They Grew Their Asphalt Marketing Agency 97% by Firing Every Generalist Client

Full transcript of Josh Nelson’s interview with Greg and Paolo Gullo. Lightly edited for readability.

Josh Nelson: Hello, and welcome to the Seven Figure Agency podcast, where we're interviewing highly successful digital marketing agencies from across the country on how they're growing and scaling their businesses. And today I'm, I'm super excited. We've got an amazing agency that's joining us. We've got Paolo and Greg from Asphalt Marketers. They've recently crossed seven figures in their agency, and so I'm really excited to have them on and kind of let them share their story and their journey. So Greg, Paolo, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.

Greg: Thank you for having us, Josh. Thanks, Josh. Thanks for having us here. We're super pumped about, this interview today.

Josh Nelson: And congratulations on building the seven-figure agency. Just so the group knows, obviously like tell us a little bit about the agency, how many clients, how much recurring revenue, kind of what's the lay of the land right now?

Greg: All right. You wanna go ahead with that, Paolo?

Paolo Gullo: Yeah. So we are at,… In our niche agency, we're at twenty-seven clients right now, and our MRR is, about eighty-five K. So yeah, we just passed that mark, in our niche and, when we, started, with seven-figure agency, I think it was like thirteen, fourteen months ago. It was May 2023 when we joined you guys. And, since then we grew by ninety-seven percent, so almost double.

Josh Nelson: So good, man. C- congratulations. So tell us a little bit about your background. Obviously, you guys have been in digital marketing and marketing for quite some time. Tell us how you got into the agency space, to begin with.

Greg: Yeah. So, long story and a long journey. So we started back… I'll try and speed this up, but we started back in 2004 with, digital marketing, okay? And in those days, we were selling information products online through Google Ads and all that. Google Ads just… AdWords just became a thing back then. We were selling information products, affiliate products, e-books and stuff like that. And then in 2010, we said, with all this knowledge and digital marketing or internet marketing was more of a buzzword back then. We said, "Why don't we offer this to local businesses, everything we know?" Mm. So in 2010, we started our agency, and we started as, a generalist agency. And so what we did was we went to our network of friends and everybody we knew who had a business and we offered them, our services, whether it was website development, pay-per-click management, whatever we can do for them to help bring them forward, that's what we offered them. And in those days, it wasn't really well-received because this is 2010. It was like, "I don't need this for my business," or, "What is this?" Like, "We get business s- so many other ways, by referrals, by word of mouth." It was very new to, companies accepting it. And then, fast-forward a few years, then things shifted where everybody was calling us that they need it as opposed to us kind of like pushing it on them. And so going back to it in 2010, our network was built of mostly construction companies. That's what our friends had and, and beyond friends, people we knew in our network. And, Asphalt was a big one. So I had my best friend, his family owned an asphalt paving company. Our next door neighbors on each side owned an asphalt paving company, and a couple other friends had one. So we went to them first and, we built their website. They were happy with it. We started doing some Google Ads, getting them some leads. They were happy with it, and we're saying, "You know what? This is a good niche for us." but as we went along, we always had the generalist side by side 'cause we thought, "We'll have the niche and we'll have the generalist because why would we shut down anyone and anyone that comes to us? That's business, right?" Like we wanna take it all. Don't like shorthand ourselves. And then when we joined 7FA, let's say fourteen months ago, it was May 2023, we said, "Okay, this is the day that going forward, we are not accepting any more generalist client. We'll keep the few that we have grandfathered in, but going forward, that's it. We're done." And that was one of the best decisions we ever made. Nothing wrong with the generalist side. It's just that the focus we have today is like, it's beautiful. Coming to work every day, speaking to the same audience, speaking to the same niche, as opposed to like, "Oh, I have a meeting today. Oh, it's a restaurant. Oh, it's, it's a manufacturer of some sort or a furniture store," whatever it is. It's like you always have to shift your mind, right? And, yeah, I think that was a big decision for us just saying, "Okay, we had both the generalist and the niche asphalt contractor agency, and we just focus on the asphalt now." So good.

Josh Nelson: How do you feel like that helped you guys? Obviously it helped with like focus, but do you feel like you would be at seven figures if you hadn't made that decision to say, "Let's just focus on this"? No, I don't think so, and I'll tell you why.

Greg: Because there was a point where we kind of reached the seven-figure mark pre-pandemic, but it was mainly project work. Mm.

Josh Nelson: And it wasn't, it wasn't, predictable.

Greg: It was, it's… Again, you know how it is. Project work is like you don't know what you're gonna have the next month, right? Yeah.

Josh Nelson: And then we also, picked up a lot of the wrong clients or small clients that just, it– we were like their saving grace.

Greg: Like they needed it to work and like they didn't have any money and it was just the wrong… We were just doing the wrong thing, right? Like even though we were, trying to niche down, it was side by side. We're a generalist agency. We didn't know what, a hundred percent what we were doing in a sense, in that way, right? We're just kind of going at it, trial and error. But yeah, ever since we actually made that shift and just focused and really, dived deep into who our ideal clients are, who we want them to be. Same thing with the programs that we created, right? Like that was a big help as well.

Paolo Gullo: Yeah, and I think to add to that, Josh, it's, it's crazy because once we decided on going niche only, it's like the law of attraction or the universe, all of a sudden now your niche, leads start coming in and booking discovery calls with you. I don't know what it is. I mean, we're doing things for momentum, that's for sure, but it's just something happens when you make that decision to focus on the niche.

Josh Nelson: Once you focus on expanse, right? So if you're listening to this and you're in a generalist agency today, and you've been playing around with, you know, I know I should go niche, but, you know, there's all this other general business out there. You know, this is a great example of by just narrowing that focus, they were able to systematize a little better. They were able to become more attractive to their industry, and it was one of the accelerants for growing their digital marketing agency. Kind of coming back then to niche selection, 'cause I know this is a, an issue a lot of people struggle with. You guys had home service clients. What was it that made you land on asphalt companies? Just kinda talk us through the niche selection process that you guys went through.

