Alan Griffiths

Most of marketing is testing. Full stop. I've launched email campaigns that flopped. Funnels that converted at 0.3%. Webinars where 4 people showed up. But I kept the pieces that worked and cut the rest. That's the whole game. Run the experiment. Read the data. Adjust. You don't need a perfect strategy. You need a willingness to look stupid on the way to finding what actually works.

There are 1,000 people who can do my job. Only one can be husband to my wife and dad to my kids. I built a business around that math. Done by 2pm. Home for dinner. Present for bedtime. Not checking Slack under the table. Revenue went up when I stopped optimizing for more hours and started optimizing for more presence. Clients noticed. My wife noticed first. The guys working 70 hour weeks aren't outworking me. They're just out-missing their families. Famous at home first. Everything else is second.

Stop trying to be the hero in your client's story. You're the guide. Your client is the one walking through something scary. Something uncertain. Something they've never done before. Your job is to make the path less terrifying. Walk beside them. Say, "I've helped people through this exact thing and here's what's on the other side." Every coach I respect operates the same way. Confidence without ego. Clarity without overwhelm. A steady hand when their client's world feels shaky.

I coach people for a living. Directness is the whole job. Had a client last month convinced he needed a rebrand. New logo, new website, new everything. Wanted to spend $15K on it. I told him his brand was fine. His follow up system was broken. That $15K needed to go into a nurture sequence, not a font change. He wasn't thrilled to hear it. But he's up 40% this quarter. Blunt saves people years. Polite keeps them comfortable.

How long until every coach, consultant, landing page, funnel, and social post looks exactly the same? It's already happening... Same AI slop. Same recycled hooks. Same fake authority. Same BS, just generated faster.

I was on a coaching call last week. Client had 4,000 people on her email list. Same newsletter going to everyone. The person who paid her $50K last year got the same email as the person who downloaded a free PDF in 2021. I asked her, "Would you talk to those two people the same way in real life?" She laughed. "Obviously not." That's the fix. Segment your list. Talk to people based on where they actually are, not where your automation assumes they are.

The thought to execution timeline just got compressed from weeks to hours. AI can give you the starting point. But the people who win are the ones adding their own expertise, story, and perspective on top of it. A robot can write the draft. Only you can make it yours.

Broke at 35. Two jobs. New baby. Making $50K a year. Everyone around me thought I was crazy for leaving. "You've got a family now. This isn't the time to take risks." But staying was the risk. Staying was watching my ceiling get lower every year while pretending the paycheck made it okay. The "safe" path was the most dangerous thing I could have done. I'd rather fail swinging than spend the rest of my life wondering what would have happened if I'd actually tried. Nine months later I hit $50K in a single month. Not because I was talented. Because I refused to let fear make my decisions for me.

Got hacked on Facebook recently. Account gone. Instagram gone. Messenger gone. Submitted my driver's license. Did the face scan. Denied. Told I can no longer appeal that I am me. Spent two days trying to reach a human at Meta. Every email came back no reply. Every form led to a dead end. Here's the reality. Zucks can get an itch any day and decide to shut down your ads, your account, your entire lead gen machine. And there's nothing you can do about it. Stop putting all your eggs in one basket. Build an email list. Post on multiple platforms. Diversify your marketing so no single company holds the keys to your business. The only thing you truly own is your list. Everything else is borrowed.

Every piece of content that performs follows the same arc: → What are you talking about? → Why should they care? → How does it work? → Now what do they do? That's it. Four questions. Answer them in order and your content writes itself.

If I'm trying to leave your website, let me go. Stop with the exit popups. "Wait! Before you go!" Nobody in the history of the internet has been glad they got ambushed on their way out. You know what works? A popup that shows up after someone's been reading for 90 seconds. They're engaged. They're interested. That's when you offer something. Timing beats desperation every time.

High ticket, low ticket, ads, organic, workshops. Pick any model you want. They all work if you actually commit to one long enough to figure it out. The strategy was never the problem. You just keep switching before anything has a chance to compound.

"I'll figure it out myself." That sentence has cost more entrepreneurs more money than any bad investment. If marketing isn't your thing, hire someone who can architect what you're trying to build. You wouldn't wire your own house. Stop trying to wire your own funnel.

I will send you my email 10 times if you need it. I will record a Loom walking through your funnel. I will hop on a quick call if you're stuck. I don't gatekeep. Generosity is my growth strategy. Always has been. The people who give the most freely tend to build the most loyal audiences. Weird how that works.

Someone on a call asked me how to reach prospects who have a pain point coming in the next 12 months. My answer applies to every service business. If you know your prospect's pain point is coming before they do, you win. That's the whole game. Financial advisor? You know when clients hit retirement age. Coach? You know when someone's about to burn out based on how they're scaling. Be proactive. Reach out before they start Googling.

A closed mouth doesn't get fed. I say this on every call. Ask the question. Send the DM. Raise your hand. Request the intro. The opportunities sitting on the other side of "hey, quick question" would blow your mind. Most people don't get what they want because they never actually ask for it.

The best employees are usually the worst at staying employed.

You don't need to start with one video a week. Start with one a month. Seriously. If you're not making content right now, going from zero to four per month is a setup for quitting by week three. One a month. Get comfortable. Then two. Then weekly. Meet yourself where you are. Build the muscle before you build the machine.

Lower the bar. Your first touchpoint with a prospect should require almost zero effort from them. A short video. A one-question quiz. A 2 minute read. If your intro offer requires a 45 minute application and a credit card, you've already lost 90% of the room. Make the first yes easy. The bigger yeses come later.

I used to wear 60-hour weeks like a badge. Told myself my family would benefit later. Later never came until I forced it. Set a hard stop at 2pm. Everything changed.