How Christian Bonnier Became a 7-Figure Copywriter

Joseph DiRico: 0:02

All right, let's go, bro. Thanks for hopping on. Appreciate it.

Christian Bonnier: 0:06

Yes, sir. Happy to be here, bro. Appreciate you.

Joseph DiRico: 0:09

So we first worked together like a year ago and since then you've been working on a bunch of crazy shit. You've got your own Sass now you've got a big community. So excited to learn a bit more about that come up. I mean, a lot of kids that I know myself included at a school, we don't know what we're doing. We stumble around for a bit, it could take 510 20 years you seem to have right out the gate just dominated from the start. So we'd love to learn about your background a little bit. Yeah,

Christian Bonnier: 0:39

man, appreciate it. I'll just dive in. So my name is Christian. I'm a cold email copywriter, and I graduated college in 2021 and December, and I was already running an agency at the time in college. But we didn't really take it full time until we graduated. So myself and my two co founders met in school started an agency did decent with it. And we set a goal that we would be able to live off it full time by the time we graduated hit that moved to Florida as a unit all three of us got an apartment together grinded for a year hit 100k a month with an Agency launched client ascension and got a two comma Club Award with client ascension our coaching program I'll actually switch out hats real quick the climate disruption

Joseph DiRico: 1:21

reprimands we got subprime Yeah.

Christian Bonnier: 1:24

So yeah, we have client ascension and then obviously lists kit is our our baby on the software side where we're selling. You know, triple verified b2b email leads for your cold outreach campaigns. Awesome. So yeah, it's been a lot dude, but it's fun.

Joseph DiRico: 1:40

So with copywriting because I went, I went through this years ago, where I bought like, the Gary Halbert letters, I bought all these different books. I was really overthinking it. So how did you learn copywriting? Because it's it's a big skill on Twitter that everyone says like, if you learn this, you'll be rich. You'll never have to work again. Yeah, how did you how did you learn it? And then also, how did you get the confidence to then start selling it as a service?

Christian Bonnier: 2:05

Yeah, so I mean, honestly, the way I learned like back in 2020, there wasn't a lot of cold email copywriting material on the market. So the way I learned it was copywriting in general, I would like handwrite old ads, I don't know it's like the cliche thing, but it actually. So handwriting old ads from like the 1920s was how I got like the general gist of copy itself. And then just cold email copy, I took cold email Wizards Course there's no our business partner. But at the time, we took his program. And I basically learned what a good cold email looks like, and took it and ran with it. Because like I said, there was no Twitter threads or stuff like that to go off of back then it was just like a really new frontier. So I kind of came up with like the one sentence cold email and things like that. And then just like dozens and dozens and dozens of hours of reps, just writing cold emails, getting feedback, seeing the stats, see what's working to the point now where it's like, it's been three years in the game, and I can look at a cold email like a, like an idiot savant. And be like, all this is raw, like, it's just so second nature to me now. But that's true for any skill. Like you're not going to get to that point, unless you put in years of effort. You know what I mean? So,

Joseph DiRico: 3:15

yeah, like, three years, like, let's say, when, when you were just starting out, if you had told that college graduate, hey, it's gonna be three years, you're gonna have to grind but you're gonna see the results, like, people want that instant gratification. But it took a few years. But in retrospect, three years isn't even that long of a time. Yeah. Like even 25 yet?

Christian Bonnier: 3:37

No, I'm 24 on Sunday, so I'm playing Mr. Happy birthday. Thanks, bro.

Joseph DiRico: 3:44

Dude, so had it so you guys, like me and my friends in college? We played rugby. We did not do I think we did like student government. And we tried to like stage a coup that was about as productive as, as we were. So what like what type of? How did you guys even get involved in this as you choose it? And how did you ultimately stay focused at a time where most kids just

Christian Bonnier: 4:07

partying? Um, I mean, I got lucky. I mean, I still had my fair share of fun, but it was like college you just have all this free time. Like if you're taking business school, you're maybe taking two hours a Class A day you go and check for your homework, you don't study. So it's like I had all this time and like most people that would, you know, a lot of my friends, I love my friends, but they would just, you know, play Xbox and smoke weed. So it's like, sure I could have done that with my time or I was fortunate enough to meet Andre my business partner and Dan, and you know, work on an agency because my parents are like getting internships or applying for jobs. And I'm like, Listen, guys, if this works out with these guys, with my own company, I'm never going to work a real job. My parents let me go off and do that with them. So you know, it was just like, I guess investing my time into growing a business instead of an internship or a student government or business leaders club on campus right? Because I felt like that was the best use of my of my free time was to actually get experience running a business. And then it just kind of snowballed into like, Alright, now we actually have clients, so I actually have shit to do, right? That's kind of what happened.

