He Turned One Presentation Into a Double Seven-Figure Law Firm Agency

Full transcript of Josh Nelson’s interview with Jay Berkowitz. Lightly edited for readability.

Josh Nelson: We are part of our agency growth series where we're interviewing highly successful digital marketing agencies from across the country on how they've grown and scaled their digital marketing agencies. Today, I'm super excited to be joined live in studio by Jay Berkowitz from Ten Golden Rules, specializes in working with law firms, runs an amazing multiple seven-figure agency, and is a real true thought leader in this digital marketing space- Thank you… For quite some time. So Jay, thanks so much for being here.

Jay Berkowitz: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Josh Nelson: So for the, for the sake of the, of the watchers, like, k-kind of give us the lay of the land. How many clients? How much recurring revenue? Like, what's the current status in the business?

Jay Berkowitz: I guess we've got about fifty clients. We were, congratulated this year to become Titans, so a double seven-figure agency, and, that was about six months ago. We've kept growing, nice and steady, like I'm the, I'm the turtle. My wife calls me the turtle. Slow and steady wins the race, right?

Josh Nelson: Yeah. Al-always Mr. Steady. Excellent. So multiple seven figures, working with law firms. Tell us a little bit about the service offering. Like, what is it that you do for these law firms that you work with?

Jay Berkowitz: Well, I like to say we do all four parts of Google because, a-about seventy percent of our business is personal injury, and you don't go to Facebook to look for a personal injury lawyer, so it's all about Google. Hmm. And, you know, I've, I've sort of coined that there's four parts of Google now in that business 'cause there's the Google Screen, the Google Maps, the pay-per-click and the SEO. And there's really four different specialists in our, in our firm, or four different specialties that we've had to master, and we do social media and videos and newsletters and other stuff, but really the heart of it is Google.

Josh Nelson: Excellent. So lots of organic search- Yeah… Focused. Idea kind of like price point, like what the monthly fee looks like for a typical client?

Jay Berkowitz: We average around five thousand a month.

Josh Nelson: Okay. So it's a, an expensive niche to do. On the, on the higher end of the- Yeah.

Jay Berkowitz: If you want to compete in personal injury, you need an agent, a good agency.

Josh Nelson: Excellent. So multiple seven figures working with lawyers, higher end service offering. Tell us a little bit about the backstory 'cause I… Like to multiple seven figures is an exciting journey. Tell us how you got into digital marketing and kind of how you got to where you are at today.

Jay Berkowitz: Yeah, sure. Well, Ten Golden Rules, I mean, my… Even going further back, I worked for big brands, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, as a director of marketing, and I saw the internet coming one day when I was at Coca-Cola, and we were getting our first website up, and we were only allowed to put the Coke jingle. Hmm. And Pepsi had interactive games and fun stuff for kids, and it was really cool. And I, you know, they… Coke would only let us run the jingle, and so I knew the internet was gonna be a game changer, so I wanted to get all into internet. Took a job with Sprint, getting people their first emails and getting companies their first websites, and then I joined eDiets.com, and it was an online dot-com in two thousand and two. Google was still in beta. Mark Zuckerberg was still in high school. And we were spending forty million dollars on MSN, Yahoo, and AOL running ads to bring people to eDiets. Hmm. So I was very lucky at, you know, two thousand and two to run that many ads and see how people actually react. What do they click on? What do they do when they come to the website? We were always running an AB test, so we were learning. Like, what do people like? What do they respond to? What, what kind of offers? Signing them up for our newsletter. And so I was asked to speak at the Direct Marketing Association, and I wrote the Ten Golden Rules of Online Marketing 'cause it was kind of a personal brand exercise to, you know, sort of carve out my expertise and position myself as a digital expert in th-these very early days, and it worked. I didn't know where it was gonna go, but when I spoke on stage, and you always say stage time is money time. Yeah. A bunch of people came rushing up at the end and asked me if I would consult for them and help them get them on the internet and explain to them this new Google thing. And so, you know, I did that for many years. Everywhere I could, I presented the Ten Golden Rules, and, you know, people would come up and ask me to consult, and that's, that was my sales strategy for many years.

Josh Nelson: Amazing. And, and that's, that presentation on Ten Golden Rules, I remember at one point, right in the early days of Click Incorporated, which is now Plumbing and HVAC SEO, I was in Fort Lauderdale at a presentation where you were- Oh, great… You were the big presenter. Like, and I was like, "Wow, this is, this is awesome." I do remember that. Yeah. Yeah.

Jay Berkowitz: I mean, you know, I used to say, "Have PowerPoint, will travel." There was an old, – Have PowerPoint, will travel… Western, like have gun, will travel. Will Paladin or something. So I just would, you know, go everywhere I could. I would present at all the American Marketing Association, Digital Marketing Association, and, that's how I built the business in the early days.

Josh Nelson: Amazing. So you worked for some of these big Fortune five hundred companies. Then you had a startup where you had a massive success within, digital marketing, and you kind of positioned yourself. What made… Like, how did you make the pivot into a focus on legal?

