How I scaled my Agency to $3M ARR by doing this 1 thing every day...

We finally did it. After 4 years of building Platter, a development agency that builds and manages e-commerce storefronts, Shopify named us a Platinum Partner, their highest tier, one of only 33 agencies in the US to get it. And we did it in record time while scaling to almost $250K a month. When I posted about this online, everyone asked the same question: how? And when I told them the truth, they couldn't believe it because it was ridiculously simple. One straightforward action I did every single day, something I think every agency owner, business owner, and entrepreneur should be doing. In this video, I'm breaking down exactly what it is and showing you how I did it my day-to-day life of growing Platter. Enjoy this week's vlog. That is 4 years of hard work right there. We just got named a Shopify Platinum Agency Partner. Vlog started late because the videographer showed up late.

What happened yesterday?

Platter became a Shopify— Ben's like, oh, here we go again. Platter became Shopify Platinum agency partner.

How long did it take you to get that?

So there were 77 agencies in the world that got this, 33 in the US. It's like Accenture, Deloitte, and then add Platter to that list, which is pretty crazy. We did it in 4 years, which I think has to be a record.

What are you lifting today?

Upper body. I only do upper body once a week.

What happened to your back?

I don't know. My upper back, all my muscles are so tight. Probably from boxing.

Probably from winning so much, man. Yeah, I know.

I gotta take a break.

Just kidding. You guys are like a family.

We are a family.

We're just missing our dog and Ben's girlfriend.

Yo, give me some motivation, man.

He doesn't need motivation. He's on like a weight loss journey right now. He's trying to lose like 25 pounds. Biceps gain soon, bro.

Oh yeah, I need to cut more, cut more fetch to get them back.

Yeah, still have all of them.

Straight to the phone, man.

Tracking my workout.

Oh, you should pretend like you're doing work, bro.

I don't slack in the gym.

Oh, okay.

I try not to. I actually downloaded this app called Be Present, which like tracks— basically uses the same mechanisms to make you unaddicted to your phone. So we'll like limit me the number of times I can open an app and make it really hard to open. Just to show you guys, this is my favorite type of day where I just have the entire day blocked off for content and deep work with one meeting with my co-founder at the end of the day, and that's it. I've designed my calendar so every single day of the week has a very specific theme, and I try to stick to that. So Mondays and Fridays are internal calls, so that's meetings with all the people in my company. Tuesdays and Thursdays are external meetings, so mostly sales calls, partnership opportunities. And then Wednesdays I block for entirely me days where I can do content, I can do deep work, and catch up on whatever is the highest priority item in the business. I found over the last couple years that if I don't plan my days in advance, then I ultimately let everyone else dictate what I'm doing because you are reactive instead of proactive in your own business and you're not moving the business forward because you're just working in the business all the time instead of on the business. So days like today are to work on the business, think strategically, and think about what is next to move the business forward.

So I don't need to add it to a specific 8K, um, because then I just saw the email from, uh, Kieran. He says like 8K or something.

Those are the specifics spread across the additional months.

Okay. All right.

As long as that's the case, you can confirm that you said you know this X192.

Yeah, let me send him a message and then I'll text you.

I remember that dude's voice now, bro, at this point.

Yeah, dude. You hear what Adam just said? He's like, I literally remember that dude's voice at this point because every time with Adam, it's on the phone with me just trying to negotiate something. I'd love to learn a little bit more about your background. Obviously happy to give you some context on our business and then we can go from there if that works for you.

Thanks, man.

Have a good one. Bye.

I do.

I love that guy's answers to the questions. When you ask someone what they do for fun, give an interesting answer to the question. It shows that you're curious and you think outside the box of what normal people do. And then when I asked him what motivates him, it was to move his family out of a poor neighborhood. So this is a kid, he's a young kid. He has drive because he wants to provide for his family. Having someone who's curious, who has that tenacity to provide for their family like that is the type personality that I'm looking for. That was an introductory call, so I won't know for a little bit what happens with him in terms of like if he passes the tech challenge and the team approves of him. But it's a thumbs up for me. So I'm curious to see what happens in a couple of weeks from now if he actually becomes a member of the Platter team.

