DeepSpecialization_Josh Nelson_EP 69_Audio_Edited_V2_
===
[00:00:00] Josh Nelson: I was paying close attention to the reps at Reach Local that had the most success. And while a Reach Local salesperson could sell to anybody, right? You could sell to the roofer, the contractor, the dentist, the chiropractor. There were a couple of outliers that just crushed it in their respective markets.
[00:00:16] Josh Nelson: And most of them had gone niche specific. Like they were like, they were just working with the plumbers or they were just working with the dentists. I was like, man, how much easier would life be if you could. Go deep into a vertical if you could position yourself as the expert, all your marketing, all your delivery.
[00:00:33] Corey Quinn: Welcome to the deep specialization podcast. The show where we blend focus strategy and client intimacy in order to scale and simplify our businesses and our lives. I'm your host, Corey Quinn. Let's jump into the show today.
[00:00:46] Corey Quinn: I'm joined by the two time bestselling author and CEO of seven figure agency in plumbing and HVAC SEO, Josh Nelson.
[00:00:56] Corey Quinn: Welcome Josh.
[00:00:57] Josh Nelson: Thank you. So glad to be here, man. Really looking forward to it.
[00:01:00] Corey Quinn: Likewise, you have such a wealth of experience and knowledge that you bring to the table, and I think you're just a really fantastic guest for this audience. To kind of kick things off, could you just share with us a little bit about yourself, your background and, uh, your two businesses, seven figure agency, as well as plumbing and HVAC SEO.
[00:01:21] Josh Nelson: Yeah. So I run plumbing HVAC SEO, which is a digital marketing agency that serves plumbing and HVAC contractors exclusively. I also run seven figure agency, which is my coaching and mentorship mastermind specifically for digital marketing agencies, looking to grow and scale, you know, my, my first foray into trying to run a digital marketing agency started right after high school.
[00:01:40] Josh Nelson: I started a web design and hosting company, thought I was going to conquer the world and it was a total flop. You know, I was, I was selling websites. For 1500 bucks with a 50 a month hosting fee, I was cold calling and sitting in BNI meetings and beat my head against the wall literally for two years, uh, made no money, had to shut that down and, and, you know, actually go get a real job for several years.
[00:02:01] Josh Nelson: And, you know, I've experienced both sides of the equation where you're just working hard and getting no results in our agency plumbing and HVAC SEO actually grew to seven figures in less than two years. And so many So many things can change when you have the right model and your, your focus is geared in the right way.
[00:02:18] Corey Quinn: So, so what happened between the business where you were doing the 1, 500 websites, the BNI meetings, by the way, I'm, I'm, I'm, you put me right back in the room when I was in the BNI meetings. I was at, at those breakfast meetings and know what those are like. Yeah.
[00:02:33] Corey Quinn: What happened between that business, shutting it down, going, getting a job and then transitioning into plumbing and HVAC SEO, like what was, what was going on then?
[00:02:42] Josh Nelson: Yeah. So, I mean, basically I had to put my tail between my legs and say, Hey, I need to make money. I was getting married to my, my wife, Yesenia at the time. And I had to get a regular job. And so I worked in business to business sales. I worked at a couple of different companies, but throughout that entire period, I was a student of the game.
[00:02:59] Josh Nelson: Like I really went passionate about listening to the audio books like yours, you know, and I was, I was listening to things like rich dad, poor dad, secrets of the millionaire mind, e myth revisited. And they were all saying, look, if you want to be wealthy, you want to have freedom in your life. You have to create a business, right?
[00:03:13] Josh Nelson: You have to invest in assets. And so I knew I had to figure out this business thing. Uh, and there was something in the book, secrets of the millionaire mind that stuck out to me by T Harvick, I recommend everybody listen or read it. But he said, if you really want to start a business, you don't have to just jump out of the gates into the business.
[00:03:29] Josh Nelson: You can enter the corridor. And what he meant by that is like, if you think you want to be in an agency, Go find a job at an agency, work there, spend some time and figure out like whether you actually enjoy that business. Maybe you'll find an opportunity to start your own thing. And so I was like, okay, that's what I'm going to do.
[00:03:44] Josh Nelson: And I kind of researched the most successful agencies at the time. And Reach Local was kind of on their, on their ascent. They had grown to like 250 million. They were on the Inc 500 list. And I was like, that would be a great place, you know, to, to learn and work. And so I got a job as an IMC, Internet Marketing Consultant at Reach Local.
[00:04:03] Josh Nelson: So there's about a year did, did really well, learned a lot of things, face some struggles, right? With like the retention side and kind of the frustrations of not getting the results of my, I might've wanted. But you know, with my, my time there, I felt like I knew some things. That were different that I could apply to my business model.
[00:04:22] Josh Nelson: And so shortly thereafter, I left and started Click Inc, which became Plumbing and HVAC SEO.
