What tools, systems, or resources would you recommend putting money into to grow or operate more efficiently?
Well, if you don't already have access to one of my communities, I'd probably shamelessly plug it. I think you'd save a lot of money joining one of those. For example, one guy just shared 250,000 free mail credits. I'm not capable of doing the math, but you get free access to a bunch of stuff just by being part of the community, which usually vastly outweighs the money you're paying. So I might check whether make moneywithmake.com or maker school makes sense. I'd also sign up for accelerators and discount aggregators like Secret. They do things like: you pay a little bit of money and then you get six months free on Notion Plus, you get ad matching on TikTok, you get 25% off your plan purchases, you can save up to $9K. You save $1,000 in free credits in Air Table. Basically, when you have a little bit of money, you can multiply that money and then get access to all these platforms and significantly reduce your software expense. And then, in terms of tools, systems, resources, I would just 10x the outreach. Honestly, whatever netted you those first few clients, you've clearly validated that works. Just scale it the hell up, man.
No problem, you should definitely double down on other forms of outreach. There are two ways to get clients: money‑intensive methods, where you spend money to acquire clients fast, and time‑intensive methods, where you spend time instead of money. In Maker School I focus on money‑intensive tactics, but the amount of money needed is actually very low compared to most businesses. For example, cold email might cost around $220 a month (software, mailboxes, leads), which is about 44% of your $500 take‑home — still a lot when you also need to pay rent. Upwork Connects cost about $2.50 per application; using the Connect strategy 20 days a month adds roughly $250, bringing your total outreach spend to about $470, or 94% of your income. Clearly, spending that much on paid outreach isn’t realistic. If you don’t have money to spend, you trade your time for what that money would have bought you. Start with cold DMs: combine the best of my cold email and Upwork approaches, and send them on LinkedIn, X (Twitter), Instagram, and Reddit — about 20 per platform each day. At three minutes per message, that’s roughly four hours a day, yielding around 1,200 outreach attempts per month. Even with a modest 5% reply rate and a 25% booking‑to‑close rate, you could land a few clients and start generating income. As you reinvest those earnings, your outreach becomes more scalable and your hourly effective rate improves. Another time‑intensive tactic is community posting: join relevant Slack, Discord, LinkedIn, Facebook groups, answer questions daily for two weeks, then start posting your own value‑driven content. When you gain visibility and authority in those communities, people will DM you for help, letting you pitch your services and turn those interactions into leads. The core idea is to trade time for money early on; as your earnings grow, you can gradually shift back to money‑intensive methods and reduce the time you need to spend.
You can absolutely hit $17‑$20K a month without cold email, but you need to focus on the platforms and outreach methods that actually move the needle. The biggest issue right now is that you’re not targeting the right places. While cold email is the simplest and most scalable channel, you can still generate high income through Upwork and community‑based outreach. For example, sending about ten high‑quality Upwork proposals a day can give you a 4‑6x return on your connect spend, which translates to roughly $7‑$8K a month after accounting for marketing and platform costs, leaving you with a healthy 75% gross margin. To improve beyond linear growth, decouple inputs from outputs by building reusable outreach templates and leveraging platforms that let you automate large‑scale, yet personalized, communication. Cold email is one such lever: invest a fixed amount of time in a high‑quality campaign, target precisely, and let it run without daily manual effort. Community outreach works similarly—become a recognized figure in a niche community, create evergreen posts that solve problems, and let those assets generate leads with minimal ongoing work. The same principle applies to cold DMs. All these strategies are layers of leverage; even the lowest‑leverage method—consistent Upwork activity—can get you to $17K if you execute well.
If you only have $100, you can't join my school community ($166/month). Instead, use free tactics first, then join after your first sale or $500. First step: get the Instantly Growth Plan at $37/month (instead of $97). Scrape leads using Apollo and Apify, which may cost another $30‑$40 depending on the actor you rent. This gives you cheap leads. Get a couple of mailboxes—use Zapmail for the cheapest option. With the Instantly growth plan and Zapmail, you’ll spend about $75 of your $100. Use the remaining $25 for a Loom subscription. Send 10 cold DMs with Loom videos explaining how you’ll fix a problem costing them a little money. That method is free. You can also join communities teaching similar Loom‑based outreach, record custom content, add value, and start there.
If you have $1,000, it's effectively the same as having $0 when viewed from a high enough level--there's no real difference. My advice is identical for anyone with zero or $1,000: start a daily consistent outreach habit, regardless of platform (social media, email, etc.). Choose a simple daily target--for example, talk to or get in front of 10 people each day for your business. Over a year that's 3,650 contacts; even a tiny conversion rate can generate significant capital because luck stems from preparation plus opportunity, and you boost luck by maximizing outreach. Most people struggle because they lack such daily habits; the real bottleneck in almost any venture is soft skills, sales ability, and marketing. You could build a product like Netflix tomorrow, but without marketing you'd have zero viewers. Practical ways to hit your daily goal: send 10 Upwork applications daily, send 10 cold emails per day on behalf of your business, or reach out to your favorite YouTubers (like me or Ali Abdal) with a custom pitch each day. Alternatively, list the top 10 creators, identify their problems, and offer to solve them--doing this for a month yields about 300 high-quality touches, each taking only 5-10 minutes, which can drive real results. Begin this habit now and maintain it for months; the compounding effect will create the bulk of your long-term capital.