The Antidote Ep 4 - The importance of building a strong ABM foundation, with Mason Cosby
📝 Episode Summary
In the fourth episode of The Antidote, Mason Cosby, founder of Scrappy ABM, joins Alex for a conversation about taking it slow and focusing on the foundations before making big - sometimes risky - bets. Mason shares his crawl, walk, run approach to account-based marketing, and the importance of assessing one’s business stage of maturity before investing in specific ABM technology. Reflecting on his learnings and wins from his Scrappy ABM journey, Mason reiterates how essential it is for marketers and sellers alike to focus on the fundamentals, and build playbooks that can be optimized and scaled over time.
🤓 What will I learn
✅ How to build a strong ABM foundation - before investing in technology.
✅ Why successful ABM programs require good sales and marketing alignment.
✅ How to create repeatable (and scalable) ABM processes and playbooks, in alignment with your sales team
✅ What do entrepreneurs need to focus on to achieve business success
👀 Key Insights
1. The ABM tech utopia and the crawl, walk, run approach
We’re in 2024 - technology is all around. So much that sometimes we think we can’t do anything without it. But that isn’t actually true. Especially when it comes to ABM. For Mason, we need to take a step back and strip down the technology from ABM, as software alone won’t guarantee the success of any GTM strategy.
So what can GTM leaders do, instead of going on a shopping spree and breaking the ABM bank? Build a strong, tech-light foundation for their account-based marketing programs, that’s repeatable, simple, and scalable, and work from a crawl, walk, run approach. Meaning, focusing on the foundations, then launching and optimizing your program, and only then bringing in the expensive tech that can take it to the next level.
“I have heard verbatim ‘I'm going to buy ABM’. And I think in large part it's been marketed as a silver bullet solution. So we buy the technology, we set it up, we press go, and we're good to go. And the reality is most people didn't have the right foundations. (...) They haven't solved the core challenge, which is ‘I don't have the right foundation, I don't have the right people, I don't have the right processes. I've got to figure out the fundamentals of ABM before I can scale it.’”
Successful ABM programs are more about mastering foundational strategies, rather than relying on technology, especially in contexts of limited resources. It’s time to go back to the basics and prioritize simple, repeatable tactics, over complex technological solutions you might not even be ready to implement yet.
2. The importance of sales and marketing alignment (again!)
Even though everyone’s tired of hearing about the importance of sales and marketing alignment, the truth is a lot of businesses are still struggling with it. And a lot of ABM programes are failing because of a lack of alignment. So how can marketers guarantee they are in sync with their sales counterparts and make their ABM initiatives a success? Mason shares 3 tips:
- Get buy-in early on, guaranteeing your sales teams know what ABM is all about, what are your goals, how can they contribute, and how their work is crucial to its success
- Build your playbook together, and instead of launching a full, complexified, siloed program, start with repeatable triggered plays your sales team can see quick wins from. Then, scale them.
- Collaborate, on defining goals, expectations, activities, messaging, results and optimizations.
“I think the dumbest thing that they're [marketers] doing is trying to start the program build without getting the sales buy-in or the executive leadership buy-in and they just kind of build it on their own and then say, ‘Hey, look at, look at the cool thing that we built.’”
3. It's all about going back to the basics
There’s a lot of digital, sales, and inbox noise out there. And at the same time, there are not enough resources or budget to break through it. But for Mason, it’s not necessarily about doing more or bigger. It’s actually about nailing down the basics really well.
“I think right now a lot of go-to-market professionals have seen less tech, less headcount, and fewer resources overall. So this is the time to go back to fundamentals before you try to do major experience experiments. Do you have a closed loss program? Do you have a customer-back program? Do you have a pipeline acceleration program that is very basic, that is very simple but very repeatable? If you don't, that's where I'd start.”
▶️ Watch the full episode on Youtube:
📖 Transcript
Alex Olley (0:03.31)
Okay, so, this week, I'm really looking forward to this one. We've got Mason on the podcast. Mason, welcome to The Antidote. What's been keeping you busy, man?
