Success in 2025
What you need to know so you are not left behind.
If you’ve met me you’ll know me as somebody that doesn’t shy away from work. I see all these ads all the time that promise the next big thing for little to no work, and I shy away from that because I find pleasure and fulfillment IN the work itself…
This philosophy has allowed me to push through the inevitable fires that self-employment and running a business or freelancing comes with. It allows me to look to MYSELF instead of others for answers and the right solutions. It trains my mind to have good JUDGEMENT and know what separates excellence from mediocrity.
With AI, we are getting a lot of mediocrity. We are getting a level playing field. The ivory towers that many have built BEFORE AI have gotten completely obliterated. Wealth is created and destroyed and transferred much quicker these days. We got SPEED.
The possibility of taking an idea and bringing it to market for next to nothing to acquire proof of concept that it works is infinitely easier. Yet, many are not willing to take their ideas from planning to testing. Many are unwilling to go beyond a “loose” plan in their minds as to how they’ll get to where they want to achieve…
Everybody wants a process, and my first step to setting out to do anything is to come up with a process. A sequence of steps that can help me get there. But, even then I make sure there IS room for the unknown. I don’t like templates very much because I enjoy the work that goes into employing my creative faculties and shipping creative work.
It’ why, while there is a time and place to hire, outsource, and leverage AI… it will never replace for example me writing to you and hand-typing every word. Why rob myself of the joy that I get from it? The ability to connect ideas and bring something that not only ensures clarity in my own thinking through the process of writing but improves my ability of CONVEYING these ideas to others in a way that is simple and easy to understand…
Don’t get me wrong. I love learning. In fact, I love it so much to the point where it may be considered a vice. Sometimes, I’m so engulfed by learning more that I never take action or implement.
All Learning must have a specific-end goal in mind.
Without APPLYING what you learn is as useless as knowing how to read but never reading. Without using the tools and skills you have been given, you inevitably waste your many talents.
School taught us to memorize and ‘be tested’ on what we know which I find highly inefficient. It’s like knowing how to spell a word in Arabic but having no idea how to use it in a sentence or apply it… Pointless.
If you truly want to learn anything, make sure you are using it and applying it to the point where you never have to look back at your learning material because it’s a part of you that doesn’t need to be recalled because you use it so much, and so often that the process becomes automatic.
I also find joy and excitement in building and execution. Taking things as quickly as possible from the PLANNING stage to the applying stage.
I know some people even now, that have been talking about “that business” for the past 3 years. And business, makes it relatively simple to know whether you are making the right or wrong decisions: money.
Are you getting paid? If not, you don’t have a business. You have an ideal.
I value bringing ideas to market as quickly as possible and testing as cheaply as possible. As little as $5 even. I distinctly recall having clients that had budgets of tens of thousands of dollars to test with and my answer was “why don’t we start with $5”.
I am not in the habit of losing money. ESPECIALLY money that is not my own. I see every dollar as an investment. And, I want my money to be put in environments where it can multiply. I create digital marketing ecosystems that make it reasonable and feasible for money to multiply. I give money a home where it can thrive and reproduce.
“Be Fruitful and Multiply”
-Genesis 1:28
Another potential mistake I’ve made often is switching too soon before getting a large enough sample size to KNOW whether something is working or not. I’ve seen this mistake often too. Someone is excited about starting something new, maybe starting a newsletter like me and they are quickly discouraged by the lack of results or growth.
To tell you the truth, it’s been >100 days since I’ve wrote daily and I’ve probably made $200 from this newsletter. My clients are still primarily coming from cold outreach and referrals.
But, I know this habit of writing daily has leverage and compounds. Give it 10 years and it’s IMPOSSIBLE for it to fail. Because, as I’m writing I’m learning more and more about what you want to hear and read more about.
Best of all, this daily email newsletter has an added benefit of being a vehicle for me to apply what I know. It’s helping me learn. Recently, I’ve gotten into storytelling. Its my “next big skill” I intend to add to my toolbox. And, what better (free) way for me to learn it than this newsletter and YOUR feedback!
People take courses and want to learn the next big thing that will change their life all the time. They move from idea to idea, burning cash and never achieving true mastery in anything. Eventually, they give up and call it quits.
Whereas the way I conduct business is vastly different, I’m always finding new areas of being uncomfortable. usually its the thing that I’m DREADING doing but I know must be done…
For example, I follow an awesome email marketer “John Bejakovic” who asked me to make a presentation/course for cold emailing. He said that later on he might be willing to promote this offer to his own highly-engaged newsletter and split profits with me. Thing is, the idea of presenting my ideas in a zoom call makes me nervous! I’m genuinely dreading it, and have the irrational fear of being laughed off stage. Which I know is completely unfeasible but a fear none-the-less.
Still, it’s a huge opportunity for me to equip myself with NEW skills and make some money too! Money has become the by-product of me making the right decisions that ultimately lead to my personal growth and acquisition of new skills/tools in my toolbox.
