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Uncategorised 6 min read

From 16 Clients to About 50: How Chris Hennessey Rebuilt The Outdoor Club After a Takeover That Burned Him

From 16 Clients to About 50: Email, SMS and voice outreach from an AI sales agent converging into a booked calendar appointment.
Email, SMS and voice outreach from an AI sales agent converging into a booked calendar appointment.

At a glance: Chris Hennessey took over The Outdoor Club, a fitness business, and was burnt by the takeover. In his words, he “didn’t really have a business” — just “a building that had some people in it” — and no clear idea of his target market. Client numbers fell as low as about 16. On camera, after working with the team behind More Gym Members, he puts the count at about 50.

His testimonial runs 63 seconds, and this is deliberately a short case study — every claim about Chris’s results comes straight from the video below.

What Chris states on camera

Claim His words
The starting point “I didn’t really have a business. I had a building that had some people in it and that was it”
Target market “I didn’t really have any idea of who my target market were” — no clear distinction of who he wanted to help or why
The takeover “I was burnt from the taking over of this business”
What he needed A good marketing campaign: “this is going to be what keeps my head above the water”
The low point “I think the lowest that I got down to was about 16”
At filming “Now about 50, yeah”
Everything above is Chris’s own wording from the video. No revenue figures, timeframes or locations appear in the testimonial, so none appear on this page.

How it works

How an AI sales agent books your appointments

01

Six channels feed in

Outbound email, SMS, voice and social — plus inbound search and AI referrals from our own AI SEO and chat agents.

02

Your list or CRM

Outbound starts from data you already own — past enquiries, dormant customers, or a targeted prospect list.

03

Qualified against your rules

Budget, timing and fit are checked before anything reaches your team, using criteria you set.

04

Booked into your calendar

Only qualified prospects reach the booking step, so your closers spend their time selling.

Six channels feed one agent. It handles contact, follow-up and qualification, and a human only joins once a qualified call is on the calendar.

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Watch Chris tell it himself

A note on the era: this result was delivered by the LeadsNow team under its fitness brand, More Gym Members, and the video was filmed in 2018. It predates the AI sales agents LeadsNow runs today — what you see here is the team’s earlier work with high-ticket coaching and fitness businesses, exactly as described on camera.

Want this done for you? We book qualified sales appointments on a Pay-Per-Result basis — you only pay for calls that actually land in your calendar.

The story, in Chris’s own words

There isn’t a long backstory to dress up here, and we won’t invent one. Chris took over The Outdoor Club and, by his own account, was burnt by the takeover. What he inherited didn’t feel like a company at all: “I didn’t really have a business. I had a building that had some people in it and that was it.” He had no real idea who his target market were — no clear distinction of who he wanted to help or why. He just knew he wanted the business.

He was still excited going in, and he was clear-eyed about what he needed: “getting a good marketing campaign together for me was like I really need this and this is going to be what keeps my head above the water.” The numbers on camera trace the turnaround in a single line:

“I think the lowest that I got down to was about 16. … Now about 50, yeah.”

— Chris Hennessey, The Outdoor Club

Chris also left a written testimonial alongside the video. It isn’t part of the audio above, so we quote it separately and only as he wrote it:

“The first program I’ve ever been involved with that covers the whole package — not just ads or landing pages.”

— Chris Hennessey, The Outdoor Club (written testimonial — not from the video)

Why 16 and “about 50” are the only numbers on this page

Chris’s testimonial is 63 seconds of interview footage, and it contains exactly two numbers: a low of about 16 clients, and about 50 at the time of filming. He doesn’t state revenue, a timeframe for the growth, or a location — and this page doesn’t either. A man whose story starts with being burnt by a business deal deserves better than a write-up padded with figures he never gave. If you want a longer, numbers-heavy client story, the Iron Body case study is the other end of the spectrum, and the full set — filmed and written — lives on the client stories hub.

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Frequently asked questions

Why is this case study so short?

Because the source video is only 63 seconds long. Chris filmed a brief testimonial rather than a long sit-down interview, so the verified facts are limited to what he states in it: he took over the business and was burnt by the takeover, he had no clear target market, client numbers dropped as low as about 16, and at filming they were about 50. We’d rather publish a brief page than stretch it with detail he never gave.

