my agency failed until I did this (at $6m/yr now)

My digital marketing agency does over $6 million per year, but it wasn't always like this. At the start, it was just a small 2-person business. We were struggling to get high-paying clients. We weren't able to deliver results consistently, and I was working 80+ hours per week to keep things running. But since then, we were able to dramatically scale the agency and hit multiple 7 figures. We built a team of 60 full-time employees, and now with the support of an amazing leadership team, it only takes a couple of hours per week of my personal time to manage the entire company. Now, in this video, I want to go over the exact things that we implemented to achieve this transition step by step so you can do the same. All right, so let's get into it. The first thing that really made the difference that was able to help free me up and free the business up for accelerated growth. Number one is positioning. We really had no niche and we were a jack of all trades. We were working with restaurants, roofers, the local dentist, an eye doctor. We were just trying to get local clients that would potentially be interested in doing business with us. This only attracted shoppers and, and low quality clients, like the person that was referred from a friend of a friend, but didn't really look at us as an expert, didn't look at us as somebody that had proven results. And we realized if we wanted to scale, we had to become the best of the best in one niche. And so we made the scary decision to pick one service, one type of client, one industry. Our niche, plumbing and HVAC companies focused on SEO and digital marketing. Initially, we had to say no to people, and, and that was scary. But in the long term, it helped us so much because we were able to become the go-to expert in that one particular industry. We were able to attract clients that were looking to work with somebody with proven results in their type of business, and they were willing to pay a premium for that outcome. And most importantly, we were able to dial in our service delivery to deliver world-class results because we were working with the same niche month in and month out. We were able to understand the ins, the outs, and we were able to iterate and improve and become really, really good at delivering the outcomes that our clients expected from us. The second thing we had to really shift was authority. Choosing one niche wasn't enough. Like just saying we work with plumbing and HVAC companies wasn't going to cover it. We needed to convey that we were the absolute best. We do that through expert positioning. Here's what we did. First thing we did was we published our book, How to Triple Your Sales by Getting Your Internet Marketing Right for Plumbing and HVAC Companies. We started putting out consistent content, webinars every month, podcast interviews, and started to become known. And we got involved in the industry associations, events, and conferences that happen within the plumbing and HVAC space. Getting out there, putting up a booth, spending time in the after hours, looking for opportunities to speak at those events and add value. Most marketing agencies make the mistake of only focusing on running ads or making outbound calls, but they forget how important it is to position themselves as the expert so that they can convert more of the leads much easier. So number 3 was dialing in our service delivery. One of the main reasons agencies don't grow is because they have bad retention. That comes down to like primarily one main thing, and that's the ability to deliver results for your clients. An agency that delivers amazing results and creates a great experience can retain clients long term. But if you fail to do that, you're going to be kind of on this hamster wheel where you get a couple of clients, a couple of them churn out, months later you're back trying to replace the client that you lost and you might be working really hard, but you're not actually getting forward. And so in order to fix this, we had to obsess about results, really looking closely at the client's performance, figuring out what actually works to get them ranked, to get those calls, to get the book jobs, to generate a tangible, measurable return on investment. And it to do that, you have to innovate, you have to iterate, you have to say, here's what we think it's going to be, and then put it in play and really build those relationships with the clients and look at the data, look at the outcomes so that over time you can become world-class. You can provide results that are outsized versus the competition. And you do that by focusing on client results. Number 4 is really systems and hiring. You know, lastly, I had to remove myself from the business, right? My goal wasn't just to create a job for myself where I'm selling clients and I'm doing work. And I'm managing client relationships. The goal was to create that freedom and that autonomy so that we had a true business that could provide world-class results, that could attract great clients without me personally having to do it all myself. If your business depends upon you, you're never gonna scale. So here's what we did. Number one is we had to put some systems and some automations in place. And so we got really heavy on our client attraction automation, simplifying that process in terms of how we put out that content, how people schedule in, how they get reminded, how they get warmed up, and ultimately how they sign