Cohen Wills & Justin Kane: Cleaner Marketing’s Seven-Figure Success

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, hello and welcome to the 7 Figure Agency Podcast. We're interviewing highly successful digital marketing agency owners from across the country, um, and I'm really excited today to have Cohen and Justin with us from Cleaner Marketing. They've grown their agency serving the cleaner space now to 7 figures, and I'm excited to have them on to kind of share their story, let you hear kind of how they've grown the business, how they land clients, how they deliver results, how they retain the clients, and ultimately how they've scaled so quickly. So Justin and Cohen, thanks so much for being here.

Yeah, thank you so much for having us. We're excited.

Definitely our pleasure. We look forward to this.

So tell us, start off, tell us a little bit about your background. Like, how did you guys get into the agency space? And in the cleaner niche specifically?

So we really have a unique way of coming into this. I feel like most of everybody that we meet in the agency world had an agency at one point. We actually have very different backgrounds. So in 2019, I bought my very own dry cleaning business. So I spent a couple of years kind of really understanding that industry, learning how to grow my own dry cleaning business. And things were going really well. I really only had aspirations to be a dry cleaning owner until COVID happened. And so I put all of my eggs in the basket of my dry cleaner, bought a relatively large dry cleaning operation, and all of a sudden my sales went to zero overnight.

And so those were some expensive eggs.

They were some very expensive eggs. You know, being a young entrepreneur, I think you always presume that you have the Midas touch. And nothing bad is ever going to happen. And so I was very exposed. I have a loving wife and 3 kids, and so I needed to put food on the table for them. I needed to try my best to avoid bankruptcy. And so after a couple of months of, you know, being frustrated, drinking too much, complaining, blaming the world, I realized, hey, I got to take this into my own hands. I understood that in the dry cleaning space there's such a need for, you know, a good process and marketing because most of everybody was people who had like a little gimmick or a little shtick that like, oh hey, do this one really random thing and that'll cause all of your problems to go away. And I think most of us know that's not really how a good effective marketing works. So I actually rolled out a software business that integrated with the point of sale systems for dry cleaners and said, hey, here's a marketing tool, dry cleaners, that you guys can use. And I started that in 2022, and I did that for about 8 months. And the return rate on that business was massive. We kept clients for about 2, maybe 3 months, and then they immediately canceled. And about after about 6 months of doing that, I was making just enough money to keep the food on the table, keep the lights on. And I met with a guy And he said, you were— you took a, um, a business owner who was already so busy and you just gave them another full-time job. Um, and so he said, you don't need to be giving them a tool, you need to use your tool to provide a solution for them. And so I said, okay, great, um, I need to start a marketing agency for dry cleaners. I'm a CPA by trade, I have no idea how to run a marketing agency. Um, and so I felt so overwhelmed. I actually at one point had a contract to sell the marketing agency, which at the time was doing $8,000 a month in revenue, um, to a third-party group. Yeah, oh my goodness, me too. Um, and then as I was, uh, in the thick of it, being completely miserable, hating life, because being a solo— I'm sure some people can resonate with this— being a solo marketing agency owner at $8,000 a month was just enough to make myself hate life. I was doing all the work, working 80 hours a week. My father-in-law was actually at a Bible study talking to a guy. I was like, yeah, my son started this marketing agency. I don't know if it's a thing or not a thing, but he thinks it's a thing. And so this guy that he was meeting with said, hey, I know a guy who might be a good fit for that. He actually is— he was a pastor. And he's looking for something. And so fast forward, I met Justin, um, decided, hey, I love to get into the weeds, um, I'm not a people person by default. Um, Justin is a fantastic people person. Um, so we met and it was quickly off the— off to the races. Um, we were doing about $8K, um, came across you, um, not probably just like about within the first month of us meeting.

Yeah, here's, here's a cool plug too for, for Seven Figures with I remember when we were making that decision of going, Justin, it's about like more than a quarter of our budget, but I think it's definitely going to be worth it to invest in this mastermind. And, uh, wow, has that definitely paid off. But we have a cool little saying that we say to a lot of our clients that we had in the beginning is, he's a CPA by trade, I'm a pastor by trade. So desperately cares about the numbers, I desperately care about the people. And, uh, It has been a great fit ever since. So that was the beginning. And, uh, what he didn't say, which I think a lot of people listening to this could possibly resonate with, is that it was birthed out of a season of pain, uh, season of just where you can't see sometimes the light at a tunnel. Um, but when you find a group like Seven Figures and you find a partner like we did with each other, man, the future is so bright for so many people that are probably either losing hope or, man, am I ever gonna— can I get this this ship actually, uh, you know, off the dock. And, um, and man, we're glad that we did because there's many opportunities probably to, to throw in the towel, you know. And when you choose not to and you kind of push forward, find the right people, uh, we're sitting here now doing an interview with you, which is pretty cool.

I love that.

I did not know, Justin, that you were a pastor. How cool is that? So that, that's great. I love that analogy that, you know, he cares about the system, you care about the people, which is just amazing. Synergy. So you, you were in the cleaner business, you decided, hey, let's start the software. Software was tough to scale, turned it into a done-for-you marketing agency, got into the weeds, found the partner. Like what I think, what was the acceleration point where you guys were able to start to land more and more clients within that space?

