The AI Advantage Issue No 12

Two Million-Dollar Launches and Almost Nothing in Common - Let's Break It Down.

THIS WEEK IN AI

This was a light week for me on the AI front. Summer is in full force, and while I thought it would be a brilliant idea to put the kids in camp, it actually meant starting later, and then the middle of my day was completely derailed for a 1:00 pickup!

But light does not mean nothing happened, because I fell down a rabbit hole I still haven't fully climbed out of. I spent a slightly embarrassing number of hours studying two business launches that both crossed a million dollars, and the thing that I am obsessed with is that these two women did it in completely opposite ways, yet both made over $1,000,000! Well, we know one made $1.2 million, and the other was over $10 million, but not sure of the exact amount. 

Either way, both were insanely impressive, and I have taken a lot of notes! So pour yourself something (I am three sips into a mushroom chai), and let me walk you through it, because while they did almost everything opposite, there was one major similarity that you can't hit these kinds of numbers without. 

Two Launches, Two Completely Different Playbooks

First, meet Callan Faulkner. She runs a company called The Uncommon Business, she had some type of real estate business before falling head over heels for AI, and she ran her launch like a 10-year veteran. (This was her 5th launch in the last two years for her AI program, but this year it blew her others out of the water) She ran paid ads. (I was targeted by a TON) She had a whole network of people in her corner, posting about her and emailing their lists about her, the kind of goodwill that only comes from relationships you have spent years building or students who love your work. Everywhere you looked, somebody was talking about Callan. She showed up in beautifully produced videos in million-dollar homes, opened with a low-cost ($47) bootcamp to get people in the door (YES, I purchased), and then invited them into a high-ticket program on the other side. By every account, it was a giant, multiple-seven-figure launch (I actually think it was well over 8 figures but don't have exact numbers) with a large team and a large budget fueling the launch.

Then there's Jessi Jean.

Jessi had none of that, no ad budget, no team of cheerleaders or affiliates, and not a single big name lining up to vouch for her. What she had was an iPhone, a microphone, and an Instagram account. She grew her audience from zero to 350K engaged people in about four months by doing the one thing most of us would crawl across broken glass to avoid, which is talk to a camera every single day. Her offer was a six-week challenge teaching other people to YAP to the camera (It is literally called the YAP Challenge and she is referring to the community as YAP nation). The challenge was priced at $297. She ran a waitlist, opened the cart, and did $1.2 million. And the best part, she did the whole thing in a baggy sweatshirt and short shorts. People started going crazy about her witnessing what was happening and how many people were going bananas over the YAP challenge. I probably would have bought it if I had known about it before the cart closed. =) She made $7000 the month before and then in May, $1.2 million. This type of thing is rare but when it happens, it helps us all keep the faith alive. While she had only launched this Instagram account 6 months ago, she has been showing up online for years with different niches and different topics. So she wasn't a total beginner; it just all hit perfectly now through her authenticity. I think it also worked because people want it easy. They don't want to be stuck editing videos for 3 hours a day so the YAP style sharing feels doable. 

Callan runs her business with a team of twenty-five humans and somewhere around a hundred and fifty AI assistants working behind the scenes. Jessi Jean had one virtual assistant (although we hear she is hiring rapidly to support the launch!)

What These Two Actually Had In Common

Here is the part that kept me up at night (like eyes wide open, can't fall asleep because my mind just keeps racing with ideas.) On paper, these two launches were complete opposites. The price points were different $297 vs $9000, the strategies were different, waitlist vs paid bootcamp, the entire energy of each one could not have been further apart. And yet they both worked, which tells you something: underneath them was exactly the same.

Two things, actually.

The first one is visibility, and I know that sounds almost too simple to be the real answer, so stay with me. Both of these women at some point in their journey decided to stop shrinking. They put themselves directly in front of people, on camera, almost certainly a little terrified (aren't we all), and said some version of "I am done playing small, here we go." That is the whole unsexy secret of it. You cannot sell a thing that nobody can see, and you will never become known while you are busy hiding. (At some point it was scary for everyone else, who you see, who has made a name for themselves.) 

The second thing is that their offer was so clear it practically explained itself. You could tell what Jessi was selling in a single breath, a six-week challenge to get confident talking to a camera, and you could do the exact same thing with Callan's. There was no squinting, no "wait, so what does she actually do," no trying to decode some clever little tagline. They told you who it was for and what you would walk away with, and then they got out of their own way.

Put those two together, being impossible to miss and being impossible to misunderstand, and you have something far more powerful than any ad budget or fancy production crew could ever buy.

If you want to see my breakdown of this and see these girls in action, you can watch it on Instagram here. 

Where AI Sneaks Into All of This

Now, you might have noticed something. One of these launches was built entirely around selling AI, and the other one had absolutely nothing to do with AI at all. And that might be the most freeing thing we have heard all week.

You do not need an AI offer to win right now. Jessi proved that with her whole entire chest, selling a challenge about being a human who talks to other humans.

But where AI can support is it can help someone like Jessi pull off a launch the size of Jessi's without a film crew, an ad budget, or a payroll of twenty-five people. AI is the thing humming away in the background while she writes her scripts (Maybe, I don't know for sure she pre-plans them, but she definitely has a strategy behind them. I have been watching just in the last week, studying what she is saying, how she starts the videos, how she ends them, and she definitely thinks about what she is doing before she does it; it is definitely not random. We don't have specific details about if she used AI, but we know that you can use AI to help YOU with a launch while keeping your team light! 

