← All questions

#57 · how i'm making $2m/yr with AI (full step-by-step breakdown)

youtube ↗Cold Email

Hey Nick, in a hypothetical scenario, if you were to recommend the most effective way to get your attention, what would it be? Cold email, Instagram DM, or another platform? As someone in your position, what approach gets the most responses, and what elements in the outreach message make you more likely to reply or react—DM voice notes, Loom videos, or just text?

What a great question. I'm glad you're asking me that. If this is the demo of people you want to be working with, generally speaking, I don't like DM voice notes. I like Loom videos insofar as they on the thumbnail of the Loom video are clearly visible on some aspect of my profile; they're clearly customized. I can usually smell a non‑customized AI‑generated piece of outreach from a mile away, and because I'm in the AI generation industry I assign lower value to such outreach. For me, you want to reach out to people presumably in my space or at my level. I can kind of squint and feel like I'm part of a sequence, and if I'm part of a sequence I just want to do it less—that's why I teach everybody to make their outreach seem like it's not from a sequence. Text is fine as long as you can grab my attention, and the way to do so is by frontloading value. I've shown this email many times: there was a guy who emailed me forever ago (I think it was 22 emails from me) offering to improve CTR by 1–3% and providing a list of 22 titles that increase CTR. He acknowledged the outreach, said he wasn't here to steal my time and money like cheap copywriters, and linked a doc. That's solid outreach. To improve it, fix spelling and grammar; lowercase is okay and implies he wrote it himself. Avoid saying 'unoutreach'—it's not grammatical. Instead, say something like, 'Yeah, this is outreach, but unlike all the other people in your DMs, I'm not here to steal your time and money to prove that.' Another effective line I like is, 'I know the way to get ahead in this industry is to provide value up front, so here's a bunch of value,' then link the asset. In this case the asset is a big list of Google Doc titles. The benefit of the Google‑doc approach is that inside the doc you can list additional links without hurting deliverability more than the one link in the initial doc, and you can customize sections like “for you Nick,” “emails for Nick,” “questions for Nick” to make the outreach look personal. I also received an awesome outreach where someone built me a SAS app in Lovable based on the video’s principles and reached out with it—if you really like the founder/influencer, that kind of gesture makes sense. Ultimately, as long as you frontload value and show you understand my predicament when I have to look over emails like this, you're doing a pretty good job.

cold emailinstagram dmoutreachloom video

Related answers

youtube ↗AI & Automation

What are your thoughts on building a cold‑outreach system that sends personalized Loom videos to prospects and how would you approach building it?

I've built something very similar. The main hurdle was the hidden API for uploading Looms—it worked but was painful; Gloom's auto‑GIF embeds in emails make it a good option. People are now accustomed to Looms so the format feels native. To build a personalized Loom outreach machine: 1. Use a variable (e.g., {{name}}) that a voice‑cloning model (like Be Human) replaces with the prospect's first name spoken in your voice. 2. While the name is being spoken move the Loom window across the screen to hide any mouth artifacts. 3. Prepare a library of video templates—about 30—each tailored to a specific niche or offer (e.g., B2B agencies buying cold‑email services B2B agencies buying fulfillment systems manufacturing companies buying cold outreach manufacturing companies buying fulfillment etc.). 4. When you scrape a list of leads run an AI classifier that reads the prospect's company info and assigns them to one of those categories. 5. Pick the matching template insert the prospect's first name into the voice‑over and stitch the personalized video together. 6. The result feels like a custom‑made video: “Hey Peter hope you're doing well… I've been following you… I love your no‑frills approach…” 7. To increase perceived personalization overlay a screenshot of the prospect's LinkedIn/Instagram/etc. and do a quick screen‑grab before the Loom plays. 8. I currently run a $300 k/month content business and saw that this approach could save prospects significant money with a simple tweak—hence I recorded this video to share the idea. 9. The method works well; it's not perfect but delivers strong results.

personalized loomsvoice cloningai categorizationoutreach automation
youtube ↗Cold Email

Justin asks: If I'm doing cold outreach, how much information about myself should I include? Should I mention my background? Companies are getting a lot of cold outreach, so I don't want to be part of the noise. I wonder if mentioning that I'm a mathematical statistician would help or just add noise.

