How Ryan grew his Agency from $17K to over $70K Monthly Recurring over the past 9 months

All right, well, Hello and welcome. Thank you for joining us on today’s special session. This is a part of the seven figure agency podcast. It’s our agency success interview series, where we interview successful digital marketing agencies in variety of different verticals in a variety of different areas. And I cannot be happier today to be interviewing Ryan Davis from Davis, construction marketing. Ryan, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you for having me. honored to be here, man. And

Ryan will tell the story. But as I understand he’s gone from like 17,000 a month recurring to over 70,000 a month recurring over the last 10 months or so has a lot of great insights to share with you on how to really grow your agency quickly land clients on a consistent basis and make the pivots necessary so that you don’t get bogged down doing everything yourself. So without further ado, Ryan, just kind of introduce ourselves, introduce yourself to the group kind of who you are the types of clients you work with, etc.

Yeah, man, thanks for the intro. And, you know, my name is Ryan Davis. And so our company is Davis construction marketing kind of a long name. But we we we service concrete coating companies, the guys that are doing your your garage floor coatings, things like that, like your epoxy garage floors, and then also painting contractors. So we service those two niches. And I want to say it is the 13th of October 2020. We’ve already closed five deals this month. Um, and I think that Mark says that, like, I want to say like 43 or 44 clients, something like that.

And yeah, man, it’s, it’s going great.

Yeah. That that’s, that’s amazing. So yeah, hit a like, if you’re watching this on Facebook, or a yes in comments, if you’re interested in learning how he’s getting that type of growth and kind of what’s working best for him. I know, I’m excited about it kind of unpacking this further. And I was just hearing his his success story. So you and I start kind of got together about was how long does it go, like nine months ago, a little bit less than that?

Actually, I signed up with seven figure agency. And I’ll never forget, it was March 1, but it was my birthday on on March 2, or I’m sorry, sorry, sorry, may 1 is when I signed on. And I and but my birthday was May 2. So I kind of was like a very exciting time of like, I’m turning 27. And I’m going to do this, like, you know, I’m gonna, I’m gonna pay that thousand dollars a month, or whatever it was I paid. And you know, I’m gonna commit to this, it was May 1 of this year 2020.

Awesome. And I guess what were what were some of the challenges you were trying to face? What were you looking to solve for in your agency at that time.

So, um, at that time, we had,

I want to say like, like, 15 clients are like, 14 clients. And it was, myself, my wife. And that was it. And so we were just, like, so busy. Like it was it was crazy, but we were happy because we were making a little living and, um, and we’re at about 19 k in recurring revenue. Um, but I just had this desire to go to the next level, you know, I was like, I just knew that, that, you know, I knew that God had big plans for me. I, I just knew it. And so I was searching for something. Um, previous to joining this program. I I joined this program for Billy Gene is marketing and i and i, but it was like, it was there wasn’t great support. It was kind of like, here’s the course Good luck type of type of deal. And so when I talked to your, your sales guy, forget his name, Arnaldo. Yes, he’s the man by the way. I talked to him. I talked to him. And I’m like, Look, man, like, I am not looking for a course like, so this is a course. Like, just let me know, because I’m looking for something more hands on. And he was like, No, I promise. This is not just a course I promise, man. And I’m like, I’m like, Well, you know, let’s do it then. And so I was looking for more hands on approach. I wasn’t looking for a course I set it and forget it course. And so that’s what I found here, man. Awesome.

So it sounds like you had already kind of dialed in how you were landing clients. You already had the niche. It was more about how did you build the team and the procedures? Right? Was that kind of the main thing you you joined for? Like what were like two or three of the big challenges you were looking to solve for at the time?

Yeah, I didn’t know what to do next. I’m like, I just knew I I had a guy that I was in communication with Lyle Horst. And he was telling me Look, dude, like this is what you could do. We had a similar structure. We run Facebook ads for clients, and he’s like, Dude, this is what you do. I actually reached out to him to have him, mentor me. And he was like, Look, I’m too busy, but I can’t. And I’m like, gosh, so I wanted to get to the next level. I just didn’t know how. So I was looking like, Okay, how do I get from 19? k? 200? k? Like, how do you do that? Like I didn’t even know, like what to do. Like, literally, I didn’t know what to do next. I just knew that I was tired of working from 5am to 10pm, with my wife every seven days a week, basically, you know?

So those were the Those were the things you were looking to solve for what were some of the things because obviously, you’ve you’ve gone from, you know, that was like 1720 K to 70. Plus, now, you’ve built a team, what were some of the things you put in place in order to make that happen?

So some of the things we put in place is, in terms of people, we we first got an account manager. And I actually talked to Jeff about that Jeff Fisher, and I thought I needed a marketing assistant. And he was like, No, you need an account manager. And I’m like, What is an account manager? Like, what does that mean, in my, in my company, and so, but that’s what we did. First, we hired an account manager. And that way, clients weren’t texting and calling me at 7pm on Sunday. So that was kind of cool. We had a kind of,

kind of like boots on the ground person, if you will.

And so that was first and then, and then we hired a fulfillment person to take some of the fulfillment off my shoulders. Because I was, you know, up until we had like, I want to say, like 25 clients, I was I was doing all the fulfillment. So I was, I mean, you can imagine. So we did that. And then there was a couple other fulfillment roles, like a social media manager that we hired to do some organic stuff. And so that was kind of like a people, we put in place account manager and fulfillment. And we’ve got some really cool software’s that you guys recommended, go high level, things like that, that really, you know, automated some things. So yeah, those were some of the things we put in place.

