WTF is Predictable Growth? The Story Behind Our New Company
My friend, I have missed you. Yes you. The sexy metaverse, virtual reality website visitor who I love so dearly.
It has been a while since I’ve written but everything is changing and I am thrilled to bring you this post.
In this article I’d like to share some updates about what I’ve been up to over the last few months and years for those of you who are new here, plus excitedly announce the launch of Different Hunger Media’s newest brand, Predictable Growth.
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In this article, I’ll be taking you on a 4,000+ word journey through the following elements. Feel free to jump around if you want if you rather not read through everything:
Why I Quit My Desk Job
The Raw & Real Freelancer to Agency Journey
My Multi-Year, $300K+ Quest to Master B2B Client Acquisition
The Evolution of Different Hunger and Birth of Predictable Growth
Introducing Predictable Growth: Your Go-To Grow Without Hiring or Burning Out Solution
Why I Quit My Desk Job
For those of you who are new to Different Hunger and don’t know my story, Iet me give you the 411. Different Hunger started as a personal blog my senior year of college at Emory University.
I realized the traditional path would never be my long term thing, so I started a blog because that’s what all those white dudes drinking mojitos on the beach in Thailand told me to.
But in all seriousness, I understood the long term value of creating valuable content and building a community. I knew that building a community was the asset that would ultimately allow me to live life on my terms, so starting a blog was my first step to do this.
After college, while I did take a desk job at a startup, the main idea was to get paid to learn and soon after, go my own way. After my grandpa tragically passed away in early 2016, it woke me up and inspired me to stop delaying my dreams.
After a year and a half, I finally quit my desk job at 240 W 30th Street and hopped on a one-way flight to Medellin, Colombia; excited AF and scared shitless! I had one $500 freelance client and knew three words in Spanish: tacos, burritos and baño.
For three months straight I basically was doing nothing but waking up, working out and working.
Working consisted of blindly cold pitching strangers on the phone, on Upwork, sharing what I was up to with my network and beyond. Meanwhile, I was documenting the entire journey month by month.
Basically, the first two months after quitting my job I got absolutely zero results after consecutive 80-100 hour weeks and I had my first experience with burn out. It felt like I had hit a brick wall.
It was brutal, but in my third month, my cousin Rachel Buehler (LOVE YOU CUZ) sent me a few referral projects and I finally had an income. Small, but those first few dollars might as well have been millions.
If you’re curious, these were all the blog articles I wrote documenting my raw, real and anything-but-sexy journey:
- This was my blog from April 2016 (one month after quitting)
- This was May 2016 (where I worked more than ever, forever ever Kanye voice)
- This was June 2016 (when I launched a successful blog post that grew my email list big time)
- This was July 2016 when I ended up generating more revenue than my previous salary (which wasn’t that much, but progress is progress yo!)
After three months in Medellin it was time to head back New York City. I knew I’d be back soon as I felt I still had so much to explore to truly enjoy my Colombian experience.
The Raw & Real Freelancer to Agency Journey
During this time, I quickly realized the “dream” is nothing like you see on social media.
As you can likely tell from the above articles, my ‘entrepreneur dream’ was full of burn out, 12+ hour days and inconsistent client work. After almost a year of this and racking up some debt, it was time for the ultimate slice of humble pie…
It was time to sublet my Brooklyn apartment and move home with my parents… Sup Ma?
After 13 months of a brutal first year and hiring my very first coach (Ian Luebbers), I finally started to catch momentum. One project led to another which led to another.
Thanks to my legendary business coach Ian, I learned the art of outsourcing and systemizing.
This allowed me to hire my first full-time teammate and Operations Manager, Shubham, as well as build up a team of legendary designers who were not only far cheaper than me, but way more talented.
Before I knew it my measly $500 clients were steadily climbing to $5,000 to $10,000 projects. Then seemingly out of nowhere, I closed $22,500 of business in a single day which brought my revenue over the 6-figure mark and your boy was on top of the fuckin’ world.
For those of you curious, here’s a client by client breakdown of my journey from $0 to $100,000. I hope this helps you on your own journey!
Over the next year or so, I was able to bootstrap from zero to more than 100+ clients thanks to my super skilled team plus referrals from happy clients.
Little did I know I was in for a rude awakening…
Within a few weeks, our two biggest clients (which accounted for nearly 60% of our revenue) cancelled their services. Since I had been relying on referrals, I didn’t have a sales pipeline and soon after, I had to lay off my entire team.
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Fuck bro. I never imagined I would have to tell people who invested their blood, sweat and tears into me and my business for years, that I had to let them go, for no fault of their own.
Bruh, that shit still tears me up.
If that wasn’t enough, it was time for more humble pie and round two of becoming roommates with my Mom. I love her but damn. That sucked.
