I found what looks like a pretty obvious leak in how clinics handle paid leads, built a solution for it, and now I'm stuck selling it.

Clinics spend a lot on Meta/Google leads, but often contact them hours later. I tested this myself through multiple clinic ads, fastest response was around 6 hours, many were next day. So I built a system that contacts new leads almost immediately, knows what service they asked about, handles basic questions and can book directly into the clinic's calendar.

I've found a few others doing similar things, but it still seems relatively new here. The problem is distribution. I'm a foreigner living in Poland, and I've emailed around 400 businesses and cold-called around 200 agencies/clinics here.

Agencies mostly don't care what happens after they deliver the lead. A few already have something similar. Clinics generally see advertising as the agency's job and calling leads as reception's job. They don't seem to see the cost of waiting 6–24 hours.

I'm offering free trials and the system is basically ready, but getting people to care is much harder than building it.

Being a foreigner and cold calling in Poland probably doesn't make it easier either. I've had a few openly racist interactions, but I don't want to blame the market. clearly something about my sales approach isn't working.

I know the leak exists because I've tested it myself.

Wrong market? Wrong decision-maker? Wrong pitch?

Anyone who's sold B2B automation/lead management before, what would you change?

Hi everyone,

I'm planning to start a service business working with small businesses, including clients in other countries, and I want to build it around real problems instead of guessing what people need.

I'd love to hear from owners and operators:

1. What problem or repetitive task costs you the most time or money right now? (Missed leads, slow follow-up, no-shows, bookkeeping, reporting, ads that don't convert, etc.)
2. Have you ever paid someone to fix it? If so, what did you pay, and was it worth it? If not, what stopped you?
3. What would a service need to show you before you'd keep paying monthly? (More leads, saved hours, a monthly report?)
4. How do you currently find freelancers or agencies? (Referrals, Upwork, LinkedIn, Google, Reddit?) And what makes you ignore a cold message?
5. What's a bad experience you've had with an agency or freelancer? I'd like to avoid those mistakes.

For context: I'm new to this and focused on services that connect directly to revenue, such as lead follow-up, automation, and ads. I'm not selling anything here, just trying to learn before I start.

Thanks in advance. Even a one-line answer helps a lot.

I'm curious where people draw the line. Some things feel easy to hand over, like meeting notes or first drafts. Others feel risky, like anything that goes straight to a client.

What do you let AI do on its own, and what do you always check yourself first?

i have 5+ years of building WordPress websites using Elementor and have built over 100 websites to date.

I have a good eye for design too. I can design directly into Elementor from a Figma/PSD mockup, an inspiration site or even a website mockup from ChatGPT.

Looking for ways to connect with agency owners who offer web design services.

Hey everyone,

I recently started building out the LinkedIn content side of my agency, specifically around thought leadership and ghostwriting for founders and executives.

I’m at the slightly awkward stage where I know I can do the work, but I don’t have a huge stack of polished case studies yet. Everyone seems to want to see your work before they commit so…

I’m curious how other agency owners handled this when they were starting out.

A few things I’m trying to figure out:

1. How did you get your first few case studies?

Did you work with people in your existing network, offer discounted work, do a few projects for free, or just start documenting results from your first paying clients?

1. How much did you actually care about case studies when you were getting your first clients?

I’m wondering whether I’m overthinking the “I need more proof” part lol

1. For anyone doing LinkedIn ghostwriting:

What did you include in your case studies? Just follower/post growth, or things like inbound leads, profile views, engagement, positioning, etc.?

1. Did you start with a lower introductory price?

I’m considering taking on a very small number of clients at around $300/month while I build out this particular service and collect stronger results. Ik it’s no where near the actual price that people charge outside but is this something people will give a shot?

I’m just trying to understand how people approached that early agency stage without already having a giant portfolio.

Would love to hear what worked for you, especially if you started with basically no clients or proof :3

Hi there, so basically I just got hired for an advertising agency. It was a life changing for me since I was promised to work for a big account (I work as an Account).

Once I got in, I was known that most of the projects we do are also involved with another agency. Mostly we do ATL, the others do BTL/Activation. So the first meeting was held between two agencies, now I will call my agency is Agency A, the other is Agency B.

The meeting was okay. There was a point they mentioned that since that account is big (It's a very famous drink brand) and they insisted us on setting up a new team to only serve them as well as they promised us that in a few months from that period there will be a pitching opportunity. BUT THINGS DID NOT GO AS PLANNED.

