u/XunooL

Since I turned to using cold email outreach to get clients, I came up with two different approaches to how I should do it. So, I decided to share some sauce with you guys (it might help one or two of you), and ask you for help since I'm a bit confused about which one of them I should move forward with and what more I can add

Disclaimer: I won't be giving any email since it will put you into an endless loop of what things should look like. Instead, I will give you the pattern you can use, and from there use your brain to come up with the copy you think would resonate the most with the lead (you need that to become great at writing emails)

### Approach 1:

- Assuming that you have 10 warmed-up mailboxes.

There's something you have to know, which is that ALMOST every business has these pillars: lead acquisition → sales → onboarding → fulfillment → client retention, and within each one of them there are plenty of manual and repetitive tasks/workflow that you can automate for a business

Now, you remember when I said you have 10 mailboxes, right? Divide them into groups of two, where each group would be specific to the A/B testing of the tasks of one pillar

Two mailboxes --> one pillar --> cycle of A/B testing through the manual & repetitive tasks of that pillar till you find the winning problem/pain

Note: I don't care which industries you target; that's up to you to decide

Now comes the email; I follow a specific formula:

problem you saw (one of the workflows of that pillar) --> its pain/cost --> your solution --> case study + solution's ROI --> final result --> risk reversal --> CTA

And for each lead, I continue with a sequence of 3 to 4 follow-ups after the initial email.

### Approach 2:

This is what I call "The Hyper Personalization" method, where you're going to write an email subject line and icebreaker that feels like you've done a week's worth of research on them

Before I explain how this approach should be done, I want you to know the catch/inconvinience of that method, which is that you're going to do things "manually" and slowly

How you're going to do it:

- Assuming that you have got a list of leads with all of their information, I don't want to use the lead's first name with the company name; that's what I call a BS personalization. Instead, you will have to get the recent news of the company that might have raised a problem that can be solved with an Automation system, or the workflow/task where that problem/pain is coming from has a few manual and repetitive steps that, once you automate them, that pain will vanish

In summary, you're personalizing your email with the company's recent news

Tip: To make things faster, just connect "Firecrawl" with "Claude" and write a prompt that will scrape the recent news of a company, and make sure you equip that prompt with a few rules that will let the LLM decide whether that news item has any connection with what you can offer or not

You can do that approach with 1 to 2 mailboxes max. It takes time and effort, but it has a higher open & reply rate, and it will help you master the skill of copywriting, since you're going to be writing 60 emails manually a day minimum

That's the sauce that I have

Now, I wanna ask for a favour from senior automation specialists.

- Do you think I missed anything crucial with both of them?
- What else can you add as advice on the selling process? (I want to see how you can sell the value of an automation system)

I'm gonna keep it short: I'm confused between building Automation systems for clients using no-code tools like n8n, Zapier, and Make, or using a high-code stack such as LangGraph, LangChain, Python, FastAPI...etc

Which stack is better for delivering the automation product to a client?

Note:
- I know that the clients won't even know what I'm using to solve their problems until I deliver it, but they will judge when I reach the hosting/usage cost (the high-code is way less than no-code when it comes to using an automation system on a daily basis)

I'm gonna keep it short: I'm confused between building Automation systems for clients using no-code tools like n8n, Zapier, and Make, or using a high-code stack such as LangGraph, LangChain, Python, FastAPI...etc

Which stack is better for delivering the automation product to a client?

Note:
- I know that the clients won't even know what I'm using to solve their problems until I deliver it, but they will judge when I reach the hosting/usage cost (the high-code is way less than no-code when it comes to using an automation system on a daily basis)

Hey everyone, I’m pulling my hair out over a bizarre issue with the PayPal Sandbox API

I’m building an automated invoicing agent using FastAPI and LangGraph. I’ve got the OAuth 2.0 authentication perfectly dialed in (using the Client_ID & Secret), and I’m making a POST request to /v2/invoicing/invoices to create a draft invoice.

The Problem:
The API call is "successful". It returns a 201 Created status code, and if I check my PayPal Sandbox dashboard, the invoice actually gets created with all the correct details.

However, the JSON response body is completely wrong. Instead of returning the full invoice object (with the id, status, detail, etc., as shown in their API docs), the response body only contains a HATEOAS link object. It looks exactly like this:

{
  "rel": "self",
  "href": "link that I can't share(due to the community policies)",
  "method": "GET"
}

Because the id key is missing from the top level, my code immediately crashes with a KeyError: 'id' when I try to extract it to pass to the next step.

