📌 Monday December 23

• Solopreneurs Networking | Free

• Hustle Haven | $23

• Networking for Government Jobs | $149

📌 Tuesday December 24

• Digital Nomad & Remote Entrepreneur | Free

📌 Wednesday December 25

• CEO Boardroom Mastermind | $495

📌 Thursday December 26

• A Feminine Mastermind for Female Entrepreneurs | $20-$35

• Investing Hackathon/AI Conference | $0-$129

📌 Friday December 27

• Business Networking | $0-16

• Silicon Valley Bootstrappers Breakfast | $10

• Mobile Application Pitch Contest | $0-$50

📌 Saturday December 28

• Craft your Culture & Expand your Network | $63.00

• Business Connections & Strategy Session | $30

• Highest Self Social Club (women) | $25

• Content Creators Support & Accountability | $25

News You Can Actually Use 📰

🧑‍💻 Burned Out Techies Are Saying No to Algorithms
The algorithmic exodus is here. Tech pros are ditching corporate life for simpler jobs and less screen time. Silicon Valley, meet slow living. Could you survive the algorithm detox?

🔨 Roofers Just Got Their Tinder
Shingles, scaffolding, and romance? SRS Distribution partners with ToolBelt to give contractors the hookup—literally. Forget flowers, just bring a hammer.

💪 China Flexes Its Tech Talent Muscles
Silicon Valley, who? China is pumping out tech geniuses faster than your startup’s burn rate. The global talent race just got real. Is your business ready for the future of tech?

🤖 EvyAI Pro Is Coming for Your Sales Job
This AI sales tool closes deals faster than your top rep. It’s like hiring a genius robot who never needs coffee breaks.

🤳 Instagram Just Became Your Digital Business Card
Sliding into DMs just got professional. Instagram now doubles as a digital business card because who needs paper when you’ve got vibes?

💰 HBCU Drops $1.5M to Back Future Startup Moguls
Move over, Silicon Valley. This HBCU is building the next generation of tech moguls with a $1.5M venture hub. Who needs overpriced lattes and venture bros anyway?

Fresh Finds 🧰 

I’ve been creating the news section above for weeks and have seen a trend of new tools coming out that I personally feel deserve to have their own dedicated section so here we are.

Boardy.ai - An AI super connector that you talk to over the phone who introduces you to important people in it’s network.

Foundity - A crowdfunding and investment platform tailored for startups and creators seeking streamlined fundraising.

Socially.so - Helps community organizers build and monetize with courses, products, memberships and more.

Socap.ai - An AI-driven networking and social capital tool designed to help professionals uncover opportunities and build valuable connections.

JobShinobi - A stealth-mode job search platform offering discreet and targeted job opportunities for professionals.

O’ Down the Rabbit Hole 🐇

After going through and creating my little automation tool last week, it got me thinking…What if there was a tool that created customized Linkedin messages for every type of outreach, not just investors. There are tools out there that do 1:many and I’ve used quite a few of them but nothing that does one-off hyper-personalization.

So, I went down the old rabbit hole to see if there’s something super simple like this before I build it. 😈 Now before I dive in, you should know I searched 4 different categories of Linkedin automation tools 1) Linkedin messaging 2) Web scraping 3) Multi-channel Outreach and 4) Marketing & Sales Automation tools.

Here’s the results 👇

Linkedin Messaging Tools Automates repetitive tasks such as connection requests, messaging, and engagement. Mostly streamlines outreach campaigns and follow-up sequences. 

🔥 Reply.io - Starts at $53/mo. This one I’m interested in trying. Not only do they have the majority of features the rest of the tools have but, they have a handle on AI and for an additional $299/mo you can have your very own AI sales agent that automatically responds to messages. 

LIProspect - Starting at $50/mo. Nothing too special about how this one works but, you can apparently segment your existing network with tags to create more targeted campaigns which I guess is pretty cool if you don’t have thousands of people to sort through. 

Salesrobot - Starting at $99/mo. TBH, I’ve used this one before and wasn’t all that impressed.

