July 2026

Meta just gave investors a preview of how expensive the AI race really is, and Wall Street isn’t thrilled. The company missed earnings estimates and issued weaker-than-expected revenue guidance, sending shares down as much as 11% after-hours, CNBC reports. The real shock is that free cash flow collapsed to $784 million this quarter, down from $8.55 billion a year earlier, as Meta pours money into AI.

Next year could be worse. Analysts expect Meta to burn through more than $20 billion in cash in 2027, based on $174 billion in projected spending. Deutsche Bank thinks that figure could reach $215 billion, and Raymond James pegs it as high as $280 billion.

What sets Meta apart from fellow big spenders Amazon and Alphabet is its lack of a backup plan. There’s no cloud business and no proven track record building new revenue streams beyond advertising. Meta’s long-term debt has ballooned to $83.7 billion, and CFO Susan Li said the company won’t reconsider its pace until “’28 and beyond.” Investors, analysts say, aren’t likely to wait that long.

Meta just gave investors a preview of how expensive the AI race really is, and Wall Street isn’t thrilled. The company missed earnings estimates and issued weaker-than-expected revenue guidance, sending shares down as much as 11% after-hours, CNBC reports. The real shock is that free cash flow collapsed to $784 million this quarter, down from $8.55 billion a year earlier, as Meta pours money into AI.

Next year could be worse. Analysts expect Meta to burn through more than $20 billion in cash in 2027, based on $174 billion in projected spending. Deutsche Bank thinks that figure could reach $215 billion, and Raymond James pegs it as high as $280 billion.

What sets Meta apart from fellow big spenders Amazon and Alphabet is its lack of a backup plan. There’s no cloud business and no proven track record building new revenue streams beyond advertising. Meta’s long-term debt has ballooned to $83.7 billion, and CFO Susan Li said the company won’t reconsider its pace until “’28 and beyond.” Investors, analysts say, aren’t likely to wait that long.

Bernard Arnault has spent millions trying to change his image. It may have taken one sarcastic tweet to actually pull it off. The LVMH chairman, long nicknamed “the wolf in cashmere” and “the Terminator,” funded museums and underwrote the Paris Olympics over the past decade to soften his reputation, with little effect, the New York Times reports.

Then came a three-page open letter responding to a critical Le Monde investigative series, posted to X. Instead of disagreeing with the reporting, Arnault poked fun at it, joking about details like being accused of making Hermès-tie-wearing visitors change clothes. The letter has been viewed over 8 million times and drew praise from figures like billionaire investor Bill Ackman.

Bernard Arnault has spent millions trying to change his image. It may have taken one sarcastic tweet to actually pull it off. The LVMH chairman, long nicknamed “the wolf in cashmere” and “the Terminator,” funded museums and underwrote the Paris Olympics over the past decade to soften his reputation, with little effect, the New York Times reports.

Then came a three-page open letter responding to a critical Le Monde investigative series, posted to X. Instead of disagreeing with the reporting, Arnault poked fun at it, joking about details like being accused of making Hermès-tie-wearing visitors change clothes. The letter has been viewed over 8 million times and drew praise from figures like billionaire investor Bill Ackman.

I have spent years on both ends of the cold pitch. I send them to land coverage and clients, and because of the work I do, I receive a steady stream of them, too. That second seat taught me more than the first. Watching hundreds of pitches land in my own inbox showed me, in seconds, why almost all of them get deleted and why a rare few earn a reply.

The deletions are not close calls. Most cold outreach fails the moment it arrives, because it was clearly blasted to a list and could have been addressed to anyone. The reader feels that instantly. Gartner found that most B2B buyers now actively avoid suppliers who send irrelevant outreach, and that bad prospecting damages a relationship rather than starting one. The good news is that the pitches that work are not cleverer or better written. They just do three simple things that the rest skip.

They prove you did your homework

The single biggest predictor of a reply is evidence that the sender actually knows who they are writing to. Not a merge field with my first name. Real, specific proof — a reference to something I published, a detail about my company, a reason this message is landing in my inbox and not someone else’s.

