Live Q&A - Scaling Your Agency

What is going on, guys? Welcome back to another live. We're here live on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, all of the places. Where'd you get that SpaceX jacket, Ethan? That's sick.

I'm flying the next ship. So you're—

oh, you're on there. Okay, cool. I didn't know. That's great.

I bought it a couple weeks ago.

That's cool. I like that. That's sick. If you guys are just joining us, we are going to do a live Q&A for as long as you guys have questions. We will keep going. Um, so as you guys start to trickle in here, drop some questions that you have around scaling your agency, getting more leads, getting more clients, uh, pricing margins, uh, how to, how to sell retainers versus how to sell one-offs. Like, drop any questions you have. We're gonna bring you guys on live and we will be answering those questions, uh, below. Let's dive into some wins from the week though. Let me go ahead and share my screen here. We had a lot of wins this week, dude. Let me find it.

Here we go.

So going from today backwards, we got Julian with a $7.5K 3-month deal closed. He works with, um, mainly interior designers, which is great, uh, and he does, uh, like interior designer— interior designers, uh, anybody within that kind of realm. And these are from ads, so he was able to get a $7.5K Closed. Uh, Hakim is saying because he hopped on the sales calls, he's getting the, getting the reps, which is great, which I love to see. Um, and then he kind of goes through a 3-call process. He said he has like a discovery call, which is more exploratory. Uh, he does more of a sales call to pitch them the prices, and then he does a follow-up if he needs to, to basically close. Um, said ideally everybody would close in 2 calls, but he noticed that some people take more time to think about it. They want to talk to somebody, and that's why he has that third call, which I think is, is smart, very helpful. Um, we got Brandon Link with a 12-month $24K deal, $5K down, cash collected. Um, couple more hot follow-ups on the calendar, and he's upping those prices, which is going to be huge. Love to see it. Uh, Maxwell has his free-to-case study spots full. He's breaking into a new industry, which is awesome. We got Squints over here with a 3-month $7,500 contract. Um, He joined what, last week? I think Ethan, you onboarded him, right? Uh, Steven.

Steven. Yep. Uh, about a weekend.

Yep. Yeah. Killing it.

Love it.

Um, today too. He what?

He's getting some case studies today too.

Heck yeah. Love it. And then we got Jonathan with a reactivation, closed a $46K deal and a $12.5K deal, uh, both from reactivations of old clients, pre-COVID clients. Um, which is crazy. It's like there's so much money in your existing list that you guys are just not taking advantage of. I think a lot of people forget that. And, uh, and obviously here, let's do the math for me, Ethan.

45, 46 plus 12.5, uh, what, 58-ish?

58K in, in literal deals from just people who are waiting for him to reach out to them and close. Like, that's huge. So if you guys are sleeping on your list, reactivate them. Uh, Gage closed a $30K 12-month package. Dante on the board with a a 12-month $24K package, organic only, which is great. Got Tyler with a 12-month $60K deal with a construction company. It's killing it. And then we got Brandon, uh, with an $8K for 6 months, which is awesome. And then Julian's packed out with the calls, which is what's translating to some of these deals closing, which is, uh, which is awesome. Um, any other wins you can think of that I'm, I'm missing here, Ethan?

Um, I think here, um, oh, Mitch. Uh, works with home service. He closed a roofing client for $3,900 a month for 3 months.

Nice, good stuff. Love it.

Wait on the, uh, I think he's just waiting on the agreement for that.

Sweet, good stuff. If you guys are just joining us, drop any questions you have around scaling your agency. We are doing a live Q&A here, and we can't do that without questions, so we're just going to yap about stuff you guys don't care about until you drop some questions down below. And, uh, and we'll start going through that with you guys. Ethan, what, uh, on the topic of pricing, what are some margins that people should be shooting for as far as their packages? Like, what, what profit margins should they have on those packages?

So starting point is usually shoot for 70%, and, you know, if we end up at 60, 65, that's awesome.

What does that mean for maybe people who don't understand? How that works? Like, what does that mean mathematically?

So let's say, let's say you charge $10,000 a month to make the math easy. That means you've got, for 70% profit, that means you've got about $3,000 a month of expenses, whether that's crew, gear rentals, editors, sales rep commission, you know, just whatever is going out the door. You have 30% to go out the door.

Got it. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, I'm curious for the people watching, what margins do you have in your packages right now? Because I think so many video agencies price based off— they based off what they feel they should price and not what they actually should price to be able to hire people. I see that time and time again. Ethan, I know you see that time and time again where people are like, they are pricing what they're like, oh, this, this number feels like it should be what it is, or it's a lot of money to them, or they need to be pricing it based off of what they actually need to price it off of to basically hire other people to do the work for them. And so I'm curious, what margins are you guys currently at? What does that look like for you guys? Because I'd love to know. Um, and I'd love to dive into that a little bit. But yeah, I think a lot of times people do not— they don't price themselves appropriately because they're, they're doing all the work themselves, whereas they need to get into a place where they can hire other people to build leverage in the business to then actually be able to grow. You know what I mean? Um, because you have to focus on the CEO tasks like getting more leads, doing the marketing, taking sales calls. And if you neglect that, a lot of times you put yourself in a place where You're on that kind of hamster wheel where you get a client, you stop doing all your marketing and sales, and then you basically hope that you get another client, but then it's dry for a little while. And it's like you have to keep that marketing and sales going all the time. So I think that's huge. Matt says, back again, told you I'd set a reminder and keep showing up. I love it, Matt. What questions do you have for us today? Let us know. Let us know if you have anything. We are— we thrive off of answering your, uh, you guys' questions. We love to go through that just so I'm not yapping about stuff you guys don't care about. Um, where was I though? With the pricing, I think, yeah, it is, it is very key. Like, you got to make sure you have enough margin because then you get to a place where you can't hire people because you didn't charge enough, and then you're in a tough place in your business where like you're doing all the work and you're just kind of stuck at the end of the day, you know.

