The lead generation strategies that work for a solo marketer are not secret channels. They are a small set of boring habits run every day: build a qualified list, connect before you pitch, lead with useful work, follow up, count your inputs, and stay visible in your local community. Andy Milligan's version of that system has produced $378,000 in lifetime revenue for his solo business.
Andy is the founder of MMG Design, a web and SEO studio that works only with healthcare brands, and of the Columbus Marketing Organization. In this session he describes the outreach behind a business that generates "between 10 and 30K consistently" each month, then does the work on camera. If you are still landing your first deals, start with how to get your first client and come back here for the full system.
"The reason I'm doing it is to show you guys how unsexy it actually is and what it takes to get the results that you say that you want." Andy Milligan
The lead generation strategies in Andy's daily system
Andy's process is a stack, not a single tactic. Each layer feeds the next:
- A qualified list of decision makers in one target market.
- A LinkedIn connection before any pitch.
- A short personalized video that gives away two or three specific fixes.
- A scheduled email that delivers the video, plus follow-ups.
- An input tracker that counts the work, not the replies.
- Community and events that turn strangers into warm contacts.
- Slow channels like a podcast and newsletter that build trust over months.
The sections below cover each layer, what Andy said worked, and what he said is still underwhelming.
Strategy 1: Build a qualified list before you write a word
Andy starts every session with a list, not a message. He used AI assistants connected to his CRM to build "a fresh batch of leads that are qualified within our target market." Every person on that list is a marketing decision maker at a healthcare organization, because healthcare is the only market his studio serves.
A narrow list makes every later step easier. You can reuse the same research angles, speak the buyer's language, and spot patterns across their websites. When Andy tells a prospect "we only work with healthcare brands like yours," it is true, and it is the reason they keep watching.
Try this: pick one industry and one role. Build a list of 30 to 50 people before you send anything. If you cannot name the industry, you are not ready for outreach yet.
Strategy 2: Connect on LinkedIn before you pitch
Every video Andy recorded in this session opened the same way: "You and I just connected on LinkedIn." He connects first, then sends value. The connection gives the message context, and it makes the outreach feel like a follow-up to a real interaction instead of a cold interruption.
That relevance matters. In a June 2025 Gartner survey of 632 B2B buyers, 73% said they actively avoid suppliers who send irrelevant outreach. A connection plus a specific observation is the opposite of irrelevant. Andy covers this layer in depth in his guide to LinkedIn outreach.
Strategy 3: Lead with a short, personalized video audit
This is the core of Andy's B2B lead generation. After connecting, he records a short video walking through the prospect's own website and offers "two to three small things" they could change. He says up front, "This is not a sales pitch or anything like that," and he invites them to forward the video to their developer.
The fixes he recommended in this session are a useful checklist for any service provider who audits websites:
- A clear, contrasted call to action in the hero section, so visitors know the main conversion.
- A mobile call to action, often a simple phone icon. Andy says heat maps on his clients' sites show mobile CTAs are much more likely to get clicked.
- Descriptive page titles that drop the word "home" and include the brand and services.
- Meta descriptions of about 150 characters or less, which is Andy's working target.
- A global canonical setting that tells the website builder which domain is the main one.
- A separate URL for each service page, so search engines and AI tools can see topical authority. Andy also suggests adding images and alternating layouts to those pages, because a long scrolling block of text rarely gets engagement.
- A descriptive H1 that names the services, location, and audience.
- Social proof near the top, such as the insurance providers a clinic accepts.
Each video ends with a low-pressure offer: a coffee, an introduction to someone in their space, or an invitation to an upcoming marketer event. Andy explains the full method, including scripts, in his video prospecting playbook.
Strategy 4: Send new outreach first, then follow up
Andy's order of operations is deliberate: "Starting with new videos and then moving on to follow-ups." New outreach fills the top of the pipeline. Follow-ups recover the people who watched and did not reply.
He also schedules his emails instead of sending them late in the day. In this session he recorded in the afternoon, scheduled two of the emails "to go live tomorrow," and noted that his energy is better in the morning. For timing and tone on the second touch, see his process for how to follow up with leads.
Strategy 5: Count the inputs, not the results
Andy tracks his outreach against the Rule of 100, Alex Hormozi's idea of doing 100 primary lead generation actions a day for 100 days. He built a small tracker that pops up as he logs each action, which he calls his "intention trigger." In his words, it is "massively incentivizing and rewarding" (1:32).
