The Art of Building a Profitable and Effective Agency Mastermind

All right, welcome back to Agency Journey. This is your host, Gray MacKenzie from Zenpilot. This week I've got the pleasure of bringing on my good friend and industry colleague, JJ Russell. Jj, welcome to the podcast.

Great, thanks for having me, man. It's been fun working alongside of you. Now we get to get on here and maybe for me say some semi inappropriate things. Apologies to the audience.

Can't resist the opportunity. Right. Why don't you give. You're a podcast host and I've done a lot of this, so I'll let you give the quick overview. Who is jj? Tell us the, the quick story, the of the background. I'm sure we'll uncover more as we go through it.

Yeah, cool. So background that probably didn't get uncovered again after like the first episode of our podcast, which is the best damn agency podcast, is that I was in ministry for, for eight years, which people always find really amusing. I think particularly the people who are kind of like anti that culture and perspective. They're like, dude, you're, you're like a normal human. You have, you have bourbon in your background. Like, yeah, like, I don't know, Jesus drank wine. I like bourbon. I live in Kentucky. It's, it's my, my drink of choice. But so yeah, ministry for eight years, college ministry, was a pastor to church for a few years and then about three years ago got reconnected after a move with a roommate of mine. So that's also a little known fact. My business partner is one of my ex roommates from college and he's kind of a serial entrepreneur. Had built a sales like outbound lead gen company and was just stepping into building a like total sales ops solution consulting company for digital agencies specifically. So that's about three years ago. So originally branded sales driven agency, rebranded apex revenue. I came on to help sell that service for them. And so really what we were doing was building out sales operation, sales process, sales tech, sales teams for agencies. And so I did that for about six months. I did not last very long and two things became very clear. One is that ironically I am not a cold outbound sales guy. I can do it. I closed deals, drove revenue, but man, it just like eats away at my soul. I'm the networking relationship building guy. And so simultaneously what became clear was I really have a of a niche for entrepreneurship and stepping into this world full bore was something I was really excited about. So Joey and I, Joey Gilkey, again, business partner, spun up the best damn agency mastermind and launched a mastermind based off of our Expertise and the relationships that we had working in the agency space specifically for agency CEOs doing seven or eight figures. And so we've been running that for about two years and it's been been a whole lot of fun.

I love hearing like the, the short version of the story. Cause there's a whole lot to unpack from that. First of all, what's the website for the. For the Mastermind?

Yeah. If you want to find the mastermind, you can check us out at agencymastermind IO agencymastermind IO and so what'll be fun is by the time this podcast airs, we've got a new project in the hopper and so you'll find best dam agency mastermind again. Mastermind for seven and eight figure agency CEOs on that website. But we're building as a community. We're sort of in the pre launch phase. Four sub seven figure agencies. And so by the time this episode goes live, that will be live on the website as well.

Has your perspective shifted on the use of like six figure or seven figure agency as you've gotten farther into it?

Yeah, I mean I think they're sort of arbitrary markers I think too like kind of an easy status symbol to hold on to. It's an easy target to throw in a wall. I think those monikers as a target end up being sort of empty and also they don't ever really speak to what needs to happen to get there. It's just again, it's a sticker slapped on the wall and I know a bunch of six figure operators who in a lot of ways could run circles around guys who are doing $10 million. So I think yeah, what that means culturally has divided from what I think it means to the people actually doing it.

I think it's also there's seven figures sounds great until you hit seven figures and they're like what was the. Like I'm still just doing whatever. And I think this happens at every like I remember the second year with Guava Box with our agency and at whatever point we hit multi six figures and it's like, wow, we're multi six figures. That's crazy. We crossed like now you just kind of look back and laugh at that, but it's aspirational.

So you can be an agency mastermind, but if you just let anybody in, you know, now you're trying to solve a very wide array of problems and it's tough to get results that are kind of exponential in any one direction. And so for us we're not only just an agency Mastermind. We're not only just an agency mastermind with some collective kind of thought or growth like desires, but we're, we are that mastermind for seven and eight figure digital agency owners. So the caliber of the people that are in there and I've talked about how those are just numbers but like they are trying to solve, as I said, very similar type problems. They're not trying to find product market fit. They're not talking about niching down. They've done those things and they're trying to talk about how do I grow my team from 30 to 60 people without breaking everything in the next 12 months.

Right. As you've gotten into it longer have you felt like compared to the beginning, how's your expectation around how much teaching versus like education versus connection needs to happen? Was it more heavy on hey, we've got to teach and coach on some of this stuff at the beginning and it's grown, made more connection or gone the inverse. And that made me different in different areas too.

I think what's really cool is my evolution on this idea personally. It is synonymous with, in parallel to the growth and kind of change of mindset for the members in the group. And so Joey, my business partner has built a brand in the agency space as the agency sales guy. And so when people heard like hey, we're building this Mastermind, it's only for seven and eight figures. Here's our kind of qualifiers for who gets in and Joey's going to be there teaching and training on sales tactics and whatever. That was the thing that was the hook that I think got a lot of people into the community. And it is not why they stayed. Anybody that has stayed, which is, is most of them, anybody that stayed has stayed for the community.

Yeah.

Because they've realized one, they get more out of just being around these people. Right. Like osmosis what they learn from them and get from their lives. But then the biggest takeaways like the little nuggets and the game changing things for their business most often come from these members who are big time givers.

