​Ayman Al-Abdullah was the CEO of AppSumo and got it on track to doing over $80m/yr, then semi-retired, and then started Agoge Consulting when too many CEO's kept asking him questions: Watch this super informative interview here --> ​

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🎤 Or listen to the interview as a podcast:

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Here's my personal notes from this interview:

0:28: Why leave a sweet gig at Appsumo? Really really knowing what you’re good at and what you like doing.

0:37: Three phases of a company's growth. 1.) Startup Phase ($5m revenue). 2.) Scale Up Phase. 3.) Grow Up Phase.

2:30: In the beginning the founder is the star player. Then you move to coach. At $50m in revenue then you move to owner of a team, and it’s more like a politician.

3:50: Thought he was going to take a break from working for a while, but people kept asking questions, so Agoge Consulting was born.

6:05: “I always tell founder, you know you’ve hit product market fit when it feels like you’re wearing a meat suit in a dog park.”

6:25: Why didn’t you just make this a course? The nature of working with these founders is way too individual.

7:12: When you coach CEO’s, it’s so different dependant on the company, so it’s difficult to make a one-size-fits-all program.

8:02: What do you do with clients? They have a monthly check in (what you doing this month, what doing next month), voice noting + texting, quick phone calls, it’s like being a concierge medical doctor for business.

9:35: He made a thing called “9 steps to 9 figures” he walks CEO’s through.

10:43: What technical skills have you learned? His core thing is Notion. Easy to use and everything works with it. Great search. 100% be using AI, if not it’s like being in the 90’s and not using the internet. Loom has AI SOP’s now. Learning easy softwares provides ultra-high leverage.

12:50: Example: Everyone can use video editing with CapCut, but if you use After Effects you can make it 100% better. So levelling up your toolset can increase your value big time.

13:36: Become a Triple Threat. Become Full Stack.

14:46: Trung Phan and Matt Gray stack their skills together on social and it made them stand out. Combining styles can create a unique advantage.

16:16: Social media seems like the early days of the UFC, it’s just getting started.

16:52: People follow individuals not companies. Without a good social presence it’s much harder to attract talent.

18:05: ATM Framework = Attention → Trust → Money

18:58: SEO has tectonically shifted, and less people are clicking ten links.

19:50: Google searches down 33% because of AI. Google released 3 major updates that changes results. But mainly, how do you diversify your revenue stream so you’re not heavily impacted.

21:05: Building a business on one social media channel is like having an office space where the rent doubles every 18 months.

22:00: Things like direct mail and conferences are very powerful but not as sexy so you hear about their successes less.

22:35: Start with who is your customer, and where are they at. If you’re marketing to plumbers they’re probably not finding you on Reels. How do you build a marketing engine that feeds into that customer persona.

23:15: Opinions on podcasts? It depends on your avatar. Like Chris Do is for designers, and they listen to a lot of podcasts. If you’re a roofer you wanna be going door to door or buying billboards, so it just depends on who the customer is.

24:24: What industries are killing it, what industries are hurting? Education is getting commoditized, people are not paying for knowledge, courses, communities the way they used to because it’s all becoming free and harder to compete. Selling education is uphill battle, but if you can turn that information into a template or tool or software that is taking off. It’s much harder to be in business right now. Companies that are doing well are ones that help individuals make more money. If you can be directly tied to revenue that’s a more defensible business.

26:46: Why a newsletter agency didn’t totally make sense. Newsletters weren’t tied to revenue. “Can I prove my revenue?”

29:00: Ayman is so clear he’s not a “start with an idea guy.” He is a scale guy. He has an exercise he uses with CEO’s where he finds the 4 moments they are most proud of, and that tells him a lot about what they enjoy doing.

31:35: There are some outlier examples like Mark Zuckerberg or Warren Buffet, but it’s not common. Like there’s 5 examples, so it’s not helpful to compare to those.

33:11: What’s the deal with AI!? Interesting applications? Try to find how your business plays into disruptive technologies. Ford example of a faster horse. Ironically the horse industry is bigger today than it was before. Figure out the END PROBLEM THE CUSTOMER IS TRYING TO SOLVE and then ask “Could AI make this better?” Fortunately even if many companies are “late” to AI it can still be ok, we saw this happen with the internet 20+ years ago.

38:20: 3 fundamentals for a $100m company: Persona, Problem, Promotion. Persona: Who do you sell. Problem: What do you solve. Promotion: How do you acquire customers. American Express travellers check example.

40:10: A lot of AI people are just trying 20+ ideas to gauge traction. But it’s important to make sure if the AI gets better your product gets better.

41:15: Peter Levels is doing a good job at finding uses for AI.

41:44: We thought AI would kill Copywriting Course. Low, Medium, and High level copywriting are big distinctions. AI is great at low level writing, decent at medium level, and bad at high level (currently). We notice this in Office Hours that people come for a mix of strategy, CRO, UX, copywriting, and design….it’s not just copywriting alone. People care about the END CONVERSION RATE, they don’t care about what method you use to increase it.

44:36: Better Design, Better Layout, Better UX, Better Copy. Ayman explains why Neville is so good at it.

45:26: “Familiarity Blindness” is when you look at something so much that’s it’s difficult to improve it anymore, which is why Office Hours and our Forum is so good at improving people’s stuff because other people look at it with a fresh perspective.

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Follow Ayman: ​
​Web: aymanalabdullah.com​
​X: x.com/aymanalabdul​

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​Watch the whole video here 👀​