Agency Success Interview with Sean McMeen – Vinnie Mac Restoration Marketing

All right. Hello and welcome. So excited to have you with us. Today we’re going to be interviewing Shawn mcmeen from Vinnie Mac marketing. This is part of the seven figure agency podcast where we’re interviewing highly successful digital marketing agencies from across the country. And I am so pumped to have Sean with us today. So Shawn, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

So if I recall correctly, you kind of over the last 1215 months or so have made the leap from that, like 15 to $20,000. Mark to over 40,000 in monthly recurring with your with your agency.

Yes, that’s right. Yeah. Back in. I believe I joined a seven figure agency in September 2019. That was about 15. right then. So and, and this is the second month now that we’re gonna be over 40

Oh, that’s amazing, man, congratulations, great. You’re in that place in your agency, and you’re like, man, I, you know, I need to get out of this struggle, phase two, you know, to the scale phase, this interview is going to be great for you. So Shawn, to kick things off, just kind of give us an overview of, you know, your agency and kind of the services you provide?

Yes, so we we focus on restoration contractors, and that restoration contractor spaces, water, mold, fire, disinfecting services. And, you know, we also have legacy clients as well, we in the medical space, so medical spas, chiropractors, in a few little, still a little local mom and pops that we help out as well. But the vast majority of our business now is in the contractor space. And so what we do for them is we basically provide a comprehensive package from PPC, to SEO to website to social media, and it’s about building the brand of their company and not just selling them leads in the restoration space. It’s highly, highly, highly competitive. And my whole thing is like you want to build a company, you don’t want to just go lead by lead by lead, right? You want to build a brand. And that’s that’s what we really focus on for our restoration clients.

Nice. Nice. So So how long have you been in the agency game? I like just, you know, in general, doing websites, SEO, social media, kind of what’s your transition period?

Yeah. So I should start off with saying, When I was younger, probably 1011. I, that would. Commodore 64 was around. I don’t have ever heard of that or not. But my dad taught me how to program

I had a Commodore 64.

Right. He taught me how to program when I was in like third grade. So that’s, that’s how I first got into computers and things like that. And I was never really a hardware guy. And I like the visual side of it. And so like in high school, when front page came out is like around 9697. I was like, Wow, this is awesome. You can just, you know, plug and play things in here, you can do some little coding, little customization. And then when I went to college, I started my first business in college and developed a couple websites. One that was kind of like match.com. And then a local directory joined a chamber and like interacting with businesses and stuff like that. And that was my first dip into the actual, like business to business relationship and things like that. And so after I graduated and got my master’s degree and everything, I kind of took some time off group grew my family, and at the time, I got a corporate job, a company called Thomson Reuters sells financial software. And I was in that working 15 years in that space and technical sales, had a team. And around. During that time, I did a lot of white label fulfillment for agencies. So I knew the operational side and knew how to get results. I just didn’t because I had a full time job, I didn’t have the time to meet with clients, you know. And so, you know, I had the experience, and then around 2016, my boss, basically, we we had another downsizing in the corporate world. And so that’s when I went to my wife and I was like, you know, now’s the time for me to volunteer and go, I was already making over half my salary on the side and freelancing. And so I was like, you know, I want to be able to control my own destiny going into going in the future, you know, so I wasn’t at risk at that time I lose my job, but it’s only a matter of time in the corporate space. So that’s when that’s when I decided to go off on my own in 2016. And luckily, I had a severance package that helped my wife is in military so we had TRICARE for insurance, you know, that’s the big, that’s the big difficult thing when you have a family, I always weighed that risk reward. And so I didn’t want to risk my family’s you know, security and so when the time presented it, you know, I haven’t looked back since so.

So so kind of you saw the writing on the wall you’re like you know, I’ve got this this little passive income that’s coming in from my my freelance work. If I focused on this full time, I could I can build it up.

Yeah. I mean, that’s, that’s that’s how it was, you know, I have a huge operational background. So and that’s a good and bad thing when you’re starting your agency. Right. So, and the operational side still to this day still it, I’m in it, and I’m trying to get dig myself out of it, right. So they can be above it and actually grow the agency versus doing the work in the agency.

Yeah, so like, it makes a lot of sense, right? He’s talking about the good and the bad, the good is, you know exactly how to do the work, you know exactly how to deliver the results. And that’s good. The bad is you wind up doing it yourself, or feeling like you have to have your hand in almost every little thing that’s going on for your clients. And that’s one of the struggles you’ve had is like, I’m still doing some of the work, which doesn’t let you focus on growing and building the business right now, in this year with COVID. Everything that gave me a chance to look back.

When COVID first started, we really double down with our clients just because we did I mean, there’s so much unknown with it going right. And so we were focused on making sure we produce our clients get as much results restructured, help them restructure their business and everything. But it also allowed me to really sit back and look and see where where am I struggling personally the most right. And it was the being in the operational side. And so we’ve we’ve grown our team by three people over the last six months. So to help with that.

Nice. And so how is that impacted you being able to afford to do a team but also having a team with the extra hands?

I couldn’t do without my team. My team is awesome. Abby, who’s my operations managers like project manager, she is she’s, she’s right there. With me. I mean, I couldn’t do without her. I’ve got I’ve got a team of C five now. So operations person, slash project manager, I have a content writer, dedicated content writer for SEO results and things. And then I have a marketing assistant. I have an account manager. And also, we just hired a dedicated SEO person.

Nice. So a good team to get the work done to execute for the clients. That way, you’re not physically doing it yourself. Do you feel like that team is kind of, you’ve got enough people now that you could scale to 50 6070 without having to add a lot of additional team members.

Yeah, so the the next hire I’m making and I’m doing interviews right now is on the PPC side. With with that hire I’ve interviewed tons of people for and that’s kind of where my background comes from. And I’ve spent a lot of energy in that. dialing in for clients in the water damage space and contractor play space in general, you know how this is it’s very, very competitive, and it can get very, very expensive. And the last thing I want to do is have mistakes for our clients, right. And so I spent a lot of time documenting that and making sure we would find that process. So that way, when we hire somebody in, they’re going to be able to start, you know, and understand what we do, because we do extremely customized campaigns. We don’t just throw up one campaign and say, okay, water damage, and it’s going to cover all this area, you know, it’s very complex. And it’s, it’s, it’s hard to let it go. Let’s put it that way. But that’s I know, without doing that, I’m not gonna be able to do skill skill pass much more where we are just, there’s just not enough time. Yeah.

