They Made $42M With a Simple Funnel… Here's the AI Version

Ever wonder why a $42 million company's entire growth secret fits on a napkin? 

Joe Downs and Peter Swain break down a real-world sales funnel playbook. The one that took outreach software company Lemlist from zero to $42M in annual revenue and show you exactly how to steal the framework using AI side hustles and zero-dollar ad budget. 

Peter walks through the full top-to-bottom funnel strategy: how to use Claude and Manus for deep customer research, how to build lead magnets without confusion, and how AI automation handles your outreach while you're doing literally everything else. 

This episode is for every solopreneur, side hustler, and kitchen-table entrepreneur who has a great product but has no idea how to fill the funnel. 

That's most of us. Perfect.

Listen For

3:45 How do you strip a $42 million sales funnel down to something a main street business owner can actually use?

8:08 What does Claude actually do when you ask it to research your ideal customer's 3:00 AM pain?

14:00 Why does solving one problem beat solving five and how does a confused buyer kill your funnel fast?

20:33 How can Claude build your lead magnet content in a single conversation without any heavy lifting?

23:37 How do you build a fully automated outreach campaign starting with just a free Apollo CSV download?

Links Mentioned

Peter's Free AI Business Audit | ColdIQ | Apollo | Claude | Manus | Gamma | Opus Clip | Munch | Descript | Lovable

Email the “Idiots” Joe and Peter

idiots@successfulidiots.com 

Joe Downs

Website | LinkedIn | YouTube | Email Joe:joe@belroseam.com 

Peter Swain

Website | Email | LinkedIn | X

Transcript

Peter Swain (00:00):

A confused buyer does not exist. Right. So if you tell someone, "Hey, if you download this prompt pack, it's going to set up your funnel, it's going to do your text, it's going to write this, it's going to produce your ads and da, da, da, da, da." You should already be feeling it just from that little thing where you're like, "I'm lost"

Joe Downs (00:24):

42 million. That's what Lemless an outreach software company generated an annual revenue in 2025. And this week, the founder of a sales system company called ColdIQ posted the entire playbook, not the highlights, not the PR version, the actual funnel, the channels, the tools, the conversion rates, the ad spend, the affiliate strategy, all of it. Now, most of us aren't building a $42 million software company, but here's what I couldn't stop thinking about reading that post. They didn't have a secret. They had a clear funnel, a content strategy, and a system that converted entry offers into customers. Three things, that's it. Today we're going to break down how AI helps you build all three from wherever you're starting. And then we're going to talk about how AI automates the outreach that fills the funnel, even when you're not at your desk. I'm Joe Downs, with me is Peter Swain.

(01:25):

We're just a couple of successful idiots who figured out how to use AI to improve our lives, empower our businesses. And that's what we try to do every episode is share that with you. Peter, true or false? The British tea culture invented the world's first follow-up sequence. Send the

Peter Swain (01:46):

Invite.

Joe Downs (01:47):

Wait, hold. I'm not done.

Peter Swain (01:49):

I mean, the answer's yes. If we invent, it's definitely ours.

Joe Downs (01:52):

So you're going with true before you even know the whole question?

Peter Swain (01:55):

Yeah. All

Joe Downs (01:56):

Right.

Peter Swain (01:57):

God, what is it?

Joe Downs (01:57):

British Tea Culture invented the world's first follow-up sequence. Step one, send the invite. Wait three days, send another, way three more, and somehow this is just called being polite. Well,

Peter Swain (02:14):

When you convert it to funnel world, it's wait one day, then two days, then three days, but yeah, exactly.

Joe Downs (02:19):

So you're going true. You're sticking with your answer.

Peter Swain (02:21):

Why not?

Joe Downs (02:22):

Today, how AI helps you map out and build a growth funnel from scratch, which I think is so applicable for entrepreneurs, solopreneurs. We're all in business. Whatever we do, we need business coming in the door. So this is paramount for any business to survive. And then now that we're going to talk about how it's built, Peter, how AI can automate the outreach that fills it while you're doing everything else. And when I say we, I mean you, I'm just asking the questions and setting it up.