Yeah. Has that just said how you market that? Because I feel like we've got a similar like different thing but you know we go heavy to market with ClickUp. Hey, ClickUp for agencies. If you're an agency and you're looking at doing ClickUp you should talk to us like you get under the surface. And we do that because that's what people are looking for. Man. The last project management tools sucked. Maybe ClickUp. ClickUp's got a Lot of buzz. Like maybe ClickUp's the magic sauce. And the reality is like it's way less about a specific tool. Yeah, I've got all these reasons. Get at me on and do a two hour podcast just about why ClickUp versus We go systematically through the rest of the platform, but it's not fundamentally a ClickUp problem. It's fundamentally a human behavior problem. And so if you don't have the, the combination same three pillars that you guys are focused on or Apex Revenue is focused on going in and building sales works is like, hey, we've got tooling, we got technical problems, we got process problems and we got behavioral problems and we got to address all three of those. But we've stayed somewhat front and center. We don't try to hide from the fact that hey, we're not just focused on your ClickUp problems, we're focused on making you more profitable and productive. And that's going to wire other stuff. But do you feel like the Mastermind marketing has shifted though and maybe gotten away from that hook and then maybe, hey, we've got intention to not. Our intention is not to scale this up and have 160 people in the next six months in this Mastermind because then that, that sucks. You know, a lot of the life out of the Mastermind.

Yeah, it's definitely front and center in our marketing. It has been from day one. So anybody that bought into Joey as a sales guru did that solely through like sales conversations or just being tangential to what we've done in Apex Revenue. I think life is basically just this ongoing series of agreements. Right. And so we make agreements every day. We make them with ourselves, we make them with our spouses, we make them with our co workers. And I think the clearer those agreements are, you know, the more engaged, invested and committed people are to the agreed upon outcome. Most agreements are never said out loud. They're just things that you have subliminally decided on or you know, you, the, the environment that you're in has created an agreement for you and some coworker or some person. And that's never been said out loud, which is not helpful. But the agreements we made with anybody that was coming into this mastermind is, hey, we've got this code of conduct that is very clear about these are the things that we are committing to. If you do not adhere to these things, we will kick you out. And so what's funny is we have, we have kicked out more people than have left.

Yeah.

And I think that's us holding to Our agreements and having integrity with. If we really want this to be the best DAM agency mastermind and an elite community and resource for the people that are a part of it, then if you're not carrying your weight, if you're here just to take and not to give, if you're totally disengaged and not adding to the conversation, then we will kindly ask you to go find another community to be a part of. And as we've mentioned already, there are plenty of those that would gladly take you as long as you're willing to stripe, you know, swipe your credit card.

Yeah, right, right. Please, please, just bend. So for agencies who are thinking, so what's cool about your story that I like so much is this is like a desire that you have on your own for, hey, we have not found this community. We want to be a part of it. And I think that always gives you the ability to, to stick it out longer if you don't get quick, quick traction. Yeah, I'm into it. And keep pushing to make it what you want it to be. And there's the, you know, like, who are my customers? The people who like what I do. Like the that phrase or who are my fans? Like the people who like what I do and it's less about, you know, because I show up and I talk about ClickUp. They like me. And it's more about. No, because I'm this weird personality who's got my own quirks and I'm public about that. Like there's, there's people who like that and there's people who hate that and that's fine. There's public who. We like that enough. So I think that's powerful for you guys. But for folks who are thinking about it, maybe beyond that insight, which I think is really important, which is what do you want out of it? Aside from the revenue, aside from the numbers, what do you really want? But what else? Do you have any thoughts on what else people should look at like paid communities? We've got, yeah, sure, a handful of different ideas there, but what else have you seen work well or have thoughts on how to make it work well?

Yeah. Okay, so you already disqualified. The first thing that I would say is what do you want? Right. I think you gotta get really clear on what you want. If you just want to grow your top line revenue or your bottom line revenue or whatever, or bottom line profit, there's. It's like there is somebody for that. Right. If you want to operationalize your business, go bring on Gray and his Team. If you want to build a sales operation, go talk to Apex Revenue. If you want to go find a guru who's going to give you the seven step playbook to how to build a blank figure agency. Like, those people are a dime a dozen, go Google, you know, agency playbook or whatever. You'll find them. I think that communities should be like, this should be like a force multiplier. I don't know if I have a better way to say it, but like something that is almost like a filter through which all of your energy and efforts are exponentially multiplied in a certain direction. So the question is, what direction are you trying to multiply your efforts in? And so I posted this a long time ago and I'm by no means like a content creator wizard, but I think that this conversation can map back really well to like, as you're looking for this force multiplier, do you need a community, a consultant or a coach? Because so I would say that what community do I choose is a sub decision underneath this bigger decision, which is who is the right type of person or people to really help me engage in this. And so for me, it's like if you want somebody to help you work on yourself, this is the lens through which I see it. That's what a coach is for. They coach you on being a better you. There's a business coach, there's a mindset coach, there's life coach, there's a marriage code. There's all kinds of coaches that help you work on specific components of yourself. If you want somebody to help you achieve a very specific outcome in your business, to me, that's a consultant. Now there's a continuum of like, how strategic that person is. Can they help you think high level? Do they get into the weeds and help you develop the actual, you know, boots on the ground tactics that, that execute. But to me, again, consultants are there to help you create a specific outcome. Community to me gets a lot more amorphous because it is, it's like the specific like position of the community is going to dictate the outcome of the community. And so again, if you're looking for a seven step how to like that exists for you. If you're looking for people who can, if you're looking for a community of people who can speak into your life and business from multiple perspectives with, you know, multiple sets of experience, with multiple sets of insights, that to me is the value of a community over the other two, or aligned with running side by side with the other two. I think you could have all three. Right. You could have a coach you're working with, a consultant that's helping you work on your business and the community that you're getting these insights from something you can afford all those things. But I think what's cool about the community is it can be and should be, if applied correctly, a force multiplier in a lot of directions. Right. And so what's cool about. And I've seen this in the mastermind, where in our mastermind, people are super engaged. Hey, you need. You have questions about legal, you have questions about finance, you have questions about sales, you have questions about inbound, you have questions about crypto, you have questions about real estate investing, you have questions about being a husband. Because these guys are all high caliber leaders who are committed to helping each other. There is somebody in that group who's ahead of you in one of those areas and they're going to be additive to a force multiplier in your life and in your business in that direction. And so I see a lot of compounding benefits from a community like the one we've built.

