Behind The Scenes Of Signing An 8 Figure Brand

I just signed one of my dream clients, an 8-figure brand that I actually use and buy every single year. And when I think about how this deal happened, it didn't come from a cold email, it didn't come from an ad, it came from a relationship. And that's the thing nobody tells you about growing an agency. The deals that change your business don't come from outreach, they come from people who already trust you. It took me a long time to figure that out. Early on, I was doing what everyone does, grinding cold outreach, trying to pitch my way in. But once I stopped selling and started building real relationships, everything changed. Platter's now past $250K a month and the pipeline has never been stronger. So today I'm bringing you along for a full day showing you how I actually build relationships with prospects, clients, and other founders live. The behind the scenes stuff that nobody shows you that actually closes deals. Enjoy this week's vlog. What's the plan for today? Going to go get a boxing workout in, and then I have a meeting with an amazing person who runs a brand that we are going to work with for Platter. Meetings and calls. A lot of stuff around driving new business and closing deals. The main lesson in this vlog and the thing that I want to show you guys is just how I actually do go-to-market and like the different tactics that I've used from a business development perspective to build Platter into one of the fastest growing agencies to get to Shopify Platinum status. I am releasing a YouTube video this weekend that, in my opinion, is the best video that we've ever created. It's the journey of training for a boxing fight and doing it. And that boxing fight was largely inspired by a guy named Jesse Itzler, who is a very successful entrepreneur who started this concept called a misogi. And in 2025, my misogi was to sign up for a boxing fight. The reason it's a very cool full circle moment is my friend Taylor's coming over after we go to the gym, and she runs the brand Big Ass Calendar, which is Jesse Itzler's brand. Not only because we're going to work with them for Platter, it's partially like relationship building because we want to be good partners, understand how we can make them successful. But there's this very cool full circle moment where like she's coming over not only to talk about working with Platter, but I'm also going to show her the the YouTube video today because it releases tomorrow. And so I think there's just a lesson in the middle of this of trying to like tie your personal life into your professional life and like bringing those goals together and intertwining the people you spend your time with and how you tell that story because it's so authentic that it just makes it easier for me to talk about everything, if that makes sense. Time to go work out. He kicked my ass for like 5 months. I'm gonna fucking murder him. He's gonna give up like 10 times today, I guarantee it. I want a dent in there. I want a dent in the fucking bag. Dude, that was the hardest workout I've done since my fight. That guy's always in training camp mode. That workout— my hands are shaking right now. That workout absolutely killed me. Especially if you're a founder, like if you care about fitness, I think having a trainer is the most important thing to do because you're constantly making so many decisions every single day that the last thing you need to do is add more decisions to your plate in terms of like, oh, what am I going to do at the gym today? Like what what exercises am I going to do, etc. Just show up and work hard. My brain is already thinking so much about like, like these FaceTimes and like meetings I have and things I need to do that I don't have to think about how much weight I have to put on a barbell to like do an exercise. I think I will have a trainer for the rest of my life. Taylor from the Big Ass Calendar is about to walk through the door. Really scary dog. Hi, this is Olivia. Nice to meet you.

My younger sister. Hi, nice to meet you.

She was in Israel with me and she's flying back in a few hours.

I just came here this year.

From where?

I was in Atlanta.

Oh, amazing.

What did you do there for fun when you weren't just doing all the things? Did you make friends there outside of like your professional circle?

Some friends, but I was traveling so much when I was there, so I didn't see a ton of people. Spent a lot of time at Jesse's house.

Yeah, I went to the Bills-Falcons game that we do, like my Friends and I do one away game every year to go to a new city. Okay, it was my first time going.

Wait, that's fun.

It's a cool tradition. It's like my home friends, and it was my first time going to Atlanta. Your options are either we can watch the video then sauna, or we can sauna and then watch the video.

Let's watch the video.

Every day started to feel the same, like I was watching my own life on repeat. That's when I came across an ancient Japanese concept called the misogi. It humbled me and reminded me that although I had been in a few hockey fights on ice, I had minimal shoebox— hockey fights. My trainer Charlie told me that the most most important thing for today is to have fucking aura. So I'm just gonna order an Uber Black. That's the only option. We can't go cheaper than that.

Or farm all day. All day.

And it scares me. Create a life worth living. I mean, that's definitely the video that I'm most proud of that we've ever made.

No, it's so cool.

Perfect. I kind of just want like making money to be my masogi for one year. Like a lot of these things are so time-consuming and it's so easy to say when you are already like uber successful. They go, yeah, like commit X amount of time of your life to do it.

You're like better for it, right? So you like, you have to do it sometimes. Do you have to do like a hard physical one every year where you have to train? And like, my biggest things this year is I want to build like a robust social life in New York.

What about business-wise? And then I'm assuming you guys have like company goals with like big-ass calendar.

Of course. Like all those goals are only achieved if I do that goal in my head. If we are going to reach our potential everywhere, like everything needs to scale, and I need to not be doing like 80% of what I'm doing right now.

