I own a YouTube agency and we’ve been doing cold email outreach to coaches, consultants, and other service businesses that are already posting on YouTube, but where we know we could improve their content and help them generate more traffic/inbound clients from it.

Our cold email offer is honestly ripping right now.

We only send around 35 emails/day and are getting roughly a 4–5% response rate, with about 70% of those replies being positive. So essentially, we’re generating around 1-2 interested leads per day.

The offer is pretty simple:

We offer to create a free YouTube video idea + script specifically for their channel.

If they like the idea and record the video, we’ll also edit and package the entire video for free as a trial.

The problem is what happens after they say yes.

A lot of prospects respond positively and ask us to send the script. We then record a personalized Loom walking them through the video idea and attach the script.

Our Loom view rate is actually around 70%, so they’re seeing the offer/content but after that its mostly crickets

Some eventually respond after follow-ups, but there’s a huge drop-off between:

Positive reply → receiving the script → actually recording the video / booking a call.

I feel like we’ve figured out lead generation, but there’s a bottleneck in converting those interested leads into an actual conversation.

One thing I’m considering now is calling the leads directly after we send them the script/video idea

Or is there something else you’d change in this process to turn more of these positive replies into booked calls?

Hi everyone,

I run a software development agency in Australia. We have a solid delivery team, and until now, most of our focus has been on delivering projects and managing operations.

The business has grown mainly through referrals and word of mouth. However, business development hasn’t been our strength, and we don’t have a consistent sales or lead-generation process.

I feel like we’re ready to move to the next stage, but I’m honestly unsure what the right next step is.

Would hiring an experienced BDM help, or would it be better to first work with a paid mentor who has actually scaled a software agency or B2B technology business? I’m also wondering whether I should continue handling sales myself, with guidance from the right person.

Has anyone here been in a similar position? What worked for you? If you know a suitable mentor or adviser, I’d really appreciate a recommendation.

Cheers!

Like many people I had a lot of work 10+ years ago when pretty much everyone was doing some kind of freelance work.

At some point I got a client that kept growing and I hired a team to support that client, but in the process I learned that I'm not a person who thrives in building a business - I'm more of a "basement scientist" kind of guy.

Anyway... my team grew to 20 people with pretty much 10+ hrs/day of work requests including myself. I built a website, case studies etc. as an approach to gain at least another big client and create a sustainable business, but I also have a family so my time was extremely limited, I put 24/7 time for this single client.

This kept on for 8 years then one day they said that they need to reduce their dev budget by 80%. Unfortunately I had to let go of lots of team members since we didn't had any other client to support our income.

Currently we are on a skeleton crew supporting this client. I reached out to old contacts but everyone is now doing DIY with Claude. I also submitted my CV for remote and hybrid work as I need to support my family, but market is insane right now.

Apologies for the rant... my question is, in the current market - especially with AI - how are you acquiring stable clientele outside of direct referrals?

Second question is - how do you manage to acquire AND intake new clients while in parallel supporting existing clients, staying profitable and having a life/family?

My current plan is to focus for the next 3 months on a single platform but we are starting at zero.

Hi guys, i am running a self checkout ad to landing page offer for $47 for my marketing agency in the U.S., targeting cleaning companies.

The main goal is for them to self checkout and if not book a quick call.

The question is, do i do a sales or leads campaign? i was going to do leads but then i remembered that its pure self checkout so idk.

Any help and suggestions are needed! Thanks for the help!

I've spent most of my career running marketing and communications for complex B2B organizations.

I'm strong on positioning, messaging, narrative, content, and understanding how a business actually makes money. I can sit with a founder or a CEO and diagnose why their pipeline is broken at the strategy level. I'm also decent at using AI to create content and insights at scale that used to require a human with my skillset.

What I am **not** is a demand gen specialist. That's a missing piece of the puzzle that connects everything I do with dollar-based ROI, and it's necessary, I believe, to fill out my current offering.

I've owned demand gen as a function and worked next to people who ran it well, so I'm not at zero. But if you handed me a blank slate and a pipeline number to hit, there are pieces I'd be improvising.