Yeah.

I don't know if I even answered your question. I just started saying a lot of stuff.

I think that's helpful. Like all kind of starts with what you want and then figure out how you want to service and then, you know, kind of build from there. I want to go to something that you brought up earlier was like, hey, the commonality of these folks. Yeah, there's the business qualifiers, but then there's the mindset that they bring to the table.

Yep.

And you've talked a lot about mindset. Some of the podcasts that I heard you and Joey do talked about self limiting beliefs. But maybe, and I'm going to tie this into kind of a larger conversation around some of the trends that we see in the agency space. But what are the common. And you may have a systematic way of looking at it, or it might just be kind of like top of the dome style here. What are the common self limiting beliefs that you see talking with agency owners and leaders?

What's funny, he said you might have a system or this might be top of the dome. Joey and I could not be more different. Joey has a framework. The amount of times I've heard him say framework. The dude just walks around and thinks about IP all day long. He takes his dog for a walk and he thinks about how could I brand this? How could I framework this? And so his answer to do you have a framework for anything? Right. Yes. He would make one up on the spot. And it would sound really good. I am, I am off the top of the dome. I think a lot of it, man. Lenses through which I would view this through. I think a lot of it does come back to this question we asked earlier. Some of it's so tied to a revenue number. Right. So are these thresholds real or are they just completely arbitrary? And I think that most agency owners have like a dream for what they think that they can build. What's crazy is a lot of these dudes are super visionary. Most of them are.

Yeah.

And so that dream is like, it's elaborate. It's birthed out of their creativity. They've got a lot of positive momentum towards this thing. But when's the last time that you sat down and evaluated one? Why you even want to do that? Right. So there's like, there's the. It's less of a mindset piece and it's more like clarity of vision. What do you want to build? What do you want your life to be about? Are you owning your business or is it owning you? Kind of, kind of conversation with yourself or somebody else. And so I see a lot of agency owners pressing towards good friends of mine. Hey, I just got to get to. You said this earlier. Eight figures. Yep. I'm going to build. And there's a couple guys in the mastermind that are dead set on building $100 million businesses. And they probably will because they are badass operators. But like what happens when you get there? Right.

Yeah.

And what do you have to sacrifice along the way? And have you really sat down to consider whether or not building a nine figure business is the most important thing in your life or could it potentially be something else? And who's challenging those beliefs? So I'll make that one bucket of the self evaluation. Like when's the last time you really had a hard conversation with yourself or had somebody who was willing to challenge you on even the initial vision that you had for building the business? Cause then I think a lot of us just put our heads down and start running towards that thing and don't stop to look up and evaluate. So that's one. You have any questions there about that component?

No, I don't. I do think that's really true though, that we set a goal and then. And I don't, you know, there's a balance here. You don't want to change the goal every single day if you're leading a team. That's tough.

Yep.

But also, hey, we learn new information, our eyes get Opened up every single day. And so at some point there's gotta be, you know, if that's once a year or whatever, there's gotta be a, a changing of what's our vision, what's our goal.

I do think having that like annual review with yourself can be really powerful of checking in on what is my vision. Has it changed? Am I tracking towards this and not having it be in every week? 90 day thing, that can be exhausting for you and everybody else. All right, so the second bucket I think would be like, you've put the target on the map. Have you evaluated it? That was the first question. Like, is this really what you want? But like, why is that the target and why not? Further right. So there's a second group of people who, they just want to get to seven figures or they just want to have 10 employees or they just want to, you know, drive profit margins up to 30% or whatever it is. They've set a goal. It is kind of arbitrary. Goals are helpful. Most of them are arbitrary if we're honest. But why not Further right. And I think there's a lot of people that need to be challenged on what they think they have the capacity to do versus what is reality, which is man. Most people. I want to say all people, but I just want to check myself on my own belief here. I'll say most people. I think most people can go as far as they want to go. There's not really, at least in the space and level that we're playing at, which is in the six, seven and eight figures. I think that almost anybody could build a six, seven or eight figure business. Yeah, it just, it's like, do you actually believe that? And then what's it going to take to get there? Heard it said that intelligence is like speed to change.

