How This Agency Owner Scaled To $1M+ A Year
===
[00:00:00] What is something that people don't get about you by looking at you from the outside, you or your agency? Well, it's a balance, I suppose, of, of who, of who you asked. It's so easy to think that, um, running an agency is all, uh, rainbows and unicorns and you just grow really quickly and aggressively and it's easy and you're, um.
Done at five o'clock every day, and you have more money than what you know what to do with. And that's not the, that is not the reality at all of what growth is, is like, um, not that there isn't a lot of good and really exciting and really rewarding things, but, uh, there is an insane amount of hard work that goes on the inside and from the outside.
I, we can get a lot of feedback from people at conferences like. Wow, this seems like an easy, easy business to run. And, and if only they, they saw how hard our, our whole team works. It's almost like there's a myth that, you know, you start an agency and then you have the right offer, and then you just make millions.
Right? [00:01:00] Right. You delegate all the work. You show up for a few hours and take back on the beach, drinking mi ties, you know, traveling the world. Exactly from a client's perspective. Um, I think too that they probably see it as we have some magical lever to just pull and push and magically leads come out for them.
Of course, you don't, you don't have a lever. Pull the lever, unk, wrong lever. No, no, I, uh, an unlimited amount of people waiting to call them. And, uh, and, and part of that is truly our client experience because we, we try to make it as magical and as Disney, like as possible. Yeah. What are three words you could use to describe your agency?
Driven would certainly be one. I like to say dependable. I hope dependable. That's something I definitely obsess about. Um, and, and for sure impactful. I think everything we try to do, we try to make it impactful. Well, knowing [00:02:00] you, as long as I have, I, I've observed all three of those, I, those, those ring true for me, man.
Um, what's your go-to work avoidance strategy? How do you escape? Well, my initial thought is work avoidance is go work on something that doesn't need to be worked on. So what, what would it be? So, so doing, going, going and working on something that shouldn't exist. Is that, is that, uh, is that your default during work?
Um, is the question more oriented towards outside of, uh, what, what comes outside of work? Yeah, when you're, when, well, yeah. Let's say you're in the middle of a workday and you're like, you need to take a break, or you just want to mentally take a, you know, a little mini vacation. How do you, what do you what, where, what's your go-to?
Oh, going on a walk, there's about a, a mile and a half, uh, loop near my house that I love going on, and I know, hey, if I need to reset in about 25 minutes, I can reset, I can think I can listen to a podcast, whatever it needs to be. Do whatever needs to be done to get back in the zone. Um, that, that is my break.
No vices, [00:03:00] no, uh, no video game controllers in the drawer? No. Uh, no. No escape patches? Nope. Nope. And if it's winter time, I'll actually drive to, uh, to Starbucks. One that's a little further away intentionally. And I won't do the drive through. I'll go inside. But just the habit of saying, all right, I'm separating, I'm gonna go, uh, we all work from home, so, uh, if it's cold, go go over to Starbucks and pick something up.
That's awesome. How long have you been an agency owner? 12 years. What is something that you used to believe about growing an agency maybe in the early days, 10, 12 years ago, that you have found to be not true? There, there's definitely a few quotes out there that feel like I, in the early days, you're just taking any advice you can get.
And, um, one of them is there are very few problems, um, in a, in a business that more revenue can't fix. And I can, um, maybe it's just me, but I've definitely gone through rapid revenue growth and I can assure you adding more was, did, [00:04:00] did not help solve that problem for us. Um, you mean you, you, you mean you.
Generated revenue and all your problems didn't disappear. No. No. That's usually when the problems are revealed, right? That's exactly right. You solved one problem and about four others that you didn't see all popped up. Yeah. Yeah. They call 'em high, high, high class problems. In your early days, again, 10, 12 years ago, were there any times where things were maybe dark and scary and maybe you wanted to give up?
Oh, 100%. Um, many, many times that I felt like giving up or. This would be so much easier to go get a job or, um, whatever the thought might be, um, or, um, maybe made a, a mistake, uh, that now I have to deal with the consequences of, or maybe it was just a really hard patch of three months and like for three months in a row you didn't make any money.
So you're like, why am I [00:05:00] working 80 hour weeks for, for what? Yeah. Um, there were absolutely, um, dark times that thank, thankfully I. Going on one of those walks will usually get me back in the mindset to get back to troubleshooting. But, um, it is definitely, uh, not the e if, if you're looking to make money, the easy way is not by starting an agency.
If you knew now, if you knew then what you know now, no. Um, so have you ever thought about maybe shutting it down? Has you ever been tempted to do that? Have you, you know, what, what were the circumstances? Yeah, especially in the early days for sure, there's been so much easier to shut it down and just, yeah.
