Stop Building Your Agency. Just Get Clients. (no one cares about your website) — Transcript

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1. 0:00Recently, I got the opportunity to go on
2. 0:01a retreat with a bunch of entrepreneurs
3. 0:03in Utah. They were all in the marketing
4. 0:05agency space. Uh there were a few people
5. 0:07there making around $20,000 a month and
6. 0:09there was a person there that was making
7. 0:10over a million dollars a month. And
8. 0:12after hanging out with them for 4 days,
9. 0:13I had five big takeaways that I think
10. 0:15would be really helpful for beginners
11. 0:17that are just trying to get their
12. 0:17marketing agency off the ground and make
13. 0:19some money. If you don't know who I am,
14. 0:20my name is Clay Lawrence, founder of
15. 0:22reviewharvest.com. You can see last
16. 0:23month we made over $66,000 just in our
17. 0:26marketing agency, not including any
18. 0:27revenue from this channel. Just in our
19. 0:29marketing agency helping local business
20. 0:30owners get more views and rank higher on
21. 0:32Google. The first takeaway was
22. 0:33abundantly clear because every single
23. 0:35one of the entrepreneurs there had, you
24. 0:37know, an audience, a personal brand, or
25. 0:38whatever, helping other agencies as
26. 0:40well. Between everybody there, we had
27. 0:41kind of our finger on the pulse of
28. 0:42thousands of people trying to start this
29. 0:44type of business. The first takeaway was
30. 0:46that the people that actually make money
31. 0:47and actually get this business off the
32. 0:48ground understand that 90% of it is
33. 0:51marketing and sales in the beginning.
34. 0:52Nobody cares about your website. Nobody
35. 0:54cares about your welcome emails. Nobody
36. 0:55cares about how you onboard a client or
37. 0:57how you set up your high-level snapshot
38. 0:58or anything like that. that win and
39. 1:00actually get clients and start growing
40. 1:01their business understand that they need
41. 1:03to spend the vast majority of their
42. 1:04time, especially in the beginning, just
43. 1:06letting people know they exist. And we
44. 1:07talked about this ad nauseam because
45. 1:09most of us had struggled with this in
46. 1:10the beginning and it's so clear to us
47. 1:12why we weren't growing in those first
48. 1:14couple years of starting our own agency.
49. 1:15And now we see it with thousands of
50. 1:17other marketing agencies. People worried
51. 1:18about their logo. People worried about
52. 1:19their brand colors. People worried about
53. 1:21everything besides letting people know
54. 1:23they exist. Even myself at over $60,000
55. 1:25a month in our agency, I need to spend
56. 1:26more time focused on sales and marketing
57. 1:28because that is our bottleneck. Really,
58. 1:30most of the stuff I spend my time on in
59. 1:31our agency is not actually growing it
60. 1:33unless I'm doing sales and marketing.
61. 1:34And that's because the hardest thing to
62. 1:36do in the beginning is getting a
63. 1:37business owner to trust you enough so
64. 1:39that you can charge their card and
65. 1:40provide some sort of service. It's
66. 1:42painful and it takes longer than you
67. 1:43think, but after you get your first five
68. 1:45customers, things get a lot easier. You
69. 1:47start to understand how it works. You
70. 1:48start to get proof. You start to get
71. 1:50testimonials. You start to develop some
72. 1:51skills in sales and marketing. But,
73. 1:53getting new businesses to pay you money
74. 1:55is a full contact sport, right? We want
75. 1:57some scalable, sexy way to get new
76. 1:59clients and there are ways out there
77. 2:01that work, but in general, it's going to
78. 2:03be messy. It's going to be scrappy. The
79. 2:04ones who are winning are the ones that
80. 2:06are doing whatever it takes to get those
81. 2:07first couple clients. We all have this
82. 2:09unreasonable dream that we can like make
83. 2:10a video or run an ad and people will
84. 2:12just pay us and sign up and everything
85. 2:14will work automatically and we don't we
86. 2:15don't have to talk to people, but
87. 2:16unfortunately, unless you have like a
88. 2:17big audience already, that is not the
89. 2:19case. If you're just getting started,
90. 2:20you don't have an audience, you don't
91. 2:21have skills, you've never marketed and
92. 2:22sold before, it's going to suck. And the
93. 2:24sooner you just start chipping away at
94. 2:26the cold calls, at the posts, at the
95. 2:27ads, whatever you're doing, the better.
