Back in 2013 I founded what would go on become the largest affiliate marketing forum in the world and had just started my CRO agency alongside it.
I was selling CRO services & landing page designs to our members and we got pretty damn good at it!
Fast forward to 2017 I received a seven figure offer from Neil Patel to acquire my forum and with that made the best/worst decision of my life.
I thought to myself this is it. I can sell off the forum and focus solely on the agency and grow it into something incredible!
I sold off my baby for (at the time) The biggest payday of my life. But shortly after things started going wrong…
In a few short months my income went to zero and was rapidly burning through my hard earned nest egg!
I had scaled up the team, brought on killer developers, CRO experts, account managers everything I needed to build the best CRO agency in the world. Sounds like a recipe for success right?
Up to that point I had been running our affiliate forum for a number of years and my CRO agency was building and optimizing landing pages for all our members and these pages were CRUSHING!
It was obscene the amount of additional revenue my clients were making from our work…
So when the offer from Neil came in I thought…
This is it.
This is my chance.
I’ll take the payday, pivot and focus all my energy on the agency full time!
This was the best/worst decision of my life…
In a few short months my income went to zero and was rapidly burning through my hard earned nest egg!
I had scaled up the team, brought on killer developers, CRO experts, account managers everything I needed to build the best CRO agency in the world. Sounds like a recipe for success right?
…WRONG!
We signed a whole range of clients off the back of our past successes.
DTC brands, health and wellness coaches, lead gen, consultants, anyone we could bring on as clients to scale this agency.
But in a few short months, despite my grand designs and best efforts things weren’t going right.
I had the team, I had the clients, I even had the cash to throw fuel on the fire.
But the only thing happening was my hard earned money was going up in smoke…
All the new clients we onboarded we struggled to get them results and they were leaving us in droves.
Everyday I kept the agency open was another day closer to being completely broken.
I couldn’t sleep, I’d argue with my business partner all day then lay awake at night thinking about the worst case scenario.
The clock was ticking.
There was only so long I could keep going like this before I was broke, miserable and would have to go back to being a chef to make ends meet. Something I swore I was done with years ago…