Agency Success Interview with Robb Bailey from Nurture & Close

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. All right, what's up? Thanks so much for joining us on today's special interview. Uh, we're doing the 7 Figure Agency Podcast, and this is part of our Local Agency Success interview series. And, um, you know, I just have the honor of interviewing highly successful marketers and agency owners. And I couldn't be more excited today to be joined by Rob Bailey. Rob, thanks so much for joining us today.

Hey, Josh, no problem. It's my pleasure, sir.

So Rob runs a really— ran a really successful agency. He's also one of the top, you know, trainers, consultants for agencies leveraging HighLevel software and cool tools. And I've learned a lot from him. And so I was like, man, I gotta have this guy on the podcast. So Before we spill all the beans, if you don't mind, just kind of tell us a little bit about your background, your agency, kind of, you know, tell us about Rob.

Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, if you want to go through my journey chronologically, I made every mistake in the book. And even, um, my first agency, I grew to what I would call a 7-figure agency failure. And you might, like most people's knee-jerk reaction to that is couldn't have been that bad. You grew it to 7 figures. Let me just tell you, it was awful. I would never, ever, ever want to do that again, nor wish that upon my worst enemy. So, um, I went through that experience, uh, did not have a coach, did not have a mentor, had no systems and processes, um, experienced scope creep, had clients, you know, beating us down on pricing constantly. No two jobs were ever the same. Notice I'm on my second hand, so this is like, you know, let me just list all the bad ways, right? Um, I've made every mistake there is to make in the agency space, and I did it for far too long. Um, made way more money working in bars and restaurants in my 20s, uh, than I ever did in that first agency. And then, uh, I closed that thing down, had an amicable split with my business partner Got married to my wife, uh, had our first kid with another one on the way. And, and she's like, why don't you go get a job? And then I said, well, let me— give me like 6, 8 weeks to figure this thing out. So then I went and got smart and got some help and basically fixed all the problems, um, narrowed like a million things down to just a couple important things. And, um, really found a leverageable business model, my second agency. And that's when I grew that to 7 figures in 22 months. We had months as high as $409,000. Um, average is, you know, somewhere around the $150,000 to $200,000 a month mark after we got going. Um, had a successful exit in that business, was super happy. We had a third kid. Thank God, you know, I wasn't stressing out during the third gig, 'cause I would have gone nuts. But then, you know, after that, I just realized that there were some key components that I was really passionate about to move forward in, and that's what I'm doing now, which is helping small business owners and agencies thrive using those key components that gave me the most leverage. And that's where we are today.

That's awesome, man. So a couple things from your, kind of your background, I think are really important. This kind of ascent to 7 figures and thinking, oh, once you're at 7 figures, you're successful. But you can be just as, in just as bad a position at 7 figures with the wrong model as if you were struggling with no clients.

Oh, no question. I mean, what happens when you grow, when there's problems in your foundation or underlying problems, is that those problems only get bigger and get worse. That's all that happens. And so growth is not a good, like a good band-aid or a good solution to that. It's the opposite. These problems only get much bigger and much worse, and very quickly they become impossible to solve unless you fix the underlying root issue, right? So let me give you an example. You know, our recurring revenue was just below our monthly expenses, you know, and so for me to pay the mortgage and to feed my family and for me to pay my payroll and keep the rent and the lights on, everything at the office, Uh, you know, I had to take on a, a project, a monthly project I'd have to go drum up, right? That was usually completely custom. We completely undervalued ourselves to win the project. Yeah, it usually included 58 different things, about 78 which we didn't know of. And I'm a caveman, so like, I'm not good at math, but that, you know, it's like negative 20-something things that we didn't know. It was just stupid. The whole thing was stupid, right? And we took it on so that I could pay the bills, you know? Well, what ended up happening was like half the time we're sleeping on their desk, like ordering pizza, eating pizza, and drinking a six-pack of beer to stay up all night, and then sleep under the desk and wake up the next morning and take care of the normal business stuff. Like, how long can you do that, especially if you have a family? But, you know, period, how long can a human do that? You know, like not very long before you're just like, right? And so most of you who've been in the agency game for any longer than probably 6 months or a year understand what that's like. You just are like, I'm destroying myself for someone who's paying me $12 an hour. It's kind of how it ends up, right?

No way. So I mean, yeah, that's pretty exciting though that you were, you were able to, you know, you were successful on paper, but then you realized, man, I'm not really actually making any money. Folded, and then when you got the right model, everything changed. It's 22 months later, you had this massively successful business that you were actually able to take the complete entrepreneurial journey and sell.

Yeah, so like, let me give you an example of how like drastically different these two concepts are, right? So over here we had some big clients. We were helping local businesses too, but had some very big brand names that you would immediately recognize that are regional, national. You know, otherwise, I mean, you would like immediately recognize these people and you're like, gosh, you look so good on paper, Rob. That's what my wife said to me. That's what all of her friends, you know, all our friends said to me, etc. But the margins were this thin, and if one thing went wrong that month, meaning a client quit or we had a bad sales month or, you know, some scope creep happened, immediately into the red, right? Just, it's It was that thin to me going, I want to help local business owners now providing one service, which at the time was Facebook ads, lead generation via Facebook ads, um, to one niche, which was gyms and fitness niche. I started off in real estate agents, very quickly figured out that was not my niche and then moved to gyms and fitness centers. And, um, and then, and then we, we said no to everything else. That's the third component of this was just erase everything else. I know how— I know WordPress, I know website development, I know SEO. Our first agency specialized in SEO to a degree. I'm not doing any of that even though I know it really well, probably better than, you know, most, right? Um, but the point is, is that I was working then with clients who would never— you would never hear of for the most part and probably never will. Like Point Loma Sports Club, that was the place right down from my office, 2 blocks away, where I went to the gym. They were a great client, very profitable for me. I helped hundreds of places just like that that you would never know of unless you went there, right? So the conception of these big brands and, you know, the big contracts and da da da da da— no, no. Yeah, you're nodding your head with me. And, you know, and all these mom-and-pop shops that no one else wants to serve, that, you know, as long as we put money in their pocket every month and we can prove that and it's very tangible, they're happy to continue to pay our service fees. And we crushed it. We helped 525 fitness locations in 22 months, just under 22 months. And then I sold the agency from, from scratch. I'm not a fitness guy. Nobody in fitness knows me. I'm not a gym guy. I'd rather be outdoors. In fact, I don't really like being in, in in a gym. Um, personally, I'd rather be outdoors, but I, I love what they do. I love their passion. I love that they're positive people and I love that they're helping people change their lives. I loved all that stuff. Even more than that, I love their model and I loved how scalable it was for me to help them with that model. And so those are the biggest differences. And I can't tell you the difference. I mean, everything was better the second time around. Everything, everything for me, for them, for, you know, it's like nobody lost. So I, I just can't sing that praise enough. Like, guys and gals, you got to stop thinking that you're so smart, because that's what I was doing, that you don't need help, because that's what I was doing, that, you know, you know everything, you know the best way to do everything, because you don't. And get on the train where it's like, I I'm gonna work a proven model till I'm blue in the face and I'm super successful. And then I have all these other options that I can take if I then want to. That's the biggest difference right there is, and it's night and day. I mean, it's like not even close, right? So anyway, that's a bit of the journey.