Well, that's how you fund other parts of the businesses. You need to have enough profit to market yourself and hire people, you know. It's You have to keep yourself, uh, keep your head above water.

Yep.

For sure.

Absolutely. Uh, I'm seeing you guys join, but I'm not seeing any questions. What do we got? We're gonna cut this thing short if we don't have any questions, or I'm gonna pull some from our community. Let's see what we got here. Let me see. What about niches, Ethan? What are some good industries to go after if you are a video agency?

So typically any type of service-based business is going to be a good place to start, and then, you know, narrow in from there. Um, I'd say probably top, you know, 4 to 5 are going to be like home service. It's a really good one. So your HVAC guys, your roofers, home builders, people like that. Medical companies, dentists, cosmetic dentists, surgeons, things like that. Uh, law firms are great as well. There's a ton of different types of law firms out there. Um, yep, automotive is good as well. Um, so dealers, mechanics, collision repair. Um, and then also coaches, consultants, you know, speakers, people like that. Things I would stay away from are people like restaurants, nonprofits.

Why would you stay away from them specifically? Like, why would you not go after those types of businesses? To get retainers?

The value per customer is much smaller.

Okay.

You look at like a, you know, an HVAC company, customer spends $5,000, $10,000, $20,000 per customer, whereas, yeah, you know, like a bakery or a coffee shop, you know, people come in and spend $10, $20.

It's true, it's much harder to get ROI from the business. And when you're pitching higher ticket packages, it is, it is much more difficult. Um, Yeah, no, that's key. I also have a— I'm doing a new Sketchpad ad, so I'm gonna kind of walk through it, but it's backwards, dude. Of course it is. I walk through more so like if you had lower ticket clients versus higher ticket clients, and like with the lower ticket clients in this scenario, it's like if you have 12 clients at $3K average, that's $36K a month, right? But that's also like 12 revision cycles. It's 12 Slack channels. It's what, 12 invoices to chase, 12 sets of notes. And so it's Like, I think a lot of people get in this, this mode of like, oh, I'm closing clients, um, but I'm not charging as much as I, I could because I'm scared of people saying no. Um, and it's not really about getting more clients, it's about getting less clients paying you more, you know. I think a lot of people miss that when they're trying to scale their agency. And it's like, if we walk through what the difference between the two are, it's, it's pretty substantial. Because like, you could either have— I have it here, hold on— you could either— you could basically either have 12 clients paying you $3K a month or you could have 4 clients paying you $10K a month. In the 4 clients paying you $10K a month range, that's $40K a month, whereas you could also do 12 clients paying you $3K a month. That's $36K a month for 12 clients. And I think not enough people think about how much of a headache it is to take on new clients and really charging as much as you possibly can. So you have more room in the business and you actually, you end up increasing your profit margins as well simply because you have less clients and they're paying you more, so you need less team members to hire, right?

There's no margin to grow on those $200 real estate shoots. Yeah, you can't pay an editor, you can't pay somebody to go shoot it. You have to do 100% of it because you would pay somebody 100% of what you're—