Paolo Gullo: Yeah. So, like G- Greg mentioned, at first, when we started going after our network, a lot of them were in construction in general, but, there was a handful or so that we had that were, in the asphalt, industry. So in 2012, when we decided to, like, let's try running a niche agency alongside our generalist agency, we did some due diligence and just kinda looked to see, who was marketing the niche and w- and what was out there. And there wasn't, too many out there that were, going after the niche, and that's why we said, "You know what? Let's, let's, let's go down this path," right? And then it just snowballed in that sense, right?

Greg: Yeah. And just to add to that, so Josh, we had generalists, anybody and anybo- everyone. Then we had the asphalt niche, and then because of the construction, network we had, we're like, "Okay, let's have one that focuses on all type of contractors." But we've also now shut that down as well in terms of like, okay, no, just the asphalt niche.

Josh Nelson: Yeah. Love it. A- and I think it's an important s- like thing that if you're listening to this and you're a generalist and you're trying to choose niche, don't go too broad because home services or contractors is too broad, and it's not really that relevant to anybody. And it's also, it's not easy to systematize 'cause it's gonna be different for asphalt than it is for decorative concrete than it is for fence companies. And so be specific, be magnetically attractive. So that's how you guys picked the niche. Would love to know kinda how you package it. You talked about your growth programs built specifically for the industry. Can you talk to us a little bit about like kinda what you include in your program for the clients you work with?

Paolo Gullo: Yeah. So we have, we have three programs that we're working on, okay? Two are finalized, and our first one is our Activate program, which we charge, two nine nine seven a month plus ad spend. Okay. And that includes, website development, paid search ads management on Google primarily, and we do a little bit of ad spend on Bing. We do SEO optimization, and online review management, and we also offer, our high-level, CRM to our niche as well for that program. Okay. And we typically, focus that on asphalt contractors from one to three million in revenue. Our next one up is our Accelerate program, which we charge four nine nine seven a month, and that one has everything that Activate has. We do a little bit more in terms of content with SEO per month, and then we bring in, social media management, paid social ads management on Facebook and Instagram, and email marketing in terms of a monthly newsletter. And then on the website development side, we just offer a few more pages. Like Activate is a ten-page site. Accelerate is a 15-page site. And now we're also building out our Elite program. And Josh, we got a lot of these names from 7FA in terms of what we're naming our programs. And Elite is gonna be for asphalt contractors who are ten million plus, and we're thinking of charging about, nine nine nine seven a month for that and stacking it with more good stuff, video production content, cold outreach, whatever we can do to really help our clients, right?

Josh Nelson: To try to- So, so relatively high ticket, right? We're talking about the Activate being three thousand or so per month plus ad spend, the next level up being five K per month plus ad spend. And so if you're listening to this and you're still charging a thousand dollars a month or fifteen hundred dollars per month, you get to choose your price, right? And you might as well go a little bit higher and make sure that you're adding enough value to the program. Kind of what these guys have done is their program includes the website, the SEO, the paid search management, marketing automation with the follow-up system. And so have you had a lot of resistance to that pricing? You, you think, you know, a blue-collar industry like asphalt. Talk to us about how that's received in the marketplace.

Paolo Gullo: Not at all. You know what? Ever since w- when we started, and joined with, 7FA, our average client was approximately twenty-one fifty a month, the average, that we were getting per client. And since we introduced these programs, now our average is thirty-one fifty, right? So by doing the programs, it helped us increase our, the value of each client, the average value, but also we haven't had any resistance. And the only thing- It's a must… That we're finding is, like the one to three million dollar revenue clients, we're kinda seeing a little bit of not so much of a resistance in the sense like they're questioning anything, but they're just not closing as much. So we're really considering we might increase that to having our minimum, client's revenue to be at three million if they wanna work with us, right? Mm-hmm. We're not sure if we're gonna do that yet, but we're really contemplating. Yeah. So I would just say the only resistance we get is, you know, under a million, and then when they– once they cross over, there's a little bit of resistance, but it's all over the map. You know, you have guys that are at a million, and they're spending six or seven K a month, which is fantastic. And then you have others who it's like they don't see the benefit in marketing, or they've never done business that way, so they can't justify spending money. But you just keep focusing on the ones that want it, right? And there's enough of those out there, you know?

Josh Nelson: Hundred percent. What he said there is super important in that you're pricing to a certain part of the, of the market, even if they're the same size, could be like way too high, but there's another side of the market that's growth mindset, that's willing to invest in growth, that wants to work with the best of the best. And so you just have to be marketing enough, talking with enough prospects to get to the ones that are willing to invest at a little higher level, you know, if you're starting to get resistance early in your agency.

Paolo Gullo: Exactly, Josh, and I just wanna add to what you're saying there. So one thing is you niche down, but then when you niche down, you start figuring out that within your niche there's ideal clients, and you start niching even more down as to who you wanna go after, right? Yeah. For sure.

Josh Nelson: So, so we talked about how you pick the niche. We talked about kinda how you package it. Let's talk about that first couple of clients, right? So you had, I know, some asphalt clients, but as you decided, all right, we're just gonna focus on asphalt, what worked best for you to land that first, you know, three to five clients in the, in the niche?

Greg: Yeah. So I would say, like, the first three to five were, you know, the friends and the people we grew up with who had those businesses.

Josh Nelson: Oh, sphere, your sphere of influence.

Greg: Yeah, exactly. So it was that. And then from there, you know, referrals started coming in locally. And then we started attending, national trade shows for the niche. So that started building momentum and getting leads, and sometimes you don't close those leads right away, but maybe two years later, like, "Hey, I seen you at a trade show two years ago. I came to your booth." And it's like you close 'em that way. We've also done, cold outreach in terms of like, you know, messaging people on the social platforms, whether it be Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. That's a good way to do things. We have some organic ranking because it's a niche, so people come to us, "Hey, I did a Google search. I found you." yeah, posting on social media, just we have momentum in all the areas. We'd like to have more. We wanna put out a lot more content. But for what we've done, we've attracted, those first few clients, and then you grow from there, right?

