How should I get leads with almost no budget? How should I cold DM and email them without social proof? Should I build it as an agentic automation or a simple N8N‑style workflow?

You can generate leads on almost no budget using the Appify scraper—it’s about as cheap as it gets. If you try to go cheaper, you’ll trade off a lot of time. You could even resort to low‑tech methods like handing out flyers, but that’s far less efficient. The realistic approach is to manually compile lists on X, Instagram, Reddit, etc., then cold‑DM or email them. Ideally you’d have some social proof, but if you don’t, you can create it by showcasing marketing results: prove you can consistently book, say, ten meetings a week. Once you’ve demonstrated that, you can sell the service itself—offer to install the lead‑generation system in a client’s business and manage it for free until you hit a target, or guarantee a set number of meetings per week and only get paid if you deliver. This way you monetize your ability to book meetings rather than a product. The workflow can stay manual; you don’t need a complex automation at this stage.