Starting, Scaling & Abandoning a $15k/month Venture In Three Months | (Guest post by George Blackman)

August 31st, 2024: Greetings from NY. We are in the northeast for a wedding before returning to Austin for the rest of the year.

I more or less wrapped the final edits on my book this week which feels incredible. I am now gearing up to launch the book, which I estimate will be about September 17th.

If you’d be interested in helping to promote or share the book (or help get me on big podcasts) that would be amazing. Please fill out the form here. My approach is going to be what I’m calling a “post-launch” launch. Similar to the first book, I’m going to devote my energy toward sharing it after it’s already in the world. That’s simply much more fun and exciting for me.

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Today’s post is something I requested from George Blackman after he posted this short video on X detailing why he decided to shut down a $15k/month agency after only three months. What fascinated me was how quickly he made the decision. I’ve seen so many independently employed friends spend years working on things they know are not their “good work.” I asked him a simple question, “How did you really decide to do this? Tell me everything.”

From “More” To Better

In January, my business crossed 6-figures for the first time and, by March, I had never been more unhappy.

This wasn’t the classic “high-powered CEO realises he’s rich but miserable” tale because, until late 2023, I’d been building a business I loved. One that allowed me to help hundreds of people while making a great living. One that got me excited to get out of bed every day.

Crossing $100k in yearly revenue should have been one of the most triumphant moments of my career. In my head, I’d convinced myself that having a “6-figure business” would reassure my family that I was genuinely ok without a “proper job”.

But my decision to launch an agency - something that was against my instincts - meant that I started to hate my business at exactly the moment I should have been celebrating.

So here’s how I founded, ran, and ultimately closed my $15,000 per month scriptwriting agency in under 3 months and how I reignited my love for the business I’d spent 2 years building.

Early ambitions

3 years ago, I was working a $40k call centre job that I hated. I had wanted to move to London to be near my friends, and 12 hour night shifts were the price to pay. But, a year later,  I would land a much different job. 

Having applied on a whim, I was hired to write YouTube scripts for doctor-turned-YouTuber, Ali Abdaal. I had no formal “YouTube experience”, but through some carefully selected anecdotes about a channel I had run aged 15, my experience writing live comedy, and the riskier decision to tell Ali, point blank, that his YouTube thumbnails were rubbish - I got in.

12-hour night shifts became “work when you want”.

Answering phones became “brainstorming video ideas”.

The dreary commute became “working from home”.

I had begun my call centre job with a grim sense that it was a necessary sacrifice. But now I had my friends, and a cool job. Despite the lingering calls from my ex-colleagues to “be careful”, I had strayed from the “default path”.

But, still, I wasn’t making much more than $40k.

Over the next two years, I took charge of my path. The time I’d spent working with Ali made me wonder:  what else was out there? I got the opportunity to work with top tier creators like Ed Lawrence and Mike Shake. I spent almost a year writing scripts for sponsorship coach, Justin Moore. I started a newsletter, Write On Time,  where I shared everything I was learning about YouTube scriptwriting.

And the more I spoke publicly about it, the more people started coming to me for advice. I was beginning to feel less like a “freelancer” scrapping for my next gig, and more like an entrepreneur. I started building low-ticket products for my newfound “audience” and, after a conversation with Ali, decided to ask my readers: “would you be interested in a scriptwriting course?”

Dreams of a Scriptwriting Empire

In June 2023, without having written a single word of the course, I opened up 50 pre-sale spots. They would sell out in 72 hours, generating $7,500 revenue for my business which, at the time, seemed just about the craziest thing I could have imagined. When I did a second pre-sale in August, the same thing happened again.

Then, in January 2024, I finally launched the course to a waiting list of over 900 people. I was visiting my parents that weekend and, together with my girlfriend Julia, we all sat staring at the screen as the first few sales rolled in. Each time I refreshed the page, the number got bigger. We sat there in a bit of a stupor - all four of us just gawping - until, eventually, my Dad grinned from ear to ear and said: “Blimey. I’m going to remember this!”

