Latest / Building The Business / From Selling Nike Socks in Middle School to Building Leadbird.io w/Nick Abraham

Transcript

From Selling Nike Socks in Middle School to Building Leadbird.io w/Nick Abraham · Building The Business

• speaker-0: I am back with another episode of Building the Business. This is actually an incredibly exciting episode for me. I get to meet somebody that I have known from afar. I've look up looked up to a lot in terms of business. me as the marketer for our company, this is somebody who I've just studied a lot in terms of the outbound side, which is something that we've just started to get into. And I'm incredibly excited to introduce you guys to Nick Abraham, the founder of LeanBird.i. Nick, I gotta say, man, I know you got a lot of opportunities out there. Thank you so much for taking time to hop on this show. speaker-1: Dude, I'm more than happy to hop on. I actually found Will from his program through a Facebook ad, bought it, thought it was like the best finance program. I actually went through business school and I learned so much more in that like quarter than I did in like the past four years. And it it like like speed run me through finance and now I feel a lot stronger in that area, which has been amazing. speaker-0: I dude, I I it's so funny. I saw your name. I remember when we onboarded you and I was like, wait, LeadBird.io. That seems really familiar. And like we'll sometimes we'll get somebody to opt in. I've had some like bigger people opt into our stuff, but no, I'd never you know, I never hear from them. I figure it's someone on their team and then I saw yours pop in and I was like, No shit. Nick, like this is the Nick from from Leadbird.io and I just it's just one of those moments where you're like, Hey, when a marketer gets a marketer, you know, you're like, dude. Hey, that's a proud moment. I feel really big. It's a big win. Dude, I I I'm super pumped. I've I've been dude, I've been binging a lot of stuff. I was I was telling you off camera, like I've actually been doing some research for this. So I got the first question. I don't know if this is gonna catch you off guard or not. speaker-1: No, let's do it. speaker-0: Dude, I gotta know. So I was reading in an article that you in middle school were selling custom Nike socks. Is that right? speaker-1: Yes. Do you remember like those they used to be huge back in the day. They used to be like the socks, the Nike socks that had like the the line on the back of it. Yeah. it was like they were super expensive. They like twelve dollars for one pair. And they were like the the cool thing to have in in high school. Yeah, speaker-0: Yeah speaker-1: yeah, yeah. Yeah. You had to you had to double them up to to flex on while you play. That was like the the basketball thing. But dude, that was like the biggest craze when we were younger and they just didn't come in a lot of like custom colorways. So like your school colorways were Our school colors are blue and yellow. So they would come in blue and white. And so we would use like these tie dye markers to make the white yellow. And then we would sell at school. And that was like my first ever like entrepreneurial hustle like growing up. speaker-0: Wait, so were you all right, so were you using first off, were you using your own money? Were you going buying socks? Was this like a hey mom, hey dad, I got this idea, let me go get this. Like how did how did how did that go? speaker-1: Yeah, so the first pair I definitely used my own money. I think I you know, every socks I could buy for like twelve to twenty four bucks. Yeah, yeah. I would just buy a couple and then try to sell and then just kinda take the money that I made and go back and forth. And then the tie dye supplies, I think my parents probably bought it for me in in at Walmart, you know. and then used that. But I mean it wasn't anything big, but at that time in middle school, like I think I made probably like total, like probably anywhere from like five hundred to a thousand bucks. And so like I was jazzed. speaker-0: Middle square. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. You know? Like I'm I'm I'm I'm ecstatic. But I'll I'll tell you something that I think is actually even crazier. So I have my first cousin, he's now a junior in high school. And I I was just catching up with him and I was like, and he he's very entrepreneurial. He does a whole bunch of random side hustles. And what he does right now is he buys trailers, he'll paint them up and then put them back on Facebook Marketplace and sell them. And I was like, that's pretty cool. Like, how much have you made total so far? And he's like, man. It's not doing that good. And I was like, What does that mean? And he's like, I've only saved up twenty K. And I'm like, Dude, you're not even graduated from high school and have twenty K saved up? Like, that sounds really good. And he's like, No, no, it's not as good as you. And I was like, dude, I'm like, I'm like ten years older than you. Like I you got some time, but as you guys speaker-0: Five hundred bucks on socks, dude. You're you're like ten, you know, forty X in me right now in terms of speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: So Wait, so like physic like big trailers? Am I like for him? speaker-1: Yeah, like the trailer Yeah, trailers off a marketplace. I think like yeah, the ones that people like carry like the horses on whenever they like travel across the road and stuff, stuff like that. Wow. I don't know how he got into that, but it's working. Yeah. speaker-0: Dude, talk about, I mean, hey man, not a business idea that I would have been thinking about in high school. So I think that's that's crazy. And then I gotta ask, so was I was reading some more. All right, so that that answers that. Then you were putting on high school basketball tournaments? Were you organizing this? Was this like for money? Was this like a business idea? Was this something that like was just kind of with I I'm picturing like dude Ruckers Park, but like somewhere in Dallas or I don't know where you were at, but doing that. Like how did how'd that work? speaker-1: So our church used to always throw like a a basketball league like once a year. And whoever like and I was on the church board and when growing up. And so, you know, I was responsible for throwing it. And, you know, organizing and stuff, like I was like, wow, this actually does make some money. And so then I was like, you know what? Like outside of when I'm out of the church, I'm gonna do another league and I'm gonna try to make money out of it. So I did that like in my college summers. but a few things there. And I'm Indian, right? So like I'm from South India. We're called Malayalys. And so I called the league the MBA, the Malayali Basketball Association. It was funny too. I made like the logos of the NBA, but green or like the Indian flag color. speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. speaker-1: what I realized in that moment was that hey, like, you know, selling to Indian high schoolers and you know, people that are just getting college, probably not the best market to make a ton of money because everyone's like price constraint. And so I was like to do this huge organization, huge event to make like six hundred bucks to a thousand bucks, like unless I'm trying to host an event like every quarter, like probably not the best idea. And so and and honestly, like, but I did learn a lot from that. Like I think like organization and just like scheduling and and being able to work with like four different vendors from referees to the sports complex, you know, figuring out how to go find teams and creating, you know, the the entire teams 'cause like Sometimes you have people that are good at playing basketball but they don't have friends. And so just doing all of that and the organize organizing of it is it is a lot of work. Yeah. And so like Yeah. speaker-0: Leading a team. Yeah, you become like the CEO of that. I mean, I'm I'm a part of a men's soccer league here in Pittsburgh and and I run our team. And, you know, if you're on the outside, it's like, you know, that's nothing. It's like, did you get chase people down? You got to get people there. These are grown adults. Imagine