How to Get Your First $1,000 per Month Agency Customer
Brandon Doyle built Wallaroo Media from zero to multiple seven figures by testing every ad channel. He shares how new agencies should price their first clients, which channels actually convert, and why most founders price too low and chase the wrong customers.
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Welcome to the Kerner office. I am stoked about today's episode. I think it's going to go down as a legendary one that is referred to often because I talk to Brandon today. Brandon is my friend that is all things agency. He has owned an agency of some sort since like 2008. Dozens of different types of agencies. He used to have seven under one roof, and then he split it into two companies. Email marketing, SEO, pay per click, Facebook ads, Snapchat ads, TikTok ads, you name it. Email marketing. He has started an agency everywhere and he's done very, very well at it. But we didn't want to spend a lot of time talking about his business. We wanted to spend a lot of time talking about what businesses you can start from his ideas. He is not the type of guy that wants to, like, withhold information because he doesn't want a bunch of competitors. He wants to share the love. And so you will love this episode. We talked about using AI to be the person that presses the AI button so you can be an operator to help other companies make money. You're going to love it. Ton of agency ideas, ton of practical tactical tips and tricks to getting started. Getting your first customer to pay you $1,000 a month, $3,000 a month, $5,000 a month. You're going to love it. The ideas and stuff are in the middle to the back half. Let me know what you think. We'll have Brandon on again and enjoy. I've got Brandon here. Brandon is a friend. Never met him in person, but we will one day. And the owner of Walaroo Media, right? Did I say that right?
Yes. Yeah. Wallaroo Media. How are you doing? Happy to be here.
Good, good, thank you. And you're currently traveling Europe with your family and you're in Tuscany.
That is true, yeah. Here in Europe for six months, having a little sabbatical. It's very fun.
All right, so why don't you just tell us who you are and how you got to owning a media agency?
Yeah. So I'm Brandon, like you said. I started Wallaroo Media on the side in 2008. Kind of. I didn't have the name yet, but that's when I started learning it. The reason why was because my parents had a website built that it was their first foray into digital. They didn't have a website previously. They spent all their money on it. It was a website to allow people to customize their letterman jacket if they're a high school athlete. That's what it was. First of its kind. It was actually pretty awesome and revolutionary. I'll say that word of a website at the time, because it was like the first where you actually could customize a piece of clothing and see all the changes while you're doing it and stuff, and then order it right there. So anyway, after they had it built, they didn't have any visitors going to the site. Right. Because it was new. So they asked me to go out and get biz for marketing. And the cheapest one I got was six grand a month for SEO only, which was really expensive, especially this is 2008, we're talking. But. And they didn't have any money. They had zero dollars a month. So I said, well, what if I learn it and maybe you share the profits with me or whatever. I was still majoring in finance at byu. And they said, sure. So I started diving into Reddit and Moz and stuff like that and learning, and I started really enjoying it and loving it and putting into practice everything I was learning. And the results were really good. Less than a year later, they were on the top half of page one for almost 300 different keywords. So it was going really, really well. And then I started getting referrals and just kind of grew it from there.
So were you focusing on SEO, just like organic SEO?
Yeah, initially for them, it was SEO, and then Google ppc.
Okay, and what kind of tactics were you using then that would not apply today, or is a lot of it just the same?
Oh, no, there's so much stuff that wouldn't work anymore. I would register. You know, those were the days of, like, StumbleUpon, if you remember. Stumble Upon.
Oh, yeah.
Was big. So if you got a site, if you registered it or whatever on StumbleUpon, and then if you came across it and clicked through, then that would, like, basically help it in the StumbleUpon algorithm. So I would do that or I would register for profiles. That was a big thing. Think Yelp. But versions that no one ever used, there were like 200 of those. So the bio link was a followed link. So it was like, not that hard to get 200 pretty solid domain authority links. Like backlinks. Pretty quick. Yeah, yeah, backlinks. They didn't have good anchor text, but anyway, they were still from good domains. So that was another thing. Even doing, like, comments on other blogs with the customized anchor text. So it would say, like, custom letterman jacket, and then the link would be to the site. They weren't black hat. This is all like, white hat stuff. But, yeah, none of that works anymore. Not at all.
Was there ever something that you did that was just totally off the wall that really wouldn't work? Like, I remember hearing stories of people in SEO back in the day where they would just put thousands of keywords right on the homepage in white font with a white background. Yes. Did you ever hear that?
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
That was even.
I would guess I would classify that as gray hat. That was even gray hat. At the time, I didn't really do that, but I did spin up a bunch of landing pages. So whether it be for like a specific school or a city, that was easy to do. You know, now you can do it way faster with AI, but that was easy to do, and duplicate content wasn't really that much of an issue. So you could spin up 50, 100 landing pages that are all pretty similar, just different city names or whatever, and they would rank fairly quickly.
Okay, so what happened to their business when you started helping them? And is it still around today? What happened to it? Ultimately?
