How Jacob Neffendorf Became the Go-To Marketer for Land Clearing Companies and Built a $370K-a-Month Agency

Transcribed from the live interview and lightly cleaned for readability.

Josh: All right, hello, and welcome to another episode of the Seven Figure Agency Podcast, where we're interviewing highly successful digital marketing agency owners from across the country. Today I am super pumped to be joined by Jacob Neffendorf from Rise Online Advertising. He's grown his agency to over $350,000 in monthly recurring revenue serving land clearing companies. Jacob, thanks so much for being here.

Jacob: Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Josh: So tell us tell us like high level. I know I said about three hundred and fifty K. Like tell us how many clients, what the MRR is, what the lay of the land in the agency is right now.

Jacob: Yes, sir. We're right at about a hundred and sixty clients. MRR we just crossed over three seventy. You know, been working this year trying to get our average value per client up, but yeah, that is about where we're at right now.

Josh: And so the team structure, what like t tell a little bit about the team struck and you've got a beautiful office that you've set up now.

Jacob: Yes, absolutely. It's been really cool for me to have everybody in person because it doesn't seem like that long hose just me and a computer, but we have thirty-one employees. We do have about ten contracted overseas, and then the rest are here, besides we have one in California, one in North Carolina, but the rest are here down the hall, downstairs, with us.

Josh: Amazing. I definitely want to get into the like why local, what like what the benefits of that are. But let's let's go back. So you've got an amazing, thriving, multiple seven figure agency now in a very specific niche, getting great results. Talk to us a little bit about how you got started in digital marketing in the first place. Not a long story, but just like kind of a brief, what was the entree?

Jacob: Absolutely, yes. So I had started my own home service business here in town and you know, just had to figure it out right how to do how to do marketing and stuff. And I had gotten some tech technology experience with the church, you know, kinda through high school. And then of course, you know, being my age, we kinda all had it in our hand as well. But you know, I loved blue collar but kind of mixed the technology side with it. And yeah, I just learned to market my own business pretty well, but I was constrained by my time and choices and things like that. And then COVID hit and I wasn't sure if we were gonna be able to keep going to people's houses, blah. And so I said, well, you know, I've got these skills, maybe I could help others with their marketing while I'm, you know, at home, couldn't go out. And so that was kind of what actually birth rise. And then, you know, got our first client, did really well for that client and kinda the rest is history from there.

Josh: So good. So like back at like we're talking about from like twenty to now, you've got a multiple seven figure agency. Land clearing companies, very specific vertical. Like what like why land clearing companies? How did you stumble on that niche in the first place?

Jacob: Yes, so I knew someone who had a land clearing company and you know, historically the way they grew the business was word of mouth and yellow pages ads, right? Very common in h blue collar in general, especially that era. But these guys, I mean, they're used to spending time in the woods, majority of them, right? And so generally, even if technology kind of goes along, they're always a little bit more behind just because, you know, they prefer To be in the woods, right? They're not really focused on all this technology stuff. And so I quickly realized that was very common, that they were great at the work, amazing on the machines, great when they got face to face, but they needed more opportunities to get face to face with people. More people needed to know that they existed. And so we helped them do that.

Josh: So was like sounds like it was one of your first clients. And so did you decide early, okay, we're just gonna focus on land clearing, or were you good like home services in general? Talk to us about the journey from I could serve anybody to I'm gonna focus on this land clearing specific vertical.

Jacob: Absolutely. No, just like pretty much everybody. I mean, I named it Rise Online Advertising, right? It was like, hey, let's just let's see who we can help. And one of my previous companies was a pressure washing, so tried to kind of target those guys. And tried to just kind of target, you know, contractors in general, which is what a lot of us kind of did at the beginning. So like to me that was I kind of niched that way, but it was you know, contractors is pretty broad. But yeah, that was kind of how I tried to do it at first with my first couple months of you know getting clients and we got, you know, a handful of like a concrete guy and a remodeler and a fence guy and a roofing guy, but none of them really stuck like the land clearing client. And so I was like, you know, I've already got this case study of what we've been able to do. Let's jump into it.

Josh: Love it. So you got the result, right? And I love the fact that you said like got the result. Now you've got the case study. Was it intentional that you said, Look, I'm going down this track now with land clearing? Were you still broad, but you were just kind of focused a little bit more on land clearing, you know, for the next handful of clients?

Jacob: I don't think I knew that granular that's what I was doing. But yeah, what basically I was like, I'm gonna use this case study. I'm gonna use this machine because they're all obsessed with the machines, right? And I'm gonna say, hey, if you're like this guy, here's what we did for him, here's what we can do for you.

Josh: Love it. So you kind of used the case study. It sounds like it was like a social media centric play. How did you make the leap for like one client in this space to five? Was it was it just advertising and people seeing that case study and then entering your funnel?

Jacob: Yes, that's the only way I've ever gotten any work in business was from paid ads until like the last year and a half. Before that, like that was what I knew, that was what I did, and I just did it.

Josh: So good. All right. So now we know like why, why the niche, kind of how you made the transition to your first five. Let's talk a little bit for the like for those that are maybe in a generalist phase in their agency and they're trying to figure things out. What were like in your mind, what were the benefits of going niche and why staying niche to this, to this stage? How did that help you accelerate your

Jacob: I think it definitely allows you to kind of hold a better expert or authoritative position when you really understand them, you understand their business. I mean, we kinda learned to a point that business is business and a lot of principles transfer, but when you can really speak their language and really know what their price ranges should be and what their close rates should be and what their margins should be. It really helps you have a good conversation with them when you know those things, you can show those things, you know their machines, you talk their lingo and actually know it, right? Like there are people who have like lingo in a script and you can kind of tell. But when you actually know it, and especially, you know, I did the selling for the longest time and that That's really what sold it was, you know, people just could tell that I knew the their problems, their pain points. And like one of my clients had said when we had him on a live was that Jacob always knows the next ceiling that we're gonna hit before we hit it and he can just kinda forecast it. And that's just because of, you know, reps in position.

