The best AI lead generation tools remove friction from the work you already do. They do not replace the relationships that actually close deals. That is the honest lesson from how Andy Milligan, a solo marketer in Columbus whose business had reached $394,115 in lifetime revenue when he recorded this video, uses an AI agent inside his daily outreach.
His use is narrow on purpose. One tool helps him get started on the inbox. Everything that builds trust, he still does himself. If you are building your first pipeline, start with how to get your first client and add tools only after the habits are in place.
What AI lead generation tools actually do for him
Andy uses Instinct, a personal AI agent that its maker describes as "a personal assistant that understands your work and takes action across your applications and devices." TechCrunch, in an October 2026 roundup of AI agents that live in your text messages, notes that users communicate with Instinct by text or voice and that it takes actions on a user's behalf rather than simply answering questions.
Andy talks to it over iMessage. "I'll just ask it like on when I'm on a walk, hey, go through my LinkedIn inbox and surface 20 messages that I haven't replied to," he says (6:43). He repeats that three or four times, then types his own replies.
The point is not volume. "It just reduces the friction of getting started for me," Andy says. "And that's really the main goal here."
That framing matters more than any feature list. Most stalled pipelines do not stall because a marketer lacks software. They stall because the first step of the day feels heavy, so it gets skipped.
What he still does by hand
The agent surfaces messages. Andy writes every reply. The same split shows up across the rest of his routine:
- Following up with people he meets in person. After meeting people on a recent trip, his process is to connect with them on LinkedIn and follow up quickly. He admits he was not as dialed in on this as he wanted to be.
- Video outreach. Personalized video messages are still his job, not the agent's.
- His Dream 100. He keeps a Dream 100 list in his CRM and moves each relationship forward himself.
- Tracking the inputs. A heat map dashboard tracks his daily lead generation actions against a goal of 100 a day (7:14), an idea that comes from the Rule of 100.
Why judgment stays human
Buyers can tell when outreach was not written for them. In a June 2025 Gartner survey of 632 B2B buyers, 73% said they actively avoid suppliers who send irrelevant outreach. An agent that writes and sends messages for you makes that problem bigger, not smaller.
The tools themselves are also uneven. In an October 2025 Gartner survey of 413 marketing technology leaders, 45% of those with AI agents in pilot or production said vendor-offered agents fall short of promised business performance.
So the useful question is not which tool to buy. It is which step of your process you keep avoiding, and whether a tool can make that step easier to start without taking over the parts that require you.
A caution before you connect an agent to LinkedIn
Andy's setup has the agent log in to LinkedIn once and keep his password in a stored vault. Before you copy that, read LinkedIn's rules. Its help page on prohibited software and extensions lists browser extensions that "automate activity on LinkedIn's website" among the tools it does not allow.
A safer way to get the same benefit: put a short, fixed inbox block on your calendar, work through unanswered messages yourself, and use AI only for tasks that stay outside the platform, such as drafting notes you then edit and send by hand. For more on where AI fits in a marketer's work, read our guide to AI in marketing.
When the pipeline slows, go back to inputs
The same video shows the real risk with tools. Andy had over six figures in proposed work waiting on long sales cycles, and he let it shake his routine. "When sales cycles get long, focus on the inputs," he says (5:07). He admits that during that stretch he was not as diligent on video outreach and follow-ups as he had committed to being.
No tool fixes that. What fixes it is a short list of daily actions you control, which he lays out in the playbook on how to generate leads, and a habit of following up with leads before they go cold.
Where the Columbus community fits
Tools can surface a message. They cannot introduce you to the right person.
Columbus Marketing Organization is a peer community for marketers, freelancers, and service providers in Columbus, Ohio, founded by Andy Milligan. Members share leads, introductions, and job opportunities, including the weekly Columbus Marketing Jobs newsletter. Andy also hosts an agency leaders lunch for owners in the city.
Choose AI lead generation tools that make the first step easier, keep the relationship work for yourself, and compare notes with peers at an upcoming Columbus marketing event. If you want help building the habit, join the Columbus Marketing Organization community on Skool.
It just reduces the friction of getting started for me. And that's really the main goal here.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best AI lead generation tools for a solo marketer?
The best ones remove friction from steps you already do, like triaging an inbox or organizing follow-ups. Andy Milligan uses an AI agent to surface unanswered messages, then writes every reply himself. Pick a tool for the step you keep avoiding, not for the promise of hands-off outreach.
