Cold outreach that WORKS for copywriters (we’ve figured it out)

The Simple Way to Get Clients

How I got two big clients in a day without a following, ad spend, or fancy software

by Alejandro Martinez

I got an invoice paid from a new prospect using this strategy, as well as an old prospect. I had never made so much money in a single day, and I told Nabeel that as soon as this strategy worked, I’d made a post teaching you how to do it to “pay it forward”. My hope is that this shit makes you actually believe that you can do this too and you hopefully give my boy Nabeel a testimonial.

First of all, I want to thank Nabeel Azeez for guiding me in my efforts. Nabeel is, in my mind, the foremost authority on email marketing and, in many ways, in online business too. And though I learned this strategy from his friend, Dennis Demori, Nabeel taught me the principles as to why this works, and thus allowed me to take massive action.

I’ll break down every single thing I did, including strategies, mindsets, and tools, so you can do it too. If you catch the principles, you can apply it to any niche or industry. Please note this is a ~6,600 word post. I tried to cover EVERYTHING. So apologies if it’s too long.

Now, here’s what I’ll talk about in this post:

1. The personalized approach vs. the volume approach
2. How to make personalized cold emails, fast
3. The exact strategies I used
4. Follow-ups
5. Mindset

The personalized approach & why it works better

About three weeks ago I had a call with renowned copywriter and Minority Copywriter Summit speaker, Nicholas Verge (he’s not the client I’m referring to). I asked him whether it was better to use personalized approaches, or “volume” approaches. This is exactly what he replied to me:

“I’m against blasting out thousands of cold emails as a copywriter because, if you want to enroll a client, you have to demonstrate you’re good. If you don’t have a bunch of testimonials to back up your work, the best thing you can do is send your prospect a tailored piece he can use.

“If you send enough, there will be at least one person who’ll be like ‘woah. This guy actually took the time to do something for me without me paying him or anything.’ There’ll be other people who might need your help further down the line. And there might be others who might need copywriting help, but in other domains such as ads, landing pages, funnels, etc. But I believe in reciprocity in marketing, and people will notice you.”

“Overall, the personalized approach is what made me a shit ton of money early in my career. So I just wanted to say, dude, that you’re doing the right thing. Just keep doing more.”

Nabeel told me something different a couple years ago:

“The best way to sign up a client as a copywriter is to BE their copywriter first.” (paraphrased)

Both Nick and Nabeel were right. Over the past two weeks, I’ve sent 87 emails and gotten four replies. All replies were positive, two of them were interested prospects, and one already became my client.

Here’s the first interested prospect (who later became my client):

Here’s the second interested prospect (who I’m in talks with because he needs copywriting help):

Not gonna lie mf made me blush. Felt cute might delete later tho.

Please note, both fellas are renowned authors. My client is a tech founder with five bestselling books. Not saying this to brag; but to show you it’s possible to get the attention of “whale clients” with this method even if you have 4 LinkedIn Connections like I do. (Though he paid me $1K so I’m not sure if he qualifies as a whale client lol.)

We’ll talk about the exact strategy later. But before we do, here’s my take on the “volume approach” of cold emails.

It sucks. For me at least. I’ve tried blasting several cold emails in the past. I’ve sent email campaigns to about a thousand people and got no clients. Although to be fair, I never really liked the strategy so I didn’t take the time to iterate and improve it. It’s my fault. Deep down I also didn’t believe it worked, and belief is an important factor in any strategy. Like Thomas Edison said, “whether you believe it works or believe it doesn’t, you’re right” (or whatever tf he said lol I don’t even know if it was him). If it works for you, do more of that, but it wasn’t for me, at least not for now.

Instead, the personalized approach works best because:

1. You still get the writing chops even if you get no replies.
2. It requires significantly less prospects than the volume approach, so you probably don’t have to pay for lead-gen software (unless you want to).
3. The three sales calls I’ve had that closed, they would already see me as an authority.

