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00:00 The Market Votes With Its Dollars 02:05 Every Digital Product Follows the Same Arc 03:00 What a Form Factor Actually Is 03:45 Form Factor One: Information Products and the Key Person Problem 05:30 Form Factor Two: Software Requires a Team 06:30 Form Factor Three: Actors 08:45 Acting Is Not Producing 10:15 From Four Hours to Fifteen Minutes 13:30 When Client Agents Become Sales Mechanisms 17:15 Skip the Course, Skip the Login, Go Straight to Value 18:00 What Agencies Charge $5,000 a Month For 21:00 What If Speed to Value Is the Variable? 23:00 When You're Stuck in Delivery, You Stop Building 24:30 Three Steps to Build Your First Actor
Do Good Work is not a label but a way of living.
It is the constant and diligent effort to achieve a new level of excellence in one’s own life.
It is the hidden inner beauty behind the struggle to achieve excellence.
It is not perfect but imperfect.
It is the effort, discipline and focus that often goes unnoticed.
The goal of this podcast is to highlight that drive.
The guests I have on this show emulate this drive in their own special way. You’ll be able to apply new ideas into your own life by learning from them.
We will also have 1on1 episodes with me where we’ll dive into my own experiences with entrepreneurship and leadership.
Every episode is designed to provide you with ideas that you can apply and grow in excellence in all areas of your life, business and career.
Do Good Work,
Raul
So I grew up in direct response
advertising, not brand advertising, direct
response in digital marketing where every
dollar you spend has to produce a return.
'cause I was spending on behalf
of bootstrapped businesses with
the owner's actual budget, and
there was no room for guessing.
If an ad didn't convert, we
didn't get to blame the algorithm.
You had to look at the offer and
figure out why the market said no.
And this drilled the following idea
in my mind the market votes with its
dollars or it doesn't vote at all.
And I spent years in that arena.
That's where I cut my teeth.
I've been able, thankfully, to manage over
25 million in direct response ad spend
where every dollar had to make a return.
I've also been able to help lead and build
revenue teams to produce 15 million in
a single year, and that landed us on the
Inc 5,000 fastest growing companies list.
And, training thousands of entrepreneurs
and workshops, programs and live events.
And along the way, I also was part of the.
Agencies that help some of the largest
info product businesses online grow.
And I saw, and I'm only sharing this
frankly 'cause I wanna share the read the
digital assets or the digital products
that I've come across in my journeys.
I saw the arc of all the digital
products online from eBooks to become
courses to become coaching programs
to become cohorts in communities and
communities that turn into live events.
And that's on the information play only.
But when you actually go from building
an information as like just a thing that
you have as a cool thing to an asset is.
Taking that information and transforming
how you facilitate, deliver and package
value from that information into a
community or a group of people around
that center of gravity, the information.
And I've also built the service businesses
like the agencies themselves that
help service these kinds of clients.
Scaling delivery, managing remote
teams across 12 time zones, and
serving clients that have developed
an over multi-year relationships.
So having seen both sides of this,
the companies that sell expertise.
And helping companies build and
operationalize their systems to
deliver that expertise at scale.
I've been thinking about the following.
Okay.
Every digital product that we
have, like right now, it follows
a similar arc, like a story arc.
You start with your offering
and the market tells you whether
that offering is valuable or not.
Again, it's voting with its
dollars, and if it's valued, then
you go ahead and build more of it.
You generate more consistent recur
exchange, valuable that we call revenue.
Through that asset or
whatever you've built.
And that's when it
becomes an actual asset.
That's just a thing that you have
not just an offer where it can
actually produce value at scale.
And with that thinking, I used to
think that there's only two types of
form factors for digital products.
But now with ai, I think
there's a third and.
The third, I don't think most people are
thinking about or having fully worked
out yet, because a lot of this is new.
But I also don't see the conversations
like with my private conversations that
I have on calls or behind the scenes
conversations that I have on podcasts.
we're not thinking about this.
And I hope to kind of elaborate
on what the third form factor is.
But before I do.
I need to define my terms.
What is a form factor?
A form factor, or a digital form factor
is how a digital product takes shape.
It's not just what it does, and
it's how it's delivering value.
So how you capture that value, how
you deliver, package it, and price it
and give it to the market, as well as
how that value or that product or that
digital form factor evolves over time.