Mason Cosby (0:14.47)
Well, I mean at the time of this recording, it's about 5 degrees outside, so it's been keeping me busy is actually staying warm, making sure I've got. I've got a five-month-old baby girl and I mean she's never seen snow. Obviously, she's only five months old, so just bundle her up, making sure that everybody is safe and warm, and trying to stay off the roads a little bit. So that's personal and then professional. I'm just knee-deep in all the process documentation. I'm trying to build a bunch of playbooks that some ABMers can come and steal so they can run some Scrappy ABM programs. So I’m in the process of making everything very detailed, very beautifully designed, and then hopefully to launch those in the next couple of months so that we can get them out and try helping people out.
Alex Olley (0:58.94)
Nice man, I'm going to ask you about that later and where people can find that at the end. But it sounds like you're a busy guy and I know what it's like running a business and learning how to be a parent. It's not easy, so hats off to you, mate. Okay, so look, first question. Everyone's got a big challenge they're trying to solve. We call this their poison and what we want to try and give listeners is an antidote. What's the big challenge you're on a mission to solve?
Mason Cosby (01:23.66)
I'm enjoying our conversation because I think that obviously, Reachdesk is a technology that is heavily associated with ABM. And a lot of what I'm trying to help people do is get started with account-based marketing. And one of my value propositions is account-based marketing for revenue teams without the 200k tech stack. That is kind of the synopsis. And some people think that I'm anti-tech because that's the value proposition.
And I'm not. What I do is very hard and it doesn't scale until you put in place the right tools. So where I'm focused is if you think about ABM, everybody talks about the crawl, walk, run approach. I am trying to become the vendor of choice that helps people build a crawl program for their account-based marketing program, get the right foundation in place, and get them set up for success with the right playbooks. And then when they're ready, they can go by the right technology to start scaling it up.
So the problem that I'm solving is how do you crawl effectively? How do you set the right foundation so that when you go to scale, it doesn't just break everything, but you've got a program that can run sustainably?
Alex Olley (02:31.30)
Oh mate, so I've been there before in a previous company. I remember going to a conference and coming back and we got to do ABM. And we went really fast at it and we bought everything and it was a disaster. Now I'm just one example. You've obviously started a business because you see a big problem and it's quite widespread. Why do we end up in this situation? Why do we get to a point where everyone's trying to go, but you're buying loads of stuff over investing before the process is even built out?
Mason Cosby (03:01.67)
Yeah, I mean, and you experience this. I'm confident that people are coming to buy Reachdesk to some extent. You know, ABM is one of the only marketing strategies that I know of where people use the exact language of I need to go buy ABM. So they think that if they buy this technology, it's going to be the silver bullet that again, we buy it, we put it in place, we just press go, and then suddenly we've got a great pipeline with our best-fit customers that are just dying to buy from us.
Nobody says I'm going to go buy inbound. But I'm not going to go buy outbound like that's not a thing that we talked about, but I have heard verbatim I'm going to buy ABM. And I think again in large part it's been marketed as a silver bullet solution. So again we buy the technology, we set it up, we press go, and we're good to go. And the reality is most people didn't have the right foundations and what I've appreciated about a lot of ABM tech vendors as of late.
My third largest lead source is tech vendors that have clients that are coming through the sales process and aren't ready. I think there's been recognition from a lot of our tech vendors that are at that scale stage of like, you're not ready for ABM, let's pass you to somebody that can get you set up. So I think we're going to see less and less of it, but that doesn't solve people not buying the technology in the first place, they haven't solved the core challenge, which is I don't have the right foundation. I don't have the right people. I don't have the right processes. I've got to figure out the fundamentals of ABM before I can scale it.
Alex Olley (04:33.043)
Okay. All right. So let's talk about Scrappy ABM, you know, the business that you have essentially founded, right? What are the big things that you're talking to companies at the beginning? It sounds like you're focusing on the process. Do you have playbooks mapped out? Do you see common things that companies are doing? And you're like, oh, this is quite easy. I'm not asking you to give everyone listening your playbooks, because I want them to come to you. But what are you saying, man?
