Connor Skelly: Signing a $108k Client, What It ACTUALLY Takes To Succeed + More | SSI#14

Was that.

I know recently you signed like a six figure contract with one client, which I've not even done before, so. Prophecy.

That's.

That's awesome. Was that your biggest deal yet?

That is my biggest contract in the history of my existence. Yeah. Yeah, I haven't.

What's going on, guys? Welcome back to a Student Spotlight interview from the Client Ascension community. My name is Andre and I'm here with my good friend Connor Skelly. Welcome to the show.

Hey, Andre, thanks for having me.

Of course, man. So just to get us started, for the audience out there who might not be familiar with you yet or other students throughout the program, you obviously have been in the program for a little while now and you've been one of the most successful students to go through it and a lot of different factors which we'll talk about on today's interview. But just to get us started, who are you and what are you currently working on?

Yeah, so my name's Connor. I run a marketing and sales ops agency for businesses that use HubSpot. I started the agency formally like just before I joined Client Ascension, just about, like a month before I joined it. And yeah, it's really. It's really taken off from there. Just ended up kind of consolidating all my consulting work into one offer and one agency. And Client Ascension's kind of been somewhat. Been there from the beginning.

That's really interesting. So you started in an agency a month before joining Client Ascension. So there wasn't much of a time gap there. So I guess what was the decision first to start the agency? Like, what convinced you to start an agency and then what convinced you to join Client Ascension a month after?

Yeah, so I've been doing marketing consulting on and off for like six years and just doing all different kinds of stuff. And so my last full time role I got really, I was the marketing director. I built a team from the ground up. Um, and I just got really interested in systems and operations. And once I left that job, I just had consulting work that was focused on that and focused on like the companies that were using HubSpot. So I did that for like six, seven months and was like, I could let me just consolidate everything into one, you know, stop trying to do everything under the sun when it comes to marketing and just do this one thing. So, yeah, I did that. And then I've been lurking like money Twitter for a while. You know, probably like it was like a year, year and a half at that point. Following like, you know, Cold Email wizard and Chase diamond and those guys. And then Internet money had come out like around that same time. Like cold email wizards, Internet money. And so I joined that and then was in it for like six weeks and was like, I gotta, I gotta graduate to Client ascension.

That's so awesome, man. So you heard about it through just lurking on Twitter, got into like the entry level offer and realized you needed something higher level, something a little bit scarier of an investment, I'm sure, to just basically go all in on this. So the question I have for you is, when you join Client Ascension or around that time with your agency, like, what would you say was the biggest problem you were trying to solve at the time?

Yeah, so I think like I had just gotten over the problem of positioning the offer, communicating it the right way. Internet money really helped with that. Just like the basic foundational stuff. And then going into Client Ascension for me, it was like the first, the very first thing I did was like VSL setup and like Stephen was great with that. But getting into like the sales calls, tweaking some of the offer positioning a little bit, but definitely like improving sales calls was like a big thing for me, just. Cause like, I've done it with my consulting work in the past, but it's, it's very, it's. It's different when like you're kind of focusing on one thing and like you're doing it at a higher volume and it's just a different dynamic. And plus when you learn about what all these other people are doing, it's like, well, how are you running those sales calls? And you can get all those insights in the community.

Yeah, there's really an art to it which is so interesting. And so what would you say, like, if someone is struggling with sales? Because I feel like a lot of people do, especially early on in their agency, and it might have a lot to do with their offer not being fully fleshed out. But if sales is a big focus for someone, what were some of the things you did early on? Was it call reviews? Was it just going to the coaching calls? Like, what'd that all look like?

Going to the coaching calls is probably the biggest thing. Just like seeing how other people like what other, what problems other people were experiencing. And because like, I may have, I may say, like, oh, this call didn't go a certain way, but then seeing another student go through a similar thing, like help really helps reinforce the, the experience and the potential solutions that can come out of it. The response, handling calls were really helpful of just kind of going through and then like getting more and more conditioned into that mindset of like, handling responses on a call and. Yeah, really just the big. The big thing. The big thing that clicked for me for sales calls was like, the prospect is not your friend. That was like. Because that is the antithesis of like my entire consulting sales approach beforehand. Yeah.

