How I Moved From Coaching to a Done-For-You Ads Agency

I built the agency around taking more of the work off the client's plate: putting ads up, calling and qualifying leads, and booking them onto the calendar. The client still had to close. That was a different offer from the coaching and consulting I had sold before.

This was not my first attempt at business. I had been running different offers since the end of 2022, including a coaching business at about $80,000 to $110,000 a month. The agency came after those experiences, not from starting with no business background.

Why I changed the delivery model

I built a final-expense call center with about 55 agents. We were doing hundreds of thousands a month in revenue but barely breaking even, and then we started losing money. Revenue alone was not solving the problem.

In coaching, I depended heavily on the buyer following through. A done-for-you service let me control more of delivery, and I wanted to learn how to use AI in that work. My early thoughts about recurring revenue and higher monthly income were goals, not results I had already achieved.

What happened when I tried outbound

I had not run cold email before. Working alone in a co-working office, I used Manis prompts to find leads and decision makers and sent roughly 200 to 300 emails. One person replied that they were not interested. When I asked Daniel whether to run ads or try Dream 100, he told me to focus on Dream 100 in my situation.

I spotted an Instagram ad whose claims did not line up with the landing page. I messaged the owner, explained the inconsistencies and made a replacement landing page and ad scripts using AI. I offered to put the work in for free as a first step; that led to a call and a $10,000 deal for the quarter.

Another $10,000 deal followed. Before joining Client Ascension, I had already signed a $4,000-a-month done-for-you YouTube client using what I had learned from free videos and my own experience. In my first full 30 days inside the program, I reported $53,000 in cash collected. Collections and profit are different measures.

Client Ascension related reading: the paid funnel guide explains historical lead-funnel and application mechanics.

Learning to deliver, then teaching someone else

At first I did the fulfillment myself with AI. I described the first 30 to 60 days as working through it on my own before bringing in a VA. I taught him the prompts and the delivery process I had learned, so he could use AI to do that work too.

Changing the path from ad to qualified call

I tested an application funnel rather than treating a single funnel template as the answer. With a VSL up front, my cost per qualified call was around $550. Removing that video from the front and going straight to an application brought it to around $100 in my test. I moved the VSL to the back end.

I also ran a VSL funnel. The point I took from the testing was to build a small portfolio of funnels while watching profit, rather than pouring more spend into one just to hit a revenue target. Those were my results from my offer and tests, not a forecast for another agency.

Returning to the industry I actually knew

I had been fulfilling several different offers. I cut them back and concentrated on insurance and financial services, where I had four years of experience and was still an agent. Our clients in that niche sold something averaging above $15,000 up front, which helped me understand why marketing spend could make economic sense for them.

For the sales page, I talked through pain points with Manis and supplied transcripts: why people bought, why they did not, and what they bought before, instead of or after my offer. I used that context to work out the positioning. I also looked at why people were getting on the call so I could make more ads around those reasons.

The main arrangement I described was a $15,000 setup covering the setup and three months of ad-spend management. Clients paid for ad spend separately. We put the ads up, called and qualified the leads, and set them on the calendar. That was the historical offer in this interview, not a current price list.

Building a business that did not stop when I travelled

During a trip to Europe, I noticed how little money I was making while away. I had been around $40,000 to $50,000 a month with one VA. That made the need for systems and a team much more concrete. After returning, I reported a $57,000 week at the end of May and a month of about $97,000.

The more meaningful change was being able to bring people back into the business full time. I said three of the five people I had worked with over several years had been able to leave their other full-time jobs to work with me. My larger monthly targets were still ambitions; the work was testing, hiring and building the business behind them.

Client Ascension related reading: Dan’s HubSpot agency account discusses positioning, pricing and partner channels.

Adapted by Client Ascension with AI assistance from Johnny's interview. The first-person narrative follows the source speaker’s account. Watch the original video