From a Small Town in Ireland to Half a Million in 30 Days
What happens when you stop asking permission and start taking shots
I've been writing this thing for a while now and somehow I've got nearly 100 people reading it.
That's wild when you think about it.
I started at zero.
Like everyone does.
And now there's a hundred humans who decided my thoughts are worth their time.
So I figured I should probably tell you who the hell I am and how I ended up here.
I'm Lucas.
I grew up in a small town in Kildare, Ireland.
The kind of place where most people's stories are pretty much written before they finish school.
You get a job, maybe at the local factory or office.
You settle down.
Go to the pub on Friday.
You live a predictable life.
Nothing wrong with that.
But it wasn't what I wanted.
The internet changed everything for me.
It gave me a shot at doing things that nobody I knew was doing.
I'm not saying I'm more successful than everyone I grew up with.
Many of them are doing incredibly well.
I'm saying I've had a weird, varied life that has taken me places I never expected.
When I Wanted to Be Famous
When I was younger, I wanted to be a movie star.
Dead serious about it.
My mother was an actress (and graphic designer and psychologist, we like to switch things up in our family.)
She acted on stage as well as a few movies and TV shows.
So I grew up watching her do this thing that seemed impossible but was actually happening right in front of me.
When I was 16 or 17, I got my chance.
I ended up in a BBC show called Ripper Street with Matthew Macfadyen, who you probably know as Tom Wambsgans from Succession.
I was also in a film with Andy Serkis, the guy who played Gollum in Lord of the Rings and voiced like 132 different characters across those films.
Then I got offered a recurring role on Penny Dreadful.
If you haven't seen it, it was this dark Victorian horror show on Showtime with Josh Hartnett and Eva Green.
Gothic horror, supernatural shit, really well done.
Also fit my vibe perfectly at the time, I was a vocalist in a Deathcore band and dressed like this on the daily:
But I turned the role down.
Why?
Because I was doing my final exams and I thought school mattered more.
Plot twist: I skipped those exams entirely anyway.
That's probably one of the biggest missed opportunities of my life.
I could've been on a show that ran for three seasons and built an actual acting career.
Instead I was 17 and stupid and thought playing it safe was the smart move.
Of course, all the success I’ve had since was from taking massive risks.
If only I knew earlier.
Five Articles a Day for Six Months
I went to college to study journalism.
I liked writing.
I was passionate about it in that intense way you can only be when you're young and haven't been beaten down by reality yet.
Within a year of starting college, I already had a full-time job as a journalist.
I didn't wait around for someone to hand me an opportunity.
I got the attention of a popular journalist figure in the UK by replying to all his tweets.
Luckily, he thought I was funny.
He gave me an internship.
That summer, I started the internship.
I wrote five articles a day.
Every single day.
For six months straight.
This was before AI was really available to most people, so I was just grinding it out by hand.
Five pieces of content, every day, no exceptions.
Eventually that turned into a full-time gig as a tech journalist.
I think I was about 20 or 21 years old.
I got to do some cool stuff.
I wrote a story that caused Google to shut down work for two days.
I was interviewing people in San Francisco and Silicon Valley about major tech launches.
I visited the White House and reported on things most people my age weren't anywhere near.
But after a while, I realized my income was capped.
I was making somewhere between 50k and 65k a year.
Which is solid.
But I wanted more.
And the way you make more money in journalism is by becoming a media figure.
You go on TV, you start controversies, you become the story.
I had absolutely zero interest in that.
The Pivot
So I started ghostwriting.
I wrote two books for other people and made some money doing that.
Then I discovered online copywriting.
I bought a guide called Freelance Basics from Charles Miller on Twitter called the Freelancer's Playbook.
It was like 75 pages covering the basics:
Making a landing page
Sending cold emails
Doing sales calls
Signing clients.
Basic stuff, but it was everything I needed.
After reading it, I cold DMed a guy named Jay Campbell.
He was a big fitness influencer on Twitter at the time.
I offered to redesign one of his landing pages.
He asked me why he'd change a page that was already converting at 9%.
My answer? "I don't know, it might be cool."
I think he took pity on me. But he gave me my first paid gig outside of journalism.
I did that project, it went well, and then he basically hired me to do whatever he needed.
