Effective Growth Strategies for Digital Marketing Agencies with Joshua Crouch

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.

Hello and welcome to the 7 Figure Agency Podcast. We are interviewing highly successful digital marketing agencies from across the country and how they've grown and scaled their digital marketing agency. Uh, and today I'm super excited to have Josh Crouch with us from Relentless Digital. Uh, Josh has grown his agency over less than, I guess, less than 5 years to multiple 7 figures serving the HVAC, plumbing, and electrical niche. He's a wealth of knowledge on growing an agency, delivering world-class results, and he's probably had to stumble through some challenges as well. So if you're excited, give me a yes in the comments. Josh, thanks so much for being with us today.

Oh, thanks for having me. I haven't struggled at all.

It's been— no, none of us have, right? It's always easy peasy.

It's been, it's been gravy.

So Josh, I guess the best place to start is just kind of tell us, we know you're running multiple 7 figures today, but kind of give us the lay of the land. Like how many clients, what's the approximate recurring revenue, what's the size of the operation?

Yeah, so as of end of March, we are at 102 clients and we are right on that line of about $4 million in annual recurring revenue, just if we take out the projects and stuff. So we're about probably Probably closer to 4.5, 5 with projects.

So good, man. Nicely done. Congratulations. And you've grown really, really quickly. Tell us a little bit about the journey. Uh, kind of like, I know that you've been in the home services HVAC land for a long time and made the pivot to running your own agency. Kind of tell us a little bit about that journey.

Yeah, I mean, honestly, I think that really set me up. Being in the home services space taught me a lot of lessons. I never owned a business there, but I was always kind of like that right-hand person for the individuals I work for. So operations manager, I've, I've done the sales and marketing, uh, started a branch, Alabama, you know, about an hour away from the, the primary company headquarters where I kind of was on my own. So I had the ability to, to learn and just take in all of the business lessons that we learned, but without my money, right? Um, so At the last company I worked at, I worked at 3 different HVAC companies. The last one I really honed in on the marketing side because— and more so on the local SEO and then the customer retention side, email and text message marketing. And, uh, we were part of Best Practice Group that— you know the group, but you're, you're actually— I saw you out at one of their events last year. Um, so I started giving tips in their Best Practices Facebook group, similar to like your Facebook group where a lot of business owners were hanging out and asking questions. I was just giving tips. I was just, hey, this is what's working for us. I had, uh, some people start reaching out. My first client wasn't even from the US, actually. My first client was from Canada, of all places. Um, so I had to try to figure out any different logistical things there. And I didn't know Thaddeus and Evan at the time, so I couldn't ask them any questions about what do I need to know about Canada. But, uh, decided from that point forward, and that was, uh, literally about 2 and a half weeks before the world flipped upside down, that I was gonna see if I could do this on the side while still keeping my job and if I could make a go at it. So that was about 4 years ago, March 1st.

Amazing, man. So like really fast descent, you know, in agency land to go to multiple 7 figures, probably on pace to be around $4.5, $5 million by the end of the next year or so. Um, Tremendous growth. You know, I usually like to start with asking, you know, how you chose the niche. And it seems like for you, you kind of naturally had the experience and expertise. But I think for you, I'd love to know is what prompted you to say, hey, I've got this stable job working at this HVAC company. I've got this, you know, growing industry that I'm in. What prompted you to say, hey, I want to shift to entrepreneurial and I want to shift to running an agency?

Honestly, I think that bug's been there for a long time. I grew up in a small family business with my father. We owned a couple martial arts schools and I helped them run those and do the marketing and stuff. But we, we never really got it to the point where it was a business where it was enough for like my sister, myself, and my dad to like make a decent income, which is tough. So like Chris Rodriguez and some of those that do the martial arts schools, I, I sympathize with their business owner because it's a, it's a passion. And it was, it was always a passion. I was in martial arts for 25 years, but it's just sometimes that business is very hard to get to a certain level where you can make a a decent income for your family. So I grew up in that environment, that literally from the time I was little all the way until I was in my mid-20s. Um, so I've always wanted to own my own business. I am not a handy person, so I, I literally stumbled into the trades. I was an accountant at this point, at this point in my life, because I love numbers, data, and statistics. I just didn't really correlate marketing with those yet. And, uh, so I got hired as an accountant at a local HVAC company. I wasn't even that good of an accountant at that point. And quickly got into the business side— operations, office management, managing the team in the field, dispatching, parts running, whatever that— whatever was needed of me to grow that business and get it out of some debt. So it was— the niche was obviously chosen for me, uh, in a way, but, um, it definitely was something that at some point I knew I was going to own a business. I just— I'm not handy. Like, this sign behind me, if you guys are watching this, I don't, I don't get to hang things at my house. I got fired. Like, I got fired like 2 houses ago.

Ricky will say, no, don't touch that wall, right?

I hire someone for that stuff now because I end up putting too many, too many big holes in the wall that we can't repair. Um, so I didn't know if it was gonna be HVAC. I thought maybe the last company I worked at, we were going to work something out. Uh, just didn't quite come to fruition. And, uh, so I had this opportunity to own the digital marketing agency and start that. So I decided to run with it and see what we could do.

Excellent. So you kind of had the job and you were kind of, this was a side hustle for a little bit. Talk to us about how you took that from that one client to multiple clients, 'cause that's usually a big gap. You know, like how do we get to our first 5 clients, that first $10,000 or so in monthly recurring revenue?

Yeah, honestly, Honestly, the first 3 years in business, this is literally how we grew, is I posted online. I just shared stuff we were doing. I shared results. Um, I started implementing the heat maps that we see all over the place on social about 4, 4 and a half years ago. So that stuff was, was really new then.

Really, you were on the early part of that trend?

Yeah, and a lot of companies just didn't— either they didn't adapt to that technology yet or didn't have it or wasn't as readily available where it's like everybody has it as part of their, their thing now. So we started seeing that people started seeing these heat maps and what we were doing on the local side, like, what is it? Like, it was different even though it was— it wasn't a different service, it was a different way to go about it. But then we just started— I just started giving advice, uh, hey, this is what's working for us, try this, this is, you know, try this, try this. And, um, did it through video content, did it through social media posts, and we got to the point where at the end of that first December, we were about 30 clients. I was— it was myself, and we were white labeling some stuff because obviously I couldn't do all the work myself at that point. Um, and had to have a conversation with Brittany of like, when was the time we were gonna shift into doing this? Because I was making almost six figures doing what I was doing. So to replace that income, it was definitely a a scary transition, even though I was starting to get paid from the agency. It was just not— at that point, our highest, our only offering was $1,000 a month. I didn't have plans, I didn't have anything else. It was literally one service offering. We didn't touch websites. All we did was GMB optimization and management. That was it.

