How to Scale Your Digital Marketing Agency to 7 Figures in 12–24 Months (Proven Roadmap)

Welcome everybody to the 7-Figure Agency Roadmap Workshop. Really excited. We're gonna be talking about how you can grow and scale your digital marketing agency to the next level. Really, the goal would be to show you a plan that if followed can help you scale your agency to 7 figures or beyond over the next 12 to 24 months. So if that sounds good, just type good in the chat. If that's kind of like, hey, give me the plan, give me the model, I'll do the work, I'll follow the approach. If that sounds like a plan, okay, good. Lots of goods coming in. You guys are here. You're in the right place. I bring this number up, 176, and that represents 176 other agencies have come through this process, have followed the roadmap, and have grown to 7 figures and beyond. And this isn't just, you know, me that has grown to 7 figures. It's not just maybe some hypothetical thing that may potentially work in some abstract universe. No, I've got 176 legitimate examples. Type that into the chat if that tracks for you. It's okay. You're like, this is based on not one or two case studies, but real proven results. And I've got deep dive interviews with all of these people. If you ever want to go deep and really understand what niche they chose, why they chose that niche, how they're marketing themselves, how they've implemented the model. Jimmy typed in 176. Perfect. And over the years, some of the agencies have grown and sold. Like, for example, Jim Malin chose the roofing niche. Grew his agency to about $5 million per year and has recently sold, exited over the last year or so. Others are continuing to grow to 7 figures, multiple 7 figures in a variety of niches from home services to legal to medical and everywhere in between. So is it okay with you guys if, as we go through this, I share some of those examples and case studies? So it's not just me talking, but it's here's some examples of agencies that have actually done this. Just give me a yes if you're okay with that. Okay, Gail says yes. Alex, John says that would be great. Yep. Okay, fantastic. Cool. We did put together a really cool workbook for you guys on this. This is a, actually a full-day workshop. I'm going to give you guys the 80/20 of this on today's session. If you want that full-day workshop workbook, all you have to do is type workbook into the chat. That will let our team know to grab you the link for it. So just try Workbook, whether you're watching this live or maybe you happen to be watching this after the fact. If you type workbook, you'll get the full 176-page workbook that goes along. All right. Fantastic, guys. If somebody dropped the link into the chat for those that are on live with us, that way they can grab the link. It should be 7figureagency.com/workbook. Should get you direct access to that. Okay, so if the goal is to get to 7 figures over the next 12 to 24 months, We know that you're in one of these stages, and you're going to have to move through these stages as you grow and as you scale. From startup, like we're less than $10,000 a month of recurring revenue, to stability, between $10,000 and $30,000 a month of recurring, to scale, $40,000 to $70,000 a month of recurring, all the way to significance. We're doing over $83,000 or more on a monthly retainer-based service. And what I found is the decisions you have to make the things you have to put in place actually change as you move through these stages. And so I'd love it if you could just identify for yourself, where are you right now? Are you in that startup phase? You can just type 1. Are you in stability? 2. Are you in scale? 3. Are you already at 7 figures or beyond? 4. This also helps give me an idea where you guys sit. A lot of you guys, it looks like in the startup phase. Fantastic. That's great, right? It's a really exciting place to be because you've got nothing but opportunity ahead of you. A couple of you guys in that stability phase, that $10,000 to $30,000 a month phase. That's where you've got some clients, you've got some revenue, but you're probably doing most of it yourself. And so you've got to figure out like, how do I continue to grow the business and create some freedom for myself? Awesome. I see maybe a couple of you in that scale phase, $40,000 to $70,000. And that's really where you've got to get better at putting the systems in place. Getting the right team in place so that you can continue to accelerate beyond 7 figures. Mike's just getting started in that sort of phase. And I'll say we call it significance at 7 figures, not just because there's more money, but ideally we want to build the business in a way where, yes, there's the money to do the things we want to do, but we've also put the systems in place where we have the freedom and the flexibility to live the life that we want to live. And we're not working 40 to 60 hours a week just to get the work Done. All right, so I think a lot of you guys already identified where you're at in that stage. I guess my next question for you is, what stage would you like to see yourself at by the end of this next 12 months? So let's say like this year's already— we're already almost in the fourth quarter, but if you could project forward to the end of 2026, where do you want to be? Do you want to be at 7 figures? Do Do you want to be at multiple 7 figures? You know, what's the stage in this hierarchy you envision yourself at? Gail, significance. Shelley wants to get to scale. Alex wants to get to the, that scale phase. Okay, good. Yeah. Just the more clear you are and where you're trying to go, the better actions you're going to take, right? The better actions you take, the better outcomes that you're going to get. Thomas going to 7 figures and beyond. Fantastic. All right, guys, thanks for engaging with me into the chat. I really appreciate it. Real briefly, I'll tell you our story, and I'm not going to make this long-winded, but my wife and I, Yesenia, started our first agency right out of high school back in— I'm not going to say the exact year because I'll probably get confused and say the dates wrong. Out of high school, we