What I’ve already debugged:

• It’s not a code extraction issue: I logged response.text directly from httpx before calling .json(). The raw text coming straight from PayPal is literally just that link object instead of the response body shown in their official endpoint API doc web page
• It’s not a silent redirect: I logged response.url to ensure httpx wasn't accidentally following a 301/302 to a different endpoint (like the send_invoice endpoint, which normally returns this exact link structure). It hits the correct /v2/invoicing/invoices URL.
• Auth and Payload are fine: If they were wrong, I’d get a 401 or 422. The fact that it returns 201 and creates the invoice means PayPal accepted the request.

It’s almost like the PayPal Sandbox is accidentally returning the response body for a 200 OK (like the send_invoice endpoint) instead of the 201 Created response body for the create endpoint.

Has anyone else run into this? Is this a known glitch with the PayPal Sandbox right now, or am I missing something incredibly obvious? If the API refuses to give me the ID in the creation response, I might have to do a workaround where I immediately query the invoice by its invoice number, but I'd rather not add that extra API call if I don't have to.

Thanks in advance!

Hey everyone, I’m pulling my hair out over a bizarre issue with the PayPal Sandbox API

I’m building an automated invoicing agent using FastAPI and LangGraph. I’ve got the OAuth 2.0 authentication perfectly dialed in (using the Client_ID & Secret), and I’m making a POST request to /v2/invoicing/invoices to create a draft invoice.

The Problem:
The API call is "successful". It returns a 201 Created status code, and if I check my PayPal Sandbox dashboard, the invoice actually gets created with all the correct details.

However, the JSON response body is completely wrong. Instead of returning the full invoice object (with the id, status, detail, etc., as shown in their API docs), the response body only contains a HATEOAS link object. It looks exactly like this:

{
  "rel": "self",
  "href": "link that I can't share",
  "method": "GET"
}

Because the id key is missing from the top level, my code immediately crashes with a KeyError: 'id' when I try to extract it to pass to the next step.

What I’ve already debugged:

• It’s not a code extraction issue: I logged response.text directly from httpx before calling .json(). The raw text coming straight from PayPal is literally just that link object instead of the response body shown in their official endpoint API doc web page
• It’s not a silent redirect: I logged response.url to ensure httpx wasn't accidentally following a 301/302 to a different endpoint (like the send_invoice endpoint, which normally returns this exact link structure). It hits the correct /v2/invoicing/invoices URL.
• Auth and Payload are fine: If they were wrong, I’d get a 401 or 422. The fact that it returns 201 and creates the invoice means PayPal accepted the request.

It’s almost like the PayPal Sandbox is accidentally returning the response body for a 200 OK (like the send_invoice endpoint) instead of the 201 Created response body for the create endpoint.

Has anyone else run into this? Is this a known glitch with the PayPal Sandbox right now, or am I missing something incredibly obvious? If the API refuses to give me the ID in the creation response, I might have to do a workaround where I immediately query the invoice by its invoice number, but I'd rather not add that extra API call if I don't have to.

Thanks in advance!

Hey everyone, I’m pulling my hair out over a bizarre issue with the PayPal Sandbox API

I’m building an automated invoicing agent using FastAPI and LangGraph. I’ve got the OAuth 2.0 authentication perfectly dialed in (using the Client_ID & Secret), and I’m making a POST request to /v2/invoicing/invoices to create a draft invoice.

The Problem:
The API call is "successful". It returns a 201 Created status code, and if I check my PayPal Sandbox dashboard, the invoice actually gets created with all the correct details.

However, the JSON response body is completely wrong. Instead of returning the full invoice object (with the id, status, detail, etc., as shown in their API docs), the response body only contains a HATEOAS link object. It looks exactly like this:

{
  "rel": "self",
  "href": "https://api-m.sandbox.paypal.com/v2/invoicing/invoices/INV2-XXXX-XXXX",
  "method": "GET"
}

Because the id key is missing from the top level, my code immediately crashes with a KeyError: 'id' when I try to extract it to pass to the next step.

What I’ve already debugged:

• It’s not a code extraction issue: I logged response.text directly from httpx before calling .json(). The raw text coming straight from PayPal is literally just that link object instead of the response body shown in their official endpoint API doc web page
• It’s not a silent redirect: I logged response.url to ensure httpx wasn't accidentally following a 301/302 to a different endpoint (like the send_invoice endpoint, which normally returns this exact link structure). It hits the correct /v2/invoicing/invoices URL.
• Auth and Payload are fine: If they were wrong, I’d get a 401 or 422. The fact that it returns 201 and creates the invoice means PayPal accepted the request.

It’s almost like the PayPal Sandbox is accidentally returning the response body for a 200 OK (like the send_invoice endpoint) instead of the 201 Created response body for the create endpoint.

