SPEAKER_01 0:00

Yup Agency owners, you know how it goes. More plants, more questions, more problems to solve. You built the machines. Now you're stuck in the grind. More revenue coming, but you're running out of time. Agency advantage. Rad starts breaking it down. Better people, better systems, better moves all around. Leadership, leverage, profit, and scale. Real world lessons from the wins and fails. Build it smarter, lead the team, take your freedom back. Agency advantage. Now you're on the right track.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Hey, what's going on, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of Agency Advantage, the show where agency owners share behind the scenes of everything they went through to scale their agency from the ground up. Today's guest is Josh Crouch, founder and CEO of Relentless Digital. And here's why I wanted him on. Josh took a job as an accountant at an HVAC company back in 2013, ended up running operations, and spent about eight years inside three different contracting businesses before he ever sold a single marketing service. Then he began giving his advice away for free. Contractors began asking him to help them personally, and that turned into an agency that now has hit the Inc. 5000 three years in a row. He also co-hosts one of the biggest podcasts in the trades, runs an automation company on the side, and built a team across the globe while picking up an Inc. Best Workplaces Award. Josh, welcome to the show. Well, it's quite the intro. Thanks, Brad. Yes. Yes. You know, I it's like every time I'm like, I don't want to make the same line afterwards, but Claude can do wonder, wonderful things, right? And it's like just go out and grab all this information. And so, and then it's like you gotta fact check it and make sure that it's correct and everything like that, and uh and all those things. So it can be a fantastic tool, but if you don't don't uh don't watch it, it can also be a tool that uh that that hurts you as well. So, you know, before us getting into it, we're both in, you know, Josh Nelson's Seven Figure Agency world. I mentioned in the intro Inc 5000 this year, third year in a row. I believe I saw like 16 agencies that are members of Seven Figure Agency made the list, and you guys were one of them. Obviously, Inc. 5000's not an easy list to get onto. So why don't you kind of like just give a high level of like what it's taken you guys to be able to be on that, not just one year, but three.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

Yeah, I mean, you know, the thing that people don't realize, so they they see they see the it's like anything else, right? You see the award and you're like, that's cool, but they don't realize, you know, it's it's the leading three year or the three years prior to that. Your growth has to be a certain percentage to get on that list. And by certain percentages, it just has to be one of the top 5,000. But the work started three years prior to that, where you really had to focus on growth and consistency in systems and processes, and it all leads up to the fancy thing or the award, you know, like it's put in the background of your Zoom camera or whatever. But it's it's one of those things that it's kind of surreal when it happens because you don't really realize, you know, you're you're so you're grinding every day, and all of a sudden you like put this application in for this award, have a CPA sign off on it that your books are good. And then all of a sudden you're like, you know, the first year we were on it, I was like, okay, we're gonna be like 1500s, 2000s, something like that. And we were like number 217, and I was literally I like froze and I sat, I'm like, are you freaking kidding me? I'm like, okay. Like you, you, you start realizing, like, wow, we are doing something kind of cool. You're like, you don't when you're grinding, you don't think about it. You're just you it's like you come up for air and you're like, okay, that's pretty cool. Uh-huh. You know, and then you're like, okay, well, let's keep doing more of that because this is fun. And uh, but along the way, the fast growth also comes with fast problems. You know, there's no there's no growth without having to solve challenges. Nobody has it all figured out. I definitely didn't have it all figured out. I, as you mentioned, the first marketing agency I worked at was the one I started.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:53

So I had no idea, like, I and I wasn't in Josh Nelson's coaching from the beginning. I think we started like a year and a half into it. And the first thing I heard was pick a niche. And I'm like, cool, I already did that. I didn't have I didn't know that that was a good idea. I just that was I was in the HVAC industry. I was helping HVAC contractors. I'm like, okay, I got that done. Sometimes you stumble into things, you just don't, you don't even know the right thing to do. You just sometimes you do get a little lucky. And I got lucky on that one because I've seen a lot of these, I've talked to a lot of these people in 7FA, and they are generalist agents and they struggle with that transition because pulling the plug on one where you're paying your bills to go all in on something that you have to literally just put some belief behind. It's like religion, you just faith. You just gotta hope it's there and trust it. It's hard. And then if you don't do it, now you're managing two separate businesses, and that is hard. It's very difficult to do.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, uh, you know, I went through a somewhat of that transition in the sense that like I, my agency, like we just serviced, you know, home service businesses, right? And everybody in Josh's program, it's like, no, that's that's not a niche. Like, you just gotta choose HVAC, you just gotta choose roofing or whatever. And I went through a phase where I was like, I'm not happy doing my agency, was looking at my client base. And it was like I was I was hiring developers and doing white label work for other agencies. And I was like, those are the guys that I love working with the most. And so I had to make that choice, right? Like, I'm going to niche down and just agency. So I wound up like doing this separate brand, and I had two companies going at the same time. I was trying to keep my agency afloat, try to launch this new company. Then you and I were talking before hopping on here. I got two kids under two. So then we found out my wife was pregnant, and it was like, we're gonna go ahead and just part ways with this book of business on my agency and just uh just focus on that one thing. But even at that time, like we were by no means in the financial position to make that choice, right? But it was like I just had to believe in the fact that this is the route to go and this is the leap we're gonna take, and uh and it all worked out for us. But it's it's tough. Like, and I talk with people all the time who like they see us in Josh's group or whatever, and I'm like, okay, so what's your niche? Like, well, you know, I've been dabbling with this, and I'm like, well, how long have you been in the program for? Like, well, six months, and I'm like, You've been in the program for six months and you haven't chosen a niche yet. It's like you and then I I begin to get what you're what you're saying here, like they're just so afraid to make that jump because of the fact that like it is just something that like this is what pays your bills, and now you gotta do this whole new thing and kind of begin from nothing again, right? Uh and so it's awesome to hear that you guys kind of began in a way from the beginning you had already chosen your niche because of your HVAC background and and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 6:33