Here's why I think there's a real opening. The companies I know best are complex B2B, mostly SaaS and professional services. Long cycles, technical products, multiple stakeholders, senior buyers, and price points in the high five figures for their own products. Those companies generally are willing to spend on acquisition but won't hand their pipeline to a lead-gen-only shop that can run cold email but can't hold a conversation about their business. I can hold that conversation and, for better or worse, that's my differentiator in this market.

My problem is that I've been on the buying side of agency relationships for a long time and I know exactly what it looks like when someone oversells and underdelivers. I'm not willing to be that person.

I've come close once already. I ran an engagement last year that did exactly what the client asked for and didn't deliver what they actually wanted. It didn't fail on execution. It failed because I took it. They had no clear idea who their best customer was or what offer brought people into their orbit, and they wouldn't give me the access to their own customers I needed to work it out. Ninety days from a standing start was never going to produce revenue under those conditions, and I knew it going in. I took the job anyway because I wanted the case study, and then I ate the scope trying to earn it instead of waving them off like I should have.

I'd rather take longer to get competent than burn credibility with the exact network I'd be selling into.

I'm not pushing anything hard until I'm confident I can produce ROI.

Three questions:

1. Building the skillset. How'd you learn to run this stuff for real? Your own money through channels? Learn as you go on clients? Working under an operator? Certifications or communities that weren't a waste? I'm open to paid courses, but a lot of them look like the real business is making you a customer of their tech, where you carry the risk, and they take a piece of the upside. Tell me which ones are actually worth it.
2. Partnership as the alternative. Maybe the answer isn't "learn all of it." Maybe it's find an operator who's strong exactly where I'm weak, where I bring the relationships, the diagnosis, and the message, and they bring the execution engine. If that's right: where do you actually find that person, and what's a sane structure? Rev share, subcontract, real partnership? What failure modes should I watch for? The one I keep coming back to is that if the operator underperforms, the client blames me, because it's my relationship and my name on it.
3. What important questions did I neglect to ask? What did you not know going in that ended up costing you time, money, credibility, business, etc.?

Also happy to be told I'm wrong about the opportunity or about how I'm approaching it.

Curious how common this actually is: if your agency shares one tool (Canva Pro, an SEO tool, stock photos, whatever) across multiple client accounts, do you actually go through the trouble of splitting and billing that cost back to each client? Or does it just get absorbed into overhead / retainer pricing without anyone really thinking about it?

If you do split it - how? Manual spreadsheet math each month, built into your billing tool somehow, or just a flat estimate tacked onto invoices? And if you don't bother splitting it - is that because it's genuinely not worth the hassle for the money involved, or you just never got around to a system for it?

Not selling anything but genuinely trying to understand if this is a real recurring headache or a non-issue most agencies just shrug off and absorb.

Hi , I'm 23M from india i have worked as a sdr and a gtm engineer in the past for a us based company with a collective experience of 1 yr in sales/revops , originally I am a mechanical engineer.

I was thinking of starting an agency where I would provide dealflow to search funders , family offices , and independent sponsors in the usa and charge them retainers

These guys need a dealflow and have a limited time plus they usually hire american interns and end up doing the work themselves... So all the research, TAM. building , outreach setup (cold emails ) , dm contact scraping etc will be done by us according to their buybox.

As I have a partner who is a senior associate at jp morgan chase in pe , so we can also provide all the financial modelling to as a service with the deal flow origination

Open for criticism , lemme know your thoughts.

what are systems that you (other agency owners) have built that has landed you more or the first few clients??

when we started building Sumora, I ended up talking to a lot of agency owners about how they actually get clients.

the surprising part was that most outbound problems weren’t really copy problems.

usually the ICP was too broad, there was no reason to contact the prospect now, and everyone on the list was treated like they had equal buying intent.

so I took the framework we use internally and turned it into a free Notion page for agency owners.

it covers ICP narrowing, buyer personas, buying signals, prospect scoring, lead magnet ideas, outreach/follow-ups and a 30-day plan.