That’s awesome. So So putting an account manager in place about how many clients Did you have at that, at that point when you hired that position? So I think that’s one of the like, I really believe the two first positions is operations, like doing the work, and then dealing with the client communication. And it sounds like those were the first two that you brought on. How much time did that create for you? And how hard was it to find people for those roles?

Well, we hired her I think we had about 23 clients, I think it was 23 or 25. in there. Um, and so we, we took your guys’s I, you know, advice in terms of job description, put it on indeed, and that and that’s where we had success was indeed, I wanted to find somebody local. So we could have company events like we just had on Saturday.

And I love that I want to hear more about that. That seemed like a cultural celebration event with the team. That was awesome.

It was so cool. And

so we did indeed, we hired local use your job description. And it took a lot off our shoulders, not in the beginning took we were like diving into training. So you know, that was a thing. But that was really, really cool, though, to get it took my leadership skills to the next level is like how do I how do I tell somebody what to do? But But now it’s like, amazing, you know, like, clients come through the company, and I don’t even talk to them. You know?

That’s awesome. That’s awesome. So amazing, amazing execution on that. Oh, and Josh, one thing I forgot.

I know this isn’t necessarily recommended, but it is it is my story is I hired a salesperson. It kind of like this guy, like, fell into my lap. His name’s Danny. And I taught him everything I knew about sales. And so that was a big deal for us, too. I was fully capable of having the sales calls. I’m not the best salesman ever. But I you know, I was fully capable of getting the job done. And he fell into my lap, he needed a job. I said, Okay, this is what you’re going to do. I told him everything I knew. And so that was a part of it, too. Like, he had two sales calls. They came into the company, they onboard it, and then boom, they went to the account manager and then fulfillment. And so I don’t you know, I didn’t, I didn’t even talk to people, you know.

So it was kind of cool. That’s amazing. Yeah, it’s I mean, it’s not I mean, to me, what we all want our business is a business that can scale right to provide the money we need. So we can pay the bills, live our desired lifestyle, but more importantly, the freedom so we can do what we want to do the things that we do best. And it sounds like you’re kind of in that freedom creation phase in the business by putting these people in place, an impact, right, knowing that what we’re doing is impacting the clients. It’s also impacting the people we we hire, I think you’re already like kind of planting the seeds of impact in the team that you’ve got. It sounds like you’re hiring local, and you’re trying to build that local team Talk to me a little bit about that.

Well, I, I really had that inspiration hit me from you, actually, um, I know you like that. And I like that too. I, you know, I, you know, I’m just a people person. And, and so, we do have nine people in the Philippines that do one specific thing for us. But we have four employees now here in the Phoenix Valley. And I thought it was important. And really, the main idea was like, hey, I want to get together and have lunch together, I want to go golfing together, have little events. We just took everyone to Top Golf. And that was pretty fun. If you guys don’t know what Top Golf is, you’re missing out on a lot of fun. But we we took everyone there. And we just got to like, get to know each other. And I just I just had the vision of having a bigger impact inside of our company, if we had the opportunity to communicate with each other in person. Like, once every 60 days.

No doubt, something powerful happens when you’ve got a team and you know each other, you like each other, you spend time with each other. Everybody’s aligned towards the same vision and the same mission within the company. I think that’s that’s a big part of your rapid ascent and the success that you’re having. What was the What was it? You guess? Was it a one year celebration? Or was it a milestone celebration that you guys were all hanging out at top golf?

Well, I quit my job last September, okay, in the month, early in the month, and we we we formed the LLC October 15 of last year. So technically, our one year in terms of the LLC being formed, was October 15. But I really quit my job last September. So we were just celebrating, hey, it’s our first year in business. And I was, you know, I’m still surprised how excited our team members are to be a part of a team like, with, with all of like, all the figuring things out in the beginning. And then like, you know, obviously seeing like, our imperfections, um, they’re, they’re super committed. And it’s, it’s pretty encouraging.

That’s amazing. That’s, that’s awesome. Congratulations on your success in that one year to accomplish what you’ve accomplished in one year is is extremely impressive. So kudos to you.

And not just me. Yeah, it’s not just me, first and foremost. Like, I give all praise to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Without him, I would not be here, let me tell you that. And without my beautiful wife, Kristin, she does operations for our company. She’s actually in the other room killing it right now. And I she does not get enough. Praise and, and, and gratitude. And so it’s like, there’s, there’s things that I do for sure. And Josh, I’m sure you could speak on this leaps and bounds over this, but like it is, it is a whole team effort. And glory goes to God 100% I’m glad I’m glad you I’m glad you said that. I’m glad that that’s that’s how you feel about it, you have such a humble spirit. And you know that, you know, it comes from above. And so that’s that that’s powerful. So let’s talk a little bit about kind of going back to the foundation, the the niche, right, with a part of this podcast, we’re always talking about

something about the business model, how you land clients, how you deliver results, but it all starts with with a niche. When you were starting this agency about a year ago, what made you decide to focus on the niche that you’re in.

So for me, um, before I started this, this agency, I was a sales and marketing manager for a painting company that also did concrete coatings. So I really was in the niche before I knew what being in the niche was really. And so I did in home sales for that company. I knew how the office was supposed to run. I knew the marketing, I knew the ad spend, I knew literally everything about the business. And then before that, I was a sales and marketing manager and a commercial estimator for a like traditional flooring company, and concrete coatings company. So I really just kind of kind of fell into it. Um, and so one day, the company I was working at before I quit was Steve Holloway painting. He’s still a client of ours today. He was our first client. They were looking to get more leads. And this was before I even knew what like a marketing agency was I didn’t realize this was a thing until, like, literally about a year ago. Well, a little longer than a year ago, about about two years ago is when I learned that running ads was a was a thing. Um,

and they were like looking for more leads. And so

you know, this guy was Steve, I love this guy. He’s still a mentor of mine and, and he was like 61 I think at the time, maybe 62. And they weren’t More leads, and they were like, Ryan’s 25 years old. He’s gonna learn Facebook ads. And so I just like got initiated into this, this learning how to generate leads on Facebook.