Joseph DiRico: 5:12

How did you get that first wave of clients while you guys are in college?

Christian Bonnier: 5:16

Yeah. So the first couple clients were luckily through Daniels, he had like a whatsapp or discord group or whatever, for cold email. And there was like 20 people in there. And Andre was really, really active in there and giving away free value and tips and stuff like that. And people reach out and we started doing pay per call lead gen for like five different agencies. And like four of them failed, because they had really shitty offers. And we were just taking on anybody get a hold of, but we had one good case study that we leveraged, and then we ran up a huge cold email campaign to sign our own clients. And paper calls pretty easy to sell. Like, it's, you know, I got you on the phone with a cold email. You only paid me for calls. Okay. Yeah, sounds good. So we got to like 20k a month, just doing pay per call, like 300 bucks a call. That's it. And then we kind of like restructured into retainer, and then a lot of different models along the way. But just starting out, it was just like, from a group that we were in. And then we had one singular case study that we use to run campaigns, and we're growing on Twitter, it's like back then there were you know, Legion agencies are a dime a dozen nowadays. But back then we were one of the only people on Twitter talking about it. So it was pretty easy to find clients. Well,

Joseph DiRico: 6:23

dude, I found you through Twitter, if you remember, like I Yeah, exactly. I needed help writing cold emails, right. And I went to Twitter and I searched cold email because I was like, maybe maybe a thread will just pop up and I'll find someone because I was sick of Upwork because duds, it wasn't getting results. And I found a thread that you wrote. And that's how that's how we initially met. Yep.

Christian Bonnier: 6:46

Absolutely, bro. That's I mean, biggest piece of like, content is such a lever to pull because people will seek you out that don't even know who you are. Like, people know that they want what you offer, but they don't know who you are. Then they see your content. They're like, Oh, shit, this kid knows this stuff. You know what I mean? Sure. So. So

Joseph DiRico: 7:04

you, you guys had the agency and then did decline ascension evolved out of the agency.

Christian Bonnier: 7:11

So yeah, we we had our agency going right. And it was going well. And then Daniel took notice of us because we were like the only ones being active in building in public on Twitter, I guess you could say he's called Email wizard. Yeah, yeah. He was like our mentor turned business partner, we teamed up to launch the Vault, which was like a PDF swipe file of conversations from cold email. And we ran up like a ridiculous amount of money on that one time info product. And he was like, Alright, why don't we just launch a program? And we're like, let's do it. So we joined forces, to build client ascension, and it was a shift, it was not good. At first, it was like, one call a week. We had like, 10 people in there who never ran a business before it was not a good product. But it gradually evolved into like, 20 expert coaches, live calls all this fun stuff. Right. So client ascension was like a really rough start, but it got really, really good. And now I would argue it's like, one of the best programs on the marketplace in terms of results and community and loyalty and, you know, culture. So

Joseph DiRico: 8:10

yeah, so not only I'm assuming at first, your your cold emails weren't the best in the world as well. You went through there was a learning curve?

Christian Bonnier: 8:19

Yep. Absolutely. I mean, it's funny, because the one sentence called email was like, one of my first ideas, and it's like one of the best strategies we've ever ran. So I wouldn't I mean, I wasn't really good quickly. I just had a really good idea. Like the one sentence cold email was my thing for like, the first year, so it was easy. But yeah, like my follow ups were not good. Like a lot of it was scattered around and long winded and not the best. But yeah, I mean, now I'm at a point where it's like, cold emails a lot harder, but I've also got better at it. So I mean, yeah, dude, honestly, when we first started, it was like, easier to get results, because people would just be like, Yeah, this is cool. Let's talk versus now. They're like, you're my 85th email today. Fuck you like Yeah, yeah.

Joseph DiRico: 9:05

So both the cold emails, which turned into the copywriting, and then even client ascension, they weren't perfect at the beginning. And then you just battled through that, and kept with it. And ultimately, it snowballed into what you guys have to get, right? That's like a big thing. I mean, it's, it's frustrating when people are just starting out, because you're probably not going to be that great at it. And you're also you said, Hey, we had like one call per week, right? Or one client, so it's gonna be slow, but the key is not getting bored. Right? Because you're gonna get bored, you're gonna jump to something else and that's gonna suck too. So you got to choose one lane and stick with it long enough to see the see the results happen. Yep.