So Yeah, and then and and knowing who that contractor is, and I think that's the that's the real value behind it. It's a you know, picking a niche sounds great. Cool, I'll just pick one. I'll just you know throw a dart at a dart board and be like, yeah, that's the one I want to pick. And but when you get deep into it is when you really start solving their specific problems, and that's the key behind the whole thing. And I got lucky that I did the reverse way of being in the industry, then doing the marketing agency on the other side because I knew the problems. I I felt the problems. I was there on the 95, and when I say 90, I'm in Arizona now. I was in Wisconsin, so it was 95 in Wisconsin. That was hot. Okay. Now I know what hot is when it's 115 in Arizona. But like I've I remember literally running around. I I some days I became a parts runner. I was dropping off furnaces and ACs, so my my guys just stayed on the job. They literally diagnose something, customers sign up for a new furnace or new AC. I'm like, you stay, I'm coming to you, dropping the equipment off. And it just like you just figure the problems out. And knowing that when I talk and when I put out content, the words I use and the way I phrase them, it it's like I can't remember what it's called. It's like uh there's a there's a term for it, but it's like a like a community impact where everyone's speaking the same language, like your team, you have like these acronyms and these these sayings that nobody else knows. It's like your own little village of communication. You know those things because you're on the inside. And when you're on the inside, people trust you more because they're like, oh, they know what I'm talking about. So it just that's where the the fo the the real value of picking an industry starts. And you don't have to just stick with one. Like obviously I knew HVAC, but plumbing was close enough. We had, I worked with some plumbers, electric electrical, we're starting to get into roofing. Like you can expand it over time, go super deep with one, get to the point where you can build a team, build some systems, then you can decide to go wherever you want after that, but you have a good base where you on you you always have leads coming in, you always have clients who know exactly what keywords to target. You know, it's just it makes things simpler for you.

SPEAKER_00 8:35

Yeah. And then once you've figured out with one niche, you have that system and that go-to-market and everything ready to go. That it's like, it's not as simple as copy paste, but in a way, like at a high level copy paste, like now let's run the same play with this new, this new industry or this new niche. We got to modify some things here and there, but in a way, like that's the that's the uh the path that you go. Uh, you know, we're talking a lot about where you're at now, but let's kind of go back to 2013. You know, you're you take a job at an HVAC company as an as a accountant. Obviously, you know, back then you were probably not thinking to yourself, like, I'm gonna run an agency that has grown to the size you guys have grown to. I guess like walk me through those those first couple of years. What then got you to the point where you went from, hey, I'm I'm an accountant inside of this HVAC company to now I want to go launch my own marketing agency.

