Podcast interview (Khari Harper with guest Nick Abraham) that explores Nick's lead‑generation agency and SaaS experience, business model choices (pay‑per‑lead vs retainer), growth channels (cold email, LinkedIn, paid ads), and GTM engineering tactics. The conversation mixes tactical GTM advice (offer design, paid ad readiness, lead magnets) with personal origin story, views on luck/consistency, and the tradeoffs of building an info product versus doubling down on agency operations.
Questions this video answers
About 276 active customers.
Over 5,000 active users.
Second-most replied-to account on Smartlead (out of ~90,000 senders).
About 4 million cold emails per month.
Multi seven figures.
Chapters
All right, you guys, we are back with another podcast episode, but this time we don't have our typical, you know, LinkedIn Founder Series A funded, you know, very button up. You know, we're not doing that this time. We have a legend in the space. If you don't know him, you need to know him. I've been following Nick since 2022 on LinkedIn for Funny Story. When I first actually started following Nick, my friend told me about him and I was like, bro, this dude's talking about emails and stuff. Like, why do you even, like, I'm not even entertaining this. And then eventually, as I just consistently seen you post and grow and I started adapting that cold email stuff into my business, I was like, wow, Nick is actually a really intelligent individual. You're not somebody who's just doing surface level cold email. You're building infrastructures, but beyond cold email, you're 26 years old and you built a. What is it, multi seven figure business in revenue.
Yeah, we're multi seven figures right now.
I'm just trying to be like you when I grow up.
That's what I'm trying to do.
That's it. So, Nick, please give us an introduction and then we're going to get this thing rocking and rolling.
Yeah, absolutely. Appreciate that. You hyped me up, you got me cheesing the entire way through, but yeah. My name is Nick Abraham. I'm the founder at Leaper. That's what I'm most known for. Built a couple other SaaS. Companies that have done good, have done good, some have failed. What we're probably most notable for is like, we have currently about 276 active customers at our agency and that we have over 5,000 active users across all our SaaS companies. And in terms of like, accolades when it comes to like, cold email, we're the second most replied to account on smart lead. Out of like 90,000 senders. Send over like 4 million cold emails a month. What else is there? There's probably a little bit more out there, but that's, that's, that's me in a nutshell. Just been in the Legion space for like five years and just been posting content just like Cari said for five years about like everything we've done. So it's pretty cool to see because, like, if you go to my tweets from like 2020, you can see me talk about like having like my first client or my 10th client and then going all the way to where we're at right now, which is like 280 and yeah, that's. That's just me in a nutshell.
Awesome. Yeah, it's been a cool journey to see. You know, usually I'm a certified hater when someone's broke. It's really been cool, like, just to watch the growth. Like last year, that's when I really dove into, like, your content because you're posting more on YouTube as well, doing more interviews. So I really, like, I started diving deep into your YouTube channel and you really just dropped such gems in game. We're going to get into that question a little bit later about courses and coaching you. You're definitely one of the people that actually need to be in the space for it. And I'm sure you hear that all the time. So we're just going to jump right into this. I asked hardcore questions up front.
Let's do it.
The YouTube algorithm. Everyone starts dropping off when you do the bullshit. So we're just going to start off with, what does it feel like being rich?
That's a good question. So I think the best feeling is that I know that I can take care of my family. And it sounds corny and stuff, but my parents came from India. They moved here when they were like 27, 28. My dad legitimately used to work at Jack in the Box, and I didn't have a bad upbringing at all. Like, this dude saved every penny. He was nickel and diamond, every single thing. He was invested in real estate while he's working his 9 to 5. He went from like Jack in the Box to being like a med medical tech at a hospital, but nothing crazy. And to be able to feel like, yo, I could take care of him in any capacity, it's. It's like the greatest feeling in the world, you know, Like, I'm, I'm like, I'm able to spoil them. Like, they spoiled me when I was younger. So it's like my dad wrecked his car. I went and bought him a new car the next day. That was like super surreal to be able to do, like my grandma, she's, you know, getting older. Whenever she wants to go back to India to go visit her family just to see what's up, it's like, dude, sitting in economy is like the worst thing ever when you're like 80 plus years old. And so being able to buy her, like, first class without having to, like, think about the account is. It's. It's pretty cool. And then just being able to see, like, how much you're able to impact, like, your team's life as well. Like, you know, we, we constantly give bonuses. We constantly are able to help out in, in different ways. That's probably the best feeling. Like, it's cool when you buy stuff, Chinese things, toys, and I recommend everyone to get the, the cool things, right? The things you see everyone post about and the stuff you have like, on your walls in your little. But that stuff grows old pretty quick after you buy your second or third one. You just kind of like, you know, but the greatest feeling is whenever you can really give back. And I, that, that is so addicting to be able to give back. And, and that's kind of what it feels like being rich and being able to get back in that sense. But yeah, that, that, that's, that's.