Super, super powerful insights. I mean, this transition from project work to monthly recurring work, from serving anybody to choosing one particular niche, and then from serving like random, whatever I'm gonna do for that niche, to I've got a very specific product offering that I'm gonna bring to the table. I'm gonna do that again and again and again. It's kind of the recipe for rapid success and accession within your agency.

It's exactly a recipe. That's exactly what it is.

That's awesome. So, can you talk a little bit about, well, first of all, you said fitness and health. How did you land on that niche? A lot of, a lot of the people listening, you know, they're like, you know, I know I need to choose a niche, but I haven't decided what niche. I'm unsure where to go. How did you choose health and fitness?

Right. Okay, good. Yeah, that's a great question. I get that question a lot too. I'll give you a bit of a framework after I tell you how I stumbled into it, because I did stumble into it. I just want to be super transparent that I did not know the framework before this happened to me. And so you can either one, get lucky, or two, skip that and follow the framework that I'm about to give you. Right. Um, but basically I'd had a, um, I played indoor soccer with, um, some guys that I grew up with. Um, and so we stayed close and played in this men's soccer league. Well, I tore my ACL on my knee playing soccer one night, and then I got, um, surgery on that knee to replace it. And, uh, so in order to continue rehab after I got out of the physical therapy program. I wanted to go back to the gym to continue that. I wanted to be able to run around with my kids, etc. And so I went to this, this, you know, health club down the street from where my office was, about a mile from my house, about 3 blocks from my office. And I said, hey, this is like just a super convenient thing. I just want to check out what you guys have to offer. Just walked in one day and they said, oh, well, you should go talk to Ryan right over there. He'll give you a tour. So Ryan gives me a tour, he's asking me questions as we're walking, and he goes, we do have some like day one incentives for people who are interested in the gym, would you like to hear them? So I go, okay, sure. So he sits down on this little desk, he closes me, and I sign up for— I sort of offer, I'm like, look, I just want to double down and commit to this, do you have a yearly program for a discount? He goes, yes, by the way, we do. So I give him like $1,000 for the year up for the health club membership. And then I ended up signing up for personal training as well because I just wanted to further commit myself to, you know, rehabbing my knee. And, um, so we're, we're in there and he's, you know, like closing up the deal and stuff. And he goes, so what do you do for a living? And I say, well, I do Facebook ads for local businesses just like you. And he goes, what am I doing wrong? He flips the screen around to me and he opens up his Facebook ad account. He's like, I'm the director of memberships here and I This is my job to drive memberships. It's a, you know, but I have no idea what I'm doing. And I'm like, well, you're doing this wrong, this wrong, this wrong, this wrong. I mean, like no landing page, like the copy is bad, the offer is wrong. Like, I mean, it was just super easy, right? And so I'm like, but you know, you could like hire me and I could just do this for you and you could just sit there and sell. So about a week later, I come back in, the owner agrees, they become my clients. and Ryan ends up becoming my partner in the gym niche agency that we started. That's how I found him. So, I literally stumbled into it. Like, I walked in one day and it just kind of, you know, took it from there.

I mean, and that's a great way. I always tell people, sometimes you're going to share a framework, which is awesome, but sometimes you land a client and you prove the concept and you kind of get some results and you can run with that, right? It doesn't always have to be strategically you know, I picked this niche. Sometimes it's better to, you know, work in 2 or 3 niches, find one that works well for you, that you resonate with, prove that you know what you're doing, and then run fast as you can down that path. But the framework, if you could—

well, I, I will happily cover the framework, but this is another interesting thing that happened with him was he was destroying the leads that I sent to him. So out of all my clients, I was running Facebook ads for all different types of clients. He was the only one who was text message nurturing the leads that I sent them, and he was the only one who showed up to every single sales call that booked an appointment came in.

Kind of important, right?

