He Built 180+ Retainer Clients Charging Half What Everyone Else Charges

Full transcript of Josh Nelson’s interview with Billy Sticker. Lightly edited for readability.

Josh Nelson: This is the Seven Figure Agency podcast. Discover the strategies and techniques to grow a highly successful and profitable digital marketing agency with your host, Josh Nelson Everybody, thank you for joining me on this episode of the Seven Figure Agency podcast. This is part of our Agency Success Series, where we're interviewing highly successful digital marketing agencies from acro- across the country, really how they're growing, how they're scaling, how they're landing clients and delivering results. And, I came across Billy Sticker, you know, in our Facebook group, who's just crushing it in the chiropractic space, getting lots of really powerful results. So I wanted to reach out to him and say, "Hey, would you be willing to come on and share?" And he said yes. So Billy, thank you so much for joining us today.

Billy Sticker: Josh, thanks for having me on. Looking forward to it. Been following you for a while, and the content… I love what you're doing, you know, giving true value, helping people that are wanting to help others, and, so I appreciate you having me on and appreciate all you do for the profession.

Josh Nelson: Thank you. I appreciate that. So I guess before we get started, just kinda introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about your agency, who you serve, and kinda, well, the lay of the land.

Billy Sticker: Sure. So, I'll try to give you the Reader's Digest version, because I'm great at making a short story long. But the,… My background is really sales and marketing in ministry. We were involved, we were in youth ministry for about 13 years. Wow. But in this part of Texas, there are several coin companies, precious metals. I mean, we sold silver, gold, platinum. Some coin, like the very first gold coin ever in the United States was issued in 1795. I've sold a couple of those. I mean, just really neat things. So I was in this profession, was doing really well. I just wasn't happy. And there was a chiropractor who had multiple offices in our location, or in our area, and he was looking for somebody to come do the marketing. Well, I have no college. My wife and I have been married going on 25 years. She is a nurse, but whenever we got married, I just went to work and started self-education, I guess you would say. There's four bookcases on this wall that you can't see. Those three, and then two more here, and two more in our bedroom. So yeah, I've always been of the mindset, if there's something you wanna learn, somebody's written about it, you know, go buy those books. And so I just… Whenever I found this chiropractor that was looking for somebody to handle the marketing, I knew I could do this. So I typed up my resume and I put together an 11-page marketing plan. It was just all kinds of different marketing tips and strategies, and I gave him my resume with this marketing plan. And, he interviewed me three different times, and he said… I think he in- interviewed eight to 10 people, but he kept coming back to me. He's like, "Look, you're the only one that doesn't have a college degree, but this is really good." He goes, "I could use this marketing plan and implement this stuff and grow my practice without you. What could I do if you were here?" so I… That was kind of really my first,… I mean, I'd been to a chiropractor before. My dad had a good friend that was a chiropractor, but I really didn't know what it was until I started, you know, in the profession, and really fell in love with what it, what it means. And not to be super spiritual, but, you know, a lot of people think chiropractic is neck pain and back pain. It's so much more. There's more chiropractors… They tend to live a more health and wellness lifestyle than most medical doctors. They, it's, it is about that lifestyle, and it lined up with what I believe as a believer that God created our bodies to heal, and I just, I fell in love with the profession. So I did that for a couple of years. The issue was, is I just wasn't making as much money as I did in the precious metals business. But still, I fell in love with the profession, and then that opened the door for me to start doing some consulting. Back in 2008, that's about whenever this was, 2007, 2008, I actually started the very first podcast for chiropractors, and it was called Chiropractic Marketing University. Hmm. I only did six to 10 episodes. I… It was horrible. Anyway, I stopped it back then. I wish I would've stuck with it. But fast-forward 2015, '14, I decide to just do a relaunch, rebrand the podcast and just kinda start over. Already had a lot of, you know, connections in the profession, and we just rebranded it from Chiropractic Marketing University to just ChiroCandy, and it really started as just a podcast. Hmm. I interviewed… The, the idea was, is, look, I'm not a healthcare professional, but I think like a marketer and I wanna help chiropractors market. I wanna help them think like that. And, that was… I just wanted to create value. One thing we did also is we helped chiropractors write books. Hmm. Th- that's another story. But… So we were kinda doing that, and then one of the clients that we did a book for said, "Hey, have you ever done Facebook?" And I had, but never for, you know, a chiropractor. And he said, "I was trying it. Ads kept getting disapproved. They shut down my ads account." I just didn't know if he'd ever done any of that before. I said, "You know what? Let's give it a shot." And so the first month he had, you know, 50-something leads in his- Case fees were around three to $6,000. So 50 leads, if only, you know, 30% come in, he's still making, you know, a fortune. Mm-hmm. And then he started referring people to us. And right now we are just over 180 accounts- Wow… Is how many we have. So, but that's been over the past, you know, five years we've kinda grown to that. Anyway, I can just keep on talking, but I'm gonna stop and let you ask questions.

Josh Nelson: No, that's fantastic. So about 180 accounts. What does that amount to monthly recurring-wise, if you could share?

Billy Sticker: Right now… Well, this is one of the things that we do different. Okay. Now when I started, I didn't take a course on how to start an agency. I just knew the profession. I knew chiropractors. I knew what they would… What I felt was totally fair. Because a lot of times whenever you have campaigns set up, there's not a whole lot of work you have to do. So we do, our fees are $1,500 set up. Hmm. After that, we only charge 595 a month. Okay. So we are, a fraction of what everybody else is charging, but it's, it works. You know, we've got a lot of clients been with us a long time. We still do have some attrition and I think one of the, one of the issues is so many people have taken courses on, you know, Facebook, i- if that's what we focus on, Facebook, and we also do Google pay-per-clicks. But it– there's so many people that have taken a course and they decided, you know, now they know how to do Facebook, they're going after chiropractors. It's… I think that's one of the reasons we see, you know, some of the ones that cancel because they're getting bombarded all the time- Mm-hmm… With, you know, "Hey, let me do your ads. Let me do your ads." Fortunately, a lot of the clients we get every month are people who used to be with us- Left and came back… Left, went somewhere else, and then now they're coming back. Mm-hmm. So we see an awful lot of that, which there's a lot of principle. You know, there's a teaching moment in that. Whenever somebody does quit- Follow along… Make sure you are extremely professional, that it makes it easy for them to come back.

