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Verbatim text
Lee:
Before we start today’s show, let me share with you something super exciting that we are launching. That’s an event here in the uk, all around helping you transform your agency. So if you look back over the last year, maybe two years, and feel frustrated that maybe you’ve not moved forward, then this is the event for you. Check it out over on Agency Transformation Live. That’s Agency Transformation Live. We have got speakers from all around the world here to help you plan your next 90 days, your next three months, your next year, whatever that needs to be to help you get the level of transformation that you need in your business. That’s AgencyTransformation live. We’ll see you there. Welcome to the Agency Trailblazer podcast. This is your host, Lee, and on today’s show we are talking with John White, who shares how he launched his agency and then went into an amazing reoccurring revenue model. This is an episode not to be missed. We even go into numbers. So sit back, relax and enjoy the ride. You are joining a conversation with me, Mr. Lee Jackson. And today we have the one, the only John White.
Lee:
And your dog or the neighbour’s dog?
John:
Yeah, he’s somewhere around here, you know, just barking away.
Lee:
So he’s gonna be just sharing his thoughts and opinions, kind of shouting at the back. You know, like when you’re on the phone and you’re. The other half’s like shouting, oh, don’t forget to say this.
John:
Yeah, I’m sure he’s in the background. Like, SEO, retargeting, mobile. Responsive.
Lee:
What was it cost per acquisition?
John:
Exact. Your CPA is too high.
Lee:
Your dog’s a freaking genius. He should be on the website.
John:
Exactly. I’ll put him right on the home. It’s funny because he’s actually like the face of a local, like, garden centre out here. So, like, I’ll buy us. My partner has a garden centre, so they sell a bunch of flowers and they also have like a big dog grooming section. So for 2019, my dog’s gonna be like the face of like this dog grooming company.
Lee:
That is so cool. So autographs are available as a paw print if you wish. Please send a stamped addressed envelope. John White at True Mountain Marketing. So, John, you are from. I can’t say this. True Mountain Marketing. That’s actually a tongue twister if you say it too fast. Spelt MTN. Yes, spelt MTN. So, folks, if you want to Check out his website, that’s TrueMTN. That’s Mike TangoNovember.Com. So instead of Me butchering some sort of intro about you. I would really love to know who you are, a little bit about you, your favourite drink or your favourite colour, something like that. And then we’re going to jump in that time machine and we’re going to find out more about how you got started. So let us know a little bit about the world of John.
John:
Cool. Yes, a little, but I’ll give you like the background story. So about me, you know, I’m 25 years old, from the Chicagoland area, so northwest Indiana, around Chicago in the US. We’re like 40 minutes outside of there. I’ve been doing marketing for. Since I was like, 14. So when YouTube had to invite you to their partner programme. So that was before they paid you without, like a personal invite. And that’s kind of how I got started making YouTube intros for people online for like the gaming community kind of thing. So I learned how to do like 3ds max cinema 4d, make like 3d renders, did that and end up paying for prom. And I was like, wow, you can actually make money with like a computer just making some graphics. I’m like, this is fantastic. So I ended up back. I’m talking. This is like 10 years ago, to be honest. And I wish this was a joke.
Lee:
Which feels like five minutes ago to me. I’m 36, mate, so I’m feeling a little envious. Carry on.
John:
It was like half my life ago, so it’s. It’s made me big for me. Shut up, Tim.
Lee:
Like, I will say 10 years ago, I’ll say, remember a few months ago. My wife’s like, Lee, that was 10 years ago.
John:
Yeah. That’s crazy. But I mean, so, like, it’s just weird to think that was, for me, that’s like the beginning of it all. 10 years ago. I mean, YouTube didn’t even have a partner programme. And now it’s like everybody, they’re like, you’re a partner, you’re a partner, you get a dollar. I’m like, what is going on? It was not that easy. So I ended up starting, like an online agency when I was 14, where I had designers in Europe, Australia, throughout the US and basically it was like the first crowdsourced type of fiverr where people would come to us and I would source out the designer to get like an intro or a graphic done. I ended up selling company like within a year. And then, you know, went through school, learned a little more about photography, graphic design and graduated high school, got brought on to a marketing firm in the city. The Day after I graduated high school. So I was like 18, worked there for a year, ended up getting hired on to a home improvement centre out in the US that was competing with like Menards and Home Depot which are like the biggest people in our area.