Josh Nelson: Let's talk- A little more than you can handle… Talk practically speaking here. So let's just say, you know, you're an agency that's got, you know, a dozen clients that are generalists, and you've decided you're gonna go down a niche. Working the sphere of influence, getting those friends, those colleagues to do business with you, can you talk to us a little bit about how you know, a-approached those conversations, those meetings, and, and got those opportunities to convert into deals? If you have any feedback on how you pulled that.

Greg: Yeah. So I would say, when we're doing outreach or we're at a show and we're at our booth, whether it be… Whatever, whatever which way it is, our first thing that we do is we offer them a discovery call. So we kinda tell them like, "Hey, let's set up a call, kinda get us to learn more about your business. You can learn a little bit more about us and see if we're a good fit for each other." So just kinda leave it easygoing, not too salesy, right? And then they're like, "Yeah, sure." And then we have that 20… We say 20 minutes. For so- for some reason we go a lot longer on our discovery calls 'cause we ask, we ask a lot of good questions, and they appreciate it. And then from there, we then book a strategy session proposal call, where in the meantime, and Josh, you know this whole method, but, we do our due diligence, we check their website, we check their keyword ranking. We, we dive deep into everything that they got going online, in terms of their assets. And then on that strategy session call, we go through it all with them, and then we, at the end we offer our program that we feel is best suited for them. And then, you know, sometimes it's they close on the spot, and then sometimes it's like, "Okay, can you send that to me? I need to talk to my team," or whomever, and they need a third call, and we call that the sync-up session. – Right… And so from there, you close more that way as well. And then it's, it's a numbers game, right? You don't close everybody. You know, you talk to 10 people in your niche. You might close three, you might close four, you might close five. You want them all. You feel like you're gonna close them all, but it doesn't always happen that way.

Josh Nelson: So good. Guys, if you're listening live, and I know we've got a handful of you guys on this live, feel free to post your questions or your insights in the chat, and we'll do our best to engage with you and answer your questions as we go. So kinda coming back to the, to the question, personal connection. I know that you guys did some business with some friends and with some family and with some colleagues. How would you, like, how would you have reached out to that person and had that initial conversation about internet marketing and possibly doing business? Just, just curious on kinda how you approach those personal contacts.

Greg: Yeah. That was like a while ago, so – You're like, "I gotta think back. I gotta rewind a little bit." Yeah. Right. Yeah. So, you know what? It's just, the way… We just basically called them, picked up the phone and said, "Hey, listen, this is what we're doing right now. We're focusing on your niche," right? Like, "on… In this industry. We've been doing this for a while now. We had suc-success with, other clients, but we're, we're focusing on this industry, and we wanna give it a go with your business," right? Like, "Give us the opportunity," right? And I think when you're, when you're friends with them or you have that relationship, they'll, they'll most likely give you that opportunity. Or maybe there's a way of… Like, I think back then we weren't, like, as confident as charging so much as we charge right now, right? Mm. So we say, "Hey, listen, we'll do it for this much. Let's, let's get it going, and we'll see how it goes, and then we can talk in a few months and see if we gotta do more at that point." And then that's when we upsold them to doing more with them, right? But I think if someone's just starting out, I would say, you know, set up your niche website, set up an Instagram, you know, maybe some other ones, but an Instagram first, and start following-… Companies in your niche. That's the first thing I would do. So you have, you know, a little bit of authority there in terms of your niche. You s- people, they start coming, they start seeing it, and then s- just do some outreach. Just start messaging them, like their photos, comment on their photos, compliment them, right? And then when the time is right after a little bit of re-so- relationship building, just offer them a discovery call. That's, that's what I would do to pick up your first few clients.

Paolo Gullo: And our first outreach message, just to add to that, is, not like, "Hey, this is what we're doing. Do you wanna have a discovery call?" We're like more like asking them about their business. "Hey, how's your suite deploying so far? How do you pick up your jobs?" Or whatever. Like we just get that conversation. Do you focus on residential or commercial, industrial, right? We just start talking about it, right? So yeah, that's what I would do. And I would also say, start out maybe locally in your state, maybe knock on some doors there in your niche, right? Mm-hmm. Just to build some momentum that way to get your first like testimonial, your first video testimony, whatever it is, just to have build your first website and I think it'll pick up and you'll gain momentum from there.

Josh Nelson: I love it. I think a lot of great nuggets here. I think oftentimes getting that first couple of clients in the niche comes down to your sphere of influence and being able to reach out to that family member, that cousin, that uncle that runs a business in the space and you know, just like I said, "Hey, you know, we're, we're looking to go deep in the pool building industry. You know, I know you run a pool business. Would love to s- just schedule a couple minutes of your time to chat about what you're doing, how you're marketing yourself, get some ideas from you, and maybe even talk about how we can help to generate better results." Like if you come at it like that and you're open, we're looking to break into this space, we'd like your feedback, they're gonna be much more willing to have that meeting and oftentimes more willing to be like, "Hey, I wanna help them build this." Right? Whether that's becoming a client or referring you to friends or pointing you to groups that you can plug into. So thanks for rewinding back the playbook a little bit for us and kind of thinking about the thought process you were going through in that early phase. I think what you said about, you know, getting a lead list, setting up your Instagram, finding people in the space, connecting it with them, starting with engaging with their posts. Your clients, whether they're asphalt companies or plumbing companies or dentists, if they're posting on social media, they're not getting the love that they expect. They're not getting as many likes. They're not getting as many comments. And so if you can become a fan of their stuff and say, "Hey, that's awesome. That's really lo– I really love that you shared that." Not, not trying to just go straight into DM and schedule an appointment. I think that was a great, a great tip as well. Yeah, definitely. Okay. So let's talk a little bit about how you're landing clients today. So we talked about the first couple. It sounds like maybe the trade show play has been a big move for you guys. Talk to us about where the, where the strategy sh- sessions are coming from today and kinda, you know, how you've gotten the, you know, the bulk of the last twenty or so clients.

