I am sharing this on behalf of a friend of my partner. She wants to start her business in marketing for service based businesses in the UAE. However, she doesn't have any ties to the business world, as she is employed ever since she is in the UAE. She did Social Media Management and Copywriting back then already, but corporate got into the way. My network is spread in the European market, so I cannot really pull from there either, as she doesn't speak the target audience language.

Now here is the deal. I told her she has to find trial clients, that she can use as testimonials on her future landingpage.

So, if you run a service based business like coaching, consulting, agency, clinic, personal brand, lawyers or whatever else it might be and you need a cheap funnel that converts a handful of paying customers, then feel free to reach out.

To protect both parties involved I will put in my company as the contract partner, and will make sure the quality is good and delivered on point. What would be great for her is a little pocket money for her effort, and a proper testimonial when the first results set in.

Who would benefit most from it?

- You have a service based business
- You already have a couple paying customers yourself
- You provide your business to the english market (funnel must be english)
- You can dedicate some time for a proper onboarding
- You can start directly
- You communicate in a timely manner
- You pay software cost for hosting etc.
- You have the intention to start or optimize your paid ads.
- Be fair, and stick to your part of the contract, I will take responsibility for her side being fullfilled.

What I'd like for her to get per contract is between 150-250 USD. I believe that is acceptable. But that's for you to discuss.

What you will get:

- A deep target audience analysis
- Proper positioning in the market, so that you are hard to compare (creating your own niche)
- A landingpage for your service (what ever funnel variant is needed)
- Clear and converting copywriting for the whole funnel - ad creative, funnel etc.
- For those who wish to build a brand beyond paid advertisement, she can also help you on social media, but I personally would say, that should be negotiated seperately.

I will throw in some sales scripts, that you can use to adapt to your market, by using AI, so that the leads you generate are not going to the bin.

Just drop a comment, and I will connect you accordingly. Appreciate everyone who gives it a shot.

All the best to the rest.

I am sharing this on behalf of a friend of my partner. She wants to start her business in marketing for service based businesses in the UAE. However, she doesn't have any ties to the business world, as she is employed ever since she is in UAE. She did Social Media Management and Copywriting back then already, but corporate got into the way. My network is spread in the European market, so I cannot really pull from there either, as she doesn't speak the target audience language.

Now here is the deal. I told her she has to find trial clients, that she can use as testimonials on her future landingpage.

So, if you run a service based business like coaching, consulting, agency, clinic, personal brand, lawyers or whatever else it might be and you need a cheap funnel that converts, then feel free to reach out.

To protect both parties involved I will put in my company as the contract partner, and will make sure the quality is good and on point. What would be great for her is a little pocket money for her effort, and a proper testimonial when the first results set in.

Who would benefit most from it?

- You have a service based business
- You already have a couple paying customers yourself
- You provide your business to the english market (funnel must be english)
- You can dedicate some time for a proper onboarding
- You can start directly
- You communicate in a timely manner
- You pay software cost for hosting etc.
- You have the intention to start or optimise your paid ads.
- Be fair, and stick to your part of the contract, I will take responsibility for her side being fullfilled.

What I'd like for her to get per contract is between 500-1.000 AED. I believe that is acceptable. But that's for you to discuss.

What you will get:

- A deep target audience analysis
- Proper positioning in the market, so that you are hard to compare (creating your own niche)
- A landingpage for your service (what ever funnel variant is needed)
- Clear and converting copywriting for the whole funnel - ad creative, funnel etc.
- For those who wish to build a brand beyond paid advertisement, she can also help you on social media, but I personally would say, that should be negotiated seperately.

I will throw in some sales scripts, that you can use to adapt to your market, by using AI, so that the leads you generate are not going to the bin.

Just drop a comment, and I will connect you accordingly. Appreciate everyone who gives it a shot.

All the best to the rest.

This post is directed to Agency owners, consultants, lawyers, experts and service providers.

I am genuinely confused, as I saw many people, that generate around USD 30.000 to USD 70.000 per month in sales that complain about burning out in getting customers or daily operations. But it's the same people that don't have any proper funnel set up for themselves.

They still do LinkedIn outreach, Cold Calling or referral as their main source of leads.

See, I understand that not everyone knows about how to utilitise paid ads, but it is the solution for so many problems:

- No employees? - Paid ads for recruiting
- No leads? - Paid ads
- Wrong leads? - Paid ads
- Scaling your offer? - Paid ads

My biggest business and personal assets are my ad accounts, alongside the knowledge I hold. So as long as I don't suffer from Alzheimers I am always good to go.

