Sales Pitch Roast for Beginners (So Clients Don’t Roast You)

We are live. Welcome to today's episode of Black Belt Startup with Feras. Thank you for tuning in. So what is happening in the world of entrepreneurship? My friend, if your sales pitches or proposals aren't landing, you've come to the right place. This is your chance to get them fixed. I received a lot of great feedback from the last round of roasting that I did, so I'm running another session today. So if you're listening or watching live, you can direct message me, you can put a comment with a pitch or maybe a link to a proposal that you are struggling with, and I'll be more than happy to review it, roast it gently live today. And then for those of you who are watching later or listening later, you can still email me, you can direct message me, you can connect with me and send me your proposal or your pitch. I'd love to be able to help. You can email me at feras@startupwithferas.com, and you can obviously connect with me on social media. I already have a few submissions that are lined up, and I'll be reviewing them. From a beginner's perspective, because once you're in the in this entrepreneurship journey, once on your journey, you start building the muscle. You start you have to you have to market. You have to sell. You have to be out there to generate some traction and get some revenue and make those clients happy. And over time, you learn how to do it. It becomes second nature for for those of you who are. Just starting out, you might think, no way, I'm not a salesperson, I'm not a marketing person, I know nothing about delivering to a client. That's how we all started. When I started my very first business back when— back in 2003, I was a VP at a— this, this very, um, very well-funded startup, tech startup, and we ran out of money. No customers, no revenue, no business. I was laid off and then the company folded. Basically, I had to learn everything from scratch. I had to learn how to market, how to network, how to sell, how to come up with proposals. So, so if I learned it, every one of you should be able to do it. It does require a bit of work and a bit of building, overcoming the fear of speaking with strangers and asking them for money, but that's what we're here for, is to help you craft a better pitch, a winning proposal so that you can get more traction, so you can get your first few sales. And then once you have those under your belt, you can charge more, you can deliver better, you'll start maybe potentially hiring people and growing that business and be moving forward toward the dream that you have. So stick with me here. If you have any questions about, again, a pitch or a proposal, Send me what you have and I'll be more than happy to critique it for you and help you improve it so you can close more deals. All right, so in terms of what I want to share today, uh, what I want to focus on today, when I look at these pitches, I look at a number of criteria. And let me make sure here, yeah, for those of you who are just joining, thank you for joining us live. Let me know if you have a pitch or proposal you'd like me to review. But from a pitch perspective, you want to make sure you're very clear on the problem and the solution. So you must understand the pain points, the desires, the things that either bother the lead, the potential client, or the things that will make them happy, will save them money, will help them save money, will have them make more revenue, will help make their clients happier, will make their employees happier, whatever the case might be in your industry, in the space you're in, you want to, in your pitch, in your proposal, you want to be able, you want to know the exact pain points for the person you are reaching out to. Now, obviously, when you are just doing some cold outreach, cold email, or cold calling, you start at a broader— with a broader perspective. You don't know the specific pain points of this person. But if, let's say, you sell social media, so let's say you focus on one of the channels, TikTok or Instagram or LinkedIn, so you can start broad and say, I help you increase your engagement, I help you get qualified leads, all of that. And then as you speak with the client and as you get to know more about What is it that they've done and hasn't worked? You dig a little bit deeper and you might identify that they've been inconsistent. Maybe they've been inconsistent in publishing because they don't have the talent or they rely on the owner's nephew Jimmy and Jimmy is out every other week. So maybe you can come in and fill that gap. So start in your pitch, if it's a cold email, cold call, initial introduction, start broad. but as you capture more information from the client, from the lead at that point, you'll be able, you should be able to respond with more specific solutions and benefits based on what you've learned in those conversations. So clarity of the problem and the solution is really important. The second point is relevance and targeting. So I say this to founders all day long. I speak with 2 to 3 founders every week. And I see this as