Josh: So good. So it sounds like you really leaned into not just selling into the space, but understanding the industry, understanding the equipment, being able to talk their language, developing ridiculous results for those clients, and then showcasing those results to attract more clients in that same exact space.

Jacob: Absolutely. Yeah, I've spent a bunch of times at land clearing job sites, going all over the place, you know, to talk to them, learn more about them. Lots of time on the phone, you know. Th these guys usually have to drive a lot for the jobs and so their favorite time to talk to us is when they're driving. So you st you end up spending a lot of time on the on the phone, which you know, a lot of people try to Create boundaries and protect their time, which I definitely understand. But I think when you're just whoever can be closest to the customer wins, right? So you the more you're available, the closer you'll get to the customer. In my opinion, that has really helped our success.

Josh: So good. So huge takeaway for those of you listening, watching, you know, don't just choose a niche, right? Really go deep with the niche, get close to the customer, understand the industry, get on the job sites, develop those relationships because that's gonna make you more magnetically attractive. It's also gonna make you better at delivering those world-class results for the clients that you have. Talk to us a little bit about what the program packaging looks like. Like what is it that you do for these land clearing companies? Like what is a typical real you know arrangement?

Jacob: For sure. We basically have three tiers. A starter tier, which is mainly focused on meta ads, right? Now we still have all of our cool back end, you know, CRM, automations, account management. They all get an account manager that's here in the office. They can talk to every day via phone, no email. They can email, but not just email. And of course all of the you know, automation lead form delivering, setting up their SMS and stuff for them so they can get leads and text their leads. And then a full video editing team, right? So we script and build their content plan, you know, how, what, and when they're they need to say, and then they send it in and we get that edited and, you know, built into a creative. Which I didn't realize 'til like a year ago that there are whole agencies that just do that. They're just like creative agencies. I was like, man, we're already doing that for our guys, but So that's kind of starter. And then what I call growth is all of that, plus you add in the whole Google suite. So website, SEO, Google Ads, all that fun stuff. And then I got an upper tier where we meet weekly. It kind of almost involves a little bit of coaching and community, right? That those are all the ones I went and talked personally.

Josh: Hmm. Can you can you talk can you talk us about price like kind of high level pricing like and what's included the each tier?

Jacob: For sure, yeah. Two thousand dollars a month at the first one, four thousand at growth, and then six thousand at the highest.

Josh: Got it so like two to six thousand dollars a month. None of them include the ad spend, right? That's all your management fee plus what you do. Ad spend is separate to that. And I love the fact I bet you started with kind of with the foundation plan. And over the years, now you're g leaning more into coaching community and kind of moving up market with the larger contractors. Is that right or am I reading into that incorrectly?

Jacob: No, that's absolutely right. Cause I definitely went on a tear for a while where we just, you know, pushed people into the starter faster and more often. And it was good, you know, getting twenty, twenty five new clients a month. But when you kind of focus more on that next tier, you're able to provide more results, better value. They get the value more because they have more growth potential at that level. So yeah, definitely this year we've kind of Transition that a little bit.

Josh: Amazing. We have some live viewers with us. Dan says Jacob's the goat. Brad drops a goat in indication. Guys, thanks for joining us live. Andrew's asking a specific question. He says, at any point, did you consider niching based on location, which is where you're based? You got an office versus the industry specific niche. You know, talk about that and why you decided to go industry niche versus just, hey, I serve this local market.

Jacob: Man, that's a great question 'cause our location is pretty awesome. But I mean we to be transparent, we are taking on a handful of very similar type businesses in our local area now that we've sort of built a base here. But I mean no, I did not ever consider it really. Just because it seems like, you know, you'd really limit what you could do, if you just did it based on location. Unless you're talking about a whole estate. I mean, but even then it just gets it gets so broad. Like I had a roofing guy call me today and it's like, hey dude, I'd love to have a conversation with you, but I don't wanna tell you I can do this or that until we look at some stuff together. Because I don't have a thousand roofing case studies. Like to me, I just I can't confidently sell somebody something if I don't have that proof.

Josh: Mm-hmm. Yeah, Andrew, I th I think it's a great question. Our like our first agency, I created the name South Florida Web Solutions. Like we were gonna work with South Florida companies. And what I found was like I could use the B and I play, I could meet with people local, but I couldn't coin myself as the expert in anything. Like I was just doing services for a local market. The positioning is very weak, and the types of client you get is gonna be completely varied. Like Jacob said, from the roofing company to the dentist to the Chiropractor and we had all of those, but we were very average at everything. We weren't able to command the premium. We weren't able to position ourselves as the go-to expert. And so your positioning in a local market versus in an industry is completely different. The amount you can charge, the way that you can attract clients, and the way you can systematize your delivery would kind of be my take on, you know, why niche versus local.

Jacob: Exactly. I would completely agree with that. And even though like there's home services, contractors, whatever, even if you kinda tried to location niche on that, they're still so different. A roofer sells a twenty five thousand dollar roof and then a pest control guy is selling a three hundred dollar service. You know, so it's like It's so different and some of them, you know, let you use LSA and some of them you gotta have more rules with your meta ads and some of them need tons of you know, SEO and some of them SEO doesn't make as much sense. So it just the delivery gets really weird at a certain point. If you wanna run this kind of agency. Now if you're a creative agency, all you're gonna do is go you know, I shouldn't say all you're gonna do. If you're focused on just the media, I think you may have a little more wiggle room. But even then, like I've got so many reps with talking to these guys now. Like I show up at their site, I've got the camera and I'm like, okay, you know, say it like this. Hi, this is Tom with Tom's Land Clearing. If you want your land to look like that and it looks like this right now, comment below, click the link, give us a call, we'll walk the property with you, make sure you don't overpay. And so I can coach them so closely because it's just so many reps on that specific thing, what converts for them. It's just so much easier to deliver.