SPEAKER_02 9:31

Yeah, I'm gonna have to give you a uh a a quick story on that. Because my first HVAC experience, I was there for about three and a half years. I was hired as an accountant because I was doing accounting work for a real estate management company. Okay, and I saw this ad, and I honestly I couldn't even have told you what the V in HVAC stood for at that point in my life. I have like, I don't have no idea what that means. I just know it's heating air conditioning. And so I get started. The day I walk in, everyone's getting new cell phones, 20 techs. Okay, 20 tax. This is March of 2013. I didn't realize how bad the problems were there financially with the owner and his wife. Like, he could not get a line of credit. So, like when we picked up equipment or parts at a supplier, we had to hand them a paper check. That was our line of credit. We had no credit cards, we had no extra, like most people when they open a thing at a supplier, they get $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 where they can run up, run it up, pay it down, run it just like a credit card. We had nothing. And so what happened is Fridays would come around, we have payroll, guys' checks were bouncing all the time. So guys literally would get their check, run to the bank, cash it because they wanted to make sure theirs cleared. And then a lot of times what was happening that's that first summer is I was picking up vans every other Friday because guys were like, Yep, I'm done. See ya, I cash my check, come pick up the van. Like they didn't even want their last check, which they were owed a week because it was so bad. And so then lo and behold, I started taking, I start getting the mail because the owners weren't really coming in. I was just talking to him on the phone. He was just really burnt out. And I find out we owed the IRS $100 plus thousand dollars and we owed a supplier over $500,000 from past projects that they did. I didn't know all this, obviously, in the beginning, but what it did is it built a lot of built a lot of grind. And, you know, I'll be honest, I had two young kids at that time, and the easy button would have been to quit and find a different job because I had to hold on to my own paychecks for like sometimes three, four, five paychecks were sitting on my counter because I'm like, I need my guys to get paid because they're the ones producing revenue in the field. Yeah. So I like was holding on to my stuff until I knew because I had access to the bank. I'm like, okay, now I can take it because I know we're good and I didn't want their payroll to bounce because I kept picking up trucks. It was just this whole thing. So that went on for probably about a year and a half. So by September of 2013, so six months later, we had three techs, 20 techs down to three. And then the winter of 2013, and anyone can look this up, was the coldest winter Wisconsin has had in 30 years. So we went, we had enough work for 20 techs, but we had three. And we had the coldest winter. And I still, I mean, it was first year, I didn't know what the hell I was doing, dispatching and like prioritizing calls and like making sure they, you know, all this stuff. And so we literally would have, we'd have to shut the phones off at noon to go through like 50 voicemails. I think this 50 is as many voicemails as we could have. So 50 voicemails, write them all down, figure out what was what. We did the same thing at four o'clock when we closed the office. This went on for like three or four weeks in a row, trying to figure out which jobs. And I I was honestly just triage on the phone with customers. I was just dealing with pissed off customers every single day. I got really good at it, which is not a good skill, it's not a skill I really want to be good at, but I was good at it. And so this this whole first year was literally like, why the hell am I in this industry? Because like it was bad. I bet. But uh I'm glad I stuck it out because I learned a lot of lessons about paying vendors on time, line the credit, just financial stuff that's paid off later for me in life. But we ended up turning around, getting IRS all paid back, you know, getting some of these debts down, getting to the point where you actually started running the company like a real company, hiring good people, direct deposit. But it took probably 18 to 24 months of just stress, grind, I don't know what else to call it. That's hence the the name relentless digital. Like there was just I was just not gonna give up. And that's when I was naming our agency, it just became a a, I guess, a personality trait that I had developed, like, I'm just not gonna give up, we're just gonna figure it out, even if we fail. So that's that was kind of born out of that, even though I had no qualms about doing digital marketing even at that point. And then those skills developed later on at the next couple HVAC companies that I worked at. Because I I had more time, I didn't have all the financial problems, the tech problems, all that kind of stuff. I could actually spend some time digging into what made us more money and got us more leads and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I mean, like just going through those those numbers as well, right? Like, that's a lot to look at this and be like, we're gonna crawl ourselves out of this, right? And even for the the owner of that company, you mentioned like he was he was burnt out. And it's probably for him at that time, like, is probably like, yeah, there's no way like I'm gonna make it out of this. So he was probably like, when it burns down, it burns down. I guess probably what it was going on in his mind at one point, and you were able to come in and turn everything around. So you come in, turn everything around, and then obviously you said you were there for a couple of years. You then went on into a couple different companies as well. So then at what point, I guess how many companies later? I think I think you went to two other companies after that. So then at what point was it like, okay, now is the time where I'm gonna go open up a marketing agency? Was it I hear things where it's like, yeah, I was on the other end and I, you know, kept getting effed over by agencies or I kept blah, blah, blah by agencies. Is is that how it was for you or or what?