a common issue. People want to solve world hunger. Great, great vision, but initially focus maybe on a geography, focus on a specific vertical, focus on if you're in finance or in IT or in HR consulting or you're in workflow automation, you're into AI process improvements. So focus on maybe a vertical in healthcare, in finance, in in an area you have some experience in, you know that industry, you know the jargon in that industry. So the message will resonate better if you are targeting a specific audience. We talked about niching, niching down, niching up. There's a great book called Niching Up, short book. I recommend you check it out, but you cannot be addressing and selling to the world. It just doesn't work. Sales, marketing and sales just don't work that way. The other thing I look at as well is your value proposition. Basically, okay, fancy word for UVP, unique value proposition. It's how life and business gets better or how, depending if you're selling business to consumer or business to business, how the client situation will get better after they say yes to you. So that is very, very important. In addition to these factors, I also look for, excuse me, how you position yourself as a trusted advisor, how you establish authority and credibility. So that is, and there are tactics to do that. Some of it is like science. You got to do this, this, and that. And then some of it becomes more of an art. You see what's important to the client. If certifications are important to the lead, you highlight your certifications. If they're more relational and you can tell them that you've had clients with you for the last, you know, 5 years, or if you're just starting out, you can tell them about your previous job and how you maintained good relationship with your teams and your partners and suppliers and clients. So position, you want to bring— this is not the time to be shy. You don't want to be— you don't want to come across as professorial or you don't want to come across as a show-off, but in a very nice way, very professional way, you present your credentials. So, and again, I'll go through examples here when we go through the pitches that I'm going through. Also, I'll be looking at pricing and payment terms. This is specifically for those who shared proposals with me. If you are charging hourly or project-based, or you're charging maybe performance-based, have we defined the scope very well? Have we given the client an idea on how we will— we've gotten to this pricing? And then are there milestones with payment terms? Is it open-ended, hourly and open-ended, or is it fixed fee and there are certain parameters where this is included and that other thing is not included. So I look also at pricing and payment terms. A lot of clients, a lot of consultants lose their shirts when they price their proposals without addressing the key, the critical sections that every proposal must have. And I have a full, an hour and 4-minute video on writing and winning proposals this year. I went through everything I've learned over the last 20+ years, over 2,000 proposals, a whole lot of rejections, but we increased our win rate from I think 1 out of 10 to 3 out of 10, close to 3 to 4 out of 10 by the time we exited that business. So pricing and packaging and all the critical components a proposal should have, I look at that. And from the The last couple of things I look at also in your pitch and also in a proposal, formal proposal, the whole readability of the document or the email. Does it look professional, easy to scan, easy to read, or is it written, has grammar issues, typos, you're mentioning another client, you're mentioning things that don't, are not relevant to the lead? All of that is really, really important. It's your reputation on the line. And the last thing is you want to make sure that it does sound human. In the age of AI, clients, leads, all of us, we can smell a template from a distance. It's getting harder, but we still— so, so you want to make sure you can use AI. I'm, I'm a proponent of that. In the video I just mentioned, I have a whole section on how to use templates, how to use AI, and I actually have a custom AI assistant that you can leverage right away to help you build proposals with a thoughtful prompt, and it'll actually prompt you with specific questions to make sure everything is well— everything is captured and, and presented well to the client. So, so that's important. It's important to use templates and to use AI and to use automation. That, that will help you scale, but at the same time, you don't want to use that blindly and and you want to make sure that everything you write is aligned with the client's goals, even with the tone and their personality and what's important to them. So tone and empathy are important in pitches and in proposals. All right, so those are some of the criteria. So, and you can call these best practices. These are the things to look for when you're writing your own pitches and when you're writing your own proposals. But for now, We want to go into the roasting session. I promised I'll be gentle and I will