Paolo Gullo: Yeah. So for the trade shows, like the bulk of the, strategy sessions or discovery call bookings, they usually come around the trade shows. It's not like it's a consistent thing all year long, right? But it's a good way to, you know, create content, use that throughout the year, just remind people that you're there, right? There's also the lists from the trade shows or the associations. When you do, a trade show, sometimes they give you the list of attendees. Prior to the show, you get access to that. So, what we did was, we would, cold call them and just say, "Hey, we're gonna be at this trade show, on this date. Come and see us at our booth number," whatever. And then we'll email them as well as a reminder. And then anyone that would come to the, to the booth, if we got them on the list or that they registered for a discovery call, what we would do is that we'd have… We scan their badge, and then at the end of each day, I would export that list into our CRM and then send them an email, say, "Thanks for coming to visit us today. It's great talking to you about your business, and we look forward to having that conversation." So we get things going that way. We try to– We have more ideas going forward for the future, making a better funnel than that. And, one thing we don't have yet is our book, and we're working on that. We just started working on that, so we're hoping to get it done by the end of this year so that in the new year when we do all our trade shows, 'cause they're all in the wintertime- Mm…. We can give out our book at the next one. So we're hoping to do that. Yeah. And another thing we're finding, momentum with is, putting out video content to our niche. So, and we learn all this from 7FA and Josh, but, and we're like, you know what? If we can put out one really good piece of video content, it doesn't have to be perfect. It could be like iPhone level out on a job site, whatever it may be. If we could put out one and get one discovery call out of the thousands in your niche, what if we put out twenty pieces of content a month? Would that result into twenty, discovery calls? And so that's what we're gonna focus on next because we feel like every time we put out a video, we start– they start coming to us inbound, right? Whether they DM us, "Hey, we need to talk. Hey, I've seen your video," or just so a whole, a whole bunch of that. And then other ways we land clients, Josh, is again, through Google Ads to our niche nationwide. That helps. SEO-ing our, like, optimizing our niche and our niche keywords, that also helps. Sending out a newsletter to our list. We're now also creating our Dream 100 list and working with, list providers as well to grow that and start doing outreach and, and thinking about the gifting program and a lot of these advanced strategies. So we've reached this point, but I would say we have a lot to do. Mm. With the seven-figure agency roadmap, there's a lot of pieces that we still need to plug into and we're really excited about it. And, and we're very ambitious too. So we're at this point, but like we see no reason why we shouldn't 10X this. Like, you know, our mission is to work with five hundred asphalt contractors across the nation, right? So- Yeah.

Josh Nelson: We haven't even scratched the surface with just twenty-seven of them Yeah, I love it. You know, the fact that you're at seven figures with only twenty-seven clients, and there's so much opportunity, so much meat on the bone that you guys are gonna be able to put in play to continue to accelerate the growth. So guys, you know, if you're listening to this or watching this and you're like, "You know, what's the practical takeaway?" If you're not involved in the industry group or association within your niche, if you're not finding opportunities to get out from behind your computer and live and in person, elbow to elbow with a trade show at the event in the after hours, you're leaving a big opportunity on the table, and they just kinda walked you through their process of how they're working those trade show opportunities and how that was an accelerator to grow their agency kind of to that, to that next level. So let's talk a little bit about delivery, right? So, you know, like now we've got a bunch of asphalt companies. We've got this, you know, relatively complex service offering with the website and the SEO and the paid search and the marketing automation. Talk to us about how you, how you get the work done and kinda what the team structure looks like.

Greg: Yeah. So, even though we're at the level we're at right now, we still have a lot of cleaning up to do. It's a never ending… It's a beast, right? So, the way we have it now is that we have, about eight people in-house. In-house, but they're remote, full-time. We also partner with some, white label agencies. And we also have a handful of, freelancers, right? So that's what our team kinda looks like. But in-house is more account managers, CSMs, stuff like that, just to make sure that, you know, they can keep an eye on everyone else and making sure things are getting done on time. – I handle all the sales side of things, so there was a point where I got off that and we had salespeople, but I felt like I lost the, my finger being on the pulse of the business, right? So it's really good when you're starting out or at our size or even larger. I plan on doing this for a while, really build those deep relationships on the sales side of things. But I'll let Paulo speak to the- Yeah, like-…

Paolo Gullo: The fulfillment… We had a few salespeople and then we had to get rid of them. They weren't producing as much. Also, they were making false promises just trying to get that commission check or whatever, right? Yeah. And we learned that the hard way when we were churning a lot of clients, right? Because of the way we do things now and we have our finger on the pulse, and that's one big thing that Greg just said. Keeping our finger on the pulse was one of the biggest things we could have done in the last year or so, which has allowed us to have a retention rate of ninety-seven point seven one percent- Nice… To be accurate.

Greg: Yeah. So, and before that, we don't even know what we're, what the retention rate was. It was horrible. It wasn't tracked. It was like, you know, whatever it is. It was a mess. We were losing clients, like every month we're losing, picking up. We weren't going anywhere ahead, right? So can I just speak a little bit more to this? Yeah. If you kinda look at our structure, we have myself on handling the sales. Paulo is my brother and business partner. He's handling the fulfillment side, so we kinda got that split going on. And then on the fulfillment side, we have our website developers and coders and content writers. And, then we have our marketing coordinator who works in between our clients and our web development team, collecting all their, their assets. We have graphic designers, paid search specialists, social media specialists. Trying to think of all our services here. Basically everything. Basically the whole… Every– We have a very comprehensive program, so we have someone who works on each piece. We don't just have one handy person who does it all. Right. Like we have specialists. So whether they're full-time in-house, whether they're through white label partners that we greatly appreciate and who have helped us, or freelancers that we… They're not full-time, but they help us with certain things. That's, that's kind of the structure right now. And, we're building out our SOPs, our standard operating procedures, a-and our onboarding process and just trying to deliver the seven-figure agency world-class experience.