Yeah.

It's a calculable formula. And so are you somebody who can hear something, think something, and even have the ability to like see what is possible and then take the action steps necessary to go do that thing? Or are you somebody that listens to a podcast like this or the 30 other podcasts that you listen to and then your speed to action is either non existent or it's super slow.

Yep.

That, you know, per this framework, that person's not very intelligent. But that's in some ways a choice or just an unflexed muscle.

Like we said, like, most people can go as far as they want to go. The one tweak that I would put on that as far as they're willing to go because I think what we want and then what we're actually willing to like. Willing to me implies having willing to sacrifice something to be able to get there. But I like that phrase a lot. And I do think, I mean it's totally true. You and I have Both seen the 10 year HubSpot partner agency who's labored away to get to $2 million at 15% profitability. And. And then we've seen the agency that's a year old and they're at $2 million with one offer and dude, real quick.

So recently I have been so humbled and I don't know where these people are coming from, but I'm running into them more often. These like 23 and 24 year old guys who I just met this guy, I wish I could say his name because he is what he's building is badass, but I don't want to put it out there for his sake. But met him, took an out of town trip, we grabbed a cocktail and he has built like a, like a three million dollar agency in like a little over a year once they solidified what they actually do. He's been playing around, but the dude dropped out of college, started this agency, kind of muddled around, figured it out. There's. He took action, Right. So part of it's like he was engaged in the doing, not just learning about the doing. And then he figured out what worked for them and they exploded. So this dude's 23, running this kick ass multimillion dollar agency that's growing, you know, 100% year over year. And I've run into a bunch of those people recently. And so for you to tell me at 40, 15% growth that more than that's not possible. Maybe more than that's just not possible for you right now because of your mindset, right?

100%. All right. I thought this would be a fun little game. I want to just say either a word or a phrase or comparison and just get your thoughts on. This is all stuff that pops up from the agency space. Okay. I'm trying to pick from my list, which one do I think is like do I start with a softball or starter?

So do I like sing a song or what's my response at the Spirit Leads?

Feel free to say I don't have any strong thoughts on it, but these are topics that come up or stuff that you've seen by working with so many agencies where you might have a preference one way or another. Cool. The first one is actually not a versus. I do have some of these that are this versus that. So POS is the first one.

Oh, man, I have got massively strong feelings.

That's why I wanted to ask. I know it's not all butterflies and sunshine, dude, I love it.

So here's the. I love the framework. Love it so much. It has changed my view of like how quickly you can turn around and operationalize a business. Oh yeah. There's these simple frameworks and if you just start here and work your way down into like the ground level metrics, everything is better. Right. And so I think if applied correctly, like anything, EOS has massive benefit to be added to just about any small business. Is it the right system for everybody?

No.

Does it draw on the same time tested operation principles as most other frameworks? Yes, but I love the fact that they've simplified it. I do think simple scales complex fails. I totally believe in that. And so I think EOS can be a very simple lens through which to make massive improvements to the way that you run your business. I think it can be sort of bastardized or like one I could be held up as like, oh, EOs. It's like, man, there's other frameworks out there and they're just doing the same stuff. I think second, the minute, and this is a personal preference, the minute that process usurps people, I have a problem. Pisses me off. And I think with any of these frameworks it's very easy to like worship the framework and forget about people in the process, when in fact all great processes do is create outcomes for people. And so I would say if that is the net result, you need to reevaluate what you're doing. But I do think that there's a way to do EOS where people are elevated and it makes everybody's lives better.

Man. We could unpack that one in its own podcast episode, but that would violate.

It sounds like based on all of this, we should just do more podcasts.

I know we should.

I just.

We went down this road once before. Okay, Speaking of kind of agency, CRM, sales hubs, whatever. HubSpot versus the field.

Man, there's some of this where I could probably just get myself in trouble. I'll say a lot of the same things that I said about eos. The tool is only as good as the one wielding it, right? And so I think that there are some tools that are probably more streamlined and easily implemented than others. I think there are some tools that have a more robust suite of services or utility than others. But at the end of the day. If you suck at implementing them, you're going to suck at implementing any of them. If you're amazing at implementing them, you could probably have success with any of them. And so I really do like HubSpot a lot. I think that people have this perception that was built 5ish years ago that it's clunky, it's, it's, you know, it's kind of the decent at everything, not sharp at any one thing type of tool. I've seen their, like, their sales functionality has gotten a lot better. If anybody from HubSpot's listening to this, I wish that your sales enablement tool had a little bit more like robust feature set. I have trended towards in my own personal outreach. This is for the mastermind running sales and like enablement sales outreach out of Apollo IO. I think it's a great tool, doesn't have near the backbone or like all of the features and suite that the, that HubSpot does. But their sales enablement could use I think a little bit like refining and sharpening. But outside of that I think they've really simplified things. I think it's really user friendly, out of the box. It does a lot for you. Um, maybe if you're a $10 million org, you need Salesforce, but if you're not, you know, don't pay a hundred thousand dollars to get it built out. Go buy HubSpot.

Right? Most profitable agency. Type this. When I wrote this out in my head I was thinking of like service line or what, what the focus.

