What it's actually like trying to scale to $1M/month (no BS)

Have you ever wondered what it was like when Sam Ovens, Alex Formosi or Cole Borden were scaling past a million.

A month in revenue?

I know I have. Just like you. I wish they had videos online showing the behind the scenes of how they interacted with their team, the challenges they faced, even the strategy sessions that it took to get to that goal of eight figures per year plus in revenue. And our company's on that same journey right now. We want to achieve it, just like you. And today I'm going to take you behind the scenes and show you the strategy sessions, the challenges, and how our team interacts day in and day out to hit that goal. So without further ado, this is scaling to a million a month.

Episode one. Let's go. Which one should we talk about first?

The stretch goal one. I just, I was thinking about this today. It's really cool that we're hyping everybody up about wanting to get an additional month's pay. Like, my problem with that is like they don't have any control over it. My name's Charlie, Client Success director@adspend.com, i've been working here for about three years at this point. Basically day to day fulfillment, specifically responses in Slack channels, helping guide clients through the 16 week timeline that they go through with us and everything that goes along with that. So basically onboarding calls QCing, the work that clients are doing from writing their VSLs, you know, to basically also helping them when it comes to their ads going live and launching and educating them on, you know, what they need to be looking for specifically on once the ads go live, how do we look at the metrics that they're seeing inside the ad accounts and then making them knowledgeable enough to, you know, make those decisions and optimizations inside those ad accounts so they get the best results possible, you know, when they're running their YouTube ads.

Well, Nick, any thoughts on that? Because it feels like to me that the issue would probably just be the first one then the main issue, because if we solve that, then that would kind of fix.

Yeah, exactly. That's what I was saying. I mean, it sounds like everything we have right now, the only issues are just all related to who are we going to hire next, who's going to be in charge of what functions of the business, what's going on, guys? Nick, with adspend.com here and what do I do here, man, that is an interesting question. I do pretty much a little bit of everything, but my main focus right now is just making sure that we are on track to hitting our goal of a million dollars a month. So kind of play a little bit of a libero role, make sure that we help out with CSMing, make sure that we are set up on the correct business model to get us to a million dollars a month and do a lot of marketing, a lot of finance. But I also get a lot of support with a team on that. So that's kind of the role that I fill right now.

Third party capacity though, that I don't think there's a stuff with that because like when, like what's the timeline on that right now? Like what's the next step for that being solved? Friday all has to be done.

Yeah. Friday everything's getting done and then Monday the. You can call it an offer, but it's just. It is an offer, but it's just a 1099 contract.

Right. 500 per script or whatever.

Okay.

Yeah, exactly. And then they just get on board into the process. This is a template that you're going to be using. This is how you're gonna use ClickUp, all that other stuff. That's when they'll be onboarded is on Monday.

And Demi or Jennifer spearheading the hiring or the whatever the offer.

Israel's gonna review all the test projects that already come through on Friday. He's gonna give the final go aheads, the yes and the no's, but something that can for sure be ongoing.

Okay.

Which will definitely be again part of the org charts and the responsibilities. Like is it fast? Like something that Jennifer can really take over. She can always be looking for video editors, always looking for script writers to bring in and then only the best of the best get in.

It's just a pool.

Yeah. Okay.

So the capacity for script writing will increase one day.

Yeah. And I mean like Israel is jumping in to help a little bit.

Yeah. Yeah.

An Oscar.

Like he's going to help us scaling with E Comm and that's good that he takes that off our plate. That's a more done for you client paid a pretty high dollar amount so I want him to get more attention.

Yeah.

When I was brought on board, we were basically purely doing done for you agency services. And we were, I mean, to be honest, like pretty inconsistent with our ability to land clients just because we. It was just hard to find the clients that we wanted to work with. We were still working with some great clients at the time, you know. But for us a big challenge was coming up with an offer, product and service that is productizable to the marketplace, which is kind of how we landed, you know, the offer that we're currently running. But, you know, over the last three years we've really been focused on one, creating a better experience for our clients to, you know, having an experience that these clients go through that's, you know, transformative for themselves and their businesses and the knowledge that we're able to instill in them. And then, you know, three. And I think, you know, the biggest part is just really to be able to deliver those results for them consistently. Right. And so like that's put us in the position where we're at today where, you know, I think, you know, this month we'll probably land somewhere around 3 to $350,000 a month with obviously the end goal, you know, the next six months to a year to be at a million a month.

