Full Scaling Q&A Session

Another live. It's been a minute. Let me see if I can fix the vertical version of this. Hold on, Ethan. What's going on, dude? Can you hear me okay? Yep.

Yeah, I got you. How we doing?

Good, dude. Let me see if I can fix— how do I fix this? It's been a minute. We've been busy with client work over here. Haven't had one of these in a second. How do I switch? There we go. Okay, cool. I was like, dude, how do I switch this? What's going on, guys? We're back for another live. We're going to answer any questions you have around scaling your agency, scaling your video business. How to get more leads, how to get more sales. We're live here on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Disney Plus. No, I'm kidding, not Disney Plus, but all of the channels that we can legally stream on. So if you have any questions for us, we're just gonna be chatting, talking through stuff that we've learned working with 800 agency owners up to this point, and we're gonna answer any questions you guys have. So feel free to start dropping them in the chat and we'll start answering them as we start to see them. Ethan, what's going on? How's the week been so far?

Good, good. I've been in a kind of a day ahead this week. I thought Tuesday was Wednesday and Wednesday was Thursday, but good. Yeah, things are good.

Look at that. Let me see if I could switch this around. See, oh, that's just me. Hold on. Cool. Yeah, the streaming software has updated some things, dude. We got some cool stuff. We can do some polls and whatnot, I think. And so there's a lot of stuff we can do in the chat here. But if you're just joining us, drop a comment below. Let us know where you're calling in from. We would love to know, and we'll start jumping through some questions and answering some stuff that you guys have. Ethan, any major things you're seeing on calls that you think we could start talking through that would be helpful for people?

Ooh, I would say we've talked about that in the past is, you know, follow-up, speed to lead.

Yeah.

It's always big and making sure that I'm always a big You know, I always push call, call your leads, don't text them or email them. Yep. You know, make sure you call them, um, get them on, get them on the phone.

Yeah. I think a lot of people underestimate the amount of touch points you need to book a call with somebody. And when they're opting into your funnel, we want to make sure that we're calling them for at least 7 days straight, once a day, twice a day. So then we can actually get in touch with that lead, uh, to convert them. Cause you'd be surprised how many times we have somebody opt in. They get busy, they're like a busy business owner, and we need to basically get in touch with them. We get in touch with them on like day 6 or day 7, and then they end up closing on a deal. Right. I think a lot of people don't really think through how many times it takes and they think they're being annoying. But also you have to realize that this person, they reached out to you in the first place and like they wanted more information, you know what I mean? We got some people calling in from Las Vegas over on Instagram. Get a question from Matt here. that we'll talk through as well, which is a great question. But yeah, I think genuinely, I think it is, you just have to make sure you're contacting those leads as soon as they're coming in. Um, cause that's huge. Uh, Matt says, break down the breakdown in steps, how you would go from being a videographer doing one-off jobs to signing monthly recurring customers. We've built most of our backend. We have DHL and budget for outbound. Um, cool. I don't know what you mean by budget for outbound. I would probably, so, so first, I'd say, okay, great. Like we've done a lot of one-off jobs. What is this getting cut off? No, I think we're good. We've done a lot of one-off jobs. That's awesome. What types of clients have we worked with? And Ethan, you could probably speak to this a little bit more, but like you're probably spread across a bunch of industries. And so I would look at, okay, great. You know, which industries do we enjoy working with? Which ones get the best results? Which ones have the highest LTV? Like which ones pay us the most money? And then I'd look through all of those clients and say, okay, great. Like, Let's say medical companies are like the best clients that we have. We love working with those. Awesome. Number one, before even looking for new leads, what I would do is just go back to all the past clients you've already had and do a reactivation. That's something that we do. So I say like, hey, you know, we send, we help our clients do this, but it's like, do an email blast, a text blast. Hey, we rolled something new out. Would love to chat with you. When's a good time to chat? And we thought of you on this thing, right? And then you'll get people who are like, yeah, that's interesting. Like, would love to schedule a chat, let's schedule a time. And then a lot of times you can just resell most of those clients that have already paid you one time into a retainer contract. Ethan, maybe you could speak to like the offer side of it. Like if, let's say we're going after medical, what are some things that they might need on an ongoing basis that they're willing to pay maybe $5,000 to $10,000 a month to a video agency to do? Like what would that be?

I mean, I think the very, at the very least, I would say so, you know, social content, running ads, you know, that's at the very top of the funnel. Yep. You know, bringing them leads, creating awareness that's bringing in new customers. Yep. Testimonials are great as well, you know, building trust, showing, you know, patient stories, results, things like that.

Yeah. Well, and like Max Engage works with medical and all they do is they post the content for them. They charge them $50K a year for for it, right? And they have doctors and they only work with dentists actually. So like they, they have dentists signing up with them for $50K a year on retainer. And all they do is create a certain amount of content for them every single month. And then they just pump that out every month for each person. And then they post the content. They don't even run ads. Running ads does help. It does make it easier because you're, you're getting them more leads and you can say, hey, look, we got you 100 leads last month. And that turned into this many patients. Like you're making more money than you're paying us every month. So it's worth it, right? Matt, let me know if that makes sense.

Um, they actually just— they closed another one, uh, 11 minutes ago. Oh really?

Yeah, let's— let me show you guys.

Um, 40K for a year.

Okay, yeah, I told them to up to 50. They didn't do that. I'm mad now. I'm kidding. Let me show you. Um, let me share my screen. Can everybody see this okay?

Yes. Yep.