[00:04:28] Corey Quinn: Okay. Fascinating. So there's a history of some crossover history with us. My background is at a company called Scorpion and there were a handful of Reach Local folks came over to Scorpion. And so I'm generally familiar with, uh, you know, Reach Local and how that business worked.
[00:04:44] Corey Quinn: I did not know you worked there. That's really great. Wonderful sales organization. They're really sales, you know, focused. And so talking about, you know, learning, learning the skills, that's awesome that you came through there. So you transitioned from working in sales at reach local, and then you, you started an agency.
[00:05:01] Corey Quinn: What was the name of it?
[00:05:02] Josh Nelson: It was click incorporated,
[00:05:04] Corey Quinn: click incorporated. Tell me about click incorporated. What was that?
[00:05:07] Josh Nelson: So Click was a generalist digital marketing agency. It was going to do websites and SEO focused predominantly on SEO. And that's, that's kind of where we started, but I knew right out of the gates, I wanted to be vertical focused.
[00:05:19] Josh Nelson: And so Click Incorporated, we decided what were the most successful verticals that we saw over at Reach Local. It was home services. It was. Medical, it was legal. And so we set up little micro sites for each one of those verticals and it was plumberseo. com and it was roofing market, roofingseo. com and dentalseo.
[00:05:41] Josh Nelson: com. And we started prospecting into each of these verticals. It became hard, right. To try and chase all the verticals, but we got some early wins in the plumbing space, joined the plumbing association and, you know, just decided we're going to forget that other stuff and just focus exclusively on plumbing.
[00:05:56] Josh Nelson: And kind of massive, massive growth from there.
[00:06:00] Corey Quinn: Sure. So as you were starting Click Incorporated, you mentioned you knew you wanted to be vertical specific or niche specific. Why, why did you know that? What caused you to believe that that was the right path?
[00:06:11] Josh Nelson: You know, I, I was, I was paying close attention to the reps at Reach Local that had the most success.
[00:06:17] Josh Nelson: And while a Reach Local salesperson could sell to anybody, right? You could sell to the roofer, the contractor, the, Dentist, the chiropractor, there were a couple of outliers that just crushed it in their respective markets. And most of them had gone niche specific. Like they were like, they were just working with the plumbers or they were just working with the dentists.
[00:06:37] Josh Nelson: I was like, man, how much easier would life be if you could go deep into a vertical, if you could position yourself as the expert. All your marketing, all your delivery on the back end of that would just be so much more magnetic and so much easier to fulfill.
[00:06:51] Corey Quinn: Yeah, I just kind of clicked for you. Sorry, I had to do it.
[00:06:53] Corey Quinn: So, you had the three verticals and uh, plumbing and HVAC took off as a result of that focus. You joined the association and sort of off it went. And you mentioned it took you only two years to get to seven figures. Is that, is that right? That's right. That's right. That's fantastic. So what was what was some of the things that caused that growth?
[00:07:14] Corey Quinn: Like allowed you to grow so quickly. What were some of the keys to your success at that time?
[00:07:19] Josh Nelson: Yeah, so if I try to compare my first agency to this Agency, like the big differences the big things that I latched on to Uh, number one was was being in a vertical right just being in a very specific market and going after that A big difference there.
[00:07:34] Josh Nelson: Number two was what I was selling. Like at the time prior, I was like, I was just building a website brochure where it didn't add any value to the clients. It was just, they need a website. I'm going to set it up for them versus I'm going to help them grow. Like I'm going to help get them ranked. I'm going to actually generate revenue for them.
[00:07:49] Josh Nelson: And then the third was the pricing model. And instead of charging 1, 500 one time, like a project, it was all recurring based. And the, the minimum I was going to charge was over a thousand dollars per month, which was a big mind stretch that until I worked at reach local, I couldn't even like get my mind wrapped around.
[00:08:07] Josh Nelson: I would think, man, they'll pay 200 a month, maybe max, but seeing these, you know, these companies paying the average roofer, the average contractor, 1, 500, 3, 000, 5, 000 per month. Just the belief that you could sell a retainer based program at that price point clicked in my mind. And, um, I think there's a lot of things in addition to how we marketed and how we positioned ourselves in that niche.
[00:08:29] Josh Nelson: But I think having the right model just made a big difference in our ability to grow.
[00:08:34] Corey Quinn: So now, two years in, you have a successful agency.
[00:08:37] Corey Quinn: At what point do you begin to coach other agencies?
[00:08:41] Josh Nelson: Yeah. So like I said, I was always a student of the game. And so I was reading the books, I was going to the seminars and the conferences and seeing the other digital marketing agencies that I was hanging out with, and a lot of them would kind of get to like the 10, 000 mark, 20, 000 mark and just kind of bubble up and sit there.
