[Podcast Series] Cold to Close - Ep. 3 with Felix & Penn Frank: the cold email playbook behind a $3M ARR agency

We just dropped Episode 3 of Cold to Close - Smartlead's podcast for operators who live inside outbound campaigns.

Vaibhav (Founder, Smartlead) sat down with Felix and Penn Frank (Co-Founders, StackOptimise) to break down how they took their agency from $0 to $3M ARR in 2 years, with cold email as the backbone of every step.

In this episode they share:

✅ How they scaled to $3M using LinkedIn content + cold email as a paired motion (not separate channels)

✅ The copy approach that actually gets replies (disruptive, informal, and intentionally so)

✅ How they qualify clients and set custom KPI targets per industry before sending a single email

✅ One channel at a time vs. going wide from day one - their honest answer

✅ Why treating outbound channels as independent is killing your pipeline

Watch Episode