I Killed My Ready-to-Launch Brand to Build an AI Media Buyer

We're invested over six figures and we have ridiculous tour. Did I really kill a brand to build this like stupid Google ads AI media buying software where every single variable looked like it was made to succeed. You cannot sell this to anyone, right? Because it's genuinely a product. Hey Chris, are we finally ready to take it from development into a full-scale launch? We are working on this for over one year now. A lot of setbacks, a lot of bottlenecks. Almost ready to launch finally in a couple of weeks. We will

have that ready to give it to actual brands to run their Google ads with our Scaley AI. What is Scaley AI in the first place and which problem does it solve? One year ago, I had this like epiphany moment already where I was like, you know what? With the advancement of AI, there are possibilities as a Google Ads media buyer that you never had before, right? Or as a media buyer in general, doesn't matter how you use it, in which way you use it. There are like multiple ways you can get very creative with it. And we had major difficulties at first, right? when we work with with another agency to help help us build that because it's a very complex product.

But we're still like working on this like little things like see here with the dashboards like the spacing quite difficult with different sections here as well. But like little things like that, right? Like here we fixed it mostly already. Heck, you have some anomalies with the data here. It completely destroyed the visual beauty of it. But like those things matter, right? like you if you launch a product you want it to to be perfect also with the IM media buyer already obviously direct access to all SOPs all the questions all the answers the crazy part is like this whole thing almost didn't happen and I had to kill another business of mine to launch Scaley and I will tell you the story right now but the thing I realized very early on even before AI was that good like we see today, right?

I was like, "Okay, it

would just get better and better and you can build things, you can do things that weren't possible before." So, I had this idea already like, "Okay, how can I how can I clone myself to a certain degree, right? And this idea got stronger and stronger the more the agency grew and especially nowadays, right? like we have to reject 95% of the leads that we get because it's simply not worth it and we want to focus on our bigger clients, right? We also had the strategy session with the team yesterday for the agency and unfortunately what we realized here as well is that we have to cut the bottom 10% of our clients again.

So, we make room for extra capacity for our bigger clients, right? Especially now in in Q4. But it hurts a little bit as well because I want to help everyone, right? And we have like a huge Skool community as well, over 1,600 members right now who want to learn Google Ads. And the only thing I cannot scale is my own time, right? I can increase my workload. I can start to work 9 10 11 14 hours a day, right? But like at some point there will be a limit. At some point there will be a limit where I cannot help anyone anymore. I cannot respond to every message.

I cannot onboard everyone. Right? Even if I like start to expand my team like it it takes time as well, right? You need to train everyone. You need to make sure quality stays good and it starts to become a bottleneck. And

that's also why I want to build Scaley, right? a lot of people that do it themselves, but whenever I see that like they don't even realize how much money they leave on the table sometimes, right? Because they think, "Oh, it's quite easy to launch a simple campaign, but then they run into so many like small issues that just combound over time that they don't even realize how much money you lose, right? But who do you ask if you need some very specific advice?" So, that's still the problem. You have nobody qualified to ask. you can go and check online and you run into some random Reddit threats, right, where there is absolutely advice.

So there there's nobody really to ask and then if you just like need something real quick, you might be able to hop on a call with a really like good Google consult, but they would charge you an insane amount of money just for a 30inut call, right? Because they are also busy. So it makes sense. So this was kind of like my biffy moment where I was like, we have all these asps, right? We have all these Slack data and there's so much you can do with AI nowadays. Is it possible that I can somehow clone my brain into some sort of software, right? And then people can talk to it, chat with it, actually get like valid advice very specific to the unique problem, right?

And not just some generic thing. And that's different to like chat GPT and claude and all of that as well, right? Like you

can ask them as well about any sort of Google adset price, but you will always get like very generic AI slot. Why? Because how do these LLM work? It's basically all right, you type in a questions, they check the top sources, right, that kind of like pop up and rank quite well in Google. And what ranks well in Google? It's Reddit, Wikipedia, Google support documents, drive. It's not like the brain of a media buyer that ranks up there, right? So the the advice you will get from treachd and co will always be very sloppy advice in that that sense right and that will never change. If you

ask claw to do a account audit of the Google ads account as you will get so many weird stuff or or stuff that is valid but doesn't really matter right so they start to like analyze some of your search terms it's like okay cool how does that help me to to get more sales genuinely right and that's how Scaley AI started the idea of launching this software

so we have scale really now finally almost ready to launch. It was about 1 year ago back to August 2025. I was in Dubai at that moment because I have my business there. So I'm there regularly and it was a completely different situation. ZenoX was still running running really well and growing a lot actually if you compare our size right now compared to what we had back then in in August 2025. It's not even even comparable. So that was going well. that already took a lot of time and we had this vision of like launching our own ecom brand right because the for me it made a lot

of sense back then I was like okay I have a marketing agency already we work with so many brands we have so many insights we know what works what doesn't work right so we can launch our own brand I want to launch a per menopause supplement brand it was called perimeia I love it actually like the name was perfect the idea was perfect the pain point is huge so I was like okay that's a product where we and genuinely like help people as well, right? If we bring out proper supplements. So, I was like, that's a real gap, right? That's super exciting. And we built out the whole thing.