Jay Berkowitz: Well, you know, I had a niche agency and then… We didn't really call them niche agencies back then, but I was in digital when digital was very unique at that time. And, you know, people would say, "Well, you don't do TV?" we could, but we, you know, we wanted to be… You know, I saw that as the future and I wanted to be there. And then over the years, you know, we're, we're a twenty-year-old agency now, so after ten or fifteen years, we had a lot of competition. Hmm. And, and then it also broadened out so much. Like, you know, people would ask me to do an Amazon store or do affiliate marketing or do, you know, s-certain kind of social media, and it became harder and harder to be an expert at everything. And, I, I like to tell the story that I had a God wink. It's an expression I heard that I really like, and I met this guy, and he had a niche agency, and he only dealt with franchises, and he had like a two million dollar recurring revenue business. I'm like, "Wow, how could you do that with one niche?" Like, I'm targeting two hundred SIC codes. You're only in one. Then, there's a, the first… We're, we're based here in South Florida, as Josh is, and there, our biggest dot-com success or Technical success was a company called eBuilder, and they sold this company for five hundred million dollars. And I met the partners, the Antebi brothers, and they told the story that, you know, they were slugging away with this SaaS model, and the one brother was trying to convince the other brother, "We've gotta focus. We've gotta focus." And they focused only in on healthcare, only software for people building hospitals. Mm. And the thing blew up, and he said, like, "There's only three hundred companies in the world we need to target," and they built a five hundred million dollar- Wow… Exit. And so– and then the third godwink was when I went to the Seven Figure Agency conference, and I was meeting people who were, like, concrete coating experts who became concrete coating marketing experts and seven-figure agencies. Yeah. And our fr- good friend Billy Sticker, who worked at a chiropractor's office in marketing and started ChiroCandy marketing only to chiropractors and has, like, I think a three times seven-figure agency. S- you know, three million dollars, agency. So I realized, okay, I've gotta focus now, and we had about forty percent of our business was seminar and events. We were doing, like, the big Tony Robbins events. Mm. And about forty percent of our business was lawyers, and the lawyers definitely fit the Seven Figure Agency model because the events would come and go, and they might pay their bills, and, you know, it was performance-based. We were always chasing these guys down. But the lawyers were very good, steady, clients. They could sign a monthly retainer. They really needed your services, and they paid their bills, which was quite nice. So, so we picked the lawyer niche, I guess about four… Three to four years ago.

Josh Nelson: Amazing. So a couple of things he said there that hopefully stand out to you. Stage time is money time. Yeah. Like, getting opportunities to speak, and there's riches in the niches. Like, you're, you're, you're a world-class marketer- Yeah… And I'm sure it's hard to say, "Man, I could work with all of these companies," and take that skill and say, "Hey, what's the… What's a niche?" And it seems like you found that focusing on the niche has accelerated your growth and profitability as an organization.

Jay Berkowitz: Yeah. The, the great thing about the n- the niche or niche is, like, now I know what I do. And, and for a while there, it was becoming challenging because I was trying to be the expert at everything, and I was speaking at the Affiliate Summit conference, and the next week I was at the, you know, Independent Jewelers Association in Dallas, Texas, and it was like I was trying to figure out all these business models and all these things, and I was stretched thin. My team, you know, you bring back a new deal to my team like, "Hey, we're– today we're promoting an island where you can swim with dolphins in the natural environment." And they're like, "Okay, great. We've gotta figure out a whole other business." So, you know, being in one niche, we're really focused on Google. It's made my life easier, made my team's life easier, and we… The other thing, we got really good at it. Mm. You know, I didn't really appreciate how effective it is when you focus, y-you get really good at something. It's obvious, but… No doubt. So it makes it easier to get clients. Yeah. It also makes it easier to deliver the actual results for those clients.

Josh Nelson: Let's talk about how you do get clients. Like, what are some of the strategies that are working best for you today to get attorney clients at these higher level tickets?

Jay Berkowitz: Well, you know, I think referrals, we a- we all want referrals, and referrals are great, and referrals are, you know, clients are fantastic. When somebody calls a client up and says, "Oh, you guys, you guys are so busy, you know, what's your secret?" And they say, "Ten Golden Rules," and they call up, we… You know, we all love to get those phone calls. But we– I've nurtured a lot of relationships and, like I said, we've been focused on this lawyer niche and going to all the conferences, but really building relationship with people. One of the t- you know, so many things that I've picked up from Seven Figure Agencies, from Josh and from our other, you know, superstar members. Jim Alleyne said that when he– whenever he does his podcast and his webinar, he gets the industry influencers- Mm… And sets up a meeting with them at the conferences. And so I've been doing that and building relationships with, you know, the real rock stars in the lawyer industry that the other folks who are selling to the lawyers, the software companies and, you know, all the consultants and accountants and everyone who specializes in the law. And so we're really starting to get referrals from those folks. So I'd say, you know, thirty percent of our business is referrals. Thirty percent probably comes from our marketing and our webinars. Again, thank you to Seven Figure Agency for showing us the model. And we do a webinar every single month. We've done it for four years since I really came to your first conference. And, the… It's not, it's not… It has nothing to do with webinars. I always like to tell people this. It's, it's a tactic that shows thought leadership. And every month it's like, "Hey, learn PPC for law firms. Learn SEO for law firms." one thing Josh is very giving, he says, you know, "Use my presentation." So I used your presentation yesterday, for the first… I did a new presentation where I took Josh's plumbing presentation and crafted it for lawyers, called Triple Your Success, with Your… With the Right Digital Marketing Plan. Love it. And I got a lead this morning on my website, and the guy was on the webinar, and he's, you know, ready to go.

