How Barry Grew his Agency to Seven Figures in serving the Garage Door Niche

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. Podcast, I'm so excited to have you listening. I'm really excited about today's session. We're going to be interviewing Barry Nix from Garage Door Domination. Um, he's grown his agency to over 7 figures, most of that happening over the last 12 months. And so I'm really excited to have Barry Nixa on with us today to kind of share kind of how he's grown the business, how he's landing clients, what he's doing to deliver world-class results. So Barry, thanks so much for being on with us today.

Yeah, thank you. I'm excited.

So I guess, guys, give me a yes in the comments for those of you that are on with us live, if you're excited. I know I'm excited. I know there's gonna be lots of great insights here. Barry, kind of give us, start with like the lay of the land. Like where are you guys at in the business today in terms of clients and revenue and, kind of the current situation?

Yeah, so we're like a little over 93, uh, MRR. And so, um, that is about 51 clients. So I think our average client now is at about around $1,800 and change, you know, per month.

Fantastic. So it's so a solid 7-figure agency. Um, I think the niche, if I have it right, is garage doors and gate companies. Um, is that right?

That's right, yeah. And we've, we've kind of, uh, expanded within the, the garage, you know, world. Um, because so many of our clients, you know, they'll do garage doors, but they also do other things that are in the garage, like garage floors. And so we have some of those clients, and then garage, you know, storage solutions with the cabinets and the, uh, you know, for the, for the, the overhead storage, you know, things of that nature. And so, yeah, so either garage solutions, storage solutions, garage floors, that's the majority of it's overhead mostly residential, focused on residential repairs and installations, but it's also some commercial as well.

Excellent. All right, so, and that makes sense, you kind of figure out where the pockets of service are within the niche that you serve, and you're like, hey, you know what? A lot of these guys also do this, or they are buddies with guys that do that, and they're all part of the same groups and associations, And so you kind of, your niche might expand a little bit in that way. Super interesting. Tell us a little bit about kind of your story and your journey. You know, I know you didn't just in the last 12 months get into this. You've been doing this for a long, long time. So kind of walk us through kind of your journey to where you're at today.

Yeah, sure. So let's see what year we in, 2023. 19 years ago, I bought a direct mail, franchise. And I did that, and, you know, it was going very well up until when Google AdWords started and Facebook ads started. Um, and then after that, I started dabbling into, you know, SEO and small local websites and whatnot, trying to side hustle and start the process of building a digital agency one day. And so, long story short, um, I really began that journey about 2015-16 and started taking courses and classes and courses and classes and getting my nose bloodied and learning all the ropes and, and how to sell it and how to lose money and all of those things. And then had about $5,000 a month in recurring revenue. I wasn't doing a recurring revenue model until I found Seven Figure. But when COVID hit is when I found you and read your book, started listening and trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together. And so, uh, from, from when I started, and, and that's when the direct mail franchise, you know, went under and sold and reopened, and I did not re-up, re-up my agreement. I decided I'm going to go into this full force. That's when I joined Seven Figure. And from, you know, it was kind of a slow go the first year. Most of our growth has come within the last 12 months. 12 to 14 months, I would say. We kind of quickly went from $5,000 a month to, you know, $90,000+ a month. So that came from exiting another business in the world of advertising. And at that time, I was taking anybody from any niche. You know, it didn't really matter if you would let me do your digital marketing, I would give it a shot kind of thing.

Love it. So, 19 years of history, like, and you were probably big Dan Kennedy, big direct response, running, you know, local business, 'cause kind of the direct mail business was all local, right?

Yeah.

It was all in your local market.

That's right.

And so you had to make that hard pivot from, I got this local client base that had been paying me something in order to get in my mailers and things like that, to a more digital marketing business. And you made the choice to say, hey, like, I'm gonna try and go vertical-specific, national. Let's talk a little bit about how you chose the niche, because I know a lot of listeners are kind of in that place. Like, maybe they got a lot of local clients, um, and they're like, they've, they've heard that going niche is going to be helpful and kind of streamline things. Talk to us a little bit about how you made that decision and why you decided on, on garage door and garage companies.

Yeah, so it, it was perfectly clear that it's easier to scale when you niche down. Um, and that was one of the biggest things that stuck out to me. And it was also kind of the most scariest in a way, because I came from a world of you don't want to be in one niche, to diversify. Um, but it's just so much more difficult. So when I first came across your first book, it was like, hey, that's— I've got to find a niche. So I think my first niche was like senior living. Okay. That didn't work out so well. That was a slow go. And then I went into the dental or orthodontic niche and that I was dabbling in that and decided I really don't want to be in that niche. I know it's a great niche, but it just didn't work for me. Although I know we have people in the, in the group who do very well in that niche. And then I went into— I actually tried flooring. You and I talked about flooring marketing, and because I had clients that were in flooring. And then finally, so after my fourth go at a niche agency, It took about a year to figure that process out. But I found garage doors just by one client, that one client that we did exceptionally well with. And he referred us to someone else and then referred us to someone else. And then those people referred us and it just became like a light shined down, like, boo, you know. You've got— this is your niche. And I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go with that. And it just took off from there. I love it.

I think it's such a powerful, uh, testament to like a lot of us go through this, myself included, where we were like, we're gonna go down the niche path and we have a hypothetical niche, right? In our case, it was, it was actually restaurants. In your case, it was, you know, what was the first one that you said?