Awesome. So you focused on that one service, you started putting out, hey, here's what we're doing, showing the heat maps. When you think about where that was posted, was it predominantly— because usually people think, oh, does that go on YouTube? Does that go on your blog post? Or is that mainly on your personal social profile and some groups that you were in where you had an audience that already kind of, you knew were in that industry?

Most of it was personal Facebook. I did have a couple of groups that I could share to once in a while, but I never wanted to overdo it. And a lot of the stuff— and I did this actually at the third HVAC company too. Is I would always use my personal profile to post in the local Facebook groups, but it was never salesy. I didn't— we didn't sell anything. I just gave, hey, here's spring HVAC cleaning tips, here's air duct cleaning tips, make sure you turn your circuit breaker off on your AC in the fall. You know, just little things to help people out so they didn't get mice in their AC unit. Just little things that we could help with. And I carried that over to what we do on the digital marketing side as far as different advice and tips and just gave away the stuff. And people obviously, just like anything else, they think they wanna do it until they get into it and they're like, yeah, I don't wanna do it, I wanna hire someone. So you're the ones talking about it, you must know what you're talking about, I'm gonna hire you.

And I think it's really important, the intent and the way that you go about it in these groups. Like if your intent is I'm gonna go get some attention and I'm gonna get people to raise their hand, and you're going into someone else's group and you're posting in that way, it's obvious to everybody that's in there. Chances are the admin's gonna say, "Dude, get out of this group, you're obnoxious," versus literally just giving the information and letting the people get value from it and come to you. And it sounds like that's what's worked best in your situation.

Yeah, and it was the same on the contracting side. We ended up owning the local Facebook groups in— We were in a very small town, like 12,000 people, but that started carrying over into the next town over and then the next town over, and then the moms group in that town and the dads group in that town. I would get screenshots of what that looked like, and we were getting tagged 50 to 70% of the time when people were looking for a contractor because we were the only one in our market that was doing the teaching. We were teaching our market how to take care of their home and how to take care of their HVAC system.

I love that. So it was very organic for you. You're just kind of sharing your ideas, sharing your best practices. That one client turned into 5 clients, turned into 30 clients. Um, I like the fact that you focused early on on just one singular service, which was Google Maps optimization. Um, that helped us keep the deliverable simple. Um, talk to us a little bit about what the program package looks like today. So as you've As you've expanded, I know you've added additional things. What's the program packaging look like for a, a client today?

Yeah, so we still have that program. Some things have been added, like, uh, uh, GoHighLevel, for instance, so we can do messaging to help clients with automation. So our starting package is about $2,000, um, and then we have a couple other options. And that was actually probably after the first I think it was the first virtual intensive I took with you. It, it must, it must have been year 2, so that's 2nd December or 2nd November, whenever you guys had that one. Um, and I was— I didn't have packaged or program services or anything like that. I was like, I really— this has got to be the thing that we do here. And since we've done that, we've been able to reach different levels because it's been so easy. Like, people know exactly what they get. It's easy to sell because it's like Here's your menu. You wanna work with us. What piece of steak do you want? You know, pick one. And so we go anywhere from $2,000 to $6,500, and that's our range.

Got it. So it could be a range from the website to SEO to pay-per-click to social media to ads management. When you think about your package today, like what is it that drives the best results for your clients the most consistent results? Would you say it's the, the Google Maps? Would you say it's the full combination?

Honestly, I think the, the emphasis on Google Maps has been the primary driver for us since the beginning. I think it still is. Um, how we go about that has changed a little bit. We really focus on helping clients get set up with multiple locations. Um, we have a lot of clients with 2, 3, 4 locations. I think that the biggest we have is like, like 7. Now they're not obviously all in the same area. That's a bigger company, spread out a little bit. Yeah, I mean, it's— you got to do it with— you got to be smart about it. But, um, we do it the right way, get a physical office, go through the verification, do everything the right way. But clients really like that because otherwise, you know, we all know the, the numbers for a new customer through PPC and stuff like that. It's very expensive. So to get one new customer, you can get an office for that monthly fee. You know, it's about $400 or $500 in the home services space for a new customer, and you can get an office for $400 or $500 a month, get some reviews there, do all the right things, and get 20 or 30 new customers per month for, for a similar— you know, obviously we charge our management fee, but, um, it can definitely help them grow in these markets. Uh, I know you have plenty of companies with multiple trades multiple trades suck on Google Maps because they can, they can only grow one trade at a time. So things like that, we have clients that have all three trades— HVAC, plumbing, electrical— and they have one GMB. And I'm like, there's a reason why your plumbing and electrical divisions aren't growing, at least not growing like you want to, because they can't. The primary category is such a heavy ranking factor that— so that's, that's usually the advice we're giving on the sales side, like before they even start with us, like, hey, If you want to work with us, this is our strategy. This is what can move you forward. And they generally seem to get it and it makes sense to them why they aren't growing those other trades. Love that.

And so tactically speaking, you're saying, hey, look, you know, on the geo grid, you're ranking really well here. If we want to rank in this market, we've got to go get another location, claim the GMB, get the citations, build up the authority, and then we can kind of light up there. Then you're going to be getting all the calls and leads from this place plus this place, and we can continue to expand that over time. Um, when it comes to that location, I mean, I know that there's a million ways to skin the cat, from Aunt Betty's house to renting an actual office to actually leasing a true office. Um, any recommendations on kind of what you've found works best in, in actually getting those other Google Business Profiles ranked?

