🦾Eric Nowoslawski

I am a direct response outbound lead generation expert. And by that jumble of words, I mean that I leverage cold email to build predictable revenue pipelines for my clients. 

I leverage over 20 databases to merge Firmographic, Technographic, and Persona data to build highly targeted playbooks with my clients. 

I believe we need to arm sales teams with the knowledge of their total Target Addressable Market and teach them how to score that Market for which companies have the most pain and need their solution. 

The best way to do this is to look at public indicators such as open jobs data, employee growth/attrition, social media growth, web traffic, new product launches, employee sentiment, individual employee tech investment, company tech stacks, etc.

With this data, not only are you only messaging with people that you know have a problem that you can solve, you also are armed  with powerful messaging that cuts through the noise. 

I teach sales teams to embrace technology and multiply what is possible per employee.

Founder

2 years of effort went into the Prospeo.io Company/Contact API and this is why it was WELL worth the wait.

2 years ago Jon asked me, "If there were a database that could do anything you want, what would you wish it would do?"

I had a laundry list of ideas from

- Data accuracy and transperancy
- Organization tools for the team
- API capabilities

And then, I didn't hear from them for a little while. We kept using their email finding tool in all our Clay tables as a happy customer of course but I thought they were just focusing on that.

Then Hugo reaches out to me and says, "Hey, we finished the database the way you wanted. Want to have a look?"

I sign in to Prospeo V2 and my mouth is on the floor of everything they built. Good things definitely take time and they crushed it on this one.

I go over my favorite parts in the video down below but here are my favorite features you should check out if you don't watch the video and go straight to the site.

- Data quantity - I did comparisons of searches against Sales Navigator and was extemely happy with the counts that come back for the same filters on people and company searches in sales nav vs. prospeo

- Data quality - Every profile I checked worked at the company Prospeo says that they work at. I tried to be sneaky and check a friend that I know changed jobs a week ago and they already had that in their database.

- Email quality - All emails are SMTP verified with bounceban on top of that.
The API is so great. I just spent the christmas break making a company database we are going to scrap and just use their's.

- When you enrich a person, you get the company data with the API response so you don't have to worry about double spending on companies!

- The platform is so fast to make searches in.

- Your team can visually make searches and then click a button to get all of the JSON of that search to quickly get that search with their API.

I think they are just starting to launch it and I would highly recommend checking it out to help with your company and contact finding workflows. 

We are starting to switch a lot of TAM links internally over to them so we can stop downloading and uploading so many CSVs!

Not paid to post this or anything. 

Just found it last week and thought they did a really great job and other people would like to see it!

Check it out here! 

https://lnkd.in/dJw9eAEy

Founder Growth Engine X | Clay Enterprise Partner

Tomorrow, join me and many other outbound minds to discuss the state of outbound in 2026. (of course focused on cold email because I'm not qualified to talk about anything else). 

We’ll cover the dreaded Gmail AI filter tweet that hasn’t even been rolled out yet that everyone is asking about. 

Deliverability trends we are seeing from sending 7M emails per month on behalf of our customers

The way data is getting more accurate and cheaper and combining this with AI can cheaply laser target your ICP. 

I’ll leave the link to register in the comments. Hope to see you there! 

Vaibhav Namburi
Harris Kenny
Nick Abraham
Wesley Hoang 🛠️♠️
Alex Fine🌲
Christian Oland
Matthew Lucero
Enzo Carasso 🧲

I built a way to monitor your customer's LinkedIn content with a RapidAPI endpoint and Cursor so you can reach out to your ICP and name drop a customer they have heard of. Here's the step by step on how to do it.

I think one of the best ways that we can reach out to an ICP is if they already know of one of our successful case studies. 

You could ask your customer for a referral, but that puts work on them. 

You can monitor who they already know and reach out as if it's a regular message, and the prospect will actually have heard of the social proof you're mentioning. 

To set this up, all I did was give a voice note while walking my dog and Cursor took care of the rest. 

I hope you can even copy and paste this post and give some more context and set it up yourself. 

Step 1

Get the Rapid API endpoint. If you comment "monitor", I'll send it to you. Sorry to play this game but LinkedIn hates external links. 

Step 2

Use the MCP in RapidAPI and connect that to Cursor

Step 3

Explain what you want it to do. 

"Hey Cursor, I want to use this endpoint to build a micro app that I can enter a comma separated list of linkedin companies. I want you to 

1) find all of the posts of the linkedin companies
2) Find all of the people that work at the company and find their posts
3) Pull all of the people that have liked and commented on the posts and filter for XYZ titles and company size. 

Step 4

Add a little bit more to the prompt above about how you exactly want this to work.

Step 5

Enter Plan mode in Cursor. Drop your prompts and watch the plan

Step 6 

Edit/Approve the plan. I was lucky that Gemini Flash got this done in one shot, so I'm hoping I can pass this on and help others use it too. 

Again, comment "monitor" and I'll send it to you but if you don't want to wait for me, searching rapidapi(.)com(user)apibuilderz should help those that want to search on their own!

This workflow I made with Cursor and hosted on Railway saves me 6 hours a week on email deliverability tasks and our customers get much more consistent results from it. 

Over the last 6 months, we really systematized our email deliverability infrastructure. 

No more guessing and then ordering domains that we thought felt right. I built an SOP for everyone that I can give away at the end of the post. 

We would miss customers. Over order for some, under order for others. It was crazy. 

So we got extremely scientific about it. 

We keep all domains marked as status, Active, Insurance, or Cancel in Supabase. 