I'll go this route. So the Warren Buffett, you know, you get wealthy by staying narrow, stay wealthy by going wide and diversifying. I've seen that be really true in the agency space. And so people that are hyper niched, I think you can hyper niche and sell for a premium and make it to eight figures. There's a world where once you kind of approach that place or get to that place, your TAM will not allow you to, to go much farther beyond that total addressable market for those of you listening. And so if you only sell one thing to one very specific group of people, you're going to run out of people that you can sell to. But if you sell one thing to one very specific group of people, you can charge a shitload of money and get really good at doing it. And operationally on the back end you can really streamline your delivery. So I think you could sell just about any service that way. And I was going to get into this later, I don't know if you would go to this place. But like staff augmentation is a trend that I see. And so getting really creative with staffing models and not carrying this massive amount of overhead and payroll, having a bunch of contractors leveraging VAs, leveraging overseas work, leveraging strategic partners who can fulfill on some things especially like the lower dollar, easier fulfilled work. I think all of those things are leverage to maintain high profitability.

I think that's a great answer and I'm not going to let you off the hook. You still didn't really answer my question, which is if I had to rephrase it, it would be like if you had to go out, assume you have equal knowledge of all the disciplines, what service would you want to bring the market in your agency? Theoretically.

So good. It's hard.

Yeah.

I just. Okay. So my, my brain immediately goes and I will answer your question this time. It immediately goes to the difficulties of certain service lines. Right. And so you know, I think you can get high dollar return on a lot of the creative stuff especially if you can build a really reputable brand and become like agency of record for some big players in the space right there. There's a lot of margins on that can be high.

Yep.

And so, but, but it's just hard as hell to do. And the, and like the team you have to carry. It's hard. It would probably be and I'm not as nearly as creative as Joey. It'd probably be SEO for a super specific vertical.

Yeah.

And it would not be low dollar, it'd be high dollar. And we would just position ourself as like the premium organic growth partner for a super specific niche.

Simple Tiger. We're coming for you.

That's. I mean the people that I see that are doing it really well, they're one of them and there's a couple other in the mastermind I think the least profitable. So to go the other way is just the everything for everybody agency. And you know everybody in their grandma talks about niching but to me that comes just more down to like the load you have to carry on the back end to deliver on all the things.

It's tough. Well, I asked because we're in the cool position where we get to see your profitability by service line across all these like organic social management.

So basically are you about to tell me, are you about to grade my answer right here? Is this what's going to happen?

No, not because I'm asking you because you have the opposite end of the spectrum. I get to see what's profitable to actually service on and what's not. Like, Organic Social sucks if you're offering it as a service unless you're really good. I don't think we've had Duncan from Fire Valley on the podcast yet. But like really good at Organic Social. Unless you're really good. Most a ton of agencies offer it and they're, you know, they're doing like 2011 type stuff. Hey, we'll post on your Facebook page and we'll throw on Instagram or whatever. And that is so, so low value that it's really hard to charge any type of premium for it and be very profitable delivering it. Had plenty of conversations. And did you know that you're making.

Powerful of checking in on what is my vision? Has it changed? Am I tracking towards this and not having it be in every week? 90 day thing? That can be exhausting for you and everybody else. All right, so the second bucket, I think would be like, you've set, you've put the target on the map. Have you evaluated it? That was the first question. Like, is this really what you want? But like, why is that the target and why not? Further right. So there's a second group of people who they just want to get to seven figures, or they just want to have 10 employees or they just want to, you know, drive profit margins up to 30% or whatever it is. They've set a goal. It is kind of arbitrary. Goals are helpful. Most of them are arbitrary if we're honest. But why not Further right. And I think there's a lot of people that need to be challenged on what they think they have the capacity to do versus what is reality, which is man, most people. I want to say all people, but I just want to check myself on my own belief here. I'll say most people. I think most people can go as far as they want to go. There's not really, at least in the space and level that we're playing at, which is in the six, seven and eight figures. I think that almost anybody could build a six, seven or eight figure business.

Yeah.

It's like, do you actually believe that? And then what's it going to take to get there? Heard it said that intelligence is like speed to change.

Yeah.

It's a calculable formula. And so are you somebody who can hear something, think something, and even have the ability to like, see what is possible and then take the action steps necessary to go do that thing? Or are you somebody that listens to a podcast like this or the 30 other podcasts that you listen to and then your speed to action is either non existent or it's super slow. Yeah, that, you know, part of this framework, that person's not very intelligent, but that's in some ways a choice or just an unflexed muscle.

Like we said, like most people can go as far as they want to go. The one tweak that I would put on that is like as far as they're willing to go. Because I think what we want and then what we're actually willing to like willing to me implies having willing to sacrifice something to be able to get there. But I like that, that phrase a lot and I do think, I mean it's totally true. Like you and I have Both seen the 10 year HubSpot partner agency who's labored away to get to $2 million at 15% profitability. And then we've seen the agency that's a year old and they're at $2 million with one offer. And dude, real quick.

