Drew Carrell

$100M+ in ad spend. $1M/mo pay-per-lead agency (Inc 5000). Media buyer, not a guru. Co-host, That Agency Show. How operators actually build 👇

[Drew Carrell @drewcarrell]

My best month ever did $1.7M.

It lost $171,298.

20 years in retail. Ran a $13M grocery store. Built a lead company to No. 32 on the Inc. 5000. Read hundreds of business books.

And I still got drunk on revenue.

So this account is the hangover cure.

Every revenue flex, I ask for the net.
Every CEO victory lap, I pull the filing.
Every guru, I run his math.

If you'd rather be profitable than impressive, follow.

What's the net?

[Drew Carrell @drewcarrell]

@LeilaHormozi True. Harder corollary.

No amount of execution replaces judgment on what to execute on.

Most people "not executing" are executing plenty, on the wrong problem.

Positive thinking is the shallow trap.

Wrong-task execution is the expensive one.

[Drew Carrell @drewcarrell]

Real complaint, old complaint.

Manufacturers have said "we can't plan" through every regime change since the 70s.

Uncertainty is a tax on the slow.

It's a subsidy to the operators with short cycles, flexible sourcing, and low fixed capex.

The businesses that pivoted in prior cycles are the ones that own the next one.

[zerohedge @zerohedge]

"We Can't Do Any Planning"; Dallas Fed Manufacturers Uniformly Negative https://t.co/uu4pf51qh8

[Drew Carrell @drewcarrell]

Agree on the path. Push on the number.

$200-250k after 2-3 years is almost always SDE, with the owner's 50-60 hour week inside it.

Pay yourself market for that seat and the profit shrinks and the enterprise value gets honest.

It doesn't kill the play.

It tells you what you built.

A job with better upside and, eventually, an exit.

[Drew Carrell @drewcarrell]

One failure mode of many.

The bigger one: cold email can't earn three seconds.

Specificity collapses trust faster than any warm-up sequence.

A precise, high-relevance pitch can close a $10k retainer cold.

A vague warm-up closes nothing at any temperature.

Fix specificity before size.

[Drew Carrell @drewcarrell]

@jn_jackk Right frame, soft middle.

Posting a tweet measures interest.

Interest is free.

Real validation is a card charged or a contract signed.

"Notify me" is polite curiosity.

The graveyard is full of ideas that died in the gap between interest and cash.

[Drew Carrell @drewcarrell]

Right for anyone who can build that stack.

Franchises price for the average operator.

Above-average pays 10% for nothing.

Below-average pays 10% as tuition.

The scam isn't the franchise model.

It's a franchise that promises brand equity and only delivers a coaching call.

[Drew Carrell @drewcarrell]

This matters. Operators considering Canada run a longer checklist. Is the incentive stable across the next election cycle. Is the labor pool deep in AI and tech. Can capital deploy inside Canada without routing through New York. Nail those and the METR becomes a driver instead of a talking point.

[Drew Carrell @drewcarrell]

@danmartell True. The other half nobody says.

Time is necessary, not sufficient.

Time on the wrong offer just makes you older.

Time on a compounding asset compounds.

Patience isn't a virtue.

It's a multiplier on whatever you were already doing.

[Drew Carrell @drewcarrell]

@siddharthwv Direction right. Mechanism off.

The bar isn't low because competitors are lazy.

It's that most people quit 6 to 12 months in, before the compounding shows up.

Consistency isn't a hack.

Consistency is the whole product.

The survival curve is steep, not the skill curve.

[Drew Carrell @drewcarrell]

Right for founders whose first exit is big enough to be picky next time. Trap for everyone else. A meaningful exit buys optionality. A small one resets you to the same job with a nicer laptop. First exit's real job is to buy the ability to say no on the second. Miss that and this is a treadmill dressed as a career.

[Drew Carrell @drewcarrell]

@lorenzo_pravata Right take. Layer under it: the moat isn't stealth ads.

It's a creative shop that ships the next format before this one dies.

UGC won 2021, then died.

Stealth wins now, then dies.

Andromeda rewards new shapes.

Build a pipeline, not a religion.

[Drew Carrell @drewcarrell]

@TheOvermanEthos Solopreneurs work forever. Owners exit.

[Drew Carrell @drewcarrell]

I sell leads for a living. Here's what I'd never tell a customer on a sales call.

You probably don't need more leads.

McKinsey studied 2,463 companies. A 1% price increase grew operating profit 11.1%. A 1% volume increase grew it 3.3%.

Price is worth more than 3x volume. And volume is the only thing a lead buys you.

Most owners I talk to would rather buy 1,000 more leads than raise prices 5% and lose two customers who complain.

That's not a lead problem. That's a spine problem.

What's the net?

[Drew Carrell @drewcarrell]

@mikebolen $199/mo didn't 3x revenue.

The operator who installed it, retrained the team, and rebuilt the workflow did.

Software is the leverage.

The operator is the fulcrum.

The scarier lesson: the seller left $3M on the table because he wouldn't do 90 days of change management.

[Drew Carrell @drewcarrell]

@freddiexpott Right on the vibe. Wrong on the mechanism.

Casual doesn't win because it's casual.

It wins paired with hyper-specific context that proves you did the work.

"Yo bro let's chat" fails the same test as "just following up."

Vibe without specificity is faster spam.

[Drew Carrell @drewcarrell]

@Tannermullen Two reads. Real arb, or gutters is lumpy, storm-driven, one purchase per decade, and the Meta funnel breaks.

Both worth $2k to test before you build.

Gaps in trades usually exist because 20 operators already tried, lost money, and stopped talking about it.

[Drew Carrell @drewcarrell]

@leononrails @SpaceX @NASA @Space_Station Just another day at the office

[Drew Carrell @drewcarrell]

@QuarkWino @SpaceX @NASA @Space_Station Agreed

[Drew Carrell @drewcarrell]

@AustinJD1984 @SpaceX @NASA @Space_Station It’s basically pay to play now.