Case Study: How Corey Hit $30,000/mo inside Client Ascension

All right, what's up, everybody? Got my boy Corey here. Corey is a member inside of Client Ascension. Been in for a while now. What did you join Client Ascension at, revenue wise? And where are you now?

So when I joined Client Ascension, it's actually been quite a while. The revenue is basically zero. It was at like 2k. I actually had to go back to check. So it was like two grand a month. I wouldn't even say it was monthly. It was just kind of like a guy that was reaching out to me relatively consistently for work. And it was like 2K. And fast forward now. I just hit record month in June, July 2nd, right now. So I hit just under 31k. My recurring is sitting right at 25. Yeah, man, it's been crazy.

Nice, nice, good stuff. So walk me through, what is your business? What are you even doing? How do you get the clients first? What are you selling and who are you selling it to?

So to dive into that, I'll give like a super short backstory of kind of where I started. So I've always been relatively in the creative space in one way or another. And I was just finishing up college and it was in my last semester of school, I ended up landing like a random job doing product photography for a candy company. And I've had no experience doing photography in general. It was just like I would do photo shoots for my buddies here and there or whatever. But I knew my way around Photoshop, so I could always touch things up a bit and ended up landing that as a job. Worked there for a couple years doing that. And then the way I got my first client is someone actually just DM'd that Instagram page. At the time, I didn't even focus on running a business. It wasn't even a thought. And someone was like, hey, who does your guys design and photo work? And I was close with the girl that runs the social media and she kind of just looped me in as a quick referral. And then that kind of ended up getting me that first client who was like giving me some work here and there. And then that was like, damn, I can kind of use the stuff that I've learned from this job and let me just make some sort of a business with it. And that became me initially just being like a glorified freelancer initially.

Nice, good stuff. So what's kind of like the product that you're selling now? Yeah, like the main offering.

So a lot of people listening might have heard of Design Joy, like an unlimited product size, productized design service. And it initially started super, super broad, just literally unlimited graphic design. Just because I and me being naive thought that like the more broad that the offer is and the more shit that I would do for people the easier it would be to get clients. And I found that to be obviously the complete opposite. But so it's essentially like a super simple process. Whether it's E commerce, brands, advertising agencies, whatever the business is, we essentially just bring them into like a super simple trello board and they will just submit as many requests as they want per month on for just like a flat monthly retainer and then we just work through request with like a stipulation of a certain turnaround time. So it's like a 24 to 48 hour turnaround time and yeah, it just kind of rolls through. That way they don't have to pay for like one off projects from people on fiverr and the quality is different every time. It's just like a nice way to put someone in house. Just on the back end.

You kind of have like a business segment as well where you sell ad creative specifically, right?

Yeah. So that's where the business is morphing to and I feel like stuff's about to start just going turbo print mode.

So yeah, because yeah you make good creatives like obvious I've seen them. There's a lot of market demand for that. That's what selling the shovel is like. If say you were to like people who advertise, even do a sub niche of advertisers, you could do like SaaS companies advertising or E Com companies that are advertising. Like you could sell like a full ads management. You're going to do the creatives, you're going to do like the graphic design and credit, you're going to make video creatives, you're going to do the, the media buying, maybe some like other kind of like funnel management, email in there as well, you could do that but then there's just a component of. Well or I could just sell you like the oil of this system which is like the creatives, you know what I mean? Which is like really smart because there's just this trend where it's like you can make a pretty substantial amount of money selling low commitment offers where it's like, you know what I mean by commitment? I mean like if you're selling like a full advertising build out package, whatever management system, it's a big ask, like yeah, let me take over all of the advertising for your entire company. It's like a substantial financial commitment to do this. You could just sell the little pieces of it.

Yeah, the way I see it is like there's obviously media buyers. Like those people already have the clients. And the way I kind of like thought to shift the business this way is like one of the clients that I've worked with for the longest time. Like I still actually have that same client that I had from before I quit my job way way back. And I initially just used to do stuff for their social media page, advertising one of their products and it's shifted for them is like they're a lot larger of a company now than they used to be. So they're just testing ridiculous amount of creatives. So the work that I do for them is shifted to pretty much like 99% static ads. And I'm actually able to see the direct tangible results from that. So it's like give me this confidence of like no wonder I haven't been getting case studies. No wonder I haven't been getting any of this stuff. Like there was no tangible results. It was just like a satisfaction guarantee where now I actually have that I can use to drive it forward. And it's low commitment too because it's just like oiling the front end of the machine. These people are already running the ads and we deliver this for you. Either white label for your clients or I'll work with the E comm brands directly.