Yeah, yeah, it's still around. The website's buildyourjacket.com I mean, my parents are older now, and my dad. My dad got shot. Has not fully recovered. It's a pretty crazy. I'm sorry to hear that'll be. Well, it was nine years ago, but it hasn't recovered. Recovered anyway. Wow, that's a crazy story for a different pod. Yeah, it was a freak accident. But anyway, so it's still going. The business. He doesn't push it as hard as he used to because he doesn't have as much energy and he's in his 60s now. But at the time, no, I mean, they were killing it. It was going super good. And so they had a retail sporting goods store as well at the time. And so the website started doing so well that they sold that off and. And didn't do that anymore. They just went all in on the website.
Interesting. They sold the retail store. Went all in on the website.
Yep.
Interesting. Okay, so this was just an idea that they had from scratch?
Yeah, yeah, my dad.
Yeah. Okay. So you started with SEO and then like, did you start pulling more levers with them? Like, all right, let's try Facebook ads. Or did you start pulling those levers with other customers?
Yeah, no. So this started in OA, owned 08 to 09, was mostly SEO. Then Google PPC started and then a Facebook page was probably 09 or 2010ish when I started pushing that harder for them. And then it just kind of went from there. Twitter, Reddit, early Days of Twitter helped a lot. It was actually really good because I set up, like, advanced search trackers where anytime somebody would say custom letterman jacket or varsity jacket in the same tweet, then I would set up like an auto reply, like, hey, go, go, go. Make your own buildyourjacket.com, you know? And, yeah, I mean, it just kept scaling from there as all these new social platforms and mediums popped up.
Okay, so here's a question. You've seen, like, the evolution of social media over the years. Like, you've seen things come and go. You were around. You could post a link to a blog on Facebook and that blog would just get millions of free clicks. Right. What are some stories from, like, the biggest, best, like, just the most asymmetric opportunities you've ever seen? Like, that went away, right?
Call.
Call it a. Maybe it's a growth hack that you employed. Or, like the first three months of Facebook pages, Facebook pushed them so hard that you were making a ton of money creating Facebook pages for people, and they were seeing amazing results that just weren't lasting. I would love to hear some stories about that.
The asymmetric bet of, let's say, Google PPC was like, before my time. So. So that was more like 2003, 4, 5, 6, maybe like 4 cent clicks. Yeah, yeah. So the first big one that we started to really capitalize on at the agency was Facebook ads, especially for e commerce. So the ability to get 5, 6, 8, 10 x ROAS. We don't even use that term anymore, but that was not that hard. The hardest part for our clients was managing their finances properly. And frankly, just being able to get enough inventory in the door because there weren't, like, it was harder when Facebook ads were going great. It was harder at that time to get, like, the types of credit cards that you can get now where you don't have to pay things for 90 days, you know? So anyway, that was the first asymmetric bet. And Jesse from Ambush, he has a. Or sold a massive agency. They were like, the best at capitalizing on that period of time. But yeah, that was the first one, and that's. So we did a good job of that. I would say nothing amazing, though, but in seeing that, I guess it sort of taught me and us that next time something new came, let's jump on it quickly. So when Snapchat came, we started on that super quick. We were actually the first agency partner of Snapchat, and that was amazing if you got on it early as a brand. TikTok, we were the first agency that was doing stuff on TikTok that was huge at the start, for a start. I mean the start was like two years long, so. And I don't think that's going to stop. There's a limited amount of apps and websites that can make it out of it these days and last. But there's always going to be opportunities. If you are an early adopter and go super hard.
I'm curious what stories you can tell of a customer that you had that like really went all in on Snapchat and they saw a crazy roas or crazy download numbers. I'd love to hear something like that.
So like Acorns was a finance app.
Have you. Are you familiar?
Yeah, yeah. So they were our client. They. We started with them when they were still in beta and so when they launched we went all in on Snap. That's what we went all in on for ads. And so it was ads for the app download. Obviously it was an iOS app and it was insane. I don't know what I am allowed to say or not to say, but they really quickly. I mean we got tens of millions of downloads in under a year.
Holy cow.
Yeah.
I mean they blew up and they're still a big company. Like they're still doing fine, right?
Oh yeah. Yeah, man. Yeah. I think too many people worry about like diversification of media channels this these days or advertising channels or whatever. You don't need to worry about that unless you're probably a nine figure company.
Yeah.
Like even when you're still eight figures, it's like just master one or two channels. Yeah.
It's funny, like eight or nine months ago I posted a tweet about our tree care business and I was like, here's the 32 places we get leads from. And like it's tweet did really well and I felt really good about myself. And then one of the comments was like, this just kind of tells me that you haven't mastered any of them. I was like, oh dang it. I want to clap back to that. But you're right, it's like, well, I mean platform risk is real, right? Like, yes, it's very real. But like if you're getting a positive roas return on ad spend, why not just plow all the money you can into it? Especially if you're Acorns and you have no physical fulfillment. It's just apps.
Yeah. There's not like a perfect recipe, but I would say something like 80% of your focus should be on maybe two channels. And then 20% testing the other 12 to see what might become the third channel. So you can make sure that you are mitigating against platform risk, but you should really try to figure out how to truly crack two channels.