SPEAKER_02 14:40

No, no, I uh I never really hired an agency for anything. Uh I did a lot through Facebook content, Facebook groups, like that was the second HVAC company. Facebook groups were starting to get big. It was like 2017, 2018. And then local service ads came out. So we were like 60% of our revenue that first year. I opened a new branch. I knew it was coming. We were like the second company in our market to be on it, and there was only two of us that knew about it the entire summer, right? And it was a hot summer. I'm like, it was great. So we made like 60% of our revenue there, and then the rest was through Facebook, Facebook groups, just focusing on reviews because back in like 2017, 2018, everyone kind of knew reviews were important, but they didn't really automate the process and they just didn't really get it yet. So we were kind of ahead of the game that way. And then the last company I worked at, I had a lot more time to spend on marketing and sales and operations and technology. And that's really where I got into like Zapier and automation and stuff like that. But we were using Service Titan, which anyone that is in the home service industry, you know what Service Titan is. And I was going through our data and I realized I'm like, these Google Business Profile leads are paying us like, I think it was like $800 or $850 more on an average ticket. We don't get price shopped because they hired us based on reputation. Like it was just, there was something there. So then I again kind of turned the relentless hat on, and I'm like, every single ebook, YouTube influencer, webinar, anything I could get my hands on, I just dove. And some of this stuff was so technical, I had no idea what I was reading. I mean, at that point, I didn't understand schema. I didn't, I didn't know what any of that stuff was. Right. And so it just went super deep, and then I was like, how do I get more of these? And then I wanted to expand to another location because I started seeing some stuff about like multi-location. So I started talking to my bots. Of course, we he didn't do it while I was there. He waited until after I left, became a client, then did it, which is still worked out. He ended up his business, ended up getting acquired, and it worked out very well for him. But it was just one of those things. And because that stuff was working, I was in a a different business coaching group, similar to 7FA, but for contractors. There's like 300 members in that group, and I just like, hey, this is working for me. You might want to try this. And just again, following that same path of like, this is working for me, try it. And then I started having people be like, Man, that's really cool. Can you do that for me? Right. And I'm like, sure, like I can try. You know, and I I again I'm like, well, let's see if we can do it. Cause I had no idea if I could replicate it or if it was just something that we could do. So all we did for the first 18 months after that point, this was March 1st of 2020, two weeks before everything kind of went crazy with COVID, was we just did GBP for 18 months. So you talk about a niche, we did a niche within a niche. Like we did one thing, we did it well, and we only did it for HVAC contractors at that point. But then you're word spreads, and then I start having competitors be like, Oh, we we'll manage that for free because they did their website. I'm like, okay, we're gonna go do websites now, we're gonna go do LSA now, we're gonna go do email and text message marketing now. Like, we just started again, really good at one thing. I and I hope people are listening to get this, like, get don't be everything to everyone, be great at one thing. Build off of that foundational block because it works very well. You could I started showing heat maps online and stuff. People are like, what is this? Like, nobody knew what it was back in 2019, 2020. Like, what is a heat map? Like, what did you show me? And then, like, oh, I love the green, and like so you could show before and afters and stuff, and obviously things have changed with AI search now, but talk about things that other people aren't talking about in your industry, and people will flock to you. They will be like, This is different. And I think that's really the biggest thing that's really brought us some big audience and stuff like that. And later I joined the Service Business Mastery podcast, been doing that for about five and a half years now, which has been great. We don't actually talk about Relentless a whole lot on there. I'm not following the playbook Josh's laid out for that very well, but it has helped because people do know who I am. But uh yeah, it's been it's been a crazy journey. Uh we just crossed the 750k MR last month, so it's nine million run rate, which is it's a lot of work, it's a lot of clients, it's a lot of issues. We got like 90 team members or 89 team members or something like that. So it's it's a different beast than it was six years ago.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

Like it was just myself and it was easy. Yeah, I bet. Yeah. Well, and uh I mentioned our our intro with Claude and everything. Claude had, I think, six and a half mil is is what it had in the notes. So obviously, you know, on the notion of AI, AI is not always 100% up to date and current with where things uh where things are at. But so you you mentioned you begin just doing Google business profile. And so like when I think of like, you know, we have this concept of high volume, low ticket, or low volume, high ticket, right? So back then you're kind of in that mode of like low ticket, high volume. You don't charge much for doing Google business profile. And now you guys are at the point where you just cross this new milestone in terms of your annual current revenue. And so there's a huge pricing difference there, right? Between what you were charging then and what you're charging now. Obviously, market rates go up, but now you're doing this full package, right? So you have not just Google business profile, you have website ads, email marketing, all that stuff. And you know, even us internally right now, we're going through some pricing changes. I'm looking at things and I'm like, why the hell was I even charging that? Like that was dumb of me to even charge that from the beginning, right? And so walk me through like what does that look like? I talk with people inside of 7FA and other programs where they're like, in my industry, I can only charge 800 bucks a month, right? That's all my industry is willing to pay. And then I get on the phone with somebody else in the exact same industry and they're like, Yeah, we're you know, we're closing deals between 2500 and four grand a pop. And I'm like, last guy I just talked to told me he can max he can charge this, right? Uh, so what did that look like for you guys to then get to the point where you're like, okay, we're gonna charge what we're worth. And if you're able to share, like what's that difference of what you were charging back then versus versus now?

