I am a Money Chaser...

[greenr]

I am Roy, a Money Chaser...

That seems to start the conversation at AA meetings so why not here? I guess admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery, right?

I've been a chronic "money chaser" and I didn't even really understand that until I read MJ's book. I've easily spent over $20,000 on internet crap, courses, coaching... you name it. And here's what I have to show for it:

- Created a couple hundred Adsense sites (years ago) and made a approximately $2,000 a month for 6 or 7 months and then Google changed their ranking algorithm and it all went away in a matter of months. Here, I added no value for anybody.

- I created and sold an inexpensive script that worked with another cloaking script so that Blackhat guys could show Google one page for ranking purposes and then deliver a different page to the actual user. Here, I made a few bucks, but again added no real value for anybody.

- I'm a data warehousing guy so I thought I could use that skill set to make a few bucks on the side. So I created a data product that combined census data with real estate pricing data and sold it for $120 or so per file. Here I actually added some value, but quit after 6 months or so because it was boring as hell.

- A few years ago I hired an Internet Mareketing coach who I worked with for 3 months. During that time I created a video product about how to grow Orchids in your home. I outsourced the video stuff to an Orchid enthusiast and sold the end product on-line. Here, I actually added a little value and made a few thousand dollars, but I decided that the market wasn't big enough so dropped it.

- 13 years ago my daughter got into riding horses competitivly. I wanted to make a few bucks on the side to support her "horse habit", so while doing research, I found a website that listed "horses for sale" and based on what I saw, it looked like the site was making close to $1M a year. I wrote up a design document and had a database driven website created to compete with that site. Here I actually added a little value for people, but I shut it down after a few of my customers let me know that fake buyers were trying to scam them (the horse sellers) on my site. My site made about $400-$500 a month but I shut it down because of the scam issue. [As an aside, my daughter actually met two guys that were the nephews of the site owner mentioned above. She actually WAS making close to $1M a year. What a dumbass I am.]

There are probably more things that I've done, but I think you get the picture by now.

So... why am I telling you this? Because after my last failure I promised myself and my wife that I would quit IM/Business stuff and just focus on my job of being a Business Analyst for IT stuff.

The only problem is... I CAN'T quit. I feel like I'm just waiting and I don't even know what the hell I'm waiting for. It's almost like I'm just waiting to get old and die and that's bullshit.

So again, why am I telling you this? Because I'm going to try it again, but this time I'm going to do it completely differently. Instead of chasing money, I'm going to let the market tell me what they need and I'm going to try to fix real problems and provide real value.

I'll add to this thread tomorrow, but I've already chosen a niche. I'm going to use cold emails to hopefully warm a few of these potential customers up and then talk to them by phone or in person to dive deep into what there issues are. The email part is mostly automated as I don't have a lot of time because of my job.

I'll provide more details about the email part tomorrow.

 

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[greenr]

I sent my first batch of emails to my target market (Dentists) today. I work a full time IT job and travel about an hour each way to the office so I don't have a lot of time to devote to emailing people. So I decided to automate the process as much as possible.

My Cold Email Process:

1. I chose a target market... Dentists.
   
   
2. I bought a mail/email list for $39. There were 40,700 total dentists on the list and 8,272 of them included emails.
   
   
3. I thought I'd try to stay local (at least in the beginning) so I could personally visit them if the opportunity arose. So I filtered out 1,700 dentists that are all within a hour's drive of me.
   
   
4. Next, I had the list "cleaned" - I had a feeling the list was going to be low quality so I thought I'd run it through bouncless.io. I've never used them before, but these guys identify emails that would have bounced and they also check for a few other negative things. I'm basically left with a list of emails that, for the most part, should be deliverable. I sent 1,700 emails to bounceless.io and I got a total of 915 emails that were flagged as "OK" by them. I think this cost $19 to clean 2,500 emails.
   
   
5. Now for the "automation" part. I signed up for a monthly subscription to QuickMail.io. It basically uses your Gmail account to send the emails for you. Here's what I like about the service:

• • You can set up a "sequence" of emails to send out to your target market. It can include one or more emails in the sequence. Right now I'm just using a two email sequence as I don't want to piss anybody off by sending too many, too often.
    