Slightly important. It's just like a small important thing that you have to do is like show up when someone wants to give you their money. Like, I, I just, you know, anyway, I would say that out of 20 clients, maybe there was one who was even attempting that. And out of 100 clients, there was one that was really doing well. And I would go in to work out and see him closing the leads that I was— I mean, it was very linear. I could see this happening, right? Like, hey, I sent you 20 leads this week. How many of them came in? He's like, oh, like 15. How many did you close? Like 12. Like, my lord, that is insane. He's like, yeah, just keep doing what you're doing. And then I go in to work out and I'd see him closing the leads and working there, and there's like a line of people waiting to talk to him and stuff. And I'm like, good Lord. Okay, so, so that's thing one is that I connected more dots, which we'll talk about here at the end. But here's the framework. Okay, so for those of you who are just like, just tell me the dang framework, I don't have time for that, Rob. All right, so thing one is if you have specialized knowledge in an area, which is why I started in real estate. I had experience in real estate. I used to be a mortgage, but like a loan officer. So it's like the best natural place for me to start there is, is, is in mortgage, you know, stuff, because I know what it takes to close a deal in mortgage. I did that a bunch, right? And so that will give you a distinct advantage. And the advantage is that you understand the sales process, you understand what needs to happen before you get an opportunity to sell. You understand what happens when you try to perform a sale, then you understand the fulfillment that has to happen after that. And that's a massive advantage whenever you're trying to connect marketing or advertising to a sales process, is you understand how these two things fit together, right? Just like a nut fits with a bolt. Well, I know this is a 3/16-inch bolt with a 1/2-inch nut. Like, these two things will not fit together, or at least not very well, right? And so, you know, that's, that's the one of the biggest ones is start there. Because you have a massive advantage. It doesn't mean you have to marry that niche. Like you can still date the niche, just get started there, right? Because you'll learn the mechanics of putting these two things together that are supposed to join in a happy marriage. Ideally, if you hit, you know, if you knock it out of the park. Thing two is look for business models that, that are very, very friendly to the service you're trying to provide. Okay. So, you know, a lot of people in the gym niche that like their— the gym niche gets bombarded by marketers and there's a reason why. It's good and it's bad. You know, the good part is that it's a great model. That's why that's— it's good, right? So a lot of marketers are attracted to this model and I'll explain what that is in a minute. The bad part is that it's what people would call saturated. Now, most people don't know that the gym niche, for example, is a $3 billion a year industry just in the US alone, $3 billion. So when I talk about us booking $2.15 million in service fees in 22 months, people are like, oh my gosh, like the gym niche must be saturated if you did that there. That is a tiny drop in the bucket of $3 billion per year. Okay. So it's, it is not, it is not out of the question to go and attack a market like that. And I have no idea what it is for HVAC and plumbing, but I'm sure it's something crazy like that. Right. So, so there's plenty of business out there to be had, but the reason why a lot of people are attracted to it is because the model behind a gym membership is very, very, very good. Let me just give you the example of one person walking in, me giving them $1,000 for the year, just for the gym membership. That means if I didn't come in at all, they'd still keep my $1,000. If I came in 1,000 times, their cost of goods did not go up. At least not significantly. They kept that $1,000. And as long as their baseline expenses are met, that could potentially be all profit. Right. And in fact, I knew it was for them. Um, in addition to that, I spent tons of money on additional services. I spent about $400 a month to start off with on personal training and I'll go in for 2 days a week. Okay. So That's another— what's that, almost $5,000 a year, right? So they took $6,000 from me, and, you know, I was happy to do it because I was investing into my health and everything. And I was one of like thousands of members there. Thousands. Okay, so the model behind that type of business is very, very good. If you say, okay, well, how does that compare to other niches? Well, the model for a gym membership with add-on services is the same one that The Joint for chiropractic uses. They have a membership model plus add-on services. It's the same model that Massage Envy uses for massage services. They have a monthly membership. You get like 1 or 2 massages per month, I think, included with that. And then they do a very good job of upselling you, right, to those services. So you have to turn your brain on and say, I, I'm looking at an X-ray of their business model and figuring out how Like, how's that good? Because if you add 1, 2 clients to them, it covers your fee easily, you know? And again, I don't know that much about plumbing and HVAC, but I would imagine it's kind of the same thing. Like, okay, you get one toilet replacement or whatever, I don't even know, like, right? Like one AC unit replacement, that's like $8,000 and they make $3,000, you know? There's your service fee right there for a couple months, you know? And that's why The model behind it is important. So look for a good model, not your model, your client's model.

Yeah.

You add 1, 2, 3 new pieces of business to their model. Holy cow. Right. They're happy. They're like super happy. No doubt. As you know, we added dozens to hundreds of memberships for our clients and then they're just ecstatic. Okay. Thing 3 is, and this is the framework, this is what I would work down. So I didn't know anything about gyms. Okay. I just stumbled into it. I did know that the model was great because, you know, the model was just like very, very profitable for them. If I could get 100 people in a month for them, man, were they knocking it out of the park. Right. So in other words, my service fee was a no-brainer. The third thing that I would look for is, um, like these two things are kind of smushed together, but access slash, um, sales cycle. And let me explain what that means because length of sales cycle, like I used to work with a lot of clients whose sales cycles were 6 months to years. Okay. And these are huge custom contracts that they would build that are, well, for them to take the faith in me that I'm going to be able to fill their pipeline for 6 months to 18 months before they see a return on investment. They need to trust me a ton and they need to be able to have the cash reserves to continue to pay me to do that before they see a return. Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Usually organizations like that are tough to access. They have a CEO and there's layers of people that you need. They're bigger companies. Okay. I like working with people that you can access right away, meaning you— it's very easy to access the owner themselves. And they have a shorter sales cycle, meaning you can put money in their pocket very quickly directly from your efforts. And those two things are usually pretty close together if you, if you're looking at the local space especially. Yeah. And those are like the, like if you get those three things right, man, do you have an advantage? Like it's, it's almost difficult to not make money and not do this right if you have.

Yeah, no doubt. That was super helpful. I want to hear from you guys in comments if that was helpful, the framework he just unpacked to help you You know, pick the right niche, right? And kind of simplify this niche selection process. So pop that in comments or give me a like or a thumbs up. So the first step then is like, you know, choose a niche, right? The second step I think you talked about was just simplify your service offering where you can get a monthly recurring fee. Can you talk a little bit about the services you were offering to these gyms?

Yeah, so you see how behind your— well, on my screen it's your right, your ear, but your left ear, it says SEO, PPC, web design. Is there something else to the right?

Uh, social media.

Social media. Okay, so you have 4 things. We did— we offered 3 things and we did not have it that clear, although we— now that I'm looking at yours, we should have. Um, but we should have had our logo. All we did was lead generation through Facebook because in our niche in fitness, Facebook and Instagram are the bomb.com. Um, we did lead nurturing of those leads. So not only did we generate the lead, we would follow up with lead for our clients using software and humans to book appointments for those people to come in. So, um, we were, we were moving our client one step closer to the sale, which is an important thing that I feel is a huge advantage of today's marketplace as an agency owner. And we can talk more about that in a minute. Third thing we did was what I would call a database reactivation. And, uh, database reactivation, a lot of people like think that it's as simple as a broadcast email, which is not a new concept. And it's— I'm certainly— guys, you're dealing with a caveman here. I promise you, I'm not that smart. Pretty stupid. My vocabulary is very limited. If I can do it, you can too. But it's like, Chan can cook, you can too. It's like, it's— I always think of infomercials when I say stupid little taglines like that. But, um, but it's like, seriously, if a caveman can do this, you can too. And like, there's a lot of commercials that do that, and that's for a reason. And that's because if you just found out a little bit better of a way to do things, it can make a massive difference. And the way that it happened for us— I'll just like, spoiler alert, let me just give you the secret sauce— it was by text messaging our prospects. For our clients, not emailing them. When was the last time that you booked an appointment for something you just signed up for through an email? Like almost never. Just another spoiler alert. It's almost never. Even if you just have, you're one of the few. Okay. Like from the data across all of our locations that we helped SMS and text messaging was responsible for 96 to 97% of all of our appointments booked across all platforms.