getting high school kids to these places. You know, they got to get logistics to get stuff. Did you, Nick, did you open an entrepreneurial household? Like were you were people like around you running businesses? Was it something that just kind of like for you internally was something you knew you wanted to do? speaker-1: Yeah, so kind of yes and no. So my dad, like growing up, he was always a real estate investor, but he always did that outside of his nine to five. And so I kind of saw like how he ran things and I think like growing up, I always just was so attracted to the idea of like entrepreneurship. I did have some like cousins and stuff that, you know, dabbled in business here and there. But when you grew up in an Indian household, like the main thing that, you know, any Indian parents can push on you is like go to college, get a job, save a lot of money, invest it into safe inve or invested in safe investments. And, you know, go from there. Right. And so that was kind of what's pushed on me. But I always found like school to not be like my natural thing. Like when I was just in school, like I'd be, you know, and you you to take subjects like art history, for example. And i it to me it just was like like I and even right now, like in business, if I'm doing something that I just feel like is below my time value, it just like I just can't force myself to do it. Like my brain will do everything to do anything besides that. And so like Whenever I was just in school, it just it just like I just could not find myself in a lot of those like extracurricular classes to do it at all. And so my brain would always be wandering of like, okay, what is the other options out of here? And so I always was just trying random things to, you know, start side businesses and see what happens and what learns. And yeah, now we're here. speaker-0: I love that first off, just I I really appreciated your transparency, like especially on on X. I still think of it as Twitter, but X of like dude you I remember as a post I don't know how long ago it was. I think it was 'cause you you recently had like a billboard or a picture of yourself in I don't was that San Francisco? Was that speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: in New York, that's right. And you you I think you wrote a post about how like, you know, your parents maybe weren't like the the most proud of you in school in the sense that like you weren't the, you know, perfect A plus student. But then you've been able to take your talents and you your kind of inner strengths and be able to put them into business. And I think there's just, you know, Gary V does a great job of this of talking about kids of like, you know, to parents, like, hey, if they've got a great skill set, like don't diminish that if they're not great at the normal school subjects. So I just wanna say, dude, I really appreciate you being honest and transparent about that. Cause I know there's a lot of people out there like, dude, I especially kids who maybe even like your cousins, like, dude, I'm not Maybe school's not my jam, but like had these other natural abilities. Which leads me into kind of curious of dude, how how did Leadbird start? Like what was the origin story of Leadbird? Like, did you were you intending to start a marketing agency or a lead gen agency? Was it were you starting a different business and kind of realized like, dude, I don't know how to get leads, I gotta go do that and turn into. speaker-1: So Yeah, it was pretty much that exactly. So my next side hustle that I did in college was growing Instagram pages. So I grew a page and it's still there. It's funny. It's called like Money Marketeers. It has like I think now it has like 250K followers, but when I sold it, it was at like 50K followers. And it it's a kind of a funny story, but basically I was just taking like I was I was, you know, reading finance books all the time in freshman, sophomore year college. And I would just take whatever I learned, turn it into an infographic and post it on that account. And then it started to grow. And then I was able to sell like ebooks off of it. And it was just a like it was totally faceless. No one knew it was me. It was like a infograph account, which were kind of popular back then. And yeah, I was selling an ebook on how to grow your Instagram account, which is funny. And I was able to make some decent side cash off of that. I don't think it was spinning off anything, you know, insane. But I eventually ended up selling that account and then I was like, wait, I have all this extra time. What should I do with it? Like Maybe I could do this for other people. And that took me down the route of learning like what a marketing agency is. And I was just watching a whole bunch of videos on YouTube. And one of the videos was like, like you should choose a niche and you should choose a niche that can pay you well and that you know a lot of. I have a lot of family members that are in the medical professional space. So I was like, I'm just gonna sell to sell to like plastic surgeons and medical professionals. Super hard. Right. And so before I found out that it was super hard, I was like, let me do the the things that everyone tells you to do. Go. you know, create an LLC, you know, go create a website. Do all these things, right? And then I do all of them and I'm kind of sitting there like, how do I get customers now? Like how do how do people know to to to get me and use me? And that's what took me down the route rabbit hole of learning like outbound sales. And so I was just watching YouTube videos. People were like, hey, you should just pick up the phone and start calling people. So I was like, okay, let me try that out. And so I'm just literally peak of COVID on my phone, just calling medical professionals on their phone. They're like, how did you just get my number? And I'm like, don't about that. Let me tell you about what I could do for you. Either way is like I started learning cold email, cold calling, just doing LinkedIn outbound. It's so funny too. Like I can look at all the old LinkedIn messages I sent. I'm just like, man, this is so cringe. Like, not not not good outbound. And I just learned the hard way, but I was able to get appointments. And that's like, and I think when you start an agency, like that's the number one thing. Like you have to figure out sales and you have to figure out how to just get demos booked for yourself. And if you could make that like your core like competency as well as just like your core, like, you know, I'm gonna spend four hours a day on this. It's like almost impossible to not grow your agency. And so that's what I was spending all my time doing. What I realized really quick though was most medical professionals do not care about growing their Instagram page. Right. And if they did, it was more because they just had some spare cash and they just wanted to see what happened. And so I was selling I think I got my first agency to like 10K a month pretty, pretty quickly, like within about six months. And that was like my first business. Ten K per month. But I didn't know anything about finances back then and I was not profitable. Right. So I would see the Stripe account show ten K and I'd be looking at my bank account at the end of the month, like, there's not ten K in here. Like, what's going on? And then, you know, what I was doing basically was I had this whole team in the Philippines that I ended up finding. And this is like right before Upwork started to pop off. So I was like paying these recruiters like two K a pop to get a a VA, which is like doesn't really make sense because these VAs weren't like trained or anything. It's just A VA, that's it. speaker-0: Exactly. