The antidote to 20 cold emails a week is a workshop room

Thursday afternoon, quarter past two. The NinA AI banners from our office are set up in a bigger room on the second floor. Normally we host workshops in our own workshop space, today we had to move to a larger one. Claude Workshop = sold out. Next week sold out too. And somewhere halfway through the afternoon, while someone builds their first Claude Skill and audibly says "ohhh", I think: this isn't a workshop anymore. This delivers so much value I might not even need to do sales anymore.

The thing 20 cold emails a week don't do

An innovation manager told me something this week I can't let go of:

"We get about 20 emails a week from AI startups. Really, every week."

Twenty. At one company. Per week. That's more than four per working day.

Every AI agency in the country is knocking on the exact same 100 doors. Everyone writes the same email, with the same promise ("we can automate your processes", "we've helped 10 companies like yours"), in exactly the same way.

Generic AI produces generic pitches. Makes sense.

So the question isn't "how do I write a better cold email." The question is: what do you do to stand out, to show your value.

My answer, after almost three years building NinA AI: you invite them. Not for a sales call. For a workshop.

The Claude Workshop

Thursday we ran the Claude Workshop at our office. We had room for one group, but registrations kept coming in and we had to move to a larger space. That probably says enough.

What happened that afternoon is something I can't get out of a sales process, no matter how well it goes.

People who'd never built a Claude Skill built one. People who thought CoWork was for developers used it within fifteen minutes to plough through their drive. And they got to know me — outside LinkedIn, in real life.

Even more important: they got to know my team. They saw how we think, how we prioritize, and what questions we ask before we start anywhere.

Three weeks ago those same people might have recognised us in their inbox as "another AI startup." Now they know us as "the office where I built my first Skill on a Thursday."

Next week is sold out again. In July and August we're running the AI Summer School, with a Pro workshop on top for people who want to go further. I'm still debating whether we should add one in June. Honestly: I think the answer is yes.

What Sanne taught me at Lofi Amsterdam

The evening before our workshop I was at an event by Sanne Cornelissen. Sanne and I have become good (AI) friends — we're in a small AI circle that forwards each other fun assignments. Maybe it's because we're both Limburgers in Amsterdam, but mostly because Sanne is a damn good speaker who really knows what she's talking about. She's an AI author. I was there for the launch of her second book: This is not AI.

Venue: Lofi Amsterdam. A place you usually go for a good party. A stage, a packed room, a few familiar AI faces, a DJ, drinks afterwards.

It was an old-school, well-organised event. The way an event should be.

What struck me standing there wasn't the stage or the book. It was this: a great event doesn't feed your brand for one evening. It feeds your content for months. Every photo, every quote, every snippet from that night will still be circulating next quarter. It's an investment with a long tail.

I'm taking that to our own events. It's not about the evening itself. It's about what the evening turns on: conversations, content, trust, proposals.

My own sales struggles

Honest: the past few weeks I looked at our pipeline and something bothered me.

We have 46 deals in pipeline. For the growth we want, we need about 100. That gap is twice our current state, and it can't be fixed with more cold outreach. We tried. It doesn't work, for the reason above.

The leak isn't at the front either. Plenty of interest. Plenty of first meetings.

The leak is in the part I underestimated until recently: between "we've met" and "we're going to build something together." That's exactly where AI Consult lives. And exactly what events lay the foundation for.

In practice it goes like this:

Someone comes to a workshop. That's AI Knowledge. They actually learn to use AI, and get intrigued. Two weeks later that same person calls: "Olaf, can we look at how we'd set this up?" That's AI Consult. We map the processes, find where the real wins are, and build a plan together. Only then does AI Build follow. Because only then do we know exactly what we're building, for whom, and why.

What I didn't realise for a long time: the workshop isn't marketing for AI Build. The workshop is step 1 of AI Build.

From builder to AI partner

For clients there's an important shift here too. They don't want an "AI builder" anymore. They want an AI partner. Someone who thinks along from the first workshop, who brings their people along, and only builds when building is right.

A branch manager at a large construction firm put it sharply this week:

"Our AI agent can't be a modified version of what our competitor uses. Our agent is ours."

That's exactly why it has to happen in steps. What's yours, only you know. You don't get that from a quote. You get it from a process where we learn first, analyse second, and only then build.

And that starts, as it turns out, on a Thursday afternoon. In a room. With coffee, screens, and people audibly saying "ohhh".

What this means for the coming months

Concretely, three things.

One: we're expanding the Claude Workshop. Next week is sold out, July and August are the AI Summer School, and we'll probably add a session in June. Not because we have sales targets on events. Because this is the channel where the right people get to know us the right way.

Two: we're upgrading AI Consult into a proper product. No longer an intermediate step toward building, but a track of its own. The clients who benefit most from AI Build are the ones who first properly understood what they're building, and why.

Three: we're making our team more visible at events. One of NinA AI's pitfalls so far has been this: clients only know me. That has to change. Workshops are where people get to know the team and see that NinA AI is bigger than one founder.

Two years ago our sales pitch was a keynote with slides. A year ago it was a good conversation. Today it's a sold-out workshop room on a Thursday afternoon, where people build their first Skill themselves, where Sanne's lessons on branding feed me, and where the 21st cold email of the week gets ignored by someone who says: "I was at Olaf's workshop this week."

That's the funnel we were looking for all this time.

Until next time,

Olaf Lemmens

Founder NinA AI Agency

P.S. Want to experience what happens in a workshop yourself? Plan an intro call. Or visit www.nina-ai.nl