How Matt 5'XD His Agency Business in 5 Months While Based In Jamaica

What's going on, guys? Andre Hakel Jr. Here from client Ascension. Back with another student spotlight interview. And I'm here with Matthew Johnson from the program. What's going on, bro?

It's doing really well, man. It's a pleasure to be here. Pleasure to tell my story about how Claire essentially helped me.

Yeah, absolutely, bro. And like, we were talking off camera, and we've talked about this quite a bit beforehand as well. It's like, you're so. Story is so inspiring, dude. Like, for the audience real quick and for people in the program just to get the perspective, like, where are you currently based? Like, where are you working from and what's the situation like there?

Yeah, so as you can probably tell by my accent, many people probably don't recognize it, but I'm from Jamaica.

British or Australian, something like that. Right.

I'm from Jamaica. Yeah. It's. It's probably not one. It's a country that people hear a lot about, but not for business. And so it's. It's pretty third world. I mean, I can say that because I live here. Born and raised all my life.

Wow. And that's got to be an interesting situation. It's not like here in Tampa, where I'm in, you know, an apartment complex and I have friends and neighbors that I could talk to and go to lunch with and meet up with for dinner to talk about business. Right. Like, for you, it seems like the culture there or just the situation is pretty secluded. There's not a ton of other guys working in online entrepreneurship.

Yeah, that's exactly the case, especially at this age. Many are either. And this is the case. How old are you, by the way? I'm 21. 21 turn 21 in me.

Yeah, that's a legend.

So I joined Client Essential when I was 20, so not that long ago. But yeah, the situation is. It's definitely interesting. Jump. I don't think Jamaica is one of the primary places to do business, especially online business. I have. I still have troubles with payment processors, so stuff like Revolut Wise, Stripe, all of those stuff aren't available in my country. So I've had to find very unique mechanisms in order to actually receive money from my clients and keep the business afloat through payments. So things that other people are used to and take for granted, don't take it for granted. I've been in business for one year at this point, and the troubles that I've had to go through just because I'm based in Jamaica, it's very annoying. Can tell you that Dude, I just.

Love your mindset on stuff. It's very annoying, right? Dude, there are people in America that say running a business is very annoying. And answering emails or answering replies to cold emails, very annoying. And so to get your perspective on things, dude, it's unbelievable. And like I said, it really is so inspiring. Like when I say the word inspiring, like it just carries so much more weight in a conversation like this. So I just want to acknowledge you for that. And that leads into a really powerful conversation because if someone like yourself as a 20, 21 year old living in a third world country like Jamaica can have all this success in a pretty short time span, what. What's the excuse? You're out of excuses, bro. If you're listening, you're pretty much out of excuses. Like if you accessing the Internet, probably on a phone or a laptop, watching this video right now, I'd put my money on the fact that you're out of excuses. Or at least Matthew's excuses that way, yours. And so, bro, I don't want to focus on like the hardships anything too much. And so I just want to hear more about your journey and your story. So you said you joined Client Ascension when you were 20 years old. How did you even hear about the program?

Yeah, so I, I started online business. My online business journey from. I was about 16 actually. So it was. As I said, I don't really mind talking about some of the hardships if it can inspire someone watches a video. But things are. Ever since I was 16 or I think I was 15 at the time, and I knew that I needed some form of money to make an investment. I've been seeing affiliate marketing drop, shipping agencies, everything that you can name in the online business sphere. I have seen it and I've wanted to delve deeper into it because I saw all the money. You see the gurus. Gurus. Oh shit. I want that money. I want to be able to make that much too. So I got a summer job actually working when I was 15. So I was one year below the age that you can actually get a summer job, but I kind of just barely scraped, so. So I worked at that job for three months straight, very hard. I did overtime, everything, and I made 400 from that USD for one day? No, for three months. I even got like an award for how hard I worked. I got, I got the award for employee summer employee most outstanding and I made 400, bro. That was including overtime.

Wow.

So it was crazy. So I used that money because I didn't care at the time I wasn't paying bills or anything. I just wanted to buy this course that I saw on these IG theme pages. So I bought that for 97 at the time, and it didn't work. Like, I'm gonna. I'm gonna save you. Like, a long story short, I'm not.

