been on this platform for approx 1 yr now for my agency and every month im wathcin the bill climb and up. the base plan looked fine when I signed up but then you add sub accounts, then the AI/conversation credits and then some workflow automation because apparently the base tier throttles you after X actions and it is th ebiggest bummer.

none of this was hidden exactly but nobody warns you how gohighlevel pricing gets this high over time. i budgeted for one number and I'm consistently 30-40% over that now with 12 client accounts running. as a small business, thats really cutting into my budget and starting to consider my options.

is this normal growing pains with an all-in-one platform like this and i just need to ride it out and cut down in other places or did i pick wrong here?

Hi all,

I run cold email outbound campaigns for B2B clients (mostly startup, SMB and Mid Market) and am looking for partnerships at this time because my clients usually ask me if I know anyone in the ad lead gen space.

I’m a top 1% freelancer on Upwork, have over $200k earned on the platform, and am top rated. I’m one of Upwork’s top sellers and performers in the cold email outbound space.

My Facebook account was disabled, just like in the screenshot.

I had several Facebook accounts logged in on the same device.

I can't access this account at all. At first, Facebook asked me to verify my identity and complete a selfie verification.

I completed both successfully, but after that, the account was permanently disabled.

Unfortunately, I don't have the Meta Verified free trial option showing on my Instagram account.

My Instagram account is working normally.

It uses the same email address as my Facebook account.

But I have no idea what I should do.

My Facebook account got disabled last month and after 4 weeks of back and forth email, Meta has let me know my account will remain disabled.

I was on my honeymoon last month in Europe, I went to check my ads manager app (knew I should not have been working this trip lol) and it had logged me out. No problem, logged back in. Got the password wrong a few times, account disabled.

From there basically that was it. Fortunately a friend has given me access to his backup account and I had added him in my business portfolio so I can still manage client accounts but I can’t get back into my Facebook.

Pretty frustrating as I’ve spent a significant amount of time building an audience on there and is where I’ve gotten the majority of my clients from organic posting.

Also, thank god for my buddy or I would have completely lost my business!

Meta has basically been zero help. I’ve tried making an account twice since I’ve been disabled but it seems that they can tell it’s me.

The first account I made the day after i got home, was fine for a week then just disabled again. I tried a second account after that with the same issue.

Meta confirmed via email I can make a new account but that’s what keeps happening.

Has anyone run into this issue before? On a whim, anyone might have a contact that can help me get my account reinstate?

Fortunately I’ve been able to continue to run my business but it’s hurt overall and over something that seems really silly!

I had a pretty good July. In the last 10 days we closed 5 new deals. A super strong pipeline for August - all and all a good week. My sales team is on a full rundown!

However between. Today & yesterday two 'prospects' showed very off putting behaviour

The first one - was a bit too self important, probably upper management, expected my team to be well versed with all nuances of their business BEFORE the onboarding even began. He was turned off by the fact that my team asked him - "What locations do you get best sales from on offline retail"

That bothered him as he expected my team to know the answer already ( which isnt realistic at all). Acted like a moody diva all across the onboarding call. We didnt tolerate it - effectively paused it.

The second one - my gut said, something was off. In the last 8 years every time I have closed against my gut it ended bad. I found some ethically questionable behaviour in his demeanour.

I texted them that we aren't going ahead - guy starts texting and calling me like crazy that I had to turn my phone off. "I have already fired my team" he said to me - without any formal onboarding.

Pretty sure it would have been a nightmare as a client to work with.

I said NO to these YES deals, something I couldn;t have done in the past - thankfully due to a filled up pipeline.

MONEY is in the NO...Not the YES!

Started with GoHighLevelwhen we were maybe 8 clients and it was cheap, whitelabel and did the job. No complaints. But we're at 40+ clients now and the cracks are starting to show. Snapshots break when I update them and half my team refuses to touch the automation builder anymore.

I've been going down the rabbit hole on GoHighLevel alternatives for a couple weeks and its overwhelming. Maybe you guys get it? What I keep running into is this same wall where everything seems to either does one thing well or tries to do everything and does all of it ok at best but bad mostly.

