Charles Cormier
Charles Cormier Coaching
Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)
So Charles, please introduce yourself. What is it that you do? You're kind of the CEO of Top Leads Cold Email.
- Charles Cormier
What is that? Yeah, so top leads, mean, cold email, everyone knows what cold email is.
- Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)
It's fetching contacts and sending them emails at scale using AI.
- Charles Cormier
I do a lot of things, but yeah, in the chaotic front end, there is some sense on the back
I can to all of this. So my first company was a new topic. I've always been quite ambitious and have some thesis that I test constantly and the one that I've been trying to crack at least for the past and year was to build the business of mine that will build other businesses.
So the system that can help me crack the capitalist code. It's taking me longer than I thought, but I'm starting a bunch of businesses and cold email helps me do that.
can test various markets with various product and various offers and get product market fit. When I do that, I scale it whether it's through AI or hiring a CEO that will manage that business of mine.
So I have multiple agencies. The cold email still, yeah, probably the main one. But also do podcasting service. do mastermind as a service.
It's all productized services, most of which generate at least 20 KMRR. then once we reach that point, we hire CO, try to reach 100 KMRR and eventually a million per month.
So that's basically what I do. I have an ecosystem of businesses and slowly but surely growing my empire 1% a day.
- Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)
Now you mentioned for the listeners at home, you have your businesses on monthly recurring revenue because the classic model is, there's various levels to it.
Charles Cormier
First, it's selling your time, That's probably the weakest. At this point, if I'm selling my time, it's nothing under 5K an hour.
Most people very much undervalued themselves at like 50 an hour as consulting. So you don't want to do that.
If anything, you want to sell your energy pieces of your knowledge, for example, make a course and sell that at scale.
scale. Then once you're done selling your time, you do packages. So you have packages on your website. I will do this for that price.
At this point, you're selling your energy. The best is, well, in my opinion, many other successful founders to sell something that's recurring, that comes back to you on a monthly basis.
Why? Because you're always forced to deliver a better product on a monthly basis so that you can get the renewal, right?
And it forces you to improve 1% better on a daily basis. And eventually, you can have a very competitive product and acquire a good part of the market.
Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)
Now, one of the things you mentioned was product market fit. I actually wrote about this recently in the newsletter.
How do you get it? What is it first? how do you get it?
Charles Cormier
Yeah, there's various definitions. believe the most classic definition is like getting a million dollars as a as a company, that's when you know in less than a year that is because you can take forever to get that but to me and to many you know like once you're done with the numbers part it's it's a gut feeling because on my side i've launched most more than a thousand five hundred sequences and let's say that probably one to two percent of these were major product market fit so much so that i decided to build businesses on on these and really invest more of my energy token indeed so a product market fit in my field it's basically launching a campaign targeting someone with some specific offer if we take mastermind as a service for example targeting coaches and consultants with that people want to build their own masterminds with existing clients right it brings insights it brings accountability it brings emotional support because it's really lonely as a founder or co so you just reunite four seals in a room
Just that people don't know how to do that. They already have their practice, but they need help in finding these members Defining what the masterminds about and they're just anxious, you know like people when they don't know they they fear and fear Cells, you know like that's business for me.
So I Send them an email. Let's say it's called the Gabrielle mastermind That's the title of the email and you're like, oh, that's interesting.
haven't thought of that Maybe I could start my Gabrielle Flores mastermind and you will respond to me Then me I'm sending a thousand emails per day under that campaign, right?
If I get a reply rate that's around Let's say 2.5 percent That's 25 responses a day. That's a lot and let's say that half of these will be positive, right?
Hey, Charles send me more info about the mastermind as a service. That's 10 responses per day That's probably what I get by the way for real on the mastermind as a service But when you get 10 positive replies
that's already a very good sign that you're on to something that the market needs what you want. So basically to answer your question, it's the market that speaks.
this point, I have my opinions, but I don't get rich by having opinions. I get rich by having my opinions validated by the market.
Then obviously, we look at the close rate. Does this product close? Is the close rate higher than 15% to 20% in this market?
That might seem low. I historically close rate was 30%, but yeah, we're in a down market. Finally, how can I get paid compared to my other businesses that I run?
Mass minus the service. Right now, it's 1.5k a month. If I coach you how to do it, if I do it for you, it's 2.5k.
