Charles Tenot

CEO @lemlist & lempire. I share what I learn as the CEO of a profitable SaaS growing to $40M to $100M+. Follow me to learn from the journey.

I'm a business generalist who loves tech & running high-performing businesses.

Happy to meet Sales professionals
If you're:
- An SDR or Sales Rep
- A Sales Manager, Head of Sales, or Head of Sales Development
- A VP Sales or CRO

And you work at a B2B company between 50 and 1000 employees,

I’d love to connect for 30 minutes to chat about outbound strategy, share ideas, and learn from each other.

Don’t hesitate to drop an email on charles@lempire.co

COO / General Manager

Growing lempire from 20M$ to 100M$ while generating 35%+ EBITDA

lempire products: lemlist, lemwarm, Taplio, Tweet Hunter, lemcal - more to come

6x7 is infinitely better than 8x5.

I prefer working 6 hours a day for 7 days. 
Rather than the standard 8 hours a day for 5 days. 

The total time is roughly the same, but the result is completely different. Here is why:

→ On & offs are exhausting It is always harsh to restart the machine on Mondays. 
And it is difficult to disconnect on Saturdays. I prefer to keep a steady momentum.

→ Frequency beats intensity
Finishing earlier leaves real time for sports or passions every single day. 
It is easier to build a habit when you do it daily.

→ Weekends are for deep work
No emails. No Slack. No meetings. 
I get more done in 2 hours on a Saturday morning than in 6 hours on a Tuesday.

→ The "fluff" disappears 
The extra 2 hours you do during the week are usually low energy. 
If you cut the least 2 productive hours it almost doesn't move the needle for work. 
But it changes everything for your life.

Society has normalized the 9-5. 
But it is far from being the optimal setup, of course when your business allows it. 

Holidays are different. I take 10 days to fully reset and digest. 

But for the daily routine, I will take the 7-day week any time.

If you don’t love your job, try committing more to it.

It sounds counter-intuitive. 

Yet, every time I started doubting my role (even as a CXO/CEO), I realized it was because I wasn't giving my 100%.

It’s the "Little Prince" paradox. 

As the Fox says: "It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."

When you hold back, you enter a negative loop: 

You do less → You have less impact → The job feels meaningless.

But when you fully commit, the dynamic changes. 

You become useful. 
You build things. 
You start to care because you are investing a part of yourself.

The hard truth: Unless the environment is toxic (in which case, leave), the boredom might not come from the job description. 

It might come from your level of engagement.

Don't do it for your boss, the VC, or the Shareholders. 

Do it for yourself. 

Action creates passion, not the other way around.

In 2016, I was Finance Manager and said to be a cost center, useless to the business. 10 years later, I'm CEO. 

While luck played a huge part, there is still one specific thing that helped me get there:

I never stayed in my lane.

Most people think career growth means becoming excellent at your job description.

That's wrong.

Your job description is the minimum.

It's what keeps you employed.
It's not what gets you promoted.

What got me from Finance Manager to CEO wasn't being great at finance.

It was doing finance fast enough that I had time left.

Then using that time to fix things nobody asked me to fix.

I automated reporting & order-to-cash process. 

Took me 3 months to build a system that saved me 10+ hours every week.

I used those 10+ hours to work on growth projects: running business operations.

Things that were broken but nobody had time to fix.

I asked for permission. 
I made sure I wasn't stepping on toes.

But I didn't wait for someone to expand my role.
I expanded it myself.

Then I showed the results.

Most people wait for opportunities.
I created mine.

---

The other thing that mattered was always network.
I found my last 3 jobs through people I knew and not by applying.

You can be excellent in silence.

But nobody will promote you if they don’t know who you are and how you are impacting the business. 

—-

In a nutshell, I see 3 main enablers to career growth:

1/ Do more than your job. 

2/ Make sure people know about it. 

3/ Build a network.

—- 

Hope that helps a few ✌

Stop asking your sales reps why they lost deals or you'll make strategic mistakes.

Not because they are dishonest. 

But because they are human.

When a rep loses a big deal they are frustrated. 

They want to move to the next one. 

They don't want to spend 20 minutes writing a thesis.

So they pick the easy option in the dropdown menu: "Lost - Pricing Reason".

And you end up making strategic decisions based on bad data.

This morning I didn't ask my VP of Sales for a report. 

I simply asked my AI.

I opened Claap and typed this: "Which deal with 5+ seats did I lose the last 10 days and why?"

The answer was brutal, but it was accurate.