He set a goal of 50 video outreaches. With 30 done, he had one week to send 20 more, about three per day. He is honest about the scoreboard: "Underwhelming results on some of these so far, to be honest with you guys." His conclusion is not to change channels. It is "we just need more volume at this point." His full method is in the Rule of 100 guide.
Strategy 6: B2B lead generation through community and events
Not every lead starts in an inbox. Andy hosts in-person events for marketers in Columbus, and in this session he was focused on filling the next one, with a goal of 30 to 35 attendees. His video outreach points prospects toward the same rooms: "I also hold market masterminds here in the city to connect other marketers."
Community turns cold contacts into people who have met you. That matters because buyers trust peers. In a March 2026 SurveyMonkey and Reddit study of 1,202 U.S. business decision-makers, 73% named peer recommendations as their most trusted source when evaluating vendors.
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. You can see what is coming up on the Columbus marketing events page.
Strategy 7: Slow channels that build trust over time
Some lead generation strategies pay off over years, not weeks. Andy is candid about how slow they are.
- Podcast. Marketing by Design is almost three years in with about 4,500 downloads. "Man, podcast growth is a slog, you guys." The value is the conversations, not the download count. See how he repurposes episodes in his podcast clips playbook.
- Repurposed workshops. Andy taught a workshop on hiring virtual assistants for an online community he belongs to, then got permission to air it on his podcast.
- Newsletter as an outreach list. The Columbus Marketing Jobs newsletter passed 200 subscribers, while his LinkedIn newsletter has over 1,000. He plans to have his assistant contact LinkedIn subscribers who are not on the main list, because subscribers to the main newsletter "get jobs earlier."
What is not working yet
The useful part of building in public is the honest scorecard. In this session Andy named several problems:
- Video replies were underwhelming. His fix is more volume, not a new channel.
- Energy matters. He was "not completely thrilled" with afternoon recordings and plans to record in the morning.
- Contact data has gaps. One director of marketing's email could not be found, which stalls the email step.
- Social growth is slow. His LinkedIn following grew by 10 that day, to 7,811.
None of these caused him to stop. As he put it, "the important part is that we got the reps in."
How to put these lead generation strategies to work
Pick one market, build a list, connect first, and send something useful before you ask for anything. Count your daily actions, follow up on the people who engaged, and show up where your buyers gather in person. That is the whole system behind $378,000 in lifetime revenue, and none of it is complicated.
If you want peers to compare notes with while you build the habit, see the next Columbus marketing event or join the Columbus Marketing Organization community on Skool.
The reason I'm doing it is to show you guys how unsexy it actually is and what it takes to get the results that you say that you want.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best lead generation strategies for a solo marketer?
Andy Milligan's system combines a narrow, qualified list, a LinkedIn connection before any pitch, a short personalized video that offers two or three specific fixes, consistent follow-ups, and tracking daily actions. Community events and slow channels like a podcast add warm trust over time. Together they support a solo business with $378,000 in lifetime revenue.
Why does Andy connect on LinkedIn before sending outreach?
The connection gives the message context, so the video reads as a follow-up rather than a cold interruption. Relevance matters: a June 2025 Gartner survey of 632 B2B buyers found that 73% actively avoid suppliers who send irrelevant outreach. Connecting first and leading with a specific observation keeps outreach relevant.
What should a video outreach audit include?
Andy keeps it to two or three fixes on the prospect's own website, such as a contrasted hero call to action, a mobile phone CTA, descriptive page titles, meta descriptions around 150 characters, separate service page URLs, and a descriptive H1. He says it is not a sales pitch and invites them to forward it to their developer.
What should you do when outreach results are underwhelming?
Andy's answer is to keep the channel and raise the volume. Partway through a 50-video goal he called his early results underwhelming and concluded that he needed more volume. He also adjusts the conditions, such as recording in the morning when his energy is better and fixing gaps in contact data.
How does community fit into B2B lead generation?
Community turns cold contacts into people who have met you. Andy invites prospects to coffee and to his marketer events in Columbus. Peer trust matters: a March 2026 SurveyMonkey and Reddit study of 1,202 U.S. decision-makers found 73% trust peer recommendations most when evaluating vendors.