The first one was senior living.

Senior living, right? And it's like, man, I'm struggling, I'm beating my head against the door here, it's not working, I'm not getting any traction. And at that point, you can either continue trying and get nowhere, you can give up and say, oh, niche agency thing sucks, I'm gonna do something different, or you can keep taking action until you find the right niche. And I really have found this to be true. There's gonna be a path of least resistance in this process where it's like, for some reason, all these verticals have potential, right? 'Cause all of the verticals you mentioned, we've got agencies doing 7 figures in, but for some reason, you've got a connection, you've got a personal background, you've got a specific client that you just do great for as a case study, and the doors open and this path of least resistance opens up and you can really just go deep into that for a particular niche. So thanks for sharing that, because I know that, you know, it's easy to say, I'm running this $90,000 a month thing and, you know, I'm crushing it, but you had struggles. And, you know, that niche transition and really the generalist transition from serving anybody in your local market to really focusing on the niche was a big challenge for most agencies.

Yeah.

Awesome. If you guys have any questions on this that are live on kind of that process and the transition, let us know. So I'd love to know kind of as you, as you think back on how you got the first 5 clients in, in garage, right? So you got this one client, it was probably somebody you had done business with in the past potentially. How did you parlay that into, into more than one? Like, I think you need to have at least 5 clients in your niche before you can really say, this is my niche, right? You've got some, some critical mass there.

Yeah, it was mostly word of mouth. It just, you know, one guy to the next guy to the next guy. I think that's how the first 5 came along. We didn't really start doing any marketing to garage door. And it could, you know, honestly, I don't really remember the exact specifics, but it was somewhere in that range, Josh, where it was word of mouth, word of mouth, word of mouth. Maybe it was 3 or 4, maybe it was 5. And then we started doing the One City campaign in GHL.

Nice.

And I just followed this, you know, the, the modules. It was like, okay, check the box, go to the next one in the modules. And that was one of the very first— I don't know how it is today, you know, if you're starting from scratch. I'm sure it's changed some, but the one— do you guys still—

no, that's, that's pretty much the first thing, right? You choose the niche, you get the list, and then you start doing the cold outreach, and that's one of the suggested campaigns you can run. Say, I'm looking to work with one garage door company in your market. Here's what I did for these other guys. Are you interested? That's kind of the approach.

Yeah, so we did, I work with an agency that more or less just kind of handles your GHL stuff. And so they helped me set that up.

Nice.

And we ran two campaigns at the same time so that I was double, double running. Yep. And that's how we got to the next, you know, 4 or 5 clients was through that Just One City campaign.

Can you name the company that helped you set that up? Or is that like an internal company that you work with?

That company is— oh gosh, they're out of like Miami— I mean, Montana or Wyoming. Hold on, it'll come to me in a minute. I'm happy to name them. And they do a great job. I'll have to remember who they are. And I, I just connect with them through Asana. And then we talk through Asana all the time. I can, I can message them.

Yeah, that'll be a great resource. I'm sure, I'm sure the listeners like, come on, come on, like, let us know.

I swear, I don't remember.

But no worries.

Yeah, I will find out. And they sell like pods of hours. So you can use them for 25 hours a month or 40 hours a month. I just use them for 25, and that's enough for me. But they set up all of our clients. When we have new clients, they set them up in GHL. We get the Google review request tools set up for them, and everything else that's done in GHL. But they handle it, and it's just hands-off. So they run— they ran our Just One City campaign, did a great job. Uh, we followed I just downloaded your scripts, changed it from plumbers and HVAC to garage door and went through every script and just changed what had to be changed and followed the program. And that's how we got after that initial, you know, maybe 3 to 5 clients got to the next, probably close to 10 is through that.

[Speaker] So good. So we kind of, you know, landed the one client, it was an influential guy, that you got great results for, he kinda said some good things about you to some of his buddies, then you had 2 or 3, and they said, "Hey, look, I've got some case studies here," and that's kinda what makes the one city campaign work. It's where you reach out to all of the people in your niche in Orlando or Tampa, and you say, "Look what I did for these other guys. I'm gonna do it for just one in this market. Are you interested?" I'm curious, 'cause a lot of agencies are running that process now. How much was it just you sending the email and people replying, versus you sending the email and calling and maybe connecting. I'm curious in your scenario, like how much did you do beyond just letting the emails run?

Some. So whenever the people would reply, I would then call them, personally reach out and make a connection. And, you know, of course offer an SEO audit, record a Loom video, send it to them. So I was also doing outreach, you know, individually emailing and contacting the businesses. I had someone doing that.

Nice.

Like on the phone, calling them. I wasn't doing it. I was more or less recording the Loom videos.

Got it.

So, so through both of those let's say strategies for outreach, I was getting probably like 2 a day of SEO audits. So I was sending a lot out of Loom videos, and then they would either reply or not. And if they didn't, I followed up. If I really thought, okay, this is kind of like a, a good opportunity, like a really good client, not as much like a startup client who's got a limited number of reviews, you know, if there were a bigger client where I could see, maybe not necessarily a Dream 100 client, but either a Dream 100 or, or under that, just under that, I would personally reach out and make an extra effort to, or I would even go travel and see them. I would go see them in person regardless. Like, I went to Oklahoma City not having that client sold. I went to Atlanta not having the client sold because I believe so much in, I've gotta get their business.