It didn't look at the CRM notes. 
It analyzed the actual conversations. 
It gave me a direct link to the exact moment the prospect said no.

Claap AI shared things such as:
→ "Client A chose a competitor because of poor qualification and lack of decision-maker mapping." 
→ "Client kept their current solution because of a missing integration with their CRM."

If you want to fix your revenue you need the truth. 
You cannot rely on subjective reporting anymore.

We are entering a new era of management:
Where you don't blame people for bad reporting, but you just stop asking them to do a robot's job.

I don't believe in resolutions. But here are the 5 things I will improve to be a better CEO in 2026.

Waiting for January to change something is just an excuse. 
If you want to change you can and should do it right away.

But end of year is still good to take a moment to reflect. 

Here is where I want to get better in 2026:

1/ Talking to customers
There is no secret. 
You have to be close to your market. 
I will block 3 hours every week just for them. 
I will talk to current users and even the ones who left us.

2/ Speaking with the team 
We are now more than 100 people. 
I don't know everyone anymore. 
The best strategies don't come from meetings, they come from the people doing the work.

3/ Listening to sales calls 
This is where the truth is. 
The front line knows things I will never see from my desk. 
I need to hear what actually pisses people off.

4/ Being clear 
Vague goals create vague results. 
I need to tell people exactly what to do. Clarity always brings performance.

5/ Bringing focus 
We need to say no to good ideas. 
So we can say yes to great execution. 
Less is more when you actually ship.

We are moving from "Get Shit Done" to "Get Impactful Shit Done"

This is not a resolution. 

It is just continuous improvement 🧘

56% of our support tickets are now handled by AI, CSAT is 91%. 
Here’s what we learned that can save your some time:

12 months ago, we started using AI for customer support.

Today:
→ 56% of tickets are closed without any human
→ CSAT is 91% (vs. 93-94% for human responses)
→ 30% of human-handled tickets are answered using AI suggestions
→ Median response time: <30 seconds (vs. 5 minutes for humans)

But it wasn’t plug-and-play.

Here’s what actually worked:

→ Letting users choose: "Do you want an answer now from AI or wait a few minutes for a human?" Simple, but powerful.

→ AI is only as smart as your content. We spent weeks structuring the Help Center and Product Bible.

→ AI can only performed if trained and guided. 
We built up a set of guidances and escalation rules to get the best of AI and human duet.

→ As humans only handle the complex tickets, their CSAT naturally drops. And onboarding new agents takes way longer now.

→ AI also helps behind the scenes:
 (i) writing articles
 (ii) spotting gaps in the docs
 (iii) reviewing human responses

What’s next?

→ We’re now testing AI agents that help Team Leads:
 (i) spotting knowledge gaps
 (ii) identifying skill gaps in the team

→ We don’t believe AI will solve 100% of support.
But we do believe in a model where AI helps everywhere, all the time.
Maybe even inside the product:
 (i) guiding users step-by-step to download their invoice
 (ii) or set up their first campaign

We’re just getting started, and that's really exciting as AI enables better customer experience overall with faster reply rates, 24/7 and allows humans to focus on more complex case-handling, where a human touch can really add value.

Curious to see how voice can help in the future too when users are asking for a call (cc ElevenLabs 👀)

Big shoutout to our CX team: Julien L., Teodora Martić, Guillaume RIEU, and the whole crew.

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CEO @ lemlist & lempire

When HubSpot starts copying your narrative, you know something shifted.
A year ago, we said spray and pray was dead.

Today, they're saying the same thing.

But here's what they're missing about the future of outbound.

Outbound is not dying.

It's the most cost efficient channel for customer acquisition.

Show me another channel where you can deliver a unique message to one person at scale.

Inbound is about throwing money at the problem.

Outbound is about being smart. Being creative. Being technical.

And I'm genuinely excited to see HubSpot betting on this.

Because now we get to compete, and that will help the entire market level up and build better products for Sales teams.

Here's our vision:

→ Nothing will ever beat unique signals.
Companies with technical teams will keep building custom workflows with Clay, n8n, and other tools.

→ But most SMBs don't have those resources.
They can't build complex workflows.
They're stuck between enterprise tools they can't use and spray and pray that doesn't work.

→ So we're building something different.
Dozens of signals that you can set up in less than 5 clicks.
Zero technical skills needed.

Smart outbound for everyone, not just the companies with GTM engineering teams.

Can't wait to see how this plays out.

Nobody talks about this in sales: we analyzed 5,000+ sales deals and the data says that gender matching impacts conversion.