So recently I have been so humbled and I don't know where these people are coming from, but I'm running into them more often. These like 23 and 24 year old guys who I just met this guy, I wish I could say his name because he is what he's building is badass, but I don't want to put it out there for his sake. But met him, took an out of town trip, we grabbed a cocktail and he has built like a, like a $3 million agency in like a little over a year once they solidified what they actually do. He's been playing around, but the dude dropped out of college, started this agency, kind of muddled around, figured it out. There's. He took action. Right. So part of it's like he was engaged in the doing, not just learning about the doing. And then he figured out what worked for them and they exploded. So this Dude's, you know, 23, running this kick ass multi million dollar agency that's growing know 100% year over year. And I've run into a bunch of those people recently. And so for you to tell me at 40, 15% growth that more than that's not possible, maybe more than that's just not possible for you right now because of your mindset, right?

100%. All right. I thought this would be a fun little game. I want to just say either a word or a phrase or comparison and just get your thoughts on this is all stuff that, that pops up from the agency space. Okay. I'm trying to pick from my list which One do I think is like, do I start with a softball or starter?

So do I like sing a song or what do I.

What's my response at the Spirit Leads? Feel free to say I don't have any strong thoughts on it, but these are topics that come up or stuff that you've seen by working with so many agencies where you might have a preference one way or another. Cool. The first one is actually not a versus. I do have some of these that are. That are this versus that. So POS is the first one.

Oh man, I have got massively strong feelings.

That's why I wanted to ask. I know it's not all butterflies and sunshine, dude, I love it.

So here's the. I love the framework. Love it so much. It has changed my view of how quickly you can turn around and operationalize a business. Like, oh yeah, there's these simple frameworks and if you just start here and work your way down into like the ground level metrics, everything is better. Right. And so I think if applied correctly, like anything, EOS has massive benefit to be added to just about any small business. Is it the right system for everybody? No. Does it draw on the same time tested operation principles as most other frameworks? Yes, but I love the fact that they've simplified it. I do think simple scales complex fails. I totally believe in that. And so I think EOS can be a very simple lens through which to make massive improvements to the way that you run your business. I think it can be sort of bastardized or like one I can be held up as like oh, EOs. It's like, man, there's other frameworks out there and they're just doing the same stuff. I think second, the minute, and this is a personal preference, the minute that process usurps people, I have a problem. Pisses me off. And I think with any of these frameworks, it's very easy to worship the framework and forget about people in the process, when in fact all great processes do is create outcomes for people. And so I would say if that is the net result, you need to reevaluate what you're doing. But I do think that there's a way to do EOS where people are elevated and it makes everybody's lives better.

Man, we could unpack that one in its own podcast episode, but that would.

Vibe sounds like based on all of this we should just do more podcasts.

I know we should. We went down this road once before. Okay, speaking of kind of agency, CRM, sales hubs, whatever, HubSpot versus the field.

Man, there's some of this where I could probably just get myself in trouble. I'll say a lot of the same things that I said about eos. The tool is only as good as the one wielding it, right? And so I think that there are some tools that are probably more streamlined and easily implemented than others. I think there are some tools that have a more robust suite of services or utility than others. But at the end of the day, like if you suck at implementing them, you're gonna suck at implementing any of them. If you're amazing at implementing them, you could probably have success with any of them. And so I like, I really do like HubSpot a lot. I think that people have this perception that was built 5ish years ago that it's clunky, it's, it's, you know, it's kind of the decent at everything, not sharp at any one thing type of tool. I've seen their, like, their sales functionality has gotten a lot better. If anybody from HubSpot's listening to this, I wish that your sales enablement tool had a little bit more like robust feature set. I have trended towards in my own personal outreach. This is for the mastermind running sales and like enablement sales outreach out of Apollo IO. I think it's a great tool, doesn't have near the backbone or like all of the features and suite that HubSpot does. But their sales enablement could use I think a little bit like refining and sharpening. But outside of that I think they've really simplified things. I think it's really user friendly, out of the box. It does a lot for you. Maybe if you're a $10 million org, you need salesforce, but if you're not, don't pay $100,000 to get it built out. Go buy HubSpot.

Right. Most profitable agency type. When I wrote this in my head I was thinking of like service line or what the focus.

I'll go this route. So the Warren Buffett, you get wealthy by staying narrow, stay wealthy by going wide and diversifying. I've seen that be really true in the agency space. And so people that are hyper niched, I think you can hyper niche and sell for a premium and make it to eight figures. There's a world where once you kind of approach that place or get to that place, your TAM will not allow you to go much farther beyond that total addressable market for those of you listening. And so if you only sell one thing to one very specific group of people, you're Going to run out of people that you can sell to. But if you sell one thing to one very specific group of people, you can charge a shitload of money and get really good at doing it. And operationally on the back end, you can really streamline your delivery. So I think you could sell just about any service that way. And I was going to get into this later on if you would go to this place. But like staff augmentation is a trend that I see. And so getting really creative with staffing models and not carrying this massive amount of overhead and payroll, having a bunch of contractors leveraging VAs, leveraging overseas work, leveraging strategic partners who can fulfill on some things especially like the lower dollar, easier fulfilled work. I think all of those things are leverage to maintain high profitability.

I think that's a great answer and I'm not going to let you off the hook. You still didn't really answer my question, which is if I had to rephrase it, it would be like if you had to go out, assume you have equal knowledge of all the disciplines, what. What service would you want to bring to market in your agency? Theoretically.

So good. It's hard.

Yeah.

