He Lost His Biggest Client and Built to $65K a Month Anyway

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

Josh Nelson: This is the Seven Figure Agency podcast. Discover the strategies and techniques to grow a highly successful and profitable digital marketing agency with your host, Josh Nelson. All right. Hello and welcome. I'm so excited. Thanks for joining us for the Seven Figure Agency podcast. This is part of our agency success series, where we're interviewing highly successful digital marketing agencies from across the country. And today I'm really excited. We've got Wesley Smith with us from Treecare– Tree Service Digital. He's grown his agency to over sixty thousand dollars per month and growing on a very consistent basis. So give me a like, give me a comment, give me like a, "Hey, Wesley," or something if you're excited to hear Wesley's story and some of the things that he's done in order to really accelerate the growth of his business. So Wesley, thank you so much for joining us today.

Wesley Smith: Hey, thanks for having me, Josh. Happy to share.

Josh Nelson: So I guess just start, tell us the lay of the land, like, you know, approximately how many clients, approximately how much revenue, kind of just where you're at right now in the business.

Wesley Smith: Yeah. So right now we have approximately fifty clients. It's, it's hovering around, it's either forty-nine, fifty-one. It kinda… Th-this time of the year, we kinda have a couple people that put things on pause or kinda disappear for a month or two while we're trying to find out what they wanna do. But it's right around fifty clients. Monthly recurring is in the mid-sixties, so somewhere around sixty-four, sixty-five, sixty-six thousand. And, with, you know, project work that does come in from time to time, which you don't really wanna say no to, but it does come in every now and then, puts us over seven k a couple of months, the previous past two months. So yeah, doing good, growing and, putting everything to work in, Seven Figure Agency.

Josh Nelson: Amazing, man. Congratulations. So just like, t-to walk us back a little bit, how did you get started in the digital marketing agency, business?

Wesley Smith: Yeah. So my mom and I started a real estate investing business probably… I guess we bought our first two rental properties in two thousand eight, two thousand nine timeframe. Right. Kinda right at the peak of the market, right before the bottom just totally fell out. And I really fell in love with generating our own motivated seller leads coming in for people searching for like, "Sell my house fast, Atlanta," "Sell your house fast," you know, "We buy houses," stuff like that. So I really kinda just took a liking to digital marketing and SEO and seeing how to move the needle with getting my website to the top of those rankings. And once we did, it made a world of difference in our business. You know, I was still doing kind of a telecom agency sales and growing my residual income over there, but it was kinda slow and I'd always been interested in real estate investing. So we started that business and we quickly, you know, discovered that with SEO and pay-per-click marketing, we could have plenty of lead flow. You know, this is in addition to direct mail and other things that we were doing. So I kinda learned how to do all that stuff. We, we actually hired it out, but I took a really, you know, close watch on exactly what they were doing for our SEO. It was an overseas company, so I had a lot of input and they would kinda show me what they were doing and things like that. So once we got ranked on the first page, it was like, what, you know, night and day different. We had leads coming in all over the place. And so these are people that wanted to sell their house faster, you know, call a we-buy-houses company or something like that. So then once we set up pay-per-click ads, we had like double or triple the lead flow coming in from there. So I was like, "I really like this," you know? So we kept doing it, kept at it. We still manage our properties today that we accumulated during that time period. But prices are just getting out of whack, so we kinda slowed that, that stuff down a couple years back. So, but during that whole time, I was like, "Wouldn't it be cool if I had an agency that I could kinda do this full time?" 'Cause I just love watching websites move up the rankings and lead flow increase and all that stuff. So I started the business actually in a lead generation model where, you know, you kinda create websites, you create Google My Business listings, you get them ranked, and then you forward those leads to a company in the local area that wants to pay for leads, right? Yep. And a pretty easy business model when Google, you know, back in like maybe two thousand thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, where you could just put up a Google My Business listing at a UPS store or PO box or whatever, get it ranked for a keyword city, and then, you know, you could just forward those calls. So I, I built up a pretty good clientele doing that. And, you know, it just… Google changed. They got a little bit more, they, they kinda could see that a lot of that was going on, so they started suspending a lot of those, right?

Josh Nelson: I mean, a lot of people probably listening to this maybe started in that background too or have done something like that. Hey, just give me a me in the comments if you've done that. Like where you're just like setting up properties and pushing the leads and getting paid on a per lead basis. I'm sure a number of you… Didn't wanna interrupt. Keep going, Wesley.

Wesley Smith: Yeah, no, it's, and it's true. I mean, it seems like a good model, rank and rent model, and it is if it, if your Google My Business listings would actually stay put, right? So there would just always be little things that happen where it gets suspended and you're starting all over and different things like that. So during that process, I just learned really well and thoroughly SEO, Google My Business optimization, all that stuff. The pay-per-click thing was kinda…

Josh Nelson: I wasn't doing that quite for a lot of clients at that point, but I built up a pretty good client base, enough recurring income- What, what ver- what verticals were you in as you were doing this rank and rent model? Just curious.

Wesley Smith: Which ones did I do? And I think, okay, so I had a couple tree company ones. I had some roofing ones. I think I did carpet cleaning ones, which those are pretty low. A couple of those were, a couple of them were really good with lead flow, but just lower paying clients. Towing. Pretty much you name it, I tried it. You know what I mean? Okay. So we– I had some handyman websites and Google My Business listings. So I mean, it worked and, you know, built up some decent recurring income with several clients. And then it just got to that point where it was just so rocky with, you know, being, getting those things suspended, starting over and having to go through that stuff. So it almost got to the point where you had to have a DBA or some sort of business license to even show to get it approved. Oh, plumbing was another one I had some in and those did pretty good until it just got really difficult, right? Some of the niches were really spammy, like locksmith and plumbing and a few other ones. If you're marketing your own business, it's perfectly fine. But when you try to throw up those lead generation ones, they're under the microscope with Google. So during that time, I was kinda just looking for direction to go. Still had plenty of, you know, monthly recurring income coming in to kind of bridge that gap and bought into some other courses, you know, learned some stuff, did some things, and finally discovered you. I kinda saw you and your stuff from my dad's plumbing company that he had been running for a long time and kinda found you on that side of it 'cause I was thinking, "Well, this might be a good…" And, and I'd found that several years prior and didn't really realize you had a, an agency coaching, group too, right? And a, and a system for that. So I, then I discovered you had that, think I ordered the book, got into the Retargeting Cobweb and, you know, made sure and… So I kept watching your content and everything else, and then I joined- back in, I think it was probably two thousand nineteen, the summer. So it's been almost three years. I think two and a half years or something like that. Yep. So yeah, we, you know, I just kind of– I was already kind of doing it for a lot of different niches, during that whole lead generation, you know, three to five years I was doing that. And then, landed some clients who were doing PPC, SEO, websites and different things like that, but just didn't really streamline my offering or niche or anything like that until I came across Seven Figure Agency. So it's kind of my backstory how I got here.

Josh Nelson: Awesome. So I lo- I love kind of like looking at the journey. You experienced digital marketing and the, and the fruits and the labor of it, and you were like, "Hey, that's kind of cool. Like, I'd love to do that for businesses." Because you saw, like you got more leads, you got more sales, you got growth in what you were trying to accomplish, and then you decided to make that, like that pivot to actually deliver that as a service.