[00:08:57] Josh Nelson: And since ours went to seven figures and, and, you know, multiple seven figures shortly after that, a lot of them were coming up and saying, Hey, Josh, what did you do differently? Like, why is yours growing so quickly? What am I missing? And so armed with that and being a big student of Dan Kennedy. So always says the by product of your service is training and like your, your, your approach, I was like, I don't, I'm going to create a course.
[00:09:18] Josh Nelson: And so I created the seven figure agency blueprint, just unpacking what we did and choose, like choosing the niche and positioning yourself and selling and packaging your program wound up with about, you know, 25 people that bought that as like a one time program, went through it, Learned, got some case studies and some wins, but then quickly recognize that a course in a vacuum doesn't really change lives, right?
[00:09:41] Josh Nelson: Like the information is good, but it's the implementation that has power and implementation requires additional, you know, FaceTime. It requires additional, you know, hands on help. And so that's when we morphed it from, you know, being a course to more of a, a membership community and, you know, mastermind.
[00:09:59] Corey Quinn: Can you talk more about that implementation? So what things have to be true for someone who's coming into your program for them to get changed? Like, how do you, how do you ensure or help promote implementation?
[00:10:11] Josh Nelson: Yeah, I think that that's huge. You know, first of all, it's, it starts with goal setting, right?
[00:10:15] Josh Nelson: Being clear. Here's where I'm at. Here's where I want to go. And then actually not just. Hearing an idea and saying, Oh yeah, that would be good if I chose a niche. And, Oh, that would be good if I joined the association and started creating videos and doing webinars and launch a podcast from having the idea to actually executing it.
[00:10:30] Josh Nelson: And so what we do is through our training, we kind of map out what are the key things you need to do right now in order to start to get the appointments that you need in order to get the clients that you want to sell in order to deliver the results and retain those clients at a high level. And then ultimately the systems you need to put in place so that you don't have to do it all yourself.
[00:10:48] Josh Nelson: And so it's, it's having, you know, a dedicated, you know, meeting rhythm. It's having a place to plug in and get re inspired and learn new things.
[00:10:56] Corey Quinn: And today your focus is, is it primarily the seven figure agency? Are you still running plumbing and HVAC?
[00:11:04] Josh Nelson: It's, it's, it's a little bit of both. So we do run plumbing and HVAC SEO.
[00:11:07] Josh Nelson: That business does about 550, 000 in monthly recurring revenue. So it's still a very healthy, strong business. I've been blessed that we've got a great leadership team that we put in place. And so, you know, I think the goal of any business is that you. You build it so it becomes a business that can operate without you having to do everything.
[00:11:25] Josh Nelson: And so I sit in kind of a, a board seat in that organization. I still attend the level 10 meetings. I'm a big fan of EOS, the entrepreneur operating system. And so our team gets together every Wednesday and we talk about where we're stuck, what the opportunities are going through the scorecard. And I'm involved in that capacity.
[00:11:42] Josh Nelson: And I'm still the face at, at plumbing, HVAC, SEO, in terms of like, if we're speaking at a conference. Or when we do webinars, I actually just did a webinar a couple of minutes before this on, you know, how to get your plumbing company ranked on, on the Google map. Right. And so I'm still involved in that, but I'd say probably 80 percent of my focus is, you know, in helping agencies and what I do at, at seven figure agency.
[00:12:03] Corey Quinn: You mentioned, uh, I believe on your, on your website that you've shared that you're on a mission to help 500 agencies grow to seven figures over the next five years. I think you're probably well on your, on your path to hitting that goal. Why is that? Yeah, and we
[00:12:15] Josh Nelson: track that's not just, that's not just one of those, uh, you know, let's throw it out there into the ether.
[00:12:20] Josh Nelson: Like we track that our members submit every single month how much M-R-M-R-R we have, we, we reward them as they go through those stages. We've got a big plaque that we hand out when they hit seven figures and when they hit multiple seven figure. And so right now we've got 118 agencies that have grown to seven to seven figures, and we've got 28 agencies that have grown to multiple seven figures.
[00:12:41] Josh Nelson: And you know, that's for me, I really feel amazingly proud of that. And I can see the impact that it's having on the lives of the, of the people that we work with, which is so exciting.
[00:12:51] Corey Quinn: That's beautiful. I, you know, when I saw that I saw the 500 agencies, I love that kind of goal because It is a, it's what you call a, you know, a smart goal, specific, measurable, and so on and so forth, and it is attainable with focus, and I love the fact that you track against that, and that you have a specific number, 118, that you're against that 500, and by the way, you know, we, we have a, we share a friend in common, Luke Eggebraten, I saw that he just won his prize.
[00:13:20] Corey Quinn: seven figure plaque. So I'm so happy, so proud of him. I'm, I'm thrilled that you got to, you know, help, help shepherd him along the way. Could you unpack for us a little bit about your, your framework? You mentioned you have a framework that you work with, you work with these agencies and pursue the seven figures.
