Agency Success Interview with Frankie Fihn

This is the 7 Figure Agency Podcast. Discover the strategies and techniques to grow a highly successful and profitable digital marketing agency with your host, Joshua Nelson. Well, hello and welcome. Thank you so much for joining us on this session of the 7 Figure Agency Podcast. Uh, this is part of our Agency Success Interview Series where we're interviewing highly successful digital marketing agencies from across the country. And today I'm super excited to be joined by Frankie Finn. Frankie, thanks so much for being with us today.

Josh, it is a pleasure. You know, actually one of the things that, uh, is really cool is your book was a big inspiration for me on the way up. So it's really cool to, to now be sitting here talking to you. So, you know, it's kind of a little bit of a personal hero for me.

Thanks, man. I appreciate that. And you're doing some really cool stuff on the agency training side. Be sure to check out Frankie's book Beyond the Agency Box, which I've got a copy of. It's a great book, definitely recommend you check it out. So Frankie, just give us a quick overview, like who are you, what's your business, kind of give us an overview of the lay of the land.

Um, so I actually began my agency journey in '07, and it was, it was kind of actually a little bit by necessity. Like, I didn't wake up and say I want to run a marketing agency. It was more like the financial crisis had struck. There were no jobs in my area. They were just laying people like en masse. And I learned a little skill called SEO and kind of accidentally ended up in this SEO agency. In fact, I was only ever just trying to sell my own products with SEO. And somebody came along one day and said, can you do that for me? And it was actually a plastic surgeon or a guy who designed websites for plastic surgeons. And I did the website for the plastic surgeon and that kind of just took off. And before I knew it, I had a really big plastic surgery SEO agency, and it was really funny because we did white labeling back then, but there really wasn't a name. Like, nobody said I was a white labeler, and I didn't intend to be a white labeler. And I swear, Josh, like, back in those days, like, excuse my language, but I made every single fucking mistake in the book that one can possibly make running an agency. Was in way over my head. All I knew is I was really good at building backlinks and ranking websites, but I didn't know the first thing about hiring systems and delivering and reporting and all the things that come with an agency. And after a lot of years, I just decided I kind of like, for lack of a better explanation, really just lost my passion for doing that for a while. And I just like, I didn't want my tombstone to say, hey, Frankie Finn was really good at SEO. And so I took a little break for 6 months or a year, and I decided one day out of kind of nowhere to start working with lawyers. And I've had 2 iterations of that agency since about 2014, and we're We're now doing kind of like, you know, we put ourselves in our own little category of one, which I think is a really important place for an agency to be where, you know, what you do, they cannot just, you know, easily shop around and, you know, price shop you and all those kind of things. And that's kind of where we're at now. And, you know, it's taken me probably a good 14 years to get it, but like you, you know, one of my big values is freedom and lifestyle in a way where you're actually like, you know, delivering real value to clients. But I mostly have an agency now that runs itself. It didn't start that way, you know, I'm like probably like a 10-year, 12-year overnight success kind of thing. Um, but in that regard, like, you know, we have a really, really kind of streamlined thing that requires very, very little kind of effort to move things because it's all just kind of like really well organized.

Awesome. So you work with law firms, you've got a really great lifestyle business. I remember when we were talking before, you kind of told me a little bit about how you structured the freedom in your, in your life Just kind of share that, because a lot of times we talk about in this podcast specifically, land clients, build a team, you know, start to take on lots of overhead. I think you've kind of gone a different path. Just kind of talk us through that a little bit.