And so that was so you worked for this company, you kind of cut your teeth, you learn how it worked. And then and I guess you just decided Alright, now I’m going to do this for other companies like this was that was that how it happened? Or what kind of what was the next evolution in this process?

Yeah, and so they initially, they, they kind of told me, Hey, this is what you’re gonna do, I learned it. And I had a little bit of help along the way, I had a guy who helped me a little bit, he taught me how to boost post on Facebook. That’s what he taught me. And then I took, I took it and ran with it. But, um, so I was doing that for a little while and we were killing it, I was I was getting like 80 to 100 leads a month with about 20 $400 in AD spin. So I was getting 80 to 100 leads a month 20 2400 bucks and add spin. And I personally wasn’t making the money I wanted to make, um, I you know, the company was doing $2 million a year Home Improvement company, I just didn’t feel like I was I was being fulfilled a little bit in terms of, you know, finances. And I always wanted, like, I always knew I like I had something great, like planned for myself and I and I knew it wasn’t doing in home sales at that company at that time. So I’m like, Hey, I wonder if I could get leads for other companies like, like, I just wonder. Because I was I was either going to start a marketing company at that time doing what I’m doing now. Or I was going to start my own concrete coding company. And the coding company required more money, like a lot more money, like I saw, I’m like, you know what, let me just throw this against the wall, see if I can, if I can do it, because it’s only going to cost me about 1000 bucks to get going. and ended up costing less than that to get started. But and so I was like, You know what, I actually ran into another, you know, company that needed some help. I’ll say, hey, look, man, like, if you want to, if you want to have me help you I can I can help you, I’ll charge you 800 bucks a month, you cover the ad spin. And we’ll see if it you know, see if it works. He let me do it killed it for him. And, and then I got another referral. So my first like, couple of clients were referrals, technically. But that’s how it started. Man, I was like, just kind of in a perspective of, I wonder if I can do this for somebody else. It’s a low cost entry in terms of you no money. And that’s how it started, man.

That’s awesome. So like the lesson for a lot of you guys. And I think a lot of people miss it, when it comes to choosing the niche. Everybody wants to go and find like this magic niche somewhere that’s got the right metrics and the right average transaction value. And the best place to start always is I’ve worked in this before, I’ve got some experience, I kind of understand the industry, if you can latch on to that. If you look at you know, a lot of the people that have been on this podcast, that was their their foray, right, they had worked in that space, or they worked with a client and got some good results, or they had a business and that type of business. That’s going to be the easiest path into an issue. Even if you look at the niche and say, this might not be that that lucrative. So that that’s all so you did it. You got the first guy, how did you get your first handful of clients in the in the niche? Like what was the approach was that word of mouth or? Let’s talk talk a little bit about that.

Well, the first guy, I forgot this important part. The first guy was the guy I was working for. I actually sat down with him, I said, hey, look, I’m gonna start my own thing. You know? And he’s like, at first he was like that super, super cool. I’m excited for you. And then like, towards that conversation, he was like, wait, like, what about my marketing? Right? And I’m like, and I’m like, Well, that was actually a good segue, because I wanted to ask if you’d be my first client, and he was like, absolutely. And so I charged him 1000 bucks a month, plus ad spin. And I was like, thank God, cuz I’ll be honest with you, I was living with my mom at the time. Um, and, and, and I started this business out of my mom’s office, I’m not gonna, you know, it was so interesting. Um, I could go back, so, so far back and everyone would be like, Oh, my gosh, but I started this. So my mom’s office. And so that thousand dollars a month was like, amazing, right? It was a big deal, right? Oh, it was a huge deal. Um, and then I was actually running a painting did and I ran into another painter in the, in that same County, and I and I knew I’m kinda and I kind of talked to him. So I ran into my second deal at a painted literally the, the third client was a referral from from the first client. And then, plus my first three clients, and I was making about three grand a month on that. And that was like the first like, month or two. And I’m like, and I kind of was like, figuring out okay, how do I get clients now and so I I started running Facebook ads. Um, and in the beginning, it was actually a messenger ad. And it was crazy dude. I mean, I was running this messenger ad and people were messaging me, I’m like, responding at like, 9pm at night. And I’m like, just trying to get a call, but like, book a call with me, I promise, like, and I ended up getting a couple clients from that. And so that’s kind of how I got my first five clients. It was it was kind of a hustle, man. I love it. I love it.

So yeah, you can’t be shy about reaching out to the people you’ve worked with Rick to reaching out to your sphere of influence. Usually, that’s where your first handful of clients are going to come from, um, talk to us a little bit about the service, like, what is it that you actually do for these clients? How do you charge for it? How do you package it? What does that look like in your, in your world?