Yeah, when I say like low commitment offers as well, I'm like, I'm not saying like you shouldn't sell higher priced high ticket stuff. I'm just saying it's like you can get a substantial volume of customers into your business by selling some low commitment stuff. So like for instance for you as twice or three times as large as you are now and you're like okay, what's like the next leg up for me to get to like 300, 400, 500k a month? I'd be telling you like yeah dude, you should probably do some, some funnel management, like advertise for people and like build out that kind of. That's literally what I would tell you to do. More substantially priced up. So I think people kind of screw themselves over by trying to sell these like wildly extensive types of things for like and they're just really don't have the kind of results or case studies to back that up. And more importantly actually just the product, even sustain that. Like, I mean anyone can just say like hey I'll guarantee and make a hundred grand a month from like email or whatever. And then it's like yeah but like you don't really have a system for going about this. And when you're pitching this and trying to explain this to somebody and like you don't have like a method by which you go about that and you show and explain by like flow charts and this and this and like this information to substantiate this claim. People just don't believe you. What are you doing right now for your actual Legion? What's the Legion system in your business look like?

So initially, like, I've had a very difficult time with cold email for this offer, for the offer I was doing, which is just the unlimited, you know, graphic design is because it's like, it's just a novelty, it's not making people more money. So I would get replies. But once people are really like found out like what the service was, they're like, we're not really getting anything out of this just besides like someone to cover design stuff. But one thing I've prided myself in for the longest time is just doing really good work, very good creatives. So it's just been referrals. Honestly, this, almost this entire time. Besides, I've had a couple from ads here and there and things like that, but 99% of it is from referrals. Like when I joined, like I said I was at like 2k ish a month. I probably had like 10k in total revenue. This month I'll be crossing half a million in total revenue, 90% from referrals. And like the lifetime value of the, of the customers that pay between that like 2000 to 4000amonth mark is like 80k. It's like high for those people because they say stick around for a year to two years. But obviously I've had some like lower ticket things in the mix. But it's mainly just been referrals and people sticking around for a long period of time, just providing them good work.

Yeah, dude. I mean like if I work with the agency for something, I do good work. And it's like I just tell people like, yeah, bro, like I use this guy for this, I use this guy for this, I use this guy for this. And that's kind of what happens. I think a lot of people happens like they're not getting referrals because, like you're literally just not doing a good job. Isn't good. Like that's literally why that's so true.

Especially for something like the offer I was running where there's no actual results tied to it. Like it has to be based on the work that you provide and I test part of that to something I always offer and everything there has to be stipulations behind it is unlimited revisions on everything. People can abuse that. I've only ran into it once where people like abuse the shit out of it. Just constantly revisions. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But like it gives them the confidence of like, okay, I'm going to love everything that I receive. And that was like my risk reversal at the time is like if you're not satisfied with any of the stuff you receive within the first 30 days, like it's just miss after miss after miss. We just walk away. I give your money back. I've never had to use it. It's just been really good for that. Especially with referrals.

Yeah. I think if you did go to cold like you probably would recommend for you just like high volume, like directly asking if they want the thing. You would probably do very well on ads as well. Running ads or just for like one time trial runs.

I 100% agree. A lot of what you' been talking about lately is like that low ticket front end like self liquidating offer is like I can do a super low ticket version of that. It like it doesn't cost me that much to fulfill and it's like just to get someone in the door so they see what the whole process is like like fully onboard them, show them what the actual full experience is and then just scale from there. Because people need creatives. People are constantly testing.

Yeah. You could have like a $97 package of get a couple creatives and then you just churn those out. Yeah.

Even if you lost money that just the one person that you do sign like it covers it and then just from there it just compounds.

Yeah, exactly. Additional upsells you would need animated videos and UGC videos and.

And it's been helpful because like throughout that journey, like I did do short form content for quite a while and I still do in a little way but I don't really advertise it because I was running ads for that and I got a few clients from it. But I built up a really good referral deal with like a different mentorship group and essentially people that join that constantly need video. So they just send me people and I just give them like a monthly commission based on it. So it's just been like this little engine running in the background that like I still have the team for it. Like I have a couple editors on the team and then they just kind of send them to me. So it's just building relationships has been, like, unbelievably the best thing ever. So.

