The $10,000 Per Month Agency Story

by Chris Von Wilpert, BBusMan โ€ข Last updated April 8, 2024

Expert Verified by Leandro Langeani, BBA

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It's Wednesday night, 10pm. Suddenly a brilliant idea to get more clients hits me. 

I run over to my desk and start writing up a Facebook post about it:

It's Wednesday night, 10pm. Suddenly a brilliant idea to start a content marketing business hits me. 

I run over to my desk and start writing up a Facebook post about it:

chris facebook post image

At the end of the post I offer the first person to land a client using my strategy two rewards:

  1. A $25 Amazon gift card.
  2. Introductions to more clients (via my email list).
  1. A $25 Amazon gift card.
  2. Introductions to more clients (via my email list).

10 minutes later, Justin Brooke drops this comment:

justin brooke facebook comment image

Iโ€™m thinking to myself: โ€œGreat idea JBizzle, but starting from 0 sounds like a shit ton of work.โ€

Then one hour later 34 people have reacted to the comment.

justin brooke facebook likes image

Now Iโ€™m thinking to myself: โ€œf**k Iโ€™m really going to have to do this now, arenโ€™t I?โ€

I start writing down ideas for a service offer Iโ€™ll make.

Content promotion is a good starting spot. Everyone wants more traffic to their content.

Now I just need to focus on the biggest traffic multiplier to content. Content Multipliers, Social Media Multipliers, List Multipliers.

Yes List Multipliers, I grew the Sumo.com list to 10k/month in 5 months. I know a proven strategy to turn traffic into emails. How about --- I offer a performance based content marketing service that turns clients blog traffic into hyper-targeted leads. Bingo!

My new Three Jabs (3J) strategy is born:

three jabs content strategy image

Screw $1k/mo. I think I can make $10k/mo profit with this one proven strategy.

The Dream 100 Hit List

I wake up late the next morning and eat some fried rice. I want to start emailing people, but letโ€™s be realistic:

This strategy wonโ€™t work for everyone. 

Actually it will, but if I want to charge based on performance (and have a shot at hitting $10k/mo with a handful of clients), I need to get clients with as much or more traffic than Sumo.

So, instead, I open up all the email database tools I know of. LeadFuze, BuiltWith, Datanyze, NerdyData.

email databases image

My first instinct is to search the databases by tech stack.

What tools would a site with 200k+ organic traffic use? Ahrefs, Clearscope, Moz Pro.

I try all of them. None of the email databases have niche SEO tools listed in their database. WTF!?!?

Late at night (because I live in China), I get on demo calls with US sales reps and tell them my list criteria:

I need a list of websites with blogs getting over 200k organic traffic per month.

They tell me to use keyword filters like โ€œblogโ€ to narrow my search down to websites with blogs, but none have a traffic filterโ€ฆ except one:

datanyze semrush image

Time to build my Dream 100 hit list!

The only problem?

Datanyze pricing starts at $600/mo. WTF Datanyze !?!?

I donโ€™t really want to pay $600 to build a list of 100 people. 10 minutes later I find this thing called โ€œSEMrush Rankโ€ in the Domain Analytics section of SEMrush:

semrush rank image

Turns out Iโ€™ve hit the jackpot. 

SEMrush Rank is amazing. 

You pick a country and it spits back a list of sites ranked by the most organic traffic.

So I export the top 10,000 sites in the United States onto a CSV on my computer.

semrush export image

These sites are my perfect audience. 

Theyโ€™ve spent years building strong organic traffic to their sites, and Iโ€™m about to spoon feed them a proven strategy to convert that traffic into hyper-targeted leads.

For example, the business pictured below hustled from Jan 2012 to Oct 2014 (34 months) to get their first 1,000 organic visitors. Now, 7+ years after site launch, they get 261k organic visitors a month:

semrush organic traffic example image

Getting the sites is only half the battle though.

Iโ€™ve also got to:

  1. Find which sites run company blogs.
  2. Get the names of decision makers and their emails.
  1. Find which sites run company blogs.
  2. Get the names of decision makers and their emails.

