John E

If you're using Clay credits for cold outreach personalization, you're lighting money on fire Look, I get it Clay is the natural choice in many workflows, it's an amazing, super powerful product (if you know what you're doing) But it's overkill if you're just starting out... And if you're experienced but need to scale everything up, have fun with your 10k monthly bill lol So that's why @simonbalfe and I are building LeadSpice - your new all in one tool for personalization, enrichment, data cleaning, and much more Here's how it works: 1. Upload your CSV of lead data (from Apollo, Lusha, etc.) 2. Set up whatever you want to run (AI personalization, enrichment, etc.) 3. Run it and download the output CSV 4. Import into your sending tool (Instantly, Smartlead, etc.) and hit "launch" It's easy to use, lightning fast, and most importantly, AFFORDABLE (even at massive volume) Comment below or send me a DM if you're interested in trying it for free

Agency founders are obsessed with results. Results need to be there obviously, but it's basically table stakes at this point. Clients, especially mid market and enterprise, are also evaluating: - How long did onboarding take - How proactive was communication - Did the reports arrive on time or did I have to ask - Did your team seem on top of things and like they know what they're doing - Overall, what was the experience like The agencies charging $20k/month are not always doing better work. They just made working with them feel easy, convenient, and premium

There's a ceiling in pure service agency businesses I mean if you're doing any kind of custom work... The cycle usually looks like this: - Add clients - Need to hire - Hire compresses margins - No margin to invest in ops - Ops chaos causes churn - Churn means you need more clients - Repeat brutal Three ways out: 1. Productize your retainers 2. License the internal tools you've built 3. Spin out what you've built for your best 3 clients as a SaaS 1 is the obvious one but 2 and 3 are solid too

@meetMrajgor Absolutely bro, got a few ideas for Clario if you want to DM me

@JohnFreelancing sitting on a saas and didn't even know it man...

Vibe coding is the highest cost distraction available to agency founders -You feel productive -You get the dopamine hit of building something from scratch -You maybe even impressed your team (or so they told you lol) BUT you're spending $400/hr founder time to avoid doing the actual work of running your business Your agency doesn't need you to rebuild your CRM or your landing page over the weekend in Claude Code It needs you to close more deals, work on your relationships with existing clients, and bring strategic clarity to your team Hire someone to build the tools Go do the things only you can do

@benjaminprinter lol ok

@JohnFreelancing It’s not working g

There are 47,000 agencies offering “cold email outbound” to SaaS companies doing $500K ARR Every single one charges $2K-$5K per month, runs the same Clay + Instantly stack, and fights for the same 350 founders who all think they're too smart to need help So every conversation turns into a debate “What’s your reply rate?” “What’s your deliverability setup?” “Show me SaaS case studies” “Can we start with a free pilot?” You’re competing with thousands of agency monkeys selling the exact same thing, with the same pitch, the same positioning, and the same price Meanwhile there are over 32,000 active pest control companies in the United States The industry is on track to surpass $26B in revenue in 2025, and the typical pest control company generates around $400K per year with gross margins above 40% Their marketing is PRIMITIVE Most of them run some basic Google Ads, have a WordPress site built in 2014, a handful of Yelp reviews, and maybe a technician posting before-and-after photos on Facebook Hotels, hospitals, restaurants, warehouses and food facilities all need recurring pest control, and those contracts usually range from $2K to $10K per month They also last years A single contract can easily be worth $100K or more over its lifetime Yet most pest control companies have absolutely no systematic way to acquire these contracts They rely on referrals, random inbound calls, or the owner “knowing a guy” There’s no outbound strategy, no systematic targeting, and no structured deal flow Which makes the math ridiculous If you help a pest control company land just one commercial contract, you’ve added anywhere between $24K and $120K in annual recurring revenue to their business That instantly changes your economics One closed commercial contract can cover your entire annual fee And unlike SaaS founders, these guys aren’t on X arguing about cold email frameworks They care about one thing: revenue You’re solving a very concrete problem “Help me get more commercial accounts” The skill is the same The outbound is the same The mechanics are the same The only thing that changed is the buyer And the buyer determines the economics of the entire business

