They Hit $56K MRR by Making Themselves Impossible to Ignore

Full transcript of Josh Nelson’s interview with Jim and Brian. Lightly edited for readability.

Josh Nelson: This is the Seven Figure Agency podcast. Discover the strategies and techniques to grow a highly successful and profitable digital marketing agency with your host, Josh Nelson. All right. Well, hello. Welcome. Thank you for joining us on today's special session, of the Agency Success podcast. We are spotlighting Jim and Brian from Roofer Marketers. I'm so tempted to say roofing marketers, but Roofer Marketers. These guys have crushed it over the last couple of years. They were our two thousand and nineteen fastest-growing agency of the year. We just kind of stacked up all our members and looked at the ones that had the most, you know, new client growth and most recurring revenue growth over a twelve-month span, and these guys have just crushed it. So, Jim and Brian, welcome. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing with us today.

Jim: Yeah. Thanks for having us.

Brian: Yeah. Thanks, Josh.

Josh Nelson: So, like, let's just start from a high level. Kind of tell us a little bit about your background, you guys. Tell us a little bit about your agency and where you're at now in terms of monthly recurring, so people can get a sense of what you guys are up to.

Jim: Yeah. So, I guess Brian and I met a few years back. I was doing some pay per lead. He had a, he had an agency and, and we had joined a mastermind together and so we s- we spent a lot of money to meet each other. That was if that's an easy way to put it. And we, we were kinda noticed… First of all, we noticed that we were both in the Minneapolis area, and then secondly, we noticed that we were, we were a couple of the only people that were actually implementing, the things that were, that were going on there. So, so we decided to combine forces on a couple of projects. That led to, to working together on, on a, kinda on an agency essentially, but we had a, kind of a pay per lead model early on. That didn't last long. And then, and then, and then that kind of evolved and developed into Roofer Marketers, so. And the… Yeah.

Josh Nelson: So, so you guys run Roofer Marketers. Your business partnership kind of formed through a mastermind. Kinda where are you guys at? How many clients? How much recurring revenue? Kind of give us the lay of the land on that front.

Jim: We are at, monthly recurring… So we had a couple of people pause during the, during the, the COVID crisis, so we, we lost about ten per- seven, eight percent there. But right now we are at, we're at about fifty, I think about fifty-six mo- monthly recurring, twenty, I think it's like twenty-eight clients, twenty-nine clients. Fantastic. Yeah.

Brian: That sounds about right.

Josh Nelson: That's great. And how long have you guys been at the specific niche-focused agency at this point?

Jim: It's, it's kind of a… Like, so I think it was… What was it? I think we got our first client in October of twenty eighteen. Yep. But we were kind of just like fiddling around at that point trying to figure out what to do. Weren't so sure if we were going the full roofing niche or not.

Brian: I think it was really when, I think when I came down to the Seven Figure Agency, intensive, I think it was February- Mm-hmm… That's really when we kind of went 100% in. So it's been, yeah, 15 months probably I would say about. Right, Jim?

Jim: Yeah, about that. And, and then, you know, we were kind of working on it for a couple of months before that. We were funnel hacking Josh and, you know- Yeah… Writing our book to emulate what he did and things like that, so.

Josh Nelson: That's awesome. Well, I mean, congratulations. In a little bit more than a year, over fifty thousand in monthly recurring and growing on a pretty consistent basis. You guys have done an excellent job. So you mentioned where we started. Just how did we start working together? Just, just so the, everyone knows, like, what was, how, what was the genesis of us working together here at Seven Figure Agency?

Jim: Well, we'd, like I said, we were kind of funnel hacking, right? So we were looking at, at who was doing a niche model really well, and we came across, came across, Plumber SEO and from there the, you know, we started kinda looking at the things that you were doing and looking at other people that were doing niche-focused agencies. And then, through one of the things that we're, had purchased or downloaded from you, we got, you know, Brian got on your list, right? And then, and then he was like, "Man, I think I'm gonna fly down to Florida for this event." Right? And then he can kind of tell you the story of what it went like down at the event.

Brian: Yeah. That, I don't think you could come that time. You had something going on, so.

Jim: Yeah, it was real short notice.

Brian: I was like, "Yeah, I'll go- Like a call… I'll go check it out." Yeah. Well, long story short, the four- the first mastermind we were in didn't, there was a lot of stuff that went on with it that was not great, so we kinda lost trust in the whole, mastermind process. So, you know, flying down to Florida was like, "Eh, we'll see what it's about." But- Yeah… I wasn't expecting much. But honestly, I mean, just seeing, you know, Josh, you running a really great agency yourself and just giving it all on a platter to everyone was kind of a big eye-opener for me. So came running back and I was like, "Yeah, we gotta go all in on this pretty much." Nice.

Josh Nelson: That, that's awesome. So yeah, kind of having the experience of, like, not best scenario to kind of getting what you needed. What were the main issues, problems, ideas you were looking to solve for, when we started working together? Like, when you guys, after that first, you know, intensive and you went, "Okay, this sounds great," what were the main challenges or hurdles you were looking to solve for?

Brian: I think what we saw first was the, kind of the ability to, to execute what we wanted to do faster. Mm-hmm. A-and that's what, that's really what it, what was solved for in joining the Seven Figure Agency. We saw the format of it, the content that was, that was provided, the, you know, kind of, you know- Plug and play everything, right? So that was the thing that was like… 'Cause we had written our book actually for example, we wrote our book before joining the 7 Figure Agency. Hmm. We published our book before joining the 7 Figure Agency, and then we got access, and I logged in the first time, and there's the book. Right? Like, so it, it really, you know, made us, you know, kind of focused in on, man, we just need to implement and execute the next thing. And, and between, you know, the coaching sessions with you and Jeff and the content that's, you know, that's in the, in the, in the members area, that's what we've been able to do is just execute. Execute the next thing. Nice. And, and I had a legacy agency before, and to be honest, I mean, that's, you know, when you got clients in every different type of niche and you get kind of burned out, it was, you know, the niche, niching down was definitely the way to go. We both knew that.