All right, if you are watching this clip right now, you are watching this on YouTube. And if you are a fan of podcasts, please check out my podcast while you're at it. Because sometimes I have podcasts that aren't on YouTube and sometimes I have YouTubes that aren't on podcasts. So check out the Kerner office on any podcast platform. Or you can go to tkopod.com also my newsletter will throw that in there. There are no ads. It's weekly. It's different content than my podcast and YouTube newsletter.chrisjkerner.com you'll see the L and we'll see you there. Now, this is kind of a tangent a little bit, but what do you think about all of the direct to consumer brands that went public, or even the ones that didn't go public and they just blew up tens, hundreds, billions of dollars of revenue? And really what you're looking at is a Shopify store and Facebook ads. Right? That's the whole business. And it sounds like I'm oversimplifying it because e commerce is very hard. Like, it's much harder than almost everyone thinks. So it's just hard. Right. But you see these companies go public figs and like, none of them have done well. Allbirds Casper Figs like, they do well at first and then they don't. And the phrase that comes to my mind that I repeat all the time is that which is easily gained is easily lost. And it's like with Texas snacks, we do paid ads, but our organic customers that, like, seek us out, they return more and they spend more and they're just a better customer. And it's like they kind of had there was more friction to find us, but that friction translated into a better customer. Do you have anything to say about that?
Yeah. So Casper was actually one of our clients pre ipo. Okay, I'm trying to pull up this tweet as we're talking. Somebody ranked the all these D2C brands and their returns since they went public. And the only one that's positive of all the big ones is hims. It's the only.
Oh, and it's a. It's really a pharmaceutical company. I mean.
Yes. And one that is riding a massive wave right now of multiple things and who happens to be a consumable. It's Not a mattress.
Right.
Or a pair of shoes or whatever that you don't buy every month. So that's one part of it, of why HIMS is still doing well. But all the others are not. But all the others, I'd have to look at the exact list, but they pretty much all blew up during that Facebook ads. Crazy awesome time. That's when they blew up. And then. So what happens? They blew up, they got investment and then they had Tipo because of that. But in, in their growth, how many mattress brands exist now? Yeah, Casper was the pioneer, but there are so many because they all saw, oh, Casper's doing this, go take a little piece. So because of their own success, it inspired so many copycats that all specialized in a little niche or whatever and are taking their revenue at least part from them. Same with. I don't think that's happening as much with Figs, but Allbirds and, you know, all these other ones. So I think that's their demise. That coupled with just the fact that E Comm. Is really hard and ad costs have risen a lot since 2016, 2015. Yeah.
What was Casper's customer acquisition cost in like the heyday? Do you remember?
It was pretty cheap at first, and then. And they were growing really fast and it was going really well and they were doing. And we were helping them with some cool stuff. They had a. They had a blog, a separate website about sleep and. And it had a bunch of content on there. And we ran that actually for a while. They would do like cool campaigns where they would have like nap pods and they'd go to like festivals and roll up these nap pods. You could take naps in them. So I think they were doing a great job. Anyway, that was the time when they were scaling like crazy. And then I think maybe when they got, I don't know, Series C, Series D is when they started getting to the point where they had to keep up with the growth rate that they were already achieving, but they couldn't in as profitable of a way. Right. So then they started to achieve basically break even CAC and potentially even negative for a while. And it hasn't gone well since the ipo.
So, I mean, that's one thing if you're going to keep buying pills every month, but if you're not going to buy another mattress for a decade, you're in trouble.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
What were they spending to sell one mattress, like in the heydays, if you remember? 20 bucks? 200?
No, probably at a hundred for a thousand dollars.
Mattress man with like 80% margins too, right? Or 70%.
Yeah, it was high.
Geez.
Yeah.
Okay, so Facebook had the heyday and people like, what's different about all the E commerce brands making profitable businesses today on Facebook ads, like they just have it's their products with bigger margins or more recurring or both.
I think the brands that are doing well now are just so much more dialed in than you had to be eight years ago. Okay, so I don't know the original. Yeah, yeah. But they just have like their inventory is. Is so dialed in and their supply chain and the product costs and their teams, the leanness of their teams even like everything. Basically, if your primary growth engine is ads, which that is the case for most e comm businesses, then you have to basically be perfect on every single other aspect of your business. Because if you're not, then either a normal competitor of yours, normal being another apparel brand. So if you have Vuori over here and like Aloe Yoke over here, if Viori has everything buttoned up and Aloe doesn't, Vori is going to win. Right. But if also who they have to compete with is she in and Temu and Amazon and Walmart who are all running ads. If you Google yoga pants for women, all of those brands are running ads, some of which are willing to lose money or a lot of money on every click. Also, the younger generation is becoming more okay with dupes and stuff. So that's why you have to have every single aspect of your business dialed in. If ads is going to be one of your primary growth drivers, how has.
That affected your business? Because I imagine a big part of your business, at least at one point was a Shopify store plus Facebook ads. So as that started to die, what does your business look like today? And what was that transition like?