We always want to keep AT LEAST 50% of our Active daily sending volume in Insurance so that we can always rotate our domains. 

Every Friday, I would use a python script that would get the reply rates of all the domains in our campaigns so I could make decisions of what should be cancelled and what should be rotated from Insurance to Active. 

Once I had the numbers, spreadsheet warfare would begin. 

Making sure that every customer had enough and we didn't cancel too many domains. Numbers wouldn't look right so I'd check them manually. It was a mess.

Now, every Friday, I run this little Preview Global Rebatch and it send me a slack message with every customer, their daily send goal, how many domains are active, how many domains do we suggest to cancel, how many domains I need to buy more of, etc. 

And I hit accept and not only does it change all the statuses in our Supabase, it also pulls all of our customer's campaigns and swaps out the old domains for new domains. 

Easily my favorite workflow for deliverability. 

If you want our email deliverability SOP that goes over how we do this and how we work with Hypertide.io and Zapmail.ai to get it done, comment "primary" and I'll comment it back to you!

Here's the prompt to get you started building your own google maps scraper with Claude code or Cursor. 

One of my favorite things about LLMs and coding is that my team can build things that impact our business and then everyone can use. Bharatt Arorah built this google maps scraper for us and it's been so easy to use. 

Then when someone else on the team wants to add to it, it'd be really easy for them. 

This scraper is built on a RapidAPI endpoint that gives us 3,000,000 requests per month for $100 a month. 

Here's the prompt I'd give for Cursor or Claude Code to figure this out for you. 

First connect to the Rapid API MCP and then run this because it'll ask you to restart. (I don't use the MCP to actually run the code. I just use it to connect to the documentation to help set everything up). 

If you need the list of zip codes don't ask me or your mother for it. Ask Chat GPT literally asking "Do you know of any GitHub repositories that have all of the zip codes in the United States, or any other public ways that you can download that information easily?" and it'll come up, I promise. 

Long Text not optimized for a linkedin post AT ALL. 

Hey cursor, can you explore this Google Maps endpoint and build a plan for me that would be able to create an input where I can say a Google category, and then you'd be able to scrape it?

Here is a file of all the zip codes around the United States so that you have something to parse by. Search every one of these zip codes with my keyword to then find the companies that are in those areas. Build something into it that includes logic that, if a company is in a different business category that is excluded from my results, I want to be able to filter for the category. Let me know if we could exclude the cities and also run multiple category searches in one run. Set up the database schema to pull the zip codes from SupaBase. Literally go one by one doing a search across each of the zip codes. I also might wanna specify that I want to include certain cities, exclude certain cities, or include and exclude states in the future as well. Let's also add the filters for that to be possible as well. 

Hope that helps and provides a good lead gen project for people trying to get into coding with Cursor or Claude code.

Send those companies over to a Clay webhook to have a contact finding waterfall and you're all set!

I have to admit, six months ago I didn't get the point of MCPs.         
                                         
This post is for people who were like me. Also for my employees who are reluctant to start using these tools.                     
                                         
What is an MCP (Model Context Protocol)?                    
                                         
Think of it as a gateway for an AI agent to understand a tool.         
                                         
Instead of asking an agent to read API documentation (it will miss things),  
you connect it to an MCP. The agent figures out:                
 - What endpoints exist                             
 - What payloads to send                            
 - How to actually accomplish your task                     
                                         
Then you ask it to write the TypeScript or Python to make those API calls   
directly.                                   
                                         
Way more efficient. Way fewer tokens.                     
                                         
 My biggest tip:                                
                                         
 We're not actually doing a lot of work with MCPs as in moving data or doing work with MCP.             
                                         
We use them so agents understand the API documentation better.         
                                         
The MCP helps the agent learn the tool. Then we have Claude write actual code that calls the APIs.                                
                                         
That's the workflow:   
                           
 1. Connect MCP                                 
 2. Agent learns the tool                            
 3. Agent writes the automation code                      
 4. You run the code directly                          
                                        
 If you've been confused about MCPs, hopefully this helps.

A couple of customers have asked me what I think about this announcement from Google and here's my humble prediction. 

I'm not going to be naive and say that this won't have any affect on cold email. But also, even the video doesn't explain very well what this will do. 

I think that there is a best case scenario and a worst case scenario. 

Best case - this is an overall summarization of the email meaning that the preview text we optimize our first lines for today won't be as important as optimizing for how the summary will come across. 

A recipient can see the offer (maybe even stated cleaner than what an average copywriter can do) and choose to open or disregard. 

Worst case - it becomes a new spam filter and labels all external emails you haven't received before as spam with no preview. 

I truly think the actual outcome will be somewhere in the middle and lead magnets will become more and more important so you aren't just pitching calls and getting hung up in the spam filters. 

Truly, no one knows but it's not in my inbox yet but excited to see it when it is so we can start playing with it and see how it affects the channel.

Building unstoppable pipelines | Get free sales opportunities with our no-cost, no-risk pilot campaign | Founder @ C17 Lab

Most outbound agencies take your money and deliver nothing - zero meetings, zero learnings.

I do the opposite - you see results before you pay a dollar.

I launched Square in France and was the top growth performer at Booking.com for two consecutive years, driving over $50M in GMV. After realizing I could earn more by owning even 1% of the value I created, I started C17 Lab, the first revenue engineering firm focused on outbound-led growth.​

Who I help

You’ve built a solid business through paid media, inbound, and referrals, but growth has plateaued.
You know outbound can work - you’ve seen others scale with it - but every agency you’ve tried delivered excuses instead of pipeline. Maybe you tried DIY outbound and ran into technical complexity, deliverability issues, or data problems. You’re done with the “trust us, it takes 6 months” narrative.

