i sat down with a founder who made $1M in 90 days

Guys, have you ever wanted to make $1 million in annual recurring revenue in 90 days? Well, I just got to interview Andre, who owns a company called ListKit. This is a piece of software that enables companies to find leads to send emails to. Andre and his co-founders scaled this business to $1 million in 90 days. I had the pleasure of speaking to Andre for about half an hour, and the following video, what you're gonna watch, It's us talking about customer success, us talking about product, him and his co-founders, his origin story, and some amazing gems that you can use to scale your business today. I hope you enjoy watching the video. Really enjoy it. I'm really excited to publish this one. So you now own a very profitable, very successful, and impactful coaching program, but now you're going into the SaaS space. Now the two aren't actually that similar, I don't think, from business model perspectives. As an owner, what are some of the What are the lessons you've learned so far? What did you know? Just give me your experience. I will ask an open question. What was your experience switching to another business model?

Yeah, I think, uh, the plan has always been really clear and we've executed it really carefully, whereas like Client Ascension is, is what provides us, uh, you know, the cash flow to live, right? Um, and we always knew like with, with List Kit, we're not trying to make that a super profitable business because the end goal is to exit. And so we don't really mind if we're not taking away, uh, profit for 2 or 3 years if we can end up with a multi-million dollar exit. Um, and during those 2 to 3 years, we have profit and cash flow coming in from somewhere like Client Ascension. So the way the businesses are structured and the goals for business— the businesses is, is completely different. You're right. Um, and yeah, the, the biggest thing with building a SaaS is like product is king. Like like you have on your hat, right? And same thing with a coaching program, but I think, um, the product in a coaching program is mostly yourself, whereas the product, uh, in a software, unfortunately, it's mostly like almost entirely out of your control. So like I always was able to go into Client Ascension when someone had an issue and fix it right away by either giving them an answer, um, or direction or a link to a training that would give them the answer they needed, right? When people have an issue with Liskit, it's a software-related issue that as much as I want to just go right in there and fix it for them, I can't because I'm not a developer. And then there's a process to follow with submitting requests to our developer team and then a timeline that needs to be agreed upon. So it's much more complex. And so managing expectations has been a huge learning with Liskit, and being transparent has been, you know, something that we've really put an emphasis on since day one. That's why we have the school community for ListKit, which is growing. We're almost at 1,500 members in there, which is awesome. And we're always providing updates on the product. And you've probably seen that as a customer as well. Like a lot of the features that you've probably requested are either already in the app now or being built. And we even doubled down on that by doing live calls with the community to just hear people out and give them feedback. Cause we know with ListKit, especially if you're more informed about cold email and you can run a successful campaign, you're just going to continue using ListKit. And so because we have that knowledge, we want to share it.

It's interesting how, like, how did you— I don't say relinquish control of the user, you know, experience because it's not that, but it's like your user experience, I guess, is in the developer's hands. And when there are issues, Mentally, how did you like tell yourself it's okay? Like, is it just trusting in the team? Like, what did you— how did you handle that? Because you could just snap your fingers and fix client retention issues. Like, how did you go over that hump?

Man, it's tough. Uh, it still is tough, but especially in the beginning because it was so new, right? Like, you'd have these people complaining, and I'm always someone that like, I really want to help people. Like, I'm in a way a people pleaser. Like, I'm always just doing what other people want to do, making them happy, right? And that sometimes is not the best thing to do. Um, but that's, that's a whole nother story. But anyways, like with Litski, like I'm getting these complaints and like I also sympathize with them. I'm like, yeah, like I'd love for that to be fixed too, or I'd love for that feature to be there too, but like I'm pulling my hair out because I can't do anything about it. Um, or I mean, I can do, you know, certain things, but again, it's not like that instant fix like I could do over at Client Ascension. So it was very hard at first Um, and because I've, I've never had like a product or software product, um, before— I've always just done coaching and information— like, it's something I had to get used to. And like you said too, as well, like, spending more time with our developer team, understanding their process and their side of things even more. Because, you know, in the beginning you're like, well, why can't the devs just fix this right away? And, and it's because there's a lack of understanding of like their workflows and what their life is looking like, right? Building this thing, it's so complex that people just don't, you know, respect that at all because they can't comprehend it. But yeah, it was just getting more integrated, communicating same way at Client Ascension, the sales team communicates with the fulfillment team, right? It's just better communication between departments. And the more of that we do, the more I'm able to trust, you know, going out to customers and really telling them like, hey, like I assure you, like this is being addressed. And like our dev team, like I can assure you, like they truly do care that this gets fixed and they're putting their best efforts forward. And at this point I've just allowed that to, to make— I've just been making peace with that as the answer. And customers have been, you know, super understanding as well, which is great.

