They Turned $4 Facebook Leads Into a Six-Figure Agency

Full transcript of Josh Nelson’s interview with Duncan Metz and Benjamin Major. Lightly edited for readability.

Josh Nelson: All right. Hello, and welcome to the Seven Figure Agency podcast, where we're interviewing highly successful digital marketing agencies from across the country. I'm really excited today 'cause we've got two really fast-growing entrepreneurs with us, Duncan Metz and Benjamin Major from the Mobile Home Guys. They've grown their agency, as I understand, from, like, six K in monthly recurring to over 100,000 in monthly recurring a-at this moment. If you're pumped, say "pumped" in the chat. And, Duncan and ma- a-and Benjamin, thanks for being here, guys.

Duncan Metz: Yeah. We, appreciate it. You know, before we started, I was– I meant what I said. I just, I'm flattered. You, you don't really realize what sometimes how fast you've grown when you're kinda in the middle of it, and you, perspective is one of the things we love about the group and really seeing everybody on the journey and being able to help people that need it, and people way further ahead than us helping us kinda grow as quickly as we are. So, thanks.

Josh Nelson: So good. So I guess give us the, give us an overview of, like, what's the agency? Like, what clients do you serve? What's the, what's the lay of the land?

Duncan Metz: Yeah. So we're in the manufactured housing space as the industry calls it. All the consumers call them mobile homes. They tried to rebrand and go to manufactured hou-housing to get rid of the stigma of trailers in, like, the '70s, and it just hasn't stuck. So, like, all the ads that we run are mobile homes, you know, get your mobile home on land, et cetera, et cetera. And we're hyper-focused niche within a niche to mobile home dealerships specifically. Hmm. A lot like a car dealership. They have homes on the lot that they're trying to sell. They have a staff of sales team, sales manager, general manager of the lot trying to get them to be aggressive on the leads and do the things that they need to do. And that's kinda where our agency fits right in. We're, we're less traditional full suite of digital marketing services and more lead gen plus CRM with a lotta fun AI tools mixed in there as well that I'm sure we'll, we'll talk about to help the sales team actually be more effective.

Josh Nelson: So good. So 100,000 or so in monthly recurring revenue serving. We say there's riches in the niches. This is not a niche I think that's on most people's radar, but, like, dealers of mobile homes and manufactured homes, obviously a high transaction value, obviously marketing required in order to generate those types of sales. And if you can crack the nut, which you guys have, lots of opportunity on the other side. Talk to us a little bit about you guys' partnership. Like, Duncan and Benjamin, talk to us about your roles and kinda who's focused on what and kinda how you guys work together.

Duncan Metz: Yeah. I, Benjamin and I actually met. He's sitting in front of his other local business that he owns right now. It's a brick and mortar dog grooming salon, indoor dog park.

Josh Nelson: And we met when I had my general agency, and I slid into his DMs to get him as a client.

Duncan Metz: And, did a little bit of photo and video work back then as well. And, you know, he's a builder. I'll let him speak for himself. But basically, the relationship developed where I was running ads for events for his local business, and, you know, he just took anything that I said and ran with it and built out his own high-level account for his business and was doing all of his own stuff. And I was like, "Why are you…" At a certain point, it was like, "You're just doing all this stuff. Just take it and run with it." And he was considering launching his own agency. He did launch his own agency, actually. And we were complaining about clients, commiserating about problems of agencies together. And at one point, he was like, "Instead of complaining, why don't we build some solutions to actually fix some of the problems that agencies deal with," right? How do you get your clients to actually get to those leads quickly? How do you get them to work the leads effectively, follow up enough to get them to actually purchase? All the things that we know they should be doing, but they aren't. He was like, "Let's build a solution that actually does that for them." So I would say marketer, sales guy, kinda copywriter guy, and Benjamin's tech wizard, builder, genius guy. So, yeah.

Josh Nelson: Love that. Benjamin, would love to hear from you kinda, like, what your d-like, what your day-to-day looks like and kinda what your, what your function in the company is.

Benjamin Major: I ask myself that every day. What do I do here? Yeah. Essentially, it's, I think our orientation has been very, like, solution focused. So it's like, how can we provide a solution? It's like digital marketing, yeah, like, we need leads, we need this, we need that. But every time we provide something, we always seem to unearth another problem. So essentially, we're just kinda going at this. It's like, what is the ultimate solution? And we're still working on it. Like, we haven't, fully cracked the full, like, perfect solution yet. It's like a, what did somebody say there at the last intensive? Like, WIP, like it's a work in progress. Mm-hmm. And it's really what is the perfect solution? What problems can we continue to solve and roll that in into our main, like, everybody… Once we fix one solution, it's like we just roll it out to all the clients. It's like, "Hey, we, like, solved this. Here you go." Sometimes it's an add-on, and sometimes it's just part of our core seeing that we're doing. Just depends on the solution, how much it costs to actually implement. And that's really, it's it. We're just continually trying to have the perfect solution for our clients and essentially building towards that. And that's really the day-to-day is, like, how do we continue, you know, like, this morning, just, like, what do we do day-to-day? It's like this morning I kinda derailed our morning call, and I was like, "What if we," you know, 'cause we do, like, this lead assignment, you know, generating hundreds of leads for dealerships, and it's like, what if we instead of just assigning leads kind of evenly to the team, what if we make them work for the leads? What if, like, they have to submit content every month to us, so we can do a better job? And if what-whatever salespeople submit the content, they get access to the leads that month. And it's like, you know, obviously a relationship that we create with the GM and the team, and they're all aware, but it's like, how can we… Because that would fix a problem of, like, not getting good content or et cetera, et cetera. And it's like, "Hey, you have to give us content, and with this content, we'll be able to produce better ads. And with better ads, we'll be able to give, you know, you'll get more leads." But it's the whole, like, is that a solution? And that's like, you know, maybe it's a horrible idea, and we won't do it. But, like, that's what, you know, that's today's idea. And it solves problems on both sides of the aisle, right? Like, hard to get content from your clients as an agency, hard to, get the sales team to be as involved in that process as they need to be, and it's like carrot stick. Give us the content or don't get the leads that you so desperately want to be able to sell these homes.

Duncan Metz: So- Make them earn it. Exactly.

Josh Nelson: I love that. I love that.

Benjamin Major: Yeah, and it, and it creates that kind of like, you know, it goes back like a couple weeks ago.

Duncan Metz: There's, there's a client that's like, "Oh, yeah, the leads are, you know, they're okay." And then, like we implement, you know, it was like one or two weeks in, we implemented some small changes to her ads on her, what she had wanted, and now she's like, "Oh, yeah, the leads are way better." And it's like, are they way better, or does she feel like the input that she has put in has made- More engaged, she's more bought in.

Benjamin Major: She– now she's paying better attention. Yeah, and it's like how do we replicate that feeling with the entire sales team? Because like if the whole sales t- you know, the GM or the guy that hired us, the owner could be bought in, but if the team isn't bought in on what we're doing, then it all like, it's just a matter of, you know, the writing's on the wall from day one, essentially. And it's like how can we get the team more bought in? And it's like, well, maybe, you know, it's like I just kinda try to connect pieces, always thinking, always throwing ideas at the wall. A lot of them are horrible, but sometimes, you know, there are some good ideas.

Duncan Metz: So we realized pretty early on that we needed to free Benjamin's time up to do that all the time. It's like that's his zone of genius, and like mine is packaging it, selling it, marketing it. How do we get them pre-sold, and how do we roll those new ideas and solutions into actually like how we're acquiring clients? Yeah, 'cause ultimately, like it could be a great idea, but if it's, if we can't sell it or it confuses the product, then it's like we shouldn't roll that out, even if it's a great idea because can it be marketed in a good way where it can be communicated on the sales call, et cetera, et cetera. Kinda like we have like a process of like it's a good idea, but can it also, does it also sound good when we talk about it? Can we sell it? Yeah. So.

Josh Nelson: So, so creative problem-solving. It sounds like you guys have a great synergy there. I wanna go back, 'cause it sounds like Duncan was the agency that was out there selling digital services. Benjamin was more the bricks and mortar- The client…

Benjamin Major: You know, dog groom service, right?

Josh Nelson: Yeah. But somehow or another, you guys decided we're gonna build an agency together, and we're gonna focus on mobile homes. Talk to us about like why that niche. What was the, what was the thought process around– 'cause a lot of people struggle with niche selection. We all know it's the fastest way. Like talk to us about how you landed on that.