you can't hire someone good because you don't have the money for it. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, Matt says, I struggle with offer creation because I don't love guarantees. Everyone says I should add one though. How would you structure an offer to still show ROI? Service, show ROI-driven service that generates leads and scales. I don't think you have to offer a guarantee, if I'm being honest with you. I think that a lot of people do. It's almost worse if you do now because most people do it. And so you blend in with everybody else and you look like everybody else, right? I think that when you're, when you're coming up with an offer, you have to think about, okay, who is the market and what do they care about at the end of the day? And depending on what that comes down to, We need to, we need to look at, okay, great, what are the outcomes they want? And then can I show them how I can get them from point A to point B within that offer? And if you can do that, then you don't necessarily need a guarantee. I think guarantees attract clients who are looking for like a get-rich-quick scheme. Ethan, I don't know if you agree with that, but like, I don't love the guarantees because they're like, oh, I'm only signing up because of the guarantee, where in reality, Like, that's not a client you want. So like, you can still show ROI through, uh, pre-call videos that you put on your pre-call page, walking through how you used, uh, your content to get a client and ROI and like what that looks like. Right. Um, and I think you can still do that and then be like, hey, we don't like, cause you either swing in either direction. You either go like full guarantee or you go, um, no guarantee. And if you go no guarantee, I would be like, we don't do any guarantees because the clients we work with don't care about guarantees. And if you're looking for a guarantee, we're probably not the right fit for you. So I'd recommend going to find somebody else to do that. Um, and so I'd really look at how can you show them tangible ROI without guaranteeing anything? Cause you just end up getting really crappy clients. Says, love that answer. Yeah. It's, it's very, very, uh, very tough. All the guarantees are qualification-based that never qualify. Yeah, exactly. It's like, I think the market is sophisticated enough to where they know that like most people won't qualify for the guarantee. And so it just sets the wrong precedent. And even if they don't qualify, clients end up getting mad because they're like, well, you have this guarantee. I didn't hit— I didn't get $1 million in 30 days. Like, I want a refund. And you're like, well, you didn't do this, this, and this. And a lot of times they don't care about that. They're just like, I'm good. Like, I want, you know, I just want, um, I just want a refund or whatever because I didn't hit it. But it's like, you didn't hit the actual stipulations, if that makes sense. Um, what's your elevator pitch? Uh, I, I don't love elevator pitches. I would just be, I would be thinking through one sentence about what you do and how can you explain that clearly and very simply. So it's like, hey, we help home service companies get more clients using a video, uh, attraction system. Like that would be an example of like what that pitch would be. You need to be able to say in one sentence, what it is that you do. And it should be simply understood by anyone. If you're taking lots of time to like, explain what that is. It's, it's too complicated. A lot of times.

So we have—

yeah, exactly. Exactly. What's the best way to reach clients? Generally, it's super expensive in social media in North America. Do you think internet is the only way? Internet? What year are we in here? 2026. Yes. The internet is the way. I'd be running ads. I'd make really targeted ads to my ideal avatar. I'd ideally be educating them around a topic that I do. And then basically at the end of that ad be like, hey, if you don't wanna, if you don't wanna learn this yourself, then click the link below, apply to work with us and we'll do it all for you. And so like teach them what it is that you do in the ad, qualify them, and then get them to book a call. Matt says, I do tons of in-person networking events for local nonprofits, so this is something I need to nail often. Yeah, Ethan, you want to take that one?

So you say for nonprofits, are you working— are you like— is the nonprofit one of your— like, are they your client or are you trying to find clients? There, I guess, would be the only clarification there. Um, but outside of that, I would say run ads. It's a much better use of your time.

Yeah, for sure. It's much higher leverage. Um, event recaps usually. Okay, got it. So are you doing them to get local nonprofits as clients or are you doing it to, uh, basically like, are you working for nonprofits trying to find clients? Okay, I see. Yeah, I mean, that's fine. You can, you can utilize your bet, your time best on those, on those events. But, um, I would also be running ads in the meantime. And like doing that on the side so you can consistently be getting leads over and over and over again. Um, so that's what I would be pushing for. Yeah. So what else? What other questions we have, guys? I gotta jump here in a couple minutes, but we're gonna take some more questions, guys. I'm a video editor. How do I find more clients? Ethan, take that one.

So kind of like what we're talking about—

video editor for who? What kind of clients? What kind of businesses? We gotta define that. First, right?

When you market yourself and focus on kind of like we were talking about with, you know, margins and scaling businesses, is you gotta show that you can help people save time, right? Where if you're a one-man band, you can't be shooting content for your clients, you can't be editing. You know, there's only so many hours in the day, so how can you tell— hey, you know, help take things off their plate?

Yeah, so it's like, you don't— you're a video editor, it's like if you want to go work for another company, right? But if you want to become a business, then you need to come up with an offer. So It's like you're a video editor. That's not an offer. That's a skill set. And I would be thinking through, okay, what is my offer? Who do I want to go after? Don't want to go after home service companies. Do I want to go after medical companies? And then what is the outcome I'm going to help them achieve through video editing? And then that's how I put together my offer. Let's see. Looks like Matt wants to hire you, so go ahead and hit him up. Sweet. Example ad copy for nonprofits. I mean, I would think through what is the outcome you help them achieve, number one. So is it like, what do you help them actually do in their nonprofits? It's like, do you help them raise more funds? Do you help them get more funding? Do you help them increase attendance at events? Like, what do you help them actually do? And that's how I would go about my ad copy is like, hey, if you're a nonprofit and you wanna increase your funding at events, we're gonna install our XYZ system to help you do that, right? And then walk them through how you do that. And then if you want to learn more, click the link below, book a call with us. So cool, guys, we're going to wrap it up here unless there's any other questions. Let's see, let's see, let's see. We got another person. Look, you just hop on our lives, you'll get hired as a video editor. Look at that, I love it. Um, if you guys want to learn more about how we can help you at Master Filmmaker, let's see if I can put this up here. You can scan this QR code or go to the link below this video and learn more about how we could possibly help. And if there's any other final questions, we're gonna open it up. Otherwise, we are going to jump here, guys. Let's see. Final questions. Going once. Going twice. Tons of resources for free on my YouTube channel. You guys can check that out. We have tons of stuff there. And if you guys have any other questions for us, let us know. And we will see you guys in the next one. See you guys.

Sweet.