SPEAKER_00 0:00

Yup Agency owners, you know how it goes. More ads, more questions, more problems to solve. You built the machine to 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 winds that fail. Build it smarter, lead the team, take your freedom back. Agency advantage. Now you're on the right track.

SPEAKER_01 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 Luke, founder of Phaser Marketing. He has a degree in sports management and he was flipping go-karts on Craigslist in college and working at an orthodontics practice in Omaha when he began his agency on the side in 2019. He ran it that way for two years before he quit the job. He then niched down from marketing to anyone and everyone to excavation only. He went from eight clients to 59 and built Phaser into a seven-figure agency across North America. Along the way, he's written a book for his niche, began a podcast for it, speaks at its trade shows, and throws an annual black tie back in his hometown that raised 70 grand last year for the Boys and Girls Club. Luke, welcome on.

SPEAKER_02 1:20

Brad, thank you so much for having me on the show. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, you know, you and I were kind of uh chatting prior to hopping on here, uh, all of our uh audio if difficulties and everything that we were rocking through. But uh why don't you kind of give us, you know, you I always love hearing people's background and how they got into the agency world. So you're in you're in college, uh flip flipping go-karts on Craigslist, which most people listening to this should know what Craigslist is, but I imagine there's probably a small set of the audience that uh that does not. Uh, but how'd you get into the the the agency world?

SPEAKER_02 1:57

Yeah, I mean, my journey really started yeah, in entrepreneurship of just buying things and selling things and just realizing that there's a market to go make your own money. And so that started early on and then kind of went into college where might as well buy things that if you don't sell them, you can still use them. And and if it does sell, it's a win-win. So I'd do a lot of dune buggies, go-karts, pit bikes, mopeds, beer vending machines, arcade machines, things like that, things that we would use anyway. Uh, and then when I'd sell it, I'd make a profit and reinvest that into the next project. So that's really really where my business love started. And then yeah, had a had a sports background, but then realized that I I liked business a little bit more than specifically sports. And so marketing became a vehicle. So as you mentioned in the intro, I was a director of marketing and orthodontics practice, absolutely loved my role there. And what I my role was is to be the liaison between this marketing agency that we worked with and the the practice itself. So I got to be the point of contact.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

And what I realized is that okay, this marketing agency that only works with orthodontic practices, Nuvaloom, shout out to them. They're in California, and I had never met them. I thought they were the coolest people. We paid them a ton of money, and they made us and myself look so good. And and not patting myself on the back, they were patting them on the back just because they did so much work, and I got to take a lot of credit for it because I was, quote, the marketing guy. And it really just shined a light on it for me of man, it would be cool to do this. Like, I feel like I could do this.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:33

And so in 2019, while I was still working there, I started Phaser Marketing. And as you mentioned, it's it we just digital marketing for small businesses. Uh, that's how we got our start. First couple clients, you know, we had a real estate company, demolition company, oil field company, garage door, and kind of went through those. Also a party bus company. And then in 2021, my wife got a job at Carvana, which is headquartered in Arizona here. We moved down there and or down here and left my job and went full time with Phaser. And it's it's been amazing since. It's been amazing since day one. And so what's really, really helped is since we moved down here, joined seven-figure agency, as a lot of you listeners have heard. But what really that forced me to do is niche down because you it can't go very far, and this is just my opinion, can't go very far as a generalist, and you can go so much further and add so much more value to an industry and move that industry forward when you niche down. So we niche down in the dirt world. We serve excavation, septic, and hardscaping companies. And right now we have about 120 clients and we do about 200k monthly recurring revenue with a team of about 31. And uh absolutely love what we do, man. Wow, that's awesome!

