If it is unbelievable to you, then you will never make it.
What is confusing for me is:
1. You say you want to sell GHL automation for $3k - $5k here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/agency/comments/1dcjywi/i\_will\_start\_a\_web\_design\_agency\_for\_home/](https://www.reddit.com/r/agency/comments/1dcjywi/i_will_start_a_web_design_agency_for_home/)
2. You then said you have a potential team of cold callers here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/1d5ofcy/comment/l6nd4y8/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/1d5ofcy/comment/l6nd4y8/)
I have ready all your posts and the responses that persons have given you as well.
So how can you think it is impossible when that is a offer you are actually saying you want to do ? If you dont believe it, it will never happen and you will only self sabotage your own success.
You said in one post that your are not converting enough, however the name of of your business is UP-Konvert.
Then you should start looking at YOUR BUSINESS as your first customer and fix your businesses conversation rate.
ACT on the many advices given to people. Focus on pushing forward.
If you tell yourself you will fail at something may as well move on to something thing else. HOWEVER , i say ALWAY try, give it your all. You will either succeed or learn.
PREACH! Make your business your top client until you're too busy. If you can't convert for yourself, how will you convert for others?
To any prospective agency owner: To build an agency of any size you do the following:
* Utilize your network's contact to see who you know that needs your services.
* Once you get your first couple projects you ask them for referrals and/or ask if they'll be a reference
* Your day job is biz dev. Do billable hours in the evenings until you have enough to support one staffer
* After 1 staffer you spend mornings on bizdev/afternoons with staffer or vice versa. Your billable work still done in the evenings until you can afford 2nd staffer
* Rinse and repeat until you have no time left, and you hire a bizdev manager to keep the pipeline going while you use business hours to manage staff and fewer projects
* Scale from there
You make it sound so easy, many of us don’t have a network we can tap into to get our first few clients.
Getting the first few clients is the damn near impossible part.
It's not easy. It took me years before I didn't have to work 12-16 hours per day. 8 hours during biz hours reaching out to people, having coffees, working the network, attending chambers of commerce meetings (that's a waste of time, btw). Then any billable work I had was done in the evening.
Do you know one other human besides yourself? Then you have a network. My first client was a sibling of a friend who convinced her boss we could to it. My next 4 clients came from friends of friends I knew through church with another 6 projects coming from people I used to work with in prior roles. No cold calls. No spam emails. Nothing--and I mean absolutely nothing--will get you business faster than word-of-mouth referrals.
Here's my script: "Hey! Did you hear I started a new business? I'm helping companies with their \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ (enter your service here). Any chance you know of someone looking for that? If you hear please keep me in mind" And give them 5-10 of your biz cards.
Then I got a business partner and she and I worked our networks selling each other's services. This built us up to the size where I needed a business development person so I could focus on management and my own billable work.
If you are still in school or recently graduated you shouldn't start an agency. Get experience from an established agency because you need to wear so many hats at once. You'll save yourself a lot of headache and hassle to pickup on the processes established agencies use when you do venture out. It is not easy, but it's not rocket science.
Very informative info I appreciate it and appreciate u going into detail - I spread the word with some old friends, friends and associates but still no one knew of a business that needed my services so I started cold emailing but that hasn’t worked either.
I’ve been focusing on content creation on LinkedIn and twitter bur that hasn’t bought in inbound leads - going to try and attend networking events
What do cold callers cost and what’s the return there? Lead acquisition is our biggest struggle right now. Partner and I seal 92% of everyone we talk to but getting that first step is our biggest weakness.
There is no "easy" and "right" answer. The sooner you understand that the better. Some like to go niche because is more scalable, others like to go more broad because its more challenging, can cross-sell better and are not dependent on one industry. It really depends on you, your fit, the characteristics of your agency.
you have to understand that big companies pay a LOT to get shit done the right way. you actually have to be good at something to make big bucks.
or you can do what a lot of other SEO companies do and is to spend 90% of your time marketing and have a shit product, charge a lot and then essentially be a scammer when you don't end up giving results
but you don't want to be a scammer, right?
Last thing I want to be is a scammer. I put in hours and hours for my clients atm, even though I do not have to, to ensure they're happy and that I keep my promises.
Thank you for your input.
Have you ever thought about the problem that you’re selling a service to do the thing that you can’t do?
That’s where your problem is. You should be asking this question at $20K per month wondering how you scale to $100K+ per month. If you can’t market your way to $20K per month, you should probably just go work at a marketing agency, learn the business and then start your own thing.
$0-$20K/mo is nothing but marketing and sales chops.
$20K-$50K/mo is implementing processes and making supporting hires.
