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#130 · Make vs n8n: which makes more money in 2025?

youtube ↗Lead Generation

As a beginner with no testimonials planning to offer services for free initially, is focusing on CRM automations a good starting point, or should I look for something simpler to learn and easier to sell? Also, should I use Apollo for lead generation?

Sure, I'd recommend Apollo for lead generation. First, regarding CRM automations as a starting point: it's a viable option, but there may be simpler things to learn and sell. Second, about copywriting: I talk loudly in my videos; you can jump to my copywriting video around the 56‑minute mark where I show how I do my copywriting and share the templates I use. Third, lead follow‑ups, pipeline management, and email sequences are definitely good starting points—there are many good starting points, but those are solid. Additionally, I mentioned that getting a Starlink is a good idea, and I regret not roasting Broxton's Upwork earlier; I plan to do that right after this video. I also noted that buying a 5G device could be useful. On AI safety: I don't get many client questions about it; clients considering AI implementation usually aren't concerned about safety one way or the other. Personally, I care deeply about AI safety—I'm big on Less Wrong and AI safety in general—but I'm also an accelerationist who believes we should adopt AI as quickly as possible. However, I think the current incentives in big labs are misaligned, and if we keep responding to them, the risk of an AI‑related mishap remains high. Regarding brand stats: my main channel has 133,721 subscribers, the daily updates channel 6,684, and the Instagram channel 209,535. Overall growth is at 0.57, which is declining and unsatisfying; I'm not using the right metric. Growth has stalled—we were at 1, dropped to 0.5, and now we're back down. When looking at absolute numbers, there is some improvement just because the channel is larger, but relative growth shows no real change. Maker School churn is about 21.85%, down slightly from before. I created a thread asking what people want to know and got a hundred high‑quality comments, giving me a library of content for future Maker School exclusives—posts I only share inside the group to increase perceived value. My goal is to reduce churn to 17%; if I can get it down to 70% churn I'd hold the top spot longer, otherwise I risk being overtaken by competitors like Spencer Paulo, who is steadily gaining ground. Brian Decker at the Well Society, for example, made $8,694 in the last week while I made $4,548; at that rate he'd overtake me in about a year and a half if nothing changes. I'm going to keep providing value and redo the Maker School program to improve retention.

apollocopywritinglead follow-upsai safety

Related answers

youtube ↗AI & Automation

Hey Nick, you make great content. It's almost exactly what I'm looking for—no BS, just actual use cases and useful things businesses need. Thank you. How do you decide which business processes are worth automating with AI? Do you perform an audit? I guess it's about targeting the most revenue potential and fastest development time, but what checklist or process do you follow when evaluating automation potential within a business? I'd love if you could walk us through your decision-making process. Also, what are your top three most requested or recurring automation solutions you build for other businesses? I can put this together ASAP—cold email, my proposal generator, and a one-click CRM based on CRM templates I've shown with 1‑second copy in my previous copywriting business.

In terms of the checklist, I use an automation agency sales skeleton. Instead of a full script, which is hard to deliver naturally, I give a skeleton—a big list of topics to talk about. I start by building rapport, then set the schedule, and ask the big question: 'Why me now in this?' Because asking 'why now' usually gives the person all the ammunition needed to sell them. For example, they might say they need X, Y, Z, and that they love that I talked about X, Y, Z and think I'm the best person to help solve those. Then I know everything I need to sell them. Next, I ask about the actual audit questions: always map the customer journey from start to end of fulfillment. That means identifying where the customer first sees you—whether it's a Facebook inbound lead ad, a referral email thread, a cold email inbox, or a cold call. Then I walk through every step: lead generation, sales process (how a lead becomes a sales call, sending a calendar link, booking or not), closing the deal (proposal, agreement, invoice), onboarding, fulfillment, post‑fulfillment retention, and getting them back into the business. If any step is missing, I note what to do. By running the customer through this series and having them map their pipeline from start to finish, you usually know everything needed to make a reasonable analysis of their main bottlenecks and problems. Another useful question is revenue per employee (or cost per employee/contractor). For example, when I made over $100,000 a month with just me, my revenue per employee was $100,000, while most other businesses have $15,000–$20,000. This helps map businesses from high to low revenue per employee; the lower the revenue per employee, the more you can systematize the business, and the higher it is, the trickier it becomes. Finally, I also ask some sales history questions.

ai automationprocess auditcustomer journeyrevenue per employee
youtube ↗Niches

Should I stick with the CRO niche for startups or start testing AI automation, and if I stay with CRO what strategies do you recommend to grow it?