    
  • You can schedule when you want the emails to go out. Tell it what days of the week, what time, etc. You also tell it how many days to wait before you send your 2nd, 3rd, etc, emails. I'm waiting three days and then I'm having email #2 sent out.
    
    
  • The sequences are automatically stopped for a recipient if they respond to one of your emails in the sequence. That way I don't have to worry about bombarding them after they've already replied.
    
    
  • It provides stats for how many emails are sent, how many are opened, bounce and even if they click a link in the email. I've included a link to my LinkedIn profile. Seems like it's valuable to know if they checked my profile out even though they haven't replied yet.
    
    
  • I also think you can split test subject lines. Not 100% sure as I haven't gotten that far yet.

I'm currently sending out 50 emails a day to new recipients. I'm only sending them on Tuesday through Thursday. I know my dentist is not in the office on Friday's. Monday's seem like they may be hectic so I decided to focused on the three days above. Based on the number of emails I have in the system, my setup should take about 6 weeks to send to everyone. Once I see how many (or few) replies I get, I'll probably bump the send rate up to 100 a day.


My Day One Results:

• Emails sent: 50
• Bounces: 2
• Opened: 17
• Replies: 0

That's more opens than I expected. Another batch will automatically be sent out tomorrow morning then the system will wait until next Tuesday to start up again.

I'll update as things play out.

 

[Andy Black]

I am Roy, a Money Chaser...

That seems to start the conversation at AA meetings so why not here? I guess admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery, right?

I've been a chronic "money chaser" and I didn't even really understand that until I read MJ's book. I've easily spent over $20,000 on internet crap, courses, coaching... you name it. And here's what I have to show for it:

- Created a couple hundred Adsense sites (years ago) and made a approximately $2,000 a month for 6 or 7 months and then Google changed their ranking algorithm and it all went away in a matter of months. Here, I added no value for anybody.

- I created and sold an inexpensive script that worked with another cloaking script so that Blackhat guys could show Google one page for ranking purposes and then deliver a different page to the actual user. Here, I made a few bucks, but again added no real value for anybody.

- I'm a data warehousing guy so I thought I could use that skill set to make a few bucks on the side. So I created a data product that combined census data with real estate pricing data and sold it for $120 or so per file. Here I actually added some value, but quit after 6 months or so because it was boring as hell.

- A few years ago I hired an Internet Mareketing coach who I worked with for 3 months. During that time I created a video product about how to grow Orchids in your home. I outsourced the video stuff to an Orchid enthusiast and sold the end product on-line. Here, I actually added a little value and made a few thousand dollars, but I decided that the market wasn't big enough so dropped it.

- 13 years ago my daughter got into riding horses competitivly. I wanted to make a few bucks on the side to support her "horse habit", so while doing research, I found a website that listed "horses for sale" and based on what I saw, it looked like the site was making close to $1M a year. I wrote up a design document and had a database driven website created to compete with that site. Here I actually added a little value for people, but I shut it down after a few of my customers let me know that fake buyers were trying to scam them (the horse sellers) on my site. My site made about $400-$500 a month but I shut it down because of the scam issue. [As an aside, my daughter actually met two guys that were the nephews of the site owner mentioned above. She actually WAS making close to $1M a year. What a dumbass I am.]

There are probably more things that I've done, but I think you get the picture by now.

So... why am I telling you this? Because after my last failure I promised myself and my wife that I would quit IM/Business stuff and just focus on my job of being a Business Analyst for IT stuff.

The only problem is... I CAN'T quit. I feel like I'm just waiting and I don't even know what the hell I'm waiting for. It's almost like I'm just waiting to get old and die and that's bullshit.

So again, why am I telling you this? Because I'm going to try it again, but this time I'm going to do it completely differently. Instead of chasing money, I'm going to let the market tell me what they need and I'm going to try to fix real problems and provide real value.

I'll add to this thread tomorrow, but I've already chosen a niche. I'm going to use cold emails to hopefully warm a few of these potential customers up and then talk to them by phone or in person to dive deep into what there issues are. The email part is mostly automated as I don't have a lot of time because of my job.

I'll provide more details about the email part tomorrow.

Lol. Nice intro.

I used to be an Oracle DBA, and also fell under the spell of trying to make money moving electrons about.

