TONY: Hey, everyone, this is Tony. Before we start today’s conversation, I want to give you a quick heads up. At the very end of this episode, I’m going to share a piece of music that’s very close to my heart. My newest hit song. If you’ve ever seen those four words on every coin and every dollar in the U.S., hearing them on a song gives them a whole new weight. So stick around to the very end. I can’t wait for you to hear it.
Welcome back to the podcast, entrepreneurs. In a world of noise and automation, how do you truly connect?
You know, today we’re diving into a skill that every business leader needs — not to sell more, but to communicate better. My guest, Adam Rosen, he built Echo Works to help founders master the art of outreach, crafting clear, honest messages that open doors, build trust, and start meaningful conversations.
Now, this isn’t about spam or mass marketing. It’s about learning how to communicate value. Lead with intention and scale relationships in the digital world that we’re in. So whether you’re trying to grow your business, build partnerships, or simply be heard in the crowd, this episode will show you how clarity, consistency, and genuine connection can transform your results.
Sounds good. We’re going to explore the mindset behind powerful communication and how to turn your message into your greatest growth tool. Check this out. Let’s begin. Let’s bring him on.
Hi, Adam. Welcome to The Tony DUrso Show.
ADAM: Tony, thanks for having me. Uh, it’s a pleasure to have you.
TONY: We’re all looking forward to learning about outreach that converts — more specifically, how to build sales, global sales, how to scale with newsletters. We all, almost all of us, have a newsletter and we want to learn how to turn cold leads into warm clients. And I mentioned just such a little brief bit about you. Can you kind of share your backstory? How did it all start for you, Adam?
ADAM: Yeah, so I never held a true nine-to-five job. I ended up starting my first business about three weeks before I graduated, uh, from my MBA program in college. I started my first business, had that company for about five years. I sold that business back in 2019 and then started my current company, Email Outreach Company, about four and a half years ago.
TONY: Now that’s really something. So you started your email outreach company. So now I’m curious, how did you discover that power of what we call cold email? The people didn’t know you, but they welcomed your communication. What made you realize that that would be like was a really cool or good tool, or worthwhile tool and connection and a business model? How did that all happen?
ADAM: Yeah. So it’s funny, like in the probably nine hundred and forty-three different business ideas I’ve always had, Email Outreach Company was actually not one of them. Very much started based on a need and just what we always did a good job of.
So during my first tech startup, we were able to get some of the biggest brands in the world like think Bank of America, Amazon, Apple, Goldman, Disney, you name it, and we got them as customers. Now, we didn’t get those customers from having a lot of connections in the space or from some big inflated marketing budget. We got them just by being scrappy and cold emailing.
Even how I raised money in my first startup, how I found the company that bought my startup was through cold email. How I got over one hundred thousand students to sign up on our technology was also primarily through cold email. So I saw the power firsthand of what cold email can do for you if you do it right.
So when I sold that company back in 2019, one of the things I started to do was advising different startups. And one of those startups I was advising said, Hey Adam, my head of sales is really struggling to get meetings on the books. Is there anything you could do to help?
So long story short, I had a conversation with her. I saw what gap they had when it comes to their cold email systems. I called up my co-founder of my previous startup. I said, hey, I think we can help these guys out. Do you want to do something together on this?
And then four and a half years later, over one hundred and fifty customers later, including big Fortune 500, we’ve been building out email programs within companies to make sure they can get results through cold outbound.
TONY: Adam. The first thought, the literal first thought that comes through my mind, that probably comes through ninety percent of the audience and came through my mind when I first ran into your information is isn’t this? Can I say that word — spam? Is this, like, wrong? Is there something wrong?
And, but as a business. Businesses want want information or guidance or help that would help them with their business, I surely do. It’s not a bad thing to email, but somehow we’ve been predisposed. You programmed that to email somebody that you don’t know is wrong.
And I probably will ask more about that later. But the first thing is like, oh wait, because when I told somebody, hey, I’m going to interview Adam Rosen about cold emails like, ah, you know, alarms.
So I’m going to ask more about it later, but can you kind of dispel that. Let’s call it a myth.
ADAM: Yeah. It’s uh, it’s one of those things that cold email in the marketing world gets a bad reputation, and, uh, I don’t blame it. You know, we all have horrible emails in our inbox with unthoughtful emails at best, or malicious emails at worst. So we all have this negative experience because, man, our inboxes are filled with crap.
So I don’t blame people for having that perception. There is a fine line between being spammy and being a thoughtful marketer. And the reality is, when it comes to email, the biggest, best, most well-known brands are doing cold email, so if they are, then every other brand that isn’t as well known should be doing it too.
However, just like with anything in life, it’s about how you do it and can you do it effectively?
And the reality is, in the marketing world, there’s going to be people who love and appreciate your marketing if you do it well. But then to that same marketing that others love and appreciate, there’s going to be somebody else on the other side of it who is going to think it’s the worst thing, and they’re upset with you and they don’t like it.
Like, for example, in between selling my startup and then my first startup and then starting Email Outreach Company, I was running land development projects in the Northeast. So I had big chunks of land. I’d chop it up and sell it, and I would do a lot of advertising on Meta, primarily on Facebook.
