Q3 Agency Growth Planning Session

All right. Well, hello and welcome. I am super excited about today's session. We're going to be doing a planning session. We're going to be planning out your Q3 agency growth plan. Right. And you're on this session. And I just want to say shout out to you. Kudos to you for taking the time out of your schedule to, to plug into a session like this, because this is— it's not the sexiest thing, right? There's all kinds of cool shiny objects, but to stop and think, okay, what's my goal? What's the plan going to be to accomplish that goal? Um, takes discipline. And really, I find that that discipline, that work of consistently stopping, setting goals, mapping out a plan, holding yourself accountable, uh, really is the difference between success and failure for most agencies. So kudos to you, kind of pat yourself on the back. For taking a couple of minutes to, to, to invest in yourself and to invest in your, in your plan. I don't know about you guys, but to me, this year is going extremely quickly. It just feels like yesterday I was sitting down mapping out our 2021 goals and here we are halfway through the year. Just like in chat, give me a 1 if you feel like this year is just zipping by. Yeah, no doubt. And so that's why it's so important. If you don't consciously hit the pause button, if you don't consciously stop for a minute, time will pass you by and goals that you set become like an afterthought, right? And you don't really get nearly as much done as you had hoped or as you had anticipated. So here's the plan for today's session. Here's what we're going to be doing. Number 1, I want to make sure you've got clear goals and targets for the quarter so that between July and September, you know exactly what your target is. I want you to be refocused, reenergized. Like, that's what that pause button is about. Just kind of get the energy back up, get your, you know, your focus back in line and give you a clear plan on what you're going to accomplish. All right. So if that's the goal, what are we going to do to make it happen and set you up for success in the third quarter? I know some of you logged in early and we kind of covered this, but just give me a 1 in comments. If we can get this done, just this clear goals, clear target, updated action plan, you'll feel good about the time invested. So, Brian. All right, Casey, Paul, sweet. We're on the same page then. This is what we're going to get done. Some ground rules, you know, couple things to help you get the most out of today's session. Number 1 is just be here now, right? I'm sure you've got other things going on. I don't know about you. I've got 3 screens up. I've got, you know, sometimes I get Facebook open, I've got email open, I've got my cell phone kind of— oops, just broke it on the ground. I've got my cell phone and, you know, it's hard to remain focused. And what I'm going to encourage you to do is close out all of the other tabs, turn the phone off, give this next hour and a half your undivided attention. And I promise you're going to get good value. I promise you're going to walk away clearer than if you, if you didn't. So just give me a 1 in chat if you can confirm that you're here now, you're being completely focused, and you're not going to let anything take you off track. Awesome. Good, good, good. I appreciate this interaction, right? I find it, um, it's a lot more productive when I can kind of check in with you and you give me some feedback, and, and I'm here to answer questions and make this a conversation and not just me talking at you for the next hour and 30 minutes. So we've got the— we've got the agenda, we've got kind of the ground rules in terms of what we're trying to accomplish. Um, I want to start high level, you know, in terms of what we're all trying to build in our business. And some of us are trying to build different things. For me, what's— what I'm after and what I'd like to help you accomplish in your business is a business that can scale, really a digital marketing agency that can scale, and one that provides you 3 critical things. First, It provides you money, right? It provides you the income that you need to pay the bills and more importantly, to live your desired lifestyle, to do the things you really want to be able to do. But more than that, it also provides you freedom. I find the reason I started my business wasn't just about the money. It was about the freedom not to have to plug in 9 to 5, not to have to, you know, be told exactly what to do when. So we want to do is we want to build a business that provides the freedom to do what we want to do so that we can take the travel, so that we can spend the time with the family, so that we can do the things we really, really, um, want to do, as opposed to just slogging away all day, every day. And number 3, we— I want, I want you to have a business that, Brett, that provides impact. Um, and that impact to me is probably the most important part. It's knowing that what you're doing is having an impact. It's helping the clients that you serve It's helping the team members that you hire. And yeah, you're making money. Yeah, you have freedom, but you also feel good about it and you're pouring yourself into something that has a productive outcome. Give me a yes if, like, that's kind of what you're looking to build as well. Like, you want a business that provides you money, that provides you freedom, but it's not just a cash grab. It's something you feel good about. Excellent. Yep. Thank you, guys. I appreciate the yeses coming in. So in order to do that, there's 3 key things we have to solve for in our agencies and in our business, and that we're going to be thinking about throughout the course of this planning session. First of all, we have to land clients, right? We have to have a systematic approach to get new clients coming in on a monthly basis, right? And bottom line is, if you can get good at landing clients month in and month out, the money will take care of itself, right? There'll be more than enough money to pay the bills and and to live your desired lifestyle, to have the nice car, to have a nice house, to do the things that you want to be able to do. The second thing is we have to actually deliver results, right? A lot of training only thinks about, you know, landing clients. A lot of agency owners, they just think about landing clients. But the reality is, if you don't deliver tangible, measurable results and outcomes for your clients, you're not going to feel good about it. You're going to be constantly stressed out and you're not going to have the freedom that you're after. So I really believe that the way that you deliver results and the way that you set yourself up to deliver results is what gives you the freedom. And then number 3 is we have to, we have to have strategies to retain the clients. We have to have strategies so that the clients, you know, don't just sign up and leave as quickly as they come, but they stay. They sign up and they stick around, right? And they stick around because You're getting them good results and you're providing a world-class service and they're happy with the things that you're bringing to the table. And really, I feel if, if we can set up our agencies in a way that we provide amazing results and the clients stick around with us, that's where the impact comes into play, right? Because the clients aren't staying for the fun of it. They're staying because they're getting a tangible, measurable return. They're growing and If you're growing a 7-figure agency and you're, you know, producing millions of dollars per year, you're gonna have to have a team. So that impact comes really in the way of the clients you serve getting great results and the people that you bring into your team that you, you grow and you give them career paths and career tracks. So those are the main 3 things that we need in order to, to have a business that can scale, that provides money, freedom, and impact. In terms of landing clients, you know, the main thing is we've got to fill our funnel, right? We have to have a strategy to get agency clients raising their hand and kind of entering our world. We have to build up authority. That means we got to be positioned in a way that the clients look at us and say, wow, that person knows what they're doing in my space. They have experience, they've got case studies, and they start to come to us pre-positioned to buy. So we're not chasing every client down. And we have to deliver a sales process and we have to have sales process mastery, which is where we can take a prospect from interested to bought in to where they're giving us their credit card and they're signing on the, on the dotted line. If you can fill your funnel and you can build authority and you've got a great sales process, again, you'll be able to land clients on a consistent basis. I'm curious, as you look at this, at this model and you kind of think about where you're at in your business, right now? What, like, of these 3 key pillars, what do you need the most help with? Is it— and I want you to literally put in land clients if you're focused most on landing clients, delivering results if it's work, how do I deliver in a way that's more scalable, that doesn't take all my energy? And or is it retention? So lots of landing clients. Christina, Joseph, Casey. Bob. Okay, a lot of landing clients. Mike Murphy, it's— I want to get better at the delivery side. Uh, Paul, it's kind of a mix between landing and delivery. Michael, it's retention. Excellent. So a lot of it's around landing clients. We're going to be talking— since this is the Q3 agency growth planning session, a lot of what we talk about today is going to be around that side of the equation, right? Setting the goals, setting the targets, building the action plan to land clients. But we don't want to land clients in a vacuum, right? We want to be making sure that we're landing clients and setting up our delivery mechanism in a way that makes sense, makes sense. So we have to choose a model, right? And there's lots of things we could do as agencies. We could do funnels, we could do websites, we could do SEO, we could do pay-per-click, we could do copywriting. In my opinion, you get to choose whether you're going to do project work or whether you're going to do monthly retainer-based services. You get to choose whether you're going to be low ticket or high ticket. Um, I'm going to kind of share with you guys in the briefest way possible what I found to be the most effective model for scale. Um, that way you can systematize it, because to me that's important, right? If freedom is what we're after, we want to deliver results in a way that doesn't require us to personally have to click the buttons, to have to personally do the strategy, to have to personally reinvent the, the workflow every single time. That's pretty important how you choose to deliver the results and the actual results that you get for the client. So you want to be intentional and strategic around that part. And the other thing is you have to start to develop a team, and I don't care if you're going to be all virtual or if you want US-based talent or if you want to have an office filled with employees. At the end of the day, if you're going to grow, if you're going to scale, if you're going to create income and freedom, you can't do it yourself. So you have to be consciously thinking about building a team, training the team, and developing that team. And then as it relates to retention, really the main things are having a great kickoff process when someone signs up, getting the usernames, getting the passwords, getting everything in a quick, seamless fashion, having a great communication rhythm where you're talking to the clients on a consistent basis and really they're understanding the value that you're bringing to the table. And then you've got to see the vision, right? The number one reason your client leaves is perceived indifference, first of all, and then secondarily, they feel like you've run the course, you've taken them as far as you can go. And so they're always thinking about like, what is next? What are we going to do to move the needle? And so you got to have a strategic approach to, to really see the vision and keep them on board long term. And so this is the model from a high level. Like I said, I just wanted to start here because yes, we can talk a lot about landing clients. Yes, we can build a great plan. But big picture, if we want a business that can scale, these are the key things we have to set up. These are the key things we have to put in place. Um, give me a 1 in comments if this, if this makes sense. You're like, okay, I, I, I get it. Like, yep, it helps to kind of go back to the 50-foot view and look at it from a very, very High level. Excellent. Thank you, guys. I appreciate that, that feedback. Excellent. So like I said, I'm going to talk extremely briefly about model, um, because I want us to get into the planning and the goal setting and the targets. Um, but I know from experience, if you've got the wrong model, if you've got the wrong model you can work extremely hard, you can land a lot of clients, you can do really, really good work, but wind up not making the money and not having any freedom at all. My first agency was called Developcom. It was a web design and hosting company, and I ran it for the better part of 4 years, and my model was completely wrong. I was selling websites for like $1,000, and I was selling basically after I build a website, it'll be $50 a month. Hosting. I was able to land like 6 or 7 websites per month, which produced, you know, $6,000 to $10,000 any given month. But every month I had to, I had to start from scratch. Every month I was chasing my tail, um, and it was painful, right? I had to shut that business down. It went down in failure and frustration. My second agency, which I run today, was built on a completely different model. It was built on being in one particular niche and having monthly recurring revenue and focusing on, like, focusing on results for our clients. And that business has grown. Some of you guys know the story, you know, from zero to over $350,000 a month of recurring revenue. We work, we work just with plumbing and HVAC companies. We made the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies in the United States the last 4 years in a row. And so the model can make all the difference in the world. And so would it be helpful if I just spent a couple minutes here and just kind of unpack the model that we follow in our agency? Um, just give me a 1 if it's helpful, and I'm not going to spend 45 minutes on it. I'm going to spend like 5 minutes and give you the Cliff Notes version. Excellent. Okay, cool, cool, cool. I'm gonna get back to my, my share screen here. All right. So let's, let's look at the, at the model for one second. The model that worked best for us and for a lot of the members we work with at 7 Figure Agency, our coaching and mentorship program, is first of all, one niche. We just, we found that rather than trying to be the jack of all trades working in a lot of different verticals, if we, we could just choose one, plumbing and HVAC companies, position ourselves as the go-to expert in that space and get really good at systematizing the delivery of the results in that particular vertical, it was easier to land clients, it was easier to deliver results, and it was easier to um, it was, it was easier to retain and scale the entire business. So one niche, instead of trying to be a jack of all trades. Really want to encourage you, those of you that haven't already done this, choose one niche and position yourself as the expert in that space. Number 2 is commit to just monthly recurring retainers, right? My old business model, I was selling websites, and sometimes I would get a big site for like $5,000. It was like, woohoo! Um, but there was no recurring revenue associated with it. Um, when I moved to just having a monthly retainer model where, you know, we were charging $1,000 a month, $2,500 a month, month over month, if I was selling 3, 5, 7 clients a month, my monthly recurring base grew, and that gave consistent cash flow. It gave consistent, uh, predictable paydays where I could know that the income was there. I could build my team, I could forecast, and I could have kind consistent healthy growth within the business. So in my mind, and this is what I teach all of our members to do, no one-off projects. Just don't even bother with it. Sell it all within the, the, the guise of a monthly recurring program. No check payments, so move to ACH or direct debit. That way you're never chasing checks down. No partial deposits. And then the fourth would be a monthly recurring greater than $1,000 per month. Now, if you can go much greater than that, fantastic. Go as big as you want to go. Just don't, don't charge $500 a month. Don't charge $70 a month. The reality is it takes almost as much energy to sell a $1,000 to $2,000 a month program as it does to sell a $250 a month service. And the numbers just add up so much quicker when you're doing a monthly recurring based strategy. So, so those are the business model fundamentals. I want to have you guys for a minute look at, look at the workbook and just, just kind of think about what your model looks like today and where there might be room for improvement. But before that, go there, I want to share an example. Um, you guys are still seeing my screen, I think, right? Give me a yes if you're still seeing my screen. Okay, cool. Good example of this is Allen Hillsburg. Allen Hillsburg was a generalist agency, very good at websites and SEO and app development. And he was, you know, just kind of stuck at this $10,000 a month range. He would hit $10,000, $15,000 months, but then he would always drop down because he had to continuously resell and reinvent the wheel. Over about a 2-year window of time, he grew his agency to over $115,000 in monthly recurring revenue. This year he's doing over $1.5 million. So I just want you to hear from Alan and kind of like what, what his journey was and how this change in model made all the difference. The one I want to call up now is Alan Hillsberg. Congratulations. Thank you. Really, really excited about your progress and your journey.

