Cleaning Industry · Cleaner Marketer
A CPA, a Pastor, and a Dry Cleaner That Went to Zero
Cohen Wills bought a dry cleaning business in 2019 and watched COVID take his sales to zero. The agency he built out of that wreckage went from $8,000 a month to $123,000, and he nearly sold it before it worked.
Cohen Wills and Justin Kane on the Seven Figure Agency podcast with Josh Nelson. Full interview, 62 minutes.
Where He Started
Cohen is a CPA by trade. In 2019 he bought a relatively large dry cleaning operation and had no ambition beyond running it well. Then COVID hit and his sales went to zero overnight.
He had put every egg in that basket. He had a wife and three kids. He was trying to avoid bankruptcy.
After a few months of what he openly calls being frustrated, drinking too much and blaming the world, he decided to take it into his own hands.
The Failure That Pointed the Way
His first attempt was software. He built a marketing tool that integrated with dry cleaner point of sale systems and launched it in 2022. Clients stayed two or three months and then cancelled. He ran it for eight months and made just enough to keep the lights on.
Then someone gave him the sentence that reframed the whole business:
So he started a marketing agency for dry cleaners instead. As a CPA with no idea how to run an agency, he found it overwhelming enough that he signed a contract to sell it, at a point when it was doing $8,000 a month.
The Partner
Cohen’s father-in-law was at a Bible study, mentioning that his son had started a marketing agency and he wasn’t sure whether it was a thing. The man he was talking to knew someone who might fit. That someone was Justin Kane, a former pastor.
The fit worked because they are opposites. Cohen loves getting into the weeds and describes himself as not a people person by default. Justin is a natural with people. They joined Seven Figure Agency within about a month of meeting, at a cost Cohen remembers as more than a quarter of their budget at the time.
What Actually Drove the Growth
The four moves
- They raised prices, repeatedly. The same service that once sold around a thousand dollars a month now sells at $2,999, with a higher tier near $3,500 including per-location add-ons. Every increase held.
- They reversed the risk. Use the signature system, and if it doesn’t produce a return, they refund the money.
- They used power positioning. Cohen has actually run a cleaning business. That is not a claim a competitor can manufacture.
- They deliberately refused to be the cheapest. Their reasoning is that a high price point is what funds the work required to produce a 3x to 10x return on ad spend.
Most of their clients are $2 to $3 million businesses, so the money is there. Cohen’s view is that within sixty days the client’s mental category shifts from expense to investment, which is the entire game.
Building It to Hold
Cohen credits a specific moment for how they thought about scale, and it came from Yesenia Nelson at a mastermind. She showed a chart of how different agencies grow, including the hockey stick, and then made the point that after a hockey stick the line usually either flattens or falls off a cliff.
They walked out of that session and went to work on why fast-growing agencies feel the ground crack underneath them, and built the operational infrastructure before they needed it.
What Was Actually in the Way
Asked what holds agency owners back, Justin’s answer is not tactical.
Cohen adds a detail that will land for anyone still early. He remembers Josh being excited about $40,000 a month, and thinking that number sounded impossible to recur. He laughs about it now.
Stuck at the Number That Makes You Hate It?
Cohen almost sold his agency at $8,000 a month. What he needed was a partner, a real price, and a system, in that order.