#05: $10M in Sales, Zero Ad Spend on the SaaS: The Connection Funnel Explained

Amy Sangster is the founder of MemberUp, a community platform used by more than 1,600 businesses, built on 15 years and $10 million in sales from her own membership communities. Every software company is racing to bolt AI onto its value prop. Amy went the other way and ran the experiment: AI setters in the DMs produced more conversations and less revenue, so she put the humans back in. But when anyone can spin up a competitor in a weekend, is out-caring the rest of the industry a real moat or just a nice story? Expect to learn why MemberUp uses AI in the back end but never as its value prop, what happened when Amy swapped her AI setters for real humans in the DMs, why women and men are splitting on AI adoption and which group is loving it, the 4 questions to answer before you build a personal brand, why the most magnetic brands name what they stand against and not just what they stand for, how a bootstrapped software company runs at $0 CAC, why beginners try to automate before they have a single customer, what a couple hundred demo calls taught Amy that a dashboard never could, why the only true form of passive income is investment income, what actually keeps A players when someone offers them more money, how the 5Cs of content, community, conversations, clout and connection apply to a $99/month SaaS and a high-ticket B2B product alike and much more… ========== Guest: Amy Sangster, founder of MemberUp (memberup.com) and Creatr Business, based in Miami. Connect with Amy:   / amysangster53   Connect with Leon:   / leonwosko   Want to have human writers create content for your LinkedIn personal brand? Check out our offer on https://www.publicative.com ========== Chapters: 00:00 Cold open 00:55 Intro: Amy Sangster, founder of MemberUp 01:51 Why MemberUp refuses to make AI its value prop 04:35 The sentiment of women towards AI: a divided field 08:02 The 4 questions behind every magnetic personal brand 12:33 What Amy stands for, and why she stands against victimhood 18:41 Why software alone is not enough: coaching, strategy and churn 22:00 The connection funnel: $0 CAC and real conversations 26:34 The AI setter test: more conversations, less revenue 29:55 Why beginners automate before they have customers 32:20 Culture over tech: what actually wins A players 38:19 The 5Cs: content, community, conversations, clout and connection 45:25 Outro ========== Human-Led Growth is the podcast where B2B tech and AI founders share how they turn human trust into revenue through reputation, relationships and measures AI cannot automate. Hosted by Leon Wosko, founder of Publicative.com. ========== Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: W7BFOD9PJT6SNXMC