be. So again, for those of you who are just joining now or listening in later, reach out to me with your pitch if you're— and I'll keep everything anonymous. I don't share, I keep everything confidential. If I share anything on, on the YouTube channel or on LinkedIn, I make sure it's anonymous. I will make sure you and your client names are— are not, not shown in anything I, I share about. And if you want me to send you just a personal or a private answer, I'm happy to do that. I do this as a service to the community. A lot of people helped me on my way to, to building 7-figure companies and building an 8-figure company that we later sold to Dentsu, the global media giant. And part of this is, of course, I want to be back. I want to pay it forward and and really help a lot of the folks who are struggling with the things that I struggled with when I started. So if you have it, if you're listening to this later, don't hesitate to reach out to me with a specific proposal you want me to quickly review or to a, maybe a pitch or maybe you have a sequence, email sequence that you use and you're not getting any responses, I'm happy to take a look at. Okay, let's go through The pitches, and I have those here on slides. So just give me one second, and I will share those with you right here. And some of them are really good, so there's not a whole lot of things to roast. Let's see the first one. So here. This is someone who reached out to me actually on LinkedIn, and they sent an email. Hey, I'm happy to. I'm here in San Jose. I noticed you're in San Jose. I'd love to connect with you. We might have some common interest and love to collaborate. Okay, thank you. I said thank you. I appreciate you reaching out, and I left it at that. They followed up a week later, just checking in. Would you mind letting me know your thoughts on the message? And they gave me some in the follow-up email. They sent me some details about the services that they offer. So I was busy, did not reply. And then just following up on my last message. So they were persistent, not annoying, but they were persistent. I said, and I, I did take a look at what they offer, and I said, thank you for the follow-up. We're good in this category. I was polite and I didn't— I didn't— I don't have a need for the service that they offer. Now check out the reply they sent us, they sent me, and I really like this reply because as a salesperson, as a consultant, as a founder, you will be a salesperson in a way, not a sleazy salesperson. Sales is not a dirty word. Sales is providing— in the consulting space, you're providing A solution to a problem. So when we talk about sales, think about it of you're providing, you're helping, you're adding value, and someone is compensating you for that. Of course, you want to learn the sales strategies and the sales tactics, but this is not sleazy. This is not dirty. This is not— you're not what you see on TV as a pushy used car salesman. That's not you. You're a consultant, you're an expert, you're solving problems, and the customer will appreciate what you're doing for them and they'll pay you for it, right? So, so, so some of these tactics here are really important for you to learn, and some of it is like, like science— 1, 2, 3, 4— and some of it is art, and art requires time to be proficient in and to, to master. So if you're stumbling, if you're struggling, if you are getting, getting a lot of rejections, That is just part of sales. That's just part of entrepreneurship. You want to improve your metrics. If you're getting 0 replies out of 100 emails, like, can I get maybe 5 replies out of the next 100? And then can I get 10? And then my follow-ups, can I get 3 meetings instead of 0 meetings? So you always want to work on improving your metrics in terms of marketing and outreach and closing deals, But rejections and people not getting back to you and people not responding, it is just part of entrepreneurship. So listen, check out her response. So I said, thank you for the follow-up. You know, we're good in this category. So she said, I appreciate the transparency, Feras. So she thanked me. That's a good idea. Always thank the lead. And then just look at her follow-up. Very professional. Very, and it looks sincere to me at least. She said, just curious, what makes you feel that you're all set in this category? It is more than, is it like the strategy you're not confident in or something else? I ask because I work with a lot of founders and a lot of business owners, and even when they feel they're covered, we've often found ways to improve what's already working for them. Would you— would a quick 15-minute call to confirm that I can add value be worth it to you? So very— I love this response. Again, it's not annoying, it's not pushy. She acknowledged that I don't have the need now, but she said, can you tell me a bit more? And then I replied back to her, actually. I said, thank you, I appreciate your persistence, which I do. And I told her, I said, hey, this is my 7th venture and I have a senior team and And we have talent. We've grown companies to 7 and 8 figures. We've sold