Yeah. Like with Max, I thought that was you. Just, you just put the fire emoji. It was Evan. No. Yeah. So like this would be a good example of people who they were doing one-offs before this with dentists, but we just transitioned them. Max, yeah, he closed $39K 12-month, a 12-month for $40K. This one, he said this dentist works with like Luke Combs, Chris Stapleton, which is awesome. It's great status client. What's some other things and wins? Yeah, Gage and Max are together, same company, closed a 12-month $40K deal, which is huge, $10K upfront. And then I think they ended up actually doing $156K or $157K in the last, like in April so far. So we're 16 days in. So Ethan, you're my math guy, $157K plus $39K plus $40K, what is that? Uh, it's about $225,000 on the month, and it's only halfway through the month right now, which is huge. So it goes to show you, once you niche down, you find one angle, like, they are the go-to people for dentists. Um, I can share their— I can share their screen too, or share their, um, their thing. But, um, like, they're the go-to company for marketing for dentists. Like, they have some of the biggest dentists on Retainer. And so, like, they just kind of compound that growth because they are that person and they found a foothold in that and it makes it very easy for them to charge. I think they're still undercharging because they're closing like 60 to 70% of their calls right now, but like they could ideally, we can get that to like $60K, $70K, $80K for a year and dentists will still pay that, which is huge. So Matt, hopefully that makes sense. As far as building out the backend, I wouldn't do outbound either. I would just run ads to get clients if you have the budget. Way easier. The intent is much higher and it's not like you're bothering them to get them on the phone, if that makes sense. It's way easier. That's something we teach our clients as well. Black Stage Industries. We got— what's up, dude? How are you? It's been a minute. Let's see what other ones we got. Matt said, we are trying to transition from music videos and artist campaigns Get out of that niche, bro. That one's rough. That one's tough. You've generated millions of views with no quantifiable ROI cases. Yeah, just do a couple of, like work with a couple of dentists with like on a discount. That's it. And then ask them for a case study. Say, hey, normally we charge $5K a month for this service. If you're willing to give us a case study, we'll charge you $3K a month for the first 3 months. You know, let's knock it out of the park. You get a discount and then you have to be willing to exchange a case study with us. And then you do that for 2 to 3 people And now you have a foothold in whatever industry you're trying to go after. Makes it a lot easier. Ethan, any thoughts on that?

No, no, I think, yeah, the case studies are really, they really help your sales going forward. Like with MaxEngage, they've got a ton of case studies.

Yeah.

So definitely companies.

I actually wanna find their website real quick. I think it'd be helpful.

Da da da da da.

Yeah, because it does, it makes it way easier once you have— oh, it's with a 3. I always get that wrong. It's like GM Media with a 3. Hold on, let me pull this up. What would you deliver for $3K? I would just do some social content, like 10 to 15 social content videos, and then maybe you run some ads for them because it's gonna be easier to get them results. The problem with only doing organic for clients that I found is like if their, if their account is dead, like if they don't have a big organic presence, it is a very long time to get any sort of results. Whereas if you could just pay for ad spend behind an actual like piece of content you made and you run that to like a Facebook lead form, like we teach you in the program, it's way easier to get people results. It's just not as difficult to like, there's not as much like delay to getting those results.

In the, the organic, the The organic is not as trackable as paid ads.

Yeah, with paid ads, I can literally see like how many leads I got you, how many sales calls I got you. Bro, what are you drinking, a matcha over there? You got a little—

No, espresso.

Oh, I was like, why is it green?

Oh, it gets cold, or it gets green when it's cold.

Oh, I was like, is this St. Patrick's Day? We're drinking some green drinks over here. Let me share like Gage's and their site real quick. So here's an example, like GM Media. These are the guys we just talked about. They're at $200-ish for the month. So, uh, like they only work with dentists. So like all of their case studies, all of their content is specifically for, uh, let me go to case studies here if it'll load, is specifically for dentists. So like Dr. Davis, Spodak, uh, and then all these other doctors. So like they have a foothold within this industry and it makes it a lot Easier. Someone said, what do you mean it gets green when it gets cold?

Oh my, yeah, the cup, the cup plastic gets cold when it's green.

Yeah, yeah, you should have clarified on that, bro. He goes, what do you mean it gets green when it gets cold?

It changes colors. Yeah, when it's cold.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Um, he said, uh, I dropped $50K on film school, taught me a million tiny dots of information, yet I'm having a hard time figuring out how to connect them. I think the biggest thing you need to think about is, um, How do I get a business some sort of result like leads, calls, sales using content? Because I think too many times we think through the lens of like, I like making cool content, but not like what content will convert. You have to switch to a marketing mindset, if that makes sense. Hopefully that helps. And you got to get a cool cup like Ethan too. Yeah. That's what I would think through because like, I mean, most people know this, but like content doesn't really matter. It matters what are you like, what results are you getting them and what are they paying for? What's the destination that they're paying for?

It's like tools on a tool belt, you know?

Yeah, exactly.

What are we using to achieve the outcome?

Yeah, exactly. Sparkhouse says for creating retainer-based content, do you have to handle media buying and posting or can you just focus on contract? Yeah. So like the company we were talking about, the $200K, they just do the posting. Like they don't do any ads for the dentist. Now I think that can work well once you've established and you know, and you're really good at making organic content that converts for people. If you're not that good at that, I would recommend media, like running the ads. And I think so many people are like, oh my God, it's so hard to run the ads. It literally isn't. Like we show you how to set up the campaigns, but it's, it's very simple. It's as simple as setting up the campaigns, putting the right settings in, And then really the success of your campaigns comes down to how good the creative is. Does it hit the pain points of the market? Does it talk about something that they want out of like the pain points? Like, does it talk about a destination for them? If you can do those things in a piece of creative, it, it's gonna make it a lot easier to just have success with ads. And it's really not as hard as most people make it seem. It's not like it really comes down to the, to the actual content that you're creating. So hopefully that helps. Helps, uh, Sparkhouse. Let me know if you have any other questions on that too, happy to answer them. Um, I'm gonna see how long we can go on this live, bro. Maybe set a record. Let's see. So you guys gotta keep feeding us questions. Um, Scott, what are some niches that aren't boring, like dentists and construction, still pay premium? I come from a high-level event capture background doing videos for big artists. Um, I hate to say it, but a lot of the boring businesses make you a lot of money. So like Yeah, I'm just gonna be real there. I mean, sometimes more of the exciting businesses, like one of our clients, Alex Harp, worked with like a lot of larger artists like C-Bomb and like, who else, Bad Bunny, and like some of these guys. And like, those are great, but those people don't always pay as much, right? The big artists, tough, it's tougher, it's easier to typically work with big businesses. But Ethan, what are your thoughts on that? Like, A lot of people are like, man, I don't want to be like stuck in this one thing, you know? No.

