Lead generation is broken.

Too many companies:

- Try to generate leads themselves, but fail
- Hire a lead gen agency with bloated retainers who can’t deliver

Lead generation as a whole is always changing, so unless you’ve got a dedicated team
on it (that knows what they’re doing) — you can expect to overpay for underwhelming
results.

That said, in 2025 — you don’t need to try to generate leads yourself, or pay an
outsized retainers for subpar work.

With Leadbird, you:

- Don’t pay for overpriced retainers
- Only pay per meeting-ready-lead we deliver
- Get the expertise of career outbound salespeople

We achieve this for you through:

- Targeted lead list building
- Domain + inbox set-up and warm-up
- Proven cold email copywriting principles
- Done-for-you cold email campaign management

Book a free demo from the link in my bio to join over 115 active clients getting
high-quality, meeting-ready-leads every single month.

Talk soon,
Nick

Nick Abraham

friEND
girlfriEND
boyfriEND

You know what doesn't END?

A well-run campaign with a great offer targeting 5,000 net new prospects per month.

I send 2M+ cold emails and 1M+ LinkedIn DMs per month for 1,000+ active clients across Leadbird and Cleverly

As expected, outbound marketers are freaking out about Google's AI Inbox update, with some calling it the death of cold email. I’m here to tell you not to panic.

Here’s why this won’t kill cold email as long as you’re half-decent at it, and willing to put the work in:

(1) First of all, this isn’t currently being deployed on Workspace emails (only personal). That means you literally don’t need to worry for the time being.

(2) For when that roll out does happen, Google will not have it easy. Enterprises don't want AI to read or index their data.

This has been why enterprise AI adoption has been so slow, and Google isn't exempt.

(3) Even if SOMEHOW, this got deployed to every Workspace inbox, people will find workarounds and loopholes within 7 days (just like we did for every other infrastructure change).

The ONLY people who can potentially suffer here are people who are weak at cold email and want a low-effort, high-results motion.

And they shouldn't be sending cold emails anyway.

If I told you to pick all AI-written emails out of your inbox, I bet you could do so with 90% accuracy. It brings up an interesting point:

AI in outbound is great, but so many people are going way too overboard.

People will use Claygent + another prompt to come up with crazy, “human-looking” lines that sound great on paper but rarely get executed well against an entire lead list.

You might get some right on the nose, but the majority of them will certainly sound a little “off”, thereby killing your campaign altogether.

The variance, even with quality checks, is a little too high (as of Jan 2026…because this will certainly change).

The “right” way to handle this right now is using it to find super simple variables (i.e. company case study name) and entering those variables into human-written sentences.

If you have any other use cases that actually* work, drop them below.

There is no bigger waste of time in outbound than the debate over warm-up pools and which ones to use.

Take it from someone who bought into the hype before (I literally tried to build a company solely focused on this, promising the same stuff a ton of vendors do today): Just use Smartlead’s warm-up pool and move on.

In fact, private warm-up pools can be even riskier than public ones, considering that Seeds can burn out (ask me how I know 🙄).

At the time of writing this, we have ~130,000 inboxes in the Smartlead pool and will continue to add as we need them.

In short: There are a million other things you should spend time worrying about regarding outbound. Your warm-up pool isn’t one of them.

PS - This was a part of Smartlead’s roundtable from last week. It was an awesome time, and I highly recommend watching the replay on YouTube if you couldn’t make it. Thanks to Vaibhav Namburi for having us!

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Hey, thanks for replying. 

Here's the guide:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ogdq83o7sRMARFopD_t_-nqHF0XIOPsD/view?usp=share_link

Leadbird

P.S. If you’re an established agency or SaaS with a GREAT offer and want leads — Leadbird can help

… and we’ll do it on a Pay-Per-Lead basis.

Book today: https://www.leadbird.io/book-a-call

Spintax Guide

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yuri

90% of the time someone asks me about cold email infrastructure, I tell them to take a step back and consider what actually matters.

Yes, at scale and at the highest level of outbound, the infrastructure you use has a material impact on performance.

But (and I don’t mean to come off as arrogant in saying this), most of the time people ask this, they have issues with the fundamentals of their outbound operation that render the infrastructure question irrelevant.

