#257 · blue collar work is the future (i'm serious)

youtube ↗Sales

Should I use in‑person B2B door knocking to get AI automation clients, and do you have any tips?

I don’t recommend B2B door knocking as a reliable way to earn money; it’s extremely tough and ego‑destroying, and you’re unlikely to make direct income from it, especially early on. However, doing it once or twice can teach valuable skills—generating attention, handling rejection, and persistence—similar to a commission‑based charity job I had where I earned about $15 CAD/hour standing at a transit station. The experience builds resilience and gives you a realistic sense of the effort required in sales, much like the old door‑to‑door vacuum sales model where you had to ‘eat what you killed.’ Use it for personal growth, not as a primary client‑acquisition channel.

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Related answers

youtube ↗Client Acquisition

Do you recommend doing in-person B2B door knocking to get AI automation clients? Any tips or advice for doing it?

No, I don't recommend it as a real client-getting strategy. I do think you should try it once or twice in your life — spend a week and do a hundred door knocks — because it'll put hair on your chest (true for men and women alike). It's very difficult and pretty ego-destroying, but I don't think it'll actually make you money in the short term. One of my first jobs was petitioning strangers at SkyTrain stations for a transit referendum campaign, getting told to screw off constantly — from there I moved to fundraising for a women's rights charity doing child sponsorships, 8-9 hours a day making very little money. It builds resilience, but it's not an efficient way to land clients.

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youtube ↗Client Acquisition

What types of businesses or clients should a beginner target on Upwork (or similar platforms) when starting with AI automation?

Accept any and all work on Upwork—think of it as an elevator that instantly connects you to large businesses you’d never meet otherwise. Even as a total newbie, you can land a client doing $10–$20 million a year within a week, giving you a powerful case study like 'I helped a $10 million/year business achieve X, Y, Z.' At this stage, don’t worry about qualifying or tightening the funnel; go broad to bootstrap experience, collect case studies, and start making money. The creator shares a personal example: a friend who jumped on Upwork while he was door‑to‑door went from zero to a legitimate $30 000/month income in three‑to‑four months by maximizing opportunity and landing a big‑ticket client whose needs matched his skill set—something the creator missed while grinding door‑to‑door for $5 000/month.

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youtube ↗AI & Automation

What's one piece of advice you'd give to someone just starting out in the AI automation space?

Nick’s top advice for newcomers to AI automation is to show up daily for an extended period and focus on levers that truly move you toward making money. Key levers include talking to customers and putting yourself in front of 10 to 100 people each day; doing this for a year means contacting between 3,650 and 36,500 people. He stresses that the sheer serendipity of creating your own luck will eventually yield results, sharing his own experience of fundraising for child‑sponsorship charities by talking to hundreds of people a day for months, becoming a local celebrity and receiving party invitations—even without selling anything. He concludes that consistently putting yourself in front of many people will lead to winning.

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youtube ↗Sales

Is door-to-door sales with a pre-built automation prototype worth it for integrating with point of sale?

I don’t recommend door‑to‑door sales with a pre‑built automation prototype. It’s extraordinarily exhausting and more of a self‑improvement chore than a profitable tactic. The pound‑for‑pound return is low compared to selling digital products or services, where you can achieve the same hyper‑customization with Loom videos while eliminating drive time, walk time, and no‑shows. About 30% of doors you knock on find the business owner absent, wasting all the fixed costs of travel. Unless you’re specifically seeking the personal challenge, the ROI just isn’t there.

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