Josh Nelson: Yeah, 100%. So one question a lot of people always have when we're talking about agencies and agency growth is how did you choose the niche? How did you guys land on roofing companies? So I…

Brian: Oh, go. Yeah.

Jim: The pay per lead that I was doing was in roofing that we were kind of partnering on. Hmm. And then– And Brian had a– Brian can tell you, he had a legacy client in roofing.

Brian: Yeah. We had a– I had a legacy client that we're doing really well with. I was… Knew them really well, and that's kind of just decided to take them and run with it.

Josh Nelson: – Got it. You had– You had already kind of gone down that path. You had a little bit of success under your belt.

Jim: It's like, okay, this seems like a good place to focus. And had a case study too. So we're– That was a good starting point for sure.

Josh Nelson: Nice. And, how did you guys transition from pay per lead, where you're just basically getting whatever it is, you know, $50, $75 per lead to a, retainer-based model where you're getting a consistent monthly fee? How did you guys make that pivot?

Jim: Well, we learned that pay per lead was, ha-has its own, you know, kind of hassles there, right? You're– A lot of times you don't– you're not dealing with the right client, you know, that you talk about a lot of times in the, in the, in the 7 Figure Agency about getting to the right clients, you know, ones that are actually doing business, gonna grow long term. A lot of the people that buy leads are really small, you know, hit or miss. They're, they're not very,… There, there's a lot of arguing over if it was a quality lead or not, you know, it, and things like that. So I mean, it wasn't a hard transition. And with Brian having his agency on a re– with clients on a retainer model, he, you know, he's very familiar with, you know, with that model also.

Josh Nelson: Got it. So how did you get the first couple of clients, you know, to, you know, on an actual retainer? Like, what was the approach that worked for you guys to go from- Yep… Zero to, let's just call it five active retainer-based clients in your niche?

Jim: So the first clients were done in, through co-co-cold email list, and what is, what is now known as the Hillsburg method. But it was essentially a video audit strategy where we were reaching out to companies in specific areas, asking them if they wanted to, you know, kind of for a video audit, if they wanted to be one of our exclusive, you know, kind of companies in that area. And that's, that's how we got the– that's how we got our first four. And then, and then from there it was, it was seven, you know, executing through the 7 Figure Agency. But by then, I think by the time we had our first four, we started– Brian had the site ranking pretty well, and so we started getting some inbound, leads from through SEO also.

Josh Nelson: Nice. It is fun to switch from having to chase everything down to having some clients come to you, right? I mean, it's kind of a beautiful transition. Absolutely. For sure. Yeah, yeah. So I guess just looking back, right? From, from, you know, startup to over $50,000 in monthly recurring revenue, what would you say would be like the top three things, that you've implemented from the 7 Figure Agency that helped to move you forward and kind of helped you get that kind of momentum?

Jim: A big one was webinars. I think once we started doing that, we really started getting…

Brian: Well, Jim would know better than I did with the sales stuff, but, just as a clarification, Jim does the sales in our agency. I handle everything on the fulfillment side.

Jim: On the fulfillment side. Yeah. Yeah, it's been…

Brian: That's, that's just for clarification. But, yeah, webinars. What else, Jim? Things- Really we did– we kind of started off, from the process side when we came in, right? So hot lead follow-up system, starting to build out some systems on the fulfillment side. From a prospecting thing, aspect, webinars was definitely the first one that, that started going for us. We had the cheat sheet running for a while. We had, you know, our book funnel prior to even joining the 7 Figure Agency. We, and then it was joining the industry association, creating the Dream 100, and really focusing on marketing to that industry association, to members of that indus-industry association. And then from there it was, really building authority through our social media marketing. The podcast was another one that, that kind of the next thing that we did that really started gi-giving us some great authority. And, the case study, of course. We had the case study running. So we– Essentially what we did is we just took the next thing. Hey, what's the next thing to do? Let's execute, implement ex- implement a-and execute on it. Implement and execute on it. None of them are perfect. I found, I found an email, from you, Josh, to, people who left our– who abandoned our book funnel cart. So you were, you were sending people- Oops… You know, an abandoned cart email in our book funnel. I don't know how you did that, but, you know, it ma- you know, we forgot to find and replace Josh maybe. So but that's what we did. And, and that was the– that's really what built the momentum that we had so quickly, was just the, okay, we have the, you know, we have the webinar started. Okay, what do we do next? You know, industry association, what do we do next, right? And that was- That- that's kind of how we've continued to do things, so.

Josh Nelson: I'm gonna share my screen real quick so you guys can kind of show, like, kind of talk through some of this, 'cause I think you have done an exceptional job, implementing, right? All of it, right? From the, from the Hillsburg Method stuff early on to really choosing the niche, putting the branding in place, positioning yourselves as the go-to experts, being personality centric where you guys are on camera, it's front and center that you're the ones in charge. Can you talk about how you made the transition from, you know, direct prospecting, which a lot of us do, and some of us, like, even Seventh Degree agency members that are in the on-ramp, and it's like, "Okay, I gotta reach out, I gotta send these videos, I gotta try and get clients through that mechanism," to doing webinars and advertising and promoting webinars and kind of positioning yourselves as the experts. Can you talk a little bit about how you made that transition?