Christian Bonnier: 9:49

100% A lot of people when we were in the game in 2021, there was like, I guess like a graduating class of cold email guys. And nowadays, like I think Nick gave for him is the only one that still with it with it with us. Like, there was a whole wave of cold email guys, and none of them are here today. So like, if you can last like three years and with a specific business, you're gonna outlast everybody around you. It's like, I don't know if it was Gary Vee or Mozi. It's like, it's just a battle of lasting longer in the game, like in the marketplace. Yeah.

Joseph DiRico: 10:19

And you're you're one of the few examples of like, you see people talk on Twitter, right? It's like start an agency, build a community launch a SaaS product. And you guys have executed that pretty flawlessly in a short amount of time. So you took the community and the community, I assume is the essentially seeded your initial user base for LIS kid?

Christian Bonnier: 10:41

Yep. I mean, it's funny, because it's like the overnight success paradigm where people think like, oh, let's get was born overnight. And on paper, yes, because the software launched four months ago, and it's crushing now. But we thought of less kids two and a half years ago. So like, the shit that nobody sees that they deem an overnight success is like, starting it off as a productized service, like, making 10 km month, investing over six figures and some failed development with a bad team, almost scrapping the entire thing, because we couldn't find a good development team, spending two months negotiating a deal with our now CTO, like, it's just been two years that nobody has seen. And now they're like, Oh, you guys blocked so quick. It's like, yeah, because if you have like the the ground level, like what you people have seen is this quick spike, but like what nobody saw was like this massively slow, underground process that you know, Maitlis get what it is. So I think that's true for any business. Like if you can build and grow something for long enough, like, once it's public, it's going to take off because we've been building a brand around ourselves in the meantime, and that's the primary driver of Linscott customers, for sure.

Joseph DiRico: 11:51

Yeah. And another thing I think is big for you guys, is you were hustling at a school, you were getting results and then cold email wizard took notice of you. And I'm sure that helped boost it too, right. So what people don't realize is when you when you have a small following, if you're consistently demonstrating that you are good at what you do, and you're hustling, people are are watching. And then if someone does take notice of you like that, it could help really skyrocket the growth further. So I think that's, that's what's important. Like, you may not have a million followers, but if you get the right eyeballs on you who take an interest in you, they could help you level up a lot faster.

Christian Bonnier: 12:32

I mean, the some of the bigger accounts on Twitter got so big, because they just tweet like platitudes and like, some bullshit that no one cares about. But if you have a really, if you have audience depths, meaning like your followers are following you for your knowledge, and they're in your marketplace. Like that's way more valuable than a million followers who are like, you know, stay at home mom, I don't know, like, yeah, you want people that are actually in your marketplace? And are potential customers more than anything? Definitely.

Joseph DiRico: 13:02

So when it came to, when it came to lists, kit, I when I was looking at the website, dude, I can't believe that you guys have almost like 20 people on the team. Yeah, that's not because a lot of nothing very popular on Twitter is solopreneur. Or it's you and a few of your boys. Yeah. So how did you guys already grow to almost 20 people? And it's not just all money, Twitter people either, like I saw I forget which title he has, but it says his, his Northstars arr. So you have like, it's all virtual? Yeah, so you have all over like, real professionals on the team, too. So how did you how did you build a team around your your core group? And how are you guys managing that?

Christian Bonnier: 13:46

Yeah, so it's pretty funny because I'm looking at the website now. So myself, Andre and Dan started an agency we brought in Daniel to form client ascension. Oliver was like the first ever client ascension customer. And he's like, just an absolute Savage, like, has an extra under his belt runs our entire dev team. So like, we were lacking a development team because we wanted to build the software but we had no clue how and we like wasted time with a bad because we didn't know what to look for. And then also it's like, Hey, guys, I can find you a dev team and lead it and build a team and you know, I have an experience with an exit so we're like Alright, fuck yeah, let's bring over and he's the missing piece brought all of her in as an like an equity partner. So there's the five of us. And then he went out and built this development team that you see here, which is like Alex Alexander Costea Alia Alyssa Dan, you know, Julia J, like all of these people that they're pretty much all like Ukrainian like absolute savage developers, and we don't. Myself and Andre and Danna Daniel don't interface with them ever. We don't talk to them. We don't know about their day. We don't speak nothing. Oliver. Does the whole development side we relay the bugs to him. We relay the product updates to him. They build it. It's like a wall in between. And I think it works really well because we don't overwhelm the developers with like a bunch of requests. He manages the team and the company morale. He goes out and hires new people. All this shit is coded like insanely well, and I have no clue how they do it. But yeah, well done it. And then we have a couple of salespeople, and inbox manager and onboarding specialists, like everyone that signs on for lists get gets a one on one call with our onboarding specialists, which is like, in the SAS space. And we have Kanaan who's like our customer success manager. So yeah, dude, we're building a squad.

