In today’s edition:

🎸 Why Fender rebuilt its website around stories

💸 ChatGPT ads underdeliver, and AI Mode adds booking links

🧪 A two-minute test of how AI tells your story

💎 How four words made diamonds the default

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Mention worthy

🎸 Fender rebuilt its website to tell its story

Most brand websites exist to sell. Fender decided its site also had to explain why its guitars matter and help players pick the right one.

Fender relaunched Fender.com in October. Interim CMO Kelly Magrath said it replaced a “transactional” shopfront with a “front door that we can use as a storytelling platform”, Digiday reports. The site has short videos on Fender’s heritage, its artists (Jimi Hendrix among them) and its craftspeople, plus sound demos and comparison tools.

A new AI tool, Ask Fender, lets players describe what they want and suggests an instrument. It’s launching first in the US, Guitar.com reports. Part of the aim is to be found when people research products, AI search included.

Why it works

👉 It gives AI more to work with. Brands can’t tell ChatGPT what to say, but they can publish more for it to draw on. Heritage, artists and craft are facts Fender can tell.

👉 It answers buyers in their words. Ask Fender takes the same questions people put to ChatGPT (“which guitar for a beginner who loves indie?”) and answers them on Fender’s site.

👉 It starts where Fender has a right to win. The best place to start is content “where you have a right to win”. No one else can tell 75 years of Telecaster history, so Fender has little competition for those answers.

💡 Steal this: the origin-and-proof page

Pick three stories only you can tell: why you started, a customer and what changed for them (with permission), and how the work is done. For an accounting firm, that could be the founder’s first client and the year-end checklist.

Then add a “Which option is right for me?” section that answers your five most common buyer questions in the words buyers use. Put it all on a dated page linked from your homepage. AI then has something specific to quote when buyers ask why they should pick you.

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Industry news

🗞️ AI search stories that matter this week

1. A paid ChatGPT visit earns about a third of a Google ad visit. Researchers from WU Vienna and the Frankfurt School tracked 1,898 shops for 60 weeks. In the US, a paid ChatGPT visit brought in $0.89, against $2.45 from Google ads, according to their working paper, still under review. Being recommended is still worth more than buying the slot.

2. AI agents reach checkout more often than people do. Microsoft Clarity found checkout in 25% of sessions involving agents from OpenAI, Google and Anthropic, against 15% of human sessions, with appointment bookings at 8%. Try booking or buying on your site with an AI agent and note where it gets stuck.

3. Google’s AI Mode now sends US home-service searches to a booking page. Google’s Robby Stein said AI Mode links to booking and quote pages through Angi, Thumbtack, Housecall Pro and Jobber, with ServiceTitan coming soon. Angi says people land on the pro’s Angi profile to request a quote.

Quick hits

🔌 OpenAI now trains its top models offline. After a research model reached the live web in September, OpenAI trains frontier models in an “offline world” of cached web pages, Techzine reports. OpenAI hasn’t said it changes how ChatGPT searches, so there’s nothing to change on your site yet.

🪧 Bing is showing ads inside its AI answers. Sponsored results appeared in Bing’s Copilot-powered AI Overviews in a screenshot Search Engine Roundtable shared. Bing advertisers should check what appears inside answers for their category.

Try this

🧪 The “why you” test

Fender gives AI a story to tell. See what story AI tells about you. Open a temporary chat in ChatGPT and paste this:

Check two things. Does it tell a story about you, or only list features? Are the sources your pages or someone else’s?

And even if the answer is good, the buyer may never visit your site. That has a name 👇

Buzzwords of the week

🗣️ Zero-click search

Zero-click search is a search that ends on the results page or inside the AI answer, with no click to any website.

SparkToro measured 49% back in 2019. Its 2026 study with Similarweb data put US Google searches at 68.01% zero-click for January to April, up from 60.45% in 2024. It excludes Google’s own app, so the true figure is likely higher.

💡 My take: An answer that names you can still win the customer. Add “ChatGPT or another AI tool” to your enquiry form’s “How did you hear about us?” field and count it monthly.

Steal this playbook

📘 AirOps: 125 stats on what gets cited

AirOps’ Saven Jude Sajen compiled AI Search Statistics (October 2026), updated on 2 November. It pulls 125 figures from 15 AirOps studies and 3 research posts, each listed with its sample, AI engines and date.

Three bits worth stealing:

👉 You don’t need to be a big name. 84% of AI citations went to sites outside the 100 most cited. A small firm’s website has a fair shot.

👉 Aim for 500 to 2,000 words. Pages in that range got cited by ChatGPT the most often. Pages over 5,000 words did slightly worse than pages under 500, so longer isn’t always better.

👉 Use your buyers’ questions as headings. When a heading closely matched the question, ChatGPT cited the page 75.3% of the time, against 55.9% without a match. That was among pages near the top of its search. So a heading like “How much does outsourced payroll cost?” beats “Our pricing”.

And the one to remember: when ChatGPT pulled up a Wikipedia page, it cited it 59.2% of the time, more than any other type of site. Write your key pages the way Wikipedia does: plain facts, dates and sources, with no sales talk.

Before the bots

💎 How De Beers became the answer to “Will you marry me?”

In 1938, only about one in ten American engagement rings had a diamond, and sales had slumped through the Depression. De Beers hired the ad agency N.W. Ayer to change that.

Ayer had no direct sale to make and no brand name to push, so it sold an idea: diamonds as a symbol of lasting love. In 1947, copywriter Frances Gerety wrote “A Diamond Is Forever”. Her colleagues weren’t impressed, but it has appeared in every De Beers engagement ad since 1948.

By the end of the century, about 80% of engagement rings had a diamond, the Marketing Society notes. Advertising Age later named it the slogan of the century.

💡 The lesson for 2026: De Beers tied one product to a moment and repeated that link for decades until it became the default.

AI answers reflect which names keep appearing next to a need across many sources. The brand most consistently tied to a moment gets named for it.

👉 Your move: pick the moment buyers call you for, such as month-end close for restaurant groups. Use that exact phrase on your site, your LinkedIn posts and every article.

See you next week 🚀

Sam

Your feedback helps me create better briefings for you!

P.S. Fender’s rebuild sits in the first pillar of The Mention Method: owned content on your own site. Does yours give AI a story to quote, or only a list of what you sell? Reply “Method” and I’ll walk you through it.

P.P.S. Worth a quick read: Learn how founders use LinkedIn to boost AI search visibility in 2026.

In today’s edition:

🤖 How the Daily Mail is getting brands into AI answers

🛒 Walmart welcomes AI shoppers, and AI Mode hits Reddit

🧪 A two-minute test using your buyers’ longer questions

🍊 How an ad man got America to drink its oranges

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Mention worthy

🤖 The Daily Mail is testing a way into AI answers

Most brands hope a publisher will mention them one day. The Daily Mail is checking which AI answers a brand is missing from, then writing content to fill the gap.

The Daily Mail is running 12 to 15 tests for advertisers across the US, UK and Australia, Digiday reports, ahead of an AI visibility product early next year. Carly Steven, its director of SEO and editorial ecommerce, says the team finds the questions people ask AI about a brand’s category, tracks which sources get cited, and creates branded content where there’s an opening.

For one unnamed personal finance brand, visibility across its target questions rose from about 50% to nearly 75%.

Why it works

👉 It starts with the gaps. The team checks which sources AI cites before writing anything, and skips questions where government or medical sites already dominate.

👉 It sits on a site AI already reads. The new content was cited for most of the questions they tracked, because it lives on a publisher AI tools already draw from.

💡 Steal this: the cited-outlet list

Write down the 10 questions your buyers ask most, run each one in ChatGPT, and note which publications it cites. For an accounting firm, that might be a small-business section of a national paper. For a software company, a review site like G2.

Pitch, contribute to or sponsor those outlets. You end up named on the pages AI already pulls from.

Industry news

🗞️ AI search stories that matter this week

1. AI Mode ads earn Google less, and it’s sticking with them. Growth in AI Mode searches hit ad revenue “because of the lower monetization we were seeing in AI Mode”, Google’s Philipp Schindler said. Sundar Pichai added that AI Mode questions are three times longer than classic searches. Write pages that answer those longer, more detailed questions.

2. Reddit says Google’s AI Mode doesn’t send traffic. Reddit’s search referrals fell by more than 1 million a week on average in October. “The reality is, AI Mode does not drive traffic,” CEO Steve Huffman said. If even Reddit is losing clicks, judge your AI visibility by mentions and enquiries as well as visits.

3. Walmart lets AI agents shop for your customers. Its new Agent Gateway lets approved agents, including ChatGPT, Gemini and Meta’s Muse, search stock and buy across Walmart and Sam’s Club. Amazon has started blocking agents. If you sell products, check that your prices, stock and specs are easy for an agent to read.

Quick hits

🚫 Claude will stay ad-free. Anthropic’s IPO filing lists no ad business, while its own ad spend rose from $33M in 2024 to $147M in 2025, Digiday reports. Nobody can buy their way into Claude’s answers, so earned mentions are the only route in for now.

🛒 Azoma raises $11.2M to get brands picked by AI shopping agents. Its customers include L’Oréal, Unilever and Mars, and Azoma says revenue grew almost tenfold in a year. The biggest consumer brands are now paying to be the product an agent chooses.

Try this

🧪 The long-question test

Buyers now ask AI long, specific questions, so run your test with one of those. Open a temporary chat in ChatGPT and paste this:

Check two things. Are you named, and does it describe you correctly?

Then open one of the sources and trace where its numbers came from. Some can lead back to data nobody ever checked 👇

Buzzwords of the week

🗣️ Citation laundering

Citation laundering is when a dubious claim looks more trustworthy every time a respected source repeats it.

Peec AI’s Metehan Yesilyurt showed how it works. He published 50,000 pages of made-up statistics for about $50. ChatGPT kept citing them, and the numbers turned up in an academic paper and in investment research from Qatar’s largest financial group.

💡 My take: AI tools retrieve numbers without checking them. Before you quote a stat, trace it to the original. Better still, be the original: verified, dated data with your name on it, like Ramp’s monthly index from last week.

Steal this playbook

📘 StackedGTM: the 2027 guide to AEO

Josh Grant of StackedGTM wrote The Definitive 2027 Guide to AEO, updated on 19 October. It opens with a G2 survey: 51% of B2B buyers now start research in a chatbot more often than in Google.

Three bits worth stealing:

👉 Mine your buyers’ questions. Pull them from sales calls, support tickets and G2 reviews, then use them for your prompts, content and positioning.

👉 Track recommendations separately from citations. Across 1,094 categories, Semrush and Kevin Indig found the most-cited site was also the most-recommended brand only 21% of the time. AI can use your content and still recommend someone else.

👉 Make your facts readable. Your robots.txt can allow AI crawlers while your firewall blocks them. Check your prices appear in the page’s raw HTML, where crawlers can read them without running scripts.

And the one to remember: the guide says AI sends different questions to different places. Facts like price and specs come from your own site, while opinions like “is it any good?” come from reviews and communities. If your site only covers facts, someone else is answering the opinion questions about you.

Before the bots

🍊 How Sunkist became the name behind orange juice

By 1907, California was growing five times as many oranges as 15 years earlier. Unsold fruit piled up, and growers were cutting down their trees.

Their co-operative hired ad man Albert Lasker. A test campaign in Iowa boosted orange sales by 50%, and the oranges got a brand name: Sunkist. Then Lasker gave people a new way to use them, with the slogan “Drink an orange” and juice extractors sold alongside the fruit.

By the mid-1930s, one in five Sunkist oranges was drunk as juice.

💡 The lesson for 2026: Sunkist grew by owning a new use for its product, so its name arrived with the habit.

AI answers are built around uses: “best [product] for [situation]”. The brand most clearly tied to a specific use is the one that gets named for it.