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Honestly, for months I was a depressed wreck that didn’t even want to get out of bed. It wasn’t until I started opening up with others did I realize the truth…
Nearly every single person I viewed as successful, had their own version of the exact same story… bankruptcy, burn out, debt, laying people off, the works.
Turned out, my most successful friends had multiple versions of these stories! You mean to tell me everybody eats shit but NOBODY talks about it?I was like, Yo, WTF, you kidding me?!!
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This shocking realization gave me new life again and inspired me to stop being a depressed POS and start taking massive action to ensure this situation never happened again.
This was around 2018 and since then I dedicated myself to learning the skills that would have prevented this disaster from happening, specifically client acquisition.
My Multi-Year, $300K+ Quest to Master B2B Client Acquisition
In my quest to master client acquisition, I consumed high ticket marketing, sales and client acquisition courses and coaching like a ravenous beast that hadn’t had a meal in years.
I learned everything I could from the best of the best in the industry like Tony Robbins #1 sales guy and coach (Eli Wilde), Sam Ovens and all of his top sales guys, Scott Oldford and many more.
In total, I invested several years of my life and well over $300K+ to master B2B client acquisition. I implemented everything as fast as I could, running as many experiments as possible, first with my own business, then with clients’ businesses.
After many failures, finally I started to string together more and more wins. I was actually getting the hang of this whole lead generation/business development/appointment setting/sales/client acquisition thing, yo.
On top of that, people were starting to take notice, including some of my own mentors like Sammy Ovens! People started asking me for help, to either consult with them or hire me to setup and implement the same systems for them.
I invested hella ⏳ and 💸 into courses, coaching and masterminds to soak up as much wisdom as possible from the industry GOATs while rapidly implementing.
Finally I started seeing results, people started noticing (like Sam Ovens) & even asked me to consult / do this for them! pic.twitter.com/6bVjFKDBQy
— who am i (@whoismattkohn) April 24, 2022
Before I knew it, clients were winning Fortune 50 clients, Inc. 500, 2 Comma Club awards and more. Everything changed after I started signing up new clients over the phone for $5,000 offers who had never spoken to me before within a single phone call.
Similar to when I had closed $22,500 in a day, my entire reality and mindset had shifted. Soon we had dozens of success stories piling up…
Best of all, no more panic attacks or burn out from constantly chasing clients. Growth had become steady, predictable and on-demand.
What was crazy to me was that we were winning clients who chose our products and services over much more established companies like Tayler Welch at Traffic & Funnels, Sam Ovens at Consulting.com or your favorite homie with all the knaaaaawledge, Tai Lopez.
I couldn’t believe it honestly. I still had massive imposter syndrome yet prospects who never heard of me before were choosing to work with our company after one or two phone calls, despite the fact that we were a younger, smaller and less ‘credible’ company to work with…
Outside I was stoked. Inside, the imposter in me was like “Hold up, bruh, are you really sure you want to do this?!”
Despite my doubts, more and more prospects who became clients from all over the world kept telling me that our brand messaging and values resonated with them much more deeply than the others which was mind blowing.
After having more conversations with our clients and diving deeper, it became clear to me that so many of them were suffering daily from chronic anxiety, burn out and even spastic panic attacks. Here’s a video actually sharing some sound bytes from these exact conversations…
They told me that what I was sharing with them was not only changing their business, but more importantly, changing their lives.
After hearing these stories, I realized that I had to share what we were doing on a much bigger scale. Looking back, I now realize this was the genesis of Predictable Growth.
The Evolution of Different Hunger and Birth of Predictable Growth
After hearing that so many of my close friends and my clients were suffering, just like I had, with anxiety, burn out and depression, I was inspired to do my best to help them and others like them.
They would constantly share things like…
“I know I need to replace myself but outsourcing ends up taking me way more time than if I just did everything myself!”
“I’ve been working 8-10+ hours per day for years with no end in sight…”
“It makes me nervous that networking and referrals are our primary source of new business”
“I have no idea how to setup a marketing funnel to attract high ticket agency clients”
“I’m scared to scale the business because I can’t work any more hours than I already am working”
“If our client retention was better I could have made at least an extra 7 figures last year…”
“We’re doing way too much but I have no idea what to do to simplify the business.”
“If I got 10 clients today I wouldn’t be celebrating. I’d probably shoot myself in the face.”
“I know I need to spend more time on biz dev and systems but have no time to spend on it”
“I can’t remember the last time I took a few days off”
“It’s been years since my last vacation”
I realized that one of the biggest reasons for all the above challenges was the exact same problem I had prior… the endless, seemingly never ending pursuit of adding new clients.
During my journey and quest to master client acquisition, I launched many new products and services that mostly failed while a few got great traction. Here were a few of them…
- I rebuilt my design agency and took on select design and development projects (This worked well and we are still serving several awesome clients today!)