And a lot of times it was just me on the property with my iPhone and saying, hey, look how beautiful the Hudson River is here. Come check it out. Let me know if you want to show.
For the most part, people would be very nice and respectful. But I remember — and this was during the COVID times — there was somebody who had a not the most pleasant comments on my post and basically said, hey, I hope you get COVID and some bad things happen to you, to say it nicely.
My approach has always been to just, you know, be kind, kill it with kindness.
And long story short, we had a back and forth conversation and the gentleman said, hey man, I’m really sorry. You seem like a really nice guy, someone I’d grab a beer with. I was just having a bad day, and I just wanted to take it out on somebody.
And the reason why I bring that story up is no matter what marketing you do or anything you do in life, there’s going to be going to be people who love you, and there’s going to be people who don’t.
And a lot of times the people that don’t, it’s something else that is unrelated to you that they are going through and you’re in their life.
So try not to be so offended by it or upset by it. Everyone’s got their own life that they’re dealing with.
So anyway, that’s my long winded rant about email and knowing that if you do it well, my Slack channel of memorable responses, people that say how great our emailing is is a heck of a lot more full than people who are saying nasty things to us.
TONY: You know, I have my opinion on some of this, and that is, first of all, some of the spam that we get is like, I get twenty emails a day about my plumbing. It’s to the same email address, it’s the same email. Or similarly put that system like an overload. I never asked for it. I don’t want it. And yet I’m barraged about my plumbing, or about insurance, or about something that has nothing to do with anything.
And it’s not just one. It’s a barrage.
And so I think that when somebody gets ticked off about spam or whatever or cold outreach, it’s because now they have somebody that they can speak with, they have somebody that they can talk to because you’re open and receptive, because if you try to unsubscribe from those spam emails, you get even more spam back and they’ll continue to spam you because they know now that you are active on your email.
And the reverse, and I kind of the reverse.
But another angle is because they know you or who you are, uh, and or that you welcome communication there. You’re now the outlet for that anger.
For example, I once in the past thirty, thirty odd years, I’ve emailed somebody that I personally know, shook hands, chatted with twice about something. I both times I got really nasty messages back saying why don’t spam?
And just I was like, really bad, almost like you got with the code. It’s like, what?
So so if you know somebody and you know that they may be interested in something or their business, may be you would think that that is, it’s okay to communicate that.
But some people just are, I guess, naturally angry anyway. So it’s kind of really, really weird.
So I’m going to ask this in just one moment. First, I want to let the audience know we’re speaking with Adam Rosen. We’re talking about outreach that converts, talking about how to build your sales, how to scale with newsletters that’s coming up, and how to turn warm leads or cold leads into warm clients.
And you can find them at echo dot com echo works. Do I have that backwards?
ADAM: A lot of people a lot of people call it echo works. It’s actually EOCWorks.com — short for Email Outreach Company.
TONY: Email Outreach Company. Thank you. Thank you.
And you know what? When I first saw it, I thought it was a typo. I thought it was echo works. I don’t it’s my fault.
ADAM: That’s all right. It’s a good little blooper.
TONY: To just lead into mass emails and, and and we talked about whether, you know, somebody or you don’t know somebody, whether you send them a ton of emails or not, you’re open, you’re vulnerable.
Let’s kind of talk about this. Let’s, let’s you can address that because I also want to talk about what makes a person answer or respond to that email as opposed positively as opposed to negatively.
ADAM: It’s all about relevance. Marketing, at the end of the day, is all about being relevant, and part of being relevant is understanding what does somebody in this position need? What are they? What problems are they facing? What solutions are they looking for?
Now you’re not going to be able to get everybody because just because you are a director of talent acquisition at a company with one thousand to ten thousand employees, doesn’t mean that everyone’s going to have the same problem. Of course not.
However, if you truly understand your solution, if you truly understand your ICP, your ideal customer profile, and the problems that they most likely are facing, then you can communicate that message at scale effectively.
But it has to be relevant to them because people can see right through it. They can see when you’re just throwing something against the wall and sending out a prayer.
Versus they can see when you really deeply understand the solution to a problem that they may be facing and communicating it in a way that’s easy for them to read and digest.
Like none of us are going to read a five paragraph email, probably if our own mother sends it to us, let alone if it’s some random person, we’re going to be skimming through it.
It’s like with a resume, you got five seconds to get your point across on why this person should hire you.
Same idea with a cold email. So you got to get to the point quickly, and you have to show them why it’s relevant and give them a reason to read the next line. And then read the line after that and read the line after that. But it all starts with relevance.
TONY: Adam’s perspective is a powerful reminder that real growth doesn’t come from just shouting louder. It comes from communicating better when you’re intentional, human, and consistent in how you reach people. You don’t just generate opportunities, you build trust. And in today’s business environment, trust is the real currency.
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And now let’s get back to this powerful conversation.
TONY: I’m thinking with this, and I’m thinking, okay, how do I build trust? Okay, I’m not going to send five paragraphs, I get that. How does my short little simple message, how can I build that trust with this person? I haven’t met the person, but I know that they’re a business and that’s allowed to to email a business. So yeah.
