Lachie Pior Scale Smart Review: 3-Step AI Powered Referral Fee System?

Lachie Pior’s Scale Smart is a middleman digital marketing business mentorship program. It teaches you how to start an agency using the AI powered referral fee system. This system lets you launch an agency using AI for client leads and outsourcing for fulfillment. Its AI Evolution 101 Partnership Program provides you with unlimited mentorship, templates, training, and other resources. While partnered with the program, Scale Smart takes 10% of your revenue once you hit $5,000 a month.

Scale Smart reviews are positive, as shown by their score on popular review sites. They have a rating of 4.5/5 on Trustpilot and 3.7/5 on Product Review. Students like the accessible mentorship, website design services, regular group sessions, easy to follow training. Some students complained about the hidden costs, lack of transparency about the program details, and aggressive sales tactics. Those who opted not to join complained that the sales team was obsessed with asking about their finances. They said that ‌the program is meant for younger and more financially wealthy people.

I’ve been making money online as a middleman for over a decade. I’ve connected businesses to customers and freelancers through models like lead generation and ecommerce. This article reviews Scale Smart and its AI powered referral fee system. It includes Alice Santos’ experience with the program and a list of what you get with it, such as the 8-week training and email scripts. I also included who Lachie Pior is and what his claims about the business model are.

Scale Smart Pros and Cons

Pros

• Unlimited 1-on-1 coaching
• Plug-and-play email templates
• Lachie’s agency, Veritas Digital, uses the same business model

Cons

• 10% revenue cut
• Too much reliance on AI
• Lack of advanced lead generation strategies

Price: Scale Smart’s AI Powered Referral Fee System Costs $1,999.

Refund Policy: Scale Smart has a money-back guarantee plus $1,000 if you don’t make $1,000 profit within a year.

Origin: Scale Smart was founded in 2023.

Reputation: Scale Smart has a positive reputation and is featured in several publications, including MSN and Business Insider.

What Is The 3-Step AI Powered Referral Fee System?

The 3-step AI powered referral fee system is a business model in which you are the middleman that connects businesses with freelancers. There is a heavy focus on AI for lead generation. The system lets beginners provide digital marketing services without learning the skills or doing the work. The AI powered referral system can be explained in 3 steps:

1. Use AI to find clients en masse: Use Apollo.io to create an email list of business owners in your selected niche. It can provide you with over 4,000 results (names, companies, and verified email addresses) within seconds.
2. Use templates and AI to send email: Upload your email template to Apollo.io, which personalizes it for each potential client. It can send over 4,000 emails with 1 click. Scale Smart provides done-for-you email templates for any niche.
3. Outsource the fulfillment: Recruit freelancers from platforms like Upwork to fulfill your services. You can hire all-around marketers or specialists depending on your offers. Scale Smart simplifies this step by providing a list of pre-vetted freelancers.

You then split 50% of the service charge with the freelancer. For a $2,000 a month package, you earn up to $1,000 a month just by connecting and managing the freelancer and client.

How Alice Santos Makes $51,200 a Month With Scale Smart

Alice Santos made $51,200 on her highest month after working with Scale Smart for 4 years. She dropped out after her first year of taking business at the University of London because she was frustrated that her professors weren’t financially successful themselves. Alice joined Scale Smart with only $1K and would stay up until 3AM to take advantage of the mentorship. This hustle went on through the first few years. By year 4, she was making an average of $20K to $32K a month.

Alice says that access to the direct 1-on-1 coaching was the game changer for her. She learned sales and management skills and felt supported, unlike her experience in college. Although skeptical at first, she says that persistence led to her eventual success. She explains that she is committed to the middleman agency business and does not consider trying other online business models like dropshipping or ecommerce.

What Do You Get With Scale Smart’s AI Evolution 101 Partnership Program?

• 8-week video training program
• Step-by-step technical instructions for non-tech-savvy users
• Apollo.io training
• 1-on-1 mentorship for 10 weeks
• Weekly group calls with the co-founders Lockie and Lucas
• Access to the private community
• List of 7 “proven moneymaking niches”
• Email scripts and templates for each of the 7 niches
• Sales videos featuring Lucas that you can embed in your email templates
• ChatGPT message prompts
• Access to freelancer connections
• Sarah Smith, head of social at Veritas Digital, as your success coach
• Online assistant to automate lead generation after you hit $10,000 a month

Who Is Lachie Pior?