John:
So you know, at 19 years old I was managing 150 million a year marketing budget single handedly. And then I did that for about five years, built out a whole entire marketing department for the company. So we had about 10 people when I left just on marketing and then five people on an E commerce department that was just doing Amazon and web ecommerce for them. And then January of last year I quit and went full time into my agency which I had started on the side for like six months. So it’s been a pretty interesting transition to say the least.
Lee:
That is very cool. There is one fact you did miss and that is either your favourite colour or drink.
John:
It’s a favourite colour. Right now it’s red. Like I am obsessed with the colour red to the point where I’m trying to like come out with a product or like socks. I think I’m gonna make socks that are just red and call them red because I think it’s such a bold colour that stands out.
Lee:
Sell them in Boston.
John:
Yeah, we’ll call them the Boston Red Sox and I’m sure I won’t get any takedowns on that. That’s, that’s my struggle. I can’t call Red Sox.
Lee:
When you said you’re from Chicago, I had like this Tourette’s where I just wanted to go Chicago.
John:
Oh my. It’s crazy. I’m like if people are. Oh my gosh. That’s either that or I get. Are you Cubs fan? Yeah, I’m like, sure. I watch baseball. Are you a Bears fan? Football is cool. I guess, yeah, I kind of have to be if you live around here. But yeah, favourite colour red. You know, I used a big thing with blue for a bit. A lot of my websites were blue and I was like, this is getting overwhelming. And drinks. I’m big wine guy so red wines my go to right now. Any Malbec from Argentina is spot on, mate.
Lee:
You’re a legend. I love it.
John:
Thank you.
Lee:
Now then, I love this. So from 14, you’ve taught yourself so much. You’ve essentially run the business, sold the business, worked for this massive company, massive marketing budget and then eventually took the plunge about a year or so ago and left all that to start your own agency. That’s an incredible story. As well as liking the colour Red and maybe sometimes blue. That’s kind of it. Then that’s the podcast guys. No, I’m joking. So I really want to deep dive then in to that little, that process of. Well, actually I wanted to. Two things. I want to first of all celebrate the fact that we live in an age that a 14 year old guy can teach himself cool stuff and create a business from that and then continue to develop a business and now be 25 with his own agency and growing that. That is phenomenal. And I think we are in an amazingly exciting age. So first of all, thank you, Internet and Tim Bernersley and all that. Right? Okay. So that’s out of the way. Absolutely incredible. So the second thing I want to find out then, at what point did you start to get that it you’re managing this big budget, you’re a marketing guy, you’re a ledge and you’re like, I really want an agency.
Lee:
When did that itch start?
John:
So it’s actually funny. A lot of people always have this like, entrepreneur like story of like, okay, this is it. Like I got yelled at at work or, you know, I finally got pushed over the edge. I’m sick of having the man throw his hammer down on me, you know, and, and it really didn’t happen to me. I’ve just always kind of like, I like doing projects. I mean, when I was working at my, my full time, you know, office job, I guess you could say I was working like 50 hours a week. The pay was like phenomenal. I mean, I was in my 20s making six figures. It was awesome. I mean, I was like living it up. So I didn’t have many complaints. But I had started a bunch of stuff on the side with my, my partner, my co founder. And it just kind of like was doing it for fun. Like, hey, I want to make websites that aren’t related to home improvement or flooring or something. And I’m like, okay, I want to get into like more of like the extreme sports stuff, you know, the Red Bull style videos making in the, in the cool click funnel style of everything that’s going on now, you know, just did it for fun.
John:
And then all of a sudden it’s like everybody in their parents in our local area wanted something from me and I was already trying to be like, quiet about it. I’m like, all right, how do I keep this under the wrap so my boss doesn’t find out that I’m doing this huge side project? And then, and I was just like, I can’t. There’s too Many people already involved. Within a three to six month period, it like quadrupled in size. And I was like, oh, crap. I mean, like, time to make a decision. What am I gonna do? You know, so we. I just made the jump. I took a very, like, calculated risk. So to be honest, like, when I left in January, I knew I had so much income from my previous job that I couldn’t just quit and then pay my bills and support my, you know, family, which is my dogs and my wife. So it’s not really like a crazy family. But my dog eats a lot of food. So I took a calculated risk. I knew how much I had to make every month. We brought on a business partner, so a third partner, I guess you could say.
