He Niched Into Commercial Cleaning and Built a $104K/Month Agency

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

Josh Nelson: For today's episode of the Seven Figure Agency podcast, our agency success interview series. Today, I'm, I'm joined by Samuel Klein of Cleaning In Motion. Samuel's grown his agency from like 30K to over 104,000 in monthly recurring revenue in his niche of very tightly defined commercial cleaning space. So, Samuel, congratulations and thanks so much for being here.

Samuel Klein: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Excited to be part of this podcast and share whatever knowledge I can share.

Josh Nelson: So good, man. So I guess let's start off, introduce yourself and kinda t-tell us a little bit about the niche you're in and kinda what the, what the business looks like right now.

Samuel Klein: Perfect. Well, I'm originally from Venezuela, and, moved to the US, I guess almost, seven years ago. Eh, and I started like, most agencies in the Seven Figure as a generalist, getting any type of clients that I could. Eh, and, then I had the opportunity to work, on my friend's company, who he owns a commercial cleaning company. Eh, and after that, the rest was history, you know. Like we performed great, and he gave me a lot of room to experiment and try different things. And at that time, I also, at the same moment, I started knowing about your program, and I know that one of the requirements to make the program work for you was to niche down. Eh, so we have different, type of niches, but we chose that one because we had, great results, and one thing led to another, and here we are. We focus on the commercial cleaning space.

Josh Nelson: So good, man. Well, congratulations on growing the agency. I remember vividly you being at one of the early Roadmap live events, must have been three or four years ago. You in the room and just kinda seeing you blossom to this level is super exciting. So guys, if you're excited to hear about- Thank you. Thank you… How Samuel grew the agency, how he lands clients, what his program looks like, what he's doing to retain, I know you've got some really cool things on scale and how you deliver, give me a yes, like a visible yes in the comments. Give me a like, give me a share. So Samuel, let's start off. Tell us, you know, tell us a little bit about what your program looks like. What is it that you're selling into this, into this, commercial cleaning niche?

Samuel Klein: Well, I guess the beauty about niching down is that you start also discovering niches inside the niches, no? Yeah. Eh, so we have a couple of programs, and we do work with a lot of commercial cleaning franchises, no? So, one part of our program is to help them sell more franchise, more cleaning franchise, no? Eh, and, eh, it's, somehow a B2C play. And the other part of our program is to help them get more cleaning contracts, no? So we focus on the B2B space as well. Eh, so, we started with very basic, I come from the Facebook Ads school, so that's what I used to know before, joining the program and understanding better the industry and their needs. So we started, heavily invested in Facebook Ads. Eh, and from there, we started plugging more services, and today we offer everything, no? From, PPC, eh, design, websites, SEO. Eh, and, we also do a lot of coaching. Eh, we meet with our clients on a weekly basis, and I think that's a, a key component for success and retention. Eh, so we do coach them a lot, and we empower them with, the CRM. Eh, so we make sure that, as part of our coaching program, that they use the tools that we empower them. Otherwise, it's very hard also for us to have control and see if, the leads that we're bringing are being qualified and, if they're following, our program and our processes, no? Eh, because, like in our industry and most industries, I believe that sometimes you have to grab the client's hand and learn, and teach them the ropes and, and get them to where they… You want them to be, so your program can also be successful, no? So, we are– Our, our program is basically depending on which side we wanna offer, if it's, growing their franchise or getting more cleaning contracts. Eh, we offer the PPC, eh, building the whole funnel, eh, and, help them, manage the pipeline once they get the leads, eh, help them close those leads, no? The, at first it's turning those leads into an appointment and those appointments into customers. Eh, so that's a little bit of our programs. We, we realized that it wasn't enough just to get the leads and, and hope for the best. We had to have also control over what happened with those leads. And, I believe that 50% of our programs, that includes these coaching calls, is to help them, again, get those leads and turn them into customers, no?

Josh Nelson: Love it. So it sounds pretty comprehensive, right? It's like Facebook Ads is where it started, but then it blossomed to the websites and the SEO and the pay-per-click, all the way through to like coaching them and training them on how to convert those leads into sales and kind of going end to end. Can you give us an idea what the, what you're charging on a monthly basis for your services?

Samuel Klein: My, my average retainers start at 1,500. Eh, we usually start with, what we know it works, and from there, eh, once the client is comfortable with our service, we of course try to upsell. Eh, and, and we do a great job at, at upselling. No, we do not try to offer all at once or $3,000 package, because most companies will fail to adapt, or they get overwhelmed, and they say, "This is not for me." So, we also discovered that the best way, at least to approach my niche and my clients is to start- With a couple of services that make sense for them. Usually it's, following, it's bringing the leads and, and some email campaigns. We have a program that we call No Leads Left Behind, that it's a combination of email campaigns to help them follow up through their leads. Eh, and that's enough. With the coaching calls, they get familiar, they get to know our team, eh, we build the trust, and then, eh, they start asking or we start showing them what else can we do for them. So our starting point is usually around 1,500, and from there, eh, we, I would say we have a, a big opportunity to increase to $3,000 per month.

Josh Nelson: Love it. Yeah. So, so kind of a healthy, a healthy base, but it kind of goes up as you grow. Sahara Marketing is saying helping them close the deals is probably the difference maker in how quickly an agency grows, and I agree. I think, you know, the agency of the future isn't just thinking about generating leads. They're thinking about how do we generate leads? How do we help them convert those leads and actually make the money, whether that's through marketing automation or calling on the back end or in Samwal's case, coaching them on how to do this better. Like, that's, it's a critical component of that process. So Samwal, the, you got an interesting niche, which is commercial cleaning companies. Talk to us a little bit about how you landed on that niche, 'cause I really believe this is one of the keys to growth in your agency, right? The fastest way to grow is to choose a niche, position yourself as the expert, you know, come up with an amazing program that crushes it for them, and then you can repeat that again and again. Talk us a little bit about, like, what is commercial cleaning? Like, is it the companies that go in and clean office buildings? And how did you, how did you land on it?