Awesome. All right. So let’s, let’s kind of shift back for a minute here. So you were at 15,000? What were the what I guess what were the things you needed to solve for, in order to break from that 15,000 to the 2535 $40,000 range, just talk about some of the things you knew you needed to solve for at that point. And that helps you kind of get through that barrier.

But I think the biggest thing for me was because I had an operational background was getting out of the head that trying to do everything yourself. You know, I think that’s the big struggle for a lot of entrepreneurs, and a lot of business owners themselves, because it’s their baby, it’s their, it’s their company, right, and it represents them. And so for me, it was adding team members that are good, a good fit and giving them the tools to be successful. And I’m not trying to second guess and, again, micromanage them, give them the tools to be successful, they’re going to make mistakes, they’re not going to, they’re not going to do exactly like you do it right. And if you’re if you’re lucky, they’re going to do it better, right. And so that I’ve been fortunate enough to have a team that is is you never want to be the smartest person in the room. Let’s put it that way. You want to surround yourself with people that are very knowledgeable and that can help you grow along the way. So that’s that’s one of the big keys for me was getting some people in to help and then giving them tools. And then secondly was outreach. So our basic big success is the case study testimonial, Facebook ads. And that’s that’s how we’ve been able to grow over the over the last year or so, from a restoration side and it’s still Different from switching from a local agency where you can meet people face to face to actually somebody that’s across the country, right? And then when you do meet with them, how do you show them the value that you bring them in and turn that in from a webinar situation into a relationship? And it’s all about building relationship? If they trust you, they’re willing to, they’re going to do business with you.

Yeah, so it sounds like you to free yourself from the day to day operations, I definitely want to talk about that. I’m putting a system in place to get clients outside your local area, because it sounds like the first 15,000 or so and monthly recurring came from your local market. Right? Anybody that was a general type client could raise your hand and kind of hire your services. Yes. Okay. And then the other thing I’ll talk a little bit about is kind of the the struggle of choosing the niche because I know for you, you kind of landed on one and then you had you were like, I don’t know if this is the right one, and you change for a lot of agencies struggle with. So let’s let’s start there. Um, how did you like so tell us about your, your process on finding a niche, and then you know, how you don’t, you know, ultimately landed on damage restoration.

Yeah, so, so like I said, Before, we have had a lot of clients from either medical spas, so realtors, to contractors, and we’re generating tremendous results from our retention rate is extremely high. And because I, I, I think that is because of the personal relationship and the relationship building. But the way, I started with focusing on medical spas, because we’re just killing it for one of my local companies with Facebook advertising, CoolSculpting, Botox, and then when high level came out, like that just really made us explode. And we’re still doing that for them, we still do get great results for them. And we know that market very well. But for me, I’ve had always a background in remodeling and construction and things like that. So in college, not only was I started like an internet business, but I also flipped like four houses in college. And you know, and and remodeled in, in my house I live in now I basically rebuilt it from the ground up. So I have that contractor background in me. And as a DIY er, I’m not necessarily a contractor, but I’m, I love it and enjoy doing that. And so we had a client in that space, producing tremendous results for them, got some case studies from that, and ended up decided to flip from medical spa focus to restoration contractors. And I remember having that call call with you. And I was like, you know, I’m torn between this, I put so much work into this. And you said to me do what feels more comfortable to you do what feels right in your gut, right. And, and that’s what I did. That’s, you know, it’s been well over a year, just strictly restoration contractors now. And we’ve had restoration clients for over five years, but just adding from the seven figure agency side, adding on restoration clients, and that’s our, that’s our niche that we’re we’re all into right now.

That’s awesome, man. So I want to talk about that selection process, I think you know, that that’s something everybody needs to needs to kind of think about. And sometimes you do have to pivot, sometimes it’s just not the right fit the needs that you thought was going to be the right fit. But before that it’s wanna hear, like, how has being in the restoration, nature, being in one niche specifically impacted your ability to grow and scale? Like, do you feel like that is part of the reason you’ve had the accelerated growth that you’ve had?

Yeah, absolutely. Because, you know, at the end of the day, when you deal with local businesses and businesses all over the place you have, if you do it, right, you have to learn about them, not only them, the business owner, but the actual business that they run in the customers that they they serve, right, if you don’t do that, then you’re not going to provide provide an excellent service. And so constantly relearning every single type of industry is just, it’s, it’s not good for you, it’s not good for your team. And there’s just no efficiency there at all. And so, when you actually focus in on a specific niche, understand their concerns, their pain points, their fears, you know, what drives them, then you can address those on those sales calls, have a meaningful conversation with them, and then show them how you can get them from A to B. Right. And so that’s, that’s kind of, you know, from focusing on on one niche, or you know, somebody who sees that they have two niches and we kind of do too. You know, it’s, it allows you to scale you know, and so then you create repeatable processes for your team so they can do their work and they don’t have to be waiting on you all the time to tell them what to do.

Yeah, yeah, no doubt like good Good, good feedback there. As it as it relates to how you chose the niche. I think you did the right thing you looked at your past experienced you look to the clients you had success with, you kind of narrowed in on med spas, you were crushing it for a client there, you had a proven model, and then you looked at damage right? Similar and it was just kind of Which one do you like better? Which one? Do you have kind of a foot in the door with Which one do you feel like is going to be the better long term fit? And you just stayed the course inside of restoration. I know, it was a tough decision. But it sounds like it was the right decision. It

was in retrospect, it wasn’t part of that decision was actually talking to those clients, too. So I’ve talked to both of them. When I was started in the medical spa space, I actually had a conversation said, you know, hey, this is what I’m looking to do. What’s your thoughts? Like? How can I connect with people. And so when you have a client that you’re producing results with, that they’re going to open up with you and make connections, same thing happened with restoration spaces, gave me a great testimonial, we use that to generate leads to this day. And, you know, just having that personal relationship, when to fall back and ask them questions is is huge.

