How I lost $30K hiring an agency for my video business

I got a question from one of our clients recently about should I hire an agency in my video business? And I think it's a really good question that a lot of people struggle with. And it's more so not the right question to be asking, if that makes sense. So I'll tell you a story of how I lost about $30,000 hiring an agency to scale my video business when I was first starting and kind of, kind of some of the mistakes I made along the way. So hopefully you can take from that and learn from that. But when I first started, I didn't have an offer that was working. I didn't have a consistent way to get clients. I was relying on referrals, word of mouth, networking events. And I thought, okay, cool, let me hire an agency or somebody to come in and get me clients. I thought it was just that simple. Somebody could come in, get me clients. They could have a sales team that they just put into my business or that they take calls for me on and they would get me clients and I would get clients immediately. Right. And I thought it was that easy. And so I hired the agency, I brought them on board, I told them, hey, I just want clients. Like, I wasn't very specific about what I wanted. I just wanted video clients. I didn't really care. And I did that. And you know, month one went by, I got some leads, but they just weren't the right type of person, right? And I told the agency, I said, hey, you need to get me this type of client. And they were kind of struggling to understand that, struggling to understand how to do that. And so then month two rolls around, I'm spending money, they're spending my money on ads when were not really getting any sort of qualified leads. I'm just getting kind of these random people who want one off videos. And, and they were just, they weren't closing anything because they were doing the, the lead generation and the sales, like taking the actual sales calls as well, which I'm going to get to that in a second. That's a horrible IDEA and you 100% should not be doing that. But they were taking the calls, generating the leads, and they kept making these excuses as to why, like they weren't getting me results. I was like, where are the clients? Where are the clients? Where are the clients? And, and meanwhile I was paying them this, about $5,000 a month on top of ad spend. And we were doing this for multiple months and I wasn't getting anything out of it. And I was just getting really frustrated. I Was like, guys, what. What is going on? Like, why are we not closing any deals? And they would make up excuses and excuses and excuses and it just would continue over and over and over again. And I was just getting to the point where we were just burning money every single month. And I was just extremely frustrated. And I was like, guys, we what's going on? Until finally I just made the decision. I'm like, I just fired them and I just let them go. And it wasn't until like probably a couple years later as to why I like figured out why that actually didn't work and why I didn't get clients. And the biggest thing I'll tell you is I use the analogy of like Chick Fil A, right? So if you ever go to Chick Fil A, there's like teens usually working there, right? But each Chick Fil? A location does about 2 to 3 million dollars a year. I don't know the exact amount, but there's teenagers working there, there's teenagers managing it, there's teenagers running it. So if like, if a dumb te can run Chick Fil A and get and the Chick Fil A restaurant can still make millions of dollars, then it's not. It's not really the person, if that makes sense, that is making Chick Fil A work. It's the systems and processes of the business that are making it work. And it wasn't until later that I figured out like, the reason the agency didn't work for me is because I didn't have my systems in place myself. And there's no amazing agency that's going to come into your business and create an amazing offer for you that's going to make sure that has product market fit. It's going to make sure that you're getting your clients results. Like all the agency is going to do is generate leads and close those leads. But you have to have an offer in place, you have to have systems in place, you have to have an offer that the clients actually want. You have to get clients results, you have to have case studies, you have to have the foundation. And the foundation is, like I said, the offer, the case studies, the results. An offer that's actually generating clients results. And you have to have a niche. And, and one of the biggest issues I had was I didn't know who I was going after. So I didn't have any sort of niche. I was just like shooting in the dark and had no idea what I was actually like, who I was looking for. Instead of saying, hey, I'm going After medical businesses, or hey, I'm going after this type of business or hey, I'm going after this type of business. And it wasn't defined. So the agency was just like shooting in the dark. And of course they were going to take my money because like that's what they, you know, they want to make money, they want to grow their business, whatever, right? But I needed to have those things figured out before I had an agency. And back to the Chick Fil A example, like just Chick Fil A works because they have a menu that makes sense, they have offerings that make sense that people want. They have systems and procedures and automations in place to where like all the person has to do is they can plug like a mediocre person into the business. They can press a couple buttons, take someone's order and then deliver them what they want. That's it. And you have to think about your business the same way. And the bigger and bigger that I get, the more I realize it's not about finding these like a level people, which it is, it's important but, but it's more about having systems and an offer and a business that can run on its own. So then when you just plug mediocre people in, you can get growth in the business because you have people in place that just like make it run. But the main backbone is the business and the automations. And if you can have that foundation set up, then yes, you can hire an agency. But what I see a lot of video business owners struggle with is they are just relying on word of mouth. They don't have a winning offer, They've never built a lead generation system off of ads or purchasing customers. They go and find an agency or they go worse and hire a salesperson and they're just like, hey, go find me clients. And then they fail miserably and they don't know why. And it's because you don't have a foundation. Right? Like that's ultimately what we help our clients with. And this isn't like a plug for, for Master Filmmaker or whatever. Even though it kind of is. Like, it's just. That's why I started Master Filmmaker in the first place is because like people are getting screwed by agencies and they don't know why they're getting screwed and they don't know why it's not working. And it's because they don't have foundations in place. They don't have an offer, they don't have a system, they don't have this stuff built out to where like Once you have that built out, then, yes, you could be like, hey, agency, come in, plug into my business and start getting me leads. Here's the type of person we want. Here's what we deem as a qualified lead. Here's our offer, here's our price point. We've sold it, you know, 15, 20 times, so we have proof that it is sellable. Like, come in and take over. Like, that's fine. I mean, some of our clients do that later on down the line when they start to grow bigger and bigger and bigger. Um, but, like, if you don't master it yourself first and have those foundations down, there's no one who can save you. Like, you are it in the business. Like, you are the only person who can save yourself in the business. Like, it is up to you. So hopefully that makes sense. Like, you don't want to have a business that's reliant on just these superstar people, because if those superstar people end up leaving, then you're screwed. Like, you don't want to be reliant on humans. Humans are naturally not consistent. And don't get me wrong, like, I love my team, I love my clients, I love everyone in my business. But I had to be the one who built the foundation first before I could start hiring other people and bringing other people in. Like, I had to build the offer, I had to build the legion. I had to get coaching on how to do that, right? I had to go find other people who knew how to do it, and then I had to learn it myself. I see too many people who are. They're barely making 10, 15k a month, and they're like, I don't want to learn it myself. Like, dude, that is the only thing you should be doing. Like, I don't mean to be rude, but, like, until you're making multiple seven figures, you haven't earned the right to hire someone else to do it for you, period. Full stop. That's it. And I see a lot of people who are just like, I don't want to learn that. I'm going to hire a salesperson. It's like, okay, good luck. Because that salesperson is going to ask for like 20 to 30 sales calls that you've closed personally yourself to learn from you. And the minute they find out that you didn't do that, they're going to dip. They're going to leave. They won't stay. And if you don't have a way to get them curated opportunity volume, which is basically like, leads that want to work with you. Like, if you don't get them those leads, then they're going to have a really hard time closing any deals at all. So hopefully this is helpful. Like, the whole point of this is not to say that, like, agencies suck or, you know, team members suck or you can't find good people. I'm just saying that you have to have a foundation in place to make it work first. It's like trying to build a house on sand. You gotta build the foundation first of concrete, and then you can start hiring people to build the house around you. That's it. So hopefully that helps. If you want to learn more about what we do at Master Filmmaker, click the link below. Otherwise, enjoy the YouTube videos. We'll see you in the next one.