How Delano went from one-off projects to $250,000 yearly deals (Growth Partner Case Study)

After working with over 200 agency owners, the single biggest thing preventing their growth is charging too little.

They end up getting stuck working with cheap clients who don't respect them and just treat them like a supplier.

And that is the exact situation Delano was in.

In this video, we'll break down exactly how he was able to sign 3 growth partner deals without any prospecting, transition from 15k deals to 250k deals and reduce stress by increasing his monthly recurring revenue.

Thank you very much for sharing your experience of working with us inside the Growth Partner Accelerator.

Can you give a bit of an introduction to yourself and your business?

My name is Delano Kovarubias, and I'm the CEO and founder of a company called CourseClout.com.

And I've been going for about 2 years doing online courses.

We do streamlined Hollywood style online course creation as a service.

Worked for 2 course creation agencies or companies before this and then went on my own freelancing.

Freelancing slowly became kind of a small agency if we can even call it that and yeah I've just been grinding for a while and you know I got to a point where doing one-off online courses required getting new clients over and over and over again.

And it put us in a really stressful position because we'd have to manage so many accounts.

And when you're just getting started, you may not be pricing your services correctly or in the most optimal way.

And so it became really stressful for the entire team.

We had so many clients, we weren't charging them enough, and we were just being pulled in all directions.

So that's kind of when I started looking for help.

I think I talked to elite CEOs, maybe 1 or 2 other programs.

And then I think I followed someone and they just make sense, right?

Recurring revenue, that's what we all want.

And it's a benefit for both parties if say we're more invested in their success and we're all comfortable with our capacity and delivering in the best way we can.

And so we slowly made this transition and we're currently trying to make this transition into the growth partner model, combined kind of with our course creation services and So far so good.

And I'm really grateful for all the content you guys have shared with us.

You mentioned kind of moving from one-off projects to more sort of recurring revenue, sustainable income, higher fees.

What are some of the changes that you've made?

So, you know, I started getting value from your content just from the resources, like, that were, like, free.

And I started thinking about implementing those really fast and kind of jumped straight into the proposal and kind of the sales call process.

So the three-step sales call process, implemented that, implemented the sales, and then kind of the case study and resources in between the first and second call.

In terms of how our model has changed, we basically had something like 15 clients doing one-off online courses.

So it's in 3 milestone payments at start, at production, and then the last 1 upon completion.

Well, I basically got most of those clients on a kind of check-in call slash like final delivery call.

And I'm still doing that with some, and let's saying like, hey, you know, just letting you know, we're gonna start targeting, you know, 1 plus mil companies, 20 plus employees, and offering ongoing course creation and marketing services.

Wanted to let you know that we're making this transition.

If it was something you're interested in, you know, definitely want to service you to the best of our ability because, you know, we have this relationship now.

So, and they're like, yeah, I'm interested in what you have to offer there.

You know, having everything under 1 roof for them is definitely a value add.

And so, then started putting together like, you know, these marketing proposals that were just like service stacked.

So like 2 to 4 courses per year and full stack marketing services and was able to land a few of our current clients and transition them into recurring clients, which is huge for us.

I've always wanted to break into retainers and recurring revenue, never really had the belief system to do that, like we talked about.

And I know there's even another level of beliefs to break through and so that has been a huge kind of stress relief, a lot of pressure relieved for us and So I know it's just the start.

A lot of them are trials as well, but kind of seeing light, right?

So you actually didn't even have to prospect new clients.

You were just able to upsell some of the clients that you'd already had into a higher and recurring revenue package.

Those 3, those 3 were all current clients.

And what were the sort of deal sizes sort of beforehand and what do they look like now?

So I'm just gonna pull up this message So before we generally did courses for 15 grand for a premium online course and platform Then we transition into the recurring courses and marketing.

We've got 1 for 6 grand flat fee and then 6k for 3 months.

The second 1 was 5.3K at 12 months for 10%.

So that 1 has a bit of a trial period as well, but they seem to really enjoy our services.

And then the last 1 was 5.8K for 12 months.

And that's someone because of the help of the program that I was already servicing monthly, but was able to kind of get authorization to pull from their account monthly, instead of invoicing.

And kind of formalize our agreement a bit more.

And then there's 1 last 1, which is pretty cool.

But because of your, just the proposal process and the three-step sales script.

So we've got a trial for 28 modules for a senior living organization to take on a grant they got.

And basically it's a 7.5k trial or proof of concept.

And then the full project is going to be worth 230 grand assuming we get past this first part.

So going from like 15 K up to 250 K projects That's insane Without pushing hard prospecting side of things yet.

And during this time, obviously, if someone's kind of listening to this might be thinking, well, how is Delano just increased in such a short period of time?

Can you share maybe sort of what how those conversations went with the clients because from my experience, it's been, it's pretty easy to close growth partner deals with it being a win-win and especially it's being incentivized by the growth share because I know that some clients that even 15K can be hard to close, yet I find closing larger ones like 100k, 200k deals a lot easier.