So I think whenever we came to 7 Figure Agency, the biggest problem we had is, okay, we know, we know the industry. We know what we— we know these— this one or two things that we can do to help grow a dry cleaner, but we didn't know how to put the individual pieces together. Like, so what I would do is I would put my sales hat on one month and go, okay, we've got operations fairly dialed in, so let me go and sell a bunch of stuff. And I'd focus on selling for like 2 weeks, and then we would get a client or two, and then we'd go, oh crap, now we have to onboard them, we have to deliver the results, we have to make sure we get the tracking in place, we got to make sure are happy. Then we would leave sales and go back over to operations, and then things would dry up. And so we constantly were like on this little wheel that kept us right at $8,000 to $10,000. And so I remember whenever I first signed up for 7 Figure, I remember my wife, um, very rightfully so, was a little concerned, like, hey, we're taking all the margin that we have in our life and we're putting it into this training program. And I remember my thought process because I am one of the most cynical people you'll ever meet. I was like, it's okay though, because the guy that I talked to said there's a 60-day money-back guarantee. So we're just going to stay in this thing for 59 days. I'll figure it all out. We're out of here. And I got in there and I got to the training and I was like, all right, let me just knock out this training, get the— because most masterminds that I've joined in the past, you know, there's 2 or 3 good things, you get the knowledge. And, you know, that's— I think that's a reason why a lot of masterminds probably churn. But here we are, a year and 3/4 later, I am not more than 10% through the massive, massive pile of material and knowledge. And every time there is something, we have an opportunity to grow and expand our business. There's no guessing, will this work, won't this work, let's try this. We just open up the 7 Figure Training portal and it tells us exactly what we need to be focusing on in that moment based on our size. Um, and it has just saved us years and years of trial and error.

Yeah.

Um, and so just having that playbook to go and know like, this is what I'm working on today, have community of people with me that are in the exact same phase, the, you know, high-fiving when we're celebrating, um, consoling and getting advice and mentorship when you're beat down. It's just been a massive accelerator.

And Josh, I think that gave us the confidence that we know we can scale and we're going to be okay. But on some practical levels too, the industry seems to be very knitted together. And so the moment that you get inside of the industry with the trade shows, he was speaking at some of the trade shows. He was on— were you on the board of DLI at the time or no?

No, I don't— I wasn't on the board, but I was very closely associated with the trade group.

So he was in a number of groups that got his name kind of moving up in terms of what he's doing for marketing and how it could possibly help them. And then we got into a relationship with a gentleman that seemingly was like a beginning when we started as a competitor. At least that's how we kind of saw him, to where he became our client. Uh, and when he became our client, all the people that he was masterminding for in that industry, he started to encourage them to come our way. And so that's where it just started to really go on an upward climb. And I remember we onboarded at one time, I think, 14 to like 15 or 17 clients within like a couple weeks. And that was insanity. Uh, and then with him going to the trade shows and we started around, it just started to have those little spikes or spikes of, uh, 10 to 12 clients coming on board at the same time. And we were just making clients extremely happy with the results we're getting, so that, that word of mouth spread very quickly, um, and we just saw it constantly grow throughout the course of the year.

Yeah, so good. I love it. I want to dig into that a little bit more. I also love that story about the fact that the investment in the coaching felt like a lot. You weren't sure whether it was going to make sense to continue. But oftentimes, it's when you invest in yourself and you say, hey, we're going to burn the boats, we're going to go all in on this, it forces you into action. It forces you to move things forward. So, kudos to you.

Josh, we paid more to you than we did ourselves.

Yeah, that window of time, it sounds like it.

Yeah, but it was the best thing that could have ever happened to our business.

We do agree.

So good. Love that. So, um, I want to talk a little bit about the service because, um, cleaners is a very unique niche. Probably not a niche I would recommend people go after because it's typically low ticket. Um, it doesn't hit like the things we would look for. The fact that you have the experience in the niche, you have the connections, I think makes it really great. Can you talk us through kind of what the, the program packaging looks like and what they hire you for and kind of what the pricing is?

Yeah. So we've taken a very untraditional approach compared to our competitors because there are 2 or 3 other people serving the dry cleaning niche. And I largely attribute this to you guys in the program packaging training, which is we very much so lean into when we're having an acceleration or kind of like a educational meeting with a potential prospect, we lean into this, hey, we know that at the end of the day, what you're looking for is not really a specific marketing service. Maybe you came to us wanting to learn more about SEO. Maybe you wanted to learn, come to us learning about pay-per-click. But at the end of the day, I think what you really want is to have an ATM machine where you can put a dollar in and it spits $2 back out. We're not in the marketing business, we're in the return on investment business. And based on your situation, this is going to be the package that works best for you. So all the way until today, we don't offer any kind of standalone service that you can sign up for when you come to Kleaner Marketing, because in our opinion, we would be doing our clients a disservice to sell them an SEO service if they asked for that, or a pay-per-click service if we ultimately don't believe that that's going to give them the best return on investment. And we're so heavily leaned into return on investment that we guarantee people, if you're on what we can kind of consider our signature plan, you don't get that return on investment based on our recommendation, you don't pay anything at all. Which was a very unconventional, unconventional, um, thought process in our industry, but it really enabled us to get the, you know, the clout and the recognition of, hey, these guys have to know what they're doing And this guy owns a dry cleaner himself and is doing these things. But both of our packages, we have one that we kind of call, you know, because pardon our language, we're not marketing people through and through. I refer to them as the plan that squeezes the existing orange, i.e., your existing customer base, as much as possible to get orange juice. And then the plan that goes out and gets you new oranges. So we have a plan that costs a little bit less, but it's focused on just maximizing the value of your current database. I.e., what we would call in the industry database reactivation services, um, client ascension packages. But then we also have, for those higher-tier dry cleaners, the dry cleaners that are doing $1 to $2 million plus in sales, a package that has more comprehensive services like SEO, pay-per-click, website management, things like that.

And here's a cool thing too, I think, Josh, for the people that are watching, is I remember our whiteboards when we began, the reiterations of starting at this amount and going will they pay back? And I mean, we started probably— I mean, it was probably in the $699, maybe the $599 mark, and we just signed somebody on today, they're at $2,999. So, so I mean, same service. Yeah, same service. So that is pretty cool to see progressively, uh, we tiered upwards and, um, maintain our clients and just kept on— it just kept on rolling in. So And I, and I give him props for that because I think it was his constant, oh hey, I think we can up our, our price point here, um, and the market has, you know, favorably responded. So yeah, that's been a pretty cool— because I know that so many people struggle with, can I continue to increase? And we weren't just increasing for more money, but we had such a low ticket price that we knew out in the other market, if they even venture somewhere else, they're going to find this thing way more expensive than probably what we're offering it for.

