The argument in one line.
Hourly and salaried work caps out fast, but boring blue-collar service businesses scale once someone runs them as a software-and-AI-agent operation instead of a labor operation, because almost no competitor in those industries has automated anything.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You run or want to run a service business — lawn care, pressure washing, HVAC, home services — and want a reason to automate instead of hiring more labor.
- You're doing cold email or cold outreach for client acquisition and your lead lists are converting under 20%.
- You're a freelancer or new AI-automation operator on a tight runway deciding between cold outreach, content, and paid ads.
- You moderate an online community (Skool, Discord, or similar) and want a simple, repeatable rule for catching AI-generated spam.
SKIP IF…
- You want a scripted, step-by-step tutorial — this is an unscripted comment-reading vlog, not a how-to walkthrough.
- You're looking for tool comparisons or demos — tools are named in passing, never shown or reviewed in depth.
The full version, fast.
An hourly job, even a well-paid one, caps out once you can't raise the rate — the real ceiling-breaker is running a boring, unglamorous business like lawn care or pressure washing as a software-and-AI-agent operation instead of a labor operation, since almost no competitor in those industries automates anything. The video works through subscriber questions on fixing a low-converting cold-email list with a repeatable verification loop, choosing cold outreach over content or paid ads when money and time are both scarce, structuring referral bonuses by how much effort the referrer actually puts into the handoff, and using a two-strike rule to keep a free community free of AI-generated spam. It closes with the plain spreadsheet used to track daily growth across YouTube, Instagram, and X.
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00:00 – 00:44
01 · Intro: the daily-updates format
Nick states his monthly revenue, his goals (500k/month, 1M subscribers), and the three-part structure every daily update follows: answer subscriber comments, build in public, review growth stats.
00:44 – 04:55
02 · Blue collar work is the future
Answering a lawn-care operator and a $75/hour AI-training worker, Nick argues hourly tech work caps out near $150k/year while automated blue-collar service businesses scale because almost no competitor in those industries automates anything.
04:55 – 08:25
03 · Fixing a leaky cold-email lead list
Two viewers with lead-quality problems get the same answer: run a verification loop that scores a sample against the ICP with a cheap model and tightens filters until the pass rate hits 80%.
08:25 – 13:17
04 · One year to build a freelance income
A France-based automation freelancer with a one-year runway asks whether to focus on cold outreach, content, or paid ads, and whether to outsource sales. Nick rules out outsourcing sales and content/ads given her time-versus-money constraints.
13:17 – 21:20
05 · Compartmentalizing bad days, door knocking, and Nick's broke origin story
Nick describes waking at 5am to front-load high-ROI work, advises against door-to-door B2B sales as a client-acquisition tactic, then tells his own story of door-to-door political canvassing and charity fundraising and his father's door-to-door vacuum sales career.
21:20 – 25:49
06 · Referral bonuses and catching up with creator friends
Nick sets a referral-bonus framework tied to handoff effort, then recaps hanging out with fellow creators in Vancouver and reaching the number-two spot on a Skool engagement leaderboard.
25:49 – 31:12
07 · Moderating the free Skool community for AI slop
Live walkthrough of his free 7,500-member Skool community: scanning new posts, deleting AI-generated ones under a two-strike rule, and handling reported spam DMs.
31:12 – 33:46
08 · The daily stats tracker and sign-off
Nick reads through his manually-updated Google Sheet tracking daily growth across YouTube, Instagram, X, and his two Skool communities, then signs off.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- An hourly rate job caps out around $150,000 a year at 2,000 hours, because raising the rate to $250 or $400 an hour is rarely available to an employee.
- Blue-collar service industries aren't inherently profitable — they're profitable because almost no competitor automates anything, so a same-day auto-reply alone can beat rivals by roughly five times.
- A cold-email list converting at only 10-20% usually means the ICP filters are wrong, not that the data source is bad.
- A verification loop — score 50 leads with a cheap model, tighten filters until 80% pass, repeat 5-10 times — turns a 20% hit rate into an 80% one without manual review.
- A pricier lead source with a much higher accuracy rate can cost less per usable lead than a cheap scrape that gets thrown away most of the time.
- Cold outreach skips two steps content or paid ads require: there's no need to build a brand or a product before selling — the skill gets sold directly.
- Outsourcing sales to a partner gives away the one skill that stays valuable once AI can build almost anything, because selling the benefit is what separates otherwise identical companies.
- A referral bonus should track effort: a live warm-handoff call is worth roughly 20%, a simple email CC introduction closer to 10-15%.
- Waking up before the rest of the world and finishing high-ROI work before checking a phone, social media, or messages protects a day from emotional derailment.
- A two-strike rule for removing AI-generated posts, applied consistently, keeps a free community's discussion quality high with only a few minutes of daily moderation.
- Fifteen to thirty seconds of genuine comments on a community's top posts, done daily, is enough to reach the top of an engagement leaderboard over time.
- In-person door-to-door sales rarely produces direct revenue, but the rejection it forces builds a resilience most people never get pushed into.
- Manually logging growth metrics into a spreadsheet costs almost no time, but typing the number in forces a moment of reflection that spotting a trend requires.
What actually scales past an hourly rate ceiling
WHAT TO LEARN
Once a business is automated well enough, the skills that keep paying off are landing leads and closing them — everything else, including the technical build, gets commoditized by AI.
02Blue collar work is the future
- An hourly job caps out fast — $75 an hour at 2,000 hours a year tops out near $150,000, and raising the rate itself is rarely available to an employee.
- Traditional service businesses like lawn care or pressure washing aren't profitable because of the work itself — they're profitable because almost no competitor automates the basics.
