I'm Alex.

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I used to hate writing.

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In high school, I took Chinese to avoid Creative Writing. In college, I studied Math & Engineering to avoid any writing courses. If you would've asked me why, I would've said "writing is subjective" or "writing isn't a technical skill".

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What I really meant was "writing is hard because it forces you to think".

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I was a break-dancer not a ballerina in school. I didn't enjoy the art of thinking through abstract problems, I just did my own thing to get the answer as quickly as possible. At the time, I thought school's purpose was to "teach me to do math", rather now I've realized that it was to "teach me to think".

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Now many years out from school this realization hits my like the butt-end of a joke. Therefore, I've turned to the 1 thing that can forever "teach me to think": writing.

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I'm naturally curious about how the world works and why people do what they do. Specifically, why people spend money on the things that they do.

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"Growth" is a vague term, but it's the lane I find the most fun. Startups are the vehicle I use to experiment and test my hypothesis about people.

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This notebook is a collection of my thoughts, from initial hypothesis to final result. If they seem scattered, it's because they are. Writing is thinking for me, and only a sane man's thoughts are orderly.

It's amazing what human beings will do for attention.

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In the game of business, you might think that your "opponent" is your nearest competitor. Rather, I'd argue it's your customer's psyche. There are 3 universal human emotions that I think about constantly. I know if I can tap into one of them during the sale, I win.

• envy
• greed
• embarrassment

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Envy is usually my target of choice. As human beings, we are ridden with jealousy. But the one thing - no matter how "morally just" you are - that we cannot control, is the ability to compare our situation to other's.

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And as they say, the grass is always greener.

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Bertrand Russel has this great quote that goes something like...“Envy consists in seeing things never in themselves, but only in their relations. If you desire glory, you may envy Napoleon, but Napoleon envied Caesar, Caesar envied Alexander, and Alexander, I daresay, envied Hercules, who never existed.”

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Freaking beautiful Bertrand. Anyways, back to the point!

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Why do I love podcasts?

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Because podcasts are my envy bait! I've used podcasts as bait for my dream customers to come on, tell me about their deepest darkest problems, and lust for that sweet drug: attention. And just like a good senko bass worm... it doesn't just attract 1 fish, it attracts MANY. invite my dream customers on

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A podcast, is one of those weird things that "costs" very little to produce, yet it's perceived value is so dang high. Think about it... what do you really need to get a podcast up and going? An email address, maybe like 10 episodes to prove it's "real", and a claim that it's the "biggest" or "fastest growing". That's it - cheap!

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Yet being asked to come on as a "guest" to a podcast is viewed as one of the biggest honor's in the world. It's freaking wild!

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So I use this attention arbitrage to my advantage. Here's my playbook:

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Choose your characters

After you do the basics (choose a name, get setup on spotify, rip a first episode introducing the show), it's time to start thinking about your guests. I like to go after 2 character types...

1. The popular girl in school - this is the influencer that everyone in the industry knows. They look up to her and think she's all that and a cup of tea. this is the crowd I target FIRST. Why? It's easier than you think... these folks have likely been on podcasts before and they're most likely addicted to the attention. So play into that. Plus, if you can get these high signal people to come on your podcast, getting other guests is eeeaassssyyyy.
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2. The dream customer - this is who we're really after. Once i have a backlog of 5-10 episodes with "industry influencers", I start to target my dream customers. Once they see that they would be getting interviewed on the same podcast that insert influencer was on, it's game over. ENVY RULES.

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What to talk about

It literally doesn't matter. I used to think I should do whatever I can to make the podcast interesting but you have to remember at the end of the day: your secondary goal is content.

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Your primary goal is to build a relationship with your guest so that you can sell them your product. That's it. If they want to talk about ponies and rainbows, let them.

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What to do after the show

This is extremely important. Probably the most important part of this entire process. Let me paint the four corners of the room for you..

- You're a guest on the industry's "fastest growing" podcast.

- This super charming hosts invited you to the show, made you feel all warm and fuzzy in the pre-show conversation, let you talk about your passions for an hour, and complimented you along the way.

- You feel like a gosh dang superstar.

- The host turns off the recording and starts asking you more questions... boy do you feel loose now so you're dropping FIRE.

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Stop. That piece riiiiggghttt there is the key.

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Right after we get off the show, i compliment and ask them what i really care about.

• So you guys have been crushing it! Do you think you've hit $100k in revenue yet?
• Wow, I can't believe you've been that busy. Do you use a software to manage all that? How do you like it?
• I can't believe you've been growing so fast! What problems have you been dealing with?

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They'll tell me because they're an open book now. There is this weird fallacy that we're "off the record" because we're no longer recording. Seriously, don't believe me? ask them anything and they'll tell you! I'm literally a fox in the hen house!

