Time and time again, I see the same heartbreaking pattern in the online entrepreneurial space. People want to build their own business. They want freedom. They want to make good money—or a lot of money. But they're drowning without enough money to live. Maybe they can't get enough clients. Maybe they get clients and then lose them. Maybe they're building up debt because they're not making enough money. They don't want to go get a job. Their significant other is stressed because the debt keeps climbing every month, and there's no end in sight. I don't have a perfect solution for everyone. But I can tell you this: **Something has to change if you want change.** And what I find most of the time is that people don't really face the depth of what that could mean. ## The Endless Cycle of New Ideas Week to week, they come up with different ideas on how to get out of it. They're going to try this tactic or that tactic. They're going to start creating content to get new clients. But they don't. They're going to start cold email. They send 2 or 3 and then stop. What I see—and I know several of these people personally—is they get completely stressed out to the point where it's hard to function. And it affects their performance, which creates a vicious cycle. I'm not going to pretend it's easy to get out of this. It can be incredibly difficult. ## My Own Rock Bottom I was in a very similar situation once. I was $30,000 in credit card debt and couldn't make enough money to get out of it. The only way I was able to escape was by working like a dog. I worked essentially 24/7—multiple gigs at the same time, morning till night. I was lucky enough to be in a situation where I didn't have kids yet, so it was possible. I had a girlfriend (soon to be my wife), but we didn't spend as much time together. I had to sacrifice. I didn't have work-life balance. I had work-life. A lot of it. But I made good money, and I was able to pay it off. I found a couple of good clients that had ongoing work, and I just worked my ass off.

Social media is a great tool if you can keep it real. But it pushes you to fake it. "No one will hire me if tell the truth". Then people talk above their own level. But it's a trap, when you fake it, it slows you down -- you can't actually grow. You're literally making shit up, and then you have to pretend that shit works. When you're real, you're free, you move fast, you can document your journey. You can explore, improve, show off, it's easy. You learn REAL STUFF. When you fake it, you move slow, covering your tracks, you feel like an imposter. You move slow hoping that you're not "exposed" as a fraud. Sometimes people feel like an imposter because they ARE. The only people that can truly fake it online, succeed and make a lot of money are people with no morals. They aren't honest, and they leave a trail of wreckage behind them. If you're a normal person like me, who feels bad if they lie, just be you, all the time, as best you can. On the flip side, don't sell yourself short, brag a little. Brag a lot even, just brag about real stuff. Be free, be open, let the world see who you are. You're a wonderful person who has many REAL experiences to share. Now you just need to go do it.

A lot of people underestimate how hard it is to help people achieve their dreams. Especially if we're coaching them to level up through acquiring new skills or removing roadblocks. Bottom line: Helping people change their lives is extremely difficult. Why is this important? because I think far too often building a business online has become about marketing, offers, copywriting and closing the deal, and NOT about how to make the best product in the marketplace. We are all encouraged to use the internet to build our dream lives by selling products, but so phew people talk about how do you create an AMAZING product. In fact most of the advice is that you already have everything you need to start a business, they say -- "you just need to help someone a few steps behind you". Which is really only partially true. Being slightly ahead of someone else doesn't really mean you know how to coach them to get to where you are now. It doesn't mean you can't figure it out either, but don't fool yourself that it's going to be easy. You can put material in a course, and you can learn how to sell it. You can even get 100 clients, but that doesn't mean you have a good product. Without a good product that REALLY works you will eventually fail. That early momentum you had, the 5-10 clients you had, that will all go away if you can't eventually develop and improve your product so that it's really really really good. How often have you received a testimonial only to feel deep inside that this person is just doing you a favor? I had lots of those in the beginning, "Yea, Stephen is a great guy, loved working with him" -- this is a testimonial from someone who "likes" you, not someone that really loved your product. People might like you, and they may not regret working with you, but do they really rave to others about your product? So you have to ask yourself why you mostly focus on marketing and closing deals and not on customer success. Sometimes even when we're experts we don't always know what will make our customers successful. But you have to start thinking about it, you have to start taking repeated and sustained actions to improve your product and figure it out.

A lot of us are afraid to make mistakes because of what people will say. Or even worse, what clients might say if we mess something up. What if a new course doesn't live up to the promise if we move too fast? What if we release it before it's ready? and people complain? What if they get mad? Well... hope they do. You see its quite normal for people to complain, get short with you. And this is your advantage, not a weakness. It normal for people to jump on your failure, point it out, rub your face in it (not all people but you know who I'm talking about ;) You know what's not normal? moving fast to remedy all those complaints, dropping version 2 a week later to fix everything, setting the bar higher. I call it the "sweep the legs" technique. Moving with speed undercuts everything. People remember you more for how you respond and how fast you bounce back. Why? because that is NOT normal. - Dropping a sub-par course, NORMAL. - Customer complaints, NORMAL - Bouncing back from mental stress, NOT NORMAL!! I hate seeing people complain, or get moody on me. I sulk for 30 seconds and then plan the next release. I just aim higher and surprise them. I sweep the legs out from underneath them. I've learned in business, if you keep people focused toward a better future, you're fine. You're better than fine, you're unstoppable.

Hey Content Academy! Today in the No-Code Architects we had a demo + Q&A on the new Faceless Video Generator. Also called "Kontent Story Magic v2.0". A free version (a bit more limited) will be released on YouTube like many of the other templates. Likely next week!! In case you don't want to join the NCA Community. The KSMv2.0 Launch Party, led by Stephen G. Pope, introduced an innovative content story magic system that enables users to create and manage customizable digital stories with defined dimensions, multiple active stories, and automated prompts. The meeting covered various aspects of the system, including different story types and AI-powered actions for image, audio, and video generation, as well as its flexibility allowing for manual or automatic approval processes. A live demonstration showcased the complete workflow, highlighting integration with tools like make.com for automation and error handling. Discussions on future improvements included character image consistency, file storage solutions, and enhancements to audio generation. The meeting concluded with action items aimed at refining the system and encouraging user experimentation and feedback before its official release. Notes 🚀 Introduction and Overview (00:00 - 22:40) Stephen G Pope introduces the new content story magic system System allows defining width, height, and aspect ratio for stories Users can manage multiple stories and control which ones are active Prompting can be developed for each story type System breaks stories into scenes and shots NCA toolkit used for combining elements, aiming to reduce costs 🎨 Story Types and Actions (23:50 - 31:02) Story types can define properties, prompts, and AI actions Users can add custom actions and associate them with make.com automations Default actions include image generation (Midjourney, Flux, OpenAI), audio generation (Eleven Labs), and video generation (Luma API, Cling)