There was one goal setting framework that a friend sent me, because I feel like what I did last year was just like too much, like too complicated. And this was like, write down your 10 goals for the year. After you write them down, it's like get rid of the bottom 7. Yeah, only focus on 3. And then the other thing it said is like, what are the things right now that are stopping you from achieving those, and how do you solve those problems? It's like, what are the actions I can take to do that? Whether it's hire someone, right, have to identify that list, build the process to execute those tasks, and then hire someone. For me, with delegation, the biggest unlock for me was learning to trust other people other than myself. Because if you don't trust anyone else, even if you think you're going to delegate, you're going to end up sticking your hands back in. Yeah, because you're worried it won't get done the way you want to get done.

What else do you have going on today?

I actually have a ton of meetings today, which I'm not stoked about. What about you?

Oh, I'm like chilling this weekend. I can't wait.

You should say your plan is nothing.

I, I have, but I had to think about it. I'm like, wow, nothing. I can wake up and do whatever I want, and it's like the most thrilling thing ever. I'm like, I'm gonna wake up, see how I feel.

Well, this was amazing.

So fun.

Enjoy your weekend of doing nothing.

To meet you. Can't wait for you to move here. All right, bye.

Bye, Taylor. It couldn't have gone any better with Taylor. It's like there's part of it that's just sheer business development. Part of it is also like building relationships into real friendships. It just makes life so much more fun when you're doing business with friends. Like, there's so much overlap there and so many things to talk about, so many ways to collaborate, and you like have a lot of the same values. It just I don't know, man. It just makes life so much more fun. And you watch like how genuine and authentic it is. And Taylor made a comment in the sauna. I don't know if we caught it on camera or not, talking about like she wants to work with us because she trusts me. They've been talking about doing their website for a long time, but a lot of it is built around this concept of trust, which you get by being genuine and just being an authentic person. We are good at a very specific thing. I'm very honest when I need to be, like when there's concerns, I'll tell you if I don't know it. But at the end of the day, it's just Being human is the way that you win this game.

How we doing, dude?

My rule of thumb, at least in our company, is the only scenario that it's acceptable to be late for a call is if you're closing a deal. That's a fair reason. That's— that is number one. And that is the only one. So as far as like the platform goes, I think I've mentioned to you we were kicking off like the rebuilding of the database when we first started working together. It's coming together really well because you guys are playing big boy business. You understand like the value of it. Which is what I appreciate. But yeah, dude, I like not going to like sit here and pitch you and sell you on it. It's like whatever makes sense for you guys. Like, let me know. Yeah, yeah. No. And for me, that's kind of what I was telling you. Like, we know it makes sense for us. We're just working through what the right structure should be and look like. All right, boss. Talk to you soon. Later. That go as expected? Yeah, that went exactly as I expected. You build a reputation in the industry when you do things and like someone like that, very successful in other fields, new to this ecosystem, knows to go to people to pay for knowledge because you expedite your learning curve that way. Revenue generation. Generation through the means of like go-to-market. That's like 3 buckets. In terms of momentum, I think it would make sense. Likelihood of success, I guess, I mean, that's like your prerogative, but you just have an extremely high likelihood of success with something that Platter can help distribute. Hey, Ben. What's up, guys? How's it going? Good. How are you? Doing good. I actually hate days like this. Pretty early, went to the gym, ran home, did the sauna session, literally took my first 2 meetings sweaty out of the sauna because of the time, got in the shower, had like a 5 break and then I've been on calls ever since. And I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't do more than a certain number of calls in a day because every time I do, it makes my brain feel like I was like a ping pong ball. Just like overwhelms me.

I—

today we're at like actually a lot of important calls. I canceled 2 calls this afternoon because I'm— my battery feels on empty every time I do this. I don't know why I used to enjoy doing this. Now like I try to optimize for no calls. Can you put those away? Of course, man. You come here and eat my beef, what do you offer me? I just got off a call with a new employee that we hired that just started at the beginning of this week, and I was thinking about how cool it is when you think about checking in with a new employee when it's like employee number 5 versus— I think he was employee 26 or 27, and he's just speaking to how great the onboarding process was and how awesome the team is and how impressed he is. And I just like laugh to myself because I know where it was when we started. You're trying to build the plane and fly. And as you start to build more process and structure, it's just cool where you can be hands-off in that process with hiring new people because you now have a full infrastructure in place. And I just think it's cool to kind of look back on to see how far we've come with the business. He goes, I feel like your team is a bunch of special ops forces. Like not a single person I spoke to, I wasn't impressed by. Usually any new company I join, there's like 1 or 2 people that I'm like, I'm not really sure about that. He's like, everyone that you have, absolute killers. I was like, damn, I love to hear that. When are you launching tracking? I need to show you it, it's crazy. Tommy's coming to say hi at like 4:30, but other than that, I'm around. Come at like 4:30, a little bit.

Okay, yeah, I'll come around then. I know Tommy, I've hung out with him, so maybe I'll come then too.

Okay, all right, bye. All right, see you. What's up, dude? How are you?

Good to see you.

Have you met Adam before? No, videographer.

Tommy, nice to meet you.

Tommy's actually the content guru. Tommy's the one I learned from. Turning a vlog right now. Trying to do them weekly. I mean, we're putting out my favorite video that we've ever made tomorrow.