I just. Okay. So my, my brain immediately goes. And I will answer your question this time. It immediately goes to the difficulties of certain service lines. Right. And so you know, I think you can get high dollar return on a lot of the creative stuff, especially if you can build a really reputable brand and become like agency of record for some big players in the space right there. There's a lot of margins on that can be high.

Yep.

And so. But. But it's just hard as hell to do and the. And like the team you have to carry. It's hard. It would probably be. And I'm not as nearly as creative as Joey. It probably be SEO for a super specific vertical.

Yeah.

And it would not be low dollar. It'd be high dollar. And we would just position ourselves as like the premium organic growth partner for a super specific niche.

Simple Tiger, we're coming for you.

That's. I mean the people that I see that are doing it really well, they're one of them.

Yeah.

And there's a couple other in the mastermind I think the least profitable. So to go the other way is just the everything for everybody agency and everybody and their grandma talks about niching but to me that comes just more down to like the load you have to carry on the back end to deliver on all the things. It's tough.

Well, I ask because we're in the cool position where we get to see your profitability by service line across all these like organic social media.

So basically are you about to tell me, are you about to grade my answer right here? Is this what's going to happen?

No, not because I'm asking you because you have the opposite end of the spectrum. I get to see what's profitable to actually service on and what's not. Like Organic Social sucks if you're offering it as a service unless you're really good. I don't think we've had Duncan from Fire Valley on the podcast yet. But like really good at organic Social unless you're really good. Most a ton of agencies offer it and they're, you know, they're doing like 2011 type stuff. Hey, we'll post on your Facebook page and we'll throw on Instagram or whatever. And that is so, so low value that it's really hard to charge any type of premium for it. And be profit, be, be very profitable delivering it. Had plenty of conversations in. Did you know that you're making 40% less on this than your average, not even like your most valuable service lines? And I think you should cut this or you're going to have to figure out some way to reposition it. So I get to see like CRO pretty profitable. That is one that's kind of newer as a discipline that some agencies, a number of agencies have figured out a pretty good way to monetize. But I don't get to see the sales side. And so I was curious about your answer is you get to see kind of the value and what's the close rate when we're trying to pitch this to the other end of the spectrum. So that's, that's helpful.

I so one thing just to speak in like bolster what you're saying, we've got a friend that's in the mastermind. I think you know this person, CRO agency that just sold and that's why we could talk about him because we both know him but just sold his agency but he was doing like 75% profit. Yeah, it was stupid. I mean when he told me the numbers I'm like, bro, that doesn't even make sense.

Right.

And the multiple that he got on that sale was pretty ridiculous too. And so I think CRO is a really good one to highlight. Tell me, so your experience hyper niched SEO or just growth partner? What's that look like from margin operations?

Good. So more niched. The hard thing about SEO is if you looked across the Board at sel, it end up middle of the pack or just below median in terms of profitability by service line. The challenge is almost all the agencies that we work with offer SEO. You know.

Sure.

And there's a big difference between the folks who know who are doing, hey, I'm doing SEO for this specific legal niche or this specific, you know, for. For SaaS or whatever, where profitability would be well above the median versus the agency that's like, yeah, as part of your retainer, you know, you've got 10 hours a month of SEO work, and we're just kind of checking the boxes and doing the basic stuff, and it's not sold, it's not packaged in the right way.

Yeah. Anybody that's got three prices on their page does not meet my requirements for most profitable.

So this is my hidden passion, is the combination of what we're doing and what you're doing. And you've got Marcel at Parakeeto talking about the pricing side, but just packaging. Can I just go? Like, this is a future life. Can I just go spend time? And I would probably get bored of it at some point. Having a lot of. Maybe not. I think there's a ton to unpack there. But, hey, how can we just package what we're doing better? And how can we tweak it to deliver? How can we tweak the delivery side to deliver a ton more value with not a ton more work? How can we tweak?

So what's really interesting, and this goes back to my previous statement around getting to seven or eight figures versus going to nine.

Yep.

We just had Scott Scully, good friend from abstract marketing. He came on and did a, like, a private training for the Mastermind group. And it was. It was one of these where, like, everybody just had an oh, shit moment. It was like, oh, this is what the game really looks like. If we want to go here. He. I mean, I can't. Seriously, there. There is nothing that I could communicate to you right now on this podcast that would tell you how mind blowing what they do in kind of in between their team and operations side and say like, dude, it is just. It's amazing.

Yeah.

Now, it's a byproduct of 25 years in the space. But a lot of people spend 25 years in the space and never get to where he is. But they have very predefined services at all anchored price points that are all available, you know, to anybody shopping. And they just kick ass when it comes to how they sell it, who they sell it. To and how they deliver. And he, it's funny, he's talking about niching. He's like, yeah, we've got like, you know, 10 or 15 niches. I forget how many he said. And I'm like, dude, is it even a niche at that point? But they've gotten so good that they've got specific teams who specifically deliver and specialized ways to each of those niches and it's. They're kicking ass all over the place.

That's awesome. Hey, I kept you past time but I have a couple more I want to run by you. Do you have a couple more minutes?

Yeah, I'll try to talk less.

No, it's great. Just because you hinted at this one earlier, I'm going to skip some of these that are on my list, but contractors versus employees. Yeah, that's all. I'm not going to give you any more context.