How I help

C17 Lab engineers outbound systems that consistently generate pipeline for:

1. Manufacturers
2. B2B SaaS selling into traditional industries
3. Professional services firms doing $2M+ in annual revenue

My team of GTM engineers and SDRs will run a free pilot campaign that books you 3-4 qualified meetings. No payment required.

If we can generate pipeline when we barely know your business, imagine what happens once we deeply understand your product and market.

Ready to see what high-performance outbound actually looks like?

Book a free pilot campaign at c17.ai.

Enzo Carasso 🧲

Sales teams leave so much money on the table by refusing to do something stupidly simple.

They will do almost anything except call the lead.

- They’ll try a DM.
- They’ll tweak the copy.
- They’ll send another email.
- They’ll wait for a “better time.”

The lead just sits there.

Uncalled.

At first, this looks like progress.

Then you realize it’s comfort.

Calling feels awkward.
Email feels controlled.

But here’s what actually happens when you pick up the phone.

- You find out if the lead is real
- You hear objections dashboards never show
- You get clarity in minutes instead of weeks

Most deals don’t die from rejection.

They die from delay.

Outbound creates the opportunities.
Calls turn them into revenue.

After watching this play out again and again, here’s the takeaway.

Sales teams don’t avoid calls because they don’t work.
They avoid them because they work too well.

Reality shows up fast on a call.

And that’s the point.

Personally, I use BetterContact to find verified contact details when reaching out. Go check them out if you're interested. 

Where in your follow-up process do calls get pushed to “later”?

If you want outbound leads that are worth calling, start with C17 Lab. We'll:

- Run a no-cost pilot campaign
- Generate real outbound leads
- And show you the system working before you commit.

Apply here: https://bit.ly/C17Pilot

Repost this for someone rewriting emails instead of picking up the phone.

Follow Enzo Carasso 🧲 for more on outbound, offers, and GTM execution.

I was Alex Hormozi's #1 revenue-generating affiliate worldwide.

I didn’t have any real brand or audience.

What I did have was years of outbound execution experience.

I wasn’t brought in as a service provider.

There was no commercial arrangement.

I chose to support the launch pro bono. 

The approach was straightforward.

A clear offer tied to the launch.
Well-defined audience segments.
Outbound systems executed at scale.

The same mechanics I’d been using for years.

After the launch, people started asking questions they usually don’t ask:

- How did you drive that volume without an audience?
- Why focus on execution instead of visibility?
- Which outbound channels actually mattered?

What stood out to me was how little had changed.

The fundamentals were the same as everything I'd done before.

The difference was visibility and stakes.

That made the outcome impossible to ignore.

Alex acknowledged the achievement publicly.

What this reinforced for me is simple.

Recognition doesn’t come from explaining capability.

It comes from executing where results are measurable.

Many operators already have the skill.

They just apply it in places where the outcome stays invisible.

This is precisely what we do at C17 Lab.

Curious to see it in action?

We run a no-cost pilot campaign and show the process working before you commit.

Apply here: https://bit.ly/C17Pilot

Follow Enzo Carasso 🧲 for more on outbound execution and GTM systems.

2023: 1 man with a desk.

Today: A profitable, 17-person company. 

This photo was taken a week before Christmas.

It felt like the right moment to stop and look back.

When C17 Lab started, the setup was simple.

The work was the same work we still do today.

Outbound execution.
Offer design.

GTM systems that actually hold up.

Over the last couple of years, volume increased.

Responsibility increased.
The systems got pressure-tested.

The foundation didn’t change.

Looking at these two moments side by side, especially as 2026 kicks off, is a reminder of how this really works.

Progress rarely feels dramatic while you’re inside it.

It feels repetitive, sometimes slow, and often unremarkable.

Then enough time passes and you realise it added up.

Most people underestimate how much consistency matters.
Not for weeks.

For years.

What’s something you’ve kept doing the same as your business has grown?

Comment below.

Want to see how the systems we use at C17 Lab apply to your GTM?

Start with a no-cost pilot campaign.

Apply here: https://bit.ly/C17Pilot

Repost this for someone still early in the process.

Follow Enzo Carasso 🧲 for more on outbound execution, offer design, and long-term growth.

Most B2B funnels fail before the first email is sent.

Because founders build them bottom-up instead of top-down.

They polish pitch decks. Tweak CTAs. Obsess over subject lines.
Then they blast 200 accounts and wonder why pipeline is dead.

I’ve built outbound systems for 100+ manufacturers, pro services firms, and B2B SaaS companies.

We send millions of cold emails every month and have booked thousands of meetings.

Here’s the order that actually fills pipeline:

TOP OF FUNNEL: Get Eyeballs

1. Account Reach Engine
Hit the same high-fit accounts repeatedly across channels.
Awareness is a math problem. Solve it like one.

2. Outbound Distribution
Run email and calling at volume on firmographic-fit lists.
If it breaks at 10,000 sends, you never had infrastructure. You had a workaround.

3. Content Reinforcement
Use content to warm up cold conversations.
Content supports outbound. It doesn't replace it.

MIDDLE OF FUNNEL: Find Who Actually Buys

4. Offer-Led Messaging
Lead with a constraint they already feel. Budget pressure. Capacity problems. Missed targets.
Weak offers can't be saved by better copy.

5. Segmentation by Use Case
Segment by buying situation, not job title.
Personas don't close deals. Timing does.

6. Live Feedback Loops
Analyze replies at volume. 50 replies is guessing. 500 reveals patterns.
Silence is feedback. Read it.