Peter Swain (02:52):

Sure. Okay. So let's go at it.

Joe Downs (02:54):

Hold on. Hold on. So Michael Liben runs a company called ColdIQ and he helps businesses build modern sales systems. And this week he did something I genuinely haven't seen before, as I said in the opening. He broke down step by step how Lemless, which is the outreach software company, went from zero to 42 million in annual revenue. And he didn't just give the highlight reel. He actually gave the funnel, the channels, the tools, the conversion rates, the ad spend, the affiliate strategy, all of it. And I'm reading this thinking most of us don't have a $550,000 ad budget, probably no one listening. And we're a team of LinkedIn influencers. But there's something in the bones of how they built that growth engine that every entrepreneur I think can use, Peter. If you strip the $42 million company down to its framework, what would a main street business owner actually take away?

Peter Swain (03:45):

Well, I've always found it quite ... First of all, this is like, this is my jam. This is what I've done for all my life.

Joe Downs (03:52):

I'm excited for this one. I'm going to sit back and listen.

Peter Swain (03:55):

I find it amazing that if you ask people how they make their product or deliver their service, they can give you a pretty comprehensive, we do this, then we do this, then we do this, then we do this, then we do this. And when you ask people the same question around their marketing, they have no freaking idea. And if I had a choice between effective marketing and sales or an effective product, I've got to say, I take the marketing and the sales. So if you've got the money walking in the door, you can always fix the products on the other side. If you've got a product and you're sitting in a room on your own and nobody's buying it, you're just ... It's that 60th birthday where you've got one of those party blowers and there's nobody at the party. You don't want to be the world's best kept secret.

(04:35):

It's a terrible idea. While broadly speaking, marketing splits into three stages, top of funnel, mid-funnel, and bottom of funnel. Now, if there's any seasoned marketeers out there, I apologize. You can just tune out for the next half an hour because we're going to be talking about things that you don't agree. But I say that, Joe, because when we do this in stages, people go, "Oh no, it's a content playground." I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." And those concepts don't work at this level. We need stuff that the average entrepreneur can get hold of. So this is what I believe is true at this level of conversation. Top, mid, bottom. Top of funnel is how do I get them from out there to in here? So top of funnel is inherently happening on other people's channels.

Joe Downs (05:25):

Can I, before I said I would be quiet, but I want to just add a tweak to this.

Peter Swain (05:29):

You've never done that, so I don't think you're going to do it now.

Joe Downs (05:32):

I think you're about to speak this to someone who doesn't have experience with this. In other words, someone whose expertise is what they're actually selling, not how they sell it, right?

Peter Swain (05:46):

Yeah.

Joe Downs (05:46):

Okay. I just wanted to make sure that that's who we're speaking to here.

Peter Swain (05:50):

And I've got people like Lexi as a model in my brain of like, so makes great hats. Okay. Well, how do we do that? So top of funnel is how do I get them from out there to in here? So how do I get the first yes, which is their email address. So how do I get them to say yes to something where there is an exchange, but it's not a monetary exchange, it's a data exchange. You're going to give me your email and I'm going to give you this thing, which we often call a lead magnet.That's our first exchange. Because that's out there in here, it will inherently be happening on search as in blogs, SEO, or it'll be happening on social, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Insta, et cetera, or chamber of commerce meetings. All of those are happening in somebody else's space. So once we've got them from out there to in here, we then have to do mid-funnel, which is how do we turn them from a suspect into a prospect?

(06:59):

How do we indoctrinate them into our worldview? How do we show them why what we know is different from what everybody else knows, also known as nurture sequences. And then bottom of funnel is how do we now convert that into a transaction? So we go from top of funnel, how do we get them from out there to in here, mid funnel, how do we create a relationship? Bottom of funnel, how do we convert that relationship into a transaction? And then we have this wonderful thing called Ascension, which is once we've converted them into a transaction, how do we add more value and take more revenue at the same time? AI is a beast at executing in each of those three stages.