So now comes my question - are you guys just not aware of paid ads, do you not know how to make it work, can't you get your tracking right, do you have negative experience from the past?

Why do you guys run to lead gen agencies instead of doing it yourself? It just straight away doesn't make sense in my world.

This week it became evidently real.

Anthropic, the company behind Claude, one of the most capable AI systems on the market right now, was ordered by the US government to cut off access for all non-American users. No timeline. No compensation. No detailed explanation. Just gone.

And before you think this is just an AI story, stop and look at your own tech stack for a second.

How many of your core business tools are American?

Your CRM. Your project management software. Your cloud storage. Your communication tools. Your analytics platform. Your payment infrastructure. Your email. Your entire data warehouse probably sitting on AWS or Azure or Google Cloud.

Every single one of those operates under the same legal framework that just shut down Claude for international users. It is called export controls and the US government has had this power for decades. What changed is that they are now willing to actually use it. And Trump has proven it.

Every founder and operator outside the United States should be concerned now.

You have likely signed multi-year enterprise contracts with these providers, and even if not. You have paid significant upfront costs. You have built internal processes around these tools. You have trained your entire team on them. Your clients depend on outputs that run through them. Your data lives in these softwares - best example is Adobe for the web design creatives in you guys. Did you know that Adobe owns the data in their cloud that you generate?

None of that matters when an executive order lands.

There is no refund clause for geopolitical decisions. There is no SLA that protects you from Washington. There is no customer support ticket you can open when the reason for your outage is US foreign policy.

The businesses that will survive the next decade of tech geopolitics are not the ones with the best tools. They are the ones who treated vendor dependency as a risk category and built accordingly.

Audit your stack. Know exactly which parts of your operation would stop if a US executive order hit tomorrow. Then decide how much of that risk you are actually comfortable carrying.

Because right now most companies are carrying all of it and have no idea. Europe has a major problem, that the new ban of the new Claude models has revealed.

On the other hand it opens opportunities for new tech start up, in their positioning.

So what do you think, what do you take from this situation and are you reconsidering your tech stack?

I just came back home from meeting a real estate guy to take a look at offices for rents.

We are growing our team, needed more space and want to have a place in our office to host in office events.

We were looking for spaces at around 2.000 - 2.200 sqm. And so we did today. We looked at a new place. The place was decent, not ultra luxury, not a particular fancy location.

No indicators that was justifying an extremely high rent.

Nonetheless, the rent that he asked for exceeded well over his 850.000 Euros anually.

On top of that, we have a quote from our interior designer. Roughly 2.300 Euros per sqm for furniture, branding, hardware etc.

I was aware that it's going to be an investment, and I knew the overall investment will be considerably high, but just the rent alone is surprising. This is almost 34 EUR per sqm in rent.

What are you guys paying for rent? And obviously it differs based on the team and company size, but maybe you guys can share what you pay per sqm/sqft?

I've come across plenty of businesses in this subreddit. The number of web design agencies alone is staggering and when you look at their websites and social media presence, you start to wonder what people are actually paying for.

Working with agencies or freelancers isn't inherently wrong. Contrary to what the title suggests, it can sometimes even be the smart move. But here's a lesson worth remembering:

Never outsource something you don't understand.

If you have a customer acquisition problem, you don't just go hire a lead gen agency.
If you want a website, you don't hire the first web dev agency that reaches out.
The same goes for social media marketing, SEO, etc.... the list goes on.

Before you hire anyone, get clear on what your actual problem is. Then do your research so you can judge whether a service is genuinely good.

If a web development agency reaches out and their headline reads "#1 Webdev Agency for SMBs in UAE" - walk away.

Work with agencies who get their own business right. Proper messaging, a real solution, funnels built around buyer psychology - the basics.

And don't hire the cheapest. Hire the one who knows what they're doing.

Quick example:

Web dev agency #1 builds you a website with a 0.5% conversion rate for 20,000 AED. Now you have a website, but no traffic, no system, no idea when that investment pays off. The website looks fancy. Cool animations, great design. But that is already it. You have an expensive business card, that otherwise is just useless.

Web dev agency #2 builds a landing page with a full funnel. Every incoming lead gets pushed into a CRM. The whole process - from ad acquisition to handing qualified leads to your sales team is mapped out. They do market analysis, define the tone of voice your audience responds to, and write copy that actually converts. Their funnel runs at 8% conversion with an estimated CPM of 50 AED.

