Do it by hand first

"Wait, I thought we were building an AI system?"

That's what a founder said to me when I told him we'd be running his cold email campaign manually for the first 30 days. No fancy automation. No AI workflows. Just copy-pasting scripts into Gmail, tracking responses in a spreadsheet, and following up by hand.

His confusion makes perfect sense. He's getting decent inbound deal flow, but wants to crack into higher-ticket prospects that only respond to cold outbound. He came to me expecting bells and whistles, the full automated backend with n8n integrations and AI personalization.

Instead, I handed him a Google Sheet.

Here's what I told him, and why this approach will save him months of wasted effort:

Master the manual process first, then automate what's left.

Before you invest in automation tools, you need to validate that your process actually works. Run it manually for 3-6 months until it becomes routine and stops changing. If it's still effective and eating up significant time after that period, then you automate.

Why start manual? Two reasons:

First, it's capital efficient. You don't want to build some elaborate system before you know if your offer resonates with cold traffic. Better to spend nothing on tools and 10 hours of manual work than 20 hours on building an automation that targets the wrong audience with the wrong message.

Second, you'll discover bottlenecks that only emerge when you're in the weeds. Maybe your follow-up sequence is too aggressive. Maybe your prospect research takes twice as long as expected. Maybe your close rate drops after the third touchpoint. You only find these issues by running the process yourself, not by watching a system run it for you.

In this founder's case, his total addressable market is relatively small, roughly 2,000 potential customers total per ICP. That means we need to squeeze maximum value from every single lead. Manual outreach lets us customize our approach and iterate quickly based on what we learn.

Once we've validated the process and refined it through repetition, here's the tech stack we'll implement:

• Clay for lead list building and personalized script generation

• Smartlead for inbox management and email delivery

• n8n for backend sales and fulfillment workflows

With these tools, you can scale a validated offer to hundreds of prospects per week within 60 days.

One important caveat: cold email systems require constant monitoring even after automation. Deliverability changes, spam filters evolve, and response rates fluctuate. It's not a "set it and forget it" solution, but that's a topic for another post.

The manual approach might feel slower, but it's the fastest path to a system that actually works.

That’s all for today. Talk soon,

Momin

PS - If you want help building a cold email system that actually converts, book a strategy session here. We'll validate your offer for cold traffic, identify your best target segments, and map out the tech stack you need to scale effectively.