How Alec Littlejohn Grew His Agency to 7 figures Serving the Gym Niche

successful digital marketing agencies from across the country on how they've grown and scaled their agencies. Uh, and today I'm super excited to be joined by Alec Littlejohn from Untapped Revenue. He's grown his agency serving the gym space to 7 figures. Uh, it's been quite a journey. I'm really excited to share his story with you guys today. So, uh, Alec, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm honored to be here.

So let's start out, like, kind of tell us about the agency. Where it sits today, how many clients, how much revenue, what's kind of the lay of the land?

Yeah, so we just, uh, broke— I think we're at around 73. We've been fluctuating around 70 upwards to 80 clients right now. Our MMR, we reached, I think it was roughly 91 in MMR, and we've been kind of up and down between 80 to 91 for the past 2 months or so, uh, because we've had a lot of fires to put out. So we've had to kind of stop our marketing and kind of get things in order. So that we can continue to—

That's a day in the life of a digital marketing agency, right? You're like, right when you think it's all figured out, then you hit a plateau and it kind of comes back. But as long as you're pressing forward and making right decisions, it's just gonna continue to plot forward. So, you've got a great agency now, 7 figures in one of the toughest niches, I think, which is gyms, 'cause it's a very, you know, it's one of those transient industries. But obviously, you didn't start there. Tell us a little bit about your background, how you got into the agency space.

Yeah, so we started back in 2017, me and my business partner Derek. Uh, I think it was some ad popped up on Facebook back in the day. I think it was Tai Lopez's ad, his like classic in, in his garage with his Lambo, the classic ad. We went through that and we bought his SMMA program, and that kind of started us into digital marketing. From there, we didn't really know what, what niche to go down, uh, but we had heard that it's important to really focus on one. And so we started with a general agency, like I I think a lot of agencies do. And we ended up going basically to business to business to figure out, you know, would somebody allow us to do services for them for free to try out this, this new stuff that we were learning? And so we ended up getting in with a gym that lived around our location, and we absolutely crushed it for them using Facebook ads. And that kind of took us off because we took that testimonial and then we used, used that to basically leverage it to get more clients. Um, from 2017 to probably up till 2020 or so, man, it was quite a roller coaster. I mean, Facebook ads back in the day, our agency was primarily Facebook ads and it would just work. Like, things would really, really work. You'd run an ad and things would just take off. And then it slowly stopped working and it got more and more difficult to actually grow the agency because we found our retention was like 3 to 4 months. Um, and so obviously with, uh, what happened, um, with, you know, COVID and things like that, a lot of the gyms shut down. So we had quite a lot of turmoil. We lost about 86% of our clients. We had a mini partnership with a franchise that we lost as well during that time period. So we kind of got kicked in the butt there, and that kind of forced us to basically restructure everything. And then, you know, roughly 2022, end of 2022, beginning of 2023, we found 7-figure agency, and that's when we really realized we needed to focus on retention and building something that's more than just Facebook ads. And that's kind of where today, where we're at now, where we don't just offer Facebook ads, we're kind of a full-fledged service in helping gyms grow, where we combine the organic side of things with HighLevel as the CRM, building websites, getting them ranked on, on Google, as well as combining the Facebook ad side of things and you know, that's where we're at today.

Love it. I think a lot of us can relate to that. Here I am in my garage, uh, ad from Tai Lopez. It's kind of like one of the entry points into this agency game. Um, so 2021, you like— 2021 ish, you joined the program. Like, where were you guys in the agency at that point? Do you recall in terms of MRR?

Yeah, so I think it was— I think it was actually closer to the end of 2022 because gyms started opening back up and we were like, okay, let's let's get back into this and really focus on building this, this, you know, system as a whole, like really focusing on the client and retention. Uh, and that's when I think it was right around, it's probably beginning of 2023 when we found 7 Figure Agency and we were at $4,000, uh, MMR.

Wow.

And I think this little trophy behind us was Rookie of the Year because we took it from $4,000 up to $61,000. Um, in, you know, that, I think it was like 12 months or so, which was pretty good for us. And now, you know, we've been able to hit the 7-figure mark and just continuously growing from there. But yeah, so it was right around the end of 2022, beginning of 2023.

So good. So like massive momentum over the last 12 months, year or so. If you had to think about like 3 key things that you implemented from the 7-Figure Agency Model, you know, at that point, that helped to accelerate the growth and kind of keep the retention better? What would the top 3 be?

It's a good question. I think the major things that we took away is really focusing on listening to clients and providing solutions to their actual problems. And so for us, a lot of what we were doing before then was like, you run Facebook ads, you try to get the best cost per lead. But what we started doing, and, and something that my business partner Derek took on, is we implemented, uh, follow-up because what we realized was that the issue with a lot of our clients was lead quality. It's like everybody's complaining about the leads, nobody's booking appointments. And so what we realized was, number one, we need to— for our clients anyways, the best thing for us to do was to, to number one, take as much off of their plate as we possibly could because as a gym owner they basically do everything in their business. And so what we realized is by taking that over for them, we could control it better and really understand if there was a problem with the lead quality. And so that's number one thing we did is we, we started to, you know, add a follow-up process to help with retention because if we can take more things off their plate, we become more valuable and they'll stay longer.

Love it.