👉 Your move: pick one specific use for what you sell that competitors ignore, such as payroll for restaurants with seasonal staff. Publish the page that answers it, using that exact phrase.

See you next week 🚀

Sam

Your feedback helps me create better briefings for you!

P.S. The Daily Mail’s tests sit in the second pillar of The Mention Method: getting named on the sites AI already trusts. Want to know which sites AI cites for your buyers’ questions? Reply “Method” and I’ll walk you through it.

P.P.S. Worth a quick read: Learn how founders use LinkedIn to boost AI search visibility in 2026.

In today’s edition:

💳 How Ramp became the source everyone quotes on AI adoption

💰 $5 ChatGPT clicks, and why Google rankings don’t predict citations

🧪 A two-minute test to find the number in your category nobody owns

🥄 The baking expert America trusted, who never existed

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Mention worthy

💳 Ramp made itself the source on AI adoption

Most brands pitch for press coverage and hope for a mention. Ramp publishes a number that newspapers, the Fed and other companies come back to every month.

Ramp sells corporate cards and spend software. It also runs an in-house research team, Ramp Economics Lab, led by lead economist Ara Kharazian. Every month the team publishes the Ramp AI Index, which tracks how many US businesses pay for AI tools, using its own customers’ card and bill-pay data.

The St. Louis Fed now carries the index in its FRED economic database. The latest reading shows 40.6% of businesses on Ramp paying for OpenAI in September.

Why it works

👉 It answers a question people ask AI. “How many businesses use AI?” needs a number and a source. Ramp supplies both, so its name travels with the answer.

👉 Trusted outlets repeat it. Ramp says the lab has been cited by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist and Reuters. Every repeat is another source naming Ramp next to the number.

👉 It comes back every month. It updates every month, giving AI tools and analysts fresh data to cite. The series builds a continuous monthly record of paid AI adoption dating back to January 2023.

💡 Steal this: the monthly number

Find one number in your category that people keep asking about and nobody tracks properly. For an accounting firm, that might be how many days clients take to pay. For a recruiter, how long roles take to fill.

Pull it from your own data and publish it on the same day each month, on a page with a permanent link. Add a one-line note on how you measured it. Put your name next to the number so anyone quoting it knows who to credit.

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Industry news

🗞️ AI search stories that matter this week

1. ChatGPT clicks cost about $5, for now. OpenAI has about 60,000 advertisers, with a ChatGPT click costing $3 to $5, far below most Google searches but above Meta. If your buyers research in ChatGPT, test now, before more advertisers push prices up.

2. Google now pays 400+ publishers to feed its AI news features. CNN, the Financial Times, Axios and Forbes have joined Google’s News AI pilot. Publishers supply content for AI article overviews and audio briefings on Google News, with links back to the source.

3. Your Google ranking won’t get you cited by ChatGPT. Researchers recorded ChatGPT’s own searches from March to July, and only 6% to 9% of the pages it cited appeared in Google’s organic results. It also rewrote every question into its own search terms. So cover the follow-up questions buyers ask, such as price, etc.

Quick hits

✍️ ChatGPT will rewrite your ads from 30 October. OpenAI is turning on “creative enhancements” by default, so ChatGPT can change your headlines, translate your copy and send clicks to a different page, without you approving each version.

🗑️ AI slop sites grew 5x in a year. DoubleVerify tracked low-quality AI-written sites, and ad requests to them rose from 184 million in January to 834 million in September. If someone offers to mass-produce AI articles to get you cited, say no. Platforms are getting tougher on this.

Try this

🧪 The stat-source test

Open a temporary chat in ChatGPT and paste this:

Then look at whose name sits next to the number. If it’s a competitor, they own that answer. If the figure is years old or has no source at all, nobody owns it yet. That’s your chance to publish the monthly number above like Ramp.

Fill it with real data. Some vendors in China tried a shortcut, and it ended up on national TV 👇

Buzzwords of the week

🗣️ AI poisoning

AI poisoning is flooding the web with fake or promotional articles so AI tools pick them up and recommend your product.

At CCTV’s consumer-rights show on 15 March, an industry insider invented a smart wristband that didn’t exist. Software wrote about two dozen articles praising it, and at least two AI models then listed it among their top picks. In September, China’s advertising industry responded with a voluntary GEO standard that bans fake content and forged sources, as Marcus Pentzek explains.

💡 My take: this is the tactic Anthropic banned on Claude last week. If a vendor promises “guaranteed” AI placement, ask exactly how they’ll get it.

Steal this playbook

📘 Kevin Indig: how to plan 2027 when AI won’t attribute

Kevin Indig and Amanda Johnson wrote How to plan 2027 when traffic is down and AI won’t attribute for Search Engine Land. Their starting point: 68% of US Google searches now end without a click, per SparkToro and Similarweb.

Three bits worth stealing:

👉 Budget for skills, and leave last year’s traffic out of it. Their example split is 40% digital PR, 30% technical SEO, 20% content and 10% research.

👉 Read three numbers together. Each month, report one exposure number (like AI mentions), one behaviour signal (like branded searches) and one business result. When one rises and another doesn’t, that tells you where to look.

👉 Give every experiment a kill date. Split work into proven (fully funded), experiments/learning (capped, with one owner and an end date/kill criteria) and bets you can’t measure (funded on judgment).

And the one to remember: Ramp’s George Bonaci says relying on attribution alone “would have led us to cancel all the brand marketing we do, all our stunts, all our direct mail, all our events.”

Before the bots

🥄 How Betty Crocker became America’s baking expert

In 1921, the company behind Gold Medal Flour ran a puzzle in a popular magazine. Around 30,000 people sent it back, and many added a baking question.

The company decided to answer every one. To make the replies feel personal, it invented a woman to sign them: Betty Crocker. Every letter went out with the same signature.

💡 The lesson for 2026: the flour company became the trusted voice on baking by answering the questions people actually asked, under one name, every time.

AI tools build answers from what they see again and again. A name that keeps turning up next to clear answers is the one they repeat.

👉 Your move: collect this month’s questions from sales calls, support tickets and DMs. Answer the top five on one page under one expert’s name, and use that same name everywhere you publish.

See you next week 🚀

Sam

Your feedback helps me create better briefings for you!

P.S. This week covered all three pillars of The Mention Method: Ramp’s index (your own content), the outlets that repeat it (other people’s platforms) and ChatGPT ads (paid). Want to know which pillar your brand is weakest in? Reply “Method” and I’ll walk you through it.

P.P.S. Worth a quick read: Learn how founders use LinkedIn to boost AI search visibility in 2026.

In today’s edition:

✅ Why Philips put its doctors and engineers on Reddit

📉 ChatGPT’s traffic went missing, plus Anthropic’s rule on fake sources

🔍 A question that shows how many customers found you through AI

🚜 How a magazine from 1895 became the source farmers trusted

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Mention worthy

💬 Philips sent its engineers to Reddit

Most brands answer buyer questions on their FAQ page. Philips put its engineers and doctors on Reddit and let people ask them anything.

Philips’ personal health team hosted a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” with credentialed engineers and doctors. The aim was to put expert, factual answers on a site AI models read heavily, then test whether it changed how often AI mentioned Philips.

Meghan Signalness, who runs media and marketing planning for the $4 billion business, told Fast Company the early results were “encouraging”.

Why it works

👉 It shows up where Google’s AI looks. Reddit is one of the most-cited sites in AI answers, and Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode cite it most often.

👉 Named experts carry more weight than a logo. Each answer comes from a person with credentials. Signalness says a doctor or dentist matters more to AI than “that 20-year-old with a cellphone”.

👉 The questions come in buyers’ own words. An AMA produces dozens of questions and answers phrased the way people actually ask, which is close to how they type into ChatGPT.

💡 Steal this: the sales-call AMA

Pick the subreddit your buyers already use and message the moderators first, because most subreddits want AMAs agreed in advance.

Book one hour with your best expert, someone buyers would trust over a marketer. Before it starts, write answers to the 10 questions you hear most on sales calls, so you still have plenty to post if the thread is quiet.

Afterwards, publish the best answers as an FAQ on your site and link back to the thread.

Industry news

🗞️ AI search stories that matter this week

1. ChatGPT’s traffic went missing for a week. Since GPT-6 launched, ChatGPT links lost their tracking tag, so visits landed in “Direct”. Across 500 pages, Adobe’s Cedric Huesler found ChatGPT visits fell by about 31,000 a day while Direct rose by 26,000. On 15 October he said it was a bug and the tags were back.

2. ChatGPT ads now come with a human account manager. Advertiser Anthony Higman shared an email introducing his “ChatGPT Ads Account Manager”. It offers a check-in every two weeks to review results and find improvements. OpenAI hasn’t said who qualifies or how much you need to spend. If you’re testing ChatGPT ads, ask your rep whether you can get one.

3. Anthropic bans using Claude to fake “independent” sources. From 12 November, Claude’s usage policy bars using it to manipulate “the sources from which search engines or AI systems draw answers”, including networks of sites posing as unrelated. Agencies can’t sell this as a service either. If one offers to set up a group of “independent” review sites for you, say no.

Quick hits

🤖 Profound now shows AI bots the whole page. Many AI crawlers can’t run JavaScript, so they miss any content that needs it to appear. Profound’s Dynamic Bot Rendering serves bots from ChatGPT, Claude and others a fully loaded copy instead.

📈 Peec AI says it’s the fastest-growing AI visibility tracker. Citing Ramp’s spend data, Peec says its adoption rose from 4% to 19% in 18 months, and it’s opening a New York office. Expect clients to ask which tracker you use.

Try this

🧪 The one-question AI traffic check

Add this question to your sign-up, demo or contact form:

Keep it as a free-text box. Once a month, count the answers that name ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or another AI tool. Then compare that number with the AI traffic your analytics tool (such as Google Analytics) reports.

If people say AI sent them but your analytics disagrees, the difference has a name 👇

Buzzwords of the week

🗣️ Dark AI traffic

Dark AI traffic is visits an AI tool sent you that your analytics files as “Direct”.

It happens when a link arrives without a tag or referrer, the click comes from inside an app, or someone copies the link and pastes it. Last week’s ChatGPT bug caused a sudden spike in it. Even with the bug fixed, some AI traffic will still show up as Direct.

💡 My take: be wary of any vendor telling you how well dark AI traffic converts. Published figures range from 2.7% to over 10%, and none has been checked independently. The question above gives you your own number.

Steal this playbook

📘 AirOps and Foundation: what 380,000 AI answers cite

AirOps and Ross Simmonds’ agency Foundation analysed over 380,000 AI answers and 3 million citations across 80+ B2B categories for The B2B AI Discovery Playbook.

Three bits worth stealing:

👉 Report Google and the chatbots separately. Reddit appears in up to half of Google’s AI answers, while Claude cites no Reddit or YouTube at all. A blended “AI visibility” number hides which side you’re winning.

👉 Keep reviews coming all year. Review sites earn over 15% of citations in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude, with G2 leading. Ask for a review right after a customer gives you a high satisfaction score.

👉 Build comparison and alternative pages separately. “X vs Y” and “alternatives to X” answer different prompts. A coffee-vs-tea shopper already knows tea, but a coffee-alternatives shopper may never have heard of matcha.

And the one to remember: in just three weeks, Reddit went from appearing in 1 in 5 ChatGPT answers to 1 in 30. Spread your mentions across several sources, so one change doesn’t wipe you out.

Before the bots

🚜 How John Deere became the farmer’s first source

In 1895, John Deere, then run by the founder’s son Charles Deere, launched The Furrow. It was a magazine about farming: crops, techniques and running the business. Early issues carried some Deere adverts, but the stories were about the farmer.