Yeah. Who do you want to be as a business? Is profitability the highest order of things for you? Is that the target? If so, having a big bench of contractors is probably really helpful. Scale up, scale down. Especially if you're project based. If you're not running things based on retainer and you got month to month expenses and revenue change month in, month out, then big bench of contractor is super helpful I think especially if you can find there are a bunch of contractors who can feel like extended members of your team so you can find the right person. Especially if you're operating in a fully remote setting. Like they can feel exactly like a W2. I think if you're big time on culture. You know, I met a guy a long time ago who I've not talked to in a long time, but their company had what they called the harmonic triangle. And basically all they were after is like max experience and synergy between their team, their clients and their company. He didn't care if they grew 15% year over year. He just wanted an awesome experience for all three of the people involved. And I would say at that point, full time employees probably went out.

Yeah, makes sense. All right. Off. Off the agency side of things, I originally wrote this as your best one parenting habit. But this is not necessarily the best. This is just like what's one favorite one thing that you do that worked really well?

I love talking about entrepreneurship with my kid, my 7 year old. So she's the only one. I've got a seven to four and a one year old, all girls and the seven year old is the only one that right now can talk at that level with me. Dude, it Is so cool. Like to see her wheels turning. I was listening to a podcast where they were talking about the entire education system's based around. And I think I'm using these words correctly. Like convergent thinking. Right. So it's like, how do you get the same answer the same way and there's only one right answer. When the world of entrepreneurship, it is the epitome of divergent thinking. And I do think that the people that go the furthest in life are the people that can creatively solve problems. And so what's been fun is just having my daughter creatively think through. Hey, you have a hundred dollars. What kind of business would you start? I would go sell hot chocolate on the corner. Okay, well, it's summer, so like, do you think people are going to buy hot chocolate from you? No. What if I take it to their door so they're inside and they drink it? Well, like distribution is going to be kind of tough. Like that's. How much time are you going to take and what can you charge for it? What's something that you could charge a lot more for and make it home and you don't have to travel around. I can make bracelets and sell them for seven bucks a piece. Well, how do you know people are going to buy them? Why don't you pre sell them? Cool. I'm going to pre sell 10 bracelets. She made 70 bucks, right? Like on a, on a 10 investment into some beads.

Yeah.

So it's like those kind of things. She knows what arbitrage is. She knows how to level up. She knows how to level up and use other people's money, which right now is just my money. She understands leverage. Right. Like she's just these things that I think will serve her really well in life. If not nothing else, just the ability to think.

Yeah, that's awesome.

How about you?

No one's asking this. My favorite one right now is we started probably six months ago doing. We just call it special time. Every Thursday morning. I've got a block till 10 o' clock on the calendar and my wife and I alternate. We got four kids. So one week she takes one, I take someone the next week and do it. It can be anything. I went fishing with my four year old.

Oh, that's awesome.

Or often it's just, hey, we can go get breakfast. There's these two diners that they love. Our next door neighbor owns and runs this cool old diner 10 minutes from here. So that's their favorite place to go. But yeah, it could be, it could Be anything but just go have special one at one time with each of the kids. And that's been really helpful to have dedicated time instead of, you know, before it felt like really hot and cold streaks. Like one week. I have three. Three different days or opportunities to go do special time with somebody. And if you have to do anything for a month, it's. That's just intentional one at one time. So that especially for the kids, not everybody cares about quality time to the same level. But my oldest daughter, who's also seven. The same. Yeah. The same thing, like quality time is. Is really important to her. So it's been really fun. Really fun habit.

That's a lens that I'm trying to think through too. So I love that you did that is make a commitment or make an agreement, then build the system.

Yeah.

Which you can appreciate. So you got a commitment to a thing. All right. Now how am I actually gonna make this happen? Repeatedly.

Yep.

So having the calendar blocked on Thursdays is a surefire way to make that happen. Love that.

The best accountability is telling the kids, here's what's gonna happen. There are plenty of weeks where it's like, oh man, I've got so much to do. Or we're tired and you think we could sleep in and not get up at 6:30 to try and go fishing this morning or whatever. And yeah, kids are not big into the let you off the hook game.

They are forgiving, but they're going to make you remember every time 100%.

So we are definitely doing it. So it's fun. This has been awesome. So let's point people to the Mastermind agency. Mastermind IO, right.

Yep, that's it.

We'll point people there. Anywhere else you want folks to follow along, J.J. yeah, you can.

So what's funny is you mentioned the podcast. We sunsetted it about six months ago, but we got 150 episodes in. Yeah. So this is less about what we are currently producing and it's more like, hey, there's some really good content around. Sales for agencies specifically. If you're easily offended, maybe don't listen to the Friday episodes, the sales on the rocks S O T R episodes because that's where we kind of get a chance to just like talk about all things culture, life, politics. So just be. Be forewarned. But yeah, so the podcast, super cool. Find it on YouTube, find it on Spotify, Apple podcasts, wherever. Best damn agency podcast. And that's it for right now, man. I think go to the website and you can find any of the other content that we're producing there. And like I said, there's a kind of stealth mode project that we're building right now that we've actually got. We've got some founding members committed to, and I'm really excited about what that community could grow into alongside of what we're doing at the best damn agency Mastermind. And so check it all out at Agency Masterminds IO.

That's awesome. JJ Crushed it. Thanks for coming on, man.

You crushed it, man. I appreciate you. Thanks for inviting me.