0 to 30k/mo in 3 Months with an AI Cold Email Agency

What's up everybody? I got my boy Oleg here who is in AI Assisted Agency and you come to my calls all the time. So you're one of my homies and I actually love talking to you. You went from $0 to $30K a month inside of that program. Is that right? Yep. In 3 months? Yep. All right, cool. And a quick disclaimer for everybody, the probability you go from $0 to $30K a month in 3 months is very low. Like it's a very uncommon result to occur. What you have is a lead generation agency. I want to know all about like what you sell to clients and like kind of what you learned along way, just like insights you learned while running this business because you were running another business before, but you shut it down to do this instead. I want to know all about this and let the audience know like why you've done all the things you've, you've done up to this point, everything you learned.

So I run Slate Go-To-Market. We do outbound for a lot of different clients. We work with financial services, private equity, M&A, B2B SaaS agencies, and we do outbound mostly through cold email, although we're also starting to explore LinkedIn and other channels as well. Before I joined AI-Assisted Agency, I was running an AI automation agency, but I was effectively a glorified freelancer. I was running mostly on my own. I had like one person I partnered with for some builds. I was getting most of my work through Upwork. Every project was super custom, decent cash flow, but it wasn't a very scalable business. The reason that I signed up for AI Assisted Agency was to learn how to build a scalable business that had much better margins, had much better scalability, could grow into a business. And I could have a business where I'm doing one core function for someone and it's very repeatable over and over again, which honestly AI automation just wasn't, or at least the way I was doing it, it didn't feel that way. So I guess starting off from AI automation, the way that I, I was doing projects, I felt like almost a custom dev shop in a way, like a client would have a problem, they post it on Upwork, we'd do it no matter what it was, or I'd do it mostly. I could only handle like 2 or 3 clients at a time. Every project had to get super in the weeds and, you know, it it wasn't really a business, right? I was just like basically like a, like an engineer for their team or an automation person for their team. Since then, I've fully turned that business off, stopped accepting clients on the AI automation side, started just referring any inbounds that came in and really just focused on outbound. And now it's great because, you know, I have 10 clients that I work with right now. I'm doing the same service for them. I get to get really good at that one service, right? And run it as a business and hire people. And it feels much more like a real company than my other business did before.

What'd you sign your first client at? And then like the second and the third and like, how's the pricing adjusted over time?

I've tried a bunch of different things and pricing's flexible and it also depends on the industry I'm working with, which I know you talk about a lot to adjust the pricing to the industry. I think that's also a way that I've been able to, you know, move fast and grow relatively fast is just being nimble and just like making a deal happen and adjusting it based on who I'm talking to. My first deal I signed, I think it was like It was really, it was like $1,000 a month. They cover the infra fees, so all the inboxes and domains directly. And there was a guarantee on it as well, like 5 meetings a month or something. So that was good, but I switched to a performance-based model after where they pay an infra fee and then we charge a certain amount per meeting. That worked really, really well. It seemed like, you know, like people just understand that model much better. They're only paying for results. It also incentivizes me to obviously get better results for them. That offer just absolutely crushes. And, and to this day, we're still doing a lot of that for, for clients. Now we're starting to move towards retainers as well. Usually we're getting retainers if there's a referral or we've already worked with the client before and they want to switch to a retainer, or it's an inbound lead from, you know, LinkedIn or something like that. So there's some sort of authority. And then there's some more nuanced deals as well. For private equity, for example, we have a deal where there is no in-for-fee, but we're doing a performance-based per call that's a little bit higher. And there's also a percentage that we'd get if they end up, you know, investing in the company and closing the deal as well, which is much more long-term. So it varies, but started with PPL and now it's shifting to other things as well.

Nice. What were you doing before you were doing the freelance AI automation stuff?

Yeah, so, uh, before that I had a software company that I was doing, um, and it was consumer software and it got a lot of users but wasn't really, um, monetizing very well. And I learned how, how hard software is and also how hard consumer software is specifically.

Yeah.