You pay 160,000 AED over a 12-month contract, but now you have a concrete baseline to calculate ROI and know exactly when the investment pays for itself.

The difference between those two outcomes? Knowing what you need before you hire. And this is just one of many examples you can apply to whatever service you want.

To identify the right agency or freelancer, you first need to understand what's broken in your business, what you actually need right now, and what a real solution looks like.

TL;DR: A small budget Meta Ads strategy that actually worked for a service-based business.

Today I came home from watching PSG vs. Bayern. Absolutely criminal what happened there, but that's not the point.

I was on a call with a friend after the game, while on my way home, who approached me about a month ago asking for advice. Young guy, early twenties, not much money to his name, but a dear family friend.

He was in a position a lot of people here probably recognize. He'd already been selling services through cold outreach, but calling 150 businesses a day while still handling fulfillment is a grind that doesn't feel good long term. And he didn't have €10,000–15,000 to throw at marketing all at once.

So we tried something simple. A low-budget strategy, nothing fancy.

Today he called me to say he closed a client from that funnel after spending just €293 in total.

Static ad creative. Short but straightforward landing page. We started at €35/day. Leads came in from day one. First signed deal landed before he hit €300 in spend.

I'd love to attach a screenshot of the ad manager, but this subreddit doesn't allow images so you'll just have to trust the story and take your learnings from it.

Here's what we did differently.

Everyone told him to turn on Advantage+ and let Meta figure it out. That works fine if you're selling a €49 product. He's selling a €10k+ service. For high-ticket, broad targeting just finds you the cheapest clicks and cheap clicks are almost never people who can afford to say yes.

Instead we built the audience manually. We layered in signals that actually correlate with purchasing power, not just "interested in business," but indicators of disposable income, decision-making authority, and investment behavior. It takes longer to set up. Most agencies skip it because their clients are in e-commerce and it doesn't matter there. In high-ticket services, it matters a lot.

The funnel itself wasn't complicated.

He sells websites. His target clients were business owners running on outdated sites - his closed client hadn't touched his website since 2019.

The funnel didn't pitch a website. It just showed that client exactly how much money he was leaving on the floor, what problems that was causing him, and how a proper website would solve them. Pure value, no hard sell. He provided so much value in fact, that the leads were trying to reach out to him sooner than he did to them.

By the time they got on a call, the client already understood the problem. The close was almost a formality.

He texted me at 11pm when the contract came through. Said it was the first time a client came to him instead of the other way around.

That part stuck with me more than the ROAS number, honestly. Like so many people have the same problem, and they are torn apart by opinions, Redditposts and YouTube Videos. There is so much information out there, that no one knows where to start even. It can be so simple though, so let's take a look back.

---

So how did the funnel look like, now more detailed than what was mentioned above.

The ad creative was a static image. Nothing fancy, no scripted video ad. None of that. The ad creative took about 5 minutes of work. What was outstanding though, was the copywriting on the ad.

After the lead clicked, they went straight to a dedicated landingpage, offering Value for free. In exchange for contact details obviously, but that is about it.

It was not particularly long, it was not backed by high effort testimonial productions, none of that really. It was raw, authentic and appealed visually to his target audience. It was simple to understand.

The head of the Landingpage was a VSL funnel, the headline was a strong copy, that immediately adressed problem, target audience desired outcome, while already qualifying the traffic. All in the first section. Easy to understand copy, nothing complex or fancy.

Message for you guys out there:
KEEP IT SIMPLE.
Clear communication, no fancy animations needed. Just a clear messaging. The template for the landingpage was bought for 29$, so it can't really be that fancy right?

Below the heading was the problem section. What problems does the audience face? Again - all it took was good copy.

After that he agitated the problem. What is the real cost of not solving the issue? Financially? Personally? Long term for the business?

Then he went ahead and proposed a solution - neutrally. Not I'd do this or this, and my service helps you scale and all this nonsense I see all over the internet. Just smartly laid out the neutral solution.

And then came the value bomb - so much value and insight, that the only logical consequence is to provide your contact data in exchange for this knowledge.

He previewed the ressources that he used to capture the lead, and explained what's to expect and the CTA was right underneath.

---

So far so simple. What was really important here though was what happened after the leads came in.

