How Jacques scaled his cold email agency from $0k/month to $27k/month

It sounds like you've been booking anywhere from five to ten calls a month consistently for your business. As a cold email agency, you've been booking 15 to 25 calls a month for a handful of your clients, which is super impressive. We'll talk about that. For people that are doing cold email, I'm sure you have a lot of good info to share and then most importantly, you're able to scale your business literally from zero to $27,000 a month in revenue. What's going on, guys? Andre Hagel Jr. Back with another case study interview for Client Ascension at actually, we call it a student spotlight interview. I've been doing a lot of these recently, so apologies, but I'm here with my friend Jacques. What's going on, brother?

Yo, what's going on? Andre. Andre. Andre. Sorry.

Hey, my name's Easy. You're. I'm like, I'm like, I'm like rehearsing your name before the interview, making sure I get it right.

I know it was all one sided. I forgot to do it for you.

It's all good, man. Well, thank you for, for being here and I'm just pumped to have you on today to talk about the success that you've seen in the Client Ascension program. So real quick, just based on the information you shared before, it sounds like you've been booking anywhere from five to ten calls a month consistently for your business. As a cold email agency, you've been booking 15 to 25 calls a month for a handful of your clients, which is super impressive. We'll talk about that. For people that are doing cold email, I'm sure you have a lot of good info to share. Um, and then most importantly, you were able to scale your business literally from zero to $27,000 a month in revenue. So let's get straight into it. If you want to just give a quick intro into who you are, what your business is and then how. How the hell do you go from 0 to 27k? How long does it take? Tell us the full story, we'll pass it to you.

All right, well, it's a long story, but I'll try and make it. I'll give you the short version or I'll try to. So feel free to ask any questions as I go along, of course. But yeah. So I'm Jacques. I'm from England. I live in the Midlands, in a small spa town in the middle of nowhere really. And I started a cold email agency. So how I got from zero to now, it's actually 28k in US dollars in revenue. How I did that was first of all, number one is the expectation setting is really very important. So I would say you need to go in it with the attitude that this is indeed going to be extremely hard. So a big lesson in humility that I had was. I don't know why, but I was, I was so arrogant at the beginning. When I first started trying to create an agency, I spun up like an agency offer, like basically picked an ICP out of a hat and a service out of the hat. I tried to do. You don't know this, but I tried to do YouTube ads for online wealth coaches and consultants. Anyway, I didn't pay for help. I had no coaching whatsoever. And I basically wasted like nine months of my life acquiring one client that was. I didn't really get paid for. And like, he wasn't qualified and it was just, it's just bad all around. I actually even hired a guy to like help me fulfill with the YouTube ad because of course I didn't know what I was doing and I felt like guilty playing someone's money anyway, of course I had no frame whatsoever because this guy was the expert and I wasn't. So I couldn't even really tell him what to do. So it was just a disaster all around. So after those nine months, I got absolutely sick to death of just failing at acquiring clients. And so that's when I started investing in like coaching programs. And I actually did take a coaching program just before client ascension and then I came to client ascension later on. But it was both through client ascension and this previous coaching program that you guys taught me just how to cold email actually effectively. And of course, as soon as I actually paid for help and I was, I learned that lesson in humility. Of course, when you listen to someone's advice that's already been there before, it's crazy, but it just works because they've already solved all of the problems there. So basically how I did it was I listened to the people ahead of me and I just did what they said and I made sure to be. I think you do have to be mentally strong though. On a mindset side. I'd say like you have to be, you have to carry, you have to this burden of uncertainty. Like you just don't know whether everything's actually going to pay off in the end. But if you can deal with that and just keep moving forward a bit at a time, then really, if you never quit that and you're always learning to some degree, you can even be kind of Like a bit of a moron. But if you're always learning and you don't give up, then eventually you will just actually like, make it work. So, yeah, I'd say I did it.

