$40,000/mo Email Marketing Agency (How Max Did it, Inside Client Ascension

What's up, everybody? I got Max here, and Max runs an E commerce email marketing agency. And. Hey, Max, I want to talk to you about what revenue level were you at when you joined Client Ascension and where are you now? And if you could kind of walk us through, like, how long it took and kind of what you learned, the comparison of running, like, a 5k a month business to, like, whatever you're at now, like, 40k a month business.

Yeah. So, all right. When I first joined, I was at 5K, but, like, most of that was coming from one client who was paying me, like, 4K, and they were kind of, like, on the verge of leaving because, you know, back then I was like, pretty shit, like, all right, So I was, like, trying to get clients on my own. Like, I was joining all these different courses from, like, SMMA gurus off YouTube, and nothing was really working because a lot of them gave, like, really shitty advice. And I was like, I had recently joined Twitter at that point I started following you because you had, like, you kept popping up on my feed. But also because, like, a long time ago, I saw an interview between you and, like, Chase diamond, and I remember thinking, like, oh, who's this dude? Like, he has, like, all these interesting, like, lead gen strategies, but I didn't really look too much into it. And then eventually, you guys start coming out with this program, and like, here I was, I'm like, but I've joined, like, all these programs. None of them have really worked. A lot of them will give you, like, one or two solid nuggets of, like, oh, you should hire a va, like, for three bucks an hour. Like, these small nuggets that will, like, kind of help you, but, like, doesn't really solve the problem. So I knew you guys were legit. I just didn't know if it would work for me. But anyways, you know, like, entrepreneurship's all about just, like, taking calculated risks. And I'm like, all right, well, my biggest client's about to leave me, and I'll be fucked in that situation. So risk of joining your guys's program makes a lot of sense because either I'm guaranteed to be fucked because what I'm doing isn't working, or I have a potential of being fucked, or it'll actually work, and, you know, I'll succeed and all that stuff. So I chose that option. Joined your guys's thing. Your guys's program is, you know, insane in terms of, like, how well it solves this specific problem for, like, growing B2B businesses. So, yeah, I just joined X, executed on everything you guys said and then it worked. All right, but like, in terms of the timeline, like, all right, so when I originally joined, the program was three months and I was like, oh, fuck, like this has to work or I'm actually fucked. I was like implementing everything, booking some calls, but I mean, dude, like, there's so much lag time between like, warming up your domains, getting people to respond to you. Going through that stage of sucking at sales calls and like refining it took me longer than three months, but thankfully you guys like extended the program for like, you guys just changed the structure of the program, which actually saved me because within three months, months, like, you know, I was better off.

But like, yeah, nothing works in three months. It does. It doesn't. You need longer.

Yeah, and that was one of my initial sort of things where I'm like, damn, like, I wish this was like a year long program and I would for sure succeed. But three months, like it, like, let's try it anyway. So thankfully you guys extended it when you did or I'd be screwed. But yeah, dude, like, I like basically cut out everything outside of like business and I was like fully focused on making this work. Ah. I mean, yeah, I could go super in depth with it, but basically the learning process of going from sucking to being confident really sucked. Like, in terms of like the amount of rejections and all that stuff, you know, getting roasted. Unlike, you know, like having my calls broken down and stuff. Like, yeah, it sucked, but it's like, all right, this is the process I got to go through. So I went through the process. Thankfully the program was extended past three months. And yeah, it just worked. And you know, it's. It's like you say like nothing happens for the longest time and then everything happens all at once. Literally what happened to me. And now people are fucking flooding my fucking DMS with like, oh, let me work with you, please. And I'm like, you can go on my wait list. You know what I mean?

So how many clients do you have right now? Like, what, what revenue level are you at?

Okay, so I just passed 40k a month, so I'm hovering around like 42. I think I'm going to chill here for a while and just build out, you know, my back end system. All the clients are getting excellent results, but like, it's taken a toll on me personally because I have to like, fill in a lot of the gaps here. And I'm also hiring new people, but the new people need to be like, literally 10 out of 10. And then I got to train them. You know, it's a, it's a shit ton of. But within three months I should be good. I should have somebody who's like good and well trained up and all the clients will get their A plus results and you know, I'll just, you know, go on to the next thing, you know. But how many clients do I have? I always lose track of this because it's like we have like, like project one time setup type things. But right now I believe monthly clients, it's around like 15. Somewhere around there.