BOTTOM OF FUNNEL: Prove You're Real

7. Pre-Meeting Value
Deliver insight before the call is booked.
No value before the meeting? They won't show up to it.

8. Qualification Rules
Strict fit criteria before anything hits the calendar.
More meetings isn't progress. It's overhead.

9. Real Outcomes
Show real numbers. Real constraints. Real results.
Polished case studies destroy credibility. Messy screenshots build it.

Every broken funnel I've seen follows the same pattern:

They fix conversion before they have volume.
They optimize copy before they design the offer.
They add content before they build infrastructure.

This is why you have "leads" but no revenue.

Build top-down. Start with volume. Then relevance. Then proof.

Do it in that order, and outbound stops being spray-and-pray.

It becomes controllable pipeline.

Comment "FUNNEL" and I'll send you the exact breakdown we use.

♻️ Repost if someone in your network is building funnels backwards.

Before C17 Lab, I worked in outbound and acquisition inside large organizations.

Booking.com was my first real role.

Then I worked at other large companies like Square.

That experience shaped how I think about growth.

At scale, the standard theory disappears.

Offers get tested.
Economics show up.
Systems either hold or break.

After years of developing my craft, I left and started C17 Lab.

Today, I’ve helped dozens of 7+ figure companies scale through outbound. 

But the fundamentals I learnt haven’t changed.

Outbound works when:

→ The offer makes economic sense
→ The system is built for volume
→ Value shows up before the meeting

Since then, I’ve applied that same approach across dozens of companies.

Different industries.
Different stages.

But achieving the same outcome: 

Predictable pipeline.

That’s what we focus on at C17 Lab.

No motivation.
No shortcuts.

Just building outbound systems that are proven to drive revenue. 

If you want to see what this looks like in practice, apply for our no-cost pilot.

We’ll run a live outbound campaign so you can see results before committing.

Apply here: https://bit.ly/C17Pilot

Follow Enzo Carasso 🧲 for outbound systems and GTM execution.

Most founders stare at the wrong GTM metrics.

That’s why their outbound “works”… but revenue doesn’t move.

7 KPIs that actually tell you if outbound is working 👇

KPI 1: Cost to Prove Value

What it really is: how much you spend to show real value before a meeting.
Why it matters: if CPV creeps toward LTV, scale just makes you poorer faster.

KPI 2: Qualified Meeting Rate

What it really is: % of meetings that should have been on the calendar.
Why it matters: a “busy” calendar can still be 50% wasted sales time.

KPI 3: Response → Meeting Conversion

What it really is: how many replies turn into booked calls.
Why it matters: interest without meetings means your offer doesn’t create urgency.

KPI 4: Pipeline per 1,000 Contacts
What it really is: dollars of qualified pipeline for every 1,000 people you touch.
Why it matters: activity is a cost center; pipeline is what pays salaries.

KPI 5: Time to First Value
What it really is: how fast prospects feel the value of talking to you.
Why it matters: early clarity shortens sales cycles. Late value kills deals.

KPI 6: Disqualification Rate
What it really is: how often your system says “no” before sales ever gets involved.
Why it matters: if nothing is disqualified, your filters are fiction.

KPI 7: Outbound Pipeline Coverage
What it really is: % of next quarter’s target covered by outbound-generated pipeline.
Why it matters: if outbound can’t cover targets, growth is hope, not control.

These KPIs aren’t about doing more.
They’re about knowing what to control.

If you want to see how C17 Lab builds outbound that hits these numbers:

We run a live outbound pilot, build the system, run a real campaign, and you keep the pipeline before you decide to scale with us.
Comment “PILOT” and I’ll DM you the details.  

PS: If you know a founder still bragging about “emails sent” instead of “pipeline created,” repost this for them.

7 KPIs Every Founder Should Be Tracking

If your offer is weak, your business is heading for failure. 

Better copy won't save you.
More ads won't save you. 
More content won't save you.

Everything starts with the offer.

Below are 7 frameworks to craft offers that convert. 

Each solves a different problem.

1/ The Value Equation

Value = (Outcome × Believability) ÷ (Time × Effort)

If deals stall, one of these is off.
This tells you why the offer feels weak.

2/ The Irresistible Offer Formula

A strong offer needs:

→ A clear core benefit
→ A believable reason it works
→ A fair value-to-price exchange
→ A reason to act

No belief = no conversion.

3/ Offer Stacking

Structure the offer so the value feels obvious.

This can include:

→ Core offer
→ Risk reversal
→ Guarantees
→ Support or implementation layers

The goal is not “more stuff.”
The goal is a cleaner value exchange.

4/ The 7–11–4 Rule

Decisions don’t happen on first touch.

Trust builds through:
→ Repetition
→ Multiple channels
→ Consistent signal

This is about familiarity, not volume.

5/ Obstacle → Bonus

List why people don’t buy.

Neutralize those reasons inside the offer.

If sales team hear it, the offer should handle it.

6/ The Four Forces of Desire

Strong offers align with:

→ Existing desire
→ Identity
→ Belief
→ Urgency

You’re not creating demand.

You’re aligning with it.

7/ Before → After → Bridge

Show the current state.
Show the future state.
Position the offer as the bridge.

If buyers can’t picture the change, they won’t move.

Don’t try and apply all seven frameworks at once. 

Pick the framework that matches your bottleneck, then test it in-market.

Once the offer is right, everything downstream improves.

Outbound converts better.
Sales cycles shorten.
Decisions speed up.