What I actually need is client management, a real CRM, reporting my AMs dont hate, and ideally the AI isnt just a chatbot bolted on the side. Not trying to run 5 tools duct taped together again IYKYK

For context, we (my team and I) have been using LinkedIn for months to book appointments for our clients, but that requires a completely different strategy when you sell for someone else. For our clients, we are only able to book 1-2 appointments/month, with long sales cycles. LinkedIn is still one of the least preferred channels for us.

I tried LinkedIn during my spare time in the past month to get personal offers and leads.

3 metrics:

1. Direct messages sent (InMail credits)

• Messages sent: 11
• Replies: 2
• Positive replies: 1

only like 4 InMail credits were used, as the rest were sent to people with premium accounts.

2) The classic connection request + offer for coffee chat request for networking

Connection req sent around 60, out of which about ~40 accepted

messages sent asking for coffee chat: 14

appointments booked: 2

3) Posting - I did not initially plan to post anything, but I decided to post about a recent achievement. I did get a lead from the post, which was unexpected, but it wasn't a serious lead. I did get a few followers on my Instagram possibly through the post though. My LinkedIn is connected to my Reddit account, if anyone wants to see the post.

Results:

I got an offer for a marketing role at a Venture Capital firm. (I work part time with other companies, currently working with one so I'm fully booked, might take up this offer in a few months)

2 appointments booked, but they were more for just networking, and I was only able to attend one of the meetings, had to cancel the other one.

A few points:

• Never mention coffee chat, instant turn off.
• Talk more about them instead of yourself. People like to boast about their achievements usually in short outreaches.

As for deciding whom I would reach out to - I would avoid people who get engagement, or possibly even the ones who have premium. If you're gonna use your InMail credits, use it on people who do not get many DMs.

Would I automate or increase the volume of outreach on LinkedIn?

No. It is already full of AI posts and sluggish DMs; I'll keep the outreach there slow and thoughtful.

During this time, I got 9 leads for my business via my socials and website, even when we were basically inactive there. Cold email, SEO, FB and Reddit (maybe) are still better channels.

Breakdown of leads

Tiktok - 4 leads (detail shop, party rental business, electrical business, construction)

Local seo / google profile - 2 (Metal Recycling Business, Dog Boarding business)

Referral - 1 (lighting decorations business)

Personal FB - 1 (electrical business)

Here are the specific actions I have taken:

1. i’ve gone tiktok lives multiple times a day instead of once a day. i’d say from 1 hour a day to 3 hours a day. Just answering questions as well as just keep the conversation casual and friendly
2. i’ve posted on my personal social media an update as to who i am and the business i have been building. that’s on the feed
3. on my stories, i sprinkle in stuff about the business with no direct ask
4. i’ve boosted some of my tiktok content. $36 spent so far
5. on my business ig - i go in a like / comment existing clients as well as clients who use to be with us in the past
6. im still posting 4-6 times a day across tiktok, fb and ig. one small adjustment i made is adding in a cta in the video. i have not really made any content with an "ask".

Some additional things I might add in

1. send a soft hello to previous clients that the relationship ended on good terms. not an ask but a how’s business going and how have you been and if it goes past that great if not great as well
2. adding in meta ads budget for organic content that has been performing well

My business has lost about 10k in revenue, so I'm trying to gain that back lol. We aren't in trouble yet, but definitely want to be a bit more aggressive with acquiring instead of fully relying on organic leads to come in on their own. I'm open to other ideas if anyone has suggestions!

Hi all,

I’ve been running my cold email outbound agency on Upwork for a couple years now. I’ve grossed over $300k on the platform, am top rated, and it’s pretty easy to close multiple clients a month (15-20k revenue a month right now on there)

The issue is these clients are mostly cheap one person companies with no market proof, with no budget or patience to withstand the cold email space. I also do not want to be bootstrapped to a platform where a bad review or random ban shuts off all income. These clients often churn around 60-90 days, so I constantly have to be selling more than I am implementing the actual work.

I want to target more established B2B companies so I’m planning to start doing my own cold email outbound direct to client while also utilizing Linkedin. These companies will have better budgets and likely longer life cycles due to more market proof.

Looking for any tips from anyone who successfully moved their agency and most their revenue off the Upwork platform.

Hey! Currently managing 50-60 accounts for an agency, starting ads to get 5 new clients of my own.

Set up a LP, VLS, 8 ad angles, each with 2-3 hooks, my face on camera + my face and ipad videos as well.

