Necessity is the mother of invention. In our case, it didn't lead to invention, but to a $20k MRR business built entirely through AI-generated content.

Here's how we went from empty savings to a thriving two-person startup in less than 3 years.

In 2022, our savings were almost empty. We were ashamed that we would have to ask our families money for basic sustenance. But we had been experimenting with GenAI tools for text-based and visual content. (This was just after ChatGPT 3.5 was announced.)

Then on September 3, 2022, Sachin posted his experiment and its results on LinkedIn. The post took off and sowed the seeds for our two-person startup that generates over $20k MRR.

​https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6971748026335850496/​

Along the way, we have learned timeless lessons on brand-building. Here are five of them:

1. First, Do It Manually
2. Leads Trump Likes Every Time
3. Keep Your Ear Close to the Ground
4. Your Personal Brand Is Your Greatest Asset
5. Visual Content Must Be the Center of Your Strategy

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Note: Our cohort on scaling your business to $10k MRR and beyond using AI visuals starts soon. Use this link to get a $100 discount on it.

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Here are the above lessons in more detail.

1. First, Do It Manually

GenAI is not magic—it’s a magnifier.

As Bill Gates says, automation magnifies the efficiency of efficient business and the inefficiency of inefficient ones. This offers insight into why many businesses struggle to generate quality AI content. They are not efficient enough to take advantage of automation.

Efficiency comes when you know what works, what doesn’t, and why. This is what Sachin dove into during his early experiments with GenAI. He spent time figuring out the basics of creating content. Once he got the hang of it, deploying AI became much easier.

AI can put your content engine on autopilot only when you know what you want.

2. Leads Trump Likes Every Time

Likes and reach are metrics that all businesses and brands value.

There is no denying they matter. But what would you prefer: 1,000 likes and one unqualified lead? Or 200 likes and four qualified leads? Likes don’t always convert into leads. This means you don’t need to go viral or get 100,000 followers to make money.

What you need is a quality product that fulfills a pressing need, educational content that resonates with your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), and a system to repurpose the content that works rather than having to reinvent the wheel all the time.

Speak to your audience’s needs directly if you want to generate quality leads.

3. Keep Your Ear Close to the Ground

Another benefit of engaging your ICP is that it subtly tells you what it wants.

When we became consistent with posting content, our ICP was creatives and founders who wanted to generate quick, high-quality AI images. The more we posted in this niche, the more our audience asked questions, reached out with proposals, and more.

Meanwhile, Sachin noticed that most questions were about how to get consistency in images. The result was our first MVP which has been used over 700,000 times and sowed the seeds for Consistent Character, our tool that generates over $20k MRR. More revenue comes from workshops and training—which opened up through our LinkedIn connections.

Listen to your audience to find hidden gems that can make your startup successful.

4. Your Personal Brand Is Your Greatest Asset

People want to engage with other people, not with faceless brands.

Our initial content-posting system went like this: Sachin would post content on X and LinkedIn from his own handle while Diana posted from Neolemon’s handle. Sachin would only educate, Diana would try to convince the audience to buy.

As you can expect, the traction on Sachin’s posts was substantially more than it was for those from the company page. This made us realize that it’s a mistake to neglect your personal brand and try to build a company brand instead. It should be the other way around.

Build your brand as a thought leader by educating, not selling to, your audience.

5. Visual Content Must Be the Center of Your Strategy

Visual content gets 94 percent more views than text-only content.

This means visuals can no longer be an afterthought in your content strategy; they have to be the very fulcrum. You cannot write a post and then spend 3-5 minutes searching for an image to add for the sake of it. Stock photos and generic AI images are out.

Content with visual hooks are in. (Think strong declarative statements, controversial opinions, or thought-provoking statements). Spend a disproportionate amount of time generating powerful visuals. Posts with texts and such visuals increase information retention by 65 percent!

Posting content without visuals today is like whispering in a crowded room.

Bringing It All Together

Creating content has been one of our toughest challenges. But it has also been incredibly rewarding.

Neither of us are copywriters nor is English our first language. It would have been easier to avoid posting content (and frankly, we chose to do that at first). But without content, we would probably have failed as entrepreneurs and ended up taking corporate jobs.

Being consistent with content helps you discover your niche, find amazing opportunities, and build a profitable business. Don’t put it on the back burner.

What is one challenge you’re grappling with when it comes to creating content? Hit reply to let us know, and we will try our best to help you out.

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Sachin and Diana.

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P.S. A limited-period discount for our cohort on generating AI visuals and scaling your business to $20k MRR. Use this link to get $100 off.

P.P.S. Follow Sachin on LinkedIn​ for the latest AI updates and practical applications in creative process.

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