Um, now that we're built and established, uh, I, I've, it's a such a blessing that that's not a, uh, yeah. Something that I'm more concerned about. Um, I mean, sure. We all, I think we all have hard days where you're like, should I just sell this thing and move on? And just, um, at different stages, but usually they'll [00:06:00] last for about an hour or two and then, um, get back in the mindset of, uh, back, back to growth.
So you're, you're above seven figures, right? As an agency? Yep. What was one thing that you had to change in your agency to get right? You weren't getting right in the early days that caused you to, to surpass that seventh figure mark? Uh, uh, definitely our, probably our sales process. Um, we grew to about half a million, pretty running off of referrals and maybe a conference year or two.
And, um, that. Grew to that scale, but at, at, at that point when you want, it seemed like we just needed a more consistent, reliable, and dependable outbound approach in order to really ramp and go a lot faster. Was there something, uh, maybe an advice or workshop or um, you know, program [00:07:00] that helped you to kind of flip that switch?
You've been definitely instrumental in that. Um, and installing an outbound process has been total a total game changer for us. We knew we, we could point out the clients that we really wanted to onboard, but we didn't know how to get them, get their attention and get them to come and to trust us. And, uh, that was the first, that was the single biggest piece is being able to go and prospect to them.
Um, we're able to go a whole lot faster because we're able to do that. Why? Why not just continue to re rely on referrals? Well, I suppose if, if you just kind of wanted to coast, that might be the way to go. You would, uh, um, you, you would probably certainly have higher margins 'cause you're not doing, you're not doing marketing and nearly as much sales.
But, um, it certainly is not a growth strategy. Um, yeah, if, if you're, if you're looking to grow. And since you've started doing outbound, [00:08:00] what have you found? Like what was that process like and what have you learned along the way? Well, we, so we originally started by, we bought a few like outbound courses and thought, Hey, like.
Cold callings totally the way to go. And, uh, we did that for, for a bit and, and, um, it was fruitful. It actually did, it did work, but it was also insanely hard. Um, and it also did not feel like it was allowing us to build the reputation in the way that we wanted to because if someone had been. Cold. If we had cold called them and they didn't move forward, it may have not left the best taste in their mouth either.
For our agency, when we talked about how do we hire somebody for this role, we thought this is gonna be absolutely miserable forever, has to do this. Hey, I hate my life. When we hired you and started working with you, I, the, one of the core processes of installing gift based outbound is sending them a gift and sending them something valuable to say.
Um, hey, you [00:09:00] are a very respectable business in our space and, um, we would love the opportunity to at least discuss working with you guys and build a long-term relationship with you. And, uh, and by doing that, I think it shows that we're at a, essentially a higher level or a higher class, and we truly are.
This doing the, in the sales process, we're representing the way that our client experiences after they sign on, and that felt very effective, but also very much to our company culture too. It felt good what we were doing, not just dialing another number. You guys are, are growing quite, quite healthily, and what are some of the things that are working for you?
You mentioned gift based outbound, what else are you guys doing? AI is, is, uh, I, I'm having the time of my life with that. Uh, we have multiple full-time people in our agency now just installing that and building tools for us to use and go faster. I'm also really passionate about that area of the business too.
We're able to do things that we couldn't do before and we can, we are also doing all the things that we were doing [00:10:00] before blazingly faster and at a higher, higher quality. What are some examples that come to mind that how you're using ai? So it really isn't every department, but a few examples would be, um, every lead that we generate, we track that, uh, that lead and we're able to give a report back to our clients to say, here's exactly what happened with the lead.
Were they qualified? Was your sales process that you followed? Correct. Were they looking for your services? And so a true ROI, uh, representation anywhere in the website building from content to development, to graphic design, even, um, the full, anywhere you're looking production, they're all using AI powered tools.
What is, what's the future of the agency that, you know, considering all this new technology, like what, how does this gonna have a long-term impact on the agency space do you think? It's gonna create a lot of change. That's it already has. Um, it's going to certainly, I think it's gonna continue to separate though the best from [00:11:00] the amateurs, because now anybody can be an amateur at it and you can actually just go to chat GPT Orrock and say, build me a radon mitigation website, and they'll do a halfway decent job of doing that.
Um. But for the experts like us and other agencies who are really dedicated to looking at the data to say, here's what's working, um, who are really in depth on really creative strategies and tactics and implementing that, it just allows us to go even faster than we could before. And maybe where we were limited by manual labor or expenses like that, that's no longer a, a barrier.
Some people may say that, uh, AI is a shiny object, but I think you would argue that it's actually a very useful tool. Has there been any sort of shiny objects that you've chased over the years that now you regret looking back? Totally. Even in ai, I've, so we're getting frustrated where we were having a, we attended a lot of, we're attending quite a few conferences this year, and I [00:12:00] wanted, I want our books to be absolutely perfect down to every dime.
