BUSINESS COACHING
How ActionCOACH Milwaukee Generated 217 Leads and 136 Booked Meetings in Three Months With Done-For-You Cold Email
217 leads and 136 booked meetings in three months
Leads generated
Meetings booked
Outbound channel used
CLIENT REVIEW
Hear it straight from the client
Mike McKay
Founder at ACTIONCOACH MILWAUKEE
THE CHALLENGE
Where they were stuck
ActionCOACH Milwaukee had built a thriving coaching practice almost entirely on referrals and networking, with no cold outreach channel of their own. Founder Mike McKay wanted a predictable way to start new conversations with business owners, but building cold email infrastructure in-house was too costly and complex, and as a self-described super skeptic he was wary of trusting another vendor to do it for him.
Growth relied entirely on referrals and networking, with no outbound channel of their own
Building and warming cold email infrastructure in-house was too costly and complex
As self-described skeptics burned by past vendors, they were reluctant to trust another provider
THE SYSTEM WE BUILT
How we solved their problems
Infrastructure & Warmup
Outbound System built and warmed dedicated sending infrastructure that went live in about five business days, with the first leads landing by day seven. Mike says he barely noticed the warmup period because it happened so quickly.
Message & Copywriting
Outbound handled all of the copywriting and built a compelling, owner-to-owner message aimed at the trades, construction, manufacturing, and professional-services owners ActionCOACH serves, so every send felt relevant rather than generic.
Run & Repeat
ActionCOACH runs roughly 10,000 emails a month on the infrastructure and consistently books fifteen to twenty interviews per cycle. Across more than 50,000 emails, they've had essentially one complaint, and the channel is completely additive to their referral network.
Mike McKay is the founder of ActionCOACH Milwaukee, a business coaching firm on a mission to create a thousand millionaires out of owner-operators. He works primarily with trades, construction, manufacturing, and professional-services companies, helping them break the bottlenecks that keep owners stuck. For years, ActionCOACH grew the way most coaching firms do: through referrals and relentless networking. They had never run cold outreach at all.
The problem with a purely referral-driven pipeline is predictability. Mike wanted a channel he could turn on and rely on, but he didn't want to build cold email infrastructure himself. "There's no way we could build that infrastructure for the rate that we pay you guys to just take care of all of it." There was also trust to overcome. "I'm a super skeptic. We've had all kinds of businesses that were gonna help us do things," he says, so he was reluctant to hand the work to anyone. A referral from another Outbound System client in Indianapolis got him in the door.
Outbound System built and warmed the sending infrastructure and had it live in about five business days, with ActionCOACH seeing their version of leads by day seven or eight. Outbound also did all of the copywriting and built the message, which Mike credits with making the whole thing easy to run. On the entry plan of roughly 10,000 emails a month, his marketing team has sent every email in the allotment for three months straight. From those sends, ActionCOACH books three interviews a week and stays booked out weeks in advance.
Across three months and more than 50,000 emails, the program produced 217 leads and 136 booked meetings, with essentially one complaint the entire time. "We get fifteen to twenty good booked-in interviews that let us start conversations," Mike says, every single time they run it. The channel has proven completely additive: at a recent networking event he ran into two owners the campaign had booked months earlier, greeted one by name, and is now in talks to work with his business. For a skeptic who compares most B2B marketing spend to lighting a fire in the parking lot, the consistency won him over. His advice to other owners: "If you're B2B, in particular, this is a great tool."