[00:13:35] Corey Quinn: What is that framework made of?
[00:13:37] Josh Nelson: So there's a couple of frameworks, but if I were to boil down like the main framework, it kind of revolves around landing clients. You have to have a process for that. Delivering world class results. You have to have a process for that. Retaining clients long term. You have to have a process for that.
[00:13:51] Josh Nelson: And then scale, right? Putting the systems, procedures, and everything in place in order to not have to do it all yourself. With the goal of making the money you want to live your desired lifestyle, with the goal of having the freedom that you want, where you're not tethered to serving the clients or doing the implementation or even selling the clients.
[00:14:08] Josh Nelson: And then ultimately the big goal is having an impact, right? We, none of us want to be here on a cash grab, knowing that what we're doing is helping our clients grow. And as we're building our team, creating career career paths for people and job opportunities into the future. And so we work that model and then we transition into a growth system, which just breaks down like the things you would want to be doing daily, monthly, and quarterly to keep your pipeline full.
[00:14:33] Josh Nelson: And then what you need to be doing in terms of your sales process to convert at 30 to 35 percent or higher. And then what you need to do on the delivery side with your onboarding and your client communication in order to retain at a target of 97 percent plus on a monthly basis.
[00:14:50] Corey Quinn: How important is it for an agency to choose a niche or position themselves as a go to expert?
[00:14:56] Josh Nelson: I mean, to me, it's the number one accelerator, right? A lot of people argue on this. I know you and I are completely aligned on this, but you know, until you choose the niche, you're going to be chasing your tail. Like you're not relevant to anybody. Other than, hey, I happen to be in your backyard and I do digital marketing services.
[00:15:13] Josh Nelson: When you choose a niche and can say you've got proven experience and you've got a proven plan, now you become attractive. Like people actually want to do business with you. There's a reason for them to choose you versus the plethora of other digital marketing people. But I think on the other side of that, if you actually want to scale and have freedom, geez, if you're reinventing the wheel for every single client that you get, you're not going to be very good.
[00:15:34] Josh Nelson: You're not going to be very efficient. It's going to require you to come up with the ideas for everybody. And so, you know, being attractive and being able to systematize your delivery. So you don't have to do it and you can get extremely good, better than everybody else. It's a, it's almost like the only option in my mind, if you really want to accelerate and create freedom in your agency.
[00:15:53] Corey Quinn: Where does the concept of productized service come into play as relates to this?
[00:15:59] Josh Nelson: Well, I think your program packaging right like as a digital marketing agency You can do an infinite supply of things websites pay per click and social media and funnels and who knows whatever Ai and whatever's coming next You want to program your program to be something that you've thought in advance and you want to productize it where it's like, Hey, for the plumbing companies we work with, this is what we think they need.
[00:16:20] Josh Nelson: Website that's built to convert, you know, on page optimization, link building in order to get them ranked, some paid search and some tracking, some marketing automation. You want to package a growth system for your clients, and you might have an upsell and a drop sell, but if you haven't pre engineered that in advance, You're just going back to like re re customizing for every client and then you can't really systematize that or be consistent with the deliverable
[00:16:44] Corey Quinn: Hey, it's cory.
[00:16:44] Corey Quinn: I hope you're enjoying this episode And I want to let you know that I have a new best selling book that has just come out That gives you my proven system to escape fraud Founder led sales. It's called anyone, not everyone. And it's been endorsed by Aaron Ross, April Dunford, Dr. Benjamin Hardy, John Rulon, and many others.
[00:17:03] Corey Quinn: If you'd like to get the audio book, absolutely for free. There's a link below in the description, or you could simply go to anyone, not everyone. com and start listening right now. What about team? What, when is the. You know, what's the right team that a growing agency needs to build? What's the first hire, you know, when, when did they hire a sales team?
[00:17:24] Corey Quinn: Like, what does, what does all that look like?
[00:17:26] Josh Nelson: And in my personal opinion, based on my experience with this, first thing you want to hire is operations, right? So whether you've got five clients or a hundred clients, if you're still clicking the buttons, setting up the website, running the paid search campaign.
[00:17:39] Josh Nelson: Structuring that work. You cannot focus on business development. You can't focus on innovation. So first position operations and or project management, right? So could be that you have one person that's project managing, you know, some freelancers or some white table providers, but you don't want to be project managing that stuff either.
[00:17:56] Josh Nelson: Cause that will take a lot of your mindshare. So position one operations. Position two is is in my mind account management because if you get to let's just call it 15 to 20 clients And you're the main point of contact for the client Reviewing the monthly reports setting the vision for where things are headed next being the person they call it Five o'clock on saturday afternoon because the site's not ranking or something along those lines You're going to start to burn out and I believe that agencies that don't hire account management after that 15 to 20 Account level start to bottleneck You And they start to have to be like, look, I'm just going to maintain at this level, or I'm going to go build that team in order to have account managers be the face of those clients.