ADAM: So there’s a few different approaches to take when it comes to events, one of which is very complex. And if you’re not an expert in this technology, don’t do it.
But there’s tools out there like Clay, for example. It’s a phenomenal tool. Basically it’s a data enrichment tool. If you do it right, it will seem like you just spent an hour and a half researching this company, searching them online. You know everything about them, and you’re tying your solution into their problem based on their digital footprint.
It’s phenomenal if you can do it well.
Ninety five percent of the people that use it don’t use it well, so it ends up having the adverse effect. So that’s one end of it.
The other end of it is just keep it short and sweet and focus on these few things.
Purpose. What’s the purpose of your email? What’s the problem you solve? What’s your solution? What’s your social proof? And then what’s your call to action? Hey, do you have ten minutes to chat about this?
If you could just focus on those basics and keep it to four to five sentences tops, that’ll at least get your foot in the door in the email world.
And then when you want to get advanced and have a lot of fun with this, that’s when you get into the more personalized world through using tools like Clay.
Just know it’s much more complex and not for the amateur.
TONY: All right, so if we can communicate in our email that we know something about the company, something important, not just that their name and who they are or whatever, that can help bring a little bit more trust because they go, okay, well, they this person knows something about me that brings more trust, in fact, separate.
But when I get pitched for people to be on my show, a number of them know enough about my show that gets my attention right away. They start with, here’s the information about your show, what you’ve done, who you’ve interviewed last, or some recent interview, what was stated about it.
And then here’s a fit for you and I’m getting some of those. And believe it or not, I read those. I read those myself. And here’s a person that knows about my show and is interested because they have some a client or a prospect, a referral that they think would be good, as opposed to some media company out there saying, John Doe just wrote a book about, you know, how I struggled in the desert for thirty days and became a millionaire or whatever, whatever.
It doesn’t quite hit the metrics of my show right away because they don’t know anything about it.
So as a takeaway, I’m getting right now communicating something about that, that company, uh, right off the bat, helps to build that trust. I like that.
ADAM: And make sure it’s something too that isn’t so obvious.
Like when I get things in my inbox like, hey, I saw you worked with Company Name because it’s a case study on my website. It’s just lazy personalization.
Or hey, I saw you were on this podcast. It’s lazy personalization.
Versus, for example, like my co-founder was running a demo with me because he oversees our whole technical side of the house. So he was like, watch this.
And he put my name in there, like, as if I’m a recipient of one of these emails.
And the research it did when it broke it down, in the email, it said, hey, I heard that you got over half of your one hundred and fifty customers through cold email.
And I just posted about this on LinkedIn about a week ago, but this was before I posted about it, and I’ve only mentioned that maybe once or twice on one of the podcasts I was on where if I got that email, I would think, how the heck do they know that? Like, when did I say that?
Because it’s not like it’s a publicly available thing. It’s not like I’m like putting out my website. It’s not like I at that time posted my LinkedIn about it.
Like wherever the data was, wherever it was crawling to get that data was pretty impressive.
Versus, hey, I see you are the co-founder CEO of Email Outreach Company. Hey, I see you work with tomorrow. Hey, I saw you were on this podcast.
Like that stuff that you could have done three or four years ago. It’s just I’d rather not have any personalization and just get to the point.
But if you could do it well, you want the level of personalization where it wows people.
How do you create that wow factor? It’s very possible now, but it’s just not easy to do right now.
TONY: I think that, uh, when we read something positive about our company right away, it helps bring in that interest. It just seems to work that way.
But let’s go deeper in this. There’s a mindset, too. It’s not just. Hey, Adam, you, uh, you’ve gotten one hundred and fifty of your clients through cold reach email, says Tony.
And then he goes, oh, let’s keep reading what Tony said.
There’s a way to communicate it. There’s some value that I’m giving you. Where in that email correspondence you go. This has got some value for me.
ADAM: Yeah. So there’s people that will try to just give value in an email. I think that’s great. I think that’s more newsletter side.
So I run a over a dozen, probably a dozen have internal newsletters alone, not even counting our customer newsletters that we build for that.
And those newsletters are built around giving value.
Whether it’s my email marketing newsletter with almost seventy thousand subscribers on it, our sales newsletter, we have CFO related newsletter, we have even a golf newsletter.
I love golf, so I created a golf newsletter that’s about giving value on golf tips, etc..
So in terms of giving value, I think that’s much more valuable. On the newsletter side, it’s more branding. Number one, thought leadership. Number two.
On the cold email side, the way I look at it is there’s about eleven different problems that I face as a business owner. And there’s probably more than that.
You know, we all have problems we want to have solved.
If somebody could sneak into your inbox today, Tony, and say, hey, I can solve this problem, and here’s why you should trust me to do it.
Are you open to taking ten minutes of your valuable time to chat with me?
I’m sure you’d be like, yeah, let’s do it. I’ve been wanting to solve that problem. You seem like you’re a reputable source. Let’s see if you could do it for me.
So that’s the approach I take in cold email is every business has a problem. They want to solve many problems. They want to solve that problem could be one I can solve for them.
My job is to show it in as simple and clear of a way as possible to that prospect. Why? We are worth ten minutes of their time to get on a call to share how we might be able to solve that problem for them.
