How He Built a $70,000/mo Agency

So last month we did over $70,000 in revenue.

Yeah, 70,000. You're one of the best performing client session students. What's up, everybody? I got Sam here. Sam's a client inside Client Ascension. And Sam, I want to have you on here because you're doing really well. And I wanted to one, document a case study, but two, also maybe give some valuable information for Everybody on my YouTube about how exactly you're getting such good results. So, one, how long have you been inside Client Ascension and what is your business and how much revenue are you making in your business?

Yeah, so I joined Client Ascension in, I think it was late August. I feel like late August, maybe early September. But late August, we're going to LinkedIn go sign aid suit targeting that B2B leaders basically, as these cities, we represent them in the most compelling form possible to their target market, which creates leads, investment opportunities. Just a good thing that can happen. So last month we did over $70,000 in revenue. I think it was about 74,000 to be exact. And yeah, that's where we are right now.

Yeah, 70,000. You're one of the best performing client session students. What did you. What did you start at when you first joined?

Yeah, so my peak monthly revenue before joining was about $35,000, remember correctly, but the month prior to joining, I think I was around $20,000 a month.

How many new clients are you signing, how many calls are you booking regularly? And how's that compare against kind of like what was happening before you were in Client Ascension?

Yeah, so basically before joining Client Ascension, my only sales channel was LinkedIn inbound. For those who don't know, I have a pretty prominent presence on LinkedIn. I have, you know, around 230,000 followers. I get very solid engagement. So pretty prominent presence and all my, all my leads basically coming through me. LinkedIn, they saw my presence, they saw my results, and we talked about LinkedIn and they said, okay, I'll talk to Sam, put a call with him, then says, pointly convert and then a little bit of DMs here and there, but not very serious. But now I have cold email as a sales channel, which has been hugely impactful. I had no idea how effective it would be. Turns out people find my offer very compelling, which is great. And you know, of course I want to get into ads here pretty soon. So that's basically like my sales channels now. Those three things, LinkedIn inbound, a little bit outbound, and cold email book calls. So it's been around 10 calls booked per week. I think the last couple of weeks have been a little bit of a lull. So we basically had to do like a cold email reset. Like I don't know for any reason. Like all of our domains died at once and had to like basically reset it and do full reset, new infrastructure, everything. But that's getting back on track actually started campaign yesterday and already got some really interesting positive responses. So getting that back on track. But I think it's been. I think in October, which is when the last time I had actually recorded for total for was 37, remember correctly. But of course I want to increase that by a lot more. Like I'm increasing my capacity to fulfill by hiring clients as managers and everything polish my processes. So I'm going to increase that, you know, call book to Mel. I'm getting really good at sales too, which is awesome.

Yeah, sweet. So before you knew me and were kind of working with me and my thing, you said you were at 35,000amonth peak and then you got to. And then it was. It kind of went down to 20k a month. Like what's the difference between what was going on from you going from like 35,000 to 20,000 and then you join client essentially and then you go from 20,000 to 70,000. Like what exactly changed here? Like what do you think did it that you able to get up there?

Fundamentally it was just being much more proactive about literally everything and understanding the value of credibility. For example, with case studies, one of the first things I was told to do when joining Client Ascension was create as many compelling case studies as possible. And I did.

I remember telling you to do that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I did and that was hugely impactful because I already had some like really great results. Like I work with some, you know, pretty recognized people and there are some other very people have like a name drop soon. So like basically I already had a lot of that credibility. So I just need to like prove it in case studies and I put that out there and now that's proved monumentally useful in all of my conversion channels and actually converting people because credibility is the determinist and commit to you to give you money because you know most people are, you know, providing any service in any industry. They're either mediocre or malicious. And so people just need proof that you are not that like solid. They want the thing that you're offering. Like they want. They're talking to you for a reason. So if you can prove you're credible, you know they will convert. Also just getting Literally better at everything, Much better at sales and following up effectively, which I wasn't doing. What else? Scaling outreach. Of course that has obviously been impactful. I was not doing outreach in any meaningful sense before now. I'm extremely proactive about it. Even having a very large social practice like me, at least on LinkedIn, you need to be very, very proactive about pushing people over the finish line. I don't know, people will see you a million times, but some people, you just, honestly, most people, you have to like push them over. Like, I don't know why, but it's just the way it works. No matter how friction free your sales funnel is, you just have to, you have to talk to people. And I wasn't doing that before that.