[00:18:34] Josh Nelson: Third position in my mind is some type of administrative support. Now you might want to do this earlier, but it's just my, my kind of approach is at that stage in the game. If you're checking your emails, you're responding to all your social stuff. You're setting up your own webinars. You know, you're, that's not the highest and best use of your time.
[00:18:51] Josh Nelson: So you need a Uh, like an administrative assistant, but that can also do marketing support for you and almost be like a marketing assistant after those three roles. I think that's when we look at the, at the sales, right? It's like, Hey, now at that point, you've got an inbound engine. You've got clients coming in.
[00:19:07] Josh Nelson: Ideally, once somebody is sold, they're being managed and then the work's getting done. Really it goes full circle at that point when you can remove yourself from the sales process and somebody else is taking the sales calls. That's when you have, you start to have the freedom that you're after where mark, you know, sales are closing, clients are being onboarded, delivery is getting done and they're being retained through that relationship.
[00:19:28] Josh Nelson: And you're, you're able to lead from a top level as opposed to being in the trenches.
[00:19:33] Corey Quinn: Yeah. I love that because it presupposes that you're taking more of that productized approach and then therefore the variability in the sales conversation. Is reduced dramatically because you're, you're having a very similar conversation, especially when you're targeting a specific niche.
[00:19:47] Corey Quinn: You can have very high quality conversation and not rely on a very seasoned salesperson to be successful. You can, you can bring other folks in. What about pricing? How do you, how do you approach pricing?
[00:20:00] Josh Nelson: In my mind, I do believe it needs to be a monthly recurring fee. I don't do any projects and any of our members that are selling like a web development fee standalone, like that's an arm wrestle conversation.
[00:20:11] Josh Nelson: Look, you're just creating phantom revenue. Like just sell the retainer, right? If you want to set a fee in addition, that's perfect, but don't sell the project by itself. I think really it's, it's a mindset thing. Cause I know there's people that pay 20, 30, 000 a month. For these services, I think the minimum should be at least 1, 500 in today's market, if you're going to do website SEO, pay per click and, and other management in there, but I think there's massive price elasticity and so you should be constantly stretching yourself.
[00:20:39] Josh Nelson: Hey, look, could, you know, could we charge more because we've got more proven results because our clients are sticking around and I think there's a sweet spot between 2, 500 and 5, 000 per month. We're in almost any vertical that you can imagine. There's plenty of business owners willing to pay at that price point.
[00:20:55] Josh Nelson: And if you can deliver the goods, we'll absolutely stick with you long term. And that's separate to ad spend. So 25 to 5, 000 management fees plus ad spend.
[00:21:05] Corey Quinn: Yeah. Yeah. That, that, that seems right to me. But then, you know, you get into a question around Even positioning and messaging where today, more than ever, you're having more agencies that are like plumbing specialists.
[00:21:19] Corey Quinn: And so how do you, how do you advise folks in your group how to differentiate and position themselves in that situation?
[00:21:29] Josh Nelson: Yeah. So you're right. Like it used to be when I started this agency, I was the only one saying I could, I'm the plumbing and HVAC guy. Right. And that was enough of a unique selling proposition.
[00:21:39] Josh Nelson: You have to constantly be innovating, right? If you're in the niche and you're actually serving the clients, you should be focused on what's the problem that these clients are having. That I can bring to the table that can say, yes, not only do we specialize in this industry, not only do we have these proven results based on this program, but this is the unique thing we bring to the table.
[00:22:00] Josh Nelson: And maybe that's, you know, in today's market is not only do we generate the leads, but we put marketing automation in place in order to help you convert those leads and get them booked into your calendar. Right. But you always need to be innovating. Because if you can't separate yourself, you become a commodity and you're not going to stand out even as a verticalized agency.
[00:22:19] Corey Quinn: I completely agree with that. Talk to me about the importance of onboarding client relationship management. Like how do you navigate those waters?
[00:22:29] Josh Nelson: Yeah, in my mind, one of the biggest Determinants of your retention rate is going to be how you onboard a client right how you come out of the gates in the first 24 hours in the first week and in that first month will dictate whether like I made a good choice I'm in a good place and they'll give you the grace to stick long term or they'll be already mentally checked out and so I believe onboarding should be Welcome with a bang and appreciation.
[00:22:54] Josh Nelson: I always tell our our client our members Send a gift you're going to send a gift in the first 24 hours that they receive That they're not expecting, right. And then a welcome box. And then I really think you want to orchestrate the onboard process. The big mistake I see agencies make is they know they need usernames, passwords, they need, you know, domain access and a million different things.