Within 45 minutes each lead was contacted. And this is the most important thing in the funnel. He involved the leads into conversations about their businesses and scheduled calls for later to get into detail. Since his targeting was so good, he had ressources prepared to send the lead after confirming an appointment (after confirming a call, you need to make sure the lead will show up).

The sales call was essentially just about sealing the deal and discussing payment options.

He settled with his client for 3 rates, in addition to an already agreed upon retainer.

The contract states - 1 year of service, with a 3 months notice period for cancellation and auto renewal unless the contract is terminated.

If you run a service based business - please go for such contracts, it makes your business predictable.

---

So what do you need for this to succeed?

• #1 - Ad creative
• #2 - A strong copy on your ad
• #3 - landingpage that uses a fitting content framework (AIDA, PAS+, Before-After Bridge, whatever might fit your target audience)
• #4 - VSL - also follows proven Frameworks, but can be simply made
• #5 - Lead Magnet
• #6 - Proper sales system in place, that allows you to get in contact with leads fast
• #7 - Sales script, that makes a sale feel natural
• #8 - 30 Eur in daily budget for 1-2 weeks.

---

Important here - this worked on a specific market in Europe. I have seen such funnels in the US aswell, but have no validated data, to talk to you about. I'd say that the concept works with slight adaptation. It is nothing totally new, but I'd assume this can work as a approx. guideline for you guys to set up a low budget funnel.

If you have questions, just drop a comment.

I was out for a dinner with friends today, and we talked about early day mistakes in business?

I will go first - I outsourced to fast.

I jumped to fast in trying to hire people to do my job. Back then I invested horrendous amounts of money for office, buying iPads, Macbooks, Work phones for the core team in the illusion I am investing into my business.

Turned out, that I had a lot to learn about how to run and train a team first. I knew what I was capable of doing, but had to learn that I cannot expect someone that I hire to have the same thought processes, approaches or knowledge.
The perfect candidate for the team is not just a hire away, but usually the product of a fantastic training and onboarding.

What was your biggest mistake and what did you learn from that?

Hello fellow entrepreneurs,

Looking at the posts in this community, one thing is clear: agencies, coaches and service-based businesses are largely sharing the same problems.

So instead of writing another post about it, I decided to share something more useful. Something that we use frequently in our own operations.

One page from an internal document we use across our partner network. It is part of a larger framework we call the Scaling Playbook - a process guideline we use to assess and scale service-based businesses.

I am leaving this publicly accessible for some time, but I do not know how long.

Everyone with the link has permission to download it:
https://doc.clickup.com/9015595603/p/h/8cny4jk-17675/e66b540ae72e290

Work through it for your own business. It is not a magic fix, but it should give you a clear picture of where the real gaps are and where your focus needs to go.

Hope it helps.

This message is from me, after finishing the post. It is not a genius piece of copy or perfectly structured. But I think it's still better than the fifth Claude & ChatGPT post today.

---

I have seen plenty of businesses throughout the past 7 years. Just like many of you, people were laughing at me at first.

I had just decided to leave university at the age of 20, to pursue what I thought would be a better fit for my life. I dropped a career that I had spent more than 13 years consciously working towards - basically overnight. I left it all behind, invested whatever money I had in my business education, and it paid off.

The amount of ego-bloated business owners, marketers and sales reps I have encountered since is straight up flabbergasting.

The amount of times I heard "I have 15 years of experience in marketing, I know how it's done" - just to find a business generating 12.000 Euros per month for 15 years straight.

Today, I am involved in more than a dozen businesses, and each of these ventures outperforms those people by tenfold - while they are still stuck in the same office, with the same problems.

But we are all entrepreneurs here, at whatever stage we might be. You are in this subreddit because you can swallow your ego and remain open to learning - which leads me to my first lesson.

---

#1 — Never stop learning. Never. Not a single day.

What helped me outperform already "established" business owners in almost no time was the ability to consume knowledge. By that I do not mean watching every business-related video from some YouTube coach posing with a fancy car and watch.

I blocked 30 minutes every day - in my calendar - dedicated to learning. I built a clear and logical curriculum around everything that was important for me to become the marketer I am today.

• Buyer psychology
• Persuasion and changing behaviour
• Perception
• Objection handling
• Funnel architecture
• Brand architecture and engineering
• Business operations
• Service fulfilment

I dropped my university classes and created my own study schedule.

Whatever I needed, I consumed it - and used my iPad to document and track everything in Microsoft OneNote. Nothing fancy. But I made sure to handwrite everything I learned.

