Month two of business
What April actually felt like
Almost every evening this month I found myself in the kitchen with my wife, saying the same line:
“Wow. You don’t believe what happened today.”
Some nights it was a new exciting offer. Some nights a number I didn’t expect to see this year. Some nights a stranger from a country I’ve never been to telling me the workshop changed how they work.
But the sentence I really want to talk about isn’t that one.
It’s my son’s. He kept saying “Daddy is working” this month. At dinner, at bedtime, when he wanted to show me something.
That’s the thing I want to change in May.
Some stats first.
Last month I told you about March (my first real month of business),
Here’s April in plain stats.
8 public workshops.
6 private workshops for B2B.
5 private 1:1 sessions.
3 podcast interviews.
2 newspaper interviews.
1 new business partnership (will share about it soon).
~400 new people that joined my workshops.
$94,105 in revenue.
~80 hours of sleep lost.
2 kg up.
One son repeating, “Daddy is working.”
—
I became my own boss. I’m not an easy boss, it turns out.
People are waiting…
I’m writing this on a Wednesday morning, driving to a workshop, talking it into my phone because my hands are on the wheel.
There are 50+ unanswered messages on my WhatsApp. More on LinkedIn. More in Gmail. Right now, while you read this, my phone has more than when you started.
I feel bad about it every day.
Real people waiting… someone asked something… someone shared something personal… and I am pushing it to tomorrow… Then the next day… Then another week…
Sometimes I get into a burst: thirty minutes, I clear everything, I answer everyone. Two days later I’m back at fifty.
Communication is the thing I’m worst at. I know it. I’m thinking about finding someone to manage my messages for me because I keep losing things. Mostly I just feel terrible knowing people are waiting.
A few things I’m still carrying from April.
The stolen card
A retired woman called and told me someone had used her stolen credit card to register for one of my public workshops. I have no way of knowing which of the people who sat in the room that day used her card.
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The angry man
A participant left a workshop disappointed and started messaging dozens of participants privately, including people who weren’t in his workshop, asking them to organize against me. I refunded him, removed him from the private groups, and asked him to stop. I hope agents will not learn from us humans how to behave.
—
Keyboard bullies
The big newspaper article came out and brought 7,000+ impressions and dozens of new readers.
It also brought dozens of comments calling me a fraud, a liar, arrogant, a salesman with nothing real to sell.
My “favorites”…
“Wow, this charlatan is everywhere. Podcasts, LinkedIn, and now apparently journalism too. Takes the regular Claude components and teaches his “students” to deploy them across 6 folders and call it by the megalomaniacal name ABCTOM”
or
“Unbearable guy. But all’s good, he’s here for 10 minutes.”
First time in my life I’ve seen that kind of public hostility about me.
Now for the good stuff :)
Neo, the agent on my team, ran the Golden Ticket: the most creative campaign agents&me has done, and the best marketing thing I’ve been part of. I approved one line and watched it go.
Season 2 of the podcast went live on Spotify. Season 3 is finished. I’ll publish it through May. It’s gonna be powered by ElevenLabs. It’s the best thing I’ve made (but I’m biased).
A big article about me was published in the most prestigious business newspaper in Israel. I’m happy with the location I chose for the photo, it turned out pretty funny.
I created Alter. The coolest project I’ve ever done. I’ll probably share about it next month, there’s something to look forward to.
—
What I bought myself with $94K: five shirts, a chair called LiberNovo, lots of subscriptions to cool ai tools, new mic (Shure MV7+), AirPods for my wife because she had been walking around for months with only one working.
A good friend, the CEO of a FoodTech company, told me to start thinking in ARR. $1M a year if April held. Let’s hope he is right 🤞
What I didn’t expect
The biggest surprise for me of April was English.
I avoided English audiences my whole career. I had offers, lectures, panels, podcasts. I said no for years.
The fear: my voice in Hebrew is mine, but my voice in English is something I’m still building.
This month I said yes.
To one workshop, then another, then a private session, then an interview.
My English coach, an agent I built named Eden who joined the team this month, graded me 9 out of 10 in Hebrew and 7.5 in English. We are working toward 8.5.
—
I also did not expect the audience to widen the way it did.
When I started, the first few hundred people were tech: marketing, design, product.
April brought psychologists, researchers, lawyers, professors, real estate brokers, accountants. CFOs, therapists, solopreneurs, students and many more.
Variety of people who showed up to learn how to manage agents like a team.
In one evening room last week, we had 30 participants logged in from the US, France, UK, Canada, Germany, Greece, and Italy. Eight countries on a Tuesday night.
Here is what I want from May.
Friday evening: I’m cooking, my son standing on the stool he’s almost too tall for. My wife choosing the playlist. A few people we love coming over. My phone in the drawer.
I want my son to remember something else from May. I want him to know I was there.
If I get there once, I’m winning. If I get there every weekend, the rest will follow.
P.S. I dictated half of this driving to a workshop. The agents finished it while I was teaching. I’m still figuring out how to feel about that.
Tom