Wesley Smith: Yeah, I loved it. I mean, I couldn't get enough of it. I wanted to do it. So that's why I was starting to like, you know, r- you know, rank my own websites. I love doing that, watching them every day. I mean, it's kind of a obsessive compulsive thing, right? When you're doing it for your own websites, you kind of want to look at it every day and see the ranking.

Josh Nelson: So I kind of can understand- Refresh, refresh, research that Yeah. Yeah, that… Exactly.

Wesley Smith: And so I kind of can relate with my clients who get that way too, because we have some clients that want to stare at it every day, right? Right. We've given some of them access to agency analytics to log in, and you notice they log in three times a day, every day. You know what I mean? I'm like, "Wow, this guy's really on it." Right. So those are, those are challenging, some of those clients, but I was kind of the same way a little bit with it, and then I kind of just learned to kind of step away and not worry about it. It's gonna get there eventually. But, yeah, so I joined and before I joined, I kind of just wanted to make sure I had my niche picked out, actually, which is kind of contrary to what some people do, and some people do it that way, some people don't. And I don't think there's a, you know, right or wrong way to do it. If you join and you don't have your niche picked out, well, then there's a lot of great mentors in the group that'll help you kind of make that pivot as to which niche you want to choose. I had already kind of gotten great results for several niches. One of them was family law- Mm… And then another one was the tree service, business. So I kind of just was torn between both of those because we were crushing it for three or four family law offices who were just getting, you know, dozens and dozens of leads a month, doing very well with them. And then we had some tree care companies, tree service companies doing the same thing really good. So then at the end of the day, I just kind of decided who I wanted to work with every day and, and that type of thing and what niche kind of best fit me and maybe my team and who they wanted to work with or who was going to be easier to work with or more preferable to work with or whatever. So then we chose that niche, for tree service companies because we were getting really good results for them. So it's, it's a good niche. It's a high-ticket niche is what I would kind of recommend is make sure that you're generating, you know, leads and business for a company that's gonna be a high-ticket sale to where they can justify paying that marketing fee every month. It's kind of what I would throw out there.

Josh Nelson: Love it. So, so a couple pivots here, and I want to get into that niche selection process because I think a lot of the listeners and watchers, it's something that they might be thinking about right now. Just put in the comments niche if you're kind of in that place where you're still trying to decide the niche. You, you kind of built the rank and rent model, and I think everybody that goes down that path winds up in the same place where it's like, there's no consistency or reliability to the revenue stream here. Yeah, I can sell the leads and, you know, I'll get some money, but, you know, if that like goes down or if like for whatever reason the leads don't happen at the same level, I can't rely and pay my bills or hire a team w- if I don't have consistent cash flow. Would you say that was kind of one of the big challenges?

Wesley Smith: Correct. And the other thing that I found out was that businesses will pay triple, to market their own business versus paying for leads from some other rank and rent websites. Right. Right. 'Cause now you're not promoting their property, you're promoting your property, where when you tell them, "Look, I'm gonna do this for your company, for your website, for your established brand," they're willing to pay a premium for that.

Josh Nelson: So you wanted to get away from this kind of rocket, you know, like rocking back and forth situation, decided to go to more of a recurring-based model, decided to go, you know, niche-focused. Where were you back then in terms of like what was your average monthly revenue back in that, at that point?

Wesley Smith: Probably between ten and twenty thousand a month. Okay. You know, I had, some clients that were paying for the lead generation. They were just renting sites either for a flat fee. Then we had probably maybe a third of them, I was counting leads, and they were paying twenty bucks a lead, fifty bucks a lead, depending on the niche or whatever. And then we had some that were just paying a commission on closed jobs, which those are all challenging in itself. Oh gosh, yeah. You can make more money that way because they're, they're paying you a commission on the jobs they get, so there's no risk for them. But on the other hand, you're not sure if they're answering the calls or taking the leads or whatever. So we had kind of a hodgepodge of that stuff. And so it was… It just hovered between probably ten and twenty thousand a month up until, you know, I joined Seven Figure Agency. I think when I joined, I had, I think it was around twenty K in monthly recurring. They had one big client that was a personal injury firm down in Florida, and they were paying like five thousand a month for SEO and a, and a few other services, and they were like my big client that I was afraid to lose, right? But they were also taking up all of my time. I didn't really have a team built at that point to kind of manage a lot of that process. So, I didn't want to lose them, but at the same time, they were very difficult to work with. And so there's, there's definitely gonna be some challenge. Like if you, if you're running a general agency, you just have to be comfortable with, okay, we're gonna take care of who we're taking care of now. We're not gonna drop the ball on that. But when we move to this niche agency model, just got to make sure I manage my time wisely, right? And take two or three hours every day, whether that's first thing in the morning or late in the afternoon. I would probably recommend first thing in the morning before everything gets kind of haywire, you know, for your day. And then just, you know, put together the niche agency stuff that's in the training and just move forward with it. And before you turn around, two, three months later, you'll have everything up and going. So that's kind of how I did it.

Josh Nelson: So good, man. So from about twenty to about sixty and kind of growing on a consistent basis, obviously a good decision to go niche, to go monthly recurring, and to kind of focus on that model.

Wesley Smith: Yeah, it actually dropped. You know, when I was at twenty when I joined, that client actually ended up- The five K went away, and you were like, "Oh, no." Yeah. Actually wrote a check and, y- you know, they would refuse to do, like, monthly credit card billing. So they wrote a check, sent it, got it, then he– they put a stop on it, didn't even deposit, then they canceled. It was just a nightmare. So that ended up happening. So then my income dipped. So I was probably down around fourteen or fifteen K when I first came on right after that happened. And, man, what I did was I just basically sat there and said, "Okay, I got a handful of tree service clients, and this is the direction I'm going." I think I had my niche agency website up, and this is the direction I'm gonna go. But they were just paying one-off services. Like, I had one for website and SEO, another one for probably pay-per-click management, stuff like that. So I didn't have everything packaged together. And so joining Seven Figure Agency really taught me kinda what to do as far as putting together an entire package of what I'm gonna do for clients. And maybe two options, three options, that's it. We don't wanna have, you know, several à la carte things they can pick. Like, "Yeah, we're gonna manage your social media, we're gonna do email marketing for you, we're gonna do Facebook ads," or you know. It's just one package, and that way it's, it's high enough monthly recurring where they're gonna get some, you know, return on investment for what they're spending on marketing, but we're also able to kinda systematize that and get the work done at a lower rate than we're charging, where the margins are good. So it's kind of a happy medium where you figure that out. But the packaging of your services is big because you can charge a higher monthly recurring charge, and you gotta focus on the right size businesses to do that. Yeah.

Josh Nelson: Great, great stuff. Great insights, guys. If you have questions, post it in the comments here. Let's, let's make this as interactive as possible. So the next big thing that, you know, agencies tend to kinda get stuck on is the selection of the niche, and, like, how do you choose the niche? And I think what's interesting in your case is you already had some wins, right? You had developed these relationships through the rank and rent and through some of the direct business. And so you had, like, places where you're like, "Okay, I know this business a little bit. I know I've gotten results." I would say that's the best play, right? Try and look at the path of least resistance. You know, look to the experience that you have. How did you make the decision between, the family law, which you had experience, and the tree care service? Like, what were your deciding factors there?