SPEAKER_02 20:40

Yeah, so actually, you know, and I didn't really, I didn't put a whole lot of thought in this, but we were $9.95 per GBP, which actually for just GBP only is pretty good price. I mean, I'd trying to figure out ways to add value with reporting and other things that we could do and stuff like that. But I've always been, and actually, this is why the second HVAC company didn't work out. I opened a branch that was about an hour north of the industry branch. We didn't have any customers or anything. We had one van that I could run calls out of. And the the business owner was very much on the high volume, low margin. He was selling ACs for $1,500, $1,800 less than I wanted to. Like he was just slamming them in. You know, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just to make a couple hundred bucks for something that you get to replace once every 15 years, I did not see a whole lot of value in that as a company. Because at some point you run out of ACs to replace, especially during COVID. That's kind of where the the home service industry has kind of suffered a little bit as we pulled all this all this sales forward because everyone was home and everyone wanted to replace it and they had the free the free money from the government. Yeah. But so, and I was the opposite. I wanted to premium price, premium value, premium service. And so that's always been my philosophy. So to me, it's a mentality. Like I I've heard that they'll if you're good and you get a return on if you know you're good. And they some of the things I think sometimes people stop themselves, they they they They get a service that is scalable, it's okay or good, or maybe it's a little above average. So, like, yes, you really can't charge top premium level prices because you will have a lot of churn. But if you go deep enough and you optimize every single thing you can and you add all this extra value in, then you can charge not whatever you want, but you can charge at the high end of the rates in the market. And you can have less clients, which to me is less headache. It's it's hard to make clients happy over a long period of time because there's always something that's gonna get messed up that might not even be your fault. Call Rail isn't connecting calls to their CRM or whatever, you know, things that are other technologies. And so for me, I'm like, if I'm gonna go through this in the stress of all of this, and then of course you get a bad reputation in these Facebook groups, and these business owners will eat your lunch. They will crucify you. And I have I've had a couple run-ins over the six and a half years where it was some people that had some influence decided they wanted they weren't happy about whatever. Um, like exclusivity came up, and even though we were following the contract, she thought she owned the entire market and it blew up. And I had all kinds of people reaching out about it. So you you have to make sure you're taking care of yourself. And then, of course, for growth, like when I the first hire I made was a VA, and he's still with us actually, five, five and a half years later. Yeah, awesome. He's great, he's over in Australia. But from there, like you have to have money to invest in your team. Like I I look at how we've, you know, three or four years ago, I'd have said, Yeah, we have a good leadership team. I look at that team now and I see the team we have now. One, our payroll is significantly higher, like probably double what I was paying everybody at that point. Night and day difference. But I had to have the money to invest in those people. Otherwise, I would I would have had to turn them down because I'm didn't want to pay them. And so you have to have profit in order to do that. So you have to charge enough.

unknown 23:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:49

And for me, like our client success trages, especially the the seniors, 20 client max, like 20 big clients, but they spend time with their again. There's a there's a way to get value. If you're gonna be on the low end of the margin, they have to have 70, 80, 90, 100 clients, like you have to automate almost everything. So, and that can work. And Alex Hermozy has gone on, you know. I I know that got shared around with the agency world, like you're gonna be automate everything and be at the low end, or you're gonna be at the high end, the middle ground is kind of where you're gonna probably go to die. Either one's gonna eat your lunch. And so I chose that we wanted to be on the high end of things, and it's worked out very well for us, and we kind of get known as a premium provider. And we we attract the right type of clients then, too, because we all know a lot of times the cheapest clients will spend the most of your time. And it's it's been proven over and over again. So, and that's fine if that's what you want to do. To me, I want clients that are gonna pay us, let us do our job, we're gonna show our results, and we're gonna prove it every step of the way, and then they're gonna let us do our thing, they're gonna do their thing and focus on the operation of their business because marketing operations are not two separate, they are two separate things, but they need the biggest belief I have, and probably because I was I worked at these trades companies, like the reason we grew without spending a lot of money on marketing is because I was I was connected to both. And so when a lead came in, we maximized the heck out of that lead every single time. If it was an open estimate, we maximize the heck out of follow-up with that open estimate. So we always did those things. It just be it just like if we're spending money on stuff, it didn't make sense not to get to a point of getting to know. Yeah, and so that's that's where you can add value to your clients of helping them with their call center, helping them with whoever is selling and closing jobs and giving them data. And I think that's where the shift has really happened in the agency roles. We can connect to a lot of data now. So, how do we present that data? So it's like, wow, this is I can't get this anywhere else. This is great. Yeah. And then they become better operators, they get a better return on investment. You also become the trusted source for them, and you get to rinse and repeat and then find other people that really want this stuff. And typically they're gonna be a little bit bigger businesses, but that's that's really the route we've taken. I love it. I wouldn't, yeah, I definitely wouldn't go the other way unless I could completely automate almost everything.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

Yeah. Yeah. Which at the same time has has its own cons as well. Like with the with my agency, like we automated where every time we come, you know, posted a blog post, the client got an email. Every time we did a GMB post, the client got an email, right? It was great because then uh I was hardly meeting with clients. Uh, but then when it got time to sell the book of business, uh, then things were a little rocky because it was like, well, Brad's not going to be there, and you know, all these different things, and now we're gonna have to meet with somebody and so we don't, and all these things. And it's like, you know, I I began to see what what you're talking about right there, like this difference between being on the low end versus the the high end of things are right in the middle. And so you have to like pick and choose in the rise of AI and automation is like what all do we automate and what do we not? Some things are useful, right? But some things it's just like does not make sense to do that. You you you mentioned like adding as much value as as possible, really getting in, helping them with estimates, everything like that. I know one of the things you say often is that most contractors like they don't have a problem with with leads. It's really a problem with the conversions, you know, missed calls, booking rates, no follow-ups, everything like that. Even estimates, like I have an estimate that's sitting right now in my inbox from a contractor for from 16 months ago to convert our sliding glass door into a window and knock down our deck on the house because where we live, it does not make sense. How did you remember?