Yeah, I love that. So, so power positioning, the fact that you run cleaning businesses and you know exactly what you're doing, and also an irresistible offer, which is, look, if you use this signature system that we know is going to work, it doesn't get ROI, we'll refund your money. So you reverse the risk and you've got the power positioning. It makes it a very compelling offer. Um, tactically speaking, database reactivation, sending emails and text messages to the existing customer base, for some monthly fee. Is that pretty much—

yeah, let me say this first, and he can just double down on it, uh, because I think it, it's a testament to something he created. So he was able to code in so that we could get their point-of-sale data so that we could trigger that marketing from where that customer was coming in. So if they hadn't been in their store for 30 days, our system says, hey, it's going to send them a reminder, come on in, we miss you. Um, If they were part of a getting a comforter campaign, we were able to trigger that. Reviews have been our bread and butter for a big quick win, uh, anywhere they come from. If they get like, oh, we're very happy with our reviews, I don't care what it is, we'll say, oh, we'll, we'll probably double it or even more than double it within the first couple months, and it has yet to fail. So those big wins right off there, having the POS access has been a game changer, uh, for that initial Wow, you guys. And then we show them the real numbers and their POS. It has nothing to do with— we can't finagle it. So I sit in front of all these clients and go, here's the numbers, and they're like, wow, that's pretty, pretty remarkable.

So yep. Um, yeah, so our two plans that we have, um, our lower tier plan, essentially weekly emailing. Um, we have several ways that you can ascend the value of an existing customer in the dry cleaning space. Which I think is a testament to good reasons why to niche down into a very specific niche.

You know, the industry really went well.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, we know that in the dry cleaning space, a lot of people aren't weekly dry cleaners, but they do come in if they have an event happen, like a funeral, a wedding, um, they went out on the weekend with some friends. Um, so they may not need our core service every single week, but they— 100% of our clients have laundry at home that they hate taking care of, washing and folding, especially if you're a busy couple. We know that our customers have comforters on every single one of their beds. Those comforters probably haven't been cleaned in the last 3 months. So by being— by taking our relatively large database, ascending them with these other complementary offers allows our clients to be able to get a really fast, impactful increase in their sales, use that increase in sales to be able to double down on things like paid ads, Facebook ads, and SEO to then go out and get more of our core clients, which is ultimately dry cleaners, dry cleaning clients.

So good. I think really smart that you guys made the investment and figured out how to integrate with the POS. That gives you a massive competitive advantage because that's hard to figure out, but super high leverage for the clients. And it sounds like your foot in the door, your main strategy is squeeze the lemon, which is Look, you don't even have to spend a dollar in advertising. We're not gonna build a fancy website. We're not gonna do SEO. We're gonna help you monetize the existing prospect, the existing customer base that you have, and that's gonna generate an ROI. And if you want to go out and find new customers, we've got this other program where we can get more fancy with the website.

And Josh, that's exactly what happened. That's where we won over the trust and then all those existing clients, cuz we didn't have the second package initially. And now, or then when we were onboarding, we're like, hey, try the right, or the, the, the, the Signature package first. And if you like it, you enjoy working with us, let's go over it. And so it was just a progressive realization that they're going to immediately jump onto that. And so probably 80 to 85 maybe percent of all of our clients are on our upper tier package.

Oh, so good. So you guys have done a really nice job showing the value. It's like, hey, look, we've already won you with this. Let's, uh, let's go do the other stuff.

Yep, very few people are not. And, and this may be important, I'm going to share this just because I think it might speak to somebody watching. But this niche, when you think about a dry cleaner, you maybe, Josh, would see it very differently than what we see it as today. Because I always thought it is a mom-and-pop, or we have these little dry cleaners around that they're probably using paper receipts. But in the last 4 generations, this particular one, they've been bought up like 9, 10, 15, 20 at a time. And so these are people who are looking to grow. They're— so when somebody's looking for their niche, maybe they have a preconceived idea of what that niche is and like, oh, that would never work. But maybe that industry train changed a little bit so they can explore it a little bit more.

Love it. So, so good. So can you talk a little bit about price point for the higher level thing, like, and what you're including in that package?

Yep. Um, yeah. Um, so on the higher tier package, we include Facebook ads, Google ads, SEO. We're in a niche where the website is almost never how we would like for it to be, so we typically just almost always start with a new website and social media posting in addition to all of our core services. So basically we kind of refer to it as a fractional CMO service where they show up once a month, give our team some guidance, their account manager takes lead on all things marketing, and we show up the next month with our reporting. We start that package today at $2,499 plus $125 per additional location, because in, inside of our niche, our ideal client typically has one large central production facility where they're cleaning all the clothes and anywhere from 5 to 20 satellite stores. So we, we found the best way to peg price to the amount of work that we're having to do for multiple locations is to have a tack-on price for each additional location. So that makes our typical client in the higher tier bracket somewhere around $3,500 a month.

So good. Well, love it. And you'd never think, you know, bricks and mortar cleaning services would invest at that level. But like you said, there's price elasticity, right? As you prove value and you say, hey, look, we could probably charge this and you see what the market will bear. You know, you started at a couple thousand and now it's all the way up there. That, that's— it's phenomenal.

I think—

yeah, go ahead.

I mean, to me, because we have this conversation with clients a lot, because most of our clients are in the $2 to $3 million, so they do have the $3,500, right? One reason we like to start them on the lower tier plan is that if you look at this as an expense, we're never going to be the marketing agency that you choose because we are very painstakingly not trying to be the cheapest. Um, if anything, we're trying to keep our price point high because we want to make sure that we're doing everything we can that's going to get you a 3, 5, 10x return on ad spend. But what we can do is within 60 days of working for us, I think the mindset changes from this is a marketing expense to, hey, this is that money machine. Um, I'm putting a buck in, I'm getting 3 or 4 bucks in. And if you have a money machine sitting in front of you you're not going to come to Cleaner Marketing if you can get $2 for every $1 you put in and say, hey, I only have a budget for $1,000 for your $2,000 you'll give me back. So let me give you $1,000, you give me $2,000, and that's all I'm going to do this month because that's the, that's the budget I have. Now, if you know you have a money machine, you're going to stay, you're going to bring every bit of money you have so you can double it. Um, and so within 60 days of working with us, I think people see that the package kind of looks a little bit more like a, you know, a money machine. And we're showing them the numbers on what kind of return on investment they're getting, so they feel comfortable continuing to put more and more money into those appropriate channels.

