5 beginner SMMA mistakes that keep you from $100k/months

Looking back over the last two and a half years, there are five mistakes that prevented our agency, adspend.com from scaling past 100k a month. And if you're an agency owner, then you're going to want to pay very close attention to what I'm about to share with you. Because if you don't listen and learn from these mistakes, then you're going to end up making less money, working with bad clients, having too many expenses with very little profit, and ultimately wishing you never started an agency in the first place. You. But if you do listen to these mistakes and avoid them, you can scale past 100k a month very quickly. You can also work with really great clients who pay you in full, on time, and never micromanage you or nitpick at you. And you'll also have less expenses and more profit, which will ultimately allow you to enjoy the journey and the process of building your agency. And a quick intro on myself, if you're new to this channel, just so you know, this comes from a place of experience and not just theory. My name is Brian Wontgava, I'm the founder of adspend.com and over the last two and a half years my team and I have spent well over $40 million on YouTube ads and have worked with some of the biggest info marketers in the entire online education industry. Clients like Bedros Coolian, John Asaroff, Roland Fraser, Cole Gordon, even the Wolf of Wall street himself, Jordan Belfort, and consulted with eight and nine figure companies like Digital Marketer and and Kajabi. And last year we hit seven figures in just two and a half years of being in business. And this year we're on track to pretty much double that amount. And to be clear, I've made all of these mistakes over the last two and a half years, which is exactly why I want to share them with you today. But make sure you stick around to the end and listen to mistake number five, because Sam Ovens told me how to correct this mistake. And since implementing it into our agency, we, we've grown closer together as a team and have scaled much, much faster. So with all that said, let's dive in. Mistake number one is charging too little. And look, if you're someone who's brand new to starting an agency, you don't have any case studies, you don't have any testimonials, you don't have any social proof or real experience actually helping clients, then at this point your main job is to get case studies and testimonials and Sometimes you'll have to offer value upfront for free to get them the result and then use that as a case study to get more clients. However, in my specific scenario, having worked with Dean Graziosi and spent well over $10 million during my three years working with him, I already had a lot of experience. I already had a lot of social proof. And what I failed to do was really believe in myself to be able to charge enough, because I just didn't know any better at the time when clients would come to me and say, hey, I want you to run my YouTube ads. Because I've seen that you, you've ran the ads for Dean Graziosi, and I have a similar offer. Then I would charge them as little as when I first started, unfortunately, $1,000 a month, because I just didn't know any better. I picture the sound effect of like the wah, wah, wah as I reveal that, and you on the other side of the screen going, oh, my God, is this guy stupid? And I was selling a commodity, I was selling a service as opposed to selling results. I went from selling YouTube ads as a service from $1,000 a month to $2,000 a month to $3,000 a month to $5,000 a month, all the way up to $10,000 a month for our YouTube ads. Scaling agency. Unfortunately, most agency owners, when they first start off, are charging too little charge based off the result. You're going to give your client, not the value of what the market gives to your service. And this is something that takes time and experience and ultimately mental shifting in your head and to change your identity and level up as a agency owner to be able to say, I can confidently command not only a high ticket service fee, but also a percentage of performance. Because now@adspend.com, we don't work with clients unless they give us a retainer plus a percentage of the net profit. And the reason why is because we've helped clients spend as little as 30k to make well over 500k or even a million dollars in one launch. However, we, we got paid a flat fee and we were the ones that ultimately got, you know, screwed as a result. But again, I look back and I say, this was a mistake that we've now corrected. And now we average, you know, the goal being at least $30,000 a month per client because of the incentive that we have in scaling their business. So instead of charging for your service, which is a commodity which anybody else in the marketplace can serve and offer to anyone, especially your clients, you have to come up from a place of selling results and sell based off results, not based off your service. Don't charge too little, especially when you're first starting off. If you're just starting without any case studies, of course, do what you need to do. Get the case studies, get the testimonials, get the social proof, but then work your way up to High ticket. At least $5,000 a month, all the way up to $10,000 or that fee, plus some sort of percentage. And I guarantee you'll thank me for making this mindset shift right now as opposed to working your way up the ladder. That's like I did with 1000, 2000, $3000 and $5000 retainers with no percentage on top of it. Which leads me to mistake number two, which is working with everyone as opposed to one specific person. And you hear this all the time, right? You have to niche down. You have to get really crystal clear on who your ideal client is. However, I made the same mistake. Right? And you are probably right now, especially if you're just starting off with your agency, you're probably working with everyone or at least you're coming from a place of scarcity because you need money that you're choosing to accept anyone who's willing to offer you some cash to get your