I have a database reactivation service that can get five appointments in ten days if clients don't pay, but I have no testimonials. First, should I use a demo or a Loom video in my outreach, and if Loom, what's a quick SOP? Second, with no social proof, how would you approach this if you were in my shoes?

#173 · best AI automation agency leads (2025)

I have a database reactivation service that can get five appointments in ten days if clients don't pay, but I have no testimonials. First, should I use a demo or a Loom video in my outreach, and if Loom, what's a quick SOP? Second, with no social proof, how would you approach this if you were in my shoes?

Yeah, great question. I love this sort of question. So, how would I do it? I would split test this: let's say you're sending these manually, so I'd take 200 leads and split them into batches of 100. I'd do 100 customized Loom videos and then 100 hyper-customized emails that include an offer to do a demo or let them interact with my voice agent themselves. For the first 100 with the Loom videos, I'd say something like: 'Hey Pete, what's going on? Been following you for a really long time. Really love your stuff. I know this is out of left field. I wanted to send a video to you showing you how I think I could make probably another $5,000 to $10,000 a month for you with a simple database reactivation system. If you've never heard of this before, the way it works is XYZ.' By the end of the video, I want you to have everything you need to do this sort of thing on your own because I really like you, trust you, respect you, have been following you for a while, really like your company—whatever the hell. Just make them feel like you've been, you know, this isn't the first time you've done outreach; you've talked to them or come into contact with their brand. I want to make sure you have everything you need to do it yourself. So, even if you choose not to work with me, that's totally okay. I know values—giving value is how you get ahead in this industry—so I just wanted to give a bunch to you. And if you do, for whatever reason, want to work with me, just send me a message and I can sort it all out for you. It'll take less than five minutes of your time. And as I mentioned, I'm confident I can make you at least another five to $10,000 a month. Okay. So, here's how it works. Boom. Then just run them through how the thing works. Okay. At the end, uh, just talk about how much you like them and stuff like that. And then in the, um, demo, just do the same thing over text. Just obviously you need to format it a little bit differently. Make it a little bit punchier, make a little bit shorter so they don't have to read like a whole wall of text. And then offer to do a demo and say like, 'I believe so strongly in this and I'm actually like down to do a demo with you. Going to show you this thing. Um, and I don't know what you meant by demo here. I imagine they're just testing it on their end without even talking to you because you believe so strongly in the quality of the product.' If that's the case, you could just find a way to link the demo. Um, if you're only sending, you know, 100 emails, if you're doing this super hyper customized, you can just send the link directly. That's okay. Uh, but if it's eventually going to be a big high-volume thing, you need to find another way to position the demo.

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Related answers

youtube ↗Cold Email

Is this spam?

Right after the personalization, we introduce ourselves because we want to answer the question, okay, then who are you? Can we make this longer? Yes, we can. After we introduce ourselves, we talk about why it's relevant, so we have some social proof because we want to answer the question: why are you important and then after that we ask and provide some sort of offer/CCTA because we want to answer the question: why does this matter or what do you want basically, and then we actually give it so what does this look like? Personalization: hey Nick, love the channel, big time fan, and in particular one of my favorite things about you is that you push back against X, Y, and Z. I'm Pete. To make a long story short, I help creators make on average $15,000 to $20,000 a month more by taking something really time‑intensive off their plate—sponsorships or affiliations. Basically, I'm an agent and I handle everything for you completely from start to finish. I don't take a single dime from you that I don't earn through performance, and I currently work with a bunch of big people. The reason I'm reaching out to you is that I'm a fan and I want to see you succeed, and I think there's an opportunity here for me to solve a need that I know you have. If you're up for it, I'm happy to guarantee you XYZ results within XYZ time, and if I don't, I'm not going to ask for anything. All I need from you to get started is a 5‑minute call, which I can do anytime you're available—just give me a number and I'll even call you today to double‑check that you're free at 2 p.m. Second, I need you to forward me the last five emails you have; we'll take five seconds to do this. Here's a guide on whatever if you don't know how to do that. Let me know, man—I'm really looking forward to making this work. As mentioned, I'll do it all completely upfront for free because that's how much I believe in you and what I can do. Don't you want to make an extra $20,000? Right? Or so—that's a quick little example of a cold call I'd do to a creator or something like that. Now, are you going to be able to get all this stuff out in one big shot? No, it's going to be some back and forth, but something like that is probably what I'd do. It depends on your niche and audience; if you're calling HVAC companies, you'd have to do something different. Okay, cool. And then thank you very much, Tech—very much appreciated.

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youtube ↗Cold Email

Hey Nick, in a hypothetical scenario, if you were to recommend the most effective way to get your attention, what would it be? Cold email, Instagram DM, or another platform? As someone in your position, what approach gets the most responses, and what elements in the outreach message make you more likely to reply or react—DM voice notes, Loom videos, or just text?

