21: Start & Scale A 6 Figure Service-Based Business - #GrowYourLife

Hello and welcome to the Grow youw Life podcast where I talk about ways to grow in your life and your business. If you grow in your life, it affects business. If you grow in your business, it impacts your life in huge ways. If you're not part of the hashtag grow your life movement in the grow your life community, join it on Facebook. Look up GrowYourLife on Facebook or go to my website Jeremiah gracowski.com Click the link to join the community. It's a virtual mastermind of people growing in their life and in their business. Just like you. You can absolute questions and give input to people. Join that group as well. I give away coaching every single week on my Instagram and I'll tell you a little bit about that at the end of this podcast. How to Win a Free Coaching Session with me Normally I charge $1,500 an hour for these coaching sessions. They're free for you if you listen to the end of this podcast. Today I want to talk about how to start, grow and build a six figure or more consulting agency. Probably going to condense the title down when I actually type it up on the websites. That's not really going to be what it is. That's really the topic. Start, grow and build a six figure or more consulting or services agency Doing a skill set. Now there's so many branching areas of this. The first one is for you to identify what you want to help people in. Okay, so that's coaching Consulting skillset. Now this is not specifically around coaching. This is more going to be those for the one Do a services based agency. If you are wanting to just do coaching, I will talk about that more in the future. For me, I attach coaching to services. They really are trying to hire me for services, but they get coaching is generally how it works for what I've built successfully. And if you're wanting to start out, you have to be more of a servant. If you're just starting out going directly into coaching, you're going to have a harder time finding coaching clients without being able to get on the phone grind. Sell people on what your coaching is and prove to them that you can get them results without manipulation. But if you can also promise to deliver a certain result and assist in that, now you're more than just a coach. You're a consultant and a service provider and building an agency now. Ha. For those that are listening to this, I'm sure you're like that's not how that works. See, I've never had formal training on building an Agency, doing coaching or doing consulting. All I'm talking about with you guys is my experience of what I've done and what has worked. And that's what I want to pass on to you. This is not going to be a step by step, six page worksheet organized system with contracts and fill in the blanks of copy and paste how to start an agency. If you're looking for that, there's plenty of guys out there that sell that. In the future I may offer that. I do have my website building course and I do plan on adding a pro version to it that includes how to start a website building agency specifically in that niche. That's really the only area that I could help you with that specifically that I will recently. But this is more of an overall broad spectrum of how to start a business. Helping other people essentially is what it is and make money quickly, not the long way. So a lot of people look at businesses and they look at them from reverse order of the result backwards and then they try to build from the result backwards instead of starting where the person who started, started. What I mean by that is you look at somebody that's done a great thing, somebody that has done something that you are trying to do, trying to accomplish and you're trying to copy what they did by starting where they are now. And you're gonna struggle doing that. So one of the first things to do this before you start is pick what your niche is, what you're going to offer. And it's to be pretty specific, I've landed on two very specific things that I do and I actually wasn't even clear on them four months ago, you guys. So I started a six figure agency a year ago. I went from nothing, zero income, making a minimum of $10,000 a month on our lowest months. Now after just six months, we made that consistently. And so I can help you get there with this. I can help you get there with this. I'm building and creating and growing more of the progression of that now. But if I gave you the process to then progress past that point of making six figures, I would be doing you a disservice by lying to you and telling you that it would that process didn't matter. Process does matter because you have to be so confident and know what you're doing that you can get results for people. Now if you're somebody that has done this type of a thing for a long period of time, dive into it. Dive into what your key skill set is that you can help people do mine are two things now that I only do as far as an agency side of things. Facebook ads management. That's it. That does not mean that I am going to coach you on how to do your ads. I can manage your ads and if you're also paying me for coaching, I can then coach you on how to do your ads. Facebook ads management. And then I do executive coaching and consulting and sometimes I dive into as well with the executive coach, coaching, marketing teams. Those are the only two things that I do, and sometimes three is that step to where I work with an executive, a CEO, somebody with a vision, and I help them execute it by going all the way down to the advertising. And then I will, hands on either myself or my team, work on your advertising campaigns. But I've realized that I actually can't get the results that I need to with advertising campaigns unless I'm working with either the marketing team or the executive. And many times