Behind the Pipeline

At thirteen, I took one look at my older brother's Instagram and thought, “This is a cluttered mess. This does not look good for your image.”

I couldn't articulate the word branding yet. But that was what I was getting at.

After I pestered him for a while, he finally said, “Fine,” and gave me a chance. I archived about 70% of his pictures and kept only the best ones. Then I spent the evening unfollowing everyone who didn't follow him back—and then some—so the followers-to-following ratio looked good too.

That was the start of the escapade.

It was like a candy store

The following summer, when I was fourteen, I left Jamaica for the first time and arrived in Broward County, Florida. I was staying with my cousin, who worked as an accountant for a pharmaceutical company and later went on to become a CFO.

Cozy LED Lights was a side business. LED light strips, along with local rentals of bigger lighting equipment. Looking back, I still think my cousin was ahead of the time with that product.

There was a whole garage full of inventory, bought on credit cards, that wasn't moving. I saw it and instantly lit up. To me, it was like walking into a candy store.

First step: the name. After a few days of thinking, I settled on Fab Lights Decor. Then I spent the week rebuilding the website on Shopify. And honestly, looking back at it, it was a pretty good website.

My media-buying skills? Those were still very underdeveloped.

I managed a few sales with a poorly done ad I'd copied from the supplier's page. Nothing that amounted to serious traction. I went back home to Jamaica for school, and things fizzled out.

I still feel some frustration about that. I wish I'd been equipped to help my cousin properly launch that product. I could see the opportunity. I just didn't know enough yet.

Advertising stayed in my head, though. I kept trying different online shops and researching whatever I could.

The computer my mother bought me

Fast-forward to December 2019. I moved to America full-time. I was sixteen, turning seventeen in January, and I was excited. All I could think about was doing some kind of online business.

Deep into the research, I discovered this thing called a social media marketing agency. You ran ads for people, and they paid you a retainer. Sometimes a retainer and a performance fee.

Then the rabbit hole began.

Spring break came around. Halfway through, we were told it was being extended. Then we were told school was suspended indefinitely.

My mother was kind enough to buy me a PC from Best Buy. It was this sleek LG all-in-one, with the monitor and computer together and a nice base. An IKEA desk and chair to go with it.

I loved that thing. I really did. I was so grateful.

I'd sit there twelve hours a day studying, researching and “getting ready,” so to speak.

That summer, I needed to go back to Jamaica for three months. Which meant I needed a laptop. I begged my mother to buy me a used one from OfferUp. She had already bought me a desktop a few months earlier, so I was surprised when she agreed. And very thankful. I really did not want to stop this marketing thing.

I messaged a woman selling a MacBook Air for $400.

I came in at $350. She agreed.

“What are you going to use this laptop for?”

I went to Aventura to pick it up, hopped in her car, and we got talking.

“What are you going to use this laptop for?”

“Oh, for ads.”

“What type of ads?”

“Facebook ads.” It was still Facebook then, not Meta.

“Oh, well, I have a jewelry brand.”

“Oh, really?”

Then she asked how much I charged.

“Five hundred and five percent.”

I just blurted it out. I must have seen that pricing model on some forum. It felt like it came straight out of my subconscious and into the conversation.

She said yes.

I had no idea what was about to unfold.

Before we parted ways, she told me she didn't know how to reset the computer and asked whether I could do it. I said yes. She asked me to promise I would. To this day, I don't know how she trusted me with that, but she did.

I was so excited I couldn't wait. I still remember opening the laptop afterward, with the Hard Rock Hotel's guitar building in the background. Before resetting it, I spotted the Shopify logo and took a quick look.

My mouth dropped.

She was doing $30,000 a month organically. Organically! Selling charm bangles. And she'd already tried ads before, without getting them to work.

That woman became my first client.

On top of the world

First month, I crushed it. We generated $47,000 in revenue attributed to Facebook ads, at around a 6× return on ad spend. At $500 plus 5%, my fee came to $2,850.

All that preparation had paid off. And, to be honest, it was the perfect layup: a product people were already buying, with a business behind it that had real demand.

The highest month I had on that account was $98,000 in ad-attributed revenue. Before that month, I'd renegotiated my fee to $1,000 and 6%. That worked out to $6,880.

I was on top of the world. On top of the world.

Months later, the account got cut in half. The partners had a dispute and split. Our best-performing creative had also burned out. I'd been saying for months that we needed new ads, but I wasn't getting taken seriously.

And I have to own my part in that. I hadn't established the authority I needed to lead the work. I wasn't as skilled as I am today, either.

She referred me two more clients. One was her husband's business. Looking back, I was right when I told him the ads weren't good enough. He said they had enough creative and didn't need any more.

But being right about the problem wasn't enough. I should have been better at getting the right ads made.

The other referral was a dental exam-preparation business. I failed there too. A whole month of work, one sale, and I hadn't properly communicated what the numbers meant or managed expectations.

After that, I realized: this is no joke. If I'm going to make it here, I have to go hard.

That started the obsessive pursuit of becoming the best direct-response marketer I could be. I'm still chasing it.

My back was against the wall

After a short hiatus and three accounts that hadn't worked out, I had to start again with a fresh set of clients.

At the beginning of 2021, one happened to be my first financial-services client. I also had an HVAC company and a roofing company, and I was doing really well with those.

Leading up to signing the financial-services client, I'd got cocky. I put a guarantee in my contract: if they didn't get results, I'd work for free and pay for the ads.

In hindsight, complete madness. There were so many variables. Things could go wrong that weren't even in my control.

Three months in, this account was not going well at all. And I knew that guarantee was about to kick in.

My back was against the wall. What it felt like I did was turn around and punch straight through it. That's how much effort I put into answering one question: why is this not generating results?

Long story short, by the end of month five, lead costs and customer acquisition costs were on target.

That period left a taste in my mouth I couldn't get out. It made me focus.

Every industry has a puzzle to solve. If I wanted to become the best, I had to specialize. I couldn't keep starting over with a completely different puzzle every time.

Six months into 2021, I decided I would only take new clients in financial services.

I stayed with the puzzle

At the end of 2021, I got my first credit-repair client. At the beginning of 2022, I onboarded my first debt-consolidation client. Four tax advisors followed.

By the end of 2022, I had nine accounts under management and a small team of five.

Fast-forward to 2026. I've been relentless about this. Learning how to turn cold traffic into won clients in some of the most competitive categories in financial services. Staying with the same problems long enough to get much better at solving them.

These days, I'm selective about the accounts I take on. I want to see the upside for me and for the business. An opportunity worth putting that much of ourselves into.

For some businesses, that means working together directly: building the brand, the pipeline and the lead flow, then improving what happens after the lead comes in. That includes credit repair, retirement planning and wealth management, tax advisory and high-net-worth tax planning, and estate advisory.

For others, full pipeline development doesn't make sense. That's where our pay-per-lead pipelines come in. We currently cover home and auto insurance, annuities, debt consolidation and selected funding categories.

Today, we manage $2 million a month in ad spend on Meta and another $1.3 million on Google. We publish more than 1,000 pieces of media each month.

And the goal? To dominate this category.

I'm still chasing it. Relentlessly.