Read the video transcript
Kind: captions Language: en Hey there guys, my name is Andy. I own a solo marketing business that has generated 378K in lifetime revenue. And this is my daily marketing channel where I build and strategize in public and teach you guys what's working in Lifetime. If this is your first time here, I own three businesses. The first is my web and SEO studio called MMG Design. We work with healthcare brands exclusively. Second is the CMO, which is my community mastermind, job board, and events business for marketers in Columbus. And the third is my podcast called Marketing by Design. We interview thought lead thought leaders in healthcare, B2B, and beyond. The format we usually follow on this channel is where we'll start with a little bit of live lead genen. So I'll take you guys inside the lead generating activities that I do every month in order to generate between 10 and 30K consistently. And number two, I'll build and strategize in public, talk to you about the strategic motions that I'm doing within my businesses in order to move forward and that I'm excited about. And third, we'll do some updates and growth stats. So, we'll take you guys inside my brand stats tab within my dashboard here and track all of the growth across YouTube, LinkedIn X, podcast downloads, newsletters, and my products. So, without further ado, I've been procrastinating a little bit today, but I'm going to get right into it. Also, I want to check YouTube today because I thought I uploaded a banger yesterday. It's not getting quite as much traction as I had hoped, but that doesn't matter because the metric of success is staying consistent. What we're going to be doing today is not that. What we're going to be doing today is continue with a little bit of video outreach. So, if we go to our dashboard here on TA, I had a lot of issues getting the stuff to load properly yesterday, but I think we have all those issues patched up. Um, also shout out to my little handy um [sighs and gasps] intention trigger here, which is what I call it, which is the rule of 100, what'll pop up for Mosie, and I can go in and log all of these as I do outreach, which is massively incentivizing and rewarding. So, this is how you encourage and reinforce the habits that you want to stay consistent with, adding small things like that. And with AI, bro, anything is possible. So, all right. All right. So, going back to our video out, which we have 30. I have one week exactly to get 20 more done, which is three more per day. And I'm going to go through all of these and do follow-ups along with [sighs] new videos. So, that is important. Starting with new videos and then moving on to follow-ups. Underwhelming results on some of these so far, to be honest with you guys. Um, this one, this one have watches And yeah, we just need more volume at this point. The good news is that I have used uh Quad and Codeex combined with their MCP to folk and I've created a fresh batch of leads that are qualified within our target market. I'm connected with the point of contact on LinkedIn. So guys, we have clear pastures. We are up and to the right. We have so much outreach to do and the only thing left to do now is to take action. So, we're going to start right here and I'm going to take you along my shoulder as I use tele video outreach. What I'll probably do is fast forward through this part because I do uh I have had some comments on the previous videos like, "Hey, Andy, we don't need to see every little bit of this." But the reason I'm doing it is to show you guys how unsexy it actually is and what it takes to get the results that you say that you want. So, I'll leave it full speed for this and then I'll do a screen recording afterwards. And then after I've sent out I'll do four today. And after I sent out four, I will get back to you guys with some of the packaging what I sent. And what I'll do is I'll actually schedule these to go live tomorrow. Um, so yeah, let's rock and roll. All right. Hey Nancy, I hope you are doing well. Uh, you and I just connected on LinkedIn and I saw we were both based locally here in Ohio. Um, I love connecting with other healthcare marketers, so I thought I would send a short little video to personalize the intro a little bit here. And this is not a sales pitch or anything like that. This is just me here to give you a ton of value in the next 90 seconds or so with this video. We only work with healthcare brands like yours. And like I said, we've been in the space for a long time. And I do this all day every day. So connecting with connecting with you led me to the Beach Brook site. And I'm confident that if you implement these two to three small changes, feel free to even forward this to your developer that you guys are going to be able to as much as double the the that you guys will be able to as much as double the amount of results through the website, whether that's through donations, organic relevant search traffic, etc. Biggest thing I would add here about the forms is having some kind of contrasted CTA. The only CTA that's clear here is donate. And we usually recommend having uh a clearly contrasted bigger CTA here and also in the hero section given what you want the main conversion event to be whether that be donations, exploring services, hiring etc. Also on the responsiveness side of things uh we do generally recommend uh having a clear CTA. So go to the mobile menu here. There is no contrast that tells me what I want the visitor to do. And as a visitor, we see a lot of CTAs come to mobile, and it's just not really clear what you want me to do as a visitor when I'm on the mobile version of your site. Also, technically speaking, under the hood, the best way to get visitors from things like AI search, chat, GPT, perplexity, etc. is to have dialed in page titles and metad descriptions. Ideally, you