Things like:

1. Company names not being formatted properly (ex: still having “LLC” or “Inc.” in the name).

2. Having emojis / special symbols in contacts’ first names.

3. Not properly cleaning and formatting prospects’ job titles.

4. Having a lead list that isn’t well-targeted.

5. Not having basic copy variance set up.

These are things that come much before advanced infrastructure, yet people seem to overlook.

My advice: Get all of the above and the rest of the cold email fundamentals down first before even starting to worry about advanced infrastructure.

You’ll save time, money, and headaches.

Something to keep in mind when you see lead generation agency owners flexing crazy Smartlead / Instantly screenshots on the timeline:

Anyone with half a brain knows how to get a campaign to a 10% reply rate and 60% positive reply rate.

It doesn’t come from being some type of cold email wizard.

It’s simply putting an extremely low-friction CTA in with some type of money-back guarantee.

And to be clear, nothing is wrong with that. We still do it for certain clients, where it makes sense for the offer.

But, flexing this to try to show prospects that these are typical results is just silly.

Sure, there may be some people that aren't super familiar with outbound that are impressed by this.

But, there's also a cohort of people who are very familiar with it and know exactly what led to that performance, thereby degrading your credibility instead of adding to it.

You’re better off showing “worse” results for a much harder campaign!

You, not a $32B company: I might burn my TAM!

Ramp, a $32B company: We must email every decision-maker on earth 10 times per year.

As silly as it sounds, it’s true: If you play your cards right, it’s impossible to burn your TAM with outbound.

Playing your cards right, in this regard, means coming up with fresh and unique angles to re-market to the same prospects.

Ramp has mastered this.

They have different reps reach out at different times with overall solid emails.

Though it feels like they’re always in my inbox, I’ve never once felt pestered, spammed, or annoyed.

They’re doing this tastefully, with personalization and relevance.

And if Ramp isn’t worried about burning their TAM, there’s a great chance you shouldn’t be either.

My advice to you: Figure out ways to reach out to the same prospects that weren’t interested or didn’t respond prior in unique ways, and you’ll never worry about TAM burn again.

I would love to tell you that the solution to all your lead gen problems is the intricate Clay workflow I spent 43 hours building, but that’s not true. For 90% of teams struggling to generate leads, the problem is much simpler:

A bad offer.

Your offer, above all else, has the biggest impact on whether or not you book calls from cold email.

To that point, I can’t tell you the amount of conversations we’ve had with clients that amounted to us trying to convince them to improve their offer and make it more suitable for outbound.

Because so many of them simply don’t say anything special or that peaks the prospect’s interest.

Here’s a real example we dealt with:

The client sold CRM implementation services.

They wanted to run with messaging along the lines of: “We help HubSpot users market better and get the full use of their CRM.”

…so can every other company in their inbox.

The right way to think about this (and how we did so for this client) was to instead sell an outcome.

So, we transitioned the offer to strictly companies that used HubSpot, and saying:

“{name] - most HubSpot users don’t have a nurture re-engagement flow. I’d love to help re-book 10-15 appointments onto your calendar by building you one.

Interested in speaking?”

This email has a much higher likelihood of being responded to than the prior one, because you directly promise an outcome instead of using vague corporate messaging.

Let me know if you have any questions on doing this successfully.

Alex Hormozi says he books 4x more appointments when he calls his leads immediately after showing interest.

If you’re sending outbound and want to systemize this so that you can do it at scale, follow this process:

Tech / vendors you’ll need:

- Masterinbox.com
- LeadMagic
- Salesfinity
- No Accent Callers

—

1. Build correct tagging within Master Inbox to identify positive replies.

2. Set up an automation to automatically enrich positive replies to pull those leads’ phone numbers via LeadMagic.

3. Build the simple automation to update the contact within Master Inbox and set two tag: “interested” and “phone number found”.

4. Set up the automation to push to a call list in Salesfinity for your rep (via No Accent Callers) to call immediately.

I can’t put the same “4x improvement” tag on this, but we have seen a much better appointment set rate after implementing a flow to call our leads faster.

Comment if you want me to make a video on building these automations / setting up the system.