That, yeah, that makes sense. That's definitely. It really shows, like, where your morals stand and your ethics stands. Because a lot of people, they do like. What I like about you the most is that you're not posting about what you have and what you don't have and what you're going to get. You're always posting one. You show your personality in all aspects, but it's always about value with you. And that's what I really enjoy. That's what made me even want to like, talk to you to begin with. Because after seeing you for a while, I was like, oh, okay, this isn't one of those Internet money. Oh, you got to get the Lambo and the Rolex. You're like, hey, no, you have to build a stabilized business that actually makes money. And so you can go and give back to X, Y and Z, whatever their mission is. Now, I know you're in the cold email space, but your model is really interesting. So you're. You, like, you put your balls on the table, bro. You're like, hey, what is it? Paper appointment ready? Yeah, Meeting ready. Break it down. You, you do your thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so we, we and like to add a little bit more context. So that's like our main offer, pay per lead. And everyone sees that and they're like, yo, that's crazy. Like, how could you do that and all that stuff? There's a couple of things to keep in mind. Not all our clients are on paper lead. Like, there's still a big portion of them that are on retainers. There's a big portion of them on our cold email setup plan. So we just basically build up the info for them to be able to send cold emails. And so that's like, way more recurring than just like straight pay per lead. And even on Our pay per lead clients, we still ask them to cover like the technology cost of like the infra and the leads and things of that sort of. So it's not like it's strictly pay per lead. I think if I did that I would probably not be where I am because it's, it's extremely hard to forecast. And like we've been doing this for a while and it's funny because like, I think it just kind of hit me recently where I'm like, man, I think I might have over engineered the business in the sense of like the way we do about our revenue forecasting with pay per lead and the way we think about how to make these clients, you know, be successful with pay per lead. Like we just did so many in like, you know, whenever clients like, hey, this isn't a lead, how do we go about crediting it? How do we know how many we can credit, like all those type of things. I kind of like put myself in a hole in that sense of like over engineering the business because now I kind of look at it and I, I look at our best performing customers and they're all on retainers. And the reason why is because their CAC is a lot smaller whenever you're on a retainer because your actual cost per lead drives down the more you receive on a retainer versus it being a flat amount whenever you do a pay per lead. And so, um, this is something I wish would work better in the sense of like, I wish a customer would come on board and understand like, hey, a retainer is actually more healthy for my business because the more leads that Nick gets me, the cheaper my cost per lead gets and the cheaper my cat gets versus like them thinking like, oh, all these cold email agencies and Legion agencies are scam artists. And you know, I'm only going to go with the one that does pay per lead, right? And so that's kind of like something I've been thinking about, of how we can educate customers a little bit better and help them understand that like retainers are probably the best way forward. And it's one of the things that like even now going into this like next quarter we're like, yo, we got to start testing this out because like we're consistently delivering better for our clients whenever we have them on a retainer versus pay per lead. Because and it's, it's just like incentive alignment too. Because if you think about it, when you have a customer on paper lead, you can't really win, right? Either. You get them so many Leads. Now their invoice is massive because they're charging them per lead and they're like, yo, like this is not going to work or we got to ch or you get them no leads and they think you're the worst person in the world and they hate you. Right. But there's just like not that good of a middle ground. And in my eyes, I thought we would look at like clients would kind of perceive it more as like a partnership and they would be like, hey, like the more leads I get, the more lead or more money you make. And it's like a win win, but it actually doesn't really play out like that. This isn't to say that the pay per lead is terrible. Like, you know, I built my entire business and like my entire career, career off of it and we'll still keep doing it. But I do think that, you know, there are better models out there that are easy to scale. If I was a beginner and kind of compliment bigger businesses better than paper.
Lead, that makes sense. I mean, from what you're telling me, the way I would look at it, you know, we're going to get into the GTM engineering stuff. You know, I really enjoy developing sales processes from the messaging, et cetera. You know, the KPIs behind it. If I was in your situation, I, you know, maybe you're already doing this. I would just go. My front end offer is very simple. Pay per lead. There's a threshold which is going to be, hey, you're only going to pay maximum 10k. After that you have to switch to retainer. So if you still want to maintain these same quality leads, you're going to have to switch to a retainer because we're not going to offer you pay per lead.
Yeah, no, we've been thinking of things like that. I think even like whenever we have clients churn and it's because of price points, we talk to them about like, let's just get you on a retainer and switch from there just because like the numbers just make a lot more sense for the customer as well as for us as well. And so yeah, I think there's just like a lot of things we could be doing there better, but that's part of the journey. Right? Even though we're a service company, I feel like we're still looking for product market fit and I feel like we're slowly shifting there and I feel like this is one of the things that we have to do on the commercial side to kind of get there.
That makes sense. So a lot of people take when they start the agency route. I know you have your software companies, all that other stuff. I used a few of them for, like, Apollo List and all that stuff. But why didn't you go with ads.
To sell ads or to grow the.
Business like an ad agency?
I honestly had no background in it. So it's funny, whenever I first started the way I. So I'll kind of give you a quick background. So when I was in, like, high school, senior year, as well as, like, my freshman year in college, I was growing Instagram pages and I grew one to, like 50,000 followers pretty relatively quick. Sold it because, like, I needed some cash and probably bad decision because it had, like, really good organic impressions coming in. And then I was like, hey, you know what? I could do this for other people. And so I started growing Instagram pages for doctors and surgeons. And for whatever reason, I thought that was, like, the perfect niche. And so, you know, I did everything that you probably shouldn't do, which is like, create an llc, create a nice fancy website, like, you know, create a business card, things like that. And then I was sitting there like, oh, shit, how do I get customers? Right? I was like, how do I actually get people to pay me to make their Instagram page? Like, I created this business plan. I created the website, like, all of these things that don't get you anywhere. And so then I went online and I was like, hey, how do I get customers? And, you know, I saw things about cold email, I saw things about cold calling. That's where I found, like, D7 lead finder, which is, like the first database I've ever used for scraping leads and stuff like that. And, dude, I was just on the phone dialing for, like, three hours a day on my phone. And, you know, I was getting appointments that way for cool email. Like, I was using. I can't remember what the tool was called. I don't even think they're around anymore. I think it was like, reply I. And actually it wasn't reply I. I forgot what it was called. Something like send dot reply or something. But it was like, super hard to use. Like, just couldn't figure it out. It wasn't really working that well. Went on upwork, found like, some dude who could build, like, an SMTP and blast a ton of emails. So kind of like taught me a lot of these, like, functional skills. And then once I started actually signing customers and closing customers, I was like, wow, this actually works. And then I was like, wait, like, I probably could do this for other people. And that kind of birthed me into like the lead gen space and got me propelled into there because I, I knew that what I was selling to these doctors and surgeons was just not scalable. Right? Like, the way we're going about Instagram growth, it just like nobody cares, like nobody cares to Pay, you know, 500 bucks a month to get some like, you know, 10 posts on their Instagram, you know, and that was super hard to sell, to pull traffic. And so that was like, you know, my initial idea, like, okay, I got my first like 10 to 20 customers or whatever it was. And then I was like, I need to pivot this because, like, it's not really that profitable. And that's what took me into the lead space. And so that's why I didn't do like ads or anything else. It was because I just learned how to do outbound sales and I was like, I'm just going to start doing this for other people.