Yeah, well, I'll tell you, I think this is an underestimated piece of it, is I think really 60% of your success comes down to who you actively choose as clients. And so one of my big secrets is actually that, like, a lot of my law firm kind of clients are very busy and very successful. So the way I run my agency is catered to that fact. I found like in the beginning when I was serving the bottom, the most brokest kind of segment of the market, those people generally have a whole bunch of time and not a lot of money. So they really, they want a lot of meetings and they want a lot of talking and they want to watch it. And you know, one of the things that you mentioned I'm really big on as well, if they're not already advertising somewhere else, I'm not going to be the one to try and convince them. So like My niche is smaller than most where I'm only looking like if the law firm is not already spending money, then I probably won't even, you know, in most cases talk to them without special exceptions. And what that's created is I'm already dealing with lawyers who work 70, 80 hours a week. So one of the big advantages of them is they like really sharp, fast communication. They don't want an hour webinar and meeting like that. Not that there's anything wrong with those, but my guys are really, really happy with just like, give me the 2-minute update. Like, tell me what's going on, how we're doing. And so for that reason, we're able to like really kind of like, you know, and sell that as a benefit where it's like, hey, we're not— we know you're busy, so I'm going to give you a little 2-minute update every Friday. And that's helped us in a lot of ways to create that lifestyle agency because we're dealing with people who are, you know, not money poor but time poor. And so, you know, everything is catered to that busy, successful professional. I think that's a big secret. And I would say in any niche, regardless of what you're in, I feel like 80% of the competition is at the bottom competing like you need any client to walk through the door. As where it's very, very different if you're dealing with somebody who is already successfully advertising and has figured out pieces. And one of the things that comes up like religiously in agencies is you end up generating phone calls for businesses so often that like I hear people say, they don't call people back, they're really slow, they say all the leads are bad, they blame me. One of the things is if you deal with people who are advertising, at least to a certain degree, they've already had to solve that problem. And so you don't, you don't nearly run into it as much where they're like, "Oh, I believe that that, you know, you just wasted my money." And so I'd say that, you know, it's not the only thing, but a big, big part of our success has been just like understanding what actually makes a good client. And it's just 14 years of having really good ones, really bad ones, and then sitting down with a pen and paper and be like, why was this person such an awful client? Why was this one such an easygoing client? And starting to recognize the patterns and see how you can like, You know, then intentionally choose the clients that, you know, are going to make your life better instead of miserable, which if you've done this, I love it.

So kind of the hack there is, yes, we're in a niche, but we're on the top end of the, of the vertical, and we're specifically saying we want a certain type of client that's going to be happy with quick, punchy communication, is already busy, and will understand the value of what I can bring to the table. Um, and that makes it easier to retain and kind of just do what you need to do for those clients.

Yeah, absolutely. And, and yeah, because, you know, I get people all the time who tell me my client wants like 6 meetings a week. And I'm like, if you aim for a higher end of the market, they don't have time for 6 meetings a week. Like, they don't want those. And so usually it's not necessarily an issue of the service you're delivering. It's just who you're delivering it for. And I see this all the time when people aim for a higher tier, you know, like often your price can double or even sometimes triple just by changing who you do it for. Like, you know, in the bottom end of like the SEO market for lawyers, you might get $500 to $1,500 a month typically. If you're doing it for one of the top law firms, $10,000 to $15,000 a month is pretty— is much more typical. It's ultimately the same service, but the way you package and present it is very different.

Yeah, no doubt. So just for the sake of the listener so they can have some context, you work with law firms. It sounds like you're really going after a lifestyle type of business. Can you talk a little bit about what your offering looks like and how you charge for those services?

Yeah, so we've got two, and I'm actually most interested in the second one right now. And we kind of talked about this off air. So we actually— my recruitment process when I go get clients is very, very different. Is I have kind of three offers that I make. I call the first one, and I learned this from a mentor of mine named Travis, called the coffee date. And that's like just like a hand raiser, like, okay, I'll check out your lead magnet, I'll check out your webinar. I'll check out something about you. That's like, you know, the first intro into your world where then you're going to follow up with them some way. And then what we do that's different than most people is most people then jump to what I call a marriage offer, which is like, hey, work together with me 12 months. And we have an in-between step that we do that is like the first date. And the first date's like, hey, let us just get you a small, quick win. And it's actually, you know, it's obviously it's designed to be an easier sell, but it's actually just as much for us as it is for the clients because I've found If you get like a real pain in the ass client, like I just know from experience, if you have like 20 clients in your agency and 2 of them are like miserable and unhappy with you, when you go to sleep on the pillow, at least me personally, it's the, it's the 2 of them that are unhappy with you that are taking up all the space in your head and you're like trying to figure out how to fix these situations, how to keep these people happy, and you stress way too much about it. I found it's way, way easier to have a first date with those people and then just not give them a second date because there's usually signs and, you know, they turn in complaining or they're really, really demanding and things like that. And then you just keep the 18 that are happy and it's way easier to grow when your clients are happy and you feel good about what you're doing. So our sort of like first date of the moment, and this is like our new offer that I've created, it's something that I call digital omnipresence. And it's basically just like law firms have some of the most expensive leads. Specifically, I work with personal injury firms who are advertising, not just like all niches of the law.

Right. Big cases, big dollars.

Of course, go where the money is, right? And they, these guys, like, they have to, like, on Google AdWords, the 100 most expensive keywords, 78 of them are local lawyer keywords. So, like, to give you an idea of, like, just how expensive their front-end traffic, but following up with it, what I do differently is, like, a couple law firms retarget, but I, like, kind of retarget everywhere. And so we're running it across, like, you know, all over Facebook, all over YouTube, all over Instagram, all over the Google Display Network. Sometimes we use AdRoll and Perfect Audience depending— what it ends up creating is like when a client expresses interest in our law firm, we can suddenly be on like thousands of websites simultaneously and it costs like pennies to do. So we're just like kind of following up with the leads that they've already generated and converting those. And that's kind of like the big direction we're headed. And then in the past, we've also—

that's your foot in the door. It's like, hey, look, you're already spending all this money to generate leads. Let us help you retarget everybody that has some level of interest and kind of show value with that.