When I pitch, I earn the first sentence before I write anything else. I find one true, specific thing about the person — a recent article, a product launch, a shift at their company — and I lead with it. It tells the reader, in one line, that the message was meant for them. That tiny act of research is what separates a note that feels like a conversation from one that feels like spam.

This is also the cheapest edge available, because so few people bother. When most of your competition is sending the same template to a thousand inboxes, the one email that proves a human spent two minutes on the recipient stands out immediately. You do not need a hundred perfect pitches. You need a smaller number of genuinely tailored ones.

They make one clear, small ask

The second habit is restraint. The pitches that die try to close the whole deal in the first email. They ask for a 30-minute call, attach a deck, list every feature and end with three different links. It is exhausting to read, and exhausting gets deleted.

The ones that work ask for one small thing. A reporter pitch that lands is not “please write about my company.” It is a single useful angle and an offer to share more if it helps. A sales pitch that lands is not “let’s book a demo this week.” It is a short, relevant question that is genuinely easy to answer.

Lower the cost of saying yes, and more people say it. I think of the first message as earning the right to a second one, not winning the entire relationship in a paragraph. Once someone replies, even briefly, you are no longer cold. You are in a conversation, and conversations are where deals and coverage actually get made.

They follow up without being annoying

The third habit is the one most people quit before reaching. They send a single email, hear nothing and assume the answer is no. Far more often, the answer is “I was busy and your email got buried.” Silence is rarely rejection. It is usually just an inbox doing what inboxes do.

A short, polite follow-up recovers a surprising share of those lost conversations. The discipline is in the tone. A good follow-up adds something — a new angle, a fresh piece of context, a quick reason the timing might now make sense. A bad one just whines, “Did you see my last email?” One adds value, and the other adds pressure and only one gets a reply.

There is a line, of course. One or two thoughtful follow-ups spaced out over a couple of weeks is persistence. Five in five days is harassment, and it burns the relationship for good. Aim to be the kind of sender you would actually want to hear from: present and useful, not desperate.

Put the three together, and a pattern emerges. Do your homework, ask for one easy yes, and follow up like a professional. None of it requires charisma or a famous name. It requires treating the person on the other end like a person, which, after reading thousands of pitches that did the opposite, I can tell you is rarer and more powerful than it sounds. The trash folder is full of talented people who skipped the basics. The reply goes to the one who didn’t.

I have spent years on both ends of the cold pitch. I send them to land coverage and clients, and because of the work I do, I receive a steady stream of them, too. That second seat taught me more than the first. Watching hundreds of pitches land in my own inbox showed me, in seconds, why almost all of them get deleted and why a rare few earn a reply.

The deletions are not close calls. Most cold outreach fails the moment it arrives, because it was clearly blasted to a list and could have been addressed to anyone. The reader feels that instantly. Gartner found that most B2B buyers now actively avoid suppliers who send irrelevant outreach, and that bad prospecting damages a relationship rather than starting one. The good news is that the pitches that work are not cleverer or better written. They just do three simple things that the rest skip.

They prove you did your homework

The single biggest predictor of a reply is evidence that the sender actually knows who they are writing to. Not a merge field with my first name. Real, specific proof — a reference to something I published, a detail about my company, a reason this message is landing in my inbox and not someone else’s.

Over time, I’ve come to realize how important relationships are in every area of business — including some high-stakes areas that aren’t exactly known for their warm or welcoming experiences.

For instance, I remember working with a credit union team and realizing how important it was for them to cultivate relationships with their member communities. The concept applies elsewhere. Recruiters need to earn the trust of candidates. Venture capitalists need strong connections with founders.

Most entrepreneurs can see the important relationships in their business. But they can lose that focus as their company scales. As they obsess over things like product, hiring and distribution, they can lack the same intention in cultivating the relationships that matter.

If you’re operating in a relationship-driven industry, you want to invest in relationship infrastructure as you grow. Scratch that. It’s a requirement these days. I’ve found that if you truly want to succeed, you need to invest in relationship infrastructure. Here are three practical shifts founders can implement to help that happen.