Yeah, man. Um, so when I first started, I was charging that thousand bucks a month. And, and then I was also offering an $800 a month option, I ended that like, very quickly, but that’s what I started with. And for 800 bucks a month, I would run your Facebook ads for you. And that was it. I was just running Facebook ads. That was it. And I would, and I would basically send your leads to a Google Sheet using Xavier. And that’s how I delivered your leads. Um, and a lot of it was actually boosting a post. And then we would my wife and I would be on the back end of that boosted posts, answering the comments and the messages, converting those to leads for our clients. And for the thousand dollars a month, I would do the Facebook ads, the same thing. But I was up, I would also do your organic posting, I would post to your page, five days a week, one day, or one time per day. And so that was my two packages when I first started. So now Now we do similar. So basically, for 1550 a month plus ad spin with a 25 51st month we’ll do Facebook ads. And it’s a little bit better now. But Facebook ads will do your organic posting, we give them high level. And

really that’s it for the 1550 a month. And then we don’t know what you’re doing with high level is dropping it onto a pipeline, and doing some lead nurture follow up once the lead comes in through text message and phone.

Yeah, yeah, uh, and you know what, that’s a big deal to a lot of these guys. And so we have a really cool snapshot, I now own a concrete coating company with my family that’s doing very well and sweet. I’ve like implemented this snapshot into their account. And so I just use that for everyone else. And it has all the campaign’s triggers, and you name it in there. Um, and a lot of these guys are blown away by that. But that’s all we do for 1550 a month is Facebook ads, we deliver pretty darn good results. And then we have a middle package, we have a small, medium and large and middle packages is all the same things Facebook ads, organic posting CRM. But we also do the Google ads, we use 51 blocks, if you’re in if you’re in need of a of a nice white label provider for PPC SEO websites hit hit them up, Brittany and Michael are great. And then we also offer Reputation Marketing, we use get more reviews, works fantastic. And, and then we’ll also build a website in that in that package, if they need one, we’ll build landing pages for whatever we need. And I have a third package, which I’ve only got one person to sign up for this completely right now. But it’s 40 $500 the first month, and then it’s 3500 bucks a month reoccurring. And that one just is everything, you know, the package one and package two covers, but it includes SEO as well. So that’s kind of what we’re offering. And, you know, obviously everyone’s taken the smaller package, it seems like but, you know, we still get a nice 2550 on that first month from that package. So, yeah, but that’s kind of what we’re offering.

That’s awesome. So like 1500 1550 a month, that’s kind of what the average customer is paying. And the main focus is generate leads and inquiries with a system to follow up and convert those at the highest level possible. Obviously, you get this dialed into a science because your clients are really really happy with the, with the results that you that you generate.

Yeah, you know,

one of the cool things that that I that I have,

you know, is is the experience working on the on the on the actual business, you know, for the coating company for the painting company, I’ve been there. I know what it is to sell in the home. I you know, I know all about that. Um, and so, one of the things that is extremely important with our clients is the sales aspect. So like, what do you do when you get the lead? And so I typically am able to kind of like, talk to them about that too. And I feel like that’s a big deal. Yeah.

And you know, but you conclude that with any client, basically, look, I’m going to generate the leads for you, I’m going to put a system in place to follow up, and then I’ll help coach you and your team on how to sell these leads into book jobs.

Yeah, I don’t. Like in the beginning, I was on the phone a lot, like training guys on how to sell better, and how to like, how to have a better office. And so I, I don’t offer it now. Cuz, you know, I’m just too busy to do that. But yeah, but I but every team member knows to keep an ear out. Like, if they need help with it, I’m more than happy to do it. We just don’t like throw it up up front. But they everyone has an ear out if they need help with sales, or how to call people and set appointments, all these things, like I try to get on the phone with them. Because I know it’s just going to help help them close deals and help them pay us more, you know,

no doubt, no doubt.

So someone, Thomas is asking the price on the second package, again, it gets the audio cut out how much is the price for the second one that included the reputation and PPC.

So that one is 3500, the first month and 2500. reoccurring? Yeah, and everything’s plus ad spin, you know, we recommend a specific amount of ad spend, but

what kind of what kind of spend you find in your market is required in order to kind of grease the wheels, so to speak.

On Facebook, we recommend that you spend 80 to $100 a day, you know, you can get away with spending 20 bucks a day, if you’re an owner operator, you know any and all you need is 30 leads a month or 20 leads a month. But the guys that we’re working with a lot of them have, you know, multiple crews. And so I know that to get them a specific amount of leads, which is, you know, 50 to 150 leads a month, I need 80 to $100 per day on Facebook. And I’m on Google, we just throw it out there we say we recommend $100 per day. And the minimum though to work with us, we need 40 bucks a day for Google and 40 bucks a day. For Facebook, it’s kind of like a minimum to or it’s not gonna make sense. Right?

So it sounds like 1500 to 20 $500 a month management fee. And then somewhere between 2500 to 5000 a month, recommended adspend. Is that right? Somewhere in that territory?

Yeah, like, if they take the lowest package, which a lot of guys do. is really it’s not that much. It’s like the minimum mount is like 1200 bucks a month, but Okay, yeah, it’s like 2500 bucks a month for the for the ad spend roughly plus that 1550 management. So I mean, it’s a it’s a decent amount of investment for these guys, you know, huh?

Yeah, except they’re not used to advertising or, you know, they’ve just been doing the pennysaver like that little flyer thing that gets mailed out. And you’re coming in saying, let’s let’s, let’s dump 3500 bucks a month into your online marketing? It’s a little bit of a

ask,

how long do you find it’s taking between between when they sign up? And when they start to see return on investment? And okay, I can see this makes a lot of financial sense.

Yeah, that’s a good one. Um, so really,

I would say in month two is that is typically when it happens. Now, if they’re in a larger market, like, if, if the audience size on Facebook is like 800,000 and up, we can just pump out so many leads that a lot of guys will have that return, like within the first month for sure. You know, um, so it’s pretty cool. You know, like they can, they can close quite a bit of deals.