I started, I ended up working in finance and then I quit. That was 2012, right before we had our second kid. And so I joined with my friend and we started doing this thing and we started just with small companies and then kept growing and then anyway we became a full service agency just because anytime someone said, oh, can you do this? My answer was yes. And so that's how we became a full service agency. And we were pretty good at some things and maybe great at one and okay at others. Anyway, in 2017 we decided to go all in on social ads for E.
Commerce and cut everything else out for E commerce specifically.
Yeah, so just social ads for E commerce because we saw that those two basically waves were going to be the best.
Not even PPC no, not even Google.
It was really just Facebook ads, Instagram ads. It was 2017, so Snapchat ads, maybe a little Twitter and Reddit.
Okay.
Yeah. And so anything else comes. SEO, email, web design, whatever. We referred it out. Then we started spitting up other agencies because I was mad at how much money we were referring out. Yeah, it's tough. Yeah. So we found a guy to run a new company that focused on SEO and that started going well, you were.
Still kind of referring it out, but to your own company.
Yeah, yeah. That had its own like day to day operator, different bank account, different equity structure. And we. So we had one. Walaroo became full service, then one thing. Then it became seven different agencies with seven different operators and me and the co founder.
What were the seven?
It was ads, Email, SEO, web design, social media, a smaller version of ads, and nil stuff for college athletes.
Oh, shoot. Okay, just throw that in there.
Yeah, me and my co founder were over those seven. So each had their own day to day operator, their own bank, all that. Right. Their own set of clients. Of course there was a lot of overlap with clientele, but yeah, so we were just trying to help them all grow and all that kind of stuff. I'm saying this because had I not done this, we would have continued to scale greatly with that initial idea of just focusing on social ads, free commerce. But we got distracted by this shiny idea of running like a Holdco or whatever. And because the first one that we started was going really well. So anyway, only like a year and a half ago did we fold the seven now into two. Okay, so Walaroo still exists and does everything on the paid side, advertising, creative management, blah, blah. And then we have another one called Arvo, which basically does stuff on the organic side, but both focus largely on E commerce.
So what would you say to people that say don't chase shiny objects? Focus, focus. Focus is saying no to a thousand things. Obviously you can't blanket statement to say it's bad idea or it's bad advice. It's good advice. How has that advice played into what you've done and how do you feel about it? Looking back with the benefit of hindsight?
I mean, I know that if I hadn't done that, and even if I had focused earlier than when we started to go all in on social ads, we would be at more revenue, at least let's say twice what we're at now, if not much more, let's say. But I think the amount of lessons I learned in all that will pay more than that over time. So I guess I don't regret it. So I guess you just have to decide, do you want to go through learn by messing up a bunch or do you just want to focus on one thing only and. And go hard on that? I. I don't necessarily think there's a wrong route.
I agree.
Yeah.
Like I always say, compounding doesn't care. You just stay in the game. So you're saying that if you would have only focused on social and E commerce, you'd be twice as big, despite what happened with Facebook ads, iOS 14 and all that? Yeah.
If not three times as big, probably, to be honest.
And why do you think that is? Like, specifically because it's easy to be like. Well, like. Yeah. How could you have been so much bigger?
Well, partially the wave that we were riding was such a good one and still is, but we missed. We were less focused on the key years. So that was one and two. When me and my business partner first started this thing, our goal was always to step away so we can have more time with our wife and kids. And just like during those key years when your kids are teenagers and stuff, basically have the unlimited time to spend with them before they're gone out of your house. That was always the goal. And we saw this as a way to accomplish that. But we, I think, did it too soon and also underestimated how difficult it is to find great operators to scale things up. And, you know, there's different skill sets needed to go from 0 to 1 or 1 to 3 or 3 to 10. And we thought we could teach these seven different people how to do it all, but we didn't even know how to do it all.
Yeah.
So, yeah, we just, I don't know, got a little cocky or got a little too excited or whatever and. But I mean, it's going good now. I have no complaints. But I. There's a lot of lessons that we learned, that's for sure.
Yeah. Would you mind speaking to that on, like the size of your business today versus at its peak and like how big the seven businesses were in like rough ranges when they were all separate and not two different entities.
Yeah. So when I would say the 12 months before we did that first spin off, Walu probably did a million and a half.
Okay.
And then we started doing the spin offs or whatever. And then that first one, which was called Pouch, we renamed it to Arvo, which is the name that still stands. That one in its first year probably did, let's say like 500k.
Okay.
And then the others, the web design, the social, the web. Three one, all the others, they were probably all between 150 and like 400k in their first year. And then some started to be a little more. None of them were that profitable though, like maybe between 5 and 12% because.
You weren't really at scale with them.
Yeah, yeah. End of 2018 and then 2019. 2020, 2021. End of 2022 is when we shut them. Shut them down and merged them back into two. But like now this year we'll probably do like eight plus million.
Wow. Yeah.
But we never got over with the seven. We never got over in a single year. Like three. It's just too much.