Joe Downs (07:44):

Should we pause at each of these stages and maybe just share a nugget about how the logistics behind? So I think anyone listening can go, "Yeah, that makes a ton of sense." How do I do it? Do I use Claude? Am I doing this myself? I know I can hire you to do it, but am I doing this ... Let's say I can't afford you. What are the logistics of each of these steps?

Peter Swain (08:08):

So the first thing that we do is we go into something like Claude or Manus and we do our deep research, which we've spoken about in previous episodes because we need to know a couple of things to make this whole secret recipe work. One is who is our ideal customer? And second of all, what are their current pain points? We need that intelligence. Why is it that they need this? We call it the 3:00 AM sentence. What is it they say at 3:00 AM when no one else is listening? What is the burning desire or the burning pain of this person? We then also need to know the time window of purchase. This is quite advanced, this one. So for example, if we're selling a hotel, normally we're selling to women about 80% of decisions as to where you go and where you stay are made by women, not men.

(09:08):

So it's normally a woman that's doing it. Normally, not all the time, but normally it is. And the time from first discovery to purchase can often be as much as eight months because planning a holiday isn't tomorrow. It can be months and months and months of thought as to what transaction you're going to do, where you're going to stay, where you're going to go, et cetera. Whereas buying some shampoo is a 20-minute window of decision. And the reason that that's so important is because the amount of time they're going to spend in mid-funnel is that number. So we are going to have to find it's a different strategy for one versus the other. So let's say we now know who is the ideal customer, what is the buying window? What are their pains? What are their hopes? What are their goals? What are their dreams?

(09:57):

So we need to be able to see this person in our brain, not a group of people, not 35 to 50, that they are 42 female in Idaho. They've got two kids. One has just left home. The other is we need to be able to map this person and it's the center of the bullseye. It's not that every one of our customers will look like this. It's like, this is who we're aiming for. And that will then expand out. As we get more people, they won't hit fit that as tightly, but they'll still have semblances to it. Once we know that, then we can start having interesting conversations with AI. For example, what would be the first product this person would buy? What is the 49 or $97 product that this person would buy? And why would they buy it? Because I like starting at the bottom of funnel, the point of the transaction, not the top, because everything is serving that one moment when we say, hit this button, give me $49, buy this thing.

(11:05):

So we want to work backwards from that moment because that's the moment we're trying to secure, start with the end in mind. So what is the end? The end is they're going to buy this six-hour course for $49 that is X. Okay, good. Now we know that. Now we need to work on our mid-funnel. Okay. What are we going to have to teach that person about the world in order to make them want to buy this product? And who are we going to ... We spoke about this earlier, and who are we going to throw stones at during that process? What is the enemy that these people all agree with us is an enemy? So if anyone doesn't know this, you could do a bit of an AI research. It's called the enemy framework. If you want to sell organic coffee to somebody, you should sell against something like the Rainforest Certified Alliance and you want to find the reasons that did you know that ... For example, I found this out years ago.

(12:10):

Did you know, Joe, to be classed as a fair trade product, only 30% of your product needs to be fair trade. The reason it was put in place is if you take a granola bar, the raisins and the cranberries can be fair trade, but the flour can't be because of the time it takes to transport flour from a fair trade country to a non-fair trade company, the flour won't be usable anymore. So only 30% of the active ingredients have to be Fairtrade. What Nest Cafe does with that is they have one coffee roastery next trade and one isn't, and they'll put 31% of their Fairtrade product and 69% of their non-Fairtrade product in a can call it Fairtrade and triple the price. So we used to sell on behalf of a brand against Fairtrade. That was our enemy. You think Fairtrade, you're making these great decisions because Fairtrade is telling you X, Y, Z.