started our first agency. It was a web design and hosting company, and I thought, man, this is going to be easy, right? Everybody needs a website. Everybody needs this stuff. And I beat my head against the wall for the better part of 2 years. Didn't know what I was selling, didn't know how to sell it. Figured, hey, I need some help. So I joined a franchise service called AIS Media that was supposed to do the website stuff for me. It was going to tell me exactly how everything worked. I didn't have the money for that. I grew up in a missionary family. I literally spent the first 9 years of my life in Haiti, the island of Haiti in the Caribbean. My dad's a missionary. I've got 3 older sisters. And so there wasn't a lot of money, but I told my dad, hey, really, I want to run a business. And I think this web design, web industry is going to be really powerful. And he, he lent me $10,000, which was almost like $100,000 at the time based on my dad's income. And so it was really important to me that I make this work, not just for myself, but to repay my dad. And I tried as hard as I could. And I talk about these stages. I was down here at stage 1 for 2 and a half years, less than $10,000 a month. I was sitting in BNI meetings. I was doing cold calling. I was going door to door trying to sell companies. And I was trying to sell anybody. I remember I had the opportunity to meet with a furniture store company. And I was like, oh, man, this is going to be great. They're going to sign up, and we're going to make all this money. And I didn't know what I was doing. I just like, why would I think I would be equipped to help this furniture company accomplish anything. Anyways, I did start to figure out how to sell these services, and I wound up selling like 5 or 6 websites in a given month. But my model was totally broken. I was charging $1,000 to $2,000 one-time fee, and then I was charging a hosting fee of like $10 or $15 a month after that. And literally, after 2 years of chasing my tail, generating just enough revenue to cover the cost of the business, not able to pay myself or Yesenia or anybody else involved in the company. I had to shut it down and I had to go to my dad and tell him, hey, look, I'm really sorry. I know that we had big hopes and big dreams for this thing, but it just didn't work. I'm gonna have to get a job. And so I was there, like, and I was stuck under that $10,000 a month range for way too long, and After that, I went into corporate America. I worked at ADP, I worked at Data Impact, I worked at a couple B2B type jobs, but I was always a student of the game. And so I'm a big Audible listener. I don't know, let me know if you like to listen to audiobooks or if you like to read. Just let me know that into the chat. Are you a reader or a listener? I personally am a big-time Audible person, so I like, literally, I listen to Rich Dad Poor Dad, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, anything I could get my hands on from wealth and business development and financial success. And I realized ultimately, if I'm going to be successful in life, if I'm going to have personal wealth and affluence, I've got to figure this business thing out. And T. Harv Eker says in The Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, if you've struggled in business in the past, the best thing you can do is go get a job in the type of business you think you want to run and cut your teeth and try and— maybe you'll learn something different. Maybe you'll find a niche. For yourself. And so I decided, all right, I'm going to do that. I'm going to get a job. We'll take a little bit of an income reduction. And I got a job at ReachLocal, big pay-per-click management company. I think they were doing like $500 million a year at the time. And I got a job there. And I was selling digital marketing services. And my mind was completely changed in terms of how to package these services, how much to charge for these services, what the ideal market is for these services. And that's really what I'm going to be sharing with you, what we learned. But after about 2 years, maybe a little bit less there, I was like, okay, I'm ready to do this on my own. I'm ready to give this another shot. And we launched our business, Click Incorporated, back in 2011. Grew to 7 figures in the first 2 years. Has now grown to over $525,000 in monthly recurring revenue. We did over $7 million last year. And— That was life-changing for me. If you think about from not even being able to break $10K to over $500,000 a month of recurring revenue, the ability to take care of the family, to do things with the kids, to repay my dad multiple times over, which a lot of people always ask when I tell that story about my dad lending me the money. And I started getting other agencies asking, hey, what did you do different? Like, how did you make that happen? What are the things that, you know, that you did that helped you get there? And that's when 7 Figure Agency was born. It was born as a course. And over the years, we've been able to help hundreds of agencies follow this path, implement these outcomes, and get the results. And our mission as an organization is to help 500 agencies go to 7 figures and beyond over the next 5 years. And I truly believe that if you're on today's session, you're going to be part of that mission. And we're going to help you make more money, have more freedom, and have a bigger impact in your life and in your business. And so let's get into the model and those very specific things that I changed from my first agency where I couldn't get out of the startup phase to the agency we run today that does over $7 million per year. And I wanna preface this by saying I recognize AI has changed the way we think about the agency space. Just type AI if you're like conscious of AI, you're concerned about AI, you're thinking, oh man, is this going to disrupt this entire business altogether? Yeah, I see Milan and Amy and John. 100% AI is changing the game. But what's really cool is if we embrace the technology like Shelley just said, we can all be excited about it, right? Because we can generate better, quicker, more efficient results