Number two, I think, uh, especially that, that's mentioned in, you know, the 7 Figure Agency is, is a lot about like stickiness. Like how do we keep clients longer? What are the things that we can do? And so for us, I think the next thing that we added was the organic side of things. It's not just relying on Facebook ads, it's, it's implementing the website, getting the SEO in place, building that into their business so that it just adds even more to kind of what you're offering. And I think that was the second major thing that we did. The third was actually a reach-out method. I think it's called the Dream 10, where it's like you're trying to find the best people that you want to basically reach out to who might have the biggest impact moving forward. And we actually got pretty lucky with this because we reached out to somebody who was part of a franchise, and in early 2023, they gave us the opportunity to work for their franchise, and we absolutely killed it for them. And by killing it for them, we got, uh, we locked in a partnership with over 100 of their locations, which has helped us tremendously. Now, as of right now, we only have about 60 of their locations or so, but Every single month they're bringing on and opening new locations and we have that partnership locked in. And so just to reiterate, I think the 3 major things is focusing on the clients and what they're actually saying. And so the number 1 thing for us was taking things off of their plate, giving time back to them. And so adding the follow-up system was massive. Second would be adding the organic side of things, like actually focusing on another way for them to get leads and generate more revenue. And then the third is actually going after people in the space that have more influence. Like if we go after somebody who's part of a franchise and we do really well for them, it's likely they'll recommend us to other franchisees. And if we do well for them, we start to kind of take off within their franchise. And then, you know, at some point, once you have enough leverage, you can potentially get that partnership locked in. And so those are the 3 main things I would say.

So good. And I love that. It sounds like you're kind of your first iteration, like you figured out the niche thing, you figured out how to sell the clients, you just had a problem with the package and the retention. I'm a big preacher, especially when I talk to people that, you know, are just doing Facebook ads or just doing SEO or, you know, just doing funnels, that they want to take a more comprehensive approach. It sounds like you did that and it had an impact. Talk to us about how going multichannel or kind of being more comprehensive with the package, how that's helped you know, improve the retention and stickiness?

So for us, when we were running the Facebook ads and that was the only thing, we were probably keeping clients 3 to 4 months, which I think is pretty standard, especially for the fitness studio space. Like a lot of agencies, they just run Facebook ads, they don't do very well, or they fall off after 3 to 4 months and you lose the client. And so for us, I think our retention was, it was very bad. It was close, it was probably 3, 4 months, like less than 90%, I'm assuming, in terms of retention. However, once we started to add in these other systems, and so for us, we now offer HighLevel as the CRM, but we do a lot with the CRM to make it very sticky. And so adding the website is number one. Doing the follow-up for them is another component. We also build in a lot of different systems in there for them. So they rely a lot more on it. And so since adding these little elements, um, One other thing is a lot of our clients use an external software to manage their classes and their class calendars. So MindBody is a big one. We integrated HighLevel with that software, and so HighLevel automatically updates when people buy memberships, when people book a class. And so it feeds information from both of the platforms, and that alone is like this major add-on that clients get. And so when we added all of these different things, like there's so many different components It's like our retention now is like 97, 98%, and so it's like a massive increase in retention. And for clients that do leave us, most of them who have all these different components, they don't even— well, they don't leave us for one, they'll just downgrade. And so we basically just added in a SaaS model on the back end. And so if they're like, hey, we don't want to run the Facebook ads anymore, we don't need any of that stuff, but we want to keep the website, we want to keep the, the HighLevel system, the email system, we want to keep the integration with our payment processor, then they'll pay the software fee. And so it's just made us really sticky, and it's helped us grow, uh, be able to continuously grow. Because like, as you know, and a lot of the trainings in the 7 Figure Agency, it's like if you have a leaky bucket with your agency, it's like clients come in but clients constantly leave, it's going to be impossible to grow. And that was like our first 5 years of growing an agency. Like, you can— if you can only keep clients for 3 months, it's like you're going to get to a point where it's like You're just matching how many you lose and gain every single month. And so, that made a massive difference.

So good. Lots of great insights and takeaways there. So, kind of like going back a couple of steps, when you just chose the niche at the beginning, obviously, you were generalist, you could have served anybody, you decided to focus on gyms. Like, what was it that made you choose gyms and how did you come to that decision?

I think for us, Derek and I both enjoyed fitness. And so it was kind of like partially because of our interest, we were like, hey, you know, like we like fitness. And although really when you're running an agency, it's mostly, you know, marketing and it's kind of separate, right? But it's like by speaking to them, like a lot of gym owners, like I can relate to because I go to the gym all the time, like are different things that the different things a gym owner likes to do are the same things that I like to do. And so there's a lot more that I can relate to. Uh, also when I went to school in university, I took human kinetics. And so my plan initially was to go into something with fitness where it's either going to be chiropractic, something with ergonomics. And so I had a background in it as well that really helped. But to be completely honest, I think the major thing was when we reached out to all the different businesses, we We tried chiropractors, we, we worked with some dentists, we worked with dog walkers, we worked with a bunch of different agency or bunch of different niches. But the one we got the best results for, the one we understood, the one we could sell the best was just a fitness studio owner. Um, and so that kind of led us to go, you know what, this seems to be the best. Let's just focus on this, build all of our systems and things like that around this particular niche. And that was kind of the biggest reason I would say that we did it.