John:
He brought in funding as well. So he kind of floated us for six months, which we can reference as well when we kind of talk about some of the monthly stuff. And that kind of gave me a huge, you know, chance to basically be like, let’s figure it out. I’ve got six months to make or break and either make somebody who brought in a bunch of money extremely upset or be extremely successful. Let’s see what I’m really worth. And that’s kind of where it wasn’t really like, let’s do entrepreneur. It’s more like, I have a calculated chance where I’ll probably be more successful than I will fail. So let’s give it a try.
Lee:
Absolutely. There’s my favourite book on the planet. Actually, it’s not quite true, there’s quite a few favourite books, but one of my favourite books on the planet is Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. And that sounds very much what you did there. There’s obviously some fear and trepidation in there a little bit, but you’ve got. It’s a calculated risk. You can see that you’ve got potential. You can see that things are growing on the side. You’ve got an investor. Why the heck not? We’ve got six months. Let’s give this a go and see what happens. What’s the worst that can happen? Well, no one’s going to die, so that’s a good thing. So let’s try this. And I can always eat a tin of, like, cheap food. I was going to say a tin of beans, but I don’t think you guys have that out there, do you?
John:
In the States, like Kentucky beans or something weird. It’s the same.
Lee:
Whatever would be like a really cheap meal for you guys in the States. We would say here in the uk, it’s like, you know, seriously, we can live off beans for a month if we have to. When we started our agency, we were like, seriously, if we can’t pay ourselves for a month, we will just live on tins of beans or whatever. The cheapest meal we can make is because we believe that we can keep this going. We can actually make something of it. Now you did mention the monthly, and I’d love to deep dive into that shortly. But when you first started for those six months, can you just describe the sorts of projects you were taking on and maybe what some of the. Well, what was that six months like, as well as the projects?
John:
So our agency essentially started in 2017 in the summer. So in 2018 is when I took the jump in January. So we had like about a six, maybe seven month period of my partner kind of helping do stuff during the day while I was working during the day, and then I come home at night and tie up web projects or editing on videos. So when January came in and I jumped, we were essentially, and I like to say, and with finger quotes, like a full service marketing agency, like, we’ll do it all. Just come to us. I was literally at the point where I was like, all right, I made the jump. I will take anybody who wants to work with us right now. So we were doing, you know, video production. We have in our office right now, we’ve purchased like $25,000 in video equipment. And it is, it got ridiculous. And we’ll do all the video production, we’ll do, you know, graphic design, we’ll do your website, we’ll even just host your website. I don’t care. And it got a little ridiculous at first. But what it did at the same time was help us kind of get introduced to some very big business owners that were looking for a little bit of everything, or at least a little bit of maybe just video, but mainly web.
John:
But the fact that we could offer it really helped get our foot in the door to get started. So six months, I mean, we were just an anything agency trying to get work.
Lee:
To be honest, I think that’s something that a lot of agencies have to do. You need to get your experience, you need to get some cash in the bank to be able to then use that as a platform. And when you say anything agency, so you were positioning yourself to anyone as the full service. We will do social, web, video, anything you can possibly think of. We are your guys.
John:
Exactly. And to be honest, like, we’ve got the skill sets like, I know Facebook and social. I know video Production very well. I know my design, I know photography, but the problem is there’s only one of me and that’s what we ran into, to be honest. So.
Lee:
Well, that was going to be my next question. How did that go for those six months? Was it like the most busiest six months you’ve ever had in your life?