for our clients. And what I'm finding is The model is tweaked a little bit, but the principles of how we market ourselves, how we land clients, how we retain clients are the same. And so that's what this model is. The business you want to build— and correct me if I'm wrong, but type yes if you agree— we want to build a business that provides the money to pay the bills, to live our desired lifestyle, to have the nice house, to take care of the family. But we also want to have the freedom where we don't have to be the one doing all of the work, right? We want to create freedom in that, hey, look, we own a business and we've got a team, we've got systems, and we can take the travels, we can do the things that we really want to do. A lot of you guys saying yes. And impact, right? None of us want to feel like we're just here on a cash grab. We want to know that what we're doing is impacting our clients, that they're winning because they hired us, and that we're developing a team that's growing and having things done. Mike says, absolutely, I feel overwhelmed by doing everything myself. And that's a conscious decision that's rooted in your model. So if you make some of the adjustments to the model, you can absolutely in the long term have continued sustained growth without being overwhelmed personally. And so in order to do that, we've got to do a couple of things, right? We've got to land clients. We've got to have a process in place to get new clients coming in on a consistent basis. We've got to deliver world-class results in a systematized way. So we're not physically doing it all ourselves. And we've got to retain the clients that we have long-term, right? If we can't retain the clients, we're going to be taking one step forward and one step back, and it will never continue to accelerate. And ultimately we've got to scale, right? We've put the systems, the procedure, and the team in place so we don't have to do it all ourselves. When you think about these 4 key pillars, the 4 key things we have to get done, what's the biggest challenge for you right now? What is it that you need to focus on most? Is it landing clients? Is it the way you're delivering your results and actually knocking it out of the park for your clients? Is it the way that you're retaining? Maybe there's a retention issue. Or is it the systems and the scale? Type one of the 4 into the chat for me. All right, George says landing clients. Shelly says delivering results. Gail says systems, landing clients, systems. So it's a mix and it's going to be different for all of us. But what I found that's interesting, obviously in startup, usually it's, man, I gotta land clients. In scale, it's I've got to figure out how to deliver the results in a streamlined way, and I've got to build that team. But regardless of if you're at 6 figures or 7 figures or multiple 7 figures, you're always going to be refining, fine-tuning, and improving in each of these different areas. Yeah, so Mario says 1, 2, and 3, right? Gotta get all of that stuff working within my business. So let's get into the model and the very specific things that, that we changed in our agency that made all the difference and really helped us move things forward. So let's get super clear. What is a 7-figure agency? Like, what, what, what is the number? What is the outcome that has to happen in order to be able to call yourself a 7-figure agency. If you've got $83,000 in monthly recurring revenue and you multiply that by 12 months, that's $1 million per year. So just put a dollar sign in the chat if that makes sense. We're not like looking to get $1 million in one payment. We're looking at what's the fastest way to get to $83,000 in monthly recurring revenue. Yep, dollar signs coming in. Appreciate you guys engaging with me. And so when we do the money math, like reverse engineer, okay, how do we get to that $83,000 a month level? There's a couple different ways you could stack it. You could have 100 clients, or 830 clients pay you $100 per month. And that's what my first model was. It was like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna sell the website on the front end, and I'm gonna get this hosting fee, and I'm gonna get enough of those clients, and it's eventually gonna snowball. And that is a very hard approach. You could have 166 clients that pay you $500 per month. You could have 83 clients paying you $1,000 per month. That feels a little bit more manageable. You could have 8 or 9 clients paying you $10K a month, or you could have one client that pays you $83,000 per month. That's the money math. I think there's a sweet spot in the market with whatever vertical you might choose to focus on where there's a, an abundance of companies, abundance of potential clients that will happily pay between $1,000 and $3,000 per month into perpetuity. If you get them good results, you create a great experience, you can retain clients at that level long term. Now, absolutely, there's an opportunity at $10K, even at $83,000 a month of recurring revenue. It's a little bit harder. You have a lot, a little bit more experience and expertise to charge at those higher levels, and you're also going to be under the radar a little bit more, right? Something about a $3,000 a month payment versus a $10,000 a month payment gets treated differently. And so I think if you can get yourself to a place where you confidently charge $3,000 per month, you only need 28 clients. 