Josh Nelson: Absolutely. Never leave on bad terms, right? If, if you- That's a great, it's a great point.

Billy Sticker: Right. I- if you were like, "Well, you know what? You just weren't doing this, this, and this." Now there's sometimes that's the case. You know, look, you can't say, "We… We're not working. Whenever you were totally non-compliant. You didn't do anything." But you still just, "You know what? Look, we appreciate your business. We're always here in the future. If you need anything at all, reach out to us." and it makes it easier for them, you know, to come back, so.

Josh Nelson: Absolutely. Yeah.

Billy Sticker: So, okay, so we're, we're completely focused on chiropractic. The, the agency's called ChiroCandy. 180 plus clients on retainer-based service, predominantly running ads to generate leads and new patients into the practice.

Josh Nelson: Sounds like you landed on the niche. Was it for an actual job at this chiropractic office where you were marketing director and that's what that 10-page plan, and that's how this whole niche kind of materialized for you?

Billy Sticker: Well, back then, Facebook was really more for just colleges, you know- Mm-hmm… College students. Yeah. It wasn't what it, what it is today. That really introduced me to the profession and what it really meant. There's… I don't know of another profession that's as passionate about their message. You know, maybe ministers, chiropractors, and multi-level marketing people, right? I'll put that high on the list. They have a message they're trying to share, right. And I just, you know, really fell in love with the profession. So that really got me in the door. And that actually builds a lot of credibility with our company whenever people,… Which I'd like to get into this here in a minute, our process from attracting clients, from scheduling calls, what that looks like. But whenever they hear that I'm not just somebody who took a course and decided to target chiropractors, that, you know, for 12 years now, 13 years, we've been involved in the profession. I travel and speak at– I've spoken at a lot of the different colleges. I've been to London to speak to chiropractors, to Paris, all over. We really have done a good job getting known in the profession, so.

Josh Nelson: That's great. That's great. So I guess before we talk about how you land and how you deliver for your clients, can you talk a little bit about like what it is, like what the package… I guess you did a little bit. So it's, a setup fee and then a monthly fee to manage ads and generate new patient inquiries. Bottom line?

Billy Sticker: Pretty much, yes. So we do $1,500 setup, and then it's 595 a month. That's just for Facebook and Instagram. Okay. If they wanna do Google also, it's an additional 250. Something else we do that I actually stole from a network marketing company was if they… Okay, if I have a client and they refer three other clients, as long as those three clients are active, then they get their Facebook done for free. Hmm. Every month forever, as long as they have at least three active referrals. We were a little bit hesitant, you know. We thought it may be a good idea, and we tried it, and believe it or not, out of all of our clients, we may have three To get their stuff done for free. Hmm. It, it may be more than that. My admin can tell me better. There's not a whole lot, because what happens is we have,… You have a couple of accounts that, I mean, they'll refer, you know, eight to 10 people to you, and then you have some that will refer one or two, you know? So that is just something else that we offer that not many people do, and it works out well. They still have to pay setup fees, they still do all that, but we've actually had it before where somebody's paid a setup fee, that's been it. They refer other people to us- I bet you've referred three people that signed up before they even had to pay the first month… The first month and, you know. And so as long as you're delivering and they're happy, where else are they gonna go? Yeah. Now, obviously the $595 does not include ad spend. Mm-hmm. You know, they have to do that. But that's pretty much, you know, our basic package. Now, that's gonna be a couple of campaigns a month. We do have programs, you know, some of our offices, they may be integrated and they may be doing stem cells or some of these things, and some offices do dinner talks once a week. Hmm. There's different ways to set those up. We can do them a little more generic, where leads come in and then their office just, their staff schedule them, you know, for whatever, workshop they have coming up. We like those a little because they're a little simpler to set up, but some want it to be very specific per campaign. Like, you know, we're doing, this one is gonna be Tuesday the 13th, you know, at six o'clock at, you know, whatever restaurant or whatever hotel, whatever. And if we're getting real specific on that, then we do charge extra to do more campaigns a month than what we normally do, so…

Josh Nelson: Got it. Great. I mean, it sounds like a great, a great program. Of course, you're tracking and following up and, you know, the value proposition is there, right? They spend their $597 plus- Right… Ad spend, they're generating more than enough in revenue to say, "Billy, thank you so much. You're amazing." Right.

Billy Sticker: And I think also with what happened, you know, during this quarantine in the past couple of months, you know, we were a little concerned. We did have some accounts that said, you know, "Oh, hey, we just need to put our accounts on hold." Mm-hmm. Which I get, but it wasn't that many. I think because we are at a lower price point than a lot of people, you know, i- if you're spending, you know, $1,500 to $2,000 a month for an agency, it's m- you're more likely to say, "You know what?

Josh Nelson: Right now we gotta stop that." Right.

Billy Sticker: But if it's just $595, saying, "You know what? That's– Let, let's keep that going. We still need-" Flyes underneath the radar a little bit.

Josh Nelson: A little bit, yeah.

Billy Sticker: But been great and we've, you know, considered, you know, raising prices some, but I'm… It works. And actually how we pay our staff. You know, when we first started, it was me, 40 to 50 accounts. I did everything. I wore every hat. I did all the sales calls, I did– I managed all the accounts. And you always have some accounts that are a little more high maintenance. You have some that you just… They're great. And fortunately, I learned pretty quick. That was around the time when we started getting high maintenance accounts, we would just say, "You know what? We're not a good fit." And we would, you know, refer them out to somebody else. Especially if we're– they're only paying us, you know, 600 bucks a month, I would rather not deal with somebody high maintenance whenever we can get somebody else that's easy, you know, and I'd do that. But then when we started hiring, you know, some staff, and the way we do that, we were paying them a salary based on roughly how many accounts they wanted to manage. But our staff, they're all local. You know, nobody's outsourced to the Philippines or anything like that. We,… It's really people that we've gone to church with or, you know, somebody knew somebody, whatever. And we pay them $100 per account they manage. So if you wanna manage 20 accounts, then you're gonna get two grand a month, and you get to work from your house, get to make your own schedule. So it's not a bad deal. If they want more than that, you know, they do more. Something else we just started is now… Okay. Used to, I did all the sales calls. We were going on a mission trip, and my oldest son is actually married and they, he and his wife both just graduated college. And he really helps run a lot of our business too. But I didn't wanna not have any new business that week that we were gonna be gone. So I said, "Look, do you wanna take some sales calls? All you need to do is find out what's going on in their practice, what are their goals, let them know how we can help." You know, I kinda laid out, gave him somewhat of a script, and then just left everything the same. End of the week, he signed up like five people. Wow. And all of a sudden I realized I don't even have to do sales calls.