So good. I love that analogy, and I love that you guys are able to prove that value. And I think you mentioned something, uh, that with the POS you can actually show like, here's the actual leads that generated revenue and compare marketing spend to actual revenue. So you're not guessing, it's not a fabricated number, it's tied directly into their POS.

I directly too, and I think one, that's one of the things that has made Cleaner Marketing so sticky for our clients because many of them were doing, I'm going to do with that person and that person, and now they're coming under one roof, uh, and they enjoy our team and we're getting results. So it's very difficult for them to pull the plug on anything because it's attached to everything. And now we're doing printing for them as well. And then he had just, um, well, it's almost nearly rolled out to where any, any of the ads or leads that are coming through, not just on the, um, you know, the trigger marketing site, but ads that we do, uh, we will be able to track how much that brought into them on their POS as well. And that game, the net, the, the day that that takes place across the board, it's, it's over with. We, we will have them for a long, long time. And I think the stickiness of our company has led to such a low churn rate Uh, that, that's been, I mean, a huge point that you were mentioning at our last mastermind is just that you get that number down and, uh, that significantly changes a lot.

No doubt. So, so good. So we've got a great understanding of the niche you're in, kind of what the packaging looks like. We talked briefly about how you guys have landed clients, um, and I definitely want to get into that now because that's, it's a hot topic. How do we, how do we get the attention? How do we land clients? So I want to get into what you're doing now, but I'd like to start with that first $8,000 in recurring revenue. Cullen, what was the play? What was the approach to get those first handful of clients?

So the first set of clients that we got were my, let's call it 5, 6 clients that were still using my SaaS product that I was selling. It was, at the time it was ActiveCampaign that I was kind of white labeling. Now, bless those souls, the poor, poor people who went through that SaaS age of our life and then somehow still came along. But when we went, when we started to make that transition, I went to all of them and, you know, like I said, 5 or 6 of them and said, hey, we're going to actually change this to a marketing agency. And pretty much all of them said, okay, I think that makes sense, because what you're doing here isn't really working. Um, and so, um, I said, do y'all want to do the marketing agency? And about half of them said, no, no, we don't want to do the marketing agency. Um, and I went back to them and said, how about this? If you don't love what you get from me doing it entirely for you, I will give you all of the money back after 90 days. Um, so, um, they said, you know what, if it's free, it's for me. Um, so they all said yes.

Nothing, nothing like desperate pitches.

Not how I would recommend getting Waiting for the fence, right?

And, and just out of curiosity, what percentage of those stuck around?

Um, I'd say 90% of those clients are still with us today because when I, when I came on board, I said, Cohen, okay, here's the 6 or 8 clients. I said, if you were to rate them on, uh, going up or down, where would— he goes, I have absolutely no idea. I don't know why they're still with us, but reach out to them and let's see. And all of them stayed on.

Yeah, I think Justin told me to rank them on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being a very happy client, 1 being not happy. And I was like, one, one, one. Um, but I'll tell you, the, uh, you know, despite some of our initial hiccups of that software side of the business, I think people did appreciate that we were a group that cared, um, and that we were a group that was willing to put our money where our mouth was.

Yeah.

Um, especially when Justin came along and was able to kind of add heart and passion and consistency to our customer service. and I focused on the technical side of ensuring that they're getting a positive return on investment. Uh, getting that right group of people in the house was so critical.

Yeah, that's very critical.

We, uh, while I feel like we had an unconventional approach to getting to that first 5, that the approach that we took from 5 to the place where, you know, how did we go in a year from getting 8,000 to, you know, almost just a hair over 85, I guess, in the first year. That part was intentional and focused. What we did on that part, that was kind of our, kind of like what we call internally our own little ninja hack of sorts, is we watched a training on the portal with Seven Figure that was talking about your trade groups and focusing in on the trade groups, really becoming a part of that. We started to lean into that part of it. But what we did is we went out and we found a lot of the coaches that were in the dry cleaning coaching niche, um, because I think every niche out there has some sort of coach. They have coaches, they have gurus, they have people who have masterminds of sorts. And so what we did is we met with all those people, but we didn't take the normal— the typical conversation would be, hey, We'd like to partner with you. We'd love to give you an affiliate fee for working with us. And so whatever you give to us, we'll give you a certain percentage of revenue. We didn't do any of that conversation at all. What we did is we sat down with those coaches and said, hey, we're super interested in how you're serving the industry. We were hoping to serve the industry. Tell us about exactly what you're doing, how you bring value to those clients, and where you feel like your churn rate for your coaching business is happening. And what we noticed fairly quickly is almost all of them would say, hey, you know, we know that if a dry cleaner does A, B, C, whatever it is for that group, that they will be a more successful dry cleaner. However, they had a very difficult time implementing A, or hey, they had a very difficult time implementing this particular thing. So instead of going in and working with them and saying, hey, we will give you money money really wasn't what those coaches were looking for. They were looking for an opportunity to reduce the churn within their own group. Um, so what we did instead is we came to them and said, hey, what if that pain point, that reason that all of your clients could churn, what if we took that and worked it into one of our core packages just for your group? Um, so what we did is we modified our base plan, um, to include whatever that core service was for the coaching groups. That they felt like would make their clients successful. And all of a sudden, the coaching clients were like, or the coaches, mentors would say, yeah, that if, gosh, if every single person did that thing, we would have massive growth. So with overnight, essentially in each group, we essentially were able to get almost all of their clients to become Cleaner Marketing clients. And it was a huge win-win for both us as an agency, but also them as coaches. Because they were able to give a lot more satisfaction to their clients knowing that there was a done-for-you solution out there for them.