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and so yeah, like I was having them do all like the back end fulfillment and I was creating like these crazy systems that I was like duct taping together to, you know, get the content from the medical professional, you know, edit it, make it look all good, post it on Instagram and then do some like manual engagement and use these engagement pa all this stuff to kind of grow their pages and yeah, just found out really quickly that hey, this is not a scalable good business and this is not the offer. And I'm kind of like I think I like a Facebook group that I was kind of just like posting like or there was like an agency Facebook group that I was like posting about in there. And I was showing people I was just getting demos booked. And then I had a couple of people reach out that like, yo, could you try this out for me or could you help me out doing this? And then started doing outbound for them. And then once I did that, it kind of just started to to take off a little bit. And then that's kind of where Leadbird came out. it was just like, you know, figuring out what I was good at and then going from there. speaker-0: Dude, what I love what I love about that is like you to me it's you know, one of the easiest things to sell is like the service that you do for yourself, right? Like or the or the activities that you do for yourself. It's you have the proof for yourself and then you can go to someone else and be like, look, I know how to do this. I've been doing it for myself. You have yourself as a case study, which I think is just so powerful for anyone starting out there where it's like if you can do that, it doesn't always make sense. But especially if it's lead gen, if you do if you're offering lead gen services and you can't do lead gen for yourself, like, hey, you know, come on. There's a mismatch there. You gotta be to do lead gen for yourself. practice what you preach there. Dude, I so take me back because I'm trying to picture in my mind, dude, before like I don't even remember when instantly came out, but I'm trying to think before that I remember looking into doing cold email. And this is back when we were running a marketing agency for mostly healthcare practices. And I remember looking into cold email setup and just being like, I think I spent eight hours on it one day and was like I got no idea what any of this means, you know, and and like I'm trying to watch YouTube videos, but we're getting so deep into all these different things tying up. Like, did you did you I'm just super curious, did you start with cold email? Was like instantly around back then? Were you using that or was this like are you creating up, spinning up your own systems back then? speaker-1: Yeah, so this was like way before instantly and Smart Lead and all of them came out of the the Woodworks. And so yeah, we were using MailShake as the first sequencer. And what they did was they charged per inbox. So the new SmartLead Instantly way is, you know, you get unlimited inboxes. So our cost constraint was MailShake. Like I think, you know, at that time we were paying anywhere from like seven to ten K a month for all our customers on MailShake. And we just weren't able to scale the volume. And so it actually took me down the road of like, you know, I've met a guy and we He had a CTO and we tried to build like our own version of instantly before instantly became a thing. And we were using that to service our customers. And like that took me down the road of learning that hey, SAS is not my my my business. Cause like it was just so hard. And this is before AI and everything. And like a lot of like the trade secrets were just not out there and easily researchable. And yeah, like you just like it like right now, cold email is infinitely easier. Right. It's cheap it's never been cheaper, faster, and easier to launch campaigns than ever before. But yeah, like back then, like yeah, we were manually setting up inboxes. We were manually going into the DNS, adding the records, and then, you know, spinning up a Google inbox and manually connecting that into Mail Shake. And then like for scraping lists, man, it was it was brutal. Like we would literally have to go to sales navigator, use like a Chrome extension, it would pull the list, we'd use another tool to find the emails, and then it There was no clay, there was no like fancy tools for it. So it's all inside of a Google spreadsheet. And then yeah, you'd manually write the copy, launch it in there. Dude, we even had VAs that we'd hire from the Philippines where their entire job was to go line by line on the lead list, open up the person's LinkedIn profile, and write a personalized line about the actual person so that we could use that in a merge field in the campaign. Yeah. Like it was it was brutal. Like it was so manual. speaker-0: Yeah, going speaker-1: Yeah, and it and it's funny 'cause if I look back at the like what we did then versus what we do now, it's like like I I I mean, at then we we probably could only manage maybe like fifteen, twenty accounts. Now it's like we can give one account manager like a hundred accounts and be okay. You know, 'cause everything is just so plug and play. speaker-0: Yeah. I just I'm I'm part of me is like how nice it is now. And part of me is like just the learning experience you went through to understand all that, right? To really like to to have to go through that sort of discomfort of I mean, at the time it was just what you had to do, but now looking compared to where we are now, it's like night and day and to see you go through that is I just like the older version of myself is like, wow, what a great what a great experience you had to go through in terms of like figuring that out. learning how to deal with that, managing the team, where it's like now you could, you know, people are spin up one person agencies with managing all your clients. And it's like, hey man, you don't even know how good you have it. I feel like a boomer or old person talking about like how good you have it now. But dude, Nick, I I gotta so I I want to get into some tactical stuff because you've you've been pulling in some you've been making posts that have really gotten me like just really thinking about what we could be doing on our side. And dude, I I gotta I gotta ask you some specific stuff. One is around So in my mind, coming from the old school way of thinking, I associated outbound, especially like cold email, LinkedIn with like, I don't know, startup tech world is kind of where I originally like would have, you know, pictured that that world kind of coming from. I know it goes way back beyond that. But then I've just been seeing you post some really cool case studies lately. One is about, I think it's been about a private jet company. Like you've been reaching out and Ginley's for a private jet company. Two, I want to come back to to this in a second, but like even for like local home service. Businesses. You've been posting some really cool, interesting stuff. Like that's a lot of the clientele that we work with in terms of home service business owners. But dude, I I I'm super curious. Yeah, I'd love to know a couple of like out-of-the-box industries that this works for. Because I think some so many of us, I'm speaking about myself and business owners who are maybe like, I just don't know if this would work for me. Like my people, you know, we're two niche. We don't do, you know, the classic stuff that you hear all the time. Like, what have been some of the cooler, like maybe just out of the box Legion? companies that you've you've done lead gen for. speaker-1: Yeah. And one thing I would say to you now in today's time is that cold email is actually easier and better for like the obscure services, right? Like most people are used to seeing it be used to sell marketing services or used to sell like some SaaS software. But I'm actually finding that when you do these like obscure industries, like they just perform so much better because nobody else in their industry is actually using cold email as an acquisition channel. So like the private jet aviation company is a great example. If you talk to any private charter company, their best customers are businesses. And it's not the individual person that just wants to go fly to Vegas for a party or something. It's consistent business that comes from businesses because they have a need to travel quicker and on demand. And so if you can connect them to more businesses like that, it's an absolute no-brainer. But if you go to every charter company and you ask them how many of them are using cold email, very few of them will actually say that, right? And so that's why it works so good. And it just like we even have other clients where, you know, they're selling yoga classes, for example, and they make it like an H R add on and they're using that as a service to, you know, kind of l what's the the the technical term like? I can't remember off top of my mind, but speaker-0: A yeah, like some sort of like added benefit thing, like part of the healthcare benefit package. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. speaker-1: And so it's like how many times are you getting an email saying like, Hey, like, you know, have you considered adding yoga as a employee benefit? We're happy to come in once a week and do shops, things of that sort. And so yeah, like that's that's why it works so well. speaker-0: Dude, I I I think what's been really interesting is you open my mind to like thinking through what's what's the thing that's gonna get people because I I was watching a video you did sometime earlier in 2026 about like lead magnets working really, really well. So I guess I'd be curious like your thought process on and I don't know if this is industry dependent or like how bombarded people are with cold emails in terms of their their industry that they're in, but like How do you break down between maybe say like do you lead with a direct offer? Is it something where or do you start with, Hey, actually, you know what? That's too too much, too fast. Go to a lead magnet, just collect info, get the positive reply, start the connection there. How do you think through that in terms of like who who been who would start where or which business would start where in the process? speaker-1: So funny enough, it it comes down to market research. So what I would do is I would call my ICP. Like, so let's say, you know, for the private jet aviation company, like I and they they want to reach out to like business consultants. I would literally just call business consultants and say, Hey, how many times in month do you get an email from a private jet company, right? Selling you private jet aviation services. If they're like, dude, I don't think I've gotten a single one ever, then you could go direct response and you'll be fine, right? And honestly, like it's better in those cases. Like everyone wants to do a free service lead magnet because it's like sexy and cool, but it just makes your sales process a lot harder. You know? So let's say the private jet aviation company is doing something like they're giving free quotes and maps and some estimates and stuff like that. Well, you know, when you're doing it via email, like you're gonna have to do back and forth email convos and stuff before you even get the demo booked, you know, and like that just makes the sales cycle. way longer. So if you can avoid even having to do a service lead magnet, that's amazing. Right. And in some spaces where you have no competition, there's nobody marketing on that channel, then you should 100% not be doing service lead magnets. You should just go direct cold saying, hey, would you like to get, you know, a a private jet booked for your next travel. Right. Like I can go figure out from your, you know, your location what it would cost for your typical travel. Something like that. And just go direct response, get them to say, Yeah, I'd be interested. Book them on a call. Amazing. But If you call someone, your ICP, and they're like, hey, dude, I get five emails a day pitching me SEO, like then you need to come in and say to yourself, okay, well, like if I go direct response, I'm just gonna look like the other five SEO agencies that he's getting emails from. Like, what could I pitch to them? That's just an absolute no-brainer. So that's kind of how I think through, like, okay, should I be pushing a lead magnet or should I be just pushing direct response and and kind of go from that. speaker-0: Makes a ton of that that actually makes a ton of sense. So getting in the market research, sort of seeing, hey, where yeah, what would keep you from blending in with everybody else? in terms of what are what are people already seeing? Do you I guess, Nick, with that, like I imagine I guess in my mind, since post hormose world of like the offer being such a big piece of this, I'm just dude, I'm super fascinated because you guys work with so many different clients across so many different industries. Like In my mind, I'm like, dude, you guys gotta be like offer experts at like all of these different industries. Get people hooked in. Like, how do you do you guys have a process for that? Do you guys have a I don't wanna spill your secret sauce here, but like how do you think through because you might get somebody, I'm guessing in a day like a I don't know, a private jet company and then the next it's like, Hey, we're selling some really scarabs, you know, SAS kind of product. How do you guys go through the the process of like helping someone? I'm guessing a lot of companies probably don't come with an offer in mind and you're having to help them create it maybe. speaker-1: Hundred percent. like we'll get a lot of customers and and most of it just comes from just been like we've been doing it for so long and we've just accumulated so much data. And what we've always done from the beginning is just structured our data in such a great way and stored it in such great databases where we can like query it really well. And so, like, even from like five years ago, I could show you the exact campaign I ran for this exact client and the results we got them and every like the copy, the lead list, like everything, right? And so we just have so much data and we've, you know, serviced thousands of customers that were able to just look back on it and make really good recommendations. So we'll get a customer, let's say a recruiting company, I could tell you the five industries that would be best. I could tell you which type of like placement offer we should be doing and how to position it. And, you know, like we'll ask and be able to tell them like, hey, is this something that you guys can offer or do you feel comfortable doing this specific thing? And if you do this, like this is going to give you an extra boost in your replies, like things like that. And so that's that's kind of how we're able to kind of get results a little bit quicker than I would say most agencies and the ramp time is not as harsh. But you know, sometimes you do get the client that comes in is like, hey, I can't do any of that and I don't want to do any of that. And then you kind of have to run with what they have. And a lot of times they have a demand capture offer. And when we have a client that has a demand capture offer, outbound's just not not the right channel, right? Because there's usually not enough of like like that signal that's out there that you can capture and you know, like you're only gonna like the the saying is like you're only gonna be able to capture the three percent of the market that's looking for your offers. So, you know, if you're running a thousand emails, there's maybe three people that might be remotely interested. And so that makes it a lot harder to make something like outbound. speaker-0: Yeah. I dude as you're saying that, I mean, it makes sense where you guys have been at it for so long that, you know, when people come to work with you guys, they're getting that Yeah, it's I you know, it's one of those things where you're like, it's a it's a lead gen company, but when you add on how much experience you guys have, it's really paying for a premium of knowing how fast we can get to certain results and be able to get in and and see outcomes quicker. Which I I dude, I'd I'd love to pick your brain on. I've been thinking about this a lot. Like we we have a lot of home service clients like local based construction, you know, roofing, for example. Maybe we'll take roofing for like I think there's a common belief that like outbound wouldn't work for that. There's a small TAM, there's only a local market that we can go after and all this stuff. Like what's your thought on that? Like does cold outbound make sense for like say a local home service business that's growing? Like and if so, like how would you how would you encourage someone to like think about that or start even testing it out? speaker-1: Yeah. So like you always have to think about like what's the best type of