Josh Nelson: Love it. So it sounds like a great, you know, great team, virtual, you know, environment. Any tips on how you keep your arms around a virtual team? I know a lot of agencies have gone virtual. Our, our agency as well. But any tips on how you keep the team engaged and keep them productive? Sometimes it's hard when they're not like sitting right next to you, and you can smack them around when they're not doing their work, right?

Greg: But we used to… Pre-pandemic, we had everybody in the office. We had an office. We, at that point, we had a lot of project work. We had like fifteen people in there, and then the pandemic hit, everybody went to work remotely, and then we're like, no one really wants to come back to the office. We're like, "Okay, we don't need an office anymore," right? So Paulo and I, we have an office. We work together in an office space. Mm-hmm. And, I don't know, you wanna speak to this at all- Yeah.

Paolo Gullo: So-… In terms of remote and what we do? Yeah. To, to be honest, it was the best thing that ever happened to us remotely because, we felt like everybody was coming to us with questions all day long. And with our team working remotely, we feel like they're taking the initiative a lot more- Mm… And seeing things through on their own before they're coming to us all the time.

Greg: But we try to meet with them once a week, to just, you know, make sure that they're good. If there's anything, any type of roadblocks they're having from the previous week or they need help moving forward, we do that. Mon-Monday mornings at ten AM, there's always a meeting of the team. You know, Paulo and I are on those a lot, but if we're not, we have someone else in our company who kind of pushes the team forward on those. And then I'm also overlooking every single… So I have my time structured. I have my mornings, focused on just checking in with my team, if they need my help for something and helping them see something through, taking care of a client or whatever it is. I do that in my mornings. Mm. My afternoons are for development.

Paolo Gullo: All the stuff, you know, from our, seven-figure agency intensives. You know, we have that roadmap The project plan, I block off my afternoons for that. I don't talk to no one in the afternoon, so I can just focus on that. So every morning, I'm actually looking into everything. I'm going on Slack. I'm seeing if there's anything that needs help from me, and I'll, I'll, I'll move things forward. I'll, I'll, I'll meet with a team member ad hoc and just kinda come up with a game plan just to make sure everything's running smoothly because we don't wanna lose any client. And we wanna make sure our clients are a hundred percent happy. And then lastly on that, we also use Slack. So we have a Slack channel. They're all working remote, but like we all communicate via Slack. We have one for each client and all the different services we do for them, right? So everybody stays connected that way. And we haven't done any like time tracking or anything like that on our team members, but like at this point we're looking at it like if you're not doing your work, a fire's gonna start. You're– and it's gonna come back to you, right? So every de– everyone's doing a great job. Yes.

Josh Nelson: Love it. Lots of great insights here, kinda how you've structured the team, how you pulse with the team during that weekly meeting, how you leverage Slack to kinda keep things in the loop. Kinda the, the leadership philosophy, not micromanaging, not like time doctoring every minute of their day, but having people that you trust that are capable of doing the job that you can let them go run their day. And, you know, if there's problems, obviously it's gonna come back and you're gonna have to go deeper with that person. I agree with that operational philosophy, wholeheartedly. So let's talk retention, 'cause you mentioned ninety-seven percent monthly average or higher, which is fantastic. Talk to us about kinda some of the key strategies you've put in place that have helped to improve that retention rate.

Paolo Gullo: Yeah. So I think it starts from the sales side of things. Like Greg does all the sales calls. He builds a really good relationship and rapport with, each prospect we get and cl- and once they become a client. And then he also checks in on them once in a while as well, just so that they know that they can reach out to us if there's something that they're not happy with a team member, right? So we really make it clear that we will have their back no matter what. So even though we pass them on to our team, they know we're overlooking, we're seeing things, or if they have to come to us, we got them. So that's one big thing we did because when we l- took our finger off the pulse years ago and we were churning a lot, that's one of the reasons why. We were just not present with our clients. – We thought that was the way to grow. Mm. Like we need to be working on the business instead of in it, which is the way to grow. Like you shouldn't be too deep into it. But I think on the sales side at this level, you gotta build those solid relationships because these are, these are business people, right? They got a solid business. They're giving you a lot of money. They wanna feel like they're dealing with the owner in some cases. Not forever. There's bigger agencies than 7FA who now have salespeople, and we look up to that, and one day we're gonna go that route as well. But for now and for a while, I think that that has helped in terms of, retention. I feel like I could do a better job in terms of communicating with clients after the sale. Sometimes I have that background stress, like has it been too long since I spoke to this guy? What if he churns? What if he feels like I don't care about him enough? Or, you know. But we're now also working on our onboarding process. Mm. So we're really excited about that and having automations help because, you know, we know from 7FA the first thirty, sixty, and ninety days is crucial to long-term retention. So we're really excited about having automations and a roadmap of what their first three months or what their first twelve months with us looks like. Yeah. And on the manual side of things, because we're not fully automated with that yet, that's where I come in, and I'm always checking every Monday morning. I'm looking at everything that's happening with our, with our clients, especially our new ones, right? And then I'm checking with our account managers saying, "Okay, where is this at? Where is this at?" So we put a lot of passion and a lot of, like Greg said, we have a lot of stress into making sure that our clients are happy, right? Our– we have SOPs in place, but they could be better. I feel like that's a never-ending process. One thing I did learn from the last intensive, earlier this month, at our, at our roundtable was we were always looking at the SOPs as a project, like this massive project that we're like, "How are we gonna start and finish this beast?" But someone at our table, told us, "Hey, look at it as a process. It's an ongoing thing. You're just always working towards it." And just that one thing that was said to me is like I took a deep breath and I was able to like kinda relax, and now we've put it in a process. So it's just, it's being worked on in every area and it's, it's gonna get better and better and better as time goes by, and we're not stressing over making sure it gets done overnight type of thing, right? But yeah, like all that, all that, all that, but Greg and I, we put a lot of passion into each client and building that relationship. And I know some people wanna try to get off that and just kinda let their team run with the clients, but I think it's still key to keep, engaged with your clients, even if you've gotta put out content, and be on… Be the face of your company and making sure your clients see that on a regular basis, so they know- And send them, I would say to send them like gifts at like Christmas time and stuff like that. Show them that you care.

