Every week, I write a story about my business progress.

That’s not happening today.

We have a big client deadline to hit, and I need all the time I can get.

But I’m committed to documenting the journey, so here’s a quick list for what’s happened in our business this week.

Raw, real, and unedited.

Let’s go.

1.) I’m the business bottleneck.

We write a lot of copy in our agency.

YouTube scripts, emails, ads, and even funnel copy.

I handle 90% of it, it’s keeping me from other important tasks in the business.

Plus, as we grow, which we’re growing fast, I won’t be able to handle everything myself.

It’s a problem we need to solve for.

2.) We’re about to hire a full-time copywriter.

Once we land 1-2 more paying clients, we’re hiring our first copywriter.

This person will handle the grunt work for YouTube scripts.

But I’m also going to train them on ads and emails.

My goal is to teach this person everything I know about copywriting, marketing, and YouTube.

I’m still deciding if we pay less to bring in a junior, or pay more to bring in someone who’s advanced.

This might be the most important role we hire this year.

3.) We have 6 big prospects at the finish line.

They’re 90% sold, but nothing is official until money hits the bank.

These leads came from my network and trusted referrals, so they’re all quite hot at the moment.

They are all looking to hire a team to grow their YouTube channel, too.

A couple of these deals are 6-figure deals over the course of a year.

Once we close our next two, we’re raising our baseline retainer fee.

Once we do, I’m not sure how to tell the rest of the leads that we’ve raised our prices.

Maybe that upsets them, maybe we lose them, or maybe we win them. We’ll find out.

4.) We helped a trial client get a 2.6x outlier.

The client is Tripp Advice, and they’re on a trial project. They have 1 million subscribers, but their videos only get 5,000 views on average. We have a theory for why this is happening. So we produced a video to solve the problem, and we think we figured it out already. The video is at 13,000 views and climbing. We modeled Dan Go’s latest viral video thumbnail, then just focused on the script with zero editing. It reached as high as 200+ views per hour, but it’s currently hovering around 70 views per hour.

5.) Creating 8 YouTube scripts in the next 2 days.

Our client, Dave Asprey, is recording our first video scripts this Tuesday.

It might be the last recording date of the year, since he’s busy running a portfolio of businesses.

So we’re aiming to prepare 8 scripts in advance. We’re currently at 5, and I need to write 2 more today.

This is where having a copywriter on the team would help.

I’ve been at these scripts day and night this past week, on top of all the other client work we have.

6.) We’re having profitable days with client ad accounts.

We currently manage 2 Meta ad accounts, 1 YouTube ad account, and 1 Google ad account.

We’re only at $100/day in spend per account, but we’re having profitable days within the first few days of launching the ads.

The best ads don’t look like ads.

In fact, the best ads should look like content native to the platform you’re running ads on.

We’re an organic traffic and paid traffic agency, and they are blending well into each other.

7.) We might strike our first barter deal.

I have a former consulting client.

They are two guys, and they are the best at Meta ads and YouTube/Google ads.

We might offer them our full service for a 70% discount in exchange for them coaching us on how to become top 1% paid advertisers.

Plus we get to build him in public as a case study, and be a referral partner since all his clients are exactly who we want to work with.

8.) I don’t have enough time to run my personal brand.

I’m going to launch a YouTube channel with my face on it.

We’re making myself a client of the agency.

That means YouTube videos, content on all platforms, and our hybrid paid ads strategy.

All through my personal brand. But I’ve put this off week after week.

The agency is taking so much of my time, I can’t even get around to ordering the home studio equipment.

Once we hire our first copywriter, I’ll finally get around to going hard on content.

9.) I worry about burning out.

In 2021, I built a 1-man agency that grew big and fast.

So fast, that I burned out within weeks.

I vowed to never start an agency again. But here I am, running an agency.

During a time like this, where we have to produce about 8 YouTube scripts, 10 ads, and 20 emails over the next few days, I get worried that I might repeat the burnout pattern.

But this time, I haven’t actually experienced it.

My partner has been a total life-saver, handling everything else so I can focus on creative work.

I never like to write my business updates as lists.

I think they lack emotion, and they definitely lack storytelling. Plus, list posts are the cheap way to do long-form.

I usually like to go all-in on a single topic, and I use this weekly content as my time to practice my storytelling.

But, I’ve got a lot of YouTube scripts, ads, and emails to write over the next few days. So what you’re reading is the fast, no-time-to-edit version.

This is Week 8 of building my business in public.