Jonathan Courtney
CEO & Co-Founder, AJ&Smart. On 1 show, 21 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutivehostauthor@Jicecream ↗LinkedIn ↗ajsmart.com ↗
Jonathan Courtney is the co-founder and CEO of product design studio AJ&Smart and its training platform Facilitator.com. He is the author of The Workshopper Playbook and hosts The Unscheduled CEO podcast.
1shows
21appearances
171statements
11resolved
8supported
3contradicted
73%fully supported
3said about them ↓ Everything Jonathan Courtney said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Courtney: OpenAI o3 Recreated a $35K, 3-Month Whitepaper in 10 Minutes
“We spent. 35,000 dollars to get a white paper created three years ago, which we used in a lot of marketing. Basically we wanted this company to go and research all of these things that were happening in businesses so that we could have all of these crazy quote…”
Courtney: AJ&Smart’s ugliest funnels generate seven figures; polished ones make nothing
“So the like shittiest looking funnels we have tend to be the seven figure funnels and the nicest looking stuff we have tend to not make any money at all, which is very annoying because we're like also a design agency.”
Courtney: Meta ads are only dead for audiences under 35
“Meta ads are only dead for people under 35. So meta ads work really, really well for us better than anything else for over people over 40.”
Courtney: Burnt-out teachers pay $38,000 annually for career transition coaching
“Teachers pay 38,000 dollars, usually spread out over the 12 months.”
Courtney makes €500k from a 1,000-viewer weekly live stream without ads
“I mean, I can just tell you too, like, so I have only one to two, one to 2000 people tuning into me every Tuesday, and that business alone can make four to 500,000 euro with no ads, with nothing else other than me selling like in-person events or like even mer…”
Courtney: Creative workers hate AI for creativity but welcome menial automation
“Everyone in my world hates AI for creative work. It's like everyone's against it, but
Is very positive on AI for sort of menial, annoying tasks.”
Courtney: A founder's primary job is business promotion, not building
“Your job is to promote your business. Of course you want to build all the cool stuff. Of course you want to make the thing, but your actual key job, and then you build around yourself and build things that support that your key job is getting out there and pro…”
Courtney: Detailed AI prompts require speaking them aloud
“Prompts of this detail Are only really possible if you're able to verbally play with them and just talk them out.”
Courtney: Founders should use AI to scale output rather than downsize teams
“I don't think being efficient right now is the play. I think the play is scaling up like crazy. So like for me, I don't think the play is, oh, all of these processes can now be done by AI. So I'm just going to just do everything myself. I think the play is if …”
Courtney: Doing the exact opposite of AI trends is a massive opportunity
“I think that there's a massive opportunity or lots of massive opportunities to take a look at what's happening in the AI space, the social media space, the content space, just go the opposite way. And you're going to find that a lot of people want exactly that…”
Courtney calls industry conferences a money sink compared to boutique events
“I think conferences are generally like a money sink. Like I please do not think I'm talking about conferences. I'm really not. Conferences are like a completely separate thing”
Courtney: 1,000 podcast listeners can fill two high-ticket annual retreats
“I only have like 1000 people or 1000 to 2000 people listening to my podcast. And all my podcast is the only audience for the people coming to my other in-person events. And still I can fill, you know, one to two, 35 people events per year and add a high ticket…”
Courtney: Physical curation gains massive value as ChatGPT commoditizes digital knowledge
“And also, especially now that you can essentially generate all of that stuff on ChatGPT and knowledge is becoming less and less valuable. The ability to have something curated for you physically, in my opinion, is becoming more and more valuable.”
Courtney: Hormozi's aggressive direct response copy damages non-direct-response brands
“I think it's a really excellent version of direct response marketing copywriting, but it would be terrible for any business who doesn't want to be seen as a direct response copy marketing agency.”
Courtney: Ramping email send frequency is the simplest revenue lever
“Sometimes just ramping up the emails is the simplest way to increase revenue. Like if your Black Friday campaign usually makes like 400 K and you're sending three emails, You might literally make 600 K by sending six emails.”
Courtney: Hormozi spent $450,000 daily leading up to launch
“He was sending, he was spending, he said he spent like 450 thousand dollars per day on marketing in general in the lead up to the event.”
Courtney: Copy-heavy landing pages convert better than slick short pages
“Over the last 14 years, we've also done a lot of testing. And pages with crap tons of copy tend to do better than our slick short pages.”
Courtney: Upsells turn $6.99 book into $68.85 average cart value
“How is it that our six 99 book has an average cart value of 68 dollars, 85 cent? Well, it's because there's upsells in the process of going to buy the book.”
Courtney: Effective webinar funnels require 6 to 8 emails before and after
“So we have like for a normal webinar live webinar, you know, we could have up to six to eight emails before the webinar starts and six to eight emails after the webinar starts.”
Courtney: A webinar is merely an excuse to send email sequences
“It's like the webinar is just the excuse to send the emails.”
Courtney: AI adoption is about empowering existing staff, not downsizing
“It's not about downsizing. It's about like dramatically maxing out The people who are there already with these tools.”
Courtney: AI implementation agencies will see diminishing returns after two years
“It's going to be really profitable for about two years, and then it will be like diminishing returns, and then maybe you just don't, you move on to something else.”
Courtney: Bootstrapped businesses must build audience before product
“For a bootstrap business, starting with the audience just is the most Like you just, that, that's what you have to do. It doesn't make sense to do it the other way around.”
The other half of the tape: Jonathan Courtney's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode across the shows. 2 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Greg Isenberg 1
Statements about Jonathan Courtney, by other people (2)
Isenberg: Founders must master AI tasks personally before delegating to teams
“You shouldn't tell your team to do anything until you understand it. So, The thing that you should do is Map out all the boring, repetitive tasks that people do in your business from, by each function, and then try to do those tasks yourself.”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
the Startup Ideas Podcast 1
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Jonathan's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| STARTUP IDEASLEDGER | CEO & Co-Founder, AJ&Smart | 21 | 171 | 73% 8/11 | full record on the Startup Ideas Podcast → |