Wow.

So there was only 3 or 4% left there for email, social media, phone calls, including phone calls. And again, that was for the gym niche. It's probably different for HVAC and SEO, especially if, you know, your toilet is geysering in the middle of the night, you're going to—

there's some calls in the mix.

Yeah, yeah, some calls, right? But for our niche, you know, it was like SMS, and then, you know, a distant second was phone calls. And then after that, it was like maybe one per month was an email. It's like not even worth doing at that point. Like, literally, it's not even worth the human effort at that point to do that, right? So, so you have to— again, you have to find out what your competitive advantage is. For Josh, it's SEO, PPC, web design, and social media. Those are the 4 cornerstones. And it's not 100 things, notice it's 4. So my, my whole thing is you need 1 to 3 things that work really well. There's some niches where just one thing works well. Say no to everything else, right? Say no to design. Gosh, I would not take on design. Like, I honor you, sir, for taking on web design with clients. I will never do that ever again in my entire life. I just won't, you know. And, and I'm not saying that that isn't a problem that these business owners need solved. I'm just saying, for your agency to really crush it for them there's only 1 to 3 things that really probably move the needle, right? Yeah.

Yeah.

So find out what those things are and just do that. For us, again, it was lead generation through Facebook and Instagram. So same platform. That was not 2 things. That was 1 thing. We nurtured those leads, meaning we got— within 5 minutes, we were text messaging them through our software automation. And then, and we were booking appointments for them to come in, right? So, hey, great. You know, you just took us up on a free 10-day pass to join the gym. When would you like to come tomorrow or Wednesday? Right. And then lastly, we would do a database reactivation. So instead of emailing our list, trying to get people reactivated, come in and take in that same gym pass, we would text message them. And that was a total game changer for our clients. Again, this might sound stupid simple. That's because it is. And it's also because I'm not that smart. Okay. It's dead simple, but that's what allowed us to grow that fast and to help that many clients and literally just move the needle on every single account that came in. It was just like clockwork, you know. So that's, that's it, guys. That's like literally the whole framework is like right there in front of you. If you make it more complicated than that, it's because of ego. I can promise you. I'm not saying that you have an ego. I'm telling you that I had an ego and nothing worked. And when I got down to business, I'm like, look, take me out of the equation, take my smart head out of the equation, this is just what works. Everything got in my business got better, right? So that's just—

I think one of the biggest insights, you know, shared here, guys, is like figuring out what it is that's going to actually generate the net result for your client. So it's not about the activity, it's not about the pretty website, it's not about the links built, it's about What are you going to do that's going to generate revenue for the client? And what Rob did is he got very close to the sale. So he didn't just generate leads, he figured out how do we generate the leads, how do we nurture the leads, how do we get them to show up, how do we maximize the amount of leads that come in that turn into dollars, uh, for, for the client, right?

Yeah, exactly. So our whole premise, like, you know, on our website and our landing pages, it would say, can we add 15 to 30, or I think it was, uh, 15 to— yeah, 15 to 30 new memberships per month to your gym for you, right? So when we get on the phone, then they're like, well, what does that mean? And we're like, we'll use 3, 3 ways to get these people to become a sales opportunity for you. All you have to do is take the appointment and perform the sale. That's it. Does that sound like it's a good deal for you? And they'd go like, well, yeah, if you can really do that, that'd be great. You know, it's like, okay, well, we just helped the guy owns a gym, looks just like you. Another CrossFit gym owner, you know, Ray Rugno owns an 800 square foot gym down the street from us. We helped him get 35 new members last month. You think you could probably do better than that? Well, yeah, ours is like 1,600 feet, you know, square feet. And we've been doing this forever. And like, I have a great reputation in town and stuff like that. It's like, okay, great. Well, we're going to use these 3 tactics to fill up your calendar, just like we did with Ray, right? As long as you can sell, like these people will be showing up at your door, right? With this premise that you're going to help them. So as long as that works for you, you know, so we were signing people up left and right. I mean, we, we have some of the biggest fitness franchises in the nation and some of them in the world, um, you know, signing us up to help their franchisees. And by the end of this whole thing. And the reason why was because this just worked, you know, and they don't, you know, they've got their corporate branding, they've got blogs and newsletters and websites and templates, like all this stuff. But the things that drove the appointments were just those 3 things that we offered. And we had a competitive advantage because we were able to figure out what worked and we cut out everything else that didn't. Right. So that's all that was. It's, it's not, you could do this for any niche. Like if I, if I stopped today and said, I want to go into Josh's niche, I would literally go to a plumbing and HVAC company locally here and say, can I pay you whatever sum of money it would take to motivate this person to sit there and learn about your sales process and how you get booked appointments in and what your sales process is like and how that whole thing goes for start to finish. You don't have to pay somebody if you already know that stuff. So if you work for a CPA, you already know how the phone calls come in, how the sale gets performed, how you fulfill. If you were paying attention at all, you could find out how that worked. If you don't remember, you could call a coworker or a friend and just be like, hey, like, I kind of think you were paying attention when I wasn't. Like, how does this whole thing work? For God's sakes, we have Google and YouTube now. You can probably find it for free online. Right? But, you know, the key is that you figure out what's working. And like most small businesses, they have so many things in front of them operationally that they cannot put these pieces together on their own. They just don't have the wherewithal, the time, the resources to do this. So if you're thinking that this has already been figured out, number one, it has. Number two, it's not being done well by anybody, probably. Yeah, you know, like, that's just like a great— it's like available to anybody in any niche. Like, people are always challenging me, like, well, what about this niche? And I'm like, great, show it to me. And 15-20 minutes, I could figure it out online. And I've never, I've never failed on that challenge. It's so stinking easy to find out, you know what I mean? So sorry, my phone's ringing. Let me just turn this off, Josh.

No, no, no worries at all.

So that's, but that's the recipe, you know, figure out what clients need, like, like in a business, from a business model standpoint. And then deliver that to them and cut everything else out. And that's it. That's the whole thing right there. It's just like not any more complicated than that.