Duncan Metz: Yeah. So I had a few clients that were regular retainer clients in my general agency, more content than anything, but, you know, that's kinda my initial foray into marketing was like photo and video, and then that naturally leads into, "Hey, can you post these for us? Hey, can you put these on our website?" And, anyway, I had a few clients. One of them was a mobile home dealer, and just kinda stumbled into that relationship because their office was right next to mine in like a shared office building. Started running ads for them, and it was like, I don't know if y-you guys have experienced this, where you get an account and you run the ads and they just blow up from day one. More leads than you'd ever expected. And I thought it was a fluke. I thought it was like maybe the market's great here, maybe this, maybe that. The reality is this whole vertical is like that. There are so many people looking for affordable housing that it's crazy. So every campaign that we launch, we're getting on average $4 to $8 a lead. And obviously early on, we were like, "Wow, this…" I was like, "Wow, this is pretty crazy. If this result is repeatable, I'm getting success here, so why wouldn't I lean in and provide more results to the same, the same niche?" And how we kinda came to decide to focus on it is because it presented a problem. Like, I can generate and send somebody 1,000 leads in a month, but if they don't have the systems to convert those people at scale, they're not gonna– We're gonna get fired. I'm gonna get fired, right? And ultimately, I was complaining to Benjamin about it, and that's where that whole conversation happened of like, you know, solutions, man. Like, he gets excited by problems. That's Benjamin's, like mode of genius. He looks at it like, "Amazing. How can we…" It's a new thing to tackle. Frankly, I was like backpedaling out of agency life because clients are hard. Service businesses, generally speaking for me, are hard. And he convinced me to come back in because we could solve that problem very specifically. And, you know, I think that's really why we decided to lean into mobile homes because you can– We saw the problem very clearly and saw a path to solving it. And once we put that first iteration of the AI in, it was like overnight it went from whatever, 500 to 1,000 leads to like 50 appointments booked by the AI. Like, they'd never talked to him at all, and we were both like, "Oh." We had one of those moments like, "Oh, okay, like this is a real thing." Like we could sell– I was like, I could sell this to every mobile home dealer on Earth just based on the results from the initial campaign that we ran together.

Benjamin Major: Yeah, I remember that one account, a mobile home lady.

Duncan Metz: It was her- Yeah.

Benjamin Major: It was like the question we were asking her is, "How many appointments can you do in a day?" Like- Yeah…'cause it was like, "Oh, wow, we booked a lot." it was like phone– We were doing phone appointments at that time. And it was like, "Wow, this is a lot." It's like, does she have enough time? And it was like we were seeing the messages come in where the people were like upset because like, "Yeah, nobody called me at my scheduled time." And then it's like the AI was like rebooking another appointment, handling customer service, and it was like out of the box. I was like, "What is going on here?" And, and then she's like, "Yeah, I, like I need more time per call." And it's like, oh, okay. It's like every time we fixed a problem, it was just another problem arrived, and it was like but deeper down in the funnel. It's like too many appointments. Like, all right, well, you know.

Josh Nelson: What an interesting problem to have. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry about your bad luck. Like we sent you too many- Yeah… People to talk to. Okay.

Benjamin Major: It's kinda like everybody's seen the ads of like we'll book up, you know, like even from, you know, when we joined 7FA, like we were get hit with, like, "Oh, are you an agency doing like 10K a month?" And like, "We'll fill up your books with AI." And it's like you know, you've seen those ads, and it's like, ah, those seem like bullshit. Sorry. But then But then it's like we did it and it like did work. And I was like, wow, like it does work. Like you can book appointments with AI. And that was like, all that was like, oh, okay, yeah, this is awesome. Yeah, it clicked. And then by the time we went to the first intensive, we were already considering niching down into manufactured housing, mobile homes, and that was the push that we needed. Mm. Was just seeing all of the other agencies that had taken that path and we were like, yeah, obviously. Obviously, we need to buckle down and do it. I know we were in Puerto Rico on that trip where we were discussing like what, like we had a niche before this one and it was dog grooming. Like that was the niche we were gonna go with because it's like I, like I already knew about it. I knew like we were working on how to sell it to them. And the whole time that I was there, it was like we were working on it and we were making great progress. But it was like something in me was like, we need to do something with AI. Like we have to do something with AI, and this niche just like didn't, it's not one that needs AI necessarily. The whole time was like, we need, like I wanna play with AI. I wanna build something there. I wanna do that. And then it was like, all right, an account with 500 leads in a month. It was like, all right, that sounds like a great account to be using AI with. And that's kinda how like AI became like, 'cause I was like, I wanted to build something with AI, and it was like an industry that has a very high lead volume. It was like, all right, perfect. Let's put them together. And then we essentially scrapped the entire like a whole week's work.

Duncan Metz: Well, more than a week's work, but like- Yeah… You know, a lot of work leading up to that trip.

Benjamin Major: We scrapped all of that. I felt bad 'cause we had a third person with us, and I was like, "Sorry, like we're gonna go pursue this other thing." Yeah. And it was like, you know, that was like what? September, October-ish is like when we started making those changes, and then we did the intensive in November. And we kind of went in there with already like we were just, we had just or were about to launch our ads for this like our, you know, niche specific ad essentially to get more of that. We just launched them. I remember because we had sales calls and we had closed sales during that intensive in the niche.

Duncan Metz: Yeah, yeah. With some of the techniques that we learned at the intensive. We went to lunch and just did some stuff and closed some people, and I was like, all right, all right, this is very clear. Clear signal to me that we're headed in the right, the right direction. To your point, Benjamin, it wasn't like a straight, it wasn't like a straight line. You look back and it looks like that now, but in the time that we were trying to figure it out, we went dog grooming and we built a group that now has 2,000 members. Like we did the group play of dog groomers. Mm-hmm. And that's, that exists. It's there. Benjamin built a fully automated cleaning company that AI handled booking, payment, customer service. All the person had to do was show up and clean. Wild. It's like that was a thought. You know, there were so many things that like frankly Benjamin built and I was like, "Yeah, we could sell it," but there are these things that make it not as good of an opportunity as this niche over here. And the only thing I think we haven't said about it is there wasn't a lot of competition when we started. The niche was very, I'm not gonna say blue ocean, but it was still very behind the times in terms of tech and marketing. A lot of traditional agencies still doing TV, which I don't have a problem with TV, but you get what I'm saying. Like a lot of website companies, a lot of this, a lot of that. Nobody like true digital native that has just been doing that. So we benefited from that as well, and that was calculated. We were like, yeah, there's really, there really isn't anybody over here doing it.

Josh Nelson: Super good and probably encouraging for maybe those agencies that are in that phase where like I know I need to go from a generalist agency to a niche, and sometimes you pick the hypothetical niche and it doesn't work out, right? It's like you gotta be willing to pivot to like what's gonna be the path of leas-least resistance? What's gonna be the path that's actually gonna make the most financial sense? And it sounds like you guys were very like, where's the biggest problem that we can solve that like we're gonna be able to stand out in the marketplace where we've already got some momentum, and we're willing to say, "Hey, you know, th-this other thing's already got some wheels, but this is gonna be the better path," and focused on that. I love that. Talk to us about how you landed the first couple of clients. So you decided you already had this one mobile home, you know, manufactured home dealership, but how did you parlay that to like five clients in the same vertical?

Duncan Metz: Yeah, the, we got, we got really not lucky, but, the first client that we had that came from my general agency was a GM that loved us and loved the service. Like obviously it was working really well. And then he moved to a new office and took us with him, like set us up there, and then he moved again and he took us there as well. And that's a, he's a GM within a larger corporation. They have like 50 offices around the country, so that was a really great first client in the space. But then we did all the scrappy stuff, right? Benjamin and I did cold calls for a week and landed a couple people and- Yeah…

Benjamin Major: Validated. That was a crazy week.

Duncan Metz: Well, no, we cold, we cold called that corporation. It was like, "Hey, we work with this office." Yeah. "And these are the results we're getting." And like I called maybe like 20 offices and then we got a…

Benjamin Major: I was on my way to the Keys for my anniversary and I got a call from the head of marketing of the entire corporation, you know, like billion dollar company. And they're like- He's like, "What are you doing?" They're like, "Yeah, tell him like, you know, I gotten a lot of people asking me about you guys and like what's going on?" And I was like, "Oh, shit. I should not have been the one that answered this call." And, I don't even remember the call, but I like BS'd my way through for 10 minutes on the road to the Keys and I immediately called Duncan. I was like, "Yeah, I don't know. He told us to stop or wait." And then he wanted to talk to us and like basically put a halt on everything. But like we already had the momentum and we were cold calling other companies, so we kind of like we're, we got, like we did it fast enough to where like it was too late for him to stop us. And then he eventually quit that position so that like the gate kind of like disappeared and we continued.

Duncan Metz: Yep. Picked up a few more. That's kind of… Yeah, cold calling, like we cold called a lot of those offices. We have one client that stands out that I cold called him, and he's still a client to this day, which is always pretty neat. And then Facebook ads probably just kinda took care of the rest.

Benjamin Major: Yeah. The, the first few came from the kinda trying to figure out the best method. And we approached it, I think, the same way that we did picking the niche. We were like, "Okay, well, we can see a path where if we just did this, it would work." Oh, the other one we did, we ran ads as a mobile home dealer.

Duncan Metz: Yeah. That was a fun one. And we generated leads for people that wanted to buy homes, and then we just walked in to mobile home dealers that we could– were within driving distance, and we said- Yeah, we've got these prospects that wanna buy. Like- Yep, yep. We got you a lead. We even booked appointments for them. It's like, "Hey, this person is expecting a call from you at this time." Some value in advance. Yeah. And, like, that was cool, but not scalable. It's super easy. Yeah. Yeah. And, like, they were– You walked in and they h- they were like, "What did you do?" Like, "Who are you?" How, how did you do that? How did that happen? Right. Yeah. They're like, "Where is this person coming from?" They're like, "Just have them call us." So I'm like, "Well, you know, -" Yeah. "… They want you to call them at this time and on this date." Like, "Can we just do that?" Yeah, yeah. And we would follow up with some of those, and, like, they never called. And it was just- Yeah… There were, in a perfect world… Like I said, like, we tested a lot of things, and w- I was like, "This is a really great idea, but it's gonna take time to figure out how to, like, make all the pieces fit," and we didn't have time. Like, we were in that transition phase where we were like, "Are we gonna make this our full income?" Like, "Is this really gonna be the thing that we do?" And we, like, we gotta get people, so cold calls is always, like, classic way to kinda get the ball rolling. Yeah. Benjamin's, like, world-class on that.