So what are your feelings? What do you think is a. If you could only choose one. Let me rephrase the question. You don't have the knowledge you have now. And if you had to choose one, would it be paid ads or would it be cold email?
It depends on. It depends on the person. I think. I think if you have like no background skills in paid advertising and you don't understand like how to build the entire back ends and track and you know, how to optimize those kind of things, you don't have any capital. I would definitely go with cold emails because it's just so much cheaper. But like, I think for anyone to hit true scale, like, you're just not going to find a company that has hit like true scale and is acquiring, you know, hundreds of customers every single week. Do it with just strictly cold email, you know, like, you do need paid ads. And I think that's one thing that like Daniel really put me on. He's like, dude, you'll never get to a point. And here's the proof, right? We'll probably sign like 30 to 50 customers through content and outbound every single month, give or take. For our cold email setup plan and list kit, which Daniel runs, also does something very similar. And he's able to print 100 to 200 clients just to paid ads, you know, and so for him, it's like, hey, I just need to up my marketing budget and spend. For me, it's like, dude, I got to figure out all these like tiny little things to kind of get, you know, the content pumping more to get the, the leads coming through there and getting the cold emails to be increased to a certain amount of volume and tracking all these little tiny things. But for Daniel it's a lot simpler. Not to say it's easy, but like, I think there's, there's, there's two different things. There's like scale mode and then there's like, you know, you're just going to like quickly jump up, you know. And so I think that's, that's the difference between like cold email versus like paid ads.
Are you running paid paid ads now to acquire clients?
So we were funny enough so I started like last year doing it and we did it for like a three month period. But and I think this is like where a lot of people mess up too is like we didn't really have everything built out to make paid ads work really well. So we didn't have really good tracking in place. Like our CRM was like kind of iffy, it was kind of broken. We also didn't know like our LTV really well when it came to like our pay per lead because it ranges depending on the customer you have versus like, you know, the cold email setup plan, which is very finite. And so when you don't know all these numbers when you run paid ads, you're just going to light it on fire. And so we probably spent 80 to $90,000 on paid ads. And I would say best case scenario, we probably broke even. Worst case scenario, we probably lost a decent amount of cash. And so we haven't touched paid ads since then. Because I'm like, dude, I'm not touching this until I know one, that the offer works on full traffic. We know our numbers really well and I feel really confident in how we're building out like our nurture system inside the CRM and, and how our, our, our sales reps are kind of going about, you know, closing these like truly cold leads. So yeah, to answer your question, we have ran in the past, but we don't run it right now.
That makes a lot of sense. You know, I honestly, I think I don't know what type of ads you're running. But it's like I'm going to give it to Daniel. He is, he really understands advertising. Right? And of course him and I have the same coach, but he understands advertising very well. He understands the KPIs. What I would have done in your situation, I would have just copied exactly what he did for List Kit. And then I'm assuming like your sales just from what you told Me, I'm assuming your sales assets. Once somebody comes into the funnel, maybe it just wasn't the best. You know, that's the biggest thing. Because you are. Because when you go from organic, my background's in paid ads. So going from organic. Right. It's such a different ball game because when people probably message you, they know like and trust you already. Like, you can tell them everything and they're just like, bro, I just saw you get like 500 likes on a post. Obviously. And you know, you have all these followers, you're always being tagged in this, that and the other. But definitely with paid ads, nobody knows and nobody cares. It really is a content cycle of how do you, when you. Once someone becomes a lead, how do we break down all, all those possible objections in terms of breakout videos on the confirmation page and just consistent emails, just like showing them like, hey, these are common, frequently asked questions. Oh, what happens if the email goes. My emails go down. Just answering that in an email, answering that before their call and then what I like to do. So I do this with my consultation clients. When they're like iffy about my price, I'm just like, hey, I'm just going to show you just how fucked you can be working with me. And when I do that, they're like, that's not that bad. I'm like, I know it's not, but this is the worst case scenario. And you know, but coming from organic, bro, you don't have to do that.
Because everyone, they know you, they trust you already. So it's like a much easier close. Yeah, and I think that's the other thing too. It's like, yeah, with sales teams, like, it's kind of like having like an inbound SDR versus having like an outbound sdr. Like both, like serve a different version. Same thing with like having like an inbound account executive versus like an outbound account executive. Like, they work a different type of lead because they need to be treated differently, you know, So I, I agree with you. 100.
Yeah, man. Definitely. If you ever have any questions about sales processes, like, bro, I like, I really, I love building sales process. There's things that you could talk to me about anything else in the world, you might think I'm a. But sales processes and ads, like, I can go in on that all day. So, you know, I want to like backtrack a little bit here. Clearly the way you thought about your life in general is different than most high schoolers would think about it. Like, what was that turning point where you're like, hey, I gotta get to it. I want to make money. Was it women? Was it your family? Like, was it a heartbreak?