(13:10):

Did you know that Fairtrade only has to boom, boom, boom? And people are like, "That's outrageous." It's like, "Yeah, so come and eat our thing because our thing doesn't have any of that thing." And they're like, "Yeah, I'll eat your thing." You have to tell people what the enemy is so that they understand who you speak against. It's so much more important to understand what you stand against bizarrely than what you stand for. You have to tell them what you stand against. So this nurture sequence is going to be, "Hey, thank you for downloading my lead magnet. I'm going to teach you this. I'm going to show you this and we're going to talk about this so that you can make the ask for the purchase."

Joe Downs (13:46):

I think you just described every political argument too.

Peter Swain (13:50):

100%. Politics is just marketing on steroids.

Joe Downs (13:53):

It's just, "What are you for? I don't know, but I'm against this guy."

Peter Swain (13:57):

But I'm definitely against this.

Joe Downs (13:59):

Yeah.

Peter Swain (14:00):

Great. So am I. Awesome. You're going to vote for me? Yes. What is it you're going to do? I'm going to spend four years cleaning up off the taxpayer's dollar. Anyway, then our top of funnel is very similar. We're going to ask AI, what is the thing that would capture this person's attention? I'm going to go back to our last episode that would cut through the noise that would be different, that would differentiate me from everybody else that would importantly at the top of funnel, and AI will do this for you anyway, that answers one problem. So one of the things most entrepreneurs do horribly wrong in marketing is they try to do more. They try to add more. They try to teach more. They add.

Joe Downs (14:39):

That's

Peter Swain (14:39):

An

Joe Downs (14:39):

Interesting concept. Hold on. Unpack that for me. What do you mean? What's an example?

Peter Swain (14:45):

A confused buyer does not exist.

Joe Downs (14:47):

Right.

Peter Swain (14:48):

So if you tell someone, "Hey, if you download this prompt pack, it's going to set up your funnel. It's going to do your text. It's going to write this. It's going to produce your ads and da, da, da, da, da." You should already be feeling it just from that little thing where you're like, "I'm lost." What was the first thing? Because if I'm not being successful or if an entrepreneur's not being successful, what they tend to do is take their lead magnet and add stuff. They're like, "Oh, and it now includes this, Joe, includes an audience segmentation tool, and it now includes this. And it now includes this. "

Joe Downs (15:22):

I thought that was marketing 101, the whole ... And then there's more, but wait, there's more.

Peter Swain (15:27):

You do one thing and then you can add things to support the one thing, but you can still only do one thing.

Joe Downs (15:36):

So you've already gotten the sale when they're adding more.

Peter Swain (15:41):

Exactly. Then now they're on, okay, feed me. That makes

Joe Downs (15:44):

Sense. But to get me to that point, they sold me one thing.

Peter Swain (15:47):

It's like, "Hey, click this link and I'm going to give you the definitive prompt to analyze your ideal customer and tell you the three things that they want to buy that people download because they can understand what it's going to do. " People get really clever with marketing before they tick off the dumbbox. Tick the dumbbox first, which is what does this thing do? Everybody is inherently selfish. They want to know what they're going to get, when they're going to get it, how much it's going to cost them. We used to do this test with people, and it was a very easy test, which is as simple as this. Take a deep breath, tell people what they're going to get. And if you're dead before you finish the sentence, it was too much. It's got to be, "Hey, if you listen to this podcast, you're going to get X." Not X and Y and Z and A and B and Z.

(16:48):

No, just X. And it's a really dangerous thing of when people stop succeeding, they add more. It's just a default reaction of like, "Well, what else can I do because I'm obviously not adding enough value." So it's not that you're not adding enough value, it's that you're confusing people whilst you're explaining the value.

Joe Downs (17:08):

So where are we in the funnel here?

Peter Swain (17:11):

So we went through top, mid and bottom of the AI, once it has this context of who is the buyer, what are they buying? Why are they buying it? It can work on all of those other pieces very, very easily. But I've got an advanced tip if you want, Joe.

Joe Downs (17:28):

Please.