Thank you.

This is the Transition to Significance Award. When Alan, when Alan first came to our office, 3— was it 3 years ago? Stay up here for a sec.

2000— April 2015.

2015. He was, he was trying to figure it out. He came through the process, he chose his niche. And just watching him blossom to a legitimate 7-figure agency in the funeral home space has been amazing. Would love if you could kind of share your story a little bit with the group.

Sure. I started this in 2015. I was doing SEO, doing SEO for everyone. And at the time I was working with a restaurant, doing really well for the restaurant. Getting them visibility on a Tuesday afternoon. We implemented strategies that were really helping the restaurant grow. And the attorney for that restaurant came to me and he said, "Alan, can you help me with my attorney practice?" And I said, "Sure." So what I did, I'm gonna put this down, this is heavy.

Yeah, it's heavy, sorry.

So I said, "Sure." So what I did was I'd taken the same strategies I used for the restaurant and applied it to the attorney. And the results were mediocre at best. And my strengths are in sales, and I was bringing on clients, but I was also losing them because, you know, being, you know, working with so many different industries, you really don't capture that specialized knowledge that you need. To really help them grow. And that's why a lot of companies are not happy with their marketing, because if you're working with the dentist and the doctor and an attorney and a clothing boutique, you're just never going to get to know that business the way you really should know them, and you're not going to help them. And what happened with the attorney, he was paying me on a monthly basis, but I started to guess what would be the best strategies to work for him. So at the At the same time, I ran into Josh. I saw some type of webinar where I saw this guy working with only plumbers and the guy was making a quarter of a million dollars a month at the time. And I couldn't get it. I couldn't wrap my head around it. I said, how's this guy working with one niche and making that kind of money? You know, in my mind, I just pictured a plumber with his white truck who'll fix the clogged toilet or leaky faucet. And at the end of the week, if he had $50 left in his pocket, he was going to the neighborhood bar. You know, he wasn't, you know, putting that into marketing. So I couldn't figure out how this guy was doing it. So I got lucky. I went to one of his webinars and he said to me, and I remember he pointed out a website, InfoUSA. And he said, well, you know, you go into InfoUSA, type in plumbers, you'll get 120,000 or so like that. He goes, but now type in 120,000 plumbers that are making $1 million a year. That list goes from 120,000 down to like something like 8,000, 7,000 plumbers. He goes, that is my market. Somebody that is doing $1 million a year is doing $83,000 a month, right? They can afford to put $2,000 into their marketing each month. So that made me start to think, okay, I've got 100 clients, which is not a lot of clients. I mean, look at a football stadium, whether they have 50,000 people in the football stadium, stadium. So 100 clients paying you $2,000 a month, that's $200,000 per month in income. So I got it and I decided that this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to be niche-specific and it was the best decision I've made because when you become niche-specific, like for me, every day now for the last 4 years, the only question that I ask myself when I walk into my office is how can I drive more at me calls to my funeral home clients. And you don't have to be very bright to really, you know, come up with solutions, especially if you're asking that question to yourself each and every day. You develop a specialized knowledge in the niche that you focused on. And the cool part about this is that he's going to direct you into choosing a niche that's right for you. Then he's going to show you how to scale it. And that's where the money is made. That's where your life could change. And that's why I'm up here today.

