He Took 300 Sales Calls in One Year to Build a Newsletter Agency | Louis Shulman

Scaling a 15-Person Newsletter Agency and Building High-Converting Email Funnels

In this episode, Louis Shulman outlines how he built Orbit Marketing into a 15-person newsletter agency and ran more than 300 sales calls in a single year. He explains why email and newsletter funnels remain one of the most overlooked growth channels for B2B companies.

Louis walks through the agency playbook — from running paid ads to newsletter opt-ins to qualifying leads with surveys and Go High Level — and describes the operational and mindset shifts that turned client results into scalable growth. He also shares how internal tools like Orbit Flows evolved into commercial software.

Key Topics Covered:

• Why email marketing is an underused growth channel for B2B businesses
• The newsletter funnel: using paid social to drive newsletter opt-ins
• Automated lead qualification with surveys and Go High Level
• Transitioning from commodity service provider to fractional CMO
• Hiring approaches: founder-growth hires versus clone hires
• The power of opinionated writing over vanilla content
• Building systems and playbooks to scale agency work
• Using AI to address entrepreneurial fears and speed execution
• Monetizing internal tools — the Orbit Flows story
• Aligning incentives to consistently deliver client results

Episode Timestamps:

00:00 - Introduction and catching up with Louis Shulman
01:17 - What Orbit Marketing does and how the business evolved
03:51 - Why every B2B business should have an email presence
05:13 - Converting sales call rejections into future clients
07:23 - Training writers to create opinionated, high-converting content
08:47 - B2B vs DTC clients and strategic positioning
11:16 - The "sawdust" strategy: monetizing byproducts of your business
12:28 - Becoming a full-service marketing agency vs staying specialized
16:35 - Finding intrinsic motivation beyond revenue growth
20:32 - Is the agency model actually scalable?
24:46 - Using AI to overcome fears and mental blockers
27:06 - Hiring strategies: patience vs startup chaos mode
30:31 - Orbit Flows: building software from internal tools

About the Guest:

Louis Shulman is the founder of Orbit Marketing, a newsletter agency focused on generating qualified leads for B2B clients through email-first strategies and paid acquisition into newsletter funnels. He also operates Orbit Metrics, a data and analytics consultancy for high-spend e-commerce brands, and created Orbit Flows, a content and project management tool originally built for his own teams.

About the Company:

Orbit Marketing is a full-service newsletter agency that writes and manages newsletters, runs paid campaigns to newsletter opt-ins, and builds complete funnel systems using tools like Go High Level. With a team of 15, the agency serves clients across finance, e-commerce, and professional services, emphasizing measurable lead generation and scalable playbooks.