Samuel Klein: Correct. So commercial cleaning is exactly that. It's, companies that clean other businesses. No, it's not necessarily other offices. It, it can be from, eh, I don't know, medical spaces to, eh, religious facilities, to manufacturers. Everything that is B2B, you know? Eh, it's, what they focus on. Eh, I know that there is in the program other, eh, agencies that focus on residential cleaning, you know, and Ray has been, eh, one of… R- Ray Malaski, who… And I'm sorry if I pronounce your last name incorrectly- That's all right. That's good… Eh, has been a, a great support for me at the beginning, you know, and, and he share a lot of thoughts because he used to own also a cleaning company. Eh, so, the way or the reason we chose that niche is, one, because I had the opportunity to work on a cleaning company that was owned by a friend, which at the beginning I didn't charge him anything, but I knew that I could make any type of mistakes, and he wouldn't, eh, blame me, you know, because I was very honest that I didn't have experience working with, these type of companies before. Eh, and of course, there was that friendship, trust that he knew that I was gonna do everything that I can to, eh, bring the results. So that's, the first step that we took to consider the niche. The second step was, following, your program, and at that moment was meeting with, Jeff, who was one of the coaches. And, he taught us how to do a good research to understand how big is the niche, you know? Eh, so in our case, we realized that the niche is huge. There was more than 10,000 companies, making more than, 1.5 million a year. Eh, and that seemed like a very good sweet spot for us, you know? And, the other niches that we were considering at the moment, there were tons of agencies focusing on those ones. Eh, and, yeah, we decided to, to jump all in after having three clients in the space. Eh, we realized that this was a, a great opportunity for us.

Josh Nelson: I love it. So I think one of the key things you said there was you did your research, you made sure there was enough, you made sure they had the financial propensity to spend, and you started where you had some experience, right? You got, you got a friend that ran that business, and you tested it, and you proved the value, and that was kind of the genesis of, okay, I can, I can generate results for this niche, which helped you hop. And I think most of us, we wanna, like, jump into some random industry we don't have any experience in. All of the agencies that get great results, they usually start with the seedling of a client. Like, a client that they start to learn the industry, they start to prove their value and figure out, like, some certain things. And it sounds like then you've also got an advocate that's gonna, like, plug you into their network, potentially be willing to be your case study or your testimonial.

Samuel Klein: 100%. And, and I think the advocate part, it's, you know, having a, a client that once you get the results, there is that friendship or that relationship that at the beginning you have to invest a lot as well. So then you can ask for their referrals, eh, or testimonials or case studies that will be the foundation of, of everything you're gonna do next to market your agency, you know?

Josh Nelson: Yeah, for sure. So let's talk, let's talk about that next. Like, so you got this client, you did good results. He was a friend. How did you parlay that into your first handful of clients in that same vertical?

Samuel Klein: So, we also discovered that… And this client was part of a franchise, which is great because it's, it's a very close network that everybody refers to each other. So after that and after we get, got the results, eh, we start asking, of course, for introductions. Eh, the first three clients, we barely cover our costs. I wasn't, like, trying to make money in the sense that I'm gonna, you know, charge a very big retainer because I wasn't confident enough that I could replicate what I did for my friend, for my first client in the, in this space, eh, to other commercial cleaning companies. So, eh, I start testing or asking for referrals, of other commercial cleaning-… Friends that he had. Eh, and we start working with, around three new clients where again, at that point, I think my retainer was like almost $1,000 per month, but I was testing a lot of things. They knew I was, my only experience in the industry was with one specific client. Eh, but again, they trust me because it was a referral. So we start working with around three. From one, we scale to three, and then from three, we start asking again for referrals and that's how we grew like up to 20, $30,000 per month. A lot of referrals. And then I start implementing most of the things that you teach, you know. The monthly webinar was very key for us. In the monthly webinar, we really focus on our Dream 100. I wa- a- and yeah, we did Facebook ads and, and we tried to, shoot for the masses as well in the cleaning industry. But we really personalize our message to the Dream 100, where I reach out personally each one of them via LinkedIn in a personalized message, send emails and so on. And in my webinars, even today, we get, I don't know, five, 10 people attend the webinar, but, those five, 10s are my dream clients, and I only need to close one of them, you know, to make the difference. So webinar has been a key component of our growth as well as LinkedIn messages. You know, we reach out, LinkedIn. We have very cool, strategies where I send Loom videos via LinkedIn as well, where you have that preview of the video, so you make it more personalized. And, like anything, it's consistency, you know. Eh, if you choose one channel that you're gonna go all in, if it's, cold email, Facebook ads, or whatever your acquisition channel's gonna be. For us, right now it's webinar and LinkedIn, and we're starting to blog because we already have the processes in place to make that efforts recurring. Right now we're gonna launch a podcast, we're gonna launch a book, we're gonna launch Facebook ads and more strategies to, grow faster, you know. But for now, just by referral, webinar, and LinkedIn has been, eh, enough to get us to this stage.

Josh Nelson: Love it. Love it. So I might have missed it 'cause I was having some issues with my mic. But so sounds like nowadays you're doing webinars, you're doing LinkedIn, you're, you're tied into the internal networks. What were the… What was like the one, the like the one to five play to go from your buddy to your buddy and five, you know, other clients?

