Why Most Marketing Agencies Get Stuck at $30K/Month

What do you see as the difference between selling to that $500 client versus somebody who's paying $1 million?

Selling is— my kind of selling was always consultative.

From your perspective, what do you think can actually is a good offer?

The only guarantee I would ever give anybody was, if you keep doing the same thing, you're going to get the same result.

What are the first few steps for an agency to build the operation efficiency?

The first thing you need to do, you're an accidental agency owner, right?

What would that be like?

The biggest mistake you've made? I'm not raising my prices fast enough.

What's going on? What's going on, everybody who's actually listening to this podcast right now? First of all, guys, welcome back to another episode of D Nikhil Sai Show, which is hosted by me, D Nikhil Sai. And guess what's going on today? We're back with another amazing guest. And this guest has a very interesting background. I mean, we are talking about somebody who's in the space for over 25 years. I mean, he started in 1999 selling websites for $500, took his journey where he has now impacted over 20,000 clients transform their agencies and grow them predictably using his agency playbook. Now, if you are a marketing agency who's trying to scale in 2024 and beyond, this podcast is a must-listen. So let's, let's not waste any time and actually let's welcome the humble guy on the show today, Jason Swink. Hey, Jason.

Hey, thanks for having me on the show.

Yeah, absolutely, brother. We are stoked to talk about how you think that agency game is going to evolve. And we are going to talk about Agency Mastery and what agencymastery360.com is all about and how you're helping agencies scale. But before we get in the nitty-gritty and all the juicy stuff, can you give us context of your childhood? How was your upbringing and what was it like growing up and what prompted you to, you know, get into marketing agency business in the first place? And how did you evolve from that space to actually helping other marketing agencies right now?

Yeah, I mean, I think it was all by accident. Uh, I remember I went to the university and I always liked marketing. I was always creative. I was always drawing and I was a cartoonist. Um, and so I went to school for marketing at first and had a marketing internship where they had me stuffing envelopes. And I literally was like, why are we stuffing envelopes? And they're like, oh, this is direct mail. We're going to send it out to get clients. I'm like, this is the dumbest thing ever. Like I wanted to figure out something where I could stop cutting my fingers on these envelopes and licking stamps. And so I told them that this was around '97. I was like, well, why don't you email? Like people have email addresses now or starting to and wound up saving them tons of money. But, uh, that internship, she was like, hey, you should go into computers, not just marketing. And then that's when I started going into programming and I was the worst programmer ever. I, but I learned how to outsource in college. That's the only way I got through. And then I fell into the agency space by one of my friends looked like Justin Timberlake from NSYNC. And I created a fake band, fake website called N'Shit, and it got popular and then started doing websites for people.

That's a very interesting story overall. So from that, how was the early journey like? I mean, there's definitely a lot of shifts which happened in the marketing space. I mean, you were kind of in the marketing when most marketing analytics tools or even Facebook ads didn't exist, Google ads didn't exist in '99 when you actually started building websites. So what was the transformation like from you accidentally getting a client to you actually making this a serious business where you're actually like earning enough to support yourself and build a team and grow into a proper agency? What was the early journey like?

Well, I mean, it was— I mean, yeah, it was before Google and I remember that very specifically, cuz I remember one of my clients asking me for, to send them an invoice and I, I didn't know what an invoice was and there was no place to look this up. I had to go ask my dad, but, uh, or go in a business book or, you know, it was just, there was very limited resources back then. And, uh, but yeah, I mean, I was a, a young kid, young kid, 22, and, uh, I didn't require, I didn't have a family, I didn't have many expenses, I didn't have any debt, so. Selling 5, 6 websites a month was huge. Like I was rich for that kind of lifestyle. And then eventually, obviously we sold billion-dollar websites, but that was many years and it took a lot of learning to get to there.

Makes sense. When you are starting as a complete beginner in the agency space and then you start to kind of climb up and get higher and higher ticket clients, that limiting beliefs are definitely breaking and you're getting to the next level. So what do you believe, because you have sold all scale-up services starting from $500 website to $1 million ones, what do you see as the difference between selling to that $500 client who just needs something to, you know, show online versus somebody who's paying $1 million? And what do you believe goes into selling this higher ticket ones who actually are worth $1 million for the agency itself?

My kind of selling was always consultative. Selling a $500— I mean, the people that buy $500 websites back then, there was really no selling because it was literally like, you need a website. I saw you in the Yellow Pages, go buy this thing. And probably your audience has no idea what the Yellow Pages are. It was like these books that would have all these phone numbers and businesses in. You know, But selling, you know, let's say $5,000 websites to million-dollar websites, it's the same thing. All you have to do is figure out who's the right audience, what's their problem, how can you impact them, how can you help them out, what's the pain point that we can focus on in order to make, you know, help them make a decision. But also too, I'm not chatting with people that I have to convince, right? I'm chatting with people that identified a problem that wanna solve a solution. And then I'm just going, well, based on everything you told me, here's what I recommend. And I would come at it at a place of, as like a trusted advisor rather than a lot of agency owners or freelancers, they come out at a place of like order taking and they go, what do you, I need a website or I need social media or a pay-per-click or whatever it is. And they go, okay, I go do that rather than asking the right questions to make that prospect kind of stop for a second and think about, well, that's a good question. I never thought about it that way. And then you're positioning yourself in a different way.