Now, this approach works because it’s VERY personalized. But I’ve iterated it to the point where it takes me 12.4 minutes to write and send a cold email using this strategy. So if you invest 90 minutes a day, you can send 7.3 cold emails a day.
What I do is spend 90 minutes applying this strategy every weekday, and once a week I go all in for eight hours. Then I box and go to bed 😛

How to Make Personalized Cold Emails THE RIGHT WAY

“The best way to sign a client as a copywriter is to BE their copywriter first.” – Nabeel Azeez

I was chatting with another Copyskills member the other day. Dude wrote out an entire welcome sequence for a prospect he really wanted to work with. What a legend. However, what if you want to do this with 10 prospects? 50? 100? After all, one cold email isn’t gonna get you the sauce. Well, after iterating for about 5 weeks (on and off, starting since December 2022 lol), I cracked the code and found a method that can help you write highly-personalized cold emails in a fraction of the time.

This strategy is responsible for 3 (soon to be 4) clients signed with about 380 emails sent. That’s why, when I heard people were using the metric of “1000 emails should get you 1 client”, I called bullshit. Or maybe not bullshit; just a different approach. Who knows. As a Copyskills member, you get this strategy for free. Also, know that Nabeel isn’t paying me for this. (Although I might have to slide an invoice bc damn this strategy is goated.)

Ok, enough fluff. Let’s dive in.

I’ll try to make it generalized for every niche because I’ve tested it in three different niches, and it has worked for each one of them. In fact, I’m in talks with a renowned copywriter about a $1.5K/mo retainer to delegate some emails to me. So it works if you want an in-house position (or a “copy cub” agreement), a whale client, a girlfriend, or anything else (lmao).

1. Step One: Find out what your prospect needs and prove the concept

Let’s use the example of the renowned copywriter. I love this dude. Been on his list for a while. Yet all of a sudden, mf stopped sending emails. The fuck is this? Two weeks went by and I didn’t get a single email. So I go to his socials (he’s really active on X), stalk him for 10 mins, get a few content ideas, and wrote two emails for him. Each email told me about six minutes to write. I’ve written emails for about 3 years now, so I can whip out these emails fast.

(Simple framework to write emails: Story, Lesson, CTA. That’s it.)

Open up a Google doc. Type in docs.new on your chrome tab and it opens a brand new Google doc (No, I’m not a developer.) Then paste the emails, and tell him:

Yo [Name]!

I’m on your list but noticed you haven’t sent an email in two weeks.

I miss you.

Other subscribers miss you too I’m sure.

So here are two emails.

Just send them and lmk how they perform!

[Naked Doc link] [Signature]

His reply:

Get on a call w/him, told me: “F***** U*!” (Meaning: Follow up… With me in a month). I sent like ten of these on Saturday April 13th to copywriters I liked. Many good replies but only this copywriter actually needed help with this.

2. Step two: Create SOPs for your email outreach

The first 3 days it took me 19 minutes to get a cold email sent. After that it took me 12. That’s because I iterated and created SOPs for anything that worked for me. Oh and by the way, I wasn’t targeting copywriters anymore. I was targeting a broad mix of SaaS founders, coaches/consultants, and authors.

This is exactly what I did:

1. On Monday I’d search for my leads. I’d try to make a list of at least 100 ppl. Just name and contact info. I don’t pay for ListKit anymore, so I do it manually, though ListKit might greatly help you out. (I found out that searching for ppl on the spot would delay my outreach.)
2. Then I would follow the email framework I taught you earlier:
   1. Story (I’d go on the person’s twitter or FB or IG and see some cool story they had, and use it as a post.
   2. Lesson. I’d extract a practical lesson for the reader. You might also know this from the emails that have “Anyways, why are you reading this?” Ian Stanley popularized this a few years ago.
   3. I’d include a CTA for one of my clients’ products or services. (“If you feel like you could use help with X, then check out my course.”)
3. Get MailTrack which is a superior tool. Use their “template” option. Load your cold email script in there. If you’re going with the personalized approach, most cold email sending tools won’t work because you’re generating a new Google doc per prospect.

Now, I keep a .txt doc (a note) with a few things: stats (emails sent, replies, clients), COMMENTS (this is a big one, I’ll talk about it later), and other musings I get while sending emails. I don’t know what musings means, so if it’s out of context, just go with it.

3. Step Three: Demonstrate expertise in your outreach effort

This is a step invented by Alejandro Martinez himself. Nabeel didn’t teach me this. This is some mf’ing THOUGHT LEADERSHIP in the true sense of the word. It came through iteration and formulating the sauce. I remember reaching out to a renowned SaaS founder about a year ago. I rewrote a short opt-in landing page he had. So I followed up with him a couple times cuz I was certain my shit was better than his!!

His reply:

That reply gave me an aha moment. It was like “ohhhhhh shit.”