Yeah, I usually recommend service-based businesses, you know. Top 3 would be like medical, you know, uh, what's the other one? Law firms, uh, medical, home service, law are the top 3. Yeah, work with. And so many people want to work with artists, you know, whether it's event capture, music videos, You know, it's kind of, it's kind of a race to the bottom.

And yeah, in terms of, you can also do event packages for larger companies, right? And that's like a way that you could do the same kind of event capture, but it's, it's just way easier to make money when the company or the client that you're charging makes money too. And it's not a lot of money for them. Like, it's just so much easier to do it that way versus having to kind of struggle and like work with these people that are exciting, but they don't make a lot of money. So it's just more difficult, if that makes sense. So that's where it can be challenging, if that makes sense. So it's just, it's more of like, we wanna find businesses that will pay us $5-10K to $15K a month on retainer for very simple content to get them results. And then you can go with that money, you know, if you get to $200K, $300K, $400K, like, like some of our clients, then like you can make that money and then go do whatever you want on the side and like fund these things yourself. And I think a lot of people don't think about that, you know, which is, which is huge. But let me know if that makes sense, Scott. And then Sparkhouse, if you're still here, if you have any questions, Matt, if you have any questions, like, we're gonna try to keep this going as long as you guys have questions. So keep popping them in. We're happy to help. And if you're on Instagram to drop any questions you might have in there, and we will start answering those. We got Benjamin in here. We got fruition productions. We got people commenting on your cup, bro. Got all these people. Let's look. Uh, Spark says, for retainers for companies like dentist's office at $5K a month, is that one shoot day and then lots of content, or is it a series? Typically we try to do one shoot day every 3 months. So one, one shoot day a quarter, because then we can knock that out. You know, it's 50, let's say it's $5K a month, $15K for 3 months, $30K for 6, or what is that, $60K for a year. You go out for a year, you go out 3 times for content for them. And then for, uh, 3 months you go out 1 time, 6 months you go out 2 times. So, um, hopefully that answers your question. We just try to make it fairly simple to where it's super productized. You can hire a videographer to go do it, and then you can actually build a business that grows without you having to do all this stuff. That's the goal, is like we're trying to build a machine of a business that makes us money independent of our time. That's the goal. Hopefully that answers your question. If you have more, let me know. Happy to, happy to help. We love doing these. I miss the Q&As, bro. I miss them. They're good. We have good questions over here. Um, what else? What else? What else? Yeah, so they just closed another one, dude. They're crushing it over here. Um, let's see, what other questions do we have? Here we go. Spark House. Dentist needs to be closed. Dentist needs to be closed that day then. So dentist available. No, they don't have to be necessarily closed. Like a lot of times, like they'll do some content with the dentist, but they'll also do content with like the front house person, the front desk person, other members of the team, the staff. So like it doesn't necessarily have to be enough to be closed and it's not difficult. Like they're paying you for it, so they're going to make the time to to schedule the shoot. I mean, and if they don't, then they're paying for it. Like, we need to make sure they schedule it. So it's a big part of it. Ethan, you want to take this one? I need to drink water here.

So you think— thank you for that. Do I need to create a spec work for those industries? So what I would do, and I do this with a lot of people that we work with, is depending on the niche that you pick, I would go and do, you know, maybe a month worth of free work for one, for one business, whether it's, you know, a dental office, a roofer, law firm, whatever.

Discount, you could do discount as well, right?

Yeah, free or just start with discount and then downsell to free. Um, but that way you have some examples of work and then you can get, you know, some sort of case study or testimonial with them and then snowball that into a paying client from there, especially if you're coming from a lot of music background and event background, uh, going into the, like, the commercial industry is very different than, like, event and music.

Yeah, you get one or two of these clients at a discounted rate, you get a case study, and then a lot of times you can upsell them into the main package again. So it's like, it's a great— like, you get paid to literally get a case study, and then you can upsell them into the the full price service afterwards because you did a really good job. That is assuming you did a very good job and like you got them results. That's the key there. Peyton says, OMG, it's Eric. What's up, dude? How are you? Jay says, what streaming service are you using right now? It's StreamYard is what it's called. It's cool. We can do like, we can do some polls. Let's do a poll, bro. I'm just going to keep this live going as long as I can. I'm going to milk it. I'm going to milk this thing. Let's answer this guy's question and then we'll do a poll. If you're doing one shoot day, how do you, how do you like to split up structure of the content between organic and ads? A lot of times ads, ads are very pretty much the same as organic. So like we've kind of reached a point where organic and ads should be one thing because like when we're running ads on a platform like Facebook and Instagram don't want your ads to look like ads, right? So like it needs to look like an organic piece of content and the more it can look like an organic piece of content, the better it's gonna perform on ads, right? So if you've seen any of my ads recently, a lot of our ads are like, they look like organic pieces of content you would see in the feed. And so ideally you're just shooting all of the content and it all looks like either organic, like organic content, and then you're using that same content as ads. Now, if you want a really good hack, you can basically use, you can post all the content organically, and then you can decide, okay, which ones are working organically well, and then you can put those as paid ads. So you can basically test for free, if that makes sense. Um, and that's, that's a really easy way to get people great results. So let's do a poll and we'll get this running while we chat. Um, what do you wanna know from the people, Ethan? What should we do as a poll? How many people are charging maybe retainers versus one-offs?

Yeah, retainers versus one-offs or like sales and marketing questions.