Wesley Smith: You know, for me, honestly, it was just who I wanted to work with and talk to every day. You know- Yeah… My dad was a contractor. I just kinda like those types of people. I can shoot the breeze with those guys. So the tree service companies I was working with, they were good old guys too, and gals and they were great. So I was like, "I think I just wanna focus on this type of business." The one thing that I did have in my mind as a drawback, potentially, was the seasonality of it, possibly. Right. Yeah. And so I talked with a few people when I first started, and they said it shouldn't be an issue. And even if it is, you can offer some sort of, you know, half off for two or three months during the winter season or something just to get them through the slow time. But you'll keep maintaining stuff and then maybe just have that conversation up front if you have a lot of clients, like maybe up north or something. So I kinda… I had that in the back of my mind, but honestly, it hasn't been an issue for the most part. You know, there's a few of them here and there that we will work with on that. But I just kinda decided that, you know, who was I gonna be able to deliver a good, you know, a good value for? Who would be willing to pay for our services? And some of our tree companies, they do land clearing jobs, forestry mulching, tree removal. Those are, you know, five, ten thousand dollar jobs sometimes. So the fact that they're spending two or three thousand a month, four thousand a month, if they're doing, you know, significant PPC or anything like that, it's just not that big of a charge if they're a million dollar plus company. So, one of the, one of the determinations was when we looked up the business list, I think I used SIC codes, and now you recommend a different one. But, one of the determining factors was how many businesses in the tree service space do a million dollars and up in revenue per year.

Josh Nelson: Mm-hmm. Yep.

Wesley Smith: So that was one of the determining factors. Once you pull that list, if it's over a thousand, then you know you're golden because to be a seven-figure agency, you need what, forty, fifty clients, you know? Right. So really that you don't need but a small percentage of the overall businesses. And if there's several thousand doing that kind of revenue, well, maybe you, maybe you know, trim your list down a little bit and go after the one point five million to three million or four million, you know, whatever that niche size is. So that was kind of the determining factor was, yeah, there's a lot of companies doing big revenue, so they can spend thirty or forty thousand a year on marketing. It's not gonna be a big deal for them. And I always keep that small business administration link handy so I can show people, "Hey, they recommend five percent on, you know, your gross revenue to do for advertising, so we're asking for less than that." And, you know, so it just– That, that's kinda one of the determining factors, and then just kinda who I wanted to work with personally. And, and it wasn't anything against attorneys or family law or anything like that 'cause we were doing very well for them. I just had to kinda go down one of these roads, you know, and so I picked this one and, it's worked out good. I love it.

Josh Nelson: So some great insights for those of you that may be in this selection process. Look to the existing client base. Look to where you've got some wins. Think about affinity, right? Is this the kind of company I actually wanna work with? You know, the types of people I wanna talk with day to day, right? If I'm gonna focus on this niche exclusively. Wes, if somebody didn't already have like a short list of clients like you, like that you've worked with and won with, do you have like any suggestions on how they would go about selecting the niche?

Wesley Smith: You know, I thought about that too when I first started. And I, you know, being one of the member mentors, we've kinda gone down this road with several people too. So yeah, I think what one of the, one of the things is do you have any past business experience in any of the niches? Like, do you know the terminology, the lingo, you know, what they look for in clients or the revenue size of each job? Or, you know, do you kinda know some insider information on any niche that maybe you're kicking around? Maybe you've got it whittled down to four or five niches that you're, you're possibly wanting to look into. And so I think if you– One of the home run deciding factors would be to look up niche agency marketing services and see if there's any even out there. If you see hardly any of them, hey, that may be a good one to look into, right? It may be that nobody's picked it because there's not enough businesses that do enough revenue to even pay for marketing. But it could be that nobody's just targeted that niche, right? Yeah. And you may hit a honey hole that may be like the best one you could have picked. Right. So I think maybe do that research, you know, and see if there's any niche agency marketing companies on Google or wherever you wanna do the search. And then the other thing is just if you've kinda worked with a business in your past or anything like that, you just kinda know the lingo, you know about that business. Maybe that's something you could kinda cater to. And then, you know, if you do have a general agency, then just see who maybe you've gotten great results for and you could duplicate. You know, if you've got a testimony or a case study of a client, maybe you've got ten different niches you do, you do general agency work for now. Do you have one or two with a case study or the testimonial that you could really leverage that for your new niche? And if so, I think that would be a good, a good way to choose, you know, your niche too from the beginning.

Josh Nelson: So good. Yeah. So guys, I think the key– the optimal word here is try and find the path of least resistance, right? You know, don't try and invent some new niche you know nothing about, that you've never had any experience in. Like, if you worked in the industry before, if your dad worked in the industry, if you've sold someone in that industry before, that's gonna be much easier for you to for-foray into than to just randomly pick one out of a hat. So just give me a one in the comments here if that's helpful. It kind of give you some clarity on what to do for those of you that are still in that niche selection process in your agency. Okay. So I'm gonna look at some of the questions and comments here. This actually happens to be the next thing I always like to talk about, which is, Sanvosh, if I said that right, is saying, you know, "What's, what's your average price and what are you doing from a fulfillment perspective?" Just talk high level about kinda what you do for these tree service companies and kinda how you structure that.

Wesley Smith: Well, we go directly with, pretty much the seven-figure agency niche model, which is you go with their website. We do their Google My Business map listing, their local SEO, their, multi-location SEOs. So we always have service areas. So we do a niche agent. We do a, you know, website for their tree company. We do their Google My Business optimization, directory, citations, all of that. We post on their Google My Business listing four times a month. We upload photos if they give them to us, things like that. So we work on their SEO and their rank improvements. And then on top of that, we're doing Google Ads management. We set up a separate landing page for that, call tracking. We send a report to them every two weeks for their Google Ads budget, their calls, their leads and all that stuff. And then we send a once-a-month SEO report that our account manager will go over in detail with them if they want, which a lot of them don't, especially after March. They're so busy, they don't really care, but we offer it. And then, we also do retargeting and remarketing on social media channels and Google partner websites. So that's Facebook, Instagram, places like that, and then Google partner websites for the retargeting and all of that. And we also, if they have a database service they're using, and in my niche it's like SingleOps, Arbor Gold, jobber.com, different things like that. We'll take their database, and then we'll do an email blast once a month. Typically, we just take the blog post article that we're doing 'cause we have well-researched content for their local area, tree care-related tips, tricks and things like that. And so we take that blog post and just send it out once a month with a call to action with a ten percent discount on the bottom of the email. We do that for a handful of our clients too that want it. And, we also do some social media posting if they want that. We find that it doesn't really move the needle, but some people like to have something posted on their social media, you know, once a week or a couple times a week or whatnot. And, that's pretty much what we're doing from a fulfillment per– like, that's, that's what our packages are. So it's like website SEO, website SEO plus pay-per-click management, website plus pay-per-click management plus SEO plus retargeting, remarketing. So there's three different packages they can pick from, and sometimes they'll start with a lower one and then add stuff and, you know, things like that. We've since gotten into direct mail, which also helps the phone ring pre-pretty frequently for our clients too. Nice. Just little things, just extra things we can do for the bigger clients that want more 'cause, you know, as you know, sometimes in certain areas, the pay per click or the SEO doesn't yield quite as much as they want or had hoped. So we wanted to make sure we could plug those gaps without losing those clients to other competitors. So we actually offer some of those services now. So that's what we do as far as what we do for our clients as services.

Josh Nelson: Perfect. Can you give me a range, kinda like what the monthly fee is?