Josh Nelson: Makes a lot- And- That's a very… I was talk- I was talking with someone the other day. It's one of the most liberating feelings in the world when you can have someone else take the sales call and the business is happening without you having to do every single sales call.

Billy Sticker: And it's been great. So now I can still work on the business instead of working in the business. I don't manage any accounts. As a matter of fact, Brady doesn't manage any accounts either. He actually manages our staff. Hmm. So all of our staff are required to have a one-on-one with Brady every week. Hmm. They do it via Zoom, and they go over all their accounts. What's working great, what's not. And that's just a requirement. It's not optional. All of our staff have to do that. So, you know, that's been, that's been great also. But one of the things I learned is we were Always on the phone with staff, not our staff, but client staff. And a friend of mine said, "Why don't you just put all that in a training that their staff goes to?" I was like, "That's brilliant," you know? So now we do have that. So whenever somebody comes on, we have a training for their staff on how to follow up with the leads, different scripts to use, different things like this, the mindset. You know, 'cause Facebook is not… Nobody's going to Facebook looking for a chiropractor or a landscape company or… That's what they go to Google for. Mm-hmm. So it's a different mindset, and the lead, the staff needs to know that when they're following up. Yeah. Just because somebody filled out a lead form doesn't mean they're gonna show up, and that's okay. We know statistically 30% or more should. And so we kinda help them with some mindset stuff, you know, following up very quickly. We want them to, you know, have the mindset, look, if they say no, that's okay. That's, that's one of the seven that's gonna say no. Go find the three. And because it's easy for their staff to get a negative mindset if they're not accustomed to somebody saying no, all of a sudden in their mind, all Facebook or Instagram- These are all garbage leads. W- I don't even wanna bother… All garbage, and so they don't, they just don't treat any of them that way, and you can't have that. Mm-hmm. You have to have a level of expectancy knowing that they didn't accidentally click on the ad and accidentally type in their name and phone number and email and all that. So we have some training for that, and then we also have some training for the doctors on some things that we ask them to do. We try to make it very simple. So we have that. That was a major growth point for us whenever we implemented that. And then we realized- So it's a membership period that every client gets access to, and their staff has access to these modules that train them on- Right… These are the types of leads you're gonna get. This is how you need to think about these leads, and these are some scripts you can follow to kind of book as many of these as possible.

Josh Nelson: Right. And you found that helped them get it.

Billy Sticker: And we use Teachable. They get it. It's like, okay, now I understand how to deal with this, better than if you just send them the leads, you know, pretty soon they're like, "Oh, these leads are no good." Right. And so, something else that we realized is we use Teachable, so it's great- Great platform… Because it shows you did they a-actually go through the training. We said, "Look, you didn't even go through the training." So we realized when people would cancel, the majority of people that would cancel, they do it within the first couple of months, and most of them never went through the training. They didn't do any of the, some, a few other things that we asked. So what I started doing, I got this idea from Russell Brunson. They realized the same thing with ClickFunnels. The people that were canceling never went through their onboarding, never really learned how to use it, so he would send out a free shirt once you completed just a little onboarding process. So we did something very similar. I designed a shirt. I thought I may have one sitting in here. But it just says, "Who's your chiropractor?" And it says, "ChiroKindy," real small at the back. It costs us, you know, eight to 10 bucks for these shirts. So now as soon as they go through the training, the doctors get a shirt and their staff gets a shirt. Love it. We will spend 20 bucks if that means we're gonna keep a client much longer. It's a no-brainer.

Josh Nelson: So- Great social proof is if you can get them in the shirt, you know, all the better, right?

Billy Sticker: That's right. That's right. So, you know, that was something that was real big for us. Something else, whenever I was doing all the sales calls, and some of your, you know, the listeners can probably relate to this. Some of them, I know they're thinking, "I would love to get one sales call. I need… How do I get sales calls?" And we can talk about that in a minute. But one of the things is, you know, there were certain days where I may have seven or eight calls in a day. Mm-hmm. And after your third one, you, this, they kind of run together. You kind of forget, did I already use this example? Did, did I do this? And it was just so much. That same friend that gave me the idea about, you know, putting the training together for, you know, for their staff said, "Why don't you just have a pre-call video where that's your sales pitch?" They schedule a call. They're required to watch a short video. It's the sales pitch. This is why you do what you do. This is what makes you different. We, I don't, we don't go over any pricing, I don't think, on that. But it's just who we are, you know, why we're different, so on and so forth. And then by the time they get on the phone, you're just answering a couple of questions and getting their credit card information. Mm-hmm. And so that was, that was a big change. And we still use that video. Love it. And so now our– We have a couple of s- we have two designated salespeople that take sales calls. Every once in a while, somebody will request, "I need to speak to Billy," and so I may do a sales call. I did one last week, for example. Hmm. But normally it's them. Something else we did for our staff, though, is if you're managing, you know, these 20 or 30 accounts and one of those, your accounts, sends in a referral, you get the option to take that sales call. Hmm. So not only do you, if they sign up, which there's a great chance they are if they're a referral from somebody that you're already working with. And the way we look at it is they're referring somebody because you're doing a good job. So if you take the sales call, we give, they get a $300 commission whenever they sign up, and they get an additional $100 a month, so it grows their income, as well. Love it. So those are some of the different things. I feel like we're kinda all over the place, but those are some of the things that In the process of how we run our, agency, it's just been great for us. It keeps our, you know, the staff's happy. They have more opportunity, you know, so it's working well.

Josh Nelson: Tremendous, tremendous insights, guys. And if you're getting value, be sure to hit the like button or say, "Hey, thanks Billy. This is great." I love the agile team-like structure that you have, right? You don't just pay people salaries, you kinda have it structured out by what they get paid based on the amount of accounts that they handle, and that gives you almost unlimited scalability. And it– because of the one-on-one calls, you can kinda monitor the quality, right? The, the one-on-one calls with your- Right… With your son. It's, it's your son, right, Brady?

