How to Scale an Agency to $1,000,000/yr (FREE SMMA COURSE)

In this video, I'm going to show you exactly how you can scale your digital marketing agency to $1 million per year in 2025. This is a full-length, in-depth agency growth course for free. The framework I'm going to give you in this course completely changed my life. It helped me take a struggling 2-person online marketing agency and turn it into a $6 million a year business with 60 employees, making the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies in the United States 4 years in a row. And not only that, we use this exact system to help 137 agencies scale to 7 figures and beyond over the last several years. Like Chris, who went from $30,000 a month to multiple 7 figures in 2 years. Austin, who was in debt when he started working with us and scaled to $92,000 in monthly recurring in 11 months. And Tony, who was at $20,000 MRR and recently hit $200,000 per month at his agency. No matter if you're doing Facebook ads, PPC, funnels, SEO, web development, we've helped all types of marketing agencies hit 7 figures. Because the principles are the exact same. The angle of our process is not only to help you scale to $1 million, but to do it in a way where you have complete freedom over your life while focusing on creating impact by delivering world-class results to the clients you work with. This is gonna be one of my longest YouTube videos yet, and probably the most valuable one, as I'll literally take you through our entire system and hold nothing back. So make sure you remove all distractions and take notes when going through this free course, because it can absolutely change your business. Let's dive in. All right, let's jump right into it. The first thing we want to think about if we're going to scale our agency to 7 figures in 2025, the very first thing is the business model. We got to make sure we have the right model because if you have the wrong model, you can wind up chasing your tail. And this was my experience in my first agency, Click Incorporated. Before that was Developcom. I had a web design and hosting company. I was selling the wrong thing for the wrong amount and working really, really hard. Literally working multiple hours every single day, making cold calls, sitting in BNI meetings, selling clients, then delivering websites, but I could not get the growth that I was after. It wasn't until I had these model fundamentals correct that I started to see accelerated growth in my business. If we, we want to grow our agency, there's 4 things we have to solve for. Number 1 is we have to figure out how we're going to land clients, right? We have to have clients coming into the business on a consistent basis. Number 2 is we have to deliver results in a systematized way. Now, deliver results means as agency owners, your main responsibility, your main purpose for being is to generate a tangible, measurable return on investment and growth for your clients. And so we gotta make sure that we've got a great program, but we've also got a program that can be systematized so you don't have to do it all yourself and it can be consistent with the outcome. Number 3 is we have to retain our clients, right? We have to create such a great experience, generate such great results that the clients stick with us long-term. And then ultimately, we've gotta scale. As we're getting clients, delivering results, retaining those clients, we have to figure out how to put the right systems in place the right procedures, the right automations, and the right team so that we don't have to do it all ourselves. So we're gonna get to those 4 key components on this session. So the first thing I talked about was that right model and making sure you have the right model. And there's this concept called the rule of once, and I'm going to cover this briefly, but as agencies, we feel like we can sell to anybody. We can sell a variety of different things, but we studied the most successful agencies and kind of looked at what were the commonalities of the ones that have had the fastest growth. Number 1, we focus on one market, one niche. So as opposed to trying to be all things to all people, we focus on one one particular industry. In my case, plumbing and HVAC contractors, right? That's our niche. One lead generation strategy that we get dialed in, one conversion mechanism, one core program, not an infinite supply of different types of ways to package internet marketing services, but a, a preset program. And then we stick to it for a year. If you can do the rule of ones in 2025 and stick with it, like put your blinders on, turn off the shiny object syndrome and just focus on that one market, that one program, that one marketing strategy, and you stick with it for a year, you will get accelerated growth. Now, the other thing we need to think about is the money math. How much are we gonna charge? How many clients is it gonna take to bring that into reality? And my, my original business model was I'm gonna sell a $1,500 website and I'm gonna charge them $10 or $15 a month to host, and eventually that will snowball. That was a terrible model, right? And it resulted in me having to sell lots of volume, which is very hard to do. Couple ways to get to 7 figures. You could have 830 clients paying you $100 per month. That gets you to 7 figures or a million-dollar agency. $83,000 a month times 12 gets you to a million dollars. You could have 166 clients paying you $500 per month, 83 clients paying you $1,000 a month, 8 to 9 clients paying you $10,000 a month, or one client paying you $83,000 per month. The main thing I want you to get is that it takes almost as much energy to sell a $500 client as it does to sell a $2,000 a month client. and you have to do so much work in order to get to 7 figures with $500 or so clients. And so what I found is there's a sweet spot between $1,000 and $3,000 per month in whatever vertical, whatever niche you decide to focus on. There's a plethora of businesses willing to pay in that price range, and they will pay into perpetuity as long as there's a solid return on investment. So I really think you want to be charging at least $1,000 to $3,000 or more per month. And a lot of our members charge $3,500 to $5,000 per month. But let's make sure it's at least $1,000. Because if we can land 5 clients per month at $1,350 per month, you just kind of, you know, mathematically, 5 times $3,500 times— at the end of the year, assuming you retain those clients, you'll grow to 7 figures, right? And that is very tangible. That is very doable. That was the track we were on at Plumbing and HVAC SEO in our first couple of years, charging between $1,000 and $1,500 per month, landing like 5 to 7 new clients every single month. And that got us to 7 figures. I really just want this number to sink in for you, if you can get 33 clients at $2,500 per month, you can get to 7 figures in the next 12 months, right? And so that's the question I want you to really think about. Do you believe you can land and retain 33 clients? And I'm hoping the answer is yes, and it should be yes. And I, I'm going to share a lot of examples of companies that have accomplished that, but I just want that to be really, really clear. The model that you choose to run within your agency will make or break you. And there were a couple very specific shifts that we made in our business model as we relaunched back in like 2011 with plumbing and HVAC SEO, number