Josh Nelson: It sounds like you get that one client, you guys were super focused on the result, you were super focused on solving the problems that were coming up, and that's how you became expert in that industry so quickly. Like, to Tim's question here, he's like, "Well, it sounds like they didn't really know the industry, so how did they learn so quickly? How did they pick all that up?" Well, it was like they were in that one client, and they were focusing on delivering results for that client, and they were able to say, "Hey, look, we did this for this client. Would you like us to do something for you like that in your market?" I think that's how most niche agencies knock it out of the park, right? Like, focus on that first client, get a ridiculously good result. Even if you're not making a lot of money, you're validating that you can generate the leads, you can generate the sale, and then it becomes so easy to just like, "Hey, look, we did this here. Would you like us to do the same thing for you at- in your, in your park or in your dealership?" Yeah.

Duncan Metz: That's exactly right. Yeah, in that, in that first client, like, I remember we went up to the– We dr- they were, at that point, their office had moved and they were three hours away, and we drove up to their office and we spent all day, like, just grilling the whole sales team on, like, questions, improvements. How can we make it better? Like, like, everything, like… We soaked up, you know, asked every question that we could possibly think of asking to, like, basically become, like, a salesperson in their industry. Like, know as much as they do without, like, knowing, like, yeah, this roof has a, the 15% incline pitch. Like, nobody cares about that. But it's, like, just the, you know, like, what does it take? Like, what does it take to get finance for one of these? You know, like, if I, like, first day as a salesperson, like, what would I need to know if, like, I had to show somebody a home? And, and then it's like, you know, it's kinda like riding shotgun with the, like, ride shotgun with a client for a day and see what it is to cut down trees or whatever it is that they do. And you'll learn quite a bit in a single day, especially if you're curious and you ask a lot of questions. Like, you'll basically be up to speed. You know, especially if your intention is to just become an expert, it's like you're gonna soak it all up.

Benjamin Major: Yeah. And they'll lean into that too, your clients, if you ask, because they see it as you trying to do a better job for them. Like, you're there for them. Even though you're trying to learn, it's so that you can provide a better service and a better result. And I would also say there, like, if you are a student of marketing itself, like, you can go to any niche or any vertical and get some base level of result, and then you build on that with the industry knowledge. To me, like, the foundational stuff doesn't really change, right? It's like you know how to write a good headline or a good copy, good call to action to, like, get people to do something. That's step one, and then you apply that in an industry and then build on your knowledge there by asking questions of your clients. That's what I would do.

Josh Nelson: Love it. Okay, so we got this one client. We, we got the good result. And if you're listening to this, you're like, "How does this apply to me?" Choosing a niche, deciding to go double down on it is gonna be the fastest way to grow. Then from there, get the first client, get them an amazing result, and then use that as the, as the seed material for your marketing, for your cold calls, for your direct emails, for your drop-ins like they did. If you're struggling to get the second, third client, like, s- give massive value in advance. Like, what these guys did, they started marketing as if they were the dealer in that market. They generated the leads, and they started ha- like, spoon-feeding it to the prospects they wanted to do business with. Now, they've said that's not scalable, and they're not doing that for every client going forward. But for the first couple, that works really well. So I wanna shift gears. We, we kinda know what the niche is, why you chose the niche, how you thought through it. I wanna hear now kinda what the, what the program package is, 'cause it sounds like you came up with a very unique offering for your industry. You're leaning heavily into AI, and there's lots of c- comments here in the chat like, "So what are they doing with AI? How are they leveraging this?" And I'd love for you guys to unpack kinda what the program looks like today.

Duncan Metz: Sure. I can do, like, a 30,000 foot, and Benjamin can kinda dig into the details there. He built, he built the internal workings of the system. I think the key thing for me whenever we talk about product development and the system as a whole is work backwards from a result. Only add things in that serve the end goal of your clients. And when we also talk about it and present it in sales calls and in our marketing, it's sold as a system. It's not sold as ads and email and CRM and this and that. It's like it is this thing that you're buying that's designed to produce home sales. It's called, ours is called Mobile Home Sales Accelerator. Call yours whatever you want, fancy name, but the goal, in my opinion, is to show them this one thing that can solve all of their problems or their perceived problems, as opposed to individual service offerings. That's how we approach it. Mm-hmm.

Benjamin Major: And as far as what's included, we do Ads on any platform, paid ads on whichever one makes the most sense for them, and I'm happy to dig into that if you'd like. We have a white label version of GHL that has a ton of automations in it to get to those leads immediately and get them to reply, 'cause the team is not very good at that, generally speaking, the sales team. We have AI, conversational AI, that when the lead replies, it will communicate with the lead, answer any questions about their products and services, book appointments if they're a qualified lead, and then also all of the short and long-term follow-up. So short-term is like the lead says they gotta talk to their wife about it. The AI says, "Cool, what'd your wife say?" every day for two weeks. Very simplified. What'd she say? What'd she say? What's her answer? Yeah, yeah. And then long-term follow-up is what agencies often refer to as like a reactivation campaign. We take every single lead that we generated every quarter, and we run it back through a big promotional sequence, you know, 25K off a house, free box of fireworks and a grill for Fourth of July with any home purchase. You know, what-whatever crazy offer we help them come up with. That's our core offer, and recently we've launched a concierge like higher ticket, where we will have a person, an online sales rep, actually call all the leads within 90 seconds of them coming in as well to do that same conversation that AI is doing over text, you know, Facebook DMs, but over the phone. And there's a lot of reasons we chose to do a human instead of AI. Again, happy to dig in, but at this point in time, we've talked about it and are just of the agreement that a person is still better for that initial outreach than AI, at least for outbound calls. So that's what we're selling, and obviously there's nuances in there, like this client might need something a little different than that one, but that is the mobile home sales accelerator, and when I pitch it to people, that's how I present it.

Josh Nelson: Love it. So, so great insight there, right? You're selling the growth system, and regardless of what, you know, what your program is, what your niche is, sell the growth system, not Facebook ads and SEO, and like we're gonna generate this result, and this is the unique mechanism, and give it a sexy name, right? And go to market with that. Can you tell us kinda what the, what the price point is and what a, what a client will pay for these types of services in your niche?

Duncan Metz: Sure. The core product without the online sales rep is $2,500 a month. And then our concierge offer is $5,000 a month. And there's some other things included in there so that it doesn't just seem like, oh, we're adding a person and charging 2500 bucks a month. They also get a marketing strategist, is what we're calling our account managers now. They have weekly meetings with their strategist. We're also doing Google My Business optimization at that tier as well. A little bit of review management as well at that higher tier. But the main value driver, in my opinion, is that person doing the calls. So yeah, 2,500 and 5,000 a month for the two tiers right now.

Josh Nelson: Got it. Are you finding- Plus ad spend.

Duncan Metz: Plus ad spend, yeah.

Josh Nelson: Plus the ad spend, right. So 2500 a month for the, like the lead generation and the marketing automation behind it. 5K a month, we're also gonna put somebody that's dedicated to follow with every lead, 90 seconds, and move those leads forward. Yep. Super simple to understand, super practical, especially if you start to think about the average transaction value in the niche. What, what are most of your p- prospects buying? Are they buying the 5K, or are they buying the 2500 typically?

Duncan Metz: Yeah, the 5K is new. It's been how long, Benjamin?

Benjamin Major: A month and a half?

Duncan Metz: Like three, four weeks? Five weeks? Six weeks?

Benjamin Major: The thing that we've noticed, I think I've sold, I don't know, four of them maybe. And we've upsold some of our existing clients to that as well. The thing that I've seen is that if you focus on solving a larger problem, price doesn't seem to be that big of a deal. I haven't even been pitching the $2,500 offer to anyone, and they've all been like, "Yeah, that sounds reasonable," to the 5K offer. Hmm. It kinda blew my mind when we s- when we first changed the price and we're like, "What are we gonna do?" Like, "What's the offer looking like?" you know, we're like run before you walk. It was a, it was a Wednesday. It was like, "We should try this new thing." He got on a sales call an hour later, and the guy was like, "Yeah, that sounds reasonable." Yeah. And like we just doubled it, and it was like we didn't have anybody in place for it. We didn't have any case studies, nothing. It was just like- Mm-hmm… "Yeah, we'll do this for you." And then it was me, I was the one calling.

Josh Nelson: Benjamin was doing all the outbound calls and building out the SOPs and the system, and then we'd hired somebody within two weeks?

