Rainier LN⚡️

THE AGENCY MODEL IS SO BACK As someone who owns an SEO agency and 3x SaaS companies, I'm experiencing it first-hand. Old model: - Army of humans - 30% margins - 2-3x exit multiples New model: - One person does the work of seven - 75%+ margins - PE firms are already shifting budgets from SaaS to buy these businesses at tech multiples AI is flipping the agency model on its head. Building software used to be hard and expensive (that was the point). But AI is driving that cost to zero. Agencies have always had deep domain expertise and strategic thinking. But now these have leverage and scalability like never before. SaaS is losing its moat, agencies just found one. Here's the playbook we're running: 1. One outcome that's hard to achieve (organic leads) 2. Build a proprietary tool for each deliverable 3. AI agent runs deliverables from a Slack message 4. Humans strategise and operate campaigns 5. Sell the outcome on a monthly retainer Margins can reach ~75% because the cost is compute for execution and humans for strategy and QA. Crazy shift.

Renting an apartment in Bangkok is better than in America

Introducing Claude Managed Agents: everything you need to build and deploy agents at scale. It pairs an agent harness tuned for performance with production infrastructure, so you can go from prototype to launch in days. Now in public beta on the Claude Platform.

Your parents stopped buying things for themselves years ago. Not because they couldn't afford it. But because every time they had extra money, they thought of you first. They wear the same clothes. Use the same phone. Eat simpler meals. While making sure you never felt like you went without. Most of us noticed too late. Some of us never noticed at all.

Age of countries by ancient origins: 🇮🇷 Iran: 5,226 years 🇪🇬 Egypt: 5,126 years 🇻🇳 Vietnam: 4,905 years 🇦🇲 Armenia: 4,518 years 🇰🇵 North Korea: 4,359 years 🇨🇳 China: 4,096 years 🇮🇳 India: 4,026 years 🇬🇪 Georgia: 3,326 years 🇪🇹 Ethiopia: 3,006 years 🇬🇷 Greece: 2,826 years 🇷🇺 Russia: 2,726 years 🇦🇫 Afghanistan: 2,704 years 🇯🇵 Japan: 2,686 years 🇲🇳 Mongolia: 2,235 years 🇹🇭 Thailand: 1,426 years

Grant Cardone just said he'd charge companies $8K/month for AI consulting if he was starting from scratch. He's right. But he left out the part that actually matters. What do you actually DO for these companies? These are the 5 AI skills you can learn in a weekend and charge businesses $3K-$8K/month for: 1. AI VOICE RECEPTIONIST You build a system that answers every phone call 24/7, books appointments, and handles customer inquiries without a single human involved. Dentists, salons, law firms, clinics, HVAC companies. They're all paying $3K+/month for a front desk person who still puts callers on hold. You replace that entirely. Stack: Retell AI or Vapi + ElevenLabs for voice cloning + Google Calendar API for live booking. Setup time: 2-4 hours. Charge: $3K-$5K build + $300-$500/month retainer. 2. AI REVIEW MANAGER You build a system that monitors every Google review in real time, auto-responds to positive ones, flags negative ones for the owner, and sends review requests to happy customers automatically. Restaurants, gyms, chiropractors, auto shops. Any business that depends on their Google rating but doesn't have time to manage it needs this. Stack: n8n + Google Business Profile API + Claude API for personalized responses. Setup time: 1-2 hours. Charge: $500-$1,500 build + $200-$500/month retainer. 3. AI LEAD QUALIFIER You build a chatbot that sits on their website 24/7, engages every visitor, asks qualifying questions, captures their info, and books serious buyers directly onto the calendar. Real estate agents, coaches, consultants, agencies. Anyone selling high-ticket services who's losing leads at night because nobody's there to respond. Stack: Voiceflow or Botpress + Claude API + Calendly + HubSpot for CRM sync. Setup time: 4-8 hours. Charge: $5K-$8K build + $500-$1K/month retainer. 4. AI AD CREATIVE PIPELINE You build a system that scrapes competitor ads daily, identifies winning hooks and angles, and generates 50-100 ad variations with scripts, images, and voiceovers. Ecom brands, DTC companies, marketing agencies. They're paying creative agencies $5K-$15K/month for the same output this pipeline delivers in an afternoon. Stack: Claude + Midjourney + Runway + ElevenLabs + cron job for daily scraping. Setup time: One weekend. Charge: $1K-$3K/month retainer per brand. 5. AI SALES CALL ANALYZER You build a system that auto-transcribes every sales call, analyzes it for objections, winning phrases, and drop-off points, then grades each rep's performance and pushes a summary with coaching tips straight to Slack or the CRM. Sales teams at B2B companies, agencies, real estate brokerages, car dealerships. Any business with reps on phones who knows bad calls are costing them money but doesn't have time to review every single recording. Stack: Whisper or Fireflies for transcription + Claude for analysis and grading + n8n for automation + Slack/CRM integration for delivery. Setup time: 4-8 hours. Charge: $2K-$4K build + $500-$1K/month retainer. Grant said get 10 clients at $8K/month and you're at $80K+/month. You don't need to start there. Stack 5 clients on retainers averaging $500-$1K/month and you're already replacing a salary. Your cost to deliver all of this is $20-$200/month per client in API fees. The skills are learnable in a weekend. The tools are live right now. And businesses are actively looking for someone to build this for them. The only gap in the market is people who actually know how to set it up. Be that person.