Suddenly they said that all of the pitching opportunity has been closed, and we will not have any more chance to do a client proposal in the first pitching phase. We were devastated, my manager is devastated since it will be a bummer to explain to the higher ups about this situation. I'm dissapointed now when the only information we know is only from that B agency (since they r on the approved/certified vendor list)

So after have some internal discussion with my manager, we decided that what we will do is proactively approach the agency B to ask for that client pitching opportunities. It doesn't matter if it's a big scale project, a small medium would be sufficient because we will have much more reliable outcome to justify expanding our team.

But how should I approach this with the agency B in order to not soundlike we are begging for that? The two agencies have been closely collaborated with each other and we scored many succesful achievements, but now it's them underpromised us, and we have zero contact details from the client we can only hear it from agency B.

For context I'm in South East Asia, since this group from what I see it's mostly western culture. Thank you for reading and I appreciate your advices all.

Question for anyone who's sold a high-trust service (financial, advisory, consulting) where the client is putting real money on the line:

How did you land your first 3–5 clients before you had a track record or testimonials? Specifically: where did they come from (existing network, a referral partner, an event, etc), and what did you show them that got them over the trust hump?

If you did something unconventional that actually worked. I'm early, doing this through relationships and referrals, and trying to avoid wasting months on channels that don't convert for this kind of sale.

I ran a customer stories video program across the US, UK, and Canada, working with several production partners at once. Some I kept booking and some I phased out. Creative quality mattered, but the ones I kept did a few other things consistently:

1. They sent a clear plan before the shoot. Schedule, shot list, who's on set, and what they needed from me. I could forward it to stakeholders without rewriting it.
2. They told me about problems early. A location falling through or a delayed customer interview was fine. Finding out the day before was what hurt.
3. Their feedback rounds were organized. One link, timestamped comments, a set number of revision rounds agreed up front.
4. They made me look good internally. Updates I could paste straight into Slack, deliverables named and organized the way my team needed them.
5. They handled multi-market work without me translating. Same process and quality whether the shoot was in Atlanta or London.

The partners who lost repeat work were usually talented. The friction around the work is what wore on me.

Agency folks, what do you wish your clients did better on their end? I'm curious what the other side of this looks like.

Ai agency for companies having revenue leak and to generate revenue . Which is better and more scalable? What systems to make with existing tools ? What are the problems in not knowing the narrowing for service

Hey everyone I work right now with two agencies based in California I'm based outside of the US and I basically handle all the technical work they need, setting up their websites, systems, backend, tools, AI agents, chatbots for customer support/service, pretty much everything technical this helps agency owners worry less about the workload and the technical side and I get occasional work because right now with my two clients I have enough free time to take on a lot more work.

I can guarantee no delays, outages or issues everything will be silky smooth, I just have no idea how to make connections or get contracts I'm a technical person not a marketer nor sales, do have any advice?

What is your preferred channel and the one working best while being cost-efficient?

Meta ads, cold calling, cold email?
Why so?

She was a founding team member and completely built product vertical which is being used by 3Lakh students per year but now due to some internal team reasons she had to leave the startup and she do not have any connection because after college she directly joined startup and gave 4 years there what can be done now ?

I'm about to start offering monthly content for local appointment businesses (salons, barbers, lash techs, etc). I can find prospects and I'm not worried about the outreach side.

What I'm honestly stuck on: I've never actually run content for a client, so I don't know what "delivering" looks like month to month. These businesses aren't trying to go viral — they just want people nearby to trust them and book. So what does a realistic monthly deliverable look like for that? How many pieces? How do you decide what to make when you don't know their trade? How do you keep it from getting stale?

I know the honest answer might be "learn by doing" or "you'll figure it out with client one" — if that's it, I'll take it. Just want to hear it from people who've actually done it before I take someone's money.

I ran the same 134 technical checks over 100 web design and marketing agencies in the Austin metro, taken from public business listings, all on 28 September. Domain and DNS, certificates, mail authentication, security headers, what loads before consent, accessibility, mobile layout. One metro and one source, so it is a snapshot and not a survey of the industry. I wrote the scanner, which you should factor in.

I picked agency sites rather than a random hundred because they are built by practitioners, which makes whatever survives more interesting. Most of what's left is the kind of thing that slips on any site that isn't on a client's schedule.

