How We Turn Onboarding Into a $40K Retention Engine

So again, we're gonna start on the left side, how most people do their onboarding session. We're gonna go all the way through and then we're gonna reverse engineer. And at the end result is you should be in a position where you're no longer having poor to okay onboarding sessions, but instead in a position where your client goes, damn, this guy's really good. I want to refer you out. I want to upgrade. And I want to pay you a boatload of money over time. So for example, I did this onboarding style with my tax client. She went from $1,500, 2 weeks later she added another account for a total of $3,000, then another account for $4,000, and now she wants to pay us $10,000 for a setter placement. That 4-month, for the average agency of $1,000 to $1,500, Is about $4,000, $5,000, $6,000, but instead for us, it's probably gonna be closer to $20,000, $30,000, or even $40,000. It's because I reverse engineered the onboarding process to optimize for referrals, upgrades, and renewals. So if y'all ready to boogie and party, this is it right here. Stereotypically, Most people start their onboarding session with a payment of money to kickstart a paying agency relationship, and then they will send an onboarding form. This onboarding form asks very stupid, inane, redundant, and repeatable questions. It is fundamentally flawed and arguably unfair for someone to receive this form from you. And it is of poor guidance to be sending it out. On those stereotypical forms, you're asking questions like, what's your contact information? You and I both know when you go to the doctor's office and they ask for your name, number, email address, zip code, birthdate, city, state, you're going, you already know my city and state. You don't need my zip code. We've already talked over the phone. Why are you asking this information again? When you type in things like, so what launch date do you want? Your client is of the belief that now I have to be in charge. When you ask questions about like, how would you rate your lead quality? We all know they're not coming to you because they got great knees. You and I both know their knees suck. Why are you asking them how bad their knees are? What does success look like? You think this is a great question. We all know what success looks like. And it continues on and on because you're asking questions like, give me a Google dump of your logos and assets. You can go find them. Where are your competitors? You should know them. What are your current marketing channels? That's Googleable. Further on and further on and further on, you think you're asking great questions, but you're really asking questions that reinforce a negative subtext. These are not good onboarding questions. These are questions that make your clients say, oh, I guess I should not be renewing with you. Oh, I guess I don't have to pay you money anymore. Oh, I guess I'm just gonna leave. And I know this because I have been onboarded and I have onboarded with this. These types of questions are low status. They're emotionally tone deaf. They offload responsibility. They waste time. They undermine confidence. When you ask these questions, it makes the client feel like they've hired a virtual assistant instead of a visionary captain that can execute. Again, I know this because this is how people onboard me. And when they ask questions like, what's my contact information? What's my launch date? What's my competitors? I know I will not be doing more than 1, 2, or even 3 months with them. When you ask questions like, can you send over any creatives you've run in the past? What your client hears is we don't have a starting point unless you spoon-feed us. When you ask questions like, do you have any examples of what you like? Your client hears, oh, they don't have a vision. When you ask questions like, who is your target customer? They hear, we don't have done— we haven't done any research. Help us figure it out. When you ask questions like, what KPIs matter most to you? You and I both know, you know that answer. And when you're hoping to launch is obviously ASAP. Like, why would I hire you to launch something in 6 years? Silly, stupid. It's redundant. And again, you have to understand something called subtext. Subtext is the text that appears in a client's head when you ask them stupid questions. When you have enough negative subtext, their brains are thinking, eh, no, I'm not interested. They'll create feelings that lead to failure and eventually the ending of a renewal, upgrade, or retainer conversation, even if they have client results. I'll say it again. If you ask these questions on an onboarding form, you will create subtext that leads into thoughts and feelings that will preemptively end your relationship with your client, even if you have amazing results. You'll elicit figures and feelings of trepidation, frustration, doubt, resentful compliance, the urge for them to micromanage you, apathy, and then more importantly, who's in charge? Because if your client has to tell you what's going on, you're not in charge. Your client is. And that's what happens again and again and again in agency-client relationships. That start off with poor questions. Those feelings determine your client's success and compliance. And instead of asking stupid questions on your onboarding form that lead to subtext of me thinking you're stupid, leading to feelings that make me know that you're stupid, so I end the contract, you need to reverse engineer into the correct feelings. Bigger picture, here's what is happening. You are secretly of the belief that operating in an average capacity is okay and fair because you believe that all things are equal, that everybody's got an equal shot, and we all have an equal opportunity, that success is equally distributed amongst all players. And if you are asking average questions, You've got a fair chance. This is incorrect because markets do not look like this, and success does not look like this, and opportunity does not look like this. When you ask average questions, you are of the belief you are playing safe. The reality is that success is heavily weighted to the winners. 