It spread fast. By 1912 circulation had passed 4 million, and Deere bought its first electric printing press to keep up, printing 50,000 copies in eight hours. The Furrow is still published today, more than 130 years on.

💡 The lesson for 2026: The Furrow earned farmers’ trust by helping with their work, so Deere was the name they knew when they needed a machine.

AI tools work the same way. They cite the source that answers the question, and the brand behind the most useful answers gets named.

👉 Your move: list the questions customers ask you that your product doesn’t answer, like “How do I write a job ad that gets applicants?” if you sell payroll software. Pick the one you hear most and publish a step-by-step answer under your name.

See you next week 🚀

Sam

Your feedback helps me create better briefings for you!

P.S. Every story this week sits in one of the three pillars of The Mention Method, my process for getting brands named in AI answers. Want to know where your brand wins and loses across all three? Reply “Method” and I’ll walk you through it.

P.P.S. Worth a quick read: Learn how founders use LinkedIn to boost AI search visibility in 2026.

Welcome back. Plenty of brands have a “best [category]” blog post with their own name at number one. New data says Google’s AI has started ignoring them. In the same week, ChatGPT ads got pictures and proper measurement.

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Industry news

🗞️ AI search stories that matter this week

1. ChatGPT ads now come with pictures and proof. OpenAI will test image ads that appear while ChatGPT is generating an image, starting with a small group of US advertisers. ChatGPT ads also now plug into the tracking tools marketing teams already use, so you can compare them with your Google and Meta ads. If “we can’t measure it” was your reason to wait, that reason has gone.

2. The Verge will soon make some readers sign up before they can read. Digiday reports the test starts later this month, with the wall shown to a share of visitors or to people arriving from certain sites. AI search is sending publishers fewer readers, and one executive said ads shown to signed-in readers can sell for up to eight times more. Before you pitch or pay for coverage, check whether buyers can still read it.

3. Google’s AI is dropping brands that rank themselves first. SEO consultant Lily Ray checked 100 “best B2B software” searches in September. AI Overviews left out the brand that had put itself top 83% of the time, up from 69% in June, and citations of those self-ranking pages fell 38%.

Quick hits

🏷️ ChatGPT’s writing gets a watermark in the EU. OpenAI will add an invisible watermark to ChatGPT text for EU users in the coming weeks. Changing one word in ten reduces detection from 92% to 66%, which is one more reason to edit what AI gives you.

👟 ChatGPT may be handing out “best for” badges. Brodie Clark spotted labels such as “best all-rounder” and “best for beginners” on product results. OpenAI hasn’t confirmed the test. Say on your product page who it’s best for.

Mention worthy

🍽️ The supermarket podcast with a billion plays

Most branded podcasts are a marketing team talking to itself. Waitrose has surpassed a billion plays, and John Lewis borrowed the format for Gift List, its chatbot show.

Dish launched in 2022, with Nick Grimshaw and Michelin-starred chef Angela Hartnett hosting a famous guest for dinner. Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch have been round, and Tom Holland’s episode reached 2.3 million people. In June, Waitrose said the show had passed one billion downloads, views and listens across 165 episodes.

Why it works

👉 It lives on the site AI cites most. More people now watch Dish than listen, much of it on YouTube. Meltwater’s study of 9.5 million AI citations found that YouTube was one of the most-cited sources.

👉 Other people say the name. LinkedIn, Reddit and YouTube accounted for 47.5% of citations, against 18.7% for company websites and 15% for review sites. A guest praising a pudding on these platforms is someone else talking about Waitrose food.

👉 It keeps coming. AI tools tend to cite a page for a few weeks, then move on. A show with 165 episodes and counting gives models something new to find all year.

💡 Steal this: the name-it-out-loud clip

Go through video you already have, such as webinars, customer calls and podcast guest spots. Find three moments where someone answers a question your buyers ask.

Keep the ones where your product or company is said by name. AI tools mostly work from the title, description and transcript, so “it’s brilliant” gives them nothing and “Acme’s onboarding took us two days” is a mention.

Post each clip to YouTube with the question as the title.

Try this

🧪 The two-minute mention test

Open a temporary chat in ChatGPT and paste this:

Then check two things. Are you named? Is your website among the links?

If you got the first without the second, there’s a name for that 👇

Buzzwords of the week

🗣️ The mention-citation gap

The mention-citation gap is the difference between how often AI names your brand and how often it links to you.

MarketScale’s B2B tracker has AI naming a brand in 26.4% of answers and linking to it in 17.1%. ChatGPT has the widest gap, at 33.3% named and 12.8% linked.

💡 My take: when AI names you but links someone else, it probably took the answer from their page. Run the test above and note which pages it linked. Then publish your own page answering that same question with only the facts you have, like prices, specs, and results.

Steal this playbook

📘 BuzzStream and YouGov: do people click AI’s sources?

BuzzStream had YouGov survey 1,000 US adults in September for Do Americans Use AI for News?, a five-question repeat of its January survey on AI news summaries.

Three bits worth stealing:

👉 Make the mention do the selling. Few people click through to the source every time. Check that your homepage and profiles describe what you do, and who for, in one clear sentence AI can repeat.

👉 Be the page people check. Two in three AI news users have caught AI getting a story wrong. Keep your prices, dates and specs on one page that’s current and easy to find.

👉 Keep your other channels running. Most Americans still rarely or never get news from AI. Email, search and social reach the buyers AI doesn’t, so build AI visibility on top of them.

And the one to remember: only 5% trust an AI summary over an outlet they know. Coverage from names your buyers already trust works on people and on AI.

Before the bots

🏅 How Good Housekeeping became the answer shoppers trusted

In 1909, Good Housekeeping opened an Institute in Springfield with a model kitchen and testing rooms. Its job was to check whether household products did what their adverts claimed. This was before the FTC existed.

That December, the magazine printed its first “Tested and Approved” list: 21 products, including a washer, a refrigerator and an electric iron. By the end of 1910, almost 200 had qualified. The list became the Good Housekeeping Seal, and by the 1940s the magazine backed approved products with its own refund or replacement warranty.

💡 The lesson for 2026: AI models do what 1910 readers did. They look for a named third party that has already tested the claim.

Reviews, comparison tables, standards bodies and creator explainers are today’s Seal. Your homepage is the advert, and everyone else is the Institute.

👉 Your move: name the independent tester your buyers already trust, and get your product in front of them this month.

See you next week 🚀

Sam

Your feedback helps me create better briefings for you!

P.S. Every story this week sits in one of the three pillars of The Mention Method, my process for getting brands named in AI answers. Want to know where your brand wins and loses across all three? Reply “Method” and I’ll walk you through it.

P.P.S. New this week on LinkedIn: How can founders use LinkedIn to boost AI search visibility in 2026?

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Industry news

🗞️ AI search stories that matter this week

🛒 Ask YouTube is becoming a shopping assistant. At Made on YouTube, the company said product review searches in Ask YouTube may return organised video recommendations, including a comparison table of product attributes. Viewers can keep asking questions on the video’s page, or by voice on TV. More than 140 million people have used Ask YouTube, up over 500% since December.

📉 ChatGPT’s share of US AI prompts fell from 70% to 50% in six months. Gemini climbed from 17% to 30% and Claude from 2% to 11% between January and June, according to Comscore’s Q2 AI Intelligence Report. ChatGPT is still the biggest, with 168 million desktop conversations in June. Google showed an AI Overview on 39.4% of desktop searches that month. Focus on only ChatGPT, and you’re watching half the market.

⏳ Profound puts a shelf life on every AI citation. Its new Citation Decay view tracks every page AI cites: when it was first cited, when it peaked and how fast it dropped. Profound says half the pages AI cites are less than 13 weeks old. In its study of 883,000 pages, the typical page was cited half as often 11 days after its peak. It's live for Profound customers.

🖱️ The click rate on ChatGPT ads has doubled since launch. Graphite and Similarweb studied more than 98,000 ads and 8,000 landing pages. Half of the top 10 advertisers run more ads on ChatGPT than on Meta, and the leading ones write 98% new copy for it. Ads get the most clicks in the first few messages of a chat. Graphite still says to treat them as a small test.

🔎 Google now shows an AI Overview on most big-brand searches. Chris Long tested roughly 100 large brand names, including Reddit, Salesforce, Amazon and Adobe, and found an AI Overview on 93% of them. Most sit mid-page, below the brand’s own listing. DemandSphere’s daily tracking has branded searches with an Overview rising from 26% on 1 September to 82% by the 29th. Search your brand name and read what Google wrote.

Mention worthy

🛋️ Wayfair is testing an ad you can chat with

Click most ChatGPT ads and you land on a web page. Click Wayfair's new one and you start chatting with Wayfair's own AI.

On 16 September, OpenAI announced Sponsored Agents, a test with select US advertisers. A shopper sees an ad, taps a button such as “Chat with us”, and starts a conversation with the brand’s agent. Wayfair confirmed that it’s in a pilot at a limited scale to see whether a conversation helps customers make better-informed decisions. When the shopper is ready, the agent links to the brand’s site.

Why it works

👉 The brand gets a turn in the chat. A normal ad pulls the shopper away from the place where they’re deciding. This one keeps them in ChatGPT, talking to Wayfair by name, while they’re comparing options.

👉 It answers the second question. Nobody stops at “best dining table”. OpenAI’s own example shopper wants to know whether it fits the room, how many it seats and how to care for the finish. The brand with those answers ready is the one the shopper buys from.

👉 It runs on product facts. Wayfair says its test has checks on product accuracy. Shopify sellers can already run ChatGPT ads from an app that pulls their products in from Shopify’s catalogue. If a size or price is wrong in your product data, the agent repeats it to the customer mid-conversation.

💡 Steal this: the follow-up page

Sponsored Agents are invite-only, but the idea is free. After “who should I hire?”, buyers ask ChatGPT about price, timing and what’s included. If a page on your website doesn’t answer, ChatGPT uses a page that does.

So pick one service and list ten questions buyers ask before paying. Answer each in two sentences. Publish them as a Q&A on the service page. It gives AI something specific to quote, and it’s your agent’s script for when OpenAI opens up this format.

Buzzwords of the week

🗣️ Sponsored Agents

You ask ChatGPT for a sofa under $800 that fits a small flat. Under its answer sits an ad with a “Chat with us” button.

Sponsored Agents are ads that open a chat with a brand’s own AI. The chat is labelled as sponsored and runs in its own thread, separate from the answer ChatGPT gave you.

The name is OpenAI’s, and it’s about two weeks old.

💡My take: learn the term, but don't spend on it yet. A Sponsored Agent buys you a chat with the shopper. It doesn't change what ChatGPT recommends in its own answer. You can't pay to be named there, so work on that first.

Steal this playbook

📘 OtterlyAI’s September AI Search Index

OtterlyAI’s Rick Tousseyn published The September Update: The Month AI Search Stopped Agreeing About Social. It’s built on 1,600 prompts across 16 US industries, run every day on seven AI engines.

Three bits worth stealing:

👉 Pick the engine before the platform. LinkedIn was cited 39% more often on 20 September than on the 1st, led by ChatGPT (up 66%), Google AI Mode (up 62%) and Perplexity (up 51%). On Google AI Overviews it fell 13%, and Gemini didn’t cite LinkedIn once.

👉 Treat Reddit as a Google channel. AI Overviews and AI Mode each give Reddit about 5% of their citations. Claude never cited it in 77 days of tracking, and ChatGPT’s use of Reddit is down 94% since July.

👉 Don’t count on YouTube alone. Its share fell 42% in the same three weeks, almost entirely because Google AI Mode cut YouTube from 13.5% of its citations to 3.9%. AI Overviews is the only engine still citing it in any volume.