The course  generated $74,423 in its first 72 hours, pushing my rolling 12-month revenue well beyond 6-figures, and reassuring my family that the path I’d taken 2 years ago was leading somewhere exciting.

But this launch coincided with another. My new scriptwriting agency, which I’d been convinced to start by a pair of well-meaning entrepreneurs I’d met on Twitter, was about to produce its first batch of scripts.

The agency model had always appealed to me. I’m a YouTube scriptwriter by trade, and as my presence had grown on Twitter, my inbound leads were becoming unmanageable. So, when these two easy-to-work with guys pitched me a compelling approach, I decided to go all-in .

The goal of the agency was to scale my impact. 

But to be completely transparent, I wanted to cash in.

I knew my course was likely to sell well, but I feared that moment would be lightning in a bottle - a one-off cash injection that’d look cool on paper, but which wouldn’t sustain my business for more than a year.

But an agency…

I’d seen the numbers that my peers were doing with their agencies, and I wanted a piece of the action.

If I spent six months setting everything up, I might get to $50k per month in revenue, have others deliver the work, and take home $10k without lifting a finger.

This was, by far, the most money-motivated decision I’d ever made.

So although I would have loved to celebrate my $80k course launch, I had to ensure the agency would launch just as smoothly. I’d hired 5 brilliant writers for our 5 launch clients (including some big industry names like ConvertKit) and we were due to start work 2 weeks later. With another 20 clients on the waitlist, I was feeling good. It felt like we had the world at our feet.

And things started well. My writers were delivering consistently, the clients were mostly responsive, and we were working on  exciting projects. By March, our revenue had hit $15k. As the scripts became more predictable, we started to discuss expansion.

In theory, if we could onboard all 20 clients from our waitlist we could grow our revenue more than 5x.

And we hadn’t even done any outreach yet - the potential was enormous.

I Never Wanted This

If I had gone back and listened to myself on my own podcast,  I could have found plenty of examples of the times I said I didn’t want to run an agency, I didn't want to become a “manager”, and that I knew the path to expansion was never as simple as “do this, but more”.

It was easy to drool at the numbers I’d seen agencies making, but even easier to ignore the tweets from their founders who warned about the impact it was having on their mental health. The life of an “agency owner”, I knew, was something I didn’t want.

Yet here I was. And as the financial upside increased, I buried my feelings.

Then, for reasons I couldn’t put my finger on, my days were getting… longer. I lost track of time and started skipping meals. I started to convince myself that I didn’t have time to stop for a cup of tea or a proper lunch break.

I used to love making fancy avocado toast at lunchtime, but it soon became habitual for me to grab something ready to eat from the local cafe instead. After all, that was marginally faster.

Once, I had to get in the car, but refused to stop working. I sat in the back seat, long legs awkwardly balancing my laptop on my knees, tip-tapping away with my headphones on.

And, in fairness, I was busy. Between reviewing scripts, communicating with clients and their teams, and the writers, reviewing writer applications, sifting waitlist clients, building training, and managing payroll, it was a lot.

But… the money was good!

And my inner monologue started 

“$15k this month… imagine what we’ll be doing by June!”

Are you actually enjoying this?

“If we onboard that client by next month, my take-home from the agency alone will be-”

Have you noticed how miserable you are?

“I love how creative I get to be while… sending Slack messages to clients…”

Fancy a cup of tea?

“NO, I DON’T HAVE TIME.”

I started wearing my stress like a badge of honour. I started associating the idea of “being busy” with my personality.

“George is the sort of guy who doesn’t have time for trivial things like replying to friends or going for a lunchtime coffee on a sunny day. He runs an agency. He’s too busy.”

For most people, Fridays are one of the best days of the week. The weekend is on the horizon. There’s a happy buzz in the air. 

But me? I hated Fridays.

Friday was deadline day. The day when anything outstanding had to be reviewed, edited, and finalised by me. I had a great team but thanks to my own inefficiencies, there was always a HUGE pile of work on Fridays. Week in, week out, no matter what I did,  it was always the same.