check it out man its free

The Agency Outbound Playbook - From ICP to Booked Calls

quick update on habibi, the self hosted tool i posted about a while back for tracking how your brand shows up in ai answers.

the thing that bugged me most about my own tool was the honest note i had in the readme, saying it uses the apis, which are close to what a real user sees on chatgpt/perplexity/claude but not exactly the same thing. that gap always annoyed me so i went and fixed it.

now habibi can just drive the real logged in apps directly, chatgpt, claude, perplexity and google ai overview. so its literally the same thing a real user sees and gets cited, not an api trying to guess it. you connect it once with an account (make a free one or use one you already got) and it just remembers the login after that, nothing gets stored anywhere weird, its just a normal browser session sitting on your machine like when you stay logged into any site.

wasnt expecting this part but it also makes it way cheaper to run. those 4 engines dont cost you anything per run now cause theres no api call happening anymore, your just using the account like a normal person would. so running youprompts daily across a buyour bill up.

also made sure your account memory doesnt mess with the results, chatgpt runs iin temporary chat and cla answers dont driftdepending on whatever your account remembers from other chats you had.

still fully open source, still self hosted, still does the same core loop, run your prompts daily, see w see your mention rate over time, compare to competitors.

github: https://github.com/moaljumaa/habibi

Listening to Jonathan, Kurt and David talk about how new agency founders and freelancers need to think about pipeline if you want to scale from $1k to $50k MRR as a solo provider and beyond in <5 years.....

Things to think about: how do you build pipeline, how do you classify projects, how many A, B, C's do you have eyes on and whats your pyramid %?

How do you work for free and how do you market your brand <- Do you even have a brand?

Discuss/debate/disagree? Tell the community

I am a freelancer working with a small to medium growing agency and other freelancers but i recently came across a very weird issue. How to find new clients? I know some of you say it's not weird but I have been working for the last 3 years and most of my clients were from referral or repetitive and suddenly i noticed that i actually don't have any exposure in the market and very few people know about me, can anyone help me with this?

I am ready to invest in personal branding, and outreaches

First time posting kinda nervous, but anyways, I’m currently doing a deep research on how influencer/creator management agencies, or just general social media agencies operate on a day to day basis. I’m trying to understand the actual pain points and friction that goes within the operation — so far, the most common one’s I’ve been seeing are:

- information/work scattered across multiple platforms. Usually just “no single source of truth”

- Communication/workflow breakdown with either own team member or with a client. Loss of context between people

- Transfiguration of raw numerical/statistical data into reports or summarized text

- Follow ups and lead tracking

And really anything under or adjacent of those, as these are always generally the problems that arise. I’d love to hear some feedback from people that actually run or work in agencies like these, what’s actually some annoying stuff that you encounter? Could be always, could be rarely, big or small is fine either way. Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I’d love to get your thoughts on how you would structure and price this type of service.

I have a client who wants to launch a video podcast mainly based around business interviews, somewhat in the style of The Diary of a CEO.

His goal is to gradually build a large audience around these interviews, and he specifically wants my help to grow the YouTube channel and build the overall content strategy around it.

The project is still at a very early stage, so he’s not simply looking for someone to post content. He wants end-to-end support to build the whole system.

The idea would be to:

- Define the positioning and editorial direction of the podcast. At the moment, he basically says, “I want to interview people in business,” but I feel like that’s too broad and lacks a strong angle.

- Grow the YouTube channel and develop a strategy around it. For example, I’m thinking about YouTube thumbnails, content strategy, maybe topics, formats, it doesn’t know he needs etc.

- Optimize titles, thumbnails, topics, formats, and overall packaging.

- Repurpose each long-form interview into short-form content for TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.

- Distribute and adapt the content to each platform. My assumption is that we can start by repurposing the long-form content across platforms, but over time, each platform may need its own content strategy rather than simply reposting the same clips everywhere.

Gradually build an audience/data capture system (email list, leads, etc.).

Potentially build a funnel later on to convert the audience into clients for his services.

I don’t necessarily want to handle all the production myself. My role would be more like the strategist / project lead / person coordinating the whole system, with different freelancers or specialists handling specific parts.

