Team briefing · 26 August 2026 · ten minutes
Apollo, explained once, properly.
What it is, what it costs, what the AI does and doesn't do, and why nine companies matter more than nine hundred.
01 · What it is
It's a phone book. That's the whole thing.
Apollo is a database of about 220 million working people at 30 million companies, wrapped in a tool that sends email and tracks who replied.
It is not a lead source. It does not know who wants to buy insurance, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. What it knows is narrow and useful: who works where, what their job title is, how big the company really is, and what their work email address is.
The only sentence that matters
The Form 5500 filings tell us which companies have a plan. Apollo tells us who to actually call. Neither one is worth much on its own — together they're a prospect list nobody else in Houston is building.
02 · The problem it solves
Our list had 69 contacts. A quarter were the wrong person.
This is not an edge case. 17 of our 69 filings name an outside administrator — a bookkeeping firm that files for several unrelated employers — rather than anyone who works at the company. Emailing "Hi Marcus, I see you handle benefits at Moana Minerals" to five different companies is how you get a domain blacklisted in a week.
03 · How it works, end to end
Six steps. Two cost money. Four don't.
Why the free/paid split matters more than it sounds
You can spend an hour narrowing a search to exactly the right nine people and it costs nothing. The moment you click Access email, you've spent money you can't get back. So: search endlessly, reveal sparingly. Never more than two people per company, and never someone you aren't contacting this month.
04 · Where the AI actually sits
The AI does the reading. People do the talking.
This matters because the honest version is more useful than the impressive version — and because the split is what keeps us compliant.
What runs today vs what's being built
| Capability | Status | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Company matching + headcount | Live | Done for 34 accounts. Free, so it runs on everything. |
| Decision-maker discovery | Live | 12 verified contacts found across 9 companies. |
| Copy drafting + segmentation | Live | Three sequences written. You edit, you send. |
| Per-prospect 5500 Snapshot | Live | One page per company, generated from public filings. |
| Auto-enrich on new lead | Building | A form fill on the website will enrich itself before anyone opens it. |
| Renewal-month calendar | Building | The highest-value field we don't have yet. Free and public — it just needs writing. |
| Nightly sync back to /admin | Building | Replies and outcomes appear in Hipson's system without anyone copying them. |
| Unattended sending | Never | Not a roadmap item. A deliberate permanent no. |
05 · Why it will work
Because it already caught things a person wouldn't have.
Round 1 ran on 25 August. It cost twelve credits and no dollars. Here's what it found in an afternoon.
600
BioUrja's real headcount. The filing said 131 participants. Far too big for us — removed before we wrote a word.
1,900
Radix's real headcount. Filed 48. A global engineering firm. Also removed.
2
Filings where the named contact was an outside bookkeeper, corrected to the real person.
12
Verified decision-maker emails, across 9 Houston employers, for 12 credits.
The reason a stranger replies
Every competitor's first touch asks for something — census data, claims history, "fifteen minutes to learn about your business."
Ours arrives already knowing. The 5500 Snapshot is one page about their company, built from their own public filing, that took four minutes and cost nothing. It required nothing from them.
That's not a clever trick. It's just doing the homework before the meeting, which almost nobody does.
The reason nine beats nine hundred
Nine companies, all within 22 minutes of the office, where we know the headcount, the plan size, the decision maker's name, and whether most of their staff are even enrolled.
A list of nine hundred strangers gets you a spam complaint and a dead sending domain. A complaint costs more than a meeting is worth, because the domain also carries client mail.
Round 1 is deliberately small. That is the strategy, not a limitation.
06 · What you actually do
Open Tasks. Work down the list. That's the job.
Apollo has a Tasks screen. Everything you need to do that day is on it, in order. You never have to go looking.
- An email task. Read the draft. Change at least one thing so it isn't identical to the last nine. Send.
- A call task. Ring the direct line. First attempt — no voicemail. Second attempt — leave one, and mention the email.
- A LinkedIn task. Connect. No note. A note converts worse.
- A drop task. Print the Renewal Runway, drive it over, hand it to the front desk. Everyone on this list is inside 22 minutes.
- A reply. Stop the sequence for that person immediately, and answer as yourself. The campaign is over for them.
Three things that would undo all of it
Writing to a name on the blacklist. Marcus Bowie · Qian Liu · Kenesha Brown · Richard Tatum · Nick Rice · Edward Rojas. These are outside bookkeepers who appear on several unrelated filings. Never, at any company.
Cold-contacting the two exclusions. C-Mar Group Holdings — Michael Hipson is its listed plan administrator, so it's an existing relationship. Gush Education — said no on 14 August, and we respect that.
Letting a sequence run past a reply. Sending step 5 to someone who answered step 3 is the fastest way to look like a machine. Apollo usually catches it. Usually is not always.
07 · Where we are
One thing stands between us and the first send.
| Piece | Status |
|---|---|
| Apollo account, credits, enrichment | Done — 12 contacts saved, 173 credits left |
| Sequences, copy, lead magnets | Done — three worksheets live on the site |
Sending mailbox michael@go.hipsoninvestments.com | In progress — nothing can send until this exists |
| Compliance review of the retirement copy | Waiting — SEQ-B is held until it clears |
| Renewal-month calendar | Next build — the most valuable thing we still don't have |
Deeper detail lives on the Outreach engine page — the full campaign, the copy, the warming schedule and the account-by-account overrides.