Mason Cosby (04:59.69)
So the core challenge for so many of these organizations is the classic case of sales and marketing alignment. And I don't wanna harp too long on that because I feel like everybody talks about it. But again, if you look at the data-driven reasons why ABM fails, the number one reason is that sales and marketing aren't aligned. So again, marketing thinks about building this ABM program. They spend three, four, five months developing all of the operations around it. They develop the content. They… build all the tracking and they build the campaign in their martech stack and then they go to sales and they're like, Hey, we want to launch an ABM program, are you guys bought in? They're like, what do you talk like? I've got other stuff that I'm doing. I'm busy. And depending on your marketing team and your marketing program, they may not have delivered a significant pipeline previously. So again, if you're asking. Sales to now take time away from their day that they have or people process sees that they're using, that they have full control over, you're asking your sales team to give up a little bit of their control to partner with marketing to then actually go build a true ABM program.
So again, where I'm seeing a lot of companies struggle is that specific handoff. So a lot of what we do to get a company started, it's literally a 30-day project. It's just what I call sales activation plays. And it's very simple. It's what is a trigger that has a repeatable trigger that we can then automate the segmentation of a specific list for all of our sellers. And then how do we have our sales team activate to go outbound based on that trigger? And my goal is that the trigger is so much of a no-brainer that sales are like, if you give me that list, I'll go after them.
So a couple of quick examples that everybody knows about, but somebody who's viewed your product pages your pricing page, and your schedule of call page. If they view those pages on your website, they are likely somebody who would be a good fit. That would be somebody that is open to having a conversation with sales. They just didn't book in the first place. So how do you segment that list so that your sales team can go up to them on a weekly basis? Another one has missed meetings. So somebody books a call. I'm fairly confident that most sellers do some level of follow-up, but they let it go after a couple of weeks. They want to reprioritize. Can you segment out that list? And then on a quarterly basis, a quarter later say, hey, it looks like you tried to book a call. We never connected last quarter. Is this thing still a priority for you right now? Were you able to solve the problem? And just re-engaging on those missed meetings. Another one would be closed lost. And I heard this from another company. I thought it was genius. It's like a gate on their closed loss bucket. They pick an exact day to re-engage the closed lost. Again, you don't have to pick a day, but you have to either select an actual day on the calendar to re-engage or click NA.
And then you can literally have an automation workflow within HubSpot or Salesforce that helps your sales team resurface those closed, lost accounts. Another one would be customer win-back programs. After a customer leaves, can you create a system and a process that is largely automated for list segmentation with great templates for outreach that then get your sellers to go back after customers that have previously lost you? So those are just four that almost every B2B organization should have the ability to create a program around. And then the best programs that we work with customers on are really specific and nuanced to their business and their business use cases. So I just recommend people look at their data flow and identify where is a specific action, not a lead metric, not a scoring model, but what's a tangible thing that somebody does that we can then say, they did this thing, they're likely somebody that we should reach out to because they did this thing.
And to be very clear, it's not like they opted in to get a piece of content. That should be a marketing email flow, that's fine. But what is the tangible action that somebody did that then indicates to us they are likely interested in having a conversation? Can we reach out to be helpful and support them in actually booking that call?
Alex Olley (09:06.85)
Love it. Okay. So those are some actual tangible things you can do. All right. So it sounds like you're using a lot of data to inform these decisions. A big thing I get asked a lot is, well, firstly, people say we're not ready for ABM. Maybe we can dive into that a little bit. But firstly, when do you see your job is done and for companies to be able to really go hard at the, we can invest in technology and we can perhaps hire an account-based marketing manager build a more mature program, is there a certain maturity that you see that people should start considering that more or is it different each time?
Mason Cosby (09:45.83)
I would say there are a couple of nuances to this. So I'll start with the blankest answer, that I think that most vertical SaaS companies should likely be running an account-based marketing program because I've talked with companies, I've got a client right now that serves the mortgage space, and they only provide a specific technology for mortgage lenders. So their use case and their technology is so specific that they said there's, and we can only serve the US. So they, by the nature of the company that they've built, they already know that their world of accounts they said is literally 5,000 companies that we can work with period. Now there are multiple divisions within those companies, but we know the world of accounts that we can actually serve 5,000, which probably running some form of an account-based marketing strategy, that is a reasonable number of accounts that we could go after.