One thing people don’t speak much about in business is accountability. You are on your own. Only you can be responsible for how much or how little money you make. Only you can be responsible for right or wrong decisions. Major wins and major failures…
We all have a need as humans to outsource accountability/responsibility. Even my career in advertising is not so different. The owners I work with can point at me and say “I made the right decision therefore I’m a genius” or say “it’s all your fault Shakoor” (which never happens due to my dedication to getting results or not asking for a penny)…
Either way, it’s why we have lawyers, accountants, doctors, etc. … someone to blame when things go wrong; and OURSELVES to embellish when things go right for having the good judgement of picking that person…
think of ways you can INCREASE accountability and money will ultimately flow towards you…
Another thing I notice in some people is an ultimate disconnect between the actions they’re taking and the goal they have…
I know one person whose been documenting his fitness journey online. Although I spoke to him many times to have an END goal for it and think of ways to monetize it… which he ultimately took to heart and began clothing and collabs with other brands; he soon gave up and started something else…
“making content for others”
So then, I asked him: “what are you doing to get clients?”
His response:
Watching Mr.Beast videos to see how to make good content
Making skits (like ads) to get clients
I told him, there is a disconnect. There is no money in what he is doing. That he’s taking the wrong steps because NONE of these are…
Connected in a step-by-step chain/process that results in the end goal (i.e. CLIENTS)
Starting conversations with key decision makers
I told him to do outreach. Start more conversations and that is TBD as i write this. Still, he is younger than me (I like speaking with people up and coming and passing on my knowledge and teaching); but the disconnect between action and result is apparent.
Begin with the end in mind.
…Then work backwards and create the STEPS that will get you there.
Right now, I’m noticing major resistance to signing ecommerce clients. it’s much more different than what I had to deal with in 2020 where it was easy to get clients via cold email offering a free trial. Thing is, this niche is getting inundated with so many messages that it’s ultimately harder to stand out.
I’m not privy to doing free work even when I have a respectable portfolio simply because the ROI of ONE client is so high for me. Give it 6 months and my client could easily be a $15,000/month client who is happy with the work, whose marketing ‘funnel’ is running smoothly and perfectly that I have to work for less than 2 hours a month to maintain and scale and ensure everything is working correctly.
I am aware of the “trends” at the moment…
putting “AI” in anything is going to get attention and response because its the conversation on everyone’s mind
Ecom clients LOVE user-generated content and the offer I’m seeing all ecom marketing agencies copy and pivot towards is “creating content” and managing ads for free — so testing 100+ creatives/week.
Although I KNOW this is inefficient, and against my strategy. It’s hard to TELL THEM that due to the major appeal that it has. Like Alex Hormozi Says, sometimes you gotta give them the desert before the vegetables. You gotta give them that quick win, the thing they want, so you can now give them the thing they NEED!
Either way, my legacy ecom clients are healthy and well but I’m shying away from increasing my customer acquisition costs OR outsourcing my copywriting to AI (I simply LIKE it too much to let AI rob me of the joy of my work). Also, I see that AI can replace the “mediocre” copywriters but it can’t replace the A players.
And, that is what Im' going towards. Being an A player in all things advertising-related.
Where AI is implented in my business right now is in the mundane work, the work that requires SPEED and lets me buy back my time… like market research which was highly manual and something i’d spend 8+ hours doing while spending 1 hour writing copy. Or, the visual side of things that I never dedicated much time in mastering while I focused on key PRINCIPLES of human psychology and advertising. Even then, I know what to look for. I can tell when AI is doing a bad job or a good one. I can “judge” the work accurately and move things much quicker…
So, to everybody reading this. Welcome to a new era. Welcome to another level playing field. All the ivory towers have been demolished or in need of repairs. AI is the next stage of business. Now, USE IT. Learn it quickly. And APPLY it by bringing ideas to market quickly. You have equal access to it like everybody else. Just like, anyone that wants to do what I do has equal access to all sources of knowledge and information.
Knowledge used to be the bottleneck. The “unfair” advantage. It no longer is. APPLYING knowledge and mastering a craft used to be the “next” unfair advantage. That, my friend is quickly becoming less and less of a given.
The true winners will be the ones that know how to use this “ai” thing and be a good judge of good work AND/OR those that love their craft, that put their SOUL into it to truly become great.
The greatest writers won’t be writing “AI” books anytime soon, only the mediocre ones. BUT, the mediocre books will probably be order of magnitudes better than mediocre writers. So mediocre writers SHOULD use AI, to compensate for their skills and use it as a tool to become a “great” writer as quickly as possible.
You’ve been blessed and given with SPEED my friend. Everything is moving much quicker now. AI is just the next level of that.
TLDR; bring ideas to market quickly. As quickly as possible. Use all tools as your disposal to do so. And, test cheaply. Test many. Know how much TIME is necessary to know if your idea has potential or not. And, double down and never deviate from it until you extract as much money as possible from it. Ai can never replace you if you are going for mastery of your craft and find true enjoyment in it (which is a USP all in itself).