Yeah, you know, it's funny. So I think it's a couple things. So graduating high school, my parents didn't want me to go to, like, a state school because, like, they were just kind of like, hey, we need to, like, watch over you a little bit more. Just from, like, you know, big. A little. Little knucklehead in high school.
Yeah.
Which is honestly the best decision that ever happened. So, like, while all my friends went to, like, you know, universities and stuff, I was going to community college, and I was at home and I had nothing better to do. And so, you know, I'm researching online how to make money, right? And I'm going through all the different things that people talk about. Drop shipping, you know, selling courses, like, just trying a whole bunch of different things, right? And so that's kind of what took me down, the mindset of, like, let me just, you know, know, try to make money and try this online stuff. I even had, like, a job at a gas station so I could fund all these, like, side projects. I was, like, flipping shoes, like, a whole bunch of randomness. And. And I, like, I think once you get exposed to the world and you start to see people your age or just a couple years ahead of you doing really well, it. You just, like, you just get immersed in it. And that's kind of what happened to me. And like, I. And like, back then, I was dating my girlfriend, which is still my girlfriend now dating for, like, seven years, eight years. I, like, I wanted to pay for this, you know, and I couldn't because I had no money. And so that was like, another thing, too, is, like, slowly, like, how can I get money so I can afford this dinner, or I can afford to take her out here or whatever it was. It's like, to impress her and, you know, you know, build a relationship there. So I think it was a kind of a mix of stuff. And then when I really started to see this really grow was like, my senior year of college, I ended up dropping out because, like, things were actually taken, like, a step forward and things were actually growing. And, you know, my time was, like, kind of split too hard with school. And I was like, yo, I gotta give this a shot and I gotta give this a chance. My parents thought I was absolutely crazy. Family thought I was absolutely crazy. I think I had, like, one cousin that was like, you know, Nick's pretty smart. Like, I'm pretty Sure. He's not just doing this just to do it. And, dude, I was able to focus that senior year, and I think that was, like, one of the biggest things, like, just being able to start young and mess up. Because, like, whenever you start entrepreneurship, like, the next four to five years, if you're coming from scratch and having, like, no outside influence, you're going to mess up. You're absolutely going to get wrecked. You know, you're not going to make money. You're probably going to lose a lot of money. I lost a lot of money starting out. But it's like you're paying your way forward. You're paying to make these mistakes. And that's like, part of becoming successful and making something stick. And so that's what it was. And it's like, I'm able to make all these mistakes because, like, I'm living at home with my parents. I'm going to community college when I actually, you know, went to university. You know, I'm living in some super cheap apartment. Like, there's just not much overhead and not much responsibility. So it just gives you so much ability to fail. And as long as you keep hitting your head against the wall, something's going to stick, you know, and so that's, that's, that's what it was for me. And then, yeah, like, you know, you know, I would say I think I'm pretty smart. I don't think I'm, like, dumb by any means, but I'm also really lucky. Like, I got really lucky with a lot of these different things and crisises and things that could have, like, that happen. And so I don't just attribute this all to just, like, pure skill. I think a huge portion of it is just luck.
Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. I say the same exact thing. You know, I've been on my own since I was 16 years old, right? So, you know, I'm 31 now, so 15 years in. And my older brother, he ended up going to prison at 18 for seven years. I. I was. My biological mom, she's addicted to crack. She's like the greatest crackhead ever. Like, she's never been in prison. Like, she's fully functional. She just nods out, like, during the day. And I'm like, all right, word. But. And then I got adopted. You know, my adopted mother, she was an alcoholic. I don't know what God's trying to tell me, but it is what it is. But she's an alcoholic. So I was kicked out. And I noticed, like, a lane. I noticed That I got very lucky in the lane that I'm in to end up being the person that I am. Because sometimes it's just one or two people making decisions for you that you don't even realize is the right decision. Like your parents saying, don't go to state college. Like, that could have been like, when they say, pay for the knowledge up front, that is like you paying for knowledge up front. Me, I live with my best friend. I slept in his basement for two years, and his mom was like. Like, hey, you're not going home. Because if you want to go home and try to rekindle things with your mother, I feel like you've made so much progress mentally that I would prefer you just to stay here and figure your shit out. And that's what I did until I was like, 20. And now looking back, you know, the person I am now, a father, being able to have two homes, things like that, I'm thinking, like, this is nothing to do with skill. This was pure luck. Circle in my circumstance, timing in place. Because all it took, all it took, it took was one decision. My best friend's mom saying, no, you can't stay here. All it took was one decision. Your parents saying, go ahead, go to state college. Enjoy. You're a grown man. But so, yeah, when you said that, I just wanted to get that off because I was like, you're so right. Everyone thinks being a business owner, making a few dollars is all about skills. No, a lot of it's 80% luck, 20% skill set and consistency.
Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, and like, I've seen so many people in our space, specifically Legion space, like, pivot their business, like, 10 times. You know, they're doing Legion one day. Now they're doing, like, coaching and consulting, and then they're pivoting to, you know, drop shipping. And now they, you know, they run an ads agency. And. And like, that when you. When you kind of have that kind of mindset, like, nothing's just gonna work, you know, you're just not sitting anything through. Like, I had, like 10 iterations, but those 10 iterations were on the agency, Liberty. It's always been cold email, cold email first, but just iterating on what we're selling, how we're selling, and how we're fulfilling. And, you know, we've been just doing that for forever. And, like, I. I truly believe, like, if you do something long enough and you stay consistent to it, like, things will work out.
And.
And that's what it was for us.
So then what would you say to those people who are constantly switching, like, 1. Why do you think they do it? Like, what's. Because. Because think about it like this. Just say, drop shipping. Having an agency isn't working, right? We know it works. Obviously, we're clear proof that it works. But what do you say to the person where it's not working and it's been eight months, it's been 10 months.
