Send Hundreds, Not Six, to Earn Replies
One of my agency owner students told me they sent 6 outreach messages last week. They were proud of that number. Sure, it‘s better than sending 0 messages. But we’re not here for participation trophies. We’re here to grow a business. Let’s look at the reality. The typical reply rate for outreach is around 1% on the low end. That means that, to get 1 reply, you have to send 100 messages. (And that’s not even to close a sale. It’s just to get a reply.) When you send 6 messages, what do you expect to happen? Do you expect to get… → 5 replies (an 83% reply rate)? → 3 replies (an 50% reply rate)? → 1 reply (an 17% reply rate)? Even if you expect to get 1 reply from your 6 messages, you mean to say that you’re 17× better than everyone else who does outreach? Maybe you are. Maybe you aren’t. Are you willing to bet your whole business on it?
Believe the Best Is Still Ahead to Thrive
The most important quality an agency owner can have for success has nothing to do with sales, or hiring, or positioning. It’s believing the best is yet to come. You must possess a genuine, deep conviction that your biggest, most important...
Authentic Authority Boosts Agency Revenue to $100K+
$100K+ booked for the year already. It’s only March. When they first joined, a result like that felt hard to believe. Here’s what we actually worked on together. We didn’t work on their website. We didn’t work on finding more clients. We worked...
Leadership, Not Hiring, Determines Team's Closing Success
One of my agency owner students closes 80% of sales calls he’s on. His team closes only 10% of calls he’s not on. He think it’s a hiring problem, that he hired the wrong people. It’s not a hiring problem. It’s a leadership...
We Teach Kids Conformity, Then Demand Their Uniqueness
I hate rules that are designed to make people conform, especially kids. Kids go through years of school and slowly learn to shrink themselves… to color inside the lines. Dress codes. Standardized tests. Keep your voice down. Then we hand them...
Bootstrapped Success: Define Enough, Share Wealth, Out‑Care Competition
I’m bringing my friend @wilreynolds into the Make More Money program for a fireside chat. If you don’t know Wil. he founded @SeerInteractive in his living room in 2002. Built it to 200+ people, fully bootstrapped. Turned down $50M in acquisition...
Use AI for Educated Value‑pricing Guesses, No CFO Needed
“My prospect didn’t tell me their budget. How can I price the project?” Most agency owners think value pricing requires a CFO-level deep dive into the prospect’s financials. It doesn’t. So where do you get the numbers from? You guess. But not random guesses. Educated...
Flip the Script: Embed Clients in Your Agency Rituals
“We don’t adopt your rituals. You adopt ours.” That was the rule at my agency for every client engagement. Most agencies pitch “we become part of your team” like it’s a feature. It’s not. The moment you join their Slack, adopt their tools,...
Targeted ICP and Funnel Turned Luck Into Predictable Revenue
Three months ago, a Make More Money student’s pipeline was referrals and luck. Last week, they sent me this message. They’re a solo developer specializing in Webflow. They did around $250K in revenue last year, but the model was brittle. Every...
Turning a Family Getaway Into a Productive Coaching Session
I have a new office this week. The view is ok. (I shot this photo yesterday.) My daughters are in the pool. My wife is reading on the deck. And in about three hours, I’ll be teaching my weekly coaching class for agency...
Never Stop Marketing, Even When Business Is Full
The single biggest mistake agency owners make for their pipeline: They stop marketing when they get busy. My favorite restaurant in the world is Royal Sushi Omakase in Philadelphia. (If you ask me, it’s the best restaurant in the world.) It has...
Solid Team Performance Despite a Few Missteps
Great run today with a solid team. Made a few bad choices but overall happy with how I played. https://t.co/m3c70WgCPj
Stop Being the Ceiling: Focus on Numbers, People, Culture
If you’re an agency owner still doing creative direction, project management, and client calls, you’re the ceiling for your business. As Michael Gerber says in The E-Myth Revisited, “If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business. You...
Build Systems After You’ve Done It, Not Before
You wrote an SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for something you’ve never done. That’s not a system. That’s a guess. You haven’t onboarded a single client yet, but you have a 12-step onboarding document. You haven’t hired anyone, but you’ve got a...