John:
It was interesting to say the least. So like what we found we had maybe like one or two projects I fell through where it’s just maybe I forgot. Forgot about it. What it became was an extremely awesome learning experience because I worked a tonne but at the same time it’s like the scale, you could say it started me working like 15 hours a day and eventually got to like 10 to 8 because I figured out how to like project manage a lot better. How do they use like we. I’m big Outlook guy, so how to use my tasks and Outlook correctly and sync those to my phone. So if something popped up, you know I’m moving it on my phone already. Just every day basically wake up, set my task list and basically work it down from the top to the bottom until I was done. So like, basically organisation was not perfect and now it’s like as close as it’s gonna get for right now. But that that helped save a tonne. So I learned right away, like as an agency, if you’re going to offer everything, that’s fine, just organise your day out.
John:
It’s just not possible to do it without that.
Lee:
Absolutely. And I like that you’ve been able to over time establish the process or you know, the organisational process. And you’ve actually proved using Outlook. My gosh, mate, I mean I’ve not used Outlook for donkeys years. Okay, but you know, if you have a tool, as long as you got a process, you can pretty much use any tool to organise yourself. As long as you know how you use it and where you put things, you can organise your day and you can organise a full service agency with Outlook. So if you are blaming whatever tool it is you’re using right now as an agency because you feel overwhelmed, maybe have a look at the processes you have rather than the tools that you’re using because otherwise we’re always going to be trying all of these appsumo deals for new PM systems.
John:
Outlook has everything, I’m telling you. So like, I mean, if you’re not fully using the calendar function, you’re doing it wrong. Task list, if you’re not using it, you’re doing it wrong. And then if you have partners or you have Employees with the tasks. You can assign them the tasks just like you could like some random like Asana pretty much. And then in the tasks you can leave comments just like Asana. So you’re not using all these third party platforms all the time. And I mean it just syncs everything perfectly to my iPhone with you know, 365. So that’s a big plus.
Lee:
But now for a message from our sponsors. Hey.
John:
And I’m like anyways, click referral link.
Lee:
We’re at Microsoft.
John:
Use Outlook for your agency 5050 cent referral link. Thank you.
Lee:
Yeah, that is, that does suck, doesn’t it? I’ve never understood how there’s it companies that will resell like the implementation of Microsoft into your business office 365 but I think they’re only getting like ridiculously low sum. But anyway that’s a completely different podcast. All right, so full service agency, six months manic. You’ve clearly made it a success. So you’ve made your investor happy and you’ve kept going. At what point did you guys kind of calm it down a bit and start to focus on things? Because if I’m looking at your website I can see that you’re offering only three core services. That’s web content and digital. So when did that happen, why did that happen and how’s it been going? Big loaded question there.
John:
Yeah, absolutely. So after the six months that’s kind of when like our we knew that our payroll funding you could say from our initial investment from our partner, it was going to be gone. So what we had quickly figured out was like we had that six month period to basically try everything. We could just blast out every type of thing and eventually we rework ourselves. So we pretty much pivoted heavily into becoming more of a web in digital agency. So we moved all of our services to like a digital base. We had been doing a bunch of web design pretty much left and right and then we had tried to do like a little bit of like social on top of that but we just couldn’t do social and build sites and make sure the sites are like you know, launched correctly and everything on top of a little bit creative. Social is like a full time job if you’re doing it correctly. We found out. So eventually the end of the year in like December, ish, maybe like November between November December, we brought on, we didn’t really bring on a fourth partner. We started a separate company called True Mountain Social and we brought on somebody who just manages that aspect of, we call it like a division I guess you could say.
John:
So my partner, his name’s Matt, all he does every day is sit on Facebook, Instagram, you know, make sure he’s learning his Google Ads, AdWords, which we don’t run as much because it’s too expensive for our clients right now. And that’s it. So basically we pivoted our company strictly into digital for True Mountain and then focused into three buckets which like you said, it’s just content, web and digital. So each one has like its own team that looks it over. Like I focus on kind of all three. But my key aspect in my day to day is the web. My original co founder does kind of the content. So if somebody needs photography or video, he’s the guy that drives out there and knocks it out for us. Like I said, the fourth person we brought on does the digital. So I put whoever was the best at each part in charge of that to make sure it got done correctly and you know, things didn’t fall through. And that helped a tonne. I mean I see so many agencies that are like a one man band and it as the business owner, like I was doing that, I just wasn’t even getting to do anything other than just manage projects.