Is that my understanding? Yeah. And the other thing with it is, and we've talked about this, I call it the closest to the whole mentality where I don't think there's— I think for a business to be in business long term, obviously they got to be able to sell cold traffic. But in the case of like a law firm who's spending a lot of money, they have already got shit tons of flow of cold traffic. They've got more of a conversion problem than anything. So when we do retargeting, it's often like we can usually in the first 48 hours show them something like a phone call comes in or a form gets filled out because these are people that for the most part, like in our niche, they got in an accident, they already went through treatment, they already started researching lawyers, they already started researching their options, they've read reviews, they've been to websites, So they're like already like 90% of the way to hiring a lawyer already. So we're just moving them the last 10%. So they're already metaphorically close to the hole. And that's kind of our strategy is like—

Tap it in.

Work close to the hole. And so like, to give you another example, just like in another niche, I have somebody in our mastermind who works with restaurants and restaurants obviously bringing strangers in the door to eat. Is necessary for them long term. But, but we're working on like low-hanging fruit. Like, take somebody who just came in on Tuesday and invite them back to Wednesday, and he's doing things like, for example, just running a birthday campaign. Like, hey, you've got, you know, 1 out of 12 people who came into your restaurant are gonna have a birthday this month. Let's just make them an offer to come have a really cool birthday party. And lo and behold, because they're doing it to their existing customers, people already eating there, it tends to work like a lot quicker than cold traffic. And so he's able to show them a couple of big birthday parties. And it's not like he's going to dramatically change their business, but they're far more open to then discussing a 12-month SEO contract when they've already, you know, profited $5,000 from, from what he's done. So it's kind of like that mentality. And then, like I said, it also gives us the ability to feel out a client, because if they're going to be a high maintenance pain in the ass, then I'm like, yeah, let's just leave it at that birthday campaign.

So what do you charge for this digital omnipresence kind of foot-in-the-door offer?

I'm still like, it's actually, this is our new offer, but part of why we're shifting over to that is like from a delivery perspective, it's like as close to set and forget as possible. We're just charging for like packages of phone calls. So I'm still experimenting a little bit with price. Usually personal injury, anywhere from like $200 to $500 is pretty typical for a phone call. And, you know, we just charge them every time somebody either fills out the email form. Where I want to take it actually in the future is set it actually to like kind of like a texting system where they can text, get information from the law firm and go in quick. Because I don't think anybody's doing that. And I just think I love to do unique, innovative stuff that like puts us in a category one, but it's also like really easy to deliver because we're only dealing with leads that are, you know, close to the hole. I've mentioned before. Love it.

So you kind of help them monetize the flow they already have through value. If I heard right, did you say it was like between $200 and $500 setup and then a per, you know, per lead?

Um, usually when I'm pitching it to people, like, so I'm at the position now and I certainly didn't start there, but like, um, I've been to like, you know, many of the really big legal conferences. And so I know a lot of these guys personally, so I'm cherry-picking them. So actually most of our lead generation now is either done where I literally just message one of the guys on Facebook and say, hey, I had an idea for you. Or I'll send them like a personalized direct mail letter through Click2Mail or something like that. So for that reason— What's that?

You send them a personalized direct mail through what service?

Click2Mail.

Okay, cool.

Nice. And so we're kind of cherry-picking them. So I typically tend not to charge them setup fees because often they're the people like, you know, I know who they are, their reputation precedes them. In the past, I have experimented with that. But the more and more I do the first date thing and realize it's more for me than it is for them, setup fees tend to be harder to walk away from. So like, to me, it's— I just know that like even one bad client, just in my experience, and maybe this is not true of everybody's agency, for me, like, I don't know, I just want my clients to be happy with me and my service. And it, it was just a heavy burden mentally. Like when I did SEO for plastic surgeons, I would say, especially with the reporting and communication side, not with actually the SEO and my deliverable, But clients were regularly unhappy with me because I would send them these like really pretty looking reports that they had no idea what they meant. And so they had no idea what they were buying from me or even how it was going. And so there was this constant frustration where I would say like 10 to 20% of my clients were just perpetually unhappy. And where it affected me personally is like it made it really hard to go sell another client when, you know, there's a 10, 20% chance they're just going to hate you in like 6 months, right? Like You know, but yeah, that's kind of how we're doing that. I love it.

