Live Q&A

What is going on, guys? We are back for another live Stock Operator Says Let's Make a Movie. I love it. First comment in, great comment. Um, what's going on guys? We're back for another live. We're here to answer any questions you have around scaling your agency, getting more clients, getting more leads, getting more sales. Uh, Ethan, what's going on dude? How are you?

Good, good. Didn't have jury duty, so it's a great day.

That's, that's always good. I know I'm getting my, uh, my water heater replaced, which is so much fun dude. Just the joys of being a homeowner over here. Um, we're gonna let everybody get in here, uh, but any questions you guys have, start dropping them down below and we will start answering those. We're gonna try to go for another hour this time. We'll see how that goes. If you guys got enough questions, we will keep on rolling. And I liked the polls we did last time, dude. I think that was, that was great. Gave me some good insight, which is awesome. Um, let's see what we got here. Maybe we'll go over some wins. Let's pull some of those up here while we're waiting for everybody to get in. If you're just joining us, drop any comments you have around or questions you have around scaling your agency, and we're gonna jump into that in just one second. Couple of wins. Uh, Gage closed a $42K for 12 months and he got $10.5K, uh, cash collected upfront, which is huge. Mace said he, uh, signed another $12K a month client. Uh, looks like he's at $45K for the month so far, uh, or monthly right now, which is awesome. Uh, looks like Evan, our very own Evan Andrews, closed a $6K for 4-month deal, which is sick. And we got Brandon in with a $15K deal, $5K cash collected. Ryan's working on an $8K. Max is working on a 12-month $40K, which is huge. And those are just some of the wins from the past couple days here, guys. Let me drop that here. Let me move this over, dude. Let's see. Sweet. There we go. Um, what are some of the themes from this week as we wait for everybody to get in here? Ethan?

Um, you know, sales is always a big one, whether it's, uh, you know, follow-ups, you know, making sure we're on the phones rather than emails and text messages, speed up lead Um, objections, another big one. But, um, oh yeah, I think big one lately has been, you know, don't text and email your leads, you know, not early, at least not for the first couple touch points, you know. Call every day, you know, for a week, double dial. Yep. Try different times of the day. Um, those are the big things. And don't— for sure, golden rule— don't send proposals via email.

Oh my God, dude, I know. I had, um Uh, one of our clients said he sent one over, and I was like, I was like, uh, well, what, what caused you to send it? He's like, oh, well, the person wanted me to send it over. I'm like, no, we don't, guys, we don't do that. Like, it, it puts you at such a disadvantage when you send over a proposal versus actually going in and explaining it on the sales process. Um, that is like, that is what actually gets the deal done at the end of the day. You have to make sure you're walking them through it. I think a lot of times people are just like uncomfortable with like, like, like addressing objections. I mean, what are your thoughts on that, Ethan? Like, I think that's a lot of times what the main issue is, you know what I mean?

Yeah. I think people get the icky car salesman sales ideas, you know, in their head, you know, and feel confrontational going through objections with people where, you know, sometimes it might just be a lack of information.

Yeah, no, that makes sense. Um, let me make sure that we're live over here on Instagram here, guys. As we're popping in, drop any questions you have around scaling your video or creative agency. We've worked with 838— I just did the count yesterday— uh, individual agencies one-on-one over the past 5 years. Isn't that crazy?

1K, here we come, dude.

It's insane. I know we're gonna get to 1K pretty quick. It's pretty wild. Okay, I think we're good on Instagram here, guys. I see you guys jumping in. If you have any questions, let us know. We're going to do a poll here in a sec. Um, let's dive into some of the questions that we're getting in the community here. What do we got? And if you guys are on, don't leave us hanging. We thrive on your questions. I want to make sure that we're like— this is actually helpful to you. So if you're jumping in here, drop any questions you have. And, uh, we are happy to start answering those, and that is what we use for content on here. So if you want us to make it to an hour, drop some questions here, uh, and we'll be happy to get through it. Let's see, when it comes to sales, why do clients who need the service always ghost after you give them a proposal? Ethan, this is yours.

Can I go? Just talking about, you know, you got to go over it on the call. With them, you know, and answer questions, handle objections. Maybe you weren't talking to the decision maker or just decision makers.

Well, and why— I guess, why do you feel like— why can't people just send a proposal? It seems like it would be easier to just do that and just get the deal done. Like, why wouldn't that work? Or why do you feel like that wouldn't work?

