Congrats, you’re still standing—many aren’t. The core truth remains: if clients don’t come back, your service, process, or follow-through is broken. In 2025, ditch the hustle-for-hustle’s-sake mindset. Focus ruthlessly on managing value, time, and cash flow. Avoid debt unless it’s strategic—only borrow to fund automation and AI systems that slash future grind and boost scalability.
How AI helps: Automate invoicing, late-fee nudges, expense categorization, and email triage. Use AI to summarize emails into actionable tasks, draft responses in your voice, and forecast cash flow based on pipeline data. Train AI on your unique policies, offers, and tone for low-drama, high-leverage management.
Example: AI pulls yesterday’s emails, extracts tasks, sets due dates, and syncs them to your calendar or project management tool. It drafts follow-ups you approve in one pass.
Example: Feed last year’s invoices and bank data into an AI workbook to spot late payers, seasonal revenue dips, and “marketing” spend that’s just wishful thinking.
Use: QuickBooks Online, Xero, Wave, Zoho Books, Stripe Billing, Square Invoices, Ramp, Brex, Expensify, Float, LivePlan, Spotlight Reporting, Airtable, Coda, Notion AI, Excel with Copilot, Google Sheets with Gemini.
Stop Chasing Dead Leads
Some prospects will never buy—not because you suck, but because they’re married to someone else’s solution or just don’t vibe with you. Qualify harder, move faster. Your time is oxygen; don’t waste it preaching to the choir of “no.”
AI play: Score inbound leads by fit, budget, and urgency using form answers, site behavior, and public data. Tag tire-kickers and prioritize buyers.
Example: AI scans a lead’s LinkedIn and public info, then summarizes: “Small team, just raised, hiring marketing—likely needs a content retainer. Est. budget: medium.”
If nobody returns, your delivery or communication is sloppy. Don’t beg for support—fix the experience. Study winners in your niche and zig where they zag. Be reliably excellent at the few things that matter.
AI play: Analyze support threads and call transcripts for friction points. Get the top 5 confusion drivers, new macros, and improved FAQs.
Example: AI drafts three reply options (friendly, direct, legal-clean) for a heated email. You pick the tone, send, and keep the relationship intact.
Don’t call asking for crumbs. Call with solutions they didn’t have to think up. That’s how budgets magically appear.
AI play: Monitor prospects’ sites, newsletters, and socials for signals—new product pages, hiring, market shifts—then draft a 4-bullet pitch tailored to their current push.
Example: “Saw you’re launching in the Southwest. I can deliver a 6-week regional push with owned media + email + partner placements. Here’s the outline, timeline, and price.”
Lunch isn’t dead. Deals still prefer eyeballs. But be efficient: one strong visit can replace ten Zooms.
AI play: Prep a one-page brief before you walk in: their goals, competitors, new moves, and your three fastest wins. After the meeting, AI writes the recap and sends next steps with dates.
Example: Record the meeting (with consent), AI summarizes decisions an
Kevin "KevRoss" Ross is a music and radio industry expert. He is a 20 -plus year entrepreneur with the leading most successful industry trade publication and site Radio Facts (www.radiofacts.com). He has also published various books, magazines, performed marketing and promotions for major corporations and recording artists and he is on the advisory board of several industry organizations. This year Ross introduced his non profit organization LOMARI (Leaders of the Music and Recording Industry) to help teach young minority students how to market and manage their music and products.