Benjamin Major: Yeah, like within two weeks she was working for us. It was like- And she's crushing it… Three days later it was like, "We need to find somebody." Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, she's crushing it. She booked, I don't know, 30, 40 appointments last month. I don't know, whatever. Which we can talk about what a good person for that role is, but the point is, it's still early, but I haven't, I haven't hit any of the price resistance that I had been hitting at $2,500. People are like, "Ah, okay," like it's a little higher than comparable offers. And it's true. Like there are other agencies out there that are general who might do something kind of close to what we do that's nowhere near as comprehensive or, as niche specific, but it was still comparable, and we were comparable on price, but just not too far away. But it was the high end, right? So I think we were kinda going to the middle to die, where a lot of pricing goes, at least for our niche. And as soon as we did the high ticket thing, it went from like, "Oh, okay," having to do some objection handling to like, "Yeah, that makes sense. L-let me talk over it with my team, and we'll book another call for tomorrow," was the majority of, is the majority of the answers I've been getting. So good. The core of the core of the program is we're gonna generate leads, and then we're gonna follow up with th-those leads and get them to appointment. And then the, the big problem solved is, and we're gonna follow up with those leads, and we're gonna actually schedule them in and make sure that they show up. And it's gonna end to end.

Josh Nelson: For the lead generation portion of it, is it Facebook ads? Is it Google Ads? Is it retargeting? Is it like, or a combination of all of that stuff?

Duncan Metz: Yeah, great question. So we recommend Facebook and Instagram Meta ads first. In our niche, the volume is through the roof. I know a lot of people are similar, and the perception is that the quality is low, when in reality, the intent is low. So say you get 100 leads, 50 of them are gonna be, are gonna buy at some point, but most of them are thinking about buying three, six, 12 months down the line. Most of the time, a business is gonna try and reach out a couple times, and then they're not gonna– nothing happens after that, right? So, so the reason we recommend Facebook and Instagram is because mass amount of volume, lowest cost per lead that we can get, and we work them for you on into the future so that when they're ready to buy, they come back and buy from you. But if somebody comes and, to us and they say, "We have $20,000 to spend in ad spend," I'm not gonna sink all that into Facebook. I would recommend something a little bit more blended, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google, retargeting kinda landscape it within that. So it depends. Like I mentioned earlier, it depends on the client, depends on their needs. So that's the custom element, I guess, if there's any fluctuation in what we offer or how we kinda roll things out. It depends on how many homes they wanna sell and what their marketing budget is overall, and I'll make recommendations based on that.

Josh Nelson: Got it. But the consistent winner for you right now is Facebook Meta advertising to a local marketplace with, like, how detailed are we getting with targeting? Like, is it open targeting or is it, like, a certain demographic that you're pinning to?

Duncan Metz: Yeah, it's open targeting. Broad right now is crushing it and- Mm-hmm… Creative targeting as they're, as they're calling it is what's winning where the ads call out to the people that wanna buy the thing, the copy calls out directly to the people that wanna buy the thing. Also in housing, you're limited in terms of what you can do for targeting. It's one of those special categories you gotta declare and then they don't let you do a lot of the demographic stuff that you normally do. And we're doing a ton of lead form ads right now, lead form and Messenger, and we ask some qualifying questions. As little as much friction as possible and just kept, keep them on the platform. Yeah. Increase the volume. Correct. And then that would again normally be an issue if you're sending a business hundreds of leads that are lower intent. They're gonna get burnout. Like, trying to call those people, trying to do all that work, and then they're gonna churn because their perception is the leads are bad, when in reality they just need some system or some person or some something- Find the gold to find the 10% of those leads that are ready to buy now. Exactly. Yep. How I like to pitch it is that in this specific niche and this specific type of advertising is like the people aren't looking to buy a house today, at least most of them aren't. But in three, six, 12 months, it's like they're getting closer to being able to achieve homeownership. So in a weird way, where like an old list becomes kind of like, you know, cold and bad, these lists become like warmer and hotter with time because, like, time is the only thing preventing them from being able to purchase, whether it's down payment, credits, debt, whatever. It's like they only become more qualified with time, and it's like the system is in place to nurture them long period, you know, three to four weeks at a, like, you know, a touch point every three to four weeks. So nothing too crazy, just like, "Hey, we're still around." And then just last week, there's a, that guy that actually I cold called and he's still a client. For some reason, like we've had so many changes in the last year, we never did a reactivation for him, like never once. Wasn't even a thing we did back then. And we did one just for Black Friday. Everybody was doing one. And, had a call with him on, yesterday, and he was like, "Yeah, man," like almost like somebody like on drugs, like, "How do I get, like, more of those?" Like, it was like, "I've never seen the activity like that before." I was like, "We have three new deals just from that." And it's like, that's a list of 2,500 people over the last year that like 90% of businesses would've like deleted those contacts. Yes. And it's like- Never reached out again. Yeah. Never reached out again. And it's like a simple series of like five text messages saying, "Hey, are you still like looking for a home? We got this like $500 down deal or whatever for qualified buyers." And he says three deals came out of that. And he's like, "That's like, you guys have generated about eight, like, sales this year for us, which is fantastic." And he's like, "Three of them are gonna be coming just from this weekend." And he's like, "How do I do that more?" And it's like- Mm-hmm. You know, so it's just to talk about how the, you know, like on Google, it's like they're looking for something now. So if you don't hit them now, it's like in a month or two from now, like that person has probably already purchased or they've already gone through the whole process and been told, "No, you can't," or whatever. Now they're like, they never think about that. "I'll just rent for the rest of my life." But on Facebook, it's kind of like they're like dreaming and we just continue keeping that dream alive for basically forever until one of those promotions is the right time for them.

Josh Nelson: So good. And, and I would imagine in your niche, the cost per click, the cost per lead from Google is significantly higher just 'cause that's like the channel that like you're catching them at the very bottom of the funnel. Mm-hmm. And so you guys are able to come in and get much lower cost per lead and kinda plant these long-term opportunities. What you've done with your program that most agencies don't is you recognize, all right, we're generating leads, and then the customer's not converting the leads or they're frustrated with the quality 'cause they're not following up correctly, and then the agency gets fired and it's like there's no opportunity there. But you're, you solve the lead generation problem and now you're s- also now using AI and actual salespeople on the other side to convert those, to find the ma- to find the ready to buy customer and to nurture them to that place. You mentioned AI, and I know like this is a big part of what you guys do. Can you talk to us about what that AI follow-up mechanism looks like and kinda how that flows in the delivery? That's all you, man.

Duncan Metz: Yeah. I wish it was more sophisticated than it is.

Josh Nelson: Hey, listen, not sophisticated is beautiful for us. Like we– everyone wants to hear it.

Duncan Metz: I know. I wish it was this complex thing that was like, wow, what an amazing thing they've built and it's like, you know, when I look at my workflow, it's like enter workflow AI text, wait three weeks, come back around, like, you know, for my long-term nurture.

Josh Nelson: It's like a nice prompt, obviously, that, you know, does what it's supposed to, but it's really not like- Don't, don't skip over that though, 'cause I think that one is important Yeah, walk us through it. If, if, unless it's proprietary, like, "Hey, listen, I can't share this," but like if it's something you're, you're comfortable sharing, everyone will really benefit from it. I'm thinking of the, specifically the context-based thing is cool.

Duncan Metz: Yeah, that's what it is. It's, it's a context-based, all within HighLevel, not HighLevel specifically. It's a app that you can get on the HighLevel app store that has like an AI. 'Cause the HighLevel's AI might be good now. I, we haven't touched it since like a year ago.

Josh Nelson: Is it Closebot or is it some other app that you're syncing with it?

Duncan Metz: Assistable I think is the main name of it. I wish I had an affiliate link, but, – Get one for myself, you know the way Yeah. I'm pretty su- like I found them on the marketplace. I'm pretty sure they're like top five most downloaded apps. Like they probably have a crazy amount of downloads. Not everybody's using them, but I think it's very similar to Closebot.

Josh Nelson: I think could you walk us through, lead comes in, something happens with Assistable, message goes out. Like walk us through like the, the HighLevel logic of it.

Duncan Metz: Yeah. Essentially lead comes in, from whatever source. Automation kicks off. It's like, "Hey, first name, this is Judy with business name." And then we fire off another text right after. I saw here based on like the lead form, AI analyzes the messages and it's like based on you're looking for a three bedroom, blah, blah, blah, and we've got plenty of those in stock. Like what's your budget? And then, and then it kind of ends there, so we're waiting for them to respond.

Josh Nelson: And then essentially if they don't respond, we have like a long series of like basically response getters.

Duncan Metz: Like we need them to respond so that way the AI- Just to get them to engage. Correct. And once they do engage, they answer one of the whatever, the fifth text, the tenth text, the first text, then the AI basically prompted for these businesses has a conversation. And there's a couple tasks that it tries to get through. But essentially it's like make sure they're qualified, that they have more than $500 a month to spend on a brand new home and book the appointment. It's like it's that simple. I think a lot of the other stuff happens like when they don't reply 'cause like, we've been seeing 30% response rate. So the other 70% it's like the nothing, like no response, 20, 30 text messages go out, nothing. But we don't stop. Like it's forever until they say stop. And the reactivation campaigns is where a lot, we squeeze those people. Like they finally do reply. I mean, we've got examples of like 40 texts going out. It's like they finally responded. At 40 they're finally like, "Yeah, I wanna schedule," or, "Yeah, I'm interested." Yeah. Like, "Oh, I'm ready." Like, "Oh, thanks for following up." And it's like, yeah, okay. Yeah, imagine this was a real person like doing this follow-up. Like that would be insane.

Benjamin Major: Yeah. Wild. Mm-hmm.