if I'm only working with a marketing team and not the executive, the results were 1/10 or less of what could have happened working with the executives. So that's what I've landed in. My niche is before I was kind of doing everything. I would build websites for people, I would do graphics design, I would do videos, I would do ads, I would do this yada, yada, yada. And it. And it took me hundreds of hours to do that when really the only key skill set that I was actually doing that was valuable was that first initial meeting I had with people where I could cast vision for their future and then either build a team, mobilize a team to execute that vision. So I've, what I've done was I've focused on how can I do more of that, how can I find somebody and help cast vision with one meeting that shifts the result of their entire organization. And if that involves Facebook ads, then I will get involved on that one piece right there of the Facebook ads. And that's worked out well for me. But in the beginning, I did all these other things. I had a lot of skill sets. So you have to hone in on what yours is. What is your unique skill set? Yours is not going to be mine. You're not going to copy me. You can't. If you tried to, it wouldn't work. You're an individual. I am an individual. We are different. We are authentically supposed to do what is our key wheelhouse. Find what yours is. If you don't know what it is, then you need to do some soul searching. There's some podcast Episodes that I have on that. Once you hone in and identify what that thing is, now, you can put it out there and how do you put it out there and get clients? So this is how you start it. Okay? You identify, what do I have to offer to the marketplace that people will pay for? Once you identify that, you can build a business around it. That's it. All it takes to start it. Now, I'm not going to go into the nitty gritty of all the details of the legal and all that. I went the easy route and paid way more money than I should have and just used LegalZoom because it took me 10 minutes. And I appreciated that convenience to start an LLC. Started a company and got a bank account, and now people could send me checks to my company, and that's how I file for my taxes. Boom, super easy. Got a mailbox that I could put at the bottom of my website, at the bottom of my emails. Got a Google voice number, you're in business. And I actually did that for a whole year before I had a website. In fact, my entire website was one page that had my email address. And for an entire year, I built an agency to six figures consistently with an email address. No website, no phone number. If people wanted to get a hold of me, they would email me. And it was all word of mouth. And I did that differently that way. Now you might be saying I don't know how to do word of mouth. Listen to the end of the podcast. I'm going to give you some solutions that will work and will open up your mind to possibilities that you never thought were possible. Right now, I'm just sharing my experience with you. And that was my experience was word of mouth. You know, I started with two clients. And this is. I'm gonna go into more of this, of how to get clients quickly through word of mouth. Please do not shut the podcast off, because I said that. And then how to scale or reverse the order. Listen, word of mouth is gonna be your easiest traffic to get because you want to find people that already know the skill set that you have. Find people that already know that you're good at what you're talking about, and then work with them first and ask for referrals. Now, let me back up for a second here. So I did that for a year. All I had to do was get five clients to pay me $2,000 a month, and that's ten grand a month. Four clients to pay me $8,000 a month was just under the six figure mark. One client to pay you $2,000 a month can change everything for somebody. If you can help one person reach their goals and they pay you on a consistent basis. You started an agency. And so in this you have to identify do I have skill set? Unfortunately, I've seen a lot of agency trainings out there that teach people to fake that they have skill set and then to hire and outsource underneath them people. Now this is okay, and this works, but not the way that I'm talking about. And I don't really like to talk about building things that way. If you already can find people that you can just outsource the work to, that's great. That's called agency arbitrage. You can go to upwork.com, find a trusted individual and I'll talk about this in a little bit. I'm going to talk about these different forms of agencies. The non agency agency, which is the lat, which is actually I'm building, I'm personally building everything in reverse order of what most people say to do. So I'm giving you my perspective on it and then I'm going to bring it back around to offer you the decision to decide which one is best for you. Okay. The non agency models where you take people, let's say somebody charges $2,000 a month for a service, you then go find the client and charge $3,000 a month and pass it on to that person. So that's a non agency model and you keep the spread of $1,000 a month. I decided to not go that route because I had skill set of execution. And it was actually, it takes me more work to explain to people sometimes as well as to vet people. So what I wanted to do is I really wanted to dive into what I have done for the last 15 years of being a laborer, being an employee and working and doing things that get results for business owners. And so I started with word of mouth. I asked some friends that knew the skill set that I offered if they needed help with anything. And the first client I told him, I'll do it for free. And from there I actually did this. And I stumbled upon this method of word of mouth marketing