Not close, either. 15 votes for COLD OUTREACH. Organic inbound took 8. Ads and warm network got 2 apiece. So that's where we're going. Now — I said in that poll that I compare job boards to Tinder, and I want to finish that thought, because it explains this whole thing. On Upwork, somebody posted a job. They have a budget. They have a deadline. They have already decided they're hiring somebody. The only question left is WHO. That's Tinder. Everyone in the building is there for the same reason. You still have to not be weird about it, but the hand is already up. Cold outreach is the grocery store. Same you. Completely different odds. And the difference has nothing to do with how good you are at your job. Here's the good news though, and it's bigger than it sounds. You don't need a new system for this. 🎯 TARGETS. 💣 PAYLOAD. ⏰ TIMING. Same three dials. They don't care whether there's a job post involved. But two of them get harder — and one of them stops being a dial and becomes the entire machine. 🎯 TARGETS gets harder, because nobody filtered the list for you. On Upwork you can pull up a client's history and decide in thirty seconds. Cold, there is no history page. You're building the list yourself, which means you can aim literally anywhere. Which is exactly why most people aim at "businesses in my city" and then wonder why nothing lands. 💣 PAYLOAD gets harder, because there's no job description to respond to. On Upwork, they TOLD you what they want. Cold, you're guessing. Evidence still beats proxies. But now your evidence has to be about THEM — not about the job they posted, because they didn't post one. ⏰ And TIMING? TIMING becomes everything. Think about what a job post actually is for a second. It's a timestamp. It is somebody standing up and announcing "I need this NOW." That is the single most valuable piece of information in the entire transaction — and on Upwork they hand it to you for free, a few hundred times a day, with a budget attached.

SIXers... Everything I’ve shown you so far—TARGETS, PAYLOAD, TIMING—I learned from starting on Upwork. But the three dials don’t care where you use them. These matter for the cold outreach I'm doing right now, too. They matter when I reach out to potential affiliate partners. They matter whenever you are communicating with anyone, to accomplish anything. Upwork is kinda like a "lukewarm, halfway in between cold and hot" outreach. It's why I always compare job boards to Tinder. But... Taking shots, looking for evidence instead of proxies, and keeping a floor work anywhere you’re trying to turn a stranger into a deal. So where should we aim next? Please vote below, and if you're feeling really extra credit, do us a BIG favor and say which SPECIFIC type of outreach channel you're interested in.

Ryan Serhant does multiple billions of dollars in real estate sales every year. His secret? "The Two Cs." That gets your foot in the door. But is that his real secret for closing deals? Watch this quick short and drop a comment what you think his real "secret" is for closing billions in deals.

You guys said they were ready for this one. So here it is. Quick recap. Path 3 runs on three dials. 🎯 TARGETS. Who you aim at. 💣 PAYLOAD. What you drop on them. ⏰ TIMING. When you show up. Last time was TARGETS, and the whole lesson was that you can't zero a rifle you've never fired. But there's something I left out. You can have perfect aim and still hit absolutely nothing. (If you're firing blanks.) A blank looks right. Sounds right. Same flash, same bang, same kick into your shoulder. You walk off the range feeling like you did something. But! Well… Nothing arrived at the target. That's most proposals. Here's what I think almost everybody gets wrong… They think the client is sitting there asking: is this person good? They're not. Not QUITE. They're asking one question and it's much narrower than that: 👉 Can this person do MY job right NOW? That's the entire evaluation. That's the whole thing! Which means every line in your proposal is either evidence for that, or evidence against it? There is no neutral sentence. You don't get filler. You've got about 3 seconds of a stranger's attention and every sentence is either earning you the next one or burning it. Are you earning or burning? And… What actually counts as evidence? NOT this stuff: ❌ Years of experience ❌ Your rate ❌ A portfolio link with nothing said about it ❌ "I'm passionate about..." ❌ A list of platforms you've used Those are PROXIES. A proxy is what a client reaches for when there's no real evidence in front of them. And it's what YOU reach for when you haven't given them any. Firing PROXIES means firing BLANKS. Everybody in that stack of 50 is firing proxies at the same target. That's exactly why the stack looks identical from the client's chair. From MY chair. Evidence looks different: ✅ A thing you built, described by what it does ✅ A number somebody could go and check ✅ Something useful they can act on today ✅ A gap named, and then closed ✅ A specific timeline

I used to do nothing but play video games, all the way up until my mid 20s. I still play them now whenever I have downtime, although for slightly shorter stretches than "all day from 8 am to 11:39 pm." Just cracked open the LAST unopened box from our move and saw the old Super Famicom cartridges we bought in Japan and I'm daydreaming about setting up a retro gaming corner in the "office" slash "library" with an old tube TV and an uncomfortable bean bag chair. What about you?