When You Quit Your 9-5 Job and Start Making $20,000/Month

I went from being kind of average salesman to all of a sudden having ridiculous number of leads and ridiculous number of closed deals. Yeah, I came in wanting to hit 10k a month. We're currently at 20k and I want to go up 30k by the end of the year.

We're back with yet another student Spotlight interview here with my good friend James. What's going on, brother?

I'm doing good. How you doing?

Good, bro. I'm excited for this one. Let's just start with who you are and what you're currently working on.

Obviously the name is James. I'm based just south of London in the uk, currently working on building two different agencies. The main one is your classic on a legion, diverging a bit into growth partnership, but it's focused on helping consulting firms or other professional service firms, you know, grow their pipeline. And then the second agency I've started up recently with a friend is a kind of design based agency. So it's following the classic kind of unlimited design, one fixed monthly subscription.

You've joined the program twice, maybe take the audience through the journey of like joining the first time. And then what was the decision to join back again?

I started out 10 years in the corporate world as a management consultant. In my last job I was in, I was tasked with kind of increasing sales for the company. Everyone was basically given a bit of a budget to go out and buy some training material and everyone kind of went, went out and bought the standard stuff and it didn't really work. And so I kind of went on a bit of a quest to find something different. I'm going to go like this unconventional route. All the sales training is exactly the same. Let's try something different. And I can't remember how I stumbled on cold email. So Dan, so Cold Email wizard And Jeremy a LinkedIn legend I think. Now I was given this budget of about a thousand pounds to spend and I picked up loads of different courses, but one of them was Cold Email Mastery and the other was a course that Jeremy sold. Of all the courses I went through and took, those are the two that kind of delivered results in my corporate role. And it was a complete switch from what everyone else was doing. The short consultant, nice email template that Dan was kind of advocating for at the time was a complete change. My kind of sales at that company just took off. I went from being kind of average salesman to all of a sudden having ridiculous number of leads and ridiculous number of kind of closed deals. It was just because of these two courses I kind of credited with and it basically just got to the point of it happened consistently. It wasn't just a one off. And then the company I was working for actually were like, oh, you got to kind of teach us what you're doing differently. So I taught them with that and, you know, it led to kind of big improvement. I basically just thought, actually, why don't I start just doing this for other consultancies? Because, you know, management consultancy is always the same, very traditional. And that's when, you know, I all right, I'll go back to the originals. Cold email Dan. Which led me to kind of Client Ascension and meeting you guys. But the problem was at that time I was still working my corporate job and so I literally was, you know, doing 10, 12 hour days consulting and trying to build something on the side, and it kind of just wasn't really working. That first Client Ascension stint where I basically signed up, was there for a couple months now, taking a bit of information, but never fully applied it. And then essentially, life changes. I want to build on my own agency. I use all the lessons I implemented from those guys, previously delivered huge results. So I quit my corporate job, doubled down on Client Ascension and kind of just went for it. And that's why I came back the second time. Since then, we've achieved good numbers.

That's an amazing story, James. The results spoke for themselves, right? You quickly shot up in that company, which is awesome. And you just realize you're really good at this stuff. Why am I doing it for someone else instead of myself? So that was the transition, right? Into starting your own agency. What was that decision like? There are a lot of people that listen to this and even people incline ascension or just on Twitter and they're like, I'm in that situation that James is in where like, I need to make that leap of faith. I'm not sure it's the time or if I'm ready. What went into that decision where you're like, screw it, I'm going all in. I'm starting my own thing and seeing where this leads me.

When I first joined Client Ascension, one of the standout sessions for me was Mario's executive coaching or executive development. And I actually started engaging, working with Mario kind of on a one to one basis. We kind of worked together. When he stopped actually recently, over those months, he kind of built up my confidence that actually, tell you what, there's only one life. You got to go for it. What I tried to do more and more, I tried to set aside time in the evenings. I was like, nope, Today I'm going to stop at five and the next four hours I'm going to build my agency. And it just never happened. Clocked off work, got too tired. So I basically just came to the point I want to build something myself. I believe I can. Got a good support network around me. There's this community as well. I've kind of just got to go for it. I was on a decent salary as well when I left. Giving up something I'd spent, you know, 10 years climbing the corporate ladder for. And I just want to build something myself. It's quite satisfying being self reliant now actually.

Absolutely, bro. It's cool to hear how working with Mario on like the mindset side of things and just like talking through those different situations where you clock off of work at 5 and you just got nothing left in the tank. So you have to make the decision and goal and which is amazing that you did that. What was the first challenge that you ran into after making that decision?