Wesley Smith: Yeah. So it starts at twelve hundred a month and goes up to eighteen hundred a month. Got it. So we're between twelve and eighteen hundred a month, and we've raised the prices a hundred, two hundred dollars here and there for different packages over the last two and a half years.

Josh Nelson: And you know, what you'll find is, guys, too, for everybody watching this, as you build your brand and your authority gets higher, people know who you are, they start listening to your content, all those types of things, you'll have less resistance for price. It's just not that big of a deal.

Wesley Smith: You'll, you'll feel like you need to start lower 'cause maybe there's competitors in your niche or whatever, but after you get going and you're the content provider in your niche, it's just not gonna be that big of an issue. So we find that's a good sweet spot for us. We have really good margins on that revenue. We're fulfilling everything for roughly a third, sometimes even less than that, depending on what we're doing for the client. And so it helps us make money. We get money for account managers and, you know, operations and different things like that. So it's, it's, it's helping us. And I think I'm gonna continue to raise prices a little bit. Maybe we'll offer a few other extra things as we do that.

Josh Nelson: Awesome. So just give us a yes if it was helpful. He broke down kinda what his program package looks like, kinda how much he's charging for it. Even gave you a little bit of insight in terms of like the profit margins that he bakes in, which is, which is great to know those metrics and know that you're making money on each client that you get. Let's, let's kinda shift gears here a little bit. So we've talked about like the niche. We've talked a little bit about how you chose the niche. We've talked about the program and how you structure it. Now let's talk about landing clients. You know, everyone wants to know like the, the ninja hacks or the key secret strategies. Like what's been working best for you to land clients and kinda get that kind of momentum that you've had?

Wesley Smith: Yeah. This is the fun part right here. This is the part I like because I've been in sales since '04. So learning the whole marketing side and positioning and all that really came from seven-figure agency. So you're on the fence, and you wanna learn how to like promote your brand and be the authoritative niche agency, then seven-figure agency is for you because everything's in there laid out, what you need.

Josh Nelson: I love all these plugs, man. You're doing, you're doing awesome, man. There's just a lot of stuff in there, man, that really helps you kinda just become that authoritative niche agency because what you do and, you know, that's, that's kinda how I discovered you and kept coming back into the wheelhouse is that you know, you just, you have everything kinda plugged in.

Wesley Smith: So it's really, for me, the webinar, monthly webinar series has really been the thing that's landed the most clients for us. That's my most consistent, marketing channel. When we get super busy, I may skip a month here and there, but we try to, you know, stick them out there every single month. And you know, that really has been the biggest driver of our, of our, you know, basically like appointments, you know, getting strategy sessions and just getting people on our radar. Because once you do that monthly webinar, if you don't do anything else, and that's all you do is your monthly webinar, you can take that Zoom video, your webinar, and you can upload that to YouTube Right? You can have that go to your social media channels. You could actually chop it up into four or five different videos with different key points on it to where you can have plenty of content for the month if that's all you wanna do. You can put the audio file on your podcast, right? And you can do so many different things with it. You can have it as a blog post on your website with it, like, transcribed into text. I mean, there's– it's endless what you can do with this one blog post, and you'll learn that in the training. And so that's what I started doing. It was, it was hard to pull off that first one. It, it's kind of a jigsaw puzzle of sorts for y-you know, you gotta have all the stuff in place and the ClickFunnels and the High Level and et cetera, and what platform you're gonna use and this and that, and just trying to pull it off and the timing and all that. But once you get one of them done, it's, it's literally, you know, y-you know how to do it from that point on- Rinse and repeat, right? New topic, new syn– you know, new syndication steps. Exactly. And so that's– really just doing the first one is eighty percent of the work. Once you get that first one down, the nerves go away. It kinda gets easier, even if nobody shows up. I don't think anybody showed up on my first one, but I was super nervous for it. And, but I got through it, right? You get through it. You do it again and again. Every time it gets easier and easier. And so that's really been the biggest driver. Now, on top of that, we do a lot of retargeting. So people that land on our website, I retarget them on Facebook with either an invite to our group. We do an invite to, you know, download the free checklist or, you know, grab the book or, you know, "Hey, here's a webinar coming up. Go ahead and register." So we have a lot of retargeting ads on that. And we've ran a lot of cold ads too with a provider also in the Seven Figure Agency that helped me with that. – I see… So that's helped land some clients as well. And, we also do pay-per-click ads. So on Google, if you search for tree service marketing or different things like that, you know, we run ads just like we're telling our clients to do. I do the same thing nationwide. So we bring in leads that way.

Josh Nelson: And those are literally usually the most motivated ones that come through, is people that have just recently- Bottom of the funnel looking for an agency that serves their niche, right?

Wesley Smith: Exactly. And so you'll see that. That's low-hanging fruit in your niche. If you, if you look that up, you choose a niche. Go look at niche agency marketing services or whatever, and you'll see there's nobody doing Google Ads. That could be a great place for you to put your website up there on the ads and get leads coming in that way for strategy sessions. So that, those three things and then, the podcast. You know, I took probably a year and a half to get the podcast going, and what I realized is after I just kinda really started diving into it, 'cause a lot of the other members in the group were doing it, you're doing it, Josh, and it's like, you see everybody doing it and it's like, it can't be that hard, you know? So I looked at it. I started looking at it too, and I'm like, it's really, it's the same content you're already doing. You could just turn the file into an MP3 file and upload it there. And some of the podcast players will already just, you know, turn a video into the MP3. So with mine, maybe I picked the wrong one or whatever, but I have to turn my MP4 file from video to MP3. But it's the same video. It's the same piece of content. It's just the audio part. You're uploading it in there. And then if you wanna do a short podcast episode, you just do one and, you know, you can just knock one out in fifteen minutes. But the podcast has been surprisingly a good lead generator for us too, 'cause there's just not a lot of podcasts in my niche. So somebody does a search for tree service marketing, maybe they find our website, but they also see the podcast, you know? And so that has been good getting that on the radar. A lot of people are downloading episodes, and we probably get two hundred and fifty to three hundred and fifty downloads a month now on it. And, you know, it's the right type of people that are listening to it. You know what I mean? You don't need, you know, thousands and thousands of downloads on your podcast. You just need a few that are interested in what you're, you're selling or your services are promoting, and it's, it's been really good. And so I'm trying to get that monthly interview down, with, you know, the business owners and like you do. It's great, man, 'cause it's like, it's not that you're trying to sell them something or promote the digital marketing side. You're actually interviewing an expert, so it's a really good angle. And so I'm just trying to keep consistent with that and, I need to get some sort of system in place for that. But those are really the ways that we land clients and, you know, we sign some on the first, y-you know, the first strategy session. A lot of them come in, "Hey man, we've been listening to your podcast for a while," or, "We've been watching your YouTube video for a while, been on five webinars," and there's no resistance. You do strategy session, you sign them right up. And then other people still need time. They just wanted to figure out what the pricing was. They've heard everything they wanna hear, but they wanna know the prices. So then they may not sign up right away, but they do later. So really it's those, it's those ways. It's, it's Google Ads. It's the webinar method to our list. And to build your list, that really, the webinar method keeps getting more and more and more effective as your list gets bigger and bigger. And I would say just offering, you know, your checklist download, maybe an offer to your group, or something like that, and then maybe case studies. Those types of little things that you build, little downloads that they can get, that's gonna bring a lot of people into your email list too. It's several hundred that we've added. And then going to the associations too. That's one of the big things that you promote too, Josh, or, you know, have us do. And that's huge too because when you go to the association, they'll usually give you, if you go to your trade show, they'll usually give you a list of attendees, and it's their name, their email, business name. So that's another place you can plug those extra contacts into your, contacts into your list. And so eventually you get four, five, ten thousand people in your, in your list. So, all of it just keeps working and growing. The sooner you start all of that, the better.