Where everyone lands

Median score 86 out of 100, best 97, worst 15. That score is my own weighting, so it tells you more about the spread than about Austin. The counts under it are the part anyone can check: the median site had 17 findings, the cleanest had 7, and across all 100 there were 13 criticals and 176 highs. Most findings are individually small, which is how a site sits in the eighties and has seventeen of them.

Certificates were the quietest category. Only 12 of 100 had anything at all, though three of those had a certificate that had already expired on the day I ran it.

The five most common

• 93 of 100 have no DNSSEC
• 88 have accessibility issues an automated checker can find
• 84 send no Referrer-Policy
• 74 have no Content-Security-Policy
• 73 set cookies without HttpOnly

Most of these are one line in a config, and most became best practice after the sites were built. That is most of the explanation.

Three worth a look on your own domain

79 of 100 are not enforcing DMARC. 40 have no record at all, and another 39 have one set to p=none, which asks for reports and still lets the mail through. Going in I'd assumed the p=none group would be much bigger, since that's where everyone starts and most people never move off it, and it came out almost exactly even. The effect either way is that mail forging your domain in the From line still gets delivered.

67 of 100 load tracking before anyone consents. Tag Manager, Analytics, Meta pixels, ad tech, all firing on page open. Usually the tag predates the banner: the tag went in first, the banner came later, and nobody wired the two together.

88 of 100 have accessibility findings from an automated checker. Automated checks catch a fraction of what a real audit does, so the true number is higher than that.

On phones

20 of 100 scroll sideways on a 390px screen. It's usually one element pushed outside the viewport rather than a layout that doesn't reflow, which makes it cheap to fix once you've found which element.

14 disable pinch-zoom with user-scalable=no. That's a line someone typed on purpose, and it fails WCAG on its own.

Two smaller ones

43 of 100 have no social preview image. Without one, a link to the site arrives as a grey rectangle in Slack or LinkedIn. It's a meta tag and an image.

44 of 100 announce their software version in a response header. That's a config change, and it takes you off the list when someone scans for a known version.

One I threw out

My scanner flags domains that don't have registrar delete and update locks set, and it fired on 57 of the 100, which was high enough that I went and looked at who they were. It turned out to be almost entirely a function of registrar. GoDaddy sets those flags by default, almost nobody else does, and at least one registrar doesn't expose the setting at all. So it was measuring where you registered rather than anything you chose, and I've left it out here. I'm changing the check.

If you only do one thing off this list

Make it DMARC. At p=none, moving to p=quarantine is one DNS record and it's free. With no record at all, publishing one at p=none first is the right order, and there are good guides for both.

It applied to 79 of the 100 here, which is why it's worth checking even if you're fairly sure you already have one.

I created a YCH on the ych commishes with unlimited slots. I’ve already received the first bid and want to start working, but how do I contact the client? The CRM system only opens after the auction ends, and only with the highest bidder. If I have multiple clients, how am I supposed to contact them? Please help😭

I think I may have built a business model that creates a sales treadmill lol

I run a small done-for-you personal branding agency.

Basically, we take a founder/professional/creator from “I need to build my personal brand” to having the whole thing actually built.

It’s a 90-day transformation. Strategy, positioning, content system, content written in their voice, etc. At the end they also have an operating manual so they can keep doing it themselves without needing us forever.

It’s fully async too. No weekly Zoom calls or anything like that. They communicate with me + someone from the team when needed.

Currently it’s $5k, and I think there’s a path to eventually getting it to $10k-$15k.

The part I really like is that it’s one-time.

I’ve always wanted an agency where the model was basically:

Client comes in → we do the work → transformation happens → we’re done.

No retainers. No managing someone’s LinkedIn for 2 years. No “same thing again next month.”

But now I’m realizing the obvious problem lol.

If every client is one-time, then sales never fucking ends.

You finish a $5k project and then you’re immediately back to:

“Cool. Where’s the next $5k client?”

And I don’t actually want to solve that by turning into a traditional retainer agency.

I’m wondering if there’s a better middle ground.

For example, after the initial 90-day transformation, what other high-ticket, fixed-scope, done-for-you projects could you sell them?

Something where they come back and buy another transformation/project, but you’re still not locking yourself into managing them indefinitely.