Before that I worked at a, at a YC company, um, you know, doing product product management there. And before that I was in investment banking.

Oh wow, really? How old are you?

I'm 29.

I'm also 29. Nice.

Yeah, exactly. What's up, bro?

Say somebody's watching this right now and they're like, oh, I'm thinking about starting a business or like thinking about a specific offer to sell and just like using yours as an example of like, well, what niche do I pick and how much do I charge? And like, what if I don't get clients results? Like, did you ever think about stuff like that? How did you resolve this in your own mind to actually like just like do it?

I definitely had those thoughts. I think everybody does and it's super natural. I think one idea that I had that I followed that I know you talk about a lot and other people, um, in the AI-assisted agency talk about a lot is picking an offer that already is working in the market. You know, when I first was doing like my software company, we were coming up with like something that nobody's ever done before. Right. And like the odds of really coming up with something that nobody's ever done before and just nailing it, you know, and getting product market fit are pretty low. Like there are a lot of smart people in the world and the chances that you find something that nobody's ever done before are pretty low. And. When I shifted that belief into, okay, like, let me find something that already has demand, it's already working. I think that really was like one of the biggest differences for, you know, actually seeing success and seeing customers come in and cash flow come in and growing. Everybody needs outbound, right? Everybody needs lead gen. Everybody needs customers. It's one of the biggest markets in the world. And to have a, you know, successful agency, you need a very, very, very small piece of that market, right? You need your 30, 50 customers or whatever the number is, right? Which is super, super small compared to like the millions of businesses out there that need lead gen,, right? So there will always be a place for lead gen agencies, I think, and for someone to have a successful lead gen agency. So that's one belief I had. In terms of worrying about client results and being scared to deliver, you definitely have that thought. I think that's super natural. Um, I personally always like to put myself in situations where I have to learn. So I didn't really worry too much about, you know, like studying everything, learning everything beforehand. I just focused on selling. And once I had customers and I had to deliver, there's just a natural forcing function in having to actually get them results. And you become extremely motivated, right? If you're— especially if you're on a performance basis or there's a guarantee, like you have no other choice. So that's definitely an approach that I took and I also recommend to other people as well.

How much time do you spend on fulfillment for clients? How much time do you spend on you growing your own business for you to get more clients and kind of like what is the distribution of that and what do you do for each of those categories?

The really nice thing about an outbound agency is that your marketing motion and your lead gen motion is the same as your delivery. So as you improve your own lead generation, you're also improving your delivery engine for your clients. The biggest way that we get clients is through cold email. So it really compounds, right? Like we make a breakthrough, we find a better way to build a list or, you know, some copy that works. We can use it for our own clients. We can also use it for ourselves. So that actually allows you to grow much quicker for an outbound lead agency. So I think in general, if anybody's building an agency, like if you can do the marketing in the same way that you actually match as a service you're delivering, you're just gonna grow much faster instead of doing two separate things. But in terms of, you know, Obviously you, you do have to manage both at the same time. We just treat our own lead gen agency as a client, basically just, you know, maybe doing more volume than everybody else. And that's just how I think of it. So a lot of our systems are set up and as, you know, we have 10 clients and we just have an 11th client, that's our agency. As we're building lists, as we're doing copy, as we're launching campaigns, we just do it in the same way that we do it for our clients. And it works for our clients, it works for us, and both improve at the same time. And then obviously there's like sales calls that I have to take and, you know, other stuff that we don't do for clients, like LinkedIn, you know, other methods of growing the brand, conferences also that I'm starting to go to. I historically probably focused, you know, 50/50, maybe 50% on sales and marketing, 50% on delivery. Now I'm starting to hire people on the delivery side of things, which is really speeding things up, and I can spend more time on sales and marketing, which is really nice. And obviously we're using AI throughout the whole thing, which also just makes it much, much more scalable and much more efficient. We have a pretty lean team for, I think, the size that we're at, and I think AI just lets you run an agency extremely profitably, which is was really nice.