Or a year to keep going? I think that's all it is. But the other thing, too, it's like. I think it's funny because, like, they'll. They'll. Some of them are doing it because they don't want to take the long, hard road, right? Like, they. They see the guy that is, you know, pushing some kind of consulting or coaching program that has, like, this lavish lifestyle that they want, and they're just like. They're just going back and forth. They just have shiny object syndrome because, like, you know, they. They want, like, a quick way to just make money. There's legitimately no way to make quick money. Yeah, you can have a quick way up, but try to, like, consistently do that year over year over year. It's impossible. And so I think that was, like, another thing for me, starting out early. I was, like, so obsessed with trying to figure out what is the quick way to make money, you know, like, looking and reading these books. And it's funny, I went to. I went home a couple weeks ago, and I was looking at my book collection, and I had a book that I picked out for, like, stock trading. And it's like, dude, like, you know, like, I'm not gonna make it that way. But back then I really thought, like, dude, I just gotta read this book. Gotta, you know, put a couple dollars in and see what's up, and then I'll become a millionaire, like, in a month or so. If I just focus on this for a month. Month happens, and you just have unrealistic expectations and you're like, all right, this isn't work, right? Let me go pick up that book about drop shipping, okay? I gotta, you know, create a brand real quick and then post about it a couple, you know, so it's just like, that's what a lot of people do. And they just. They're just trying to make. And find that quick way to make money. And they're just. You just gotta know from the jump, there is no quick way. There's legitimately no quick way. You will eat shit for the first two years. And, like, I think people can cut the curve A lot quicker. Specifically if they have like someone that has done what they're doing or is just like able to give that startup advice. Like, I always tell a lot of my like really close friends that really aren't into entrepreneurship, I'm telling them exactly what to do because I'm like, bro, if you guys can just listen to me, I can make sure that four year curve is cut in half. Like you're still going to eat shit and you're still going to suck what you do for two years. But like I've been through that exact place where you've been and I know what like kind of like small things you need to do to save, save money and like be able to still make it through. Like I think like one of my, my friends, he had like a business idea is about pay someone like 1500 bucks to make a website. And I was like, dude, just go on lovable and spin that up for 20 bucks by yourself, please. Like do not spend, you don't even have much money. Like do not spend that much money on a website on an idea that you don't even know will work. And so it's like small little things like that, like it's pretty handy to like be able to give to friends and stuff. Yeah.
And it's so funny because my one, a lot of my friends aren't entrepreneurs. You know, regular corporate work their way up the ladder. You know, shout out to my best friend Shandon. When I was 20, I used to live with him. He had a little, he had a place called Kyrie's Corner. It was a little air mattress for whenever I was there. So. But he, he worked his way up the corporate ladder. You know, he's making, he's making some decent money now, multi six figures. But he wants to make more. And I'm like, bro, like just ask me. Maybe I'm not going to tell you how to make a million dollars, but I'm like, if an extra 5k a month will drastically impact your life, why wouldn't you just sit here? Because there's people and I know you know how it feels. Like I tell my friends sometimes there are people who are dying to have a conversation with me and know what's inside here. And you, me and you go get pizza and you're talking to me about a whole bunch of other stuff. When your best friend, someone who will do anything for you, has a plethora of knowledge and if you just give me one hour, we can mastermind this thing for you and you could ship it and it's just, it's always the closest people to you are like, yeah, yeah, we're appreciate it but can we talk about this other thing now again? You know.
Yeah.
So I know you know how it feels. It's a lot. It definitely is. And I see that you're a person who likes to take care. So I don't know if it frustrates you or not when they don't listen.
Oh, it does. I have a couple of friends that are like looking for new jobs and like, I mean I get emails nowadays where people are looking for jobs and I usually don't like to work with friends or family just because I like to keep it separate. And it's hard to have that hard conversation if they're underperforming. But I'm like, did I get these emails from people that are asking for jobs and they're so good, they're just so good. They put like their what they could do to provide value and everything of that sort of. And it's like I usually will always speak to them and I always tell my friends, I'm like guys, if you're looking for a job, this is exactly what you need to be doing. Like you need to be sending emails or LinkedIn outbound and not just clicking easy apply on LinkedIn and then hoping for the best. And so like I've been following up with one of my, one of my boys like weekly to see how much outbound he's done instead of just hitting the Easy apply on LinkedIn and it's been like two weeks and he sent like 20 messages and I'm like, you just can't complain about not having interviews when you're not putting in the minimal effort of sending an email that takes 10 seconds. I even wrote him the email. I wrote him the email. I wrote him like the, the follow ups and then what to say in the voice notes if he hits them up on LinkedIn and it's just like no output has came. And yeah, I just had a heart to heart with him yesterday. I was like, dude, like if you have. Because he's always hitting me up like we always watch movies all the time. He's like, yo, let's go watch this movie, let's go watch that movie like week over week. I'm like, dude, if you have time to sit there for two and a half hours to watch this movie, you have time to Send out the 20 dms per day and it's like you would already had a job and multiple job offerings if you just did that. And it's like, you just need a month of real hard execution effort. You'll be employed, you'll have a great job, you have multiple job opportunities and you'll learn a lot. And so, yeah, sometimes it's just like, you can't really. It's like, what that saying. It's like that saying is like, you can get a force or a horse to drink, but you can't get water, but you can't. Yeah, that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's what it is.