Lachie Pior is a digital marketing entrepreneur from Melbourne, Australia. He is the co-founder of the marketing agency, Veritas Digital. He is skilled with SEO, Google Ads, social media marketing, and email marketing. Lachie earns $7 million a year in total revenue from his digital agency and coaching businesses. Coming from a financially challenged family, he became a millionaire by 25 years old.

Lachie’s childhood was plagued with evictions, a mentally unstable mother, and a physically exhausted father. His father was a door-to-door seafood salesman, while his mother struggled with severe depression and suicidal tendencies. By age 16, Lachie started working at the Hoyts movie theater and made $150 a week. After high school, he worked as a cold caller for Yellow Pages company and became the top salesperson in 2 months.

At 19 years old, Lachie worked for a digital marketing agency where he learned direct response copywriting and Facebook advertising. He managed $40K to $90K monthly ad spend for 20 to 50 clients. A year later, he co-founded the agency Digital Knockout (renamed to Veritas Digital) with Lucas Durante. The agency was earning $40K a month within 90 days of launching. Veritas Digital makes $3 million annually with the help of AI-powered tools and a team of over 20 full-time employees.

What Are Lachie Pior’s Claims About the AI Powered Referral Fee System?

• Lachie promotes the AI Powered Referral Fee System as a business that can earn over $5,000 just by just sending emails.
• It takes an average of 3 weeks to get your first client by working 10 hours a week. Lachie says this is based on 678 Scale Smart students.
• You keep 100% of your profit split.
• You can do it with no experience with digital marketing or team management.

Debunking Lachie Pior’s Claims

• Earning $5,000 a month requires 10 $2,000 clients at a 50% cut. While this is possible, the average conversion rate of cold email marketing is 0.215% according to instantly.ai. Businesses are also more likely to sign with older proven agencies compared to new ones.
• It is possible to get a client within 3 weeks through automated mass email marketing. However, you may need to invest a lot of time in niche and market research. You may also likely spend weeks to years focused on brand building. The most successful students of Scale Smart stuck to it for many years.
• You do not take 100% profit as there are costs involved in the business. The free version of Apollo.io only gives you limited access to basic functions. It costs $49 to $119 to access the features you will need for the business. Using email marketing alone is not an effective lead generation strategy. Even Lachie uses paid ads to promote his agency. An example he gave is that he made $1,034,798 in 31 days by spending $221,587 on paid ads. He also had a team of over 40 members (29 full-time employees). The higher your target earnings, the higher the investment and risks.
• Starting a digital marketing business with zero experience is risky. Even as a middleman, you will need to learn how to manage clients and freelancers. Even Lachie says that team management is the most important part of the business.

Top 4 Middleman Online Businesses

1. Local lead generation: Rank niche sites using local SEO and rent them out to local businesses. As the digital landlord, you earn passive monthly income as long as the site is generating leads.
2. Amazon FBA wholesaling: Buy products in bulk for a significant discount and list them for sale on Amazon at full price. Amazon handles the fulfillment including inventory, shipping, and customer service.
3. Affiliate marketing: Create an online brand and promote products or services related to your niche. You can also just run ads to promote your affiliate links with no branding. You earn from commissions made from each sale.
4. Craigslist middleman: Similar to Scale Smart’s business model, you get jobs on Craigslist and outsource the fulfillment to freelancers. Craigslist offers a variety of online jobs such as graphic designs, audio editing, and website design.

The best middleman online business for you depends on factors like your skills, available resources, interests, niche. Each comes with their own advantages and risks. Make sure you do your due diligence before choosing.

Why Local Lead Generation Is My Number 1 Middleman Business

Local lead generation is my number 1 middleman business because of its passiveness and scalability. Compared to a marketing agency, you do not have to build a brand or portfolio. You do not compete with hundreds of agencies offering the same services. Instead, you rank niche websites which will generate leads for local businesses. Renting this site out to local businesses earns $500 to $3,000 a month. It’s basically hands-free as long as your site is ranking and generating leads.

The best part is that it is easy and quick to scale. Since you only need to update when ranking drops, you can focus on scaling after every launch. I currently have dozens of local lead generation sites, from tree care to limo rentals, that earn me over $52K of passive monthly income.