Hey Nick, I love your explanations. Our product alleviates back-office friction, not inbound/sales optimization. I'm a finance guy, my co-founder handles engineering on the value prop narrative. We're shifting to telling users which three numbers matter this week and why. Is that compelling enough to grab a client's attention? We've had meetings with overly big clients via outbound and overreacted to small ones via warm contacts. We're still learning; it depends on how big the financial value of those three numbers is and how much the audience usually spends on similar products. It's tough to say exactly. My recommendation is to frame things in business owner language (topline: revenue generated or bottom line: expenses saved, margins). It's weird like learning a new language—you start with English then translate word by word to French; same with business: think in terms that make sense to you, then translate to business speak. How much money does the tool actually make the average user? How much can we save on expenses? You have to translate every sentence in your head to be a meaningful communicator. Clearly none of you are big into marketing; that's the core hack: frame everything as a benefit like revenue or expense directly. It's not just telling which three numbers matter; it's saving $15–$20k/month by telling which three numbers matter. One is a feature, the other a benefit.
Right now you're focused on the savings, and I think that's the main thing you've understood automations to provide, but savings is a small fraction of the total value of an automation. Say you build a system that saves 10 salespeople 1 hour a week each — that's 40 hours a month, and if they're paid $50/hour that looks like a $2,000/month automation. That looks sizable, but it's only a small part of the value you're capable of providing. The big thing isn't the savings, it's the revenue: if you free up an hour of a salesperson's time and they can use it to close deals worth, say, $500 in that hour (amortized across their whole workload), you're not just saving $2,000, you're making them an extra $20,000. That's the difference between a savings mindset and a revenue mindset — it's opportunity cost. When I sell a cold email system, I don't say 'this saves you $50/month on cheaper leads,' I say 'this frees up 10 hours a month of your salespeople's time, worth $500/hour, meaning it makes you $5,000.' Reorient your pitch around revenue, not savings — savings only matters if you're working with a multi-billion dollar enterprise. On your second issue: 3,000 emails to one booked meeting is a 0.03% booked-meeting rate. Two meetings would be 0.06%, three would be 0.1% — that's totally fine, not the best ever (ideally 0.5-1%, a meeting every ~200 emails), but it proves it's possible. You've run the equivalent of a 10-minute mile; now make your copy better and run a 9-minute mile.
There are cultural differences in how comfortable people are discussing their own finances on a call, but you can insulate against a lot of that defensiveness just by being socially aware. I'll never directly ask 'what are your current expenses' or 'what's the value of your time' — instead I'll ask things like 'how are you currently doing this?', 'what software are you using for that?', 'oh that's pretty expensive, are you on that plan?' — and by the end I've mentally added up their spend without ever asking directly. If my estimate is wrong, the client will correct me, so I still get the real number without them feeling interrogated — and every accurate estimate I make also demonstrates that I clearly know this space, which is itself a sales signal. Same approach for opportunity cost: instead of 'how much money have you made this month,' I'll ask 'how are sales going, mostly ads, inbound, or referrals?' and build up the picture indirectly from there.
If you’re earning $2,500 per year, you’re essentially being robbed in broad daylight; but if you’re making $2,000 per month ($24k per year), you’re on the lower end yet not necessarily being exploited. To think about your situation, imagine you’re paid $25,000 per year while generating $500,000 in value for the YouTuber—that’s about 5% of the value you create. Most people receive only 1–2% of the value they generate, while strong salespeople earn 15–20% through commissions. My advice for contractor‑partner roles like yours is to aim for 10–15% of the value you deliver, which translates to roughly a 10× return on investment for the client. If the client is smart, they’ll happily pay you $1 to make $10 for them. The mistake many people make is realizing they’re underpaid and then demanding more money outright—a losing approach that comes across as a loss‑based demand and triggers ego or risk‑aversion in business owners. Instead, frame the conversation around growth: remind the client of the results you’ve already delivered (e.g., over $3 million generated together), share your vision for scaling to $10 million, $20 million, or $30 million, and propose a concrete roadmap (start with X, then Y, then Z). Emphasize that you want to take on more responsibility because you believe you can execute better than others, and assure them you won’t take any of their time. Then, at the close, add that you want skin in the game—more upside when things go well, and a corresponding adjustment when they don’t. Present this structure directly to the client. Because you’re leading with growth and a clear path to multiply their business, the likelihood of them agreeing to partner on a new initiative is vastly higher than if you simply complained about pay. In short, if you’re only making a few thousand dollars a year, you are being underpaid; but if you’re earning tens of thousands per month, you’re in a reasonable position. My overall approach to every job or partnership discussion is to focus on mutual growth, not to threaten to walk away unless paid more—that’s blackmail and damages trust. Successful business owners refuse to negotiate with that kind of pressure. When you approach from a desire to grow the pie together, you’ll achieve far better outcomes.
It'd be nice if there were a beautiful ROI screen that instantly showed the return for every client, but for systems that aren't directly growth/marketing related, ROI is genuinely hard to quantify — how do you put a number on the value of a dashboard? What you can do is track that having a clear, well-built dashboard measurably increases the number of strong, actionable decisions a business owner makes in a month, and those decisions are what move the business forward — even if that chain is hard to track precisely. You need to align with the client on a shared understanding of ROI, and constantly check in: 'I noticed you made a couple of new decisions last month, how important would you say the dashboard was to that?' Take notes on their answers and keep building a case for why they should keep working with you. I treat my weekly strategy calls like sales calls, not just status updates — I open with 'you would not believe how much money we made last week' and show the numbers (e.g. 'that system generated $12,400 last week alone, we're on track for 40-50K a month'), then pitch the next system to add scope to the relationship. You should always be selling yourself.