I've found much more success by following a line from Mother Teresa:

"Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time, and always start with the nearest person to you."​

Maybe listen to this radio interview I did:

• www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/the-biggest-reason-websites-suck.68179

Now, on the subject of money chasing...

"Money is proof you helped your fellow man."
​

Now go get some.

 

[Andy Black]

So you like data @greenr ?


Maybe read/watch these posts:

1. www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/the-biggest-benefit-of-adwords.52440
2. www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/are-you-only-buying-traffic.52527
3. www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/launch-learn.52526
4. www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/online-direct-response-metrics.52781
5. www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/the-most-important-formula-in-business.52782
6. www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/the-need-for-speed.58742
7. www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/how-to-get-profitable-or-fail-fast-with-adwords.59147
8. www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/andytalks-adwords-70-min-video-interview.67214
9. www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/segment-your-adwords-data.67528
10. www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/categorising-keywords-with-ms-excel.68062

If that tickles your fancy, then you can read the rest here:

• www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/andys-adwords-posts.52850

Originally posted here:

• www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/lead-gen-for-local-service-businesses.61148/#post-470716

1. What or who inspired you to start your own business?

It's quite a normal route for IT support staff in the UK to go "contracting" and work on client sites. My choices back in 2000 were to move into management roles, or stay technical. I like being at the coal-face and learning so chose to stay technical. The obvious route for IT techies to earn more is to setup a limited company and charge yourself out at a daily rate.

After 5 years as a contract IT support techie I realised that I was always seen as a cost. Businesses begrudged paying me, and only did so to keep their systems running.

It took another 5 years to get out of IT contracting, with me trying various ways to be seen to add more value.

I wanted to do something that obviously added more value, and thought learning to create a website would help.

The real break came back in 2009 when the economy was heading South. I had a friend who was an electrician and his work had dried up so much he couldn't afford payments on his van and had to hand it back. He had a wife and two kids with another baby on the way and he must have been staring into the abyss back then.

I can't learn for the sake of learning, so asked my friend if I could build him a website to try and help him get some work. He bit my hand off down to my ankle, and I set to learning a bit of Wordpress and installing a free theme.

I got him ranked top on Google for "kildare electrician", the county we live in here in Ireland, but he didn't get any calls.

Then an AdWords voucher fell out of a book I'd bought, and I thought "what the heck, let's try that."

I still remember being on a client site in their IT support team when my friend rang me all excited saying "Andy, I've had a call". I physically stood up and wandered around the office in a daze, thinking "wow... this actually works".

It's like I found a true purpose for all my technical skills and creativity - I can generate leads for local service businesses. Instead of being a cog in a big blue chip company, I can now help actual people keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.


2. Tell us a bit about it and the services you provide.

I've since had a couple of j.o.b.s as I reskilled, then I've gone back to being self-employed.

I've managed a team of 35 AdWords specialists spending €120k+ a day. I've managed a team of 4 AdWords specialists building 120m keywords and ads to drive 15k signups a day. I've driven calls to a call centre for tradesmen in the UK, created campaigns for the biggest insurance broker in Ireland, and work in a team driving sales for a worldwide online brand.

Currently, most of my revenue comes in as a contractor still.

I'm on client sites 9am till 3pm Mon-Thu running their AdWords campaigns. Sure, I don't feel that I'm helping anyone directly, but those businesses can very directly see the value in the service I provide.

I also have a few smaller clients, and I work on their campaigns in the evenings.


3. Was this your original product idea?

People liked the way I explained how to generate leads and sales via AdWords. I put up a lot of posts on my blog, and posted a lot in forums. This lead to me building an email list that I emailed for a while, and building up some authority on forums. Which in turn lead to me doing some consulting for these smaller clients, and doing some coaching calls. It wasn't something scalable, but I enjoyed the one-to-one interaction, and finding out deeper what people's pain points and needs were. I thought I might bring out an info product or course.


4. What have you found most rewarding?

I really enjoyed demystifying AdWords. When I'm on a coaching call and looking over someone's shoulder as they create an ad, and then 10 minutes later they do a search on Google and see their own ad, I get a buzz at their excitement. They thought it would be impossible to setup an AdWords campaign, and now their ad is running.