I love it. So what I liked you said there, if you had to restore it, you'd start with sales process. It would be like, what does it look like to turn a sale into money. And that really helps to inform, all right, well then what, what do I need to fix to help them get more of those sales and more of those, those deals? So, all right, so we talked about choose a niche. You went with the fitness space. Um, you develop a package that you can do again and again and again. We kind of unpack that in depth. Um, and then the next is like make sure you get a recurring revenue model. Can you talk a little bit about how you charge for these services for these gyms?

Sure. So, um, the average gym that we helped was not a big box gym. Um, in fact, we served the middle to lower market And that means a lot of them were like fitness studios where the owner-operator was usually either at the front desk or teaching classes or both. Um, smaller, like we call them boxes, like CrossFit boxes, if you've heard of that. Um, but a lot of like spin, spin studios, bar studios, Pilates studios, like this is the kind of average person we were helping. And we were able to charge $5,800 for 3 months of service. Upfront. And then we had a $1,250 to $1,500 per month retainer on month 4 and beyond. So, or they could sign up and get a discount, you know, for another 3 months. So, so it was not small. And they're only like a lot— if you saw these places, you'd just be like, how did you charge this?

There's no way they could afford it, right? These guys won't spend $200 a month for anything, right?

Yeah, exactly. And they didn't. And, and, you you know, it was a bit of an arm wrestle on some of the sales calls because that's, it's a lot of money to them. But the amount of money that we were putting back in their pocket in month 1, like our, our whole premise was if we can't put more than $5,800 back into their pocket before they get their credit card statement in 30 days, we don't deserve to keep the account. That was our mindset. And so every time that we get a client, we would say, great, we're going to upload your database to our software. Our software is going to send out a text message. And you're going to get drip-fed appointments over the next 4 weeks to keep your calendar full and to get these appointments coming in at no cost to you. In other words, you don't have to pay anything for ad spend yet. And some clients that would last for 3 months for and beyond, and some clients that would last for 2 weeks, 3 weeks if they were just new or just didn't have a big database. It just varied greatly, but we would always start off with that so that we could put the investment that they paid to us in service fees back in their pocket right away. And that was something that we found out early on was that, you know, like the average small business owner just can't continue to pay your, your retainer for very long unless you're putting money in their pocket fast.

Yeah.

Right. So that was our whole premise at the beginning was like, look, starting tomorrow, you're going to start to get appointments. If you want to sign up today, we get you set up. If you show up and do the onboarding and everything, we can have appointments being brewed as fast as tomorrow, the next day. Something like that. The goal, our internal goal was to get their return on investment within 7 days. Didn't always happen, but I'm like, guys, like Mach 2 with your hair on fire, put this money back in their pocket. Right. Um, and some of them we did that with, uh, we had some clients who had such a good database that we never had to run a Facebook ad for them ever. We were just using their existing database and text messaging and emailing these people. And warming them back up and getting them re-excited about the whole thing and booking appointments. And by the time that we got through the whole— so we'd break the list up into chunks. By the time we got to the end of the list, it'd be time to go back to the beginning of the list and hit those people up who just didn't respond again. And the database would grow because we'd ask them to bring a friend, right? Again, this might not apply to your niche, but you know, in the gym niche, it's very conducive to like, bring a friend, it's a free lead for the client. And people love working out with their friends, you know, it's much better than coming alone, right? So, you know, we use that to grow their database, or like organically, if you will. Um, and a lot of them, the time we didn't even have to turn an ad on. If they needed fresh blood, then we would just like, you know, obviously at the beginning we just say, well, look, if your database isn't that big, you're probably going to have to invest in advertising to get some fresh blood in town. And, you know, we would do that for them and it would still be profitable. But that was the whole— our whole pricing model was based around the fact that our return on investment was at least 10x what we charged them. So our goal was to put 10 times the $5,800 in immediate and long-term value back in their pocket before 30 days was out. Not, not even 3 months. They would get 3 months of service. So the second third month were, you know, net positive. Yeah, net positive for them. But, you know, our goal is to put like $6,000, $10,000 of cash in their pocket month one. Plus, in the gym membership space, they've got monthly recurring membership fees, so that was all profit as well. So, you know, at the end of the whole thing, we, we really made it to where we earned our clients' business by outperforming whatever goals they had for us. We were just like, no, those— that's fine that you have that expectation of us, but we're looking to surpass that. And I think that's an important piece of this is—

I think one of the, the secret sauce to your success really is you figured out how you take their, their dormant database, reactivate— I know this is your term, database reactivation— yeah, reactivate it through text message, get them immediate return on investment, And really the secret sauce that you're teaching other agencies, which among other things, but really how do you tap into that in any local business or any niche that you happen to serve and do it in a way that's efficient, scalable, and gets that client an immediate return on investment? Because if they're winning, they're gonna stick with you, right? If they're gonna stick with you, you're not gonna have churn problems and you really be able to grow and scale the business.

Exactly. And you know, again, this goes back to the 3 criteria we talked about before, but if they, if they have, you know, a business model that's conducive to this, you can, you can absolutely like blow that first, first month's expectation out of the water, far surpass your bill, and prove it to them using software now that you, you know well about now, you know. But, you know, now you can just be like, look, this is, this is not theory. This is not like, oh, did you pick up the phone and it's not being tracked? This is all in a piece of software that's showing your pipeline value from our efforts working together. And so nowadays it's like ludicrous to me to operate your agency any other way because like, even if we had a client said, hey, it's not working out so great for us, Rob, like before, you know, my first agency, we had no way to prove that it was just like a, like another arm wrestle, right? Like a wrestle, you know, it's just like, well, it's my word against yours and guess what?

You're money.

No, I don't know what you did.

Right, this came from us.