Before the bots

🚗 How a tyre company ended up rating the world's restaurants

In 1900, France had fewer than 3,000 cars, and brothers André and Édouard Michelin had tyres to sell. They printed about 35,000 copies of a free handbook for drivers, with maps, puncture repairs, petrol stops, hotels and places to eat. More miles meant more worn-out tyres.

For 20 years they gave it away. Then, André found copies propping up a workbench in a tyre shop. He decided that "man only truly respects what he pays for". So the 1920 edition went on sale for seven francs, with the paid adverts taken out.

The restaurant pages had become the popular part, so Michelin recruited anonymous inspectors. A single star arrived in 1926 and the one-to-three scale in 1931. In 1936 it published what the stars meant: two for cooking worth a detour, three for cooking worth a special journey.

CNN’s history of the guide says there’s no evidence it ever increased tyre sales. It became a business in its own right, with more than 30 million copies sold and over 30,000 restaurants covered.

💡 The lesson for 2026: Michelin took the adverts out, published its rules and judged something its customers cared about. The name became the standard other people quote.

AI tools face the same problem as a driver in 1920, with too many options and no time to test them. When someone asks ChatGPT “what’s the best invoicing app for a freelancer?”, it leans on sources that have already done the judging, such as review sites, comparison tables and rankings with clear criteria.

👉 Your move: pick something your customers have to choose but you don’t sell. If you build websites for dentists, rate the booking systems they pick between. Publish three criteria, test each one the same way and update it every year.

See you next week 🚀

Sam

- If you enjoyed issue #33, please tap the Like button below 💙 Thank you!

P.S. Want to know what ChatGPT says about your business? Reply to this email (or drop a comment). I’ll tell you if AI recommends you, who it recommends instead, and one thing to fix. It’s the first step of The Mention Method, my process for getting brands named in AI answers.

Subscribe now

Industry news

🗞️ AI search stories that matter this week

💰 ChatGPT ads hit $1bn in under 200 days. Tens of thousands of advertisers are already buying ads on ChatGPT, and brands in India, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa can buy placements directly. Ads sit beneath ChatGPT's answers, in front of 900 million weekly users. Amazon has already started selling that space to advertisers through its own ad platform.

📉 Google admits “position 1–10” doesn’t mean what it used to. Asked how Search Console counts AI Overviews, Google’s John Mueller said the old position 1–10 has become hard to map or make useful. Every link inside an AI Overview gets the Overview’s position, not its own.

🦄 Profound raises $180M to track who AI recommends. AI visibility platform Profound raised $180 million at a $1.8 billion valuation. That's less than seven months after its $96 million Series C. It serves more than 1,000 enterprise brands, including over a third of the Fortune 100. In other words, "does ChatGPT mention us?" is now a boardroom question.

💬 ChatGPT ads can now talk back. OpenAI is testing Sponsored Agents with select US advertisers. Click an ad and you can open a labelled chat with the brand's own agent, ask questions, then visit its site. It arrives with HubSpot and Shopify integrations. Your ad just became a salesperson, so it had better know your product.

📈 GEO is the hot new service. In Fiverr's 2026 Holiday Marketing Index, 67% of freelance search specialists report rising demand for GEO, compared with 56% for traditional rankings. 83% say clients now want strategy over execution. The advice: invest in both rather than choose.

Mention worthy

🎙️ John Lewis made a chat show. The audience is a chatbot.

Most brands are rewriting product pages to get into ChatGPT's answers. John Lewis went another way and hired a TV presenter.

The department store is launching a YouTube “vodcast” called Gift List, hosted by Angela Scanlon, along with a social media studio. The stated aim is to make John Lewis more visible to chatbots and more prominent in AI search results. Louis Theroux is the first guest, and six episodes run up to Christmas.

A year ago, 0.3% of John Lewis customers searched for products through tools like ChatGPT. Today it’s 2.5%.

Why it works

👉 It creates third-party voices. AI models tend to prioritise third-party advice and live content when they build an answer. When guests talk about gifts, that counts as other people talking. It isn’t John Lewis talking about John Lewis.

👉 It never goes stale. The studio lets them respond within days to a live cultural moment, for example by filming around the Bayeux tapestry exhibition at the British Museum. Six episodes plus a clip machine means a steady supply of new material for AI models to find.

👉 It lives where the models look. An analysis of 46 million citations found YouTube accounts for 23.3% of AI Overview citations. John Lewis chose one of the platforms AI reads most.

💡 Steal this: the 20-minute guest chat

You don’t need to hire Louis Theroux. You need someone who isn’t you, talking about a question your buyers ask AI.

Once a month, record 20 minutes with a client or a respected peer. Title the video with the question, for example “How much should a brand identity cost in 2026?” Post it to YouTube, cut three clips, and put the transcript on your site.

It costs nothing, and you end up with three new sources that mention you.

Buzzwords of the week

🗣️ SEO vs AEO vs GEO

Think of them as three ways to win at a party.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) gets your name on the guest list. You rank in the blue links, and people choose to click on you.

AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) makes you the person who answers when someone asks a question out loud. Be the direct answer, not one of ten options.

GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) makes you the person everyone quotes when they retell the story the next day. You get named and cited inside the answers that ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity write.

💡My take: these aren’t three jobs. It’s one job with three scoreboards: clicks, answers and mentions. Don’t let anyone sell you three separate retainers.

Steal this playbook

📘 LinkedIn’s guide to winning AI search

LinkedIn recently published Unlocking AI Search Visibility: The B2B Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn, written by its VP of Marketing, Davang Shah. It’s built on 18 months of LinkedIn’s own testing.

Three bits worth stealing:

👉 Your profile is a citation asset. The guide cites Meltwater research finding that 75% of LinkedIn’s AI citations came from individual member profiles, not company pages.

👉 Get the whole team saying the same thing. LinkedIn recommends coordinating company content with executives, employees, subject-matter experts, creators and press coverage, so credible sources reinforce the same themes about your brand.

👉 Date it and lead with it. Put specific dates in your posts so AI can tell the information is current, and open with the most important point. LinkedIn’s internal data also suggests posts with 10 or more comments seem to do better.

And the stat that should wake you up: LinkedIn’s own marketing sites have seen non-branded search traffic fall by as much as 60%. If it’s happening to LinkedIn, it’s happening to you.

Before the bots

🍺 How a beer brand built the first answer engine

In November 1951, the managing director of the Guinness Brewery, Sir Hugh Beaver, was on a shooting party in County Wexford, Ireland. The group argued about which was Europe’s fastest game bird. Back home, they couldn’t find a single reference book that could settle it.

Beaver saw the bigger picture. He reckoned the same kind of friendly arguments were happening every night in the 81,400 pubs across Britain and Ireland.

So he hired Norris and Ross McWhirter, twin brothers who ran a fact-finding agency in London. The first Guinness Book of Records came out on 27 August 1955. The first 1,000 copies were laminated against beer spills and given to pubs free as a promotion. They were so popular that Guinness started selling the book, and it was a UK bestseller by Christmas. Now it’s in its 71st year, published in 100 countries and 40 languages.

💡 The lesson for 2026: the book didn’t advertise beer. It became the source that settled the argument, so the Guinness name came up every time someone said “look it up.”

That’s AI search in one sentence. ChatGPT is the new pub, and your customers are arguing in it every night: “Is X better than Y?”, “How much should this cost?”, “Who’s the best at Z?”

👉 Your move: find the question your industry argues about most, publish the definitive answer, and make it the page everyone cites.

See you next week 🚀

Sam

- If you enjoyed issue #32, please tap the Like button below 💙 Thank you!

P.S. Want to know what ChatGPT says about your business? Reply to this email (or drop a comment). I’ll tell you if AI recommends you, who it recommends instead, and one thing to fix. It’s the first step of The Mention Method, the process I’ve developed to get brands named in AI answers.

“Aren’t you worried people will just copy you?”

Usually right after I’ve shared a template, a pricing breakdown, or the blueprint I follow when I am looking for new clients.

Usually right after I've shared a system from 6,700+ projects, the pricing that got me to the top 0.04% on platforms like Fiverr, or the blueprint I’ve used to work with clients in 100+ countries.

Fair question. I used to worry about it too.

Then I discovered a bartender from 1862 who settled it for me.

His name was Jerry Thomas. At the peak of his career in New York, he did something nobody in his trade had ever done.

He wrote his recipes down. All of them.

Every other bartender in America kept recipes in their head. The recipes provided job security. Jerry sold his for $2.50.

It’s the same call you’re making every time you decide whether to share your process, pricing, systems, or templates. Jerry got it right. Here’s how to copy it.

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📖 The recipes went public. The bar got busier.

Before 1862, if you wanted to learn how to make a proper cocktail, you found a bartender who knew one and you watched him make it. Nothing was written down. Recipes got passed along like a family secret.

Jerry’s book, The Bar-Tender’s Guide, was the first time anyone in America had put cocktail recipes in print.

Now think about what he was risking.

Anyone with $2.50 could read how the most famous bartender in America made his drinks. Including the person across the street who wanted his job.

You'd expect that to end badly for him.

But four years later, Jerry opened his own bar on Broadway. It became the most famous saloon in New York. Why?

Because a recipe can’t pour the drink for you.

And it can’t make you feel like you got the best seat in the house.

The book didn’t replace Jerry. It was an advert, sitting on the shelf of every bar that owned a copy.

A new edition came out in 1887, two years after he died, with his name still on the front. You can even order a reprint on Amazon today (164 years later!)

This shows NOBODY is just paying you for your process.

They’re paying YOU to run that process inside THEIR business. Publishing the process doesn’t give that away. It proves you’ve got one.

I did this in October.

I published the 5 unconventional things I did to hit $589K on platforms like Fiverr.

Some said I was handing over the keys, but nobody copied me out of business, and I generated new business.

Copy this:

If you’re a designer 👉 post a before and after with the two changes you made and why. It’s the only way someone can see the thinking they’re paying for.

If you’re a coach 👉 post the first email you send a new client. Anyone nervous about booking gets to see exactly what happens next.

These quick growth ideas cost you nothing and still work in six months.

🔥 Jerry turned a hot toddy into a magic trick

The Blue Blazer is whiskey and boiling water with a spoon of sugar.

That’s a hot toddy. It’s what many grandparents have given us to treat a cold.

Jerry set it on fire and poured it, still burning, in a long blue arc between two silver mugs. Back and forth. That was the closest thing to magic most had ever seen in the 1800’s.

What you sell is a hot toddy. Copywriting, lead generation, coaching services. The client can get the ingredients anywhere from a thousand people at a thousand prices.

But what they remember is the moment it ARRIVED.

So stop attaching a file and typing “let me know your thoughts.”

1. Record a 2-minute Loom.

2. Walk them through the work and the decisions you made on purpose.

3. Say why you cut the thing they asked for. Put “here’s what I’d test first” at the bottom of the delivery email.

The work is the same either way. What changes is how it feels to receive it.

Jerry knew that. He had the same whiskey as the bar across the street. People paid more because of how he delivered it.

💸 Then he bet the bar on something he didn't understand

Jerry poured cocktails. He wrote a book about pouring cocktails. He toured Europe pouring cocktails. Then he opened his bar on Broadway and poured cocktails there.

That’s how he made money. Every dollar came from the same place.

BUT… then he started playing Wall Street.

He lost. Badly enough that he sold the bar and auctioned off his art collection to cover it. He opened another bar, and it was never the same.

I watch this happen to solopreneurs who are doing WELL.

You get good at one thing. It pays. And the second it pays, the money starts whispering about something completely different.

• A course.

• An agency.

• Investing in crypto.

Meanwhile, the easiest money you'll ever make is sitting in the work you're already delivering.

Let’s say you write email sequences.

Those emails have to send people somewhere, and you already know the offer and the voice. So why not sell them the landing page too?

