Over the last few years I've heard every excuse for not doing cold outreach.
We don't have brand.
We don't have experience.
We don't have the credentials.
The buyer will ignore us.
Then I remember Tom Grogan and Herman Sahota.
So I figured I'd just write about it.
Because their story is the single best argument I can give you for picking up the phone or hitting send today.
- In 2017, they had an ambitious goal.
Bring Wingstop to the UK.
That was it. That was the plan.
They had no restaurant experience.
They'd never franchised anything before.
They had no track record in the food industry at all.
What they did have was absolute conviction.
- They did what any bold founder would do.
They found the simplest, highest-impact move available to them.
A cold email.
To the head of franchising at Wingstop.
That's it. Not a warm intro. Not a mutual connection. Not a paid consultant with a rolodex.
One email to one decision-maker.
- Here's what that email became.
It started a conversation.
The conversation opened a door.
The door led to a UK franchise opportunity with one of America's fastest-growing restaurant chains.
Then:
Launched their first location in London.
Expanded to 57 stores across the UK.
Hired and developed 2,500+ people.
Generated £150M+ in annual revenue.
Sold the entire operation for $400 million at the end of 2024.
All from one cold email.
- The lesson isn't "send more cold emails".
The lesson is: the barrier between you and your next big customer is almost always smaller than you think.
It's not a brand problem.
It's not a credentials problem.
It's not a timing problem.
It's a "did you actually send the email" problem.
Most founders don't lose the deal.
They never start the conversation.
- What made their email work was the shape of it.
The right person. Not a generic careers inbox. The actual decision-maker who could say yes.
A message that was relevant. Not a template. Something the recipient could see themselves in.
A specific ask. Not "let's connect". A clear reason to reply.
That's the whole playbook. Right person. Relevant message. Clear ask.
Everything else in outbound is just scale on top of those three things.
- Don't wait for the perfect moment or the perfect credentials.
They won't arrive.
Find the right person.
Craft a message that's actually relevant and helpful.
Hit send.
You could be one email or one call away from your big break, or your next customer.
I share this because the highest-leverage 30 minutes most founders can spend this week is writing three cold emails to the three people who could change their business.
Not building a sequence. Not tuning a signal layer. Not hiring an SDR.
Three emails. Three of the right people. Sent today.
Tom