Go that direction. Love that. Yeah, I think it's really— yeah, I think it's really important as you're trying to choose the niche, find where you have some affinity. And Alex Bates, he kind of had that affinity, had a passion for fitness, and then find where you can get results, right? Who cares if you've got access? If you can't knock it out of the park, everything else is irrelevant, right? So figure out what you can do that's going to differentiate and actually generate a return on investment and growth. Let's talk about the first handful of clients, because that's always a challenge. So So, you decided, "Hey, let's go after gyms." How did you get the first 5 or so to prove your validation of your selection?

Yeah. I remember the one summer Derek and I spent, he basically practically lived at my place in Guelph, Ontario, where we live. And we basically would wake up every morning and we would DM on Facebook as many different gyms as possible. Trying to— we would say, hey, can we run your marketing for 30 days? From there we would book appointments. I would get on the call. There's— I have Instagram videos of me sitting in the backyard on, on our back porch at the time, speaking on the phone. And it's like I'm trying to sell people onto this, this free offer. I'm like, hey, let us run your marketing for 30 days. Let us run your marketing for 30 days. And that's, that's really how we got all of our first clients. It, it always started with DMs, to be honest. It's like find people where where they are. And so something we learned over the years is it's like you'd watch out, we'd watch a lot of videos and they're like, oh yeah, go to LinkedIn, find people. Gym owners aren't really on LinkedIn. I can't get in touch with them on LinkedIn. And so that was a big waste of time for growing our LinkedIn profiles. But what we soon realized was like, they're all on Facebook, Facebook, Instagram, they're all on these different social media platforms. And so that's really where we figured out what was going to work. And so that's how we landed our first clients, is DMing on Facebook, finding them, making connections with them on Facebook, posting, you know, content so that when they do see our friend request, they go check out your profile and they see that you have some content about it. And that's really how we got our first 5.

Amazing. So just hustle, not cold call, cold DM, cold DM, cold DM, free offer. What were you like literally running the ads for 30 days and then showing value and then saying, okay, now we're going to move to the monthly retainer?

Yeah, we were really in the phase where it's like we needed to build our skill set. Like, we weren't super confident, and I think that that's a big thing over the course of my entrepreneur journey is like the more confident I've gotten, the more we've been able to charge, the easier it is to sell them. But when you're starting out and it's like you're trying to build that expertise, it's like giving away as much as you can for free until you figure out a system that works. Mhm. Like, that was the biggest thing for us. And once we did, once we got the testimonials, that's really when we started to get the leverage needed to now rather than reaching out about this free 30 days, it was reaching out about something that would get them on the phone so that we could then sell them onto the actual client services.

Love that. And so if you're in that phase in your agency, you're trying to figure out like, how do I get those first handful of clients? You know, the main thing he's focused on, or he was focused on, was proving value, right? It's not just about cash grab. It's not just about trying to trick some people into giving you money to do something. It's like, We wanna get this client whether they pay us or not and do what it is that we think we're gonna deliver to see if we can get result and to see if we can prove our ROI, to see if we can show like, look, this is the result we can get in this industry. And once you've got that, it's off to the races. So the first 5 clients, you're trying to get attention, but you're trying to prove your value, trying to prove your results.

Yeah, I think I would even add to that where you're also trying to figure out the problems they have. Because when you can identify, you know, all these issues in their business, you can work to solve them. And so something we did at the beginning too is we basically became their employees. It's like when they asked us to do something, we would do it because then you start to learn all the inner workings of everything that they're doing and you start to pinpoint, oh hey, this looks like it could be fixed or improved upon, or hey, this is a problem that I'm noticing. And then you could start to build service offerings around these big issues that you're noticing. And so I think that's something we probably missed because we didn't have the education at the time, but it's really like a research phase. It's like gather as much intel as you can when you're working with these new clients, 'cause that's gonna then help you in the long run building your service, building this stickiness, because you're gonna solve all these different problems that you've been able to identify doing so.

So good. Lots of great insights and takeaways there. Talk to us a little bit about what the program package looks like today. Like what is it that they get? What do they pay? How many different, like, levels are there?

