He Charged $99 a Month and Planned to Get a Thousand Clients

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

Josh Nelson: All right, hello and welcome to another episode of the 7 Figure Agency podcast, where we're interviewing highly successful digital marketing agencies from across the country. And today, we are blessed to be joined by Matt Foreman of, L- Lawn and Land Marketing. Hey, Matt. He's grown his agency to, now over $105,000 in monthly recurring revenue, doing some really cool things with AI and OpenClaw. Guys, welcome me in joining Matt to the call. Matt, thanks for being here, man.

Matt Foreman: Josh, always a pleasure to just be around you and talk to you. Thank you for having me. A real privilege and surreal to actually be here. I've been watching these even before, I had an agency, and so to now be on the podcast with you, yeah, wild experience.

Josh Nelson: So good, man. Well, congratulations. I know we celebrated your seven-figure status at the last intensive. You gave an amazing speech to the group- Oh, wow… On kind of your journey. For those that weren't there or didn't get a chance to hear it, just tell us where we're at in the business today. How many clients? How much recurring revenue? What, what's the kind current lay of the land?

Matt Foreman: Sure. Without getting into the exact number, we're, we're over 50 clients now. Love that. W- We get to be super intentional with our clients. We're do- we're over 100 in, MRR. We offer two distinct different programs based off of the stage where they're at. And so we have a, a really good mix of both of those client types right now. And yeah, we're, we're, we're growing. A great retention rate, and there's a reason why people stay with us. And so yeah, it's, now we get to grow very, in a very intentional way. Mm-hmm. We get to pick and choose our clients, and they obviously pick and choose us. So whenever we're adding somebody on, it's a great start to relationship, and it's one that we do a really good job of maintaining.

Josh Nelson: So good. So, so very intentional also with the, with the niche. So it's like landscaping, you know, type of businesses, lawn care companies, which is a competitive space, right?

Matt Foreman: Yeah. It's even been a competitive over the last couple years.

Josh Nelson: So to thrive in that space, you've done so many things right. You've done so many things well to separate yourself. Take us back a little bit. We know you've got a $100,000 agency today, and that's amazing, and you're continuing to grow, and I have no doubt that number's gonna continue to expand. But take us back a couple of years back where you were just getting things started and, you know, like why did you get into agency in the first place? What made you choose the landscaping niche?

Matt Foreman: So I had an agency back in 2016. I founded one. I just learned how to build websites. I mean, I could take you really far back to my college days where, I was an entrepreneur, and I was an ideas guy, and I would join all these pitch competitions like Shark Tank-esque. It was like right when Shark Tank came out. Wow. So I was part of all that. And then I needed somebody to build websites, hired somebody, didn't live up to expectations, so I just learned how to build websites myself, built a website for my little tech startup. It was cool, but then I had people asking me about websites. And, so then I started building websites for friends, and people saw those and started asking me, and I'm like, "I could probably just start an agency out of this." So I did. Started up that agency. So we called it a generalist agency, working with everybody, under the sun, as long as you have a business and are willing to spend money. And yeah, I didn't have a, I didn't have a playbook for that, and I didn't have like how much things should cost, and I really didn't even know how to run a business at that point. So I kinda settled in on, and it's wild thinking about this, but I settled in on, we're gonna charge $99 a month. And but I mean, it's gonna be so cheap, and like, we'll have 1,000 clients and that would be insane s- insane amount of money, and it'd be so easy. And boy, was that a tough thing to do. Yeah. First off, $99 a month is not very easy to sell because you're selling to really low, like smaller businesses. One, they're probably strapped for cash, but two, there was a lot of burnout. So, yeah, I would say in, 2020, I don't know if anybody remembers that year. That was a tough one for everybody. I was not a reader, and so this is funny. I love this story. And I won't name names, but there was a, in my generalist agency, there came a time where I'm like, "Man, I need to get better at selling. I need, I need to get more leads." And so I found this company, third-party company that was going to run my marketing for me. And I brought somebody on board. They, they set me up with someone, and this person that they introduced me to said like, I told them about my business, what I wanna do, and they're like, "Have you ever thought like we should niche down?" Again, this is like a random employee now. I've never talked to him. I'm like, "Eh, no, I don't wanna do that. There's just so much work out there. Like, why would I cut off 99% of that to niche down?" And he's like, "Oh, you should, you should check out this guy named Josh Nelson." And I'm like, "Okay, yeah, cool," and just went back to working. And I think I– he eventually sent me a link, and I've, I filled it out, got a free book, and I'm not a reader. I never was a reader. And so the book shows up to my house and, yeah, it's like 7 Figure Agency. I'm like, "Well, that sounds nice, but, that's, like, that'd be, that'd be crazy." I open the book up and I just remember like I made it to I think page six and I'm like, "This is what I need to do. That's, this is, this is it. This is what I need to do. Like, this is…" I'm really big on my faith. I've always wanted to have a business that was Christ-centered, and I don't know if it's where I live or the space that I'm in, but it always just seems so cutthroat. It's like you had to screw over the other business to get business. That, that's kind of what I learned over the years. And so to like read this book, that allowed you to not, sacrifice your values and still grow the business, build a business that had value, again, I'm six pages in, I'm like, "Whoa." And then so I think I flipped to the back of the book and was like, "Oh, there's a group," and I'm like, "Let's try it out," and signed up for it th- that day. At that point, my agency, again, generalist agency, was getting worse and worse, making less and less money. So this was like kinda scary. Just all the investments, whether it's time, money, or whatever, huge leap of faith. Best thing I ever did. And so yeah, I've, probably already forgot your original question, but As it relates to this industry, okay, how did I end up in landscaping? One of my generalist, clients happened to be a local friend of mine, and, he was into landscaping. And h- I remember, like, again, I just built a $99 website, and, I went a little bit above and beyond 'cause he was a friend, a friend of mine, so I'm like, "Okay, let me do a couple things here and there, that I know about, SEO and whatnot." Man, the results were awesome for him. Like, he started crushing it. And so I'm like, "Okay, like, let me try again. Let me, like let me try somebody else. Let me, like, lean all into him." And so he ended up… So I was pretty committed to this. I had to jump in with both feet first, so I'm like, "Okay, I'm gonna do lawn care and landscaping." And all right, now I gotta come up with a company name. How can I be super on the nose so that there's no question about who we service? Well, Lawn and Land Marketing. Still get some questions on, like, "Oh, who do you serve?" I'm like, "Okay, well-" You're like, "Really?" "I don't know how much more to change the name for you." But, but yeah, so I committed to all of that. I consumed everything that I could in a three-month time span, 'cause I joined Seven Figure, right at the end of March. Or sorry, at the end of August. So September, October, November, and December, so four months, I just consumed everything, everything. Really didn't put anything into play yet other than maybe building what I was gonna do. And s- I told myself, "January 1st, we're going all in, and, like, we're gonna get started." And I told my buddy, I'm like, "I will work f- for you for free. Like, I gotta build up the case studies. I wanna show case what we do." So we got our first client on January 1st, which was him, not really paying anything. He did offer me 600 bucks a month, so I'm like, "Okay, that helps a bit." And absolutely crushed it for him. We actually… He's still a client of ours. Now he has two businesses under us. He started a second one 'cause the first one did so well. And yeah, after that, built the case studies, and I'm like, "Okay, we are, we're off to the races." And I couldn't be more, I couldn't be happier about the industry that we're in. One, I love the people. I love and appreciate the, all the hardworking blue collar people in this industry. But also the appreciation that we get with our clients. And at the end of the day, like if I'm gonna be honest, like, I don't wanna say it's easy, but I always think about it's like, okay, if I'm in a market and I'm a professional marketer, and I have to compete against, let's say, a landscaper that doesn't know marketing like I do, I'm gonna win 10 out of 10 times. So I would love to, like, bring on a partner in that area to show, like, "Hey," like, "your competition has no chance against what we're about to do for you." So- Mm. It's just been, it's been fun. I know I took a long time to get there for you, but, that's how I ended up in this industry. We're here to stay, we're here to lean into it, and we're here to absolutely crush it for our clients.