Duncan Metz: And then the long term, like the… I think the coolest part that really unlocked a lot of the stuff was the short term follow up. So essentially like he was saying earlier, like it's context based, so it's, if they haven't booked any appointment and the last message has been more than 24 hours, basically put them in this workflow and it's like based on the entire conversation, whether there has been a conversation or not, create a new message to get them to respond, like to follow up, to like to move the conversation forward. It's like the one thing that we see the AI being very successful at versus sales team is moving the conversation forward. The AI never leaves a open-ended, never like a, "Oh yeah, thanks. Just reach out whenever you're ready." Like AI never like does that. It's keep bumping it forward until it's a no or a let's schedule. Yeah. It's a very, bad verbal words or, "Yes, I would love to come in." You know? It's like one of the two.

Benjamin Major: – Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Duncan Metz: So essentially the context base is really nice for that aspect because it's like it will follow up for additional two weeks on a dead conversation, and then after that they go into long-term nurture. The long-term nurture has the same kind of thing where it like looks at the entire conversation, everything the AI has said. It's like, "All right, well, we've tried all these messages. Let's try a new one." And it basically generates a new unique message based on everything that was said or has been said or could be said, and based on the information they have provided, like what size, do they have land, et cetera, et cetera. And just tries to essentially get them around. But the long-term nurture is really just to keep them there until the reactivation happens. 'Cause the reactivation is where I think, we squeeze really a lot of those people. But it's just like, "Oh, who is this?" You know, it's kinda like, "Oh yeah, like I've got 100 message. This is like, this is a constant.

Benjamin Major: I know this number." The context-based thing for me was huge when you told me about it. A light bulb went off because it's like it's what a salesman should do. And like when I go on a call, I'm not explaining context-based AI and like it's like, "Wouldn't it be great if your salesperson would message someone every two days for the rest of their life until they came back to buy a house?" And they're like, "Yeah." Like, "Okay, cool, we can do that." "Oh, what does it sound like? What does it say?" "Oh, well, it does what a salesperson should do. It reads the message, reads the notes about the person, crafts a unique message to send back to them that relates to them and their situation. It's like you said you had to talk to your wife about it, but you also have land and $10,000 down. Like what are we doing here, man? Like let's get the ball rolling." And you can prompt it so that it can, it uses context and it does all the fun, crazy stuff that ChatGPT does, where you could say, "Craft a response like pick your marketer," right? Like talk like Alex Hormozi or Grant Cardone, and like you can plug that into it in addition to the context. So the implications of that to me were like I was going a little bit crazy. But yeah.

Duncan Metz: And then on the front end, the only thing I wanted to add there, Benjamin, was that those response getters, that's like classic copywriting. Right when, right when that lead comes in, all we're trying to do is elicit a response, like warm body, like person with a pulse that has replied to trigger the conversation. And like we've experimented with SpongeBob memes. Yeah.

Josh Nelson: Like, you know, hey- Is that, is that part manually written by you guys?

Benjamin Major: You really spent some time thinking like how do, like what questions can we keep dropping on them- Yeah…

Josh Nelson: To get a reply so that we can kick in the AI?

Duncan Metz: Correct. Yeah. We, and we've tried, the benefit of the niche is like so many leads for us to experiment with. Like we've tried everything I think there's Benjamin literally put a, put a question mark, standalone question mark by itself that gets sent. That worked and it bumped it up like another 2% or whatever response rate. It's like- Yeah. It's little dumb things like that you see at scale, that you have the benefit of testing things with so many people coming in, that you make one tweak and you're like, "Oh, it worked really well for this account. Let's roll it out for everybody." Yeah.

Benjamin Major: I think like to emphasize like why a niche is so important is because you can be like, yeah, we test things out with different accounts. Sometimes it's your account, sometimes it's this account, and when we see something succeed, everybody gets the update. 'Cause it's like we want all of you guys to succeed and like nobody's really even like, you know, close to each other or whatever, but like we all want you to succeed equally. And it's like the amount of data that we have helps to feed a better program. And it helped for the first like three months that nobody had access to the, anything. And like we black, we black boxed it. They had no idea what was going on. It was like, "Here's a text with an appointment." Yeah. And like we were able to really go quick and far and test a lot of stuff out. Mm-hmm. I used to read every single AI message that went out. Like, I would read, thousands of messages like every week, just like what was said, how was this conversation said. And, and eventually like people were like, "Yeah, I wanna like see how the conversation's going." Like, "All right. Yeah, yeah." Like, so we started giving people access to basically HighLevel, so they could see everything happening. Mm-hmm. But before we got there, we did have a couple months of being able to like do some crazy stuff and like- Yep. Test… Basically del- like if a mistake was like really bad, we could just delete the whole conversation and like, yeah, that never happened. Like, we were able to do a couple of those. And fortunately like the high lead volume, like nobody… It's like 499 this month. We blow them away. Yeah. It's like, – Yeah, yeah. So that was, I think that was very helpful, being able to just do whatever for a few months and not have to worry about like what's being said, you know, to an extent. So lead comes in, automations fire, AI looks at the context.

Josh Nelson: The goal of the AI is to get full contact record, right? Like name, address, money down, whatever details to qualify. And then are they sending it off or are they actually booking it in on a HighLevel calendar? Like, is there some internal system that the clients use that they're booking in? Like, talk to me about that piece, like the final goal there of actually scheduling the sales consult or- Yeah.

Benjamin Major: The AI just talks back and forth and it's like, "Two o'clock on Tuesday good for you?" It's like, "Yeah, that's good." And then just makes an API call to HighLevel. Boom, appointment set, and then you got your appointment notifications that go off. And it'll even do the classic of like, what works better this time or this time? It's like you can bake in those little nuances that make an appointment setter really good. It's not like go click a time on the schedule and book it 'cause nobody will do that. Nobody, yeah. But it's like if it's Linda at the office saying, "Hey, when you wanna come by Tuesday at 2:00?" "Yes." "Great." Bam, grab the time on the calendar. Yeah. Book it in. We're at the point now where… Sorry. We're at the point now where prospects will show up at our clients' dealerships- Yeah… And ask for the AI by name. They're like, "Is Judy here?" Like, Linda's not in right now, but- Yeah. The running joke is like, "Judy's at lunch," or, "Judy's on vacation," or whatever. So it gets to the point where it's indistinguishable from reality. Yeah, and that's been popping up a little bit more recently. It's like another problem, right? It's like, do we gotta fix that one? It's like we have to work on a better handoff from AI to the assigned salesperson who's gonna be- Or they're just gonna be at the office, the salesperson they're gonna be there. Yeah. So we have to like tweak it, which we haven't done yet 'cause it's like, it's hilarious. Yeah. Like, thank you so much. Like, you know, make sure you ask for this person when you come in. I mean, it's such an easy fix that it's like I haven't done it yet, but- Yeah. People are coming in and being upset that they- Probably value for the name of the person at that office, and it just pops in that name and their- Yeah. It's like you'll be talking to, you know, assigned user brackets, like… Yeah, but we had a couple people, the clients call and they were like, the prospect came in and they were annoyed that they couldn't work with Judy because she was so nice, and they wanted to make sure she got the commission and we're like, "How do we handle this?" It's like, I don't know, just do sales, man. Like- Right… That's our appointment setter and she's great. She doesn't work on site. You're gonna be working with me. Yeah. She, she's virtual. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's like say whatever you want. Interactive, right. Yeah.

Josh Nelson: Is this a problem? So does the lead, the lead comes in, AI kicks off. Do you still send the lead to the office and they know lead for lead how many they got, or are you just counting the ones that actually get to appointment? We're actively… Sorry to cut you off, Benjamin.

Benjamin Major: It's like we're, we're actively trying to figure out what the best version of that is because still the same problem, like all the leads come in from Facebook and they answer questions on the form, but there's a ton that aren't qualified that we're still working. Mm-hmm. And we know that if they call immediately when those leads come in, if they're not paying us to do it, all the leads, they're gonna get better results. So- Mm. Some people are in there full force, like they see every single lead that comes in, it goes into the new leads column. And they're, they're like jumping in and trying to call the customer while the AI's doing its thing. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and that little piece there, like there's some people have AI on 24/7. Some people have it on after business hours and the team's handling it during the day. So there's like, those are those little tweaks that I mentioned that just depends on who, on what the client really wants and sees is going to be the best fit for them. But my point there is like they see all the leads, and they can work them however they want. But my version, my best version of this is like, "Don't worry about it. Let us do it because we're gonna be better at it than you anyway, and just be hands-off until we book an appointment with a qualified person, and then step in and work them from there." Because at that point we can't do anything. We're not there, so take over.

Duncan Metz: But- We bring it in.

Benjamin Major: Yeah. Not everybody's on that. I'm just…

Josh Nelson: On the same topic, Lisa's asking, if it's SMS, which we know that it is, do they wind up calling the number at some point and how are those situations handled?