I got product samples. I got the store. I had the website ready. We were ready to launch. And on the day, I got the vision for Scaley for the very first time, right?

Like just like a little spark of it. On this exact day, I actually made a hire for this Equinim brand as well, right? like we were literally like ready to launch because we had the budget basically. The the HD was running quite well. Everything was perfect. Everything made sense and I just knew the brand would have crushed it. And it was like super late in the evening. I kind of like switched my hat off a little bit, you know, like we were done with work. It was super late. Then it came out of nowhere. I still don't quite remember. Right. It came out of nowhere where I had this like idea suddenly again of like hey AI is like advancing a lot there.

so much we can do right now that hasn't been possible before. We have all these SOPs. We have all this knowledge. We have all the all this data. And I saw some of these like early now competitors of Scaley popping up. One of them quite

prominent. It's like Rise AI, right? Doesn't really matter the names. A lot of them have a look at their product, right? I check out their website and what they offer basically and it's like pure marketing AI slop, right? again very close to JGPT claw and you can integrate it whatever and it's like just like this very basic thing where it's like okay it works but it's not really valuable right like nobody nobody needs that but I had the idea already like dude we we can do this better like we have all that knowledge right we have all that passive piece we have all the data so why not building this so I had this idea and I got very very excited and I still remember I couldn't even like sleep that night, right?

I had all these ideas and everything and but I realized also and that realization kind of like came the next day, right? All

right, I run an agency already, right? And it grows fast. It takes a lot of time and like even right now I'm filming this video and I'm like, "Okay, I have to go pack. I need to I need to do some some client work." So, we have the agency. It's growing fast. It's pretty much a startup itself and we have this brand now. It's ready to launch as well. And now I want to build a software and not not just a random software, right? It's not your typical daily task planner which is like a you can buy put that and you launch it and you sell it for like €9 a month.

No, I want to do Google Ads AI media buy and that is generally very complex to do. We had so many issues like it's unreal. But anyway, I had to I had this realization, right, that you have to understand when you want to succeed at anything. But especially in business as well, it needs focus. It needs focus, right? You cannot do multiple things at once. You cannot go back and forth and do a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and change your mind constantly. Like, I mean, look at the agency, right? I'm doing Google Ads since 2021 basically. And then most of the success came just last year, right?

Because it takes time. It takes time. It compounds. You build relationships. You build more skill. You build more knowledge. If I would have done a little then I do drop shipping, and then I do trading, and then I do whatever AI automation right now, right? Like everything seems so so nice. Then you have like shiny object syndrome. And the problem is you you do nothing properly. And the solution is everything generally works, right? Like literally almost every business model you see out there like people make money with everything, right? So everything can per se work. It just really need the dedication, the focus and the discipline to also like stick through it.

Either way, so focus is a big thing, right? And I was like, okay, the agency is still quite young. I want to build this super complex software which I was again super excited about. I just knew this is the thing, right? I knew this is the future of Mediaine and we have to do it. Software is quite a different game because you you need to build something first and that building process generally takes a lot of money, right? Because typically you need developers and even nowadays with like all this VIP coding stuff like that's that doesn't have the same level of quality as if you do it with a developer.

Either way, situation was PMIA was that was a was a great idea. I'm sure it would have crushed. I'm like I'm kind of like curious where it would be right now if you would have launched the brand instead of the software. So it would have been interesting to see the different timelines, but I have like zero regrets with it because I know what you're building here right now is 1,000 times bigger, right? That's

that's a different level. Problem was though, I have no clue how to build a software. Well, I'm not a developer. I can't code. And even things like system architecture overall, right? like how do you build a product like that wasn't really something I was familiar with it I feel like I do have quite a talent for it though always had it because I have this like engineer architect mindset and really helped to build the agency as well systemize things productize things have hundreds of sobs skill I built there already I could also transfer in the in the software and that's why we have a a pretty decent product already it needs to be relatively good right and that's a problem with the software as well because typically you want to like launch fast fast fast and it's like especially in the software game right it needs to have a certain pace either way so the the problem was like I had no clue about software I had no developers developers are super expensive and it was a bit tricky to to even figure out who to hire in the first place so we

went through this whole hiring process and in the end we decided to go with a third party agency called invice they focus on software development. They have a huge team of like different kind of developers, front end, back end for LLMs, whatever. So, we could get everything out of one hand. And the pricing was also pretty decent, right? And the timeline was solid at this point. We officially started then around September. Expected launch of the MVP was in January, so like 3 4 months of building max. But I was like, okay, that's exciting. I remember like last year in October I posted this stupid story as well because we made so much progress quickly.