Billy Sticker: Right. Yes. Yeah. I'm, I'm 45. He's 22. Hmm. And whenever we first started, he was getting ready to move off to college. He actually went to Bible school for a couple of years in Dallas, and then finished his degree at Dallas Baptist University. But we were trying to get him… Like when he was a senior in high school, my wife was like, "Look, you should, you know, work in the business, do some of this stuff." When you're 18, you've got the world figured out, right? Yeah, yeah. "No, no." and he was d- you know, that was five hours from where we live now, and he would come in on the weekends, and it was during Christmas one year. Actually, I had gone and spoken at an event and had like 15 new accounts, like in one weekend sign up, and I was kind of in the weeds trying to get everything set up and I said, "Look, I will pay you X amount of dollars to help set up these accounts." And finally he's like, "Done. I'll be right there." And so he started, you know, getting in the business and I think when it comes to staff, and I-I'm sure, Josh, you can relate to this, you have some team members that are great at following instructions. Mm-hmm. You tell them the steps to do, they are gonna do those steps. And then you have the ones who they understand the steps and they understand why you're doing those steps. If you're doing these steps to get to this result, what if there's a few different steps that might make that result bigger or easier or whatever? And that's really how Brady thought, and we have a few staff like that now. They just see the bigger picture. And it wasn't long till I realized he's really good at this. He gets it and he's, he's better than I am at a lot of this stuff now, which I am totally okay with. You know, it's, it doesn't hurt my feelings at all. There was a conference I went to one time and, it was all about being a CEO. It was pretty much for chiropractors, but there was a, some of us in there that were just involved in the profession that weren't doctors. But one of the g- one of the exercises we went through is he– there was three different things we had to write down. The first thing he said, "I want you to write down things that you do that you hate doing- Mm-hmm… But you feel like nobody does them better. Just write those down. Now I want you to write down things that you do because you're good at, but you don't necessarily love doing it, you, it just needs to be done, so you do it. Then I want you to write down the things that you do that you love doing, you would never delegate because it just lights your fire doing these things." He said, "So from now on, here's what we're gonna do. You are never gonna do what you don't like doing." You're… He called that red, yellow, and then green. You're never gonna do the red. At all. You're never gonna do the yellow. You're– Delegate that. And you know what? If they're doing it 80% compared to your 100%, that's okay. They're never gonna grow. So you have to be okay with that. But when you can start delegating and giving, loosen up the reins, giving them some control, that's when you can actually work less. You focus on the green, you work less, and you can make more. And something else he said is, "When you, when you're doing the stuff you don't like doing, it stops momentum in your business. When you're doing the yellow, the stuff that just needs to be done, it slows down things. But when you're focused on your core competency, what you love doing, that fuels momentum. And if you can focus on just those things and let other people do the rest, that's when you can really grow." and that is whenever we saw a lot of growth. One of the issues we would have as we would grow is, you know, I have no issue spending money on ads. So we have referrals coming in. You know, I do go and speak, and we al- still have a podcast, so people come in that way. But I don't m- I will spend six to 10 grand a month on ads. It's fine. I know we- we're gonna see a return in that. So one of the things that would happen is we used to pay our staff a salary. But if l-let's say that we're paying people based on them willing to manage about 20 accounts. Well, we do still lose some accounts every month. Mm-hmm. Probably seven to 10 a month we lose. Yep. Fortunately, we gain 20 or more normally. But what was happening is that means we're having to hire somebody new every couple of months. If they're only gonna manage 20, every couple of months I'm having to hire somebody new. Well, what had happened is we turned around and we have all these staff that we're paying to manage, let's just say 20 accounts, but because of people canceling, they're all averaging 15 to 16. Mm-hmm Well, now our payroll is inflated and we're hiring more people, and that's when we made that change. Like, okay, we're not doing that anymore. Really just didn't say anything, so…

Josh Nelson: I thought, I mean, everything you shared there was tremendous insights. And I think what you were talking about there is finding people that play at what you have to work at so that you can do the things that you really enjoy, that you're passionate about, and that frees you up to put talented people in place to really get some momentum going. So a question that everybody wants to know a-and it's coming up in comments: so 20 clients this month, on average 20 clients per month, what's the mix look like? How do you get that many clients coming in on a consistent basis?

Billy Sticker: It, it's a great question, and, I do wanna say some of it I think is just favor. We, we have been around long enough, a lot of people, they do know who we are. But even if… I mean, I see these people that are going after chiropractors, for example, I wouldn't recommend it. Like right now, if you're starting off, I just think there are other niches that aren't as crowded- Not as easy… As the chiropractic space. It's definitely not a, not a blue ocean right now. It's, it's not. And it's not that I'm worried. I mean, we still, we still do great, right? We're, I think, you know, right now 120 to 130 revenue a month. So we– we're doing fine. But if you're starting off right now, I just think there's other areas. We have something that I teach, and this is called the five Ps. Mm. And I was talking to somebody last night at church about this. He's wanting to start his own business, not necessarily an agency, he's just wanting to start his own business, and I think the first thing you have to do is what– figure out what problem you're gonna solve. Mm-hmm. If you wanna make money, solve expensive problems for rich people. That's, that's great. A-and that can go as deep as… Think about everything that you pay for, you know, a lawn company, they're solving a problem. Mm-hmm. You don't wanna mow, right? A pool company. We have somebody that cleans our house. When you go to a restaurant, you know, some of it is kind of for entertainment, but you don't wanna cook, right? These are people that are solving problems. And it, you know, it can grow from there. But in an agency, you know, are you gonna work on SEO? Is it going to be lead generation? Is it gonna be, you know, web design? Whatever it is, just decide what problem it is that you're, you know, that you wanna solve, and for who. Mm-hmm. You know, who is it you wanna solve these problems for? And then that's gonna lead to the second P, which is the product, right? That's what it is you're actually going to do. Is it going to be Facebook and Instagram or YouTube or Google or web, SEO, text messaging, whatever it is. Just find out, you know, figure out the problem, what product you're gonna use, to do that, and then you have to come up with a plan. The plan is how exactly– what does that look like? How do you get your first client? And the first client… So y-you have the problem, the product, the plan, but you have to have proof. So once you kinda know you have an idea, well, I'm gonna do Facebook ads for chiropractors. You know, that's the plan. Well, now we need proof, right? And that's what we did. We had Dr. Aaron Gumm, was his name. We wrote a book for him. He wanted us to do some Facebook ads, so now we need the proof. Fifty leads the first month, and all of a sudden we have that testimonial, and we didn't charge him anything. I mean, he'd already paid us to do the book for him, but he didn't charge us to do Facebook. We did that– or we didn't charge him for that. We did it for free. And it was unbelievably worth it because he was an influencer and started referring people to us. And so that's the proof. Once you have the proof, then your last, you know, your fifth thing is the promotion. And the promotion can be a couple of things. Promotion can just be scaling, but it's also having people in your business that you can promote with the business. So, it… We can, we can spend a lot of time on those five Ps.

