I Hired a Cursor Coach, Why I’m Hitting My Entire TAM With 400K Emails

In this episode #3010, Eric Siu and Neil Patel discuss the rise of cursor coaching to boost coding efficiency and the use of AI to streamline business processes. They explore innovative email marketing strategies and emphasize the importance of content quality for audience engagement. The conversation also touches on how the YouTube algorithm drives video views over time. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES (00:00) The Rise of Cursor Coaching (02:49) Leveraging AI for Business Efficiency (05:49) Innovative Email Marketing Strategies (08:53) The Impact of Content Quality on Engagement To suggest a topic, go to https://www.marketingschool.io. For more content from Eric and Neil, check out Eric’s Leveling Up with Eric Siu YouTube channel and Neil’s Neil Patel YouTube channel. Connect with Us: Single Grain << Eric's ad agency NP Digital << Neil’s ad agency X @neilpatel, @ericosiu Instagram @neilpatel, @ericosiu Drop Us a Review If You Enjoyed the Episode!

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:35Speaker 00

  By the way, did I tell you I hired a Cursor Coach?

• 0:38Speaker 01

  You did tell me that. Mike from my end also has a Cursor Coach.

• 0:41Speaker 00

  Really?

• 0:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:42Speaker 00

  Okay, tell me how it's working from Mike's end, and then I'll give you mine.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  So Mike's main reason for a Cursor Coach is...

• 0:48Speaker 00

  And Mike's your co-founder.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  Mike's my co-founder of NP Digital. We do a lot of stuff manually. And we, of course, try to leverage AI and automated. We have an internal team that does it. But sometimes Mike and I just want to do stuff on our own. Mike's been spending way more time on this than me. But like, to just get it set up and get all the data feeds integrated with it, it's a real pain. And just knowing how to prompt doesn't mean that Cursor is going to work the way you want. And it's going to output the things the exact way you want. So he had a coach who helped him set it up. And he has a coach who helps him get over roadblocks and things that aren't working. And it's actually been working really well for him.

• 1:28Speaker 00

  How much does he pay for the coach?

• 1:31Speaker 00

  I'll tell you mine.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  It can't be much, because he got him from, my guess is he got him from Upwork. So my guess is no more than like 30 bucks an hour, I had to guess.

• 1:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, so mine's $50. Now, he invoices me 50 per session or whatever. And it's the same thing. So the reason why we're even talking about Cursor, like neither Neil and I are coders. Especially not me, but Cursor's an IDE. It's an interactive, I believe it's an interactive development environment, something like that, right? Where you can, it helps you code edit, it helps you, you know, correct your code mistakes, things like that. Now, the cool thing with Cursor... As you can integrate with different MCPs, these are model context protocols, just meaning that you could have a talk with different apps. So I can query, hey Gong, how many discovery calls did we do last week? Okay, what's the open pipeline right now? And there's a HubSpot MCP too. There's a QuickBooks MCP where you can pull your financial data too. There's a Google Analytics MCP. There's a Google Search MCP, uh, Google Search Console MCP.

• 2:22Speaker 00

  So I can pull all this data if I want. I can also, you know what I can do, Neil? I can use Appify and I can scrape the Facebook library, the LinkedIn library. I can scrape a bunch of Instagram posts and I can have it, I can even have input websites or copy for me and things like that. So basically I can work within these IDs and even like using Comet, which is perplexity's browser or Dia, these browsers, you can work within them now. And I feel like we're going to be working within these a lot more. And this is all just to just make us faster. And I think it's good that you have Mike doing it and then I'm doing it because then they'll just show you, we'll just show you how to do it later.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:53Speaker 00

  That's probably easier because it's really frustrating setting it up right now.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. I believe it. And I used to be at a point in my life where I would spend a lot more time on like technology and learning it. What I find my highest leverage point in today's, you know, where my business is, is like dealing with stuff like, um, hey, we're getting all these leads and this is what we're pitching and our discovery call to pitch ratio has gone down. Let me figure out how to rework the pitch and create a message that resonates with the market. So I'll do a lot of testing on like X and ad channels like Meta and I'll run ads with different types of copy that I would include in my pitch and the ones that resonate the most, I know they're most likely to work

• 3:40Speaker 01

  the best on our discovery calls to get more people to want to pitch.

