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I built my first AI employee this week.Her name is Callie, and she helps me prepare for and follow up after sales calls....
28/05/2026

I built my first AI employee this week.

Her name is Callie, and she helps me prepare for and follow up after sales calls.

And yes, I know I’m personifying my AI a little bit.

For me, naming the tool helps me remember what it does, how I’ve instructed it, and how I need to prompt it.

Also, Callie helps me with calls, so the name works. And it’s more fun.

Before a sales call, Callie reviews the information I have about the prospective client, looks at their website, and helps me create a prep document.

After the call, she reads the transcript and grades me on a scale of 1 to 10 in a few different categories based on the sales process I’m trying to practice.

Yikes. 😳

She tells me where I got off track, what I did well, and what I should work on next time.

She also helps me think through whether the prospect seems like a good fit for the kind of work we do and drafts the follow-up email.

I still make the decisions. I still personalize the follow-up. I still bring the human judgment.

But Callie helps me save time, stay more consistent, and show up more prepared.

The biggest benefit, though, is what happens during the call.

Because I’m not using half my brain to remember whether I covered everything I was supposed to cover, I can pay better attention to the person in front of me.

I can listen better, ask better questions, and offer more helpful insight in the moment.

That is my hope for AI: that it makes our humanness matter more, not less.

Launches are not dead. I was just on a call this week celebrating one that proved it.But the landscape is changing, and ...
06/05/2026

Launches are not dead. I was just on a call this week celebrating one that proved it.

But the landscape is changing, and I think a lot of evergreen funnels haven't caught up yet.

Here's what I keep seeing: audiences don't trust pre-recorded experiences the way they used to. A webinar that never changes and never acknowledges what's happening right now reads like no one's home.

People need to believe you're real. Not "authentic" in the branding sense. Actually real, as in: a human being who shows up live, answers questions, and exists outside of a recording made two years ago.

The fix is usually pretty simple. Same webinar, same material you already know cold, but live. Bi-weekly if you can, monthly if that's what's doable.

Presence is the differentiator right now. And that's actually good news, because no one can automate you showing up.

06/05/2026

Came home with way too many ideas. 👀

Same audience. Different buyer.I had a call this week with someone who has a genuinely great app.It's converting beautif...
22/04/2026

Same audience. Different buyer.

I had a call this week with someone who has a genuinely great app.

It's converting beautifully in the App Store. Strong free trial uptake, solid purchase rate.

Then he ran Facebook ads to the same offer. He spent thousands of dollars and got maybe four or five free trial sign-ups. Nobody purchased.

I could see what was happening almost right away.

It wasn't the ad.
And it wasn't the product.

It was the difference between who finds you in the App Store and who finds you while scrolling Instagram.

The person in the App Store typed something into a search bar. They have a problem and they're actively looking for a solution. By the time they find your app, they're already partway toward a decision.

The person scrolling Instagram might be half-watching Bridgerton, talking to someone in the same room, scrolling more out of habit than intention.

👉 They're not in decision mode.

Asking them to sign up for something before you've done any persuasion work? Most of them are just going to keep scrolling.

Getting someone from that starting point all the way to a purchase takes a lot more in between. You need what I'd call a bridge experience: something that does the persuasion work before you ever ask them to commit.

For this client, that bridge was a quiz. It earned the email address, introduced the free trial, and helped people understand why the app was actually for them, before anyone asked them to buy anything.

The App Store was doing a lot of that work quietly in the background. Cold traffic from ads needs something else to pick up the slack.

If your warm audience converts and your ads don't... this is usually why.

I volunteer at the food bank most weeks. People move through stations one by one, choosing a set number of items at each...
15/04/2026

I volunteer at the food bank most weeks. People move through stations one by one, choosing a set number of items at each stop. It's organized, it flows well, and people are in charge of their own decisions, which I love.

This week at the last station, there were more items and people could take more of them. Sounds great, right?

The line nearly stalled.

All those extra choices created friction. People had already been making decisions at every previous station, and suddenly there were a lot more to make. Even people who were hungry and wanted the food had a hard time deciding what to pick.

