How Nick & Troy Went From $10K to $30K MRR With a Lead Gen Agency

What's going on, guys? Andre Hakel Jr. Here from client Ascension back with another Student spotlight interview. On this one, we got two legendary business partners, Nick and Troy. What's going on, guys?

Hey, what's going on, Andre? Good to see you, man.

Andre, thanks for having us.

Likewise. Likewise, dude. I've been pumped to do this ever since we've put it on calendar just because of the backstory we have with Nick and just seeing what both Nick and Troy have accomplished with their agency Buzz Lead in just the last couple of months. And so we have a lot to talk about. But Nick, if you could kind of just go back and tell the story of, like, how this all started, because I think it's. It's so funny and unique. I've done a lot of these interviews, and it's always, It's. It's cool for me and for the audience to hear how, like, the students found the program or found me or Christian or Daniel. One of the funnier ones was Max. Or maybe it was another student who found us through his college professor who actually recommended Client Ascension. But I think this story that Nick is about to tell tops that story even. So I'm excited for these guys to hear it.

Yeah, absolutely. So it goes back maybe a year and a half or two years ago. I mean, we had started the agency, you know, just over two years ago, and it all kind of sparked with being on Twitter and just going through a rabbit hole, Discovering gumroad, Cold Email Mastery. So I purchased the course, and me and Troy ended up becoming business partners and. And just enrolling in this course. We had just gotten started on it. We're like, we're just going to start a lead generation agency. Our background was always in sales marketing, so we knew we'd be good at it and we just wanted to start making money for ourselves as opposed to somebody else. So following Cold Email Wizard, I had realized that, you know, he ran a coaching program as well in addition to the Cold Email Mastery program. And I noticed that he had a couple of different business partners. You, Dan, Christian. And I came to realize that Christian, I was following a lot of his stuff for copywriting, and yeah, just was really enjoying his Twitter content that he was pushing out there. And I noticed that he would always post this picture in a cathedral, which I knew was in Tampa. It was just a cigar lounge church. And I was like, oh. And I was telling my girlfriend, I'm like, I didn't even realize that the Wizard's business partner, Christian, lives over here in Tampa. I'm like, how cool would it be? I was like, I'm going to meet this guy one day. I was like, maybe we'll become friends. And I kid you not. The next morning, I'm in the sauna, or I'm finishing up with the sauna. I'm over at the Harbor Island Country Club, and I'm shirtless, getting dressed. And then all of a sudden, the guy next to me, who's also just, like, getting dressed, looks just like Christian, the guy that the night before I was, I will one day meet this guy. And I'm like, is your name Christian by chance? And he looks at me, like, funny, and he's like, yeah, How'd you know that? Well, you know, I came across this wizard cold email mastery program. I was like. And I'm pretty sure I've seen you on his Twitter and I've been following you on Twitter. And he was like, no way. He was like, what are the odds of that? And anyway, Christian, he was like, can I see your phone and follow you on Twitter? He gives me a shout out on Twitter. And he's like, nick just started his Legion agency. You know, follow him, excited to see the journey. And then a couple months go by, and me and Christian would see each other at the gym. And I'm like, hey, Emily. Me and Christian, we're kind of buds now at the gym. And Christian has my phone number at this point. So we start working out together a little bit. And Christian's looking for a new apartment. I'm like, I live at a really cool apartment complex. Come check it out. He checks it out, loves the apartment complex, and him and the rest of the client Ascension founders all move in, and we become neighbors. And that was, you know, last year or so. But me and Troy end up joining client Ascension. And it was just a coincidence. I think it's more than a coincidence that God put us in each other's lives. And it was cool seeing it go full circle from a. Yeah. To being a part of the same group. And now we're friends. And. Yeah. Yeah, it's a little run.