💡 Your Friday takeaway

Jerry Thomas was one man with a bar, in a trade where everyone had the same ingredients.

He won by putting the secrets in print, by turning an ordinary drink into a performance, and he lost by walking away from the thing he was best at.

📖 Publish your process. The recipe isn’t the product. You are.

🔥 The delivery is part of the job. Show them the thinking, not just the file.

💸 Protect the craft that pays. That’s the bar. Don’t bet it.

TL;DR: Jerry Thomas (1830–1885) wrote the first cocktail book published in America and gave away every recipe. It made him the most famous bartender alive, not the most copied. He set a hot toddy on fire and called it the Blue Blazer, got paid $100 a week in 1860 just to be seen behind a bar, then lost the lot on Wall Street. Share the process. Sell the moment. And don't bet the bar.

See you next week 🚀

Sam

—If you enjoyed this issue, please tap the Like button below 💙 Thank you!

Money-back guarantees. Free delivery. The celebrity endorsement. An invite-only launch. The illustrated catalogue. Or a rep who turns up at your door with samples.

One man did all of them first. He made plates.

Josiah Wedgwood died in 1795 with one of the most famous brands in Europe and around £600,000 in the bank. That's comfortably north of $100 million today, made out of clay dug up in Staffordshire.

I went down a Wedgwood hole this week. Deeper than planned. And there are some proper Quick Growth Ideas buried in how he sold and how he launched.

Let me show you.

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👑 One customer was worth more than a thousand

In 1765 an order came down from St James's Palace. A cream-coloured tea set for Queen Charlotte.

Wedgwood made it, sent it off, and then did the bit that mattered.

He asked for permission to call himself "Potter to Her Majesty". Got it and…

• Put it on his invoices

• Put it on the showroom sign.

• Renamed the whole product line "Queen's Ware".

• And mentioned the Queen in his newspaper ads, because who was going to stop him?

The palace didn't pay him a fortune for that tea set.

Didn't matter. One order turned into a permanent line on the letterhead, and every family in Britain with a bit of money and something to prove wanted the same plates the palace ate off.

👉 Your move: You've got one client whose name people recognise. Right now it's probably buried on page four of a case study. Message them: "Would you be happy for me to mention we've worked together?" Most say yes. Then write it as a title, not a footnote: "The copywriter behind [Client]'s launch that generated XYZ." Put it in your headline, email signature, next proposal, and more!

❌ He removed every reason to say no

Here's what Wedgwood was offering customers in the 1770s:

• Free carriage of his goods anywhere in the country.

• Free replacement of anything that broke on the way.

• Your money back if you didn't like it.

In the 1770s. When “delivery” meant a crate of pottery on the back of a cart on a dirt road, and a fair bit of it arrived in pieces.

Look at it from the buyer’s side. Why would you order plates from a factory 150 miles away?

What if it breaks?

What if I don’t like it?

What’s the carriage going to cost me?

Wedgwood answered every objection before it was asked, and made the answer part of the product.

👉 The lesson: Write down why the last three prospects went quiet on you. Not the polite reason, the real one. "What if I don't like it?" "What if it's late?" Now put the answer on your sales page and in the proposal before they have to ask. An objection you've already answered doesn't come up on the call.

🎟️ He sold tickets to look at someone else's dinner plates

In 1773 Catherine the Great ordered a dinner and dessert service. 50 settings. Roughly 950 pieces. Every single one hand-painted with a different landscape.

By most accounts Wedgwood made little or no money on it. Might even have lost some.

But before a single crate went to Russia, he laid the whole lot out across five rooms of his showroom on Greek Street in Soho, set the tables as if dinner was about to be served, and opened the doors in June 1774.

You needed a ticket to look at plates you couldn’t buy, on their way to a woman you’d never meet…

High society in London queued anyway.

👉 The lesson: Next time you land the big one, negotiate the right to show it while you're building it. A build-in-public thread. A teardown of the brief once it's live. Wedgwood didn't need Catherine to write him a testimonial. The queue on Greek Street was the testimonial.

💡 Your Friday takeaway

Wedgwood has been dead 231 years and people still queue to look at his plates behind glass in museums.

Now you have three quick growth ideas he used. Pick the one that’s cheapest for you to try this week (probably the client-name one, it’s a single email) and do it before Monday.

TL;DR: Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795) turned a royal order into a product name, killed every objection with free delivery and a money-back guarantee, and sold tickets to see his biggest job before it shipped. All three still work for a one-person business in 2026.

See you next week 🚀

Sam

—If you enjoyed this issue, please tap the Like button below 💙 Thank you!

A website called Red Flags For Cash pays freelancers and solopreneurs a 10% commission (for life) on every bad-fit lead they send over.

These are the leads nobody wants.

• Low budgets.

• Vague scope.

• Tight deadlines.

• Hagglers.

• Tyre kickers.

They are the leads that make you close your laptop and go for a walk.

Red Flags For Cash takes those leads, closes them, and sends you a cut of every project that client buys…forever.

I came across it this week, and there are some great Quick Growth Ideas hidden in the model, the brand, and how it’s sold.

Let me show you.

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🚩 Every freelancer has a trash folder full of money

You know the leads I’m talking about.

The ones where the budget is £250 for a full website build.

The ones who want “just a quick thing” but can’t describe what it is.

The ones who haggle the price down on every deliverable.

Normally, we all do the same thing:

Politely decline and move on.

Red Flags For Cash looked at that moment and saw a business.

The pitch is simple: Forward your bad-fit lead, and if the project closes, you get 10% of the value. And 10% of every future project that the client buys. For life.

After working on 6,000+ projects, I can think of hundreds of leads I’ve turned down and forgotten about.

Now I can see these leads are worth something to someone.

👉 Your move: Think about the last 5 leads you rejected. Where did they go? If the answer is “nowhere,” find one person in your network who handles the work you turn down, and build a referral deal.

💸 The numbers speak for themselves

A theatre production company was referred by a web agency. Red Flags For Cash sold them on a £6k website build. The agency got £600 for sending one referral email.

A co-working company was referred by a developer. Red Flags For Cash quoted £17k. They went for it. The developer got £1,700 for sending one referral email.

I hope you’re starting to see how simple this model is.

The lifetime commission is a real selling point. It means a £500 lead today can turn into thousands over the next few years.

👉 The lesson: Rejected leads feel like dead ends. They’re starting points. A referral email to the right person can create a new revenue stream.

🎨 The brand is a masterclass in personality

The model is smart. But I love the way Red Flags For Cash sells itself.

The headline? “Red Flags For Cash.”

The tagline? “Refer your bad-fit web design leads and get paid. For life.”

Bad-fit clients? They are called “clowns.”

The stats section boosts credibility and confidence in who you’re referring the bad leads to. They are experts.

This is a brand you’d actually want to refer people to. The personality proves credibility in a way a portfolio never could.

👉 The lesson: Does your website sound like you, or like every other freelancer? Red Flags For Cash works because you can hear a real person in every line. Personality is a trust signal, and people refer business to people they like.

💡 Your Friday takeaway

You don't need to build a referral site from scratch. But you can steal Quick Growth Ideas from this playbook.

🚩 Your rejected leads are someone else’s ideal client.

Every “no” you send is revenue walking away. Build a referral relationship with someone who handles what you turn down.

🎨 Personality closes.

Red Flags For Cash works because it sounds human, not like a template. Your website should do the same.

🧠 Your FAQ is a sales tool.

List the objections yourself. Answer them like you’d answer a friend. A great FAQ removes every reason to say no.

We all have a folder of rejected and forgotten about leads. Red Flags For Cash figured out that the folder has a price tag.

You might as well get paid for the leads you can’t use.

Don’t you think so?

See you next week 🚀

Sam

—If you enjoyed issue #29, please tap the Like button below 💙 Thank you!

At The Connaught Bar in London, you’ll pay £30+ for one.

And there’s a queue to get through the mahogany doors.

The Connaught has been ranked in the World’s 50 Best Bars for 16 consecutive years and is currently sitting at number 6.

People fly to London specifically to sit at one of their tables lit by intimate amber lighting.

I had the opportunity to visit last year.

Since then, I’ve been thinking about it, because what they do with a cocktail is exactly what most solopreneurs fail to do with their service.

The Connaught Bar sells how a drink makes you feel.

And the way they pull it off has three lessons worth stealing.

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🍸 They sell one drink better than anyone else sells a hundred

The Connaught could fill a menu with 200 cocktails. They don’t.

Their signature? The Dry Martini (Connaught Martini)

And they’ve made it the most famous cocktail serve in the world.

Here’s how it works:

• A number 10 trolley rolls up to your table.

• The bartender stirs your chosen spirit with a house blend of vermouths.

• They lift the mixing glass overhead.

• And pour into a bitters-adorned glass in one ceremonial motion.

It’s a performance. And it’s the same drink every time.

This is the lesson I learned the hard way as a copywriter.

When I started on Fiverr, I called myself “a copywriter.” Generic, invisible, and competing with thousands of other people using the same title.

So I narrowed it down.

My positioning went from “I’m a copywriter” to “I will professionally write your website to boost sales.”

The impact was immediate.

Clients could find me, and when they did, I looked like a specialist, not a generalist competing on price.

The Connaught does the same thing.

They have a full cocktail menu, but the Martini is the reason people come.

👉 Your move: Look at your current offer. Are you listing 10 services hoping one sticks? Pick the one you’re best at and make it your Martini. Build your reputation around a single, specific thing you do better than anyone.

✨ The ceremony IS the product

The martini itself? Gin, vermouth, bitters. You can make it at home for a couple of quid. The ingredients aren’t special. The experience is.

The trolley. The pour. The bartender selecting your bitters based on what your evening “calls for.” The lighting, the room, the pace.

Every detail is designed to make a £30 drink feel like it’s worth ten times more.

Most freelancers deliver their work in a Google Doc or an attachment in a Slack message.

The work might be great. But the experience of receiving it?

Forgettable.

After 6,400+ projects, I’ve seen what separates freelancers who charge £10 from those who charge £100+ for similar work.

The quality gap is smaller than you’d think, but the delivery gap is enormous.

Think about how you hand over your work.

1. Do you send a file, or do you present it?

2. Do you explain why you made the choices you made?

The Connaught doesn’t hand you a glass. They give you a show.

Your service should feel the SAME way.

👉 The lesson: Look at your delivery process. Add a walkthrough video explaining your thinking. Create a branded PDF. Send a short Loom with the delivery. The work is the work. But the ceremony is what makes people pay more and come back.

💰 Premium pricing is a presentation problem

The Connaught charges £30+ for a martini, and nobody flinches.

By the time you’re sitting in that Art Deco, wood-panelled room, watching the trolley approach your table, the price feels completely fair.

The David Collins-designed interior. The cubist art. The Champagne Room. Their house-distilled gin. Every detail builds perceived value around a simple drink, and none of it is about the drink itself.

Most freelancers try to justify prices by listing deliverables.

“You get 5 pages of copy, 3 rounds of revisions, and a style guide.”

That’s selling ingredients.

The Connaught doesn’t list gin and vermouth on a spec sheet.

👉 The takeaway: If prospects keep pushing back on your prices, look at everything surrounding the work like your proposal, your results, your delivery. Premium pricing is about building an experience that makes the number feel right.

💡 Your Friday takeaway

You don't need a hotel bar in Mayfair. But you can steal Quick Growth Ideas from how The Connaught operates.

1. 🍸 Make one thing your signature.

   The Connaught has a full menu but they’re known for the Martini. Pick one service and become the person clients think of for that specific thing.

2. ✨ Design the delivery, not the work.

   A £30+ martini can taste the same as a £2 one. The trolley, the pour, the ceremony, that’s what people pay for. How you hand over your work matters as much as the work itself.

3. 💰 Build context around your price.