when I was 16 years old. By accident, I got my first agency client at 16 years old. And then I got two more doing this method. And at 17 years old, I was making $40 an hour, full time income doing that. So I would, I would bill them hourly at 40 bucks an hour for like 14, 15 years ago. Yeah, 15 years ago. And that's why with my Website building course I say, you know, I've been building websites professionally for the last 15 years. That's how I got those first clients. And then I did video production, audio production, all these things. Marketing took over as the marketing director, media director, the marketing director, you know, with my mom's business, if you guys follow my mom. And now I'm building my business in a unique way, doing stuff like this podcast just to share with you guys what's inside of me that I have always wanted to help people learn, but I haven't had language for. And so that's what this podcast is for, is to help you get that language. To get those first customers, I had to lay down my ego aside, even though my skill set was a high level and offer work for free. And so when I started my agency a year ago, a year and a half ago, doing services, what I did was I went to two people that I knew that knew my skill set and needed help. And I offered them to pick the price. Basically I said they were paying somebody else to do something. I said, pay me what you're paying them and I'll get you five times the result, big ask. But that's exactly what I did. They paid me. It was way less than I wanted, but they promised referrals and it was a friend of mine. Here's why Warm Market is so important. The friend gave me the referrals. See, a cold prospect is probably not going to give you a lot of referrals, even if you help them. But a friend, if you can help a friend or a colleague or somebody that you met that has seen you over the years, that's why Warm Market is so valuable. And so I went in as a consultant, not an employee, to help them. Now, where I've failed in the past is I would get a consulting client and then I would turn them, become their employee. And I decided after, you know, doing that I wanted to stick with being a business owner myself so I could choose my hours, choose my life. Nowadays I don't even really work until 7 o' clock at night. I spend most of my day just kind of hanging out around the house. My wife, the puppies. Maybe I'll do a, a video like this. I'll, I'll do my live videos, I'll go out, I'll go to the gym. I actually was able to start going to the gym more just by flipping my schedule around and having that time freedom. And so you need to have time freedom. And that's what the purpose of why you need to have an agency is. But the mistake that most people make when they start an agency business is this they spend all of their time helping people do things. And in the beginning, the model. I wish I had learned all of this that I'm gonna share with you in this podcast. When I started a year ago, a year and a half ago, I even had people telling me this. But I didn't quite get it until very recently. To where I've been able to increase my clients, increase the revenue, increase my reach and decrease my hours without hiring staff. Yet I still don't have staff. I have one girl that helps me very part with some of my videos and that's about it. Other than that it's me doing everything and that's what I want to share with you is how to be able to do that. To start, you have to lay your ego aside and realize that you're probably going to have to lose money on your first client or two. I meet so many people that want to start an agency or do something like that and they can't get their first client. The way to get your first client is to lower the price. And if you don't have the skill set that's valuable to them, you're gonna have to increase your skill set. So where I've seen a lot of people also mess up is they will sell agency services they can't really deliver on if you can't really deliver on it. If you're a good salesperson, you can sell people on just about anything. If you're not a great salesperson, you're going to have to have a higher quality output to what you can deliver or learn a new skill. And then if you have skill, you have good sales skills, but you're having trouble getting your first client, lower your price and come in at that rate with the expectation of it's a referral or offer a trial run, you know, 30 day trial. 30 day trial with maybe a contingency plan attached to it. So that's what I did with a lot of my first clients. See, I never suggest working for free long term for everybody. Anybody offer to do stuff for free with a contingency plan that if it works out for them as good as or better than they expect, that they would be open to a paid role with you. Otherwise you'll have to move on because you can't keep doing work for free. But you want to help them to prove your worth. And this is a way to front loaded a little bit in the front end and then get paid in the back end and that's how you can get clients. So once you start your agency, once you pick what you're going to do now, you can get clients that way. And if you still don't know what you want to do, here's the deal. I really recommend that you go buy my website building course and learn how to build websites. Because building websites is the number one thing that all business owners now in 2019, 2020 need. And if you can get that skill set and then get clients to build their website for them, you could charge $2,000 a month to build a website for somebody. If it takes you three months, that's six grand. Bid them $6,000 and put a contract in place. You can build them a site with Squarespace for $6,000 following what I taught in that course. 