Want to craft an offer that drives growth? 

Apply for our no-risk, no-cost pilot. 

We’ll launch a real outbound campaign and generate qualified leads before you spend a dollar.

Apply here: https://bit.ly/C17Pilot

Follow Enzo Carasso 🧲 for outbound systems and GTM execution.

Last year, C17 Lab sent just over 13 million cold emails.

That number matters less than what happened next.

115,111 replies.
23,846 leads generated for our client.
A 20.7% positive reply rate on conversations that actually happened.

Truth been told.

Open rates don’t matter in cold outbound (yes, flash news).
Reply rates don’t matter if they’re low intent.
Volume doesn’t matter if it destroys domains and don't book meetings.

What we care about is signal.

Positive replies mean:
- the offer made sense to a cold audience
– the ICP was tight enough to resonate
– the message created real interest that leads towards a meeting, not curiosity

Bounce rate stayed under 3%.
Reply rate held at scale.
Positive replies stayed consistent across campaigns.

That doesn’t happen by accident.

It comes from starting with economics.
Designing the offer before writing copy.
And building outbound systems that hold up when volume increases.

Most outbound fails quietly.

Ours gets consistent and scalable results. 

Want to see how this looks applied to your business?

We offer an application-only, no-cost pilot campaign.

Apply here: https://bit.ly/C17Pilot

Repost this for someone still judging GTM by open rates.

Follow Enzo Carasso 🧲 for more on outbound, offer design, and GTM execution.

Bad deliverability will kill your outbound before your offer ever gets read.

But everyone blames the copy.

I've sent millions of cold emails. 

Here are the 7 deliverability mistakes that destroy campaigns:

1/ Using a Single Domain for Outbound
→ Running outbound from one domain concentrates all risk in one place.
→ If you seriously want to scale you need at least 100 domains. 

2/ Sending Too Much From Each Inbox
→ High send counts create abnormal patterns that trigger filtering.
→ Cap daily sends at 15-20 emails per day and to never go above 30. 

3/ Treating Warm-Up as a One-Time Step
→ Inbox reputation is shaped by ongoing behavior, not initial setup.
→ Maintain consistent sending for 2-3 weeks minimum and avoid pauses that reset trust signals.

4/ Scaling an Offer That Doesn't Get Replies
→ Low engagement trains filters to deprioritize your emails.
→ If nobody's replying, pause scaling and adjust your offer before touching infrastructure.

5/ Using Opens as a Performance Signal
→ Opens do not indicate intent.
→ Track replies and interactions at the inbox level and remove inboxes with sustained low engagement.

6/ Adding Infrastructure Before It's Required
→ Complex setups delay feedback instead of improving performance.
→ Add complexity only when manual limits are reached.

7/ Treating Deliverability as a Solved Problem
→ Inbox health degrades over time.
→ Rotate domains proactively and adjust volume based on engagement trends.

Outbound isn't about clever subject lines.
It's about engineering systems that survive scale.

If you're doing $2M-$3M+ in revenue and want to see how we engineer outbound pipelines that actually deliver, apply for our pilot campaign.

We'll book 3-4 qualified meetings in your calendar. You verify ICP fit. If they're good, we talk.

Apply for a pilot campaign at https://bit.ly/C17Pilot

Repost if you believe infrastructure beats tactics.

Follow Enzo Carasso 🧲 for outbound engineering at scale.

7 Deliverability Mistakes

I learned early that most outbound fails before the first email is sent.

Not because the message is bad.

Because the math doesn’t work.

Early on, I spent time on copy.
Hooks. Openers. Personalization.

Some campaigns worked.
Others didn’t.

When I looked closer, the difference wasn’t language.

It was economics.

Campaigns with average copy succeeded when the numbers made sense.

Campaigns with great copy failed when they didn’t.

That changed how I approach outbound.

I stopped starting with “What should we say?”

I started with “What does this need to work?”

→ Lifetime value.
→ Acceptable CAC.
→ How much we can afford to spend to prove value before a meeting.

At scale, personalization can hide bad offers.

It creates replies and activity.
But it never fixes the equation.

A weak offer stays weak.

A broken CAC to LTV ratio stays broken.

That’s why copy has never been the leverage.

Here’s how I think about it now.

– Lock the economics first
– Design the offer to remove risk
– Decide how much CAC you can afford to spend proving value
– Use copy to deliver the message, not to rescue it

When the math is right, copy gets simple.

Most teams do this in reverse.

They polish words and hope the numbers follow.

The ones that scale fix the numbers first.

Want to see how we design outbound strategies that convert?

That’s what we do at C17 Lab.

We run a no-cost pilot campaign and show the process working before you commit.

Apply here: https://bit.ly/C17Pilot

Repost this for someone rewriting copy instead of fixing the math.

Follow Enzo Carasso 🧲 for more on outbound, offer design, and GTM execution.

Most 2026 growth plans won’t survive Q1.

Not because the target is too big.

Because the system underneath it is the same as last year.

The start of every year looks the same:

→ New revenue goal
→ New pressure
→ Same leaky pipeline

If the operating system doesn’t change, neither do the numbers.

Here’s the 5-part outbound system we see in teams that actually grow:

1/ Aim the system

Pick a narrow ICP, a problem they already lose sleep over, and make sure they have real budget and authority.

If this is fuzzy, every lead source gets expensive.

2/ Design the offer

Buyers don’t care about your service.
They care: “Is this worth the risk?”

Give them: a clear ROI case, terms that feel safe, and proof that answers their biggest objection before they say it.