We just changed the name because the BAs were coming in as real BAs.

And who's currently doing that right now? Is that something you're doing?

MC does it if it's simple. Sarah or Felipe do it if it's hard.

Got it.

That guy would be able to do it if it's hard.

I want to make interactive gifting and start to make— like, brand that we test this with.

A girl uses it.

It'll notify you in like a month or two on how to execute and how to do it all, you know?

Cool, man. Sounds good.

Talk to you about it.

Later.

If there's anything that I can do for you, don't hesitate to reach out. I have nothing but positive things to say about what you did for our company.

So I—

yeah, thank you.

I appreciate that. Thank you so much, Benny.

Time to make use of New York City while I'm in New York City. I realized that I kind of got sick of working working from home every single day because I just like stay in my sweatpants and I'm just on calls and virtual interactions. So figured that we'd spend the afternoon today working from somewhere that is not the apartment that you guys see in every video.

That it hurts me so good and you don't even know, darling, I can't find my way.

I want to explain to you guys why it matters that Platter is now a Shopify Platinum Partner Agency. As I mentioned, there are like 75 in the entire world that have this status. This now allows us to have the opportunity to work with some of the largest corporations in the world that are operating on Shopify because Shopify will now give us the support that we need. And we've proven that through the amount of revenue we generated back to them, the brands that we've worked with thus far and the trajectory that we're on as a business. But I want to share with you, if you're an agency owner, like the things you should be thinking about to get to this status. It doesn't matter if you build websites or if you're a paid ads agency or any other type of agency. The lesson here is the go-to-market strategy that we use over the last 4 years to be able to achieve something that most businesses take 10 to 15 years to get to. And it's very simple. Think about what your business does, simplify it into a couple of words. So in our case, we build websites and attach your name to it. Every time I talk to someone, I'm like, our company name is Platter. We build websites. Every meeting that I have in person, virtual, every event that I host, every podcast that I shoot, it doesn't matter. When I talk to someone like, oh, what does your business do? I'm like, oh, we build Shopify website. Our company name is Platter. If you talk to anyone who needs a website, let them know to talk to us. By making this very simple association, so many people I talk to make references to our business and refer us clients. Because when someone's like, oh, do you know anyone who builds a website or anyone who can help with a website?

They're like, wait, this one person has a company called Platter that can help with that.

The simplification in describing what your business does is a superpower. Don't try to sound smart. It takes time to recognize that. You think you need to use big words to sound intellectual. It's not true. Explain what your business does like you're 7 years old. Tell everyone that, just keep repeating it over and over. And eventually with time, more people will hear it, more people will refer you business, and ultimately you can grow to get to where we got to, which was one of the fastest growing Shopify agencies to exist. Now with this status, we are getting referrals to massive businesses that the younger version of myself 4 years ago could have never imagined that we would have had the opportunity to work with.

How was that? Did you get work done?

It's so real that by changing your environment, you will change the way that your mind works. It's like when you're looking for creativity, just change where you are and you will start to think about different things. I'm such a creature of habit, and I realize that staying in the same environment is not conducive to wanting to change my thoughts. So like being able to go somewhere that I don't normally go allows me to look at the world in a different way and think about things differently. That was actually a huge success. I'm going to start doing that more often. As a remote agency founder, you're probably wondering why I choose to live in one of the most expensive cities in the world. I can literally walk 3 blocks and be exposed to tens of founders within minutes. You can walk— I look familiar?

Maybe I've seen you online somewhere. You do YouTube?

Yeah, I do.

Ben.

Ben. Yeah, I'm David.

Nice to meet you. Good to meet you, David.

What videos are you doing?

Like Build in Public.

I think I've seen you on, uh—

but if you're also roaming around this neighborhood, I live a couple blocks that way, so that's also possible.

