The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 171 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
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.”
Courtney: Content creators should not prioritize originality when starting
“And so with your content, originality is not the goal in the beginning. You're going to accidentally become original by just being yourself and having your own life experiences.”
Courtney: Sustained content creation is an overpowered, unbeatable business skill
“And I think that's also why people who make a lot of content are actually usually the most successful people. Like it's just, It's impossible to compete with it. If it was like a video game or a board game, it's like the overpowered skill is the ability to kee…”
Courtney: A Great Black Friday Sale Can Salvage an Entire Year
“If you can do a great Black Friday sale, you can literally fuck up everything for the rest of the year and still have a great year.”
Courtney: Websites function as 'shadow funnels' for legitimacy, not conversion
“So website is a shadow funnel. It's almost just there to prove that you're actually a real company. And sometimes it's almost just there. So you yourself can figure out what you do and just have like a home for your stuff”
Courtney: Standard websites fail to convert sales without exceptional SEO or ads
“Unless you have unbelievably good SEO and you're spending, you know, good money and have good talent to get the Google ads to go towards your website, unless you have a lot of brand recognition, your website is not going to sell things for you necessarily.”
Courtney: Polished website designers are generally terrible at building sales funnels
“People who make really nice websites are generally not good at making funnels at all because funnels require really good copywriting and mostly it's about conversion optimization for that specific flow.”
Courtney: High-ticket offers fail when sold directly through standard website listings
“If that was how we sold, if that's how we expected to sell out three events per year at 14,000 dollars this, my business would not exist because no one would ever buy it because it's too high ticket. And also like, why, why would you buy it? It's just on the w…”
Courtney: One unpolished AJ&Smart sales funnel generated $20M in lifetime revenue
“So this launched in 2020, this one funnel, which I can barely look at, Will has already passed twenty million revenue in it, but in its lifetime, just to be super clear. So in the last four years, actually it started officially in May. So in the last three and…”
Courtney: Nothing in marketing is more effective than physical books
“Nothing is more effective, nothing like in marketing than holding a goddamn book in your hand.”
Courtney: Seven-Figure Business Value Does Not Come From Answering Slack
“Whereas real work that makes real money and makes seven figure differences, that doesn't come from just responding to shit on Slack from my perspective.”
Courtney: Ad Market Split Between Overpriced Agencies and Flashy 25-Year-Olds
“The problem is that the market for people who offer paid ad services are either agencies, which are too expensive and like too big and just confusing, or douchey guys who are like 25 wearing a gold Rolex and look kind of intimidating.”
Courtney: Copying Silicon Valley's Anti-Ad Status Games Hurts Small Businesses
“We take a lot of the Silicon Valley status symbols and try to apply these status symbols to small businesses. I think this is what Jason Fried is good at kind of cutting out and getting through the bullshit. A lot of these status symbols, like not running ads,…”
Founders with under $20M revenue should avoid devil's advocates
“You mostly don't want to be surrounded by people who are questioning everything and being the devil devil's advocates and telling you all the ways things can go wrong when your business is just starting out and you're still under twenty million. You want to be…”
Courtney: Human scriptwriters will hold major advantage in faceless YouTube
“So I think writers are going to have a killer advantage here. The people who don't have to use AI to create, to generate the scripts.”
Courtney: Detailed productivity systems are not for real business people
“Productivity stuff is just like, not for real business people.”
Courtney: Cities are paid utilities providing access to energy and networks
“If you're still on your journey, I do think cities are, they're not just a place to go have fun. They are a utility that you pay for. Like, there's a reason also people are like, oh, if you live in Berlin, you pay this much for an apartment. But if I, if you j…”
Courtney: Building an early career remotely is playing on 'hard mode'
“It is Of course possible to build a career remotely and not in a city. It's just the challenge. It is kind of like playing on hard mode versus easy mode. You get the, it's like in a video game, you're putting the attributes into comfort. You're putting all you…”
Courtney: Creating a millennial retro gaming media brand is a million-dollar opportunity
“So if you can become the content creator for the new millennial retro, you're going to make yourself a millionaire.”
Courtney: Huge market opportunity for non-creepy male sex toys
“I genuinely think there's an entire market out there for sex toys. I don't know what pleasure self-pleasure devices for men that is like as big a thing as it is for women, but just not creepy and not weird”
Courtney: Russell Brunson's Atlas is the best mastermind for info products
“It's Russell Brunson's top level mastermind called Atlas. Only 15 people are in it. I don't think there's a better, again, we're talking about the info product space. We're talking about marketing. We're talking about direct response marketing and copywriting.”
Courtney: AI sanitization will drive audiences toward unscripted, live content
“So that's something that I think from your list is going to be Bigger and bigger and bigger as AI sanitizes a lot of stuff. I think more people are going to want, want to listen to more authentic people speaking long form, unedited, unscripted, and live.”
Adult hobby businesses face low competition because founders find the space boring
“Again, there's not a lot of competition because not a lot of people even want to do this. Like it's kind of seen as like a boring thing. And that's why there's not a lot of competition.”
Founders can find health startup verticals by checking CVS shelf space
“I think that's the hint of how you find your verticals go into a CVS. What is the over the counter stuff that you're seeing the most of? Well, that's probably the problems people are having.”
Courtney: 5,000 newsletter signups yield 200 webinar attendees and 12 buyers
“Our biggest holding pattern is our email newsletter. And when I see that an extra 5000 people have joined the newsletter, I can mentally say that means another 200 people will turn up to the next webinar. And that means another 12 people will buy something.”