Just real quick, because we're about to have a lunch break, how has growing the business from where you were to where you are now, how's it impacted your life? Like in terms of, it's great to have more money, but Freedom, let's talk about the whole equation.

Oh man, I was paycheck to paycheck. I mean, I was charging people $300, $500 to do SEO. It was like eating soup with a fork. You ever try to do that? You're busy, but you're still hungry. And that's what it was like. That's what it was like. And I wanted very, very much to get out of that. And, you know, I've got a big family. You know, I don't know if any of you got a big family, but try booking a flight during Christmas for 6 to go anywhere. Yeah, okay, just the flight alone, we couldn't go anywhere. It just, it just year after year, it was just a struggle. And now it's gotten to the point where I— and it's, it really is a wonderful feeling to pay your bills and then having a ton of money every month left over to invest, to do whatever the hell you want. I mean, pretty much. I mean, I've gotten to the point where, um, I could do whatever I want.

And, uh, I mean, so, so I want to share that just because I think it's important, right? The, the right model can make all the difference in the world. So what I want to do now is I want to talk about— I want to talk about targets and the KPIs that are going to help you grow your business and accelerate things to the next level. Let me turn the screen sharing function back on and we're about to dive into it. Was it helpful to hear his story? Kind of like how having the right model impacted his growth? Just give me some feedback on what I want to call it. Bob says yes. Willie says yes. Okay, good. All right. So goals and targets, right? That's what we're here for. That's what this session is really all about. I'm a big fan of Brian Tracy. He's got the Ultimate Goal Setting Program, which is really, really good. And one of the quotes from that program that really stuck with me is that success is goals, all else is commentary, right? So to the extent that you're not laser-focused on here's where I want to go over the next 3, 6, 9, 12 months, You're going to wind up getting busy, but you're going to be busy chasing your tail. And so Alan, myself, all the other agencies that have gone to 7 figures over the last 12, 24 months have been a function of taking times out, resetting goals and targets, and getting really clear on their, on their action plan. To me, having clear goals is like the ability to create the wind in your sail, right? If you don't have goals, you're like a boat that's out at sea there's no wind and the current is taking you wherever it wants to take you. By, by setting a goal, by making it intentional, by putting it on paper and having it front and center in front of you, you can create the wind and momentum in the right direction. So the goal— goal-setting framework that I've found to be best is we want to have written goals and plans. We should have at minimum an annual plan like over the course of 2021. Where do I want to be? How many clients do I want to have? How much recurring revenue do I want to have in the business? Then we want to break that down into quarters, which we're doing right now, the quarter 3 plan. Um, and then we want to break that down into monthly chunks. But the most important part of this whole framework is we have to have a pause point where we stop and reflect. I don't know about you, like most people that talk about New Year's resolutions and talk about goals, for think it's a waste of time. And I think the reason for that is because we set a goal, we work on it for like 2, 3 weeks, and then we lose focus and we give up on it. And then we never check at the end of the year, oh, did I lose that weight? Did I like accomplish that objective? And that creates the sense of like wasted time. But if you know that you're going to hold yourself accountable that you're going to have that goal written down and you're going to pause and reflect that I get it done. And yes, I did great. I'm going to celebrate that. No, I didn't. Okay, what do I need to change? What do I need to modify? Is what makes all the difference in the world. You start to develop what I call the muscle of manifestation, which is the ability to set a target, do the work, and actually bring that intention into the real world. So let's, let's do that now. Let's set some goals. Let's set the intentions. And create the plan to bring it into reality. So I've got this document that I shared with you guys, and, um, Ed has shared it in the chat. What I want you guys to do is I want everybody to open this. Okay, I see 28 of you are in here now. Everybody should have this document open. If you didn't already, click the link, open it up. Um, and again, you can get to it either in the link, or maybe if you're watching this after the fact, it's 7figureagency.com/quarterly-planning. Give me a 1 if you've got the document open, first of all, just so I can kind of track along with everybody. Perfect. Excellent. All right, so what I want you to do is just make a copy of this. So go File, Make a Copy, um, and then What I'd encourage you to do is rename it Quarterly Planning Workbook Your Company Name. So I'll just call it Plumbing and HVAC SEO.

Bam.