customer. So let's take a solar contractor, for example. Like there's residential, then there's also, you know, you got big buildings, they might want it. But like who would benefit the most from like solar? Well, farms are a great industry for them. And so it's like, Can I go build a list of all the local farms to them that they could service in their industry and then talk about how much energy that they could save? Like, yes. And so like A lot of the times you have to kind of figure out like where is that pocket of like where is that specific like customer type that I could like build into to kind of be able to run an offer and it's just like a no brainer in that sense. And then, you know, if we just keep going down the the block, like when it's something like a plumber, for example, it's kind of hard, right, to get them a commercial contract. And so then it's like, you know Can I say something in the cold email that'll just stand out from what they usually get? And so for us, like we'll always think about like what are some funny jokes that we could use that incorporate like, you know, shit and and you know, put that in the PS line somewhere to just kind of get them to giggle. So it's like like one of the ones would be like, Hey, can we come in and give you a free quote before shit breaks? Like that that kind of gets people like, like, hey, like, you know, whatever, right? So we'll we'll do things like that to kind of stand out. I also find that a lot of like local contracting businesses, they're willing to do stuff like come in with, you know, food for the team. Right. And so then it's like being able to hit local businesses and saying, hey, like, you know, my team's down the street looking at, you know, so and so. I'd love to stop by, do an estimate. PS, I'm happy to, you know, bring over some coffee for your team. Like stuff like that just to get their foot in the door. Great way to go about it. And so yeah, like you just Like I always just think of like it's still fundamentally the same, but it's just like, what is that thing that's gonna make me look different? Gonna look conversational, is it gonna be a no brainer for them to, you know, say yes to and is also something that's just easy for them to say yes to. And if you can kind of incorporate that, then it's just like it works and it works well. Well, I say it's you know, a channel where they're going to get like I feel like when you run Facebook ads for like a contractor, they're probably gonna get a lot more residential leads. higher frequency, you probably won't get that as much with cold email. But I think the type of customer you work with is just worth more, right? Because you're gonna work with more with like a commercial building that you can, you know, be their go-to guy for the next couple years versus, you know, the resident that's gonna penny pinch and is only going to call you when something actually does break. And so I think, yeah, that's that's kind of how we think about it. I think when I look at all types of like the Contractor type businesses, the best one I think for cold email in my eyes, that does actually get the frequency of leads is janitorial. It is a little bit more competitive now for sure. Interesting. But janitorial does really well, as well as power washers. Power washers also do really good. Cause you could just like hit up restaurants and be like, hey, when was the last time you got the side of your building washed or whatever? And like they do pretty good on those. So those are like the two that like I would definitely be running cold email if I owned a business like that. speaker-0: Dude that actually makes a ton of sense. We have a a lady who we work with who her whole business is going and cleaning the kitchen parts of restaurants. Like they go in and they do the the like ovens in the I can't remember what it's called, like the steam system above it or whatever. And I just I think about her and like she's just been going and knocking on doors and that's how she's been getting business. And it's like, wow, could we, you know, could she just be reaching out, creating a list? I'm sure she can get the emails of all those company you know, all the restaurants with the 70 mile radius and be able to to, you know, even if it's a first cleaning free or something, I don't, you know. But like, and they have to, like the restaurants have to to stay in code, right? So it's like such a easy sell in the sense of like they're gonna have to do it one way or another to get in there. So dude, so so smart. I'm I'm curious, like, let's just say someone's like, dude, I want to do that. What do you recommend if someone wants to try? I guess two questions, two part question. One is what do you recommend for somebody who wants like dabble in this, who's like, I want to test this out, I you know, I want to see what it is. Or two and then two, like when does it make sense for someone who's, you know, maybe more in the B to B space? Like when does it make sense to look into a an outbound agency? When does it make sense to maybe switch over from the dabble myself to, you know what, honestly, it it makes more sense to hire someone like Liedberg. speaker-1: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then and I'll say two things. So one is I actually recommend for a lot of people do not start off hiring a Legion agency, right? And the reason why is because a lot of times the success of the Legion agency is completely dependent on your offer, right? And so it's like if you're selling something that people to genuinely just don't want, or it's not positioned in the way that they want it, or it's not speaking to the pain point that they want, there's not much the Legion agency could do for you. Right. So if like you can't get results even with a very minimal very, you know, low quality tech stack and process y, like the Legion agency, even with the great processes, the great tech stack and everything, will probably also not get results. So like what I recommend is you can have a minimal viable system and setup that isn't as technical and as hard to do in today's time versus like what it was before. So like I would go to smartlead.smartlead.ai, which is a cold email sequencer, and they actually have everything in there built in for you to kind of do everything on your own. You know, Their core business is being a cold email sequencer, but they added in like email infrastructure so you can go spin up inboxes yourself. They also have like lead data in there. So you can search in there like your local city and then, you know, put in like the industries that are more like local business types and like the type of customers you want. And then you can actually just send a cold email straight through there, a sequence, and see how it does. And like what I would do is be looking at hey, with this like minimal tech stack without me knowing a lot about cold email. Am I just getting people that are somewhat saying, you know, I'm interested in some capacity? And if you are, that's a great sign. And then you have, you know, two pathways to think about. Do I want to spend time and learn how to be a cold email operator, which is really technical, and learn how to scale this up? Or do I have the budget in place to spend two to three thousand dollars a month and outsource this to an agency and show them what I use and did and got results with so that they can then scale it? And that's that's how I would think about it entirely. But I do think that like a lot of customers come in and they are like, Yo, I sell the best thing in the world. And it's like, dude, you sell SEO with no guarantee or differentiator. And then they're like, Hey, why am I not getting results? Why do people not want to buy my service? And it's like, Well, I think there's a couple of other things we need here to to really make it stand out. and they're like, Well, I wouldn't want to do that. It's gonna attract bad customers. And it's like, Well, like, there's not much we could do for you here now, right? And so Yeah, like before anybody hires a Legion agency, I like I really do recommend like try to do it on your own. Try to get and see if your offer just resonates in any capacity. And then go to a Legion agency and say, Hey, like I know