Awesome, awesome, awesome story, bro. And, yeah, it's so funny. Like, imagine people hearing this story, like, on the outside, like, there's a wizard. People are meeting in the sauna or in the. And it's like, what is going on here? Like, I thought this was a business interview. It's like, it's so funny. So. So my question is actually now directed towards Troy. Where were you at during this whole process? Probably catching up with Nick. Hearing about, you know, what he was working on down here, Meaning, Christian, I know you were part of the agency from the start. So like, what were you working on while Nick was networking down here and just getting the agency started?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I don't know if crossing paths to the wizard and asana or whatnot, but there feels like there was some divine intervention there that just made the stars align. Right. So Nick and I, we've always just had entrepreneurial experience. So we used to sell T shirts in college and sororities and fraternities. He then joined me at another company where he was still at the time doing sales. And so our big focus was just we were tired of working for somebody else and getting somebody else rich. And so we saw our opportunity. Like, we're really good at sales. Let's just sell that to other people. And so he brought the idea of a lead generation company up. At the time, I was getting frustrated making somebody else rich and I was like, let's just do it. Let's just take it and run with it. And so it took a lot of time and a lot of effort. And so we started the agency, we got some initial clients, but we weren't really able to succeed at that point. We got the initial acquisition, but fulfillment remained challenging. And so it's kind of just this catch up phase where we were able to engage with Christian, get some scripts writing, take Daniel's course and learn a little bit there, but there's still a gap in between. And that's when he joined the client ascension program and things just really took off for the business there itself. And so that was the biggest driver kind of at that time frame.

Yeah, I think it's awesome that you guys had that experience working together before. And I love business partnerships. I know that's the biggest reason for my success is I found the right business partners because I tried entrepreneurship for years without any results until I found the right business partners. So for the audience, I always love to ask the question when I come across business partners who just work really well together and are super successful in crushing it. Like, what are both of your guys responsibilities in the agency? And like, how do you balance the day to day workloads for each of you?

Yeah, good question. And so I think we've come to a good point where we have divvied up tasks and learned how to delegate things across both of us. You know, both of us have had sales experience. And so, I mean, in terms of like the processes and who handles what I'm doing a Lot of the operations, back end client fulfillment. Troy does a lot of the sales objections, copywriting, crafting of the offers. We team up a lot of times for if we see a good opportunity with somebody that we really want to close, we'll both hop on the call. And I think it just comes off very professional. When they see that we have two people that are specializing in two different aspects of the business. They know about our tech sales background. So we're able to work with clients that are in that technology SaaS space that, you know, bring in a lot of revenue as is and they really want a professional team that knows and understands the tech space. So I think that comes off really powerful. But at the end of the day with us working with each other for a couple of years, it's, it's pretty easy. We could just put a bullet like a list of tasks and just be like, all right, I'm taking care of all the, the lists, building out the automations for these guys, putting this together. Troy puts the offer together, plugs it into smart lead and it's just, we could just knock out four or five clients in the span of, you know, a day or so. And it's really powerful having that and having that trust between each other has gone.

Has taken. Yeah. We often get asked like where did you guys find each other? How did you. I've been looking for a good partner. It's so hard. Right. To your point, Andre. And so I don't know if it's luck or it's just somewhere. Life has just really, you know, flipped a good coin in our direction. But having the opportunity to work with Nick previously has just made this a ton easier and we both have that same vision. So that's often what I tell people is like find somebody else that like has the same goal as you and whether that goal is the exact same wise, that's irrelevant. As long as you guys are trying to get to that same destination is all that matters together because then you can put down the to do sheet and break it down evenly and then just let you go and conquer these tasks and go on to the next step in the next year.

Exactly. Yeah. Dude, I love that. Both great answers and like the takeaways that I have from that is is find someone that you can trust and have done previous work with. That always helps have an aligned or shared vision. Right. Because you, you both want to be working towards the same thing and then just be really straightforward about. These are the tasks that I'm going to do. These are the tasks that you're going to do. And then also when opportunities for you guys to team up and actually work on something together, take advantage of those opportunities. Because to Nick's point, like, that's going to come across as super professional. When you get on a call with a huge potential client, then they hear from both of you guys, and maybe, like, Nick is saying a great thing about deliverability and Troy's saying a great thing about copywriting, and that's what really seals the deal, because most other businesses or agencies can't really offer both those perspectives. So I think. I think that's awesome.