Nice. How long did it take you to sign your first client when you started the lead gen agency?

I think within a week or two I signed a client. Honestly, it was really quick. I already had some email infrastructure ready, so I just started, you know, sending it out. And the key was just offering performance-based and just using the offers that kind of are taught in the course. Yeah, if you literally just follow, you know, the proven offers that work, you can get a client within a week or two, right? As soon as you start emailing people, as long as you're doing it on volume. And the good thing about something like AI-Assisted Agency is obviously there are people that have already built large agencies that are in the program. So you can kind of just like, you know, follow the footsteps of those people. And also there's a lot of people, or there are people that are also building, you know, the same types of agencies at the same time. So you can really get a sense for, you know, what messaging is working like today at that point that you're doing it as well, because it does change from time to time. So yeah, for me it was within a week or two.

So like going from $0 to $30K a month in 3 months is super fast. Why is it, do you think, that you were able to do it that quickly versus other people who can't? Someone could like start the same business as you and run the same exact offer, but like they just like can't do it. Some people like, why, why do you think that is? If you had to like pinpoint like what you believe is stopping them, what would you say it is?

Yeah, I think one thing is just not being scared of like, you know, high volume. I think when I started off, I was doing $2,000 per day for my own agency. Now I'm at $6.5K per day. I want to get that up to $10K per day. Just not being scared of, you know, just doing as much volume as possible. Having too many sales calls and too many clients to service is a great problem to have. I think some people might start off at, you know, 500 emails per day or, you know, even $750, $1,000, and you can literally do double, triple that with no problem. I think that's one thing. I think another is, we touched on this earlier as well, is not over-fixating on learning everything you need before you start, right? Just like not overthinking, just starting to do things and learning as you go. You know, when you start an agency, there's a reason that you're offering performance-based pricing, and you talk about this a lot as well, is like you're offering it because you're getting started with an agency, right? If you knew what you're like, if you had a ton of experience, a ton of case studies, you would be charging very high retainers. That by yourself, like, is already enough, you know, gives you the permission to kind of, you know, learn as you go. And you'd be surprised at how quickly you can learn once the pressure's on as well, and how quickly you can deliver results, especially if you have a program and other people you can talk to as well. And I think the final thing is just like really leaning into AI as well. I think that allowed me to scale much quicker. I think the benefit of doing AI automation agency and even a software startup before that is I approached everything from, you know, building a service-based business but building it almost like a, like a software product as well, where, you know, everything that we do in our company is in GitHub in a in a repo, you know, every call that gets pulled in, it gets pulled into GitHub. Everybody on our team has all the contacts so they can just ask their AI agent, their Cloud Code, their Codex to ask any questions instead of asking me. Everything that we're doing is done through Cloud Code or Codex or whatever tool that we're using. So that just also allows us to move much quicker instead of like building things manually.

Here's how I can help you. The first link in the description, that's for the AI-assisted agency program. We show you what to sell, who to sell it to, how to get clients, and how to fulfill for the clients by using AI. If you want to see that and see all the offers that people inside that program are actively running right now and how they're getting clients, click the first link in the description, go opt in for that and you will see absolutely everything of how it works and how you can run that business successfully yourself. I'll see you over there. Talk to me about like mindset stuff because I just see all the time, like I think a lot of people's problems are that they're making stuff up in their head and that's why it doesn't work. I don't know if you have anything to say about that.