At that moment I wasn’t getting many replies bc I was still formulating the sauce, so I went back to the drawing board:

“Maybe I’m not getting enough replies because people AREN’T SEEING WHY THIS IS BETTER!!”

They copied a template and they followed it to a tee, and because the template is given to them by their “proven SaaS marketing guru lover”, they don’t question it. That’s not their fault. You gotta SHOW THEM WHY YOUR SHIT ROCKS. You feel me?

So after creating about 30 cold emails (making an inbound email for each prospect to send to their lists), I started seeing my own patterns and took note of them so I could replicate them over and over. Those patterns I can’t give you. I’m giving u the principles here.

Needless to say, the patterns WORK because I was telling people WHY THEY WORKED, and people were accepting my reply and ACTUALLY IMPLEMENTING IT into their work. Even running ads to them. (I must tell you. I’m very confident in my abilities at this point, at least for emails, so when I send something I know 8 times out of 10 it’ll make my prospect money unless his list is fucked.)

Let me show you. Here’s a reply from one of the 4 interested prospects (who didn’t have a need for copywriting atm). Also, this prospect gave me permission to share this with his name:

“I particularly like the explanation you included in the document. IT ALL MAKES SENSE. (!!!!!)”

And I know this shit works because he followed up with me a week later (Yes, HE followed up with ME, when have you heard that in a cold email strategy?)

MF RAN A $4K AD BUDGET on the new book description I had made him. Took him from 4.9 sales to 5.3 sales. That’s only about $200/mo extra but, if you know authors like I do, most sales don’t come from the book sale itself, but from the back-end. This fellow will be making big bucks if his back-end is set up right (which he told me he had). Guy was overjoyed and actually allowed me to share this as a testimonial.

But the real lesson here is that, I sent something he needed, it made sense to him (because I explained it to him, which is something you gotta do bc non-copywriters don’t know why stuff works), and he applied it and got results.

Anyways, whenever I send a Google doc cold email, I copy and paste comments on the doc. Each comment shows them why this particular line or sentence will work. By the end they adopt it, and it works. It works because I follow a strategy given to me by my mentor, intellectual hero, and infomercial legend Ronald Lynch. That’s why I know it works so well. I’m a proud Marketing Mercenary. I also have the reference experience that it works which is very very useful.

Final lesson: Send hella cold emails. See what works and what’ll make your work easier & faster. Add that to a doc. Eventually your cold emails will take WAY less time.

As you can see by now, I’m not using any fancy tactics, just putting in the work. My subject line is FNAME quick question, or FNAME question. Both work. Don’t have the data to split-test them yet. If you send personalized cold emails, someone will notice. They’ll have a need. And they’ll hire you. Simple as that.

4. Step Four: Follow-ups

Nabeel prolly gonna hate me for this one. But I don’t follow up unless the prospect demonstrates interest in my initial cold email, or replies to it. I have a few reasons for this.

(Comment from Nabeel: I agree with Alejandro. And I teach the right way to follow up in “How to Get Your First or Next Copywriting Client”, which you’ll already know if you were paying attention when you watched the course.)

My first mentor, cold DM legend and former client, Ross Johnson, taught me that “in cold DMs, you want to look for the 3% of the market that’s ready to buy now”. This fellow Gene Schwartz said it first I know but Ross exemplified to me with cold DMs/emails. Plus I don’t even like that mf Gene Schwartz.

(Comment from Nabeel: If you use Alejandro’s cold outreach strategy and the follow-up strategy I taught you, the other 97% will buy from you eventually.)

In my experience, Ross’s right. Every single client I’ve gotten through a cold email was because he had a need right now and I just “showed up”. This is NOT the case for inbound social media clients or other means. But the people you reach out to simply have a need and you show up in time (this is also the reason why a combination of volume and personalization is key. You’ll rarely find that ready-to-buy client on your first attempt. But when someone’s ready to buy, you must demonstrate expertise and show them why you’re the most logical option to do business with. Hence why this approach is so effective if you don’t have massive street cred like Nabeel does.)

• Client one: “I’m in the process of publishing my book. Do you do sales pages for books?”
• Client two: “I’m actually working on a Kickstarter. Can you help us with emails?”
• Client three: “I’m going through a website redesign at the moment. Can you help us with the copy?”
• Client four: “I’m launching a new course based on an event I made last year. Can you write the website?”

