The Roadmap to Scaling an Agency to $1,000,000/yr (2026)

Welcome. I'm gonna be talking all about the 7-Figure Agency Roadmap and walking you through it. And really my promise for you on this particular session is to show you a plan that if followed will get you to 7 figures over the next 12 to 24 months. And for those of you over 7 figures, I know some of you guys here are already doing 7 figures and have a great agency running, how to add an additional million dollars over the next 12 to 24 months. So if that sounds good, stay tuned because we're gonna unpack this entire process for you on today's session. And I wanna start by saying, 184 other agencies have already come through this model and gotten to 7 figures. Like, this is something I track very close. It's not, hey, I did it once and this is what I did. Literally, there are 184 other agencies that have followed this playbook, implemented this plan, and are now running 7-figure and multiple 7-figure agencies. Just a few, and I'm not going to belabor the point, but Jim Aline from Roofer Marketers, It was now running over $250,000 in monthly recurring revenue. Recently sold that agency to public equity. Austin Hauser works with painting companies, grew from $0 to $94,000 in monthly recurring. Chris Rodriguez, who works with dojos, like martial arts studios, from $30,000, now over $250,000 in monthly recurring. I'll share some of their examples and case studies, but I just wanna make sure you're clear, this is a proven roadmap. That's not only been lived my experience, but has been implemented by other agencies as well. And we did put together a workbook for this. Kevin asked me, hey, look, give the resources, give everything they need in order to implement these strategies. And in the downloads here, you've got access to it, or you can go to 7figureagency.com/roadmap-workbook. It's about a 147-page workbook with more details than we can cover on this particular session, but it should give you everything you need to get like super clear on how to execute this plan in your agency. I find that we're all in different stages of growth. As we grow and scale our agencies, we all go through at least these 4 evolutions, right? From startup, you're less than $10,000 a month of recurring revenue, just trying to get things off the ground. To stability, between $10,000 and $30,000 a month of recurring revenue. To scale, $40,000 to $70,000, starting to put a team in place. Starting to put some systems and procedures in place, all the way to significance, which is you're doing over $83,000 a month. You're on pace for 7 figures. And as we're working through this today, I'd love for you to find yourself, like, where are you right now in your agency? Which stage are you in? And I want you to recognize that every one of these stages requires a different thought process, a different approach. Like, the things that get you to startup and stability aren't going to be the things that get you to 7 figures and beyond. So recognize you're going to have to elevate. You're going to have to make different decisions. You're going to have to deploy different strategies to break through these stages of growth. So I want you to find yourself just mentally so that you can use this roadmap to move yourself forward as you plot through today's session. I want to spend just a quick sec to, to kind of tell you our story. My wife, Yoseni, and I started our first agency back in 2002. So like right outta high school, we were like, we're gonna start a web design and hosting company. And we were like, this is gonna be great, right? We're gonna make a ton of money. And that business failed miserably. Like we were selling the wrong thing in the wrong way, using the wrong approach. And like literally we would work 40 to 50 hours a week sitting in BNI meetings, making cold calls, sending emails and never made enough money even to pay ourselves. Like we would've made more if we'd worked at Burger King or Best Buy or something like that. So we experienced like working hard, doing what we thought was right, but not having the outcome. And so had to shut that business down. Both of us went and got corporate B2B jobs and I wound up at ReachLocal. Like I, I know some of you guys love 'em, know 'em, a lot of you guys know 'em, hate 'em, but they were doing about $500 million a year at the time. And so I was like, you know what? I failed at this thing. Let me go work somewhere that has it figured out. Like at least from a revenue perspective, they're doing something right. And I worked there and I learned a lot. I really discovered the right way to make this happen. And what I discovered there at ReachLocal is what made a big difference for me. 'Cause I was then able to relaunch Click Incorporated and we grew to 7 figures in just 2 years. We made the Inc. 5000 list. Of the fastest growing companies in the United States 4 years in a row. And today that agency does over $525,000 in monthly recurring revenue and has a team of 40 full-time employees. That was my experience. And I can tell you, like, as the business grew and as we experienced the revenue growth, our lives changed, right? We, we got married and we wound up having kids. And for us, it's not just about the money, right? We want— we make the money so that we can live the lives that we want to live. Right? And so we, we are able to take travels, we're able to homeschool our kids, we're able to have the flexibility and the autonomy to really live a great life. And so that was our story. Like that was our journey. And as we grew our agency, other agencies started asking, hey, Josh, what are you doing different? Like, how did you