Peter Swain (17:30):

Take that report from Cold IQ and say, "Replicate this, please."

Joe Downs (17:36):

I want to do this.

Peter Swain (17:38):

One thing I've always loved about digital marketing is the realization that everybody's playbook is on display. So if you're selling against Grant Cardone, for example, you're in real estate education or real estate fund syndication, go and buy his thing. Go through his funnel and look at it through soft eyes. Look at it as an observer. When did I ... Okay, so I got the first email after 22 hours. Okay. And I got the next email six hours later, got it. And then I got a text message one hour later. Awesome. And just replicate it soup to nuts, just replicate it. I think my advice to everybody would be step one, copy the best out there. Once you understand what's happening, then you can start working on how to be different. But you can use AI to just directly copy the best in the business. You want to launch a bestselling book or go and sign up for a book funnel from somebody that's about to launch a book and see what happens.

(18:37):

I guarantee you I know what happens. They'll send you chapter one and then they'll ask you to tag them on social with what's the next post. And when they see the social post, then they're going to reach out to you and talk to you about something else. And then they're going to ask you to share it with three friends. The formulas are there. We are no longer in marketing. It's not an art form, it's a science. And in science, we have right and wrong answers. So do the science.

Joe Downs (19:00):

Who gave them all the right suggestion or right answer of you sign up for the webinar or whatever and it's a week before, three days before email, a day before email, morning of email and text, an hour before, 10 minutes before. It's too much. Maybe the science is there, but it's too much. And it's a point where it pisses me.

Peter Swain (19:25):

It works.

Joe Downs (19:27):

I don't

Peter Swain (19:27):

Know. You're thinking about you as an individual. Trust me, it works. I

Joe Downs (19:31):

Know. It works for us.

Peter Swain (19:31):

And I wish it didn't. When I see when we're running a webinar and we do seven emails and three texts and two afterwards, I'm like, surely no. But when we drop things out of the sequence, less people show up.

Joe Downs (19:45):

Less people. Well, there you go. That's part of the ebook there.

Peter Swain (19:49):

Who gave them the right answer? It's just decades worth of iteration. Yeah. But you don't need to work out how to make this work. You just need to copy somebody in your industry that's doing great at doing the thing already. The market is big enough to accommodate for them and you at the same time.

Joe Downs (20:08):

That's so true. How about just a quick ... And I mean quick, if you can, because we got one more segment I want to get to hear about how to actually implement it. But I think this is part of the first part, which is the lead magnet. I know the answer to this, but I just want people to hear it from you because it sounds better with a British accent. How do I create the content? What's the simplest way to create these lead magnet content?

Peter Swain (20:33):

Hey, Claude, we've just done what the lead magnet is, and Claude will literally turn around and say, "Do you want me to create that for you? " And you say, "Yes."

Joe Downs (20:42):

All right. Wrong answer. I'm kidding.

Peter Swain (20:44):

Then I'd use Gamma.

Joe Downs (20:45):

Of course that. But one of the things I'm using for storage muggles is I'm putting content out there on YouTube, I'm doing podcast, all kinds of stuff. And content is repeat. AI takes that content and creates short videos from it. And it's something I have to do. And I wanted people to hear that access question.

Peter Swain (21:05):

Well, you understand right. You've got things like Opus, Clip, Munch, Descript, which will all take long video and turn it into shorts and then publish it for you. But you've also got things like Gamma that can produce very, very stylish presentations and documents and downloads now.

Joe Downs (21:20):

Oh yeah.

Peter Swain (21:20):

But again, my default answer is to ask Claude to say, "Hey, I want to produce short videos." Or

Joe Downs (21:29):

Platforms

Peter Swain (21:30):

Does that.

Joe Downs (21:31):

That's my default answer to everything I just ask Claude. But I just wanted people to know this is not a heavy lift to start building your funnel because if you just record your day-to-day, whatever it is you're doing, that recording itself is a lead magnet.