Let's do, let's do the retainers one first. Let's say, um, are you charging retainers? I gotta type it here. Or one-offs. I'm curious to know the split. One-offs, retainers. See if this works. So let's see. So if you're charging retainers, put a 2 in the chat. I think it's gonna tally it live. I'm actually really curious to see. If you're doing one-offs mainly, put a 1. We'll see if that works. I wonder if it works on Instagram as well. It might only work on like YouTube. So let's see. Let's do if you're doing retainers, put a 1. Oh yeah, look at that. That's sick, dude. Look at that. Very good. We got 2 for one-offs, 1 for retainers. This is— I love this feature. I miss, I miss doing live streams, bro. This is great. This is sick. Let's keep, uh, if you're, if you're on here, you better vote. I'm, I'm waiting to see. Um, so 67% so far one-offs and 33% retainers. That's awesome, guys. What are some of the struggles you have with like switching to retainers? Like, what are some of the, um, like, what are you guys worried about? Because I know, like, when some clients work with us, they're like, man, I don't think clients will pay for it, or like, you know, I'm worried that they're gonna say no, or how do I prove the value? Like, I'd love to know, like, what do you guys— what's holding you back from doing it? I'd love to address that. Interesting. 75% one-offs, 25% retainers. Ethan, you got to think of another Q&A for me, uh, or another poll. Let's think, let's see. That's interesting. But yeah, let's wait on some comments. I'm curious what's holding you guys back from doing that. Because if we can build recurring revenue, it makes a lot easier. Like if you're not starting over every single month in revenue, makes it a lot easier to grow, right? Because you already have a base essentially. Yep. Let's see if you're just joining us, put a 1 in the chat. If you do one-offs, and a 2 in the chat if you do retainers mainly. Curious. Yeah, main concern is what I mentioned above, pivoting my niche. Yeah, I get that. At a certain point, you just have to make a decision, right, on it and just go for it. And then there's going to be kind of a dip, and then you start to catch that back up, right? Um, that's the goal. Let's see, can I pull that back up? How do I show this again? Hide, show. There it is. Sick. 83% one-offs, dude. Look at this. If you're just joining us, ask any questions you guys have around, around scaling, getting more retainers. Like, it, it makes a huge, huge difference. It's very interesting.

Um, I would pull up, uh, Spark has had a good question about—

oh yeah, let's see—

with retainers. So like, for the product launch I mean, they're going to need consistent content, you know, whether it's commercial or— or sorry, ads and commercials or social content.

Yeah, on a monthly basis.

Like, we launch the product and build up the hype, but also we've got to keep—

you're going to need new ads every single month, you know, we—

you know, monthly basis.

Yeah, I'd be curious. I think— I assume they're larger e-com brands, right, that you're doing these $25K videos for, or are they more like enterprise companies? If they're e-com, they're gonna— they're running ads constantly. They're— they're gonna need consistent content on an ongoing basis to just keep the ads going, right? Because ads fatigue. You launch an ad, it works for a little while, then it fatigues out. You need new ads. And so that's just a constant problem that you can solve for them and charge them monthly for, which is huge. It really is just like, how do we find more problems in the client? Like, how do we find clients that have problems that we can solve? And then how do we solve them on an ongoing basis, you know? Um, which is, which is a huge, huge part of it. So hopefully that helps. Sparkass, let me know if you have any other questions. If you, uh, If anything else, let us know. Um, happy to continue to answer those, but I think that's— I assume it's probably for more e-com companies. Um, and ads would be a very easy way to just get ongoing content. Uh, let's see. I still work 50 hours, 50+ hours a week at my day job. Totally get that. Um, I would say makes it tough to get out there like I truly want. I get that for sure. It is a little bit harder when you do have a day job. It's just, You have your 9 to 5 and then you have your 5 to 9. Your 5 to 9 is going to be getting this business off the ground, replacing that income so then you can eventually leave if that's what you truly want to do, right? Yeah, most of our clients are e-commerce brands. That's a dude, that's an easy sell is like selling them an ads package every single month for, you know, $5 to $10 to $15K a month because I would be curious to know how much they're spending in ads every single month. And like if you can cut their ad spend or reduce their ad spend by even 20% by just having better creatives in their ad account, why are they not willing to pay $5,000 to $10,000 a month for that? Plenty of them are. It's like a lot of these e-com companies, they're spending $500,000, $1 million, $500,000, $1 million a month on ads. And it's like if you can reduce that percentage, Ethan, what's— what's— Ethan's our human calculator. Ethan, what's 20% of $500,000? Okay, so if you can reduce their ad spend by 20%, if they're spending $500K and that's $100,000 you reduce their ad spend by, like, why would they not pay you $10K a month to do that? Because you're just pumping out consistent creatives for them, right? And you're also really not serving them.

They also don't have to spend the time to make their own ads, run them, manage them, learn how to diagnose the data. You know, there's a lot more than just making the videos.

So we like doing high production value videos. I think one fear is retainer. So we're doing a lot of cheaper, smaller videos to take away from— no, I don't, I don't think it will though, because like the, the high production value videos, they have a place within the funnel for them. I'd be curious where they're using it. They're maybe using it on like the main website or like for these big hero high production, like you said, value commercials. Here's a great idea that I implement with a lot of our clients who do these. Like we have multiple clients doing multiple millions a year who do these like $25K, $50K, $100K, $300K projects. And it's like you sell that, but then that's your front-end offer. And then on the back-end, you say, hey, now that we have this, let's also do $10K a month for consistent ad content. That's gonna be a little bit of a smaller cutdown type stuff that we would do where we come out maybe once every 3 months, create a bunch of content, and then we roll that out to you monthly, right? Because then, like, if you look at the LTV of your clients, lifetime value, your lifetime value is probably $25K right now, which is which is fine, but it's like if you can then bolt on, um, $10K a month for a year, it's like, what's, what is, um, Ethan, what's that? $60K for a year, $10K a month for it. No, sorry. $120K. You can take your LTV from $25K to $155K, which is, uh, the $25K plus $120K on the backend. So you can literally double or triple your LTV of a customer, get more money out of them. Right. And then basically make that so then if you, you know, if each client's paying you $25K a month right now, if each client paid you $150K total, then like it makes scaling a lot easier because like you're actually, you need less clients to hit your revenue goal. I'm curious, you can share if you want, but what I'm curious what your monthly revenue is where you guys sit, but like genuinely by just bolting on retainers on the backend, it could double or triple your business. Literally just doing that. And you could still sell what you're already selling. Like you don't have to change that. It's just a bolt-on. So Ethan, thoughts on that?