And then you'll have your own version that you can track along with. I want you guys to actually write this stuff in, do this work, and get this plan built. So if you've got a copy, just write copy in the chat so I can make sure I'm not running too far ahead and that everybody's right here with me. Okay, we got our copy. Sweet. All right, so scroll down. As we scroll through this, first thing you're going to see: if we fail to plan, then we're planning to fail. So the good news is we're creating a plan, right, which is going to help us not fail. We talked about that model and we talked about the business model fundamentals. Um, and anytime I start to do a quarterly plan, I like to revisit some of the fundamentals. So what I want you to do is under model audit, which is kind of what comes up on the, on the second, third page. I talked about niche, I talked about one program, I talked about a monthly fee greater than $1,000 per month, and I talked about having retainer-based recurring revenue as opposed to one-off project revenue. I just want you for a second to kind of write out what the, what the current situation is. I'm going to give you some time to work on this because I think the model makes a massive difference in your outcomes. So underneath, like what? Like what's the niche? Are you working in a specific vertical or are you kind of a jack of all trades? Just write that in, right? Jack of all trades. For me, I would write in plumbing and HVAC companies, right? On the monthly fee, what is your monthly fee right now? Do you have a $700 a month thing? Is it a $5,000 a month thing? Is it random? You know, just kind of a gut check on that. And then project or recurring— is most of your business coming via recurring revenue, like where they chart, they're paying you $1,000, $2,000 every single month? Or is a lot of it just coming in via, via project work where you get a big payment and then that's it, right? And it kind of comes and it goes almost as quickly as it came. So I'm gonna give you guys a minute here, just kind of what's the current situation as it relates to that model. And as you're doing it, like, I mean, not everyone's gonna say, yep, Josh, I think you're 100% right, I want to go into one niche, or I want to have one program. But what's the ideal situation? What modifications do you need to think— do you need to make going into Q3 and the second half of the year to, to get things purring in the right direction. So that's what I want you to do on the right, kind of what that ideal situation would look like. If you have any questions on this, let me know. To give you guys a minute and a half, just kind of get clear on any changes you need to make to the business model itself. So, so programs, I didn't talk about this too much, but you want to have programmed out like, here's what we do for our clients and have like 1 or 2 core programs. That would be $2,000 a month. We'll build you a website, we'll do your SEO, we'll do your pay-per-click. And we'll run your Google Ads. And then maybe a lower program that's like, we're just gonna run Google Ads for you. And that's $997 per month. Impro— I just want you to be thinking like, do you have an infinite supply of programs? Because if so, that's very hard to scale and it's very hard to control. Or do you have like 1 to 3 core programs that you're selling time and time again within your marketplace? So Jennifer, that's what I'm referring to there. Paul's got starter, growth, and premium. Excellent, good stuff. All right, if you're good on the kind of the business model review, put a 1 in chat. If you need more time, just say, like, I need more time. All right, some of us are good. Excellent. So let's keep moving forward. All right, so clear on the model. Hopefully a couple things stand out to you. It's like, okay, here's what I gotta change. I need to move to one niche, or I need to increase my monthly fee, or I need to stop taking this project work. Promise you any of those three changes can have massive ramifications for your growth, for your systemization, and for the scale of your, of your agency. From there, we're gonna scroll down to where it says quarterly plan. And it's really important as you start to think about your new quarter that you, you stamp out like, here's where I'm at at the end of the second quarter, at the halfway point in the year. So what I want you to do under current snapshot, just put in there how many clients do you have right now? And I'm going to preface that, that are on retainer, right? So if you've got 6 projects in play, you don't have any clients. If you've got 6 clients that are paying you a fee greater than $500 per month, I will count those as clients. So how many retainer-based clients do you have? That's what I want you to put here. And then on the second one where it says recurring revenue, how much do you have coming in every single month at this point in the year? Assuming you didn't sell anything new, you didn't have any new projects come in, how much recurring revenue can you rely on in the business right now. So that's what I want you to put here. Really, we're looking for the gross number, so don't worry. I mean, yes, that's important, but for the sake of this practice, how much revenue comes in? Um, now if you're, if you're adding ad spend and things like that, you don't want to include that. Just how much is your, your fee going to your business for the management of your client base? Again, the snapshot is kind of where we start. So we got 175 clients and $375K MRR, right? We want a basic number like that. Everybody's got their number in. Any questions on this? Just the one in chat. Once you've got your, your current snapshot, your current situation plugged in. And this, this is great to have because you're able to look back at the end of the quarter and say, okay, where was I? Oh, $175,000 and 370 hours. I was at 1 client and $1K in monthly recurring, right? You know exactly where you were when you started, and it makes it easy to look back on that. So anytime we start a new quarter, I always like to reset, like, long-term vision, right? We tend to overestimate what we can do in a year and and underestimate what we can do in 5. So just projecting out to 2025, blue sky thinking for a minute, where would you like to see this business? What's your long-term vision? How much recurring revenue predominantly, and how many clients, right? And sometimes that's hard if you don't know what your monthly fee is right now and you haven't fleshed all of that out. You know, just assume a $2,000 a month monthly fee. How much recurring revenue on a monthly basis would you love to have in your business. So I just want you to put that under 2025 goal, future plan. And this is big. This is big picture enough that if you want to put this in the chat for me, that would be great. So put it in here and then, yeah, Michael, $400K a month, build something great. I love it. Jennifer, 100 clients, $10 million in annual revenue or monthly revenue, either way, very good. Michael, 40 clients. 25 clients, $94K to put you at 7 figures. Willie Hunter, great to see you, man. 96 clients, $103K. Angie, 21+ M. Ah, $29K and $101K. Awesome. Okay, so the ones that put it in the chat, thank you. Those of you that didn't, ideally you've got it on your workbook if you want to keep it confidential. Here's the most important thing, and I should probably make this a different color, but right underneath that there's a, a why. And I want you to get really clear, whatever that number is, whether it was $1,000— I mean, $100,000 a month, or something bigger, something smaller. Why? Why is this important to you? I want you to spend a couple minutes getting clear in your mind and kind of fleshing this out. Is it because you want to have the home of your dreams? Is it because you want to have the freedom, you know, to go on more travel with your family? Is it because you want to invest back in the ministry? Is it because you just want to feel successful as an individual? What's your reason? And it's really important that you're clear on what that why is. So on that line underneath what the target is, I want you to spend a couple minutes putting in your why. And the clearer you are on that reason why, the more powerful the emotional connection is going to be for you to do the work, to execute the plan, to actually bring it into reality. And so as you write that down and as you get it fleshed out on your paper, post it in comments for me. Let me, let me know what your Why is— does anybody want to unmute for a minute and kind of talk through what their— what their why is and why this big goal is important for them? Anybody willing to unmute? Yeah, I'll go. Yes. So yeah, my why is to have what I need for my family, to have this healthy Lifestyle like you talk about, and then to be abundantly generous. So I'm a missionary and this is helping support my, my support raising. I love that. I love that. So missionary, business entrepreneur, building the business to provide for your personal needs and then to reinvest in ministry. Paul, that's awesome, man. Thank you for sharing. Anybody else? Hope to hear from like 1 or 2 more of you. I'll go. Michael, awesome. Yeah, my— I, I'm building this because I've actually helped 4 other people scale their business and grow big, and I really never did anything about it, or I never, never got a piece of it. And frankly, I want to build my own, build something great. Love it, love it. So build it, build it for yourself this time. Yeah, absolutely. Beautiful. Oh, who else? Um, okay, go, go. Basically what I'm trying to do, this is a family business. So I want to be able to leave this for my grandkids and great-grandkids. My kids are going to wind up, you know, when I'm gone, they're going to run the thing and we're going to try to build it as successful as we can make it. And that's what it's all about. Love it. Create a family business that you can pass down from generation to generation. So good. Awesome. So what we've done now is we're all clear, like, here's where we're at right now. Here's what the long-term vision for the company is. Here's where we want to be over the next 5 years. And here's why. Right. Very powerful, right, to have this thought out, to have it on paper. So kudos to all of you guys for doing that. So now what I want to do is I want to shift into the, the tactical, immediate, like over the next 90 days, because our mind can't think in terms of 5 years. You can't think in a year either, but it can absolutely think, okay, in the next 90 days you can hold that in your mind and you can keep yourself moving in that direction, especially if you break it down into, into months. So what I want to do now is based on your current snapshot, I want to help you get clear targets on paper for July, August, and September. And so under that 90-day goal, there's a workbook in there. And so I want you guys all to pull up that workbook. I'm going to share it again, but it's, it's accessible from your workbook. But I'll put it in the links. And you're going to do the same thing on this. Once you've got it open, just do File, Make a Copy. And we're going to use this to simplify this goal setting and planning process. And to kind of create some KPIs for ourselves. So I want to give you guys a second to open that up and to get it in front of you. So give me a 1 in the chat once you've got it up and you've got your copy made. Stick with me, guys, right? If you do these exercises, you will walk away with a clear plan and clear goals and a clear target. If you don't, you will just have filled your head with me talking at you for an hour and a half and not have much to show for it. Okay, cool. A lot of you guys have this open, so here's what we're going to do. Put in your starting point numbers, whatever you had on your document there. Um, so if I were 50 clients and $550,000 or $55,000 in monthly recurring, let's just say you'd put that in right there. And then what I want you to do is, is over the next 3 months, realistically How much are you going to charge your monthly recurring fee? Again, it should be greater than $1,000. You know, some of you guys, it might be much greater than $1,000, somewhere between $1,000 and $5,000 per month. How much is your monthly fee going to target? And then how many clients are you going to shoot for? So let's say I'm $1,500 a month and I'm going to shoot for 4 clients a month, right? That's what I want you to do there. And then what this will do, it will just give you a clear target, right? If you're going to sell 4 clients a month, July, August, September, then you would wind up with 54 clients by the end of July, 58 clients by the end of August, 62 by the end of September, and it would put you at $73,000 in monthly recurring revenue. Give me a yes if that worked for you and it made sense. Good, it worked and it made sense. What does 7 mean, Eric? Okay, cool, cool, cool. Yes, yes, yes.

Awesome.