one was one market. Really, if you're working with 6, 7, 10 different types of businesses, you're making your life much harder than it needs to be because you're not that interesting to any of them, right? They want to deal with someone that's the expert in their type of business. The other reason you're making it harder on yourself is you have to reinvent the wheel from one client to the next. Look, if you work with a dentist today and you get a roofer tomorrow and then a chiropractor the next day and then an e-commerce store the next day. Every one of those types of businesses has a completely different strategy that you would need to implement. You need to understand their keywords, you need to understand their conversion mechanism, you need to understand the way that their clients and their customers think. And reinventing that takes a lot of thought, takes a lot of energy, versus if you work with a chiropractor today, you say, I'm just gonna build my strategy for a chiropractic. Every other client that you get, you can dial in the program, you can improve the program, you can figure out what's working and you can get much better at delivering oversized results. And so that's why this one niche is so important. It's not even just about making your sales process easier. It's also about making your delivery in a way that you can scale. Second really important pillar is monthly recurring revenue is the only way to go. Let's get rid of any project type work. If you're doing one-off web builds, if you're doing one-off app development, you're gonna get money and you're gonna lose the money, right? There's no retention strategy there. Sell a monthly recurring growth program month in and month out. So no project work, no check payments— like, you're not waiting for someone to mail a check, you're getting a credit card authorization form. Once they say yes, they get billed, and it just hits every single month until they tell you to stop. And that monthly fee needs to be at least $1,000 per month. Going into the new year— I don't know where you're at in your agency as you're watching this— let's just add an additional $500 to your current comfort zone, because there's massive price elasticity to these agency services, right? There are people paying $15,000, $20,000 a month for a lot of the same things that you're probably doing right now. So you can absolutely charge more, but it needs to be at least $1,000 per month. A beautiful example of this in the real world is Alan Hillsberg. He runs an agency called Funeral Home Marketing Services. The first time he came through this process and kind of learned about this model, he had a generalist agency working with a variety of different verticals, and he was selling project work one day, a little bit of recurring revenue the next day, and then we get to like $10,000 or $15,000 any given month. Not recurring, but just any given month. And it was very hard for him to get consistent growth. It was very hard for him to break through. And he heard me explain this concept. He heard me share what I did within the plumbing space. And he said, all right, let's try it. One vertical, one program, monthly fee greater than $1,000 per month. Implemented the strategy, decided he was going to work with funeral homes and decided he was going to package his website SEO program at $1,000 per month. Got really diligent with the outreach process and the, and the client attraction method that I'm going to teach you right in a couple of minutes and grew his agency to over $115,000 per month in the span of about a 2-year window of time. And now he's doing multiple 7 figures and continues to grow. So this program, this strategy works really, really well. That being the case, we're clear. Yeah, this is— I need one niche, I need one program. The next thing we need to think about is what that program looks like, what that suite of services looks like. The issue I see a lot of agencies have when it comes to their program packaging is they're trying to sell random piecemeal services. Okay, I'll build a website, or I'll do some SEO, or I'll do some paid search, or I'll run Facebook ads, or I'll post on their social profiles. And And when you do piecemeal random services, oftentimes the clients don't get a tangible result, right? I mean, if you haven't thought it out in advance and what you're selling doesn't actually lead to them getting sales, then there'd be no reason for them to stay. And so obviously that's going to lead to churn. The other issue I see with, with a lot of agencies that know how to do a lot of things but haven't packaged their program is that the numbers don't add up, right? You know, like people only pay you so much to run Facebook ads. They'll only pay you so much to do link building. They'll only pay you so much to post to their Facebook page. So like there's no way we can justify a $2,000, $3,000 price point. And if we don't engineer the program in advance, we're reinventing the wheel for each client. So we meet with the client and they say they want to do some SEO, they want to do some Facebook ads, and we kind of piecemeal the program. We kind of reinvent it for each client. What we want to do, and really why this is so important, is we want to engineer the program in advance, systematize it so that we're not reinventing the wheel so that we can get consistent, predictable results. So 5 things I want you to think about as you, as you engineer your program package. Number 1 is to sell the holes, not the drill. Like as digital marketing agencies, we know how to do SEO and pay-per-click and funnels, and we can know the technical details about link building and on-page optimization and, you know, click-through rates and all of that stuff. But your prospect, your client really just wants— they want sales, they want revenue growth, and that's why they're going to hire you. And so as you develop your program, you think about how you're going to position it, make sure that you're selling the outcome, which is the hole in the wall, and not the technical specs, like the how fast the drill turns and what the power capacity of the drill is. Sell the hole, not the drills. Number 2 is develop a more comprehensive program. The biggest thing I can say as I look at our program, our success, the success of a lot of the different agencies we work with, if you just do one thing, it's hard to justify the fee. It's also hard to consistently get the outcome. So if you're just doing Facebook ads, or you're just doing pay-per-click advertising, or you're just doing SEO, any one of those in a vacuum, it's easy the client what— from one month to the next, be like, I didn't get a good result, let's cancel that out, right? Because you're just a single service provider. Where when you come to the table and you've thought about it as a growth plan, and you're trying to think about how I'm going to get with these clients in this niche, and I'm going to partner with them to help them get from where they are to where they want to go. And that's going to require more than just these piecemeal things. Like, we really want to— we want to package it where it's like, let's make sure the website's built to convert. Let's make sure it's coming up in the organic listings where people are looking. Let's run some traffic. That way we control our outcome. Let's make sure we're tracking and we can show them their tangible return on investment. And when you come