So it was a scheduled appointment. You just didn't show up in Atlanta. Like you said, hey, I'm gonna be in that area on Thursday at 3. Let's get together. And then sometimes getting it live in a person makes a big difference in the relationship and the conversion of the deal.

Yeah, it's something that happens, I think, in your head and in theirs. Like if I'm gonna spend my time and the resources it takes to go, I'm gonna make it worth my trip.

Right.

And then, and that person from a different perspective feels the same way. Like, oh, it's important enough for this guy to come over here. I have not done that with a lot of them, but I have done that probably 3 times where it made sense to go do that.

Love it. So, so good. Lots of practical insights here. So just out of curiosity, because we're talking about that, those first handful of clients and kind of doing this cold outreach process, you got extra hands. And I think that's important because a lot of agencies, they try and run the GHL, get the list, send the emails, make the calls. And let's face it, that's very tedious work. And you can hire, I would think, a quality VA to do some of the behind-the-scenes work, whether it's a service provider like you had there or a dedicated person making those calls. And I think that's a great insight that you shared. You didn't try and tackle all of that yourself while trying to serve the clients that you maybe already had in place. How did you get the list? There's so many list providers. We talk about cold analytics these days. Um, you know, SIC code. Like, do you recall how you pulled your initial seed list of prospects that you were reaching out to originally?

Um, you guys recommended a source, uh, siccodes.com maybe. I got their list. Got it. Um, uh, originally, and then, um, we you know, I have quite a few VAs, and when I started, I didn't have as many as we have today, but I, I, I would invest in VAs to do— to help with the, the process of the marketing. Um, so I had some— to answer your question, I had somebody going into Google and copying and pasting the information out of Google Maps for each city to hand-create the list.

Okay.

And I still have that list. And I think we have about 11,000 that we've accumulated to use for marketing. And so if somebody is— you don't have to do that. We also use Outscraper and it does it automated and it's much faster and it's just as accurate. And, you know, I learned that trick from Zach Winsitt. Yeah. Which is how we've gotten most of our clients is because through the training in the module, it says run a Facebook campaign. Watch how Zach did it for Trees many years ago. Yeah. And so I reached out to Zach and he has been fantastic for us. And so honestly, most of our new clients have come through Facebook.

So that's where I wanna go next. That's awesome. So you made, you did make the transition from cold outreach, getting the list, to starting to do inbound and getting people to see you as an expert and kind of enter your funnel, which I think we all have to, right? Once you've got 5, 6, 10 clients, you don't wanna constantly be just cold chasing prospects. You wanna shift to the inbound portion. And so love to talk like, as it sits today, like now we've got, you know, $90,000 in monthly recurring revenue. What's it look like? Where are the clients coming from today?

So, they still come from the Facebook ad. I still—

Let's talk about that, because I think that was the next step. Like, what does that look like? Custom audience with an offer?

Yeah, it's a custom audience. We've gotten most of the data for for that audience from Outscraper. Okay, so some of it has come from the 11,000 that we hand-built. Some of it has come— comes from the original lists that we purchased from SIC codes. There's another one too, that we bought from— besides siccodes.com, Jeff, back in the day, referred to somebody and I don't remember. But anyways, with all of that data, combined, it's probably about 25,000 or 30,000 garage door companies that we target on Facebook. There's two different lists, one just for the phone numbers, one for the email addresses. That's how, uh, Zach likes to, to do it. And, um, and so most of our— I would say probably 50% of our new business comes from word of mouth, maybe a little more than 50%.

Nice.

The rest of it comes from either the Facebook campaign or from a combination of, you know, the Facebook campaign is great because it gets people on the Facebook page. Linktree is our website address in Facebook on the, on the page. And from Linktree, they can go to the Instagram page. The YouTube page, my LinkedIn page, our website, case studies, the download of the, you know, the inter— uh, digital marketing checklist. All of that is on the Linktree. And I kind of learned that from, uh, Jim Roofing Marketers. Yeah, global. You know, I can't remember exactly how he he phrased it, but it's that omnipresence. That's it, omnipresence. Yeah, that— I just kind of like decided, um, well, let's go do that. Let's emulate that whole idea. And it works. And so I don't know if people that contact me— I, I'll probably get a lead a day almost every day, uh, you know, 5 days a week. Some days 2, some days 0, some days 3, some days 1. It, you know, but it's a constant steady flow of leads, and I think that Facebook campaign sort of powers that. It is the, the fuel to that engine. But some people find us on— message me through Instagram. Some of it's directly from— I got one yesterday from the website, um, the little chat, GHL chat widget on the website.

Nice.

So it's just a combination of those things, but I honestly think To answer your question, a lot of it's word of mouth and some of it is, you know, that omnipresent, you know, just a combination of all the social platforms along with the website.

So good. So many great insights here. So kind of like kind of recapping on the client acquisition side of the equation, chose the niche, got a client that she crushed it for. She had the case study. Parlayed into a couple of case studies, got a list, right? Like none of your marketing efforts are gonna work if you don't have quality data. And it looks like you went big with data, right? You know, where some guys are getting 1,000 prospects, you've got 11 right outta the gates and you're continually building that database that you can do cold outreach to, that you can upload as a custom audience. And then you've been really committed to being front and center where they're seeing you again and again and again and again and again. On Facebook predominantly with an offer to go in and schedule a time. On the Facebook ads piece, are you following— I know probably Zach runs this for you at this point as well. Is it testimonials where they're seeing your guys saying how good you are and then, "Look, if you want similar results, come here and schedule a time"?