Yeah, powerful, powerful insight there, guys. I think that’s the place to start. If you have some past clients, start there, right, if you don’t start with your sphere of influence, they go out to people, you know, people you’ve done business with. And don’t feel like start selling around at the gates to have a meeting with them. Talk to them about what you’re thinking about doing, see what they think, see if they have anybody that can introduce yourself too early in your agency, I think that’s one of the fastest ways to gain momentum.

Yeah, especially when you’re first starting out is you want to be helpful, like you, you want to be helpful. And you want to show that you’re providing value without trying to sell them. Nobody wants to be sold. Nobody likes to go buy a new car, because they don’t want to be sold, right? And so if you can be helpful and show them value, then that’s you’re going to get trust, and that at the end of the day, if somebody trusts you, like I said before, they’re going to do business with you.

Yeah. Great. So we’ve had that kind of a nice conversation, I think a number of really good useful insights there. Thank you for sharing. Now, as it relates to getting the clients in that space. You know, you went from 15 to 40. Like you said that the case study funnel has been working well for you. Let’s talk about where you’re getting the clients from, or at least were the first seedling clients outside of the initial client. What are the first ones come from and where do they were coming from now?

Yeah, so like many agencies, I’ve tried a million different things tried, you know, cold emailing, cold calling, oh, my God, I pulled my hair out on that, like, I can’t do that. You know, we tried mailers, we’ve tried PPC, we’ve tried Facebook ads. And by far the best results when we get his testimony case studies using Facebook, to dial into your, your, your specific niche. Right. And so that’s that’s been the biggest driver for us is getting them showing a testimonial case study, getting them on a zoom session. And actually, you know, Zelt, very similar processes, what you use as far as showing them doing an audit for them real quick, showing them results that we get for our clients, showing them the system, the dashboard system that we use for call tracking. And, you know, learning more about their business and and listening to their problems, their concerns, and they’re going to tell you, if you dig deep enough, during that initial phase of it, they’re going to tell you why they won’t do business with you right then and there. Right? If you ask the right probing questions, and so you can if you can get and solve the answer those questions or solve those problems, right then and there. There’s at the end of the call, there’s, you know, there’s very few reasons why they should say, No.

Yeah, I love that. I mean, I think that’s, there’s there’s a lot of ways to grow your agency and your niche agency, one of my favorites is get a client in your, in your vertical, generate an amazing results, document that result. shoot a video of yourself explaining, hey, here’s what we did. Here’s the result they got, here’s how many leads they’re getting. And then ideally, a zoom interview like we’re doing right now with that client, ask them questions, ask about their experience about ask about why they chose you ask about the results. Now you can go to that vertical, not with, hey, you want to hire me, but you can go to that vertical and show a proven example of what you’ve done. And they just get to decide, do they want a similar result for themselves? And so you know that that’s awesome. Did you get any clients through the cold outreach, the networking, and a lot of the hustle efforts? Or was it pretty much the Facebook ads is what worked for you and your in your business?

I actually got I tried the cold email templates. I think, Jeff, and that’s, that’s in the training. And I actually signed one client through that. So it went out to around 2000 people I had several several strategy sessions with people. For me, I, I I know how hard it is to get results for restoration clients because it’s such a competitive niche similar to lawyers, so competitive, lots of money for advertising that goes in that space. And so I think Do not discount my services, I, I won’t do that, because I know what it takes results, I’m not going to discount our services because I know the value that we can bring. And so we could have added additional clients and been less profitable than what we are right now. But for me, I just didn’t think that, you know, it was worth it just to add clients to clients, you know, especially if they didn’t have the money, right, then it just the money issue. It’s always if it’s an issue at the beginning, it’s always going to be an issue some sometime down the road, no matter what results you’re going to get, get for them.

Yeah, smart, smart move, right, you know, the client that that nickels and dimes you at the beginning is going to nickel and dime you for forever. And you already had a case study client. So you don’t even have to negotiate. Like, you could say, Look, I’ve already got this client, this result, I have a proven model, I think it’s okay to maybe negotiate with the first client in a vertical if you don’t have anything just to cut your teeth and prove the viability of what you’re bringing to the table. After that. stick to your guns. Right. Yeah, I think I think that’s a great place for you to see if you could just kind of explain how you package your service and kind of what the price points are just so we understand kind of what you’re what you’re selling to that space.

Yeah. So it all starts with, with a website, we make sure that their website is most the time we rebuild the entire thing. You know, and that’s not only just about branding, but also conversion factors, right want to make sure that it’s mobile friendly, it loads fast it that at the end of the day when emergency happens. And that’s what our spaces, they need to be able to contact them quickly and easily. And so it all starts with a website at the same time. We implement our our PPC campaigns. And so the PPC campaigns, you know, depending on where they’re located, you know, if it’s in a big metropolitan area, it can be a very, very complex campaign, because we dial it in by location, and then by specific keyword, so scag campaigns, once we get the PPC going, and the website launched, we also do SEO plan for GMB optimizations we do social media posts for local branding. And, you know, that’s pretty much our main comprehensive package, we all we use high level to encompass all that and for our tracking in in analytics for call tracking. Because at the end of the day, if you can show the value you’re bringing in for calls, then it’s going to prove it’s going to show them this put it this way, if you say okay, I got you 30 calls this month and and client says well, who were those people? And what was it for, right? If you can relate a call to a name to value and job type. If you can do all of that. There’s no questions. There’s no questions around it, right? We can’t control if they close the deal, but we can control them we get sent them qualified calls for services that they offer. Yep.

Powerful so so it sounds like website SEO Pay Per Click marketing, automation lead follow up type stuff, what is a monthly average fee for that?

