From $43K to $118K a Month by Niching Down Into Dirt

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

Josh Nelson: All right. Hello, and welcome to the Seven Figure Agency podcast, where we're interviewing highly successful digital marketing agencies from across the country. Today, I'm super excited to be joined by Josh Stoeckel. Josh, thanks so much for joining us.

Josh Stockel: Yeah, thanks for having me. Love being here.

Josh Nelson: So Josh has grown his agency to over $118,000 in monthly recurring revenue, focusing on the land clearing industry, and he's had accelerated growth. Over the last year, he was telling me he went from almost, like, 43K to over- Yeah… 100K. And so this should be really interesting. Yeah. We'll talk about his journey and how he's grown. So I guess without stealing your thunder, tell us what's the current lay of the land? Approximately how many clients, how much recurring revenue? Like, what does, what does it look like today?

Josh Stockel: Yeah. So today, we are at 118,000 monthly recurring revenue. We have about 60 to 65 clients, 13 employees, and yeah, one happy dog that likes to sit next to me all day long.

Josh Nelson: Awesome. So, so a really great business, a thriving business. Take us back a little bit. So, like, you've been at this game for quite some time. And I love the accelerated growth- Yeah… In the last year, but tell us about, like, how you got into digital marketing agency business in the first place.

Josh Stockel: Yeah, so that's a fun story. I won't take up too much time on it, but I was, I was the president CEO of a local chamber of commerce, and I had owned a pie shop right before that and sold it. I, moving into the chamber job, thought it was actually gonna be more pay, but my take-home, it was just a mess. I didn't do my math right, typical entrepreneur. I just jumped in. And I just needed to figure out how to make more money, and so I started thinking, "What could I do on the side that I actually enjoy?" And I started thinking about with the pie shop we owned, I loved the marketing aspect. And so I was like, "Maybe there's a way I could do some marketing." Started doing social media marketing for a couple of local restaurants and then quickly found out you can't scale that by yourself. Mm. So then I started Googling around, like, what are marketing things you can do at scale? And sure enough, rank-and-rent business model popped up, fascinated me. I was like, "What? I can own a website and rent it to somebody?" So learned SEO, learned web design, and then it just went off from there. I was like, "You know, rank and rent is fine, but I really like working with real clients." And so that's just how we got into it.

Josh Nelson: Fascinating. So you started in a pie shop. We gotta hear that story one day. Yeah. You got into chamber of commerce and then- Yeah… Did rank and rent and kinda developed from there. Talk to us about, like, the journey to 50K because, like, we got to know each other through the acquisition of Agency Collective, which was a, you know, a really fun experience for us, and we got some amazing members from that community and some amazing talent. But talk to us about the, kind of the journey to that first K and some of the things that helped to accelerate the growth.

Josh Stockel: Man, that was hard. That was a really hard process. I– So when I started my agency, we, you know, did your typical, like, cold call, and actually, no cold call. Cold text, cold email. I was like, "I'll never do a cold call," and to this day, praise the Lord, I haven't had to do that. But we just really fumbled, and we were a generalist agency. We worked with all types of contractors. I kinda liked it and just kind of fumbled our way to the 30K mark. I had a prospecting method that I called potty prospecting method. I mean, you tell I'm a parent, right? Still saying potty. I would just send messages to guys, you know. I remember looking at a roofer's thing and, you know, would just doomscroll in the bathroom, right? So I just remember seeing, like, a Facebook ad for a roofer, and I thought, "Well, this guy is wasting money on me 'cause I, you know, I'm not in the market to buy a roof." So I thought, "I'm selling SEO, I'm selling web design. I'm sure there's a better way." So I reached out to him, and I said, "Hey, you wasted your money on me. Great looking ad, but I just don't need a roof, and I'd hate for you to keep wasting money on people like me. I could actually show you a better way to get in front of more, like 80% or more of your market. Would you be interested in hearing about that?" And it was just enough to get, for the guy to go, "You piqued my interest. What are you doing?" And then it just kinda made me realize, hey, I could do this method with a lot more guys. And so I started teaching Facebook who I wanted in front of me, and I just started hammering out roofers and plumbers, electricians, and I made it deliver Facebook ads because these guys were actually paying for marketing. So I wasn't just going into groups, hitting up everybody, which we all know m-many of them just don't have the funds. And so I started growing from that zero mark to that 30K mark, kinda doing that method. It didn't cost me anything other than time. And then I got into Agency Collective, and now i-in that time period, I learned how to do ads, like, for my own agency. And so that helped us get from 30 to 50 and then I think for, you know, we've been doing this 10 years, but somewhere in between all that time was a lot of this up and down, round and round rollercoaster, right? I mean, we talk about it all the time in 7FA, but I was that guy and where I was like, it's like I just finally get ahead, and then retention would fall, and then get ahead and retention would fall, and I just could not figure out how to really scale this thing. So, it wasn't until coming into 7FA and really thinking about all these other moving parts and pieces that just, that made the huge ch-change for us and our business.

Josh Nelson: So, okay. So the potting method I think is fascinating. Like, you kinda trade- Yeah… I'm gonna see ads from local companies, and then you use that- Yeah… As a foot in the door. – Yeah… So the people that are tr- like, interested in te-testing something like that out, I know you've got a whole training, and you do, you were, like, you do weekly calls on this. Yeah. But, like, what's the, what's, how do you flip it from, "Hey, I just got your ad, you know, you're not qualified," to an actual sales opportunity?

Josh Stockel: Yeah. So you– Well, we wanna be careful not to just, "Hey, I do SEO. You wanna stop doing ads, right?" Like, it's, nobody wants to hear about what you sell. And so it was, it was figuring out the system to get the right people in front of me and then saying the right message that piqued their interest. So we talk about, we sell the end result. We don't talk about selling the services. So I, in my messaging, was just real clear on that. Like, "Hey, I've got a better way than what you're doing, and I can get you in front of more of your city without wasting your advertising dollars." And then once they reached out and said, "Yeah, I'm interested to hear more," I made them a personalized video showing them how we're killing it in the SEO space and how they're not, how their clients or their competitors are killing it and how we can help them surpass their competitors and, you know, just did the whole two-minute little quick audit, and it was enough. You know, and there's gonna be some who are like, "Oh, okay, never mind. I don't want it." But there were some who were like, "I've never seen this before. No one's ever done a personalized video like that. Let's talk." And that's when we just started adding clients on that method. And so started figuring out how can we do that at scale. So figuring, like, how can I get a VA to run the same method on their Facebook ad account? 'Cause again, we're trying to get in front of the right type of client, not just any roofer but, or electrician or whatever, but the right ones, so who had a marketing budget, who are paying for marketing, so they believe in marketing, but Probably just not getting a great ROI on it. That was the idea.

Josh Nelson: Super good. Yeah, and there's a lot of wisdom in that statement, in that you wanna look for people that already have shown the propensity to advertise, right? The hardest person to sell is someone that's not spending a dollar on advertising- Mm-hmm… And be like, "Hey, let me do your SEO," or, "Let me do your pay per click," or, "Let me…" That is like s- squeezing, you know, juice out of a turnip, right? Yeah. Nothing's gonna come out. Yeah. Yeah. So if you're- That's why they say, like, "This is what I wa- yeah, I want it, I want it." And they're like, "What's the price?" You're like, "Anything. Oh, I don't have any money." Okay, well, that was a big waste of time. And so this whole, like, one-to-one method, especially when maybe 75% of them aren't qualified- Mm-hmm… Is just a huge time suck. And so we've gotta find a way to get in front of the right people, and how do we get in front of the right people who are ready to buy marketing at scale? And that's where the switch from, like, those other methods, one-to-one methods, kinda go by the wayside, and we start looking at the one-to-many methods like Facebook ads or organic stuff. And that's just the better option. Awesome. So hopefully super helpful. Like, be looking for people that are already spending on advertising. Yeah. Just that in and of itself, and be, like, prospecting and working with the people that are already spending money, right? It's a smart way to do that. Right. So I wanna talk, I wanna talk about the transition, right? So- Yeah… 43K, you kinda had your ups, your downs, you kinda, like, leveled out there. And then over the last year you've had this explosive growth to, you know, almost three X. Talk to us about some of the changes, some of the pivots, and some of the things that helped create that momentum.

