From Zero to 8-Figure Agencies: Jake Setterlun’s No-BS Scaling Blueprint 🚀

What is up? What is up everybody who's actually listening to this podcast right now? First of all guys, welcome back to another episode of The Nikhil Sai Show, which is hosted by me, The Nikhil Sai. And guess what's going on today? If you're seeing this on video, you probably know I brought another amazing award-winning entrepreneur, and he's powerhouse in the world of digital marketing space, talking about agency growth, offer creation, whatnot. I see very few people in the marketing space who actually try to make education as their core product. And we are bringing somebody who's at heart an educator and he's built 6+ 7-figure businesses, multiple 8-figure businesses, and with a proven track record. And scaling agencies to 8 figures is no joke. And if somebody has done it, you know how much painful it is. So we will be talking about all the things that could go right and go wrong as well. And he won the prestigious Inc. 5000 Award as well. He's been listed in that list and featured in the 30 Under 30, all the cool stuff. And he also has written a book called the Offer Course. So there is many things you're going to talk about, about advertising, offer creation, because he's one of the very few early adopters of TikTok ads, LinkedIn ads, and Meta ads and whatnot. And what I love about Jake, who I'm bringing on today on as a guest, is his no BS, straight to the point strategies that actually drive results. So let's not waste any time and actually let's welcome the founder of SettleLearn University, Jake SettleLearn.

Hey Jake, how's it going, man? Thank you so much for having me today. Excited to be here.

Yeah, we are stoked to have you as well. I mean, what a journey. Like, we kind of talked behind the podcast that, you know, your initial goal was to get that one golden plaque, right? Like, we all started with that one idea, like, if I can just make a million dollars with a business, right? Like, I'm set for life. But then once you get there, you ended up doing so much more, and it's really inspiring to see you. I would love to get into the meat and potatoes of how you have done that. Before that, Jake, can you give us some context? Who is Jake as a person? What was your upbringing? What was your journey before you actually got into entrepreneurship?

Yeah, absolutely. So really to start, I was in school for engineering. That's really kind of my origin story. And as a kid, I always wanted to be an inventor, which, you know, kind of going forward into marketing, I feel like I'm scratching that itch because I'm building businesses. I'm, you know, in marketing, it's a lot about creating different angles, scripts, you know, and the way people absorb it. So, always wanted to be an inventor. And that led me into being in school for engineering. And I was in school for engineering, realized, hey, this is cool, but I really want to own my own business and have that freedom. I ate a little bit too much or drank a little bit too much of the Kool-Aid from the Gary Vee era of— and Grant Cardone was big back then— of, you know, work for yourself, hustle, grind, all that stuff. I was, you know, big into that, big into that mindset. And that led me, you know, engineering plus entrepreneurship into starting a prototyping company, uh, very traditional brick and mortar, and realized very quickly— I'm 19 at the time— you can build a business and people don't come to it. So I had this whole thing, the prototyping business, 3D printer, all this fun stuff, um, you know, realized nobody was coming to my door. So I had to learn marketing, and actually that led me into getting into good old Tai Lopez's program. You know, his SMMA program. And you know, as much hate as the guy gets, one of the big, you know, strategies I took out of that was just traditional, you know, social media marketing. I ended up running a little free trial for the prototyping business. I got a few clients. Now granted, I didn't make a lot of money from that, but I was like, wow, this is like really cool, this whole marketing thing. You know, I had ran ads. And I was like, I can do this for other people. So I changed up, you know, I switched directions, shut down the whole engineering stuff and switched into having a marketing agency, specifically doing social media marketing for golf courses. And that was really my origin story of getting into, from, you know, in college, dropping out into marketing. And from there, I mean, we can unpack, you know, the next 2, 3 years of trying out marketing agencies, not making any money, doing free trials, a lot of free work, learning funnel building, getting a ClickFunnels account. And then really where it clicked in terms of, you know, having a solid advertising agency, a good offer, a good partner that was positioned well in that specific industry that we were doing lead gen and marketing for, which that's when the trajectory was like, okay, like, people are paying us, we're signing people up, and we scaled from there.

Makes sense. And such an interesting journey from an engineer to marketer. And I'm actually from engineering background as well. I have a diploma in mechanical engineering and I dropped out in my actual engineering because I kind of see the pattern and where it's ending up. So I was like, yeah, nah, this is not for me. So that's so cool. And yeah, I met Tai when I was in LA at his mansion in Beverly Hills. Yes, there's a bunch of people who hate him, but at the same time, I look at the net positive he has done. Like most entrepreneurs who I meet, like you, right, every now and then, even in, you know, anywhere I travel, like they kind of started somewhere with these people as the idols, like the Iman Gadzis or the, you know, Tai Lopez or Grant Cardone or Gary Vee. These were the people who kind of inspired and ignited that. Yeah, they might not have carried the whole journey out, but that's what you needed, right? The first initial spark. So that's pretty cool. So give us a blueprint, right? If somebody is listening, And starting an agency back in the day, advertising agency is so different from what's happening right now. If you were to start an agency today with no awards behind you, no brand name, no Inc. 5000, no 30 Under 30, like none of those credentials and no SaaS awards, what would be your playbook to get it to 7 figures?

