Fans pay the bills. Followers don’t.

Hey there,

It is Matthew Larsen, back with my daily newsletter.

You can make huge gains in content and paid ads when you begin to “own” a word in the mind of your target market.

If someone thinks of lead generation, I want them to think of Matthew Larsen immediately. That is what I mean by owning a keyword.

You do this by generating fans, not just followers, and giving value instead of only worrying about views. Your aim is to create a bingeable series of content that solves every single problem your target market would face.

Some insane things happen when you start to own a keyword, but getting there is not easy. Think about how many people are competing for the same audience and saying basically the same things.

This is why developing your own philosophy matters. Having your own opinions, frameworks, and way of solving problems gives people something specific to associate with you.

Think about the associations these people have built. In my mind:

Imagine how much easier selling becomes when someone thinks about the problem you solve and your name immediately comes to mind.

You probably need to go more niche.

If you run an email marketing agency for ecommerce stores, “email marketing” is a very competitive subject. There are tons of people teaching it, selling it, and trying to become known for it.

Compare that with “email marketing for subscription brands.”

That is a little easier to own. You could go even further than that.

This is why making content that is more niche than you are used to, or perhaps more niche than you would like, can be a good idea.

You want a series of content built around the actual problems and circumstances your ideal customers find themselves in. Help them completely solve those problems. Keep the topics focused and the production simple, and put your effort into giving genuinely useful advice.

A lot of these topics will not get many views, so the uninitiated person will usually get discouraged and think they are doing something wrong. They are not. They may not get a lot of views, but they can still get the “right” views.

Then you have to keep doing it. Stay focused on the same audience and keep giving them reasons to come back.

Fans are what pay the bills. Followers don’t.

I can barely scratch 3,000 views on a YouTube video, and I made $9 million off YouTube in 2024 and $7 million off YouTube in 2025.

That is the power of this. I basically owned “agency lead generation” for a time and then foolishly stopped being consistent and now I do not “own” that anymore.

Eventually, you want to become the hook.

People should click because they know your content is going to be good and likely to solve their problem.

That is the point you are trying to reach. It almost doesn’t fucking matter what you put in the thumbnail or say in the hook. They want to consume it because it is you.

But you have to earn that expectation. Your standards need to keep increasing as you publish.

The question I want you to ask is:

“How do I make this piece of content 10 times better than the best thing I have put out before?”

You probably will not achieve that, quite frankly. But the mindset matters.

Maybe you make it five times better. Maybe twice as good. Maybe it is 50% or 25% better. Keep approaching your content like that over time and you can end up with something extremely good.

And you cannot hand this thinking over to AI.

Everybody is using the same tools. If your advice comes from the same surface-level answers everyone else can generate, you are going to sound like everyone else.

You need your own understanding, experience, opinions, and way of doing things. That is what gives someone a reason to watch you specifically.

If you are a clone of everybody else, you are not going to own shit.

Hope this email was worth your time,

Matthew Larsen

PS. Work with me in my Skool group at https://skool.com/leadgenerationacademy.ai