For me personally, I run a marketing consulting business and a services business, my world of accounts is pretty significant because it's B2B companies that need to build an ABM program from the ground up. I am not industry-specific and spoiler alert. I don't even run ABM for myself. I don't think I'm at the appropriate stage to run ABM because I think that you need to have enough reps of customers that you've worked with to identify the specific industries and the specific, uh, sizes of companies that you work best with. So I think if you are not a very specific use case product, that serves a very specific uh, other kind of business or that is in a regulated industry where by regulations, you are limited to who you conserve., I think you should actually probably run more of a demand gen inbound marketing program to identify who are our best-fit customers. Once you've identified your specific use case where you absolutely crush it for a specific industry, you build vertical-specific ABM programs.
So I really love to go after again, verticals that we can then create all of our content that's like, this is our retail vertical program. This is our SaaS vertical program. And again, you then build the framework for how we engage an industry. How do we engage a specific vertical? And I think you can do all of that, either with an outsource partner, you can get somebody, at that stage, you'd either have an outsource partner or you'd have an AVM manager. I don't think you have both.
And, from a tech perspective, I wouldn't go buy new tech unless there is a very specific point in your process in which there's a gap and it's like, we literally can't do this without it. So prime example would be data sources. As I had, there's a guy on my team who's our head of strategy and ops, and he gave me this quick framework for how to build an avian program of data distribution destination. Those are just the three things that you can think through.
So if you're building an ABM vertical-specific program and you don't have the data source that allows you to engage that industry, that's gonna be a non-starter for you. So you need to solve that or try to build a different kind of program. The distribution piece, you can largely do with a lot of your existing technology. So can you do email marketing? Can you do outbound sequencing? Can you run LinkedIn ads natively without buying additional pieces of technology? And then the destination. So what's the content we're using? If you have a website, you've got the destination nailed.
That's how I think through it. And then once you've built that first program, that again, very vertical-specific, using your existing tech stack, you look at what was really time-consuming, what were the most effective channels that we used. And from there, you can then say, as we go to build the next vertical specific AVM program, as we go build a larger, whatever you wanna build next, which I would stay vertical specific for quite some time, you buy the technology that allows you to optimize the existing framework that you've built. So it's not saying let's go buy the tech and figure out how to use it, which to be clear, I've had clients come in down that said we bought the full AVM tech stack saying we would figure out how to use it after we bought it. They weren't buying to solve a specific problem within their AVM program, they bought a silver bullet that didn't work. So when you build the framework in the program first, you identify your gaps, you identify the opportunities to optimize and you buy technology to solve specific challenges within your overall process, not buying technology to build your process.
Alex Olley (14:08.76)
Love that. I've been there, been burned by it. I think I did the burning maybe, it's my fault. But I hear you get the process nailed down as best as possible and then really invest there. Very cool. I love the three Ds, very easy way of remembering it. So I wanna move on to you and your journey a little bit. I actually don't know this, but Scrappy ABM. Let's talk about that. How did that start?
Mason Cosby (14:35.35)
It's a great question. So I previously worked in an account-based marketing agency and it was a 25-person boutique ABM agency that really did have some great tech partnerships and had a lot of great frameworks and processes. And that's where I would say I learned most of what I know about ABM. And what was really fun about that job was I was actually the marketing director for the agency. So I marketed marketing to marketers, which is the best job. So literally my job.
Alex Olley (15:01.71)
Oh wow. Yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun.
Mason Cosby (15:05.84)
It's so it was so much fun. But my job was to learn ABM and then teach ABM so that when they started to try to build it on their own, they realized how hard it was and they would come by from us. I heard from my boss because this company had been around for about 20 years at this point, so they did not know their ICP. They knew their right-fit customers. They had the processes and the products nailed. But what she said to me is Hey Mason, I really need us to build an ABM program for ourselves so that we can go get the right fit customers, but you don't have an ABM platform. You don't have any ability, like you have no budget, to be honest. Like you are the budget Mason like you've got some tech, we can do some light sending, you've got a data enrichment platform, but what you have is fairly limited. I was like, okay. So that, that was three, four years ago at this point that I started to build that first program and I, I built it entirely through LinkedIn.