Yeah, no, I mean, I mean, yeah, it would be easier, um, but I think part of it comes back to you know, always booking a meeting from a meeting, like until the deal is closed. Well, then even after they become a client too, but you just always need to have something on the counter with them, whether it's the next discovery call, the next sales call, the next, you know, script review call, strategy session, whatever it is. There always needs to be something on the calendar with whether it's—

we always call it, we call it BAMFAM. So it's book a meeting from a meeting. So it's always making sure that we're going from a meeting to a next meeting. So then you're not chasing people over a longer time horizon where you're just constantly having to chase them. It feels like you're pulling teeth. And like, that's one of the main reasons that we want to make sure that we're getting, uh, that we're getting, uh, those calendar commitments and those people back on that next meeting, right? Which is huge. If you're just jumping on Instagram, drop any questions you have around scaling your video or creative agency. We're going to dive through any questions you guys have. Ethan, what are the best offers right now? What are you seeing?

A big thing. So, I mean, my main thing with offers is monthly recurring content, whether it's, you know, social content and ads are the most popular right now. Ads at the very minimum, like Mitch, who's been really successful with home service, you know, his main offer is, you know, pretty similar to Max Engages.

What does he do? Who does he work with?

Home service companies.

Okay, got it.

So right now he's got an elevator client, a plumbing client, and a gutter client. Um, so his main boring businesses that people are like, hey, that's not—

it's not a sexy business. Like, I guess, what do you say to people who are like, yeah, that's not like super sexy, I want to work with like these amazing huge brands, which I don't think there's anything wrong with, but like, what do you say to people who are kind of like, hey, I want to work with these insane brands and not necessarily like these boring businesses, or like, do I have to choose one or the other, or can I do both? Like, what is that, you know, what's your opinion on that?

Yeah, when I was actually talking to one of our clients on my coaching call before this about that, where before he came to us he would do 5 or 6 like really big projects every single year, and their time horizons are just so long. Yeah, where these big, you know, Fortune 500 companies, 500 employees, the sales cycle is super long, it takes too long to get in with decision makers. And they're like, like I said, their time horizon for these projects is just so long. Like, they make decisions on like a quarterly and yearly basis versus— yeah, smaller business makes much faster moves.

So you're saying like the sales cycle is basically just shorter on these boring businesses, so you can close more deals faster, right?

Well, I think because the, the pain, the pain is deeper too, because if they don't make a change fast, they may lose their business or employees, whereas you know, I don't know, Apple, if they don't put out a new ad, they're still fine.

Yeah, or these larger Fortune 500 companies, which are fun to work with. I don't think there's anything wrong with working with them, but I think you should have those, but then you should have a good base of recurring revenue with boring businesses as well, right? Um, which I think is actually—

people do the boring work with a roofer. May not be the most sexy, fun work, but that's where a lot of the consistent work is.

For sure. Absolutely. Yeah. Um, C Banks says, I'm trying to get local companies to do ads for immersive content. I guess give us a little bit more like depth or, um, detail on that. Like, what do you mean by immersive content? Like, what does that look like? Um, and how are you finding your clients? Like, how are you getting leads right now is what I would ask. And then we'll circle back to that one.

Yep.

Uh, Nezzy Young says, also as a new business owner, I get this issue where clients keep Postponing scheduled meetings, and it's always— it's usually draining. How do you approach this? Ethan, you want to take that one?

So, I mean, are they giving you— are they giving you a reason? Or, I mean, you know, regardless of the reason, like, partially depend on what the reason is. Um, just, you know, see how urgent it is for them, you know. Hey, is this a big priority for you guys at the moment? Because we, you know, we can just continue to kick the can down the road, but the problem is not going to solve itself.

Right, exactly. And I assume these are sales conversations that they're postponing because, like, if, like Ethan said, if you're not getting enough urgency in the beginning of that meeting, or there's not really a reason for them to do or make a change, then they're, they're going to keep kicking it down the road because it's not a priority for them. And I would address that fact to be like, is this a priority for you right now? Or like, what is the main point of having these meetings? Like, why do we want to keep meeting? And so like, put them on the spot to where you're trying to figure out why specifically do they wanna have the meeting and is it a priority for them to do this now? Or, you know, is it something where it's just not really a priority and that's why they're kicking it down the road? You don't wanna keep chasing people who are not serious, right? And that comes down to qualifying harder. If you're running ads, like qualifying harder in the ad, qualifying harder before you talk to somebody. I have a whole new reel that I just put out on like the anatomy of a sales process, which is on my page on Instagram if you wanna check that out. But Like, that is one of the reasons why, uh, people are not closing or having that urgency is because there's not really any point of them— like, they don't— there's no real reason why they want to meet with you. And so we're just trying to have these meetings that they don't want to attend, right?

Like, uh, your water heater broke, right? Like, you need that done as soon as you possibly can.

Immediately I was like, hey, how soon can you guys get over here? It's like, okay, cool, I'll pay whatever it is and get it done because, like, it's a necessity. You have to have it. And so, like, you have to look at How do you become a necessity for your clients to where they have to have your service and it's not like a nice to have, but more of a, a need to have, if that makes sense.

Yep.

Yeah. C Bank says the new immersive experience gains screen format business. Like, I'm not sure if I'm fully understanding, um, the question there. Ethan, are you getting that?