Yeah, dude, that's.

I don't want to rely on it because it's not good to rely on it.

It's probably a good idea for you too, if you were doing, like, outreach to go to these groups and, like, try. Try to make partnerships with those groups and even, like, even probably big partnerships with ad agencies themselves. Like, hey, do you need help making static ads? You know what I mean?

Just got off a call right before this with an ads agency, and he's like, dude, we have, like, 10 clients who need creatives, but they all design it themselves, and they just do the media buying. Like, I could just upcharge them, like, a thousand bucks white label this on the back end, and then he would. It would just crush.

Yeah, exactly. That would cook. All right, so how do you conduct, like, fulfillment and what's your team look like now?

So right now, it's currently just me, and it's been me the ent time for design services, and that's number one because of, like, the system we use where it's just like a trello board of just consistent requests. Everything's super streamlined in one place. And having those turnaround times has allowed me to kind of do that. But right now, I'm pretty much at the cap of the amount of work that I can handle and not be able to scale beyond that without hiring a designer. And the reason I haven't had a team prior for design and, like, actual deliverables is because the design was so broad. I was doing everything under the sun. And, like, I have the skill set where I can do a lot of that. But when you're hiring a designer, like, a lot of people are just niched to one specific thing. Like, if you have, like, a logo designer or if you have someone who's specific for ad creatives or social media graphics, I would have to build out this, like, whole mega team because of the horrible expectations I set for those clients initially just because I needed work. But, like, I have one designer on the team technically. Right now, we just onboarded. Essentially, he's just no monthly retainer. It's just like a pay per deliverable type of thing. He's specifically there for static ads. And the whole goal is eventually to allow the current clients I have to churn out just have it where it's the static ads, because that team's so much more scalable going in the future because it's just one skill set, and that's so much easier to Replicate going forward and train for if I needed to.

Are you doing anything with AI?

We do use AI for I've used it in like social media graphics. Like if we're doing like for example, let's just say there's like a product like this and we just want to put it in some like really crazy environment, we'll use that. But we'll also obviously use Photoshop involved in it because I don't know if it's just me because I'm a designer and I've been using Photoshop for so long. I hate when I see ad creatives online that are like obviously just made with ChatGPT and it's just chat BT and ChatGPT and I see some of the text is maybe misspelled or I don't know, it just drives me nuts. So we'll use it a little bit. There has to be some personal touch to it. Yeah.

What do you think your main bottleneck in the business is right now? If you were to identify like what's.

Kind of stopping you from honestly being broad with everything which has caused fulfillment to need to only fall on my shoulders. And if I wanted to pull the time away, I would have to like say peace out to some of the clients and just like cut revenue substantially and then scramble to get new clients. When I haven't had systems in place but now revenue is a lot higher. I just actually started working with plug them remotely X to hire an executive assistant to kind of handle some of the things that'll actually push the business forward, whether it's outreach, building emails and things like that. While I start shifting the focus more towards ad creatives.

Nice, good stuff. What are your pricing packages normally? Like, how is this like structured? Like forcing people to get on retainers. You do a lot of like one time things or like how do you go about that?

Yeah. So what I did initially was I had a flat monthly rate and there was like contract where 6 months, 12 months, whatever it might have been. But that was when my rate was around 2,500amonth. So it was a little bit lower barrier to entry, but just for like my stability sake. And then one thing I ended up starting to test was I moved up to about three grand a month roughly and I removed the time commitment. I just had like a 30 day cancellation. But there was that satisfaction guarantee. And I'm not saying I recommend that to everybody, but maybe it was just because of the work I provided or like how I communicated with them, but there was virtually like zero churn. For the longest time, because I felt like that had like a level in the client's head of like, they didn't feel like they were stuck with me. If they're getting good work, they're going to stick around. And they did. So as I realized that, like, scalability was going to be an issue because of me doing the fulfillment, I raised the prices. So right now it's four grand a month for unlimited graphic design. And that usually, like I said, covers social media, graphics, ad creatives, things like that.

All right, so what do you use Client Ascension for? Because you came in here, you're pretty much at zero. You're at 30k a month. Assume obviously you're trying to go to like 100, 200k a month. How have you used it personally?