Yeah, sure. I love that approach. And I believe the key to high ticket is absolutely consulting. Like if you don't consult, they don't see the value to pay you a million bucks. And Jason, I'm curious with, you know, obviously the book $100 Million getting so popular in the space and Alex Hormozi with his free advice online, I'm seeing a gigantic amount of volume of new agency owners, marketing agency owners, and people who are selling services coming up with crazy insane guarantees like, hey, you know, I will work for you for 6 months for free and if it doesn't work, I'll pay you $5,000 in rewards. I mean, I couldn't even fathom the type of guarantees I'm seeing and it's definitely getting crowded. From your perspective, What do you think can actually is a good offer or what could actually make, you know, an income while starting and scaling your company in the agency space right now? How do you think we could differentiate by not going nuts, just offering the craziest thing possible where there are no margins?

[Speaker] Yeah, well, I mean, let's talk about the guarantee first. The only guarantee I would ever give anybody was, hey, if you keep doing the same thing, you're going to get the same result. That was the only guarantee I ever promised to anybody. The people that promised the guarantee of work for free and all that, because I get that all the time. People are like, oh, can I work for you for free? I'm like, no, because literally I'm going to, my time is more valuable than the money I would actually pay someone to do something. And if you think about why agencies actually exist, they're the middlemen. They're the middlemen between a business and figure, helping them figure out a solution. So whoever can figure out the biggest solution the fastest usually wins. How agency owners can really stand out or agencies can stand out is you have to get laser-focused at who you can actually help, who you want to help, and who you can actually help. So if you start thinking about, if I was only going to be paid on performance only, who would I help and what would I actually do for them? And then you have to start putting out content. And putting out valuable stuff and not trying to do everything so quick. I'm so tired of people going, you're an overnight success, or they're believing the Instagram life of very young people with all this, this stuff. I'm like, well, if you really kind of looked in the backend, I bet they probably didn't have the life that, that you would want. And so if you can kind of focus on just being consistent, being persistent, You know, I've been doing the Smart Agency Masterclass podcast for 10 years, 10 years of doing a podcast. We've never missed one episode, you know, not one week. And now we do it twice a week. That's persistence. That's consistency, right? You know, water can, you know, form the Grand Canyon and, you know, shape rocks and shape the earth, but it's over, you know, over time and being consistent. So it's the same thing about with agencies. Don't look at what you need to get tomorrow. Look at what you need to do today in order to affect 3 years out and make those decisions rather than trying to be rich right off the bat. There's no silver bullet. There's only the silver that you're going to get from all the little different pieces and put together, and then that's your silver bullet. So that's what I have to, you know, that would be my advice to myself. you know, starting over again.

Jason, I have an interesting question. Anybody can go from having the desperate need to generate some revenue for their business, or, you know, the easiest, one of the easiest business to get into is to build a marketing agency overall so they can learn a marketing skill, start providing and start generating revenue. Now the bottleneck is themselves. They have the high income skill, they can deliver, they are the salesperson, they're making the revenue, and maybe they are like hire a few support staff to help, but it's not really a scalable thing. Operations is probably the biggest part, like I have observed, which is keeping most agencies stuck at $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 in revenue. And most agencies are only stuck at that scale and they really don't get to that $100,000, $200,000 per month mark. Myself, I've achieved the 6-figure mark in my business and there was shit all over the place. I couldn't just fathom to be in that place without having the systems I have right now. It's just too tough to play that game overall. We get to the so-called burnout. So I would love your advice on what are the first few steps for an agency to build the operation efficiency where they could actually scale without getting the burnout and actually build the business to the scale where they can have freedom while increasing their income.