3/ Build reliable pipeline

You need outbound channels you control: email, calling, LinkedIn.

→ Daily volume targets. 
→ Deliverability handled. 
→ Messaging that actually reaches decision-makers. 

Pipeline isn’t momentum. It’s mechanics.

4/ Turn pipeline into revenue

Calendars full of the wrong meetings kill teams.

Tight qualification rules, clear next steps, and a sales process that matches how your buyers actually buy.

This is where most teams quietly leak deals.

5/ Scale & defend

Systematize what already works.

Then increase volume and headcount on purpose instead of 'hiring and hoping.'

Feed proof back into the system so bigger accounts feel safe saying yes.

Strong companies don’t bet on 'a big 2026'.
They run a system they can execute every single week.

If you want that system installed instead of another New Year wish list:

At C17 Lab, we start with a no-cost outbound pilot:

→ We design the system
→ We run the campaigns
→ You get the leads and meetings

Apply here: https://bit.ly/C17Pilot

Repost this for someone who needs to rethink their 2026 plan.

Follow Enzo Carasso 🧲 for more on outbound execution and GTM systems.

Marketing isn’t magic.

It’s a multiplier.

Multiply by zero, you still get zero.

I see this mistake constantly when reviewing growth plans.

→ Strong product × strong marketing = compounding growth
→ Strong product × weak marketing = slow progress
→ Weak product × strong marketing = expensive disappointment
→ Weak product × no marketing = quiet failure

Marketing doesn't create value.
It scales whatever already exists.

→ Low activation rates just mean more churn at scale
→ Broken unit economics mean larger losses at scale
→ Healthy retention and margins turn marketing into leverage

The sequence matters.

1/ Build something people actually stick with
2/ Make sure the economics work
3/ Add marketing
4/ Let it compound

Most teams reverse this and wonder why nothing holds.

One thing I’ve learned building outbound systems is this:

Marketing feels productive even when it’s masking a weak offer.

That is why it is dangerous when fundamentals are off.

Marketing isn’t the fix.
It’s the accelerant.

Build something worth multiplying.
Then multiply it.

That’s when marketing starts to work.

Where do you see teams rushing the sequence most often?

Comment below.

Thanks to David Manela for the image.

If you want to pressure-test your offer and see how expert marketing performs:

Start with a no-cost, no-risk pilot campaign.

We run a live outbound campaign so you can see results before committing.

Apply here: https://bit.ly/C17Pilot

Repost to help your audience crack the marketing code. 

Follow Enzo Carasso 🧲 for more on offers, outbound, and revenue systems.

Your leads rarely cost too much, you make too little from them. 

But most founders calculate both numbers wrong anyway.

LTV & CAC: What Actually Matters
Most founders track LTV and CAC.
Few know what "good" actually looks like.

LTV (Customer Lifetime Value)

Formula: Revenue per customer × Gross margin × Retention period
What to watch for: Overestimating retention or using best-customer averages.
Real LTV is lower than you think.

Benchmark: 

80% annual retention = 5x LTV multiplier. 
50% retention = 2x multiplier. 
That's 2.5x more value from the same customer at the same CAC.

CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)

Formula: Total sales & marketing cost ÷ New customers acquired
What to watch for: Blended CAC hiding rising marginal costs.
Real CAC is higher than you think.

Payback Period

Formula: CAC ÷ Monthly gross profit per customer
What to watch for: Long payback masked by future upside assumptions.

Benchmark: 

30 days or less. 
Why? Credit cards give you 30 days interest-free. 
Recover CAC in 30 days = scale without outside capital.

LTV:CAC Ratio

What to watch for: Ratios improving only because spend is constrained.

Benchmarks by business type: 

Fully automated (SaaS + checkout): 3:1 
One human in loop (salesperson OR service): 6:1 
Two humans (sales + service): 9:1 
All humans (outbound + sales + fulfillment): 12:1

Below these? 

Don't scale. You'll bleed cash.

What Actually Moves The Math:

Retention → LTV → CAC tolerance → Scale capacity
Retention expands how much you can afford to spend on acquisition.

Founder Rules:

They require a clear GTM strategy 
Don't scale what only works at low volume 
Track direction, not single snapshots.

We build outbound systems with predictable unit economics.

Book a pilot: https://bit.ly/C17Pilot

Know your numbers,

Enzo

♻️ Repost if you're recalculating right now.

Most agencies will rewrite your emails endlessly.

We rebuild the infrastructure those emails/calls run on.

Infrastructure → offers → execution. 

The wrong order will kills your whole system. 

Here's the approach you should take: 


1: Offer-First Outbound

Design an offer that makes sense to a cold buyer. 

Ask yourself: 

How do they actually buy? 
What gets them to take a meeting with zero relationship? 
What can you deliver before the call?

Then align the offer with what actually makes people move. 


2/ Logistics Call Framing

Don't book discovery calls. Book walkthroughs.

Reframe your approach: 

Stop saying "Can we discuss your challenges?"
Start saying:"I built X for your situation. Give me 15 minutes to walk you through it."

The call should be a review, not discovery.


3/ Custom Lead Magnet Engine

Each prospect gets something that's valuable for them.

Start manual. 
One custom analysis per account. 

It's time-intensive, but forces conversations. 

If you solve part of their problem before they agree to talk you're more likely to close.


4/ Manual → Automated

Validate manually. Automate when volume breaks your process.

Manual = low volume, high insight, precise. 
Automated = higher volume, same system.

If you automate before validating, you just scale broken systems.