John:
It kind of was like a toll on like what you can do every day, especially when you want to be the creative, you know.
Lee:
Exactly. I was doing the 19 hour days when I first launched my agency. It was ridiculous. Well, 19 hour days was a short day. I think sometimes I would, I have been known to pull literally an all nighter and still be going at 9am to make a site live, etc. It was ridiculous. And my wife was telling me that I need to either go and get a job or make a massive change in the business.
John:
Yeah, we started using Toggl recently. I don’t know if you know that app that’s Toggle, it’s just a time tracker free. We started doing that and I’m making all of our, everybody basically in our company do that and just mark what type of project they have. So if it’s web, they type in web and start their project. It’s content. It’s content. Because basically I want to be like, all right, at the end of the week, I work 70 hours. This is what I get paid. What am I making an hour? Am I better just working for like a minimum wage job right now? Like, let’s see if this actually makes sense. But you have to know that, you have to know that to even see if what we’re doing makes sense.
Lee:
Absolutely. Exactly. And we’ve been doing that. So we use a product called Absado and everything we’re doing is timed. They’ve got a little timer in there so we can see, you know, how long are we spending on development, how long are we spending on social media, etc. And if it’s not paying, it needs to be reduced. So, for example, I put an announcement. I don’t know if you saw it today. We’re not. I’m no longer going into the WP Innovator Group. So spoiler alert, guys, if you’ve not read the message, I’m not going to be in the WP Innovator group anymore. I’m going to be in it once a week for 30 minutes for a Q and A. Otherwise I will not be in there answering loads of questions because I found that I was spending approximately six to seven hours a week of time answering questions, putting content into that WP Innovator group and there wasn’t really that much return. Whereas I can actually redirect that into, say, something like the membership or into ongoing digital marketing or to training my team, et cetera. So, you know, I’ve reduced that seven hours a week down to 30 minutes of a Q and A call, which I can probably add a lot of value there, rather than trying to spread myself really thin over lots and lots of different things.
Lee:
Not about me, though. I definitely want to talk about these buckets that you created. I love the word buckets because visually, as we’re all designers or developers, we can kind of really get that. I love the fact you have these buckets. And if people want to Check out the website, go to True MTN, that’s Mike Tango November.com and if you scroll down, you’ll see kind of a productized view where you’ve got a logo for each. I’m seeing the blue that you love. I see true mountains kind of erring towards the red, even though it’s orange right now. We could just change that to red, mate, and then you’ve got the green True Mountain. So one thing that I’ve kind of recommended to people is sometimes they can’t find a niche necessarily, but what you can do is at least create a productized niche where you’re super focused on something. Like you’ve got your partner doing the True Mountain social. They are super focused and they are professional expert in that one thing and you’ll market that one thing as a product on its own. So it becomes a productized niche, as it were. So folks, truemtnmiketangonovember.com, go Check those out.
Lee:
So with the. We’ve covered social, obviously you’ve got someone covering those, you’ve got your True Mountain content. We’ve covered those. Let’s talk about what you’re up to with the web, because I’m interested in your model, folks. If you click on Learn more about True Mountain, you’ve. They’ve actually got an entire separate website called mtnsites.com and the first thing, mate, that struck me about it was your pricing model. I went straight to pricing because that’s what we all do. And you’ve got a very interesting pricing model. Instead of me filling in a form to try and work out how much it’s going to cost, you put your prices up front and it’s monthly. Tell me all about that. How did you get into doing that? Because that’s not necessarily the norm in agency life.
John:
I know. So I’ve been posting for like the last month on and off for like pretty much all the different agency groups and web groups. And you know, apparently this is not normal.
Lee:
It really is not. And it’s cool. So tell me.
John:
People are like super caught off when I say this. Like, some people are even mad at me. They’re like, this is dumb, you’re not making any money. I’m like, I mean, if you don’t want to do it, that’s fine, that’s great for me. Like, that’s great. But essentially what we ran into in our first six months for 18 was, wow, we’ve got this, these big projects we were doing, you know, we were selling 15,000, $25,000 e commerce sites, like, no problem. But what the problem actually was was when I sat back and I looked at the time investment to put together a pitch to now get that initial meeting. So basically it was initial meeting, put together a pitch because now you’ve left that meeting, you know what they want after discovery. Now get back together with this client again, pitch them this, and then basically they go, this price is too high, or this doesn’t have any of the features I want. So I go back and forth again and now I got to revise the proposal. And then after that I sent it to him. Now their attorney has to look over the contract.