Yeah, here's exactly how that goes. Perfect. I just do exact— I did exactly what you put in the thing. I mean, it's pretty much a carbon copy. Love it. Which I learned from Jim as well. I think when they came to you, it was like, we just copied all your stuff.

Just do it, right? Don't reinvent the wheel. Like, take the strategy.

Yeah, I mean, it works. It just works. You just have to do the work and implement all of the little tasks. But how it works is this. We run a video. Oh, well, we have like a warm-up ad or an outreach ad and then a targeted ad. And on that ad, we had a video created. And the video is a combination of 5 testimonials. Have you— I'm sure you have, but have you heard of or do you ever use VideoAsk?

Yeah, big, big fan of VideoAsk.

Okay. So that's all I did was I sent out VideoAsk requests. They sent me back the videos. I sent those to somebody on Upwork to put— a couple hundred bucks later, we had a great montage. Yeah, it's a, it's a great video. And I think we have 5— it's me talking, then it's 5 videos back to back, and then me talking at the end. So I think the whole thing, maybe 60 seconds, that goes to— when you learn more, it goes to a landing page. And that landing page, once they Apply, apply. It goes to an app partnership application page on my website, which is not— you can't find that through the navigation menu, but it's on the website. That's where it's hosted. And that's whenever they fill out the partnership application form, it goes straight to my phone on text message and I get it via email.

And you just reach right out and schedule an appointment.

I found that you've gotta— when somebody reaches out to you, if you wait, the chances of you getting a hold of them and getting their attention, just, I think with every hour it goes down.

Speed to lead is where it's at, right? Like 15 minutes or less, got to get on the phone with those people, otherwise you're—

it's strike while the iron's hot. And my process from there is once I get them on the phone, I answer their questions. And, you know, basically it's We would like to conduct an audit. And once we have that data put together, I'll call you and we'll set up a time to meet. Let's just go ahead and set up that time now. And so we set up a time to do a 30 to 45 minute Zoom call, and then we, we go ahead and do their audit instead of recording a Loom video. We do it then and we recorded that meeting. That works a lot better with conversions from, let's say, people who are interested to giving a proposal.

Love it. So, so good, man. And so many great insights. It's very, very actionable, guys. Give me a dollar sign in the comments if you got at least one takeaway here on how Barry has grown his agency to $90,000 and kind of how he's landing clients. I'm curious on the omnipresent side. So we've got the list, we've got the cold outreach, we've got the outreach, we've got the Facebook ads. Are you doing anything to nurture the list with webinars or interviews or anything along those lines?

You know, we started— I started doing that, and I have, um, several webinars we've done, uh, through StreamYard, and they've gone out, and I've done a very poor job at continuing to push those. Um, Honestly, I, I haven't done a lot of them. Like, my plan this year, 2023, was to do one webinar a month. That was one of my goals. I think I've done one, maybe two, but the leads just keep coming in. And that's part of me being lazy, maybe, uh, part of it is, um, just being busy trying to keep up with all these Google updates that have happened this year, which have taken way more time than I planned. Um, so I've been— we've been implementing platforms and strategies on, on increasing the quality of the product or the service we're providing, um, opposed to investing in marketing. And I don't mean money, I just mean time. Like how much time is allocated. So we've put more people on the marketing side of the agency, but I'm doing nothing really on a consistent basis to nurture those lists, not an email campaign that goes out. So I've really dropped the ball.

I mean, again, looking at the path of least resistance, right? If you've got a, a strategy that's keeping the pipeline full and it's enough to meet your goals, that does the trick. It's nice to know that you've got that other arrow in the quiver if it doesn't start to continue. Hey, look, let's start to do some webinars, let's start to do some live events, let's start to do some podcasting, and you could probably triple or quadruple the amount of lead flow and positioning you have in the industry. Super, super great insights here. Really appreciate your willingness to share and be open. I'd love to shift gears a little bit now. We've talked about how you got the clients. Can we talk a little bit about like kind of what the program looks like, what you're doing to deliver and retain? I guess the best place to start would be like, tell us a little bit about what your program looks like and what you're actually offering to these garage door, garage companies.