I analysed launches, funnels, ads, landing pages, tools - always asking: "Why would they do it this way, and what is the intent?" Whenever I learned something, I applied it within the next 6 hours, so it would not become just another piece of useless information sitting in my head.

I have invested at least 145.000 Euros in my own education, and even today those 30 minutes a day are non-negotiable. Not my wife, nor my cat has access to my office while I am learning. It is me, my Mac, and my phone somewhere far away.

If someone makes a valid point - whether it is a delivery driver or Elon Musk - I listen and try to take something away from it. Always learning, always improving.

On top of that, I read a book a week, with a clear plan of what knowledge I need and which books to read next. If you have recommendations, I am more than open.

Track every learning you have. Every time you hit an "aha" moment, write it down. Good thought at 1am while lying in bed? Write it down.

It is not just about learning - it is about building a knowledge base and tracking what you learn.

If there is something I simply cannot wrap my head around, I will pay someone to find a solution. I pay a lower six-figure amount per year just to have access to a network of business owners in a similar position - because I know that information, data and access cost money.

Investing money or time in building knowledge is always worth it. Buy courses - even though Reddit has a rather negative relationship with that idea. Every new piece of information potentially unlocks a new stage of your business development.

---

#2 — Business growth is compounding, and depends on your personal growth.

Every decision matters - from the food you eat, to the habits you follow, to the environment you work in. It is the sum of small decisions in the right direction that will set you apart from others.

• Are you sleeping in because you feel like it, or are you sticking to your routine?
• Are you ordering food or eating healthy home-cooked meals?
• Are you working remote from your bedroom in jogging pants, or are you leaving the house, dressed and groomed properly?
• Who are you surrounding yourself with?
• Where are you living and building your business?

Every activity, every decision compounds into the version of yourself that you are. You are your business.

Frankly - I barely have any friends from my school days, simply because I get nothing from spending time with them. When it feels like a waste, why continue? We naturally grew apart, and that is okay. It was a decision and a necessary sacrifice.

If a friend asks me for advice or support with their business, I am happy to help - but they know to expect an invoice. Not because I am stingy, but because I learned that advice given freely loses its value. It is in their own interest to have a financial commitment, because it creates urgency to actually act on it.

Some people consider me selfish because I always think about myself and my business first. What they do not see is the responsibility of by now more than a hundred people - partly on my shoulders. They work on projects I initiate and businesses I supervise. I think about the loans they take on, depending on and trusting the ability of the leadership around them.

If a friend asks me to help them move, I am more than happy to pay for a moving company - but you will not see me assembling furniture. My time is better used elsewhere. I would rather have that person over for a great dinner and a day together than spending it on flat-pack furniture.

We are business owners. The difference between us and our employees is that we have a vision, a greater goal, and the relentless drive to achieve it. Everything has to contribute to that goal. Every action, every activity. Our time has value and should not be wasted by people who do not respect it.

This does not mean there is no space for rest and leisure. But when I decide to watch a movie with my wife, take her out for dinner, or travel - it is with the goal of keeping that person in my life. And at the same time, I get a genuine rest from our time together.

Maybe you are sitting there telling yourself I am exaggerating. That is fine.

---

#3 — Keep your word. Have integrity and be straight.

If you say you are going to deliver the ad creative by Friday at 6pm, I expect it at 6pm. If it is not, I will give it another chance - maybe one more - but that is it.

People plan around your word. Someone is launching a product based on the delivery date you promised. People plan their day around the meeting they scheduled with you. Show up.

As a business owner it is even more crucial. I live by: underpromise, overdeliver.

It is all a matter of how organised you are. If I tell you your freebie will be fully designed and ready for distribution by Friday, you will have it on Tuesday - and we spend the remaining time reviewing everything together.

If a timeline depends on others, plan accordingly. Give your team a due date of the 10th of May and communicate the 24th to your client.

Keeping your word makes you trustworthy. And if you are trustworthy, people are far more likely to do recurring business with you or refer your service.

The same applies to social proof, testimonials and how you present yourself as a young business owner. If you are new - be honest about it. "I am looking for my first test clients to validate my offer" is far more credible than building a handful of fake companies to manufacture social proof on a landing page.

Live by this, and you will attract the right clients, the right employees and the right partner. And the choice of partner is so crucial for your business success.

---

There are plenty of lessons. I have personally documented well over 600 throughout the years in my own knowledge base. It is an asset that nobody gets access to. Full of collected data, lessons learned and more. I would advise everyone to build something similar.