Duncan Metz: Yeah. Yeah. I got… This is mine. Do it, do it. I got this. Yeah, yeah. During our initial like sequence of response getters within business hours after 15 minutes of the first text going out and then not respond… If they respond, everything stops. AI kicks in, but, they have not responded yet. The after 15 minutes, we do a voicemail drop. We… Yes, finally got to say it. We leave- "Hey, it's Judy from XYZ," you know Yeah, so they get a missed call on their phone, the lead, and a voicemail, and it's like, you know, voicemail now is where, like, you can just read it. And we just have a, you know, we just c- create an AI voice, or sometimes the team records something, and we do the voicemail drop. We see a 10% callback rate from that. So they don't even respond or text back. They literally just call back 10% of the time. So you're looking at, 500 leads in a month, you're gonna expect 50 to 75 calls coming into your office from a lead form. So it's not like a Google click-to-call. It's like a lead form. You have all their information. When they call in, the team can just open up the app, like the lead connector, and it's like, "Oh, yeah, she's looking for four bedrooms. She has land," and great. It's like, "Oh, hey, Linda." It's like, "What's up?" You know? And then so when they call that number, it just forwards to the assigned salesperson directly to their cell phone. So it doesn't go to the office. We just go straight to like, "Hey, Joe's assigned to this person." It's going straight to Joe's cell phone. Yeah, and it's like we– Benjamin's been able to figure out how to turn Facebook lead forms traditionally like low quality, not great leads into calls. It's like you gotta pay hundreds of dollars per call to, in some niches, to Google, where it's like we're able to squeeze as much out of those Facebook leads as possible with little pieces like that. Taking a traditionally un-undervalued source and, like, squeezing out the good leads. Yeah, and, you know, we've made mistakes along the way. We've done reactivations with voicemails where thousands of people went through at the same time at once. Thousands of people got a voicemail at the exact same time. Hundreds of callbacks in, in like- Hundreds of callbacks within like, two-hour span. Yeah. And the dealerships are like, "What is going on?" You know? Hundreds of calls, like obviously like- And they're, they're not calling back like with clear context. They're like, "I missed a call." Yeah. And if you're not prepared to have that conversation- Yeah… It's a dead opportunity, right? I'm looking at the high level like report of like, you know, it's kinda like CallRail, like inbound calls, and I'm like, "-oh, I fucked up." No. I'm in an oopsies. Yeah, but then at the end of that, though, he was like, "That was crazy, but do more of that. That was… Keep it up." Do that again. Like, like do that again. Yeah, yeah. That'd be pretty cool, right? Yeah, yeah. And now it's like that's a, it went from a mistake to, "Oh yeah, that's a planned feature." Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. You know? I definitely, before people get billed, we don't do this anymore, but like-… Before their billing cycle, we would do reactivation campaigns like three day- They see the winds right before the bill gets-… Days before. Yeah. And it was like an account that's like, "Ooh, things are a little rocky with this one." We would just do that reactivation like a couple days before, and it's like we get on a call like, "Hey, how's everything going?" It's like, "Oh my God, we're so busy." And it's like, "Oh, well, great to hear." Like, – Yeah, saved it… Next month's click. Phew. Yeah, yeah.

Josh Nelson: Super smart. So, so love the program, love the structure of this, and I love the fact you guys are willing to nerd out on this and walk us through like the flow and kinda how you think about it and how you engineered it. Are you closing the loop on like which of those appointments showed up and which ones convert, or do you guys just leave that to them? And it would be hard to turn off the AI if somebody didn't go in and actually buy a home. Like, talk to me about how you close that loop.

Duncan Metz: Yeah. So as soon as an appointment is made, AI turned off. That's where it stops. Everything disconnected. Okay. Like we can keep texting back and forth in there. Of course, we have appointment reminders set out, so it's like, you know, 24 hours, an hour before the appointment. Mm-hmm. Like those kind of thing. Right. It's up to the sales team to kind of like, "Hey, I'm gonna be late," for them to like be aware of that and communicate with the person. And at that point, if they mark the person as like no show, then everything gets re- like they kind of go back in. It's like they're back into the no-show, automations go out. If they don't respond, they go into long-term nurture, AI's back on, and they're part of the spaghetti bowl again.

Josh Nelson: Mm-hmm. And if it's deal one, are you, are they telling you that? That way you can track your ROI on the back end, or you're not worried about that part?

Duncan Metz: It's like, look, we got you the lead. If they showed up, great. We're trying to get that data because it's like obviously so good from a marketing perspective. It's like, hey, this guy spent this much and was able to make this much. Like- Mm-hmm… Really good for our marketing, but not every dealership is fully bought in on like they… It's like once the person comes in, it's like they sometimes have their own CRM and just things kind of like, you know, AI's turned off, and we don't know what happens from there, and it's like we don't- It's kind of a black box after that, but- Sometimes, yeah…

Josh Nelson: Every up to the lead, you guys are owning that process. On the concierge piece, so now you're saying, "Hey, look, we need to pick up the phone. We're gonna just speed the lead in live calls." Talk to me about that and kinda how you've, how you found people to do that job, 'cause it's, it's hard to get someone to do that job well over time.

Duncan Metz: We got really lucky again. Our operations manager is awesome, and she, we gave her a lot more… We expected a lot more from her than is really fair of anybody in that position as quickly as we have, but she has lived up to that and surpassed it. So I say all that to say, she knew who would be perfect for the role, and she went and recruited them from the job that we actually stole her from. They took her position at her last place, and she went and brought her over too. From what we've seen, very small sample size, from what we've seen, the right person for the role is more customer service oriented, bubbly, friendly, personable, enjoys talking to people on the phone, does not get drained by it. They need to get energy from connecting with people. Like a high I personality type.

Benjamin Major: Yes. Yep.

Duncan Metz: And she just, Alex, our operations manager, just so happened to know somebody that was the perfect fit for that, and that online sales rep also knows somebody that's exactly like her, and we have a second interview lined up with her, that person next week. So a lot of things kind of clicking right out of the gate that revealed the right person to us and also has opened the door to somebody else that's a really good fit for the role, and we'll have more data on it in a few months. I have constant conversations, not constant, I have weekly conversations with our online sales rep about "How are you feeling?" How's your morale? Like, you're doing an amazing job. Here's this great thing that a client said about you. She's also in those weekly calls with their marketing strategist to make her feel like she's a part of the team and getting good feedback from them as well. Like, "Oh, this appointment that you sent us was phenomenal. Like, we got a deposit from them. Like, keep it up. Keep sending them over." So getting that, you want her to be– the client to be bought in on her as well so that she can get that positive feedback or so that they can get that positive feedback from them and keep that morale up. Because inevitably, they're gonna have some accounts that underperform, you know, and like it sucks to do all these calls, especially for our niche when she had to call, I don't know, to book those 50 appointments, 40, 50 appointments, she had to call, I don't know- Like 100.

Benjamin Major: Yeah, yeah, a lot, a lot of leads.

Duncan Metz: I don't even wanna look how many calls she made in her first month. It's like, it's something probably insane. And she was, you know, I talked to her a bit. She's like a gamer. She likes to play games online. And so I built her a website, and like gamified it. Mm-hmm. So it's basically just a single page. And I did an API connection from HighLevel to that site, so every time an appointment got made, it would like, a status bar would fill up on hers. Mm-hmm. And it was Thanksgiving, so it was like, "You have to save all these turkeys." Right. And the only way to save these turkeys is by booking more appointments. And it's like, each time she booked an appointment for a specific account, like the, the bar filled up, and then there was like a, your total, like you have to save 70 turkeys this month 'cause you have seven accounts, so you have to make 70 appointments basically. So it's like a silly way of like, you know, the theme. So like this month, I haven't actually done the website. I gotta do that. It's gonna be like, I don't know, something about snow. Like you gotta save- Yeah, yeah… All the snowflakes or something. Or Santa needs help. I don't know. You just gotta like have fun with it, you know, like kinda be a little silly about it.

Josh Nelson: I love the way you think. You know, like very creative and outside the box, but, you know, kind of a fun way to solve problems. Yeah. It's kinda like, what's the point if you're not having fun, right? Yeah. We talked about that in the beginning too.

Duncan Metz: I was like, "I'll, I'm down to do this agency thing if you handle all the stuff that I don't wanna handle." You talk to all the clients, and that'll let me have fun, and like, what don't you wanna do?

Benjamin Major: I'll do that stuff so that you can have fun too, or else what's the point?

Duncan Metz: Yeah. It was a hard transition from account manager when I was doing it to like letting somebody else do it. 'Cause I was like, "I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just getting on the calls and like chit-chatting with them." Like, I never presented a single report in like six months to a client. Like never. I was like, "What's up?" Never prepared, like worst account manager you could probably have. But like, and it was like hard 'cause I couldn't like, how do you like rep- how do you tell somebody to just like go… And it's like, okay, no. So then Alex like actually built out an entire, based on like, I think she got on a couple calls with you guys, and based on all the stuff that's in the, in the portal, she created like a really detailed SOP. Now it's like the, everybody that hires on, they're like, "This is the smoothest onboarding I've ever had with a company." And I'm like- Yeah…

Benjamin Major: With us? Every person we've hired said that.

Duncan Metz: Yeah, and Benjamin and I were like, "I don't know what you're talking about. I'm gl- I'm glad I don't know. I'm glad you're saying it, and I know it wouldn't have been me." Yeah. And she, all she did was just like basically regurgitate all the information that's on the portal and made it our own, of course. But it's like, I don't know. She's crushing it, so I'm happy we have her.

Josh Nelson: Great to have someone in that role that can take those ideas and implement them, especially you guys are both like quick start, like go get things done. Mm-hmm. One last question on the concierge. Logistically, they're ringing into HighLevel. Are you using Eliza or are you using like individual swapping between subaccounts? Yeah. How are you guys managing that? Great question. Yeah.

Duncan Metz: Yeah. Eliza is no longer available- Okay… For new people to join on, which when I was like, "Hey, let's do this," I was like, "100% yeah, we'll use Eliza. That's like the perfect thing." And then when I went to go use it, gone. It's like landing pages- I wonder why.