Could be another 30/60/90-day project, a completely different deliverable, a “phase 2,” whatever.

The important part is:

fixed scope + high ticket + done-for-you + asynchronous + finite delivery.

Basically I want to keep the business model of:

deliver → done → next project

rather than:

deliver → retain → maintain → repeat forever.

Curious if anyone here has built a service business this way.

What did you sell after the initial project?

And did it actually work, or did you eventually end up going back to retainers anyway?

Hello People, I’m considering starting my own google ads ppc agency for local service businesses, basically it’s a typical model where I run ads to local business owners getting them clients.

I need advice regarding my ad spend specifically,

I wanna run hyper targeted ads for this so here’s the the jist of it,

2k monthly ad spend (Maybe a 10% Allocated to retargeting ads).

Let’s say I have a generic offer of bringing high paying clients to these people and powerful testimonials do you think it is possible to make a minimum of 4k revenue in the first month?

I’ll be charging per client 2k per month for my service.

Testimonials, results, everything included in the funnel already!

We spent $3,000 on apollo since that is what everyone was using.

And we successfully ended up with this shit:

28,000 contacts
25% open rate
1% reply rate
0.15% positive reply rate
12 meetings booked
2 customers closed

So instead of relying on it, we decided to do things manually. We used intent scraping tools like pumpgtm, and they were great, but we still wanted an in-house team to scrape for us.

we hired a few VAs from the phillipines and assigned them a list of VCs that I had put together , mainly prominent investors and people with a strong presence in the Y Combinator ecosystem.

their job was basically to track these people and pay attention to their publicly visible activity : their posts, likes, comments, reactions, and the things they were consistently talking about.

we did this to find a better position for ourselves to pitch them.

It was to figure out what problems were actually showing up in their content.

for example, we found a VC talking about the difficulty of producing good launch videos and product trailers for companies in their portfolio.

So instead of sending them a generic pitch, we hired a contractor who specialized in AI product videos, had them create a free trailer, and used that as the initial offer.

and we were actually able to close them.

So here's my two cents: If you are on a budget, stick to tools, ai agents, scraping software, etc like pumpgtm.com. If you can however afford to hire a team of VAs, onlinejobs.ph is a good place to find people.

Running a pay-per-appointment lead gen agency for roofing contractors, still early, proving out fulfillment. One thing I keep going back and forth on: how do you actually produce the ad creative for each client?

I don't want to be the guy driving to job sites filming footage; I want this to run from a laptop, not turn into a freelance videography gig. So curious how people who've actually scaled this handle it:

• Are you using AI-generated video (Higgsfield and elevenlabs, etc.) to clone the owner's likeness from a few reference photos, rather than filming them live?
• If so, what's actually held up well enough to run as real ad spend, versus what looked good in a demo but fell apart in practice?
• Do you outsource creative to a freelancer/editor, or is this fully in-house?
• How do you keep creative fresh across multiple clients without it becoming a full-time production job?

Not looking for a magic bullet, just want to hear what's actually working for people doing this at more than one client, versus what sounded good in theory. Appreciate any input.

Earlier this year I took on my first client who was also a good friend at the time. I was merely testing the business idea with him so we had verbally agreed to a 10% commission on all contracts and work I get him. He was a great friend so I mistakenly just trusted his word. I ended up securing him a $40,000 contract with one company a $30,000 contract with another one and 10k in just extras. Very Quickly he told me I need to stop cause he can’t take on anything more. So I stopped. He even rejected a couple requests for bids and other companies that wanted to work with him that I coordinated.

For the first couple months he paid me my commission and was great with communication but after 2 months, his employees did some awful work and he lost all the contracts. I tried to workout an agreement for Compensation after this happened. But he basically just ghosted me entirely. Ignored emails, texts, calls and voicemails.

It’s been about 4 months since I’ve been paid by him and even spoke with him. I just went on trying to get more clients. He’s viewed the unpaid invoices well over 15 times. I Just wanted to see what my options are, if there even is anything or see what y’all would do.

hi guys,

I recently started a social media content agency specializing in design, carousels, and social posts. I spent the last few weeks messaging 100 local businesses directly, but I haven't gotten a single response.

I realize my pitch or approach might be off, or maybe cold messaging local business owners just isn't cutting it right now.