Are you saying like things that go on like large, like LED walls?

Yeah. So then I would just talk about what's the benefit of them doing that? Like, how are they gonna get more leads? How are they gonna get more calls, more sales, like from doing the immersive experience advertising or marketing? Like what are the, what are the stats that, that you see when a business does that with you? Right. It's like you have to be able to provide some case studies or social proof or some aspect of like, this is how you're gonna get an ROI. Otherwise there's no reason for them to invest in that, if that makes sense. And so you have to make sure that it's like, okay, great. Why are they investing in that? Like, what does that look like for them? How is that going to get them a return? And if you can't do that, then they're not going to invest in it. It's going to be difficult, right?

Or they'll pick the cheaper option, right?

Yeah. If they don't see why they should be paying more, why they should be doing this versus Meta ads versus billboards versus radio, it's like we need to figure out why they should invest in that versus something else, right? Ethan, let's— I think we got some people on here. What's a good idea for a poll? What should we do?

Ooh, um, well, you're just talking about like results-based sales, results, or like, you know, looks and aesthetics.

So do you sell content or do you sell based on results of content?

And that's the reason why one of the first things that I do with people when they come in is go get case studies from anybody and everybody that you've worked with. We need to document what you've done and how well you've done it for, for the businesses that you've worked with. Yep.

Cool, guys. I want to know, um, so put a 1 in the chat if you sell just the content, or put a 2 in the chat if you sell based on the results. I'd love to know. Let's see what people say in the chat here. I want to see what the split is as we continue going here. Um, cool. Well, yeah, that makes sense with, with those as far as like we just wanna make sure we're selling based on the results, based on getting more leads, getting based, based on getting more clients. Um, and then another easy thing you could do is just run ads for your clients. It's not hard. Like just learn that skill. It's something we teach. It's something you can learn, learn the skill of like how do we actually use the content to then run that on Meta, run that on some sort of platform to then get them results, right? Easy. Done. If you're just joining us, guys, uh, we are doing a live Q&A on how to grow and scale your video agency. Worked with over, um, 800— what did I say? I'm gonna check the exact amount— 828, uh, video and creative agencies one-on-one up to this point. So if you have a problem, we've probably seen it before and we'd be happy to help you. Uh, Lorenzo says, are you based in Atlanta? I am, yes. Based in Woodstock. Ethan is more in Atlanta, Atlanta. He's cooler than I am, so I'm in the suburbs with my, my daughter and my wife.

Traffic is not cool though.

Yeah, well, just don't go anywhere, bro. Just, just—

true.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So far we're 50/50 on do you sell, uh, based on results, um, or do you sell content, which is interesting. And if you're selling content or results, like, drop in the chat what, what is your pitch? Like, what do you say when you're trying to sell people? Like, I'd love to take a look at it, maybe give you some, uh, thoughts, improvements, things how we can, uh, actually improve that pitch so we can get more people closing on deals here. Um, Lorenzo says, awesome, I see you've done work around KSU. Yeah, I actually went to KSU, um, way back in the day. God, how long have we been out of college? When did we graduate? 2020?

10 years ago.

Oh my God, I didn't graduate high school.

2016.

Oh God, I feel so old. I feel so old, dude. Um, yeah, are you— where are you based out of, Lorenzo? I'm, I'm, uh, I'm curious if you want to drop that in the chat. Yeah, dude, I feel, I feel old. I am, uh, 2020 graduated. That was 6 years ago.

Oh God, COVID.

Yeah, when I was in college, I was doing work for the college, uh, football team, whatnot, video work, so It was one of the big things that I did. Very fun. We traveled with them. We got to go on like a private plane with them, go to different areas, like Utah areas of the country, and made like hype videos and stuff like that for, for the different games that they played, which was fun. So it's good stuff. Yeah, that's interesting, guys. So if you have any more, one in the chat, if you do content, you sell based on content, two in the chat, if you sell based on results. Lorenzo said, I also went to KSU. I just recently graduated. Congrats, dude. That's awesome.

There we go.

Sweet. Let's see. I think we're gonna close this poll, guys. What other questions do we have? Stop the poll here. What else comes up, Ethan? What else do you feel like we can cover?

Ooh. Um, guess it'd be kind of a basic question. Do you have a CRM or not?

Mm, that's a good one. Let's see. And we're gonna draw this out, guys. We're trying to get to an hour on this live. So if you were on this live, help us out and, uh, and drop some questions because we can yap forever about anything, but I'd prefer to yap about stuff that's actually helpful for you guys. Um, so do you have a CRM? Is that the— that's the poll? Next poll. Yep. Do you have a CRM or not? Some way to organize your pipeline, run automations, just do email follow-up, text follow-up, um, Just organize all of your deal flow. No CRM.

