They Got Fired Down to Zero Clients Twice, Then Built a 113-Studio Agency

Full transcript of Josh Nelson’s interview with Kristian and Bryce. Lightly edited for readability.

Josh Nelson: Hello, and welcome to the Seven Figure Agency podcast, where we're interviewing highly successful digital marketing agency owners from across the country on how they've grown and scaled their agencies. Today, I'm super excited. We've got an amazing agency with us. We've got Christian and Bryce from, you know, Dance Motion Marketing. They've grown their agency to seven figures serving the dance studio space. And I've been privileged to watch their journey and kinda watch them scale. So without further ado, Christian and Bryce, thanks so much for being on with us today.

Kristian: Hey, thanks for having us.

Bryce: Excited to be here.

Josh Nelson: So before we get started, tell us a little bit about the kind of the agency, the lay of the land, how many clients, how much recurring revenue, kinda what the, what the agency looks like today.

Kristian: Yep. And so today we're serving 113, dance studios across the country, a few, international clients as well. Monthly recurring is about $76,000, which is, up quite a bit from where we were this time last year.

Josh Nelson: Fantastic. So kinda hit seven figures down a little bit, gonna blow past seven figures again. Talk to us a little bit about the services you provide. Like, what does it look like? What do you do for these dance studios?

Kristian: Yeah. So it's really kinda three parts. The main thing that got us in this business was providing done-for-you social media ads on Facebook, Instagram. So that's pretty much the main component they look for us for. And then with the rise of high-level CRM software, we include that also as part of our services, so that way we kinda give them the full CRM and done-for-you ads experience. And that's our primary offer at the moment.

Josh Nelson: Facebook ads and marketing automation for the follow-up. That's your- Yeah… Core thing. Exactly. Can you give me an idea of like kinda what you charge for those services today?

Kristian: Yeah. So I would say on average, we have, you know, I think pricing has been a thing that we've been teetering with 'cause it depends on how many campaigns you're running. But on the low end, it's $600 a month, on the high end, $1,300 a month for those services.

Josh Nelson: Got it. So some- somewhere in that range. I'm definitely excited to get into like how you guys are getting clients, how you're delivering results, how you're scaling the team to create freedom. But before that, I'd love to know how you guys got together and how you guys got into this particular niche.

Kristian: Yeah. So this, I m- this is just a, it's a very bizarre story. We– neither one of us are dancers. We didn't hail from that realm.

Bryce: The short of the long is I was invited, several years ago to be a guest on a podcast that I, unbeknownst to me, was run by Christian's roommate. And, the roommate said, "Hey, you know, you guys, you're kind of in similar fields." We were both at the time commercial filmmakers and, you know, a- and the roommate said, "Well, you should talk to, you should talk to my guy, Christian." we started connecting. We became fast friends. About every 30 days, we just kinda check in. And, it was, it was around, I think it was, it was either 2020 or 2021, I can't remember, to be honest. And, Christian, we, and we just caught up and said, "What are you working on?" He said, "Oh, I just finished up this video project for a dance studio." I was like, "Dude, that's so random. Like so random." He's like, "Yeah. Well, after the other one." I'm like, "Wait, there's two? You've done this twice now? Clearly, there's a need. Let's explore it." We gave ourselves 90 days to kinda pilot a program of what that– we thought that might look like. It was a total failure, but it got us into the niche, and we started to realize that it was a need and it was, it was an area where we could really create substantial value for a client set that desperately needed help. Yeah. So that's sorta how we got here.

Josh Nelson: Love it. So you were on a podcast. You guys got connected. Christian had a deal flowing with video specifically in that space, a- and it just kind of worked its way from there. W- when it comes to the selection of the niche, like talk to us about like kinda your background. Were you– You guys weren't just in that particular vertical. Talk to us about the verticals you had been in and why you decided to double down all of the way into dance.

Bryce: Th- this is, I mean, it's a loaded question. I'll let Christian speak for himself. My…

Kristian: I ran a video production company that worked with, large corporations, household brand names, you know, companies that you would know, sports franchises. And during the pandemic, it just went away. I mean, it's tough to spend. Video is a very expensive platform to get into. There's a lot of specialists. And, it just went away. When you're furloughing, you know, 40, 50, 60% of your staff, you're not investing there. And so I suddenly, when the pandemic rolled around, had nothing but time on my hands, and was looking for a way to occupy it. Getting to know Christian, hearing that he was working at the time with more small businesses, there were still open- openings and channels there. And so really I was just, if I'm being completely honest with you, I was just bored. I was looking for a way to fill time. And when he kind of, you know, shared with me what he was doing with the small business dance studios, got me excited about doing something. Never saw myself being a part of the business long term, just kind of volunteered, like, "Hey, I got like 60 days. You wanna like give this a go and see where we get to?" And it was like 60 to 90 days later, we realized we had something, interesting. And, and more importantly, I think we had found a clientele that we were interested in helping. Like we kind of- Mm…

Bryce: Fell in love with not with the industry or the niche necessarily, but with the clients, the kind of person that tends to open a dance studio. And the things that, motivated them were, r- really fueled us, really got us excited in a lot of ways. So that's sort of how I got there. Christian, feel free to jump in on your own.

Kristian: Yeah. I mean, I was like a generalist video production person, like all over the board. And I think during the pandemic, that's when I was like, "All right, I gotta add new skills in my toolbox 'cause no one wants to do in-person video." That's when I kinda started diving into learning Facebook Ads and all this other stuff. And I think for me, the dream as a video producer is The, the trap we all wanna get out of is the one, the client that just gets a one-time project and they never buy from you again. And so I wanted to add a recurring service. And for me, I just got lucky that a dance studio was open for me, giving them a little trial on Facebook ads. And the selection of dance studios was kind of random, universal luck where I got referred a second dance studio client. And I've known about niches. I've like tiptoed around that concept, but this is the first time where I actually had like two of a kind in my portfolio of clients. And so I'm like, "Okay, let's just like take this two. We have two kind of pretty good case studies. Let's just like Bryce said, let's just give it 90 days and go after this niche and see what happens." And we had enough positive indicators that we haven't looked back, and we've only focused on this niche ever since.