Josh Nelson: I wonder why they eliminated it.

Duncan Metz: Landing pages don't work. I went on support. I was like, "What's going on?" They're like, "yeah, let me check." They're like, "Oh, yeah, it's no longer… Like, they're not accepting new people anymore." And it's like, and then the last update on the update pages is like two years ago on Eliza. Like, everything's super old. Like, they, it's like they abandoned that project. And I was like, "Great. What do we do?" So, Google Sheets.

Josh Nelson: So basically, what we do is each lead that comes in goes into one Google sheet, and it has- Different tab for each client?

Duncan Metz: No. It's all just one sheet. But it says like the name of the client, some information, and then there's a link to that. So when they click that link, it brings them to that conversation in the correct subaccount. So she can close all her tabs, click the link, it'll bring her to subaccount, A to conversation A of that person, and then when she calls that person, through the magic of the internet, that person gets removed off the spreadsheet.

Josh Nelson: Oh, that's pretty cool. Yeah. That's great.

Duncan Metz: So it's kind of like they go on the spreadsheet. She goes there. When she calls them, it gets removed from the spreadsheet, essentially. So the other- And that's been our workaround. Yeah. And it's, yeah. I think it's pretty, it's simple to me, and like that's what you need in order to… Minimum viable, right? Mm-hmm. Minimum viable, and then you start to add things on to make everybody's lives easier. The other role of the online sales rep that we didn't really cover is they're also monitoring the AI conversations in those accounts, and that's another added benefit that I kinda pitch for that higher tier is like, yeah, your team could be in there working their own leads, monitoring all these conversations that the AS- AI is having and reporting any bugs to us, or completely hands-off. This person's responsibility is making sure the AI is saying all the right things because they're trained on your business. So if you want that human layer of quality assurance, quality control, that's, that's that higher tier as well. Yeah. And then the, essentially the way that we manage that, 'cause it's like an insane amount of conversations, is when the AI, when there's an unread message. It's like when AI responds, message gets marked as cleared and basically disappears. But unread messages means that the AI like stalled out or something happened to where the AI is no longer active for that conversation. And then what we have is we have a system check. So when somebody sends a message, there's a five-minute wait, and then it checks. It does a, we do an API call back to HighLevel. Is this message unread? If yes, then add to Google Sheet. And then we add that to the Google Sheet, and it's like, "Hey, this message is unread." Same concept, press the link, go to the conversation, check out what's wrong, maybe call the client, maybe push the, like, see what happened. Usually, it's a question, like some weird question about the houses that the AI doesn't have the information on. She grabs the information from the dealership, answers the question, updates the AI. We never have to worry about that again. So- Yeah… So it's a, it's a, it's a workaround, but it's working really well, where basically the, that online sales rep has a sheet. All the leads that are coming in that are active, either via the chat or via, like, I need to call this opportunity, she's just working a sh- dynamic spreadsheet that's basically adding and removing contacts all throughout the day. Yep. That's it. Super cool.

Josh Nelson: How, how do you envision scaling that? Like, how many, how many clients do you perceive, like, one of those online sales reps can handle? Like, any KPIs around that that you can share?

Duncan Metz: Yeah. We're tracking for 10 accounts per online sales rep to really maintain the speed that we would like them to have and the quality of monitoring the conversations. And we incentivize based on appointments per account. So, whenever they hit 10 appointments set in an account, that's what we've seen as, like, the number they need to close a sale. Ten in-person appointments, generally speaking, leads to one active deal. We'll pay, what is it? Two hundred bucks? It's, like, $10 per appointment. And then, so $100 for 10 appointments.

Benjamin Major: If they hit 10 appointments- Hundred dollars…

Duncan Metz: They get an additional $100 bonus for that account. So it's $200 per account that they handle. And then, if they hit all their accounts, 10, then they get an additional $100 per account that they hit. So it's basically the maximum is $3,000 in bonus, and then of course they're on salary. Yeah. And scalable in terms of, you know, we had to charge higher ticket to make it make sense from a bottom line and margin perspective because we want to incentivize them to be in line with what our clients are trying to do. And, like, we wanna handle that so that the clients doesn't have to worry about it, right? It's like, pay them really well to do a really great job, and it just makes sense for them to have a smaller pool of clients, higher ticket, so they can focus and really- Yeah… Push those appointments. It's like, I think it comes out to, like, if she just every single month, like, nailed it in all 10 accounts consistently, it'd be, like, 75K a year, like salary. And if she's making 75K a year, then it's like those clients are gonna be very happy, like essentially. So it's like I'd rather invest in our team to make sure that the end result, the solution is well. Like, I'd rather take, you know, less profit and like, have a better, you know, better everything and like she's stateside, and it's like, you know, if we can help a small company, and we can have everybody to be able to live comfortably, 'cause we are in Florida, so cost of living is still, you know, high here. You know, that makes us happy to be able to support and help our team out, you know?

Benjamin Major: Yeah, and it's frankly a no-brainer, right? Seventy-five K a year to support $50,000 in monthly recurring revenue. You know, it doesn't- Yeah. It's not, the math is mathing, as they say.

Josh Nelson: Yeah. Super good. Win, win for everybody involved. Win for you guys, win for that person, and win for the client 'cause they're getting more booked appointments.

Duncan Metz: Yeah, and there's something to be said, like higher quality when somebody act- Like, it seems like over text, you know, no-show rates are not, you know, we'd like them to be- It's like 50% is- Yeah… Show rate. We don't have enough, like, data yet on the OSR, what the show rates are, but it seems like it's going to be, like, more of a commitment 'cause, like, you've made a connection with somebody, you've talked to them. Versus, like, texting is very, I'm not gonna say informal, but it's, like, very easy to just disappear, right? Like- Mm-hmm. But when you talk to somebody and you have a conversation and, you know, hopefully she's there to kind of like hit it off with them and get them excited about coming to the lot, there's gonna be like some more guilt there. It's not just like a number on a screen. It's like a person that you've talked to and you've communicated with, and you don't wanna disappoint them. So I think there's something to be said there as well, like an actual conversation had over the phone versus just texting. Whether it's AI or a person, it doesn't matter. It's still texting. And so that's where the bridge is for this concierge.

Josh Nelson: Not only are they following up on the phone for the lead, but once they're booking through the AI, they're calling and saying, "Hey, I see you scheduled. You just wanted to…" Like, they're confirming that appointment. Is that part of the process and part of that bridge to like a real human voice?

Duncan Metz: They aren't currently calling to do appointment confirmations. Our advice to our clients is that they handle it. They should do that on their side. Yeah. Because it's like you, we get them excited and booked, and she does the handoff. She's like, "You're going to be talking to this person. Expect a call from them to make sure you have any paperwork that you need when you come in or to move the ball forward a little bit more for you." Super, super.

Josh Nelson: We've gone really deep on, like, the delivery mechanism, which you– I really appreciate you guys sharing. I know we're getting a little bit deep into time, but I'd love to have a quick conversation about how you're acquiring clients today. So you've grown to over 100,000 in MRR. Amazing. Even Rob was just asking us, like, talk to us about what's working to get those clients in the door for you guys right now.

Duncan Metz: Yeah. Facebook ads- Mm… Is where almost all of our clients have come from. I am happy to dig into the details. The line that runs through all of it is deliver a really crazy result- Mm-hmm… That you can actually deliver. So don't pretend like you can and say it and then unable to back it up. And then in our ads, we say, "Hey, are you this XYZ very specific business?" So for us, it's, "Are you a mobile home dealer? Do you want this crazy result? If so, click here, and we will show you how to get it." It's not super complicated. Dangle a carrot. It's like classic direct response, right? Show them something that they want and give them a very clear next step in order to get the thing. And then they go to a landing page for us and on that page, I just show them how the sausage is made. It's like, here's a lead that came in. They talked to the AI. They booked an appointment and showed up on the lot and bought a house It's like very open, you know, open the doors to how the process works. And then on that page, there's a link to book a call with us, and they– we don't even use AI for our own leads. They go click the ad, go to the page, schedule a call. We get about a 60% show rate for those people on those calls. And then we do a two-call process discovery, and then I do a little bit of competitor analysis. Our industry is very focused on competition. We get like, "Are you gonna work with the guy down the street?" on almost every call.

Benjamin Major: So we do a competitor analysis- Every single conversation comes up.

Duncan Metz: Every call. I don't think I've had one where they haven't asked about it. So we do a little bit of competitor analysis, and I say, "Here's my recommendations for you." And then I roll into the same pitch that I do for everybody after going through the competitor analysis. So there is some custom. I just do ChatGPT, like look at all the dealers in their area kind of thing. Mm-hmm. And if they're a really good fit and they seem interested, sometimes I'll roll that into one call to try and s-shorten that sales cycle. And yeah, I would say all of our… How many clients do we have now? I don't know. 60, 70? Individual locations, we're at like 60, almost 70 plus, yeah.

Benjamin Major: They've all come from Facebook ads with a few exceptions. Yeah. So- We do like multi-location discounts and stuff. Yeah, yeah.

Josh Nelson: Facebook ad, is it like targeting? Are you open targeting or have you figured out a way to laser target these mobile home, you know- Yeah, we do the list targeting play.

Benjamin Major: So you pur- we purchased a list from, we purchased a few lists.

Josh Nelson: Hard niche to target, apparently. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. I would imagine, yeah.