10,000, 20,000. If I'm building a website right now for somebody, I charge $20,000 just because I don't have staff, I don't have people I really want to refer out for that type of work. So if it's me doing all the work, that's how much it costs. Which is why I'm actually not trying to get new clients in. That is what it is. I'm actually trying to get more coaching clients and work with their teams, which maximizes my time and effort and ability and result. Find what you are most valuable at or learn a skill set and then that's what you can offer. If you still don't know what skill set to learn, go through some of the other episodes of my podcast. I have one about how anybody can make $100,000. I have another one about like why you need to make more money, ways to get out of your head, stop making validation your biggest goal. That's going to help you with that. If you're still stuck in that place, that's going to help you get past that and get to where you're called to go and get more time, freedom and build a six figure business. So the idea is this. You start with a service based business, a service business model. You offer a service which then turns into coaching and consulting to where you systematize it and then once you systematize it. This is where I also see a lot of people mess up, is I will start with this always. I want to do it myself first or know enough about it that I could direct a team with confidence instead of not having confidence on how to direct teams. And I know my target market that's listening to this. You probably don't have the confidence to direct teams, technology, marketing, advertising, all of that. So you need to learn some of those skill sets on your own before you can direct other people to do that. If you do have that skill set, props to you. Just go find more people to duplicate what you do. Okay? And that's what that is. And so for me, I started with. I always start with. It's more because it's fun for me. I love learning new things. I posted a video the other day on how to learn new things. In less than 20 hours of learning, you can learn as much as you need to. At least direct teams in about 20 hours of knowledge. My Squarespace course is 10 hours. That pretty much imparts to you all of my knowledge about Squarespace. And then you could take that and do some 10 to 20 more hours of research on your own to go further. And then that's what I have the Facebook group for in there. That's why I'm going to have an additional training added to it on how to build a website building agency on top of that, to help people get clients, book clients, sales calls, contracts, and how to close deals to build websites. Websites are basically digital real estate. And so if so, think of it as if you're building a website, you're getting in the contracting business on the Internet and you're the contractor, slash, builder, slash, sometimes investor. And you can make money that way. It's great. You can even get ideas from those clients that you serve of other things that you might be able to do, get referrals, find different methods, you'll increase in your skill the more you do it. It's all methodical. And so the biggest part about building an agency, I want you to say, is you need to have some kind of a skill set. If your skill set is in sales and you need to find people that are skilled to work underneath you, if your skill set is in doing the work, then you need to find salespeople. If your skill set is in leading, then you need to find salespeople and leaders if you want to. In the beginning, this is what I did. I'm not recommending this as the best model for you, but if you can grow in both sales skills, execution, the labor part of it, and leading teams, those three things, if you can gain those skill sets, you can be unusually successful with an agency or any organization because you'll know how to do the job, how to get customers, and how to lead an organization. Those three skills, leadership of organizations, job execution and sales involvement, building the product, getting Customers and organizing the team that does all of that. And so in the beginning, that's. That's what you have to kind of sometimes do all the work of yourself, find which one you're most skilled in and do that more often. Okay. Find what you're most skilled in and do that more often. So a year and a half ago, I would say actually I was probably less skilled in leading teams and more skilled in doing execution. But I was like, right there, they were kind of hand in hand. And so over the last year and a half, I've actually increased my skill in leading because I studied it. I studied leadership over the last years. That's what I've spent the last year, the last year and a half studying is how to lead, how to be a good CEO, how to lead CEOs, be an executive coach. And now I've gotten better at that level. My track record's proven it. So now I almost will. I'm not going to be doing the execution side of things, except for Facebook ads, because I still like doing that. And I haven't found anybody that's quite at the level that I do them yet that I would like to pass it on to. But growing in leadership allowed me to shift and pivot my agency. So in the beginning, look at which skill set you have the most skill in. Double down on your strengths and either I would simultaneously hire out your weaknesses, partner your weaknesses. So this is what I did. I actually partnered my weaknesses with two guys that were very business, sales minded and CEO leadership minded. And I learned from them as well as they helped get me deals and lead teams while I did the execution. And then I learned from them of how to kind of do that. It all became this synergistic model for me. And so for you, find who you know. That's why I love warm market. That's why in the warm market, then learn from your customers. Learn from them. Become a student of those that you serve. I'll go into that in a second. Why