on the dotted line and become a client that's excited to do business with us. We noticed a lot of time and energy was going into the onboarding process. So we put as much automation as possible into how we collect the usernames, passwords, how we show the client appreciation and overcommunicate in the beginning, because that onboarding is time-consuming, but it's also make or break in terms of whether the clients are going to stick with us long-term. So we dialed in those systems. Number 2 is we had to get to the recruiting, hiring, and training aspect of the business. And the first thing we hired for was a project manager because at the beginning, in the early days, we would get a client and I would sell it. And then my business partner Dean would start to get to work designing the website and I would start working on the content and we kind of toggle between these different roles. We recognized that the first thing we had to remove ourselves was the doing of the work. And so we hired a project manager, kind of an operations person that could do some of the website stuff, do some of the SEO stuff, do some of the directory optimization, kind of moving down that track. The next thing we realized was that one operations manager couldn't actually do all the work. They needed to oversee the work and they needed to manage it. And so we started hiring for the specific roles like web development, content development, ongoing SEO, local SEO, right? Developing those area-specific roles so that we could deliver the results. As the organization grew, the next role was account management because I started to recognize if we wanted to retain the clients, we had to be meeting with the clients on a monthly basis and the automatic reporting wasn't going to cut it. That starts to become time-consuming if you are the person getting the requests, and you're the person that needs to be on top of the ball with every client. And so we started hiring account managers. I recognized for every 25 or so accounts, we needed a new account manager that could be that central point of contact with the client. From there, we needed some marketing support, right? If I was going to continue to grow the business and scale the business, I couldn't be the one setting up the funnels and sending the emails and doing all of the behind-the-scenes stuff. And so we got a marketing administrative support person that could take some of that burden off my shoulders. And then finally, we hired for, for the sales position. And Initially, that's the last thing the owner wants to remove themselves from because we're good at sales, right? We're good at that business development conversation. But we hired a great salesperson that took the sales function off my responsibility list. And it was, it was a crazy outcome because once you've hired for all of those key positions within the company and you've got a leadership team that's leading in those areas, your responsibility in the business just becomes the vision for the company and making sure the organization is moving forward. And it's truly autonomous in that the marketing is happening, sales calls are happening, and clients are signing on the dotted line. They're being taken over by account management that launches the client, and the operations team does the work and makes sure it's all fulfilled. And when you, you've got all those positions filled, truly you have a business as opposed to a job. And I think that's something we should all aspire to within our agency. You know, really the goal is to save as much of your time as possible so that the, the business can grow and deliver world-class results without you having to do more and more work. I think it's important to note, as you remove yourself from the organization, though, you do need to put a leadership team in place. Right. And so we use the process called EOS, the Entrepreneur's Operating System. That's really where I was able to take the hat off of being the team leader for all of these different areas within the business to being the true CEO and letting the director of account management, the director of sales, the director of operations, the director of web dev really be in charge of that function with the business, get hands-on and make those strategic decisions. When I was able to make that shift from feeling like I had to be management to letting that leadership team run, that's when the company really started to blossom and grow with less and less of my personal time and effort being invested into the business. After implementing these things, we scaled our agency to $6 million per year. And since then, we've helped over 130 agencies hit 7 figures by applying these same principles we learned for scaling our own agency. Like Austin, who went from being in debt to hitting $92,000 $100,000 a month in just 11 months. Or Tony, who scaled to over $200,000 MRR after working with us. So if you'd like our help and shortcut this whole process, then click the first link in the description to schedule a free agency acceleration session. In this call, we'll review your current situation, identify your biggest bottlenecks, create a customized scaling plan for your specific situation, and show you how we can help implement these systems with you. But I should warn you, we only work with agencies who are serious about scaling to 7 figures and are willing to put in the work. If that's you, click the link, book your session now. Thanks for watching. I'll see you on the next video.