And so I built, we built this, uh, tool where every person could just, um, literally email a picture of the receipt and the ai like reads the receipt, says what this for. It figures out, Hey, they attended this event. So it's probably in this category, it fills in all the information sphere, was it approved?
And uh, we brought it back to my CFO and, um, he's like. Yeah, but this would just be a lot easier to use Expensify, wash the Box on,
and we ended up using Expensify over here. That's actually already built. Yeah, I've been there by the way. I I totally get that. Um, in, in running your agency, how many, how many employees do you have? Right now we're at 18. What does. Running your 18 person, seven figure plus agency teaching you now about business or about life?
Well, I, [00:13:00] I, I mean, I, I feel incredibly fortunate every day because I love the people that I work with and I really respect them, and they're, not only are they hardworking, they're really talented at what they do, so I feel like I, I learn something from somebody every day. I think the more that I learn to stop and listen and let them handle things and run, um, I actually get a huge amount of value out of that.
And, um, and it lets them be in their zones of genius. Yeah. What's an example maybe of something you've, you've recently let them run with versus something that maybe you've, you would've owned or taken control over? Well, I find, I find, you know, it's so easy for them to bring in, uh, bring you a problem that they're trying to solve.
And for me just to say, go and do this, I've got the answer. And I'm finding not only do, obviously their buy-in is a whole lot higher if they come up with the, with the solution themselves and they get there. Yeah. But I'm finding sometimes they are, often, they're actually bringing back solutions that I didn't even think about that are even [00:14:00] better than that.
Oh, awesome. That's awesome. I'm reminded of the, um, the, the quote from Dave Ramsey, I think we've talked about. It's like the monkey, like the employee comes into your office with a monkey on their back. They sit down, they put the monkey on the desk. It's up to you to determine whether or not they leave with the monkey or leave within your office.
Right? That you have to figure it out. So as your business has grown now, um, what's been a tricky part about maintaining or shaping or managing your growth? It, it feels like it could, it, it could possibly be anywhere in the business. Can, uh, it, it definitely, if you take something and you, you double the output of that thing by two or three times, you definitely start to see where are the things that we have documented really well and trained really well, but also instilled like our core values into, to say, here's why we do this thing.
Um, and um, it's definitely, it tests every single department to def every area by doing that [00:15:00] is what I'm learning. What's the most fun for you right now in running your business? Definitely working with our AI team. Um, yeah, they're just amazing. Their job is to come into a department, evaluate how are they currently operating, and figure out either can we a, um, make it more efficient, accelerate the production time.
Or b, add new capabilities that we couldn't do before without adding additional labor. Nice. And um, so we basically go through every department. We, I mean, we also have a Kanban of priority of ideas and, and trying to figure out where the, where's the biggest impact and fastest ability to implement. Um, but that's what they're doing all day or every week we reassess, Hey, what can we build this week?
Awesome. That's great that you have that resource that you've built that resource. That's, that's fantastic. I love it.
So let's do a quick rapid fire. [00:16:00] A couple questions as we wrap up here. So we're catching up this time next year. What are you most excited about and what are we gonna celebrate together? It's one year from today. Doubling our revenue. Um, that's something really big. It's easy to put it. That's the easiest KPI to, uh, uh, to track.
Um, I think, uh, some of the AI tools that we're building by the time, uh, come around in one year from now, I can only imagine what we're going to be able to do. That we, yeah. Yeah. It's gonna be awesome. Yeah. Um, most overrated advice in agency growth. S
it probably, I mean, if they build it, uh, or if you build it, they will come. That's for sure. One that's easy. They will not come and they will actually never hear about you. Um, what's, what's the mo, what's the number one most underrated skill in agency growth? Underrated skill, at least as a founder [00:17:00] and owner.
Um, listening, being able to listen. Weirdest place. You've ever taken a client call?
I've traveled quite a bit, so I've probably done a client call in about every state by now. So what, what you're saying is you don't take calls from the restroom. No, I don't. That's where I draw the line.
You're a better man than me. Uh, if you could whisper one thing into the ear of every new agency founder who's just getting started, what would that be? Mm, that would definitely be, um, specialized. So find, uh, a group of people that you can solve a problem for and go really deep in that one liner that you would give to an agency founder that's thinking, I may not be cut out for this.
Um, what they don't realize is nobody feels cut out for it. Like everybody feels like they're [00:18:00] building the plane while they're flying it. At least I do. Well said. Um. Awesome. Peter, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for taking the time doing this. I love it. I love that we're having coffee and uh, appreciate you coming on, dude.
Cheers. Thank you for having me, Corey. Cheers. Yeah.
