How Dylan Scaled His Agency to $41k/mo in 7 months

What's up everybody? I got Dylan Rich here. He's running a $41,000 per month agency right now. You've been in client ascension for like seven months now. So I kind of wanted to do this interview, just introduce yourself to everyone what you do and, and how things are going.

Yeah. Thank you, Daniel. So my name is Dylan Rich. So essentially we help SaaS and software companies build predictable sales systems with the use of cold email, implementing cold calling, LinkedIn strategies, essentially a business development team in a box for your smaller and mid level SaaS companies.

And you make some like custom platforms and do some pretty cool stuff. You're basically just placing SDRs into people's businesses. Right.

That would create the playbook. We write the scripts, we find all the contacts, create the systems integrated with your CRM. Pretty much everything top to bottom dope.

So just like sales systems in a box. So if you, when did you start this business? Like what's happened in the last seven months? And kind of like take us through kind of the journey, I guess in the last seven months, like what, what has occurred here?

Yeah. So I mean I used to work a 9 to 5 on the sales side of things and just understood that my knowledge and skill set could be, you know, more fruitful from a revenue perspective if I kind of did it myself. I knew the pain points of the market and then I quit my job in December of last year. I've been going full time since then, so it's like almost coming up on a year, which is pretty crazy. But the biggest thing that's kind of, you know, attributed to the increase in revenue is just providing more value. Right. Listening to the clients that we had on just cold email and cold LinkedIn and everyone was like, hey, you guys do cold calling? Do you have a cold caller? It kept coming up. Right. So listen to the market. We created a separate company that does SDR training and placements. So we find people, we teach them sales and then we connect them with our clients so everyone wins. So we're helping the companies as well as people looking to make money remotely.

Yeah. And you're the cold calling guy.

Yeah, I used to make like 2, 250 dials a day for like over a year. So if I put in the reps and understand what works, doesn't work. It's a lot mindset. Let me teach a lot of mindset stuff because it is a grind now.

If someone, if someone, so someone comes in and they just say, hey Dylan, can I want a cold caller in my business you can just place a cold caller in their business and like do the training for them.

Yeah, yeah. So we do two ways, right? Just a strict placement with a guarantee. And then we also can do like an outsourced SDR model where we essentially retain the sdr, we write the scripts, we manage them, call recordings, and all they get is the meetings on the calendar. So you can be, you know, have someone internally or we could handle it outsourced, depending on what the client wants.

Yeah, so it's exactly like a lead generation agency, but it's just using a different mechanism. Like a lot of people will start like a cold email agency or something like that. And as more and more people get into that and more and more people sell business opportunity versus make a lead gen agency, you kind of have to stay ahead of the game and do the hard thing that people don't particularly want to partake in because there's not a lot of people on earth who are, who are doing cold calling or training cold callers or even know how to do cold calling correctly. So.

Yeah, yeah. Like if you read predictable revenue, right, like everyone knows that you need it, but it's like the hardest thing to hire for. Find the right person, manage that person's expectations and actually scale it out and.

Have them actually, actually perform and stay inside of the company and not churn within two weeks because they don't like it.

Yeah, the half life on like an SDR is like six to seven months. It's pretty wild.

Yeah. And you're the cold calling coach in client ascension. Now we're doing cold calls in there.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's the most effective way to reach the person that you want to sell your product or service to. Because, you know, in a live conversation you can overcome those objections that you may have never even understood was an objection with a cold email because they'll just read it, have the objection, and then just say, no, not interested. Removing from your list or a call, you can actually navigate a conversation and, you know, get them to a meeting at a higher percentage.

So when you, when you quit your job, were you, were you under. Did you think you'd be able to hit 41k a month in seven months? Like, is that something you thought would happen? Do you think it'd take a little longer?

I definitely just believed in doing, you know, consistent things on a daily basis and then it would just work out. Right. Like, I didn't have so much a number in mind. It was just like, I'm gonna put my head down Every day and, you know, chop the wood. And over time, whether that was seven months, a year, two years, I didn't really care. I just knew that if you're just consistent and disciplined, kind of detaching from like that instant gratification, like, ah, I didn't do this and this and then get discouraged. Just like, don't even care about it. Let me think too much. Just do it. Did you.

Did you find yourself when you started hitting a wall, like, if you like 10k or 20k a month, where you have to like, switch things up and kind of design the business differently to hit a higher number?

Yeah, no, 100%. I mean, you can kind of. You know, it depends on a couple of things, right? Like, either your offer is not scalable from like a fulfillment perspective, where you're just doing too much for too low of a price point, which I think a lot of people who are getting out charge too less for what they're actually bringing to the market. So understanding your worth definitely helps in getting through those. Right. If you charge $750 a month, you could have a lot of closed deals and be really busy and you're just not making enough money. So, you know, understanding and pivoting quickly and not falling in love with one specific thing definitely helps you kind of get over those barriers as well as, like, you know, as a sales, you get the 10k pretty simple. But then going from 10 to 25 and then 25 to now 50, which is we're on the market, is like different things. You got to focus on like fulfillment systems. Hiring the right people and retaining clients is like the biggest thing there. That's the biggest thing people forget is like, there's.

There's some math done by her Mose explaining churn and retention and how it is the number one thing that stops people from scaling because they'll assign a client, they do a really bad job, and then they turn. It's. You can't scale if everyone is churning. It's. It's too hard. It's way, way, way too hard. The velocity of. If you want to scale the business, the velocity with which you need to acquire new people also needs to accelerate if everybody is churning, which is just an absolute pain in the ass.

