Mindset Bolt

i'm one of the top voices on LinkedIn. ​ and after: - generating $5M in revenue from LI - growing to over 62,000+ followers - signing brands like True Classic from content ​ i’m noticing something weird that’s unfolding: ​ the generation coming up does NOT care if what they're saying is completely true. ​ instead, ​ engagement is the product for them. ​ if a post gets comments → it was a good post ​ regardless of whether the claims in it hold up to any scrutiny at all. ​ i've seen it in people i've hired too. ​ it genuinely has not occurred to some of them that the thing we make needs to be based on REAL experience. ​ they grew up in a world where success is the metric and if the numbers go up you did a good job. ​ older creators are still obsessing over accuracy and softening every claim. ​ meanwhile, ​ someone half their age posts with full confidence and books more calls. ​ i don't think it's right. ​ i also don't think i'm powerful enough to change it. ​ this is just what's happening and getting emotional about it doesn't help. ​ pragmatism isn't sexy but it ages well.

I've sent 20,000,000+ cold emails. The HIGHEST-reply-rate cold email play I've ever run: A saturated-vertical pivot. 1. Pull a vertical your competitors won't touch (K-12 schools, public libraries, county procurement, state associations) 2. Public directory first. NCES, county records, association rosters. Apollo can't match these segments. 3. ICP-locked decision makers 4. 4 angles per vertical, 3 offers per angle, 7 weeks of testing Bookmark it.

Signal data is the FOUNDATION of a modern go-to-market system. I just wrote a complete playbook on it. Inside: 1. 5 core uses of intent signals (lead scoring, automated outreach, CRM/Slack alerts, expansion, ABM list building) 2. 3 signal categories explained in detail (1st-party, 2nd-party, 3rd-party) 3. Layer 1 Ingest stack (Tray(.)io, Zapier, Hightouch, Fivetran into your CRM/CDP/warehouse) 4. Layer 2 Normalize and Score with the weighted model (blog visit +2, pricing +8, demo +15, product spike +20) 5. Layer 3 Enrich plus Layer 4 Trigger (if/then logic for deals, alerts, nurture, retargeting, outbound) 6. Layer 5 Close the feedback loop so signals that produce meetings get weight, unproductive ones get cut This is a complete guide to capturing, scoring, and activating intent signals across first-party, second-party, and third-party data to build a real-time, signal-driven GTM system. Reply SIGNAL and I'll send it. (MUST BE FOLLOWING)

Audited a DTC account at $50K+/month in spend this week. 3 leaks I found in 90 minutes: 1. Their testing campaign was 80% statics. Net new reach needs videos in the mix, so Meta was retargeting their warm audience instead of finding new buyers. 2. Purchase exclusions on the testing campaign were blank. Meta was harvesting existing customers and reporting it as new acquisition. 3. Default attribution window with 1-day view-through layered in. Reported ROAS was 1.4x. Actual incrementally below 1.0x. Fix list: • Diversify testing creative — keep statics for testing depth, add videos to drive net new reach • Set purchase exclusions on every testing campaign • Pull attribution to 7-day click + 1-day engage-through, drop view-through from the operating window Save this!

Got a 4-sentence cold email recently that stopped me cold: "We noticed you're following RB2B and thought you'd be interested in a better alternative. We offer double the accuracy at half the price. We offer 500 identifications at $69 compared to the 200 identifications at $119 from RB2B. No need for a call now, but if I sent you a video of how it works would you watch?” What made it work: 1. They did the research. Saw I followed RB2B, assumed I was in market. They were right. 2. Clear value. Double the accuracy at half the price. Took zero work to evaluate. 3. Real numbers. 500 at $69 versus 200 at $119. The follow-up was just as good. New angle, pointed out features I'd lose with RB2B, soft CTA. The good cold emails read like research the sender did on you.

google ads account of an ecom brand at $1k-5k/day: - one campaign, everything inside - or too many campaigns with no strategy - campaigns overlap and compete - feed touched once a month - scaling by adding more campaigns - algorithm completely confused google ads account of an an ecom brand at $50k+/day: - campaigns added based on segmentation and real data - products properly segmented - feed rebuilt from scratch - no warnings or disapprovals in merchant center - youtube added after foundation is solid - algorithm knows exactly what to do - vertical scaling only the gap is hardly the ad spend. it is what was built before the ad spend went up.