[gasps] Yeah. Uh, you know what? It's a very nuanced thing because the core idea in cold email is you are competing for a very scarce set of attention, and [snorts] you really have to optimize every word in your cold email to be at least providing value or providing the perception that you have value and you're a valuable person to know. And then when you start including things like by the way you know I did my PhD at whatever and I I you know love walking dogs. People look at that and then they're like you know the the the value ratio dips and then that's where they jump off the email. But in the last couple years AI has been increasingly sending and managing people's email inboxes. And as a result, a lot of the spam that people get is like perfectly written AI emails that are super optimized for this where every line is just value, value, value, value value. And so a common thing that people in communities like Maker School are doing is they're actually like purposefully reducing like the value density of the email by including some weird personal anecdotes. And some of my best performing campaigns include like weird one-off mentions like that. Like um uh I don't know like yo Justin man, I've been following your channel for the last couple years and it's really changed how I look at my my career. Uh and I just wanted to thank you. Um you know I'm from Vancouver originally. Um I just wanted you to know and then you dive into your pitch and it's like what the hell is that? Well, it turns out that a form of rapport building like that has been documented in literature is voluntary disclosure of information. And a voluntary disclosure of information when you give somebody information about yourself without being necessarily prompted makes them think that you are closer even though you know nothing else about them. And so sprinkling in a little bit of this stuff without obviously screwing up your email can actually be powerful. But that's the nuanced answer. I wish I could just tell you yes or no, but um yeah, things have gotten pretty pretty interesting and complicated recently. [gasps] [sighs]

cold emailself disclosurevalue densityAI
youtube ↗Cold Email

Can you walk through cold email personalization? My campaign gets only 1‑2% replies at 5,400 emails per month, and I’m new to emailing. How can I personalize the copy to achieve higher reply rates?

First, a 2 % reply rate isn’t terrible, but there’s room for improvement. Personalizing only the first line of an email is no longer enough—everyone does that now. Think of personalization as a foundational strategy rather than a tactical tweak. The core idea is to build an icebreaker that shows you’ve actually researched the prospect, not just scraped their name. Start with an icebreaker that combines a genuine compliment with a paraphrased reference to something they posted on LinkedIn, Facebook, or their website. For example, “Hey Nick, I deeply respect your work, especially your recent post about AI‑driven marketing.” To create the paraphrased part, pull a specific detail from their content, feed it to AI, and ask it to rewrite it in your own voice. This makes the prospect feel you took the extra step to understand them. Next, add an identification line that tells who you are and why you’re reaching out. Keep it short: “I’m a marketer who helps agencies like yours generate $1‑5 k of monthly revenue using AI‑enhanced outreach.” Mention a concrete credential or past success—e.g., “When I ran PR campaigns for Forbes‑level publications, I saw 20 % reply rates.” Follow the icebreaker and ID with social proof: cite a recent win that’s relevant to the prospect’s industry. For instance, “Last week I delivered $8,390 in revenue in two months for a Sydney‑based marketing agency similar to yours.” Finally, present a clear offer: “I’m confident I can replicate—or even improve—those results for you.” Test multiple variations. Write at least ten different icebreakers and identification lines, then pit them against each other to see which combination yields the highest response. By focusing on deep research, personalized paraphrasing, concise self‑identification, and strong social proof, you’ll move well beyond the 2 % baseline and achieve much higher reply rates.

cold emailpersonalizationreply rate
youtube ↗Lead Generation

What is an asset in your outreach strategy, and what alternative assets can I create without a webcam, laptop, Loom, or custom domain, using only an old PC, Gmail, and a basic cold email tool?

Obviously you're very financially and resource‑constrained, lacking a laptop, webcam, microphone, and custom domains, yet you’re actively thinking about how to get things done despite those limits — that mindset will take you far. When I say ‘asset,’ I’m referring to the asset‑based outreach strategy I’ve discussed before: you create a high‑quality, customized piece of value that solves a specific problem for a prospect, give it to them with little or no ask, and use it to break the ice instead of sending a plain cold email. These assets are high‑value and very effective when they truly address the prospect’s pain points, though they do require considerable time and effort to produce. Examples of assets include: using AI to generate newsletters from a prospect’s website, then formatting them into a polished newsletter (about 80‑90 % complete) that you send for free; for coaches or consultants, running an automation that pulls the top‑10 trending videos in their niche, feeding those titles into AI to generate a set of strong title ideas, and delivering those titles; video editors editing a prospect’s video and sending it over with a note like, “I love your channel; I’ve edited a bunch of your content for you — just wanted you to have it”; taking long‑form video content, running it through a short‑form clip generator (e.g., Opus, Stockclip) to produce a bunch of short clips, then sending those clips to an influencer or creator with a message such as, “I clipped your content for free; feel free to use it — I do this professionally and would be happy to help you further.” You can mix and match any of these ideas in your outreach. In your situation — no Loom video, no custom domain, no paid cold‑email tool, only an old PC and Gmail — your best leverage is your ability to build such assets rather than relying on pure sales skill. If you need a laptop for a Zoom call, borrowing one from a friend works well. Your resourcefulness and gumption are exactly what will move you forward.

assetoutreachlead generationai