• 3:43Speaker 00

  So you know what I want to do with this in the future? I want to take, let's say, all of your ad library data and you can see the historical performance, right? Or I want to take all, let's say I have tens of thousands of Gong calls. We talked about this, where I want to make a synthetic customer persona and I could just talk to it in cursor instead of me having to do a customer development call. I can have an infinitely patient thing that's trained on all my data and say, hey, what's the next, what's the next angle here? What should we build? I have this angle over here. Let's work on it, right? And then it's based on all the, like, why do I need to wait for customers? For development anymore.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Dude, Masalo from my team did something really good. And even though he's not the CMO, he really does run marketing. He did something that was really interesting where we can automatically crawl and dissect using AI. The top performing YouTube ads within any category. And then it'll create a variation that's relevant to any business we want. And then it creates an output and we just do it at mass scale for testing.

• 4:39Speaker 00

  That's great. Wait, so you're doing it now. So how many are you making?

• 4:41Speaker 01

  How many ads are we making?

• 4:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, at a time, based off of that.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Like, maybe like sixteen, seventeen a week?

• 4:48Speaker 00

  That's a lot.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a good amount.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  It's all automated.

• 4:51Speaker 00

  Dude, you're, you're, I saw a very recent YouTube video you put out, and it was like an AI-generated thumbnail.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Yes, but the video isn't using AI, but I saw the thumbnail. I was like, what the heck is this? This doesn't look like me.

• 5:02Speaker 00

  It's like a crazy version of you.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they're like, oh, we just use AI. And what they're doing right now is they just test a lot of different variations. Cause you know, YouTube allows A B testing natively. And then once we have a winning variation, either they'll redo it with my real picture. Or if it's doing extremely well, they won't mess with it. And they're like, people will see the real you in the video if they watch. And I'm like, okay.

• 5:24Speaker 00

  And you did you pick a new studio too?

• 5:26Speaker 01

  No, same studio.

• 5:27Speaker 00

  Oh, but they have a nicer setup now. I was like, that's a nice setup. Oh, that's the big conference room in the back, isn't it?

• 5:33Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 5:34Speaker 00

  I'm gonna have the same setup.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  You'll have the same setup. I don't know.

• 5:38Speaker 00

  I'm just kidding. I like my setup.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have no idea which one it is.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, it isn't. It looks nice, though. I like the nice. So Neil has a new background now where there's like a little monitor in the back with MP Digital on it.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Oh, no, that was temporary.

• 5:50Speaker 00

  Oh, what? Where? What was that?

• 5:52Speaker 01

  Uh, one of my buddy's place, because he's like, hey, do you want to do it for free here? I got this free space. And I was like,

• 5:57Speaker 00

  Free sounds good.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Free sounds good. I had to pay twenty dollars for parking though. But it's still cheaper than paying for a studio.

• 6:03Speaker 00

  But where's that place?

• 6:04Speaker 01

  It was a thirty-two minute drive.

• 6:06Speaker 00

  Oh, no, see, that's too far. That's too far.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  It's even further for you, because you're more, yeah, uh, west than I am.

• 6:11Speaker 00

  Mine's a ten-minute walk.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:13Speaker 00

  Yours is what?

• 6:14Speaker 01

  The ten-minute drive to get there, ten, fifteen minutes. Yeah, but I went for the savings.

• 6:18Speaker 00

  Got it.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  This time. But I, I, I don't have that anymore in my future videos.

• 6:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, looks nice, though.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  It wasn't free forever.

• 6:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. Cool. All right. So by the way, I'm doing something right now. I was talking to a guy yesterday. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna hit my entire TAM, my total addressable market with 400,000 emails per month. They're only gonna get two emails. It's a two email sequence, right? And I was talking to one guy that does this for other companies, right? And basically for one company, he's booking 12 to 15 meetings per day. For like this one's for an agency and then for another person. And I think Adam Robinson would be okay with me saying this for retention, our B2B. He's booking him and they're not sending nearly this amount of volume, but booking him one meeting a day, right? And so I'm like, okay, sure, let's try it. Let's hit 400,000 of my TAM.

• 7:08Speaker 00

  Let's find everybody in it and let's see how it goes. So we're gonna give it a shot.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  What do you mean 400 on your TAM?