this works. So I know that, you know, your chance of success with me is gonna, you be infinitely higher. I just need you to scale it up and be the person that can like, you know, make sure that it's taken care of. So I'm not having to think about it and having to be in the technical webs of learning deliverability and stuff of that sort. speaker-0: Dude, there's there's two things that came to mind as you were you were talking about that. I think one is, Nick, just just a testament to you. I remember texting you probably I don't know, six to eight months ago, maybe it was even longer. and I was like, Nick, hey. I was like, dude, you know, I've I've been watching your stuff and I'm curious, like, you know, thinking about maybe hiring you guys at Leadbird and just a testament to you, you're like, Hey, dude, I've been through the program. I love it. Hey, here's what's going to work best. Like, if you're going to go do this, try to test this stuff out first. You gave me some suggestions and you know, you're like, hey, what's really working well is done for you services. You know, at the time we didn't really have full on fractional CFO services, and now we do. And it's like got me thinking of like, okay, you know, you it was just really, I thought it was really great to have someone be like, hey man, yeah, not just gonna chase your, you know, it's not like, yes, I could promise the world. It's like, hey, dude, here are the things that we need to have, which makes me think it actually really made me think of our similar situation in a business where it's like, Hey, you c if you're gonna just try to abdicate lead gen or you're gonna abdicate your finances in our case, it's like it's long term, that's very rarely gonna work out. Like you gotta take some level of responsibility and control and understand it. If nothing else, like you gotta know what you what you don't know to be able to monitor it and do quality control, have good expectations. I love that you talk about that. I think it's something that is just like there's there's a real conversation with the business owner that's like, look, man. This is only going to be as good as you have an understanding of. You don't need to be the one to do it all, but like you gotta have control over some of it so you can actually measure is this good or is it not? Otherwise you're at the mercy of whoever the other person is telling you this is great. And you're like, I guess it's great because I don't know anything about cold email. I don't know anything about LinkedIn messages. speaker-1: That's always been my philosophy of like hiring any vendor. Like I always say to myself, like, if this is gonna be something that I like really want it to work, I need to try it on my own, see if I can get some level results. And then, you know, I'll know how to monitor and be, you know, an actual aide to the agency. The only time I won't try to do it myself is if I'm like, okay, I'm going to this relationship and I know that if it does not work in any capacity, I have to be completely okay with losing all the money. Right. And if I don't have that mindset, then it's like I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go forward with it. Cause then I know I'm just gonna be upset at vendor when I know it's not really the vendor's fault. I think that's another thing that sucks in the agency space is like you do have to take on a lot of the blame. But it's like if you really want an agency relationship to work out well, like you just have to be an aide in in the sense of like, you know, if they're like, hey, like we need these assets, like make sure you actually come through and help them. Right. And and some people just come off that like, hey, just get everything done for me. Like, I don't you know what I mean? And like it just never works. Like you you just need to be there for the agency in the sense of like. Be res respective of like, you know, their feedback on like things that can make it better and like try it out their way, have them split tested against your ideas. If you're, you know, a real big believer it won't work, and try things out that way. And that's that's how you make agency relationships work. It's not like a one-way street. It's not like, hey, I give my agency vendor, you $3,000 a month. I need to see a 2X return. So I need to see $6,000 at the end of the month. Like it just doesn't work like that. speaker-0: Yeah. Dude, I I gotta say, Nick, I'm I'm I don't think it's a surprise that you've become one of the bigger I don't know if the biggest, but one of the bigger outbound sort of agencies out there that I know of just because you care, man. Like I can just tell that you care about customers. Like you you wanna do what's right for people and I think that's just a lesson in business in general that's like sadly not always the the case where it's like, hey man, I some people are after a buck and it's great. It's like, dude, just to to hear you and like I can tell Like, hey man, I I want what's best for the people on the other side of this relationship. And I do I'm super curious. I would love to know because, you know, part of this is dude just understanding kind of hey about your business journey, but also like what's working for you guys internally. What's been working really well for you guys lately with LeadBurt? I don't know if that's like if if it's improved processes with AI that have been happening lately and you guys are able to just do a lot more. I don't know if that's yeah, I'd be curious if it's like messaging techniques have changed changed. Like what's been really working for you guys both internally to improve the business and then for clients too. speaker-1: Yeah. So we we've done a lot of change in the last sixty days. I'm like, I haven't been this excited about the agency in so long. I feel like in the last like two years, we've been like kind of doing the same thing and whatnot. And like, you know, just kind of growing as we grow and just doing like the things that yeah. Either way, it's like we've changed a lot. So we'll we'll we'll we'll be walking through some of the stuff we've done. So our entire back end now with my CTO and the ability to have AI, we're able to rebuild the entire back end infrastructure. And so it's like it's so good for our team. In the sense of like, I know that the efficiency each account manager will have in the next 60 days is going to be better than any agency in the world. And then it's only going to allow us to improve our results for our customers because now they could just own more. And so what I mean by that is like, okay, for example, for them to build list previously, it was a lot harder. Now it's like you could literally just go into Claude and prompt it because it connects with a couple of our vendors' MCPs. And then it ports into our PM system way better, allows them to segment the list way easier. And so they're just able to create better campaigns across cold email, cold call, LinkedIn, and be able to just have it running on blast for all of our customers. And then we just have like systems in place to like top off the campaigns that are doing good and then kill the campaigns that are doing bad. And like one thing I felt like we've struggled with in the last three to four months was like. proper client communication. Like we're still, you know, hitting our SLAs and making sure we get back to them within 24 hours. But like where we could have been better is like being proactive about adjustments as well as just like giving them consistent reports. Like, yeah, they could log into their client portal and see stuff in 247, but a lot of clients don't want to log into the portal, which is something that I had to get used to. You know? And so it's like how can we just make sure that we're always in front of them, send them updates, you know, weekly via email. That show them all the campaigns, show them like all the conversations that are happening, everything of that sort. So our entire back end just rebuilt it and it's just way more stable. And then we just like figured out a whole bunch of like motes in our business. And what I mean by that is like, how can we get an extra edge in deliberability? How can we, you know, have like this extra channel that most