So I used it a lot different initially than I do now, and that's about to kind of change. So I was kind of explaining a little bit before this call, like, I feel like I'm joining client section for a second time. It's really exciting because now I'm super confident about the direction I'm going to go. So when I joined, it was immediately into, you know, cold email, building the systems, getting on calls, asking questions, and just having that as like a resource to kind of go from being a freelancer to kind of structuring it as an agency. And it was huge for that initially. And then obviously, like, my offer kind of gave me those bottlenecks. But now that the offer is switching completely to something that's actually going to give people results, because that's one of the biggest things, especially with how much you. You stress having the more case studies you have will just like, unequivocally result in more money. Like, the more case studies, more results, the more money you'll make. And now that it's transitioning to that, I'm going of be able to go back into the modules, into the calls, the same way that I did initially, because now there's finally an offer and scalability that'll actually start printing money with, with running the cold email, doing the Dream 100 outreach. Because if I was just doing Dream 100 for, you know, just random creatives, like, there's no substance behind it. So, like, I've been in client ascension for a while and I'm kind of glad things have went how they went because it allowed me to, like, learn what I should be doing, what I shouldn't be doing, and getting that feedback from people like my student success coach and just being able to ask questions whenever I've needed. So like it's been a crazy resource rather than just going on YouTube and just searching for random this stuff or which is cool but it's like such a structured area to be able to have your questions answered.

Yeah, I think you would absolutely annihilate with ads too. Like your own ads.

We'll have to do a second call in a few months. I'll be like this went crazy.

Yeah, exactly. You go immediately goes from like 30k to 200k a month in like 6 months. Dude.

I'm not going to say it's going to happen but I really think something there's like a huge trajectory that's going to happen.

Dude. It's funny because sometimes I see some of the guys in there running these specific kinds of businesses. Like you're an example of one where it's like wow, I wish I just owned this. That because I would just like fucking just spin up funnel real quick and a bunch of ads and like a couple salespeople and just bullet it to like 200k a month and like probably like a couple months.

And there's other ways that I can hit the market too. Like for example with like client ascension. Like there's a lot of things taught about cold email. And then you have list kit as well which is like kind of an extension of that. They all work together with the unlimited design. There was like nothing I could really sell is like a low ticket offer or anything like that. Just to get opt ins and leads in the pipeline other than people who are directly interested. It's like now that I'm doing static ads, it's like I can build a library of templates if people just want to get on in the low like hey, I'll give you 100 templates for $97 one time payment. They use them, they realize that they don't want to do the actual work to put their you know, products on the creatives and run them. Like we'll do that for you. So then there's going to be whole processes involved in that.

Yeah, it's cool because when you have, when you have like a fair bit of money you can hire someone to build a funnel for you. I mean you can sit there and write copy. You can drop 10, 20, 30 grand on ads to like blitz something and then you just sell people upsells on the back end. It just like to spew off cash. It's like having access to the people who can actually do things in a competent fashion. Because I think people say oh yeah, I'd be do that too, Daniel, if I had a bunch of money. The answer's like, actually, no, I wouldn't, because you don't know the people I know. And I think it's actually funny when people. The whole trope of higher A players, like, yes, literally, yeah, do that. They don't just spawn from nowhere, just like have to meet them gradually over time. And then you just like, know when you're young, you don't know a player. So it's like the only option you have to do anything with your life at all is to be an A player yourself. Like, that's really the only thing you can do. It's almost like you operate in life and you can have like one of two resources. So like, operate in the business world. It's either like, you're a likable person and people like to be associated with you, or you have money. Ideally a both. Right. But if you don't have money, it's like, you got to be the first one. You got to have like, skills and be like, useful person to be useful to other people.

Yeah, totally. And that's one thing I realized, like, with the amount of time that I've spent going through this, like, the person that I was initially is not the same person that I am now. As far as one connections I've. I've built to the way that I like, communicate and like treat my clients and things like that. Not that I ever treat them like shit, but like shit just evolves over time. Where now I. I have like, if I was deciding on this new static ad offer initially, I don't think I would have had like the, the bandwidth, the mental capacity, like even know how to scale that the right way. And just like, I didn't have any connections in that space. Like, I've gotten on a bunch of calls recently with these advertising agencies, some e comm companies, just to ask them questions. Like, what would be like an ideal offer for you? Like, if you could build your own offer based on like the stuff that I provide. And I've just used that as like feedback. And it's just been a really good way to like, test because, like, you could just ask people.