Nice.

So yeah, everything's going pretty well.

So dude, this is such an important point that nobody talks about where wants to like turbo scale as fast as possible. And then what happens is if they do find something that has any form of semblance of, of success in terms of like acquisition, there's two kinds of people. It's like one kind of person will just not do sufficient volume necessary to actually drive results in terms of acquisition. And then the second kind of person gets way too many clients and like lets their back end get completely screwed up and there's no semblance of fulfillment and everybody leaves. And sitting in the center between those people where you slow sc, like really slow scale. So it's like for instance, people who are at like 5k a month or something might hear what you just said. Like, yeah, I'm gonna hang around like 40 for a while while we build this. A lot of people like, oh no, it's scaled as fast as possible and like turbo rem, it's like, bro, you don't understand what it actually feels like when you have so many people coming through and clients are getting signed and if you aren't able to fulfill on the things and you feel like you're constantly like your head is about to explode. It's a really slow process of getting clients, training people to help you fulfill, making sure they' actually competent and able to do it in the first place. And then only once that has occurred, going and acquiring more and scaling in like a stepladder fashion. And it takes significantly longer than people otherwise believe it does. And what have you been running your business like a year and a half, two years now?

Yeah, it took me longer than most. You know, everybody's like, oh, I scaled to 40k, like 90 days type shit. Yeah, I always knew that this was going to take me longer than most people. I don't know why, but generally like what I've seen throughout my life is like me going from like complete beginner to being like some sort of, you know, decent level of skill level. I don't know why I always have like some super long ass learning curve, but whatever, you know.

Because it's your first, it's your first rodeo. So like the first rodeo takes a really long time. Like you have to take it really slow. Like I, I think I probably, I probably grew in exactly the same speed that you did. People only say like, oh, I got to, I got to 50k a month in, in two months. And it's like, yeah, well, they don't tell you they ran another business or like we're a, of some startup before and like already kind of knew how.

To do the thing.

But it's like when, when you're building it 100% yourself, it takes a really long time. And this is what people kind of don't understand where it's like, dude, slow scale is better. Like slow and steady scale is way, way, way better. Because if you want to run the business for a really long time, like there's gotta be a solid foundation. It's built upon. You can't just go straight to skyscraper. And you never went to engineering school or built another building before. Like it just, it doesn't work like that. You just build on the building gradually over time and that's exactly what you.

Want to be doing.

So I don't think that's something to be upset about on your end.

Like, oh no, yeah, like I wouldn't have changed anything. But I mean, yeah, going from complete beginner to like even 10k a month, like there's so many skills you got to learn. Like it's just a lot of effort, you know.

0. 0 to 10 is really hard.

It's like, dude, holy shit.

It's really, it's, it's really, really hard because you're kind of getting into the area now. So you, it always goes in walls. Like 10k is like a wall. And then like you're around like 30 to 40 is a wall. You're doing exactly what you need to be. It's all about people just like hiring, hiring people and you're, that's a really, really tough wallet. But once you built it properly, you can pretty cleanly get up to 100.

Yeah, I'm not too worried about this. Like, to me this stage seems like a lot easier to overcome than 0 to 10, dude. Like 0 to 10. It's so much effort. It's like, oh, I gotta dial in my product market fit and like the sales calls and you know, the onboarding but this one is just like, oh, you just interview a lot of people and then find somebo who's good and then just like, show them in loom video format how to train them. Like, to me, it's straightforward versus the original part. It's kind of like you're shooting in the in the dark multiple times until something finally hits, you know? So, yeah, I mean, I'm feeling pretty good about where I'm at.

So what when you were going from like, let's take like 5 to 20k a month as an example, what were you doing to get those clients? And what are kind of some things you learned along the way while operating that from like 5k a month to 20k a month.

All right, so before I joined the program, I was like, overthinking everything. Like, oh, I didn't realize the amount of volume that you had to run with cold email in order to achieve sufficient results. So that's something that you talk a lot about. I was coming from a bunch of these courses on. From gurus on YouTube who are telling you, like, 80% of your time should be spent on lead generation, like, actually building the lead lists, which in retrospect is so retarded. Such bad advice. Dude, like, never once mentioned that you could hire virtual assistants to do all. All that stuff.

So scrape it.