- A same-day automated reply to a quote request can out-convert a competitor by roughly five times, simply because most operators in that industry take days to respond.
- Running a blue-collar service as a software-and-AI-agent operation, rather than a labor operation, is what actually lets it scale past a single owner's hours.
03Fixing a leaky cold-email lead list
- A cold-email list converting at only 10-20% against the target profile usually means the filters are wrong, not that the data source is bad.
- A verification loop fixes it: score roughly 50 leads with a cheaper model against the ideal customer profile, tally the pass rate, and tighten filters until it hits 80%.
- A pricier lead source with a much higher accuracy rate can end up cheaper per usable contact than a cheap scrape that gets thrown away most of the time.
04One year to build a freelance income
- Outsourcing sales to a partner gives away the one skill that stays valuable once AI can build almost anything, because selling the benefit is what separates otherwise identical companies.
- Paid ads trade money for time and content trades months of unpaid effort for a future audience — cold outreach is the only channel that only costs time someone already has.
- Selling a skill directly skips two steps a brand-first strategy requires: there's no need to build an audience or a product before the first sale.
05Compartmentalizing bad days, door knocking, and Nick's broke origin story
- Waking up before the rest of the world and finishing the highest-ROI work before checking a phone, social media, or messages protects a day from getting derailed by bad news.
- In-person door-to-door sales rarely produces direct revenue, but the constant rejection it forces builds a resilience that most people never get pushed into building.
06Referral bonuses and catching up with creator friends
- A referral bonus should scale with effort: a live warm-handoff call is worth roughly 20%, while a simple email CC introduction is worth closer to 10-15%.
- Capping a referral bonus to a fixed dollar amount or the first deal only, rather than an open-ended cut of every future contract, keeps the incentive proportional to the actual work.
- Fifteen to thirty seconds of genuine engagement on a community's top posts, done daily, is enough to reach the top of an engagement leaderboard over time.
07Moderating the free Skool community for AI slop
- A consistent two-strike rule for removing AI-generated or self-promotional posts keeps a free community's discussion quality high without heavy day-to-day moderation.
- A few minutes of manual review on new posts each day catches spam and low-effort AI content that automated filters typically miss.
08The daily stats tracker and sign-off
- Manually logging growth metrics into a spreadsheet costs almost nothing in time, but typing the number in forces a moment of reflection that spotting a trend requires.
Terms worth knowing.
- ROAS
- Return on ad spend — revenue generated per dollar spent on advertising, used to judge whether a campaign is profitable.
- LTV
- Lifetime value — the total revenue a business expects to earn from a single customer over the full length of the relationship.
- ICP
- Ideal customer profile — the specific type of company or person a business's outreach and marketing is meant to target.
- Apify
- A web-scraping platform used to pull lead lists, such as company or contact data, from public sources like LinkedIn.
- Skool
- A community and course-hosting platform where creators run paid memberships and free communities with posts, leaderboards, and DMs.
- Instantly
- A cold-email sending platform used to manage outbound domains, mailboxes, and multi-step sequences at scale.
Things they pointed at.
04:55toolApify
06:46toolInstantly
25:49channelMaker School (Skool community)
Lines you could clip.
02:25
“I actually think blue collar work is the future.”
12:10
“Cold outreach is like skipping the beginner zone and going straight into PvP. It's like fighting the level 99 dragon.”
09:27
“The only value nowadays is really just your customer base.”
Word for word.
Read-along
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00:00Hey. Welcome to my daily updates channel. I make over 300 k a month.
00:03And in this video, I'm gonna show you guys how I do it. I structure every daily update the same. I will run you guys through my goals, which as of now are 500 k a month and 1,000,000 subscribers.
00:13Then I do some YouTube comment q and a just to deliver some value right off the bat. Build and strategize in public, show you guys what I'm doing, and then show you guys my growth stats across YouTube, Instagram, and products. And that's to, like, make sure that what I'm doing is actually working.
00:25And happy to report things are working. This is the main channel over here. You guys are currently on the daily updates channel.
00:29And, you know, when I say I answer questions, I will literally just, like, go through all my comments and then start. I think the cutoff's like a month now. And anything that's earlier than a month, I'll just answer.
00:37So if guys have any questions for me, somebody in my position, just out of interest, curiosity, or desire to improve, just let me know. K. So the first one's from Nightmares four seventy.
00:46He says, brother, your console on this channel reminds me of Alex Ramosy's earlier work. He be a huge creator. I wanna thank you.
00:50Question. I come from an industry unlike what this channel is focused on. I run a lawn care business, but marketing is my main skill set.
00:56I run ads at $20 per day right now with around five x thirty day ROAS, that stands for return on ad spend, and around 10 to 20 x LTV ROAS. LTV stands for lifetime value ROAS.
01:08So basically, this person is making 20 times of the lifetime value of a client for every dollar that they spend.
01:17So it's like, I spend a dollar on you, then I get 20 freaking dollars in lifetime value of the clients that I generate because of that marketing.
01:27How should I delegate my money? Should I keep OpEx at below 30% of rev, or is it okay to get more expensive? I mean, like, you know, these are, yeah, these are pretty solid business model questions, but there's so many determinants, and I don't know if I would ever just have, a cutoff number there.
01:41You should definitely be spending more than $20 per day. Your roles will probably go down, but your growth will go way up. So that's what I would do.
01:48On a side note, it's pretty clear to me that blue collar work does not scale well. It doesn't really align with the life I wanna live. I come from a tech job training AI paying $75 an hour, and I could travel.
01:56How wise, unwise do think it'd be jump ship to another opportunity in the future? Well, I mean, this does not scale very well. Right?
