I Tried Big-Tech Lead-gen with a Startup Budget. Here’s What Happened Next.
It all started with a Christmas movie. My mom managed a Hallmark store, and as we watched a movie together, I couldn’t stop thinking about how funny it would be for a gossipy bakeshop character named Miss Claudia to joke about “spilling the tea” in her shop.
I dove into online guides about the nine-act structure of these stories, and before I knew it, I had a script written for “Swipe Right on Christmas.”
Friends and family indulged my newfound obsession just enough that Christmas, and before I knew it, I had written four scripts. That’s when I started thinking about what it would take to sell them to a production company that would get them aired.
I had a pretty solid blueprint in mind. With over 20 years’ experience in big tech, I led teams that sold hundreds of millions of dollars of software annually. But I realized that my burgeoning screenwriting side hustle didn’t have dozens of BDRs, hundreds of thousands of dollars of marketing tech, or the typical infrastructure I was used to. So I got to wondering: how much of that could be replicated for little to no cost?
Here’s where my experiment led.
Website Launch: Credibility on a Budget
As best I can tell, it’s impossible to sell anything without a credible online presence. My first step, then, would be to build a website to showcase my scripts – and build in all of the SEO that would get me discovered. I chose a URL that I thought represented my business well – jdmillerscreen.com – and spent $26.99 to register it for a year with EasyDNS.
I was already using Google’s Gemini AI ($19.99 per month), so I fed it all my scripts. I tasked it with creating image mockups of key scenes from each, along with brief marketing blurbs (“loglines,” in industry-speak).
One Saturday morning, I merged these materials into a configurable “screenwriter website” template on Wix, paying $204 for a year of their “light” plan. By that afternoon, I was discoverable on Google.
I was “internet official!”
Scaling Social Media with AI and Automation
A website alone didn’t feel like enough credibility, so my next step was to build out a social media presence. This would help SEO, reinforce the website, and drive potential buyers there.
It seemed most TV movie people were on Instagram, so I created a free account for my screenwriting career there first. While I was at it, I also created Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) accounts using the same @jdmillerscreen handle for consistency.
Knowing I wouldn’t have the discipline to post to all these channels daily, I created an account at Buffer to automate it. They have a free plan that would have let me schedule up to 10 posts on each of my three social media profiles – but I opted for their $5/channel/month subscription, and wrote a few months’ worth of content in advance.
AI was helpful for this process, too – though it did take a bit of effort. I started by asking Gemini to write the text for twenty posts for each of my four movies, complete with with relevant hashtags and suggested images. I dropped each post into Buffer’s scheduling tool, then used Buffer’s AI to modify the text of each post – ensuring they were appropriate in tone, style, and length for each platform I was using.
It was tedious and tiring, but after a fair bit of manual effort and editing on my end, I knew that brand-appropriate content would show up on each of my channels daily, and I wouldn’t need to think about it again for about three more months.
Pinpoint Prospects: Where Selling Happens
In the 1989 movie Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner’s character builds a baseball field despite skepticism, with the belief that “if you build it, they will come.”
It may have worked in that movie, but with my sales background, I knew that building a website alone wouldn’t sell mine. That’s why the next step was to identify a target list of prospects.
A quick Google search led me to a helpful Entertainment Weekly article that listed all 116 Christmas movies that were made in 2023. (Yes, Hallmark bought many, but so did Lifetime, Netflix, BET+, Great American Family … even the horror channel Shudder TV bought a Christmas film!)
I wasn’t sure exactly who my buyer was, but I had a good sense that the people involved in these 116 shows would be a strong place to start. So, I paid $19.99 for one month of access to IMDB’s movie database, and began researching each film. It was a manual effort but I was able to identify the writer, writer’s agent, producers, executive producers, and directors of each film.
The website helpfully provided phone numbers and email addresses for a lot of these people – and I was suprised at how many are still using AOL! For almost everyone else, there was at least the production company’s website, where I could sleuth for email formats or other contact details.
The Tracking System: Affordable and Workable for This Size
In my full-time role, I’d rely on a CRM tool like Salesforce or HubSpot to track all this data. But for this project, a spreadsheet would have to do. I used Google Sheets (free with my gmail account), and made entries for everyone I found.
I was targeting multiple roles from each of the 116 movies. Many of the individuals in those roles worked on multiple films, so I ultimately compiled about 114 total contacts in my “database,” with up to three people identified at a few dozen production companies.