Core building, right?

Yeah, yeah. It was just totally different than how I've done sales in the past. Like, taking the friend route has worked pretty well, but it's, It's. It's different in, in this, in this system. Yeah.

Well, this clearly has worked for you. I've seen you in the WINS channel for the past couple of months and especially recently. It's cool to see, like the build up to.

Was that.

I know recently you signed like a six figure contract with one client, which I've not even done before. So props to you.

That's.

That's awesome. Was that your biggest deal yet?

That is my biggest contract in the history of my existence. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't, you know, even like, no, no full time salary has. Has breached that. So yeah, you know, consulting contracts. That. That was the biggest one. And that was. That was a renewal for my first client with this agency.

Wow, that's awesome, man. So not only is the sales really locked down, but also the fulfillment in the offer and the value that you're providing, which all of it is so, so important. So that's really cool. So congrats on that.

Thank you.

Super inspiring for other students to see. Six figure deals, one client, like, unheard of. So really cool.

It's wild. Yeah.

I even saw your tweet, I think before you sent it out or when you sent it out, you're like, pray for me.

I felt good about it going into it, but you never know, right? You never really know how it goes. So. Yeah, I'm happy it happened. Yeah.

100, man. Well, congrats on that. I want to talk a little bit about, like, your experience in Client Ascension. Not so much about, like the actual program, but just meeting other people in the community and so maybe let's talk about last October right now. We're recording this in March. So a couple of months ago, we did our first event in Tampa. You were one of the guys that flew out, I think actually, were you one of the guys that won, like the free flight?

That is what brought me from Internet money into Client Ascension?

No way. Yeah.

Daniel was like the next person to join Client Ascension will fly you out to Tampa and he posted that Internet money. And I already had a sales Call with Client Ascension scheduled for the next day. And yeah, it was me.

So I remember the DMs, like doing the flight bookings or whatever. Yeah, right.

Yeah, that was a very, I imagine, unique and yeah, fun entrance into the community.

Yeah. Yeah, I think we only did that one. So if you're listening to this, no, we're not going to buy you a flight. But regardless, now that you went through that experience, you went to the event, you met people at the event, I'm sure you would have been very happy to pay for the flight ticket. 100 maybe just talk about that whole experience because I think that's super unique.

Yeah, so like one just entering the community through that, you know, funnel, I guess, was. Was pretty funny. And, and yeah, the event itself was. Was great. Like the. I had always struggled. I talked about this before. Like, I've always struggled with like finding that group of people that like, just love talking about business because, like I have friends that like do it, but like they get burnt out quickly. And so being like one just being in the client centric community really fills that. But then being able to see these people in person and like all talk about the same topics and learn about new things and whatever it is just really help reinforces like the importance of the community. And then, you know, there's probably 10 or 15 people or so that I've met through Client Ascension that like I talk to on a daily or weekly basis. So yeah, it's. It's definitely been a great way to meet new people and make new friends and all that. Yeah, it's awesome.

I don't know if you want to go into the specific details, but I know, I don't know if this happened because I don't even really know the background. So I'd be interested in learning a little bit more of the story here of Melody and how that partnership came to be.

Yeah, so I was part of the. When Melody was doing like its alpha stage, I was like one of the group, you know, one of the small group of people that was in on it. So I was using it to it earlier. I really liked it and I think actually I may have gotten a client during the alpha stage with using Melody, which is kind of funny. But then there was a soft launch of it sort of at the Client Ascension event and I had been thinking about getting more involved with the company if they'd have me, and just had a conversation with David Jacob, the CEO of it and it sort of worked out where like it was sort of. It was very Like Serendipitous, where they had already talked, they were talking about potential plans like, and how they wanted to develop the product and like more future roadmap stuff. And I learned that like they were going to reach out to me to like help them do it. So it was like pure like circumstance and like that. It just sort of met that way. And yeah, I've been working with the team since and it's been a lot of fun.