Jim: Yeah. So for me, w- it wasn't really a transition. I, I learned, probably, in the mid-2000s, I did a lot of public speaking and trainings and things like that, and I learned very quickly that the person in front of the room is the expert. And that, that carries over into, you know, into social media, into, you know, the way that you put yourself out there through, like you can see just through the videos that we did on the website and things like that. So, and then I have a background in, in helping, you know, helping clients with video and things like that too, so, and have never been, never shied away from the camera. Well, actually, I failed public speaking three times in college. I finally… I passed it on the fourth one. So-…

Brian: It did take me- That's true. That's true…

Jim: It did take me a while, right? So, but- It was a hard-earned skill… It's, it is. It was… You know, it's one of those things that's difficult and, and, it… Yeah, you're always critiquing yourself and, you know. My wife tells me, I'll, I'll edit some of our videos with- where I'm talking and she's like, "How do you do that? How do you edit your- yourself, right?" And so, but that's what it is. It's being the per- the person in front of the room is the expert, right? And so, that's where, you know, we wanted to make sure that we were on camera speaking to our clients. Just like… And, and one of the things that we do is we try to execute everything that we are, you know, advising our clients to do. So we're telling our clients they should rank, you know, r- rank their website through SEO. We're doing that, right? We're running paid advertising. We're doing social media marketing. All of the things that we're telling our clients to do, we wanna be executing ourselves, and leading from the front. So, that's kinda how that came together. Brian can speak to more about how he put the branding and the, and the website and things together, 'cause he did an amazing job on that. I can't take any credit there. The guy has a, he has a s- a very special skill set.

Brian: Yeah. Talk, talk us- Branding not so much.

Josh Nelson: Talk us through them, Brian. I mean, it looks wonderful. I mean, I'm not a big…

Brian: I'm not into, like, design or branding. It's more SEO is my background. So I think- I'm not into design or branding. I don't do a good job of that at all. I felt like the bright red color stood out, so we used that. But yeah, I mean, and the… One thing I think we didn't mention is that, you know, over time, I mean, this was… I didn't put this site together overnight. It took, you know, a lot of time, months and months. But, and I don't know if Jim mentioned this, but, you know, all those things we've been doing, webinars, you know, case studies, Facebook ads, like, at a certain point it's like a slow ramp-up, and then you kind of hit this momentum shift in terms of people seeing you as the expert, and I think we kind of hit that not too long ago. But it definitely took some time, you know, from the beginning standpoint.

Josh Nelson: That's a great point, 'cause there was a period of time where it felt like you guys were doing the webinars and you were doing the podcast episodes and you were creating the content, but just, it was, it was all happening underneath the surface and it wasn't materializing into sales, right? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Jim: Yeah. I think it… I mean, it just takes time, right? N- these aren't, these aren't short-term marketing strategies, right? SEO is not a short-term marketing strategy. You know, building authority is not a short-term thing. You don't just show up and become an authority overnight, right? So you have to put the work in behind that. But that work will always pay off down the road. And, and through that authority building, that's really what happened with us, and y- we really, I think as I mentioned, we really started getting, kind of fi- feeling the, the beginning of that after we started marketing directly to the industry association people. I think that's where, that's where we started. And it was because we were put, we were, I guess, we were, we were pointing our, our efforts at the right audience. Mm. And, and that was a, that was a big thing. So, you know, w- essentially, we were, we were forcing ourselves to be on the stage in front of the right audience, if you wanna think about it that way. So, you know, if, you know, that was one of the things that helped do it. And then it was just, it's the consistency of effort, just nonstop continuously doing it. And you know, I see people… I saw people in the, in the Seven Figure Agency a few times. You know, one of the, I guess more recently, I think it was, like, comments about, you know, make… "Well, I sent, you know, 40 emails through the Hillsburg Method and no one responded," or, "I did, you know, I, you know, I, I did, I've done, you know, I did my first webinar and I only got two people to show up," right? It's so, it's like, yeah, you did. You got two people to show up. That's how we thought about it, right? We got two people to show up. And I mean, we still, on our webinars, we, you know, we were only getting about 10, you know, about 10 people live on the webinar, about 40 registrations, about 10 live for since, kind of probably late August. Before that, we might have got, you know, two… I think we did, we actually did a webinar with no attendees. Remember that one? That was a good one That was a good one, right? We did a webinar with no attendees, and we don't care, right? Because now we get to have that content. It goes on our YouTube channel. It's, you know, we can use it, you know, through, you know, through everything else. And, and then, you know, what… When the COVID hit, and we did the COVID-19 webinar, that's when our list really responded, and that was the first time I had– I mean, I had like 53 people live on the webinar for that, and that wa- I was blown away. That was, that was amazing to me. So I don't,… My, our goal, one of our goals when we joined the industry association was to, was to try to get everyone in that association to know who we are. Mm-hmm. It wasn't to sell to X amount of roofing contractors. I mean, we have our sales goals, of course, but, we, you know, it wa- it's all about that, you know, the… I just wanted them to know who we are, and that was kind of the, what we, you know, kind of how we did that. So- Sorry. Yeah. You can see here some of the, some of the content on the, on the YouTube channel. Mm-hmm. All the podcast episodes, the webinars, things like that. Yeah.

Josh Nelson: So I think, you know, if you were to take this in sequence, chose the niche, started doing some cold outreach, joined the association, which gave you a good list. Not a garbage list, but a good list of prospects, and then you were just really aggressive in your outreach to that list with value-added content. Give them the book, invite them to the webinars, start planting those seeds, and it started to result in a culmination of opportunity coming at you, not from one channel, but from lots of different channels. For sure. Exactly.

Jim: That's it. There's an old, there's a, it… You, you remember that, sales trainer by… He was, he's an older gentleman, Jim Rohn. He passed away now. Mm-hmm. Remember him? Yeah. I re- There's one qu- kind of quote from him that always sticks in my mind, and that's to have, to have a consistent business, you need fi- you need, five to seven con- five to seven lead sources, right? So if you're only focusing on, "Hey, well, I'm doing these webinars and nothing's working," well, you only have one lead source there, so you're, you're missing out, right? So you have to get to five to seven lead sources, right? Ranking your w- website, doing, you know, your ca- you know, running Facebook ads to a case study, doing a podcast, you know, marketing to an industry, to your industry association, doing your webinars. So each of these things, and once you have that concept to me was, has stuck with me. And I always think of that when, you know, when executing a business, executing a new business. Multiple sources of inbound opportunities. That's right.