My Multi-Touch Communication Strategy
In my regular job, I know that it takes about 17 “touches” – including emails, phone calls, and LinkedIn connection requests – to get someone to take a sales call. For this project, I wasn’t going to cold-call 114 people multiple times. Instead, I decided to email everyone and then focus my calling on the most promising prospects.
I started by writing a test email to warm up my skills. I sent each contact a “fan letter” congratulating them on their recent movie(s). There was no specific call to action; it simply served as a great test to ensure my addresses were deliverable. I researched, refined, or removed contacts from my list if they bounced back.
A month later, I launched a six-email sequence, delivering one message each week: 
Email 1: An overview of me and my four movies
Email 2: An email specific to “Swipe Right for Christmas”
Email 3: An email specific to “A Very Elfin Christmas”
Email 4: An email specific to “Finding Love in Holly Valley”
Email 5: An email specific to “An Electric Christmas Connection”
Email 6: A wrap up email summarizing it all
The messages were pretty basic: a classic “F-shaped” email with plenty of whitespace, bolding, and a lot of links (to my website, social media, and to images or additional content that inspired each script).
Email Automation: Smart, Affordable Personalization
I wanted to personalize my messages, but I wasn’t about to buy an expensive marketing automation tool.
A bit of web research led me to Mailsuite – an online tool that would integrate with my gmail account, and read the data from my list of contacts in Google Sheets, making it easy to schedule 114 messages reading “Dear FIRSTNAME: Congratulations on your work on YOUR MOVIES being aired on THE STREAMING CHANNEL!”
Even better, for $19.99, their advanced feature suite would notify me via a popup or email every time someone clicked a link in my messages. I could also access a dashboard for on-demand reporting of who was opening my messages multiple times (a sign to me that they were interested, or forwarding it around their company).
While I wasn’t going to cold call all hundred-plus contacts each week, I certainly had time to call anyone interested enough to click a link, or who showed this level of interest – and the real-time alerting meant I was often calling while they were browsing my site.
When I had a real conversation, I manually removed that prospect from the rest of the sequence. Of course, I also used Mailsuite’s tools to comply with relevant email marketing laws, respecting opt-out requests.
The Result: Tangible Traction for $580.86
My total out of pocket costs for six months of this sales and marketing experiment came in at just under $600.
Here’s the $580.86 breakdown:
EasyDNS URL registration (1 year upfront): $26.99
Google Gemini AI ($19.99/month for 6 months): $119.94
Wix “Light” plan (1 year upfront): $204.00
Buffer subscription ($5/channel/month for 3 channels for 6 months): $90.00
IMDB.com access (1 month): $19.99
Mailsuite ($19.99/month for 6 months): $119.94
While I haven’t earned any movie writing royalties yet, I suspect that’s more a reflection of the product being marketed than the process used. The sales metrics are pretty encouraging:
114 Contacts Targeted
3 contacts asked to be unsubscribed or said they are not interested.
14 contacts requested copies of different scripts to read
2 contacts asked to include the scripts in their company’s package of pitches they are shopping to TV channels
1 contact has asked for extensive re-writes on a specific script
I always coach sellers to stay professionally persistent. While most people give up after two or three messages, the results of my six-message sequence show that the best response actually came from the final message.
Email 6’s message was inspired by the Sandler Pendulum, and said, in effect “I’ve sent you one email every week for the last five weeks, and gotten no response. I’m assuming you’re not interested, and will give your inbox a break by stopping now.” Two recipients called that day to set up meetings, and ten requested scripts to read.
The Closing Scene
My experiment in holiday movie writing showed me something valuable: effective lead generation isn’t reserved for companies with endless resources. For under $600 spent over six months, I built a credible online presence, automated my social media, identified key prospects, implemented a multi-touch email campaign, and gained valuable insights into audience engagement.
It’s true that my screenwriting millions haven’t rolled in just yet (the tea-spilling joke might need work!), the tangible sales metrics speak for themselves. Generating interest, securing script requests, and even prompting rewrite discussions from industry professionals with such a lean approach demonstrates the power of strategic, persistent outreach—even when running a solo operation.
The process may be rough and involve a lot of effort, but you can build surprisingly effective lead generation systems with readily available, low-cost tools applied to established sales principles. Don’t let a “startup budget” deter you from thinking big – we all start somewhere!