Yeah. It's a lot to wrap your arms around.
Yeah. Especially because the six were new, right?
Yeah.
If they had been more staggered, it would have been more doable. Maybe. But it was literally like six were launched within 12 months.
Yeah. And with where the business stands today, what is like the 8020 of your rep? Like you do a bunch of different things. What are you doing the most of?
We don't do that much. So. I mean, Walleroo manages ads for e commerce businesses. Arvo does SEO, email and CRO for.
Largely E commerce conversion rate optimization.
Yeah. Yeah. And the two in my head, they're basically one, but about 50, 50 as far as revenue goes.
Interesting. It doesn't usually shake out like that. It sounds like you.
Yeah.
Obviously it took you a while to get there, but it sounds like you've landed in a good spot.
Yeah. The two guys who run each of them, the two CEOs of each, they're amazing. We recently my. My co founder and I brought on a sort of like an official board member to be over them too, because we're at where they're at. I've never gone past that business wise. So as much podcast listening and Twitter studying I can do, I still haven't done it in practice. And so admitting that to myself and to them by bringing on this other person and giving him an incentive structure based off of the delta of his, basically he gets equity or he has equity and it's the difference of our valuation when he started, which was like two months ago, and when we sell. And so he gets a chunk of that delta.
Right. I like that.
So he's very incentivized to help us get acquired. And he comes from the world of M and A and consulting and stuff. So he has a ton of experience and has done like 40 acquisitions. So he is, you know, going to just bring in this new perspective that we haven't had before.
Yeah, that's awesome. Of all the things you're doing, zero, email, paid, all that. What do you love? Like what business just kills it for you guys or what revenue line ads the most?
Still, I think people always love ads, clients, let's say, because it's just the fastest. It's the fastest way to immediate gratification unless they can go viral consistently like you do on social media. Other than that, yeah, ads is the quickest way to revenue. And so they just love dollar in, dollar out. And essentially it's a math equation with a lot of creativity involved. So if you can solve that, then you can scale it. We just have to be a little more choosy than we used to on who we say yes to that wants to hire us. Because if it's just a run of the mill shoe brand, we're probably not going to be able to help them because they're probably not special. There have all the. Yeah, yeah.
So, yeah, like you'll be set up for failure because they have an inferior product as.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That might not sound politically correct, but it is what it is. Are you guys like actively doing outbound to find more customers right now or are you guys, are you just keeping it going, Growing organically?
We rank for a lot of stuff. We do a little bit of ads for ourselves. We get a lot of referrals. So, yeah, we don't do any outbound. Every time I hear you mention you talk about outbound on your pods, I'm always intrigued by like, oh, man, I wonder if that could work for an agency like ours. But no, we don't do that. In the past we did here and there, but it would be, it would just be manual. It'd be like, I would find a cool brand on Instagram that I know we could scale and I would just find the founder and be like, hey, I would love to chat with you. I have some ideas on how you could grow.
Did that usually work pretty well?
It worked super well.
Yeah. I mean, that's how I find partially. Go ahead.
No, no, you go.
I was gonna say that's how I find cool people. For the podcast, I'm just on Instagram and I'm like, yeah, I want to talk, I want to talk to you.
Yeah, yeah. And especially if you're coming with. I mean, in my perspective, if I'm coming with value, of course they can see through it and they probably know that I want to get them as a client, but I'll literally, I have an idea for this for you and this and this. And I'll give you all my ideas and advice on a call. And if you want to hire us, awesome. But if not, no worries.
Yeah. And you mean it? It always starts. They see that.
Yeah.
I'm curious what you think, because I always tell young people, like, oh, what should I do, Chris? What do I start? What do I do? What should I learn? What skills should I learn? And like, I feel like when it comes to technical knowledge, people, they always revert to coding. Like, I need to learn how to code so I can build an app. And like, I always tell them, learn paid ads. Like really, really learn it. And. Or learn cold email. And you might start an agency with that or you might start a business with that, but if you can learn one or two or both of those, like, you can do anything you want in the world. Would you agree with that or what kind of tweak might you put on that advice?
No, I agree. But I guess my little tweak would be learn sales. Those are basically mediums for sales learning. Right.
So you.
One is sales via the written word, one is sales in the ad scenario. That's some written word, of course, but images or videos or just actual sales like on a phone or over video or in person. Because that skill AI is never going to be able to touch.
Yeah.
If you can actually convince somebody why they should go with you and why you're going to help them make more money. And if you can become good at that, you'll always have six figure job.
Yeah, agreed. One reason, like I've always thought if I ran an agency it would be like shiny object overload. Because I'd be seeing how much money I'm making my clients, an ad agency specifically. And it's like, oh, I'm going to go start an app that's just like acorns. I'm going to go start selling these merino wool shoes just like Allbirds. Like they have a 10x roas. I'd be all over the place. Have you ever been tempted? Has there ever been a client you've had? Oh, yeah. Oh man, I'd love to hear a couple stories about that. And you can bleep out the client's name if you want, but just more generally speaking, I don't know necessarily.