help, and you're happily accepting it because you need the money. And trust me, I made this mistake as well. But the problem you're going to run into with this mistake is because you are not crystal clear on who you can actually help the most and get the most results. Narrowing down your niche and getting crystal clear on who your ideal client is, what their business looks like, how many team members they have, what's their monthly revenue? Right? What niche are they in? Are they in health and wellness? Are they in dating relationships? Are they in make money online? Who is it that you can actually help? The reason why we couldn't charge High Ticket was because we were customizing the price and the deal based off every client that came to work with us. When you're at a at a level of like 0 to $30,000 a month, and I mentioned this in a previous video that I posted last week, which you can click right over here, which is called, you know, eight figure entrepreneur, told me how to make $10 million. I share the six phases to eight figures and I break down each phase and why it's very important to focus on very specific things in those phases. So definitely check out that video after this one if you haven't watched it. However, it's very crucial in this stage to focus on the highest ROI activity that you can do to make sure you can get clear on what your value proposition is to the marketplace. Is it running ads? Is it, is it creating funnels? Is it, you know, CRO and funnel optimization to get better conversion rates? Is it SEO? What is your core service that helps your clients make the most money? Once you have that clear in your head, then you can get clear on who you can actually help that has this problem that you can offer your service to and get them results. So you got to get crystal clear on this now. Otherwise you'll be creating a life of complexity and you'll hate yourself. Trust me. Because you won't know who your ideal client is, you won't know what exactly you're offering, and you won't have a clear path to scale and get more clients. Which brings me to mistake number three. Serious question for you. How would you feel if you just up and quit your job and the next day you did not know where your next client was coming from? What if you just quit your job, you went all in on your agency and you had no clue what, when or how you were going to make your money, how you're gonna get your next client, when your next client's gonna come, or where you can actually find your next client? How would that feel? It probably wouldn't feel good, right? Well, unfortunately, that's exactly the mistake that I made, which is not having an optimal selling strategy. And I talk about this all the time. The book Ready, Fire, Aim, which is over here behind me, right? Ready, Fire, Aim. Underneath this cool looking Greek statue is the ultimate business bible that I talked about in this book video right over here. Five life changing books that everyone must read in 2022. This is the business bible and it talks about the optimum selling strategy from zero to $1 million a year in revenue. You need to have a repeatable, predictable way to generate clients for your agency. And unfortunately, when I was starting off, I didn't have a repeatable, predictable way to generate clients. I was relying on word of mouth and referral. And although that did work for a long time, and truthfully, we're able to scale the seven figures with just word of mouth and referrals, which is pretty sick. And I say that proudly, but also like kind of admitting that I didn't really know what I was doing. Because we were able to get client after client after client referred to us because of our results and because of the work we cared for the clients the work we showed for the clients, the work we did for the clients, and ultimately caring about getting results right and going above and beyond, doing everything we could with our service and our customer experience. And we were just getting referral after referral after referral. However, we got spoiled with that as well. I was remembering like talking with my team one day and I was like, guys, like we don't really know what we're doing in a way that makes sense to scale this agency, right? And everyone was like, yeah, we're working with a bunch of different clients. Mistake number two, and we're not charging enough. Mistake number one, and we don't know where our ideal clients are. Mistake number three, because we didn't focus focus on mistake number one. Mistake number two and solving those problems sooner. We were just getting lucky and in a really cool way because we were doing a really good job. The point being for you is you need to have a repeatable, predictable way to generate clients for your business. So the sooner you get clear on who your ideal client is, the sooner you get clear on what you can actually charge to get them their result that they're looking for and solve their problem, the sooner you can put in place a repeatable, predictable system to generate leads and close more clients for your agency so you can scale from 30k to 100k a month in almost no time flat. So my optimum selling strategy looking back was masterminds joining masterminds and being in these rooms with these high level entrepreneurs and just giving tons of value to them, helping them for free, and then them seeing me as an expert and wanting to work with me and my team. So optimum selling strategy, what is yours right now? Take some time to really determine where are your clients hanging out, how are you going to get in front of them and ultimately how are you going to get them from knowing you and then getting to book a call with you so you can close them on your agency services. For me it was masterminds, it was word of mouth, it was referrals. Now we have a more predictable system in place, but you need to put this in place to scale from $30,000 a month to to $100,000 a month or else you'll be pulling your hair out not knowing exactly where your next client or deal is coming from. By the way, if you're liking this content, give this video