Josh Stockel: Oh man, yes, huge changes. I- and the good part is they're all the changes you talk about in 7FA. So I just remember, a- and I know I've told you this before, but, like, I just remember coming in a little lost, like, man, the coaching group I was a part of got bought out. I don't know who this group is. I don't know what they're doing. I don't even know if they're good, if their stuff works. And so I really kinda, like, stayed back for a while. I was just… I just didn't like the whole idea, right? Change. I just didn't like change. That's what it came down to. But I had a couple of friends that were in the group, so I found out who was in here. I was like, "Oh, I trust that guy. I like that guy. Okay, they're in here, so this must be pretty decent." And then I started poking around, looking at videos, and kinda getting the idea, and I was like, "Okay, I see, I see what y'all are doing, but I still, I wanna be a generalist agency. I like what I'm doing. You know, we've got some clients here that are in different industries. It would be weird to niche down and all that." So I had all the excuses to not niche down. And then I remember watching the March intensive from home. Actually, me and another guy that were in the group that moved into your group, were sitting on a couch together in his office watching the intensive, and I was just, you know, sort of paying attention, sort of not. And I remember you were doing the interview with all these new seven-figure earners, and you had each one- Mm… Kinda talk about what they had done. And I leaned over to my buddy and I said, "Watch. Every guy who walks up has either started a podcast or written a book or both, has niched down," and I think I said one other thing. And sure enough, one after the other all said the exact same thing. And in that moment it was like, "Okay, I gotta do this, man. I'm tired of this. Let's go." And I literally stopped listening to the, to the sessions, and I built my… I built this logo and our company website on the couch before the session had ended that day. Wow. And that was the beginning. And we, so we niched down. That was the big change. We niched down. Why we chose the dirt world, which for us- Mm-hmm… Is land clearing, excavation, demolition, site prep. Why we chose that one was I started thinking through, all right, out of all the different companies we worked with, who have we had the most success with? Like, who have we really helped the most? And my other caveat was, or requirement was, who do you like talking to? Like, who do you just like working with? Mm-hmm. 'Cause there are some industries I found just weren't a good fit personality wise. And it was just instant, like, the most successful companies we worked with were dirt world guys, and I really enjoyed them. Mm-hmm. So I said, "All right, now I've picked my niche. I'm gonna go after that niche." And, and then just started, like, tightening up our offers. Then it was like, all right, now that we know our niche, we know our la- we gotta… What's the language that's worked with these guys? What kind of funnel should we be building for these guys? What kind of offers should we put here? What kind of pricing, right? So the whole rest of the thing just kinda made sense. It started to fall into place, and so just kinda spent, like, a month just kinda fine-tuning that. I mean, we're always fine-tuning, but spent a month just kinda building all that out and getting it started, and that's just really… That was the number one biggest thing was niche, offer, and then the second big one, biggest one a couple months later was working on retention. Mm. I, that was what I finally identified my biggest issue I was having before was retention. We could sell, but we just weren't retaining a whole lot. And so started going to the training like, "All right, how do we get this thing figured out? How do we keep the back door closed?" And so we started just going through the videos and the trainings and figuring out what are we doing well, but what are we not doing well, and then just made the changes and saw our retention jump up to, like, 95 to 97% on a regular basis. Now we have some months it's low and all that, but in general we've just, we've seen a massive increase in that. So sales has increased and retention has increased, so therefore growth has increased, right?

Josh Nelson: Yeah, no doubt. So I, I love that. You were kind of resistant to the idea of going into a niche- Yeah… Having a centralized program. Mm-hmm. Like, I don't know about that. – Yeah… Saw other agencies and seeing, like, okay, obviously they've gotten to seven figures, like, something is different here. And I love the fact that you walked us through kinda, like, what your thought process around selection of the niche was. Where a lot of people get stuck in your scenario where they're, they've grown to, like, 40,000 plus, but it's already producing good income and they've already got a- Mm-hmm… Lot of clients. Making the pivot and being like, "Okay, I'm gonna keep these guys as long as I can, but I'm gonna focus my new marketing in this new vertical." Yeah. And making the balance there, how did you make that work? And any tips for those agencies that are like, "I wanna go niche. I'm just, you know, I'm too busy, like, trying to keep what I have here going"?

Josh Stockel: Yeah. That was, that was a big hurdle we had to figure out, and I don't think there's… I've heard a couple guys do different things. For us, what we ended up doing was keeping that kind of, like, the parent company in place, like Blue Goat Marketing- Mm-hmm… And all of those clients in those verticals kind of still there and, you know, still get emails from that email account. But internal staff and what we do is it actually was a better move for them because when we improved our retention efforts, they were the recipients of that. Yeah. They just didn't know it was under a new name. Yeah. And so then the new agency, the new website and all that stuff has been for everything since, right? So all of our advertising and our organic efforts are all tied to the land leads, Blue Goat Land Leads business. But we still have a handful of those clients who've just stuck around and they know, some of them know about it. They see it online, and I think in their minds they're just kinda like, "Hey, we've seen y'all improve what you're doing for us." Cool. As long as you just keep it going, you know, we're making money, then we don't mind sticking around with you guys. So we just kinda had to… I thought there would be, more pushback or more questions. We, we only had a handful that were like, "Hey, just we're curious what this is all about," and it was fine. So it's like, d- you, like, don't feel like you gotta burn the boat. Like, if you got clients- Yeah… Keep those clients. Retain those clients.

Josh Nelson: Right. Create a world-class experience. You're just creating a new division of the company- Right…

Josh Stockel: That's like, "We're gonna focus on this industry now." Correct.

Josh Nelson: Keep serving those guys. Just all your new marketing is trying to attract the others. The other, I think, place where people that make this transition get stuck is, well, I'm still getting opportunities outside the niche. How did you handle that? You still take those clients? Or did you say, "Hey, I just wanna put the blinders on"? In your case, how did you, did you address those situations?

Josh Stockel: Yeah. So our rule is we're not taking them on unless they are, like, a referral, and they know- Mm… They know what we, who we are, right? They're just like, "Hey, we just wanna work with y'all because we know you have," and okay, then fine. Come on in. But we aren't advertising to those guys. If somebody comes in through our ads who's not a great fit, and we don't know them, they don't really know us, we're not even gonna mess with it. Mm. We just move them on and just tell them, "Hey, we're, we're just not a great fit." But again, like I said, if it's, like, a friend of a friend who's like, "Hey, I've been having great success with them. I know you don't quite fit their niche, but come on anyway." And they're like, "Yeah, I know you guys don't really work with me, but I really wanna work with y'all," okay. Come on in.

Josh Nelson: Yeah. Love that. I think that's super helpful for people that might be overthinking this, that-… Like, you could still take those clients if you want. Yeah. And you can just be a little more choosy, right? Yeah. And I know some people are like, "You know, I'm gonna charge more for the generalist prospects that come into my world, and make sure that it's a retainer-based thing." And- Right… Which case I'll say no to some, but occasionally if it's a good referral, somebody really wants to do something- Yeah… You can still take that business while directionally focusing going forward.

Josh Stockel: Right. I would say the one thing that we did make clear was though you are gonna come into our new pricing. Yeah. So we're not going to give you what those guys were getting back in the day, 'cause we're actually more expensive now that we've niched down. Our offering is a little stronger, bigger, robust, and so I do tell them, "You come in, they're gonna have to fall in line with our service offering," 'cause that just makes sense internally with all of our teams and our tasks and stuff like that. We just don't wanna now create, like, a different type of service like the old days that doesn't fit. So that is our one, like, caveat.

Josh Nelson: Love it. So, w- and I definitely wanna get into the program and kinda how you package that, but before we go there, so you've, you've got this generalist agency doing 400K. You got a bunch of different clients in a bunch of different verticals, and you decide, "Okay, we're gonna- Mm… We're gonna work with land clearing companies.

Josh Stockel: Well, I've already got some examples.

Josh Nelson: I've already got some case studies." What, like, what was the parlay that you used to go from that seed list of, you know, handful of clients to the next five?

Josh Stockel: Or maybe even the n- the next handful that you were like, "Okay, I wanna go after this vertical in a more aggressive way." What do you mean, in terms of the marketing aspect or, like- Yeah…

Josh Nelson: Just the thought process behind it? What actually worked? Yeah. How did you land those next…

Josh Stockel: They knew you as your general agency, the ones that you wound up getting after that were in the niche. Yeah. Yeah. So we are big on ads. We didn't really have an organic thing going on.

Josh Nelson: We're just actually right now in the last six months been working on that.