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Then towards the end, there is 1 thing you can do to make your life 10x easier. I would have them recommend who i should talk to next which is just how we built this incredible waitlist. it's all about how you frame the ask.

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Asking them "who else is worth bringing on the podcast?" and then listen to them spew a list of names.

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When they're done, ask if they have personal relationships with them. this question kind of sounds offensive so they'll typically give a big "well ya! i'm a baller!". then ask for the intro live, then and there. it works like a charm.

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After that, we'll follow up and see if we can show them a demo of insert product to get feedback and the rest is history.

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Best case i've got a new friend and a customer for life.

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Worst case i've got a new friend and a heck of a story!

there is only one way to use social to drive new leads. and less about it organic and more about outbound.

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first thing's first: viral posts aren't going to do shit. I want to show you something...

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A founder friend of mine had this post go viral:

You know how many leads this drove? ZILCH. NADA. NOTHING. Well at least not enough for it to be noticeable.

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And going viral is hard. There are all sorts of tips and tricks that "help", but at the end of the day it's just about as easy as catching lightning in a bottle

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So here's the strategy that I use that is guaranteed to work over time.

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Layer 1: Produce content

This is a no-brainer but a lot of people over-complicate it. You can't "use social to drive new leads" if you're not producing content - duh.

And producing good content is not as hard as you think. Get a ghostwriter, shit out content every single day. Check out this blog I wrote here that talks about the easiest way to set this up: The Best Way to Write Quality Content at Scale

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Layer 2: Target your ICP

Once you've got content out there, we need to get a little bit smarter about who sees it. We can't just expect for it to "start working" once we post. Use your brain - the world doesn't work like that. We have to go get our own traffic.

So first thing's first, write a list of the accounts your ICP might be following / connected to. Don't mail this in, build a list of at least 10 accounts that is specifically unique to your ICP's interests. We'll call this the "Target List"

On Twitter, you can add these guys to a separate "feed" or list, I forgot what they call it. And on LI you can't really do that but you can follow them. Do that - it'll make more sense in a second.

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Layer 3: Increase your surface area for luck

Okay, now that we've got content being produced and we've identified the accounts our ICP is probably following, we're going to vampire attack.

Here are the 2 things to do:

1. Comment - Under each of the ~10 accounts in your Target List, you have to comment when they post. These accounts presumably have reach to our potential ICP so by commenting consistently under their posts, we're hijacking some of their reach for free. So set notifications for their accounts so you can be the first comment.
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2. Follow/Unfollow - This sounds so damn basic, but i'm not kidding - it's probably one of the most valuable things you can do. Legit follow, then unfollow every single account that's following the ~10 accounts in your Target List. If you want to get cheeky with it, you can dm every single new follower of yours that's an ICP fit and say waddup, but it's not super needed.

You can automate either of these, but i'd recommending starting it out manually while you tweak it. Then get a va or use tools that can automate this for you. (I've had good success with Owlead for Twitter and Dripify for LI).

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Layer 4: Post demand-gen content

Now that we're posting good content, our following is growing with our potential ICP, and we're striking up conversations in the dm's we have one goal: get them off platform.

Next stop: email.

For the guys in your dm's it's easy, just tell them there's probably a better place for this and shoot them your email.

If you're lucky and your dm's are full, you can stop here. But if you're like the rest of us, you'll need to start fishing from your audience.

How? Create and post lead magnets. Just create a few simple resources you can offer for free and email gate it. That's it. Nothing too crazy or inventive here.

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Layer 5: Outreach

The last layer of the onion here is just to connect with the folks who inbounded and use your lead magnets as bait for outbound.

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Then rinse and repeat.

No need for viral posts or paid ads or any other gimmicks. Just build a base of content, get in front of the people that would like it, and then follow up with them. No need to overcomplicate it.

Copy I Like

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ads

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There are two macro trends occurring right in this moment that open up a unique opportunity.

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Pet adoption is increasing and AI technology is getting better. 

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First let’s cover pet adoption. 

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The pandemic sparked a big surge in pet adoption, with one third of households in the US welcoming a new family member with paws during the first few months of lockdown. A large share of pet adoptions were for dogs, who require services like grooming and walking. 

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To accommodate the increased demand for such services, pet companies increased their hiring across all fields. Job postings from pet companies, stores, and veterinary clinics increased threefold in 2021 and 2022 relative to their levels in 2020. Although the growth in job postings by pet companies has decelerated in 2023, it remains markedly elevated compared to pre-pandemic levels. 

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Pet companies need more skilled, pet-friendly workers but from where?? 

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The job is too “low-status” for college graduates. But at the same time, it’s too artistically challenging for low-skilled workers.

The business problem is clear. But the solution isn’t. 

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I want to pause now and look over at the other macro trend taking place: The rise of AI. 