02:01You're making $75 per hour. If you work two thousand hours ish per year, you're making a $150,000. In order to meaningfully make more money than that, would have to meaningfully improve that, make a $150 an hour, $250 an hour, $400 an hour.
02:13So that's not that's not scaling very well at all. Any sort of hourly rate typically doesn't until you get to, like, very, you know, high until you get to a point where you can significantly improve your compensation per hour, which you will not do at a tech job. I actually think blue collar work is the future.
02:27And I know this sounds stupid, but most of the people that I know that are really crushing and making a ton of money are are running blue collar style businesses. So stuff like this lawn care business, stuff like pool cleaning, stuff like pressure washing, stuff like home services, HVAC, driveway paving, you know, hell, even like just physical businesses like like like physiotherapist, massage therapist, and so on and so forth.
02:49And the value there is it's not that it's that business which is really inherently profitable. It's just that the people that crush it, what they do is they basically run software businesses, but then they slap, like, a home services logo on the software business.
03:04And then they just automate the hell out of everything with AI agents and then, you know, no code drag and drop builders like NADA. Like, back in the day when I started one of my first businesses, maybe, like, first five businesses, one of them was like a a photography company.
03:16And I noticed that, you know, as part of my market research, I called up, like, 10 photography companies. Like, hey, you know, I'm really interested in services. Could you guys, like, you know, give me a quote?
03:25And they're like, yeah. Yeah. Sure.
03:26Just send me an email. I'd send them an email. They would take, like, two days to get back to me.
03:30And invariably, was like, this is shittiest customer service ever. So I just built a system that when somebody sent me an email or whatever, would, like, immediately reply being like, hey, Pete. Thanks so much for getting back to me.
03:38Yeah. For sure. Let me get on that for you in a second.
03:40I'm just out of the office right now. We'll handle this for you. I ran ads to that.
03:44And despite knowing basically nothing about ads, my royalties are probably like five x what the other guys were simply by virtue of having automated a simple step in the process. So I guess the point I'm making is these are boring traditional industries.
03:55Junk removal, moving, lawn care, whatever the hell. And you gotta understand because of that, the the competition's really bad. So you can just be a software business or an AI automation tech guy like you, and then you can crush it in that industry.
04:07You'd make way more than $75 an hour if you did it really well. Why no other businesses? Says Yao Fernandez.
04:14I mean, I'm just doing a lot as is, so I don't really need another business necessarily. My current ones make a lot of money. Ferris says, library content.
04:20Just signed my first client. Congratulations. And we're gonna get more booked appointments using cold email outreach.
04:24Getting good quality leads has been my biggest issue so far. I'm using Apify scrapers, mostly the dollar 51. Try a few others too, but even with the ICP and industry filters dialed in, only about 20 to 30% what comes back is actually relevant.
04:36I put the results in Claude and ask it to filter in. Then I put what's left through an email verifier and end up with maybe 10 to 12% of the original scrape leads actually being send worthy. I saw your video on any mail finder in AirScale.
04:46Haven't tried them myself, but I know they're pricier. Would love to hear your advice. So you're doing something wrong here for only getting 10% of the list, to be clear.
04:55What you should do, probably the simplest way of doing this, is just run a run a verification loop. Clearly, something with your ICP and industry filters are not making sense. If you're only getting 20% of your intended ICP with the ICP through of of the filters.
05:11What I mean is you're looking for, like, marketing agency owners and then just, I don't know, like, managed service provider owners are coming back. Right?
05:20Like, clearly, that's that's your fault. And I don't mean that in a bad way. Just mean you can fix this.
05:23It's pretty low hanging fruit. So run a verification loop rather than just like getting Claude to look at the filters and then so on and so forth. Just like do that and then say, oh, you know, if the result is only like 20%, then I want you to adjust the filters until the results are 80%.
05:37And just have it continuously do this across your total addressable market. And eventually, you get to the point where, you know, you're not at 30%, you're like 80%. You just run this in the background, by the way.
05:45It's a pretty simple loop. Just do the filters, get a list of maybe 50, Have a cheaper Claude model go through all 50 and determine, you know, if it's a pass or fail.
05:55Then just get the percentage, maybe 50%. And then if it's below 80%, just be like, hey, cool. Let's adjust the filters and do it again.
06:01Adjust the filters, do it again. Do that over and over and over again. And by the end of, like, five or 10 loops, like, you'll have a pretty solid set of filters.
06:06I don't even do any of this stuff manually anymore. I just have Claude do that through the same loop. Now the second thing is even if you get to 80% and then, I don't know, like, you verify 50, that technically means 40% of the total list is actually making it through.
06:20Which means for the dollar 50 you're spending, you're not just spending a dollar 50 per thousand leads. Now you're spending, $3.50 or $4. And so Airstcale and stuff like that might not actually be as expensive as you think because these tend to have much higher quality leads because they're scraping directly from LinkedIn SalesNav as opposed to a cash list from LinkedIn SalesNav like a year ago.
06:37And then, you know, if you do the math on, like, your verification and million verify or whatever the hell you're using, then, you know, you'll find that maybe it's not much more than $3.50. Okay? Hopefully, that makes sense.
06:48Mune says, I'm doing AI, and I build products but didn't get a paid client yet. I've watched your cold email. I reach videos, and I've tried that the tools used in each video are paid and they're in dollars.
06:57Can you please make a video on how to get clients using tools that cost less, which costs 30 or $40, which is equal to $10,000 in my country?
07:04That's $10,000. Well, I mean, like, $10,000 in buying power? Probably not.
07:08I mean, I don't think there's any country on earth that has that big of a multiple right now. Yeah. Anyway, 30 or $40, that's your cap.
