In this instructional video, Joshua Nelson outlines a concise, four‑step framework – the “Rule of 1’s” – for rapidly scaling a digital‑marketing agency to seven‑figures in 2024. He advises agency owners to focus on a single target market (e.g., plumbing and HVAC), a single lead‑generation channel, a single conversion mechanism (typically a discovery call), and a single packaged program that delivers recurring monthly revenue. Nelson stresses the importance of doing the “money math” to set pricing between $1,000‑$3,000 per month for new agencies and $3,000‑$5,000+ for more mature ones, arguing that higher‑ticket recurring contracts reduce sales effort and increase scalability. He outlines operational benchmarks – 15‑20 strategy sessions per month, a >30% close rate, and 97%+ client retention – and recommends systematic onboarding, automated billing (credit card/ACH), and building an account‑management team to sustain retention. The video warns against shiny‑object syndrome and frequent pivots, urging consistency with the chosen niche, lead source, and program. Nelson concludes with a call to action to subscribe, watch upcoming retention‑focused videos, and explore a deeper agency‑growth roadmap at 7figureagency.com/roadmap.
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On this video, I wanna talk about the fastest way to grow your agency in 2024. So happy New Year. Really excited about everything going on in terms of growing and scaling our agencies. I wanna share kind of what we've seen has worked very best for now working with hundreds of agencies over the last several years, now helping 103 active agencies go to 7 figures and multiple 7 figures and beyond. We've boiled it down to this process. That I learned from Taki Moore from Million Dollar Coach, who learned it from Clay Collins from LeadPages, is that the rule of once. And if you can focus on one area in these 5 dimensions within your agency, it will absolutely accelerate your growth. And so the first is having one target market. I know we all believe that we can be all things to all people, and maybe if we work with all businesses, that would work just fine. And what we found is that when you choose one particular market, in our case plumbing and HVAC companies, you can position yourself in that space, you can become known, you can get clients to come to you prepositioned to buy, you can systematize your offering, and you can accelerate your growth. So in 2024, choose one vertical out of the universe of, of types of businesses that you can work with. It will simplify your business, which can ultimately accelerate your growth. Number 2 is we want one lead generation strategy. There's lots of ways to land clients. Facebook ads, public speaking in industry events and associations, going to trade shows, creating content, running webinars, having a podcast. We find the agencies that go fastest find one particular client attraction mechanism that works best. They build that all the way up, they focus on that, and they use that as the main mechanism to keep their calendar full and to bring on new clients. So, one target niche, one lead generation strategy, one conversion mechanism, right? And within your agency, somebody could buy on a Zoom call, they could buy through a proposal, they could buy through a video sales letter, they could buy on a webinar potentially. What we found is discovery call process works best, right? Where they get on a call with you, you have a consultative sales process, you ask the questions, you show them how you can help, and we make that our main conversion mechanism. Okay, number 4 is to have one program. And as digital marketing agencies, we can do a vast array of things. Websites, SEO, pay-per-click, social media, email marketing, funnel design, social media creative, right? There's lots of different things that we can do. We find that the agencies that grow fastest are the ones that can say, "Hey, I'm gonna take all of these services, all these disparate parts, and put them into a program, and make that the main thing that we sell." A growth program to this niche. And when you do it that way, you can get really good at figuring out what's actually gonna make it rain for your clients, what's gonna actually generate the results for them. You can systematize it so that you can repeat the process and improve it every single time for every next client that you get. So, one target market. Choose one type of business within all the clients you can work with to focus on. That way you can go deep. One lead generation strategy. What's gonna work best for you in order to get appointments and to get opportunities? One conversion mechanism, sales process to ask the questions, to show the value, to get the business, and then one program. Now yes, you can have an upsell, you can have a drop sell, but just don't have an à la carte, we'll figure it out, we'll customize it for your needs. Build your program in advance. And many of you might be looking at this saying, yeah, I could do that, I could do one program, one niche, one lead generation strategy. But ultimately we get shiny object syndrome. Like we start to think, uh, you know what, I'll do that, but then maybe this niche doesn't seem so attractive after a couple of months or a couple of weeks and we try another niche. Or, you know, that conversion mechanism that I was trying with the sales process, not so excited, I'm gonna switch to VSLs. The agencies that have the most growth and are gonna have the most growth in 2024 will stick with it throughout the course of the year. Right? If you won't stick with it and you won't be consistent with taking the action and sticking to this plan, you're gonna wind up taking 3 steps back instead of 3 steps forward. So this is the rule of ones. If you can do this, it will absolutely streamline, simplify, and accelerate the growth of your digital marketing agency. Now, the second thing you need to consider as you think about growing your agency in 2024 is You wanna make sure that you've done the money math, right? How many clients is it gonna take to hit your revenue goals? Now, let's say your goal is to get to $1 million in 2024, or maybe it's to get to $5 million in 2024. Just using each million, there's