Is that the boxing one?

Yeah.

I don't think I've seen you since you did all that.

Yeah, dude. And then I did like the 10-day silent meditation retreat. I sat in silence for 10 days.

What was harder?

I don't know. I guess I would say they're like a different kind of hard. The meditation thing is actually very challenging physically cuz you're literally sitting there for 10 hours a day meditating, but like it's more of a mental battle. What's up with you though, dude? Just like writing books now?

That's— oh yeah, that's—

that's so cool. Tommy's writing a book. How many pages is it now?

Uh, well, I finished the first draft. First draft was like 160,000 words. That's probably like—

how many pages is that, like a normal size?

About 400.

It's crazy.

400. I want it to be— cuz I mean, that's a little too long.

You're asking me, was the boxing fight hard? If you told me I had to write a 400-page book and write 1,000 words a day, that's way scarier than anything I've ever done in my life.

I appreciate it.

When are you hoping to launch this this thing?

I'm at end of this year, so I just finished the first draft. I am pretty much rewriting the whole thing now. Then I got to the point where the agency was taking so much of my time. That's where most of my income comes from, so I was like, okay, I got to put some more time into this.

Makes sense.

Now we're getting to the point where with the agency where I don't know how much more I want to like grow it. The more I look at agency owners that are sort of at the next phase in the company, I'm not like super excited.

It's not 1 1 2 to get to the next rung, cuz I, I can fully relate with, even Platter. Yeah, like to go from like a $500K agency to a million to like $3 million, sure, you can like follow the same path, but to get to like $5 to $10 to $20, you need so many more efficiencies operationally to maintain customer satisfaction that it's like a lot of the stuff that I would have to do to get to that stage like just does not excite me because then, then I've noticed myself even now having to get more remove from the work.

I don't know, like the first— I mean, the first time I was on your podcast, I'm talking about how like I need to do that.

It was so— it's such a cool— that's a cool like timeless piece of content that you'll forever have.

Yeah, every time I'm like stressed, I just got to go back and watch that episode and be like, you know, it's gonna be okay, it's fine. I always—

he came on the podcast when— I mean, how far into it were you?

I think it was like 4 months after I left my job.

He was 4 months into building the agency and he was just like, I don't really know, I'm just kind of figuring it out, it's a lot. And now he crushes it.

Yeah, that was a very very different time. I think I had like 2 contractors and I was still very hesitant to make my first hire. Adrian was trying to like beat into my head like, dude, just make your hire.

And how big is your team now?

Just under 15 people.

Yeah, gangster.

Especially when you run an agency and you're good at what you do, the gravitate, like the gravitational pull to like just get bigger and bigger and bigger, it's always there. People are gonna come inbound and like if you don't say no, then you are forced, that is the forcing function to have to.

What's up, dude?

What's up, bro?

Look at him, look at him. Okay, who are you? Who are you, dude?

I got my coat now.

Everything's changed. Muscle shirt on under there? Yes. Oh my God, trench coat with a muscle shirt.

What's up, dude?

I haven't seen you in a minute.

I know, I haven't seen you forever.

What's up? Hi. Hi, nice to see you. Nice to see you. Thanks.

What's up, Tommy? I haven't seen you even longer.

Yeah, it's been a minute. What, like 2 years?

We all left It was me and you were in that office, right?

You should say to celebrate the IPO, everyone short the stock because Aura Tracking is live.

We only started developing it like maybe 2 weeks ago, week and a half ago, and it's, uh, it's already better. It's the best mobile tracker in the world.

I was telling these two I actually talked to my therapist about you. It's a good hook for a clip because I told him every time I go somewhere I get a text from Zach that's like, dude, stop traveling. Why are we fighting? Uh, we're not fighting, I'm just explaining. But like, I'll give you an example. My whole family is going to the Bahamas for Passover at the end of March, like the Jew holiday. I wouldn't even think twice to pass up an opportunity to spend time with my family because it's so important to me. And when you work remote, it doesn't actually really matter where you are in the world. So I was up at 2 o'clock in the morning in Israel, like, taking calls and doing shit. But I just laugh every time I think about going somewhere now. I just have Zach's voice in my head being like, why are you traveling? You should be in your office drinking Monster, like, on What are you doing?

There's probably a through line that's correct, which is you probably travel a little too much.

If there's one thing I know, it's commerce. That's like the only thing I know.

And then look, imagine this on someone's workout when you're looking at it, Ben. So me and my designer helped, took a lot of time.

Take them on a walk. Oh my God, these are lads. Is there a means to like do the whole concept but directly in— well, that would be if we have like a social feed or something.

The idea is your—

that's your unicorn. Yeah, I, I—

but it's like the far— yeah, I mean, dude, we could like— there's that alone on its own is its own massive company.

I think I was planning on making an outro for this video that turned into my internet friend Zach reappearing for the first time in I don't know how many months, and he's building a better version of Strava. So we're just going to say that now so you can look back on this video in a few months. This is Zach Pogrob. He doesn't like to be on camera unless it's him yelling at Strava.