It’s very difficult to know whether to stick with CRO or test AI automation without knowing your revenue or how long you’ve been at it. At the end of the day, those are the only two variables that matter for deciding whether to keep doing something or move on. If you’re asking this question, you’re likely not achieving the results you expected; that could be due to your expectations or your actual performance relative to reasonable expectations. AI automation is a solid niche, but CRO is directly defensible from a revenue perspective. Imagine a company making $100,000 a month with their CRO. If you offer to double their CRO, you’re offering an additional $100,000 per month because their funnel is their only revenue source. At $100,000 a month, you can charge 10‑15% as a service provider, yielding $10,000‑$15,000 per month from that client alone. All else equal, that’s a 7‑10x ROI—a strong offer right out of the gate. You can pair it with a fixed‑price guarantee (e.g., guarantee X improvement in conversion rate or you don’t pay, money‑back, free landing page) to get them in the door, improve CRO, and move to a longer‑term, performance‑based relationship. I don’t think CRO is a bad niche, nor is it at risk of being automated away; automation or AI would actually let you do more with it. The fact you’re asking this suggests you’re doing something wrong. Specific strategies: How many customer contacts are you making per day? Are you contacting and selling to at least 100 people daily for this service? If not, and you haven’t done that for 90 days straight (≈9,000 contacts), keep going until you hit that mark. After about 9,000 contacts you’ll have a reasonable sense of how it works. If you can’t do it, can’t hack it, or just suck at it, there’s no shame in moving on to something that works. I believe AI automation is probably the best service‑based business model to start, which is why I teach it in Maker School (my 90‑day accountability program), but I’m not dismissing your model because you’re not winning yet.

croai automationgrowth strategies
youtube ↗AI & Automation

I'm creating automations for a warehouse management system with ~4,000 SKUs but have no WMS experience. Should I treat it like a CRM?

No, you're absolutely right—warehouse management systems, enterprise resource planning, and inventory management systems are essentially dressed-up CRMs. If you understand how spreadsheets work, you'll understand how WMS and similar systems work; their UX is often clunky, but that's fine. Regarding VR 180 cameras: they're stereo cameras with a wide field of view that feel immersive in a VR headset; still early days with resolution needing work, but they could become a big industry in 5–10 years. I haven't used them yet, but they look exciting—two lenses recreating human field of view. I film them with OBS Studio. On your AI automation ideas for cold email: AI meeting note‑taking that sends key subjects and actionable steps to participants and updates the CRM is great. Automated email tagging and filtering is great. An AI concierge for Airbnbs and hotels answering common questions is reasonable. I'm not aiming to become a millionaire; I just want to sell simple sub‑$1K services to get off the ground. For mailboxes, I wouldn't recommend Hostinger for cold email—there's a reason big players avoid it. I'd suggest Zapmail at about $3.50 per mailbox (up to 10 or 100 mailboxes), which also handles DNS setup. Regarding pivoting into AI and automation: if I didn't think it made sense, I wouldn't be making videos about it all day, so my work already shows it's a good move. On starting an agency with no clients: outreach isn't a simple yes/no; it's about volume. How many outreach pieces did you send? How many Upwork or freelancer applications? How many community posts? How many people have you talked to, and over what time? If you haven't done enough, it's not that you're not good enough—it's just that you haven't put in the reps. Expecting results without sufficient effort is unreasonable. Why people fail to make money online: mostly because they can't stick with something long enough to see results. They expect success after a few days or weeks, like learning piano to a concert level in two weeks—impossible. You need years of effort; don't compare your chapter one to someone else's chapter 100. On hiring versus doing it yourself: hiring someone on Upwork or Fiverr to build templates isn't more efficient if your metric is cost or time, because you pay for work you could do yourself and add communication overhead. The only real efficiency gain is doing less of the work you dislike, but at this stage I'd optimize for making $100K rather than avoiding work you enjoy. On growing a coaching business: first, stop over‑analyzing your 'why' and start acting. Determine a set of daily revenue‑generating activities you can do every day for the next year that will drive the results you care about—financial goals. Define what you're selling (information/coaching). Put your offer in front of people, articulate how it solves their problems, and improve the offer as you deliver it. Learn and deliver in tandem. Reinvest profits to systemize outreach, lead gen, and sales, freeing time for systematization and growth. For example, join school communities and each day respond to ten women with health‑improvement suggestions, then move conversations to DMs, calls, and present your coaching offer. As you earn money, you can make the process more sophisticated.

warehouse managementvr 180cold emailai automation
youtube ↗Marketing

I genuinely love AI, so I've been creating content and posting on socials, while also trying to get my agency off the ground. Content takes a lot of time to record and post — should I focus solely on the business and drop content for a while? My content isn't built in public, it's just generic valuable content about AI, not tied to the business, though it could bring clients or leads down the line.

The way I see it, content is a lead-generation strategy. The entire reason I went into content is because my CPMs with cold email were like $8-10, and I wanted them lower — I got my CPMs down to like two or three bucks with content, and my average ticket price also went up when I sold someone through content versus cold email. If I have two routes available and one is just way better in every shape and form, obviously I'm going to go down that path. But it's also worth saying this wasn't immediate — it took me a couple of months. Content requires a fair amount of effort and input, and you don't see results for at least a 3-6 month period, most people see it 6-12 months down the line. That's a lot of work and opportunity cost. If you have something capable of generating shorter-term revenue, like cold email, even with higher CPMs, you should probably do that to get yourself to a reasonable financial point before committing to the riskier, higher-payoff play. It's high risk, high reward, and if you don't have some runway or money in the bank to sustain yourself while you wait for content to pay off, it's probably not optimal.

content marketingcold emailcpmlead generation