Josh Nelson: So, those are fantastic.

Jay Berkowitz: But, you know, also the extension of the webinar. On our, on our YouTube channel, we have all our webinars. It's been viewed two hundred and fifty thousand times. So a couple times a month, someone's like, "You know, I was on your webinar. I know you guys know how to do local service ads, and we wanna go with you." And so it's like they're coming in pre-sold. It's awesome. And then we have, an- you know, another twenty or thirty percent of our business comes from outreach marketing. We've got some appointment setters and, doing some calling, a lot of emailing and building the business.

Josh Nelson: Excellent. So it sounds like a lot of, authority positioning. So for those of you listening, thinking, "How do I apply this to my niche or to," you know, if you happen to be in legal, right? Just cold calling is probably the hardest way to land attorneys, right? If, if you're going after any niche, cold calling, cold emails, you can get there, but it's, it's hard. If you can elevate your positioning by being at the conferences, having a booth, speaking, like being a thought leader, putting out content and podcasting, that is what's gonna position you as the expert to get clients to come to you pre-positioned to buy. I think the other thing that he said that's really important is when he goes to those events, he's not just there in his booth, you know, trying to get people to schedule a strategy session. He's making relationships. He's connecting with the other exhibitors, and that can create joint venture opportunities and more thought leadership that you can tap into.

Jay Berkowitz: Yeah, I hate being in the booth, so personally, like, I like to see the other speakers and I'm out, so my team's in the booth. Personally, I'm not a booth guy and, and I s- like, Jim taught us, I schedule a lot of podcasts and interviews, at, while I'm at the event and while we're together with the other- So you'll do that right at the event? Yep. "Hey, you know, hey, so and so, come over." Do it at breakfast, do it at lunch, whatever, yeah.

Josh Nelson: And you just do that on your phone or is there any technology you use for that?

Jay Berkowitz: Actually, I have a similar thing with these audio clips. Okay. And, it connects to your phone or your computer, and so I'll just set the computer up on the desk and do the interview.

Josh Nelson: That's a great takeaway, guys. Yeah. If you're not doing that, like, use that time where you're live where, and your prospects are live or those potential joint ventures are live, and get together and create some content. And those relationships form in those conversations, that wouldn't have happened if you were just coming by and say, "Hey, you know, you want me to refer you and we can refer each other?" Like, you gotta find ways to create those relationships.

Jay Berkowitz: Yeah, and you know, you have to be fairly proactive. You know, good pe- people do come to you, but,… And then the best thing, you know, Josh said it and I repeated it, stage time is money time. You know, you really wanna get on stage at those events. And then, you know, ideally I try and get on day one, you know. Little, it's a little thing, but, you know, if you're on the third day in the afternoon, everyone's already flying home. Checked out. If you can get on day one, and you can do a killer presentation, you know, people are gonna come to your booth and, you know, pull you over the three days or whatever the conference is, and that's really been great for us.

Josh Nelson: I know you've published a couple of books. Talk to us about how those books have played into your marketing strategy and how you use that potentially to position yourself and/or get speaking opportunities.

Jay Berkowitz: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the book makes you the expert. I wrote the first book, The 10 Golden Rules of Online Marketing 20 years ago now. Makes me crazy to think that. And, you know, a lot of times I'm introduced in those referral emails like, "Oh, you gotta talk to Jay. He's the guy who wrote the book." Mm. And it just gives you that authority, and I've done a couple other books and my new book on the, on the law niche specific is almost done and coming out in the… You know, we'll use it at the, at the conferences, and we'll use it, for prospects. I'm gonna tie in a charity angle and- Mm… If, you know, like a donation to the Legal Aid Society if people buy the book. And so, you know, it'll have multiple legs. So someone once told me it's, it's like the $5 business card, but it really makes you a, an expert. Right. So, like, the $5 business card idea there is if you have a business card, they're gonna throw that away immediately. Yeah. If you hand them a book, that's gonna be tangible, like, they're gonna either put it in their briefcase, it'll wind up on their desk. They're not gonna throw that away. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, it's worked great for me for 20 years and, I s- I highly recommend it.

Josh Nelson: So let's talk a little bit about, speaking opportunities, 'cause I think you do really good on this. Any tips for that agency owner that's trying to figure out, you know, "Hey, I'd love to speak, but I have no idea, like, why they would want me to come or how to get those types of opportunities"?