with a more proactive, more customized program like that, you're going to be stickier, right? Because they're not just going to see you as a single service provider. So they're going to be more likely to stick around. They're going to be willing to pay more because you're doing what would usually take a number of providers and you're looking at the big picture strategy. But you're also going to be able to blend the results, right? And be consistent because, you know, some days the SEO is doing really well, but the paid search is poor and vice versa. But when you've got a strategies in play that you're controlling on behalf of the client, you can more consistently generate the outcome. So number 3 is we're gonna focus on impact and not activity. When you develop your program, don't just throw in a lot of things that you can say, oh yeah, well that checks the box, right? We're gonna post to your social, we're gonna send an email out, we're gonna create a new graphic for you once a month. Make sure that these things that you include in your program are designed to actually do something that's going to make the phone ring more, to get them more bookings, or to get them more sales. Make sure that they're impact-based and not activity-based. Number 4 is make sure that it's something that can be replicated and scaled. So as you develop the program, intentionally decide, while you may know how to do all of this stuff, you are not gonna be the one doing the website or running the Facebook ads or recording the videos or, you know, doing all of the things that need to be done to implement. Make sure that it can be done from one client as well as it can be done for 100 clients, and you are not personally involved in that process. And so that's number 5, is to remove yourself from the process so that you can hand it off, you can systematize it, and you you can focus on either selling it, positioning it, marketing it, and have a team that is going to deliver it and continue to improve it and iterate it over time. What we want— kind of, I hit the 5 keys there— what we want is this to be a program built for the very specific industry. It needs to be a monthly fee greater than $1,000 per month with no one-off, like, hey, yeah, no worries, just $5,000 this one time, and then that's it. Like, let's eliminate that. Client should be set up on auto bill, like, we're just going to charge every single month until they cancel. And it should be a more comprehensive solution. We're selling the whole, not the drill. So, as an example, our Online Marketing Complete Program which we sell to plumbing and HVAC companies, we're coming in and we're saying, "Hey, we're going to do your website, SEO, pay-per-click. We're going to put marketing automation in place to follow up the leads that we generate. We're going to do database reactivation to come out of the gates really, really quickly. We're going to do all of that for $3,500 per month plus your ad spend." Right? So, those— that ad spend is separate to that. And so, you want to come up with a program like that. Like where it's got all the things you need. And you may have a lower level drop. Like where it's like, "Hey, you know what? I just want to do the SEO." SEO and the paid search. And so that's maybe $2,500 a month instead of $3,500 per month. So be sure that you develop a comprehensive program that is going to warrant the fee, but it also is going to be sticky where clients will wind up sticking with it long-term. A great example of this is Barry Nixon. He works in garage and door domination, focuses on garage installation repair companies, grew from $5,500 per month to $97,000 a month in recurring, continues to grow. One of the key things that he was stuck with when it was at $5,500 was what do I sell? How do I package it? How do I deliver a consistent result for the clients that I work with in this space? And when we mapped out his program and we put it on a single, single-page document that he could quickly and confidently explain it to a prospect and feel confident that it could be delivered on, he was able to shift gears into business development mode and accelerated the growth within his agency. So we've talked about the model, right? We've talked about how to develop the program packaging, the offer that we're going to bring to the market. Now we got to figure out how we're going to land clients and how we can get clients on a consistent basis in the agency. You know, stepping back one step, like, as you think about selling to clients, we have to have a conversation with the prospect. And so the way I suggest that you present these services is pricing should only be discussed after value has been shown. So make sure that you're putting out content, you're putting out information, you're sharing case studies. We'll talk about all of that stuff so that somebody can schedule in with you, but you're not saying my program is $5,000 a month or my program is $3,000 a month. You're getting them onto a conversation where you can have a live, ideally web-based meeting on Zoom or Google Meet, and taking them through a consultative sales process where you can understand their problem, you can understand what they're looking to accomplish, you can understand what they've tried before, you can show them the deficiencies in their current strategy, and then present price. And so we want to take our package, our program package, and we want to figure out all of the deliverables, and then we want to map how that's going to get done and how much it's going to cost, and really identify their pricing. Then we want to customize a program overview, which is— you could call it a proposal, but I much prefer to call it a program overview that explains exactly what's included, explains why that's important, the pricing, right? So that you can meet with the client, you can have that conversation, you can ask for the business, have a document that explains everything, and a credit card authorization form so that you can hit the ground running. That's how you want to present the program. The 7-figure agency sales process really falls down into these 5 steps. Number 1, we've got to get prospects to raise their hand. We'll talk about a dozen different ways to get prospects to raise their hand, either through cold outreach, through inbound marketing, and all of those other strategies. We want them to raise their hand, and then we want to do a discovery process, either through a survey or through a live conversation with the client to understand them, to understand their goals, to see if they're a good fit, to see if they're interested in what we can bring to the table. If so, we'll move them to the strategy session where we can have that long conversation about what we found in their online marketing, where there's room for improvement, show them exactly what we do within our program, some examples of how we can help, and ask for the business. And we You want to have a hot lead follow-up that follows up after that meeting for those people that need a little bit more information, an ability for them to sign up, right? Ideally DocuSign or HelloSign or one of those automated signature processes and move directly to launch. So that's the 7-figure agency sales process. Our objective to get to 7 figures is 4 or 5 clients per month. Typically we're going to need probably 15 to 20 strategy sessions with qualified prospects monthly, assuming a 20 to 30% close