And Josh, I don't know if this is a, um, a rare thing, but it was almost like we joked about turning the faucet on and then turning it off. And it's scary that you can do that because I know industries don't always have that faucet. But, um, we've been, either by God's grace on our life or just by the fact that the industry has seen us as a favorable, uh, solution. We've been able to turn that off and then turn it on when we're ready to kind of go at it again. So when he said, yeah, he turned the faucet off a couple months ago so that we could prepare for, uh, influx, um, we've seen that take place throughout all those groups. So that's been pretty cool.

I love the idea of, you know, you're just one joint venture away from a 7-figure agency, right? And you guys You did that, but you took the approach not of, hey, let's find a win-win, let's find a JV rev share type of opportunity. You were intentional about figuring out what their challenge was and how you could help them solve that challenge. You became a value-added provider for them, plus you've got great services and great communication, and so it just became a logical extension that they would start to refer you. I'm curious, did those referrals come in the form of one-on-one introductions Or did they have you come speak to their coaching group when they were live webinars? I'm just curious, like, what the— well, maybe a mix of all of that stuff.

Um, I would say it's about 90— it has been a mix of all of those different things because our, our big heart in this is, hey, let us serve you in a way that makes your life as easy as possible. Um, coach/mentor, because that certainly is our bread and butter. That's what we love is folks partnering in with these different groups. So we will fly across the country, meet with their team, do a webinar. But really, on the most practical side, once those coaches saw the results that we could get for their clients, we would just get a— we would get an email either from the coach or this potential new person. And they came so predisposed to purchase. Yeah, I, you know, I had done my training on how to do an acceleration session. And so I had my slide deck and it just killed Justin for the first 3 or 4 months because I feel like people need the data. And we would have clients consistently just waving their money over there.

Just take the credit card.

Cohen's like, no, no, no, no, no, hold on one second. You have to see what it is that we do for you.

But it was, I mean, we, our close rate inside of that um, vertical was probably north of 95%. Because when, when someone trusts a coach, when they trust a mastermind group, and that person says, hey, this is the solution, they, they're 100% predisposed.

But, and also, that coach was not getting money from us. That was, I think, the big deal. They trusted— I mean, he could clearly— and a lot of those coaches may use us too. So it was like one of those things where it was like there was no money that was—

no quid pro quo.

It wasn't like, yeah, so yeah, go, go use these guys and they're gonna get a fit. Nope. It was like, because they, they would ask us on the calls, so hey, so-and-so recommends you, is— are you guys kicking back? I was like, no, that's the great thing. He literally recommends us because he's one of our clients or whatever it may be. And so that was kind of cool to see that people had that trust because there was no under-the-table or even over-the-table type payment being done.

Love it. So practically speaking, if you're watching or listening and you're like, man, how can I apply this to my agency? Do that research. Like, who are the coaches? What are the masterminds? What's the association? And start to befriend those people. Start to connect with those people. Come with your hand out, like to give, not to just take.

Absolutely.

Yeah. I think giving to the coaches in advance of asking for anything is one of the best things you can possibly do. Um, so learn about what that coach is good at, learn who their clients are. If you know some people who would be a good fit for that coaching group, try to send them some leads, send them a gift, um, do whatever you can do to give, because people love to reciprocate when they can.

But give with no strings, because that one— I mean, the one mastermind guy, I mean, that was a 6-month type relationship of— we'd even— we weren't even expecting nothing, just Hey, how can we serve this? And, uh, that was pretty cool to see that just immediately turn around after a certain point in time.

Yep.

And we were not in it for anything to get from him, so, or any of them. So that was pretty cool.

So, so good. So we've talked about kind of what the, what the client acquisition strategy looks like. Um, would love to talk about operations. So you've grown from $8,000 a month of recurring to $85,000 a month recurring, and You're still growing very rapidly.

Um, we're at 123 last month, Josh. I'm sorry, 123 last month.

So good. So, uh, talk to us a little bit about how you built the operational infrastructure to handle that scale and obviously to do it at a world-class level because the, the clients are getting results and they're sticking around at massively high retention rates.

Yeah, I'm gonna let Justin run lead on this, but I do want to give a huge shout out out to your fantastic wife, Yesenia, who I feel like gave, uh, one of the mastermind groups, I believe it was November of last year, she showed this chart of how different agencies grew. Um, and I could still see it just burned into my head because it horrified me. Um, she was like, she said some agencies have the hockey stick growth. And so I had this little line with a straight line going up She said, we typically almost always see after the hockey stick, it either levels out or it immediately shoots down. So we, you know, we definitely walked away from that thing or from that mastermind going, okay, we really need to look at what— why people after shooting up so high quickly feel like the ground starts to crack and fall down. And so we actually stopped taking clients for about 2 months. Um, created a waitlist and said, hey, we want to go through and make sure every aspect of our business is ready to scale to the next level. Because I think what gets you from $0 to $8,000 is— takes a big transition of your business. What takes you from $10,000 to, you know, $30,000, $40,000 is a complete change in business. And what we found is if you didn't— when we were at that, we had that $40,000 a year business model where I'm doing a lot of work, Justin's doing a lot of work. We're bringing on a few people who are doing a bunch of work and we're all just doing a lot of work. And I can so easily see how at a certain threshold, if you still continue to think that way, it could just completely implode the deliverables. So we took a lot of time to work on restructuring our team to make sure that we were built to get ready to go to, you know, where we look forward to very soonly being in the multi-seven-figure level. But Justin, you feel free to talk.

I love that you spoke about that process and recognizing, you know, we got to a level, let's make sure our systems, procedures, team are up to speed so that we don't have to see like a negative movement in the growth of the business.

Yeah. And I know we certainly did not coin this phrase, but we did fail forward as much as possible. You know what I'm saying?

Sure did.

Ready, fire, aim, right?

Yeah.