Jay Berkowitz: Well, you know, to start out, you need a presentation, and you can start out with something relatively small. You know, I do The 10 Golden Rules. H- I, by the way, don't do 10. That's, it's a lot of- That's a lot. That's a lot of bullets… You know, 'cause I've done the 10 golden rules of podcasting and social media and, you know, artificial intelligence, but it's a lot easier to do three or five, and I highly recommend that. But come up with, you know, a short presentation and get out there. You know, you can do it at your local chamber of commerce, your rotary clubs. I remember once I was speaking at a rotary club and seven people showed up, and so I'm thinking, "Oh my goodness, I crafted this whole presentation and I customized it for the group, and I rehearsed it and I was up late at night, and there's only seven people here." Well, one of the guys comes up to me at the end and says, you know, "Hey, I'm, I realize we're a small group today, but I have a large company and I'd like you to come speak at our annual meeting," and we became friends and clients and so, w- a- and then what happens a lot of times, those small groups bubble up to bigger groups. So at the end of every presentation I say, you know, "Thank you guys so much, and the reason I do this is I'd love to help you with your marketing. But other things, you know, I really appreciate if you can refer me. If you're in, you know, in, the legal if your bar association's looking for speakers, if there's any groups you're a member of that you think this to- content would be good, I'd love the referral." And I just put it in their head, and I get one or two referrals after every speaking. So a lot of times you know, you'll go from, like, the rotary club to the regional rotary if you're good. You know, you go to the regional rotary and I spoke at, Women in Communications, a little local club, and then the regional group, and then the Florida group, and then the National Women in Communications event, so.

Josh Nelson: I think that's a great, very practical tip. So, you know, recognize that it doesn't, you don't just wind up on the big national conference overnight, right? You're gonna wind up speaking on webinars maybe for a handful of people, speaking at some local small groups, and try and get video recordings of that so you have some social proof. That way it kinda steps up. Very similar for me at Plumbing HVAC SEO. When I started speaking, I wanted to speak at the national conference, and I wound up speaking at the Miami Plumbing Con- Contractors Association, which had- Worked your way up… 20 people in it. Like, literally 20 people, and one of them happened to be the president that happened to be one of our first clients.

Jay Berkowitz: Awesome. Awesome.

Josh Nelson: And then we kinda moved up from there and I did get some bigger stages over time. But, you know, those little meetings can be just as profitable as when you speak in front of a massive group. There's always one in the room who can, move your business forward. Yeah. And if not, at least you're getting some flashbacks- Yeah… And you're getting some skills, and you're getting some- Yeah… Some pictures. So great practical tips there. I wanna shift gears a little bit. Well, actually before we do, I wanna talk about webinars. You've done this very consistently. You've done this very well. W- like, what's one webinar topic that's worked really well for you in the last couple of years? And any takeaways on how to promote the webinar to get the most juice out of them?

Jay Berkowitz: Well, there's a little balancing act because when I do a webinar on, like, how to rank in Google Maps for law firms, there's, there's probably only gonna be, like, 50 people and we do it, we promote it through our email and our social media. We also promote it on LinkedIn. We create a LinkedIn event And invite people to the event. Smart. So like if I get 50 register from social and from my email, I'll get another 50, on LinkedIn. But, you know, I also find there's a value in doing the sexier topics. Mm-hmm. The newer topics. So when local service ads became available for lawyers- Yeah… You know, I jumped on it right away, and a month in I did local service. And people didn't really understand it. But I get… I did it again about four months later, and we got maybe 100 registrants on the regular and 100 on LinkedIn. And then I did, TikTok for lawyers. Mm. Hot topic, 300 registrants. You know, set my new record. And then I did AI for lawyers, 400 registrants. Wow. But, you know, I would balance the two because, you know, the AI for lawyers is thought leadership. Got a ton of views, maybe 15,000 views on our YouTube channel. But, you know, Google Maps for lawyers, local service ads for lawyers, gets lawyers who are looking to hire us. Right. So it's a bit of a balancing act.

Josh Nelson: I think that's a great point. So play with the topics, right? Yeah. As you get more confident with this, touch the basics, but if there's something new and exciting, think about the newsjacking concept. If there's something new coming out and you can be the one running a webinar on that, you're gonna get the eyeballs.

Jay Berkowitz: A- and the same thing for us when LSA first came out, that was a slam dunk for us.

Josh Nelson: And I think you do wanna find that, the balance because if you do one that's too abstract- Yeah…

Jay Berkowitz: Yeah, you'll get eyeballs, but it doesn't lead to appointments which lead to sales. Like where if you do the 2024 digital marketing, you know, growth planning session- Yeah… That really ties in nicely to a, to a sale versus just, you know, just some cool topic. And so we do the annual plan, like if you follow Josh's model. And, you know, I gotta be honest, and I thank you so much because, you know, I used to watch Josh's webinar, and I used to take notes, and then I'd create my slides and change the plumbing reference to lawyer reference. And, you know, oh, and the good news, you only have to slog through that for 12 months. 'Cause you do one a month, and then the next year you just rinse and repeat. Right. You just update the data and update the slides. And then, you know, part of it is I get a little bored, so I, you know, I do the work and the research on the AI or, TikTok and then bring that to market. And, and like Jim taught us, you know, bring in experts. So like I'll… Every year I do a technology for law firms panel, and I'll bring in five or six companies, work with them in advance and, and get their sort of soft, promise that they'll promote it on their socials and send out an email. We get them the creative in advance, and then it brings a whole new audience because if I'm working with one of the biggest, you know, legal case management s- companies and CallRail, the call tracking company in, we've had, Intaker, the AI chatbot, and those folks will promote it to their audience because they're on a big, you know, lawyer marketing podcast- Mm-hmm… With, you know, a bunch of YouTube views, and we convince them how valuable it is for them. They promote it for us and brings in a new audience.