becoming a student of those that you serve in your agency is so important and will set you so far ahead of anybody that the competition really won't be able to compete. And that's what's happened with me as well. I keep drawing stories because this is really kind of what I'm doing now, what I've done over the last year, and I'm passing it on to you. These stories are purely not meant to brag, but to inspire you of what's possible over the last year. And this is not Something that I was doing prior to this, I was merely just executing and working as an employee and then doing some team leadership inside of a company, my mom's company. And so after leaving that, now this is the, the new journey that I've been on is growing in leadership and really honing in on leadership skills. So you can learn new things, you can learn new skills, you can learn things that will help your weaknesses. Double down on your strengths and either find somebody else to shore up your weaknesses or learn new skills in those areas that you're weak. That's really the formula for success. Do more of what you're good at and then find other people to do what you're not good at. If you don't have the money to find people, learn how to get better at the things you're not good at. 1, 2, 3. Like, if you do that, you cannot fail well unless you then don't put it into action and go to work, you know, so in that, building an agency, that's how it works. That's how you can get your first couple clients. Word of mouth. If you want to do advertising, I still would recommend word of mouth. And this is, this is what it is, man. This is what it is, guys, gals, is you have to prove your sales method. You have to prove that you can actually get a client. If you can't get your first client, you're not going to get it through lead generation. You can't get a customer, word of mouth in person, on the phone. You're doing Facebook ads, lead gen funnels, whatever. That's not going to help you as much. It might get you more people to then fail at, to then get better at. So that's the, that's the side of this. If you're really bad at this and you've killed your warm market, then you got to generate leads, which is, which is great. I've kind of almost become exceptional at warm market and I saturate that level until I go into lead gen. I maximize what my warm market can give me before I go out into lead gen. And that's just something that I've done. It's great. It builds relationship friendship. You're helping people, you're not trying to sell them on services. You are trying to help them reach their goals by serving them. And that's why with warm market, offering to do it for free, offering to help at a very low cost, less than what the rest of the marketplace does, will give you experience and give you some income ahead. One of the biggest Caveats a lot of people have with warm market is I don't want to sell my friends and family. Yeah, but your friends and family would love for you to help them and cut them a deal. You see what I mean? So if you can cut a deal for friends and family, get business real quick, get some referrals because you got, you see your warm market, if you're serving them and helping them, they want to see you succeed. So then they'll refer business to you and give you leads. Especially if you ask for it. If you just ask for it. I asked all my clients for leads. I got like two referrals from each client initially. That's how I've now built my agency over the last year is that. And I did it in less than four months. I got, I got the, I got the first two clients was making very little money, got two more off of them, got two more off of them and two more off of them. Maybe one more, something like that. And then one of them quit. But oh well, that's attrition. That's, you know, 10% quit, 90% stayed on the one that quit. It wasn't really a good fit anyways. I don't think we didn't even actually execute or go forward. We just did a lot, a lot of back and forth conversation. He got a lot of free coaching from me. Don't be willing to check your ego at the door and serve somebody. Building an agency is all about serving people. Grow in skill set or find people. You can find people on upwork, you can find them through your own network. If you look for that friend that just started a video production business that you can refer to somebody else. Here's another one that I like to do, and this is kind of like a little hack is instead of hiring people right away to help you with your agency, refer them a bunch of business for free and then ask them to cut you a deal on the back end to help you. I've done that with, you know, with some friends of mine, referred them a bunch of business and then when I need to come to them for advice or a quick help, they'll cut me a deal. I don't even have to ask for the deal, they just cut it automatically. They'll cut me a deal because I sent them so much business, it was worth it to them. I learned that from one of my mentors. It's kind of what. He did the same thing for me. He sent me a ton of business. I cut him a deal and we're friends to this day because of that. And it's, it's, it's a mutually beneficial thing. We even do some mutual mentorship in a way. He has a skill in one area that I don't. I have skill in one that he doesn't. We help each other and raise each other up. It's great. So in this, that's how you can find your first customers with your warm market to generate leads, use your social media. You. That's where content creation comes in. You guys, you can prove to people that you know what you're talking about. For example, I got these 20 podcasts. I have 10 minutes of videos every single day. Hopefully, at this point, if you're listening to this podcast, I proved to you that I know what I'm talking about. Now, most people that are listening to this, I also