The easiest way to go from $0-10K/mo is with outbound and content.

The easiest way to go from $10K/mo-$0 is trying to get to $20K/mo with paid ads.

If you're under $30K/mo, here's what you can expect from ads: Your CPA will be no less than $1,500.

That's if you have a solid LP with a VSL and case studies, active LinkedIn, and the whole nine yards.

Most people don't have it completely dialed in.

Let's do the math, even assuming the best case:

$15,000/mo business idea a college kid could start by lunch today: Influencer scouting for brands.

1. Set up as many inboxes as you could afford

Ideally through Hypertide, but Smartlead also just released a feature that lets you buy through them, too.

Warm them up as needed (let me know if you need help).

Web design is infinitely hard to sell with cold outbound.

You HAVE to turn your offer from demand capture to demand gen.

Here's exactly how I'd do it: For the record, demand capture offers are tough in general.

You're sending cold emails to 100% of your TAM, trying to find the 3% actively looking for your offer.

It's tough to make money on.

On the other hand, demand generation offers CREATE demand for your service.

I spent $1,700,000 learning lead gen in the last 5 years.

Here's a master thread of my 17 most important learnings: Before I get into this – compiling this took a ton of time and, well, literally almost $2M.

Any replies/RTs are appreciated for helping this get out there.

Let's get into it:

The agency owner that nails this funnel will make millions.

It's untapped, is hard to replicate, and gets you prospects ready to buy.

Here's how it works:

(step 3 is what makes it work) 1. Create valuable lead magnet

This MUST be ultra-valuable. Free tool, in-depth strategy doc, etc.

Spend time and money making sure this is something the prospect would pay for – even though you're giving it for free.

Phone number-gate it.

Cold email's 10x harder today than it was 3 years ago.

3 predictions on where it goes in the next 3 years (video + thread): 1. Barrier to entry continues to lower

A literal beginner can start sending 100,000 cold emails/month in <30 days. Tool advancement has been RIDICULOUS.

There's more inbox competition.

This will not change. It'll only get worse.

How to find + scrape a list of your ICP if you can't get the right search filters on Apollo or SalesNav: 1. Find your most relevant competitors/adjacent tools

If you are a lead gen agency, find other lead gen agencies on Linkedin

If you're a B2B SaaS selling to CMOs, find other B2B SaaS selling to CMOs on LinkedIn.

You get the point.

This is gonna sound like I'm joking, but I'm not

We tried making our cold emails look less "like" cold emails by asking ChatGPT to come up with cheesy openers

Positive reply rate shot way up

Here are 6 of our best-performing ones (steal if you want): 1. "I’m sure your inbox is busier than a bee in a flower shop, so I’ll make this quick."

2. "I know your inbox is probably more crowded than a clown car, so I'll cut to the chase."

Cold email is changing.

There's been a 500%+ increase in cold email influencers in the last 3-4 years.

Everyone's getting better, makes cold email way harder

I know the fix, but most people won't like it.

Read on if you want to get ahead: You need to send cold emails with formats nobody posts about here.

I know this is ironic because I post a lot of them.

But every new cold email format plays out the same way:

We have a client that gets 1 lead for every 14 contacts we email.

That's 71 leads for every 1,000 lead list prospects.

The secret?

Their offer does 3 things perfectly (that really, anyone can do).

Here's what they are: 1) Extreme PMF

I obviously can't share the exact offer. But it's clear extreme product-market fit is accelerating it's performance.

This is validated by high positive response rates and high lead-to-meeting book rate.

I sent 250,000 cold emails last week.

Here's what's printing meetings right now (bookmark this): Relevance > personalization

Nobody cares that your cousin went to the same university as them in 2012.

The first line of your email should make the prospect feel like it's relevant to them.

If you don't care about building team culture, don't read this.

If you do, here are two small things that have gone a long way for us in the past 6 months: 1) Celebrate the team's birthdays

I want to make everyone feel included and special.

On someone's birthday, we get the rest of the team to wish them a happy birthday on Slack.

I want to get to a point where we make this even more special for them, somehow.

You will never grow a business without customer success systems.

We spent the last 12 months making ours the best they can be.

3 additions that have worked well (you can steal): 1) Map out ALL touch points

From onboarding to continued service delivery, map out every time you can get in front of them.

Onboarding email, work ready for review, first big win, reporting, etc.

Make sure you or your team member are hitting them.

It's 2024 and people still suck at making lead magnets.

But you need great ones if you want clients on autopilot.

Here are the 3 questions you need to ask yourself that'll help make lead magnets that actually get you clients:

(with an example) What's something that:

- Is insanely valuable to my specific ICP?
- People would pay for, but I could give away for free?
- I can automate or easily systemize the delivery of?

Example:

Here's a completely untapped agency offer you could (pretty easily) get to $30,000/month by the end of August:

(I'd pay for this today) Companies struggle to build, manage, and scale teams because they don't have their SOPs in place.

I know, because I struggle with this and have friends that do, too.

You can capitalize of this issue.

Here's how:

I'm stealing the enterprise SaaS customer success playbook and applying it to my agency.

Enterprise SaaS Account Mangers do one thing very well: Get in front of your face.

Emails, calls, random updates, etc.

You never go a few days without hearing from them.

You feel like you're always on their mind, even though it's just their job.

I want the same for my agency.

I've had small startups all the way to publicly-traded, billion-dollar companies as clients.

You know what nobody tells you about working with the big boys?

Results matter, but not as much as you may think.

Really, they care about a couple things WAY more: (1) That you don't break internal processes

If they have workflow requirements or guidelines, don't break them. It's that simple.

(2) Communication

Not even that they need lots of reporting, but they care about regular response time. Don't leave them waiting.

And look...

Integration campaigns are the easiest way to book hundreds of meetings on autopilot.

Here's exactly how (with a free script template): Background:

These are campaigns for tools and software that integrate with other, bigger tools or software.

Think things that integrate with HubSpot or Salesforce.

These are targeting and messaging goldmines.

Here's the playbook to run:

Breaking down the Outlook cold email issue:

- What happened
- What's next for lead gen
- What you can do to keep emails safe

Let's get into it: Our bounce rate never gets above 1%.

But a few weeks ago, we noticed it was steadily increasing.

Our scraping and verification process hadn't changed at all.

So, what happened?

We dug in...

The first agency I got to $10,000/month in revenue sold Instagram growth.

No joke, I worked harder back then than I even do now.

And still, somehow, I was LOSING money with it every month.

Here's the story, and what I learned: At the time, I was finishing high school and getting to college.

I was signing clients pretty consistently.

That wasn't my issue.

Operations was...

Every employee deserves 20-35 PTO days.

And when they return, their work shouldn't have piled up.

Making sure of this is your job.

Here are two ways we make this a reality: 1) Over-hire

We started hiring a little more than we need.

This helps us balance each team member's workload, while also ramping up sales without worrying about capacity.

Plus, it helps with Point 2.