Yeah, so it starts out like our base package is probably similar to most agencies, I would assume. It's the website, consistent web development. So monthly, it's not just we build your website, but also web development, SEO on the website. Of course, we host the website if they want us to, which is most of them. And GMB SEO, or GMB optimization, which we, we talk about as a different service than just SEO on the website. Both are important, but that's our package. It's GMB management, SEO, and website build plus web development. Um, yeah, that's our initial package. Then after that, it's— well, if you want lead generation services, then that's a different package, or it's an add-on package, however you want to look at it, but it's above and beyond the initial foundational, you know, that to me, SEO, um, and website is, you know, obviously it's a slower way to get a client leads. So it is important to be able to have other, um, you know, services that provide quicker lead generation. It's not required that they do Google AdWords in the garage door niche for me to do business with them. Some niches that makes a lot of sense. It's not the case in this because garage door locksmith, electricians, I think bankruptcy attorneys, those are kind of like your top, uh, most scrutinized, spammiest categories in North America as your, uh, let's say your Google Business Profile, uh, primary category. And so in order for somebody to run GLSA or AdWords, they have to be advanced verified. And with garage door, that can take 90 days, it can take 120 days, it can take longer. And they're limited or restricted campaigns when they do get advanced verified. So I tell people, you know, if you want to do AdWords in your garage door and you're not advanced verified, plan on it start making sense in 4 to 6 months. Um, but, you know, and that just doesn't— that doesn't— that's not a whole lot faster than when it takes to start getting results from SEO. So, um, we also, um, that, that, that's our base package is— and how we get more is if we're running, um, any paid traffic campaigns, if we're doing Facebook campaigns, uh, for them. We also have clients who, uh, in the garage door space, you know, just like plumbing, most of their leads— or I, I would think the majority of the leads come from the Google Maps unless they just have an extraordinary paid traffic budget, right? So we hone in and go heavy on local SEO for them and developing just a killer thick, wide, deep website to get the reward from Google for the local rankings, which helps power the GMB or the GBP. And so we, we kind of hone in on that. We also have clients that get— want to get additional, uh, Google Business Profiles within their service area. And so if they have a legitimate place where they can claim as a, you know, another Google Business Profile that Google will verify, will help them through that process. So there are people on our team in the agency who kind of specialize in getting Google Business Profiles verified for our clients, and it's hard to do with garage door.

I'm sure. Yeah.

Um, but if it's, um, legitimized and it's set up according to their guidelines, we can help them get multiple locations. Well, for each one, uh, we charge an additional fee to manage that GBP, and that's how we have clients that maybe have 7 locations or 11 locations. I have one client with 29 locations.

Wow.

And we charge for each one. So, we scale their, increase their monthly rate depending on how many, you know, locations they have, GBP locations, or if they're doing paid traffic campaigns.

Love it. So, Kenny, you got that base website SEO, pay-per-click, website SEO, Google Maps, and then you can expand through more locations. Hey, look, you're here, we wanna get you on the maps all around town. And you got a strategy for that. Or if you wanna run paid ads, it doesn't sound like that's a main focus for you, but if you wanna run paid ads, Google Ads, LSA, even Facebook, we can help support that. I'm curious, what percentage of your clients would you say are doing some type of paid? Or is it almost all organic?

It's probably mostly organic. I would prefer it not be.

Right, right. You're like, let's get a little bit of spend in here, you know, to kind of help balance things out and make life easier for you, I'm sure.

Yeah. It's just with our non— let's say our garage door clients that don't focus on garage doors, so garage floor, garage storage, those folks, it's easy to get Google AdWords up and running comparatively.

Right.

But for our garage door clients, probably 15% of them. So it's a very low percentage that run paid ads. It's just difficult. And, you know, they're paying the fee, the monthly fee to have it up and running. Really, they're not— they're paying initially to have us help them get advanced verified and to get them out of that limited restricted campaign. Once, once that's done, man, it's like a racist double-edged, very sharp sword. Um, but the, you know, the cost per click with garage door is also very expensive. So the majority of the clients can't afford to do it properly.

They need to have at least a $5,000 spend really even to play the game against the big boys. Look, if you're not going to play the game with the big boys, let me help you play the game organically over here and help you win there via that path, or run a Facebook campaign.

You know, and it's not gonna blow the world up, but it, you know, it can definitely bring in some extra lead generation. Nextdoor helps as well. It's not a big spend, but it helps generate another couple of leads a week or whatever. Yelp can help, but you nailed it. That's exactly right.

Love it. So, so good. Lots of great details here on the program structure, Um, just out of curiosity, kind of going deep on the program stuff, you talk about multiple locations. Just from your experience and kind of what you found, can you get them ranked on the map if it's from a home address, um, or, you know, or like a virtual office in your world, or do they need to have a commercial location rented? Or do you— have you found somewhere— I'm not asking you to share the secret sauce, but have you found some, you know, backdoor channels where you can get a GMB listing ranked even if they don't have a physical commercial location?

So from my experience, if they— you can get a visible address, a GMB or GBP, verified using a home address, especially after COVID, because so many businesses transitioned home after COVID, and Google knows that. So it is, you just have to prove it up. And if you can prove it up with an assumed name certificate, a DBA certificate of insurance, proper signage, doing a video, showing the pictures, showing the work truck or whatever, the tools, you know, you can, I'm sure you've been down that path or your guys have. You can prove up a home address, a visible storefront address, GMB. Works really well. Yes, they work faster, um, because Google verifies those much easier, but they don't get the pin drop in the maps. They don't work as well. They're much slower. You need way more reviews and posts and pictures and Q&As and everything else in order to get juice and productivity out of that. Google Business Profile. So you don't have to have— to answer your question, uh, they don't have to have a commercial or industrial, like, office or storage unit or warehouse or showroom, but it is helpful. It— the Google Business Profiles get reported less frequently. Uh, our— the garage door world is, like a lot of them, very cutthroat. They just We've had people drive around and report and take pictures and send Google just to get them removed out of Google, to get them suspended. And then they'll call and say, hey, I just got you suspended. I mean, it is awful.

I just busted you. You're out, bro. Yeah.