Yeah, physical office is definitely So, you know, we— there's always questions with that because everyone wants— they want to try to get a listing the cheapest way possible because they're not really going to be there that often. They maybe store some stuff there. But, um, so those are conversations we have on the sales side. And people like— honestly, we get small— the smaller clients that come and they have their— an SAB listing through their house, we will literally tell them we can't work with them until they get an office, just because one, that is another big thing that will increase their rankings. So it's like I think there's a lot of times on the digital marketing side, we set our clients up for failure before they even start with us because they don't take care of the things that we know are going to move the needle. Great example, I was looking at an account with, uh, Brittany last night. She was asking about the address and stuff, and the guy was about 3 miles south of what Google defines as the actual city he wants to rank in. His post office address says I'm in Newark, Delaware. But his office address is like, it was like 3 miles south, and he's already set himself up for— he doesn't know it, but he set himself up for failure with his office because Google's going to take the companies that are actually in Newark and rank them higher. So it's things like that that I think that way we also know that we're going to be able to deliver on results, um, especially with the Google Maps stuff, because that is one of the quickest ways they know as soon as the Google Maps stuff is good and they're ranking, they know because their phones pick up dramatically, right? Uh, it's, it's a, it's a very instantaneous— so from like on SEO, we always talk about how long it takes because the website stuff does take long, like there's no way around that. But Maps can happen in a month or two. So for us, we don't— we still don't offer any sort of paid ads. That may change at some point, but we still don't offer any sort of paid ads. So for us, we have to have some quick wins. And getting Google Maps right, getting the address right, getting all the right steps in place so they can start feeling that things are working. And then, uh, using GoHighLevel— we have our own white-labeled version of it that we've obviously built for the trades— but, uh, retargeting their existing customer database has been a huge driver for us. Tune-up appointments, open estimates, automation when new estimates come in, or automations when, you know, they're on the way and they want to pre-sell a membership. Just, there's all sorts of different campaigns you can run, but those have been really helpful for us because now our biggest problem we had the first couple years was I don't have a PPC or a Facebook ad or something else I can shift, turn on, generate some activity, right? Correct. So we had to have something that we could flip the light switch on, like, okay, Great, you're slow right now, I understand that's frustrating, give us your customer list, we'll work our magic, we'll get you some appointments, we'll keep you busy, and then that'll come up to the next busy season. And that's been really great for us.

So good. So, so it's really a focus on organic traffic and then a focus on marketing back to that past customer base, to that past prospect base, which, well, probably a lot of the clients you work with haven't done anything with that past customer base, right? It's just kind of sitting there in their system and it's like found money that like you were able to help them tap into?

Well, they, they tried, or they have signed up for programs. I won't name the programs, but they're— they become ex— they become expensive paperweights, we'll say that. So yeah, they sign up for— because theoretically they know they should be doing something. They all know that. That's not— they don't have to convince them that it's a smart idea to email and text your past customers. It's just that they don't have the time, they don't know how to do it, they don't know how to set it up. They don't know how to set up— set it up where it's more of a drip over a week or a month. you know, for like open estimates. They don't know how to drip 5 text messages out over the course of a month so that way they're continuously following up. And I think that's where there's a ton of value. And, and now with the AI technology that's out there and AI bots, and there's a ton of value from the agency side to do exactly that, is to help them set up the, you know, save time in their office and then have these conversations where their office staff doesn't get burdened with them. Because the other thing that they don't do— we'll send the messages out, we'll send them the notifications when somebody's ready to book. They don't have somebody to manage the conversations from that point, and they will still have issues there. So there's still, there's still always challenges to, to fill. But, um, for the most part, we get them like 90% of the way there, and it's like, hey, you guys got to book the rest of this, like They said they want a morning appointment on Friday. I can't— like, I'm literally dropping them off at the doorstep. They're ready to go. They got all their nice clothes on. They just need to cross the threshold into your schedule or your calendar.

Awesome. So I love that. Drive traffic through organic, get them ranked all over the market with GMB, leverage automation to follow up with the leads in the past customer base. And you find that to be like kind of the sweet spot with what you bring to the table for most clients. Going back to the Google Maps question, you mentioned if they don't have an actual location, like if it's a house, you're like, look, this isn't going to work. I think it's important as an agency owner to recognize what's actually going to work and be willing to say, hey, this, you know, this isn't a fit, right? If you're not willing to go get a location in the proper city where you want me to rank, I'm not going to be able to get you right there, right? And maybe it's better if we part ways. You know, you know that conversation.

Well, you know, it's funny, we will figure out pretty quickly. So I— we had a client leave about 7 months, and he had, um, it was before we implemented this. So we implemented this, it's probably almost a year ago, and this guy signed up. We signed up when I was still doing the sales, and I'm way too nice and I let people in. I'm like, oh yeah, you don't ever want to say no, right? Brittany's— Brittany's way better, like, nope, you got to do it this way. And so since then, uh, so we had a guy leave he came, he was, he had a physical office, but it was in the middle of nowhere, which is another no-no because there's no population. There's no— yes, the map looks pretty, right?

Number one, you dominate the area, but there's no search and there's no people.

There's only one company in that area. Um, so he, he came, he literally came back to us like 2 days ago. He's like, okay, I'm in the city, I want to rank, and now I got an office, can you guys look at it? And he wants to come back. So he literally stopped us so just so he could save some money so he could come back with an office. And it's doing those things I think are super important. One, if you tell someone no and then they come back to you in a couple weeks saying they have an office, you know that they're ready to work with you. They really believe in what you're telling them. And it's helped us weed out some people that are like, no, just get me ranked. Like, I don't care, just get me ranked. Here's some money, do your thing. We heard you're a good company. And I'm like, well, if you're not willing to do the things that it takes to grow your business, why should I be willing to do those things? For you because we just know it's going to be a bad marriage. You're going to leave us, so why waste your time and our time? Go find someone else that maybe runs ads for you and that can be a better fit for you.

Yeah, love that. I think it's important, you know, if you're listening, to recognize you've got to be willing to have those tough conversations. Um, on, on this topic, we mentioned the house is a no-no. We need an actual location. How do you feel about like virtual offices like Regus or those, like, can that be used in your mind, or do you feel like it needs to be a true, like, warehouse or a true, like, location that they can rent with a unique suite number exclusively used by them?