Yeah, great question. So we just recently restructured everything because as I mentioned, realizing how important it is to get their website system and organic system in place changed our entire packaging because what we started to realize is any clients we brought on just for the Facebook side of things without the organic, our retention would be closer to 90%. And so as soon as we added in this extra organic component, we knew, you know, with certainty that if we can, you know, get their website in place, get their system dialed in on HighLevel, connect it to HighLevel through an integration, and then also run the ads, we knew we could keep them a lot longer. And so our packaging now is structured where usually we'll get clients on a phone call. We, we run a lot of Facebook ads nowadays. We don't need to do all the DMing anymore. We have a lot more testimonial, a lot more, you know, extra disposable income to run ads. And so most of our offerings are around just one of the biggest problems in our industry is just lead flow. And I— most, you know, services are going to have this as a big problem too if they're struggling. And so for us, it's we get them on the phone about solving that lead flow problem. We're not very specific about if it's going to be through Facebook ads or if it's going to be through organic. It's just get them on the phone in whatever way possible and then navigate the conversation to offer you know, a website rebuild and an SEO. And so our packaging starts with trying to build out a new website. If they already have a good one in place and we're very confident it's probably doing well, then we'll skip that and we'll go right into, um, the kind of ad management. And so for the organic side of things, um, if they want to build out the website, the first thing that we do is we charge for the website buildout. As of right now, we charged $1,000 to build that out. Um, set it up, structure it, do some basic SEO. We're not going too advanced in the SEO side of things. We're basically just doing the 80/20. We're getting the on-page stuff. We're not doing any backlinking, um, just the basic components to make sure that their website is designed for conversions so that if they are getting traffic, then, you know, they'll do really well. And something we do like to focus on when we're bringing on new clients is any client that's been around for 5 to 10 years that has a website that looks like crap, we know if we just revamp their website, they're already getting traffic, it just doesn't convert, that we can immediately take their lead flow from— if they're only getting 5 leads from their website— up to like 30 to 60, because they already have the traffic, the website just doesn't convert. So those would be considered our ideal clients, is getting those types of people, um, in the door and building out their website for the $1,000. And then afterwards, we also sell them on to the ad management. And so once the website is built, we're we're always like, hey, we need to build you this 3-pillar system, is how we pitch it, where we say, once we get your organic in place, we'll get your Facebook ad system in place, and then your data tracking is the last metric. And so for us, it's getting that website for $1,000. After that, we build out their Facebook advertising campaigns, which is our management service, which is also $1,000. Uh, that's a recurring fee every single month, um, that they pay. And so website paid ads, and then the data, um, uh, the data, basically analytic tracking that we do for them is just a weekly report that we send out to them saying, here's how many leads, here's the bookings, show-ups, sales. Um, and that's basically the packaging. And so the best flow for us is get them on the website, charge them $1,000 for that, get them onto the ad management afterwards for a monthly fee of $1,000 every single month. And on top of that, not only are we doing the ads, the website, we're we're also managing all their follow-up. And so we've priced ourselves purposefully because in our industry, like, a lot of people have told us, oh, you got to increase prices, you got to increase prices. And for us, the value discrepancy to the price they pay is so high. The reason we can maintain a retention of 98% is because to get somebody to run your ads, manage your website, manage your follow-up for you, manage the data tracking, is so valuable to a fitness studio owner that they'll keep paying. The $1,000 a month and they, they won't ever stop. And we could probably increase our prices too and keep it, but that's something we'll probably have to do in the future and play around with to see. But as of right now, that's kind of—

so you guys are proactively focused on let's make sure the price provides a really great return on investment so that they would— they have no reason to, to cancel. I love the fact that it's— we're going to get the website so it's built to convert, we're going to drive traffic, we're going to track it, we're We're also gonna put automations in place to convert the leads you do generate into book job or into scheduled, you know, consults and ultimately into, you know, new clients.

Yep. Exactly. You nailed it.

Is the follow-up all automation, like text message, email, or is there some phone component to it as well?

So we don't do any phone components. We realize that it costs us a lot of money to pay people to phone all the time. And the conversion differences in terms of just texting versus phone calls in our industry wasn't substantial enough. To include it as a service. And so we just decided, okay, let's not include that. Let's just keep doing our, our follow-up. And we don't really use like AI to respond. It's, it's an actual team of people that are replying. We do have the automations to start the conversation. If they stop replying, we have automations to bring them back into conversations. But as soon as they do reply, it's a, it's a real person that will jump in. And start to try to book them into appointments. We found it just works better. I don't think AI is quite there yet, at least from what I've looked at, to be as good as our team quite yet. So that's the reason we do that.

And, and it sounds like you're also, once the inquiry comes in, dropping it on the pipeline and working the pipeline too. Did they come in and do the initial, you know, trial, or did they come in and do the, the preview tour And then did they actually become a client? Um, are you, are you following up with the gym owner to that level to, to figure out who showed up and who became an actual paying, you know, client?

Yep. So because we have— so depending on the client, if we have a client with a certain system— so MindBody is a big software that a lot of gyms use— if they're using one of the big softwares, because we have the integration with HighLevel, it'll update the pipelines automatically because as soon as somebody pays, we've created an automation to connect that. For gyms that don't have that, they do have to go in and manually update the pipelines of when they purchase, when they start a trial, when they show up obviously, and when they purchase a membership. Um, but yeah, for the most part, ideally, like, our best clients are ones we automate everything, right? If we can connect it, you know, it's so much easier for them. They don't have to worry about it. All their data is there. It's clearly displayed. They don't have to touch anything and It just makes it a lot easier for us as well.

That's huge. And so regardless of what niche you happen to be in, uh, you know, if you're generating leads, if you can figure out how to connect it to the dispatch system— so in plumbing and HVAC, it's like ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro. In the gym space, it's MindBody. In dentistry, it's Dentrix. Whatever the system is, if you can bridge that gap and be able to show them, here's the leads we generated, and here's the ones that actually converted through an integration, you're gonna really stand out from the competition. And it's hard for them to figure that out on their own.

Very hard, yeah.

So good. Love it, love it. And I think I also like the fact that like, as you structured your program, it's not just let's generate some leads. It's figuring out what does the lead cycle look like in my niche? And then how do I make sure that my offering matches that in a way that gets them more of what they really want, which is, you know, new clients, new customers, and then people that are staying on that retainer service for a long time.