Yeah.

One plus one equals three sort of thing.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Dude. It's. It's exponential the growth that you can see if you find the right business partner. So I want to get a little bit more into kind of the decision process of joining client ascension. So every time I sit down and do an interview, it's with a student who knew they wanted to join the program. But as soon as that thought entered their mind, that's not when they joined it either was, you know, a month later, a year later, I just talked to a student who knew he wanted to join, but didn't join until two years later. Like, he sat on Twitter and watched everything that was happening for two years. And this is helpful for our audience because there are people in our audience that already made the decision that they want to join the program, but haven't pulled the trailer trigger yet. And so for you guys. And I would see Nick, like, every day because, like, he pointed out we were neighbors for a while there. And I'd be asking him, like, yo, what are you gonna join? When are you gonna join? When was the right time for you to pull the trigger? And what went into that decision?

Correct me if I'm wrong, I want to say the time frame was June. When do we join? Was it May or June?

Yeah, about a year and a half, give or take.

Yeah. So at the time, we were sitting at a revenue band around like 6 to like 9, 10k, just depending on how many clients were able to onboard and get the onboarding, you know, implementation fee. And so we weren't really. The fulfillment side of things remained challenging. And so we were like, we were just missing a few pieces of the puzzle within our business that were keeping us from achieving the growth that we really wanted to be. And so we knew that Andre, yourself had some of the answers on the operations side of things. Cold Email Wiz had some answers on the business structure side of things that are offering and then Christian had some answers on the copywriting side of things, like, how can we figure out instructions that offer in a compelling way, specifically via email? And so we were just sitting at that revenue threshold and we were like, we gotta make a decision one way or the other. We took some coin out of our pocket and we were like, we'll each throw in 6k into this and there's a high likelihood that we get our money back, you know, within a pretty short time frame, giving you guys guarantee. And you guys knocked that guarantee out of the park. And now we're sitting around, what, like 30ish k in monthly recurring revenue. And so that's consistently stacked up and we've recognized significant growth the first three months of this year. But it was really just that typical of being like, we are so close, but there's some small little details that we don't know that we need to learn from somebody else that's been there before and that knows what to do. And so we can take their advice and really scale the business itself.

That's awesome. Yeah. You make a bet, you make a bet on yourself. Right. It's really what it is. And I love how that bet comes after you've already proven yourself that you can establish a revenue threshold and you can do most of the things in the business. And so you're not joining the program out of, like, the scarcity mindset of, like, I don't know anything. I hope I learn everything from these guys and they can figure it out for me. Like, you're coming to us with like, hey, I have a pretty good operation already. It's just a couple of things are missing. And if you could point those things out, we'll take them and run with them and do what you've done. Right. To scale to 30k a month in revenue is amazing. And one thing that I've noticed, you guys do incredibly well is branding. Like, you guys are not just creating this agency that no one really knows about. It's the brand behind Buzz Lead. Right. And so maybe talk to the audience a little bit about the importance of not just creating an agency and providing good services, but rallying a community behind the brand that you've created for yourselves. Nick. Nick's got right above his head. And so maybe let's start with Nick on this one.

