If you had no money and no audience starting from scratch, what would you do differently?
With no money and no audience, I’d go straight into cold outbound because I’m good at it—I’ve done door‑to‑door and learned what gets people to talk or kick you out. I’d start with Loom videos or manually written cold emails (not scalable but effective) to pitch people directly. Then I’d bootstrap: 10× the number of mailboxes, sell a simple AI service, and have clients cover costs to keep things simple and low‑cost. That’s the core approach. (After answering, I note I wasn’t going to record today but we’re doing it now, then I share my brand stats: YouTube 93,779, Instagram 127,175, daily updates channel 4,716.)
To get opportunities you can start with free or low‑cost channels. On Upwork you can create a profile and bid for jobs even though it costs a bit of money, it’s one of the easiest ways to start. Cold email is another option: reach out directly to prospects. Join online communities such as Reddit, answer questions, provide value, then post your own content; people will contact you naturally. This approach costs nothing. You can also spend a small amount on paid ads (around $100‑$200) which are still relatively cheap and scalable. Other tactics include cold DMs on LinkedIn or Instagram (though I don’t treat Instagram as a sales platform), commenting on YouTube videos, asking for referrals from anyone who might need your services, and re‑activating past clients. Basically, keep reaching out, introduce yourself and explain that you do AI automation and can solve a problem for them.
If you have $1,000, it's effectively the same as having $0 when viewed from a high enough level--there's no real difference. My advice is identical for anyone with zero or $1,000: start a daily consistent outreach habit, regardless of platform (social media, email, etc.). Choose a simple daily target--for example, talk to or get in front of 10 people each day for your business. Over a year that's 3,650 contacts; even a tiny conversion rate can generate significant capital because luck stems from preparation plus opportunity, and you boost luck by maximizing outreach. Most people struggle because they lack such daily habits; the real bottleneck in almost any venture is soft skills, sales ability, and marketing. You could build a product like Netflix tomorrow, but without marketing you'd have zero viewers. Practical ways to hit your daily goal: send 10 Upwork applications daily, send 10 cold emails per day on behalf of your business, or reach out to your favorite YouTubers (like me or Ali Abdal) with a custom pitch each day. Alternatively, list the top 10 creators, identify their problems, and offer to solve them--doing this for a month yields about 300 high-quality touches, each taking only 5-10 minutes, which can drive real results. Begin this habit now and maintain it for months; the compounding effect will create the bulk of your long-term capital.
You already have the product, offer, and demo, but you could have validated the market first—sell the idea before building the product. With no budget or proof, focus on hyper‑customized cold outreach: research each prospect deeply (e.g., find an old blog post) and mention it in a personal note. Instead of blasting 100 generic emails a day, send about 20 highly tailored ones and follow up on every platform where they’re active (Instagram, LinkedIn, X, TikTok). This multiplies your visibility—reaching people on three or four platforms can give you two‑to‑three times more exposure than email alone. Assuming a 20% chance of being seen per platform, outreach on several platforms raises your overall view rate to about 50%, which can yield a 25% reply rate. From 600 outreach attempts you might get ~75 replies, ~10 positive, leading to a few calls and possibly one closed deal.
I'm about to publish a video on my main channel covering this topic. I can see you're just starting with about five videos, experimenting with thumbnail templates and using AI for images—pretty accurate. Keep doing what you're doing; if you scaled up to 100 videos or 25 times your current output, you'd easily surpass 3,000 subscribers. I'll soon release a video detailing exactly how I approach this in the automation agency space, because lots of people want to replicate my growth. I've noticed channels copying my Instagram content outright, so I might as well share my secret sauce and monetize it.