a couple of ways to get there, right? You could have one client that pays you $83,000 per month. $83,000 times 12 months is about $1 million. You have one client. You could have 8 to 9 clients that pay you $10,000 per month. You could have 83 clients that pay you $1,000 per month. You could have 166 clients that pay you $500 a month. You could have 830 clients paying you $100 a month. What I found is we're thinking about how to really help you grow fastest in 2024. The fastest way is to make sure you're charging enough that you're not chasing your tail. We found that it takes almost as much energy to sell a $100 a month or a $500 a month service as it does to sell a $5,000 a month program. And if you can get $3,000, $5,000, $10,000, the amount of clients you have to land is so much less. So make sure the math that you're working off of makes a lot of sense. And I really believe in any niche, regardless of what niche you might be thinking about focusing on or that you do focus on within your agency, there's a plethora of businesses willing to pay between $1,000 $3,000 per month for a management fee. And you know what? That number is growing. We got a lot of people in the program charging $10,000 plus. But if you're new to the niche space, you're trying to get this dialed in, I would say make sure you're charging between at least $1,000 and $3,000 per month. There's a sweet spot there where you can absolutely sell it. They will absolutely stay with you long-term, assuming you get value and you deliver on your promises. Just don't charge less because you're gonna wind up doing a lot more work to get there. So that's the money math. And so if you break this down and you think, you know, my goal is to either grow to $1 million this year or add an additional $1 million in revenue, which I think would be a great target for anybody watching this video. If we can land 5 clients per month at an average of $1,350 per month, which is on the low end of the spectrum for niche digital marketing agency services. Just 5 clients at $13,000, $15,000 per month, you can add $1 million over the next 12 months. So building a 7-figure agency in that timeframe, I really believe is doable, and this is the fastest path to do it. I'm gonna get into the Cliff Notes here, the key things. One niche. In our agency, we work with plumbing and HVAC companies. That's our main play. Recurring monthly revenue every single time. Don't sell project work. Don't sell the big website build or the big funnel build. As a one-time fee, make sure you sell it as a package. That way you can get recurring revenue, and every client you get starts to stack on top of itself. I find when agencies do project work, they wind up getting busy on that project, even if it was a $10,000 or $15,000 or $20,000 project, and they, they do that work, and then when it's done, the money has come in, and the project is over. There's no recurrence to it. Nothing has happened. There's no build in terms of their business. And it winds up becoming like phantom revenue, the cash in, cash out, game over, right? So play the recurring revenue game. Get to a place where every month when you sell clients, that recurring base grows every single time. So no one-off project works, no check payments, make sure you're getting a credit card or an ACH card. You don't wanna have to chase down the check. You don't wanna have to say, hey, I sent you the invoice. When they sign up, they give you the authorization to run it every single month, and it just auto-bills until they say stop. No partial payment deposits. And I really believe that monthly minimum needs to be at least $1,000 per month. Make sure that the number's large enough that you can have consistent momentum. In another video, I'll talk about how to package your program to make it compelling enough to charge $3,000 to $5,000 per month, excluding ad spend. But make sure if you're doing websites and SEO and pay-per-click and social media as a service, It's gotta be at least $1,000 per month. I would say probably in 2024, that minimum should be $2,000 per month. And we're thinking about how to accelerate your growth in 2024. Make sure you've got a growth system in place where you're doing specific things daily, you're doing certain things monthly, you're doing certain things quarterly to ensure you've got at least 15 strategy sessions per month, 15 to 20 strategy sessions per month. Make sure you've got a great appointment process where somebody could schedule in, get warmed up, get pre-positioned to buy, and a great sales process where the prospect says yes north of 30%, right? Because if you do that, you'll absolutely be landing 5 clients or more on a monthly basis. And then from there, make sure that you retain, right? We don't wanna just land the client, lose the client, and be on this hamster wheel. Have a world-class onboarding process in place, have a great communication flow with those retainer-based clients so they understand your values, so they see where you're headed, so that they're excited to stick with you long-term. And, and really start thinking about how you're gonna build your account management capacity, how you're gonna hire and train account managers so you don't have to do it all yourself with the goal of retaining at 97% or higher. So you don't churn anything more than 3% on a monthly basis. I assure you, if you do these things consistently and well, this is the fastest way to grow your digital marketing agency in 2024. I hope you got value. If you have questions, please let me know in the comments. Here in January, I'm gonna be talking about the key strategies for retention, the key strategies for building your program and your package, and really the right model to scale your agency in 2024. So stay tuned, be sure you hit the subscribe button so you get alerted as these new trainings and these new videos come out. If you'd like to go deep on my philosophy on how to grow and scale your agency with all of the details over the next 12 to 24 months to 7 figures and beyond, you can access that by going to 7figureagency.com. /roadmap. That's 7figureagency.com/roadmap. Thanks so much for watching today. Cannot wait to hear what you accomplish in 2024. Let's make it great.