Yeah, absolutely. Going to the brand, like, I. You guys really displayed how important building a brand is and what that could do. Having a community backing you up, I mean, essentially that community becomes your affiliates. It's like an army that vouches for you, that trusts you, refers you to other people. And we've seen a lot of agencies out there that just don't do a good job with building a brand. And we looked at our name. The story behind, you know, Buzz Lead is we knew we were in leads. We were looking for a buzzword. Buzz Lead just rang a bell. And so we're like, all right, this is a catchy word to begin with. And if we could just both have our brand. Because originally it was just we were building my brand on Twitter and we were like, how much more powerful would it be if we can get Troy on Twitter here as well? We re branded our website to put a new design on there, created a school community that now has over 500 members in it. And we have a lot of people that are just reaching out to us, and they're just like, hey, the Buzzly team is crushing it. And we just started realizing that that is such a powerful asset in itself, having that. So we've expanded to other channels now where we're growing on YouTube and we're starting to get inbound customers through YouTube, through Twitter referrals. And so much of that has just come from us doing a good job really representing who we are and the vision that we have, because we could see Buzzly just turning into an empire powerhouse if we continue doing that. And eventually we'll get other people that are helping us, you know, run this team and lead, learn to delegate things a little bit more better. But if you have a brand that takes you so far and any business offer that ties together with what we want to do in the long term, we'll come together, assuming people know who we are, and we'll grow across multiple platforms. But it's been a fun ride so far. And yeah, the brand has really just started taking off. But catch us in 12 months and I think we'll be 10x farther than where we are now.

Absolutely. Troy, anything to add?

No, I mean, that's the plan. We're just. The branding was such a big thing. And so when we started out, I was still working my 9 to 5, and so the focus was like, I don't want to build a big brand and get caught doing the side hustle side of things. And so then we got Nick up to, I don't know, 1800 followers. And then we got a client through an inbound lead. And I was like, oh, so this is how the whole branding thing works. And then I was like, I got to get in on this action. And so just took a new focus into it and then we just acquired a partner that's going to help us out with the YouTube side of things to help us grow there as well. And so it's just interesting to see how branding is playing such a key role in this. And it's something that has such a long term lifetime value compared to just a quick input like you might see with ads. And it's just that content lives forever.

Absolutely. Yeah. Content and the goodwill that you create as well. Right. With the community you're rallying. And there's so many benefits of community that people don't talk about that you guys hit on is like, yeah, it's great when someone follows you on Twitter and then turns into a client, but I think it's even better when someone follows you on Twitter or joins your community. Community goes through your training and then becomes part of your team. Like, that is the biggest game changer that I've found is hiring a players straight out of our following in our community. Because that's really the secret to scaling past a certain point. Like there's ads and content and sales processes and things that we can teach you that'll get you really far. But to hit exponential growth, it really does involve hiring and finding the right people. And I think the community aspect of what you're building is going to allow for that. And I'm sure you guys already have great people working with you, so continue to allow that. I want to go more into the details about the program real quick, just to give the audience some insights as to like, okay, you joined a coaching program and you got results, but what actually happened? So like when you joined the program, if you guys can go back and think, what are some things you actually did while you were in there? Was it like connecting with other students, showing up to coaching calls, going through the content? Like, what did that program experience actually entail for you guys?

So the first step of that whole process we took, well, we watched a ton of the videos, like day one, of course. Nick and I do an act to do list. We're like, Troy, you're doing sales, you're doing copywriting, you're doing offers. Take all that, Nick. Watch everything that Andre has ever come out of his mouth. And we're going to take that and watch the operations videos. And so we started with Daniel doing the offers content. And so we shaped us into, we'll book you 8 to 12 meetings with your ideal clients every single month. And since then, we've tried different vernacular at the spin of that to make it more unique in the market itself. We then took that and we worked with Christian on the copywriting side of things to help us build that outbound engine and start booking more meetings. The next step in that process was, I believe at the time we were still using mail that has since changed to smart leads, which we absolutely love and advocate for. And so that was a great plug by the client Ascension team. And then in the background, Nick is building up a master system, per Andre's recommendations, with Zapier and make tools to really make our onboarding process efficient and clean for our clients. And so from there it was just like, now we have the whole system built out, we know how to fulfill because we have Krishna on deck. And the focus just went, all right, let's just start booking more meetings and acquire more clients. And so it took a little bit of time to get there. I want to say it probably took us around, you know, three or four months until we're clearly over that 10k hurdle. But once we got there, you know, it's just been the sky's the limit at this point. And as I said, the first three months of this year have really been astronomical to the growth.

That's awesome. Nick, any other perspective on what your experience was like?