That's awesome. That's awesome. And it's so, it's so spot on. It's so realistic and accurate. And I've done, you know, I think at this point, 75 to 100 of these interviews. And so I hear it all the time. But like, that is the number one takeaway from what makes students in our program successful is that they actually do what we tell them to do. And why that works is because we don't just run a coaching program like I always tell people, and I'm a coaching program business owner. I say that coaching programs aren't real businesses, right? So I'm like kind of speaking against myself. But the reason I say that is because out of all the businesses I've ever run and still run to this day, I run a recruiting agency, I run a software company, and then I run a coaching program. The coaching program being, you know, the smallest of all of those businesses. What I've realized is like, the coaching program is the easiest run because it's not a real business. Like, it doesn't work the same way a business like your agency works or like my agency works or my software company works. And so if you're learning from someone that just runs a coaching program, chances are they're not really going to have the experience to get necessary to tell you what to do that's actually going to work. And so you should be cautionary when, when doing everything that they tell you to do, because those aren't things that they've done necessarily right. So that's why I think client attention's worked so consistently for so long, is because we are out there implementing these things ourselves in our own software company and agency businesses that we know it works because it's working right now for us, not in our coaching program, but in actual businesses similar to the ones that you guys as students are running. But I want to go into more of like the mindset because, like, implementing what we say to implement. Like, it sounds great, like, okay, yeah, it's easy, like, I'll sign up and I'll do exactly what they tell me to do. But it's not as simple as you implement it and it works immediately. It quite often goes in a way that you would never expect that completely throws you off and makes you doubt what we're telling you will eventually work. And so what goes into like the mindset and the thought process on a day to day when you're implementing some of this stuff and it's frustrating or it's taking longer than expecting, or it's completely against what you thought you should actually be doing. And maybe even touch on how we have mindset coaching in the program for this exact reason with Mario Lanzarote.

Absolutely. And I actually just had a call with Mario recently and he completely changed my. What Mario can do and what like a good mindset coach can do is just really reframe your perspectives. Because I think Homozy said this a while ago. I think he's only into like saying now develop skills, but at a time he was saying changing your beliefs is one of like the highest leverage things you can do. And you'll hear people talk about like, oh, it's a limiting belief and blah, blah, blah, but it's absolutely true. It's, it's, it's a little bit cheesy, but it's absolutely true because you can't, sometimes you do have to just change what you believe is actually possible in order to, for you to be motivated to actually believe in it enough to actually do the actions that will then result in that outcome. So if you don't, if you're not changing your perspective and obviously like asking for help with people, this is what the coaching does most of all. Like, you just tell me how to think and it's like I can almost download what like you or Daniel would actually think and then just apply it to my own business, like what to do next with action. But I would say like mindset wise, I always try and rely on like just a few truisms. Like when, when you're in a coaching program, like a good one, like client ascension, you should have clarity. Like the roadmap should look pretty clear. You should know what to do. But it's, it's simple, therefore, but it's not easy. And so like it's easy for like you guys to like say do xyz, but of course like the grind of it is so much more painful. And so it's simple, but it's not easy. But yeah, that's it.

That's awesome, man. So, so let's dive in to like, okay, like you started at zero. How long ago was that? Just for context for the audience.

This is like, I'd say just over two years ago now. Yeah, so it's been a while.

And then what were some of those like, like, how would you like if you had to Put it into chapters. Like, was there a 0 to 10, a 10 to 20?

Oh my goodness. I can't wait to answer this question because I have, I have a to do list that is about two years old and I set it. So because it was such a grind and so horrible to begin with, I decided like, what is a good way to. Because I'm spending so much of my time doing this, I need to find a way to actually enjoy it. And the best way I found of actually like enjoying the work was to just gamify it. So I used to play like a lot of Call of Duty in my teenage years and like video games and stuff. And it was always really fun. Just like, you know, ranking up your prestige and then, you know, getting more attachments and getting better guns. You accumulate all of this XP and you can trade that experience for like higher leverage things. So like in a business context you would trade xp. Like you just do the reps, do the reps, do the reps. Now suddenly like you have a little bit of a network now, you have more case studies now you can charge more now your fulfillment's better. So you're retaining clients better. And all of these things compound. So, so they compound all at once. And it's just, you know, you obviously heard that phrase, like when it rains, it pours. And that is the experience that I felt in the last couple months, like everything just coming together and all compounding sort of at the same time. And that's when like it feels like things are really growing fast. Hopefully that answered your question.