Okay, so we've got coffee, then we've got a first date. We're charging this like, let's run some omnipresence, let's see if we like them, if they like us, if they're going to be a happy customer. If so, then you move them to your standard retainer-based model, or to kind of talk me through that.

Yeah, I'm moving away. It's a little tricky in the legal stuff, to be honest, Josh. One of the things that I'm really big on is, especially if you vetted the client personally first and work with them on a First Day is actually doing entirely revenue share because they're actually much higher upside. And I'll tell you, when I first experienced this, when I first started doing SEO, I charged $400 a month because it just seemed like a psychologically satisfying number to me, not because people seem to pay it. And I remember the first time I was talking to a plastic surgeon in Dallas. He asked me if I could call him, and I was almost apologetic that I was taking up his time. and I said, hey, you know, Dr. So-and-so, I'm really sorry that, you know, I'm kind of taking up your time. And he said, are you fucking kidding me? Like, you're more important than my office manager. We've tripled our practice since you started doing this SEO stuff. People call every day and they say, I found you on the Google, I found you on the Google. Like, please keep doing this. And I'll tell you, my first thought right then was like, $400 is not nearly enough for what I'm doing. So the, the direction I want to take my agency actually in the next probably year or two is to have like a 7-figure-plus agency with like 5 to 10 clients max.

And that will be a function of when we started working together, this is your revenue and I'll take an incremental on your growth kind of deal.

Yeah, especially because when we're doing all the retargeting and we're driving them to our own landing pages and our own tracking phone numbers, like we can see 100% of what our stuff is doing and therefore can like, you know, uniquely and individually say, that was us right there.

Love it. So take a percentage of the revenue as opposed to a fixed monthly fee.

Yeah, it's a little bit tricky because in legal they can't pay revenue directly to a non-law firm, but they can pay for a lead. So we've got it priced on that basis. But I would actually much prefer to just be paid like just a whole percentage of the growth that we're directly responsible for.

Got it. So, so some unique ideas here in terms of kind of closest to the cup, finding an offering that can get you close to the cup and show a quick win, vet whether the client's a good fit or not, then, you know, move to a more substantial relationship. You're doing some unique things in terms of how you sell clients and how you retain clients. You know, a lot of us are big on let's get them on the phone, let's take them through this long process. Let's meet with them every month and show the reports. And I know you've got a contrarian view on that, which I think is pretty interesting. Can you walk the listeners through how you approach reporting specifically?

Um, reporting specifically?

Uh, reporting. So like, you know, the retention side of how you handle things.

