I'm building a startup for my cleaning business with all the knowledge I've gained. How can I reach the right people? I don't have social reach, and I made a YouTube channel but feel camera shy. How did you get past that phase?
First things first, you can't be camera shy in a world where your success depends on you being confident enough to show you in conjunction with your brand. People won't see that as shyness — they'll see that as a lack of conviction or a lack of belief. If you really believe in your brand, you will stand behind it 100%, and that includes putting your face on it. So it's not really a question of being shy or comfortable or whatever; it's a question of 'do I really fucking believe in what it is that I'm doing?' And if so, of course I'm going to put my face behind it — that's how you show the rest of the world your belief. So reframe that. The second thing is reach. There are many different ways to do it, but you don't actually need social reach in order to build a startup for your cleaning business. It depends on what your startup is, obviously, and the ticket value, but you can actually just reach out to people one-on-one, like I usually talk about on my channel. A lot of big high-ticket SaaS companies do this sort of thing, and that's how they actually grow. So if your SaaS or startup or whatever it is makes somewhere more than, I don't know, like $3,000 lifetime value, it actually makes sense for you to do this sort of outreach. And then your apps on the App Store are going to be 50/50 — probably not going to be that high-ticket, but just worth considering. And then if you did want to build social reach, the best way to do so right now is just to pre-commit 90 days to a platform and a format. A platform might be YouTube, a format might be talking-head AI automation tutorials such as I do. And then just rip and do one video or one piece of content a day every day for 90 days. If you feel like you can do more than one — because maybe it's a text thing or some sort of audio thing — then do two a day for 90 days. Don't assess yourself before that period; only assess yourself after that period. If after the 90-day period you think you made a positive return on investment for all the time, energy, and money that you've spent, then ramp it up and go all in. Otherwise, just move to another approach, take what you learned from the previous one, and rinse and repeat.
Fausto RDS says, 'Nick, how would you to about growing an audience starting from zero? I'm thinking Facebook and Instagram and YouTube. My ICP are service businesses, home services, and I sell custom software and automations. I got a lot of people asking questions like, how do I start my own brand and what's the best way to build an audience? Cuz they look at the way that I built my audience and they're like, well, Nick obviously puts a lot of time, effort, and care into it, so um you know, he'll he'll know. But I'll be honest, I just I just tried 10 different approaches and then I found one that happened to work. Um I did not come with like a highly strategic approach. What I did was I simply asked myself, what provides me the lowest CPMs, costs per meeting? >> [gasps] >> Which platform, if I test it for 30 to 60 to 90 days, will get me the lowest CPMs uh comparatively? And it turns out it was YouTube. So, rather than start at the end, which you're doing right now, which is growing an audience and starting from zero, start at the beginning, which is, hm, why do I want to grow an audience? Well, I work in the home service businesses uh niche. My current CPMs are $45. And that's not very scalable because our lifetime values are, you know, at some ratio where the cost of acquiring the customer to the lifetime value just doesn't make sense. So, how can I get lower CPMs? And then, rather than choosing Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, like you have here, uh just try a bunch and then determine which ones work after the fact. Pre-commit yourself to some sort of test. Cuz that's what I always do and uh that tends to work pretty well. But yeah, man, it's all 100% just about your cost per meeting, if I'm honest, or your cost per, you know, uh intent. In my case now with Maker School, driving a chunk of my revenue, it's it's cost per intent. It's cost per like, basically, each person visiting my landing page. >> [gasps] >> And that's way better than through cold email.'
I don’t know the specifics of your product, but mimicking what’s working for others is a reasonable first step. The tactics I use in my own social‑media advertising involve spending a lot of money for time, which isn’t ideal for you because you have plenty of time but limited cash. Instead of giving you a detailed walk‑through of my exact methods, let’s look at your situation more generally.
You’ve spent a lot of time building a tool that helps people go viral. The usual approach is to keep investing time and money into the product and then hope marketing will magically work later. That’s the opposite of what you should do. It’s far more effective to start by marketing and selling, then build the product only after you’ve validated demand. If you begin with demand, you’ll already have customers and a clear idea of what they actually want when you finally create the tool.
Rather than building a big inbound funnel for a product that might become obsolete, reach out directly to potential users. Pitch hypothetical offers or tools you could build if they show interest. For example, you could say, “Hey, I’m transitioning to software and think I could save you $10‑15k a month with a tool that does X, Y, Z. Would you be interested in a free version?” If they say yes, you have validation without even having a finished product. Modern AI lets you build functional tools quickly, so you can test ideas fast.
My recommendation: focus all your time and energy on marketing first. Validate the product through outbound outreach. If validation fails, iterate and try a new idea. This outbound‑first approach is the 80/20 play many high‑growth agencies use today, especially with AI accelerating development.
In practice, avoid inbound because it’s undirected and slow to show ROI. Set a target number of outreach contacts and define clear exit conditions—e.g., at least five booked meetings from a thousand messages. If you hit those metrics, then you proceed to build the product. Remember, you can market and sell an idea without a finished product; you just need a compelling concept and a way to communicate it.
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.
Yeah, I like to think so as well. I deliver a ridiculous amount of value—whether it’s $60, $70, or whatever the current price is, sometimes around $3,000 depending on when you watch this. To make a long story short, I don’t actually recommend posting on YouTube for a while; most people see creators like me posting and assume that’s how you make money, so they feel they need to post and showcase their systems. I can only do that because I’ve already had success selling this through cold outreach and built a business model aside from YouTube. Only once I had the cash flow to justify spending time on YouTube did I start making videos consistently. Before you start making videos about a money‑making topic, get to the point where you’ve achieved more than 99% of people at that thing. If you’re a standout 1% with some accomplishment or social proof, people will be far more likely to listen to you. There are literally a million‑plus people waving light poles online talking about stuff they don’t really understand. When you can demonstrate real results—say, making $42,000 a month—and show how you did it, you cut through that noise much more easily. The key is to do it without bragging; come across as genuine, not ungrounded. Based on our interactions in Maker School, you’re not that kind of guy—you’re good. For me, it’s more about reputation than follower count; I care about the strength and quality of each follower, not just the number. I’m not missing out on money by focusing on goodwill; in fact, I’m accumulating more goodwill than pretty much anyone in the industry by doing this. Thanks for the advice—you totally get how to play the game.