How to pick the niche for your agency - 5 Deadly Niches to avoid at all cost

up, please let us know. But we really want you to be able to move forward after this conversation today.

Yep, and it is 12 o'clock, so let's, let's get started. We're getting together. Um, you know, Jeff and I found that at the, at the intensive and kind of at our, our conversations over the last couple months, oftentimes, you know, we buy in 100%. Yeah, we should be in a niche. It is the fastest way to grow our agency. Um, it is going to be the most scalable way to control our service offering and to really build, but we're stuck. We don't know what niche to choose, right? And I would imagine you're on this session because that's the place that you're at. You're like, yeah, I just, I need some help. I need some help kind of ironing out what the right niche for me is. And that's really what we want to do on today's session. So I'm going to talk a little bit about niche, and then we're going to start to bring you guys on so that you can talk with me and Jeff Jeff is our success coach here, and he's really great at really kind of drilling down and getting to the net of it and helping you figure out the right direction to go. So just real, real high level, why, why choosing a niche? You know, everybody wants to work with the expert in their type of business, right? That's, that's just a known thing. You know, if you're a generalist and you go out, you talk to a random dentist or a random roofer, They're going to say, what other dentists do you work with? Can you show me some examples? You know, can I talk with a couple of your other clients? And it just makes life so much easier when you choose to specialize in a niche. Makes it so much easier to sell and to close the business, right? Because you have the social proof, you have the clout, you have really a strong business case for them to do business with you. And probably bigger in my mind than that stuff, um, is, is it actually gives you an easier way to systematize your processes. Most people don't think this all the way through. It's like, okay, once I have 5 or 6 clients, if I'm in multiple niches, I don't have any systems. I've kind of completely figured things out willy-nilly and there's no scalability to that. And so being in one niche gives you the ability to figure out, here's what we're gonna do, here are the steps, and do it the same or very similar again and again. And you can get really good at driving results. You know, when you work with the same space 2, 3, 10, 20, 50 times, you start to really figure out what works and what doesn't, and that's where you have a massive competitive advantage over the competition. And ultimately, I found in my business experience and working with, with lots of other really successful digital marketing agencies, it really truly is the fastest way to accelerate the growth of your digital marketing agency. So, you know, that's the why. Some hows, we're going to talk about this in more depth in your specific situation, but as it relates to looking at your niche, you want to make sure that they clump together or self-identify. A lot of times we find we're selecting niches that are too broad. A great example of that is, and if you're going to work with home services, that's broad, right? That, you know, that could mean pest control, it could mean roofing, it could mean plumbing. And nobody identifies as home services. They identify as a plumbing company or a roofing company. So just making sure that they self-identify, making sure that they have a propensity to invest in marketing, right? This is probably the, the most important thing that you look for in your niche. Do they already advertise either offline or online or in some other way? Is that type of business carved out with, with a spend? And so just an example, We work with plumbing and HVAC contractors. I think most of you know, um, over the years they built their business with large budgets in the Yellow Pages. Most of those companies spending between $2,000 and $10,000 a month in Yellow Pages. So they had a propensity to invest in advertising. You just want to make sure the niche you focus on has that propensity. You also want to make sure there's enough of them. If you're going to be in one particular niche, which, which obviously is the, the purpose of today's conversation, You wanna make sure that it's not a niche with like 100 companies, that you'd have to get all 100 companies to have the potential to get to 7 figures. There's a certain quantity you wanna look for, and ideally you wanna make sure there's some type of industry association, right? The National Plumbing Association, the National Roofing Association, where they get together, they've got a list of people that are opted into the association, and you can access it and you can tap into the affinity of that group. And so, you know, these are just some high-level things you want to look for when choosing your niche. Again, we're going to get specific and hot seat you guys here in a moment. Anything you want to add to this, Jeff, before we press forward?

On the previous slide, the biggest thing that happens over time as you work in your niche is you start to become also a business expert within the niche itself. So you're not just a marketing niche, but you're able to talk to them about You know, things like their hourly rates and are their hourly rates comparable to other companies in that particular niche? Or, you know, it could be any number of things like that. But, you know, I like to use childcare. As I learned about childcare, I started to learn about, you know, how tuition systems work. I started to learn about, you know, they're not just their marketing traditionally, but what's been most successful and what the expectation of, you know, how many they're going to have walk through the door and how many of those are going to be like 2 children versus 1 child. So as you learn those things, you can advise other, other businesses that you have. So that's a big thing that comes out of really specializing in the niche. And you won't realize that at first because you're going to be totally focused on the marketing side. But it does get to be really fun when you're able to stand on stage stage at one of those association meetings somewhere in the future. And somebody raises their hand and asks what, for a general marketing guy, would be an off-the-wall question. But because you are the expert, you can actually speak with confidence on some of those business type of, of things. So that'd be the first slide. And then choosing your niche. The only other thing I would add here is whenever possible, if we can buy a list, you're always going to have an advantage if you can you know, get a good quality list. InfoUSA is, you know, good. There's other brokers out there that, you know, like I know for plumbers, for example, there's guys that just sell plumber lists. That's all they sell.

True.

And so that would be the biggest thing I would add there.

Awesome.

So just some things to think about as you choose a niche. And, and now we could talk a little bit about the 5 5 niches that Jeff and I have identified that aren't really ideal for local internet marketing. There's exceptions to every rule. There are niches that Jeff and I have looked at and been like, probably not a great fit, and people have been able to make it work. So don't feel like just because this list is here, you know, it's 100% non-starter. But, you know, for the most part, there's so many great niches that you can tap into that have a need for these services, that can get a tangible return on investment, that have the propensity to spend, it probably would be better to avoid these. And so since I know a lot of you commented, "I need to know what the 5 are," and you were really eager to find out what these are, the first I would say is government entities and municipalities. You know, you'd feel like these are government associations that have big budgets, they should be able to spend tons of money. I'm gonna suggest you kind of avoid them. They don't have a propensity to spend. To invest in advertising. They, you know, usually you have to go through a procurement process, so I would really avoid that. Real estate agents and insurance agents, you know, a lot of times I see, you know, people just getting into the space, they're like, "Wow, there's tons of real estate agents, there's tons of insurance agents, I can probably get them great results." And while you probably could, maybe, you know, through Facebook advertising and through some other mechanism, trying to generate results for them from a local internet marketing perspective, setting up a website, getting it optimized for search, leveraging paid campaigns, tapping into, you know, the Facebook advertising. Real estate agents and insurance agents, there's tons of competition. There are like national groups that kind of control the paid search side of the equation, like sites like Zillow and things like that. I've just found these are not great niches, and it seems to be ones that everybody kind of flocks to when they think, oh, there's lots of them, I can get to them through BNI and I can really scale a business. But they don't tend to have the propensity to advertise, right? They're not willing to spend $2,000 to $5,000 a month to generate leads and sales for the most part. Anything you want to add on that, Jeff?

No, uh, not at this point. I want to know what the other 5 are that you choose.

Uh, general practice doctors offices. You know, we look at medical, and I'm a big fan of medical. There's lots of great specialties within medical, but for the most part, your general practice doctor, like your local doctor's office, doesn't have the propensity to advertise, you know, isn't spending a lot of money on their website and pay-per-click advertising because most of their business comes from referral as well as the, the local, you know, insurance group that they're part of. So specialized medical, absolutely. Like eye doctors and, you know, audiologists and, you know, dentists and things. But just general practice dentistry, not a great niche to try and focus and build your business around. And the last is retail stores, hair salons, things like that. Again, I see a lot of people kind of gravitate to these. They think, oh, retail store, there's all kinds of retail stores. I'll go to the local clothing shop or I'll go to the local hair salon and I'll get them. The problem is their ticket is so low, like the average transaction value, the way they advertise, they don't have the propensity to spend. It's hard to really aggregate and market to them. And so I could probably make this list longer, but I think you'd be wise to kind of focus your attention on something outside of these 5 deadly niches in my personal opinion. Anything to add on this, Jeff?

Yeah, so said just a little differently, first of all, you wanna work with companies that get paid up front or at the time of service. So that's why a realtor is not necessarily a good choice because remember, he's gonna get paid after the house sells, after the 30-day escrow, after, after, after. So guess what? He's gonna be asking you to get paid way down the stream as well 'cause that's when he collects his money. So I would stay away from that. I would stay away from extremely skilled gatekeepers. So there are some industries out there that spend a lot of money on training their gatekeepers, on their receptionists. And so if it's near impossible to get through to the decision maker, there's other easier niches. That's all I'm saying is there's easier niches. And then finally, you want to stay away from niches where the content is constantly changing. Daily, weekly, whatever the case may be. Because remember, your goal is to put up a great-looking little website for them and then market the heck out of your website. You're not wanting to every couple of days you're getting an email from your new client and they're saying, well, change the homepage picture and add these 3 new products, take these 3 products down, because pretty soon you're not in the marketing business anymore, you're in the website maintenance business. So Those would be 3 things that are not just niche-specific, but if, if you hit on one of those 3, I would, I would definitely reconsider your niche. Not to say it won't work. As Josh said earlier, we've been proven wrong more than once. Um, but the last thing is I always believe that you need to have some level of passion for your niche. You don't have to be over the top, you know, but I like to say, you know, the guy that 40 years ago sang a famous song on the stage and he's still singing it 40 years later, you sure hope he likes that song when he's singing. Well, it's the kind of the same thing when you're up in front of the association 10 years from now. You better like talking about plumbers and plumbing and better like plumbers when you're setting up there with a cocktail, you know, with them at the end of their association meeting or whatever. And again, you don't have to be madly in love with them, but there's gotta be some level of passion.

