From solo founder to a $7M agency

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Michel Lieben is the Founder and CEO of ColdIQ, a GTM agency that has grown to $7M in revenue with 35 employees since launching in January 2023. Before the agency, Michel spent years in marketing roles at startups and built affiliate businesses on the side, including a directory of GTM tools. To drive traffic to the directory, Michel started posting about those tools on LinkedIn, and as his following grew, people kept asking him to run outbound for them. After he said yes to one client, ColdIQ was born. Today ColdIQ runs outbound, LinkedIn content, and LinkedIn ads for B2B companies, syncing all three into what Michel calls a GTM flywheel.

In this podcast, we discuss:

* How ColdIQ uses a combination of outbound, LinkedIn content, and LinkedIn ads to warm up accounts before cold emails ever land

* Why most people fail at LinkedIn content and what Michel recommends instead

* How posts with hooks that establish the author’s credibility outperform posts with generic hooks even when the substance of the content is the same

* How ColdIQ uses repeatable content formats like tech stack breakdowns to stay consistent and drive engagement without starting from scratch every week

* How ColdIQ is using Cursor and Claude Code to operationalize cross-client campaign learnings into a system that gets smarter with every engagement

Episode highlights:

* ColdIQ runs LinkedIn ads against target accounts one to two weeks before cold emails go out, taking top-performing organic posts and expanding them into ad formats. They then use tools that identify which companies engaged, and reps follow up with cold emails referencing that content. Michel notes that identical outbound templates produce significantly better results when accounts have been warmed up by LinkedIn ads first.

* Michel says most people fail at LinkedIn content because they come in with their own idea of which formats should perform well. He suggests that a better first step is to study what’s already performing by looking at top creators in a relevant niche, identifying their best-performing posts, and recognizing the patterns across them. Instead of making the substance of your post 10% better, Michel recommends making the packaging 10% better, since it can drive a 5x impact on reach.

* Michel explains that the most effective posts have hooks to establish credibility before introducing the topic. He gives an example of a CEO whose post on three tips to sell more got no traction. The content was solid, but there was nothing differentiating it over the hundreds of other posts on the same topic. After reframing the post to lead with the company’s actual revenue numbers and then sharing the same three tips, the post would drive far more reach.

* One of ColdIQ’s biggest content advantages is repeatable formats. After Michel’s post about ColdIQ’s own tech stack blew up when they hit seven figures, he realized he had a format that worked and could be built on over time. He’s since repurposed and expanded it as the company has grown and swapped tools, and eventually started featuring other companies’ stacks as well. Because people forget posts within a couple months, a proven format with added content can keep delivering high engagement results.

* Because building software is easier than ever, Michel thinks that the bar for SaaS tools has gone up, while cost does down, effectively strengthening the case for buy instead of build and raising the expectations a user can have from the products they buy.

* ColdIQ feeds performance data and copy from 80+ client campaigns into a central knowledge base built on Cursor and Claude Code. When team members are building new campaigns, they can query the system in natural language to surface what’s worked for similar clients, as well as see when templates have started underperforming and should be sunset. Michel sees this as the biggest long-term moat for a niche agency.

Where to find Michel:

* LinkedIn

* ColdIQ

Transcript details:

(00:00) Intro

(02:15) Scaling ColdIQ to 35 employees and seven figures in three years

(04:08) Syncing outbound, LinkedIn content, and LinkedIn ads

(06:00) Warming accounts with ads before outbound and identifying engaged leads

(12:12) Why most people fail at LinkedIn content and how to study what actually performs

(14:33) Writing hooks that answer why the reader should listen to you specifically

(17:59) How to create content that can endure algorithm changes

(25:06) Why human-written content will continue to perform well as AI-generated posts flood the platform

(26:38) Michel’s creative process for LinkedIn posts

(29:10) How Michel forms his view of what good looks like by staying on the front lines

(34:16) The tech stack content format and how to use repeatable post structures

(42:31) Podcast distribution strategy and repurposing interviews into LinkedIn content

(45:37) Michel’s takeaways about tech stacks and build vs. buy after spending so much time digging into them

(53:11) Using Cursor and Claude Code to automate agency operations and reduce manual work

(54:08) The advantage of operationalizing learnings across 80+ client campaigns

(01:02:58) Favorite underrated tools, growth hack, and wrap up

For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast and to recommend any guests, email noah@thegtmengineer.ai

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