Greg: Yeah. We do that a lot. We send, we send, whether it's a bottle of alcohol or if it's, a basket or whatever, we send gifts.

Josh Nelson: Love it. So, so good. I think a great insight, great takeaway is if you've put a salesperson in place and, you know, like you're starting to see an increase in churn, know that that's, that typically happens, right? If you get an aggressive salesperson that isn't setting proper expectations, that's selling the mood, selling the guarantees, selling the money back if it doesn't work out- On the back end of an increase in sales is gonna be a massive spike in churn. Happened to us at Plumbing and HVAC SEO. It sounds like it happened at, at their agency as well. But also know that if you get the right salesperson in place that can sell in the proper way, you can sell clients that stick. But if you can step in and take the sales process, set proper expectations, and the continuity of the relationship, I think is a big reason these clients are signing up at a high ticket, staying around long term, 'cause they know you guys are both owners, you both really care about their business, and you wanna keep them long term. And I think that's one of the big things that's helped you guys elevate that retention number.

Paolo Gullo: Yeah. One thing you just said there, sorry, Josh, in terms of the setting the expectations on the sales end, yeah, that's a big part because what we found in the past was a lot of the churn was because a lot of customers came thinking that they're gonna turn on their campaigns and they're gonna be successful overnight and crush their competition. And, that's when we started saying, "Okay, we need to make it clear that marketing is not a one-size-fits-all, set it, forget it, turn it on, and you're gonna…" Like, we have to make it clear in the sales process that this is a partnership, we're working together, we're gonna be trying things, we're gonna be testing, we're gonna get the data, we're gonna see what works, what doesn't work, right? And, and when it's like that, they just now look at you as an extension of their team. They're not looking at you as a… You're just a company that they're paying and has to get them the results, right? Yeah. Do I have time to add a little more on this topic? Absolutely. Yeah. I'd love to. Okay. So another thing in terms of retention and long-term retention is that, you know, what we find is once they hit twelve months, if they make it there, which a lot of them do, right, then if they cross that point, they're there for the long term, right? But now it's like, okay, 'cause we have clients that have been with us for five years. Some have been with us for a decade, when we go back to those friends who are– who stick by us and they're loyal to us. When they stick that long, it's like what we do is every time the calendar year changes, we go through all our long-term loyal clients. We're like, "Okay, let's have an annual meeting with them. Let's show them that we care. Let's talk about what we're gonna do this year." You can't, you can't take 'em for granted and let it ride like, "Oh, they're loyal, so we'll just… We know that they don't need our attention." It's like, no. We make a point, the calendar year changes, go through all the loyal ones, five-year, ten-year clients, and have a strategy with them in terms of what else we could offer them, 'cause they wanna know. They wanna know what else you're gonna do for them. You know, the current results are working, but what else can we bring to the table? And so we make a point to all the long-term clients every year, we put an annual, meeting effort into it.

Josh Nelson: I love that. I'm glad you brought that up 'cause I think, you know, the reason clients leave is perceived indifference, right? They feel like you don't care. I think you guys do a great job showing that you care. The other reason they leave is they feel like their vision for their business has outpaced your vision in terms of what you're bringing to the table. And so constantly seeing the vision, "Hey, here's where we're headed next. Here's what the next twelve months looks like," and spending that time with the client, not just to report, like, back, but the, "Here, here's what the plan is year two, year three, year four." I'm glad you brought that up as a key initiative that's helped you guys expand those relationships. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about reporting. So you've got, you've got a high ticket service that these guys are selling. I wouldn't imagine there's tons of volume, but if you get them a couple of these asphalt projects, you can show ROI. Like, what is it that you report to the clients? How do you show the value to keep them on board?

Paolo Gullo: One thing we do is, like, if when we're generating leads for them, if they… Like, usually there's, like, the same type of, like, there's, like, an average sale or average type of project they get. But when there's those really big, impressive ones, we always highlight those.

Greg: Mm. Like, we always make a big point. We'll even do a Google, Earth image shot of the property to show the building that, you know, say, "Hey, this one came in." Like, we wanna really highlight it to them and make sure that they actually, call them right away or get on it. Like, we'll, we'll, like, we'll be their, speed to lead, you know, in a sense. Say, "Hey, go, go get this one." Go slip on this one, guys. This one's good, right? Go, go get this one. And they appreciate it. They'll be like, "Yep, seen it. On, on it." It's like we're, we're, like, pure integrated, right? Because like to Paolo's point, they're getting leads throughout the day. Not everything comes from online, right? They have their own business that they're operating. So we just wanna highlight the bigger ones, the home run type leads to make sure that they get to them as well as they have something in the back of their mind, like, "Yeah, this is working for me. Oh, that came from Asphalt Marketers." You know what I mean? Mm. So, okay, so we re– we highlight those. We also show, like, the amount of ad spend that they did in the month, the amount of leads we generated, the cost per lead. Sometimes we say in terms of their local service area, with our conversion metrics, we can start to see that some cities or towns are generating more leads than others, so we'll say, "Hey, why don't we shift the budget there?" Mm. Right? Yeah. We'll look at the cost per lead. Like, if a cost per lead in one area is, like, really high and another area is really low, we'll shift more of the budget that way. So, like, we have these conversations with them to show, like, it's not just a set it and forget it. Like, here's the data, here's what happened the last thirty days, here's what we can do and try it for the next thirty days so that we can, see how that improves, right? Like, we took one client that in the beginning, it was a big struggle, that leads were converting at, like, six hundred dollars. It's way too high. Crazy. And we said, "Guys, like, it's gotta work," right? And we're like, "We're, we're gonna make it work. We're gonna figure it out." For some reason, it's not… It wasn't working out. Anyways, we got that down to a hundred dollars a lead by doing these type of things, right? But we had to wait for the data to come in. Mm. And we sell high ticket, but their jobs are high ticket as well. Right. Like, their jobs can be five to ten thousand for a small one, or fifty to a hundred thousand to three hundred thousand for a big one, right? So- We're all in line there Only need a couple of jobs to justify the expense.