Josh: So good. Yeah. I think it's a great answer and a great question there, there, Andrew. Jacob, I definitely want to get into some of the big shifts, right? Because you know, you've built seven figures and then you've gone to multiple seven figures. And we talk about some of those transitions, kind of like the you know, beyond seven figure discussion. But I do want to answer ha Hamaza's question here. He says, how to best get leads? And like, how are you using meta ads to beat Andromeda? I know you're gonna be unpacking this at the intensive, but if you can give like Cliff Note versions for People like, how do you actually even early in the early days, how are you using Facebook ads to get those clients in your niche?

Jacob: For sure. This is how I've always got clients again until just this year I put enough time and effort into organic where we're getting some traction on that. But took a long time, right? So historically, meta ads is how we did it. If Dramata didn't exist when we first started doing it, Facebook ads, you know, we all know were easier back in those days, but not easy and not without failure. So I love to tell this story because the first three months I ran meta ads, I did not get any clients from them. So it was like three thousand dollars, five thousand dollars, five thousand dollars, and nothing. And obviously I wanted to quit doing that for sure. But dang, if I would have quit, it was that next October that I went from like three K MRR to like twenty five K MRR because of who I pulled in from the meta ads. It was just it took me that much trial and error to get to the point where it worked. And I have never turned them off since then, which was five years ago.

Josh: Hmm. So I think there's two big lessons there. The first is, you know, don't give up, right? Like the only way you fail is if you pull the plug. And sometimes we give up way too early. So you were in that three months of spending and figuring things out and you could have pulled the plug, you know, just said this agency thing sucks, or advertising my agency in this way sucks, and you would have never gotten to where you are today. I'm curious, was there anything that you changed, you know, in that fourth month? That made a big difference or was it just the amount of time, you know, and the amount of impressions targeting your ideal prospects?

Jacob: I definitely kept iterating. I kept making new versions and saying different things and I was like having people check out my funnels. I was a part of you know, age collective. And if there was a sales training, I was there. If there was a ads coach session, I was there. I'm like, hey, if anybody doesn't want to go, like everybody please go look at my funnel. Just getting as much feedback as I could. But one of the big shifts I did at that time was I stopped running the ads from my Rise page and put it on an industry specific page. That seemed to help because I think it looked less like an agency ad and looked more like, you know, something they related to. But yeah. Just kept at it, kept tweaking until, you know, it unlocked and I've had to do that ever since. Like it's not like those same ads are on today. Yep.

Josh: There's no Senate forget it, unfortunately, ladies and gentlemen. Right. So st sticking with it and being a student of the game. Like early on, you realize there's things you don't know, there's information you need to pick up, and you were able to jump in and get support and get guidance and get feedback. I feel like you continue to do that. Like as part of seven figure agency, as part of acquisition.com, like you're a big time student of the game. You take massive action, but you also get around people that have solved the problems that you're looking to solve that can help shortcut that process for you.

Jacob: Exactly. Yeah, I've always I've always bet on getting the information for sure or getting that accountability.

Josh: Yeah. So good. So I'd love to kind of drill down because you mentioned you know, getting to a million dollars kind of as part of Agency Collective. And I think that's how we met. We were fortunate enough to acquire Agency Collective from Lakes Nongrass, and we started bringing you to the seven figure agency events. And you know, you transitioned, now you're at three hundred and fifty plus. What were some of the biggest shifts you had to make as you kind of transitioned from a seven figure agency to a multiple seven figure agency?

Jacob: For sure. Golly, there was so much. But the three big things for me personally, I had too many irons in the fire. So I had too many other responsibilities or commitments that I ended up having to cut out to really make it worthwhile. In the beginning we used white label services, which I'm not saying like there's giant agencies to use white label services. They can be great. Where we were at that was not the best thing for us anymore. So we started hiring in-house. We had a lot more control over the deliverables, which really helped us increase results. And so much things were just kind of reliant on me. So that was, you know, huge pivotal moment there. And then of course sales. I did hire sales right before we were at a million, but I was pretty much doing everything right up to about fifty K a month and then started sort of tacking on from there. But to get anywhere past a hundred K a month it was like I need I need help in every area.

Josh: So like sounds like, you know, going up market, kind of going with the bigger contractors, putting the team and the systems in place, and then getting yourself out of the out of the sales process, like while still being fully in the founder seat, fully in the visionary seat, but kind of separating yourself more and more from the day to day.

Jacob: Big time. Yeah, and I'm glad you mentioned the up market because that was another huge one where, you know, there was a time where we were You know, it we would just take anybody who would say yes, right? But really drawing a line in the sand of like, hey, we work with established people at this level, and if that's not you, we're not for you, you know. That really helped all kinds of things. I think I told you one of the first times I met you, we had we had put out like a s a really cheap offer one time, six hundred bucks a month or something like that. And we got a ton of people on it and a ton of them churned because they just weren't the Right people who were ready for this type of service.

Josh: So good. So talk to us, talk to us a little bit about the team structure. Cause now you said I think it was twenty-five or thirty team members, most of them working in the office. Talk to us about the leadership team, how you planned that out, how you structured it, how do you manage this amount of clients at scale?