Josh Nelson: I love it. I think, you know, a lot of agencies go down this path, right? They know they wanna do digital marketing. Maybe it's video in your case, maybe it's funnels, maybe it's web design, and they realize project work isn't great. Jumping from one niche to the next isn't great. Yeah. And so really figuring out how can we make a recurring-based service, and then how can we do it for a very specific vertical so that we can scale it up, and really just be world-class in that particular niche that we serve. Right. Love hearing the story, kind of how you guys arrived at this. I talk with a lot of people that are strong on video, and that's their passion, and it's very hard for them to let go of doing video production. Recognizing though that it is a, usually a one-time shoot it and maybe once a year they might bring you back for something else. How have you, or maybe you haven't, been able to continue to integrate your video skills into the program?

Kristian: So I think we're just now starting to get it back. And so I think in our journey, the very first studio clients that we serviced, we kind of just were like investing all the time and resources we had. And so we did all the custom. We would go out, you know, I flew out to a studio in Houston to do video production for them and the ads. But I realized like I can only do that so many times. And so we've really kind of scaled and productized our service really far back, where like my camera work has been collecting dust for a couple years. And so it is kind of virtually nonexistent. So I'm, I'm a whole new type of entrepreneur now. Yeah. But now we're starting to recognize and we use those skills 'cause, you know, content is a huge part of digital marketing. And so I think just the process thinking around how we collect content, edit content, deliver back, and that whole process is probably what we're using today in our businesses. But for the most part, like custom video work just isn't really a good– Like just, it's, they don't have the budget for that kind of stuff that we would wanna charge for. Like Bryce's work had, he had six-figure projects for his video production work. Dance studios, our niche, can't really afford that, so we really had to productize how we integrate video into the agency. But the thinking I think still is very much, part of the work that we do.

Josh Nelson: Love it. Love it. So, so good. So you guys decided like what could we do for this vertical that will d-deliver great results so that they hit their goals and they get the outcomes that they're after. And you've developed this program. It sounds like it's mainly leveraging Facebook, leveraging marketing automation to follow up with the leads, and put new students into the classrooms on a consistent basis. Would love to talk about, so you had the two clients. You decided let's prove ourselves in this space. How did you take that to your first five clients- Yeah… In the dance studio industry?

Kristian: Yeah. So the, a-again, you, when you're starting a business, an agency, it doesn't really matter the type of business, you're working from a great deal of hypothesis, ideas, conjecture, what you think is going to work, what you think is needed. And so we gave ourselves, we built, an eight-week, not really a master, not ma- not a mastermind, but like a master class where we're gonna teach- Yeah, bootcamp… Studio owners that want it. Bootcamp is what we called it. And we, we went out and got eight or 10 studios. Some paid, some didn't pay. Like some were like, "Hey, would you just like go through this and give us feedback? And if you like it, a testimonial." And we went through this process. Eight weeks in, we're, we're there every week. We're there for a couple hours. We're coaching them. We're giving them resources, workbooks, you know, cheat sheets, et cetera. And at the end of the eight weeks, everybody was e-ecstatic. They were just delighted by the service. We caught up with everybody three, four weeks later just to see what the results were like. Like what kind of results were they getting? Were they getting stuck? Was it working for them? Had we covered all the bases? And across the board, unanimously, everybody said, "Oh, that was awesome, but I haven't done anything with it." And that was the moment when we s- we kind of realized that while what we were teaching them was important from an informational standpoint, these particular clients are so time poor that they had no ability to execute on the information. And that's began a very long process. Neither one of us felt particularly comfortable doing hands-on marketing for these clients. We felt very unsure about that, and it started a, really like a, almost a 10-month process of going through, learning how to do it, offering it for cheap, or in some cases free, just to get clients. And then when we had, kind of a repertoire, we started to look at our results. We started to realize that our clients were getting wins. Then we put a, we put a price tag on it, and the price has shifted over the last few years as we've gotten into it. The markets have changed. What people can afford has changed as well. But it's really been, it was a trial and error process, and the thing that we started with is certainly a far cry from where we are today- Yeah… In terms of the actual offer and the deliverables.

Josh Nelson: Love it. So it sounds like it was education first in you guys' case. It was like, "Let's sell a training on how to do this." Totally. And you got people- Yeah… That were like, "Okay. Yes, this is cool. You obviously know what you're doing." And then they were like, "But we didn't do it, so can we pay you to get this done?" And you guys had to decide to go done for you at that point. Correct. This is a common theme with successful agencies. And, and I want you guys all to hear this. When you get those first couple of clients within the niche, it's not just take the money and run, right? It's maybe take the money or not take the money, but the whole focus is to prove your results. Yeah. To be able to say, "Hey, this is the client we have in whatever niche, dance studios. This is the deliverable and this is the result." So they focused all their attention around figuring out, how do we deliver on our promise? How do we create an amazing case study? And once we have that, it's off to the races, right? 'Cause then you've got proven results and you can stack that. I'd love to know, so as you, as you transitioned to actually making this a service, so you were like, "Okay." Mm-hmm. "They're buying the coaching, but now we've got this done for you thing." how did you sell those clients, and kinda what was the path to get those retainer-based, studio clients?

Kristian: Yeah. I mean, I think what we learned is, you know, at the very be- we were willing to do a lot of, you know, pro bono work 'cause we knew as outsiders to this industry, we would have far more success getting our word spread if our– we had good clients and testimonials. And so our early growth came from a lot of referrals and then kind of people like bragging about like, "We found our marketing guys." And so that's where it kind of blossomed and we were– that's how we pretty much probably were growing until we joined your program, was all through referrals and word of mouth. Mm-hmm. We hadn't really done any additional advertising. You know, we had attempted a Facebook group approach where we got a bunch of people in there. But it was really just word of mouth. And, you know, as clients referred people to us, Bryce, we were taking sales calls together in the early days, you know, explaining our offer, selling them into a monthly recurring program, and then figuring out how we can deliver and keep them for as long as possible. But it was like, I remember a point, now you– we are serving 113, but there was a moment where I– we had 11 clients, and I was like, "Bryce, I don't even know how we can take on an- another one." Like I just couldn't even grasp scaling beyond that. And so there's just a lot of learning lessons too that we can speak on of like, how did we, you know, develop our processes to even be able to handle more? 'Cause I– it's just funny thinking back where I was like, "Bryce, 10 clients is stressing me out. I can't take on a single one." And there's just a lot of the, just some of the barriers that we were running into as people kept referring business to us.