Josh Nelson: That's a powerful- But-… Powerful breakdown of the five Ps. I love it.

Billy Sticker: But once you know what it is… A-and let's say if you're just starting off, you may try something. You know, we actually used to do websites for people, too. I didn't like it. Mm. I just didn't enjoy it, and we still at least weekly have somebody say, "Hey, do you guys do websites?" There's a company that's pretty well known in the profession, we just refer people out to them. It wasn't our core competency. I'm just not gonna build a business around something, you know, that I don't enjoy doing. Now little bit of a sidetrack. We used to use– we would do Facebook ads, we used ActiveCampaign- Mm-hmm… And, ClickFunnels, and we still do some of that, but we've recently switched over to HighLevel. So good. It's phenomenal. It's just really been a game changer, and it has been a little bit of a transition because our whole team is having to go through, you know, this process. So we started using HighLevel, and Brady actually is the one that discovered it, and he tried it out on just a handful of accounts and realized, "Okay, this is really good." And then it has been a process, us moving everybody over Because sometimes if it's not broke, why fix it?

Josh Nelson: Why fix it? Yeah. It's tough to do that.

Billy Sticker: So you're like, "Oh, do we really wanna switch this?" but it has been, it has been really nice, you know, being able to… They've just done a great job developing their software. Anyway, what was I saying? So you have to figure out what it is. Like, you may start off doing websites and realize you don't like it. Mm-hmm. You know, you may start doing SEO, but you just need some success. You need s- s- Validate, validate that you can actually generate a result and prove the concept, and when you've got that proof and you've got a client that will sing your praises, the promotion becomes so much easier to go out and say, "Hey, here's what we do for this space, and here's the validation that we know what we're doing." Absolutely.

Josh Nelson: And what it does for you, right? It's also gonna help you know, get new business, but it does make you feel good because, you know, you had this plan and it worked. Mm-hmm. Right? You're proving it to yourself, too. And it's, it's great.

Billy Sticker: I remember, you know, we used to just charge $500 a month, and the goal was, you know, w- can you imagine whenever we have somebody, like every day we have at least one client being charged, that's gonna be great.

Josh Nelson: And, you know- Yeah, 30 times 500, that's big money, right?

Billy Sticker: Yeah. We're like, "Oh my goodness." and you know, now we're averaging around 4 to 5,000 a day. Mm-hmm. And, I don't think we have any days that somebody's not being charged. But y- you start seeing the success and then it's– you start having these benchmarks like, "Well, wait till I get five clients, and then wait till I get this, and wait till I get that." But if you know, once you have your proof, s- you it's gonna be hard, but spend money on some ads. If you don't have, the way to go out and get these referrals organically, just spend some money on a- on ads. We look at things the way we look at our numbers. We're okay spending up to $200 just for someone to schedule a call with us. Mm. Because we know 70% of the people we talk to will sign up within the next 90 days. Th- those are our numbers. Now, since the beginning of the year, even before COVID, a lot of times in the year, we always see a bunch of growth during the beginning of the year. Those, our cost per leads, cost per call scheduled is averaging around 50 bucks. Oh, nice. It's, it just dropped. So we're okay. You know, we'll just, you know, keep spending the same amount.

Josh Nelson: Racking it up, right? If you go up to 200, you might as well crank it, right?

Billy Sticker: If, if you- Right. But, you know, even if you're doing, let's say $50 a day or you're doing $100 a day, at first you're like, "Ah." When you're starting off and you don't have those resources, but let's say that you get… You have $1,000 that you can spend in ads. You borrow it, okay? And you get enough calls scheduled, and you need one of them, one person to sign up and pay, you know, a setup fee, and now you're back even.

Josh Nelson: To recoup the expense, right?

Billy Sticker: Re- recoup it all. But when you can start looking at those numbers, man, it is tough to start. But yeah, you know, that would be one thing you can do. It's like, you know what? Just spend money. Yeah. If you don't have the money to spend, what I would do is similar to, you know, everybody talks about the Dream 100. You know, write down who are some people in that industry that have– that are influencers. Reach out to those people and offer to do whatever service it is you're gonna provide for free for some of the influencers a- and just say, "Look, I love what you're doing for the profession. This is one of the things we do. Would you– is there any way I can, you know, do this service for you for free?" You don't have to do it forever. You can either do it for a couple of weeks or do it for a month. But let them know. Say, "Look, I wanna do this for you. If it's working well, we just hope that you refer people to us." You know? That can do it. Because if you can get a couple of key influencers that are singing your praises, man, it changes everything. It does. And then people start seeing you with the same authority that they see them with if they're the ones recommending you. You know, so that would be the– one of those two ways would be what I would recommend at first. Another way would be what businesses are you already doing business with? Mm. You know, reach out to one of them. Tap that, tap that sphere of influence and reach out and say, "Hey, look- Yeah… You know, let's do something. Like I've got a concept or an idea. Let me prove it with you," right? "Let me do this for you." Absolutely. "Show you that it works," and now you've got the basis to go out and tell people, "Hey, look, I can help. Here's what I did for this guy or this gal." Right.

Josh Nelson: Powerful. So there's a couple questions in here I wanna make sure we get to. So, there are– a couple people are asking, what's the average spend for one of your clients? In addition to your management fee, what do you recommend they spend on ads?

Billy Sticker: We recommend $25 to $30 a day minimum. Okay. One of the things we're real big about is building retargeting audiences. Mm. In the chiropractic niche, they are so passionate about their message. We like these docs to do short videos, and we have like 57 sample videos from our clients that we show them. You know, "Hey, here's tons of different ideas." And so we want some of that budget to go towards content in their community, because then Facebook lets us take, you know, anybody that watches 25% to 50%, you start building a retargeting audience. – So that's kind of what we recommend. We have some offices that spend ten to twelve thousand dollars a month in ads. Mm. So a lot of these, they're not regular chiropractic offices. They're some integrated offices, and they're doing stem cells. You know, where their case fees are six grand, they'll spend, you know, the money, as long as it's working. We've never started someone off that high. We typically start them off, you know, thirty bucks. Sometimes they wanna go up to fifty a day, and then we'll, you know, scale it up from there.

