I stole from Peep Laja
Because great artists steal
I’ll be honest: the marketing playbook I’m using is one I stole from Peep Laja.
If you don’t know Peep, you should. He’s the CEO and founder of Wynter. He is also the founder of CXL and Speero. A prolific entrepreneur, he initially focused on conversion rate optimization (CXL, Speero) and then audience research.
Peep’s story is incredible. He started blogging in 2011 about CRO.
He once said on a podcast, “[I]blogged like my life depended on it.”
His blog got 300,000 monthly visits, which built his email list to over 100,000 subscribers through his daily 150-250 newsletter signups. And he attracted 100 quality agency leads per month.
Peep’s a machine.
Then, in 2021, to launch and grow is new company, Wynter, he started a virtual monthly mini-conference cadence called Wynter Games.
He recruited 15-20 guest speakers each event. They became huge lead generators for his new business.
Then he launched a twice-yearly in-person event called Spryng. It was an “un-conference.” You arrive, attend keynotes from practitioners, not thought leaders. And you get matched up with 6-8 potential clients or partners hand-picked for you.
His philosophy was:
Personal brand over company brand.
Events as positioning, not just lead capture
Email is the sales platform
Peep was frankly the inspiration to a series of mini-conferences I organized in 2021-2022 to grow my Spanish-language blog, Content Marketing Latam.
And he also inspired my journey into virtual events.
What exactly did I steal?
Everything.
I launched my frist virtual summit in December of last year.
I’m starting to write a daily Substack article like my life depended on it.
I’m organizing a weekly webinar series.
I’m planning to launch a monthly “mini-summit” series.
And…an in-person conference!
I’ll hopefully be holding it in September in Waco. Why Waco? Because it’s a cool, up-and-coming city (halfway between Dallas and Austin).
I want to prove that a one-person enterprise can keep up this machine-like cadence to grow my category and my personal brand, generate leads, and serve as an example to solopreneurs, small businesses, and growing enterprises that have reached a revenue plateau and to grow their pipeline, their brand, AND their category!
Learning in public
A mantra I learned somewhere is: “Learn in public.” And that’s what I’ll be doing on my journey.
You see, I know events are powerful - and an organized multi-layered approach that includes daily emails, small, medium-sized, and large events is like super-fuel. I’m also going deep with Claude Cowork skills and plugins to automate the whole thing.
I’ve also been inspired by Russ Henneberry’s “March Madness” plugin contest which he’s organizing for members of his community at theCLICK. My idea is to productize my own “zone of genius.”
My plan is to:
Carry out and refine my event machine process
Document it step-by-step
Encapsulate this into a skill and create a plugin out of it.
So am I a thief?
I’m stealing from Peep Laja’s playbook, because as Pablo Picasso said, “Good artists copy.. Great artists steal.”
That sounds a bit conceited, but I truly aspire to be a great artist!
And I’m stealing from Darrell Vesterfelt, from Bryan Funk, from Rachel Starr, and from Sheriff Subair.
But to make it my own, I’m adding what I think is the most important differentiator in the AI age: designing your own category while using agentic AI.
Stay tuned. Share your experience. Let me know what you think.
Join me next Tuesday, March 31st, at 12 PM U.S. Central Time for my first weekly webinar.
See you there!