[00:23:16] Josh Nelson: And so they'll send this, you know, a hundred question questionnaire and they'll send it off to the client and be like, okay, once they fill it in, we'll get the party started. That's a recipe for failure, right? Because they're busy, they don't know all of that stuff. And so while you do want to like get the information that they have, you need to orchestrate an onboarding conversation to get scheduled in the first two to three business days, max.
[00:23:39] Josh Nelson: And you're going through that onboard process with them. You're getting the usernames and passwords. You're checking the things off your, your team is calling go daddy in tandem. If that's what needs to be done so that there can't be a slowdown, like that they need to be onboarded. And then your team needs to get to work so that you can have a deliverable, a quick win sometime in the first two weeks, right?
[00:24:01] Josh Nelson: And if you're not doing that, they're going to start to feel like, Oh, like maybe they're busy, but I don't see the return. I don't see what's happening on the other side. And so just being super intentional about that experience, how you capture that stuff and the wins that you generate can make a big difference in client retention.
[00:24:19] Corey Quinn: Yeah, there's, there's a phrase that I'm familiar with in, in SAS, which is time to value. Which is, you know, trying to shorten the amount of time between they pay and they actually receive tangible value, right? And the, and the sooner they can get some value, the, uh, the, the, the quicker you lock them in and, and, and convince them even further that they made the right choice.
[00:24:39] Corey Quinn: Absolutely. When it comes to playbooks, you know, when, when should an agency start developing, uh, Sort of more formal playbooks. When should they start writing down their procedures and who should own that in the organization?
[00:24:52] Josh Nelson: I think you want to, I think you want to start building playbooks as, as quickly as you can.
[00:24:55] Josh Nelson: You know, yes, there's the tendency to as entrepreneurs to build the plane while we're in the air, and there's going to be some component of that if you're growing quickly, but there's no reason you can't figure out like, what is our main deliverable that we're going to bring to the table for the clients and from a strategic perspective, what should that look like?
[00:25:13] Josh Nelson: There's a lot of great training on this, you know, on how to build playbooks from Mike Michalowicz and from Dan Martell and a lot of different people. I like the idea of keeping it simple, having it in Google Docs, having the key thing, right? Here's the play that we need to get done. Here's a video of me explaining how to do it or my operations manager explaining how to do it.
[00:25:33] Josh Nelson: And here's the steps. Here's the checklist that you need to check off to know that that particular thing was completed. And I think you do that even if it's a basic version as quickly as you can in your agency for the key things. You're not going to do it for everything. I think that's a pipe dream, but at least figuring out the 20 percent of the key things you absolutely need to have documented and done well, you need to do that like right away.
[00:25:56] Corey Quinn: That's awesome. I'm a big fan of playbooks as well. I'm a fan of Dan Martell as well. And. How do you approach this idea of an operating system for managing your, your, the operations and your growth? Like what is, what does an operating system look like and what does that mean?
[00:26:14] Josh Nelson: Yeah. So for me, operating system, you know, obviously I immediately go to EOS, the entrepreneur operating system, the book traction, but from a, from a broader perspective, your operating system is Who's accountable for what within the business, who's accountable for operations and under operations, who's accountable for the websites and the SEO and the pay per click, making sure there's an accountability there, who's responsible to actually get it done.
[00:26:34] Josh Nelson: What are the KPIs or the scorecard metrics for each of those different areas within the business? What's the meeting rhythm that the team comes together and shares those KPIs, shares their stock points. And so, you know, CliffNotes version, right? EOS. Tells you, you should have a level 10 meeting, which happens every week with your leadership team.
[00:26:54] Josh Nelson: And that gives them the place to bring those problems, to bring those issues and to as a, as a team, troubleshoot or IDS identify, discuss and solve things to move the business forward. And then if you've got a large enough company and there's a. You know, an SEO department and a paid search department and a web development department, they should be having their own level 10 meetings that are covering those same specific things.
[00:27:19] Josh Nelson: And some of those issues get brought to the leadership level, uh, level 10.
[00:27:23] Corey Quinn: And
[00:27:23] Josh Nelson: so in a nutshell, like that would be my concept of what the right operating system should look like.
[00:27:29] Corey Quinn: Yeah. And do you recommend that agencies bring in an operating system like EOS, uh, early in early part of their growth?
[00:27:36] Josh Nelson: I do. I especially kind of, you know, once you're past that half a million dollar mark, you're going to start to want to have the operations team and at least an account management team.
[00:27:45] Josh Nelson: And so even if it's a small team, like rather than just running by the seat of your pants and having, Hey, I've got a problem and constantly putting out fires, parking it for the level 10 process can really be empowering.
[00:27:57] Corey Quinn: Yeah. Taking a step back a little bit, I'm, I'm curious about the, sort of the, the major growth milestones in your agency.