Josh Nelson: So if you're, as you're listening to this, like, think about how you're reporting back to your clients. Are you dumping a lot of data? What you didn't hear them say was, "We run a ranking report, we show them analytics, we spend forty-five minutes going through all the click-through ratios." No. They said they talk with the client, they show, "Here's how much you spent, here's how many leads you generated, here's, here's what your average cost per lead is," and then they highlight the big opportunities that have come in. So there might be dozens of leads that come in, but if there's a big job in a big area, their team's paying attention and saying, "Hey, look, this one's great. Make sure you guys jump on this." And that shows care, and it also kind of helps demonstrate, man, if we can just close that one job probably, that pays for a year worth of these guys' services. So lots of great insights and takeaways on kinda how you're reporting that, and also how that contributes to higher retention long term in the agency. Exactly. So we've got a question here from Mill City, and they're asking, "When did you guys start building the team for the agency?" We talked about the team and kinda how it looks today. At what point did you guys start building that team?

Greg: So I-I'll just go back to the early days. So the early days it was, Paolo and I were both selling, and then we… When we were on the road back then, we'd go to the people's, like, to their offices, and then we'd come back and do the work. So it was like selling in the morning, doing the work in the afternoon, right? And then we grew a bit, and then our first hire was a project manager, so now that freed us up of watching all the projects, and then we started build- building our team that way, like having a web developer, and then our project manager would work in between the client and our web developer.

Paolo Gullo: And then as you get, like you grow, you start realizing, okay, now I need a client success manager or an account manager, – Yeah, like we're– like Greg said, like we would start, we started off by like doing the project management ourselves and hiring like, you know, some freelancers on Upwork and places like that just to get that help so we're not doing… First of all, we didn't know anything about coding and websites and all that type of stuff back then, right? Yeah. Like we're not experts in every single piece in terms of doing the work, w- but in terms of strategy and knowing digital marketing and all that's our forte, right? Mm-hmm. But that's why you hire the people who are specialists in web development, paid search, SEO, social media specialists. There's people out there that can do that for you. But I would say if you're, if you're just starting out and you're like zero to ten K MRR, try and do things yourself, and then you'll realize, you know, Josh has this all laid out, at what size you're gonna need to start having your first hire and your second and so on and so forth.

Greg: Yeah. And working with a freelancer or white label agency where you're paying, per client rather than hiring someone full-time. 'Cause hiring someone full-time is a big expense, right? You, you need- You have to have work for them… And you need more than one person, 'cause one person can't be an expert at everything, right? So y- the best way to go about it is- Yeah… Hiring, freelancers or white label. Partnering with a white label agency who can, you can pay piecework, right? Yeah.

Josh Nelson: I think, you know, there's economies of scale, right, that are at play in that first, that first ten to twenty thousand dollars in MRR. You might wanna lean a little bit more on white label providers and freelance contractors, but eventually that piecemeal, once you're at, you know, thirty, forty thousand dollars per month, starts to pay too much to the white label and you could start to build your own team. And by building your own team, you can have better control, you can drive better results, you can innovate more. And so I think it's a great question by Mill City is kind of thinking through, you know, what are you good at right now? Maybe you're really good at websites or maybe you're really good at SEO. Do that piece in addition to selling. Find people to help supplement. But know that long term, you're probably gonna wanna build your internal capacity so that you can deliver world-class results, and you can innovate within the niche and become the very best in your industry.

Greg: Definitely. And, and if you're using white label or, or freelance contractors, if you do have to hire in-house, what we choose to do is hi-hire the account managers, project managers, CSMs in-house- Mm… So that they can keep on top of your, contractors and white label agencies to make sure they're delivering the results that are required, right? Yeah. But, and at least you have that person who's gonna advocate for your client. And then once that outsourced person has a full portfolio, now you say, "Okay, I can bring it in-house because paying someone a salary versus white labeling makes sense, and I'm not burning through cash when I don't have the work for this full-time person." But- Yeah… But keep your white label relationships or your contract relationships because when you have an overflow, like let's say you have an extra five clients and you don't wanna hire that second person full time, you need someone to handle that, tho- those, clients as well. So keep those relationships going. Absolutely.

Josh Nelson: Great answer there. Great insights on kinda how you think through who to hire when as you're growing, as you're scaling. You guys have shared some great takeaways on how you chose the niche, how you packaged your program, how you land clients, how you deliver results and retain the clients at the highest level possible. Retrospectively, kinda like the eighteen months you've worked here with us here at Seven Figure Agency, you know, if there were like two or three key projects that you feel like you implemented from Seven Figure Agency that had the biggest impact, what would those be?