5/ ICP Learning Loop

Outbound is market research. Conversations refine your ICP and offers.

Target tight. 
Force conversations. 
Extract insight from what they say and where they push back.
Then rebuild your offer and repeat. 

Your third campaign should be 10x sharper than your first.


6/ Speed-to-Experiment

Can't ship in 72 hours? Too complex.

Launch campaigns in 2-3 days. 
Test fast. 
Move faster than competitors spend perfecting copy.


7/ Scale After Proof

Only scale after response validates the system.

Start low volume. 
Tight targeting. Manual. 
Prove it generates qualified pipeline - then ramp.

Scale before validation burns your TAM and credibility.


8/ Measure Pipeline + Learning

Pipeline and insight first. Revenue follows.

Track what you learned: 

Which offers worked? 
Which ICPs responded? 
Which objections repeated?

The conversations are the data.


We ran this system for a manufacturer selling $40K products. 400 qualified leads in 90 days. 47% show rate.

You can watch the breakdown here: https://lnkd.in/g_sHs_Hi

Repost if you want pipeline, not promises.

Follow Enzo Carasso 🧲 for outbound engineering and real execution.

Most teams suck at outbound.

And there's one mistake that trips them up:

Teams push messages out quickly, across broad lists, without a real offer behind them. 

It feels efficient because activity ramps up fast.

That decision leads to the first failure mode.

1/ Low relevance, low personalization

Generic messaging goes to loosely defined audiences
(backed by weak ICP logic and unclear value).

The result is predictable.

- Reply rates stay low
- Spam complaints increase
- Domains decay before pipeline appears

At this point, teams conclude outbound itself is broken.

So they try to fix it.

2/ High personalization, low relevance

Instead of changing the offer or the ICP, they add effort.

They personalize everything.

- Data points
- Custom openers
- Personal trivia

Replies improve, which feels like progress.

But meetings don’t qualify.
Pipeline doesn’t move.

Personalization increases activity, not relevance. 

The conversation starts, but there’s still no business reason to continue it.

Eventually, the real issue becomes obvious.

3/ Low personalization, high relevance

When outbound works, it starts with clarity, not cleverness.

- A strong ICP definition
- Clear economic pain
- Role-specific framing
- A repeatable offer

Because relevance is doing the work, messages can stay simple.

Signal improves.

Volume starts compounding instead of hurting.

This is where outbound becomes predictable and scalable.

Some teams then push it further.

4/ High personalization, high relevance

For priority accounts, they add depth.

- Deep account research
- Custom pain framing
- Tailored offers

Conversion rates climb.

So does cost.

This approach also means:

- Manual workflows
- High effort per touch
- Limited scalability

This works when used intentionally. 
It breaks when treated as a default motion.

After seeing this cycle enough times, the pattern is clear.

Outbound doesn’t fail because teams don’t personalize enough.

It fails because they personalize before relevance is established.

Relevance has to be engineered first.

Personalization should come after, and only where it pays.

Most teams reverse that order and absorb the cost.

Where does your outbound sit today?

Share below.

Want to see how C17 Lab runs outbound built to actually convert?

Start with a no-cost pilot campaign.

Apply here: https://bit.ly/C17Pilot

Repost this for someone still confusing personalization with relevance.

Follow Enzo Carasso 🧲 for more on outbound, offer creation, and GTM execution.

Outbound in 2026 is way more than just cold email. 

It’s strategic...
It’s automated...
It’s multichannel... 

And most teams are still guessing how to run it properly.

That’s why I’m joining ‘The Biggest Roundtable in the History of Outbound’ at 10:00 EST, today.

This isn’t a webinar full of cheap hacks.

It’s a live roundtable with some of the best operators on the planet, comparing notes on what outbound actually looks like heading into 2026.

We’re talking about:

✅ Why old-school outbound stacks are falling apart

✅ What “native” multichannel actually means in 2026

✅ Automation tactics that don’t wreck your pipeline

✅ How to stop burning SDRs and build systems that scale

✅ The 2026 checklist: what to keep, cut, or create

All from a group of people running outbound at a high level. 

If outbound is part of your growth strategy, you need to attend. 

Register here: https://luma.com/15b32258

I’ll see you at 10:00 EST. 

Repost for others looking to scale through outbound. 

Follow Enzo Carasso 🧲 for more.

I've seen countless founders make this mistake. 

They assume that good marketing is just: 

→ A few viral posts
→ Ads everywhere
→ A clever tagline
→ A nice logo
→ A shiny website

That’s the part you can see.

What actually moves revenue tends to go unnoticed.

Behind the scenes, good marketing usually means:

→ Knowing exactly who you’re for
→ Understanding what buyers already believe
→ Designing an offer that makes sense economically
→ Repeating the same message across channels
→ Earning trust before asking for action
→ Measuring what converts, not what looks busy

None of this is flashy.
Most of it doesn't sound cool on social media. 

But it’s the difference between attention and results.

The brands that scale aren’t louder.

They’re clearer.

They make it easy for the right buyer to understand:

- Why this?
- Why now?

What part of your marketing efforts is making the most impact for you right now? 

If you want to see what good, strategic outbound looks like, C17 Lab runs a no-cost pilot campaign.

We launch a real outbound campaign and generate leads before you commit.

Apply here: https://bit.ly/C17Pilot

Repost to remind other founders. 

Follow Enzo Carasso 🧲 for more on outbound, offers, and GTM systems.

Most founders don’t fail because they’re lazy.

They fail because of poor systems and habits.  

They stay busy.
They feel productive.
They tell stories about progress.

Then they check pipeline and nothing moved.