Peter Swain (21:48):

100%. You can

Joe Downs (21:50):

Distill down into short videos, to blog posts, to LinkedIn posts, to Instagram, shots, reels, everything. It's incredible what AI can do for-

Peter Swain (22:01):

You could create a 30-day content calendar include plus the lead magnet, plus the funnel page in Lovable, plus the carousel posts, plus the LinkedIn posts, 55 minutes, just shy of an hour to get the first pass up. It won't be perfect, but it'll be way more than you've got right now, and you'll start seeing some actual numbers as to what's working and what's not.

Joe Downs (22:26):

That's incredible. And that's the perfect lead into Michael Lieben posted something this week that I had to read it twice, to be honest with you, because he described 19 different software APIs, which to me sounds a little overwhelming, but it's good to know what's available that when you connect them together with an AI coding tool, they build a fully automated outbound sales machine, finds your leads, enriches their data, writes personalized emails, launches the campaign, logs everything into your CRM, apparently in about 15 minutes with a handful of prompts. That specific setup is not something I'm building tomorrow. You know me, you know I'm not capable of that. I'm capable of a lot. That seems like a little heavier of a lift for me. And I'm guessing most obviously the solopreneur or entrepreneur listening, unless that's their field, that seems a little advanced. But the concept behind it, using AI to automate the most repetitive parts of the sales outreach so it keeps working even when you're not, that is something any business owner can start doing today.

(23:32):

So Peter, where does someone actually start with that? How do I build an outreach campaign?

Peter Swain (23:37):

So the easiest way I would do this is I would go to something like Apollo and the Free Tier and just download the list. You don't need to connect it. You could just go and download a CSV of 100 records. I would drop that into Claude Cowork and I would tell it to go and research through this list, find out anything it can on LinkedIn and any other data source around these people and predict one problem that each of those people might have. That's where I'd start. So we'd take this 100 person download and we'd turn it into what is this person most likely to be experiencing in their business right?

Joe Downs (24:18):

And then what's my next step with that? You're saying it's going to give me for all 100, a pain point.

Peter Swain (24:25):

Yeah. Why not do all 100? If we're an infinite scale world with AI, we don't need to just do the 20, we could do a hundred. True. Again, if I was in something like Claude Cowork, I'd say, great, send them all an email from me. This is my product or service if it doesn't already know your products or service, and this is the action I'm trying to get them to take. So back to our marketing world, it's probably download a lead magnet. So it's probably going to write an email that sends me like, "Hey, Joe, I hope you well. We've built this tool that entrepreneurs can use to do an audit of where they're at with AI." It's completely free just as a kind of give back after three years as AI training and 10,000 plus conversations, you'll find it at audit.peterswain.com. We think you might be surprised as to the results, kind regards.

(25:11):

And you're going to give it the rough version, like this is my rough version. It doesn't have to be WordPerfect, grammar perfect, but instead of giving it all of them sitting for hours, just say, "Hey, send something like this and personalize it using all the enrichment that you just did." Then if you're in a Gmail system, hit the Claude connector and connect the Gmail connector so it can send the emails for you. So that's going to take you 10 minutes, 15 minutes to connect the connector, write the prompts to tell it to personalize the emails.

Joe Downs (25:47):

Did you say email or email sequence?

Peter Swain (25:50):

An email at this point.

Joe Downs (25:51):

Just one email.

Peter Swain (25:53):

Yeah. Before I did anything else, I'd want to work out if they're actually opening the email if actually anyone was interested. Did I get the right list from Apollo? Before I go down the rabbit hole, let's see if two or three people reply.

Joe Downs (26:05):

And of course from a couple episodes, first reach out to them on LinkedIn, right? On

Peter Swain (26:09):

LinkedIn which you just- Connect on LinkedIn. Yeah. Coworks will be able to open LinkedIn and connect with them first.

Joe Downs (26:14):

I feel like we have to do an episode on cowork. 100%.

Peter Swain (26:17):

But I don't know how we do it on a pod versus a VOD or whatever they call that.