For example, like an ebook in
a coaching program, they might
have the same information.
They actually might have the
same knowledge, but they're
delivered differently.
They're priced differently.
There's perception differently,
and people buy different ones
depending on who they are.
The way that value is delivered and the
way that you evolve as a person,, as
well, as a product evolves over time is
different because a book usually becomes
either a coaching or it can be one-on-one,
or it can be groups and a group coaching
firm usually can become cohorts and or
live events, so they evolve differently.
They package almost the same thing
together, but it's a different modality.
And with ai, I think there's
now three form factors.
These are not like stages or revolutions.
These are just three distinct
form factors that have their
own set of rules or properties.
They may not be principles
they're at least properties,
and we're gonna call them rules.
So form factor number one, we've
just been talking about that.
Info products, information products,
and this is where I grew up.
You have eBooks, you have
courses, templates, you have
playbooks, coaching programs,
cohorts, communities, live events.
And the original information
stays at the core.
So like you can only build an ecosystem
or a little multi like a little
universe around this information.
If the main thesis stay interconnected
and they're within their own like mini
universe and the evolution is nonlinear.
It can be natural, it can be
crisscross, it can be multiple ways,
but it could be an ebook that becomes
a course or a course that becomes
coaching that becomes a cohort.
Communities, lab events, et cetera.
So there's different ways to evolve.
You can go straight from
book to coaching to cohort.
You can go straight from coaching cohorts
to communities and then write a book.
There's multiple ways that this evolves.
But the requirements or the
principles or the rules around this
is that you're the one driving it.
Like the information isn't valuable
without someone in front of it, and
your presence literally is the product.
So for the information to evolve,
it does require you to help
that information to evolve.
So you go from being an author to
a coach, to a community leader, and
every step requires more of you.
Now, I know when you build infra products
and you scale that, 'cause we've, I
mean, I've seen it done it firsthand.
You can scale like economies of scale for
you to have a higher effectively Hourly
rate, but it's still limited to you.
You're the single like most important,
like key man or key person risk.
So these are not drawbacks.
I'm not just saying like there's
pros and cons to each of these.
These are just principles to be aware of.
Now the second form factor
is software products.
These are software as a service.
These are tools.
These are.
Platforms and they evolve
into more software.
And sometimes software does
leverage the info play.
I know we did that.
We did info.
And then software you have
training library certifications.
You can build communities
around the product.
And the evolution comes
through new features.
New integrations potentially launch
into new markets, and you do need
an engineering team, or at least a
staff or maybe even agents to, to help
deploy it and grow that evolution.
However, the requirement of the.
Principle stays the same.
Software requires a team engineers
support infrastructure capital to
grow the software into new software.
Now, what I'm gonna describe as
form factor number three might
sound like software, but it's not.
But form factor number three is
actors, and this is the new one.
An actor is an.
Agent or a set of multi-agent as an
orchestration that acts on your behalf.
So it acts, it performs it.
A, it executes on your behalf.
It takes an input, it makes a decision,
it produces an output and moves
things forward without requiring
your ongoing presence at every step.
Now, this sounds like software, but it's
not because a tool, it's not something,
it's not something you need to log into.
It's not like a tool that
you need to log into it.
It's also not information.
It's not a course or something
you have to go through.
In order to know what to do, and then
you execute based on that information.
And it's not like a login that
a client has to log into and
then learn how to figure it out.
it's an actor performs software
still requires you to learn.
And there's even some softwares that
I personally use that have their own
a library of academies or learning
centers, or even their universities,
like their own acade, like their own
universities, to go through all this
training to know how to use the tool.
An actor skips that and
it produces the outcome.
So instead of, Hey, I bought a tool,
I gotta learn how to use the tool.
It's, Hey, this thing is performing
this activity for me, and I'm
getting the outcome and I'm
reaping the fruits of that outcome.
So an actor.
Is an AI agent, but it
produces an outcome.
You don't log in, you don't need to
learn, you don't need to like operate
or connect it or do all these things.
Maybe sometimes you do in the setup, but
the and output is it operates for you.
So again, to distinguish this from
information, remember information
requires you to evolve it.
Software requires the team to evolve
the software into more software.