Josh Nelson: So good. I love that, I love that you s- you kinda talked about the starting point, right? And I think a lot of agencies are in one of those two places. "I wanna be a generalist and I wanna serve everybody." Mm-hmm. "And it would suck to go down, like, the niche path." And so you had to work through that. And then the other big mistake a lot of agencies make, "Well, why don't I just charge 50 bucks a month or 90 bucks a month and hopefully it'll, it'll grow over time?" And the money math just doesn't make sense. And so you just, you, you crossed both of those hurdles and you kinda, you invested in training, you invested in yourself, and then you focused on one client out of the gates. You didn't try and say, "Hey, I know everything about landscaping, and I'm the man, and go hire me." 'Cause nobody buys that. But you found one local client that you were, you were connected with, you cared about. You poured yourself into that. You actually generated an amazing result, which gave you confidence, but it also gave you a case study, and you kinda, it sounds like that was the parlay into, "Okay, now I've got proven result, and I can build on that." Yeah.

Matt Foreman: Yeah, and that's what I tell a lot of people, like, when I talk to them and they're, thinking about niching down or even starting an agency for the first time. There is a massive value in proof. And- Oh, yeah… Sometimes, like, the hardest… No, not sometimes. The hardest client to get is your first one, or first- Right… Couple. Mm-hmm. And so if you could just bite the bullet, assume you're not gonna become a millionaire overnight, and just work for cheap or free to get those case studies, to prove it to yourself and say, "Hey, is this something I actually even wanna do? But let alone can I do it?" Mm-hmm. But once you do that and once you get those case studies and the proof is in the pudding, it's gonna be a lot easier to sell your services. And then that's also the start of figuring out how to build out a system that's, that's repeatable. So yeah, I, for so many, so many agencies, obviously you wanna immediately make money. You wanna be profitable. I get that. Everybody wants to be. But I think in the early days, you gotta earn your stripes. And so work for cheap or free. That's, that would be my, some of my earliest advice that I would have. It, like, if I were to do this over again, I'm very happy that I did that.

Josh Nelson: So good. Yeah, you had to earn your stripes. They are paying full price, by the way. They are paying full price. Right, right, like, over time you get them up. Yeah. I'm just curious, how did you p- how did you pay the bills? Like, you know, that's, like, a three, four-month window of time, you know, very low fee. I know you had other generalist revenue. How did you make do during that time? What kind of sacrifices did you have to make to live the life that you're living today?

Matt Foreman: Sure. And, and so I mean, I mean, it wasn't, like I wa- I wasn't eating ramen. I still had my generalist agency. Mm-hmm. And, and it was fine. Like, it paid the bills. It was able to sustain that ability to just kind of like, "All right. I'm gonna laser focus in it." So, so it paid for all my early setup, like, with hosting and all the stuff, like, all the technicals, so that we weren't just, like, burning cash. – Mm… I mean, marketing doesn't, isn't the most overhead thing, but it helped sustain me early on. And I know that's obviously not going to be the same for everybody, but I did have some sort of recurring revenue, even with the $99 websites.

Josh Nelson: Got it. Okay.

Matt Foreman: So to- And I have a rockstar wife. That helps, too. So she helps pay the bills. And she trusted me, so that's another big thing. Always have a partner that believes and trusts in you and can support you.

Josh Nelson: Yeah. It was good to have her there on, in your corner believing in you, and she was there to celebrate you at the Intentive, which was a lot of fun. Yeah. So you've got this one client. You've crushed it for them. You feel like, "Okay, I'm ready to go all in." How did you take that one case study client and turned it into your next client? 'Cause that's the other big hurdle is like, "I got one. How do I know, like, go get those other handful of clients?" Just kinda like the seed revenue.

Matt Foreman: Yeah. It, and so when we built this first one, I mean, I can't say we. When I. I mean, I didn't have a team at this point. I, again, I just poured a ton of love into the website, great visual so you can send that as, like, screenshots or even send them to the link. Showcase results, like where were they versus where they were. Funny enough, one of the before and afters that I had, 'cause I never had the original website they had back on my previous generalist agency, so I literally used our generalist agency's website that we built and said, "Look how bad that looks, and now look how good it looks now." So I literally compared my work to my work. Nice. But yeah, it, it, it showcased, okay, this company knows what they're doing. I will say, like, I also kind of went forward with an approach of like, "I'm gonna look bigger than we really are." So I did build out, like, this perception, like, okay, Lawn and Land Marketing, wow, big agency. They've been around for a while. Like, again, I just poured my love into this thing, so I would say that probably helped me too. I mean, my first client that we landed, first, like, legitimate client, was a $4.5 million landscaping company. Two years later, they're 12 million.

Josh Nelson: Man. Wow.

Matt Foreman: So, like, this was a big company. Like, they're, they're, they're like no joke. And I don't think, I don't think, no, at the beginning, they did not realize that they just hired a guy. Mm-hmm. They thought they hired, like, a really good agency, which they did. At the end of the day, they did. – Sure did… And I had a great relationship with the owner there and, like, I've, I kind of, like, we got to laugh at the serendipitous of, like, how we even connected and like, "Hey, just wanna let you know, thanks for taking a, thanks for trusting me. This was the reality, and I'm glad it worked out." And yeah, we both laughed about it. And we even said like, "Hey, probably wouldn't have joined you if I knew it was just you." yeah, so it's, it, it was, it was a fun journey. But yeah, the, the perception really helped. But also- Mm… Just that single case study, like, made it look like, okay, hey, this company knows what they're doing. They specialize in this. They're not, like, focused anywhere else. And yeah, hey, we are the agency, even though there's obviously other agencies in the space.

Josh Nelson: So you focused on two things really early it sounds like, crushing it for the first client and getting undeniable proof, like this is- Mm-hmm… Where they rank, this is how many leads they're getting, this is how much revenue's generated. And then you invested early in your own website, and I did put the link in there, landandlawnmarketing.com, if you wanna check it out, to make it look legit, to make it look professional, to show that you could craft really good m-marketing, messaging, branding. But logistically, was it a phone call? Was it a drop-in? Was it… Like, how did you get that $4 million company's attention to get the app back? Was it you went to a BNI meeting? Like, talk to us about that first one.

Matt Foreman: Yeah. So I used one of the trainings in Seven Figure Agency Model about, cold outreach, building a dream 100 list, and so I did that. At this point, again, even with my generalist agency, I really had no approach. I had no structure. So this was all new to me. So I'm, I'm trying to figure out how High Level works, how automations work, and all this stuff. And so I gathered a big list from another company that was able to scrape or build lists, and I sent them out, i-in, kind of en masse. And, it was funny, and I know this probably won't help anybody, j-I just think it's a funny, instance. So at this point I'm like, "Okay, I'm just gonna target Florida. I'm here in Florida. I'm gonna target- Mm-hmm… People in my area to make it feel a little bit more local. Eventually, I'll branch out to the other states." And so I originally found, wanted this list of all local businesses in Florida. I started in the Tampa Bay area. And the company that I landed has a very just kind of generic landscaping name. I mean, there's, there's so many, like, ABC Landscaping. There's probably 50 of them in the, in the US, stuff like that. And so I asked for this list, and I went through and I just kind of automated, my emails and my intention was if anybody replied, like, I'm gonna jump right o- on it, call, email, like speed to lead sort of thing. And my, one of my first response, this, company, not in Florida. The, the email scraping list got me wrong contact information. So it was a company in a completely different state and 'cause I… And, and the problem was, like, it said it was this state in Florida, so I'm, like, looking at their website. I'm like, I'm just like I'm, I'm having a hard time put- piecing it all together. But yeah, eventually replied and again, it was just a very serendipitous, like, running into each other, figuring it out, actually moving forward, getting on calls, and eventually, like, closing the deal.

Josh Nelson: So, but yeah- Love that…

Matt Foreman: It was just, it was, it was a grind. It, it really was. I didn't get- Mm-hmm. So this wasn't until, again, I started January 1st with my first client, my friend, super, like, not making money, that's for sure. – Mm-hmm… And then my next one wasn't until middle of March.

Josh Nelson: So I first- Like three and a half months in you're like, "All right. Let's see if we can't get another client." When did you, when did you start sending those emails? 'Cause was it, was it quick that you started getting replies and got this? Or was it you did that for quite some time?

Matt Foreman: I did it, I did it for quite some time. So yeah, like I said, the, those first four months was me prepping. So January 1st I'm gonna be working for this, basically free for this company, and I'm gonna be, putting the wheels in motion. And yeah, I mean, it wasn't instant gratification. A lot of, like, getting your teeth kicked in. But yeah, it's just trusting the process. And I tell this to my clients all the time. I mean, like, you do marketing for clients and if anybody's a digital marketer, they're gonna know. Like, you're gonna have those clients month one, month two like, "Hey, where's all the, where are all the leads at?" And you gotta remind them, "Hey, it's momentum. It's about doing the right thing. It's consistency." You gotta, like, you are marketing too. You have to remember that yourself. So, you have to practice what you preach. You have to know that, like, hey, marketing does not mean immediate gratification. It can in some instances if you're pumping a ton of money into ads. I didn't have the money. So just, cold outreach, putting my, – Put my steps in and then, yeah, eventually landing one. I think our first like four clients were all cold outreach.