You mentioned something interesting I want to touch on about trusting people and, you know, working with others. And you've actually— CA and Listkit has 4 founders. Right? Or maybe more than 4. You, Daniel, Christian, and, uh, Dan, isn't it? Like, some companies can't function with one founder, some struggle with two founders. How do you guys manage four founders?

You can call it an achievement. I've always called it our competitive advantage for the exact reason you just explained. Like, it's very rare, uh, for a company like Client Ascension or ListKit, which has 5 founders because Oliver is a founder there as well, um, to be able to operate successfully. Um, and it's just a communication thing. Um, and then also like the way businesses are designed, like you have really specific roles and departments. You have marketing, you have sales, and you have fulfillment, right? And there's a whole bunch of other stuff involved too, but those are really the pillars. And so like for us to be able to run Client Ascension and for us to be able to also run List Kit And like to do all the, cause I get the question like, okay, you have a lot of founders and then also you have a lot of companies. Like how is it all possible? And it's because we have a lot of founders. Like for Client Ascension, I don't have to focus on sales. I don't have to focus on marketing. I just have to focus on the product and the community and the results that students are getting. Easy, right? It's like running an entire company. Sure.

That's amazing.

But it really niches you down to like a role within that company. And then over at WizKit. I have a different role there where I— same thing, kind of. I focus on CS, like making sure that the churn rate is low, the LTV is high, um, the amount of reviews we're getting on, on G2 is increasing, the school community is engaged with, right? And so the roles are really dialed at both companies, which makes it possible for both companies to grow and have the impact that they do. Because if it was just me, like, none of this would be possible. But because I know Dan is doing sales and Daniel is doing marketing and Oliver's taking care of product and managing the developers, like, it's just not a worry to me.

I see. It's like you've got 5— say, for ListKit, it's like 5 of you crazy guys building a SaaS, like, super speed, right? It's like you've got 5 free employees and you're equally as incentivized to make it work because it's your fucking businesses.

Like, that's the only way it works, I think, for ListKit. And it's why we've yet to see anyone go up against companies like ZoomInfo ZoomInfo or Apollo. Because think about it this way, right? ZoomInfo, public company trading at a market cap of over $1 billion, number one. And then Apollo, private company, but they've raised over $200 million in the last year alone. And then ListKit, bootstrapped, right? But with 5 founders that all have, you know, a ton of heart, uh, and also a ton of industry knowledge from previous ventures like Client Ascension and Cold Email Mastery that gives us a competitive advantage. So you have to, you have to like stick to your strengths. And I think our strength and competitive advantage has always been like the more founders we have, the less each of us have to do, which means the things that we do do, we could do at the highest level. Um, and I've always, you know, loved operating in teams.

So you're Codeemo people, and that's why you can create a Codeemo software. You're basically doubling down on your strengths. And I think the reason you can compete with these companies that, you know, the $200 million funded companies is because your product is based on insane experience and deep industry knowledge. And it like reminds you of back, you know, when Alex Becker created Hiros because he's an ad expert. You guys are doing your Hiros moment with Liskit because you're fucking the best cold emails on the planet, in my opinion. So like, it makes complete sense. There was probably no way SaaS you were ever going to make. You said that was the— you executed the plan properly. Was the plan always coaching program, SaaS exit? Was that always the plan?

Always a plan, but the first leg of it was actually the agency. Um, and so Dan Christian and I, um, before we even partnered with Daniel, uh, we went through his course, which taught us how to do— we went through the original Cold Email Mastery. That's how we met Daniel in the first place.

Oh wow, I didn't know that.