people can't scale? How can we be able to sell the most scalable cold call system with, you know, SDRs that we're able to ramp up and hire? and place and get them to to be managed by our clients and everything of that sort. So we just figured all those pieces out. So I feel like our product has never been better. And just like with now how our data is now being ported to, it's just like it's just gonna be like it we're just gonna collect so much more data than ever before. So like that right there, it has like such a big impact on product, but also on like efficiency, which helps our margins. So like it's just a much better business all the way through. so that was like our big rollout in the last like four months. But now I think like, okay, like what's the next step? It's, you know, in the agency space, I think with a like how AI is come in, like how do you stand out from all the other competitors in space? Because if you look up cold email agencies, there's there's quite literally every day a new hundred coming out. It's like the new thing of like kind of being like a Facebook ad agency. Like, you know, at a certain point, like it just became huge. And that's how it is in the cold email space. So the competition is just driving through the roof. Anyways, I'm like, how can we compete? And then it's, I think, on brand. And so that's like a big focus for us now is like how can we have like the best brand as an agency? Like what are the the things that we can invest and buy into? So we bought the domain cold mail dot com. So we're gonna do like a whole rebrand there. Yeah, yeah. And so we're super excited for all that. And we've just had our core team for so long. So everyone knows each other, everyone loves each other. And we just we just know this business like the back of our hand. So I think like, you know, we've had year over year growth, but I'm like super excited for next year because I think like With what we've done with the back end, with, you know, how we've improved our margins, how we've improved our product, and how we think we're gonna just like be able to actually market and grow the business in the next year, like it's gonna be our biggest year yet, like no doubt. speaker-0: Dude, I just it's one, I it's just really cool to hear where your focus is, which is product and and in my mind that goes to like, hey, how do we improve the experience to keep people longer? How do we how do we retain clients? How do we make it so they're having like just this amazing experience? And which is so cool to hear from somebody who's like in an outbound world where it might have like, dude, we're just hammering outbound even more. And that's, you know, and we're just going volume, volume, volume, which I know you guys handle a ton of volume. Yeah. It's just really cool to see somebody, you know, where you're like, hey man, we got that unlocked. We gotta we gotta focus on products, we make it as best as we can. And thinking about the things that are gonna improve lifetime value of of young people, which is just speaker-1: I I feel like our pro product was kind of like in a way, 'cause like we've we've added so much in the last like year and a half and it's like it was in a way kind of duct tape together with a whole bunch of different solutions and like a portal and stuff. And so now that we've kind of removed all that and built it from scratch on our own, it just is like it just looks way easier or like way better and it's better for the customer. And like we have like way less things breaking. Our team hates it right now because there's just like random bugs that pop up and it's like a completely new thing to learn. But Everyone sees like the light the end of the tunnel and everyone's excited, like, okay, like this is like I I see how this can make my life a lot easier. So or or like speed running there. But like it's like the simplest things, like like all right, we would send lead notifications to our customer and sometimes like their responses wouldn't be captured. And so we used to send them like bump notifications, like, hey, you haven't responded to this lead, get back to it. But since sometimes their lead notific or like the lead reply that they would give us wouldn't be captured in our old system because of whatever tech issue we had. Like we just ended up turning that off because we're like because a lot of customers would get pissed off because they were like, Hey, I did actually respond. Like, did you not get it? Like, whatever, whatever. And so, you know, it would just cause issues. But now in our new system, we can have that back on. And like that has such a good lift because it's like with some clients, they're just a little slow. And so, you know, if you know, they're not responding quick enough, they need to get that, you know, push in their face and saying, Hey, get back to this lead. And now it's even like telling our account managers to go reach out to the client and say, Hey, Like we saw that your past four leads you haven't gotten back to in 24 hours. Like, can you or do you mind if we enable the AI reply agent? It's gonna be faster. It may not be as good as you, but like speed to lead is really important here. And so it's like things like that that'll just like help enable us to make sure the customers are getting better results. And that's kind of how we built our entire product and made it like as simple as we possibly could. And so that's kind of like all the stuff we did. And I like we it's even more like past that. Like one thing I'm super excited about, like if you work with any cool email agency. It takes about 14 days to launch a campaign because of how you warm up the infrastructure. But like we figured out how like a good scalable way of like being able to launch campaigns quicker. so like we could like onboard a customer tomorrow and then have their campaigns launched before the end of day tomorrow. And so like we did a whole bunch of stuff there. And since we own the systems now, it's really cool. So like before we would just round robin, our account managers, but now what we'll do is we'll see which account manager has the earliest availability on their calendar. and isn't at capacity. And so then you could book a call like as soon as possible versus like sometimes you would just get round robin to an account manager that didn't have bookings available for three days, which was, you know, a big issue in our client journey. Cause there, you know, when you buy something you have like the I don't know what the word is, but you you you're you're like, yo, I'm gonna get started. I want to get started. You know? Yeah, yeah. and so if you have to wait three days, it then it kind of starts to sink in, like, man, like this agency sucks. So things like that. Like I think we just have done a lot better job of. And so yeah, I don't know. I'm I'm like super ecstatic for like the next like ninety days. speaker-0: Dude, I'm I'm just so pumped to hear you so excited, man. I like it's just one of these times I think there I've been running into a lot of owners who like, especially with just the the buzz of AI and the energy it's like brought in terms of creativity and and just like helping people to think about things differently and to process things maybe quicker. And I dude, that's so cool because I think one of the things that always was frustrating just being a business owner is impatience, right? Is always a killer of everything. And it's like you gotta wait 14 days for your domains to warm up and it's like, dude, I'm so excited to do this right now. I don't know where I'm gonna be in 14 days from now if I'm gonna still be excited. And so the fact that like you can speed that up just from a impatient business owner standpoint is so so critical. I got I got two questions left for you, Nick. One is, dude, I think one of the things that I feel like I see in you from afar that I don't have a ton of insight into. I just, I just have this sort of sense is I feel like you're a great leader, man. I feel like you probably lead your team really, really well. And I'm really curious, like. Especially in a time like this where there's so much change and just like you mentioned the last sixty days, right? There's just so much opportunity to change