Josh Nelson: So good. And I think this is really important to share, and I think it's also very encouraging and inspiring. So if you're one of those agency owners just at the, in those early days, right? And it's like, "Man, I'm, I'm sending the emails, I'm making the calls, I'm doing the personal DM-ing, I'm doing all the work," but it's like I'm not getting a lot of hits. Like you're either gonna quit and go get a regular job, or you're gonna keep at it, right? And this is the same thing Matt and all agencies have to deal with, right? It's not easy. If it was easy, everyone would run a seven-figure agency, right? You have to stick with it. You've gotta face the fact that it's not gonna just naturally fall into your lap. You're gonna have to send different messages. You're gonna have to make calls. You're gonna have to be uncomfortable. But the transformation that happens when you do stick with it and when you do keep putting in the steps, like he says, is now he's running a seven-figure agency. Now, obviously we're gonna hear more about the journey, but that's I think just a beautiful share. Do, like if you can think back, what was, what was the basic gist of that introductory s- message, like cold outreach message?

Matt Foreman: Yeah. It was,… I think it started out off a bit with kind of like picking them apart, picking, their online presence apart and saying, "Hey, you're doing this, but you could be doing this," or even reaching out and like highlighting competitors, because every company has competitors and most business owners are aware of their competitors. So if you can strike a chord, that definitely really helped. And so we, we did just kind of take a relatively generic approach and like, "Hey, your website looks terrible. It's not a great reflection of you and your company I'm sure." Obviously we wordsmithed that a little bit better but, yeah, it worked. It struck a chord and I think a lot of marketing really does come down to timing. And I, and I'm not talking specifically like seasonality timing. I'm talking about like the owner's mindset because- The perceived problem. Like- I think that- "Yeah, you're right. My site does suck and I do need to do something about it." Right Yeah. Right. I might have hit him like right after he looked at his website and said that to himself or said that to his team. Mm-hmm. And like, wow, perfect timing. So and you'll never know that timing, but it's Wayne Gretzky, "You miss every shot you don't take." And so just having a consistent system in place that is, that is all, constantly following up and it's not just a constant like attacks and saying, "Hey, yours is terrible." It's giving value. Like maybe like for instance like we send out, an updated annual Google Business Profile list, a checklist to literally everybody for free and maybe that's something that they were just looking on and realized that they're like it's, it's not as good as their competitors and I just happened to send them one at the perfect time. And so it's just a matter of timing, again just doing the right things. Also like being multi-channel too 'cause I can imagine like a ton of my emails are probably going to spam. A lot of them are not and that's very obvious. But you can't just focus on one channel. I mean we tell that to our clients too. That's why we're very full service. We- we're not just going to be your SEO agency. We're gonna be your omnipresence because while one thing may work at sometimes it doesn't mean it's working all the time. Mm-hmm. So you wanna have multiple things going and that's what we've done a really good job of building is a, a system, a multi-faceted system that focuses on organics, focuses on outreach, focuses on inbound leads and, yeah, now that's all humming pretty nicely.

Josh Nelson: Super cool. So, so zooming out right? You got, you chose the niche, got the one client really poured into it, created a great case study. All right I'm ready to go market this thing. Got a list of prospects, started doing some cold outreach, got some replies, jumped on some sales calls, got the second, third, fourth, fifth client, continued to grow that. Talk to us a little bit about what the marketing approach looks like today 'cause obviously it's much different than it was then. What's working in today's market now at 50 plus clients over $100,000 a month in recurring revenue to get new clients in the door?

Matt Foreman: Sure. So it's a little bit nicer now 'cause we make more money so we can invest a little bit more in ourselves and our marketing. So if, and maybe if another agency owners maybe you see my ads but I also realize that like I'm not as big as I think I am. I see my ads all the time obviously. But yeah, we invest heavily in ads, specifically on Meta. So I love being on camera, I love talking, I love being outgoing and so like it was just kind of a bit of a natural fit for me. So I make some, we made, we made a lot of videos. I wanna say in a three-month span, three-month span we probably made 150 different videos just giving away information talking about what we do and like the industry, both industries digital marketing and the green industry. And yeah, and then we just put some fuel on the fire, put it in, Meta ads and obviously Meta's always changing their stuff so staying up to date on that but now we have, a lot of inbound leads from ads. I'm currently working on our podcast so like I get to meet with other, green industry business owners even ones that we don't know and so that's been great. Mo Money Mo Problems podcast by the way.

Josh Nelson: I love it. I love the T-shirt and I love the, the branding behind it.

Matt Foreman: Yeah. And so, yeah it's just a, it's a matter of like taking, doing the steps and I think this is one of the hard things that I struggled with maybe in the first to second year was okay the clients are starting to come in now I need to focus on delivering for them. Mm-hmm. And so what that did was pull me away from getting more clients. And then just so you know like with my generalist agency I never had more than one employee before. – Mm… And that, at that point that agency was four years old and I had only ever hired one employee and so hiring was always a tough thing for me. So that was, that was where hiring really helped free me up because they say you should never stop selling. That doesn't necessarily mean you need to get sales every single day but you need to be doing something that is going to drive your company forward whether it's just making a video and then editing it today I would consider that some sort of sales process 'cause you're, you're working on the marketing that's going to lead to the sale. So you always need to find a way to do something to get your company out there whether it's a follow-up on somebody that told you no previously 'cause maybe they weren't ready or getting back to the basics, getting back to the foundations maybe starting doing a cold email again 'cause you, I can imagine Look, I just, back when I first started, I was sending cold emails. I landed my first four clients, four, first four real clients through cold email, being a one-man show. Let's say I run that exact same cold email campaign today with a ton of proof. We're super legit. They can check us out. We got a huge team now. It's gonna be far more successful. And, and so it's, it just continues to compound, but you can't forget about the foundations, you can't forget about the fundamentals. And, and again, you just don't wanna take your foot off the gas.

Josh Nelson: Super good. I love that. So it sounds like for you, it's mainly been the cold outreach, the Facebook ads, which you get dialed in and you're very creative and you really stand out. Like, guys, go check him out on Facebook, the company profile and l- like peep his ads library, 'cause it's not the standard ads. He's very creative- Yeah… And it's definitely standing out in the feed. And then a little bit of authority positioning in terms of the podcast. Is that kind of the mix today, even though, like, you're like, "I know I gotta go back and get consistent with the cold outreach and the daily tasks," the monthly webinar, the monthly podcast, and then I know you're starting to get in- involved in some industry events and conferences as well.

Matt Foreman: Yeah, and that's a big thing for me that I know I've been neglecting is getting at the conferences. I know and I see this with my peers, whether it's peers in the a- agency space that are not in my niche or if it's people that are in the niche. Going to these industries, building those personal relationships is super important, and that's something we haven't really tapped into yet. Very excited to tap into it. I know it's gonna go well. Even if I, like, leave with no new clients, it's, it's going to be rubbing the shoulders, getting a better understanding of who my clients really are. Mm. That in itself is just going to really help me understand kind of the framework and how to talk to people. And again, just like get a better understanding of the niche that I'm serving. And so yeah, I know that's gonna be a really important thing. I always look at things that I'm not doing, or, and I tell the clients this, things that they're not doing, whether they're not running ads or not as issues, but as opportunities. 'Cause like- Mm-hmm… I tell my clients this all the time, "You've built a really successful company without doing this. Imagine when you do do something like this." It's a massive opportunity. And so yeah, it's a huge opportunity we haven't really tapped into yet, so I'm excited to get started on that. I think the hardest thing for me is actually getting started. But once I get it, once I get into a rhythm, I'm really good at, staying consistent with things. So good.

Josh Nelson: I think it's also, super encouraging for s- like, different people find different marketing mixes that work for them. There's agencies that go to seven figures just with cold outreach. There's agencies that go to seven figures- Mm-hmm… Just with Facebook ads. So in Matt's case, either he didn't, didn't find it a priority to go to these conferences or maybe he's, I know you, he's got a wife and a young baby, and it just time-wise it wasn't the most efficient use of his time. So don't feel like you have to do it all. Like, find your lane, get really good in that one channel, get it dialed in. Donna's asking a question here, and I think you answered it, but I think it's good to come back to. Donna, thanks for listening to joining us live. But she says, "Did you do any online ads in that first year or was it exclusively cold outreach?" Hey, Donna.

