Have you worked in the education industry, or what are your thoughts on targeting schools for your services?

#164 · Self-hosting n8n sucks (true story)

Have you worked in the education industry, or what are your thoughts on targeting schools for your services?

Yes, there’s great opportunity in education. For example, I ran a PR‑agency campaign for a skateboard association where we pitched teachers and noted that schools often fund such initiatives, letting us say ‘somebody else is going to pay for this.’ I’ve also consulted for a Google‑affiliated client who had an arrangement for Google to finance an AI project up to $25,000, and I’ve run a government‑of‑British‑Columbia digital upgrade campaign that offered up to $5,000 CAD to modernize brick‑and‑mortar businesses. These examples show you can tap school funding, incentives, or public money so the client isn’t paying out of pocket, which significantly improves conversion rates in cold‑email outreach.

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Related answers

youtube ↗Offers

I'm a music producer with recent success in cold outreach (especially Instagram DMs) but curious about cold email. Would Maker School be a good investment to improve my outreach and business skills, even if I have no plans to sell AI-related services?

No, not really. The whole idea is that you're going to want to sell services here. If you're not going to sell services, Maker School probably will not deliver the return on investment. To be honest, my whole game is that I want you to deliver a return on investment, because then you'll be likely to pay me more money over the long run — versus somebody who joins for a month or two, finds the program superficially interesting, but doesn't get a return on investment. Ultimately I'm here because I want things to work. I want them to work for you, and in working for you, I want them to work for me.

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youtube ↗Offers

Why not launch a super high‑ticket community to help other school owners, given my success in organically growing school communities?

I’ve thought about creating an info product, but it feels too circular and I don’t want to be part of that AI‑economy‑joke where everyone’s investing in each other’s pockets. High‑ticket products also don’t appeal to me; they’re annoying and would make me unhappy even if they could generate millions. I prefer hands‑on work that directly helps people, especially beginners who are starting from zero. Building something from the ground up and watching newcomers succeed is far more fulfilling than adding a little extra revenue for already wealthy owners. So I’m steering clear of high‑ticket offers and focusing on low‑ticket, high‑impact education that serves a broader audience.

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youtube ↗Cold Email

How do you do cold outreach for a school community geared toward peer support and masterminding, and is cold outreach mainly suited to selling services?

Yes, you can do cold outreach for a school community, but I don’t recommend it. Communities are usually low‑ticket; the typical model is a monthly fee (e.g., $184/month for Maker School) for 3–6 months, whereas achieving similar accountability elsewhere might cost $4,000. I can deliver it for around $120, and people stay longer because they’re paying ongoing, which helps me project revenue. However, selling a mechanism that demands a lot of your time and energy for a $50/month product doesn’t make sense—you’d spend five to ten hours building campaigns and jump on five sales calls for just $50 in return. It only works if the product is high‑ticket (e.g., $5,000/month), which is rare in school communities. In general, I’d say no. If you want to run a successful school community, base it on inbound rather than cold outreach. Okay, all right—hopefully you found this valuable.

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youtube ↗Lead Generation

What is the most straightforward path to reach $20,000 per month without using cold email outreach, given I have two engineering jobs earning $3,000 a month and a few hundred dollars from freelancing, plus a $500 monthly learning budget?

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.

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