Has anyone else run into this? Is this a known glitch with the PayPal Sandbox right now, or am I missing something incredibly obvious? If the API refuses to give me the ID in the creation response, I might have to do a workaround where I immediately query the invoice by its invoice number, but I'd rather not add that extra API call if I don't have to.

Thanks in advance!

Hey everyone, I’m pulling my hair out over a bizarre issue with the PayPal Sandbox API

I’m building an automated invoicing agent using FastAPI and LangGraph. I’ve got the OAuth 2.0 authentication perfectly dialed in (using the Client_ID & Secret), and I’m making a POST request to /v2/invoicing/invoices to create a draft invoice.

The Problem:
The API call is "successful". It returns a 201 Created status code, and if I check my PayPal Sandbox dashboard, the invoice actually gets created with all the correct details.

However, the JSON response body is completely wrong. Instead of returning the full invoice object (with the id, status, detail, etc., as shown in their API docs), the response body only contains a HATEOAS link object. It looks exactly like this:

{
  "rel": "self",
  "href": "https://api-m.sandbox.paypal.com/v2/invoicing/invoices/INV2-XXXX-XXXX",
  "method": "GET"
}

Because the id key is missing from the top level, my code immediately crashes with a KeyError: 'id' when I try to extract it to pass to the next step.

What I’ve already debugged:

• It’s not a code extraction issue: I logged response.text directly from httpx before calling .json(). The raw text coming straight from PayPal is literally just that link object instead of the response body shown in their official endpoint API doc web page
• It’s not a silent redirect: I logged response.url to ensure httpx wasn't accidentally following a 301/302 to a different endpoint (like the send_invoice endpoint, which normally returns this exact link structure). It hits the correct /v2/invoicing/invoices URL.
• Auth and Payload are fine: If they were wrong, I’d get a 401 or 422. The fact that it returns 201 and creates the invoice means PayPal accepted the request.

It’s almost like the PayPal Sandbox is accidentally returning the response body for a 200 OK (like the send_invoice endpoint) instead of the 201 Created response body for the create endpoint.

Has anyone else run into this? Is this a known glitch with the PayPal Sandbox right now, or am I missing something incredibly obvious? If the API refuses to give me the ID in the creation response, I might have to do a workaround where I immediately query the invoice by its invoice number, but I'd rather not add that extra API call if I don't have to.

Thanks in advance!

Just spent the last week building out the enrichment layer for my agentic ai project. been committing daily, pushing to my feature branch, everything's working fine. but here's the weird part — github's not counting any of my contributions. The commits are literally there on the repo with my name and avatar, but my contributions graph is sitting at zero.

I've triple-checked everything. my email is set as primary on github, git config is correct locally, and commits show up with my avatar. I even waited for many hours (almost 12 hours) thinking maybe GitHub was just slow. nothing.

The commits are definitely there and attributed correctly. you can see them on the repo page. but the green squares? nowhere to be found. it's not blocking me from shipping code, but it's weird enough that i'm wondering if anyone else has run into this.

any ideas? is there some hidden setting i'm missing or is this just a github quirk?

Just spent the last week building out the enrichment layer for my agentic ai project. been committing daily, pushing to my feature branch, everything's working fine. but here's the weird part — github's not counting any of my contributions. The commits are literally there on the repo with my name and avatar, but my contributions graph is sitting at zero.

I've triple-checked everything. my email is set as primary on github, git config is correct locally, and commits show up with my avatar. I even waited for many hours (almost 12 hours) thinking maybe GitHub was just slow. nothing.

The commits are definitely there and attributed correctly. you can see them on the repo page. but the green squares? nowhere to be found. it's not blocking me from shipping code, but it's weird enough that i'm wondering if anyone else has run into this.

any ideas? is there some hidden setting i'm missing or is this just a github quirk?

Just spent the last week building out the enrichment layer for my agentic ai project. been committing daily, pushing to my feature branch, everything's working fine. but here's the weird part — github's not counting any of my contributions. The commits are literally there on the repo with my name and avatar, but my contributions graph is sitting at zero.

I've triple-checked everything. my email is set as primary on github, git config is correct locally, and commits show up with my avatar. I even waited for many hours (almost 12 hours) thinking maybe GitHub was just slow. nothing.

The commits are definitely there and attributed correctly. you can see them on the repo page. but the green squares? nowhere to be found. it's not blocking me from shipping code, but it's weird enough that i'm wondering if anyone else has run into this.

any ideas? is there some hidden setting i'm missing or is this just a github quirk?

I don’t know if this is a communication problem or articulation problem, or both honestly.

Basically, in my head the idea makes perfect sense, but when I start speaking, it comes out messy or incomplete.

And the thing is, this happens even in my native language sometimes, not only in English.