Oh, for sure, man, that's. That's awesome to hear. I love how you gamified it too, because that's like the only way to stay in it. I feel like you have to, you have to enjoy the experience and the ride because it's gonna beat you down quite often. And if you don't have like any fun in the day to day, I just think you burn out real fast. So it's awesome that you've been stuck with it for two years now and have achieved 27k a month. That's awesome, dude. Like really, really successful student here. And I think another thing that we should spend a couple minutes talking about, that the audience will get a lot of value from is cold email. Right? I mean, you've been around for two years, so you've probably so many times that cold email is dead and that cold email doesn't work anymore and it's over and this is it. What are we going to do now? But we're sitting here in June 2025, the same way we were sitting here, you know, four years ago, five years ago, when even I got into it. And cold email is working just as well as it ever has. And that's pretty evident with the results that you've been able to get for some clients booking 15 to 25 calls. So what do you have to say to the people out there that are claiming that cold email is dead?

Oh, yeah. Oh my goodness. Well, I love it. I hope they keep doing that because more clients for me in that case. Yeah, I love talking about if cold email is dead or not because I'm currently getting way better results for my clients than I ever have before. And I'd say like during these two years, I'd say, like, I'd say there's about like a cold email apocalypse probably every six months or so where something changes. And but here's what you need to know is that every time you get through one of those cold email apocalypses, I tend to be in a better spot than I was before. So, like, you can still improve it. And that's what I've been able to do for myself and for my clients as well. So trust me when I say cold email is definitely alive and well. For sure, for sure, for sure. And of course, like nowadays when I first started, there weren't tools like clay for like list building. And so like, if you can harness these skills, then you are on the cutting edge of cold email and you can just literally make it work better than all of your competitors. And I think I've heard like Eric Novoslowski say this where it's just about outrunning the bear, I think he says, which is like everyone else is trying to cold email these prospects too. So you just have to be better than them. You don't. It doesn't literally have to be the best cold email of all time if it's like a completely unsaturated market. They've never really heard like these hormozy style offers before. It's pretty simple. Just email them with a good value proposition. And something I have learned about cold email that I do want to say is that it's absolutely true what they say regarding the offer. It is by far and away like the most important leverage is the offer. And I would suggest to people there are two ways you can go about offers inside of an opening cold email. And so I like to think of it that you can only really do one of these two things that actually works. And it can be a Direct offer, like a sexy hormozy style offer that's like really simple, easy to understand, maybe like a guarantee or a lot of businesses don't want to offer those sort of like guarantees and stuff. So what you can do instead is a service based lead magnet. So basically you're just selling free work. And so the perspective that I like to come at it from is obviously research the prospects you're about to reach out to, but really think to yourself, what is a favor I could do for those prospects that they know that they would usually have to pay for. So a question like I often ask some of my clients is when they do become a paying client, what are the first few things that you do? And it's like, oh maybe we do like a roadmap map or a blueprint and we do like XYZ or we create like a mini mockup or we do like an audit their SEO, blah blah blah. It's like, well okay, well how about we try and like offer those things up front before they become a paying client and if you can tie it in with solving a really specific pain point, then you're good to go and people should respond.