Sometimes they even shout to their wife to come have a look at the screen.

Hearing the penny drop has been the most rewarding.


5. What is the most important lesson you have learned with regards to creating products/services?

Whilst I enjoyed giving people what they wanted, I realised I wasn't giving what they needed.

They learned AdWords quickly, and created some ads, but they're not going to become full time AdWords specialists, and they can't possibly do what I do with my 15 years IT and 6 years AdWords experience.

I realised that the 2 hour coaching calls could have been better spent if I build the campaigns myself, then handed them over.

They wouldn't know how to build the campaigns at the end of that 2 hours, but they would hopefully get the end result... which are inbound leads.

It seems obvious now, but people don't really want to learn AdWords. They don't want to learn SEO, content marketing, how to create a website. They don't want a yellow pages listing, or an ad on Google, or Facebook. They just want the leads and sales.

They might not think that at the start, but eventually they will realise that they want the result of this learning, not the learning itself.


6. Do you have a specific project you are working on at the moment? Please tell us about it!

So I'm now turning it on its head. I'm no longer interested in attracting prospects who want to learn AdWords, or want an AdWords consultant to build campaigns for them.

Instead, I'm going to generate leads for local service businesses, and give some free leads to contact businesses that can fulfil those leads.

If I give away 5 free leads to get a business signed up to buy future leads, then the cost of those 5 leads is my client acquisition costs.

I'm also moving away from having clients who I provide an AdWords service to, to having customers who buy leads from me.

I've a call-center lined up to accept the inbound calls and do the outbound calling. I'm getting the landing page created, and then will start doing what I do best - building AdWords paid search lead generation campaigns.


7. Is there something you would like to offer our readers? (if not I will remove this question from the blog post - could be newsletter, report, free advice - something for listbuilding)

No... not selling anything. I'm not trying to attract clients.

They can read the story about my electrician friend here though:www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/the-biggest-benefit-of-adwords.52440​

 

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[greenr]

Lol. Nice intro.

I used to be an Oracle DBA, and also fell under the spell of trying to make money moving electrons about.

I've found much more success by following a line from Mother Teresa:

"Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time, and start with the nearest person to you."​

Maybe listen to this radio interview I did:

• www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/the-biggest-reason-websites-suck.68179

Now, on the subject of money chasing...

"Money is proof you helped your fellow man."
​

Go get some.

Hi @Andy Black,

Nice job on the interview. Thanks for sharing.

You mentioned something thing that really caught my attention. It was when you were describing how to use Adwords to determine what service to offer. For example when you mentioned that your buddy wanted to install smoke detectors (I think that was it) but he was really getting more searches for appliance repair. Based on that you directed him to focus on appliance repair instead of smoke detectors.

So, are you implying that this approach could actually be used by someone like me (I don't have a business) to figure out what business to start? If so, could you actually do this just by using Google's keyword tool or have you found that those counts are way off when compared to what you actually get when you post an ad?

Thanks for the info.

 

[greenr]

So you like data @greenr ?


Maybe read/watch these posts:

1. www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/the-biggest-benefit-of-adwords.52440
2. www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/are-you-only-buying-traffic.52527
3. www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/launch-learn.52526
4. www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/online-direct-response-metrics.52781
5. www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/the-most-important-formula-in-business.52782
6. www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/the-need-for-speed.58742
7. www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/how-to-get-profitable-or-fail-fast-with-adwords.59147
8. www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/andytalks-adwords-70-min-video-interview.67214
9. www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/segment-your-adwords-data.67528
10. www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/categorising-keywords-with-ms-excel.68062

If that tickles your fancy, then you can read the rest here:

• www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/andys-adwords-posts.52850

Originally posted here:

• www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/lead-gen-for-local-service-businesses.61148/#post-470716

1. What or who inspired you to start your own business?

It's quite a normal route for IT support staff in the UK to go "contracting" and work on client sites. My choices back in 2000 were to move into management roles, or stay technical. I like being at the coal-face and learning so chose to stay technical. The obvious route for IT techies to earn more is to setup a limited company and charge yourself out at a daily rate.

After 5 years as a contract IT support techie I realised that I was always seen as a cost. Businesses begrudged paying me, and only did so to keep their systems running.