That's a really good, great question. So there's a lot to unpack there, but the first biggest thing is going to be what my offer is. So it's making sure that I'm really analyzing my competition and understanding what they're currently offering and putting my own spin on it. It's my own term, I call it a purple ocean offer. Obviously you've heard of blue ocean, you've heard of red ocean. And for me, I love purple ocean offers. And the reason being is red ocean is very competitive, but there's a lot of opportunity in a competitive market. And blue ocean, sometimes it's great, but it's too unique. So you put a blue ocean spin on a red ocean offer, that's where you make a lot of money. So that would be the first thing is making sure, and I'm gonna use the example of real estate because It's the, where we first started. So to give you an example, when, when we first started, you know, Facebook ads was, you know, the big thing and it was just leads. It was giving people leads. A couple people were giving people appointments. So we came in and we were like, hey, there's this new platform out. And it was actually even before that we had set up our own automations and flows and all that with Pipedrive and Zapier and Twilio.

Like, sounds like a nightmare. Yeah.

Yeah, really kind of put it together. But we came in and we're like, hey, you know, traditionally, you know, you're Mr. Real estate agent, you're running these ads, you're getting leads, and you need an ISA or a setter to call these people up manually. And we were saying, hey, we're gonna get these leads for you. We have text automations that are then gonna go in, book the appointments for you. It's gonna reduce your cost per appointment. And that was at the time our purple ocean offer because it's a spin on something that they were already, used to buying. So, you know, in, in today's market, I would be selling something that is definitely omnichannel, multiple different platforms with AI agents implemented in. And then I would probably need some other kind of unique mechanism on top of that as well, because even in today's market, you're still playing a little bit in the red ocean with that. So having a solid offer is definitely, you know, where I would, would First start. Second is definitely going to also be positioning in the market.

Hmm.

I recommend this to everybody. I teach it. I fall back on this is getting into something that you can actually speak towards and have a story inside of. And if not, aligning yourself with somebody that can be a power partner that has authority and experience inside of that industry. So when I got started, I was in the, you know, we were in the real estate space. I didn't know anything about real estate, didn't know buyer, seller, agent, like any of that kind of stuff. But yeah, my partner that I ended up partnering with had a big background in the real estate industry, and he knew a lot about real estate, managed real estate. He had a big story about his success in using Facebook ads on how to generate buyers and sellers. So we were able to leverage his knowledge when we're selling people, and he could speak towards that specific industry and that specific clientele. And if I was starting today and I was like, I'm gonna sell marketing towards chiropractors, I would go on Upwork, I would go locally and I would offer either, I would hire them on Upwork if I could. Otherwise I would go locally and do free work for a bunch of chiropractors. And I would say, hey, would you be interested in being a power partner? Position them as a co-owner or a consultant executive, whatever board member, and then leverage everything about them to be able to align myself as somebody that not only has a unique system, something that's tailored towards a specific industry, but now we're aligned with, you know, or the board, the founding member or executive board, whatever you want to call it, is also a chiropractor helping us align more with, hey, we're not just a basement marketer sitting here in my underpants. Like we're legitimately, you know, aligned with people in the industry. And then from there it's really, you know, marketing because, you know, sales, have a good presentation, handle objections, follow up, fulfill, you know, a good service, get good systems automations. But the marketing aspect is going to be a little bit different than when we first started. When we first got started, it was LinkedIn outbound. We didn't really ever do much cold email, although it's something that we do nowadays. And then it was DM ads back in the day. It wasn't, the Instagram DM ad, it was actually Facebook Messenger ads and converting people that way. And then also that turned into a call funnel, traditional call funnel, question, question, question, and then, you know, okay, you're qualified, book a call with us. And I would do all of that today. It's part of the ecosystem, but trust is at an all-time low and you need a lot of different entry points. You need top of funnel people, you need mid-funnel and bottom of funnel individuals. So I would, a larger ecosystem of marketing where I'm doing cold email, I'm doing the LinkedIn, I have content going, I have a free community of individuals, school group, Facebook group of chiropractors that I'm inviting people to, and I'm starting to build this whole ecosystem of marketing. And then also, you know, we still have the call funnel, you know, we still have the DM ads, and it just becomes this large-scale marketing operation. And if I didn't have advertising budget, Again, I would just do the exact same thing, the organic content, but then also a lot of outbound with the main focus of in the content showing, hey, we're aligned with this chiropractor and then the outbound doubling down on it. Excuse me. And then from there, getting appointments, reinvesting money into ads and going from there, maybe going and getting a credit card too to, to get into ads because that is going to accelerate everything. But that's kind of my blueprint.

I love that. I mean, that's so clean and straightforward. And the fact that you kind of dropped a golden nugget there for somebody who's actually catching it, like getting a partner who already is an expert in the niche or relates, I think that's the biggest factor. Like you could run an ad, but you're just a marketing bro. Like they wouldn't easily trust you. But if there is a guy who's just like them speaking on camera about your product, I think it really creates a relativity factor. That's an amazing point. Now starting a business with the playbook you've given, right? Like it could, like if you just hustle hard and you know, if you just keep attacking the marketing piece, right? And you have your fulfillment, right? You could get to 7 figures, right? Like agencies I think are like one of the easiest businesses to start with. You basically need to market, you get paid for your services you haven't delivered yet. As long as you do a good job, you could retain them and it compounds. What's the playbook for somebody who already built a 7-figure business? To get to 8 figures as an agency. I think that's a different game at scale and operations and fulfillment. So would love to have a marketing playbook and fulfillment playbook on that.