Gonna shield the program.

That didn't work. So after a while, I got another job in. In sales, actually. So I was. I was doing sales from ig, so I. I used to DM people and do sales on behalf of another company and ended up doing, I think around 30 or 40k in sales. Something more than that just from DMS. And I use the commissions from that to buy another course. I failed in that too. I got. I think I made like $20 or something. It was a drop shipping course. So that was around the time, like, I just wanted to give up because it was just so much harder to even pay for these courses. I didn't have a debit card or anything. So I had to. To ask my parents and give them back the money, right? So I think that's around the time I saw the final course. I was like, this is it. If this doesn't work, then I'm just done. So the course was an agency course. So the course basically taught you how to run an agency, and I use that. And I scaled a first agency experience to about 7.1 K. And then I just decided that I'm going to keep investing in these courses, so it must work eventually, like scale. So, long story short, I invested into another course and I'm still in there now. It's like a mastermind. But I realized that it didn't help me with one of my core issues, which was client acquisition, fulfillment, and our marketing. So I sucked at all three of those things. And I said to myself that probably needed something else. So that's around the time I met one of the coaches in Kite Ascension. I met David. And I met him through another coach that just recently joined, which is Leo. So I went to Leo and said, my sales suck. Can you train me? And then he goes and says to me, his sales also, he learned from someone else. So go talk to someone else. And then that was David. So I got on a call with David. If anybody knows David, you know, he's incredibly blunt. So he just tells me, he's like, your shit sucks. Join Client Ascension. And. And then I was just like, well, I wanted somebody to. To, you know, teach me. And he told me what to do. So that joined Client Ascension prior To that. I don't think I knew any of you guys.

Wow.

Yeah. I didn't know you, Andre. I. I saw Dance that's Cold Email Wizard. I saw his tweets from time to time. But I just joined Twitter and I'm like, damn, this guy keeps calling me poor. So I didn't really. I saw one or two of his of Dan's student success videos as well. I'm like, all right, this guy might be legit, but he's hurting my feelings. So I'm not buying. But then I.

Eventually, David hurts your feelings even more and you're like, now I gotta buy. Yeah.

I realized it was like this recurring trend. I was like, all these successful guys are telling me that I suck, so maybe it's true. Maybe. Let me, let me buy into it and see. So around that time, that's when I joined David. David took care of the whole process for me and brought me in. I'm really grateful to him as well. But yeah, so I've been in Contestantia for maybe five months now. And when I joined Client Ascension, like I lost two or three more clients during that month. They turned right during that month and it was interesting because I was like, damn, this, this could really be it. And yeah, that, that was my thoughts coming into everything.

Wow. And so Client Ascension was really like, it was a make or break for you. Like it had to work, otherwise the agency business was basically gonna to close down. It sounds like it's crazy, bro. Like there's so many guys out there that take it for granted. Like access to education through $97, 997, whatever it might be. Like these courses that you were literally working three month summer jobs to be able to afford, not knowing whether or not it'll work. And you took the risk. And even when it didn't work the first time, you took the risk again and then again and then again. And so, I mean, there's no way you don't get rewarded, whether from the universe or from God or whatever by just blindly having faith that eventually you're going to figure it out. And so I just want to, you know, acknowledge you for also just investing in yourself time and time again. And like $97, it might not sound like a huge investment to someone, but when you just work three months to make $400, like that's so much money. Right? And for it not to work like that would crush the soul of most people. And I'm sure it was, it was painful for you, but the fact that you kept going speaks Volumes. And so talking about client attention, specifically putting you right back into that moment where you lost two or three clients. Like, how did you go from there?