To do it, I copy/paste the domains from my csv file into a Google sheet, and start manually doing it myself.

Starting from the bottom (SEMrush Rank 10,000) and working my way to the top.

Slam on my headphones and listen to Drake โ€œStarted From The Bottom,โ€ whilst I lookup site after site after site after site after site.

After four hours and 50 rows of data, Iโ€™m exhausted (and start to hate Drake).

So I type up the following message to my ex-Sumo co-worker, Magic Matt (who led Sumoโ€™s SDR team):

Yo Magic, any chance you have a good source for a VA to find a list of 100 prospects?

Magic responds:

I've sourced all my VAs via Upwork, but there are these outsourced firms that do this kind of thing, like DataBees. Bar happens to be using them now at his new company in Denver.

I hit up my homie Bar (ex-Sumo Head of Sales) and we jump on a quick 15-minute call.

Bar gives me the low-down on DataBees:

Bro, DataBees are great, but they have their pros and cons.

Cons: 

  • Theyโ€™re a bit more expensive than a full-time Philippines-based VA.
  • You have to give them very specific instructions

Pros: 

  • They manage your VA for you so itโ€™s way more hands-off.
  • They have a whole team, so you can scale your leads up and down easy.
  • The lead data they get is accurate AF.

Cons: 

  • Theyโ€™re a bit more expensive than a full-time Philippines-based VA.
  • You have to give them very specific instructions

Pros: 

  • They manage your VA for you so itโ€™s way more hands-off.
  • They have a whole team, so you can scale your leads up and down easy.
  • The lead data they get is accurate AF.

I was sold.

Itโ€™s midnight, so I quickly jump over to DataBeeโ€™s website and buy the one-week trial for $99. That gives me one full-time assistant for 40 hours.

databees trial image

10am the next day I check my email for something from DataBees.

Nothing. F*&k. I need leads.

So I go back to their site and use the โ€œSchedule a Callโ€ widget on the bottom right of the site to book a time for 11pm that night (my time).

In the meantime I record a Loom video with specific instructions on exactly what I want my DataBee to do:

On the call I send Joe from DataBeeโ€™s my Loom video and tell him to โ€œmake me honey".

Joe says his people will start building my list on Monday, and have my Dream 100 hit list done by the end of Wednesday.

Wednesday comes around, but Joe still hasnโ€™t sent me the emails. WTF ?!?!

He sends me an email: โ€œsorry Iโ€™ve been sick.โ€ 

Three weeks later I get delivered a list of 81 emails in a Google sheet (with a few different marketing contacts to choose from in each company).

databees emails

81 isnโ€™t enough. So I:

1- Slam Drake โ€œStarted From The Bottomโ€ back on and manually go through another 100 rows of company data to check they have a blog.

2- Download the Clearbit Connect chrome extension for Gmail (gives you 100 email finds per month for free). 

3- Search for the company URLs inside Clearbit to find the emails of people who work in a โ€œMarketingโ€ role in the company.

clearbit emails

If I canโ€™t find the email in Clearbit, then I:

  • Search the companies on LinkedIn and try to look up โ€œcontent marketingโ€ people who work there.
  • Look on the companyโ€™s โ€œContactโ€, โ€œAboutโ€, and โ€œTeamโ€ pages.
  • Search on Google for โ€œcompany.com emailโ€ to try and find the email format used at the company so I can derive the email for the decision maker.

Five hours later I have my complete Dream 100 list.

But I canโ€™t send my emails yet. Why?

If over 10% of your emails are bad, less than 44% are delivered.

So I go over to NeverBounce and upload my CSV to analyze it for bad emails.

never bounce dream 100

The results come back:

never bounce list analysis

1% estimated bounce rate. Boo-yeah!

I hit up my buddy Guillaume Moubeche from Lemlist, and tell him โ€œIโ€™m ready to make it rain.โ€

The Timmy Traffic Outreach Funnel

Itโ€™s time to build a cold email sequence.

The whole โ€œHey {{firstName}}, loved your blog post on {{topic}}! Would love to chat about {{product}}โ€ is overdone.