So then what we have now is, is your target, right? And you have a target broken down by month. And lots of ways you can use this, but what I would like to have you do is, if these are the right targets for you, and make sure that they are indeed the right targets, right? If you set 4 down or you set 5 down, you set 10 down, make sure internally you believe, I can accomplish that. And I'm clear, like, I know that I can make this a reality. And if it's not, then ratchet it down, right? This isn't time to get crazy ambitious with goals. This is time to get realistic based on your experience, based on your abilities, based on kind of your current, you know, reality. Can you really land this number of clients at this monthly recurring fee? And what I would encourage you to do is make a bookmark of this particular document and check in with yourself, right? At the end of July, do you have the 4 clients? The end of August, you have the 4 clients? I would even encourage you to screencap this, print it, and put it somewhere visual that you're going to see it every day. My favorite place to set goals and to put them in a visual place is on my bathroom mirror, because I know I wake up in the morning, I start brushing my teeth, I start, you know, putting my contacts, whatever it is I have to do. Subconsciously, I have to look at that, and it gets kind of entered into my mind, whether I read it and say, okay, I need 4 clients this month or not. This is front and center for me. This is the goal that I'm pushing towards that's going to help me get to my long-term vision for my business and for my company. So give me a yes in the comments, or just do one this time, if you'll commit to bookmark this, print it, and really hold yourself to the accomplishment of this target. Michael's going to get to 87. I love it. In monthly recurring, fantastic. And anybody that wants to share the target, by all means, put it Put it in. Base MRR is kind of like where you were when you started, and then your base is like every month if no one canceled and nobody new came in, what would your recurring revenue be at the end of that month, at the end of the next month? Okay, good. Got it. Excellent. All right, so back to your workbook. I just want you to go in and put quarter-end target. What does that number end up with? Come back over here and it's going to be the September number, 62 clients and $73K, right? I want you to put that on your workbook, and if you are so bold, paste it into the chat, right? Hold yourself accountable, kind of proclaim it. When you proclaim it, you know, you bring— you have a higher probability of bringing it into existence. Anybody gonna put their number? And if not, that's fine too. All right, Michael's gonna have 15 clients, $15K. I love it. Eric's gonna be at $15K. Lori's gonna be at $22K. Paul's gonna be at $15K. Excellent. So a great example of this process This, you know, what you've done here is powerful, right? Just getting very clear and holding yourself accountable to your targets. A great example of this is Brian Kaskavalsian with G4 Marketing Group. He was— he works with roofing and remodeling companies. He had grown to about $60,000 a month of recurring, but he was stuck there for like 3 years, just not seeing any momentum. And the problem was he stopped setting future goals and targets. He stopped holding himself accountable. And we built this process for him over the course of a year. We kind of mapped out a year in advance, and his whole team now had something that they were shooting for. They had a target, they had a goal, and that just changed the momentum in his business. Fast forward today, he's over $370,000 in monthly recurring revenue. And I actually— I think he's on pace to do $5 million this current calendar year. That's what you hear from Brian, because I want the power of this to settle in on you. Well, hey, this is Joshua Nelson with the 7 Figure Agency, and today I'm with Brian Kaskabalsian from G4 Marketing Group. Runs a highly successful 7-figure, multiple 7-figure digital marketing agency. Brian, if you had one tip on how you were able to grow your agency to multiple 7 figures, what would it be?

So the one tip I'll give you is actually what he gave me. He gave me clarity and he gave me focus.

It was that one damn spreadsheet that you gave me that changed everything because we put out our numbers and we knew month after month, every month, what our target number was in new monthly recurring revenue. And we knew exactly where we were based on our gains and our losses. That one thing that I got from this guy right here, it's a game changer.

Awesome. Be clear, be focused.

Great, Brian, thanks for sharing.

You got it.

So you guys have done this now. You've got your goals kind of mapped out on the spreadsheet, you know. Okay, here's where we're gonna go: July, August, September. Ideally, you'll do this through the course of the year. This would be something you revisit every quarter. You check at the end of every quarter, you check at the end of every month. You hold yourself accountable. That's how you build the muscle of manifestation, right? The ability to set targets, to do the work, and accomplish the outcomes. Um, you Now, a goal without a plan is useless, right? It's, you know, the whole, the whole notion you're just going to set a goal and magically because you wrote it down, it's going to happen. That's not the way the world works, right? From there, we have to break it into a plan, and from that plan, we have to execute. We got to do the work. We got to get to work day in and day out. So the next thing I want to do is I want to help you guys set some KPIs.

Right?

All of you guys just set a target and you've written it down, and that's awesome. But there's a key performance indicator that will tell you whether or not you're on pace and whether you're pacing in the right direction to make that a reality. And so back to our workbooks, let's look at the KPI that's going to make that work, that's going to make it a reality for you. And in my mind, The one thing that you need to measure that's going to tell you whether you're on pace to accomplish that target or not is the number of strategy sessions that you have, right? The number of appointments with prospects within your niche, taking them through an intelligent consultative sales process, asking for the business, right? If you set a target of 5 clients or 3 clients or 6 clients That's not going to happen if you don't have a lot of appointments with the right kind of clients within your space. And what I found in the agency world, the target most of us should be shooting for is 15 new strategy sessions with qualified prospects on a monthly basis. Something magical about that number. The agencies we work with that kind of continue to move up the stages stages of agency growth are consistently getting 15+ at-bats and appointments within their space per month. So that's one thing I want to make sure you have written down. Is everybody else still hearing me, or did my audio cut out? Just real quick, give me a yes if my audio is still working, or a no. Okay, cool.

Yes.