Webinar slides
Landing pages
SEO work
I was the utility player on his team.
A few months later, I was scrolling Twitter and saw a carousel ad.
It was screenshots of a wins channel where people were posting all their results.
The program was called Client Ascension.
I looked at those wins and thought, if they can do it, why can't I?
I booked a sales call and told the sales guy:
"Listen, I'm going to join. Just tell me how much it is."
Two weeks later I was in the program.
What Happens When You Actually Do the Work
I went to every single class.
I listened to everything.
I took notes on everything.
I implemented everything they told me to do, exactly as they said to do it.
Within three months, I hit 25k in a month with my agency.
I was making landing pages and VSLs for clients.
Then they offered me a role as a coach inside Client Ascension.
They had no one teaching landing pages, and I'd been doing it successfully for clients.
So I became the landing page coach.
I always joke that I was their lowest lifetime value student ever because within a few months they went from me paying them to them paying me.
About a year later, they asked me to be the head expert coach and manage all the other coaches in the program.
My friend Andy, who I'd suggested for a student success coach role, became the head student success coach at the same time.
We were both doing really well.
Here’s me, Andy, and my (now) co-founder Andre at our first London event, smoking cigars.
Around that time, I started another agency with my friend Stephen.
We called it INOVATIV.
It was an e-commerce, email, and CRO agency.
That went pretty well for about six months.
Then I got an opportunity to work with my friend Matthew Larsen.
I left the agency to help him with his program and his affiliate business.
I learned a hell of a lot doing that.
Matthew's one of those people who just gets how to build systems and scale things.
I’ve watched him work in person and think he might be an actual genius.
This is us on a boat in Tampa.
Shortly after working with Matt, the founders of Client Ascension told me they were thinking about launching a new offer.
They asked what I thought about it.
Funny thing was, I'd already been working on something similar.
I'd started building something called the AI Agency Academy.
The idea was teaching people how to build, grow, and scale an agency to a sellable asset where most of the work was fulfilled by AI.
That concept became the foundation of the AI Assisted Agency.
They offered me a role as a partner and co-founder.
I took it.
I spent the next three months with my head down, grinding.
Building out all the content.
Developing all the tools.
Creating all the systems.
We launched.
First month: over $530,000.
What I'm Doing Now
Right now, I spend my days managing the AI Assisted Agency program.
Creating new content.
Developing AI tools and systems.
Making sure people get results.
And soon we'll be launching another business related to AIAA.
I'll be the CEO of that one.
Looking back, none of this was planned.
I didn't have a five-year roadmap.
I didn't know what I was doing most of the time.
I just kept taking shots when opportunities showed up.
I passed on Penny Dreadful because I thought I was supposed to play it safe.
That taught me that safety is often just another word for regret.
I wrote five articles a day for six months because someone gave me a chance and I wasn't going to waste it.
That taught me that volume builds skill faster than anything else.
I cold DM’ed Jay Campbell with a pitch that made no sense and he still gave me a shot.
That taught me that people remember boldness more than they remember perfect pitches.
I joined Client Ascension and did exactly what they told me to do, and it worked.
That taught me that sometimes the fastest path forward is just shutting up and following instructions from people who've already done it.
Now I'm building AI tools and systems that help people do in months what used to take years.
And I get to do it from the same small town in Ireland where I grew up thinking my options were limited.
The internet gave me that.
Taking shots gave me that.
Not waiting for permission gave me that.
So that's who I am.
That's how I got here.
I’ve built a life I truly love.
Surrounded by amazing people who love me.
Like my beautiful fiancée who I proposed to atop a mountaintop in Switzerland this year.
And the friends who I now consider my brothers for life.
I have wild opportunities presented to me every day.
I learned a lot about how to repeat similar results in my life.
And if you're reading this, you're part of the next chapter.
I want to share what I’ve learned with all of you.
I want you to feel the same sense of contentment I feel every day.
While doing things that help other people.
So if you want to lead an interesting life that you love waking up to.
And you want others to do the same.
Share the newsletter.
My goal is to help as many people are possible and take them along the rest of this journey.
And if you’re reading this, I want to help you.
I want to drive home that you’re a few systems and calculated risks away from the life that you want.
So let’s build them together.
Thanks for being here.
Legend!