
Friday, March 20, 2026

Happy Friday! ✌️
Earlier this week, I hosted the live monthly Q&A for my Email Storyselling community members.
One guy asked about the viability of running a faceless brand.
My advice?
You can either go deep or go wide.
If you wanna go deep...
You can make a very good living from a very small audience.
But it requires you to offer higher ticket products and services.
More intensive + higher touch.
Going deeper with a smaller number of people.
Which isn’t impossible with a faceless brand…
However, it’s not ideal.
On the flipside, if you wanna go wide...
You're playing a volume game.
And what a volume game requires is the ability to drive lots of traffic.
Either you need 50,000 to 100,000+ followers with a really engaged audience...
Or you need to be running paid ads at scale.
Like $1,000+ per day.
Not $100 a day.
This is the better fit for a faceless brand IMO.
Yet here’s the trap I see so many people fall into:
They don't necessarily wanna go deep and do lots of coaching and high-touch work…
So they wanna sell low to mid-ticket products...
Or run a community...
But they focus strictly on organic social media to drive traffic.
News flash:
Unless you've got a massive and engaged following...
That's not gonna work.
Your strategy doesn't match the game you've chosen to play.
You have to figure out what game you’re playing first.
Then design a strategy to match it.
This same misalignment came up again on a coaching call I did with an ESS AI subscriber yesterday.
She'd seen quick success on Instagram.
Giving away lots of free content...
Growing her list...
Getting tons of engagement...
And landing 1-on-1 coaching clients.
But then she started working with another coach who advised her to shift her messaging…
Focus on "premium positioning”...
And STOP giving away stuff for free…
All to weed out the freebie seekers in her audience.
Now, I’m no social media expert…
And that advice makes sense in a vacuum…
But it's not aligned with the way social media actually works.
People are conditioned to respond to free stuff on social.
So if you're using organic Instagram as your sole traffic source...
But you're not gonna give anything away for free...
There's a lack of alignment there between the game you've chosen and the strategy you're following.
Sometimes the fix is changing your strategy.
Going from organic to paid ads.
Or going from wide to deep.
But sometimes the fix is to pick a different game to play.
There's no one-size-fits-all answer.
The right strategy depends on the game you're playing.
And that's exactly what the Email Storyselling Install Map GPT™ helps you figure out.
It’s a diagnostic tool that analyzes your entire email revenue system...
List quality, lead gen, offer positioning, cadence, automations, and more...
And prints a custom "Install Map" that lays out the gaps between your strategy and the game you've chosen.
So you get clarity on whether you need to change the game...
Or change the strategy.
Takes less than 10 minutes.
And only costs $5.
So if you're not making the money you want from your email list...
And you're tired of fumbling around in the dark looking for the right solution…
Then grab the $5 Install Map GPT here:
→ Get the Email Storyselling Install Map GPT™
Jim Hamilton

Learn how to build a profitable daily newsletter with Email Storyselling. Read by 5,000+ subscribers.