You look great today. Welcome back to Hot Leads, the newsletter that makes content marketing and lead generation easier than forgetting your New Years resolutions.

Here’s what we got for you:

• ✍️ Spotting the fakers & the trend of marketing sincerity

• ✍️ Our top YT thumbnails of the week

• 🍪 Existential memes to make you question all of your life’s choices

👍 THUMBS WE LIKE

Why we like these:

1. A bold text-only image immediately sets it apart on an image heavy platform (plus solid use of subverting expectation)

2. Two easily understood stats that don’t traditionally make sense together creates curiosity

3. A minimalistic and clear point of interest leads the eyes, allowing scrollers to process information in the thumb instantaneously

4. Strong monochromatic colors and lots of negative space make it stand out on a cluttered screen

The rise of pseudo-entrepreneurialism…

Entrepreneurship is sexy.

You travel the world, buy sexy cars, live in exotic locations. You have time to do whatever you want. You fly private. You date multiple partners who don’t need a committed, fulfilling relationship. Your friends are just subordinates who worship your success…

Wait, no. That’s not right. My experience with entrepreneurship is:

1. Extremely tight budgets

2. Working on projects that friends don’t understand

3. Spending “vacation” money on new gear, new software, new growth opportunities

4. Working from my broken couch and not going anywhere for weeks/months on end

But that’s a hard sell. I get it.

This dichotomy, between what is and what could be, has formed the current meta of online entrepreneurship: marketing a less realistic, more attractive lifestyle. As a result we are bombarded with thousands of young “gurus” who sell their secret to a “better life”.

YET, the meta for social media entrepreneurship is changing.

With the rise of AI, declining global economies, and a dead internet full of joyless ads and monolithic business funnels, we need real entrepreneurs more than ever.

A real entrepreneur:

1. sells a product or service that helps other people

2. focuses on the bottom line (how much money I make vs how much it looks like I can spend)

3. prioritizes the product (customer satisfaction over self satisfaction)

4. experiences hardship and overcomes it

The last 3-4 years have seen an explosion of pseudo-entrepreneurs selling secrets to success that they don’t actually have. But the fakers are getting easier and easier to spot…

A pseudo-entrepreneur:

1. sells sensationalist ideas over proven blueprints, products, or done-for-you services

2. focuses on perceived wealth

3. prioritizes image over product/service development

4. experiences hardship, but avoids developing the skills to overcome it

The pendulum is swinging back to realism and an admiration for real work.

Grounded-ness.

The market wants services that feel good to buy (services that actually help us), that don’t make us question “is this a scam?” every time we click “purchase”.

We are even seeing major trends in open-sourced, non-subscription based software.

2 BIG examples:

• Blender - a free 3D modeling software, once for hobbyists, has become an industry standard for game development and now movies (See “Flow” winning Best Animated Feature at the Oscars)

• BlueSky - a decentralized, open-network social media platform that has risen to over 31 million users in just 2 years (with a team of only 21 people!!)

But why are these companies so successful? I would argue that it’s because they are earnest in their problem solving.

There is an enormous appetite for trustworthy, risk-free services from people who actually know what they’re doing and actually want to provide a positive user experience.

We want to buy real, helpful products, from real people, with real proof of success.

We’re tired of the fakes. We can spot them a mile away.

🥛 A SIP OF EXISTENTIAL DREAD 🤣

get that 🍞