I was like dude we are ready to launch soon. We will like eat out the whole market with this product right and then that was almost a year ago and

we still not ready because then we had so many issues and the the the whole thing started to break down. They started strong. We had some really good engineers on the team as well. But then they kind of replaced it with you know with more like junior people or people who were not that qualified and quality started to l and again it's a very complex product right it's not easy to build this at all. You need a tool that is genuinely able to help you scale your store, right? Like we were about to to build something something crazy here without venture capital of course. So I was funding it myself and yeah we had huge delays and it just got worse and worse and then we had in January we had our strategy session and again we thought we were about to launch soon but then just brought them back up more and more and more and more and the invoices increased and at this point I had invested over six figures in a thing that wasn't even ready to launch right so I kind of lost lost hope almost a little bit in in the whole thing I work with stupid people on this whole thing.

So, I was pissed as actually, right? And at the same time, the AHC was crushing it. We were growing fast. We had a crazy four. We had insane results and success stories and momentum and a a strong team, a stable team. And with the software, suddenly everything started to go wrong, right? And again, I didn't have software experience yet. And I was like pouring all my energy into the agency obviously because it worked really well. And it was also basically

funding the software, right? Because dude, just crazy expensive. But at one point, I sat down with with Tulia, my COO, were hired specifically for the software, right? And even all the promises I made to her was I felt bad about it, right? Because we were like, "Hey, we're ready to launch. We'll be super exciting. You will get the revenue share of this whole thing." And then nothing is life, right? It sucks. So at one point I was just like dude we need to stop with them right it doesn't make any sense and that was another big challenge for me I was like okay we need to hire our own developers which again I didn't know how to hire them like how do I how do how do I test their skills right I'm not a developer myself I can hire a media buyer easily right because I know what I'm looking for I know what I need I know in terms of personality hard skills soft skills leadership whatever ever.

I know exactly what I'm looking for, right? How should I test as a developer if if I can't even code myself, right? He can do me on the call. Hiring a developer is not like hiring a personal assistant, right? Like the stakes are pretty high because they have an insane salary, especially if you're looking for a good one. So, if you hire the wrong person, it again costs you like multiple five fingers in a very short period of time. So, luckily, I had a little bit of support of my friend and business partner from from Vienna. But again, I was super nervous because I was like, that's that's another risk, right?

I'm generally hiring two developers right now. And I won't tell you the exact salary we pay them, but I can guarantee you it's not cheap, right? Developers, really good developers are not cheap. But I was like, dude, I'm not giving up on this tool, right? I know we can do it. We just need the right right people to to help us build that. So yeah, at one point honestly I started to second guessess myself, right? Or not really. I'm never doubting myself to

be honest. But you still had this like lingering feeling of like what did I even do? Did I really kill a brand ready to launch ecom brand where every single variable looked like it was made to succeed? Right? volume, demand, competition, pricing, profit margin, everything made sense. I even love the name, right? And I'm like, did I really kill a brand to build this like stupid Google ads AI media buying software where invested over six six figures and we have a ridiculous tool, right? You don't understand. Like, it was so bad from that agency. Like, you cannot sell this to anyone, right? because it's genuinely a product.

Yeah, I was up and the risk was high because again I knew I wanted this. I knew it is possible, right? But we invest so much money and now you want to double down on it. Invest even more and hire your own developers which at this time even more expensive. They are fully focused on our product. We are in control, right? I can tell them exactly what I need, what we want to work on and not with this agency who has like hundreds of clients and we are just another client and they probably didn't care that much about us, right? So, we took the risk.

We hired them. We had help during the interview process

and you don't understand. That was probably the best decision of my life ever because finally we made some progress again. We had things in our control. We hired two developers and one of them turned the whole thing around. We made more progress in the last 3 months than in the 9 10 months before. It's ridiculous, right? So yeah, the risk took the risk was worth it. It still cost us a shitload of money to build it, but now we actually have something tangible. Right now I saw the

vision again. Like I saw I saw what I had in mind. It wasn't just the vision anymore. Like now I saw it. Now I have it here on my computer and I see it's working right and I like the design. I like the the visual beauty of it. I like how it works. So yeah, finally some insane progress after all these months of literally burning money, right? And seeing nothing, no results. And now we're finally almost ready to launch. And we know now like we have the team right we have a killer product we have all this data we have all these advantages of the agency as well right and that's something I want to talk about as well

that like all this knowledge and insights basically fuels back into the software so super exciting and basically what I want to do with this little documentary is like showing how we do it how we launch it how we want to scale build a software company as well and basically sharing my stories, insights and experiences on how we build, right? So yeah, we will crush it regardless. Even with all the setbacks, even with all the money we've earned so far, that's just part of the process sometimes, especially if you like experience in certain areas, right? Yeah. Time to launch it and make it a success story.

for the vlog. What? What's Roman in Serbia? I don't know. I don't make sense. Probably hard to say, right?