Yeah, I think mindset is extremely important because it affects kind of every action you take in the agency, every decision you make. One mindset that I had coming in was my goal isn't to build a $30K a month agency. My goal is to build a $300K a month agency. So, you know, getting to $30K a month in 3 months is just, it's on track to that goal, right? It's not like this crazy success. Personally, that just allows me to make decisions in a different way than, you know, maybe others because my goal is kind of up there. So by default, I have to do way more volume when I start. For example, by default, I'm, you know, not worrying about some little things or maybe I like turn down clients that just aren't, you know, going to give me that much cash flow that I'm going to spend a ton of time on. So that's been one thing that's really I think been good for mindset is just having a very high goal. Another one is just having a propensity to action and just, you know, moving quickly and not getting distracted by like little things that don't matter or, you know, the latest shiny tool that comes out and switching different data providers and mailbox providers and so on. So on the speed thing, I know Alex Formosi says this and other people say this, like money loves speed. So as soon as you have any inkling of like a deal happening, like trying to get a proposal out, you know, within an hour, just like, can you get a proposal done in like 30 minutes? Just try to sign it like that day. And then there's things you can build, right? Like I built like an automated workflow where right after a call is done, it takes in the call transcript and makes a super customized proposal in PandaDoc with payment already ready and just sends it to the client already, right? So they can literally just like sign and pay right away. So if you think about that way, you can build certain workflows that make that easier. And then also just like not getting distracted by, you know, just like little things. I think I've seen people message me or just in the group as well about, you know, like this new tool came out, like, should I use it? Should I not use it? This inbox provider, like, like, do I use this one? Do I not use this one? And just like these little decisions that people just spend a lot of time thinking about where either it doesn't matter or you can just try it. And by the time you finish that experiment, you already have the data. You don't even need to think about it too much. Right. So I think that that's another mindset shift is just like sometimes honestly, some things you just need to try quickly and experiment and get data on instead of like deliberating about it for like, you know, a day or two before you do something.

I feel like a lot of people do just random frivolous stuff that is totally unnecessary. Like there was one in the chat the other day where the guy was like, does anyone know any design agencies for my landing page? I'm like, what are you talk— why do you need a design agency for your landing page? Like, have Claude design it and just use an AI page builder. What are you doing? Why, why do you need like a custom developed landing page? You have zero clients. Why do you need a professionally designed landing page? It doesn't make any sense. Like, I don't even use that. Like, I use AI builders. I feel like there's just like an infinite amount of just like nonsense that people will focus on. It's like, it's really just as simple as offer that has demand, get traffic. That's it. You have an offer, make humans aware of it. There's legitimately nothing else beyond that. Just do that. And I mean, you were obviously touching on before, but it's like if you sit and try to spend just days days and weeks, and I need to be prepared before I sign a contract. It doesn't work like that. It's way just easier and simpler than you think. People are so like terrified of like a client being mad at them because they didn't make them a bajillion dollars. It's like, bro, grow up, it's fine.

Yeah, 100%, I agree. And I think it's because people tend to avoid how uncomfortable, you know, certain things are, like getting on a client call, like pitching someone on a sales call, um, even delivering for clients and, you know, actually having to fulfill. They're scared of that and they tend to gravitate towards other things you can argue is like good for the agency, right? Or for your business, like, you know, designing the perfect landing page and working with any, like a partner on it or an agency on it, but isn't actually moving the needle. Yeah, I think that's, that's a key thing is just not being scared of like those things that, you know, are actually going to move the business forward, like the sales calls, you know, figuring out a deal structure with a client that works right when, you know, there might be a deal there, but you have to like figure out a way to make it work. Or even if you sign a client and you know, they're a high-profile client and you need to deliver results for them, like actually delivering the results. I think those are obviously very hard things to do and a lot of people shy away from it. But the truth is, is like the harder something is to do, I think that's where the money is, right? Like, like that's where the results are. Do you really need to kind of do those things more and more? I also think you need to just put yourself in situations personally where like you have no choice but to do those kind of things. Before I was doing the AI automation agency, I had a little bit of cash flow from that. I was doing a startup for a year where I didn't pay myself at all. Like, I quit my corporate job. I had no income for a year. I was on like California food stamps, you know, like, like all that stuff. Um, and we had to actually move to, um, out of kind of where we were living in San Francisco, 2 hours away to, you know, somewhere where rent was like, like more than 2 times cheaper. Um, and I was in a position where like I burned through all my savings, right? I needed cash flow. Um, I did a software business for a year that, you know, didn't really get me any income. I had a little bit of, you know, money from the AI automation agency, but it was just like enough to get by. It wasn't anything that was like really helping me in any way. And there's just no time for like, you know, like, like nonsense. Like I just needed to like, you know, get customers and deliver for those customers. So they might be a little bit psycho, but I also think like if you put yourself in situations like this, you are more likely to get results as well.