🔥 Zopto - Starts at $197/mo. Definitely interested in trying this one. It can generate Linkedin posts, schedule them, enrich data and has an end-to-end AI campaign builder that has sentiment analysis and can auto respond. 

Octopus CRM - Starting at $7/mo. Meh. It automates your Linkedin outreach and engagement. However, if you’re on a budget and need to get something going pretty quickly, this would be a good choice. 

LinkedRadar - Starts at $19/mo. Have to dive a little bit deeper into this one but, I do like their free Chrome extension. It personalizes 1-to-1 connection requests and outreach messages. Out of everything I’ve looked at this one probably comes the closest to what I was thinking of building but, it’s still very generic and not goal-specific. 

Waalaxy - Starts at $43/mo. Pretty basic, not special in comparison to the others I’ve seen. 

Dripify - Starts at $39/mo. I used this a couple of years ago when it first came out and it wasn’t bad. There’s just a lot more advanced tools in the market now and they’re kind of falling behind.

Linked Helper - Starts at $8/mo. This is what I’ve been using for some low touch campaigns and yea it might be annoying to run on your desktop but it gets the job done like all the other ones for a quarter of the price.

Web Scraping Tools Extracts all sorts of information from Linkedin profiles and helps you expand your network by identifying and connecting with relevant contacts. 

Dux-Soup - Starting at $16/mo. 

🔥 TextAu - Starting at $79/mo. It’s like a library full of automations except you get 3X more run time than Phantombuster for the same price.

Phantombuster - Starting at $79/mo. This one is considered the “OG” of no-code automation. It’s the tool I’ve been using for the past couple of years but after seeing what TextAu has to offer, I’m definitely considering making the switch. 

Multi-channel Outreach Tools Run multiple campaigns across a variety of channels including Linkedin, email, phone and social media. 

🔥 Lemlist - Starts at $39/mo. This is the newest one I’m experimenting with. I like the multi-channel approach, Linkedin voice message feature, campaign structure and the built in database. I haven’t set up any campaigns just yet but stay tuned and I will! 

Meet Alfred - Starts at $39/mo. This one was okay. The interface kind of sucks, it’s not exactly easy to navigate and there’s no AI. Linkedin also kept getting disconnected and campaigns would pause which was annoying. 

Success.ai - Starts at $59/mo. Might be worth checking out. They definitely have quite a bit of features.

Expandi - Starts at $99. Meh, this ones is more popular but from the features they list on their website, I don’t see anything particularly special about it.

Marketing & Sales Automation Tools Automate repetitive tasks, funnel leads and helps to move them through the pipeline more quickly. 

Salestools.io - Starting at $300/mo. Definitely interested in trying! This one basically does everything an SDR can without the SDR! 

🔥 Surfe - Starting at $39/mo. This one I definitely want to try. It enriches data from 15+ databases, has a Chrome extension that can integrate Linkedin contacts to your CRM/GSheets with a click of a button on their Linkedin Profile which sounds super easy if I’m using Hubspot and want to enroll them in a sequence - no more copy/pasting back n forth. Unfortunately, their link is spammy so you’ll have to search for this one.

Jasper AI - Starts at $39/mo. I think this is more of a content tool but I’m not forking over my CC info just to find out.

Snov.io - Starts at $39 + $69 per Linkedin account (if you want automation). This one is pretty popular and I’m not exactly sure why. From what I’ve seen from other tools so far, this fits somewhere in the middle.

I’m sure I could keep going but “🔥” are the ones that stand out to me the most. Of course, your opinion may differ and you’re more than welcome to try any of the tools above for yourself.

Just remember, your success depends on how fast you create the processes and systems to get there!

As for the little mini tool I’m thinking of creating, I’m still toying with the idea. Based on the research above, there’s 2 tools that have a similar feature. Although, they’re not the main feature nor are they super personalized.

That being said, I’d love to hear your thoughts below👇

How I Can Help You Grow 🚀

1. Hire me as your Fractional CMO. Not only can I help develop your growth strategy, align marketing and sales teams, and develop customer journey maps, I can also create and execute high-impact campaigns, audit your tech stack and make sure you’re leveraging the right data to measure success.

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