Joseph DiRico: 15:35

Yeah. And people. When they hear agency, they're like, I don't want to trade my time for money, bro. Yeah. But by doing that, you experienced problems that were very niche. And you were able to build a solution around them to cater to your own sort of needs there. Yep. And that ultimately, that's what everyone wants, right? They want to SAS they want an econ product that they can that they can exit. Now you guys have that? Yeah,

Christian Bonnier: 16:02

I mean, everyone's like, oh, like agency is the best Springboard because when you build a skill set, you build an audience, you build expertise, you get a client base. And then like, Liz Kip, for us was our own pain point. Like, we hate building lists. We hate verifying shit. Let's just build a database ourself, and now we have it. So in the time that we've gone from agency to SAS, it's like, we've built the audience, we have the demand for it, we have the product market fit. So like, you can't just go into a marketplace and you can do it. But it's a lot harder to launch a SAS before you you're familiar with the space and have the rent built up. Definitely.

Joseph DiRico: 16:34

So what what is the like the growth strategy looked like in this case, obviously, you had the, the springboard with a built in community from client ascension. What else are you guys doing to get the name out there? When you think of zoom info, and you think of Apollo, those are pretty big incumbents. So how do you guys compete with with those bigger dogs?

Christian Bonnier: 16:54

Yep, so we do our own cold email campaigns, obviously, we have like 500 domains. So we're absolutely railing like 15,000 emails a day. And booking like a lot of demos, and people will just sign up without even hopping on the phone. So just spreading our name through our own organic content, our own communities, we're doing affiliates, like we're reaching out to big cold email programs and having whiskey that designated data provider. And then people were just like, I got on the call. Somebody's like, yeah, I just Googled, like b2b data, and you guys were on there. So like just shoving that footprint out slowly with cold traffic, existing customers, affiliates, SEO or starting up ads. We're gonna have the SEO game and the database is cool, because you can build a people page for everybody in your database. So if someone searches up Christian Bonnier or Joe DiRico Eventually the goal is that like lists, kits, people pages, the top one, it's like, Do you want his emails? Fine? Yeah.

Joseph DiRico: 17:55

That's genius, bro. And then how much has your individual social profiles benefitted listed as well? Because if you look at so something, you know, gone, right. Like

Christian Bonnier: 18:09

the SAS you never Yeah, like

Joseph DiRico: 18:11

you never, you never worked in the like the b2b SaaS base like most of us have. So Gong is like something that we always get blasted on LinkedIn, they got they have really good content marketing, like really good cheat sheets that you can go and download on the website, things like that. But one of the big ways that they grew was they encouraged all their employees to interact with each other's LinkedIn posts. They're making each other go viral, essentially on LinkedIn. And then that all lead back to God. And I think something kind of similar that that you guys have done. You all have really good presences on Twitter, and then that ultimately flows back to the list kid as well. Yep.

Christian Bonnier: 18:53

100%, bro. I mean, yeah, I've been fucking around on Tik Tok a lot but that's not less kid related. Still trying to figure out how to tie in business to my Puck or my tic tock but

Joseph DiRico: 19:04

we'll get ya do talk to me about tick tock man, I saw you like on the news. I saw you got like millions of views like what's what's good with that?

Christian Bonnier: 19:14

And so I always like in our space, like guys like Mason and bend or they crush it with tick tock. And I saw that I'm like, Alright, not their videos are not edited. It's just them like in front of their phone like this talking about it. So I'm like, I always have these thoughts that I usually tweet and they do all right. But I'm like, what if I just make these like videos? So I just started like, I do one or two a day it takes maybe five or 10 minutes I'll just like talk about a topic. Clip it up add captions post it it takes like five minutes and my first couple of videos bombed and then one got like 100k I was like, Holy fuck, this is so cool. So I kept posting kept posting came up with like a couple good ideas. And then like, I just started getting like a million views on a couple couple videos. one a little bit more controversial. And yeah, now I'm fully addicted to posting because it's like, very fun is like the best dopamine rush of all time.

Joseph DiRico: 20:09

Yeah, cuz especially with, with all the AI stuff is great because you automate a lot of the shit that you hate doing. Yeah, but it gives anyone the ability to just spam all day. So the only way to prove you're not a bot is by showing your face. Yeah, and a lot of people are scared to show their face. I think just doing so it's less competitive, ironically.