Yeah, I completely get it. I was talking to my friend as well. You know, he. He has his ged. I got him into tech sales as an sdr, and then he just was like, hey, I'm doing this corporate thing. And it's so crazy. Now he's an accounting, a senior account executive. I think they're paying like a quarter million or something a year. 40 hours a week. Quarter million. And you're a dude with a ged and you're a black dude on top of it. I'm like, bro, you're winning at life. But I'm sitting here like, he was looking for a new job, and I'm like, hey, how did you get all. Like, you have 14 job interviews this month? He was like, oh, I just use. He's like, I just crafted some, some emails and then I sent a few videos and I did some LinkedIn outreach and I did all that within like three weeks. I'm like, why won't you start an agency? Because he has the hardest prospecting job ever in the most saturated the job market. I'm like, if you can do it with that, to get yourself that kind of interview, even an interview, imagine what you can do for other companies. And his response is, yeah, but I don't know about that other stuff. I'm like, dog, it's just a framework. It doesn't matter the service.
Yeah, I think that's the other thing too. I see with like a lot of friends, it's like they want to. They like, they're like their own worst enemy. Like, they don't know every single thing about a process or they just don't think they're capable of doing it. It's like, you. Nobody knows what they're doing. Everyone's just taking their best shot at it and taking like some process and flow that they took from something else to try to implement here, and they're just winging it. And that's what most of most of this is, you know, I didn't know I did my taxes up until like two years ago. You know, it's like things like that. It's like, you know, you kind of wing it and you know, you figure it out as you go. But yeah, I don't know, I just thought that was hilarious.
It's definitely a fact. Especially like the taxes thing. Like I, my two years ago is when I actually did mine because I finally had like a huge lump, lump sum of money. And then the IRS emailed me, they're like, yeah, you owe four years and back taxes. I was like, well, here you go. Because before that I wasn't really making money. So I was like, it was 3,000 here, 2,000 there, but then that actual bill was like 78 grand. And I was like, ah, before this gets worse, let's.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So now my question, man, like you dropped so much value on LinkedIn, so much game. Like you're really an intelligent individual and on top of it, you're not coming with a silver spoon. Like you aren't given a silver spoon. You just stay consistent. But my question to you is this. Why haven't you created the coaching or.
Community or course, you know, it's funny, I, I've thought about it so many times and so I think like to be really successful at like running like an info op business, right, it, it has to have a whole bunch of different variables and variables that I don't think I have like a competitive advantage in. So I'll kind of give you an example. So for someone to hit the scale of like Iman Ghazi, for example, you have to be super out there and super famous and your content has to like hit the mass scale. You can't just talk about like cold emails, right? And so it's like I'm never going to be that person because like I don't want to put my personal life out there, right? So there's like that piece. For it to be like a really successful biz op, I think you have to be like, have some level of like influence and popularity. And it's like I don't really care to play that game. I think the other piece too is for me to spend my time to take an info op business to like 100k per month is just not worth it because I know that same time implemented in the agency and that same focus implements in the agency will outpace the revenue that I generate from going from 0 to 100 to going from where we're at to where we would like to go. Right? And so I just think, like, my time could be spent better elsewhere. And yeah, I think those are, like, the. The two biggest things. I also think that, like, most info businesses that don't have, like, a mainstream offer that's kind of like, broad will do good, right? Or it won't do good. And so, like, like, my, like, a good example of this is like, okay, if I taught people how to build a cold email agency, that's such a niche thing that I could only sell to Legion people versus, like, the people nowadays that are selling, like, how to build, like, an AI agency. It's a little bit more broad and it has, like, a lot more facets and ways to go. And so you can, like, kind of market that to a larger audience. And so I think that's like, kind of like the biggest thing. I kind of just enjoy doing what we're doing right now. I don't really like the info business much, and I don't think it has, like, I don't have any competitive advantages to make it to where it's like, it could be the biggest thing ever. And so I think with agency, it's the complete opposite. We have, like, a ton of competitive advantages. We're already so far ahead. I. I kind of feel like it's. It's the thing that you just double down on versus, like, trying to spin up something else just to make like, an extra couple bucks. It's not worth it at this point.
It's not, definitely. And then it, yeah, it comes. It's a drag for sure. It's definitely a great cash influx pretty, pretty quickly. But, yeah, it's just not worth it. It's not that it's not worth it, but if you're not fully, like, committed to, like, hey, I really want to do this. It's not worth it.
Now. I've never seen, like, an info business that hasn't pivoted their offer last more than, like, five years. You know, like, everyone has to pivot their offer every year or every other year. And it's like. Like when I first started, there were so many people that are pushing heavy, like, consulting courses that aren't doing anything right now. Right. And, you know, vice versa. But yeah, I think, like, it's. It's actually a much harder business model than most people make it out to seem. Like people just see it as. I mean, because there's a lot of sketch people in the space too, but just like any other space, I think people just see it as, like, oh, like High margins, like quick to sell an audience. Oh, it's an easy business and it's like yeah, it's easy to make, you know, maybe an extra 30 to 100k. It's not easy to sustain that and make you know, multi, multi seven figures for the course business. Like that's super hard to do. So that's why you see like most, most of these guys that come out with like info products they, they, they die out in like a year or two years.