I mean, yeah, we've had clients that I've wanted to copy. Whether it was that I didn't think their product was that good and they were killing it, or maybe I didn't like the client, they were super rude and they were killing it. But yeah, we've tried in the past, we've tried to launch E commerce brands ourselves, but it was. We always like, it always got pushed to the side because we were always getting more clients and they were paying the bills and we never gave it the focus. So every single time it failed. There's not a great way for an agency owner to come up with a structure for their team where they'll be excited to work on a side E commerce venture. Even if I say, hey, I'll give you 10% equity, well, that actually means nothing. Like when are we even going to do a distribution from an E comm brand? It's going to take three years.
Yeah.
Before the first one would happen. And meanwhile they're like regular ads manager. So it has never worked out until more recently. We kind of figured it out. So we're doing a couple now that are growing and, and going better.
But E Commerce.
Yeah, E Commerce. But it was because we chose to not do that. It's just like, hey, we'll use our agencies. We will treat them as paying clients. We will have them pay. We'll just subsidize it. But like compensation structure will still be the same to the people who are working on it and maybe with some extra little bonus. And that's the. Seems to be the way, at least for us, that it's working out.
In the past, when you chose one that failed, what type of product was it?
I did like stuff with like wheat grass.
Okay.
Over a decade ago. Let's see, we've done supplements, which is a good place. Yeah, we did, we did hoverboards and.
Before they caught fire.
Yeah. So here's what happened with that one. It was going well. Not it was going well. Not like insanely well, but well. And then I got us. I was doing our Amazon. I figured out Amazon and anyway, I kind of accidentally figured out something good in the buy box on Amazon. And it was at night and so then it was like late at night. And the first one that like got on the news of going on, of catching on fire happened. And so I like ran this sale. I don't even know how I did it on the buy box. That really hit the point is the next morning we sold out. We sold every single one fully out that we had. And I got out of it. And then it was literally like the next day there was like news stories all over. Seven new ones got caught on fire. Luckily ours never caught on fire, but.
Yeah, how Much did you make from that?
Oh, that was good. Yeah, that was six figures.
Geez.
Yeah.
Blender company.
Yeah. Six figures in one one overnight. So that was fun to wake up to, but it was stressful. Yeah, blender was good. And then like we ordered a couple of the blenders ourselves to test out. And then like mine like short circuited my house and then it started smoking and I'm like, what the heck? This is what we're. Because it was from China. Yeah, of course this is what we're selling. And then I was like, I don't know if our insurance, our liability insurance, I don't know if it's good enough. So we got rid of those fast. Yeah, I don't know. All over the place.
That's. I love, I love the specifics of these stories. Hypothetical scenario, men in black, they show up, they wipe your slate clean. It's still 2024. Well, forget what I said. They don't wipe your slate clean. Everything about marketing, but your hands are tied. You cannot start an agency or a product line that you've done in the past, something that you know, you've seen it, you've been around it, but you've never done it. What would you start today?
I would do a niche. So like email marketing for either a really high ticket item, like vehicles, like car dealerships, or a B2B E commerce. Though that is a massive under touched industry that if you can focus on, on something over there that would do really, really well.
What data point did you see that.
Taught you that about B2B commerce or that it's underserved?
Like do you have like an anecdotal story where like. Yeah, because I heard of this one company that's selling car parts or whatever.
I'm very intrigued by this space. So I'm always consuming information, whether it's articles or these random companies that report earnings that have a subsidiary that does that. Right. Or just random stuff I see on Twitter. But I've never actually seen anyone who's running an agency that's serving that industry. Probably because it's not sexy or cool.
Do you think the margins have something to do with it too?
Maybe. But the orders are in bulk. So I'm talking like specializing ads for restaurant furniture. For restaurants that are buying furniture.
Yeah.
And you get the furniture, the B2B furniture comp, you know, the chair companies, you get them as your clients that can sell 7,000 chairs to this restaurant distributor or whatever. That's who you go after.
How would you charge a percentage of.
Ad spend, the CAC is going to be way lower on something like that and even the LTV is going to be way higher because once you're an approved supplier in that world, you've got it made. Whereas on the consumer side, like if you sell T shirts, this is a true classic tee. Like they have to sell me again before I buy again. But I have nine T shirt brands that I like, so I'm just going to choose maybe the next one on my next T shirt purchase. But that's not the case with restaurant chairs.
Now if you went the eco, the email marketing route, are you saying that you would manage their email marketing to like market to their current customers or you would send cold email campaigns to acquire new customers?
The latter, yeah, for sure.
And how would you charge in that? Like a flat monthly fee or percentage of revenue generated?
I like starting with the flat monthly fee because I think at least in, I mean I do have a lot of experience in the agency worlds. People really like to know what am I paying right now, what am I paying this month and next month? But once you can prove that you can deliver results, then the sky's the limit.
Yeah.
So just do like, you know, I would chart, I would do a three month agreement at whatever, 4K a month, show them results and then say, okay, now it's double.