So if they go through Regus, as long as it's a real suite that they can get access to. So I mean, there's Reguses in most major cities or major, major markets, even, even the non-major markets. There's Regus offices. They, they seem to probably one of the biggest real estate companies there is, right? And, uh, so yeah, we'll definitely—

that'd be a recommendation, like, hey, go, go get a virtual office with the unique suite, and then we're going to build our strategy around it. And you feel like that works?

Yeah, it has worked. Um, it's not— I mean, I would prefer them to get a regular office, but if they can— and it's just because, like, if I go and type in their address— and this is how I know— I've had, I've had clients, um, that they'll, they'll give us an address and they say, oh no, it's, it's a real office and all this stuff. And I go, I put the address in Google search and I see that there's 40 other locations with the same address, I'm like, that's right, this is a virtual office, like, you need to do better. Like, it just is what it is. I know, I know it's painful to one, to have to tell them no, and it's painful for on the contractor or the customer side to have to go do this, but it is a very fruitful solution long term for them once they realize that. And the clients that we have that have seen this work, they're like, oh, I want to go add another office here, I want to add an office— like, they just, they get it and it just grows. And for us, that grows our MRR with that client too, and it allows us as an upsell option because then we're managing another listing. And it's a great opportunity for our, our, uh, client success team to have upsell opportunities without having to, you know, really expand. Like, we don't have to go wide with our services, at least not yet. We've gone deep and narrow versus wide. And I think that's been very helpful because then SOPs, processes, all the, all the stuff that you get, you guys teach and have a lot of different, uh, trainings on, we don't have to go as wide. We don't have to have all these different—

just get really good at this piece that we focus on and get, you know, get dialed in on that stuff.

Yeah, I mean, honestly, like, it's literally just taking what you teach everyone— find a niche, start there. We just niched within a niche. Really is what we did. We just niched it down a little further, um, not by design. It kind of just— this is what I knew and this is what I was comfortable offering, um, and it's worked out really well. I think at some point there will be a point where we have to do some sort of accelerated with paid ads, because I do know that most of the clients we get are not the larger ones, because the larger ones do want someone that runs the ads and stuff. So there's, there's always a give and take, but It's been really good for us. We've hovered around 97% the last— for retention the last 3 years since we've been tracking it, since we've had your, your sheet and tracker. Um, so it hasn't been a deterrent. It hasn't been something that's causing us a whole bunch of stress over here. Really good.

And it just goes to show, like, if you're, if you're good at what you do, you can get the client's rank on the map, and you can generate the results, they're going to stick around, right? Whether you're just doing you know, Google Ads and the website, or you're actually touching a bunch of additional things as well. Um, one thing I wanna talk about, you know, for, for a lot of the listeners, kind of in that first 10 to 20 clients, which it sounds like, you know, you transitioned through quickly, you made the strategic decision to use some white label providers, um, instead of trying to do it all yourself. And that helped you maintain the results while having the bandwidth to do other things. Talk to us a little bit about like why that way and how that worked out for you.

Yeah, so the first probably 5 or 10, I was, I was doing myself. And now, you know, just GMB management, that wasn't that bad, um, because I wasn't touching websites, I wasn't doing any of that other stuff. But I realized that, one, I was literally taking sales calls on my lunch breaks. I had an hour drive to and from work at this point in my life, so on the way home I was on the phone the whole time. And literally dealing with clients after, like, so it's like work and then my other work on the way home. Um, so for us it was, I just, I needed something. Um, I think, I think there's a place in the market and there's some, some great white label companies and really great people like Lane, David. Like, I really like them as people. I go to them for advice on SEO stuff all the time because they're great at what they do. For us, we got, we use white label to get to a certain point until we could start bringing some stuff back in-house. Um, one, there's, you know, the way white label companies make money is through bulk, by having a lot of clients. And, and they have— they have to have— they have to have a strategic process, because otherwise it's just like the assembly line at a Ford factory. If you take one piece of metal and it's a little different, it's— the whole assembly line is going to shut down. So for us, it, it allows us more customization bringing it back in-house, but early days. And even if we offer like a new service, typically that's like, okay, let's find someone that knows what they're doing. Let's see if it's something that at some point want to bring back in-house. Um, and if it's not, if it's something like, hey, this is going good, and if we just keep it there, that's, that's fine. Like, um, you know, if we ever did white label Facebook ads— Casey in the group does our Facebook ads. He does a phenomenal job. Facebook ads, I don't know enough about. I'm, you know, if we offer that to clients, we may leverage him just because I don't want to touch it. But it's, it's something that definitely a great starting place. And if you don't know a lot about SEO, like, I, I knew a lot about GMB optimization before I ever started. So part of, part of that knowledge is when someone does something, like we hire someone, a white label company to do something, and I'm like, we could do it better. And that's part of it. If, but if you don't know, that might be good enough for you. Mm-hmm. But, and that's where being, you know, being an expert at one thing, whether you're an expert at PPC, websites, something, I think is really valuable. Cause then you know if someone's doing a good job or not and if you could do it better.

Yeah, no doubt. I, I think it's, it, it makes a lot of sense, right? Start out with a little of additional help and then eventually you start to realize, well, there's some economies of scale I could tap into now that we've got enough clients to build my own internal team. And of course your own internal team's gonna pay a little better attention, care a little bit more, innovate a little bit differently than, you know, the subcontractor providers and things like that. Um, let's shift gears a little bit. Amazing insight so far. Really appreciate you kind of sharing how you package your program, how you think about going to market. And now let's talk a little bit about, you know, how you're landing clients. Obviously you've had accelerated growth. You've got 100+ clients now in the space. What's worked best for you to to get clients coming in on a consistent basis like that?

So I'll— yeah, this will be a little, little longer answer. So the first 3 and a half years, content. That was literally the sole way of us getting clients, and that included video content, um, YouTube, and YouTube and Facebook primarily, um, making sure our website was optimized well for SEO so that way if people came to our site, we could actually find us organically. But that was until October or so, September, October of last year. Um, we had gotten to the point of last spring, we got to a $3 million run rate and we hit, we hit a glass ceiling and plateau, right?