Can you just share your experience of how that's worked with you and your clients?

You know, I'd say for the most part, these folk that have closed, you know, they closed so it's been pretty smooth.

But there's maybe, you know, if I look at my proposals right now, there's maybe, maybe like 3, 2 or 3 for 5, I've maybe done 5 of these, and maybe have landed 2 or 3.

And, you know, 1 of them, their purchasing power wasn't there.

The other 1, I might've not followed up enough and just got, you know, heads deep in ops, and then maybe like 1 or 2 pending.

And it's because my clients were kind of one-off course creation clients.

I'm still not really talking to my ideal customer.

So right now I'm just turning, trying to phase these folk out and turn them into recurring clients.

But hopefully when we turn the outbound lead gen back on, I can talk to some bigger dogs and yeah, try to close them.

I just need to see the light or something.

I just need to change the belief system, I don't know.

You mentioned belief system before, I think at each stage of your growth, there's always a belief system to break.

When something's not going right in your life, business, it's normally that you have a belief system that's not serving you.

So as soon as you re-engineer that to how you actually want to live and behave and stuff, that you'll get there no problem.

Steven's proven it on the content creation side, so I definitely know you can.

In terms of the growth that you've had as a sort of a business owner during this time, like what's kind of changed there?

Because you mentioned, you know, you wouldn't even identify as like a sort of a micro agency sort of freelancer to where you are now.

How are you thinking about business differently?

I'd say because of these wins early on that there's a certain level of energy in the organization that wasn't there before.

I think a lot of it can be attributed to some of these recurring clients.

People, you know, the team seeing like some sustainability.

So, you know, for example, someone's birthday and you know, to see like 10 to 20 happy B-days, unprovoked, and the general channel is like, wow, people are engaged, right?

And also, he's just a great key team member.

But there's that aspect, thinking about ways to keep folk more engaged, doing some emotional intelligence workshops with 1 of the clients that I landed because of the program and thinking about how, you know, we've got this pie chart of energy, you know, we talk about sales and marketing, we talk about ops.

Something that I haven't really focused on, but I'm trying to focus on more is, you know, allocating some of that energy to just being a better boss.

Like, if you think about your worst boss ever and your best boss ever and how they both made you feel, like, where are you?

And so, you know, me not having the highest amount of energy a lot of the time, right, in terms of like charisma and being enthusiastic, like putting some effort into that, right?

And changing people's lives that are working with me, like they, you know, they allocate so much of their lives to just like what we're doing.

And so just thinking about making people's lives better is something that I'm trying to do as well.

Because of Growth Partners, more or less now I'm an official organization with some sustainability, I can have some breathing room to do that.

So hopefully because we're still trying to grow but yeah.

So you're looking at it a bit longer term, really building a good culture, a good team, so it's not just kind of relying on you as much.

And out of the engagement with ourselves, Where did you see the sort of key amount of benefits?

I know you mentioned sort of really getting the sales right and the deal structure.

Can you dig into maybe like 2 or 3 parts where you're like, oh, you know, these are because of this, these are the things that I changed and it made all the difference yet again, just if someone's watching, It really gives some really nice insights for them.

I would say, you know, first things that benefited me from the growth partners was the mindset shift.

You know, there's no reason for me to be charging 1 off per every client, like flat fees per client and 3 milestones.

I should be shooting for recurring clients and kind of be ruthless with that, right?

So changing my business model there immediately, right?

With some help and some hand holding, more or less, with the content you guys, immediate change that has been beneficial.

I've always, I was overdue on sales training, right?

And so putting a process there, asking the right questions and the disco calls and the sales calls, you know, what kind of resources am I going to send between those calls?

Those resources, Huge value, huge value there.

You close 1 deal because of your sales process, pays for everything for the growth partner program, right?

And so super cool sales process, deal structures.

If you customize those in a great way, the notion, it looks like it comes from a modern professional organization.

So using that proposal template in your own way, huge value.

It's going to put your best foot forward when you try to close new folks.

It's the bald head, you guys say, which I love.

Thinking about where our bald head might come, you know, at some point.

But he helped us with a spreadsheet, right?

For how much are we making from each client?

How much are we spending on each contractor or team member?

And so we just started that like last week.

But those are some of the, you know, main value adds so far.

And I'd say last 1 is just community, going to the wins channel, changing that belief system, all these folk doing amazing things.

And you get pushback on a 3k per month deal Being too much and then you go to the wins channel and you're Like what the hell this guy's closing like 20K per month and I'm doing way more.

I'm just not giving my money, but you know, pay me what we deserve, right?

know, the perspective and I don't know, seeing that helps.

I have a theory that even without the skills just being in an environment where other people are winning and doing more and being part of that would make me successful alone.

I can only speak from me, but just being around people who are getting after it, who have less experience than you, who are making more money than you, it makes you break that belief system.