[Speaker] Yeah, and I think the other thing is as you start to learn more and more about your niche, and even us, it's like, that's kind of the front end stuff. It's like you get all these leads in, you get them booked, but then it's like, for us anyways, it's like, how do we help them close more deals? 'Cause like we can get them in the door, but at the end of the day, they have to be able to now sell these new trialers onto a membership, they need to then keep their members longer and retain them. And so similar to like what, what you guys do at 7 Figure Agency where it's like you're trying to help, you know, an agency get clients, retain those clients for long term. It's the same for us as agency owners with our clients. It's like we're trying to get them more people, but how do we actually also help them retain and close more of those people? And so something else we added with our system is when, when we're tracking people in pipelines, If somebody starts a trial, something that, uh, we realize is our clients will always drop the ball when, you know, they have a bunch of new trialers sign up. They forget, you know, how far are they into their trial, you know, what stage are they at, how many classes have they gone through to their trial. And so with the integration, and because we've noticed this as a problem, as soon as somebody buys a trial, now we have an entire system built out in HighLevel that creates manual actions. And so if you're not familiar with what manual actions are in HighLevel, it basically prompts a message that the client will basically go into the manual actions and it'll be a list of messages. And this isn't automated, it's more of a systemized process where every day they jump in and they have a list of contacts that need a message depending on are they on the first day of their trial, are they on the fifth day of their trial, are they on the last day of their trial. Depending on where they're at, they'll have a specific message that they're the client will get to decide to send. And so it makes it a lot easier for them to now track all of this because all they have to do is go to this list of contacts, click the Let's Start button, and it's gonna start prompting messages, and then they get to decide if they wanna send it or not. And I think this is really powerful because rather than sending this automated message, they get to decide if they wanna customize the message. And I think personalization in the messaging is very powerful. And so if, you know, if I'm a gym owner, somebody comes into the studio, and they— I knew that Cindy, you know, hurt her shoulder or was really sore. And I have a message that prompts for Cindy. I can be like, hey, how's your shoulder feeling after that last, last class? And so that personalization helps tremendously in terms of conversions. And because we track this, we know with certainty that the clients that actually add personalization have a higher trial to membership conversion. And so I think the, the learning point here for everyone is listening is like, once you start to solve more of these problems and track things, it's really when you can get super sticky in, in your industry. Because you're— if you solve 10 different problems have been in your niche that they face, like, they're not going to find anybody who can, who can replace you.

So good. I love that example and that thought process around going deep into the niche. And I think very practical is understanding like the, the manual action is better than just letting it letting it rip, right? And then the client's upset 'cause they got something weird to their customer and the customer felt awkward. And so solving those types of problems and innovating your program will make a big difference in how you can present it on the front end, you know, to be compelling and to stand out, but then also retention on the backend. So we talked a little bit about how you landed your first handful of clients. Let's talk about what's working today. Where are the clients coming from on a consistent basis today?

For us, we have— we're very fortunate to have a partnership with one pretty big franchise, and so we open all their new locations. And so that's a pretty— it's just a constant drip of new leads. It's just a little pipeline, right? And so some of the advice we actually got, part of the 7 Figure Agency, our coach Nick, he was recommending to us that we don't want to put all our eggs in one basket. And so we don't want to rely on the franchise. And I think we made a subtle mistake where we built our entire HighLevel system and everything for this franchise. And the problem is when we then tried to switch back to getting some more, you know, mom-and-pop, small, small gyms, smaller gyms, independent gyms, it was a lot more difficult to restructure everything because they had things set up different. And so we had to basically go in and revamp our ClickUp templates, all of our processes in HighLevel, how everything operated. And we didn't realize how big of a deal this was until we started marketing again to, to attract clients. Um, and so to get back to the original question, we, you know, we have that constant drip from the franchise, uh, how we land clients. But then how we bring on the, um, independents is primarily right now Facebook ads. We've gotten very good at developing a system that works on Facebook, and, um, it's basically that the whole key to Facebook ads is your creative, your video, and then your compelling offer. And I think that it's just a major kind of theme in the, in, in the agency space where it's like you really need a compelling offer and you need to convey it in a way that makes people feel confident. And for us, the biggest thing, uh, that moved the needle forward to starting to actually get qualified appointments, um, I think there's pretty well 3 major things. Number 1 is going to be obviously the compelling offer. It needs to be good. Um, number 2 is the creative. And for us especially, it's testimonials. It's collages of videos that are answering the major pain points that our clients have. And so for us, most, most of the ads that have ever been successful for us for our space have been about getting more bodies in their doors. And so most of our testimonial clips are about 5 seconds of different testimonials of people mentioning how much traffic they're getting by using our service. And by using that as kind of the bait, It's like they're like, okay, these guys clearly are good at getting people in the door. And then on the back half of the video, and it's most of them are only about a minute to a minute 30 seconds. The back half is pain points where they're mentioning, oh, I was struggling with this, this, and that. I was, you know, waking up in cold sweats because I was afraid of our business closing down. And so just by having different variations of these different testimonial collages is really what's worked well creative-wise. Combining that with obviously the offer. And then the last part is filtration. And I think you do a very good job of training everybody in the 7 Figure Agency on this where it's like, you do not wanna bring on clients that aren't a good fit for your agency. You wanna, you wanna know with certainty that when you bring on somebody, they are going to be your highest, you know, quality client that is, you're gonna be able to retain long term. And so for us, it was really figuring out how do we How do we ask as few questions as possible, but the, the most important questions for us to know they're a good fit? And so by adding that to our booking page, I know with certainty as soon as I jump on the call whether or not they're going to be the right client, the right type of studio that will work for us. And by adding in that, that's made most of my appointments now actually, you know, valuable appointments. Like, I'm not wasting time jumping on calls being like, oh, this is not going to be a good fit, like just wasting my time. And so I get less calls now, but every call I get onto is a lot more valuable. And so Facebook ads, um, is the major way we're generating clients on top of, you know, the franchise partnership that's just a constant drip. Um, and that's, that's our major way of getting clients right now.