Josh Stockel: Okay. And it's, and it's definitely growing, but we've been heavy on Facebook ads and TikTok ads. So for us it was kind of an easy switch on that part. We were able to go, "All right. Well, we've been running ads at all. Now let's tweak them." So I changed our video, our creative out, our language out, and then we used the same system we've been doing. Just now we were targeting a very specific, you know, avatar. And then it was like we've already cleaned up our go high level, so all the automations now have language that are just for dirt world guys. So then it was, it was just kind of an easy switch once we made those changes. So sh- straight up Facebook or meta advertising, a little bit of TikTok in there.

Josh Nelson: Yeah. Laser m- messaging speaking directly to that- Yeah… Land clearing prospect. Exactly. Bringing them into the funnel, converting. Exactly. And that's worked well for you. Any tips on, like, how you're able to… 'Cause that's a pretty, it's a pretty niche niche. It is. Any, any tips as a, as a great meta ads expert on what worked to target that in terms of the actual targeting and the messaging and the ask?

Josh Stockel: Oh, I… We're big on video. In, in other, we got a couple other dirt world guys here in some bigger agency. I think we're all in agreement on that, that for a lot of the contractor space, but especially in ours, video's big. Mm. A- and I say this, you know, when I, when I'm helping other marketing agency guys think through some of this stuff, I tell them the same thing. Like, the talking head model that was big on TikTok now works on all platforms, right? Right. Facebook Reels, YouTube Shorts. There's this model where it's like, it's okay to have a framed vertical video of you talking, but don't just talk at the camera. Like, talk about results. So all of our ads now, we do a lot of, like, I've edited in quick, like, I mean, "Hey, how does a $1.2 million job sound?" Right? Like, this guy up here, and then I show the, a quick snapshot of the job they g- they landed or their logo. And so there's, like, social proof, like, f- within the first two to three seconds, and then I'm, you know, these guys, these guys, these guys. We've also got video ads now where we've literally just taken video testimonies and turned them in ads. Like, we just- Mm… Let them talk. Like, your best salesperson are your clients more than your own company, right? Like, I'm always telling my sales guy, like, "You gotta start outperforming our clients 'cause they're killing it for you right now." So yeah, we let, we've got some of those, and we're just, we're pumping a lot of video creatives into ads, and it's, it's just been working and then cycling them out. If it's getting old, you know, we're putting new ones in. But we don't really use graphics anymore or still images. It's all video. And they don't have to be long. Some are long, some are short, but we just take our best performing ones and really just go after it with case studies. And if it's me, the talking head, I'm still talking about case studies, and we just let that sell.

Josh Nelson: Got it. All right. So it's, i- it's like almost a VSL style, you know, quick hook, you know- Yeah… Like selfie style, you talking- Yeah… Bringing in some graphics, and then are you doing a lead form, or are you j- taking it to a landing page? What, like, in your model, what's worked best?

Josh Stockel: Yeah. So for us, we do lead form with conditional logic. Okay. And the conditional logic is if they're at a certain revenue point or below, it disqualifies them. Got it. If it's at, s- they have, like, four options on revenue choices. So three of them are good, one of them's bad. If you pick the bad one, sorry, you get the, "Hey, we're just not a good fit. It's just not gonna work," right? And then the top three ones, they move forward into our funnel. So they come in to go high level. The appointment setter we have sees it. She jumps on it within five minutes and is on a phone call with them doing another level of qualification questions or whatever. You know, we spend, right now we're spending, 10 to 12,000 a month on Facebook ad spend.

Josh Nelson: And so we're- Okay…

Josh Stockel: Getting in front of thousands of these guys, and we get hundreds of leads coming in. And we found early on that if we didn't qualify them at the ad level, it was filling up our pipeline, which was kind of fun at first, but then, like, having eight sales meetings a day that were booked and most of them either didn't show up or showed up and had no money, it was a mess. And quickly we were like, "We've gotta do something different where we qualify them at that ad level before they even come in." And then when they come in, the appointment setter can really make sure they're a good fit, not just financially, but are you the right industry? Can we really help you? And then book the, demo call with our salesperson or with myself. That's kind of our- Oh, that's-…

Josh Nelson: Sales funnel Super helpful.

Josh Stockel: No, straight into high level, straight into text message and phone call, speed to lead.

Josh Nelson: Yeah. Lots of heavy filtering on the front end- Yeah… To kind of clean up the noise. Yeah. When it comes to the actual targeting, are you open targeting and letting your video call out the audience? Are you custom lookalike audiences to try and get to these guys? How do you have that structured today?

Josh Stockel: Man, I'm loving the new feature from Meta, which is let it go. Let it roll. I tested both, and just putting no audience has way outperformed when I- Yeah… Created my own audiences. So- Thank you… Thank you, Meta, for figuring that out.

Josh Nelson: But the good news is not only it's, it's helping all these agency owners, I think, 'cause now you don't have- Mm.

Josh Stockel: That was like the hardest part, was really figuring out, like, who do I target, where I'm not- Yeah… Too tight, but too wide and letting…

Josh Nelson: They've got more data points than we do, right?

Josh Stockel: Right. Like, they know who you're really trying to reach, and so we just make sure that in the text portion and in the videos that we are calling out our ideal client, and then letting them figure that part out from there.

Josh Nelson: So that's a really important, announcement for those of you that maybe have been studying older Facebook ads trainings- Right… Or you're kind of testing this out, and you're like, "Well, I always thought the best thing to do was to really customize the audience or lo- like load up a list and then do lookalikes." And while that worked maybe like two years ago, in today's market- Yes… The best thing you could do is open your audience- Open it up… Let… A- and the fact that you're using lead forms like you do closes the loop easily, right? So that Meta is very easily understanding, okay, he's saying land clearing in the text and on the video, and then- Right… People are actually scheduling appointments, and they can try and like- Right… Get more of that for you.

Josh Stockel: Right. Right, and the other thing we've done is it, let's say they come in through the ad, they hit that lead form, and they submit it. At the end, we have them, instead of just doing a generic thank you page, we actually take them to one more, like, booking page. And on that booking page, it's a quick video from me, heavy, like, emphasis on check out all these case study videos below. Mm. And if you're ready to just take action, go ahead and fill out this booking form. You can jump right into a sales meeting. So that it's not just a thank you and we just wait and see what happens, but they have the option to really take action if they want.

Josh Nelson: I love that. I would imagine your follow-up sequence after the fact through High Level is driving them to that with, – Yeah…

Josh Stockel: Go ahead and schedule in addition to you picking up the phone.

Josh Nelson: Super helpful. I think if you're, if you're listening to this and you're getting value, just drop a like, because I think this is, this is great stuff. Yeah. So we talked about how you, how you pivoted and you said, "Okay, I'm gonna go after land clearing companies." Talk a little bit about what the client acquisition strategy is that's working well for you today. Let's talk a little bit about packaging. I see a question here from Zachary, who's on with us live. Zachary, gr- great to have you here, and he's just asking, like, what, like, what is it that you do for these clients? Yeah. Like, how do you, how do you package it?

Josh Stockel: Yeah. So, we have three packages now. We were doing two for a while, and we no longer sell individual services. Now, if someone wants to talk us down, like, "Hey, I'm telling you, that's all I want," okay, sure, we'll do that as long as it's one of our actual offerings. Mm. Often, most of the time, 90 to 95% of the time, we're doing a package deal. So for us, a lot of our guys in our industry don't even have websites. You know, they're like, these guys show up to sales meetings with dirt on their face. You know, they're, like, owner-operators who are out in a machine all day. They're not really tech-savvy guys. So for us, we have our Growth package, Dominate package, Elite package. Our Growth package has a $2,000 setup fee and a 2,000 a month management fee. That includes, in the setup fee, that includes a new website, new map listing. Even if they have a website, "Hey, you get one." Like this, 'cause oftentimes if they even did have a website, usually they're not great anyway, and we don't wanna try to do a remodel job. We wanna build it fast, quick, efficient, the way we like it. And then we offer four services at that base package. You get SEO, one ad platform, it's either Google Ads or Facebook Ads, whichever one we think is a better fit depending on location and service type offering. You get website hosting, and then you get the GoHighLevel subaccount. Everybody who comes through is getting a GoHighLevel subaccount. Just, like, we've gotta help our clients, even with the sales side of things, close more jobs, answer the phone, or respond if you're gonna miss the call. Like, that, we've just gotta have that in place. So that, and then all the way up to our Elite package, $2,000 setup fee, 6,000 a month, comes with everything you can think of, plus some AI automations. It'll come with an in-person videography media day. We'll fly out to 'em and do videos to… And why we do that is we get to talk strategy. They get to meet with the owner of their marketing agency for lunch. We take 'em out, and then we also are gonna grab a bunch of video and B-roll and stuff. So we're gonna give that to them for them to use on their social media, which is great, and then we're gonna use it on their ads. And then we're also gonna capture some case study material, right? Can't leave without a case study. So, yeah, they got a couple things there at that level that we give them. But no contracts for us. We don't do contracts on anything. We are month to month. So my whole team knows that we have got 30 days to make 'em happy. Mm. We've gotta produce results. So that's also why we don't just offer SEO by itself, 'cause it won't, they won't see results fast enough. So SEO with Facebook Ads, though, we can get leads within the first week or two coming in, and then it's like a race to make sure that it's enough that they're closing jobs, and then all of our retention efforts, that they're really being communicated with regularly, especially month one, it's every single week. So, yeah. Super good.