07:17You gotta just blast leads using an approach like what Ferris is using. Then you have to buy mailboxes, a few of them.
07:26And then you have to like either manually send, which blows. It's like not good. Or get the cheapest, like, cold email outbound plan on something, like, instantly.
07:35I think the cheapest by around is, like, $37. So you'll go a little bit over $40. But, basically, on a monthly basis, you'll have, like, $50 a month of cost.
07:42You'll probably send, like, two or 3,000 leads a month ish. So, yeah, I'd probably start with one domain, three mailboxes.
07:51You'd send 90 a day, have a two step sequence. So 45 on day one, forty five on day two. That means you'll send twenty six days a month, 26 times 45, somewhere like 1,500 or so, I'd say, emails a day, probably.
08:051,200 to 1,500 emails a month, sorry, to new leads. And then when you get a reply, you actually have to go into the mailbox, which sucks, and then reply.
08:14But since you only have three, it's not gonna be that big of a deal. That's what I would do. That's the stack.
08:19HHXXXXOXXX7542. Says love these videos. Amila says, Nick, I'm developing custom automation solutions for French speaking small to midsize enterprises for the past year.
08:32I've had a few projects, but not enough to live off of around $700 a month. Currently finishing a work study MBA in France. I'm graduating in two months, and I've decided to dedicate myself to freelancing and give myself one year to make a living from it.
08:43I'm aiming 3 k euros before taxes. How would you approach the situation if you were in my shoes? What strategies would you implement to acquire clients?
08:51Should I focus on cold outreach, which I'm already doing, but it's not working very well for me, content creation, or paid ads? I'm not good at sales. Only around 5% of my sales calls actually convert.
09:00Would you advise outsourcing this to a sales agent or referral partner? If not, could you give me some tips on how to improve my performance during sales calls? So we got a lot of questions here.
09:08Let's just go backwards. The first one here is about, I'm not good at sales. Only around 5% of my calls actually convert.
09:14Would you advise outsourcing this to a sales agent or referral partner? No. Most definitely not.
09:18I would not outsource this because this is really the only skill that's going to matter over the course of the next five ish years for for your economical utility economic utility. You know? Like, we're gonna get to the part where agents can do virtually anything for us.
09:30Really, the only difference in company a versus company b is gonna be company's ability to sell the benefits of their service to people. If company b sucks at it and company is great at it, company is gonna rock. And that kind of brings me back to this point of distribution where the only value nowadays is really just your customer base.
09:47But what's the difference between Netflix and then an AI generated clone of Netflix, which would take me, like, thirty seconds to make nowadays? It's the fact that Netflix has a giant list of customers. It's their marketing.
09:58It's their vendor relationships. It's their licensing. All that is a form of distribution.
10:01So, yeah, the tech stuff doesn't really matter all that much. And if you're like, oh, I'm gonna outsource this to a sales guy. The sales guy's dumb because he can just learn the tech stuff and implement it with AI now in, I don't know, like a week.
10:11And then you're dumb because you're giving away all of your leverage and capital to some salesperson that's probably gonna make way more money than you will. And not to mention, if they're good at sales, they'll sell the hell out of you too, my friend. And you're not gonna be making 70%.
10:23You're gonna be making, like, 30%, which is probably proportional to the value because sales is much more valuable.
10:30Alright. So working backwards here. I'd like to know how you approach the situation if you're in my shoes.
10:34What strategy you acquire would you use to acquire clients? Should I focus on cold outreach? Yes.
10:39Content creation, YouTube, Instagram, like, no. Or paid ads, no. Paid ads, just because the whole idea of paid ads is you convert money.
10:47You you trade money for time back. So the whole idea behind paid ads is like, don't have the time to actually talk to people individually, so I'm just gonna pay an advertiser to do all that talking for me.
10:56But the advertiser will manage the distribution of that, add to people that are actually relevant and in the market for said thing. And, you know, my website will manage the automated inquiry and so on and so forth.
11:08This is just like a simple trade off between money and time. The issue is you don't have a lot of money. What you do have is a lot of time, so you can't really make that trade.
11:17Content creation is kind of like that as well. It doesn't seem like it, but you're trading a lot of your, you know, like, you're you're you're spending all of this opportunity cost to build this brand or this business, which may pay you later on.
11:31You know, it takes a long time to have success with a brand. Right? If you tried to start a brand today, you would not see money from that in quite a while.
11:38And, you know, you have a year to make a living from it, but maybe first, like, seven, eight months, you don't make a dime. Maybe eight, nine months, and now you start making a few thousand dollars because you've hit that positive flywheel effect. All of this is just way too uncertain for me.
11:50And as somebody that, like, has been in far dire financial straits than you are, you know, yeah. What am I gonna do? Spend all day trying to make it as a YouTuber while I can't pay my bills?
11:59No. I'm gonna get evicted, and I was just about to get evicted. So what's the only situation that I think really makes sense for you?
12:05You just need to get really good at cold outreach. And I talk about it all the time, but cold outreach is like, you know, if you ever played RuneScape before, one of these these games, cold outreach is like skipping the beginner zone and going straight into PvP.
12:16It's like fighting the level 99 dragon. And the reality is the second you slay one of those level 99 dragons as a level one, you immediately gain 20 levels, And you you crush all of those guys in the beginner zone. So that's one way to conceptualize.
12:30Another way to conceptualize it is just with cold out reach, you don't have to get good at something, build something with your skills, and then sell that thing. All you have to do is really just get good at something and sell that thing directly.
12:42My point is, you sell your skills, and it's a one step gap between building the skill and selling the skill. If you try and build a brand, you gotta, you know, build the skill, build the brand, and then sell the brand.