John:
Now the contract signed, all right, we just spent like pretty much a whole month, if not eight weeks just getting to that point, to be honest, for these larger projects. And now we need to start the project. And then I found for a lot of these they were more custom based. So these projects took three months to even launch on like a good client, to be honest. So I just wasted five months and I only had six months of funding. I’m like, this is not sustainable. And it just doesn’t make sense to.
Lee:
Throw into the mix. There’s a cash flow as well, isn’t there? So if you’re doing that, you’ll get some sort of deposit up front. But if it does take three months or in a real world, let’s face it, four, five, six months, because the client doesn’t get back to you, etc. That can be a cash flow killer, can’t it?
John:
Actually that’s a great point because that was one of the issues we had also dealt with was look, we got our 1/3 payment down if it was a larger or 50% if it was under 10 grand and we got that payment down. And then when we finally launched the site, I felt like we were just chasing this client for honestly a month, if not more, because maybe they have net 30 or maybe they have net 45 and now we’re chasing them for another 30 to 45 days just to get that last payment. I’m like, this is insane. I’m like, after I broke down the amount of months involved into it and then divide that into the total cost, I’m like, we’re only making like 1200 bucks a month. If you’re lucky at the end of like a year, I’m like, this doesn’t, you can’t do this because that’s not enough to even pay one employee. And I’ve got one employee just dedicated to this whole project, you could say. So we basically just found like all these red flags that we dealt with. And then we took a step back and said, what do businesses actually need for a small business?
John:
What do they need for like a basic E commerce? What do they need if they’re a medium business and why are they asking for so much? So when we sell a lot of these larger packages and when any agency does it, you know, it’s a custom package, everything’s custom down to the point where when you send over like a mockup on a larger package, probably on a PSD and they approve it, or maybe they send you a PSD because they have an in house team and they say this is the look we want. So we basically said, no way. We’re done with that custom concept and we came up with tailored web design. So essentially what we’re doing now is we’re calling this new Concept of tailored web design, where, look, I know that you’re a restaurant, I know how a restaurant website should be set up because I’m the web designer. I know you want more customers and I will set your site up to have your menu right away in directions because that’s the two people, two things everybody comes to a restaurant website for. So we’re basically tailoring a design to the company versus spending all this time working with their people who don’t know really anything about web design to have them tell us how to build their website.
John:
So we kind of took that into it and now that has done two things. It has helped save us time because we are pretty much just making the design and it looks nice and they’re like, wow, this is awesome. And they just know it’s going to work because we’ve done like the data and the backup on it and it’s just saved a bunch of time from that aspect alone. And then two, we’re able to save some of the stuff that we redo a lot, like different types of headers or footers and you know, make our process go a lot smoother. Every single person’s not this custom ground up. Everybody’s kind of, you know, to an extent, got the same concept of I need more business or people in the door so we can build websites with that concept much faster. These aren’t full custom solutions. So that’s kind of what our goal is. It was to build websites quick and get them to the client as fast as possible. So then it brought us to pricing, which is where we really needed to kind of work things out over the course of the year. So we found when we launched like a custom site, we’d sell them, we’ll just say $10,000.
John:
Every person we did a maintenance package on or we tried to for like 150. That’s kind of like the average for agents, I feel like between 100 and 150amonth. That covers, you know, the agency to update their plugins, to update, make sure their hostings up, do their daily backups if you’re, you’re on that type of hosting. But we were like arguing with our clients on this left and right and they’re like, and we don’t want to do it. We’ll host on GoDaddy, we’ll host on somewhere else. And it like some like I felt like somebody shot an arrow into my heart every time they said that. I’m like, no, I built this really nice website and you’re going to put it on like a godaddy shared hosting. I’m like this sucks. Or they would, they would update their own plugins. You know, I load the site one day and everything’s just like hard coded HTML. I’m like what is happening right now?
