I run a video editing agency with an ICP of entrepreneurs, startup owners, founders, and coaches. I want to build an automation that does all my outreach, including lead gen, cold emailing, and DMing, while keeping the budget as low as possible. Can you help?
I think you are looking for automation of the wrong thing. While it's important to automate scalable approaches, and cold email is certainly one such scalable approach, the problem is you're looking to automate things before you've even done them. You should always do something at least once before you automate it — preferably quite a few times — because unless you've done the thing at least once, you will not know what you do not know. My recommendation is to go through this process manually. Do lead gen by cold emailing and cold DMing. Follow a guide from me or somebody else, but do it yourself. It'll automatically keep the budget as low as possible. After you've done it for anywhere between 30 to 90 days, you'll know what goes into cold emailing and cold DMing, and you'll be far more likely to make a successful automation — one that doesn't just automate work that makes you zero, but one that automates work you've proven has meaningfully generated revenue before. It is unsatisfying to hear that answer, but it is the truth.
Cold email isn't really automation; you can easily build an AI‑enabled cold‑email agency, which is a top solo‑freelancer model right now. But the simplest, highest‑leveraged system you can build for a client is a 'speedtole' system—a glorified autoresponder. You watch a mailbox for incoming mail from a filter (e.g., Facebook lead ads sending an email), then using Make.com, n8n, or cloud routines you scan the mailbox, get the trigger, and immediately reply via email. Then you send a Twilio SMS, and a team member calls the prospect. This cuts response time from minutes to under a minute, boosting pickup and conversion rates because of the perceived professionalism of your system. I’ve seen this system add over a million dollars in revenue for clients and improve existing funnels by 10‑20%, easily generating an easy $500k per year.
I’ve been in the same spot. I started by rotating a handful of Gmail accounts—sometimes five—sending about ten cold emails a day from each. It’s not ideal, but it works to get started as long as your emails are well‑researched and the approach is solid. Gmail accounts have lower deliverability, especially new ones, so they need to warm up. You can also buy cheap inboxes (e.g., three Instantly airmail inboxes for around $4 each per month plus a domain) which gives you roughly 90 emails a day. Build a quick lead list, template your messages, and spend the first hour‑and‑a‑half each day sending them. You can also DM prospects. The key is to keep sending, refine your copy, and don’t worry too much about the tools at the start.
No, you're absolutely right—warehouse management systems, enterprise resource planning, and inventory management systems are essentially dressed-up CRMs. If you understand how spreadsheets work, you'll understand how WMS and similar systems work; their UX is often clunky, but that's fine. Regarding VR 180 cameras: they're stereo cameras with a wide field of view that feel immersive in a VR headset; still early days with resolution needing work, but they could become a big industry in 5–10 years. I haven't used them yet, but they look exciting—two lenses recreating human field of view. I film them with OBS Studio. On your AI automation ideas for cold email: AI meeting note‑taking that sends key subjects and actionable steps to participants and updates the CRM is great. Automated email tagging and filtering is great. An AI concierge for Airbnbs and hotels answering common questions is reasonable. I'm not aiming to become a millionaire; I just want to sell simple sub‑$1K services to get off the ground. For mailboxes, I wouldn't recommend Hostinger for cold email—there's a reason big players avoid it. I'd suggest Zapmail at about $3.50 per mailbox (up to 10 or 100 mailboxes), which also handles DNS setup. Regarding pivoting into AI and automation: if I didn't think it made sense, I wouldn't be making videos about it all day, so my work already shows it's a good move. On starting an agency with no clients: outreach isn't a simple yes/no; it's about volume. How many outreach pieces did you send? How many Upwork or freelancer applications? How many community posts? How many people have you talked to, and over what time? If you haven't done enough, it's not that you're not good enough—it's just that you haven't put in the reps. Expecting results without sufficient effort is unreasonable. Why people fail to make money online: mostly because they can't stick with something long enough to see results. They expect success after a few days or weeks, like learning piano to a concert level in two weeks—impossible. You need years of effort; don't compare your chapter one to someone else's chapter 100. On hiring versus doing it yourself: hiring someone on Upwork or Fiverr to build templates isn't more efficient if your metric is cost or time, because you pay for work you could do yourself and add communication overhead. The only real efficiency gain is doing less of the work you dislike, but at this stage I'd optimize for making $100K rather than avoiding work you enjoy. On growing a coaching business: first, stop over‑analyzing your 'why' and start acting. Determine a set of daily revenue‑generating activities you can do every day for the next year that will drive the results you care about—financial goals. Define what you're selling (information/coaching). Put your offer in front of people, articulate how it solves their problems, and improve the offer as you deliver it. Learn and deliver in tandem. Reinvest profits to systemize outreach, lead gen, and sales, freeing time for systematization and growth. For example, join school communities and each day respond to ten women with health‑improvement suggestions, then move conversations to DMs, calls, and present your coaching offer. As you earn money, you can make the process more sophisticated.
It’s a great time to build personalization flows because new entrants in cold email are higher than ever. Cold email had a big renaissance, AI personalization hit, and it still outperforms other marketing methods when run competently. Personalization boosts ROI, but you need to go beyond simple icebreaker lines—constrain the AI output, use your copywriting to write templated bits like “I love that you’re doing X. It’s refreshing to see that you’re doing that. Figured I’d reach out.” If you don’t constrain, AI‑generated icebreakers feel flamboyant and are seen as AI‑written, hurting perceived personalization. Instead, personalize the specific high‑ROI parts of the email (not the whole thing or just one line). Examples: paraphrase three interesting things from a prospect’s podcast, or pull key quotes from their content. You can run thousands of these personalized emails a day at a token cost (~$20/month). There’s massive untapped potential—cold email volume will soon far exceed what most people are doing.