Audit and understand where relationships live in your business

Strong connections don’t happen instantly. Every time I’ve built good business relationships, they’ve taken time. They also took place in different settings.

This can lead to critical relationship management information being scattered across various parts of your business. Communication history can sit in inboxes and Slack threads. Meeting notes can exist in countless audio, visual and text-based tools. Relationship ownership is often vague and fragmented. As it grows, the distance between key points of relational information can grow.

Despite their name, even customer relationship management (CRM) tools often lack a comprehensive relationship element. They can silo and completely miss information. That’s why one of the best early infrastructure moves you can make is to go beyond the CRM concept and establish an extended relationship management (XRM) layer in your business.

Rings.ai points out the key difference between CRM and XRM models. A CRM’s focus is singular: to manage a company’s interactions with its customers. The AI-powered relationship intelligence platform compares that narrow focus to an XRM approach, which is built for things like holistic relationship management, process automation, increased transparency and scalability.

An XRM expands the customer focus across all business relationships. Instead of relying only on CRM records, it pulls in communication history, notes and external data to create a unified view of every relationship across the team.

If you want to scale your relationship infrastructure, start here. Use an XRM approach to map your institutional memory and make it visible across your team, even at scale. Centralize your communication history and relationship data at the person and company level.

See relationships as long-term assets, not transactions

The need to cultivate relationships as a core business asset is nothing new. But maintaining that perspective while scaling? That’s where I’ve found things can become challenging. Nevertheless, founders must maintain the mindset that their relationships are more than transactions. They are investments in long-term assets.

Transactional relationships have their place. They’ll always exist. But client relationships aren’t in the same category. They offer much greater value in the form of lower acquisition costs, greater trust and satisfaction and ongoing business.

Your infrastructure can help you stay focused on treating client relationships as recurring relationships. Start with mindset. Stop tracking key relationships as “opportunities.” Instead, see them as long-term assets. Again, use AI and XRMs to resist the linear sales cycles of CRMs. Store client profiles as entities, not interactions.

Treat relationship intelligence as “soft” infrastructure

Relationship intelligence should be deeply ingrained in your growth strategy. It isn’t a feature or an add-on. As a founder of a tech company, I think of relationship tools as productivity enhancements. They are not.

Use your relationship management tools as part of your operating infrastructure. It is a tool that provides a “soft” element that adds depth to the harder elements of your infrastructure. While you implement scalable systems and standard operating procedures (SOPs), investing in relationship intelligence gives you an intangible edge.

A deeper, up-to-date understanding of your organization’s relationships helps you identify revenue opportunities and enhance client services. Understanding nuanced things like a unique connection between a board member and a client can help you take meaningful and effective steps rather than blind actions.

When communication history, ownership and relationship strength are centralized, it can help you move faster, reduce internal friction and coordinate next steps with fewer people. Those are all aspects of infrastructure that make scaling easier.

Setting a relationship-driven foundation early

Founders must recognize the instrumental role that relationships play if they want to facilitate sustainable growth. I’ve found that doing this requires taking the time to identify where relationships live in your business. Treat these as long-term assets, and exercise relationship intelligence when you engage with them.

If you can do that, you can create a relationship-driven infrastructure that can not just hold up when you scale but become a catalyst for growth.

Over time, I’ve come to realize how important relationships are in every area of business — including some high-stakes areas that aren’t exactly known for their warm or welcoming experiences.

For instance, I remember working with a credit union team and realizing how important it was for them to cultivate relationships with their member communities. The concept applies elsewhere. Recruiters need to earn the trust of candidates. Venture capitalists need strong connections with founders.

Most entrepreneurs can see the important relationships in their business. But they can lose that focus as their company scales. As they obsess over things like product, hiring and distribution, they can lack the same intention in cultivating the relationships that matter.