That seems to be a commonality with everyone around the $20,000 to $30,000 a month mark and they can't get, they can't push past that normally. It seems they normally like three things. One is sales process. And I'm going to encapsulate like having case studies as a part of the sales process because it's like that's when you'll show them, that's when they'll be made aware of case studies is within the sales process. So it's that follow up and then fulfillment. I know you've been building out a big team, so would you agree that the lever that really actually pulled this because you had traffic before that wasn't your main problem? Do you believe that the main lever that pushed this was that you just started closing significantly more of the people that you were talking to because you had a better offer, offer better case studies and then you're probably not scared to fulfill one now because you have somebody, actually you have a whole team helping you with it. Is that.

Yeah, yeah. It's just like fundamentally like large improvements to every aspect of it and then being proactive about, you know, pushing that in front of people, in front of decision makers. Right? Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's really just about being proactive. Most people are just not proactive. All it's like prime example. Like there were two people are interested in lurking and I found on LinkedIn, like I asked one guy, he's like, yeah, can you send me like, you know, details about your service? Stuff like that. And he took me like a week to respond and then someone else just like didn't respond. It's like, so the point is like the vast majority of people running businesses, online business are just like not proactive. I don't know why they're just like, not ambitious. I have no idea. But, like, if you're proactive about literally everything, outreach, you know, refining your messaging, getting better at sales, if you're just intentional and proactive, your results will increase so massively. And of course it compounds over time. It gets better and better and better, but it will increase so massively it's not even funny. It's really not even complicated. You literally just have to do more of the fundamentals. Obviously, there's micro iterations specific to business and specific to your industry, but fundamentally, it's just doing as much to fundamentals as humanly possible.

It was on one of my coaching calls, Inside Client Ascension, it was one of the guys he's selling to home service companies, and he was asking me, hey, I want to get my clients better results. So the home service companies. And I was like, dude, I. I own a house and I, like, actively utilized different home service companies. So let me explain to you what, like, why I choose specific companies. So if I, if I need to have, like, gutters cleaned or something, or like a landscaper, what I do is I go online and I go and I look through all the Google search results and I'll put my, my email and phone number in like five different spots, but every single time, it's only like one of them get back to me. And then that's crazy. That's. That's the one I use. And I was just explaining that to him. I was like, dude, that it's literally that simple. It's like I'm trying to purchase. The person I buy is simply the one that responds to me. Like, it's, it's, it's really just that simple. And I think the problem with a lot of people, like, hearing what we're talking about right now. So, like this interview with you and I right now, people will get the most value from this specific one or people who are stuck at like 20k a month, like, around there. And everyone wants, like, the super one simple trick that does it. And the super one simple trick is that you. You be proactive. You see what I mean? Like, yeah, you just actually put. You actually try. Well, they'll hear us say this, though, but they won't fully understand it because you can't understand it until you actually do it. So it seems like, oh, yeah, of course.

Do the work.

You know what I mean? Like, I get that. But what a viewer might not get is that, like, you won't fully ever actually understand that until you just put it into practice. And then you see the results of it and you're like, wow. I was, I was very stupid for not paying attention to this earlier. But let me ask you some other questions here. What was the most challenging that was happening before you joined? What was like the wall in front of you that kind of like broke down, that allowed you to scale up? Like if, if you had to say, it was kind of like one thing.