It really did suck. Pick up the phone and follow up with them. Yeah, like this whole game, it's just like— and now we just go like, no, look, you know, what happened to that guy? What happened to that guy? What happened to that guy? Oh, that phone call was recorded. Your receptionist shat the bed on that one. Sorry, you know, like, but that's, that's not us, that's an internal sales problem. Would you agree? Well, it's kind of hard to say no to that, you know, if she's just like, oh, I don't care, bye, you know, right? Or whatever, like, whatever the case may be, they didn't pick up. Like, it's like, look, 78% of leads, you didn't even just give them a chance. Come on, man. Do you want this? You told me at the beginning of this you wanted growth. This is what growth looks like. You have to pick up the phone, right? You have to text message people back. I'm sorry, sorry, not sorry. This is like how growth happens. You have to, you know, serve your customers. Um, and that, that makes it very— it takes all the pressure off you to be some like magic marketer. It's just information. It's just data, right? It's like, look, this is just the hard truth. It's right there, right in front of you. Take it or leave it. I only want to work with people who are like loving all this action coming their way that looks like this, you know. And yeah, maybe it's imperfect, that's fine. But you know, if you're fighting me, like, someone else wants this result that you're seeing right here in front of your eyes, and I could just easily move that over to them. So you just let me know, man. Yeah, like, it's no longer arm wrestle, it's just very binary. Like, you either want the 1 or want the 0. Which one is it for you? Right, it's— it makes the conversation much easier, much more binary, much less about you. Like, I got kids at home, I'd rather be arguing with my 3-year-old, not some grown 40-year-old, you know. Yeah, about, you know, like, I'm just like, I only have so much willpower in the day and this makes this conversation a lot easier.

So no doubt. Yeah, no doubt. So, all right, so we gotta— we got a clear niche. A service offering that's built to win and provide tangible measurable return right out of the gates, a price point of, I guess, $5,800 on the first 3 months and then $1,500 a month into perpetuity as long as there's an ROI, and then rapid ascent. Like, you went out and you landed— what was the number? 200 or 525 gyms?

Yeah.

Phenomenal. Can you talk a little bit about how you landed those clients? I want to be conscious of your time, so I don't want to go too long, but I'd love to—

No, no, no. I'm I could talk about this stuff all day. Um, so, so I'll give you guys, and again, this is, this is better in some niches than others, but, um, in our niche, there's a lot of franchisees and there's a lot of, even beyond that, there's a lot of like gym owners are very, uh, shoulder to shoulder group. In other words, they're very tribe oriented. Yeah. And most small businesses are like, are like that, by the way. Um, and that's not a unique thing to gyms, but there are some niches that are more like this than others. Let me just say that beyond that, if you operate in a niche that has franchise, a franchise model where the franchisees are independent of the, like, it's not a corporately owned store, the franchisee signs up as like, hey, it's Rob and my wife Erin, and we just opened up this, you know, um, Burn Fitness. Right. And Burn Fitness is this corporate company that sold us the licensing, but it's our business. So when you come in, you see us.

Do whatever we want, right?

We can do it. Yeah. Beyond that, um, you know, like that's really rampant in fitness and it's becoming more popular in the US by the day and every single niche you could probably think of. But, um, what, what happened was we, we developed this strategy called the Trojan horse strategy. And, um, if you guys don't know what a Trojan horse is, Trojan horse story is, just look it up. It's the— I think it was Helen of Troy was held captive, and the warriors decided to give a gift to the opposition, and the gift was this giant wood-made horse. And inside the horse was all the— hidden inside the horse was all the surprise warriors that popped out once they got inside the gates and attacked, and that's how they won, right? And so the Trojan horse strategy from from our perspective was that we would serve a client who looked a lot like a group of clients that we wanted to pursue. So in other words, like if we help one Burn Fitness franchisee, we want to target, then target the other 200 franchisees who are within that organization. Why? Because if we helped one of them, we can do the exact same thing for the rest of the 199 of them and get a very predictable result. Right? Their model is the same. It's like a cookie-cutter model, right? And so, um, the Trojan Horse strategy is you get a— you, you get a client and at all costs you get them a good result. So that can vary from performing the service for free for a month with the database reactivation. That strategy that we use, it's— you don't even have to do that. You could just say, I'll do database reactivation for a portion of your database to get you 20 appointments for free. All I'm asking in return is that you, um, are willing to jump on a video thing just like this that you're seeing right now and record a short case study with me talking about the results that you got and share it in this group, in this tribe that marketers do not have access to. This is a big key to this strategy. So Josh and I that, you know, we're very marketing marketer guys. We— you try to go in and get into the, uh, like, is there a big franchise in your niche, Josh?

Roto-Rooter, Mr. Rooter.

All right, so there's probably a Roto-Rooter, a Mr. Rooter Facebook group that's for owners only, franchisees only, right? I guarantee they're not letting Josh in, they're not letting me in, they're not letting you in either. Okay, so it's, it's like gold to, to have one of their peers endorsing someone like Josh saying You guys wouldn't believe this, but I just got the best result ever. It's the fastest return on investment I ever got. Josh just got me 45 booked appointments and all he did was, you know, send a simple text message to my database. It was super compliant, super easy on our sales process. And my trucks are full for the next 2 weeks. Right? That person saying that as their peer is about 1,000 times more powerful than anything that Joshua Nelson or I or you could ever shout about yourself. No doubt. It's, it's like gold. It's literally like gold. And so the Trojan— whole Trojan horse strategy is if you— I usually like draw this in Zoom and stuff, but if you picture those people in a group, literally like a circle, and there's a bunch of different dots, and each of the dots represent the other franchisees, and you're trying to get in, all these other marketers trying to get in, it's like ping ping ping ping pew pew pew, like no one can get in. It's the owner's only group. There's a very high level of trust in there. And so if you can infiltrate that group through somebody that you've helped and served, and it's their voice shouting that inside that group, you can spread like wildfire. And that's exactly how we spread across like 14 different franchises in less than 2 years.

So, and so you kind of picked off one franchise at a time, cranked it out for them, knocked it out of the park, and then got them to go in and Yeah, all their peers. Yeah.

And all you have to do is say, you can either approach one franchisee cold if you know, want to work with that organization, just say, hey, I'm looking to help one, one location like this for free or cheap in order to do this. And the reason why is because I'm looking for a case study. I'm looking for someone to share it inside the community so I can help many, many more of them and to get more clients very specifically. Or you can like just help one of them. If they come to you, they pay you full price somehow, which happened, you know, fairly often for us. They just approach us anyway and we go, Hey, are there any more of those Mr. Rooter locations out there? Like, yeah, only like 1,000, you know? You're like, great. Well, how would you like to have half off your next bill with us? Or, you know, $500 per referral you send us off your bill, you know, or we'll cut you cash if it exceeds that, you know? Would you mind just like shooting a quick testimonial video with us? Case study video with us takes 15 minutes and then sharing that in the group with some bullets of the results you got with us. Everybody who comes in from your franchise that saw the video, I'll give you, you know, discount, cut your check. You know, there's a bunch of different ways to do that, but I'm just telling you, like, that is like so much gold right there that it's like not even funny. It's so stinking worth it. And they'll probably only send you like 3 to 5, if they're maybe like on the high end, like 5 to 7 or 8, something like that, at least initially. But then guess what? You help those 5 to 8 And you offer them the same deal. It's just like, yeah, it doesn't take much before, you know, all of a sudden it just seems like people are calling you out of nowhere, throwing money at you. And I can tell you that those sales conversations are more like, I have 2 questions, then I'm signing up.