Um, yeah, so the retention side, and I think we have a lot of similar views on that because I, I think actually Retention is the most important number in your agency, and everybody tends to be front-end sales-focused. But I've learned from like 14 years, 15 years doing this that if you just get clients and don't keep them, you're not actually going anywhere, especially if those clients leave unhappy. Like, I see this all the time where people post wins like, signed a client, got like $10 grand. Of course, 3 months later, that client's like, give me a fucking refund, I hate you, right? Like, that's not progress to me in an agency. Even though on the surface you can like, you can show that off in a group and everybody's really proud of you. And I'm not saying you shouldn't, but the real test to me is when client payment number 13 comes in, when client payment number 25 comes in. Like, those are the real milestones that you're actually, you're building something substantial that's going somewhere. And nobody puts like, hey, client paid me the 16th time in a row. And I would say the two biggest things that I see people drop in this and And one of those is the first impression. So I think the way a lot of people do onboarding, and I used to be guilty of this, so I'm not like, you know, pointing any fingers at anyone, but like, I always just look at it like, can you just give me the passwords and the login so I can get started? And so, because, and it comes from this place where usually like, at least I felt like this pressure to perform right away. Like I gotta get the login so I can show you like some ROI. And it was like a race to the ROI. And as you know, Josh, like the biggest thing they're actually dealing with on their end is buyer's remorse. Did I just make a stupid decision? Did I just get ripped off by another smooth-talking salesperson? So there's a step before that, and I call that step not onboarding, but I call that step welcome aboard versus onboard. And welcome aboard is like welcoming a member to your family. So how we do this is one of the things that we do is I use Edible Arrangements, and for about $50, Edible Arrangements will go there. I use— we have like a salted caramel apple, we have a standardized note, But they are so unbelievably fast, Josh. Like, they're usually there within 3 hours, same day you signed the client. Like, it's unbelievable. They're just like, they just signed, edible arrangement at the door, welcome. And we, we send some cookies with it. Everybody at the office is like, you know, what's that? And I'm really, really big on that first impression because you want a client to feel like they just made a good decision to work with you. We also drop a welcome package in the mail at the same time, and because of just the delay and physical snail mail, it takes like a week to get there. So In a lot of ways, they get like 2 or 3 kind of welcomes from us. They also get, but I want them to feel like you're in good hands and you just made a good decision. That's such an important leverage point, especially because I compare it in any niche where they've been in business 10 years or longer, they've been burned by marketers. They've just like, that's just part of the deal. And I compare it a little bit to like beaten wives where they're like, you know, they've had 6 marketers that all screwed them over, at least from their perspective and their You're the seventh one saying, hey, I'm not, I'm not abusive, I'm not here to hit you. And they're like, yeah, you know, they're kind of just bracing for the hit. So I think it's really, really important, that leverage point, because it sets the foundation for everything going forward, those little extras. And so I think it's really important, especially the first 100 days. Joey Coleman's got a really awesome book called Never Lose a Customer Again. That's a great, like, case study to walk through this. But you engineer a client experience beyond just like I'm going to do SEO and send you a report every month. So like, for my clients, we're sending them pictures of their kids. We're, you know, you— we, you know, if you just spend 10 minutes and creep their social media, we're sending them little kitchen gifts, we're sending them handwritten notes. All of it, by the way, is systematized, organized process and organized. We're building a real client experience beyond like, hey, I'm just here to send you a report every month. So like, for example, like one of my clients just the other day posted Hey, I've been so busy at the office that I've been neglecting my 4 dogs. I really miss these guys. And so I went on Amazon, I got her a big industrial-sized thing of dog treats and sent it to her office and said, this is your apology note to give them. And of course, when I keep that client for years and years and years, it won't be because my Facebook ads are just so fucking awesome that they— it'll be because, you know, you really cared. And I don't think you can— you can— fake really caring about people. So that's a big piece. And then the other piece is where I think most agencies drop the ball is in communication. And I use a story to illustrate this 'cause it's true. So right next door to me there, where I live in Mexico, they're building a whole bunch of new houses. And one of the things that I asked the guy like building it, like, how was this for you getting this house built? And he said, it's the worst fucking experience in my life. And I went, what do you mean? And he said, well, I sent my life savings to a stranger in Mexico, sight unseen, and then nobody answered me for like 2 months. And then I eventually got a communication back that was all in Spanish, and I had no idea what it said, and it was handwritten. I didn't know how to translate it. Said, a year later, I came down here to see my house for the first time, and it was built perfectly. There was like— it was, um, but because the communication gap was so huge, all he felt was uncertainty and stress. I think this is a metaphor. We think if I just build a perfect house then everything will be awesome. And I've learned that, that what we need to be doing in our agencies, especially in the beginning when they're most uncertain, is like, hey, here's a video of your house being— like, here's your land, here's the foundation being poured, here's— we're putting up the walls today. Hey, just want to welcome you, you made such a good decision, you're in good hands. And I found that actually letting clients know they're in good hands is, is actually in many ways better than building a better house. Like, you think if you just build awesome houses, people will refer you. In my experience, that's 50% of it. I'm not saying it doesn't matter, like, you won't keep clients if you never build the house in the end, but 50% of it is, is just letting them know. And I've learned, you know, and you're really big on this too, that the more proactive you are about communication, like, especially once you work with a couple of people in your niche and you see the questions— like, it never clued in for 7 years of doing SEO that my clients had the same damn questions about the reports. And so the minute I realized that, you know, it took me 7 years to finally get the memo, but I just answered the questions they were asking, like, what are you doing? How's it going? Why, why are we doing that? What's next? And I would just like really straightforward answer those questions and they love it. So we actually do our reporting now. I just send my clients like a little 2 to 3 minute Loom video. I go, here's how we're doing, here's why we're doing that, here's how it's going, here's the things we're figuring out, here's what's coming next. Uh, if you got any questions for me, let me know. For the most part, they don't ask those questions, but the more you can be proactive So that means like in SEO, like especially like the, the longer your deliverable is, the longer it takes to see results, the more you have to communicate your house is being built, your house is being built. Now with the closest to the cup offer, you can kind of get away with it because they could usually see the results in like 48, 72 hours. But if you got like a long deliverable where it might take you like a year to rank somebody in New York City, then you gotta— every time you build a backlink, you gotta let the client know, hey, I know it doesn't look like much, but we're inching you towards the goal. Hey, Really excited today. We just optimized all your tags and stuff. You got to make big deals out of all the things you normally routinely do. But once you understand that, then you systematize that and you organize that, and that just becomes part of your framework. And then what ends up happening is clients feel like they're in good hands because even before they ask, you're already letting them know what's going on. And then they don't feel like they're in the dark about a house that they just sent their life savings to. When you do that, I find that actually has a bigger impact on retention, at least for us. Than, say, getting a greater return on ad spend and things like that.