make that happen? How did you bring that into existence? And over the years we went from having like small groups of people come into our office to hang out, to talk. Agency growth to the point now where we serve over 300 agencies from across the country and we get together 3 times per year. And this is a big passion play for me, not just growing my agency, but helping other agencies grow and scale as well. And our mission is to help 500 agencies get to 7 figures over the next 5 years. Like I told you, we track that meticulously. And now that we've got 184 agencies that have crossed that, that threshold. That's why I'm so excited to share this with you, because it's changed my life. It's changed the lives of a lot of agencies that we serve. And sharing this information with you, I think, is going to help us help you accomplish that in your life as well. So let's get right into the new 7-figure agency model. And I highlight the fact that I say new because let's face it, AI is changing the game, right? If you're operating from the old playbook, and you're not updating for where things are headed with AI, you're gonna be left behind. And so regardless of what's happening with AI though, there's 3 things we all want in our business, right? I think, Kevin, you'll agree, right? There's 3 things we definitely want. We want money to pay the bill, to, to live our desired lifestyle, to do the things we want to do. But we also want freedom, right? None of us, we like, who cares if you make millions of dollars, multiple millions of dollars? If you're stuck working 40 hours per week and you don't have any freedom, you don't have any flexibility. So we want to make sure we engineer the freedom to be able to take the travels, to do the things we really want to do, and impact. I think this is the, probably the most important thing. As agency owners, we have the ability to significantly impact the lives of the clients that we serve because they're able to grow, because they're able to hire more people, because they're able to take care of their families at a higher level. We're able to impact the lives of the teams that we employ because we create career opportunities. So we want to make sure it's not just focused on the money. It's focused on the money, the freedom, and the impact that we can have in our agencies. And so to scale to 7 figures and really have a successful business, there's 4 things we have to solve. Number 1 is how we land clients and we get clients coming into our world on a consistent basis. Number 2. Is how we deliver results, right? If we're going to have impact, if we're going to keep clients, we better know how to knock it out of the park for the clients that we serve, but do it in a systematized way. And then number 3, we have to retain those clients long-term. A lot of agencies, and I felt this early in the business, was we would get a client and we would go to work and then we like, we feel like we had a little momentum and then we would lose the client. And it was like, there goes all the steam, right? We had to make sure we got a process to keep those clients with us long-term. And ultimately we've got to scale. We've got to put the systems, the procedure, and the team in place so we don't have to do it all ourselves. And so as you think about those 4 key pillars to growing and scaling your agency, I'd love for you to think, what's the biggest gap for you right now? Is it landing clients? For some of us, we're still like trying to get momentum. It might be like we just don't have a client acquisition process dialed in yet. For others, it might be the the delivery side, or it might be the scale side. Just get really clear on what it is that you need to emphasize right now in your agency. So I want to get into the model and I want to get into this proven approach that, that's worked so well. And I want to start by defining what is a 7-figure agency. So we'll kind of get out the whiteboard here and put this to use a little bit. So what's a 7-figure agency? It's pretty simple, right? This is an agency that produces over $1 million per year, right? Million dollars per year. That's a 7-figure agency. We want to break that down a little bit further. That's $83,333 per month. So my handwriting's atrocious. I apologize, but I think you get the idea. $83,333 per month will put you in a run rate to become a 7-figure agency. So we're going to break that down even further. The first thing you have to understand is the money math. If we want to get to that $83,000 a month of recurring revenue, there's a lot of different ways you can get there. Way 1 is you get 830 clients that pay you $100 per month. That's a lot of clients. And that was a model we were at when we started our agency, Developcom. It was like, hey, we're going to build the websites for a couple hundred bucks and then we're going to charge them a hosting fee. And hopefully over time we get enough clients that hosting fee becomes significant. And the numbers never really added up. You could have 166 clients paying you $500 per month. You could have 83 clients paying you $1,000 per month, 8 to 9 clients paying you $10,000 per month, or one client that pays you $83,000 per month. And if you can get it. Go get it, right? But what I found was it takes almost the same amount of energy to land a $5,000 a month client as it does to land a $500 a month client. And the other, what kind of odd thing is the client that pays $5,000 per month tends to appreciate you more, is actually a lot less pushy, a lot harder to work with and easier to retain. And so as you think about this, I really believe there's a sweet spot between $1,000 