The first thing you need to do, because what happens is kind of like my story, you're an accidental agency owner, right? Like you knew how to do something cool. Someone offered you money and you started doing it. And then you start building that business on referrals, which just isn't scalable. So what you need to think about is I need to raise my prices. You think about if I'm at, if I was at $20,000 a month in recurring revenue, great income for just myself. And like you said, that's not scalable. I want to get to $100K. Well, that means I have to 5X the amount of clients, or if I want to get to $200K, I have to 10x. Well, you're looking at it the wrong way. You need to look at it going, which clients would actually pay 10 times more? So then I could still have 5 clients and then the 5 clients would be making me $200K. Now you're making way more profit. You can afford the right people. Now, what a lot of people do in the very beginning is they, and I, I believe they should hire VAs to help out, do a lot of the to get rid of the mundane stuff, to get rid of the $10 tasks. For the bigger ones, you need to look at yourself and going, what am I really good at? And what do I suck at? And you don't need to work on the things that you suck at. You need to hire for that. My case, I was always really good at consultations and sales. I hired a project manager and then an operations person. In order to, I would sell the deal and then they would onboard them. They would actually, you know, deliver the results. They would come up with a process that I used to have that was just totally made up every time. Right? And so you have to hire those. Now, when you're thinking about hiring people, you have to do a couple things. Figure out what is my core value first? And that will be your company's core value because you don't want to hire your exact twin. That's a complete nightmare. right? Because your complete twin doesn't want to work for anybody. They want to own a business. If you really think about what makes you up, like, uh, value is being resourceful, sharing failures, sharing wins, right? You know, teaching people. Those are our core values. So when I'm looking to hire someone, I'm looking at, do they exhibit these traits for you know, for working with us. Because a person that believes in the same thing, that's the team, right? They'll start making decisions. And then all you have to do as a leader is say, this is where we're going, guys. Make decisions based on where we're going and our core values. Then, because before you give them that, they're going to be making decisions based on what's better for them. So like, for example, if you hired an operations person and you wanted them to grow accounts, But you didn't tell them, like you just said, grow an account and incentivize them. Then they're gonna be like, well, I got, I gotta do more work, but I'm gonna be paid the same amount. Like what? I'm not gonna do that. So then they're not gonna do that. But then as soon as you start letting them know where to go and you're paying them for that, uh, faster. And then the, the last thing I'll say, most people, especially starting out, you're gonna hire the cheaper person. You're gonna hire that B-level person. Versus the A-player person will be 10 to 20% less, but the A-person will deliver 10 to 20x more on results. So make sure you pick the A-player when you hire them.

Hmm. How do you spot them or how do you differentiate? When do you know that, hey, this is the A guy and this is the B guy?

Oh, because like, look, whenever I was hiring anybody, I would always kind of put them through— I'd do a bunch of mouse traps. Like for, you Example, we just hired a marketing person, but we had like 700 applications. Um, so one of the easiest ways you can do and saves you a shitload of time, but let's say I post a job on Indeed or one of these job boards. I'll say, do not apply here. You must, and I'll put this at the very bottom of the email or the job posting. I'll say, you email me and in the subject line, put this exactly. I can read instructions and then send me a 3 to 4 minute video of why you, um, want to work for us and how you can help us out. So immediately it takes the 700 applications and throws them out the door. Out of the 700, I think we got 20 people to email us. Out of the 20 people that emailed us, maybe 13 actually put that in the email description. Out of the 13 that put that in, 4, 4 actually created a video. So now I'm like, okay, they, attention to detail. And then when I chat with them, I'm asking, I'm letting them kind of run it. I'll say, hey, here's where the company's going. How can you help us? They go, I don't know. Or if they come to me and be like, what does my day-to-day look like? Well, you're not an A-player. An A-player will take initiative. Your job is to figure out who, and their job is to figure out how.

Interesting. Yeah, I think that's a great thought process too. To hire somebody. And yeah, you're so right. Most of the times we have people who want the task to be done, but not many people actually think about how can I create more for the business and be able to share well between us. So that's beautiful, Jason. Appreciate you giving that advice. And I think it's so, so interesting to know that from 700 people, you were able to get down to 4 real applicants who are really committed for the role.

And when you think about the time, you know, I was chatting with one of her mastermind members, uh, last week and he was like, man, I've put, like, I got 700 applications and then we nailed it down to like 20 and our team started going through. I was like, how much time did you put into this? He's like, I've had 4 people on this for a month. Oh my gosh.

Like, I just think $8,000 in payroll minimum. Yeah. That's insane. Sorry to cut you off there, Jason. So I'm curious, what actually was your thought process when you're actually deciding to wrap up your agency and actually make it successful exist. Agencies are, at least at a personal level, in that small scale, they don't believe that it's a valuable enough business to be sold and agencies are not sellable. People buy at face value, how is it sellable? So that's the perspective most people have. I would love to know a simple masterclass on what was the decision for you? Why did you decide to sell in the first place? And how was the process like? Give us a quick rundown.

It's a different mindset now. I'll tell you the reason why. We sold, and then I'll tell you if I would have done it again. And a lot of times I actually talk people out, like, so we've bought 10 agencies in the past 3 years. Um, and, and not small agencies, like agencies that are well over the million in net profit, like $5, anywhere, $10 million on top line. The first time I sold, I just felt like just the cap of my capability, and I felt like I was holding back the agency. Second reason was I, and I should have bought out my business partner because the business far surpassed them. And I was the one really kind of doing a lot of the work. And I kept trying to help him out and he was always amazing person, but he just, he was kind of the anchor to the business. So I just thought that was an easy way out. I didn't have anybody like me to give me advice of going, hey, Why don't you do this? Or how can you become like, I would tell people like, like I was telling you, it's about figuring out who can you hire, but it's also who can you become in order to take yourself to the next level. So looking back, I'm like, man, you know, we were over 8 figures and when we sold, I was like, man, I could have got to 9 or 10 looking back at what I know now. Let's talk about kind of the reasons why. Uh, I think someone should sell, you know, exactly what you want to do next after your business. Like, let's say I just became a pilot and let's say I wanted to go fly for the airlines and I know exactly what I want to do. Perfect. Sell it. And you know exactly the plan. But when I sold, I was depressed afterwards. Yeah. Great. Didn't have to do anything ever again. but I didn't have that significance. I didn't have that team that I had for 12 years. I didn't have, you know, all that stuff that I wanted and my self-worth was all into that. I didn't know what I wanted to do next.