We're about to increase those price, we calculate the energy input, vs what we get as an output in terms of cash.
So there's various definition and then I could add one last on top of it. And it's icky guy do I have fun doing that on my side, you know, is it a passion of mine to help people?
Reunite a kcos right reunite in one room and talk about their business their goals Make them accountable and support them and if I check all of these boxes to me that's a product market fit It's a business that I can potentially scale now scale doesn't last forever It needs to stop at some point, but yeah, I'll still give it a shot You I'll squeeze the orange yet as much juice that I can in the the next couple months Now, how do you kind of go through the process of you know You mentioned you would kind of send out newsletters in the market kind of speaking to you What other what on mediums do you use what avenues do you use to kind of connect with her with your customers?
It's 95% called email, you know, cuz that's it's so powerful I pay a tool called Apollo.io. I paid a hundred bucks a month that grants me 10,000 contacts and I have
I have gazillions account on Apollo, meaning that I probably get somewhere around like 200 cake contacts a month, right?
That new contacts, right? They now really have an existing database. There's already emails that are being sent on a daily basis site, evergreen sequences that just never stops, meaning that bottom line, you know, I sent a ton of emails on a monthly basis and I don't pay much for that.
If yes, if I would invest that money to LinkedIn or into other channels, so at least 90% of my 120 meetings that I get per week are generated through cold email.
I started doing what I know as well because I own multiple agencies over the year. For example, remarketing is a good one because everyone that visits my website and show some love show that they were attracted by my offer.
They will resee my ads over and over again. So I'm investing a bit more into that and I'm looking into more channels, but cold email is so
hard to max out, right? Because in Apollo, there is also LinkedIn outreach in there. So it's like cold email and day one, LinkedIn outreach on day three.
I'm also looking to calls because I own multiple call centers back in the days, but I don't believe calls, scales as much.
I wouldn't recommend that one. But for folks listening, and that is pretty wide. But even if you're low employees, if you're if you're high employees or low revenue or high revenue, cold email, like most people just do not use it enough.
They're scared. They think it's illegal. They think it will ruin their reputation. They think they will get in the spam, which is right, which is why I help people scale their campaigns.
But it's most of them are misconceptions. And I would encourage people to try at least a tool like Apollo and and cold email the out of everyone, get a couple of offs and improve their approach in the process to, you know, get that 100 meetings a week.
eventually. Now 100 meetings might be a lot for people. What you might do at that stage is just filter out people right, out of 100 responses, you take only the 10 best.
And yeah, it's a beautiful system.
Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)
How had you continued to improve? Because one of the things you mentioned was you basically, you got a couple of offs.
How did you improve it? How did you kind of get to that turning point where you got a little less of that?
Charles Cormier
Yeah, so not all feedback is good feedback, right? Like at first it's ego. It's good to have an ego because it pushes you to want more in life and constantly improve myself.
me personally, and I think most people are like that as well, as soon as they get criticized, we feel it in our core and it just feels like .
If someone tells you like, oh, email is bad, you're idiot. Yeah, it just feels bad. But I have trick for that.
And it's called exposure, you know, so and that's a beauty. You have scale the most you the more you get exposed to hate and feedback the more you can take it and the more you can Take it as a seed and eventually that's that seed will grow into a tree.
So Obviously sometimes there's a lot of anger right like even if you do ads or or anything out there Sometimes people have very bad days and when they see your stuff they will just hate on it.
They will spit out venom You know, I mean there. I don't know their child is sick. They just got divorced and That's the real reason why they have all that pent up anger, but they they send it to you So when it's that, you know I mean you might find a gem or two and that sort of feedback most of it is just like pure hate and there's value into that because it makes you more patient, but you just extract some of it and that's it that I get I mean I don't get much hate nowadays because my emails are quite good But let's say I get three times a day like hey I didn't understand your offer then you know that like you need to rephrase And I actually had that to date twice
you know, so I know that I need to be more clear in the copy of my campaigns there. And for the rest, you know, the more feedback that you get, the more you aggregate it over time it, I call it let it sink, you know, you just gather all that feedback in your brain.
And with time, I don't know, you chill, you do activities that relax yourself. And finally, the insights, it's fully packaged, you know, it's like a gift, it surfaces boom.
One day, oh, I need to stop marketing to see those under 10 employees. And then you modify that. some insights are like quicker, an urgent right, like let's say that you up a tag in your email and you just doesn't pop, that's a big error.