Yeah, that's awesome. And for people listening Malady is a sending tool that was created a sending tool platform. It's a company obviously as well, that was created by two students that were actually two of the first ever students in Client Ascension way back in 2021. And so yeah, it's really cool that we were able to unveil because also myself and the founders of Client Ascension are our business partners in that venture as well. So we were able to unveil the launch at our first ever in person event last year. And you got involved. So that's what I love about Client Ascension in the community. And it's really hard to see this from an outside view or perspective until you're really in it. But just the amount of opportunities that start to come your way just by being around other people that like you said, love business, love to succeed, are highly ambitious, highly skilled and if you have something to bring to the table, which you have something very, very unique and valuable, there's going to be opportunities for it.

Yeah, yeah. I mean the, the amount of like the ROI that you get on Client Ascension is nearly immediate. Right. Because you, you get tapped into that network which has immense value. And then, yeah, just the, the amount of like deals that I've got, I've closed a couple deals. Source from Client Ascension. If I ever need like an agency partner or something current client or I need something to build up my own business, like client essentially is where I go first because like there's just a massive amount of people that have all different kinds of businesses and they're all, they're all pretty good at what they do.

So yeah, 100%, man. So one, one question I always love to ask because really this is, I do these for the students and even for myself just to learn, like what do you guys really like about the program? What can we do more of what really works? Because there's so much in the program, right? There's like 12 weekly calls, there's probably over, I think over 200 videos now in the actual learning platform. Like there's no way you're going to get through all of it. You're not going to meet everyone, you're not going to talk to everyone, you're not going to learn everything. It's quite literally impossible. So what would you say to a new student or a student that's in client ascension that's not getting the full value? How have you been able to get the full value?

Yeah, like take like try to like take stock of like where you're at in your business and like what you truly need help with. Because it's easy to get overwhelmed with all the different slack channels and the, and the call recordings and all the different trainings and stuff. It's easy to get overwhelmed but it's also like very easy to get excited about it. So like, I know I've done this, a lot of students will do this, they'll just like binge a ton of videos over the course of a weekend. But I don't think that you can really take action on all that kind of stuff. So my advice would be to really understand what you need help with because chances are somewhere in client ascension there are answers to that. But then going all in on that one thing, solving that, getting it to where you want it to go and then moving on to the next thing. For me it just happened to be VSLs, which is probably not the best place to start, but did that sorted out with Steven and then you know, that happened for a week and then I went on to sales calls and then I went on to the next thing. So I take it, you know, take it more in a bite sized approach and don't try to like boil the ocean with it.

Oh, that's great.

Yeah.

Because I feel like what happens is people get overwhelmed and they leave or they don't take action because it is very overwhelming. So I love the way you approach it is just focus on the, the biggest problem or the biggest task at hand and then once you solve it, move on to the next one because there's always going to be the next thing.

Yeah.

And I. VSLs are interesting, right? Because on the surface it's just like, oh, it's a video sales letter that you'll slap on your website. But when I did my vsl, it was probably the most valuable exercise to help me get more clarity on what my offer was. Yeah, it's really like an offer creation process if you have a. Yeah, it.

Has absolutely helped me. Like it forces you to think more critically about how like how you frame sales calls, how you frame like the rest of your Website. How you just think about your offer and the value you're providing. Yeah, it's definitely. Yeah. It's more than just a video slapped on your website. Yeah. Yeah.

Awesome, man. Well, I'm happy you said that. Few more questions here. The next question is more broad. So this will go on my YouTube channel. And so people even outside of client ascension and on Twitter will see this. And so the question here is like, what advice would you have for someone that's just getting started with their agency? They're not inclined ascension, but they just are getting started with an agency similar to where you were at before you joined Internet money and everything else. Like what's. What are those first steps to get started? What should they look out for? What should they do based on your experience?