SPEAKER_01 4:48

And obviously, you can't trust everything that like clauded AI creates because you're interested, like said like 59 clients, right? And so uh obviously it's outdated, right? So you guys are are killing it. So you made this jump from you know working full time as the marketing director for this firm, and you mentioned your move and and all that good stuff. Did you make that jump because of the move? And it was like, hey, I'm I'm relocating, and so like now's time to just to do it, or was there like a financial aspect where you're like, once I hit X amount of clients or a certain amount of monthly recurring revenue, that that's when I'm making the jump and just the move just happened to be that right.

SPEAKER_02 5:26

Man, great question. I haven't talked about this fully yet on a podcast, so I've talked about some details of it, but this question, so I love it because it was the trigger, right? And it Yeah. The so the first two years when we were building up Phaser from 2019 to 2021, my goal was, you know, I'm not gonna pay myself anything out of the business until I'm maybe one day able to go full time. And who knows how long that would be or right? But the nice thing was is we're building up a business bank account, right? And so because I wasn't paying myself anything because I had a job, the the retained earnings could grow a little bit so that if one day we did go full time, we could pay myself out of that. So then come 2021, we're starting to, we're at about 7K a month recurring revenue, about 6K a month in projects, and maybe I'd say 8K in the bank business bank account. So, but we were cash flow positive since month one of 2019, and we're just very simple spend less than you make, no loans, no investors, keep it simple. And and then to your point of when when my wife got the job, we're super excited. We knew she was gonna get a job because she had just graduated with her MBA. But my thought process was I'd probably go get a job and keep doing this, and I'll never forget it. Is you know, we're celebrating Olivia getting her new job, and we're going out with some friends in Omaha and we're getting drinks. And one of her friends asked me, She's like, When you move, are you just gonna go full time with Phaser? And uh I was like, Well, I might get a job down there and just keep doing it on the side. And she's like, But like, why don't you just go full time? And it was just like a very like innocent question, uh just a curious question, and I didn't have an answer for it. And I was like, I don't know, I don't know why. And I had the support of a great community, I had the support of a few clients, I had a few team members at that time that are contractors, and and it just kind of put me in a different mindset of like, why not just go full time? And so from that day, I changed my mindset to instead of going to look for another job serving or another marketing job, it's like, hey, we're just gonna try this, we're gonna let it rip here, and uh, we're gonna have fun doing it. And that's that's what we've been doing ever since. And I've been unemployed, self-employed since.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

Yeah. Yeah. I uh that there's a there's a guy used listening to his podcast. He says that he is unemployable, right? And so uh you're at that point now. It's it's crazy that the difference like with my agency, like we I left the job too soon, and then it was like, you know, cash flow tight, right? And so it made a huge delay in terms of like trying to be able to grow. And then when I launched talent fuse, I was like, I'm not taking money out of the business until we could afford to make that transition. And so it was a huge difference in the growth, right? And then even December of last year, we were forced to, with my son's asthma issues, we were forced to bring my wife home from work so she could be with the kids. And like we were able to do it. But I'm even seeing, like, I've seen that little bit of that little pullback on the cash flow, right? Because we didn't, I had to pull back a little bit more, right? And so those who are listening, like go on the route that Luke went, where it's like, hey, just keep working that that nine to five job until you get a little bit of that cash flow built up and the like monthly recurring revenue. Like a lot of people say, hey, I'm gonna go all in when I, you know, I'm at 20K a month and monthly recurring revenue. I wouldn't go all in when you hit 20K the first month, like probably give it two or three months before you then leave that that nine to five. And obviously it depends on where you're at financially. Like 20K may be a lot more for someone else than it is, you know, a different person, right? Um, but being able to kind of go through that that process there.

