In this talk, agency founder Joshua Nelson shares the journey from his early, unprofitable web‑design venture (Developcom) to a thriving Plumbing and HVAC SEO agency and a training company (7 Figure Agency). He emphasizes that true business love stems from aligning with personal passion, then systematically building a team and processes that free the founder from day‑to‑day operations. Nelson outlines how he leveraged learning from books (Rich Dad Poor Dad, The E‑Myth, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind) and a stint at ReachLocal to acquire sales and operational know‑how. He describes the strategic hiring model of “playing to strengths,” delegating website, SEO, and PPC work, and creating client‑management roles once the agency reached ~20 clients. A pivotal shift came from adopting Gino Wickman’s Traction/EOS framework to construct a leadership accountability chart, allowing him and his partner Dean to focus on high‑impact activities like business development and public speaking. Throughout, he stresses the importance of serving clients with outstanding results, rejecting the 60‑hour hustle culture, and designing the business for freedom, impact, and family time. He invites viewers to reflect on their own business love and consider changes to model, team, or operations.
Chapters
marketing agency owners, we started our business because, you know, we wanted more freedom, we wanted to make more money, we wanted to kind of have a bigger impact. But at the end of the day, we want to enjoy it, we want to really love it. And I'm truly blessed that I have a business both with Plumbing and HVAC SEO, our agency, and my training company, 7 Figure Agency, that I truly, I truly love, I truly enjoy. And I know that's not the case for everybody that gets into business. Sometimes we start our agency out and we go and get a couple of clients and we struggle to get those clients results, and then we struggle to grow the business to make enough money that we can pay the bills. And I just thought it would be a good opportunity to kind of unpack what I did within our agency, within our business, to create something we truly love and that we truly, truly enjoy. And so Mark Twain is famously quoted as saying, as saying, find something that you enjoy to do and you'll never have to work a day in your life, or something along those lines. But as entrepreneurs, as business owners, that quote is good, but the fact is we don't wanna just do our job, right? If you take that quote and you apply it to running an agency, you'd say, okay, well, I like doing websites and SEO, or I like running Facebook ads, and I enjoy that, so I should just do that. And if I do it well and I enjoy it, I don't have to work hard, but I can still make some money. The reality is, as entrepreneurs that work that job, isn't what is going to create a successful business that's going to create freedom, that's going to have a big impact. It's really building the systems, the procedures, the team, and the model to grow and scale your business. So my first business— some of you have heard this word— my first foray into running a digital marketing agency was actually a company called Developcom, where I was building websites, hosting websites for like $1,000 and then $50 per month. I learned how to build the websites in Dreamweaver and write the content. And I was constantly chasing my tail for the better part of 3 years, not making enough money to pay myself anything, but working extremely hard. I did not enjoy it. As a matter of fact, I really disliked it. But I knew I wanted to be successful. I wanted to build a business. I wanted to develop assets. And I was a big student of the game. I read a lot of the books like Rich Dad Poor Dad and The E-Myth Revisited and Secrets of the Millionaire Mind. And there was something about Secrets of the Millionaire Mind that landed on me, which was, if you really want to be in a certain type of business, the best place to start is to get in the corridor, like find a place that's succeeding at that, go work there, you know, cut your teeth on it, learn the process. And that's what I did. I wound up working with ReachLocal for a couple years, a very, very successful, you know, say what you don't like about them, but very successful, high-growth business. Spent about a year and a half there, learned how to sell, learned the business model, learned a lot. And then with that, I was like, okay, I think I've got some ideas that I can carry over into my other business, which we started, which is ClickGank, and then became Plumbing and HVAC SEO, our digital marketing agency serving hundreds of plumbing HVAC companies across the country. But down to the specifics, right? What did I do to make this a business that I love? First of all, I made sure I was doing something I was passionate about, right? I have a high degree of passion for internet marketing, websites, SEO, helping businesses of any type increase their sales, grow their revenues. Like, I'm extremely juiced and passionate about that, and I always knew that was the line of business that I wanted to be in. So just found something I really wanted to do. And then as the business started to grow, My thought from the very beginning was, how do I make sure that I build a team around this so that it's not just me trying to do everything? I'm not gonna be the guy building the websites, doing the SEO, claiming the directories, very strategically figuring out what am I best at, what do I enjoy the most, and then how do I put people in place to do the work so the company can continue to grow without me? And so if, you know, if you kind of think that through as digital marketing agencies, the first thing we need to remove ourselves from is operations, right? Once you figure out how to sell and land clients, the first thing you have to figure out is, okay, if when I sell a client, we're gonna do a website, SEO, pay-per-click, we're gonna run some campaigns, who's gonna do that work? And once there's enough revenue and once we had enough money to do that, that was the first thing