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Prospect: Someone who is your ideal client but doesn’t know about you.

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Lead: Someone who is your ideal client and has opted-in for your lead magnet.

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Opportunity: Someone who is your ideal client and raises their hand to talk to you.

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Client: Someone who pays you money in exchange for your product/service.

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This is important so remember it.

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Got it?

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Sweet!

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In the early days of LinkedIn, I had a VA work through lists of potential prospects.

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She would visit their profile and then click on the Connect button to send a personalized connection request.

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Then I’d wait for them to accept my connection request and send them a private message.

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This was a manual process that worked like gangbusters.

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I literally generated 100s of leads and opportunities (sales calls) every week using LinkedIn which allowed me to build a 7-figure business.

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The process was simple:

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1. Identify prospects on LinkedIn

2. Send connection requests

3. Message them after they accepted

4. Have them opt-in to my funnel

5. Sell them on my lead magnet and tripwire

6. Up-sell them on core offers

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But then, LinkedIn introduced restrictions which limited how many connection requests could be sent per day.

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It started with 200/day. Then it went down to 100/day. And finally it went down to 50/day.

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But then something even worse happened in 2020.

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LinkedIn introduced a new restriction that limited the number of connection requests that could be sent to 100/week.

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WTF?!?

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How the heck am I supposed to build my business with only 100 connection requests PER WEEK?

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The short answer? You can’t.

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If you do the math, that’s only 400 connection requests per month.

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And with an average 20% acceptance rate, that only results in 80 new connections per month.

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That’s only 960 connections per year.

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960 connections per year.

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That's it.

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A measly trickle in the vast ocean of potential clients.

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Remember those heady days of hundreds of leads and opportunities flooding in every week?

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Generating a 7-figure business felt almost effortless.

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Now, the lifeblood of your business – those new connections, those fresh leads – has been reduced to a pathetic drip.

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And it's not just the paltry number of connections.

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Let's face it, even those 400 connection requests a month are a struggle to achieve.

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You're constantly bumping up against LinkedIn's draconian limitations, feeling like a caged animal pacing back and forth, desperate for a way out.

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But here's the real kicker:

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Even if you manage to hit that 400 mark, who's actually doing the work?

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Are you, the CEO, the visionary, spending your precious hours clicking buttons and sending out generic connection requests?

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Or are you relying on a team of virtual assistants, scattered across the globe, logging into your account from who-knows-where?

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Think about that for a second.

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Your business, your brand, your reputation, all resting in the hands of someone you've likely never met, working from a computer thousands of miles away.

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And what happens when they get sick?

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Or their internet goes down?

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Or they decide to take a "holiday" without telling you?

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Suddenly, that drip, drip, drip of new connections dries up completely.

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Your pipeline runs dry.

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Your sales team sits idle.

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And the revenue you so desperately need to survive, to thrive, to scale… evaporates.

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You're left staring at a stagnant LinkedIn account, wondering how you're supposed to compete in a world where everyone is fighting tooth and nail for attention.

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The frustration builds.

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The anxiety gnaws at you.

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You can feel the pressure mounting, the weight of your entire business resting on your shoulders.

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Because deep down, you know the truth:

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Relying on humans to fuel your lead generation is like building your house on a foundation of sand.

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It's unstable, unreliable, and ultimately unsustainable.

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But what's the alternative?

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Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.

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That’s the sound of money leaking out of your business.

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You just don’t know it yet.

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I’m going to share a personal story.

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One that’s close to the heart.

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I’m sure you’ll relate.

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In October of 2016 I added a new VA to my team.

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Her name was Sarah.

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I hired her to help me with some lead gen tasks. The main one was sending cold emails and handling replies.

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It wasn’t long before I realized she was the best VA I had ever hired. She was a brilliant writer and super smart. I felt lucky to have her on the team.

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In early 2017 my family and I went on a road trip.

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We were away for about 3 weeks.

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Sarah was still pretty new, and I was nervous about leaving her in charge. But I had no choice. So I gave her very specific instructions for what she needed to do while I was away.

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But in the end it didn’t matter. She ignored my instructions, did what she wanted, and screwed everything up.

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It was a mess. A total disaster.

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I was more than an hour from home when I fired her via email.

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I still remember the relief I felt.

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It felt good to have her gone, even though it meant more work for me.

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Later that day I was sitting at my desk setting out the tasks for the day ahead when my phone rang.

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It was Sarah.

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She was crying from the moment I answered the call until the moment we hung up after 30 minutes of conversation.

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She wanted to explain herself.

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Here’s what happened…

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In December of 2016 Sarah’s father committed suicide. He had some health issues but nobody saw it coming. It was a complete shock to everyone, most of all Sarah’s mom.

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Sarah was an only child, and she helped her mom get through the initial trauma. But in March of 2017 something happened and her mom fell into a deep depression. She went from being fine to not being able to function almost overnight.

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Nobody knew what to do. They were scared she might do something stupid like her husband did. So Sarah moved in with her mom and became her full-time caregiver.

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Sarah did all of this without telling anyone, including me. She didn’t want anyone to know because she felt embarrassed by what had happened.

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So there she was, trying to take care of her mom full-time while also doing what she could for her clients (me included).

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I never considered that something like this could happen … that someone who works for me could be dealing with deep trauma while trying to do their job (the job I hired them for).

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After Sarah explained everything, I cried too. It was a gut wrenching experience. Even now I’m in tears as I write this.

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I offered Sarah her job back, but she declined because she needed to focus on taking care of her mom.

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As this story demonstrates, VAs are human beings with all the frailties that come with that status.

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They get sick, experience relationship problems, suffer from depression, have financial problems, need time off for holidays, etc.