Josh Nelson: Super smart. I think it's a little bit more of an advanced strategy. So if you're just getting started with webinars, start putting out your own content. As you start to have a following and some authority, massive multiplier would be to find the people that already have relationships, the c- the consultants, the softwares, and do joint webinars with them. Any like tactics on how you would invite somebody, tap them on the shoulder and say, "Hey, I think we could do a joint webinar," and how to, you know, also like you said, get them to actually promote it so you get that multiple in terms of the eyeballs and the authority positioning?

Jay Berkowitz: You know, to be honest, you just gotta ask. Mm. As a matter of fact, we're, we're, we're launching EOS in our company. Nice. The entrepreneurial operating system, which Josh has been using, and we're using Gerardo. And so I asked Gerardo- Awesome… Who Josh, is the EOS certified implementer. And I asked him if he'd be on the webinar. We picked a date. And then there's a very famous attorney who was one of Gino Wickman, the author of, the Ent- Traction and the creator of this, operating system. One of his first clients was Mike Morse, very famous personal injury lawyer in Detroit. Mm. And he's, he wrote a book called Fireproof about EOS and about his operating system and how to fireproof your business, your law firm. So I just called up and I said, you know, "I'd like to invite Mike to be on my webinar. Who's his assistant?" Spoke to his assistant, explained that, you know, what we're doing. She said, "Just send me an email. I'll get it to Mike." And within an hour, I had Mike Morse, who's a relatively famous name, booked on my webinar, and it'll be a good, networking contact as well.

Josh Nelson: That's huge. So if you don't ask, you don't get, right?

Jay Berkowitz: Yeah. And try and find those celebrities in your niche. This is an example of your ideal target client that everyone would look to them and be like, "Wow, that's a, that's a big name." Ev- everybody knows this guy now, so. Love it. It'll be awesome.

Josh Nelson: That's, that's huge. That's a huge tip. The other thing I wanted to go deeper on was the, the LinkedIn event idea. Talk to us a little bit about how you, how you do that, and is it because you've got a big following and that's why it works? Or, or just kind of give us the cliffhanger version.

Jay Berkowitz: Yeah. We've built it. You know, we've, got a couple guys who, are very good with LinkedIn, and they've built relationships, for me. And, and I worked at it for many years myself. I'm probably connected to about 4,000 or 5,000 attorneys now. Mm. So we create a LinkedIn event, same day, same time, same topic, same graphics that we use for our emails and our socials. And then we invite people to the event. So, my event this week, we had, I think 80 lawyers for the Triple Your Success, webinar. And then there's a software called Restream, and we go live on Zoom. Zoom connects to Restream and, pushes it to a live LinkedIn event.

Josh Nelson: Hmm. So you're, you're just showing up on Zoom.

Jay Berkowitz: Yeah. There's people interacting with you there, and then Restream, like actually this is being done through Restream, hits LinkedIn, and so the people are actually watching and engaging- Yep… Directly on the LinkedIn software or platform. Yeah, exactly. I log into Zoom- Before the, before the meeting, log into Restream. Says connect the plat… I'm, I'm– My, my team's figured out how to set it up. Right. But they tell me, like, click this, click this, and then it says, "You're live on LinkedIn," and then we go.

Josh Nelson: Love it. And is it on the, on the Jay Berkwitz page or on the 10 Golden Rules?

Jay Berkowitz: On the 10 Golden Rules page.

Josh Nelson: Okay. So it's your, it's your business page that's- Yes… Running this event?

Jay Berkowitz: Yeah. I've made the mistake. I actually have to not be logged in as me, and I have to- Right… Log in on a different browser to the company page.

Josh Nelson: Very cool. And I think, you know, recognizing where your audience hangs out is important. Yeah. Like, your clients may or may not be on LinkedIn, but attorneys definitely are, right? This is probably the place where they hang out most.

Jay Berkowitz: Yeah. You know, obviously, they're personally on Facebook and Insta- Yeah… And TikTok, but, and it, they're… You know, I'd love to do Facebook and everything else, but sometimes you just gotta, you know, hit, hit a single and keep going. So we haven't figured out how to do everything yet.

Josh Nelson: Awesome. So lots of great insights here, guys, on how to position yourself, how to leverage webinars, how to find speaking opportunities to land clients, and I think Jay's a great example of kinda leveling up these strategies and figuring out how to pull in joint venture opportunities and leverage other platforms. If we could shift gears a little bit now to- Sure… Delivery. So you get the clients. You know, the, you know, there's a lot of moving parts. Talk to us a little bit about how you've built the team to deliver and to deliver at such a, a high level.