And off of that, yeah, back in 2020, yeah, uh, I bought Cold Email Mastery. So I was just like everyone else, bought Cold Email Mastery, had no idea, you know, who was selling it. It was just Cold Email Wizard. Um, went through the program starting an agency, started to get results. Daniel reached out, uh, for a testimonial or whatever, and we hopped on a call, and that's when we first met. Um, and then we partnered on an info product together later on. Um, but the agency was something that we had a lot of success with. We were one of the first Legion agencies in the Twitter space, I'd say, uh, that got to $100,000 a month in revenue. We're servicing almost 200 clients. And that'll happen within 2 years. And that was the only reason that we started Client Ascension is because we were able to do something so wildly successful compared to where everyone else was at in the market that we had a lot to share and teach about. And that was the entire premise of Client Ascension is we were just going to help people start their own lead gen agency. And obviously now it's spiraled into anyone with an agency or just anyone in general that wants to grow with cold email. But that was the progression— agency coaching program. And then we knew SaaS was going to be a play. We thought it'd be earlier, um, but it just so happened that it took the longest out of any of the things, but we're happy, you know, where we're at now.

What I, I remember seeing ListKit emails ages ago, and ListKit never used to be its current format. It used to be something else, am I mistaken?

It used to be a productized service. So, so when we were doing the agency, the biggest bottleneck I experienced— so here's the story, right? So we had the agency. Um, while we were building the agency, I read a book called Build to Sell. Um, and in that book it talked about how this guy who had an agency wanted to exit his business, but no one wanted to buy it because it wasn't really a business. It was just glorified freelancing. And so the book talked about how he met this guy that sold a bunch of businesses and he basically worked with him to make his business sellable. And the way he did it is by figuring out one core problem that his agency was solving consistently. And get really productized with it. So this guy went from having a marketing agency to just creating logos, nothing else. And he basically built out a business of creating logos up until the point of an exit. It was super productized. And so I looked at our agency at the time and said, okay, we're doing cold email lead gen A to Z. It's going okay. Uh, like we're bringing in cash flows, just, you know, an operational nightmare because there's so many logistics. What part of the process really annoys me that I could, you know, offer a solution to the market because it probably annoys everyone else too. And that was list building because back in the day you had to pick 25 leads from Apollo every page, put the full list together, run it through Personalized Lines Generator, run it through Million Verifier, and it was just spreadsheet after spreadsheet after spreadsheet. Took hours and it just was a bottleneck to our campaigns. And so I was like, let's just sell lists, uh, to other lead gen agency owners because I know they do not want to be building their own leads list. And then eventually, if it goes well and we prove this out, I don't know how we could do this, but we could build something like Apollo, right? And that was just the idea. Um, and so that was back in July 2021. So like, again, 2 and a half years ago, before we started Client Ascension, um, we started List Kit. And List Kit was just, you go to the website, you say how many leads you want, You tell us your ICP and then we go out and our team builds your leads list the same way we would build our leads list just for our clients at our agency at the time. And right away, first month I hit $10K a month. Um, and then we didn't put a ton of focus and energy behind it, so it didn't really grow, but it stayed consistent. $10K a month, $10K a month. And pretty soon into it, we figured, hey, like, this is validated already. People, you know, want a better solution to list building. And so let's start to build out a software version of it. And, and that software version took 2.5 years. But, um, the reason it, it was able to, to have such a fast start, the software had such a fast start, is because we had 2.5 months, 2.5 years worth of, uh, customer data to rely on and know exactly what people wanted in a tool like ListKit.

That's crazy that technically ListKit was first. That's absolutely, that's, that's absolutely crazy. Wow. What would you say the biggest moments— what were the biggest moments that shaped your life so far, do you think?