Study this if you want to learn how to use AI for your email marketing efforts:

If I ran @ketone TikTok Shop, I would not treat it like a supplement brand I would treat it like a new energy category The product has the right ingredients for TikTok Shop No caffeine No sugar Performance angle Clear use case Easy creator storytelling The data shows Ketone-IQ is doing around $15.7K in 28-day GMV on TikTok Shop. That tells me the market exists. But the machine has not really been turned on yet. What I would do: 1. Stop leading with 'ketones' Most people do not wake up thinking they need ketones. They think I need energy I need focus I do not want to crash I drink too much coffee I need something before a workout 2. Build creator pods by use case Runners CrossFit Golf Founders Busy parents Students Night-shift workers Productivity creators Same product. Different buying moment. 3. Make the first offer simple Workout stack Afternoon energy pack Founder focus pack Coffee replacement challenge 4. Run a 30-day creator challenge Try Ketone-IQ for 30 days Post 10 videos Show the moment you use it Reward volume and sales Not just follower count 5. Turn TikTok Shop into the proof engine Winning videos become: Spark Ads Meta creative Product page assets Email creative Landing page hooks Ketone-IQ should be much bigger on TikTok Shop than it is today. I broke down the full opportunity here 👇 youtu.be/cXQoNaI4ZF0?si… Tag anyone at Ketone-IQ who should see this! If you haven't tried it yet, do it! This isn't an endorsement, but their number one fan!

The secret to growing a social following? It's not amazing content. It’s amazing distribution. Your options are to pay for shoutouts from big Instagram theme pages, RTs from big twitter accounts, ads... ...or make friends with bigger creators, get them to help you That's it

Email three is where most welcome series quietly unravel. Jimmy and Chase talk through how to recommend products like a guide, not a pushy salesperson. @yojimmykim @ecomchasedimond

The default move when a sales workflow breaks is to add another tool. We did the OPPOSITE and collapsed 8 tools into one Claude Code window: SDRs at most B2B companies burn ~20 minutes per personalized email toggling between Apollo, Findymail, HubSpot, Slack, Gmail, and a few other tabs. 30 reps doing 50 emails a day adds up to thousands of hours a month that nobody on the team can show you the work for. We rebuilt the whole thing on top of Claude Code with 8 MCPs wired in. This is the actual setup we run inside our 20-person GTM org, and it felt selfish keeping the doc internal: • The exact 8 MCPs to install (and the install order) • The Apollo to Findymail waterfall that protects sender reputation • How to chain Trigify and HeyReach across a 5-day LinkedIn-to-DM sequence • Why HubSpot is the destination layer every other MCP feeds • The "describe an ICP, get a list" workflow we run daily Reply MCPS and I'll DM you the link. (must be following)

In 2021, I scaled my eCom stores to $500k/mo. Then, iOS 14 wiped out BOTH of them overnight. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in monthly revenue vanished. Ad costs have only gone up since then, and since I was depending 100% on paid traffic... I was cooked. I didn't have a retention channel where the relationship was 100% MINE. BEFORE (what I was doing before iOS 14): • Spend 90% of marketing budget on Facebook ads • Optimize pixel targeting, lookalike audiences, creative testing • Treat email as a newsletter afterthought • Assume every dollar on paid would keep working next quarter • No system to catch customers who already paid me once AFTER: • Build the full-lifecycle email system before scaling ad spend • Use paid traffic to feed the list • Auomated flows running the retention side on autopilot • Segmented campaigns sending consistently each month • Email attributed revenue targeted as a meaningful share of total TL;DR: No algorithm change, iOS update, or platform ban can affect your email list. YOU own the subscriber, the send, and the revenue. Every brand still running 90% of budget through Meta is one platform update away from where my two stores ended up in 2021. Tread carefully.

This post literally breaks down how to scale a marketing agency to $1M/mo with one hyper-specialized offer:

Degrees in 2026 don't hold the same weight as they once did. I know so many people in my inner circle who never went to college, and they're absolutely crushing it. None of them waited for permission. They put themselves in places where they could get the experience, worked their way up from the ground, and understood the business by being in the field. That's how they built the solutions and systems they run on today. In my world, it’s all about your experience. And you've got to put yourself in places where you can get it. Start going to events, make friends in the space, and eventually those people will get to know you as a human and potentially hire you. People hire off of people. I know “your network is your net worth” sounds cliché, but it's the truth. It's not really about what you know, but who you know.

@scotchisholm CEO

Comment “CEO” and I’ll send you my full article on this exact topic.