It Pays to Write

She grew from 2K to 12K LinkedIn followers in her spare time without quitting her day job. The surprising reason she never wanted to. Katrina Fuhrman is a podcast host and trade show strategist who has spent years building a cross-platform brand alongside a full-time W-2 job. She launched her podcast during the pandemic to give small business owners a voice when forced shutdowns threatened to clos...

Lauren Gibson is a ghostwriter and email marketer helping agency owners and coaches grow their businesses through content. She’s the founder of the “Connections” newsletter and writes daily on LinkedIn about business, brand building, and the future of work. But she didn’t start in marketing. From navigating Egyptian taxis without GPS to landing meetings with Ethereum’s co-founder, Lauren’s path ha...

Dylan Davis shares his incredible YouTube lead generation journey, growing to 14,000 subscribers in just seven months and getting 2 to 6 leads/wk sharing AI automation tips and processes. He provides valuable YouTube and AI use tips and tactics and discusses how to turn your YouTube channel into a lead generation machine. Learn how to boost YouTube video content creation to generate qualified lead...

How to Use ChatGPT: Guide for BeginnersEpisode Summary Dan Sanchez, AI educator and host of AI-Driven Marketer* joins Jack to share a real-world beginner’s guide on how to use ChatGPT the right way. Forget fancy prompts and endless tool lists. Dan walks you through the actual skills that separate casual users from smart operators. You’ll learn how ChatGPT’s memory really works, why context matters...

How to Grow Your Followers on LinkedIn: 23K followers in 14 monthsDustin is VP of International Sales by day—and a fast-growing social media strategist by night. In just 14 months, he's built a LinkedIn audience of over 23,000 followers using a repeatable system that blends evergreen content, smart engagement tactics, and AI-powered comment strategies. In this episode, Dustin unpacks his entir...

Vanessa Yepes, a product operations lead at AppSumo with eight years of experience in customer and partner success, transformed her totally unused LinkedIn account into a powerhouse of engagement, authenticity, growth, and connection with other cool people. She doubled her audience in just 60 days of writing on LinkedIn, by doing back-to-back 30 day writing challenges. In this episode, Vanessa tal...

What does it really take to grow from 1K to 7K+ LinkedIn followers in six months, without turning into another “broetry” meme? Implementation-manager-by-day and content strategist-by-night Simon Schmitz breaks down the tactics behind his meteoric rise. Simon explains why carousels still beat every other format on reach, why text-only posts often out-perform image posts, and how LinkedIn’s shifting...

Jennifer Chou went from blowing up her companies TikTok account, to → Growing her own audience to 80K+ people (now it’s well over 100K) → Getting laid off from that job → Replacing her $6k/month salary with a 24 hour sale of her first course Jennifer, better known online as Vegan Tech Nomad, turns unhinged data dashboards, her content marketing strategy, poop-tracking, marathon training, and more...

How to Self Publish Your First Book with Derek Siddoway Derek Siddoway has self-published 18 fantasy novels in the past 12 years. And he's already working on the next one. In this conversation, Jack and Derek unpack how Derek turned a passion for writing fiction into income. We explore his journey of writing, particularly in the fantasy genre, making money as a fantasy novel writer, writing tips f...

How to Become a Social Media Strategist (And Get to Six-Figures) Today on It Pays to Write, I’m stoked to welcome Dorien Morin-van Dam. She says she's s Dutch by birth, American by choice, and she totally reinvented her career at 40 and built a thriving social media + AI consultancy from scratch. If you’ve ever wondered how to become a social media strategist , this episode is your roadmap. Here’s...

Our guest today is the brilliant Matt Herman. He’s a content-marketing pro at Aeroseal, an AI warlock, songwriter, and all-around creative. Matt and Jack dig into practical AI use cases in content marketing, smarter ChatGPT workflows, turning generative AI into a pocket life coach, and keeping the human spark alive in writing and other creative processes. Then they nerd out on AI: how to write wit...