and $5,000 per month that in whatever industry you might serve, whatever vertical you might be in, there's a plethora of companies willing to invest at this level. And it's a low enough fee that if you're generating results— now that's the— obviously you gotta generate a return on that investment. But we— there's no reason you can't generate a return on investment if you know what you're doing and you put these strategies into good play. This is the sweet spot. Don't go less than $1,000 per month. If you can go higher, by all means, but there's plenty of companies that are willing to pay in that range and it can make the math of getting to 7 figures so much easier for you. And so I just want this number to settle in for you. If you can get 33 clients to pay you $2,500 per month, that puts you at a run rate of 7 figures, right? So it was over $83,000 a month of recurring revenue. So that's the question I want you to ponder. Can you get 33 clients and retain 33 clients? And I think the answer absolutely should be yes for anybody on this workshop. And again, if you're already at 7 figures, that's going to multiple 7 figures. Let's add an additional 33 clients at that $2,500 a month price point. So some of the fundamentals, right? And this was the most basic shifts that I changed in my first model to go from struggle and shutting it down to going to 7 figures in less than 2 years. And now almost every agency we work with in 7 Figure Agency has implemented this model. It's very simple. One target niche. As agencies, we can serve anybody, right? From the roofer to the chiropractor to the dentist and everything in between. The easiest and fastest way to grow your agency is to choose one vertical and to position yourself as the expert in that vertical, develop a program engineered specifically for that industry. And you can really, you can go and sell that $2,500 to $5,000 a month program and deliver world-class consistent results. So one niche recurring monthly only, right? So rather than selling one-off projects like a setup fee and then a monthly fee, What we found works best is just going straight to monthly recurring revenue. Hey, our program's $2,500 a month. We're gonna do this and this. This is what you can expect. Either you're gonna buy that or you're not. And if you're not, that's cool, right? You're not a good fit for us right now. No one-off projects, no check payments. So everybody goes to automatic recurring on either ACH or credit card authorization. No, no partial payments. And the monthly recurring needs to be at least $1,000 per month. 5 simple rules that totally changed the game for me and a lot of the other agencies that we work with. Really good example of this is Seth and Nicholas, and I wanted to use them as an example because this is recent, like literally 12 months ago, Seth and Nicholas were a general agency selling project work, reinventing the wheel from one client to the next, and they could not consistently get past $10,000 months. Fast forward to today, they're doing over $100,000 in monthly recurring revenue in less than 12 months. And they're going to do over $1.5 million. And so I want to pause there. I want you to really reflect, what do you need to change in terms of your model? There's a really important concept that simplicity scales and complexity fails. And so like, how can you simplify your model by choosing one niche, by going to monthly recurring, by having one core program that you sell again and again. Just really think about that and think about what decision, what change you can make on that front. I wanna Cliff Notes this portion of what I wanna teach, cuz I wanna get into the growth system with you guys, but we gotta land clients, we gotta deliver results, we've gotta retain, and then we've gotta scale. There's a lot of things that go into this, but as I think about most of the agencies that are sub-seven figures, the most important aspect you've really gotta focus on out of the gates is how we land clients and the process to attract clients on a consistent basis. And so really what I want to drill down on is what I call the growth system. And this is, okay, I get the idea. I need 33 clients that'll pay me $2,500 a month. How do I bring that into reality? What do I need to be doing in order to land those clients, in order to retain those clients? And so this growth system will help you figure out like, what do I need to do daily? What do I need to do monthly? What do I need to be doing quarterly to fill my funnel? And then how do I retain the clients? And so I'm gonna, I'm gonna go through this quick and efficient as possible, but you should be able to walk away with a really clear plan on how to execute. There's a great quote by James Clear, and what he says is, you don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the standard of your systems. And so this is a system that you can install into your agency that will help you bring that 7-figure goal or that additional 7 figures into reality. So what do we want to do daily? On a daily basis, you should be doing some type of cold outreach, which is let's decide what the niche is, whatever it is— roofing companies, HVAC companies, plumbers— get a list of the ideal prospects you want to work with. And I'm not talking about spamming, but I'm talking about let's get the list. Let's get their name, their phone number, their email. Let's connect with them on social media. And let's introduce ourselves. Let's get them into a nurtured database so we can start to introduce ourselves into their world. And then let's also run Facebook ads and Google ads. Eat our own dog food as digital marketing