SPEAKER_02 8:56

And what I would say on that for those listening is, you know, it's different for everybody. But if if if you were to ask me in your situation, I would I would ask more questions. I'd find more details. Uh, what are your what's your personal budget look like? I mean, if you have if you have a stay-at-home spouse and five kids and you're a single income and with no benefits, like probably should and your job is paying you $150 plus full benefits and you're gonna start a marketing agency from scratch and just jump into it full time, I'd say, I wouldn't do that, right? But if you're 19 and you just graduated high school and you're not going to college and you're transitioning into this full time and you have 15K saved up and you have three recurring clients that pay you 6K MRR, hey, yeah, get some good mentors and coaches in your corner. Let's go full time with it. Give yourself six months. And if we're not at 15k MRR by then, you probably need to go get a job. And so there's situations for everyone, but I think the moral of that story is every situation is different, but also find good mentors and coaches that'll tell you like it is and uh that are that love you enough to tell you what you don't want to hear.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

Yeah, yeah, and like have them along for the ride, right? Like absolutely someone that I was talking to about like this transition with my wife, they would have been like, hey man, why don't you just pump the brakes for like three more months? She's due with your second child in March. Like you should probably just hang tight and collect that free check, right? We're like, no, we're we're bringing home from work and everything, everything works out, right? God has his own plan for for life. But um, you you know, you mentioned the the the coaching aspect, and I know inside a seven-figure agency, you're a coach there. What does that look like? Because obviously you're a member, so you're always learning, right? You're you're you're part of that aspect, but then you're coaching those who are coming through the program as well. Those who are listening who maybe aren't part of the program but have heard of it and are thinking about joining. What's the advantage of them joining and working with a with a coach like you?

SPEAKER_02 10:54

Yeah, I mean, I'll just start from back in 2021 when I went full time. I didn't know what I didn't know. And I knew that that's probably one of my biggest skill sets. I knew that I was I didn't know anything. And so just having the recognition to be like, I'm nothing special, but to go seek it. And I found out that there's a marketing agency group with 300 agencies that are niche down and they all help each other. And I'm just like, that's what I'm looking for. And I read Josh's book, The Seven Figure Agency Roadmap. I was hooked. I said, what whatever Kool-Aid they're selling, I'm gonna drink it. I love this stuff. And because it was all it was what I believe in, right? And how to take care of clients, how to deliver value. But I just needed the right roadmap to go down. So in 2021, Tony Ricketts shout out, online marketing, he invited me as his guest. I was blown away. In person, there's, I think at that time, 250 agencies in person. I'm learning, I'm networking, I'm meeting people that are at 10k MRR, 500k MRR, 60K, 80K, but it didn't matter. Like it was sure they've gone through different ceilings and broken through different things, but everyone has their struggles. And it was just like, I was like, man, this person at 300k isn't much more special than the person at 10K. And that's the attitude that was in that room of just like, hey, we're all here to help each other. And so I joined from there and I've had the ultimate blessing. If anyone's watching on YouTube, you can see I basically have every color medal because I went so low and slow on purpose, right? Of just every intensive, my goal was to get the next medal, which is 10K MRR new revenue in basically four months. And so some people look at that and it's like, well, I want to grow faster, I want to hit seven figures. And I was just like, I'm just gonna do 10K at a time, yeah, and then fast forward to today, like this upcoming November intensive, I'll be speaking at it. It'll be my 13th intensive live. And, you know, we've learned so much. I've had some of my best friends come from that group. And going back to your question, Brad, of what it means having a coach. The nice thing about 7FA is that you don't just get one coach. Like I am one of the agency success coaches, so I would be a member's head coach, but then you have 30 other specialist coaches you can meet with at any time. You have any of the member mentors, you have weekly coaching sessions you can jump on. So really it's one of those you get in what you get out what you put in kind of group. And the the eight members that join, uh we've had 198 agencies cross seven figures, which is 83k and MRR, which is unbelievable. So getting in that room with them, I'm I now have the biggest blessing of being a part of also the Titans group. Uh so anyone multiple seven figures, and then also, of course, the biggest blessing of getting to uh be a coach. And so I've been a coach now for over a year and coach over 20 agencies and help them scale their agency, deliver big impact to their team and their clients and uh and really try and help them win.