Josh Nelson: So between 2 and $6,000 plus ad spend, I think was what I heard. Is that- Yeah… Is that right?

Josh Stockel: Plus ad spend, yeah.

Josh Nelson: Okay. And it's, okay, website, SEO, local SEO, and then one of the paid ads platforms. Yeah. I'm curious, in your market, is it typically Facebook Ads that's winning, or is it local service ads and Google Ads? Or like you said, I know it's different from market, one market to the next.

Josh Stockel: Yeah. Yeah, LSA is not really a thing yet for most of our areas for our guys.

Josh Nelson: Okay. I know like plumbers, electricians, that it is- Right…

Josh Stockel: But it's not- For that, yeah… Dirt world guys really, so we don't really do a whole lot of LSA. We will look to see if it is available, 'cause some of our guys do occasionally have access to it, and if they do, then great, we'll add that in. Oftentimes it's Facebook Ads for our dirt world guys. They are killing it on the Facebook ad. I've also found for our guys, I would say, I know some don't always agree with me on this, but what I've seen is the Southern states do really well on Facebook Ads, and the Northern states tend to do a little bit better on Google Ads. Okay. I don't know why we've seen that, but it's just been working out that way, that lead flow just is stronger depending on which side of the US you're on. So I don't, you know, I wouldn't like die on that hill or whatever, but, and we try to move them into like our middle package, which is all the above. You're gonna get Google Ads- Mm… And Facebook Ads and SEO, right? So we're gonna do all of it, but Facebook ads is a really fast, quick one, and the reason I love Facebook ads for this industry is it's fun to watch machines doing machine things. Like- Right… Who doesn't like a giant excavator thing? That's just, yeah, they got the equipment already, right? So it's like- Yeah… You're gonna see it, and you're gonna in- Yes… Interact with it. Right. You know, if a realtor's selling a house, it's kinda like, "Okay, there's a dude at a house," but man, seeing a giant yellow machine doing, like, crazy stuff, moving earth, is just exciting to see, don't, d- doesn't matter whether you're in the niche or not, right?

Josh Nelson: So, so good. All right, so thanks for breaking that piece of it down for us, and it seems like you made the strategic decision that I would recommend pretty much any agency do, is go multi-channel. Yeah. Don't just do SEO, but also don't just do Facebook ads.

Josh Stockel: Right. It's a combination for some reason that kind of gives you more leverage points to actually generate- Yeah… The result. Oh, absolutely. Not 'cause you're, like, you're tying them to you, but because you're like, you know that the SEO's gonna pick up organic rankings, and that's gonna drive some organic flow and a low cost per lead, but you've also got the speed of execution of launching- Right… Some type of paid strategy, and that is gonna drive better results, it's gonna drive more sticky clients, and it's gonna drive better retention long term with that. Yeah. Absolutely. And I do think marketing agencies where we have to be thinking, forward thinking is marketing has to be a holistic approach. Mm. It's like we're not just SEOs who love to do rankings on Google and get you some Google leads. It's just that's 10 years ago. Like, where we're at now is we've got to be found everywhere. Our clients have to be found everywhere, and with the increase of AI searching going on and all the AI results, you really do have to be everywhere. So we're having convos with some of our clients about how do we get you on Reddit? And not just on it, but active in it, where you're actually getting really good engagement. How can we help you with that? I mean, there, and just a number of those things that we're working through now with our clients and coaching them on their sales side. Mm. There's, even though we hand it off to them, we don't qualify, we've found that the guys who are terrible at sales cancel on us 'cause we don't have contracts. So we need to help them figure out and put all the tools in place, but also teach them how to do better at sales. So I'm actually working on our book right now, and I'm actually in that sales chapter. I'm helping them just not with marketing, but sales, and how you answer the phone and why you should answer and how quick you should answer and stuff like that.

Josh Nelson: I love that. I'm glad you brought that back up because you've taken it beyond just we're gonna do a website and paid ads to we're also gonna help you convert those leads into- Yeah… Booked jobs and into revenue. And I think the fact that you've set up HighLevel and you bake that into your overall program is awesome. What have you found to work best to get compliance from your contractors to actually, you know, follow up with the leads, let the automations purr, and hopefully, I don't know if, like, are they closing the loop on their jobs, like this was qualified and it booked? Or like how do you, how do you think about that whole cycle?

Josh Stockel: Yeah, so we've got our account managers calling every week. We don't just do a monthly email, "Here's what we did this month." We're calling every week, and the account manager says, "Hey, Jim Bob, I see that a Mary Jane called you on Monday at 3:00. How did that call go? What did you quote her? Did you close it? Yes or no," right? And why that's helpful is now they're seeing in their own system, whether it be GoHighLevel, we also use WebConverts, they're seeing now their quote values and their sales values for the month, and then we internally are being able to see are we producing an ROI or not? And not just on sale values. That's, that's why I would encourage marketers also look at quote values, not just what they sold but also what they quoted. We had a, we had a client today, we were, it was in our client success channel, he gave out $807,000 in quotes this month. Wow. Right? And so we were able to show him, "Hey, you paid us $3,500 this month. You quoted 800 grand. You closed 100 of that already. So is there an ROI? Or why would you cancel on us? It makes zero sense," right? Right. Instead of just we barely talked about the lead flow. We talked about quote value and revenue value from the marketing and just the overall ROI. So every week our account managers are trained to go in and look at each one of their leads and call and check. Now, we ask them to do that, but like you said, like what's the buy-in like? I mean, a lot of these guys just don't… And I think they're getting to a point where some of them just kinda like it. They're like, "Oh, it feels like I've got an assistant now who's gonna call and check on my numbers," and I don't, I'm still trying to work through that 'cause I don't want our account managers to be everyone's assistant, but- Mm… At this point it's, we've got to be tracking that to make sure that what we're doing is working and that they see real value in what we're offering.

Josh Nelson: So good. And, and that's why you've had the growth that you have and the fact that you care that much about the client, that it's not like, "Hey, I just did my thing," and that's it. Like- Yeah… "I did my thing, and I'm holding your hand- Yeah… To make sure not only do you see the value and perceive it, but you actually get the return on investment. Yeah. So logistically it sounds like, you know, you got the website, you're getting some organic traffic from that, you're tracking phone calls, and you're tracking the lead forms that probably are coming in on Facebook ads- Mm-hmm… Dropping them into a pipeline on HighLevel, and then putting some type of follow-up speed to lead piece in place for the clients- Right… And the customers- Right… That they get, and then you're, like, your literally team is looking at, "Hey, you had 19 leads. It sounds like, you know, these were five that you were dispatched on." Do you do calendar management through the platform for them, or is it mainly just you got a lead, and then I wanna know, like, did you get a call booked, and then did you actually- Right… Get the job?

Josh Stockel: Yeah, it's that second part. We're not at that place yet because that's where I think we start… And we might. We're, we're still figuring that out. Do we wanna go that far where we're also managing their calendar on that? But we use the calendar to see what they've booked, what they've not. We also are tracking from the analytics side just calls, lead forms, texts, outbound calls instead of just inbound calls, so that we can see who are the guys who are most active and then who are the guys who are the least active. And then we usually can see a parallel there. The ones who are most active and the ones who are calling quickly, answering their phones, are the ones who are most successful. So it's not just about who got the most leads from us, but who are the ones who are on their side, on their sales side, killing it, and that's, that's how we can kinda track, you know. And, and then we use that to educate more of our clients and potential customers. We take that info, we can make YouTube videos over on our channel and talk about, "Hey, here's what we're noticing a- as a company who works with dozens and dozens of people in this industry. Here are the ones who are most successful financially, and it's not just because they're paying for marketing," right? Like, that's just a baseline. They're get- they got marketing, great, but now what are they doing with that marketing, so- We're trying to track that and communicate that and educate these guys. Lot of education. Yeah.