Christian Bonnier: 20:34

Yeah, I was gonna say I think like personal branding is like what's going to separate people in the near future, because everyone's consuming short form and YouTube and all this shit. Like, all this attention is just going upwards to like, the 1% of people who are posting. So if you can, like, command that attention and you know, grow your own brand and can easily like, I'll put this hat back on. I thought of this hat in the shower, and I got a sample made up. So it's like, you know, a shipping box like ship Handle with care. So like, it's got all the branding of like a shipping box with like the crack and oh, yeah, so like, I'm thinking about launching this as like a mental health play. And like, I'll just spin it up off of my tic tock and

Joseph DiRico: 21:17

to wrap up. Um, so I'm at actually about a basically the same thing that you helped me out with last year. Yeah, the AR stuff. One of my Taylor Swift video is when not as viral as yours, but it got like 40 50,000 views and a lot of good engagement. Yeah, I could have so easily done some Taylor Swift related EECOM stuff, because I see them all the time on like Etsy and shit.

Christian Bonnier: 21:45

I'm about to make a Swift video. Shouldn't on Swift these but that's a different story.

Joseph DiRico: 21:50

See? And that's the so that's the other thing too, right? You're not afraid to? Oh, no, push the boundaries. And when you push the boundaries, bro, that's where you get the engagement. Yeah,

Christian Bonnier: 21:59

that's, that's my favorite thing to do, bro. Because the best is when like two people will disagree in the comments and they fight back and forth on my video. Yeah, going viral, baby. Let's go.

Joseph DiRico: 22:09

And it's not like you're doing any sound like you're it's like pushing the button and controversial but nothing serious. You know what I mean? That's not hurting anyone. That's yeah. It's just all fun.

Christian Bonnier: 22:19

I'm like, bring back bullying. Like I was fat. And I got bullied into being skinny. Like just it's like playful. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, you have to not come out and say like something really fucked up. But you have to still make it fun. Like, because

Joseph DiRico: 22:33

because I struggle with that too. Because you try to, you know, leave me being like a people pleaser. But if you just try to stay in the middle on social media, it's very hard to get. Yeah, you need to scroll past you got to

Christian Bonnier: 22:45

take the you have to be you have to state your own opinions. Like you can't just be like, you know, I don't even know what a good example is. But like people you

Joseph DiRico: 22:55

can't you got to take one side. So it can't be like, I think sales is a actually a horrible career choice. But it might make sense. If you're in this situation, you got to just pick one you can't come out

Christian Bonnier: 23:06

and say like sales is a good career. Like everyone knows it, bro. Like, you have to say shit that people say like I say things that people think but are afraid to say and I'm just like, I'll just say it. So. Exactly,

Joseph DiRico: 23:16

exactly. And then that that ultimately works. So what about your with Twitter grow? When I first met you? You probably had like a couple 1000 followers, and now you're pushing like, so you probably 10x Your Twitter growth over the last eight to 10 months? I would say yeah, how is that worked

Christian Bonnier: 23:35

out to on Twitter. Um, I mean, dude, I just like really took advantage of just the giveaways back in the day where it was like, like in the comment, I'll DM you this resource like back when it first started grow, they would pop like I would get 1000 or more followers per giveaway. And I did one a week. So I went from like 10 to 20k in like two months. And I've slowed down a little bit. Just because I think Twitter's algorithm is really weird nowadays where you can't grow as fast. But it's at a point where I have you know, 24k followers, and they're all very engaged, and I get good engagement. So I'm not really stressing about, you know, growing the followers. It's just like getting more growing a relationship with the followers. I do have.

Joseph DiRico: 24:26

Yeah, so I spoke with someone who he blew up a essentially a community for, for hippies. And it was on Facebook about like a long time ago, like 10 years ago. And they were getting crazy organic traffic to their page. And then when Facebook all of a sudden, like needed to start making money. They stopped giving people so much organic reach and made them spend to get in front of the same eyeballs. So I'm sure that Twitter is doing something similar right now. Yeah, I'm trying to disincentivize you from relying so much on organic and now they want people to move towards the ads, but Twitter ads suck, bro. Like they're it's mostly bots. And like, for example, my ads are pending right now for no reason for the last like five days. Yeah, like messing around with

Christian Bonnier: 25:16

Elon his Twitter and like a weird place like, I don't really think like I don't really think it's either I think the ads don't really work and the organic doesn't really work because it's just like Elon just tinkering with it so much. I don't know what he's trying to do. But it's really weird man. Like, we were running ads for ads were better before Ilan took over, too. So I'm not really sure what's going on there. But you just have to oppose through the algorithm, I guess you could say.