Oh, that's a scary place, right?

Yeah. Like I'm like, I've been an agency owner for 12 years and now I'm nothing. So now I don't have a title, CEO of this company. Coming to me for advice, I was like, this kind of sucks. I was like, I shouldn't have sold. So a lot of times when I'm chatting with someone, so let's say I'm chatting with you, Nick, and you're like, hey, I want to sell. You're making over $1 million in profit. You're working not many hours. I'm going to actually try to talk you out of it. I'm going to be like, what am I missing? Like, you're not doing much. You're doing only the things you love and you're making a ton of money. So what am I missing? Oh, I just want that number and get that title of selling. I'm like, well, that's the dumbest thing ever. Right? Look, and then a lot of people too, they want to sell to get rid of one of their problems that they can't figure out. That's probably one of the biggest ones. That goes back to me, right? My biggest problem was my business partner. But I always go to them, I'm like, what if you could solve that problem? Would you sell? And they're like, no. Then don't sell.

You can solve it. Yeah. Hmm. Interesting. And can you give us a brief on like how does the multiples work? I mean, in the software industry, we know like multiples are the best and highest. In agency space, typically kind of constrained to like 3 times, maybe 5 times. I don't know if they're operationally efficient and self-reliable, maybe a little bit more. So I'm curious, what do you see when you are acquiring businesses or when you sold your own company and what do you see in the average market? An agency is being sold, what kind of multiples can we expect? Is it on EBITDA or is it on top line? What kind of situations are you seeing, Jason?

Never on top line. If you find a buyer buying you on top line, sell it to them because they're the dumbest buyer ever and make sure you don't stay. It's always on profit. I'm going to answer this kind of two ways. So I'll tell you a story of one. So I was talking to one agency owner let's say they were at $2 million in net profit. So at $2 million, you're looking at probably like X on the net profit EBITDA. And this is assuming that the owner is getting paid a true CEO salary, right? Not like, oh, I'm getting paid $20,000 when you should be being paid $250,000 to $400,000 depending on how big you are. The owner was doing all of sales. Owner was heavily involved in the operations and the account management. Went to them. I said, you're worth nothing. He's like, what do you mean? You're like, I'm $2 million in profit. You're not worth anything to me because you're doing all this. If you get rid of all these responsibilities and you become the true CEO, then you're worth something. If you're under $1 million in EBITDA, which is earnings before interest, tax, and amortization or something like that, you guys can look it up. Under that, you're worth anywhere from 1 to 2x of that. So if you're only making $100,000 in profit, you're worth $100,000 to $200,000 in valuation. That doesn't mean someone's going to give you cash for that. That just means the valuation.

Well, that's more tricky now.

Now, if you can get over the million mark, so the million to 3, anywhere from 4 to 6. I've gotten some of my clients 8x, which was really nice. Very, very specialized. Then if you can get over the 3 to about $8 million in EBITDA, you're on like the 6 to 9. And then if you can get over the 8 figures, you're worth a lot. You know, the first goal is to get over the million in profit and then you're worth something. If you're under that, And also too, if you're doing sales and operations and marketing and all these things, like if you can't go away for a month, like one of our mastermind members, his family's been really sick and he's constantly going back to India. And so he'll spend like a month in India and then he'll come back, but his agency is constantly growing. The sign of a true agency that can run without the owner. That is worth something.

Yeah, totally. I agree. And that's a very interesting dynamic. And I appreciate you giving us very clear insight on, you know, the multiples which an agency can expect. Now, can you point out the differences at a business owner level and at a business infrastructure level between an agency which is stuck at less than, you know, $300,000, $500,000 in yearly revenue to the ones which are actually making it to the multi-seven-figure range and eight-figure, like you said, if you would go back and you could talk to yourself, you would not even sell and get it to 9 figures and beyond. So I'm curious what things actually are the differences between these two companies, if you can help us understand that.

Right systems in place, right? Like the ones that are kind of stuck, they don't have that clarity. It goes back to the, you know, I remember when we were around $2 million in revenue, I wanted to completely shut the agency down. I even thought about getting a job. And I wanted to quit. And in the interview they asked me, they go, what do you want to do every day? And what don't you never want to do ever again? And I was like, well, I didn't know how to answer it in that meeting, but I went back that night and I go, spent me like an hour writing down on a sheet of paper, hated. Then I spent maybe 15, 30 minutes, everything I loved. And I was like, well, how do I get rid of the things I don't like? How do I delegate? How do I say no? How do I use technology, automation, AI, whatever it is? And I was a— and then I had that clarity of where I was going. So then I could pass to the team so then they can make decisions without me. And it was all about creating the right systems for building the pipeline. That's like, you know, a pain in the ass for agencies, right? Because they're just taking on work that's coming to them. Versus what if you could build your own pipeline with channels from inbound, outbound, strategic partners? Then you're at a point where you can pick and choose to do the clients that you want to work with, pick and choose the ones that can pay you the fees. So then you can afford the people because at the end of the day, no one just wants to scale their agency just to scale their agency. If they say that, they're a complete moron. They want to scale it so they can get more time. And more freedom and more money later on, right? And, you know, the ones that really do want to have an impact, they want to reach more people, right? The ones that with the true mission-driven ones. So those are kind of the exceptions. Yeah, go on.