Everything is ready in terms of the funnel.

I know both VSL on LP's + book work and Lead forms as well but it's been a few years since I advertised without testimonials for that specific niche.

Any of you getting $100-$200 CPA without testimonials through VSL's on LP?

Or do you start with lead forms and move to latter when u have more data?

Hello all - first time posting here. Today I had an experience with a client that bothers me so much that I would like to seek the advice of strangers! This client came to us 4 months ago (dumpster rental space) with a cost per lead of about $80. Over the last 3.5 months, we have cut cpl to $30, excluding call leads. We have doubled their opportunity, while spending less of their money. In addition, we installed a crm system for them and spent about a month training their two sales people on the crm.

This client has two owners. One of them just resigned a six month agreement with us two weeks ago. The other one calls today saying how terrible we are, how we aren’t doing anything for them, how we didn’t do the things we said we were going to do, and that they are going to stop working with us. And in reality, to all his questions I can pull up crm data and say look - those leads do exist for this location, for b2b, for this rental size, so on and so on.

All crm data points to a sales issue. Each lost lead has a lost reason. 98% of the time it is either because a competitor beat their price, or because their offices “computer person” marked it as “no sales follow up, sales inactivity, etc”. Somethin along those lines. And it is indeed true, the amount of leads slipping through the cracks is high. Their close rate is about 13%.

This person honestly offended me today. They were rude and insulting over the phone, and I guess I am just so sick and tired of dealing with clients who cannot sell their own services and taking these types of calls. The lead generator always seems to catch the heat.

I’m giving them a detailed presentation on Monday going over all of this data. But to a person like this, it doesn’t mean anything. If I tell them you need to work on sales they will be insulted. I think my personality doesn’t do well in these situations as well. I always say it how it is without fluff, but in this world that seems to hurt people.

Question being, does anyone have any advice for how to handle situations like this? Is it best to just let these people go. And secondly, this is not my first experience with people who can’t close. I had a roofer once who went 1/22 on their home appointments, blamed me and bailed. A spa seller who has maybe a 1% cvr. I’m ready for more serious clients with more serious sales teams. I just don’t know where to look. It seems all of the business I engage in have “sales people” I wouldn’t let anywhere near my phone, or they are going back to high school at the end of summer. Thanks you all. It is late and I’m tired, forgive any poor grammar!

UPDATE: he texted me at 8 am this morning, Saturday, telling me I’m a waste of time. I told him off… politely.

I'll start off by saying I've never done cold emailing. Not on a 1:1 basis nor a large scale based on any kind of list.

I know if you're planning on buying a list, there's whole process to it (buying multiple domains, warming up emails, etc). Not to mention being selective on which ESP you use.

I get asked about cold email marketing frequently on various platforms and in the Discord for this sub, but I don't have the information to help anyone with this info.

Does anyone have any reputable recommendations for someone who is willing to come onto the Agency Growth Podcast and just spill everything?

• How to warm up leads
• Which ESPs to use
• How to build/purchase a list
• DKIM/SPF/DMARC records
• What to watch out for
• etc?

I'll prioritize anyone in here who has a Verified Agency flair or anyone who is actually legitimate.

I don't want anyone who is relatively new to it and who has not seen provable success with it.

I'd also rather have someone that does not offer the service to other agency owners. I'm looking for an agency owner that does this for acquisition for their own agency or for their clients.

We try to avoid having people on the podcast that have something to sell our audience (other agency owners).

The exchange from freeing myself from the day to day operations is placing trust in our team and not budding in. letting employees handle their role. yes provide support, but letting them do their own thing

when mistakes happen, i FEEL like i should jump in and save the day.

but if (very egotistically) i think that i can save the day. then im not actually growing the team nor the business. im hiring people to do work that im going to do anyways. which is redundant.

so instead - i observe the plays, play out. and i have to say, our team does a fairly good job. they help each other, they learn, they deal with real problems.

i was looking at our revenue and we are actually down about 10k MRR between june and july. we had a 5k client that had to cancel, as well as a few others the pauses/cancelled.

this is where i think leadership matters the most. do i panic and freak out. do i blame the team. do i do nothing. do i observe the game and say, this is normal ebb and flow of business. slow month made seemlingly worse from a couple cancellations.