Yeah, dude, that's so, that's so helpful I think for the audience listening and like you just heard it again, probably not for the first time. But like the offer really does dictate the success of your cold email campaigns more than anything else. Number two, it's pretty easy nowadays to be on the cutting edge of cold email, especially being in a program like Client Ascension, which we'll talk more about in a second. But also pretty clearly like cold email is not dead. And if you choose to think that cold email is dead, then thanks. You just gave us more business and more opportunity for us. But also you know, we're here to help and we really don't want you to buy into that fear based marketing. And like the whole thing is too. It's like you're chasing the bear, right? Or outrunning the bear. Essentially you have to do that no matter what business you choose. It's like this, this isn't just specific to cold email. I mean especially with AI is changing the way every business is being run for email marketing agencies they have to fight against. Why should I just, why should I hire you instead of just using AI to write my emails for me and all the AI tools that the softwares like Klaviyo are coming out with. And it's like no matter what industry or market you serve or service you provide, like you are always out running the bear that is business at the end of the day. And so, like, people love to complain and romanticize like how cold email used to be. And it's like those are the guys that fall behind and lose. And I've seen it. Like, the guys that were doing cold email when I started five years ago are not the same guys that are doing cold email anymore. And the only reason I think that I'm successful with, with my cold email businesses is because I've stayed in the game longer than anyone else has. And that's not just me, it's my businesses and my business partners like Daniel, the cold email wizard who started it all. Really, like, we've stayed in it, but we have not pivoted off of cold email. And like, if there's any strategy that works better than anything else, it's. It's just outlasting the competition. It's stamina. Right. So anyways, I wanted to talk more a little bit about how a program like Client Ascension helps stay on the cutting edge of cold email and specifically having access to some of the best cold emailers in the world, like Nick Abraham, Matt Lucero, cold Email Chris as like actual cold email coaches, and then just the community in general. There's a lot of smart people in there. So what has your experience been like with that?

Yeah. Oh my goodness. Well, first of all, I just want to say Client Ascension is by far and away the best coaching program I've ever joined. For sure you don't know this, but I was actually in two minds about buying Client Ascension and I think Daniel said this in one of his YouTube videos and I think he had the example of like, if you, if you're trying to buy a screwdriver on Amazon and one is like ten pounds and another one's like two pounds or whatever, but the two pound one only has like one review, but the ten pound one has like hundreds of five star reviews. It's like several times more expensive, but the likelihood that it's actually going to work is so much higher. And I remember thinking, well, I don't really care what the price is because really the outcome I want is the outcome I want. I want to grow my business. And so who are going to be the most like the highest likelihood of success? Just like the hormones here question. And I thought, well, client Ascension is more expensive. But I like checked out the reviews. I've been watching you guys for years, to be honest, and I've seen all the case studies on Daniel's channel and your Channel. And yeah, I just thought I'm gonna go for it. Client extension is clearly gonna give me, like, the highest likelihood of success. And I'm so, so, so glad I did that because. So I would break it down in several ways as to why client extension is so good. Number one and probably, like, the most underrated is the community. So, like, not only do you have access to all the coaches, but you can just ask the community of, like, there's so many people doing, say, cold email. I'm a cold emailer, but, like, there's so many people that have probably reached out to an ICP that you've not reached out to yet. Like, I'm a cold email agency owner, but there are some, like, random guys just like sending cold emails to, like an industry that I'm about to send out to. And so, like, it can be really useful to talk to these guys to just see, like, how they might scrape the leads or what might have worked for. For. Another thing with client extension is that the status delta of all of the coaches is absolutely insane. Like, these guys are top, top, top, top, top, top, top. And like, I use smart Lead. I have access to the founder of Smart Lead inside of Client Ascension Insane. I have access to Nick Abraham who has like over 200 clients. So, like, the belief of like, oh, maybe will it scale to 100k a month? Well, I absolutely know for absolute certainty that Nick is like way beyond that point. So of course it can definite definitely work. And if you have access to these guys, it's just really hard to go wrong because you might be stressing about a problem, like, a lot, like, I don't know, hiring an inbox manager or like some part of fulfillment maybe. And then you'll go to Nick's call and Nick will be like, oh, just do this. And then you're like, oh, yeah. Like, it's so simple and like, the way he put it, he's just clearly solved this problem over and over and over and over and over again like a bajillion times. And so it just gives you a reassurance that like, what they're saying is actually going to work. But of course, like, always just verify and test. It's already verified by mere fact that they are a client ascension coach and that they have been there before. But yeah, so I would say the community, the coaching and think about a problem like, a lot, like, I don't know, hiring an inbox manager or like some part of fulfillment maybe. And then you'll go to Nick's call And Nick will be like, oh, just do this. And then you're like, oh, yeah. Like, it's so simple. And like the way he put it, it's just clearly solved this problem over and over and over and over and over again like a bajillion times. And so it just gives you a reassurance that like what they're saying is actually going work. But of course, like always just verify and test. It's already verified by mere fact that they are a client ascension coach and that they have been there before. But yeah, so I would say the community, the coaching. And then of course, like going back to the belief, breaking like the limiting beliefs and stuff and just changing perspective on things. That's how client decision has helped me.