7 Brew is pouring it on. Brew Crew Holdings, the chain’s largest franchisee, finished 2025 with 130 stores and $273 million in sales, ranking No. 61 among the country’s largest restaurant franchisees, Franchise Times reports. It’s targeting 100 new locations this year alone.

“I think the industry hasn’t been disrupted in a long time, and that’s what’s been happening over the last few years,” said Brew Crew President Connor Wilson. Franchised 7 Brew stores now average $2.65 million in annual sales, up from $1.9 million the year before, fueled by customizable, colorful drinks like Pink Mermaid 7 Fizz and Cereal Milk Matcha served through double drive-thrus. Weekly volumes are “insane,” says operations director Matt Martinkovic.

7 Brew is part of a new breed of drink chain shaking up the category. Along with Dutch Bros and dirty-soda concepts Swig and Fiiz Drinks, it’s pushing traditional coffee chains to rethink their own menus. Iced drinks overtook hot coffee sales at Dunkin’ two years ago, and Starbucks’ refresher platform is now a $2 billion business.

7 Brew is pouring it on. Brew Crew Holdings, the chain’s largest franchisee, finished 2025 with 130 stores and $273 million in sales, ranking No. 61 among the country’s largest restaurant franchisees, Franchise Times reports. It’s targeting 100 new locations this year alone.

“I think the industry hasn’t been disrupted in a long time, and that’s what’s been happening over the last few years,” said Brew Crew President Connor Wilson. Franchised 7 Brew stores now average $2.65 million in annual sales, up from $1.9 million the year before, fueled by customizable, colorful drinks like Pink Mermaid 7 Fizz and Cereal Milk Matcha served through double drive-thrus. Weekly volumes are “insane,” says operations director Matt Martinkovic.

7 Brew is part of a new breed of drink chain shaking up the category. Along with Dutch Bros and dirty-soda concepts Swig and Fiiz Drinks, it’s pushing traditional coffee chains to rethink their own menus. Iced drinks overtook hot coffee sales at Dunkin’ two years ago, and Starbucks’ refresher platform is now a $2 billion business.

I wrote recently about the decisions that define you, the ones you make blind, with partial information and real stakes. That piece was about what happens inside the leader. This one is about what happens around the leader, because while you are wrestling with an uncertain call, your team is watching, waiting and drawing conclusions.

Here is what three decades in wealth management have taught me about those conclusions: your team does not need you to be certain. It needs you to be clear.

Silence is always interpreted as risk

When conditions get murky, the responsible instinct is to slow down. Hit the brakes and be more catious. Commission another analysis. Schedule another round of reviews. Wait for the fog to lift. The intention is diligence. The effect is corrosive, because while leadership waits, teams are left to interpret silence and silence is always interpreted as risk.

People tolerate ambiguity about outcomes far better than they tolerate ambiguity about priorities. A team can accept that the destination might shift. What it cannot accept is not knowing what matters most right now. Every day you spend privately deliberating, your best people are publicly guessing, and guessing is expensive. Work gets duplicated. Initiatives stall halfway. The most anxious voice in the room starts setting the agenda.

Direction is a decision, not a prediction

Leaders often confuse these two things. A prediction says this is what will happen. A direction says this is what we will do, and here is what would make us change course. Predictions invite debate about the future, which nobody in the room controls. Directions invite commitment to the present, which everybody in the room controls.

I hold direction to three tests before I communicate it. Is the logic sound? Is the downside survivable? Does the team know exactly what signal would trigger a change of course? When those three answers are yes, waiting longer adds cost without adding insight. When one of them is no, that is the work, not another week of deliberation.

Give the checkpoint, not the destination

The most practical shift I have made as a leader is defining the next checkpoint rather than the final destination. A ninety-day horizon with explicit review criteria gives people something concrete to execute against. It also gives leadership a dignified mechanism for changing its mind, which is the real prerequisite for decisiveness. People commit faster when they know the plan includes a way to correct it.

This is also where transparency earns its keep. Tell the team what you know, what you are assuming and what you will be watching between now and the checkpoint. Teams do not lose trust when leaders admit uncertainty. They lose trust when leaders pretend it does not exist and are later proven wrong.