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The AI category is rapidly evolving but developing into three layers: foundational models, AI infrastructure and AI applications.

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Foundational model leaders like Anthropic, Cohere and OpenAI have raised a combine $1B+ in venture capital over the last several years. 

The “picks and shovels” of AI, AKA the infrastructure layer, are gaining significant adoption as well. They include a variety of categories including data enhancement, fine-tuning, databases and model-training tools. For example, vector databases like Pinecone and Weaviate are touted by 100’s of thousands of users. 

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These foundational models and infrastructure enable the perfect storm for niche AI business applications. A deep underlying knowledge of end-user workflows and access to valuable industry-specific training data allow for powerful AI-enhanced software applications.

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So, where does the rise in AI technology and the explosion of pet adoption meet? 

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Vertical software for pet groomers. 

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The rise of Vertical SaaS in the past decade has demonstrated the power of industry-specific software, producing dozens of winners like Toast, Shopify, Procore, and ServiceTitan.

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And now, in an industry inundated with mostly generic software, narrow and specific is now possible versus broad and generalized.

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The grooming market accounts for more than $6.14 Billion in the US alone. 

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Right now, groomer-operators spend over 15 hours and thousands of dollars a week scheduling clients and conducting routine admin work. 

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AI-powered features can deliver automation, which can be the difference between needing another hire and not. Routine processes can be digitized, giving back hours of highly valuable grooming time. 

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For many grooming businesses, the owner’s just want to groom. 

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And we’re confident that an AI-powered business solution will allow them to do just that. 

You should be using events to sell to leads. Think about it. “Free booze” is probably the easiest thing to sell in the world. It’s practically a layup to get in front of your leads. 

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Now it’s not the most scalable, but it’s easy and practically costless. Hell, you can even turn events into negative CAC if you get really dialed. At a b2b saas startup I worked for in early 2022, we turned our events into a $1.5M business! 

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Let’s throw a pretend event for YC alum in NYC…

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6 weeks before the event

Come up with the idea for the event. This is worth putting first because i want to call out one thing that’ll determine whether this succeeds or not - the crazy factor. i promise that you’re not going “Crazy” enough for the event. 

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It needs to seem like it costs a lot of money and is super hard to get into. In many ways this is a SIGNAL for how well you’re doing as a company. So posture BIG so people thing you’re a rocket ship. Pick a dope venue, with a name brand caterer or band, and a spunky theme. To put into perspective that you’re not going big enough - we once got the Chainsmokers for a silly founder event. 

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Start putting the pieces together. I usually start in Notion, write the copy, come up with a catchy title, and create a canva banner. Then I’ll head over to Luma to upload everything. I like luma becaus it’s easy to use, looks nice on mobile, and lets you do a sneaky hack that I’ll explain later. Make sure you set an attendee cap on the event (just make up a small number), turn on “approve before adding” function, add “where did you hear about us from” on the form, and if you really wanna get cheeky - password gate the event. 

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Next we have to go find the money to actually throw this event. You didn’t think we were paying for this ourselves did you? To do this, we’re going to go pitch partners to come in on this. We’ll find other notable logos in the space that our customers hang out and reach out. After tons of failed pitches, here are my best notes on how to secure the bag here…

1. We send the partner an email telling them we have an event coming up in NYC for former yc founders. Ask them if they’re interested in getting involved
2. If they reply, we ask them if they’d like to learn more. Hop on a call.
3. We don’t talk money.
4. After the call, send them a followup. “here’s how the luma link would look. Let me know if you’re interested”
5. When they say YES, we ask them how much budget they have available. If they give us a number, that’s the minimum check size, we make a sponsorship tier for that. Rinse and repeat. 

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5 weeks before the event

Alright once we know we can afford it and we have partners in to nail down the credibility, it’s time to focus on filling the event. 

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We’re going to scrape a list of YC Alum in NYC. We’re going to use our data scraping extraordinaire Drake Dukes to get all this for us. Why not just use Apollo? Drake thinks outside the box, he’ll get stuff not on the public lead databases, and he’ll enrich all the data to make sure we’re not burning our domains. 

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Perfect. While Drake is getting the data all ready for us, we’ll go ahead and start writing the copy. Here’s a screenshot of what that copy looks like for this event…

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Super simple, to the point, and conversational.

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When Drake gives us the data (looks like there is 804 leads), we’ll immediately start a connection campaign on LI / Twitter using the leads list. We are NOT cold dm’ing. That is spammy and we are not spammers! Instead, we’re just going to do simple follow/connection request campaigns to plant the idea of “oh ya, I’ve heard of these guys” in their heads. A little subconscious credibility work before the ask. 