Joe Downs (26:22):

Because you need to demonstrate how it works.

Peter Swain (26:24):

It's really so ... Yeah, we could try.

Joe Downs (26:27):

I mean, I could give a plug for you if you want just and say, join your

Peter Swain (26:30):

Mastermind

Joe Downs (26:31):

Where you demonstrating.

Peter Swain (26:33):

Why about in a few episodes time? Why don't we do a special, like a live for people to listen to the podcast? We'll do a YouTube at a certain time and we'll do it live. So we use the podcast to promote and we'll do that.

Joe Downs (26:45):

We should announce it, promote it, give a date, and then there we go. We're on YouTube and you've got your screen up and ...

Peter Swain (26:53):

Yeah, let's do it.

Joe Downs (26:55):

And let's save Claude for that, our co-work in particular because a lot of these things we've been talking about, especially this episode, I feel like just Claude can do for you, right? The co-work, you could set it up. And that's if you're ... I don't know, do you need to be tech savvy minded? I mean, it's something

Peter Swain (27:12):

I can

Joe Downs (27:12):

Actually do, right? I'm not-

Peter Swain (27:14):

Because as soon as you start adding that in, it starts feeling a bit techy. I'd rather, if you're just downloading the CSV, why not? Now, most people, the next step, they would talk about sequences, they would start recommending tools like Instantly or Apollo, and I'd actually recommend something different. I'd recommend you go back to cowork and say, "Great, I want to extend that single email we've just sent into a sequence." So keep a record of what you just sent to people and I'm going to check back in with you in two days and we're going to write the follow-up and it will store ... Oh, I just sent email one to Joe, Bill, Ben, Harry, Sadie, Megan, and Anne. And then when you come back on the next day, you turn around to it and say, "Scan my Gmail because we enabled that connector and look at who replied and who didn't." Based on who didn't, let's send them a follow-up email.

(28:08):

You can use Claude cowork at this level, like 100, 200 contacts with a Excel file that Claude will build out for itself as its own little mini CRM for those hundred people.

Joe Downs (28:20):

And as you're talking, I'm just thinking, you said scan your email, which led to this thought. Why not send it to people from the last three years that didn't do business with you? Then why not just send it to your whole contact piece?

Peter Swain (28:36):

This is a fun little story and I'm considering starting to use AI for this. When I was running the web agency in Dubai, we made more money from the Dilbert comic than anything else. I had one assistant employed and their entire job was to take a picture of the Dilbert Magazine in the College Times, the newspaper. They looked at the CRM and they found the 60 people who we hadn't spoken to for the longest period of time and they sent them a picture of the comic and it said, "Hey, Joe, I saw this in the paper this morning, made me laugh and think of you. I hope all is well. Hope to speak soon, Pete." We got more business from that than our sales and marketing team because people just went, "Oh yeah, I was talking to some guy about websites early on. I completely forgot you even existed." Just the ability to stay front of mind with people is 90% of the battle.

(29:40):

And the beauty of this system was because we did 60 people, it was a kind of exact number, we were adding more than 60 in every day from going to events and conferences and speaking and seminars, so nobody ever went back through the rotation.

(29:56):

So it was always just nudging people, "Hey, we are still here. We still exist. AI could do this for you in a heartbeat now of look at my Gmail and only find potential customer emails and send them this.

Joe Downs (30:13):

And I'm guessing it could scan the email for customers that didn't do business with you, either never responded to an outreach.

Peter Swain (30:22):

Well, you'd say something like, go through my email and then go through my Stripe or go through my CRM, cross reference the two to only pull out the people that didn't purchase something and send them a quick, hope everything is good message.

Joe Downs (30:41):

What about, and now I'm just thinking out of the box here. You have a new product, a different line, something improved. Go through my email and find out who purchased something that looked like this in the past and offer them this.

Peter Swain (30:59):

100%.

Joe Downs (30:59):

All via email. You didn't even do it.