• 7:14Speaker 00

  So 400,000 people in my TAM, because let's assume there's 20,000 people in B2B or whatever, 20,000 companies, but there's still a lot of people that work within these companies. So we'll hit them. The key thing, I was like, so what is the key thing here? He's like, well, the key thing is the offer, right? And one of the companies, they're just sending AirPods. I'm like, AirPods are so old. Like, that's something you would do like two, three years ago. So he's like, well, AirPods are back. I'm like, are you sure they're back? Like?

• 7:35Speaker 01

  Send the cheaper generation.

• 7:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  Or older version.

• 7:37Speaker 00

  Save money, right?

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:39Speaker 00

  Basically, they're doing something to stand out, right? And so to book these 12 to 15 meetings per day. So I'm like, well, the thing that works for Adam Robinson is he kind of has a name around B2B. So they're using his name. I'm like, okay, you can test my name, but just if we overuse my name, we can get associated with spam. So I will report back on how this goes in, you know, in a couple of episodes. And then you'll, you'll talk about your experiment with how you might, I don't know. I think we had one earlier where you might partner up with someone. I don't know. Frictionless Growth Marketing hosted by Sonya Thompson is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Frictionless Growth Marketing hosted by Sonya Thompson shows how modern brands grow by removing the friction in their marketing and customer experience that pushes customers away every single day, often without leaders even realizing it.

• 8:24Speaker 00

  Each episode delivers practical insights, real brand examples, and conversations with marketing leaders showing brands how to win with the new rules of growth, identity-driven marketing, cultural relevance, and frictionless customer experiences. Listen to Frictionless Growth Marketing wherever you get your podcasts.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  So yeah, that's true.

• 8:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  But on our, on our ran, you know, going back to the video topic, you know, it's interesting that I learned from that new background that I would have never thought. So that new background doesn't look as good as the one that we were doing in studio, in my opinion. The editing is, is uh really good quality. And I assume the background had a little bit of effect, like what people will think and whatnot. And you know, I was going through the comments and stuff like that. And I did tell them, you know, I was wrong on the background. The background doesn't make that much of a difference. Editing already new doesn't matter that much. It's just a nice to have. And one of the video views got, did really well. The other one didn't do as well.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  They were both, arm and a leg was spent time wise on scripting between me and the other person. You're probably talking about seven, eight hours just on scripting each video.

• 9:32Speaker 00

  Each video?

• 9:32Speaker 01

  Each video.

• 9:33Speaker 00

  Each video is like, what, 15 minutes?

• 9:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:36Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  So we're spending a lot of time on scripting.

• 9:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  And I was telling them, I'm like, the duds are duds, not because of the editing. That already knew the background. I was like, man, is it gonna make a, a, a, a effect on leads and all that kind of stuff? Cause people don't think it's as professional. Didn't really make a difference. But the big thing is, is and we know this more than any, you know, you and I have experienced this so many times. It's, what are you talking about? Is it something new that people are interested in? Or is it just regurgitated information? And if it's new, you're probably gonna do well. If it's not new, even if your hook's amazing, we're in a world where there's just too much content. It just doesn't do well in today's world.

• 10:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, and what I, what I've learned too is you have to hit them with like some, like a really good nugget in the beginning to keep them going. If you save the nugget for later.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  It doesn't work.

• 10:23Speaker 00

  They're just gone. Yeah. Cause they could easily just find another video.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:26Speaker 00

  Yeah. So by the way, I'm, I'm looking at my YouTube right now. It's um, I, I posted something like a couple of weeks ago, but basically I'm just like, the YouTube algorithm just never stops working for you, right? And then this is like, this video was like a nothing burger for like a year or whatever. Like it just kept.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Look at that. Now it's just shooting and it's an old video.

• 10:43Speaker 00

  It's old video.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. How many days is this? Like 300 and something or two something?

• 10:47Speaker 00

  362 days.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 10:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  So pretty much a year.

• 10:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, pretty much a year. And now it's at, this is a short, by the way, but it now it's at 739,000 views. Yeah. So, but it's like, just the YouTube algorithm never stops working for you. So you always try to work on your packaging, try to fix the thumbnail, the headline and all that, um, you know, with whatever time you have.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:09Speaker 00

  Anyway, that's what I'll say. A jack of all trades, guys, is better than a master of one. See you tomorrow.