companies. We've bought companies. We've merged. We have the team who can handle these things. So she said, thank you so much. I appreciate it. So what I want you to get out of this today is that— Sorry, one second. Yeah, so what I want you to get out of this example is that there's a balance between being annoying and calling and emailing and texting at 6 PM and 7 PM and 7 AM and, and doing this 3 times a day, and finding a balance where you don't give up with the first no. You find a good reason to follow up. You add more value. I always say in every follow-up and every interaction with the lead, you want to add value. Send them a report that you came across that is important to them. Send them something you found on one of their competitors' websites. Send them an insight, maybe a new blog post you wrote, an article, a post, a short video you've done. So send something to the client, to the lead at that— in that phase. So send something to the lead that shows that you care about them and you're adding value in this interaction. And in their mind, oh my God, this, this expert, this consultant is so good. I've already learned a whole lot from them before, before I even bought from them. And if they end up not buying from them, and again, that's going to be common, not everyone you speak with and you send a proposal to will buy from you. But if even if they don't buy from you at that point, you're in this, you're in this business, you're in entrepreneurship for the long run. So even if they don't buy from you today, you've left a positive impression on them. They'll remember that. And when they move on to the next job and they're looking for someone who offers what you offer, they'll remember you. Or when— if the reason why they didn't go with you this time because of budget, or their boss did not approve it, or the timing wasn't right, guess what? If you've left a positive impression on them, they'll come back to you, especially if you maintain that connection. Every couple months you send a follow-up email, again with value, with insight, with something, or just maybe a happy holiday, happy holiday, happy Thanksgiving, or happy, um, whatever. If you know their birthday, happy birthday. Whatever it is, send something that you are around, you're still around here, you're still doing what you're doing, you're still interested in working with them. So that is that one follow-up that I really liked. So we have some comments here. Let me check, uh, from Lori. Lori, thank you for joining live. So how can we send you our pitch? And thank you for the offer. Yes, Lori, so, uh, if you want to add it as a comment here, um, where on— I think, I believe you're on LinkedIn from what I can see. I can take a look at it right away. If you prefer that you send it offline you can email it to me, feras@startupwithferas.com, and I'll be more than happy to review it for you. Or on LinkedIn, you can send me a message. You can also send me a link to a Google Doc with that information if it's, if it's long. So I'm more than happy to take, to take a look at it for you, Lori. Thank you again for joining live. Um, let's see. Okay, then next one. You know, I promise to be gentle with these things. So here's the next one. Um, let me make sure I'm sharing my screen. Yep. So, hey Feras, uh, I watched your last video. Well, thank you for watching. Now, why is video in all caps? I have no idea. The moments are solid, but the opening does not hook, so viewers probably drop early. So this is the thing in, in YouTube We have a YouTube channel building this community. We've— we have over 7,000 followers. So, so it took me a whole lot of time to figure out YouTube, still figuring things out. So, but we're doing okay, I believe, based on, on the energy and the efforts we put in. And we want to grow and expand that community. So I appreciate our YouTube community. But he says, so the thing in YouTube is if the hook, that initial 10, 15, 20 seconds it's not engaging, it does not really answer the proposition, you know, the title of the video and, and what you have on the thumbnail. If, if those things don't sort of flow together, people, people typically leave. So, so he's saying here, viewers probably drop early. I can do a short test edit, no charge, just to tighten the first 30 to 40 seconds. If it helps, great. If not, no worries. Have a good day. So again, I don't like— it's a bit informal. Hey, Feras. I said this and I say this all the time. Maybe this is a generational thing. Maybe I'm an old guy. I don't care. Do not start your emails with hey. You never know the person. You might offend 1% of the population, and that person would have loved to do business with you if you did not call them hey. So why use hey? Reduce, remove, eliminate factors that could cause you a lead or cause or send a signal that you're not professional. So I say hey all the time to friends, but in my first outreach, hello, hi, depending, depending on the culture we have. I have a business in, in Dubai. There, dear is expected. So you have to learn the, the culture that you are working with. So when I go to