[Speaker] Yeah, I love that. And there's a lot of different ways that you can get there and we've done it a few different ways inside of our businesses. So there's what I like to call horizontally scaling and we've done this. This was the first way that we made our first 10 mil, our first 8 figures, which was copying and pasting what was working into another industry. So we had real estate, we said, okay, this is working great, let's copy and paste into mortgage. We saw, okay, mortgage is going great, let's copy and paste into solar. So it was very horizontal, same deliverable, same product, different industry, different branding, et cetera. Weren't, you have that in insurance now, we have that in home services. And that was how we made our first 8 figures. But there's also a different approach. And that was something that, you know, through a lot of masterminds, it's something that, you know, you don't, A lot of, most people aren't going to just, you know, off the bat know how to do this, but it's, you know, instead of scaling horizontally, it's scaling vertically, which is going to, yeah, vertically, which is going to be having, you know, ascension inside of your business. So they're coming in on this offer. We've perfected making money on this offer. How can I now increase LTV and ascend them into a different product? And for us, it was either a kit, we'll call it a kitchen sink offer where we're able to just deliver on everything that we can do. Or more of a mastermind where we're connecting them with individuals. It's annual, monthly meets, a lot of different resources, more from a business growth perspective, not just even marketing. So there's that. And then lastly is different entry points into your business. And we could say that that is more, I guess that's still, you know, kind of playing in the vertical space. I was going to say more horizontal, but we'll say diagonal where you have different entry points. So if I'm selling over here, Facebook ads and GHL, I'm gonna now have a different service that is the same or very similar entry point, but maybe it's SEO, maybe it's GMB. And now I have two different ways that somebody can enter into my business and then I can upsell across the board. So that is how then we went and scaled to 8 figures again in a different manner. And from a marketing piece, it's, that's, you know, again, it's a lot of internal marketing, it's a lot of capitalizing on what you have going on. One thing that we've never capitalized on is power partners inside of our business, like the Dream 100 type of, you know, hey, you're big, you know, sign on, you know, X amount of people. Happened a couple times, but it's a valid way of doing things. Our biggest thing is always what can we control? And it's scaling our marketing, coming up with new offers, scaling horizontally into different industries, or just having a bigger product suite and more upsells.

Hmm, love that. Makes a lot of sense. I'm curious, like you have built multiple business models, like you've sold services as an agency. I'm assuming you've sold, like you're saying, mastermind and coaching and communities, consulting. There is also software. You have multiple SaaS awards behind you. But if you have to pick one model, okay, for 2025 and beyond, like you could only do one of those, not all of those, right? Which one would you actually pick and why?

I would do a hybrid offer of coaching and agency. Hmm, I'll give you a, give you a reason for this. The biggest issue all marketing companies have is retention, and the retention issue is on the SEO side. They don't know what's going on. They, they don't see the delivery.

Just hoping.

Yeah, it's very hard for them to conceptualize, and it's hard to sell websites too because everybody sells websites. A lot of competition, very red ocean. It's very also hard to put a blue ocean spin on a website. I'll leave it at that. On the, on the marketing side with advertising, all that stuff, it's always the end of time. You'll hear it from every agency: lead quality, leads suck, leads don't convert, appointments suck, they're not showing up, etc. Not buying. Yeah, they're not buying. Exactly. So by positioning it as marketing where you have this deliverable, you have, you know, they're getting the leads, they're getting something right away, but the coaching aspect, being able to coach them and have it be a little bit more intimate coaching. You know, we'll use chiropractors as an example. We're teaching them not only how to take those clients and convert them, or the leads and convert them, I should say, but then also how do you know you position your offers as a chiropractic agency? Here's resources for retention, here's ideas for bookkeeping, etc., etc., different practices. So it becomes more of this community and coaching for that specific industry in addition to marketing. And I'm not saying, you know, that's not a new thing by any means. There's a lot of agencies that have been successful with that model, but that is 100% what I would start in today's business. I think just the marketing agency model, you're just stuck in the same old, same old. So knowing what I know now, that's what I would do.

Yeah, I love that approach because I've seen both sides failing. Like just teaching education, you coach but they don't take action. But just doing marketing, you give them leads, but they say they don't have education on how to use that. So I think combining both could be the way like you're talking about. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Now you built one of the most incredible communities in the marketing space, right? Like 2,000 active members in your school group. I mean, like every time I open Instagram or Facebook, I kind of see you even if like I just scroll and I keep seeing you. So what's been the playbook for you to build a high-quality community like that? If somebody wants to build a high-quality community like that? What's the playbook for somebody to build a paid community? It's not just a free group. That's an interesting point there, right? Keeping 2,000 members active. So would love to know how to do that.