Matt Foreman: We did zero ads. Yeah, we didn't run any ads. I just didn't have any money to do it. And so, like, yeah, if the money was there, money was available, I would have. Also, now that I know how to run them, I think with running ads, and maybe you see this with your clients too, there's that leap of faith and sometimes you have to like, "Okay, I'm about to put the money in the, in the machine. Am I actually gonna get a return?" And so, no, first year we didn't do that. I mean, my first year we only had four clients total, by the end of the year. And so no, we just didn't have the money to do it. So it's not for a fact that I would say not to. Again, if you have the funds, do it. But yeah, no, we didn't get a, get a chance to.

Josh Nelson: So good. I think that's, it's a story of perseverance, right? Like your story here is like the fact that three months before the first client came in outside of the, like kind of the freebie, and then a whole first year with four clients would've been easy to say, "This is, isn't enough money," right? Like, "I'm like really working hard," and just kind of fold up shop. How did you stick with it, and like what was your mindset as you kind of went into that second and third year? Like, you know, coming to the intensives, see- like seeing like, you know what, there, I wanna be further ahead, but being happy with your, you know, with your journey.

Matt Foreman: I promise everybody Josh isn't paying me to say this, but, it was being part of that group and seeing that it is possible. I can imagine if I was doing this alone, especially being a digital marketer where I'm just sitting behind a computer and not around other people, I could see where the doubt would creep in. But I constantly saw people, breaking through barriers, like breaking through those plateaus, being celebrated at every stage of the way. Yeah, so in, 2023 when I officially started the business, the first intensive I went to was March. I didn't get to go to the second one in July, but then I went to the one in November at that time. I think they're in October now, but it was November at the time. And that was when I just crossed, 10,000 in monthly recurring revenue. It was tough. I mean, still not making a ton of money, but, and it was, it was interesting because like I was part of the group, and I'm seeing all of these other agencies just absolutely crush it. And, and again, I only had four clients. Yes, I was happy about getting those, but at the same time, like there is the, "Oh my goodness, I'm just watching all these other ones. I'm so far behind. Can I even compete?" Because you see other people in your industry too, and you're like, "Oof," like, "They're always gonna be better than me." It was, again, seeing those breakthroughs, seeing people like, and talking to people that have been through exactly what I've been through. And, yeah, just I went up there and, I slinked up and I actually didn't put in my numbers. Josh is always like very intentional in asking for updates to numbers so he can celebrate you. And I didn't put in my numbers almost out of embarrassment. But then I saw people walk up on stage and celebrate hitting the 10K as well, like alongside me. And, that was one of my biggest regrets is like I didn't get on that stage. So I actually went up to Josh afterwards and said, "Hey, like I was supposed to get that medal. I didn't." And, and gave me one and congratulated me personally. But, Yeah, it, it, and that's what, that's what kept me going. And then year two was substantially better, and then, by the end of year three, I mean, we hit the seven-figure mark. And so, and it was being a part of this community, not doing it all by myself, I think that was a really hard thing for me is sucking up my pride. I've always been of an entrepreneurial leadership mindset, and the pride part was like, "Okay, I'm gonna do this. I don't, don't need help. I don't need a business partner. I don't need any of that." And, and that was a definitely a pride thing, a huge fault of my own in learning to lean into others has substantially helped me become a better person, a better business owner, a better friend, everything. And so, yeah, it was watching the community succeed that ultimately led me to continue to succeed.

Josh Nelson: So good, man. You stuck, you stuck with it, and you continued to ma-make progress each time. I love the fact that when you came up, you had the white ribbon with you because- Yeah… You know, like, it's easy when you're getting the s- the seven-figure plaque, and it's like, "Hey, we've crossed seven figures. Look at us." Like, and now it feels like it was easier, but you had to, you had to go through all of those steps, and all of us did, right from the, from the agencies that are crossing eight figures, we all had to get that first 10K- Mm-hmm… That first 20K. And so we wanna celebrate that as much. That's encouragement for everybody that's starting. Yeah. And I love the fact that you did that. I wanna come back to Cody's question. Cody, it's great having you on here with us, and he's asking specifically on the Facebook ad stuff 'cause you really do have that dialed in. What do you feel like was the knob that Feld made that click? Was it the creative, the messaging, the targeting? Anything you can share without feeling like you're, you're opening the kimono too much on that.

Matt Foreman: Oh, and I'm happy to give all of it away. I'm, I'm not gatekeeping anything. I would say the thing that really stood out, one, video, but two, putting a talking head, like m-making sure it's, it's you. I know a lot of times, especially with AI, and don't get me wrong, I love AI, but you have to be real, especially in this agency space. I mean, you might not ever get a chance to go and shake the hand of your owner, but you, so you need to come off as real. And early on, like my early success in my Meta Ads was just me like filming like, "Hey, this is who we are. This is what we do. I'd love to work with you." And, and it was, yeah, we just call them ugly ads, and we were just very intentional. We're real people. This is what we do. And that's what at least a lot of our, client types like is like a real person, not something- Yeah… Somebody corporate, somebody relatable. I will say like I a lot of times strategically will like grow out my facial hair in a certain way to kind of be more relatable to my industry. Okay. So occasionally, I mean, the next time you might see me, I'll probably have a full beard. Who knows? But it's, and if you see that, you're, you could probably think like, "Okay, he's in, he's in filming mode." He's matching the audience, right, with these ads. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, it's, it was just a matter of like putting out more content and, yeah, not everything's gonna work. And, and so but don't get discouraged. I would just say keep doing stuff. Yeah. Right now we also are in a, in a great time for Meta Ads because before you had to almost kinda manually control it, watch the data, turn things off, turn things on. Now you can just continuously dump things in there and let, Meta's Andromeda update figure it out for you, so you never have to turn things on or off. We have a lot of ads out there that have kind of like, some of them were doing nothing, but we were just told, "Leave 'em on." And then after months like of getting like no impressions, boom, now they're our most popular ones all of a sudden. So you just kinda like let it do its thing, never stop creating, and, yeah, just kind of, just be real. Be a person. I would say also don't go complacent. Like it's fine, put some graphics out there as kind of maybe a supplement to some of the stuff. But get on video, like highly recommend it.

Josh Nelson: So you like leaned into that know, like, trust, right? Like, like the personality brand- Yeah… Of Matt Foreman as the individual behind the company, that when you hire us, you're gonna get me as the thought leader that's gonna drive you forward. And the fact is, people wanna do business with people that they know, like, and trust, and they're willing to pay a premium for the best in that space. That's right. And so what you've done there with your videos is you've made yourself personal and relatable, but you've also positioned yourself as the expert, which commands a premium price. So good. How much of that is organic content versus just straight up this is getting loaded up for ads exclusively?

Matt Foreman: So that's interesting. We definitely have a lot more organic content, but, we are eventually going to just be dumping all of it into ads- Okay… With call to actions on the end. Awesome. So we'll be able to repurpose all of those, with some sort of call to action, whether it's as intentional as like, "Hey, book a call with us," or, like if we, if we made a piece of content that was talking about your Google Business profile, the call to action might be, "Download your free, Google Business profile checklist." So eventually, all of it will be in there because, again, we're, we're now at the time where we don't have to be so picky and choosy because your budget, like it will not be split amongst all of those. So you don't have to only select your winners. Meta will do that for you now.

Josh Nelson: Got it. And are you driving your ads to, like a lead form, or are you going to a landing page? Have you– Like what's, what's your preferred modality that you're seeing works best?

Matt Foreman: Yeah, that's, that's interesting because, I mean, I've heard, the differences in, what's good and what's not. You'll have some people that will always say like, "Oh, the leads from Facebook lead forms are trash," and others will be like, "Well, our landing pages don't work that well." We build, like I will brag about it. Our, we build some great landing pages, some great websites, some great workflows, very high quality stuff, tested, tested, and proven to like have amazing messaging. And even with that, we have still noticed that Facebook lead forms, just capturing that information and then obviously great follow-up afterwards, has led to more high quality leads and better conversations. Then just redirecting them to a landing page with an intentional book your strategy call. Now, that's not gonna be the case for everybody. It's not gonna be the case for every industry. You got, you got different types of personalities. I can imagine most of my, owners are maybe in their truck, maybe just checking it out after a long day's work, and they just want the ease of doing something. And so a lot of them don't immediately book a strategy call after seeing the meta ads. But we have great follow-up, and, the money's made in the follow-up, truly. I don't know if we have a single client that just, like immediately said, "Hey, I just heard about you, and, like, I would love to give you all my money." Like, there– you have to have conversations, you have to be real, and you have to kind of… You have to water that seed. Love that. Yeah, like multiple touch points, almost letting them binge a little bit your content and get to know, like, trust you over time.