ratio. That will get us to $83,000 per month. Month, which is a 7-figure agency in a single year, or here in 2025. So let's look at the strategies and techniques we can put in place to get those 15 strategy sessions, to get those client deals that we need in order to hit those revenue targets. A lot of different things you can do to market your agency. First and foremost is cold outreach, and this is the, the foundation. A lot of times when I say cold outreach, people think, oh, I'm going to spam a bunch of people, and that's not what I'm talking about. What I mean is, in your niche, whatever that niche is, we need to introduce ourselves to that industry, and we need to start reaching out to prospects and developing relationships. And so that happens through acquiring a list, and you can get that list by joining the National Association, by joining subgroups, by using a tool like Coldlytics or Apollo, where you can say, I want the contact details of the people within this niche, and you'll get the name of the company, the name of the owner, their email address, their, their phone number, ideally their social profiles, so that you can start an outreach process to introduce yourself to see if there's a need, to start to make those connections and those relationships. And your cold outreach is something you should be doing on a daily basis. You should be connecting with at least 5 new prospects every single day. Now from there, we also want to do some inbound marketing, which is getting prospects to find our value in advance, either on YouTube or on iTunes or whatever podcast platform that they use, or when they search the web. So inbound marketing is a function of putting out great information, great content. I'm a fan of doing one webinar webinar per month. We put out that webinar and we syndicate it. I'm a fan of doing a podcast where we interview successful people within the niche. As you put out great content, you start to become discovered, right? And people start to find you. Now, the challenge I often see with inbound is putting out content, but there's no audience. Like, there's nobody to see. They don't know you yet. And that's why you have to have that cold list. Because now, anytime you create a new piece of content, anytime you do a new webinar, you've got a list that you that you can send it to. You've got a list that you can target to get that, that content in front of them. And those two start to multiply, right? Cold outreach by itself is only so effective. Inbound marketing is only so effective. But when you combine the two, now you've got a synergistic outcome. Now off from there is marketed lead generation, running Facebook ads, running Google ads, setting up retargeting. We should all be doing this, right? You should be investing some money into your own self, right? Don't be that cobbler that has no shoes, right? You know how to do this stuff. Make sure that you're running it for yourself. And in our industry, in plumbing specifically, or whatever niche you happen to be considering, marketed lead generation works extremely well. You just have to use it, right? You have to know how to target, you know, how to— have to know how to retarget. Again, now you're pulling new prospects into your, into your world on a consistent basis. Up from there, we've got associations and speaking. And so a lot of agency owners I talk with just want to hide behind their desk, right? They want to be in their office, they want to be on Zoom, maybe like DMing on Facebook. But magic happens live and in person. And in every vertical and every niche, there's industry conferences and trade shows that happen throughout the country. And so I want you to identify the industry association. I want you to identify when they're getting together for live events and gatherings and be there, right? Be there as an exhibitor. Look for opportunities to speak so you can position yourself as the expert. And then up from there, you've got joint ventures, which is strategic relationships with people that already are doing business with the clients that you want to do business with and finding a win-win, finding a reason for them refer you to their clients, finding a reason for them to let you come present or speak or do a webinar for their group. This is at the top of the hierarchy because I really believe you're just one joint venture away from a 7-figure agency. And I know a lot of agencies that have had that outcome. But you can't just start with the JV, right? All of these strategies work together because if we've got the list down at the bottom, we're doing our cold outreach and we're connecting with people on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, we're making connections. And then we start to put out great content and webinars and podcasts and that list lists exposed to our value and people start to find that content out in the internet. And then we run marketed lead generation where we're laser targeting the people in our industry, the people in our groups, the people in the association. We start to get seen and known as an expert within the niche. And so when we show up at those associations and speaking engagements, we're not just somebody sitting behind a booth, but they look at us and say, well, I've been getting your emails. Hey, I've been seeing your podcast. Hey, I've been on a couple of your webinars. And the people that arrange those groups start to say, hey, you know what? We should probably have you come "Next time," right? And those types of opportunities only present themselves because you are an active player in the industry, because you are putting out great content. That's where those joint venture opportunities start to blossom, because you've got clients, because you've got proven results, because they're able to rub elbows with you at the events and associations, and you can have that conversation and actually have them be very, very receptive to it. And so if you look at this on a timeline, well, when do I do this cold outreach stuff? Stuff. How often do I do my webinars? What's the frequency for these events and associations? We put this in what we call a growth system. This is the Agency Growth System, and it just kind of maps out the things you want to do daily, monthly, and quarterly to get to your appointment threshold, to get to your 7-figure target, or to add an additional 7 figures every 12 months. Daily, every single day, up in the top left-hand corner, I want you to be doing cold outreach, which is you're getting a list of prospects and you're making introductions, at at least 5 targeted connections per day. So yes, we can send out mass cold emails and get people to raise their hand, but at least 5 times per day you're going to a prospect, you're connecting with them on Facebook, you're connecting with them on LinkedIn, you're sending an introduction, and you're starting a relationship, you're starting a conversation. And ideally you're leading with, hey, I created this, this guide on the top 7 things every roofing company should be doing to market themselves. I wanted to know if I could send it to you. Come with value in advance versus asking for their time. We're going to do that. Also, every day we should be running Facebook ads and we should be running Google ads. Every single day. This stuff is getting impressions. It's getting mindshare. Now, once a month we're going to do 2 things. Once a month, we're going to do a fully promoted