Here’s what we saw:
→ When women sell to women: 44% close rate
→ When women sell to men: 34% close rate

That’s a 29% difference 🤯

More broadly:
→ Women close 39% of their deals
→ Men close 36% of their deals

The worst results were when one gender sells to the other.
Same-gender conversations perform better.

I haven’t seen this talked about anywhere, have you? 
Curious if others have run similar analyses.

Tell me who you are hiring and I'll tell you what problems you have:

→ VP Engineering: My co-founder CTO is poor at management and we need someone who can fix this without hurting the CTO ego

→ CRO: I sold 100% growth to my board but things don't add up and I'm 50% short

→ CMO: I don't know what my marketing team is doing and I need someone to translate and build a plan

→ Head of People: Our best people are leaving and I have no idea why

→ Chief of Staff: I'm drowning in meetings and emails and can't think anymore

→ Head of Product: We've been building for months and nothing ships

→ CFO: My board wants a budget and I have no clue where the money goes

This is the reality of most executive positions.

You're hired to fix urgent problems.

Problems that nobody before you could solve.

With limited time, limited resources, and high expectations.

Good luck to anyone taking a new CxO role 😇

Don't forget to challenge your hiring manager as much as they challenge you and make sure there is a clear contracting in expectations.

While everyone is complaining about landing in spam, we just managed to reduce lemwarm's user spam rate to below 2% through R&D.

This means that our customers at lemwarm average less than 2% of spam, which is the best proxy we can have of lemlist's campaign deliverability for lemwarm users.

We achieved this by improving a few things in the algorithm.

I won't share publicly all our R&D but it includes templates, sending algorithm, and server management.

Really excited to see all our customers achieve better deliverability to ultimately book more meetings.

Big up to the team 🔥

A VC friend of mine said something that hit hard: "The founders who post the most on LinkedIn usually run the worst companies."

But then I see amazing founders like Alex (Deel), Arthur (Pennylane), Guillermo (Vercel) or Varun (Clay) crushing it on LinkedIn.

So, where's the truth?

Here’s my take:

Being great at running your company is 100x more important than writing great posts.

But the best founders do both.

The trick is not to confuse posting on LinkedIn with your *real* job.

Your real job as a CEO is to move the needle. That means:

→ Hiring and leading an amazing team
→ Talking to customers every single day
→ Setting a clear vision for everyone
→ Making sure the company has money to grow

Posting on LinkedIn isn't on that list.

But it can actually help with ALL of it. 

It gives you an incredible advantage in hiring, sales, and building your brand.

Most founders think they don't have time.

But you don't need hours.

With the right system, you can spend less than 30 minutes a day and generate millions of views in a few months.

There aren't many activities that offer that kind of return.

So, my VC friend is half-right:
→ If LinkedIn is your #1 priority, you're making a mistake.
→ But if you ignore it, you're leaving a massive opportunity on the table.

What do you think?

This weekend, I built an app with my kids to find the best cookie places in Paris.

None of us can write a single line of code.
But it took us less than 30 minutes to have a functional V1 we could use.
Thanks to Claude Code. 

What's happening in software right now is really interesting.

Warren Buffett said that brand is the most important moat.

I think the next 10 years will prove this more than ever.

Because building simple apps is becoming virtually free.
(I'm still curious how this will apply to complex apps and ecosystems.)

But one thing is clear.
More value will be in understanding user problems and workflows.

Branding and distribution will be increasingly critical.

Influence will be a strong lever. 
Look at the 1 billion dollar Khaby Lame deal.

15 years ago, you'd find geeky profiles in small businesses building custom Access databases.

I wouldn't be surprised to see more and more custom applications that fit user needs better.

Apps that can evolve fast with clean UI.
Apps that are much more cost efficient overall with almost no fixed fees.

The barrier to building is disappearing.
The question now is what you build and how you get it to people.

The average win rate after a demo is 20%. This campaign gets 73% reply rate, and I created a public version that you can copy.

I have worked with 100+ sales reps in my career.
What separates top reps from others is how they manage their time:
→ They know which deal to prioritize. 
→ They know how to optimize productivity via relentless organization.

In the quest for time automation is a must. 
But automation should look human or it just destroys conversion rates.

I recently spotted a campaign with a 70%+ reply rate. 

I dug in and noticed it was a post demo automation.

The flow is actually simple:
→ You run the demo. 
→ You let Claap fill in your CRM automatically. 
→ From the CRM you push the attendee to lemlist in a dedicated campaign.