So it was, I have, I have on one screen, a list of target accounts on the other screen. I haven't LinkedIn profile and I just went and connected with a hundred people on LinkedIn every single week that was, that was from my target account list. So my LinkedIn following was actually just my target account list to get it started and that was, I did that. I joined specific communities because the community costs like 20 bucks a month to get into the places where all the right decision-makers were. And really just started to actually at that point, uh, while I was getting into, I started to build a podcast to have the opportunity to invite targeted accounts that cost 32 bucks a month. So my overall tech and my overall budget was my salary. I had HubSpot, uh, I had sales Intel for data enrichment. And essentially I just spent $20 a month to get into the peak community that was done by Sangram and Judd. Uh, I spent $32 a month on StreamYard and Spreaker for podcast hosting and distribution and doing live streaming. And I went I didn't pay for any LinkedIn premium or automation. That was the first scrappy ABM program that I built because I was given the parameters of we need an ABM program for ourselves. We have no budget. We have no tech. How do you get it done? And that was where it started. And then I just fell in love with doing it because I was like, this is so it's just so fun to have these constraints and to say, I understand that these are my constraints, but I still need to figure it out.
So from there, I just try to continue to iterate on how to build out more scrappy programs like this that don't require any additional budget. They don't require any additional technology but still drive the results. And then fast forward a few years, I've worked in a couple of companies since then, and people just kept coming back to me for that need of, Hey, I really need some thoughts and advice. So I just, I've been hopping on calls with people for two years, just giving away free advice, and the breaking point for, you know, somebody's actual messaging was like I've loved your advice so much. I actually went and started my own consultancy using your advice, and I'm helping other companies do what you recommended I do. And I was like, wait, what? So when somebody else started using what I had been pitching out for years to build their own business, I was like, I should just I just need to bet on myself. I should go do it. So I did.
Alex Olley (18:23.92)
Wow, that's powerful, man. I have no idea. Let's talk a little bit about some of the results that you got, because obviously when you were doing this in the agency and you've managed to do this for many people now, with such a low cost, do you have anything you can share on what you were able to achieve?
Mason Cosby (18:40.01)
I mean, so the convoluted part of this is the original agency was called Mojo Media Labs. They ended up being acquired by a company called Gravity Global, the world's most awarded B2B agency. And we were the ABM division of that. So I'll give the two. And if you go check out my LinkedIn, actually under my job experience, I outlined the exact results that we were able to get. So I'll just read it off real quick.
Of for when I was at Mojo as marketing director. In a one-and-a-half-year timeframe, we sourced 45 deals that were marketing sources for 1.68 million, and then when you factor in headcount for me, our rev ops person, our salesperson, and the full marketing budget, it ended up being about a 15 X ROI. So again, just on marketing source, not talking about influence, not anything else, but really solid there.
And then as far as opportunities, we need that sourcing, uh, 3.29 million. So again, from an opportunity sourcing perspective, very solid, and the close rate, obviously on that, at that point is a 59% close rate for marketing source deals. So again, we went, but so that's, that's mojo. And then with gravity, it was actually really interesting. I stepped into a sales role, uh, for a time.
Alex Olley (19:52.70)
That is insane. That is insane. Oh my God.
Mason Cosby (20:04.70)
I was the director of growth. So I ran kind of both marketing and sales. So I was the figurehead for our marketing and I was selling, which was a really effective strategy. Ended up closing about 1.7 million in about a six-month timeframe because of all the education I had put out. The close rate was 37.5% of my average sale cycle was 40 days. So a very fast pipeline, and really solid close rates. So if you can in an environment where it makes sense, like I was the ICP that stepped into a sales role for the first work period of time that then helped close those deals. So collectively, when you put all that together, it ends up being in a two-year timeframe of about 3 million bucks that I personally sourced and delivered and had an overall 15 X ROI on. So that's the results that you can start to see.
Alex Olley (20:52.71)
That is, that's astonishing. And you didn't have paid spend, you didn't have platforms to do any of this, this is just you.
Mason Cosby (21:01.80)
I'm a really weird person in the ABM space. I have someone on my team who can now run ads, but I've personally never done a ton with ad spend. I've done some basic LinkedIn advertising, but I would not claim any proficiency as a paid performance marketer. My whole focus actually came up as a content marketer. So my whole focus has been how we create the right content that serves the audience and then by nature I ran all the marketing at a HubSpot agency.
I needed to learn how to do operations, so I kind of self-taught ops and led the HubSpot account-based marketing hub or hug HubSpot user group for about two years. So essentially all I was doing was just telling people here's how you run a VM using HubSpot, no additional tools. So I would very much so claim process. I'm not going to claim to be a marketing operations expert personally, but through processes, I've got good ops chops that allow us to make sure that the content is getting in front of the right people in a way that can then be tracked and is activating the sales team. So again, when I say scrappy, everything that I'm outlining doesn't require an additional budget. It just requires time, a good process, good content, and an understanding of where your audience lives.