things, to to reiterate stuff. Like, how have you been keeping the team informed or like morale wise of, hey, here's what we're doing, here's why we're changing so much stuff and keeping them bought in during this time period? speaker-1: Well, it's funny because I think that's actually my weakest area. And this is the part that I'm still working on developing. By far no means like a great leader, learning as I go. like if I look at it in the sense of like five years ago, this was like and I used to hire like consultants and coaches to help me learn this leadership stuff. Cause I felt like, you know, I've never worked a regular job. I've never really seen like a leadership person in the terms of a business myself being in there. And so it was just always hard for me to understand like how to act and how to be. And so I was like, okay, well, I know I suck as a leader today, but if I start to implement a lot of these things that I'm reading about and what I'm seeing, slowly and surely in, you know, the next five years I'll be better. And I'm young right now. I was like, I'll be better. So twenty seven years old, still learning a lot, still not a great leader, but I know by the time I'm thirty five, forty, forty five, I'm just gonna consistently get better at being a leader. And when you ask questions on like how are you rolling it out to your team and how are you keeping them updated, honestly, did not do a great job there. And I think that's what's causing a lot of the frustration to be completely candid. And so I'm I'm trying to be better there in the sense of just like keeping them in the loop. I think the the best thing you can do in situations like this is just let your team know that like, yo, whatever is happening, like you're on top of it. And so like I like in the last three weeks I've, you know, replied to messages in sub five minutes. I'm the one that's following up with our devs if, you know, something isn't fixed fast enough. It's just like that urgency, I think that shows a lot. Funny enough, I think my C my CTO's living with us right now just because he's visiting from India and I think he sees me working like crazy hours and he's like, okay, like I thought this guy didn't do as much as I initially thought. and so it's like the things like that, just like just showing that you care and that like you are putting everything at a high priority and you're not letting things slip. I think that's like the number one thing that's helping me right now. Just like stay on top of stuff as well as just like, you know, show that I really do care about them. speaker-0: Yeah. Dude, I I I well, I'll be forty in a few months. And I gotta say, man, like I think the the thing that I've seen in leadership is somebody who recognizes if they don't think they're a good leader, and to me that's probably a really good sign that they're gonna be a great leader, is that they're aware. And dude, I've watched a lot of your videos, man. I don't think I've ever heard you say bad word about team, about anyone that you work with and the fact that you take ownership. So I know it's hard to as an owner you don't hear a lot, but I just want to commend you, man. I I feel like you've done appreciate it. A really good job from afar, man. Yeah, just the way you carry yourself and there's a lot that you can see from not seeing certain things and and just like that. And so I just dude, I I really really look up to you in that way and I really respect you and for the way that you handle yourself. And then I have one last question. Super random, but I don't know why I just I felt like I needed to know, dude, like what have you been jamming out to lately, music wise, dude? What's been if you've been listening to any music, I've been I've been curious like I Yeah. speaker-1: Dude, I'm a huge Drake fan. So I'm like Dude. But speaker-0: no way. speaker-1: if I think in if I look at like stuff, I look at like you know, you have icons in in business that you kinda look up to. Dude, Drake, he may not be in business, but he's one of those icons that I gotta I gotta look up to. But his whole album Iceman, banger, and then he did like a deluxe version of I' blanking on the name of the album, but he he he dropped another one. and I've been listening to that. So yeah, anything Drake, I'm listening to. Huge fan of Gunna as well. And so those are my Yeah, those are my two back to backs. What about you, Will? I got a I another. speaker-0: Dude. Well, first I gotta I gotta relisten to Iceman. I mean, it's been a minute. I wasn't sure dude, 'cause you're twenty seven, I didn't know if Drake would be on your radar if that was like too old. speaker-1: No, no, dude. I've been on Drake like since the beginning. I think like I was so one of one of like probably like my biggest fights I've ever had with my parents was that when Drake was doing his tour with Lil Wayne in high school, I think I like in the eight, ninth or tenth grade, they wouldn't let me go. And I was so mad about it. I was so distraught. 'Cause one of my friends is going with his sister. I was like, please let me go with them. But yeah, Drake is Drake is the goat in my eyes. speaker-0: Dude, man, I've spent shoot, man. I spent a lot of time working out to to a lot of Drake music in my lifetime. dude, lately I've been on a kick, so I I live in Pittsburgh. I moved here ten years ago. I guess twelve years ago now, gosh. And I hate to say it, but I'd never really listened to Mac Miller until a couple of years ago. And I've been really into I am I I got exposed to his tiny death set first and I loved it, dude. I fell in love with it and and I'm glad I did 'cause like it it's sort of the more mature Mac. And now I've kinda gone back and like listened to his discography and hear him as a young kid and like the journey. And so kinda like with Drake, dude, it's so weird. Like I'm similar age as Drake. So when I hear his old stuff, I'm like, we've gone through this journey is like in our lifetime. And now I hear him talking about like, you know, kids and all this stuff. So it's kind of weird with Mac obviously yes. speaker-1: It no, my favorite thing about Drake right now is like I mean he's, you know, obscenely rich and so some of those things he talks about in the songs you have to go Google 'cause you're like, What is what is this Mussolini that he's talking about? And it's like some custom Rolls Royce that like is only sold to like the Saudi Prince and it's like, bro, what? speaker-0: Dude, he he talk about a business mogul too, man. He is really creating his empire for himself, dude. Nick, dude, I I just gotta say, man, thank you so much for taking time to be on the show. I know you've got a lot of different opportunities in front of you and for you to take time to be here, man. I just I genuinely appreciate it. And I'd love to know for anybody who's listening out there, whether that's a another business owner who's like, dude, I think we could really benefit from outbound and wants to learn about Leadbird, or maybe just connected with something that you said and want to give you a shout out, like where can people Reach out to you or find out more about you guys. speaker-1: Yeah, so we we post content all the time. So you can go to LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube and just type in Nick Abraham and I'll probably pop up somewhere. But yeah, if you're ever interested in agency services, after you validate your offer, just type in cold email dot com and then it'll it'll take you to Libra.io, which will eventually rebrand and do the whole thing there. But yeah, that's where you can find me. speaker-0: Dude, I Nick, thank you so much for hopping on. I was gonna say I'd do a Drake intro for this one. I gotta see if I can get the copyright, if I can afford the copyright you know version of that. speaker-1: We'll survive off of it for this one. speaker-0: I'll do I'll just do a free s I'll do a like karaoke a cappella version of Drake for it. So that way it's it's technically mine. But do Nick, I I just thank you so much for popping on. And if you've enjoyed this episode, I'll have links to all of Nick's info in the show notes and we'll catch you guys on the next episode of Building the Business. speaker-1: Thank you so much, Will.