Samuel Klein: Webinar and Li- and LinkedIn, those two. Okay. And, those two combined, because sometimes the LinkedIn strategy is invite them to a webinar and also the LinkedIn strategy is telling them that we work with companies such as ABC, eh, and, offering a, a free consultation. We even offer a free Starbucks or a free lunch if they don't like, what they're gonna hear. We will pay for their time. We try all of these messages and for them, it resonate a lot. We, we got actually a very good replies. But again, it's, it's because we were targeting our Dream 100, which we got to know very well. Eh, so we believe, or I believe that the message was, spot on. We of course have LinkedIn campaigns that we try to target any cleaning industry, and we get something here and there. But yeah, our focus always have been land the dream client, eh, because, as we all know that working with the painful clients, it can, be a major step back, no?

Josh Nelson: No doubt. I think something you hammered on that I think everybody should pay close attention to, you know, you can choose the pond that you fish in, right? And if you're fishing in the grand sea of all of the potential commercial cleaning companies or whatever your niche is with Facebook ads, with cold email, you're gonna get spotty results. But if you really make the pond small, you choose, literally choose 100 clients, like, okay, these are the clients I know would be a good fit, that have the money, and you really go relentlessly after that small pond, you might get some outside of it, but y- you're gonna get the right kind of clients, and you can really become omnipresent with your webinars, your LinkedIn communication, and how you reach out to that. And it sounds like that's been a big play for you, Samuel. 100% correct. So good. So Sahara Marketing had a quick follow-up question for you. They're asking, you know, you're using webinar and LinkedIn to acquire clients. What's working best to drive leads for those clients, on the other end?

Samuel Klein: So what we do to get results for our clients, it's, eh, PPC, Google AdWords. It's, the easiest solution now where usually the leads are passing up. Then we have, our program that we did a session in the seven figure as well that it's, only step behind, which basically are eight types of email campaigns, you know, from email and prospecting. Eh, we have a combination of, also using LinkedIn to reach out for their ideal clients and cold emails. So that's how we build their prospecting pipeline, so they can also work on, on those leads. And, we also w- have as part of this program and these eight email campaigns, eh, we created, basically one specific campaign for each stage of their pipeline, you know. So for example, we created an email campaign for, eh, that we called proposal follow-up. We realized that most, sales reps suck at following up, and they just follow up once or twice. Eh, and in the B2B space, you have to follow up up to 12 times sometimes. So we empower them with a proposal follow-up campaign, where after they send a, a proposal, usually the leads start ghosting them. And, eh, one month later, they can enroll this lead in this campaign, and it will follow up specifically on that stage, "Hey, I just sent you a proposal. I want to see if you had the time to revise it," and so on. So like that, we created, a lot of different campaigns for each stage of the pipeline, and that, actually that specific service has been a home run for us. Eh, where again, I'm, I'm happy to elaborate more about that specific strategy. Eh- That it's called, i- it's, email, it's, PPC, it's LinkedIn, and it's SEO, no? SEO more focused on GMB, which, it's crucial for the cleaning companies to have a good reputation and rank in the three-pack.

Josh Nelson: I love it. So, I mean, I think what you've done that's great is you didn't just take the basic website SEO pay per click and call it a day. You were like, "Okay, my niche, you know, needs a little bit more high touch 'cause it's B2B." Like, they need, like, sales process and sales marketing automation. They need some coaching for those sales reps to follow up on the leads 'cause not everyone's just gonna sign the contract. I think all of us should be thinking about how do we iterate our offering to make sure it's, it's going to generate the best results for the client base. Brad has a question here that's asking, "Do you have a yearly contract or is it month to month?" my contracts are a little bit weird because, I ask for six month, and it, auto-renew.

Samuel Klein: Nevertheless, we also have a paragraph that says that if they're not happy, they can leave us whenever they want. They just have to give us a 30-day heads up. But at the beginning in the conversation, I always tell them, "If you're not thinking about at least six month, we're not gonna be a good fit for you." And, and, even the clients that we didn't get the desired results, they usually respect those six month. So yeah, we don't wanna take hostage anybody because also we meet on a weekly basis with most of our clients or every two weeks, so we do really have a very strong relationship, and it can get very awkward if we're not getting the results or if they're not the right fit. So we don't want them that they're gonna feel tied to a one-year contract if they're not happy, no?

Josh Nelson: I think that's a, that's a good conversation to kind of pivot to retention, right? We've talked about what your program looks like. We've talked about your niche and how you picked it. We talked about how you land clients and position yourself in the industry. Now we're talking about what do we do to retain those clients on a month over month basis. One thing you just said that's, it's a big, it's a big thing all of us could do, is put a, put a contract in place. Like, don't say it's month to month, even though it probably is at the end of the day. Give them a timeframe. We went to 12 months. It's like, look, if we're gonna do business, it's gonna be a 12-month relationship, right? And don't think this is gonna happen overnight. And just psychologically getting your clients to buy in, not month to month, but long term, you're gonna have better retention, right? 'Cause their expectation is different. Now, that doesn't mean you're gonna sue them if they cancel early or you're not gonna let them out. It's just framing the expectation and putting it into the agreement that way, which it sounds like what you've done with your six-month agreement, right, Samuel?