Josh Nelson: I think you guys have executed as well as anybody in the group in becoming omnipresent in the, in the industry, right? Yeah. We're- And didn't start with trying to target all roofing companies. It was, "Let's find the roofing companies in this association and let's create great content for them. Let's get it in front of their eyeballs." And what's funny is when you do that, it permeates the rest of the industry. Like, I'm sure you're getting people outside of the association, but because you were creating it for that specific audience, that's how the positioning really started to materialize. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Jim: That, that's exactly how it came together.

Josh Nelson: Very cool. So if you were to look at, you know, all of the different marketing that you do, is there one or two strategies that seem to be generating the lion's share of the opportunity for you at this point? Or is it still kind of d- you know, diffused across the base?

Jim: Diffused across the base. Recent- I would say that we do get– I would say that the largest volume of leads comes through search, so, our website being ranked. – That's powerful. Yeah… Of inbound inquiries. The secondly, probably right now through the case study, and then everyone kinda come… Once they're in, that's when they're go- that's when we're presenting them with the webinars and the podcast episodes and all of those types of things. But I've had opportunities come directly from the podcast. I've had, opportunities come directly from, Instagram, opportunities come directly from LinkedIn. You know, so through our social media marketing it, what, is another place that we've, we've definitely found some good traction. And once you, once you opt into anything or come to our site, you're never gonna get rid of us, so- You'll never get rid of us. You're pixeled. You're on the list. That's right. And you get nurtured- Sorry… And nurtured and nurtured- Sorry, everyone… Nurtured and nurtured. Come ahead, visit our website. I dare you.

Josh Nelson: I'm sure they will. Yeah. And they'll see your, they'll see your retargeting ads and all of the other amazing stuff you guys are, you guys are putting out. So I think an important insight, I wanna hear from you guys in chat here, what's standing out to you in terms of what you're hearing? I think an important insight is if you, if you, if you're looking for a single bullet that's going to just drive your business forward, it doesn't exist. Like, if all they did was run a case study funnel, "Hey, look at one roofer that got this result," and that was all they did to a, like, a random landing page, you know, they would, they would absolutely not be where they are today, right? It was that they took a, a multi-channel approach to their marketing and really dominating this local space. Would you agree, like, would you agree with that assessment, Jim and Brian? Yeah, for sure. Mm-hmm. 100%. 100%. Okay. Let, let's pivot a little bit. Let's talk a little bit about the service offering. Like, what exactly is it that you do for the clients that you serve? What is your, what is your program? What does your packaging look like?

Jim: So that's actually a perfect time to pivot to the service offering because that's exactly how we tell our, what we tell our clients that they need to be doing, right? You can't just, do SEO. You can't j- just try to rank your Google My Business listing. You can't just do pay-per-click advertising. You can't just do social media marketing. So it's a combined- a combined package there. So, so our package includes, es-essentially the way that I describe it on a daily basis is it is what we do is it, is what– The way that Google displays search results for the roofing industry, roofing search terms with commercial intent, right? So that's the core of what we do. That's our Get Found package as of, as we've talked about before. And that is, you know, a, a fully optimized website, not only optimized for SEO, but for conversions. We, and then ongoing SEO, for the website, rank helping, o-optimization of their Google My Business listing and, you know, all the SEO that goes into ranking that. Their reputation management, a reputation management system to help them build their reviews and their trust in that Go-Google My Business listing. The, management of all of their pay-per-click advertising, retargeting and remarketing ads, and then social media marketing beyond that.

Josh Nelson: Nice. And, and kinda high level, how do you charge for this type of thing? Do you, à la carte, monthly fee?

Jim: – Monthly fee, twenty-four fifty for everything. Nineteen fifty if they, if we're not doing the social media advertising for them, social media marketing.

Josh Nelson: Got it. Very, very cool. Had you guys ever been, à la carte based, or have you always been, you know, retainer based? I guess you were doing pay per lead at one point, so that's kind of- Yeah…

Jim: À la carte based. That's à la carte. But the, no, we haven't. We– It's, it was all or nothing. Always recurring, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was all or nothing recurring. Yeah.

Josh Nelson: That's a game changer, right? Do you feel like if you were doing, you know, random websites for roofing companies or random, you know, piecemeal type stuff, that would have stalled out your growth a little bit? A hundred percent. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. So having a comprehensive solution where you can come and say, "Look, this is what you're gonna need to do to generate the maximum results, and this is how much it is. Either take it or don't take it," has been a big part of what's mo- like driven your agency forward, for sure. And, and behind that is, and behind that is if– would building them a website, you know, what would that do for their business? Well, it'll do something very small, right? But if they're not getting traffic to that website, then what's the website for, right? What, what good is that website that you build them?

Jim: So each of the… Everything goes, you know, everything, you know… We, we are the experts i, in what we do and this is what we would do if we owned a roofing company, right? What– We wouldn't just do one thing or another. So that's, that's, you know, that's the service offering that we put together is, you know, what should you really be doing? Not, not just, "Well, hey, we'll do what you want us to do." No, no. We're the authority. We're, we're the experts in this. This is what you, what you need to be doing as a, as a company to generate the best efforts through your digital marketing.

Josh Nelson: That's awesome. And you guys are obviously getting great results for the clients. So let's talk a little bit about how you get the work done. So you guys have grown to, you know, twenty-plus clients across the country. What does the, what does the operation look like? Is it just the two of you? Have you started to add team members at this point?

Brian: We've built a team. It's definitely been a learning process. But most of our team that does the fulfillment is, in the Philippines. They do great work. I've trained a lot of them. You know, we have a US-based account manager, project manager, to handle that sort of stuff. But our team's about, I think, ten people now, eleven people.

Josh Nelson: – Nice So. That definitely helps to get it, to get it all done. Scott's asking, as it relates to the package and the website, do you include the website in the, in the monthly fee, or do they pay a separate fee for the website and then the monthly fee?