Maybe. Well, follow your YouTube.

Oh yeah.

Wait, do you work with Jody? Yeah, dude, it's me. It's me. It was like 2 weeks ago.

Really?

We stopped for a second because Jody said hi to me and you guys were like walking to go like—

See, that's how my brain works.

He just came up to me and stopped me and he's like, wait, have I seen your content before? We're just like standing here filming a video. Funny enough, he actually has never seen my content, but he works with someone that I know. He's been doing content for way longer than I have and has had a ton of success. So listen to the guy himself on what you need to do if you want to get into this game.

Have a vision, show up, show up, and show up, and show up, and show up, and have faith.

I love that, dude.

You have a famous face.

Yeah? Yeah. Wow, that's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me.

I swear to God, on God right now.

What does that mean to you?

I don't know, it's like a recognizable face, you know, like Iman Gadzhi. Yeah, similar vibes. Okay, that's what I get. That's genuine right there.

I love it, dude. Good luck with everything. Thank you. You too. I'll text you.

Thank you.

Later. So as I was saying in that clip before about why I live in New York, that's actually— it's moments like that, like the serendipity. I'm literally standing here filming a video. A guy stops me on the street to tell me that I have a recognizable face. He has millions of followers on social, and now we're buddies. Maybe we'll hang out. Maybe we'll do some collab together. But it's just little things like that that you don't get when you're just in Bali, off the land, trying to build your business. I think being in the action is so important. So you always keep a pulse on what's going on. Wait, pause for one second. I have a very, very important message. If you just subscribe to the channel, if you're still watching, I'm early in this journey. We're like 10 or 12 videos into this thing. I have like 250 subscribers. Every single one counts. I don't ask you guys enough, so if you could please hit the subscribe button, I would appreciate that. Okay, let's get back to the video. Our minimum now is— just so you know, don't you want the CEO making sure— no, I, I 100%— closed mouths don't get fed. No, I'm, I'm aligned with you, but I'm just gonna spare the debate because it's, you know, I'm not the only shareholder shareholder in my company that has to say yes to shit like that, you know?

I feel like I played my part. You guys designed a killer site for us.

Cool.

But at the same time, I did go on record with you and said I don't like—

You did. I heard it. You can tell all your shareholders.

Yo, I mean, I got a bunch of other vendors down.

That's good. I mean, like I said, closed mouths don't get fed. Before we wrap up this week's vlog, I just wanted to talk to you guys about a call that I had a couple hours ago with with a client of ours who called me to essentially try to renegotiate the retainer price that we agreed upon. The main takeaway here is for you to understand that all because someone is trying to negotiate price with you does not mean that you need to say yes. The same way that you run a business, they also run a business. It's important to remember that closed mouths don't get fed. So if you don't ask for a discount, you're not going to get it. But all because they ask for it doesn't mean you have to give it to them. I got on the phone and basically just said, unfortunately, we can't do that. And his response to me was literally, I understand, I figured I would just ask because what's the worst that happens by asking? And he told me that he actually was able to successfully negotiate a bunch of other rates with a lot of other vendors that they use for the business. But if you're an agency owner or a service provider and you get in situations where you feel uncomfortable when someone's like pressing you, trying to negotiate you on price, and you're scared that they're going to walk away from the deal if you don't give it to them, you have to understand that holding your ground and knowing your worth is actually a winning strategy in the long run because you will build a reputation for yourself. If you're known as the guy that just bends over and says yes to everything that everyone asks for. It can be scary because the intrusive thought in your head is, I'm going to lose this deal if I don't give them exactly what they ask for. But understand, if you know your worth, it actually is more respectable. And there are a lot of clients out there who will say okay if you just hold your ground. That's the main lesson here. I appreciate you guys tuning in for another week of the vlog. The goal this year is to do 36 videos. That is roughly 3 a month. Hold me accountable if I don't do it. We will see you guys next week for another episode of the vlog. Peace.