If someone tells you they can get you consistent leadflow from outbound in 30 days or less, don’t listen.

We send over 2 million cold emails per month for almost 300 clients… trust me, it takes 60-90 days to properly get consistent lead flow coming from outbound if you’re starting from zero.

BUT

There are some things you can do to speed up the process that we are implementing across the client base.

Namely, there are 7 types of campaigns you can keep always on and running in the background, additional to your actual campaign copy. 

Though these won't put a hundred calls per month on your calendar, they are certainly worth running and do not take much input or upkeep at all.

I break down each of them in detail in the carousel below, so be sure to save it:

Always-On Campaigns

Elon Musk bought X and implemented signal-based outreach to sell ads. And honestly, it’s not the worst play in the world:

- The email looks human
- It grabbed media from my post
- They did some filtering to see I talk about business
- They mention “testing” paid ads (lower-risk)
- They emphasize the “free hands-on support”

I’m sure there are ways they’re identifying business owners and automating a lot of the tedious work to set this up, but the end product still really isn’t bad.

This is your signal that no matter how big your company, using the right signals for outreach likely isn’t a bad idea.

Google your name right now. What comes up?

Does your website show up?

If so, does it have a VSL?

Is it full of case studies and customer interviews?

What about your LinkedIn and X profiles?

Are they optimized and active?

Are you showing off your expertise?

This might sound overboard, but this is exactly what goes through a prospect’s head when you email them.

The first thing 90% of them do is Google your name.

If you can’t show that you’re a real person with a real business that solves real problems for real clients, you’re dead in the water.

Really, cold outbound is nothing more than a trust game.

You need to make it so that someone who doesn’t know you one bit automatically trusts you. And you do so by optimizing everything I talked about above.

If you don’t have those things in check, much of your outbound is just a waste of time.

Alex Hormozi famously says that if you want more leads, you should dedicate the first half of your day to getting in front of more people.

Whether that’s content, paid ads, or however else, you need to be getting in front of people.

Outbound, generally, will be both the cheapest and easiest to generate results from immediately.

And let me tell you after doing this first-hand: Alex Hormozi is right about this.

In college, I started an Instagram growth agency.

I did everything I thought I needed to do:

- Make a logo
- Put up website
- Form LLC
- Post blogs

And when all of that was done, I looked up and still had zero people paying me.

That’s when I started dedicating my entire day to messaging prospects and seeing if they’d get on a call.

The business hit $10,000/mo of revenue in the months that followed.

The point:

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of sales ops and revenue tech out there, but most of the time, all you need to do is get yourself in front of more prospects.

Shreya Batra

We manage deliverability for 130,000+ inboxes with Hypertide.io. At that volume, you can't afford to baby underperforming domains. Our 4-step process for handling deliverability issues:

Step 1: Flag problems early

We monitor inbox performance daily. If a domain is underperforming by 40%+ vs that client's average, it gets flagged automatically.

Step 2: Kill it without losing capacity

We delete the domain using Hypertide Layover. The domain gets removed from billing immediately, but sending still works for 18 days. This gives us breathing room without sudden volume drops.

Step 3: Replace while the old one's still running

During those 18 days, new infrastructure gets spun up and warmed properly. This works so that there’s loss in total sending capacity.

Step 4: Protect the replies

Once the old domain shuts off completely, Hypertide Relay kicks in. All replies from the deleted domain automatically forward to the new infrastructure. Importantly, there are no leads missed and no broken threads.

Quite importantly, we don't try to save domains that are already burnt.

A lot of agencies waste weeks trying to nurse underperforming infrastructure back to health. Using this system, we just assume domains will fail and build systems that swap them out seamlessly.

As a result, capacity never drops and your deliverability stays clean. Let me know if you have any questions on this.

Local lead generation is so underrated that we started asking all clients (not just ones with local businesses) if they’re open to it on the onboarding form, so that we can run this campaign.

No matter what anyone tells you, cold email is most definitely getting harder. Each day, we have to think harder about the best way to get in front of prospects in a way that stands out.

This local lead generation play is exactly it.