CAN U SEE THE COMMONALITIES? All these clients had something they needed right now. If I had reached out a month later, they prolly didn’t need me. So following up might only make sense with this strategy if you’re playing the really long game and following up in months. Otherwise, due to the level of personalization, it’ll take you too much time, which leads me to the next reason.

The second reason why I don’t follow up, is because it literally takes me less time to contact a new client, than it takes me to follow up. It’s easy to follow up if you have an automated cold email sending tool like MailShake or Omni or the one Nabeel is an affiliate for. But for highly personalized emails like this one, at least in my experience, those tools don’t work because you still have to paste unique Gdoc links and other stuff.

Again I could be wrong here…

…But it’s easier for me to find a new prospect, whip up an email that’ll change their financial and marital life and quite literally reignite their flame in the bedroom (due to 3rd order effects), and send it to them; than it is to open up a fucking spreadsheet, put in their last touchpoint date, first name, email, GDoc link, and notes. I drooled just writing this goddamn paragraph.

If you figure out a way to follow-up with ease using this strategy lmk.

Now, you can have all the strategies, but if you have a poor mindset, not even the best strategy can help you. So let’s cover that next.

5. Step Five: Mindset

Here I’ll share everything I’ve learned in this process, and I’ll also share a few tricks that’ll help you bulletproof yourself to undergo your path to success. Here are some of the things I’ve learned.

Pain and pleasure dynamics

I’ve known this cold emailing strategy since about November 2022. If I had applied it as consistently as I have in the past three weeks, I’d probably be at $10K/mo by now AT LEAST. But I didn’t because, to be frank with you, I was lazy. I had a lot of limiting beliefs around success. And to be fair with myself too I went through a paid internship that took most of my time for about six months. But still, most of it was laziness.

Why haven’t I missed a single day of sending cold emails in the past three weeks, even though I have three clients, am in-camp for an amateur boxing match, and going to college full-time?

Because there’s some pain that motivates me. You see, I want to do an exchange and move to Colombia. The exchange costs me $5K and, as of right now, I don’t have that money. So I could remain in my current city which is mad-expensive, small, and kinda whack, or I could go to Colombia and quite literally become a PIMP, talk to hotties all day long, and travel and explore a new country I’ve always wanted to go to. The pain of not having that experience is stronger than the desire to just float and relax and stay where I am. I need to make that $ by September 1st or die trying.

So the biggest lesson I’ve learned is, if you associate enough pain to your current reality or behavior (A), and associate enough pleasure to your desired reality or behavior (B), then you’ll do the uncomfortable actions required to get to B. It is quite literally easier for me to send these cold emails even if it’s 10PM (I’m writing this at 12:03 am my time) than to “rest” and lay low. And you don’t need a trip to motivate yourself. Try creating pain by having a deep look at your current situation, at a reality you no longer want to experience, or maybe even your family’s situation. What’s the cost of staying there? What’s the cost of continuing to indulge in bullshit lazy behavior? I took that deep look within myself. It motivated me beyond belief. If you want to learn more of this read Tony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within. G book.

The 10X Rule

I never thought I’d be recommending Grant Cardone but here I am. I haven’t really read his book, The 10X Rule, but I know his rule and I do know something: Whatever goal you’re trying to achieve, estimate that it’ll take 10-100X the effort to achieve it. If you want a gf you won’t have to approach just one girl. It’ll be 10-100. Maybe even more these days lol. If you want a client, you won’t have to send 10 cold emails. Maybe 100-1000. And so on.

This shit is quite humbling but it also makes you strong (actually, humble = strong because not many things hurt your ego when you’re humble. Some spiritual stuff too in here. Damn Nabeel I’ll have to invoice u dawg there’s too much sauce in here).

When you adopt this mindset, if you sent 50 cold emails and don’t get a reply, you’re cool because you have an accurate view of the marketplace and the effort required. So you just send more.

This rule also reminded me of the saying, “Don’t judge the day by what you reap, but by what you sow”, which I read from bestselling author Frederick Dodson. Love that fellow. When I send cold emails, I feel accomplished. I don’t feel that accomplished when I get an invoice paid because actually sending an invoice takes little effort.

No effort is wasted

This shit changed my life. It’s a little woo-woo so it might not click with your belief system and that’s ok. But it was so deep to me that I thought I’d share. I read this in Fred Dodson’s book, Success Attracts Success. Fantastic book.