Josh Nelson: So good, guys. I wanna, I wanna see some dollar signs in the comments 'cause he just gave you the exact, you know, client acquisition strategy that he used to go from twenty K to sixty K and growing, you know, every single month. Amazing. So it sounds like you've spent a lot of time on the positioning side of the equation, right? Which is the webinars, the podcasts, the content generation, which is all driven really by that one webinar that you do every month, the monthly webinar method. You mentioned, you know, you bought a seed list, that you joined the Tree Service Association. Would you say, like, th-that having that seed list and then doing the webinars and nurturing that database over time is kinda what's created the momentum from a client acquisition perspective?

Wesley Smith: Absolutely. You know, they, whether or not they join live on your webinar or not, like you're gonna do four invites, five invites for each webinar every w– every month, and then you're also gonna promote the replay two or three emails afterwards for that second week. So I would say the majority of everybody on my list Does not attend live webinars, but they will watch the replay. Because I go to YouTube and I see that that YouTube embed for the webinar replay on my landing page to register for a strategy session has been watched seventy, eighty, two hundred times. So you know people are watching it, they're just not coming live. And that's the benefit of it too, is they can watch it in their own time on the weekends or at night or whatever. So yes, I would say 100% just, you know, that's, that's the whole momentum game really. When you first start, right, you don't have all of this content. You don't have, you know, you don't have a topic on this and that. You're just kinda getting that started. But the sooner you get started, the sooner you've got six videos already on YouTube or six podcasts, you know, interviews or, episodes on your podcast or blog posts or whatever. So you gotta get started to kinda get down that road where you get that momentum built. But absolutely, that's been, you know, the first month it's, you know, it just, it just keeps gaining steam every single month 'cause your, your list keeps getting bigger. And the first list I think I had was like maybe it was like 1,000 or maybe it was like 1,200 tree companies. And so that went right in there after the cold outreach, and we landed some clients doing that. And so to build on that, when I joined the associations, I had my virtual assistant log into my niche association website, 'cause they don't give you just a way to swipe and download an Excel file. You know what I'm saying? You gotta kinda scrape it one at a time, right? Exactly. So I had him log in there and kinda, you know, get the ones that look like a tree company that looked decent, and he downloaded. So I got another probably 1,000 or so from that from both of the associations. That ended up being, you know, 2,500 or 3,000. And then from there it's just the checklist downloads, the case study downloads. And they come in from, you know, different areas too. You'll have strategy sessions from people that come in from Google Ads or whatever, and you'll add them to it. So it gets up to 4,000 or 5,000. And I mean, every time you send out an email, even if it's only 20% open rate or 15%, you're still 1,000 people are seeing it or 800 people are seeing it, right? So- Yep… It really helps. And, and every month, just like Josh says, I mean, the momentum does build. It gets easier. People come on and they say, "Hey, man, I've watched four or five of your webinars. You know, we just wanna go ahead and get started." You know, so that's what you're gonna have down the road. Pre-positioned, pre-positioned to buy.

Josh Nelson: Exactly. One of my favorite terms.

Wesley Smith: Oh, and it's, it's a beautiful thing when it starts happening because it just seems like it's, your business is just kinda growing effortlessly. But it's not effortlessly, it's, it's, it's the seeds you've been planting for the last year or two, you know, is what's creating that. And so you realize that, and then you're like, "Man, I'm glad I did all this work." And, and you just continue to do it because it just keeps on building and building and building. And I mean, we consistently land, even during the slow months, you know, two or three clients a month, and then busy months, three to five clients a month. So it just keeps on growing and growing and growing. You can go faster than that. You can go slower than that. It's really up to, you know, you as the agency owner how fast you wanna go.

Josh Nelson: Yeah. So, so good, guys. So many great nuggets here. And really, you know, this model executed perfectly. I just love it, right? Chose the niche, got the seed list, did some cold outreach, started to invite them to webinars, started to syndicate those webinars, started to develop positioning and recognition as one of the go-to experts in the space, joined the association, be at the trade shows and events. You can see the banners from the trade shows behind. And then just steadily chopping away. You know, three to five clients per month, well on your way to seven figures. I would say probably at seven figures in the next, you know, next couple of months.

Wesley Smith: Yeah, I would say so too.

Josh Nelson: And, and the way you gotta look at this too, guys, is like any business that you wanna start, I've been kind of doing my own business now for, I guess I went on my own completely in 2010, so 12 years now. When you start a business or you own a business, you understand that it's not going to happen today. It's not gonna maybe happen next month or six months. You, you've gotta be in this for the long haul, and you gotta kinda fall in love with the process, I think, of just creating the content, doing the strategy sessions one after another after another, talking to clients, building your business, and just staying with it, right? Nothing is ever built worthwhile in a month, I don't think. I mean, there's, there's very few people that have created something spectacular in six months or something like that, right? So it's gonna take you a while to build this. But I mean, what business is not gonna take a little while to build? And this is a business with monthly recurring charges with clients, so it's easy to kind of predict your revenue, grow your revenue. You know, as long as you're maintaining at a pretty good level and retaining your clients at a good level, then you're gonna grow your business, period. Right? You just have to keep your, keep your clients and don't have a leaky bucket with, losing too many clients too quick. But it's a very predictable model, and if you just keep pushing and keep working your business, you're gonna see it through. And, and a lot of that's just making sure you chose the right niche up front, which I think most niches will work if you do that due diligence. If they're a big enough companies and a big enough list of companies across the country, they all need marketing services to promote their company. So you're gonna do fine as long as you do that niche selection, you stick to it, do the work, and, just follow the steps and the process that's laid out in the training. I mean, I don't think you can really lose unless you just don't do the work. So good, guys. Give me some likes in the comments if you're getting some insights, you're getting some value. Tag Wesley in the comments and say, "Thanks for sharing," 'cause this is great stuff. So Wesley, let's just take one step back, right? So we talked about how you landed clients today and kind of the momentum that you're at. If you could reverse back to when you just decided, "Okay, I'm gonna go after tree services," do you recall like where the first five clients came from? Like what was the action, what was the activity that drove those first handful of clients?

