5 lessons that took me from broke to $1.3M

At 26, I was unemployed. By 28, I started an online business and moved to Medellín, Colombia. By 31, my LinkedIn agency is on the front page of Google.

And I've helped 100+ founders scale on LinkedIn, making $1.3M+ in the process.

The wildest part is:

- I don't have a "marketing degree".

- I'm unemployable and have left 7 jobs in five years.

- I never had "daddy's money" or a trust fund like other creators here.

It was always down to me. I made every mistake imaginable. I went through times losing money. Losing clients. Not getting leads. Not knowing how to scale an agency profitably.

If I started my agency again, here's every single GTM lesson I would implement to grow in half the time:

1. GTM Fundamentals first.

Holy fuck, I remember starting out. I thought it was all about if I was using the latest outbound tool or content creation widget. The truth is, man, none of that shit matters. I lost so much time chasing shiny objects. When content inbound was big 3 years ago (and working) it was all about who had the latest hook tool to go viral. Or was I using the latest analytics to get ahead. Now I start with principles first. Who am I targeting? Can I understand the buyer better than I know myself? Can I lock myself away in a dark, candlelit room and outline their frustrations, wants, fears, and aspirations in as close to their own words as humanly possible? Then it's just as simple as talking to that one person from where they are right now to where they want to go. Christ, it's the same for outbound. Because when you get the fundamentals right, your latest widget for content or outbound actually drives the result you want. I'm convinced that the way we acquire clients will look staggeringly different in the future. All agent marketplaces. AGI. The lot. But you know what won't change... The fundamentals. You will always need to know your customer. And know how to talk to them to sell them.

2. Don't die on a hill with one method of client acquisition.

I regret building my entire business on LinkedIn. That put me at serious risk to platform changes. And when the LinkedIn algorithm took a dive, it did impact my inbounds this year. If I look at the numbers, they halted. Now, luckily, we have always been overly bullish on content-led outbound as our means to drive clients. Which meant content-led outbound filled the gap, but if we had been dependent on inbound, we would have been COOKED with a capital C. The only reason we have continued to grow despite platform changes and desperately less sales calls is because I aggressively invested in my own sales skills. We have closed 50% last 2 months on 12k (probably a sign to raise rates, we will get to that). If I could go back, I would invest in channels that supplement LinkedIn. We are building out cold email flows now. That would leave us less vulnerable to platform changes.

3. There is zero point in driving demand into a leaky funnel.

Everyone wants clients! Clients! Clients! I used to say "we just need more calls". And then you look at our CRM, and you see a dogshit show rate around 50%... we were losing 50% of prospects before they came to the call purely because our funnel was leaking. Raising our show rate by making our funnel less leaky would have added $100,000s of net new business a year and it would have increased our agency's close rate without us needing to be any better at sales... (purely because we would have more deals to get at bats with!). It seems so obvious looking back. Now I am laser focused on my amount of calls, nurturing and engaging deals in the process to improve show rate, and also those that come through our process who said maybe later. In fact, 50% of net new clients this year came from convos I had last year. This is absolutely poignant now in a market where I'm seeing and speaking with others across the board that amounts of calls have dropped for many. You have to make the most of every single opportunity coming through your funnel. Wasting ops because your Calendly makes it utterly unappealing to come to a call is out.

4. Know my numbers from day 1.

I look back at the way I used to run my business, and it makes me cringe. For the first year of my business, I couldn't tell you my exact close rate, show rate, pipeline value, even the amount of meetings I booked per month. And you know what, my results showed it. I stayed plateaued at a similar rev level because I had no idea what to optimise. Now I am anally attentive and obsessed with our stats. If we aren't closing I'm looking at show rate, I'm looking at lead source, and ICP. Now I can pull real hypotheses to make improvements to these metrics in real time instead of just guessing. Your growth should be as clear to you as: we need x amount of calls. That leads to x amount of prospects at bats that leads to x amount classically slipping and x amount to cash in bank. And now with Claude, that level of math is easy to replicate. If I had done that, I would have been significantly less anxious this entire time because growth would have felt predictable rather than a scramble.

5. It will always feel like pushing a rock up a hill.

It's not easy to generate demand. It's not easy to book sales meetings. It's tough to close.

And I have one of the largest brands in B2B. And I find it hard, so I can't imagine how hard it is for agency owners now. I feel for you guys. None of these things are easy for anyone. The sooner you accept it's going to be hard to generate demand no matter what you do, the more you will continuously think of better ways to go about it. And most importantly... stay in the game long enough for it to bear fruit. I've been posting for 4 years now. And my compounding only started 3 years later, when we started breaking 100k months in the agency.

I say all this because I'm not some fluffluencer who is looking to sell you a cohort on making your posts look pretty. Or giving you some vague crap about using "numbers in your post" or "being kind". My content this year is for the operators.

Those jaded by the familiar, unbelievable rubbish they see every day on LinkedIn with the Claude bot lead generator 5000.

The agency owners who want REAL.

I'm doubling down this year, sharing in depth what works. What sucks and what is crushing for us. In the hopes it could help someone like you. (and yes, this post is fucking messy, it's not ai written, it was from the heart, let me know if you dig this style)