So I ask Guillaume Moubeche from Lemlist:

Got any tips on the email sequence I should use?

Guillaume sends me a link to Lemlistโ€™s complete collection of cold email templates:

lemlist cold email templates image

Iโ€™m all over it like a fat kid with a cupcake (18 of them).

My whole Saturday is spent studying Lemlistโ€™s cold email templates.

I read every word. Study every template. 

Then start merging my copywriting skills with some of Guillaume and Vukโ€™s ideas from the blog.

Open up Facebook and pretend to write a message to one of my Aussie mates: Joey Big Pig.

cold email draft image

Copy/paste the message into a text doc on my computer and move onto email #2.

At this point, there isnโ€™t much to tell you. Thereโ€™s no magic formula to follow. Just hours on my laptop thinking โ€œIf I was on the other end of this email, how would I respond?โ€

The answer to that one question guides every word I write.

I write. Then rewrite. Then rewrite again. Tweaking sentences all day as I slowly read through all the Lemlist cold email templates for inspiration.

In 2015 I sent 100+ cold emails in a desperate attempt to land more clients for my ad agency. I even shot personal videos. It was time consuming and hard.

cold outreach example image

Iโ€™d just won Australia 30under30 and thought I was top shit.

Then I got slammed:

cold outreach example fail image

Again, and again, and again, and again, and again.

I felt like giving up, but I took the hits on the chin and kept moving forward. Haters gonna hate.

Just over one week into building my new $10k/mo agency itโ€™s still hard.

My copy feels like a mess, and Iโ€™m afraid of looking like a spammer AGAIN. Waa-waa. Donโ€™t be a cry baby. Nobody cares. Figure it out. Everyone else figured it out.

I think back to a mastermind I went to in Florida with Justin Brooke and the AdSkills gang. 

At the mastermind Justin reverse engineered Tai Lopezโ€™s most successful YouTube video ad โ€œHere In My Garageโ€.

Taiโ€™s secret?

Charlie Mungerโ€™s 25 cognitive biases.

I figure if I can give context and frame the information I send in a specific way like Tai:

Iโ€™ll be able to influence decision makers judgment and decision-making to hire me.

I start mapping out Charlie Mungerโ€™s cognitive biases to every stage of my outreach funnel. Every time I get stuck I go back to YouTube and rewatch Charlie Mungerโ€™s speech on The Psychology of Human Misjudgement.

Itโ€™s Mayweather vs McGregor. Iโ€™m copywriting like Mayweather ducks in and out of punches with Philly shell shoulder rolls. Pivot hooks. Throwing haymakers. Writing hit after hit.

Word after word. Sentence after sentence. Iโ€™m becoming better at human persuasion than Tai Lopez himself. Personalizing an outreach campaign Ogilvy would be proud of. And Iโ€™m loving every second of it.

cold outreach funnel image

Lemlist Cold Emails

I wake up the next morning, rush over to my laptop, and create a new gmail account with the pen name โ€œTimmy Traffic.โ€

gmail account image

This is the pen name Iโ€™m going to use to prove I can get clients with zero testimonials, zero connections, zero social followers, and zero email list.

I tell my wife, โ€œWe need to go to Starbucks and order two Grande Lattes With Extra Caramel Drizzle.โ€

She looks at me weird. I tell her itโ€™s for a marketing project. She gives me that โ€œwhat are you up to now?โ€ look, but agrees to come if I take her out to a movie.

I take a shower and put on my best button-down shirt. Then jump on an hour long bus ride to town. Walk into Starbucks and tell the waitress:

Two Grande Lattes With Extra Caramel Drizzle please.

She grabs two Grande size cups and asks me my name. I tell her:

Please donโ€™t write my name, I need the cups to take pictures.

Waitress looks at me weird. Asks if she can write my name on the back of the cup instead. I say โ€œthatโ€™s fine.โ€

My lattes come out. I find a spot with good lightning. Then I hit my best pose while my wife takes a picture. 54 poses, three location swaps and a lilโ€™ bit of Insta-magic later. I have โ€œthe money shotโ€:

Back at home, I sit down on the couch and open up Chapter 14 of The Boron Letters.