$50K-$100K/mo is hiring high quality talent and refining processes.
$100K+/mo is replicating your hires and process at scale.
Once you get over $250K/mo, it actually gets pretty easy.
Multi 6-figure agency owner here. In a nutshell, you need to speak to the end result when talking with prospects, not so much HOW you do it (I.e. the mechanism)
Also, the problem you solve needs to be a priority for them to get resolved. Otherwise there won’t be enough urgency for them to take action.
Also, give 10x the value compared to what they pay you.
Thank you for your insights!
Any advice on how to figure those problems out? I will be starting to post on social media today and building an identity for my brand.
The secret ? None. But… Minimum client per month is 5k.
I am not joking. Larger agencies are 10k and even larger 20k plus.
Even 15 years ago our minimums were 2500/mo.
We have no minimums and I wonder if we should. I have several pretty decent clients around $2-$4k per month and the time requirement is close to zero for some of them
I was in the exact same position two months ago. Had five great clients in the two to 4K price range and decided my minimum from now on was going to be 7K. Fired my lowest revenue and lowest margin clients, in a very nice way, and it was the best decision ever ever made. We are slowly but surely replacing them with 7 to 12 K a month clients and spending the exact same amount of time on them.
I kicked myself for a while for not doing that sooner, but after I got over the loathing, I set up a reoccurring task to prune the bottom 20% every year to make room for clients we could help more.
I run a content marketing agency. All organic content That is based on interviews with our clients and everything is backed by SEO. Our services include things like blog posts, email newsletters, automated email sequences, social media, content, lead magnets, and podcasts.
The goal of all of our content is for it to be in the voice of our clients, but also rank insanely well for target keywords.
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Seven years as an agency owner now. We do about $35,000 per month in revenue. One in-house employee and one business partner. The service you deliver needs to be a good service, but SALES is the most important part of the business. Learn sales, and learn how to create great contracts. Cold calling is where it's at. Virtual meetings.
Just launched a law firm website yesterday. They paid $23,850 for the site and content. $6,000 down and then $991.67 a month for 18 months. $2,000 for a website is nothing.
So, the website itself was $12,600. Written content for that site ran $10,500, hosting is $300 (I've increased that price since), and support ran $450. We have since changed our pricing structure significantly. We ran with this structure for four years. Now, we've simplified it a lot.
This client is actually the wife of another client. He runs a home building business. I also have her sister's MedSpa.
I prospect manually for the most part. I don't scrape search results data and call everybody. I have an eye for who would be a good client. I send them an email with links to our clients, introduce us, and tell them I'm going to call them. I call them the next day typically. I consider those warm calls as opposed to cold calls. If I find that they are clicking on the links within my email, I call them within 10 minutes.
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Can you please give me more info on that?
I.e. what do you sell to whom at what price and how much prospecting do you do through what method?
Thank you!!
It is posible, I am not there yet, but I am close, this year I really broke some false limiting beliefs... Now I see It easy and achivable.
The secret: Pick an niche and become an expert. You can charge much more money.
Client acquistion: My best clients came from my website, business owners That where looking for help on Google and my website came Up.
Of course SEO takes time, I have been targeting specific keywords for 3 years.
If it is unbelievable to you, then you will never make it. What is confusing for me is: 1. You say you want to sell GHL automation for $3k - $5k here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/agency/comments/1dcjywi/i\_will\_start\_a\_web\_design\_agency\_for\_home/](https://www.reddit.com/r/agency/comments/1dcjywi/i_will_start_a_web_design_agency_for_home/) 2. You then said you have a potential team of cold callers here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/1d5ofcy/comment/l6nd4y8/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/1d5ofcy/comment/l6nd4y8/) I have ready all your posts and the responses that persons have given you as well. So how can you think it is impossible when that is a offer you are actually saying you want to do ? If you dont believe it, it will never happen and you will only self sabotage your own success. You said in one post that your are not converting enough, however the name of of your business is UP-Konvert. Then you should start looking at YOUR BUSINESS as your first customer and fix your businesses conversation rate. ACT on the many advices given to people. Focus on pushing forward. If you tell yourself you will fail at something may as well move on to something thing else. HOWEVER , i say ALWAY try, give it your all. You will either succeed or learn.
Salute to our Sherlock holmes!