Yeah, so the, the debt package is 20 $500 per month, that does not include ad spin and a 1500 dollar setup fee, we do not waive separate feeds either. We’ve we’ve tried to package it and present it as Okay, it’s it’s $4,000 for the first month and then 20 $500 for the next month. I’ve had better results breaking it out and basically explaining the the setup fee is that to to speed up the process and get your new website dialed in. And and get things rolling and you know, most of the time you know, I’m I close one out of five calls. So that’s that’s been what I’ve been lately so

fantastic. So thanks for breaking down the kind of the program how many how many variations of that like if somebody wants to just do a custom website or if they just want to you know just do like SEO with you How do you handle those situations.

So we have a PPC only package as well and so that’s 1200 dollars per month with a with $1,000 setup fee actually on that because of we can reduce that one down a little bit depending on their market you know if it’s a smaller market and we’ll be as as much work to to get everything dialed in but we that’s the that’s the one down so we have outside of that. I don’t have any other packages.

So it’s this is the program that’s gonna work. This is what we believe you need you take it if it’s a fit, if not no hard feelings, you know, best of luck. I wish you luck.

Yeah, and then we put them in a cool follow up sequence and, and you know, at the end of the day, I’ve had a couple clients that said no one the initial call, continued to get communication for us and then signed up later. So

a lot it’s just kind of nurture them until they’re ready.

Yep, you know, at the end of the day results speak speak volumes. Right, if you can, if you can go show results, get to get declined results, document that and present it to people that are looking for the same results. And then, you know, that’s that’s speaks volumes right there.

Hundred percent. Now if I recall correctly, earlier in the agency, you weren’t niche focused. And you were kind of a cart like somebody could buy a website, or they could buy whatever they needed, how has kind of packaging it and having like, this is our core thing that we’re going to sell simplified your operations. And, you know, do you feel like that’s helped in the growth and scale in your agency?

It definitely has, because everybody on my team knows what they need to do. When a client comes on board, you know, at at the, what’s the client signs, pays the first month setup fee and everything we have onboarding call with them, usually, that’s 40 minutes or so, where we just dive deep into everything, we have onboarding checklist that we go through. And once we get all that information, my team members know what to do, right? They know, websites. First, we get the PPC dialed in Google, Google Maps optimization. And so we’ve got everything set up and click up from a template that we can clone over for each individual, one of our clients, and we just go through that list as a team and, and make sure everything gets gets rockin, you know, the important thing is to produce results fast. So we do make sure within the first seven days they have their PPC results up and running. If they don’t have Google local services, we help them get that done. And so it’s it’s important to get that phone ringing as quickly as possible. Hundred percent he

just shared a writer downer if you like if you’re listening, and you didn’t hear that, you need to generate quick wins, right? They just signed up for 2500 bucks a month. Yes, you’re going to do a website? Yes, you’re going to do SEO, yes, you’re going to do a lot of things behind the scenes. But as quickly as feasibly possible, you need them to get a call a web submission, a lead something where they’re like, okay, they can see the the return, maybe not entire return, but they can see some types of wins that are going to keep them excited about the journey in the process. So I think that was it. That was a great, great tip.

Here’s a perfect example. So now we’ve got our website process dialed in so much that used to take us 3040 days maybe to revamp a website. And that’s what the location pages and all that with our branding everything. And we just launched, we signed a client two weeks ago and already launched the website. So once you get that process dialed in, it’s just a matter of making sure that you know, everything is set up in their branding and follow the process.

simplify, simplify to multiply, right. Yep. Good. Got a couple questions here. I want to I want to address because I think this is this is this is great stuff. Um, Tyler wanted to give her a How much is the inclusive package? 2500 bucks a month, Rachel, you said with a 1500? dollar setup fee?

Correct.

Okay. And then do you offer the website as part of that package? Ricardo wanted to know,

we do with the six month minimum we do.

So he’s launching the website, he’s creating the content, he’s doing the SEO, that’s all part of the strategy to help generate the best result possible for that particular client.

I always tell clients, it’s it, you know, a lot of times they’re like, well, I just want leads. And that’s, that’s one strategy in the water space. In the in restoration space. There’s a lot of insurance companies, and there’s a lot of pay per lead services, I tell them to keep them, keep them right, you want to have as many poles and hooks in the water right as possible. But you also want to build a company, if you if you’re looking to build a brand and a company in your local area. Like I’m your guy, I’m gonna help you with that. If you’re looking for just the pay per lead thing, there’s plenty of other companies out there home advisors that can help you with that. And they weren’t good. They weren’t good. But it’s only it’s only gonna get you so far.

Yeah, no doubt. Yeah, absolutely love that. KENNETH wants to know what the what the minimum PPC budget is that you’re telling the client,

it depends on the population in the market space and the competitors, right. So you know, if it’s a smaller location, you might be able to get by with 1500 dollars per month. In a lot of our bigger markets, you’re looking at 4000 to $10,000 per month, depending on the results you want to get. The the thing that a lot of restoration contractors struggle with is there’s tons and tons of competition. And there’s tons of like franchises and things like that. And they have these huge marketing budgets, right. So they’ll take a loss on one service to upsell on another. And the other thing in the restoration space is the the job size is getting smaller, right so insurance companies are beaten down the cost of it, you know, I had one client tell me that they were the insurance came get we’re gonna give them $30 to install a dishwasher and hook up the waterline he says I can’t even play a licensed plumber to hook up a water line for that. And, and so, you know, that’s what they struggle with is so much competition and the value of the leads have dropped. So we try to make it as much as cost effective for them to get leads and increase their branding so that way they don’t have to rely on paid ads all the time. They look up The company name?

Yeah. 100%. And it’s an important question like, you need to know what that minimum viable spend is for your vertical and for the market that that clients in. And it’s usually more than the client probably perceives on the front end. I think also important as it relates to your price point, as it relates to, you know, the the types of services you provide, how large are the companies you tend to work with? Are they start up restoration companies? Are they bigger restoration companies, like What’s your ideal customer that you tend to work best with?