But where AI lends a hand is this. It can help someone pull off a launch the size of Jessi's without a film crew, an ad budget, or a payroll of twenty-five people. (I don't actually know whether Jessi uses AI for her scripts. But I have spent the last week studying how she opens her videos, how she ends them, and the strategy running underneath all of it, and trust me, none of it is random.) We don't know her exact toolkit, but we do know this. You can absolutely use AI to help YOU run a launch while keeping your team light.

Let's Talk About That First One: Visibility (You can't win without it!)

I keep coming back to visibility, because it is the thing none of us gets to opt out of. You can have the most beautiful offer in the world, priced perfectly, solving a real problem, and if you are the best-kept secret in your zip code, it will sit there gathering dust while you refresh your sales page wondering what went wrong.

So here is what I really want you to hear, because we say it to clients all the time. You cannot just have a website and wait. Think of your website as a business card tucked in a drawer. Wonderful to have, and it does important work (we will get to that in a second), but it is not going to walk into a room and introduce you to anyone. That part is on you.

And the part that should take some pressure off is that there are about a hundred different doors into being visible, and you only have to walk through the ones that feel like you. You can get yourself quoted in the local paper, show up to community events, or host a vendor table at the market where your people already spend their Saturdays. You can walk into the shops they love, go to a meetup or a networking breakfast, or pitch yourself onto a podcast. You can run ads, post on social and let people see your actual face instead of your logo, or make sure you show up on Google the second someone goes looking for you. The list is long on purpose, because the point is not to do all of it. The point is to pick the two or three you will actually keep doing, and do it! 

Your Website Is Your Wingman

Now, about that website doing strategic work in the background. A site you are actually proud of does two real things for you.

First, it gives YOU confidence, and do not underestimate that, because it is hard to walk into a room and own it when you secretly feel like your online home is held together with duct tape. When your site looks like you and sounds like you, you stand a little taller at the event and proudly rattle off yuor URL when someone asks for your website or how to connect with you.

Second, and this is the big one, it is what people find right after they meet you. Because here is what actually happens. You speak on a podcast and light up someone's ears, and the very first thing they do afterward is google you. If you do not show up, or what they find is three years old and a little sad, that spark fizzles out. If you do show up, and it looks current and clear and like you know exactly where you are headed, it validates everything they just felt in the room (or in their earpods). It tells them you are the real deal and you are going places (the big places). And people, right, wrong, or indifferent, are drawn to people who are doing big things. 

That second part is exactly what we obsess over for clients, making sure you actually surface when someone searches your name or asks AI about your industry. (It is the whole reason AEO and SEO exist, and yes, it is a big chunk of what we do all day.) Visibility in the room and visibility on the screen are a team. We call it the cascade effect when you have both. They make each other stronger.

How AI Hands You the Courage (and the Plan)

Here is the thing about that long list of ways to get visible. Most of us do absolutely none of them, and it usually comes down to overwhelm with a little fear mixed in, and AI happens to be weirdly good at melting both.

If you are stuck on which podcast to pitch, AI can research the shows your ideal client actually listens to and draft the pitch email for you. If the idea of talking to a camera makes you queasy, it can help you outline exactly what to say so you are not staring at yourself on your phone camera with a blank brain feeling like you can't formulate to words, let alone the perfect 30-second clip with a hook, story, and CTA. If you have no idea what is even happening in your own town, it can dig up the local events, markets, and meetups where your people already gather. And if you have ever given one good talk, it can spin that single talk into a month of social posts, so showing up online stops devouring your entire week.

The one thing AI can't do for you is show up. I mean I guess it could if you are doing one of those AI clones, but I'm not sure I am sold on those.) So for now, you still have to be the one who shows up. But it takes the part you have been hiding behind (I don't know where to start, I don't have the time, I don't know what to say) and clears it right off the table.

You Can Try This Too

Pick one visibility move this week. Make it something that scares you a teeny bit, but not so much that you talk yourself out of it by Tuesday. Maybe it is finally posting the video. Maybe it is emailing one podcast host. Maybe it is an incognito window and googling your own name to see what a stranger would find (brace yourself, or be pleasantly surprised). Visibility is a muscle, and it gets so much less terrifying the more you use it.

And if you want help picking the one that actually fits you, this week's AI CLUB drop will be incredibly helpful.

From Our Desk

We will be back next week (with any luck, having survived camp pickup logistics). Until then, remember that Callan and Jessi did not become visible because they were fearless. They got visible while they were still a little scared, while they were feeling things out and putting in the reps. LOTS of reps over lots of years, and that is the only version of brave that actually exists. Your people are out there waiting to find you. Go make it easy for them.

XO Krissy (+ Claire)

BONUS | For AI CLUB Members

Not in the AI CLUB yet? Join for $5.55 a month and you instantly get the AI Brand Brain, the foundation document that gets Claude to actually understand your business, your voice, and your offers, so it can show up as the assistant, copywriter, and strategic partner you've been wanting it to be instead of a generic chatbot.

This Week's AI CLUB Drop: The Get-Visible-Your-Way Prompt. I'm handing you the exact prompt that turns Claude (Or whatever LLM you use) into a warm but honest visibility strategist. It interviews you about how you actually like to show up, the parts that make you want to hide under a blanket, and whether you are working with a budget or just your beautiful self, and then it hands you a realistic plan that fits YOU instead of some influencer's highlight reel. Tell it where you live and who you serve, and it will even point you toward real local events, podcasts, and rooms where your people are already hanging out. (Members, it's waiting for you right below.)