Peter Swain (31:04):

Right? Well, and if you're using Claude cowork on your local machine, it can also connect to your iMessage and it can do that.

Joe Downs (31:10):

We're definitely going to have to do a series on YouTube.

Peter Swain (31:13):

That's a

Joe Downs (31:13):

Great

Peter Swain (31:14):

Idea.

Joe Downs (31:14):

Why don't we do a series building a funnel on-

Peter Swain (31:18):

Hey, this is the easy way for people to understand cowork. If you can do it on your machine using your keyboard and your mouse, so can it. If you can

Joe Downs (31:29):

Use your fingers to type on your keyboard, what you're saying is so can claude cowork just without the fingers.

Peter Swain (31:38):

Yeah.

Joe Downs (31:39):

Yeah. It's a lot. It's a lot to wrap your head around, but-

Peter Swain (31:42):

It is.

Joe Downs (31:43):

My gosh, is it powerful?

Peter Swain (31:46):

The last couple of weeks have just been an absolute explosion in capability and it's not slowing down. It's so much fun.

Joe Downs (31:52):

Where do we go from here? At the pace, this is ...

Peter Swain (31:57):

Beam me up, Scotty.

Joe Downs (31:59):

How far away is it?

Peter Swain (32:01):

Who knows? Because it's working on itself.

Joe Downs (32:03):

Yeah. So, all right. Well, I hope we landed that well enough for Michael's post, which is he's talking about the 19API stack is the end state of the system and that anyone can start building today with the right tools and a couple hours. But the point is, you got to know who you're reaching. Write something that sounds like you wrote it and then follow up consistently, which we don't have the bandwidth ourselves to do, but the AI stack does. And not only does it make it faster and probably better output and content. I think the biggest key here is you don't need a developer to do it for you.

Peter Swain (32:47):

No.

Joe Downs (32:47):

This is well within your fingertips.

Peter Swain (32:50):

100%.

Joe Downs (32:51):

Every week I struggle to keep the show not so long that people want to listen, but I don't know which shiny object to introduce each week. I'm picking two out of a hundred every time. There's so many I want to do. Another just amazing show, Peter, thank you.

Peter Swain (33:10):

No, thank you.

Joe Downs (33:11):

I'm going to promote this for you, is your audit. How can people who don't know what they don't know, they don't know how AI can help their business. They don't know what they don't know is the best way I could say it. How can they get ... It's a free audit, right?

Peter Swain (33:28):

Audit.peterswain.com. You answer a few questions and it'll give you evaluation of your sales, your marketing, your operations, and your strategic capability. It'll talk about where you're at as a business, what industry you're in. And it compares it to, I think it's 2000 conversations that we had to pick out the nuggets. So people at this stage typically could benefit from this, this, and this. It's completely free. It's not gated. You don't have to speak to one of my team to get hold of it. It really was just a kind of give back after three years of seeing so many people accelerate in their learning, but struggling in where they apply it.

Joe Downs (34:04):

What is it at its core? If you could distill it into, if I gave you a, I don't know, 50 character limit.

Peter Swain (34:12):

Who are you? Do this, earn 200K.

Joe Downs (34:16):

Wow. All right. Simple.

Peter Swain (34:20):

It takes somebody and go, "Don't even think about sales and marketing. Think about your operations, how you're going to use AI for ops because your sales and marketing is doing well, but your ops is suffering. Or your sales is doing great, but your marketing sucks." It literally just looks at the business, tells you where you should pay attention and tells you roughly what to do in order to get the results.

Joe Downs (34:45):

Incredible. Well, like I said, another great show. I get excited every week. So thank you, Peter. Folks,

Peter Swain (34:52):

I hope you- It's a pleasure. Love

Joe Downs (34:53):

It. I hope you get out of this, what I get out of it. If you would like to get more out of it, go to audit.peterswain.com and/or send us an email, idiots@successfulidiots.com. For Peter Swain, I'm Joe Downs. We are your successful idiots. We'll see you next week.