28 clients times $3,000 a month puts you on a run rate of 7 figures per year. So I want you to let that sink in, because if we take an abstract concept like, I want to build a 7-figure agency, and we make it super concrete and super simple to wrap our head around— if we can get 33 clients at $2,500 per month and you can retain those clients, that will put you at a 7-figure agency level. So the question is, can you land and retain 33 clients? I want a yes yes or no into the chat. Yes. Alex says no. Okay. Fair enough. You might want to just drop off the call or maybe charge less and get more clients. Thomas says yes. Maybe, says Amy. Yes, with our help. Then Jimmy, that's right. I love that. Absolutely. Not right now. Absolutely, says Will. Okay. Thanks for engaging, guys. I appreciate it. So what's the fastest way to get to that 33 clients at $2,500 in a month. There's a concept called the rule of once, and this is just based on what I've seen work in my agency, what I've seen work in literally the 176 other agencies that have come through this process and gone to 7 figures. If you can focus on one area in each of these different components in your business, you're going to have the fastest, smoothest path to that level. Number 1 is one target market, right? Don't try and serve all people. You want to serve a very specific market. In my case, we went from being a generalist trying to serve everybody to we work with plumbing and HVAC companies. That's our one market. From there, we want one lead generation process. A million, a million different ways to land clients: cold outreach, Facebook ads, Google ads, industry associations, and eventually you need to do it all, right? I think a combined approach works best, but we find the agencies that grow fastest are the ones that get one process really dialed in, really consistent, really generating results, and you continue just to focus on that primary mechanism to get appointments. One conversion mechanism, which is how we sell the clients, how we get the clients to say yes. One program, right? Rather than trying to be à la carte and trying to say, hey, let me know what you need and I'll customize it for you. Develop a growth program for your industry, design it in advance, and go to market with that program that's $2,500 or $3,000 or $5,000 per month and build that program, engineer it in advance, sell that. You can have an upsell, you can have a drop sell, but you don't want to be à la carting or customizing. You want one core program And then sticking point for a lot of us, because we all have shiny object syndrome, is to stick with it for a year. One niche, one program, one conversion mechanism for a full year until we get to 7 figures or beyond. So that's the rule of ones. Just type one in the chat if that's clear. This is the fastest way. If you add any additional complexity to any of this, you multiply the amount of time it's going to take to get to where you're trying to go. Appreciate all the ones coming in. Cliff notes here on the model. Like, literally speaking, if you can stick to these basics, you're going to set yourself up for success. One target market, right? Whether that's plumbing companies, roofing companies, HVAC contractors, dentists, chiropractors, whatever it is for you, choose that one market and focus on it. And I'd love for you to drop into the chat. Let me know what your niche is, or if you had to choose a niche right now, what that niche would be. Drop it, drop it into the chat. Churches, plumbers, real estate agents, auto repair shops, construction, lawyers, to be determined, MMA gyms, home care. Love it. Actually, most of these, we have agencies that have gone to 7 figures in almost all of the verticals you guys just mentioned in the chat. So one market, like, to the extent you can be clear who's— here's who I'm going to serve. You can start to put together marketing. You can start to put together positioning that positions yourself as the expert, and you can simplify the delivery. From there, we're going to sell a recurring-based program only, not a custom website design, not a development project. But hey, look, this is the growth program. It is $2,500 per month or whatever the number is. And this is what you're going to get. Recurring is the only way to go. When I worked at, in my first agency that I couldn't get off the ground, I was trying to sell a web design project, and then I was trying to sell hosting, and then if they needed something else, I was going to à la carte that. When I worked at ReachLocal, there was one program, there was one thing I could sell. It was recurring Google Ads services, and there was no one-time payment option. It was just everything was going straight to recurring. And so you're going to sell which you have the ability to sell. And so recurring only. Just type recurring if you can do that. Like, just decide, I'm going to sell a growth program, and every month it's going to recur until they cancel. All right, the recurring's coming in. All right, no one-off projects, no check payments. They're going to give you a credit card form, or they're going to give you ACH, and it's going to go until they cancel. This is how you get snowballed recurring revenue growth, and you're not like feast and famine, money coming in, money going out. And then the final key here is the monthly fee needs to be at least $1,000 per month. I go as high as you're comfortable, go as high as you're confident, but it needs to be at least $1,000 per month. If you just do this, you just say, hey, from now on I'm going to focus on this one industry, I'm going to sell this program that's whatever it is, $2,500 per month, I'm going to get them on ACH payment, and that's all I'm going to do, that's all I'm going to focus on until I get to 7 figures. You've got a bulletproof plan. A great example of this, and this was one of our early examples here in, as I was teaching the model and teaching it to agencies, is Allen Hillsborough. Allen Hillsborough was a generalist agency. He was working with a variety of different markets. He was customizing programs and he was stuck, like literally stuck at like that $10,000 a month range. Couple months he'd get a little above, couple months he'd be below. And he really latched on this concept. Okay, choose a niche. He chose funeral homes. Develop a program, at least $1,000 per month. Website, SEO, some paid search. That's what he went with. And he, over the next 24 months, grew his agency to multiple 7 figures serving the funeral home space. If you want, there's a great video explaining his entire journey. I'm not going to play it. On today's session, but this works, right? This model— again, if you look at the 176 agencies that we've worked with, almost without any exception, that's what they did, right? They did that fundamental approach. And so here's a quick check-in with you guys. What are you