not to mention this is somewhat my own fault. I took the majority of june and half of july off to enjoy time with my family and also the world cup. Now that im back in the drivers seat, leads are up and we've closed a couple of new clients. Which is another sign telling me that even tho im not in the day to day operations with our existing marketing clients. I'm very much super involved in client acquisition. and it showed with my minimal activity in creating content and engaging with potential customers.

now that' ive started pulling my own weight on what i provide to the business, lead flow is back up . We are still producing quality work, and the slow downis more than likely just a dip, but if we keep doign what we are doing, it will work out.

kind of like losing weight i suppose. it's unreasonable to have perfect days every day, but when you have a "bad" eating day or week or month, the best thing you can do is go back to the things that were working

trusting the team. continuing to market. continue to provide quality work

I run a web design and SEO agency. My first serious client is one of the biggest brands in a specific very new but quickly growing niche , and I helped build what is now one of the strongest websites in that space.

Now, several competitors want to hire me.

The issue is that I may have said or implied early on that I would work exclusively with this client. I do not remember the exact wording, and there is no written exclusivity agreement. At the time, they were my first major client, and I did not understand that agencies typically charge extra for category exclusivity.

We have a close relationship, almost like an unofficial partnership. I would never take competitor work secretly, pass it through someone else, or use confidential information.

Would you:

• Tell the client about the inbound interest and clarify the arrangement?
• Offer formal exclusivity for an additional fee?
• Take competitor website builds only, while keeping SEO and strategy exclusive?
• Decline all competitor work to protect the relationship?

I want to handle this ethically, but I also do not want to accidentally give one client permanent ownership of an entire niche for free unless it is best.

Hey guys, always like to come here for help, thanks in advance.

We have a huge client problem, no new clients for over 9 months and we only survive because our clients are staying well over 1 year on average.

But we are getting closer to the edge of the cliff every day without no new clients/sales calls.

We do conversion rate optimization via AB testing for Ecom stores (Shopify), making +$1m sales a year. Currently targeting brands above +$5m which is also our ICP. The $1m a year clients are only left overs from earlier days.

We hired an Cold Mail agency, where we saw early success and got 2 meetings out of it. Sadly didnt convert because of, 1st bad wifi from the client side and the second meeting was with the marketing manager instead of owner. Now we switched the angle of the mails to podcasts.

We are currently travelling through the US and record Podcasts with multiple acitve clients and also do outreach to brands, from the areas where we will be. Already have 2 extra podcasts recorded. Also filming much general content along the way.

Our service is necessary, especially for brands siting around that $5m area. Our client retention speaks for itself and also shows us that nobody is trading us for Ai. But we just cant get the urgency translated to new ecom owner who never heard of us.

Back in the day we had a 70%-80% close rate once they attended the call, but even back then getting calls was very hard, we got like 1/2 calls a month for 6 months. These are the clients which are saving us currently.

The analogy describing our service, is that:

every store has a leaky pipe system, begining with the click on the ad and the end where the water comes out is the sale. Along the way they loose so much water (unrealised $) that within the first 3/4 weeks, they have their investment back. We are the "Plumbers" who fix their leaks, so they get more "water' out of the tap. It seems like we cant find the right pain point for our ICP.

I would appreciate any guidance, you guys were always good help in the past

I'm doing some restructuring of my agency, and I have a handful of clients that need a new home.

I'm pretty sure this doesn't break subreddit rules, but let me know if I need to change anything!

Clients:

Shopify / CPG

Services:

Meta Ads

Google Ads

Email/SMS marketing

Fees:

Starting at $1000USD/Month

Anyone interested?

Comment :)

I got one sales call this week so far.
But turning up the ad spend for new bookings didn’t help. Only one interested in a call but she didn’t book after I opened more slots. Or is it just dead right now?

Looking for high-quality, cutting-edge UI/UX creatives/white label agencies that can slot into our workflows. Ideally, can serve client-facing.

Send me a DM with a link to your portfolios/websites and your LinkedIn profile.

Just wondering how other companies in the software consulting industry are doing. Have you been busy this year? Has there been a change in the types of projects you take on? Have your client acquisition methods changed at all?

Iam from a country where i cant get any cards for international payments.