Right.

Like, it's the sales process is just like almost nonexistent at that point. They're just like ready to sign up because the person that they know, like, and trust already has already endorsed you. Right? They don't have any of that trust issue stuff when they come to you. So that's, that's literally how we got in. And I'm just, again, I'm telling you, there's much bigger names in the fitness space who are like fitness people. I was not one of them. No one still knows who I am in fitness. They know more about my business partner Ryan because he used to work in a gym, but like, they don't know who the heck Rob Bailey is, you know? And I was a CEO and owner of that company. So You know, if I can do that in the fitness industry and one of the most competitive industries on the planet, guys, I mean, you can do this in any niche. And that's the best way to get in is to use a Trojan horse strategy where you find, you know, a collection of— and the harder it is to get in, the better, because the one person that gets in, it's like they have the whole audience to themselves. That's, that's exactly what it's like, right? So what a cool ninja hack.

If you like that ninja hack that he just shared with you that you've probably never heard anywhere else, Be sure to thank him. Be sure to post a comment.

Yeah. And like, so where I really became a believer in this, Josh, was my friends own a surf shop, South Coast Surf Shops. And, um, for 3 years I worked before I started my agency businesses. Um, I worked in my friend's surf shop and I ran their web store and stuff like that. And the surf industry is very, very tight. They're very shoulder to shoulder. Like, if you're not a surf shop owner or employee It's very like, uh, I don't know if you're on the inside or not, man, you know. And it's just— and it's been like that for a long time. Um, and like, if you go— if you ever go to like a Surf Expo or surf film premiere or surf event, you can feel that like really fast. Like really fast. It's like a big insider's club, right? Once you're on the inside of the surf community, it's one of the best places you could possibly be in your entire life. They take such good care of each other. You're like, all of a sudden, like, it's like you have a membership card to just about anything you want in that world, you know. And, and so you have to view it like, I'm— I want to get in on, you know, on this industry's good side, but I want to do it the right way by serving them first, right? And that's the key. You have to generally want to help these people. And so whatever your niche— and this would apply for like plumbers just the same as it would for like— how many plumber— I don't know a single plumber personally, I don't think, but I would imagine there's their own vernacular.

There's definitely an inner circle, and if you can pierce the inner circle, you become known and recognized and boom, yeah, I come to you pre-positioned to buy.

Absolutely. Yeah, it's like that with anything, you know. It's so— don't discount that just and just think that it's, oh, it's Just gym owners are like that. It's like that with every niche that you could probably possibly think of. I'm just telling you. And it's the best way to approach it. You can't buy advertising better than that. I've tried, trust me. Um, it's just, it's the best way to get in is to serve one person and then have them, you know, sing your praises inside the group. That's it.

So a couple of follow-up questions on that. I definitely want to ask about the exit strategy. And I know that we're getting, you know, bumping up against an hour here. But, um, in terms of the testimonial video, do you interview them face to face like this where they would see both faces, or you just interview them where it's just their face?

Yeah, I just do it like this. Okay. And ask them 3 simple questions. Um, happy to share those with you if you want.

Yeah, that'd be awesome.

Yeah, we just— I— all I would do is I'll tell them, you can share as much as you want or as little as you want, it doesn't matter to me. Um, I'm just gonna ask you 3 simple questions. What was it like before you signed up with us? What kind of results do you get right when you sign up with us? And then what would you just say to somebody who's on the fence about signing up with us? And that's it.

You get the magic before state, after state, and the enthusiasm of, you know, here's what I would do, like hire these guys right away.

Yeah. And the key is you want to catch this person to get on with you when they've just had a huge win.

Catch them on that emotional high, like, oh man, I signed up, I had this, and now I'm here.

Yeah. So with the database reactivation, for example, sometimes that was within the first 7 days. A lot of times they'd be like, I'm too busy. I can't, I don't have time because you packed my calendar.

Right.

When it settles down, I'm happy to. So it's like 2 weeks, 3 weeks in, they're just like, oh my gosh, we just had 48 appointments and 35 new memberships. And that's a record. And this is usually the slowest month of the year. Now it's our best month of the year, you know, record-breaking stuff like that. And that, that just happened naturally because You know, you got good results for them, but the, it's, it's like I use, I like to use analogies and think outside of the niche that I'm in because it helps just cross the storylines, if you will. But like, if you think about a dentist, right? You don't want to ask for a review from your patient if you're a dentist, right after you just did a tooth extraction.

When they're in pain and discomfort, right?

Yes. And they're high as a kite and they're probably like, I kind of want to write a bad review just because my tooth hurts so much.

You know?

And it has nothing to do with the doctor, it's just the situation, the state that they're in, right? Likewise, if you just fix their smile, think about how impactful for the rest of their life that is. Or brighten their teeth to fix their, you know, whatever that is. Just got their braces off, whatever. Guess how I'm feeling today, Doc? Yes, I love you, man. I'm gonna name my first kid after you, probably, right?

Right.

Stuff like that. You have to think about it that way. And so like, those are the two— there's two rules that I have: get case study videos early and often, meaning you can't do it too soon. And that just because you got it once doesn't mean that you can't get it again. I re-interview people for case studies again and again and again.

Where are you at now? And how's it going now, right?

Exactly.

How's life continue to improve, right?

Exactly.

Um, that's a great share, right? Simple 3 questions. Don't overthink it. Don't overcomplicate it.

Yeah. Because think about it, you know, it might, it might take 15, 20 minutes out of your day to capture something that, that fuels the entire Trojan horse strategy for the next 3, 6 months, a year, you know. Um, so like at Fit Club Accelerator, which is our fitness agency, we had, um, I think over 100 case study video interviews.

Wow.