SPEAKER_01 13:53

Yeah, that's awesome. It's awesome that you you keep like the medals and everything back behind you too, right? Because a lot of people sit in that room and actually at this last intense of July, I was sitting next to someone who was like like base was like made a comment along the lines of like, like, man, like I I wonder what it's like to be up there like getting like that next met medal or whatever, right? And it was like, I think we were at like, you know, 60k a month in MRR or whatever it was at this time. And this person hadn't gone up for a a medal yet. And I remember just talking to him and and I was like, hey, that like that's the beauty of uh of the room, right? Is that you get to see these people. And so it's not like you came in and you were already at 50, you're already at 60, right? Like you came in at the at the bottom, right? Just went 10, 20, 30, and all the way up. And so um, I think for you it's also cool because you get to coach people who are going through that same ladder as well, right? So it's kind of a full circle moment where you're like, hey, I was here where you were at, you know, 10 at 10 and tenses ago, nine one, you know, a go type thing.

SPEAKER_02 14:55

Yeah. And the biggest thing with that, Brad, is I think sometimes people think like you make it. There is no like it in business is always this journey. And but that's the beauty of it, is like I'm I still like I'm feel I still feel like I'm almost the same person because I'm just my truest self. I've always enjoyed this journey. And I think if you're not enjoying the journey right now at 15k or 35k or 72k, you're not gonna enjoy it at 200 because that's that's a you problem. And I'm just if you're but if you're have the right mindset around it, you choose to have a good perception on it, a good attitude, uh, you're gonna be successful no matter what because success changes and successful success is different for everyone. But in terms of revenue-wise, like, yeah, it I also say this too. Like, I know a lot of people say, you know, your problems just get bigger as you grow. That that is true, but it doesn't mean that it isn't nicer to grow, right? And so I like you said, I've been at every at every level under 200K, and I'd rather be at 200k than at 10 again, because 10 is very difficult because nobody knows who you are, your reputation is small, you have less momentum, less money to move around to go make choices with hires. And so I'm pretty candid about that too. It's like, yeah, growth is super important. We can give more financially, we can give more time, we can give more chances to team members, etc. So I do think there's an aspiration to grow, absolutely, and to to run a healthy agency.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

Yeah, absolutely. And I I I want to kind of talk about in a second here, like what it looks like. You know, there's there's different phases recall for different like levels of marketing, right? And so what you guys are doing right now to drive business into phasers different what than what you were doing then. Uh but before we get into that, one of the things that my good friend Claude pulled in here was like it said that you you've made a comment that desperation is a smelly cologne and clients can sense when you're selling to survive. And so was there something early on in the agency days that you were trying to do in terms of marketing-wise, it kind of got you to say that quote?

SPEAKER_02 17:02

Yes. So it's almost like what we talked about earlier of I and I say this knowing that every situation is different. I I don't know everyone's situation listening, but this is just speaking for myself. I did not want my next cli, my next sales call to pay my grocery bill or to keep my lights on. And that's why I kept my job. That's why I worked these two jobs, right? And because I had to frame, not reframe, but frame my mindset for forever of these clients that we're bringing on, I'm not bringing them on to get a payday. I'm bringing them on to help them. I'm adding value to their business. And I'm not doing this for my business, right? And I think just reversing that because you hear it all the time, agency owners will say, I need leads, or I just lost a client, I need more leads. And it's like, well, for one, it sounds terrible. It sounds desperate. You are desperate, but they're gonna smell that in the sales call. And what is, I mean, just from a foundational standpoint, like, why are we even in business? Are we just trying to pad our our paycheck or what are we doing? So I think that's where that comes from. And we need to help these businesses. Like, what problem are we solving in the industry? And so for anyone listening, I we've all been convicted of it. Just trying to go get clients for the money and really not focusing on like why and what are we doing for them? Because they worked damn hard for their money too. And uh so there's that piece of it. And in my opinion, if you can kind of work on your mindset like that, uh everything else will fix itself because you start working for different reasons.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, the it's hard to kind of tell that when you're on a virtual environment, right? Am I, you know, given this commission breath? I'm gonna call it right. Um, but like I always yeah, and it's uh I I always tell people like, you know, we there's a furniture place nearby, and like my my wife and I were looking for new furniture, and we walked in there, and like this guy was just like, he's like, Yeah, if you guys need help, just reach out, blah, blah. But then you we could just feel him like following us, right? Just like breathing down our neck, and we just left and went somewhere else. We're like, we're not gonna buy from this place. And so I would tell people, like, think about those types of things, or go into a place where there's like, you know, it's commission people, a used car lot, like those types of things, and just see how that feels in person and then think about how you would want your clients to feel, or any other case, in this case, leads how you want them to feel on on the other end.