Here’s the basic concept:

Let’s say you send 100 personalized cold emails using the approach above. You get 3 clients with those efforts. But only two of them were in your prospect list; the third was an old-time prospect that you stopped following up on because, at the time, he wasn’t interested.

All of a sudden, non-interested prospect tells you he has a need for your product and asks you to give you a call. New client acquired.

THIS HAPPENED TO ME.

You might think this was luck or whatever. But my belief is that no effort is lost. Like author Fred Dodson says (paraphrased), “when you work towards something and apply effort, you tend to develop the belief that you ‘deserve it’ due to the effort you’ve taken. That belief becomes attractive to other opportunities that weren’t available to you, because you thought you were unworthy of them.”

My belief is that because of the effort I applied, I got into that vibration and opportunities came from elsewhere too. But you must work in order to get this momentum rolling.

Again, a little woo-woo? Sure, but it’ll make your personalized efforts MUCH EASIER. Especially because at first, when a prospect didn’t reply to my cold emails, I’d even feel resented. I’d be like “this mf??? Just shared a piece of work that’ll change his biz. Dude read it and didn’t even say thank you.” Truth is, they don’t owe you anything. Release that resentment, bless them (if you want lol not necessary), and send more cold emails.

Visualize Daily

This one might seem woo-woo by some sources and purely scientific by others. I won’t go too deep in here but it’s a practice I have. I visualize myself with those $5K in a bank account and me fulfilling to all these clients. I see myself as doing great work and getting clients RESULTS and having them feel overjoyed w my work. And when you do that, you get an internal reference experience. You feel better and your brain trusts how your body feels by default.

So by visualizing something as it being already there, you quite literally create the reference experience. Then you can more easily take action.

Dealing with rejection

Here’s the truth: Most cold emails will get rejected, regardless of how cool you are, how long your masculine reproductive organ is, how many testimonials you have, or how personalized your email is.

That’s just the game.

Like Nabeel says in his “How to Get Your First or Next Client” Course, if you don’t like it it’s much easier to search for an in-house position and that’s totally fine. No shame in that. (In fact I think every copywriter should go through a time where he’s only writing copy and not worrying about anything else. But that’s a topic for another day.) Cold email isn’t for everyone.

But there are a few concepts that, when understood intellectually and internalized through heavy action and reflection, have helped me to the point where, I dare say, you’re bulletproof against it.

These concepts are:

1. Rejection is God’s protection. Sometimes the client doesn’t have your best interests in mind. Or they’re a shit client. Or any other reason. How do you know that not getting this client is “bad” for you? There are many instances in which I’ve really needed a client, and didn’t get him, but in the long-term it was better because it instilled a few lessons in me. Same has happened to me with women a few times in my life lol.
2. Each “rejection” is a step closer to your goals. If it takes you, say, 100 cold emails to get a client, and the first 20 people “reject” you, then congrats dude. You just need 79 more instead of 99! Keep going. This shit sounds corny but it’ll make you overjoyed to send those cold emails. You’ll look forward to getting “rejected”.
3. It’s their loss. If you have the sauce, have confidence in your abilities, and know FOR A FACT that you can make your client more money than she pays you, then if they don’t hire you, whose loss is that? You’re the one goated with the sauce. She’s the one who doesn’t have the necessary sauce required to grow her business. So just keep at it. As pretty much every lesson I’ve shared here it also applies to women LMAO.
4. No rejection is personal. The people you reach out to don’t know you. People are self-centered and that’s just human nature. They don’t give a fuck about you at all. They care so little about you, it doesn’t even matter. Seriously. So in the very odd case you get a mean reply (or get ignored), know for a fact that it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them.
5. Send more emails. Dude you’re just SENDING EMAILS. You don’t have to hunt or fight mammoths to feed your family anymore. Life is easy. There’s no reason that could stop you from getting the success you want today. It’s there. And honestly, CopySkills has everything u need.

Exiting scarcity

If you’re visualizing daily and are sending cold emails, and have worked on your skills, there’s quite literally no way you don’t make money. I’ve been writing copy for almost four years now. I’m by far not an A-list copywriter and have soooo much to learn. In fact sometimes I think I’m the shit, send some copy to Nabeel for critique, and dude bashes me. Keeps me humble.