Biggest moments that shaped my life. That's a great question. I think first one was, was meeting Christian back in college. And so I was always like the kid in high school that was entrepreneurial and I was like, oh, screw college. Like all my friends when they were, you know, doing like applications to the different colleges and universities they wanted to get into. I was like, I didn't even want to go to college at that point. The reason was because I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs. So my dad was an entrepreneur and my grandpa was an entrepreneur, the two, uh, you know, men in my life that I looked up to the most growing up. And so I wanted to be an entrepreneur, and I knew that entrepreneurs didn't really need to go to school, but I went anyways. Um, and at school I met Christian, um, and Christian was from a different area, but we met. We both shared, you know, similar interests around not just business really, because Christian wasn't super into business at the time. He was doing like accounting, um, but like sports and just like wanting freedom and like kind of going on a separate path. And so the biggest moment there was like we were both curious of like, how can we, you know, get away from this college stuff, going to classes, going to networking events, career fairs, all this BS, and do our own thing? And so we started a podcast, and we had no idea what podcasting was. Same story that you were telling me before this, like you heard Gary Vee say you should start a podcast, and that's exactly what we did. Um, and our podcast was called Real Talk University. And the reason we named it that is because we're like pissed at our university for not, you know, telling us the real stuff. Like, hey, like, there's more opportunity outside of the classroom. That was the tagline: exploring success stories outside of the classroom. And so we'd go interview people online that were making it as an entrepreneur, and we did, uh, it had to be 150 to 200 podcast interviews over the course of 2 years with entrepreneurs as big as, um, John Lee Dumas. Um, we did Neil Patel. We had, um, so many big names on there. I mean, you could go through and look it up, Real Talk University. Some of the names I'll go through, and it's still like shocking that we had these guys on even. Um, and we learned so much, and Through that, we started our first social media marketing agency back in the day, um, and that just spiraled into everything else we're doing now. But meeting Christian and deciding like, hey, we're curious about this thing, we don't really know anything about it other than we should start a podcast and find out. The curiosity is, I think, for an entrepreneur, probably the biggest thing you should be leaning into, um, because, because most of you just don't know what you don't know. And I think there's like an ego problem with a lot of people that think they know it all and have all the answers. But for me, I was like, hey, I grew up around probably the most successful entrepreneurs that most people will ever meet, but I didn't know, you know, anything. And I could go to them and learn, but like, I was curious to go outside and learn from others as well because I know there's not just one way to do things. Um, and so we were curious.

And like, I know your family are in business, right? If I, if I'm— your dad or your granddad or something like that, if I'm correct. Do you think your life was always going to turn out into business, or do you think your life has turned out differently because of being Christian and starting a business, or was this always going to be probably your life?

I think growing up, like, I always wanted to have the next big idea. So like, our family was centered around entrepreneurship, and it was always like the talk at dinner, like, who's going to have the next big idea? Or, uh, because my family's business was coupon books, like, who's going to figure out how to sell the most coupon books, right? Like, this was always the talk growing up, so I was always inclined towards entrepreneurship, but there were doubts all the way up until when I met Christian that I might, you know, not be a fit for this and I should maybe go into pharmacy school, is something I strongly considered, or be a lawyer. These are all careers like I really considered for some time. Um, but when I met Christian and we started the podcast, the reason I say that was a life-changing moment is because that's when I turned and could never go back. Never. Because I was talking to these people and hearing their life experiences in, in realizing that this is a possibility and this is so good that if I'm gonna go through this life, this is the way I want it to be lived. And so how can I make this happen for myself? Um, so that was podcasting, and we didn't make any money from the podcast. Um, we stopped doing the podcast, right? But that was probably the most valuable thing I've ever done.

Yeah, I didn't— my first podcast, I only done about 35 episodes. It was, it was weird. I was interviewing filmmakers because I used to be a filmmaker, like, believe it or not. And I just don't, don't talk about it on Twitter though, but I interviewed BAFTA people, proper really famous people, but made no money for it or anything. But the networking was absolutely off the charts. Even I look at the list of people I spoke to and I was like, how did I get them on a podcast?

Yeah bro, it was cool. I mean, even from the podcast, one of our favorite stories, Christian and I, we're in college and we reached out to someone, uh, that made like custom sneakers that we really wanted to interview and His social media manager responded saying, hey, like, he's not interested, but I am. And we're like, oh, who's this guy? Like, social media manager? Like, we're not really interested, but sure, like, whatever. We interviewed him, it was dope, we became like really good friends. And then like 3 months later he hits us up, he's like, yo, I'm working at VaynerMedia, uh, I know you guys are big like GaryVee fans, like, if you're ever in New York City, like, let me know, we could do something. So we ended up going to New York City And we literally went to VaynerMedia and did an interview in Gary Vee's office, like his famous office that he still has in all of his YouTube videos with like the stuff in the background, with our friend Josh. And like, we could have easily turned him down again, like, oh, he's just a social media manager. But we were curious enough and we were open enough to see where this could go. And that was one of the coolest experiences ever, bro. Yeah, go on YouTube and look up Real Talk University. I think, uh, Josh Ordonez. You can watch the whole interview. It's like literally us sitting in Gary Vee's office doing like an hour-long podcast with Josh.