I’m not trying to blow them away and give them all the best advice in the world. That’s what my newsletter is for.
For cold email, it’s you have a problem. We have a solution. Do you want to chat about it?
TONY: Okay, okay.
And we’re talking about sending a lot of communications. We’re of the mindset. I mean who isn’t?
There’s AI, everything is automated. The more automated we think, the more free and easy our life is. The more luxurious things are, the more income we make.
We’re believers that we need to automate, but computers, AI, they’re not necessarily personable.
And yet we want to remain and be authentic and be real. So it’s like a dichotomy here.
You want to send out a lot of communications, but you want to show up as a real person and be taken seriously, not just some spam spammer or whatever.
Trying to send you twenty emails a day telling you about they can fix your plumbing. That doesn’t need to be fixed, you know?
So how do we do that? How do you do that?
ADAM: The irony is now is the level of personalization and relevance that you could do today in twenty twenty five, even though it is through tools like AI. Powered by humans, of course, is not even in the same universe as what I used to do in the first two and a half years of having this startup.
In my first five years of building my first tech startup, it was just hi, first name. Here’s a blanket email and if you’re interested, let’s talk. It was very simple.
It wasn’t personalized much other than hey, you fit this ICP criteria.
Now the level of personalization, it really feels like we did our homework on them and it either becomes either one. Thank you for doing your due diligence. Like you’ve really looked at my company.
Or two. You are really good at AI and either way I tip my cap to you, but the level of relevance you can get to today is again, almost unrecognizable than what it used to be when AI wasn’t a thing.
But in order to your point, Tony, in order to use AI right, you can’t just press a button and just sit back, relax and sip a cocktail and, you know, wait for the meetings and the money to come through.
It needs to be powered by humans. It has to have that human touch.
If not, we’re all going to get the same crappy emails that, again, are sitting in every single one of our inboxes right now.
TONY: Yeah, one thing about AI that I’ve run into so far is it just cannot replicate a real person. If I can use the wording that way without AI getting mad. I call this real people. It just can’t.
And I’ve interviewed one of the foremost AI experts in the world four or five years ago, said it’ll never replace the human. It just can’t.
I mean, some of the answers that AI provides when you do a search, it’s just they just don’t. It doesn’t always get it, though.
It is getting better and better.
So AI. While AI may give a suggestion. Here’s this. Here’s what you can send out for an email. And I’ve tried it.
You know, what would I say to this? It’s like it’s okay. It’s sort of like a starting point, and then you’ve got to fix it. Fine tune it and make it better.
But just putting the AI out of communication by itself doesn’t always, uh, sink in.
And, um, I think that by trial and error, you’ll find out that you’ll get more results by that personal touch.
There’s there’s just things that it just doesn’t know. And it’s just because it’s not programmed or it just doesn’t know everything about you or your business.
It’s just not something I think that they’re meant to know.
But with that is all right. I’ve sent out these communications, which I make sure I put the personal touch. I make sure that I know about the company and give it a good lead in so that Adam here, Adam Rosen, knows I looked into your company, and I really like I have something that I think could help you.
And he reads it, and then I send one email, and then I don’t send another one. I don’t follow up.
Some people like me. I’ll raise my hand.
I don’t like to push people. I figure if you’re really interested, if you really want it.
And I know this is contrary to everything we’ve talked about on my show, put my hand over the mic. But I still don’t like to be pushy.
You know, there’s too many people that can use my products or what I have to offer that I don’t have to be pushy.
Now, I’m not trying to be arrogant or egotistical. I just somehow don’t like to bother people.
But yet there is a professional protocol without going past a point where you’re overbearing.
And how do you see that?
ADAM: In a lot of ways, I agree with.
Like for me and I, I lead the sales for my business. After a call, you know, I’ll send the follow up with whatever is required, pricing, etc. and I very I don’t like to follow up either.
It’s like, hey, you either want to do this or you don’t. Like, I don’t want to push you.
Now, on the flip side though, there’s a major power in following up, especially when it comes to email.
So there are times where I’ll see an email. I’m like, oh, this is interesting. This is actually something I would want to have a conversation with this person about to see if they can solve my problem.
But for whatever reason, I don’t respond to it or save it.
And then I’ll think back two weeks later. Oh crap, who is that person? I reached out about this thing. How do I find them? I don’t know where to find it.
And if they don’t follow, they don’t give me a chance at it.
The amount of customers that we have gotten, or our customers have gotten because of a follow up email is we’re not talking like thousands of dollars or tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue, like we’re talking seven figure plus because of the follow up.
The amount of people that when it’s right, will say thank you for following up. Yes. Let’s talk, you know, tomorrow or whenever. The date is.
So much of the power, especially when it comes to email, is in the follow up.
If you don’t follow up, you don’t give yourself a chance like we did now our sequences are much tighter.
We only do a three point sequence, so one primary email and then two follow ups.
We used to do a nine point sequence. About twenty percent of our emails are meetings. Books would come on that last email.
On average, it took about four and a half emails to get a meeting booked. So about five emails to even book one meeting.
So, so much of the power in email is doing the follow up.
If you don’t follow up, you’re just not giving yourself a chance even to be successful.