Jim: The website is included. We have an initial twelve-month agreement. And so really, it's not a twelve-month agreement, it's, it's twelve, the kind of four… We, we went through some things for our, agreement, getting a new agreement put together. So it's really, it's really a– it's our fee for the year, right? And then y- it– we break that down into twelve installments. And so the website is included in that.

Josh Nelson: Yeah. And I find that to work best. You know, when– if you're gonna charge a separate fee for the website and then a separate monthly, it just creates inconsistency of the cash flow. So I always recommend having one monthly fee that includes the website w– and the whole, the whole nine yards.

Jim: Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Nelson: For sure. Good question, Scott. And if you guys have other questions, post them in comments, that way we can answer your questions and keep this as interactive as possible. Looking back, kinda looking back over, y-you know, the growth of the company and kinda what you guys have accomplished, what would be like three key lessons or three key takeaways that you could share with the, with the group?

Brian: Well, I could say, I mean, you gotta start somewhere. You know, it was the… What was the quote? Something about imperfection. You just gotta, you just gotta go for it. I mean, if you start just thinking about everything and just, you're not gonna get anything accomplished. So, you know, make a list, do one thing at a time. You know, as I said, you know, everything that's on the site and all of our different, inbound sources we've built slowly over time. We started with the web– started with the site. We… Then we did the webinars. You know, we did the book. I mean, that was all a progression. So don't overthink it, just do it. You know, that's what I would say.

Josh Nelson: Great. Jim?

Jim: That's for sure. Yeah. And, and that was- in the beginning, we were, we were hesitant in hiring. I think that, I think that we– if looking back, I think we would, we could have hired faster, and that would have helped accelerate the growth. It's the unknown of what your recurring will be in the next, you know, in the next six months or something, right? So, having to hire, you know, before you have, you know, a, a, you know, a good amount of recurring in there, I think we could have done that a little bit, a little bit sooner. And then just, yeah, executing as fast as possible. I would have probably executed, things even, I would have done things even faster. So no, no breaks at all, just- No breaks, no hesitation. Like, let's go, right?

Brian: Like- Both of us, Jim and I both like to overthink things. For sure. So that's- That's helped us a lot. Or in– yeah, it is because there… What, what's really funny, Josh, and I've, I've told you this in person, is that every time I think of an idea, like at the next intensive or at the next thing, there's a, there's like a, a full- fully built out module on exactly how to execute it. I'm like, "That's awesome. I was thinking about doing a podcast." "Okay, here's everything you need." Right? Like, it's, it's the, it, it definitely just doing the next thing, just pulling the next module out of the, out of the members area and ex- and put it in place. So.

Josh Nelson: That's awesome. Let's see. Jeremy's asking, when you, when you look at the spend versus the management fee, are you including that in your twenty-four hundred monthly fee or do you take that on top?

Brian: All ad spend is on top of the twenty-four fifty, yeah.

Josh Nelson: So keep that separate, guys. Run, run Google AdWords, you know, to directly to their card. That way they see how much went to Google AdWords- Yep… And you keep your management fee. Very hard to manage profitability if, you know, so like you're taking their spend and billing that directly and then spending it on your own account, to manage the AdWords. So, so good question.

Brian: We, we did that in the beginning. We, we signed– we had four clients in the beginning that we signed on a package that included ad spend. And so it was three thousand dollars a month. Fifteen hundred doll-dollars of that was our agency fee, and fifteen hundred dollars a month went towards, went towards their ad spend through Google Ads. And there was… You can't, you can't scale that. It, it's too difficult to scale that and to have the, you know, it, that many, that much ad spend coming out of your, you know, out of your pocket on a monthly basis, you know. They don't pay their next month's agency fee, and all of a sudden you know, their card bal- you know, gets declined and all of a sudden you s- you're, you know, you're down, you know, five hundred, a thousand dollars in ad spend on top of that, so. Great point. Yeah.

Josh Nelson: There's a risk to it. There's the concern for them not knowing transparency-wise how much maybe you spent on ads versus just pocketed for your own profitability. So I always recommend keeping the budget separate from the management fees. Jeremy was asking if you guys just do SEO and pay-per-click advertising on Google Ads. Do you get involved in, Facebook advertising at all?

Brian: Facebook ads also. Yeah. Facebook and Instagram ads. That's the additional package, though. Yeah. That's the twenty-four fifty, includes Face- ad– running ads on Facebook and Instagram. Yep.

Josh Nelson: So it's a very comprehensive, like this is what you need to do in order to maximize your lead flow- Yeah… In order to, you know, just capitalize on the internet, website, SEO, pay-per-click, social media, paid advertising, tracking, for a, for a monthly fee that's gonna be, you know, easily monetized.

Brian: Yeah. Yep.

Josh Nelson: I love it. St-Steven's asking, can you give me an idea how many strategy sessions you guys are taking on a monthly basis, to get that kind of growth?

Brian: It was, it– really, it, it depended on the month. We've had a lot of fluctuation in that we have– it hasn't, it hasn't been like, hey, we do ten strategy sessions a month, right? It's, the– but between six and ten is probably what we averaged, in the kind of… Once, once we kind of gotten a little bit of momentum, we were at about six to ten. The goal now is twenty, but we're, you know, we're pushing it to get to twenty. That would be, you know, that would be cranking pretty well. So, that's the goal every month. But, so yeah, I would say, you know, to get to that, you know, you gotta, you gotta be focused on at least ten, trying to hit ten. That was my goal every month, was to hit ten.

Josh Nelson: Got it. So shoot for ten, and then close ratio somewhere in the, thirty to forty- Probably the thirties.

Brian: Thirties. Mid-thirties. Yeah.

Josh Nelson: Well, if you can get to twenty strategy sessions, you'd have like five to six new clients. That's right. And you're gonna get three to four new clients.

Brian: Yep. Yeah.