Jacob: For sure. Account management was probably the biggest one just because, you know, we had built this culture of being very available for our clients. And once we started hitting that, you know, hundred client mark, we really needed help there. And so that was kind of the first team we really built out in-house was the account management team, client success. And then I still kept a lot of the deliverables on my side with, you know, building websites, ads, creatives, all the things. But you know, people would probably be mad at me for this, but at the at a certain point I had the account managers doing a lot of things. Like they were starting to do creatives, they were starting to do website edits, they were starting to build automations and kind of become, you know, CRM high level experts. And that was kinda what helped us make the transition from white label to building those teams in house. Where now we have SEO team, website team, you know, ads team, Facebook ads team, creative, Google Ads team, et cetera. And then of course the sales team. So That's kind of where we're at right now. The biggest hole. The reason I'm saying this, because if there's anybody out there who thinks they would be great for this position, we are looking for an operations manager, to really kind of oversee that part of the organizational chart.

Josh: Critical seat. And it sounds like you've you've kind of built that infrastructure leaning into account management, which is gonna drive retention. There's a great question here from Matthew. He's asking, like, what's your churn rate? You know, like what does that number look like? And how have how are you maximizing retention in your in your process? We don't wanna get into that talk track a little bit.

Jacob: Absolutely. Yeah, best lead generation for getting our own clients has always been meta ads. Always. Churn rate right now is like three, either three or three point six, somewhere right in there. We got down to like two point seven this year. But yeah, I mean it is a seasonal business. I don't like to use that excuse at all. But you do always have a good amount of people who are just like, I'm gonna pause or stop for the winter. So we creeped up above that three percent. I'm still trying to get it back down.

Josh: That's really good at scale. I'll tell you, that's way above the industry standard. So you're you're crushing it.

Jacob: Thank you, thank you. How much have we automated with the AI? So there's still humans touching everything. We just made them like 10x more efficient with AI. There's not a whole lot of like just totally automated processes. I've got some cool like video editing tools where they can, you know, maybe edit quicker or like the in-depth stuff the video editors do, but the quick, like hey, clip caption logo. They've got that there. You know we've built I would get too deep if I started nerding out on all this, but essentially we have an automated whole process.

Josh: This is great. Now go as nerd as you want. People love it. Yeah, people love to hear it.

Jacob: Okay, yeah. So I mean I've gone full in on agents, right? And so these agents have access to everything I've ever said, done, recorded, learned from, pulled from every client result, every client account, every client conversation, every conversation with our clients, all of their conversations from high level, every fathom recording that exists, every YouTube live stream I've ever put out. And they're constantly being trained, building playbooks and So like one of my favorite ones is the Content Media Day playbook. And so I've d you know, for a while, like the mature skill level for using AI was how big of a prompt can you give it? And now it's like if you build the agent right because it has enough brain and database back here, it's like how short of a prompt can you give it? So I just say like, hey, this client needs a media day, and it pops out a 10-page content plan for that in-person Media Day. With everything needed, including the scripts built in the way that we know converts, right? So that's a huge piece. Probably the most automated thing we have right now would be websites, which has been such a benefit to our clients, because we went from, you know, putting a lot of time and effort to put build like a five to ten page website to where now we can put out a 40, 50 page website that's better SEO optimized. Faster to edit for them and it can be delivered in you know way shorter amount of time. So those are I mean some of the huge ones, but

Josh: So good. So I want to continue on the AI track because I know everyone wants to hear about that. I do want to though go back real quick to retention. At scale, like an average 3% retent churn rate is phenomenal. Like what are some of the things you feel like you've done in your delivery and your experiences with the clients to maintain at that level at over 100 clients, is which is when it really starts to get harder to maintain that level.

Jacob: For sure. I mean, we put a lot of time, effort, and dollars to training the account management team. I will say that if anybody ever wants to talk to me, I talk to them. I put out tons and tons of content for free, right? But also I'll always talk to a client if they want to talk to me. So I think just being available, always hearing them out, is a huge piece of it. And then of course transparency. I'm avoiding results. Like you're getting good results, they're they're staying. Yeah.

Josh: Results is important. Right. That's mission critic. That's A one number one, most important. Everything else is supplemental, but important.

Jacob: Yes. And so, you know, but also being able to show those results, like working with blue collar guys, you know, they don't know what ROAS means. You know what I'm saying? So you have to be able to get on the same level as them and show them the value. But these girls truly care. Like if you go read our Google reviews, the guys are not talking about like, I made so much money with them, which I mean sometimes would be nice if they would say that 'cause they have, but they're like You know, when my when my wife had surgery they mailed me a cookie and a stuffy or they sent me a Yeti bucket on my birthday, like just truly caring about them. I know care is not just gifts, but those are just examples of what people say. That we truly, truly care about them and the value goes way beyond ads and ROI. That's what a lot of our reviews say. So I think that would be a huge one.

Josh: Yeah, I love that. I think I really believe that obviously results is the main reason that a client's gonna stay or leave. But beyond that, the main reason is gonna be perceived indifference. And it sounds like you've really leaned into you know, like you being present and available if the client needs you, having a team that's there, that's not overburdened but can really meet with the clients and show the results, move things forward, and then going the extra mile, the little things that they don't expect, the gifts the life change acknowledgements are tend to be the reasons that people stick around long term.

Jacob: Yes. Big time. Big time for sure. And I love that you said that 'cause I see a lot of people asking, like, hey, what's the recommended response time to an to an email or how often should you be available for your clients? It's like we have clients who call every day. And I know, you know, a lot of people will say that's crazy. You gotta draw boundaries and stuff. It works out for us. I don't know what say.

Josh: Yeah. Like if you're if you're setting the standard that you're gonna respond in twenty four hours, that's not gonna work really well, right? Like they need someone that's immediately paying attention, that can immediately respond. Do you find most of your clients engage with you via text message or is it on phone calls or is it on Zoom reviews? Like what are you finding the most standard response is?