I feel like there's a lot of misconception that people people think a business should be. Like you said, one of them earlier where it's like, well, every deal is probably going to be custom. And that's what I say a lot too. It's just like there's dozens or if not hundreds of micro assumptions people have about how a business should be run before they've even run a business ever. And then they come in and they try to like operate under those assumptions and be like, well, this is the correct way to do it. It's actually doing nothing but hurting them. So like, for instance, just going back to that pricing thing where it's like all pricing in an agency relationship is a negotiation. Like, unless you're like a fairly established company, like, every deal is gonna look different. We're like, it's gonna be priced slightly different. The deal, there's gonna be different terms of the deal. Like, it's all custom. Like, it's so funny, and you probably see it in my calls all the time. Everyone's always asking, what should I charge for this? How much should I charge for this offer? It's like, you charge the amount, the maximum amount of money you can get somebody to pay you. That's what you charge. There's, what does this person charge? What does this person charge? What does this person charge? What does this person charge? But all these people have different levels of market authority and different levels of case studies because they've worked with other clients, and they can command higher prices. It's mostly like, well, what can you command? It's just variable, and people want to like box it into like a specific— it needs to be exactly like this. And there's just like all these like hundreds of different assumptions that you have to like unlearn in order to actually do this correctly. Just like random things where you're like, oh, it actually works like this, that maybe you found over time.

Yeah, there's definitely a lot. Um, so the first one that comes to mind is something I touched upon already before, is the idea that I used to think that to have a successful business, you had to come up with a concept that, you know, nobody's ever thought of before, new way of approaching a problem, right? And that's what you see in a lot of the big success stories of the billion-dollar, like, tech companies and, and things like that. But like, that's absolutely not true. Like, you could do it that way, but there's like 10 companies a year that, that do it that way. Most businesses are, are all doing the same thing in a certain way. They might be approaching it differently or, or, you know, have some different changes, but they're solving the same problem. There are just so many different problems that need to get solved in, in the world that have a ton of demand for, like lead gen, for example. People that, you know, you don't need to find, and you probably shouldn't find an idea that, you know, nobody's ever thought of before. The most efficient way to do things, I think, is to find something that already has active demand. I know you talk about this a lot and just solve that problem for people because again, you need your 30, 50, 100 customers, whatever that number is, to have a huge agency that, you know, or successful agency that you're really proud of and is your entire life's work. That's one belief that I definitely kind of changed, and especially over the past couple of years and coming into the program. Another one is understanding how cold traffic offers work. I think when I started, I thought that you can just like, you know, have lead generation work for anybody, right? Like it just works and you just need to figure it out. And that's probably been the hardest part of scaling agency, but also like, I think the biggest unlock is like figuring out one, which customers to work with because not every marketing channel works for every customer. And there's certain things that make the odds of success for company and an offer more likely for lead generation. But then also The idea that like an offer is malleable as well. Like there's a lot of room and creativity you can get in terms of how you position an offer and how you market it, especially for some businesses versus others, being able to adjust that as well. Like I'll give an example. I actually had one company that I first started working with where, you know, they did marketing services and they did, um, like brand advisory, which was a pretty hard offer to, to run. I didn't realize that you can like adjust the offer. So I was like, okay, we're gonna run brand advisory. We got okay results, but it wasn't like anything spectacular. And actually suggested that we stop working together cuz they weren't getting amazing results. And then They actually came back to me a couple months later, and at that point I, you know, already had a better understanding of offers and how it worked. I pitched the idea of, you know, adjusting the offer so that we run, you know, 5 different campaigns, like one with a guarantee that focus on growth, another one with leading with like different services that are more high demand and having the brand generation aspect be kind of on the backend. And that's been absolutely crushing. And that's been another like belief that just I had is like, if the client is telling you that, you know, this is the offer that they want to do, you don't have to do that. Part of your job as a marketer is to actually take that, reposition it, adjust it, make make it work in a way where, you know, people are attracted to it, people come in, and then also, you know, you can always add in that offer. A lot of people will even change like what they're doing or their approaches, you know, because they want revenue, they want customers, so they'll adjust what they're doing based on what the demand is as well.

