Jake Roper

ex-college athlete turned Europe's Best CEO 2025 • leading growth & distribution for awesome companies

[Jake Roper @ropewrites]

Three years ago, I was eating $1 salmon packets from corner stores.

Couldn’t afford real meals.

Drowning in debt.

One missed payment away from losing everything.

Today, I reside in my favorite city in the world.

They asked me what this moment means.

I couldn’t speak for a minute.

Because it’s not about the award.

It’s about every night I fell asleep wondering if I was delusional for believing Adstra could work.

Every morning I woke up choosing to keep going when quitting would have been easier.

Every time someone said “maybe you should get a real job” while I was building something from nothing.

This award isn’t just mine.

It belongs to every entrepreneur who’s been one step away from giving up.

Who’s chosen ramen over restaurants to fund their dream.

Who’s been called crazy for seeing something others couldn’t.

To my team who believed when I could barely believe in myself.

To my clients who trusted us when we were just a guy with a laptop, wifi and a vision.

And to everyone still fighting in the corner store, eating $1 meals, wondering if the pain will be worth it.

It is.

Keep going.

Your breakthrough might be closer than you think.

This one’s for everyone still grinding in the darkness.

🏆

[Jake Roper @ropewrites]

"We run out of time basically at the end of Q2."

That's the moment every revenue-conscious founder dreads.

You look at the number.
You look at the calendar.
And you do the math.

The gap between where you are and where you need to be is not a motivation problem.
It's a pipeline problem.

[Jake Roper @ropewrites]

Tony told me on a call: "I watched you too long on Instagram and then you started showing up on all my feeds."

That's not a coincidence.
That's a system.

Every prospect who calls Adstra has already been moved by Adstra's marketing.

[Jake Roper @ropewrites]

I run ads on Meta and X.

I also post content every day.

The ads buy attention.
The content earns trust.

You need both.
One without the other is either expensive or slow.

[Jake Roper @ropewrites]

"We got lots of impressions. We just got no conversions."

I hear this every week.

Impressions are not a business metric.
Reach is not a business metric.

The only number that matters:
How many qualified people sat across from your closer this week?

[Jake Roper @ropewrites]

"Referrals are the best. But how do you get them? They're lumpy."

Lumpy.

That's the word every referral-dependent founder uses eventually.

Great months. Dead months.
No pattern. No predictability.
No way to plan.

Lumpy is not a business.
Lumpy is a gamble.

[Jake Roper @ropewrites]

I've been in Barcelona for a while now.

The thing that surprised me most wasn't the lifestyle.

It was how much better I think when I'm not in the same environment I built my stress in.

Geography is underrated as a performance tool.

[Jake Roper @ropewrites]

"I've thrown hundreds of thousands out the window and it just never shows up."

That's what a smart, experienced operator sounds like when they've been burned enough times.

They're not stupid.
They're exhausted.

And exhausted people need proof, not promises.

[Jake Roper @ropewrites]

$1,300 in.
$61,000 out.

That's not a hypothetical.
That's a real campaign result.

The math on paid acquisition is either working or it isn't.
Most people never find out because they quit before the system is calibrated.

[Jake Roper @ropewrites]

Americans optimize for speed.
Europeans optimize for quality.

I used to think speed was the advantage.

Then I moved here and watched founders take 2-hour lunches and still close $10M years.

Speed is a tactic.
Clarity is a strategy.

[Jake Roper @ropewrites]

Cem told me our landing page reminded him of "Andrew Tate's poetry format."

High-conviction. Long-form. It worked on him.

He booked a call.

Nobody buys from someone they don't believe.
Write like you mean it.

[Jake Roper @ropewrites]

One of the best decisions I made when I moved to Barcelona:

I stopped measuring my day by how many calls I took.

Started measuring it by what I actually moved forward.

Calls are not progress.
Decisions are progress.

[Jake Roper @ropewrites]

"The salesman's tired of being told to go F himself every day."

That's a real quote from a real sales call.

That's what happens when you build a great closer and then make him prospect.

Closers close.
They don't hunt.
Stop making them hunt.

[Jake Roper @ropewrites]

Before we turned on a single ad for Sue, we deployed an AI SMS bot on her cold opt-in list.

38 booked calls in 2 days.
150+ by end of week one.
Zero ad spend.

The money was already sitting in her list.
She just didn't know how to unlock it.

[Jake Roper @ropewrites]

The best business decision I ever made wasn't a hire.
Wasn't a funnel.
Wasn't an ad.

It was deciding what kind of life I was building toward.

Everything else is just execution.
Get the vision right first.

[Jake Roper @ropewrites]

"Things have been changing.
Whatever works today will not work tomorrow."

Alex said that to me on a call.
He's been in business lending for 17 years.

He's right.
The founders who win are the ones who build systems that adapt.
Not tactics. Systems.

[Jake Roper @ropewrites]

We started working with a company when they had one sales rep.

18 months later: 780+ qualified booked calls.
One AE became nine.

Salesforce acquired them.

The only thing that changed was the top of funnel.

[Jake Roper @ropewrites]

Running a business from Barcelona taught me one thing:

The founders who are always available are usually the ones whose businesses can't run without them.

Unavailability is a forcing function.
It forces you to build systems.

Build the system. Then take the long lunch.

[Jake Roper @ropewrites]

How many times can you get beat down?
And how many times do you stand back up?

That's the only question that matters in business.

Not your IQ.
Not your network.
Not your first-mover advantage.

Just: how stubborn are you willing to be?

[Jake Roper @ropewrites]

"$2K a month on Facebook. 181 leads. One deal."

That's a real number from a real business owner.

181 leads.
One deal.

That's not a volume problem.
That's a quality problem.

Leads are not the goal.
Qualified booked calls are.

[Jake Roper @ropewrites]

I paid $10K to sit in a room with Alex Hormozi for a day.

Best money I ever spent.
Not because of what he said.
Because of what he forced me to cut.

Every founder needs someone who will tell them what to stop doing.
Most never find one.