So, yeah. So, and I think that get it going before get it good, you know. So I think the, the idea of world class is a, it's a target. We were even talking about in our team meeting and that word came up, world class. I, I know we're certainly not there, but I think we built up a lot of relational equity. And for me, um, on behalf of him, but usually me talking to the clients, I really learned how to, uh, apologize genuinely. Like, hey, I'm sorry we dropped the ball there, you know, our team's working hard on it, you know, that kind of stuff. And, you know, we're constantly developing stuff, and as we're developing stuff, you You know, we would make promises that maybe we weren't, you know, always coming close to, but there's just this trust equity that we had built up. We had the humility aspect there. And then we started to build this team around Josh that, man, it just, you know, every single person on our team has been with us the entire time. Not a person has stepped away. And so we just started to fill these spots. And I think something that he does good from behind the scenes is he gets things where they need to kind of where somebody can then take that over and then kind of hopefully make it a little bit better. And he started to do that with each of the departments. And then just kind of have the responsibility making sure that, hey, this ship is moving and we're rowing in the same direction and our vision's not, you know, we're not veering off, off direction. So a lot of those different components of frustration and embarrassment and doing our best and we're getting better and to the point where now, where certain things are just dialed in and certain things are not, but it gives us confidence that those things that are not, we're going to get there, you know. So you kind of trust the process when you have that team in place. And, um, and so yeah, so we failed forward quite a bit to the point where we're now going forward more steps without failing, and that's pretty cool to see. And, and our reputation, I think, is coming along with that. I think initially it was man, they get stuff done, they're doing a lot of things, but, uh, they're not detailed, you know. And now I— we haven't heard that complaint in a while. And, and, uh, so that's been kind of cool to see that and, uh, and watch that progressive growth of a team around you that's actually in unison operating.

Yeah, I think one thing that I would add to that or clarify on is when we made change to kind of go to this multi-seven-figure operational model, we were really intentional to make sure that every different department in our organization has a true owner. And so every single deliverable has a, has a specific owner that they're accountable to. And what I think, you know, is a little different, you know, maybe not different about us, but one thing that we look at is we tell each person that's taking responsibility You know, it's okay to make mistakes. We're going to make mistakes every day. I've made 3 mistakes today. It's, it's all right to make mistakes. But what we— what's going to be different about our culture is we're going to own that mistake. We're— and then we're going to ask for feedback from the client. If it's something that involved the client on how can we do this better in the future. And then we're all going to meet on it. We have team meetings once a week where we take our wins, we celebrate the wins, but we also look to some of the failures and say, okay, this is a failure that happened. Our team immediately jumps on, hey, this was my mistake. Yeah, this is what happened. We break down what happened, why it happened, and then what are the changes in our systems and processes that we need to go and immediately update inside of our standard operating procedures to make sure that this doesn't happen again. And so that's where that phrase, fall forward, I mean, we should get that printed in big font because we— yeah, because with every failure, we take that as a learning opportunity to become a better company.

So good. I love that, you know, like, really part of the reason you had the fast growth was that you did build the airplane while you were in the air on your way down, but you also recognized, like, we, we have to make strategic decisions to get better and have those, sometimes those tough conversations with the clients and find out where you can improve and bring that to the team and build it into the culture. I'm curious, being that you come from a bricks and mortar cleaning business, did you guys decide to build a virtual team? Is it an in-office team? What's the team structure look like?

Good.

Yeah.

So we're hovering right around 11 people. We have 3 on the Asian side, Pakistan. We have 3 We have 1, 2, 4, 5 on the US side.

And it's the joys of growing quickly. You kind of have to do that quick number count. Yep.

And it's kind of cool. One of the ladies on our team who does our content writing, she said she brought up something interesting in our team meeting. And I was very— it was kind of really affirming to hear it. She goes, hey, can I speak to everybody? And we're like, yeah, of course. She said, I know how difficult it is to bring a collaborative effort of people that are all across. You know, sometimes they just do their thing, but we have so many things in Slack so they can see everything going on. She said, I know so-and-so over there, and the ads, I can see, man, how much they're actually doing all day long. It's just ping, ping, ping, ping. And then I get to see what this— and so she said, I can see everybody working together in, in unison, and then they're collaborating with each other. So all of them serve each other. They serve each other well, and they, they got each other's back. So I think that abroad, I didn't know how that would work, but man, that is— that's been very surprising at how well and cohesive they've been with each other. And then coming together on a, you know, Google Meet or Zoom meeting every Tuesday and then participating has also added just another level to them getting to know each other. And, um, I mean, one guy in our group, he said, I have never had anybody outside of my family, especially any place I work, ever just even celebrate my birthday and sing happy birthday. And it, it was such a little thing, but to him it was huge. And so it added so much buy-in, uh, to the things that we're doing. So yeah, so we have 6 that are abroad, 4 that are, uh, US side, and then some designers below us for the printing Awesome.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's great to have that virtual team because you can get the best talent, you can get efficiency, and you know, you're not landlocked to a local marketplace. You shared a couple things in the Ninja Hack around that, that weekly team meeting and how you built up the culture. I thought there were a lot of great insights. Can you share like one tip on how you've built a great culture amongst that, that, you know, virtual team?

Yeah, I'll probably point out two, then you can kind of add to it, is at least from my perspective, I'm looking for gaps because I know if gaps are unaddressed, they eventually become culture. So we knew initially in the beginning, and I think he's done great with this, and I don't mean to just throw him on the spot like that, but he has addressed things with me that are his frustrations, but there's a safe place to do it. And so it's kind of good to hear. I need to hear his input because then it goes, "Hey, this is a gap," and it's a little bit more of a warning, so, or a red alert. So We address those gaps, we prioritize them, and then we mobilize around them. And man, you get those gaps lined up, the culture then doesn't become that. We're not a non-detailed agency. We're actually a very detailed agency now. And so that gap was addressed. So I think gap identification is huge. And then getting the pulse, hearing them because they're the closest thing to what they're doing and knowing how they're thinking rather than, hey, how is Justin or how Cohen think about it? You know? No, no, I want to hear how you're thinking about it so then we can know how you're thinking about it and then kind of make some tweaks of, or probe a little bit more in every single one of them. I mean, you have some on the Asian side that are very timid coming out and saying, hey, this is what I think about this, and I think we should do this. And one of them called out one of what we did where a person was doing writing. He didn't belong there, but we had so much growth, he just picked it up and he did. It was noble, but he did a bad job. And she said, I don't think that's— I don't think that's our standard that we want to release any of this to the clients. And so it was tough for him to swallow. But we're all like, that's exactly what we need. And she held that standard up because she had a place to where we need to know what you're thinking about what you're over rather than, hey, what does Cohen think about this, you know?

