In January, I co-founded a company that runs live events.
Not advised on one. Co-founded one. It's called Epic Marketing Events, and our first event was the Epic Webinar Summit in Miami on February 17th and 18th.
If you've followed me for a while, you know some of the things I've done. I built Filteroff to 250,000 users and an acquisition. I've been featured in the New York Times, the BBC, TechCrunch, and a couple hundred other outlets, almost all from cold pitches and zero dollars spent on agencies.
I bring that up so you know the next part comes from someone who still builds the things he talks about.
Because here's what I keep seeing online: people who teach a thing but haven't done the thing in years. I didn't want to be that. So this year, instead of only advising founders on growth, I went and built a live event business from scratch.
We held the first Epic Webinar Summit at a venue called The LAB in Miami. 13-plus speakers. Travis Stephenson and Laurel Portie were two of them. More than 150 people in the room.
And almost all of it ran on the same playbook I've used for everything else: cold outreach and a clear offer.
A few weeks before the event, this company didn't exist. We had no brand, no list, no venue, and no speakers. Just an idea and a willingness to send a lot of emails.
Then there were 150 people in seats, 13 speakers on a stage, sponsors who paid to be in the room, and a backend offer people bought. None of it fell from the sky. Every piece of it started as a cold message to someone who had never heard of us.
Let me tell you how a live event actually comes together, because it's less glamorous than it looks from the highlight reel.
The speakers don't just show up. You pitch them, the same way you pitch a journalist. You find the people whose audience overlaps with yours, you make the ask specific, and you make it easy to say yes.
The attendees don't appear either. I wrote cold outreach sequences for three different groups: coaches, agencies, and corporate sponsors. I wrote those myself, not from a template I bought. I sat down and wrote the emails for coaches, then rewrote them for agencies, then again for sponsors, because the same message doesn't land the same way for three different buyers.
And the sponsors, the part that actually pays for the room, came from outreach too. Nobody emails you offering to sponsor your first event. You go find them.
Most of those emails got no reply. That's the part nobody posts about. You send a lot and hear back from a few, and the few are enough when the offer is right and you follow up like you mean it.
I'm not special at this. I'm just willing to send the next email after the silence, and then the one after that.
Here's the lesson, and it's the through-line of basically everything I do.
The skill that built a 250,000-user dating app, the skill that got me into the BBC, and the skill that filled a room in Miami is the same skill. It's the ability to find the right person, make a clear offer, and follow up until you get a yes. Cold outreach plus a real offer. That's the engine.
Most people think every new thing requires a new superpower. It doesn't. It requires the same boring, repeatable move pointed at a new audience. Dating app users, journalists, event speakers, sponsors. Different audiences, same move.
The reason I keep building new things isn't that I get bored. It's that once you have a skill you can take anywhere, the world stops looking like separate industries and starts looking like the same game with different jerseys.
I'm not a "dating app guy" or a "PR guy" or an "events guy." I'm someone who can find the right person and make an offer they say yes to. You can take that one skill almost anywhere.
One thing to try this week: take the one channel you think only works for "your" type of business, and ask what it would look like applied somewhere completely different. The founder who can move one skill across three businesses beats the specialist who can only run one play.
If you're trying to crack a new channel right now and it's not working (cold email, press, events, whatever), hit reply and tell me where it's stuck. I read every one.
Zach
P.S. The cold-pitching skill I keep mentioning is the same one that got me 200+ press features. I built a tool that does the hard part for you. It finds the right journalists for your story and writes the pitch. Free for 7 days, no credit card. presspitchai.com
If you love the World Cup and listening to a lot of Shakira: I partnered with Kalshi. Bet on your favorite team below:
One Pick. $1 Million. Free to Enter.
Pick which country wins the 2026 World Cup on Kalshi, official partner of Argentina's national team. If you're right, you split $1 million with every other correct picker. No cost to enter. Sign up and make your call.
Trade responsibly.
A resource I use: When I'm comparing payment processors for a project, I check Processor Verdict. It lays out fees, payout times, and the gotchas side by side, so I'm not guessing. processorverdict.com
Know a founder who needs press?
Share this newsletter to get free pitch templates, journalist contacts, press angles, and a strategy call with me.