Josh Nelson: That's awesome. Yeah, I'd love to make that transition now. So like now you've got this steady flow of clients coming in, mainly 'cause you delivered on the promise. You were able to show the results, and people started saying, "These are the guys." Right? And, and you started getting tossed all these clients. What like, what changes did you have to make on the systems, the procedures, the process in order to continue to deliver at scale?

Bryce: Well, I think… And I'm gonna let Christian really speak to the practical and tactical of the systems, because he's been far closer to that than I have. But I think the first major mindset shift that we took on was admitting to ourselves that we weren't ready to scale and that we needed to make the changes, just acknowledging that upfront. Like Christian said, we started– when we started, we'd take every call together. We- he was on all of the sales calls, I was on all of the client calls. And we realized at some point, this isn't gonna work. We have to divide and conquer. We have to actually separate roles and responsibilities. You have to be able to run and make decisions on hiring, firing, budget, systems, et cetera, without needing to consult me on every decision that you make. Right. And that was a big mental shift that sort of started to open the door to recognition of, we can scale, but we have to do this intelligently. And, and I'll let him speak to the specifics of the, you know, the people and the processes that we've, we've had to adopt and bring in, because there have been many that allowed us to go from our fir- we had two clients and then one of them fired us, and then we fired the other one and we were back to zero. And then we had 12 90 days later, and then we had 24 60 days after that. So the growth was very quick, once we really picked the niche. But that's where Christian like just absolutely knocked it out of the park in terms of putting the s- the systems and the people in place to make that go smoothly.

Josh Nelson: Yeah, Christian, I wanna hear, I wanna hear your feedback on this. But I want to land, for those of you listening, especially if you're in a partnership, make sure you're clear on who's responsible for what within the business, right? They were struggling with the fact that they were both kind of trying to do everything together, and I think the perfect term was how do we divide and conquer, right? And that's exactly what Bryce said. How do we figure out your strengths and my strengths so that we get two or three times the outcome- Mm-hmm… Versus both of us trying to work at the same time? So, I thought that was a great insight. So Christian, let's get into kinda how you thought about the systems and the procedures part of this.

Kristian: Yeah, I mean, I think I realized, I tend to be quick to be aware of like I, I'm at a point where I don't know anymore, and I need to find other consultants or experts. So, you know, for that, it kind of like, you know, during that year we discovered High Level, which helped a degree. But then more importantly, I think it was just thinking about I need to think in systems and processes. Like 'cause we hired a virtual assistant, in overseas and like I realized, oh man, I have to like train this person. And that was a decision after trying to hire an expert where we just kind of butted heads too much. I realized, oh, I can't hire an expert. Maybe I tr- I know this. Maybe I try bringing on someone who doesn't know ads and I train them. And I think in that training process, I realized I needed to like do… So I, so I just bought this course on process. It was like a ClickUp course, learning how to put things in place and kinda train someone a little bit at a time. But it was a long journey, but that's kinda where just by like piecing together YouTube videos, that's when I honestly started discovering your YouTube videos and I was like, wow, this stuff is like kind of informing how we should go about this with like our org chart or the people that we're helping. So just kind of taking bits and pieces there, but the biggest shift for me was implementing like, you know-… Documenting our processes as best as I knew how to do and putting into a tool like ClickUp, so that way my, our virtual assistant, our very first hire could, you know, start taking some of the work off my plate and help us serve the clients that we had at the time. And that's like the very beginning and just a lot of YouTube universities and things like that, just piecing things together.

Josh Nelson: Love it. So you proved the concept. You started to get this snowball. Recognized you needed to build the systems and the procedures so that you could get the work done. Hired a couple people, fired a couple people like we all do- Yeah… Like kind of churn through that team to get the right people in the right seat that understand what they're, what they're trying to do. What was the, what was the growth strategy that worked best? I mean, obviously word of mouth was powerful. But to go from two clients to hundreds of clients, that takes some great outcomes. Like what were, what are you guys doing today, I guess, to keep the calendar full and to continue to attract new clients?

Bryce: Yeah. So some of it truthfully is still in flux, in process, and we're continuing to evolve and test new things. In the early days, like Chris just said, we did ran- run a free Facebook group, and weekly we would volunteer two hours of our time to just come together and say, in, as, in an ask me anything style, you know, workshop, like, "Hey, what do you need to know? What are you struggling with?" That gave us a lot of education, and that's really how we got from where we were at z- two clients to 12, and we gave ourselves 90 days to do it. We said, we're gonna… You know, it was January of, I think it was '21, and then we said, we had two, and we said, "If we're, if we're not at 10 by, you know, the end of March, we're, we're just gonna wrap this up. There's nothing here." a month later, four or five weeks later, we had 12 clients, and that's when we realized there is something here. Like there, we know what we're doing. We're getting into the space. A lot of word of mouth. Our industry is a small one. Everybody knows everybody, so, you know, that was a big factor. We have done, some organic content. We've seen some success with that, but truthfully, we have not been as consistent with that as we would like to be. We do run our own podcast. It's a weekly conversation. We co-host it together, and we just have, you know, conversations. And I don't know if that's ever brought in leads directly, but it goes a long way to reassuring potential leads, prospects, that we know what we're talking about, and so we do that. They're both on, all the major platforms, you know, iTunes, Spotify, et cetera. Also on YouTube. It is a video podcast just like this one is. And, and then paid ads and that's been something that even that strategy, and I won't say anything more about it 'cause I don't know who's gonna end up listening to this, and we've got some secret sauce coming down the line. Nice. But paid ads have definitely been a, a pretty consistent way for us to bring new people into our, into our gravity well. Mm-hmm.

Kristian: Yeah, just to add on, I think joining, we joined this program in November, so a- almost a year ago. Mm-hmm. And we had just dipped our toes with ads, but I think some of the things that we've taken from this program, it, that's really helped catapult the growth over the last year to get us to this level was the webinar strategies. Mm-hmm. I think we just, the idea of building authority really started to sink in as well. And then just like having access to the coaches and seeing how other people are doing their ad strategies, like that, and just being, knowing how much we should be spending in marketing as well are other things that have, really helped, kind of get that pipeline flowing- Yeah… More than we had before.