changing the model? Just if there's one thing you could switch right now, what would it be? Drop it in the chat. Maybe it's you need to choose a niche. Maybe you need to raise that monthly fee. Maybe you need to go all in on recurring. Let me know what it is for you before we go to the next. Raise fees. Bobby says, I need to put together a funnel, attract more clients. Amy says, I need to stop saying yes to everything. Thomas says, I need a retainer growth plan instead of biweekly. Shopping list. Yeah, exactly. I need to get customers, says Jay. I need to raise my fees. Perfect. All right. So again, I don't want to just talk at you. I want you guys to be thinking. I want you guys to be adjusting. I want you to be like making some decisions that are going to help you move things forward to get to 7 figures, right? Assuming we've got that model, we're committed to that model. We've got to do a couple of things. We've got to land clients, right? We've got to deliver world-class results. We've got to retain those clients. And then we've got to scale. In order to land clients, there's a couple of things we have to do. Number one is we've got to fill the funnel, right? So let's just say we're working with real estate agents. A couple of you guys mentioned real estate. How do we get out in front of real estate agents that are looking to generate more listings? And how do we fill the funnel and get them to raise their hand and express some level of interest? That's the first thing we have to solve for. From there, we also want to develop authority, right? Because A lot of agencies, and this was my issue as well, default to like cold outreach or referral-based business. I'm going to, I'm going to send emails, I'm going to slide into DMs, I'm going to go to network events, and I'm going to get referred. Type me if that's kind of like what your predominant play is today. Relying on referrals. That's where I hear most agencies. Oh, it all comes from word of mouth. Or cold outreach, right? A lot of you guys saying that's you. So we need to fill the funnel and then we have to build authority. The difference between accelerated growth and stagnation is you start to position yourself as the expert in that particular industry. And when you're the authority, when you are the expert, clients start to come to you pre-positioned to buy. And in that example of the real estate agencies, like we could publish a book on how to market your real estate agency to get more listings. We could join the local REIA Association, Real Estate Broker Association, and speak at their events and at their conferences. We could document case studies. But the bottom line is we have to figure out how we're going to build our authority, and then we've got to dial in our sales process, right? If we're going to sell that $2,500, $3,000, $5,000 a month retainer-based service, we've got to have a great process to take a prospect from interested to yes, from, hey, this sounds good, to yeah, here's a credit card authorization for $2,500 per month. And so having that process where we know the questions to ask, we know how to bridge the gap and show them where there's missing components to their marketing strategy today and how to ask for the business— when you get that dialed in, you're going to have the money, right? You're going to have the money that you need to have the accelerated growth, to hire the team, to do everything else. But if we can't sell By doing these 3 things, we're never going to get off the first block. And so I just want you to rate yourself right now on a red, yellow, green. What's the biggest problem for you right now? Is that you're not an authority? Is that you don't have enough people like raising their hand, expressing interest? Is that you don't have a good sales process where you can confidently convert 30% or more of your deals? Just type into the chat for me, which one is the biggest gap for you right now when it comes to landing clients? Not enough leads, says Bobby. Will, not filling the funnel. Milan says all three. And we said, I gotta build up the authority. Excellent. We'll talk a little bit about this because I think for most of us, this is the big area we need to focus on since most of you guys are in that startup, scale, stability phase in the agency. Mario, selecting the niche. Exactly. There's no way you can fill the funnel or build authority if you don't have a niche, because trying to be a generalist agency that is looked at as the authority is very hard. So that's the model is the predecessor to all of this stuff. All right. So number 2 is we've got to deliver results and we want to do the results in a systematized way. And so step 1 is we have to choose our model, right? Which is exactly what I shared prior. Choose the niche. Decide we're going to charge a monthly recurring fee, put together a growth program that we've engineered in advance with the right mix of services. We've got to choose that model. Now, number 2 is we have to systematize, right? There's no way you're going to deliver great consistent results if you haven't systematized the approach. The other really important thing when it comes to the systematized piece of the equation If one of your goals is to create freedom where you've got the ability to take a week off and spend time with your family or to be present at your kids' games or like whatever it is that's for you that you really want that freedom for. If you haven't systematized it, there's no way you can hand it off and you're going to have to be either doing it yourself or closely micromanaging the team that does the work in order to get the outcomes for your clients. So we have to systematize. And the number 3 is we have to build the team, right? If we want to go to 7 figures, multiple 7 figures, you have to be a CEO. You can't be the one doing the work. You've got to build the team that does the website builder, does the content development, or does the SEO. You got to build the team that engages with the client and retains the relationship. Then you're going to build the team that does the sales and marketing so that you can truly run the business as opposed to be the