want your page titles to be a little bit longer, to not have the name home in there. It's not descriptive. It has no keywords. Make that a little bit longer and the metad description a little bit shorter. Ideally, you want the metad description to be 150 characters or less. It's not bad, but I would cut out like some of these ands afterwards and use full words as well. But as long as you have your brand name and your services in your page titles and meta, that's a really good signal to search engines. And also having a global canonical meaning you tell your website builder whatever you built the platform on that your main domain is beachbrook.org work. Last thing I'll bring up here is on your service pages, you have really good ones. I would highly recommend getting each of these on a different URL. These are really good copywise, but you want to reinforce them with some imagery. Have some left to right layouts because this general scrolling section is not going to get a lot of engagement. We see that pages, especially service pages, which are how a lot of warm visitors find our website, that there are some kind of assets or imagery that engage them and encourage them to click through our to our CTAs. So, that's all I'll include here. Like I said, if you have a developer or a technical marketer on staff that you can forward this to, definitely feel free to. I'll include some more documentation in this email. But all in all, just glad to be connected. I would love to get a copy sometime. I travel up to Cleveland for conferences often and I also uh hold market masterminds here in the city to connect other marketers as well. So, um, either way, just glad to be connected and have a great rest of your week. Bye. Damn. Excuse me. [snorts] Bro, come on now. Really? Oh [ __ ] Please don't bounce. No. [ __ ] connecting from Columbus. Exclamation point. [snorts] Testing. Testing. [snorts] Hey Leah, I hope you are doing well. You and I just connected on LinkedIn and I thought I would send this video to personalize the intro a little bit. Um, I'm based here in Columbus and I know we're both based locally, so I'd love to get you a coffee sometime just to connect. I love meeting other people in our space. I just moved to Clintonville not too long ago, but uh your profile led me to the reach website and I just wanted to send two or three small things to be helpful. This is not a sales video. I do this stuff every single day. And my goal with the next, you know, couple seconds of this is to just unload a ton of free value on you. And yeah, hopefully if you have a developer on staff, you can forward that to them. But uh yeah, the biggest things I would address off the rip here, you guys have a very well-built site. It's built on WordPress. It's easily maintained. Biggest thing I would push right away is having changing your main H1. What we see on websites from AI search engines like Perplexity, Quad Chat, GPT, they want to see a very well descriptive H1. Now, it doesn't have to be this text right here, but you can actually set a display hidden tag on your H1. The perfect H1 for you guys would be something to the tune of services and location and audience. So if you can include all three of those, ideally behavioral health services in Ohio for families, children, etc., that would be perfect. So you can add that there and just add a hidden tag. And that way you can customize this H1 to be whatever you want. But that's the biggest SEO hot spot that can really help increase your guys' organic visibility. Additionally, on the mobile version of your guys' website, I pulled it up here. What I would want you to do is have a phone CTA be the primary CTA here. We find that obviously when people are viewing the site on their phones, the call is the most traditional action that they would take. And you could even include that just as a small single icon CTA here in the top right. And just a small strategic thing that I've seen work for some of our past clients, including insurance, availability as one of your first and primary value props, like even putting this logo section here right below the fold. Logos are good for social proof, but you guys would do really well to have some kind of social proof, meaning someone other than you saying that speaking to your credibility. If you're covered by insurance providers and you have that backing, you guys, that's a great social proof signal. And what we've seen convert really good for companies like yours as well is having the the main CTA be insurance qualification. So maybe changing this to say see if you're covered and then onboarding them into a form that could get their information and that really warms them up and allows you to also get their contact information for remarketing purposes as well. That's really low hanging fruit and could be really high leverage for you guys. All in all, that's all I wanted to share in this video. Again, so glad to be connected and I would love to get you a coffee sometime soon if you'd love to connect and I hope you're having a fantastic day. Cheers. Why do you do that? Dude, here we go. [snorts] Hey, Stephen. You and I just connected on LinkedIn and that led me to the Northstar website. [ __ ] me. Hey, Stephen. I hope you are doing well. You and I just connected on LinkedIn and I wanted to send a quick little video to help you personalize the intro here. I saw you guys are based in Utah and Idaho. We have a couple pharmacy clients in that area. Um, but yeah, my goal with this is to not send you a sales pitch. Like I said, I send a lot of these every day. We only work with healthcare brands. So, I'm glad we're in the same space and being connected on LinkedIn. But what I wanted to send you is just two to three small things that I think will at least double the amount of results that you guys get from the website. I