Samuel Klein: No, correct. And, and don't get me wrong, I would love to close a one-year contract, but we realized that we got a lot of pushback and again, people are, are… They think it twice, or they prefer testing our agencies or our service that, they don't have to commit for so long. Because, at this point, most companies that have been established and have been around for more than, five to 10 years, which is our ideal client, they already have tried a lot of different agencies and services, no? So, for us, it was a, a really pushback to try to commit for a year that we try for a couple of months, and we didn't accomplish it. It doesn't mean that it doesn't work, no. It's that, for me, the way that I sell, it wasn't a good fit and that's why we changed to six month. And, and also having that freedom that they can read it and they feel comfortable enough that they can leave whenever they wanna after, giving us 30 days heads up, no?

Josh Nelson: Love it. So let's talk a little bit about, like, what else do you do to keep the clients long term? Like, what's your, what are some of your key retention strategies?

Samuel Klein: I think, the key for our retain- retention, which, I'm very proud, is, the coaching calls. And we call it coaching calls. At the beginning, we ca- we, it was training. It, it was, just, a meeting with them one-on-one and so on. But at this point, and we tell them since day one, no, the first, eight weeks, couple of months, we're gonna meet on a weekly basis with you and your team. And after that, we are gonna shift to every two weeks unless, something happen and you need us again, for a little bit longer on the weekly calls. And we did train a lot of our account managers, which, they are amazing and, and, the- they're basically the reason of my retention, to learn very well our processes, to learn very well our offer, and to learn very well the industry, no? So in these coaching calls, what we do, it's, it's, very easy. It's just we share the screen. We walk them to our CRM, which, most of the agencies are using right now. It's, high level, so we go through the pipeline. We ask, if they feel comfortable using it, what questions do they have, what happened bec- in this column that they have so many leads that they haven't moved around. We brainstorm ideas. Maybe they wanna prioritize, cleaning schools because, now schools, are, opening again, so we create a campaign specifically for the schools. We are a little bit flexible also with the offers that we provide, because at this point, we already have created so much content and so much, email campaigns and different type of campaigns that I don't mind offering as a one-time, no, not usually recurring, but, as a one time here and there to clients that already are part of our network, and they've been with us for a long time. So the coaching calls, it's amazing, and even, and I don't say this proudly, but even when we get a, get a rough month where we don't get the desired results, they still with us because there is communication. And, we found out that a lot of the complaints, of our clients when they come to us is that, they als- always tell us that, "Ah, the agency I used to work, we didn't know anything about it. We just, receive a report once a month, and that's it." with this, again, on a weekly basis, when you meet with the owner, there's accountability on both sides, not only on our side to bring the results, but if they're not following up and they're not calling and they're not doing their part, they know that we're not gonna get the, the results, no? So that, I, if I have to put one reason, for my retention, it would be the coaching calls that today it's translated into much more. Now it's translating into the online courses that we are creating, making sure that they watch it, to upselling because there is that trust with the account manager. So right now we are launching the concierge service, so it's easier for us to upsell as well and, or just to better test the service with a couple of clients and from there start scaling. So I think communication, it's, it's 100% the key for retention.

Josh Nelson: I love it. Great, great share. So when you say coaching calls, you're talking about your monthly check-ins. In your world, it's not like a group coaching thing. It's your account manager meeting. You just don't call it a check-in, you call it a coaching call. 100%. Great point.

Samuel Klein: And, the also is because we need them to use our tools for us to be successful, no? And, we really see it when someone has their own CRM or they don't connect, we know that that client's not gonna last, long. And, we also do not only meet with the owner. Most of the time it's the owner with a couple of more persons, or at this point, we only meet with the sales rep or with the person responsible for the leads, and we train that person. If, if tomorrow, I don't know, Josh is my client, and you bring someone new to your team, the first thing that they do is that they call us so we can onboard them and train them in everything that we're doing marketing related and on the CRM and so on. So it, it is a little bit of coaching, because we also share knowledge from other clients and things that are working in the industry, so they can apply it by themselves. But at the same time, yeah, it's all, I would say, 70% check-in.

Josh Nelson: Love it. I love the, the phraseology around that 'cause it's more value to the client as opposed to, "Hey, we just wanna meet with you so we can go through some reports." great insight there, guys. I think something, you know, everybody here can take advantage of and kind of tap into. You know, the next thing I'd like to talk a little about, I, if I recall correctly, like, you joined Seven Figure Agency at about 17,000 or so in monthly recurring revenue, mostly generalists. Now you're at 104,000 in MRR, which is amazing. What… Like, if you had to think about three shifts, pivots, decisions that you made that helped to accelerate that growth, what would those be?

Samuel Klein: I think, well, first, of course, is niching down. Eh, but, committing to a niche, you know. Eh, we were talking, before jumping into a call that, and I believe, most people in, in this program or in similar programs can relate. You know, when you join a program and you see the new guy who joined six months, one year after, and suddenly, eh, I don't know, they join at 10K MRR, and suddenly they are, again, a seven-figure agency, and you're still there in the 20, 30, so struggling. Eh, and it really start hitting, you know. And, the only thing different that they did is just following a model and committing to the, the niche and learning to say no to other things that are a distraction. So that took me a lot, a lot of time to get it in my head and to not be afraid to say to our clients no, or even friends and family, that I only focus on the commercial cleaning space because it's a little bit of weird. Eh, and before that, we used to have a lot of e-commerce and things like that, and you also have that, voice that says, "What happen if this doesn't work? Now I'm gonna alienate all of my clients." So, I think, one of the, of the number one challenge that I had, it was to commit to a niche, and it really made all the difference when I said, you know, "I'm all in." Eh, so that's one. Eh, the other thing is, being part of the community. I think, same thing in that you have this feeling of, someone who scaled 10X quicker than you, eh, because they follow the model and understanding what's working for other agencies, you know, eh, and tapping into the network and asking questions and jumping one-on-one, and, "Hey, can, can… Do you mind if, I steal five minutes from you?" From other successful agencies have also been a game changer. Eh, understanding the operation part which, for me, before, again, every time that we scale, we crash, you know. I used to have a 40K MRR before joining Seven Figure, and boom, 20K after losing a lot of clients. And then again, and then crashing again because I didn't have the processes in place or the people in place or the operation. So I think that's something that has stuck with me as well a lot. Eh, having processes so we can scale and, and the right trainings and the right tools and the right checklists and so on, eh, so it's easier to not depend on one team member that is the rockstar, and you can always plug and play, eh, a team member, you know, and as you scale. So, I think that and sales, no? Eh, w- I think what you're saying, what get measured gets done. So, eh, tr- measure everything that you're doing a- and understanding that I'm not gonna get to seven figure if I'm only getting three appointments per month or three strategy sessions per month, no? Eh, so sales, has been a crucial part in plugging all these strategies that we talked at the beginning, the webinar, the book, the podcast, the email, everything that we're currently finally taking it super serious and executing on it, eh, I think are my three takeaways.