Josh Nelson: Super smart. Great, great stuff. Zachary did have a follow-up question here, and Zachary, thanks for engaging. If you've got questions and you're on with us live, drop them in, we'll do our best to answer.

Josh Stockel: He's saying, "Can you give me an idea of the average meta cost per lead if, like, that you're seeing in your industry?" is that for inbound for our agency or for our clients? Both. Okay.

Josh Nelson: I think both would be helpful if you have it.

Josh Stockel: Yeah. Facebook leads, and again, depends on are we land clearing, excavation, demolition, right? But, in general, Facebook leads are about around $20 to $40, $20 to $35 per lead. For them, Google Ads are producing anywhere between $85 to $250 leads. But- Mm… We did an audit recently on one of our top clients and sa- and determined that one out of four of their Google leads converted into a paying job, whereas one out of 14 of their Facebook leads converted into a paying job. So the customer- Wow… Acquisition cost was actually pretty close, but it came down to which do you prefer? Do you wanna have more calls that you're gonna be chasing? Some of our guys who are sales oriented, yeah, give me as m- I'll, I'll, I'll turn anything into a dollar. Let's go. But then we have some other guys who are smaller, they're like, "I'm in a machine. I don't have time to be working hundreds of leads. Just give me the ones who are most qualified. I don't mind that it's gon- the cost is a little bit higher." So we gotta, we have to educate them sometimes on that. Like, this is gonna be more costly, but, you know, you're, you're gonna make it work. So that's on the client side. I would say for our agency, when we didn't qualify our leads, we were getting seven, $8 leads, and now that we're qualifying them, we're getting between 20 and $40 leads qualified- Mm… For our own inbound agency. And so then we can reverse engineer that and figure out, all right, what's our ad spend gotta be to get enough of those, which will then result in enough booked calls, which will then result in enough sales. So good.

Josh Nelson: Thanks for sharing those numbers. And for those of you listening, I hope that y- like one thing you're picking up as you're listening to Josh is that he knows his numbers, and he, like, down to the metrics, like how w- how much are we spending? What's our average cost per lead? What's our average cost per booking? What's our convert, you know, cost to acquire- Yeah… A customer? He knows these numbers, and in terms of what he delivers for his clients, he's not using the cop-out like, "Hey, we generated 112 leads for you, and that's my only job is I'm making the phone ring and you gotta convert it." The reason he's doing so well and the reason he's retaining the way that he is because he is getting involved and he's tracking those metrics, and that makes him indispensable to the clients that he serves. So it's an opportunity, if you're not doing that today, to level up your thinking, level up your tracking, which is gonna be a, you know, better result for your client- Yeah… And better result for your own agency. Right. And that, you know, the big question we ask our clients, and I think even us as agency owners we have to ask ourselves are, is what makes us unique, right?

Josh Stockel: That's, that's- Yeah… The selling point we talk about in advertising all the time, no matter who you are. What makes me unique and different from the other 10 guys that that company might reach out to? And so as an agency owner, that has to be one of the things that can set us apart, is that our hands-on involvement is just, is light years ahead of what just a regular marketing agency's doing, who's just doing lead gen, right? They're, "Nah, I just, I generate leads through one or two channels. There you go. Hope it works." And I'm saying that as a guy who did that. I was that guy, and that's why our- Yeah… Retention sucked, is I was just, I thought, I can't believe I even said this, but I used to tell people, "Well, yeah, I think our clients like us like a Netflix subscription. I don't need to hear from my Netflix rep," right? "I just want the service to work, and just leave me alone." And I thought our clients wanted that. But man, I was wrong. Like I've just I've learned from doing it now, being on this other side going, "You know what? Actually, they prefer that." Now, of course you're gonna have some that are like, you know, "Hey, I'm busy, man. We don't have time to talk." And our, and our account managers, we have a whole system where we track that who, you know, the star system, right? I think I learned it from another agency owner in here. One star, two star, three star in terms of handholding. But the ones who really like it, th- there's a good chunk of them, even in our dirt world agency, our dirt world, clients that really wanna hear from you regularly so.

Josh Nelson: Love it. So let's shift gears. We've talked a little bit about how you land clients, and we've talked about what the program looks like. Let's talk about delivery. You know, and now with $115,000 or so in monthly recurring revenue, that's a lot of clients, right? To build websites for and to run ads for and talk to us a little bit about what the delivery model looks like in your business and how you've scaled that.

Josh Stockel: Yeah. So when we were all white label for the longest time. Mm-hmm. It was just the easiest thing to do, and then as we crossed the million mark at that 83K mark, I started looking at our numbers realizing we're spending a lot of money at this size on white labelers. So since crossing that threshold, we have been removing all of our white labelers. We're at down to our last two positions we're interviewing right now. That'll, that'll be completely now all in-house. And the other reason we wanted to do it was not just cost, but now that we are hyper-focused on retention and deliverables, we realized we didn't have as much control on those white labelers. 'Cause before it was like we hired them just to get results, right? But now we wanna go beyond that, not just get results, but like stellar results, and you just can't control that with white labels. So we moved it all in-house for that, and so our process has been much stronger. We use ClickUp to manage all of our processes. I have a stinking amazing operations manager. She's light years ahead of me on organization, of skills. She runs the team. There's times where I'm like, "Wait, what are we doing again?" She's like teaching me and informing me, "This is what we do now." I'm like, "Oh yeah, you're right. My bad." So I, you know, having an internal team that is strong and organized and then a clear, like plan of action for everything we do, and then clear communication pathways for that has just made the process faster and stronger.

Josh Nelson: Awesome. So I mean, for those of you at, you know, 40, 50, 60,000 in monthly recurring revenue, don't feel like you have to bring it in-house right away. Mm-hmm. It sounds like Josh grew to- Yeah… Seven figures, right? And he was like, "I'm gonna do what I do. I'm gonna focus on, you know, getting the clients and- Yeah… The tracking and the relationship, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna not have to focus on delivery." But now he's taking it in-house. If in retrospect, like if you could do it again, would you have brought it in-house sooner? Or do you feel like this was the right move for you?

Josh Stockel: Yeah, maybe a little sooner. I think what happens, based on some of the convos I've had with other marketing agency owners, is that i- if you are really good at sales and then you move real fast, you're closing a lot, and you don't really have a strong system in place, you don't have SOPs, you don't really know what's needed for those deliverables, trying to bring somebody or a couple of players in inside causes just a lot of chaos and a mess. Yeah. And so one of the lessons that we've learned, and we heard this from others and we've, we've adopted it from the get-go, was start your… Figure out your SOPs first and then hire for those SOPs. Mm-hmm. Don't try and hire somebody- Figure it out… Bring them in, and then ask them to figure out the SOP for you, 'cause what you thought you were hiring may not be the right fit, and maybe their SOP isn't really a good fit at all. So that was a good word of caution to us that we adopted early on, but that took us a lot of figuring out, okay, well, what is our SOP? How do we… In terms of our SEO program, how are we gonna do that? In terms of the way we run ads, how do we wanna make that work? And, and then started figuring, all right, how do we replace these white labels so that we can do that, because now we have a strong system in place. The other thing I'd say too, for us, was I wouldn't have done it if I had to keep being the ops person. Mm. 'Cause I'm handling sales all day long, and then I'm trying to run the whole team as well? That w- that was gonna be a quick mess too. So my first hire was an account manager, and she was, who's now my ops manager, she was my first hire as a account manager. Saw that she was killing it in that role, and then as we brought on more stuff, it was like, "Hey, you need to be our full-blown ops manager," and she's been great moving into that role. And then it gave me the confidence to say, "All right, are we ready?" I have that convo with her all the time, "Are you ready for the next stage? Are you ready for the next hires? If you're not, then let's pump the brakes. We'll keep… White label's fine, but when you're ready, 'cause you've got everything under control and smooth," you know, I always call it, like, all cylinders, all eight cylinders are running and there's no squeaky wheel, there's no weird knocking noise, then we'll bring on the next hire. And so we've gone through, I mean, going from three employees to 13 in one year is, there's been a lot of change and a lot of, like, are you sure you're ready? Are you okay? And we both like sometimes are like, "High five. You go that way, I'll go this way. You're training those guys, I'm training sales side over here, and we're gonna figure it out, and then we'll just check ba- back in on each other." So I think there are some parts that, depending on your personality, your skill set, that would dictate whether you should do it sooner or later. Yeah.