Lee:
Well I had my nephew, he logged in and updated the site for us.
John:
Yep, it’s exactly what was happening.
Lee:
He did what now?
John:
We eventually found we had one client in the US that had to do an ADA compliant website. So basically we had to build a website for people with, you know, visual impairments so they could use their keyboard to access everything. We gave it to the municipality. They didn’t want us to host it, they didn’t want us to touch it after that. And honestly it was such a long project. I was like here you go, goodbye. And they updated all of the colours, all the back end plugins. Like the second day broke everything. And I was like, I don’t know where the like the fault is on that one. So we were like, you know what, every project has to have a maintenance package at this point. And then I was like wait, why don’t we just basically finance this website? You know I know that for a simple website my agency needs to make at least six grand. Now I know we’re at $300 a month so we did that and we eventually had 12 month commitments so that brought us like 3,600. It’s not enough. So what we did was we made it 24 month commitments and we’ve kind strictly done that now.
John:
And that I guess you just under.
Lee:
Ten grand isn’t it?
John:
Yeah. So it’s roughly 7200 and I actually padded it up because what I knew I needed to do was hire a sales staff. So basically I brought in, I have like a whole team of people that just do sales and they’re commission based so I can pay them out depending on how many they sell. And I have basically a twelve hundred dollar padding where I know I can like lose some of that in time to set something up or maybe I have to buy extra plugins for that person and then I can pay my salesperson as well the commission for getting the sale. So I can focus just on making these websites as fast as possible and that has worked great. So the 299Amonth was like easy. I haven’t had anybody really complain about it and if they do complain about it I’m like this is great because I’m definitely not going to sell you any video packages now and you definitely can’t afford the digital, you know, ads. $300 a month, you’re really going to have a heart attack when I tell you it’s a thousand bucks just to touch digital ads, you know.
John:
So what it has done is it’s qualified a bunch of companies for us. So we always say like the website’s your foundation but there’s still so much more outside of that. So we’re not just selling them the website. The website’s kind of our entry. So if we can get them at 299amonth, that’s awesome. It’s high margin for us. By the time it’s done, now is our chance to be like okay, you want more traffic, let’s focus on digital. Or maybe you want like a custom video slider on the top. Let me send my video guy out to you. So it’s almost in a way a loss later. But I know after a 24 month commitment like I’m getting paid in full.
Lee:
Well I’m looking at this. On your recommended package you’ll get 99500 which is your 3 991, the one I was doing the calcs on. But if you’ve got a customer who can come in at 399amonth, which to a small business that’s actually quite, that’s still feels like quite a big commitment. So by Pre qualifying someone. 399amonth. Yeah, I can do 399amonth. It’s less likely they’re going to push back. When you say hey, let’s do a video shoot, let’s do an xyz. You’ve got a customer who’s used to paying you every single month. They used to having communications with you regularly because you’re telling them what’s going on, you’re maybe doing something for their website, etc. And then they’re more likely to continue to pay you and build up those opportunities, build up that business with them. With regards to I know this question will come up. Have you had clients like disappear three months in?
John:
So we have not. I’ve actually only had one. So right now we’re at about like 53 active monthly users in a six month period. And all these were at our 299 because in 19 is when we rolled out this 399 package because we did have a couple that were like whoa, this is way more work than like a 299amonth website. So most of them are at 299 but we had one that actually gotten back to us. Because a local agency, I guess, went through all of our clients and hand wrote letters to them all and basically said, hey, we’ll do it for 140amonth. I was like, what? Like, this is crazy. I’m like, if you. They were like, well, can you guys match this price? I’m like, you guys already signed the contract like four months ago. I’m like, no way. I’m like, but what we do do, we do offer, which a lot of the people would do, this kind of concept. We do offer an early cancellation. It’s half of whatever the remaining balance is on the 24 months. So it’s kind of like, all right, yeah. If you guys want to go the cheaper route, I mean, you can just buy yourself out of the contract just.
Lee:
Like a mobile phone or a cell phone. Sorry.
John:
Exactly. Because like out here we have like a phone book. And the phone book offers a web service, oddly enough. And I think that’s the only thing keeping them alive. And they charge people same. Yeah, it’s crazy.