Josh Nelson: Love it. Love it. So, cur- curious, so there must be a pocket, you know, like, so a- as niche agency owners, right, we've got whatever it is, chiropractors, dance studios, and we're either gonna buy a list, we're gonna borrow a list, we're gonna join an association. We've got access to a coach or some group that's out there. Sounds like in your case, you were putting out content, you were adding value to the industry, you aggregated your prospects into a Facebook group, and started showing up on a weekly basis, adding value, proving your results. What was the seedling? Was there like a joint venture? Was there a big group, that kind of helped populate that initial awareness?

Bryce: No, there really wasn't. I mean, we were not smart enough to figure-… To figure out that there were groups and associations that already had, you know, our pockets- Yeah… Like you said, groupings of our ideal customer. We, we just went at it- Mm… Ver- from a very cold start standpoint. We just started, like, personally reaching out to people on Facebook saying like, "Hey, do you need this?" And they would be like, "No." But eventually we got enough yeses that we believed that it was possible. Now we're pretty well tied in to all of the, you know, again, the, the conferences that happen over the course of the year. We know where they are. We're a known entity now. When we show up, people aren't like, "Who's, who are these guys?" I mean, obviously it's a, it's a female heavy, you know, woman-dominated industry. First couple years we showed up and they'd be like, "Why are, who are these men in this room, and why are they telling me how to run my business?" And we've been very conscious and, and aware of that since. Now we show up and people know who we are. Mm. And we've kind of attained that, like, local, let's call it local star power, local celebrity status, where we walk in the room and they're like, "Oh, you're the marketing guy. I need to talk to you." and so we've sort of broken in now, but it, we weren't, we didn't go the fast or easy way. We really just did it one by one- Yeah… Until we've gotten to where we are today.

Josh Nelson: I love that. So, so literally just reaching out to people that you saw within the niche, connecting on social media, starting a DM process, inviting them to the group, and then these weekly sessions. I love this strategy. Can you talk to me about the format? Or was it just, "Hey, bring us your questions. We're gonna help you, and if there's an opportunity, you know, we'll schedule you in"?

Bryce: Yeah, I mean- That, that was it, yeah. Go ahead, Chris.

Kristian: Yeah. So one of the big aha moments for us when we did the eight-week boot camp, no, actually I think it was one of the first times we tried to do like a Russell Brunson style webinar.

Josh Nelson: Now you, now you stack pitch at the end.

Kristian: Yeah. You're gonna get this and this and this, and sign up now- Exactly… And nobody signed, right So I remember clearly the, the w- this is like, there was a clear moment where it was like, "This is what we need to replicate and do every week." We did a 90-minute webinar and did content all the way until like the 75th minute, and then Q&A was a little just dull, no one bought. And then this one studio owner, I remember her, she was like, "I, I get all this. I've been told all this. I just want someone to tell me why it doesn't work for me." And I was like, "Okay, just let's see your Face- like do you wanna share with us your Facebook ads?" And we pull it up on the computer, and I just kinda like poked holes at it, and she was like, had this like aha moment- Mm… Where she– that moment I think we just gave her feedback. And so that was the impetus of our format where, "Hey, ask me anything, get feedback on your marketing." And people would show up, share a Facebook ad they put together, share a landing page or their website, and we just like would critique it. And it was as simple as that. And people showed up. They liked hanging out with us. They showed up. They were telling their friends. And we started seeing, you know, some people actually get wins from, hey, they would show up on a call and say, "I did the thing you told me to do two weeks ago, and I'm getting leads now, and one of them came in for a trial." And other people would hear it, and that kind of like snowballed. People wanted to hang out with us. So we kind of like Bryce said, the hard way, we kinda grav- create our own gravity swell just by showing up and giving our time up for free. So… And that still continues today with our clients.

Bryce: Yeah. And we have clients today, just to put it in perspective, that started coming to those free conversations four, five years ago, that three years later they reach out and they're like, "I'm ready now. I did the thing that you told me to do, and now I'm ready." And I'm thinking of one in particular, Lydia, who like that's exactly what happened. She showed up. She was struggling really hard in her business. She was not getting traction. We showed up, we gave her free advice, and she's a customer now, and has been for a while. And so it wasn't, it wasn't– We didn't realize, I think at the time, the benefit that we were gonna receive from it as well. We thought this is like, "Oh, we're just gonna give this away for free." But we've really earned the trust of the industry and learned a lot about our market, about our customers, how they think, what's keeping them up at night. And so when we started putting a price tag on things, we knew the areas where they were gonna trip up. We knew the objections. We knew the struggles. And so we were able to really hyper-target our messaging to speak to exactly th- the bleeding neck, the thing that was just- Mm… Absolutely critical that they needed solved right now. And so we were the beneficiaries of that as much as the people who attended the calls- Yeah… And potential clients. So it was very eye-opening.

Josh Nelson: It's super cool. Lots of lessons from that. So good. I love it. And, you know, if you're listening to this and you're thinking about, "Oh, I do content," or, "I've got a Facebook group," really you should ask like are you giving value? Are you thinking about the problems that your prospects have, or are you just trying to show up and sell, sell? Are you trying to show up- Right… And posture, posture? These guys, they showed up, and it was, "Let us help. Let us solve your problems. Show what's not working." And no ask, just give. And when you give, people start to reciprocate. People start to- Yeah… Give you it. I think you guys have done an amazing job with this. I appreciate you sharing kinda how you, how you approached that. Would love to come back now to… So that's how we're getting clients, right? Mm-hmm. Would like to come back now to the delivery side. Now serving hundreds of clients, obviously you've built the systems, you've built the team. Let's talk a little bit about what the team looks like, how you guys think about recruitment and training of the, of the, of the team that does the work.

Kristian: Love that. So that is very much like we've made a lot of huge progress over the last year. It's still kind of a puzzle piece that we're trying to solve. But primarily it's, you know, the people. Like we have our people roles, like our account managers, that they meet with our clients, give them the monthly review calls, like share and like help them plan campaigns. And then we have our marketing specialists where they kind of put all the ads together, do all the delivery of side of things. And so they all collectively, we kinda have a couple account managers and some marketing specialists to serve our clients. And so it's a combination of the people empathy roles and then the technical put it all together and launch it roles. Mm. And that's pretty much… Like right now I'm overseeing kind of like the delivery. I'm still doing some account management, helping people with the ads. But in terms of hiring and filling, we have really found, after all the trial and error, I think where we're going forward now is we hire first for culture fit. Mm-hmm. Like if you have the willingness to learn, you vibe well with our team, we'll teach you the skills that you need to do this job well. It's kind of really fun to kind of mold them into our processes, our way of work. And so that's been working pretty well for us so far, just to kind of get people who are passionate about dance or just helping other people and like, cool, you don't need the skill set. You don't need to be a Facebook ad expert. We'll teach you all that in our training. And, that's been working really well for us at this time. Mm-hmm. And, and just to add to that, for anybody listening, be very conscious. Like your team is the backbone of how well you are going to be able to scale a business. If you don't have a team or if you have a team that's not, you don't implicitly trust them, they're, they're not really on board, it's going to handicap how much or how fast you are able to grow.