SPEAKER_02 19:24

Yeah, and I'll even battle back against my own statement there because sales are important, right? But it's like why we're selling. And so yeah, I've been with a lot of sales coaches, right? Like Coach Peyton Welch or Coach Sean Denon. And a lot of times it's it's are we asking them the right questions? Are we asking their goals? Are we supplying the the roadmap to achieve those goals? Are we putting numbers and and an ROI plan together? And most of the time in desperation, we're not. And so uh we have to be willing to tell a c a lead or a client no. Like it's just not, I don't think you should do this, right? And that will build more trust than anything is if you're willing to tell a prospect, I don't think I can take your money, let's let's revisit this in six months. So having that mindset, wanting to help people, but then getting to the root cause, can you and will you help solve their main problem? And a lot of times when we're desperate, we skip those and we just jump to how do we get this person signed up? How do I get their visa?

SPEAKER_01 20:24

Yeah, absolutely. There's a book called The Challenger Sale. Uh, so I don't know if if you've read that book, Luke. If not, it's a great book, but it talks about like, hey, like every sales conversation you leave, like the person shouldn't, you should not leave that conversation where they're like, yeah, like I like they're agreeing with everything you say. They like leave that conversation. It's like, I never thought of things in that way. And like challenging the way that they believe. And so I think that goes hand in hand here as well as like making sure that you're you're challenging the way they think. I oftentimes tell people we aren't a good fit, right? Uh, because it's one of those things where it's like, I don't want one, I don't want the churn. Two, I don't want the the bad rap, but I also know like there's clients we've talked to that I've been in their shoes. And it's like, I know that, you know, this hire or whatever may make or break their bank account. And it's like, yeah I'd rather just tell you how to go do this yourself or what you need to do differently. Um you know, you mentioned a lot of people say, I need more sales, right? I just need to close that next deal. Legion, ironically, for marketing agencies, can be one of the hardest things for agencies to do. So what is it like? At what point do you recommend certain things? Like with talent fees as an example, like I've grown for us purely through like organic content, my personal brand, Facebook, you know, podcasts, that type of stuff. And we're just now turning on like the ads and everything like that. And that was the route that I took. And it's worked well for me, but for others, it does not work. So what have you found with all not just yourself, but all the agencies that you've coached that has been like the best path for them?