SPEAKER_02 27:26

How did you remember who that was? Or did you only get one estimate?

SPEAKER_00 27:29

I got three estimates, and he was the one that actually provided me the most value in this sale. He then followed up three times afterwards within like a four-week time period, right? I was not ready to buy.

SPEAKER_02 27:41

So you remembered him.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

You remembered that company and that person because they took the time, they followed up with you. Yeah. But guess who has not followed up since then, right? 16 months later, now I'm actually ready to buy. He's not followed up with me, right? None of them have. And actually, I take that back. He called me about a month and a half ago and it went to voicemail, and I never called him back because I got busy. Okay. But if he calls me again, and so now, like, we aren't in a rush. We're only doing this because in about a year or so, we're gonna move houses, we're gonna turn our current house into a rental. And so it's like, what's just the cheapest thing to get this converted to rental, right? So I can do it now, I can do it in January, I can do it in June of next year, right? I'm ready to buy whatever he's ready for it to happen, type thing. And so I'm just kind of at this point, I'm waiting to see when this guy, if he is gonna follow up, and then when it becomes urgent to basically, okay, now let's get this window done, either call him back or maybe go out and get more bids and see who has the best game in the follow-up, right? But my point being is like the money is in your CRM, the money is in the follow-up. And so what do you guys do with your clients to make sure that like they are actually acting on the leads that you're sending them and that if they got a lead via SEO, a Google business profile 16 months ago, that their reps are doing the work to actually try to close those deals now?

SPEAKER_02 29:00

Yeah, so and that's why we started adding SMS and email marketing to our service offerings. SMS was the first thing, one, because you know, being again, this is how you you know the problems your industry has. So HVAC, there's seasonal demand, usually twice a year, and then there's a lull twice a year. And some of I mean, if in Arizona RACs run almost almost all year round, but in most of the country, there's a heating and a cooling season, except for in like the deep south. And so I was like, you know, text message marketing is a great way to get back in their home. And they have the customer list of a thousand, five thousand, ten thousand. Some of the big ones have fifty thousand people in their customer list. Imagine if one every three, every three months we could go back and just get reviews. Because we all, even with a great review system, which I feel like we do have, 10 to 15% of people leave a review. So that's 85 to 90 percent that never left you a review. And you can also, for that 10 to 15% that really loved you already, give them another option for the BBB or Facebook or Nextdoor, or name the review platform that is important in your industry. And so that's one thing, just getting reviews, because we know that helps with LSA, we know that helps with GBP, it helps with AI search, but then getting back in their home with inspections, tune-ups, water testing for plumbers. We had one guy recently did like a $79 electrical safety inspection. He had to turn it off halfway through because he was so busy with people just saying yes. We had one, the the first case study ever got was like 2023. It was a HBC contractor in Oklahoma, and they were they're dead. They were just slow. They had they're pretty big companies, so they had a lot of guys and stuff, and it didn't, it wasn't hot yet. And so we they had a list of about 5,000 people we sent, a $49 AC tune-up offer. And then we followed up a couple times after that. We just it was all automated once we set it up, and they just replied every yes, got them booked, went out there, did the job. They booked like 300 tune-ups in April, so about six percent conversion. Yeah. And they sold over $300,000 that month, which that month actually was they did almost as much revenue that month as they do in the middle of summer when it's hot and sticky in Oklahoma. All just by doing one single database reactivation campaign.