Yeah.
And just keep doing that.
What would you say to someone that's just starting an agency or wants to start an agency and they know that their ticket price has to be 3,000amonth and they're coming to you and saying, Brandon, like how do I convince someone to pay me $3,000 a month? Like that's a ton of money. Obviously it gets easier once you have a track record and testimonials. But how do you get your first $3,000 a month or 4,000 or 1,000? What's your tip there?
My advice to that would just be. So when I started my agency, my first client was 150 bucks a month and I just chose that number. Granted, this is 2000. Not so, not kind of my parents. 2009 was when I got my first client. So 150 bucks a month.
And how many hours were you spending on that client if you were to guess per month?
20. Yeah, let's say 20amonth. Yeah.
Minimum wage.
Oh yeah, yeah. If not more, more than 20. So but then the next client was 200amonth and then 250 and I just kept doing that. So basically until, until somebody said no, then maybe I would pause for A sec on the raising and then we kind of settled into a groove. But yeah, you just got to keep saying more.
This is like, I feel like this is the best advice of this whole episode, is that right there. And it might seem like obvious on the surface, but some people like Alex Hormozi might say, you know, work for free. Just work for free and get some testimonials, some case studies. And that could be good advice too. But it's just like, what I hear from you is just like, don't do it for free. Charge something, because if they pay for it, they'll value it more. They'll be more invested to open and read your emails and your reports. And you're just going to eat crap. You're just going to get paid a little bit to learn. But it's like you're going to university, but you're being paid minimum wage to attend.
Yeah, exactly. And especially when you're starting out, like, I'm sorry, but you're probably not that good. You might be really smart and you might be a hard worker, but you're probably not very good. So you got to kind of see it from their perspective, too, or put yourself in their shoes. But also, I always like to think about a client as if I have a client. It's like, that's my client. But I could get five more from them if I do really, really good. But if I don't, then I'm for sure, then I'll lose them and I won't ever get those other five. Because usually business owners are friends with business owners. So I want to do so good for that client that I'll get those five referrals eventually, whether it's over the course of a year or two or five years or whatever. So every time I lose one, it's like, that sucks because I just lost six clients, basically.
Yeah.
And so especially when you're starting out, that's who you should think.
Now, what would you say back then when you charged 150, what was the market rate for the same level of service that you were providing? Like, how much less was that than market?
That was probably like a sixth, a fifth. Yeah, so like a thousand bucks pay seven, eight. Yeah, 100, whatever. Yeah, geez.
Same question. You're starting over different agency. How would you use AI to start an agency? Because it's like there's two camps. Like, oh, AI is going to change everything. And it is, and it is changing everything. But at the same time, it's like there still needs to be AI operators, like, I don't care how simple a piece of software is, I don't care. You click a button and it does all your ads for you, right? Oh crap. Now our secret sauce is gone. Well, you still need someone to click the button. There are still all these people that don't have the time or they don't want to spend the time to learn how to click that button. Like so forever. There's always going to need to be operators for people to click the AI button. Right. So with that in mind, would you do anything differently? Is there an AI tool that you would go launch or an AI agency or an automation agency?
Yeah, yeah, I think unless you have the aptitude and I guess, passion and dedication to do a tool and to have an immense amount of focus to make sure that that tool is staying ahead of the game because the AI platforms that's like chat, GPT and cloud and all them, they're going to continue to get so good that if you're not updating your tool that's built off of it, you're just going to get left in the dust because someone's just going to come six months later and, and be way better than you. So unless that's the case, I would actually focus on doing an agency that, that is using whatever tools are the best at your disposal on the back end at all times.
And can you give some examples on tools?
So if it's a whatever, if it's a email marketing for E commerce, be upfront, like say, hey, I, I do email marketing, I do it for E commerce. I only use AI tools for the writing of your emails and the images in your emails and the videos in your emails. All I do is I use ChatGPT, Midjourney, Runway, ML, whatever, whatever, whatever. You know, that's all I do. But here's the benefit. A, I can do more than your current agency, I can push out more and B, they charge you 4k a month, I only charge you 2k. So it's 2k, it's going to be more quantity per month, it's going to be the same quality. And so if you can figure that out on the back end, which shouldn't be that hard, then you just have to have a killer of cold email strategy basically to go out and get those clients and tell your story.
Oh, that's so good. I love it. Because even if you don't say we're cheaper, people have the expectation that it's cheaper, right? So you say we only use AI tools. Hey, here's all my cards, I'm pushing them over. This is what we're doing. I'm not writing these emails. Nope. AI generated this, this, this. You throw a bunch of tools at them, they're like, wait, what's this? Wait, what? And then you don't even need to say we're cheaper. It's like, that means I'm a 10x agency at the same price. Right. And maybe your market rate is 3, 500 and you're 3, 500 and you might actually be cheaper, but they're like man. Or you might be more expensive. They're like, man. And it's cheaper. No, they're like, of course he's cheaper because he's using all these tools. He doesn't. But really what that means is you have better margins.
Right.
Because you don't have all the overhead.