I would say it is both our weakness and our greatest strength. And it was us always being able to adapt to new things. So it's a great strength because we're able to change offers and pivot very quickly. And it's one of our weaknesses because sometimes we don't stick with what's working. But we have found something that's definitely working now. So excited to scale that to the moon.

Demi and Jennifer, they're kind of doing the same stuff. Similar things.

Yeah.

You know, again you can make the argument, and I made this argument to both you guys and them is like probably could just be one person.

Right.

But if we're going where we're going, which we are, how do we split their roles?

Exactly.

You know.

Yeah.

Because it seems like Demi right now is doing more account setups, which is fine. She's like more operations integrator or whatever. She can do a lot of stuff that Jennifer can't with, like the automations and stuff. So that's why she's better there. But does that make Jennifer just hr? Just those things are, you know, very key.

Is it possible for us three to be put in one like thing?

Well, that's.

Well, for me it's a different. For Nick, it's like Nick is also like, I know we want to move Nick to ops, like managing the marketing, but he's also still responsible for client.

So maybe just putting a plan to.

Get there, I guess.

Yeah, that's just normal.

Right.

Like that's like every business, it's like there's going to just be times where you have to just do more.

And the reason I say that is I think we've tried to do that though. It's Like, Brian's in this seat, Nick's in this seat, Charlie's in this seat. And it never works out that way because it's just the nature of where we're at.

Yeah.

I think we're getting much closer.

Yeah. We've never been closer now.

Yeah.

Than ever.

I would agree. Yeah.

But, yeah, I mean, that's the key.

Though, is to work on one specific thing I don't think we had. In my opinion, the problem that we had was the business model, as we had a business model.

Oh, who's that?

That a close?

Yeah.

Cash collected. $1,700.

What?

1700 paid today. 3300 do asap. He's moving money around from Guatemala. Damn. 5k in 30 days. 5k in 30 days. Cedar, Jen, Closer.

Ryan.

He's got.

I think it really boils down to. And this is going to sound like super. A super simple answer, but I really do believe it is this simple. And it's just like, how well can you build a relationship with the clients you work with? And the reason I say that is because of the experiences that we've had with the clients that we've had the opportunity to work with. The problem that we're having right now is like, things are happening, but nobody is responsible for what's happening.

Yeah.

It's like we're all just kind of. Like you said, you're just.

I think we put too much on the csms.

Yeah. Yeah.

But I'm saying if we take. Yeah, exactly. And if we do this, they don't have to do. They don't have to worry about QCing, all that stuff. They're just in charge of getting the project and we can offer more, is what I'm saying.

Oh, God. Got it.

Because it's.

It's a productized agency now.

Yeah.

We have copycheat, we have scriptwriters, we have video editors. We have a cheap video editor. We can edit their ads, we can edit their. Anything we can do the Ravi model is what I'm saying. With this. With this right here.

So you're. So the flip side to this would be we would.

CSM is qcsm.

Yeah.

The other alternative here is we. We look at this and we say, okay, well, this is going to be, you know, high overhead again, all those things. And we then do a different route, which is like, less done for you, more done with you. But the market clearly shows right now with us, it's like what Mark Dahlman told me. He's like, dude, the people want the hybrid offer. He's like, they clearly want it. They're buying it. Now. You don't have a marketing problem. You have an operations problem.

Right.

So, like, it's your team's job and you as well, to figure out how to. How to fix this operation to get it to scale. So this is scale from what I'm seeing.

Right.

And I like it.

Yeah. I think that it goes beyond just income goals when you're talking about personal goals that I've set. And it's more about becoming the person that I need to be or the leader that I need to be inside of the company to get it to the next level. It no longer is just about the couple individuals, the four, five or six people that we've kind of been with for the last two or three years. And it's really moving into a leadership role that enables me, myself, and the rest of the team to be able to level up and become the best that they can be. So really moving into a leadership role is kind of the biggest goal that I've set personally. And it's managing people and being an effective and a good manager. Because I think we've all had good and bad managers in our life, and a good manager is definitely worth their weight in gold.

Why do we think the CSMs can't.

It takes a lot of time.

But, like, have we measured how much time it takes to know?

Yes. And then per hour. It's not a per hour. You wouldn't want to pay per hour for that. I promise you. It takes a lot of time to do it.

I can see.

Well, because you're literally just like checking line by line. Like, it'd be cheaper to pay somebody from Fiverr to do it if we want to do that.