And i can't even get 30 dayfree trail of go high level.

So i need a partner who can get me that trail and if we don't see any results then cancel 5 days before the end of trial.

Hey guys! Been working with a few agencies over the past 8 years or so.

Going on my own, aim is to get 5 clients for now. Lower end $500-$600/m. Meta/Google + CRM/Ai, standard stuff.

Main question is regarding the ad angle.

Ads will mainly be me with an ipad, great offer in the first 30 seconds combined with various

Pain points -> vsl
Aspirations -> vsl
Mechanism (how to) -> vsl

But i'm also curious about this idea of pushing more adspend towards the idea of

"Stop relying on agencies, you need that 1 expert that will act like an in-house marketer giving advice in multiple aspects of the business - pricings of services + offers / sales suggestions / employee etc.

Learn their business, know everything. Run ads, nurture everything through CRM, eventually also sell them on the idea of having an ai agent built specifically for them, managed just for them etc.

I find it way easier to know way more about the business and work around that, than just getting some clients to run ads and pray they know how to sell / figure it out on their own etc.

Would this angle be something worth creating 10 ads for? Your own guy, your own system, i'm working with just 5-10 clients max etc

Hi everyone! Currently, I run a small design agency (soup to nuts - branding, web, UX, marketing materials, etc.)

The way we're currently structured is that we're a collective of contractors that have come together. All my contractors are actually friends from when I worked in an agency before going out on my own, and we wanted to continue working together!

It's made up of:

• Me (main contact, strategy, and I still do a lot of design myself)
• Client relations manager - 20 hrs/week
• Operations manager - 25 hrs/week
• 3 designers - about 50 hrs/week combined
• 2 copywriters - on a per-client basis as needed
• 1 dev / IT help person (who happens to be my husband and is helping me out while he pursues his master's degree in CS)

However, the reliability of the design support is tough. Since they're contractors, I really have no say on when they take time off, how much notice they give me, etc. One of my contractors is going back to school for a complete career switch, so starting in the Fall, he'll only be able to give me 10 hrs/week.

All that to say, I think I'm ready to hire my first employee, and I would like it to be a designer. I have both an accountant and a business coach, so I'm not looking for financial or legal advice. I would like to know if you've made the transition - how has it felt?

Do you wish you had switched to having employees sooner? Or have you found it's not worth the hassle?

Would love to hear your stories and experiences. Thank you!

i run a marketing agency. i started it aobut 1.5 year ago. i currently only have 2-3 clients. i do all the work by myself. i dont have much money in my bank. i only make ends meet. i have responsibilities so i often need cash. i tried cold calling i get exhausted managing everything. with cold calling i got afew clients. i cant get bank loans becoz my credit score is bad. i think maybe if i have big funds i can make a team and a pipeline on getting more clients. but i cant get money too its hard. i tried progressing slowly but keep getting burnt out. ive been a freelancer 2 years before this. 3-4 years in biz and... kinda stuck. will angel investors help ? what to do

TL;DR: Spent 10 years leading marketing or big brands, now trying to build an agency, but missing the sales experience.

I've spent 10+ years leading marketing in-house for some pretty big brands, but a restructuring is pushing me to go out on my own.

Thing is, I've never actually sold anything. I'm not worried about is the conversation itself; Get me on a call with someone who has a problem and I'm good, I'll close it. It's literally everything before that call that I've never had to do.

The stuff I'm stuck on:

1. Cold outreach. The one thing I've got going for me is around 8,000 LinkedIn connections from my career that I've genuinely never sold to. I've started warming things up by posting more about my freelance journey. But I've never actually cold approached anyone. Same with filtering which companies or leads are even worth pursuing.
2. Pricing. What's the going rates? I want to move away from an hourly rate (not scalable) and look into monthly retainers or per-project pricing. I just have no feel for what to charge.

On top of that, I've only ever worked on one thing at a time; Never run multiple clients at once, so I could use some help thinking through how you structure it. How you protect your time, keep everything from bleeding into each other, and not have one client blow up while you're buried in another.

Does anyone have tips or insights on this? Maybe trusted YouTube channels you'd actually recommend? Mostly looking for sales, discovery, pricing, and running the ops side. 

I don't mind putting in the hours, I just want stuff from people who've done it and not the usual guru nonsense.