Yeah, yeah, no doubt. So here's, here's where we want to go next, and feel free to type in any questions you have about the niche selection process or the niches to avoid. Really, the purpose of this is to be a brainstorm session, and so we want to hot seat you guys. What we're going to do, we're going to go in sequential order. We're going to unmute you, and we're going to ask you, once we make you panelists, to turn on your camera, and then we're going to hot seat. And Jeff's got a great process for this to help get clear about the best options for you, your background, and help you narrow down and really move forward on a niche. So we get kind of get off of the 'I'm thinking about it' onto the 'I'm taking action, I'm starting to land clients, I'm starting to serve those clients.' And so I'm going to stop sharing my screen and we're going to go to Corey since Corey was on deck and he was our first person we tested this with and it worked correctly. So hold on one little minute. If I can get this back up.

Let's do Corey.

You should be coming on now.

There he is.

What's up, Corey? How are you?

Hey there, guys.

How's it going?

Fantastic. Jeff, I will let you drive.

All right, so tell us about the niche you're thinking about, or if you've already selected one, let's analyze and make sure you're on the right track, if that works for you, Tori.

Yeah, so, um, pretty much narrowed it down to two. I'm thinking either going with chiropractors or the med spas. Um, those are the two we've really narrowed it down to. We actually have a pretty good relationship with a chiropractor actor currently that basically works in a med spa. Um, so we're thinking about using that guy as our case study. He's definitely willing to be our cheerleader where we need him to be. Um, Brian, with the incentive, mentioned was pretty important with his first client. Um, yeah, I think that's a good in. Um, just trying to get some insights on, you know, the research that we've done showing that there's about a little over 16,000 med spas. In the nation and like 2,200 of them are doing a little over a million, whereas there's about 57,000 chiropractors and like 2,800 of them are doing over a million. So it seems that the med spas just have a little bit more propensity to spend on advertising, they have more money. So just thinking, yeah, any thoughts on that?

Well, let's start with chiropractors, okay? So when I first got into internet marketing about 10 years ago, Everybody was talking about, you know, chiropractors. Chiropractors would be a great niche to go after, and that, you know, made a lot of sense. But unfortunately, then of course it felt like everybody jumped on that, you know. So now all of a sudden, uh, you've got that, that kind of issue that you've got to resolve is how much competition is out there chasing after that 2,800, you know, people that you've identified. I think there's more than 2,800, over a million, but you know, that's a reasonable amount.

Okay.

And so that would be my concern with chiropractors. Otherwise, I think they're good. What you want to be doing though is you want to be looking for chiropractors that have at least 3 or more chiropractors in the space. They may have a masseuse, you know, they may have a variety of other things that work. Okay, but that would be definitely something I would look at. Med spas, I think, are great. Um, I agree, I think they've got more money. Um, you know, it's more like a cosmetic, uh, application, if you will. So a lot of people go to chiropractors because they're in pain and they're, you know, trying to just resolve that problem and try to probably minimize what they're spending with the chiropractor. Whereas with a med spa, just if you think about it from the client perspective, uh, less of those concerns. They're coming in expecting, you know, whether they're doing CoolSculpting or whatever they're doing, you know, laser hair removal, they're not expecting an insurance company to pay for it, right? So that, um, is good. So they're still, you know, paying attention to cost, but, um, it's, it's less of a factor. The other thing, Corey, is I would take med spas down one more level. So do some tough research on it, figure out what are the two most common or three most common services provided by the med spas and identify the ones that, you know, charge the most. You know, again, is it CoolSculpting? Is it laser hair removal? You know, whatever the case may be that you're getting done, Botox or whatever, and then focus on those. Now that doesn't mean you're gonna turn away the other med spas, but what it means is that, you know, when you wake up every day, I like to say, you know, when I was doing childcare, it was really simple because I'm doing childcare, I know they have to have at least 75 children in the center for it to make sense, preferably 125 in the niche is much better. And so that was, you know, just the things that I, I thought about.

Okay, um, and like same thing with the, the chiro, you're saying, you know, you want to make sure they have probably at least 3 chiropractors, masseuse, and like a receptionist. That's going to be pretty legit business.

Yeah, at least a half-time, if not a full-time receptionist. I mean, those are going to show you their, you know, easy ways to figure out their organizational structure.

Yeah.

And obviously, if you know, well, I have a receptionist that works Tuesdays and Thursdays for 3 hours, that tells you right off the bat that they're not getting a lot of phone calls, so they don't really need a receptionist, and they're not going to want to write you probably a $1,500 a month check.

Sure. Um, what would you say the numbers would be for things like med anything glaring?

It's gonna be the same thing. You're gonna want to make sure they have whatever the title is. I don't know, but you want to make sure it's multiple. And always the best situation is if you can find— and this applies to like dentists as well— but where the actual owner/operator is not doing 100% of the production work.

Got it.

You know, because think about a dentist in a small dentist practice. The only way he makes money is if his hands are in somebody's mouth, right? It isn't sitting in his office doing strategic planning for his business or anything like that. So med spa owners and chiropractors, that would be the case as well.

Okay, cool, excellent. I think that definitely narrows it down. I think we get the direction that we're going to go.

Excellent, awesome. So I was just putting in comments who wants to go next. It looks like Justin's on deck. So Corey, thank you for volunteering. That was— hopefully that was helpful.

Absolutely. Thank you guys. It's been awesome.

The same thought process, even if you're not the one on, like, you're thinking about like, what about your niche? What questions should you be asking yourself? So I'm going to remove you or change to attendee, and then Justin, you're on deck. So be prepared to turn on your camera so we can get you, we can get you set up. Justin, what's up, man? I just unmuted you, so you should be good to go.

Great, great.

Can you hear me?

Loud and clear.

Awesome. How's it going? Miami was fun last week. I enjoyed it.

Good, good. Glad you came.

It was—

we had a lot of fun too.

Yeah, I appreciated that.

So what, what, what are your questions? What are you thinking about?

Um, so when, when I was at the conference last week, I was— my niche was real estate brokers and brokerage teams. But now I am thinking about going into the painting industry. So I kind of wanted to get your guys' opinions on the painting niche and, um, yeah, just your general thoughts. I guess the reason why I decided to go to painting, to the painting industry, is because I When I had my 9 to 5 as a computer programmer, I actually ran a successful painting business on the side. So I have some experience with, you know, marketing for, you know, building my painting business and hiring employees to paint houses and bidding jobs. So that's kind of why I went that route.

So are you going to do exclusively residential painters or residential and commercial painters? First question.

I guess, yeah, I'm not really exclusive to anything right now, and I guess another little background piece that might be helpful is that I did just land my first client yesterday, and my angle was going to be marketing for their painting side of the business, but then it turned out that they do more— they do painting, but they also do roofing, and they also do windows and doors, So they kind of wanted me to start with marketing for their roofing jobs to get them more roofing appointments. Um, so I guess I wanted some advice on that as well as it seems like I'm kind of broadening my niche by taking my first client who, uh, does painting but also does all these other home improvement services.

Okay. So Justin, here's my answer to that. So every day when you wake up, you chase painters. Okay, but you're in that unique window right now where I'm guessing you could use a little revenue stream to jumpstart your business. So, you know, one of the things that we have seen, and I want to be very careful here, is, you know, in the beginning, get as niched as you can. But if there are a few clients that raise their hand that are not a perfect fit, um, go ahead and take them on because you got to stay afloat. Right. You know, but what I want to make sure that you're doing is every day when you get up, you know what your niche is that you're chasing. And by the time you get your third or fourth, excuse me, painting client, you no longer will even consider those other niches because you'll have confidence in the niche. But also know that painters, you know, like any other home services provider, very often will offer more than one service. So they may do painting and siding. They may do painting windows, so carpentry, whatever the case may be. So keep that in mind. But the more exclusive that you can get down to painters, the better it will be over time. I think painters are a good niche. Again, the— my 3 criteria that I talked about earlier, I typically don't have a highly skilled gatekeeper, so getting to the decision maker is not usually that big a deal. They're at least typically collecting some percentage of the payment before they start the job. So they're, you know, used to paying for your services along the way. So I think you're good there. And same thing, their content's not changing frequently. You know, they may update their color selection page occasionally or whatever, but that's not happening even on probably a monthly basis. So It fits those criteria really well. What other concerns do you have about painters?