So fundamentally like I just didn't know how to create more leads outside of inbound. Like I know I could have sent more DMs that I would just like sitting in front of this, I was like, dude, how do I get more calls on my calendar? Like fundamental. It's like how, like I don't like this. How do I get more people to talk to me? That was the main thing. I just did not know how to scale lead volume. That was the main thing. Other thing, I was sort of, I guess generally insecure about my offer and positioning. I mean it's just sort of like what you don't know, you don't know, right? So just like I didn't know like is my landing page polished? Like do I need like to have a vsl like or what should it say if I do so also just with a lot of insecurity, like you know, I didn't know if I was doing something wrong or right. Maybe it was doing most things right. But I had no baseline outside of like, you know, you know, people post guidance online but generally, you know, that's really disordered and one sided and self interested. So you don't, you don't really know. So that, that was really the main thing. It was just first of all, I didn't how to scale lead volume. Second of all, just uncertainty about everything. Uncertainty about systems, uncertainty about my offer, uncertainty about positioning, uncertainty about everything. What Cloud Attention fundamentally gave me was clarity. What do I need to do, do this. It's the greatest thing ever.

What, what were those things? So from not my knowledge, just so I like everyone who's watching this, they can be made aware of like what precisely actually did occur. Like what were the inputs? It was, you came in, we, we, we changed up the packaging of your offer and kind of how it's framed. So it's kind of like soft skill type stuff. Changed the landing page to be like kind of a better, a better sales page. Made a VSL that had like a pretty clear value proposition and sales argument dialed in a sales process. Like did you, did you like already have a CRM before this? But. And Then like you implemented it inside here or something.

I didn't really have like, I didn't have a couple like dual spreadsheets. Yeah, like I fundamentally didn't have like systems. I had a little bit, but not really like, you know, for example, one of the sales calls that was introduced to like close.com, i think you close,Os close.com. but now I have like an actual sales CRM and I've built an internal CRM too. It's pretty basic but it works. It gets the job done. Eventually I'll have to make that a little more complex, but it gets the job done. Fundamentally I just didn't have systems. Again, this goes back to uncertainty. I literally just didn't know what to do and now I do know what to do and I can always ask. Cool.

Okay. So then also you started doing cold email, which has got you some results. What are you doing on LinkedIn that gets results and calls booked right now?

First of all, like I've been more targeted in my messaging. Like I transitioned to me a lot. Like I used to like make content that was a lot more broadly appealing. But I dialed it in doing some extension. I'm dialed in even more. I really need to do more case studies, stuff like that. I really get case studies. I need to really be more intentional about like posting things to convert people to calls. Like today like what I did wasn't like salesy but like, you know, I basically just for the first time ever, like I talked about my revenue and stuff like that, which provides a lot of credibility. So I just been a lot more. And I asked for like my student success coach, I asked for his advice on that. Cause I was sort of nervous about that, right? But he was like, yes, you should do it. It gives you a lot of credibility. So it's just like being a lot more targeted. My content that's sort of how it affect my LinkedIn. And I know on the outbound front I need, I need to be using LinkedIn for DMs more. But cold email again has, has been huge. And yeah, I hope that answer the question. I'm sorry.

Yeah, yeah, of course. How long did it take you to start seeing results? Like you came into client ascension and we started telling you like, do this, do this, do. How long did that take until you like you saw something like actually happening?

I mean it was like immediate, right? Because I was going to like uncertain by myself. Like I had like occasional inputs from like, you know, people around me who did sort of similar things fundamentally. Like I Was like in my own bubble, but immediately enjoying ascension. I had guidance, I had support, I had a network. I mean I had a network before. Like, I had a network of people who were dedicated to helping me. Like, I was grounded. Right. And that was immediate and the knowledge gain was immediate. The course is really good and it didn't take long for that tradition to real, real results at all. Actually, I had a record revenue month. Like the immediate month I joined September. I joined in like late August.

But was that from making the case studies and changing the offer?

Yeah, I think the case studies was the biggest mover. Like that was before I had a vsl. I'm so like, I think I need to make other VSL now. But like that was where I had a vsl. It was literally the case studies just things so much different. And I look at and like I have.

Yeah, yeah.

And I have Microsoft Clarity and stuff on my website now. And so I like what people are doing and like, so like, and people like go straight to the case studies. It just makes such a huge difference.