Josh Nelson: Yeah. So it sounds like video ad to lead form to automation and sprinkling, but most of your lead forms that you're advertising on Meta would go straight to lead form to schedule appointment, right? Yeah. Or, or are you- Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Very cool. I think that's super helpful for everybody that's watching. Your follow-up after the fact, it sounds like High Level's running in the background. How much of it is email versus SMS versus phone, and is there any DM-ing on the back end i-in terms of your sales process today? Or, or personal- Yeah… Messaging on Facebook Messenger?

Matt Foreman: A-And again, huge opportunities. We're definitely not doing a lot of those things yet. Huge opportunities for when we do 'cause again, that's just gonna be another great lever to pull. Right now, we are doing primarily text and email follow-ups. And it's so interesting. So I have done a few personal outreaches on, on Facebook, like using my account, not the Lawn and Land Marketing account, to put a, a face to the company and say, "Hey, I'm a real person. I wanna have a real conversation with you." Which kinda harks back to my early days in Seven Figure Agency. Josh, you did that so amazingly. That's probably what encouraged me immediately after reading the book, getting started, and making me feel like… 'Cause as a lot of agency owners know, like after you spend some money, you might have, your clients might have some buyer's remorse. And so getting that, getting that reassurance, it was so funny. I sent a message to Josh and said, "Hey, I'm really excited about this opportunity to be in Seven Figure Agency." And I even said, I'm like, "I don't know if this is actually you or somebody manning your Facebook page, but I just wanna thank you for the opportunity to be here." And two minutes later, so funny. Two minutes later, I get a video message back from Josh, and he's like, he's like getting in his car, and he's like, "Hey, sorry, Matt, I was just getting some Starbucks. Yeah, it's really great to have you in the group." And it's just so funny. But it was like, man, what a r- like real guy, like actually intentional, like actually cares, and, that's, that's what I've wanted to emulate in my business too, and it has worked really well. So I haven't done that enough, and I think, I wanna say, and I hate making excuses, but I wanna say it's because of the growth of the company that has unfortunately pulled me away from where I would like to be, and that would be more of the face of the company. But I definitely wanna get back there, and I would highly encourage it. I mean, you're only going to win by being personable, reaching out, and eventually, like, the teeth-getting-kicked-in stops. Yeah. You know how to talk to people. You know, like how to kinda temperature check and everything. So, yeah, I can't wait to get back into, like, kind of that more personal touch again.

Josh Nelson: Amazing. A-And so it's straight up the Facebook ads with the video- Correct… Straight to lead form, lead form to email and SMS. Let the automation bring them through. If they're hot and ready, they schedule in. If they're not, they're on your nurture sequence, and you're touching them, I'm sure, into perpetuity, and that playbook is working without having to take a lot of your personal time. I wanna switch back to something you said earlier, which I thought was really relatable for everybody watching, which is, "I got the five clients, and then I got super busy making sure I crushed it for them, and then I couldn't continue to market." How did you manage that and start to transition back to focusing on business growth, and, you know, what would be your suggestions in retrospect to agencies to balance that so you can continue to grow while still pouring into the clients and making sure they're getting great results?

Matt Foreman: Yeah. I love this question. For me, and this might not be for everybody, I genuinely think it could be for a lot of people, though. I knew I needed to hire, and so that in itself is its own struggle and a time sink. Like, you gotta get your team up to speed. That early on, we didn't have SOPs. I was the SOP, and so, like, it was all stuck in here, and I did a bad job early on equipping my team, but they helped. Now, that being said, you still have entire departments and entire things that you're trying to sell. So what we did early on was we white labeled a lot of stuff. We white labeled meta ads, we white labeled Google ads, and we white labeled a portion of the web, the website management and, content creation. We got really lucky, and everybody right now is really lucky. Again, agency started essentially January of twenty twenty-three, and ChatGPT hit the scene on March twenty twenty-three, so that helped a lot. But yeah, we white labeled a ton of stuff. Very expensive, really hurts your margins, especially the bigger you get, but it freed up my time. It freed up my time to deliver, and so, I mean, we didn't make a ton of money. It goes to, like, why we couldn't run ads or anything like that 'cause it was really going into fulfillment. And so, and if you're a white label provider, I'm, I'm sorry, that I'm about to say this trick, but yeah, what we ended up doing was, we worked with our white label providers for months and months and months, and then I eventually started hiring people and said, "Reverse engineer what they're doing." And, then I brought it all in-house, and that was one of the best things… No, not one of. That is, like, the best thing we ever did for our margins, and it helped train our team. It helped save my time 'cause I didn't have to train. 'Cause at the time, I didn't really understand Google Ads. Now I'm pretty good at it, and, – Mm… I didn't understand meta ads, now I'm really good at it. And, yeah, it, I used that as a, an opportunity to free up my time, train my team, build a team, and, yeah, now we, now everything's in-house. We do everything ourselves, and now we have a lot more control and understanding, obviously, of our clients. I love our white label providers and partners that we've had in the past, but as they know that as a company starts finding more success, they become at more risk of leaving, and that's just kind of where we are at in our journey. So if you're getting started, yeah, you don't have to burn yourself out. There are providers out there that are wanting and willing to help you and can get you really good results.

Josh Nelson: I love that, and I think the best white label providers plan for that, right? That's their, like, they realize they're there as a bridge to help you grow the company, and they're totally good with you. Like, when you get to the economies of scale where it makes more sense to have your own web dev, your own SEO, your own paid search, they're, they're willing to kinda transition that out, and that's kinda par for the course. And so I also think, you know, w- if you're gonna get to seven figures or multiple seven figures and be on the cutting edge and deliver world-class results, you need to own the production, right? Mm-hmm. You can't outsource your core competency, and I think that's been a reoccurring trend with almost every agency that's, you know, in the program that's gone to seven figures and multiple seven figures. White label is not going to be the best in your space, right? The only you can bring that innovation. I think, Matt, you've done a world-class job just saying, "Okay, we know what to do, and now we're gonna elevate it internally and then not only improve my margins but massively improve the outcome that we get for the clients." Awesome. Okay. So we talked a little bit about that. Talk to us today about y- you mentioned the tiers, like the different programs. Talk to us briefly about what are the, what are the programs, what are you delivering, what's the cost today?

Matt Foreman: So I'm very proud of this. When we, when we first started, we had one program. It was, it was, it was the everything program, so website, local SEO, Google Ads, meta ads, reputation management, getting them set up on a CRM, helping them with automations, lead nurturing, all that stuff. And we put a great price point on it, one that is obviously good for us, but two, the value in understanding our clients, their margins, the size of clients that we're working with. It was, it was really a great win-win. However, and that went well. Like I love it, and I love that program, and it's still continued to get better. And it's, it's our most popular program as of right now. But we still saw a massive gap, and we still saw a lot of people not fitting our criteria for a perfect client for that program. And, and when I say a massive gap, I wanna say like a heavy, heavy majority of the people that we were talking to just wouldn't qualify for it. Mm. And so but they were so close. They were so close. They just kind of like needed that like little nudge to get them over, help maybe build some foundational systems, specifically online. And so that is when I, I really started thinking and asking. I asked a lot of people, in the space, in the industry, and I will say, I got a lot of pushback on it, of us wanting to offer, a tiered down program. And even though I got a lot of negative feedback, I still decided, you know what? I've, I've done a good job of understanding this industry. I've done a good job of understanding, the type of clients that I work with and their pain points, and even though, I was getting pushback, I genuinely felt a conviction that I think this program will work well. And we did it with intentionality. So we did create a tiered down program. It's all about foundational building, so it's not as aggressive as our flagship program, but it's more affordable. And we're bi- really big on math for them, showing like, "Hey, you're only gonna spend this much, and this is what you can expect out of it and why this is going to potentially work in your company based off of, your, annual revenue and stuff like that and your margins." And but here's what, here's our goal here. And so with this foundational program, we give them hope. We, we don't just like, "Great, you're on this program. Let's go sell it again." Like, "We're on this program with the intention that you're gonna get to this flagship program. W- this is gonna be win-win, and here's how we're gonna do it." And so now we have this program. Sure, it's foundational building, but it's a path. It's a path forward to get to that flagship program, to give them that nudge, to build their foundations, and now we have like a graduation ceremony of when they upgrade from we call it our growth program to our- Mm… Authority program. Love it. And it seeds the vision. They know that like and we try to do a really good job of setting these expectations. They know that it is not gangbusters when you get on this, but it's about doing all the right things now so that when you're about to pu- pour fuel on the fire, whether it's more ad spend or more aggressive SEO, that you have the foundations in place. Your money's gonna go farther. You understand what's about to happen. And again, now they're making more money. They're spending more money with us by graduating on this program, and we've captured the people that may have never been able to work with us again and maybe we never talk to again, because we said, "No, you just aren't there yet." And so now we've captured the almost there, got them on a program. It, it helps them win. It helps them get to the next level up. And throughout this entire journey, we're building a great relationship with them. We're helping them grow their business, not just generate more leads, but helping them understand, like, "No, let's get the foundations in place. Hey, I see you're doing this. We see that, our clients that succeed the most do this. Maybe we can help you with that." And we're building relationships a- all along the way. So we took something that was immediately told to us like, "Don't bother with the lower tier customers," to now that's one of our best funnels into our flagship program. I love that. So that's why we have two right now.