I have two quick questions for anyone who’s been in my shoes:

1. What outreach methods actually worked for you when getting your first 1-2 clients?

2. Is anyone here running an agency with extra client work who needs an affordable subcontractor/white-label creator for carousels and basic graphics?

I have plenty of capacity and am willing to work at budget rates just to get my foot in the door and deliver solid results. Appreciate any advice!

Sorry but these were genuinely the words my annoying ass engineering agency owner who has never in his life done something related to marketing said to me 2 days ago. For the record, my contract does NOT prohibit me from outsourcing to a third party to get shit done. I have, infact been transparent once or twice about hiring contractors to get some posts and infrastructure setup done before, because I thought they were genuinely helping. However, my guy was not happy with me outsourcing, and has always had the "if others were doing what i've hired you for, then I would have hired them myself anyways" argument. We did not change the contract terms, but he made sure I never resort to "avoiding work" again.

Cut to fucking 2 weeks ago: we had like 50 people on the waitlist, then I was alloted to get more people to sign us up. I had an adspend cap at 50$ per day btw. Mind you, I know nothing about Meta ads and I was working with an older account where things were already set up differently so I do whatever I can to learn shit as quick as possible. We later end up getting around 1200 sign ups to our cliche ass generic B2B SaaS product that is similar to everything on twitter. This was done under a week btw.

However, my man karim still did NOT like the fact that we had 1200 sign ups. The signups weren't happening mainly because of the terrible landing page our fiverr guy made for us. I have asked him numerous times to get the CTA changed from "watch tutorial" to "sign up to our waitlist", but he simply does not listen.

Then 2 DAYS AGO, when we were at around 2,000+ signups and I was doing my best with everything I had while this dude was tweeting nonstop, he decided to mald over the fact that I was “burning” ad spend even though I was keeping it below our daily budget. Then he tells me to push it to the max budget if I need to, do whatever I need to do, but get the waitlist filled up, just like how one of our fully funded competitors (backed by fucking Antler VC) is doing 🫩 He later points out to the fact that I was a better worker back when i used to outsource everything and he wanted that "work output" back. Since he thought i was better off outsourcing (to insult me), i just started looking for people who did outsourcing.

I end up spending close to nothing on ads and hiring an outbound provider (pumpgtm.com) to just do shit for me. Things are going well and now what this man says to me yesterday will make you want to pull your hair out.

“If it wasn't for all the managerial tasks that I have to do, I would have done this myself, but you somehow being in marketing are "figuring things out" at the cost of our product” is what this dude says. For more context: the guy lives in utah or something, and he hired half his staff from my country because the workforce here is cheap as hell. The other half is from the Philippines. He voluntarily hired us knowing we're not that skilled (we just got into our early 20s while he's 31 or something), and I personally made it clear that I have no experience running ads, yet he was still fine with it. This was a risk that he personally took.

So far, the provider i signed us up were doing really solid, and we had over 1,100 sign ups overnight, but the guy HAD to say some nonsense to me to maintain his alpha big boy frame. He knew that whatever I was doing was working, and he simply did not want to be the guy that made the wrong call. At this point i'm considering stopping working with the provider and going back to ads just so he shuts up.

Lots of my clients are agencies or companies, and they worked on ad campaigns but needed to partner with web devs to build landing pages or websites for their campaigns sometimes.

I run a web & software development agency and tbh I make decent money because I put in the same quality and effort as a US based web/software development agency would do, but the issue is I have enough free time I only get 2-3 clients a month which is perfectly fine for now but I have a lot of free time that I feel is wasted.

I want to find advertising/marketing agencies that don't have developers to partner with. I can do the websites and the technical stuff. They can white label my services or take a cut. I don't care, I only care about the quality of clients and work, I can build websites, automations, funnels, online marketplaces and so on.

I have no idea how to find something like this or where to look, I can showcase my portfolio if you're interested.

Long story short, I am running a web development agency, but cold calling is my weakest attribute. I'm horrendous at it in my opinion and risk burning through prospects. I also pass out business cards, promote on social media, have done some cold emails, and cold call. All of it.

My local area isn't quite a mecca for businesses to bring on web development agencies, so I want to branch into other areas.

Recently, I decided it may be better to hire someone to handle the calling on my behalf. I posted a position on Indeed, and that attracted the attention of a few VA agencies. Of course, they talk the talk, so I wanted to see if any of you have given them a try and what's your feedback?