Wesley Smith: Yeah. I think,… So what I was already doing, so I had some revenue coming in, and I had a, probably, I don't know, maybe three or four niche clients already. I think I was running a selfie video Facebook ad- Okay… From one of my business pages, either the Tree Service Digital Facebook page or Wesley Smith Entrepreneur page. So I was running some Facebook ads to get some strategy sessions, but what I found was it was just not the right type of customer coming in from those to pay the package prices that I was looking to get. So the cold outreach did help me, land the c- a couple of clients up front in the beginning. And so what happened was, I did the cold outreach. We, we, you know, I sent out thousands of those and we did, I did get some responses and strategy sessions and things like that. And I think I landed two or three from that over the first sixty days. And then I did the first webinar, and the first webinar actually created- another client that came from that on the replay promoting that part, and that was like my largest package price client. He's still with me today. It's been over two years he's been with me. So that was– I kinda wanted to get out of the cold outreach as quickly as possible into the webinar part. And I think the Google Ads running those on- online just to my agency website, created the next couple of clients. So I was able to score clients pretty quickly, with the package pricing that we had set. And a lot of it too is just if you're a member of, you know, a group like this, a mastermind like this, you're gonna kinda figure out what people are paying, what they're not paying, what they're not willing to pay, what they, you know… You'll kinda learn all of that too. So I wasn't really sure exactly how to price my services, so I went through, you know, down that road with a lot of the members in the group and during the weekly trainings and things like that. And so kinda came to my pricing level as to what we could, what we could charge, what's a fair price for this and what we're providing and everything. So you'll kinda learn all of that too. And then, 'cause if you're charging too high, you may not win a lot of clients. If you're charging too low, they may not think it's gonna be really worth their while if it's too low of a price, right? So you kinda have that happy medium. And so I think that's what it was. It was cold outreach, then it was the webinar, got one, and then I got a couple from running Google Ads. And then just the follow-up after that just created steady appointments and, the, you know, this, the webinar method every month after that has created steady appointments. And, that's really been the difference maker, you know, other than setting up the podcast. Once I set up the podcast, that really was a game changer too. A lot of people started coming in from that direction. I was totally surprised, but people ride around in their trucks and they listen to podcasts. That's one of the things you gotta understand. People listen to them and it works. So, you know- I think they're more likely to consume your content as audio in a podcast than they are to sit and watch a video webinar or a replay of a webinar, right? Hundred percent. And so, like, just recognize, especially if you're in home services, these guys are in their trucks, they're driving around. You… I used to send CDs out, but really the new way that this works is, you know, it's, it's listening to the, to the replays, so. Yeah. And that's what we do. We got a box that we send out to strategy sessions and people that are ready to get started and things like that. And I do, I record, send it over to, you know, the place that does the CDs and everything. City Blueprint, I believe it is. Yep. So we send them over there, and I get a hundred of those recordings of the twenty twenty-two, you know, tree service marketing plan or whatever, and I send those out with the book and a few other goodies in the box, and it, and it works. I guess they still listen to them. I maybe need to send them into a thumb drive or something. Pretty soon. I think pretty soon, like, those trucks aren't gonna have CD players or something. I'm like, I like the CD, and I like forcing them to put it in.

Josh Nelson: Mm-hmm. So a- amazing insight here, guys. And I want– I always say this, and I don't think people, like, really grasp it. At the beginning, you're gonna have to do cold outreach 'cause nobody knows you, and you don't have a list, and you're not recognized yet. So you have to do the hard work of sending these emails and making the calls and, like, really forcibly getting those first handful of clients. But nobody should stay with that as the predominant client acquisition mode, right? Once you've got a couple clients, you convert those to case studies, right? And you start to create webinar content to nurture that cold list that you got or that association list that you got. And it's the nurture that shifts the game from chasing to clients coming to you pre-positioned to buy. I- I'm a real big believer that people have to spend time with you before they're willing to spend money with you. And so they spend time with you in the form of watching your webinar or sitting on your podcast and listening to it, or reading some of your email nurtures that you send. And you know, that's, that's what Wesley did. He shifted from chase to positioned inbound marketing on a consistent basis. And I think this was very well explained, Wesley. So thanks for, thanks for breaking that down for us.

Wesley Smith: No problem. I would just say too, if, you're a little apprehensive to get on video, so was I. I was very apprehensive to get on video.

Josh Nelson: That's one of the biggest- That's hard to believe, man, 'cause you've got like a s- you got a great voice. You got a great look. Thank you. You, you wouldn't think that would be a concern for you at all.

Wesley Smith: Thanks, man. No, it's always been one of my biggest fears, man, for whatever reason. I don't know. It's like one of those, one of those things, right? Gives you the heebie-jeebies. But yeah, it's like, if y- once you get outta your own way with that, like, it's just gonna be a game changer. You just gotta say, "Screw it." Like, we're all here for a finite amount of time. Who cares, right? Let's just get it done. Let's grow the business. Whatever it's gonna take to do it, just get outta your own way and go do it. And I think if you just do it a few times, you're gonna be like, "Oh, it's not really that big of a deal." You don't have to go back and watch yourself on video. Just get it done. Get it, you know, get it out there, and, pretty soon you'll be comfortable with that. And that's the only way people really have a chance to get to know you, other than talking to you on the phone, right? Yeah. So you need to be able to do that so that you can build that relationship without you having to have a thousand conversations. You have one conversation with the video, get your content out there, and then if it's gobbled up 200 times, that's your little salesman on the side working for you all day, every day when somebody wants to search for something that they're looking for. So you just gotta do it. You gotta get outta your own way and just get it done. That's, that's what I had to do, and that's what everybody in the group has to do.

Josh Nelson: I think, I think that's a great sh- like, vulnerable share, right? Th- all of us at the beginning are not confident, right? We don't wanna do webinar 'cause we're scared that we're not gonna sound good, we're not gonna look good, we're not articulate, right? We don't think we have that ability. And I felt the same way. Wesley felt the same way. But once you do it a couple times, you start to develop the confidence. You start to recognize, like, it's not gonna be perfect, but it will improve from one time to the next. And we've all had to go through that journey. So if that's you and you're like, "I don't wanna do webinar. I don't wanna be on camera. I don't wanna do podcasts," like, get over it, right? Start doing the work and start doing the positioning. That's the one thing that separates you from where you wanna go right there. That's it. Because once you do that, you're hitting a larger audience without having to do any more work, right? Yeah. More people are finding it and doing it. And so…

Wesley Smith: And I'm coming from a 16, 17 year sales background. I mean, phone and in-person meetings are, that's one thing, but, you know, video recordings and lives and presentations, things like that, is a whole different thing. So it's like you just have to practice it, and I think just the reps is what'll get you through it. Just, just get it done no matter how good or bad you think it is. And then once you get over it and get it done a couple times, it's not gonna be a big deal. So, that's what I would say would be the biggest game changer is just don't, don't try to stay in the cold outreach mode. Get your content out there, because once people start coming in and booking appointments without you having to really do much at all, it's, it's a really nice thing in your business. And, and that's when you're gonna see the growth that you want is when people are coming in, just kinda ready to buy. They've already kinda, they are- they're already sold on your process and what you're teaching. It's just a matter of getting the pricing things out of the way, logistics, how it's gonna work, how are you gonna get login access to this and that, blah, blah. It's really all that matters on- once you get all of it out there. So, just do it, get it done, and, move on to the next one.

Josh Nelson: Love it. Great stuff. So, Dallas Bass is watching live. He's got a question. He said, "You know, when did you start promoting the Facebook group?" 'Cause I think that's a great strategy, right? We-we're gonna aggregate the names and emails in the database, and then we're also gonna try and aggregate them into a Facebook group. And I think the real question he's trying to ask is, you know, how did you get the first ten or so people and how did you go about building from an empty group to, like, a stocked group?