Jacob: Definitely text and calls. You get a ton of those text messages that are like, Hey, can you talk? It's like and again, it's usually when they're driving is when they have, you know, time. Or like for most guys, if they call me, they're in the machine and you just hear just mmm, you know, you hear the s the skit steer of the excavator run in the background. But yeah, lots of phone calls, but text is I mean it's probably, you know. A couple hundred texts a day for sure.

Josh: So I think it's it's an important insight. Like if you're listening, watching in your niche, if you tried to force clients into a Zoom meeting for the sales call versus recognizing they're in the field, they'll take the conversation on the phone, you wouldn't close as many deals. And if you tried to force your client into a monthly review on Zoom where they're in front of a computer and you can show them all the things, they probably wouldn't engage, right? And that would lead to higher churn. I think that's really valuable insight and kind of like You feel like that has led to more sales and better retention?

Jacob: Big time. I will put out a negative thing there. We have like a top 10% of clients who are higher level. They came from other business, they understand business at a different level. Those guys we have to pretty much treat differently, which kind of messes the system up a little bit. And we've had to go through like some pretty good. Client constructive feedback in those scenarios, and I end up disseminating down to like, hey, you have to understand most of our guys get on their daughter's iPad if they're gonna get on the Zoom with us. Like we have to keep this stuff very, very digestible, very close to where they're at. But then we do have guys who do understand. Metrics and percentages and ROAS and you know all these things. And so, you know, we could probably be better about the expectation of level of reporting based on packages, but we kind of more so customize that to those few guys who need it.

Josh: Love it. I think that's great. And when you say trying to get the reporting down to how they understand it and like the way they want to interpret it, what do you and your account managers report to clients? Like what is it that you're like showing them to prove the value and to kind of keep them on board?

Jacob: For sure. So it's a lot of pushing every week for them to enter in every bit of their lead sales pipeline. We've built it for them in high level, lots of automated things, but they have to move it through the stages and they have to put the values. And if they don't, account manager calls them, asks them, hey, what leads, estimates, quotes, and jobs have you gotten this week? And they'll manually input it for them. But that's mostly what we're reporting on, like, hey. You spent this much, you got this many leads. From what I can see or what you told me, this is how many jobs and what value you got them at. And then from there, recommendations, right? Like if we notice that there's their lead to quote rates low. We're gonna recommend things there. If we notice that their quote, the close rate's low, we're gonna recommend things there. If their volume overall is low, we're like, hey, we need to do this or we need this from you so that we can refresh your creative or whatever move we want to make. Or it's like, hey, you said you wanted to hit two million bucks this year. We're at 1.5. Here's your you know cost to acquire a client and here's your average job. Let's double your ad spend and get you where you want to be.

Josh: So good. I think that like the constructive thing, I think what you've done really, really well is you're not just generating leads and saying, hey, hope it's good. Like you're committed to let's make sure we know which of those leads generate an estimate, which of those estimates actually generated revenue. So you can connect the dots from like here's what you spent with us, and here's the revenue return on investment. And that's elevating you to a consultant level, to like a CMO level. Which I think is a big reason you can command the price that you do and retain at the level that you do. Love it. So there's a question here from Rabbi. He's saying, Do you still build c sites on WordPress for clients? And like what are some of the b bottlenecks you're having in your development workflow? I know this is something you've worked on heavily in the last couple of months.

Jacob: Yes. So yeah, we have I think we have like fifty or sixty WordPress sites still, but we're not building new ones on there. We found that speed load times, abilities to edit and customize with our new workflows just a lot a lot smoother custom built versus using a builder is what we kind of transition to.

Josh: Hmm. So off WordPress, going straight to the hosted platform and you're finding that's quicker to deploy, easier to optimize, and ultimately gonna generate better results for the for the clients.

Jacob: It has so far. It has generated better. I'm not saying you can't generate just in our process that's been better.

Josh: Yeah. Brian's asking if you could clarify the industry specific page versus the rise online advertising page. Like what like is that a separate page that's like land clearing business, you know, success or something like that?

Jacob: Yes. Like for example my Rise page probably has two or three thousand followers and this land clearing branded page has seven thousand. That's what the ads have always been running from. So now I post to both, but it definitely gets a lot more.

Josh: So good. A useful insight. And guys, keep the questions coming. We got I've still got a lot I want to cover with Jacob, but we want to answer your questions as we go. And so, like Brian, in your case, that would be if you're working with asphalt companies, then instead of being like asphalt marketer, it would be asphalt, you know, business or something like that. Is that right, Jacob? Okay. All right. Alex is asking what you charge for websites. I know we covered this early, but for the sake of Yeah, just the answer that for

Jacob: Yeah, right now they're three grand.

Josh: Three grand for the website and then between two thousand and six thousand dollars per month for the program.

Jacob: Yes, yeah. So if they jump on any of those higher tiers, the website's included. We don't charge extra. That's just like a la carte website, I guess you'd say.

Josh: Hmm. There you go. Included in the package. Okay. So Matthew's asking what would you mind sharing what your average client ad spend is?

Jacob: Yep. Three to five thousand.

Josh: Three to five grand. If they wanted to spend less, how do you

Jacob: Minim minimum is one thousand and I've highly considered raising that bar a little bit 'cause a as Meta has grown, like that fifty dollar a day is kind of becoming the new floor for any good amount of air area, you know.

Josh: I think it's a it's a great question. It's something you want to be super aware of. Is there's a minimum viable spend, whether it's with Facebook or Meta or whether it's with Google ads, like if they only want to spend 500 bucks a month, you're probably not gonna have enough traction to generate enough leads to generate a job. Like in our case, a plumbing job, in Jacob's case, a land clearing project. So understand what that floor needs to be and just be willing to say, look, if you can't spend our twenty five hundred dollar management fee plus the $2,500 ad spend, it's probably not a good fit, right? Because you're gonna set yourself up and the client for disappointment. Yeah. Lex is asking, what's the average project worth or job worth in land clearing?