12:55It's like a lot more steps. Right? Well, actually, what you have to do is you have to build the skill, build the brand on that skill, build products on that brand, and then sell those products.
13:03So it's like, just cut it down to two steps. Get really good at just talking about stuff that you've that that you know how to do, and then just sell your skills.
13:11You'll make less money in the long run, but you'll make far more money in the short run. And that's what you want right now. How do you deal with emotional distractions, says Ahmed.
13:20Like a bad news or conflict with a parent, unexpected things that eat away your cognitive energy, how to prevent it from distracting the work that needs to be done? You know, it's a great question. There's a fair amount of compartmentalization that I think you need to have if you wanna be really successful with this stuff long term.
13:32The reason why is because if you are the bottleneck by which your business lives or dies, at least in the case of most of you, that will be that will be true for a long time. And then your performance on a daily basis goes up and down because you're just spending all of your emotional energy on something else that doesn't deliver your direct ROI.
13:47You know, like, if your performance goes up and down, so too will your results. Right? Just because you are the everything needs to pass by you, basically.
13:56You're the bottleneck, the the the load bearing point. So, you know, you need to learn how to compartmentalize a little bit. The way that I like to do it is I just wake up pretty early.
14:05Like, I woke up at 5AM today, and then I just get a few hours of work done in before I have anything else in my life. Like, I don't have my phone on.
14:13I don't have, like, anything on my computer. I'm not, like, going on social media first thing in the morning. I'm not talking to, like, my my girlfriends.
14:20I'm not talking to my family. I'm just, like, I'm just doing my thing. And the benefit there is I just get done with all of my higher ROI revenue generating activities before I even have the chance of something coming in and screwing up my day.
14:32And if something comes in and screws my day up, if I get bad news or something, obviously, it's gonna screw my day up. But at that point, I'm 80% of the way. So, anyway, that's just the way that I deal with it.
14:41There are multiple ones, but I can't really turn this into a psychology session because I'm not a psychologist, and I don't really know if I'd I'd be that valuable. I'm talking about stuff I got. Okay.
14:50So I'm currently on Upwork, so does Shafiel. I'm trying to do jobs because I don't have a specific industry I can help with and niche down my offer with. So I saw your last video on that.
14:57So how can I do it? By the way, I'm $0. I'm trying to do jobs, but I don't have a specific industry I can help with.
15:03Yeah. I mean, you should you shouldn't niche down if you're on Upwork. Like, you shouldn't be like, I help, you know, dog walking businesses make $50,000 a month.
15:13Why? Because there just aren't that many dog walking businesses on Upwork, and the whole point of Upwork is you just like you're just doing whatever you can to get a few reps in.
15:22So I don't niche down at all. I would not recommend you niche down at all. I'm just like the automation guy.
15:26I apply to all automation jobs. Thanks for the feedback, says BayBuddy Knights. No problem.
15:31Justin says, thanks for the response, Nick. Is offering free services as a test run to a business a viable approach? When starting up with zero customers, to prove the work is valuable and show the benefit to then be paid while building up my first customer base.
15:44Now I don't really think so. If you wanna do free work, just do it for yourself. What I mean by this is like, if you wanna do free work, then take the work and then apply it to your own business.
15:54Building a lead gen system. You don't need to go find somebody to build a lead gen system for you. You can just build it for your own business, and then you could just tell people, yeah.
16:00You know, I built this lead gen system for an IT company. Technically correct. You know, you sell information technology.
16:07Yeah. I work with a consulting business. I work with, like, an AI company, actually.
16:10It's like, it's your own. Technically true. But you've just sidestepped it all.
16:14You don't need to do any of that bullshit. And then you could just sell to people directly based off of a case study of, hey, you know, I built a lead gen system in the house we got 19, I don't know, like 19 booked meetings a month.
16:27And it's like, wow, can you show it to me? It's like, yeah, sure. This is the business I built it for, and it's your own business.
16:33You don't need anything more than that to sell your ability to, like, get leads. Right? So if you're selling a lead gen service, and you've just built a lead gen service for yourself that gets you the leads, it's kinda like, well, how do I know this is gonna work?
16:45It's like, well, you're here right now, aren't you? Exactly rocket science. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is, yeah, I would just I'll build it for yourself, man.
16:53I mean, you're gonna save a lot of time. Nirvana says, got a notification. You like my comment.
16:57Here, take $925. I will happily take $925. Thank Kaz RDS says, Nick, do you recommend doing in person b to b door knocking and sales to get clients for AI automation?
17:06Do have any tips or advice for doing it? No. I do not recommend you do this.
17:09I recommend you try this out, like, once or twice in your life. Like, you know, go through a I don't know.
17:14Spend a week and do like a 100 door knocks. I think it'll just like put hair on your chest, essentially. And I mean that for both men and women.
17:19It's very, very difficult and that's quite ego destroying. But I don't think that'll actually make you money in the short term. One of my first jobs was I was volunteering well, not volunteering.
17:32I was initially volunteering, but that's how I got the job. I was volunteering for, like, this political thing at my school, and it was all about, like, the transit system.
17:40And so we were doing this thing called the transit referendum, and I was, like, petitioning people to vote a certain thing on the transit referendum. And I went to, like, a really liberal kind of progressive college, and, you know, they sort of got me thinking that this was the right thing to do.
17:54Funnily enough, now I don't think that transit referendum made any sense. Not that I regret doing it. I just didn't know what the hell I was talking about.
17:59I was some impressionable 18 year old. Right? But this involved me, like, just, like, talking to random strangers at Skytrain stations and stuff like that.
