Sell First Strategy To Scale Marketing Agencies to 7 Fig without burnout - ft. Amiee Ball | TNS 14

We are live, we are live, everyone! Let some great people join the show and we'll be rocking soon in the whole show. So hey guys, this is Nikhil Sai back again with another amazing interview. So let me just quickly start with this stuff. So welcome to Indian Entrepreneurs Freedom, where we interview 2Gama Club Award winners and 7-figure business owners who inspire people with their amazing stories and stuff like that. So I'm Nikhil Sai, uh, hosting the show today, and we are having another special guest. Guess what? She is a boss. I mean, she's a boss, and she helped multiple agencies scale to 7 figures and beyond. So she is a 2Gama Club Award winner. She has an amazing track record. When I actually had a look, I was super amazed with her track record. So let's welcome Ami Ball, CEO of Bossless Forever. Hi, Ami.

Hey, how's it going?

It's going great, Ami. We'd love to have you on the show. How's everything going from your side?

Going well. Wish it was a little warmer, but that's about all.

Yeah, that sounds really fair, Ami. So first of all, guys, whoever is watching this live, thanks for joining the live, and please make sure to comment if you have any more questions because Ami is super generous. She would love to answer your questions while the live is going on. And please share this valuable content because It's going to add insane amount of value to the people who are actually starting off. And Amy, why don't you start off with your backstory? Like, how did you get started? Like, what was your story behind the scenes? It would be definitely great if you share.

Yeah, for sure. So, you know, probably like a lot of us, I definitely wasn't born with a silver spoon or anything in my mouth. You know, both of my parents worked full-time to make ends meet. You know, after high school, followed the path of a typical 9-to-5 American, you know, taking out way too many student loans, working 3 jobs throughout college, hope of— hoping to land that 6-figure paycheck when I finally graduated. Um, suffice to say, I was probably immediately humbled by the $24,000 a year that my corporate employer offered me. Um, I worked in a Fortune 1000 company for about the next 12 years, worked my way up, all that good stuff. And honestly, I was making probably about $200,000 a year, company car, benefits, you know, all the bells and whistles. But like, for me, something was still kind of missing. Um, I had—

but you're a boss, right?

Right. Yeah, I was like, I need to do something different. And I had two small kids, and I was constantly, you know, sacrificing my time with them for a paycheck. Um, So I kind of took a good hard look at what I was doing. It's like, you know, I'm giving my blood, sweat, and tears to this company who, you know, if something happens, they'll have me out the door in 2 seconds flat. So like you said, come hell or high water, it was like, I gotta, I gotta become my own boss. So I started researching, understanding different opportunities like so many of us have done, and decided to go into the digital marketing space. I connected with a few good mentors. To be honest, some successful business owners who helped me understand a lot of the backend, the technical stuff. And I started, you know, the infamous side hustle. And I guess about a year after starting, I was making about twice as much in this side hustle gig than I was in my full-time job. And that's kind of when I decided to entrepreneur the hell out of it. Quit my job. So, you know, to make a long story short, I've been doing this full-time now for about the last 8 years, 7 years, and I've managed to grow the agency to over 7 figures, expand into other areas to generate more revenue, including software and of course coaching other agency owners. So that's kind of the gist of it.

I need to definitely appreciate that, right? So this is where the boss stuff comes from, a lady who's already making probably $200,000 a year before 10 years. Now she was like having, like, she literally realized that there was a missing of freedom thing, right? Now then you started your own business, and this is the right way to do it, where you actually started with a gig, side hustle, and you made a lot of money. Then you felt super comfortable making double the money. Then you started doubling down on what's actually working and started quitting your job. That's really inspiring. And I think a lot of women will actually watch this, will get super interested and excited to to start their own side hustle because they always give excuses like, "Ah, nah, I'm busy, I'm on a job, I don't have time," and other stuff, right? But here you go, you can definitely do it if you really start in the right way. So yeah, I would like to get back to the actual context, Ami. So as you're into agency space from a long time, I mean around 10 years or something like that, I really like, what is the main problem with agency business? I see a lot of people do it wrong. Why do you think most of people do it in the wrong way?