That hard plateau where it's like, wait a minute, you could just—

like, literally, I just, I It was obviously, it's not a real thing, but I could feel it. Like, it just, we could just could not break through. We would get a little bit above, a little bit below, a little bit above. And that happened for about 4, 5, or 6 months. Um, and I finally decided, okay, that it's time for us to run ads. Like, we have to do something else. And, uh, so we started doing that in September, October, which has allowed us to get through this glass ceiling, if you will. So we had a sales and marketing problem, essentially what it was last year. And it was because my focus was elsewhere. Um, that's where Brittany came in and she started doing the sales. She had a background in HVAC sales, so it was a very natural fit. She was a hairdresser for 10 years before she did HVAC sales. She loved— she'll talk to anyone and everyone. She loves it. And, uh, it was a— I'm not a— I, I don't get up in the morning and want to talk to a bunch of people. So it's not my—

you said you're an accountant, right? So this is like way outside the normal accountant comfort zone, right? Selling, selling services like these?

I definitely like more of the research and developments and partnerships and those sort of discussions. I definitely like the more of that stuff on the CEO side. I don't love the sales side. It was a necessary evil for a number of years, so I did it. Um, but that's been a great transition for us. So now, now we have ads running. Um, Casey runs our Facebook ads. We have some very top of funnel stuff through a company called Market Storm that is outside of the Google and the Facebook ecosystem they run on. Well, actually, it's funny, I know you know what they are because I see your ads on different sites and blogs all the time. So what you're doing is kind of what we're doing too. We're getting people higher up in the funnel, trying to drive them to our website, and then we're retargeting them on Facebook. And then that— and then I've ramped up the short-form content the last 3 months or so because now I have more time to do so. And now people come to sales calls and they're like, man, I see you everywhere, right? And they're already pre-packaged or pre-programmed to— they have a certain feel about us before they ever get to the sales call. They have a certain, you know, I like something that this company is doing. So they already— we're already a step ahead of our competition in that way.

Feels so good when a client comes to you pre-positioned to buy, right? And that only happens if you're positioned because they saw you on a video or they listened to a podcast or they saw you speak. Uh, I wanna go back to the conversation of the, the plateau, right? Because when we hit those plateaus, there's really only 3 things we can change, right? Number 1 is we could sell more clients. Number 2 is we can reduce our churn. Number 3 is we could increase the amount that the average client is paying us on a monthly basis. And it sounds like in your case it was, we need to ramp up the marketing engine a little bit, right? Which was adding the Facebook ads to the equation. Um, outside of that, it was mostly organic and content. Um, I know you do some really innovative things with podcasting. Would love to hear kind of what your idea behind the podcast was, how you leverage it. Um, you didn't mention it, but I, I feel like that's probably one of the, the main positioning assets that you leverage.

Yeah. So, you know, it's funny, we actually don't talk about Relentless hardly ever. Um, obviously it gets dropped in conversation that we own a comp— marketing company and stuff like and we do put our links at the bottom because my team does help with some of the production. Um, but it was 2 months after I left the HVAC company, so we're talking March of '21 now. I, I left, uh, that to do this full-time. I started asking a guy that I knew had had a podcast for a number of years, uh, called Service Business Mastery. I started asking questions. We knew each other from the same coaching group that I mentioned earlier, and then even before that on some other Facebook groups. We had interacted several times before, so I knew him pretty well. And was like, hey, looking to start a podcast, give me advice and all stuff. He was getting burnt out. He had been doing it for 4 years by himself. He's been doing all the audio editing, the video editing, not much time for marketing the podcast, and he's grown it to a certain point. So he was looking for help as well. So it ended up just becoming this great marriage, which obviously is still working today. We have 3 recordings later this week, um, but that has definitely helped because I think more so even the fact that they don't— we don't say talk about Relentless, we're talking about our service as much. It's just the fact that I'm in— I get in front of more people, and then they end up knowing that just because they're tuning into the show or they're listening, they know that I own Relentless Digital, and they know that they connect the dots. And so we were able to put out more content, which gets seen in more places. So it's definitely helped from that side. It's, it's not a It's not a direct lead generation for Relentless.

It's literally just a whole separate content thing that you do. I think that's an interesting insight. Like if you're running a podcast and you're just doing a marketing-centric podcast that has a certain viewership and a certain listenership, if you've got a business growth podcast or more just like a— yours is more just how to run an HVAC or home services company with your co-host. Which has a great authority positioning in the marketplace, even though you're not overtly saying, hey, if you want me to help you with your SEO, you know, come click here.

Yeah. And I, I mean, our topics are anything from financing to sales training to technician training, new AI technology. Uh, some of it's just stuff that's not even closely related to digital marketing, but it does it brings in a broader audience because there's some things for some people, there's some things for other people. Um, and it's also allowed us to get invited to podcasts at all of the different trade events, which I obviously go there and still hand out business cards and people talk to you or they'll be like, oh hey, I need help with digital marketing or whatever. It's kind of a side thing, but it definitely helps get seen and more visible. And I think it also— we're not constant, just like I talked about with the local Facebook groups and the educational content. I'm, I'm not throwing buy from me in their face all the time. It's just, if you like us, if you like what we're about, come talk to us and see if you like what we have to offer. If not, that's okay too. Um, we just, we don't throw ourselves out there to be like, you gotta buy from me, gotta buy from me. And I think that people resonate. It's, it's that— I know, I'm sure there's some fancy term or someone studied it, but it's, it's kind of like that, that attraction marketing where it's like, you wait, you, you're not trying to sell me something? Like, well, I want to—

I will—

tell me more. It's like that. You draw them in that way even though it's not the intent. It's just the way I guess we're wired as humans to— if someone doesn't try to push something on you, like, well, wait a minute, hang on, don't leave, tell me more. Yeah.

I, I love that. I think it's a good insight, right? If, if it feels like your podcast is literally just you opening loops and trying to get people to schedule in, that's not gonna be really that interesting or attractive to your, to your audience. I've observed two things you do with your podcast. I think it's interesting. I love to kind of hear the, the thought process behind it. First is I do see when you're at industry events and conferences, somehow or other you're setting up like a booth and you're doing some type of live live podcasting. Uh, the second is you've also got these sponsors, it looks like, where you got their logos and they're helping to sponsor that. Can you talk about those two strategies a little bit?