Josh Nelson: So good. So choosing the niche, plugging it into community, having like a brain trust that you can go to when you get stuck, when you need feedback, when you need advice, and then dialing in the operation so that when you get the clients, you can knock it out of the park for them without, you know, breaking everything in terms of team, in terms of capacity- Right… And then focusing on sales.

Samuel Klein: Yeah. Focusing on business development, really having a target.

Josh Nelson: How many strategy sessions per month have you been shooting for in your agency?

Samuel Klein: We've been shooting for 25, and we usually land around 15.

Josh Nelson: So, – Around 15 or around 50? No, 15. Okay, got it. One five. Eh, so, – I love that…

Samuel Klein: W- and we still have lots to do with, again, with the sales. Eh, I'm the only one currently selling. Again, not dreaming of w-when will be the time that I can step out of sale.

Josh Nelson: – That's your next big play, yeah…

Samuel Klein: I know that. Exactly. But, I'm not there yet, no? So, so yeah, little by little.

Josh Nelson: Well, he just shared with you, again, I hope everyone took note, I hope everyone wrote down. First of all, if we can get at least 15 strategy sessions per month, with even just a, a decent close ratio, you're gonna get momentum, you're gonna get growth. Less than 15, it's gonna be hard to grow, it's gonna be hard to scale. So put that somewhere. Like, look, I need to be having at least 15 sales appointments per month. And about 15 on average, Samwell's grown to 104,000 in monthly recurring. A, a healthy seven-figure digital marketing agency. The other thing he said that was really powerful was that if his benchmark is 15, he wasn't shooting for 15, he was shooting for 25. So any given month, he's trying to get 25 strategy sessions, and if he falls a little bit short, at least he hits that minimum threshold that's gonna keep the new client engine purring, right, at the head of churn. So really cool insights there, Samwell. Thank you for sharing. My pleasure. Thanks. So here's a couple questions, and then we'll, we'll keep pressing forward. So Get Viral is asking, how many employees does it take to run an agency at that level, the way you're structured?

Samuel Klein: So right now we have, I believe 16 full-time, team members. Eh, I wouldn't pay too much attention to that, eh, no, on how many employees because, we have seen amazing agencies doing, m-more than, what we're doing currently, and they have five, six, team members, no? Eh, so the way that I structure my agency i-i-is because I do these coaching calls and require more time to invest into the clients, has led me to have a bigger team, no? Eh, but I believe, again, from my experience in the seven figure, that there is a lot of agencies m-making more than seven figures, and they have a smaller team. So, eh, to answer the question, we have 16 team members full-time, eh, but I believe, again, that you don't need 16. You, you can do it with five, eight, whatever is the number, no?

Josh Nelson: Awesome. I think that parlays nicely into this question of scale, right? As you grow, as you scale, you've grown to 104,000 a month of recurring revenue. You've got 17 full-time employees. I know you've done a lot of work in this front. You did a great training for the Seven Figure Agency community on, like, operations and how you've dialed this in. What are some of your nuggets you could share with the group on how you've scaled the team while still keeping the level of service high?

Samuel Klein: So, the way that… Hiring, it's a process that takes so much time, no? Eh, and, really if you need to start hiring or you're overwhelmed, you should know also that to get the right person, it might take you a month or more, or more to find the ideal client, no? So working on a process that, eh, you can replicate every time you need a new position, eh, it's gonna save a lot of time, and, also took me a lot of time to understand that, going back to how important it is to put the processes, and operation in place. So having a, your own funnel on how to attract candidates and, eh, don't waste time interviewing the people that are not a good fit, I think it's key. Eh, and the other thing is how do you know if it's a good fit or not is by, again, understanding your values, understanding, your company culture, eh, and based on that, knowing that you can train almost every skill, but that part, if it's not a good fit because the personality doesn't fit your agency, it's not gonna go a-anywhere, no? Eh, so, we learned that we have our own pipeline or funnel to bring candidates, and when I hire for a position, let's say account manager, I still have five other candidates that I like, that I interview, that when I need to scale, I'm gonna start knocking on their doors. No, and if not, I just have to turn my LinkedIn ads for, eh, recruiting or Indeed, or whatever you use. We use LinkedIn. Eh, and, they… The process will start again. So that's how we scale the team. Me, personally, I always been somehow overstaffed. Eh, I like to play it safe without, of course, hurting too much the revenue. Eh, but, for example, at this point I'm, I'm testing something new, because one of the positions that is hardest for us to recruit is account manager, because our account manager, again, they act as coaches and they have to run the meeting with the several people, and they need certain type of skills. So what I'm doing right now, it's, I'm training and starting a relationship with, potential candidates without joining the, eh, agency. So I still pay them a very small retainer. They still have their full-time job. Eh, but we're starting the conversation. We have a weekly meeting, and I know that when the time is right and when that person also trusts that this is the right fit for, eh, them, eh, I will make the offer, no? So I'm trying to, see ahead a little bit in the tough positions to hire. If you find a good candidate, you should always keep the relationship open and the communication open, so when the time comes, you can, you can bring them in, no? I can't hear you, Josh.