Josh Nelson: So I think that's great perspective for, you know, for the agencies that are listening, either they've got it in-house today and they're like, "Man, maybe I've, I've overburdened myself," or they're trying to think about making that transition. I do find most agencies, when they get to, you know, especially when you get to, like, 60,000, 70,000 or more, economies of scale, you know, in terms of- Yeah… Like the cost to produce make much more financial sense. Yep. But the biggest driver is if you want to be the best in your space and you want to be innovating- Mm… And you want to be, like, on the cutting edge, that's hard- Yeah… To get from a white label provider. Yeah. Right? You really own the pro- production- Yeah… When you bring it in-house, and that helps- Right… Confidence, it helps sales process, it helps retention and everything else. Right.

Josh Stockel: Yep. Yeah. When you're, when you're in the beginning stages, you're like, "I'm just trying to sell. I'm just trying to get some clients on here and make them happy with some results." Then it's like, yeah, white label it all day. What we found with white labeling, the pro was that I could scale sales then. I really was able to just really hammer sales all day long, and then just turn around and hand them off to, like, experts out there, and that was great, but until it got to a certain size, and then it was like, wait a minute, we've got enough internal stuff that we really should start moving this back in here. So yeah, totally agree.

Josh Nelson: Great. Great insight. So, so now we've got a team, right? And we've got a team of people that are focused on this day in and day out. Talk to us about the organizational chart and kind of like is it US-based? Is it international? Is it virtual? Yeah. Is it in an office?

Josh Stockel: Yeah. That's great. Great question. We are half US and half Philippines, and one Canadian. My sales guy's up in Canada, who actually lives in Belarus, and it's, it's a whole thing, but- Right… He's awesome. He was just talking about Southern accents today. He's like, "I can't quite figure this Southern accent thing out." I was like, "You're gonna have to figure it out. A lot of Southerners like to get on the phone in the dirt world industry." In the dirt world, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. We call it. But yeah, so we've got… Everyone's remote, and we communicate daily through ClickUp. We're very task-oriented, right? Project-oriented. So we don't track hours, we track performance. We just track deliverables. Are you getting the stuff that we think you should be able to do in one week knocked out? Mm-hmm. And if it's not, then let's have a convo, right? Anybody that is client-facing is American. Anybody who does work that's not client-facing has been in the Philippines for us. So, and that's just how we've… It's just worked out that way for us, and it's just made more sense financially to do a blend. So yeah, that's our setup.

Josh Nelson: Excellent. So walk us through the, the key positions. So obviously- Yeah… You're the, you're the visionary. Like, what are the other key roles or leadership, you know, layers that you have in your agency?

Josh Stockel: Yeah. So right now we've got me at the top, and then we have our operations manager. Our operations manager has, right now, two account managers, two SEOs. Well, about we're hiring right now for the two ad specialists, one GoHighLevel specialist. And then on my side, I also handle sales, so I've got the appointment setter and our business development manager, our sales guy. So we've kind of split it that she's got all operations, I've got all sales and marketing, and I'm handling the marketing as well and stuff for the podcast and all that other stuff. And it's worked so far. The next step will be taking the account management and having like a, account or what is it, the onboarding specialist role who just kind of oversees that whole side so that we don't have 10 reports all going to my ops manager, but we start having some mid-level, and can she can, she can shrink it down. As of last week, she was able, my ops manager was finally able to hand off the last of her clients so that she doesn't oversee any direct contact with clients. We have account managers that do that now exclusively so that she is freed up truly to just meet with each one of our staff members and make sure that everything's firing on all eight cyl- cylinders. And that's it.

Josh Nelson: Super good. So, so seven figures, growing quickly, mostly virtual team, or completely virtual team, but, you know, kind of a mix.

Josh Stockel: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Remote everywhere. Yeah. Remote team.

Josh Nelson: Sounds like Slack, ClickUp, and Zoom interaction. Any, any cool things that you have d- have done from a cultural perspective, being that you got the Philippine team, the US team, keeping everybody in sync and feeling- Yeah… Like part of the family?

Josh Stockel: Yeah, a couple things that we do. There's some things I'm still working on that I wanna do. Like, I've seen people use, like, those fun game days and stuff like that. Mm. I've looked at in-person stuff, trying to figure that out. Something that was really important to me was making sure that any of our full-time… Basically, if you work here, you're part of this team. Like, I really want that culture, and especially if you're full-time, like we really want you. I don't care if you're in a different country or not, you get all the same benefits that all of our Americans do. I really did not want to create this feeling of, "Oh, we're virtual assistants, and there's the real employees over there that's…" So a couple things we did was one, everyone's face is on our social media, everyone's face is on our website or about to be on our website. I don't care who you are. You're on our team. You're, you're the team. Another one we've done is we've, we've got this from Ba- Brad Starnes, the 1% revenue share program. So if you're full-time, whether you're overseas or here, you have access to our 1% rev share program. So every six months when we hit a milestone that we've set, it unlocks 1% for the whole team, and the whole team shares it based on their… Everybody gets amount, a certain amount of tokens. So, like, some positions have more tokens, some have less d- based on experience and role responsibilities and timeframe you've been with the company. But however many tokens you've got equals a certain dollar amount, and so everybody gets that. And so it's something that you can tell even some of our Filipino employees have said like, "Thank you for this. Like, no one's ever done that. Other places I've worked at have never treated us this way." And so I really like that, looking forward to it. We're about to hit June, our first one, and we're r- we're on track to hit it, and I can't wait to give it to them. And another one that we've done is in ClickUp, we have a client s- success channel- Wow… That all employees part-time, full-time go into, and it's big for us. I know a lot of agencies do it, but for us, like I've really made it a key, not just for social media purposes and marketing purposes, but I want every member of our team to see that if even if you're doing a repetitive task that feels, "Oh, I'm not one of those upper positions, I'm one of these," everything that you did, plus them, plus all of us, has contributed to the success of our clients. Mm. And so every time our clients win, we wanna post it in there so that the whole team, all staff are in that, can celebrate. And then I've made it kind of a cultural thing that I'm celebrating all the time. I'm celebrating over my staff. Anything they're doing, anything that's worth celebrating, we celebrate, and I'll do it personally with each one or… And now there's kind of a cultural thing that even my office manager, I'll see her do it. Like, "Hey, I loved that you said that. I loved it. You did great doing this. I love that you cared about fixing this for our client. You're killing it. You're doing a great job." Like, just creating a culture of praise instead of, like, the machine, you know? Mm. We just day in, day out. I feel like that's how you burn out people. I've been in positions in the past where I've had, you know, upward of 200 employees before when I was working government and I've worked other places too, and I, and I just hate that kind of culture. I didn't even wanna be there for those kind of cultures. Mm-hmm. And I just thought with my own business, I really want it to be a place that I genuinely get excited about working at and that others do. And I get it. Nobody's gonna love your business like you are, and I get that. So they're, you know, some of them have side hustles, and I thought, "Great. Go. Go do your thing." But if you're working here, I want you to love it. I want you to really love working here and feel like, "I don't wanna go anywhere." So when I hear an employee say, "I don't care if the world catches on fire, I'm, I'm not leaving this place," I'm like, "Yes." Like, that's what I'm wanting. That's what I'm trying to create here. So we've worked real hard on that, keep working real hard on that. I'm always looking for new ways to strengthen that.

Josh Nelson: No, I love that. I think there's three things you said there that are really impactful that I hope everybody made note of. First of all, everybody on the team, regardless if they're in the Philippines or Canada or, like, in your backyard, is a full member of the team- Yes… With respect, invited to the meetings, and they're not just a VA. Right? If you treat them like a VA- Right… They're gonna show up like a VA. Right. Exactly. Super powerful. Number two is sharing those wins and the culture of winning, once you focus on expanse. And so it's like i- if you're focused on getting the client's ROI and growing their business, share that. Get the whole team- Yeah… Excited about that. Yeah. That gives them a reason beyond the paycheck- Right… To stick around. And then number three, I think probably the, the most impactful for a lot of us is we always struggle, like the company's growing and you've had massive growth.