Um, mainly if they would have the money to invest in marketing, um, because the average job size is about $3,000, and if they're spending— I guess I'm just having a hard time making the numbers work for for me to be able to relay that information to these strategy calls and helping them realize like this investment would pay off, you know, give them a high ROI.

Yeah, dig further. I think you're going to find that your average is a lot higher, especially if you blend in the commercial painters. Okay. But, you know, again, you don't want to go after the general painter, just like you didn't want to go after the general doctor. You want to start digging into painters that do specialty work. You know, they specialize in restoration projects, for example. So they're going into, you know, 50 to 100-year-old homes and they're not just slapping up, you know, white paint on all the walls. They're also staining the trim work and, you know, they're maybe color matching a paint color that's 100 years old. So, Not to say that your generalist painter won't be good, but the more you can narrow down your niche, you know, the higher probability they're going to have money to spend. Um, but I think you're going to see that typical jobs, once you get a little further into it, are going to be more in the $3,000 to $7,000 or $8,000 range. And I say that based on some experience. So I spent 3 years in the water fire damage industry and we did a lot of painting. Painting work. And yeah, there was a lot of $1,500 jobs. I'm not going to tell you there weren't, but there was also a lot of $7,000, $8,000, $9,000 jobs. Especially the other thing is, look at the painters that specialize in— they'll move all your stuff too and cover it, and they make a big deal about talking about how they're unique and how they cover and protect your property while they're painting, because Remember, at the end of the day, they're selling a little bit of paint in a can, but they're really selling labor, right? So the more they can sell of the labor source, the more they can charge. So again, anytime they talk about, you know, we move every room, we cover everything completely, we put it all back, you know, that's the type of painter you're going to want to go after. Whereas if you go on somebody's website and they say, hey, we specialize in empty apartments, you know, that's probably the guy you're going to want to stay away from because he's the guy that's— instead of charging $3,500, he's charging $1,500, but he walks in and paints out a place in, you know, 4 or 5 hours because of his techniques. But, you know, he's maybe getting a little bit more per hour because of technique. But, um, you're also not looking for the one-man show, right? I mean, that's the, that's the biggest thing here. The same thing that I told Eric Ori, you want to find, you know, at least a half-time receptionist. You want them to have—

yeah, yeah, I started with 4 crews, you know, things like that. Annual revenue from InfoUSA.

Yeah, and annual revenue is one good indicator, but remember, as you're building your list, it's okay. I, you know, I got a list of 1,000 here that are all greater than $1 million in revenue. And then I'm gonna take that list and keep doing that, uh, qualifying as I get smarter about my niche. And eventually that list of 1,000 may be cut in half. Now that doesn't mean— I want to be really clear— that doesn't mean you can't— to the 500 that you've eliminated, continue to do cold outreach, like maybe you're doing auto email, automated emails. Okay, but I'm talking about the ones that you're going to spend a lot of time picking up the phone, trying to contact that way. That's the left, the other 500. Because in the 500 that you've called out, there are the few exceptions that will raise their hand and say, you know, even though, you know, I'm the guy that goes in and does the $1,500 apartment complex, I do 25 of those a day, right? And then you're like, well, man, that says This guy's got money.

Could you explain a little bit more about how you break down that list from— so right now I do have like exactly 1,001 painting companies in the USA that are doing at least $2.5 million in annual revenue.

Perfect.

So I would— so in that case, since you use $2.5 million or greater as the top end, I would now look at the really large ones. And see if they're franchises or multiple center or, you know, locations, things like that. And here's what I know: if you spend 2 hours later today and you take and just go down your list and look at the first 20 to 30 websites— and I'm talking about spending no more than 3 minutes per website, so an hour, maybe an hour and a half— later, you're going to see a pattern. I don't know what that pattern is for painters, but it's there.

Okay.

And once you see that pattern, that's either, hey, I want to keep these folks, or I want to eliminate these folks, right?

Justin, was that— was that helpful? Because we definitely do need to— we need to keep, keep moving.

Yeah, yeah, that was helpful. Appreciate that.

A couple things. I think smart move moving from, from real estate agents to to painters. I think that's, that's a great niche with a big opportunity. And congratulations on landing your first client in that, in that space. Well done.

Yeah, appreciate it. Thank you guys.

Awesome. Have a great weekend.

You too.

Take care.

We're gonna go to, uh, Mark Lewis next. So Mark, I'm gonna bring you on deck here and we will keep pressing forward. Posting comments like, kind of, is this helpful? Is it good to hear other people, um, kind of talking through their niche? It kind of helps ideally get your creative juices flowing. So Mark, get ready. I'm gonna try and find you on here. There you are. Remote to panelist. There's Mark. Yeah, you might need to unmute yourself, Mark. I'm gonna unmute you just in case you don't know where it is. Hey, Mark, can you hear us? All right, Mark, I'm gonna hold for like 2 more secs and then we're gonna bring somebody else on. Um, I think Eric was next after Mark, so Eric, you're gonna come on. There's Eric. What's up, man? Let me unmute you. Eric, it looks like you're outside, out and about.

Yeah, I thought there was another guy in between me and that, but, uh, anyways, yeah, I'm in between either going all out for air duct cleaning or landscaping.

So they're kind of cleaning or landscaping. Yep. Okay. What, what moved you down this path to those two niches?

Uh, well, in the past 13 years of working, that's the only two things that I've ever done. So 6 years in landscaping, about 7 years in air duct cleaning.

And what exactly did you do in air duct cleaning? What was your role?

I went out and cleaned air ducts.

So you were the guy actually cleaning. So the guy that you were working for, what was his biggest complaint about how to find clients?

So I actually worked for, I worked for a carpet cleaning company that had 50 trucks a day that started branching out into air duct cleaning because people were just calling and asking if we could do it. So We never really, we never marketed for clients ever that I knew. We just kind of slowly grew as, and then by that time we'd been in business for 10 years. So we had a huge database of that. They were just emailing probably once a month.

Yeah. So with air duct cleaning, that would be my only concern is that typically air duct cleaning doesn't stand alone. Um, I'm not saying it can't, and I'm sure they're out there again. Back in the early '90s, I did work for a water fire damage company. We did air duct cleaning. It was pretty new at that point in time. But that's the research that I would do about air duct cleaning is what are the other services that they typically offer? And you may find that to do air duct cleaning, you may need to also do carpet cleaning, for example.

So most of your carpet cleaners, there's a couple that do do that. Most of them are teamed up with either HVAC companies, and that's majority of HVAC, air duct cleaning, or air ducts stand alone. But every once in a while you'll find they are teamed up with carpet cleaning, but just like your huge carpet cleaning companies, right?

So, um, I'm just saying, but again, if you went out and just started looking at websites and confirm, and confirm that There may be some other pattern that you would see around air duct cleaners that I'm just not thinking of.

If I, whenever I pull a list and stuff, if I went air duct route, I think teaming up HVAC and air duct is the most congruent list that I can see. Like I said, I'm being a little bit basic.

Yeah, I agree. I think that, yeah, I definitely agree. I think that HVAC duct cleaning, that's kind of like a, kind of they go hand in hand. So I think, you know, your niche would be more HVAC with a specialization in air ducts, if anything.

So my question with that is, is like, you know, going to the conference and talking to everybody, HVAC is like, when you're starting out, it's one of the hardest niches because obviously you're competing with guys like you that have a 30-man team. That's like, and it's just a very competitive market. There's a lot of money spent in the market. Versus landscape may not be as hard to enter.

That may be, that might be true, but I don't know if you know this, Eric, but I owned a landscape company for 12 years. And so I do have some experience there. And I think landscaping is also, you know, it's a great niche to go after. I think your entry level might be a bit easier, but in both of these niches, there's plenty of opportunity. I mean, that's one of the reasons that at the 7 Figure Agency, you know, Josh has been gracious enough to let other plumbers and HVAC companies in and we train them. I mean, we train them how to be Josh's competitor, you know, and we're not concerned about that because there is so much opportunity in both of those niches. Because again, you could do something as, you know, starting out, just depending on how you like to do it. We have one person in the, in the group that he's just specializing in 3 states right now. He's just focusing on 3 states in the United States, you know, and he feels he can get his 30 to 50 clients that he wants in just 3 states. So don't worry about the competition is my biggest thing. Uh, I don't think, I don't think that's a big deal. The thing I like about landscapers, for example, But it applies to duct cleaning and HVAC. It's real easy to figure out, again, who can answer the phone and who can't, right? Because if you can't get to the decision maker and you're driving yourself crazy, then to me you're in the wrong niche.

Yeah. Yeah.