Yeah, so, um, the, the first actually— so there's a big— the biggest, uh, heating and cooling industry or industry event of the year is called AHR Expo. It's not really just for contractors, so it's more so like there's contractors, manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, the whole gamut. It's the entire industry. Um, but they, a number of years ago, this was actually before I started with Tersh, they started something called a Podcast Pavilion. And so now that— and Tersh was a big part of that, him and a guy named Brian Orr, uh, who had— and who actually got him into podcasting back in 2017. So they started that, and then from there, we both, both him and I have having conversations with def— different, uh, industry event leaders and stuff like that, people that throw the events that they invite us to come. It's like, well, hey, you should really we do this and start, you know, we give them some value. Like, hey, your, your event— a lot of these events have been run the same way for 10, 15 years, and they haven't adjusted to the— and I hate calling it this, but the influencer marketing thing, because I will never look at myself like that. Um, but they— so now they're starting to have conversations about like, well, let's do this, or— and now they're starting to put those things together. So other podcasts are also getting that too, because people like to come see the podcast. They like to— they listen to these people all the time, they want to come meet them. Um, so we're getting that at several different events now where there's a nice station. They usually put it right in the middle in the walking path so everyone can kind of see and take pictures and all that stuff. It's kind of turned into its own, its own thing. So that's been really great. But it's— that's us having conversations with the leader of Service Nation and the leader of some of these other event organizations.

Nice.

Um, and then about 2 years ago, we— the, the big CRM in our space, I know you know who that is, um, had approached us about doing some sponsorship stuff. And we had a conversation with someone else, different company, um, and we started to decide to turn the podcast into something more than it was. So we, we actually opened up a separate LLC for that and started taking on sponsors and figuring out what that looked like. So today we have 5 sponsors, and actually later today I have a meeting with one that wants to become the 6th. Wow. And so, so it's turned into its own business, uh, which is great. It's obviously not the same amount of revenue that we make here, but it is a nice little, nice little side income. And then from there we decide, do we want to do some courses or do we want to do something else? So it's turned into its own business. Um, but it all started from one, having a show that was valuable enough and people realized it was valuable enough. So I think that that takes time. Um, but I think even on a small scale, if you're, if you're in a really tight-knit industry, I think getting with some of the thought leaders, people that are the, the Tommy Mellows of your industry— if you don't, if you're not, if you're in the home services space at all, you probably know who Tommy is by this point. But if you, if you get people like that, you can get some notoriety around your show, you can start getting some eyeballs. And there's so many different organizations within your industry— financing companies, CRMs, all these different software companies— they're looking to get their products in front of the same clients that you're promoting to. And there's a lot of value because, one, they, they get the, the logo and the links and all that stuff. But they— when you go to industry events and you have those those conversations that nobody knows about, those are the most valuable because that's where you get to your recommendations. So obviously for us, it's been really important to partner with companies we truly believe in so we can actually say, yes, we think this is a great fit for you because it's a great organization and they have great people.

Love it. Thanks for sharing those insights and kind of how you put that together, what the thought process behind it was. I think that's some some great like next level thinking. You know, yes, have a podcast, but if you can start to actually make it something super relevant in the industry and you can tie it into the industry events and you can get sponsorship revenue, uh, now you're actually getting paid to create the content to elevate your positioning, which I think is really interesting. Um, I wanna go back 2 steps. As you mentioned, you started running ads and you started creating short form content, and I think your short form content is great. Any tips on kind of how you come up with the topics and, and kind of what your, your recording flow is for that?

Yeah, so I— that's honestly— so I, I used to do my own stuff for that and come up with the ideas and, and list it all out and stuff, and that was painful. Like, that's—

yeah, hard work, right?

Hard mental work. Like, I, I— in doing that though, I realized like these, these guys that have these great channels and make a ton of money just doing YouTube is so much work. It is insane. Like, it's way more work than we give them credit for. It's like, oh, they made a couple videos and they're super popular, but they, they worked at it. Um, like MrBeast, like, there's— the guy probably doesn't ever sleep. Like, there's no— there's no way. But, um, so, but I stopped for a while just to build the business, SOPs, processes, hire people, all the, all the stuff. And that's really when we started having that sales and marketing problem, is I wasn't doing as much of the stuff that I was doing previously. I know Alex Hormozy talked about that in his his second book, $100 Million Leads, is I think it was his wife who had— because they were figuring out like why they— why was performance down on all their paid media. And I think his, uh, Layla, I think is who asked him, well, what, what did we— not what are we doing differently, but what did we stop doing? And what he stopped doing was content. And so that kind of resonated with me. I'm like, yeah, well, that's what I stopped doing too, and things started to peter off. And, uh, so now I hire someone, especially for the short form. They come up with the ideation, comes up with a variation of a script, and then I give my take on it. So I did hire someone to do that for me now because it is just a lot of work, like mentally. Like, yes, you can use ChatGPT for this stuff, but it only, it only gets you so far, right? Um, so he comes up with 20 to 30 video topics at a time. I'll go through yes, no, yes, no. And then I'll give— I'll add to his script or take away from based on my experiences. But that— then I'll shoot 20 or 30 short-form videos at a time, and then they post everything. Then they do the editing, they do all that stuff. Um, but I do— I mean, it's $600 a month. It's really cost-effective when you think about it from a marketing perspective. I mean, to get 30 videos out there and all the time that would take you yourself So it's been really good. Um, I think I got our second or third list of videos that I'm on now. Um, it's been really good. It's got me into a flow, that content creation flow. As I mean, you're literally like the master of content creation and syndicating it. Like, I seriously, every time I talk about content, like, I gotta know what Josh is doing because he runs like a webinar, all of a sudden I see it everywhere. I see clips, I see emails, I see it on the groups. I'm like, damn, like someday, someday that's gonna be us. So I just to give kudos to you because it is impressive what you're able to do from a content perspective.

Yeah, I think that's great, the idea that you batch the content, right? Find— if you're struggling with this, find someone that can help you come up with the topics. There's lots of people that play at what you have to work at, so if that's work for you and find someone that plays at that. Help have them come up with the topics and kind of the, the general flow, and then batch it. Like, if you're going to try and do a video every day, extremely hard. If you're going to do 20 videos once a month and you block, you know, lock out 4 hours of your day to get it done, that's doable. So I think that's a great tip, Josh. Thank you for sharing that.