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4 weeks before the event

Now that we’ve got our targets soft-circled, we’ll start sending them the actual invites. There’s nothing to this really, just make sure you’re monitoring the copy for the first few days to see how it’s performing. Depending on the size of your leads list, this could take 1 week or 3 to fully run. For ours, it’ll take 3-4 weeks, so I’ve sped up the frequency on my sequence to 3 days between sends. 

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Right when you hit launch, I would start to make sure you have everything ready to go for the incoming replies. There are a few common triggers I like to prepare for…

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They reply - reply within 48 hours of first reply

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They reply and signup - Reply within 48 hours of signup

“Hey, saw your sign up come through the backend so you’re all set. Looking forward to seeing you at the event! You owe me a full breakdown on what {company name} does!!”

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They reply and can’t come - Reply within 48 hours of signup

“Hey, no worries we’re out in sf/nyc all the time. You won’t miss much at the event, just a bunch of tech nerds talking about the recent open AI drama. We are giving all the attendees beta access to our 1-year free perk, so you will miss that but if you guys really want to try it out, I can probably get you a code for that.”

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1 week before the event

Okay, by this point signups should be coming in and you should be getting a pulse on how many attendees you should expect at the event. I always assume 30% of the signups will show up, so if you get 200 signups - aim for 65 attendees.

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The other thing to do at this point is give your partners a heads up on where you’re at. They should be impressed with the number of signups (and the fact they’ve all come through you lol). Push them to throw the invite out on their socials again. This probably won’t drive more signups but will be good credibility. 

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At this point, there’s probably a fair amount of folks that forgot to signup after initially showing interest. So reach back out to all those who replied but didn’t signup. 

“Hey noticed I never saw your signup come through. Just wanted to check in and make sure you guys can’t make it? The event is full so we turned off signups, but I know we talked a few weeks ago so I can slip you guys in if you still wanted to come.”

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Also - here’s when you do the luma hack I mentioned in the beginning. Go back through your email sender and export the list of leads that never replied. Luma has a feature that lets you “auto-send” invites to a list of emails. It’ll use their domains and look different from your emails. This has a SURPRISINGLY good signup rate so use it. 

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Day of the event

Okay, at this point the potential attendees are sitting around wondering if they should go or not. So go ahead and send one more email. send a note that is personal, short, and “sent from your iPhone”. Something like…

“Hey you still coming tonight?? I still wanna hear about {company name}. I’ll be the goofy tall one walking around with a backward cardinals hat so come find me. Let me know if you have any questions getting in!”

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Why do we do this? How many times have you almost not gone to an event because “eh, I won’t really know anybody”. An attendee gets a note like this and they almost feel “obligated” to go because you’re excited to see them. Plus, at the event you’ll be somewhat of a mini celebrity. All of your leads will come find you!

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p.s. - please tell me you have a photographer. The photos they take will drive fomo and get the event flywheel going. Event photographers are worth their weight in gold!!

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Day after the event

Okay, there’s a bunch of things to do after the event to start farming the leads but the most important thing happens the day after. 

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Send out a tweet / LI post showing how “packed” the event was. Tag all your partners in it. This will drive fomo on your page but also serve as an asset for future partnership pitches, future event marketing, etc. 

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Send an email to your partners thanking them, send them the stats and leads list (highlight the “where did you hear about us” statistic to show how much value you added). Also -> send them the tweet and tell them to engage.

Next, go find the leads who didn’t reply to your campaign. Shoot them a message linking to the tweet and saying we missed them. Tell them all attendees got access to the beta perk and “I can probably get you in if you want”.  

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‍Segment your attendees as the following...

1. People a team member spoke to
2. People who attended
3. People who registered and were approved but didn't go
4. People who registered and were not approved (waitlisted)

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Email Follow Up Copy

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1. People a team member spoke to

‍Develop the relationship further and follow up on relevant topics discussed at the event with super personalized emails to each of these new relationships! 

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2. People who attended

Hey (First Name),

Thanks for coming to our event last night. Myself and the rest of the hosts were happy with the turn out even with the rain. 

Bummed we didn’t get the chance to chat yesterday. I’m looking back at the attendees list and was looking forward to actually hearing more about (Company Name)!

Do you have time to catch up over Zoom next week? 

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3. People who registered and were approved but didn't go

Hey (First Name), bummed we missed you at our event last night. 

Totally get it - the rain makes it tough to get out. We ended up having a great showing with over 40 ecom leaders! 

I’m looking back at the attendees list and was looking forward to actually hearing more about (Company Name)!

Do you have time to catch up over Zoom next week? 

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4. People who registered and were not approved (waitlisted)

Hey (First Name), saw your name got bumped to the waitlist for our event last night. 

I wanted to reach out today and thank you for registering in the first place. That’s on me - next time now I know we need a bigger venue… lol

With that being said, I was poking around your site and would love to learn more about what’s new at (Company Name). 

Do you have time to catch up over Zoom next week?

