Anybody Can Do Anything Is the Problem

The Call That Started With a Website and Ended With a Wake-Up Call

I was on a coaching call recently with a guy who had all the pieces. He'd worked twenty-eight years as a network engineer at one of the biggest telecoms in the country. He understood the tech. He had fulfillment partners who could build anything. An automation was already running - six thousand cold emails a month going out through Instantly. He had a funnel, a niche, a business name, a logo, a website.

He had everything except the one thing that sells: a clear, single offer.

His site said something like "AI consulting for businesses." His email funnel was inviting people onto a podcast. His "niche" was financial services - specifically boutique wealth advisors and registered investment firms. Why that niche? Because, he told me, there's money in it.

I had to stop him right there. He was just chasing money.

There's Money in Every Niche. That's Not the Point.

This guy picked his niche based on where he thought the money was, not where he had an edge.

I told him straight: there's money in textiles. There's money in logistics. Trucks are driving around everywhere - money's moving. Manufacturing is booming. Financial services has money, sure. But so does every single industry that exists. You can't use "there's money there" as your targeting logic, because that logic points everywhere at once, which means it points nowhere.

The smarter question - and this is the one I pushed him on - is: where do you have an insider advantage? Where have you sat inside a business and seen how it runs?

For him, the answer was obvious once we dug into it. Thirty years in IT. Twenty-eight of those years at one of the biggest telecoms in the country. He knows how those companies operate. He knows the workflows, the pain points, the internal politics, the budget cycles. He's lived it from the inside.

That's an edge. "There's money in financial services" is not an edge.

"Any Good Dev Can Do Anything" - And That's Exactly the Problem

I told him on the call: any good developer can do anything. Any good AI consultant can build almost anything a client asks for. The technology is flexible enough. The fulfillment is available. You can find a partner to execute on almost any implementation you can dream up.

Flexibility is a liability until you make a decision.

When you lead with "I can do anything in AI," you're putting the burden of figuring out what they need onto the prospect. They don't know what they need. That's why they were going to hire you. So now you've got a confused buyer who has to do your job for you, which means they don't buy.

Clarity is the differentiator. Not competence. Competence is table stakes in this market. Your competitors are competent too. Some of them are brilliant. You need a crisp, specific answer to the question: "So what exactly do you do?"

If your answer to that question takes longer than one sentence, you're losing deals you should be winning.

The Podcast Funnel Problem

Let me tell you about the funnel this guy was running, because I think it's a trap a lot of people fall into.

He was sending six thousand cold emails a month, all to get people onto his podcast, where he'd have a conversation, figure out what they were struggling with, and then maybe pitch them something at the end.

I have a memory burned into my brain from one of my first jobs, maybe twelve years ago. My boss was losing his mind excited about getting on a podcast. He told the whole team. He was hyped. He got on. At the end of it, he realized the podcast host was running the exact same funnel - just trying to sell him something. He was furious. I've never forgotten that.

That's what your prospects feel when you do the bait-and-switch podcast pitch. You get them excited about the exposure, the conversation, the platform - and then you hit them with a sales pitch. They just want to talk. They don't want to buy anything. Once they're in podcast mode, they're in broadcast mode, not buying mode.

Beyond the psychological problem, there's a funnel efficiency problem. You're spending six thousand email sends to get people onto a podcast, which gets you a conversation, which gets you maybe a chance to pitch. That's three steps before you even start selling. I would much rather try to sell them on the first email. Cut the podcast, cut the middle step, and drop the warm-up conversation entirely. Lead with the offer, lead with the value, book the meeting directly.

Want the cold email scripts I use for direct offer outreach? Grab them here: Top 5 Cold Email Scripts.

The Problem: You're Selling a Category.

"AI consulting" is a category. It's not an offer.

"Financial services AI" is a niche description. It's not an offer.

An offer is something specific enough that I can picture exactly what happens after someone pays you. Here's the format I use and teach:

Get [specific benefit] in [timeframe] without [common obstacle].

For this guy's business, something like: Get new business from your dormant client list within days, without hiring additional sales staff.

Now I know what I'm buying and what the outcome is. I can see when I'll get results, and what I don't have to do. That's a thing I can say yes or no to. "AI consulting" forces a longer conversation about what I even want before I can say yes or no.

The more specific your offer, the less work the prospect has to do. And the less work the prospect has to do, the more likely they are to buy.

What the Implementation Should Look Like

Once we started drilling into what he could deliver - not just "AI consulting" in the abstract - an offer started to take shape.

His fulfillment partners could build backend AI systems. He knew customer data and telecom-style business operations inside out. So what's the highest-ROI implementation of AI for a small service business?

Forget backend admin, paperwork automation, and saving time on data entry.

Revenue. Direct, measurable revenue from a previously dormant asset they already own: their customer list.

Here's what I sketched out for him on the call. Something like: I will use AI to review your past customer list and, one, identify the high-value customers worth a personal outreach from your team. Two, generate customized AI email sequences to re-engage the lower-value segment automatically. And three, as an optional add-on, set up text message re-engagement campaigns for those same contacts.

You implement the system once. You charge for the implementation - let's say somewhere in the range of one to two thousand dollars. And then you take a percentage of the revenue generated from those reactivated customers. That ongoing rev-share is where the money compounds over time. Now you're a partner with skin in the game, and every dollar their dormant list generates justifies your continued involvement.