Yeah, I mean, it's nuts. It's like, oh, that's where most of your time should be going. And the whole time, like, bro, I would. I spend like a week like, building a list of like 100 people and like, qualifying them or like Facebook ads or whatever and send out the cold email and they would all just get pissed. And I'm like, oh, my God, I just wasted a week. But this is the process, you know what I mean? So stupid. Now what I learned that actually works is, yeah, just ramming volume. That's number one. Having a really good lead list. You know, the dudes in Client ascension will literally help you with that. That was something that was kind of tough. I think it's like, how do I get leads?

Yeah, people don't know that you can just go on a list kit and scrape 100,000 E commerce brands in one shot. Email, all of them.

Yeah, yeah. Because it's like, I'm so far removed from that as, like, being like a main problem, but I remember being like, like, fuck, how do I get leads? Like, do I pay someone on Fiverr? Do I scrape them myself? But now it's like, yeah, you just go on list kit and all that. Shit. But then there's so many other, like, side questions where it's like, what size of business am I going for? Do I email their personal address or their business? So, yeah, just a bunch of stuff that gets like. Like, I would have to spend, like, weeks trying to figure this out and testing it out myself before the program. And now it's just like, oh, let me just hit up Andre or some shit and they'll literally tell you. So. So, yeah, overall, in terms of going from 5 to 20k, just ram out volume.

Like, how much, bro?

Like, now I have like 30 domains. One thing that I was talking to one of my friends about was, like, how I. How I bought the domains. I would always buy them at like, five at a time where I'm like, oh, you know, 15 should be enough. But for some reason, like, in my head, there's no real downside to buying more domains. But there's like, this limiting belief in my head that, like, I can't mentally manage running all this volume. But looking back, it's like, why didn't I just buy 30 fucking domains and just, yeah, run it like that, you know?

Like, there's no reason not to do that.

Cost like six bucks a domain. Yeah. I mean, in terms of what I would do differently, I would just skip this whole, oh, this should be enough, and just like, overkill. Buy shitloads of domains and just like, ram out shitloads of emails. Also, you're probably not gonna burn the leads either. So it's like. Because I'd be like, oh, what if I run out of leads? But it's like, you can literally cycle them. Yeah, it's so dumb.

One, you're not running out. Two, then you just recycle them months later.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, they don't even remember you. And, like, there are people I've even gone on, like, sales calls with and I email them, they try booking a call again, like, three months later, I'm like, this is so stupid. Just so. Yeah. The moral of the story is just listen to you, Daniel, because you say all this stuff anyway, but it's like, yeah, just fully unload on the volume. Just like, bam, the market. All that's what I would say about that. Yeah.

I mean, not spam, but, like, it's.

Not spam, but, dude, it's like the.

Alex Hermosi story with the flyers. Oh, I put out 300 flyers and his mentor was like, dude, we test with 5,000. Yeah. And then, like, from there, if it works, we're going like 30,000 a day. Like, people think it's like, they really don't understand, like, to be presented with the idea of, let's build a $40,000 per month business. If you were around a lot of people who run successful businesses, it's easy to become desensitized to that number to where you forget that that's a fucking shit ton of money. Like, that's a shit ton of, like, volume, right? And to like, expect that you're going to send like 200 cold emails and get like 40k of like, you're out of your mind if you, if you think that's how this works. And it's like, let me give you for. We're in this. We're in this one mastermind. They make like 4 million a month. The guys who run it and like asking them, like, how do you do 4 million a month? And they go, we spend $1 million a month on that. It's like, oh, okay, that makes sense. So, like, let's just put this into a numerical breakdown. So let's say there's a $20 cpm. So 1 million divided by 20, that's 50,000 cpm. So 50,000 times 1,000, that's 50 million people or 50 million impressions per month to make 4 million month. 50 million per month. And people think that you're going to get clients by hitting up 100 people a month or 200 people a month. It's like, bro, try like bare absolute minimum, 10,000. It's like somehow you thought that, like, you could get away with doing like 200. It's just hilarious to me. It's like, no, dude, you really don't understand, like, what is required to hit those numbers you want so bad that, like, it's a lot.

