John O'Long went from 20 years as a pastor to building an agency that does $637,000 a month. He credits joining the 7 Figure Agency mastermind in 2020 with teaching him SEO, ads, and sales. He sold his first agency in May 2025 and acquired Leads Near Me in October 2025.
Chapters
There's nowhere else on the planet I could have gotten what I got from 7 Figure Agency. My name's John O'Long and I'm the CEO of Leads Near Me. And we work with auto repair shops. I joined 7 Figure Agency back in July of 2020. My story's a little bit unique. I started with a generalist agency and finally niched down, uh, bounced around in a couple of niches and, uh, had fire and water damage restoration agency and hung with that for about a year, but didn't really love it. Then I jumped into churches because of my ministry, ministry background. And, uh, that was awesome for a while. I ended up selling that agency in May of, uh, 2025 and then got a business partner and bought, uh, Leads Near Me in October of 2025. And so, uh, sold an agency that was almost at a million dollars a year. And, uh, now the new agency that, uh, I own, we are doing $637,000, uh, a month in MRR. There's a lot of challenges I faced. Uh, the main challenge that I faced was that I was a pastor for 20 years and that did not lend itself well to running a digital marketing agency. And so I knew nothing. I knew social media a little bit, but as far as running a business, how to do SEO, how to do ads, all of those things, I knew nothing about, no education there. And joining Seven Figure Agency was like getting a PhD-level degree in digital marketing that came with constant continuing education and was just a fast forward button to being able to be successful in digital marketing. And there's nowhere else on the planet I could have gotten what I got from Seven Figure Agency. My agency has changed since joining Seven Figures. Of course, we've grown. Uh, the thing that it took me a while to get, but has changed us the most, is really going all in on sales. Uh, profit is, is oxygen to the business, and I'm not a good salesperson. So I, I had to realize that and be honest with myself and go all in on sales by getting getting someone who was good at sales to come in and breathe life into the business. There's so much value in 7 Figure Agency. To, to describe the most valuable component is pretty tough, but I would say the community— there is nothing like it. And, and a lot of us have been in different networking groups, different masterminds, whatever. 7 Figure Agency is different. People aren't competing with each other. They're encouraging, they're sharing. Even if somebody's in the same niche as you are, they're just giving. There's an abundance mindset and, uh, Everybody's friends, and I have gained so much from the relationships in the community that I have at 7 Figure Agency. You should totally join 7 Figure Agency because this is not just lip service. There is no other mastermind group on the planet that will give you this much value, that will pour into you this much, and there's no other mastermind that is full of such great people that will just love you and encourage you and be your biggest cheerleader. So you need do whatever you've got to do to be able to join 7 Figure Agency. It will change your life. It'll change your agency. And you will— my only regret about 7 Figure Agency is not joining about 5 years sooner.