And if someone tells you they can't afford it, think about what they're already paying. If they have an office, they're spending at least three or four thousand dollars a month on rent. They're paying a cleaning company probably a thousand a month. These "broke" companies have line items. You just have to position your offer so you can fit into one of them.

How to Find These Companies in the First Place

Once you know who you're targeting and what you're selling them, the lead gen part becomes almost mechanical.

Say you land on financial consultants or independent wealth advisors as your niche. The ones with offices - not the guy working out of his house with no revenue - are your targets. Office means overhead. Overhead means cashflow, and that means they have budget.

The fastest way to build that list is a Google Maps scrape. Search for "financial consultants" in any city, set your scrape parameters, and you get a list of companies that, by definition, have a physical presence. I use ScraperCity's Google Maps scraper for exactly this. It pulls the business data and attempts to find contact emails at the same time. Sometimes it gets the email, sometimes you need to enrich it further - but the core list is there in minutes.

From there, if you need to find decision-maker emails, there are dedicated tools for that. ScraperCity's email finder is one option, or you can cross-reference with something like Findymail to verify before you send. The point is the targeting comes first. The tools are just the execution layer.

If you want a full framework for how to think about lead sourcing for different business types, the Best Lead Strategy Guide breaks it down in more detail.

Content and SEO Are Not the Answer Right Now

I can feel some of you reading this and thinking: but what about LinkedIn content? What about SEO? What about building an audience?

Here's my position on this, and I told him the same thing on the call.

There are short-term growth levers and long-term growth levers. Short-term: cold email, LinkedIn outreach, cold calling, showing up at events and pitching in person. These can generate revenue this week. Long-term: SEO, podcast appearances, content, audience building. These take months to compound.

When you're not yet making consistent money, spending on the long-term levers is almost always the wrong move. Going to spend two thousand a month on SEO? That's probably not the best use of your capital right now. But once you're making ten thousand a month and you want to lock in your market position? That's when you layer in the longer game.

Same with getting on podcasts as a guest - I've done hundreds of them, including big business shows. It works, it promotes the business, it builds credibility. But I did that once the business was already generating. I didn't do it instead of selling.

You can't content-market your way to revenue if you don't have a working offer yet. Get the offer right first. Then scale the thing that's working, and from there invest in the channels that compound over time.

The Rubik's Cube No One Can Solve for You

I said something toward the end of this call that I want to close with, because I think it's the most honest thing I can tell you.

Business is like a Rubik's Cube. But unlike a regular Rubik's Cube, you can't look up the solution online and apply it. Every business is a different puzzle. What worked at my agency isn't going to work for you. What worked for this guy on the call isn't going to work for someone in a totally different niche with a totally different background.

So even if you go buy a "proven offer" or a "proven framework" - and some of those are good starting points - it's not proven to work for your specific situation. You might end up selling something I could never sell in a market I could never crack, and you blow it up. It happens.

The early stage of a business is about figuring out your solved puzzle. Once you find it - once the offer is right, the niche is right, and you've locked in the channel - then you can scale. You can go as big as you want. The scaling part is the easy part. Finding the combination that works for you first, that's what takes the time.

But here's what I know for sure: you can't find your solved puzzle while you're doing everything. You find it by committing to one thing, running it hard enough to get usable data, and adjusting from there.

Your Homework (The Same Homework I Gave Him)

I'm going to give you the same four-step homework I gave this guy at the end of the call.

Step one: Commit to one offer. Skip the menu and the category. Pick one implementation aimed at one type of business, with one specific outcome. Write it out in this format: I am selling [specific thing] to [specific type of company] and it will make them [specific result] and it costs [specific number]. Fill in all four blanks before you do anything else.

Step two: Rewrite your site to reflect that offer. Your homepage should answer the question "what do you do and for who" in the first five seconds. If someone has to scroll or click to figure out what you sell, you've already lost them. Use the offer formula. Get new business within days for [your niche]. Done. That's your headline. Build out from there.

Step three: Rewrite your email campaigns based on the offer. If your current cold emails are inviting people onto a podcast, or pitching a vague "let's explore how AI can help your business," scrap them. Write to the specific outcome. The email should be about their problem and your specific solution to that problem, leaving out anything about you, your process, or your credentials. If you want templates to work from, the Cold Email Follow-Up Templates are a good starting point for the sequence structure.

Step four: Rewrite your LinkedIn to match. Your LinkedIn headline should say what you do and for who. Not "AI Consultant | Entrepreneur | Helping Businesses Grow." Something like: "I use AI to reactivate dormant customer lists for [niche] companies." Specific. Boring to the wrong people. Magnetic to the right ones.

Four steps. You can knock out a first draft of all four in a single day if you sit down and do it.

Once you have the offer locked in, everything downstream gets easier. Your site rewrites itself. Writing the emails takes ten minutes because you know exactly what to say. Your LinkedIn profile falls into place.

The offer is the keystone. Pull it out and everything falls. Lock it in and everything else snaps into place.

If you want to go deeper on this with direct feedback on your offer, your emails, and your outreach strategy - that's what Galadon Gold is built for. We work through this stuff live, on calls, with businesses going through this exact process. The same process I just walked through on that call.

Get the offer right. Everything else follows.