8 Lessons I Wish I Knew Before I Started My First Agency

I'm 28 years old. I make somewhere between $1.2M and $1.5M per month in revenue, carry a liquid net worth in the multiple millions, and an illiquid net worth north of $10M. If I could go back eight years to when I was 20 and just getting started, here's exactly what I would tell myself.

Lesson 1: Pick a Winning Offer

I found an Instagram growth agency on Instagram, copied their offer almost exactly—500 to 600 followers per month for $97, up to 1,200 for $147—and went from making almost nothing to $12K per month in profit.

That wasn't luck. That was picking something with active market demand.

The biggest mistake I see beginners make is just making something up. You invent a service nobody asked for and wonder why nobody buys. Stop doing that. Only sell what is already proven to sell to cold traffic. You're not building the next Facebook. You're building a cash flow business. Find something that works, then copy and execute it.

Lesson 2: Understand Your Market and Test Everything

When I first started that Instagram agency, I positioned my offer around "make money with Instagram." Almost nobody responded. The moment I switched the promise to simply more followers, it started working immediately.

In most B2B markets, promising money outperforms everything else. But in that specific market, with those specific people, it didn't. The lesson isn't that one script is right or wrong. The lesson is that you have to test.

If a message isn't working, think about how you'd feel receiving it. Step into the third person. Ask yourself whether it's clear, compelling, and believable—then try something different. The people who succeed are the ones who iterate without making excuses. The ones who fail are the ones waiting for a copy-paste solution that requires zero thinking.

Lesson 3: Failure Stacks Skills

That Instagram growth agency hit $12K per month in profit. Then one algorithm update wiped it to zero overnight. Every client churned the same month.

Instead of quitting, I looked at what I'd actually built: I knew how to run an agency, and I knew how to sign clients with cold email. So I started cold emailing other agencies and selling them cold email as a service. That eventually scaled to around $20K per month, which led to the Twitter account Cold Email Wizard, a course called Email Mastery that sold $1.1M, and eventually the partnerships that built Client Ascension and List Kit.

One failure, compounded into nearly a decade of momentum. When something breaks, you haven't lost everything—you've built a stack of skills you can deploy in a new direction.

Lesson 4: Don't Sign Broke Clients

Every new agency owner is terrified of the same thing: What if I can't get the client results? The fear is valid, but the diagnosis is usually wrong.

When a client doesn't get results from cold traffic lead generation, it's almost never your fault. It's because they've never sold to cold traffic before. Their entire sales history is referrals and warm intros, and they have no cold traffic offer. When you start sending strangers their way, their close rate drops to zero—and then they blame your leads.

You need to interview clients before you sign them. Find out whether they have a proven front-end cold traffic offer. If they don't, walk away. Signing an unqualified client creates a death spiral: they can't get results, they yell at you, you get insecure, you stop prospecting, and your business dies. Signing the right client is the opposite—it compounds into case studies, referrals, and confidence.

Lesson 5: Use Guarantees Strategically

The pain of losing $100 hurts more than the joy of gaining $100. Most people you're selling to are wired to avoid loss, not pursue gain. Guarantees reduce perceived risk and, when structured correctly, they dramatically increase close rates.

A money-back guarantee with reasonable stipulations will typically raise your refund rate to somewhere between 2% and 6%. But it can double or triple the number of clients you sign. The math isn't close. The stipulations exist to block fraud, not legitimate refund requests—and they turn the guarantee into a mutual commitment, not a blank check.

Lesson 6: Stack Your Deliverables

Two agencies promise the same result: 30 qualified sales calls, guaranteed. One just says that. The other explains exactly what's included—50 custom domains, two inboxes per domain, blacklist monitoring, 10 scripts for 10 audiences, inbox management, pre-written sequences.

The second agency wins more deals, even without case studies. Clarity about what someone is actually receiving builds more trust than a vague promise. Build a sales deck. Walk prospects through the process. Make the product real before they buy it.

Lesson 7: Start YouTube Earlier Than You Think

YouTube has the highest conversion rate of any platform I've used—and it's not close. I've seen people with videos getting a few hundred views sign multiple clients from a single upload. At scale, people like Myron Golden generate $50M+ per year from YouTube alone, running zero ads.

You can send tens of thousands of cold emails and sign no one. You can run ads to tens of thousands of impressions and sign no one. That almost never happens with YouTube. Start sooner than feels comfortable.

Lesson 8: Use What You Have

When TikTok ads first launched, I waited almost a year before trying them. When I finally did, I was getting an 8x ROAS. Shortly after, the platform banned anything related to business opportunities and money. I left a year of returns on the table by waiting.

Right now, AI-assisted agency fulfillment is the equivalent opportunity. Supply is low, the technology is good enough, and most people are still sitting on the sidelines because it "might not last." That's exactly the wrong reasoning. Use what's in front of you while it's in front of you. The window doesn't stay open.