So but

if you’re in a smaller market, like you only have a couple hundred thousand people running the Add to takes a little time, it takes a little time to get going and get things ramped up. So I would say month number two for that one. Got it.

Very, very, very cool stuff. So So let’s talk a little bit about where we’re, you’re getting the clients. So you’ve gone from 20 K to over 70 K, a handful of clients to it sounded like, how many Was it 45 clients? What were the clients coming from, you know, what’s working for you in terms of client acquisition?

Yeah, so really just, you know, when I first started, really figuring out how to try to land clients like that whole perspective, which was about when I had like, five clients. Um, I was doing Facebook ads, we were doing the messenger ads and then the messenger your ads turned into lead gen objectives. And that was, that was the whole thing. And in itself, I mean, we pumped out so many leads, I mean, I just have Google Sheets just full of like hundreds and hundreds of leads. Tons of owner operators, which was cool. But, and then it turned into like, a little bit more, you know, complex ads, you know, running conversion, ads and traffic and all these things and retargeting. But that’s, that’s where we land our clients is all Facebook ads. Um, I’ve, I’ve landed a couple clients, from Facebook groups. Um, I think I might have landed like, five clients from Facebook groups, that’s kind of like a hidden secret is

in our space, and the coding and painting space are some really big

Facebook groups. And so I would, you know, I would post in there, hey, this is what I’m doing. Here’s a video testimonial. messaged me. And I landed a couple of clients there. But for the most part, it’s it’s all been paid advertising on Facebook, to land all of our clients.

That’s awesome. And you’ve got you’ve got a really dialed in, you did a really nice, deep dive walkthrough of kind of how your landing clients for the seven figure agency members last couple a couple weeks ago, and it was amazing. And thank you so much for sharing because you have some really innovative things you do for client acquisition through through Facebook. Daniel’s asking, what’s the average cost to acquire customer for you through Facebook? If you have an idea on that?

If Yeah, I mean, I can tell you that. With our retargeting like the funnel that I talked to you guys about video view traffic conversion, those leads end up around like 30 to like 45 bucks per sorry, per booked call, huh? So these are guys that see an ad, they book their own call, they’re getting enrolled into a to a campaign in high level. And then my sales guy talks to them. And, you know, that’s that that’s what I mean by those, you know, 30 to 45 bucks for that 30 to $45 per qualified

appointment or per person until the point which is which is really good is really Yeah, really good. Really good cause for a targeted lead in a specific vertical. Well, well done.

Now is asking, Oh, go ahead. The second. The second aspect to that is that’s the funnel that I’ve that I’ve kind of developed. But if I go straight for conversions to like, like a look alike audience like that, those can be like, around like 50 to $100 per book call. Hmm. So a little bit higher. And you got to ask yourself, Am I willing to pay for that? I am at this point. But yeah, so three, the warmer audience 30 to 45 bucks. If you go straight to conversions, it tends to be a little bit higher.

Got it. Ricky Ricky’s asking about targeting. Daniel says, Thank you. I think you’re part of the membership. So there’s a deep anybody that’s part of seven figure agency. There’s like a two hour long training that Ryan did, where he walks you step by step through the targeting and the three different steps. So I don’t want to rehash that too much on this session. But if you need help finding it, just shoot me a pm. Um, Chris is asking if Chris Novick is asking if you do any cold calling.

Really? Not right now. Although I’ve done so much cold calling in the past, but No, I don’t. I don’t I don’t do it right now. I’m not that I’m a you know, post to it. But just I don’t do it right now. Yeah,

I think you know, the beauty of it is once you’ve got some client, case studies and lens, you can start to run ads and get clients to come to you preposition to buy, right? And that’s where we all want to get to in our agency, because that’s when you shift from chasing prospects down to having the prospects come to you. I think you’ve been an exceptional example of getting that done. And seeing like a rapid ascent within your within your business.

Yeah, 100%, man.

So so let’s talk now we’ve talked about we’ve got the niche. We talked about kind of what the business model looks like what we’re selling. It’s three packages, monthly recurring fee, very systematized service offering, talk a little bit about how you’re getting the clients and you’ve got a sales guy now kind of in the middle. So you don’t even have to do the sales meetings for the most part, right? It comes in scheduled into his calendar, he takes them through a sales process and either gets the yes or gets the No, it gets flipped. So flipped over to an account manager that does the intake process and kicks it off. Let’s talk a little bit about the fulfillment like how does the work get done once the client gives you the card and it kind of now it’s like, okay, let’s get to work to get that ROI as quickly as possible.

Yeah, um, so, you know, they pay us. They onboard we have a launch call. And in that launch call, I have the account manager Jasmine. She’s awesome. By the way. Then I have Tori in that launch call. And he does our, our Facebook fulfillment on the media buying, if you will. And then sometimes I’ll jump on that call if I, if if I want to, if I need to, or something like that. But really, it’s just jasmine and Tori, they do the launch call. And we have everything in Google Drive. So they have a launch call template, she, they have a whole, you know, SLP on how to do the launch call, get all the information. And they do that in about an hour to an hour and a half. Because sometimes we actually do, we set up their business manager and we do a couple things that we don’t want to do later on. So sometimes it’s an hour and a half. And then after that, well automatically through Zapier, when they sign the document, I mean it creates the Slack channel creates a project and teamwork. It does all these things, which shout out to Danny Barrera told me to do that. So going back to, you know, the fulfillment, after the launch call Tory going to teamwork, he’s got the task and the task template. And so he knows how to do everything. And so the timeframe is from the launch call to the time their Facebook ads go live. It’s five business days. So we might extend that as we get busier, which I’m kind of feeling like we might need to extend that to seven days or 10 days. But right now it’s five business days from your launch call. Your Facebook ads will go live. And so, you know, we use teamwork. It’s great. Um, we feel like it you know, it works great for us right now. But yeah, I mean, it’s super simple. We use slack to communicate. So Jasmine might hit up Tori and say, Hey, Tori’s this little thing over here. And we might hit her up. Hey, this little thing over here. But yeah, it’s it’s done really through teamwork and slack.