webinar on a different topic. How to set your website up for maximum conversion. How to get your website ranked. How to run Facebook ads. Our 10 most high-converting Facebook ads for this niche. The most commonly searched, you know, keywords for plumbing and HVAC companies. Just once a month, we show up. We send emails about it. We invite prospects to attend. We then take the recording, we load it up on YouTube, we load it up on a podcast, and we syndicate it out. Done correctly, one webinar per month will position you as an expert, as a thought leader, and it will force you into nurturing your database by inviting them. It will force you into creating new content because you got to show up and you got to actually create the slides and you got to create the content. Also, once a month is a podcast. So this is just an interview style podcast. You can use Zoom. Zoom, or you can use Restream, you can use whatever platform you want. But once a month, you invite somebody on with you on Zoom and you ask them questions. Ideally, it's somebody within your niche. So we work with plumbing companies. Ours is called the Plumbing Marketing Success Podcast, and we'll bring on a plumber and we'll ask them, hey, tell me about your company. How many trucks do you guys have? How much revenue are you doing on an annual basis? Amazing. Tell me a little bit about how you market yourself. Like, what are you guys doing with, um, your marketing strategy? What's your unique message? What kinds of special offers, incentives do you run? How do you market? How much are you doing on online versus offline? How, how aggressive are you with SEO and local service ads? Ask these questions, get the answers, and the content that you create from that is unique, highly valuable, and you develop relationships with those people that you invite on your podcast. Could be past clients, could be current clients, could be prospects on your Dream 100 list. One podcast, one webinar per month will make you prolific within your industry. Now, in addition to that, at the bottom left-hand corner, we're going to do a couple things quarterly. I talked about industry events and conferences. Once per quarter, we're gonna get out from our office, we're gonna get out from Zoom land, and we're gonna get live in person. So once per— at least once per quarter, I want you to find an industry gathering that you can participate in, ideally that you can have a booth and maybe even speak at, once per quarter. And then once per quarter, we're gonna create a client case study, which is really documenting a client that you worked with, where they were, kind of what was the situation, and what the result has been. They went from $1 million to $2 million per year. This is what we put in place. This is the proof in the tracking in terms of where they rank, in terms of how many calls, in terms of all of that stuff. And you can document the case study and ideally grab that same client, bring them on Zoom and interview them about the process, about the transformation, about how life is different and better. Hopefully this is clear, right? So this column over here on the left, this is the system you put in place to fill the funnel with the objective of getting 15 or more strategy sessions per month. We need to also have a great appointment process where somebody can schedule in, they can get warmed up, they can kind of come to the meeting pre-positioned to buy. We need to have a great sales process where we know how to ask the questions to create the gap, to demonstrate, hey, here's where you are, here's where you tell me you wanted to go, here's what's missing in your online marketing, and here's our program, here's how we can help. The objective with that is to close at least 30% of your opportunities. So mathematically speaking, if we can get 15 strategy sessions and close at 30%, that gives us 3 3 to 5 new clients every single month, assuming the price point that we talked about earlier, which puts you on a track record to 7 figures, assuming you can retain, right? So the retention formula over here is around your world-class onboarding, the way you communicate with your client month over month to keep them engaged, and how you develop that team to remove yourself from the account management process. And the objective we're looking for in the growth system here is 97%. And so we want to roll this process out. I assure you, if you do these activities daily, monthly, quarterly, you'll hit your appointment level. You practice that sales process, you've got a great offer, you'll convert at 30%. You will be able to grow to 7 figures over the next, next 12 months. So the next thing is, is that appointment process. Like, how do we get somebody to schedule in and come to us pre-positioned to buy? And that's where the ultimate agency funnel comes into play. Really what we want to do is we want to have a, not just a Calendly style appointment where they can enter their name and pick a day date. But we want them to pick that time and we want to share some examples, share some case studies, get them excited through our warm-up process to actually show up for that appointment excited and pre-positioned to buy. A great example of, of an agency that implemented this is Austin Hauser. Austin was in debt, like negative $2,000 in monthly debt, implemented the strategy focusing on painting contractors. So Base Coat Marketing specializes in painting contractors. Put this entire strategy in place, started putting out content, starting doing the webinars, started to really positioned himself as the go-to expert in the space. Grew to over $92,000 in monthly recurring revenue in just 11 months. Now, he's over $166,000 in monthly recurring revenue. So, dialing the strategy in and putting the strategies in place to get those strategy sessions makes all the difference. 15 strategy sessions per month is what we're shooting for. We talked about cold outreach. We talked about the appointment funnel. The next thing I want to talk a little bit about is how do you— how do you get clients to come to you pre-positioned to buy? How do you position yourself as the expert so they're looking at you, they're leaning in, and you're not chasing them down? A couple of positioning assets. Number 1 is have a core presentation. A core thought process that you can share. That's, "Here's how the people in my niche can triple their sales by getting their internet marketing right." Or, "Here's the 7 things every roofing company needs to know about marketing and have that in presentation format that you could confidently present if you were invited to speak at industry event or invited to speak at a, at a webinar within your industry. Number 2 is a marketing guide for the niche. You know, just an ebook, just a document works really, really well. A niche website that has great content speaking to your specific industry. So not clickinc.com, which was our old website. But plumberseo.net, which is specific to the industry and loaded with information. All of our webinars, all of our podcasts, all of that great content that positions us as an expert. Number 4 is case studies and testimonials. Anybody can talk the talk, but it's people that have real proof. This is the client, this is the result, this is what we did. And here you can actually talk to the client or hear from the client, let them share their experience. That separates you as an expert that has proven results. Video-based