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Days following the event

When you get the professional photos, export a list of everyone who attended to send them a recap email. 

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Things to include in your recap email:

• the professional photos as the bait. They’ll click in to see them - feel free to data capture and qualify here if you want.
• A screenshot of good “reviews” that people left. Luma does this automatically, but I like to include them because they’re typically pretty funny.
• Callout the beta perk again just in case they missed it the first time. Maybe even add some fomo… “We only have 3 spots left in the beta perk discount. If you haven’t signed up for it yet, let me know asap so I can save you a spot!!”

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Weeks following the event

Lead farm like it’s your JOB. Your relationship with a potential customer has never been so high. They just had a blast at your free event with free booze and free fun. And you are the guy who invited them. Boy should they like you ALOT right now.

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we'd come up with an event

fomo in other partners with bigger logos for credibility

probably charge the partners some moneys too

then load up our cold email sender like an AK47

fomo our icp into the event saying it's closed already / etc.

auto-invite those that didn't reply to the cold emails and those on our current email list

blow out the event and make it seem that way - long line, photographer, etc.

send out pictures to fomo the next day

reach out to bigger and better partners immediately following, saying we have "1 slot" left not event partnership

reach out to all attendees and invite them to our "closed beta" test

rinse and repeat

Most companies nowadays get their customers through buying leads on google, Facebook, or ad slots in newsletters / podcasts, etc.

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You’re renting your audience.

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But what if you didn’t have to pay for your customers? And what if you actually got paid for finding your customers?

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Now before you say I sounds freaking crazy… hear me out

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What if you built a *media* business.

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A podcast, newsletter, blog, etc. Company agnostic. Something that your customers would read.

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You can start these pretty lean, you will forever OWN the audience, and you are basically spinning up a machine to win your customers at scale - for free.

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Then afterwards, build a data or services business to go with it.

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You’ll learn about your audience and the services that go along with it. And then have free distribution to promote it … to the audience that told you they want it.

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And this audience will compound. Keep putting out quality content, keep growing your audience base.

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Due to these media businesses being pretty niche, you’ll eventually look around and realize you’re the top dog. And then others will start to pay you for that.

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Other people will reach out to you to sponsor it.

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This is beautiful, because not only is your media side-biz making money now, but you’re *learning* what bait your audience is falling for by monitoring the clicks.

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This is where the power shit comes in.

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By learning what your audience clicks on (while someone pays you), you’re learning what your audience would pay for.

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And stay with me here… who does your audience trust most?

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You.

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So what if instead of capturing a small % of the product you’re pushing, you capture the whole shebang?  

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Yep, ladies and gentlemen, that’s how we come full circle.

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Eventually, you tell that sponsor to kick rocks and you start selling something you own.

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Now you have money coming in from advertising and product, with an audience you OWN completely.

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You just turned a random media company into a:

1. Lead finder
2. Profit center

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You’ve reached nirvana: a negative customer acquisition cost.

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“Media businesses are the biggest arbitrage opportunity of this decade” - the king of owned media himself - Craig Fuller.

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What’s beautiful about owned media is also just how easy is to compound and compete against your media “competitors”.

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How does that work?

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Well, a sub is not worth a sub anymore.

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A sub is worth a sub + service now.

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Let me break this down.

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Let’s say you have 10,000 subs and an advertiser that pays you $.25 per sub for a banner ad. You’re making $2,500 for that, nice.

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So you know that every additional sub is worth $.25 to you. Therefore your ad spend to get those subs is “unprofitable” for anything spent over $.25/sub.

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But what if you could sell that sub something else - an add-on service offered by you. Let’s keep it simple and say you’ll sell that sub a $10 phone case.

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Assuming 1% of people click through and buy that phone case, a sub is now worth $.35, an additional $.10 from your original price. And with that, you can get a little bit more aggressive with your sub acquisition because you have an extra $.10 of wiggle room.

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Now imagine you were selling financing or a plot of land to those subs. Your price per sub now is something like $500k. Holy shit.

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This is all rounded silly math but you get the gist.

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Using media as a tool - rather than as a sole business - actually enables you to grow the media brand much much faster, and in turn your saas much much faster.

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If your curious what “right” looks like, here are some of my favorite examples of this…
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• Craig Fuller, founder of freight waves, sells a data saas off the back of his online news site.
• Mercury, the startup bank, started a print magazine - Meridian.  
• HubSpot, a crm solution, bought a new site called The Hustle.
• Founder Path, a lending solution for saas co’s, does a founder webinar a week.
• And perhaps the most valuable example of them all - Bloomberg.

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Forget the title for a minute. I don't even want you to think about this like a "campaign". There is something so obvious yet so under-utilized out there that not enough founders do. This might sound crazy...

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Talk to your customers

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Whether you're in B2B or B2C or BBC (jk), you HAVE to talk to your potential customers. But you know that! So the only question that's worth asking then is: how do i do this?