But the key is how do you follow up in a respectful way where if they’re not interested, no problem, I’ll unsubscribe you. I won’t reach out to you again, but if you are interested, I’d love to have a conversation with you.
TONY: I like that, I like that, I think that’s absolutely the perfect way to go about it, because the busy executive doesn’t necessarily read that first email, but they’ll see it. They’ll see it again if it’s done respectfully.
And now do you when you do that, do you use AI in doing that? Do you have AI assist you in that follow up, or is that all done by humans or how does that work?
ADAM: No, I mean, we’re sending a few million emails a month. My team is small. We only have seventeen employees like it’s a small company.
And if we were, we couldn’t manually send everything.
So it’s all done through powering AI so it knows exactly what to say. So it sounds like a human, but this is all automated.
And then when somebody responds they’re removed from our sequences. They don’t get any more emails from us.
But it’s all automated.
The beauty of the technology, especially today, it’s so powerful where if you just know how to use it, scaling your outreach is not what it used to be.
So it’s all about really knowing how to use the AI.
It’s it’s something that you don’t think ten years ago we, we could have been able to do this way.
TONY: No, not even close.
ADAM: I mean, like we used to do mail.
So when I first started the email world, I would one by one copy paste, copy paste send, copy paste sent.
Then one of our advisors was like, hey, there’s this tool. I forgot the name of it. Now it was called like streak or something.
This is where you could do a mail merge, and it was basically creating a bunch of spreadsheets and then doing a mail merge and then manually removing stuff. It was a headache.
But now today, I mean, it’s it’s pretty remarkable what you could do from an automation and technology side.
But again, from an AI personalization side like it is remarkable.
If you can prompt like we have dozens and dozens of rows and columns telling it who to do research on how to do the research, how to write the copy with all these technologies under these.
Like it’s pretty freaking cool and complex if you can do it right.
But it’s just really hard.
Like it’s just not an easy, easy technology to use.
But if you could do it right, man, the stuff you can do in twenty twenty five is pretty exciting.
TONY: And now is the time for my facet minute.
This week I’ve been thinking a lot about communication, not just in business, but in life.
As entrepreneurs, we spend so much time trying to be heard pitching ideas, sending emails, leading teams.
But the real breakthrough doesn’t come from saying more. It comes from saying what matters clearly and honestly.
I’ve learned this not only as a business owner, but as a musician.
When you write a song, every word has to earn its place. If it’s forced, people feel it. If it’s authentic, it resonates.
Whether you’re writing an email, leading a company, or creating something meaningful, clarity is what turns noise into connection.
And that’s a lesson worth carrying into everything we build.
And before we continue this great conversation with Adam, I want to take a quick moment to thank you for being here.
Thank you for your time and attention means a lot to me, and I truly appreciate you listening to The Tony DUrso Show.
If you’re getting value from today’s episode, I invite you to follow the show and share it with someone who could benefit.
That simple act helps us reach more entrepreneurs and leaders who are serious about growing and doing meaningful work.
And if you’re not already receiving my Elite Entrepreneurs newsletter, I’d love for you to join us.
Twice a month, I share insights from top guests, highlights from my books and interviews, and practical ideas you can apply right away on your own journey.
It’s free, it’s thoughtful, and it’s designed to help you move forward with clarity and purpose.
You can sign up at Tony. Edu.
That’s Tony.
Oh, and one more thing.
If you’re curious about the creative side of what I do, you can always explore my music at Tony D.
And now let’s get back to this powerful conversation.
TONY: It’s very interesting. You made me hark back to the year 2000. Email. The internet was very, very brand new.
And I had I ran into people cold, cold on the streets, ran into people, got their email addresses and then I bcc blind carbon copy. I did BCC just in six months. I raised three point two five million dollars for a first startup, so it was all BCC and spreadsheets.
I totally remember. It absolutely worked.
It was. It was really interesting because you would send an email to yourself, but just BCC everybody.
ADAM: I remember on that note, one of my first lens into cold email. Two things.
One, I was running an entrepreneur program at my school. I helped start it up my senior year. That’s what led me to eventually starting my one year MBA program, where I kept running the center for entrepreneurship and then getting my MBA before I started my business.
But during my senior year, when I was running that program, I wanted Mark Cuban to speak at one of our events.
I remember emailing him and I was shocked. He politely declined, but he got back to me.
I was like, oh, that’s pretty cool. Like, Mark Cuban will respond to me via email.
But I remember we had a big event and, uh, my advisor, she was like, hey, Adam, can you reach out to all these people that went to our event to thank them?
These are like politicians, business leaders in the space, all this stuff.
I didn’t know at the time what PCC was.
So I remember I just blasted it out in all these big name emails were all for everyone to view.
And it was my first experience of okay, I gotta learn PCC.
And then eventually PCC turned into mail merge.
And then mail merge turned into what we’re doing today.
TONY: Yeah, it doesn’t take maybe one or two attempts at putting people in the CC bracket or the two bracket before it explodes back at you. Never do that again.
ADAM: No, it’s a mistake. You only need once. You only make once.
TONY: Very interesting.
We talked a bit about AI and how to communicate, and I think I made it clear, at least for me, it’s never going to replace a human.