One habit makes this durable: restate the priority out loud, every week, in the same words. It will feel repetitive to you long before it feels repetitive to the team. Leaders live inside their own reasoning all day, while the people executing hear only a fraction of it, so what feels like over-communication from your chair usually lands as the first clear signal from theirs. Repetition is not a failure of imagination. It is the delivery mechanism for direction.

Push the decisions down

Here is the test of whether your direction is actually clear: can your frontline people resolve most questions without you? When direction is specific, they can, because they can weigh any choice against the stated priority. When direction is vague, every question travels upward, and the organization becomes a bottleneck shaped exactly like its own leadership.

I have found that pushing decision rights down does more for speed than any process improvement, and it does something better than speed. It teaches people how to think about tradeoffs instead of waiting to be told, which is the difference between a team that executes and a team that merely complies.

Clarity compounds

There is a compounding effect here that never shows up in a spreadsheet. A team that receives clear direction this quarter moves faster next quarter, because it has learned that leadership will decide, communicate and adjust in the open. Hesitation compounds the same way in reverse. Every stalled decision teaches the organization to wait, and waiting quietly becomes the culture.

None of this is an argument for recklessness. Direction without judgment is just noise with confidence behind it. The point is narrower: stop treating certainty as the precondition for movement. The preconditions are a clearly stated priority, a survivable downside and a visible plan for revision.

Markets will keep withholding certainty. That is not a flaw in the environment. It is the environment. Your job is not to predict the fog away. It is to hand your team a compass, name the first landmark and start walking.

I wrote recently about the decisions that define you, the ones you make blind, with partial information and real stakes. That piece was about what happens inside the leader. This one is about what happens around the leader, because while you are wrestling with an uncertain call, your team is watching, waiting and drawing conclusions.

Here is what three decades in wealth management have taught me about those conclusions: your team does not need you to be certain. It needs you to be clear.

Silence is always interpreted as risk

When conditions get murky, the responsible instinct is to slow down. Hit the brakes and be more catious. Commission another analysis. Schedule another round of reviews. Wait for the fog to lift. The intention is diligence. The effect is corrosive, because while leadership waits, teams are left to interpret silence and silence is always interpreted as risk.

In a time when companies are touting ways they have used AI to streamline operations, one restaurant chain stands out. Instead of trying to apply AI, this chain has gone back to the basics and fixed its foundations to become more efficient — and its latest quarterly report shows that the effort is paying off. 

According to Chris Caldwell, chief information officer of Chili’s-owner Brinker International, Chili’s is “not all in” on AI. Caldwell, who has been in the restaurant tech industry for nearly 30 years, recently told The Wall Street Journal that he has instead used his budget over the past two years to fix cracks in Chili’s foundation and strengthen its basic technology.

The initiatives include stronger Wi-Fi access, better payment systems and new devices for staff so they can provide better service to customers. 

Cutting back on robots

Simultaneously, Caldwell has pulled the plug on what he calls flashy but ultimately pointless initiatives, like robot servers. He has also decided to cut back on generative AI applications. Every technology initiative now has to serve the bigger purpose of enhancing food service and atmosphere, he said. 

“If a robot’s getting in the way and not helping us deliver a great guest experience, we’re going to get rid of them,” he added.

The technology initiative is part of a broader turnaround effort for Chili’s. Sara Senatore, a senior restaurants analyst at Bank of America, told the Journal that the plan has been successful: The company’s stock has risen more than 500% since June 2022. “The Chili’s turnaround has been nothing short of remarkable,” Senatore said.

According to Brinker International’s latest financial results for the third quarter ending March 25, Chili’s restaurant sales increased 4% when compared to the same period last year. Company sales overall were $1.46 billion, up from $1.41 billion the previous year. 

Caldwell decided to invest in the basics

Caldwell told the Journal that when he first arrived at Chili’s in February 2024, it was evident that the chain had neglected the basics. Poor Wi-Fi, outdated services and confusing ordering software were slowing staff down and hurting service quality. 