Yeah. So assuming they've. They've picked some sort of offer at this point and you know, they want to go down a path of, you know, whatever it is, get really good at it. Like everything else, you can be really good at sales, you can be really good at, you know, writing content, whatever it is. Like as long if. But if your core service, like if you're not good at it, just, you're gonna fail. I've seen people where they just like immediately start to outsource their fulfillment without actually really knowing the thing themselves and they don't last very long. So I think having. If you're starting out, making sure you're very competent at what you're selling is first and foremost you will get better along the way. Right. You'll get better at how you can structure that work, how you then start to delegate those things. But those are just hurdles that you'll face as you make more and more money each month and get more clients. So yeah, if. If fulfillment isn't there, everything else breaks down.

So true. This has been a really big topic of conversation within client ascension community is just getting real with yourself is like spend the time to get good at the service. You have to be able to provide value. Like the core of an agency business is offering a service that is valuable to someone else. It's not skinning them for money. That's not the. That's not what it is at all. And it gets a bad rep. Especially with some of these smma gu. Yeah. And just the agency game in general. But the guys that last the longest stick around the longest. And exactly what you said earlier, you sign your biggest contract, which was not a new client, it was actually a renewal. And that says everything about your ability to deliver value and quality Service. Yeah.

That was their fourth renewal.

Yeah. I love that you said that, because it's not talked about nearly enough to build. To build a sustainable agency. And I think that's a big reason why you're able to scale so quickly.

And it's, It's. It's sort of like, I understand that people, like, it's tough for people to get to get over that. Right. Like, because for me, like, this is my first time building a business from an operator perspective. Like, I've done solo consulting stuff. I could run that. I could have a decent business where it's just me and I could do that forever, but it's not interesting to me anymore. So, like, when people tend to build these agencies, they want to build it more and more and move themselves farther and farther away from the business. So I think going into creating a business with that mindset, it has a lot of friction with actually being good at the service because they're like, oh, if I just want to move away from the business, I don't have to be that good at fulfillment. Well, you're not going to have a business if you're not good at fulfillment, so you have to just start from that. And then as you get better, you'll learn what the new hurdles are of scaling better systems. You'll join client ascension, you'll hop on Andre's calls, and then you'll get better at operating and scaling.

Yeah, don't come to my calls and be like, oh, I'm just going to outsource it all. It's like, no, you're not. You're going to learn how to do it first.

Yeah, I know. That's where that's. That's been a big. A big challenge for me is like, moving away from the work and how to. How to do this correctly, especially with this kind of agency, because it's pretty technical. So that's. That's my big challenge right now.

Nice. Hey, that's always the. The biggest thing I've learned from Cole Gordon, I think, said, this is the moment you solve a problem in business. There's one thing that happens for certain is a new problem is created somewhere.

Yep.

And it's your job to go find it and solve it quickly. And that's all it is. It's like in business, you're never done solving problems. It's literally always never ending problems. And that's what makes it fun. It's like an end. It's an.

An infinite gain checklist. Yeah.

So awesome. Man, this has been a lot of fun. To wrap it up I just want to ask where can people find you, follow you and learn more about potentially working with you and your agency?

Yeah, so primarily on Twitter. My agency's website is Fission F I S S I o n agency.com Again we do marketing and sales ops for HubSpot businesses making their CRMs run better. So yeah if you're, if you use HubSpot or you're going to use it and you want better systems so you.

Can reach out, hell yeah. Appreciate you Connor. Keep crushing it man. You're one of the most valuable assets in the client essential community. So if you are watching this and you're in the community, be sure to connect with Connor. Reach out and see how you can provide value to him and to everyone.

Else in the community.

That's what this is all about. And I'll catch you guys on the next Student Success or Student Spotlight. Sorry interview. Thanks.