Entrepreneurship can take many forms. Some founders begin with a startup idea, while others discover an opportunity after years of working in an industry and seeing a problem that businesses repeatedly struggle to solve.
For Thomas Berkley entrepreneur developed through a combination of military service, business experience, marketing, and a growing interest in what happens after a company wins a customer.
Based in Cleveland, Ohio, Berkley is an entrepreneur, United States Air Force veteran, and founder of CSM Collective, a training and placement company focused on Client Success Management. His public biography states that he has generated more than $10 million in sales, built and scaled multiple businesses beyond eight figures, and received recognition including the ClickFunnels Two Comma Club and 10X Award.
Today, his work is centered on an area of business that can sometimes receive less attention than sales and marketing: helping companies retain their clients and create systems around the customer experience.
A Business Career Built on Discipline and Systems
Thomas Berkley’s professional story began before his entrepreneurial career.
He spent ten years in the United States Air Force after joining at 18. According to his public biography, the experience shaped his approach to discipline, accountability, leadership, and structured execution.
Those principles later became part of the way Berkley approached business.
Rather than seeing entrepreneurship purely as an exercise in creativity or risk-taking, his philosophy emphasizes systems and consistency. The idea is that a business should have processes that continue to work as the company grows, rather than depending entirely on the founder’s personal effort.
Berkley began building businesses in 2018 and eventually moved into online entrepreneurship and digital marketing. His current biography describes a career involving multiple companies that reached eight-figure levels.
Reaching the Eight-Figure Level
Berkley’s entrepreneurial career has included several notable milestones.
His public profile says he received the ClickFunnels Two Comma Club Award after generating more than $1 million through a single sales funnel. He later received the 10X Award, associated with surpassing $10 million in total sales.
These achievements are significant because they reflect Berkley’s experience with the mechanics of customer acquisition and revenue generation.
But his later work would focus on a different question.
If a business becomes successful at attracting customers, what systems does it have in place to make sure those customers remain successful?
That question became increasingly important to Berkley’s business philosophy.
Experience Working With Kevin Harrington
Another notable chapter in Berkley’s career was his work with Kevin Harrington, the original investor associated with ABC’s Shark Tank.
According to Berkley’s public biography, he worked with Harrington through American Entrepreneur, managing marketing campaigns for clients in the home-services sector.
The experience gave Berkley exposure to direct-response marketing and the operational challenges that come with helping businesses grow.
His later entrepreneurial philosophy combines that marketing experience with a greater emphasis on the customer relationship after the initial sale.
The Problem Thomas Berkley Identified
A recurring observation in Berkley’s public materials is that many businesses devote significant resources to acquiring customers but comparatively less attention to retaining them.
The pattern is easy to understand.
A business invests in advertising, salespeople, social media, lead generation, and other acquisition channels. Eventually, those efforts produce a customer.
But the customer relationship does not end with the transaction.
The company still has to onboard the client, communicate with them, deliver the promised service, monitor progress, resolve issues, and demonstrate value.
When those processes are not organized, customer churn can become a serious business problem.
Berkley saw an opportunity in that gap.
His response was to build a business around Client Success Management.
Understanding Client Success Management
A Client Success Manager, or CSM, is responsible for helping customers achieve the outcomes they expected when they purchased a product or service.
The position can include responsibilities such as:
- Guiding new customers through onboarding
- Maintaining regular communication
- Tracking progress toward goals
- Identifying potential problems
- Coordinating with internal teams
- Helping customers understand available resources
- Monitoring engagement and satisfaction
- Supporting long-term client relationships
The role is different from traditional customer support.
Support is often reactive: a customer has a problem and contacts the company for assistance.
Client Success is more proactive. The objective is to identify what customers need and help them reach their desired outcome before problems develop into cancellations.
This distinction is central to the business model Berkley developed with CSM Collective.
The Creation of CSM Collective
CSM Collective was created to address the client-retention challenge Berkley had observed across online businesses.
The company operates as a training and placement program for Client Success Managers.
Its model has two sides.
For businesses, CSM Collective provides trained professionals who can take responsibility for client relationships, onboarding, progress tracking, and retention.
For professionals, the organization provides training and certification intended to prepare them for remote Client Success roles.
According to CSM Collective’s public information, the program places certified CSMs with online businesses generating at least $35,000 per month. The company reports that more than 100 professionals have been trained and placed through its program.
Why Client Success Has Become a Business Priority
The rise of online businesses has made customer relationships more complex.
A coaching company may have clients participating remotely. A consulting firm may work with customers across several time zones. An agency may manage multiple accounts simultaneously. An online education company may have hundreds or thousands of customers progressing through a program at different speeds.
In each case, simply making a sale does not guarantee a successful customer experience.
Businesses need systems to understand whether customers are actually receiving value.
That is where a Client Success function can become useful.
Instead of leaving every customer relationship to the founder, salesperson, or general support team, a business can create a dedicated role responsible for helping clients succeed.
Berkley’s business is built around this concept.
Training the People Behind the Client Experience
One of the distinctive aspects of CSM Collective is that Berkley did not build the company solely as a consulting service for businesses.
The organization also focuses on developing people who want to work in Client Success.
Its training program teaches participants how to manage client relationships, conduct check-ins, track milestones, support onboarding, and identify potential retention issues.
The company states that previous Client Success experience is not required to enter its training program.
This creates a two-sided model: businesses receive trained talent, while professionals gain a structured pathway toward remote Client Success work.
A Different Perspective on Business Growth
Much of modern entrepreneurship revolves around acquisition.