Yeah. And then just to, you know, add on to that, just the dynamic of all the different coaches that you have within the community was so powerful. Like even with creating our, our original landing page, you guys have a landing page coach. There's a lead gen expert in Nick Abraham. So anytime we have any questions about anything Lead gen related and fulfillment, he's coming up with strategies that we would have never thought of because we just didn't have that experience there. Appointment setting mastery. If we want to meet with Dylan, you know, he's been in sales and he scaled multiple agencies to the point where he can give us tactics, strategies. But I think one of the biggest things is just the community overall. Having other people that are doing the same exact thing that we're doing, that we can meet, network with them, share ideas back and forth, see what they're doing that's working on Twitter and other social media channels. And it's just a big motivator. Seeing other people that are making way more money than we are, who are have been in the same exact situation as us, it just shows that, you know, there is a formula behind it. And if we just put ourselves out there, meet new people, set some high end goals for ourselves, like it's all possible and it's Just been, yeah, fun ride. We actually renewed for a whole nother year with Client Ascension because we loved it. So much money.

Money well spent in my opinion. But yeah, the community is incredible. Just being able to tap into Nick, to Nick's point, like Nick Abraham Magazul, Isaac Wood, Jesse, you guys recently brought on a new ads expert, Alex Riddle. He's been incredibly helpful and hands on with just getting our ads up and running, being able to generate leads from those now too. So it's like you guys hear what you're, what we're saying as a community and it just continues to grow and evolve. So we love being a part of it and that's why we spent, you know, some more thousands of dollars with you guys and it's a great investment on our opinion.

Appreciate it. Yeah, it's great to get your guys insights because I'm always interested to hear like when someone joins the community, what actually happens, right? Because you have to take action. It's first a big decision to join, but you have to back up that decision with action. And I love how you guys go at it from two different angles, right? Like hey Nick, you take the operation stuff and I'll take like the offer stuff and the sales stuff and you guys essentially, if you play it the right way, are getting double the value. And so I think it's helpful to hear for other people out there like how much you really do have to do after joining a coaching program. It's not just a couple of buttons that get clicked or a couple of payments that get sent and results just start to show up. So I just want to commend you guys for actually putting in the work and using the program to get the most value out of it. With all the different coaches, the community, the content, really what it was built for. So my next question, two more questions. The next one is what advice would you have? Right. You guys are one of the success stories for our program. Not every student that goes through the program is a success story. So if you're just joining again for the first time or if you're in the program now and you're just not really seeing the traction or the results that you'd expected when you first joined, like what are some things you'd recommend they do to turn that around?

For me, I'd say not everything is as cookie cutter as it looks like. You're going to get a lot of great instructions on how to do things and you should absolutely follow those, but it's always going to be a lot harder than you think going into it, and you've got to be creative on kind of different strategies, approaches that you take. Something that may have worked a couple of months ago may not work as well because other people are using that. You really do need to venture out and try new things. But I'd say just staying consistent with it. Like, you know, we were spinning our wheels for months, just wondering, why are we not getting these results? And it just comes with time. Like, you end up trying things out that don't work. You learn from those mistakes, reiterate your process, and I just say, yeah, our biggest thing is that we've been doing it now for two years and it just gets easier and easier. And then you start seeing the results, you get motivated, you want to go to the next level. And then that big goal of 10k at first all of a sudden becomes 50k, which we're hoping to hit here in the next few months. Then that's going to keep on going up and I don't know, it's just a fun, fun ride overall.

Yeah, that goal post keeps on moving, which is kind of the tough part of being a entrepreneur, is like, you always want more. But the. To your point, Andre, at the end of the day, man, you gotta do the work. I feel like a lot of people join a coaching program and they expect just like having 10k a month business hand to them, and that's not a reality. And to next point, like, you have to stay consistent on those activities because at the end of the day, no one's going to do the work for you. So you got to want it and nobody else is going to want it as much as you do.