Bryce: We've been very lucky in a sense, and I say lucky with sort of air quotes, because we've, we've built a culture that is attracting the right kind of person in. Mm. And we're also conscious to hire from within the industry. Yeah. So like in the empathy forward roles, we accidentally hired our first kind of success manager, account manager, and she was a former dance studio owner herself. Mm. And we didn't realize At the time, how fortuitous that was, or the level of empathy that she would truly be able to show up with, the conversations, the depth that she can go to with our clients that Christian and I just can't ever go to- Right… Despite our best efforts, 'cause I don't know what it's like to own a dance studio, but she does. And so now we've been very conscious of the who, more than the how. We'll figure out the how together, but we gotta get the right people, and this is Jim Collins in Good to Great, and get the right people on the bus and all the things. But really truly when you get the right people, you can step back and just trust that it's gonna work out okay. And more times than not, it does. And our team, it's almost starting to sound like a cliche 'cause we do our, like, weekly sendoff call where we check in with everybody, and every week it's just like somebody brings this gushing gratitude for the rest of the team, but it really is true. Like, we love working together. We love being together in person. We have great dynamics. Everyone has either came in with a skill set or has developed a skill set at a very high proficiency, and it's just cool to see. And team is the hardest thing to build. Culture's incredibly difficult to build. But once you get it right and you hit that, like, magic moment, it is magic. It just like, it all works in a very special way. So hire well is my advice or my suggestion to those who might be listening in today. It's, it's well worth the time and effort.

Josh Nelson: So good. So many great insights there. Kind of as you grow and scale the agency, right, if you wanna have freedom, you're gonna have to build a team, especially if you wanna deliver great results. And so a couple things they said here that were really powerful, hire for attitude and then train for aptitude, right? Mm. Do they fit into the culture? Are they the right fit? And you can train them, right? Especially if you already know what you're doing with the website or the SEO or the Facebook ads or whatever it is that you do. Hiring somebody experienced, you're gonna have to get them to conform to your way.

Kristian: But when you hire them and train them- Mm-hmm…

Josh Nelson: They're part of your team. They're gonna follow your process. Mm-hmm. That's super valuable, super insightful. The other, the other thing was hiring within the niche, right?

Kristian: Hiring someone that has a passion for that industry that you're in so they have the, they have the context, right, and they can have deeper conversations, especially on the account management front. The people are gonna be talking with the clients. Yeah.

Josh Nelson: I love that. Would love to talk a little bit about, like, team pulsing, right? So you've great– You've got this great culture. You've got this team that you've trained up. Like, what does a week in the life look like? How often are you meeting? What's the Slack communication flow look like? Just let's have a quick conversation around that.

Kristian: So I think a big thing that's helped us as we've grown and, you know, like we started implementing EOS from, you know, you guys talk about this all the time in Centigrade Agency and, so we started- Mm-hmm… Implementing that ourselves. So we have, we do our weekly L10 call. We have our, now our new Friday sendoff call where we just, it's more of a personal thing, like not so much work related. We have our delivery team does a daily huddle every day just to check in on roadblocks and what's needed for that day and priorities. And then, Slack, we kind of have one foot in ClickUp, one foot in Slack in terms of getting work done. So that part we're still trying to figure out. Yeah. But I think the daily huddles with the delivery team and the L10s to really tackle the big business priorities together have been really helpful in just kind of creating more visibility for everyone to know what's happening in all our departments. We're eight, it's eight of us total right now, and so we've just started to get to that point where departments don't see each other as often, which is why we did the Friday sendoff. So our onboarding and our delivery can be together with me and Bryce and other people that may- they may not see on a day-to-day basis. So that's a little bit about what we've implemented today on a daily and weekly basis to make sure the team is all well-informed and in sync with each other.

Josh Nelson: Love it. So the daily huddle, how long is that and what's the basic format for you guys?

Bryce: 15 minutes, round robin. Is there a roadblock getting in your way or is there something that escalated in priority? And we just quickly identify it. We don't solve anything. We just know, here's what we gotta do. Do you know what you need to do to get, make that happen? And it's really quick check-in.

Josh Nelson: And is that every day? What time? Is that in the morning, in the afternoon?

Bryce: For us, it's first thing in the morning, at the beginning of every day, Monday through Friday.

Josh Nelson: Love it. And then once a week, you've got your level 10, which is an EOS meeting structure, and then you've got your Friday sendoff. What's the format for that?

Bryce: So it's somebody, it's somewhat evolving, but usually it's a, like a ridiculous icebreaker question that we've- Love it… You know, pull off the inter… Like if you were a box of cereal, what kind of cereal would you be and why, right? Like what… Just silly things that kinda get us talking about it. Usually, we talk weekend plans, like what are you up to? What are you most excited about? What's going on? And it's just a way, truthfully, to create space in a breath where people get to know their colleagues. So when you're running remote or distributed teams, it's a challenge to build a culture. And we made a decision, one of our core values truthfully, is collaboration. Mm. We collaborated with early customers. We've collaborated with them on h- what to develop. Christian and I have always been collaborative. And so we're not the kind of company that's afraid of putting more meetings than maybe we need to on the calendar because it creates connection. And when you create connection, then people don't mind sending that text message or that Slack notification or whatever that gets to the answer faster. And so w- we're always just about creating as much FaceTime as, FaceTime virtually as we possibly can with our folk so that they feel like they can, they know they can go to anybody else on the team, they feel comfortable to do so. Mm. And so the Fridays are like, they're just meant to be goofy. It's just kind of- Yeah… What fires you up? What are you excited? What was your big win from the week? And we kinda hear and celebrate, you know, those wins and, you know, just one another in a very personal way. So it's, it's not a, it's, it's not a r- It doesn't really have a structure. It just kinda goes the way it goes and it's always good.