   The Connaught doesn’t justify £30 by listing ingredients. They surround it with design, story, and atmosphere. Start selling the experience of working with you.

A martini is gin and vermouth. Copywriting is words on a page.

The Connaught figured out that what you wrap around the thing is worth more than the thing itself.

That’s the lesson.

See you next week 🚀

Sam

—If you enjoyed issue #28, please tap the Like button below 💙 Thank you!

The hoodie makes you $52. The magnets? $5,832.

A company called Magnet Lover figured this out.

They sell merch to the music industry:

• Musicians

• Touring artists

• Festivals

But while everyone else fights over t-shirt designs and hoodie margins, they went all-in on the one product.

Fridge Magnets.

And the way they’re selling them has lessons freelancers and solopreneurs can copy to stand out in a crowded market.

Let me show you what Magnet Lover is doing and what you can steal.

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🎯 One stat. That's all it took.

Before Magnet Lover says a single word about their product, they hit you with this:

If you’re an artist touring 50 cities, playing to thousands of fans a night, and 80% of them walk straight past your merch table… that’s a problem.

You don’t need Magnet Lover to tell you it’s a problem.

The number did it for them.

This is what most freelancers and solopreneurs get wrong about selling. They lead with the solution.

👉 Your move: Find the number in your industry that makes people uncomfortable. If you're a web designer, that might be "70% of visitors leave your site in under 3 seconds." Open with that instead of your features or your process.

🔎 They sell one thing in a market that sells everything

The music merch industry is enormous. T-shirts, hoodies, vinyl, posters, hats, patches, tote bags, wristbands… the list goes on.

Magnet Lover looked at all of that and said: We’re just doing magnets.

And because they only do one thing, they can go deeper than anyone else.

They know:

1. The exact sizes that work (2x2 inches and 1.75x2.75 inches).

2. The print quality that matches an artist’s brand (Mylar gloss, rigid cores).

3. The constraints (merch competes with production gear for cargo space).

No generalist merch company is thinking about cargo space. Magnet Lover is.

Take a look at how they split their pitch:

Artists hear about margins, volume, and space. Fans hear about keepsakes, memories, and affordability.

The magnet is the same. The reason someone buys it is completely different depending on which side of the table they’re standing on.

👉 The lesson: Pick the one thing you do better than anyone and build your identity around it. If you're a copywriter, don't sell LinkedIn posts, emails, and website copy. Be the person who writes landing pages that convert. Specificity IS the positioning.

🧮 They built a calculator that does the selling for them

This is the part I LOVE.

Most companies would say “magnets have better margins than t-shirts.” Magnet Lover shows you a calculator and lets you figure it out yourself.

One t-shirt takes up enough space for 167 magnets. One t-shirt makes you $28 profit. The same space in magnets? $1,503.

Then they show you sweatshirts:

And hoodies:

They never say “magnets are more profitable.” They don’t have to. You can see it.

👉 The quick win: Stop telling your clients what you’re worth. Show them. Build a simple comparison, calculator, or before/after that lets them do the maths. An ROI calculator or time-saved breakdown is a great format to use.

💡 Your Friday takeaway

You don’t need to be in the music or merch industry to steal Quick Growth Ideas from this playbook.

1. 🎯 Lead with the gap, not the fix.

   Magnet Lover opens with “only 20% of people buy merch.” Find the stat in your industry that makes your audience uncomfortable. Let the problem sell the solution.

2. 🔎 Sell one thing and own it.

   They ignored an entire industry of merch options and went all-in on magnets. Pick the one offer you’re best at, go deep, and stop diluting your pitch.

3. 🧮 Build a tool that does the selling.

   Don’t say “I’ll save you money.” Show a calculator that proves it. When the prospect reaches the conclusion themselves, there’s nothing left to object to.

Magnet Lover gets it. That’s why a fridge magnet company is making touring artists rethink their entire merch strategy.

See you next week 🚀

Sam

—If you enjoyed issue #27, please tap the Like button below 💙 Thank you!

That’s when I came across Kudos Wiki.

Kheoh Yee Wei got sick of Netflix recommending the same 30 films.

So he wrote a Python script, let it run for 12 hours, and scraped Wikipedia for movies described as “critically acclaimed.”

1,800 films. 83 countries. 19 genres. Going back to the 1910s.

Now he’s selling the full list for $50.

I’m not telling you to buy it. I’m telling you to study how he built it.

Because inside this weird little movie project is a playbook for how any solopreneur or freelancer can turn free information into a lead magnet, a digital product, and recurring revenue.

Let me show you what you can copy. And how it applies to you.

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🔍 He didn't create anything. He filtered it.

Kheoh didn’t write 1,800 movie reviews. He didn’t build a streaming service.

He found one signal:

Wikipedia articles that say a film “received acclaim from critics”

And scraped everything that matched.

Then he manually reviewed every result. Over 2,400 of them. Cutting anything where the acclaim was for an actor’s performance rather than the film itself.

That human filter is the product people are buying.

Without it, you’ve got a spreadsheet. With it, you’ve got something people trust enough to pay for.

👉 Your move: Stop trying to create from scratch. What information already exists that your audience struggles to find, sort, or filter? That’s your product. You don’t write it. You organise it.

🧲 The free list is the magnet. The paid list is the money.

Look at how he set this up:

Two clear CTA buttons to avoid confusion.

The free version gives you 1,000 movies. That’s genuinely useful. But it’s also enough to make you think “wait, there’s 800 more?”

The paid version? Everything. Plus monthly updates as new critically acclaimed films hit Wikipedia.

👉 The lesson: If your free version doesn’t make people say “this is incredible,” your paid version won’t sell. Give away the good stuff. Charge for the complete stuff.

🎮 A spreadsheet didn't do this. The packaging did.

This is where most people would’ve stopped. Export a CSV. Throw it on Gumroad. Call it a day.

Kheoh didn’t do that.

The whole site feels like flipping through someone’s personal film journal.

• Children’s drawings as illustrations.

• Movie posters in rounded cards you want to click.

• Soft pink palette.

Two people could sell the same list of 1,800 movies. The one who wraps it in personality will win every time.

👉 The takeaway: Your directory doesn’t need to be complex. It needs to feel like you made it. Design, personality, and a point of view turn data into something people want to spend time with.

📣 Don’t guess. Find the demand first.

414 Reddit comments on a post asking for movie recs across any genre, any length.

Reddit, Facebook groups, niche forums… they’re full of people begging for curated recommendations that algorithms don’t give them.

👉 Your move: Before you build anything, search Reddit and forums for posts where your audience asks “where do I find…?” or “can anyone recommend…?” If you find threads with hundreds of replies, you’ve found your directory.

🧩 This isn't just a movie thing.

The model works everywhere. Here’s how it looks across different industries:

Freelance designer: Curate the 100 best landing pages sorted by conversion type. Source from Dribbble, Awwwards, One Page Love. Give away 200. Sell the tagged, searchable collection.

Marketing consultant: Build a swipe file of 1,000 high-performing email subject lines by industry and campaign type. Free tier gets 300. Paid gets the full library plus monthly additions.

Real estate agent: Neighbourhood guides for every suburb in your city. Walkability, schools, prices, local gems. All public data. Free covers 10 suburbs. Paid covers 50 with quarterly updates.

💡 Your Friday takeaway

You can follow this playbook and apply the same formula every time:

1. 🎯 Find the signal. Kheoh found “received acclaim from critics” on Wikipedia and built everything around it. What’s the filter in your industry that separates great from average?

2. 🤖 Use AI for the grunt work. A Python script on an old laptop processed 150GB in 12 hours. You don’t need a team. You need a tool and a weekend.

3. 🧠 Add the human layer. He reviewed 2,400 results by hand. Automation collects. You curate. That’s the part people pay for.

4. 🎁 Give away the good stuff. Sell the complete stuff. 1,000 movies free. 1,800+ for $50. Make your free version so useful the paid version sells itself.

5. ✨ Make it feel like something. A spreadsheet is forgettable. A discovery experience with personality, updates, and a story behind it? That’s a product people tell their friends about.

Freelancers and solopreneurs who get that curation is creation will ship products faster than anyone trying to build from zero.

See you next week 🚀

Sam

—If you enjoyed issue #26, please tap the Like button below 💙 Thank you!

I get asked this all the time by aspiring freelancers and solopreneurs.

No portfolio → no clients → no portfolio.

So they wait.

Maybe apply for a couple of projects and hope someone takes a chance on them.

You know. I know. That’s not how to build a profitable and sustainable business.

Whether you’re starting from zero or leveling up what you’ve got, this is the fastest path to building a portfolio and proof clients care about.

Keep reading and steal my 7-day portfolio sprint.

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👀 "7-Day Portfolio Sprint" Explained

Every job brief or post is a confession.

A potential client is admitting:

1. What they need

2. How they describe it

3. What they’re willing to pay

That’s market research most people pay consultants for and it’s sitting on platforms like Upwork, LinkedIn, and Fiverr for free.

The key to a successful sprint is:

• Picking a brief that fits your niche and offer

• Building the deliverable as if you won the job (adjust the details)

• Adding to your portfolio and talking about it on socials

👉 Why a sprint works better than random “practice projects”?

The portfolio sprint means you’re building what the market already wants.

Your samples will speak to the deliverables the client is looking for

(Not what you THINK they’re looking for)

And when you apply for similar gigs, your portfolio speaks the clients language.

This is what makes the difference.

The client doesn't have to imagine what the work might look like… they can see it.

They don't have to wonder if this person understands their industry… the proof is right there.

🚀 Your 7-Day Portfolio Sprint

🔍 Day 1: Search for the brief

Scan platforms like Upwork, Fiverr and LinkedIn for a job post in your niche with clear deliverables.

”I need some writing stuff, will discuss details later” is a cry for help, and you should keep scrolling.

The brief needs to be specific like this example:

Save the brief. Steal the language. The way clients describe what they want? That’s going straight into your portfolio descriptions and proposals.

🧱 Day 2-4: Build the thing

Create the deliverable as if you landed the job. Change the company name, tweak the industry, make it yours.

Don’t spend three weeks “perfecting” a sample and end up with nothing to show.

Spread it across a few days if you need to. But cap yourself at 90 minutes per day total.

Done beats perfect.

A finished B+ sample will outperform an imaginary A+ masterpiece every single time.

✏️ Day 5: Write your mini case study

Show a quick breakdown:

• What was the brief asking for?

• How did you approach it?

• What problem does this solve?

Congrats, you just turned a random sample into a story which works for your portfolio, social posts, and for proposals when clients ask “walk me through your process.”

Three birds, one stone, zero clients required.

✅ Day 6: Add it to your portfolio

Upload it to your Fiverr gig, Upwork profile, personal site, wherever you live online.

PRO TIP: title your samples the way clients think.

❌ “Brand Messaging Project”

*(What does this even mean? Who is this for? Why should I care?)*

✅ “Website Copy for a Fitness Coach Launching an Online Program”

*(Oh, I’m a fitness coach launching an online program. This is for me.)*

🌍 Day 7: Share it publicly

Post your sample on LinkedIn or X. Show your work. Explain your thinking.

Copy this:

*”Found this brief on [platform] for a SaaS landing page. Loved the challenge, so I built it anyway. Here’s what I came up with → [link]. If you’re working on something similar, I’d love to help out.”*

People see themselves in the work, send you a DM, and your wake up to inbound leads instead of rejections.

(there’s no better feeling! 👌)

💡 Your Friday takeaway

Steal this 7-day portfolio sprint and make your portfolio a living experiment instead of a graveyard of old work.

You can repeat this sprint over and over again.

The more sprints you do the more proof you create and the bigger your personal brand becomes.

That’s how you win in 2026.