Alex Olley (22:19.43)
Wow. And look, to be clear, we're not trying to say, don't use a six sense of demand base that they have and all those lots of different tools that they have their place, but it's pretty astonishing what you've been able to accomplish without needing a lot of that. I'm shocked in a pleasant way. So look, you've obviously worked very, very hard to get to where you are today, running your own business. What did you have to do to get to where you are today? You've discussed a lot about your journey through ABM, but people don't often see the hard side of what it takes to get to running your own business.
Mason Cosby (23:58.86)
I mean, for starters, this is the first business that I've ever personally run. So I, I am personally working through the balance of, uh, business dollars should feel different than personal dollars. Cause right now, you know, every dollar I generate at first felt like it was supposed to hit my own bank account. When in reality, I have to really think through it as just an allocation of resources. I remember.
I was listening to something, from Alex Hermos. And he said you can tell the kind of business leader you're speaking to based on the level at which they speak. And if they're speaking entirely in the allocation of resources, they are truly at the level of enterprise leadership. So that's been a really hard thing for me personally because I've been trying, I've tried to be very financially literate, and be wise with the money that I spend, but I'm also recognizing the prime example earlier today, I had a contractor earlier this week, I had a contractor and I was keeping back some of the, the work so that I could quote unquote pay him for specific work. I was like, this is going to take me 15 hours of my life. And I only have so much time in my life. I can pay him literally a thousand dollars to get the work done. I still have a nice healthy profit margin, for managing the relationship and managing him. I don't need to talk about the actual work itself. He's got great processes. He's better at it than I am because he does it all the time. Let me just give it over to him. And I just bought back 15 hours of my life to go do stuff like this. It helps you to write more business. I can go and develop better processes and better products that I can then go into the market and sell. So just the transition from all the money that comes in, if it hit my personal bank account, it was, it was ours. Like that was a wage. That's how that worked. Now it's the appropriate allocation of resources. So that's been something that, and really thinking through a lot on cashflow, I really want to do right by my contractors. So maybe I make this a mistake.
I will often pay a contractor before I've been officially paid because I've got the margin within my bank account to ensure that I maintain the relationship with the contractor. Because for me, my goal is I don't want to lose any clients, but I recognize a client will likely stay with me for two years. I want my contractors to be with me for as long as they want to continue to work with me. So if I take care of my contractors, they'll take care of the clients and everybody will be better. So those are some of the things that have been really hard to have the mindset shift around. It has nothing to do with actually account-based marketing or anything like that.
I'm familiar with the agency space. I've done this a couple of times. The transition has been owning everything in cash flow management. And I could do all of it, but it would take me a hundred hours a week. And I have a five-month-old. That's really cute. And my wife wants some support actually raising our child. Uh, so it would be better to buy back time by outsourcing to contractors who can do some of the more time-consuming things. And I can focus on the highest impact opportunities and also be present for my family.
Alex Olley (26:53.27)
I wish I'd realized that sooner, particularly when I started Reach Desk because I think my son was born six months into our journey. And I didn't prioritize that as much. I learned it later and I can't get that time back. But when I second baby, I was like, give it to other people. There's that concept of giving away your Legos. And I think it really ties back into the happy people are successful. Successful people aren't necessarily happy. And if you can find that balance, that's awesome, man. Love it.
So it sounds like you're really learning how to run the business. And there have been any moments where you're like, Oh my God, this is, this is way harder than I expected. Was it a single moment that, uh, you know, some people go through self-doubt or anything like that? Has that happened to you yet? Or has it been pretty good cruising so far?
Mason Cosby (27:40.45)
Yeah, yeah, that's definitely happened. There was one week. It was pretty early on. I had a client. That you know we were talking through a bunch of stuff and they were like we want to do 24 webinars. We do a podcast we want to do. We want your help putting on a virtual conference. Everyone was formerly launched publicly. It's like those early stages. Just if I can do it, I will take the contract.