But the cool thing about an
actor, the third form factor is
that it requires your expertise.
To evolve, which is the coolest thing.
It doesn't need your ongoing presence
for it to execute on delivery, but
you can evolve it through your mind,
through your expertise from you knowing
what it needs to do and improving that.
So you would improve the orchestration.
And the orchestration
handles the delivery.
Now, I wanna make a distinction
because an AI agent can be an actor,
but not all actors are producers.
So for example.
You can build an AI agent, like right now,
like you can build it over the weekend.
It can take you a couple hours.
You can do it for free.
You can do it at a cost, like
it's effectively a very low cost,
but an actor that generates.
So again this agent's
acting on your behalf.
If it just does something for you,
great, but when it starts creating
value, that is measured through
revenue, it's a producer, and I wanna
make that distinction very clear.
AI agent can be like, acts on your behalf.
But it doesn't become a producer until
it creates actual net new value and you
capture that value in form of revenue.
It produces value and potentially
revenue on your behalf.
And again, you can build an agent in
a couple of hours and that's cool.
And you might even have something
that could be like automated, that's
great, but it doesn't, if it doesn't
generate real market value it's
honestly just a cool, shiny, cool thing.
The goal is to create net new value
that the market will pay for, which
is why I shared the experience about
ads and offers that the market has to
vote with its dollars that it cares
for, and that it is actually valuable.
Now, the interesting part here is
that an actor, again, it becomes a
producer, but it needs your methodology
to be baked into how it works.
It needs your accumulated
knowledge, driving its decisions,
and your positioning, like how
you're currently positioned in the
marketplace to determine whether.
The output is something that the market
will pay for, or if it's just gonna
be like a random agent that automates
generic slop and it's not a producer.
So your positioning, your community
knowledge, your methodology
does dictate the value that your
actor produces on your behalf.
Again, AI, agent producing,
acting on your behalf.
If it's just taking actions, it's cool.
That's okay.
But if it's actually generating and
creating new market value on your
behalf without you having to be present,
that's when it becomes a producer.
So here, your expertise is still
the asset, the actor, the AI agent
acting on your behalf is how you
deploy your expertise at scale.
So let me share some examples and I'll be
transparent with what I'm currently doing.
Here's one simple example I have.
More, but they're not ready for public.
But here's one simple example is
that content scheduling for me used
to take around four hours a month.
Sometimes that could be four hours a
week, and I don't like to admit that,
but yeah, it can take four hours a week.
On average, it might take
around four hours a month.
That's getting all the things pieced
together, making sure that the copy is
good, making sure that the images are
good, that the videos are on point, that
we schedule them even with an assistant
to have them upload it, schedule it,
use my writing, make sure that I wrote
everything, make sure that it's in
alignment, that the dates are good.
It still takes about four hours.
And this is work that's necessary.
'cause yes, content does drive revenue
for me, but it's easy to fall behind.
It's not something that's, ooh, it's aha.
I'm looking forward to scheduling
all these things together.
So even with an assistant in the
scheduling, it's still needed more of me.
So I built a solution.
I created an internal series
of agents, not just one agent.
I created a master agent, and then from
there micro agents that's that feed it
up to handle the entire content pipeline.
So it extracts.
Insights from all of my digital
interactions, drafts content
ideas, and when it's ready,
it formats it for my review.
And if for longer pieces or bigger pieces
or important pieces, it interviews me.
I work with it.
I wrestle ideas with it so that anything
that I produce is higher quality.
And the cool part is once we have
assets that we can deploy or content
pieces that we can deploy, I don't
have to log into a scheduler.
I don't have to upload anything.
Honestly, it does it all for me
because I've trained it on what
to do, how it needs to do what
I want to, has my standards.
And the awesome thing.
It executes at the standards
every single time in me because
I might some days be tired, may
maybe be unavailable or be busy.
I may not execute at 110%
all the time this thing does.
So I used to take four hours.
Now it takes about 15 minutes.
It's.
Crazy.
15 minutes is a long time,
but still it takes 15 minutes.
I do like to review, do like to make
sure everything is in alignment and it's
able to produce higher quality stuff.
Not the copy, but not the ideas,
but some of the images, some of
the cuts that we make on my videos,
like that's the cool part, but
that's not the most important part.
The most important part
is now I have free time.