So true, bro. You have to put in the work. It's not buying the program. That is the work. It's actually following what the program tells you to do that is the work. And so that's awesome. Yeah. I'm curious, nick. You mentioned 50k being the next goal and of course, moving the goalpost, that's part of the game as part of entrepreneurship, because really what happens is like, you hit the goal and then you realize, like, oh, if I could hit 50k, why can't I hit 100k? And. And what are the implications of hitting that next goal? Right. That's where I always get most motivated. It's if I hit 100k instead of 50k, like, imagine how many more people I. I have to serve to do that, and how many more people would benefit from my product or my services or my coaching. And so it's Selfish not to always be moving the goalpost and fighting towards that next revenue level, because people that you can genuinely service and help in the marketplace wouldn't be getting that from you guys if you're not constantly pushing further. So what are some of those goals that you guys have? I guess for 2024?

Yeah, so we've got some really big goals we want to turn into. And our goal for right now is, like, by July 1st, we want to actually be at 60k. And the reason we came up with that number is because we've realized that with some of these clients we've been working with that we've been absolutely crushing it for, like, they're paying us a lot of money, and we realize if we just keep doing a good job and we're working with clients that are, in our background space being technology and SaaS, they're already used to paying BDRS 50 to $100,000 each. And if we could go in there and provide 3x the results that all those BDRs are doing, they're not going to have a problem paying us five, $10,000. So just, you know, since January, we've signed on nine clients, so we're sitting at 13 clients overall, and a couple of those are at the beginning stages where they're not even fully ramped up. And if we're looking at our average value per client conservatively being $3,000, like, we're going to hit that goal in no time here. But we've got some big goals. I mean, Troy and I are going to be taking our first annual executive trip to Japan later this year, and we're like, if we could all of a sudden, you know, start bringing in 50, $60,000 a month, it's not going to be a problem for us to go out to Japan on, you know, our first annual meeting, and then a year from that, be able to invite team members out to that. So it's just. It's super exciting. Then eventually create a suite of products that complement our services. Got big goals. Not entirely sure what those are going to be, but we know we'll get there.

Awesome, bro.

Super exciting. Japan is going to be sick.

Oh, yeah, that's an exciting journey for us. So we're starting to see that bank account go up, and we're like, all right, let's have a little bit of fun with this. We put in all this hard work for two and a half years, and we're finally breaking through the ice and onto the way to success. And so now we're just piling on.

Enjoy. Yeah. I remember when we started our agency, we would do yearly goals, and a big part of our yearly goals was always to take a team trip. And I think our first one was, you know, you do them like, super casual to start. Like, our first one was just to, like, Sarasota. And so if you're from Tampa, you know, it's like an hour drive south is. It's not like anything crazy. And then you just start to ramp up, and it just makes it so much more fun. I think we've done team trips in London. We've gone to Lisbon, Portugal, a couple of times. So if you always have those things to look forward to, it just makes, like, the day to day that much more fun. It's really a game right at the end of the day, which is how you can have fun with it.

Absolutely. Game.

Awesome, guys. This has been amazing. I'm pumped we got the chance to catch up and get this on calendar and get this out to the audience, because I know a lot of these guys will benefit from just hearing from your story and your feedback and your advice and for them to continue listening and hearing from you guys. The last question I have is where can they find you guys online?

Yeah. So you can find me on Twitter at Troy Aiken A I T K E N underscore. And then you'll find me at Troy Aiken on YouTube. Awesome.

Yeah. And then for me, it's just ickconsta. Figured I'd give people a little grace, not spell out the full last name.

So it's.

K o n S T A and as well, both on YouTube, Twitter and Instagram as well.

Awesome. And what's the website? Buzzly.com or IO.IO so, yep, yep. Awesome, guys. Appreciate it. Again, I'm super proud of where you guys are at and just excited to see where you guys go from here. I know you have big goals, as you both said. We're hyped to see some pictures from that Japan trip. And yeah, really just the work that you guys are doing, just continue to do that and always remember to serve those clients at the highest level, which is how you've gotten to where you're at and how you're going to continue to grow. So appreciate the time, bro.

Thanks.

Peace.