know can't afford my coaching. I may be offering a discounted rate here in the future, but I do give away a free coaching session for people that write me that, that engage on my Instagram, not who write me, who engage on my Instagram. And I'm going to tell you about that at the end of this podcast. So the reason I generate content is that it created an asset. It proved my value without testimonials. It shows people that I know what I'm talking about. And now I'm getting lots of people. They write me and I get, I'm getting lukewarm market leads. I get people asking for help with stuff that I never, never dreamt of. They're asking to hire me, and a lot of times they're like, I don't quite have as much to hire you at. Which I'm. Okay, cool. So I'm honing in on more of my target market. My target market isn't generally on social media. I'm trying to help raise up all of you guys. There's my little. My little bribe is if I give you enough training that's gonna make you a ton of money, maybe one day you'll hire me for consulting or you'll buy a course from me, something like that. Or maybe you'll give to a charity that I support. Something like that. Whatever that is. Or at least share this podcast with somebody. Share this podcast. That's the only thing I ask if you listen to and this has impacted you, is to share it, Share it with somebody so that it can help them grow as well. And join the hashtag, grow your life community on Facebook. Now, to generate leads, you need to have a website. You can generate them through Facebook, there's a messaging app through that and then calendly. So if you don't want to use a website, you can get calendly and just run ads to your calendly form to fill out free calls. If you're having trouble with people hiring you, one of the best ways to get leads is, hey, I'm offering free consulting. If you're having trouble getting that, then maybe you need to work on your messaging, your copywriting, get some leads that way, get on the phone with some people, grind the phones, talk to people, fail. I haven't really done a whole lot of that, which is why I'm kind of coming at this from a different side. There's lots of great people out there that teach about lead gen. As far as agencies go, I have not tried to get any agency clients through lead generation. So this is my way to do it. Without ads, without money spent, without building leads through your warmer, lukewarm market, asking for referrals and helping serve people. And that's how you can build and build an agency that way. Lead gen, though. Yeah, a website. I mean, at this point, this is that old phrase beggars can't be choosers comes into play here is with lead gen, because if you can't get people with all those other methods I described, then this is where beggars can't be choosers comes from. You have to have a website to really sell it. If you're selling a service, you have to show people that you have a certain level of value. And that's what my course. Website Building made Easy can also help you do is to build a website that generates leads. You can use a mailchimp form. You can offer, you know, some like a free training that generates leads with an autoresponder to get them to schedule a meeting with you. This is all what lead gen is. And I'm gonna dive more into lead gen here in the future. Those are unique ways to do that. However, you can get on the phone with somebody. So one of the ways to do that is a free product, you know, a podcast, free videos, a group. I've generated leads that way without advertising. I actually do advertise my podcast in my group though, to get more people listening and tell people to share it. And then I can get and talk with them and close the deals that I want to. I don't close deals that way. Okay, now to generate completely cold traffic leads, the best way to do that is with like some sort of a free offer. Like they do an opt in that's related to what your service is. And you're basically giving them away high value, that'll get them results. And you can do that through your social media, through podcasting, through all kinds of different methods like that as well. And then you can have an autoresponder, you can do a follow up, you can reach out to them, you can talk to them, you can have a Facebook group, however, you can get in front of other people and see who you can help. That's how you generate leads. Facebook groups are great ways to do this. There's, you could do it cold traffic. You just reach out to people on a cold level, you know, start a conversation. I hate it when I see amateurs that are like, hey, I run an agency, I can help you do this and this and this. What if you just started the conversation with hey, I see you're doing a lot, what are you up to? And you just start a conversation with somebody. I've gotten customers and clients that way where I just started a conversation trying to see how I can build a relationship with them. So what I like to do is I actually like to turn my cold market into warm market and that's who I work with a lot. It's another more of a harder method to do things, but it's really, it's really more long term sustainable and they stay with you longer that way. If there's more relationship built there, this is great. I haven't even really talked about a lot of this stuff before. So those are the different ways to get clients. And then to build really is about figuring out, okay, now I've maxed out my time with what I do can do, what am I really skilled at, what can I outsource? And then for me, what I actually had to do is I had to actually flip my day around for my maximum output time. So I found I was actually trying to work 9 to 5 and that was my lowest output with my agency work because I was doing a lot of phone calls then. So what I decided to do is now I actually don't work. I take phone calls