We do not have any startup companies, I find that, you know, they need to be doing at least $500,000 a year, and in revenue to have a team in place. To be able to have a sustainable, it can’t be just a side hustle type thing. Because, you know, last thing I want to do is, you know, bring on a client and three months down the lane down the way they can’t, they can’t pay for the services, they can’t pay for the the ads to drive the leads and everything like that. So if they’re if they haven’t been around very long, usually, it’s not a good fit for us. It I’ll put them in my sequence. I’ve said no, but I’ve said no before and giving them tools so that they can do get themselves in a better position to succeed. And that’s, that’s kind of the way I approach it.

Yeah, good, good. Good feedback there. Um, let’s see Megan, Megan’s asking, Can you please go over how these testimonials on Facebook and the case study piece works. There’s a training in the members area called the case study builder. I don’t know if that’s exactly what John’s doing. But the concept of you take your client, you document the result, you record a video of it, you run ads targeting your list, or your ideal prospects on Facebook. And they’re like they opt in for to watch that case study. And it takes them straight to the calendar, right? So there’s a training that walks you step by step through that in the in the members area, can you any gaps that you want to fill in on on kind of that and how it works for you?

Yeah, we’re in the process of revamping our ads, because they kind of got played out a little bit. So if you go to my Facebook page, you’re not gonna see anything or right now, we just redid our landing page as well. For us as we do a very informal nut polished testimonial, testimonial video from the client. And basically, there will be a little a few breaks in that interview type thing. We asked them where they, where they started before, where they were at before they started working with us. We asked them, you know what kind of results they’re getting now since working with us, and we asked them if they’d recommend us to someone else, right. So one of my better case studies was a new client we brought on within within 30 days, they were there. They had 30 jobs, and they had to hire another crew, they had to go out and spend $60,000 in new equipment. That’s here’s your damage restoration. Yeah, like it’s a no, no, it’s a no brainer. When you see that video. It’s like, Okay, how did they get those results for that client? Right?

So it’s like a juicy teaser video on Facebook. Yeah, that brings them to a page to watch the rest of it. And then it’s like an application or a schedule right there. Correct?

Yep. Love it.

Hopefully that helps like this, this strategy works really, really well. And you have to, you know, the key is you have to have a client win. And you have to knock out a port for them in the vertical. And then you got to take the time to document it and get the client to speak to the to the impact.

Yes, definitely. Definitely. You know, if, you know, it’s, it gives you a lot of social proof. And also, you know, you can say you can say works to green, and you can say works all day. But if your clients are actually saying it’s working then then it speaks volumes. 100%.

Brendan, great to have you with us Britain, Brenda’s asking, What do you recommend for the Facebook ad budget to generate leads for an agency?

Yes. So what what I did was I actually, I customized my audience, and I was spending $75 per day actually on ads, before I pause them about a week ago, to revamp the videos, landing pages and things like that. About $75 a day is what we’re spending and and on average each week, I’d probably have five to six strategy sessions with that. And then we would we would sign you know, one in six, one and five, something like that.

That’s great, great, great insights. There’s like 75 bucks a day should be generating appointments, right? If you’re spending 75 bucks a day, you’re not getting nibbles and you’re not getting people scheduled in your calendar. There’s either something off with the targeting or there’s something off with the case study. There’s something off with your funnel, right? Um, but you know that that’s super, super powerful.

Yeah, and you can do it for less. It just depends on your niche and how you’re setting up a custom audiences. I definitely Take a look at the training because it goes in depth on how to set all that up. There’s, you know, there’s a number of people in the group that have that offer that service as well. I haven’t used them personally. But you know, with operational background, again, I

get like, I know how to do it, I’ll do it. And I want to know how to do it. Right.

Right. I need to get out of that mindset sometimes. And so you know, that that’s where I’m headed. But yeah, it definitely works.

That’s, that’s great. Let’s see, um, how long is the teaser video that you run on Facebook, or the one that you were running before you’re updating all of this.

So I had to I had one that was, there was about 4550 seconds, something like that. And then I had one that was three minutes, the three minute one actually produced the best results.

So a little three minute, not too long, not too short enough to be like, wait, this sounds pretty interesting. So when you get to the, to the page where they can watch the rest and schedule in, they’re pretty, they’re pretty warmed up.

And here’s the here’s the, here’s a tip I have is like, if you try to, at least in my experience, if you try to polish something up and make your logo and set music and all this stuff like that, those for me, they haven’t produced as good results. But if you tell the client to take this little phone, and take a video of them, and let them talk, that’s the that’s where I get the best results.

Yeah, and it’s very counterintuitive, right? Most of us want to have a super polished professional, perfect lighting, perfect sound, you know, production. But on Facebook, that’s not that impressive, you know, you’d rather see the authentic kind of broken, broken video. And you know, Shawn, that’s, that’s your tested result, right? That’s what actually bore results for you better. And you’ve got some really nice polished videos, I’ve seen them, they look really great with the lower thirds and the music coming in. Very, very good insight there.

The thing that I would do also is make sure you have captions on there. And it’s actually saying what they’re saying too, because a lot of people on their phone, don’t they don’t turn on the volume right there on who knows what they’re doing. Right? And so

sitting on the toilet, right? You don’t want to be crass, but let’s face it, they’re like, Ah, I’m not gonna play this out loud right now. But if the caption is down there, they’ll read it right? And they’ll get sucked into it. Yep, definitely. Good stuff, man. Good stuff. So lots of great questions here. And I definitely want to address minis this week. It’s the seven figure agency coaching and mentorship program. We have a number of trainings like this to kind of break this stuff down with with examples and things. So that’s what we’re referring to there. Um, Alpha Team. How do you entice clients to give you the video testimonial? Like, how did you get that client to say, Yes,

I’ll do it for you produce results for them? They will? Yeah. So

people tend to like it, when you knock it out of the park for them and you generate 30 jobs, like they they’re going to be pretty happy and pretty willing to do what you want. If you crapped the bed, you know, you know, deliver the goods? You You couldn’t pay them enough to do anything like that for you, right?

