Deshan says, 'Why did those people who asked for a refund in Maker School not achieve the results? Tell me about their mistakes so I can avoid them.'
The vast majority of wins in Maker School come down to consistency—or lack thereof. Outreach demands are fairly low: first week 2‑3 hours/day, then after building systems you can reduce to 1‑2 hours/day, and after a couple months most people can do the outreach in 45‑60 minutes. The actual outreach feels high and scary to those with low expectations about how much outreach is needed to get a client; they’ll think 'Oh my god, how do you do all these Upwork applications?' or cold emails or community posts take forever. But outreach is literally the only thing in your business that has any value when you have zero clients—nobody cares how good you are at voice agents until you have people on a call evaluating your skill to build voice agents. So just spend all your time on outreach. Many people aren’t willing to do that, unfortunately. Still, those who aren’t willing sometimes achieve great results because there’s a market hack/glitch where a little time, energy, and money can yield much larger returns. However, about 95% of those asking for refunds simply lack the consistency muscle and come up with every excuse not to do the work. I’ve been there too—I had low expectations about the volume needed; it took me 2,500 doors knocked to make my first dollar with an agency model. After that it becomes hard not to think, 'Holy, I can get a client in five hours of my time, which means I can get a client every day.' If you spend five hours a day doing this, you’ll get more clients in one day than most people get in a month.
If someone asks for a refund under Maker School’s 90‑day policy—whether they claim they made no money or not—I simply give them their money back. Honestly, most people who request refunds are those who probably weren’t going to succeed anyway. You can often tell by looking at their post history: if they’ve never even introduced themselves in the community, it’s clear they’re not interested in taking full advantage of what Maker School offers. The real value of Maker School lies in the relationships and network you build. When you make an introduction, you instantly connect with people who are building agencies earning $5 k–$10 k per month, as well as beginners, veterans, and folks across every experience level. The community spans almost every continent (except Antarctica) and is present in major population centers worldwide. Those who ask for a refund usually lack the willingness to put themselves out there, held back by limiting beliefs, and that’s why I don’t hesitate to refund them. My actual refund rate is about 2‑5 % month‑to‑month, rising to roughly 6 % during big sales because many people join excitedly without thinking it through. While that’s a regret of running large promotions, it also brings in significant revenue, so I continue to run those big sales.
No problem, you should definitely double down on other forms of outreach. There are two ways to get clients: money‑intensive methods, where you spend money to acquire clients fast, and time‑intensive methods, where you spend time instead of money. In Maker School I focus on money‑intensive tactics, but the amount of money needed is actually very low compared to most businesses. For example, cold email might cost around $220 a month (software, mailboxes, leads), which is about 44% of your $500 take‑home — still a lot when you also need to pay rent. Upwork Connects cost about $2.50 per application; using the Connect strategy 20 days a month adds roughly $250, bringing your total outreach spend to about $470, or 94% of your income. Clearly, spending that much on paid outreach isn’t realistic. If you don’t have money to spend, you trade your time for what that money would have bought you. Start with cold DMs: combine the best of my cold email and Upwork approaches, and send them on LinkedIn, X (Twitter), Instagram, and Reddit — about 20 per platform each day. At three minutes per message, that’s roughly four hours a day, yielding around 1,200 outreach attempts per month. Even with a modest 5% reply rate and a 25% booking‑to‑close rate, you could land a few clients and start generating income. As you reinvest those earnings, your outreach becomes more scalable and your hourly effective rate improves. Another time‑intensive tactic is community posting: join relevant Slack, Discord, LinkedIn, Facebook groups, answer questions daily for two weeks, then start posting your own value‑driven content. When you gain visibility and authority in those communities, people will DM you for help, letting you pitch your services and turn those interactions into leads. The core idea is to trade time for money early on; as your earnings grow, you can gradually shift back to money‑intensive methods and reduce the time you need to spend.
Yeah, well, I think you hit the nail on the head. It does take money to make money, but it doesn't explicitly require money—you can make it work with zero dollars, though it takes longer and is harder. The high‑leverage approach is to invest a little money at strategic pressure points to ease burdens like mundane outreach. So yeah, cold email outreach definitely still works. There are dozens of people posting wins about their cold outreach every day; if you check Maker School or the wins tab, about a third are cold outreach. The reason more aren’t cold outreach is that after most people get their first win they stop posting, and cold outreach is super scalable, so those who win tend to get many wins. In contrast, with Upwork you’re excited about the very first customer, which over‑represents Upwork wins. Anyway, the math: 400 bucks a month for 18‑credit applications at $1.50 per 50 credits per 10 equals $2.7, then you said 150—actually you’re right, it’s $400 a month. Most people don’t actually do five Upwork apps a day, and you’re amortizing the cost across the whole month. I recommend beginners do this because, compared with many other methods, you spend a little money each day instead of a large lump sum, and you see returns quickly, though the gap between investment and return is smaller and shorter. The way Upwork works is you spend a little bit of money daily—about $12 a day for 30 days—so you start seeing results pretty quickly, though the returns aren’t as big because Upwork is more competitive and has limits on job size and client acquisition. You notice the gap between starting and making money is shorter and smaller, which is why many people use Upwork. So yeah, it does take money to make money, but you don’t have to do it this way; you could send cold DMs, send cold emails manually, or try a million other things. Just don’t let the possibility of failure stop you from pursuing success.
The biggest one-time contract I sold was mid $220,000 for a project I called 'Uber for lumpers'—a system connecting companies needing lumpers (people who load/unload ships) with lumper workers. My business partner and I built it, but it was a total pain and not worth the time; it was one of the first projects we sold, so I took on custom work, but I don't recommend doing custom projects more than a couple times early on because there's little ROI on your time—my hourly rate is about $50. After that, I did a proposal generator system project that paid $1,500 and took only about 5–10 minutes to fulfill (plus ~30 minutes selling and a 30‑minute kickoff call). That gave a huge return on investment and unlocked the leverage idea: I could either make $225,000 in month‑one revenue from a big custom project, or I could create templates and sell the need, then spend five minutes copying a template I already built. Regarding agency requests, I get about 10 genuine agency inquiries per month; most want to invest $15K–$20K and work with me on a three‑month subscription at $5,900/month ($17,700 up front). I haven’t finalized my agency dynamics yet. The businesses that reach out most are high‑earning industries: fintech, software, financing/investing (e.g., underwriting firms that need automated financial data and email replies), and companies installing power grids that take a cut of hundred‑million‑dollar projects. My agency currently makes about $25,000 a month; from the $128,000 profit I mentioned, that’s roughly 20% of my income. Monthly profit isn’t the only metric—enterprise value matters. Info products are hard to sell because they’re tied to me; agencies have low multiples, whereas a SaaS product can achieve much higher multiples. I’m therefore building templates and done‑for‑you services, continuing to scale the agency for enterprise value and to stay connected to what I teach, because in coaching, when a system works, people often abandon it to teach it, which makes it outdated. I want to avoid that.
biggest contractuber for lumpersproposal generatoragency