Josh Nelson: So good. Yeah, I think there's some great- Yeah… Takeaways there, guys. First of all, having a hiring funnel, right? You know, like, not just thinking about your sales funnel, which all of us are like, "Okay. What… You know, how am I getting appointments? How am I, like, closing the deals?" But as you grow, if you're gonna get to seven figures and multiple seven figures where Samuel's headed here, you need a, an, a funnel that's almost as well-structured for recruiting talent, for, like, vetting that talent and for taking them through to the hiring process. I think that's really insightful. The other thing that Samuel does that I've always done is to hire in advance, right? If you're, if you've got consistent growth and you know that you're gonna have some additional revenue and some additional work that needs to be done, if you wind up waiting too long to make that hire, it can hurt your ability to retain, right? Because you're gonna create a bad experience. Maybe you're gonna tarnish your reputation in the industry. So while it's gonna cut into your margins in the short term, as long as your growth engine is purring, it's smart to, like, hire a little bit in advance. Don't go crazy with it, like, you still need profit. But it'll, you know, hire a little bit in advance. I like that. And the other thing he said was to hire slow and fire fast. He didn't say fire fast, but hire slow. Like, don't hire the first person that applies. As entrepreneurs, most of us are very quick-start oriented, and so we just want… Like, I need somebody and I'll hire the first person. You need to be methodical, right? Get them to jump through some hoops, interview more than one candidate. Make sure you get somebody good, and hire slow. Kind of slow that process down a little bit, and then keep in touch. Like, if you've got a handful of people that were good, like Samuel said, just 'cause they're not an immediate hire doesn't mean you shouldn't keep that relationship open so that when you do need them, you can, you can grab right from your, right from your bench, so to speak. Like, you've got a waiting list of people that you're ready to bring on board, right, Samuel?

Samuel Klein: I have to say, Josh, that you're so good at summarizing things that-… Sometimes I just say, "Whoa, did I just say that?" You know? So thanks for putting it in an easy way to understand to everyone, no?

Josh Nelson: No, absolutely. You, you explained it, you explained it perfectly. Let's talk a little bit about your No Lead Left Behind program, 'cause I know, you know, that's something that's, that's really pretty interesting and something that you do great work with. Can you share a little bit of the, of the, kind of the secret sauce behind how that works?

Samuel Klein: Yeah, 100%. So No Leads Left Behind, eh, is exactly what the name, says, no? Like, there is hundreds of studies there. It, it's not my data by any means, but it says that, at least in the B2B space, and this apply for us as agencies, you know, we can, grab this program and start implementing it for ourself and for the clients. Eh, but, even if it's B2C or B2B, you need at least, 10 to 12 touch points to close a clients or sometimes just to get a meeting. Eh, but those, 12 to tou- 10 to 12 touch points doesn't mean that it's when the lead is there, no? When, when you just, acquire a new prospect and that's it. Eh, it also made us realize that there is… E- each sales process or each sales, eh, pipeline has their own stages, no? So for example, in the cleaning industry, we know that first you get the lead, then you have to call the lead, eh, then you have to set an appointment. Then after the appointment, you have to send a proposal. Then after the proposal, again, you have to follow up a lot until you can get an answer or a second meeting, and then you get the client, no? So w- what we did is try to understand what are the main stages of the pipeline of our industry, and create a campaign specific for that stage of the pipeline, no? So for us, or I believe in marketing, everything is about the right message at the right time to the right person. So we have, eight different type of email campaigns and, we combine depending, again, on the target. Sometimes it's email, text message, and voice message. Sometimes it's just emails, depending on the information that we get from the lead. But we have a campaign that we call for prospecting, that is just to grow their pipeline and for them to give them something that they can work on. So that it's call, email, and LinkedIn reach out. That's the prospecting strategy that we use, the, you know, besides paid advertising. Then we have another campaign that is a proposal follow-up, which I already explained. It's empowering people that… We, we also realized that a lot of the sales rep in, this includes myself, sometimes we waste so much time going after and following up, eh, with leads that I know that the retainer is gonna be less than $1,000. And same happened with my industry. I see these sales guys- Spending so much time pursuing a $200, $300 a month contract instead of focusing on the 5,000 a month contract, no? So we created a campaign that, okay, just follow up like you regularly do, call the lead, after you send the proposal, but if posting you, just put them in this campaign. And this campaign, again, because it's the right message at the right time to the right person, will say things like, "Hey, a few days ago, I just sent you, a proposal. I wanted to see if you took the time to revise it. Let me know if you have any questions." And it like that is like eight touch points. And after that, it will go to another campaign that we call it reactivation campaign. In reactivation campaign, we put, we ask from day one to our clients, "Give me all of you the prospects that have raised their hand, that have showed some kind of interest in your service, that you never, done anything with them or the communication for some reason got solved or, or that's it. No, there is no relationship at that point." So we put them in reactivation campaign, which is the most powerful campaign that we have or the most successful, because that campaign, it says things like, "Hey, Josh, at some point in the past, you were interested about our cleaning services. I wanted to see if you're still in the market, for a service like this. Let me know." One week later, "Hey, Josh, sorry to bother you. I hope you remember me." But there was already established communication in the past. It doesn't matter if it was six months ago, one month, or five years. So we're trying to reactivate a database that the client provide us, and at the same time, after a certain period of, stages, no, the leads that we get, we also end up in reactivation if, they don't close the lead. Like that, we have another one that is just review, asking for review campaign. Then we have cancellation. So cancellation, it's another very interesting campaign and, and I love the answers of those, of those messages because, people are very creative when you ask them for a second chance, no? And cancellation campaign is just grabbing all of the canceled accounts of our clients and asking for a second chance, which, surprisingly, you will realize that they gain customers again. And, it happens because they chat… Sometimes, e-even for us as agencies, no, a client cancel the service because the decision maker changed, because life situations, whatever it is, but it doesn't mean that it was for a bad reason, no, or a bad service that you provide. So in cancellation campaign, we just, ask for a second chance, no? So we have post-proposal campaign, cancellation campaign, reactivation campaign, prospecting campaign, and, a re-review campaign, and, I'm missing a couple of more. We have specials campaign. Specials, again, is to upsell their current clientele, which most of, at least in my industry, they just close a client, they move to the next, and they don't w- spend any minute in trying to upsell their current clients. So, what we realized and the reason we created this is because we had a client that was super frustrated that, they realized that one of their client that is super happy with the service was hiring a carpet cleaning company because they don't realize that they do carpet cleaning as well. Because when you close a client, even for our agencies, you close them for A, B, C, and that's it, no? So it's important that every now and then you knock on the doors and you say, "Hey, we have this special," or, "We have this new service," or whatever you're gonna offer. But it's a campaign specifically to upsell your current clients. A-and I know I'm missing one more, but overall, again, the, the whole concept is that you don't wanna left any lead or any opportunity behind, and, you can, bulletproof yourself if you have campaigns for every stage of your pipeline, as long as you understand what are the steps that someone has to take to become a customer. So hopefully that wasn't too complicated.