Yeah, so I joined back in January and that's around the time two of my clients churned, I think it was. Yeah, it was two. So, so it was not. It wasn't because of fulfillment. It was because one, just couldn't afford it anymore and two, they just didn't require because the service anymore because they were moving industries. So there. Those are two things that I just couldn't plan for. Right. I couldn't. No matter what I thought, I just couldn't change it. So coming into Client Ascension, you can imagine that a fire was. The fire that was already lit burnt even brighter because I, I hear people talk about this. I heard Eddie talk about it as well, another student that's killing it in, in Client Ascension. But you can't operate from the premise that there's a plan, a Plan B. If, if you do, you're going to feel as though you can fail because you'll have some form of it. You'll feel more comfortable with failure if you have a plan B. Because it's like a net. It's a safety net. Right. In case this doesn't work, I have this behind me. But I had none of that. I dropped out of college in, in September. I spent two weeks in. I joined Client Ascension in January 2023 and I was in college in January, September 2022, and I dropped out in my second week to. To focus on agency stuff. So I literally could not fail. If I failed, then it was back to working for $400 every. Every three months. I couldn't do it for. So it was after, after joining and realizing that there's just no Plan B anymore, I spent ungodly hours just taking in all the information that I could. And I feel that when you're in Client Ascension, one of the most important things you need to realize is that there are other people in Client Ascension that you can probably relate to and that can be your partners on the journey because it doesn't make any sense for you to go it alone. I. I didn't have a business partner. I still don't because they're just there. There weren't that many people around me that took business as seriously as I did and were as dedicated as I was. So I didn't have those types of people. And I wasn't in a relationship with anyone online worse that I could get into a partnership with. So when I got Into Client Ascension, I actually formed an accountability relationship, a partnership with one of the students that joined around the same time as me, which was Aiden. And we're still have calls every week.

Wow.

To talk about these things. Like, I had one yesterday with him. So as soon as I found a person that I knew would work maybe even three times as hard as me and they were in a similar position, it just became so much easier because you just knew that if you fell behind, this is going to affect you mentally, physically, every type of link. Right. Like, you're just gonna. It's gonna. It's gonna feel terrible. So using that as a premise, along with the student success coaches shout out to Shen as well. They keep you accountable. And along with that and all the information that you have, as well as how quickly all the coaches will respond to you, it just made my life that much easier. So when you join Client Ascension, it is literally all on you. There's. There's no blaming anyone but yourself because you have every single thing there to propel you forward. And there are countless student success videos that Andre has and that Daniel has. So you can see that it works. The only defining variable or the variable that's not constant is the student themselves.

I love it. And what you said there is just so simple, but it's so true. It's like ungodly hours. Like, you have to show up, you have to do the work. There is no shortcuts, there's no skipping certain parts of the program. And I feel like that's where a lot of students go wrong, is they just don't show up and do the work. And as simple as that sounds, it's what holds back probably 90% of the students that don't have the results from getting the results. And so just being willing to put in the work and the time and the effort and then being held accountable to it. Right, Right. Like with Aiden, like, Aiden might be moving way faster than you are. And what's that going to do when you show up every week and he's talking about how much further ahead and how much he's posting in the WINS channel that's going to push you to show up and say, hey, look, I did more than you this week. And so those elements that you're talking about here, they're so simple. And it's just so, like, obvious as to why stuff like this works. It's common sense, but just most people don't do it. And so again, props to you for actually doing it. I want to also ask, like, since being in client ascension, like, you talked about partnering with other students. You talked about putting in a lot of work. You talked also about in the beginning, like marketing, lead gen and fulfillment problems. Like, what does your business look like today? I think you mentioned you've been in the program for five months.

Yeah. Yeah. So let me start off with the revenue first. I think everybody wants to hear that. Right. I would need a thumbnail.

So more than $400 for three months. That's what I was going to use as the thumbnail.

So hopefully I'm gonna have to beat.

Makes $400 in three months. Imagine.

All right, so starting in client ascension, I was around 3.1k or something after my two clients churned. And no, I'm at about 15k. Yeah. So that's. I did sign a deal on Monday, so it might be more than that, but I'm just spitballing now. Yeah, I think it's about 15k though.

So that's so cool, bro. And so like, okay, you go from 3 to 15k in 5 months, right? You basically 5x to your business in 5 months.

That's.

That's a good thumbnail right there.

Yeah.

What actually goes into that? Like, if there's one thing, like if you could share this with your son one day and you're like, there's one thing I did during those five months that I absolutely need you to do, what would that be?

