“Sam,” he cuts me off mid-pitch, “isn’t this what every YouTube agency does?”

My stomach tightens, and cold sweat creeps up the back of my neck.

I’ve spent the last two hours crafting an offer for this guy. But now, it feels like I’ve just presented something too… average.

I almost buckle under the pressure…

“You’re right,” I say, the words catching in my throat. “What I just showed you is what every YouTube agency does.”

But as I take a breath and calm myself, a smirk tugs at the corner of my mouth…

“But here’s what they don’t do…”

His eyebrow raises ever so slightly.

I lock in and walk him through the rest of our offer, laying out the precise strategy that will not only grow his views but generate millions in revenue from his YouTube alone.

He digests every word, but his expression stays neutral – it’s impossible for me to read.

Is he impressed? Does he see the value?

I can’t tell, and the uncertainty hangs in the air as I finish the pitch.

The silence feels like an eternity, and I have no clue if my pitch landed or missed the mark. But then he finally replies, and what he says next becomes a turning point for our agency…

You see, I didn’t expect to be talking with this guy on a call. Not until a couple of weeks ago, when I get a random text…

“Hey man, think you could help one of our experts with his YouTube channel?”

It’s from a guy at an 8-figure marketing company.

They’re the best at funnels and paid ads, and it’s working really well for one of their expert brands. But lately, they’re feeling the pinch of rising ad costs and compliance issues.

Turns out, their top expert has a YouTube channel, and they think organic YouTube content could be the missing piece to help them scale even further.

But his current videos are stuck at a measly 300 views each.

That’s where we come in.

So I get on a call with the guy.

Within minutes, I see he’s the real deal – decades of experience, a strong track record, and a desire to create content. His business is already huge from paid advertising, but we could open up an even more profitable channel with the right organic YouTube strategy.

And within seconds of checking out his channel, I see the problem:

Weak video ideas… poor thumbnails and titles… intros that drag on and on…

It’s a classic case of having tons of potential but no strategy.

All he needed were small tweaks to get big results.

I show the expert results I’ve gotten for a small channel in his same niche. Their average video was getting 100 views. After consulting them on some small tweaks, their next four videos hit 2,500 views (25x), 247 views (2.5x), 1,000 views (10x), and 9,400 views (94x).

I can see his eyes light up after showing him this little case study.

But this isn’t just about views.

The goal is to generate organic traffic that fuels their already well-oiled marketing machine. They’ve got the offers and the backend dialed in – they just need more eyeballs outside of paid advertising.

By the end of the call, he’s eager to hear how we can work together. So we agree to create a proposal and schedule a follow-up call for Wednesday.

Wednesday morning rolls around, and I’ve got five hours to craft the perfect offer before the call. It’s the first YouTube-only offer we’re putting together, so I need time to do this well…

Then, I get a text from the expert asking if we can move the meeting up.

Suddenly, my five hours shrink to two, and I get a little nervous.

Two hours isn’t a lot of time, but I’ve worked under pressure before. I roll out of bed and head out for a walk, where I do my best thinking.

By the end of an hour-long walk, I’ve written the entire offer in my head…

I sit down at my desk and start typing. I pour everything into that offer. I dial in the positioning, the relevancy, and the differentiation. And with just two minutes left before the call, I lean back, take a deep breath, and look at what I’ve written.

It’s the best offer I’ve ever created.

The call kicks off. I’m walking him through the 3-step process I created just an hour earlier, carefully explaining what makes our solution superior to other solutions on the market, and why it’s perfect for him.

He interjects with direct, probing questions. And at one point, he bluntly asks, “Isn’t this what every other YouTube agency does?”

It almost throws me off my game…

But I stay focused and go for the close, explaining how these three steps will help him get a massive ROI by creating just one video per week.

And then, I stop talking.

Silence.

He’s staring at me, and I can’t read a thing. The seconds drag on…

Is he going to say yes? Or did I miss the mark?

I’m worried I’ll have to write about this failure online since I share behind the scenes into our agency. And that’s never the fun one to write…

Finally, he leans forward, opens his mouth, and says…

“What you’ve just shown me is… amazing. I’m in – let’s do it.”

And just like that, a weight lifts off my shoulders…

Now, I’m not one to celebrate too early. It’s only official when the money hits the bank, and the money hasn’t hit the bank yet. We caught him during a family vacation at the beach, so he asked if we can start this week after he’s back.

I’m simply sharing a story, as this is my promise to document my journey in the open.

So if you’re reading this right now, then you know as much as I do if this deal will close or not. But also, this is the most exciting thing that’s happened – because we’ve finally crafted an offer that’s going to be a game-changer.

We’re calling it The YouTube Revenue Engine.

It’s not just a fancy name. It’s an actual system that combines the best of direct response marketing with organic YouTube content into three simple steps. I won’t go into the details today. But for the last few months, I’ve publicly stated that I believe this is the future of online business…

However, I didn’t know what the specific solution looked like…

Until now.

I’ve shown The YouTube Revenue Engine to a few of my buddies who are smarter marketers than me, and even they’re impressed with what we’ve created. No other agency is doing this right now.

And the best part?

We can use this system to market our own agency, allowing us to demonstrate it rather than talk about it. So that’s exactly what we’re going to do, starting with my personal brand which you’ll see soon…

The lesson here is, selling an offer is really just selling a solution.

​​The best solutions aren’t better, they’re different. They offer a different way to get the same outcome everybody else is promising.

​​And that ‘different way’ needs to give the client more of what they want, and less of what they don’t want.

Once you identify this…

It needs to become the positioning of your entire offer.

Cracking the code to marketing is finding this one thing…

I feel like we found ours.

It feels good to be this excited about something, and that makes this whole thing much more enjoyable.

This is the start of something big for us.

There’s still a ton of work ahead, but I’m more confident than ever that this strategy will allow us and our partners to build the brands of the future.

This is Week 3 of building my business in public.