Well, you know, it's a great question because in working with probably over 2,000 agency owners over the last few years, I hear them constantly saying things like, you know, I need more automation because I'm working 80 hours a week, or I can't find clients, or I get the clients and then I lose the clients because they tell me my leads are crap. But the truth is, those are all symptoms of a much bigger problem that a lot of agency owners don't realize. The root problem I think people have is that they lack a good business model. You know, we focus so hard on the methods and the skills that we've learned, whether it's Facebook ads or SEO or whatever it is, that we fail to build out a solid business model and really offer unique value around the client's problems. And honestly, it's not the fault of agency owners. You know, we, we do it that way because it's what we've been taught. You know, if you think about the learning process of most agency owners or digital marketers, we start off wanting to escape the 9-to-5 grind exactly like I did. So we find a coach, we purchase a course, we take a class, whatever it is, so we can learn these skills. Like I said, lead gen, Facebook ads, SEO. But what we don't see is that much like traditional school, most of those courses do teach valuable tactical processes, you know, the how to do it kind of thing, but they don't necessarily teach people how to create a unique scalable offer. You know, they don't teach people how to think for themselves and create a viable business that's kind of going to stand the test of time. So what happens next is that we have what's happening today. You know, we have business owners all over the world getting bombarded on a daily basis with thousands of these online marketing guys who are calling them to say, hey, I can get you more leads, or I can improve your Google rankings, or I can put you on social media, right?

But absolutely.

So what's happened is, unfortunately, online marketers have essentially become like that schmucky, slick-haired used car salesman of the digital world, you know. And unless you start doing something different, digital marketers are going to continue and agency owners are going to continue to burn themselves out trying to be successful. I mean, think about it this way, Nikhil. If we apply the same theory to, let's say, local business owners, right? Take a plumber, for instance. A good plumber is going to have all the skills. They're going to have the tools that they need to fix the leaky drain and unclog the toilet. But those skills alone aren't going to turn a good plumber into a successful business owner. And honestly, no different for agency owners. You know, you can know everything from how to set up a Facebook ad to local SEO to running YouTube ads. But if you don't know how to create a repeatable process to position yourself and apply those skills to solving your niche's biggest problems, then it's going to be nearly impossible to grow. And that's what I see as the biggest problem that most agency owners have.

Absolutely. That totally makes sense. As a business owner, I'm actually learning a lot. Actually, I do run a marketing agency as well, so I'm actually running the process of how it's going wrong. And absolutely, as you said, in the right way, they need to be solving the right problem according to their niche. Like, I see a lot of agencies try to solve everyone's problem. They literally want to serve everyone. They want to serve 7.2 billion people all day, every day. That's why they go into the burnout. Out, right? And they try to upsell a lot of stuff without actually delivering any results. That's where the problem starts. And that's what you exactly told— you, when they, they go into more technical stuff, you know, learning all the things at a time, they learn copywriting, they're expert at Facebook, they're good at SEO, they design funnels, they do all the crazy jazz. But as you already know, if they do everything, then good at none, right? Exactly, exactly. And that's where they forgot about the business model, right? They try to monetize, they get one or two clients then they'll underdeliver and boom, they lost the client. And again, they come to the same situation as they were before, right? So this is the next question for you. And that was absolutely a great answer. Actually, I'm learning a lot on this interview. I hope a lot of people who are watching this would definitely learn a lot as well. In the process of where you go, yada yada, throughout this agency process, a lot of agencies who still have a lot of clients in the pipeline, who manage at least 5 to 6 clients every single month on retainers, still they're going through this different process called burnout. They get stressed out, they hate meetings, you know, like why do you think this burnout happens to agency businesses especially? So how can they actually avoid this burnout throughout the process?

Well, look, I've been there and it does happen. And I think, you know, burnout for agency owners happens, I think, due to what I call the deadly domino effect. And it essentially only takes 3 dominoes to fall before burnout happens. You have lack of prospecting, sheer desperation, and then lack of repeatable processes. So that first domino, like I was saying, is essentially lack of systemic prospecting. And look, I get it. I think as humans, we instinctively avoid doing the things that cause us pain. So for most agency owners, and you probably know this, prospecting— nobody likes it. It equals pain, right? Nobody likes cold calling.

Nobody likes getting told no. Absolutely.

So what do we do?

We get comfortable. We get comfortable with what we have, right?

Exactly. Exactly. Well, you know, we start off the day with the best of intentions. We're like, I'm going to reach out to 50 business owners today, but then we don't get responses or people start telling us no. And we immediately switch gears and we're like, okay, well, I'll try again tomorrow. I'm going to go—

I'm motivated.

I'm going to work on my website or I'm going to make it prettier. We try to do anything except prospecting. But guess what?

Absolutely.

You can have the coolest website in the world, but if you don't have clients, you're still not making money. So what do we do then? Well, that's when desperation comes in, right? We get desperate. We start offering, like you were saying, anything to anyone, and we finally get somebody to bite. Like, they show some sign of interest, and the conversation usually goes like, you know, hey, um, yeah, okay, Mr. Business Owner, I can totally build that, um, 40-page website for you. Oh, it's custom? Yeah, I can do a custom site. Oh wait, you don't have pictures? Oh, you need me to take them? Yeah, I can do that too. Uh, and you need me to build out the content? Uh-huh.

Yeah. Oh, and you agree?