18:06Right? Skytrain stations are, like, Vancouver's version of, like, the subway. And, you know, that, like that was pretty scary because I'd be like, hello.
18:14Have you heard of x y z? People are like, no. Screw off.
18:16Stop talking to me. Do. Right?
18:18And so from there, I got a job fundraising for, like, a charity, like, a woman's rights charity, an African woman's rights, and, like, a motherhood charity, I think.
18:30And we also did, like, child sponsorships. What I mean by that is, like, you can sponsor a child for, I don't know, $40.50 bucks a month and then ensure that they have some foods on their plate.
18:40I I don't know. Varying degrees of accuracy there, I'm sure, of, like, how the money gets dispersed. But anyway, that's what I did.
18:46And I made very little money with that. But for basically eight to nine hours a day, Monday to Friday, sometimes on Saturdays, I had to stand by a busy train station with a bright pink vest on and a little folio, and I had to be like, hey. You know?
19:00Hey. You look like the sort of person that would love to donate $45 of your hard earned money to little Mubamba or something. Right?
19:08And, like, it sucked. It was terrible.
19:12That job, holy shit. I don't know, man.
19:15I got yeah. I got slapped.
19:18People spit on me. It was bad. Yeah.
19:23It was good too because, obviously, it taught me a tremendous skill set. When you talk to a 100 random strangers in the street every day, you get pretty good at generating attention. Right?
19:33Or at least generating something to divert people's attention. But yeah. I mean, do know how much money I made for that?
19:38It was like $15 an hour. No commission. No nothing.
19:40Granted, it makes sense. Right? Commission for, like, charity fundraising.
19:44That's kind of a slippery slope. But I was making 15 Canadian dollars an hour equivalent to, like, 11 American. And, you know, $88 a day, something like that, five days a week.
19:54And I didn't make any direct money from it. Just like you're probably not gonna make any direct money with b to b door knocking, especially if it's just like your first a 100 or so.
20:02You gotta get good at this in order to make it work. Right? But probably one of the most valuable jobs I've ever had aside from that.
20:08And that really helped my door to door experience as well. So, no, I don't recommend doing any sort of in person b to b door knocking and sales to get clients, but I do recommend doing it just to, like, really figure out what life is like on the other side. You know?
20:21Shit's tough, man. It's like the modern version of, like, hunting and eating your the food that you killed. Like, that is just the the clearest analogy, I would say.
20:30Yeah. We don't live in a an environment where I can, like, throw a spear at, like, a, you know, gazelle and then pick that puppy up, put it over my shoulder, bring it home to the wife and kids.
20:40We don't live in that world anymore. So this is the closest analogy. My dad was a door to door vacuum salesman when he arrived in this country, and very similar idea.
20:49Every every morning, guy had to, like, wake up. He was, think, a 100% commission or at least, like, 80% commission or something. Like, very, very intense.
20:55He had to wake up, he had to, like, eat what he killed. And, like, if he didn't, then I, my mom, you know, who's taking care of me at the time, we had nothing. Think about what that pressure does to a man, especially like a young man in that environment.
21:07Crazy. Yeah. Anyhoo.
21:12Hey, Nick. I look forward to these videos daily. Hope you keep them coming.
21:15Says Numbers. I have a client who can refer my AI agency to dozens of leads who he believes would be interested in my automations. We discussed a referral bonus briefly.
21:2225% got thrown around, but that doesn't feel right. What referral bonus structure would you give in my situation? Should I take into account qualified versus unqualified leads, retainers versus one time setups, or am I over complicating this?
21:33Thank you in advance. Yeah. The the the main question to answer is how involved is that person gonna be in the handoff?
21:38If they are jumping on a call with you and the lead that they're referring, and then they do like a warm handoff, I would pay maybe 20% for that. That's fine.
21:47If it's just like a a simple email cc, which they could do very easily, I might pay, you know, 10 to 15% for that. So twenty five percent's on the higher end, but maybe they misunderstand what that means.
21:58Maybe they want 25% of the first deal, and then you can do whatever the hell you want after that. So just clarify. You know?
22:04It's like 25% of deal number one, but then you can do whatever you want after that. Maybe it's 25% of your first $10,000. Right?
22:11And you're like, oh my god. $2,500. But maybe then you sign them on, a year long retainer at $10,000 a month.
22:16And now proportionally, your acquisition cost is a lot lower. So that's the main thing I would say.
22:21Thank you code with Robbie. Yep. Underlying concept is definitely consistency.
22:25Whoever said cleanliness is godliness had not yet met Nick. Until Fable can make your bet, I see no reason to allow that task to utilize your limited resources.
22:34That's so funny. Yeah. I didn't clean my bed.
22:37You know, I didn't do it at the hotel because that's what I pay people for. I don't even do my damn bed if I'm in a hotel. But, anyway, people are ragging on me for it.
22:45Codis Robbie says, let me ask you. Why do do your daily tracking manually, and how do you think you benefit from it? You know, it's a good question.
22:51I'm the automation guy, and then I manually go through and update some janky Google Sheet every day. The reason why is because it's not just about the metric, it's about what I gain from bringing awareness to the metric and then reflecting on it for even a few seconds.
23:05And when I have to manually go through on each of these pages, see the thing, and then add it, it costs me, you know, thirty seconds a day, but I gained far more in value than the thirty seconds that I spent. I spot trends and I spot things that, like, result in my content having peaked. If I get a a big proportional improvement in my follower growth, you know, one day, I'm like, why?
23:24Why did I see this big daily update increase? Kinda makes me think about it. So if you had a lot of metrics and you're working with a company on this stuff, obviously, you don't do it manually every single day.