I’ve worked with founders running outbound, sales, and delivery at scale.

The ones who grow don’t rely on motivation.

They run the same weekly drills, whether they feel like it or not.

Here’s the structure that actually moves revenue.


TOP OF THE WEEK: Measure Reality


1. Scoreboard, Not Stories

Start every week with proof, not explanations.

→ New opportunities.
→ Qualified meetings.
→ Proposals sent.
→ Cash collected.

If those didn’t move, nothing else you did matters.

2. Upgrade One Variable In Your Offer

Each week, improve one lever.

→ Guarantee.
→ Proof.
→ Bonus.
→ Terms.
→ Price framing.

Ship the change, then compare results next week.

3. Tighten Who You Sell To

Look at real behavior from the last 30 days.

→ Who replied?
→ Who booked?
→ Who showed?
→ Who bought?

Update your ICP based on that.


MID-WEEK: Force Clarity and Fix Systems


4. Rewrite Your 1-Sentence Pitch

If you can’t explain your business in one sentence, it’s not clear.

“We help [WHO] get [RESULT] in [TIME] without [THING THEY HATE].”

If it confuses a stranger, fix the sentence.

5. Find What Breaks at Today’s Volume

List what failed this week.

→ Follow-ups.
→ Handoffs.
→ Deliverability.
→ Client confusion.

Scale doesn’t create problems - it exposes them.

6. Fix One Constraint in Your System

Pick one bottleneck.

→ Response time.
→ Show rate.
→ Proposal speed.
→ Onboarding clarity.

Fix it.


END OF WEEK: Cut Noise and Increase Signal


7. Talk to One Actual Buyer

Have one real conversation with someone who fits your target.

→ Ask why they bought.
→ Ask what almost stopped them.
→ Ask what actually mattered.

Ignore feedback from people who won’t pay.

8. Run a Weekly GTM Autopsy

Ask two questions.

Where did pipeline actually come from?
What looked productive but did nothing?

Double down on what worked.

9. Sharpen Your Cold Open

Improve how conversations start.

→ Emails.
→ Calls.
→ DMs.

If the value only shows up after the call, it’s too late.

10. Decide What You Will Not Do Next Week

Make a not-doing list.

Tasks that don’t move the pipeline.
Meetings that exist out of habit.

Every founder who complains about growth but skips this cadence is choosing chaos.

Turn this into a weekly operating system.
Run it every week.
No exceptions.

Got it? 

Repost this to remind others in your network. 

Follow Enzo Carasso 🧲 for more on outbound execution, offer design, and disciplined growth.

Most companies track the wrong metrics.

Not because they’re careless...

Because they assume growth is linear.

It isn’t.

What you should measure changes as the system changes.

Early on, growth is about signal, not scale.
If real buyers aren’t responding, no dashboard will save you.

At that stage:

→ Conversations matter more than volume.
→ Repeated objections matter more than conversion rates.
→ Willingness to take a call matters more than impressions.

Then comes scale.

Now growth is about repeatability.

→ Pipeline per dollar.
→ Effort to outcome.
→ Forecasting accuracy.

More activity without better conversion just creates noise.

At maturity, growth becomes a systems and finance problem.

→ Predictability matters more than speed.
→ Efficiency matters more than novelty.
→ Margins matter more than experimentation.

This is where most teams break things by scaling channels instead of control.

The mistake is always the same:

Using late-stage metrics too early.
Or early-stage metrics for too long.

Metrics change because the system changes.

What works early doesn’t work later.
What scales later isn’t required early.

If growth feels chaotic, you’re probably measuring the wrong signals for your stage.

If you want to see what disciplined outbound execution looks like in practice, apply for our no-cost, no-risk pilot.

We’ll run a live outbound campaign so you can see real results before committing.

Apply here: https://bit.ly/C17Pilot

Follow Enzo Carasso 🧲 for more on outbound systems, GTM, and revenue execution.

Growth Stages

Most companies get to $2-3M ARR then stall. 

Reasons: What got you to $2-3M doesn’t scale past it. 

Not because effort drops.
Because the system gets exposed: 

The offer still sounds good, but the economics aren’t tight.

The ICP is defined, but not prioritized.

Messaging gets responses, but not the right conversations.

Outbound works, but only in bursts.

Pipeline exists, but forecasting doesn’t.

Each part works in isolation.
The system doesn’t.

Scaling past $10M requires alignment.

1/ Offer architecture
If ROI isn’t obvious, velocity disappears.
No amount of activity fixes weak economics.

2/ Market mapping
Broad ICPs hide where revenue actually comes from.
Growth accelerates when you concentrate on the segments that convert cleanly.

3/ Message precision
Good messaging doesn’t persuade.
It filters for buyers who already care.

4/ Outbound engine
At scale, the pipeline can’t be accidental.
It has to be created on purpose.

If output depends on timing, referrals, or hero effort, it’s fragile.

5/ Revenue operations
This is where scale either stabilizes or collapses.
If data and handoffs aren’t tight, leadership is always reacting.

6/ Predictable scale
Forecasting only works when inputs are controlled.
When the system is stable, growth becomes boring.

Miss one piece and everything downstream degrades.

If outbound is part of how you plan to scale, it needs to be engineered with precision. 

Need help building a system that scales? 

Apply for our no-cost, no-risk pilot campaign. 

We’ll run a live campaign to show you how it should work before you make any commitments. 

Apply here: https://bit.ly/C17Pilot

Follow Enzo Carasso 🧲 for outbound systems and growth.

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Enzo Carasso 🧲

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