I have free time.
That helps me focus more on creating
more of these, like my hope is
that what I'm producing right now.
Is higher value and more important for you
and will continue to compound over time.
Because my goal is to create the best
quality content that I personally
can create, given my resources
and given the limitations of time.
So instead of spending hours with
the logistics and figuring out the
schedule and the other, I hate all that.
Even the assistant, like having
an assistant help me do this.
And I now have an, a series of actors,
agents execute for me and they're
producing, like this is actual, like
they're able to execute my level,
my standard, and they're learning.
Every time I interact with it, it learns.
And interacts and it evolves with me.
So every time that we do a new
syndication or a content syndication,
it learns from the previous ones.
So the next V one draft of how
we're gonna schedule everything,
it's already better than last time.
And I really like that.
And this is where the actor, the AI
agent that's acting on my behalf,
it's actually now becoming a producer.
Because again, the content that I create,
yes, content does drive revenue for me.
But the cool thing is I don't
have to create net new time or
find additional time to do this.
It's packaging everything that I'm
already doing and helping me execute
in the flow, in the execution.
So that's really important.
I'll give you another example.
So a few of my clients in
my portfolio of clients.
Have this baked into their
initial offering where their
initial offering is a product.
It's a, is an it.
They're, they're getting support from
their agents to produce a product, but
that product itself can become a sales
asset and not just like a simple oh, cool,
here's a front like entry level offer.
The entry level offer is two to three
x more valuable than the going rate.
What other people can pay for
right now, and this is because I
wanna overindex not only with my
work, but my clients, I push them.
We wanna overindex on value.
So if someone buys from my client
their initial offering, I can
guarantee you they're gonna be getting
about two to three higher value at
not a two to three higher price.
For what other people would charge
because they're baking their methodology
into an actor that produces an asset for
them, then that asset itself becomes a
sales mechanism for them to go deeper.
So when a prospect engages with
a product or a new client engages
with the entry-level product, even
though we're saying entry level,
that doesn't mean it's low tier.
It's just the first initial touch.
the end client is going
to get immediate value.
That's my goal.
How do we over index and
overdeliver on value?
And when they interact with my
clients The end client is gonna
get real insights, real progress
towards their goals and expertise.
That naturally tees up the
next conversation of how they
can go deeper with my clients,
and that's the beauty of it.
And I talked about this when I
wrote and did the podcast on.
The post scope era is that we need
to earn the right, when you're
working with clients to go deeper.
You can't just sell the back end of the
highest ticket thing in the beginning.
Maybe sometimes you can't, but
you need to earn the right, it's
a relationship, it's a dance.
You wanna help your end clients go
further and go like immense value.
And my hope here is that with
these agencies, actors that
become producers, you can do that.
And when you leverage these things.
The actor itself, the AI agent that
acts on your behalf is producing,
and it over delivers on value.
And the beauty, it's helping my clients
get out of pure execution, like getting
them out of the weeds as part of it.
And that same asset that this agent
produces can become a sales mechanism
because the value speaks for itself.
But it naturally.
Forces the relationship to deepen
and go further if it makes sense.
Again, we're not pushing anyone
to do any action that they don't
want, but we're enabling over.
If we over index on value, then
the relationship is naturally
there to share with the end client.
Here's how we can help you
even further, and then it tees
up the conversation to have.
To go further in the relationship, either
with new scope, recurring scope, or a
bigger ticket offering on the backend.
So just to contrast with how this
is, again, different from the other
models and the information model.
The course had to sells
you on a transformation.
If you buy this book, if you buy this
thing, you'll be better with your
health, better with your finances,
better with your relationships, but
someone has to consume it and someone
has to act on that information.
That gap is like large.
And most people, if you know, I think
it's like a three or 5% like completion
rates of any information, like most
people don't make it across that gap.
Even in software, like how many people
actually fully utilize all the softwares.
If you log in, if you look at your
p and l right now and you look at
all the softwares that you're paying
for, are you fully maximizing every
ounce, every squeeze, every juice of
all the softwares that you're using?
Probably not because you may not
even not even know what you're
using it to its full potential and.
The nice thing is with actors
with a third form factor, you
can just go straight to value.
You can go straight to a end outcome.