To make it really perfect you use variables from your discovery questions. 

For instance if you use SPIDED, you can use Claap to automatically fill in the SPICED criteria. 
Then you use the SPICED in the email. 
Example: "You told me that you were experiencing {{Pain}}".

You could even use Claap to generate the full follow up email using a template.

You can adapt next steps depending on whether or not there is already a follow up meeting planned.

Sales reps don't need to spend 1 hour of manual follow up & prospect chasing after each meeting, and RevOps should clearly build these kind of workflows for their entire sales teams.

Sharing public link to campaign in comment 👇

A like or comment is appreciated if you think that's useful 🙏

PS: Nicolas Marchais from Phacet sent me one of the best post-demo follow up mail that I received in my life - 
Nico would you be open to sharing it publicly? 
Did you use AI to write it?

If your sales team is not hitting quota, maybe you don't have a sales problem but a lead generation problem.

In 2026, if your strategy is still to:
→ Let sales organize themselves with the CRM
→ Define territories as they want
→ Research accounts manually
→ Source prospects manually for each account
→ Decide which accounts they should engage with
→ Find phone numbers and emails on their own

You are far from getting 100% from them.

This might have worked in 2015.

But since then, CAC has increased by over 300% and competition has never been stronger.

Your competitors are doing it right with a Growth Outbound team (or GTM Engineer) who:
→ Maps the entire Total Addressable Market
→ Collects useful data on accounts (firmographics, technographics, etc.)
→ Scores accounts
→ Continuously monitors the existing TAM with signals and identifies new potential accounts
→ Sources all contacts in your target persona for each account
→ Defines engagement rules and territories
→ Assigns accounts on a weekly or monthly basis, or helps reps engage with the warmest and most promising accounts

This difference (which is usually 1 FTE) explains at least 50% of performance gaps.

The technology is here for all of this, eg: Clay, lemlist, Leadinfo, Warmly, n8n, FullEnrich, and more.

The problem is usually dedicating the resource and setting up a good methodology.

---

Thanks to Francis Brero for this amazing meme seen on Business Operations Network 🙏

"We have built territories so everyone has the same chance of success." This is almost never true. 

Here is the reality of most sales floors:

→ The best industries are reserved for 1 or 2 reps in the name of specialization.

→ The best companies are kept by historical AEs giving no chance to newcomers.

→ The same quotas are given on new countries with zero brand and a barely translated product.

Giving equal chances of success to all reps is the most important thing to do in any commercial organization.

This creates true and healthy competition.
And ultimately it maximizes business impact for the company.

If the game is rigged the players will quit.

⚖️

Marketing is not about acquisition. It is about Motivation.

We think marketing stops when the user signs up and Product takes over from there. 

But that is wrong.

Your marketing dictates your user's patience.
It includes your brand reputation and word of mouth.

Think about it: If users come with low conviction, they quit at the first bug. 
A confusing menu, a single bug, is enough to make them leave.

But if they have high conviction, they'll stick around and try hard.
They might ignore a few bugs.
They might read the docs.
They might contact support for help.


Great marketing doesn't just fill the funnel. 

It buys time for the product to be imperfect.

The problem is that Google Analytics doesn't measure "Motivation".
But it is often what separates successful users from early churners.

Scale revenue with AI & tech

I decided to skip the traditional corporate path & start building in the AI x Sales space at 27. 
Here's the journey so far:

Age 18-21: Business school in Brussels, realized I needed practical experience
Age 22: Coding bootcamp + lucky Bitcoin exit gave me 50K to fund a world trip
Age 23: 12-country world tour learning new skills every month in a new country.
Age 24-26: Growth hacker roles at German startups, learned systems but felt unfulfilled 
Age 27: Co-founded ColdIQ with Mich
Age 28: Hit our first major milestones learning everything the hard way 
Age 29: Scaled to $6M ARR and became Clay's #1 global partner. Running a business that does $477K/month with 30+ team members across 4 continents.

It's been wild. Today through ColdIQ, we help B2B companies build AI-powered sales systems that work. 

We've run outbound for 300+ organizations and generated millions in pipeline.

The best part? We built this entirely remote with people I genuinely enjoy working with. 

Turns out you can have rapid growth AND life quality - you just need the right systems.

If you want to build your own AI sales agency, I teach everything in our ColdIQ Agency Accelerator, the exact playbook we used to hit $6M ARR in 2 years. 

From Clay workflows to hiring A-players to scaling without burning out.