Wesley Smith: So what I did was I created my group, really early on in the process because one of the parts of the training is whenever you give somebody the opportunity to book an appointment, it goes to a thank you page and you tell them what to expect on the upcoming strategy session. But oh, by the way, we've got this free group. Go ahead and click on this link right here and, you know, request access to join the group and we'll approve you. So I had that set up immediately on my thank you page and just had the group set up, right? And so when I set up the group, there, yeah, there was nobody in there at all. So I started, you know, inviting people in. Sometimes I would put a couple of current clients in there and then invited a few people in through the strategy session. Most people, if you give them the opportunity, they will click on it to go to your group to request to join, right? So one of the things I wasn't doing the entire time, which I probably already had their email address anyway from them booking a strategy session or coming in from a different angle. But now we've got a tool plugged in to where they actually request their email address if they wanna learn more about tree service marketing or something like that. So they get in the follow-up sequence whether they want to or not now. But that's a– it's a good way to build your group up and then, you know, so just have everybody kinda, you know, invite them once they join for a strategy session on the thank you page, and then you can promote it too all over the pa- place. So I've got a YouTube video once in a while I'll do, "Hey, come join the, you know, the Facebook group. It's free. Just click on this link right here, request to join." I think I have a selfie video on my social channels, inviting people to come to the free Tree Service Marketing Facebook group. It's free to join. We go over all kind of stuff. It's gonna help your business grow. Just click below, and then I get people coming in from that. 'Cause when you start running a lot of ads on your Facebook page or Instagram or wherever, they're gonna be coming to your page a lot. So when they come to your page, I have like a pinned post at the top with a video. Right. And so they can just kinda… They– That's the first video they see. And I think the one I got on there now is pretty terrible. It's like a year and a half, two years ago. But it's, I mean, it brings people into the group and, you know, they keep joining. I'm gonna redo that one pretty soon. But that– you just ask them to come over there and join, and they will. And then also with my email nurture list, I'll sometimes put a link to the Facebook, "Hey, did you join our free Facebook group?" So you just gotta put it all over the place. I think I did a podcast episode about the Facebook group, got ten or twelve people join right then and there. But promoting that group is good because it's kinda your little, you know, fish in a barrel strategy at that point. And, you know, engagement in the group's a whole 'nother story, so there's things you can do there to kinda get the engagement going too. But it works well, and you want all those people in one place, and why not be your group than somebody else's group?

Josh Nelson: A hundred percent. So it sounds like the answer is don't sweat the fact that there's not people. Every group starts with nobody in it at first. Go invite some clients, go invite some people that you happen to know that are in the industry, and then just make it part of your process to build up that group.

Wesley Smith: Yeah. And it works good. You know, you got everybody in there and so it's… You can– What I'm gonna start doing is probably having like a live once a week inside there- Mm. -and just making sure I… What, what you can do is email everybody. You know, "Hey, we're going live in fifteen minutes in the group. You know, click here to join." And then, you know, just to make sure you just kinda keep that engagement going because some people, if they, if you're not friends with them on Facebook personally, with your personal profile, they're not gonna see and get notified that you're going live in the group. So there's a lot of little tricks and stuff to the group method. But just getting the group, you know, going and getting people added to it consistently, will help you get it there. And then once you get it there, you can figure out kinda how to monetize the group.

Josh Nelson: Love it. Love it. Give you some helpful if that's helpful just to get some tips. Dallas says, "Very interesting. Thanks for the tips." Thanks, Dal– thanks- No problem. -Dallas. So let's, let's shift gears again. So we talked about landing clients and kinda how you've positioned yourself and some amazing insights. Again, I wanna see some dollar signs in the comments if that was some good insights on how he's positioned in landing clients. But I wanna like shift now. Let's talk a little bit about delivery and retention, right? Because it's one thing to get clients. It's a far different thing to, like, deliver and knock it out of the park for them and retain. And I think you've done an exceptional job retaining your clients at a super high level. So if you can just talk a little bit about, like, kinda what the delivery model and the retention model looks like for you.

Wesley Smith: Yeah. So we onboard clients when they sign up and enroll. We basically have one of the account managers is now also project manager kind of operations, and we've reduced her client load to only like ten clients or so, some that she started with, got a good relationship with. And so I've got three account managers. So the strategy for that is onboarding, getting all that stuff done, and then over to an account manager. And what we do is our model, like I just made a decision early on in my business that I wanted to do everything virtual, and I don't think there's any right or wrong way to do it. There's some people with an office, there's some people that are all virtual, and they're successful in the group. So I just kind of decided I was gonna go the virtual route. And so, my account managers are virtual. They're across the country. We all do Zoom meetings and things like that. And so the fulfillment side of it is white label. So we have white label SEO provider, and we have a white label web development, part of the seven-figure agency these people are, and then, a pay-per-click manager for the clients as well, that's white label. So the margins are really good. And so you basically… That's how we do the fulfillment side of it. And our account managers know enough to be able to kinda intelligently explain what's going on with the SEO, what's going on with, the Google Ads campaign or the Facebook or, you know, Instagram or anything like that. So they kinda know what's going on with it, and they know who to go to, in our Slack channels for questions and answers or modifications or changes or whatever. And so that's how we kind of deliver. And every new client's got a dedicated account manager. And then I've promoted, our first account manager to kinda like account director, account manager director type role. Also, she does project management and a little bit of operations too. So she's kinda head of the account management department because th-there is some-… Things that you'll have to get involved a lot in that maybe perhaps somebody else could take care of and as you try to grow your company. So she's actually above those account managers that kinda helps with escalations, things that need help, and then I kinda jump in if I need to, if it's like a total, you know, stage four fire or something like that, I gotta get involved in it. But, fulfillment is basically for us, it's white label. We do a couple of things in-house. Actually, I don't think we really do anything in-house. Like we have a couple of clients that we're still doing Google My Business posts for. I've got a guy that I hired for one-off stuff like that. But for the most part, it's a complete package for white label SEO, complete package for website development. And so I would say get your website development in order sooner than later 'cause that can be the bane of your existence for the agency model if you don't get that part in place, right? Yeah. Get a good partner for that or have a good system inside your agency for that part of it 'cause that can be a lot of back and forth, if you don't watch out, especially if you sign three or four clients in a row, that can be pretty tough to manage to get all- Create a bottleneck, right? Oh my gosh. So yeah, have good people you can trust for that or if you're doing it in-house, just hire somebody good for that part. And then the pay-per-click side of it as well. I mean, we set everybody up pretty quickly with pay-per-click, call tracking, things like that. The web development's kinda going on simultaneously. And then from there we onboard them with our SEO team. So, that's how we operate. We really don't do anything in-house, so to speak, other than, account management and then project management on the front end with the web development and things like that.

Josh Nelson: I love it. So I mean, you've got this structured model where you can deliver a great r-result. So you found really good white label providers that you can rely on and you knock it out of the park for the clients, and that gives you almost unlimited scalability to take as many clients as you want and control the process 'cause it's your team that's dealing with the client, onboarding the client, d-dictating the strategy, but without having to hire 1,000 web developers and pay-per-click people and SEO people, yourself.

Wesley Smith: That's correct, and there's challenges on both side of that, I think. If you know, if you have everybody in-house, you know, you're probably paying for, you know, more sometimes for somebody who you don't have a lot of work for to do, right?

