Two years into building an automation agency alongside my consulting job I have three clients generating $20K revenue—one from Upwork, one from cold email, and one referred from that cold email client. The cold email ROI is great but relying on a single client per month isn’t repeatable. I’ve built several AI tools (SEO generator, social post generator, meeting summary tool, product copywriter) and have healthy inboxes but almost no meetings. I’m considering a productized, done‑for‑you service helping CFOs get invoices paid faster. Should I scrap the current model and go all‑in on one narrow offer, or does having only three clients in two years indicate something else is broken? Also, am I not doing enough outreach?
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.
Great question. I should make it abundantly clear that when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. My hammer is cold email, so I try to solve every problem with it. Cold email isn’t always the most effective marketing method, but it’s like a video game where you keep playing the main character because you’re best at it. I would definitely use cold email. I’d start by pitching these SMA agencies. I’d go to Apollo and filter for 1‑11 staff, looking for digital marketing, digital agency, or creative agency. I’d use the OR operator to pull as many as possible—probably a list of 30 k to 50 k in the United States alone. Then I’d blast out my offer with the software, giving a free demo. I’d position it as if I’d read the person’s whole life story and built the software just for them. I’d mention that I’ve been following what they’re doing at [their company] and that I used to run a digital marketing agency (maybe I still do). I’d share that I’m suffering from XYZ problem and that this software is the solution I came up with. I’d want to put it in front of them to see if it has value. I’m 100 % confident that running their clients through my system will generate outsized returns, so much that I’m willing to guarantee it and give it away for free just to hear their thoughts. If they’re open to a quick call, we could jump on it. I’d approach this at the higher‑agency level, positioning myself as an agency owner talking to agency owners, not as a SaaS person trying to sell something. I’d get on as many calls as possible and frame them almost as partnerships: give them a trial of the software, let them solve their current problems with it, then use that feedback to improve the software faster and better. Once I have a ready‑to‑go version, I’d charge premium prices. And yes, I’d go straight cold email, starting with agencies because they tend to have more money than SMBs.
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.
Yeah, so for big builds, don't just do it all in one shot; avoid big all-encompassing systems because scope creep usually leads to a situation where you haven't clearly defined what you’ll do for the client, which is impossible to specify ahead of time, causing the client to expect something you didn’t agree to for payment, breeding resentment and harming the relationship. Instead, start with a small starter project that’s tightly scoped and agreed upon by both sides, then vibe each other out to learn what the client likes and demonstrate your aptitude—this lets you pitch more later and gives you insight into their business before committing to a massive scope. If you’re doing this for a company and need to send 10,000 depersonalized emails, think logically: using Make, first you get the leads (one op), then you iterate through the leads (n ops), generate icebreakers (another n ops), and optionally upload to Instantly (another n ops) or bulk‑upload to Google Sheets (effectively one op). Roughly, that’s about three n ops, or two n ops if you use the bulk‑upload shortcut. For 10,000 records that works out to roughly 20,000 operations, give or take. As for the Make plan, the $34‑per‑month Core plan gives you 40,000 ops, plenty of headroom; you don’t need the Pro plan unless you want better error handling, in which case the Pro plan is $62. You can start with Core and upgrade later, paying only the difference. On a personal note, I’m about twenty minutes into this video and feeling locked in; I’ve gotten more done today than in the past week because I’ve committed to stop daily posting on my main channel. My growth has slowed—my first‑24‑hour view‑to‑subscriber ratio dropped from about 15% (≈15,000 views on 100k subs) to around 5% (≈5,000 views). Comments suggest this is because my niche‑specific content has saturated its audience, and broadening the topic would attract less‑interested viewers. Elrico noted that my recent videos repeat earlier material, which may also be hurting growth, and suggested exploring other tools besides Make, like voice agents and live builds. Parker joked about throwing me on while cooking to start a riot over quitting daily, and shared ideas such as adding an automation bucket for publicly traded codes to save Coinbase money, using customer‑support headcount as an input for percentage assessments, and targeting big logos to pull in the right audience. My daily updates channel now has about 5,600 subscribers, while the main channel sits at 110,750. I’m checking follower‑count tools like Trend Hero, though I’m not sure about the daily‑limit metric. Reflecting on all this feedback, I’ve decided to stop posting daily and instead pursue a multifaceted strategy: focus on what makes me unique—my calm, low‑production‑value, high‑signal‑to‑noise conversational content—and develop a new, less‑replicable format. With my team, we’ve decided to pursue the “complete and utter uncopyable thing”: building a business with this stuff in front of everybody, doing it extraordinarily well by spending time generating leads, selling them, securing proposals, onboarding clients, fulfilling projects, and growing the company. Nobody else can replicate that live business‑building demonstration. My earlier live video of starting and selling an AI service in ten hours went viral precisely because it proved I can generate leads on camera; it’s a litmus test for knowing how to do this.
First, this isn’t a full business model—it’s a go‑to‑market offer. Your offer is essentially: “I will guarantee you three to five qualified appointments per month using a predictable outbound machine that automatically researches companies and generates hyper‑personalized icebreakers for cold email.” The real business model sits behind that offer: you need to understand your customer acquisition cost versus lifetime value, how you staff and fulfill the service, and the economics after you have paying customers. The concept works; you can apply it to almost any niche if you guarantee a specific number of appointments. The math is simple: if you close, say, one in five meetings and you deliver five meetings a month, that’s one new client per month. At $10,000 per client and a $2,000 monthly cost, that’s a 5× ROI. To improve the offer, be very specific about the guarantee. Saying “3‑5 appointments” is vague; you’re really promising at least three. I’d suggest a clearer guarantee—e.g., 20 qualified appointments per month—with an expected 70‑80 % show‑up rate, and make it clear that the guarantee only covers booked meetings, not attendance. Regarding your concern about splitting attention across multiple businesses, I allocate roughly 60 % of my time to my media brand, 20 % to my agency, 15 % to my SaaS, and 5 % to side projects. Each business experiences diminishing returns after a certain number of hours (about four hours for media, two for agency, one for SaaS). My optimal strategy is to work up to that cap on one business, then rotate to the next, repeating the cycle daily. This “portfolio” approach to time mirrors investment diversification—spreading effort avoids the plateau effect and maximizes overall results.