80% of the success. is about 10 to 20% of the market. 80% of the results go to 10 to 20% of the players. And when you ask average clients or you act in average, or you have the belief that average is safe, you're not fighting over the middle market. You're actually fighting over the small percentage of the market. You are not fighting over the largest bucket. You are fighting over the smallest. This is where your average onboarding questions land you. This is what your average onboarding clients make you believe. This is where you exist when you ask average stupid questions. The quality of your agency relationship, the quality of your retainers, renewals, and upgrades is a function of the questions you ask on the onboarding form. You ask average questions. You're not gonna get average results. You're gonna get infinitely smaller, less than average results. You need to reverse engineer these feelings so that clients are impressed with the quality of the questions that you ask. Let's do it. First things first, you need to optimize and start with the highest dollar Highest, stickiest emotions and feelings, like relief that I'm here, like momentum and clarity. I finally feel like I know where I'm going. Prestige. I'm so happy Jeff took me on as a client. Intense interest in the journey. Courage. People that are rudders instead of boulders. Pride. And don't worry. We got this. The agency is leading. If your client has thoughts and feelings of this, not only will they stick around longer, but they'll actually leave you a testimonial on the onboarding session. How cool is that? You need to reverse engineer the thoughts and feelings of the onboarding session so your clients spend more money with you. To answer the question of how do I make this fucking happen? You move on backwards to the subtext. If you want your clients to say and to think, we've done this before, you are in good hands, you need to say things like, we've already mapped out your next 90 days. Here's the plan. If you want your client to have subtext and say, we do the work before we get paid, you're already ahead, you need to do things like, we already ran an audit before the call. We found 3 gaps and 2 quick wins. Here's what you're executing today. If you want your client to have subtext, like you get leverage, not labor, we make decisions, you get results. You need to say things like, here's what we've already built for you. No input needed. In fact, I got off the phone yesterday of a pitch call. I said, I'm not buying anytime soon. He said, cool, man, we've already made it anyway. Here it is. I now have the feeling of pride and relief. Everybody else is waiting to get paid. It took this guy 15 minutes. If you want your clients to think, hey, the agency is already looking 3 moves ahead for you, you need to start saying things like your competitors are doing X but missing Y. Here's how you'll outposition them. If you want your clients to have excited compliance, you need to say, don't think about messaging right now. We've already created 3 based upon your Client avatars. This is the subtext your clients need to think so that they have pride, relief, momentum, clarity, prestige, become rudders, not boulders. Again, we are reverse engineering this so that we don't become average, but instead become the top 80, 90, or 100%. This is how you look like a high status person, high status business, and then eventually deliver high status results. This is human being psychology 101, fellas. High status, emotionally aware, the ownership of responsibility and adding time. This is what you need to be doing and giving the impression and example of on the onboarding session. You wanna make the client feel like they have hired leadership and execution instead of another head that they have to manage. This is the biggest reason why clients, including me, end their contracts. It feels like I have another head to manage. That is irrespective of the dollars spent. This is why the phrase of The intern, the free intern got the better deal is true. Because you think the cost of hiring you is just money. It's also time and attention. And if I gotta watch you, that's 2 costs. If you give the implication and impression that you need to be watched, you're already ending it before it comes up. You need to ask better questions. So for example, instead of saying things like, what's your contact information? What's your launch date? And what's your lead quality? You need to give your clients a ranked choice of prebuilt assets. Here's 5 templates that already work in your industry. Rank them based upon how you think and feel fit with your brand. Amazing. Give your client a sample dashboard that will be filled in once every 2 weeks. Amazing. Give your client out-of-the-box KPIs. This is the goal. For every 10 leads, you should get 2 people on the phone. One of those will be qualified. Cool. Give your client milestones with due dates. From the day you pay, day 