So good. Lots of, lots, lots of good insights there. So I really believe you're always one joint venture or one strategic relationship away from a 7 bigger agency. And so, in your case, it sounds like maybe it's— I don't know if it's a joint venture. How would you classify? It's just a strategic alliance?

Yeah. So, we have a partnership. So, we're in their contract. So, any new locations that they open, they have to stay with us for 5 months. And then after that, they get to decide if they want to keep with us. And so, we're locked in their contract as a partner. So—

So good. So, like you want to always be looking for those strategic relationships And they don't just fall out of the sky, right? Alec was putting out great content. He was probably plugged into events. He formed a couple of key relationships and bam, that's the main channel. With the Facebook ad stuff, I think you said some great things and some specific nuance there. The testimonial videos that we all run, like, oh, Alec is great. Alec helps fill my gym. That's one level. The next level up is speaking to the objections you're hearing on your sales calls And having the video clip where the person said that was their problem and having that in the ad, it's gonna catch people in a different way than just saying how great your agency is. Um, you mentioned a couple times the offer. Um, like, is there a specific offer that you're using, widget, that seems to be working well that they're like, okay, I'll jump on a meeting, um, that you can share?

Yeah, so I think the best piece of advice I can give for the offer, so Something that we do is we run a lot of offer testing. We do this for our actual clients too, but we do it for our agency and it's really helped. Actually, Christian, who just reached 7-figure agencies, I remember we had a conversation about this and I showed him our process for running offer tests and he started running that as well. And so it works pretty well. But basically you take a group of offers in your industry. And so for us, it would, it would be along the lines of get, you know, 50 members in the next 90 days or you don't pay. Uh, it could also be, you— we take— and so we take— when we come up with our offers, we take something that's actually tangible. So like, can we do this for a client? Are we confident we could do this, uh, for them? Um, and then we just try a bunch of different variations of it. And so 50 members in 90 days could also be, you know, what's the revenue equivalent to 50 members in 90 days? And so I would take $10K in 90 days, or you don't pay and try a bunch of these variations. And then I run them all at the exact same time to figure out, okay, now that it's running to this audience, what one's getting the most clicks, what one's getting the most engagements. And from there we can then figure out, okay, based on the data we see in the Facebook ads, here's the offer that seems to be hitting the most. And then once we figure that out, we think we can then roll it into an actual, uh, real test where we're trying to generate leads with it. And so to break it down a little bit further, we're running a traffic campaign to see what one's getting the most clicks, uh, click-through rate as well, because those are leading indicators to the success of a Facebook ad. And then on the flip side, we're then taking the winner from that and we're actually proving it as an offer. So we're running it as a lead ad on Facebook, or we'll run it to a landing page with that offer on it. Um, and we'll see, does it actually generate leads and is it actually getting bookings? And for the most part, when we run that, it's most of the time the offer you move to the next phase to prove it works, works very well. Um, something I will also mention is we do that exact same process for the copy and the creatives too, where we test them all out. We test a bunch of variations of them. The one that won moves into the next phase and we just keep moving winning, winning ads forward. And so the winning offer with the winning copy with the winning headline, and then we just go from there. And that's literally been our major way of making ads work and coming up with the offers. To answer your question though, I think our winner was like 10K in the next 90 days or you don't pay. That was kind of like the major hook.

I love it. I love the answer, but more importantly, the process to get to the answer, right? And testing and recognizing that what's working right now might not be working 9 months from now. That's why you like true— Testing.

Yeah.

Are always testing, right? Figuring like A/B test, what's gonna work best in each of these variables, and promoting the winners and keeping those winners fresh. That was an amazing breakdown, really cool share. I wanna talk a little bit about team. So, obviously serving 80 or so clients, you've got a lot of moving parts with the website, and then also doing the Facebook ads. What does the team look like, and how do you keep the team productive and consistent?

I would probably say this has been our biggest weakness. Um, we actually— our major team that manages all the ads, the client communications, is only 3 people. Um, and so we have 1 account manager. Derek and myself, uh, are still doing way too much as of right now. Um, for websites, I have been building them, which we are working on hiring somebody to build the websites right now. For that because I need to get out of that role. Um, yeah, so that's been a big kind of sluggish transition where we're trying to step out of this. And Derek right now is still doing probably too much communication with clients, but our team is getting up to speed to do that. Um, we do have an 8-person follow-up team that Derek manages, and so getting them on board, building a system for them, uh, to manage really about systems and processes when it comes to that. It's, it's making sure that they're following a structured SOP. And, you know, pretty much in terms of bringing on people for that role, they're mostly people from, you know, Indeed. They're mostly from the Philippines. They don't need to be super educated for that role. And so that's pretty simple. It's really bringing on the A-players. And I would say, as of right now, like this is our weakness. This is part of the reason we're part of 7 Figure Agency is to help us get to that point where we're doing this at a, at a higher level. Because I would say this has stopped us from growing up to the $100,000, $200,000, $300,000 mark is because we're still doing way too much. And so, um, right now our focus is this exact thing. And so it's utilizing platforms like Indeed and really building that system. I think we got really good at building systems for our clients that we kind of left ours for building our own team kind of in the back burner up until this point now. And so our, our main focus is getting that into place so that Derek can fully step out and I can fully step out and then focus more on the sales. Cause the other side of it is sales and marketing, which I'm also doing all myself. And so this is something where I would say we don't really have the expertise yet because that's something we're working on. So team of 3 major team leaders, and then only a team of 8 or so for follow-up. It's kind of where we're at.

