#859 Building a $6.5M Remote Agency in 5 Years — LevelUp Leads
Tropical MBA: Entrepreneurship & Founder Lifestyle
Dan Andrews; Ian Schoen
4.9 • 527 Ratings
🗓️ 4 June 2026
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dan interviews John Karsant, founder of Level Up Leads, a 73-person outsourced SDR agency doing about $6.5M/year revenue, built while living abroad (Argentina, now Barcelona). John shares how he found remote work early via Craigslist, then spun out a list-building service that nearly failed due to one-off sales before pivoting into full appointment setting—eventually cold calling, which raised value, doubled average sale while keeping churn steady, and enabled $15K–$20K/month packages. He explains why radical honesty wins deals, how a strong ops leader and an in-house client dashboard improved transparency, and which metrics matter most (dial-to-connect, meetings booked, show rate, and pipeline movement).
In this episode:
- John discusses hiring ahead of the curve
- How he compensates reps based on client retention
- The decline of email outreach
- John’s inbound engine that drives 80–90% of leads
- Practical AI uses for role play training, transcript analysis, playbooks, and script generation
- The value of an experienced CEO coach
- John’s approach to investing and family life
Thanks to this week's sponsor Wayfront — the AI-ready operating system for productized agencies. One client portal. One team dashboard. All your data, AI-accessible. TMBA listeners get an extra free month on top of the trial at wayfront.com/tmba.
Links:
Level Up Leads
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Chapters:
(00:00:33) Guest Intro Story
(00:02:11) Argentina Remote Leap
(00:04:24) Barcelona Founder Life
(00:05:24) Time Management Abroad
(00:07:37) Business Idea Origins
(00:08:47) Pivot To Cold Calling
(00:12:17) Honest Sales Edge
(00:12:48) Ops Systems Dashboard
(00:14:27) Metrics And Financials
(00:18:12) Retention Based Pay
(00:21:44) Outbound Shifts And Inbound
(00:24:26) AI Workflows For SDRs
(00:28:43) CEO Coaching And Hard Stuff
(00:31:32) Personal Finance Investing
(00:31:16) Life Outside Work Dadhood
(00:38:58) Ideal Clients And Wrap Up
CONNECT:
Dan Andrews is the co-founder of Dynamite Circle, author of Before the Exit, host of the Tropical MBA podcast, and an entrepreneur who has successfully launched and scaled multiple 7-figure businesses.
Email Dan@tropicalmba.com
PLAYLIST:
The $10K Projects You Never Do (AI Just Changed That)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The best trait I have in sales is that I'm a shi liar. |
| 0:16.3 | Happy Thursday morning, everybody. |
| 0:17.5 | Welcome to the Tropical NBA podcast. |
| 0:19.7 | If you run a location independent |
| 0:21.2 | business or would like to do so one day, today you're joined by thousands who are doing the same. |
| 0:27.2 | You can find out more about what we do at tropical MBA.com or at dynamite circle.com. |
| 0:33.8 | Today's interview is a little bit of a full circle moment. Today's guest told me that over 10 years ago, he would listen to this podcast and say, |
| 0:41.0 | hey, wouldn't it be cool if I could go to a DC event someday? |
| 0:46.0 | Rewind the tape just a few days ago, Ian and I were on a morning huddle talking about our event |
| 0:51.4 | coming up in Barcelona at the end of July. |
| 0:53.9 | It's an event specifically |
| 0:54.9 | for seven and eight figure founders. And I was looking over the attendee list and I saw John's name. |
| 1:02.1 | And I was like, man, I really want to talk to John. He's on a heater. He's got a 73 person agency |
| 1:07.3 | doing $6.5 million a year. He's living in Barcelona. His entire adult |
| 1:13.3 | professional life, he's lived outside of the United States. He quit his job as a tennis coach |
| 1:18.1 | initially, moved to Argentina with no plan and no Spanish, and found his first remote gig on |
| 1:23.2 | Craigslist before remote work blew up. And this is probably around the time when he's listened to the |
| 1:28.2 | pod thinking, wouldn't be cool if I went to an event. Fast forward, I'm looking at the event registry |
| 1:33.2 | saying, man, I'm hoping John would be willing to come on the pod. I shoot him a text. He says, |
| 1:38.2 | let's do it. So in today's conversation, we'll talk about how we had the idea, how he built it. Initially, |
| 1:45.4 | he thought it was going to be just a very small shop, why he nearly shut the whole thing down |
| 1:50.0 | in the very, very early days. The pivot that changed everything gave him some tailwinds and some |
... |
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