And I will be very transparent with you. It's something that I'm still learning because I am, I'm new. I've been doing the agency thing for so long. I'm still learning. I've invested in mentors and some partners to help out with the coaching side of things. Specifically what's worked for us, I feel like that's all I can talk about, is overdelivering and undercharging has been the biggest thing. If you look inside of there, like, obviously, you know, we just give away pretty much everything for free. Pulling back the curtain, I'm not upselling every single product. The way it's structured is you get in for $17 a month, you can unlock one of our programs every month. Or you can upgrade to unlimited for, it's $47. Like other than that, full access to absolutely everything. We have our templates in there for automated onboarding. I give all of our Canva templates away for ad images, funnels, outbound prospecting. We don't have any like, hey, unlock this course for $200 or anything like that. It's all right then and there. So that's definitely been the biggest thing is just straight up giving value. But then also, I do believe that the coaching aspect has also been huge. I know a lot of people that have higher-end communities do coaching calls every week, but we still do coaching calls every week at the price point that we're at. And I really do that, do believe, like, people turn it, you know, it's absolutely something that happens. But if you can get them on and get them feedback and give them a little bit of that one-on-one attention, Obviously you can't do it for everybody, but you try to and really just giving that people stick around and they appreciate what you're doing for them.

Yeah, I agree. I've seen these type of products or coaching services being sold at $10,000, $15,000, $30,000 just few years ago, like back in 2022, like before school even popped up, before communities was a big thing. The industry is changing a lot. Now there is a wave of info entrepreneurs and coaches and agencies, right? Who are becoming obsolete, especially because of AI. Because there used to be a big wall of information gap for the clients to do something, and that's why they needed a coach or an agency. And now you have ChatGPT in your phone. Like, you just ask a question and it probably answers better than the coach. Considering that, how would you make your business kind of AI-proof in this era, and how you would use AI in your advantage to keep the business, you know, who's actually going through the struggle?

That's a really good question. And it's hard because I feel like everything that I could say, I could backtrack and be like, well, like hypothetically you could get that from AI.

Make some assumptions, you know, you don't have to be perfect. You'll be good on that terms.

Yeah. So the biggest thing is definitely the done-for-you assets. We give out our battle-tested, and we've signed up over 10,000 clients with it, our automated onboarding sequence. It's a funnel that they use that the book and onboarding, they self-onboard. We have video tutorials, intake form. Checkout agreement. And at this point in time, AI can't build out that full sequence of automations and, you know, workflow, you know, it's automations, funnel, like all that stuff. So for me, that's one of those things that if I can continue to give value, one of the trainings, or I hate to call it a training, but like deliverables that we're working on currently is everything that we have in school. So yes, could AI populate some kind of training on how to run a school group? Yeah. But I have specific automations on if somebody turns and cancels, we send out automated messages. And that's the deliverable that people need on unique different ways to connect different things and the actual templates to execute on. And those are what's gonna help you stay AI-proof is the actual deliverable, not just the knowledge. Because I've even found it too with, we've had some members come in and be like, then they watch the basic videos and they're like, hey, like, I didn't learn anything from this. Like, this is all very basic info. And I'm like, well, hey man, like, you gotta unlock, you know, use your credit. We have a credit system. So it's like, use your token, unlock a credit or unlock a course. And I promise it's not basic, but that's absolutely a real thing because if somebody's like, how do I fix my mindset? Well, I can talk to ChatGPT, use the voice function, and it'll give me a full-on coaching plan on how I can do that. And then on the back end of that is always going to be human accountability. And that's something that we, we take into our coaching is as much as AI is great, you currently and today, like you can obviously automate it, but AI is not going to call you up physically. I guess it could. See, this is where I'm like, well, you could hypothetically do that.

It is a tricky, it is a tricky, yeah.

But in general, accountability from a human perspective and service.

And you're doing this for $17? You're doing all this for $17?

So, so this is more on the, the backend of the coaching aspect. Of what we have with accountability. But with that said, yes, because what we have in there is the people that show up for the weekly group coaching. I'll say, hey, you know, this is X, Y, and Z feedback. Come next week and I want you to show me what you worked on. And not everybody does it, but for those that do and they feel like, okay, like Jake is, you know, gonna like, you know, like he's expecting this to happen, that's one of those things that people Again, it's psychologically like they don't want to let another human down is what I'm trying to get at. So it's that accountability aspect.

Love that. That's pretty cool on how you're setting a frame for the community to keep it going. I think not many communities have that similar vibe in the community and they struggle with churn. I've seen some people who turned their high-ticket programs into low-ticket communities and it bombed off so bad. I cannot even stop laughing looking at that situation, but it is what it is sometimes. I'm curious, like you've been leveraging HighLevel pretty well and you're talking about like the playbooks and automations and pretty well and you have a bunch of SaaS awards behind you. If you have to break down the SaaS playbook, are you selling SaaS individually? Are you selling through webinars or are you offering it only to your clients? What's been the playbook to get that many subscribers for your SaaS users?

It's always the backbone of a different offer. We have never, and we've tried, and back in the day it worked, but it, over the years, everybody's doing it and everybody even at this point knows what HighLevel is. It's become such an industry-wide name in marketing. It's the HubSpot of, you know, the, the 20, the small business HubSpot. Yeah, whatever, you know, whatever year we're in. Yeah, it's really that big. People know what it is, even the boomers, they know what it is. So it's always a backbone for an offer. So for school, it's, hey, you know, get all of our, you know, frameworks, templates, all that stuff. Well, where do you have to host that? In school. Our clients for marketing agency, hey, you know, we have these AI agents and we have all these automations, et cetera, et cetera. Where do we host it? It's in GHL. So it's always a different upfront offer that's leading them to GHL as being the powerhouse for their business. And it just so happens that GHL can basically run their entire business and then that's what gets them to stick on. There's, there's definitely ways. The only other thing I would do is I would piece apart GHL's features and sell them as standalones and upsell into the main feature as an additional. But I think just straight up, we've tried to sell just straight up GHL.