Jacob: So, I mean it's like anything, it can definitely vary widely. Five K to fifty K plus. I mean, we just had a couple of guys land multi six figure jobs. But anytime I'm doing the math with them, I always go on the way conservative end. So I will always say five K. 'cause like guy with one machine really can't be profitable for anything less than, you know, twenty five hundred, three thousand dollars a day for their business. So if you're considering, you know, one to two day job, five.

Josh: So you like I think that's a useful insight as well. Like you don't base it on the large project, the fifty to sixty thousand dollar project. You base it on five. If you could justify ROI based on that, then you get a couple of those big jobs, you knocked it out of the park for the client. They're like, Wow, you just blew my mind, you've massively exceeded our expectations.

Jacob: For sure. I've always put that quote at the bottom of any like presentations I'm giving. It's like one job can pay for this.

Josh: Yeah, and that's great in high-ticket services like yours. We don't have the benefit of that necessarily in plumbing where the average transaction is like seven fifty. So we've got to get enough volume. And like in our case, we need probably 10 jobs to justify our fee. In you know, in every industry, it's a little bit different. But if you know that number and you can build like, hey, look, we're gonna get there in the first one to three months, you can get really predictable, great results, which leads to great retentions, which r leads to great word of mouth. Guys, I love the QA that you guys are dropping in. So keep them coming. Jake is asking, have you found Google paid ads to be effective for your clients?

Jacob: Effective, yes, as effective as Facebook, no, which is very controversial, and a lot of people just are kind of surprised by that because it's a home service, right? But the difference is people are way more solution aware for things like roofing HVAC plumbing, etc. Not everyone is solution aware of land clearing services and what that is and what it entails. And but when they see a video and they're like, my land looks like that, and I would love for it to look like that, and that machine just did it in no time, that works really, really well. Do you want to be on Google when those people who are solution aware search? Absolutely. But overall. Five years, close to twenty million dollars in ad spend now. Facebook wins every time and that's why our starter package is Facebook before Google.

Josh: So good. Yeah. So I mean, I love the fact that you literally lean into like the visual demonstration of before and after. And you've kind of really you've really perfected that in your niche. And I think that's a really unique thing that you bring to the table. Versus if all you're doing is Google ads and you're looking for the person that searched for a land clearing company near me, that's super competitive. The average cost per click is super high. And you're not capturing the rest of the market that might need land clearing but doesn't even realize that like that's available and it's like something they want to do.

Jacob: Right. Exactly. Yeah. Absolutely.

Josh: Amazing. So George is asking if you're including the website in your higher tier packages and pretty much all your packages, how long is the is the term commitment and how do you how do you work around that?

Jacob: For sure. Right now we're selling twelve month contracts, but we do have an option when they sign up to do a no contra they can just kind of pay a setup fee and do no contract.

Josh: Mm. Good. That's a great way, great way to handle it. And another key thing, right? Like as you went to, I would say, general speaking, like as you go to seven figures and your big constraint tends to be retention, man, we're getting clients, but we're like we're we're losing almost as fast as we're selling is going to a longer term contract, going up market, larger clients. Being willing to say, look, if you can't commit to do this with us for a year, it's probably not a fit. You're gonna get a better client, which is ultimately gonna Have a better expectation, which is gonna lead to longer term client relationships. Awesome. So I want to talk a little bit about metrics. And I feel like you're the kind of guy that really gets into the metrics, likes to know the metrics. Within your agency, what are some of the key numbers that you like to keep a close pulse on for your agency specifically?

Jacob: Definitely CAC, right? Cost to acquire a client for me is a huge one I'm looking at. So that one's on our scorecard. Cash on hand, you know, I definitely like to know that. The other things we watch is ads launched. So we launch about a hundred new ads a week. So I know if that dips, you know, we have some kind of bottleneck in the creative side. Customer reported errors. Our scorecard is supposed to be Zero, right, for the week. We usually average a couple a month, which I'm I'm definitely happy about. Another one clients in red, so people who, you know, their results are not where they need to be, or there's some kind of miscon miscommunication. We like to keep that below three. We usually, you know, are right in that range on our scorecard. And then wins reported. This one's huge for me. I post, if anybody follows me, I post pretty much client result wins daily. Either to my story or actually to the pages. And so we have a Slack channel and you know it's it's a culture of asking clients about what they have going on. And so every week we want to see at least ten wins reported. That's those are really the big ones I'm looking at.

Josh: Su super important, right? To know the numbers, to track the numbers. Like where d where do you track that? Do you have a s a dashboard for that? Do you have a Slack channel? Do you are you're manually keying it? Like talk to me about how the how that data is surfaced for you in the agency.

Jacob: Yes, so talking about nerd now, like I've got all of this stuff in some pretty cool AI dashboards. They're not AI anymore. I guess AI just built them, but like I have a sales tracker that shows me, you know, all of the sales numbers plus CAC and new R MR added and all those things. But we have scorecard and ninety, the EOS tool, is where we keep all those numbers.

Josh: Yep. Awesome. So knowing the numbers gives you the ability to optimize for the numbers, which gives you the ability to make the adjustments and grow the agency and make the changes. Something you mentioned early was one of the big things that helped you shift from, you know, seven figures to multiple seven figures was getting out of the sales seat. And that's always a challenge in the agency because you're the face, you know how to sell it, you've got a high close ratio. Talk to us about how you made that transition and how you found the right person. Got out of being in every sales.