Can an AI agent send my LinkedIn outreach for me?
Be careful. LinkedIn's help page on prohibited software lists browser extensions that automate activity on its website, and automated outreach also tends to read as generic. Keep sending and replying by hand, and use AI for work that stays off the platform, such as drafting notes you edit yourself.
Do AI agents for sales and marketing actually work?
Results are mixed. In an October 2025 Gartner survey of 413 marketing technology leaders, 45% of those using AI agents said vendor-offered agents fell short of promised business performance. Treat any agent as an assistant you supervise, and measure whether it saves time on a specific task.
What should I do when my sales pipeline slows down?
Go back to inputs. Andy Milligan's advice when sales cycles get long is to focus on the daily actions you control, like follow-ups, video outreach, and new conversations. He tracks those actions on a dashboard against a goal of 100 a day so a slow month does not break the routine.
Read the video transcript
Kind: captions Language: en Hey there. How's it going everybody? My name is Andy. I own a solo marketing business that has generated $394,115 in lifetime revenue. If this is your first time to the channel, I own three businesses. One is my web and SEO studio for healthcare called MMP Design. And the other is the Columbus Marketing Organization, which is my job board, Inerson networking, and mastermind community for marketers here in Columbus, Ohio. And the third is my podcast, but I didn't have a screenshot to show that, so I'm leaving with this. Um, it's been a few days since I've last recorded, and really my goal with this one is to just pro provide with every, as with every video, is to just provide straight up value and kind of grease the wheels a little bit to get back into it. The past couple days, I've struggled a little bit with kind of finding purpose and meaning and fulfillment behind the work. And I, this is going to sound tright, but I almost feel selfish in the current phase of my business. Um, I am, and this has happened before, and if a lot of you guys are running your own businesses, if you're doing freelance work, you can probably relate to the idea that um, when you are removed from the outcomes that you're providing for your customers, you don't feel like you're having a real impact. Um, and obviously you don't diversify as well from the life front. kind of isolate your source of fulfillment to be one unique narrow avenue which is the business and the highs and lows of it then you are vulnerable to the highs and lows of the business that you attach all of your self worth to. So that's something I'm working to through currently. I just wanted to update you guys on that. Uh that's going to be some of the format moving forwards is we're going to keep doing the same thing as ever. Start with one, a little live weed gen where I show you guys what's working in my business, how I'm generating leads, and moving the business forward. Number two, we'll leave into a build and strategize in public where I will talk about the near-term actions I'll be doing to grow and the things that I'm excited about. And number three, we'll do updates and growth stats where I share you guys how my different channels that I'm focused on growing across YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn and products. So, uh, let's go ahead and dive into things. I'll bring up Folk here, which is my CRM to kind of give you guys a live snapshot of the pipeline. Coming back from Atlanta last week, I wanted to be a little bit more dialed. Uh, and unfortunately, I wasn't in terms of following up with the new people that I had met. Um, I I'm sure I've made a video about this on this channel at some point, but some method of, you know, sending outreach to people that I have met and that you meet in person, connect with them on LinkedIn, deeply following up and doing it quickly as well. Um, sales cycles have been long recently and we have enough to obviously keep us going and meet our revenue goals. In fact, next month could be our best month ever just in terms of closed revenue because we have a final final deposit on um our big enterprise client and a few more sources that will be coming due next month. So, next month could be a 30k month. Um but after on that, but after that, I'm more increasingly focused on the podcast and making the business sustainable. I just had an interview, today's uh Wednesday, October 7th as we're recording this with a web flow specialist uh and kind of filling in that role for the team and maybe he can get to a stage where I can start to elevate his role a bit more into more of an account manager or something like that in the future. So, I'm excited about that. Um, shout out to Mo if you're listening. Great job on the interview today. And yeah, so that's what we're doing pipeline wise. Um we have in our proposed stage we have about 35 this is actually 3k a month deal 35k website this is proposed as well. So here sitting in our pipeline we have about um 70k in project work plus 3k in monthly work. This one's been proposed as well. So yeah we have over six figures in proposed pipeline and multiple of these were supposed to have started already. So, I think you can sense my frustration in terms of the length of the sales process. And I will say with most of these, I have done just about everything I could. Like, if you guys check out a