I'm 19, bootstrapping with no capital, no tools, just grit — using Perplexity to research real estate businesses and Claude to write ultra-personalized cold emails offering follow-up and booking automations. How do I scale this and land my first two clients?
I appreciate the grit — but seriously, try to find even 0 to put toward tools, it'll make your life a lot easier. That said, what you're doing is fine: ultra-personalizing emails and throwing enough of them at the wall is the straightest-line path to making it when you have nothing. I'd combine that with a Loom video or some other custom asset — it's one thing to research a business and write a personalized email, it's another to also hand them something custom while you're at it. I'd also experiment with DMs: while researching a business you'll usually find their Instagram, Twitter/X, and LinkedIn too, so have Claude also draft a customized one-line DM or connection request for each platform and send them all out simultaneously. If each channel independently has, say, a 20% chance of being seen, sending across email plus two or three social platforms takes your odds of being seen from 20% up to around 59% — and if a third of the people who see hyper-customized, well-researched outreach respond, you're looking at something like a 20% reply rate.
Both approaches have value, so you should do them simultaneously. If you’re planning to send 30‑40 emails a day, aim for 30 rather than 40 to stay sustainable. Start with a manageable number—20 emails per day for the first week, then increase to 30. Build systems that let you work faster: split your daily volume between two types of outreach. Send about half of the emails (15) with deep personalization and the other half (15) with a custom asset, like a sample or a strategy document. Create two or three reusable custom‑asset templates so you can quickly generate them for each prospect, and also develop two or three deep‑personalized email templates where you can swap in variables. This hybrid approach lets you showcase value up front while still tailoring each message, increasing the chances of landing a call and eventually a client.
Obviously you're very financially and resource‑constrained, lacking a laptop, webcam, microphone, and custom domains, yet you’re actively thinking about how to get things done despite those limits — that mindset will take you far. When I say ‘asset,’ I’m referring to the asset‑based outreach strategy I’ve discussed before: you create a high‑quality, customized piece of value that solves a specific problem for a prospect, give it to them with little or no ask, and use it to break the ice instead of sending a plain cold email. These assets are high‑value and very effective when they truly address the prospect’s pain points, though they do require considerable time and effort to produce. Examples of assets include: using AI to generate newsletters from a prospect’s website, then formatting them into a polished newsletter (about 80‑90 % complete) that you send for free; for coaches or consultants, running an automation that pulls the top‑10 trending videos in their niche, feeding those titles into AI to generate a set of strong title ideas, and delivering those titles; video editors editing a prospect’s video and sending it over with a note like, “I love your channel; I’ve edited a bunch of your content for you — just wanted you to have it”; taking long‑form video content, running it through a short‑form clip generator (e.g., Opus, Stockclip) to produce a bunch of short clips, then sending those clips to an influencer or creator with a message such as, “I clipped your content for free; feel free to use it — I do this professionally and would be happy to help you further.” You can mix and match any of these ideas in your outreach. In your situation — no Loom video, no custom domain, no paid cold‑email tool, only an old PC and Gmail — your best leverage is your ability to build such assets rather than relying on pure sales skill. If you need a laptop for a Zoom call, borrowing one from a friend works well. Your resourcefulness and gumption are exactly what will move you forward.
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.
Josh's approach is perfect if you're not yet in the automation industry, don't have an automation business, or aren't freelancing; your only goal should be to go from zero to one as quickly as possible. Most people in Josh's situation try to jump from zero to a hundred right away, but the strategies for going from 0 to 1 are different from those needed to scale to 100. Josh is looking for a minimum viable strategy—similar to a minimum viable product—to avoid stagnation and quit, because he values feedback loops. This is the way I approach any business model in the 2020s, given how fast everything moves. Regarding your question about minimum tools and whether to focus on Upwork until you earn money: it depends on your financial situation. The quickest path from zero to one, in my experience, is to spam three methods: Upwork applications, cold emails, and community engagement. I call it spamming like a video game because, while quality matters, the law of large numbers ensures results if you send enough outreach. For Upwork, send many applications using a customized Loom video approach—record a short video saying, 'Hey, how's it going? I just saw your post for XYZ; let me show you exactly how I'd solve this.' Highlight your relevant experience (X, Y, Z) and past results. Even if you're new to Upwork, this personalized touch boosts your chances. For cold emails, use one of my offer formulas or cold email templates, then find an audience, split‑test two or three audiences, and gauge reply rates—especially positive replies. You can personalize with AI if you wish; my Nix cold email templates are available via the four‑step cold email copying system. For communities, identify groups and niches you're interested in (e.g., videography, dental clinic managers). Post hyper‑relevant content that provides value without selling immediately. For example, in a dental clinic manager community, share a strategy like 'end‑of‑insurance reactivation' that leaves voicemails about unused benefits. By consistently giving value over time, you become an authority and can start charging for your services. These three outreach methods—Upwork, cold emails, and community posting—constitute the minimum viable strategy for landing your first client.