I love it. So you’ve got it. You’ve got a pretty systematized where do you like how often do you find yourself doing the launch partner doing the work behind the scenes? Where have you kind of already gotten yourself out of that, and you’ve got the team running with it? You know, the lion’s share of the time?

So like, I just hopped on a launch call on. When was this? I think I did it on Friday. Yeah, it was on. I think it was Friday. I hopped on just to like do a training, if you will. And I wanted to kind of revamp and let him know. Like, let jasmine and Tori know exactly how we want it done. How to do it right how to build value, how to build a relationship in five minutes, things like this. So I did that on Friday. And I and I think they’re good for another month or two. And then I might hop back on and just kind of show them. So, you know, but we’re kind of new still like as far as hiring these people like it? Yeah, I mean, like my, my account manager has been with us for four months. Now. The Tory’s been with us for like, I want to say like he’s in his second month, maybe like six weeks or eight weeks. So like, I’m like, out of it now. But I’m like, kind of like in slack. I, you know, I find myself in Slack, kind of like still training them monitoring it making sure that this standards are set that they know what to do and how to do it. Yeah, so I’m not doing it. But I’m like back, like,

kind of overseeing it very closely. Yeah. So there’s, there’s a mental shift you had to make that all of the all of the listeners or watchers either had to make or thinking about are going to have to make at some point, which is, well, if I’m the guy that owns the business that they bought from, and I’m going to hand this off to an account manager, aren’t they going to be mad? Right? They thought they were hiring me and now they’re getting somebody else? How did you address that in your own mind? And kind of what’s been your experience as you kind of shuffled your way out of being the central point of communication with every new and existing client?

Yeah, that’s a big topic. I will tell you this, especially because, you know, I’m like the face of the company if you will, you know, Ryan, I know he’s, you know, he come from in home sales. He knows all about the business and all this so they all want to talk to me. I just had a guy was it yesterday? Oh, yeah. Yesterday, and he like hit me up on Facebook Messenger before the call. Hey, man, I’m so excited to work with you. I’ve been following you for this and that I’m I’m very out there. So like, if I see somebody book a free strategy call, I go friend him on Facebook, and I’m doing anything I do. I just friend him because I want them in my in my friend list. Just in case I because I want them to see what I’m doing at all times. And like oh, like while they’re missing out. Um, but uh, yeah, so it’s a big topic. Um, but I will tell you this all the clients that come through our new system, they talked to Danny on this on the on the sales call. They talked to jasmine and Tory during the launch call and and and on not involved. They don’t have an issue. Um, when we’re still training all the all the clients that we had previous to jasmine and Tori, and they still want to, like, text me, it doesn’t happen as much, but there’s like three clients that still are, like, holding on to me, you know, they’re like, No, I know, Ryan, I’m gonna, I’m going to text Ryan, cuz he’s my buddy, you know, so we’re still training them. But, um, it’s a process I learned from Jeff, the biggest thing that I that I’ve done is when somebody texts me on Saturday and say, Hey, Ryan, you know, this thing? I just texted him back and say, did you send this to Jasmine question mark? And that’s all I say. And they’re like, Ah, crap. Yeah. Like, what am I doing? And so I just slowly train them like that. And out. So I have three clients that we like a week call in our company, we call them high maintenance. They all want to, like text me, so we call them height, maintenance. Um, but really the, like the training, it’s actually like, you’re training your clients, you’re training them to do what you need them to do. And it’s a process. And I’m not gonna lie, I had one client cancel on us, because he couldn’t call me all the time. He he actually canceled on us. And I was like, You know what? Let him go, Hey, you can’t make everyone happy. That’s okay. Um, so it’s a, it’s a big deal man on on how to do that, right. And the biggest piece of advice I can give you on that is like, join the seven figure agency, and get Jeff Fisher or somebody else as your coach and ask them how to do it. And it it’s amazing, though, when clients don’t call you for stuff, it’s, it’s truly amazing, man.

Yeah, and you know, you’ve made the you’ve made the transition quicker than most likely, like you’re talking about hired sales, account management and operations in relatively quick fashion. Some people take two, three years to get to the place like okay, now I’m ready for my ops manager. Now, I’m ready for my account manager. I think a lot of it has to do with simplifying the service offering. And then putting some systems in place and getting the right people in the right seats. How did you like, if there was like one or two key lessons on how you made that transition from you doing everything, marketing it, selling it, fulfilling it, and then managing it to retain it to to like transitioning to having this team? I know, it’s early, and they’re still getting trained up for like, two or three, like, key lessons on how you made that