Dubai, I visit, I go there about once a year, and when I— my business co-founders, they take me around to meet some clients, they remind me of some of the local etiquettes. Everything in Dubai is in English, everybody speaks English, everything is done in English, but the local culture is important. So again, if you're talking to a Gen Zer, it's maybe one thing, if you're talking to maybe a boomer or a Gen Xer, you know, maybe it's different, but be aware of what you're doing, don't just send emails, You'll increase your chances of winning pitches and proposals if you have— if you know more about the receiver and you customize or you personalize that message for them. So enough on this hey, but I would now say it again, I don't know why this video— he probably would have done a better job, he or she, if they also linked to the video or mentioned the name of the video they're talking about, and then, and you know, the moments are solid, okay, I appreciate that. Now what I like about this one here is that, is that they're offering something of value. I can do a short— so they're a video editor, it sounds like. I can do a short test edit, no charge. So they will show me what they do. Probably take them half an hour, an hour to edit a 30-second part of a video. So they're offering— this is, and this is something, um, of perceived value to me. Because I can see if they're doing a better job than my editor. I can talk to my editor, hey my friend, like check this out, see what's going on, can we improve? So, so, or maybe, maybe I've been thinking of a new editor. I'm not, I love our editor, but if I were and this email just comes in time, it's their lucky day, I might actually take on this offer and send me what you have. So, so again, no signature here, no thank you sincerely, No link to a website or maybe a LinkedIn or an Instagram or YouTube portfolio, so I would definitely make it a bit more formal, I would be more specific, and I would make sure it's very, very professional from a presentation perspective, but I love this idea of— I love this idea of making offering an audit, uh, or, or something of value. You can do, um, you can do a training session, you can do, um, a, a— we used to do when we sold analytics as a service, we would do a free, like we called a mini audit. So we'd spend an hour and then put what we find, some, and we tell the client this is just a mini audit, it's not comprehensive, it's not thorough, but here some things we found. And people, oh my goodness, we didn't know that we had this issue in our implementation. So whatever your service is, in most cases you can do a demonstration, you can show how you've helped others, or you can offer— just give them a piece of that amazing information and experience and expertise you have. Let them taste it, let them feel it, and that potentially creates more engagement. You're getting closer, you're getting to know them, they're getting to know you. They're they're seeing the value you offer, and then they're more likely to work with you. Hi, Lori. Yeah, so Lori's asking, only sales pitches or investment pitches as well? So I can take a look. Okay, your lucky day, so I'll look at them both. Send a sales pitch and an investment pitch, but yeah, just make it concise so it's not like I'm reviewing a 20-page pitch. Pitch deck, but happy, happy to take a look. No worry at all. Thank you again for, for joining live. Good. Moving on to the next one. So this is an outreach on LinkedIn, and here, this is— notice I highlighted the date. So given your professional background, I thought connecting makes sense. We're actively looking for strategic partners to help our clients. Okay, I'm always open for ideas. Networking and getting to know people is always a good thing. Of course, based on my availability, based on how busy I am, I might not be able to respond right away. I might have my co-founder Eric or one of our team members do some follow-up, but I don't mind. There are always opportunities with other people, professionals, people who are smart and work hard. There are always ways to make more money and establish good relationships with folks. So here, I did reply. I think I believe it was the same day or maybe the next day. I think the same day. Said, thank you for reaching out. Happy to discuss any potential real opportunities in the near future. So someone reached out. So they took the time to research me, to send me a message. And then I reply the same day or the next day. I believe the same day. And then radio silence. There's nothing. No response. It's been 2 weeks. So again, no judging here. This person could have been busy. Something happened in life. Who knows? They have aging parents, death in the family, traveled. I get it. But what I want to highlight here is that if you're in the sales business, if you're in consulting, if you're in consulting, that means you're in the sales business and part of sales, a core, a core aspect of sales, a key critical aspect of sales, of sale, is follow-up. No follow-up, no sales. No sales, no revenue. No revenue, no business. So I talked about follow-up