Eric Deeran, who has coached 750 agency owners, argues most agencies are stuck managing 80-100 low-paying clients when they should pursue fewer high-ticket retainers. Agencies doing $150-180K monthly on $350-450 shoots waste energy on friction and churn. Switching to $5K-15K retainers cuts your client load, raises margins, and attracts easier clients.
Questions this video answers
About 750 agency owners.
Around $150–$180K per month with roughly 80–100 clients.
Client retainers in the $5K–$15K per month range.
Approximately $350–$450 per shoot.
Chapters
Most of the people watching this don't have a I need more clients problem. They simply need more clients paying them less. And I'll explain more in this video kind of what I mean. But one of the biggest things after coaching 750 agency owners up to this point is most people think they need more clients, but the truth is they need less clients paying them more at the end of the day. And I think we get into this trap of like, we need more clients, we need more people, we need more, you know, more revenue, a higher, like a higher volume of clients. And I have talked to a couple of agencies recently that were doing about a 150, 180k a month and they had I think close to 80 to 100 clients a month to get there, which is absolutely insane. And I think a lot of people don't think about this when they're scaling. Their business is like, you have to think about the ideal business that you want. And if you want a business where you do tons and tons of revenue but you only work with a few select amount of people, I'd say that's the best way to go because you're not having to put yourself in a position where you have tons and tons of clients. Because I've played that game and I've played that game with lower ticket clients. And the biggest thing that I find is like, they're harder to work with. There's less margin with those clients because you're not charging enough, because you still have to deliver a great service, but you're not charging enough. And they, they expect the world from you. Whereas when you work with a select smaller amount of clients, people who are easier to work with, they pay a higher ticket amount of money, like 5, 10, 15k a month. They're typically easier clients to work with because it's a lower amount of their total revenue. And so the reason that low ticket clients are so difficult is because you're basically asking for, you know, 25 to 50% of their entire revenue every single month. So they're like, this has to work. Like, you need to make sure this works for me. You got to make sure that this works. And they are clinging on for dear life because they don't have like any other option. Whereas when you work with a higher ticket client, somebody who maybe you're like 5 to 10% of their entire monthly revenue, then they're not as needy because it's simply not as important to them. And like it's still important, but you can kind of do full, you can have full control. You can have full creative control, you can have full control over the project and you don't have to be worried about, hey, is this, you know, is this client going to be up my butt if I do something wrong? Right? And it's just, just a thought I had today and I figured I'd share it with you guys, but it's like, you really have to go after finding higher ticket clients, people who will pay to work with you, because there's always somebody who's going to pay to work with you. And I was talking to one of our clients, Jason, about this where he does podcasting like for, for large names, like large people in the space. And he's like, well, I don't want to raise my prices. I'm scared because, like, if I raise my prices and then, you know, some people are going to say no. I'm like, absolutely. But a dichotomy, it's like a sliding scale, right? So it's like you have cheap and then really expensive. And there will always be people who pay along that spectrum. It's just that you're going to have more people who pay down here and less people that pay up here. And it's going to feel harder up here because like, more people are going to say no. But the clients that you do work with at that level are going to be way easier to work with. They're going to be better clients, they're going to stay longer, they're going to churn less, they're going to, you have to do physically less work for them. And I use the example of like, we've had a lot of people coming from real estate photography and real estate media. And I think real estate media is amazing. But we had a client like Mitch who came from $450 real estate shoots to then doing 5 to 10k a month retainers with home service companies. I think one of his first client was like a plumbing company. The second client was I think like an elevator company, I believe for like in home and then commercial elevators. And he was like, dude, it's literally like less work that I do on a monthly basis for these people paying me 5 to 10k a month versus the people who are, you know, I'm doing $450 for one house for that shoot or $350 for a shoot. And it's just really interesting to see that, like it is so much, you don't have to do any more work. And like, that was the biggest kind of mindset shift unlock for me. Was like, you could literally do less work and get paid more money to do the exact same thing with the exact same skills that you already have. Like, it's not about always working as much as like the hustle guru people want you to think. It's more about like finding the right types of clients and finding the people who are actually going to pay you what you're worth and finding people where it's worth it for them to pay you. Like, it's not as much money for them to pay you. Like, you know, if you're working with musicians, people who are broke, then like, it's going to be really difficult to. I mean, you can still sell them, but you can't sell them for a high ticket amount of money. It's going to be more difficult to work with them just because simply it's a larger percentage of their income and they're not really going to make a ton of money from it as well. Whereas, take it, you're working with a home service company, like a roofing company where they do $20,000 roofs. If you said, hey, the video is $20,000, or this set of videos that I'm doing for you is $20,000 a month, do you think you can sell one roof a month? Well, like, that's a lot easier sell for that person than for a real estate photo, like, or for a music video person, right? Where it's like, well, I'm not really going to make money off of this. So I think it's just, I'll leave you with this. I think it's, you have to figure out where you want to spend your time and what kind of business you want to build. And for me, I'd rather clients who pay me more than more clients than pay me less. So hopefully that's helpful. If you want to learn more about how we can help, click the link below. We have a free training. You can book a call with our team if you want to learn more about how we can help. If not, it's helpful and we'll see you in the next one.