We:

1. Call out that we’re in the area.

2. Casually mention what we do and share how we did so.

3. Use a soft, casual CTA to gauge interest.

Yes, this is of course harder to scale in that there are finite local businesses you can sell to. But, in most cases and for most offers, this is worth trying.

If I were a local general contractor, for example, I know I’d be inclined to work with an SEO agency in my area as opposed to one on the other side of the country. There’s a local preference there that you can tap into.

If you have anecdotes on local lead generation working well for you, leave them below.

After spending $2M to send 30,000,000+ cold emails for 500+ clients, this is my number one learning about outbound:

Offer. Is. King.

You hear everyone say it, but nobody really internalizes it.

You can have:

- 3-4 blocky paragraphs
- 2-3 links
- Images
- OK-but-not-great targeting
- Basic infrastructure

…and still outperform the “best” outbound teams who spend thousands of dollars trying to optimize all of the above, as long as your offer is strong.

Strong offer = more replies.

More replies = less spam risk.

Less spam risk = more replies.

The cycle repeats.

Before you try to optimize for anything else, make sure your offer is strong to begin with.

I mean this diplomatically, but if you can’t get cold email responses from your ICP, it is not because inboxes are crowded. It’s likely one or more of the following factors:

1. Bad offer
2. Weak email
3. No social proof
4. All of the above

The simplest way to get responses is following this workflow, which attacks all of the above issues:

1. Come up with a no-brainer offer that the prospect would feel stupid saying no to (i.e. performance, money-back guarantee, etc.)

2. Use Apollo to find the email of the right job title to sell to at the company (might be CEO, might not be).

3. Do a baseline level of research (or use Clay) to write a line personal enough to the decision-maker.

4. Put it all together with a template like this:

{{name}} - saw {{personalized line}}.

Just curious, if I could {{generate result}}, would you be interested in speaking?

Only asking because we helped {{company}} do exactly that, and figured {{their company}} might want something similar.

Worth a chat?

If you do this right, you will get responses. Period.

I uploaded this video on November 18, 2024 saying the only 3 channels you need to get 50 calls/month and blow past $1M in revenue are:

- Cold email
- Cold calling
- LinkedIn

It was true back then, but is far more true just 13 months later.

The truth is, as much as nobody likes to admit it, cold email is getting harder. We’re no longer in the 2021 glory days, where seemingly anyone with a few inboxes could book calls from the channel.

Yes, it’s still viable (and still our bread and butter), but you’d be foolish not to diversify into cold calling and LinkedIn DMs (the right way) as you solidify cold email.

After working with 500+ clients and having 283 active right now, there are 3 things I wish I did on Day 1 of my agency.

(they would've made me much wealthier today)

1. Become an expert on my financials early.

This is so easy to overlook but ridiculously important.

At any point when asked, you should know your numbers to a T.

- What was last month's revenue?
- What was last month's gross margin?
- What was last month's net margin?
- What was last month's profit?

The more you can get in the routine of checking and understanding this, the better.

2. Make demos booked your north star.

You should wake up every day trying to improve that metric.

Every single day. Forget "marketing" and "growth" and "building the brand".

Every day, wake up and figure out how to put more meetings on your calendar, and you will grow.

3. Keep fulfillment as simple as possible while still being able to get the results you promise.

The more complex, the harder it gets to maintain.

Once you have these in place, and you can communicate your offer + results in a non-gimmicky way, you're on the right path.

If you have any questions on this, let me know.

We got to 0-10 clients with outbound, but what took us from 10-30 clients was something completely different: Referrals.

How we did it:

1. Put a question on onboarding form: "Is there anyone in your network that you think could benefit from this service?"

2. Client would often think of someone and put their name/email.

3. We would manually reach out saying "[name] is a customer of ours and said you might be a fit for out services - worth a chat?"

This worked because it was easy for our client to think of someone, and the person they thought of would likely think "well if they're using this service, there's likely something to it".

NOTE: This is far easier when you have a strong offer + social proof to lean on!

Slinging Inboxes

I do stuff for fun nowadays. Enjoying every minute of it

Ben Rasmussen

Cold email agencies are not product consultants.

Yet every week I see agencies trying to solve product-market fit for clients with fundamentally broken offers.