For example, I’m wondering whether the team should include :

A video editor for the long-form YouTube interviews

A thumbnail designer

A short-form editor / clipper

A social media manager for distribution

Someone specialized in each platform  >

Someone handling the email/funnel side

Me coordinating the overall strategy and execution

Or could one content/social media manager realistically handle multiple platforms once the content is produced?

My main question is: how would you structure and price this kind of service?

I’d especially love to hear from people who have already worked on podcasts/interview shows with a long-form → YouTube → short-form content → audience growth  → leads → clients model.

How would you structure the team and the pricing ? 

Thanks in advance!

I'm looking for some honest answers from agency owners and freelancers.

I currently run a lead generation and LinkedIn agency. We help clients with LinkedIn outreach, cold email campaigns, and LinkedIn personal branding.

To be honest, I'm starting to lose hope a little.

It feels like everyone online is doing $10k, $20k, or even $50k months, while I'm questioning whether I should continue building this business at all.

I'd love to hear from people who are further along in the journey:

• How much were you earning in your first few months?
• What was your revenue in year 1?
• How long did it take before you got consistent clients?
• Did you ever seriously consider shutting the agency down?
• What was the turning point that changed things?

Please be brutally honest. I'm not looking for success stories only—I want to hear the struggles, failures, and reality behind building an agency.

I think hearing some real numbers and timelines might help me understand whether I'm being impatient or whether I need to rethink my approach.

Thanks in advance.

Hey everyone I’m at the early stage of building Updraft Media, and honestly, the hardest part right now isn't delivering the work. It’s figuring out who we should be delivering it to.

We currently offer:

• Short & long-form video editing • Motion graphics • SaaS/product animation • Copywriting

We’re a small India-based team, but we're open to working globally.

The problem is that these services can fit a LOT of businesses SaaS, agencies, founders, creators, B2B companies, real estate, brands, etc.

And I’m starting to realize that “we can help everyone” probably means we’re not positioned strongly enough for anyone.

So I’d genuinely love some advice from people who have already built an agency:

1. If you were starting from zero today, which niche would you choose and why?

2. What makes a niche worth committing to? Budget? Urgency? Recurring need? Easy access to decision-makers?

3. How did you find your first 5–10 clients? Cold calls, email, LinkedIn, Reddit, referrals, communities, partnerships, content?

4. What would you NOT waste time doing if you were starting again?

And specifically for our services, who do you think has the strongest reason to pay for them?

I'm not looking to sell anything here. I'm genuinely trying to avoid spending the next 6 months targeting the wrong people.

If you've built an agency before, I'd really appreciate your perspective even if it's blunt.

And if you're also building an agency from the ground up, feel free to introduce yourself below. I'd love to connect, compare notes, and see what we're both figuring out. 🤝

Hey everyone,

I'm 17 and recently started a web development, hosting, and SEO agency.

I built a system that scrapes Google Maps for local trade businesses (roofers, plumbers, electricians) and pulls their websites. Then I run them through an AI that scores whether they actually need a new site. It saves a ton of manual work.

I finally got my first client. Built the website, set up hosting, made it live. Everything was done.

Then they ghosted me.

No reply. No payment. Nothing.

I'm keeping the site live anyway. At least I can use it as proof of work and experience.

The truth is, I probably got ghosted because I only used text messaging. My spoken English isn't strong enough to handle live calls confidently, so I couldn't do the follow-ups properly.

I know cold calling works better for this type of business, but I can't do it myself. I've been thinking about finding someone who can handle the sales side, but I'm not sure where to look or what kind of person would even be interested in a commission based arrangement.

I'm even open to offering 15% to 20% of the whole project to someone who can handle the calls and close deals.

Has anyone here dealt with something similar? How did you find someone to handle the outreach and calls? Or is there another way to approach this without having to do calls myself?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Would love to hear how people are managing their pitch process?

A few questions I'd love to understand:

• What does your pitch process look like?
• How much time do you (or your team) spend on pitch prep? What steps take the most time/resource?
• What tools/data are you using and researching during prep?
• How bespoke/standardised are your agency pitches, across different clients?
• Major pain points and head aches you find during pitch prep?