So I'm curious, the biggest thing, like the main component I observed what you're talking about is creating that system. And most agency owners, are at heart salespeople. They are the visionaries. They could have conversations like these and they can convert, they can get the cash, they can get the deal done, they could get the contracts, they could show up at the networking events with a smile on their face and close deals. And just like you, you know, who had, I would say, a not so strength on the operations side, like I suck at operations myself as well. I know I could do better, but that is not the biggest strength I had. I'm better doing sales and, you know, connections and Conversations over, you know, operations, I would say. So I'm curious, operations is probably where we need the most systems. So if you could give a rough rundown on how do you go from not having any systems to building few, what, what was the journey like and what can someone do today to, to, to actually build a system? And what is a system in your case, in your perspective, and how do you define it? How do you build one?

It starts with like, you know, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. right? So you're not going to start off with all the systems that I have, but you got to look at kind of, all right, let's look at for the operations. How are we going to onboard clients? That could be a system, right? In order to, you know, within the first 90 days, they're going to make a decision. It's probably really within the first week, they're going to make a decision if they like working with you. You can onboard a client and they're excited about it. You're the only one excited when they actually sign the deal. They're going into buyer's remorse right after that. But if you can walk them through, build trust, show them value, show them results, and actually grow that account, that's the kind of system I would build. Or a system around avoiding scope creep, which always just crushes agencies because they sell something for this price, but then they don't have a process in place to avoid the client for asking for everything that's not even included, and they're not doing it on purpose, but you don't have a system in place. Like, one of the best ways to avoid— I'll just give you guys a little cheat sheet on avoiding scope creep. When a client comes to you and asks you for something that's out of scope and it's very small, right? Like, let's say it's going to take you 15 minutes, 10 minutes. Tell the client, be like, hey, this is out of scope. But what I'm going to do for you is I'm going to do it. Now I'm going to send you a $0 change order. I want you to sign it and send it back. And it would literally show like the minimum 1 hour, whatever it is, like $400, $500 an hour. And it would just be zeroed out. Do that a couple of times, right? For the, like the 10-minute things. And it probably takes you 2 minutes to do. But what you're doing is you're training that client. So when they do come to you and saying, hey, Jason, I want this big thing. You know, Nick, uh, I'd love to do it for you. This is out of scope. I've already given you so much and they remember this. This is what it's going to be if you want to do it. And so just like little systems like this that you can kind of put in place to really kind of elevate the agency, you know, to the new level.

I mean, I love that. I want you to keep talking. That's just so informative for me and I'm like juicing it out. So that is so, so helpful, Jason. Appreciate you sharing that overall and One of the things I have seen, including myself, you know, suffering is team having the same vision as the founder. Like I am at core, I want to do the right thing, but having the team with the same intention, same motivation, same execution, and same care for the client account is definitely a big, you know, it's a big problem to tackle. And I get the fact that building the mission values, the core value systems for the company is probably the biggest factor. But I would believe that the incentive structures you have created inside the company will also play a huge factor. So what have you seen for growing agencies, uh, which would actually play out as the right incentive structure, which can allow you to scale? But because agency owners don't really have highest margins possible, so they're scared to give too much, but they don't want to give a thick base as well. So I'm curious, what have you found as the best incentive for A-players? Keep them, retain them, attract them, and whatnot.

The A players not all the time want the most money. You want to make sure they want to be contributing. They want to feel significance. They want to, you know, be patted on the back going, hey, that was awesome. You did a great job there. You know, right? They want that recognition a lot of times. And they also are doing it not just for you, but they love the team that they're on, right? Like, I've built a really amazing team. I think they're more in it for the team members than just me. Like they're not in it to be like, let's make Jason a ton of money. Right? They're in it to be like, to follow kind of the, the vision that we have. And the North Star that we have is to be a resource I wish I had when I ran the first agency. So like an example of this was we were writing a blog post. Many years ago when people wrote blog posts, like the top conferences agency owners need to go to, team listed out 20 of them, 3 of them, I was like, I don't like these conferences. Told them to take it off. And my team knew why I told them to take it off. They were like, why should we take it off? I said, because they didn't pick me to speak at their conference. And they go, is it a good conference? Yes. So put it, okay, put it back on. So like the team could make decisions and even call me out on my bullshit.

Right.

And then really incentivizing, right? Like incentivizing a team too. You could do quarterly bonuses. You know, what we would do is we would say, here's the overall company goal for the quarter for monetary and then also for like something we want to create, whether it be a lead gen system or, you know, profit leak system, whatever it is. And then I would go to the employees. Well, how are What are your quarterly goals based on this and based on your role? And then they would come up with that and then I would put a value on it and then I would pay them a quarterly bonus. Those are just some of the things that you can do.