Now - what are your biggest 3 lessons? I think I missed the point of keeping it to just 3, but maybe someone here is more structured than me.

This is to all service based businesses out there. I am training my team, and for that we are going to review landingpages.

Quickly describe your funnel, what is your main source of traffic and briefly describe what you think your target audience is.

I am going to start a series of posts on Reddit. As of right now, I have spare time in the evenings to share my thoughts, insights and knowledge about working with coaches, consultants and service-based businesses in Europe.

Today I will walk you through a case study of mine. So let's get right into it.

Base Data

Industry: Financial Consulting
Revenue before: Inconsistent, ranging from 20.000 EUR to 50.000 EUR MRR
Revenue now: 700.000 EUR+ MRR

Situation at the start

So, how did things look before working with this company?

They had clients, and an enormous local trust in their brand. A solid reputation in their community, trusted as professionals. Revenue was coming in — but it was volatile. One month was fine, the next barely covered operational costs.

They had no marketing, other than some local events they participated in. They had tried ads once or twice, but nothing ran sustainably. Their sales backbone was catastrophic — solely running on pen and paper, nothing else. Their website was a classical "we exist, by the way" page with no real messaging. There was traffic, but people were not staying long. Positioning in the market? You can guess.

The majority of their consultations happened in-house. People walked into the office to receive their service.

They did not even know they had problems. They looked at the end-of-year result, saw a profit, and thought — that is fine. Enough for a comfortable life.

---

What happened?

The first thing that needed to happen was igniting a fire. The founders needed to see what was possible outside the borders of their own community. So we attended events of business owners making upwards of 40.000.000 EUR per year. That alone sparked a vision of what their company could look like. I confronted them with words like funnel, social media and ad campaigns.

What happened after? The first and immediate change was structuring the company. They already had a sales rep and some back office, but everything was spread all over the place. Due to the specific demands of their products, standard CRMs like Hubspot, Pipedrive or Close were not options. We designed a backbone that actually connected the company. The founders finally had an overview of what was happening inside their own business. We built dashboards that delivered actionable data, designed a dedicated sales CRM, and replaced the standard contact form on their website with a Calendly booking as a quick fix. Then I built an automation that pushed new leads directly into the CRM and notified the sales team via Slack.

Internal communication shifted from scattered emails to dedicated Slack channels. Is Slack overkill for a team of fewer than 10 people? Probably. But the vision was to scale, so we set the right foundation and established the right habits early.

On top of that, we introduced digital financial consulting via video call. Suddenly people from all over the country were reaching out. Remote meetings had become widely accepted post-Covid, so it was an easy fix that changed a lot.

Within 3 months, this first round of activity already increased revenue, simply because the probability of closing improved through being organised. The team had visibility on what needed to happen next: upsells, cross-sells, follow-ups. All of it.

With the system in place, the next step was replacing the website with a proper funnel.

The website was barely converting. After introducing Calendly, there were around 2–3 requests per week coming through. Before that, leads landed in some email inbox with no reliability - sometimes zero in a week, sometimes four bookings. Now they were at least organised, and based on their position in the sales process, they received automated yet personalised follow-ups to shorten the sales cycle. On top of that, their local reputation was bringing in another 1–2 referrals per week. In total, we were looking at around 15–20 leads per month.

The major problem remained: zero positioning. They were just another financial consultant.

So the next mission was increasing the volume of booked time slots — in other words, more inbound leads.

For that, we needed a position in the market. So we identified the product with the highest revenue per deal and the best margin, and doubled down on it. It had been their strongest product for a while, we knew it worked.

The next step was setting up a YouTube channel, highly specialised around that core product. YouTube takes time to build, so while the broader marketing engine was being developed, we made sure YouTube was growing in parallel. We scripted and recorded videos and brought in an editor to manage the channel. The founders got more and more comfortable in front of a camera, which is an important step toward building a personal brand and a long-term asset for the business.

Even without changing the website, the lead volume grew. Without thousands of views or subscribers, the YouTube channel was generating another 2 reliable leads per week within the first 3 months. Sometimes more. It does not sound like crazy numbers, but personal branding and building a business is a development, not a switch.

In the meantime, we developed a completely new website. We moved away from just having a website and created a funnel hub. Since they offered multiple services and consultation topics, we designed a dedicated funnel for each - even though the YouTube channel was focused solely on their main consulting topic. This made it easy to redirect a client from Service A to Service B, C and beyond. Customer lifetime value increased, trust in the company increased, and people started consolidating all their financial needs with one provider -> us.