Exactly. It's like decorating a house that's on fire.

Yeah, that, yeah, that's, that's, that's. That makes a lot of sense. Yo. If you are running an agency and you are currently at 5,000 to $10,000 per month and you want help scaling to Half a million to $1 million per year. Click on the link below. Client ascension.com if you want help with getting clients with cold email, building sales systems, managing a sales team, hiring and operationalizing your business. And if you want to be in a community of over 140 other agency owners who are like you, a lot of which are doing over $100,000 per month right now, that link is client ascension.com but let's get back to the video now. I find it's really interesting if someone is selling like 2,000, $3,000 a month kind of stuff and maybe they have a high churn rate. Average client stays for like three months. Yeah, you have a nice LTV, but if you're trying to do $100,000 a month, you need to be selling like 5 to 10k type stuff. It's too difficult to scale when you're, you're. The thing you're selling is so little money.

Yeah. And that's.

And now you get into the question of how do you sell more expensive things which ties back into doing the hard thing and in your particular interest in, in your particular situation, it's cold calling and doing the things that nobody else does. And I was thinking about this a lot the other day of how people, they'll get like a business opportunity course like some kind of like oh dude, Amazon, FBA or make it make a cold email lead gen agency. And there's so many other people doing it and it's not unique.

Yeah. And.

It'S, you need to have something where it's so forceful and you're like, oh, that's like, you see it, you see the offer and you're like yo, that's really, really interesting. And a good phenomenal example of that is hey, we'll place a cold caller inside your business. It goes back to like market sophistication levels. Like for instance, everyone's selling short form videos right now. Like hey, we'll make you short form videos. That's the easiest thing to sell of all time right now. Because no, it's so new and no one else knows it and they have about like 10 months left until that starts getting more competitive.

And the people that will stay around will people who actually understand the half life and pivot and understand like what their clients are actually wanting. Because short form video is just one piece of the puzzle from a content perspective. So like that's kind of with us. Right? Like we saw like the people we were talking to were talking to five other people and I knew two of Them, Right. And it's like, all right, like it's just going to be the race to the bottom on price because all the technology is kind of the same. Right. So, you know, what are we actually doing to stay ahead of the curve and offer services that other people just can't replicate overnight? Which is kind of where we pivoted to.

Yeah. So tell me about, tell me about how you acquired all these clients. Were they all through outbound or did you get a lot of them from Twitter or LinkedIn? Like, where's the lead flow coming from? And how do you, how do you execute your acquisition? Like your first full system of it.

Yeah, so we kind of get high for on supply. Right. So like the same systems that we sell and implement for clients we use internally. Right. Making cold calls, booking it the old fashioned way, kind of practice what we preach. And the beautiful thing about that offer is that like when you get on the phone with somebody that you booked through a cold call to sell them cold call services, they know it works. Right. Because they're on the actual phone with you. So it's, you know, it kind of sells itself because a lot of these people are like, oh, I never ever booked from cold calls. How do I know this works? Well, we just told you because the same people that we trained, that we can train and hire within your company are the same people that we hire and train for our own company. Right. So that's probably the biggest version. And then Twitter definitely helps, you know, building personal brand credibility on Twitter as well as LinkedIn. Just having that as not only your inbound lead, but as well, if someone, you know, looks you up, then they can see your tweets, they can see your content and like, all right, this guy actually knows what he's talking about. Here's some client results. And just having that as like credibility, right? Not just a testimonial, but actually them knowing that you know what you're talking about. And then referrals definitely been a big part, you know, making partnerships, connections with everyone that you talk to because they might not be someone who needs cold calling, but they definitely know someone else that does. So just making the most of every conversation that I have.

Yeah, I feel like. And I've sent you referrals too, because it's just a good service. This makes a lot of sense. Do you, do you. How far do you think you can take this business as your current skill level stands? Do you. Are you at the position where it's like, because you're at 41k a month. Do you feel as if the way everything is designed right now, like your operational ability at this moment could take you to some amount? Like, do you think it's just inevitable you're gonna get to 100k a month right now, or do you think you need to do some, like, shifts to get there?

No, I mean, it really just comes down to, like, fulfillment. Right? Like, our energy and focus from a marketing perspective is not so much on new clients. Right? Because if we get a bunch of new clients but don't have, you know, quality SDRs and appointment setters to fulfill, then it kind of, you know, topples and falls on top of each other. So our big focus is like finding the correct person, being able to train them, and then be able to place them with clients. So it's like, it's definitely kind of like a delicate balancing act, kind of how the, you know, it's positioned right, because you could sell it. Everyone wants a cold caller, but then you got to make sure that you deliver on your results, right? So we're really focused on building up the course and building up our network of appointment centers and SDR individuals. And then once we have, you know, a large enough pool, then we can really go at it. So it kind of comes in seasons. We'll get a bunch of clients, we'll fulfill on them, and then we gotta refulfill the pipeline to be able to fulfill clients.

I like services where you can. I like operating, and I like businesses that operate in two different, basically entirely separate realms. Either you're selling two businesses and it's very expensive, or you're selling, like a business opportunity to mass market. And I feel like those are the two best things. It makes a lot of sense to do that. But the problem with the biz op.