With HVAC, like whenever I want to say competitive market, I'm just talking more talent level of building the websites and getting the phone to ring for the customer. Not so much getting the customer signed up for my agency because the websites that you see in the HVAC industry are pretty, pretty good versus like when you go to like the guy that cuts my grass, his website can't even take payments. And it's kind of like, it looks like it was designed by Craigslist guy.

So yeah, that's, that's the advantage. I mean, that's one of the things I liked about childcare. You know, when I started 9 years ago in childcare, It was kind of the same thing that there was a whole lot of websites that were built thinking the audience was the child. And so a big part of my educating childcare centers was, hey, your website needs to speak to the parent, not to the child. So having the little merry-go-round with the moving, you know, animals and all that's really good. The child's going, ooh, that's really cool. But is that the thing that's going to sell the parent on you're a trustworthy childcare center. So it's the same kind of thing with landscaping. You're going to have a lot of those guys that have done a little bit lower end website and they're okay with it, but you want to find that group, which they're out there. And the nice thing is there are national associations for landscaping. And you may have been in the room when Brian Stearman was talking, you know, I know Brian is doing landscaping. We have another member in that's doing landscaping and there's plenty of space in the landscape space. And then just keep in mind, if you're doing landscaping up north, you're probably going to be doing landscaping and snow removal.

Yeah.

Down here in Texas, it's landscaping and leaf removal.

So, but remember you can build your whole darn business. You just focus on the East Coast, the West Coast, and across the bottom of the United States and pretty much avoid snow removal completely. If that's your preference. And I guarantee you, you can get 40 or 50 clients out of that, whatever, 12 or 14 states.

So, what do you think landscape companies, what, like $1,350 a month plus design their website, do their SEO, and do their pay-per-click campaigns? That's kind of where you would—

I think your $1,500 to $2,500 is a reasonable price range for a good landscape company.

Okay.

All right. Well, I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thanks, Eric.

So which one are you going to focus on, Eric?

Um, I think with my, with my expertise in marketing, landscape's probably a lot better for me to enter, you know, just like you said, it's the websites aren't as good as the HVAC companies until, you know, I have the agency staff. So probably landscape.

Yeah, let's just be careful. Once you pick landscape, you're all in. You're not doing HVAC later, okay? Because if you think— if you're thinking that, then do HVAC from the beginning, because you're going to learn real quick by the time you get that 10th, 11th, 12th client that you're not going to have time to be thinking about another niche because you're going to be busy serving the niche you've chosen.

I'm loyal to like whatever makes me have that abundant income is what you stay with. Like, if it got me to be a million-dollar agency, there's no reason to change.

So yeah, no doubt.

Good.

So hopefully, hopefully that was helpful for you, Eric. You got some clarity, you kind of narrowed it down to these two. I think you're on the right path with, with the landscape stuff. So, um, okay, go, go get it.

All right, man, I appreciate your time.

Thanks.

Bye. Absolutely.

All right, we got Ricardo on with us now. Ricardo, you can go ahead and unmute yourself.

Here we—

there you are. Good to see you again, man. How you doing?

I'm doing good.

Thank you.

Thank you. It was great last week in Miami. It was incredible. Awesome.

Good. We're glad to hear that. So you walked away and your head was spinning a little bit, probably a whole bunch of information. So what can we help you clarify today on a niche?

Yes, uh, it was spinning in a good way. Uh, basically, uh, you answered the question I was going to ask in regards to chiropractors, uh, because I'm presently working with one and he's, um, before I got into marketing, I was in IT. He left me a great testimonial for the IT company, uh, in 2009, 10 years ago. And when I started doing marketing, uh, for him, uh, several years ago, um, You know, he's ready now to pretty much give me a good testimonial, case study, et cetera. But I heard what you just said on the first, uh, person, I forgot his name in regards to chiropractors. So my question then now moves over to two other industries, niches or professions rather, uh, pest control and, uh, restaurants. And I wanted to see your take on those two.

Well, let's come back to chiropractors cause I don't think there's anything wrong with chiropractors, but Ricardo, what you want to do is dig into what is called functional medicine.

Okay.

And that would be the thing that I would look at right there. Give me just a second. We got the guy pounding right outside the window. I need to apologize for that.

No problem.

Yeah, so I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with chiropractors, but you want to go after the chiropractors that, you know, do functional medicine, alternative medicine, things like that. Because what they found is, you know, for $35 to $50, they'll crack your back. I've been to a chiropractor many times. But you want the ones that are also thinking more holistic medicine. And The reason being is I used a functional medicine doctor 3 or 4 years ago, and his fee to get started with him was $6,000. And you bought a package versus just, you know, come in, we'll crack your back, see you next week, we'll crack your back, you know, $50 at a time. So there's nothing wrong with chiropractors, but if you're going to dig into it, dig a little deeper and see if that— and quite honestly, so you know, Ricardo, I have recommended functional medicine practitioners to about 5 different people. But I doubt that all 5 will jump in at the same time. I've never seen that as being the case. But so now let's back around to restaurants. If you're going to go after restaurants, figure out a niche within the niche. So you want to be the specialist in high-end steakhouses, for example, or, you know, whatever the high-end type of restaurant, high-end Italian, it doesn't matter because restaurants are just too general.

Right, exactly.

The guy, if you come in and say, hey, I've got 3 Denny's that I do marketing for and I'd really like to do your high-end steakhouse, the guy's not going to be impressed at all. But you know, if you go in and say, hey, I do this local Morton's down the street and we know Morton's is $75 a head, right, walking out the door, you know, so that's what you want to be looking at. You want to be looking at restaurants that have a ticket of $100+ typically, not the ones that are having you know, 2 people are eating for $35. Okay, cool.

Gotcha.

And what was the third one?

Uh, pest control.

Um, pest control is fine. My only concern with pest control is, uh, you know, the— it's a little bit of small dollar, um, meaning they don't get paid a lot per time they arrive. The package to sell is good, so there's nothing really wrong with it from that respect. But I would dig a little further in to pest control, and is there a subspecialty within pest control that you might go after? So it could be varmint removal, for example. I'm being a little bit extreme here, but they specialized in skunk removal and badgers and raccoons and things like that. Um, a little easier to rank them.

Gotcha. Uh, the reason why pest control— I used to work for a pest control company not too long ago actually. And basically it's here in South Florida. I live in West Palm Beach and pretty much on the coast from Miami all the way up to Melbourne, it's just mansions. And so this company, their specialty was in lawn and ornamental care where they took care of lawn care and maintenance for that, the pest control on that side. And their ticket was very high because of the different homes we were going to or the different communities in Palm Beach and Boca Raton and Fort Lauderdale and Miami, et cetera. And so that company was averaging about $7 million a year for the pest control company. Yes, they did have another side for, you know, the rodents and the mosquitoes and the bugs and all that, you know, termites, whatever. But their main revenue was coming in from the lawn and ornamental care. And I see a lot of those companies, especially here in South Florida, California, certain parts of Texas, etc. So I was wondering, should I focus on that particular, uh, side of the pest control industry, that, that does the lawn and ornamental, um, versus the ones that just do, you know, the typical termites and bugs?

Yeah, I mean, that's, that's a great example, Ricardo, of niching within that niche, right? Finding that sub-niche within there. And then, you know, the, the research that I would do is I would look at 3 or 4 other states to see Do those kinds of pest control companies exist in those other states? I'm assuming they do, but you want to make sure. And again, the beauty of pest control is you can build your whole business down the east, west, and bottom, across the bottom, and not have to deal too much with seasonality.

Then that was my other question, the seasonality, because I know certain states, the seasons kick in and there's nothing there. So, okay.

Great.

What I hear in your voice is I hear a passion for pest control. Well, you know, you know something about it already, you know, you've done some research. And so if there is a level of passion, if I'm reading that correctly, it's the one I was leaning to the most.

Um, the chiropractor, uh, I just met with him actually last night and I told him what I wanted to do. He asked me, actually saw a Facebook post of mine. He's like, hey, what's that 7-figure thing I saw on your Facebook page that you posted last week. And I said, oh, you know, it's this awesome, amazing thing that I found, and you know, it's focusing on one niche. And he's like, really? And I told him, hey, you know, this is maybe a professional niche that, you know, that could be considered. He said, hey, you know, I'll help you. I'll leave you a testimonial. We could come over, bring your video camera, we could do a review, do some case studies on what you've done for me.

I was like, Oh, cool.

You know, but then I knew the chiropractic niche was kind of that red ocean type thing, you know? So I was like, eee. So of course I knew today we were going to have this webinar. And of course the very first person that asked the question was on chiropractors. So it was like, okay. So of course, because I've worked with the pest control company and know that industry a bit too, you know, I was like, okay, you know, and then know the sub-niche of what they provide there. And then also work with a little rest, you know, some little small restaurants in the neighborhood, you know, not the big steakhouses, but I do understand what you're saying there. Those would be the ones to go after in that particular profession, that niche of restaurants. But yes, I would agree with you. Pest control is the one I'm leaning to the most.