Yeah, that is really, really helpful. And can you give us a rough breakdown of the Agency Playbook and what makes this framework so effective for agency growth?

You know, it's Agency Playbook's broken out into 8 systems. And it's all foundational systems, right? And it will stand the test of time. There's no tricks or hacks in it. And I'll explain it. So the first system is really around clarity. Where are you wanting to go? Who you want to help? And really helping you figure out that vision. So you're being more proactive rather than reactive. The second system is about you position your agency in a way where you don't look like every me-too agency out there. Right? Like, what's the niche that you can go after? What's the right messaging? Can you stand out? You know, it goes into the, the third system, which is the offering. Like, too many people pitch a retainer off the bat for month to month or a 30-day out clause. I'm like, well, that's not a retainer. That's just, you know, someone buying something they can, they can get out of. But how can you structure your offer in a way where it's an easy decision for that prospect to say yes. And then a way where you can build trust with them and identify a problem. And then you can look at this client and say, you know, can I actually help this, this person out? Do I want to help them out? And then go to a retainer. So those are the, those 3 systems are the foundational systems. And then you can kind of move on to the prospecting, figuring out, well, what's my inbound strategy channel? What's my outbound? What's my strategic partnership channel? Then once you figure out the prospecting, you're like, now I'm talking to all these people. Well, how do you create a sales system that's not dependent on the owner and build a sales team and incentivize them? Then once you sell it, how do you deliver it? Like we just talked about around, you know, operations around avoiding scope creep, onboarding, you know, making sure you're profitable and delivering things on time, you know, delivering things under budget. And then, you know, the last part is around operations, who to hire, when to hire. And then the last part is leadership, where what are the roles that you need to kind of transform into from an owner to a CEO to really elevate the agency and kind of get that freedom that you've always wanted. And then every level your agency goes through, you're constantly working on those 8 systems because going through those systems at $1,000 in top line revenue and $1 million are totally different. Same thing with $8 million revenue or $10 or $20 or whatever. They're saying you're constantly looking at it. And so that's why we've developed the Agency Playbook, you know, in order to, you know, just guide them through so they can kind of take those bits and pieces and go like, okay, cool. Like, I can— that makes sense. And it's all like micro videos too, right? Like, I can't stand when Someone talks for a half hour or an hour and it's like one little concept like I told you on the $0 change order. I'm like, oh, you could do that in 2 seconds.

Yeah, I love that. I mean, that's just so fundamentally true. And I love the fact that you have broken down how not just agency, but fundamentally when I'm looking at your framework, I'm like, wow, this could be applied to any business most likely. Like, you know, as long as you sell a service, you know, it doesn't need to just apply for a marketing agency in particular. So I love that fact overall. Now just this quick question here. On top of what you just mentioned. If you look at $100 coming into the bank account of an agency, how do you want to spend that? How much percentage do you want to keep for marketing cost? What percentage do you want to keep for your sales cost? What percentage do you want to keep your fulfillment cost under, your admin overall? So that the equation could actually work out on a scale. Because I've seen most agency owners are either withdrawing too much profit personally for themselves, so the business doesn't really have the blood to run the company, or they're just trying to scale so fast that they're not really taking anything and the business isn't sustainable. Like it's just breaking all the fundamental rules of running a business profitably. And if they leave, then it just doesn't sustain. So I'm curious, what do you see is, is it like a good budgeting factor for an agency which is built for scale?

I always recommend 10% for marketing, 20% for sales, 3% for operations, and the rest is profit. Now you can always kind of go up and down on certain ones, but those are kind of the general percentages that we used.

Okay. I love that. Thanks for quick rundown. Now we have a series of questions for the next few. So I'm excited. Can you give us a quick roadmap, or I would say a quick list of tools you use on a daily basis to manage your personal productivity, your clients, your project, and the systems you basically run your company on?

Is there's, we create Trello boards for pretty much everything. It's a great brainstorming tool. Connect, Calendly for our calendar to really control our calendars. Um, and, and kind of time blocking because I only do, I only work from Tuesday through Thursday from 9 to 2. Um, outside or, well, I guess I'm kind of breaking my rule now. I can, well, no, I'm not. We still got 15 minutes on my side.

Yep. But, um, this is probably the last appointment on your calendar.

The tools that we use, use email marketing tools. I don't want to say the one because I'm not the biggest fan of it. We're actually looking for another one. A lot of those tools just suck.

I agree. So as an agency, when you're going after big clients, what do you believe is the best channel? Because most agencies which I have seen are trying to grow, they suffer with the cost of acquisition, especially when they're advertising on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. The cost just scales up so fast that, you know, the campaign which is profitable 2 months ago isn't really profitable. So what do you believe is a good channel for high-ticket client acquisition in 2024 and beyond?