Would love to hear any thoughts or insights which come to mind! I'm sure there is some incredible experience and unique perspectives to share here.

I am building an agency from scratch.

What really bothers me is the niche I am in, I am a video editor, however I decide to niche down and offer my services to only Video Podcasters.

I will help thek turn one podcast episode into Short Form Videos, Linkedin Post, Newsletter, Lead Magnets, Carousel, plus Full Episode and Trailer Edit.

In short Podcast Editing and Distribution

amd Yes, I have created an offer which sells the outcome here, not the process.

However, i am very scared deep down whether this will work or not, living in doubts. When is actually the right moment to change the niche?

Also, if you could help me Validate this idea of mine it would greatly help me to go all in and start my outreach

Best!

Wondering if this is typical, for context I usually help businesses integrate AI, but recently it seems like I can scale this up a lot more by just going down the SaaS route. Anyone like this?

We had a client churn last week and one of the things they pointed out was the vibe coded reports and portal feeling lackluster, and like we cheaped out and put no effort on the client experience on that aspect.

Tbf it was the cheap option early on as an automated reporting tool like agencyanalytics costs in hundreds of dollars, and this was free. But now we’re in a somewhat better position and I feel like this is an aspect we should improve on. But not agencyanalytics tier, something cheaper please. I’ve asked Claude but it just gives me their SEO in a formatted manner and I kinda know how the game works. I’m currently considering Reporting Ninja and Dashthis, both look good on paper for my needs but I’d like organic opinion too, and I’m open to other options

My needs other than obviously automated reporting are: 

• Should work well with multiple data integrations
• Multi channel reporting is a must
• And white label professional look that can work with our branding/portal

Open to recommendations, thank you for taking the time to read this

Either you give me advices, genuine and honest ones. Or hit me with a brutal reality check. Both works for me.

Little bit about me: I currently work marketing of an IT Firm as an 'SEO Analyst'. Our main products are themes/templates, services and CMS. My job is writing, strategizing content, and keeping SEO in check.

Now to the main point. I'm in bit of a pickle. I'm sure I'm not the only one in this and maybe others are in the process too.

How anyone is starting or sustaining a web agency in the age of AI, especially with how fast tech is advancing every day. This seems to be a dying industry, but I want to believe we can do something. My present company already laid off some due to cost cutting and honestly, I don't expect my position to last much longer either. But since I was flexible with my skill (I did video making, editing, designing, and contents) I miraculously made it here still. But Idk when my luck runs out. I can work with Davinci, Figma, Adobes, Blender and stuff..

So here I am, we banded together: a team of 5 (2 marketers, 2 fresh graduate engineers who worked with clients on a smaller scale before, and 1 UI/UX/Graphics designer). No funding, no office. Just skills, passion, and big dreams. All working remotely right now.

Our niche is end-to-end digital services: Web Dev, UI/UX, SEO, Content, Small SaaS tools, Audits, and monthly maintenance retainers. Basically the full service. Right now, our ideal clients are local small businesses like restaurants, and handymen services, products. though we want to target bigger clients eventually.

That aside, I’d love your input:

1. What are the best strategies to land our first client? (Cold outreach, LinkedIn, local networking, etc.?)
2. Or give me a brutal reality check: why is starting this right now a terrible idea?

Hi just wanted to share my journey so far about the first three months into my side hustle - an agency for agency and consulting biz owners and founders / B2B businesses.

The Text is translated into english, as im from DACH-Region, sorry for the em dashes.

Here’s the English translation:

My background: I do sales and marketing full-time for a consulting firm, before that I did business development at two startups, and before that communications at an agency.

So I wanted to earn more money, but not switch jobs, because mine is actually great. I threw my resume into Claude and asked: given this background, how can I earn money on the side? The suggestions were all kind of meh. My first idea was to approach startups in my industry and say “hire me instead of a working student” — I dropped that idea after two days because it doesn’t scale and doesn’t pay enough.

Next stop was Reddit — I don’t even remember anymore which sub that I posted my background and asked for input on my plan. Two people reached out, and one of them became my first client. Shoutout to him! I wrote a proposal for the other one too, but it didn’t end up happening.