And now for the new stuff that we're doing, we have over 300 in under a year because I just— that's, that is our sales copy. You know, we don't have to get fancy with sales, sales copy and marketing and advertising now. It's just, we have over 300 positive reviews from people who are getting results. So it's like, what's someone going to say? That doesn't work. It's like, works for that guy and that guy and that guy 300 times. Like, At our last event, I was sitting there scrolling on the screen and it was like, and everyone's like, okay. And I'm like, no, we're painfully sitting through the scrolling of the videos that, yeah. And then they started to laugh and then I'm like, you know, and then they started to laugh again. And I'm like, I'm okay with this, laugh, you know, like, and so there's literally nothing better that you can do. Than have that sort of information. Because when somebody comes to look at your site, they don't trust you immediately. That's— it's the hardest thing to get over, right? They will trust your face next to someone who looks just like them saying it over and over and over and over again. And it'll happen very, very quick.

100%. So key insight here is don't stop at 1 or 2. Like, okay, I've got my case study and now I'm done. Like, the more social proof you can get the better you can position yourself and the more you can make it undeniable that what you're doing is going to work for them, right? Irresistible and magnetic to your ideal prospects.

Yeah, the goal should be to have a disgusting amount of social proof, so much that you can't fit it on one page, so much that your website can't load. That's what the problem we ran into was like, well, there's like over 100 videos on this page, we got to figure out a way for the page to actually load, you know.

That's killer.

And so, and it's not It's not a— it's not a braggadocious thing. It's not that I'm great, Rob is great. It's I'm the shepherd of their hero story. I'm just the shepherd. I'm the facilitator, right? So I'm sitting there, just sitting there asking questions, going like, dude, I love hearing this, you know. I couldn't be— I'm your number one cheerleader. I'm like the happiest person here for you. I'm just the shepherd. This is your win. You're the hero, not me. So that's the proper way to do it, in my opinion, and the way that is the most authentic and the way that is the most believable to people. If you script it too much or make it too much about you, it's, you know, people see through that really fast. And we're looking for fast, but like on this side of the thing where it's like, that person looks— oh, CrossFit, CrossFit box owner, CrossFit box owner, CrossFit box owner, results, results, results. Oh, well, Rob's just this ugly guy over here, the caveman, just talking to them. You know, that's fine, he's fine. Maybe I'll get on the phone with them later, but I believe them. I believe them. I believe them. Okay, now I'm kind of excited. All right, I guess I'll book a call, right? Can't hurt.

No doubt. Powerful insights. Thank you so much for sharing, guys. If you're getting value from this, I know we're going long. I want to make sure, um, you know how to get more information about Rob and kind of his training for agencies. And, you know, he's helped us a lot with how we can develop nurture campaigns for our existing client base, which has been a game changer. So Rob, how can they learn more about you and kind of how to plug into your program?

And yeah, so we specifically help agency owners solve the follow-up and appointment booking problem for their clients. You know, I won't sit here and, you know, spout off the whole pitch here, but if you have any interest in having the level of success that we've enjoyed with our fitness clients, and that we've helped so many others in other niches do, including Josh. Just go to robbailey.com/quiz. And I spell my first name with two Bs, so it's R-O-B-B-B-A-I-L-E-Y.com. I know it's nauseating. There's three Bs in a row there. Sorry about that. Sorry. Yeah, that's what all my friends call me now is Triple B. It's like a joke. But seriously, like, I think that, you know, this is all I do now. Now that I sold my agency, I'm like, I'm so passionate about the follow-up. Like, there's studies out there that say that you have 5 minutes or less to get in touch with a hot lead, and after that, you know, your chances of even getting in touch with them after that drop off by like 600%, right? And nowadays, thank God, we have some great— a great— a one great tool that will solve 99% of your lead follow-up problems. Um, Joshua Nelson is on it. I've helped 300 and something agency owners do it who have left reviews. Then we've helped about 300 additional agency owners install this in their business. And I would love— it'd be an honor for me to help you with that. So if that's an issue that you need solved, you haven't figured that out yet, um, just go to robbailey.com/quiz or just find me on Facebook and send me a message. I'm super approachable. So either one of those would work fine. Ping him.

I'm also going to have the link here in comments. It's helped us out a lot. Like, if you're serious about knocking it out of the park for your clients and having a differentiated service offering where it's not just, I'm going to generate some leads for you, but it's, I'm going to generate leads, I'm going to show you how to convert them into sales, and I'm also going to help you kind of create opportunity out of thin air by tapping your existing database— there's nobody better in the world to show you how to do that than Rob. So I highly recommend you go to that robbailey.com/quiz. Kinda, he unpacks exactly what the model is. And of course, it's just a great resource to help you get that side of what you do for your clients super dialed in.

Thanks, man. Yeah, and if you need for me to, you know, expand on that or come down and, you know, let us show your group stuff at your next event or whatever, I'm happy to do that. So you guys just let me know how I can serve you and I'm happy to oblige.

Awesome. Well, Rob, this has been great. Thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you for sharing. Your success. I mean, this is a tremendous agency success story and some very, very powerful nuggets and insights. Really appreciate you taking the time.

Oh man, the honor's mine, Josh. I appreciate you having me. Trust me, the honor's mine.

So definitely reach out to Rob, connect with him, go to that page. If you want more interviews like this, definitely go to 7figureagency.com. There I've interviewed several highly successful plumbing and HVAC several agencies from across the country and how they're growing and building 7-figure businesses. Uh, so definitely go to 7figureagency.com. There you can plug into that and be sure to check Rob out as well.

Cool. Thanks, Josh. Appreciate you, man.

Awesome. Thank you.

Take care.

Well, I hope you got value from this session. If you'd like more ideas, strategies, and techniques on how to more effectively grow and scale your digital marketing agency, I'd like to invite you to go to 7figureagency.com. There you'll find a training series completely free of charge that walks you through how we were able to grow our agency from zero to over $300,000 per month, uh, in less than 7 years and how we're adding clients on a consistent basis. So we walk you through, you know, the quickest way to position yourself as the expert in a particular market and proven models to get customers coming to you. Preposition to buy. So if you got value from this and you would like more, you can go to 7figureagency.com. There's a free video series for you there. Just get there, you'll enter your name, your email address, and you'll get access in the next couple of minutes. So thanks for joining us. Go to 7figureagency.com now, and we'll talk to you soon.