transition? Yeah, so I would use a acronym, i, k TA, which is, I know that already. So getting out of that perspective, like, like, so if you come into the seven figure agency program, or if you’re running a business by yourself, get the I know, that already sent them out of your head. Um, and so that’s what I came in with was like, okay, like, I know, I’m doing okay, but what do these guys have to offer? And you guys were telling me to do things you guys were telling me, Hey, you know, hire an account manager, I know, it’s gonna be a little bit hit on your on your profit margin, cuz you’re going to pay for this, but do it. Um, hey, organize your, your, your package, take that out of your package, put this there instead, you should do that. And having that, that perspective of listening, taking advice. That’s the biggest thing that has benefited me in terms of like, you know, getting from here to there. Um, because, trust me, I’ve been in a place before where, you know, I’m, I’m pretty stubborn. like growing up, my dad tried to teach me how to throw a football better and things like this, but I wouldn’t listen, because I was too hard headed. And so I came into this with an open mind. So you guys told me to do this? do that? No, do it this way. You should try this. And when, when I listened. It was it was it was very simple. It’s like, okay, like, okay, hire an account manager, have this structure, have a package charge this much? Do monthly checking calls, do all these different things. And it’s very, it’s, it’s given me the ability to get clear on what I should do. So it was, it was really easy. Okay, hire an account manager. Oh, well, we grew like this. Okay, higher fulfillment. Oh, this is awesome. I can do this now. You know, it was it was that simple.

That’s awesome. I like that acronym, right? Because if you think you know it all, you’re not going to ever learn you’re not going to be open to it to different ways of doing things. That’s great. So Daniel’s asking a question. I think it kind of transitions nicely to the next topic, which is client retention, right. So now you’ve got all of these clients, and you’re doing a great job, but like, what kinds of things are you doing in order to create the great experience and in order to retain at the highest level possible?

Yeah, it’s a great topic. Daniel mentioned, do you get in touch with everyone? Of course. Do we do a monthly check in call that’s scheduled. That’s with jasmine, we have like this check in call template with notes and questions. And she, you know, does a great job. And we’re continuing to get better at that, um, one thing that we’ve implemented is sending out a little gift to all the clients. And I was very surprised how they love this. We started out really small with a coffee mug with our logo. And I got so many texts from clients and emails and everything. Thank you so much. I was like, wow, I’m so we’ve done that. We know we sent out a little gift. We we do monthly check in calls. And I think those two things are, are a big deal. But also like the communication, we have a ticket system as well, that is in teamwork that Jeff, again, shout out to Jeff told me to get this ticket system in place. That way, when a client has a question and issue a new ad of this, of that, they just submit the ticket, and it sends them an automatic email. And then we communicate with them step by step, hey, we took you know, we took care of this on the ticket, we took care of that, hey, we’re doing this, we’ll let you know when we’re done. And it’s that communication, that line of communication is always open. Um, so that’s what we’ve done. We have a lot of room for improvement. I’m, I’m still learning, like, I just talked to Danny, the other day and Danny’s like, Hey, get proactive, don’t be reactive. And so I’m like, I know, I’ve heard that before. But while Danny like, he opened my eyes, so now we’re learning again. And I’m like, okay, so one of the things that that we’re doing now is we’re going to get proactive. So every little step of the way. Email, hey, just let you know that we did this. Hey, just let me know that we updated this. And so I think the line of communication, the little gifts, Josh, you’re like, like, if you guys don’t know, Josh, Josh is the man of gifts. Like, I’m not sure if you’re like this at home. But the gift boxes, the little gifts, the shirts, the little I mean, we got to do a better job at those gifts, man. Because those those actually make you smile, you know?

Yes, the things that you get in the mail that you’re not expecting outside, like you’re paying for a monthly recurring agency service, you don’t expect to get the thank you card, you don’t expect to get a welcome box, you don’t expect to get something. And so the reason it has an impact is because it’s unexpected and above and beyond the call of duty. And it creates that experience. All credit for the gifts that we send from seven figure agency go to my wife decennia. She does an amazing job planning that stuff out picking it and making sure that it gets centered in a smart time horizon.

Yeah, yeah. So we have a lot of room for improvement in terms of client retention. But the biggest thing for us has been going through this program and learning what others are doing. And, and then the communication. I love it.

I love it. So as you look at this scale, right, as you look at kind of where the business goes, next year, and the year beyond that the growth rate that you have, what are some of the positions you’re thinking about, or things you’re going to need to change in order to to keep up with the demand and keep the service at a very high level?

Well, I have one account manager managing everyone right now. And I and I know that she’s like, maxed out I can I can tell. Um, and so Jeff, last month, we had a call and Jeff was like, again, going back to being being teachable. I was like, Jeff, this is where we’re at. It’s in our one account manager, he goes, wait, can you get another five clients and then hire another account manager? And me, I’m just like, Well, Jeff has given me all these things of these past six months. Okay, Jeff, I’m gonna do that. So that’s our next thing, we’re gonna hire another account manager, that’ll free up Jasmine from a couple of tasks. So that’s one thing that’ll be huge. And we have our fulfillment guy, which is, which is great. And I might, um, we, we might hire an operations manager, my wife does the operations. She really likes doing it, though. So I mean, I think the reality is, is we have so many Facebook ad clients. And it’s extremely profitable. Really all, all we really need is we could probably use a web developer. Um, that way, you could just build landing pages and, and websites in house versus white labeling them out. And then the account manager, maybe a marketing assistant too. But I have Danny who does sales and he can, he can do a lot of business development. So really, it’s like the account management thing is, is what’s going to be the biggest issue.

Yeah, I think it’s probably around 25 clients. And then once it’s above 25, the start that account managers got to they’re starting to read Blind a little bit, and you need to think, okay, now it’s time to start recruiting for that next account manager to keep the workload balanced. So the person doesn’t stress out, but it also so that the clients get a high level of service every step of the way. So it seems like you’re speaking smart on those lines, in terms of you mentioned vas versus internal staff. Talk to me about your philosophy on, like, where VA comes into play off shore versus the core team at your office here in Phoenix?