[00:28:06] Corey Quinn: You know, you started big milestone, I imagine two years in, you may reach seven figures. What are, what are some of the major milestones that, that you've been able to achieve there?
[00:28:14] Josh Nelson: Yeah, I think, you know, going to, going to seven figures and kind of getting to multiple seven figures, you know, the big thing that we shifted was the growth in the client acquisition.
[00:28:24] Josh Nelson: Like we went from 1, 000 monthly fee to like a 2, 000 monthly fee. We got active in some of the bigger groups and associations and got some notoriety. And so we had accelerated growth. As I look back on plateaus, And this is something we focus on heavily as we, as we work with agencies is eventually you're going to hit a plateau, right?
[00:28:42] Josh Nelson: And if you don't understand what's causing that glass ceiling, you're going to get stuck. And so looking back at that moment, the problem was our attention, right? We were good at doing the SEO. We were good at executing and getting results for the clients, but we hadn't developed a great onboarding process.
[00:28:57] Josh Nelson: We didn't have a great communication rhythm. And so we were just doing our work and the clients would email or they'd call and it'd be like, phones ringing, leave us alone. Right. And we started to notice our churn rate kind of bubble up to like the seven, eight, 9% And despite the fact we were landing clients, we were about to like catch up with the amount of clients we were churning.
[00:29:18] Josh Nelson: And so we really went deep at that moment. Like, all right, let's dial in this retention side of the business. Let's dial in how we're reporting. Let's make sure we've got an account management team that's on top of the ball and being proactive instead of reactive.
[00:29:30] Corey Quinn: Yeah.
[00:29:30] Josh Nelson: And we were able to get that churn down to like a 3 percent average monthly churn.
[00:29:35] Josh Nelson: And that helped us kind of go to the next threshold where we were about, you know, 250, 000 in monthly recurring revenue. And, you know, at that point it was trying to figure out like, well, we're landing clients, but we're also still churning at that 3 percent level. Why is it that we're, we're stuck here?
[00:29:52] Josh Nelson: Our monthly fee was too low, right? And so we needed to bump the monthly fee a little bit more. And so while we still lost clients, we were gaining clients on the higher side and we started to get better. At it's only got a higher price point and adding value to our existing client base through additional services.
[00:30:07] Josh Nelson: Hey, let's expand to another market. Hey, let's increase that, that Google ad spend and take a little bit of management fee on top of that. And so our average client value increased and our churn decreased. Um, and that helped us kind of push through to the half a million dollar monthly recurring revenue level.
[00:30:25] Corey Quinn: That's awesome. At what point did you hire your first sales resource for the agency?
[00:30:32] Josh Nelson: So I did it in a couple of different increments in the business. So at about half a million, I was like, I need an appointment center, right? I hired a guy that was just calling everybody and helping to set appointments and I had the wrong compensation model for him.
[00:30:45] Josh Nelson: And so before too long, he was actually getting paid a residual fee that was ridiculous just for setting appointments. And anyways, we, we, we passed on him
[00:30:54] Corey Quinn: at
[00:30:55] Josh Nelson: about the, the million and a half dollar mark. I hired a salesperson and this was a closure because we had inbound opportunities. So I just need someone to take the calls and close the deals.
[00:31:04] Josh Nelson: And he did an amazing job. Actually, our revenue increased quite significantly. But that was also around the time where our churn started to increase significantly. And in retrospect, yes, part of it was our onboarding and our communication, but a big part of it was improper expectations being set in the sales process.
[00:31:20] Corey Quinn: And
[00:31:20] Josh Nelson: so this guy didn't understand SEO and internet marketing. He was just a, I'm going to sell, sell, sell, promise the world. And that led to a. You know, uh, a high churn rate where, you know, what we found was hiring from our account management staff, as counterintuitive as that might be. People that served the client set expectations, knew what we could actually deliver, moving them into a sales role.
[00:31:45] Josh Nelson: While they might not be as aggressive as some of these other salespeople, they could set the proper expectation and not over promise. And we found that that was a really nice balance for continuing to build our sales team without setting ourselves up for, for issues.
[00:32:00] Corey Quinn: I think that's a great source of sales talent.
[00:32:03] Corey Quinn: To your point, they understand the product. They're going to be able to really paint the picture of what to expect. And then of course, once the client comes on, they're going to, they're actually going to experience that. So you're, you're keeping promises, which is really important. Switching gears a little bit here, Josh, I noticed you're really active on social media.
[00:32:20] Corey Quinn: How important is it for agency founders to Play more of an active role as, as the founder and having sort of more presence online.
[00:32:30] Josh Nelson: I think, I think it's really important, right? Cause people want to do business with people they know, like, and trust your clients, the clients that you want to work with, they're looking for content.