If you're already doing $1M+ ARR and want help scaling your existing business, let's talk about our done-for-you services.

https://coldiq.com/

If you're not there yet, I share everything for free on LinkedIn and in our 7-day email course (in the featured section).

The AI x Sales opportunity is the biggest wealth creation event of our generation. The market is so massive that there's room for everyone to win.

Ready to start your agency? Join 130+ founders in our accelerator.

https://coldiq.com/accelerator-program

Alex Vacca 🧠🛠️

R.I.P. LinkedIn "experts".

↳ For 2026, I built this step-by-step guide + agents so you can get clients on LinkedIn.

Most LinkedIn "experts" only do two things:

Post generic motivational content.
Send cold DMs that smell like a pitch from the first second.

We decided to do something different.

We created a real system that combines AI + strategic positioning + intentional content:

- Generates consistent visibility without chasing anyone.
- Converts strangers into prospects.
- Works without a team.

What we achieved in 30 days:

→ +14,338,471 organic impressions without spending on ads.
→ +500 inbound leads without sending a single message.
→ +110 calls booked.
→ All using a guide that's already optimized for what's coming in 2026.

What's inside the guide?

→ How to use AI with specific prompts to build authority without burning out.
→ How to structure your content so it sells.
→ How to make LinkedIn work for you 24/7.
→ The exact execution system we use (and how you can replicate it).

Want access to the full guide to dominate LinkedIn in 2026?

Comment "2026" and I'll send it to you.

Co-Founder @ ColdIQ ($6M ARR) | Helped 300+ companies scale revenue with AI & Tech | #1 AI Sales Agency

If your outbound isn't working, it's probably not your copy.

It's your data. Here is how to find the best one.

Most sales teams are sourcing leads from the exact same places.

LinkedIn. ZoomInfo. Apollo.

Your competitor builds a list Monday morning.
You build the same list Monday afternoon.

Now you're both chasing the same person who's already drowning in pitches.

This is why outbound feels broken.

It's not your messaging.
It's that you're fishing in the same pond as everyone else.

We stopped doing that.

Instead, we started hunting in places nobody's paying attention to:

→ Product Hunt launches where founders list their email publicly
→ G2 reviews where buyers complain about your competitor
→ Job boards where hiring signals reveal budget and growth
→ GitHub repos where technical buyers reveal themselves
→ Reddit threads where people ask for alternatives
…and 57 other data sources.

All accessible and ignored by 95% of sales teams.

We built a breakdown of every underused data source for outbound.
What you can scrape from each.
The sales signal it reveals.

Drop "LIST" in the comments and I'll send it over in full resolution.

We scaled to $6M ARR without funnels.

This is why 90% of funnels don’t work anymore 👇

This is how most companies run their GTM:
 
Awareness → Decision → Conversion → Start over.

The problem with that is that every time you close a deal (or lose one), you start all over again.

Plus, you have 3 teams running 3 separate motions

→ Every hand-off creates friction
→ You learn things after it's too late to fix them
→ Your tools live in silos and never connect
→ Each team is optimizing for something different

We replaced all of it with a flywheel.

One system where Content, Ads & Outbound work as one.

Here's how it works:

Motion 1: Value-led outbound

We don't send pitches. We send value.

Every cold email offers something worth consuming:

- A personalized video breakdown
- An industry-specific strategy doc
- A downloadable Notion template
- A teardown of their current approach

The goal is bring qualified traffic into our ecosystem.

Motion 2: Multi-channel retargeting

Every interaction gets captured and scored:

→ LinkedIn profile viewers identified via Sales Nav + PhantomBuster
→ Post engagers tracked through Trigify.io and Common Room
→ Website visitors enriched via RB2B (US) and Snitcher (EU)
→ All touchpoints routed through Clay for lead scoring

One click or a reply to our cold email triggers:

→ LinkedIn + Google retargeting for 30 days
→ Automated email nurture sequence
→ CRM tags them based on intent
→ Sales gets instant notification
→ We track every profile view and post engagement

Motion 3: Tier conversion system

Not everyone converts the same way. So we built multiple paths:

→ High-intent leads book appointments by chat (email, LI DMs)
→ MQLs go into automated nurture sequences
→ Warm accounts get ad retargeting plus personalized campaigns

We use outbound to fuel the flywheel.

Cold email isn't dead. It's just no longer the full strategy.

It's the trigger for the real GTM engine behind the scenes.

Here's why this compounds:

Outbound creates curiosity → drives traffic to the ColdIQ ecosystem
Content builds authority → warms future outbound responses
Ads retarget engaged accounts → move them through the buying cycle
Great delivery → Better case studies → Better prospects → Better clients → Higher prices.