I love it. So, so good. And I really believe in everything you've said there, right? World-class onboarding. Send the things they don't expect. Make the collection of data easy. And then finding this balance between getting good results and building a nice house, but also communicating and showing them that you care and showing them what you're up to. That creates a great client experience and really can, can improve retention. I'd like to talk about how you get away with working with attorneys without doing face-to-face Zoom sessions. And I'm sure a lot of our listeners would love to hear this as well. So just kind of talk me through this, um, you know, meetingless agency philosophy that you have.

Um, well, certainly, like I said, part of it is choosing people who are busy, who don't want the meetings in the first place. And I, in every niche, the movers and shakers are generally like time poor. And so the more you can position it as a benefit, that like certainly helps. But a big part of it is, you know, when I was working with Travis, one of the things he said to me— this actually came out of a function of— I was— I had my first little girl. We were still living in Germany back then. And as part of being like getting a German green card, which I was going through, I had to go to school. And so it was a really weird predicament for me because for the first time in my life, I suddenly have like a 9-to-5 commitment for the first time in like a decade and a half. And I like have a real schedule. I can't leave till like the bell rings. And it was And then I would go home and I would have, you know, calls, right? Like, you know, whatever you want to call them, sales calls, discovery calls, whatever. And it was a weird thing because I was like really kind of missing my daughter. Like she would want to come out, "Where's Papa? I want to play with her." "Hold on, Papa's on a strategy session." And so, you know, my mentor Travis really just hit me at the right time where he was like, "Hey," and his message was really, really simple, which is if you can't sell your offer in 1 to 3 sentences, then adding a VSL and a webinar and follow-ups and things like that won't make it any easier to sell. And so part of why we came up with the first date is if you're proposing, you know, like, you know, metaphorically, hey, let's get married for 12 months, which I used to propose with SEO, and let's have this long commitment, then usually they're gonna ask for references and they're gonna ask for a proposal and they're gonna take some time and think about it. And they may even shop around, even though, you know, they tell us they're not shopping around, they're gonna shop around. And those things kind of happen. But if you can put together something where it's like, hey, we can find out in 48 hours whether or not this works, and I'm willing to take on all the risk, like it's, you know, a small little introductory thing, and if it doesn't work out, I'll just give you a refund. Like, there's nothing about it that's like a big decision. We'll know by Friday whether or not this birthday campaign for the restaurant is going to work. We don't have to like have a big talk about it. And so that is the biggest piece that eliminates the need for the phone call. The other thing we're doing is we're sending these little 5-minute videos, and there is a structure to them that works really, really well. And I would say the opening piece is the most important part. And I was listening to this guy who's the number one guy selling hurricane-proof windows in Florida, and he worked at this company that was all over the state, and they sold these hurricane-proof windows. And he was, he was like outselling number 2 and 3 and 4 and 5 combined. He was just orders of magnitude past everybody in the company. And they had their big annual conference and they were trying to figure out how he was doing it. And so everybody's expecting like, what's your sales technique? What's your closing line? What's your opener? And he said, I grab a window, I grab a hammer, and I go, wham! And I go, see, hurricane-proof windows. And like 70, 80% of the sales made in about 5 seconds. And so I've got a concept that I call the dramatic demonstration. And it's showing a client in like really, really detail what it'll look like in their experience. So for example, almost everybody in our industry is shouting at people, more sales, more leads. But I take it a step deeper. Like, how would they know if they had more sales, more leads? So like, I'll give you a couple examples, um, just to make this concept crystal clear. So one of the things I do is I've shown like, for example, here's a screenshot of like all the people booked with your law firm in your inbox? Do you want an inbox that looks— so they can visually see what it means to have more leads. We also like have a guy at our mastermind who's doing this for e-commerce stores. And so I said like, well, how does an e-commerce store know when they get more business? And he said, well, they get a little notification in their Shopify app on their phone. It goes cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching. So instead of just generically saying more leads, Show them the Shopify app, create a little animation and go cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching 10 times, right? And show to them what that looks like in their actual experience. And when you do that, like it doesn't entirely make the sale in one single leap of bound, but it like, like in a matter of seconds gets them really, really curious. So as much as possible, it's like we try and visually show what it looks like in their experience. And there's only two, there's really three things you can ever show in a demonstration. You can either show the problem the client has, or I should say the symptom, because they never understand their deeper problem. You can show what your result looks like, or you can show them side by side if you can do that. And sometimes it's— it's— so we have a guy who works with dentists, and like one of the things that the dentists say is, is, well, I bought this like $10,000, $20,000 really pretty looking website where everybody's smiling in these stock photos, but at the end of the day, the hygienist chair is empty. And so you can summarize his problem in 4 sentence— or 4 words: the chair is empty. And so I said, instead of trying to like show them with all these words, like, let's end the video. And we created like a little graphic where it shows a really pretty website and then an arrow and an empty hygienist chair and go, does this sound familiar? You got like a $10,000, $20,000 website, but at the end of the day, all you wanted was a butt in the seat in the hygienist chair and nobody's there. And so like that really like powerful thing. And then the middle piece, which takes up most of our videos, is just we lay out our plan for getting them results. And I try and like do it from a 30,000-foot view, view where you just got to make it believable. Okay, like everybody wants the cash registers to go cha-ching in Shopify, but I need to see that you have like a real plan to get me there. And then we just end the videos with a really simple 1 to 3 sentence intro offer that's easy to say yes to. Um, let's try it. And then, and then rather than having a face-to-face meeting with a client, We say, hey, I'm happy to have a meeting with you, but why don't you check out this video so you know what we're doing? And we put everything in there, including the cost. Like, I know conventional wisdom says wait till the very end with the cost, but part of it for us is creating offers where you're in a category of one where they can't shop you around, and therefore you can be very upfront about your pricing. Therefore you can just say, here's what we do for people, cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching. Here's our plan to get you the cha-ching, cha-ching. Here's a little intro to try it out. We got this little reactivation campaign and we'll know by Friday whether or not it's gonna work. What do you think? And then usually what ends up happening is if you've done it right, you'll either get yes or you'll get like, hey, I have a question, like, would it work in this kind of situation? And then, and then if you want to, you can still have a, I call them like the 5-minute strategy session. You can still have a 5-minute strategy session, but it's basically like 80/20 in a sales call. And that's how we're kind of able to around it. But for me, I mean, I was— it was just birthed out of necessity. I just didn't want to miss my daughter growing up, and so I had to figure out how to either get a really talented salesperson— and you know, Josh, when you bring in salespeople, they have good days and bad days. When a salesperson goes 10— 8 for 10, they think they're the greatest ever. When they go 0 for 6, you gotta talk them down from the ledge and say, put away the suicide note, you're just in a little bit of a bad streak. And so for me, I really like the videos because the videos are just they work like it doesn't take off days. It's like I, I take 6 minutes and I get the presentation right and that's it.