Yeah. And it's also like, what are they even buying in the first place? Like, you have an idea of like, what your offer is going to be. Like kind of the product you're selling. Then there's thousands of different variations of like, well, who can I sell it to? How is it positioned? Like, what thing am I promising that they're getting. How am I presenting it? There's just thousands of different iterations that this could take up, and you're not really sure what exactly you need to be selling. So, like, you generally are kind of broad and you kind of sell, like, whatever to anybody, which is fine. Which I kind of recommend in the beginning, because what that allows you to do is uncover where the market demand is. We want to call. We're talking about different positionings for at List Kit against different audiences. I was like, well, let's pull this customer segment over here. And then, well, they're paying this and they're doing this. And then the conversation is like, yeah, but like, who buys that? You know what I mean? They're right here. The people who bought it are the people who buy it. Let's look at what they are. So it's like, okay, you go in, you look and see who they are. It's like, oh, okay, it's this person, this person, this person, this person. Okay, well, let's formalize this into a. Like, let's sell this product to this people, Make a funnel targeting those people and sell them this. This specific product with this specific positioning that they relay to us on sales calls. You see what I mean? It's like, I'll just extract it from reality. And you can really only kind of do that when you have a bunch of. Of, like, broad happenings occurring all over the place normally. Mostly occurs. It's what I. Bro, I've sold all kinds of. All kinds of shit. I sold Facebook advertising in, like, 2018. I sold, like, Instagram growth management. I've sold cold email. I've sold software, sold courses, sold coaching programs, multiple agencies, six SaaS companies. You know, I mean, I've sold, like, so many different kinds of things, so many different kinds of people, and you kind of just like, figure it out at some point. It's like, okay, well, there's a market for this. Let me just lean into this market. And then you just, like, draw. Drive deep into that market, and just, how far does this go? Like, how far can we dig? You know what I mean? You keep digging and mining and mining and mining and mining. And some markets just go so deep and you just get rich off mining one hole. You know what I mean?

And that's exactly what I'm realizing now with this, with the static ads. It's like, I can provide this one service and sell it in multiple different ways. Like, one, I could sell it directly. Like, let's just say if we're talking e Com. I could sell it directly to the brands. If they're running the ads themselves, they constantly need things to the test. I could also sell it to the advertising agencies who have these people as clients and whether that's them white labeling it and just reselling it, selling it to their clients, like, so they'll make more money from the thing that I'm providing to them. Their clients will make more money because they have more statics to test to find like a winning variant. So like everyone's making money throughout that entire process initially. Like, if I'm charging them a flat rate, they have X amount of clients and we can cover that many brands. They can just upsell their clients to start offering creatives and just everyone starts making money.

Yep. Good stuff. All right, so what's the plan from here? Where are you taking your business? What's the growth trajectory and plan for this?

Now that we'll be having fulfillment kind of taken off my plate very soon, it's like literally just growth focus. And that's one thing I've learned over time is like, I love growing a bit business more than I love like doing the actual like deliverables of it.

Yeah.

So, dude, it's, it's gonna be exciting. So I'm gonna just push super heavily on ads and cold email. And I really do see like the trajectory of the business, like scaling to like 1 million ARR very soon. Like 80,000 plus a month and probably ambitiously like 6 to 8 months. I do think that's possible just because the scalability will be there. Like if I got that influx of leads right now, I wouldn't be able to handle it. But like, once I have that fulfillment team for just statics, like if that's the only bottleneck is just like hiring more people for that. The rest is just focused on more clients. More clients. More clients, More clients.

Would you sell the company or would you keep it?

Depends what level it's at. Yeah, there's always a number, but like, probably not. Like, if I'm at that level now, not yet. Like, yeah, I want to scale this thing to a couple. I see the potential for several hundred thousand a month.

Nice. Good stuff. I do too.

Yeah, it's a good business.

Very clean business. I like it.

I appreciate it.

All right, everybody, I'll leave links to all Corey stuff in the description. You can check them out. And if you want to join client ascension, that'll be in the description too. Corey, my friend, thank you for coming on. Appreciate it.

Appreciate you having me.