I'm 16, still in school, and my agency does €8k weeks. here's how I'd start over from scratch with nothing.
i'm 16. started my cold email agency with no money, no network, and no experience. just school ending at 1pm and 10 hours after that to figure it out. i've sent over 4 million cold emails across dozens of niches and scaled to €8k weeks.
if i lost everything tomorrow and had to start over, here's exactly what i'd do in the first 30 days:
week 1 - pick one niche and one problem. not "i help businesses grow." one specific type of business with one specific pain they feel every day. "i help HVAC companies book more jobs from people who called and nobody picked up." that's specific enough to get a reply from a cold email because the owner reads it and thinks "that literally happened to me yesterday."
week 2 - set up the infrastructure. buy 2-3 domains similar to your name. set up 5 inboxes on each. configure SPF, DKIM, DMARC. start warmup. total cost maybe €50-80. don't touch your main domain. don't skip the warmup. don't send a single email until these have been warming for at least 14 days.
week 3 - build your first list while inboxes warm up. go on a lead database and filter by your niche. but don't just pull everyone - look for companies showing signs they need help right now. hiring for sales roles means they need pipeline. recently funded means they're trying to grow. job ads for positions they wouldn't need if things were working. a list of 100-200 built on these signals beats a list of 5000 random contacts.
week 4 - write 3 email variations. under 80 words each. first line about their situation not about you. one proof point or relevant observation. one simple question as the CTA. send each variation to a segment of 50-70 people. check the data after a week. whichever gets the most replies scale that one. kill the others.
by the end of month one you'll have real conversations with business owners who have the problem you solve. some will say no. some will ghost. but a few will say "yeah tell me more" and that's your first client sitting right there.
the stuff that doesn't matter in the first 30 days - your website, your logo, your business cards, your LLC, your CRM, your social media strategy. none of that makes you money. conversations make you money. everything else is procrastination disguised as productivity.
the stuff that does matter - how many people see your offer every day. that's the only metric. if 5 people saw it this week that's not a test that's a coin flip. if 500 people saw it that's data you can actually learn from.
i did all of this while going to school full time. if you've got more free hours than a 16 year old high schooler you've got zero excuses.
happy to answer anything about the process. drop your questions below.