What strategies can I use to integrate my automation services with local small‑to‑medium‑sized businesses via cold DMs?
Nick advises Jake to stick with packaged automation services rather than moving to custom projects, because custom work suffers from scope bloat and inefficiencies. He suggests leveraging Jake’s existing mortgage‑originator network: compile a list of all B2B clients and leads from that work, plus any other network connections. In a spreadsheet, put clients in column A, ways you could help them in column B, systems you could build or sell in column C, and pitch price in column D. Then warm‑pitch each contact by referencing your automation work and asking if they know anyone who might need it. Start with existing clients and leads, then expand to your wider network for referrals. This approach uses your proven problem‑solver reputation, making outreach far more effective than cold outreach. After exhausting warm contacts, you can still add a scalable outbound mechanism (e.g., B2B cold email) to reach strangers, but the warm path is the fastest route to revenue.
I recommend targeting businesses with 1‑10 employees, so you can serve both freelancers/individuals and small agencies without making it exclusive. As for examples, I’ve built a cold‑email system for a brokerage that flips under‑priced homes. They had a list of about 50,000 contacts; the system pulled personal data, crafted personalized cold‑email campaigns, and generated massive responses—some reports suggest $50‑150 K in the first day. I also created automated property‑assessment tools that ingest a property’s square footage, regional price per square foot, distance to schools, crime rates, and other factors to output an instant valuation. These tools run on a custom platform (omake.com) and automate the entire assessment workflow. Both solutions have real value for real‑estate professionals and demonstrate the kind of automation you can sell in that niche.
Use a tiered outreach approach. First, pitch to people who have already paid you—past clients give you about 10× the results per hour compared to cold outreach. Next, go to those who have paid you before, then to prospects who almost paid but didn’t, then to people you’ve already reached out to, and finally to completely cold audiences. Each step down the tier cuts the expected return (≈5×, 2×, 1.5×, 1×). It’s analogous to retargeting ads: validate your offer with a warm audience before spending time on cold leads. In your case, start with the agency you built the invoicing system for, show them the ROI you delivered, and ask for referrals or additional work.
If you're running an automation agency, you have three main options to find clients. First, Upwork: it's the simplest, straightest path for beginners to get your first dollar online, though the ROI is lower than other methods. Second, cold email: cost per acquisition is super low, you can scale it, and you can use AI to personalize outreach; check out my previous videos on my main channel @Nix for details on customizing and personalizing emails. Third, communities: post high-value content daily or every few days in groups where your target customers hang out; this frames you as an authority and quickly builds an inbound presence without the hard work of recording hundreds of videos. In Maker School I provide a daily regimen: send 10 Upwork applications, make a community post, and do cold email outreach each day. I recommend about 270 cold emails per day (nine mailboxes with 30 emails each). With a two-step sequence, that yields roughly 3,240 contacts per month, leading to about 90 engaged people, and assuming a third respond positively, you get around 30 leads per day—fantastic for your pipeline. This is what's working today given your photography background; you don't need to cold‑approach bigger businesses unless you want to, as it's often a pain.
I think the core problem isn’t the offer itself but the amount of outreach you’re doing. Based on the numbers you shared you’re probably doing far fewer outreach actions than a typical agency—maybe 24 × less than you think. If you tally every email, DM, call, or LinkedIn message you sent in the first month you’ll see you could have done many more. The growth equation is simple: more outreach equals more leads, which equals more clients. So before you scrap the model, double‑down on consistent, high‑volume outreach (cold email, LinkedIn, etc.) and track those metrics. Once you have a reliable pipeline you can decide whether to specialize, but the immediate fix is to increase outreach dramatically.