Advertising on Facebook or Instagram, I think, is a waste of time now. Years ago, yes, it was great. But everybody, like, I can't tell you how many bullshit ads I see. And we're, and All of us are totally frustrated with it. It goes back to what you said in the beginning. Here's my guarantee. And are you this? And I'm just like, I don't even get on Facebook anymore, honestly, just because I'm so sick of it. But what you should be doing is going back to what I was saying around having those 3 channels, right? Like you should be creating content. Like I applaud you for doing a podcast, interviewing people, right? That checks the box for outbound strategies. Checks the box for inbound strategies, strategic partnerships, right? So if you, if you're in, you know, if you're a business and you don't have a podcast, you're a moron. You really need to look at doing one. Like it's, it could literally be the best thing you've ever done if you're consistent with it. What else? You should be researching, like come up with your top 50 hit list of people that you want to work with that you know you can help. Do research. And then actively reach out to them. Like, don't like spam 'em, but like, if you, like, if you were trying to reach me and like, uh, and you followed me on social, you'd be like, man, he loves public subs. They're the best in the world. And I can't get 'em in Colorado. If you were in Florida and you knew I liked public subs, if you sent me a public sub, you would get my attention. Like, I just got my pilot's license. Like, I had someone send me I had this little cool cutout, had, has an airplane on it and it had Swank on it. I thought that was cool. Or people will send me stuff like Swank Mountain. Like you'll get my attention, right? Like if you research someone and find out what they're into and you send a strategic gift, you're going to get their attention. Uh, like, or if you reached out to me and said, Jace, man, something on your website you should go fix right now. And you gave me great advice and then I did it and it actually worked. I'd be like, damn, I need to talk to Nick. Like, he helped me out on that. That was a big, that was a big thing.

So, yeah, I love that perspective. I mean, again, fundamentally it comes back to connections and being able, being helpful in the end. That just one guarantee won't really help your business, but how you actually treat people and, you know, what you stand for will do in the longer run. So I appreciate you sharing that, Jason. Can you walk us through it?

Oh, go on, please. I'm just gonna say there's a, there's a movie. I, I don't know if you've seen it. It's in the States, Tommy Boy. Have you ever seen the movie Tommy Boy? Toy?

No, no, sounds familiar, but I haven't seen it.

Yeah, you gotta watch it because then you'll, you'll, you'll get this. So it's, um, it's Chris Farley, uh, in this movie, and he's trying to sell brake pads. And the one person goes, well, why should I buy your brake pads over the other brake pads? Because the other brake pads have guaranteed on the box, and that makes people feel all warm inside. And, and Chris basically goes, You know why they put guaranteed on the box? Because they know they're selling a guaranteed piece of shit. He goes, you know, if you want me to take a shit in a box and market guaranteed, I can do that because I have time. And so whenever I ever hear people say there's a guarantee, I always think of that. Watch that movie. It's hilarious.

Yeah, appreciate that. I will definitely, you know, bookmark it and, you know, definitely spend some time this weekend to go over. But that, that's probably the accurate description. And I will remember that whenever somebody tells me a guarantee forever. So thanks for sharing that.

I got time, I could shit in a box, I'll mark it guaranteed.

And you could buy it happily with a smile on your face.

And there's people that do buy shit in a box. That's the funny part. Like I found this one website that if you don't like people, you can put their address and they'll actually send gorilla poop or elephant poop. Like, I was like, I was like, man, that's awesome.

That's so funny. So Jason, you said you only work from Tuesdays to Thursdays and 9 to 2, which is an interesting schedule. Can you walk us through a typical day? Uh, when you're working, when you're not working, how does that differentiate? So would love an average break day.

Mondays are just getting ready for the week, you know, brainstorming, just, you know, my type of meeting. Um, or meeting with the team. Podcast interviews. These are really more dedicated to our community or mastermind and, and, and some podcast interviews. And same thing with Thursdays. And then Fridays are epic Fridays. So we go climb a mountain, go fly a plane, jump out of a plane, whatever. Do something really, uh, most people don't ever do. It's kind of like a bucket list Fridays. And then Saturday and Sundays are family days.

So, Interesting breakout. And that's really helpful. If you could go back and talk to 20-year-old yourself and give yourself an advice, what would that be?

Be patient and focus. Focus means finish one commitment till success. Many people focus on one thing and then it doesn't work and then they move on to the next, which they were this close to making it work. And I've never really had trouble with that. It's like when I, When I have an idea, like I'll focus on it until it's done. To almost my detriment, days will go by. I'll be like, I'll keep working. And then I'll be like, oh shit, days went by.

I mean, I love that. I think that's a very good trait for entrepreneurship overall. So I love that. And what was the motto behind building agencymastery360.com? What was the reason you went from, hey, I had a successful exit to being like, oh, let me help other people who are trying to build one. And what's like your ultra vision? Are you trying to build a holding co and hold a lot of companies? Because I hear you acquired a lot of agencies in the last few years. I'm curious.