Everything strengthens everything else.

When your GTM engine runs in sync, growth becomes inevitable.

P.S. If you run an agency/B2B business and want to engineer the system that connects all three channels and add $10K-$100K to your MRR, comment "GTM".

Most cold emails get <1% reply rates.

Ours get 10%.

If I had to teach someone cold email from scratch, here's what I'd tell them:

For getting replies, focus on:

1. Real triggers
2. Specific pain
3. Proof that's actually believable

Too many people here just blast templates. But that's not enough anymore.

You need triggers to be relevant.
You need pain that connects to their actual situation.

Two examples you can steal:

"Saw you're hiring 10 SDRs. Usually means ramp time is killing quota."

vs.

"I noticed you work in sales."

One gets replies. One gets deleted.

For the ask, I'd focus on:

1. Giving value before asking for time
2. Making the next step super easy

"Do you have 15 minutes?" doesn't work anymore.

"Mind if I send over the 3-step process we used?" does.

Here's my actual template:

"Hi [Name],

Saw you're [trigger].

Usually that means [pain].

We helped [Company] go from [before] to [after].

They saw [result] in [timeframe].

Mind if I share how?"

That's it.

Everyone overthinks this.

Perfect subject lines. AI personalization. Fancy tools.

But if you nail trigger + pain + value, nothing else matters.

One more thing that works better than anything:

Free work.

"Mind if I build you a custom lead list for your new SDR team?"

That gets replies every time. You're solving their problem before they ask.

It's simple, I know... but it works.

What's your go-to cold email approach? Drop it below 👇

Most lists get 1-2% reply rates.

Ours get 5-15%.

Same frameworks. Different lists.

If I had to teach someone list building from scratch, here's what I'd tell them:

For coverage, focus on:

1. Multiple data sources (one source = missing 40% of your market)
2. Cross-referencing to fill gaps
3. Never trusting a single data provider

Too many people here just pull a list from Apollo and start blasting.

That's not a strategy.

For enrichment, I'd focus on:

1. Validating every email before sending
2. Adding context that makes it relevant
3. Scoring leads so you know who to prioritize

The difference is the work you do before you send.

For precision, I'd focus on:

1. Tiering your list (not all leads are equal)
2. Matching message to segment
3. Spending more time on fewer, better leads

Everyone wants the perfect cold email template.

But if you're sending to the wrong people, no template saves you.

The list is the strategy. Everything else is execution.

We put together a free masterclass on this:

→ Full guide (8 phases)
→ 15+ video lessons
→ 2 AI agents that build lists for you

Comment "LIST" and I'll send it over.

list building masterclass

Andrew Carnegie sold his company for $480 million and became the richest man in America.

Thanks to a decision his partners called "the worst mistake of his life."

In 1870, steel was about to change everything.

Hundreds of entrepreneurs saw the opportunity.

"We need the mines. The railroads. The production. The distribution."

Carnegie made a different choice.

"What if instead of doing 12 things poorly, I dominate ONE?"

He picked production.

Every dollar. Every engineer. One single metric: cost per ton.

1875: Steel cost $100 per ton.
1900: Carnegie was producing it at $12 per ton.

Nobody could compete.

1901: J.P. Morgan bought everything for $480 million.

The "worst mistake" made him the richest man in America.

I'm watching the same mistake happen in AI right now.

Every week someone DMs me:

"I'm starting an AI agency. We do lead gen, AI workflows, chatbots, automation, and consulting."

That's five businesses. Not one.

In 2026, thousands of people will launch AI service businesses.

Everyone will have access to the same tools. Claude. GPT. Make. n8n. Clay.

The tools won't be your edge.

Expertise will.

One niche. One problem. One service. Done better than anyone else.

At ColdIQ, we spent 3 years going deep on GTM.

Not AI broadly. Not "automation." GTM for B2B tech companies.

That focus is the reason we're at $6M ARR.

Carnegie didn't win by doing more.

He won by doing one thing better than anyone else in the world.

Same playbook works in 2026.

Pick your one thing. Go deeper than everyone else.

That's how you win when everyone has the same tools.

the 480 million mistake 

Cold outreach stops feeling cold when you catch people at the right time.

The difference between "not interested" and "let's talk" usually comes down to timing.

We've tested dozens of signals over the past year.

These 5 actually tell you when someone's ready to have a conversation:

1️⃣ They visited your website

Someone from a target company just looked at your pricing page.