We launched the new website, refreshed the logo, and celebrated with a local event where high-profile leads were invited. Despite the shift toward digital marketing, we made sure the local community felt the momentum. People talked. Some pointed fingers at the ambitious goals being publicly communicated - but that was perfect, because it drove traffic on its own. Nobody had anything negative to say, and that quiet fire burning in this office building made people want to be close to what was happening. The number of business dinners the owners were invited to skyrocketed.

Before a single digital ad went live, we made sure the entire community was already talking about us.

Alongside other local and offline marketing activities, we launched the first ad campaign. More than 50 ad variants, built around 5 core creatives, distributed across YouTube and Meta.

Given their past experience with paid ads, the founders wanted to start with a small budget of 2.000 Euros over 4 weeks.

I started the campaign, ran the usual media buying process of cutting non-performers, and when the winning ad emerged, I doubled down. Cost per lead started at around 70 Euros. With minor optimisation, I brought it below 60 Euros — qualified leads, booking directly through the new landing page.

I burned through the budget within a week and did not say a word. The founders were already in back-to-back sales calls, and instead of shutting the funnel down, I invested my own money to keep the ads running. I did not tell them until much later.

In total, within the first 30 days I had spent 6.334 Euros, which translated to 114 leads. Combined with existing traction from all other sources, we hit a new record — more than 150 leads that month.

The average deal value was around 1.200 Euros. Revenue from those leads exceeded 200.000 Euros. And this is when everyone noticed, that something is clearly working. Just like that year one was already over.

So what had happened so far?

Within the first year, we had essentially rebuilt the company. Automations, email campaigns, marketing funnels, a funnel hub, landing pages, and a new YouTube channel that grew to more than 3.000 subscribers in a notoriously boring niche. We had launched a profitable ad campaign, established a clear cost per lead, and made revenue predictable. We turned the wild open sea into a smooth lake with a beautiful view.

We continued with a combination of paid advertising and YouTube for lead acquisition and settled at a new average of 130 inbound leads per month on average for the new year.

With consistent revenue finally coming in, there was money to build a proper team. That became the next growth step.

What we hired at this stage:

• 3 new sales reps
• 1 full-time video editor
• 1 post-sale and customer satisfaction employee
• 1 graphic designer

We overhauled the entire sales infrastructure. The first sales rep who had been with the company for years became the sales team lead. We offered him equity to accelerate the team's performance by improving his motivation.

Under him, we established a setter and closer model. Every inbound lead was contacted within 30 minutes of registration during working hours. Everything was scripted - the qualification call, the closing call, the onboarding. If a lead was qualified for a consultation, they were handed over to the closer, who delivered a tailored solution.

We ran two parallel teams, each with one setter and one closer. The result was that the consultants - the people with the actual financial expertise - had qualified appointments filling their calendar all day, without wasting time on unqualified leads. Closing rate grew from roughly 30% to more than 70% over the first 15 months.

The video editor took ownership of YouTube. The graphic designer supported with motion graphics and funnel assets. The post-sale hire focused on customer satisfaction and generating testimonials. We organised a full weekend of video production, recorded more than 20 client testimonials, and made it an experience, not just a recording session. That made the second round of interviews even easier to organise, that followed a year later.

We developed new funnels, built freebies, ran webinars and live events in great locations, and used the momentum to push average monthly revenue to 250.000 EUR. Ads were running, YouTube had crossed 20.000 subscribers after several videos reaching hundreds of thousands of views.

Two reliable lead channels. Every 2 months we refreshed messaging slightly and tested it against the current best performers. Budgets scaled as the team grew. By this point, more than 15 people were working in the business - and after all costs, there was still 140.000 EUR in profit per month, pre-tax.

Ad spend was around 15.000 Euros per month with a ROAS above 8. YouTube ran on minimal cost and kept delivering leads consistently.

The next step was launching a referral and affiliate system with genuinely generous incentives for existing clients. We launched it via email campaign and a small retargeting campaign aimed at the existing customer base. Weekly referrals grew from an average of 5 to more than 12.

The lead engine kept growing, bringing new challenges and adaptations with it.

Everything was healthy, everything was working and we intentionally stayed in that position for the remainder of the second year. The only notable addition was a slow, deliberate start on Instagram to expand the brand's reach.