past video where I talk about how to manage the sales process perfectly, I did everything. I booked the call from the call. I proposed in a time bound quick nature. I stated pricing before I made the proposal. They were qualified all the way through. So this might be one of those guys where I'm just like, you know, a lesson that I could have learned and honestly asking them like, "Hey, what could we have done better?" So yeah, that's unfortunate. So anyway, uh I think things that I'm excited about, we have committed to hosting our next agency leaders lunch and I've set that for the 29th, Thursday the 29th. I've already got five people attended and I really haven't done any outreach yet. So that's something that I'm uniquely focused on. Um, but yeah, things that I will say to myself as I kind of coach you guys through this is when sales cycles get wrong, focus on the inputs. I especially this week kind of let my emotions get the better of me and I didn't stay consistent on the LinkedIn outreach. I still continued to send connection requests, be present. I was always posting of course, but I wasn't as diligent on the video outreach, on the follow-ups, and doing the things that um I had committed to doing earlier. So yeah, that's um that's a bit of the current state of the outreach. Uh podcast-wise, we do have um we've had multiple podcasts recently. Hired a new editor, shout out to AJ. Uh we have the podcast production flowing, so that'll be big to take that off of my plate. Uh we have a podcast scheduled for next Friday with Kayla. Podcast scheduled for Friday at 12:30 with Goldie here. And we have multiple scheduled onwards into the future. I know that uh Amy, someone I met yesterday, was committed to joining as well. And we still have our dream 100 here within folk that we need to continue to move through the pipeline, excuse me, and continue to keep going. Um still have a lot of follow-ups to do. Continue to keep this moving. Uh these three are in good stages right here. Something I have also been doing is I've been using a tool called Instinct. Um I know you guys have probably heard of a lot of what's going on in terms of the agentic tools market like Meta's Muse, Instinct, Grockbot, things like that. I have been loving Instinct and I've been using it through my iMessage and it has been wonderful for staying on top of LinkedIn inboxes. Like all I have to do, you log in once, it keeps your password in like a stored vault and I'll just ask it like on when I'm on a walk, hey, go through my LinkedIn inbox and surface 20 messages that I haven't replied to. And I end up doing that like three or four times and typing the responses in there and it just reduces the friction of getting started for me. And that's really the main goal here. Additionally, increasing my awareness around tracking things. Still have my heat map dashboard here. Um, trying to get to 100 every day. they haven't been as consistent with as as I would like to. But I've got the this widget here programmed to appear in every single box that I show up in. So, this is really cool to see this there. And I also need to do better of timing the amount of time that I spend on content as well. So, yeah. Aside from that, uh, other things I'm focused on, I really want to I caught up with my friend Delara Casey at the content adventure conference this week and I asked her like what would it be like if we were to kind of collaborate on putting together like some kind of a 90-day road map or course for um, people who just got laid off from marketing or people who want to get their first freelance customer. give them a 90day road mapap to okay just clearly outline these are the actions that you need to take every day. I said and she agreed with me that people tend to be on both sides of the extremes. just like, "Hey, I really need to get the ball rolling, overdo it with outreach, burn themselves out." Or they're just like, "I need to take this time off, not do anything, sink into a hole, enjoy my time off, all this stuff." And they don't have a clear road map in terms of the the actions that they they can take in terms of outreach, business development, meeting people, obviously, you know, submitting job applications that are the right fits for them. And just some clarity around that would be very helpful. And obviously I have deep experience in this. I've been through a layoff. I've been in that position. So I can uniquely resonate with that. So um I do have the offer the um the plans publicized and on the website now for the mastermind tier. And I've continued to curate the um the group for the next event here. And ideally with this I want to get about half of the attendees from the first meetup and half new. So, still kind of keeping around that 30 attendee mark and just diversifying the attendees a little bit so people can meet new people, make introductions, and leave with some worthwhile connections, which is the promise of this event that I'm delivering on. So, yeah. Um, on a life note, um, I appreciate you guys following along on the journey. We're going to be consistent with the daily uploads from now on. I'm back from travel and I've I've been putting some systems in place to operationalize my routine a little bit more. So, even when I am traveling, it just ended up hitting me way harder than I thought it would. Um, but I'm back. I'm regaining my energy, and I appreciate you guys joining me. See you guys on the next one. Bye.