There's a saying in marketing: "If you confuse, you lose."

I saw it play out on a sales call this week, too. Great offer. Low price. Plenty of clicks. But the buy button led to seven different options, and even I couldn't immediately find the right one.
My potential client & I both spotted the problem at exactly the same moment.

One offer. One button. One decision. That single change could move the needle on purchases without touching the ads at all.

So ask yourself: when someone clicks through from your ad, how many decisions are you making them make before they can buy?

Most of the time, at least one too many. (That's often true for me too!)

Drop a question in the comments if you want a second set of eyes on your offer page.
🌸 🛒

I’m officially counting down the days.In about a month, I’m heading to Anaheim for Social Media Marketing World, and I’m...
08/04/2026

I’m officially counting down the days.

In about a month, I’m heading to Anaheim for Social Media Marketing World, and I’m going with a couple of my business besties who love talking ads and content as much as I do.

We’re starting with Disneyland (because obviously), riding Indiana Jones, and pretending for a few hours that the algorithm doesn’t exist… and then heading into three full days of everything that’s changing in social media, AI, and ads.

And honestly, things are changing fast right now.

Between new AI tools, constant algorithm shifts, and tracking continuing to get messier, what worked even six months ago is already starting to feel a little outdated.

That’s a big part of why I go to things like this.

I want to check in with people who are just like us: in ad accounts every day, managing real budgets, seeing what’s holding up and what isn’t.

It’s less about learning something brand new and more about comparing notes, looking at patterns, and making sure what we’re doing still makes sense based on what’s happening right now.

So I’d love to know…

What’s been feeling tricky or frustrating in your ads lately?

If you want to share, I’ll keep it in mind while I’m there and see what I can bring back that might help.

And also, if you’ve been to Disneyland, I need your recommendations.

Pirates of the Caribbean and Blue Bayou are my favorites, but it's been a few years so I’m open to adding more 🙂

A friend told me last week she shut off her ads after performance dropped.Not because she’d fully evaluated it… but beca...
01/04/2026

A friend told me last week she shut off her ads after performance dropped.

Not because she’d fully evaluated it… but because it suddenly felt risky to keep them running.

And honestly, I get that.

This is the part no one really talks about. When it’s your money and your business, it’s hard to stay neutral. A dip doesn’t feel like data, it feels personal.

She said afterward, “I didn’t need a new strategy. I needed more emotional resiliency.”

That stuck with me.

Because I do this too.

Even with all my experience, it’s harder to be objective when it’s my own ads. I don’t have the same distance I have with client accounts.

Sometimes something needs to change. Sometimes it doesn’t.

From the inside, those can feel exactly the same. It can feel more emotionally charged than it needs to.

And that’s where people get stuck a lot of the time.

P.S. I’m not against running your own ads. You absolutely can. I love that my friend runs her own ads. But as the spend goes up, it asks more of you. You either build the ability to step back and read what’s happening clearly… or you bring someone in who can help you do that.

I hate reading bad books. I don't like wasting my time on them.So lately I’ve been paying a lot more attention to what I...
25/03/2026

I hate reading bad books. I don't like wasting my time on them.

So lately I’ve been paying a lot more attention to what I actually like… and keeping track of it.

Not in a big, formal way. Just enough to see patterns.

I loved Shield of Sparrows and A Stitch in Time (apparently I’m a sucker for intrigue + time travel).

And then there are the books that should be a fit… but just aren’t.

What I’ve noticed is this: the more I track my likes and dislikes, the easier it is to choose what to read next.

I’m not guessing anymore.

And honestly, it’s the same in business.

When you’re tracking what’s working, decisions get a lot simpler.

That’s one of the things ads do really well… they give you more data, faster.

And when you have that, it’s a lot easier to know what to do next.

I get pretty good recommendations now based on what I know I like… but I’m always open to a great one if you’ve got it. Read anything good lately?📚

Note: This was an audiobook, so the image is a little AI assist. The recommendation is 100% real though.

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