His priority was fixing the network. Over two years, the company upgraded Wi-Fi in 1,200 locations, renegotiated its Comcast contract, added cellular backup and installed new lines in sites of weakened connectivity. 

Caldwell did not disclose how much the project cost, but said that the effort wrapped up earlier this year. 

He added that better Wi-Fi set the stage for other tech upgrades in restaurants. 

In one early move, he bought 1,200 new laptops — one for each store manager. Before that, managers had to rely on the same desktop systems overloaded with running back-office operations. 

He also bought 23,000 new iPads that staff could use in place of old tablets to take orders. Up until that point, the tablets they used lacked quality battery life and weren’t functional for an entire shift. 

Caldwell said that his investments have contributed to 20 consecutive quarters of same-store sales growth. 

In a time when companies are touting ways they have used AI to streamline operations, one restaurant chain stands out. Instead of trying to apply AI, this chain has gone back to the basics and fixed its foundations to become more efficient — and its latest quarterly report shows that the effort is paying off. 

According to Chris Caldwell, chief information officer of Chili’s-owner Brinker International, Chili’s is “not all in” on AI. Caldwell, who has been in the restaurant tech industry for nearly 30 years, recently told The Wall Street Journal that he has instead used his budget over the past two years to fix cracks in Chili’s foundation and strengthen its basic technology.

The initiatives include stronger Wi-Fi access, better payment systems and new devices for staff so they can provide better service to customers. 

If you are building a personal brand and are not actively learning how to use AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT, you are leaving real results — and real revenue — on the table.

That might sound blunt, but the market is blunt right now. Increased visibility does not cut it anymore. You have to produce more content, articulate resonant ideas, build stronger positioning and stand out in ways that actually mean something. And it is less about volume than it is about precision.

At my company, D2 Branding, we work with speakers, founders, authors and podcast hosts whose ideas are their business. Their brands encompass a lot: social media, yes, but more broadly, reputation, intellectual property and market influence. Getting AI right has completely changed how we help them scale — but we did not get it right the first time.

How we got it wrong at first

Here is the honest part. Like many businesses, we first approached AI as if it were a productivity shortcut, using it to quickly spit out captions, blogs and emails. Efficient on the surface, sure. But we hit a wall pretty fast when we realized that premium personal brands need sharper thinking, not more content.

Established founders, speakers and industry leaders are not valuable because they post constantly and show up at the top of your Instagram feed. They are valuable because they can communicate clearly what others cannot, with more conviction and more precision.

Once that clicked, our approach changed. Instead of prompting AI with vague tasks like “write a post about leadership,” we started using it to challenge and deepen perspectives. We asked harder questions: Where is this founder’s philosophy being misunderstood? Which parts of their expertise are flying under the radar? What would make this message land harder?

That shift turned AI from a content-producing machine into a genuine thought partner. Now, we use it to hone keynote messaging, test frameworks and shape content that actually resonates.

Stop starting from zero

The second thing we got wrong was not building any real intelligence around the brands themselves. Every time we opened Claude or ChatGPT, we started from scratch — re-explaining the founder’s backstory, positioning, target audience, offers and tone of voice every single time. That approach was inefficient, and worse, it held us back from reaching real strategic depth. When a brand is built on ideas and voice, you cannot operate that way.

So we changed how we work. For every premium personal brand client we take on, we now build a structured ecosystem inside platforms like Claude Projects. Before a single prompt is typed, the system already knows the brand’s foundation — origin story, core philosophies, audience and positioning.

That adjustment turned AI into infrastructure. When a brand has a centralized intelligence system behind it, it can actually scale. Speakers sound aligned whether they are on stage, on a podcast or in copy on their website. Authors expand across channels without becoming scattered. The brand grows without losing what made it take off in the first place.

Take advantage of real data

Our third mistake, and possibly the biggest, was underestimating the power of real-world data. Most businesses are still guessing what their audience wants. They open an AI platform, type in a prompt and hope the response lands with their target audience. Premium brands should take the guesswork out of the equation altogether.