How many leads can a company generate?
How many sales can its team close?
How much can it spend on advertising?
How quickly can revenue increase?
Berkley’s approach introduces another set of questions.
How long do customers stay?
Are they achieving the outcomes they expected?
How effectively are new clients onboarded?
What causes customers to leave?
Can the business identify problems before they become cancellations?
These questions shift the focus from simply generating revenue to understanding the full customer lifecycle.
For Berkley, that lifecycle is where Client Success Management becomes important.
The Influence of His Military Background
Berkley’s military background also provides context for his systems-oriented approach.
Ten years in the Air Force exposed him to an environment where roles, procedures, accountability, and execution matter.
His public biography describes those experiences as foundational to how he operates businesses today.
That influence can be seen in the way CSM Collective approaches Client Success.
Instead of treating client relationships as informal interactions, the company promotes a structured framework involving onboarding, communication, progress tracking, and retention.
The underlying idea is straightforward: consistent results are easier to produce when the process for achieving them is clearly defined.
Thomas Berkley’s Approach to Entrepreneurship
Several ideas characterize Berkley’s current entrepreneurial philosophy.
Building Systems
Berkley emphasizes systems that allow businesses to operate without requiring the founder to personally manage every activity.
Measuring Retention
Instead of concentrating exclusively on acquisition numbers, his work places greater attention on customer retention and lifetime value.
Creating Specialized Roles
As companies grow, different functions can require dedicated professionals. Client Success is one of the roles Berkley believes deserves greater attention.
Developing People
Through CSM Collective, his work extends beyond business consulting into professional training and career development.
Focusing on Outcomes
Client Success ultimately depends on whether customers achieve meaningful results. The role is therefore centered on outcomes rather than simply responding to requests.
What CSM Collective Offers Businesses
CSM Collective is designed primarily for online businesses that have already reached a certain level of revenue and need more structure around client management.
The company identifies coaching businesses, consulting companies, agencies, online education businesses, memberships, and other online service companies among the types of organizations that can benefit from Client Success support.
For these companies, a dedicated CSM can potentially help with several areas:
Client onboarding: Making the transition from sale to service more organized.
Communication: Establishing regular contact with customers.
Progress tracking: Monitoring whether clients are moving toward their objectives.
Problem identification: Finding potential issues before they lead to cancellations.
Retention: Helping create an experience that encourages customers to remain engaged.
Founder support: Taking day-to-day client management responsibilities away from business owners.
The objective is not simply to answer customer questions. It is to create an organized system around the customer’s journey.
A Career Opportunity in Remote Client Success
Berkley’s work also reflects a broader change in the employment market.
Remote work has created opportunities for professionals who may not want traditional sales or office-based careers.
Client Success can be attractive to people whose strengths include communication, organization, relationship building, problem-solving, and empathy.
CSM Collective’s model is built around teaching these skills and connecting trained professionals with businesses seeking Client Success support.
The company reports that CSMs placed through its program typically earn between $5,000 and $10,000 per month, depending on the business and the individual’s experience. These are company-reported figures and should not be interpreted as guaranteed earnings.
Thomas Berkley’s Current Focus
Berkley is now focused primarily on CSM Collective.
His public biography states that he went full time on the company in May 2026 and that more than 100 professionals have been trained and placed through the program.
The company is based in Cleveland, Ohio, while its training and placement model operates remotely across the United States.
This represents a new phase of Berkley’s career.
His earlier entrepreneurial work centered heavily on building and scaling companies. His current work takes those experiences and applies them to a specific operational challenge: helping businesses keep and serve the customers they have already acquired.
The Bigger Business Lesson
Thomas Berkley’s entrepreneurial story highlights an important aspect of modern business growth.
Customer acquisition may get a company noticed, but customer experience can determine what happens afterward.
A business can generate large numbers of leads and sales and still struggle if clients leave quickly. Conversely, a company with strong retention and effective fulfillment can create more stable recurring revenue and stronger customer relationships.
Client Success Management sits directly in that space.
Berkley’s work through CSM Collective is based on the belief that businesses should give this function more attention and structure.
Whether a company calls the role Client Success Manager, Account Manager, Customer Success Manager, or another name, the underlying responsibility remains similar: help customers achieve the results they came for.
Looking Ahead
Thomas Berkley’s career has moved through several distinct stages — military service, entrepreneurship, digital marketing, business scaling, and now Client Success Management.
Each stage has contributed to the perspective behind his current work.
His military experience provided a foundation in discipline and systems. His entrepreneurial career exposed him to the challenges of acquiring and retaining customers. His marketing work provided experience with growth and customer acquisition. CSM Collective represents his current effort to address the other side of that equation.
The broader idea is that successful businesses need more than an effective sales engine.
They also need a reliable way to deliver value after the sale.
For Thomas Berkley, that is where Client Success Management comes in.
Conclusion
Thomas Berkley’s journey from Air Force service to entrepreneurship and eventually to founding CSM Collective illustrates how business opportunities can emerge from repeatedly observing the same operational problem.
His experience building companies, generating significant sales, working in digital marketing, and collaborating with established entrepreneurs led him to focus on a question that is easy for growing businesses to overlook: What happens after the customer says yes?
Through CSM Collective, Berkley has built a business around that question.
The company trains Client Success Managers, connects them with qualifying online businesses, and promotes a more structured approach to customer retention and relationship management.
For Berkley, the future of sustainable online business growth is not only about finding more customers. It is also about creating better systems for helping existing customers succeed.