And again, to recap,
what makes all of this work is
your methodology, your unique
process of delivering results for
clients is baked into how these
actors, these producers function.
What it surfaces in the next step.
And I talked about this in the net new
value quadrant and the services stack
that if you focus on and outcomes and
value you'd be selling with your clients,
you'd be selling at the top of the stack.
Belief in transformation
you wouldn't be selling.
Here are the hands, here's the
things that we can do for you.
Let me give you one final example
from my own practice just to,
to hopefully take this home.
Part of some of the go-to-market work
that I do for clients includes like
full research for their leads, signal
detection, business case development,
and actual custom curated lead generation
strategy and prospects to reach out
to and why to reach out to them.
Growth strategy roadmap, like
that's just part of what I do.
And to do that from scratch, it
takes about four to six weeks.
That's cool.
It's normal.
Not because I'm inefficient,
it's just because that's, I mean,
when you do this kind of work,
it naturally takes that long.
Now with actors that produce and
outcomes with me, alongside with me,
yes, I can do some of that work a
little faster, but that's not the point.
The key thing is now I'm able
to help clients go miles further
because I'm able to produce an
outcomes and deliver on value.
I'm not outsourced, and I know there's
gonna be a lot of critics thinking about
this, but I'm not outsourcing my thinking.
I was on a call with a gentleman
and he's building like large data
centers, and I tend mentioned what's
possible and what we're doing, and
he's saying, well, it sounds you
know, some of those strategies might
just not be smart enough or whatever.
If you can have an actor produce and help
you with you, then it may not be there.
that's not the point.
I'm not outsourcing my thinking.
I'm not stopping thinking.
That's like cheap level zero,
like neg negative thinking.
So what I'm able to produce now,
because we're focusing on end outcomes
and value, I'm able to produce
what literally other agencies are
charging at least 5,000 a month to do.
And I know this because I've
helped build those other agencies.
Alright.
The thinking that I want to capture here
is that we are able to now capture value,
deliver that faster, and focus on the
highest levels of the relationship with
the client for the end transformation
or the future that they wanna build.
And none of this would've been
possible without the third form factor.
These actors, these AI agents
help produce alongside with me.
The strategy is still mine.
The focus and the positioning and
the judgment and how I like, have
nuance of what I review with clients,
what I build with clients, the
offers that I help clients with.
That's still me, but I'm now able to
take that and go further and focus on
end outcomes and over index on value
because I have actors that are now
becoming producers for me, alongside with
me, and they handle the research, the
assembly, and documentation, which frees
my capacity to focus on not only things
that I couldn't before but focus on.
More client relationships, having clients
be happier, more value for the client,
increasing my client lifetime value,
increasing revenue, increasing impact,
and I'm doing the work that actually
still requires me and the agents,
these actors that are producers are
producing activity that supports it.
And just to reframe, efficiency is doing
the same thing faster, which is cute.
But a producer, an AI agent that
acts on your behalf and produces real
market value, creates value that you
couldn't do in the past or before.
So let me give you a contrasting.
Another contrasting example here.
So a friend of mine built a digital
agency and it was kind of cool.
His story's amazing over
like the last 10 years.
He started like a music ministry and
then now like he's building the agency.
He's built the agency and he's exiting
with Earnouts, which is freaking amazing.
That's remarkable.
He built a business that
works on his behalf.
It generates real market value.
it compounded the value over time,
where now he could sell it as an
asset and that asset's gonna help
him grow, and it's gonna help him and
his community and his family thrive.
That's amazing.
I keep coming back to his story
'cause it's just amazing to see
him grow and do what he's doing.
Like I love that.
But I'm sharing that example 'cause
that's, I just described pretty much
like almost any business, right?
A business is supposed to execute on your
behalf and produce value on your behalf.
Yeah.
Like I get it.
However, this is the question
that I've been wrestling with.
What if the speed to value creation
is fundamentally different?
What if it's not by cutting corner?
We're never gonna cut corners.
We're never gonna be cheap.
We're never gonna skip your expertise.
But what if the speed to value creation is
actually choosing the right form factor?
Think about that, because if we're
leveraging your expertise is the asset.
And when you develop actors that deploy
that on your behalf and create real
market value and they become producers
and you're able to do that at scale.