Jay Berkowitz: You know, and so many things I've learned from Seven Figure Agency, so thanks again to the community. One of the things that we've used is a software called ClickUp. Mm. And one of the things that's so powerful about, Seven Figure Agency is, like, you just go on the Facebook group, and you ask, like, "Hey, we're looking at Asana and ClickUp," and, I forget, we had two or three other options, and we wanted a better project management system. And, like, six out of seven people are like, "ClickUp. You know, ClickUp's the way to go, thousand percent." And then I think you had some guys, Zen, ZenPilot or something. Yep. And, and they did a session, an educational session for us, and then w- they had forty-five templates that we purchased for ClickUp for agencies. And so now we have what we call SOPs, standard operating procedures, that are in this software. So if we're doing something like, setting up a new Google Maps location, a lot of people are adding a second and third location. There's, you know, seventeen or twenty-four steps in ClickUp, and we can assign it to, you know, one of two or three people on the team, but it's gonna get done right because we've… You know, we're constantly honing our best practices. So in terms of delivering the product, we got– We have systems. It's in a software. It's… The, the task is assigned to someone. We can check it against the checklist, and we can coach people if they do it wrong 'cause we have, essentially a digital manual for how to do everything. And we've frankly been doing this for twenty years. I was lucky enough. Someone gave me the book E-Myth, about how to systematize your business. And so we've been E-Myth-ing our business from day one. We used to have binders on how to do things. With all the SOPs. Yeah. Yeah. We, we… So we, so we just took those and made them digital. So, yeah, the dig- the product is, pretty systematized now, and, you know, it's really about figuring out the best way to do it. And it always changes, so you've gotta be constantly iterating. And we deliver a very consistent product and get very consistent results.

Josh Nelson: Love it. So, so good, guys. Have a project management system. You know, really innovate and set up the, not just the checklists, but also the, the SOPs or playbooks so that you can bring new people into the process as you grow. What does the operational team look like? You know, onshore, offshore, any- anything you can talk about how you've kinda structured the team?

Jay Berkowitz: I mean, all the management's here in, North America, and, we pretty much have evolved to, like, three, department managers now. Awesome. So I'm trying to get out of the day-to-day in all the, all the departments. I'm trying. But we have a director of search and, str- strategy we call it. And so they're, the, SEO, pay per click, local service ad, and social media team reports to them. We've got an account management team, or we call them customer success managers, report to a director now. And we have a n- a new, marketing and sales position that's working with me on, all the stuff we do for ourselves.

Josh Nelson: Outstanding. And it sounds like E-Myth, what's kinda got your wheels in turn, and now you're also looking to implement even deeper EOS, or you've implemented EOS to build that leadership team and to kinda get them to level up and take more ownership in the operational side of things.

Jay Berkowitz: Yeah. What I love about EOS, and we… You know, I, I, w- I read s- the book Traction six, seven years ago, and we weren't quite ready, and it's really, we're… The team's ready now for it. But we've been using component parts, so we've been using, you know, the level ten meeting agendas. We've been using scorecard. We've been doing rocks for seven or eight years. Like, we do a quarterly brainstorming- Mm… And develop our top five priorities for the company, and then everybody individually has their top five priorities for the quarter. So we've been using the component parts for many years, but we're gonna do it, you know, all in. And, we all… We had a book club, and every week we read a chapter of the book, What the Heck is EOS? Mm. And it's my fourth EO, it's my fourth EOS book. But the o- one thing I really took from it, and working through it with the team, is it creates a very standard terminology and system for the company, and everybody is now using these same words and phrases and solutions and business systems. So I'm very much looking forward to the full-scale implementation.

Josh Nelson: Love it. So, book club, that's a cool idea to kinda create culture, get everybody on the same page. Yeah. How do you, like how do you break that down with the team? Are you guys literally sitting and reading it?

Jay Berkowitz: Or is it like, "Hey, you need to read chapter three as a group, and then we're gonna talk about it?" It's all of that except for the part about you need to read chapter three, so. Okay. You know, I started out with a lot of enthusiasm and, you know, just said we meet as a team every week. So I said, "You know, I've sent everybody the book through Amazon," and then I said, like, "You gotta read chapter one, and next week we're gonna talk about it." So, you know, of course, there's always the A students who read the chapter, took notes- Absolutely… Dissected it, gave us great feedback, and it was very clear who had read, done their reading for the week and who hadn't. And at first I was thinking of the stick, like, if you didn't do your reading, you know, what's gonna happen? And then I realized, you know, the carrot's much better than the stick, if you use that old- Mm-hmm… Metaphor or whatever. And so I said, "Look, you know, Amy and Alyssa, you guys did great this week. Thank you so much for doing your homework. I want you to pick a twenty-five dollar Amazon gift certificate, and I'm gonna send it to you." Mm. And the next week, you know, "Hey, what Amazon gift certificate did you get?" "Oh, I picked the wine one. I picked the…" You know. So, you know, everybody started getting a little bit more enthusiastic for a chance to win something.

Josh Nelson: I love that. I think that's a smart takeaway. Yeah. How often do you rotate books?

Jay Berkowitz: Well, we've done it, you know, I've done it through the years, but we, we revamped a book, called Eat That Frog- Mm… By Brian Tracy. Yeah. Great book, highly recommend it. About setting your top three priorities in the morning and getting those done first thing. So we did that, earlier this year. And there's, you know, eight, ten chapters in a book. You do one a week and you know, before you know it, you're done.