96. 2:29The second takeaway I had is that every
97. 2:31single one of us had a bunch of failed
98. 2:32attempts of businesses before, but when
99. 2:34we finally started to grow, we found a
100. 2:35proven model and we did that before we
101. 2:37iterated it and changed it up and added
102. 2:39our own spin, right? For me, it's like I
103. 2:40knew people were paying for review
104. 2:42software. I knew people were paying
105. 2:43agencies to get them more reviews, so I
106. 2:45decided I was going to go all in on
107. 2:46that. For a lot of other people there,
108. 2:47it was just a traditional marketing
109. 2:48agency, right? We're doing websites,
110. 2:50reviews, local SEO, running ads for
111. 2:52people. It was all very basic models
112. 2:53that have been proven time and time
113. 2:55again to work and we all use proven
114. 2:57models to cut our teeth and learn the
115. 2:59skills needed. We didn't decide we're
116. 3:00some Elon Musk. We didn't decide we're
117. 3:02going to do some brand new strategy and
118. 3:03go high-level or brand new marketing
119. 3:05service that no one's ever done before,
120. 3:07because starting a marketing agency is
121. 3:08already hard enough. So, you might as
122. 3:09well not try something completely new
123. 3:11before you've learned any skills and
124. 3:12experience. Once you've got some money
125. 3:14coming in, once you've gotten some
126. 3:15skills, once you've learned how to
127. 3:16market and sell, then if you want to
128. 3:17iterate, you actually have some skills
129. 3:19to move forward with, but in the
130. 3:20beginning, I can't recommend enough,
131. 3:21find a model that works, find somebody
132. 3:23online that's actually doing what they
133. 3:24say they're doing and just model your
134. 3:25business after them. Don't try to
135. 3:27reinvent the wheel before you have any
136. 3:28momentum at all. At first, just grab
137. 3:30that wheel and start pushing it and
138. 3:31start learning. Third takeaway might
139. 3:33sound a little bit depressing to some,
140. 3:35but at the end, I'll show you actual
141. 3:36tactics that you can take to become this
142. 3:38type of person. The third takeaway was
143. 3:39something we mentioned all weekend,
144. 3:41winners win, period, right? There are
145. 3:43winners and there are losers. It's very
146. 3:45clear to us now after making content for
147. 3:46agencies, after coaching other agencies,
148. 3:48that some people just have a loser's
149. 3:50attitude. They blame their
150. 3:51circumstances. They have the mindset
151. 3:52that they can't learn anything and
152. 3:54certain things are beyond them, certain
153. 3:55things are beneath them, certain things
154. 3:57are kind of above their pay grade.
155. 3:58They're worried about all the wrong
156. 4:00things when starting their business. And
157. 4:01so, if you flip this on its head and you
158. 4:03want to become the type of person who is
159. 4:04a winner, first thing you need to do is
160. 4:06point the finger back to yourself and
161. 4:07turn these things into problems you can
162. 4:08solve, right? If you tried to run
163. 4:10Facebook ads and it didn't work, a loser
164. 4:12would say, "Oh, Facebook ads ads don't
165. 4:13work in my industry. That would never
166. 4:14work." Instead, the statement is, "I
167. 4:17haven't figured out how to make ads work
168. 4:18yet, but I know they do work and I know
169. 4:20I can figure it out." Nothing is beneath
170. 4:22or above winners. Winners have the
171. 4:23attitude that they can figure out
172. 4:25anything. It's not, "Oh, high-level,
173. 4:26super complicated. I don't know how to
174. 4:27set it up. I need to pay a VA to do it."
175. 4:29It's, "Hey, I can figure this out with a
176. 4:30bunch of YouTube videos. I can sit down
177. 4:32and anything is figureoutable." These
178. 4:33winners also understand how hard
179. 4:35business actually is. They don't have
180. 4:36these crazy expectations that they can
181. 4:38just start month one with no skills or
182. 4:40experience and make $10,000 a month
183. 4:41their very first month. They understand
184. 4:43it takes time. You have to be scrappy.
185. 4:45You have to consistently show up day in
186. 4:46and day out to make progress. So,
187. 4:47winners have a knack for focusing on
188. 4:49what matters. And you don't even have to
189. 4:51have this knack. I'll tell you right
190. 4:52now, focusing on what matters in the
191. 4:53beginning means focusing on letting
192. 4:55people know you exist. Doing more cold
193. 4:56calls, sending more emails, sending more
194. 4:58DMs, posting more content, make running
195. 5:00more ads. So, if you're watching this
196. 5:02and that sounds like you, great. You're
197. 5:03a winner. In due time, if you keep
198. 5:05showing up and being consistent, you
199. 5:06will be able to build the business you
200. 5:07want to have. If you're listening to
201. 5:09this and you're like, "Oh, crap. Like,
202. 5:10I'm the guy that says I can't do that
203. 5:12and I can't do this." and use the word
204. 5:13can't all the time, well, then just
205. 5:15stop. Like, literally stop saying you
206. 5:17can't do stuff. Become the type of
207. 5:18person that can do stuff. Understand
208. 5:20that everything is figureoutable.