Go for it. You got the passion, you know, I heard it in your voice. You got a little excited there talking about it. You know something about it. You're already thinking about high-end pest control, you know, the bigger houses, the bigger facilities, that kind of stuff. So your mind's in the right place. So I would—

okay.

Going down that path, if that works for you.

Thank you so much. I truly appreciate it.

Yeah.

And Corey also mentioned you might want to look at the places that specialize in tenting the homes. So that's just something to potentially think about.

Okay, great. Thank you, Josh. Thank you, Jeff.

You're welcome.

Hopefully that was helpful for all of you guys. You know, you're looking for the passion, you're looking for, you know, good fit, you're looking for propensity to spend. And so even if you're not on the hot seat, you should be thinking about this. It will fine-tune your ability to make sure you're in the right space within your agency. So, um, let's go to Jean Lewis. Jean, I'm going to unmute you.

And I go by Jeannie, by the way. Hi, I'm Jeannie.

I'm sorry about that.

That's okay.

Glad to have you with us.

Thanks, happy to be here. Thanks for doing this. Yeah, I, I'm kind of beginning, I've scrambled around a little bit. I have something that's a bit unique, um, so I focused on that and that's kind of held me back a little bit just because it's so unique, but you know Nobody knows what it is and people are a little afraid of it. So doing the traditional stuff, I mean, I really haven't really gotten off the ground. I can tell you what my passions are. And then I'm always afraid that there's so much competition in everything that I'm just like afraid to go in any direction.

Tell me your passions. Let's start there.

I like pretty stuff. I mean, I love interior design.

Flora shops.

Hmm?

Flora shops.

What kind of shops?

Flower shops.

Oh, flower! That's a great idea. Yeah, I mean, I'm looking to make as much money as I can, of course.

You know, I just throw it out because you like pretty things. You and I talked before, if I remember right. Hmm? You and I talked like over a year ago.

We did!

Yeah, but not like this.

Yep, exactly. And so, if, you know—

I have a life insurance client and he's using my unique thing.

Good.

And it's working, it's just that, I don't know, I'm just— I feel like it's taking forever for me to get— I've had people try to steal my unique thing and I just want something stable and long-term and I don't want to switch to accounting.

Yeah, and so, you know, normally we don't recommend a retail store per se, but flower shops, which by default oftentimes are gift shops, you know, their websites, a lot of times they'll have like their standard, here's our 10, you know, bouquets, designs, floral arrangements. So they don't violate the changing the stuff often. A lot of them, like I know here in the greater Reno area, we have a company called Sparks Force. They have 4 locations inside of, you know, we're roughly a 350,000 population. The nice thing with multiple location like flower shops is of course they're going to get the benefit of, you know, you're not just marketing one location, you're marketing 4. So you're not going to charge dramatically more to add on those 3 additional locations. So they're cost gets spread across 4 different locations.

What kind of price should I charge that kind of thing?

What price could you charge that thing to them?

What do I charge them?

$1,000 to $3,000, I think, is very doable in that.

But per month?

Per month, yeah. I don't see any reason that you, you couldn't do that. What other pretty things do you like? Home designers I'd probably stay away from simply because, again, that's very specialized. They don't typically have that big of a staff. I mean, there are ones that do, obviously.

Oops, sorry.

But you want to find a nice little something that's not totally dependent on that one, one person who's the designer is where I would go with that.

Right. I mean, I like furniture. What do you think of furniture?

Furniture is great. You know, the only negative thing that comes to mind with furniture is it's a little bit longer buying cycle, and depending on if they want an online shopping cart or not, do you want to be dealing with shopping carts? You know, because that would be something that would be confronting you.

Oh, I have a prospective fashion client that I met the other day at a party. I don't know what his budget is at all. I think he's got a line. And then, oh, what about—

I guess plastic surgery. Fashion falls into that part of retail. I'd probably stay away.

That's basically— how about plastic surgery?

Plastic surgery is a great niche.

Is it all too full, do you think? You still think there's, there's space?

There's plenty of space in every one of these niches we've talked about.

Um, that includes oral surgery?

Yep.

Okay, and how do you get to those people?

Well, again, you're gonna strive to buy a list, and then you're gonna do pick up the phone and call, or you're gonna use cold email.

Got you. Okay.

Case may be.

All right, you guys are awesome.

Do a little looking into flower shops. So I might— I think you might be surprised. It's not a niche I've ever recommended before, but it's been one of those that's, you know, it's been in the back of my mind that, you know, somebody someday is gonna find that flower shop/gift shop and really knock it out of the park with it. What do you think?

So when you haven't done it before though, how do you get them? Like, I have a background in marketing and I've done high-tech healthcare. How do you get them when you haven't done it before?

Then go find one, you know, you live in a city, go drive up to 10 of them and say, I want to do you as a case study, and I'd like to see if you'd like to work with me as my first client, and talk all about your marketing experience. Don't talk about your lack of experience, right?

I have a lot of experience. Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, that's right. Not with them.

But I didn't have— until I got my first childcare, I didn't have childcare. Until Josh got his first plumber, he didn't have a plumber. So we all have overcome that initial 1 to 3 clients, but it's all about talking to them, sharing your experience, why you think you can help them out. Do you offer—

what do you offer for free? How much do you offer for free? Do they pay costs?

You might ask them to pay costs. You know, everybody's situation's a little different. I always want them to pay a little bit of something because I want them committed, right? If you give it to them for free, then you got a totally different type of sale going on.

What's the most something you would ask for? What's the most little bit of something you'd ask for?

$500.

Okay, just for the case study?

Yeah, I mean, because you're gonna either build their site or you're going to rank their site or you're going to go out and fix their Google My Business listings or, you know, you're going to do something very specific that's very measurable while you're doing other things for them.

Love it. You're awesome. Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

Good.

Jeannie, thanks for joining us. Hopefully this helped kind of guide you down, down the path. So we're gonna, we're gonna move to, um, we're gonna move to Mark. So let me unmute you, Mark. And Jeannie, thank you for joining us. Yeah, I know, same last name though, right? Yeah, yeah. Mark, what's up, man? Can you hear me loud and clear?

All right, sorry about that. We do, we do Zoom in my conference room on my laptop. I never do it on my desktop, so I don't think my microphone's working. So anyways, um, so since the meeting, um, the next day we actually had a— on that, I think it was Thursday, we actually went fishing with a a pest control client and so I was kind of thinking pest control. Talked to them, we're doing a TV campaign for them. Talked to him, his brother's currently doing his SEO and it's a very successful business. I'm like, well, this is great. He's gonna have association, be able to get in there and whatnot. So the TV campaign's moving forward, it's gonna start next week. So then I was originally, then I was like, okay, that's one I could possibly look at. And then I was thinking, well, we're just launching a website that we just did a bunch of video work to, and we launched a website, we're doing some PPC for a hotel lodge up in North Carolina. I'm like, well, that's fun, that'd be fun doing a hotel, kinda, you know, get to travel. The problem is we ended up configuring all this booking software, and I started thinking, each time, each hotel, there's gonna be all the different booking software that they have, so it's not gonna be able, it's always gonna be different. And that wasn't easy, it was a struggle for us to get that done, I'm not gonna lie. So then I had this giant epiphany yesterday for moving companies, 'cause we already do an SEO for a moving company and we've been doing it for like 4 years and we've been able to keep them highly ranked and he's a big guy and he's actually, he got a very deep voice and I'm thinking, well, he could be our, you know, he could be our cheerleader, so to speak. So I called him and he is all in. So he's very excited to be able to help us and He's always, it's funny because in this market there's a couple other guys that have called us but we haven't been able to take them because just like you, Jeff, and Josh, we only handle one guy per market. So that's kinda where we're going. We actually went ahead and bought some domains and everything so I think we're gonna go with the moving company just because we have experience, I have past results that I can show for multiple years and then I have a guy that's, big in the business, and he's actually in the process of franchising, so that would be a lot more clients for us if we get it. He's already contacted us about doing the SEO for these other people. So, that's kinda where I'm leaning.

I think moving companies are just fine. My guess is you can get a list of independently owned moving companies, 'cause you know—

Yeah, independent ones for sure.

The big players out there. A natural spinoff of that is you're probably gonna also, be looking at doing storage facilities, 'cause a lot of those small independents have a relatively small storage facility they also rent out. So I would think about that as well. They have an association, is my guess. So you're good to do one.

Yep, he's already talked to me about that.

Yeah, I think moving companies are great, quite honestly. I don't think we have anybody in the membership group active doing moving companies. There might be some silent person.