training. If you're doing webinars every single month, This will definitely position you as an expert. The book. There's one thing that makes somebody an expert, and that's either they're at the front of the stage presenting or they're the published author. And so we've got our book, How to Triple Your Sales by Getting Your Internet Marketing Right for Plumbing HVAC Contractors. And we use that book to market. We use that book in a lot of different ways. But when you have a book, you are looked at and thought of as an expert. And it doesn't have to be as hard or complicated as you think. Podcast, being on iTunes, being on Spotify. Your prospect doesn't realize. It's not that hard. There's not like a super high threshold. That's literally just video and/or audio that's loaded up and a nice cover graphic. And you've got a podcast. And the beautiful thing about podcasting is most of your clients are busy. They got a million things going on, but they do have to travel and they will listen to podcasts. And so podcast is a long-form content strategy where they can sit there and they will be listening to you, listening to your interviews, And you can really develop a relationship with your prospects just by speaking into a mic on a consistent basis. So usually what happens is as we grow and scale our agency, we wind up with a bunch of prospects sitting in a— right, we do cold email, we get an association list, maybe we do some Facebook ads and some Google ads, sits in the CRM, and then it kind of goes there and gets stuck. Usually what we have to figure out how to do is touch the database 2 to 3 times per week week, like not just a nurture sequence, but proactive new touches, add value on a consistent basis, nurture the relationship because the money isn't in your list, it's in your relationship to the list. And then we got to have a way to offer to help add value and say, hey, look, if you'd like some help with that, let's talk. And when you do that consistently, you're going to get accelerated growth. And so my favorite shortcut for this is doing a monthly topical webinar. We talk about this in the Growth System. But the reason this is so powerful is because it's going to help you grow your database and will help you nurture your database. Every time you do a webinar, you're going to have something to email them about. Hey, Thursday at 3 o'clock, I'm going to talk about this topic. Hey, we're about to start the webinar. After the webinar, hey, in case you missed it, here's the recording, right? Gives you a reason to touch the database. It also forces you to create that new content because every time you show up and you record the webinar, assuming it's new fresh content, and that's what it should be, you take the recording and you load it up on You take the audio and you put it on iTunes. And people that discover that are going to be drawn into you. They're going to be drawn into your funnel. They're going to be drawn into your world on a consistent basis. And so, this agency growth system really when executed will drive the revenue growth to 7 figures or $1 million over the next year. A great example of this is Jim and Brian from Roofer Marketers. They focus on the roofing niche. Niche. Several years ago, they didn't have an agency. They just decided, you know what, I'm going to try and go after this internet marketing game. And they grew to $13,000 in monthly recurring revenue. And they were just, they were just kind of getting started, right? They were getting the wheels in motion and they decided to go all in on the growth system, doing webinars every month, doing podcasts every month, running Google Ads, really becoming the known go-to expert, published their book. They grew the agency to over $500,000 in monthly recurring revenue, recently sold it to JobNimbus, the big big CRM within their industry. So not only can this work to grow your agency, but it can create massive wealth and, and a business that's super exciting and interesting to acquirers when you do it right. So just a great example there, Jim and Brian from Roofer Marketers. So we've talked about the model, we've talked about program packaging, we've talked about how to land clients and get those 5 to 7 new clients month in and month out. The next thing we need to think about is retention, right? Because if you get clients but you can't keep them, you're just going to be on a, on a treadmill, one step forward, one step back. When it comes to client retention, clients cancel, right? And it hurts, right? If you've been at this game for any period of time, you know, you put your heart and your soul into these clients. You got your team, they build the website, they do the SEO, you're tracking everything, and you want to win for the client. You want to make sure that client's happy. But every now and then you get that message, hey, we're going a different direction, and it hurts, right? And it's going to happen, but we need to make sure we minimize how often how often we churn clients. We're gonna make sure we minimize that, that client cancellation ratio because it will start to destroy your confidence, right? It'll destroy your energy to go out and sell. And we all know if we can't retain, we can't move forward, right? If we're landing 2 clients, losing 2 clients, or landing 3 clients, losing a client, you know, or constantly oscillating back and forth. And it can also negatively impact your reputation in the industry, right? One of the beautiful things about being in a niche is you're getting on, right? Like, it's a small space, you do good work, people start to refer you, you get known as the expert. But the negative word can spread really fast as well. So if you've got great marketing but you're not delivering and you're churning out your client base, people start to say, hey, I don't, I don't think those guys are great, I wouldn't use them. And that will massively stall your, your business growth. The number one factor in client success and retention is results. Are you going to make sure that that program package that you developed is rock solid and it's going to generate tangible, measurable results. But the number one reason clients leave isn't actually results. The number one reason clients leave is perceived indifference. They feel like you and your team don't really care, like you don't have a pulse, that you're not thinking in their best interest. And so knowing that, we can really kind of find the happy balance between results— yes, we've got to make it rain for the client— but also the, the experience, the relationship. There are specific things we can do to make them feel loved, to make them know that you care, and that's where you're you're going to get great results with your retention over time. Key things when it comes to client retention: number 1 is world-class onboarding. We got to make sure we come out of the gate strong. That day the client signs up, there should be some communication. We should schedule that kickoff call. We got to make it seamless the way that we gather the information. We need to make sure in our program we've engineered some quick wins, so they're going to start to get some leads, they're going to start to get some sales in the first couple of weeks. That's the recipe for a happy client that's going to stick around. After that, we've got to make sure we're effective with our communication. Automatic reports that come out of the systems that we