Yet we really, really need it.
What, you know, for us out there in the marketers business, uh, business people, entrepreneurs, what are good AI tools you’ve mentioned, Clay, is that but you also mentioned it really takes there’s a learning curve on it.
Is there anything more simple that we can use for to get out really good communications?
ADAM: Yeah, I’ll take a different approach.
One of my actually not one of my favorite AI tool for any marketer, any business owner, it is unbelievable.
It’s a tool called Lovable. Lovable.dev. I think that’s the website.
It’s a website builder, but I am not a tech person. I’m not a more of a sales marketing business guy.
The the quality of websites or landing pages you could pump out.
Basically all you need to do is prompt in this tool. Lovable. Hey, build me a website for A, B, and C.
You describe everything to a T, it’ll create your website in minutes and then you just keep prompting it and telling it what to do and telling you what to do and telling you what to do.
Some of my most beautiful websites I’ve created are all through Lovable on a weekend when my weekend projects, or me typically building different Lovable sites out for different landing pages or newsletters, media kits, you know, business ideas that I just want to throw out there and just kind of see see if it has any legs on them.
It’s one of the coolest tools, and if you use that technology, you will start to see how powerful AI is and where it’s going, because it completely erases what I used to pay thousands and thousands of dollars for developers to build basic landing pages, and it would take so much time.
I would be so reliant on them or WordPress pages, which are pretty complex, or Squarespace, which doesn’t look good and is pretty complex.
Lovable.dev.
If anyone has two hours on a weekend, play around with that. With that site, build a landing page for yourself. You will be blown away.
So that is probably my number one AI tool in the world right now, and I have a lot of fun with it pretty consistently.
TONY: I appreciate that for me, because I have a website that I’ve been working on, on and off for the past couple of years, and every time I have somebody update it, I just don’t like it. And it just I just keep doing that.
And I’m just thinking this might be a way to do it.
It’s just I’m going to check that out I appreciate that.
ADAM: Yeah, I had a my personal email domain is at AdamRosen.com and I was always like, I should have some type of website that shows all the podcasts I’ve been on, things I’ve done, etc.
You know, like a lot of times when I go on podcasts, they want to see a media kit.
I was like, when am I ever going to pay someone to do this?
And I don’t even know what the vision is.
In a weekend, not even a weekend, probably two or three hours on a Sunday. I had my website built out, and it’s not like it’s the greatest, most incredible site in the world. But it’s definitely at the very least, an MVP.
And it’s just like that for me.
Prompting it, throwing in some images, telling. Telling it what I want, like it is remarkable.
And it just shows where AI is going, like the need for developers is not gone, but it’s we’re not as reliant as we used to be.
And anyone who’s business marketing minded, it’s a whole new world for us if we can learn some of these technologies.
TONY: I think this is a godsend.
Now, does that Lovable? Does it need access to your domain or did it? Or it gives you the HTML code that you upload?
ADAM: So it’s so good.
Like I’ve already had my domain through GoDaddy. It makes it so easy to connect it with GoDaddy.
If you need to buy a domain, you just connect it right there.
Like, it makes things so easy if you could just follow directions.
It tells you what to do.
It is pretty remarkable what it can do.
So anyone who’s ideas you want to build a website, just go to Lovable.dev.
It’s pretty inexpensive too.
And again, it’s not super difficult to learn because all you’re really doing is just prompting it like you would ChatGPT just telling it what you want.
Like it’s pretty cool.
TONY: I really like that. That was a great, great. Thank you.
On behalf of the audience and on behalf of Tony here. That was really, really good.
Now, okay, so kind of back to this.
We’re kind of perhaps not going step by step, but but we covered some key points.
Perhaps that would come up.
So we do this email outreach. We do a couple emails. We follow up.
And the follow up you found is the most key in really getting sales.
I totally get it.
Did we cover everything that’s important on that?
Because, you know, I’m looking to learn.
I get follow ups so many different ways.
You know, people will sometimes take the same email that the original email and then send it back to me with some more information.
And sometimes that gets my attention.
Is that a good way to follow up?
ADAM: It can be. Yeah, we’ll do that sometimes.
What I want to go back to what you just said, Tony, when it comes to importance.
So there’s really three things when it comes to email to do it right.
One of which is copy, which includes the first email, the follow up emails.
Do you want to personalize it? Do you want to just keep it short and sweet?
How do you do the follow ups? All that stuff?
That’s number three on the totem pole of the top three.
Next thing is lists. Getting high quality lists and cleaning those lists.
So one, is it the right titles at the right companies?
Two, is it going to be an accurate email or is it going to bounce?
Google, Yahoo, Microsoft. All these providers have gotten incredibly strict with what they allow in the inbox versus spam.
They don’t want bad emailers using their software and they will block you, mark you as spam very easily.
So you want to make sure your lists are high quality.
So that’s the second most important thing.
The most important thing when it comes to email though, is none of those.
It is not lists, it is not copy.
It is infrastructure.
So what do I mean by infrastructure?
You should in 2025.
And this has been the case now really since September of 2023 when Google Domains was purchased by Squarespace.
That’s when stuff really started to change in the email world was September of 2023.