23:33It would just take way too much time. But, yeah, I think as a as a as a portion of that, that's fine.
23:39Okay. And I was gonna answer this one, but I'm just thinking I'm running out of time here. So yeah.
23:44And I probably did mean to say mister beast, yeah, because we're working together. Alright. So that's that.
23:50Had a blast hanging out with a couple of the school guys yesterday. So Marty, it was great seeing you. Ryan and Michael, also great seeing you guys.
23:57You know? These are killers that have I think Marty has, like, over 5,000,000 on YouTube, and then I think Ryan is, like, a 160 k on IG. Literally the most jack I've ever seen in my life.
24:06And then Michael has, like, many million on on Instagram as well. So it was cool kinda hanging out with them out here in Vancouver. We just got together and went to, like, the local cactus club, talked about, like, content and, you know, how to, like, optimize school because they're part of a big school challenge.
24:21And speaking of school, things are going pretty well. I don't know if I've told you guys, but I'm in this big school platinum group. And the whole idea behind platinum is it's just a hold on a second.
24:32It's just like a group of people that basically a competition for educational creators, the 100 k followers application only.
24:41And what I do is basically, you know, like, Hormozi and and Ovens, stuff like that, they're they work really closely with all these creators to help them, like, grow because they want really high quality schools. And every day, just comment on posts for five minutes, and I've somehow made it to the number two spot on the leaderboard, which is kind of funny because if you think about it, like, number one, I'm a very valued resource here.
24:59People really, really like me. And, you know, they're always commenting like, Nick, thanks so much. Nick, what would you do?
25:04What what do you think about this? Because, you know, I'm kind of a role model in that way. But what's really funny is, like, I didn't really spend too much effort in order to get to this point.
25:12And, yeah, I mean, like, I'm I'm almost first on the leaderboard, which just means they all see my name every single day. That's funny because, like, I've honestly it's pretty straightforward.
25:23I just voice transcribe. Like, I just, like, see a post, and I go, oh, yeah. I think x, y, and z, and then I move on.
25:27It's, fifteen seconds per post or something, thirty seconds per post. Very, very little work aside from actually reading the thing and understanding it. And then I now get, like, massive exposure.
25:36So that's fun. That's really fun.
25:39So anybody from there that might be watching this, thank you. Looking forward to continuing to connect. Just love giving value.
25:45And I love that communities make it so easy and human focused. On the community front, the free school is working great. So if I go back here, we're at 7,400 members today.
25:56And to the two wins from Alex's story and then Anwar to ten k months, thank you guys very much for posting. You know, you guys fire up a lot of the newbies here. What I do, just because I kinda wanna show you guys, you know, how it's working, is I will literally just every day go through this new, quickly read through sort of as a first pass to see if there's anything that's so bullshit here that it's, like, obviously AI generated.
26:18So what am I seeing here that's AI generated? This is probably the worst post here, I would say, because somebody looks like they posted a YouTube video.
26:33So, I mean, just as like a general rule, I'm just gonna delete that. And then I'm gonna say, is this a YouTube video for sure?
26:40Yeah. I think they're, like, trying to drive traffic to the YouTube video, so I'm just gonna delete this. And, you know, sorry if if if not.
26:46I mean, I have to be kinda trigger happy with this stuff just for time purposes. But, yeah, the rest of this has been great.
26:52Like, I just spot AI generated posts, then I remove them. And then I'll spend exactly five minutes going through and just dropping a few comments. Like, it's really not that difficult as you guys could see.
27:00You get a lot of people that come in that, you know, like, aren't really sure what to do or where to go. They read through some of these posts, they're like, holy shit.
27:07This is actually possible. And you know what's wild is, like, I think we've actually got a much higher quality discussion kind of board as a result of just this carte blanche, no AI post rule.
27:22So, yeah. I mean, this one from Rodrigo is probably the most suspect in the last twenty four hours, cause he had a couple of weird em dashes and it seemed very proper. But at the bottom, said, hey, guys.
27:31Like, I'm not, you know, English. I just translated this by Google. Sorry about that.
27:37Yeah. This one seems pretty AI AI, but it might also be like a language thing. So I've been watching Nick's videos for while, I really appreciate his style.
27:44No hype, just straight talk, but what actually works. What I think about joining Maker School, a bit about me, sort of design of your video and strategy. Okay.
27:49Hold on. This is obviously AI. Yeah.
27:52Less tinkering, more doing. Cool. So I'm just deleting that.
27:56And then, you know, like, you can you can give them a reason for that as well. I don't really give them reasons if it's the first post.
28:04I think my rule is like a two strike pass, so that's probably what I'm gonna end up at. I'm still figuring this out as I go, but, yeah, two strikes and you're out. So if I see more than one AI generated post here, then, you know, I kind of, like, give you the benefit of the doubt.
28:18Maybe I screwed up, but, obviously, if it's two for two, I, you know, I probably see 98%. I probably have, like, 98%, you know, success rate in spotting ad generated posts.
28:30That's funny. We're from 7.4 to 7.5 k on. Just because I'm, like, very familiar with how AI writing works and stuff.
28:35So, yeah, I just ban the hell out of them and trigger happy. And that's what we do. So as a result, have a pretty high quality freaking community.
28:42And, yeah, if you just sprinkle in and post here, is need. The one issue I think is, like, this top level look allows people to market bullshit in the intro tab here. So I've had a few people that are like marketing stupid BS being like, hey.
28:55How's it going? You know, do you wanna make money on the Internet?
29:01Right? And people, like, leave replies to people here trying to sell them on stuff. And, yeah, the unfortunate thing is when that happens, I don't really see it unless somebody reports it.
