Jordan Platten

Watch me build a self-learning AI appointment setter from scratch 🤖 I used to pay setters $3k/mo. They got bored, answered late, quit. Speed to lead is everything. Humans can't keep up. So I built one that doesn't sleep, doesn't complain, costs under $100/mo, & feels human if set up right. Built from scratch 👇 youtube.com/watch?v=wZSKdK…

Feeling too small to matter? Good. That means you're thinking right. 1. Find a smaller market where your size is an edge. 2. Grow until you're not small anymore. 3. Redefine impact - one transformed client is impact. You don't need to be big. You need to be useful to the right people.

Your clients aren't churning because of your marketing. They're churning because they don't know how to close.

Niching down used to mean a smaller market. In 2026 it means a smarter brain. Every client teaches your AI something. Every campaign sharpens it. Point that at one industry for two years and you know things no generalist ever will. The niche tips to the deepest player. Always has.

Cold email still works in 2026. Most people just avoid the boring stuff. 6 steps to book calls without touching spam: 1. Respect inbox limits (30/day max) 2. Do the boring setup right (auth, warmup, tracking) 3. Build a tight list (500 right > 10k random) 4. Avoid spam words 5. Follow up (replies come on 2-3) 6. Track your numbers weekly Most people skip 5/6 of these. That's why it's not working.

People assume one big failure ends the story. Perfect example: Steve Jobs. Forced out of his own company in 1985. The one he built from nothing. Gone. Here's the part everyone forgets: 1. He treated the failure as a redirect, not a verdict. 2. He kept building anyway - founded NeXT right after. 3. He took the next risk measured, not reckless. 4. He decided it wasn't over, long before the world agreed. Apple bought NeXT in '96. Jobs came back as CEO. Then came the iPod, iPhone, iPad. It's only over when you decide it is.

I asked Ricky Solanki, CEO of Push Group, how he'd build his agency from scratch in 2026. 50 people. 400 clients at their peak.  He didn't say hire faster or systemise harder. He said: "start with the premise that one person could manage an entire client. Then work backwards." We went deep on this one. Go watch it on the latest Agency Giants podcast here: youtube.com/watch?v=N0Ubox…

Two agencies. Both doing $100k a month. Agency 1: 5 people. 60% margins. Founder out of the day to day. Agency 2: 15 people. 25% margins. Founder drowning in Slack. One of my portfolio agencies runs 98 active clients with a 5-person delivery team at 64% net margins. That's what happens when AI sits at the front of the business, not the back. Full breakdown on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=CVzVTd…

Sam Ovens gave me one piece of advice that doubled my agency's revenue in 90 days. "Double your prices." Here's how to actually do it. 1. Stop selling deliverables. Sell the transformation. 2. Stack your credentials. Case studies, screenshots, client wins. 3. Build a brand clients want to be part of. People aren't buying the service. They're buying the story. The work doesn't need to change. Your perceived value does.

The agency you're comparing yourself to isn't winning more than you. They're just cropping better Same chaos. Same uncertainty. Same months where nothing works. They just don't post about it. The grass isn't greener on the other side. They've just cropped out all the mud.

Saturated niches aren't the problem. Agencies that deliver the same thing the same way as everyone else are. Own more of the outcome. Build the data layer. Stay focused. That's the whole game.

Your agency is only as valuable as the businesses you serve. The solo cleaner caps out in four months. The kitchen fitter doesn't want 40 leads. The PT doing $3k a month can't afford to pay you properly. You're not running a bad agency. You're running one for businesses that structurally cannot grow. If you 5x'd your client's leads tomorrow and they'd say "slow down, I can't cope", that's not a client. That's a ceiling. Stop selling growth to people who don't want it.

Read this before you send a single cold DM on Twitter. Most people open a fresh account, blast 200 messages and get banned by the weekend. Then blame the platform. The setup is the problem. Here's what you actually need. 1.Aged accounts. 6+ months old, phone-verified, in your ICP's city. 2. One residential proxy per account. Mars Proxies or iProyal. 3. 20 DMs per hour. 250 per day max. Under 50 per day for the first 14 days. 4. No videos or images in DMs to people who don't follow you. 5. Tweet 20+ times before you DM anyone. An empty profile screams bot. 6. Drippi with irregular send intervals. 2 to 3 follow-ups, 2 days apart. Build the setup before you get greedy. Skip step one and your pipeline dies in week two.

"No matter what I do, it never seems good enough." This usually comes from one of two things. 1. Comparison. You're measuring your work against someone else's highlight reel. The problem isn't your work. It's the measuring stick. 2. Perfectionism. Great is the enemy of good. If you wait for perfect, you'll never ship anything. We suffer far more in imagination than we do in reality. Don't become a slave to thoughts that were never true to begin with.

Most agencies blame bad ads when a client churns. That's rarely the reason. You generated the leads. The leads were good. But the receptionist took 4 hours to call back, show-up rate dropped and revenue stayed flat. Client looks at Stripe. Cancels. Tells their mates the leads weren't great quality. The fix is qualifying better on the sales call. If they can't tell you their show-up rate in 60 seconds, they're a future churn.

6 hours of AI agency training. Completely free. My team told me to charge for this. I'm giving it away anyway. The exact blueprint to start your AI agency from scratch. Picking your model, finding leads, closing clients, cold calling, cold email, service delivery and full GoHighLevel and Appointwise walkthroughs. 10 modules. Timestamps pinned so you can jump straight to what you need. No upsell at the end. Watch it here: youtube.com/watch?v=s6bTnv…

One video testimonial with real numbers will outsell 30 written ones. Most agency owners know this and still don't do it. Here's how to get one in under a week. 1. Pick your most measurable client. Numbers AND a story. One without the other is wallpaper. 2. Push for video. Written sits on a page nobody scrolls. Video runs everywhere. 3. Send a brief before the call. Their situation before you, the numbers, why they picked you. 4. Ask the right questions. Where were you before us? What changed? What would you say to someone on the fence? 5. Get written permission. One email. GDPR catches up with everyone eventually. If it's still zero on your site, be honest. Is it the asking that's stopping you or the editing?

Most agencies generate the same ideas because they always have the same people in the room solving the same problems. Here's how to fix that. 1. Practice lateral thinking. Borrow ideas from industries your competitors never look at. 2. Brainstorm with structure. Mind mapping, reverse thinking, role playing. Push past the obvious. 3. Seek diverse perspectives. Disagreement is where breakthroughs are born. 4. Protect innovation time. Creativity cannot happen between back to back meetings. 5. Study the innovators. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. Just understand what makes it spin better. Innovation isn't a talent. It's a habit.

The generalist agency is dying. 10 clients across 8 industries gives you anecdotes. The specialist with 25 clients in one niche has benchmarks, seasonal data and credibility you can't fake. You're not losing on price. You're losing before price comes up. Pick a niche. Let the generalist clients churn. Around month 8 inbound starts and retainers go up. Easiest test: which current client would you happily take 20 more of? That's your niche.

Most agency owners don't know how much their clients make per lead. The client does. And that gap is why most stay stuck on £2k a month while their clients make 10x off the back of their work. One of our students, Lirim, hit £50k last month by switching to a performance model. My latest video breaks down the 7 deal structures, the maths behind pricing it and how to move existing clients over without losing the account. Watch it here: youtube.com/watch?v=rBZDDw…