Standardized Playbooks, Not Unicorns, Drive Scalable Success
McDonald’s doesn’t need world-class chefs at every restaurant. That’s the whole point. My second job ever when I was 14 was working at McDonald’s. At 14, the best meal I could make on my own was a bowl of cereal or...
Scale by Orchestrating, Not by Doing Everything Yourself
One of my students made $74K last year and burned out. This year, he’ll clear that by the end of Q1. How? He‘s not working harder. He’s directing three projects right now where he’s not doing the work. He came to me a...
Your Role Changes, Your Identity Stays—Step Back
You built your agency on being the best designer in the room. But the thing that got you here is the thing that’s keeping you stuck. Now, somewhere between $200K and $500K, the thing you built your identity around—being the person...
Hiring Expert DM Sales Closer for High‑Ticket Agency Coaching
I’m hiring. Right now I spend a lot of time selling for my Make More Money program. I’m pretty good at it, but it’s not where I do my best work. My best work is teaching, coaching, and sharing what I know...
Follow‑up Persistence Drives 80% of Sales Success
Most deals aren’t lost to “no.” They’re lost to silence. 80% of sales happen after the fifth follow-up. But 44% of salespeople give up after the first one. Read that again. Almost half of all salespeople quit after a single attempt. Meanwhile, the...
Act Like a CEO, Ditch $50/Hr Tasks
I spent last week in the Belizean jungle, workshopping with some of my top agency owner students. Here’s what happened the day they got back to work yesterday. When you stop doing $50/hr tasks and start acting like the CEO you are,...
Stop Mass Emails: Offer Relentlessly, Share Your Solution
You haven’t run out of people to reach out to. You’ve run out of offers. You sent one message to each person once. That’s not outreach. That’s a mass email, sent the long, hard, stupid way. Here’s what I’ve noticed about the...
Cold Outreach Success Is Pure Math, Not Talent
You don’t have a closing problem. You have a math problem. The average response rate on cold outreach is about 5%. That means for every 20 messages you send, one person replies. Not that one person buys. One person replies. Most agency owners...
Avoid Discount Pricing: Choose Full Price or Free
The worst price you can charge is a discount. You’re not cheap enough to win on price. You’re not expensive enough to signal expertise at a premium. You’re in the middle, where nobody shops. There are two prices that work: 1️⃣ Full price. You charge...
Price the Moment, Not the Client’s Size
Charging Nike more than your local apparel shop isn’t value pricing. It’s entitlement. Most pricing advice says, “price the customer, not the service.” Charge big companies more than small ones. Big company, bigger budgets, higher price. Makes sense, right? Think again. This way...
Send the Contract Immediately to Lock in the Deal
The fastest way to kill a deal: Wait a week to send the contract. You close a deal verbally. The client says yes. You’re excited. Then you wait a week to send the contract. By then, they “need to think about it.” The deal is...
Real Breakthroughs Happen in Face‑to‑face Conversations, Not Screens
I discovered the best standing desk setup. I’m writing this from an infinity pool in the middle of a rainforest. It looks like vacation, but it’s not. I’m here with a small group of agency owners for something I’ve been building for...
Only Propose What You Can Confidently Defend
Stop lying in your proposals. It’s literally costing you business. I reviewed an agency proposal last week. They included hourly estimates for every phase. I asked: “Is this the way you’d prefer to do it?” They said no. “Then why is it in your...
Stop Building Foundations; Start Selling to Generate Profit
You’re too busy building the “foundations” of your agency to work on the only thing that matters. You don’t need: ↳ A logo ↳ A CRM ↳ An LLC ↳ A tagline ↳ A website ↳ A rebrand ↳ A pitch deck ↳ A brand guide ↳ An office space ↳...
Know Your Lead's Value, Transform Your Agency Strategy
Here’s a question most agency owners can’t answer: What is a single lead actually worth to your business? When you know that number, everything changes: what you spend on ads, which partnerships you say yes to, whether that content strategy is actually...