Josh Nelson: I think it's a great point, and Steven, it sort of shows that you're thinking, right? You can do all of the best activity, right? You can have a great website, you can have case studies, you can be doing podcasts, but if you're not getting ten to fifteen or more strategy sessions month in and month out, the new client volume's not gonna be there and the growth isn't gonna be there. So like really being clear on what you're shooting for and how many strategy sessions you need or sales appointments, whatever you wanna call it, is smart thinking. Do you guys track that activity? Is that something you guys pay close attention to make sure you're hitting that ten, or how do you track that stuff?

Brian: With the KPI board on the wall right here. Nice. So.

Josh Nelson: Love it. So KPIs, right? Yep. How many strategy sessions, how many new clients, how much recurring revenue growth. Love that you guys are, you know, really tracking and measuring the activity you wanna get more of. All right. So Matt Coffee had his hand raised. I'm not sure. What he wrote in here, though, was what are the top three things you guys are doing right now to get strategy sessions during the pandemic? Like, what's worked well during the pandemic to get strategy sessions?

Brian: The strategy sessions definitely slowed down, w-when the pandem- pandemic hit. But, you know, w- I went really, I went really aggressively with the webinar and the podcast episodes and really focused on what roofing contractors would need help with at this time. So I did a series of podcast episodes on those very specific things. And so, and that has led to some other opportunities from doing that. But, but through the pandemic, it… Really what we've seen is in the last couple of weeks, I've seen the call volume increase of our inbound. And it's, it's mainly that it just seems like people are starting to get back into, into buying mode or into, you know, all right, this is gonna end, so what are we gonna do?.

Josh Nelson: Nice. So that's smart. You kind of went into, let's create great content that's gonna position us- Yeah… As this, in the, in the immediate term, and then as this thing starts to come back to normal, you've got all of the content that you can drip out over time.

Brian: Yeah. And, and really just to position our… It, it helped, you know, build our authority even more, right? We were just– We– That, that was the whole, the whole goal is just to build our authority even more, become more omnipresent to them. And, and that'll… I don't think about what, how many, you know, I wasn't focused on how many strategy sessions can I get during, you know, during the COVID crisis. It was just, hey, let's just do good things and, and good things will come, right?

Josh Nelson: Yeah. Ma-makes a lot of sense. Todd, what's up? Glad to have you with us. Todd's asking, do you find you have to have multiple meetings with a prospect to get the sale, or do you guys usually get a one-call sale? How does that work in your world?

Brian: We do a two-part, it's a two-part sales system. It's the discovery call and then the strategy session. I find that I, I may… Probably out of our twenty, eight clients, twenty-six clients, I may have had one sign on the strategy session. I don't ask for the credit card. Maybe I should. But I have a proposal system that I use that sends them the agreement and the system overview and process overview and kind of a lot, some information around that, you know, that's integrated that they can just sign, e-sign and, and move on. But, I don't find that it's a, the– It is– I find that it is something that people want to think about or compare you to another company. The client that we just signed last week, we did our strategy session. Great. Everything went well. We're gonna think about it. Sounds good. We'll make a deci– we're gonna make a decision in the next week. During that time when they came back and called me to say, "Hey, we're gonna go with you guys," they said that they had done, they had, they had, they had six other sales presentations in that time period. Wow. So they were actively looking to buy, right? And, but they wanted to make sure that they were making the right decision. And I, I'd be ha– I'm happy to let someone shop me. Go and do a strategy session or a, a sales presentation with another company in our space. You won't, you'll, you'll see the difference so.

Jim: Yeah. It's a, it's a great point, and I think we're, we're similar in that front, right? We don't, we'll ask for the business, but we don't usually get it right on a one-sale close, right? This is, there's an evaluation process that goes into place. There's a follow-up system in place. I would say probably eighty percent of our deals come, you know, in the follow-up week, two weeks after, that initial sales presentation is made. Yeah.

Josh Nelson: Sounds like that's how it's working for you guys as well. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, listen, when it does happen and they do give you the credit card over the phone, that's great. But if that was your only play and that's how you thought it would always need to go, you'd wind up probably frustrating some of your prospects because you'd be, you know, "Hey, listen, if you sign today, I'm gonna knock, you know, X amount off the deal." And that, it just doesn't feel congruent. It doesn't feel professional. So, good question though, Todd. There's a few in the Q&A if you saw that too. I don't know. Didn't see it. Glad you brought it up. Let's see. Q&A, where is it? Aha. All right, let's see if we haven't already answered some of these. Joel says, "Not sure exactly how your service is offered.

Jim: If this is a problem you have, deal with project creep?" Yeah, we– That sounds like something- Project creep. Scope creep, right? Yeah. We, we had a conversation with Josh about this the other day. And it's, you know, it's part of it. We don't, I don't know that we've dealt with it exceptionally well or exceptionally poorly, right? We, we just kinda t– we take it case by case so. But we try to set the expectations up front. This is not a custom website that you're getting. You know, it is, it is a framework that we put forth that works best for what you're trying to accomplish, and that's, you know, leads generating, you know, qualified leads to your roofing business so,. And when you're getting twenty-five hundred bucks a month, you can afford to, you know, hey, look, we'll, we'll do a little bit of extra than maybe we thought, right? Yeah. Yep. Kind of what you're experiencing. Yeah.

Josh Nelson: So Jeremy's got a good question. He says, "When you're running your ads for the agency, how are you able to target roofing companies specifically and not just anybody?" for our agency? Yeah. Brian can answer to that.

Brian: Custom, custom audiences. Yeah. So I know Josh Wheeler's talked about, a lot about that, but Joining the, associations, getting a list, and I mean, that's, that's the best way to do it, I think. Upload that list to Facebook and run those ads And create great content that gets people to get onto your page to get pixeled, so that now you're creating that audience and you're very laser-targeted.