Josh Stockel: Yeah, that's great for me.

Josh Nelson: How do you get the rest of the team excited about that and- Yeah… Bought into that?

Josh Stockel: That's it. And so the whole idea of some type of profit share. Now they're seeing the company grow, and yeah, they're happy for you, they're happy for the company, but they're also like- Right… "Hey, that's gonna impact my money," even if it's not a huge amount 'cause 1% divided amongst the entire team, but it's, it's telling them you appreciate their contribution. Yeah. And as the company wins, they're gonna win as well. Yeah. That's, that was a big one 'cause I kept thinking, you know, I've been at a part-time employee before, I've been an hourly person before and, you know, companies love talking about, "Hey, these are our revenue goals and here's where we're going sales-wise and retention-wise," and okay, I'm gonna get the same paycheck whether I work hard or work, you know, lazy. It's, you know, I'm just gonna show up and do me. Why do I care about the company? And so I always thought, yeah, I mean, that makes sense. Why, why would I expect it any differently of my employees? So I was like, they've gotta have something that motivates them, and we, and the truth is, a lot of business coaching and stuff will teach you, like money isn't really the primary motivator, right? Mm-hmm. There's, there's stuff when it's beyond you, when you feel like you're part of something bigger than yourself, that's really a bigger motivator, but money is a big, like close second, right? Like, so they wanna… So I've told our staff like, "You know, there are gonna be some days, not all the time, but there may be a Friday where you're like, 'It's 4:00, 5:00. I know another thing just came in for me to do, but I'm calling it a day.'" And I want there to be that little thing that you go, "Yeah, I'm willing to put in just that little extra hump when I don't feel like it because…" And what is that thing? And so that's why that rev shu- share program came into place, was like I want them to think like, "Yeah, if we could just push a little bit more beyond my hourly or my project-based tasks," that would ex- get someone excited to do a little bit more. That I was like, "We gotta figure that out." Brad Starnes did a great job sharing that and I was like, "Oh, I jumped on that." I was like, "That's what I've been looking for. Yes, give me the details." So we put it into- So good.

Josh Nelson: So good shout to him and, – Cliff notes, because there are a million ways to structure rev share or profit sharing Mm-hmm… Just give us the cliff notes. I know you mentioned it's 1%, and it was, like, every six months, but logistically, h- how does that work if somebody wanted to try and do something similar? Yeah. So- Or maybe you could point them to Brad and say, "Hey, like, he's got the details here." Right.

Josh Stockel: So there's profit share and there's rev share, right? So profit share is more beneficial to the owner 'cause it's after taxes and everything that's paid out, but it's less of a win to your employees. They're kinda like, "Oh, okay, well, after you've paid everybody, and how do we know you didn't pay yourself even more this month," right? Yeah. They can come up with all these excuses. A revenue share is better for the employees and not as strong for you because it's 1% gross, so you're like, "I don't know." Even if you had a negative profit month, like, you're still gonna like- Yeah, well, there's, that's gonna hurt. But, and my brain was, if it's based on performance as well, so every six months we have a milestone that we're shooting for. So our next one is at 120, so we're at 118. Like- Nice… They have till June to hit 2,000 more dollars a month, and then it unlocks it. As long as by the end of June we're still at 120 or above, it unlocks it. And then six more months, we've got a new milestone. So to me it just makes… And like, i- if we're hitting the milestone, then we're profitable, right? So it's not on a bad month, it's technically based on good months continuing to climb, and so why wouldn't I wanna do that? And, and the other cool part is that, cool part for my employees, not for, not as the business owner, but it is that, you know, after two, three, four years, let's say we get to four, five, six, seven million. Now all of a sudden that is a chunk of change. Right. 1% being split up, that, you know, even, like, somebody who may be way down the totem pole is getting, like, a $1,500 check or a $2,000 check. And, and your top line employees are getting, like, a three, four, $5,000 check. So it can, it can really stack where it's really exciting for some of our employees. And I think they love that idea, too, that this isn't just a, the same number every time, but hey, as we keep growing, and yeah, you hit a milestone, but what if we hit the next milestone, and then the next one? Then man, we're gonna keep unlocking and unlocking and unlocking, and you guys, I mean, it's…

Josh Nelson: Praise God. Yes, y'all earned it. Get it, take it. Go buy yourself something fun. Go do something fun with that. Super helpful. I, I love, I love that, and I love the spirit behind it and how it solves that question- Yeah… Of like, how do we get the team bought in? How do we get them excited about this? Right. And we're all winning as this company grows and we hit new milestones. Right. Let's talk a little bit about retention. Mm-hmm. So you mentioned struggling with retention, and now, like, really getting things dialed in. Talk to us about some of the things you've put in place that have impacted that ability to retain at a higher level.

Josh Stockel: Yeah. So we went into the program and was like, "All right, what are we not doing?" And then I thought, "I feel like we're doing everything right. I don't know why retention's not great." Come to find out, no, we're not. So the big change was really the level of communication ramped up. So- Mm… It used to be, I think we were probably what a lot of regular marketing agencies do, where it's just like at the end of the month I send an email report, and, you know, if you didn't check it, no worries. We'll be here. Just please send your invoice, right? Mm-hmm. So we, so what we changed was the onboarding is where it starts, right? Like, obviously it starts with sales, but then at onboarding we do a really smooth handoff, and our ops manager and that account manager who's gonna take this client on both meet with that new client, and they do introductions, they walk through a bunch of stuff, and they have a really good onboarding session. And then we set clear expectations, and here, get ready, you're about to hear from us pretty soon. And then the ops manager and the account manager communicate, especially on that first month, or sometimes we go six weeks, for every single week. And so they're checking in here, and just feel, even if there's not a whole lot to report, "Hey, your website's almost done," or, "Hey, it's time for a review," or it's whatever, right? So it's weekly touch points the way they like, whether it's a phone call or text. And then when their first lead comes in, we call. Even if they did a touch point two days ago, we're calling when that first lead comes in. Couple reasons. One, we're just on it, right? They like it. But two, we're also making sure that everything's connected properly. Like, did you get that lead? So now we know all the way from their ads through their system made it to their inbox, right? So that's part of it. And then monthly we're, where we do a video meeting with them. But weekly, so let's say after that first month's over, there's still gonna be weekly phone calls just to check on leads, how they're doing, like how did you, what'd, what'd you quote, all that stuff. But we still do a monthly meeting where we get on a video meeting just like this. So the, their account manager and the client will meet, and then they'll go over just, all right, for the month. It doesn't have to be a long one, especially if they've been talking weekly. Just here's what we covered. Here's what we did. Here are things we've proactively been looking for, not just reactively, like, "Oh, things haven't been going well. Lead flow's down. Now let's make some change." I tell the account managers, "You gotta be looking for opportunities to strengthen. Like, go after, go find stuff that we could improve. Don't wait around." And so they'll share that in that time period, and then they'll give them some, sometimes some homework. We're like, "Hey, you need some more reviews. Here's the link for you to… And we'll put it in your GoHighLevel for you, but just be thinking about asking for reviews and things like that." So, that's been a big part of it. We've switched language around, from just lead flow. Like, "Hey, we've done marketing services, and here's your lead flow," to everything we're doing with- which isn't just lead flow, but here's what the revenue looks like. Here's the ROI on this. So kind of a mindset shift, and that's all gone all the way down to our sales. So now at the sales level even, we've changed where we no longer sell services, but we sell outcomes. And we don't sell outcomes just, "Hey, you're getting a lot of leads from these services," but the outcomes are our people are making 5X ROI, 10X ROI. There's a million-dollar contract that just went out for one guy. Hey, there's a four million. We just had one of our clients just did a hundred million dollar bid. Hundred million dollar bid. Wow. One lead that came in from our SEO, and, been waiting to get him on the podcast. I'm like, "Come on, did you close?" Yeah, it's gonna be great. Come on, let's go. But, like, helping people to see that everything we're doing is helping tie all that together so that they see value. Retention has been all of that. Heavy amount of communication, really strong onboarding process, and then tying in results at the end, not just lead flow or services rendered.