This pattern destroys businesses.

Client comes in with a terrible value proposition. 

→ The offer doesn't resonate. 
→ The market doesn't want it. 
→ The positioning is confused.

And the agency thinks their job is to fix it.

Wrong.

You're a traffic broker. 

You drive qualified prospects to offers. 

That's the entire scope of your responsibility.

You're not a product coach. 
You're not a business therapist. 
You're not a miracle worker who transforms garbage into gold.

But agencies take on these impossible clients anyway. 

They convince themselves that perfect targeting or brilliant copy will overcome a fundamentally flawed offer.

It won't.

No amount of cold email sophistication saves a product nobody wants. 

No deliverability optimization fixes a value proposition the market rejects.

Then these agencies wonder why campaigns fail. 

They blame their infrastructure. 

They question their strategies. 

They think cold email doesn't work.

The channel works fine. 

Your client selection is broken.

Meanwhile successful agencies qualify clients ruthlessly. 

They only work with businesses that have proven offers. 

They verify product-market fit before sending a single email.

They understand their role: amplify what already converts. 

Not fix what's fundamentally broken.

Stop babysitting clients with trash offers. 

Stop trying to solve their existential business problems through cold email.

Pick better clients. Work with businesses that have real market demand. 

Drive traffic to offers people actually want.

Your job is distribution, not transformation.

Follow me Ben Rasmussen for more cold email insights.

The market decides what has value. 

Not you.

This fundamental misunderstanding destroys more agencies than any tactical mistake.

Entrepreneurs fall in love with their offers. 

They convince themselves the market needs what they're selling. 

They build elaborate strategies around products nobody wants.

Then they wonder why nobody buys.

You don't get to decide what the market values. 

You can't force an offer down someone's throat through clever copywriting or persistent follow-up.

If what you're selling provides no value to prospects, there's zero situations where they give you money.

Period.

Successful agencies validate demand before building infrastructure. 

They prove people actually want what they're selling through manual outreach.

50 personalized emails. Real conversations. Direct market feedback.

If nobody responds positively to careful manual outreach, automation won't save you. 

Scaling doesn't fix fundamental product-market fit problems.

The market is telling you something. Listen.

Most entrepreneurs override clear market signals with their own assumptions. 

They think they know better than the dozens of prospects who ignored their offer.

Wrong approach entirely.

Your assumptions mean nothing. 

The market's response means everything.

Prove demand manually first. 

Get real people to say yes to your offer. 

Confirm they'll actually pay for what you're selling.

Then automate what works. Not before.

Follow me Ben Rasmussen for more cold email insights.

Your cold email campaign is failing for exactly eight reasons.

Eight specific, fixable problems that agencies refuse to acknowledge.

Here's the complete list:

1. Your offer's shit
2. Your targeting's shit
3. Your copy's shit
4. You look like a scammer
5. Your response time's shit
6. Your deliverability's shit
7. Your follow-up sequences are shit
8. You don't follow up with responses who ghost you

That's it. 

Those are the only variables that determine whether cold email works for your agency.

Most agencies blame external factors when campaigns fail. 

They talk about inbox saturation, spam filters or claim the channel is dying.

Wrong diagnosis entirely.

The channel works fine. 

Your execution is broken in one of these eight areas.

Usually it's number one. 

Your offer doesn't resonate. 

The market doesn't want what you're selling. 

No amount of optimization fixes fundamental product-market fit problems.

Sometimes it's number two. 

You're targeting the wrong prospects. 

Perfect offer delivered to wrong audience equals zero results.

Often it's number five or eight. 

You respond slowly or you don't follow up persistently.

Prospects ghost because you let them.

However successful agencies audit these eight variables ruthlessly. 

They identify which one is broken. 

They fix it. 

They move forward.

Your cold email problems aren't mysterious. 

They're one of these eight things.

Go through the list. 

Be honest about which ones apply to your campaigns. 

Fix them systematically.

Stop looking for complicated answers to simple problems.

Your offer either resonates or it doesn't. 
Your targeting either reaches the right people or it doesn't. 
Your follow-up either persists or it doesn't.

These aren't subjective. They're measurable. They're fixable.

But only if you stop pretending the problem is something else.