I was operating on a spreadsheet before we had a CRM.

Oh, remember the days? Remember the days, dude. Oh yeah. Drop a 1 in the chat if you do use a CRM and drop a 2 in the chat if you do not use a CRM. Uh, let's see. Da da da da da. Nezzy Young says, I run a tech company, but I'm getting into digital marketing and people aren't interested much in websites. When I run, when I run videos and photos, they like to see engagement, people asking stuff. Got it. I don't know if there's a question in there, but if there is, let me know. Um, Lorenzo says one in the chat on YesCRM. And then what CRM are you guys using? I said C Bank says he uses HubSpot. Uh, Nezzy Young says he built one himself. Any other, like, what are you guys using for your CRM? I'm curious. Let's see. Let's—

that's pretty popular. I know Monday has one.

HubSpot is just such a, um, it's good, but it's, it's very, uh, it's very like Fortune 500. Like it, it has a lot of extra stuff we don't always need. Um, but it can work for sure. It can work well. Um, let's see what else we got, guys. One in the chat. One, two, Sweet. Yeah, it's interesting. It's a good one. Let's see, what other questions, guys? If we don't have any good questions, we're gonna have to wrap this thing up early. What else do you wanna— what else, what else do you think would be helpful, maybe around pricing, Ethan, that people could take away within their agency? Like, I feel like based on most of the pricing we see, people are priced way too low. But what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, no, I think— and I tell this to everybody too when making their offer is your pricing with the same deliverables might be different as somebody else, somebody else's business with the same deliverables because a lot of people don't factor in the cost of goods. Yep. Their packages. So edit cost.

Sometimes I was talking about people price based on how they feel with the packages, like what they think they should price, not based off of what they actually have to price to actually grow. And then when they try to hire people, their margins compress and shrink, and then they don't have any margin to hire people because they didn't account for that within the margin, right? Because they charge based on what they thought they should charge or felt they should charge, not what they actually have to charge, if that makes sense.

Yep, exactly. So yeah, just factor in, you know, what are your costs based on your situation, um, and then shoot for 70%, uh, profit based on what your costs are.

Absolutely. Got Sparkhouse back in the chat. It's been a minute, we haven't seen you since last week, Sparkhouse. What's going on? How do you determine how much to spend on ads every month? Good question. We start campaigns at $20 to $25 a day. And then from there, we then see, okay, great, what is our cost per lead? What is our cost per call? And then based on those KPIs, we look at, you know, we get a handful of calls, 5 to 10 calls, then from there, we need to decide, okay, what is your close rate based on that metric? And then we can determine the unit economics of like, okay, great, we can afford up to a you know, let's say $100 lead cost because we know that your show rate is 70% and your close rate is 30% and your average ticket value is X. And then based on that math, we can then determine, okay, great, uh, this is how much we can spend. And then it just becomes how many calls do you want every single month, right? Um, what's the capacity you can take? So like with MaxEngage, they're at, um, 150, they're at 160 right now, I think for the month so far. And based on that, we look at, okay, what's their availability on the calendar? They're getting cost per calls around $100, $140 for a qualified call. They're closing at like 50 to 60%, and then their show rate is 70%. And so based on those metrics, we can then decide, okay, great. Like, it's just how many calls do we want at this point? And then you can make the decision on like, do we turn that valve up or back down? Let me know if that makes sense, Sparkhouse. That is what we— that's how we determine it.

Yeah, that's what I did with Mitch is he got 2 clients really quick off the bat, and then he was like, whoa, we need to slow the brakes because I'm the one doing everything right now. So we went and got editors, you know, social manager. So it— yeah, it's a, it's a faucet or a dial that we can turn up and down as we need.

Yeah, exactly. But even if that makes sense as far as blow everything up if you brought more clients in, I think it's— I think your name's Tori.

Right.

I don't want to keep calling you Sparkhouse, just your company name. Uh, but yeah, let me know if that makes sense. That's how we determine it. And then it's just based on, based on the unit economics, we then say, okay, great. We want to spend this much. Um, and then it just depends on how many calls you can take based on that. Right. Um, Tori Sparkhouse. Nice. Cool. Yeah, it makes sense. Let me know if you have any other questions. Good question on that. Uh, that's how we determine it though. And then we're just basically looking at the sales motion, making sure everything's in place there. So then we are, uh, we are basically getting as many leads and deals as we can from the money we're spending on ads. But then it really just becomes a faucet of like, how far do we want to turn it up or down? And then from there, we can make decisions based on that. So let me know if that makes sense. Let's see. They're still working on this water heater downstairs. It is— I have no water for the next like 3 hours, which is fun. So Yeah, we should have hot water. Yeah, seriously, tell me about it. Let me get rid of this poll. What other questions we got, guys, around scaling agency, getting more leads, running ads? Can be anything. We are trying to get to an hour and we need your help. We need more questions. How do I get rid of this widget here? Hide.