earlier. There's a balance between annoying people and nagging and begging and doing follow-up previously. And if you just joined Right at this moment, just go back maybe 10, 15 minutes ago and I talked about some of the best practices for follow-up. Always add value when you follow up, but sending an email, a cold email or a cold message, or you call someone and then you don't follow up, that's when things just— you lose your credibility. You lose an opportunity. I might have been very interested in what this person has to offer. So make sure you have a system to track all your sales activities. Now for those of you who are just starting out or for those of you who started out and they still don't have traction, they don't have maybe a budget and you can't afford the time and the effort to set up a CRM like Salesforce for small business or for small businesses or HubSpot or any of these CRMs, If you don't have the time or the energy or the know-how yet, you can use my DIY CRM, and I have a spreadsheet. I'll put that in the link in the description so that you can basically track all your sales activities. Every email, every call, every action item has to be documented, and whether you use a spreadsheet, your own spreadsheet, my DIY CRM worksheet, Use Salesforce, HubSpot at the end of the day, and even if you have everything automated and you have your Gmail Gemini summary of conversations automatically and automagically injected in your CRM and you have all that automation in place, there's still some follow-up muscles you have to do as a business owner, as a consultant, as a salesperson, so you have to track, okay, We spoke with this lead today. Here's what I gathered. This all could be done with AI if you're using Gemini or any— or Zoom. They give you the summary of the call. So that's great. And then you put that in your CRM or a link to it in the spreadsheet so you don't forget what you discussed. But then right then, right after that call, what is the next step? I promised this lead I'll send a case study. I promised this lead I'll send them the pitch deck. I promised this lead I will meet them at this event. Make sure you have that and put it on your calendar to do that follow-up. See, I'm all for automation. We use— we were a Salesforce partner in the previous company. We use HubSpot now in a couple of the ventures that I'm involved in. I'm big on CRMs, but initially as a small business owner, as a new consultant, if you don't want to spend a lot of time on CRMs and all that good stuff, Track your activities and the next steps and the time and the date and the time of the next step in my DIY CRM. That will, that will save you a whole lot of time in the future. It does take time. This administrative work does take time, but it will improve your chances of winning deals significantly. Again, no follow-up, no sales. No sales, no revenue. No revenue, no business. All right, moving on to the next one. So there you go. So this is an email I got early in 2026, in February, I think. Yeah, this in February. And it says, as May 2026. So this person obviously reads the future, or I don't know, they transported themselves to the future. We're in May— we're in February, not in May. So, so if you have some auto-insertion from your CRM or from a spreadsheet into your email system, I, I get it, these things happen, these mistakes happen. But my friend, test your emails, even if it's just you. You can set up your email templates, you can have— if you're using Constant Contact or iContact or Mailchimp or using or if you're using Salesforce or HubSpot, it doesn't matter. The same concept. You have a list of names, a list of emails, and then you have custom fields you want to insert in your emails. That, that whole auto-insertion feature, it— they all work the same way. They take data about your lead and they insert it into your email that you send out so that the email is more personalized. More personalization is typically leads to higher conversion, higher open rate, higher, higher response rate. So, so this person did not do their job in testing, or they're, I don't know, sloppy in, in writing. I don't know, maybe they were thinking about May 2025. I have no idea. So maybe they were wishing me May 2026 be a beautiful year. Maybe that's what they had in their mind, on their mind. So it doesn't matter. That does not leave a Very positive impression on the lead, and then you look at what they're offering, and it is everything under the sun from web iOS. I don't need any Android development, AI ML, digital growth support, UI UX recruitment, data analytics. I'd love to connect with you. Da da da da. So I mean, I appreciate the thoroughness of of what they're offering. But it doesn't give me that, um, it doesn't encourage me to, to follow up aside from this May 2026 issue. Like, are you like, what you do, you do everything under the sun, uh, can you maybe research what I do, uh, in this business? Startup with Feras, we are about helping entrepreneurs. We have content, we are content creators. And then we also provide consulting. We have digital products. Like, none of this