while I'm out with the family, out doing stuff, hanging out, maybe playing Madden. And I'll take a phone call real quick, just chilling, going to the gym, having fun. So what I did was I flipped my fun time instead of it being in the evening like most of society is, I'm spent, I'm spending time having fun during the day and then I'm doing a lot of my grinding work right before bed and I'm Then waking up a little bit later. So I shifted all of that around. It works because of my family and what we do. Your situation is going to be different. You can't just copy what I do and it equate to exactly your blueprint. I'm so tired of people thinking they just take what a mentor says like me, and that's a blueprint. I want to help you think. I want to help you learn to think for yourself. Because if I give you a fish, it'll feed you for a day. If I teach you how to fish, it'll feed you for a lifetime. A mentor that only tells you what to do is giving you a fish for the day. I'm not that kind of mentor for anybody that I work with and I know that that's a niche that I've kind of carved for myself. I'm not going to be the one to tell you exactly what to do, but I'm going to teach you how to think. And that's what I even do. With my website building course. I've condensed all of my knowledge and skill over the last 15 years of building websites into that course to teach you how to think about building websites, to then be an expert, to be a professional. When you reach capacity of what you have to do, what you can do in your business, rearrange your time management, look at what you can take out. There's a whole other side to this as well. I'll talk about. Let me just share one story about something that's really helped me with my time management that I did that changed everything for me. Stop getting your self worth and the validation and opinions of other people. So I was getting my self worth from what my clients thought about me and I was working way too much because of it. And so what I've done now is I've set a standard that if their lack of planning and emergency, consistent, repeated emergency, toxic level becomes my problem, I'm now stressing myself out and I'm not getting anything extra for it. Now if you bake in, you know, an urgency rate, which I might do that with some of my future clients and even add that into some contracts that if there's like a 20, if you need a 24 hour turnaround, it's an extra charge for that, it's an extra 500 bucks. Otherwise it's going to be 72 hours or even four days turnaround is what I'm doing now with most clients, I tell them, I say, hey listen, you got to get me stuff at least four days in advance of when you really need it, then I can execute on time. And I made that a standard. And I didn't let feeling invalidated by other people or other people's opinions affect my mood and my emotions. And that's when I freed up so much time for myself to stay focused. And I stopped worrying what other people thought about me. And I said this, listen, your. Your lack of planning is not my problem now. I didn't say that to them. Don't say that to your clients. That doesn't go over well. But say it to yourself. Their lack of planning is not my emergency. I'm going to stay peaceful and calm. And when you're building an agency business, the only way to really scale is to stay peaceful and calm and to not let it take over you, to not let it control you, to not let it slave drive you. And so that's how I've been able to build an agency business, create content in less than 60 hours a week, 40 to 60 hours a week. Doing that right now, the content creation isn't making me as much money as I want right now. The agency side is. But I'm building and I'm ramping up to what I'm going to be selling. You know, the website building course is selling like crazy to people that need to build websites. I'm going to make courses on advertising, sales, marketing, podcasting, leadership, all that kind of stuff that's coming soon. But I'm committed to making these podcasts for you every single week to give you lessons to help you grow in your life and in your business and get results. And if you're not in the hashtag grow your life community on Facebook, please join it, ask questions. Let me know what you think about this podcast. Let me know what it inspired you, what thoughts it had, what it triggered in you, what you disagree with, what you agree with, what you worry about, what you wonder, whatever that is, leave it in the group, post in the questions. And people comment back and forth like, we want to help you. It helps me make more content. And you might be able to network and connect with some great people that can help you as well. All business owners in there. It's a. It's really a free for all. I let people talk about their product, talk about their service, talk about what they do, but I don't let people spam it. So it's very. It's very organic. There's really no, like, major rules other than no spamming. But yeah, if you meet somebody in there and want to Network over whatever. Like please do. That's what the purpose of it is. And we've had people do that. You know, I haven't had anybody abuse that. I'm sure at some point I might have to enforce something if somebody abuses that. But at this point there hasn't been, there's been really honorable people that have joined that group and I love it. And so to grow your business, you have to outsource what you're doing. You have to shift and adjust your time management. Stop being so worried about other people's opinions and plan your day and work within those bounds and stick to that. Like I'm not gonna work 100 hours, I only have 40 hours to do this. Or I only have 10 hours to do this. If you have kids, I only have five hours to do this. So I'm gonna have to hire people to do this for me. You know, get that one