agencies. We sell these services. We need to run these services in a very specific vertical. It becomes much more palatable to actually run those ads to a very specific market. And then start creating content on a daily basis. Some short form, some long form, some information about how to do what it is that you do, how to generate better results, how to actually execute these ideas. And so that's what we want to be doing on a daily basis. That in and of itself is going to start to create some opportunity. It's going to start to create some deal flow, but more important, we don't just want cold prospects. We want prospects that are coming to us pre-positioned to buy. And so there's two things I'm gonna suggest that you do every single month. And if you do these two things, you will be prolific within your industry. You'll have clients starting to come to you pre-positioned to buy. First, we're gonna do every month a webinar, and I'm not talking about a sales pitch webinar. I'm talking about once a month, you're gonna show up on Zoom and you're gonna teach. You're gonna give great value. You're gonna share examples. You're gonna teach on a very Specific component of what you do for your clients. So just as an example, if you're working with roofing companies, you would show up and say, how to set up your roofing website for maximum conversion. That could be a webinar topic and you show examples of roofing websites and you show clients and results. And that's a teach. The next month you could show up and say, how to get your roofing company ranked for the most important roofing keywords in your area. And you talk about SEO and how to get that done. Once a month. That gives you a reason to email your database. It forces you to create new content and new thought leadership. It gives you something that you can syndicate out. Over the last 10 years, this is one thing we've done every single month at Plumbing and HVAC SEO. And that's like the number one thing that drives our content engine and positions us as a, an attractive leader in the industry. So one webinar per month. And then I'm also gonna suggest once a month to do a podcast. And this is just you bringing on somebody in your space that's doing really good work, somebody that's really successful and interviewing them, right? Either get them on Restream or get them on Riverside or get them on Zoom. And you say, hey, tell me about your company. Tell me about how you market yourself. Tell me about some of the biggest lessons you've learned from a marketing perspective. Tell me about how you're getting reviews. Get a series of 5 to 6 questions that you ask every single time. And by doing that, you are going to have content that makes you magnetically attractive, but it also is gonna help you connect with thought leaders and experts within your space. And it's a power lever. Like once a month you show up. If you could do it more frequently, there are people in our community that do podcasting every single week. But if you just did one webinar per month and you did one podcast interview per month, you'd be light years ahead. Of anybody else within that space. And you'd be like really positioning yourself as a prolific thought leader. And then quarterly, so this is once per quarter, this is 4 times per year. I'm gonna ask you to get into a live environment with your ideal prospects, right? I know as marketing agencies, we like to be behind our computers and we like to be on Zoom, but a lot of magic happens live and in person. And your industry, like if you're working with whatever it is, plumbing companies, roofing companies, chiropractors, They're getting together live for conferences, for continuing education. And so get out in person, get a booth at that conference, start to plant live seeds, look for opportunities to add value. If you can do a workshop, if you can train and be on the front of the stage, that's even gonna elevate that experience further for you. But when you're live and in person, you're gonna get more referrals. You're gonna understand the industry better. You're going to potentially find joint venture opportunities. So really force yourself, even if it's outside your comfort zone, to find those live places to plug in. And then once per quarter, a case study, like a documented, here's the client we're working with. Here's where they were when we started. Here's the struggles they were having and here's where they are today. And really be able to back up. Here's how many leads they're getting. Here's how many, how much revenue they're generating from our services. Because a lot of people can talk the talk, right? Oh, here's how you do it. And here's how, like, here's the secret sauce. But when you back that up with, hey, here's real clients we've worked with and real results we've gotten, you become bulletproof. So the combination of content strategy here with backing that up with case studies and examples will drive a lot of high leverage prospect opportunity versus just like cold outreach. Opportunities. So that's how we fill our funnel. And the number we're looking for is 15 strategy sessions per month, right? If you do this activity, I can tell you, you can absolutely set yourself up to get a consistent 15 or more prospects scheduling and say, hey, I'm interested in what you can do for me. Talk to me about how you can help. And then from there, we've just got to have our process to convert those opportunities into sales. There's two things you want to put in place. Number one is the appointment funnel. This is just an easy way for someone to schedule in and get reminded to show up and ideally get warmed up so that they