You could potentially model what other
businesses have done through building
employees, infrastructure, different
locations, but you're able to do and
encode that with orchestration over
months and maybe weeks versus years.
And that's what I don't think a
lot of people are in our industry
that fully internalized this yet.
Because right now a lot of
people are thinking in prompts.
They're thinking that AI's productivity,
they're thinking about a way to do
the same thing faster in efficiency.
That's real and that's cool, but
that's not the third form factor.
The third form factor fundamentally
shapes how you package your
expertise and it keeps working for
you whether you're there or not.
And I think that's the
most important thing.
And we already knew this, like
your clients, at least I hope your
clients are paying for the outcomes.
They're not paying for your hours.
So I, I wanna contrast that with that
final story because that's why I think
the power of this third form factor comes
through because you can use the third
form factor again for your own internal
to augment work for more market value.
And I think that is the play.
But eventually you can probably leverage
that so that it's in itself because
it's own different digital product.
Now, why am I sharing all this?
What is my hidden goal?
Like my hidden goal truly
is human flourishing.
So I wanna be honest about this,
like if you're a consultant, agency
owner or a coach, I think you can
leverage this thinking or this
opportunity with the third form factor
to stop being trapped in delivery.
Not because delivery doesn't matter,
but because when you're stuck
in the weeds, you stop building,
you stop innovating, you stop
focusing on creating net new value.
There's a significant difference
between doing the same thing more
efficiently and creating something
genuinely new that didn't exist before.
And that genuinely new thing can help
people go further and create net new
value for yourself, for your clients,
and at the end outcome that your clients.
Produce in the marketplace.
And when you do that, a
paradox actually happens.
You're not working less, you're actually
working more in the work that matters, and
you're focused on improving the producer,
the AI agent that's producing value.
You're focused on deepening
your client relationships.
You're focusing on creating things
that you previously couldn't
do because you were buried in
execution or in the day-to-day.
If an actor, the AI agent that
performs on your behalf, handles the
delivery, you handle the improvement.
And the technology isn't
here to replace you.
It's here to amplify
what you're able to do.
And that's the thing that I believe with
human flourishing, that's the goal that
I have here for you, is about helping
you go further to serve more people at
a higher quality without burning out
at your own capacity in the process.
And I think that's the best application
of technology to help humans go
further than they could before.
So that more people can access your
expertise, your real thinking and
experience, real transformation, and the
end goal is flourishing for everyone.
You win, your clients win.
The impact of your work wins.
Your team wins, their families
win, the community they live
in, win, and so on and so forth.
So if you're sitting on expertise that
can become a producer, you've probably
already felt this gap that I'm mentioning.
You're doing work that the market
values, you're delivering real results.
You're doing amazing work,
but you're burnt out.
You're stuck on time.
There's not enough hours
in the day for you.
Hours or time is truly the ceiling
of what your business can produce.
I think you can close that gap
now, not by buying a tool or
subscribing to some platform.
Here are three things
that I would recommend.
Number one, map out your
methodology clearly enough that
it can drive orchestration.
Pretend you're writing a
manual for someone else.
Pretend you're writing.
Book.
Like really think about this.
And I know even before AI kept telling
people to think about their own thinking
and write down their strategies and
their thoughts, very few people do that.
So I'm really hopeful that right now
you'll map out at least your methodology.
I want you to take that time.
This is probably the most important
thing that you can be doing.
Writing is still a competitive advantage.
Map out your methodology.
Think about your own thinking.
Second is identify what in your
delivery actually requires you.
And what just requires your thinking.
This is different from having staff
or hiring people, but it's akin to
those lines what actually requires you
versus what requires your thinking.
We're not outsourcing your thinking,
we're just gonna build an actor.
So step three is to build an actor
to carry your thinking into the
world while you focus on improving
the actor so it becomes a producer.
And if that's interesting to you, this
is the exact work that I do with clients.
So if you're a consultant, agency
owner or coach with proven expertise,
like you've actually done the thing,
you've done it a hundred times,
handwritten over and over again.
We're not going from
scratch or from zero to one.
You've actually have expertise and
you wanna explore what a third form
factor looks like in your business.
I'd love to have that
conversation with you.
Connect with me here, DM me, message me
any way you can, and we'll go from here.
This is Gerald Hernandez.
Do good work.