Is Phoenix, right? Yep, yep, we’re in the Phoenix Valley. Um, and so, I’ve used I’m a guy that I’ve used for a couple things, um, some really cool stuff. But um, like the ones that we have, like on, you know, on payroll, there’s, there’s nine of them. And we run a lot of boosted posts for our clients and messenger ads on Facebook. And we have this very strategic way of Imagine seeing an ad. That’s a beautiful, you know, two car garage, transformed, you’re like, man, I’d love to have that in my garage. You’ve Josh, probably in your area. You’ve probably seen one of our clients OCD flooring, you probably seen their ads before. If you’re on Facebook, I have Yeah. Well, you might as well sign up, man, you will come out and give you a free quote now. Yeah, right. But, uh, on these ads, the before and afters are just beautiful. They’re I mean, they’re kill shots. And so the strategy is people will message and hey, how much for a two car garage, hey, how much for my patio. And we have a SLP of how to respond. And my VA s are responding, you know, seven days a week 8am to 8pm, Arizona time. And so we have nine of them. They’re just responding, converting people from, hey, I’m interested, how much to thanks for your interest. We don’t get up ballparks. We need to set up a free quote, appointment. Each project is different. We got to come assess the project. You know, what is your phone number? You know, we’ll reach out for a free quote appointment. And they’re like, okay, here, here’s my phone number. And then we send that to the client, we don’t get their phone number, address all that stuff. And so that’s what they do for us. They’re just responding to messages, comments. They’re inviting people to like all of our pages. And they communicate with the clients if there’s questions on a specific thing, through high level, to the client via text or whatever. So that’s what they do for us literally, it’s just one thing. Um, and trust me, I’ve, you know, I’ve tried to use mini chat for this. And I’m trying to implement mini chat a little bit, but with the complexity of the questions people have to ask, like, imagine what you would ask you like, hey, how much for my patio floor, I want to get my pool deck coated on my patio. But there’s these cracks, Hey, can you guys do this? It’s pretty complex with a chatbot. So we, you know, I’ve just had the person on the

other side there to engage, but they’re working from a list of predefined variables, right? If they asked this, this is what you’re going to put on. So they’re engaging with people on social media, and in your two way chat on high level?

Yep. Yep. And so we’re learning new slps every every week, you know, a this question that you know, is this answer. So that’s what they do for us. And I also use, I use the VA, they’ve done some some pretty cool things for us in terms of video editing, scraping, you know, they’ve done this really cool. scraping of Facebook groups, like they would scrape Facebook groups. It’s just crazy, man. So there’s some cool things. Yeah. I love it.

So I think we’ve come we’ve come full circle, right? We talked about the business model, how you’re landing clients, how you delivered the results, kind of how you’re growing the team and getting the work done on this has been awesome. I mean, you know, what a tremendous example of how to really get things done, right, grow and scale the business. If you have any questions, post them in while we’re still alive. We got a couple minutes left. And be sure to reach out to Ryan and thank him. Ryan, thank you so much for taking the time to share kind of what’s worked for you and kind of how you’re getting this done. This has been great. If you had like one piece of wisdom for that agency that’s just thinking about man, I want to take things to the next level. What would that be? You know, he kind of in closing up today?

Yeah, well, there’s man to funnel down to one thing. Man, there’s so many there’s, there’s so many. Um, for me, I just share with you what, what’s on my heart is, um, for me, I had a lot of personal things going on before I started this agency, you know, that like mentally it like, you know, I tell myself like, I don’t deserve this. Like, I’m not I’m not good enough for this. I don’t know if I can do this. Like, I’m not smart enough to do this. I’m not you know, I don’t know what I’m doing. And you have those self doubt. thoughts, I would ask you and I would encourage you to just Look at those as complete lies. Those are complete lies. I believe it’s from the devil, you might think it’s from the earth, whatever it is, regardless their lives. And like, I’m telling you guys right now from where I was a couple years ago, to where I’m at now is a full 180. from, from job loss from addiction from I’ve even been homeless before. Like, and now you know, I’m married things aren’t perfect, but you know, I’m married to a beautiful wife, beautiful kids business. I think we did like 75 k last month, we’ll probably do that or a little bit more this month. Like, just don’t believe those self doubt lies that, hey, I can’t do this. I’m not good enough. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to do that. I don’t have the money. all that crap. Just those are complete lies. I would I would encourage you to push through those lies. Because Because you can do it. I’m telling you right now, if I can, if I could do it, you could do it. 1,000%

I love it. I love it.

Thank you, Ryan, so much for sharing. Congratulations on your on your success. Feel free to reach out to Ryan in the Facebook group. He’s a tremendous, tremendous individual, obviously willing to share, you’ll find that’s the case with most successful people, right? They like to share what’s working and kinda give back. If you’d like to listen to more interviews like this, you know, definitely subscribe to the seven figure agency podcast. Be sure to jump into our group, the local agency success if you’re not in there. We’ve got interviews with highly successful digital marketing agencies in a lot of different verticals that have gone to seven figures. I’m sure Ryan will be seven figures. What like, what’s the timeframe here by the end of this year, right?

It’s not enough into this month. All right.

I love it, crushing it, crushing it, man. Well, thanks again. Really appreciate you taking the time and keep keep killing it. Man. We’ll talk to you soon. Thanks so much. All right.