Posts of the Week

kubikdanon said:

Any updates, @perchboy ? This thread is GOLD

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I hate to keep posting with no real progress and changing my plan everyday but here's what changed. Sorry guys I am just a random 19 year old kid I wish I could update yall that I'm taking over the ads game and making $5k/day but heres what's going on:


For the past 5 months, I learned and successfully built campaigns with whitehat GMBs, AISEO, organic SEO, and Google Ads. However, I have no real earnings from any of that and nothing to show for. I kept getting burned by fulfillment partners nonstop and restarting again from 0. Also most of these detailers don't value my service and I feel like a little kid begging them to give me permission to run their ads.


Last Sunday I stayed in bed all day depressed. I felt like shit and hated my life. I wished that there was just a version of my business where I don't need to fulfill anything or deal with people and I could just get paid for sales I create. I guess something like dropshipping but I've already been doing detailing Google acquisition for so long I can't abandon it.


And then I found the solution. In the main Toronto area, it's SOOO EASY to find contractors that I barely have to worry about fulfillment. The problem last season was that I was marketing in every city, every province, and random rural low competition towns that were easy to get jobs in but no contractors lived there or wanted to drive there. LIKE OF COURSE YOU CAN'T FIND FULFILL A ONE OFF JOB IN BLOODCLAAT VANDERHOOD BC. If I flipped it around and marketed in our 7 million population Toronto area instead, then fulfillment would be easy, and marketing would be the hard part because of all the competition: that's exactly what I wanted.


But then I had a talk with these 2 operators in Toronto that I used to work for and they make over 5k/day profit. They've been in the game for 14 years doing GMB, SEO, and Google Ads. It was really cool when I told them about Andy's Google ads and they said they do the exact same strategy lmao because they started doing Google Ads when it first came out and manual cpc/exact match were the standard options. Anyways they have been telling me nonstop that I need to buy my own trucks and take control of all the leads I generate or else I will get bullied around by the company collecting the payment.


I want to clarify that this is not the only way to do it - you can make money selling leads, selling retainers, or doing the work yourself. All of them come with their own problems.


I also realized last week that I only need about $5k/month to live, and after I make $20k/month I have nothing else to spend money on. I want to work 3 hours per day on my business and grow it slow and steady. Have enough time to do random side quests, build my Uni Hub Toronto app, and live my life.


I want to continue where I left off last May with my detailing but running everything under 1 brand name, whitehat marketing, and buying a van for employees so we can actually do good jobs. I will take everything I learned in the past 5 months and apply it to my own business.


Another massive realization was that I've always been wanting to do more cities, more nichies to get extra dopamine. If I focused on becoming THE BEST car detailing company in Toronto I would be making more money now. Instead of scaling by going wider geographically, I am going to scale this season by getting better in my 1 dense area.


But guys I'm feeling good don't worry. I am finishing the most epic year of my life. Lots of up and downs with personal life and business BUT I AM GRATEFUL EVERYDAY TO WAKE UP WITH AN ABLED BODY. Last year I sat inside all day on my laptop with no friends because they were not "hustler money" mindset and had "no utility", this year I went to 4 countries so far, went to an exchange summer school in French and met people from across the world, went to Uni for the experience after I didn't go last year and dropped after the first week but it was fun asf, and now I'm building the App that will hopefully change Toronto social life.


Side note: if you are under 25 years old, and you want to live the most fun month of your life next spring / summer, go onto englishfrench.ca and apply to a french immersion program it costs $2k for a month and your life will literally be like a movie and you will be happy you went for the rest of your life. And if you need help DM me I literally am begging EVERYONE i know and all my friends to do it because it was so life changing. It was like a productocracy and now I'm getting them referrals lol


My biggest weakness has always been changing ideas and having low focus. I also think in terms of, "how can I be at 100k/m profit next month?" And now I'm going to think in terms of where my detailing company will be in 5 years now.


3 hours work per day on my detailing business: Toronto only and own all the easy fulfillment
Working on Uni Hub as a side thing because it's my dream


I have enough money, I have time, I have the skills and knowledge. I am not even in this business for money because I can make enough money at any time, but for some reason I just wake up and I NEED to progress my business or work on something to feel happy. I can't take a chill day, this is like my ultimate hobby and brain stimulation activity. Business feels like a videogame. I don't need to build a 100k/m business by next month, but I will go slow and steady with REAL EXECUTION.


Also, the biggest waste of time was never tiktok, hanging out with friends, porn, etc.

THE BIGGEST WASTE OF TIME WAS NOT BUILDING 1 THING.

Although I've been doing detailing for this long I never built 1 brand.

That brand could be an agency brand that gets results, or a detailing brand, or personal brand. But I'm doing a detailing brand because I've already hit high profit months with it before and it's the quickest route to getting back to at least 30k/m which is more than I never need


Dump over, will update when I have 1 van booked fulltime / or contractor system going daily if that doesnt work. Nonetheless I am building 1 toronto brand. Cya!