Josh Nelson: Jim, I'd love it if you could unpack your, omnipresence on steroids. I know, I know like a year and a half ago, I was talking a lot about join the association, put out content, show up everywhere they look. And you kind of took that concept of omnipresence and you said it's the omnipresence strategy on steroids. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Jim: Yeah, for sure. So, so, you know, I– that really hit me. The omnipresence, the, just the word, right? And the concept behind it really, really resonated with me. And, and so what we did, the omnipresence approach, you know, what Josh is talking about is, you know, you're joining the industry association. You are marketing to that association, whether it's through direct mail, it's through, you know, all of these different a- you know, aspects, the webinars, the, you know, custom content or creating content, valuable content. And so what I did is I thought, how do we, you know, how do we do this and, you know, how do we increase this exponentially? And how do we– And really, I mean, it comes… I, it came from three sources. The, the kind of the way that I put this together came from three sources. One is Gary Vaynerchuk. He's the king of repurposing content and creating a lot of content from a, from what he does. And just creating a ton of content. That, that guy's– I can't believe how much content that guy puts out.

Josh Nelson: – Sixty pieces a day…

Jim: Then the other one was, Frank Kern. Frank Kern had a little course on, it kind of, that kind of was, had this essence. And another, someone else, Peng Joon had another course that kind of had this essence. And so what essentially the, the strategy of it is to take your, take a large piece of content and break it up into multiple pieces of content and distribute that content in as many places as possible. And so if you go to, Inst- I don't know if you could go to instagram.com/roofermarketers. That's the best, kind of the be- or yeah, you can click on the Instagram logo there. And you'll be able to see here kind of what we do on a daily basis. These are what we, what we've termed videograms. So we take, you know, I, I…

Josh Nelson: Like the, does the searcher's intent matter?

Jim: So I created a series of educational videos that we repurpose and put out on a new, on an ongoing basis. But then you can see we're, we're also, we're also pulling little clips from all of the podcast episodes that we do. That's been our, that's our biggest, that's the big- the largest number of pieces of content that we have that gets circulated through this. And, and the goal is impression share. So, go up to the top there, Josh, in the search bar and type in hashtag roofers world, I think. Roofers world. Roofers world, roofer world, something like that. No, not that one. So try it with singular. Roofer world. Do roofers of Instagram there. Roofers of Instagram. Fifty-nine thousand posts, right? So this is another thing, I just took it from Danny, right? Now, so scroll down this feed of posts, and I guarantee that we will be there.

Josh Nelson: Yeah, there you are.

Jim: Over and over, and just continue to scroll down and we will be there over and over again. So I try to, essentially, I try to take over hashtags, or not take over hashtags, but put, insert ourselves into the conversation through hashtags on Instagram. We also do the same, posting on, on our Facebook,,on Facebook, on our, on LinkedIn, my personal LinkedIn, on the business LinkedIn, on, you know. So everywhere you go, we're– we will always have a post in our feed. I was telling, I mentioned this on Joe Troyer's podcast that I just did with him, is that we actually have had, one of our employees unsubscribe. She's like, "I can't take it anymore." "Every time I open Facebook up, you're in my feed." And that's the concept behind the im- omnipresence on steroids is to always be in front of them. Every time they open their Facebook, every time they open their Instagram, every time they open their LinkedIn, I'm there. And so it's just an impression share, right? On a basic level, it's just how much impression share can we achieve with the content that we create?

Josh Nelson: I love it. And, and kind of the short code or the hack is it's not like you're creating hundreds and hundreds of pieces of content. Yeah. You create one, two, three, maybe ma- like long form pieces of content, a webinar, an interview- Yep… A podcast. That gets then split up into micro components that are- Yeah… Named differently, titled differently- Yeah… And that's how you've got this constant flow of new content getting dripped out. Exactly. And Jim, you're able to kind of flip the script on that when you're selling to those people because they're, they're so used to seeing you. You're like, "Well, that's what we're gonna do for you." Exactly. Yep. And the fact is everybody wants to deal with the expert in their type of business, and they wanna deal with the best of the best. And like it or not, the person that's most present, the person that is putting out the content, the person at the front of the stage, the person that's running the webinar is perceived as the expert. And so that's why these guys are coming to you and they're willing to pay premium to have you implement these ideas for them.

Jim: Yeah. We just– We raised our prices during COVID. Nice. April first, our prices went up to nineteen fifty and twenty-four fifty from seventeen fifty to, and twenty-two fifty. So, you know, the, the more authority that we, that we build, the better that we execute for our clients. The, you know, w- We didn't, we didn't go, we didn't go backwards during COVID is, you know, the easy way to put it, so.

Josh Nelson: That's awesome. Give a thumbs up or a that was awesome to this, to Jim if that was useful to kinda hear how he's thinking through this omnipresent strategy and how he's developing this authority positioning. So we have a cou-couple questions in here and then we'll start to wrap up. Bear's asking, do they get charged a, an additional setup fee in the first month or is it just a flat monthly from the inception?

Jim: We-we're just doing a flat monthly from inception.

Josh Nelson: Okay. And he's asking, what happens if they sign in the middle of the month?

Jim: Do you guys just do anniversary-based billing or is it based on the first- Yep, thirty-day billing. Yeah. Same here, Bear. So like if a client signs up on the seventeenth of the month, they just get billed every seventeenth until they cancel. That's right. So there's no need to prorate, there's no need- Yep… To try and figure out how do we get it to set on the first of every month. So, good question. Steven's asking if you remove clients from your marketing list once they become a client, so they're not- We do… Continuing to see. Yeah, we do. So we move them over into a partner ki- We call it a Roofer Marketers partners. That's how they're tagged in our, in our system or, you know, in our list, in the Roofer Marketers partner list. So any– so they may make it d-d-a different type of content, right? But they won't get invited to every– they won't get as much, for sure.