1, here's the milestones of the next 2, 8, 16, 64, 128 days. Push that shit out to 2 years. Magically, your clients will start sticking around for 2 goddamn years. On the onboarding session, you should be saying, here's your competitors. We tore them down, we did a breakdown of their funnel. P.S., I had to do it anyway. P.S., I did it 3 months ago. P.S., it's on my YouTube channel, but fuck it, I made the Canva anyway, so here we're going through it. Doesn't matter if you're right or you're wrong, you are giving the impression that you are not an additional head to manage and you're avoiding 2 costs. It's either money and time, not both. Tell them about the culture and the communication standard, how they will be spoken to, how they will be spoken at, what's appropriate for them to say and to not. For example, if you are a waiter and you're going to your head maître d' and you say table number 4 is missing bread and there's no bread, you're introducing a problem to your head maître d'. Instead, you should be saying, hey, table 4 is missing bread. There is no bread. I gave him fruit instead and gave him a $5 gift certificate. That is a solution. Now the maître d' simply has to say, great idea, or next time do something different. How many of you are telling your clients how to talk to you? How many of you are waiting to get talked to first? Give your client a list of quick wins. For their database. Hey, here's 5 text messages and 5 emails that you can send right here. Most clients will make our fee back twice over. Give them a priority list based upon me and my background and everything that we've done for clients just like you. Here's a list of top 5 priorities. If you feel that there's something on this priority list that should not be there, you can swap it out, but we're only working on the top 3 out of these 5. We're not gonna switch 'em around. You get to rank them. This is it. Thanks. And now your client is not talking to you about reviewing their sales calls, or they are. You should give your client a self-service AI assistant, which costs a grand total of, I think, $300 a month. Give your client samples, hooks, headlines, and tones. their video ads. Give them the top 3 client avatars and their psychographics and their selling points, their pain points. It costs 15 cents and 15 minutes to make this. More importantly, tell your clients what you won't do. How many people are telling that to their clients? How many people are going to their clients and saying, hey, here's everything that we do. And how many people are saying, here's everything that we don't do? Why the hell not? See the difference? If you have an onboarding session that is like this, we're giving them a ranked choice of prebuilt assets, competitor teardowns, sample tones and hooks, out-of-the-box KPIs. All of a sudden you are light years ahead of people asking for their contact information, light years ahead of people asking for their logos and assets. Light years away from people saying, so what does success look like? This is the type of stuff you should be asking, because when you ask these questions, the subtext is much higher status, which makes people very happy to do business with you and immediately send referrals. When we went through this process with our most recent client, they came on board at $1,500 a month. That's after a $3,000 setup fee, and they immediately went from $1,500 To three grand, to four grand, and now we're talking about a ten K setter placement. This is the type of stuff you need to be doing. These are the types of questions that move you over here, and now you're no longer fighting over twenty percent of the market. Now you're fighting over eighty percent. These are the types of questions you need to be asking to generate referrals. Retainers, renewals, upgrades. And this is how you turn a $1,000 one-time thing into an immediate 2x, 3x, and 4x. This is the type of sales infrastructure that makes ads very easy to get an ROI on. This is the type of sales infrastructure and business infrastructure that keeps clients forever. This is what is missing. This works whether it's a done-for-you service or done-with-you service, a do-it-yourself service. This works whether it's Stupid Simple Ads, a coaching program about Stupid Simple Ads, or even an info product about Stupid Simple Ads. It's all about asking the right questions to get the right subtext, get the right emotion. And then reverse engineering the correct emotions into the right subtext, to the right sentences, to the right deliverables. The challenge is that most people are accidentally of the belief that this requires a lot of work. That is also incorrect. Milestones with due dates are copy and paste. Priority list is copy and paste. Copy and paste, copy and paste, copy and paste. 15 minutes, 15 minutes already built demo deck. It's the same for everybody, same for everybody. You had to do this anyway. And this is in your assets file. The communication that you have on your onboarding session determines Happiness, the length, and the amount of money your client will spend to you, even if the results are the same. The difference is here you ask questions that make them say, goddammit, I have to manage somebody else. Here you're asking questions and delivering things that make them say, damn, I finally have relief. Somebody else is leading. I have courage, I have interest, I have prestige, and now I can be a rudder, not a boulder. Believe me, your client does not want to be in charge. They want you to be in charge. You can do that by doing this.