Josh Nelson: Yeah. Or it's kind of a juggling act, and I can see that, and I've been down that road too. So it's, it's really…

Wesley Smith: And it's not a perfect idea either with white label. Sometimes things fall through the cracks or the ball gets dropped or, you know, tools mess up or whatever, you know? So there's not a perfect, model either way. Just for me and just for my business, it just made the most sense to go that route, for me kinda when I hashed everything out and decided who's gonna do what and everything else. And so, we try not to give the account managers too many technicalities 'cause I don't want there to be a humongous learning curve there. And, that's the challenge is getting them ramped up to kinda know what to do with the clients and things like that. So the white label providers are great. We have a monthly meeting with pretty much everybody and a biweekly meeting with our pay-per-click account manager. So yeah, I mean, it works really well for us. A-and again, there's, there's really no perfect way to do it, you know? There's gonna be little things here and there, but it works really good. It's pretty seamless. The scalability is there. I think we could double in size with pretty much the way we've got it set up now, just more account managers, which I'm planning on doing. And so, at the rate it's growing, I mean, we should be, you know, like you were talking about earlier, you know, seven figures by the middle of the year, run rate and, just keep on growing from there. And I think it's just a matter, you know, training more account managers, bringing them in, and then just making sure we have our white label steps and stuff dialed in, make sure everything's kinda on point with all of that.

Josh Nelson: So good. It's a great scale plan, right? Basically, you're, you're ma- your next hires are account managers. Eventually, maybe you're gonna need a manager to help oversee the account managers. Since it's white label, you just need w- basically the one project coordinator, right? To kinda coordinate client and team and getting the stuff done. Do you ever perceive yourself taking yourself out of the sales process? At which point, you know, you can just kinda look at this business and watch it run.

Wesley Smith: Yes. Yes. And that's something that – Yes! As a salesperson, as a sales and marketing person, you know, you have that tight rein on it. Right. Like I know I can do it, I know how to close clients, and I wanna keep doing it. But yes, I do, and, I've seen some others in the group successfully do it. I know you're doing it, Josh, really well. So it's like I know I can do it and I'll get to that point. I do see that. I'm, I'm not sure exactly what the revenue threshold is to get to that point. I don't know if that's, you know, seven-figure run rate, if that's 100K a month. I'm not sure what that looks like. But I'm happy to bring somebody on and train 'em and, you know, let them start, you know, closing these clients down because, I mean, it can be duplicated and it can be… You know, once we go over the packages, there's salespeople out there that are probably better than me that I could hire, right? And you start probably realizing that once you get out of the way. And you know, a lot of times I don't wanna be like, you know, walking away from sales appointments 'cause we already signed four clients for the month, right? Right. I wanna also… If that's somebody else's dedicated position, then they're gonna wanna keep going on more and more and more appointments. Yep. So yes, I'm probably the bottleneck in some cases with that. So yeah, I do foresee doing that at some point, yes.

Josh Nelson: So good. Yeah, I think my vision for Seven Figure Agency is to help agencies make more money, have more freedom, and have a bigger impact, and I think that comes full circle when you remove yourself from account management, you remove yourself from operations. But really full circle is when you're no longer selling. And so, like, you're the face of the company, you're promoting the company, but the clients come in, they get sold, they get onboarded, they get serviced, they get retained, and that's, that's really when you're, you're free to do whatever you're most passionate about, whatever your strengths are. I think you're, you're just like a whisper step away from going to that next, level.

Wesley Smith: Yeah. It, it doesn't seem like it's too far away. I mean, I think I could duplicate what I'm doing now and… You know, a lot of it's just discovery calls to find out if this potential client's gonna be a good fit for us. Right. So a lot of that is something that the salesperson can do and just kinda make sure they whittle out some of the people that, you know, just aren't a good fit for whatever reason. Maybe they're a startup or they don't have a marketing budget. You have to talk to them for a minute to get that, get that out of them, right? Yep. So sometimes that 10 or 15-minute conversation, if you have so many of them, you'll tend to kinda sometimes not show or not do it and, or maybe send them a text, "Hey man, I'm not gonna be able to make it," or something just because you don't think they're gonna work out. But they could have just sold a company and they got plenty of cash or you just never know. Yeah. And so I've, I've been, you know, I've, I've judged a book by its cover before when I shouldn't have, and somebody signed right up and I didn't think they were going to, right? So if you have a salesperson, I think you'll, you'll You'll less likely miss some of the… You, you won't miss as many of those, and you'll have more appointments and probably sign more clients, if I had to guess.

Josh Nelson: Yeah. So good. A- any questions, guys, before we wrap up here? Amazing insights, man. You know, congratulations on your growth. Congratulations on your continued success. Thank you for kind of breaking down how you chose the niche, what your model looks like, how you're delivering, how you're retaining. You know, kind of in closing, if you had to give one piece of wisdom to that agency owner that's just, you know, they're, they're kind of stuck and they're figuring… Wanting or trying to figure out how to go to the next level, what would that wisdom be from you?

Wesley Smith: I would say hire a coach who's been down the road that you wanna go down, right? Like, you don't know what you don't know, and sometimes you know even what you're supposed to be doing, but you're just not implementing it because you don't have somebody there kind of with step-by-step process. The collaboration, the group, and all the amazing people that are inside the training and the group and the mentorship and all that stuff, that's really the difference maker because you're gonna hold yourself accountable to other people that are doing big things in the group. I mean, there's people doing what I'm doing. There's people doing double what I'm doing. There's people doing triple what I'm doing. There's people doing less than what I'm doing. So you have this mixed bag of all these different types of agency owners, and you learn from each other, right? I learn from people doing less from me. I, I learn from people doing more than me. So if you're in a group like that, a mastermind, kind of a networking opportunity, where else are you gonna go to where you can be around people doing the exact same thing that you're doing? And so that's really something I probably should have done earlier, is just get the coaching and not worry about what the price is or spending the money because you're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna make way more than that because you're gonna know what to do. You're gonna have that roadmap. You're gonna have that, you're gonna have the direction you need to go 'cause a lot of times, a lot of success is just knowing that you're doing the right thing day in and day out and not wasting your time on something that's not gonna move the needle, right? And I, and I had that whole question in my head too, like, "I wonder if what I'm doing is actually gonna grow my company," right? You don't know what team members to hire next. You don't know what content to put out there and promote. You don't know, you know, every little thing that's involved, like what billing processes to use, how to package your services. Like, there's a million different things that go into it. So if you're, if you're networking with local people, that's great, but maybe they're contractors and you're trying to do an agency or maybe they're doctors or maybe they're… They're not gonna know the exact, you know, things that are gonna move the needle for your business. So I think just getting a coach and a mentor is gonna help because it helped me for sure, and this training really just uncovers everything that you need to really kind of move your business forward and grow it. So I think getting started sooner than later with a, with a, with a proven, you know, roadmap, to grow your agency is probably what I would say. And just, don't waste any time. Just move forward with it and just keep on going with it and don't, don't back down. Just keep going.

Josh Nelson: Awesome, man. I really appreciate that. I really believe the best investment you can make is in yourself, right? Yeah. You could buy more ads.

Wesley Smith: Yeah, you could build a better website.

Josh Nelson: But invest in yourself. Get the training and the support that you need. Really well said. Really appreciate all the plugs for the Seven Figure Agency, man. You're crushing it. Congratulations. Guys, if you have follow-up questions, post them in the comments here. Be sure to reach out to tag Wesley to thank him. Like, he's given his time. He's given some of his best insights. I think this has been an amazing interview. So Wesley, thanks so much for joining us. Guys, thanks for joining us and listening in, and, we'll talk to you all again sometime soon.

Wesley Smith: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Thanks, Josh. Thank you.