Yeah, we have one other that's doing really well in moving, all paid pay-per-click. So I know it's a good space. They have a high propensity to advertise. You've already got that one case study, so I think you're on a great track. I'm glad you said you had that, that epiphany moment. It's like, yes, this is a— you kind of already got 3 steps down the road with the, the past case study and this guy kind of already on board and ready to promote you. I think you're on a great track.

Awesome. Yeah, I felt that it was weird. It just kind of came— I don't know about you guys, but I've been in this creative business. It's weird how things come to you in the shower. So yesterday morning in the shower, I'm like, Sean. So I called him. He's like 6'4" and he's got this really deep voice, and he's just— he's, are you kidding me, man? I talk about you guys all the time, how— because I Google every day and I'm always on page 1, you know what I mean? So he's all excited. I'm like, can you say that on camera for me, you know what I mean? So So we're going to set that up and we got to go to Boston next week to film a car commercial, so we're going to do that when we come back and get him going. I want to run a couple domains by you if you guys don't mind.

Sure.

So movingcoseo.com and then movingcoseogurus.com, and then that kind of pigeonholes us in SEO, but then also movingcomarketing.com. I don't know, we'll probably buy a couple of those and redirect, I imagine.

Why the co? You can't find like Moving Marketing Pros or Moving Marketing Machine or Moving Marketing—

that's why I asked you. Yeah, moving marketing machine.

I wouldn't have the co. I wouldn't have the co. What do you think, Jeff?

If you're gonna have co, spell it, you know, themovingcompanymarketing.com. Don't— the co, you know, I'm just this real big believer in keep it really simple so people aren't trying to think of what that could domain needs.

Right.

It's— there's, you know, plumber SEO says it all. Of course, you know, Joshua naming it today, it might be different, but yeah, I wouldn't probably call it—

I probably wouldn't call it SEO because, like you said, it does limit you. Where marketing, internet marketing, digital marketing, digital marketer at the end of your domain, um, kind of gives you the opportunity to talk website, SEO, pay-per-click, social media, and anything else that comes down the line in the future, right?

No, that's, you know, my company's been around for a little, and it started as a production company, so we're still Tightline Productions. We get pigeonholed, people think that's all we do. I'm like, no, no, we do media buys, we do digital, we do web. Oh really? I didn't know that. I'm like, well, you haven't been to my website. But so I know that feeling. So Josh, you said one a minute ago, Moving Company Marketing Machine. That's kind of long, I think what you said, Moving Marketing, MovingMarketingMachine.com.

Like, I kind of like throwing machine or something like that at the end of it.

Correct.

Check out Moving Marketing Pros or Professionals. No, it's a little— it's a little long, but remember, we're past the days of you got to type it in all the time, right? You've got that. Okay. Or you can do Moving Professionals Marketing.

Gotcha, gotcha. Well, I've been working on my business a lot 'cause I got a lot going on, trying to keep it running and trying to keep the funnels coming in, you know, and then every day at 5:00, I'm getting up and working on this thing, and we've been doing, like, we've been doing some strategy sessions. I've been looking at different, like, we did a SharpSpring webinar the other day. I came back from the meeting in Miami, I was only there one day 'cause I could only, I had the next day that trip lined up, and my mind was full. So now I'm trying to go through it and decipher it all and make a plan, so I appreciate it. I mean, you guys have been just Awesome. It's been very, very, very helpful.

Fantastic. Glad you joined us.

Yeah, man. All right, all right, guys. Well, appreciate it, man. You guys have a great weekend.

Talk to you soon.

All right, Josh.

Thanks, man.

There, I unmuted you. What's up, man?

Hey, what's up? Can anybody hear me?

Yeah, we hear you now.

I can hear you.

So we Jeff, you're muted though. We talked about functional medicine practitioners, health and wellness, if I remember right, in Miami.

Yeah, yeah, we did. And I've been looking into it and I'm having a— I wasn't really feeling it, and I felt like it was kind of vague a little bit. I felt like there's so many different, um, I guess the whole, the whole area seemed kind of just is big. I mean, you got people calling them quacks and like, you know, not being, not really believing in, I guess, the process of what exactly of, and even just being clear on exactly who you be targeting. I mean, they all do different things. You got energy healers, you got people that are, that would be acupuncturists. I mean, there's just all kinds of stuff in that, in that specific space. So I mean, I kind of looked into it still. I'm not like ruling it out, but I was thinking about other things. So some of the stuff that other people have said has came up for me, like the med spas. I've been actually reaching out to a lot of med spas and I got some feedback, a few raised hands. It's like a niche down service that certain med spas offer. So that's been pretty good. But I mean, I just think about something that I want to get up and deal with every single day, you know what I mean? Whether or if I can see myself talking on stage at an event for, you know, a specific industry or specific niche. And I mean, some, you know, like sometimes the functional medicine practitioners or even the order— that led me into some other guys that do like IV drips or different types of the Botox med spa stuff. I mean, all this crazy stuff. And I'm like, I don't really care to be learning about those kind of things or dealing with that kind of stuff.

So what else are you passionate about?

Yeah, the things that I like, like I wrote down a list of things that I'm into. I mean, I've been doing graphic design for a long time. I love music. I had a shower moment like the guy that's like Mark before me, and I thought about like nightlife and clubs, and I don't do like clubbing and nightlife, but I'm like, there's a lot of events that happen on a regular basis, artists that that come into town and I noticed that they don't do too much marketing for them and I'm thinking more like a Facebook ad standpoint, like if an artist comes to town targeting people that like the artist and just getting more traffic for them, that was one thing. Then I thought about while I was, and this is another passion of mine, just being active, active, going out, being outdoors, water sports, I mean anything, man, hiking, taking my kid to trampoline parks, skateparks or any kind of thing like that. And so while I was on Groupon looking for more prospects for the men's bondage, I was like, you know what, let me look to see what are the top-selling offers on Groupon and maybe get some niche ideas from that. And so, again, it's still kind of general, but the recreational stuff, like I'll give you examples like indoor playgrounds for kids, bounce houses, or even down to like axe throwing throwing or rock climbing, I felt like, I was wondering if you had any suggestions for if I was to consider marketing for companies that offer those type of things, like everything from skydiving to all the things that I just mentioned.

Yeah, I think all of those are fine. My concern is it's kind of all over the board. My first thought is, just based on my experience, they'll tend to only have one location. They're tending to always struggle, so they're gonna be hoping that you're the savior per se. But let's jump back around to the reason I would stay away from nightlife stuff is back to— remember one of those criteria about the niches? You don't want their stuff changing a lot. Yeah, so if you got a nightclub and, you know, every week you're having to put up the new, new act that's coming to town, or multiple acts, and they got, you know, like 2 or 3 acts in a week, so you got that. But how about music stores?

Yeah, actually, yeah, I thought about that. Um, not too much though. I was driving by one yesterday dropping my son off to daycare, and I, and I considered that. That was in the whole, like, um, uh, uh, like, let— I saw lessons being offered.

So yeah, so you've got lessons and equipment rental, right? Yeah. And so there's 2 things that they're going to want to promote a lot because that's what creates for them their recurring revenue, right? People walking in and buying a piece of sheet music or whatever, I mean, that's a one-time transaction. But I always like to look for companies that have some type of recurring. So when they rent out, you know, a whole swatch of equipment to the high school for a year, you know, they're getting paid every single month for that equipment while it's out. Lessons, the same thing. Nobody signs their child up sign them up for 5, 10, 20, 5 years, 10 years, you know. So you've got that. The other thing is they have a facility, so they have a need to drive traffic to their location, you know. So that, that's a positive in the sense of, you know, if you did a music teacher that works out of his house, that's going to be a little different. But I, you know, again, music store has been one of those running around in my head for a long time because the right music stores that specialize in, like I say, equipment rental and teaching, they got recurring revenue. They want to keep that and grow that revenue.

Yeah, I can see that. I mean, so what about places like, um, like these paintball places, or I mean, these guys that they come, they have memberships and they come maybe weekly or monthly, or I don't know, I don't know, just those type of activities.

Well, go on to InfoUSA and see how many paintball companies in the United States are over $1 million. I mean, that really becomes the issue there is, are they big enough, right? Because I'm guessing you got a little A lot of little guys out there that, you know, they're in the $300,000 to $500,000 range. Mm-hmm. And they're high margin, probably, is my guess. But I just, you know, the first thing people cut out when the economy goes bad is that kind of entertainment stuff. So, you know, you may, You know, and again, I'm just taking it back to the music store, but you're probably not going to stop little Joey from going to music practice if the economy gets bad, but his Saturday afternoon paintball club or whatever he's in may go away.

So the music, I mean, I think about it's mostly parents going to get enrolled in their children's music lessons. So that makes me think about the other options that I've considered, like Would you be marketing to the same kind of people, like maybe martial arts studios or even these indoor playgrounds and things like that? What do you think about that?

