Codie Sanchez just validated this call

Codie Sanchez posted a chart this week that stopped me mid-scroll.

The Bloomberg data underneath it showed that high-income Americans that the top 10% of earners now drive nearly 50% of all US consumer spending. Up from about a third in the early 1990s.

That post validated a call I made about a year ago that changed my agency more than any tactical decision I've made in the last five years.

We used to work with 6 and 7 figure founders. Great people with businesses and problems worth solving. Then I made the decision to move our ICP up. 8 and 9 figure founders only.

Almost immediately, three things happened.

- Noticed decision making get faster. A 7-figure founder often takes 3-4 weeks to make a decision on our services. They loop in their partner, run the math a dozen times, sit with it. An 8-figure founder decides on the call, sometimes even before the call. They've done enough deals that they know how to evaluate one quickly, and they trust their own judgment.

- Noticed they understood the value already. With a smaller founder, we spend the first 20 minutes of every call selling them on why a personal brand matters. With an 8-figure founder, that conversation never happens. They've watched a competitor grow one and eat their market share or they've had a partner make an intro through content so they walked into the conversation already convinced.

- Noticed calls become better. Every conversation is about the work. Here is what we're building, here is what the market is doing, here is the decision. That alone gave back 5-10 hours a week and made the team dramatically more energized.

Then something I didn't plan for happened, and it's the part I want you to take away from this.

8-figure founders know other 8-figure founders.

The referral loop that opens up when your client base is at that level is completely different from the one at the 7-figure level. A 7-figure founder's network is other 7-figure founders. An 8-figure founder's network is other 8-figure founders, plus 9-figure operators, plus investors, plus people running funds. When they refer you, they refer you sideways and every new client brings the possibility of two more like them.

The agency stopped feeling like an agency and started feeling like a small, self-reinforcing ecosystem.

The rich pay better, decide faster, and travel in circles that compound. Every part of your business runs better when your ICP is at the top of the market instead of the middle.

Most founders resist moving up because it feels risky. Fewer clients, higher stakes, less margin for error. But higher-caliber clients are almost always lower risk, because they pay on time, cause fewer fires and don't disappear during a rough quarter.

The risk has always been in the middle of the market, not the top.

Wiz

P.S. This is exactly why we now only work with a handful of founders inside Mogul and every one of them is a SHARK in their industry. Book a call to join them and get become a recognizable name in your industry