Jacob: Yes. Some of it was necessity. So this was super early on. It was actually my first hire was a setter. I got him from Cole Gordon's program. Just 'cause I didn't know anything about anything. I didn't know any better. Obviously, Cole Gordon's the man with sales. I got into his funnel, you know, blah. So, anyways, I got my first setter through there, and so he came trained, right? And in that program, they also trained you how to interview and how to do like role play and stuff. And then they're training them on how to look good on the interview. It was it was pretty cool. Anyways, but it was very expensive. I've never done it again since then, but I ended up getting this 18-year-old kid who went to school from eight to twelve, and he worked for me twelve to eight, which was beautiful because a lot of these guys want to talk in the evening. And man, he was a killer. Killer. He worked for me for three years. We made six figures every year. He worked for me. Yeah. So

Josh: Eighteen. That's phenomenal. Good for him.

Jacob: You know, basically I was I finally cracked leads, right? And so I'm getting all these leads. I'm calling them, you know, doesn't matter where I was at, the store, the bathroom, at a job, whatever. And so I'm calling them like crazy. And then I was like, you know, I can't do the appointments and call all the people. So that was why I got him. Then he was booking me 10 calls a day. And I immediately just did not have a life anymore. It was crazy, right? And I was just selling, I was closing like 60 to 70 percent. And so I mean it was it was overwhelming very quickly, but I got fortunate that his dad was a closer for some other offer and he wanted, you know, to get on a new offer. So I hired his dad and that was that was literally what took us from like 50k a month to over 100k a month. And so then I've I've been out of sales really except for referrals since then.

Josh: So I want to drill down on that. It's a beautiful transition. How much better I guess I all of us have a different feeling about this. How did you feel the first couple of times the deal was closed and you didn't have to be on the call?

Jacob: It's the greatest feeling ever. Yeah.

Josh: That's the way I f I feel about it. I think as agency owners, we like we know how to sell and so we get good at it. We kinda hold on to that typically till the very you know as long as we can. But the day that a lead can come in, a prospect can be sold, onboarded, and maintained without us having to be personally involved is like almost like liberation day. It's not that you don't have to work anymore, but that's just a huge weight. Like you really have a business at that point, in my opinion.

Jacob: Yep. Yeah, it's an amazing even to this day, like I get hyped when I see the Slack channel notification of a new person close. Like I'm still very close to the process, but like you said, it's not reliant on me, which is huge. And it also allows me to spend a bunch of time putting out content and talking to customers and marketing where it just makes it easier for the sales guys.

Josh: Yeah. I think it's important like for those of you still listening and feel free to ask your questions. We're still live, we're happy to answer your questions as we go. You said the first hire was an appointment setter, but that wasn't a cold-calling appointment setter that was like calling into land clean blind. You dialed in your marketing machine, you had tons of inquiries coming in, and so there was leads for them to follow up with. I think you get a much different outcome if in your agency you hire an appointment setter early, but you don't have that deal flow.

Jacob: Yes. Absolutely. I have never done Outbound and I know people do amazing at it. So I'm not knocking it. It's just I didn't go that route. But yeah. It's it's been it's been great. Blessing for sure.

Josh: So good. So can you talk to us a little bit about, and you don't have to say specifically for these two guys, but how you how you would structure compensation for that type of role?

Jacob: For sure. So Cole Gordon had given me what I was supposed to do for that guy. And it was two K base plus ten percent, which I quickly I shouldn't say quick I did quickly realize that was too much. Ten percent of cash collected. Which was a lot.

Josh: Ten percent of residual or ten percent of the first month? Okay. Into per into like into per like ongoing or just from the beginning?

Jacob: So at that time we weren't selling contracts per se. We were selling like three month packages. So like a at that time Facebook package was three grand for three months, right? So he would get three hundred bucks for that. It was definitely a lot. Because the closers were getting twenty percent. So I was diming out thirty percent of cash collected for almost a year before I like had the confidence to tell them like, hey guys, I gotta change this.

Josh: On the high side, yeah.

Jacob: And they were cool with it. They understood. And I think you're i if you're a good boss and you create a good culture and I mean in their shoes, I'm spoon feeding them everything, right? Like they're not going and getting their own anything. So it went pretty well.

Josh: So I think we all learn lessons with comp plans, right? And we had a couple of really poorly structured comp plans early that cost us and we had to restructure if you had to rebuild it from the ground up for those agencies that are like, I you know, I've got my deal flow going, I'm ready to hire either a closer or an appointment, like how would you structure it knowing what you know now?

Jacob: Good sales guys want commission. They prefer commission over base because they know what they're capable of. So I would go that route. Then that's my closer right now, is all commission. I do still have base on the setter just because I want them working leads all the time, no matter what. But yeah, if I could go back, yeah, I would definitely. Definitely structure it a little a little different and I also did bonuses because that's kind of what they told me to do. And so yeah, they had big percentages and very easy to hit bonuses. And the other thing is like when they hit if you have like certain things like that and you don't have a next step up increase, they'll usually stop. Like if they hit their goal for the two weeks or the month or whatever. Yeah.

Josh: Right, it's like, okay, I'm there, I hit my target, I'm out. Like let's let's sandbag to next month type of thing.

Jacob: Exactly. And I think even subconsciously they kinda do that. Versus 'cause you see the opposite happen if they're not there yet, those last few days they're hustling. And so if you just incentivize that hustle to happen all the time, it's a lot better.

Josh: Hmm. So good. Lots of lessons there. So you grew this thing, right? You like Facebook marketing to generate opportunities, sold the deals, delivered it on your own. Then you said, I need some additional sales support. That gave you a lift. Then you built the organizational structure with account managers, with team in place to help you do all of the work. I know you're doing some innovative things kind of next level as you think about where you're headed next. Talk to us about what you're doing with live events, how that plays into the big picture for retention and for client acquisition, and kind of how you've how you've kind of shifted your thinking from seven figures, multiple seven figures to eight figures and beyond.