Joseph DiRico: 25:44

Exactly. So when it comes to the cold emails themselves, you've run a lot of campaigns. Yeah, what what makes a really good campaign, and I'm talking like, not necessarily just cold one off cold emails, but doing this at scale? Like what what are the vital aspects of it, that people need to know? Um, vital

Christian Bonnier: 26:12

aspects, you have to know your customer like, you can't just pitch leads to a law firm, you have to sell them like alimony divorce cases, or like child custody cases, like you have to know what language they speak. You have to be short, you want to keep it like 50 words or less, someone should be able to read your email in five seconds and answer had no thought process behind it. And then make it relevant to them. Because some people try to give away like, Do you want my PDF on how I scaled this random brand from zero to 10k? It's like, No, I don't know what the fuck you are. Why would I want your PDF? I don't want shit. But if the PDFs like, Would you like a PDF explaining how I can add 10k in sales to your business? All of a sudden? It's like, Oh, sure. Yeah, I want to know, so you have to make it relevant to them keep it short. And speak their language? I'd say those are the the three major things.

Joseph DiRico: 27:03

And then how so once you push them live, how long until you're going to start tweaking it? How long are you going to let it run before you start going in and tinkering. Um,

Christian Bonnier: 27:16

I would say like every month I do an audit. So I'll let something run for a month, check the results change the losers add in more winners, like based on what's winning, I'll tweak it depends on how much volume to like with lists kit, we're sending so many emails, I'm getting data like every single week, so I'm optimizing every week. But if you're doing like five to 10,000 leads a month, I would let it run for three to four weeks audit move, because if you audit it too fast, you're not really giving it a fair chance, or getting any statistical significance there. So I would say three to four weeks is a good sweet spot.

Joseph DiRico: 27:45

Definitely. And you I saw you share your talk about research you shared on on Twitter, how you how you been using chat GPT. And I think you use that actual example of the divorce lawyers. So what are you how are you leveraging GPT for research and anything else that's helping you get the not necessarily admin, but the more time consuming parts of the process done? Yeah. So

Christian Bonnier: 28:10

like, I only use it to research who I'm reaching out to in terms of what messaging they use. So lawyers use something called billable hours to judge how much they're charging clients. So instead of saying like high ticket clients, I'm saying divorce cases with 50 billable hours like that, you have to speak their language. And like previously, you could sit on the phone and dial lawyers all day, Hey, can I do some research for my college project? Go on Reddit, go on all these bullshit websites. Like I hated to do that back in the day. But now the chat GP I didn't even do it back in the day. I was just lazy. But now the chat GPT exists. You can ask it a question like, you can interview a lawyer on chat. GBT, basically, in 30 seconds and have your answer, like chat GPT can spit out this whole list of shit that lawyers like, and you see one little nugget that can make your whole campaign perform.

Joseph DiRico: 28:57

Yeah, dude, it is not. And then what? So I saw when it comes to, like, audits, right? Because I've seen you leverage that a bit too, in, in your emails, where it's like, Hey, can I do an audit for you? Yeah. So I think it could be in your case, it would be audit your email campaigns. But how could How could people play around with that as a as a way for getting someone to respond and ultimately hop on calls?

Christian Bonnier: 29:26

So audit in terms of optimizing your performance or Yeah, like

Joseph DiRico: 29:31

what's what's, what's something that how can people use that term? Like, hey, I'll audit this for you as the as the call to action, as opposed to so it's a value giveaway. You know what I mean? It's like you're doing an audit of their Yeah, so email campaign, or the only time the

Christian Bonnier: 29:47

only time I like to pitch audits is when I don't need access to anything like no one wants to give you the access to the Facebook Ads Manager or their CLEVEO they don't want to give a stranger that access. They just don't like no one wants to do that. They Want to get a video that explains what they can fix on their ads? So like, yeah, make it as low barrier as possible with people. Like if someone asked me like, Hey, bro, let me audit your Twitter account, like just send me the login. I'm like, No, dude, I don't know who you are and whatever. So if you're gonna do an audit, make it like something front facing like, I just did a website audit on video. Can I send it over? Right?

Joseph DiRico: 30:21

Yep. Did you How could someone get your attention? Let's say someone like do you respond to cold emails or cold calls? Like how someone get in front of you. So

Christian Bonnier: 30:32

cold DMS, when I see a good one, I'll answer. Like, I got one today from this kid that I know he triggered it on accident to me, but I was like, this is a good one. He said, like, Hey, I have this strategy that can get you in touch with 40 econ brands a month, and it's working really well. Can I send him a video on how it works? I'm like, Dude, that's a good DM. I would answer that.

Joseph DiRico: 30:48

Yeah. So I think that, because because we do this type of stuff all the time. So I think we have an appreciation when someone does send a good one. So we actually might be more likely to respond than the average person realistically. But yeah, it is. It's weird, because you start sending so many of these things, then you forget that, like someone else noticed, trying to get people like us our attention to?