SPEAKER_02 21:55

Yeah. I mean, first of all, you have to look in the mirror. So if you're struggling to f Most agencies struggle to market their own marketing agency. And but you just put the mirror on any of us and you see the problem. And so for example, we always preach to our clients you need more Google reviews, you know, get that Google business profile on fire. It's so helpful. We need to be posting on social media, like organic content, post your face. Like the algorithm loves faces more than graphics, blah, blah, blah. And all of these things that we're doing for our clients and we teach our clients. And I'll just I just do the same thing for marketing agencies. I'm like, okay, let's take a look at your company LinkedIn profile and your Instagram, your Facebook, and your personal. And if it's dormant, uh, well, let's start there. For one, that's free. And two, that is basic plan number one that shouldn't even be a I need leads now. This should be a basic marketing tactic that we should be doing forever. So just putting the mirror up and seeing, okay, let's check out your agency Google Business Profile. Well, it, you know, there's three reviews on there, but I only have it's like, okay, well, we we can't complain about not having leads when we're not doing the things we're teaching our clients. And then another big thing too, Brad, is just marketing has been diluted, which has helped creative marketers. I will be honest about that. Like anyone who's creative listening to this, you've noticed that it's getting easier and easier to stand out because everyone else is adopting this black and white, gray, just boring. It's all the same content. But if you can think outside of the box and be go back to being a true marketer, you will succeed and you will get eyeballs, you will get awareness, you will get that fire going, and you'll get people that want to work with you on your team. You'll get people that want to work with you as a client. So getting back to the basics of how do we market our marketing agency? Well, you got to do the basics. Also, you got to think outside the box and be creative and welcome to the party. That is marketing. Yeah. So yeah, yeah, just it there's no shortcuts. I know everyone, including myself, you know, gets excited about AI and these new systems. But it's making it easier for the creative marketers, including myself, to stand out because I'm a real person posting my thoughts and uh and doing it that way. So yeah, just getting back to being creative and uh being yourself as well.

SPEAKER_01 24:08

Yeah. And it's like, you know, with with the you know, the posting the thoughts and the the personal branding and being creative, you know, I take this rule. It's like 80% life entrepreneurship, like what it's like to grow a company, 20% business, right? And so like every once in a while I post these offers, right? But it's like those, those aren't really designed to like convert. Yes, they convert, but what really converts is like me talking about my life journey and growing a company and the mis mistakes I've made and all those different things. And then people resonate with those and they buy from people, and then it turns into, you know, leads and then sales and everything like that. And then you can get to a point, you know, those who are listening, I'm I'm looking at Luke's background, he's got a thing that says dirtbag behind him, right? Yes, sir. And so, like, I imagine like that concept of dirtbag, which like now is funny, right? It's part of your marketing, your brand play, was not there at first. So, like oftentimes we get hung up and like, I need to have all these creative ways of, you know, you know, our agency, right? Just get out there and do the work, build a brand, and then you can do all those fun things afterwards.

SPEAKER_02 25:13

Yeah. And Brad, I love what you said there about uh yeah, we use the same thing. We call it the 80-20 rule. And it's yeah, it's 80% of your posts should be giving value, 20% is the asking or the taking, or the you know, asking for their email or call now or whatever that is. But a lot of times we've most people flip it around. They're like, nobody's engaging with my content. It's like, yeah, because it's you're just taking every single post. And how do we give some value? How do we make it social? And we always say too, social media is meant to be social. And if you want somebody to like and share your content and comment on everything, it's like power of reciprocity. Go do that for others, and I almost guarantee it comes back your way.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

Yeah, absolutely. Little uh little side note for those listening. Uh, if you're doing the personal branding route, we've been doing some analysis on my personal brand. Uh, the months that I get the posts with the most amount of comments on them, do we see a direct correlation in terms of new leads and new revenue coming into the business, right? Because commenting on posts gets it to show more in the feed. So it seems very simple, but that's just like a direct data point that we've seen. I don't know if you guys have seen that on your end, Luke.

SPEAKER_02 26:20

Yeah, I'd say with that, I and this could be for any owners listening, but also anyone that's a team member. But building your personal brand in conjunction with the business. Uh, they can connect, they can spider web together. Uh, I love doing that. Like Phaser is associated with Luke, Luke is associated with Phaser, Luke is also standalone, Phaser is also standalone. So you want to kind of spider web and and get those it's additional networks, additional value. And we do the same thing with our podcast. We have a dirt eggs podcast, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, everything, TikTok. Yeah. And so, but they can all collaborate together. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:55