[00:32:38] Josh Nelson: They're looking for expertise. They're looking for likability. And so if you can get yourself into a rhythm where you're posting on Facebook and you're posting on Instagram and you're adding things to your stories on a consistent basis, And you've connected like, so as part of your outreach process, you're connecting with the people you want to do business with.
[00:32:56] Josh Nelson: They're seeing you, they're seeing your consistency, they're seeing your heart and kind of how you show up in the, in the social sphere. And I think that makes you magnetically attractive. So when clients do come in and they say, Hey, I'm interested in working with you. It's not like they just blindly saw a Facebook ad and scheduled in, they already know, like, trust you and they want to do business with you as the expert in their industry.
[00:33:17] Josh Nelson: And I think that's a massively powerful asset that all agency owners should be tapping into.
[00:33:23] Corey Quinn: What's a good place or way for them to get started? Do you think, you know, those of those who are maybe reluctant to do it or don't have the habit yet?
[00:33:32] Josh Nelson: Yeah. I think first of all, like I would suggest connecting with your prospect base, right?
[00:33:37] Josh Nelson: So however you do prospecting, if you've joined an association or you built a prospect list, you want to connect with those people on the main channels on Facebook, on Instagram, on LinkedIn. And then I would say just get yourself to a place where you can post at least once. Per day, ideally once per day, either something you're up to a client, when a picture with your team doing something, one of the client websites that you just launched, just something like that on a daily basis.
[00:34:04] Josh Nelson: And what we found is that video obviously has, it touches at a deeper level, but you have to build your confidence for that. So I would suggest doing at least one video per week. So daily post at least one video per week and you'll start to build your confidence and you'll start to build that following.
[00:34:21] Corey Quinn: That's, that's great. And in our over communicated world where we're seeing what five, 10, 000 advertisements every day to have a trusted smiling face providing value through content is definitely a way to build your credibility and authority online for sure.
[00:34:39] Corey Quinn: So I'm going to wrap up here with two questions for you, Josh.
[00:34:44] Corey Quinn: Number one. For that agency founder who is struggling with scaling their growth, maybe they were, they got into business. They're dealing with a lot of different types of clients. They, they, they love being an agency owner and they want to help a lot of businesses, but they're struggling a little bit with getting to that next level.
[00:35:03] Corey Quinn: What advice would you have for them?
[00:35:07] Josh Nelson: I think my best advice would be anchor back to your, to your vision, right? I think a lot of times when you stagnate, It's because you've lost where you want to go. You've lost a goal. You've lost a target. You've lost something you're shooting for. So get really clear on where you want to go, why your life's going to be different and better when you get there really anchored to that.
[00:35:26] Josh Nelson: And then I would say, find somebody that's already gone down that track. Somebody that's experienced those failures, has pushed through those obstacles and those people exist. So I would find somebody like that, that I could, you know, Buddy up with and get some of the shortcuts, get some of the insights to keep yourself not only inspired, but also making the right decisions that are going to accelerate you to that next level.
[00:35:48] Corey Quinn: I love that. I think far too many of us by default operate alone or independently and don't know how to ask for help. So I think that's wonderful advice. Last question for you, Josh. What's your motivation?
[00:36:01] Josh Nelson: Oh, my motivation. I, my motivation is to help as many people as I can live their desired life. Right.
[00:36:07] Josh Nelson: I know that I struggled in my early life with, you know, not getting the goals that I wanted, not getting the outcomes that I wanted. And yeah. I know that with the right information, with the right insights, everything changed for me. And so I, I just love helping other people accomplish that. And so that's my, my driving motivation.
[00:36:24] Corey Quinn: Yeah. Well, based on what I know of you, you know, we're, we're relatively new friends and I've learned so much from you just in general on this call. You know, clearly you're living that mission and that passion is very, very apparent and it's real. You've helped over 118 or 118 exactly agencies reach seven figures.
[00:36:46] Corey Quinn: Clearly you have a lot of expertise and a lot of experience in this area. Where could agency Founders who have been listening and they're resonating with this, they're nodding their head along. Where could they find more about you and your program?
[00:37:01] Josh Nelson: Uh, the best place would be to go to sevenfigureagency.
[00:37:03] Josh Nelson: com. I've got a lot of resources there. We've got our book, the seven figure agency roadmap, which kind of spells out our roadmap, so that'd be the best place to go.
[00:37:11] Corey Quinn: Awesome. Well, thanks Josh for coming on. I think this has been a great conversation.
[00:37:16] Josh Nelson: Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate the opportunity and look forward to seeing you in a couple, couple of weeks.
[00:37:21] Josh Nelson: Yeah,
[00:37:22] Corey Quinn: that's it for today. I'm Corey Quinn, and I hope you join me again next time on the deep specialization podcast. If you received value from the show, please go to apple podcasts and leave us a review. Thanks. And we'll see you soon.
