Calvin Manik On Building His $30k/month Video Editing Agency From Bali

All right, what's going on? Client Ascension fam. Andre Haykel Jr. Here back with another student spotlight interview. And on today's interview, we have Calvin Manning from the community. Welcome, bro.

Thanks, man. Thanks for having me on, bro. Good to finally connect, dude.

Thanks for taking the time. Is that, is that a Marcus Aurelius statue back there, by the way?

Yeah, man, I don't know, man. I just grabbed something from ikea. Not gonna lie, man.

Very stoic. I love it, dude. That's the greatest thing. Awesome, man. Well, real quick, just to get us started here, if you could explain for the audience a little bit about who you are and also more importantly, where you're currently working on.

Right, Sounds good. Your client Ascension. So I'm Calvin, so you may know me from Twitter or anywhere. Discussing a lot about video editing and content. So what I work on, what I'm working on, what I've been working on is I provide post production work for agencies, e commerce and personal brands. What that means is it's basically videos at scale, right? Creatives at scale. So clients come to me, they have multiple other clients and then they have no way of actually fulfilling the video editing work or the graphic design work. And instead of actually hiring like multiple unreliable freelancers or basically hiring expensive in house graphic designers over there on the west, like in the US and the uk, they just come to me and I take care of everything post production wise. And yeah, basically I handle creative production and a creative post production at scale.

That's so exciting, dude. Yeah, I've seen your work. I know you do a lot of content for some of the students and client ascension already. And so if you're watching this and you've seen not only Calvin's content, but some of the other guys in the program's content, good chance that Calvin and his agency is behind it. So, dude, you do really great work. And so I guess my next question then is like, how'd you hear about client ascension? When did that come on your map? Like, were you already working on an agency? How far along with the agency were you? When did that come into play?

Yeah, man. So I have a really interesting story to tell. So actually the agency itself, I've been working on it since I was in Unique. I went to uni in the uk, but at first we only worked with local clients and I think it's a similar path to a lot of the students watching now, you know, you work with low ticket clients, it was like what, $300, $400, shitty clients, high churn. You Know the drill. Right? So it was local clients. I was a bit stressed about it because it seems like I wasn't going anywhere. Each time I added a new client, I need to add a new employee or a new va and then they keep turning. And then the profits went like to zero. Right? So it was awful. I did that for like a year and a half, two years maybe. A long time. It was just going in circles, man. I think the most revenue I did during that was like 4,000. And that was like, with like 20 guys in my team. That doesn't even make sense. Right? It was, it was an awful experience. And then basically I got frustrated. Scrolled through Twitter and then I actually found Cold Email Wizard. First Daniel scrolled through his timeline and then I, I found his course actually called Email Mastery. And then the first thing that got into my mind was actually, okay, I'm in Indonesia, I want clients outside of Indonesia. I use Facebook ads, or if I use Google Ads, that will be expensive, CPM wise. Because I was poor, I didn't have any money to do that, so couldn't, couldn't go that route. But then I bought his course and then it showed me a cost effective way basically to just like turbo RAM of prospects through cold email. Right. So what I did was, okay, I bought the course and then I also saw that Client Ascension was only like 2, 3, 4 months old when I actually bought the course. And then he promoted a lot through his Twitter timeline. And then I thought to myself, okay, if I can only get one client through cold email, I was sending like 400 a day, just like every day, just like going through like Apollo and what did I use instantly? And yeah, I got one client through cold email and then I put everything into Client Ascension. So basically every, any profit left, I just put into Client Ascension. Like, it can't be worse than like what I'm doing right now. Right? And then, yeah, found Client Ascension through there and then the rest is history.

Wow, dude. So you had so much conviction in Client Ascension and cold email. Because what it sounds like is you put all of your effort and all of your time and attention towards just getting one client from Cold email, which you successfully did just through sending a sheer amount of volume. And then as soon as you did that, you just reinvested all of it and dumped all of it in the Client Ascension. So I guess my question for you would be like, why were you so confident that Client Ascension would be the answer solution to you growing your agency?

Yeah. So took a look like I scrolled Through. I think I've been following Daniel for quite some time back then, and I followed you as well, when Client Ascension was on the rise. And yeah, you guys. You guys just talk a lot of sense, basically through retweets. And then obviously the course itself, it was awesome. Called Email Mastery. It made a lot of sense. And then actually the one thing that pushed me over as well was because it wasn't like, geographically, like, restricted to an area. Like, what it means is, you know, I see people from Europe crushing it. I see people from Asia crushing it. I'm like, they can do it. I can speak English well, so why can't I do it? It's like, it all makes sense anyways, right? So then when I saw what the program entails, so I actually talked to Jay during the sales calls, and then he handled a lot of my objections pretty well, like, okay, what about the one on one? What about if I go. If I run into this? What if I run to this? And then it just, you know, it just made so much sense, basically.