Yeah, absolutely. Well, because you you know, one day, the the goal should always be build a company to exit, right? Whether that's exit in terms of there's someone else in the family who runs it or you sell it to a PE firm or whatever. And so if you're if Luke's brand is phaser marketing and just that, well, then when you no longer have phaser marketing because you sold the company or whatever, now Luke has no brand, right? And so it's important in that sense to be doing it in that case. Uh, one of the things I wanted to talk through, Luke, is you know, there's this aspect of as you're growing an agency, right? We're battling this aspect of, okay, trying trying to get leads, marketing in, but also building a team and running fulfillment and everything. If I recall correctly, you guys were, you know, doing white label fulfillment probably towards the beginning and then built an in-house team. Um, you know, most agencies eventually go in that direction. But at what point, you know, did it make the most sense for you guys to make that transition where it's like, hey, white label has served our needs up until now, but now we're at a different phase in our business where it makes sense to bring things in-house.

SPEAKER_02 27:57

Yeah. So I was a big advocate for having white label companies tackle the heavy lifting of our fulfillment and then having we call them consistent contractors. So they could be in the U US, uh, maybe working five to 20 hours a month for me, but they were kind of bought into the mission. Maybe they're in college, maybe they're a freelancer, but uh, we would have consistent contractors. And so as we were growing, my main goal was like, let's get to seven figures, 83K, and then we can start bringing things in-house because it was good enough. And when you stay on top of a white label and you treat them as part of your team and you communicate and you're asking good questions, that's when you can have a decently successful white label relationship. Uh, what I think most agencies fail to do is they hire a white label, they give them the keys, they check back in in four months, and they're like, what's going on? And you can't love your clients. Nobody can love your clients as much as you do. And I think some people just assume that this white label company is going to do that. So anyway, we um we had a great relationship. We had we worked at the time with agency elevation, different owners at the time, but we got it up to 83k monthly recurring revenue. It was I had two white labels, agency elevation, and then blue collar marketers, great company, friends of mine out of Canada. And then I think we had maybe nine consistent contractors that I would just pay monthly, and then we had one full-time employee. So that was Josie. She's now fast forward our COO and our integrator. That was 20 March of 2024. We hit seven figures, and it was all intentional. We made the plan then to slowly shift in-house. And at that time, we were probably about 40% gross profit, about 15% net profit, which is expected when you're white labeling most stuff. And uh and I was fine with it too. Like we were debt-free. Like I said, that was after owners pay everything and uh still doing well there. So but when we shifted, we expected, you know, eventually once we completed the shift, that to those to rise, and then also our control and our deliverables to rise and uh get become higher quality. And so about a 14-month transition, I would say, like all intentional. We'd do like batches, we'd do about four or five clients, offload them from white label, onboard them onto our team with our new SEO specialist with a tight SOP. And okay, yep, things are going well. Emails aren't going down, like you know, okay, things are looking good. Okay, let's do the next batch. Five of them, and it was about it was about 2K per batch. So $400 per client per month, five clients, $2K coming in, and we're hiring through Go Staffi. And so Go Staffy team members about 12, you know, 2K to 2,500, somewhere in that range, right? And so we could justify it because we're like, wow, this person can definitely take more than 10 clients.

SPEAKER_01 30:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:45

So we started batching it like that, and then at the end of the 14 months, we did that with all SEO accounts, all paid ads accounts, and then took a little bit longer, but did all the websites too. And then now we have full control, we have 31 team members, we have such an awesome team, a great culture, and margins somewhere around the 25 to 30 percent net and about 60-ish percent gross. But the point I'm trying to make with that too is like it it all is great, right? But for me personally, I could not have done that at 40k. A lot of people can, and but they have to be more operationally minded than I am and than I was. Yeah, one of my big weaknesses is building SOPs and building systems. Some people do that in their sleep. I I'm great at business development and selling, and so white label, if you're listening, is a great opportunity for you to go sell and we'll keep building the business as we go. Yeah, but when we got to that time, like white label sometimes isn't always forever for all agencies. And it does, you know, we're spending 50k a month in white label. I'm like, I could hire quite a few team members with that. Yeah. So trying to batch it where we're doing it slower, merge everything and transition over. And it's been uh yeah, I wouldn't have changed a thing, honestly. I I think it was about the right time.