It took another 5 years to get out of IT contracting, with me trying various ways to be seen to add more value.

I wanted to do something that obviously added more value, and thought learning to create a website would help.

The real break came back in 2009 when the economy was heading South. I had a friend who was an electrician and his work had dried up so much he couldn't afford payments on his van and had to hand it back. He had a wife and two kids with another baby on the way and he must have been staring into the abyss back then.

I can't learn for the sake of learning, so asked my friend if I could build him a website to try and help him get some work. He bit my hand off down to my ankle, and I set to learning a bit of Wordpress and installing a free theme.

I got him ranked top on Google for "kildare electrician", the county we live in here in Ireland, but he didn't get any calls.

Then an AdWords voucher fell out of a book I'd bought, and I thought "what the heck, let's try that."

I still remember being on a client site in their IT support team when my friend rang me all excited saying "Andy, I've had a call". I physically stood up and wandered around the office in a daze, thinking "wow... this actually works".

It's like I found a true purpose for all my technical skills and creativity - I can generate leads for local service businesses. Instead of being a cog in a big blue chip company, I can now help actual people keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.


2. Tell us a bit about it and the services you provide.

I've since had a couple of j.o.b.s as I reskilled, then I've gone back to being self-employed.

I've managed a team of 35 AdWords specialists spending €120k+ a day. I've managed a team of 4 AdWords specialists building 120m keywords and ads to drive 15k signups a day. I've driven calls to a call centre for tradesmen in the UK, created campaigns for the biggest insurance broker in Ireland, and work in a team driving sales for a worldwide online brand.

Currently, most of my revenue comes in as a contractor still.

I'm on client sites 9am till 3pm Mon-Thu running their AdWords campaigns. Sure, I don't feel that I'm helping anyone directly, but those businesses can very directly see the value in the service I provide.

I also have a few smaller clients, and I work on their campaigns in the evenings.


3. Was this your original product idea?

People liked the way I explained how to generate leads and sales via AdWords. I put up a lot of posts on my blog, and posted a lot in forums. This lead to me building an email list that I emailed for a while, and building up some authority on forums. Which in turn lead to me doing some consulting for these smaller clients, and doing some coaching calls. It wasn't something scalable, but I enjoyed the one-to-one interaction, and finding out deeper what people's pain points and needs were. I thought I might bring out an info product or course.


4. What have you found most rewarding?

I really enjoyed demystifying AdWords. When I'm on a coaching call and looking over someone's shoulder as they create an ad, and then 10 minutes later they do a search on Google and see their own ad, I get a buzz at their excitement. They thought it would be impossible to setup an AdWords campaign, and now their ad is running.

Sometimes they even shout to their wife to come have a look at the screen.

Hearing the penny drop has been the most rewarding.


5. What is the most important lesson you have learned with regards to creating products/services?

Whilst I enjoyed giving people what they wanted, I realised I wasn't giving what they needed.

They learned AdWords quickly, and created some ads, but they're not going to become full time AdWords specialists, and they can't possibly do what I do with my 15 years IT and 6 years AdWords experience.

I realised that the 2 hour coaching calls could have been better spent if I build the campaigns myself, then handed them over.

They wouldn't know how to build the campaigns at the end of that 2 hours, but they would hopefully get the end result... which are inbound leads.

It seems obvious now, but people don't really want to learn AdWords. They don't want to learn SEO, content marketing, how to create a website. They don't want a yellow pages listing, or an ad on Google, or Facebook. They just want the leads and sales.

They might not think that at the start, but eventually they will realise that they want the result of this learning, not the learning itself.


6. Do you have a specific project you are working on at the moment? Please tell us about it!

So I'm now turning it on its head. I'm no longer interested in attracting prospects who want to learn AdWords, or want an AdWords consultant to build campaigns for them.

Instead, I'm going to generate leads for local service businesses, and give some free leads to contact businesses that can fulfil those leads.

If I give away 5 free leads to get a business signed up to buy future leads, then the cost of those 5 leads is my client acquisition costs.

I'm also moving away from having clients who I provide an AdWords service to, to having customers who buy leads from me.

I've a call-center lined up to accept the inbound calls and do the outbound calling. I'm getting the landing page created, and then will start doing what I do best - building AdWords paid search lead generation campaigns.