- I launched a done-for-you lead generation agency with a partner (this got tons of traction early and we profitably scaled to $17,500 MRR within a few months, but we said yes to too many clients and it was a nightmare to scale)
- I launched a course and coaching program called 6-Figure Agency Accelerator with my business coach Ian for freelancers looking to build a profitable 6-figure agency (This was a huge success: we sold out 10 spots and pre-sold over $36,000 in revenue on Thinkific!)
- I launched a ‘graduation’ program to the previous accelerator which helped already profitable agencies productize their services and automate all operations (We did over $150,000 in revenue in our first year but had a difficult time scaling ads which hurt profitability)
- I launched two different monthly membership to help early-stage freelancers and agencies grow their business (one called Web Design Accelerator for web designers and one called Empires for freelancers/agencies) which got traction early but I was spread to thin with everything I had going on and ended up shutting things down
Throughout all this, I had the privilege to learn from the most brilliant minds in the client acquisition space, connect with thousands of agency owners in the B2B services space and personally serve hundreds of clients and customers through my own business. This allowed me to gain invaluable experience that I wanted to share with others…
So I started thinking about how I could solve this problem for not only them, but every business owner who feels the same (which based on my past conversations is the vast majority of businesses).
After meditating on my big picture vision for Different Hunger and undergoing my own spiritual awakening these last few years, especially since the passing of my friend and coach Ian, I realized that I wanted Different Hunger to be something far bigger than serving only entrepreneurs.
The name Different Hunger has always been about something deeper than business so limiting our reach to freelancers and agencies, which had become our primary audience, didn’t make sense.
After this realization, I decided to roll up all of our business growth products (like our growth agency, accelerator programs, courses, software, etc.) into their own sub-brand (which I decided would be Predictable Growth) under the larger umbrella brand of Different Hunger.
This way, we could continue to be laser targeted in serving our existing audience of freelancers, agencies and consultants without diluting our focus while also broadening Different Hunger’s reach.
While I will dive deeper into the future vision for Different Hunger in a later post, I’d love to formally introduce you to Predictable Growth, by telling you who we are, what we do and how we can help you transform your business and life…
Introducing Predictable Growth: Your Go-To Grow Without Hiring or Burning Out Solution
I identified the core problem that I wanted to solve at Predictable Growth was what I call the “growth hamster wheel”.
In our hustle porn addicted culture of 24/7 hustle, the mob mind continues to push an obsolete model for client acquisition: more leads, more appointments, more clients and more hiring.
With this approach, your company gets stuck on a never ending growth hamster wheel that steadily eats away at your time, sanity, profit margin and soul.
This is the epitome of what we call the growth hamster wheel and as shared above, this is exactly why my dear friends and clients were suffering from chronic anxiety, burn out and even spastic panic attacks.
I did some more research on this and the data is even worse…
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On average, it takes B2B companies 4 months to close a new deal beyond referrals (Klipfolio). Meanwhile it takes at least 11 months and cost your company $96,000 on average to generate an ROI with a new sales hire according to XYZ. Not to mention 1 in 4 sales hires will churn within 18 months and 50% will never hit quota, according to HubSpot. No wonder most businesses owners are enslaved by their business, yo!
This is a massive problem that’s ruining lives and through Predictable Growth, I am stoked to be able to solve this problem once and for all through what we call the New Model for Client Acquisition.
Our alternative is designed to help companies transition from inconsistent to on-demand client acquisition using a system that is simpler, faster, cheaper and more sustainable.
Best of all, our model can be implemented without hiring or without working yourself into oblivion, like I did the entire first year+ of my own journey…
After learning from so many brilliant mentors, I was able to take bits and pieces of my favorite parts, then apply my own unique style into something transformative for myself and clients.
This new model for client acquisition is what my team and I have pioneered and will be unashamedly promoting until this problem is resolved once and for all.
Our mission at Predictable Growth is simple: to help ambitious, bootstrapped B2B companies grow without sacrificing their mental health.
In order to do that, we have created the Predictable Growth Academy, a membership portal where users can learn about the new model for client acquisition and join a community that shares their values of both abundance and freedom — not burn out and anxiety.
In order to fulfill our mission and reach as many businesses as possible, we are making the membership totally free. I can’t promise it will always be free so jump in and start learning the new model for client acquisition for free while you still can.
Get Signed up for the Predictable Growth Academy Here
Next week, we are launching the Predictable Growth Academy on Product Hunt on April 25th and would greatly appreciate your support in the form of shares, comments and/or upvotes.
Additionally, we are hosting a monthly sales challenge called the 72 Hour Sales Challenge to help businesses add new clients in 72 hours. We’ve run this several times in the past with insane results and cannot wait to relaunch this to further our mission!
For anyone interested, we will be offering 50% off our next sales challenge. You can get the discounts on our Product Hunt page here when we launch on Apr 25, 2022.
We are thrilled to share with the business world there is a smarter way to grow! I am so grateful for your time and attention in following our journey. Peace and love amigo.
You friend, Matt.