Josh Nelson: Yeah, like easier said than done, and you've pulled it off, which is great 'cause I know- Yeah… I think I was, I was probably the one that was like, "Don't even deal with it," right? Less than half a million, like let somebody else deal with it. You deal with the established companies. Stability-wise, your retention typically is better- Yeah… On the higher end, but you've got a passion for the, for the upstart, right? And for that one-man, two-man operator that has growth aspirations.

Matt Foreman: I think it's about setting that proper expectation. Like this isn't gonna, it's not gonna blow you up, right, but it's gonna put the foundation in place- Right… So that you can start to grow.

Josh Nelson: Star just asked, and Star, thanks for being on here with us live and participating. How much do you charge for that? And like a kind of ballpark, like what are the fees for the foundation, the, and kind of the other ones?

Matt Foreman: So our flagship program is $2,850, and we do annual contracts just one time. After that, it becomes month to month. So it's $2,850 for the flagship program with,… And, and you need to have your own ad spend. Right. So, we kinda talk to them about, "Okay, well, this is what your annual investment's gonna look like with us, and this is what our recommended annual investment is in your ad spend." So it's substantially higher than our foundational program, our growth program, that is $1,200 a month. 'Cause that one we can very easily say, "Hey, you're gonna spend $14,400 for the year." And then we can have, again, like a really good, like logical conversation. "All right, you're about to spend $14,000. You sell five-figure projects. If we land you one client in this next year," obviously not taking into consideration margins, but like it could be a massive win and also, again, we're, we're thinking about the future. And one of the big reasons and what we tell them when we sign them up for an annual contract is like, "Look, it's a s- this is a seasonal industry." like for instance, like our northern clients, unless they offer snow removal or holiday light installations, they're not, they're not making money in the winter months. And so we have to work with them for a full year to show them the big picture because we can never say, "Oh yeah, we brought somebody on in March," and then, "How come all of a sudden it's December, I'm not getting any leads? I've had marketing for eight months now. What's going on?" Well, we can't force people to search in the colder months, so we like having a full year, take a good look at the picture. "All right, you sh- like end of the year, like you spent $14,000. What are we looking at? Like how did, how did this, w- year actually turn out?" And, and same for the, the flagship programs. $2,850 for flagship and, $1,200 for our foundational. Super good.

Josh Nelson: Follow-up question here from Ray is, "For the annual clients, do you charge the full year or do you break it up?" So- Ray, thanks for being on…

Matt Foreman: When I say annual, meaning they just, they sign an annual contract, so we allow them to pay month by month. Now we do, we do offer just for the, growth program, our foundational program, the ability to pay, for the year in full, and we take off two months' worth. So you pay for 10 months, you get the full year. The reason w- we do that for the foundational program only is because these would be the clients that might be more inclined to disappear during those slow months. And so- Just drop off, drop off with the agreement for the year, right? Yeah. Yeah. So it benefits us and benefits them if they pay for the full year, even though obviously we make less money for the full year. But, yeah, for our foundationals. But we don't offer that program. Like you're on it for our main program, our authority program, that's month by month. Essentially, we look at it the full year and says, "Hey, this is what you owe over the full year." And we've never really had to, but if we need to work with them and say, "Hey, let's not charge you guys in December, January, February, and maybe double it up in March, April, May when they're flush with cash," we can do that too. But ultimately it's a, "Hey, you're signing up for a full year. That's, that's what your cost expectations are gonna be." And so the important thing here for like the question you asked, Ray, is it's annual. Do we charge annual? No. Like you break it down, but it's really important, especially in a seasonal business, you're signing up for a year, right? We're building this website, we're building this strategy, we're building the foundation. There's gonna be months where there's pra- practically no revenue coming in for you, but this is an annual project. You know, it's, it's gonna pay for itself over the year. And that massively impacts your retention, not just in landscaping, but in any industry. Get them to commit for the year, but you can still break it into monthly payments.

Josh Nelson: This has, this has been great. I know that we're at the hour mark. You said you might have a little extra time.

Matt Foreman: I got the time. I always got time for you, Josh.

Josh Nelson: Are you good if we keep going a little bit?

Matt Foreman: I always got time for you.

Josh Nelson: So good. 'cause I do wanna make sure we get in a little bit into retention, right? Because you've got now 50 plus clients. You're, you're very focused on the results. Mm-hmm. Sounds like the retention's been really strong. Talk to us about what you do to create, a world-class experience and keep those clients with you long term.

Matt Foreman: Yeah. So, very proud of my team for our retention. And I will say again, not a, not plugging Josh, but like this is, this is a book that's always really important. The thing that's mentioned a lot in that book is perceived indifference. And I would say early on, yeah, like we could, we could… You get great results and, and again, like with the seasonality part of it, you could get great results in March, April, May, but if you're slow and you can't properly seed the vision of like, "Why are you slow in October and November, and I'm still paying the same amount?" and you're not helping them kind of understand the big picture, and there is that perceived indifference that you don't care. You're not doing what you're supposed to be doing. Where am I getting this value? 'Cause they may have already forgotten and spent all the money that they made in the early parts of the month. So we do a really good job of setting those expectations, talking to them throughout all of it. "Hey, this is the month coming up. This is what we expect." Being, being an advisor for them. And I don't wanna say necessarily dumbing down marketing for them, but helping bridge the gap in the understanding of what to expect, what we expect. Also, not lying to them. Like, not everything goes up all the time. And so letting them know, and then also letting them know what we're doing and why. We don't want to kinda create a bit of friction caused by, miscommunication or the, the semblance of like, "Okay, they're just lying and saying the right things to my face and… But it's not the reality." So, we have a core value called courageous communication, and, it means having the tough conversations all the time, a- and saying like, saying the truth to anybody. And so we are just very good at communicating with our clients. And it's also meeting them, like how they wanna communicate. 'Cause a lot of our clients, like, I mean, they don't wanna jump on a phone call. They don't want to like… And they're not in front of a laptop. So like sometimes we'll just text them. Sometimes we'll leave them a voicemail. Nobody, I tell this to every single, one of my team members, we are, we will never get fired for over-communicating. And so we're very transparent. Like, our team, every single Friday we will reach out to our clients, "Hey, how was your week? I hope you're doing great. Hope you have an amazing weekend." We try to treat our clients as friends. I think the thing that I wanted to always avoid was being perceived as a vendor. Mm. And so really leaning into, like, okay, how would a partner act? How would, a friend act? Again, just being a human and b- being, just meeting them where they are, talking to them like they would talk to a buddy, has really helped our retention. And obviously, like, the results are super necessary. I mean, you can only build so many good relationships and get bad results, but it does, it, I mean, just that combination of the two, yeah, I mean, we have over 98%, I think like 98 and a half percent month over month retention. Like it's, yeah, and there's a reason. And so for instance, like again, our clients are super slow in December, January, February, and they're still paying us in full. We lost zero clients during these three months. So- They have the choice. They c- could leave, especially the clients that are after over the year mark, 'cause any of our clients could technically leave and the only thing if they don't finish the full year, they just don't get the website. But after that, they get to make the decision every single month, "Do I want to continue working with you?" And, there's a reason why.