Love it. So, so literally selling through Loom-type videos with a compelling offer. Um, and of course if you sell that way, it's easier to retain in that way. Talk to me about the monthly check-ins or the ongoing check-ins with the client once they are a client.

Um, so yeah, obviously that's a huge point and I have a kind of a philosophy I call the accordion. So if you look at kind of like a timeline, like when accordions swish together, that's like a bunch of communications really close, and when it's stretched out, those are like far apart. And I think people treat this like if I just check in every 30 days periodically, that that's good enough. And if you want to have an average agency, do that and you'll get average results. And that'll— what I've learned is that in the beginning, especially when the trust is at the lowest, that's when you want the accordion to be really like almost over-communicate at that point. Like, you know, I'd say in the first 7 days you're going to hear from our agency every single day for those 7 days, and then after the next 2 weeks we kind of stagger it. And a lot of it is just firstly like saying thank you and appreciating them, then letting them know what's happening, and then letting them know what's going on. And I like to use a thing I call it the drive-by update, update. So I do this a lot with my clients. Hey, little drive-by update, nothing you need to do, but just so you know, blank. Just a sentence or two. Hey, hey, I know you wanted it to be updated for your branding and colors. Just so you know, that's going to happen. I got my VA on it. Give me till Friday. And the more and more you do those— so how we structure ourselves is our communication is very front-end heavy. It's not until we're probably at least, I would say, 8 months into the relationship that suddenly, like, every 30 days is okay. But, you know, that's kind of like how we've got to structure this. And it really is just either— you're either telling clients you appreciate them, you're doing some extra thing for them, or you're just letting them know where you're at in building the house without them asking. Hey, we put up your foundation today. How cool is that? And I also think it's important to admit mistakes preemptively because I think that's a real trust builder. Like, you know, we had a guy the other day, like, we have an ad template on Facebook ads, and he forgot to— it says like in brackets, insert state here in our template, and he forgot to change the the state. So we ran an ad on Facebook and spent like $50 or $100 that said insert state here. But, you know, if you're a typical agency, you try and hide behind that. But I just like, hey, client, I'm really, really sorry, I goofed up, I spent $50 or $100. But that builds so much trust on the grand scale when you say like, I did something stupid, or we screwed up, or this took longer, and you admit your mistakes. Because now they're like, oh yeah, they're— and, uh, I don't know, that's basically our communication in a nutshell, is either we're doing something extra for you, we're thanking you, or we're telling you what's going on. And I just make it very, very front-end heavy to like, you know, to build those relationships. Because once they trust you and they know they're in good hands, I don't think you need to like, you know, I've had a client, for example, who was running the same ads for 4 years. And so like, you know, they were telling me that the report is basically like, yep, it's still working. Cool. We'll talk to you next month. You can do that after 4 years when things are working and when they're running, but on day 4, like, very much the opposite. So that's just how we do it, is squeeze the accordion together in the beginning, stretch it out once you've established the trust and you've got, like, you know, the operation running and they're happy with it. I love it.

