Been fortunate/cursed enough to blow up a few agencies.
Our first agency was a white label SEO agency mostly for plastic surgeons. This was 10 years before “white label” was even a term.
I got contacted by a guy who designed website for plastic surgeons. He asked me if I could help one of his clients with SEO.
Gave us 30 days to see if we could generate ranking improvements. We brought the client from page 20 to bottom of page 1 in 30 days. He was happy with that.
What I didn’t know is that he went to all the conferences and sold 300+ sites every year. Half of those web design clients wanted SEO. He was looking for a fulfillment partner. The 1 client was a little test.
1 client turned into 3-5 clients. We continuously added 3-5 clients every week… for years and years on end. At $800-1200/month a pop… it added up.
Italso broke every fulfillment system I had…
which was zero.That agency was pure chaos. Don’t recommend it… but I did it.
The second time I blew up an agency was in the personal injury lawyer space. In that niche, we were one of the first to run Facebook ads… if not the first.
To get clients, I ran a lot of Facebook ads to webinars. One of the people who watched my webinar owned the industry association. He’s still a dear friend and mentor.
He invited me to come speak at one of his events.
One event led to two. Before Covid, I did a ton of speaking at legal events.
In 6 months, I went from knowing 0 lawyers to being intimately connected with 40% of the top lawyers on Earth.
We typically added $10k-$50k/month in new biz.
Here‘s why I share this.
When people talk about scaling an agency…
…they almost always talk about 1 of 2 things.
1. Digital door knocking. AKA 1-to-1 blast your message out there.
2. Run Facebook ads to a call. AKA digital billboards.I’m not against these things.(Well I hate digital door knocking… but Facebook ads work.)
What always took us to the next level?
WHO……not how.
Knowing the right person.
Creating the right partnerships is a lost art.
The first time it happened? It was an accident.
Now we can engineer the process on purpose.
Don’t know if y’all are familiar with Dan Sullivan’s book Who Not How…?
For me, the next level was always a WHO and not a HOW.
Create partnerships with the right people and do it on purpose.
Side note: Would y’all be interested in hearing more about how we identify the major WHOs in a niche? And how we approach them for partnerships in an easy, low-key kinda way?
Random thoughts on a Wednesday in Mexico.
May the force be with you.
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