Adam Sprague

@ruben_vdzr The receipt-as-email-marketing trap is everywhere. The money is in the flows nobody sets up.Post-purchase, winback, browse abandon. That's retention revenue sitting on the table while brands blast one newsletter a month.

Most ecom brands send a receipt and call that email marketing. I built email systems for brands before I ran my own. The ones doing real retention revenue weren't sending the most emails. They were sending the right one at the right moment. The most valuable email you'll ever send goes out 48 hours after someone buys, before the product even arrives. Not a discount. Not a review request. Just a message that makes the customer feel like they ordered from a real brand. That window between purchase and delivery is where people decide if they'll ever buy from you again. Most founders are already planning the next ad campaign while it sits open. Build the relationship before you try to monetize it a second time.

@Saturdaymatters That question is the whole sales process now. Founders aren't buying services, they're buying whether you'll really show up. Every founder who's been burned is asking one thing: are you going to disappear after the brief.

Got on an onboarding call with a founder two weeks ago. Before I could finish my intake questions, he stopped me. He wanted to know who I was. Whether I'd actually be involved or just hand off the brief. He'd been burned before. Last agency gave him copy that could've been written for anyone selling anything. Here's what this guy had already done before he ever hired us: > Spent a full month researching his avatar before he built the product > Compiled every word, phrase, and complaint his customers use on Reddit and Amazon into a document > Built the product around a gap (everyone else is selling gummies with sugar and food dye to kids who react to sugar and food dye) > Migrated subscription platforms specifically because the old ones' dunning system was producing bad churn data and he couldn't trust the numbers > Fulfills out of his home with his family because he trusts them most He didn't ask how our process worked. He asked whether the right person would be touching his brand. Most founders never think to ask that. They hire the agency, let whoever gets assigned do the work, then complain three months later that the copy doesn't sound like them. This guy treated the partnership like a hire. That level of intentionality doesn't just show up in how he vets vendors. It shows up in everything he's built.

@cedric_design Channels don't die. The copy-paste playbook does. Boring was always the thing on life support.

"SEO is dead." "Email is dead." "Cold outreach is dead." "Design is dead." "The funnel is dead." Nothing in B2B marketing is dead. Boring is dead. Generic is dead. The playbook every competitor copied is dead. SEO still works, when you actually have something worth ranking for. Email still works, when it doesn't read like Mailchimp crap. Cold outreach still works, when it's about them, not your Series B. The channel was never the problem. The mediocrity was. CMOs who keep blaming the tactic are just avoiding the harder truth: Their execution got lazy, not the channel. Stop attending funerals. Start raising the bar.

@ItsKieranDrew The weird stuff being a magnet is the whole secret. Most people sand it off trying to sound professional. Sand them down and you blend into everyone writing the same safe takes.

If you feel alone with your thoughts, start writing online. The things that make you weird become a magnet for like-minded people, and you stop feeling like you need to conform. Thinking differently is something to celebrate.

@kanekallaway Visuals don't replace the idea, but they decide if anyone gets to the idea. A weak thought with great design still flops. A great thought with no visual hierarchy never gets read. You need both doing their job.

Lots of people say "visuals don't matter" in content. This is nonsense. The people that say this are trying to convince you that raw yapping is the superior strategy (so they can sell you the yapping course). Premium visuals are the fastest way to differentiate a category-leading personal brand. This is because: 1. Visual context is richer: A picture's worth 1,000 words. A video's worth 1,000 pictures. 2. Visual communicate silently: 85% of people watch videos on silent. There was a false narrative that premium visuals were commoditized because "any editor can make them." Bad visuals are commoditzed. Great visuals are the easiest way to cut through and will be for a long-time. The only way to win without having a strong visual format is if you are: • Top .01% charismatic • Top .01% volume/articulation skill • Top .01% proof If you're not this, but have resources, visual differentiation is a helpful method to cut through faster. Not to say you have to have premium visuals to win (there are plenty of counterpoints), but it is the ultimate separator. There's a reason why all the top shows (TBPN, DOAC, Modern Wisdom, CHD, Rogan) have premium visuals. There is a premium paid for premium, both from brands and in the subconscious brain of the viewer.

@leonabboud Gold. You don't need case studies to start. You need to show your thinking out loud. Document how you solve the problem and the proof builds itself in public. The first case study is you, working.

How to build your personal brand when too have no case studies

@DanielSmidstrup 80% from one channel is the dream and the risk in the same number. Build in public clearly works for you. I'd start feeding a second track now while X is hot! One platform owning your traffic is great until the day it isn't.