What would you say the biggest failure in your career has been yet and how did it help you?

Yeah, absolutely. Um, so this was going to be my next answer to biggest life moments. Um, so right out of college or right towards when we were getting out of college, actually, this was like during COVID It was like a year left of school before we graduated. Um, we were really into this agency, and it was really just like a social media marketing agency. And this was like our first taste of running a real business, and we're, you know, making some revenue every month, and we had a bunch of clients and doing a bunch of services. We had some team members, and we were really doing the thing. Um, the reason I'm, I'm calling this a pivotal moment and a failure, but also something we learned from, and also I think the best thing that ever happened to me was for a few reasons which I'll get into. But essentially, we had a business partner, uh, that was also in there with us, um, and it just led to like a really dramatic split because of really key differences between what my vision for the company was, what Christian's vision, Dan's vision, uh, and our, our other partner's vision was. In our other partner, there are also some, uh, really, you know, messed up things with like how the equity of the business was structured and stuff like that because we were new, like we had no understanding of like how do you structure things. And so like Dan and Christian were really left out and there's, there's a whole bunch of stuff that happened. Um, but anyways, we had spent 2 years building up this agency. We were, you know, really happy with where it was at. Um, but we got to this point where we had to make a decision like, hey, like Dan, Christian and I, we formed a really great bond. We worked really well together. And so we had to make a decision that, hey, like we're gonna leave completely all this stuff we've done for 2 years and start completely from scratch, completely from scratch. Um, and that was a tough decision, and it was, it was a pivotal moment because like we could have stayed in where we were at and it would not have panned out. It eventually would have blown up the same way it did when it did. I mean, we're happy it did when it did, and if only, if only it could have been earlier, it would have been even better. But anyways, it is what it is. Um, but that was like a failure because we just didn't understand like general business practices and, and partnerships. And that's why, like, going back to your question earlier, why I think our partnerships work so much today is because we went through the other side of it. Like, we've been in a bad partnership and we know what that's like, working with a business partner that's just not aligned and in a structure of a business that just doesn't make sense for everyone involved, that it's eventually going to lead to disputes and, and really, you know, like a big a big event that causes people to leave and go their separate ways. So because that experience happened, it was super painful because we had to walk away from so much time, effort, and work. Um, but because we knew like and had confidence in ourselves and in the learnings and the skill sets we acquired along the way, we said, hey, we could start this again from scratch. And that's exactly what we did. And we carried the lessons into what we did next. And that's again why you see like our, our double-down superpower competitive advantage is partnerships, even though That was the biggest failure in our entrepreneurship career was partnership that went, went wrong.

There's a lot of people watching this, probably because of who you are especially, maybe a lot of your students I imagine. If they reach $100K a month and they've got a really successful agency, when should they know to pivot to something else? Because they always say your first business isn't going to be your last business. Now you've done a few business models. How do you, can you tell someone, okay, you've built something cool, now maybe use it as cash flow of something else or double down on what you're currently doing? How can someone maybe intuitively, or how can they make that decision as rationally as possible?