There we go. Cool.

Uh, C Bank says, please talk about how to meet the expectations of customers to get leads from ads versus ad campaign spend? I need a— I need you to just formulate that better because I don't really understand what you're saying. I think you're saying like, how do you meet the expectations of customers? I mean, the way you, you meet the expectations is you set proper expectations and then you meet them. So when you sell them, you say, hey, this is what we're going to do. And then on the back end, on fulfillment, you make sure that you hit those— what you said you're going to do. It's as simple as that. Where people get upset is when the expectation doesn't match what the experience is, right? And then they're like, okay, this wasn't what I thought it was and I paid this money for it. And then they're basically like, okay, I'm not happy because I thought it was going to be up here and it was really down here. And so that's where you have to look out for as far as expectation matching. Um, Ethan, any thoughts on that since you're mainly on fulfillment?

No, I was gonna say, yeah, I think that kind of relates to what you were just saying as far as like it depends on what the numbers are, like specifically the lead cost, right? Because Ad spend versus leads is directly correlated, right? If a lead is $50, how many leads do we want to get? Do we want to get 1 lead a day? Well, let's spend $50 a day. So just, you know, the amount—

yeah, I think that's a big thing a lot of people don't understand is they'll launch a campaign at like $20 a day, but their average lead cost is $75, and they say, why does it take me 3 days to get a lead? It's because that's math, right? It's math. And then it's never always exactly 3 days. It might be like 4 or 5 days, and then you get another lead in 2 days, and then you get another lead in 1 day, and then it takes another 5 days they get a lead. So it's like, it ends up evening out to be that number of what that lead cost is, but you have to be, you have to understand the, the unit economics and the math behind it to say, okay, great, like I'm spending this much, this is my lead cost. You're not magically just gonna get more leads, um, because of that, right? So it's like, you're not, unless you spend more money, that's what it comes down to. Um, Sparkass, Tori said We have multiple ideal customer industries, consumer electronics, and just manufacturing SaaS for ad campaigns. Let's say I would not switch ad targeting every month. Just depends on how much budget you have to spend, because it's like each one of those is targetable by ads. It's just every time we launch a funnel or a campaign, you have to spend money up front before you get anything in return to test different creatives. And so we usually make 20 to 25 creatives per vertical or campaign. And so you would have to make 20 to 25 times 3, right? Because you have 3 different ideal markets with 3 different funnels. I do not recommend doing them all at once because it is way, way too much work. Um, like, that's what I tell everybody, there's too many variables. Yeah, there's way too many variables that are, that are going on there.

Um, you can target all of them, but yeah, like, you don't want to make 100 ads at a time.

Yeah, I would pick one. I'd say, okay, great. Out of consumer electronics, industry manufacturing, and SaaS, which one has the highest LTV for us as a business? And then based on that, I would go after them first because they have the highest LTV. You're gonna make the most money from them. And so then I would target that first. We find the winning ads, we scale the winning ads, we get booked calls with that funnel. That funnel's working great. We can then set it, forget it, leave it, just start booking calls through that, and then go and test the next funnel or vertical that we wanna go after. So like, that's how I would go. I would never just like switch up the targeting because then you're like, just have a bunch of half-built bridges that are— make no sense. Like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't do that. So let me know if that makes sense.

Good question too.

Keep them coming. Uh, I like what you guys are doing, keep it up. Thank you. Nezzy has a leaf as his profile picture. I love it. You gotta get your face on here, man. Good to see you. Um, but yeah, let me know if that makes sense. Tori, if you have any other questions on that, happy to answer them. Um, I know Mitch, I mean, dude, he, he got 3 clients and then he had his baby and he was like, dude, I have too many leads. And then he turned his ad campaign down to like $1.50 a day and he ended up getting, he ended up getting clients from it like at that low of a budget too. So like you're, even with a super low budget, you can make stuff like that, uh, work. Thanks, gotta bounce. Always seems like you got a sales call on these at these times, Tori. What's going on over there? Got to get you more sales calls. I love it, go crush it.

And then with Mitch, we're cutting off his, uh, real estate side here soon too.

Yeah. Oh yeah, so maybe fill people in. So he came from doing like low-ticket real estate photography and videography and then transitioned into doing more, uh, high-ticket, right? Um, how was that transition for him? Like, because you work with him mainly one-on-one. You have more context than I do.

Yeah, no, I mean, and it's, it's— I've done that with a lot of people where, you know, real, real estate to home service, it's a pretty natural transition for a lot of guys that come to real estate because it's a very similar type of content that you're shooting. You know, it's all about the house, right? Whether it's for a countertop company, a remodeler, you know, you're just showing off and making the house look as good as you can. Um, yeah, so we're just shifting more to a results-based model versus a, you know, hey, let's just come in and take a bunch of photos.