@benjaminprinter Sure let’s see proof of it working then

@JohnFreelancing Skill issue

@yanndine @AlfieJCarter Signals

Most agencies build lists. Zero build signal-based targeting. So I documented the most complete signal-based outbound system for agencies you can use today. Inside: → 6 signal plays including keyword monitoring, profile visitors, competitor commenters, job changes, website visitors, and after-hours cold calling → A full ICP scoring model so you know exactly who to prioritise and who to skip → Tier 1 and Tier 2 sequences for every signal with LinkedIn, email, and WhatsApp touchpoints → Reply handling scripts for every response type including not interested, send info, and let's chat → 2026 metric targets so you know what good looks like across every channel → A tracking sheet template to double down on what converts and cut what doesn't → A step-by-step all-bound LinkedIn x email x WhatsApp workflow you can install in Conigma today If you run an agency, manage outbound for clients, or build lead gen systems - this is the only playbook you will need. Comment SIGNALS and I will send it straight to your DMs.

@TeeDevh @AdityaShips 👋

I had a great conversation with @AdityaShips about SEO. I summarized everything I did for Tabtify to reach: • 53.1K clicks • 581K impressions • 9.1% CTR • 6.6 avg position Put it all into a SEO.md file. Comment 👋 and I’ll share it.

@Adilson_Ai LEADS

I am giving out contact list of 75 000 Founders and CEOs This list is freshly scraped from X today (quality leads worth $1655) Like, and comment "LEADS" and I will DM you the database! (Must be Following ) (only first 200)

Hmm not sure about that, maybe smaller models but opus 4.6 level is VERY compute intensive for inference, even on GPUs honestly I looked into running open source LLMs self hosted, why do you think there basically aren’t any providers offering unlimited tokens self hosted as an API? Closest thing to that is open router but they aggressively limit usage of free models and charge a hefty markup on everything else Unlimited tokens for a flat subscription is a cash printing business model if the margins were right, but they’re not and I don’t see that changing much any time soon Also hardware improvement is rather slow, I think it’s more on the model compute efficiency side that we’d see gains here Basically whoever figures out how to run opus 4.6 level model inference with 100x less compute (if that’s possible) will print cash, I’d bet on the Chinese lol

@karankendre You’re forgetting that with the current rate of hardware improvement, we will probably be able to run inference for Opus 4.6 level models locally on consumer hardware within the next few years. I don’t think we’ll be stuck calling remote APIs to run inference for ever.

Cursor’s $200/month actually costs them ~$5,000 >Raise VC money >Burn it subsidizing your usage >Get developers addicted to AI coding >Then one day maybe they will charge what it actually costs You're not a customer right now. You're a user being onboarded into dependency. The $200 price tag is temporary. The habit they're building in you is permanent.

@GrammarHippy Yup the more things change the more they stay the same As always, the solution is simply to go deeper, refine your craft and get better at what you do

Now that AI can write and build for you… It’ll just highlight EVEN more who knows what they’re doing and who doesn’t. Before AI - you’d still pay someone money just for execution. Because having something is better than nothing. No more my friends. No more. The machine can execute. Humans need to make it work. The machine only made it more clear who knows how to make stuff work and who just got paid for the hour in disguise of being an expert.

I agree about trust but I think it’s really that info is fundamentally too high variability to be a trustworthy business model at scale If you don’t have full control (like DFY), then you can not guarantee the outcome or result. Full stop. Also imo there’s no point to hiring a service provider if they can’t implement for you, you’re basically just paying for fluff and still have to do all the valuable work (the execution) yourself This is why I never touch info products anymore, it has nothing to do with fake screenshots or fake case studies

