This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Recruiters pay me to tear apart their emails. That is the title of today's episode. Today's Throwback Thursday segment. In fact, we're going to hear how one copy savvy side hustler turns a collection of recruiter emails into a swipe file. Swipe file is basically a collection of notes, emails, copy, et cetera that you can borrow from, customize, make your own. And then he builds a
monthly subscription around it. As noted, this is throwback Thursday where we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved since we first featured them. And of course this is side hustle school, the daily podcast, the only one bringing you stories, tips, answers to questions, all kinds of ideas designed to get you thinking and not just thinking, but hopefully working on your next side hustle so you can have more money without quitting your job. That's what it's all about. Last week we heard from a side hustler who built a simple browser-based spreadsheet tool. And I think
they've achieved their objective because that tool earns enough to cover the rent each month. Pretty cool. All right, today we're going to hear about this recruiter email swipe file. Sean, the side hustler is going to explain it a bit more. I'm going to pass the microphone to him. I'll be back at
the end with a quick little wrap up. Hi, I'm Sean Markham based in Chicago. I've worked in marketing and copywriting for a while. And I've always been one of those people who saves good emails stuff that nails clarity, the tone or gets straight to the point. A few years ago, I was in between gigs and getting a lot of recruiter outreach and most of it was terrible. But every so often someone
nailed the email intro. I started collecting the good ones, especially messages for creative roles, developers or specialty industries like biotech or fintech. I made a habit of annotating these emails just just for fun. But then I was on a call with a recruiter friend who said, my team has no idea how to write like this and AI tools don't help much because they don't know the context. That's when it clicked. Maybe I could turn this into a product. So I built a swipe file
of annotated recruiter outreach templates organized by industry and job level. I added comments on tone, timing, subject lines, and even reply rate estimates when I had them. I priced it at $39 and launched it at gum road with the name the recruiters cold email. Initial sales were okay, just about $800 the first week from LinkedIn posts and word of mouth. I think a lot of people are happy with AI solutions these days. But then I quickly realized something more people were
emailing me asking, Do you also sell contact lists than anything else? So I made a change. I started building verified contact bundles for recruiters lists of hiring leads or potential candidates in specific industries. These weren't scraped from LinkedIn. I used a mix of tools like Apollo Hunter and others and my own research to keep the lists accurate and up to date. Each list was specific
and actionable. 100 UX designers in Austin who recently updated their portfolios, 80 biotech leads who've posted hiring roles in the last 30 days, 120 fractional CTOs for fintech startups. I sold them for 99 to $149 each and included the swipe file as a bonus. This flipped the business completely. The templates became lead generation and the list became the real product.
What a concept. I now do about $4,000 a month in list sales and I released two to three new bundles each month to my mailing list. I keep it lean just me air table a basic CRM and a Google sheets plus stripe checkout flow. The teardown club still exists $12 per month for annotated outreach reviews, but it's mostly legacy subscribers. Contact lists are what keep the business alive. My biggest lesson, AI makes average outreach easy, but recruiters still
struggle with targeting and tone. They don't just want templates, they want results. When you give them vetted leads and solid language, it's a no brainer. It started with a folder full of cold emails. Now pays my mortgage. Hey, thanks, Sean. I appreciate you sharing
the story listeners. Remember, there's something you can do as well. There's an idea just waiting for you to explore and put into action. Let me know what you think and who you'd like to see featured from our archives of thousands of episodes. And of course, much more is to come if you have a question or a comment or an update sidehustleschool.com detailed resources for each episode as well there 3,246 at the moment, in fact, and new episodes come out every single day. Listen wherever you want Spotify, Apple podcasts, any other platform,
anything you like. Of course, it's always free. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