Yeah, I'm happy to get those for you. You know, like, we just—

this is hilarious. Yeah, absolutely.

Then we give them the price and they're like, okay, for all of this I just told you, it's gonna be $5,000 and $1,000 a month for the SEO. Oh, that's too much? Yeah, yeah, I can do it for $500. No problem. So before you know it, you've taken on like this one-time project. It's custom, which means you can't outsource it and you can't scale it and you can't create a process for it. So it leaves you doing 100% of the fulfillment. And after 3 months, when you finally completed this project, you look at how much time you've spent on this monstrosity and you realize you've only been paid like $5 an hour for all the work you've done. And on top of that, you don't have any more clients now because you've been spending all your damn time just doing this project.

Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah. Then, you know, that's that deadly domino effect. And it happens again and again and again until we're physically and emotionally drained. And that's when you're burnt out and you either quit or you keep running yourself ragged.

Yeah, that totally makes sense. I've seen this happen to a lot of businesses. I mean a lot, even sometimes myself, a lot of friends of mine who always go through this process. They get clients, they fill their pipeline, and they go into fulfillment. They actually forget prospecting and managing these people. And when, when the time comes, the end of the project, then you see back, you have zero leads, zero sales. Then you sit idle for months, months, months waiting for someone to reach out to you because you still hate prospecting, right? Because don't go for cold calling, you don't go for stuff like that, and you be in the process. So what do you think business owners can do to avoid this? Like in a short sentence, like how they, how they can avoid this process of burnout?

Well, there's a couple of things that you can do, and it all starts with focusing 100% of your time on landing the clients. And, you know, that's, that's kind of where we go wrong is that we try to do all these different things, just like you were saying earlier, for all these different people. And then when we do, So many things, we don't do any of them really well. So I think one of the first things that you can do is really start to pick a niche, pick an industry you want to go to, pick a type of client and really understand them and understand what their problems are that they're having. Because if you can understand the niche better, then you can have better conversations. You can create a product that solves their problems so that way your product becomes a repeatable, scalable something that you can now outsource, that you can now hire for fulfillment. So now you take that piece off your plate and you can spend more time getting more clients, which is what we should be doing. That's where we—

That sounds really great. Absolutely. So everyone who's watching this, this is absolutely a golden nugget. So if you're into burnout or if you're still struggling with your agency, first of all, pick a niche, be a very specialized guy. In that niche, you should learn everything and everything. You should be actually able to serve and deliver results. And then you start to do it to a couple of people. Then you actually find a good team or build your own internal team or outsource someone who can actually do the same stuff where you just need to do a little bit of monitoring. So you will be getting into 20% of monitoring and 80% of the fulfillment will be done by your team. And you get the 80— you invest 80% time into actually prospecting, getting more clients. So filling the pipeline. This is the right way to do agency, and you are learning from the boss again. So this is the boss stuff. So as you're saying, I mean, like, the main problem is they want clients. Now, how to get dream client appointments? Because a lot of people get wrong people. Like, they get on a call, they still try like, hey, I'll do Facebook ads, YouTube ads, SEO, everything for $997. They still say like, oh, that's too costly, you know. Like, I see a lot of business owners who get appointments or no appointments Even if they have some, they are cheap, like they are not qualified business owners. So how they can avoid this thing and get high qualified appointments of a dream client? Because if someone has expertise and if some, a business owner really needs that expertise, it can be a great fit. They don't even need to pitch, right? It automatically happens, right? But still these people mismatch themselves and try to connect with a different person and they go into a different phase where they feel unmotivated. They try to close, The client is not okay, then they feel unmotivated. They do 5 to 6 sales calls and they try to quit or they take break. They think not everything is not working. So how can someone, agency owner, can get appointments of dream clients using what strategies? That would be great.

Well, you know, first of all, I think it's like I said, it goes back to understanding the niche and what the problems are, what the pains are. I don't think personally it's ever about problems. Price. I think it's always about value. So if you can understand, you know, what's the value of your niche, what's the average job worth to them, and position what you do like you were saying earlier, the results that you're going to provide. It's not about the tactics. Nobody cares how much work you do as long as you get them results, right? So if you can position what you're doing as valuable to the client and show that to them, okay, you know, Mr. Contractor, you know, your average job is worth $15,000. Well, realistically, how much would this be worth to you if I could bring you 5 more jobs next month? That's something of value, right? So I think about positioning. So it goes back to understanding what your positioning needs to be based on the biggest problem of the niche, and how do you use your skills in order to solve that problem. And when you can pull those 3 things together, then regardless of the business owner, trust me, if they know you're going to solve the problem— and we all, we all know the biggest problem is I don't have enough time, I don't, I'm not making enough money, right? Solve their problem, those pains of time and money, and show them the value that you can provide, and they will find the money to pay you. That I can guarantee.