209. 5:22Understand that it takes time. It takes
210. 5:23being relentless. And focus on things
211. 5:25that matter. And you can become one of
212. 5:26these winners that I'm talking about.
213. 5:28The fourth takeaway was really
214. 5:29interesting. I was talking about
215. 5:30just-in-time learning versus
216. 5:31just-in-case, right? A lot of beginners
217. 5:33when they're getting started, they want
218. 5:34to learn everything before they take any
219. 5:36action, right? They want to have their
220. 5:37website first. They want to have their
221. 5:38welcome emails. They want to have their
222. 5:40logo and branding dialed in. They want
223. 5:41to know how to onboard a client. They
224. 5:42want to know how to run ads. They want
225. 5:43to know how to do everything before they
226. 5:45even get a client. But, the people that
227. 5:46are consistently showing up and making
228. 5:47progress, a lot of it is just-in-time
229. 5:49learning. It's like, "Okay, I sold the
230. 5:50client. Now, let me go figure out how to
231. 5:52onboard them and create a website for
232. 5:53them. And let me watch YouTube videos to
233. 5:54deliver them." So, Mike told a really
234. 5:56cool story about a guy getting started.
235. 5:57He was having some success. And somebody
236. 5:59did actually ask him about his website.
237. 6:00They're like, on a sales call, he was
238. 6:01about to close and say, "Hey, I just
239. 6:03send me over your website later and then
240. 6:04I'll take a look at it and then I'll
241. 6:05make a decision." So, instead of
242. 6:06spending 3 weeks of not talking to
243. 6:07people and building his website, after
244. 6:09the call he said, "Hey, I'm really busy
245. 6:10today. I'll send that over to you later
246. 6:11this afternoon." He took an hour, or 2
247. 6:12hours after the call, created a website,
248. 6:14and sent it over to that person because
249. 6:15they needed it. So, you can spend 10
250. 6:17hours a day on YouTube learning, feeling
251. 6:19productive, thinking that you're making
252. 6:20progress, but you're not actually making
253. 6:22any progress because if you're trying to
254. 6:23improve or learn something that is not
255. 6:25the bottleneck of your business right
256. 6:26now, which is probably getting
257. 6:28customers, then it's a waste of time.
258. 6:29And the fifth takeaway for me personally
259. 6:31was that things take time, right? Big
260. 6:32things don't happen overnight. And this
261. 6:34was reassuring to me because I could see
262. 6:35the biggest people in the room, people
263. 6:36making the most amount of money, to the
264. 6:38smallest people in the room, and for the
265. 6:39most part, the difference was how long
266. 6:40they've been doing it, right? If you are
267. 6:42a winner, if you do show up
268. 6:43consistently, if you let people know you
269. 6:44exist, if you provide some sort of real
270. 6:46result to a client, over time you keep
271. 6:48chiseling away, you will create the
272. 6:50business that you want. But, sometimes
273. 6:51it takes a year, 2 years, 5 years to get
274. 6:53where you want to be. The reality is
275. 6:54that most of us are probably just move
276. 6:55the goal posts and keep trying to grow.
277. 6:57But, as long as you have the expectation
278. 6:58this is going to take years and not
279. 6:59weeks, I think it puts you in a better
280. 7:01position mentally to keep showing up.
281. 7:03Because if you do have the expectation
282. 7:05that you're going to make $10,000 your
283. 7:06first month, or your first 3 months,
284. 7:08whatever it is, and then when you get 3
285. 7:09months in and you're only making a
286. 7:10thousand, you feel like a failure. No,
287. 7:12you're not a failure. You're just
288. 7:13growing. It takes time. You're doing the
289. 7:15hardest part of growing your business,
290. 7:16which is the first couple clients. And
291. 7:18so, of course it takes time. Every
292. 7:20person in that room had had exponential
293. 7:21growth, meaning that it took years of
294. 7:23just slowly circling away and then boom,
295. 7:25all of a sudden they just exploded. And
296. 7:26it looks like overnight to everybody
297. 7:28else, but to the person actually running
298. 7:30the business, they're like, "No, it was
299. 7:31the 5 years that I put in before I had
300. 7:33this big year where it actually blew
301. 7:34up." And so, be patient and give
302. 7:36yourself a time to grow this type of
303. 7:37business, especially if you're a
304. 7:38beginner. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed
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