Awesome, man. Dude, I'm so happy to hear. And I'm happy you made the decision ultimately to join the program because clearly it's hard a big impact on your journey. But like I said in the beginning is it's really like your willingness to follow our lead and our direction and our coaching that will make you successful. Right. Because we could sit there and coach you all day long, but if you don't do anything with it, nothing's going to happen.

Absolutely. You have to try. Like, I want to tell that to people. You do actually have to try. You can't go in it with the attitude of, oh, we'll see if it works. It's like, no, you're gonna make it work and you have all the help that you need to make it work. Like, I don't know if you. Like, when I was at school, I used to. I tried hard in school. So, like, I would actually like, try and do well in my exams. But like, you'd hear a lot of people in class be like, oh, I'm not gonna revise hard for this exam because, like, my teacher isn't so good. And it's like, bitch, just do the work. Just like, it doesn't matter if your teacher's bad. Like, you can still get an A if you try. There are things within your control, things like not within your control and things that you can influence. Things like building your business. It's almost one of those things that you can just control. Like you can heavily, heavily influence it at the very. So if you're not listening to the people that you're like getting coaching from and you've paid for their advice, then you may as well just burn money.

That's it. Or just not be in business for yourself because that's a disqualifier like immediately like, what I, what comes to mind for me with what you just said is if you have a victim mentality, you're not cut out to run your own business. You're just not cut out to run your own business because nobody is going to entertain those thoughts and nobody's going to feel bad for you. At the end of the day, you bear all the way to responsibility of running your own business and victim mentality is not going to get you anywhere. So the sooner you get over that and fall into the mentality that you're talking about, which is like, I'm going to make this work one way or another, there's no reason this can't work for me. If it can work for all these other guys that Andre's interviewed, that's when you're going to start to tap into your potential and, and start to see some success. And there's no timeline for like, as soon as you take on this mindset and do what we say, you're immediately going to see results. Like, it's going to take time. And I say as long as you're willing to commit to this for a year. And that's not even a big ask. I mean, I've been doing it for six years myself. Sounds like you've been doing it for over two years at this point. But like, you have to bare minimum commit to doing this for a year and going hard at it. Like not half and half out, like all the way in for an entire year. And that's why our programs mapped out to be a year long program so that you have the support you need to go all in for an entire year. And for the ones that do, it turns out pretty well. So my question was going to be like, what advice you have for students that aren't seeing success right away or right now. And we've pretty much co answered that question.

So I'd love to leave on this note, which is going back to what you said about going all in. So here's my version of going all in. So I knew that when I finished university, I was sold on the idea of entrepreneurship and like building a business by Tim Ferriss, four Hour Work Week. So it was decided there and then. I was absolutely, I must build a business. Now coming out of university, I came.

From, by the way, that book is a scheme. It really only takes three hours.