No, no. I think one, the way, and when I'm helping people create offers too, is, you know, have different types of deliverables that are, you know, top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel, you know, where, you know, ads and social are top of funnel, testimonial brand videos, you know, more middle or bottom of the funnel. So we have an all-encompassing solution.

Yeah, you do about $100K a month. Yeah, that's what I would do because like we could get, we could get that to $200K, $300K, $400K by literally not getting any more customers, but just making the customers we already have worth double or triple what they're worth right now. Right? Because if you're doing $100K a month, you sell $25K packages, you're doing 4 clients a month. Great. I'm not even saying you need to get new clients. I'm just saying bolt that on the backend. And then you could do inbound to get more clients if you really wanted to, and then raise the prices from like $25K for a project to like $30K, $40K, $50K because you have more demand and then it's just supply demand curve. Or you just keep the clients you have now and just make them double or triple what they're already worth and then just have recurring revenue because it might be more lumpy. I don't know because I didn't, I don't know your business, but like your monthly might be more lumpy because it's a bunch of one-offs all the time. Whereas if you know you have I mean, literally, if you take this right now, you do 4 clients a month, and then each client after the $25K pays you $10K a month, then you're literally— you do $100K the first month, and then you do— what is that? $40K the next month. And that's if you sign no more $25K projects. You would do $40K a month consistently for 6 months to a year after that. Now, if you kept the same ones, it would be $100K the first month, right? And then let's say you sign another 4 clients and then plus the retainers, you go from $100K the first month to $140K. I'm sorry. Yeah, $140K the next month. And then you sign more on top of that. Then it goes to $180K the month after that. And then you keep compounding by $40K a month if you're signing new clients. So like it also makes the enterprise value of your company a lot bigger too.

Yeah, that's what I did with, uh, Ben and Christina that recently joined is they knew that they had some one-offs, but if they, or they did it month to month and they knew that everybody that stayed after 3 months would stick with them for at least a year. So then we just cut off the, uh, the month to month and just said, hey, if you, or the, the minimum engagement level is 3 months because they know that everybody that commits to 3 stays for 12.

I'm curious too, Sparkhouse, is everything referrals right now or is it, um, do you pay to acquire customers at all or is it just all word of mouth referrals at the moment. Because it's just a game of like, if you wanted to scale to say a million a month, it would just be a game of CAC versus LTV. So it's like, how much do we pay? Okay, you said SEO. Nice. Yeah. So most of it's SEO. Yeah, which is great. But it's again, SEO is a great side, side, like side acquisition strategy, but it's based on search intent. And so we're capped at how many people are searching for your solution every single month. If we can also bolt on like an inbound paid ad system on top of that, then like that makes all of this so much easier as well because we're actually— we have not just intent-based marketing where like, you know, I'm— you're only hitting people who are like looking for video provider versus if you put some on Meta as well, which I would assume you're probably doing, you might be paying for SEO or it's just you just have good SEO. If you're not doing a Google search campaign as well, I do that because that's like you run that at $15 a day. And get great results from that. But then on top of that, doing meta ads to get interruption-based marketing in people's feed and then just trying to get people that way as well.

Yeah.

What I'm curious to, what's the minimum revenue requirement of somebody you work with? Like, is it typically a million a month, 2 million a month? Good SEO, pay agency as well. Nice. Okay, cool. Yeah, I would say that bolting on the actual inbound would be great as well. Like having an actual meta inbound. But yeah, I'm curious, like, what level of companies you guys work with as well. So what else, guys? Do you teach how to get inbound leads for your program? Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, we're running paid ads. So we run paid ads into a funnel. We have a whole follow-up sequence we build for our clients. And then just making sure that those people get on, get on a call and then we close them and then we just track all the data from there. So What else? What else? What else, guys? Good questions, by the way. I love this. 83% one-offs, 17% retainers. Very interesting. And if you're on Instagram as well, guys, drop a comment. And Instagram's quiet today, bro. Everybody's on YouTube. I can see everybody's— everybody's on Facebook and YouTube on this live right now. What kind of ads would you run for a creative agency and how much spend would you put behind it? I would assume you're saying for your agency. We typically start at $20 a day and then we're just scaling it based on the KPI. So like we come up with a KPI cost per call that we find acceptable and that makes sense for the unit economics of the offer. And then we're essentially just running like what types of ads we're running. It's gonna vary. We run a mix of like static video, photo, B-roll type ads. And then all of those are just mixed within different pain points of the ideal market. Uh, Scott says appreciate all the value. Absolutely, dude, I love doing these. These are, uh, we do like— I do 3 coaching calls a week for our actual clients, and then I love getting on here for you guys as well and just chatting with everybody. Ethan does 5 a week, right? Plus 5 a week.

Yeah, 5 a week plus one-on-ones.

Yep. And then we got Evan who's not on here as well. 2 Evans. Got Hakim, um, and we got, uh, a couple other people as well. I have 5 ads ready to test. I would launch with 20 to 25. 5 is not enough. Um, new Meta Andromeda update is basically like it prefers volume of creative, so you're gonna need a lot. I'd say 20 to 25 in a campaign to launch to start. We don't have a set minimum value.

We have startups, uh, video and static, right? Not just video. Video ads.