The move that changed our work the most was starting to feed AI actual data. We uploaded podcast transcripts, sales conversations, event recordings, customer questions, comments, DMs and Google reviews. Then we asked AI to show us patterns we might be missing. What emotional triggers keep surfacing? Where are people stuck but struggling to articulate why? Which ideas are resonating but need to be more fully developed?

The answers to those questions build stronger brands. When you use AI to identify the exact language, pain points and desires your audience has already been expressing, your messaging becomes far more effective. You are building an evidence-based strategy that makes people feel genuinely understood.

The AI advantage

This is where AI becomes one of the most valuable tools a personal brand can use. It can take human insight and sharpen it, help create messaging that converts into high-ticket offers, uncover themes that become books or keynote addresses and translate years of lived experience into scalable intellectual property.

We have shifted away from using AI to mindlessly pump out more content. Instead, we use these platforms to clarify thinking and strengthen positioning in crowded markets. AI helps us turn expertise into premium assets.

Do not make the mistake of thinking you just need more content to succeed. You do not. You need more precision, more data and more depth. AI alone will not build your personal brand — but used strategically, it can help you package years of expertise faster, communicate it more clearly and scale it further than you could on your own. In today’s market, that is a real advantage.

If you are building a personal brand and are not actively learning how to use AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT, you are leaving real results — and real revenue — on the table.

That might sound blunt, but the market is blunt right now. Increased visibility does not cut it anymore. You have to produce more content, articulate resonant ideas, build stronger positioning and stand out in ways that actually mean something. And it is less about volume than it is about precision.

At my company, D2 Branding, we work with speakers, founders, authors and podcast hosts whose ideas are their business. Their brands encompass a lot: social media, yes, but more broadly, reputation, intellectual property and market influence. Getting AI right has completely changed how we help them scale — but we did not get it right the first time.

To start your solo agency, you need a clear ideal client profile (ICP) and a transformative ideal client journey (ICJ). These two, when combined, define your agency’s niche. But knowing your niche is not enough. To sustain your agency, you need to have real paying customers. And as with all good things that last, your success all starts with your first.

If you’ve defined a valuable niche, attracting your first client will not be a result of market buoyancy. It will be a direct result of who you know and who knows you. That is to say, your first client will almost always come from your existing network.

In fact, I’m willing to bet that if you don’t already know your first client (perhaps even your first few clients), your prospects for long-term success as an independent expert are grim. You’re not yet ready.

So, before you even start thinking about quitting your full-time job to build the next big agency, make sure you have at least 20 individuals in your niche who you can ask for feedback. Notice that I say, “ask for feedback” and not “pitch to.” That distinction is important, and I’ll come back to it shortly.

Learn from my mistake

Before we dive into what you should do to find your first client, I want to share a mistake I made that almost cost me my agency before it even started. This is an important lesson that you can learn from.

I had spent the year between 2019 and 2020 deep in thought about how I believed I could enter the Salesforce CRM ecosystem as an independent advisor. I was confident in my strategies and had defined a clear client journey. In the fall of 2020, I officially founded my agency, MVRK.

In early 2021, my first potential client reached out through a referral. At the time, I still had a full-time job. After a couple of fantastic conversations that included most of the company’s senior leadership team, they asked me for a quote.

I eagerly prepared it and sent it off. After some back and forth, we reached a verbal agreement to start at the beginning of the following month. Full of eagerness following that verbal agreement, I handed in my three weeks’ notice with my employer.

Can you guess what happened next? That’s right. My potential client ghosted me! There was no signed paperwork. No deposit was paid. I made an amateurish decision that left me with nothing.

The lesson is simple: You don’t have a client until they’ve paid you.

Instead of pitching, ask for feedback

For most people, that would have been the end of the journey before it even started. But for me, it turned out to be a stumble before a fantastic sprint. That sprint has turned into a marathon that I’m still running. Today, I have a small team and over a dozen fantastic clients.