can tell you guys use AI to help you with some of the build processes of this. Um, so hopefully this can help you apply some more strategy. Um, and you know, if you have a developer on staff, forward this to them or try and implement it your guys' on your own end. But the biggest thing I can say here is from a technical standpoint and that's having separate pages for each of your services SEO and AI Search tools like Quad, Jet, GBT, Perplexity really value topical authority. So having a dedicated page that's SEO optimized, especially for your location, is going to be super helpful for you guys and help generate more uh inbound leads to the website. And also on those service pages, you can start to add relevant guides that you categorize by what services they apply to and really start to add value to your website visitors. Additionally, from a design standpoint, we also recommend having some kind of a CTA above here. Especially if it's on a phone, you can put a phone icon and that will be that will get a lot of traffic. We've seen from our heat maps on customers websites. We've seen from heat maps on our customers websites that if there's some kind of a mobile CTA, it's much more likely to get quicked. All in all, Stephen, just glad to be connected, man. Uh, if you have any questions on anything that I've sent or if you want any referrals to any people in our space as well, either way, I'm just thrilled to be connected. Looking forward to following along on your journey. Cheers and have a great day, man. Bye. [clears throat] [snorts] Alrighty. How's it going, guys? All right, so we got three more outreaches sent. Honestly, I'm not completely thrilled with the way that those turned out. I mean, we got them in. That's the most important part. Uh I just wasn't thrilled with the my energy, which is a good reminder to probably do some of these in the morning. But uh yeah, so I scheduled send two of those to go live tomorrow. So was having a few issues with the contact sourcing. For some reason, the director of marketing email just nowhere to be found in the same cadence of all the other ones. So that is a little bit disappointing. But the important part is that we got the reps in and we're gonna have days like this even as much as I suck. So yeah, that part is done. Um yeah, let's go on to next. Uh building a public. This is what happens when you do have your assistant sending DMs. Shout out to Eric. Um, yeah. Okay. So, building up, strategizing in public. What I'm focused on currently is we have our next event for marketers on the 15th here in a few weeks. So, I need to start sourcing invites. Also, I'm going to Atlanta next week. will be leaving on Monday afternoon and driving down to Atlanta about 11 hours. I've got a VA agency workshop. So, I I held a workshop. We're going to be airing this in the podcast next week, but I hosted a workshop for a community I am in called 10x solo and sent this to them. Did a live workshop. I got permission from Garrett Justice. Shout out to Garrick. Garrett to post this on our podcast and repurpose it there. Super loaded with value. talks about how we went into hiring Roa uh Clark and Ali, two of our developers. And uh yeah, I've loved uh I love showing you about that. That'll be really helpful for you guys if you're considering hiring a VA and dabbling. Talks about everything that goes into it, finding your own, you know, internal resource or going with an agency talking through both approaches there. So that'll be super helpful for you guys. Um, but yeah, we have the event on the 15th of October, which is in a little over two weeks. So, I really, really got to start banging the drum on outreach. I'm hoping I can get 30 to 35 people there. So, prioritizing that for now. Uh, but yeah, let's move on and close out with growth stats here across all of our channels. Should know, should know YouTube, LinkedIn, and I already have that open. on Instagram and podcast. I think we today might be the day we breach 200 subscribers for the jobs newsletter 2011, baby. Let's go. We freaking love to see that. Love to see it. Instagram 1854 still down. I'll have to add the functionality to be able to to go downwards. Andy the marketer 47 up one more that the LinkedIn what's our follower count looking like now 7811 10 more so not really enthusiastic about that Um, next up would be Spotify for creators. Your podcast downloads. I did see here anecdotal evidence, meaning someone told me they listened to a podcast yesterday, so it should be at least one. 4522. Man, podcast growth is a slog, you guys. Almost three years in, 4,500 downloads, which is just crazy. But yeah, a little bit of good social proof there. Over 200 on the Beehive newsletter. And it's actually more than that. If we look on the LinkedIn newsletter for the Columbus marketing jobs, it should be if I go to my network connection. No, newsletters. We're at over a thousand on there. What I might have Roa do is have her have her reach out to everybody that's on this list and say, "Hey, looks like you're not connected on the main newsletter. Subscribers of the main newsletter get jobs earlier," which they do. So technically that could be a good PCRO there. Just use this as an outreach list. Have her check their newsletter and see if they're subscribed. Some of these aren't even really that qualified. I don't know if it's subscribed by default, but anywh who uh yeah, so I think we're going to close it out there. Uh appreciate you guys watching. If you guys are uh a marketer looking to engage in community, grow more business, grow as a person, connect with more, uh I'll leave an application below in the comments. I'm here to serve you, help you get more jobs, grow your business, and do these boring parts of outreach that have managed to move me forward. Appreciate it, guys. Hope to see you next one. Bye.