Yep. Yep. And, and I mean, at the end of the day, that you got to produce results, you can promise and say everything, but if you don’t produce results, it’s, you know, it’s all for not so for me, it was one of them was done via zoom, and the other one, the guy just took it on a cell phone, you know, and I have a couple other ones too, that are a little, just very, very unpolished testimonials. So you know, just just make sure it all starts with relationship, I can’t tell you that express that a month, if whether you have account manager or your that you’re the person that goes to, if you can build that rapport with them, and they feel like you’re you, they’re getting something of value from you, they’re going to open up to you until they tell you their problems. They’re gonna do whatever they can for you as well, because they’re running a small business just like you are.

Yeah, great, great insights here. So decided on the niche, simplify the service offering, put a strategy in place to get five plus strategy sessions per month, started landing clients and kind of growing the agency quickly, the big thing that you started with, which is probably the biggest struggle is now how do we make sure you’re not personally doing all of the work and this is where the team came into place. Let’s just talk a little bit about that evolution, how you mentally bought into, okay, I’ve got to hire some people, and then who do we hire first? And how do we hire those people? And how do we train? Let’s just talk a little bit about that now.

Yeah, I mean, again, the the the biggest struggle for me is is is letting go of things. I it’s, it’s, it’s my company, it’s my baby and I want to produce tremendous results for our clients. But you know, if you can, I think I think Jeff is the best if you struggle with that Jeff is the best person for you to talk to because, you know, he kind of breaks it down like, you know, are you are you a person that like what do you make per per hour if you if you were to pay yourself? What do you make per hour like, are you getting paid 15 $20 an hour? Are you at the hundred dollar range? Or what are what’s your time worth? Right? And so, if you look at at that standpoint, you know, would you rather pay somebody to do do a job for $20? Or would you rather, yourself make $20 versus making what you should be making, which is growing the business, you know, so if you’re looking at that standpoint, I don’t know if I explain it very well. But perfect, that’s, that’s kind of how I looked at it is, and I still struggle with it. I’m not trying to paint a pony rosy picture here, because it’s ingrained in me, the operational side is just ingrained in me. And I want results for our clients. And so I still struggle with it. But if you have processes documented, and you have a good project management system, like clickup, or teamwork, or whatever works for you, it makes your life so much easier. I can’t tell you how much easier it is, since I’ve added two to three team members. Were things just get done. And then I’m like, that’s, I mean, how good that feels that they just get done. And you don’t have to, you know, check up on it, you know, so I still find myself like, hey, did I get that? Yeah, I got done two days ago, or whatever, you know. So it’s, it, I can’t tell you like, if you can just look at it that way as far as like whether you pay somebody versus your time, because we only have so much time. And that that’s kind of what it boiled down to me with four kids. I have four kids, wife, and I did I coach my son and baseball for since he was nine years old, or eight years old, and now he’s going on the high school. My time is limited, right. And so my family is number one priority. And if I’m spending 6070 hours a week trying to fulfill things, it doesn’t matter how much money I’m making, right? I have no time to spend with the people that I love and care about. So that that’s what is has driven me to really put a team in place and give them the tools to be successful.

I love it. So like, what was the first position that you realize, okay, I got to get this type of person in place. Like, what was that first person? And how much revenue were you generated? Before you were like, Okay, I know now I can afford to make that investment.

I’ve had a couple interns even over the last couple since Well, since I started my agency in 2016 off on my own from freelancing, I’ve had few interns in between there that did 20 to 30 hours a week. And so they would do basic website stuff. And WordPress makes it so much easier. We use Elementor for everything and and so those were the two I had interns before, but the main hire for me was the operations project manager piece. And that took so much off of my plate. And you’ve got to find somebody that’s that’s undoer like somebody that just gets stuff done, right? For me, I’m a multitasker. And I have 30 windows open, I’m dribbling in a lot of different things, right? That’s not an operational project manager type role you want somebody that can has a job to do gets it done. Right, moves on to the next one doesn’t mean they’re not juggling multiple things. But you want somebody that gets things done. And, you know, if you’re I saw somebody comment, that’s me, you know, 30 tabs open, right? I’m dabbling in a lot of things. That’s just my mind works constantly, right? And so if you can find somebody that gets things done for you, that is a game changer. It’s a game changer. And that was the biggest hire for me. Abby’s my team, my operations person, project manager, she, she’s exceptional. I couldn’t do it without her. And then I have other great team members that fill in around her. So yeah,

that’s awesome. So I think that usually, the first thing you want to take yourself out of is operations, right, the day to day fulfillment of the work for the clients. And so you had you had like freelancers, but there’s something difference between, you know, having freelancers that you have to direct and having a project manager and Operations Director, whatever you want to call them, that now takes over responsibility for operations. And while you still know what’s going on, and you still have a pulse on it, they’re responsible for making sure when the client comes in this, this, this, this, this and that gets done. And if you got a system, like you said, like teamwork, or click up and you’ve got all the steps documented, you can confidently feel like okay, this person has the right profile to go out and do this work and make sure that it all gets executed. You can focus on positioning, running those Facebook ads, selling the new clients, and know that you’re still going to generate great results for the client base, right?

For me, it was, you know, I was like, I always knew I need to document everything and then I’m sure a lot of people will even on this call or the listen to this and be like, Yeah, I know I need to do it. I just don’t have the time to do it. Right? Because I’m too busy doing it. So loom was a huge thing for me. If I do a task more than once Jeff’s a big person. opponent this video right video it and then whoever on your team is going to be doing that. Let them write up the task, right? And let them write up the template, whether it’s a Google Doc clickup, teamwork, whatever. And so the more and more I’ve been able to do that, the more and more I’ve been able to take off my plate. And so, I mean, that’s that’s key right

there. Powerful. Yeah, super powerful. So how did you find your, your project manager?

Um,

you know, did you was it on Upwork? Or some other platform? Like, how do you find somebody like that?

