From hurricane survivor to $116K in recurring revenue
How AdsExpress built a global business with daily webinars
Note: This case study reflects one user's experience. Results vary and are not typical.
Jose Graxirena rebuilt his life from zero. Twice.
The first time was 2008, when he got fired from a corporate job at Bacardi and started a consulting business in Puerto Rico from his kitchen table.
The second time was 2017, when Hurricane Maria flattened the island and took 85% of his customers, two homes and his cars in a single weekend.
He landed in Florida with a smartphone, an old laptop and his family. No plan. No safety net. Just a license to sell life insurance and the will to never work for someone else again.
By 2023, Jose had built an $8 million insurance agency. He was traveling constantly, working 80 hours each week and waking up exhausted every Monday.
His commissions were huge, but they were chargeback-prone advances tied to a feast-or-famine cycle.
His wife and son told him to find a "real job." That hit him hard.
Then in 2024, he watched a YouTube video that changed everything. An agent named Alister Shirazi had built 100+ SaaS clients in 90 days using webinars and HighLevel.
"If he did it, why not me?"
Within 12 months, he launched daily live webinars, built a YouTube channel that now sits at 23,000+ subscribers and grew AdsExpress to 115+ monthly paying clients across multiple countries.
Here’s how Jose did it.
The Challenge: A high-income trap with no time and no freedom
The insurance business was making Jose money. It was also taking everything else.
"I was working 80 hours per week. I was never present. Every day I was at zero."
His agency relied on direct mail leads at $20,000 per county. He locked all of Central Florida from Tampa to Daytona, then watched the model crumble when mortgage rates jumped from 2% to 7% and his lead flow dried up.
He pivoted to selling small funeral insurance policies, but the commissions were a fraction of what he used to earn. He was spending $3,000 a week on leads just to keep the pipeline alive.
Worse, the structure had no exit. He was earning upfront commission for sales he hadn’t actually made yet. If a customer canceled, he had to pay the money back. So every "win" came with a string attached and every cancellation drained his account.
There was no ownership. No customer base he could step away from. No system that ran without him at the wheel.
And then there was the part of his life that no commission check could replace.
His wife had left her teaching job to care for their autistic son, Adrian. They moved from a beachfront home in Puerto Rico to a small apartment in Orlando with no friends nearby. And Jose was working away from home most of the time.
His wife and son finally sat him down.
"They told me, 'Why don't you find a real job? A job where you can have a salary, health insurance, and we can be together.' I said, 'Houston, we have a problem.'"
The Solution: One webinar a day, one platform, one ecosystem
When Jose discovered HighLevel through a lead vendor, he saw something different. Not just a CRM. A foundation.
"I realized you can do different things with HighLevel, not only leads. So I said, let me put time and structure into this. Let me go all in."
He went straight to the $497 plan because he wanted everything. Then he built AdsExpress around three pillars.
Sell it. Daily live webinars at 6 PM, Monday through Friday. No pre-recordings. No avatars. Just Jose, in Spanish, teaching anyone in any country how to build a digital business with the AdsExpress system. The webinars convert because they're personal. People ask questions in real time and Jose answers them.
Deliver it. A simple, tiered subscription model. $107/month for the basic Google Maps system, $197/month for websites and reviews, $397/month for the full lead generation suite. One-time setups range from $97 to $197. Every subscription rebuilds his predictable monthly revenue.
Teach it. Live training every Thursday at 10:30 AM. AdsExpress doesn't just hand clients software. It teaches them how to call 20 small businesses a day, fix their Google Maps listings, build AI websites and resell HighLevel's AI Employee at a fraction of what an actual employee would cost.
The positioning is what makes it work. AdsExpress isn't competing on features. It's competing on access.
"You don't have to invest a lot of capital. You have great support. And you can run it from anywhere in the world."
For the Hispanic market, where Jose estimates AI adoption sits at just 1%, that access is everything. He's not selling sophistication. He's selling a starting point.
The result is a business that scales horizontally instead of vertically. More clients, not bigger clients. More countries, not more meetings.
The Result: A book of business that runs while he's at the gym
The early months were brutal. Stripe froze $5,000 of his money for six months. Then Square froze another $6,000 for the same length of time.
Two back-to-back hits with no clear explanation. Jose eventually moved to a high-risk processor that takes 15% per transaction, which is why his entry tier is $107 instead of $97.
He absorbed the cost and kept selling.
His first 10 customers came from the webinars. He hit 100 customers in five months. He has 115+ active clients today, all subscription-based, paying anywhere from $107 to $397 a month.
He hired his first VA after his eighth client. He now has two remote team members handling onboarding and customer support across two time zones.
The numbers tell the story of the shift.
Revenue up 100% year-over-year, crossing $116K through November 2025 (almost all recurring)
Gold SaaSPRENEUR Award winner in his first year
YouTube channel grew from a few hundred subscribers to over 23,000
Audience now spans the United States, Mexico, Argentina, Spain, France and England
But the real shift is the one his family sees.
"Now I wake up at 7, go to the gym with my son Adrian, come back, have breakfast with my wife. I start work at 10. At 6 PM I have my webinar. From 7 to 8 PM I work with new customers."
The Punta Cana moment is the one Jose talks about most. He took his family to the Dominican Republic. The webinars kept running. The customers kept paying. The onboarding kept happening.
That’s when he realized for the first time in his life that the business was working for him instead of the other way around.
Next year, he's moving operations there permanently.
"My market is the planet now. Before I was driving alone 50% of the time. Now I can sell to anyone who speaks Spanish, anywhere in the world."
What happens when you stop selling hours and start building a book?
Jose Graxirena spent 16 years trading time for income. Bacardi sales director. Walmart consultant. Insurance agent. Each role made him more money. None of them gave him his life back.
HighLevel changed the equation.
One platform. One offer. One webinar a day. A model where every new client compounds the next.
A year in, AdsExpress runs across multiple countries with 115+ recurring subscribers, a 23,000+ subscriber YouTube engine and a founder who finally eats breakfast with his wife.
Read the full case study to see how Jose built it from zero. From a frozen Stripe account to a Gold SaaSPRENEUR Award to a global business he plans to run from a beach in the Dominican Republic.
Disclaimer: The results shared in this case study reflect the experience of one HighLevel user and are not typical or representative of what other users may achieve. AdsExpress’ growth and revenue outcomes are specific to their unique business model, market and execution. Revenue figures represent gross revenue during the stated period and do not reflect expenses or net profit. HighLevel makes no representations, warranties or guarantees regarding potential earnings, client growth or business success. This content is for illustrative and informational purposes only and does not constitute a business opportunity, franchise offering or earnings guarantee. Past performance does not predict future results and individual results will vary significantly.
