In this video, Nicolas Cole addresses the common fear that publicly pitching a product or service will come across as salesy or damage relationships. He uses a plumber‑neighbor analogy to illustrate that pointing out a problem and offering a solution is helpful, not intrusive. Cole gives permission to pitch publicly as long as the intent is to educate and improve the target’s business, not to criticize. He explains how a public teardown of a founder’s funnel (e.g., Justin Welsh’s) can be repurposed as a direct‑message outreach to similar founders (e.g., Ali Abdaal). He stresses that early outreach should be unscalable—doing personal, high‑quality DMs before trying to automate—because mastering the unscalable version is prerequisite to scaling. He describes how high‑growth companies scale DM funnels by hiring “setters” who field messages for hours each day, allowing the founder to focus on strategy. Throughout, Cole intersperses a promotion for his free ghostwriting masterclass and his book, positioning ghostwriting as a lucrative way for writers to monetize their skills. The overall message is that public pitching, when framed as helpful education, is both permissible and a powerful growth engine.
Chapters
I'm a bit wary of pitching in public because I think people would feel called out and I could jeopardize the relationship. This is another faulty belief. You think that by pointing out a problem that if they solved, they would be more successful, that they will get upset at you. So the analogy I like to use is imagine you walk past your neighbor's house. And you walk past and you see water coming out of the front door and it's flooding the entire front yard. And you're a plumber and you're like, you know, I've actually seen this in 3 other houses. I know why this house is flooding, but I'm not going to knock on the door and I'm not going to help them because I don't want to be salesy. I don't, I don't want, I don't want them to take it the wrong way. I don't want one of the neighbors to see me knocking on the door and being like, "Can you believe this person?" It's the same thing, right? Like, I am in no way advocating for a pitch in public to be, "Hey everyone, here's how awful this person is." That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, "Hey, I specialize in this thing. I know it really well. This person actually has a really cool business." But when I went through their funnel or newsletter or opt-in or whatever, I actually noticed a bunch of things that could be upgraded. And I bet if they did, it would operate way better and it would make them way more money. Like, why would that be taken negatively? And if the person does take that negatively, that is a reflection on them. That is not a reflection on you. So I'm just— I'm giving everyone here permission. Like, unless your pitch in public is like, here's why this person is so awful, which is not what I'm advocating for, you have nothing to worry about. Why would you not want to help people improve their business? Business owners spend tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars to join programs and masterminds just to get told all the things they're doing wrong. They spend money for that. So why would you doing it for free be taken as a negative? If I pitch one founder in public, can I use that as a DM to other founders also in the same space? Yes, absolutely. That's like the whole benefit, right? If I pitch in public about— let's say I do a pitch in public about Justin Welsh, right? And I do a whole teardown of his funnel selling async digital products. Can I take that post and go send it to Ali Abdaal? Of course I can. I can be like, hey, Ali, I just wanted to share this with you. I did a whole teardown of Justin's funnel. You guys actually have very similar funnels. Just sending this over. Pass it to your team if you want. I think it would be helpful. Of course you can. So many— I, again, I want to like harp on this. So many of these questions is like, am I allowed to? Can I? And the answer is always yes. As long as you are helping the other person, as long as you are educating them about a problem. As long as you are in some way making their life better, right? If the answer to that is yes, then do whatever you want. Ama, is this scalable in terms of the personal DM? So, little great framework for everyone here: in the beginning, the whole game is doing things that are unscalable. You can't scale something that you've never done the unscalable version of well. So you should do things that are unscalable. It's like, is it unscalable to talk to every customer? No. But should you do that when you have your first 10 customers? Yeah, because you can, right? So I think oftentimes people take an activity and multiply it by 1,000 and go, that's unscalable, so I won't even do it. But you have to realize that in order to scale it, You have to first do it well. Like, just to play this out for everyone, it's like, do you know that most companies doing north of $5 or $10 million a year, if they have really advanced DM funnels, do you know how they scale DM funnels? It's not the business owner doing it. It's that they hire a team of setters. It's called being a setter. And setters sit inside the business owner's Instagram or Facebook or X account, and all they do is field DMs 8 hours a day. And there are companies doing $10, $20, $30, $50, $100 million a year with 50 setters. So you can scale it. But do you think that you will ever be able to do that if, if you haven't yet built the skill of, and this is how we DM our potential customer? No, of course not, right? You have to learn that first and then everything is scalable. Everything is scalable. It's just you can't scale it unless you know how to do the first version of it really well. Hey, by the way, if you're brand new to the world of ghostwriting, maybe you've heard the term but aren't really sure what it is or how it's different from copywriting or content writing, check out premiumghostwritingblueprint.com. It's in the description below. Okay, this is a free masterclass that I've put together for writers who want to monetize their skills and love for writing with ghostwriting. This is what I did, and ghostwriting completely changed my life. It's how I quit my job. It's how I quadrupled the amount of money I was making. It's how I've gotten to work with so many smart, amazing people, but also have time for my own writing, like writing this book, The Art and Business of Ghostwriting. Anyways, check it out. If you're at all interested in making money from your writing, I would really encourage you to get into ghostwriting, and this free premium ghostwriting blueprint in the description below is the best place to start.