Okay, thank you very much. Um, and the reason for that 15 strategy session number is the average close ratio in digital marketing services is— it's actually 12%. But if you're well positioned in your niche and you've got a great sales process, I believe it should be more like 30%. Um, and so if you want to sell 5 clients on any given month, new clients into your agency, and you've got a 30% close ratio That tells you you're going to need at least 15 strategy sessions to make that a reality. So I want to help you figure out what your number is in your space so that, you know, if you're going to hit the goal you just set, here's the minimum expected sales opportunities that you're going to need to make that a reality. Give me a 1 if that'll be helpful, just to know, like, okay, I set this goal, here's what I'm shooting for. Give me, give me like some feedback here. Okay, good, good, good. So in your, in your document, what I want you to do under KPIs— again, this is where the rubber meets the road— it's actually quarter targets on the second tab. There's this tab that calls KPI Calculator. So I want to share that with you guys. Again, if you've got your document open already, All you have to do is go to that same quarterly planning sheet on, on Google Sheets and hit the next tab. If you didn't do it, you can open up that document and go to that tab. So all you're doing here is writing in the number of clients that you set for yourself. Some of you set 3, some of you set 5, some of you might have set something higher. You put that number there and then what your average close ratio is. Like, for every appointment that you get, what percentage of them wind up saying yes and giving you the credit card and signing on to your monthly recurring services? If you don't know, I'd suggest put in 15%. If you do know, put that number, right? If you haven't done much sales and you have no idea, it's like something between 15% and 20% is probably right. So if I put in here 0.3, I want 5, 5 new clients. I need 17 strategy sessions per month at 30% to hit my 5 new client target. It's a simple thing, but knowing that makes a big difference because a lot of the agencies I work with that, you know, month over month, they, they're like, man, I don't know why I'm not getting where I needed to go. They're not, not hitting targets. They're having like 3 or 4 sales appointments a month. They're like, oh, there's no momentum. Yeah, you need to do a lot more activity. You need to schedule a lot more appointments. You need to either run more Facebook ads or send more cold outreach. Or do more activity to get those at-bats. So this just should give you like some reality-framed lenses that help you see, okay, if I want 5 clients, I'm gonna need like 20 appointments in order to make that a reality. Uh, Lori says, love this. Good, I'm glad. So what I want you to do now is just in the comments, what is your KPI? How many strategy sessions or appointments are you going to need in order to hit your goal? Put it in the comments. And add it to your workbook. John needs 15, Laura needs 13, Willie 13, Bob needs 17, Michael only needs 10, Eric needs 10, Sherry needs 32, Zen needs 27, Liz needs 10. Perfect. Excellent. This is great. And I want you to have this number front and center because this is what's going to dictate whether you're going to hit this target or not. Right, there's no magic to, oh, I'm gonna set a target for 5, and I don't know, I can meet with as many people as I can. That's not going to get you there, right? You need to meet with 17 people minimum if you're going to hit that target, or 13, or whatever your number is based on that, that formula. So now we've got KPIs. The next thing we want to do is we want to build on our our action plan. And so we know what the number is, somewhere between 10 and 25 strategy sessions for most, most of us. What do we have to do activity-wise in order to make that a reality? So that's what we're going to work on now. So what I want you to do, I want everyone to stand up for a second, just kind of shake out your arms. We've, we've got the, we've got the easy part done, right? We've set some goals, we've set some targets, we put a KPI out there. We know what kind of what we're framing towards. Now we want to build the action plan. So put on your thinking caps, kind of refocus. This is where, this is where the rubber meets the road, guys. Okay, so foundationally, there's some things we need to do. If you don't have these foundational items in place, you're not gonna, you're not gonna get there, right? So a couple things. Very first thing is we need a prospect list, right? Appointments happen in a niche because we've got a list of prospects that we're proactively going after. So you need a list of the prospects in the niche that you're going after, right? And if you're like still like, I don't know what niche there is, choose a niche, right? Could be plumbing, could be roofing, could be AC contractors, could be any variety. And I've got great trainings that I've shared freely that kind of help you shortlist potential niches. The next step is we need a list— name, phone number, email address, um, mailing address— of at least 1,000 prospects within that industry that we can start to go after. We want to identify a Dream 100 out of that list, right? Out of all of the plumbing companies in the United States, what are the 100 that I want to go after with relentless focus? That I think they're the right kind of company, they can afford my services, I see what I could do that would add value to them, that I can go after and not just send a blind email but call them, email them, put something in the mail, shoot them a custom video that I can really actively go after. What I found is a lot of times we get these big anonymous lists and we send out email, email, email, email. There's nothing happening, there's no response, it's just a waste of time. There's like no No, no action. But if we make the list small, 100— and this is a concept rolled out by Chet Holmes in The Ultimate Sales Machine, if you've never read it— is we make the list small and we go after it. We start to know who the players in that company are. We start to know what's going on with that company. We know who their provider is. We know what their pain points are, and we're gonna hit them from every different angle again and again and again. Until they know us, like us, trust us, and give us the opportunity to do some business with them. Join the association within the vertical that you're in. Like, one of the quickest ways to build authority within this— the niche that you're going after and to get those appointments is, as opposed to just cold emailing everybody, join the national association. Get access to the list of members within that association. Find out when they have events and go get involved in the association. Duh, Brian brought in the association on his client number one. That's beautiful, right? Because now you've got the association and you've got access to all of their members. So join the associations within the space. The next thing we want to do is we want to have a CRM of some sort populated with our prospects, with our Dream 100. That we can use to email them, to text message them, to keep track of our activity with them and do all of that stuff. I don't care whether you're using Infusionsoft or ActiveCampaign or GoHighLevel. You need a platform of some sort where you're housing all of the prospect data and notes. My system of choice right now is GoHighLevel. I love it. It does email, text, funnels, the whole nine yards. I've got my whole agency marketing platform built. On GoHighLevel. So we want a system of some sort to house that stuff. Um, and then we need a niche website, a website speaking directly to that vertical. So if you work with pest control, pestcontrolmarketer.com, that's filled with information about how to generate more leads, more sales, better results, has your case studies, and positions you as an unquestioned expert within that particular vertical. In my, in my case, it's plumberseo.com. .net. They work with plumbing companies. And HVACSEO.net, both of them speak to that particular vertical. Somebody gets there and they're a plumber, they're like, oh, this is for me. Oh, look at all this great information. Wow, check out all these amazing case studies. And they come in pre-positioned to buy. So you want a website like that that speaks specifically to your targeted market. Um, you want to set up a funnel of some sort where people could schedule in on your calendar. They can opt in for either a checklist or a guide or a copy of your book or some value-added content, um, and a sequence that kind of reminds them and follows up with them. And you want to have personalized and professional profiles. So in today's market, your prospect that you email, that you call, that you meet at an event— usually before they meet with you, before they wind up doing business with you, they go to your Facebook page or they go to your LinkedIn page. Your personal profile, and they look at you, it's like, what are you about? If you haven't updated your social profiles to say, I specialize in helping this vertical generate this result, you're going to lose opportunities. So we want to update our social profiles and we want to publish content. One of the best things you can publish to position yourself as an expert is a book, right? This is easy positioning. Have a nice cover made, create a nice 100-150 page book. That will undoubtedly position you as the go-to expert within your vertical. So these are some of the foundational things we're doing, a quarterly plan. So I do not expect any of you guys to knock out all of this stuff in a quarter. Some of it you have to have, especially the top 5, 4 items. You need a prospect list, you need to narrow down to a Dream 100, and you need a CRM that the prospects are sitting in. So kind of going back to our workbook. Going back to that Google Doc we're working off of, there's a tab called Action Plan. On the far left column is your foundation, and what I want you to do is I want you to pick the things that you're going to get done this quarter, that you're going to make a, a focus. Maybe it's getting that list and getting it populated and starting to do some cold outreach. So I'm going to give you guys a couple minutes. Erase the ones, or maybe move them down to the bottom list, the ones you're not going to do, and prioritize The, the foundational things that you absolutely will put in place to help you hit that strategy session target. Any questions on the, on the foundational items here before we dive into advertising and the ongoing activities to hit our KPIs? Are you guys tracking along with me? Thumbs up if you're tracking along with me.

Yeah.

Okay, good. Excellent. Do we all have some clarity on the key foundational things we need to do?

Yeah.