Yeah, so I actually found them from Express Scripts, which is a temp service. I, it was kind of random. I, they had reached out to me, are you looking for a marketing person, and just so happens, they had somebody and so she started with 30 hours a week. And he basically with with that type of service, you just call him and say, and he’s somebody who has these skills, and they’ll try to find you somebody, right? So you pay a little bit of premium there for that. But but they pay them they do all the payroll and everything like that. And then after X number of hours, then they become on your payroll. And so just I mean, if I could clone Abby as 10 times, like, he said, be off to the races. Right, right. And that’s so so that’s how, that’s how I found her. But the intern I, I have a friend that’s in the university here that’s in town here. And she, she’s my intern is my marketing assistant. She, she came from a recommendation. And then a content writer came from the staffing service as well, she, she graduated from university in in career or degree in journalism, so perfect fit there. And then my account manager was from my operational she referral from my operations person. So you know, and my SEO person I just hired actually hired off of Upwork. And Jeff helped me out with that process and wasn’t, you’ve had everybody in house before, but this person is over in the Philippines. And she’s outstanding. I’ve had her she’s been on board for three weeks now. And Game Changer big time. So, you know, I’ve kind of tried a lot of different ways. And you know, so far I’ve kind of lucked into it and and found good people and, and, you know, if you can treat people right, and have a good team in place, you know, it makes your life a lot easier.

I love it. So Kenneth Kenneth had 30 tabs open, but he was wanting to make sure he didn’t miss out on how much approximately, how much recurring revenue Did you have when you made that investment? In that operations manager?

Um, probably around 20.

Okay, yeah, I think that’s when we got ours, we were probably like 17, in monthly recurring. And that’s really, like, you’ve got enough money coming in. And you can say, I can take a little bit of a financial hit to create a lot more, you know, potential revenue, or I can just keep all this myself and be completely bottlenecked. I think that’s it, that’s a wise spot somewhere between like, if 17 and 25,000, a month recurring, invest in a resource to help take over the the operations load. So you can do you can do other things? That’s a great question. A

lot of questions that come up in the group I know a lot is like, do you hire in house? Or do you outsource? You know, find somebody up? Or do you do white label services. For me, it’s just all about what you feel comfortable with, since I have a bit of a more operational background, like I felt more comfortable training them to, you know, to, to be successful, and put them in the right spot and then go from there, the SEO side, like, I’m okay, in SEO, you know, I’ve just in the past generated tons of results for my clients, but I need somebody that had more knowledge, we didn’t have to handhold them as much to get him to be up to speed. And that’s where I found this person on Upwork had him do a test project at NIU to test projects, his fixed cost projects for our agency first before I had him do it for the client. And she knocked out a park and, you know, hopefully it’s a long term relationship with that person. So, next next hire is a PPC person. And that’s, if I can get that, you know, it’s gonna take a pound off my plate.

Yeah. That that’s awesome. Yeah, I mean, it’s so great stuff. Shawn. Guys, if you’re getting value, you’re watching this on Facebook, or you’re here with us live. Put a yes in the comments or a wife. You’re like, this has been great stuff. Sean’s unpacking how he went from 15 to 40. That pivots that he made. If you’re watching on Facebook, give us a like and a comment engagement is appreciated. And after watching this after the fact, be sure to tag Shawn and thank him. He’s got such a generous spirit dear to like, just share exactly what’s working for him and exactly how he’s grown and kind of what he’s focused on. on next. So we’ve got about a couple minutes left. So if you have specific questions for Shawn, I think You guys for the feedback in the comments in here. If you have specific questions, put them in the comments. We’ll talk a little bit about retention. So now we’ve got, um, I don’t know how many we’ve got clients that are paying a monthly fee 2500 bucks a month, what what things are you putting in place in order to, you know, to retain those clients and keep them with you, month after month? Sounds like you’ve got a very high retention rate?

Yeah, so I think the the high retention rate is is a testament to number one results, if you’re not getting results, you got to you got to make changes to get the results, right. And, and number two, you have to have that relationship. In the past, it’s always been, I’ve had that personal one on one relationship, and it just can’t, I can’t keep that going, it doesn’t mean I’m going to go away and be gone. But you know, as a business owner, I have to let go of some of that. And so I hired an account manager. She’s been on board for about three months now. And so she’s now regularly providing value to the clients. And when she introduced herself, she wasn’t like, Okay, I’m replacing Shawn, or I’m the go to person. We’re slowly introducing her as the go to point. And the point of that, I think, when you did your last intensive with the account manager, training, right,

yeah, he account manager advantage.

Right. Right. So I was in the process of hiring somebody, and that that training actually helped out with that. So So I, you know, she’s just providing value to them. And at some point, they’re gonna realize that, you know, hey, Jennifer’s she’s helping me out big time, right? I’m asked her questions. And that way, they don’t have to go to me all the time. You know, so, you know, I have to she has a degree in psychology, so she knows how to speak to people and relate to people and have a, you know, conversation with, she texted with him. Right. So that’s been, that’s been great. You know, and so, for me, the retention side is just really produce results, share those results with them, don’t overload them with, oh, I did this for you on SEO side, at the end of the day, depending on your niche, all they want to do is the phone to ring or sales to come in. And if you can show them value from if it’s if you’re tracking calls, or leads or whatever to and just don’t show them a number, show them actual real data, clients services value of those services, your retention rates going to be much better than if you just say, Yeah, I sent you 50 calls. What does that mean?

Right? I love it. I love it. So just just, you know, kind of focusing on on the relationship side, taking yourself out of it, right? Because at a certain point, you can’t retain the clients and do the work and focus on the business. So you’ve made a wise decision to get that account manager in place to manage that relationship. So they don’t don’t sense perceived indifference. Right, get them amazing results provide an amazing experience. And the clients will stay for the most part, not always, but for the most part, you there’s you know,

there’s there’s one thing I had my first cancel a long time, not too long ago. And that was after you had asked me to to talk about retention in the seven figure agency thing. I was like, Josh, Jake’s me there. But ultimately, it was a thing that was out of my control, you know, and so, um, as a business owner, you it’s hard to, sometimes you take it personal, right. And there’s, there’s only so much that you can carry. From a baggage standpoint, if you look back and you say, Okay, I did these things that I promised that I would do. And if they’re not happy, there’s some things you just can’t control, whether it’s money, their, their attitude, their decisions, their business, you can’t control that, right. And so if you can somehow disconnect the personal feelings from the business side of it, you know, it’s, it’s easy to swallow, it doesn’t mean you don’t learn from it, and you know, kind of, you know, grow from it, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s just one of those things, you know, you just gotta gotta move on from, you’re gonna have people cancel.

