Uptrend

Maverick Lim was a weightlifter and student-athlete who faced an existential crisis when his athletic career became infeasible. During his 2-year mandatory military service in Singapore, he decided to dedicate himself to building a business instead. He had no entrepreneurial skills but was motivated by a clear goal: achieving financial stability and freedom.

Maverick invested $2,000 in an expensive course on starting a consulting agency—a significant sum at the time. His initial idea was generating leads for real estate agents through Facebook, which he executed from Singapore while targeting New Zealand prospects. He discovered he could achieve a 10% call rate with his cold email copy, proving he could land cross-border deals. However, his inability to close deals in sales calls beyond 5 minutes forced him to pivot. A breakthrough came when he met an M&A advisor in a Facebook group who became his accountability partner, introduced him to the Sandler sales system, and eventually hired him to help with his firm.

Maverick's growth strategy relied entirely on cold email and LinkedIn direct outreach. He posted blog content on LinkedIn groups once every 2 weeks and steadily improved his messaging. His first 60-70 sales calls were brutal—he bombed them consistently while pitching to high-net-worth M&A advisors who were "sharpshooters" and would tear apart his pitch. But by call 80-100, he had learned to recognize objection patterns and counter them effectively. He eventually closed 3 clients at $2,000 monthly retainers, generating $15,000+ in total revenue.

Cold email and LinkedIn outreach worked exceptionally well for initial lead generation. However, the business model had fatal flaws. Timing was catastrophic—in 2019, the economy was booming and business owners weren't motivated to sell. His leads would flake after initial calls, making it impossible for M&A advisors to justify monthly retainers. The branding was forgettable; "Uptrend" conveyed no clear intent and didn't resonate in the niche. Most critically, he lacked the tools to build databases of ideal prospects—many were older business owners skeptical of digital outreach who only trusted referrals. Delivering results and retaining clients proved impossible, and after 10 months, Maverick was burning out with no foreseeable path forward.

Uptrend shut down in January 2020, just before COVID-19 would have created the market conditions for success (recession prompted business sales). Maverick invested $11,000 of his revenue back into tools and self-improvement but ultimately decided the niche was too small to scale. He documented the failure candidly and moved on to build Endorsive, focusing on automation and delegation—lessons learned from his first venture.