Josh Nelson: So 98% is phenomenal and I think it's, it's world-class delivery. Like obviously you care really heavily about the results that your clients get, focused on proving ROI, really understanding what's the value of those projects versus your fee, and then perceived indifference. Like you said, the number one reason a client leaves is perceived indif- they feel like you don't care, that they're just, another one of your clients up on the shelf somewhere. Yeah. But you show them that you care and your team is checking in the way that they want. And what makes it even more impressive, that 98%, is that some percentage of your clients are on that Grow program, right? Which is the har- pr- arguably the hardest type of client to retain. So if you're retaining at 98% in that world- Mm-hmm… You're doing a lot of things right. So, so thanks for sharing. Ray here has been really interactive in the, in the, in the chat. Ray, thanks for joining us and hanging out with us this whole time. He asked the question, which is, "How are you using AI in your agency?" And we could probably go l- like all day just on AI with Matt, 'cause this is Matt's point of genius, and he's got a lot of points of genius, but he won the Ninja Hack at our, at our mastermind for some really cool things that he's doing with AI. So ju- just talk to us a little bit about that. Like how do you see AI and how are you leveraging it in your agency?

Matt Foreman: Yeah, we could talk a while f- on this. So AI is, I mean it's here. It's unavoidable. Is it perfect yet? No. Will it be? Probably very soon, a lot faster than, I think a lot of us, even people that are diving into it realize. But there's a bunch of different ways in which you can use AI. I m- I think like client facing, a lot of people are like, "Okay, well I want an AI chat bot," or even an AI answering system and service. Then, then you have the things that you can build internally to, so to like make your internal operations function a lot better and a lot faster. And then you have the operations, the output in terms of what we can do, be doing with AI. And so I would say right now, like our biggest thing is leveraging AI for and with data, because there are so many data points that are necessary for digital marketing success. A Google algorithm change, there could be, technical things that again, to the naked eye, to a human you might never see on your website. I mean, something as stupid as like, "Oh, one of this website looks incredible," but you accidentally have a no-index tag on it. And, and sure there are tools to see it, but it's, it's one of those things like you have to be super intentional as a human to do it, versus you can quite literally send an AI agent to crawl the entire website, diagnose everything, figure out where the weaknesses are, what's working well, also, cross-reference competitors, and it can all, do it all in an instant. And so, yeah, one of, one of the big things that we're doing right now is leveraging now the availability of thousands of data points that sure was always available, but I mean, how much can you really parse through? And using that to strategically place our clients' deliverables, whether it's a blog or a landing page for a Google ad, or even the Google Ad setup itself, the messaging on, let's say Meta, it can leverage all of these different data points and says, "Okay, well this works well. This is where there's gaps in opportunities. This is where there's weaknesses. This is where keyword strength is at its lowest, where you can probably make a big improvement." And then we build stuff, either we, our team, our human team, or we as our AI agents are building stuff based off of this proven data that is going to be moving the needle. And, and now we can do this with like an astronomically more amount of confidence in what we're delivering, and we can then ask the AI to dumb this down for us so that we can relay this, to the rest of the team or to the client in what we're doing. And so now our output, and again, I feel like I just talked about a lot of stuff, but I think the beauty in all the things I just talked about is that's just all instant now. Like it just gets done so quick. And so yeah, now we can deliver more for our clients, deliver it faster with a lot more accuracy, much better margins, and eventually in many cases, fully automated. So it's a tough one. Sure, I can get into the in- intricacies of like what exactly we're doing, but it's, it's, it's gonna come down to like what do you do for your company? And what I recommend when it comes to AI and like actually building something, simplify it. Simplify it into an SOP, and this is what we've done. We've simplified, okay, what do we do in terms of SEO for our clients? We've broken it down into 38 different tasks when it comes to local SEO, and then we've broken down those 38, okay, what can be automated with AI, automated, what can be, done with AI, or what needs to have human touch? And, and then from there, yeah, you'll very quickly see a lot of those things can be, at the very least, improved with AI, but in many cases, fully autonomous using AI.

Josh Nelson: So good. I think you're on the cutting edge of, like, agentic AI. Like, I know a lot of agencies are talking about AI, but you're truly- Yeah… Leveraging agentic age AI and, you know, can you briefly touch on h- like, the tools that you use, how you stitch that together, if you're willing to talk briefly about that?

Matt Foreman: Yeah. So I use, I use OpenClaw, and there's other ones. There's Claude Code, Claude Cowork. In a lot of cases, it becomes an Apple versus Android thing. For OpenClaw, for me, it's really nice 'cause it's, AI large language model agnostic, meaning you can use any different AI model, and a lot of them have their strengths and weaknesses, and it's also very, it's open source, so there's, there's far less limitations. So, like, it's once you get it to a point of understanding how to use it's very much like, "Hey, I want this done," and it goes and does it and it, and it reports back. So I'm big on OpenClaw. I spent a good month learning it, and I feel like I, in one month time, I've learned two years' worth of stuff. It, it is crazy. And so now we have seven OpenClaw agents in the team. My team uses it. They all have their own agents, not all of them yet, but our leadership team has their own agents. And, yeah, it's, it's, it's fascinating. So for instance, like our account managers, they were never hired on to be web developers. They were never hired on to manage Meta ads. They were always hired to build and maintain great relationships and be advocates for our clients. Well, now they have AI agents that can quite literally, and I was, like, looking at, a task that was created today. Account manager got on a call. A client wanted, a new Meta ad update, and, they told the account manager, account manager made the task, and then the t- account manager also finished the task because they had their AI agent do it. And- Mm… I mean, early on, we, like, and it got reviewed, and it was done perfectly. But it just, again, it's like we're, we're making superhumans with our, with our team now. And so how much, how much can we do with it? I mean, again, it's like, it's getting better. I think eventually, and I said this, I said this at the seven-figure agency intensive, your team's just gonna be made up of account managers, like, 'cause that's all that's gonna e-eventually probably be necessary. Obviously, that's, that's a bit of an extreme, like I would, I would still recommend having like a web dev and expert to visually see everything and to speak on it. I mean, our account managers are just like technical rock stars now. They can do, they can do so much. I'm so proud of them and what they're doing. Yeah, it's, it's not, coming… I mean, yes, it's coming, but it's, it's already here. And so my big thing is, especially with agencies, and I had a fear for some of the bigger agencies is like, yeah, some of these agencies have huge teams, and kudos to them and I hate the tough reality and I know I didn't make a ton of fans saying this, but I mean, I, again, this is like the whole courageous communication thing. We're gonna have to fully, like, we're gonna have to look at team structure, and unfortunately, humans i-in many instances are gonna slow things down by having so many. And that's not even a greedy thing to, like, and I'm not talking about like profit margins. I'm saying like one AI agent could do the tasks of 10 people, but if you had those 10 people, it probably would still be done slower. And so there's a lot of things and a lot of advantages, and it's one of those things that people will unfortunately be impacted, but, there's also going to be other opportunities that are gonna be made from it. So yeah. It's just a, it's a wild time. Yes, I feel like I could have a great conversation on this, and I know I'm probably gonna be putting my foot in my mouth because I know there's gonna be so many agencies that have amazing teams. I mean, I'm not degrading the work of like my team or anybody's operations team, but it's just a reality. I think, like I noticed like a lot of content companies went out of business because AI came out, and they beat- Mm…. Beat the drum for a while. It's like, "No, AI will never be able to write content as good as our team will." Okay. I mean, I wanna believe that for a while, but like we noticed it getting better and better and better and better, and then the reality hit and, I think that's happening again.

Josh Nelson: So, a-and like this was the, this was the really cool ninja hack that you shared, right? Was like kinda how you've actually started replacing internal processes with OpenClaw. Mm-hmm. Here's another great question from Ray that I think will be beneficial for everybody. Are you running OpenClaw on a closed network or a paid network?

Matt Foreman: So I have, I have, and nobody needs to do this. I have three different computers right behind me. Each one of them has an OpenClaw agent, and then I have four VPS agents as well. So those three maintain each other, and then they also maintain the VPS agents, so nothing ever breaks. They can all update each other, and they all learn from each other. It's really cool and super nerdy. Again, this is just kind of a more like advanced case. This is not what other people need to do. You don't need to have like a Mac Mini or anything. You could do this all on VPS. But I'm, I'm trying to, I'm trying to learn at the speed of light and stay up to date on all the stuff, and I've, I found that there is a benefit. Yeah. I mean, if you wanna have a VPS, that works perfectly fine. I would say there is some maybe complications and confusions setting it up. I will no- I will note that OpenClaw, their setup, is far more complicated than others. If, if anybody wants an easier, like OpenClaw alternative, which I also use, so this would technically be my eighth agent. I use a agent called Hermes, H-E-R-M-E-S. The setup's a lot easier. It's a lot slower. N- I don't wanna say a lot slower. It's slower than OpenClaw, so it goes at a more reasonable pace. I've noticed it never breaks, and it's self-fixing. I feel like this is like the perfect beginner to semi-advanced agent. OpenClaw, super advanced. So, – If anybody's really wanting to get started and maybe seems overwhelmed, I would look up Hermes. It is, it… OpenClaw was made by a guy. Hermes was made by MIT.