See you next week 🚀

Sam

P.S. Missed my post about hitting $589K as a freelancer? Check it out below.

—If you enjoyed issue #25, please tap the Like button below 💙 Thank you!

They’re E Ink keyboards with one purpose: typing words.

And they’re not cheap.

We’re talking $500+ for what looks like deliberately crippled technology.

But writers are lining up to buy them.

Russell Brunson won’t write books without one, and the Freewrite community has typed over 611 million words.

Freewrite’s goal isn’t to compete with laptops.

They’re competing with the distraction epidemic and winning by removing features.

Here’s what freelancers and solopreneurs can steal from this.

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🧠 The problem nobody admits they have

1. You open your laptop. Start typing.

2. Remember you need to fact-check something. Open a tab. See an email notification. Click it. Respond.

3. Return to your doc. Realise you’re hungry. Check your phone.

4. Forty minutes gone. Three sentences written.

Russell Brunson calls it “right brain/left brain ping-pong.”

Your creative brain wants to flow. Your analytical brain wants to edit. The internet gives you infinite ways to avoid both.

Freewrite forces you to just write.

When you’re done, it syncs with a 3rd-party document (no open internet access required).

Users report writing 2-3x more words per hour using these distraction-free devices.

👉 What solopreneurs can steal from this

Most of us think we grow by adding more.

More services. More platforms. More “I can do that too.”

Freewrite did the opposite.

They took a computer and surgically removed everything except the keyboard.

Then charged more for the subtraction.

When you offer “website copy, emails, social posts, landing pages, and blogs,” clients see you as interchangeable.

You’re competing with 50,000 other generalists.

But when you say “I only write SaaS educational email courses”, you’re not competing with everyone anymore.

You’re the specialist they’ve been looking for who:

🎮 Turn boring specs into a story

Freewrite’s new firmware update could’ve been announced like every other tech company: “Version 2.3 - Performance Improvements.”

Instead, they called it Sailfish.

They also named their special editions:

Hemingwrite Signature Edition (channels Hemingway’s legacy)

Valentine Special Edition (designed to “fall in love with writing again”)

👉 Stop describing what you do in generic terms

Compare these:

• “I’ll optimise your email sequence” vs “Your subscribers will look forward to Tuesdays”

• “I provide business coaching” vs “You’ll finally stop second-guessing every decision at 2am”

Clients don’t buy deliverables.

They buy the end of a problem or the beginning of a feeling.

Freewrite knows writers don’t want a keyboard. They want to remember WHY they started writing in the first place.

What feeling are your clients paying for?

💡 Your Friday takeaway

Five ways you can apply the building blocks behind Freewrite:

1. 🔍 Audit what you offer. What can you remove that clients don’t need?

2. 🎯 Name your constraint. “I only do X” becomes your advantage, not your limitation.

3. ⚖️ Show the compromise. Make a comparison showing what trade-offs your competitors force. Then show how you eliminate it.

4. 🎨 Build sensory language. Speed isn’t “fast delivery.” It’s “momentum you’ll feel tomorrow morning.”

5. 🚪 Create a gateway. Let people taste your approach at 10% of the price before they commit.

See you next week 🚀

Sam

—If you enjoyed issue #24, please tap the Like button below 💙 Thank you!

Not the other way around.

Emily Lonetto left Webflow.

But instead of quietly updating her LinkedIn and disappearing into a new role, she built an entire microsite documenting her experience.

And it’s a masterclass in how to exit with momentum.

Let me show you what Emily did, plus why every freelancer and solopreneur should steal this playbook.

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🎯 Most people quit quietly. Emily built a launch pad.

Standard exit:

• Update LinkedIn: “Excited for my next chapter!”

• Maybe post a “thank you”

• Hope someone remembers you in 6 months

What we can learn from Emily’s exit:

• Full microsite with quantified impact

• Visual proof of every major project

• A public archive that shows up when you Google her name

• Email capture for “what’s next”

📊 Build a portfolio without calling it a portfolio

Look at how Emily structured the page.

Every section is a case study dressed up as a memory:

“World Wide Webflow”
Translation: I built and scaled a global partner program from scratch.

“Ryan Reynolds Campaign”
Translation: I can handle high-visibility projects with impossible timelines.

“Partner Summit in 8 weeks”
Translation: I execute under chaos and deliver measurable results.

Emily is showing receipts.

And the metrics? They’re everywhere:

Those numbers tell future clients: When I show up, the metrics follow.

💬 The lesson: Specificity beats corporate speak

Here’s what kills most portfolios and LinkedIn profiles:

“Led cross-functional marketing initiatives.”
“Managed vendor relationships.”
“Drove engagement across multiple channels.”

Cool. So did 10,000 other people.

Now look at what Emily wrote:

You can feel the hustle. You want to work with someone like that.

Emily’s not sharing a resume. It’s a story people remember (and hire).

🛠️ How this works across industries

You don't need to work at Webflow to use this playbook.

Copywriter leaving an agency?

❌ Not: “Wrote email campaigns for various clients”

✅ Instead: “847 emails. Open rates jumped 18% → 34%. One sequence: $2.3M in 90 days.”

👉 Screenshot the Slack praise. Show the subject line tests. Include the metrics.

Developer leaving a startup?

❌ Not: “Built features and mentored team members”

✅Instead: “52 features shipped. Load time: 4.2s → 1.6s. 3 junior devs I mentored are now senior engineers.”

👉 Show the GitHub commits. Include the performance graphs. Name the people (with permission).

Consultant leaving corporate?

❌ Not: “Led transformation initiatives globally”

✅ Instead: “14 projects, 6 countries. $47M identified in savings. 3 clients promoted to C-suite post-engagement.”

👉 Use anonymized case studies. Show your frameworks. Remove company names, keep the impact.

And YES, you can prove impact without breaking NDAs or contracts.

Emily showed “1,800+ agency partners” without naming a single one. You can too.

💡 Your Friday takeaway

Your last day at a job doesn’t have to be the end of your visibility. It can provide the momentum you need as a solopreneur.

Here’s action steps you can implement today:

1. 📝 Open a doc called “Exit Archive”
Start dumping every project, metric, win, and lesson from your current role. Even if you’re not leaving soon.

2. 📊 Find your numbers
What metrics prove you make things better? Revenue, growth, efficiency, scale, people developed.

3. 📸 Screenshot the wins
Grab the Slack messages, the client emails, the team photos. Collect the proof now while you still have access.

4. 🚀 Build your goodbye like a product launch
When you eventually leave, treat it like you’re launching the next version of yourself. Because you are.

5. ✅ Make your exit memorable
People remember how you leave. Make them think: “I’d hire someone like that.”

Most people leave jobs like they’re sneaking out of a bad date.

Emily left like she just headlined a sold-out show.

Guess which one has clients lining up?

See you next week 🚀

Sam

—If you enjoyed issue #23, please tap the Like button below 💙 Thank you!

Lenny’s Newsletter does it. And a handful of other creators I follow.

They’re all running some version of a “product pass” where partner deals are bundled into their paid subscriptions.

At first glance, it looks like a glorified coupon book.

But when you dig into how it works, there’s something way more interesting happening here.

Let me break down what’s really going on and how you could use this in your own business.

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🔑 They’re not selling discounts. They’re selling access.

Lenny offers thirteen software tools inside Product Pass.

These tools normally cost $24,000+ per year if you bought them separately. With Lenny’s $200 subscription, you get them all free.

The pricing structure caught my attention.

Wait. The annual plan costs LESS than monthly but includes $24,000 in products?

That’s the whole game right there.

Stack so much value into annual that choosing monthly feels like a mistake.

Most people will use three or four tools. The rest will sit there, claimed but unopened.

And that’s completely fine.

Because the value isn’t in using everything. It’s in having access to everything.

This follows the Costco principle.

You don’t go there planning to buy a kayak, but knowing you COULD buy a kayak for $299 makes the membership feel worth it.

🤝 The partner companies are buying distribution.

Let’s think about what PostHog gets out of this.

They’re giving away $16,500 in value to Lenny’s subscribers.

That sounds insane until you realise what they’re actually getting…

Access to 1,000,000+ product builders (Lenny’s subs) who’ve already demonstrated they’ll pay for quality tools.

These are qualified prospects who pay $200-$350 to access his newsletter and tools.

When someone claims their PostHog code, PostHog now has:

• Their email

• Proof they’re willing to pay for tools

• A year to convert them from “free user” to “paying customer”

✅ So how can you copy this playbook?

You don’t need thousands of subscribers to make this work.

Simply partner with complementary businesses, bundle their offers into your service, and use that combined value to justify higher prices or longer commitments.

Let me show you what this looks like across different industries.

If you’re a copywriter:

Partner with:

• Unsplash+ or Shutterstock (negotiate 50 accounts/year for client stock photos)

• Grammarly Business (pro accounts for your clients’ teams)

• Asana or ClickUp (project management with team licenses)

• Kit or Mailchimp (email marketing startup tier access)

Now, when someone hires you, you’re selling copy PLUS $5,000 in tools they’d need anyway. Your retainer suddenly looks like a bargain.

If you’re a business coach:

Partner with:

• QuickBooks or Xero (accounting software for solopreneurs)

• HubSpot or Pipedrive (CRM for client management)

• Zapier or Make (workflow automation platforms)

• Rocket Lawyer or LegalZoom (contract templates and incorporation docs)

Your coaching isn’t $1,500/month anymore. It’s $1,500/month for coaching plus the entire tech stack they need to run their business.

🧠 The psychology that makes this playbook work

Notice how Lenny frames it.

He’s not asking people to “unlock” anything. You’re redeeming codes. Like you won something. Like you’re claiming a prize you earned.

👉 The takeaway: Stop asking people to “sign up” or “get started.” Ask them to claim their spot, secure their template library, or redeem their strategy session. The action is the same. The feeling is completely different.

💡 Your Friday takeaway

The product pass model works because it solves three problems at once:

1. For you: Higher perceived value, easier justification for annual pricing, ongoing relationship with partners who send referrals back.

2. For partners: Qualified user acquisition, potential conversion to paid plans, brand exposure to your audience.

3. For clients: More value than they expected, tools they needed anyway, feeling of getting a deal.

Start small.

Find one complementary business. Add it to your next proposal or pricing plan.

Watch what happens to your close rate.

See you next week 🚀

Sam

—If you enjoyed issue #21, please tap the Like button below 💙 Thank you!

What grabbed my attention was a big, glassy 25:00 floating over two fluffy blue monsters.

Welcome to Monster Pomodoro!

It’s a tiny, hyper-specific project that checks almost every Quick Growth Idea:

• Character-driven brand

• Ultra-simple product

• Low-friction monetization via Ko-Fi

• Cause-driven hook

• Built for a very specific kind of brain

Let’s break down what they’re doing and how you can steal the thinking.

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👾 They turned a boring tool into a character universe

Check out how Monster Pomodor introduces itself:

“Because some brains (hello ADHD and Autism!) deserve more than ticking clocks.”

That’s a statement of belonging.

Monster Pomodoro was made by a family of six with ADHD and Autism. They’re building for themselves first.

When you solve your own problem, you can’t fake the understanding. You know where the generic solutions fall short.

👉 Your move: Pick the specific audience you understand. Not “small businesses” or “busy professionals.” The narrower, the better. Your lived experience is the moat.

🧸 They turned a timer into a friend

Most Pomodoro apps give you settings and themes.

Monster Pomodoro gives you this:

Different monsters. Each with a flavour and personality:

• Creaming Soda + Fizzyhoof – pops and fizzes like a bubbly brainstorm

• Orange Roughies + Roughbeard – grumbles but keeps you on task

• Cotton Candy + Fluffquatch – soft, sweet, and sneakily focused

• Purple Rain + Fuzzberryprince – purple-powered and groove-approved

• Blue Raspberry + Sasqberry – cool as a frozen howl

You don’t just “pick a theme.” You adopt a monster who chomps down on distractions with you.