And that happens. And so we— like, I had a call yesterday with a new client, or a new potential client. And then who was a word-of-mouth referral from another garage door guy, and he doesn't have a Google Business Profile. And he's like— I said, the only way we'll work with you is you have to go get an office. You have to get a verified office, like it has to be a real place, and then we'll work with you. And we're leaning more that heavy in that direction because those don't get reported and they don't get suspended, and they— if they have a visible storefront and the Google Business Profile shows the address, we know we can get that ranked and working for them to where they're making enough money fairly quickly, depending on the city and, you know, the population and amount of competition, to where they're making more money than what we're charging them.

So good. Lots of great, lots of great details here. I love it, Barry. Thanks for filling this in. Daniel says, "Love the authenticity, Barry, appreciate it." Let's talk a little bit about operations and scale. So $90,000 a month in recurring revenue and growing. What does the team structure look like? How are you able to deliver the goods, especially like you're doing a lot of content, a lot of web dev, a lot of GMB optimization type work?

Yeah, we have, it's somewhere around 25 to 27, people on staff.

Excellent.

Most of it is Philippine-based. My bookkeeper's here, and I have one person that helps me, you know, manage accounts who's based here. Everybody else is Philippine-based. And so we— I have it broken up into buckets or departments. And so we have our content writers, SEO, uh, or web developers, SEO, and then, you know, support, whether it be marketing or account management support. And, and so the main— for if, if we're doing PPC, any type of PPC, that's white label. And for me, that just kind of has worked. So as far as our team goes, it's really those main departments. Content, which is very important. I, you know, I've kind of followed Tony Ricketts, his model. I mean, they're so big on content. And so we've put a lot of emphasis and on that web development. You say world-class websites and your, you know, training. And when you talk, we've put a big emphasis on trying to make websites better. Our goal when we have a new client is, and we tell— I tell them this, is you're going to have the best website in your city for any other garage door company. It will be the best website found on the internet in your area for garage door. That's our goal, uh, and I hope that that, that happens. But we're constantly trying to reinvent ourselves and, and have a better quality site— but, uh, product. But to answer your question, it's about 25 to 27 people, um, split up between SEO, web dev, uh, content writers, and then miscellaneous.

Love it. So you're still doing the sales in the organization. You've got a US-based account manager that talks to the clients and helps with the relationship along those sides. Any tips for the agencies that are kind of going to that 7-level mark and they're trying to figure out, how do I, you know, 20 employees, how do I keep track of all of this? How do I manage, you know, the scope of this type of thing?

Yeah, so I have help with that. And the person who works here, she does help manage accounts, but she also helps manage the team.

Hmm.

And we have systems of accountability. So whenever, let's say, a ticket is created, which is many of them all day, or tasks, she tries to keep them organized and stay on top of who's responsible to get what done. And then she's constantly following up with the person assigned to the task. It is a lot of work. I mean, that's kind of like a full-time job almost. And so, you know, I think Asana or what is it that you use?

ClickUp. ClickUp is the kind of the go-to that most of us use. But, you know, a system of Asana or ClickUp or Monday or something helps manage.

Yeah. And so those are helpful. But we found that in addition to that, Asana, having somebody on top physically communicating and engaging to get the tasks and to answer questions and to just be on top of it, to get things done quicker, more efficiently. There's sometimes, you know, a breakdown of communication when you're internationally. Setup, right? And cultures are different. You know, priorities are different. Sense of urgency. You know, it's hard to express sense of urgency through ClickUp or through something like that. But I think, I think that you're having somebody in on top of that And personally managing it is extra helpful. So it is a lot to manage that many people, but, um, the— every time we bring on a new client, I evaluate, do we have enough people? Do we need to bring somebody on? And I have leadership roles, like I have one person who's in charge of SEO over all the SEO people. I have one person kind of over all the web dev, and have one person over the content writers. And I don't meet with all of the content writers. I don't meet with all of the SEO people. I don't meet with all the web— I meet with one person from each department. And then I have one person that helps me kind of oversee the whole, the whole system. It's not so big that, you know, it's, it's not so many people that it's like, unbearable, right? But, um, if I'm going to be over sales and, you know, working on the business, uh, I, you know, I just— you can only have so many hours in the day.

I think that's a powerful insight and a powerful takeaway, right? So what Barry's done, he's got the $90,000 a month agency that's growing, right? He talked about being in the niche so he can systematize the process and kind of keep a lot of the consistency with what he delivers. And then he's got a virtual team, which is awesome, with a US-based, and it seems interesting, you got the US-based person that's kind of operations management as well as account management, so they can help on both fronts. And then there's a leadership team for each of the different departments. So you're able to manage the complexity. It seems like you've got a, probably a great US-based person that's helping to manage all of that. There's been a number of questions in here about where you found your, your team in the Philippines. Um, any insights you can share on that, like kind of where you posted, how you hired, um, on that front?

Yeah, initially I used OnlineJobs.

OnlineJobs.ph.