use are good, but it's not going to cut it, right? We got to make sure that we've got strategic reporting that shows them exactly what they're spending, what the return on investment is, make them feel confident. We've got to be meeting with them live and in person. We've got to have that meeting pulse. We're meeting with them on a monthly basis, say, hey, here's where we're at, here's what we've implemented, here's what the reporting is telling us, here's some things that we've caught, here's what we're working on over the next 30 60 days and keep them in the loop, keep them engaged, constantly see the vision for where things are headed. And then the third key priority when it comes to retention is making sure you've got a client success management process where you can place account managers, you're tracking your retention rate, you've got the KPIs that you're looking for, and you've got a traffic light system that makes it really simple to look at the spectrum of clients, whether it's 10 clients or 100 clients, and see who's happy, who's kind of at risk, and who's got one foot out the door so that you can prioritize your retention approach and your retention strategy. World-class onboarding is mission critical. Coming out of the gate strong, getting it super dialed in. So we want to dial in the onboarding. We want to set up a multi-step new client capture form where they can send their details in. We want to flesh out that onboarding call. Like, what does that conversation sound like? What questions do we ask? How do we seed the vision? Capture all of those details. Engineer those quick wins. Send them a thank you gift. This is one of my favorite things. Automate every time you get a client, they're going to get goodies in the mail that express appreciation. We're going to roll out the onboarding sequence where we're, we're letting them know what's going on every step of the way. So we wow them in the first day, in the first week, in the first process. Ongoing communication. Again, I said the number one reason clients leave is perceived indifference. We want to make sure we're touching them, but we also want to make sure our reporting boils down the most important things. And so in my mind, they're paying you not to do the activity, but to get the result. And so we want to make sure that our reporting demonstrates how much did you spend, how many leads did you generate, what's your average cost per lead, where did those leads come from, and what's your return on investment. Where at a glance, month over month, they can see, well, I spent $5,000, but look at this, I generated $122,000 in revenue. This is great. I've got a return on investment. And they can kind of check that logical box that they're in good hands. Now, on an ongoing basis, We want to be meeting with the client every single month, right? Every month. Or if they're too busy, they don't want to meet, that happens from time to time. Have a fallback strategy where we send a Loom video with a recap. Hey, Mr. Customer, I know you're busy this week. I'm sorry we couldn't connect. Just wanted to send this video to show you here's what's going on on the reporting. Here's what we're working on. Here's a couple of things we had from the last meeting and here's where we're headed next. When you do that on a consistent basis and your reporting is dialed in, the clients have no reason reason to leave. Now, also super important when it comes to client success management, you need to have a strategy so that you're not the one dealing with all the clients, right? And we're going to talk about scaling here in just a minute, but you want to develop an account management recruiting and training process so that for every 20 or so clients, you got a new account manager coming in that can plug in, that can be the direct point of contact with that client, that can create that world-class experience and keep them in No, keep them plugged in. Beautiful example of this is Chris Rodriguez from Grow Pro Agency. Um, she works with martial arts studios, runs an amazing agency doing over $270,000 a month. But if we rewind back a couple of years ago, just before COVID she was at $32,000 a month. She was building up her agency, predominantly doing Facebook ads for these martial arts studios, and she was trying to figure out how to scale. There was a lot of things, right, in terms of how she attracted clients and how she delivered the results and packaged her program, but really how she retained those clients, created that world-class experience that made a massive difference. She dialed that in, accelerated her growth over about a— I would say about a 12.5-month period from $30K to over $160K. Today she's doing over $270,000 in monthly recurring revenue. So dialing in that retention can have a huge impact on your growth. The final piece of the puzzle is how to scale. We talked about how we package the program. We talked about the, the model. We talked about how to land clients and how to retain clients. The next most important thing is we have to really know our objective in this business isn't to give ourselves a job, but it's to create that freedom and to create that autonomy so that we can live our desired lifestyle. We can do the things we want to do. And oftentimes, as the business grows, we wind up with lots of balls in the air, right? On the marketing side, we've got to be doing webinars, we got to doing podcasts, We gotta be sending emails and then we get clients and those clients need to be onboarded and the work needs to be done with the SEO and the pay-per-click. And eventually we hire a team and that team needs to be managed, right? And we wind up feeling overwhelmed and stressed out. And so it's really important that we put the strategies in place to scale so that we can remain under control as the business grows and have that freedom that we're after. And so there's 3 key things I think about and that I put in place on our agency agency scale model. Number 1 is the team. I gotta make sure we got the team in place. Number 2 is the systems and the procedures. And then number 3 is the operating system, the way the business operates. And so from a team perspective, number 1, we need an accountability chart. We need an organizational chart that maps who are the people, what are the key functions within the business, and who are the people that sit in those seats. And whether you're a one-man operator right now or you've got a team of 60+ like us, we all start with key functions within the business. What those responsibilities are. And we start to backfill what we need as we grow. But it starts with that accountability chart. From there, we have to make sure we've got a great hiring process because as we need the talent, we need that SEO person, we need that operations director. Well, what does it look like? How do we post the job? How do we get people interested? How do we vet to make sure we get the right candidate? And then once we do select, we've got to have great onboarding. Hey, welcome to the team. Here's your Here's your responsibilities. Here's how we're going to communicate. How do we get those team members off the ground and into flow as effectively as possible? So that's the team component of growth. From the systems and procedures, we need playbooks for each of the D key areas within the company. We need our project management system. We like ClickUp. That's our go-to platform for project management