What a great question. I'm glad you're asking me that. If this is the demo of people you want to be working with, generally speaking, I don't like DM voice notes. I like Loom videos insofar as they on the thumbnail of the Loom video are clearly visible on some aspect of my profile; they're clearly customized. I can usually smell a non‑customized AI‑generated piece of outreach from a mile away, and because I'm in the AI generation industry I assign lower value to such outreach. For me, you want to reach out to people presumably in my space or at my level. I can kind of squint and feel like I'm part of a sequence, and if I'm part of a sequence I just want to do it less—that's why I teach everybody to make their outreach seem like it's not from a sequence. Text is fine as long as you can grab my attention, and the way to do so is by frontloading value. I've shown this email many times: there was a guy who emailed me forever ago (I think it was 22 emails from me) offering to improve CTR by 1–3% and providing a list of 22 titles that increase CTR. He acknowledged the outreach, said he wasn't here to steal my time and money like cheap copywriters, and linked a doc. That's solid outreach. To improve it, fix spelling and grammar; lowercase is okay and implies he wrote it himself. Avoid saying 'unoutreach'—it's not grammatical. Instead, say something like, 'Yeah, this is outreach, but unlike all the other people in your DMs, I'm not here to steal your time and money to prove that.' Another effective line I like is, 'I know the way to get ahead in this industry is to provide value up front, so here's a bunch of value,' then link the asset. In this case the asset is a big list of Google Doc titles. The benefit of the Google‑doc approach is that inside the doc you can list additional links without hurting deliverability more than the one link in the initial doc, and you can customize sections like “for you Nick,” “emails for Nick,” “questions for Nick” to make the outreach look personal. I also received an awesome outreach where someone built me a SAS app in Lovable based on the video’s principles and reached out with it—if you really like the founder/influencer, that kind of gesture makes sense. Ultimately, as long as you frontload value and show you understand my predicament when I have to look over emails like this, you're doing a pretty good job.

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youtube ↗Pricing

Tristan says: Hey Nick, love your content. Been setting up my agency for the last couple of months. Actually just about to install my first automation for a popular wedding band over here in Scotland. They're on a free trial for 6 weeks and if they like it, we're going to go to a monthly plan. It's a system that receives all their inquiries, generates a quote, and makes a draft email for them. I suggested it purely from watching Instagram stories where they're saying, 'We're sorry for the slow responses.' Nice. So, you did some sort of outbound Instagram approach. Fantastic work. That's killer. I'm going to save them at least 15 hours a week. My question is, when it comes to pricing, how do I justify my price? Where should I even start?

So you said you're offering a free trial for 6 weeks, then moving to a monthly plan if they like it. I'll be honest—that's not a good way to pitch automations; you've done it, so you'll have to live with it. But think about it from their perspective: this is fear‑based because you get them used to the system for six weeks and then threaten to take it away unless they pay. I don't like operating that way. I prefer people to fall in love with the value so much they want to pay me hand over fist. Here's how I'd do it: offer the system build for free, and only if they absolutely love it would I ever ask them to pay. Then I'd make them love it so much that the natural question becomes, 'Hey Nick, how can I pay you?'—and I'd have them start that conversation with me, not wait until the end of a six‑week period. In terms of pricing, it's hard to give a exact number, but consider: how much money were they making before? How much are they making with the system? What's the opportunity cost of the leads they're missing? How much more money do you think they'd make with the system versus without it? How much time would you be saving them? Add all that up into a value number, then charge maybe a third or a quarter of that. For example, saving 15 hours a week is one part of the value—but it's not just about time savings. There's actually a lot more that goes into a system's value. If you notice, I listed time as one of the last value components. Fifteen hours a week at $50/hour is only $750 a week. But because we gained three more leads this week and the average lead value is $1,000, that's $3,000—four times the time‑savings value. That kind of 4× differential between front‑end and back‑end value is typical. Thank you, Builder Tutorials and Techul—much appreciated. Okay, I think I'll leave it there; hopefully this makes sense.

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youtube ↗Client Acquisition

I feel lost and want to work for you — you don't have to pay much, I'll do anything. I'm good at building voice agents and video editing and would love to gain experience for my portfolio.

Think about it from my perspective — I'm already making a lot of money and don't need more talent, so the only way this becomes worth my while is if you do all the work for me upfront. Identify a specific problem I'm suffering from that's costing me money, solve it, and package the solution so all I have to do is click one button — don't make me come up with the problem, the solution, or a management structure for you. Don't pitch like 'I'd like a job, I'm feeling lost' — instead, put yourself in the shoes of the person you're reaching out to, understand what they're actually struggling with, do all the work, then present it: 'I think I can make you this much money — all you need to do is respond with X, Y, Z. Say yes and I'll get started immediately, you can pay me after it's done.' That's how you pitch working for someone for free. I'm good right now and probably will be until $300-400K/month, but when I am hiring again, the people who've engaged with my content will be the first I look to — you can copy this approach for other people too.

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