SPEAKER_00 31:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:05

So we that's a that's a regular occurrence for us. We've and obviously the the more you do, the more you do these, you start figuring out which ones are working, which ones are not, what price point works, which one doesn't. Um, because sometimes clients bring stuff to you like, I'm gonna do 50 off any repair. I'm like, you're really hoping that someone's gonna blindfold themselves, turn, spin themselves around, hit a bullseye on a dartboard, because that's what you're trying to do right now. You're hoping that a couple people is like, oh, I have a plumbing repair I need. Like, nobody's thinking about that. If they if they're thinking about it, they already went and searched for it. So we got to try to find a way to get in the home that everyone can take advantage of. Yeah. Whole home inspections are usually the best way for anything like that. Obviously, there's other ways to do it if you know if you if you're in the the gym space or martial arts or whatever, there's other ways to do those sorts of offers, but that was huge. And then for us, it was really about how do we do speed to lead for all channels? How do we follow up on open estimates? How do we do seasonal repair buyback campaigns? So, like somebody gets their AC repaired in the summer because it's hot, they just want it repaired and cooling. Give them a credit of up to a certain amount for that repair to go replace the system, generate replacements. It's but that's you have to know your industry in order to do those things. And those, it just it like literally my uh the guy that leads those campaigns for me now, he just sent me like a list of like the top 10. He's like, Would you add anything else to this? And that's we're just continuously turning that into SOPs to help our clients close more of the business that they already that someone already content, they already paid for the lead. They paid us, they paid Google, they paid somebody for that lead. Just close more. And then their ROI goes up and then they stay because they're like, Wow, you guys do all this stuff for me? Like, yeah, we do. The one thing we don't have for all that stuff is AI all the way through. We tried it, just it was probably an us problem, but we didn't quite figure it out. But that is probably on the roadmap in the future of like, because we we do these outbound campaigns, and one of the biggest problems we have is people don't answer the messages fast enough. And it's painful. I go into their high-level account and I'm like, man, there's like 30 open messages sitting here. I'm like, you guys gotta keep this open. Like, yeah. Cause they may say yes, and then they get like you, they get busy. Oh, I sorry, I don't have time now. I'm going out of town, I'm doing XYZ, school starting, and they just run out of time. And now you lost you got the yes. You gotta get them when they say yes immediately. Yeah, it can't wait more than like five to 10 minutes.

SPEAKER_00 33:27

Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's almost like you need something like, you know, in Slack, there's Victor or whatever, right? You need something like that, an AI agent that's just gonna sit there and watch it, right? And if you're not following up with her, it's like pestering the crap out of your team because you get busy and forget and all that stuff and just like reactivate, even things like, you know, we lost power, we lose power all the time, but we lost power back in like May or June. And like my wife's got months of like breast milk built up. And we were going on a vacation in August, and I'm like, that is my ticket to vacation. We are not losing this stuff. So like we load the deep freezer up in the back of the car, drive it to my parents' house, uh, and I'm like, I'm getting an outlet put on the outside of the house so I can hook a generator up and we're gonna power this thing, right? And so I get it done, and then I like make a post about it, and I have people reaching out to me like crazy, probably 15, 20 people asking for this guy's info because they also needed one. And it's like something as simple as that. If you own a company that can do electric work and on residential homes, something like that happens in the area. Run an offer, push it out to your audience, because I guarantee you, like if I was in somebody's database and they texted me an offer, I probably just would have gone with them and not even gone out and shopped quotes, right? And so it's just l little things like that, as you said, knowing your audience, knowing the the industry to be able to then say, like, okay, now I need to get these people to convert and something.

SPEAKER_02 34:49

Well, and I'll and and even still, I mean, we run paid ads now, but you know, a lot of agencies spend a lot more than like four and a half percent of revenue on marketing. That's about what we spend. Some a lot of that's like gift cards for referrals or these coaching programs that we pay on the back end for them to send clients and stuff. Yeah. But for me, organic social media has and in particular Facebook groups have been a huge boon for our business. And now I don't know why they've finally figured this out now. They've they came up with forum. I don't know if you've heard of this. That's the it's the Facebook groups only app. I'm like, oh, thank God. Now I don't have to sit and try to find Facebook group conversations in my feed, I can just go right to the groups where all the money is because that's where I engage. And I think the mistake is it's the same thing with contractors, and I try to teach them this because we don't we don't do social for contractors yet, but uh, in search of someone to help replace my air conditioner or in search of someone to fix my toilet or whatever, they just put their company name down. I'm like, no, you literally are missing the point. The point is to engage and be the leader in the group. Ask them questions, engage them in a different way. You will stand out from every single person in that group because everyone's just lazy and they just tag their company or they tag someone. That's all they do. And you can start owning those Facebook groups, which of course, you start owning your backyard as a local business like that. And there's conversations like that all day. We had one, it was called the Port Washington Voice. When I started, we were in the mix with like a bunch of other companies, and it was, you know, it was probably maybe five percent. Maybe we got mentioned in those groups. But by doing this, and I would take posts like three days before a big weather event, like a polar vortex or whatever scary word they use on the news to talk about the weather pattern coming, use that 72 hours before, put a post on my personal page, share it to that group, not with my business page, but with the personal profile. So I'm not selling anything, I'm not, there's no CTA, there's no call us, there's no nothing. It's just yep, take care of your house. This is what's gonna happen during this cold snap or warm snap or whatever. So if your thermostat doesn't do this, what that it's okay, it's normal. And so that like I had one time I had the post, I started sharing it to Facebook groups, and then it just took, I got shared like 990 times. It was like back in 2017 or 2018. Had like, I mean, I I don't think I even ever looked at the post reach, but it was probably hundreds of thousands of people. It's about the most viral post I've ever had. And it was all about just literally what to do during a cold snap and what happens with your heating system. Yeah. And you know, stuff takes over, and all of a sudden the Facebook groups, and I have screen recordings of this of like someone started asking about six months, 12 months after we started doing this, just taking over the group, just completely dominating the group. 60 to 70 percent of the mentions were us, and those are all happy customers and stuff, and they would just and we get people that literally would comment, they'd hire us, go back to that threat, and then comment, yeah, they work great. You should definitely hire professional services. So, and that's that's carried over into the agency world for me. I engage on Facebook groups every single day. I know some people are like, Oh God, I don't want to do that. It's probably the most valuable if you can stay focused. Yeah, if you can stay focused, let me caveat. Most valuable 10 to 15 minutes of your day is those Facebook groups, go engage. You don't don't just engage on the marketing specific stuff. If you have something to bring to other conversations, bring it. Things you've learned, things you've learned from your other clients, bring that stuff to the groups, become that trusted voice. So people are like, oh, when so-and-so talk, because they all see you, they see your name. And if you see it pop up enough, you're like, who is this person? Yeah you know, and it's Brad, like I've I've started seeing your name more and more and more, and that's why we got here on the podcast today. And it's just you putting out good content and us paying attention to each other, and that's how you network in today's world.