The "make money online" industry is going through a credibility collapse and the winners on the other side will be the operators who actually do the thing they teach. Every other model is dying… Three years ago you could sell a course based on screenshots, a rented Lambo, and a Miami balcony. The bar for proof was a Stripe dashboard and some confidence. Thousands of gurus made millions selling theory they'd never applied at scale That era is ending fast. Refund rates on info products are at all-time highs. Trust in online educators is at all-time lows. The audience got smarter. They've been burned too many times. They can smell the bullshit now. The screenshot doesn't work anymore because everyone knows screenshots can be faked. The Lambo doesn't work because everyone knows it's rented. The "I made $100k in 30 days" hook doesn't work because everyone's seen a dozen people claim it and deliver nothing What does work is verifiable proof from operators who are still in the trenches. Not "I used to do this." Not "I know how to do this." But "I am currently doing this, right now, today, at a scale you can verify with third-party data" This is why the next generation of info products will be built by active operators, not retired coaches. The people who can point to real-time results, verified rankings, live dashboards, and current client outcomes. The era of selling screenshots is being replaced by the era of selling proximity to active operators That's why we built ap3x the way we did. Our team is ranked #1 for tracked revenue on TikTok Shop. $55M+ in GMV generated for brands. Every member has done at least $50k profit in a single month. We're not teaching from memory. We're teaching from today's results. The same systems we use daily to generate millions in revenue are the same systems we hand to our members We're not a course. We're not a discord server. We're 12 operators who said fuck the guru model and built something where you learn from people who are still doing the work That's the difference. Link in bio if you want to see what we're building

@scaling_shields Good stuff, how is it borderline unethical? Sounds totally fine to me lol

i found a subject line hack that took our open rates from 41% to 74% overnight its borderline unethical and i probably shouldnt be sharing it but fuck it most cold email subject lines look like this: "quick question" "intro" "[first name] - quick one" "idea for [company name]" they work fine 40-50% open rate on a good day but theres a subject line format that makes it physically impossible for the prospect to NOT open it heres the format: subject: is [their clients name] still your biggest account? read that again youre not using THEIR name youre using the name of THEIR CLIENT how to do it: step 1: go to your prospects website or linkedin step 2: find any client they publicly mention (testimonials page, case studies, linkedin posts) step 3: use that client name as the subject line examples: if youre emailing a marketing agency that has "Nike" on their case study page: subject: is Nike still your biggest account? if youre emailing an accountant who posted about working with a local restaurant: subject: is [Restaurant Name] still keeping you busy? if youre emailing a web dev agency that has a testimonial from a SaaS company: subject: is [SaaS Company] still on retainer? why this works at a psychological level: 1. it implies you know something about their business (you barely do - you spent 30 seconds on their website) 2. mentioning their clients name triggers a protective instinct - "who is this person and how do they know about my clients?" 3. it cannot be ignored - even if they think its spam they HAVE to open it to find out who knows about their client relationships 4. its deeply personal without being "personalised" - you didnt scrape their linkedin activity or reference a podcast. you mentioned the one thing they actually care about: their revenue the beauty of this is you can automate it with clay clay pulls their website → scrapes testimonials/case studies → extracts client names → auto-generates the subject line 10,000 emails per day with a subject line that gets 70%+ open rates fully automated we tested this across 3 campaigns last month: campaign 1 (standard subject): 43% open rate → 0.8% positive reply rate campaign 2 (client name subject): 71% open rate → 2.3% positive reply rate the subject line nearly tripled the positive replies because triple the people actually READ the email your email isnt bad people just arent opening it fix the subject line the rest fixes itself

@Pushkarkx Yup

@JohnFreelancing if you don’t build it, someone else will, and you’ll play catch up

Somewhere in your industry, a competitor is quietly building a data product It’ll become the standard benchmark everyone references When that happens, you’ll be buying their insights instead of selling your own This is already playing out in a few verticals I’m watching closely The first agency or SaaS company in a niche to aggregate their data into an industry benchmark will own that positioning indefinitely. Because once someone is the go-to for benchmark data in a vertical, the switching cost is enormous. Their credibility and reputation as "the source" becomes self-reinforcing. The window to be first is open right now for most mid-market services verticals. It won’t be open long. Are you going to be the one who builds the benchmark, or the one who pays for someone else’s?

@hieudinh_ 👋

My weekly SEO workflow is now a single Claude Code command that does: 1. Pull GSC data 2. Detect keywords ranking 4-15 3. Expand with Keywords Everywhere API 4. Auto-write & publish blog posts Follow and reply 👋 if you want to steal it.

@brainrotvictim9 @jn_jackk Haha yeah fair enough

@JohnFreelancing @jn_jackk I guarantee this guy has this same pitch and risk reversal with no proof of competence in 1000 other dms from equally unqualified desperate teenagers. Not tough to say no to at all.

Is this W or L DM game