It gets complicated.

Yeah, so hard. It's so hard. So it's the backbone of all of our other offers.

Hmm, makes sense. Now you've done something which I call blitzscaling, right? Like you kind of figured out one offer and little fulfillment on like how to keep clients happy and get them results. But then you started like blowing it up, right? Like, and many agencies, they suffer and they kind of crumble or crash or shut down or something goes so bad. Like, but you've done it successfully, not just once, but like multiple times at different scales, like 8 figures, 7 figures, so many times. So if you have to think back to the moment, right? And be like, if I'm observing myself building this 8-figure empire as an agency, these are the 3 things which I did right, right? So people could take away big playbooks from there. What would that be like?

Yeah, so the 3 things that we did right is your first hire should be your managers is going to be number 1. No matter what business you're in, I don't care what they cost, in the long run, I mean, besides a VA, I'm talking like big, big hire, like not somebody that's taking over and helping out with a little bit of client communication or anything. I'm talking like hire number one that's, you know, like replacing like a big piece of the business, like a sales closer as an example, or sales rep that you should be hiring that person with the expectation that they are gonna become a sales manager and eventually be closing a lot of deals, managing a team, et cetera, et cetera. To backtrack on that, we just hired a closer for, for the coaching side of things for Sutherland University to sell the full one-on-one coaching. And he is signed on with the expectation that he is here to close, learn the system, and then build out a team. And he has the rev share to do that. And that's also something with an operations manager. If I'm bringing on somebody to manage, let's say, the client CSM, I'm hiring that person, that first CSM is getting the expectation, I'm hiring him with the expectation that Hey, you're coming on for this amount of money. I'm also putting in your contract that once you learn the system, you are going to be needing to hire other CSMs. You're going to need to train them on exactly what you know. Here's the rev share that we're giving to you for doing that. That is the expectation. And you're almost bringing on these mini partners that are allowing you to build without having to manage.

Interesting.

It skips the step of You know, in business you have, you're the operator, you're doing everything, and then you ascend to this manager role where you have 5, you know, let's say 5, 6, 7, 8 team members underneath you, but you're still managing all of those individuals. And then you have what I call the admin or the owner or the founder or whatever, that that person is managing managers. And by me putting managers in in the first place, I'm skipping that whole middle ground So I don't have to worry about managing the manager because they're on a— I mean, obviously, excuse me, I don't have to worry about being a manager because I can manage these managers and make sure that they're just hiring good people and, you know, doing their job. But they understand that they're, they're in this like weird self-sufficient role. So that's helped out a lot.

Interesting.

The other big thing is going to be looking at KPIs. That is like don't get emotional. I don't care, you know, what you look at. I'll give you a little bit of a story we had with our first real estate agency. We scaled it. Speaking about crashing and burning, you know, we had a point where we were scaled a million dollars a month doing really great, and it all crashed and burned. And there was a lot of different reasons that you could point to. You could look at the market, you could look at, you know, whatever sales. But it really came down to us having a lot of our backend outsourced. We had picked the support company to basically handle all of our support. They ended up taking over fulfillment. And when that happens, now you have this disconnect of what are your customers saying? Are they being fulfilled upon? We didn't have the right management structure in place. And we, you know, ended up basically failing because they were not dealing with our customers properly, and we were hearing online from our customers complaining about us. And then we're like, okay, that's not good. We're going to them, they're saying, oh, everything's fine, you know. And it's just downhill from there. Reputation is so, so, so important, and delivering a good product is number one in every business. So that was, you know, the biggest issue. And when this happened, and, and that, you know, having in-house fulfillment, controlling everything, that, that'll be my lesson 3. But with the KPIs is when that happened, we were going to all of these individuals and saying, hey, what's going on? Sales manager, you're not closing as many people. What's happening?

Hmm.

Support person, support owner of the company, what's going on? And we're hearing all these different things of, oh, it's, it's fine. You know, don't worry. It's this, it's that, it's that, it's that. When in reality we should have been looking at KPIs. And it wasn't until we started tracking what, you know, what from literally from lead cost all the way to retention, cancellation, et cetera. What are our rates? What does everything look like? When we can really identify, okay, you know, our retention rate has dropped 10%. Film it. What's going on? Explain. What do we need to do to improve? And, you know, same thing with sales. It's always been a big thing when, you know, oh, the sales manager's like, ah, lead quality dropped, or the no-show rate's down, or et cetera, et cetera. But nothing's changed on the marketing side. And then not only that, but different sales reps are performing at different rates and this salesperson A's rate hasn't, it's been very consistent for the last 6 months, but then salesperson B has consistently declined. Well, it's not a lead issue because they're on a round robin. They're getting the same leads. Salesperson B is doing something wrong. What's going on there? So, so looking at KPIs, like don't, that needs to be the gold standard of anything, any decision in business. Don't worry about what other people are saying to you. Take it into account, but back it up with the KPIs. And then yeah, my last third one is always control everything in-house as much as possible because you need to be able to control the deliverable that you're giving.