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We could run ads, we could show up at incubators to talk to founders, we could post on social hoping to go viral, we could ask for referrals, we could give partner deals, the list goes on and on and on…

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But now let’s try something. I want you to re-read that paragraph above except make one change to the question…. how to do we do this at scale?

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Adding that one factor suddenly makes the answers not make sense.

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Now I know what you’re thinking. We’re in the valley Alex! So we can subscribe to the “graham-erism” that it’s okay to be doing things that’s scale.

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And to that I say absolutely! We should be running ads, and asking for referrals, and giving partner deals and all of the above. But if we truly believe this is going to be an industry breaking company, we need to begin searching for industry wide solutions.

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And with that, let’s talk about email.

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DISCLAIMER: this is where we might lose some folks. My experience here is particularly with B2B saas so if you're not in that crowd, feel free to kick rocks (or hang around to get some chuckles).

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Email is the most efficient way to reach your customer

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If you can get the data, you can get to the customer.

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What do your boss, accountant, wife, and the IRS all have in common? They all send scary emails. Jokes aside, it’s where our customer lives so we might as well be hitting them in there.

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And, there’s no ceiling. You can send 100 or 100,000, the world is our oyster.

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You can literally send infinite cold emails. 

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As long as you do proper infrastructure set up, you can light this sh*t on fire. Now with anything, I wouldn't recommend pouring all the gasoline on it right off the bat. Start slowly, learn, and make sure you're hitting the right people and iterating on your copy.

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The more you do it - the more you will learn about your customer

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What happens every time you ask your ICP about your product? You learn something.

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To hit hyper growth, you need to have the shortest feedback loops in the game. Instead of learning 1:1 on the phone, you can learn 1:many through email.

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Brian Armstrong said “action produces information”.

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Imaging turning down a channel where you can get 20-30 data points from your icp A DAY.

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And the bar is just so freaking low...
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You know that airplane graphic that represents survivorship bias?

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Where planes that get hit do not return.

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Now back to email....How many cold emails do you respond to?

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You're going to say "0" because you're such a smart cookie.

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But how many times do you know it's a cold email?? Oooofff..... now you're thinking. And now you get my point.

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If you do this right, it won't look like you're selling.

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It'll look like you're just trying to start a conversation. Often times, cold email is less about conversion and more about conversation.

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Some of my favorite cold email copy

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If you were to show your first email to your company's CMO she should say "that is so bad, it doesn't even talk about what you're doing".

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If you get that response - congrats. You know you nailed the first email.

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There are some risks here... especially if you're silly about your copy

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You don't want to be known as a "spammy" brand.

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If you send too many shitty emails, people will start to take you and your brand less seriously.

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WORST case scenario is someone puts you on blast on twitter / facebook where your ICP hangs out.

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And there is some tech risk.

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If you don't set up your infrastructure right, you can obviously burn your domains and get caught in Google purgatory forever.

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This is easily avoidable if you set up your tech right, scrape the right emails, and don't be a bozo when it comes to copy.

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Plus at the very worst case, you just spin up new domains.

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How to get this all going

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I mean we could go DEEP here, but honestly it's hard to keep this part of the content evergreen.

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The rules of the road for email always change.

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But I'm happy to give a 50,000 foot view of how I think about this...

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Data Acquisition & Customer Leads

• Acquire prospect data
• Map to key contacts (founder roles) at those companies
• Enrich for valid emails for email campaigns
• Get enough data for first batch of testing (400-600 leads)
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Email Outbound Infrastructure Set Up

• Buy domains and create email sending accounts.
• Set up SPF, DKIM & DMARC.
• Set up forwarding to main domain.
• Connecting email accounts to sending / sales automation platform
• Set up Custom Tracking Domain
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Copy Writing, Sequencing, and Funnel Strategy

• Write initial email copy and set up sequences based on batch 1 messaging
• Create squeeze page, calendly link, or event for bottom of the funnel CTA
• Monitor results and response feedback to optimize campaigns and double down on copy that's resonating

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Run it till you're dead, seriously

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I love Forbes

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Why? it’s the best business model in the world.
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1. Everyone wants to be featured
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2. Everyone looks up to those featured
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3. Everyone blindly listens to Forbes’ judgement - no one questions “why?” Lol

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Charlie munger once said the world isn’t driven by greed, it’s driven by envy

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So my model for enterprise sales is to forbesify the f*** out of my customers. Let's crank the envy level up to the max!

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Podcasts -

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“come on and talk about how you built our empire”

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• this is my favorite because you get FaceTime, but the least scalable because it takes face time. Save for your WHALE customers
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• you can read about how I use these effectively in my post How I Use Podcasts for Sales
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Print magazines -

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“we have a cover spot available for June that we’d like to feature you on”
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• this is great because it’s unique
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• And the “wow” factor is bigger because you can touch it
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Magazines are a little trickier to produce because there are physical expenses.

