CEO, Chronos Agency | Retention systems that turn $1 into $43+ | $400M+ attributed revenue via Email, SMS, Push | Free Audit Below
Singapore
Joined October 2020
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I'm Josh.
When I first started, I offered to work for free for a month and still couldn’t close a single client.
8 years later, I run a 75-person retention agency behind $380M in attributed revenue.
The beginning was quite a unique journey:
• I spent every dollar I had on courses, books, and food.
• Spent 4 months reaching out to brands who didn't care about email.
• Couldn't even give my work away for free.
I was in college and had no grand plan or startup vision. I just needed to make money so I could eat.
I'd been flipping random stuff on eBay, dropshipping, making a little bit of cash on the side.
But I saw an opportunity in email marketing and decided to pivot. But I had nothing:
• No network.
• No connections.
• About $1,000 to my name.
That was my entire operating budget.
And the brands I was reaching out to didn't care about email at all…
They were all-in on Facebook ads, doubling down on paid. Email was an afterthought to pretty much everyone.
So I spent four months doing cold outreach every day. Reaching out to brands on social media trying to land a single client.
And got zero results. Not a single client.
So I had a new genius offer:
"I'll do it for free. Four weeks, with no charge. We only talk about payment after I've driven results."
It felt like the offer nobody could refuse.
It turns out, free has a cost.
If you're a successful business owner, the risk of handing your email system to a random kid off the internet is real.
• What if he messes something up?
• What if you lose customers?
• What if skimping on a proper hire ends up costing more than paying for one?
The opportunity cost of free was too high. And at the time I had no clue of it.
I learned something that still shapes me today:
For people who've already built something, money isn't the scarcest resource. Time and attention are.
• Free doesn't solve for time.
• Free doesn't solve for attention.
• Free just means cheap. And cheap feels risky.
Once I understood that, I stopped competing on price and I started solving for what was actually scarce.
8 years later…
~$380M in retention-attributed revenue.
~75 people on the team.
~60 active clients.
It all started with $1,000 and four months of hearing no.
The constraint you're solving for might be the wrong one.
I probably wouldn't hire a “superstar” the way I did for my first hire.
At the time, it was stage appropriate.
My co-founder and I were doing the same things over and over again.
- We were hunting for clients
- We were servicing them
- We were doing the invoices
- We were doing admin
We needed to scale, and we wanted to scale.
But we were out of capacity.
We couldn't serve another client. So something had to give.
Without much experience, the first thing we tried to do was replicate ourselves.
We had never hired anyone before, and yet we went looking for:
> a “superstar” employee
> someone with an entrepreneurial spirit
> a generalist we could hire for attitude and aptitude
Looking back, it's kind of funny. But it worked out for us.
We took a hit on margins and hired someone to take over the full end-to-end production of servicing clients.
That paid off.
It really freed up our time to think about what the next evolution of Chronos should look like.
Things that quietly destroy your email and SMS revenue:
1. Optimizing your pop-up for submit rate over net new emails → fewer people enter your flows.
2. Mailing 80-90% of your list on every Q4 send with no safeguards → going wide can turn into a problem.
3. Even one of SPF, DKIM, or DMARC missing → inbox providers get fewer reasons to trust you.
4. Passive pop-up copy → visitors have to work out why they should care.
5. Segments that don't change what anyone receives → the same campaign goes to the engaged buyer and the first-time BFCM shopper who's never opened again.
6. More volume without tighter targeting → more of the wrong message reaches more of the wrong people faster.
7. An SMS list with nothing sent to it → revenue sits uncollected.
8. A generic “don't miss out” text → inbox clutter.
9. A discount at the front of every campaign → you train your audience to wait for the next one.
22. The list you already have is worth more than you think. You just have to work it properly. Save this and implement it all.
I'm Josh.
8 years ago, I started Chronos as one of the first Klaviyo agencies with a team based outside the US.
Today, we're a team of 75 people servicing 60+ brands, and we've generated $400M+ in attributed revenue for 600+ clients.
Full story below:
No other channel lets you sell to a captive audience that converts 3 to 5x better than your site traffic.
If your site converts at 3%, your email traffic should be converting closer to 10% or more.
So the more traffic you drive from email, the more revenue you should see.
Retention is the lever we've spent 8 years pulling for brands at Chronos.
(On a side note: I'm also building Ecom North, an events business for founders. Next up is a 2-day summit at Meridian Hall in Toronto on October 29th and 30th, focused on taking your brand beyond 8 figures. Sign up here: luma.com/ecomnorth-061d)