Yep. And that's how most people, uh, I think, just, just go to that website. They are the leader. I think they were the first to market. Um, that guy does a great job. I found my first couple of folks through Online Jobs. Um, I got really lucky, and the second person I hired after I joined Seven Figure Agency— the first was a content writer, the second person was an SEO guy, and we farmed out the web dev at the time— and the second guy has been, you know, like the superstar, total godsend, and one of— become one of my, like, best friends. Never still met him in person, but just a great guy. And he is over a training agency in the Philippines. So he works for us full-time, but he also is in charge of an SEO training academy in the Philippines. And that training academy does SEO, web dev, SMM, uh, web dev, all sorts of, you know, internet marketing training. But they put them through in batches. So in each batch, there might be 20 trainees So if we need at any time, to answer your question, like, okay, well, we need one more person for SEO, we need one more person to add, another person for content. He's got like the pick of the litter from each of these batches. And they all know each other. I can't remember the last time I hired someone from online job—

from outside of his pool. Yeah.

Outside of that pool. Um, and I still am a member, paid member of Online Jobs, and I still like to run ads. I have 3 ads running on there right now. I think I do all the time. But, um, they all know each other. And like, we've got husbands and wives and sis— like, you know, I think within one family we have 3 people that work here. We have 2, 2 sets of those. 2 sets of 3 family members. So it's— what I've learned is we hire based on their character, their work ethic, and a positive mental attitude. We can train or teach them to do anything else. So we kind of have like this in-house training where we are constantly making videos about how to do this task, how to do that task, how to do this task. And if they can just watch the videos and learn and ask questions, You know, we have them broken up into groups. If you're in web dev, you content, you communicate with your department and they teach each other. And so it's been a real blessing. And, and I've just felt totally lucky to have developed relationships with, with these people. Our kind of our mission, and we say this on a regular basis is to employ 100 Filipinos one day. And we're about one-fourth to almost maybe close, getting close to one-third of the way. But that's something we, we like to think about, talk about, to, you know, because without that, this agency wouldn't be what it is today without that one guy and everybody else that's a part of our team. So, you know, we just wanna give back and that's part of our mission.

[Speaker] So good, I love that. I love the thought process of this international team not being, I hired low-cost VAs 'cause I could have better profit. It was like, where can I find good talent, people that are hungry to work, that have the aptitude to step in, where I can make an impact as my business grows? I think you're coming from it, your heart is in that place, not the place of, "Oh, let me get the cheapest labor and just maximize profitability," even though that's obviously a byproduct of having an international team in a place like the Philippines.

It is a byproduct. And initially, that was the thought, to just be honest and to be transparent. It's like, "Well, you know, that makes sense. I know other guys that do that." you can save money, but that has completely 100% shifted. I would rather pay these people more so they never leave. And they also, you know, word of mouth referrals. If you do a good job with your clients, it just sort of explodes and grows.

Yeah.

And word of mouth referrals from within your agency just explodes and grows. And there's a lot of guys and gals in this, you know, in the group that do that. That's the way they grow their business. It's the way they grow their team is through word of mouth. So, um, yeah, 100%.

Take care of your team, make it a great place for them to work, and they're going to want to stay. They're going to want to bring their friends and their family that have similar core values, which is awesome. A quick question here, follow up on, uh, this from Robert Thompson, was how do you develop all the SOPs for the VAs to follow internally? Or do the SEO VAs have their own that you approve?

Both. Yeah, it's developed over time. We have our own SOPs. Sometimes people will bring in suggestions that we test and we'll implement, uh, sometimes. So to answer that question, um, our SOPs have developed over time. We've taken some from other agencies. That's why it's cool to be in 7 figures, because you can reach out to people and ask and say, you know, Josh, how do you guys do this? Or, or whomever, how do you do this? Uh, and I ask those questions, uh, at the events or from, you know, later on and from people you synchronize with and connect with. But the SOPs have come from trial and error and from getting advice from people. You know, not all niches are created equally. So what works for one niche doesn't necessarily work for another based on how Google sees that. So you just kind of have to, you have to get in, get your fingernails dug in the dirt and get dirty and put in the work. You know, I probably still work 14, 15, sometimes 16 hours a day, sometimes 6 days a week, sometimes 7 days a week, sometimes 4 days a week. Most of the time, It's 6 days most of the time. It's minimum 12 hours. You know, because the VAs work— some of them work on US hours, some of them work off. But it's like I have a little window between the hours of 4 to 7 o'clock in the afternoon. But from 8 AM or 7:30 AM all the way up until like 4 or so o'clock, I'm slammed. And then from like 7 o'clock PM till midnight, I'm slammed. But that's by choice. And I'm not saying that that's the right thing to do. But I really wanted to scale this business and I wanted to get it up and prove it to myself that it could be done within this niche, which I had many people say, multiple people say, don't do garage door. So There you go, right? Yeah. Well, you know, now that we've kind of gotten to 7 figures, it's like I want to hire more people so I don't, you know, have a heart attack, you know, and I can kind of enjoy more me time or family time. But I love working and I love, you know, being in the mix of it. So, so good.

So good, Barry. And guys, give me a yes in the comments if you appreciate him. Elaborating on some of this stuff, right? He's not surface level, he's really giving you some useful details here. So Barry, thank you. You know, we talk about to grow a 7-figure agency, right? You gotta land clients, deliver world-class results, retain, and scale. And we've talked about those 3 key pillars. The one that we haven't talked about is retention. And like you said, garage door niche is very, very competitive. There's lots of people in their ears from the big companies to the local guys. Like what are you guys doing in order to maximize client retention? Any cool insights on what you guys are doing on the retention side of the equation?