Yeah, dude, it's actually insane. It's in that, that phase where it's like, it's kind of like everything below like 15k a month is just like getting case studies. And then you have enough case studies and it's like. And then you can see it's like, it's like literally the entire purpose of a business is just the acquisition of a profound amount of case studies. And like that's it.

Yeah, Literally all it is. And you know, again, just because people don't get it, so many businesses are just like not doing this.

Like I.

And even like high impact businesses. Like one of my clients is like a series a SaaS, like very well funded. Inc 5000, maybe inc 500. No case studies on their website. I'm just like, dude, you're making my job harder. You need to have case study. Like, especially because his industry, I don't want to be too specific because it's a very niche. I don't want to talk bad about them. They're great people. But it's like their industry is like especially disturbing. Like they're notoriously. And they're doing great by the way. They have a really awesome product. But like, like their industry really discerning, like their people, their target market is especially hard to get in touch with. And like there's like, you have to have case studies that's like, that's like an extreme example. Like people just like are doing this and even like some of my clients it's like. Like, I have a client that's a huge branch agency. It's like, even. Even there. Like, they're very proactive about case studies. Like, you know, even then, it's like, you know, you could talk more about results. Like, people don't take case studies seriously enough, just across the board, and it's. It's so underrated. I don't know why. They just don't get it, I guess.

Yeah, they don't. They don't fully understand that it's like, literally 80% of what gets people to buy. Because obviously you were, like, in my funnel before. So what made you finally decide to join? Client ascension. And what hesitations or doubts were there before coming in?

Yeah, so, I mean, it's like you mentioned, like, I was in your final. So I've been following you. I've been following Daniel for a while. Like, he talks about you talk about, like, having parasocial relationships and importance of, like, scaling the amount of parasocial relationships you have with people. Like, that was me. Like, I had a social relationship with Daniel. Yeah. So that. Because, you know, like, in. In your space, in his space, there are so many grifters, either because they're, like, literally malicious or because they're just, like. They're just, like, stupid and mediocre, and they have no idea. Dunning Krueger. So, like, you know, his space especially requires a lot of trust. Like, he didn't have a parachute relationship. Like, I would not have covered it. Like, the first time I saw Daniel, I was like, oh, it's another, like, Internet entrepreneurship guy. And then he kept appearing my face like, oh, this guy actually knows what he's talking about. Like, I need to pay attention. And so. And I've been following him like, it must have been, like, a year. And, like, I was just sort of like, you know, doing my agency somewhat casually. Like, I had, like, on and off periods, but it was basically just like, one day I was like, okay, like, I need to take this seriously. Like, there's a lot of potential, and, you know, I don't want to waste my potential. And then I just, like, Daniel was like, head was like, living in my mind. The first thing that popped up is like, yeah, I need to, you know, good. On his funnel, whatever he's offering, if I need to, I need to pursue it. And there's really no other option because nobody else had built that parasitical relationship with me. Like, I really can't think of any other, like, online entrepreneurship Persona that, like, has nearly the amount of credibility that you have with me? Like, I, like, I can't really think, like, if I wasn't joining Client Ascension, I can't really think of a program I would be joining.

So, yeah, yeah, I guess I'm doing the right thing. What was the most difficult change you had to make in your approach to business? Like, if. Because it was probably, like, super nonchalant, like, whatever, but it's probably become more of, like, a structured system holistically now. So, like, like, what was difficult about that change or like, anything that was hard that you had to overcome to get to the level you're at now?