Yeah, no problem. I feel like the one thing I have to do differently this next time is have different shirts in the office so I don't have to see the shirt on every time. It looks like it's a different video, just change like every 3 or 5 videos so it doesn't look I'm always wearing the same shirt.

Yes. Good, good idea. Alright. So, I want to shift gears. We talked about kind of what the program looks like. We talked about how you're landing clients. You share some great insights there. You mentioned you're retaining at 97% plus which is amazing. Very hard to do at your size with this industry that we're in. What are some of the strategies that you've implemented and kind of how you approach your client retention strategy?

Yeah, so I mean, honestly, starting to track everything was probably one of the more eye-opening things that we did. And your guys' sales and retention tracking sheet has been— I've still honestly, I'll probably always use that. I love it. Uh, it's very— it's just very easy for, for me to see both retention and sales at the same point, and it's very easy to update. Um, at some point I'll have my executive assistant probably take that over, but I like actually updating it and manually putting it. It's something as a CEO I like doing. Like a sale comes in, I'm like, ooh, let me see where the numbers are. Um, but one thing that we did— so now we have, uh, well, we have 4 account managers, we call them client success managers, and we just hired 2 more. So now as we're building that department, one thing that we really had to do is start identifying at-risk clients earlier than when they leave. Um, and that's, that's a hard thing to do because we struggle with it for a little bit, but we really gotten into a point like every Monday morning our entire CSM team will meet and we, we have a red zone client list. And we also report on that metric for our EOS meeting on Tuesday, which is shortly after this podcast is over. So we know what's of now we have 102 clients. Of that, what percentage are at risk of leaving based on the factors that we have? And then from there, individually, the CSMs are going through as a group talking about the issues, and maybe someone has a suggestion, uh, maybe someone has dealt with that in the past and they can give some advice. But that, I feel, has been really good, because then we also know we got to give extra attention to these clients before they leave, because there's something not right. Either we screwed up they're having money problems, they are— there's— they keep saying they're slow. Whatever the case is, we know we have to give some extra attention. Maybe we have to put some extra value or some extra elbow grease into that account. But it's really helpful for us to know those things ahead of time. It's like forecasting essentially of what could go wrong if every one of these clients leave.

Love it. So measuring, right? What you measure gets done and always improves. So just making sure you're tracking that You run an agency, you don't know what your churn is right now, that's probably a problem, right? If you don't measure it, you can't improve it. And all of this is like kind of red zoning the clients and having, you know, not just a, hey, let's wait for the client to email us and be worried. Let's proactively look at what clients potentially are in that red zone and strategically on our weekly rhythm, figure out what we can do, maybe from a results perspective, maybe from a relationship perspective to move those red zone clients back to green.

Yeah, I think to one step further, something we're working on, um, but our director gets involved, they have a task in offboarding to do a full recap of that client and go through and look at— we use Fathom for Zoom recording, so look at the Fathoms, look at the emails, you know, look at the campaign in general, you know, where did we mess up? Did Does it go all the way back to the sales process? Did we let the wrong client in?

Right.

And that's how that happens more than we probably all realize. That we should have never let this client in because there was red flags in the beginning. We have one right now that we just go back to the sales process and all the questions and the multiple times we had to repeat the same thing. We know we should have let him— shouldn't let him in. He's been nothing but a problem since he's come on board. And again, it's just knowing those things, you can fix them. And but you have to look at them. You have— but then again, you also have to hire people because you can't do it yourself. You can tell yourself, I can do that, and then you know what's going to happen?

Nothing.

You're not going to do it. So, but that's where you start. As you start building that department, get a director role or a senior account manager, something where that person can dig into the account, spends a couple hours going through everything asking questions, doing like an investigator, you know, like there's a crime scene, you know, the client left, that's a crime scene for us in the agency space. Let's investigate, let's find the cause of the problem so we can try to fix it so that we don't have that issue later. And that's been really helpful for us because it's been— that's also why we say no a lot on sales calls, because we don't want everybody. We want to work with the people that we know are going to stay and ones that we're going to have a long-term relationship with.

Love that. And kind of just taking that a step further, a lot of us, the client cancels and we're like, okay, shut it down, move on with our lives.

Next.

That's, that's a massive opportunity to, like you said, let's go investigate. Let's figure out what the breakpoint was. Maybe we could fix it. Maybe we couldn't, but how do we improve going forward so that that retention cycle can improve for the future clients we build? Uh, I think that's a great insight. And so shifting gears now to, to the team, You know, you've grown to multiple 7 figures. You've moved from just you and Brittany to now you've got a team. Talk to us about kind of how you structured that team and, you know, your thoughts on team building and leadership.

Well, it was funny. We had— I don't know if it was one of our employees made a joke because we added a new position recently for one of our— one of our CSMs moved into a campaign coordinator position, which is text and email marketing because we're doing so much of it. And, uh, we likened it to, you know, flying— building the plane while we're flying it. And honestly, we've done that multiple times. Like, uh, we hired our ops manager almost 2 years ago now, 2 years ago in June. I, I had an idea what that person would do, but I didn't have like daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly responsibilities. So it is a leap of faith sometimes when you hire positions that you have not hired for in the past. You have, you know, that you need to hire someone with maybe a certain skill set. You just don't know exactly what they're going to do on a daily basis. Um, so we've had several of those. Like when we first hired a director of client experience, I'm asking questions in the group and trying to ask anyone I can, but until you hire them and get into the nitty-gritty, you just don't know what you don't know. Um, but you have to be willing to take the leap to hire that person. Because it's the best thing I've ever done was hire an ops manager. You know, the next best thing is hiring a director for the client experience team, 'cause it frees me up to kind of be like a rover where if there's a problem, I can go there. You know, like right now sales and marketing is doing really well. Ops is now, now we're at capacity. So I'm shifting my time and my energy and resources into focusing on ops. But I'm able to do that 'cause I don't have to do all the day-to-day stuff. That our ops manager does or our director does, or we even have a team lead on the CSM side. So those people are still taken care of for at a very, uh, I guess a very ground level. Like, they always have someone they can reach out to for help. So I can help figure out the big problems and solve those.