That's kind of like what happened with me. So I had a cleaning business and so my journey was I started making, I made, started making my first six figure months with my cleaning business plus coaching on the side. It just blew up on LinkedIn. I was just like oh, I didn't know everyone wanted to do this and me, I'm not wasting N$. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm going to take it from their account into mine respectfully. And we were getting great results. That's really what like made us just scale. Like we didn't need paid ads because it was just referral based. So we, I scaled that, I did that for around three years. So I always had the cleaning business and the coaching. The cleaning business kept going up. The coaching began dwindling. I'm like yo, why do I have to make like 60 pieces of content talking about the cleaning business when I have a cleaning business and I just have Google Ads running and clients are coming in and VA is just printing with bookings. And then I started using cold email. But then I started printing like janitorial contracts because you think a cleaning business owner is using cold email to prospect. No chance. So I was crushing it there. So I quit the coaching. I just sold the cleaning business in May. We just did a nice little, nice little multi six figure exit. It was a, it was a good day. And then, but yeah and then I went to a, I had a period in my life this year where I was like what was my favorite part of the business? And I was like it was the sales processes like just building everything and like because bro in the cleaning space no one was doing using go high level instantly follow up sequences content using signal based intent for when you're doing outreach on LinkedIn saying oh shoot. Like when I saw people were hiring in office I was like do you guys need a cleaning company? Then they will refer me to the property manager. No one was doing that. So this whole year of 2025 how I got into GTM engineering was I was like I really love building sales processes and this is where I want to stay. I may have had different things that I've done, but every business has always been building sales processes and everyone else handling the customer support. Like in my coaching program, I didn't coach. I did like, no coaching. Everyone thought that they would get me. I was like, I don't know why you thought that. I did the last two coaching calls actually, just to make sure they launched. But. So, yeah, I get what you're saying for sure. I don't think coaching is a scalable business. I don't believe. I believe it's a cash influx business, but I also think that where you are and the type of consistency that you have, I'm gonna say, give you some pushback. I don't feel like you are maximizing your personal brand enough. And maybe you don't see just how valuable your brand is yet.
Yeah, no, I, I definitely agree. I. Yeah, I agree. 100. Yeah, we. We definitely could step up the personal brand. Especially on like YouTube. It was funny because I went to this conference sculpt in San Fran all last week and I was meeting a lot of people and they're like, dude, I love your YouTube content. I love your YouTube content. I love YOUR YouTube content. I was like, Brian posted on YouTube like all year. I was like, that's crazy. They're like, dude, I've watched every YouTube video. And I like, yeah, it was kind of a surreal moment. I like told my girlfriend that night, I was like, you got to bully me this next week if I don't put a YouTube video out.
And she's like, a YouTube video out?
No, I told her this last night. So this next week, if I'm not up by next Friday, then you can get on me. I was like, I need to make a video where it's just like an update of where I've been like the last nine months. But YouTube is so hard to crack. It's just so hard to consistently put videos out. And so, yeah, because I used to want to like get them. I mean, all our current ones are like edited and whatnot. And then like, you have to have a thumbnail. So it's like you got to record even before you record. You got to script it, you got to record it, you got to send it to the video editor, you got to send it to a thumbnail person. And then, you know, have like a va. Have them schedule it all. And then you got to like cross promote it on your other channels. It's a lot of work to make it really work. But I think it's definitely worth it. And I think I see that in person now where I'm like oh shit, I need to, I need to spend my time here.
I don't even think that you have to do all that, right? So like this is going to go up on YouTube. It's, it's the fact that you already have an offer in cold email YouTube. You, I want you, if I can make this suggestion, I want you to look at video you making YouTube content as your automated SDR because there is nothing like the YouTube algorithm that's just going to push your video consistently and just do that and then eventually hopefully you get back into paid ads. Your lead magnet is going to be a banger YouTube video and you're just basically you're arbitraging traffic in reality from Facebook, pushing them to YouTube. Now YouTube thinks oh these people like Nick. Now YouTube is just pushing you up even more Then you already have your LinkedIn audience. I guarantee if you said you're about to drop a four hour YouTube video in three weeks and you told people to sign up for an email, a wait list to get that video, I can guarantee you'll get 10k views in your first 48 hours if you promoted it on your LinkedIn channel.
Yeah, you gave me, gave me enough ideas. That's the motivation I needed bro, because.
You really like I'm doing, I'm rebuilding my YouTube channel right now and I've already made sales from it and my videos are only getting 200, 300 views but they're so specific in pain point driven that I don't like, you know, Daniel Fazio says it all the time, he's like I don't need 10, 100000 views. So bro, don't waste that opportunity because I think that where you are now, obviously you're doing amazing things but this is you doing amazing things, not even hitting your full potential.
Dude. I always tell myself that I'm like dude, I gotta, I gotta turn it up a notch whilst I got this.
Energy and I'm Young Bro, I'm 31. When I wake up sometimes I'm like this is, this isn't 26 year old me waking up.
I see.
Yeah, but yeah man. So I want to wrap this up because I definitely appreciate the time that you have given me. So just my last question. What are your feelings about the GTM engineering space and cold email? Because I do you feel like the market's pivoting because me like I work as a full time now and I also do consulting for other companies. It seems like a lot of people are, they don't want to take the agency model as much and everyone wants to bring it in house. So what are your thoughts and what do you see?