Josh Nelson: No, man, what a, what a powerful share, right? Guys, so you… I mean, he's looking at his entire customer journey for his clients, and instead of just generating a lead, which most of us do, we generate a lead, it's like, okay, we made, we made them, we got them an inquiry on Facebook, or we got someone to call in from a Google ad. And if f- that's all he did, like, you know, they wouldn't convert those leads. They'd say, "Oh, Samwell, we're not making any money." He's looking at the entire life cycle, that's how we turn that lead into an inquiry, how do we turn that inquiry into an appointment, and then setting up campaigns for each. My question for you as you're listening to this is, would your clients get better results if you did something like this for them? Yes. Would they be willing to s-stay longer with you 'cause it's like, "Man, I'm getting great return"? Would they be willing to pay more? Absolutely. So really, I mean, this is, this is next level thinking that Samwell's put in place that you should consider putting in place for your agency, especially, you know, if you're, if you're, like, high ticket, recurring, and/or, like, quote-based projects.

Samuel Klein: Yeah. And then overall, we don't, we don't wanna… What, what we think is like, what are the options, no? They can always hire an agency or they can hire someone in-house. If they hire someone in-house that will have the same skills as us, it, it's almost impossible, no? They need to know email marketing, PPC, CRM, automations, and so on, no? So just by offering constantly email campaigns that everybody understand that email i-is crucial, it helps a lot with the retention as well.

Josh Nelson: So good. I… Ryan Davis posted, "Samwell is the man. #legend." I know it's him 'cause of the #legend. Ryan, you're the man. That was awesome. I love the no lead b- left behind concept. I think all of you guys can do something along those lines and really separate yourself from the competition. I think we have time for one more question, and this came from David Kundstak, who works in the pressure cleaning space.

Samuel Klein: He goes, "On the $1,500 initial package, do you have one-off services or less opt- like, less expensive options when appropriate?" So, I don't have, less expensive options. Eh, if I see… What we have done is that if I see that it's our ideal client and they're just, I don't know, pricing for some reason, and it's been a turnoff, we have done, "Okay, let us try our service for 1,200," something like that, "for the first three months, and then automatically we'll go for 1,500." But we only, we do that and we put it in the contract. No, it's not just, eh, trust me and that's it. Eh, so we have done that in the past for, for at least three client, and it has worked very well. Eh, we have our packages, you know, like A, B, C, but depending on the client, we might mix things with A and things with B, you know? So, for some clients, for 1,500, what we offer is the no leads left behind program with, PPC, eh, and that's it. Eh, for others, it's, a PPC and Google My Business. Eh, again, if we know that the client is not the type of client that is gonna jump with us on a weekly, eh, basis, or the communication, he's super busy, you can tell those type of clients usually at the beginning of the relationship. We know that the no leads left behind program won't work for them because, again, they have a lot of replies via email, a lot of replies via LinkedIn, and if they're not in front of the computer, it's completely useless, you know? So it's, 1,500 will include two services from the three that I'm gonna mention. Goo- eh, Google My Business, PPC, and no leads left behind. Usually, we combine two, and we put it in 1,500.

Josh Nelson: Nice. Great share. Very, very clear. Samwell, this has been awesome, man. Thanks so much for sharing. Congratulations on growing your agency to seven figures. We celebrated that at the last Intensive.

Samuel Klein: Thank you. Thank you. It was amazing.