stuff really, you know, applies to me, or most of it doesn't apply to me. So, so do, do your homework before you do outreach and customize to the extent that you can, uh, before you send out. So that is, that is one. Let me move to the next one here while we're at it. Yeah, this is really, this is really cool. So, so, uh, and again, if, if— let me— this is before I go there. Let me just couple of thoughts here. So this one, the next example is to do with cold emailing, and I have a perspective on this. Cold emailing, cold calling works. It worked for us early on when I started. I'm not the best cold caller. I did a little bit of it, then we had some revenue. I hired someone to do the cold calling for me, then I would take the next call. There are different ways to do it. Emailing, cold email, we do that, and again, we use all the best practices So cold emailing, cold calling, it works. You have to do it according to the best practices, including deliverability and making sure you have a list, a targeted list of your potential buyers, and you have a plan to do sequencing and all that good stuff. So you have to learn about cold calling. You can hire someone to help you with it. You can go on Upwork and find someone who can help you with that. It works. My recommendation though, for new consultants, or if you're struggling, if you started and you're struggling, is to first exhaust your own network, your own, um, uh, I call warm leads. So, so people go to LinkedIn, I always say this, go to settings and download all of your network, all your connections, and then put them in a spreadsheet and then segment these. These are close friends, I can talk to them about anything. And these are people I worked with and they— I left a positive impression on them. They could support me in finding people who could buy from me. And then these people, I haven't talked to them in a long time. So go through this process, segment your list, and then start sending emails to these people first. You have to be your own billboard, your own walking billboard as a new consultant. And I remember when I started my very first business, I attended, I had zero background in sales, aside from being part of corporate and understanding that there's a sales function and all that, but selling to small businesses, that's something I'd never done before. It was terrifying. So I went to a lot of sales courses. I, at the time, a whole lot of CDs. I would listen to the CDs and take notes, copious notes on What to say and how to handle objections. But the thing is, when when when you reach out to people, it's you're not a robot. So so once you know what you want to offer, and once you know who your target audience audience is, you want to tell everybody in your network that that's what you do. So whether you are at the gym or you you are Not at a funeral, at a wedding maybe. Uh, you're, you're at a, at a networking event. I encourage you to go and attend networking events. You're in a meetup, you're in virtual meetup. There are specific organizations like, like BMI and others where you— the local chamber, chamber, uh, local chambers of commerce, they facilitate meetings for you as an entrepreneur to go and meet with people. So I encourage you Before you start cold emailing and cold calling, again, I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just saying from a prioritization perspective, first reach out to your network, people that you know, speak with them, especially that close set of friends and colleagues and ex-colleagues and maybe your ex-boss, including customers. And let them know what you're doing. Get their feedback on the on the offer. They might know if you're an HR consultant and you work with someone, they might not be in HR or they might not be the COO or the CEO, but they can introduce you. They can send an email to their CEO and say, "Hey, this friend of mine, very reliable, very knowledgeable. They have a consulting company. They help improve employee retention." Da da da. I mean, you you get you just want to get that. Someone to kind of get that foot in the door, right? So, so start reaching out to your— exhaust your local— sorry, exhaust your network, whether it's local or national, in person or virtual, it doesn't matter. But reach out to everyone in your network. Now, I have— if you haven't done this before and you're not sure how to do it, when to do it, what to say, you can check out my— and I'll show you the links to these assets the end of this, um, live stream. I have the ultimate guide to starting a consulting business this year, and in it I go through how to package your offer, how to price it, all that good stuff. And then I show you exactly how to reach out to your network, and then I have sample emails on what to say and, and how to have a professional, thoughtful follow-up, not, not just, hey, are you there? Hey, Can you buy from me? So you can check out that video as well. I'll put the link in the description so you can easily access it, all right? Good, good stuff. So all this introduction to this cold email that— hi, Eric, my co-founder Eric got, and