a thumbs up. Leave a comment down below with what you've learned so far and it would really help out the channel. So I really appreciate it. But with that being Said let's get into mistake number four, which is hiring in house too soon versus outsourcing, okay? And this is a mistake that I do not want you to make because really to get from 30 to 100k a month as an agency owner, you might need only one or two people and the focus for you should be sales, okay? Everybody should be focusing on sales when they're going from 0 to 100k a month. There is really nothing else you need to be focusing on. That's the quickest way to go to seven figures. The mistake that I made was I was hiring my friends too soon full time, paying them full time salaries, having them work in house for future expected growth instead of, you know, just outsourcing the fulfillment to one media buyer. So he was managing the campaigns and me being able to focus on sales. And the reason why I made this mistake was because I made all the mistakes through 1 through 3 that I just talked about in the last few points, which is why this is very sequential here. You can see how we're adding it up because we didn't know exactly who we were helping the most, who, who we could help the best. We didn't charge enough and we didn't know where our clients were going to come from that was repeatable and predictable and scalable. Without needing me to be in the room in these masterminds and showing face. I was hiring generalists on my team who could do a lot of good things, a lot of things very, very well, right? They could run ads, they could write copy, they could talk to clients. I was training them to be duplicates of me as opposed to hiring outsourced specialists outside of the US for cheaper costs and being able to have them pay them a really good living for them in their country and be able to just focus on the number one thing that you and I need to focus on from 0 to 100k a month, which is sales. I just need to be focused on sales, not bringing people in full time. So before you hire someone in house full time, you really have to ask yourself, does this make sense right now? Because the highest leverage ROI activity that you're going to have in your agency is, is getting client results and getting clients. That's it. So the sooner you can hire someone to help you get clients results, the sooner you can focus on getting more clients and the sooner you'll be able to scale to $100,000 a month. Don't make this mistake that I did. Don't hire people in house full time too soon. Your Expenses will be too high, your overhead will be crazy, and it'll create a lot of complexity in your business because your profit will be super low when instead, if I look back now, we could, and we are at this point operating on 60 to 70% margins because of our lean operation. And that's what I should have been doing since day one, but I made this mistake. So you got to learn, live and learn, and that's why we're here. Last but not least, mistake number five. This is something that I learned from Sam Ovens the moment that I joined Quantum Mastermind at the beginning of, I believe, March of this year. And, and Sam Ovens taught me how important it is to implement what he calls daily huddles with your team. So, as we just learned in mistake number four, right, Hiring in house too soon, full time, too soon, versus outsourced. It's very important. No matter who you have on your team, how many team members, you meet with them on a daily basis. And the mistake that I made that I want you to learn from right now, mistake number five, is not implementing daily huddles so sooner, okay? And we tried a bunch of things@adspend.com at our agency. We tried weekly kickoff calls, you know, where we had everybody on the team, you know, do a weekly standup where we talked about our personal wins, our professional wins. You want to meet with your team daily to inspire them to review the mission, the vision, the values, to make sure they're on track to hit their goals. They're inspired, they're motivated, they feel good about what they're doing. And the only way you can really have that touch point with your team and is if you're meeting with them daily, especially as an agency who's probably working remote, you right now might have an agency where your team's, you know, across the country, where they're in the Philippines or they're in India or they're in, you know, the uk, right? You can't really meet with them in house. Now, even when we were in house for us@adspend.com, we had a team of about six or seven people all full time in house in an office in Phoenix. And, you know, it was fun, but we still weren't meeting every single day. And so what I look back on now, the mistake that I made was not meeting with our team full time, not getting clear on what they were focusing on for that day, not making sure everyone knew exactly what they should be doing, and not constantly reviewing the vision, the mission, and the values with them on a daily basis. This also helps you as a leader for your agency because you can really get a feel for who on your team, you know, isn't really showing up to the calls as excited as they maybe once were. You can get a feel if someone needs to have a one on one with you or you need to have a one on one with them to kind of just check in on them and see what's going on, see if they're okay, see if they're feeling good and see if you can help them in any way, shape or form. So Daily Huddles has been very, very powerful. And again, I learned this from Sam Oven, so credit to Sam after joining Quantum. Because of Daily Huddles, everybody on my team is very clear on what we should be focusing on to help us get to our goals. I promise you this will help you get a pulse for your team and know exactly how everybody is feeling. It's one of the highest level masterminds in the entire info marketing industry. And on the first day of this mastermind, Cole Gordon, an eight figure sales trainer who's doing about $2.5 million a month right now, shared what he calls the eight phases to eight figures.