Josh Nelson: I think that's beautiful. I think it's so important. Most, most agencies these days do run virtual team, right? And whether it's international or national, you know, we wanna put them into their s- ClickUp task list and, you know, send them to work, right? Expect them to get things done. Well, if you wanna have a culture where people actually care about you, they care about your clients, then they have to feel like they know you and they trust you. And like the r- the reality is, you know, the only way you do that, if you spend time with them, and you spend time with them in more of a casual environment. And I love that you've baked that into your Friday frequency where this happens and you've gotten to know them, they've gotten to know you. And I think that buys a lot of grace and it buys a lot of, you know, them really caring about the company and the, and the core outcomes.

Bryce: Well, and just to- Yeah… Just to add to this, like we actually have made really smart business decisions as a result of the goofiness that happens on Friday afternoon. Mm. So we learned recently that one of the gals who's on our team, she's newer to us, we didn't have an existing relationship coming in. On a Friday call, we sort of discovered that she really loves social media management. She loves it. And so we started going, "Well, wait a minute. This is a need that we actually have within our own business. Would you be willing to do this? Can we experiment with, can we play with this?" And it allows us to actually build the business based on her passions.

Kristian: Yeah. And her passions fit with our needs, and we never would've known that if we hadn't done a like, "What are you doing this weekend?" You know, like, "What if you, if you had a superpower, what would it be?" I mean, it's totally goofy stuff, but you really do get to know people, and it… You can leverage it to build your business as well.

Josh Nelson: Love it. Love it so much. Kirk here is watching live. Kirk, thanks for watching. He's asking, "Camera's on for that?" I would, I would imagine that that's an absolute- Absolutely… Yes, right?

Bryce: Yeah. Yeah. And I think too, like just something that I've, cared more about is s- agencies like we, our first hire was an overseas VA. English is not his first language. And I think for a while, like I don't know, it was unintentional, but just the way we worked, he and I just kind of worked together in a silo. But even integrating people that are overseas into the team has really helped a lot in the gelling and the bl- and feeling like you matter here, and you're not just… So ev- anyone who is work- even if you're working with a virtual assistant, English may not be their first language, just know that that would probably mean a lot to these people just to be able to show up and be a part of something.

Kristian: And I don't know, it may- Mm-hmm…

Bryce: That probably gets like a lot of like mis- like misconceptions in virtual a- assistants, but that like really make it a whole team thing. Everyone is at… You– We all have the same status. We're at the same level. There's no hierarchy. And giving people a space to share their wins and voice concerns ha- that has helped a lot in creating that vulnerability in our team.

Josh Nelson: Hu- 100%. I'm glad you said that. I think it's important, like regardless of where they are, if you treat them like a team member, they're gonna show up like a team member, right?

Bryce: Exactly. Invite them on the meetings, invite them to the games that you play as the company.

Josh Nelson: I think that that's amazing. Would love to shift gears now to retention, right? So we've got hundreds of dance studios now obviously trying to like deliver world-class results, retain those clients at the highest level possible. Talk to us about how you guys think about retention and kinda any cool strategies you've put in place to, you know, to keep those relationships active.

Kristian: So this is a really interesting one for us, and it may be niche specific, so it may not have… This may have no value to anybody else. But we have learned in the last six months that our results aren't actually the reason why people stay or choose to go, and that's a really tough pill to swallow- Mm… Because, you know, we came into this with the belief that if we could just do great work, that they'd stay for- forever. And we've learned that that's not really the case. And so we're, we're having to adjust and shift, and it's not fully formed yet, what we're doing, how we're doing it. What we do know is that, relational connectivity is going to be the glue that holds us together over a period of time longer than purely based just looking at numbers and basing, you know, a, an estimated retention time based on that. And so there are s- some things that we're, we're evolving. There's some things that we're learning. We've recently– I recently as a, as a project, pulled all of our data, from every client that we've ever worked with, evaluated price point, how long they stayed, time of year that they started, et cetera, to see if we could start understanding trends and patterns. And we're still sorting through it 'cause it's a lot, but there's an incredible amount of data in that. There's a lot of insight that we're taking away, and we're bringing that now to our team saying, "We have a," like, "we have a retention problem. We know that when we have X, Y, and Z factor, how can we fix that?" Mm. And these are things that they're real conversations that are evolving in real time. I don't think that we've, we've kind of found the magic bullet on that one yet- Yeah… To be honest with you. And the reason I think it's been challenging is 'cause our specific niche, it's very possible to get fired for doing too good of a job as well. Like, we've had dozens of people who they were starting very small studios, 30, 40 kids. They get to 60 and they're over- their operations are overwhelmed and they're like, "Guys, I can't advertise anymore 'cause I gotta figure out how to handle this," you know, this. And so like we realized, wow, we… Like, what do we do about this? Like, we can actually do too good of a job with results. And so that's where we're really thinking through, you know, what other pieces and elements we can put in our, in our services. 'Cause currently it's just that one offer, ads and CRM. But what else can we do to give value for people who hit that overwhelm in their businesses- Mm-hmm… Where… And it's also a very seasonal thing too. So there's big growth seasons and then holding steady seasons where advertising may not be necessary. And so we're really just trying to figure out what are additional ways, now that we know- Mm-hmm… More about this industry and the business model, how can we meet other needs when it's not grow, grow, but more like hold steady and- Maintain… Keep our students longer? So that's what we're looking to get- Yeah… A little bit creative with. And our cl- and our clients too, like they're, they're brick-and-mortar businesses, and it's service-based. So you can only, like, reasonably, responsibly have X number of kids in a classroom per hour. Right. And so there– we have been fired and we joke about it like it's– we love getting the phone calls, the best reason to get fired. Right. But, like, clients will call us up and say, "I'm full. I can't squeeze another kid in here. I gotta let you go." And it's like, that's like pat on the back, like, "Yay, we did a good job," but also it's like, well, I don't love that part, you know? So- Yeah. So there is a, like the… And, and these are s- a lot of these are gonna be specific to us and our niche and our industry. Mm-hmm. But if you're in, a salon only has so many chairs, a chiropractor only has so many beds, a martial arts dojo only has so much floor space. Like, there are going to be limitations in whatever niche you pick, and it's just understanding them so that you can serve your client at the highest possible level.