Follow me Ben Rasmussen for more cold email insights.

Your infrastructure obsession is killing your business.

Every week I see agencies spending thousands on domains, automation tools, and deliverability systems before validating their core offer.

This pattern keeps showing up. 

Entrepreneurs jump straight to technical setup because it feels productive.

Buying domains feels like progress. 

Setting up automation sequences feels sophisticated. 

Building infrastructure feels like building a real business.

It's expensive procrastination disguised as preparation.

Before you scrape a single lead. 

Before you buy a single domain. 

Before you set up any automation tool.

You need an offer that makes someone go "Oh yeah I need that."

Everything else is secondary.

Nobody cares about your perfectly warmed domains if your value proposition doesn't resonate. 

Your deliverability doesn't matter if prospects don't want what you're selling.

The sequence matters enormously:

First, validate your offer. 
Test it manually. 
Send 50 personalized emails. 
Get real feedback. 
Adjust based on market response.

Then scale with infrastructure once you know it converts.

Most agencies do this backward. 

They build elaborate systems for offers that haven't proven market fit. 

Then they wonder why their expensive infrastructure produces zero results.

Meanwhile successful agencies prove demand first. 

They validate their offers through manual outreach. 

They confirm people actually want what they're selling.

Only then do they invest in automation and scale.

Your offer either solves a real problem or it doesn't. 

No amount of technical sophistication changes that fundamental reality.

Stop hiding behind infrastructure projects. 

Prove your offer works first.

Follow me Ben Rasmussen for more cold email insights.

Validation comes before automation.

Yet every week I see new agencies dropping thousands on infrastructure before proving their offer converts.

This pattern kills businesses faster than anything else.

Zero clients. 
Zero case studies. 
Zero proof the market wants what they're selling.

But they're buying domains. 

Setting up automation sequences. 

Subscribing to every tool in the cold email stack.

Why?

Because infrastructure feels like progress. 

Buying tools feels professional. 

Setting up systems feels like building a real business.

It's avoidance disguised as preparation.

Here's what actually needs to happen first:

Send 50 manual emails. 
Personalized. 
Thoughtful. 
Direct outreach to your exact ICP.
Get real responses. 
Actual feedback. 
Market validation that people care about your offer.

If nobody responds to 50 carefully crafted manual emails, your problem isn't automation. 

Your problem is your offer doesn't resonate.

No amount of deliverability optimization fixes that fundamental issue.

But agencies skip this step entirely. 

They jump straight to scaling something that's never been proven to work.

Then they wonder why their expensive infrastructure produces zero results.

Meanwhile successful agencies prove demand first. 

They validate their offers through direct conversations. 

They confirm people actually want what they're selling.

Only then do they invest in automation and scale.

The sequence matters enormously:

Manual validation. 
Real feedback. 
Offer refinement. 
Then automation.

Most agencies do this backward. 

They automate garbage. 

Then they're surprised when automated garbage produces garbage results.

Stop hiding behind tools and infrastructure. Prove your offer works first 
through direct, manual outreach.

Once you know it converts, scale it. 

Not before.

Follow me Ben Rasmussen for more cold email insights.

Your value proposition has exactly two options.

1) Help prospects make more money. 

Or 

2) Help them save money they're currently losing.

That's the entire list of things businesses care about.

Every successful cold email I've seen boils down to one of these two outcomes. 

Every campaign that consistently books meetings communicates this clearly in the opening line.

Meanwhile struggling agencies bury their value proposition in paragraph three. 

They lead with credentials. 
They talk about their process. 
They explain their methodology.

Nobody cares.

Your first sentence either connects to revenue or it doesn't. 

If prospects can't immediately understand how you impact their bottom line, you've already lost them.

"We help e-commerce brands scale" means nothing. 
"We help e-commerce brands add $50k monthly revenue through email marketing" is a value proposition.

"We improve operational efficiency" is vague nonsense. 
"We save manufacturing companies $30k monthly by reducing waste in production" actually communicates value.

The difference determines whether prospects respond or delete.

Most agencies think they're communicating value when they're actually just describing features. 

They talk about what they do instead of what it means for the prospect's business.