I will never forget it. I was in Sicily. I got a call from my business partner and he’s like, Adam. Our bounce rate went from, I don’t know, one percent to fifty percent overnight because of this, and we had to change everything we did as a business.
And it’s all related to infrastructure.
So if anybody is listening to this podcast and you are doing any cold outbound emailing from your primary domain, please, please, please stop doing that.
If you do that, there is a chance you will get marked as spam by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft.
There is a good chance your emails will then go into spam, and there is even a chance that your domain will get blacklisted, which is the horror story.
Because if that happens, then you’re in big trouble and it takes a long time to get out of it.
So what do you do?
You need to create all of these basically sending domains that you send your cold emails from.
So back in the old days when we would have a customer, we would create one or two domains from them and a handful maybe of inboxes we would email from.
And that was okay.
Now our biggest customer we’re sending from over a thousand inboxes and about three hundred, four hundred different domains that we have created.
And the reason why is you really can’t send more than ten emails from an inbox in a day. Just ten.
Any more than ten emails, there’s a good chance you’re going into spam and you’re going to be flagged as spam.
So if you have a big universe and you want to send ten thousand emails a month, fifty thousand emails a month, one hundred thousand emails a month, the only way to do that is if you have an infrastructure built to do that.
So everything when it comes to cold email starts with infrastructure.
If you don’t get that right, I don’t care how good your copy is or how good your lists are, you’re not going to get results.
TONY: I’m thinking with that. Okay. Yeah. Um, totally makes perfect sense.
It sounds like we need a company to help handle this for us, because there’s a lot of moving parts that are very, very important if we’re running a good business, whatever the business is, we definitely don’t want to be a spammer.
We don’t want. Oh, because we sent out more too many emails or we’ve sent it to a bad email address or things like that.
And it’s very easy to just go click and send back and and say, hey, this person’s bothering me now you’ve got a complaint.
So there are definitely there are definite things here that have to really be approached properly.
As you’re going through this, I’m thinking, well, are there times when outreach just doesn’t work? Or is it just you got to have these points in place for it to have a good a good chance of success?
ADAM: Yeah, there’s a few ways it doesn’t work.
One way is if you can’t get an email list, of course.
Like if you can’t get the contact information, there’s not much you could do through email.
But that’s of course very rare.
There’s very few industries that I could think of that you wouldn’t be able to get contact information for.
The other side of it, though, is if people aren’t interested in what you offer, there’s only so much you can do.
So that’s always key.
And typically though for any business that’s at product market fit stage or even closing in on product market fit stage, there’s probably a pitch that can work for your audience, but you just have to figure out what that is.
Now with email, though, like it’s not just about getting new customers.
If you want to raise money, like what you talked about earlier in 2000 when you were VC, seeing potential investors.
If you want to get your company acquired.
I was just with one of my good friends who had a had a nice acquisition for his business, and he was telling me the how he got acquired was just from cold emailing folks.
So if you want to get on that.
In the beginning days when we started this company and I got on a lot of podcasts, it was from us doing cold outbound to podcast hosts who then brought me on the podcast.
Email is just a way to connect in person, to connect person A to person B, that’s all email is at the end of the day.
So when you think about it, just what is person B? What do they want to get from you or somebody else?
And then if you can communicate that message in a compelling enough way email is a great source to do that.
TONY: As you’re saying this, I’m thinking, you know, we all all our companies, whoever you know, most companies, we have our email list, we have our clients, we have our prospect list, whatever number it is, it’s of course not enough.
We want to break through that. We want to go to a higher level.
And that’s where it takes some finesse and some understanding of how to move into that upper bracket.
Sounds like we need to really.
Not that I’m trying to pitch anything or sell anything, but we really need to go to a marketing company that understands all these different points to expand our company reach into a level that we’ve not expanded before.
Otherwise, it can be troublesome for us.
ADAM: Yeah.
When it comes to email now versus what it was in the past, like in the old days, it really wasn’t that complicated.
You get an email list, you put it into a simple mail merge system, you email from your primary domain, you blast it out and you could get some results.
It really you didn’t have to. It wasn’t that complex.
It just was like, are you going to be scrappy and do you have the stomach to deal with it?
Now I tell people, though, really you have two options in email if you want to get results.
Either one become an expert or two hire an expert.
If you’re not going to become an expert or hire an expert, you might as well not do it because you’re going to end up wasting your time banging your head against the wall, not getting results, and wasting time and money.
So those are really the two options today and beyond.
Just because the space does get more and more crowded, the technologies are getting more and more complex, and the end user has higher expectations of you versus in the old days.
TONY: Yeah. Makes perfect sense if you’re willing to spend the time to do it yourself and become the expert.
Otherwise, there are some dangers there.
No business that I that I know of. I mean, we’re not in the business of risking our domain.
Our domain has become very, very important or risking our business overall.
And if we do something incorrect, we certainly don’t want those complaints.
So you really bring up a very good caveat in a way to to doing it ourselves.
It’s very easy to send out a thousand emails, but the risk of getting some complaints that could impact or label you as a spammer or put you on a blacklist or something, that’s very scary, especially for us business owners or entrepreneurs that have spent years and years building our business properly and and reputably.