Show up. It has to be to show up. Consistency. Because everything compounds. And I like to talk about this. So that's a, That's a great question. Everything compounds. So when I just started client ascension Twitter, there are many channels that they teach you, right? But Twitter was one that I just really liked because money Twitter, the community, that's. That's. That's what really gets that file in you. That, that's what really, when you fund that file, that's what really did it for me. Money Twitter. And I wanted to be a part of these killers because in money Twitter, like, I was talking to Matt Luchiro yesterday, so another person from the program and I told him, like, oh, yeah, this is my first month that I've passed 10K. And then he's like, ah, you're making minimum wage now. And then I just. It's so true. That's why I like the community. Because it pushes you further, pushing you, Right? Yes. So I wanted to become somebody fairly relevant on money Twitter or at least have a decent following. So I started. And in the first three months of, of me getting into it, I'VE been on Twitter for maybe a year prior, but just not posting anything or just every so often. And I had maybe 50 followers, maybe even less than that. But after doing everything that I learned from the quota, which is one of the coaches, and then the. The courses from the Kajabi, I. I think it took me three weeks or something, and I got to. Or maybe two weeks, and I got to 1K because I don't 1K followers. And then everything just kind of shot up after that. And this is something that Dan said to me. She's called Email wizard, for those who don't know him intimately like that. But he said if he's doing three tweets a day, I have to be doing five. That's what he was telling me, is that you have to just be doing way more than what the. The industry standard is. Right. And the. One of the strategies he told me was to do like, two sales assets every single week until I get to a certain number. And there was no one who was willing to do it. Like, nobody was willing to do it. But I did it every single week. And I'm at 20. I'm at 27 now.

What?

Yes. I was doing two every single week. And it's just. You don't see it immediately. Right. It doesn't happen in one month. It doesn't happen in two months either. But on the third month or the fourth month, everything just hits you like you get. It gets a ton of inbound leads just from doing Twitter. More people are reaching out to you, building more connections. People are seeing that you're getting up and doing this every single day, and they respect you for that. And as a result, you're gonna. More opportunities are going to be open for you. So I could have given up in the first month of client ascension just because I was basically making nothing and nothing was happening immediately. But in my fifth month, everything just like I went from 3K. I was basically. I was living. It's better than 400, I'll tell you that. I was living, but it just. I just got six or seven clients. It's right there. Yeah.

One of the concepts we. We talk about and try to remind students of as much as possible is nothing happens for the longest time, and then everything happens all at once. And one of my favorite quotes, I have it on the wall right above my desk here, is live in the day, measure by the decade. And really what that's saying is inputs over outputs. And one of my mentors, the way he says it is I can guarantee What I tell you to do will work if you do it. I just can't tell you when. That's not for me to decide. That's not for you to decide. That's for. For God to decide the timing. And you just have to trust that if you do these certain things, they will work. It's just a matter of when. And a lot of people don't have the patience, but you did. And now you're sitting here in month five and you're starting to see all the results from the compound and efforts.

Yeah. Succeed.

One of my favorite questions to ask students like yourself who have just gone through the program with more success than. Than others. It's like, what's one piece of advice you'd have to a student right now in Client Ascension that is just feeling like, man, like, this isn't as good as I thought it would be. I'm not getting the results I thought I would be. Like, what do you say to someone like that.

