ZYN & SINS — ISSUE #108

Hustle of the Week: Owning the Inbox

If you're between 18 and 25 and trying to make money, here's what nobody tells you:

The fastest way to build leverage isn't content, courses, or flipping couches.

It’s understanding how money enters a business. And it almost always comes through the inbox.

The DMs. The email replies. The phone calls missed.

Most small businesses are bleeding money because they respond slow, or not at all. They treat the inbox like a chore. You treat it like the front door.

That’s your advantage.

This is called Operational Retention — keeping more of the leads they already earned.

You don’t need to run ads or build funnels. You need to do this:

1. Choose a business category where every message matters:

   • Med spas

   • Gyms

   • Tattoo shops

   • Mobile car detailers

   • Niche retail stores

   • High-ticket services (closets, concrete, countertops)

2. Mystery shop them.
   Message the business on Instagram, email, or their website form and see how long it takes for them to respond.

   If it takes more than an hour — that’s a lead lost. That’s your pitch.

3. Offer them this:

   • You monitor and respond to DMs for them (using a shared inbox, not your account)

   • You set up templated replies for common questions (price, hours, availability)

   • You build an FAQ page, booking link, or auto-responder if needed

   You are not “doing social media.” You are turning strangers into money.

4. Price it based on their revenue per client.
   If they charge $600 per tattoo or $150 per massage, every missed lead is lost profit. Charge $400–$1,200/month depending on volume.

This is low visibility work with high dependency. Once they realize how many clients they were losing, they won’t fire you. They’ll build around you.

That’s leverage.

Skill to Master: The Quiet Deliverable

Most people don’t get paid well because their work is loud and replaceable.

• Ads are loud

• Design is loud

• Posting content is loud

They make noise. They don’t hold power.

Instead, you want to master the Quiet Deliverable — something the business doesn’t even notice until it breaks.

These are things like:

• API connections

• Internal dashboards

• Payment logic in Stripe

• Cross-platform lead routing

• Backend automations that run support emails, order confirmation, or reminders

You do it once. They don’t understand how it works. And now you’re not a freelancer. You’re infrastructure.

If you're 20 years old and can build a Google Sheet that sends a text reminder when someone forgets to pay, you’re more valuable than most CMOs.

Don’t chase visibility. Chase control.

Chick of the Day: Kennadi

Tactical Money Play: Internal Upsells

Here’s how to double your revenue from any client without offering new services.

Step one: ask what happens after someone becomes a customer.

• What do they send?

• What do they forget to send?

• Where do they lose repeat buyers?

• Where does communication fall off?

Then build a process to fix it. That’s the upsell.

Example:

You help a gym with lead follow-up. Ask what happens after the client signs up. You learn they have no system for referrals, no cancellation save offer, and no birthday outreach.

You build all three.
That’s $1,000/month added without running a single ad.

Most “growth” comes from fixing cracks, not adding shiny features.

Music to Work To:

Track — “No Broke Boys” by Disco Lines

No breakdown needed. It's two minutes of motion. Play it when you're overthinking. Then do the one thing you’ve been putting off for three days.

Final Note

Everyone wants to talk about scale.
Everyone wants “freedom.”

But most of them haven’t done anything consistently for more than six weeks.

Do the boring part. Watch what happens.

If you respond faster than other people, you win.
If you fix invisible problems, you stay.
If you show up when it’s quiet, you’re already ahead of 99 percent of your age group.

Don’t get loud. Get sharp.