Christian Bonnier: 31:15

Yeah. Like, anyone is reachable with the right message, right, like people get bombarded. But if you have something that sticks out, it's going to work.

Joseph DiRico: 31:26

So especially if it hits on on a problem that they have

Christian Bonnier: 31:30

100% Like what

Joseph DiRico: 31:31

are like the like the best numbers look like? Like, what are the benchmark numbers for open rates, response rates? I know, it probably depends on industry, but what are like some benchmarks people should should shoot for because I think that what a lot of people do get started with this stuff, they just don't know how their campaign is performing relative to where it should be.

Christian Bonnier: 31:55

Yeah, I would say like 60% opens is fine. You want to have like, three to 5% response rate. What I like to say is for every 1000 emails, you should shoot for 10 to 15 calls. It's like 1% Call books rate. One, one deal, if you're closing a deal per 1000, you're on track, you're healthy, you're good, right? That can vary based on how good of a closer you are like you could close one deal out of five calls. But as long as you're booking at least like, you know, 1% meaning boats, right? You're crushing it.

Joseph DiRico: 32:30

Good to know. Yeah, the, the response rates, especially as you as you scale up, because I think we had send like 15,000 We're like one 2% response rate. And that was still 50 meetings are so but that's a lot of people that just didn't answer your message that you might might have burned? I mean, you never know. So how do you when you're doing these at scale? And, and people don't answer, do you throw them in another campaign? Or do you just move on to different leads, because some of these niche industries, they're, there's only so many people and it's kind of a small circle. So if you spend them a bunch, they might be like, your company is just a bunch of frogs, I don't want to talk to you. So how do you manage that? Like people that don't answer don't respond, you put them in a new campaign? Um,

Christian Bonnier: 33:20

if the market is big enough, I would say no, but if it's a small market, you can plug them back in like every six months and try new angle.

Joseph DiRico: 33:30

Yeah, cuz there's, I think there's definitely concern, especially amongst the, the bigger companies that I speak with, they're very concerned with their brand, like their brand reputation when it comes to the cold email strategies. So like, how does it How does it differ from what you would do to where do for rather like an agency like that started from someone on Twitter versus a fortune 500 company comes to you and they're like, Krishna, we want you to set up our email campaigns, like, how would you approach them differently?

Christian Bonnier: 34:00

Fortune 500 compared to who, just

Joseph DiRico: 34:02

like a small agency, the you know, the people reached out to you through Twitter, it's just a one man shop, he doesn't really care too much about the perception of people being like, stop stop harassing me sort of thing. So he can be a little bit more gung ho, whereas the fortune 500 has got to obviously be more buttoned up with their approach.

Christian Bonnier: 34:26

Yeah, I mean, my approach wouldn't really change I just know that with the fortune 500 I would have to go through like a week of approvals on the copy so Exactly. It would just be like I would still use my same approach but I would just be ready for like insane amount of approvals from there. And you know what I mean

Joseph DiRico: 34:47

with you like you think that these because I've seen it right, like, I mean, I was telling you, there there definitely are companies like it's not just money twitter using instantly like real companies are starting to sign up and leverage Jett?

Christian Bonnier: 35:01

Yeah. So

Joseph DiRico: 35:04

like it could translate to the not like there's like real and fake business world. But you got people a lot older than us that are starting to run these types of campaigns. Yeah,

Christian Bonnier: 35:14

I mean, it's great. Like, the funny part is the biggest companies do cold email the worst just because they have no clue how to do it. Yeah, exactly. So they're burning domains. They're ruining, like their main domains reputation, which is nuts. But yeah, I mean, the enterprise stuff is a whole different ballgame. Just because they operate a lot differently. They're slower. They're more Arctic, they have like sign offs on shit. Whereas us guys are just like, Yeah, this is cool. That's good. So you kind of have to be that's why I love having our, our CTO, because he's been in the enterprise game. And he knows how to handle those relationships and stuff like that. Sure.

Joseph DiRico: 35:50

What about the like managing the inboxes that's another thing that people that are starting to run instantly campaigns. That is something that they're struggling with is the the inbox management, like they know how to set them up. Sometimes they even say, Hey, we're getting good responses. But managing the inboxes is a nightmare. We're trying to find a VA we're trying to find a service someone. So what are you seeing in terms of the, like the best clients, how they're managing the the inboxes and all those responses are coming in.

Christian Bonnier: 36:20

Um, I mean, we so we do like, recruitment now. So we have like, specialists doing everything for clients. But the best clients back in the day, were very systemized, like, Hey, did you follow up with like, Yep, I already did it already did it like those people that have the system in place and like respected our work enough to be on top of it were the best. Whereas you had clients who were like, Oh, I haven't gotten to it today. They just didn't care enough.