Okay, good. The next thing is column number 2 here is advertising, right? And as digital marketing agencies, we like, we do this stuff for our clients. We do SEO, we do pay-per-click, and we set up retargeting and we run Facebook Facebook ads, but oftentimes we don't eat our own dog food, right? We all know you gotta spend a dollar to, to make a dollar in return. But we all try and do bootstrap advertising for our own agencies. The agencies that we work with that are getting the best results are spending money advertising and promoting their businesses. So, you know, in a niche especially, you can run Google AdWords. Like, why not pick pest control marketing, marketing for pest controls, SEO marketing company, uh, for pest control, right? You can run AdWords campaigns and capture that inbound search volume. You should absolutely have retargeting set up. When somebody gets to your niche website, they see your ad on Facebook, they see your banner ads that draw them back in to the next step. SEO, right? We should be building authority for our niche website. For me, I'm a big fan of rolling out videos on a consistent basis. I'm running at least one webinar per month. By doing that, by properly optimizing it, you can get your website to rank organically over time. Uh, Mano, I'll come back to you on that. Um, I'll definitely come back to you on that. Facebook ads works really well, right? I mean, in a niche, you can choose the audience, you can upload your custom list and set that as your audience that you're going to target on Facebook and serve ads to them. You know, serve case studies, serve, you know, the offer for your checklist or for your guide or for your book. Get them to opt in, add them to a follow-up sequence. Leveraging direct mail to your Dream 100 list can be really, really effective, right? Sending them physical things in the mail so that they know, like, trust you, and they're seeing you in their inbox, they're seeing you on social media, they're getting something in the mail from you. And then exhibiting at trade shows in the industry. In any vertical you can think of, from plumbing to decorative concrete to dentistry and everything in between. There's events happening in major markets across the country where the prospects are aggregating. They're coming together to get continuing education, to network with each other, to like learn what's going on. And you can exhibit at those events. And when you exhibit, you get the names of the attendees, you get their contact details, you get some face time. And if you're smart, you look for opportunities to speak in front of those groups and to hang out with them at the bar and wherever else they're hanging out after hours. You want to look for those opportunities to advertise your agency. You know, these two combined can really set you up to hit that 15 to 20 strategy session mark within your business. So I want you to pick at least 2 or 3 of these advertising initiatives. That you're going to put in play this quarter. So again, we're building that action plan to hit the KPIs, to hit the inevitable goal of growing the agency and recurring revenue that you've set for yourself. Give me a 1 if you've got your advertising initiatives that you're gonna focus on? One in the chat. Excellent, very good. All right, and then the third is, is what we want to do is we want to figure out what the, what the activity is, right? Because there's certain things you can set, like set up your advertising, pick your associations and events, and you just kind of set it up and it's running. There's other things you have to proactively do in order to accomplish your goals, in order to move things forward. And so what I really want to encourage you or a VA on your team— if you don't have a VA, you should think about getting one, hiring one, training one— on a consistent basis is at least 3 move-forward conversations a day. So every day you would be reaching out either via cold call, via email, via social messenger on like Facebook or LinkedIn or even Instagram and getting prospects to express some level of interest, right? And whether you're coming at them saying, hey, I'm looking to work with just one plumber in the Dallas area right now, where you're coming and saying, hey, I've got this video that I shot that kind of shows you where there's room for improvement. Um, there's lots of different angles you can come at it from. You want 3 prospects a day that are hearing from you and saying, yeah, I'd look at that. Yeah, I'd be open to see what you have to say. If you do that, you're going to move the needle forward. This is one thing that Alan Hillsborough, who I talked about earlier, kind of showed you his case study, that he does really well. From the beginning, it was 3 move-forward conversations. Whether it took him 10 minutes and 3 people said, hey, yeah, send it over, or it took him the entire day, he committed to get 3 move-forward conversations every single day. Also daily, we should attempt to connect with at least 25 prospects within our space. And by connect, I mean send them a like, send them a friend request on Facebook, connect with them on LinkedIn, send them an email, call their office, leave a message, drop them something in the mail. If you're connecting with and moving the needle forward with 25 prospects every single day, you're going to have enough activity to start to fill the calendar. Now, I don't do this activity, right? I did at one point. And then once we get a little bit of recurring revenue, I got a VA in place that does this activity. And, you know, so don't feel like you have to do this forever. If you can afford to hire a VA for, you know, $1,500, $1,700 per month, you can put a full-time person on this task to be doing the work to fill your calendar. But you want to have this daily activity happening. So just put daily in chat if you're clear on like This is the activity you probably want to be looking to implement on a day-in-and-day-out basis to hit your goals and targets. Awesome. There's certain things we want to do weekly, right? And I'm not prescribing to you what you do weekly, but I believe, you know, if you could pick one city to focus on, on a weekly basis and have your VA Reach out to all of the people within your vertical in that city. So let's just use Miami as an example. Choose all the plumbers in Miami, um, reach out to them. Hey, we're looking to work with one in your area. It's going to be first come, first serve. Here's what we do. Here's the results we can get. Let me know if this is something you're interested in. Moving one city forward on a weekly basis and then creating some type of authority content every single week. So recording a quick video, um, on some tip or tactic within the vertical, how to get ranked on page 1, how to generate more reviews, how to generate better return on investment with your Google Ads, you know, any variety of topics. Just a quick 5-minute video that you post on your personal profile, on your business page, your LinkedIn profile, that you share into the groups that are relevant to your industry. Then you take that and you have it transcribed, you put it up on your blog, you email blast it out to the prospects that are in your database. Doing that will create positioning content that lives, you know, as an asset for inbound marketing into perpetuity, but it also kind of shakes the bushes within your database. Be like, oh wow, that's what you do. Hey, I'm interested in scheduling a time to talk. And if you've got your funnel set up, it brings them in to a scheduled strategy session with you and kind of into your appointment sphere. Um, could we all shoot one video per week Load it up, syndicated out. Give me a 1 if we can do 1 video a week just to kind of create some authority and create some positioning. And then monthly, I think, you know, if there's one thing you did every month that would have a huge impact, it's one live topical webinar. So it's a different webinar on a different topic that's relevant to your space. So if you look at Plumber SEO, I do a webinar every month. I do a webinar on the beginning of the year. It's your 2021 planning session. And then I do in February, it's one on how to set your website up for maximum conversion. I show examples of plumbing websites that convert well. And then I do one on how to optimize your website so that it ranks for the most important plumbing keywords in your service area. And by doing that one webinar, I've got a reason to email my database to invite them to the live event. I'm forced to show up and record a long-form video, right? I've got the attention of my prospects for a short period of time. And what often happens if you run the webinar strategically, you can promote it out there, prospects register for it, and then they get to a page that says, hey, the webinar is going to be great, but if you want to just meet and I can do this for you, schedule a time in. A lot of prospects will register for the webinar and go straight to your calendar. One webinar per month. Put webinar if you believe you could do one webinar per month to really position yourself and to kind of keep that calendar relatively full with prospects. Absolutely. Sherry, Bob, Lori, awesome. These are the— like, these are the key things that are going to move your agency forward, right? If you get the foundation dialed in, you do some level of advertising— you have to do it all, but like put a couple dollars towards your advertising— and then you do daily, weekly, and monthly activities without going crazy, like, you know, just consistent activity, your calendar will get pretty filled up, right? And you'll be able to hit those sales targets that you set for yourselves. So out of all of this stuff I want you to update your document, right? Not all of you are going to do all of this. Some of you are going to do other cool, like, different things. I just want you to update your action plan based on the goals and the KPIs. Like, what's your action items going to be? What are the things you're going to put in place in order to make this all happen in your business? And while you guys are updating that, I'm going to jump back to Mano, who was asking What do we do for $1,000 per month? Um, I mean, you— I mean, depends, right, on the— depending upon the vertical that you're in. Could be a website, could be SEO, could be website SEO and pay-per-click. Um, right now our program is $2,500 per month. We do their website, we do their SEO for the most important keywords, um, we put a reputation system in place, we run Google Ads. And we put all the tracking in place. Um, $2,500 a month, they get that, and then we just manage it month over month. When we started, it was $1,000 a month for the website and SEO, and $1,500 a month for website, SEO, and pay-per-click. Depending upon how well-versed you are in your niche, kind of what your skill set is, you want to package in that kind of way. Well, it's like, here's what we're going to do, and know that you're going to get a tangible, measurable return for the clients. Okay, put plan in comments if you feel like you've got a pretty tight plan for the key things you're going to do to hit your goals and targets. Awesome, very, very good. Again, that the purpose of this session is just this, right? It's to give you guys the plan to go out and make this a reality within your, within your business. And you're clear now on your goals, you're clear on your targets. I want to show a good example of Danny Barrera, which some of you guys have heard his story. He works in decorative concrete. He grew from, you know, less than $12,000 per month, over $23,000 in the first year, and then he grew from $23,000 to almost $76,000 in monthly recurring revenue. I want you to hear a little bit of his story. Tell us, tell us like where you were in your agency last year around this time and kind of where you're at now.

Oh yeah, last year around this time I was a generalist taking or trying to get every client under the sun. As a matter of fact, I don't know if you knew this, but Contractor SEO Agency, I came with that idea because I saw your website. ContractorSEO.net, right?

Yep.

And I saw you ranked and I told my friends, I'm like, hey man, I'm gonna buy this domain. I'm actually gonna rank it on top of this guy's, watch. And eventually it did rank. So I did get a couple of contractors, you know, through that website and all this stuff. But I was all over the place, no direction, which for me was the biggest game changer. It's like when you know where you're going, you have a target and you're focusing and moving that direction. Something magical happens, and that's what happened to me. So I don't know, on one of the coaching calls with Jeff, and at that time I had— I don't remember exactly how many clients, maybe around 5 or so, you know, between $4,000 to $7,000 a month in revenue. And, you know, he probably— he asked me a couple of questions in just regarding what what I like to do, you know, what, who I like working with and all that good stuff. And eventually he's like, hey, why don't you try the Concrete Guys? Like, you know, the guys that do residential concrete work. So that was the beginning for me. And from there, you know, one step led to another. I just went all in. I just went all in, showed up for the Wednesday calls and just started executing. Like, I don't— I didn't care, you know, whether that didn't make sense to me or not. I just started taking in action. I took, you know, whatever knowledge I had, you know, from sales and, you know, outreach and all that stuff and just went all out. And that gave me the momentum to start generating the niche clients. So yeah, the difference is by probably month 3 or 4, I got rid of all the other clients and just focused on the niche agency. And, you know, I'm not looking back. Seriously, like, I want to take over that industry as a whole. There's been a ton of resistance for me, and I felt it personally because there's a ton of rednecks, you know, throughout the United States, and that's the majority of, you know, contractors. And, you know, for me, but that, that's a motivation for me. I'm like, I'm going all out. Like, I want these guys to see my face, and they're going to be, you know, it's like you, you know, they're going to have to see your face. All the plumbers, they know who you are. So we did the World of Concrete just last, 2 weeks ago.