Yeah, if you don't know what your clients are going through, it's kind of crumbled. It's just a matter of time. So I'm glad we talked about those three things. Now you have built a unique structure, right? Like you kind of talked about this a little bit where you're giving key roles some sort of fair incentive with the company's growth so they have clear motivation on what they need to work on and they don't need to be actively managed. Because the cycle I see a lot of agency owners, I call this monkey play, meaning you tell them and then you check up on them and they don't do it, then you check why it's not happening, and then you're just in this constant operational battle. And then the team is scattered with the vision because there's just so many clients, so many things breaking down. How do you stop that? Like how have you fixed that issue in your company when you're looking at the scale about operations not breaking and having those people motivated to do stuff?

Every business needs a professional butt kicker. I didn't, you know, I don't want to swear, but every business needs somebody that is going to hold somebody accountable. So if that's not you, and that's not me, I'm not that person. I have so many thoughts that go on on a day-to-day basis, ideas. So it's very hard for me to keep people accountable. But I, you know, it's very specific. And we're very diligent about having one person that is the butt kicker, the person that's going to keep all the cattle, you know, in the pen and make sure that they're doing what they're doing. So that is 100% the biggest thing is you need somebody that is solely focused on making sure that other people do what they need to do. Whether it's you or whether it's another individual, even honestly, we have one company where a VA does it and she is probably the biggest pain in the butt for everybody. But she, like her sole focus is making sure that she's on every single meeting, knows what everybody needs to do. She's in Monday, she sees everybody's to-do list and that's all she focuses on. So that to me is you need a professional butt kicker inside your company.

No, I'll take this advice and now I have a few companies that I need to mention and say, hey, Guess who we are hiring next? A butt kicker. Yep, you're creating a bunch of job postings after that. That's, that's, that's pretty cool. That's actually real talk, right? Like, that's actually very required because many entrepreneurs are visionaries and founders, optimistic people. They all talk about ideas and strategies and get lost sometimes on the details and what's actually being done. I think, yeah, every company deserves having a butt kicker, like you said, and the ROI could be insane. So that's Let's get to a different set of questions. Walk us through your tool stack. What are you using on a daily basis to manage yourself, your productivity, your clients, and whatnot?

I love that. That's such an awesome question. Right now, my biggest is GHL, of course. Gmail, if you wanted me to get in the weeds. Slack is definitely one. Other than that, ChatGPT, hands down, you know, all day, every day. It's, you know, just one of the best. Google Suite, Docs, Slides, et cetera. School, make.com. I used to be a big Zapier guy. Make has been a lot better for me recently with just with some of the customizations you can do.

Hmm.

I've been using a lot of Miro, you know, with content creation. I was used to be a big Gamma guy. Gamma was an AI presentation builder and I've been doing a lot in Miro because I can present a little bit better. So more visual, more visual. Absolutely. All socials, CapCut, Zoom, ClickUp. We're building our whole coaching backend and then that's going to be everything for, you know, from a management perspective for the agencies. ClickUp is going to be big. Canva for any kind of content. Fiverr, Upwork, you know, for hiring and outsourcing. Stripe, EasyPay for processing. I'm trying to look at all the tabs that I have open. Yeah, yeah.

Appreciate that. That's pretty cool.

Fathom has been Fathom has absolutely been huge.

Game changer. Yeah.

AI note-taking. Absolutely. Absolutely. Riverside for— I actually record all my content on Riverside for VSLs and everything just because it, for me, it's been the best for recording.

Easy to share. Yeah.

Easy to share. And then I guess another little one for the coaches that have school groups out there, SK Booster. It allows you to schedule out your school posts so I can have my VA go in there or I specifically go in for an hour during the week. Schedule out a couple weeks and then I don't have to worry specifically about scheduling out my school post. But yeah, that's been pretty much it. I mean, again, GHL is just always—

that's where you sleep. Yeah, it's always one tab open right there in the desktop, always, every day.

Right.

So yeah, totally with you. Now walk us through your average day, Jake. I know you're not like super outgoing person. Like when I ask you like, hey, why haven't you met you at FHL? You're like, I don't go anywhere, brother. Like, I'm just zoned in. So walk us through what are you doing? What grand projects are you working on? What's your day? What's your average day look like?

Yeah, so a day for me is very bland, unfortunately. I get up some days. I will do— I used to do a lot of like exercise, cardio, conditioning, and recently I've just had more work to do. So it's been very not so exciting lately. So I'll get up, I'll walk for anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes, a little bit of cardio, and then checking my phone, caffeination, and I'm working. In the morning is always my deep work, just so like I am 100% locked in. And then I go to the gym in the middle of the day. And then after that, it is any kind of meetings, coaching calls, etc., podcasts. And then that's, that's pretty much it. And then the night, it's usually working. Sometimes I'll go see my family. I do travel here and there. I was just actually in Alaska for 2 weeks, but other than that, Alaska. Alaska.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just getting out there in nature. I've got to touch grass every now and then. But I'll take, I'll do little weekend trips to different cities. Again, I'm talking like I'm there for a day. I'm there for 24 hours just to hang out, switch locations. And then other than that, it's hanging out with friends, going to dinner. I golf a lot in the summer. Thankfully we have good weather here now. But that, that's pretty much it. Like, I'm a very simple human being. Like, I'm not down in Miami networking, and it's, it's, it's not that I shouldn't be doing that because, like, I'm sure I could have a lot of business opportunities come my way from doing that, but I feel like I have so much on my plate currently. Um, you know, the agencies, I have two different coaching companies that, you know, we're currently building out another one, and then I have Sutterland University. So it's it's like, as much as I love going to events, I used to go to a lot of them. I've just had such a full plate and such, like, I have, like, I know what I need to build. I have the businesses that I need to be working on that, like, I just, you know, I don't need to be networking. Could I be losing out on money? Sure. But I do enjoy what I do at this point.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there is no right or wrong answer. I believe it's just a preference in the end, right? So that's kind of how I see it. And I'm glad you talked about your daily routine. I have a different sort of question for you. If you could go back and talk to the young yourself, right? And if you have to coach him right now, what would be the number one advice you would give yourself?