I need the revenue to support the actual building of the inevitable business. So I put 150 grand in closed one based on everything that we had scoped out and I sent over the first invoice and he was like, I'm sorry, I don't know what I'll be able to pay this. I was like, what do you mean? And he was like I have no money in our accounts, I need some other things to close before I can pay you. And I was like, I cannot, this is too early for me to make a bet like this.
So I went ahead and quote-unquote fired the client. And in that same week, I had another deal. It's about a $50,000 deal. So again, at this point, I think that we had closed $300,000 in revenue. So again, this is the first couple of months. And again, 150 of that was associated with one client. Uh, and I got, I got the legal language from that, from that vendor or for that client and they essentially were just going to own my business and they were a publicly traded multi I think they're a billion-dollar company. So I really wanted to work with them. I was going to make a massive impact hopefully. But when I looked at the Lingual Language I was like I cannot be owned like this by one client at this stage. So in the same week, I had to unclose one $150,000.
And I had to say no to a $50,000 contract that we had already gone through a lot of redlining and I just kind of finally said I gotta step away from this. So one week, I thought I had 200 grand and I suddenly didn't and went back to 150 and closed one, and luckily those clients were really solid and we had more behind it that inevitably closed a couple of weeks later. So six weeks later, I was back up to 300 grand. But yeah, that was way cross like should I just go back in the house and get a job and my wife was like no you hate it.
Alex Olley (30:09.16)
Oh, those moments man. But, you know, I suppose I'm, I'm laughing in a sense because I know what that feels like. I've been there. I know lots of people who have made it to that point and have thrown in the towel. How do you keep going through those moments? What was it that was, that you're still going now? You're very successful. How did you keep going?
Mason Cosby (30:32.30)
For sure, I would not yet claim very successful. I think I've got a long road ahead. I think for where I am, I've enjoyed what I've done so far. But I mean, let's call it what it is. I'm seven months into this thing as a full-time gig. I've got a long, long road before I would even ever claim true success. And the second side of it is I firmly believe in the problem that there was when I work with the right kinds of clients, I mean, I have a client that I can tangibly say in six months we generated $400,000 in revenue for them, just very tangibly, I know that, and it's through podcasting. So I helped them sell their podcast sponsorships we sold $400,000 in sponsorships.
And he said, my business is also getting new clients. I don't know the exact revenue of those new clients, but I can say six months we've been doing podcasting. They generated $400,000 in revenue. Plus it's become, a new business engine for his, for his business. Those are the right kinds of clients. I know the problems we're solving are very valuable. They changed the lives of the clients that we work with. And the other thing is just the contractors that I have come from really hard work environments where they weren't appreciated.
So I get to build a business in which we solve a very viable problem. It helps a lot of people and I get to create an environment in which my team members can thrive because they're appreciated for the value that they bring. And I also just see the long-term benefit of this. I'm not making a ton of money right now. I'd very intentionally keep our expenses low to keep as much cash in the business, but this is how I'm going to be able to hopefully make a big impact in our industry and help a lot of people. And then inevitably, I'll be able to make sure that my family is always provided for. I think this is the transition in a lot of ways for changing my family tree. It's all of those things combined where I'm like, if I do this right, this is how I really make a massive impact in our industry and my family's life. In the lives of our contractors, in the lives of our clients, there's just so much positive that one bad week shouldn't stop what we're already starting to build.
Alex Olley (32:58.41)
Oh mate, I love that. And that's why I think I'm going to say it now. I think you're going to be wildly successful because you've got that drive. You've got that way and that purpose. So I'm looking forward to seeing what Scrappy ABM brings us in the future. Okay, mate, well look, we're... Let's see is what I've always said. We're at the quick-fire round. So this is real quick. And then I'm going to ask you for a final piece of advice for those listening, but I was asked the same question. If you could have a drink with anyone in the world, who would it be and why?
Mason Cosby (33:27.63)
Such a cheesy answer. But I'm pretty open that I'm a believer, and I'd probably love a good cup of coffee with Jesus just to understand a lot of what he was thinking through in some of his final days. So I know it's cheesy, but it's the truth. So I'm going to give you two. So that's past. And then honestly, I would love to sit down for an hour to an hour and a half with Alex Hermosy, Cody Sanchez, or Justin Welsh because the three of them have had incredible careers and then transitioned into building personal brands. And for me at least, they've taken over the internet in a two-year timeframe. And I need to figure out how you did that. So those are kind of the two sides to that answer.