Absolutely, that sounds really, really fair. So this is the art of how you will actually prospect, right? You should be very clear of your ideal client. That's when you can get clear, and then you should actually give them the value prop, like exactly what you're providing, how much is it worth when you're solving the problem, what is it worth for them. And then even if you charge them like 10% of what it's actually worth, they'll be happy to pay. That's how agency business works. And if possible, I mean, would you like to share like 3 best ways, like how can people get appointments in this time? Like Do you suggest Facebook ads or organic? There's a lot of discussions going around organic is dead or alive and YouTube ads, like, or cold calling, cold emailing, like which strategies do you think are working best right now in 2021?

So for our strategy, I am a true believer that you have to have multiple lines in the water, both from an organic perspective as well as paid. If you are not running paid ads for your agency, you are missing the boat. I think Facebook is crushing it. Thing with Facebook, though, and we all know this, is that you have to have a good audience. If you don't know your audience and your targeting is off, it doesn't matter what your ad looks like because nobody's going to click it. Second thing about Facebook, right? Once you have your targeting, you have to get that copy down. It's kind of like that old theory of, you know, sharpen the ax before you try cutting down the tree. If your copy is not on point, then regardless of your audience, it's going to be relevant for them. They're not going to click it, right? So you got to get the audience, you have to get the targeting, and then you have to have a good offer. Like, why should they want to talk to you? What is appealing about what you have to offer? That's the biggest thing about running ads on Facebook for your agency. Second prospecting method that I feel is, is necessary— cold email still works, guys. And, but the thing with cold email, you know, I was actually on the phone with someone yesterday and they're like, yeah, I'm doing cold email. I'm sending out like 10 to 20 a day and I'm not getting any responses. And I'm like, dude, you need to be sending out like 500 to 1,000 a day, right? 10 to 20 a day is not gonna work for cold email. So the thing with cold email is that you just have to have a process for it and you have to be sending it out in massive quantities, right? Because even if you can get a 1% response rate, if you're sending out, like I said, 500, 1,000 a day, that's going to be still a good amount of business owners that are going to be interested in what you have. But you have to—

5 to 10 people a day.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Another method, organically speaking, is, is that we actually teach is Having a VA do outbound reach, right? And you know, you can get a VA for anywhere between $3 and $5 an hour. But the biggest thing for that is actually having a process that they can follow that's very specific as to what you want to do and how you want them to do it. What do those messages look like? What's step 1, step 2, step 3? And also having that follow-up campaign that happens automatically. And that is their job. I mean, they can, they can do that for you. It's relatively inexpensive. The biggest thing when it comes to prospecting is that you need to be keeping your list, again, constantly understanding more about, more and more about your audience, and then tweaking your methods based on the more you learn, right? Tweaking, tweaking the copy, tweaking, um, the outreach, different things like that. That's, that's what's key. And also tracking your numbers. You know, because if you have, like I said, 5 lines in the water for prospecting, then you want to optimize where the time is spent as well as the money. So if you're not tracking the effectiveness of your different prospecting strategies, if you don't know your close rate, if you don't know your conversion rates, then you may be spending too much time and money in one area and not enough somewhere else. So that's key.

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Monitoring is really important. So yeah guys, that was great actually. You've given us amazing methods where Facebook has the number one priority. If you're not doing it, you're missing out. Because make sure when you're doing Facebook ads, I see a lot of people do their messaging in the wrong way. They try a different audience and their messaging is for a different audience and they collide it and they ask that Zook is eating their money. That's not how it works. You should have your messaging on point. That's how you get clients. And as Amy said, it was absolutely amazing. And definitely, as you told, I need to agree on cold emails still work because I've seen agencies who do $100,000 per month just on cold emails. They don't even actually try ads and stuff like that. They just rely, like they are good at that and they're killing it, right? So there is method for the madness. And also, as you mentioned, hiring a VA is super cheap. Like just do the math. Like if you're paying someone 3 hours a day and if they're working 4 hours a day, that's probably like 12 hours a day and it's going to be around $300 to $400 expense. But let's say if they get 2 clients per month who is paying you $2,000 each, that's a $4,000 in revenue. Boom, right? And that's how you check the ROI. And you need to track the metrics, like how much you're spending on this form and this form, what's the ROI on every single thing. Let's say if cold email is not working, you're spending a lot of money, stop it. If FB ads is working, push in more money. If your VA is doing good, push more money. That was absolutely amazing, Amy. We really love it. So let's get into the actual key thing which is happening struggling in agency scale. They have clients, they have 2, 3 people, 4, 5 people, clients every single month coming and going out. That's good. They're giving testimonials, they're happy with the service, they're appreciating the efforts which the agency owners are putting in. But they get into this fulfillment stuff and they actually forget to scale. And again, the burnout starts out when they have the same amount of revenue, because when someone actually starts to make money, they actually tend to spend more before, right? So So they get into a level where they need to make more money, but they won't be able to because they are running an agency in a different way. So how do you like, what is the best process for you to scale an agency? What do you think are the best tips from your side?