But during that time I thought to myself, okay, I'm definitely gonna build a business. I have to go all in. I know you guys, like, in America you have like your Ivy League universities in England. The equivalent is like Russell Group universities. And so I, I came out of university with like a decent degree from like a decent university and I had the option of getting like a, I don't know, like a 30k a year full time management job that I didn't really want to do, blah blah, blah. But I said no, no, I'm not going to do that because I don't want to be handcuffed in like golden handcuffs, so to speak. And so I want to put myself in a position. I basically engineered this horrible environment for myself. So I said I want a minimum wage job that I'm only going to work part time and that only just covers the rent. And the only way out of that job is for me to make my business work. But of course like if I'm only working part time and I'm barely like making rent then that is going to motivate me to actually like try really, really hard and therefore go all in with the business. And it took me about like a year, a year and a half maybe until I'd actually left that. Funny story actually they actually fired me in the end. And then the very next month my business made like 10k USD revenue for like the first time ever. And I actually managed to like make it work from then on. Yeah, I actually thought I was gonna get like.

You have to put the pressure on. Yeah, like you have to. I did the same thing when I was graduating college. Like I, I knew like my parents would really pressure me into getting a job because they'd always ask like what's your plan? And if I didn't have, you know, foolproof plan, they weren't going to let me, you know, hang around at home any longer. So I put a timeline on it and I said by the time I graduate like this business needs to be supporting my ideal lifestyle. And at that time it was only you know, getting the business to 21k a month because there are three partners and that's you know, kind of what we estimated we'd make if we were to go into job market right away. And that was within like a six month time frame. And we made it happen. And like we wouldn't have made it happen in that time frame if we were like loosey goosey about it and didn't put pressure on ourselves. But you have to be willing to put your yourself in like an uncomfortable situation because what do you do in those situations? Naturally like you find a way out.

100% just bet on yourself and actually go all in. It makes you say it's a power as well when you do that. Like, it makes you feel like a G to be like, yeah, you know what? I'm just gonna take this burden and run with it on my shoulders. Like, let's do this. It's cool.

How to build confidence is just keep the promises you make to yourself. It's like inputs. It's not necessarily about getting insane results. It's like just showing up exactly how you committed to showing up. If you join a coaching program, go through the coaching program, bro, you'd be shocked how many people sign up. They'll like, send a couple messages in the beginning and then they'll ghost. And then at the end of the six months or the year long time that they're in the program, we'll be like, hey, like, what happened? And they're like, I didn't get any results, so I'm not going to continue. And it's like, you didn't show up for six months except to tell us that you're not continuing. And it's like, what do you expect? Like, when you join a coaching program, you got to go all in. You got to attend the calls, go through the content, connect and mingle with other students. Like, ask thoughtful questions, implement, and then share what happens after you implement. And it's like, if you don't do that, that's the bare minimum, by the way. If you don't do that, like, you have to have zero expectations at that point. So anyways, this was a master class on, like just setting the record straight as to what's required or what it really means to go all in on your business and that the fact that it is required for you to go all in on your business to make it work or to at least get results like what Jacques is getting and what we've seen from our software company, our coaching program, and our different agencies that we run. So anyways, bro, where can the audience find you and follow you and connect with you online? And I always say, if you're inclined Ascension, shoot them a DM on Slack. That's always where our students are connecting. But for anyone else, where can they find you online?

Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. So my name is Jack Suttel. It's spelled J, A, C, Q, U, E, S and then S, U, T, T, L. That's where you can find me.

Awesome, man. Thank you so much, bro. Congrats again on your success. I mean, just now getting to speak to you in this format and hearing kind of your outlook on things and your mindset. Like, dude, you're gonna have massive success for a long time to come. So I'm really looking forward to keeping up with that and even learning. For me, this is the best part about being in a community like Client Ascension is, like, you don't just learn from the coaches. You learn from successful students as well. And there's so many successful students that you guys can be learning from. So check out Jacques on social media. And then for Client Ascension, you guys know where to find us. It's just client ascension.com. you can find all the information about the program, but called our team, and if it makes sense, we hope to see you in there. Otherwise, keep crushing it, and we'll see you guys back here for the next one. Peace.