So one of my favorite— so I'm an accountant by trade, as I mentioned, so I'm very used to A/B, very dry meetings, right? And so, and I've started a couple businesses before. And if I'm leading the meeting, I try to bring as much spice as an accountant can bring. But I mean, it's just, it's never going to be that exciting. But with our team meetings, Justin runs lead on those. And every time we start the meeting, he always starts the meeting with something fun. Fun. Um, sometimes it can be borderline on silly, but I remember, I believe it was 3 weeks ago, Justin said, hey, before we get started, I just want everybody to flip their cameras on real quick and tell us what your favorite song in your entire life was. Like, what is that song that when you think of it, it just amps you up? And as soon as I heard that, my accountant brain was like, what?

I'm wasting time here, right?

What a of 10 minutes to hear people's songs. But I think looking back on the 2 years of running this agency, that was probably the best culture-building moment. Because one of our introverted, quiet employees, her favorite song was Spice Girls. And so now we've got Spice Girl emojis and memes going on all the time. And we just learned so much about all the different people Yeah. You know, I think that having those lighthearted moments that people are not used to in the workplace, that's just something I really, really credit Justin to, you know, creating a fun work environment that causes people to want to leave and do their best for, for the clients.

Yeah, for sure. It's well said.

I love it.

You guys shared so many great insights there from being sure that you've got an accountability chart where everybody's clear on their ownership within it. Creating a culture where that you guys play together, right? Yeah, and there's a fun experience even though it feels like a waste of time. A team that plays together and laughs together stays together, and you guys are living proof of that. Even with an international team, a lot of times agencies want to treat their Filipinos or their Pakistani team as their VA, right? And they're off on an island and the US team gets together, but those guys aren't. And like, if you can bring the entire team together and and treat them like they're part of those weekly meetings and you care about their personal situation, you can create a great international culture, which, which really plays super nice. But I think there's another really important point is a lot of times we have a team member that we're annoyed by, like they're just something, they're not doing it right, and we vex about it in our own minds versus let's train that person on what they're doing wrong so that they can improve. And if you're not doing weekly training with your team guys, you like, you guys that are listening, you know, that's a missed opportunity because if you don't train them on what it is that you're annoyed by, there's no way it's going to get better.

Absolutely. And we make sure, I thought this was a great rule of thumb for meetings, is that if you praise publicly, you also address things publicly. And if you do it privately, then nobody learns from it. And so we do have that time where we address some very sensitive pointed things, and I, you know, try to do it the kindest way possible, but this was unacceptable. And, and man, just like you said, they have—

we've—

because they've watched us take ownership. Hey, we made this mistake, we messed up here, and they've done the exact same thing. And it's been cool to see everybody learns from that, so they're now modeling that to each other.

Yep.

So good. Love it, love it. So last thing I want to talk about is I want to get into retention. So it sounds like you guys have a a super high retention rate. Like, share some of the strategies that have worked well for you to show the love and to keep those clients sticking around long-term.

Um, so this is really something that I think Justin has been fantastic at. Our churn, um, from where I was at, as I mentioned to you, probably around 50%, um, every 3 months, um, with that software business, to where now we, we were, um, talking about it before this podcast, I think we've lost one client this year. Um, and so it's one of those things you say and Yeah, knock on wood, right?

Yeah.

But I do think that we've been very intentional to focus on making sure our clients just feel like we are a part of their team, as we kind of refer to it as being their fractional chief marketing officer, that we feel like we're winning with them, or if we're not getting the results that we're losing right there alongside them. But I think that one of the biggest things we've done is we very, very intentionally quantify the return on investment. That the clients are getting every month with a really simple report of saying, hey, you spent this much money, you got this amount of return on investment. And, you know, keeping a really simple page one, and then any of the other details you want, we have those details. But the reality is most clients really don't care about the impressions, the clicks, you know, the customer acquisition costs. They want to know, did they get $3 back? Did they get $10 back? And if they got that and they truly believe that they did, they typically are happy as can be if they know that that return was profitable.

So I would coincide with that. So the results, of course, you don't have results, retention is going to go down the drain. But I think the other word that I would use is just care, you know, like when they know getting results, but, you know, I think somebody said it, maybe you did, Josh, or somebody along the lines, it was Uh, you know, clients need assurance, uh, they need certainty, they need attention. Um, and I, I've always kept this rule of— and this is probably for more people who are watching this— just so that you don't get— agency is not just about a numbers game, it's not just about a money-making game. You know, my dad's been a small business owner for 40-some years, and so I keep in mind every time I'm with a client, I see him on the other end as how I would hope some marketing agency would treat him. And I think that came across to our entire team. You treat them with respect, you serve them as best as you can, and you respond as quickly as you can. And we've watched that progressively get better and better because it's hard to communicate in this age when it's via Slack or it's via Zoom, you know, but you have to find a way to come across even with your tone on, on caring about these individuals because they're small business owners, just like we all have been. Fighting for their life every single day, just trying to make this business better. Uh, and we get to play a part in that. So results, of course, very, very sticky results. Um, but I think at the end of, we're very relational. Um, we know a lot about our clients. Uh, they know about us. You know, I've had times when I've been able to pray with our clients, you know, coming from my background, conversations that usually are not business conversations. I don't try to make it happen, but it just kind of comes about as a relationship. And then ultimately, I think we both said these two months ago, where people just now, they trust us. They see us as a unit. They know that we're not divided in any type of way, and they trust that, hey, they're going to take good care of you guys. And that's— that I think that's the proudest thing for me to ever hear, is these guys you can trust. Uh, and that's been pretty cool.