Yeah. And the benefit is you can say, you don't even, you don't have to write it down yet. You can say, hey, I use AI, I'm cheaper and I'm going to push out more than your current agency. Then when you get them as a client and you find out their current agency, let's say, is getting paid 4k a month and they're doing 4 emails a month now, you know if you're charging 3k, you only have to do 5 emails to be like double better, 3k for 5 instead of 4k for 4. So do 3k for 5, do that for 2 months and then do. And if you do a 3 month contract on month 3, do 7 emails instead of 5. And guess what, they're going to renew because you just almost doubled their emails that they were getting from the previous agency. And you probably have a good cadence now to where your margins in month four and onwards should be able to be even better than they were in the first three months. And you can now do eight emails, two a week.
Yeah. So it's like, even if it's more expensive, it's more value. So it's a win in that. Win.
Yeah, yeah. And you keep increasing the production over time. And on month 13, you, you're now doing 19 emails a month. And if, let's say you start at 3K, you can say, hey, I know you were paying four for four, I'm three for 19. I'm actually now five for 19. But I'm assuming you're gonna be good with that because it's for 19. Right. And they're like, yeah, I'm good with that.
Yeah. When you're, when your marginal cost of production is so small. Then you, you just build goodwill for 12 months by sending more emails than you promised, delivering more value than you promised. So on month 13 it's like, hey, price is going up 80%. But you're cool with that, right? My fulfillment went up 800%. Oh yeah, no problem.
Yeah, exactly.
So you've got someone looking at you and they're star eyed and they're listening like, I'm going to start an agency. I'm going to, oh, this is going to be amazing. I'm, I just need 10 customers playing, paying 33 grand a month and I'm going make 30 grand a month. 90% gross margins. How would you, what water would you pour on that fire? It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Listen. Like these are the things you got to watch out for because it's a lot freaking harder than it looks.
I would say getting a client is harder than ever these days. That's why sales is such an important skill to our earlier conversation. So that's, number one, you better be a killer salesperson. You can't just have a great sentence and expect that to be the thing that closes all your clients. Right. So you need to either be really charismatic or really persistent or both or whatever. So that's number one. And number two, there's this little matrix that we have internally here where if the results you're getting for your client are bad, but your communication is great.
Yep.
Then you'll actually probably keep them long enough to where you can get the client the results to be okay.
So true.
And then they'll still be a forever client. Right. Your results are great and your communication is horrible. You actually will probably still lose them. So you have to have either good or great communication and then either good or great results. But great communication can buy you the time while the results are sucking. Which may happen every now and then because this thing ebbs and flows. So I would just really dial in your communication and over communicate to the point where your client could potentially be annoyed because you're sending too much information to them.
Yeah.
Better to lean, do it in a good way. Yeah. Talk about like even if they're a chiropractor and you hate chiropractors, just talk about like, hey, I was just, I just wrote this email for you and actually where AI did or whatever and I learned this new thing about chiropractic. Like I didn't even know that you guys, you could do this and this. That is so cool. You're. You work in such an awesome mystery. There's one point of communication for the month. But now they're seeing like your passion for what they do and even that.
Goes along, they like you more. They just like you more. Yeah, yeah. They're gonna be less likely to fire people numbers.
Yeah, exactly.
It's so funny, like, we have a lot of the same frameworks, especially when you're in a hard business. Like I was in third party logistics, you've been in E commerce, so you probably know how hard that business is. However hard e commerce is, 3 PL is even harder. And I would tell my employees that every day. I would say communication covers a multitude of sins. Like, yes, here's the bad news. We clicked the wrong button and we sent 1300 packages to the wrong people. Sorry. Here's the good news. We're telling you about it right now. That's good. So you would basically say over communicate. And don't underestimate how hard it is to acquire a client. But to acquire a client, eat crap for a few months getting paid minimum.
Wage, and then keep in mind how you got that client was probably away from another agency. That's probably not a bad agency. And someone's coming for your client now. So that's why you have to over communicate and sort of always like resell why they should stay with you.
Would you rather take a client from another agency or take a client that has never done paid ads before?
Oh, man, I love taking clients from other agencies, especially if they're our main.
Competitors because there's a contrast that happens. Right?
Yeah, Yeah. I, I actually like it more coming from another agency because then they already, they've already been expectations. Know how it is. Yeah. And so. Yeah. Yeah.
Same with the 3PO world. Because it's like, whoa, this order was placed an hour ago. You haven't shipped it yet. It's like, bro, do you know how this works? We have other clients, but if they came from another agency, it's like, oh my gosh, this order was placed two days ago and you already shipped it. Oh, you guys are amazing.
Yeah, yeah, totally, man.
Well, I'm out of questions, but this was amazing. Thank you for your time. Where can everyone find you? I'll link to all the things, but where should we find.
Yeah, just Brandon Doyle with Underscore before and after on Twitter or Instagram. And I love to chat about anything, so feel free to DM and. Yeah, thanks for having me.
Okay, thanks, Brandon.
Okay, see ya.