He's doing less work because what, he goes out once a quarter for these clients? And with real estate, he was going out every couple— every day on multiple shoots.

He's going out once a month.

Once a month on his—

but still much, much better than, you know, every week for $200.

Yeah, yeah.

Versus once, once a month for, you know, $5,000.

For sure. Um, Will Allen says, uh, hi guys, been following you, reached out and spoke. Uh, here's my question. I am not an agency yet and trying to— and trying to not burn out. How big is your team? How large are people's agencies' team? It's a good question. Um, oh, and then here's a second follow-up. And what does that look like? I'm an independent still, stuck in the paradigm of doing it all myself. Can you talk more about behind the scenes of production, post-production, how you can't handle too many. Yeah. Um, so good question. As far as what you're doing right now, I'd love to know like what kind of clients you're working with. First off, that'd be the first thing I'd want to know. Um, but a lot of times you can't, and this might not be the case for you, but a lot of times what we see, you can't hire people simply because you don't have enough margin or you don't charge enough to hire people, right? It's like you're charging enough for you to do all the work yourself, Whereas what you really need to do is say, okay, great, I'm charging— let's say I'm charging $5K. Well, to hire people, I'm really gonna need to charge $8K. And so then you try— we basically try to up the prices, narrow down the amount of clients that we have. And now that we have more money per client, we have more revenue per client, we can hire that first person to take some stuff off your plate. So then you can focus on the things that actually matter in the business, which is sales and marketing. So it's like, you as the founder need to focus on how do I get more leads and how do I close more sales? And then with that money that you have, you can then go hire an editor, a videographer, people to do the work for you, the fulfillment, because no one's gonna run your business for you. But you, like, you are the only one who can do that. Like, anybody can do the editing, anybody can do the shooting, anybody can do the account management. And it's how do we increase our prices so we have enough margin to be able to do that? Right? And it's not like you just hire a bunch of people overnight, which I know can, you know, a lot of people are like, this is super overwhelming. You're not hiring everybody overnight. You're just simply saying, let me do a time audit. And this is one of the first things we do with our clients. And Ethan, maybe you wanna jump in on this as well, but we first say, okay, let's do a time audit on everything that we're doing in the business and which things are revenue generating and which things are not revenue generating. Revenue generating would be like, taking sales calls, reaching out to new leads, uh, booking clients, uh, and then non-revenue would be like editing, shooting, uh, videography, um, account management, replying to client emails. And it's like, we want to look at what's the first thing we can take off your plate that is the easiest and cheapest, which would typically be editing, because editing is a time suck, takes up so much mental bandwidth. And then we get that off your plate, and then you, you have, let's say, another 10 hours a week that you can then work on. How do I get more leads? How do I get more calls? And then grow this thing into a business instead of having it just be a freelance business, right? Hopefully that makes sense. Um, I have two retainers. That's great. Yeah, I love that. You have two retainer, two retainers for $7K each for 6 months. Doc filmmaker. Uh, so these are building their business foundation, thought leaders galleries. Um, I mean, the fact that you got two for $7K a month is already great. I would just look at what is your gross profit margin on those packages. And what we wanna look for is typically we need 70 to 80% gross profit margins on the packages that we sell. Like for instance, if it, I'm just gonna use round numbers, but if it's, if you're charging the client $10K a month, you should only be paying max for labor, $2 to $3K a month for labor off of that. So then you have enough margin to invest back into marketing. Pay yourself, take money out of the business, have a good profit margin in the business, right? And so I would look at what are your current profit margins and where can you start hiring people to take things off your plate? And then it's, it's, it's a, it's a volume knob, not like a light switch. I always say it's not like you're like, okay, we're going to hire 5 people and I'm out of the fulfillment and I'm done, right? It's like, let me hire an editor. Okay, now that I have the editor ramped and they're good to go, Let me hire a shooter. Great. Now that I have them, let me hire an account manager. And you're slowly volume knobbing yourself out of the fulfillment to where you are just focusing on higher level things. Um, and this is just given that you want to grow an actual business. Like, some, some people love just editing and just shooting, and if that's the case, then that's great. Like, this wouldn't make any sense for you. But if you want to grow like a real business, you you just have to start taking yourself out of each step. Right. And so typically editing is the biggest lever because it is usually where people spend the most of their time. Um, but just do a time audit, like look at how much time are you spending every single week on these things? And I always say like, if you're spending 40 hours a week editing, if you took 40 sales calls and you closed— Ethan, be my calculator real quick. If you took 40 sales calls, 1 hour each, instead of doing 40 hours of editing and you closed— what's 10% of 40?

4.

If you closed 4 deals at your $7K a month, what's 4 times 7?

28.