show up to that appointment pre-positioned. It's one thing if you're using like Calendly and it's just a, hey, here's a text reminder, see you on Thursday at 3:00 versus, hey, before we meet, here's some examples of some of the clients we've worked with. We're to give them a little mental exercise that creates a gap. Between where they are, where they're looking to go, and what your unique mechanism is and why they're going to come to that meeting excited to meet with you. So you want to have that in terms of your appointment process. And then you want to have sales process mastery, right? A great process to take a prospect from, I'm interested in what you can do. I've seen some of the examples to sign me up. I want to pay the $2,500 a month. I want to pay the $5,000 per month. And we do that by having a structured consultative sales process. And the goal here, like when you get your conversion mechanism dialed in, should be at least a 30% close ratio. When you've got a, a prepositioned funnel, people are showing up prepositioned to buy. You've got a great sales process. You can be able to convert at 30% or higher. Now that will get the deal flow going, but we have to retain those clients as well. Right? So we have to make sure that we create a world-class experience. So first thing we want to do is world-class onboarding. The way you come out of the gates with your clients in the first week, in the first month, will set the pace of whether they're going to be with you a year down the road. So really dial in that onboarding process. Dial in your communication rhythm, how you're going to check in with the clients, how you're going to show the value, how you're going to see the vision to where things are headed next so that they're not just one month to the next. They feel bought in. They feel like you've got the plan that's going to take them to where they want to go. And then you're gonna want to develop your account management process so that as you go from 10 clients to 50 clients to 100+, it's not you, but there's a trained account management team and an account management process where people can come in and take that process over. The goal here with your delivery and retention is 97% or higher, right? 3 to 5% churn should be the worst case scenario. When you do this right and when you do this well, but the gold standard lets you for no more than 3% monthly churn. And what's cool is this formula, this growth system, when you do this activity, will absolutely get you to 7 figures or higher. I really believe that math is the path, right? And so if we do the math here, I'll do one more mathematical breakdown for you guys, and then we'll get you on with your day. The goal is 33 clients or more at $2,500 per month is going to get us to a 7-figure agency. So the mathematics of this is we said we want 15 strategy sessions per month, right? That's the KPI. Doing our monthly webinar, doing our monthly podcast, doing our Facebook ads and our Google ads and all of that stuff. 15 strategy sessions per month with a 30% close ratio, right? That was the KPI. These are the 2 KPIs. The Growth System is focused around. This will net you 4.5 clients every single month. So between 4 and 5 new clients on a monthly basis, consistent. Now, 4 clients per month times $2,500, which is what we said. You could go higher, you could go lower, but let's just say it was $2,500 per month. That's $10K a month in MRR growth. Right? $10K a month growth times 12 months is $120,000 in MRR growth in a year. So even if you had a month, maybe, you know what, we didn't hit the sales target. We were a little bit behind. Even if you had a little bit higher churn than you were expecting, because you didn't have all of that dialed in. If you implement the Growth System, you get this dialed in. That puts you well above the 7-figure run rate in your digital marketing agency. That's the math. Another really good example of this is Austin Hauser from Base Coat Marketing. He focuses on painting contractors, grew his agency from $2,000 to $92,000 in 12 months. Did exactly this thing, chose the niche, positioned himself as the expert, implemented the growth system, the daily, monthly, quarterly activities. He's now doing over $200,000 in monthly recurring revenue and growing. And that was what I promised. Today's session, I was going to show you a proven model that if followed, it can get you to 7 figures over the next 12 to 24 months. I backed it up with examples. I backed it up with a plan that you can execute and hopefully the mathematics to get you to be like, okay, I believe this is possible. If I do that work, I can make it happen. Now there's a lot more like to this, right? There's a lot of moving parts. To really growing and scaling the agency. Now, obviously we gotta land clients, we gotta get that piece dialed in. We've also gotta deliver the results and we need to make sure we do that in a systematized way where we don't get sucked into operations mode or where quality starts to suffer as the operations scale. And then we've gotta retain, right? We gotta really dial in that onboarding process and that client communication process. We have our 7-figure agency implementation roadmap. Training, which is like what I taught here with the deep dive on how to set this up. It's actually a 2-day live workshop. I usually sell it for $997. I'm going to include it for free for those of you that are part of this summit. So if you want to grab that, you can go to 7figureagency.com/roadmap. Again, it is free. You will need to opt in, but you'll get access to that full 2-day workshop with all of the explanation of how to execute this.