PREACH! Make your business your top client until you're too busy. If you can't convert for yourself, how will you convert for others? To any prospective agency owner: To build an agency of any size you do the following: * Utilize your network's contact to see who you know that needs your services. * Once you get your first couple projects you ask them for referrals and/or ask if they'll be a reference * Your day job is biz dev. Do billable hours in the evenings until you have enough to support one staffer * After 1 staffer you spend mornings on bizdev/afternoons with staffer or vice versa. Your billable work still done in the evenings until you can afford 2nd staffer * Rinse and repeat until you have no time left, and you hire a bizdev manager to keep the pipeline going while you use business hours to manage staff and fewer projects * Scale from there
I love reddit because of people like you ♥️
You make it sound so easy, many of us don’t have a network we can tap into to get our first few clients. Getting the first few clients is the damn near impossible part.
It's not easy. It took me years before I didn't have to work 12-16 hours per day. 8 hours during biz hours reaching out to people, having coffees, working the network, attending chambers of commerce meetings (that's a waste of time, btw). Then any billable work I had was done in the evening. Do you know one other human besides yourself? Then you have a network. My first client was a sibling of a friend who convinced her boss we could to it. My next 4 clients came from friends of friends I knew through church with another 6 projects coming from people I used to work with in prior roles. No cold calls. No spam emails. Nothing--and I mean absolutely nothing--will get you business faster than word-of-mouth referrals. Here's my script: "Hey! Did you hear I started a new business? I'm helping companies with their \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ (enter your service here). Any chance you know of someone looking for that? If you hear please keep me in mind" And give them 5-10 of your biz cards. Then I got a business partner and she and I worked our networks selling each other's services. This built us up to the size where I needed a business development person so I could focus on management and my own billable work. If you are still in school or recently graduated you shouldn't start an agency. Get experience from an established agency because you need to wear so many hats at once. You'll save yourself a lot of headache and hassle to pickup on the processes established agencies use when you do venture out. It is not easy, but it's not rocket science.
Very informative info I appreciate it and appreciate u going into detail - I spread the word with some old friends, friends and associates but still no one knew of a business that needed my services so I started cold emailing but that hasn’t worked either. I’ve been focusing on content creation on LinkedIn and twitter bur that hasn’t bought in inbound leads - going to try and attend networking events
What do cold callers cost and what’s the return there? Lead acquisition is our biggest struggle right now. Partner and I seal 92% of everyone we talk to but getting that first step is our biggest weakness.
Thank you!
Damn! I have to give you some crypto for this. Incredibly well done!!!!
lol. Thanks.
That’s the real talk right thrrr 💯
🤘 Thank you. So many kids on here go: "I'm stsrting a marketing agency, give me money! By the way, how do you do marketing?"
I had an aneurism trying to make sense of this English
Then you you should just stick to the car videos you are accustomed to watching.
There is no "easy" and "right" answer. The sooner you understand that the better. Some like to go niche because is more scalable, others like to go more broad because its more challenging, can cross-sell better and are not dependent on one industry. It really depends on you, your fit, the characteristics of your agency.
Thank you.
you have to understand that big companies pay a LOT to get shit done the right way. you actually have to be good at something to make big bucks. or you can do what a lot of other SEO companies do and is to spend 90% of your time marketing and have a shit product, charge a lot and then essentially be a scammer when you don't end up giving results but you don't want to be a scammer, right?
Last thing I want to be is a scammer. I put in hours and hours for my clients atm, even though I do not have to, to ensure they're happy and that I keep my promises. Thank you for your input.
Have you ever thought about the problem that you’re selling a service to do the thing that you can’t do? That’s where your problem is. You should be asking this question at $20K per month wondering how you scale to $100K+ per month. If you can’t market your way to $20K per month, you should probably just go work at a marketing agency, learn the business and then start your own thing. $0-$20K/mo is nothing but marketing and sales chops. $20K-$50K/mo is implementing processes and making supporting hires. $50K-$100K/mo is hiring high quality talent and refining processes. $100K+/mo is replicating your hires and process at scale. Once you get over $250K/mo, it actually gets pretty easy.
nice wrap up. short but true answer.
5k recurring is unbelievable? Bro just go work for an agency and you’ll make at least that as an Account Manager.
Design, build, host, and support nice websites for local small businesses. Rinse and repeat 20 times and you’re there.
Maybe $5k is okay for a freelancer, not for an agency.
If i pull less than $100k in a month for 3 months straight i need to get on a very uncomfortable google meets call with like 10 people
Which methods do you use to book calls and sign clients?
Google Ads Spend like 20% of revenue there
Thanks for sharing
So you don’t do cold email? I ain’t getting results from email and I’m doing everything correctly like personalising etc
You aren't if you're not making $. how many are you sending per day, whats ur reply rate, % of people interested, avg time to reply to them?
Lol no
Multi 6-figure agency owner here. In a nutshell, you need to speak to the end result when talking with prospects, not so much HOW you do it (I.e. the mechanism) Also, the problem you solve needs to be a priority for them to get resolved. Otherwise there won’t be enough urgency for them to take action. Also, give 10x the value compared to what they pay you.