we replaced, operations. We put somebody in place full-time to take that, to take that on. And then the next thing was kind of once we got to 20 or so clients, the big problem was, or the big challenge was, well, the clients need to be, they need to be managed. Like somebody needs to be showing them the reports and kind of explaining what we're doing and painting the vision for where we're going as a company. So the next thing we need to figure out was, okay, who can we put in place to manage these client relations so they get an amazing result, so that they're well taken care of, but also so that we're able to do what we do best. Really, as you build a team, what you want to be thinking about is, how can I find people that play at what I have to work at? There's an amazing book by John Osseroff called The Answer. Lots of interesting stuff in that book. The one thing that stuck out at me that I've taken to building this business that I love is find people that play at what you have to work at. There's things you're great at, you're naturally talented at, that you just do well, right? For me, it's, it's— I like public speaking, I like selling, I like business development. I don't necessarily like the behind-the-scenes doing of the work. And as entrepreneurs, we think we have to do it all. We think we have to be the expert. We need to know how to do it all. We need to probably do most of it ourselves. The reality is there are people that are passionate about that piece of the equation, that really love doing those specific types of things. And it's an extremely empowering way to look at it, and it really helps you realize if you're going to grow a digital marketing agency that you love, that provides money, that provides freedom, that provides impact, you know, do something you really want to do. But then as you get successful, as you start to land clients and deliver results, build a team, put some systems and procedures in place so you don't have to do it all yourself. And so kind of as we were growing our business, as we were growing our agency, there came a point in time where we were a little bit bottlenecked, 'cause me and my business partner, Dean, were the thought leaders in the company, right? We were the ones thinking about what we're gonna do next and setting the goals. And we're both very, we're both very fast start type individuals, right? Come up with the idea and then throw it over the fence to somebody else. But it was all on us to execute and to kind of make sure the team was doing what needed to be done. And we came across this amazing book called Traction by Gino Wickman. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. Traction, it kind of outlines the entrepreneur operating system, EOS. And it's really all around how do you build a leadership team so that it's not you running the company and having a bunch of peons that you say, do this, do that, do this, do that, and holding them accountable. But it's really about how do you figure out what your, organization chart looks like, or what your accountability chart really looks like, and the different functions within the business. And then how do you raise up leaders to take complete accountability of that aspect within the business? So within, you know, the websites, within the paid search strategy, within the account management, within, you know, even just managing the team, there's gotta be leaders in those areas that really love it, that are passionate about it, that understand exactly how to do that work that can raise up. I can tell you that once we transitioned our business from, you know, me and Dean being at the top and just having people underneath us that were doing what we said, to developing a leadership team, following kind of the Entrepreneur Operating System model, that's really where a lot of the freedom came within our business because we were able to completely step out and focus on the things that we enjoy most, the things that we do very best, and the company really even started to flourish even more. And so that's just a couple things, you know, how to build a business that you love. You know, do something you're passionate about first, you know, first and foremost. Build a team and really find people that can play at what you have to work at. And then, you know, focus on the impact. Really focus on helping the people that you serve, the clients you serve, get amazing results, right? If you help enough people get what they want, you can absolutely get anything that you want. And be conscious of the fact that you didn't probably start your business to have to work 60 hours a week. You probably started the business so that you could serve your clients, so that you can make the money that you want to have, but ultimately so that you could have the freedom and the flexibility to spend time with the kids or with the family, to take the travels and And so be conscious of the fact that's what you're after. This whole hustle lifestyle where, you know, you're gonna work 60 hours a week and you're just gonna grind, grind, grind, grind, grind. I don't buy into that, right? That's not why I started my business. And it's probably not why you started either. So I'd love to hear from you guys in the comments. You know, do you love your business? Are you passionate about what you're doing? Are you passionate about the work that you do day in and day out? Just let me know in the comments. I'd love to kind of have a conversation around this. And if not, you're the architect of your business. You're the architect of your, of your life. So you have the opportunity to decide, if I'm not happy with the way that it's going right now, something needs to change, right? It might be your business model. It might be the way that you're approaching your team and kind of trying to maybe do everything yourself. It might just be a change in the way that you operate your business as a whole. So that's my two cents on this front. Hopefully this has been helpful. Hopefully it's been useful. Would love to hear from you in comments, and I'll talk to you soon.