Awesome. So in the immediate term, really healthy profit margins because of that really tight control of the results, which is probably one of the reasons the retention is where it is, but creates a big opportunity to say, all right, to go to the next level, we've got to put the leadership team in place. We've got to put those processes in place so that we can have a little freedom, right? And we can also, you know, be able to continue to grow and scale the business to the next level. Let's talk a little bit about retention. You mentioned the range kind of between 90% with just ads to 98% plus. Like, what are some of the things you guys are doing in order to maximize the retention of your client base?

Yeah, I think the biggest thing is response times is super important. For us, I feel like, at least when we like hire somebody else to do things, like response times are usually later than an hour. Our— one of our key metrics that our team looks at is how quickly are we replying to our clients when a problem comes up. Even if we don't have the answer yet, one of the first things that we do is we'll mention, we'll reach out just letting them know, hey, we saw this, we're looking into the problem. And so I feel like a lot of people get caught up in this idea where they need the answer to reply, and for us, it's like reply as quickly as possible. I think that's the biggest thing. We actually recently ran an NPS survey to all of our clients to figure out what are the things that we're doing well that they like. And one of the biggest pieces of feedback was that it was, they're so quick to reply and to solve the problems. And so that's been a big focus because that's what our clients are telling us is, you know, making their lives easier. Um, I would say the second thing that we do for our clients is, um, obviously they need good results. Like if you're not getting clients results, that's gonna, you know, cause them not to stay. It doesn't matter if you got them good results, 5 months ago, if you're not getting them good results today, they will still leave. And so you have to make sure that every single day you are, you know, doing everything that you can possibly can to get them the best results. And for us, that was adding in— honestly, the website has made it like so much easier to retain clients because our follow-up team gets more value the more leads they get. And so by having Facebook ads, let's just use a whole number of 100 leads will come in from Facebook every single month, if they're also getting 50 leads from the website, and the website's usually higher quality prospects, more of them book appointments, more of them show up, their traffic feels a lot more from the studio's— studio owner's perspective. And our jobs, we have a lot more to do. And so if they were to remove us and not have our follow-up system and they're getting those 150 leads, their team's probably spending 10 hours a week on handling that. And so for us, for our ability to save them a certain amount of time while also making sure that they're actually generating revenue has been a massive improvement for our retention. And then the last thing I would say is a lot of business owners, especially in the, in our space, like they got into it because they love fitness, not because they wanted to be business owners. And so they don't track their numbers. They, they aren't the best business owners. And so if you can help them become better business owners, they're gonna overall be better. And so for us, data tracking is very important. And so I can't tell you the amount of times I get on calls and they have no idea what their booking percentages are, what their show percentages are, what their retention is, their lifetime value. They just don't know these numbers. And so for us to add this in, and something that we built with HighLevel is a way to automate this. And so it basically fills in an Excel sheet automatically basically looks at the pipelines in HighLevel and starts to report it automatically, which is really nice. So they just have to look at this sheet and they can see from the marketing front, here's leads, here's the booking percentage, here's the show-up rate, here's your trial to membership conversion. And then so long as they're reciprocating and giving us data, we can also track their churn and things like that and start to help them identify bottlenecks and issues. And like I've mentioned already, if you can solve these problems for your clients, you're gonna keep them longer. And the more you can be like, hey, here's all your stats. This stat doesn't look very good. Here's what we can do to fix it. The more you do that, if you do that every week, every month, like they're not going anywhere. And that's how we retain our, our, our clients. I love that.

And I, I love the, like the, the spreadsheet concept of showing them their conversion rates and really helping them fill in the gaps on that cuz there's no way they're tracking it correctly. Huge value in terms of how you retain. I'd love to drill down on the, the follow-up team and kind of what that looks like. Um, like, just talk me through what that team's day-to-day looks like and how they're following up with those leads. I guess predominantly through the, through the conversations tab on HighLevel.

Yeah, exactly. So there's actually a third-party software. I think it's— I think HighLevel owns it.

Eliza.

Sure, it's Eliza. Yeah, so Basically, they'll, they'll hop on. We have two different windows of, um, workers. So we have our first morning staff and then we have our afternoon staff. And so it's 18 hours a day that they're managing it. And so they'll basically log in, they head into Eliza, and then each client has their own FAQ sheet. And through that FAQ sheet, they're predominantly very similar across the board. And something we realized is the only way we can improve our follow-up system is if it's standardized across the forward. Because if it's not standardized and we change something, we have no idea if that was the real cause of, of the improvement. And so it's all standardized, the flow, uh, very similar. And so for us, there's a couple key components we do with follow-up that I think would be helpful for people to know. And I think the major thing for us is simplifying it. We always actually want to start with a question that's engaging, not just get right into booking. And so one of the first questions we ask is for any clients that opt in, most of them are opting in for a fitness style offer of some sort. And so it's always, hey, what are your health and fitness goals at this time? That kind of starts the conversation. And then from there, if they give us their goal, they're in the mindset of pain. And so our team, our main goal with our team is to reply to all leads within 1 to 3 minutes. That is, it makes a massive difference in terms of conversions for when, you know, we're meeting that. If we start to, you know, get closer to 10 minutes, 15 minutes, that's when we start to add in more follow-up team members because the conversions start to get affected by that. Um, but the, I think the major thing is once we ask that question, start to actually have a conversation with them as a real person. From there, once they give us their goal question, it's very easy to move right into booking. It's like, as soon as they say, let's just say as an example, um, somebody says, oh, to tone and lose some weight. And our follow-up team would say, amazing, we can definitely help you with that goal. Does an evening or morning class work best for you to come by? And so you're answering their goal question, but it's standardized, so it doesn't matter what goal question they said. We're always going to say, amazing, regardless. Yeah, exactly. It's amazing, we're going to help you with that, we can help you with that goal. And then we move right into the follow-up, uh, for booking, which is morning or evening. We only ever give 2 options because we found this works best.