then I actually the same day, funny, Eric sent me this email and said, hey, Feras, check out this very personalized email that he got, and then I got the same email a similar email from a different sender, actually. So there are good things about, actually a lot of good things about these pitches. One is that they've done their homework about what we do in our Black Belt Startup framework, and they said, hey, we're an accountant, and I'm guessing your accountant only talks to you once a year, so they made that assumption, which is Typical in a lot of cases. A lot of CPAs, a lot of accountants, they just focus on doing taxes during the year and that's what they do. These people, they're claiming that they help people like us who do coaching, mentoring, and also consulting, and who are into 6 figures or 7 figures. They can save $50K to $79K. I don't know why $79K. Usually it's funny. $50K to $79K can be— people leave that amount on the table because we're not doing tax optimization strategies. You're not benefiting from all the tax allowances or saving allowances that the IRS offers. So that's good. I think it's a targeted email. They provide their information, their address, they're legit. The timing of this is very important because the deadline to file taxes for individuals, April 15th, for businesses is a month earlier. So, so very good timing. They've provided specifics. I don't know why that, that dollar sign is missing. Not a good idea, I think. Um, small, small, small critique here. Um, uh, and then, and then the funny part is We— Eric got this email, I got this other email, same approach, but the funny thing is that they came from 2 different people and from 2 different domain names. So related domain names, and I know when you do a lot of cold emailing out, you use different domains so that if one is caught by the spam filter or blocked, the other domain is still active. I understand those strategies, and an average person who's not into email marketing might not know this, but if I see the same offer from myself and my business founder or myself and my CEO, we get 2 emails from the same company from different domains, different people, it might be a question mark. So probably, again, I don't know, maybe this, I don't know, I've never seen this sort of approach like the same day. Maybe their database is not cleaned up. I would say you can sort by, by company name, by domain name, and see if you have multiple contacts and their titles, maybe figure out how the email go from the same person. So it requires more data scrubbing and that's more work. So I get it, but that is really interesting. I really like the pitch and like the specificity and they shared what they've done for others. I think they're exaggerating a little bit, especially for people who know what they're doing, But I like the approach, it's just sending 2 emails to 2 co-founders from 2 different people, 2 different domains, question mark there. So that is it for today, that's what I wanted to cover, those are the pitches that I wanted to gently roast. Again, Lori, I saw your comment earlier, if you had emailed me, I'll put my email here, let me put my email, Here, Feras at Feras. Sorry about that. Here, if I can spell my name, that would work. Okay, um, and then, and then you can also, um Um, you can, um, again, just let me know if you want to keep it confidential. I won't share it publicly. If I share publicly, I'll always share anonymously, but I'll be more than happy to take a look at what you have and, and go from there. Let's see what else. I think that's it. I do want to share a couple things here before we wrap it up, and that is right here. Let me go back to, um, the resources I mentioned earlier. So, so this is the YouTube channel, and, uh, The video I mentioned earlier about the proposal, so this is the Ultimate Guide to Writing Proposals as a Consultant in 2026. It's an hour and 4 minutes. I put everything I've learned over 20 years with over 2,000 proposals in this video, so check it out. There's a video on hourly rates, and if you're struggling with pricing, check out this video. And then the other video I mentioned is the Ultimate Guide to Starting a Consulting Business. It, it's a long video as well, uh, 51, you know, the ultimate guide. So 51 minutes with all the tools, all the worksheets, all the templates you need to start and grow your consulting business. So if you're liking this content, hit the subscribe button, hit the like button. Um, let me know if you're running into issues aside from just pitching. You might be having issues with delivering a client to a client or maybe hiring. I'll be more than happy to address these questions in future live streams. And then don't forget to also sign up for the newsletter. I have a weekly newsletter with tips and strategies on how to start and grow your business and, and pivot your skills into a profitable consulting and services business. So that is it for today. Um, appreciate you joining live, and those who are listening later, thank you for your support, and let me know if I can be of any help. See you next time.