Thomas Berkley is an entrepreneur and business builder based in Cleveland, Ohio, whose career has developed around entrepreneurship, sales, marketing, and client retention. His professional journey includes a decade of service in the United States Air Force, the creation and growth of multiple businesses, and the development of CSM Collective, a company focused on training and placing Client Success Managers.
His approach to business is shaped by a simple observation: acquiring customers is only one part of building a sustainable company. Keeping those customers engaged, helping them achieve results, and creating systems that support long-term relationships can have an equally significant effect on growth.
From Military Service to Entrepreneurship
Berkley’s professional story began in the United States Air Force. According to his website, he served for 10 years after joining at age 18. His military experience became a foundation for the discipline, accountability, and structured approach he later applied to business.
Rather than waiting until his military career ended, Berkley began studying business, sales, and marketing while still serving. His early entrepreneurial work eventually developed into a broader career in business building and consulting.
His website states that he began building and scaling companies from 2018 onward, eventually generating more than $10 million in sales across his companies. He also continued developing his understanding of marketing and client relationships through work with other entrepreneurs and businesses.
The combination of military discipline and entrepreneurial experience became a defining part of Berkley’s professional philosophy. He has emphasized the value of consistent execution, clearly defined responsibilities, and systems that allow businesses to operate without depending entirely on individual effort.
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Building Businesses Beyond the Eight-Figure Mark
Thomas Berkley’s entrepreneurial record includes several significant milestones. His website identifies him as a recipient of the ClickFunnels Two Comma Club Award and the ClickFunnels 10X Award.
The Two Comma Club recognition is associated with generating more than $1 million through a single ClickFunnels funnel. Berkley also received the 10X Award after surpassing $10 million in total sales across his businesses.
These achievements reflect a career centered on measurable business performance rather than entrepreneurship as a title alone. His experience has included sales systems, marketing campaigns, customer relationships, and the operational challenges that emerge as companies grow.
Berkley also worked directly with Kevin Harrington, the original Shark associated with ABC’s Shark Tank. His website describes his work as managing marketing campaigns for Harrington’s home-services clients.
That experience gave Berkley exposure to businesses operating at a larger commercial scale and reinforced his interest in the systems behind customer acquisition and retention.
The Business Problem That Led to CSM Collective
The development of CSM Collective Founder comes from a recurring problem Berkley observed while building and consulting with businesses.
Companies often invest heavily in acquiring customers. Marketing, advertising, sales teams, funnels, and lead-generation systems receive considerable attention, while the customer experience after the sale can receive far less.
Berkley identified client retention as a major gap.
A company can generate strong sales figures while still losing customers because of weak onboarding, inconsistent communication, unclear expectations, or poor follow-through. From Berkley’s perspective, solving those problems requires someone whose responsibility extends beyond customer support.
That role is the Client Success Manager, or CSM.
CSM Collective was developed around this concept. The company trains and certifies Client Success Managers and connects them with online businesses that need support with onboarding, engagement, fulfillment, and retention.
The Vision Behind CSM Collective
Berkley’s vision for CSM Collective extends beyond professional training. The model addresses two sides of the business relationship.
For business owners, the company provides trained professionals who can take responsibility for the customer journey after a sale. A CSM can help clients understand the service they purchased, stay engaged with the process, reach important milestones, and remain connected to the business.
For professionals, CSM Collective provides a pathway into client success work without requiring a traditional sales background. Its website describes the program as a way to train remote professionals for CSM roles and connect them with online coaches, consultants, and agencies.
The company states that more than 100 professionals have been trained, certified, and placed through CSM Collective.
This dual focus is central to Berkley’s current entrepreneurial work: helping businesses protect the value of the customers they already have while creating career opportunities for professionals who want to work in client success.
Why Client Retention Became a Central Focus
Berkley’s business philosophy places retention alongside acquisition as a core measure of business health.
A company may have an effective sales operation, but high customer churn can undermine the revenue generated by that system. Strong onboarding, regular communication, measurable milestones, and proactive customer support can help businesses build stronger relationships after the initial transaction.
Berkley has written about this subject in his own content. In a Medium article, he described client experience as an overlooked area of online business and argued that businesses can lose significant value by concentrating too heavily on acquiring new customers while neglecting existing ones.
His approach also connects client success with revenue. A successful customer may be more likely to renew, purchase additional services, provide a testimonial, or refer another customer. That makes the customer experience part of a company’s broader commercial strategy rather than an isolated support function.
A Philosophy Built Around Discipline
Military service remains an important part of how Berkley describes his approach to business.
His website states that the Air Force taught him the importance of clear roles, accountability, consistency, and disciplined execution. He applies those principles to company building by emphasizing systems rather than relying on motivation or short-term enthusiasm.
This philosophy is visible in his view of client success. A CSM is not simply expected to respond when a customer has a problem. The role can involve creating structured onboarding processes, monitoring progress, maintaining communication, and identifying issues before they become reasons for a customer to leave.
For Berkley, disciplined processes create the foundation for businesses that can grow without allowing customer relationships to become disorganized.
Helping Build Remote Career Opportunities
Another part of Berkley’s work involves the changing nature of professional careers.
CSM Collective positions client success as a remote career path for people who may not want to work in traditional sales roles. The company’s training model focuses on developing skills that businesses can use to manage customer relationships after the sale.
The CSM Collective website promotes roles involving client support, relationship management, and retention rather than cold outreach or commission-based selling.
This reflects Berkley’s broader belief that valuable business skills can create opportunities for people outside conventional career paths. His model connects professional training with an actual business need: companies require people who can help customers achieve the results they were promised.
Thomas Berkley’s Current Work
Today, Berkley’s public professional identity is closely associated with CSM Collective and client success management.
His website describes CSM Collective as a training and placement program designed to address client retention for online businesses, particularly companies operating in coaching, consulting, agency, and other service-based markets.
His work also continues to focus on entrepreneurship, business systems, marketing, and customer experience. Through his website and published content, Berkley shares his perspective on retention, client success, and the operational challenges entrepreneurs face as their companies expand.
The emphasis is consistent across these areas: growth should not depend entirely on acquiring more customers. Businesses also need systems that help existing customers stay, succeed, and continue seeing value in the relationship.
Entrepreneurial Success Through a Different Lens
Thomas Berkley’s career illustrates an approach to entrepreneurship that places operational discipline alongside revenue growth.
His path from the Air Force to business ownership, his experience building companies past eight figures, his work with established marketing figures, and his creation of CSM Collective all point toward the same principle: sustainable business performance depends on what happens after a customer says yes.
That perspective has shaped the direction of his current work. Rather than focusing solely on sales acquisition, Berkley has built his professional platform around the people and systems responsible for customer outcomes.
CSM Collective represents the clearest expression of that vision. By training Client Success Managers and connecting them with businesses that need stronger retention systems, Berkley has built a model that addresses both sides of the market.
His career continues to develop around entrepreneurship, client success, and the practical systems required to build businesses that can retain customers as they grow.
Author Bio
The author is a professional business and entrepreneurship writer who covers founders, business leaders, company strategies, and emerging professional opportunities. Their work focuses on presenting researched information in a clear, factual, and reader-focused format, with particular attention to entrepreneurial journeys and the ideas behind growing businesses.