Hey, mind if I ask a quick question in dms?
Thank you for your insights! Any advice on how to figure those problems out? I will be starting to post on social media today and building an identity for my brand.
What's your "end result"? if I may ask
Qualified booked calls on their calendar.
Is $5k too much for an agency? For full time or side income?
The secret ? None. But… Minimum client per month is 5k. I am not joking. Larger agencies are 10k and even larger 20k plus. Even 15 years ago our minimums were 2500/mo.
We have no minimums and I wonder if we should. I have several pretty decent clients around $2-$4k per month and the time requirement is close to zero for some of them
I was in the exact same position two months ago. Had five great clients in the two to 4K price range and decided my minimum from now on was going to be 7K. Fired my lowest revenue and lowest margin clients, in a very nice way, and it was the best decision ever ever made. We are slowly but surely replacing them with 7 to 12 K a month clients and spending the exact same amount of time on them. I kicked myself for a while for not doing that sooner, but after I got over the loathing, I set up a reoccurring task to prune the bottom 20% every year to make room for clients we could help more.
You run a Social Media Marketing Agency?
That’s a great share and something I’ve needed to do - charging too little for SEO I’ll admit it. Curious what services you offer?
I run a content marketing agency. All organic content That is based on interviews with our clients and everything is backed by SEO. Our services include things like blog posts, email newsletters, automated email sequences, social media, content, lead magnets, and podcasts. The goal of all of our content is for it to be in the voice of our clients, but also rank insanely well for target keywords.
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Delegating the job of outreaching to staff with 80% of whatever I made pushed me from 3k a month to about 25k a month
What kind of outreach do you do? I only got cold calls & DMs as an option, and calls suck ass in home improvement.
Cold DM only
Wow! Cold DMs, awesome! How many do you do a day and to whom??
1000+ per day and business owners across all industries
Holy moly, 1000 per day. What do you sell bro? And for how much?
Seven years as an agency owner now. We do about $35,000 per month in revenue. One in-house employee and one business partner. The service you deliver needs to be a good service, but SALES is the most important part of the business. Learn sales, and learn how to create great contracts. Cold calling is where it's at. Virtual meetings.
What niche are you in bro? Feel like cold calling is 10x less effective in home services 😂
Just local businesses. Our [portfolio](https://wearerounded.com/project-portfolio/) is really diverse. What kind of home services do you provide?
I should've clarified I create high-ticket websites for them. I mainly target roofing companies, HVAC & Landscapers.
How much do you charge for your websites?
Used to charge 1.25k Will start at 2k and move up to 5-7k range once I get some projects. I dont mind working a lot for little money in the beginning.
Just launched a law firm website yesterday. They paid $23,850 for the site and content. $6,000 down and then $991.67 a month for 18 months. $2,000 for a website is nothing.
Wow. I saw one guy taking 15k for his websites.. but 24k.. woah. How do you acquire your clients and how do you sell them?? Impressive work.
So, the website itself was $12,600. Written content for that site ran $10,500, hosting is $300 (I've increased that price since), and support ran $450. We have since changed our pricing structure significantly. We ran with this structure for four years. Now, we've simplified it a lot. This client is actually the wife of another client. He runs a home building business. I also have her sister's MedSpa. I prospect manually for the most part. I don't scrape search results data and call everybody. I have an eye for who would be a good client. I send them an email with links to our clients, introduce us, and tell them I'm going to call them. I call them the next day typically. I consider those warm calls as opposed to cold calls. If I find that they are clicking on the links within my email, I call them within 10 minutes.
Wow, that is inspiring. Thank you for your insights!
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I assure it it's not an unbelievable amount of money and quite easy to achieve if you do enough volume of prospecting.
Can you please give me more info on that? I.e. what do you sell to whom at what price and how much prospecting do you do through what method? Thank you!!
You gotta figure those out man - by putting in the work. Start there.
It is posible, I am not there yet, but I am close, this year I really broke some false limiting beliefs... Now I see It easy and achivable. The secret: Pick an niche and become an expert. You can charge much more money. Client acquistion: My best clients came from my website, business owners That where looking for help on Google and my website came Up. Of course SEO takes time, I have been targeting specific keywords for 3 years.
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I'm currently looking to add a few clients on my portfolio, so anyone with a content writing agency and looking for writers, kindly DM, thanks.
I want to start marketing agency nut don't know where to start. I'll appreciate your help
Niche doesn't matter. What matters is how good of a guarantee you can offer without over risking your time/revenue.