On June 25, 1984 Gary Halbert wrote a letter to his son. In it he wrote about a dirt filled plastic baggie. An โ€œattention grabberโ€ he attached to a real estate investment sales letter. He then tied his sales copy back to the dirt baggie in a relevant way that made sense. 

The result = cold prospects replying to his sales offer.

gary halbert dirt baggie image

I login to Lemlist. Inside email #1 I strategically place Timmyโ€™s beautiful barista smile aka โ€œthe money shotโ€.

(with the name of my prospect elegantly handwritten on one of the cups.)

starbucks personalized image

Then I tie my email copy back to the โ€œattention grabberโ€:

lemlist email image

Ainโ€™t nobody gonna be calling your boi Timmy a spammer after getting this email ๐Ÿ™‚

Get the focused attention of my prospect. Check.

Humanize cold email with a personalized image. Check.

Build rapport. Check. 

Now for Step 2.

I open up my AdSkills Ad Journal. Tell my wife to take a pic of me pointing at a blank page in the book.

Then I use it to present a personalized image with the "opportunity gap" I've found on my prospects site:

lemlist email 2 notebook image

BOOM! Look at lilโ€™ Timmy go.

To seal the deal I add a diagram of my Three Jabs strategy. Drag the companyโ€™s name and logo onto the diagram. Then make a specific ask to meet me tomorrow at 9am EST for 15 minutes.

lemlist email 2 diagram image

My second email can now be answered with a simple โ€œYes Timmy.โ€

If that doesnโ€™t land me a meeting, Iโ€™ve got a wild card up my sleeve for Step 3.

A personalized video.

lemlist email 3 image

One click on that video thumbnail. And my fully personalized landing page with company logo, name, first name, video and calendar magically appears:

personalized landing page image

When the video is played, I blow my prospect away with my Three Jabs strategy.

I spend five minutes giving insane value, then 30 seconds pitching my prospect to get on a call:

In the last second the video finishes, this chat box pops up:

lemchat image

Crazy, right? Thatโ€™s the power of Lemlist.

Now, what if email one, two, AND three donโ€™t work?

Itโ€™s time to say goodbye.

If you ainโ€™t got time for Timmy Traffic, Timmy ainโ€™t got time for you. Simple as that.

Like any good breakupโ€ฆ we let it go (deep breath in, deep breath out).

lemlist email 4 image

I woke up with an idea to go order Lattes at Starbucks. Iโ€™m ending the day with a 4-step cold email campaign. Iโ€™m happy. Itโ€™s done. 100% personalized. 100% automated. 100% my own voice and style. 

I hope Gary Halbert would be proud.

I hit up my buddy Guillaume (CEO at Lemlist), and ask him to hop on a call tomorrow to review my sequence. Then I fall into bed.

The next day Guillaume and I get on a Google hangout:

Guillaume gives me some killer feedback:

  • A/B test your subject line.
  • Make your call to action in email #2 for a specific day and time.
  • Follow-up every three days.
  • Send Monday to Sunday (because entrepreneurs open on Sunday).
  • Spread out email sending 7am-6pm to maximize deliverability.
  • A/B test your subject line.
  • Make your call to action in email #2 for a specific day and time.
  • Follow-up every three days.
  • Send Monday to Sunday (because entrepreneurs open on Sunday).
  • Spread out email sending 7am-6pm to maximize deliverability.

The only problem?

guillaume new gmail account image

Shit.

I grab my Dream 100 list and start importing it into Lemlist.

If you want to see how many client meetings I land, enter your email below to ride along.

The form above will subscribe you to the Content Mavericks email list, send you my best traffic tips, and put you on the list to get notified about Part 4 of this case study when it goes live.

PS - Want me to buy you a copy of The Boron Letters? Guess how many meetings I land in the comments. If youโ€™re right Iโ€™ll ship you a copy.

PPS - If you're trying to get recurring revenue clients to grow a small, profitable agency, and want a predictable system to get $3,000 to $15,000 per month clients, I teach everything I know here.

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