So the biggest thing with scaling an agency is you have to look at what the bulk of your business is, right? So a lot of times when you see agency owners hitting kind of that $10,000 a month point is when I see them start to, starting to struggle with scaling. It's like, how do I break past this ceiling? And what I've seen is that a lot of times the reason why they, they're hitting those $10,000 a month points is because they're doing multiple projects, right? They might have a website design and then they have a Facebook ad client, then they have PPC or whatever it is. But you have to look at, number one, what's making your agency the most money out of all the clients that you have? And look at scaling that as a product. So that way, because when you can take the services that you offer that are really, like we said earlier, solving the problems and create a product around it, well, now you have something that's essentially scalable and repeatable, right? Because you can take that product, like we were talking about earlier, and you can say, okay, every time a new client comes on, this is their product. This is step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4, step 5, how to build it. You can get your team, whether that's outsourced, whether it's a VA, whether it's somebody that you hire, whatever it is, to do that fulfillment process. So that takes that completely off of your plate. So now you have— you can put processes in play for the product that you're selling. The problem agency owners have when they're trying to scale is that they don't have anything that's scalable. So you're doing these one-off custom projects all the time, or you're, you're talking to, you know, 8 different niches. Well, that's not scalable because if you're talking to different niches, then you're going to have a different conversation every time. The problems are going to be different, the pricing is going to be different, everything else. If you're selling different services, then the setup is going to be different. So you have to make sure you're trying to scale something that is absolutely scalable. And once you can figure that out, then like you said, you can start sinking more in and investing and saying, okay, well, now I want to hire salespeople, now I want to hire an account manager. You can even start keeping the clients longer when you do that, because now the processes are the same. So your onboarding is going to be the same every time, right? You can start setting expectations for clients very specifically. And that's a big problem with, I think, why we lose clients is because we don't do a very good job onboarding, setting expectations, and taking control of that relationship. You know, we let the client determine how they're going to manage us, we lose control and then we lose the client.

I agree, I agree. I see this a lot of time. That was absolutely amazing, amazing. So this is the key learning, guys. You need to prioritize your agency. This is not like you do 8 different services for different clients in a customized way. It's not going to work. You will go into definitely burnout when you do multiple different projects which are completely different onboarding, different process, different problems, different offers. It's gonna crack your head up, right? So you should be focusing on one niche, one service, one type of ideal client. And you know, this one guy, you may be thinking like where they are, but there are almost like 1 million people even if you sell only one kind of service. I mean, I'm super niching down, still I have 1 to 2 million audience here. I can service them. And I don't need 1 to 2 million customers or clients to be a millionaire or billionaire. I just need a couple of them, that's it. If I deliver results, they'll be retaining, right? But that's a great learning. Amazing. And yeah guys, so that's the whole thing. Productize it, keep it scalable. And again, as you mentioned, systems and processes. The burnout starts when you don't have a system or process. And as you told, I've seen this a lot of time, client taking the power and then we become the toy. They say like, hey, I need you to hop on the call right now. And as you don't have the control, we should, right? We may have another meeting, but still we need to, right? Because we have a fear of losing them, right? So you need to have systems and process. As you mentioned, on the onboarding, you should be very upfront of the deliverables. And how the process is going to work. Explain your way of working. Don't listen to them first. Explain your way of working and let them mold into you, right? That's how it works. That's a really great learning from talking to you, Ami. And now let's get into some boss stuff, like some ninja stuff. Like, what are the tools you recommend to use for managing clients or prospecting? I mean, the, the SWOTs you have back of you when you want, right? That's the key, you know, tools and automation processes are really important these days. So what kind of tools and automations would you suggest to get more clients or in prospecting, managing CRM, stuff like that? We'd love to hear.

Well, I have used probably every tool known to man, um, from, from a CRM perspective, from Ontraport to Infusionsoft to ActiveCampaign to, um, you know, the sky's the limit. But recently here we are transitioning everything to HighLevel. And the reason that we have done that— and I've ClickFunnels, obviously I've used that too for certain things. We are transitioning a lot to HighLevel simply because of the level of support, the capabilities of the program. It's allowed us to remove a lot of things with Zapier, you know, the zaps that we had integrating everything. We've had service issues in the past with other systems. So it's really kind of taking— allowed us to take some of our integrations and tools that we were using and condense them into one. Um, it's, it's, you know, HighLevel is relatively new to the market, hasn't been around as long as some of the other things. It is, you know, anytime you switch different, different programs, it's a little bit of a challenge because you have to learn something new and the way that they work. Um, but it's been a good switch for us. Something else that we use to track our processes is ClickUp. I don't know if you're familiar with it. It works a lot like Asana. We've used Asana in the past. ClickUp, honestly, it's just cheaper. It looks almost identical to Asana. But those, and of course we use apps for a number of things, but those are primarily what we've been using to structure everything.