Such a good question because it's one of those things that, you know, I do believe that like I am here because I went through the path that I, you know, I went through. But I would say definitely making content and documenting my journey, not to get all Gary Vee, but even for, where I'm at now, where it is a little bit more coaching, I wish I had the content of the trials and errors and all that stuff to be able to go and be like, yo, check this out. This is, you know, this was an issue we went through this, and I can tell stories about it now. But if I was able to, you know, go back and show, yeah, that would have been really cool. So I think that doubling down on myself for the longest time, I was always the backend individuals behind the scenes, never the face of the company. And I wish I would have started getting more on the front end sooner. But with that said, it is one of those things that I do think there's a right place and a right time to do that for myself specifically. So I don't regret that it, you know, I didn't do that for the longest time.

Hmm.

And then I think the other, the biggest thing is just documenting all the crazy conversations and ideas that I've had. I have so many screenshots, so many voice notes. But if I would've had like one condensed Google Doc of everything, I could have fed it to ChatGPT and I would, I would have business for the rest of my life. Yeah.

Yeah. It's, it's your business CEO.

1000%. So that, that would've been really cool. And then going along with content, I think is making videos on lessons just that you learn along the way because you forget a lot about like the lessons that you learn after, you know, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 years. And it's like, you know, again, it takes a lot of conver— I, from the podcast even that I'm on, like it, those spark the old memories and it's like, oh, that's such a good lesson that I can give because from the coaching perspective and going back and, and teaching how do I start from zero, it's been so hard. It took me, you know, a few months to get back in that mindset because we've been operating at such a high level for so long that you skip a lot of the, the small steps, the details. Yeah, 1000%. And it's like, okay, like, and I had to bring in coaching clients and just do a lot of free work, even at the level I'm at now, because I needed to get back in that mindset of like, what challenges are you having? Like, what do you mean you can't get appointments? Like, you just run a funnel and it's like, oh yeah, that's right. You don't have $5,000 a week to spend on ads like that. Sure. 100%. So yeah, that's, that's been one of those things that has been One of the things I would go back and change is making sure that you document the journey and the lessons.

If you can save us, okay, from one big mistake that you've made, which probably we are about to make, and you're like, "Nick, that costs a lot, time, energy, effort, don't do it," what would that be?

Pitching people at too high of a service upfront in your career. I am big on, if you are just starting, you don't have a track record, you don't have proven results, you don't have a proven process, just get clients in the door and get comfortable working with people and perfect your craft. And there's so many different ways on how you can position. It doesn't have to be free work. It doesn't have to be a free client. It can be a rev share. It could be, hey, let me build this out for you. Let me, let me get in the weeds. Let me figure out how to, you know, work this out and then pay me a commission. And you can bring in 4 or 5, 6 clients like that, build out really good case studies, and that's going to unlock you charging 4K, but I burned so many time, I burned so many years, so many months, so many appointments, so much opportunity trying to pitch people on $5,000 retainers when we had absolutely no track record and we should have never been doing that from the start. That would be mine.

I'm kind of curious, right? Like at this scale of running an agency, like I'm sure like if somebody is an agency owner, they're making, 6 figures a year or more, like typically they have maybe 1 VA, they're mostly doing it by themselves and they kind of have high margins, right? What numbers do you think an agency owner should aim when they're building like an 8-figure agency? Like what's like a good ratio of marketing budget? Because it does get tricky. Like I've seen people who overspend marketing budget because they don't have standards on like how much they should spend. So curious on how would you respond to that?

So my threshold for marketing is always 25%. Of the cash— not, excuse me, not cash collected, the contract value of who you're bringing in. 25% hard max upfront. Good cost per acquisition from straight up marketing is going to be 10%, 10 to 15%. That's really good. You're scaling all day. It gets very hard when you get into the 20s of, you know, that amount of money going towards, you know, bringing on a client. Now, I will say the higher you— the more you charge, 20% becomes less and less and less. But when you start factoring in commissions, you start factoring in just all the other business expenses that you have. And usually when you're charging more, you have to spend more on the back end or deliver more. Not always, but, you know, and for the most part, oh, 25% is, is my number for, for that.

Makes sense. So that's the marketing piece. How about The sales side and the fulfillment side. I think those are the 3 common. There's admin, but that's not— I don't think it's a big deal. Yeah.

I mean, you're always going to have that 3%, 3% to 5% for payment processor, all that stuff. Yeah. So for sales, anywhere from a 10% to a 17%, we even have on some of our agencies, percent commission rate on cash collected. You got to motivate your salespeople. I am not one to skip out on paying out commissions because That is the lifeblood of every single business, whether it's coaching, whether it's agency, whatever it is. And then usually for a sales manager, anywhere from 3% to 5%, up to 10%. Again, you gotta have good people because sales is so important. So you're usually looking at a max of another 25% for sales.