So good. So they've just given you guys the recipe for almost 100% retention, which is phenomenal, which is world-class results, which you don't want to use that word, but the reality is deep expertise in the industry, custom integrations to the POS so you can show tangible measurable return on investment. So there's no way to question the results. So amazing results, but then world-class care, right? It's not just, hey, we want that monthly retainer. It's we really care about the client. We really want to see them win. We're willing to have those tough conversations when we know we dropped the ball. And I think that combination of great results and great service is why you guys have had such great retention in the, in the agency. And Josh, and why I think that's gonna continue for you, uh, into the future.

And Josh, that's, it's why we're a part of this mastermind. It's identical what happened. You, the results are tremendously sticky. Everybody's seen it. And then you and Yesenia, you care. You know what I'm saying? Like you, you come across as like, Hey, I care. And then we can try— like, I would tell anybody, I can—

I—

you can trust Josh. He won't take advantage of you. He's in it to help you. And of course, he gets a reward for doing so. So yeah, exactly what we explain is exactly what we experience with this agency. So that's a cool little plug there, but I think it's, uh, identical to what we're emulating in our company as well.

100%.

Thank you so much. I, I really appreciate it. So many great insights and takeaways. Guys, if you're watching this, whether it's live right now or you're watching after the fact, write in the comments here what a couple of your takeaways are, what some of your insights are. You know, I think as you think about structuring your program in your niche, is there a CRM? Is there a dispatch system? Is there a platform that you can sync into? A lot of us as agency owners are still projecting ROI, like, and that's one option. But if you can figure out how to sync with the system that they actually run their billing through, that gives you massive competitive advantage. I think from a client acquisition perspective, who are the joint venture opportunities that you can sync up with and approach it like Cohen and Justin mentioned? Like, you're not like, hey, I want to give you 10% of our recurring revenue for every deal you flip, but like, hey, I'd like to get to know you a little bit. I'd like to understand kind of how you're serving this industry and how I might be able to support you and enter those opportunities in that way. And then, you know, as it turns to building the team, I think a massive takeaway is treat your entire team like one big team and bring them in whether virtual or live and spend the time with them weekly, have the fun conversations, but also, you know, use those training moments to address the issues that are annoying you or where balls are being dropped.

Yep.

That's a good recap. That was impressive. If that was not teleprompted, impressive.

You guys covered a lot more than that, and really massive kudos to you guys for what you've accomplished. Um, you know, the success that you've had in the agency— cannot wait to see what you guys accomplish over the next 12 to 24 months and look forward to celebrating you guys.

Oh yeah, we're coming for another one of those.

Yeah, at Titan status sometime really soon. Um, kind of in conclusion, if you had one piece of wisdom to share, one other additional piece of wisdom with that agency owner that's wherever they are, like, you know, they're at $8,000 or they're at $20,000, they're trying to get to the next level, um, what would you, what would you say?

You know, to me, I think it's just to really go into the industry and give without any expectation of receiving. I think that's something that it doesn't— it's not super fun and sexy because it's not going to pay that dividend tomorrow, it's not going to pay the bills at the end of this month. But if you're in those Facebook groups, not shouting, hey, I'm a marketing agency, hey, here's a tip for Google Ads. You're just in there giving value, you know, in the Facebook groups, in the trade shows. You will get that advocacy over time that is just priceless.

Love it.

And, uh, this may be as transparent as I can be. When I'm sitting in that last day on Thursday at your mastermind and you're surrounded by people that have exceeded numbers that you one day would dream of, you feel like you don't belong. And there's a— and, and for no other reason, it's not because any— it's all internal, that there are barriers internally that are just keeping you where you're at. And, um, and you have to push through them. The insecurity, the, the doubt, the limiting self-belief— you, you, you got to see beyond that and know that there's nothing more special about I mean, come on, there's nothing we can do it anyway. You know, there's barriers that you can break. And, uh, I remember Josh just being so excited about what, $40,000 a month? What? That, that just seemed to him— he's been in the business world for so long, so those numbers are smaller than what maybe we're used to. But for me, I was like, man, that's just crazy to reoccur. And now I, I laugh at how excited I was about even reaching that number one day. So It would be that self-limiting belief when you, you get around people that maybe are further along, or if somebody hears our story, they're like, man, $123,000 a month, wow, like no way. When, when it's possible, it really, really is. And it takes others to see it, and then it takes yourself to kind of say, okay, I believe it.

I think we talked several about some of the things that we did, but I don't think, Josh, that anything we talked about today is anything that's not already deeply covered in the 7 Figure Agency Training. I mean, all all we did is every month we pulled out a little chart that you gave us that has little checkboxes. It says, hey, if we're at this, um, phase of monthly recurring revenue, we need to be doing these things. And we just followed the playbook and we did it consistently. And I mean, it is— we'll say I've been a part of a lot of masterminds, but this is just the most thorough documented getting you from where you are to where you want to be. Um, I, I just couldn't be more excited to be a —of the group.

Yeah.

And thank you. Yeah, for what you did.

Thank you guys so much for sharing, well, you know, your success story, sharing what's worked for you. Guys, if you got value from listening to these guys, be sure to reach out to them and send them a thank you. If they want to connect or learn more about you, is there any place that you would suggest?

Yeah, so definitely reach out to me on Facebook, Instagram. Those are probably going to be my two big ones. And even just feel free to reach out to us via email. We chose the worst URL. So if you're listening to this— I like it— new agency, don't go with.marketing. So our emails are cohen@cleaner.marketing.

No.com. Yeah, there's no.com.

Everyone wants to add a.com at the end of it, right?

Yep. That is very confusing, hindsight being what it is. But shoot us an email. I'm more than happy to jump on a phone call. I'm sure I know, just— oh, I love it. We just feel so blessed to be where we're at today because of people like yourself or the other coaches who invested the time. I remember having a meeting with Lynn one time, a great EOS implementer and coach on your team, and I just sat there thinking to myself, why is this guy spending the time to have this conversation with me? But those conversations just paid massive dividends. So anything we can do to help pay that forward, we'd love to sit down and help in any way we can. Absolutely. So good.

Well, thank you guys again so much. And for those of you that listen, thank you for participating. Be sure to hit the like button or the subscribe button or post a comment here with a couple of