Josh Nelson: Love it. Great idea to create culture, to make sure everybody's- Yeah… Thinking and learning in that similar language, right? If the, if the group is speaking the same language- Yeah… It makes it so much easier to mesh and to, and to communicate. Let's talk about retention. So re- I mean, retaining attorneys is notoriously hard. What are some s- like great nuggets you can share with the group on how you're able to retain your clients and keep them on board long term?

Jay Berkowitz: Well, you know, results is obviously, you know, the obvious answer, but, you know, assuming you're doing a pretty good job there. You know, you also have to communicate your results, to the clients. So we're pretty, diligent with a monthly meeting. For bigger clients we meet twice a month. Mm. We call the first meeting the performance meeting, the second meeting the check-in meeting. Mm. But we're, you know, we run the agency like a business. You know, we've got an agenda. We've got a Google Slides deck. We've got, all the reporting, you know, screenshots of everything in the deck. And we go through it in a businesslike manner. We actually start every meeting with the joke of the week. Mm. And it's become sort of a running- Breaks the ice a little bit… A running joke. Well, our mission is, to be fun, easy to use, and deliver amazing return on investment. Mm. So the fun part is, you know, that reminds us to be fun. But, you know, also, like, there was a time in our, in our business where we were presenting the same data to the same companies for the first week or the second week of the month, and it got very drudgerous. You know, for us, like, it was the same chart, and so I had to remind us and remind myself, you know, we've gotta be fun. You know, especially with lawyers, you know, there's not many instances where it's a pleasant experience, you know, that, that these guys are, you know, the injury lawyers or divorce lawyers or bankruptcy lawyers. Maybe if you're, you know, you're getting someone their first house or someone's buying a business, but, you know, most of their, the rest of their week is pretty crappy. So, you know, we wanna be fun, and we wanna be high energy, and we wanna come with a bad joke that we can all laugh at or a good joke that works. – Love it… And, and so we, you know, we run the business like a business. And what happens is, you know, the first couple times maybe they don't show up or they're late, and then, you know, we call 'em and get 'em on the phone and on the Zoom meeting, and they realize, you know, there's really good value here. You know, they realize, we also track, you know, the lead sources and, the number of signed cases. So we work with the intake team to actually tie it back to the lead source, and we tie back the ROI measurement. We, we hold ourselves accountable to that performance. So, you know, the, it's, it doesn't take more than a month or two for the partner and the marketing person to show up regularly for the meetings. And then, you know, retention's easier, you know, A, you operate like a b- business, B, they see what you're doing, C, you're getting results, D, you're tracking results, E, you're bringing new stuff to them every month. So it generally helps with retention.

Josh Nelson: I love it. I think so something that you guys should all take away from that is that the meeting, while you do wanna have slides and while you do wanna have an agenda, can't be a regurgitation of the same thing every time. You gotta make sure that you're also talking about what you're working on, where you're tracking against the goals. That way, they have a reason as the business owner or the marketing director to participate, right? If your meeting is boring and doesn't actually add value, and it just is basically reading a report, they will disengage, right? And you'll have, like, a very low show-up for the meeting, which will lead to a higher churn rate long term.

Jay Berkowitz: Yeah. We throw a little sizzle in every month. So, you know, like if I, if I'm doing research on artificial intelligence- Mm… Or if I interview, Dr. Kane Elliot, who's the AI futurist at Filevine, and I've got some slides that I'm using for a webinar or using on stage, you know, we'll, we'll take six or eight of them and use them for our client meeting each month. So they'll learn about AI. There's always changes to the local service ads. You know, so each month we, we al- we'll always have a little bit of value.

Josh Nelson: Love that idea. Right. So, like, kind of make sure that you keep it spicy. You mentioned two meetings, a, a results meeting- Performance meeting. Yeah Okay.

Jay Berkowitz: And then a- Results meeting. A check-in. Okay. Yeah. We call it a check-in, you know, just to differentiate the two meetings. You know, I definitely want the, the partner, like most law firms are like Nelson and Berkowitz or Berkowitz and Nelson, and one of them is a trial attorney and one of them runs the business, and the guy who runs the business runs the marketing, runs the HR. You know, I want him in that meeting. He doesn't necessarily need to be in the check-in meeting. So there's always like an office manager or a marketing director. Mm. And so the check-in, I might not be there and he– the partner might not be there. And that's more of, you know, "Hey, we're, we're getting some content approved, some social media approved." may-maybe fixing something or, you know, following up on something.

Josh Nelson: Amazing. So, so good. Is this a group like where you're, you're doing this with all your clients or is this one-on-one meeting with the client?

Jay Berkowitz: Oh, no. These are, these are his results, you know, his data or her data. It's one-on-one.

Josh Nelson: Got it. So it's, it's like one-on-one meetings with each of these guys twice a month.

Jay Berkowitz: The first one is more strategic. "Hey, you're high level." Yeah. "Here's where things are headed." The next one is more technical. "Hey, here's what we need from you. Here's the approvals." and it might hit two different people within the organization. And for smaller clients we still have the check-in but it's virtual. So we'll send them an email, "Hey, just wanna let you know your pay-per-click's on track. You got this many leads. You know, we're still waiting for this approval." That's typical.