So I totally get that.
And and as I’m going through this, I’m wondering, you know, before emails, before AI, we had our protocol of communication, how to communicate.
We’ve we’ve covered a couple of these points here in this interview.
And I’m wondering what else can you teach us about communication.
Is it just that simple?
Well, you talked about finding out more about the company, communicating to them that you’ve done some research and you’ve got something good for them.
Is it that simple?
It seems like there’s more to it.
I mean, we make everything look easy, don’t we?
But behind the scenes, sometimes there’s a lot more work in complexity than we may make it seem like.
ADAM: Yeah.
It’s funny, I, um, I always tell my co-founder, who’s more he’s on the technical side, and he’s really the credit for why we’ve been named an expert at so many of the top tools in the email world.
And I always joke, I say I have the easiest job.
All I need to do is talk to people about what we do, bring people on, and share the results we get for our customers.
I don’t have to do the whole technical side.
And when I go through the technical side with them, because of course I need to know how to do it and how it works and all that good stuff.
My mind is blown.
Like my mind. I’m like, Holy mackerel.
Like, this is really complex.
Like there’s a lot going in here.
So yes, of course, I mean, it sounds simple, but that’s the whole beauty.
Like the, the hardest thing in the world is to make something seem simple.
And that’s our job as marketers, is we have to take this complex mess, whether it’s contact information. Enriching it.
Putting together a compelling pitch, or engaging with the prospects when they reply to do it quickly with good templates.
Because even when people respond and they say, hey, let’s talk, this is interesting, or they have questions, we have a DIY product where our customers need to handle the replies.
And sometimes it’ll take them fourteen hours to get back or their reply is confusing.
Like every little detail of the process needs to be perfect in order to get that one meeting booked.
So that’s obviously what we’ve been perfecting now for the past four and a half years.
And we’re not perfect yet.
There’s a lot of improvement we need to continue to make.
But to your point, Tony, yes, there’s a lot of complexity behind the scenes, but that’s the beauty of marketing.
If you can do it well, it comes across as simple and effortless, and that’s always the goal.
Whenever we write these emails, book these meetings and of course hopefully lead to sales.
TONY: Wonderful.
Once again, this is Adam Rosen.
We talked about outreach that converts how to build global sales.
Guys come on turn your warm warmly. You’re cold. I say it twice.
Turn your cold leads into warm clients and big sales.
This is really, really good.
Go to EOCWork.com.
That’s EOCWork.com.
Check out what he has, what they do.
I’m very inspired by it.
You’ve heard this interview.
There are ways to do it right and proper and be very successful.
Check that out guys.
Adam, thank you so much.
This was good advice.
I learned some good points here.
I’m very appreciative.
I just want to say it was so great to have you on.
ADAM: Thank you Tony I appreciate you having me.
TONY: Wonderful wonderful wonderful.
Well, guys, there you go.
If you like this, do us a favor.
Share this with your friends.
Tell them about Adam and tell them about EOC Works.
What he’s been, how it works.
You can be the expert.
You could do it yourself, or you could find a company to do it.
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All right, let’s use this and let’s help you move on your journey to success.
Thanks to remember, just take action.
Success awaits those who persevere and remain steadfast despite the odds.
So good seats do good deeds and I’ll see you on the next episode.
And before we close today’s episode, I want to share something special with you.
Something I mentioned at the start of the show.
This is my brand new song, inspired by four powerful words printed on every U.S. coin and every dollar.
You’ve seen these words your entire life, but when you hear them as a song, they carry a whole new meaning.
It’s called In God We Trust.
Here it is.
TONY (SONG LYRICS): Walking by a bus stop. Not even a book. Feeling everything is just plain old. Stuck. A dime on the ground I held it to the light. What it said restored my sight. In God we trust. The words shine true. Guiding my steps. And all I do. Through trials and storms I find my place in God we trust. Amazing grace. Yeah. I took the next bus, though my pocket had no fare. I told the driver my life with a humble prayer. He gave a smile and said, go on, son. I knew then that my hope had begun. In God we trust the word shine through, guiding my steps and all I do. Through trials and storms I find my place in God we trust. Amazing grace. I found a diner with a crowd at the door and asked the kind lady if I could do more. She smiled and said, you can stay if you try with the dime in my hand. I whispered on high. When the road feels heavy and hope runs thin. That coin reminds me where faith begins. One small coin, yeah. The truth so wide. In God we trust forever. My God. In God we trust. The word shines through. Guiding my steps and all I do. Through trials and storms I find my place in God we trust. Amazing grace. Forever we sing. God we trust. Forever we sing. In God we trust.
TONY: And that is In God We Trust. The song that truly came to me as a gift from God.
I hope you enjoy it and I’d love to hear your feedback.
Thank you for listening and thank you for spending this time with me today.
I hope this episode and this song gives you something meaningful to take with you.
And by the way, this song is part of my very first album, which is now out.
If you want to hear more of the new music, visit Tony. Com.
That’s Tony.
I appreciate you.
Thanks.
So remember, just take action.
Success awaits those who persevere and remain steadfast despite the odds.
So good seeds do good deeds.
And I’ll see you on the next episode.
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Slash news.
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