A big expo.

The biggest expo for concrete guys, 65,000 construction, industrial construction, concrete guys go there. And we generated over 100 leads from that event.

Wow.

Okay. So now I'm having conversations, my pipeline is full right now. In fact, people wanted to book a call like today, but I'm here. I'm here. So that's my journey. That's been my journey.

Yeah.

You mind sharing approximately like where you're at from a recurring revenue perspective?

We passed $28,000 in recurring revenue. Now I made more than that because some clients, you know, we're doing little things here and there.

Projects.

Right.

Projects. But $28,000 and change.

That's this month. Yeah, well done. So what's cool is that was in his, in his first year. Fast forward here, and this is just— all right guys, well, 2019 Agency of the Year, Danny Barrera. Um, we kind of stacked up all of our clients, or all the members of the 7 Figure Agency, based on growth rate, based on pipeline revenue growth. We have a couple of prizes. We awarded the fastest growing, the Rookie of the Year, And he was actually Rookie of the Year last year. And this year, by all stats, he is the, the outright winner of the Agency of the Year 2019. As I see it, 330% year-over-year growth from 2018 to 2019. He grew from $23,000 in monthly recurring to $76,000 in monthly recurring by the end of 2019. That's over $55,000 in monthly recurring revenue growth. He's on pace to be over 7 figures going through the end of 2020, and really the momentum and the steam behind him is phenomenal. So since he's not able to join us live and in person at this intensive, I just wanted to get some words from our Agency of the Year 2019. You know, tell us, tell us how you feel, kind of give us some insights on how you made it happen.

I, I got to tell you, Josh, you know, you, you really caught me off guard, uh, you know. I don't do this for the awards or anything like that, but all I'm saying is, coming into this program, if I go back 2+ years ago when I was getting started, I don't know if you remember, it was the first live intensive I went to when I said, "Hey, by the end of that year, I'm gonna have 75 clients," and you're like, "Uh, I don't think, you know, that's not a realistic goal to set for yourself," but that was a wake-up call it was a wake-up call for me. And ever since then, I set myself up a goal to really continue pushing my own boundaries and my own limiting beliefs in all the facets, because I didn't know how to run an agency. That's where I learned coming here. Didn't know how to run an agency the right way, didn't know how to structure my packages so that I could scale, which is another, you know, thing of its own. I didn't have any market positioning, so no one really knew who I was. I was not a market leader. So all of those things, I've taken it straight right from your playbook, from your guidance, and Jeff Fisher. You guys have been, you know, phenomenal through this journey. I mean, I don't know what to tell you, seriously. It's, uh, you know, my father passed away last year, right? I, you know, I shared that story before, but It's one of those things where looking back, you know, if he was here and I was able to talk to him, I know he would be very proud, but, you know, the ability to get to this point financially and be able to give back, I mean, my goal was to be able to retire my father. I've literally 10x'd that goal, you know, and I made it. I want to make something significant, so, you know, I'm opening up a foundation under his name. In El Salvador, back in my country, and I would not be able to do those sort of things without money, you know, without what facilitates that whole front end. And that's what pushes me, motivates me, and it has not been, you know, a walk in the park. I see myself as a David and Goliath in a lot of the things that have happened last year alone, but, you know, I trust in God, I have full faith, And I know he's on my side. I know he's right in front of me, right behind me, right on each side looking after me. And all I got to do is just go out there and get it, you know. That's the way I see it.

That's amazing, man. Well, I know that you're at an event and you kind of broke away for a couple minutes to do this quick video for the group. Thanks for sharing. If you have one piece of wisdom or insight that you could share just to kind of inspire the others that would love to get similar results, what would you share?

Guys, you see, this is something I've learned, is whatever you see in me, it's in you. Whatever you see in me, whatever, even the flaws or whatever inspires you, that is in you. Well, you see, what I see in Joshua Nelson as a father, as a husband, as a business owner, entrepreneur, as a marketer, it's— those are things that I see in myself. And you know, the thing is this, a lot of times we stop ourselves from from actually receiving the blessings and the successes because we start thinking, hey, I'm not worth it. But the thing is, the bottom line is you have to have beliefs that yes, you can do it, it's doable, put in the work. But you know, I'm not from another planet, dude. I've had it so hard. I'll tell you right now, I don't say this to brag, but I've made more money than a lot of people in the agency world without a green card, without an active Social Security number last year, because I was dealing with that situation, without a driver's license in the United States. And I'll tell you, if I can do it under those circumstances, trust me, if you've got that part covered, you could be 10 steps ahead. But whatever you see in me, you know, it's in you. You just got to go and claim it, really, and step out. Yeah, step out of the comfort zone.

Go and make it happen. Well, you're an inspiration. Congratulations. This award, I can't wait to give it to you in person the next time I see you. We definitely missed you at this event, but go crush it at your expo, and we'll look forward to catching up with you again soon.

Hey, uh, Josh, I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart, really, for being there for me. And for me, it's all about execution. We can talk, we can mastermind all day long, we could write down goals, we could do everything else, but nothing happens until we step out in the front and we go to war. And you've really given me all the weapons, all the armory, whatever I need to do in order to win. I know I'm gonna win because I've got the best in my corner. So thank you, thank you, and thank you to our Coaches. And I mean, thank you to your wife for being there for you in the events. And you guys are, you know, you've changed my life. So Thank you. I really mean it from the bottom of my heart.

Thanks, man. It's an honor to be part of your continued growth and success. And, um, I look forward to talking with you again soon.

Awesome. Thank you.

What's amazing is now that was 2020. That was like mid-2020. He was the Agency of the Year 2020, 2019. Um, he's over $200,000 a month in recurring revenue, right? And it's just based on this whole process. Choose the niche, Simplify your model, position yourself as the go-to expert, set annual quarter goals, and execute the plan month in, month out. Hold yourself accountable. So I thought that was like kind of a good synopsis of what we've just covered. What I want you to do now, um, I want you guys to look at some roadblocks because the reality is there are going to be things that stop you from getting this work done, right? We know what the goal is. We've written down what the actions are. We know if we do those actions, we'll hit the targets. I just want you for a quick second at the bottom of page— what page is this? The bottom of the document, there's a spot called roadblocks. And I want you again On the far left column, what's the current reality? And that's, you know, how many clients, how much recurring revenue, but also like how hard are you working, how many clients are you getting, what's the current reality. Then I want you to look at the, at the goal for the quarter. By the end of the quarter, where do you want to be? How many clients, how much recurring revenue, how are things different in the business, how are things improving? And then I want you to spend a couple minutes proactively recognizing the roadblocks, which is like, what are the things that are going to get in your way that are going to slow you down? So I'm going to give you guys just 2 minutes here. Just think this through. I promise if you spend some time thinking about this in advance, you can make different decisions. You can move things. You can get around these roadblocks. If you have any questions, feel free to chime in on, on the chat. Where do my chatbots go? And so as you're doing that, I just want to like— if you followed along with me today You're clear on the business model that's going to position you for success. You've got clear targets for this quarter— how many clients you're going to have, how much recurring revenue. You've got a proven action plan. It's like, if you do this work, you can get these outcomes. And you've got an accountability mechanism where you can, like, go back and look and say, okay, here's the goal I set. Um, either I'm on track I'm not on track. And you spend a little bit of time thinking about like, what are the roadblocks? Is it just because you get busy? Is it because you get too sucked into fulfillment? Is it because you kind of lose steam a couple of weeks in? You know, we all have different roadblocks that slow us down and prevent us from, from hitting our goals and our targets. So at the beginning, this is what we said, right? We said we're going to set goals, targets, we're going to get re-energized and refocused and Kind of part of that is pausing. Part of it's reflecting. Part of it is hearing the stories of other successful people. We mapped out an action plan and we've given you the roadmap to be much more successful in Q3 and the year in advance. Just give me a yes in comments if you feel like you got value, if you got what you came to get and you feel clear on what you can do going forward. Fantastic.