It was by accident again, you know, like after I sold the agency a couple of years later, people were asking me, how'd you do this? How'd you kick her butt? How'd you blah, blah, blah. And I literally started helping people for free and it really gave me a lot of enjoyment and a lot of satisfaction to see them succeed. And so then I just. I started working with people one-on-one. I don't do that anymore, but we build communities and we build little mini masterminds that work really well together and help each other out. Not group coaching. So I just wanted to build a resource I wish I had. You know, I was always looking for a community or a mastermind that I belonged to that were just agency owners that were cool, you know, ego, amazing, that were scaling at a fast pace. Knew they weren't perfect, but wanted to share what was working for them or share what didn't work and do cool stuff together. And so that was the whole idea around Agency Mastery 360. And then that opened up opportunities for us to create other companies like Republics is the holding company that buys other companies. And yeah, and we'll see where it goes from here.

Appreciate that. If you could look back and talk about the achievements you had and the next big goals, what would that be?

Back or what's the next big goals?

Both. Like if you could talk about the biggest achievements you had and what you would like to achieve next.

I just want to keep having fun. I mean, like, you know, for example, revenue goals at the company, which a lot of people would be like, what? Like, it's crazy. Our goal, and this is how we measure ourselves, is to take 50% of our mastermind members and double their EBITDA and reduce their work by 25%. That's how we measure, like if we're able to hit that, then all that other stuff will happen. So make all our decisions based on that. So that's what I'm really excited about of just sharing, like how people can get to a place where they have more time, freedom, and obviously money, you know, that's part of it. With people, but that's not the main focus. Because I also tell people too, I'm like, look, like there was a person I talked to yesterday. What's your number if you wanted to sell? $4 million. Okay. Why, why did you come up with that number?

I don't know.

It sounded like a good number. I was like, oh, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard, but that's fine. Then I asked him kind of what his EBITDA was. $1.5 million in EBITDA. And then if you kind of recast a lot of the expenses, we probably could get them up to $2 million. It's like, all right, let me, it's like, dude, you're worth like $10 million. Why would you want to sell? Oh, there was a problem going back to, there was a problem that he didn't know how to solve at that point. And I said, look, if I was, people could take advantage of him really easy. And I said, look, you can see he's worth $10 million. I could have told you, I'd be like, yeah, I'll give you $4 million. And then turn around and sell it next week for 10 and make $6 million like that. But like, it goes back to kind of, you know, I had some really bad advice when I sold my agency and I always promised myself, and my business partners always get mad at me. They're like, why are you so honest on these things? And I'm, well, I always promised I would, you know, tell people like the real truth. Of going, no, you should not sell. And he wound up, he was like, good. I'm glad I chatted with you because I don't want to sell. If I can figure out this one problem, just sit back, make— I even told him, I said, look, $2 million in profit, pay, find out the people you pay an extra million that year to do anything and you're still getting $1 million a year. He's like, oh, I never thought about it that way. I'm like, well, you should.

Yeah, I love that. And I really like the perspective you've given me overall on how to change your key metrics, thinking about your client success. And I believe that will help you achieve your ultimate goals overall. Yes, revenue goals are great, but client success goals can drive your revenue indirectly. And I appreciate that perspective overall. If you could share a mistake you've made, which you could probably learn and not repeat, what would that be like? The biggest mistake you've made?

Raising my prices fast enough.

When you add your capacity instead of— yeah, I love that. Just increase the price.

Yeah.

I like it. Awesome. Awesome. And what excites you, Jason, to get up and get to work and keep moving?

I love hearing, you know, our members going, I implemented the foot in the door or raised my prices on the client, or I created a podcast and the business is 2x'd and I'm not— and I was able to take off like when Duncan. Told me he was able to take off a month and his agency kept growing. It's like fantastic. Like, that's awesome. I would like, people will figure it out, but if I can help them figure it out quicker, we've done our job.

That, and if somebody's listening to this whole podcast and Jason, if they need your help, how can they find you? How do they get in touch with you or one of your teammates?

Go to agencymastery360.com. Uh, we have tons of resources for free. I mean, we have 800 episodes on our podcast. I think we have close to 1,000 videos on YouTube, which is crazy. But if you want a shortcut to that, you might want to just go to the website and then reach out, and then we can kind of point you in the right direction for that.

Love that advice overall. Any last words for us to conclude the whole show for today?

Finish one commitment till success.

Don't give up, you know, in between. I love that advice, Jason. Appreciate you showing up so far and thank you so much for the amazing value you have shared. Guys, if you have stick to the end and if you learned a lot on the podcast, make sure to implement. Take 3 to 5 things you could actually do because Jason gave absolutely insane actionable advice starting from how you could budget your agency to maintain 40% minimum profit margin to, you know, installing all the 8 systems he talked about in Agency Playbook to actually hiring A-players and raising your surprises and many more mistakes through talking yourself out of trying to sell your company instead of just solving the problem. Like everything you could actually do today. So go do that and don't let the podcast be another motivational show you heard, but an actionable show for you to do something and get a result. And if you need more help, reach out to Jason. And Jason, thank you so much for sharing amazing advice and appreciate the story you have shared and all the learnings. And guys, stay tuned, share this with your agency friend and we'll be back with another amazing guest just like Jason on the show. Thank you so much, Jason. Have a good one. Woo! That was a value pack.