I have just paid myself my first salary, nearly two years after launching my business!

Hey guys,

In my intro post, a lot of you got curious about the cold email side of things, so I'm putting everything I know into this one.

Quick recap for anyone who missed it: for the last 2.5 years I did cold outreach through emails and DMs for two agencies, and every one of the 15,000+ messages I sent was hyper-personalized. My outreach closed more than $200,000 in contract value, helped the first agency grow from about $3,000 to $25,000 a month, and helped the second grow from about $2,000 to $18,000 a month in six months.

Along the way I wrote cold emails for VCs, SaaS companies, coaches and plenty of other niches, got replies from people at Ogilvy, AppSumo, EUVC, Clay and many more, including C-suite executives at Inc. 500 companies, and kept my reply rate between 10% and 15% once follow-ups were in place.

First, let's burst some bubbles​

I only send hyper-personalized emails. When I started, that capped me at 10 to 15 emails a day, and I've since scaled it to around 100 a day. By hyper-personalized I mean every email is different from head to toe for every person, even though the structure underneath stays the same, and you'll see later in this post why that gets me the reply rate it does.

The myth I want to kill first is the one the YouTube gurus keep feeding you about sending 1,000 or 10,000 emails a day. That advice works for a specific kind of person, and for most of you it will fail, because the niche you operate in decides everything.

Say you're targeting US companies doing $10M+ in annual recurring revenue. How many of those do you think exist? Be generous and call it 100,000, which is your entire TAM (total addressable market). If you follow the guru playbook and blast 5,000 emails a day with automation tools, you'll probably get a few yeses and maybe close a client or two, but you'll burn through your whole market in about 20 days, and after that you'll have nobody left to reach out to.

Mass outreach does work, and I've seen plenty of people land big names with it, but it works best in two situations. The first is when your offer is so strong that saying yes feels like a no-brainer, like a free trial, a free first month, or only getting paid once you deliver results. When you take on all the risk, even a less personal email can pull replies at volume. The downside is that a strong offer also attracts bad leads, people who say yes because it's free rather than because they need you, so you'll spend a lot of time on calls and trials that never turn into paying clients unless you have a way to filter them out early.

The second situation is when you have a crazy case study, like a testimonial from Elon Musk or Bill Gates, because then the proof does the selling and you can go spam the world.

Most of you have neither yet, and that's fine. If you're starting out without case studies or an offer that strong, go hyper-personalized first, win clients and collect results, then move to volume once you have proof or an offer worth spreading.

Part 1: Leads​

Step 1: Define your ICP and go up market​

Your ICP (ideal client profile) comes from the service you sell, and I'll always push you to go up market, because the same service is worth wildly different amounts depending on who you sell it to.

Take video editing. Going down market means pitching small YouTubers, and the problem there is that your client's problems become your problems. If they aren't making money, you won't either, and if they don't know how to make good content, your edits can't save it.

Facebook ads for local business owners works the same way. A lot of them don't know sales, don't use a CRM, never follow up with leads, and are running an offer with bad economics. You can be the best ads person alive, and when the results don't come you'll start doubting yourself, even though the real problem is that they have no system to turn your leads into revenue.

Going up market means taking that same service to a niche that can actually use it. Instead of YouTubers, pitch your video editing to SaaS companies, VCs, or big podcasts that need their episodes clipped into short-form content (money and business podcasts are great for this). You do the same work with the same effort, and you get paid more with way less stress because the client already runs a business that works.

So take your service, pick the up-market audience you want to go after, and write that down as your ICP.

Step 2: Scrape your list​

Once you know who you're going after, scrape their data. LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Apollo both work, and I personally use Apify a lot for scraping Google Maps, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Step 3: Enrich and verify​

Before you send anything, clean the list by verifying every email address (ZeroBounce, NeverBounce or MillionVerifier all do this), checking that names and companies are correct, and filling in anything missing. Bad data bounces, and too many bounces will wreck your sender reputation before you've sent a single good email.

Once that's done, you have your lead list.

Part 2: Writing the email​

This is the structure I still use today, and I'm giving it away because I want you guys to win. I call it OISA, which stands for Observation, Insight, Solution, Action.

One rule before we start: anything you've seen on YouTube about cold email is already saturated, because millions of people watched the same video and are copying it, so treat that as your baseline and assume you need to do better.

Observation​

Find something specific about the person by checking whether they've been on a podcast, written a blog post, posted a long LinkedIn thread, or published a book, and if they wrote a book, go F*cking buy it and read it. Skip lines like "I saw your recent post and loved it," since everyone sends that.

A good observation sounds like this: "Hey [Name], I listened to your episode on [Podcast] where you talked about [specific point], and it stuck with me because [your real reason]."

When someone opens your email, this line tells them you did the homework, and that makes it the most important part of the whole email.

Insight​

This is where you show them the gap you noticed, and the rule is to never hurt their ego, because nobody buys from someone who just insulted them. You need a scapegoat, meaning something outside their control that you can blame for the problem.