Benjamin Major: And like they're on Google, they have websites, so I'm like, "What's going on here?" But we use a list of about 1,000, create lookalike audiences, and, you know, you just do traditional Facebook ads, right? It's like test your 1% lookalike audience versus your broad targeting versus your 3% lookalike versus your warm retargeting audience from people that have come to the page and the site. And those, the same ads that we launched in November or September of last year are still running and still producing.

Josh Nelson: So- So a very targeted list. You're not open targeting. You're like very targeted list, custom audience lookalike to that. Mm-hmm. Is the creative text-based, video-based- Yeah… Combination? What's working best?

Benjamin Major: Videos more than anything. We have some fun time on the lots. Commit to the bit is kind of the, you know, is the name of… Word of the day, right?

Josh Nelson: It's like- So the creative is you guys on mobile dealership lot- Mm-hmm… Talking about, you know, whatever it is to get their attention. Mm-hmm. And then that drives them to the VSL sort to speak, where it's a video of you explaining the sauce and how it works, and if you'd like us to do it for you, click below, schedule in, reminder sequence, sales pitch. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Benjamin Major: I had Duncan crawl from under a home. Yeah. And it was like, it was a retargeting ad. It was like, "Hey, you've been seeing our ads, like why haven't you scheduled a time yet?" Yeah. Yeah. So good. Yeah. And like have a little bit of fun, right? It's like don't take yourself too seriously and like don't look like everybody else. Like if you're gonna run ads and you're gonna run the same ads that everybody else is gonna run, you're gonna pay a lot, a lot per call, a lot per client. The goal with ads is to stand out, be different than what they're seeing, or else y-you're thr- throwing good money after bad or whatever the saying is. And in terms of like the what's in the ads and what we're saying in the ads, it's all, it all points back to my friend and mentor always says, "Just say the thing." It's like don't, don't be fancy about it. Don't be marketing about it. Just say the thing. It's like, "Do you want more sales? We will use AI to get you more sales, and if you're curious about how that works, click the ad and I will show you how we use AI to get more sales." It's like it's not- So good… It's not too fancy, not too complicated. Just say the thing. And it's same copywriting, same… We have follow-up sequences as well for email and text. It's all like just say the thing.

Josh Nelson: Fantastic. A-amazing interview, guys. First of all, congratulations on your success. What's exciting is I think this is just a very early start point for you guys. I can't wait to see where you're at 12 to 24 months from now as you guys continue to evolve, continue to i-iterate, continue to innovate within your space. Thanks for coming on and just complete abundance mindset, like, "Here's what we did. Here's what's working." not holding anything back. If you had one last piece of wisdom to share with that agency owner that's trying to get to the next level, what would it be?

Duncan Metz: I would say action is more important than almost anything. It's like forward momentum, and it's something that I've learned from Benjamin specifically. You know, I'm very used to being comfortable. Like I would've been happy at 20, 30K and just like doing the work myself and, you know, cruising right along. Even though I know how to acquire more clients than that, I probably would've just stagnated. I probably would've been in that same position where I was like, "Yeah, this is good enough." Benjamin is like, "Nah. What are we doing today to move things forward?" And it's like action and sometimes almost to a fault. If you can, not to, rag on you, Benjamin, but it's like it's forward momentum at all costs, and sometimes like you gotta slow down a little bit. But people, when they slow down, they slow down to a dead standstill and then don't grow, don't move, don't progress. And like you need both sides of that. Like you need the push, and then you need the a little bit of slow so you don't go off the tracks. But I would say the one thing is like take action. Don't just like think and plan. Do some stuff.

Josh Nelson: How about you, Benjamin? To, to wrap us up.

Benjamin Major: What he, what he said. I think to this day, one of the best emails that I've received, which we'll play along with this, is the 3730 from Alex Hormozi. So Alex Hormozi, if you don't know him, YouTube him, but he's got a mailing list. Just join it. He sends out like a five-minute thing like every week. – And I read every single one of them. I think they're fantastic. It's the only thing… I open my emails to see if I have one from him. I will, you know. So, and it's like the speed to action. Like, I saw an email, it was called the 3730, and it was like, it was your follow-up sequence. Like, what do you do after somebody comes in, like, through the appointment or lead or whatever. And it was like the s- the first three days, the first seven days, and the first 30 days. And, Duncan and I were on our way to a, sh- our first show last January. It was like a month after the intensive, and it was a 14-hour trip. Like, we drove all the way to Kentucky from Florida, and I got the email on that trip, and was like, "Oh, this is pretty cool. Let's, we should implement this." So then I started driving, and then Duncan for the next, like, two hours was, like, just writing every single email in that 3730 kind of framework, from Alex Hormozi. And there was a month where it was, like, five new clients that we had acquired. There was a month that we had, like, a crazy month. I think it was, like, in March or April.

Duncan Metz: There was like a- Yeah, we did, we did 15 that month. Yeah, 15 sales.

Benjamin Major: And it was like five of them came directly attributed from that 3730. Granted, they came from, you know, f- like, the ads and stuff like that, but they converted on the 3730. Like, they're like, "I want another call." Like, these are, you know. That email was just as good as when I got the email from Alex Hormozi.

Josh Nelson: So I would say the 3730- Give us the cliff note version, of what 3730 is.

Benjamin Major: It's- Yeah. Yeah, Duncan is- Do you remember?

Duncan Metz: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No. It's email and text a day for the first three days, so consistently every day. And those are your best three client results, case studies, and then an email and text every other day for the next seven days, and then it goes out to once a week for the next 30 days. So it just kinda tapers off slowly. And the content can change. To me, I think I recycled, at that point we didn't have many case studies or client results, so I was like, "Hey, leads from $23 down to $6 for this client," and there were five emails about that. You kinda look at it from a different angle, but same case study.

Benjamin Major: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Duncan Metz: Okay. That was good. And then you sprinkle your testimonials in there. It's like all the same stuff that you're posting on social and is on your website to build trust and give them more information. If somebody didn't buy when they came through the first time, they didn't have enough information, about you, about the product, about the results. So, like, y- that window of time is to give them whatever they didn't get before they came into the sales funnel so that they can come back around more informed and actually ready to buy the thing. Like Benjamin said, it was like, you know, that month was nuts, but it was an immediate result. The first texts that went out, we were getting replies, and I was doing sales again. I was like, "Oh, cool." And to my point, though, like, I would've been comfortable just trying to sell people from the ads. Mm-hmm. And Benjamin was like, "What are we doing, man? Like, we're on the way to the show. We're probably gonna sell some people there. Like, let's build this email sequence." And I was like, "I would've been okay just like-" Yeah, this email said that we'll make more sales if we do it. Like, why don't we just do this?

Benjamin Major: Like- Yeah… This wouldn't be that hard.

Duncan Metz: I was fine napping on the way to Kentucky, and Benjamin's like, "What email sequence are we gonna write right now?" I'm like, "All right, all right.

Benjamin Major: I guess I'll do something." Yeah, I was there like, "Come on, let's do something." I was like- Yeah…

Duncan Metz: "We got 14 hours.

Benjamin Major: Like, let's, let's do something." I'll, I have it saved in my emails. I'll send you the email itself, John. – It'd be good, yeah.

Josh Nelson: Or, and we'll drop it into the member group 'cause I'm sure everyone- Yeah, yeah… You know, do something that- Yeah, I'll like, I'll just copy and paste the whole email, and I'll just, like, drop it.

Benjamin Major: It's, like, directly from him. And I would recommend to just get on his email list. It's like he literally gives out, like, free information, and it's very general. It's good for everything. Sometimes the emails, like, don't partake to me. Sometimes I use them for my local business. It's like, oh, this is like, that's a great, you know, like, how to handle, whatever situation, and it's like five minute, you know. He calls them Mozie Minutes 'cause, great name. Mozie Minute. Yeah, yeah. Love the Mozie Minute. Yeah, yeah. Well, g- great takeaways, guys.

Josh Nelson: Amazing speed to implement, right? And I think you guys embody that so well. Like, you're students of the game, but you don't just learn. You learn and you implement. You iterate. You problem solve. You hit a wall, but then you say, "How do we solve that?" And then a great example of that is this 3730. You guys heard that idea. You didn't just sit on it and was like, "Okay, let's do that now." Right? Rather than hearing a good idea, I really think that inspiration has a, has a short shelf life, right? If you get a cool idea and you execute right away, you get an outcome. If you think, "That's a good idea. Maybe I'll do that one day," it perishes, right? It never gets any fruit. So beautiful embodiment of that. Again, thanks for coming on. Thanks for going along with us for a full hour and a half here. This is amazing. If, if one of the listeners wanna connect with you further or get to know you guys better, is anything, any way they can connect with you guys?

Duncan Metz: Yeah. Duncan@mobilehomeguys.ai is my email, and if Benjamin wants to give his out, he can. But we're also in the groups and on the calls and at the intensives and, you know, happy to, happy to help in any way we can.

Benjamin Major: Yeah, mine's crazy. Benjamin@mobilehomeguys.ai. He never really guessed it.

Josh Nelson: Yeah, yeah. Got it. Chad says, "Great call." Paul says, "Love this. Maximum respect for what you guys have done." Thanks, Paul. "This has been great." Guys, thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. We'll see you on a future episode of the "Seven Figure Agency" podcast. Thanks, everybody. See ya