Well, you fix it quick, but some other errors, you need a lot of feedback, especially when you're stubborn like myself, you know, and that needs like more time and to seek in sort of.
\ Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)
Yeah, that's a good point. How do you continue? to figure out ways to bring value. how do you create new ideas?
Charles Cormier
mentioned you've done a bunch of businesses. How do you continue to create product ideas? The podcast basically is a big mechanism.
So I just interview a bunch of people and I've discovered they're full of or if they have a good business idea.
It's quite easy after interviewing more than 1000 CEOs, you know, to know who has it and who doesn't. I can even know like in the first 22nd, someone, you know, has a full fledged business or not, you know, other than if they are like sort of autistic or like very introverted, then it's hard to know their character and so forth and to judge a business.
I speak to so many folks that I just have this this this meter in me that that tells me if if someone has a good business or not.
Also the questions that I ask, I have a bunch of sources of data as you know, I check their website, check their LinkedIn, I check their ambition as well.
That's So underrated, you know, what someone's ambition, they want to reach trillions or are they okay to cruise at 100k a month, let's say.
So with that, I just uncovered these ideas, then I cross correlate stuff. I also can do my data on YouTube, audiobooks.
And most importantly, I take all of this data and I send campaigns, called email campaigns with it. I test out these hypothesis, you know, and then I get a bunch of replies in my mailbox.
I just check out probably like at least 50 companies on a daily basis. I have other companies too that bring me other clients and I get the more intimate view of the client's business.
And I just constantly test out stuff, you know, so it's a complex sort of lab that constantly test out hypothesis, get some partial conclusions.
And yeah, it's a process that I still haven't defined yet because it's sort of complex and still not. Define but in the end I test out hypothesis in real time right because these emails are in real time and everyone checks their emails and From there I can know if something is good or not Now what do you what what kind of tactics what measuring tools you use to test your hypothesis?
Yeah Apollo for the cold email so Can I share my screen merit is you gonna publish it on YouTube?
Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)
I can if you want to yeah, yeah I'm just Allow me to share my screen and I'll show you some systems there So folks this is actually great opportunity as well to let you folks know that hey We do have a YouTube channel, so please make free to check out the YouTube channel And then you can also go ahead and check out go and check out the shades of E on YouTube And you'll be able to actually see these video clips as well as real so that's great little plug there Charles let's see it.
SCREEN SHARING: Charles started screen sharing - WATCH
Charles Cormier
Yeah, so Okay, Apollo that IO right Let's see what account that is. Yeah, and so that's a client's account.
So I need to log out of there. Apollo.io guys, basically $100 a month, gives you 10,000 contacts and it's a cold email tool.
Like right, a lot of people ask me, what's the difference between this and HubSpot or MailChimp? These tools, they don't accept called email.
You really need to use a tool like Apollo, connect it with SendGrid, which is super important. SendGrid is 20 bucks a month.
That will allow you to reach email scale. So to your question, know, like, yeah, just go in my sequences.
And there you'll see my trove of chaos and magic to me, which is like all the campaigns that I deployed.
Takes a good time to log because there's so many in there. But as you can see at the bottom, there's 374 campaigns on this account.
I have multiple. And there's multiple tests going on here. A lot of it is like the podcast, right? So basically, you can see here private equity podcast, for example, government nonprofits, you know.
So I get my data by talking to all of these folks, and I get more ideas, and then I start campaigns on Apollo again to test out these ideas.
AI agencies, some are direct offers like aid, you want to start your podcast and so forth. As you can see, all the open rates are pretty high.
And the reply rate, everything's over 2.5%. So I get lots of responses, and you'll see some bigger campaigns, you know, with a lot of contacts added.
Let's take this one here. CEOs, you know, 4.5k active. this stuff, it guy here is like, yeah, share me the details.
what I do, I just reply here. and modify his name and I send, you know, so that's the offer of the podcast funnel.
It's a big email, but I've tested and people like that. I also mentioned my price upfront in these emails so that people don't waste my time.
Because I've got, I mean, a specific situation, right? most people, they need to follow up. Most people, they don't mention the prices because they really want to talk to people.
Me, me, I'm overbooked, know, like my, my calendar looks like this year. And my, again, my calendar takes time to load because it's just craziness.