They read a case study. Clicked around your features.

They're not sold yet. But they're curious.

→ That's your window. Hit them before they forget you exist.

2️⃣ They just got funding

Fresh capital means spending mode. New hires, new tools, new infrastructure.

That window only lasts about 90 days.

→ Reach out before their growth stack is finalized.

3️⃣ They're hiring for a specific role

A company adding 5 SDRs needs a better sales stack.

A company hiring engineers needs dev tools.

Growth creates gaps. Gaps create budgets.

→ Position yourself before they've already picked someone else.

4️⃣ They're engaging with certain LinkedIn profiles

They're liking posts from thought leaders in your space.

Leaving comments. Saving content about problems you fix.

That's not scrolling. That's someone doing research.

→ Reference the topic. Start with value. Skip the pitch.

5️⃣ They're consuming content about a specific topic

Same idea, but broader.

They're reading about challenges you solve.

Watching videos. Joining conversations.

They know they have a problem. They just haven't found the answer yet.

→ Show up where they're already looking.

Stack two or three of these together and you're reaching out to people already in motion.

lemlist's intent signals tracks all 5 automatically and pings you when it’s time to reach out.

No manual tracking. No spreadsheets. Just real time signals.

Which one would move the needle most for you?

5 intent signals telling you who is ready to buy

He went from $10K to $80K/month with just one extra hire.

No ads and no big sales team. 

Samuel is one of our students inside our Agency Accelerator.

He runs a recruiting agency in Germany serving IT and construction companies.

Before joining, his client acquisition was 100% cold calling.
Dialing gatekeepers. Hoping to reach the CEO. 

It worked, but it didn't scale.

He wanted to grow revenue without growing headcount.

Here's what he built:

→ Scraped job platforms like Indeed to find companies actively hiring
→ Reached out 1-2 days after they posted (perfect timing)
→ Automated his Clay workflows to run evergreen
→ Personalized LinkedIn outreach to candidates with Clay


He went from $10K to $80K/month in less than a year.
Team went from 2 people to 3.
His employee's calendar is now booked with 40-50 candidate appointments per week.

I sat down with Samuel to break down how he achieved this.

You can check the full case study on Youtube.

We are working 1:1 with 5 agencies this month.

If you'd like to add $20-100K MRR in the next 90 days, send the word "Accelerator".

Cold outreach: 8% reply rate.

Warm outbound: 47% reply rate.

Same effort. 5x the responses.

The difference happens because you are reaching people who already know you exist.

Think about it:

-> Someone viewed your profile.
-> Someone engaged your post.
-> Someone followed your company page.

They already recognize your name.

But most B2B teams ignore these people and blast 10,000 cold emails to strangers instead.

Why?

Because capturing warm leads used to be a nightmare:

Sales Nav -> Clay enrichment -> ICP scoring formulas -> Claude for Copy -> Automation setup -> Daily manual work.

6+ tools just to reach people who were already interested.

Valley does all of it.

It captures:
→ Profile viewers
→ Post engagers
→ Competitor post engagers
→ Company page followers

Then it scores them, filters out bad fits, writes personalized outreach, and sends it.

Every day without the manual work.

The people who already know you convert better than strangers.

Now you can actually reach them.

What's your best strategy to convert leads on LinkedIn?

If you are in Cape Town 🇿🇦 and want to succeed in GTM.

This is for you.

On January 29th, ask us anything about building GTM systems with Clay.

If you've seen ColdIQ's posts, followed the work we do, or wondered how top teams actually use Clay to grow their businesses, you might want to join us.

This is your chance to ask real questions, get real answers, and learn how to apply Clay to your own business.

You’ll Learn:

- How ColdIQ uses Clay to power real-world GTM systems
- Signal-based outbound strategies and when to use them
- How to think about Clay if you’re just getting started
- Common mistakes teams make and how to avoid them
- How AI fits into modern outbound and GTM workflows

Stefan 🦁 Kollenberg (Head of Data Partnership) and I will answer the questions from Louis Van Wyk.

I'll be there to share how we've scaled into a multimillion-dollar agency building GTM systems for 300+ companies + sharing our plans for 2026.

We'll kick things off with welcome drinks at 6 PM, then move into a live AMA-style discussion.

Spots are limited.

Link to register ↓

He left Goldman Sachs to start an agency from scratch.

8 weeks later he hit $40K/month with zero ads and no sales team.