Josh Nelson: Yeah. And well beyond seven figures now, at $104,000 in monthly recurring revenue. You talked about the niche. You talked about how you chose the niche. You talked about what you do to land clients, the delivery model, kind of what you're doing, how you're doing it. You talked about what you're doing to retain the clients once they sign up and some really cool insights on the coaching program. And then you talked about how you scaled, right, how you g- have 17 employees and some hiring. One thing that you do that's, that's unique, I think, is you have a lot of Latin American talent. Can you talk just about the split between US-based, international, and kind of how you manage a virtual team?

Samuel Klein: Yeah. So, as I said at the beginning, I'm originally from Venezuela, so I speak the language. And the beauty that we also realize is that's also a competitive advantage because the Hispanic market in the US is huge. I think it's around 60 million people or 70 million. It's only growing an exponential pace. So we do a lot of our campaigns in Spanish as well. Eh, and, the team, at the beginning, I didn't have, the money to invest and to hire a US-based talent. Eh, and at the beginning, I mean whe-when I was a, a… My legacy agency, you know? So, I started, who is my ideal client. I didn't know much about the agency world because, I never worked for an agency, or I didn't know anybody that owns an agency. I just loved marketing and went all in. So I started hiring people that I thought o- or th- I thought, no, they were actually smarter than me, that had a lot of experience, in the agency world, from Latin America. Eh, and of course, it's much more affordable, and you can find amazing talent, even, talent that they studied college in the US and they went back for whatever reason. And we started just, reaching out via LinkedIn. "Look, this is what I do. This is who I am. Eh, would love to set out a call if you're interested in a new opportunity." And, that's how I have hire all of my team, just by reaching out my ideal, prospect via LinkedIn. And at this point, I'm, trying to automate the, the process by creating my funnel, which, I do. But we also have built, like, lists in Sales Navigator of account managers. So I have a list of, at least 40, 50 account managers that at least in their profile, of course, I don't know until I meet them, are they the perfect candidate. And like that, we have lists for everything, for design, for all the key positions in the agency. And once we need, we just, plug the automation or start reaching out or the, eh, VAs start reaching out on my behalf until they do pre- the pre-qualification, which is just, responding some, questions via video. And after that, if we like it, we jump on the first call.

Josh Nelson: So good. And is it, is there a big cost differential between hiring someone in the United States versus someone in Latin America?

Samuel Klein: Yeah. The… It, it's huge. Eh, it's huge and, overall, it's also same as the Philippines, you know? Like, when you pay a nice salary in Latin America, eh, it- it's game changer for them and their families 100% completely, you know? Eh, so we do- Pay way more than any other local company, at least we try to. Eh, and you can find amazing talent, really amazing talent. Also understanding, like the best universities or the best, companies there, that so you can try to reach out those people helps a lot.

Josh Nelson: But yeah, eh- So when you do, when you do this right, you can get be- like better talent that's more engaged 'cause you're paying them at the top of the scale, while still paying less than you would, significantly less than you would without some of the drama that you might get in the United States.

Samuel Klein: Exactly. That's your point. Like, me personally, because I didn't grow up here, I'm not very familiar with the laws of hiring here. I know a lot of, people that have struggled legally with, lawsuits and things like that. I avoid all those kind of things, and I don't have limitations or where can I hire and what type of experience. If I want someone who has 10 years of experience in PPC, again, in the US it's almost 100K, eh, per year. In, in Latin America, it can be half of that, no? Eh, so it's more expensive than the Philippines, eh, at least double or triple. I again, I keep hearing people that hiring in the Philippines for $400, $500. I don't know the range yet. Eh, but in Latin America, you can find great talent around the $2,000 a month mark.

Josh Nelson: Really good. There's a question here, what's the split in your company between US and international team members?

Samuel Klein: I only have one person in the US, eh, actually two, because they moved from Latin America here, so it wasn't intentionally. Eh, and of course, I readjust the salary, so at this point we have two members in the US, eh, 14 members in Latin America. Actually, we have one in Gambia, which is very strange. Eh, and a couple of in Philippines. The rest is in Latin America, and if tomorrow I have to hire someone, eh, Latin America is my place to go.

Josh Nelson: So good, man. So living proof that you can run a completely virtual or practically completely virtual team with the lion's share of the team i- international, if you're strategic with what, how you hire and how you train and how do you manage that process. This has been awesome. Lots of great insights, lots of wisdom. Guys, if you're still listening, I know a lot of you guys are still on with us, would love to just in the comments, what were some of your takeaways? What were some of your insights? Be sure to tag and thank Samuel for what he shared. Like as we wrap up, Samuel, what would be, you know, what would be that last piece of wisdom you would drop on the agency owner that's just trying to get to the next level, whatever that is for them?

Samuel Klein: I think, focus. Focus is the, the main thing. Eh, skills you can always learn, you know, watching, the program or any online course. But, focus is so hard when you have so much, distraction and when you have this, I don't know, someone, an e-commerce asking you for something and, you see that, it would be nice to have those, $2,000 a month in the bank, at least for three, four months, because you know that, they might not, stay for long because it's not your specialty. So focusing in your niche and learning how to say no to not only opportunities, but, to distractions, I think it makes all the difference in how fast you're gonna grow.

Josh Nelson: Love it. Focus, focus. Samuel, this has been great. Thanks so much for sharing. Congratulations on your growth. Thank you. Keep crushing it and, we'll… We will end today's episode here. If you wanna hear other interviews like this with other highly successful digital marketing agencies on how they've grown and scaled, be sure to go to seventhfigureagency.com. You can click on the podcast, and you can i- listen to interviews just like this. So that's it for today. Thanks so much for joining us, everybody. Go out there, take your agency to the next level, and we'll talk to you again soon.