But the truth is, most likely you’re exponentially better than your clients at writing copy. Sometimes a simple tweak (like the one above with the increased book sales) will yield significantly better results.

What I’ve learned from reference experience, is that if you don’t have $ or you’re dealing with clients you don’t like, you can literally just send more emails, which is a volume and skill game, and get a client. And it’s not really that hard nor do you need to be an absolute G to make it work. That’s the most valuable lesson I’ve learned in the past two weeks.

Recommended reading

This sort of expands on the mindset area seen earlier. Some books I’ve read lately and I fully recommend are:

1. Tony Robbins, Awaken The Giant Within. Seriously needs no introduction. One of the most important self-help books ever written.
2. Grant Cardone, 10X Rule. Full honestly I haven’t read it lmao just watched a video about it explaining what the rule was.
3. Fred Dodson, Success Attracts Success. Really cool. Talks about topics of vibration. Has some cool concepts you probably haven’t read elsewhere. It’s one of those underground books nobody knows about. I’m a big Fred Dodson fan so I do know his stuff.
4. Fred Dodson, Parallel Universes of Self. One of my favorite books but probably most of the stuff he says will be irrelevant or absurd to you. It was to me at first. If so, only research the P.U.R.E technique he talks about in chapter 5 of this book. It’s the most powerful visualization method I’ve used bar none. In fact it’s so powerful that, if you take action upon it afterwards,**you can see your first positive changes in 3 days, and a full reality change in 3 weeks.** Seriously. I don’t recommend any other visualization stuff (except for Dr. Joe Dispenza PROBABLY) because I haven’t gotten results with it or they diminish action and real-world experience as irrelevant.

(Comment from Nabeel: Watch the Mindset Masterclass we’ve provided AND read Gorilla Mindset, the book. It’s the best book on Mindset ever written.)

I hope this helps you. Poured my heart into it. I wish you as much success as I’ve experienced in the past couple of weeks. 🙂

If you have questions, PLEASE ask us in the Discussion space. You’ll have to upgrade your Copyskills membership first. Don’t go at this alone. We’re a community!

(Comment from Nabeel: Thank you, Alejandro.)

---

BONUS: The #1 Most Important Cold Outreach Lesson

You’re about to learn the most important cold outreach lesson I’ve personally ever learned—as well as the single biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my client acquisition journey. Understand these two key aspects, and I dare say you’ll be properly set on your path to consistent clients, forever. I’m not exaggerating.

You see, I learned this idea from my first ever business mentor, Ross Johnson. He’s the “coach’s coach” and he has taught me so many business and client acquisition strategies. He credits this lesson as one of the few “mindset” lessons that got him to make his first seven figures in only sixteen months. Anyways, you’re probably too hyped up by this point, so let’s get into it.

The 911 Memory Incident

Do you remember what you were doing when 9/11 happened? I can’t. I was about to turn 1. But psychologists Jennifer Talarico and David Rubin asked this to several people back in 2003. Each person gave his or her individual response.

Now here’s where it gets shocking. One year later, they asked the same people where they were when the 9/11 attacks happened. And even if they remained confident in their response, close to 40% of them gave a different response to their first response a year earlier.

THEY CHANGED THEIR MEMORY!

Now, mind you, the 9/11 attack is what psychologists call a “flashbulb memory”. That is, a moment so important in your life that you have a vivid recollection of your surroundings, emotional state, and even thoughts when it happened.

So if 40% of people got the details of a “flashbulb memory” wrong, just a year after them being asked, you can say that the other, less relevant memories vanish or completely change just a few days or weeks later. The key here is to know that your memories are COMPLETELY SUBJECTIVE. They’re inaccurate.

Now, please keep this in mind for now. Everything will make sense and will relate to your client acquisition journey in just a second. And please take a look at this chart below.

This is Warren Buffett’s net worth, and how it has increased from 1930 to 2023. The image is self-explanatory. You see how the line is static for over fifty years, and then it bursts into the air. This is an example of PROGRESS. And if you were to analyze progress charts, you’ll recognize that progress is always exponential, not linear. ALWAYS. (If you want to learn more about this, the book Good to Great by James Collins explains it pretty well through the Flywheel concept.)

This is one of the most common flaws in thinking people have. They think that growth is linear, and if they don’t see results immediately, they’re doing something wrong. I myself am guilty of falling for this too many times.