Daniel Salzner is one of our students inside our Agency Accelerator

He spent 1 year at Goldman Sachs 

He knew cold outreach worked.
It got him his first customers and his first investors for his previous startup

But this time he wanted to build something different.
An agency with an acquisition system that runs without a sales team.

Here's what he achieved:

→ Started on Upwork to nail his ICP
→ First 4 clients in 4 weeks ($15K MRR)
→ Switched to targeted outbound once he knew who to reach
→ Automated 40-50% of fulfillment
→ One LinkedIn post brought 130K impressions and 30 booked calls

The result?

$0 to $40K MRR in 8 weeks.
$80K collected in 10 weeks.

Still no sales team. Still no ads.

I sat down with Daniel to break down how he achieved this.

You can watch the full case study on my Youtube channel. 

We are working 1:1 with 5 agencies this month. 

If you'd like to add $20-50K MRR in the next 90 days, send the word "Accelerator".

364K to 1.7M impressions in 6 months.

Here's what I changed.

Most people blame the algorithm when LinkedIn doesn't work for them.

But the problem is almost never the algorithm.

It's your profile and content not being optimized to show up in the feed.

Here's the breakdown:

1. My headline

Your headline should scream exactly what you specialize in.

When someone lands on your profile, there's zero confusion about what you help with.

I use the formula: "I help X achieve Y through Z"

So your ideal client knows instantly you’re the right person for that.

Mine is: “Helped 300+ companies scale revenue with AI & Tech”

If your headline is vague, no one remembers you.

2. My content

I stopped posting what I wanted to talk about.

I started answering the burning questions my ideal clients already have.

If they struggle with lead generation, I break that down in detail.

How do you find those questions?

Ask yourself: What are they struggling with right now?

In my case, my ideal client was me 2 years ago.

So I spend time thinking: What kept me up at night when I was at that stage?

That's your content goldmine.

For me, those questions became my content pillars:

→ Workflows and automations
→ Tech stack breakdowns
→ GTM strategies (outbound, content, ads)
→ Operations and systems
→ Lessons from my founder journey

Every piece of content I create is focused on helping B2B business owners and teams increase revenue through technology.

The goal is giving away so much tactical value that people see you as their trusted advisor, before they ever talk to you.

3. My proof

It's not enough to say what you do.

You have to prove you can actually deliver.

- Testimonials
- Achievements
- Case studies
- Screenshots
- Real data

If you claim you get X results, show data. Show client wins.

People need evidence before they trust and invest in you.

Which of these 3 do you think moves the needle the most?

9 Truths I’ve Learned by 30 

(That I wish I’d known at 20)

1) Do > Consume

In 2020, I read 59 books in one year. I made 0$

In 2025, I read 2 books and our business generated multiple 7 figures.

In my early twenties, I was always the guy who knew everything about self-improvement and business.

I was reading books for CEOs when I hadn't even started a side project.

Consuming feels like progress. It's not.

You can spend a lifetime reading and never actually move forward.

2) You can't lose if you don't stop

I've spent 3 years in GTM now.

My goal: be known as one of the top people worldwide helping businesses grow with technology.

That takes years and there's no shortcut.

Businesses come and go.

But the authority you build in an industry? That stays with you.

It only disappears if you restart something new every 3 months.

3) You can only connect the dots looking backward

So many decisions didn't make sense when I made them.

But 10 years later, you look back and see how everything connects.

But for the dots to connect, you have to make decisions first.

4) Posting content is a luck mutiplier

Content has been the biggest hack in my life.

You just become a magnet for interesting people and interesting opportunities.

5) No one is coming to save you

People complain about the system. About AI. About their boss. About their upbringing. Their traumas because it feels comforting to have people feeling bad you.

Everyone got different cards dealt.

But no one will ever care about your life more than you.

You have to save yourself because no one else will.

6) Find your infinite games and your infinite people

For me the ultimate happines is finding great people to build great things with.

That is a game that is fun to play and that has no end.

That's what I'm optimizing for now.

7) Your growth is measured by the uncomfortable conversations you are willing to have

I've seen people stay stuck for years because they're avoiding one conversation.

The conversation they know they need to have but keep putting off.

The people who move fast in life have the hard talk today, not next month.

8) Micro Speed - Macro Patience

Most people are extremely impatient but have zero long-term vision.

Flip it.

Have a 10-year vision. But act fast today.

9) The world is changed by your action not by your opinion

Everyone wants to have impact and change things.

It's easy to comment and easy to have opinions.

But what really matters is what you do.

Not what you say.

—

Which one do you agree/disagree with?

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The Battle

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