Yeah, those— the ones that are crushing for us right now are those like stupid, um, black background, white text. If if you're this person. Yeah, they're just crushing right now. Um, that's one of the things we do in the program too. We just update you guys on what's working based on our ads, um, because we spend a decent amount. Uh, we don't have a set minimum revenue. We have startup line to spend where we only do their marketing spend for the year, and bigger brands to do one piece. Nice, cool. Yeah, I think bolting on recurring for you guys would be huge. Um, I don't know where you're trying to scale to. I'm curious, but Um, maybe let me know in the chat, like, you guys trying to get to $500K a month, $600K, $1 million? Be curious to know. Um, let's see what else, what else, what else. What other questions, guys? Yes, you have both. Perfect. Cool. Ethan, I'm trying to go to an hour, bro. I'm— I am— I am— I don't think we've done an hour on a live before, so I'm trying to go to an hour. So I need your guys's help to drop comments. So I can keep talking.

I got another poll idea if we need to.

Yes, hit me, dude. Let's do the poll while we're waiting on questions. What do you got? So can you do it on your end, or can I— am I the only one who could do it?

No, you have to do it. Okay, but are you, uh, like pitching prices on a sales call, or proposals via email, or like a text message?

Sales call, or what was the other one? Or, uh, send— just sending a proposal.

Yep.

Oh, got good questions today, dude. Let's go. I still miss when I did that live in Switzerland. I want to go back there and do my lives now, bro. I'm stuck in this office.

It's like a year ago.

I know. Um, people thought the background was fake too. It looked fake. Sending proposals. So are you pitching prices on sales call? Sales calls? Or are you sending proposals? Yeah, I'm putting that. So let me show this and then I'm going to close the poll on, on the retainers one. So are you— so put a 1 in the chat if you're pitching prices on sales call, like you're walking them through the proposal, or put a 2 in the chat if you're just sending proposals through email, not walking them through it, and then just being like, Let me know if you want to buy. Good stuff, dude. 2. I think you might have to do it again. Yep, that guy, because I think I just launched the poll, so you might have to do it. Put a 2 again. Let's see. There we go. Okay, cool. 1, 2. Sparkhouse, $100K a month, baby. You better be doing You better be doing— oh, you wait, you're doing proposals. Oh, oh, it depends. I mean, enterprise clients, sometimes you have to send proposals, but like for most clients, you should be walking them through it on the sales call for sure. Who did a 1? Scott.

Scott.

Nice, Scott. Yeah, I mean, it's okay to send the proposal afterwards, obviously, but we really, really, really, really, really, really want to make sure we're walking through the proposal. Sparkhouse, I'm curious if you guys are doing that. If not, I definitely think we're leaving some money on the table because if we just, if we have a discovery call and then we're like, great, I'm just going to email you this thing, buy if you want to, we lose the opportunity to handle any objections or concerns or things they're concerned about on the call. And then yes, sometimes that goes to another call after that call, but at least we're sending a proposal and we're giving them like a walkthrough and we have an opportunity to handle objections. So Sparkhouse, do you guys do that or do you just, um, send the proposal and then that's, that's it? We walk through general pricing on the call, so when we send proposals we are closing at 60%. Cool. Yeah, I mean, then that obviously is that, that's working, so that's fine. Um, yeah, good. So you're at least walking them through it on the call, which is great. You'd be surprised how many people don't even do that. They're just like Here you go, pay. And then we don't actually, we don't actually walk them through it, which is huge. Interesting, 75% and then 25% price on sales calls. Nice. So you should have put a 1 because you do tell them the price on the sales call. Yeah, all good.

I guess maybe a better way to, another question would have been, are you doing discovery and pitch on the same call or?

Yeah.

And two separate calls. Yeah, which a lot of our clients do.

Yeah. Okay, another one I'm curious about is, um, let's stop that poll. I'd be curious to know who's running ads and who's not. Who— are you running ads to get clients or is it word of mouth? Ads to get clients or is it Dude, it's so weird. We, um, my wife and I obviously have a 7-month-old, so we went to like this meetup in our town, um, or word of mouth, word of mouth, and one of the guys did video. And like, I was just— it was like a bunch of dads and moms with their kids. It was like a meetup kind of thing. And he's like, I feel like I know you, and he's like staring at me. And I'm like, no, I don't know, man. I don't, I don't think so. He's like, yeah, you're that video guy. I've seen your ads. I'm like, oh my God. That's like the first time I've been recognized in public too. It's so weird. It's funny. Cause we've been running ads for like 6, 7 years, but it's just very, it's very interesting when people like recognize you in the middle of nowhere. It's very odd. Got my boy Eli up in here. What's up, dude?

What's up, dude?

Eli is the king of live lives, which is who I got this from. Got the idea from. And Eli, you probably have done the polls and stuff, but it's pretty cool on here. I like the new update to the StreamYard. So yeah, so put a 1 in the chat if you're doing ads and put a 2 in the chat if you mainly rely on word of mouth. You got some comments in here. Yeah. I gotta feel out how they react on the call for sure. And then make sure we adjust before we send proposals. Yeah, I would. That makes sense. 2 separate calls. Matt says, We're trying to close on the call. I would give it a shot and see if you can try to close on the call. I'd be, I'd be curious to know because so much of your traffic is high intent. So like, I would probably expect you to close at 60% on the call. So I'd be curious to know if you can close even more, if you, um, if you push to close on the call, right. Um, I'd be very curious to know that. Let's see. How do you recommend production companies generate ideas, inspo? Ethan, I'm tired of talking, bro. We got, I got 10 minutes. We got 10 minutes. I'm going. 10 minutes.

An inspiration from lots of video retainers. So I'm assuming you're saying like ideas for just like topics for videos.

So for their clients. Yeah. Like how did they come up with like ideas?

I'd say I, and I think Eric, you put it this way first is like different buckets. Of content, you know, there's educational content, there is testimonial content, which you can also use from a cutdown of a longer form content, you know, behind the scenes, like day in the life type stuff, just to, you know, outside of the business, you know, some of the trends content if you're doing like organic.