But it's great that you got a huge amount of value from a lot of the technical stuff as well.

You mentioned, obviously, you were reviewing who or which company could help you on the next stages of your growth and you mentioned a couple of the leading suppliers within the market space for kind of online marketing and sales and CEO and stuff like that.

What made you select, and I'm very grateful by the way, but what made you select the Growth Partner?

They all have the exact same kind of sales process and onboarding flow for like, or like, you know, sales process.

I think everyone probably uses GoHighLevel or something.

I don't like feeling like just another, just another like lead, right?

They put you on with a sales closer and they're super kind of robotic and like definitely have a script or salesy.

And I'm just like, okay, like what is going on here?

Automated text, automated email, watch this video before the next call.

And so like, I don't really like feeling like, like I'm just in the process or another lead.

And then with you guys, I was already sold, but then I got to talk directly with you and Jacob.

And then, you know, after the call, you send me like just bullets of like things to look at.

Like I don't want like a templatized message, right?

You send me bullets, everything's relevant to you.

Because it was just kind of personal, it was casual, and the content spoke for itself, right?

I don't know, it could have been a tactic, it could have been some psychology, but that was just refreshing to me and so I've been trying to be more casual too on my like follow-ups and like Like how I present a deal not a huge proposal, but maybe just some bullets The ultimately more personal experience and You guys are on Twitter and I follow a lot of big folk on Twitter.

So yeah, and you guys are solving an actual problem.

It's not, you know, just the lead generation via ads.

It's creating an entire offer and pivoting your entire business model to be more sustainable, which is going at the root of the issue versus like if we close more deals, what kind of offer are we going to make to these folks?

Or if we get more leads, what does the sales process look like at that point?

They might help with that kind of stuff too, but you guys kind of do all that plus offer creation.

What surprised you about, you know, what was kind of different in terms of, oh, I actually didn't think that this would be a big change or that I'd receive as part of it.

I know you mentioned some things like Yang with the spreadsheet and stuff like that.

But is there anything else that you're like, actually, I didn't think I needed to do this thing because it doesn't says it's not really promoted and online but actually this was actually really important for the growth of my business.

Is there anything like that that popped up for you?

The amounts of customization in a proposal, I think is necessary.

I think a good amount of customization to really connect and close a client and you guys lay it out in a really good way.

So I kind of knew I needed to do that, but you guys helped get over that edge and that hump, sales process, the script.

Can it give you the framework for what you already, you thought you needed, but allowed you to go deeper.

That's exactly correct and yeah hoping to do that next round right like that 15k a month hoping would be awesome.

Our clients who are at the higher end, the sales process was less rigid, more personalized, more bid sending over, communication back and forward, meeting with the team, building the project and the proposal together.

And I think the taking actually the time to understand learn about the partner who you bring on board is super important because a lot of your money will come from the rev share so you don't just want to sell a client you want to really find a good partner and that's why in our business when when I met with you yeah we want people to join the accelerator a hundred percent but we don't want anyone to join the Accelerator.

We want the right people to join the Accelerator.

And I think just that small change within your business can make all the difference, because you're actually looking for the best partner rather than just trying to make sales.

When you're looking for the best partner, it's very easy to make sales.

Because, like, does this fit or does it not fit?

I mean, that's, for me, that's 1 of the beauties of the partnership model, you know?

Because you're both incentivized by the upside, it's a win-win.

If someone's on the fence, Delano, because I know that you did take some consideration in working together, and someone's maybe concerned from a will-list faith, an investment perspective, stuff like that, I know you mentioned that 1 small part of the deal covers all of the investment, but can you just, if someone's listening and they're kind of on the fence, what would you say to them?

I'd say watch the videos that are sent over.

If you get that from somebody on the Growth Partner side, watch all the resources, check out that free masterclass that they have.

You can get value just from that, and you'll understand, you know, it's gonna click, it'll make sense, right?

I'd say watch this video if you're here by now, hopefully all of that sold you, right?

So, you know, this is my first ever kind of big purchase in a program and our investments in a program and it's paid off so far.

I did a lot of due diligence in other programs and I went with this 1.

I knew I needed a community, I knew I needed some structure, I knew I needed to get to that next level.

And so I'm a very skeptical person, whether you take my word for it or not.

And so I made the decision and it's been really great.

So I would definitely recommend you to join and connect and get going.

Thank you Jelano, I know you made a good few clicks on the links that were sort of sent over, you mentioned that you'd kind of revised all of them so I think your diligence you know is definitely done by you and Every investment that you make in a business can seem daunting, especially those early stages ones as the business is just starting to turn over or you're bridging into the next phase.

It feels like a little bit of a make or break.

So I'm very grateful and proud that the investment paid off and I'm super pleased that you're on board.

Thank you very much for sharing your experience.

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How this 27-year-old closed $250,000 in 2 months (Growth Partner Case Study)