To answer your question, it can be done by the csm. It absolutely can be. The question is, do we want them doing that, though? Do we want them watching video ads and looking for spelling?

But the alternative right now is no one's doing it. So I agree. We should find someone to do it. I'm just advocating of why not having them do it first until we find a better solution. Because if they don't have time. If they have time to do it right now.

No, they definitely.

Then they should do it.

Absolutely.

The average csm, if they have time. I do believe, again, even at scale, potentially maybe 40 clients. Right. Like, they could potentially still do it. I could be wrong. Let's see what happens when we get there. Right now, the two of you doing it with everything you have on your plates 100% I get it does not make sense to do that.

This client success stuff, I think, can be overcomplicated at times. And it's really just like listening to the client and understanding where they're coming from, having empathy with the situations that you find yourself in with those clients, because, like, they're going to tell you how they're feeling, and you just have to listen and be able to understand based upon what that client is telling you. How should you direct the conversation? How can you best, you know, help them with the needs or the issues that they're experiencing when it comes to whatever it is that they're dealing with inside of their business or, you know, the results that they're dealing with, specifically with the YouTube ads, because the client's going to tell you or leave clues as to what problems they have to solve next or what is their real concern. And the more that you listen, the more that you ask questions to understand where that client is coming from, the better you'll be able to foster a better relationship with that client because you're actually going to be addressing the root cause of what it is that's actually bothering them or what they're dealing with. And so, again, the more that you pay attention. And again, these sound like such, like, simple things, but they really do go a long way, especially in my experience with working with the clients that I've worked with up to this point.

So the smartest thing I think we've done is get away from, like, the book club shit. Yeah, that was not. That was not money vibes like, okay, so let's, like, in my opinion, that was not. That was not helping us make more money. I don't think memorizing the core value.

Helps us make more money.

I could see it both ways. I'm not gonna say any which way or the other, but I will say that, like, if I had to pick between spending an hour memorizing core values or helping Noah or Jeff or having nor Jeff focus on working on their stuff for their clients, I would pick the latter for sure. It's all, like, opportunity cost.

The biggest challenge we face this far, I think, again, would be focus again. There's so many different ways to achieve your goal that it seems like the best possible option is to jump ship and to do something else. But most times it's really just to dig your heels in and to focus on what was working before. Again, there are other pivotal times when you need to make a pivot, no pun intended. But I think that most often than not, your Gut is right. With the first option and you just need to stick with it and stick it out to the end. It's like there's no better place to start with just the people in the actual company.

Yeah.

That you're going to have way more impact over the. Than over a client.

Yeah. Yeah.

In my opinion. So, like, that's. That's huge. Like, there's. There's no better place to start. Like, I always think about her Moses training videos that he used to do that you showed us one that he did of like investing into the 401k.

Yeah.

That almost sick.

And that was for his team. Yeah, that was. It was literally his team on the call that he ended up posting on YouTube. So, like they had space for internal team training.

Yeah, that's. That's what I want, more of honesty. That's why I was asking. I feel like we're missing that as a team right now. Like, and that's why I'm asking about the organization structure of the meeting specifically, because I feel like once a week there should be some sort of training on something, you know, not just pulling out of our ass, but like something to help us all as individuals.

Yeah.

You know, come closer together.

Yeah, we thought about that. Like Mike doing a training on like, I don't know, like, how to, you know, how to. How to dance or something like that. You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah.

More relevant though.

Yeah.

To like our professional growth, I would say. So maybe we should start with that. We just do it on Mondays.

Clients are always going to think that you are the only client that you have. Like, they're going to think that you don't work with any other businesses other than them. So you have to kind of think through their. You have to. You kind of think through that and understand that you have to be the one to be proactive in the relationship with the client. You're the one that has to tell them what's going on. You have to tell them, hey, I'm working on this this week. Hey, I've got this, you know, thing that, you know, we're going to be focusing on this week or, you know, really setting out a plan of action with your clients and letting them know that, you know, they are a focus that you are working on their ad account or you're working on, you know, whatever it is that your product or service that you do for these clients that, you know, whoever's going to be watching this, it's important to always be the one to play offense and not defense.

What model do we think is going to be more efficient?

Right.

The right model is 10 to 20 units a month. The left model is. Yeah, big scale, 50 to 100.

Yeah, I think that that's the better way to put it, actually.

Yeah. Yeah.

This is much more closer to a million dollars a month.

Yeah.

We're not building for 500k mods, we're building for the million months. So, yeah, if that's the case, then let's just use that one.

It.