Lots of great analogies, lots of great insights here. Um, you know, living, living proof that you can sell high-ticket niche-based services, even in a tough market like attorneys, even in a tough market like, you know, uh, accident attorneys, which is super competitive, and you can retain clients without having to be constantly doing these monthly meetings. You can— if you kind of do it in the frequency, you're living proof that you're landing clients and retaining via this model, which is really interesting.

14 years in the making, though. That's the little asterisk, right? It wasn't like this on day one, just so you guys know. Great stuff.

Um, so Frankie, if people want to learn more about you, I know that they can pull up your book Beyond the Agency Box, which is a really interesting book with kind of, kind of like killing the sacred cows and like, you know, different ways of approaching the business model. How else could they kind of connect with you?

Uh, we've also got a website where you can get some really cool of our bonus campaigns, like some of those Closest to the Cup campaigns. We've got a couple, one, and it— to spoil a surprise for you, any guys are familiar with Frank Kern, we just turned his 4-Day Cash Machine into something you can run for local businesses. It works really, really well. But you can download those at beyondagencyprofits.com as well. We've got a Facebook group called Beyond Agency Profits, uh, and it's for agency lifestyle design. So Check those out.

Excellent. Be sure to check that out. Be sure to connect with Frankie. Anything you want to say in kind of conclusion as we wrap up today's interview?

Yes, I want to give you a big thank you, Josh, because, you know, one of the things that I feel really passionately about this is stuff like what you do just did not exist when I began in '07. Maybe it did and I just didn't know about it, but there was nobody who could take a 14-year journey and, you know, shrink that into 14 months or 7 months and take that learning curve and all the mistakes. Like, just your stuff on picking a niche which probably, had I read that sooner, probably would have saved me just 7 years of misery instead of trying to be Mr. Custom Solution for Everybody and create an unscalable machine. So I really appreciate you just putting that together and sharing that. I know it's very fulfilling when you can take your life's work and share that with people and see them get improvements. But, you know, like I said, I can't, I can't say that enough. I wish this stuff was there 14 years ago when I started, and I think it's really, really cool that you're doing it now.

Awesome, man. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for sharing. If you had one last piece of wisdom to drop on that agency owner that's trying to get to the next level, what would it be?

Well, that's a little bit of secret in the book, but, you know, I lay out the 5 stages, and there's basically 5 stages, which is when you're the freelancer and you're just starting out, when you first start bringing in employed help, then when you become like a full-time manager and you're like completely out of the day-to-day then when you start running it like a CEO where you've got a manager who reports to you, and then when you start building multiple agencies, which I've never really cared to go to that level, but it lays out a roadmap for those pieces. I don't think there is one secret. I think the secret depends on where you're at. If your immediate obstacle is hiring, then you have to learn to hire people or you're going to be stuck where you are. So the next level really depends on the level you're at. I'd say for most people that are in stages 1 to 2 is make your offer easy to say yes to, and most of your challenges will get easier and, and really narrow down who you do it for. Because I look at it like, in the beginning I used to do 50 solutions for 50 people, and that's the fastest way to get burnt out. You want to just be like McDonald's, just delivering hamburgers over and over and over and over again, especially in the beginning. Or Amazon in the beginning where they only did books. And if you do that and say no to a lot of things, you build a much more scalable agency. It might, might require saying no to business today, but it'll make your life much, much easier tomorrow because you'll have a much better structure after the clients come in the door. And I think that's so much of it.

Awesome. Great, great share, Frankie. Thanks again for being on here. Congratulations on your continued growth and success. Lots of great insights. Be sure to look Frankie up, tag him, thank him for sharing. And we'll see you guys on another episode of the 7 Figure Agency Podcast. Thanks, Josh.