client, bump your rate up. Here's the other part of the, about this, about growing, growing this. I haven't talked to people. So what I always do is I always a pricing structure for agencies. Oh. As I try to double my pricing with every new client between one and a half to 200%. So like if somebody, if, if I charge somebody like a thousand dollars, the next client I'm going to charge them 2000 but then after that, you know, maybe the next one I'll charge them 3,000 and then the next one after that I'll charge 4,000 and then 6,000 and we'll go up from there and stair step it. So I, I'm picking the rate that I want and I'm incorporating, increasing it, scaling my rates to then be able to hire people. Because eventually now there is a point where people aren't going to hire you for certain services. You either have to over deliver more or that's kind of your peak. So I've landed at, with, with certain types of things that I do. Facebook, ads, consulting, things like that right now is what, what I can get clients for my target client. And so now if I get more at that rate, every new client I get I can hire one person with, which is awesome. And that's a great place to be in. That's where I'm at right now. If I get one more client for what I do with all my other clients, I'm gonna be able to hire a full time person from that and create a job and then hire more full time people and do that. And so you're gonna scale in mind with hiring people, you know you might be able to partner with somebody, do maybe a 50, 50 upfront on the revenues, co build a business with an agency, maybe you find somebody that's good at executing, you're good at sales, you're good at marketing, you're good at leadership. Find somebody to execute and do a 5050 split on the revenue. You keep it for what you're good at, they keep the part that they're good at and then we grow from there. That's a great model as well. A real relationship building, honest, organic agency type thing. A two person agency like that works really well as well. So and then from there you can just scale, grow and build even more. My wife and I actually did it. We are a two person agency. It's not a one person. We started it together as two people and we still do it together. We do different types of tasks though, so we don't do any of the same things. I do most of the communication and sales, but then when it comes to her stuff, she's the one that gets on the phone with people and we're doing that together. She's more administrative events coordination, social media management, I'm more copywriting, advertising, coaching, consulting and direction strategy. And we've worked together doing that. That's what we've done for the last 15 years and that's what we do in our agency. And so for you, you can grow and build an agency that makes money, that makes a full time income for yourself just by following what I talked about here. If you have any more questions, let me know. I want to help you with this. I want to help you grow and build something because what you can do is if you make money in an agency and then you hire people, you can then pour it into, you can take your time now, now that your bills are paid, you can make content, you can make podcasts, you can make courses. Now that's a whole nother income that is 10 to 20 times greater than an agency. So what I found is if I'm doing something repeatedly for a client, I'm doing the same coaching all the time. I package that into a course, you know, and then I can actually instead of selling services, I sell self study or I onboard my employees with that, that course and that's how you can build it that way. And then you can also even license people to teach your courses for you. There's all kinds of different models to do that. And then you can pour that money or you pour it into software development, real estate. Software development and real estate are the two that I plan on getting into the most. So that's why so the first that come to mind. There's so many different things that you can do though if you increase your income and you get flowing. And a lot of it starts with just service based humbling yourself, serving somebody, serving another man or woman's vision and then growing from there will help you grow your life. And listen, if you want to have a free 30 minute coaching session with me, a free 30 minute coaching session with me, leave hashtag grow your life on any post that I do on Instagram within 10 minutes of me posting it. And I pick one winner per week every single Sunday on my stories on Instagram. So you're gonna have to go follow me at jeremycle Crack. Leave hashtag grow your life in the comments within 10 minutes of me posting and I pick one winner per week to do a 30 minute coaching session with or leave hashtag grow your life on any post that I do throughout that week. So if it was this week, you know, from Monday to like where this podcast post is until the next week is when I pick it on Sunday and I'll pick one person and you'll. And if you're listening to this and you go do that, that is literally I'm giving away. An hour with me is 1500 an hour, so that's a half hour. So that's $750 in value a week I'm giving away. And it's not a sales pitch. I'm not trying to pitch you on coaching services. I've already told you my rates for that. You know, I actually want to help you. This is a full level coaching so that you can experience what coaching is and get some results. You know, we've just had amazing results from people that I've talked to on these coaching calls of that it's a legit like deep dive. And so if you win, I'll give you kind of the details of what to do to move forward. But you have to take that step of faith. Go leave the hashtag grow your life. You can win that coaching call with me. Grow your life. And we'll talk soon. Have a good one, everybody.