29:10So we've had a few people in my DMs be like, hey, man. This person is obviously doing BS, and then they'll report it, and I get a little notification here. If you guys see anything that's spam or AI generated, then just let me know, and then I will immediately god emperor ban hammer the hell out of them.
29:25You know? Like like, I will do I will do this to them.
29:32That is me in this community. And I will slice them with my freaking Warhammer 40 k sort. Yeah.
29:41Yeah. So that's good. And the Maker School continues to grow.
29:43The DMs were a problem a few days ago because now that I have a free community, obviously, like, I got a lot of people that send me DMs that are just like, hey. Thanks, Nick. You know?
29:50Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
29:51And, obviously, I appreciate it, so I wanna read them all. But it takes a long time to read them all. And, you know, I'm trying to stick to my core promise, which is I'm gonna read these DMs.
30:00Like, not gonna reply, but I'm gonna read them. So, yeah, I was just getting to the cadence of actually, like, reading through, you know, forty, fifty of them a day.
30:10What I found really interesting about this whole thing is I I think I am genuinely testing the limits of what one person can feasibly do. Is there really anybody on the Internet that is doing this? I think I might be the only one.
30:20The only one that's, like, actually doing this level of volume for this long as well because I've been doing it for over a year. And what's cool is, like, I use AI to assist me everywhere except for the actual, like, deliverable, which is the, like, value of the coaching and the value of, like, the presence.
30:39It's wild. I don't think anybody else is doing this on the Internet. I haven't really dialed into a t.
30:44It's about like human extension. I've extended myself using technologies like voice transcripts and so on and so forth, but I haven't like replaced myself, which is what everybody else is doing, which is why people just think that they're fake and they're not real. So it's an interesting thought experiment.
30:57Like, I wonder how far you could really take it. Like, what if I get my community view, you know, a million a month, and it's just me managing it?
31:05That'd be cool. But, I mean, it's you know, we'll we'll see.
31:10We'll see how all that stuff goes. Anyhow, I'm just yapping at this point. No real strategy.
31:15So why don't we just move into tracker, and then we will wrap up today. So, yeah, my stats are four seventy one six zero one.
31:22So we slowed down big time on the growth, point one one percent. If I go to the analytics here, you could see we are getting very close. Now we just went up two since I recorded this or started recording this to 20 k.
31:35So I'm looking forward to that. And then I also have a blast up thing. Let's just check this one more time because it keeps saying a server error has occurred, but I don't think it Five forty nine one five one.
31:45So if I do the math there, that's point one three. And then if I go on x, I think I crossed 3.5 k now. And, yeah, I'm just I'm just talking about whatever the hell I want to on x, so that's kind of fun.
31:59Where the hell is this? Oh, there it is. Okay.
32:02And then this growth woah. Woah.
32:06What happened here? Oh, yeah. That's point six six.
32:08We actually went up exactly point six six again, which is interesting. I don't know why this one has a comma on this one, though. Alright.
32:17That's better. That bothers me. I checked Maker School before this.
32:20We were at 2142. I think it might be 2143 now. I think we got somebody.
32:25Yeah. Like, we got somebody extra. But anyways, still point 23%.
32:29And Maker 0 is if I just go to Maker 0, exactly 7,500. Thank you, Abdullah, which has brought us up here.
32:37Unfortunately, we've dropped down to rank three for the search terms that I am attempting to win. Somebody just crushed me on a search term, and they need to be dealt with.
32:47So that's what I'll be doing next. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm pretty happy with all this growth.
32:52Pretty well to think that less than two weeks ago, there was no Maker Zero, and now we have 7,500 members. I'm gonna be adding a membership question that asks for an email address.
33:00Unfortunately, I found out that Maker Zero does not inherently provide me the email address as the as the owner, which kinda sucks. Just like it's kind of a shitty oversight. But I need to add a membership question so that I have all 7,500 emails as well.
33:13And, you know, I can do stuff with it, like give them my annual promo. But you you're gonna leak a lot anytime you do anything new, so I'm not super worried about it. Yeah.
33:23So 2142 is is pretty neat. We're we're grown.
33:26I'm looking forward to being like number three on the chart again because then you get like some cute little thing. Alright. That's it.
33:34I love the rest of the day. It kinda sucks that my monitor is all the way down to here. I'm looking forward to, like, going back home so I don't have to keep on looking down and then looking up and then looking down.
33:44But, anyway, I'll see y'all tomorrow.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Nick Saraev opens his daily-updates channel the way he opens every one of them: state the number, then earn it. A few minutes later, a viewer's $75-an-hour AI-training job becomes the excuse for the video's real argument — that boring, blue-collar service businesses scale once someone runs them like a software company wearing a lawn-care logo.
Named ideas worth stealing.
04:55list
The lead-list verification loop
- Pull a sample of ~50 scraped leads
- Have a cheap model score each as pass/fail against the ICP
- Tally the pass percentage
- If under 80%, adjust the filters and rerun
- Repeat 5-10 cycles until the pass rate holds near 80%
A repeatable check for whether a scraped cold-email list actually matches the intended target profile, run entirely with AI rather than manual review.
Steal forany cold outreach or lead-scraping pipeline with a low relevance rate
21:20model
Referral bonus tiering by handoff effort
- Live warm-handoff call with the lead: ~20%
- Simple email CC introduction: ~10-15%
- Cap the percentage to a fixed dollar amount or the first deal only
Sets referral compensation proportional to how much work the referring party actually does in the handoff, rather than a flat percentage of all future revenue.
Steal forany agency or freelancer negotiating referral partnerships
Visual structure at a glance.