Joseph DiRico: 36:44

So what are they doing for him? But like, are they connecting it to? Because you connect to like Slack and things like that? So are they are they managing those emails through an integration? Or do they have just someone sitting in instantly managing the unit box.

Christian Bonnier: 37:00

So I mean, we recommend like, the unit box is fine. But then there's also like replies, it'll fall through the cracks that they don't catch. So I always advise to go through every Gmail inbox per day, which obviously gets out of hand if you have 100 domain set up but yeah, set up a master inbox and just like make a lightweight CRM by storing all the good replies so either way

Joseph DiRico: 37:24

Yeah, I think ultimately, there's there's still a lot of potential with instantly and what do you guys use instantly? What what you guys are using to actually send or do you have something else too?

Christian Bonnier: 37:38

So we personally use smart lead. We just have a good relationship with the foundries like involved in client essentials community helping people we have like a referral. We have like an affiliate setup with him. So we've been using smartly for a while good results. I mean, no, instantly is great, too. We've just kind of gravitated towards them because the founder is good we do we host like webinars together, we were like intertwine with less good and smart leads. So we use smart lead and it makes

Joseph DiRico: 38:04

it makes sense. Makes sense. So what about the like the worst responses you've seen? Because I think gone you got thick skin and that's helped you a lot of these last few years. Yeah. People send cold emails someone tells them to go fuck themselves, and then they just never send another one again. Like what are what are some of the examples of bad ones that you've gotten? Just to give people like, yeah,

Christian Bonnier: 38:29

I've gotten my part of the game. Oh, forgot your spammer and everyone hear from you again. are important due to whatever whatever GDPR shit. Yeah, it's terrible. I've seen everything bro makes me laugh at this point. They're just miserable. Yeah,

Joseph DiRico: 38:43

you got to like stick a thick skin in terms of that and then be not being afraid to show your face with things like social media and just posting because all those stepping out of your comfort zone bro has obviously allowed you to dominate the way you have in a short amount of time.

Christian Bonnier: 39:04

100% bro? Yeah, man. I mean, you don't always have to have it figured out you just got to action and then fill in the holes instead of just like sitting there twiddling your thumbs like I'm scared I don't know what to do right it's typically 100% 100%

Joseph DiRico: 39:18

Bro any any closing thoughts bro any any heartaches that that you'd like to share?

Christian Bonnier: 39:25

Um, let's get is going to be the number one data provider in 2024 and beyond believe

Joseph DiRico: 39:33

that's millionaire before 30 That's my

Christian Bonnier: 39:35

heartache, bro.

Joseph DiRico: 39:37

I like it. So how can so how can people sign up for either lists kid or client ascension? Like what is what is the process work like even like working with you? A lot of people need help a copy.

Christian Bonnier: 39:48

Yeah, so I'll give you the links for the description. If you want to book a one on one copy consult with me. I do 30 Minute Calls. We hop on we write a five step email sequence. I'm available for after you know Changes afterwards and consulting afterwards to make sure that it's working. That's a one on one call on the call. We have a coaching program client ascension, you will add $10,000 to your monthly revenue with cold email fully guaranteed, or else you do not pay client ascension.com All their team, they'll get you right, we're not going to sell you if you're not a fit. So if you are fit to join, we're gonna help you add 10k Guaranteed to your business. And then less kit is a data provider similar to Apollo or zoominfo. Let's get.io we triple Verify Email leads so you don't have to use million verifier you don't have to use an upper bounce. You don't have to use scrubbie we're dropping direct dial phone numbers. Let's get that IO if you're sick of Apollo six zoominfo we'll get you right with let's get so boom.

Joseph DiRico: 40:44

Right You're gonna buy the lightning.

Christian Bonnier: 40:47

That would be I want to buy the Steelers and fixer shitty organization that they have right now. For

Joseph DiRico: 40:52

the Steelers are great man. I had the Patriots last night. I just knew the true Biscay touchdown.

Christian Bonnier: 40:58

It didn't have a single one because he saw no I did do QB sneaked in.

Joseph DiRico: 41:03

Oh, we did have it. Yeah. absolute legend. Yeah,

Christian Bonnier: 41:06

whatever. I'm sick football after this year.

Joseph DiRico: 41:09

I know. Alright, well, I appreciate your time. Appreciate you. Yeah, and I'll post all those links in the description. People need leads cold email,

Christian Bonnier: 41:19

whatever it is.

Joseph DiRico: 41:21

Good stuff, brother. Awesome, bro.

Christian Bonnier: 41:22

Appreciate you