Next week, it’ll be better.

But it never was.

The Kettle Boils Over

Until, one Friday morning, Something clicked.

I’d set an early alarm to try and get some work done before Julia woke up.

When she came down for breakfast, I’d been sitting at the kitchen table for a couple of hours.

We hugged good morning, and she put the kettle on.

As it started to boil, I remember glancing out the window.

Now, we live in a little English town that looks like something straight out of Dickens. On a sunny day, it’s breathtaking. We’d moved out of London dreaming of a calmer version of our lives; of spending time in the town square even on “work days”, sipping tea and reminiscing about how stressful things used to be in the city.

As I sat there, I heard a familiar hum rising from the cobbles below as the first few locals took their seats and ordered their cooked breakfasts. I noticed the sun glinting off the beautiful independent shops and art galleries we were lucky enough to be surrounded by. I saw the trees waving calmly in the light breeze that now drifted through our kitchen, carrying with it the smell of fresh coffee.

And, as the kettle boiled, I brought my attention back inside and looked up at Julia.

Then I looked down at my laptop.

And I thought to myself:

“What the fuck am I doing?”

Letting Go

The moment I imagined my life without the agency, I noticed an immediate and powerful internal shift. Everything felt aligned. 

I would no longer be a “manager”; I could be a “creative”.

I would no longer be bound by constant deadlines; I could prioritise exercise, diet and proper sleep.

I would no longer feel “icky” about paying writers half of what we were actually charging clients; I could help them find writing gigs that paid better than mine.

In fact, there were a dozen ways that being an “agency owner” was completely at odds with my personality. No surprise, then, that reimagining myself as something else was liberating.

2 days later, I’d told all the writers that I was shutting the agency down and, thankfully, they undersood. I made a video about the whole thing and posted it on Twitter and YouTube. It got the biggest response of anything I’ve ever made. There were hundreds of people emailing, commenting, DMing (including Paul!)

Many resonated with  my experiences, explaining the wrong turns they’d made in their past, or the fear that they were about to make one. But, what shocked me most were the responses I got from other agency owners. Multiple people messaged me saying words to the effect of:

“Yes, I also hate running my agency and I wish I could stop.”

I’m sharing my story here for them. But there was pushback, too. Some have suggested that I didn’t stick at it long enough and that with perseverance, we get better, things become easier, and we start to have fun. “It’s like going to the gym!” they remark.

But this sort of black-and-white approach, one of embracing hard things just to do hard things, misses the point of life. 

It mistakes “do hard things at all cost” with “do hard things that are aligned with what you actually care about.” 

When money is in the picture, it is easy to mistake the former for the latter.

Looking Inward

It turns out that I hadn’t really internalised the lessons I’d learned about “money” and “happiness” over the years. Half my brain knew more cash wouldn’t make me happier. The other half wanted to prove it wrong. Perhaps I was the exception, I thought.  I had to learn the hard way that wasn’t true. Even though it was only three months, in those months I felt completely out of control. Every decision was reactive.

Even when I could feel my behaviour affecting those around me, I still felt self-righteous - like everyone had to bend to my schedule because it was more important than theirs.

The instant I became self-aware, walking away from the agency was easy. I mean, who aspires to be like that?

But going through all of this, founding and closing my agency, was the best thing that ever happened to me as a solopreneur.

Why?

It  forced me to look inward.

And I realised that, until now, every single year had been about “more”. Money was the metric. Create more services, do more projects, make more money.

But when more = miserable, what’s the point?

So I’m embracing a new goal. Instead of “more,” I’m embracing the idea of “better.”

I want to create a better experience inside my community; to make my course better; to create email funnels that function better.

That’s enough.

Because if I want  better work-life balance; to be better for my friends and family; to wake up with a better mindset, that path wasn’t going to work for me.

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George Blackman is a self-employed creator focused on scriptwriting. He said that he tends to cover things like Youtube strategy in his newsletter but also likes to swerve into “pathless” topics. You can also follow him on X or his podcast on YouTube which covers the “behind the scenes” of top creators.