Josh Nelson: Yeah. I love that. I think, you know, it should be a badge of honor when a client does s- pause you or cancel you 'cause they've been overbooked. Like, that should be something to celebrate, right? I think that's awesome that you're accomplishing that. And you're like, how much better could you have done for a client than that they're overbooked and now they need to stop the service? I think Bryce said something really powerful, and I wanna make sure you heard it and it resonates with you. Clients don't just stay for results, right? You can deliver amazing results and still get cancellations, right? Mm-hmm. They stay for, like, the results and the experience that you generate for them, right? I think showing that you care, gifting, those things are gonna help with retention. Obviously, results is mission critical. But if you don't have that, it's going to hurt. I would think in you guys' case, like what you do with cross-pollination with your own content, with the community, and kinda creating a mastermind around your client base, you know, like they're gonna also stay for those relationships and for- Totally… That community that you guys might develop. And so I think, you know, those are some big opportunities for you to maybe even double down on deeper.

Kristian: Yeah. We, we actually had this happen very recently. We had a client who, something happened in her personal life that was impacting her ability to earn. So previously, things were at this level and she was totally satisfied, and we got her to this level, but she had this change in her personal life, and so suddenly this wasn't enough. Mm-hmm. And she came to us and said, "Listen, I can't afford to work with you guys anymore. I'm, I'm gonna need to let you go." And we said, "Okay. Well, if that's what you need to do, that's what you need to do." Then she's like, "But I love the community. I love the relationships. I don't know how I could function without them." And we're like, "Well, you will be giving that up if you cancel the service." And she's still a, she's still a client. We pulled it out of the fire. She's getting more results. She's happy now. Everything's, you know, everything's peachy. But it does just go to say that it's, it's not just dollars and cents. It's not just number of leads that you get captured every week. It, it is the experience that people have- Yeah… That ultimately will keep them there.

Josh Nelson: Yeah. If you can get your clients to feel like you're on their side or you're a true partner, and you're here to figure it out with them, that, even if the results, you know, you're going through a slump in results and they feel that from you and your team, they'd rather have a thought partner in this than try to figure it out alone- Mm-hmm… Or work with another vendor where it's just transactional. And so really having those relationships, like lean into that, it just, it really helps keep people along with you for a while. So good. So many great takeaways there. I think if you're in a niche that lends itself to seasonality or to getting overbooked, figuring out how you can add a mastermind component or a community component where they're getting almost as much value from the relationships with your other clients as they are from what you actually deliver, gives you another layer of retention. And you know, you, you know, they might pause the campaign but still pay because they value- Yeah… The community that you're in. So just something to think about if they're in one of those, one of those niches. Guys, this has been awesome. Congratulations on your success. You shared some great insights on how you chose the niche, how you put together your program, kinda what the deliverable looks like, how you land clients and have positioned yourselves as the go-to expert in that space. And beyond that, really how you've developed your team, your systems, your processes, how you think about the culture within your company. Thank you so much. So many great takeaways. If you had one last piece of wisdom, I'll ask this for both of you, for that agency that's, you know, just trying to get to the next level, what would that be? And let's start with- Mm. Let's start with Bryce.

Bryce: Way, way to put me on the spot there, Chad. I think that this is, it doesn't matter what level you're at, whether you're starting or you're, or you're, you know, making an attempt or you're trying to grow in scale, I'm really just gonna suggest to you that if you don't f- absolutely fall in love with your clients and the problems that they have, you're not gonna get there. And, and I'm seeing more and more, people enter into our market. Generally, you know, lots of people are building and launching agencies now, and it's always sort of with this mindset of, oh, if you run an agency, you can make money. And there is a truth to that. However, if you don't really truly fall in love with your clients' problems- Mm… You're on- you're not gonna, you might make money, but you're not gonna have impact. And I guess I would just encourage everyone who's listening today, why are you getting into it? What are you trying to do? Yeah, you can, you know, you can, you can earn the whole world and lose your soul in the process, right? And that's not something that we want, for ourselves- Mm-hmm… Or I don't want that for you. So really fall in love and, like, making an impact and it's gonna just be really satisfying. It gets you through those tough months when revenue drops, when clients cancel. You're like, "But I still love these people," and it just kinda does something for you in a, in a pretty special way that just puts fuel in the tank when you're kinda running on E. So that would be mine.

Josh Nelson: Powerful. I love that. Fall in love with your client and their problems. And if you don't, if you're just in for a quick cash grab, "Oh, it's a niche, so I'm gonna say I know what I'm doing, and I'm just gonna go and charge them monthly fee," you're gonna struggle, right? Especially when you've got people like Bryce that truly care about the industry and are giving, not just, you know, the bare minimum, but willing to go above and beyond 'cause they actually care. I think that's wonderful. How about you, Christian? Yeah, I mean, that's a really great response.

Kristian: I think for me, looking back, like starting out either as an agency or going after a certain niche, patience, I think- Mm-hmm… Is just something to keep in your mind. And just like, I think slowly, like we didn't make a buck from going after this niche for like the first 13 months.

Josh Nelson: Mm. Yeah.

Kristian: But we knew that we were building trust and relationships, and we were trying to figure out what the best thing to offer them was. But I think, yeah, like if you love the person and you're, and you're patient in the process, it's like a garden. It's gonna take time to grow. And even when… I think some of the things that, scared me going through this is like when other competitors or people pop up or you think it's a crowded space, you'd be amazed at, what doing 1% better than… Like, I think a lot of people just are, they are mediocre in my opinion, honestly. And I think there's a… When you get into the business owner space, you realize that even among business owners, that people are succeeding and they're delivering a mediocre service. And so if you care, you love your client, and you care about them, you do 1% better, that's gonna set you apart, like regardless of how much competition is out there. And that would be my two cents and just being patient in the, in the growth journey there.

Josh Nelson: Love it. Plant, plant the seeds, put the right soil, water it, recognize there's a gestation period. You're not just gonna do a webinar or send an email or run an ad and magically have a seven-figure agency. These guys have invested in their industry, caring about the industry, proving their results, and built gradually over time. Two great takeaways. Thank you guys for sharing. Congratulations on your success. I can't wait to celebrate you. Seven figures and multiple seven figures down the track. If somebody wanted to connect with you or learn more about you guys, what would be the best place to do that?