But that journey had to start with a first. So, how did I go about finding my first paying client after being ghosted? I did what all great entrepreneurs do. I turned my focus towards getting feedback on my strategy from people I trusted.

Instead of becoming desperate and begging my former boss to take me back, I asked former clients and business acquaintances for 20 minutes of their time. When I met with them, I did not try to pitch myself to them or position some form of partnership. Instead, I asked for their feedback on my designed client journey.

The question that worked the best for getting that feedback, especially from former clients, was this: “If you’d had the option to choose what I’m offering now when you originally made the decision to work with my team, how would that have influenced your thinking?” Feel free to use it yourself!

No matter what questions you ask, there are two signals that you need to tune into:

1. What resonates with your audience. The elements they respond to positively are the things you will use as the keystones of your pitch.
2. What your audience is confused about. Anything that does not make sense to the person you ask for feedback needs to be refined immediately.

These feedback conversations will be the most important time investment you make at the start of your solo journey. And unlike me, you should have those conversations before you quit your job!

Start to strengthen your network today

So, how did these conversations turn into my first client? It’s quite simple. A CFO I met with from a former client told his VP of Sales about my consulting firm. That VP reached out, asking for my help. After a conversation about what I offered, they signed a contract, paid the deposit, and we got to work.

They are still my client to this day, over five years later! You will almost certainly find your first client or clients in a similar way.

This is why I recommend that before you start working solo, you should be in a position where you can ask as many relevant people as possible for feedback; 20 is the minimum, closer to 50 is more ideal. If you are saying to yourself, “I don’t think I have 20 people I can ask for feedback,” then you’re not yet ready. Instead of rushing in, work hard to strengthen your network.

Even if it means you need to work for someone else for longer, it is worth the wait because the strength of your network will have a proportional impact on your early agency success.

To start your solo agency, you need a clear ideal client profile (ICP) and a transformative ideal client journey (ICJ). These two, when combined, define your agency’s niche. But knowing your niche is not enough. To sustain your agency, you need to have real paying customers. And as with all good things that last, your success all starts with your first.

If you’ve defined a valuable niche, attracting your first client will not be a result of market buoyancy. It will be a direct result of who you know and who knows you. That is to say, your first client will almost always come from your existing network.

In fact, I’m willing to bet that if you don’t already know your first client (perhaps even your first few clients), your prospects for long-term success as an independent expert are grim. You’re not yet ready.

Visa is slashing about 2,600 jobs, roughly 7% of its workforce. The layoffs will mainly hit technology and product teams, Bloomberg reports. CEO Ryan McInerney wrote to his staff that AI is “helping to accelerate this evolution and shape the way work gets done at Visa.”

But AI isn’t the whole story. According to a person familiar with the company’s reasoning, the cuts are also about freeing up money to reinvest in newer bets such as stablecoins, cross-border payments and business-to-business services.

Visa had about 34,100 employees at the end of its last fiscal year, more than triple what it had a decade earlier. “I have deep conviction that we are doing what is right for Visa, our clients and our partners,” McInerney wrote. Visa isn’t the only fintech company trimming staff. PayPal recently announced plans to cut 20% of its workforce, and Block has made similar moves in recent months.

Visa is slashing about 2,600 jobs, roughly 7% of its workforce. The layoffs will mainly hit technology and product teams, Bloomberg reports. CEO Ryan McInerney wrote to his staff that AI is “helping to accelerate this evolution and shape the way work gets done at Visa.”

But AI isn’t the whole story. According to a person familiar with the company’s reasoning, the cuts are also about freeing up money to reinvest in newer bets such as stablecoins, cross-border payments and business-to-business services.

Visa had about 34,100 employees at the end of its last fiscal year, more than triple what it had a decade earlier. “I have deep conviction that we are doing what is right for Visa, our clients and our partners,” McInerney wrote. Visa isn’t the only fintech company trimming staff. PayPal recently announced plans to cut 20% of its workforce, and Block has made similar moves in recent months.