7. Is there something you would like to offer our readers? (if not I will remove this question from the blog post - could be newsletter, report, free advice - something for listbuilding)

No... not selling anything. I'm not trying to attract clients.

They can read the story about my electrician friend here though:www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/the-biggest-benefit-of-adwords.52440​

Yep... I'm a data guy like you. Been in Business Intelligence for the last 14 years or so. Many of the posts above resonate with me. Thanks.

I've used Adwords and Bing a bit in the past and have thought of doing Adwords work before because it is driven by the numbers... and I enjoy that. The negative aspect for me is that Google is constantly changing the rules. I guess I could also look at it as a positive though. Business owners that try to do their own Adwords would tire of trying to always keep up and search out a professional.

 

[greenr]

My automated cold email system is still running. Here are today's numbers.

Day 2 Results:

Emails sent: 50
Bounces: 2
Opened: 15
Replies: 3

Replies:

1. This person wanted to be unsubscribed
2. This one just told me he was retired
3. The final one did provide a little comment about his trouble hiring employees. It was a bit vague so I responded with a quick question. Really just trying to start building a relationship (as much as you can by email).

No further emails will go out until Tuesday morning. Tuesday will be the first day that people that haven't replied yet will get a second email that is a "gentle reminder". It will be interesting to see if the reply rate gets better.

 

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[Andy Black]

Hi @Andy Black,

Nice job on the interview. Thanks for sharing.

You mentioned something thing that really caught my attention. It was when you were describing how to use Adwords to determine what service to offer. For example when you mentioned that your buddy wanted to install smoke detectors (I think that was it) but he was really getting more searches for appliance repair. Based on that you directed him to focus on appliance repair instead of smoke detectors.

So, are you implying that this approach could actually be used by someone like me (I don't have a business) to figure out what business to start? If so, could you actually do this just by using Google's keyword tool or have you found that those counts are way off when compared to what you actually get when you post an ad?

Thanks for the info.

Yes. Load campaigns, buy data, give lots of ideas the bullet before you even get create something.

The Keyword Planner gives estimated search volumes.

1) They're estimated.

2) It gives exact match search volumes.

3) It doesn't give your estimated Impression Share for different bid prices you might try.

4) It doesn't tell you what your quality score would be.

5) It doesn't tell you what ad position you'll be in.


Of course, some data scientists would love to model all that.

But it would be a model and you'd take less time to launch and learn.

 

[Andy Black]

Yep... I'm a data guy like you. Been in Business Intelligence for the last 14 years or so. Many of the posts above resonate with me. Thanks.

I've used Adwords and Bing a bit in the past and have thought of doing Adwords work before because it is driven by the numbers... and I enjoy that. The negative aspect for me is that Google is constantly changing the rules. I guess I could also look at it as a positive though. Business owners that try to do their own Adwords would tire of trying to always keep up and search out a professional.

Yeah, I see the changes as opportunity.

I see problems as stepping stones and barriers to entry.

 

[biophase]

What kind of problems are you hoping to solve? I don't understand your process here.

 

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[greenr]

What kind of problems are you hoping to solve? I don't understand your process here.

Hey @Bio ... good question.

My overall process is really nothing new. @MTF did it here in his "Let's Get Offline... And Solve Some Real B2B Problems!" post.

You can find it here:
https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/co...fline-and-solve-some-real-b2b-problems.50980/

His end result was that he identified a problem that lead to a Saas application. About the only difference is I've chosen to automate the cold emailing process as much as possible because my job and commute take up about 11 hours a day. So that doesn't leave me a lot of time to work on this.

When I eventually do get through to a Dentist I plan on doing Dane Maxwell type of idea extraction process to see what needs he/she has in business. This will hopefully lead to an idea I can use to build a business.

But, I basically have the same goal as @MTF... let someone else provide a real business problem that I can fix and turn it into a business.

I read other posts on this forum that believe this process doesn't/won't work at all or that the odds of actually identifying a problem that a business can be built around are very small. Will this approach actually work? I don't know yet, but I thought I'd let this go for a few weeks and see what comes of it.

If that doesn't work then I'll adjust and try to go about this another way.