The first one was I handed in my notice. I had like three months notice and the first kind of like wobble was when I got my last paycheck and I was like, okay, from here I'm out. There's no paycheck at the end of every single month. The other thing was actually processes. Getting everything set up and established and nicely formalized. So that's a lot of stuff in the corporate world used to annoy me in terms of why do we need all this process of bureaucracy and these kind of sops and whatnot. But actually when you're out in your own and you don't have an accounting team, a legal team, onboarding team, customer service team, I see the value of this stuff now. So you've gone from kind of like a really regimented timetable to nothing. I've got to sell these things and I've got a card out my day to set this up. Something that I didn't appreciate before, like processes. That's really why I kind of signed up to Client ascension is because I felt I'd kind of not mastered but made good progress on the cold email. But there are kind of like, you know, so many different other areas like the landing page, VSL, the actual sales calls themselves LinkedIn, Twitter, various other aspects that are building blocks that I basically start from scratch. That kind of panic of oh crap, I've actually got to build all these different elements up if I need someone to help me kind of led me back to client ascension.

You had obviously identified the different areas you needed to Focus more on.

Right.

You said the Legion and cold email outside was really the expertise that was taken care of. So now it was more of like building an actual business rather than being a team member at an existing business. What were some of the things that you implemented early on after joining client attention that really helped? And you still look back at today, it's like, thank God I did those things.

I didn't want to spread myself too thin, so I took a different approach. I focused purely on kind of lead gen and cold email. Good at that whole process in terms of automating it, making it as efficient and stuff like that as possible. I really doubled down Legion, which worked because very quickly I sent a batch of emails with Christian's help with the copy and Nick's help, you know, generating some decent leads. Very quickly found myself in a situation where I was getting 10 sales meetings a week when I was closing, you know, like kind of 20% of those as well. So very quickly, rapidly got up to like five or six clients in the space of like, two, three weeks. But then the problem was because I doubled down on lead gen, all of a sudden I was like, oh, crap, I need to build an operation. So all of a sudden I kind of, you know, popped up in your kind of operations school as well to try and, you know, build like, this onboarding process and other bits like that. What worked well was actually focusing on one particular area. But then at the same time, like, I needed to keep a couple of steps ahead as well. Thinking of this process, I am going to get clients. I need to think about onboarding and fulfillment, which kind of in the early days didn't. So that was a bit of a struggle to catch up, let's say.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's the thing, right? Like, there's so many things you could be doing every single day with your business. We call it like the infinite black hole. You're never going to go to bed after starting a business and being like, oh, yeah, everything that I should or could be doing, like, it's done. There's always going to be the next thing to work on, which is overwhelming. But I love your approach of like, let's start with Legion and figure that out. Now that I have sales calls coming through, let's make sure I'm closing those at 20% or whatever the KPI is. And then once I have clients coming through, let's figure out the onboarding process. But it sounds like you didn't pressure yourself too much to have it all figured out day one, which Allowed you to scale smoothly in a sense.

For me, when you try to do seven things, you kind of do seven things like, okay. And I was like, I'm just going to focus on kind of each step in the process. It's following that onboarding sheet. You know, you get client sanction kind of just going through them one by one saying, you know, am I comfortable with this? Cool, let's move on. Now I'm at a point where the lead gen landing pages, the operations are kind of there. Spending a bit more time in the whole mindset and leadership development stage as well, because that's a big one. People always overlook.

We always joke about this like people overlook it. And I just think not enough people get to this point. I just don't speak to so many business owners that get to the point where this is even relevant to talk about because they can't get past Legion or they can't get past sales with satisfactory results. But once you do, then it really begins, right? Like you have to hire the right people and then once you hire the right person, you have to keep them and manage them and make sure they're performing. You have to develop yourself first as like a business leader.

You kind of so focused on getting your first client, you know how to do your job, but all of a sudden you need other people to help you out.

One thing I'm really proud about Client ascension is like it is labeled like a Legion or cold email coaching program. I do the operations calls every week. We have Luke Ward that does operations and automations. We got JP who's got a bunch of content on operations and people management. We really have it covered. Again, most people don't get there fast enough very quickly for you. You came in as someone who is very experienced with cold email and you got off to a quicker start there. So you're able to see the benefit through some other aspects of the program, which is nice.

But what I really like about client ascension is it's constantly evolving in terms of meeting the market as well. Because when I first signed like what, last year, even in January there's like 10 or 12, and now I think there's what, like 16 or something. It's good to see students obviously become coaches as well, but it literally covers absolutely everything.

Yeah, there's 16 individual coaching calls every single week. It's unbelievable. I realized that especially for small businesses, your business problems really are just stemming from your personal problems most of the time. We could fix your business problems all day long with the coaches and the calls. We already had, but we didn't have anyone to come in and help you solve or identify personal problems. And that's where Mario really stepped in. And that's a call that a lot of people, people look at and they're like executive leadership. That doesn't seem valuable or worth my time when I could be sending, you know, cold emails during this time. But again, once you mature enough as a business owner, you realize 99% of your business problems are a result of your personal problems. And you have to deal with that stuff first, maybe even speak on that experience. Because I know you mentioned already working with Mario. How is that different than maybe what you expected in a business coaching program or just an entrepreneurship setting in general?