SPEAKER_01 32:00

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I made the uh I made the wild choice when our first was born. Um we knew my wife was being induced on a Thursday, and I hired on my SEO director and it canceled white labeled that Monday prior. Uh like four days. Now, my executive admin, who's now my director of operations talent, feels like she had been going through for like two months prior of like pulling down all of our data and everything. So like we had the foundation there, but I had no clue if this team member was gonna work, right? I just trusted that the fact that it was uh go to work and it all worked out fine. But yeah, yeah, that's good. Definitely was crazy. Now we didn't have the uh amount of clients that you guys have, so it was much easier to be able to do that. But love the fact you guys did it in batches and everything like that to make sure that things went through correctly. As we as we wrap up here, Luke, you know, there's a lot of people who, you know, probably sit in the rooms at like seven figure agencies and see, you know, some of these people and it's like, yeah, but like they don't have the same problems that I have, right? And it's like I I have, you know, XYZ that causes me to be the bottleneck in my agency. And I believe that, you know, new levels bring on new devils. So there's always something that you're gonna be a bottleneck in in inside of your own company. Uh so for you guys today, like, is there something that like you're like, man, the one thing that I cannot get off my plate, even when we have X amount of revenue and clients, is this?

SPEAKER_02 33:17

I love this question. Very passionate about uh this type of stuff too. I would say, oh man, we were just talking my wife and I are just talking about this this week on a walk. What how would our what in our days would look different if money was no object? And we thought about it for a while and we're talking about some things. There's a couple things like unrelated to phaser, but when it comes to my role at phaser, almost nothing. Like I think there is a reason I'm doing everything I'm doing. And if there is something I'm not doing, I I I do have the means to delegate it, automate it, or eliminate it. And if for whatever reason I'm keeping it, it's for a different reason. So I and we always say too, like 10% of your job is always gonna suck. And so, yeah, sure, there's conversations where maybe a client is upset or they're I I will say this. Okay, I'll say this. I like this conversation. Legal, legal and high-level IT and tech security. So risk management, it's not that fun for me, but it's super important, obviously. And as we're approaching a, you know, two and a half million dollar company, it's like you kind of got to get your poop in a group here. And yeah, we we hired our first law firm. They're great, very expensive, but it's like I don't like going through the contracts and even like going through all the risk points and the penetration and all this stuff. It's like that stuff I could do without. So I'd say the legal stuff, which is super important, I have to be involved, right? And then the second would be like the high-level cybersecurity risk, IT risk, things like that. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 34:48

Well, even now with like the rise of of AI, like it just opens up uh a ginormous amount of risk. And like I always tell people, it's like, what happens when your system gets hacked? And like, are these companies, these insurance companies, going to back you or not? Like, so there's you know there's all types of things like that right now that are all up in the air.

SPEAKER_02 35:09

Yeah. So I'm glad we talked through that because those are definitely two that I'm just like, man, not fun, but also need to go through because really that's our biggest risk as a company. It isn't losing 10 clients, it is getting sued by a privacy law. Or, you know, you know what I mean? Something like that where it's uh we just get nailed for something. And so we're doing our best to uh not be negligent and to protect where we can and and also just eliminate some of the low-hanging fruit for people and do our best to be as as wholesome as possible, we'll say. Like we are just doing our job, we're trying to do the best we can for our clients, and uh yeah, and then there's ways we can protect ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 35:48

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Luke, thanks again for for hopping on and thank you for watching or listening to the episode. Go follow Luke, check out Phaser Marketing and the Dirtbags Podcast at dirtbagspodcast.com. All the links are 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 time, this is the agency advantage.