The One About my Agency

Mate,

Second weekly update!

I survived the first one.

This week was mostly about one big decision…

My agency SELF is back (and I’m excited about it)!

I wrote about it in Why I’m Building a One-Person, Billion-Dollar Agency, which went out on Sunday. The short version: I think one person with good judgment, directing a few dozen AI agents, can do the work clients currently pay big agencies millions for. Clients aren’t really paying those agencies for ideas. They’re paying for coordination, and AI is very good at coordination. So I do the thinking (narrative, messaging, positioning, editing) and the agents do the production. Yes, the billion is a made-up number, but that’s sort of the point.

If you’re looking for a growth, content or storytelling partner, I’d love to line up a conversation. You can reply here, or check out the SELF site!

Until now, I’ve been treating SELF as the thing I’d fall back on if everything went to hell. Which, written down, is a pretty stupid way to treat the best thing I’ve ever built. People like working with me. They like how I think.

So I’m going to take it seriously.

Here’s what that looks like so far:

• A new site. thisisstudioself.com is better positioned with SELF as an AI-native marketing agency: “The agency model, rebuilt for the AI era.” The idea underneath it is simple: AI made average content free, so what’s left worth paying for is judgment and taste.
• Outcomes, not hours. Old agencies bill for hours, and once AI collapses the time the work takes, billing by the hour only rewards being slow. So I don’t.
• A rule I’m very committed to keeping. No meeting that a written update could replace. (You knew that one was coming!)

The referral program

This is the bit I’d love your help with. If you know a company that needs this kind of help, you can introduce them to SELF and earn 20% of their first three months.

It works like this. You make the introduction, either by emailing me the company and who to talk to, or by introducing us directly. I take it from there and run the conversation and the proposal. When they sign a retainer, you get 20% of each retainer fee for the first three months, up to $3,000 a month. Retainers run from $5,000 to $15,000 a month, so each client you introduce earns you $1,000 to $3,000 a month. It’s a fairly unheard of model for agencies, but it’s been relatively successful so far!

All the details are at thisisstudioself.com/referrals, or just email hello@thisisstudioself.com.

I’ll keep reporting back on how this goes, mistakes included.

Note: there will be mistakes.

What I’m thinking about

• Being vs doing. I spent most of this year trying to be someone instead of trying to do things. Every few weeks I’d have a new identity crisis about what my work meant, what my tools said about me, whether I was the right kind of person to run an agency... and meanwhile the actual work sat there waiting for me. This week’s thinking was really just me noticing that none of those questions were getting me anywhere. This week, I stayed out of the tech bubble, didn’t think about tools or identity once, and just built. It was the calmest I’ve felt in months. A win! A palpable win…
• Fear that turns into a plan. On Saturday night I read about Eric Elliott, a developer who was earning around $500k a year three years ago and is now living in his car. ChatGPT gutted his blog traffic, Adobe let him go, and he was evicted this summer. It scared me more than I expected, because I could see bits of myself in it. But I have my writing, my audience, my network and a team of agents that keeps my costs low. And I’ve caught my own wobble early. Fear is useless on its own; fear that turns into a plan is pretty handy.
• Am I delusional? Can a solo agency survive AI? I don’t think I’m kidding myself. AI is eating the volume work: posts, calendars, basic ads. It isn’t eating judgment, taste, a point of view, or a founder who trusts you enough to argue with you. That’s what I sell. Or, more honestly, it’s what I should have been selling.

How I’m doing

• Obviously, heartbroken about Sir Patrick Stewart. An absolute giant of a man, and a wonderful one at that. I think we’re all a little poorer this week…
• Last Tuesday was rough. I had a full-on bout of “nothing I’m doing is going to work and it’s all already over” (very healthy, very normal, 10/10 would not recommend). The only thing that got me through it was ignoring the fear and doing whatever was on my list, even when it felt pointless. As it turns out, that’s still the whole trick.
• Then Wednesday happened, I made the SELF decision, and it feels as though something has lifted. Every day since, when the doubt creeps in, I lean on the new direction and it calms me down. I have a sense of movement and I have a compass.
• I’ve been trying to let go of a few things this week: my ego, my identity issues, and a lot of grand ideas about how to give my life more purpose and meaning. Some of that will stick and some of it won’t. We’ll see.
• Halloween was the highlight of the week, for sure. Handing out candy to all the kids in the neighbourhood is genuinely one of my favourite things to do, and I was, for once, calm and present all day. Sunday was a leftovers-and-TV kind of day, which I needed. I did spend too much of it scrolling though... whoops.

What I’m saving

A quiet week for saving, which says something about where my head was. Here’s something I did keep:

• Jake Lundahl on his grandfather’s rations. His grandfather, who saw combat in WWII, wrote about soldiers being found dead with chocolate bars and bread still in their pockets. So he ate every ration as soon as he got it and saved nothing. I can’t stop thinking about it as a rule for how to spend your energy, your ideas, your best work... use it now.

What I’m reading

I’m going back to Tony Robbins, specifically Unlimited Power. The highlight I’ve found most useful is “Think in terms of possibilities.” My note next to it says, “Everything happens for a reason. This is something I have been less good at remembering lately.” That’s about right.

I keep talking publicly about optimism, but I realised I wasn’t actually living by it.

That has to change.

I’ve also started reading Masters of Doom. Incredible book about two of my heroes when I was a kid, John Carmack and John Romero, the creators of Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, etc. I’d recommend this over almost any airport “business guru” book.

What I’m working on

• SELF. Everything above, a better blog on the SELF site, a new marketing funnel, and a lot of follow-ups with people I’d let go cold.
• A History of Quantum Computing and A History of Optimism. New SELF projects: a series of sites telling the history of quantum computing, tech, optimism, AI etc. Call them storytelling experiments, call them narrative demos, call them a contribution to optimism itself. I’ve launched the first two, a History of Quantum and a History of Optimism, and I have plans for a few more.
• SeditionDAW. Every account now gets one free export before the Pro paywall kicks in, and I’ve written up a launch plan for Show HN, Product Hunt, X and Reddit. The plan is to grow it into a proper side-hustle.
• Heretics for Hire. I re-wrote the outline and pitch this week. Slow progress, but progress.
• Permissionless. The book’s site has a new landing page and its own store, and I want to start pushing it as part of what SELF does. I’ll launch it this week. The idea is: instead of selling a static version of the book, the site compiles an up-to-the-moment version based on any edits I’ve made and generates an ePub, Mobi and PDF with a personal inscription for each buyer. A few tweaks still outstanding, but…it’s good.
• Kerouac and Post Through It. I’ve given both apps six months to become profitable. If they don’t, I’ll shut them down.

Last week’s essays

Thanks for reading. If one of these essays was useful, forward it to a friend!

JA