SPEAKER_00 38:26

Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I guarantee you, had I reached out to you a year ago, you may have been like, I have no clue who the hell this guy is, right? And and but to the point of Facebook groups, like I'm where I'm at today. And we mentioned Josh Nelson, some bigger agency. Like, I just began like really going, and there's some great players in the talent world in Josh's group, right? And now all of a sudden, like every call I hop on, it's like, oh, I saw you in Josh's group. Oh, I saw you in Josh's group, oh, I saw you, which is why I mentioned Josh's group on this podcast, right? It's like, I, you know, it's the seven habits of highly affected people, the emotional bank account, right? You're depositing and what do you receive and all that stuff. Um, but even for those who are agency owners, like go into these other Facebook groups of roofing companies, of HVAC companies, and just provide value after value after value. And on top of that, don't be afraid to go in and add them as a friend on Facebook and do the content and talk 80% personal life, entrepreneurship, blah, blah, blah, 20% offers, right? And then what happens? I have people who comment me all the time. And I'm like, I've never even talked to you guys. I have no clue how you're commenting me, right? But it's because we're friends on Facebook, they see my content, they see me as a trusted expert, and they're gonna continue to comment my name. And I'm sure you guys see it the exact same way. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:43

On your lot of people do that, and I'm it's it's the coolest thing when it happens when people are like, I've never even done business with them. They just must have seen the content. But I also try to do the same thing for other people. If you know a coach or you know a bookkeeper or you know a trainer, consultant, someone that can help them with their problem that you've reached out to or talked to, and that you've you've you've liked their content, tag them because then they will likely reciprocate at some point, or at least they pay attention to it, and then be you can start a partnership of some sort, a referral partnership. And there's just a lot of ways. It's just it's all got to be strategic. Like there's time for the you know, the reels and the TikToks and all that stuff, and and I still do that stuff too, but I always make sure I try to find some post to engage in every day. And it's just it's you do it every again, you just get in a good habit and things will pick up. It's a little bit of a slow burn, it's not as easy as just throwing an ad up, but ads also get very expensive very quick. So if you're a young agency and you don't have a lot of profit and stuff like you can go through that money real fast trying to get clients. So this way it was kind of my way of like easing into that and then learn learning the ropes and figuring out the business model and the pricing and the leadership team and all the things that came along with it.

SPEAKER_00 40:55

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Josh, I know we're at time here, but any last words, anybody who's listening runs an agency and they're like, hey, I want to be, you know, Inc. 5000, I want to be at the point where Josh and his team are at. What's kind of your one one phrase or one word of advice for them? Buy back your time.

SPEAKER_02 41:11

Dan, read the book because he's gonna say it way more eloquently than I would. Read buy back your time, start there and put, don't just read the book, implement what is in the book, and your life will get better, your business will get better, you'll have more time to go to the gym, you'll have more time to take care of your health, your family hobbies, because you'll you'll decide that instead of doing all the work yourself, you hire great people that are gonna do it better than you, and you can get the heck out of the way. And it it changes, it'll change your life.

SPEAKER_00 41:40

Yeah. Yeah. And and I would just add to that, don't just buy it back in the business. Buy it personally as well. Right.

SPEAKER_02 41:46

It's gonna make a world of difference in your That's a great point, Brad, because we've done that. Like there are things I could try to figure out how to do at my house. I just hire someone. I just I'm not, it's not worth my time. Just hire it so I can focus on what I need to focus on to better my life, have good relationships with my family. So 100%.

SPEAKER_00 42:01

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Josh, thank you again. This was this was great. Thank you for watching or listening. Go follow Josh and check out Relentless Digital and the Service Business Mastery Podcast. All the links will be in the notes below. If this one helped you, share it with another agency owner who's trying to do it all alone and subscribe so you don't miss next week. But until next, until next time, this is the agency advantage.