Wrong approach entirely.

Prospects don't buy services.

 They buy outcomes. Revenue increase or cost reduction. 

Everything else is just explanation of how you deliver those outcomes.

If your cold email doesn't clearly communicate one of those two things in the first sentence, you're getting ignored.

Not because your offer is bad. 

Because you failed to connect it to money fast enough.

Attention spans are dead. 

You have one sentence to demonstrate you understand business fundamentals.

Make more money. 

Save money currently being lost. 

Pick one and lead with it.

Everything else can wait for sentence two.

Follow me Ben Rasmussen for more cold email reality.

Speed matters more than totals.

This keeps coming up in agency conversations. 

Someone celebrates hitting $100k revenue and I have to ask the uncomfortable question:

Over what timeframe?

$100k spread across two years isn't an achievement. 

It's barely sustainable. 

That's $4,166 per month. 

You could make more managing a Chipotle.

But $100k in two months? 

That's a different conversation entirely. 

That's a legitimate business with real momentum.

The timeframe completely changes what the number means.

Most entrepreneurs measure success in absolute terms. 

They hit revenue milestones and think they've arrived. 

They celebrate totals without considering velocity.

Wrong approach entirely.

Rich versus poor isn't determined by how much you made. 

It's determined by how fast you made it.

Money earned slowly is just a salary with extra steps. 

Money earned quickly is wealth creation. 

The difference is fundamental.

Your cold email agency doing $50k annually is poverty. 

Another agency doing $50k monthly is on track for seven figures. 

Same number. Completely different businesses.

This creates a false sense of progress. 

You see the revenue number going up and assume you're winning. 

Meanwhile you're just slowly grinding toward mediocrity.

Successful agencies obsess over acceleration. 

They track growth rates, not just totals. 

They measure how quickly revenue compounds.

They understand that speed is the actual metric that matters.

If your revenue took two years to reach $100k, you're not celebrating success. 

You're diagnosing a systemic problem with your acquisition or offer.

Stop measuring in absolutes. Start measuring in velocity.

The market rewards speed. 

Everything else is just slow failure disguised as gradual progress.

Follow me Ben Rasmussen for more cold email reality.

"SaaS companies" isn't a target market.

Every week I hear agencies describe their ICP this way. 

They think naming an industry counts as targeting strategy.

It doesn't.

When you say you target SaaS companies, you've said nothing useful. 

You haven't defined who you're actually reaching or why your offer matters to them specifically.

Here's what actual targeting looks like:

B2B or B2C SaaS? 
That determines completely different pain points and buying processes.

10 employees or 100? 
Resource constraints and decision-making authority are entirely different.

$1M ARR or $50M ARR? 
Budget availability and sophistication levels aren't even comparable.

Marketing tools or fintech platforms? 
The problems they face have zero overlap.

These distinctions aren't semantic. 

They're fundamental to whether your offer resonates.

You can't personalize at scale when your audience is "SaaS companies." 

You have nothing specific to say. 
Your value proposition stays vague. 
Your emails sound like everyone else's.

Meanwhile agencies crushing it have razor-sharp targeting. 

They know exactly who they're reaching. 

Their offers address specific problems for specific company profiles.

This precision shows up immediately in their messaging. 

Prospects can tell you understand their world.

Most agencies think broad targeting gives them more opportunities. 

They want to cast the widest net possible.

Wrong approach entirely.

When you dilute your message to appeal to everyone, it resonates with nobody. 

When you speak directly to a specific profile, response rates jump immediately.

Stop hiding behind vague industry labels. 

Define your ICP with actual specificity.

Company size. 
Revenue range. 
Specific vertical. 
Growth stage. Geographic location.

The data proves this out: narrow targeting consistently outperforms broad targeting in response rates and conversion quality.

Generic targeting equals generic results equals broke.

Follow me Ben Rasmussen for more cold email reality.

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The Battle

Nick Abraham

Ben Rasmussen

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Performance ScoreNick Abraham's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreBen Rasmussen's LinkedIn Performance

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taplio

The Battle

Nick Abraham

Ben Rasmussen

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Nick Abraham's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreBen Rasmussen's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreNick Abraham's LinkedIn Performance