Yeah, a powerful, powerful insight there. Like, don’t take it too personal, right, pay attention, but don’t let it let it happen, where it brings you all the way down to the ground, because it’s there, there’s going to be natural turn in any business. Right? So, you know, live with it and kind of move on a couple great questions here. First of all, Ron says, he’s a long term friend of yours in a row together, and he’s happy to see you crushing it. So that that’s cool. Um, so Brent, Don wants to know, in high level, how you actually show the results, then just the calls that have been generated?

Yeah. So there’s a training that that and one of the monthly let’s see was Operations Training that, that that I did, it wasn’t the reactivation campaign, but there’s another training that I break down and show you how we do that. But at the end, really what it involves is, we have Count manager, this is her responsibility, she actually goes into each one of our clients, and will spot listen to phone calls. And, and make sure we’re generating results from those calls, make sure we’re getting qualified leads and actually put name, a name to that, that that call that opportunity. So whenever a call comes in, we have triggers set up, that will create an opportunity that obviously the call is recorded, we tag a name to it and a job type to it. So then at the end of the month, we can send them a fancy little screenshot that says, okay, we sent you, this was the total number of calls, you had come in lots of spam stuff that happens all the time. But these are the qualified calls you had come in. And this is what we estimate your value to be of those calls if you close them, right. And then we try to provide them resources and training on you know how to answer the phone correctly and kind of in a corporate world, when I worked with Ron, I did, I had a team and I did call coaching. So we would have to sit there and listen to our calls and learn from our calls, how to speak to people and things like that. So we provide some training on that to our clients as well. So

yeah, so I’ll make sure if that’s not already converted to a module, I’ll convert that I think would be a great one to convert to a module how to track your client ROI in high level, because yeah, you broke that down really, really, really nicely in a step by step fashion. Sometimes it’s just realizing it can be done, but it’s okay, I can see how that the fact that it can be done makes you feel like Okay, I gotta roll up my sleeves a little bit and figure out how to make this work. I think the bottom line is, it takes work, right? You can’t just think the client is going to magically go into high level and update their pipelines and put an exact dollar amount, because they want. So Shawn invest the time from his own team to listen to those calls, rate those calls and and kind of track the outcomes.

Right? Yeah, definitely. I mean, it does definitely take time. But if you can, if there ever becomes a question from the client, I don’t feel like there’s I got work this month, right, or I didn’t get in qualified calls will if you have a name associated to a job type, you can say, this is the calls that we sent you right? Not to say, you know, a client, you’re wrong. But just to back it up, right? You have the call recordings, you have the names associated with them. And you know, the estimated value associated with it, right? You can’t control if they’re gonna close that deal, though, you know, but you can have conversations with them, and help them understand that, you know, maybe a team member that’s answering the phone isn’t answering the phone the way they should be, or they answered the phone and they say hello, you know, like, that’s not how you should be answering the phone. Right? So the call recordings is huge, high level helped us change our business and simplify our business. You know, Shawn, and Robin, those guys over there, do a tremendous job. The software’s continuing to evolve, and we love it. There’s some things that I would like to add in there. And in Shawn knows that about some call stuff, whatever. But you know, at the end of the day, it’s such a game changer. And I know you’re high on high level and everything. It just simplifies your life. So much easier than than what we used to have to do with multiple systems.

Great stuff. Well, this has been awesome, man. Congratulations on your growth and your success. Thank you for all the specific, you know, insights and actions. Members. One an honor to have Sean is one of our mentors on the team that you know, shows up for the skill sessions and helps people and answers questions and helps figure out how to figure out how to do this stuff. It’s like Vinson, Vince Stott is asking if you can get together for lunch, because I think he really liked like what you shared. Yeah, hit me up on Facebook. I’ll be I’m actually visiting client in Pompano Beach on Monday. So next week. Cool. So I guess in closing, you know, if you were to have one last nugget of wisdom for that digital marketing agency that struggling and trying to get to the next level, what would you say? Well, and we’ll wrap up on that. For me,

it’s about accountability. The reason why I joined seven figure agency is to be able to network with people be able to learn from people that have gone through what what I’m going through in the agency space, it’s it’s a you know, when you’re a local agency, you feel like you’re kind of in your own little bubble. You don’t want to talk to the agency down the street because you’re competing for the same customers. And for me, it’s just about being being around people that are going to help lift you up right. And if you can associate your yourself around those people. You know, it’s going to drive you to want to do better. You know, I have a I told myself once I reached 40,000, MMR monthly reoccurring revenue, the I was going to put a pool in the backyard of our, of our of our house and I had that picture up on up on my wall up here. We’re putting it in next spring. So that’s awesome man low. And that was, you know, on my, on my sheet here that that was on from from the last I think it was from the first intensive first or second that was reward for the the reward for anything. That was my reward, you know. And so for me, it’s it’s all relates back to family. And if I can provide for my family, keep my family in my house and support my family. That’s, you know, that’s the most important to me and being a part of the seven figure agency has allowed me to do that being around yourself, Josh, and in the tremendous other agencies in the group have just, I mean, it’s lifted me up and driven me to want to do better to support my family.

That’s awesome. And I appreciate you saying that. And thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much for sharing. If you have follow up questions, we can move this into the into the Facebook group, feel free to you know, tag Shawn in the questions, make sure that you reach out and thank him for sharing right? Too often we just take right we sit on these sessions and we learn and we get a good ideas. Be sure share some appreciation with Shawn for what he’s giving you and kind of what he’s what he shared on today’s session. So that’s it for now. Thanks again, man. And we’ll see you guys in the Facebook group and we’ll continue the conversation there.

I’ll see you next week.

Yes, looking forward to it.

All right. Bye.

Bye, guys.