That's so awesome, dude. I'm happy to hear it. There are a lot of different factors in there, but it just sounds like your experience with previous courses from Daniel and just seeing the content online, it made a lot of sense that what we had in there was. Was good stuff. So I guess to dive a little bit deeper into Client Ascension and your agency journey, like, when you first joined the program, it sounds like you were just going all in and you didn't really have a backup plan or a second option. And you also weren't, like, necessarily crushing it with the agency. So I don't know if there is one specific problem, but what would you say was your biggest problem that you struggled with early on, like, when you first joined Client Ascension, that you said, hey, like, I'm inclined Ascension now. This is the first thing I want to solve.

I will definitely say Legion. Legion would be the number one thing and also sales. So those two. Right. Legion I did do. I wouldn't say pretty well because I actually ran through the time really, really quickly to get into Client Ascension. I just, like, I don't know what I did. I didn't even track anything. I just like, okay, I just need to get one client. I don't care if I need to burn through everything, right? I just need to get a one client. But then Legion, I think the best. The best thing that Client Ascension has taught me is actually Twitter. Twitter would be the number one thing. And then when you join Client Ascension, you connect with Other, like, top Twitter, top killers in Client Ascension. You follow me, Daniel, follow me. And that actually just makes everything a lot easier when you do outbound, when you post content, when people see your profile. So Twitter and cold email definitely helped me the most. And that was the one thing I was struggling with. Legion. And then obviously sales calls. So the first sales call I took before I joined Client Ascension, the one client I onboarded, I didn't know what to actually ask. I just said, okay, what do you need? I'm like, okay, yeah, here's the price. That's it. There's no process, no structure, no three pillars. No, no, no, no. David shouting, okay, that's bad. It's literally just like, okay, what do you need? And then luckily he took a chance on me. And then, yeah, after that, my sales process became a whole lot like, it's. It's so structured and then I close a lot more. And yeah, those two things definitely Client Ascension helped me solve.

That's awesome, dude. And you mentioned, like, lead gen first, and then you're like, oh, yeah, sales too. And I feel like when you're running an agency, you're so focused on that first biggest problem, which for you at the time was Legion, that you don't even realize that you have another problem you're going to have to solve, which in your case was sales. Right. So I guess outside of just sales, what's something that you struggled with or you didn't even know you struggled with until you joined Client Ascension that you're like, oh, man, Like, I can seriously improve that. Because it sounds like that's what happened with Sales. Like, you didn't even know there was a process that had to happen there. And when you join, you're kind of like, oh, like, David, it really opened your eyes, like three pillars in sales structure. Was there anything else like that where you joined and you kind of were like, oh, I didn't even think about improving this or working on something like this.

I would definitely say CRM is a. Is a good skill that I learned inside CRM and definitely content that I thought. I thought I was making pretty good content. But a lot of the courses inside of Client Ascension and then the weekly calls as well. And then I think one thing that made me like, okay, I made the right decision. Like, the one thing is community. Because when we build an agency, you don't have a lot of friends. Not like high school or uni friends, but like friends in the space. And once you join the community, it's just like, it's so nice to see the community uplifting each other, celebrating everyone's wins. That's one of the things that I think was one of my favorite parts of Flying Ascension as well, because you just get to connect with like actual people building similar stuff to you and just like, you know, having the same mindset and the same hustle as you basically.

100 dude, the community is everything. Like you have the content, you have the coaching calls, you have all that. But dude, the community is so important. So like kind of to ask a side question is like in for the community in specific, what are some ways that you are able to leverage or utilize it to help in your business? Because I feel like a lot of people hear the word community, like, oh, it's such an awesome community and they don't really understand what that means or how that can be leveraged or used to their advantage. So like, how have you benefited from being in the client ascension community specifically?

Yeah, I think in terms of community, obviously passively you can see like the channels, what people are talking about, the WINS channel and just like overall, any discussions on the different channels we have, you know, lead gen, sales, etc. Etc. But not only that, I got to connect. Usually if not in the community, it's through Twitter, through LinkedIn and it's like, oh, I saw your inclined section as well. And then we just chat. Some of them turn into clients as well. So yeah, I think it's just a win win solution, isn't it? If they need your service, if I need their service, you know, we make business opportunities happen. If not, it's just nice to, you know, talk to other people. You know, I found some Client Ascension members over at Bali as well, which is nice. Yeah. So yeah, it's just, it's just having someone, it's just having other people there that are doing similar stuff to you, having the same problems as you and just like growing together. Yeah, that's my favorite part.

No doubt. And are you still in Bali now?

Yeah, I go to Bali like everyone. I went back from Lombok last week, so I'm basically based in the capital in Jakarta. But it's pretty cheap to go anywhere, to be honest.

Very cool. Yeah, I know Marcos is, is headed that way pretty soon. He's another one in the community that's big on Twitter and social media content as well. And so we were joking when he was here in Tampa that we'll have to do a Bali mastermind. I'm like, yeah, it'll. I don't too difficult to convince everyone here to do 24 hours of travel for a client. Yeah, that'll be a real test to see how much people love client attention. Are they willing to do a 24 hour travel?

I mean, I'll definitely come. I'll spend the one hour to get there.

Yeah, you better. If we make the trip that far out, man, you better be there. It looks like a cool place, though.