business. Ideally, over time, you're not doing any of the work. And so you've systematized the model in that way. And when you do it right, that's where the freedom comes from, where you have a business that can operate without you. When it comes to those three, what's the biggest opportunity? What's the missing component? Is it the model still not right? Hopefully you can commit to the model we talked about. Is it you don't have systems and procedures? You're like, it's here in your head, or you're inventing it for every client on the, on the fly. Or it's that you don't have the team. Like maybe you got a VA or two, which you don't really have a true team that can take the ball and run with it on your behalf. Bobby says systems and team. Alex says team. John Rice says team. Absolutely. And so I just want to encourage you on this front because a lot of you guys are in the startup struggle scale phase within your agency. And a couple of you mentioned, I feel overwhelmed as it is, so I can't even imagine how overwhelmed I would be when we go to 7 figures, we've got hundreds of clients. You truly can have an agency that operates without you. Again, my agency right now is doing about $7 million per year, and I invest— candidly, I invest probably about 4 hours per week in that agency personally. And that's because we've got a great model, we've got systems, and there's an amazing team. And it's not just a bunch of workers. We've got a leadership team in place that there's somebody focused on client development. There's somebody focused on delivery. There's somebody focused on account management, and there's a leadership team. That's their job. That's their function within the company. And so I'm able to come in as the leader in the business and be on our level 10 meetings and have those conversations and look at the core metrics. But I don't personally have to get in and get into the weeds. Type aspiration if that's like something you aspire to. If you could have a business doing millions of dollars per year, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal income, and you didn't personally have to be involved outside of things you actually want to do. All right, cool. Yeah, it starts with the thought, right? It starts with recognizing, I want to grow a 7-figure business. I want to create income without personally having to work my butt off. And then it's, okay, how do we engineer that? How do we create that? This is the approach. Okay. Number 3 is we have to retain long term, right? I think a lot of agencies, like, we get really— maybe like we focus on the landing of the clients and doing the work, but we don't, we don't realize that just because you got the client and you delivered amazing result doesn't mean they're going to stick with you long term. And there's a couple things that you really want to focus on to maximize client retention. Number 1 is your onboarding. You want to craft a world-class onboarding experience where when that client signs up and they've given you that credit card authorization form, you hit the ground running. The what you do in the first week with that client, what— like how you engage with them, what they receive, the expectations that are set will dictate whether they're with you 12 to 24 months down the track. So the very specific things we can do to create a world-class experience out of the gates. Number 2 is we have to get a great client communication rhythm in place. We can't just— I'll wait until the client says they want to meet, or turn on like some type of automatic monthly report that goes out from Agency Analytics or something and be like, hey, that's gonna, that's gonna cut it, and hopefully I'll retain those clients. No, like, we have to have a great rhythm where we're meeting with the client on a consistent frequency, we're showing them the results, We're engaging with them in the process, and we're casting the vision where things are headed next. And then number 3 is we have to develop our account management systems, right? So ideally, in order to retain, you need to meet with the clients, you need to have great onboarding, but you don't want to do that. And so you have to get good at how do we hire, train, onboard great account managers that can interface with the client, that can set those expectations, that can move things forward in the business relationship. And that's really where scaled growth comes from. And what I believe is once you're retaining clients, I think in my mind, 97% or higher monthly retention is really strong client retention. That's when you know you're having a big impact because you're getting clients, they're sticking with you long term because they're winning, because they're getting results. You're building your team, you're building your processes. And so you're having an impact on the clients that you serve. You're having an impact on the team that you hire and that you train up and you create career opportunities for. So when it comes to client retention, what's the biggest gap right now for you? Let me know. Is it the onboarding? Is it the communication rhythm? Or is it that account management success process or the AM team that you need to focus on? Will says onboarding, communication. Says Shelly. Jimmy says all of it. Excellent, excellent. And then we've got to scale, right? And scaling is about our operational team rituals. It's about our hiring process. It's about putting the systems, the procedures, and the playbooks in place so that you can deliver at a world-class level without personally having to do it all yourself. And so when it comes to filling the funnel, when it comes to landing clients on a consistent basis, when it comes to getting the deal flow that we need, I think that's where most of you guys are focused right now. There's a lot of things you can do. I believe that this growth system is the clearest, most concise thing that you can implement. And so the growth system is born out of how we grew Plumbing and HVAC SEO. And what we've seen our most successful agencies do that get to 7 figures and multiple 7 figures. And it's a breakdown of the things you want to do daily, the things you need to do