Martial arts studios I think are great too. Mixed martial arts or whatever you decide to go after. Again, it's very specific. You know, I had a client that was a party rental location. A long time ago, and it really was a nightmare because again, if they didn't book anything, they'd be calling me up saying, you know, we don't have anything booked, I need to cut back on my marketing right now, which is not what they should have been doing. But they were so tight in income, you know, in revenue stream, that they were always asking me to adjust downward, not upward.

Okay.

But martial arts, again, like, like the music studio, I mean, you got people that are signing up, they've got a certain recurring revenue base. So every time you bring them a client, it's worth, you know, lifetime value of that client is much higher than, again, a single transaction type of business.

Right, right.

Okay.

Yeah, I'm just trying to think about things that I don't know that I can get excited about. I mean, you know, some of the stuff that I've thought about, while I could see making some decent money, I mean, I feel like there's quite a few things I could make some decent money. So at least let me be, you know, let me be excited about the clients that I'm working with as a, you know, and I mean, even with the med spas, I mean, like I'm not a, I don't even like, I'm not a fan of Botox or, you know, there's certain services that I'm not particularly, like I don't even want to promote myself. You know what I mean? It's almost like if I was to endorse McDonald's and I don't eat McDonald's, I don't— if I don't have to work with those type of businesses, I don't really want to. So, you know, I was trying to consider that kind of stuff when choosing my niche.

All right, well, you're still all over the board. How can we help you get closer?

Um, I think, I think for me it might just be like, uh, working with some of them, like working with different niches and filling it out. And like, I've gotten some feedback. I got a call I got to make today for Med Spa. But yeah, maybe just trying a few different niches and seeing, you know, running the campaign, seeing what it's like. Also, I think a big part of this for me too is I'm thinking about it from a standpoint of running Facebook ads for them, even though I mean, I'm experienced with WordPress. I can set up the websites, but I've never done SEO. I think it's important, it's something I'd like to offer. That's another reason why I want to get involved with the 7 Figure Agency, to have, to help, you know, get a good grasp on that leg of the business. But when I think about Facebook ads, it's just, it's easier to run ads for these type, you know, these more appealing type of activities or something like that. The results and the conversions seem to be better, so.

I think that's spas again, martial arts studios. I would, I would start with those two, really drill down on those two. One of those two will work for you.

Okay.

All right.

We definitely want to get two more hot seats in, uh, Geo. Hopefully at least this kind of gave you some thought process around it and kind of helped to rule out some things. So thanks for joining us and, uh, keep, keep pressing forward, man. You know, try and find the one that's going to gravitate to you. Sometimes the niche finds you. As you go out, land, uh, 3, 4, 5 clients in one particular space.

Right.

Okay, thanks.

So I'm gonna bring— I'm gonna bring Howard on, on deck, and I'll just say, you know, like, this is what we do at the 7 Figure Agency. We have weekly coaching calls just like this where the members come together. You get to talk about what's going on, where you're stuck, how you need help. You know, choosing your niche right now is just like one small piece of the equation, right? It's like phase 1 of literally hundreds, you know, from how do we go out and land the clients on a consistent basis, how do we position ourselves. So You know, for those of you that aren't members, just kind of think, you know, how would this benefit you as you look to grow and scale your digital marketing agency? So let's get you on here, Howard. Actually, you're already on and you're already unmuted, so tell us what's going on.

Hi.

Yeah, for some reason my camera's not working. It was working last night, so—

I know, and you've got all these cool pictures and stuff on Facebook, so I know you've got the tech to do it.

Hahaha.

Alright, so, um, Yeah, I was thinking along similar lines to Gio. You know, I'm a musician, and the music stores, music lessons, I just don't think there's enough revenue there to support high-ticket services. Most of the music store space is really taken up by 3 or 4 of the big box stores. There's not too many, you know, small local music stores that are making it these days, especially with online. Music gear purchases and what. So at any rate, so I was also, I was also considering med spas, and I have the same, same feeling about it as Gio. You know, I'm not really excited by the idea of the Botox and microdermabrasions and things like that. As far as dealing with it every day as a service or creating content around it. Um, and I've been trying to break into the personal injury attorney niche for the last, uh, uh, 6 weeks or so with LinkedIn. And, um, while I'm getting, uh, people who are connecting with me, uh, I've been following up with automated emails and, uh, I'm not really getting any traction on that. And part of my USP with that niche has been I signed up for a service that does like artificial intelligence and they have data around people's behaviors and blah, blah, blah. So that would give me an edge over your other, your average company.

But is that the Joshua Nelson stuff you're talking about?

Yes. Yeah, okay, cool.

And, um, you know, and then recently, you know, everybody's been piling into the personal injury attorneys, so he's limited now the data on that. He's got a waitlist on that. So, so if you don't have the data, you know, now you're, you're, you're marketing to the haystack instead of the needles, and that's the whole USP really goes down the drain. So I'm trying to find a niche that there is data available for that I can tie it all in together and I can upsell them to a more pricier service because the data, by the time you're done with the data, if you have white label, white label ad managers, etc., it's, you know, I got to charge $5,000 to make $2,000. On a, you know, and not every niche can handle that. Plus I have no case studies yet for that, and I don't want to spend $3,000 trying to get a case study, and, you know, maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, you know, that kind of thing. So attorneys is, you know, legal. You've got 5 different legal niches here which are solid niches. So I tend to want to do legal as a niche, although I'm not your, you know, I don't look like Josh, you know, all tucked in and neat and, you know, coiffed and all that, you know, I'm sort of a little rough and ready there. And so, you know, I wonder, you know, same thing with the med spas, you know, I'm not really very neatly put together in terms of fashion and whatnot. So, I don't know if I would be, you know, a good fit for that niche. So, that brings me to home services and, you know, roofers tends to, you know, I have a lot of experience with roofers. You know, I've done a lot of home services in the past and So, you know, that, that's where I'm at. I'm sort of like wondering, okay, how, how, uh, how important is it to have a, uh, uh, a, uh, affinity for the niche, you know? And I'm assuming if I'm working with it every day, I should have an affinity for it.

Yeah, well, remember, it doesn't have to be— first of all, let's, let's talk about your appearance. You know, you dress well, so you're fine there. You know, it's just one of the things I bring up is the suit and tie crowd versus not. You know, for some people that's, you know, are you going to connect with them? Are you going to like— you know, I like to say when you go to the association and you're hanging out in the bar afterwards trying to upsell them, are you going to be having fun, feeling like you're part of the crowd, or are you going to feel like you don't fit in? So that's really where that kind of comes in. Howard, I know you met Danny last week in Miami. I mean, Danny used to do lawyers, and then when he got into the decorative concrete, he just felt more comfortable in his own skin, if you will, in that niche. So don't overthink that. Don't let that be a total driving thing. It's more of, you know, what do you want to wear on a daily basis and who do you want to talk to and things like that. But You don't have to be over-the-top passionate about, but you have to have at least some level of curiosity about how the niche works and how the services work so that as you learn about them, that curiosity aspect of it's filled. You know, from my perspective, 5 or 6 weeks in a niche is not really much time at all. So to, you know, say personal injury attorneys aren't working after 5 or 6 weeks. I wouldn't necessarily say that's the case. But my question is, would you be more comfortable in the home service niche?

Probably, yeah.

Yeah, so you got roofers, you got fencers, you got asphalt driveways, you've got concrete, you know. Of any of those, which one kind of comes to mind?

Well, I was looking at damage restoration. You know, I had been working with Joe Troyer a few years back, and, uh, you know, he's getting like upwards of $400 a lead for water damage. And, uh, I know Jamie, um, you know, last week was talking about, you know, water damage as a, as a great niche.

Now, I would—

I was assuming more or less that, that water damage is, is a heavy insurance a fueled niche rather than, um, you know, someone, you know, calling up out of the blue, you know, off of lead gen kind of deal to, uh, to hire that kind of a service. Is, is that the case?

So since I worked in that niche a long time ago, here's, here's the, the trick to that niche is you're right, a lot of that is insurance driven in, if you want to call it Phase 2, okay? But in Phase 1, which means, oh my gosh, I got, you know, 6 inches of water standing in my basement right now, unless that person calls their insurance company and says, who should I use, they're gonna go to the web, they're gonna Google, you know, water extraction or whatever variation they're gonna do, and they're gonna pick the first person that can show up to deal with it. So what guys that specialize in damage type niches know is getting through the door is the hardest part. So if you can help them get through the door, because the other thing is the law states that, you know, unless they've signed exclusivity with that insurance company to a certain provider, that they can pick and choose their own service provider. So I know when I did that back in the '90s, we were all about getting through the door so we would have the opportunity to sell the Phase 2 part of the services, you know, while we were extracting the water or cleaning up after the fire, whatever the case would be. So I think that's a great niche. I think one of the things that you need to look at, it's interesting, but you want to go after states. And even down to as far as cities that have a lot of weather activity. Because, you know, if you come to Reno, Nevada, for example, I mean, we have 7 inches of rain a year. If you go into another city that has 50 or 60 inches of rain a year, there's going to be much more water damage work than there is in Reno, Nevada. So things like that, places that have storms and things like that, are gonna also deal with all kinds of damage restoration. Then you have to decide, are you gonna be water exclusive, fire exclusive, damage overall exclusive? You also have within that space, Howard, you have what they call boarding up services. So, you know, you've got companies that they specialize in just, you know, when there's a hole in the roof, they go throw on the plywood and put on the tarp and stop the damage from happening any further or minimize the damage.