That's a great question. I think for us, it's always been one ecosystem and that's the only reason it's worked. Like if I, if we did the lead gen agency and then we did a coaching program for like people that want to learn how to play the piano, it wouldn't work. Right. And then if we did, even if we did the agency and then client ascension, and then we did a software that was like. Um, you know, like accounting, like QuickBooks, but just for other businesses, like it wouldn't work. And so I think you know when to do the next thing if it, if it is another thing or service or product that can serve the same people you're currently serving, um, and you have some competitive advantage with it, right? So like, I'll give you an example of each of these things. So first off, KnowledgeX lead gen agency, that was something that Like we just went from 0 to 100K like you're saying. So how do we decide to go into client ascension next? Well, instead of just working with clients that want to do lead gen, why don't we just teach them the same lead gen strategy we're implementing for our clients? The reason that was a competitive advantage is because we had a partnership with Daniel called Email Wizard who had a huge personal brand that people know, like, and trust enough to pay us high ticket for our coaching, right? So easy decision, right? No hesitation whatsoever. Um, ListKit, right? Same thing. We had this service that we were providing A to Z. It only made sense— it made so much sense to say, hey, one thing we do better than anyone else is we have this really systemized way of building our leads list, which is a huge bottleneck for everyone else that does cold email. And so let's just sell that to people that maybe aren't ready to pay us for a done-for-you lead gen service. So we— when, when ListKit was a productized service, we sold it but we also would sell ListKit customers into our agency services and then into our coaching program. And so they all work together, which means if we're going to put out a piece of content on Twitter about cold email, it could send people to ListKit, it could send people to Client Ascension, or it could send people to Knowledge X. It's just they choose their path at that point. And I think that's the only way it works, especially when your big focus is building a personal brand because Like if you make a tweet about cold email and then your next tweet is about like learning how to play the piano, like I was saying, you're really splitting yourself and now you have 50% focus here, 50% focus here. Our entire focus is cold emailing. It is like the same way Russell Brunson is like, you're one funnel away where you're one cold email away and that's it. So I don't think it's a revenue number. You should say, once I get here, then I'll do the next thing. It's more so like once you've become a true expert in whatever that umbrella category is and you've identified that next product or service that can really help the same people you're currently helping, just in a different way or at a different level, that's when you know it's the right time.

So a few minutes left. I know, busy guys. So tell me, André, is there anything you can either do a CTA or advice to beginners or something you'd like to end the podcast on? But by the way, this is really great. Killer episode.

Oh, I appreciate it, bro. You've asked some really great questions that got me thinking and have, uh, pulled back some, some stories from way early on in my career that I haven't thought of in a long time. So it's always fun. Um, in terms of like CTAs or piece of advice, like, I think my superpower, um, as an entrepreneur is consistency, uh, resilience. Like, I've been through so many failures. I've also been at this for such a long time. Again, like, I have the receipt in my email inbox of buying Cold Email Mastery in 2020, and only now, you know, I'm starting to surface on, on Twitter and on podcasts and with Client Ascension and with our SaaS. And so that's 4 years. Most people are not willing to show up every single day and put in 8 to 10 hours, whether it be, you know, on the computer or even just thinking about the business outside of an actual work session, right? Because that counts too, um, for 4 straight years. But that's something for me, like, I've never missed a day. I think I'm the most consistent person I know, um, and that's why I say it's my superpower, because that's the only reason I'm here today. Um, I don't have all the answers, I never did, but I know that, and I knew that going into this, if I just showed up every single day with the right intentions to serve people, right? Everything we do, Client Ascension, it's to help a past version of ourselves that is wanting to start an agency, that we have the answers to, you know, help them avoid the mistakes that we made, right? Uh, KnowledgeX, same thing, helping agency owners and business owners acquire leads in a way that they're just not familiar with. Or List Kit, helping people get their lists in a faster, more efficient, more affordable way, and without having to do the verification. So if you have the intention of serving someone through your product or service and you show up every single day consistently to find the answers and to try things and be willing to fail at things, like, eventually you're gonna have success. I don't know when. Um, I didn't know when I was gonna have success. To me, I still think I'm very early on in my journey and there's a long way to go, long road ahead. I don't think I'm anywhere near as successful as I picture myself soon to become, but Consistency and the right intentions, I think, is so key. Like, just serve other people through whatever it is you do— product, coaching, agency. Serve people.

Guys, thanks for watching that video. I hope you learned as much as I did watching it. Andre and his team are absolute killers. They're probably my future billionaires. But look, guys, if you enjoyed this video, leave a comment down below. What other topics would you like me to talk about in the realm of customer success and product? There's a billion other marketers out there who tell you how to market, how to get leads. I'm not really one of those guys. I don't care about doing that. I care about making sure that your customers are taken care of, making sure that you can retain as many customers as you actually manage to acquire. So look, give me as many questions as you want in the comments. All of my videos from here on out and all the ones before, it's all about product, customer retention, upselling, backend mastery of your business, and less about marketing sales. But look, leave a comment, leave a like, subscribe to the channel. There's going to be much more where this came from. Thank you very much.