monthly, and the things you need to do quarterly in order to fill the funnel. And so daily, on a daily basis, you should be doing some type of cold outreach, right? Reaching out to brand new prospects, making introductions. And you can do that via email, you can do that via DM, you can do that via direct mail, but we're really literally checking in, reaching out, introducing ourselves to new prospects every single day. We should also be running ads, right? It becomes easier to run ads, obviously, when you're in a niche, right? A generalist agency trying to market to a local market, nobody's interested. But when you say, I specialize in helping plumbing companies generate more booked jobs by dialing in their internet marketing, And I'm out in front on Google Ads for those plumbers that are looking. I'm out in front on Facebook showing case studies, showing examples, offering valuable content and become attractive. I can get people to raise their hand. I can get people to opt in. And so on a daily basis, we want to be running Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and retargeting ads to the exact prospects that we want to connect with. I think on a daily basis, we want to be creating new valuable added content. And so that's short-form content, it's new information being loaded up and being discovered on social media— Facebook, Instagram, TikTok— the places where your prospects are hanging out. So that's daily. Monthly, two things. If you can just do these two things every single month, you'll position yourself as an expert, you'll be able to fill your funnel on a pretty consistent basis, you'll force yourself to create new valuable added content. And so those two things are once a month, show up and do an informational educational webinar like this right here. We are once a month. I'm giving you information on how to scale your agency to seven figures in plumbing and HVAC SEO. Every month I show up and do a webinar and it could be on how to get your plumbing website ranked for the most important keywords. How to leverage paid ads to generate more deal flow for your plumbing HVAC company. Could be, you know, how to leverage marketing automation to convert more of the leads that you generate into booked jobs. But you're not showing up and doing a sales pitch. You're showing up and you're giving education to your specific market in a way that makes them like, like, wow, I got great information here. And if I want more, seems like these guys would be a good company to hire for that particular service. Type webinar if you feel like you could do one webinar per month for your niche. All right, powerful. And there's a lot to it, right? And the way you promote the webinar, the way you show up for the webinar, the way you follow up after the webinar. But what's great about the monthly webinar is it's a fixed date and time, so it gives you a reason to message your database and invite them to something. It creates content because you do the webinar for, let's say, 45 minutes Afterwards, you can take the recording and load it up on YouTube. You can take the audio and put it up as a podcast. You can have it transcribed and load it up on your website. You can take that 45-minute webinar and slice it into small micro videos that go up on social media. But it's really one anchor piece of content that can drive your entire content machine. Now, that was one thing I want you to do every month. The other thing I want you to do every single month is a podcast. And I know that maybe that sounds complicated, but when I say podcast, I mean show up on either Zoom or Riverside or whatever platform that you like and interview somebody within your niche about how they're marketing themselves and how they're growing their business. We've done this for decades at Plumbing HVAC SEO, and so it literally started on Zoom. I would invite one of our clients or I would invite somebody doing well in the plumbing space and I just ask them the questions. Hey, tell me about your company. How many trucks do you have? How are you marketing yourself today? What's working best? What have you tried in the past that didn't work? What are some insights you would share with other plumbing HVAC companies that are looking to grow? Super easy to create, but also extremely interesting, extremely value-added to the industry. And you can use a podcast in a lot of ways. You can use it to create case studies. You can use it to actually connect with prospects that you might not have been able to connect with because, hey, Hey, I'm not trying to sell you. I just want to have you on my podcast so I can get to know you and I can share your story with the industry. And it gives you something to send out that positions you as an expert. It gets clients to come to you pre-positioned to buy. Type podcast here if you think you could do like one interview per month with somebody in your space, somebody in your niche. All right, I see podcast coming in. Fantastic. All right. Quarterly, right? There's a couple things we want to do every single quarter. Number one is get out to an industry event or conference. Like, in your niche, there's continuing education that's happening. They're coming together for industry conferences, for continuing education. And while we all love to stay behind our computers in Zoom land, there's live interaction that's happening. And so we want to, at least once a quarter, get out of our office and get out into where our prospects are congregating and have a booth or look for opportunities to speak. But when you get live and in person, that's where you start to see joint venture opportunities. That's where you start to get belly to belly with prospects. That's where you maybe you see your clients and they introduce you to other people. This is a key strategy in order to get continued growth. And then the other thing you want to do at least once a quarter is create a client case study. Right? Because with our content, with our webinars, with our podcast, typically we're sharing insights, we're sharing information, we're sharing like what we think works. When we create case studies once a quarter, we validate that it actually