Wow, that sounds really great. So yeah, I've heard a lot of good things about HighLevel. So now I've got a clear confirmation. I'll definitely try out after this thing, right? That sounds really great. So yeah, guys, You use HighLevel and, you know, like Asana or Trello or stuff like that, Voxer to chat and have a good conversation internally to team and prospects. And yeah, these are the tools which you can use to know the KPIs of your business. Because if you don't know what's happening inside your business, then you're not running a business. That's how it works, right? Yeah. And let's get into some great stuff right now, which is kind of more about you, because we learned a lot about how to run agency, prospecting. Scaling up an agency, why to, like, how to avoid burnout, and great stuff about agency, which is your expertise. Now let's get more into your backstory and, like, more about you. So what will be your suggestion to a 20-year-old or someone who's starting out right now? Because most of the agencies are now emerging, like, it's getting so populated. So what do you suggest yourself, someone, to a new person in the market, or about you?

So I would say start creating problems for yourself. And I know that sounds crazy, right? You know, people, people are scared. They have this fear to launch, right? They're like, it has to be perfect. It has to be perfect. But if you keep waiting for it to be perfect, it's never going to happen. You know, and it's funny because I tell the members in our programs this all the time, that it's only when you start creating problems for yourself that it allows you to see all the possibilities. You know, I've seen so many people who really had so much potential either, either fail to start businesses or take the plunge or invest in themselves, like I said, because they didn't have the money or the product wasn't quite perfect. But the reality is, like I said, you know, it's only when we kind of force ourselves out of our comfort zone or take a risk or just be a little bit vulnerable that we ever position ourselves for true success. I think that And like I said, you know, my answer to everyone is always create that problem because the agency owners I work with, they'll come to me and they'll actually tell you, they'll say things like, you know, Amy, I can't run these ads yet for my client getting strategy because what if I land a client and I don't have my onboarding campaign set up? My answer is always, hey, let's create that problem. Let's get the client first and then worry about that later. Like if you land a client, manually send them the damn first email. I don't care. And then we'll set up the campaign, but first create the problem so that way you can see it's possible. And that's, you know, that's what I tell people getting started because I think that we don't rock the boat enough and we really need to be.

That is a golden nugget. So always create a problem first, then do the right solution for it and never let the problem repeat, right? So that's a great— so that's how you build out systems and process. You get a client, then you don't have a system to onboard, you create onboarding process. Then you get it on, then you get into the process, then you have— don't have a team, and you build out the team, and you see there is no fulfillment, then you pull it out. Then you see there is no surveillance, then you set it up, right? And you don't have management, you set it up. That's the whole system, right? That makes a lot of more sense. I mean, that was a great answer from your side. And also, this is a question for you, like, what do you feel are the biggest achievements in your life, and what are your next goals for 2021?

So Um, you know, from a business perspective, um, probably my biggest achievement thus far is really understanding how to best use the power of leverage for continual improvement and growth. Um, you know, for me, money's never really been the motivator. You know, obviously I want to make bank like all of us do, but I also want— I want to be able to use my time in the way that I want to, but I also want to have enough money to be able to enjoy that time, right? I want to be fulfilled.

Freedom. Yeah, the boss lets freedom.

Yeah. I think hitting the million-dollar mark with my agency was the first milestone. Kind of getting it to run like a well-oiled machine was definitely the next one. But I kind of came to the realization that there were thousands of other agency owners out there having the same struggles as me. So I knew I couldn't, like you were saying, and possibly help millions of business owners. So, you know, the next step logically was helping agency owners better understand how to leverage the same business skills that I've done to create this agency machine, so to speak. So, you know, my goal for 2021, basically it's pretty audacious, but I'm hoping to help 1,000 more agency owners create a real live working business, go from freelancer to actually working 80 hours a week and barely scraping by to actually doing this without burnout, without the sleepless nights, learning how to optimize and systematize and monetize every aspect of that agency so that way they can start enjoying life too. Because I'm gonna tell you, there's no better feeling than waking up in the morning to, emails and Facebook messages and texts that say, hey, this has literally changed my business. So that's my goal.