Yeah, yeah. I remember thinking that, like, there's. There's like this weird mental block where it's like you feel like you can't push past, like a certain volume. At least for me. I have no idea why, like, looking back on it. So ridiculous. But it's like you think you're gonna find this script that, like, oh, it has a 15 called booked rate. And like, that way I won't burn my lead list. I don't know. I really can't explain it. Like, even looking back on it, to me it's just stupid. But yeah, I mean, like, at the end of the day it always just comes back to just like running shitloads of volume. Like, even if you don't have a script that's winning or even if you don't have like product market fit or whatever. Like even during the testing phase, you still got to run a shitload of volume, you know what I mean?

So yeah, and I'd like your take on this now like up around 40 because it starts to be. You start to have like some inbound and referrals start coming around like 20, 25. Is that where like a portion of your new clients are coming from now?

Oh yeah, the vast majority, they're all coming through inbound, which is nice because dude, I always hated cold email. Like it's important to develop those skills of selling buddy selling somebody who's completely cold with like no case studies or whatever. But at a certain point it's like your sales velocity is. I mean it's just like you have to hop on like fucking five calls and one of them closes versus like inbound, where you just write post and then people book on your calendar and like 80% of them close. You know what I mean? So obviously a combo of the two. Yeah, go ahead, dude.

It's like people who have clients get all of the clients and people who have no clients continue to get no clients. It's like like the literal, like just biblical absolutes of the world where it's like those who have everything will have more given to them and those who have nothing will have everything taken from them. It's like it's just an absolute law of the universe where it's like if you have everything, you will be given more and if you have nothing, everything will be taken from you like continuously forever and ever and ever. So the prospect comes like if you're stuck and like basically no clients, like you have to brute force, like absolutely extreme amount of work and like hyper proficient effort, like really trying harder than you've ever tried before just to get those first like five people. Just to break past being the person who has nothing. It's. Yeah, everybody has to do that. No one talks about this. And it's like, I mean, you bought this stuff from like YouTube gurus. I guess I'm kind of a YouTube guru now. But it's like I try to invoke the maximum amount of realism as conceivably possible in all my content. But it's like you don't just magically get people and no one's just going to magically hand you clients. It's like, dude, you got to put like extreme effort in the beginning. It's the hardest in the beginning. The amount of effort that it would take you to go from 40k per month to 80k per month is like 1/8 what it took for you to get from 0 to 40, like legitimately, like that. Much less effort in work, bro.

I literally doubled my revenue with like no effort versus, like, bro, going from 00 to like even 2k for me was like, insane. I'm like, oh, shit. Like, this is like half of a normal job's income, you know what I mean? But to your point, it takes a fuck ton of effort, you know, because I would see people signing all of these clients because they had all the case studies. I'm like, oh, fuck. Like, and it's taken me all of this effort to sign one, but like, to me that was just more motivation to like, get my foot in the door, you know what I mean? Like, once I have a few clients, then I'll have to case studies and then it becomes easier, like, you know, just having faith in that and it eventually happened where, you know, now it takes like no effort. Like I have people being like, they're like, oh, like, are you still taking on clients? And like, it's like three grand per month retainer. And I'm like, in the beginning that was a shit ton of effort. I'm like, please give me three grand. Now it's like, bro, like, I just don't have capacity. So, like, you go on the wait list, you know, like, it becomes such a, like small deal. You know what I mean? Yeah.

So if you had to give a piece of advice to someone who's at, let's say, 5k a month and getting up to your levels or just some like, integral things that they need to understand, what would you tell them?

Alright, so I have a bunch of people like asking me this on Twitter and my answer is like, pretty much always the same. It's like, all right, literally join client ascension and then just identify your bottleneck at each stage. So at 5K, it's gonna be like legion. Just like ask all the coaches, like, how do I fix this problem? And they're gonna tell you, like, here's the action step to fix this. And then you just do it. Like, it's quite simple. I mean, that's pretty much what I did and it worked. So you know what I mean? So. But in terms of like, practical advice without joining the program, yeah, just get shitloads of domains, buy your leads off list kit and. And then, yeah, a ton of cold emails. Work on your sales skills in terms of sales. Yeah, just read, read all of Daniel's content in terms of like putting together your offer. Like, literally, like, I. I don't really have much to say other than just, like, read your stuff because, like, honestly, like, you're kind of the. You have, like, kind of the cutting edge information on all this shit. So just. Just go join Daniel Fazio's Twitter, basically.

All right, brother. Thanks so much for coming on. All of Max's links will be inside of the description. So will a link to join client Ascension. That will be there. You can click this or you can click thank you very much for watching.