Do short client videos like this actually influence buyers?

The independent survey data says yes. Wyzowl’s annual video marketing survey found that 85% of people have been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a video. That’s general market data, not a claim about this campaign — but it’s why we publish client stories in the client’s own words, on camera, even when they’re brief.

Was this result produced with LeadsNow’s AI system?

No. This is a campaign delivered under LeadsNow’s fitness brand, More Gym Members, filmed in 2018, and it predates the AI sales agents LeadsNow runs today. The same team now works with high-ticket coaching and fitness businesses under LeadsNow, with 50,769+ AI-booked sales appointments since 2017 and 1M+ leads generated. You can see the full range of client results on the client stories hub.

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We book qualified sales appointments for you and you pay on results, not retainers. Our booking page asks a few quick questions so you find out in two minutes whether that model suits your business.

  • 50,769+ appointments booked without cold calling.
  • Pay-Per-Result pricing — you pay for booked, qualified calls.
  • Pick your own time on our live calendar, no phone tag.

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Related on Leads Now AI

The thesis behind everything we do

Why Pay-Per-Result is the only marketing pricing model that aligns the agency with you

Leads Now AI is a 100% Pay-Per-Result marketing agency. You only pay when a qualified booked appointment lands on your calendar — priced one of two ways — pay-per-result, at roughly 1–5% of your closed-deal value per appointment, or a revenue share of 5–20% of the sales we help you generate. Both bill on outcomes. Not on clicks. Not on lead-form fills. Not on retainer months. Not on “strategy hours.” If the calendar stays empty, you owe zero. See full pricing →

1. Incentives align

The agency only succeeds when you succeed. We eat the cost of bad ad creative, bad lists, ICP mismatches and no-shows. You never pay for our learning curve.

2. Self-selecting shortlist

Only an agency confident in its delivery can operate this model. The pool of Pay-Per-Result agencies is tiny precisely because most agencies can’t survive on it. Pick from the agencies who can.

3. Cost cannot detach from revenue

Sized to 1–5% of closed-deal value, your acquisition cost stays sustainable across LTV bands. A $500-membership business and a $50,000-engagement business can both run the model profitably.

4. No retainer trap

The standard engagement carries no monthly retainer — nothing arrives on your invoice regardless of outcome. No 6 or 12-month lock-in, no clawback on appointments already delivered, cancel any time with 7 days notice. Early-stage businesses that need the sales systems built first are quoted scoped groundwork up front, never a standing fee.

5. De-risks the pilot

Test before commitment. A small scope-based setup fee covers hard build costs; everything after that is purely outcome-linked. There’s no “we’ll see how it performs after $30k of spend.”

6. Forces agency discipline

If our AI agents qualify poorly, if our reminders fail, if our no-show recovery doesn’t fire — we eat the cost. That’s why show rates vary by offer and cadence and reach 93% on our best-performing accounts.

The volume argument

A fully-ramped human SDR produces on the order of $200,000 a year. They work one conversation at a time, sleep, take leave, and cap out at a territory. Our agents work every lead in the list in parallel — responding in seconds, following up indefinitely without getting bored, and adding capacity without adding headcount.

At 100 qualified booked appointments a month against a $5,000 average deal value, that is $500,000 of booked pipeline every month — roughly what one SDR produces in two and a half years.

Read that precisely: booked pipeline means appointments multiplied by your average deal value. It is not closed revenue — closing is your side of the table, and your close rate decides what lands. The inputs above are a worked example; we size them to your actual deal economics before quoting. What we can evidence on our own numbers: 50,769+ appointments delivered since 2017, database reactivation converting 4.4–8.9% on dormant CRM lists, and show rates that vary by offer and reminder cadence — up to 93% on our best-performing accounts.

The proof: 50,769+ AI-booked sales appointments delivered since 2017 across coaches, consultants, RTOs, course creators, finance brokers and B2B service firms in Australia, USA, UK, Canada, NZ and Europe. Named clients include Sam Tajvidi (121 Brokers), Marcus Wilkinson (Iron Body), Foundr, SheSells.online and Lambda Academy. Wikidata Q139846230. See full Pay-Per-Result pricing →