That's so important, knowing what will sell. I mean, you have it at this point, you can see something, nah, there's no chance that works on cold email, and then you have another one like, oh yeah, that'll, that'll absolutely rip. You just kind of know, and like, I know if it'll work on ads, like I know if it'll work on specific organic audiences. It's just interesting to know if one will cook or not, and I obviously have a completely tremendous amount of content in regards to that inside the program. But there's also like, it would be like a sport where it's like you can only watch so many videos about being good at tennis until you need to just like go on to a tennis court and hit the tennis ball, you know what I mean? Like, it is, it's kind of like that where people just want to listen and listen and listen and listen, but it's like, dude, you just gotta like go do lead gen for some offers and firsthand see, did this campaign work? You spin up a cold email campaign for some offer, did it work, yes or no? If it didn't work, like, okay, well, you learned what doesn't work now. And then like you do something that does work, you're like, oh, that works. So what if I try like shifting it like this? And you say, oh, that works too. Then what if I do this? Oh no, that made it not work. And then like you just figure this out over time and you start to just know what will work and what will not work on cold traffic, which you then apply to your own offers. And then you know if something is going to work or not, or you talk to a client like, well, we want to sell this, and you're like, there's 0% chance that that is ever going to work. There's literally no shot that will work. So it's very interesting that you learn that over time.

I completely agree. And that's like the number one skill to learn, I think, is just figuring out which offers work in the market and how to adjust them as well. Like, that is hands down the number one skill I've learned over the past couple months that I think is, is going to be the most valuable. But just like you said, you also have to just go through it and just get those reps in and just test as many things as possible as quickly as possible and learn from them. And then also, I think reflecting on the learning is important. That's something I'm working on as well still, is just like taking some time to actually like analyze, like, okay, like, what happened? Why didn't this work? Why did this one work? What are the differences here? How can I adjust this? Like, is there way I can test it, right? Maybe we take this offer and we adjust it in the same way. Is it going to work here? And then all this knowledge that you gain just compounds into, you know, just better results for yourself and your clients going forward. And then also when you're on like sales calls and you have that kind of conversation with the client, you're like, yeah, like this isn't going to work. This is how you should reposition it. That just immediately gives you so much authority, right? That you know what you're doing and that you've been around the block and that you can actually get them results that I think you can also just charge higher prices once you're able to talk like that, you know, even on a sales call before you onboard a client.

All right, bro. So Got anything else to leave the audience with before we, before we end it?

Honestly, I think there's two things I want to say. One is just don't be scared of volume. Just go as hard as you can when you get started. Everything will work itself out. You know, you won't die. You know, you'll figure out a way to make it work. Like the worst thing that's going to happen is you're going to have, you know, a lot of money coming in and a lot of customers and you'll make it work. Like everybody always figures out a way to make it work. So just don't be scared of that. And the other thing is is I really do think that, you know, education, investing education is important. Personally, I think I could have gone to where I am now, you know, maybe in the— call it 6 months, 12 months, whatever the number is. I definitely just shortcut that process by investing in education. For a lot of things, I'd just rather learn from, you know, other people instead of just like having my own scars that I have to learn from. And because there's always going to be plenty of scars you learn from yourself, but you know, wherever you can, you can just learn from other people. I always think that's the best way to do it.

For everybody watching, if you want to connect with Oleg, I'll leave all his stuff at the links in the description. And obviously, if you wanna join the program that he's in, AI Assisted Agency, that'll also be there. So you can check that out. Good sir, thank you for coming on.

Thanks, Daniel.