Jacob: Absolutely. I will say, like, I kind of talked a lot about that sales year, which is what kind of boosted us. Then retention was like in that seven to eight percent or churn was. So then I focused on fixing that and sales stayed steady. And then this last year, once retention was down in that three percent range, we hit sales again hard this year. But Next year slash right now, I want to do both, right? Like ideally you do both at the same time. Which hiring's definitely helped with that. But I will say live is the way, right? If you can, like right now, we're live, unscripted, real, just talking. That wins. And TikTok really changed this. People like to see real people kind of raw, unedited, just doing their thing. So I put out insane amounts of content. We go live minimum one time a week, if not more, just talking to our customers, talking to our audience. And then this year I went and visited I think twenty three in person, which was another huge like live thing. So obviously I got content while I was there, but I'm also face to face with that real person. They get to see and hear me do what I do. You know, in the best way. So next year, January eighth through the tenth, we're hosting our first live event for clients where they're coming to us. We're gonna get them all in the same room, which we've got to experience that from the other side with y'all's events. I mean that's what hooked us from day one when we got to come out there was like, wow, you can get into a room of all these people who understand where you're at. Like you're not this, you know, out on an island here. And we want to provide that for our clients. And when we launched that, I mean it's already almost sold out. So I was very surprised at how many people wanted to jump on that so quickly. So I'm I'm super excited about that and the ability to just get them together, help them set up for 2027, show them like my guys in that top tier, they get to see how I help them solve problems every week. But to the point where the agency's grown, there are guys who have never seen me do that or any of our team do that, except for maybe in a quick live video like this. So I'm excited to have them all in a room like that.

Josh: So good. I think a great question. Alex is asking what like what are you planning content wise for an event like that? Is it only clients? Are you bringing prospects as well? And just like rough sketch, like what are you planning to unpack in that type of event?

Jacob: Only clients with small exception, we have a very close JV who runs a coaching program for our exact same audience. He's got a couple of guys in there that we invited to come out, but 99% just clients. The focus is gonna be mindset shift from operator to owner and how to grow your business in 2027. We're gonna be really focusing on breaking beliefs right at the beginning of like why you should grow a bigger business. Just to give you a little taste of that. It's like the business itself is risky. It's hard, it takes a lot of work, stressful, blood, sweat, and tears. On top of that, this business is capital intensive with machines and trucks and trailers and tools and things that break down. And it's super risky because you have this machine that can just kill people, you know, driving down the road. Next to people's houses on their properties, very risky. Well, I hate seeing guys make three, four, five hundred thousand dollars a year and take home fifty or even a hundred. Like you could go work a job and have way less risk and make a hundred thousand dollars and clock out. Why would you go through all of this to not build a business that you're able to Grow your wealth, support your family, support your community, support your employees, and really re get rewarded for that risk and that effort you put in. So that's gonna be the first thing is breaking that, right? And then tactically showing them like, hey, this is where your business is at. Here's how you figure out your numbers, here's where you need to be priced, here's how you reverse engineer your goals, tack that together. Kind of, you know, similar to the hot seats. That we do at the event. We're gonna try to do something, you know, pretty much like that. And then of course give them the tools. We have our ClearPath tool, which is like an AI advisor for them that does all kinds of crazy stuff, but it's built and trained on land clearing specifically. So you know, there's gonna have those tools there. I'm gonna have a content studio set up so we can like show them live how to get better content quick, easy, in a hurry. And then we're gonna of course have informal strategy type. Time built into there.

Josh: So good, man. So many great insights here on how you've grown and scaled the agency. First of all, kudos and congratulations. Second, thanks for your willingness to come on and just share. Like, hey, here's what's worked for me. Here's how I've done it so that other agencies can kind of learn and model your behavior and hopefully model your outcomes. If you if you had one last piece of wisdom, wisdom for that agency owner that's trying to get to the next level, what would it be? If you have more than one, by all means.

Jacob: Man, I feel like you just have to truly I know it sounds so vague, but you have to really care that you're doing you're doing something really great for them. I think that's definitely number one. And then if I was able to tack on two subs, it would be like, don't tell people to spend money marketing their business if you're not willing to do it. So do it yourself. And then also. Raise your prices. That's one of the that's one of the huge, huge things. And that whole sermon I just gave on that I want to give to my guys, I had to basically have the belief broken for me. And I rent at two million dollars a year, we were less than five percent profit. And it's hard, man. It's not worth doing all of that work to just not have any money in the bank. And so that was one thing, you know, we really fixed this year. And it's been pretty awesome.

Josh: So good. So many great insights and takeaways. Sounds to me like, first of all, you've been identifying constraints all along the process. Where are you stuck? Retention, team, facilitation. Identify the constraint and solve for it so you can break through. Build the machine, which is like, let's build the infrastructure, let's build the meeting rhythms, let's get all of the all of the infrastructure in place. Operate from a scoreboard. It sounds you've got a really tight scoreboard that you operate from. You know your metrics. You've got it coming up consistently so that you can make decisions. You've built leaders, not just doers. And you're obviously continuing to build that, but you've got account managers, you've got salespeople, you've got leaders in the company that are moving things forward and you're focused on profitability, right? Because who wants to be at 2 million or 3 million or 5 million if you're not being healthy profit and really dialing in the metrics and knowing those numbers? Amazing. Jacob, thanks so much for sharing. So many great insights and takeaways. If somebody wanted to connect with you further, maybe a land clearing company that's interested or just an agency owner that wants to check in with you, what would be the best way to connect with you?

Jacob: For sure. Any social media or email would be Jacob at riseonline ads dot com.

Josh: Good Jacob thanks for taking the time today guys thanks for being on here and listening in Tiffany amazing kudos to you as well you and Jacob make such a great team thanks for sharing thanks for being on here excited to see you guys next week in Miami and we're gonna we're gonna wrap it up there thanks everybody thanks Jacob