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And there’s one other problem too…

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If you’re using VAs to do lead gen tasks like sending cold emails or connecting with people on LinkedIn then you’re putting your business at risk. Big risk!

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Why?

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Because these VAs are logging into your accounts from IP addresses in places like India or the Philippines. You may have gotten away with this up until now, but it’s just a matter of time before you trigger a red flag with Google or LinkedIn.

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When that happens you’re SCREWED!

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If you’re creating fake accounts on Gmail or LinkedIn (even if you’re using automation software) and doing lead gen from those accounts you’re also putting your business at risk.

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Ultimately you can’t scale lead generation using humans (VAs) no matter how hard you try.

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That’s because people are too unpredictable and unreliable … just like Sarah (for reasons beyond her control).

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Humans break down under pressure when they become stressed or anxious about something. This results in mistakes being made or things not getting done at all.

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And it gets worse.

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Much worse.

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Because relying on VAs for lead generation isn’t just unreliable, it’s like playing with fire.

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One wrong move and your entire lead generation operation can go up in flames, taking your business with it.

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Imagine this:

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You’ve finally found a VA who seems to get it.

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They’re responsive, communicative, and they seem to be getting results. You start to ramp things up, giving them more responsibility and more accounts to manage.

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You’re feeling good.

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Maybe, just maybe, you’ve cracked the code to scaling lead generation.

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But then, bam!

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Your LinkedIn account gets restricted.

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You can’t send connection requests, you can’t message anyone, you’re stuck in LinkedIn jail.

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Your carefully crafted lead generation machine grinds to a halt.

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Or worse, Google flags your Gmail account as suspicious.

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All your carefully crafted email sequences, your warm leads, your entire email outreach strategy vanishes overnight.

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Poof!

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Gone.

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And what about all those fake LinkedIn or Gmail accounts you created to get around the limitations?

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They’re dropping like flies, getting flagged and restricted left and right.

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You see, the platforms you rely on for lead generation – LinkedIn, Gmail, Facebook – they’re not stupid.

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They have sophisticated algorithms and systems in place to detect and shut down any activity that looks even remotely suspicious.

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And when they catch you, they don’t mess around.

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It’s a constant cat-and-mouse game, and the platforms are always a few steps ahead.

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You’re forever looking over your shoulder, wondering when the hammer is going to fall.

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And the more you try to scale, the more you try to push the boundaries, the greater the risk becomes.

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It’s a vicious cycle.

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So you’re stuck.

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Trapped between the unreliability of human VAs and the ever-present threat of getting shut down by the platforms.

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What’s a business owner to do?

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Let’s assume you’re in the B2B space and you’ve heard about LinkedIn as a channel to generate leads.

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You spend weeks researching and learning about the platform. You discover that LinkedIn has restrictions on how many connection requests you can send. 100 per week is the max. You read that the restriction is based on a rolling 7 day period and reset at 12am pacific time.

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You also learn about all the rules and limitations LinkedIn imposes on you to protect their ecosystem from unwanted spam and abuse, and that you can only message people who accept your connection request.

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Then you hit a wall.

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You join Facebook groups to learn more about how the cool kids are doing it.

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You learn about automation tools that will auto-connect with your target audience and then send them a sequence of follow up messages using their API.

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You also learn that in order to scale beyond 100 connection requests per week you have to create multiple LinkedIn accounts.

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For example if your goal is to send 500 connection requests per week you’d need to create 5 additional LinkedIn accounts PLUS your own LinkedIn account = 6 accounts x 100 requests = 600 connection requests per week (sexy).

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So what’s involved in creating a new LinkedIn account?

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First you need a new email address (Gmail, Outlook etc) and a unique phone number that allows you to receive SMS (GoogleVoice, Twilio etc).

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Then you need a unique IP address for each account, otherwise LinkedIn will know it’s you and will restrict your account (VPN, Proxies etc).

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Then you have to build out the profile and make it look legit (real name, real photo, summary, job history, education etc).

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Then once your profile is built out you have to join relevant groups, and start making friends with people who don’t know you from Adam.

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Then once your profile looks legit and you’ve connected with some “friends” you create a new LinkedIn API account so that your favorite automation tool can login as you and start sending out connection requests on your behalf.

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Then every day of every week (even on weekends) you need to login to each account (from a unique IP address) and check no red flags are being triggered by LinkedIn.

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And don’t forget that once your connection target audience accepts your connection request, you need to be able to login as each LinkedIn account so you can respond to messages being sent back to you.

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Rinse and repeat for every new LinkedIn account you create.

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Creating new LinkedIn Accounts in order to send more than 100 connection requests a week is a full time job in itself.

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But here’s the kicker…

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Even if you’re willing to go through all that effort, even if you're prepared to dedicate hours upon hours to building and nurturing these fake LinkedIn profiles, a dark cloud hangs over everything.

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Because you see, LinkedIn is not stupid.

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They have an army of engineers whose sole job it is to sniff out and shut down fake accounts.

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Think of them as digital detectives, constantly monitoring for suspicious activity, always on the lookout for the telltale signs of automation and inauthenticity.

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They’re looking at your IP address, your login patterns, your connection activity, your profile content, even the way you interact with other users.

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And if they even suspect that you're trying to game the system, they can and will drop the hammer.

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Your account can be restricted, suspended, or even permanently banned, all that time and effort evaporating in an instant.

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Poof.

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Gone.

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And it's not just one account at risk, it's all of them.

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Like a house of cards, your entire operation could come crashing down with a single algorithmic flick of the wrist.

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And even if you manage to fly under the radar for a while, the constant fear of detection hangs over you like a sword of Damocles, a looming threat that can strike at any moment.

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The pressure is immense, the stakes are high, and the risk of failure is ever-present.