More—

if you give too many options, people get confused and they'll likely fall off. And so morning or evening. From there, um, we'll say depending on obviously the studio, if they have different classes, we'll give them 2 options of classes. And then if they say evening, we're going to give them 2 options, 2 different days within that time window. So if it's evening, it would be Wednesday at 5 PM or Thursday at 8 PM. And from there, that usually works, works the best. That's at least what we found in terms of all of our different testing to figure out That's the flow, that's the structure, and everybody basically follows that. If they ask questions in between that, that flow, we obviously answer it, but as soon as we answer it, the follow-up question we ask is always back in line with trying to get them booked.

Amazing. And then once they schedule, are they scheduling on a HighLevel calendar or is it going into the Mindbody calendar? Like, and then are you following up through automation to actually get them to show up, or is there some manual component there?

Great question. So I see. So it depends on the client. If they're using Mindbody and we have the integration— so we have an integration with Mindbody and Zen Planner and a few other ones if there's a Zapier connection that exists— as soon as they book, it will basically be in a HighLevel calendar. And so our team just needs to book the appointment in HighLevel when they pick the time. It'll then send it in the calendar for them on Mindbody, which will fill in the class spot. So a lot of our clients have like a class limit of 30, and so you want to make sure that it's actually blocking that class slot. And so that's how it worked for them. For clients that don't have that, um, that the integration, once it's filled out in, in HighLevel, they get a notification. They then have to go in and add that contact to their software. And then from there, um, the automations basically do all the appointment reminders and all the booking. And so, so long as, you know, the team is booking the appropriate times, it then sends the automated messages. Which will reach out to them 24 hours before their appointment, an hour before, then 15 minutes before.

So good. My camera's doing something odd, but, um, really appreciate you breaking this down and giving the details of kind of how you structure that, how you got it set up. Um, in terms of that team specifically, um, are— is it the $1,000 monthly fee covers all of their follow-up, or is there an incremental cost for that?

Nope, it covers— it covers everything. The only thing the client would pay for there is we do have the SaaS HighLevel accounts, and so the clients pay pay for all the texting fees. It's not a significant amount of revenue though to account for it. And so yeah, it's just the $9.97. And like I said, the, the value discrepancy there, it's, it's— they're getting such a steal. And so it's like they're, they're unlikely to go anywhere. And I think I actually recently listened to Hormozy say something which is kind of in line with our thought process, which is if you're charging an amount at which your client will not continue to pay on their worst month, then your pricing is probably too high. And so for us, what we realized is at that price point, if they have a really bad month, they'll still stay. Whereas if we charge $1,500 to $2,000 and they have a really bad month, they'll probably cancel. And so we think we found a sweet spot, but that's obviously something we would have to test and figure out and do some research on, um, which we'll probably do at some point. The more we add on because we have so many things that we do for them now that I think it's probably time to increase that, but that's something to play around with in the future.

Yeah, no doubt the value proposition that you're bringing to the table at that price point is amazing, right? And, um, the retention numbers show it. So, Alec, congratulations on building to 7 figures. Thanks for sharing some of the amazing insights on how you structure your program, how you land clients, how you deliver results, how you've kind of built the team, and you've shared some great nuggets on what you're doing to innovate the service offering to really be sticky within the client base. Um, if you had one last piece of wisdom for that agency owner that's trying to get to the next level, uh, what would that be?

I think it's going to go back to what I've been saying, and this is just kind of an overarching thought. It's like, when you listen to your clients and you listen to their problems and you focus obsessively about solving all their problems that come up, you'll build an exceptional service that, that nobody else has. Like, like we talked about when we started with just Facebook ads, that's such a small little thing that we can do for them. When we can add in all these different components that I've talked about, it's like, and really solve these problems, that's really where you're going to get your retention up to, you know, the 90% and higher, and really be able to grow because you don't have that leaky bucket. You're not losing clients every single month. You're keeping clients because you focused on that service. And so my biggest thing is like focus on your clients, listen to your clients, collect feedback. That's something we started doing, NPS surveys, to let them tell you what you're doing well. It is gonna make a massive difference in the future for your, your agency moving forward.

So good, man. So many great insights. If somebody wanna connect with you or find more about you, what would be the best way for someone to reach out to you?

Yeah, if they just check me out on Facebook, just Alec Littlejohn. That's usually where I'm at most of the time 'cause all of our clients are on Facebook. And so anytime I get messages on Facebook, you can just reach out, Alec Littlejohn, my profile, and send me a DM there.

So good. So if you got value today, be sure to reach out to Alec. Thank him for sharing his insights. And his abundance mindset. Uh, Alec, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for sharing. Congratulations on your success. Uh, excited to see you in November, hopefully live for the intensive.

Awesome, awesome.

Thanks for listening, everybody.