Josh Nelson: Got it. That, that makes a lot of sense. I'm sure that's, that's super helpful. Albert's asking, if they handle twenty accounts at a hundred dollars a piece, that's two thousand dollars a month, are most of these people part-time and this is something that they do on the side? Is that enough money to kinda…

Billy Sticker: Yeah, some do more, right? Like s- we have some that, you know, they may manage twenty accounts, but they're also, you know, doing sales calls and they're averaging ten accounts a month. You know, what– we pay a three hundred dollar commission, 'cause we do… Basically, we do a fifteen hundred dollar setup, and we pay twenty percent of that in commission. Mm-hmm. So if they're managing twenty accounts, that's two grand, and then they sell… You know, they have– like one guy's actually a pa- he pastors a church. And so it's- And it's a great additional supplemental income to what his true calling is. Right. He, he manages about, I think, ten to fifteen accounts. That's all he wants. He doesn't want any more. Mm-hmm. And then he does sales calls. Hmm. And it's, it's perfect for him. But you know, we have some staff, they just don't want any more. And that's one of the things here recently we ask. We're like, "Okay, who– right now, who can handle more accounts?" and we try to keep them on somewhat of a rotation. Some people, that's all they want. Some people want to handle, you know, four accounts. And because we do Google pay-per-click, we pay a little bit different for that, and we have certain people that manage those accounts. So if you're a client, you may have Holly doing your Facebook and Travis is managing your Google, you know? Makes sense. And they're working together, right. Instead of having to teach all of our staff how to do both, we just have a couple that know how to do Google. Because most of our income is from Facebook and Instagram, so.

Josh Nelson: Yeah. Good, good insights there. So if we looked at your, kinda your positioning in the marketplace and where the clients come from, you've got this podcast you've been doing for quite some time. You do speaking in the industry. Sounds like you're involved in the association. You've got a name for yourself and a database of prospects, and then you're running Facebook ads to generate, like, new prospects on a consistent basis. What would you say, like, where are the clients coming from for the most part across that spectrum?

Billy Sticker: I would say, some referrals. I would say a small percentage is from the podcast. We normally get a few, probably at least five calls a month from the podcast. It's not a whole lot, but it's still, it's some calls that are coming in.

Josh Nelson: – And is that podcast, marketing-centric or is it just talking about- Yes. Okay, cool.

Billy Sticker: Yeah, it's- How to market your chiropractic practice. Pretty much, yes.

Josh Nelson: Now- Tips and interviews with successful chiropractors?

Billy Sticker: Sometimes it's just solo stuff with me. And then sometimes I'm interviewing other chiropractors, other, you know, people that do coaching in the profession. We interviewed somebody who, she's a CPA, and she's doing, a lot of the PPP, SBA stuff that's going on right now. Mm-hmm. We interviewed her. She specializes in– they just work with chiropractors. So we had her on, you know, the other day. Had somebody else on that they help, buy… People buy and sell chiropractic offices. Mm. Z– you know, so we may do stuff like that. It's great because it may not be marketing, but it was helping people, okay, if I do eventually want to sell my practice, these are the things I need to be considering now. If I want to buy a practice, these are the things I need to be looking at, so. But normally it is more business marketing growth, centric.

Josh Nelson: Got it. And so then you've got the referrals that are coming in from happy clients.

Billy Sticker: And, and- Yeah, we probably… I would say as far as calls go, I really should have a better breakdown. I just haven't checked the numbers in the past couple of months. Mm. But we normally have, you know, five to ten a month that sign up that are referrals.

Josh Nelson: Wow. That's awesome.

Billy Sticker: Well, I– Yeah, somewhere through there. And then the rest come just from Facebook. Now, we do a lot of retargeting. Looking at our ads, the majority of the s- calls that are scheduled are from our retargeting ads- Mm-hmm…

Josh Nelson: Not just from, you know, from cold. Cold. They're not brand cold people that you said- Right… "Oh, let's target chiropractors and run these ads." Like, you've developed that warm list over the years and kind of- Right… Run it down the funnel. On the, on the referral side, so I think that's a function of providing a world-class service that's affordable, that has a tangible, measurable return on investment, and then you've incentivized them, like you said, where for every three referrals you might get, you know, free service, monthly service. Do you find that they're more incentivized by that, or just 'cause they like the results they're getting and they wanna have a good, a good reference for their friends?

Billy Sticker: As far as why people refer? Mm-hmm. I don't know. I think it may be because it is a smaller amount. They're like, "I'm not even that much worried about that. It's working for me." They're asking what's, you know, what's working. But you do have some that are like, "Hey, how many accounts, you know, how many referrals do I have? Okay, I-I got a couple more, you know, that I'm working on sending over to you." It might not be the only reason, but there's a little bit of a, "Hey, this is gonna help me too." Yeah. Right? Right. I think that is some of it. You know, and we've had some that, for example, their budget, let's say they're doing $1,000 a month on ad spend, and as soon as they get their three referrals, well, they wanna spend the same, they just add that- Bump it to the spend… To their ad spend. Correct. Yeah. So.

Josh Nelson: I love it. Very, very cool stuff. And then on the, on the Facebook ads, y- what's the angle? Are you leading with a case study of some sort, or are you leading with content, like just video-based content? What's usually the angle to pull someone off Facebook and into a strategy session?

Billy Sticker: Okay, so not for our clients, but you're talking about for us.

Josh Nelson: Yeah, for you, for ChiroCandy, yeah.