If you're doing, if you're trying to run ads, a lot of your ads should be on different angles as to why somebody would buy from that business. So like I use the example of like dog food, right? If somebody's gonna buy dog food or healthy dog food, what are all the reasons they would buy? Well, they want their pet to like live longer, right? They want them to have a shinier coat. They want them to be more energetic. And it's like, those are all different ads that you can make. And you can also adapt those concepts into organic content as well. And so that's the way I'd be thinking through. And then I also think through like, what are all the top objections that this company gets before somebody buys their product or service? And how can I make a single video on each one of those objections? Like, oh, it's— it just depends on the business, but it's like, oh, it's too expensive. Or like if it's an e-com product like Sparkhouse works with, it's like, think about what are all the A, reasons somebody buys the product if you're gonna make ads for them, and then B, what are all the objections or like things that they have? Like Sparkhouse, I don't know if you wanna drop like a couple of examples of types of clients you work with. I can give more, more points.

Or like FAQs that they get.

FAQs. Yeah. Like what are all the main problems or issues that that somebody has before they decide to purchase the product and then making those into ads and ad creative works really, really well. It's kind of a hack.

Yep.

Yeah, that's huge. 9 minutes, guys. Give me some more questions. Come on. Instagram's light today. Give me some more questions. I want to know what you guys have. Let's look back at our poll here. We only have 1 vote. Come on, guys.

Oh, we have 2.

No, yeah, so 3. Yeah, so everyone's word of mouth. Yeah. Sparkhouse, I would run ads, dude. I hope you're a dude, or I'm just saying dude to a company name. I would run ads. I'd add retainers on the backend. I think that's a huge, huge part of growing. I don't know where you wanna get to monthly revenue, but like—

Saves you a lot of time too.

Oh, here we go. So one of the companies he works with is a security Security camera company. Yeah. So like, I don't know if they're high priced, low priced. Like if it's high priced, you know, a video could be like why it's more expensive than competitors. Another one could be like talking about protecting your home when you're not at home, protecting your kids when you're not at home, protecting your family when you're not at home. Like those are all different ad angles you can make. What else, Ethan? What are other reasons somebody would buy a security camera like a Ring?

You don't have to get up on the roof and, you know, try and install cameras, you know.

Well, I'm thinking like doorbell camera.

Oh, doorbell camera. Yeah. You said, yeah, peace of mind, you know, protection, knowing what's going on.

Yeah. So like just, and then like also having the company do a poll of like, even if they can send out like an email to like, because these are probably fairly established companies, they could send out an email to everybody who bought the product and then ask them like a poll of like, what were some of the concerns you had before you bought the product? And then making videos that address those. Is a huge hack because it's going on in their head. And if you can address it and then defuse it, then they'll buy. And then it just leads to more sales.

I've actually had somebody work with a company like that before where like Ring, you have to pay a monthly subscription, whereas, you know, some of these other companies, you own the hard drive, so you don't have to pay, you know, like another monthly fee on top.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So like, that's a really good way to just make ongoing content for them on like a $10K a month retainer on the back end of your $25K. And then, you know, let's say you reach capacity with all these retainers like Sparkhouse, like you reach, you do $25K packages, and then you do like a backend retainer and you reach capacity at that point, then we just raise the price on the front end. And then you can just go from $25K to like $35K, and then $45K, and then $50K. And then we just like, we shrink the amount of customers because we have so much backend revenue that we don't need front end revenue. And we're not constantly relying on front end acquisition. Even though we have that with paid ads. So like, that'd be a huge part of it. Um, what else? What else? What else? Dude, I need to, I need to, um, need some hot tea. I'm talking so much. I'm used, I'm used to doing this on coaching calls. It's just not as rapid fire because usually other people are asking questions as well, whereas this, we're just like firing comments all day. Um, what else, guys? What other questions we have? Let's see, we got Max on Instagram. Max, jump on, uh, Max, if you want to jump on for 5 minutes, let me know if you want to jump on the live. I'll send you the link, just ping me in Slack. If you don't want to, it's fine, um, but I think it'd be cool to have you on at some point.

Uh, yep, that guy. Do you take control of the client's social media accounts like Facebook?

Oh yeah, here you go, you got this one.

Social media accounts, upload the videos for them, or do you just give them the video? So that would be typically, you know, it'd be 2 different price points. On that. You know, I would definitely, you know, if you are going to run, run the ads and post the content for them, I would definitely charge for that. And then ad spend is typically a separate cost in addition to that because that's a variable cost. It could be $20 a day, it could be $100 a day, um, but, um, that's two typically two separate offers is running the ads or just giving them the content.

Yeah, for sure. London Kyle on Instagram. I got to give Instagram some love real quick. Says my setup. I assume your camera setup. You're saying my setup. Let's say my setup is 6K. What would you charge for content after 3 months of working together? Doesn't matter what your setup is. All that matters is what results do you get your clients? And so who is the client? What results do you get them? Are you going to run ads for them? Are you going to help them increase sales? You could do that with an iPhone, honestly, making UGC content. Like one of our clients, Ryan, is a UGC agency and all they do is make UGC content. And a lot of their stuff is shot on iPhones, but they charge tens of thousands of dollars for the content, which is huge. So it's like, it's more about what's gonna actually generate results, not what your setup costs. So, Scott says, I've been interested in your program for a while now, just confused on which needs, I should go after that doesn't pivot me completely away from work I've done. That's something we would help you with on the inside. But like I said, we just figure out what industries do you have any experience in and then how can we leverage that? And then how can we get case studies within that industry to kind of establish more of a foothold that you work with those types of people? And then we use and market those case studies to go get more of those types of people. So hopefully that helps. I'm a business owner, say a car dealership, never heard of you, pitch me your service. No. If someone ever does that, do not fall into that trap. Pitch me your service. Pitch me your service, bro.

Well, what made you reach out in the first place?

Exactly. Flip the frame, put it back on them. What had you reach out to us? You know, what are you possibly looking to get help with right now? Never, ever, ever fall into that trap of like, pitch me your service. It doesn't work. It's your fault.