I kind of wasn't growing as much as I wanted to early on before I kind of joined Client Ascension. And I thought that was just a market or process kind of issue. And exactly like you said, it was actually all personal kind of issues were coming to the surface and the kind of impact in the business. And it's actually kind of realizing that massive breakthrough. When you see other more successful agency owners experiencing the same thing or slightly different things, overcoming it together, it's just really enlightening. It's all these things you think is maybe just a business or a system or process or a market issue. You can always boil it down, like you said, to a personal piece. All the coaching calls are great, but I think Mario is what people don't expect it to be. That preconceived notion about what it is.

It's comforting to know, like other people that are way further ahead or even behind everyone is feeling these same things. If you don't have like these other people to connect with and share your problems with or at least have more vulnerable conversations with, it's going to affect how you show up in the business and lead even your own team and speak and communicate with your clients. That's where a lot of fulfillment comes from because you can help fellow community members too. It was also really awesome to meet in London. You're out at that event, which was a really nice time at dinner and everything. Maybe talk about that experience like just in person events who you were able to connect with. Anything that you took away from that event that maybe had an impact on the business growth since.

So the community client center has always been strong. When we brought everyone together in London, it was just another level actually meeting people from all over the place. Because like you said before, entrepreneurship can feel a bit lonely. And joining an online community can help with that and then I think this is a kind of level above it. These aren't just people, like icons or people on a screen, real friends that got to get together.

What have been the results or milestones you've achieved in your agency and then where are you looking to go from here?

When I initially joined, what I wanted to do was kind of hit 10k a month. That was kind of the goal and that's £10,000. The reason for that was basically be honest, to match my kind of old salary. And then one week where I closed like 10k in one week, very quickly got to 20k. And I wanted to achieve that by the end of the year. But now the goal is actually we're going to try and hit like I think it's 35k by the end of the year. It's not kind of sales at the cost of everything. It has to be like a sustainable business with good operations, a good team, good mindset, good work, life balance.

I'm always more impressed with guys that take the slower growth path of like 10k, 20k, 30k. You always see like these interviews and even coaching programs that like have poster child story of like 0 to 100k in 60 days and then that person falls off the face of the map because they're not able to sustain it. That's not the way we like to do business. And that's where I think client attention is different is it's the Legion program, right, with cold email. We teach sales too, but we teach operations and we teach mindset. We really try to develop you into a business owner that can sustain these revenue levels and that level of growth. We don't want to just crop you up to 100k a month just for a quick snapshot and then you fall back down and it's like whatever. It's more about the sustained growth. So the route you're going is the way to go. There's always in coaching programs a select group of students that don't see results or success. They join the program, they set the goal, and then they just don't hit the goal. What's one piece of advice or one thing you tell these people to do that can turn it around and improve the likelihood of their success?

The weeks I joined, the coaching calls kind of literally positively correlated with my business performance in the sense that I joined those calls, I got those insights and put them into action. Staying consistent with those coaching calls is key. Watching the recording is great, but actually being there in person is better for any ad hoc kind of questions. Because on these calls, for example, like Nick's. Nick's always legion. One always stands out for me because every single week there seems to be a different technique, a different tool, a different method of generating better leads and stuff like that. And I think you got to just take action. I had quite a bit of a perfectionist mindset before. Can't launch anything until it's like 110% perfect, right? Whereas now the whole approach of kind of launch, it's okay to fail, experiment around a bit, look at the data and then kind of tweak. It's just that kind of bias for action is kind of the key one.

Everything you mentioned right there is so perfectly said and it's kind of how we designed the program. Like, the accountability piece is so key because again, as an entrepreneur, it starts and stops with you. So if you don't do anything, there's not really anyone around you to hold you accountable and say, hey, why didn't you do this? Everyone has this mindset where they join a coaching program and they're like scared to ask questions because they think they're going to sound dumb behind the scenes. As a coach and like as a co founder at the company, it's like the people we look at as dumb are the ones that don't ask questions because it's like you join a coaching program, you paid money to ask us questions, and then you're not asking questions. Last thing though is where can the audience find you, follow you and work.

With you for kind of like lead gen and growth partnership stuff best found on LinkedIn. The company is called growvisory and the website is just growvisory. Co for any kind of design work, that company is called Design guru Godesignguru. Com.

Very cool. Companies in the works and huge part of the community. So I appreciate you and looking forward to seeing you keep crushing it.