Billy Sticker: We do, a little bit of both. We do have some that are more content. We used to do a lot more content that would lead people to a strategy session. I think because so much of it is retargeting now, a lot of it is just a cold, you know, a cold… Well, I don't wanna say cold. It's just an offer. Hmm. Right? Whenever we can say, "Hey, you know, we're doing Facebook, and, you know, we'll do your Facebook and Instagram for $595 a month." People are so used to paying 1,500, they're like, "Hang on now. What?" You know, and then so we have… And, and we check, we test the different, you know, scripts too. We have some that are long ad copy, short ad copy, what's working better. We have tons of different images. You know, it's… That's one of the things. Sometimes people comment, you know… We have pictures of us in Paris or, you know, Hawaii or whatever, just on vacation, and people will comment, you know, "What does this have to do with chiropractic?" Nothing. But Facebook knows, like if it's a picture of- An interesting image, right? I-if… Yeah, and you guys may know this, but, Facebook's algorithm, like their software knows what's on a picture, or they have a general idea. And if it's a picture taken outside with people in it, especially, you know, a couple people smiling, they consider that's a happy, positive image, and they show it more. And so those… And so we started testing it, and those work really well. That works well. We also get– We try to do tons of testimonials. Hmm. When you start getting success, any time someone says, "Man, hey, you guys are doing a great job," that is the perfect time to ask them for either a Google review, or, you know, to write or to either write a review or to do a quick video testimonial for you. Video testimonials can be difficult for people to do. They just, you know, sometimes are embarrassed or whatever. But you need to make that a priority. So whenever people go to our website, when clients do to schedule a call, we have what we call our… We call it the perfect patient tribe turbine. It's just our process that we use to get leads for chiropractors. Hmm. And I have a real quick sh-short video that goes over that. So they go to the website, they watch this video. Underneath that, it's like 30 testimonial videos. Testimonials.

Josh Nelson: I was looking on the site earlier, it just scrolls and scrolls and scrolls.

Billy Sticker: Scrolls, and they're… And people aren't gonna watch all of them, but there's a good chance they may know, you know, "Oh, I went to chiropractic college with him," or, you know, "I used to coach with this guy," or whatever. But the more of that you can do, it just builds credibility. So you wanna get those, you know, as many testimonials as you can. So basically, the way our process works is whether it's an ad, referral, whatever, they go to the same landing page, with the exception, like our staff each have their own path. So for example, chiropractic, or chirocandymarketing.com/renee, that's what her clients, her accounts send referrals to there. Mm-hmm. Because then they schedule a call with her. You know, or Travis or, you know, whoever our staff is at Team Wing That. But normally it's just chirocandymarketing.com. And so anybody can go there and just kinda see what we have set up. But they go there, they click a button, and it takes them to a Jotform. Well, it actually takes them to a ClickFunnels page that has the Jotform embedded, that they just answer a few questions about their practice. You know, how long have they been in practice? We know we're not a good fit for everybody, and that's another powerful place to be. Mm-hmm. When you're first starting off, you just want people to pay you. But there comes a time when you're like, "Even if you wanna pay me, please don't, because we're not your answer." We had somebody that was a referral the other day, well, this has been probably six or nine months ago, and I actually talked to them. They're seeing 50 patients a week between two separate offices. Well, the average chiropractor is gonna be seeing around 150 a week. There's… I just knew we weren't a good fit for this guy. There's just no way. Not enough volume to be a good fit. Not enough, yeah. And so we do see that from time to time, whether they're a brand new practice or maybe they sold a practice and moved to a new location, and we're just, we just know we're not gonna be a good fit. We actually just released in April a course, and we used the old name of the podcast, "Chiropractic Marketing University," but it's a course that shows Basically everything we do, it's like we've already decided new staff, they're gonna go through this course to learn how to set up the ads. And we have twenty-seven done-for-you copy and paste ads, you know, that they can use. But it sells on our website for nineteen ninety-five or three payments of six seventy-five, I think is what it is. Something like that. Mm-hmm. But what we did is we're taking that where people schedule a call with us, and if we know they're just not a good fit, whether they don't really have the- Write us, write us instead, right? And learn how to do it on your own. Right. And then what we do is we tell them we sell it for nine ninety-seven instead of the nineteen. So we tell them, "Look, you can go to our website, it's two grand." Mm-hmm.

Josh Nelson: "But I can go ahead and take your card over the phone.

Billy Sticker: I can get it for you for half price. In the end, once you get up and going, you increase your volume, we will actually use– give you a credit for what you spent on the course toward your setup fee." I like that. Yeah. Yeah, that's smart.

Josh Nelson: And so that's, that's working well too.

Billy Sticker: And let me show you this.

Josh Nelson: We just wrote a new book.

Billy Sticker: Love it. And we're gonna be promoting this to the profession. It's gonna be the same thing. We're just using it… We just– just like you do with your book, right? You just- Mm-hmm. It's lead generation to get in front of more people, to eventually become clients, whether that's through the course or, you know, through- Great positioning for speaking opportunities, great giveaway- Right…

Josh Nelson: At the, at those speaking events when you speak. Tremendous positioning. Yeah.

Billy Sticker: Yeah. And we've– Which I said a while ago, we– one of the other things we do is we help chiropractors write books. Mm-hmm. So I've written a few other books. This is something that's,… I don't know, it's just, if you've ever wanted to write a book, just do it. You know? It doesn't need to be a priority. Go get clients. Yeah. But once you have clients, it's too easy now to write a book, use Amazon or Kindle Direct Publishing to get it printed. I think this one is two forty a book to print or two fifty a book, something like that. The author prints are so cheap that it's, it's almost cheaper than a brochure. Absolutely, yeah. But it's just gonna help set you apart, you know, from your competition so…

Josh Nelson: I think, I think the book is one of the most powerful marketing assets that you can have, right?

Billy Sticker: The social proof- Right…

Josh Nelson: Book, being up on the front of the stage, all extremely powerful marketing assets. This has been great, man. Thank you so much for sharing kinda like- Sure… How you're landing these clients, how you've positioned yourself, kinda what you do for your clients. There's a question here. Ricardo wants to know if the, if the Two Comma Clubs are for ChiroCandy or for some other business that you run.

Billy Sticker: No, it's actually both. Different things we've done. Yeah, it– we kinda changed it up. We had one funnel, and then we changed it up, and we added some new stuff to it, and so that's both for ChiroCandy.

Josh Nelson: That's awesome, man. Congratulations. And then I know we're gonna do…

Billy Sticker: I will get a new Two Comma Club award- Another one from this-… For this one… From the book.

Josh Nelson: You're gonna do a free plus shipping funnel on this? Yes. And then straight into appointments, and then- Yes.