We’ve always started with digital offering first (great for seo anyways), then after filling up a “subscriber” list printing a few copies to give away for free and use as fomo fodder.

Finally after fomo-ing a bunch of people, offering it physically for a subscription cost.
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The eyeballs from the distribution is great, but we’re really after it as a tool to forbesify our customers so there are 2 offerings I’ll use to hang over people’s heads:
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Spotlights
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• we can do 4-5 per magazine
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• easier to give spots away but still need data at scale
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• great offering though. i usually use for middle-market ICP. Not whale’s but not scrubs
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Cover
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• only have 12 spots (1 per month) so you can use scarcity in your offer, BUT you only have 12 spots so it’s also not super scalable
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• this I also use for whales, I’ll typically go podcast and then if i think I can swing them, I’ll ask them about the cover spot. Win win
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Feature articles -
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“doing an article about people in x city or x industry, would love to feature you”
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• unlimited spots, but it can water down the offer
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• if you have data at scale, this is a pretty light lift
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• offers an easy conversation opener for tons of fish. Could pick up the hidden whale

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Think about this.
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Featuring someone on your made up media company…

• is basically free
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• and it’s the easiest yes to a sales call you’ll ever get
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The people you feature…

• will consider you as a friend for life
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• and they’ll never again be a “cold lead”
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And the content you create…

• will attack even more potential customers
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• and build brand equity towards becoming the kingmaker
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I’ve only tried this playbook in niche industries, but I have no reason why it can’t work everywhere. Thank you for coming to my ted talk. #IloveForbes

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My buddy Drake has a data software company called Gravity that serves investors early-stage startup leads. When things were slow, he’d let me run little growth experiments here and there on it, like my own personal sandbox. We tried dm campaigns, ads, newsletters, all sorts of hocus pocus but there was one thing that absolutely slayed: personal content.

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Using his data saas, we’d generate insights and post about them on his linkedin. we had built a system that was relatively scalable. One of the most fun things in the world is seeing your friends win. And this campaign ripped big time for Drake.

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Within 3 months, Drake’s account exploded.

• 7,000+ LinkedIn followers
• 1,500,000+ LinkedIn impressions
• $4,000+ MRR
• 500+ Newsletter subscribers
• 15 new enterprise demos (~$400k in potential LTV)

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Turns out, that play wasn’t isolated to just Drake. Off that insight, I started a content agency to prove it out. For $5k/mo, I would ghostwrite for a select group of B2B saas founders that were too busy to crank out personal content.

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At first, things were rocky. I think 1 of the reasons that I was able to produce such great content for Drake was that I had not only known the product so well, but I had known him so well. It was second nature to write for him because I knew exactly what he’d say himself.

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So I had to figure out a way to replicate that insight…

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The goals:

• get authentic content
• make the system scalable for the founder (low time, low effort)

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This started the creation of the original Prompts and to this day, the system I recommend to all busy founders.

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Here’s how it works:

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1. Come up with a series of prompts to ask

I would go crazy with these, a series of interesting questions about their personal background, the inception of the company, design decisions, customer stories, etc. I would try and ask questions that might spur hot takes or big mistakes.

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2. Schedule a 30 minute zoom every 2 weeks

This would give me MORE than enough content to write from. And these calls are simple - I’d think of them like a podcast interview that doesn’t get published. We show up and I’d use the prompts questions as a guide. But be open to wherever the conversation goes.

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3. Write the dang content

This part could be tailored differently to who you are as a writer, but for me it would work like building a puzzle. First I’d open up the box to see what I’m working with, which meant downloading the transcript. Then I’d separate out the corner pieces, which meant bucketing out the question with the following answer. Finally, I’d put it all together - re-work the question as a hook and summarize their answer into an engaging story.

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You might read that and say “duh”, but it’s not a “duh”. The typical ghostwriting model is broken. It forces the founder to make a choice between high quality content and freedom of time. If you want high quality authentic content, you’re often stuck writing out the content so it’s not just fluff piece after fluff piece. If you want to save time, you’re often caught compromising for content that reads like an industry trade magazine (BORING).

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Prompts turns the original ghostwriting model on its head. instead of writing boring industry-agnostic content you get beautiful, authentic stories that sound like the founder actually wrote them. And not to mention in 1/10 of the time.

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If you want to implement it as a founder, here’s what I’d recommend:

• find a writer (internal or external) doesn’t matter. And get them up to speed on what the goal is
• have them write prompts
• schedule a 30 min meeting with them every 2 weeks
• give them access to popular twitter / linkedin frameworks
• let em loose

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This system allows you to create content that is truly authentic and expert opinions without requiring more than 30-60 minutes a month

You ever find yourself in a market where you have no clue where to find leads?