Wow. That's great stuff. That's absolutely great stuff. And your goal is amazing. Maybe you're potentially impacting 1,000 people, which you definitely do, but indirectly you're impacting 10,000 people. I mean, the team of the agency owner, they're making good money and the clients who get agency support, they have good fulfillment. So indirectly impacting 10,000 people's lives in 2021. That's a great goal and we'll definitely do it. Let's go for that. Definitely all the best with that, Amy. And that's a great answer for your achievements and the goals. Now we want to learn from your mistake. What was your biggest mistake in your agency stuff and what was the actual problem? You were like, oh, I shouldn't have done that. What was that situation?

I don't necessarily believe in mistakes simply because I think I believe in choices. Right? And whether right or wrong in hindsight, I kind of feel like every choice I've made has led me right to where I am today. And I probably wouldn't change that. But, you know, looking back at the things, the choices that I made, for some things within my agency, like I said, the good thing was that I learned from them. And it's like, okay, I took on this massive beast of a website design and This was a terrible fricking decision. So my choice at that moment was, okay, I can continue taking these and yes, get the $5,000 or $10,000 quick hit, or I can learn from that, not do it again, figure out what does work and create something from it, create a new product, create a new process, whatever it is. So I think, you know, that goes back to that creating problems thing. It's like you feel like you've made a mistake, but the reality is as long as you learn from it and you can tweak it and use it for opportunity, then I think you're going to come off stronger than not making any mistakes at all.

Absolutely. That's a great answer. So you should never repeat your mistakes and stay strong throughout the process. And I mean, I have another question for you. Who are your main inspiration for the whole success which you have made? You know, like even as you are making $200,000 a year, I think past 10 years ago, that's a great level of income actually. But still you had that inspiration and you have that key persons involved in your life who actually took you from almost 10x-ing your whole life and freedom inside your life, right? So can you name some of people who are involved in the success?

As far as involved, you know, there's no, I think, one person who has helped me get to where I am. You know, I think we reach out to mentors and successful people and what you should look at is, is understand where you're struggling and who's kind of been there and what's the problem they can help you solve, right? And, and really understand like what's the questions that I must ask this person to be successful with that. And you know, what I've done over the years is, you know, if I had a problem with YouTube ads, running them. You know, there's somebody I can go to. I know who to go to for this question. Or because just like you said, we're— if you try to be good at everything or look for one person to solve all your problems, it's probably not going to happen. Um, you know, as far as inspiration goes though, I mean, the reason I get up and do this every day are, you know, my family, my kids. I mean, they're 18 and 15 and they still watch everything I do and You know, as a parent or even as a business person, you have an obligation to set an example and, you know, instill qualities of work ethic and humility and instill growth. And but, you know, what it all comes down to when you're looking for like mentors, when you're looking for inspiration, when you're looking for successful people, is that make sure your actions speak louder than words. You know, so as much as people will preach to you and tell you what you want to hear, You also have to look at if they're practicing what they preach, because, you know, the last thing you want to do is take somebody's word for it and be released out into the wild and not have any idea that it— whether it works or it doesn't work, because nobody's really done it before. So like I said, you know, looking for those different avenues and understanding where you need help and actually asking for it when you need it and understanding like what your why is and all that stuff is all going to come together to make you um, more successful, I think.

Absolutely. So you need to have a purpose to wake up and actually start doing something and interacting with people. That sounds really fair. And this is a very famous question. I've seen this in the comments right now. So a guy is asking like how to land their first client. This is almost one of the like most asked questions every time, like how to land the first client. They have zero credibility, maybe they have learned from a course of what to do, they don't know how to land their first client. What is your suggestion of how someone can land their first client?

You know, usually my question back to people who ask me that is, well, how much time are you spending trying to land your first client? The first thing that I would say to somebody trying to land their first client is you need to, get rid of all those limiting beliefs you have. You know, I think people put too much pressure on themselves to be perfect and they're like, well, what if, you know, and they kind of block themselves. You know, it's like, well, if I, if I land a client, what if I don't, I'm not able to provide results? What if I'm not able to do this? Typically, regardless as to whether or not you have testimonials or you have reviews or anything else, typically you have tried, you have built a website, you have generated leads, you have done, you've generated calls, you've done something. That's proof. Proof doesn't need to be somebody singing your praises. Me personally, I'd rather have tangible proof. I wanna see the calls you generated. I wanna see the email leads you got. I wanna see the conversions go up, right? That to me is more impactful than somebody saying, oh, you know, I really like Amy or I really like Nikhil, they're great. Right? Yeah. That's one thing. But, you know, obviously landing your first client, you have to make more offers. You have to. Most people are not making enough offers to get enough people in front of enough people to have someone tell you yes. So if you can get out there, like I said, with a good solid offer and solve that problem of your niche, Somebody's gonna tell you yes, but you have to be getting out there. And 100%, if you do not have a client yet right now, 100% of your time should be focused on getting one. 100%. I, I, and I tell people this, I don't want you building websites, I don't want you running ads unless, you know, that's your prospecting method. I don't want you doing anything until somebody is putting money in your pocket. 100% of your time should be focused on prospecting.