I usually know what I wanna say, but I struggle to explain it the same way I imagined it in my brain, or I get stuck in an endless loop of going back and forth to the same point.

Sometimes I pause too much, sometimes I overthink the sentence while talking, sometimes I speak so fast, which leads me to stutter or not pronounce the word/letter in the right way, and sometimes I finish speaking and feel like “that’s not what I actually wanted to say”.

Does anyone relate to this?

And how do people become more articulate? Is it practice only? Reading? Speaking Frameworks? Recording yourself?

Do you have any books, videos, or resources for that?

Would appreciate any advice.

I don’t know if this is a communication problem or articulation problem, or both honestly.

Basically, in my head the idea makes perfect sense, but when I start speaking, it comes out messy or incomplete.

And the thing is, this happens even in my native language sometimes, not only in English.

I usually know what I wanna say, but I struggle to explain it the same way I imagined it in my brain, or I get stuck in an endless loop of going back and forth to the same point.

Sometimes I pause too much, sometimes I overthink the sentence while talking, sometimes I speak so fast, which leads me to stutter or not pronounce the word/letter in the right way, and sometimes I finish speaking and feel like “that’s not what I actually wanted to say”.

Does anyone relate to this?

And how do people become more articulate? Is it practice only? Reading? Speaking Frameworks? Recording yourself?

Do you have any books, videos, or resources for that?

Would appreciate any advice.

I’m 22 years old and recently I started noticing that self doubt is affecting almost everything I do.

Whenever I wanna try something new, my brain immediately goes to “you probably can’t do it” or “you’re gonna fail anyway”. Sometimes it becomes so annoying that I stop before even trying.

And even when I actually do the thing, I keep doubting myself during the whole process. Every choice, every decision, everything.

It also happens when I speak English (it’s my second language). People around me tell me my English is good enough and some even told me it’s really good, but every time I speak I still feel like maybe I said something wrong or weird.

The weird thing is that logically I know I’m not “bad” at things. Like I already did hard things before. But mentally, I still feel like I’m not capable enough.

Did anyone here go through this before?

What actually helped you build confidence for real? Books, habits, experiences, literally anything.

I’m 22 years old, and recently I started noticing that self doubt is affecting almost everything I do.

Whenever I wanna try something new, my brain immediately goes to “you probably can’t do it” or “you’re gonna fail anyway”. Sometimes it becomes so annoying that I stop before even trying.

And even when I actually do the thing, I keep doubting myself during the whole process. Every choice, every decision, everything.

It also happens when I speak English (it’s my second language). People around me tell me my English is good enough, and some even told me it’s really good, but every time I speak I still feel like maybe I said something wrong or weird.

The weird thing is that logically I know I’m not “bad” at things. Like I already did hard things before. But mentally, I still feel like I’m not capable enough.

Did anyone here go through this before?

What actually helped you build confidence for real? Books, habits, experiences, literally anything.

I’m 22 years old, and recently I started noticing that self doubt is affecting almost everything I do.

Whenever I wanna try something new, my brain immediately goes to “you probably can’t do it” or “you’re gonna fail anyway”. Sometimes it becomes so annoying that I stop before even trying.

And even when I actually do the thing, I keep doubting myself during the whole process. Every choice, every decision, everything.

It also happens when I speak English (it’s my second language). People around me tell me my English is good enough, and some even told me it’s really good, but every time I speak I still feel like maybe I said something wrong or weird.

The weird thing is that logically I know I’m not “bad” at things. Like I already did hard things before. But mentally, I still feel like I’m not capable enough.

Did anyone here go through this before?

What actually helped you build confidence for real? Books, habits, experiences, literally anything.

I’m a 22 year old AI engineer, and recently I realized something kinda painful.

My technical skills are honestly pretty good for my age, and I worked on projects that I’m proud of.

But I know people with weaker technical skills who still get better opportunities than I because they communicate better and present themselves better.

And honestly, it opened my eyes a lot.

I feel like my communication skills are holding me back hard, especially when talking about myself, explaining ideas, networking, and interviews, etc.

For people in tech:

How important was communication in your career compared to technical skills?

And how did you improve it? Any Books, Videos, or podcasts? Anything that can help me with that

Because right now I feel like I focused too much on becoming technically good and ignored the “human” side completely.

For the folks who are used to buying things from foreign countries and getting them shipped here to Algeria, can you please inform me of the whole procedure that you walk through each time you want to buy something?

For reference, I stepped upon a clothing brand from the UK that I want to buy from, but I heard that we have shipping problems here in Algeria. How do you do it, guys?

Also, I bought products before from Aliexpress, but I don't think it will be the same procedure, am I wrong?