Use paid ads to learn what converts instead of guessing with organic

Dan… we'd been running a UGC program for like a year. I really just like wanted to restart it and put a lot of new energy into it, and this happened within the first like 4 days of like restarting that UGC program. But then that program dies, like you know, it's just like it requires a lot of management. So the question is, is it worth it? For me, it's only worth it if, number one, it's something that I can do relatively long-term and scale hard.

DanI feel like UGC just like doesn't scale that hard. We could talk about like Clueless a little bit here, because you're- It's tough to get signals about what converts and what doesn't. And I think that you should pay to get that data, so I think maybe paid ads is a better approach for that than at least UGC, because you get real data of what's working and what's not, and you can iterate much faster versus having to guess and take random shots to get views,

Danunless you have a really broad product and like you're doing D2C, like Neuro Gum, for example. They have almost in-house affiliates, UGC creators, and they have another like 100,000 on TikTok shop, and they were doing maybe nine-plus figures. But Neuro Gum kind of is for everyone, you know? So they really only just care about views, and maybe paid doesn't work for them as well. So this is why I'm saying like really take this with a grain of salt …

Dan… on your own. Like get the main idea behind why you think their thing worked, and then take it back to your own company and take a bunch of shots and- and keep trying to figure that out. At least that's what I do. Host: Let's say someone's at like five-figure MRR and they're trying to get to six, and they're kind of in this research loop. When you're at that stage, what is the thing that you just- pure execution, you just got to go do that thing?

DanPricing changes, UGC, content, whatever you have energy for and whatever you think you can do. Like there's going to be stuff that you really want to do and that is like feels like a shiny little object, and you're like, "Oh, my god. They just reached 5 million MRR with this one hack." Like, no. It worked for them for a very specific reason that you don't know why, and you can't scale. I'll give you the bumps of what it was for us. We doubled our revenue from pricing changes. We increased revenue 50% by doing ads in a specific way,

Danbut all that stuff came from 80% of stuff that didn't work. And it came together almost like not on purpose. Like I didn't know what would work, and I was just trying, and now I know why it works, and I know how to scale it, and I know like, oh, I know exactly the path to a million MRR. Some people see UGC and they have this anxiety, like, "I really want to do it. It's what's going to bring me from five- to six-figures to seven-figures MRR," but …