It looks like this. That's my average week. So basically, I don't want to speak to folks that are not sure, like, of my prices and so forth.
Like I just want to get it over with. So to answer your question, again, everything is super centered on Apollo.io.
And just the search. features so that folks can understand here. Let's say I want family offices, right? CEOs of family offices.
Well, here I already made up a search. I just click on it and the title will be CEOs will be founders and then I use I can use the keywords and I can basically research anyone anywhere in the world for that regard.
So yeah, that's my little laboratory here.
Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)
Wow. Now folks, if you're not going on the YouTube, just to kind of give you a quick rundown. This is basically a quick, you know, Apollo AI with us in grade basically is a nice tool to use to send out mass amount of, you know, camping emails.
You actually get your click-through rate, your open rate, your spam rate, rate, a great way to kind of as again, to Charles's point, it's really is, you know, cold emails.
You know, used to work in the real estate. You used to you know, get out. Well, who the hell are you?
Stop calling me. I don't need to talk to you. Who doesn't have a realtor, you know? to Charles points.
You never know if they had a good day or bad day, not sure. We're just trying to get to the...
And that's fine. I'd rather get to a no faster because that's me. That's me to get to the next call to get to the yes, right?
So the sooner I get to a no, then the sooner I can get to somebody else who's actually to me a yes.
Now Charles, what's the goal? What's the next mission? are you going to... What's the next, you know, five, ten years look like?
Charles Cormier
Well, they look interesting for sure. What I projected for myself, I haven't reached it because they're moonshot, but I think I've reached probably 80% of what I've said for myself.
So life is interesting, will not give you exactly what you want, but will give you a version of it.
And again, you can A.B. test that system and try to hack it, which will still be my goals. Hopefully, I'll be done with this business that will create other businesses and crack capitalism so that I can focus mostly on general artificial intelligence and longevity.
Okay, not dying in terms of businesses. And yeah, to your audience, I mean, they're folks that are starting their businesses.
Apollo, I mean, is super duper cheap, you know, I'm affiliated with them, but obviously I won't get any money from that.
know, I won't send you even a link. Just try this tool or even call the email. If you have a Gmail, you can start called emailing just that you can do it at scale.
Else Gmail will ban you. So if you're in business, send a couple of these emails, you know, get these deals on.
That's always a priority when you start a business, especially if your boots trap it. It's to get these clients, get these, this feedback, get this data.
And yeah, from there, just get on phone calls, understand your clients, constantly test out things. don't only have this experimental mindset in business, bring it to your personal life.
You know, A.B. test stuff in your life. A diet. Oh, how am I checking? How am I feeling when I eat chicken vs.
when I eat beans, you know? Do I feel sluggish? Do I feel good or bad? Oh, if I use this reaction with my spouse, well, she feels that way, you know, A.B.
test what you say and calculate and analyze everything that you do. Even take notes if you want. And now we have tools like Chad GPT that you can upload that data in if you're super nerd, you know, you can have an Excel sheet, write it down and now Chad GPT can tell you, oh, it looks like when you say this to your spouse, she reacts better, you know, stuff that our brains are not made to data.
So having an experimental mindset and that also means that when you fail, you just don't give a , you know, it's just data that you will use in the future to make better decisions.
And so try that experimental mindset and be stoic about things. Do what's in your control and just don't give a
Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)
the crap about what you can't control. I love it. Now, folks at home that are interested in maybe contacting you want to hear more about you, maybe want to learn about your website.
Charles Cormier
How do they how do they learn more about Charles? Yeah, Charles, call me on Google.
Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)
Perfect. And is there anything else? what else do we'd like to listeners know before leave?
Charles Cormier
That I'm there with them. I love them. And I you think sometimes that you're alone fighting, but you're not, you know, we're all into this together.
yeah, there will be good days that will be bad days. Just keep on going like Winston, which would say I love it.
Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)
Again, folks, Charles, the CEO of top leads, cold email, he just dropped some gems. Again, I hope you take some time to go look on the YouTube page, the shades of E, we're putting up some rills, we'll start putting up the full episodes here at the beginning of the year as well getting working on that as well.
Charles, thank you again so much for your time. Thank you again for all of the help you give me in my professional life as well as things you're giving the audience here.
I really do appreciate your time. I'm going let you get back to it with that insane schedule. So thank you again for your time.
Enjoy the rest of the day for everybody else. Thank you and have a great night.