And here’s the thing.

When someone asks what timer you use, you don’t say “a Pomodoro app.”

You say “I’ve got Fuzzberryprince helping me focus today.”

That’s free marketing through curiosity.

👉 Your version: Give your client a monster to root for. Your proposal isn’t “Q4 Marketing Strategy” - it’s “Operation: Make Your Competitor’s CMO Nervous.” Your welcome packet isn’t an onboarding doc - it’s “Your New Unfair Advantage.”

🔊 They removed the guilt

Most productivity apps punish you. Harsh alarms. Red notifications when you miss a session. Streak counters that make you feel terrible when you break them.

Monster Pomodoro went the opposite direction.

Instead of aggressive beeps, you get roars and squeaks.

“Giggly growls” when it’s break time.

They call these “sensory-safe cues,” but really they just made it feel less like a drill sergeant.

That’s a completely different relationship with productivity.

👉 The lesson: Stop making people feel bad for being human. Don’t guilt-trip newsletter subscribers who haven’t opened your emails. Don’t make clients feel awful when they miss a deadline. Just... be nice. It works better anyway.

☕ They use Ko-Fi to make support feel like a tip, not a bill

Monster Pomodoro doesn’t hit you with:

• “Create an account”

• “Start your 7-day free trial”

• “Upgrade to Pro for $7/month”

Instead, they lean on Ko-Fi.

People pay what they can. Some pay $5. Some pay $20. It’s contribution, not transaction.

50% also goes to charity. That builds trust without saying “trust us.

You don’t need fancy payment infrastructure. You need a dozen people who believe in what you’re doing enough to support it.

👉 Your lesson: Test your next project with “pay what you want” pricing. Gumroad. Ko-Fi. Whatever. You’ll immediately see who your real supporters are. Those people become your advisory board.

💡 Your Friday takeaway

1. Find your specific people. Not “everyone who needs marketing.” The specific group you understand because you’ve been there.

2. Add personality to boring things. Your service packages. Your invoice descriptions. Your Zoom backgrounds. Anything that’s usually generic.

3. Try Ko-Fi for your next project. See if people will support what you’re building before you build the whole thing.

4. Remove the guilt. Make everything easy to buy, easy to use, easy to walk away from. Counterintuitively, this builds loyalty.

5. Stop sounding like a company. Sound like yourself. The rough edges are features, not bugs.

Monster Pomodoro could’ve been another productivity timer. Instead, they built something people want to tell their friends about.

That’s the difference between a product and a thing people care about.

See you next week 🚀

Sam

—If you enjoyed issue #20, please tap the Like button below 💙 Thank you!

Really Good Emails is hosting its 2025 awards show live on December 17th.

I’m not telling you to attend. I’m telling you to study how they’re selling it.

Buried inside their landing page and announcement emails is a blueprint for how solopreneurs and freelancers should grow in 2026.

Let me show you what they’re doing and what you can steal.

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🔒 They’re building an asset AI can’t touch

Here’s how they’re pitching the awards:

“Connect with marketers who geek out over open rates, debate font choices, and celebrate clever CTAs. This is your community.”

They’re selling access to a community of people who care about the same weird details you do.

RGE built an audience of email nerds. Now they’re letting those nerds find each other.

The awards are just the excuse.

👉 Your move: Stop trying to build your audience from scratch. Find where your ideal clients already gather (newsletters, podcasts, communities) and become the person who connects them.

🧪 Their landing page is a lesson in conversions

Look at what they’re doing on the registration page:

Two different CTAs. Two different goals and zero confusion about which one you should click.

They’re not asking you to “learn more” or “explore categories.” They’re giving you two paths: watch or participate.

Then scroll down, and you hit this:

Eleven award categories presented as retro game cartridges. Each one has:

• A creative name (not “Email Newsletter Category #4”)

• A one-line description and memorable tagline

“Cart Abandonment. One last mission: complete the cart.” 
“Win-Back Campaigns. Rise from the ashes of inactivity.”

They could’ve just listed categories. Instead, they made each one feel like something you’d want to be part of.

👉 The lesson: Stop hiding your value behind generic labels. Name things in ways that make people feel something.

🎁 They’re using exclusivity without being exclusive

Check out this section from one of their announcement emails:

Sticker packs cost almost nothing to produce. But watch what they accomplish:

1. Creates urgency (first 250 only)

2. Makes early action feel rewarded

3. Gives attendees something physical to remember the event

4. Turns attendees into walking billboards when they use the stickers

The stickers aren’t valuable because they’re expensive. They’re valuable because they’re limited and they signal “I was there.”

👉 Your version: Find the lowest-cost thing you can make exclusive. First 50 people get a template. First 20 clients get lifetime access. First 10 to reply get a free audit.

The number matters more than what you’re giving away.

🏆 They made submitting feel like winning

Look at how Really Good Emails frame the submission process:

They’re not just asking you to “enter a competition.” They want you to claim recognition for work you’re already proud of.

This is psychological judo.

Instead of creating a barrier (”am I good enough to enter?”), they’ve created permission (”you already know this was good, just make it official”).

👉 The takeaway: Stop asking people to “sign up” or “register” or “apply.” Ask them to claim something, join something, or get access to something. The action is the same. The feeling is completely different.

💡 Your Friday takeaway

You don’t need to run an awards show. But you can steal Quick Growth Ideas from this playbook.

1. Build borrowed audiences. Stop creating content in isolation. Connect your people with others who get it.

2. Name things like they matter. “Monthly Newsletter” → “The thing 500+ freelancers check first on Thursday mornings.”

3. Create low-cost exclusivity. First 25 people get [literally anything]. Scarcity creates value.

4. Send the same message from multiple angles. One announcement won’t cut it. Announce it via email, on X, and places your audience talk.

5. Frame participation as claiming, not asking. Don’t make people feel like they’re begging to be chosen.

Solopreneurs, freelancers, and biz owners who understand community, exclusivity, and human psychology will win everything.

RGE gets it. That’s why their awards show makes people take notice.

See you next week 🚀

Sam

—If you enjoyed issue #19, please tap the Like button below 💙 Thank you!

Not because I’m special. Not because I have a massive following. And definitely not because I’m posting LinkedIn carousels every day.

I stopped hunting for clients because I built a mafia.

Not the illegal kind!

The kind where 12 people quietly send work my way without asking.

The kind where I never have to cold email again because someone’s always saying…

“You need to talk to Sam for copywriting.”

Every client you’ve worked with knows 10-50 people who need what you offer. But they won’t be because you’re not visible.

Let me show you how to fix that 👇

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🧬 Why Past Clients Are Your Best Distribution Channel

Patrick Campbell built ProfitWell (acquired for $200M by Paddle) almost entirely through word of mouth. His strategy? He obsessively stayed in touch with everyone who used his product.

He called past clients “a network of evangelists”… people who naturally recommended ProfitWell because he never let them forget he existed.

When someone pays you, they mentally file you under “people I know who do X.”

But that file gets dusty.

Three months after a project ends, you’re a vague memory.

Six months later, when their friend asks “do you know a good XYZ?” they’ll say “uh… I can’t remember their name.”

The Client Mafia fixes this.

🎯 Step 1: Rank Your Clients by Influence (Not Invoice Size)

Your $50K client might be a dead end. Your $2K client might know everyone.

New York Times Best Seller Ramit Sethi discovered this early on.

His smallest clients became his biggest source of referrals because they were well-connected startup founders. Corporate clients paid more but referred nobody.

I want you to open a spreadsheet and list every client from the past 1-3 years.

Now rank them by distribution power:

1. High-Influence: Well-connected founders, VPs, agency owners active in your target communities.

2. Medium-Influence: Solid professionals who could introduce you to 3-5 people.

3. Low-Influence: Great clients but not well-networked (might be in a junior role)

Identify your top 10-15 high-influence clients. These are your mafia.

✅ Copy this: Check LinkedIn. Who has 2,000+ connections and gets engagement from decision-makers? Target them.

🔥 Step 2: The Monthly Experiment Email

Brian Dean (founder of Backlinko) used this strategy. Every month, he’d email past clients and partners with a specific SEO tactic he was testing.

Those emails kept him top-of-mind. When those people needed SEO help or knew someone who did, Brian was the first name they mentioned.

So, once a month, I want you to send a short email to your top 10-15 clients. Here’s your template.

Subject: “Quick update: what I’m testing this month”

Body:

Hey [Name],

Quick note — I’m experimenting with [new tactic] for clients right now. Early results: [one interesting finding].

Thought you’d find it useful given your work on [their business].

How’s [specific thing] going?

— [Your Name]

Why this works:

• You’re giving value (not asking for anything)

• You’re proving you’re still sharp

• You’re personalising it (shows you remember them)

✅ Copy this: Set a monthly calendar reminder. It takes 20 minutes to send 15 personalised emails.

💬 Step 3: The Specific Intro Ask

Don’t make this mistake: “Hey, if you know anyone who needs [service], send them my way!”

That’s lazy. It puts ALL the work on them.

Stripe’s early growth came from the founders, Patrick and John, asking Y Combinator batchmates for specific intros: “We’re looking to talk to anyone building marketplace platforms. Do you know anyone?

Your version:

Hey [Name],

I’m looking to work with more [specific type of company] in [specific industry]. I know you’ve worked with folks in that space.

Is there anyone in your network I should know? Happy to send a quick intro blurb you can forward if it helps.

Why this works:

• Specific = they know exactly who to think of

• You’re doing the work (intro blurb = no effort for them)

• Not asking for a favour (just exploring their network)

✅ Copy this: Only ask high-influence clients. Provide a forwardable intro blurb.

🕵️‍♂️ Step 4: Run Your Mafia Like an Insider Club

Superhuman (the email app) did this brilliantly.

Before they launched publicly, they built a waitlist of 180,000 people. But existing users could skip the line by referring friends.

Those users felt like insiders. They talked about Superhuman everywhere because being “in” was a status symbol.

I want you to give your mafia perks that strangers don’t get:

• Early access: New service? Offer it to past clients first

• Exclusive rates: “You worked with me before, so you get a special rate”

• Priority booking: “I have one slot opening - wanted to check with you first”

• Behind-the-scenes: Share your business experiments and lessons

✅ Copy this: Create a “past clients only” email list. Send them stuff before anyone else so they feel special, talk about you, and are incentivised to refer.

🚀 Step 5: Public Recognition Creates More Intros

When Morning Brew was starting out, cofounder Alex Lieberman used a simple tactic to explode their referral flywheel.

Every time someone helped them (shared the newsletter, hosted them on a podcast, plugged them in a thread), Alex publicly thanked that person on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Every. Single. Time.

This strategy helped Morning Brew grow past 4 million subscribers.

Your version:

Just wrapped a project that increased [Client X]’s conversion rate by 40%. 

Shoutout to @Sarah @Mike @Tom who introduced me to this team. This wouldn’t have happened without you.

✅ Copy this: Tag people who helped you. They’ll share it. New intros happen.

💡 Your Friday takeaway

You don’t need 10,000 followers.

You need 10 people who remember your name when someone asks “who should I hire?”

• 10 clients × 50 connections each = 500 warm leads

• 1 intro per quarter = 40 leads/year

• Close 25% = 10 clients without cold outreach

That’s your mafia.

TL;DR: Past clients are your best distribution channel. Rank them by influence. Stay top-of-mind by sharing what you’re testing. Ask for specific intros. Give your top 10-15 insider access and perks. Publicly thank people who help you. Turn those relationships into a client mafia that works forever.

See you next week 🚀

Sam

—If you enjoyed issue #18, please tap the Like button below 💙 Thank you!