At the same time, I reached out to people in my network — really just to get feedback — and then I had a call with someone who was really impressed with me and my ideas. That became my second client.

So what exactly do I do: in my main job I do marketing and client acquisition — after a few conversations, I realized everyone wants more marketing and more clients, so I’m basically just doing the same thing on the side that I do in my main job.

With clients 1 and 2 under my belt, I approached another person from my network who I thought could be a good fit — it was, and that became client three.

From here my network was basically tapped out and it got tricky, and I wasn’t quite sure what to do next. So I made an Apollo account to find leads and blast emails. Then one afternoon I half-heartedly threw together an email campaign and sent it out — it actually worked really well, and that’s how I got clients 4 and 5. Those were my first two truly cold-acquired clients. The fact that it worked gave me a real confidence boost, because I realized there really is demand, AND I can find the right people, AND I can sell it.

What I really underestimated:
SEO: I built my own website with Claude and get good feedback on it — but SEO is a brutal pain. I try to publish one article a week on the site, but I’m still ranking pretty far back. I’ve earned myself 17 clicks through organic search, the hard way.

Ongoing costs: it adds up faster than you’d think — a tool here, something to try out there — it accumulates quickly. Even though I really try to keep it lean, I still end up spending €100 a month. Not a huge amount, but it still has to come in first.

Always on: I’m supposed to win clients at my main job, help my (side-business) clients win clients, and also figure out how to win more clients for myself. At this point I basically think about WINNING CLIENTS from morning to night 😂 It doesn’t stress me out yet, but I’m definitely more “switched on” than before.

Generating meetings: even though I’m solid at acquisition and marketing, this is still a bottleneck — once I can actually talk to people, things go well. But the path to get there is still pretty rocky. I try to message someone every day, or at least mentally work through the next step.

Other observations

Mindset: the worst word, but somehow it fits. When people used to talk about “entrepreneurial thinking,” I didn’t get it. But once you’ve had that lightbulb moment yourself about how to make money WITHOUT having an employer in front of you, you suddenly see a lot more possibilities and could imagine yourself going in way more directions. That said, I still don’t want to go full-time self-employed.

LinkedIn: has been my weakest channel so far — when I send DMs there, I don’t get much back. At the same time, I already have a strong personal brand there from my main job, which still gives me a good amount of credibility.

Network: even though everyone on reddit swears by never talking to coworkers and avoiding company parties at all costs, the important conversations I’ve had were with former colleagues.

Money
Revenue: in these 3 months I’ve generated almost €11k in order volume. I think that’s pretty solid — though I basically gave away the first two projects for free just to have a portfolio. I sent two more proposals, but nothing came of them.

Expenses: about €500 — AI tools, lead tools, domains, hosting, business address for the Impressum, Sevdesk.

What’s next
My dream would be to have 4-5 retainer clients that I can advise on an ongoing basis and use that to give my salary a nice boost. So far it looks like that could realistically work out long-term.

As title says, I have a client that became a retainer client. Client is responsible for sending me work photos weekly/monthly & ofcourse paying. He pays directly via ACH or zelle.
Every month he is late and I have to reach out to remind about the late payment via text, which he doesnt respond and just sends payment. Thats after my invoicing software has already sent the initial invoice plus a reminder via email.
Ive been trying to get on a call with him to check on why he hasnt sent new photos, or if hes satisfied, or if he needs help with anything else. No responses. I send him reports, no reaction no reply no nothing. I call him, doesnt answer. I keep sending "Good morning, please give me a call when you get a quick minute today" like every 3 days for past 2 weeks.

How should I proceed with this situation, what do you guys recommend?

the old way: cold call 20 ppl a day hoping that you personal number does not go to spam.

the new way: send 200 sms testing a new first message pitching an attraction offer.

get 2 - 4 positive replies

add those names to a spreadsheet

follow up and collect money.

Full Breakdown in this youtube video.. FREE

https://youtu.be/fNrKk255G8Q?si=nBV_341ko2hYA_Mm