Alex Olley (34:13.90)
But I've never had either of those, so thank you for that. Now let's focus on ABMers. What's the dumbest thing you think account-based marketers are doing right now and what should they be doing differently?
Mason Cosby (34:27.10)
I think the dumbest thing that they're doing is trying to start the program build without getting the sales buy-in or the executive leadership buy-in and they just kind of build it on their own and then say, Hey, look at, look at the cool thing that we built versus, Hey, we're going to build this thing and kind of in that they try to build multiple programs or they try to build the full thing all at once. And I just think you need to build it like a playbook at a time that then stacks together into a full program versus let me go build the full thing from beginning to end and see if it works like just small plays along the way that build into a full program are a way that you can prove quick wins along the way.
Alex Olley (35:07.88)
I love that man. It's such good advice and I think it will forever be good advice because I just see people doing it over and over again. Maybe you'll reduce the pool and you'll get more people doing it right from the start. Is there a company right now and just in general that you think could be a future game changer that you've got your eye on?
Mason Cosby (35:27.21)
Audience Plus I think that that's probably not a surprising answer. But I've, I've been fortunate to have several conversations with JK who's their head of marketing and they just hired Todd Clauser. And again, if you think about the amount of interest in revenue that they were able to generate or sorry, interest that they were able to generate pre-product, just run the concept of that. You're a B2B company. You should be an owned media, uh, company. And when they went to actually launch a product, the amount of revenue they were able to generate very quickly because they had done such a good job of building interest in building the problem through their own owned media, I think is very clearly going to be a game changer for the way that people, because we've heard it a lot, every B2B company should be a media brand and they're actually doing it and helping people do it in a way that I have not seen another company do well.
Alex Olley (36:27.81)
Very cool. Well, it's hard to be a media brand. I've been watching them too. And what they pulled off is, it's pretty amazing. Okay, look, just find a piece of advice that I appreciate you joining us. Before you go, if you can, in one sentence, what would, what would you suggest to go to market professionals who are trying to break through the noise right now? What would you say?
Mason Cosby (36:54.61)
I'll be very transparent in my last role before I launched crappy ABM, I was not super successful because I wasn't the right fit for the organization. And I tried to do way, way too much as opposed to just focusing on a few fundamentals. I think right now a lot of go-to-market professionals have seen less tech, less headcount, and fewer resources overall.
So this is the time to go back to fundamentals before you try to do major experience experiments. Do you have a closed loss program? Do you have a customer-back program? Do you have a pipeline acceleration program that is very basic, that is very simple but very repeatable? If you don't, that's where I'd start. That was more than one sentence, but I think that's hopefully helpful context.
Alex Olley (37:43.35)
That's good enough, man. It's such good advice. It's such good advice. Mate, I've thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. Thank you for being so open, and transparent. You're a very humble guy. I'm going to say you are successful and you will continue to be. So I wish you all the best with your business. I know it's your first venture, but thank you for giving up your time, man. Where, where can people find you? How can they find out about Scrappy ABM? You've got your podcast.
Mason Cosby (38:08.61)
Yeah, I feel a little bit. If you've watched the movie Space Balls, feel a little bit like Space Ball sometimes because everything is scrappy ABM, even the website, even the podcast. If you look up scrappy ABM on LinkedIn, I'm the first thing that should appear. Everything I wear is Scrappy ABM now. So if you just look up scrappy ABM, I should pop up and I try to post on LinkedIn at least once a day. Sometimes I post upwards of two to three times podcasts releasing two episodes a week and the playbooks are not yet live. I had released some Google Docs playbooks and those were helpful, but I'm now truly designing them out, turning them into editable tangible templates and PDFs so that you can then go and take the playbooks that we build for our clients and run them on your own. So that will be coming. I don't have a firm timeline, but if you just keep your eye on the podcast, if you keep your eye on the LinkedIn profile, when those playbooks are out, you'll be the first to know.
Alex Olley (39:7.37)
Love it. Well, thank you again, Mason. This has been a real treat. And thank you for everyone listening and watching. This has been another episode of the antidote.
Mason Cosby (39:17.07)
Thanks, Alex.