Josh Nelson: Yeah. Good, good question. And I think easy to remove them from an email list. A little bit less easy to remove them from a retargeting list or from a s- Yeah… Social promotion list. But that's not a problem, right? The– you want your clients to see you and see all the great stuff you're putting out 'cause then they're just like, "Oh, I must be with the right, the right company," right? These guys were the, are continuing to innovate, continuing to roll out great information and content. Great stuff. R- I think some amazing insights here on how you guys chose the niche, position yourself as the experts, land clients, you know, get the work done, continue to grow, continue to scale. I guess for those maybe that are listening that aren't members of Seven Figure Agency, what would you say to someone that's thinking, should I get involved with this? Should I not? What would you guys' feedback be to that person or persons?

Jim: If you are looking to build a niche agency, do it. There's nothing better. Yep. I've, I've done– Ryan and, both Ryan and I, and I'm sure everyone here on the call or watching, you know, in the future, has spent money on a lot of courses and, and things like that. And there's… This was, this was by far well and be-beyond anything we've ever, I've ever had in a, in any kind of course, so.

Josh Nelson: That's awesome. I appreciate that. So, so going from, going from where you were to o- fifty thousand and beyond in monthly recurring and growing, I have no doubt you guys will be seven figures, by the end of the year. I think that's the target, right? Yeah. How, how has that impacted your business life and your personal life? Like, what's the impact of that for you guys?

Jim: Well, I mean, we're still pretty busy. We're, we're, we're a little busy. We're busy. You know, things are a little busy around here. It's been nice to take a paycheck.

Josh Nelson: That was, that's been nice, huh?

Jim: That, that was the biggest thing. That was, that was good. Yeah. It's been, you know, growing. It, it just gives you, give you some room to work with. And I think that in the beginning, you know, I know a lot of people can relate, you're tight with funds. You're, you know, you…

Brian: Like Jim said, we're unsure if we wanna hire someone 'cause they're, you know, you're just kind of juggling, "Eh, can we afford this?" whatnot. But it's nice to have that kind of little comfortable room right now. That, that's the biggest thing in business for sure. That's– And, and we're, we're, we've definitely passed the point of where we know what's gonna happen, right? There's no, there's just no doubt anymore where, you know, where we'll be able to take the agency. So it's just kinda that confidence that you're on the right track, the momentum is there, it's not like it's going away, and knowing that there's a bright future without question out in front of you guys. Yep, for sure.

Josh Nelson: Very cool. So as we wrap up, any additional nuggets of wisdom you would offer to that agency owner that's, you know, just trying to get to the next level, trying to, you know, get things to that next place? What nuggets of wisdoms would you share, for them? What would you share on the fulfillment side, Ryan?

Brian: I would say, you know, this isn't for everyone, but have an understanding of what you're hiring out to people before you do it because, -… You know, there's a lot of people out there that do great work, but there's a lot of people that don't do great work and I think you'd rather know kind of ahead of time what you're getting yourself into, before just subbing everything out and hoping for the best for your clients 'cause it's not a, not a, not a trial really period when you have clients and they're, they're waiting on results. No doubt. That's my two cents. I love it. From a, from a sales perspective, I would say, that, that it… You have to make sure you have the right mindset. You know, one of the books that I've read, and I know, you know, a lot of people have probably read in this group is, Grant Cardone's "10X," you know, "10X Rule." And, you know, I've heard Danny talk about it a lot of times and the, my, the core concept that I got from that book was everything is gonna take ten times more effort than you think it's gonna take. It may take ten times longer than you think it's gonna take. So if you think you need, you know, ten inbound, ten strategy sessions to get to, you know, your first, you know, three, five clients, try and do a hundred, right? Ten X that, and in that ten X-ing of your effort, is where you're gonna really just s- build momentum quickly. I'd also say maybe fol- find someone, and then this obviously doesn't apply to everyone. I give props to like Dan Mee, who kind of headed the agency himself to start. But, Jim, I mean, he's a great sales guy and, you know, he complements my skill set because, you know, he doesn't do the fulfillment stuff. I like to oversee the operations side and everything. So us two working together works out really well. You know, if we both were good at sales and weren't good at the other stuff, it really wouldn't make sense. But in this case it does. Partner with or hire your weaknesses, right? For sure. I'm sorry, Jim, I, I talked over you there. Oh, no. Partner with your, partner with your, partner with…

Jim: Or partner or hire your weaknesses- Mm-hmm…

Brian: Quickly, 'cause that's what you procrastinate on. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Josh Nelson: I love it. Excuse me. Well, thank you guys so much for sharing. Congratulations on your growth and success. I mean, tremendous momentum. And again, I have no doubt you guys are headed to multiple seven figures and beyond over the next, twelve to twenty-four months. So thank you for sharing. Thanks for all the, all the amazing insights. For those of you watching this after the fact, be sure to tag, Brian and Jim, thank them for sharing. Thank them for their, for their insights. Yeah. Thanks, Josh. Good job. That was awesome. Well, I hope you get great value from that session. If you'd like to get more ideas, strategies, and techniques on how to most effectively grow and scale your digital marketing agency, I'd like to invite you to go to sevenfigureagency.com. Got a number of resources that you're gonna get tremendous value from. You're gonna go to sevenfigureagency.com. If you scroll down, you can grab a free copy of my book, "The 7 Figure Agency Roadmap," that really spells out big picture, how to position yourself as the expert, how to grow your agency, and how to scale to seven figures and beyond. The other resource I want you to check out on our website, is the podcast, right? If you're listening to this and you'd like more, I've got dozens of interviews with highly successful digital marketing agencies on how they've grown and have scaled their agency. So if you go to sevenfigureagency.com and hit the Podcast button, there you can subscribe on the channel that's of most benefit to you. And the last thing I'm gonna suggest is make sure that you go to sevenfigureagency.com/group or search on Facebook for the Local Agency Success Group on Facebook. I'm in there, the guests that we've had on the show are in there, and thousands of other successful digital marketing agencies. It's a great place to plug in, share best practices, and network with other highly successful digital marketing agencies. So thanks for joining us. Thanks for listening. Again, I hope you got great value, and I look forward to seeing you in the Facebook group. I'll talk to you soon.