After a certain age, your parents slowly become your children. They ask simple questions, repeat stories, and depend on your patience the way you once depended on theirs. Very few understand this role reversal.What looks like innocence or inconvenience is really time coming full circle. Don't correct them harshly. Don't rush them. Care for them the way they once protected you. This is not a burden. It is repayment.

Walking alone through a foreign city at night and realizing how far you’ve come has to be a top 3 peak moment of all time

The diamond engagement ring was invented by an ad agency in 1947. Before that, only 1 in 10 American brides got one. The company behind it, De Beers, was worth $9.2 billion three years ago. Today that number is $2.3 billion, and its owner is trying to find a buyer. In 1940, diamonds were a luxury for the rich. Nobody proposed with one unless they had serious money. De Beers had a warehouse full of diamonds and no customers, so they hired NW Ayer, an ad firm out of Philadelphia. A copywriter named Frances Gerety came up with four words: “A Diamond is Forever.” NW Ayer paid Hollywood studios to write diamond proposals into movie scripts. They planted stories in gossip columns about which rock some actress just got. They invented the “two months’ salary” rule, the idea that a man should spend two months of income on a ring. None of that existed before. It was all marketing. By the 1990s, 8 out of 10 American brides wore diamond engagement rings. Then De Beers did it again in Japan, going from 5% to 60% in 14 years. Advertising Age called it the greatest advertising slogan of the 20th century. They were right. The whole business ran on one trick: make diamonds seem rare. De Beers controlled most of the world’s supply but only released a small amount each year. That artificial shortage kept prices sky-high. And the “forever” in the slogan had a second job: if nobody resells their diamond, supply stays tight and prices stay up. Lab-grown diamonds blew that apart. You can now grow a diamond in a lab that is the same thing, atom for atom, as one pulled out of the ground. Costs 80–85% less. In 2019, only 6% of engagement rings in America had a lab-grown stone. By 2025, that number was 61%. That’s from The Knot’s annual survey of 10,000+ newlywed couples. People are buying bigger rings (1.9 carats on average, compared to 1.6 for mined) and keeping the savings. De Beers saw this coming. In 2018, they launched their own lab-grown jewelry brand called Lightbox, priced at $800 per carat. The idea was to make lab-grown look like cheap costume jewelry so people would still pay a premium for “real” diamonds. Prices tanked 90% anyway. By 2025, American grocery stores were selling lab-grown diamond rings for $200. De Beers shut Lightbox down last May. Since 2023, De Beers has lost nearly $7 billion in value. It lost over $500 million in 2025 alone and has about $2 billion in diamonds sitting in storage that nobody is buying. Its parent company, Anglo American, is now in what they’re calling “advanced discussions” to sell off the whole thing. A 137-year-old company, dumped. The greatest ad campaign ever made convinced a planet that a common carbon crystal was worth two months of your salary. The product that’s killing it just proved you can grow the same crystal in a factory for pocket change.

10 days post 5-MeO-DMT > my body can't sleep enough > I'll sleep 8 hrs + midday hr nap + 9hrs that night > mind feels really fast > sex drive is up by 2-3x > kid vibe excitement levels about life > dreams are vivid, more alive than I can remember > previous normalized i.e. scrolling, now seem insane > societal norms generally feel insane to me, how we trade our existence for ephemeral things > I feel more self aware and robust at handling conflict > I feel love more deeply

This is literally how most modern people spend their lives.

Square just auto-enabled Bitcoin Lightning payments across 4 million U.S. merchant terminals. No opt-in required. Sellers receive USD by default. This is the most significant Bitcoin payments infrastructure move since the Lightning Network launched. Every coffee shop, barber, and food truck on Square can now accept sats over Lightning at zero fees through 2026. Jack Dorsey's Block didn't ask for permission. They flipped the switch.

This must be embarrassing for all the "first world nations" in the world.

One of the most impressive things happening in El Salvador right now is that they are literally renovating or building two new schools EVERY SINGLE DAY. Bukele launched this last year, and the results are astonishing. They've done 624 schools so far, and there's a site to monitor progress for each school. Many of the workers are non-violent criminals who once terrorized the same communities. Now they work to repay their debt & earn some time off their sentence.

Cuadra por cuadra... tardará un poco, pero quedará hermoso.

President of El Salvador Nayib Bukele releases video showing the transformation of his country. Since Bukele took office: - Homicides plunged from 2,398 in 2019 to just 114 homicides in 2024. - Murder rate is now 1.9 per 100,000 people, a historic low. - In 2022, Bukele declared a state of exception and made over 85,000 arrests. “Everything in life has a cost and the cost of being called authoritarian is too small to bother me much,” he once said.

Your headphones just became a personal translator in 70+ languages. 🎧✨ Google Translate’s “Live translate” with headphones is officially on iOS. We're also expanding this capability to more countries around the world for both @Android and iOS users. To try it, open the Translate app, tap “Live translate” and connect your headphones.

“The only real test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life.”

A massive advantage in life: Being a pleasure to deal with. Kind when others aren’t. Calm when things go sideways. Reliable under pressure. Intelligence alone is overrated. Be someone who lightens the load for folks around them. People value people who make their lives easier.