Love that. And kind of that, that analogy that like as you grow, you recognize you have a You recognize there's an opportunity, you get prepared, like, you know, the job description and what the job posting is, but you just have to take the leap, right? And you have to work through it as it goes until you get stability in those different roles within the company. And obviously you've made some leaps and you've gotten some great people in place. What is your meeting rhythm or your leadership process look like to keep those leaders engaged and to, you know, keep things getting done?

Yeah, so this is where the experience on the HVAC contractor side comes in. It's one of the best things that we ever did was with our technicians. Um, we had 2 to 3 trainings a week and it was a very regular schedule. So as soon as we started having account managers and CSMs and stuff like that, we— that was something immediately from day one I wanted to implement where we met, uh, we meet 3 days a week It's turned into something a little like, it used to be just training on SEO, GMB. Like I wanted them to be more strategists, not just, hey, client has a question, I gotta go to the team and then play this game of tennis or ping pong or my favorite pickleball.

One second, one second, I'll get back to you, right?

Clients are okay with hearing that. They don't wanna hear that a lot. Like at some point they're gonna be like, God, every time I email this person, they clearly don't know anything. So we wanted to train them up. We've invested in some like Sterling Sky, LocalU type trainings where it's 5-figure trainings for the team so they can learn and grow. BrightLocal has awesome trainings. There's literally trainings everywhere, but 3 days a week. And that has, it's funny, I had, we had a new director that we had to hire for the CX team. And typically during the, they see that schedule of the 3 trains are like, well, you know, we could reduce some of that time and we could, uh, uh, get to a point where they have more clients. I'm like, no, that's like literally a non-negotiable for me. It's like, I will not remove the trainings. We'll remove them like if everyone's really busy this one week or something, we'll remove a training. But as a whole, that stuff has to stay. So that was number 1 for us, and that is going to be with us till the end of time, is that training schedule for our account management team, because I want them to be able to answer 75% of the questions clients give us. There's always going to be something they need to come to me or someone else on the team for strategy, but they can answer most, and they, they're, they're really good at that. Um, the other— we, about maybe a year ago now, um, I realized that from a leadership perspective, we were having a lot of meetings that weren't super productive, like We had a long doc with like all the notes and all this stuff, but we weren't getting stuff done. Um, and so we, we did shift into EOS. We had, uh, Lynn Askin help us implement that. I think it was— we started like last October, maybe it was, maybe it was even before. I, I can't remember at this point, but that's been great. Um, that's actually— Tuesdays are our L10 days, so about an hour after this podcast is over is our L10 day. It gives us a very consistent schedule to talk through things, focus on the highest priority items, talk about the departments, what the team needs, what hires do we need to make, where are we struggling, where are things really good, and kind of be more cohesive as a team. So that's been honestly one of the best things we've, we've done is done that. Now we have it to the point where, uh, in January we're able to move that to departments. So now Ops has their own weekly meeting, CX has their own, sales and marketing has their own, which has been great because then we can focus on the, like, the really granular details of each department and make sure that the goals all align to what the company goals or the leadership goals are.

So good, love that. Like, really just recognizing having a team, you can't just drop them in and say, hey, go get it done, right? Doing the ongoing training to develop the team, you know, just— it's not easy to do. It's easy to say, but to consistently do that 3 times per week is how you keep the team sharp, and it's exceptional that you do that. And then having that meeting rhythm and EOS installed, doing the quarterly planning, having the Level 10 meetings, having the departmental Level 10 meetings is how I believe is a big reason you're able to deliver the results that you do at scale while continuing to grow the agency.

Yeah, this stuff's super important. It can't be stressed enough.

I—

we all, we all don't think we have time, right? There's no time in the day. I'm super busy. I, I'm at capacity. But we have to take the time. It's— there is— it has to be a non-negotiable. And you just have to tell yourself that, like, no matter what is going on in your business, we have to set aside time with no distractions and have these meetings because if you're not training your team, they're not growing. So that means they're staying, but they're not getting any better. And our next phase of this as we grow is to like figure out how— because the internal team doesn't get as much training love as the CSM team does, because the CSM team is the customer-facing piece. So there's a lot of training that needs to be involved. But figuring out that next step is going to be internal team trainings, SEO, webs— like, how do we keep getting better? How do we keep pushing the envelope? How do we keep innovating with what we do. Because otherwise, if we don't innovate, there's always going to be the next agency that's, that's coming and is doing something better or different than we are. But training— if there's one lesson I've learned from my time in the trades into here, you cannot do enough training. Love that.

Such a powerful insight. Josh, this has been awesome. First of all, congratulations on your, your growth. Amazing what you've accomplished. I know that you're headed towards 8 figures. I have no question about that over the next couple of years. Thanks for sharing. Like, thanks for coming on and sharing what's worked for you to land clients, deliver results, retain, and then scale your team. As we wrap up, if you had one last piece of wisdom, one last insight for that agency owner that's trying to get to the next level, whatever that happens to be for them, what would that be?

So for me, it's two words. It actually drives with our company name. It's be relentless. And that's kind of like our one of our— it's actually our number one core value. You can't stop. Like, you cannot let— look, there's plenty of reasons to maybe not like your life for a little bit of time or something like that, but you can't give up.

Keep—

ask questions. Like, I'm not an asshole. Like, I will ask and get to the answers. I won't keep asking the same questions, but ask. If it's Josh or someone in their group, or you find someone like network even outside there, someone that doesn't— isn't in the same— just network, learn, and keep asking questions. Just don't stop until you get an answer. That's probably the one thing that's benefited me the most because I did not grow up in HVAC. I had no idea how to run an HVAC business, and I just kept asking and asking. I still, I still try to learn stuff on the HVAC business just in case someday I decide I want to invest in one or do something else. But you just cannot ever stop asking and learning for yourself. So spend time— I think EOS calls it a clarity break— find time to invest in your education and make sure that you continually grow as well. So good, love that.

Be relentless, guys. Thanks for watching today. If you got value, please hit the like button, post a review of this podcast on iTunes. That's my preferred place for a review. And be sure to reach out to Josh Crouch. Thank him for sharing. Thank him for his abundance mindset. Josh, what would be the best way for the viewers, listeners to connect with you?

Facebook. I'm on Facebook way too much, but Facebook.

So, hit him up on Facebook and we're going to wrap it there. Thanks so much everybody for listening and watching. Josh, you crushed it. Thanks so much for your time.

Thanks, Josh.