Yeah, good question. So, so I, I don't think cold email will ever go anywhere. I don't think outbound in general will ever go anywhere. Like outbound sales has been around forever and it's, it's just, it's like it goes through waves and influxes. So I think what I see right now is cold email has gotten harder. There's a lot more restrictions and so naturally and then like it's, it's so much easier to launch a campaign today than it was five years ago. Like wildly easier. And so there's much more emails in circulation than ever before. And so everyone's inbox is naturally more crowded. Like that's why your reply rates and your lead rates are dropping compared to 5 years ago. Vice versa. 5 years ago LinkedIn was a lot harder to get results because everyone knew how to hook up a LinkedIn automation tool. And on a LinkedIn automation tool off a singular profile used to be able to blast a ton of messages. I think you could send like 100 to 300 connections per day and now you can't do that. You could probably do maybe like 40 per week. And so the LinkedIn inbox is so much more quieter than it used to be. And so if you run LinkedIn campaigns now at scale, you're getting almost 4 to 5x the reply rate that you would get on email. And so I think everything kind of goes through its seasons. And I think like cold email right now may not have the greatest reply rates like compared to what it used to be, still can get phenomenal results. Don't get me wrong there because it's so easy to scale. But there's going to be a time and period where people say, okay, cold email is getting too hard. I'm going to focus on LinkedIn. And then LinkedIn starts to get hard and cold email gets easier. And so I think it kind of goes through these kind of like waves and periods. But I still think cold email is a great channel for every like business to be running. I think the people that don't get good results is, they just usually don't have because you could mess up on all the tech, on all the infra, on all the lead list scraping. You can mess up on all the fundamental stuff that we execute day in day. Out. But if you have a good offer, it's going to work every single time. I've seen clients that have the worst campaign structure and setup you could ever see. But since they have such a good offer and it's such a no brainer that it works. And so yeah, I think like that's, that's kind of how I think about it. That's how I see this space. I think when it comes to GTM engineers, it's gotten a lot more popular with like the rise of clay. And I think clay is like phenomenal with what it can do, but it's also not essential. Like you know, you, you can't put lipstick on a pig. And what I mean by that is like you can't do all this clay personalization and put it on a bad offer and then expect it to work. And so I see that a lot right now where like customers that don't have a good offer that's actually a no brainer and can like crack a cold traffic market, they're like coming in and they're wanting to do these ten step clay plays. And I'm like, this isn't going to do anything. It's just like that mental distraction that you want because you want to try something new. But in reality it's like you got to just make this more of a no brainer offer. Like I would say like 7 to 8 at a times. 7 to 8 out of 10 times if it's not working with no personalization. When you add the personalization, does it like, you know, take off in the sense of like it's quadrupling the results you got before. It's, you know, obviously you're going to have a small incremental lift and positivity just because it has personalization there. But it's not like it's going to change the campaign. And so those are like things that I think we like educate our customers on and just speak about.
So then in this day and age, especially since you work with B2B, what is a good offer for you? Because you know Alex Hermosi, he definitely those whatever irresistible offers, it's true, but I think that they're burned out and a lot of B2B in general, they're so far behind. Like they think just having a software is a good enough offer. So how do you educate them on that? Especially with so much bureaucracy in the B2B space?
Yeah, and it's hard but like you just gotta kind of keep coming back to the idea of like, okay, if your Target market. Read this email, is there any chance that they would say no? Right? So if they read this, like, why would they not reply and say yes? And so like, I think Enzo, he does a really good job of this. He runs C17, which is like a Legion agency and he has this like concept and idea of like lead magnets and using that to be like the front end offer. And so it's like, you know, if you're selling Legion, everyone's pitching, hey, we can get you 10x leads and guarantee X and whatever, how many of them are pitching a free lead list, right? And so it's like being able to, to make it a no brainer even if it's kind of like a commoditized offer. And so like he'll send emails where it's like, hey, you know, we've worked with top companies like X, Y and Z. Most of our customers are, are having issues when it comes to lead quality. Do you mind if I send you a lead list that matches your ICP and I'll use like clay to make it to, you know, can I get you 10,000 leads that fit your ICP of and puts in there like ICP, things like that. That's how I think you really can make cold email work at a large scale. It's like, what is that one thing that your competitors won't give for free but also doesn't cost you anything and doesn't have much of an incremental lift in terms of operations that you can just give and make it a no brainer. Another good example is there's a printing company where they print your company's logo on a polo. It's being able to send emails where it's like, hey, first name, can I show you what it would look like by putting your logo on a few shirts? And it's like, why would you not reply yes to that? You know, and then it's like being able to just get that mock up for, you know, takes, you know, like it takes you what, 10 seconds to get that mock up done and then being able to send it to them and now they have a vendor in mind. And now, you know, you can say, hey, you know, you got any events coming up? We'd love to, you know, get you a discount or something for your first order. It's like things like that work really well, but you have a lot of clients for sure that are just kind of like, hey, I only want to say this. And it's like those guys are just never going to get results it's so.
Funny you say all of this because now my mind went back to the beginning of our conversation about. I asked you if you're running paid ads. You literally just gave the strategy for paid ads. It's like, why is it so hard for us? It's easier for us to give the advice than use it on our own. Than use it on. That's literally the strategy.
Like, what the. Maybe we need somebody paid ads again.
Then in facts, because that's what it is. It's. Bro, it's a lead magnet. That's all it is. I don't know how you attract your clients, X, Y and Z, but, man, I. I would say if I was you, I'll be sitting with your team. What can we give away for free that is not. That is scalable. That doesn't cost us anything in terms of money and labor or minimal cost, at least in terms of financially. And just go run those paid ads again because all of your users are on Facebook, regardless. Mix that in with your YouTube channel because you drop heat, regardless. Then mix that in with your LinkedIn. Your social proof paid ad should be. If anyone, if it's gonna work for anyone, it's going to work for you.
Then I gotta get it going.
You do, man. But, Nick, I appreciate the time. I appreciate you being here. I think this was like one of the best podcast episodes I've done, you know, and I'm just really glad you were able to, just because I watched a lot of your podcasts before. I really wanted to be somebody who can bring out a little bit more of your personal side. Because, like, even the fact, bro, I didn't know you had a girlfriend. I was like, oh, wait, he's not gay. No. So I really do appreciate you just even giving us those moments of vulnerability and showing us, you know, that, hey, your. Your business has scaled and it's growing and you don't multi seven figures, but you don't also have it all figured out either.
Every day.
Exactly, man. So keep showing people, you know that, hey, even here, those problems that you have at $0 a month, you're gonna have it at multi six figures. Six figures, 50k a month. They don't go away, they just change. So, Nick, do you have anything else you want to end this podcast off with?
No, this is a fun podcast. I love talking about the personal thing, so this is great. Thanks for having me on. And yeah, you guys need help with Legion? Hit up, Kari.
Appreciate it, man. All right, you guys.