Greg: Well, pro… I'm gonna say a mix of projects and also like advice. Okay. So it was deciding one hundred percent on the niche and, and forgetting everything else. Mm. So that was one big thing. The other thing is the programs, because we were selling everything à la carte. And à la carte you get people knocking off this, that, that. You know, like take this off, take that off, or they're comparing with another agency because now they're looking at how much is the paid search portion, how much is the SEO. Well, these guys are charging me this much, these guys… Right? So we did the programs, and the programs allowed us to increase our average, value of each client, right? And as well with the programs is, – Cutting out the project work, the seven FA way- Mm-hmm… And including the website. So now everything is about MRR. It's not about, having some on MRR, and then some we're doing a website for separate. Right? So that was another key thing. Increasing, increasing our average client by $1,000 a month at 27 clients is 27K a month is a big chunk of the growth in the last, 14 months or so, right? So, th- that was a huge thing. The other thing is, focusing. So there's a lot of shiny objects. There's a lot of different ways we can all get pulled, when we're, when we're starting out. And, doing the, you know, the roadmap at the end of each intensive. Yeah. The intensives have been huge for us. So anybody watching, we r- highly recommend going to the agency intensives in Miami and showing up live if you can. Yeah. Because that roadmap we do, especially at the end where we, where we can say, "Okay, these are the projects that we're gonna focus on for the next quarter," that was a huge thing for us. And the other thing is making sure that we block out the time to be able to do those projects. Because if we just say we're gonna do those projects in the next 90 days, weeks are gonna fly by before you even start anything. Or you might start something, and then it just stays on the back burner and then another… You find yourself a month later and you haven't even done anything. So we actually reorganize our schedule after every intensive where we say, "Okay. These are the projects we have at hand. This is how many hours we need. We're gonna do, every Monday is this, every Tuesday is this, every Wednesday…" So we block out those times, and we work on those projects, right?

Josh Nelson: Love it. So good. So many great insights there on kinda how you've plugged in, how you've gotten the results. Congratulations on growing to seven figures. Thank you. You know, I believe like you guys said, this is just the t- the starting point for you guys. I mean, eight figures is definitely within reach as you implement more, as you execute more. You know, our goal at Seven Figure Agency is to help you guys, help, you know, agencies in general, make more money, have more freedom, have a bigger impact. You're now at seven figures and kinda having a more systematized operation. How's life different or better than, you know, what it was prior?

Greg: You know what? The biggest thing for us, like the fact that we're able to like keep clients happy and retain them, is the best thing ever because- Mm-hmm… Our stress levels dropped drastically. And, we just like are way more pumped coming to work and, and doing this because like the agency life, like everyone knows, it can become very stressful. So that's one big thing. And I think because we focused on that, it was, it allowed us to get to this level as well, right? Yeah.

Paolo Gullo: If I could just add to that, another big thing is being clear on the direction we're going. You know, I tell my wife, you know, ever since, we've joined seven FA, it feels really good to know the direction we're going and that the success we're gonna have because I have no doubt that we're going in that direction. And, and we thank you, Josh, Yesenia, and Seven FA for that like big time.

Greg: Yeah. Yeah.

Paolo Gullo: You guys are a huge part of this slot. So just being clear and knowing that we have the roadmap is way better than the days where we had a generalist and agency, and we're just trying to get anybody and everybody. The, the path we're on now is the right path, and we're happy that we came across this. We wish it was sooner, earlier on in our journey, so that we didn't make all the mistakes we made. But, we're happy that we came across this now and where we're going.

Josh Nelson: Amazing. So many great insights, so many great takeaways. If you're watching this live or after the fact, in the comments, like what are a couple of takeaways, couple things that you'll implement that you heard from Greg and Paolo? Kinda in conclusion, kinda wrapping up, if you had one last piece of wisdom for that agency owner that's trying to get to the next level, what would it be?

Greg: If you're trying to get to the next level, I would say definitely niche down and when you're picking a niche, you know, be passionate about it. Like, not so passionate, but don't be like you know nothing about it, right? I would say, you know, and if you're considering one over the other, there's factors to look at, like what type of clientele do you mesh well better with? Will you be selling high ticket or low ticket to them? That's another thing to look at. I would definitely recommend joining Seven Figure Agency and getting all the tools a- and roadmap here that will guide you in the right direction. And do everything right the first time around. Avoid all the pain. And, and just get out there. Get those first few clients. Don't overthink it. Don't overthink it. Don't have the shining object syndrome, like you gotta do everything. You have all these half-built bridges and nothing's done. Like, I would say focus on getting things done and start building that momentum in your niche, and you'll get that first client, that second one. We always say the first one is the hardest, and then once you have that first one, then the second one comes, and the third one comes, and the fourth one, and so on and so forth. And done is better than perfect. Mm. Yeah. Yeah. You can perfect later, but done is better than perfect. And we've, we've been, we've made that mistake many times. Like we want it to be perfect, so we never get it done. Now it's just get it, get it out there. Yeah.

Josh Nelson: So good. So many great insights. Guys, congratulations. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for your abundance mindset and your willing to- willingness to come on and share from your heart kinda what's worked for you, where you're headed, what you've accomplished. If people wanted to connect with you further, is there any suggestions? Would they just go to your website, or how would people connect with you if they wanna- Yeah.

Greg: They could, reach out to us. You could email me greg@asphaltmarketers.com.

Paolo Gullo: And myself is paolo@asphaltmarketers.com, or even if you find us in the group on Facebook, you can DM us, whatever you need.

Greg: Yeah. We're part of the Seven FA, digital marketing success group, I believe it's called. So you can find us on there and DM us. Yeah. We'll be more than happy to help and guide you in the right direction.

Josh Nelson: So again- Well, guys, thanks so much for sharing. If you got value, be sure to reach out to the guy, these guys on Facebook. Send them a DM thanking them for sharing their wisdom, congratulating them on their success and cheering them along, 'cause I know they're going even higher and farther in the next couple months ahead. Thanks for watching today. Thanks for listening. Be sure to hit the like button and subscribe button wherever you happen to be hanging out, and if you could drop a comment of some sort, that'll help with the algorithm as well. So