Say you're a video editor. If you write "your edits aren't great and I can do better," you've lost them, so blame something else instead:

"I noticed your videos have really in-depth content but aren't getting the reach they deserve. From what I've seen, that's usually down to how the platforms work, since the algorithm rewards fast hooks in the first few seconds, and educational content tends to get edited for people who already follow you, so new viewers scroll past before they reach the good part."

Here the algorithm takes the blame, their knowledge stays the hero, and the problem becomes something the two of you can fix together.

Solution​

Now show that you've already solved this exact problem for someone else, which only takes a line or two: "The same thing was happening with [Client], so we rebuilt the first 10 seconds of every video around a hook framework, and they went from [X] to [Y] views in [timeframe]."

Use real numbers wherever you can, and if you don't have a case study yet, describe the specific approach you'd take and keep it concrete.

Action (CTA)​

The CTA should be so easy that saying yes takes two seconds, so skip the 30-minute call ask and offer something they can receive without any effort, like a Loom video, a quick audit, a free trial, or a roadmap you've already made.

Something like: "I've put together a short roadmap of how I'd fix this for your channel. Mind if I send it over, [Name]?"

I always finish with a PS, which I use for a second hook, a casual personal detail, or a softer alternative to the main CTA.

The template​

Subject: [short, specific reference to your observation]

Hey [Name],

[Observation: something specific from their podcast, book, post or talk, and why it stuck with you.]

[Insight: the gap you noticed, framed around a scapegoat so their ego stays intact.]

[Solution: the same thing happened with [Client], we did [specific approach], and they got [specific result].]

[Action: I've already put together a [Loom/audit/roadmap] for [their company]. Mind if I send it over?]

[Your name]

PS: [Second hook, personal detail, or a lighter alternative CTA.]

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Example: a video editor pitching a business coach​

Say you're a video editor, and you found a business coach named Mike who posts long YouTube videos about growing a small business. His advice is good, but his videos only get around 500 views each, and you think you can help.

Subject: your video on hiring your first employee

Hey Mike,

I watched your video on hiring your first employee, and your tip about doing a paid one-week trial before hiring someone full time was something I'd never heard before.

Your advice is really solid, but I noticed most of your videos take about a minute to get to the point. YouTube decides in the first few seconds whether to keep showing a video to new people, so a slow intro can hold back your views even when the content is great.

I had the same problem with [Client], another business coach. We cut his intros down to 10 seconds, and his views went from around 500 to 3,000 per video in two months.

I re-edited the first 30 seconds of your hiring video to show you what I mean. Can I send it over?

[Your name]

PS: The edit is free, and it's yours to post either way.

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Here's how each part maps to OISA:

• Observation: You mention one specific tip from his video, which proves you watched it instead of sending him a copy-paste line.
• Insight: You blame YouTube and slow intros rather than Mike, so you point out the problem without making him feel stupid.
• Solution: You show that someone like him had the same problem and got a real result after working with you.
• Action: You've already done the work, so all Mike has to say is "sure, send it."

The $500 challenge​

If you apply everything in this post and send your next 100 hyper-personalized emails without getting a single reply, I'll pay you $500, so reply to this thread with your results. I expect most of you to get your first reply somewhere within 30 to 50 emails.

There are a few conditions, though:

1. Your emails have to land in the inbox. I didn't cover inbox setup in this post because there are tons of YouTube videos on creating inboxes, warming them up, checking their health, and setting up your SPF, DKIM and DMARC records. If your emails land in spam, nobody sees them, and no amount of personalization can fix that.
2. Your ICP has to read their email. If you're emailing local business owners, you probably won't get the replies you're hoping for, because they spend their day on their phones and rarely check their inbox. Walking in or cold calling works much better for them, while cold email works best for people who live in their inbox, like founders, VCs and marketing leads.

What's next​

That’s part one. There’s still a lot I haven’t covered, including how I write subject lines, how I run follow-ups (which is where a big chunk of my 10–15% reply rate comes from), and a few crazy strategies I’ve used that honestly feel illegal, so if this post gets enough traction I’ll break all of that down in part two. Let me know what you think.

Thank you so much for reading my post

PS: If you haven’t read my last post, please give it a read, because I’m looking for a white-label partner in the US. We have strong SEO and AEO case studies, and the funnel and messaging are already built and ready to go. If you already sell SEO or AEO and want a partner on the fulfillment side, if you run an agency and want to upsell your existing clients with SEO and AEO, or if you want to start offering it as a new service, I’d love to partner up.

Today, I went to the international food industry trade show in Paris.
I visited the booth of a brand owner—a maker of healthy popcorn—to whom Charles Coristine (of Lesser Evil) had introduced me.

Charles was at the show yesterday; I just missed him!
I live only 30 minutes away from the trade show...

He told our mutual friend that a Frenchman had once sent him a brick in the mail—and that the brick is still sitting on his desk!

I’m definitely going to tell this story to my future children!

@IceCreamKid