Josh Nelson: So good. So it sounds like dialing in the onboarding, really increasing the frequency, right? Yeah. Rather than, you know, "Hey, look, we're gonna reactively send this report," and if they ask Great. If not- Mm-hmm… No news is good news. But really just getting- Yeah… Out in front of it. That's a big one. "Hey, here's what's going on, here's the outcomes," and then- Mm-hmm… Taking accountability. And that's not just like, hey, theoretically that's gonna help your retention. In your world you've seen that tangibly have a big impact on retention.

Josh Stockel: Huge. Yeah. R- the rate went up. And then we tracked it, right? So, like that was another big one. I never really tracked any of that stuff. Mm. I'd just go off feeling. I was like, things, you know, we're, we're just… MRR was the only thing I was looking at. And it's like then I started really, like, all right, what's the actual show up rate this week, this today, this week, this month, right? What's our book rate for demo? What's our close rate? What's all of that stuff? Then we can figure out is this a marketing issue for us? Is this a, you know, appointment setter problem? Is this a salesperson problem? And now on the re- on the account manager side, retention efforts, now we're tracking revenue retention. We're also tracking, number of client retention. We actually have both numbers that we're looking at at all times. And I've incentivized our account managers. They make money. They make money for hitting quarterly retention goals, so if they can maintain a 95% above for three months in a row, they get a bonus, $500 bonus. They get bonuses for getting, five-star reviews from our clients. They get another bonus, a bigger bonus, for every video testimony they bring in, and they get a sales commission off of upsells into additional packages and services. Wow. Doing heavy amounts of, like, incentivizing for the operations side, too, not just sales side, so that they're thinking like this, like, "Man, I wanna do a stellar job on my side." Everybody has incentives financially for everything they do, whether it's the rev share program or sales obviously, but even retention side they make money doing everything they do. So just really ramped up all of that and it was like, "Oh, look, the numbers are increasing." Like, "Wow, look at that, it works." So love it.

Josh Nelson: So good. What you, what you measure gets done, right? Yeah. And, like, what you measure always improves, so you're like, "Well, I gotta measure the retention, I gotta measure those things." You got that dialed in, which is huge. Incentivizing the account managers. One thing you said that I really loved was not just incentivizing the retention but incentivizing taking that client from a, you know, from a client to a champion, right? Yeah. When a client comes on and does a testimonial for me, for you, they go from just being a client to being an advocate. Yeah. Which obviously is good for your marketing, but it also justifies your entire organization. Right. Right? 'Cause you're, you're really helping people win. You're helping people get- Yeah… The outcomes that they're after, and that's not a, not like a by-product of like, "Hey, we did good work." Yeah. It's intentional. We're gonna do such a great job that we want you to jump on Zoom with us and be a client testimonial or whatever it is the methodology for you that the whole team can rally around. Makes you more interesting from a marketing perspective. And interestingly, when you get somebody that steps out in that way, they become more likely to stay with you long term as well. So lots of really cool- Right… Insights that you shared- Right… Just kinda unpacking your retention strategy.

Josh Stockel: Yeah. Another one I ask them to do is be on the lookout for our next podcast guest. So if they're seeing- Ooh… A client that's succeeding or saying a lot of positive things, include them into it. Like, they have the option to tell them right now, "Hey, Josh would love to have you on the podcast." They don't even have to ask my permission, just go get 'em. And then here's- Wow… The link to go ahead and book that. And then if they can't get 'em that quickly, then let me know. We have a channel for that. I'll jump on and get a call or text, whatever. We found that if we can get them good results and then get them a case study out of them and/or a podcast guest, then, man, their retention really sticks. 'Cause now they've built a relationship with me and with their account manager and the ops manager and they're… So even on a slow month, like, if we've had some of these guys, like, "Hey, it's been a kind of a rough month," man, they're in. They don't, they're not going anywhere. They'll even say, like- Cool… It's almost like they give you grace for a couple months if things are s- are slipping. But someone who just barely knows you doesn't care. It's like they're off to the next shiny thing. Right. So all of that all plays together in retention.

Josh Nelson: So good. So many great insights here on kinda how you've gone from the $43,000 level to the 120, and I know you're gonna continue to grow. I have no doubt about that.

Josh Stockel: Hopefully we are killing.

Josh Nelson: Yeah. How you land clients, how you deliver results, how you retain those clients, how you've structured a great team culture. If you had one last piece of advice for that agency owner that is trying to get to the next level, what would that be?

Josh Stockel: Oh, man. I got a lot. You know, I… One big one that I wish I had started way earlier is the organic side. I know we didn't talk a whole lot about that, but I… We're heavy on ads, right? But man, I've had to keep scaling my ad spend to keep doing that. And we've had some AI leads come in and stuff like that. We're working on that. But, you know, getting the podcast up and running and, you know, working on YouTube channel stuff has been huge. We've had n- now a number of guys who will say, "I found your podcast. Listened to it. I really enjoyed it. How, how do we work with y'all?" And I'm like, "That wasn't somebody I had to pay for, right?" Mm-hmm. "That didn't cost me $40, like, on my ad side." And then others have said, like, "We, we did find you through the ads, but then we checked out your podcast and now we're already kinda pre-sold before we show up to the meetings." Not that it… I mean, it's a slow burn, right? So especially if you're just growing or getting started, s- that's harder. But I would say as you're going, whatever your method for inbound leads are, be working on your organic side, too. Really be the authority in that space, and especially if you're niched down, it's just that fa- much faster and easier. And so I'm looking forward to having the book and some of the other stuff that we're working on right now to help just solidify that authority piece. I would love to see more, I'd rather double my lead flow from organic and either scale back my ads or just double everything that we're doing- Mm… And not have to pay for all of that. That'd be a piece of advice I'd give.

Josh Nelson: So good. I love that. I think more and more people start to come to you pre-positioned to buy. Yeah. And when you combine an aggressive ad strategy, which you have, and you've got dialed in with a great organic strategy where you're doing- Yeah… Podcasts and webinars and showing up at the events, people are gonna start to come up and they want- Yeah… Selfies with you. And they're like, "Hey, how do I hire you?" Yeah. "I don't care how much it costs." Yeah. And I think you're at that place now, which is pretty awesome.

Josh Stockel: It was cool. For the first time, I, I, I don't do a lot of the sales now 'cause of our sales employee, but when I, when there was that transition where I was still doing it and working all this organic stuff, the first time I had someone show up on video for their demo call and he was like, "Oh, the blue goat hat guy, like, you're the guy in the videos." And I was like, "Yeah, I am." I was like, "Okay, so I guess you've watched our videos." "Oh, I've seen all of your videos, man. I didn't think I'd be meeting with you." And it just felt like, well, this should be easy. Like, that's… I didn't have to start with that guard up, which a lot of guys do.

Josh Nelson: So yeah, 100%, that would make life much easier, having a bunch of those guys line up for sales meetings. So good, man. So many great insights and takeaways. Josh, congratulations on your success.

Josh Stockel: Thank you. Thank you for everything you do to serve the Seven Figure Agency community.

Josh Nelson: Absolutely. Glad to help. Thanks for your willingness to come on and share, you know, like just- Yeah…

Josh Stockel: Out of the abundance of your- Yeah, absolutely…

Josh Nelson: Mindset and say, "Hey, here's what's working for me. Here's how it's flown." If somebody did wanna connect with you further, what would be the best way to engage with you?

Josh Stockel: Yeah. We're landclearinginsights.com, or you can go to my Facebook page. I've got that up all day long. Josh Stockwell over there. We can connect, and DM me. We can talk. I'm, I'm an open book. I'm all about… I remember being in that early stage begging people, even thr- "Hey, I'll give you a Starbucks gift card if you just give me 20 minutes to pick your brain." Mm. And, and seeing so many guys not do that, and I struggled with it so badly, and I was so desperate. So I just, for me, I'm like, "Hey, y'all are all more important than me. However I can help serve others, I'm all about that." Reach out and we can talk.

Josh Nelson: Amazing. Well, thanks Josh. Thank you for listening- Of course… Or watching today. If you got value, please be sure to hit the like button, hit the subscribe button, and if you got follow-up questions, drop them in the comments. And please do reach out to Josh, if nothing else, just to say, "Hey, Josh, thanks so much. Congratulations on your success." Yeah. Those types of comments go a long ways. So- Yeah… We're gonna wrap it up there. Thanks everyone for watching. All right. And we'll catch you on a future episode of the- All right… Seven Figure Agency podcast.

Josh Stockel: Sounds good. See y'all.