Josh Nelson: Super cool share. You mentioned seven agents, and I guess there's a lot of ways to skin that cat. Is that seven literal machines, or would it be one machine potentially with seven separate instances on it? How do you think about that and kinda scaling that out?

Matt Foreman: Yeah, so three are on machines. Three are on Macs, Mac Minis, all that have their own screens, keyboards, all the stuff. Four of them are on VPS. Okay. I could have technically seven on VPS. I could have just one and on my Mac Mini, and it manages the other six on VPS. That was just a personal choice. I feel like I was kind of on the cutting edge of it, so, like, I dove, like, really hard into it early on. Would I change it? Eh, probably not, because I personally have seen that the ones that are on Mac Mini actually do perform, a bit better, a bit smarter. I, and I don't know why. I also know that I can, like, see the files, and the files are essentially its memory and how it performs and operates. And so that's really helped me visually understand how it references things and does what it does. But I don't think anybody needs to be as technical and advanced as what I'm doing here.

Josh Nelson: Got it. 'Cause I've seen where you could have one virtual private server with multiple installs of OpenClaw- Mm-hmm… As separate instances and have, like, the same benefit of multiple agents but on the one machine per se.

Matt Foreman: Yeah. Yeah, and we have that. Yeah, we have, like, one VP- or yeah, we have two OpenClaws on two different VPS servers. So I mean, yeah, and it's super cheap. I mean, I think it's, like, you pay for two years, it's, like, $8 a month or something like that on Hostinger.

Josh Nelson: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so very affordable. Yeah. Awesome. A- amazing share. I know we could talk about OpenClaw and AI agents with you for at least another hour, but I wanna be respectful of your time. You, you shared with us kinda how you grew the agency. Congratulations on crossing $100,000. Thank you. And I know you're just gonna continue to grow 'cause you care so much about your clients, and you're delivering world-class results. Talked about how you structured your programs, how you think about retention, how you've scaled the team. If you had one last piece of wisdom for those agency owners trying to get to the next level, whatever that is for them, what would it be?

Matt Foreman: Leverage your community and your friends. I've learned so much, and I care so deeply for the relationships and friendships that I've built in the 7 Figure community. People are wanting and willing to help, and so lean into that. Don't be afraid. Obviously, like, I wanna say continue to give. Don't just always be a taker, but, like- Yeah… People are wanting and willing to help. And so you're not in this alone. That was my biggest thing. If I could go back, 10 years ago when I founded my first agency, when I was like, "I can do all of this on my own," that was my biggest roadblock, was me. Was me thinking I have the best answers for me. So leverage the people around you. Leverage the community. There are people that have done what you're doing, have run into the issues that you're running into. And there are people that are wanting and willing to help you. Without a doubt, that is, I think, my most important takeaway in this entire journey up to seven figures.

Josh Nelson: So good. Amazing share. Don't do it on your own, right? Whether it's 7 Figure Agency or some other community, plug in, right? And get to the live events. That's one thing you've, you've always committed to. Other than a couple times where you couldn't, like, you come to the live events. You immerse yourself in the information.

Matt Foreman: You're there- One was for the birth of my daughter.

Josh Nelson: Otherwise- Right. Well, and we'll give you a pass, right? But, like, immerse yourself, right? And, and be a, be a student, but also be a giver. And you're, you're an amazing example of that where you're willing to share everything you've learned, but you're also willing to say, "Hey, that's a different way to do it, and that's a different way to approach it." so congratulations. If somebody did wanna connect with you further or kinda get to connect with you, what would be the best, the best- Yeah, you can reach out to,…

Matt Foreman: I mean, obviously, feel free to check out our website. I always welcome people, like, especially new agency owners, like, "Hey, you need an idea," take it from our website. Like, I think we do some really cool stuff, and I think it would work for a lot of people, if you need any kinda creative. And, and obviously, you can reach out to us and the company from the website. But if you wanna reach out to me personally, shoot me a message on Facebook. That's, that's, that's a great way to connect there. Like I said, I'm, I'm happy and wanting and willing to help, if you have any questions. I might not have all the answers. I'm still learning a ton of stuff, too. But, yeah, I would, I would say definitely connect with me there. It is me. So, and it'll probably always be me. Maybe I'll, I might hire an EA at some point, who knows?

Josh Nelson: But- Awesome. Matt, thanks so much for your willingness to come on and share your journey, share your success. Be so abundance-minded that you're just, "Here's what I've done. Here's how I've done it. If you want to learn from me, come, like, come to the group. Come ask questions." we're gonna wrap it up there. For those of you that stuck around throughout this whole thing, thank you for participating. I hope you were inspired. I know I was. Be sure to reach out to Matt, even if you don't have a question, just to congratulate him and thank him for his abundance mindset. And if you have follow-up questions, drop them into the chat. We'll definitely try our best to find your questions even after the fact and answer them for you. So that's it for today. Yep. Thanks for joining, and we'll see you on a future episode of the "7 Figure Agency" podcast. Thanks, everybody.

Transcript of Matt Foreman’s testimonial video.

7FA helped build our entire engine. It helped build the entire company from the ground up, and it's got us to where we are today. My name is Matt Foreman with Lawn to Land Marketing, and we specialize in digital marketing for lawn care and landscaping companies. Prior to joining 7FA, I didn't even have a niche agency, so I was at zero MMR, um, and we didn't get our first client until January of 2023, and we are now at 112K MMR. So one of the main challenges that I faced prior to joining 7FA was direction.

I didn't really know where I wanted to take my generalist agency at the time. Uh, we didn't have a niche. We didn't even know about niching down, and we just didn't know what was next. And so 7FA helped build our entire engine. It helped build the entire company from the ground up, and it's got us to where we are today. Since joining 7FA, my agency has changed dramatically. Um, every single time I come to one of these events, we learn something new, we implement something new, um, and it just continues to help our company go to the next level, handle the next problem, understand the problems before they even show up, uh, and be well-positioned for continued growth.

One of the most valuable components of 7 Figure Agency is definitely the community. Uh, so many of these agency owners are just doing incredible things. They've run into issues that we never ran into yet, and so they've helped us solve them even before we ran into them. They've helped us understand what we're doing in terms of our next steps, where we're at today. There are so many people in this industry that are also in the same niche that have opened up their resources and knowledge on the niche to help us better understand our clients.

7FA and the community here has just been absolutely incredible for every single part of our business from end to end. So the growth of our agency has dramatically changed my entire life. It has given us financial freedom, and it's allowed me to start a family. Now I have two kids that we know we can comfortably do the things that we need to do. It's give us plenty of personal financial freedom. Um, I wouldn't have been able to do any of this without my agency and 7 Figure Agency helping me along the way.

In the next six to twelve months, I'm fully confident that we're going to double our company in size. Um, we are just on a great trajectory. We, again, already understand the problems we're gonna eventually face, and we're already working to solve them even before they become problems. It's just going to be momentum, building on momentum, building on momentum. So the next six to twelve months are gonna be incredible for Lawn to Land Marketing. So being recognized on the stage for 7 Figure Agency and finally getting to seven figures was absolutely incredible.

Um, very heartwarming and humbling experience. Just seeing, um, everybody celebrate me, even though many of them have already hit that, was incredible. But just knowing that we hit a milestone, uh, a goal that we set out that we didn't even set for ourselves, 7 Figure Agency set for us, it was just so meaningful to hit that and be celebrated for that. So it, it was just a memory that I'm gonna cherish forever. If you're considering joining 7 Figures, it's a no-brainer. It's the best community of agency owners who are all wanting and willing to help you thrive.

We wanna see you grow. We wanna see you crush it. So if you're on, on the fence about joining 7 Figure Agency, I say just do it. You are not gonna look back. It's going to be the best experience you have. You're going to be among like-minded individuals that want to succeed just as much as you, and we're all going to do it together.