where all of those tasks for the program, the onboarding, the new client welcome list, the keyword list, all of the things that need to be done are mapped in a project management system with who's responsible, when is it due by, so that you can keep track and make sure that none of the balls get dropped on the delivery side of the equation. We have to have great financial controls. You know, basic QuickBooks is great, right? We got all the financials, how much money came in, how much money went out. But we need to be looking at that and managing it on a consistent basis to ensure we're not just growing to $1 million, but we're going to $1 million with profitability, right? Who cares how much money the business generates generates if we're not keeping some of that money for ourselves. And then the operating system, right? As you get this team and this team is doing work within the business, if you really want autonomy, you need leaders to step up and you need leaders that can make decisions and move things forward. And so we use what's called EOS, the Entrepreneur Operating System, where we get that leadership team and then we've got level 10 meetings happening with our leadership team every single week. And then every single team like the SEO team, the PPC team, the account management team, the marketing team, they're meeting independently with the people on that group. And then we got quarterly and annual planning. So that's big picture, like the things you want to make sure you put in place as you scale to 7 figures, multiple 7 figures, and eventually 8 figures and beyond. A couple of keys. Number 1, ensure your model's built to scale. Right? And the whole first half of today's training was around the right model. One niche, one program built in advance. That model is built to scale. So make sure you've got a scalable model. Number 2, map out your accountability chart, your organizational chart. Figure out what those key functions are within the business. That way you know who's responsible for what. Number 3, find people that play at what you have to work at. And this was a really empowering concept for me because in our agency, I felt like, "Man, I know what— I know how to do this stuff. I know how to do the webinars and I know how to do the websites and I know how to, you know, build out the funnels." I can't let any of that stuff go. And some of it I don't really even like that much. Why would anyone want to do that particular role? Well, the reality is there are people that play and are passionate about and enjoy maybe some of the things that you don't like or the things that you'd like to not have to do. And it's very empowering to know that those people exist. And that's who you want to put in these roles. People that have a natural passion, a natural desire to do that type of work. Number 4 is develop your systems and your procedures in each of the different areas within the business. Number 5, we've got to recruit, train, and manage. As you grow and as you scale, your responsibility comes more about finding and placing the right talent within your agency. So, 4 key positions as you look to scale in the order that I find most agents agencies do. Number 1, operation management and delivery. So as you're growing, the first thing you need to not be doing is the building of the website, the doing of the SEO, the writing of the email campaigns. That needs to be somebody on the team that owns that responsibility. Number 2 is account managers, the people meeting with the client, the people answering the calls, the people engaging the relationship. You want to hire new account managers, usually 1 new account manager per 25 or so clients. Number 3, it's a personal assistant. If you're checking your emails, booking your travel, doing administrative type work, still setting up your email campaigns and stuff, that is a lower value per hour task than your, your worth, right? So make sure that you've got an assistant that can take that responsibility. And then number 4, finally, is we remove ourselves from sales and marketing. And I usually see agencies do this last because typically you're going to have a natural talent at sales, at business development. But once you find someone that can take sales calls that can close the deals and enroll the clients, you've got a business that can run without you. Clients are being sold. Once they're sold, they're being onboarded by somebody on the team. Once they're onboarded, there's account manager that is talking to the client on a monthly basis. And behind the scenes, the operations team is doing the websites, doing the SEO, doing the paid search. And you've got a leadership team that's innovating in each of those different areas within the business. And this is really where you want to go within your agency if you're going to get to 7 figures and you're going to remove yourself and have that freedom that you want. Beautiful example of this is Tony Ricketts from Lawnline Marketing. Runs an agency serving the landscaping industry. Grew from $20,000 in monthly recurring revenue. He already had the niche, landscaping, but he was heavy in project stuff. And he was so good at the websites and the SEO and the positioning, he wanted to do it all himself. We empowered him to say, "Hey, look, let's build a team. Let's scale this business." And he grew over $212,000 in monthly recurring revenue and is continuing to grow. And so in conclusion on this training today, to build a 7-figure agency, we've got to land clients, we've got to deliver world-class results, we've got to retain those clients at the highest level possible, and then we got to put the systems and the procedure in place so we don't have to do it all ourselves. The information in this free course genuinely has the power to help you scale your agency to $1 million per year. So I hope you went through this, took a bunch of notes, and started thinking about how you will implement. Now at the end of the course course, you've got two options. Number one is you go ahead and try and implement this all yourself. The problem with this approach is that you're most likely gonna waste a lot more money and time trying to figure out how that works. But if you choose that path, I wish you all the best. Now, the second option is that you get help from somebody that's done exactly what you're looking to do and can help guide you through the entire process. I know that if you're at the end of this video, you're serious about finally taking your agency to the next level. And to be honest, if you're not already on your way to 7 figures, you definitely need some help. That's why I want you to click the first link in the description and book a free agency acceleration session with us. On that call, there's no hard sell. We'll simply take a look at your business current situation and create a step-by-step game plan to help you scale to 7 figures. And if you're the right fit, we'll talk about how we can actually work with you to implement those strategies and get there even faster. Don't worry, if you're not the right fit, we'll still point puts you in the right direction. So again, click that first link in the description to schedule your free call. This is the exact first step that those other 137 agencies that we helped scale to 7 figures took, and it would be foolish to think that you can't be our next success story. So click the link, schedule your call, and we'll talk to you soon.