[Speaker] Yeah, I would say for retention, it's all about results and communication, right? So you have to deliver results. Some of the things that you do aren't tangible, like the customer can't feel that in their pocketbook. But it's a service that you're providing that allows the potential for success. So you have to do a lot of setup along the way. If you're not communicating, the clients don't know what they don't know, right? They don't understand every little piece of the puzzle. Some clients want to be more involved or be communicated with more than others. So I would say, to answer your question, doing the work for each client and then communicating that to them. And so when we have a client that's new, within the first, say, month and a half to 3 months, I communicate or someone on the team communicates with them more than after that initial setup phase.

Yep.

We have a fella in the Philippines that communicates with all of our clients on a monthly basis via— put— we talked about putting a report together. So we manually put a report together of how they're doing, like with Local Falcon heatmaps or Rank Tracker, like Semrush, just to give them an idea, okay, what we're doing, uh, here are the results of what we're doing, um, metrics-wise. We also give them a Google Sheet of all the SEO tasks we've done every month. So every Google task—

every—

I'm sorry, every SEO task, or, or whatever it is, it's, it's documented. And so we're providing that on a monthly basis with a video. So we create a video and take them Like, I try to make it like a 3-minute video where I don't do it. A guy named Mark does it, and he walks them through. He says, here's the link to all the tasks we did for the month. Here's the results. Here's a link for that. And here's a Google slide to show you what we've done. It takes a lot of time. It's very difficult. Not very difficult, but it's difficult in, in terms of getting all of those done every month on time. But that communication on a regular basis where we talk to them on the phone, via text message, via email, Zoom, it's a combination of touches and how often. Some require more than others, right? Some clients call me once a year. Some of them are like, don't send me a report. I don't care. I just want the phone to ring. Learning what each client wants. And, you know, that's not a way to systematize or to scale it. So we send out that report once a month anyways. It's just— that's at minimum what we're doing is sending out a monthly report. I like to personally talk to the clients, which can't go on forever, which is why I've brought people in to help communicate. So as we grow, I'm trying to, you know, break away from that so that You know, people don't constantly always call and talk, but it still happens. And that's okay with me, at least for now. But delivering the results, I like to— that's first. And I like to make our goal to be, we want to deliver more results than what they expect and what they pay us for.

Love it.

And then we have to communicate with them. And answer their questions and take the time that you really don't wanna take because you're like, ugh, I need to be doing this or I need to be doing that. But we've gotta keep them happy to keep that retention and the word-of-mouth referrals.

[Speaker] So good, so kind of that healthy balance, maybe in your case even more balanced on like, let's make sure we crush it. Let's make sure we're delivering world-class results and let's also make sure we create a great experience, we're communicating and we're keeping them in the loop. And when you've got that balance, retention stays high. Clients are happy, they're well served, they stick around long-term. So, so good, Barry, so many great insights. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing your journey, sharing your story, sharing some of your struggles, right? It hasn't been, you know, a straight path to 7 figures. Like so many agencies, you decided to go down the niche path, you got into the wrong niche, you didn't get traction, but you kept pressing through, you kept trying. And now you're at $90K and growing, and I have no doubt we're going to multiple 7 figures and beyond, and you're gonna hit that mission of 100 full-time members in the Philippines. Any other last nuggets or piece of wisdoms you would share with that agency that's trying to get to the next level?

I would just say, I mean, for me, and I know this sounds like, you know, I'm on this, this thing with you today. I just followed what you've taught. And that's, that is, I've told you that before. I just followed the process. I think first you have to find the process that you trust, that you really trust it. And then you just got to hit it and go after it and be relentless. And that, you know, you're right, it's been ups and downs. We've, we've lost clients, we've, uh, learned the hard way, we've lost money, we got our nose bloody. But you learn what to do and what not to do. If it's kind of like if you buy a franchise, you're buying like a turnkey model of do this, this, this, and this, and you'll get, you know, better results than doing it on your own. For me, when I found, uh, the 7 Figure Model and just started going through the modules and training. Eventually, when you do enough of the right things, the right things happen. What you can't do is give up. And you can't use a failure as an excuse to quit. For me, this— I intentionally, like, I didn't torch any relationships, but I burned the bridge. Like, I— when I left my old business, it was like, that bridge is no longer there. I don't want to ever go back to it. Because the wave of the future is not newspapers and direct mail and, you know, stuff of the '70s, '80s, '90s. Um, and so this is, this is a much better business model for me personally. I just followed the plan, and, and I would suggest anybody trying to get to that next level or scale their digital agency, whether it's 7-figure or something else, Whatever you believe is the right fit for you, dive in and go after it and just be committed to it and don't give up.

So good, man. So many great insights. Guys, if you got value from today's session, be sure to tag Barry. He's got an abundance mentality, just sharing out of the abundance of his, his nature, right? He's had success, he wants to share with others. So be sure to thank him for sharing. If you have follow-up questions, regardless of where you're watching this, maybe you're watching this on the YouTube channel, or maybe you're watching it on Facebook, and you got follow-up questions, post them in the comments. I'll be watching, and I'll try and fill in the gaps for you or get Gary to fill in the gaps for you. Thanks so much for tuning in. Thanks for listening. Can't wait to hear what you accomplish as you continue to grow and scale. And Barry, congratulations, and thanks again for sharing.

Thank you, Josh. I appreciate it, buddy.

Thanks, everybody.