Billy Sticker: We actually… Well, yeah. What we– the way we have it set up right now is, it's free plus shipping. Then we have a twen– Well, you know what? I've got a sheet. Hang on here. We are– I'm doing like, Russell did… Oh, I don't have my… Did you ever see Russell talk about whenever they were launching ClickFunnels, they sent those packages out, and he had the video card? Mm-hmm. You remember that where you opened up the card- Yeah, yeah… And it was a video? I ordered some from China. Okay. And they're all designed with our book. But because we do know a lot of influencers, we're getting ready to send them packages. We're gonna get them a copy of the book, and then we have, a bunch of upsells. I'll just show you on here. I just had these printed, and they're still wrapped in the plastic. But basically, there's a, it's a free plus shipping offer. The first bump is just the order bump, twenty-seven dollars for the audiobook. Yep. Then we have a pixel. It's called Pixel Perfect. It's a ninety-seven dollar, course add-on that's, you know, just how to make sure the pixel's set up, what you need to do to get it set up, so on and so forth. And then we have one called Viral Videos. This is actually part of the training we've already done for our existing clients- Hmm… Showing them how to create content, some sample videos, you know, what you need to say in your videos, all this stuff to build authority in your community. And then we have our CMU course, for nine ninety-seven on there. I actually turned the ads- That was like right now on this page only, instead of two grand, get it for nine ninety-seven. Right. A-and the way our positioning on that is, "Look, we've managed over four million dollars in paid ads for chiropractors. We know what works. This is actually gonna give you twenty-seven done-for-you copy and paste ads that you can do." So we kind of positioned it like that, and it's almost like they're sh- giving me the ads- Mm… And they're gonna show me how to set them up. This is a no-brainer. So we wanna test the funnel a little bit before we start getting affiliates, 'cause I wanna be able to show them this is our average cart value. We're paying out a forty percent commission. So I turned the ads on the other day, and the first person to go through it bought the one forty… No, he bought the upsell, the audiobook, and then the nine ninety-seven… Course was like $1,000. But he actually messaged me and said, "Hey, there's a couple of glitches in the funnel." and as soon as we, like, the ad had been on for a couple of hours, we immediately shut it off, and we're going through to make sure the funnel is working properly. Working right. The good news is, the first person that went through the funnel and got the book- The whole, the whole track all the way up… Did the, yeah, did the $1,000 upsell. So- That's wonderful… Yeah, that's a good sign.

Josh Nelson: That's a great indication. Yep. And it'll probably wind up… And the beauty, the beautiful thing is that pays for all your advertising, and then a lion's share of those folks are gonna wind up hiring the agency services.

Billy Sticker: That's, yeah, that's the goal.

Josh Nelson: Yep. So. Well, this has been great. I wanna make sure I'm respectful of your time. I know you've gotta, you've gotta run. Two last questions to wrap up. Sure. The first is, if someone wants to learn more about you or connect with you further, what would be the best way to engage?

Billy Sticker: The best way, I know I'm at 5,000 friends on Facebook, so sometimes I don't see all the message requests. But you can go to the ChiroCandy Facebook page, which is just, you just Google or just search ChiroCandy. And you can send us messages on there.

Josh Nelson: And, you know, if you wanna schedule a call, there's- Would you be okay if other agencies bought the course that you sell on your site? What's that? Would you, would you be okay if other agencies bought the course on your site? Or do you want that exclusively for chiropractors?

Billy Sticker: I don't care if other agencies buy it, but one of the things that comes with the course is a Facebook group where we do support and stuff in there. People in that group. You have to be a chiropractor to be in the group.

Josh Nelson: Got it. So. Makes sense. Beautiful. So I guess my last question, and be sure, guys, if you've listened to this and you got tremendous value like I did, reach out to Billy. Thank you for sharing. You know, this has been, this has been tremendous. I mean, seven figures, 20-plus clients every single month, lots of ideas, not just on how to land clients and serve clients, but also really, like, the running of an agency and structuring an agency. You talked a lot about your Christian values, right? It sounds like, you know, Baptist church, son went to Baptist college. I've got a Christian, a Christian background as well. I was a missionary kid, lived in Haiti. How do you feel like your Christian values apply to the business and help make you a better entrepreneur?

Billy Sticker: Yeah. I used to try to se- I don't wanna say separate the two, like even on the podcast. At first I was like, "Well, should I… You know, you know what? It's who I am." Mm-hmm. "I'm going to share my faith." you know, you mentioned Baptist. I have nothing against Baptist. We're actually, we go to a non-denominational church. Non-denominational Christian, right. Yeah. But, but r- regardless, it's, it's not separate. It's not like there's a different hat. It's, it's just, you know, it's, it's who I am. And fortunately, you know, in our business, the, everybody that works for us, most of them know each other through church. You know, one of the guys that works with us, his name's Matt, he and my son went to Bible school together. And he's just been a great asset. So whenever we s- we do a Zoom meeting every Monday, and it's required. You can't, you know… Every once in a while somebody may miss it if something's going on. But we do it, you know, every week. We start off the Zoom meeting with prayer requests. "Hey, what's going on? Anybody have any prayer requests? You know, what can we pray for?" and then we take turns, you know, who's leading it. And, and it's just, it's something we do. It's just how we built the business. Wow. That's not saying you have to be a Christian to ever work with us or anything like that. It, it's, it's just the culture of who we are. I don't know. Did that answer your question?

Josh Nelson: It did. No, no, I thought, I thought that was great, you know? And, I think, you know, you're gonna attract the type of people that have similar values. Not exclusively- Right… But that's a great thing. On your team, the clients you serve, and, you know, having those similar values makes it just a, an even more pleasurable business experience.

Billy Sticker: Yeah. One of my favorite scriptures when it comes to business is, Proverbs 14:23. It says, "All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads to poverty." Mm-hmm. And, just to encourage the people listening, you have this idea to start an agency, and you're reading books about it, and you're taking courses about it, and you're putting off reaching out to clients or potential clients. Y- mere talk leads to poverty. Mm-hmm. You gotta actually, you gotta find people, even if it's doing work for free at first. Get out there, get some success for somebody else. That's gonna lead to your success.

Josh Nelson: I love it. I think that's a powerful note to end on. It's been an honor to spend this time with you. I really appreciate you sharing. And, that's it. We'll, we'll wrap it there. Thanks so much for your time.

Billy Sticker: All right. Thank you. Have a great day.

Josh Nelson: Bye, guys. Thanks for joining us.