How I'm Approaching Cold Outreach to Validate My Idea

So after scraping (automatically and manually) several blogs and building a list of Ghost users, I'm now moving on to the next step of my side gig: validating the problem with potential ICPs.

This task, in particular, feels scary because it means poking someone else and requesting them to dedicate some of their time to talking to me about aspects of their work.

In this post, I'll explain what I'm set to do and the inspiration for it.

What I've done so far

I've decided to work in batches of roughly 10 contacts per session, giving me time to iterate on the outreach copy and sit through interviews with my tight schedule.

I've split and prioritized my list into three segments:

1. Solo bloggers and Indie Hackers: I think people who go solo into their ventures might appreciate other people trying the same thing more, reducing the anxiety caused by reaching out.
2. Small media teams (e.g., teams doing copy and SEO for brands or their customers): I feel AI-assisted writing isn't as frowned upon (source: my guts).
3. Writers at newspapers or bigger media outlets: Though they make up the majority of my list, I know less, and my instincts are no good. Also, a lot of freelance work might mean their writers probably won't be spending a lot of time using Ghost.

I've selected the first batch of people, read their latest blog posts, summarized what the main topic or niche they write about is, noted how they monetize their content and/or use it for personal branding, and made remarks that'd help me send a properly addressed message.

With what I feel is enough information to send the first 10 emails, I now need to organize a proper outreach message. I took the following learnings as inspiration.

Guidelines I'm abiding by

I did not have time to read through more acclaimed books on cold outreach before getting to this step, and it certainly won't be a blocker.

I have, however, read loosely related stuff in the past, which I have revisited to build a set of starting guidelines.

Here it goes.

From Jason Cohen's article "When you have nothing: How to find customers to interview", despite it also talking about the previous step (compiling my list of contacts), I got the following learnings from the Ground Rules section:

1. "Good Enough" is good enough at first: I know I probably won't get everyone to sit in an interview with me. If people prefer messaging over calls, then that'll be good enough for me.
2. Frame it as asking for advice: I want to make sure they understand I'm not selling them anything.
3. Make it trivially easy for the other person: My cal.com link is ready and set up with a flexible calendar for users to schedule meetings with me.
4. Expect a low success rate: I'll be lucky if I get to sit with 10 people out of the 100 I have manually gathered.

From Josh Kaufman's The Personal MBA's chapter on Value Creation:

1. Hassle Premium: the type of value I'm trying to create removes hassle. That's what I need to convey to convince people that bearing with me can be valuable.

From Alex Hormozi's $100m Leads chapter on Cold Outreach:

1. Make the message very simple to read: The simpler it reads, the more it'll be read. He recommends passing your text through an online reading level app and making sure it reads like third-grade level text.
2. Personalization: This is about making sure your message feels like it is uniquely addressed to the receiver. This requires the work I mentioned above: understanding who they are and what they write about.

I reckon this is very basic and people with more experience would think that's not the way it's done. If you are one, I'd love to hear your feedback.

Above all, I don't want to stall this further with analysis paralysis, so this is good enough for me to get started.

But the important thing is, what will the message say?

The template

It's clear I want messages to be customized, given the time I have taken to research each contact, but still I'll need to make sure I'm following my guidelines.

So, here's an example I'll use as a template. It will require customization for each, while keeping the core true to my goals:

Hi Jane,

I'm Eugenio, a software engineer and fellow Ghost user. I came across your blog while researching Ghost writers. I found your post on economics genuinely insightful.

You see, I have a problem with Ghost. As a non-native English speaker, I use AI to fix my writing. It's helpful for the minor typos and such, but it adds friction to the process.

Normally I'd try to solve this as an engineer. This time, however, I want to learn how other Ghost bloggers actually deal with it. Would you be open to a 20-minute conversation about your workflow (even if it doesn't involve AI)?

I'm talking to Ghost writers this week and next—happy to work around your schedule: https://cal.com/eugene

Thanks for considering,

Eugenio

As you can see, it consists of four simple paragraphs: a personalized (and this time lazy) introduction, the motivation behind my reaching out (the issue I'm validating), why I reached out to her (her advice), and a call to schedule a meeting with me.

If you pass this through a readability scoring app, you'll see it meets the requirements. For example, no sentence is too long and no adverbs are used.

And with that, I think I'm set up to get started.

To be continued

Thank you for reading this far.

Writing here does help me a lot in staying on track with this project. There's a lot to say about the power of Self Elicitation.

If you happen to be one of the people I've reached out to, I hope you've found it interesting.

If you're one of the three subscribers who always read my posts, thank you twice ;).

Best, Eugenio.