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In the world of B2B saas, I've been spoiled to have access to lead databases to conjur up my first targets. ZoomInfo, Crunchbase, and Gravity have literally all been the TRT to my GTM (LOL). But what happens when those sources don't have your customer profile?

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I recently came across this predicament while trying to serve *******, for those who aren't on the premium+ plan - those bleeped out words are a certain customer demographic in the SMB category.

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Thought I've only tried this funnel with this specific customer, I have no doubt it could be used for any customer across SMB. So what's it look like?

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Established separately branded newsletter

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This is KEY. Any sales guru or moron alike out there will tell you - never lead with the hard sale. When you're swooning on a lady at the bar, you never ask her for a kiss right away do you? No, you buy her a skinny margarita and say her eyes remind you of something Shakespeare once wrote.

Just instead of giving a girl a skinny margarita, we're going to give our customer a free newsletter. Same same!

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We'll save the how-to-newsletter for a different post but this can be AI or human. It doesn't really matter as long it passes for "valuable".

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Pay for cheap FaceBook ads to grow the newsletter

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Pay-per-lead on any typical saas product is EXPENSIVE. Pay-per-lead on any typical consumer product is MEGA EXPENSIVE. Pay-per-lead on a newsletter? Cheaper than your Ikea dresser.

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I used Facebook because I was fairly certain my customers hang out there.

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And Facebook ads - lucky for me - are pretty easy to run!

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Copy: Don't get crazy and keep it simple, stupid. I like to think about that Jedi meme when creating ads to remind myself that over-complication is usually dumb. Open Canva, create something people will like and can understand, be done with it. Here's one of my highest converting ads for this campaign...

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Filters: I didn't set any filters besides geo-gating the ad to the United States. As someone who always stops at the roadside stand that has the "World's Best Coffee", I'm going to let the "World's Best Advertising Algorithm" do it's thing.

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Budget: Start with a small budget until you know you're getting conversions, but when you know it works - let it riiiipp. We're constantly acquiring subscribers for $.18-.20 a lead. Each of these leads could be worth upwards of $10k+ in LTV so it's safe to safe it's worth it.

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Ask for qualifying data upon subscription

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When they subscribe, this is a LAYUP chance to ask for more qualifying data. The ad copy from your toils and hard earned dollar worked! Motivation is fleeting so at the very second they subscribe if you can collect more data - you'll have a pretty damn high chance of collecting!

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I can't speak for other newsletter platforms, but Beehiiv let's you do this natively. How does the customer journey look here?

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1. Customer sees our ad
2. They click through to a squeeze page (webflow + beehiive embed)
3. They enter their email to subscribe
4. They're redirected to a form

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If they complete steps 1-3, you'd be shocked at how well they complete step 4. In this form, I would keep the questions within 1 degree of "this helps us better serve the community". What do I mean by that? Well, if you can answer "this helps us better serve the community" to any claims of brazen data harvesting then you're okay. But if you're asking for revenue details and blood types, well... good luck charlie.

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Ask for more data (might as well)

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Following a subscription, we have one of those automatic emails go out from Beehiiv that links to our most popular content - rad. But even more rad is the zap we have that pushes a welcome email from my personal email to a subscriber's starting a conversation with them.

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This might look like overkill but hear me out... this 1 email opens the door to so much opportunity.

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1. The customer can't tell this automatic. I know you and I can, but you have to remember that not everybody is in the zeitgeist. The copy looks genuine and these guys don't get cold emails 24/7 like other tech bros, so it looks like I'm actually starting a conversation with them
2. It establishes an early relationship. Going forward, this person will forever have a record of our first account. I have now turned this lead from cold to warm.
3. If they answer, they'll give me MORE data. Remember, the whole point of this exercise is to harvest leads without any seeds! Data is our seeds!! 

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If you copy anything from this email let it be the last line. People love to brag about themselves and hate anything that takes more than a second. If I ask you how long you've been working in startups, you'd proudly answer just to tell me.

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Same mantra stands across industries. SMB folks are human too! Therefore this is the perfect last line to prompt a response.

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Bonus item: what to do with all the email responses

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"20 years", "since 83", "my whole damn life". After I started getting around 100 emails a day from customers replying with comments like these, I figured there had to be something we could do with this. Any ideas??

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More data.

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I started replying to these folks at scale with another human-looking automated response.

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You can see how this response could engage a series of 3 emotions:

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1. Feel flattered for the compliments
2. Feel honored that he personally asked me
3. Feel like you just scored great value

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As I'm in the midst of this experiment right now, I haven't written the guides yet. But logistics are like sketchy neighbors - you don't need to worry about them until you do. We'll get there. Till then enjoy this hack and rock n roll.