Wow, this is a good one, right? This is absolutely the number one rule if you're running an agency. You should be having someone paying you. That's when you should be actually start to do the other stuff which you need to, right? Don't get into overwhelm and don't get into the unmotivated stuff. You know, as Amy said, the first key is to understand the niche and be targeting, like, look, like, understand where they're actually hanging out and go out, try to put yourself into that network and try to speak to people. And don't pitch. You don't need to start pitching. Ask their problem. They really have that problem, and if you can really genuinely solve that But even you can start with free stuff. That's how I started. That's how most people start, right? They offer like, hey, I would like to do it for free. Would you like to take a look at that? And then you start to do a little bit some stuff for free, and then you build a little bit credibility, and that's where you go into the snowball effect as an agency, right? That sounds really interesting, Amy. That sounds really interesting. And as my network, or maybe someone who is watching this interview, maybe want to be bossless forever. So where our audience can find you and like get your mentorship? Because like I would be more than happy if someone can join your goal of impacting 1,000 agencies. So where they can actually find you and get your help?

Well, we have a couple spaces. I go, I post a lot of stuff on the Amy Ball Facebook page. We also have a private group. It's on Facebook, Agency Owner Growth Secrets. It's free. You can join it.

I'll drop the link after this session.

Okay. And then if you are interested in mentorship and you're like, Amy, everything you're saying, I want help choosing this niche. I want help building out this product. I need to understand better how to set up my agency for success. And you know, you're really serious and committed to it because I mean, you know this, it's not easy, right? It's work. Like you have to do, you have to, I can lead the horse to water, but I can't make you drink. But if you're committed and this is something that you wanna do, I can give you the website. It's burnt2bossless.com/applynow and you can book a call with our team. We'll hop on with you, understand what your agency looks like now, figure out if this is something that's gonna work for you. If it is, great. If not, that's cool too. Usually we give you a few golden nuggets of advice either way. Um, so we can do that too. So those are 3 different ways that you can connect with me.

Absolutely, that's great. So guys who are watching this live and probably replay, make sure to join the group. I'll add the link after the session ends. I'll add the group. And if you feel like Amy's cool, actually, whatever she says, she's saying everything with experience. You can, you can understand the level of expertise she's at, right? So she can definitely help you if you're someone who are an agency owner who is still struggling with your clients and, you know, you're going to burn out where you're unable to prospect or manage your clients and not having any systems and process, I mean, it's the way to go. You can definitely schedule a call and absolutely they won't pitch you. You just, they just listen to you. And if they feel that they can really serve you and give you results, it'll be a good fit. Or else still, that's okay. You learned a lot and you connected with big people, right? You built a good network. So that was a great option. I mean, probably my people would reach out to you if they need any help from you. I would definitely appreciate that, giving them a little bit of a reply from your side. And I have another question. Let me look into the comments if anyone have any questions. So yeah, guys, if you have any more questions, please make sure to comment down, or else maybe Ami can conclude. Like, what do you like to say to everyone who is watching this live? I mean, like, what is the impact you want to create? Any last words before we conclude the interview?

Yeah, you know, like I said when we first started, there's, there's a lot of noise in, in the online marketing space right now. There's a lot of information, there's a lot of misinformation. Um, try not to go down the shiny object wormhole of, you know, learning more tactics and, and different strategies and things like this. Take what you know, use the skills that you have to really build a solid foundation and a scalable business. Um, you know, take the risk, find your focus, and build your business the right way. There are some great mentors out there, and if you need help, find the person that's a fit for you by assessing your needs and making sure you can connect with their style. You know, you do that and, and you build an agency machine, and really there's kind of no limit on what you can achieve.

Absolutely. That's an amazing, amazing thing. And yeah, I would definitely appreciate that. So guys, always remember, double down on what's working. Don't complicate yourself. If you're having clients for copywriting, just do more copywriting. Don't get into— if your client is asking for SEO, don't learn SEO from beginning, right? That's not what, what you should be doing. You should be saying like, no, I won't do SEO, I'll only do copy. Whenever you need copy, get back to me, right? That's how you need to be more laser focused on what's your service. And stay focused, double down on what's actually working. And thanks for your time and amazing opportunity, Amy. It was a really great interview. I really love your answers and whole stuff, the amazing value which you gave. And as a business owner, as an agency owner especially, I really, really understand the level of golden nuggets which you're providing here in the interview. I definitely appreciate your time and value which you have provided here. And yeah guys, I hope you enjoyed this session, and let's look forward for The next interview, we'll be looking forward. Cheese!

Thanks for having me. Bye.

Yeah, we look forward. Bye.