You mean as a roofer or as part of the water damage niche?

Part of the water damage niche. There's guys that that's how they initially get through the doors. They specialize in, you know, patching the hole or stopping the leak or whatever the case may be.

So, hey, Jeff, we've got a couple minutes left and We've still got Tyler on, on deck, so I just wanted to make sure you know the timeframe. You guys just wrap up. Hopefully we'll make it as productive to wrap that with Howard as possible. Hopefully Howard, this has been helpful.

Yeah, I mean, is there a— and this might be helpful for everybody— is there sort of a dip your toe in the niche kind of process that we can test out our niches? You know, maybe throw up a paper call campaign or a Facebook Ads campaign or just something to, uh, you know, get our feet wet and see, uh, no pun intended, to see if, uh, you know, if, if the niche is gonna— is a good fit for us.

I don't have any suggestions for that. Maybe Josh does, but I'm, I'm more of a once you jump in, work it hard and crazy for 90 days and—

okay.

I mean, do you have— do you already have a general type website up?

Yeah.

So then go on your general website, add 2 to 3 pages about a particular niche. Let's say it's water fire damage. Don't build out a complete niche website.

Go out—

to your point— then go out and sell water fire damage for the next 60 days. And then once you've got your third or fourth client, then come back around and build out your niche-specific website.

Okay, that sounds good.

Thanks, Howard. And hey, show up on coaching call next week and we can keep— we can keep narrowing this down for you.

Yep, Wednesday, this is your time. Press forward, jump on Wednesday and keep taking action.

Okay, great. Thanks, guys.

Awesome.

So we're gonna—

we're gonna do one— we're gonna do one more and then we'll wrap up because Jeff's got another meeting and I've got a webinar starting at 2. So, um, let's go to— let's go to Tyler. I'm just going to unmute you and we can Tyler, can you hear us?

Yes, I can.

Awesome. Welcome.

How's it going?

Fantastic.

Good, good. I'm doing all right.

So my name is Tyler. I'm 25. I am from Minnesota, uh, but I just recently moved to Florida. Um, the two niches that I'm really thinking about right now are going to be tiny houses or shipping container homes and, um, home remodeling or specifically kitchen remodeling. And I would just like to hear you guys' input.

Container homes and tiny homes, it's not a big enough niche yet. It might be in the future. So that would be my only concern there. I'm not saying that that's not stuff that's coming, but a lot of cities' ordinances aren't very well developed in relationship to, like, tiny homes. So, like, there's several developments here in Reno where you have to build a minimum of a 2,000-square-foot house. To be in that area. So you would be butting up against things like that. And of course, container homes, there's a stigma related to, you know, I don't want a container in my neighborhood, not realizing that, you know, they can look pretty cool. It's an interesting topic because I love to look at things like that. So I know exactly what you're talking about.

Yeah, me too.

That would be my bigger concern. Then remodeling, kitchen and bath remodeling, either one or both.

Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. So doing both would be just fine as well?

Yeah, I mean, if you decide, you know, obviously there's bigger money in kitchen remodels than there are in bathroom remodels, so you might decide to do that. But again, when you buy your list of remodelers, you're going to want to eliminate the people that do entire rooms, you know, entire homes, and come up with a list that's just kitchen and bath. They tend to overlap. At least that's been my experience. I think that's a, that's a great niche if you can drill down on it and figure out what makes You know, you unique and finding again that very specialized client.

Gotcha, gotcha. And then I have another one, um, like tree trimmers. What do you think about that?

Maybe arborist? Arborist is a great niche. There's a whole large business around tree care. Really what you're talking about is tree care.

Yeah, gotcha.

Um, so yeah, that would, that would be a great niche as well.

Cool, cool, cool.

That's all I got for you.

So I would, I would start digging in a little deeper. Again, remember, do they have an association, right? You know, when they stick their hand out and shake your hand, do they say, hey, I'm a barber, hey, I'm a bathroom remodeler? You know, that's what you're looking for, that self-identification. You know, they're proud of the service or business that they're in. You know, but if they've got to have a long explanation of I do 27 different things, that's not really self-identifying.

Gotcha.

So does that help? Hopefully, hopefully you've eliminated a— at least it might take you down that path, you know.

I'm definitely gonna do my research on the kitchen and bathroom remodeling, and I think I'm gonna run with that. I feel like that's a higher-ticket item. I have an SEO template that I do want to charge a good amount for. So definitely sounds like something I'm going to be doing.

Good deal, man.

Yeah, start with kitchen remodels. I think you'll be impressed.

Awesome, awesome. Thank you so much, guys. Really appreciate it.

Yeah, well, Jeff, that was, that was great stuff. We covered, we covered, I guess, about like 9 or 10 hot seats and kind of talked about niches. Hopefully those of you guys that stuck through the whole time, you know, those of you got one-on-one attention, hopefully that helped. Those of you that were just listening in, hopefully clarified your thinking around, you know, am I in the right niche? Am I thinking along the right lines? The key thing though is not to get stuck on the niche, right? There's no perfect niche. Really, there's no like deadly niche. I mentioned ones that you should try and avoid, but the key is to choose a niche, commit to it, and then start doing the work necessary to position yourself as the expert and to start getting clients coming to you. And that's, that's what we do here at the 7 Figure Agency. You know, every week Jeff is live. It's not always just about niche. A lot of times it's about how do you land clients, how do you serve the clients, how do you get those clients results, how do you retain, how do you build your virtual team. Be surprised at the dynamic of the questions that come in. And it's great to have access to me and Jeff. Oftentimes on Wednesdays at 2, it's Jeff to really help get you that clarity and keep you moving forward. So, you know, for those of you that aren't members of the 7 Figure Agency membership, yeah, I want to encourage you, we're still holding the 3-pay option through the end of this week. It's kind of a no-brainer if you're serious about running a digital marketing agency, you know, being niche-focused, getting clients, serving clients, retaining them long-term. You know, we've got the tools, we've got the resources, we've got the case studies, and we've got the support that you need in order to really move yourself forward. So, um, you know, if you haven't already, I'm really going to encourage you, go to 7figureagency.com/start. Um, you know, a lot of you guys are already members, so, you know, you're in, don't worry about it. But those of you that aren't, you know, 7figureagency.com/start. Um, we have the 3-pay option, so you're not having to come out with the full amount up front, and it's backed by 100% satisfaction guarantee. You know, Jeff and I are completely committed to help you grow your agency. And so for some reason you don't see the value, you don't see how you're going to be able to land some clients, and you don't see how this is going to move you forward faster, um, just let us know. We'll gladly refund your investment. That's not what it's about for us. It's about really helping you get to your goal and get to where you want to go. Um, anything you want to add on this, Jeff, as we, as we wrap up?

Oh, I just had a blast. This is one of the things that I love to do. I hope that came across as, uh, as I help each of you, uh If you're a member already, please continue to post up in the Facebook group. If you're not a member yet and you have additional questions, please paste it in the Local Marketing Agency— I think that's what the group's called, right? Local Marketing Agency?

Local Agency Success.

Yep, Local Agency Success. Post up in there, and Joshua Nelson and I pay attention to both of those groups on a daily basis, and we'll add comments. And Jeannie, yes, hotels are okay as long as they're a specialty hotel. Bed and breakfast, that kind of thing. But remember, you're also going to be competing against Orbitz and everything else out there. So that's what we try to, you know, we try to help you pare it down to make a better, more informed decision. And like I said, if you're on the weekly coaching calls with me, my goal is to help you get a specific answer or to send you home with homework so you can dig in further and identify the solution for your in this case niche, as Josh talked about. We also do a lot with tools. What tools are working? What tools do we recommend? You know, if you're new and starting out, what project management tool should you be using? If you're larger, what would be the next one? So we take a lot of care in trying to advise you well, because we do. How are we going to achieve our goal of 100 7-figure agencies if we're not working hard to help you guys be successful?

No doubt. So thanks for joining us. Really, you know, excited about seeing you grow, excited about seeing you take your agency to the next level. Even if you don't join, know Jeff and I still love you and we're here to support you, but we can do that a lot better in the group, right? So, um, post your questions. We're gonna wrap it here. Members, we'll see you on Wednesday at 2:00 PM, and we'll talk to you guys again soon. Thanks, Jeff.

Thanks, everyone.