Kristian: Yeah, I mean, the– Well, first of all, we're always open to talk to other entrepreneurs and agency owners or people, so feel free. It doesn't– You don't have to be a Dance client to reach out. Just hit us up. We'd be happy to talk to you. We are only where we are because we've had a tribe of people who came alongside us and pointed us in the right direction, so we'd be happy to do that for you if you're listening today. If you are a Dance client, head on over to dancemotionmarketing.com. You can see what we're about, how we do what we do. You can get in touch with us there.

Josh Nelson: Fantastic. Thanks, guys, and thank you for watching today. If you got value, hit the like button, hit the subscribe button if you happen to be watching on YouTube. And be sure to reach out to Bryce and Christian. Thank them for sharing, right? Thank them for their abundance mindset. Like, they have nothing to gain here other than just to share their wisdom and to give back, and really help the other people that are on their way up. So, thank you guys for doing this today, and I will send you on with your day. Awesome. Thanks, Josh.

Kristian: Thanks for having us.

Transcript of Kristian and Bryce’s testimonial video.

Hey, I'm Christian Altuve. I'm Bryce Conlon, and we're from Dance Motion Marketing. Our agency does a lot of paid social media ads for dance studios. It's been a long, slow road. We started with nothing. About this time last year, we were doing about twenty-three thousand dollars in revenue. Twelve months later, we have a hundred and seventeen clients, and we are doing about eighty-four K per month in recurring. I would say we were a little bit just doing everything ourselves. Our team was a little bit disorganized, and we were trying to put our processes in place beforehand, not really doing much of our own marketing or advertising.

And then since joining Seven Figure Agency, really learned the importance of building authority. So we started running a lot more of our own ads for webinars just to, like, put ourselves out there and say, "Hey, we're here to help educate our niche on marketing best practices." And then really just starting to put systems and, like, documenting our processes a lot better. So now we have a team of people that are kind of fulfilling, doing a lot of the client delivery work that we were initially doing ourselves.

The main challenge that I think we had before we joined Seven Figure Agency was that a hundred percent of our lead flow was coming from referrals, which isn't bad, but it's not consistent. It's a very- Yeah … very much a hope and pray, uh, scenario. Now we're in the driver's seat. We're thinking long term. We know what we need to be working on, when we need to be working on it to help us get to that next level. We're, you know, very good at implementing things, but we didn't know what were the right things to implement.

And so I think it was a lot of just taking our best guess at this is what the business needs, this is the problem they have to solve, spending time trying to put in place and realizing we solved the wrong problem in our own business. So I think not knowing what to focus on has… was a big, uh, question mark for us. I would say the biggest change for us is now having team who cares and developing leaders within our own agency who are stepping up and being proactive about solving a lot of things that we want to for our clients.

We went from having maybe three of us in the business to now we have nine on our team. So that's been the biggest difference, getting a lot more organized and having a team behind, uh, the mission that we're here to solve for our clients. One of the biggest changes that we've made since joining the Seven Figure Agency was really around authority building. We recognized, uh, at the last intensive that nobody knew who we were, and we might have been the best in the industry or in our industry, but we were functionally invisible.

Taking an approach to go forward and build a podcast, launch short-form content, put it out there in the world, and now we hear from clients and team alike that Dance Motion Marketing is everywhere. We're unignorable, and that's been a very practical thing that we came away from the last intensive with that has radically transformed the game for us. The work hasn't gotten easier, but I have gotten a lot lifted off my shoulders, where before I just had to really carry the load of everything that was happening in the business.

Now having a team to kind of distribute that workload and I guess more importantly, the, the changes that you were talking about, authority building is, it makes our growth a lot easier because people know us before we even get on a sales call. They're more familiar with our brand, which has just made our whole process of acquiring new clients a lot easier because of that authority that we're building and we're getting seen at conferences. So that has just helped a lot on our marketing and sales side, which ultimately feeds our business, feeds the team, and then helps us do more for our clients at a better capacity.

There's also the profitability in business. Yeah. I mean, I remember that when that tax bill would come around and the IRS would come knocking, it was always super stressful. Yeah. Like, where am I gonna get this money? I don't have this money to pay my taxes. And now we take a profit first approach where cash comes out every single month. We put it aside. We have taxes ready to go, and we're actually bonusing ourselves out on a quarterly basis or I guess taking draws based on the profit that we've earned.

And, and that was a massive mental shift for us because suddenly the business felt like it was making progress. Yeah. It changed, I think, a lot for us. It, we doubled down emotionally. We invested differently and just having profit to take out to reward yourself for the work that you do really is critically important for- Yeah … for long-term growth. Where we see ourselves in the next six to twelve months, people ask, that's a hard question to answer because things don't necessarily happen linearly. Uh, it's easy to say we're gonna continue to grow, and we are.

It's easy to say we're gonna continue to double down on the, you know, the, the implementation roadmap that we're learning here today. But I don't know what that means in terms of revenue or in terms of clients. What I do know is that we're fired up to continue to be the industry leader in this space, uh, to be the dominant force, to be the voice that everybody knows, not because we're the, necessarily the biggest, but because we're definitely the best. I think the most valuable component of Seven Figure Agency is just having, uh, the roadmap that you just gotta follow and implement.

But on top of that, you get access to amazing coaches and people who are ten steps ahead of where you are today and be able to ask them and help use the coaches and the mentors to then understand, like, what part of the roadmap should you focus on right now, and then just implementing it. And so I think having the path laid out for you and having the accountability and the mentors to guide you through that has been, made a world of a difference in our agency.

If you're thinking about joining the Seven Figure Agency, you honestly shouldn't unless you are absolutely committed to showing up and doing the work. Uh, it's like anything. You're gonna get out of it what you put into it, and it's not easy street. There's a lot of benefits to being part of a community like this, where you can get the cheat codes, figure out how to accelerate your business, and know what you should be working on and when, but it's still work. And truthfully, it's gonna expose a lot of things that you're not doing very well today, and that's uncomfortable.

So unless you're willing to get uncomfortable and really lean into it, you probably shouldn't. But if you are ready to do those things, then this is absolutely the place for you. And join one of the, the events as a guest. Just get a feel for what we do here in person. Um, this community meets, I think, three times a year. So get out to one of the Miami intensives and just see for yourself what it's like. And I know it fired us up to roll up our sleeves and commit to the work.