X is driving 80% of ClimbX traffic. Google is second largest with 5%. 38 days in. Build in Public works!?

@palassis @bsheldonx Willing to put my first born on the line. 🤣 Substance and distribution are the whole game now. Timing just decides how fast it pays off.

@bsheldonx Organic reach got weird fast. Feels like you need substance, timing, distribution, and a minor blood sacrifice to get the right people in the room now 😂 followed for this.

Why has it become so incredibly challenging to get any kind of organic reach on X in the past year or two? Not claiming to be a cultural mover here by any means, but used to be able to engage in conversation with smart people if there was substance. Bots that bad even with an X sub? cc: @nikitabier

@MindXacademy This is the reframe nobody wants to hear. The algorithm isn't suppressing you, it just has nothing to work with. Give people a reason to stop and it stops being your enemy. Boring is the only thing it truly buries.

The algorithm did not kill organic reach. Boring content did. When you write something that makes someone stop, think, save, or share, the algorithm has no incentive to bury it. Chase engagement because you're saying something worth engaging with, not because you've found the hack. The hack changes. The quality doesn't have to.

Most of the work that builds a brand is invisible. Reps nobody sees. Posts that flop. Systems you rebuild twice. You keep going because you can see what it turns into.

I'd rather have 5 people who trust me than 5,000 who scroll past. Reach is rented. Trust is owned.

@msrshahisoft Clean schema makes you readable. It doesn't make you repeatable. The model trusts the brand telling one story everywhere, not just the one with the nicest JSON-LD.

If your marketing playbook is still built around "driving organic clicks," you’re fighting for real estate on a dying map. The shift from classic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) isn't a trend on the horizon. It is the baseline reality of 2026. When users consult ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, or AI Overviews, they aren’t looking for a directory of URLs to click through. They expect a definitive, instantly summarized solution. For growth teams, this flips the traditional rule of digital marketing: Classic SEO focuses on winning a high placement. GEO focuses on embedding your brand into the LLM’s actual output as the verified authority. If an AI tool compiles a response and leaves your insights out of the loop, your organic reach effectively hits zero-no matter how dominant your keyword rankings used to be. The Architecture of an AI-Friendly Resource LLMs don't read web copy the way legacy search bots used to. They look for clean architecture, contextual depth, and data-backed authority rather than keyword repetition. To guarantee your content gets pulled into AI answers, it requires: Granular Semantic Framing: Intuitive heading logic (H1-H3) and targeted summary definitions that AI models can effortlessly parse and ingest. Flawless Schema Architecture: Comprehensive, hardcoded JSON-LD tags (such as Dataset and Product Schema) that serve as a direct guide for AI data harvesters. Exclusive Information Layers: Cookie-cutter articles fail here. Large language models prioritize original case studies, internal statistics, and localized insights (designed to feed secure, real-time RAG systems). Cross-LLM Readability: Text must be structured clearly enough to remain coherent and authoritative across the differing logic engines of Claude, Gemini, and OpenAI. Scaling Mass Production Safely The biggest challenge facing modern growth teams and digital agencies is volume. How do you scale topical authority and roll out complex, localized info hubs without relying on standard, low-value AI copywriting? The fix is abandoning basic, manual prompt engineering and upgrading to Autonomous AI Workflows baked directly into your backend CMS. By linking your company's proprietary data (PDF files, case studies, unique transcripts) straight to your content pipeline, you can seamlessly deploy massive amounts of original, clean, and highly structured pages that engage human readers while providing the exact technical framework that AI search platforms require. The future of brand discovery isn't about outsmarting the AI; it's about feeding it the primary sources it needs to function. Are you still optimizing for clicks, or are you optimizing for source citations? #GEO #SEO2026 #SearchGenerativeExperience #ContentMarketing #AIOps #ProgrammaticSEO #EnterpriseMarketing

Nobody claps when you're building the boring foundation. No likes for the systems, the docs, the late nights. That's the part that pays you later.

Pick one sentence that says who you are. Now say it the same way everywhere. That repetition is what teaches AI to recommend you.

You don't need more content. You need content a machine can read, trust, and repeat back to a buyer.

json runs your entire website and you've never once said thank you. 🤣

@elonmusk giving full access to a man you can't even identify is the most founder thing I've ever seen.

“Full access” 😂

The system I'm building for myself first: A site an AI can read. A funnel an AI can follow. Soon, a booking an AI can complete on its own. Every brand I work with gets the same rail. Build it for one, give it to all.

Most brands are sleepwalking through the biggest shift since Google. The window to become the name AI trusts is open. It won't stay open.

Everybody's using AI to sound more professional. So now professional sounds like nothing.