Sell me this pen.

Sell me this pen. No, I won't. Like, you can't play that game because then you fall into their frame. And you have no authority in the conversation anymore. So running ads, content, coaching, uh, London, it depends on London, Kyle. It depends on what kind of business it is. So, um, typically like $5K a month, $10K a month is pretty average for retainer. If you're creating organic content ads on an ongoing basis for them, it's pretty normal.

But I'd say that question too is also a really good reason why you should be running ads because you control the frame when people are coming to you. Yeah.

What had you reached out? Matt says no, no, say I walk in to sell them. So you're not walking in. You should never walk in to sell them. You would walk in to see if there's a problem you can solve, and then you'd set up, set up a main sales appointment to then have them come in, have a sit down, and then figure out if you can actually help them. I would never just like walk in and be like, let me sell you something. It doesn't work.

Yeah.

Let's see if you're just joining us. Let us know what questions you have. We're going on an hour almost here, guys. Let's see what other questions I'm trying to make you guys. I need everybody's help. I need questions over here. Let's see. I think we're good on this poll. We got 3 people for word of mouth, 0 for ads. Yeah, dude. It's interesting. I saw— it's very true, but Instagram and Meta, people are like, oh, I don't know if my ideal market's on there.

They are.

Trust me. There's 8 billion people on the platform. And it's interesting because like a lot of times people have run YouTube ads, but YouTube ads have gotten worse and worse and worse over the years because like people who have money pay for YouTube Premium and they hide the ads.

I've never—

you literally can't reach people on YouTube. So like Meta is the only platform we found that has the best algorithm for finding your ideal market and your ideal target market and then getting in front of them and getting them to purchase something from you. Like YouTube is rough. Google Display Network is really rough. The only one from Google that I really like is Google Search, Google SEO, because then people are Googling you, you show up at the top of the results and it's a lot easier. So, yep. Matt says, appreciate the info, guys. Absolutely, dude.

You got a lot of stuff off Instagram.

Yep, yep, yep, yep. Scott says, pivoting is my number one drawback of doing the program. Yeah, man. I mean, you're going to have to pivot at some point. It doesn't matter if you work with us or somebody else, like you're going to have to pivot. Like if things are not working, and it's not working for a while, there has to be some sort of pivot that's being made. Like, otherwise you just keep staying stubborn. Not you, but like people stay stubborn and stuck in the same lane for so long and then they just end up going down and decline, decline, decline, decline until like there's no revenue left in the business. And so like sometimes you have to make pivots in business and you just have to know when that is.

So, uh, well, it's not to say that you can't ever do that work again. It's just in addition to another type of work.

Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. Um, what tools and stack are you using after the ad click? Uh, we have a GoHighLevel version for a master filmmaker that we've built out. Um, and that's basically what we've used. So Sparkhouse says, thanks guys, gotta get on a sales call pitching retainer and closing on the call. Let's go, baby. I love it. I love it. Just, just take the exact retainer that I gave you and close it on that call. I really hope that you do. And let me know, text us or send me a message. I'd love to know how that goes. Good luck. Good stuff. Things are working. I'm making six figures. I just want to work better without hating my job for sure. And like I said, there's no, like, there's no reason. Remind me again the niche you're working with, Scott. I don't remember. But there's no reason you can't just add on to that. Arm. So that could be a big part of it as well. Let me see. How do I get money from things I do sell? I don't know what that means. That's very vague. You need to phrase the question better. Let's see what else, what else, what else. Uh, London says best type of targeting ads, uh, testimonials, client wins, Yeah, client wins are gonna be the best. I mean, the more you can show proof over promise, it's always gonna work better for sure. Yep. All right guys, the time has come. We have hit an hour. This is a record. Look what I can do now, Ethan. I can put this amazing QR code. If you wanna book a call that you can scan, that will take you directly to book a call with our team to see if we can possibly help. So now I'm going to, uh, I'll drop that up there. And if you guys have any last questions, let me know. We're happy to answer them, but you can scan that QR code. Will take you to book a call with us and we'll see if we can possibly help. And I hope you guys got some value from this and we enjoy doing them and talking with you guys and connecting with you guys. So if there's any other questions, drop them in the chat. Any final polls, Ethan? We did retainers versus one-offs.

I like the poll feature a lot.

I know, it's pretty sick. And I like the QR feature too, QR code feature. Trying to think if there's any final polls that we can last, we can end with. We did Retainers versus one-offs, pitching prices on sales call, running ads to get clients. What else, what else, what else, what else? How often do you guys do these lives? We, uh, used to do them once a week, but, uh, let us know in the chat, do you guys want us to do this once a week? Because we'll keep doing them every week, Thursday at 2. I just want to make sure you guys are getting value from it. Um, but usually we used to do them every single week, so you guys want us to do more of that? Let's, let's do that. Let's do a poll. And say, do you want us to do more lives? And you might say no, you guys suck, we don't like you. Do you want us to do more lives? Yes or no, you guys suck.

Yeah, Matt, typically we do them every week, Thursday at 2 Eastern.

All right, here's the poll. Do you want us to do more lives? Put a 1 in the chat if that's a yes. Or put a 2 if you think we suck and we're not good, so, which is fine with me. It's okay. Please do. I'll put them in the calendar. Yeah. Drop a, drop a 1 in the chat if you want us to do it, or a 2 if you do not want us to do it, guys. See if I have anything else before we wrap up here. And then you can click that or scan that QR code or go to the link below this video if you want to book a call with us. Let's see if we have anything else. What about Adrian? I don't know what you're talking about, man. I'm sorry. What about shrunken customers? What does that mean? I don't know what that means. Okay, let's do it. Adrian, you need to just rephrase those questions a little bit better. I'm happy to answer them. Um, let's see if there's anything else, guys, and we'll wrap up here. Going once, going twice. That's it. Sold. All right, guys, pleasure as always. Let me know if you need anything or have any questions. Happy to help, and we will see you guys in the next one.