You would, you would have an extra $28,000 a month in recurring revenue if you simply just did not do the editing. And so it's literally costing you— and that's if you, that's if you close at 10%, you probably close at a higher percentage. So you actually would probably be making more. But it's like, if you look at the time you spend, it's like, is editing worth $28,000 a month in lost revenue? Probably not. I could probably hire someone for like $1,000 a week or $2,000 a week to do all the editing that I'm doing. And then I sell $28,000 worth of packages and then I keep $27,000, right? It's like just, just a basic example, but it's actually costing you money doing everything yourself and not focusing on revenue generating activities. So it says, I appreciate everything you share. Absolutely. I love doing this stuff and I love talking through this stuff. If you have more questions, drop them to me and let me know. Um, since you're solo. Yep, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. Just baby steps, volume knobbing, volume knobbing your way out. Lorenzo says, how do you recommend making the transition from doing everything yourself to outsourcing the editing? My demand is increasing and time is limited. Looking to raise prices. Ethan, you wanna maybe take that one?

Time audit. For the next 7 days, write down everything you do, keep track of how much time you spend doing on it, and then whatever is revenue generating, take the cheapest tasks, put it in, you know, 1 to 10 of cheapest to most expensive, and then just start going down the list of, you know, from cheapest to most expensive.

Yep, it's good.

I usually don't have people track things like going to the gym because I can't outsource that for you.

So yeah, if only we could, right? That'd be so nice. Yep. So I really like going to the gym.

Anything business related, like, you know, you know, stuff like, like the gym, I can't— you know, you can't pay somebody to do that for you.

Yeah, for sure. Um, and like you said, the last thing you said— excuse me, Lorenzo— is you need to look at raising your prices. Because the easiest thing you can do in your business is literally just raise your prices. It's the easiest lever you can pull. Because if you can raise the prices, you have more money to hire people, you have more money to outsource, you have more money to take home, you like your clients more because they're paying you more. I always use the, like, law— the mowing the lawn analogy. It's like, would you mow my lawn for $100? Probably not. Would you mow it for, like, $1,000? Eh. Would you mow it for $10,000? Yeah, I'd probably do that. Would you mow it for $100,000? It's like, yeah, I would mow it for $100,000. Would you mow it for a million? It's like, yep, and a smile on my face. Like, I would do it. So it's like, if your clients pay you more, you end up liking them more because your time is valued more. You can hire more people, you build a better business. And so like 9 times out of 10, the solution is literally just raising your prices. Like, I hate to sound simple, but It literally is like, it's just raising your prices and charging more because it just makes everything easier. Like, literally it does. Um, and like, most people undercharge anyways because they, they think that it's normal to know how to do this stuff when it's like you're really talented at it and most people don't know how to do what you do.

So, yep, it's less, uh, operational complexity too.

Yep.

One client pay you $10,000 or 20 clients pay you $500? I'd rather have that.

I'd rather have the one client at $10,000. Yeah, for sure. Um, sweet. Cool, guys, we'll probably wrap it up if you don't have any other questions. Let's see if we have anything else. Lorenzo says, I work with real estate agents. Sometimes I worry they are price sensitive. They are, yes. Yes, the market you are in also determines how, how well you can raise your prices. If you are working with real estate agents it is definitely more difficult to raise your prices because of that. Um, yeah, he's been growing majorly in video and marketing. Students are super motivated, eager to learn, and involved. Would love to hear you as a speaker if you're interested. Yeah, for sure, just DM me. Absolutely, I'd love to. Uh, do people pay big money only for the result of the video, like, like for example, the leads it generates, or can you charge big for this video? No, you have to somehow relate it back to how it's gonna get them results because at the end of the day, people are paying for results. They're not paying for video. It's like, um, it's a good analogy. Like, would you pay for a flight just to get on a flight and come back to the same destination you're at right now? Like, literally, if I'm in Atlanta, would I pay for a flight to get on a flight to just fly around for a second and then come back down to Atlanta? It's like, probably not because I'm not getting to a destination. Right. Same thing with content. They're not paying for the content. They're paying for what the content does for their business and the destination it takes them to. What were you gonna say, Ethan?

No. Yeah. And I was gonna say, yeah, just like 10 hours for a flight to wherever, or just in the air for 10 hours.

Yeah. Yeah.

No, hell no.

I don't even wanna have to fly if I don't have to. Like, and this is what I think a lot of people have to realize is like the clients, you are a vehicle to them. Like they just want the quickest vehicle to grow their business, get more leads, get more calls, get more clients. And if you can convince them that video is the best vehicle to get them there, then of course they're going to buy from you. But if there's another vehicle that gets them there faster, they're going to buy that. It's kind of, it's the same thing back to the flights. It's like, if there was a faster way, if there was like an underground train that would get me to Hawaii, in like an hour from Atlanta, I'm gonna take that instead of an 11-hour flight cuz it's faster.

I'd be there every day.