Hmm.

For fulfillment, you can get away with up to 25%. Usually you're going to be wanting to stick within 10 to 15% for fulfillment. And then I mean, you know, at scale with what we're running, I hope this isn't a surprise to everybody that we don't have the craziest margins in the world. But we, we like to run at anywhere from 30% is really good, a 30% margin, but it's usually right around 20%. Obviously, we get into the teens. And we get, you know, up to— we'll have some months where it's in the 30s, high 30s, but right around that 20— excuse me, that 30 to 25% profit margin is at scale what you're going to be running. And I know some people are going to think that's absolutely ridiculous. But, you know, for us and the way we operate, that's just what we operate at. There's absolutely, you know, ways that you could reduce that. But I do think at scale it's always going to reduce and you're always going to be—

Oh yeah.

Less and less and less.

I mean, I'm glad you're talking about this because I've had this conversation with people who scaled 8-figure agencies and more, and they always come back to the same typical margins of like 20 to 30% is great, you're crushing it. It's like a stable recurring revenue business. Like keep it active and try to sell if you want, you know, like at a higher multiple. That's kind of what I hear. But then the young agency owners listen to that guy and say, oh, if I would be running that business, I would have 90% margins because I would hire everybody for 'From Philippines and spend no money on ads.' And I'm like, that doesn't work that way, buddy. Like, you know, learn something, Charlie. Like, so I'm glad you're talking about the numbers.

Honestly, the only way that you see yourself doing that is you don't own a business. I hate to use the word, you're a freelancer or you're a coach with 5 people that you work one-on-one with and you charge a decent amount of money. And I have friends that do this. They make a lot of money. Makes about $30,000 to $40,000 a month, his agency. He's got anywhere from 5 to 7 clients at one time. They're all on a rev share. He is the sole media buyer. He does all the work himself. He's got a VA and then he's got a creative individual and that's it. So if you want to work a typical job and, you know, 9 to 5, work a lot, not own a business, but just, be a really well-paid person with a normal job. And there's nothing wrong with that by any means. You know, there are months where I wish I was just doing that and I had my clients and I was working my 9 to 5 and, or had those clients and I had my hours I worked and that was it. But you know, to own a legitimate business, you're always, profit margins are always going to shrink.

Yeah, 100%. I'm with you on that. What inspires you, Jake? What's the reason you wake up you get to the desk, you sit down and you work. What's the motivation you have?

Honestly, I love creating and I still have that. And it's something that I lost for a long time, you know, with the agencies when you are doing the copy and paste model and you're scaling horizontally.

It gets boring.

Yeah. I hate doing things twice. So when you're on your 5th, 6th, 7th agency and you're like, I am sick because it's the same formula. It's build this, do this, do this. Like, and then it's like, it's not fun anymore. I don't care about, you know, building another agency. But what's been awesome for me is putting the coaching stuff together because it's new. I'm taking what we know, I'm templating it, I'm building course material around it. We're building out this coaching structure and we have different levels and like that. I'm just, I'm so jacked up on that. And then the, the backside of that, which has been really cool, and I've never felt— because it— I've just been out of the, the whole customer loop, you know. I haven't talked to a customer or had a relationship with a customer in a very long time because we have people doing that. So I'm, I'm out of that. But I've been so jacked up working with individuals again, seeing that they're getting results. I just did a consulting call with an individual the other day that He had, you know, he has his own group, his own community. And he was like, Jake, how are you getting all these signups for your group? And I was like, yo, like, just let's hop on a call. I'm going to show you the backend. I'll show you how I run the ads. All the media buyers run the ads now, but you know, show you how we have it set up. He messaged me yesterday and was like, I got my first $17 and $19 signup. And, you know, I'm breaking even. And he was losing money. He was paying like, 3 times what it costs for somebody to join their community. So he was like, this is amazing. And like, that's the type of stuff that I was like, that's so cool because it's not, now it's not me. Like when we start an agency and it's doing revenue, like, okay, cool. But the fact that other people are doing it, it's like, that's, that's awesome. So that's been the biggest for me too.

Yeah. I, I, I love that. And I totally relate, like, you know, your motivation. For your own goals kind of goes away at a certain stage, you know, after hitting certain revenue and having certain security and whatnot. But yeah, I really see the new stories you get from your clients every day keeps you up. Okay, that's pretty cool. Now Jake, somebody's listening and they feel like it's so cool and they want to be a part of what you're doing. How can they find you? How can they become a part of what you're doing?

Absolutely, yes. Just, I mean, I have jakesetterlund.com, but everything's going to point you back to Sutterlund University. It's like you said, it's $17 a month. We're just trying to give away as much as possible so that everybody can have a successful online business.

There's such an incredible offer. Thank you so much for sharing that with our audience. And Jake, thank you for sharing your wisdom of generating over $25 million online and building one of the fastest growing companies in the world and sharing your wisdom to our audience. And guys, hopefully you took some notes on how to build successful coaching consulting agency business, including communities. We haven't probably missed any point, but I'm glad you, you jumped on, Jake. And stay tuned, share this with a bunch of friends who have agencies and consider joining Settlelearn University as well. And I'll be back with another amazing guest just like Jake on this podcast. Once again, thanks for jumping on, Jake. Bye-bye.

Thank you so much.