Yeah, it's sort of a hard question to answer, but I think it was just being. And I guess I sort of all knew this to the extent, but it's just like, you have to be extremely relentless about everything. Like, you either want this or you don't. It's really that simple. And so you literally are going to. Are you going to apply the max amount of effort you can to literally every channel, every sales channel, every aspect of your business, or are you not going to? And I was mentally prepared for that to an extent. But it's like you just sort of have to, like, foster this muscle of relentless intensity in everything you do. You really have to become this person who's just really dedicated and like, what, what, what client decision make clear is just like, there's no replacement. No matter how smart you are, no matter how credible you are, there's no replacement for just being extremely intentional about every aspect of your business. There's no replacement for it. It really is all about the fundamentals also being more proactive about delegating. Before Client Ascension, I was really hesitant to delegate because I just felt like my thing with my industry and everything was so niche. It was just like, it'd be impossible to find anybody to fill the gaps. But I knew eventually had to delegate. I guess finance tension really pushed me and said, you literally have to do this or you will not grow your business. You have to start delegating. And so I just, like, you know, I just started doing it. And what I realized is that you can actually hire people who are not only, like, as good as you, but they're actually better than you, either because they're innately more talented in that area, or because they literally just have more time dedicated to the specific thing or both, and you can train them to create better results. And you could in that position because you just don't have time and you create a better business overall. So I Guess like, first thing is just like being extremely intentional, being extremely relentless, maximizing volume on everything. Second thing is just getting over yourself and delegating and realize that like you can actually hire people who can do a better job than you in the role than you have the capacity to do. Those are the two main things. Main changes, I guess.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Did Andre kind of help you with that? Like finding good people and how to, how to structure?

Yeah, and he sent me some resources. But yeah, I mean, it's still something to figure out. Like I'm in the process of hiring my first crisis manager. I've narrowed it down to really two really good candidates. But yeah, I mean it's still like a discovery process. So like nervous about it. It's like this is my first full time role. Like I pay one of my writers like a ton of money, but like she has like other income stream. But like I'm now like a high risk person. Like their life is like now in my hands. Like I have to like, like, yeah, it's kind of scary, but it's like, like an actual legit full time employee. Like this person is like reporting me. Like this person is like thinking about the business all day. Like that's, that's a lot of responsibility. I don't know if like, you know, I need to ask somebody else. I need to ask my clients to say success coach, but how do I mentally accommodate that? Like the more people you hire, you.

Gotta make sure the people you hire, their compensation is tied to performance as well. Which is like something that we've been doing every, every single person who works for us, like a substantial amount of their compensation is tied to performance of.

What we're trying to get them to do.

Client success manager, like it's tied to churn. Like if you keep the clients longer, you can you get performance fees and a bunch of stuff like that. Real quick, could you walk us through like the difference between a typical day, now what do you do all day to run a $70,000 a month business?

Yeah, I mean, so I guess the difference between before and now is just like it's increasing. I'm busier than ever. But it's increasingly more impactful and more meaningful work. As I scale, my input becomes higher leverage. When before it was just sort of a lot of uncertainty and pressing buttons, I didn't really know what they did or applying my time to things I didn't really know were effective. But I guess now it's just a lot more certainty in everything I do and just a Lot more confidence that the stuff I'm doing is time and things. So. And as a result, like the work I'm doing is literally more high impact. Like, you know, I hire more people who do more things. And so when I like when I move things certain directions, there's more action in that direction basically. I guess like sort of what you may think is that, you know, as you get more revenue, like you have a, you know, higher baseline, you get more confident. And that is true. But there's also like an element of anxiety, especially if you're like, you know, sort of a solo founder like me. Increase revenue to an extent. You know, it creates more anxiety because you have an increasingly large amount to lose. And I guess it's to an extent it's a positive feedback loop because you're increasingly more motivated, you're increasingly more locked in, more clinical about how you spend your time. But still. But one of the best. That ties to one of the best benefits of client ascension though, which is support network. I really like my client success manager and other coaches. I really like Daniel, all of them. Literally everybody in the program is here for you. Which is so important because no matter how successful you are, you get some days where it's like, dude, I'm sorry, freaking stupid. Like I literally hate myself. That's what I like. And then like, like two hours later you'll feel like, you'll feel like I was into great conquering the world. It's just you have these huge emotional fluctuations. I don't know, maybe it's just me, maybe I'm neurotic.