I don't care if it's a flight or like a train or a boat. All I care about is how does it get me there the fastest, the safest, and the most convenient for me. And so like when you're packaging up your offer, you have to think about these things because like your clients want it fast. They want it convenient and they want it Uh, they want it to be the best vehicle to get them there. And like, they're not, they don't care about the content. They do, but they don't.

Right. So hopefully that helps.

Uh, what else guys?

If you could teleport somewhere, you'd pay the same price as a plane ticket or more.

I'd pay more because it's faster. Right. It's like the faster you can get them a result, the better, the more they're gonna pay. Right. Lorenzo says, so it's better to sell results versus the work you do. I get worried guaranteeing results. You don't have to guarantee results. That's what I think a lot of people don't understand. You don't have to guarantee results. You just sell based on the results. So you say, Ethan, do you feel like if we did this video and we ran it as an ad that you would be able to get more leads than the ads you're running right now that are just like these basic photo ads? Yes, I do. Okay, great. Why do you feel that way? I'm going to get the client to explain to me why they feel like it's going to get them there without me saying, we guarantee you this thing, which you can't do anyways, because that's illegal. Like there's no way for you to guarantee it. But like, you see the difference between that and then guaranteeing? Like, there's a, there's a way to sell the results without guaranteeing them anything by getting them to convince themselves in the sales process.

So, and that's where having testimonials from your past clients are a good supplement to that too.

Yeah, for sure. Um, let's see. What other questions, guys, before we wrap up here? I'm trying to get to an hour at 45 minutes. Can we get 15 minutes more of questions? I'm trying, I'm pushing for it. I'm waiting for you guys. Let's see, let's see, let's see, let's see. What other questions? Ethan, any other poll ideas based on what we talked about? You're the poll master, bro. Sounds wrong.

Hey, don't do me like that.

Um, let's see, what do we got? What are we thinking? Let me stop this other one. Um, Poll Master Ethan, trying to think what we did last week.

We did offer ones last week, offer ones last week.

We did CRM, we did do you sell content or the results of content. What else, what else, what else? Let's see, guys, we're waiting on you. Come on, there's people on this live, I see them. Ask some questions, what can we help with? Otherwise we're gonna have to wrap this thing up. Let's see what else, guys.

I guess one that was brought up a few minutes ago that we were talking about is, uh, who currently outsources things, like solo versus, uh, solo versus team.

Good one. And then Lorenzo, I see your question. I'll get to that in 2 seconds here. Are you solo or have a team? Team.

Cool.

All right. So put a 1 in the chat if you're solo, put a 2 in the chat if you're team. Lorenzo says, uh, any advice in standing out in, in the marketing world? Say I work with lawyers, real estate agents. I know there was, I know results is a thing, but sometimes we're at the mercy of the market economy. Uh, I disagree. Um, so if you work with lawyers, what is the result you get them? And so when you're marketing to them, hey, if you're a lawyer, that wants to get more leads, more cases, more, more injury cases, whatever type of lawyer they are. We're going to help you get more cases using our video content system that will help you bring more inbound cases of people who actually trust you because they're watching content. If you want to learn more about how we can help you, click the link below, book a call. That would be an example of like what an ad run would be, right? You just have to, A, have case studies and proof. B, talk about the result that you're going to get them. And then C, find a way to differentiate yourself between all of the other competitors in the space. Um, same thing with real estate agents. I just wouldn't really work with real estate agents. They're typically lower income and it is, uh, it's more difficult to work with them for sure. Um, but just having a niche and going in on like becoming the expert when you work with lawyers, right? It's like we look at Max Engage and they're like close to $200K this month so far. and all they do is do organic content for dentists. That's it. Like, that's all they do, but they are the leader and the industry leader in that, right? So like, you just have to become the expert within that, and you do that by working with the same types of people over and over and over again, getting case studies. So what are small clients that— what are small clients that are also the decision makers but they do have money? Not like real estate agents you mentioned. Uh, yeah, for sure. Medical companies, med spas, dental companies, lawyers, professional services, home services, roofing companies, solar companies. What am I missing? Any others? Home builders, remodelers, remodelers, boring businesses. There's tons of them. They suck at marketing. They need your, they need your help, and they have money to spend. There you go. Easy. Um, yep. Cool.

May not be fun, but they make money.

Sweet. Yes. Well, cool guys. I think I have to run here. I think they're done with this water heater. So I'm gonna wrap this up. Um, if you wanna learn more about how you can help or get our help growing your agency, I will put a, uh, a QR code here on screen and, uh, you can scan that, book a call with our team, see if we could possibly help. Be happy to, uh, see if we can help and, uh, we will go from there. Lorenzo says, great advice, thank you, answering a million questions. I really like your brand built following years. Absolutely, dude. Yep, you got it. All right guys, I gotta run. Uh, let me know if you need anything from me and we'll see in the next one. Peace.