works. And a case study is simple as saying, hey, here's the client that I work with, here's where they were when we started, and here's where they're at today. Here's the results they're getting. And then if you can show a little bit in the middle, like and here's what we did, right? Here's what we did with their website, or we did with their paid search, or here's what we did with their marketing automation. Here's what we put in place, and here's the results that we're getting. That's when you become bulletproof, right? Because not only are you a thought leader, but you're also backing it up with case studies. Just type case studies, plural, if you can commit to— let's build at least one deep client case study every single quarter. Awesome. And you can use the case study in so many ways. Like, obviously it goes on your website, but that case study in and of itself should be emailed out. It should be put up on your social profiles. You can advertise it like, hey, discover how this company got this result, and you use it as a lead magnet to get clients to come to you pre-positioned to buy. It's a simple set of things done in a very specific frequency, but when you do this you start to become known in the industry. You start to become prolific. Prospects start to come to you pre-positioned to buy. The joint ventures that are already doing business with your clients start to say, hey, it seems like you've got this dialed in. Can you come speak to my group? Or can I introduce you to my client base? And it really creates a vicious cycle of opportunity and revenue growth. The KPI we're shooting for with the Growth System, with those activities, is 15 strategy sessions per month. I just want you to type that in. 15 strategy sessions per month. Just the number 15, because we found that's the magic sweet spot, right? If we can get 15 sales appointments every single month and we can convert 30, 35% of those from appointment to sale, and we're charging $1,500 to $3,000 per month, You do that math again, we need how many clients at $2,500 a month to get to 7 figures? I think it's like 33. And so that's the KPI, and you want to track against that, you want to measure against that. And if you do these activities, there's no reason you can't get a consistent 15 or more strategy sessions every single month. Yeah, bonus points for Mario, he wrote 33, which is the correct number. Okay, so that's how we fill the funnel. Right. That's how we build the authority. We also have to convert those opportunities into yes. And there's two key things we want to put in place. Number one is an appointment funnel, right? Just an easy way so somebody can schedule a time on your calendar. They can get the reminders and ideally get warmed up, right? So if they— whatever they saw, they got interested in your services, then they scheduled. We want them to see some case studies. We want them to understand our philosophy. So that they don't just show up to the appointment, but they show up leaning in. They show up pre-positioned to buy. And then we want to have a great orchestrated sales process where it's not just a pitch deck, but we're really having a consultative conversation that can take the prospect from, I'm interested in what you have to, wow, I see that you're the answer to get to where I'm looking to go and I'm ready to rock and roll. Here's my credit card or my ACH form. That way we can hit the ground running. The KPI we're looking for with our conversion process is 30%. At least 30%. We want to get our sales process dialed in enough that we can convert 30% or more of our appointments into sales. And then we've got to deliver and retain, right? We can't just get the clients and go focus on the next, right? We have to make sure we got an amazing world-class onboarding. We've got a great communication rhythm where we're checking in with the client at least once a month and having a real conversation, real buy-in, really showing them the value. and we start to develop that account management team, that account management infrastructure. And the KPI here on the retain side is 97%, right? Churn less than 3% every single month. If you could hit these KPIs, that's the path, right? It's one thing to say, I need 33 clients at $2,500 a month. It's another thing to say, what's the activity required? What we're trying to do is simplify that as clear as possible for you. And again, when I started off today, I said the goal was to show you a plan that, if followed, can help you get to 7 figures over the next 12 to 24 months. That's the plan. That's the approach. That's the model. Do you have any questions on this stuff? I see it. It says the trifecta. That's right. Will says, thank you, Josh. Fantastic. Outstanding. Perfect. A really great example of this in the real world is Austin Hauser. Austin runs an agency working with painting contractors, but before this he had a general estate agency and he just couldn't get any momentum. He was a good salesperson. He's really good at web design and hosting, but he just couldn't get any momentum in the business. He latched on to the niche, obviously. All right, I'm going to sell to painting contractors. I'm going to sell a program that's at least $2,000 per month, and let's see what happens. He went to work and he implemented the growth system, like literally every one of these things— running Facebook ads, running Google ads, consistent with the webinar, consistent with the podcast, consistent at being at the industry events and conferences. And we're now— he's a published author and he's speaking at those events. Fast forward, grew his agency to $92,000 a month of recurring revenue in the first 12 months, and now he's over $250,000 in that same niche. So this model works. This approach actually generates fruit in the real world. And so that was the promise. That's the model. We'd love to help you implement this. What's really cool— some of you guys said this is good content, I really enjoyed it. This is what we do, right? We have step-by-step, like, literal swipe and deploys for every single part of the growth system to help you implement this, to help you get this into the world quickly.