I have no idea Happens. So yeah, it's like most of your time spent like content creation on LinkedIn, like, like following up with, with leads, taking sales calls. What's the just distribution of time between like front end lead gen sales and fulfillment and kind of like operation Guess.

Like not carrying the past few weeks because I actually like have been spending a lot more time in the back end. I'm basically reorienting my business to be much more data oriented. And so I'm like, I'm being much more intentional about how I collect data and how I apply it, which gives me like a pretty huge moat because literally nobody else is doing this. I'm trying to basically eliminate as much uncertainty that exists in success on LinkedIn and content marketing in general by applying data. So like not counting that because like I have sort of like that backslidge things. Yeah, it's just like more and more business development. I'm spending like increasingly large majority of my time on sales calls following up the leads. I would love to get help with sales sometime next year but I think you know, for foreseeable future like I mean like you know, or pretty much forever. As long as I have this business, like it still has to be me talking to like at least like the S tier and the A tier clients. Like a lot of my clients. Like I have several clients who are like near eight figure or past eight figure. Like very large branch strategy agencies who work with like household, household names. So like everybody like like living in a hut would recognize.

Yeah.

And, and they're still on those sales calls with those decision makers. Like you have to be like it has to be your fundamentally like it has to be your face when you're talking like to certain, to certain clients, not all of them but certain processes. You have to be there. So it's like I'll never fully separate from that but like I do want to be like 99% focused on business development and like people I trust on fulfillment. And thankfully I am finding those people. They're expensive but they're worth every dollar.

Yep. Yeah. I think that the next unlock for you to get up to like 150amonth is sales team. It's just a whole third of the business that kind of like manual input work per day where it's like you'll gain three hours a day. That's just off the top of my head that the next thing that needs to happen to you maybe introducing more products. We should probably, I think you might be at the point now where you could probably make like a, like a info product or some kind of like live class course type thing. But, but speaking of that, I'll close it off with this. What, what are your goals? Because it's about to be 2025 as we're as recording this. What have you identified as your goals and what are you trying to get done next year?

So in terms of revenue of course like you know, having my first 100k month but you know, I'm like already I already got 74% of the way there so I think it's pretty much locked in. It wants to speak out of turn of course. But you know there's a lot of evidence going in that direction. I mean fundamentally the offer is very val validated. I've proven to myself and to the world that I have the credibility and the systems and the results to work with extremely credible people, high impact people and create effective results for them. Very well known companies and founders to already exist my public portfolio, not to mention the ones that I'm hoping to add soon. But I really have to go way beyond that. It's really just more about more of the fundamentals. I need to scale all my channels. I need to scale all my system. I need to scale all of my talent. Like I had somebody in my comment section today told me like they found me from YouTube on LinkedIn, they comment on LinkedIn, they found me from YouTube and I posted like literally I posted some personal development stuff a while ago last year I posted like literally one video on my main channel. So it's like one person already was impact. Like I already had that impact. Like imagine how much more there is to unlock there. So I have to scale long form, I scale short form, I have to make. I have to like iterate upon my LinkedIn strategy. Like there's so much to do just on, on every sales channel. I need to send way more cold emails, I need to do ads, I need to do everything. So I just need to scale everything. That's really just all about that. More of the fundamentals. I really think I'm very, very early to B2B social marketing. I guess SEO is somewhat of a mature space, but everything else is so early. It is so wild west. And every aspect of B2B social, it's not just LinkedIn but it's B2B YouTube, B2B microblogging, B2B short form. It's so immature. And I really want to totally own this channel. I want to be totally synonymous to this channel. I think the value of it is going to grow tremendously. It's like, just think, I'm extremely early to this and I want to take full advantage of that. More people need to be aware that I exist and be reminded that I exist constantly. And this service exists and is by far and away the best service it could possibly pursue for creating Results first on LinkedIn. But just everyone B2B social.

Yep. Good stuff, bro. Hey, I appreciate you coming on. Everyone watching Sam's links are going to be in the description. You can connect with him, talk with him, see what he's doing. Brother, thank you for coming on. Very much appreciate it and very welcome. Let's keep scaling.