Josh Nelson: Amazing. So, so great stuff. We talked about how you land clients, how you deliver world-class results, kind of what the team looks like and how you're scaling the organization. Any other, yeah, like tips you'd wanna share with the digital marketing agency owner on kinda how they can do better either on delivery or on how they're growing?

Jay Berkowitz: You know, the tip I wanna share is, is how much value we've gotten from Seven Figure Agency and how much value is available. You know, the– there's great training online. There's… The other thing that I, that I wanna say is like, you know, I came to the first couple of conferences and I thought there was good stuff and it was interesting and, you know, I was kinda like a fair weather. You know, I'd show up a little… You know, I'd drive down from Boca. It's about an hour and a half in traffic and I maybe leave a little early to miss traffic and then came back again and was like, "Hey, this stuff's pretty good." And then the next one, you know, I, I sort of logged in and, you know, stayed in the hotel and, and attended the whole day and the one thing I realized that I go to a lot of– or at the time I was speaking a lot of the internet marketing conferences. I was, you know, speaking and attending, you know, Affiliate Summit and Search Engine Strategies and I realized Seven Figure Agency is not an internet marketing conference. Sure, Josh will have some great sessions on SEO or PPC, but it's, it teaches us how to run the agency like a business. And most of the topics are how to sell, how to manage your agency, how to staff your agency, how to build leads, how to close sales. So it's really, it's, it's a different conference and it's a different set of content. So the… You gotta, you gotta be at the event. And then other things I didn't realize, like once you join, there's a phenomenal mastermind effect. Mm. And that is, it takes place online, it takes place in person. Like we have Zoom meetings. So you know, like basically everything… Most of the things that have taken us from, you know, you know, X to Y to Z, we've– I've learned, you know, in one way, shape or form. Like sometimes it's like I ask a question in the Facebook group, of-about ClickUp. You know, I said, "do I go Asana? Do I go ClickUp?" Or if it's, "Oh, ClickUp's great." And there's these software and there's templates and then someone's like, "Hey, I'll get on a call with you and show your people how to do it." Like everybody's so giving. And then the, the mastermind, we do the Zoom meetings and there's people at your level who are in there and everybody gets a hot seat. So you bring one problem to… Or one thing you're struggling with to the, the group and the, you know, there's six or eight people who are at your same level where your business is at, and you get amazing feedback. You know, I was with Matt Plapp and Tony Ricketts yesterday. Mm. Matt, you know, has a five or six million dollar business, Tony has a three or four million dollar agency and they're niche specific and obviously they're not competing with you and they're, they're willing to give you so many great ideas, so. Love it. So the power of kind of getting around other people at your level or beyond and just having that idea exchange can accelerate your growth. Yeah. And I, you know, I like to share that because, you know, if somebody's, somebody's watching this and they haven't, you know, been to one of the events, been to one of the intensives or, you know, can't see the private Facebook group, I just want you to know there's a hell of a lot of value and, you know, your question is what's taken me to the next level and frankly, I've gotten it from you and, and you know, Josh is great but, you know, there's, you know, 20 titans, there's 20 multi-seven figure agencies and everybody has so much value and is so giving.

Josh Nelson: Love it. Thanks for, thanks for saying that. Yeah. Appreciate it. So kinda as we, as we wrap up, just kinda one last question. If you were talking to that agency that's at forty thousand, fifty thousand, they're trying to get to the next level, what would be like one last piece of wisdom you would, you would leave them with?

Jay Berkowitz: You know, I worked in the seminar and event business and I saw Tony Robbins about eight times in about three years and he s- he says success leaves clues. Mm. And you don't have to figure all this stuff out yourself. And f- you know, for many years I was a member of a lot of masterminds. I was at my CEO mastermind today and I'm the only agency in the room. But the beauty of this is you're with other experts, you're with other people who are figuring out exactly the same problem but they're not competing directly with you 'cause they're in another niche. So success leaves clues, like that's the fastest way to… You know, you don't have to struggle through it for two years of picking the wrong software and doing the wrong implementation, not knowing how… Like we had ClickUp, we had these forty-five templates, we were up and running in two, three months and it's been great. We've been on it for three years now. So just fast, faster route to success.

Josh Nelson: Love it. Well, Jay, congratulations on your success. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Thanks for being such an a-amazing active participant at Seven Figure Agency. We're truly honored- My pleasure… To have you as part of the community. Guys, thanks for watching. Be sure to hit the like button, hit the subscribe button. If you got follow-up questions, post them in the comments. Jay, if someone wanted to connect with you or learn more about you, what would be the best way?

Jay Berkowitz: 10goldenrules.com or Jay Berkowitz on all the social media. There's a, there's a c-couple guys, Dr. Jay Berkowitz and Professor Jay Berkowitz, probably a lot more important to society-… But I always beat them to the new social media. So I've– I'm Jay Berkowitz on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, et cetera.

Josh Nelson: Excellent. Well, thanks so much for sharing. Thanks for watching everybody, and we'll, we'll catch you on a future episode of the Seven Figure Agency-