Now, how does this all tie together? What does all this crap have to do with your cold outreach? Well, imagine you’re sending 10 cold emails a day, Monday to Friday, for a year.

Here’s exactly what’s gonna happen.

In the first days, you send cold emails but hear crickets. No response. You stick to it despite not getting positive feedback, and about a couple weeks in, you get your initial replies, but still no clients. And let’s say that one month in, you get your very first client. But you go even deeper. You keep sending your cold emails even if you’re working with your client, and it takes you a bit less time—let’s say three weeks instead of a month—to get your second client. Fast forward to three months into your journey, and you have more clients than you can possibly handle.

If you were to keep going this way for a year, you would probably have to outsource some of your client work and build an agency, because you literally can’t fulfill the amount of clients you’re getting, even if you worked 18 hours a day (on top of your 10 daily cold emails). But that would be in a perfect world.

In reality, here’s often what happens, and I’m talking from experience:

You get one or a few clients, and you either (a) feel on top of the world, or (b) don’t have enough time to do your outreach while serving all your clients. So you stop. And until the money from those clients runs out (what is commonly called “feast or famine”), you’re back to the hurried grind of sending cold emails so you can pay your electric bill on time. I’ve done this exact mistake about four times in my journey.

And here’s a visual graph that explains why this mistake—or rather, this unconscious decision—happens.

Where it all ties together

In this graph, the red line represents your memory. As you can see, the more time passes, the less accurate your memory can be. It gets lost in the other memories formed in your life over time. And the blue line represents the exponential growth of your results with cold outreach, similar to the Warren Buffett example we saw earlier.

So if you stuck to the plan we talked earlier, one year in you’re enjoying the results of your hard work, but you FORGOT what caused these results. When most people see their initial results, they get comfortable and stop taking action. Or their ego takes over and they think they’re the shit, when in reality it’s their action, beliefs, and attitude that got them there. And they stop taking the actions that led them there (in this case, doing cold outreach).

Shortly after, because the flywheel hasn’t caught enough speed in a year to spin on its own, entropy quickly takes over and they’re back to the initial outreach grind. Some people call this “self-sabotage”, but the ultimate form of self-sabotage is not knowing how these laws work. Again, this has happened at least four times throughout my career, so I’m talking from experience.

The solution? It’s twofold.

How to fix this and enjoy consistent results

First, be disciplined and humble enough to recognize that your results come through your repeated actions and beliefs.

The more aligned your beliefs are with the reality of cold outreach (see the final part of my first post), the easier it is to be patient, keep sending those emails, and embrace results when they eventually come.

And second, when you eventually get results, which, again, WILL HAPPEN if you persist and don’t give up, then you must be disciplined enough to keep taking action and factor in your cold emails during your day.

Here’s an example:

A little over a month ago I got at capacity when working with clients. If I had taken another client, I’d probably gone crazy. Mind you, I was sending cold emails for the first ninety minutes of my day, every weekday.

But instead of making the same mistake of stopping my outreach for the fifth time, I chose to keep sending cold emails, but for thirty minutes instead of ninety. This was a great decision because one of the clients I was working with ended up being a pain, and we parted ways. And another long-time retainer chose to reduce the frequency of our emails because it’s the off-season for boaters, which halved my monthly fee.

Now, if I had fully stopped my outreach, I’d be desperately trying to push that flywheel again and get clients to fill that financial void ASAP. But because I stuck to my outreach schedule, even if it was 30 minutes instead of 90, I’m in talks with a couple new prospects, and I know for a fact that one of them will become a client soon.

Conclusion

You’ve just learned these complicated charts and fancy concepts to learn one thing: Never stop the pipeline. LOL. Just keep at it even if the clients are coming in, and even if you don’t know where you’ll fit your next client. Worst that could happen is to get them on a waitlist, which I’m trying to figure out how to do. Stick to this and you will quite literally escape the feast or famine that often characterizes freelance copywriting.

And if you haven’t started cold emailing people yet, and don’t have a multitude of clients harassing you to take their payment and work with them, then start sending those cold emails TODAY. The flywheel is being pushed, whether you know it or not; its direction is up to you. (That’s another lesson you should get out of this. If you recognize the nature of progress, which is exponential, you’d be eager to send those cold emails starting today, because the faster you get going, the faster that exponential curve blows up.)

Best of luck, and if you have any questions, upgrade your Copyskills membership and ask me in the discussion space 🙂