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From day one, I had been planning and working toward the development of a new product built around the founders' personal brand.

As financial consultants, they had one fundamental bottleneck: they were easy to compare. An amazing reputation, hundreds of great reviews, thousands of clients with more than 20 years in business, but at the end of the day, they were consultants. They advised people on which financial product to choose from a broad market of investments, insurance and banking options. And the biggest recurring issue in sales was that a bank could top their offer on loan conditions or insurance policies. It was a constant battle.

I knew this bottleneck would inevitably become a ceiling, so we spent almost a full year developing their first proprietary coaching product.

Their core offer and brand were closely tied to real estate. The founders had an impressive personal real estate portfolio, and much of the content we produced used their own properties as references - practice what you preach. Their audience and clients were well aware of this. Questions about how to invest in real estate came in constantly. The product choice was self-explanatory.

In the software they used to manage client wealth and investments (totalling more than 120.000.000 Euros in funds at this point, managed alongside a senior asset manager) they held detailed financial data on thousands of clients, including current bank statements. We knew exactly who had the financial profile to afford the new programme. We had data. Plenty of it.

So just like every good launch, it started subtle. The sales team began mentioning it casually in calls. Email marketing shifted slowly - from financial products toward real estate investment content. The team grew, and we brought on experts in real estate investment consulting with a dedicated funnel. The founders started networking with real estate developers. The product began building its own demand before it was even announced.

In every sales call, we listened for signals like future intentions to purchase more properties. The personal brand on social media gradually shifted from financial products to real estate investment content. And when we had generated enough attention and demand, we initiated the launch through a sequenced ad campaign, each creative building on the last.

Simultaneously, we screened the existing client base. Without any public announcement, a selection of clients received an invitation box, delivered before the first ad ever went live. Our clients knew something was coming, not through a simple email, but through a well-considered offline approach.

The boxes contained useful content, a market report on real estate, a handwritten invitation from the founders, and a QR code leading to an early registration page alongside other things. The boxes were too high-quality to throw away, too large to ignore, and sat somewhere in people's homes as a constant, silent reminder of who had sent them. We built anticipation. We stayed in their heads up until the due date of the webinar.

The conversion rate was extraordinary. We sent out more than 250 boxes. Within 1 week, 212 registrations had come in for the webinar, along with 16 new appointments for property investment consultations.

The following week, the ad campaign launched — distributed across WhatsApp, email, Meta and YouTube, targeting the existing client base from every angle. The sheer quality of the campaign combined with a strong funnel landed us at almost 980 webinar registrations. The show-up rate dropped slightly compared to previous launches, settling at around 64%.

But the launch was a success. Honestly, the launch itself is a case study on its own.

Out of more than 600 attendees, 62 purchased the programme immediately at 4.500 Euros each which resulted in 279.000 EUR in revenue within a week, including follow-ups. And this was only the first round. The product runs as an evergreen programme, restarting every 4 months. In the second round, another 50 participants joined at a price of 5.500 Euros.

After the successful launch, we developed masterclasses, upsells and additional revenue layers. Combined with all other ongoing activity, the company crossed an average of 500.000 Euros in revenue per month. A significant portion came through recurring contracts, close to 100.000 Euros in passive contract income (a dynamic that is somewhat unique to financial consulting) alongside hundreds of inbound leads and the regular development of new products.

Every 3 months, a new funnel launched. The company grew, the marketing effort grew, and we built an in-house team to manage it.

By investing more money on ads, optimising for conversion, growing leads for both the consulting arm of the company and the coaching side, through the organic personal brand building we have landed at the following numbers through all funnels:

Financial Consultation

• 570+ Leads
• 150-180 new contracts per month (main product - Cross and Upsells not included)

Lead sources

• YouTube (30.000 Subscribers) - 110 leads
• Paid Ads - 150-170 leads
• Referral - 65-75 leads
• Social Media - 15-25 leads

The rest of the leads are through Freebie campaigns, or low ticket entry offers**.**

As of right now around 60% of revenue flows through consultation. 15% through the coaching, and 25% through other income streams.

This whole ecosystem has developed over a total of more than 4 years.

And even though this post is quite long, the actual case study could stretch for longer and longer. Every major step, could be one case study alone.

There is plenty more to say, but I think I stretched it long enough. If you have questions feel free to drop a comment or reach out.

If you want to see the next case study, or want an even deeper break down stay tuned for the next post!

In the meantime cheers to all of you!

- Just another marketing guy