You'Re not teachable. That's the results I'd say. Or that's what I'd see. Because all of the coaches in client ascension are more than likely way more successful than the students just by the metric of revenue and how their business is doing. Maybe 80 to 90% of them are more successful in that regard and they have more experience as well. So something that I wouldn't do as a 20 or 21 year old when I'm talking to guys that are maybe in their early 30s, is act as though I know more than them, right? I don't. I paid the money because I don't know more than I paid the money because I want to learn from them. So for me, I joke about this too, but when, when I, when I just started, I was offering social media marketing as a service and now I do Legion through upwork, right? So I do upwork Legion for agency ones. So how I got there was actually pretty funny. So my first call with any coach here was with, was it Dan Cole, email wizard? And our call was about my offer and I gave him a bit of background on my story and Dan just says to me, stop offering what you're offering. Offer this instead. And then I'm like, okay. And he's like, okay, cool. Any questions? No, that was the call. That was the entire call. So immediately I stopped doing everything social media marketing related and focused everything on that offer. And I can tell you that if I. If I disregarded his advice and just kept doing social media marketing, I would have definitely failed because my Offer just sucked. And I. But I didn't know that because I didn't know any better. Right. So as a student, if you're. If you think that your results aren't good enough or if you think that it's client ascension's fault as to whether or not you're getting results, I can tell you with certainty that it's not. You really need to just listen to the coaches and ask questions. So maybe it's your offer, maybe it's something sales related, maybe it's something marketing related. Whatever your issue is, if based on these two things, you just need to ask yourself, one, am I doing everything that I was told to do or everything that's in the course? If there's a change, you ask the coach. But that's the first thing. Am I doing everything based on what the information has been, you know, presented to me are? Two, am I asking enough questions? I'm not talking about stupid questions. I'm not the type of person, like, people would say that there's no stupid questions. There are stupid questions. They're pretty bad questions. I'm us. I'm talking about, like, meaningful questions. So are you asking meaningful questions to the coaches that are much more successful than you? If you're. If you can't answer these two, then that's probably why you're feeling.

Man, dude, I love how simple the advice you give is because it's really like, that's what it comes down to. It's hard work, it's consistency, it's being coachable or teachable, and it's asking thoughtful, meaningful questions. Like, that's the success formula. The answers are there. You just have to go search for them or ask for them. Like you said, there are enough coaches in the program. I think there's 14 or 15 expert coaches now in all different areas of running a business. They have the answers you're looking for. You just have to be willing to show up, ask, get the answer, and then most importantly, take action and implement and trust that it's going to work with time. And so that is the success formula, dude. And I'm just so happy that I have you on this call because you can explain it so elegantly. Where I think, I really do think there are people watching this, where it's finally, for them clicking like it's just making sense. And that's going to result in even more success stories. And so again, shout out to you, bro, because you're going to have an impact on some of the students here. I just want to wrap it because I know we, we got a busy schedule here.

What.

Because you offer such a unique service too, by the way. And I, I think that's, you know, a big reason why you're doing well in the community is because you have a valuable service and obviously the offer is really, really good. And so if you could just tell people what you offer, what you do and where they can connect with you online. Obviously if you're inclined ascension, just shoot them a DM and slide lock. But for those listening that are running an agency, how can you help them and then where they, where can they go to learn more?

Yeah. All right, so I offer Upwork Legion to agency owners. So I guarantee 5 to 10 qualified sales calls per month using upwork. So I'd essentially create Upwork profile for you, optimize it. So create your profile description, your title for SEO, give you instructions on how to shoot a video introduction that converts as well as take care of everything a profile related and then add, create your scripts, the follow up sequences and perform outreach on your behalf. So I'd send anywhere between 10 to 20 outreach messages per day and I'd take care of the meeting booking process or the inbox management process if you're a bit more learned. And all you'd have to do is show up and take these meetings. All right, so I live in Jamaica, so you might have to send a courier pigeon to like send a message to me and send it back. But now I'm joking, I'm joking. You can see, you can find me on Twitter, Matt Johnson jm. So the JM stands for Jamaica. And you can also feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. Check out my YouTube channel. Guys, I have so many good Vietnam joking. I don't have a YouTube I'm working on. I work. So yeah, if you're inclined Ascension, I think There are like 20 Matthews there, but there's only one Jamaican, Matthew, so. So you'll find me, I'm sure of it.

Yeah, absolutely, bro. Well, dude, seriously, thank you so much for pouring into the audience here during this session and for sharing where they can find you and contact you. And if guys, if you're listening, seriously, like I don't really need to say much at this point because if you've been listening, truly listening to what Matthew is saying here, you're probably rushing your phone to hop off this and just connect with him. So be sure to follow up and do that. Because one of the things Matthew mentioned as to why he's had success in client ascension is because he's been able to partner and establish friendships with guys like Aiden and Matt Lucero and John Prince and some of these other students in the program. And so this is your opportunity to do the same. And if you've made it this far, all I can say is thank you and we'll see you in the community.