Lee:
Yell yale.com and thompson or something like that. They do the same.
John:
Yeah. So it’s like crazy expense. It’s actually more than our packages. And some of these websites are just horrendous. And I have clients coming to us, potential clients that are like, here’s who I’m with. I’m like, oh, this is an easy sale. And we’ll call them to get them off the package. And they don’t let them cancel at all. So I’m like, well, when this is done, we’ll touch base then. So I make like just a calendar reminder or something. But just the fact that we offer earlier early cancellation is actually a lot different than some of the larger companies that are doing this. So we haven’t had anybody do it yet. If somebody did, I mean, honestly, it just means we weren’t working hard enough with them or we weren’t giving them what they should have gotten. So, you know, that’s fine. If they want to move on, it’s probably better for both sides to be honest.
Lee:
No worries. Now let’s do the math here because I want to encourage people who are listening to this and think that 299 does not sound like a lot. So we’re talking to 299 and you’ve got how many clients?
John:
We got 53 active right now.
Lee:
53 active. So you are pulling in $15,847 per month of recurring revenue, all of them tied into a two year contract. So if you’re driving Please pull over and just take few deep breaths.
John:
So this is like, honestly, this is nothing. So January’s kicked off and like I said, so 299amonth for a normal business owner who’s, I mean we’re talking like 500,000 to a million per year is like a business that we try to target.299amonth for them is nothing. And we’re going to give them a value that brings them even more business because we make nice websites, but we sell websites that bring in more business. And every agency should be pivoting into that concept now. And basically I have multiple clients right now that are business owners that have like four sites with us. I mean I have three people that make up probably 11 of our sites and they are giving us even more because business owners usually have more businesses, to be honest, and if you find the right ones and then they have friends groups that have even more. So 53 right now is nothing. Since we in January, in the last two weeks we’ve signed up nine and then I’ve got another probably like I’d say 14 on the pipeline just waiting to sign proposals. So I’m basically doing one to two per day getting signed up with this concept.
John:
So I should be in theory at 100 around summer and by the end of the year I’d like to be at like 150 and that’d be pretty nice.
Lee:
That’d be calculatoring away. So you’d be hitting 30k. If you hit 100, you hit be hitting 30k a month.
John:
Yep.
Lee:
Which is a entire. Well, I don’t know what it is. Like I don’t know what salaries are in the uk but that’s nearly a full salary per month, which is freaking awesome. And then at 150, and this is just the basic package, not even thinking of upsells, not even considering as well. Looking at, I mean you’ve got your E Commerce package as well, which is 599. So people might be upgrading to that at some point. Or people may also be investing in your social media packages because you know, we’ve now got a relationship with them. You can say, hey look over here, we’re doing social media or they be, you know, commissioning a video shoot or whatever to put some cool video because they love the video on your site and they want some for their site and obviously that’s not going to be included. So that’s an upsell as well. So you’re looking here at a business model which is beautiful and people do scoff at what you’re doing. I know because I’ve got a lot of agency friends who are starting to do this and they’re finding great success if people listen back to a very early episode.
Lee:
About two years ago, two or three years ago, I had a chat with Rock City Digital. They started doing something very, very similar. I think they’ve now got 15 staff. They’ve just opened up two new offices as well. So they are growing rap by using this exact model. So it’s definitely worth, if you are an agency, considering taking a look at this sort of model that reoccurring revenue. And one of the things that I have often found stressful, we do white label development for agencies. So we’re very often having to do this, you know, project to project to project. Some of these projects will take 10 to 12 months because they’re very big. Maybe we’ll be doing something for a bank that’s quite common. We’ll be doing a big build for a bank or a big CRM system and it will take months and months and months and months and. And then we have to still find the next project to keep the cash flow going. So, you know, interviewing you selfishly, I want to know all about what you’re doing as well as the listeners because I want to know how this is working and can I adopt this model for my agency as well, which I think is phenomenal.
John:
Yeah, well, it’s really cool. So, I mean, you’re touching base on pretty much the struggles we dealt with. Like, wow, we just sold 20,000 on our website. Woo. And then three weeks later we’re like, wait, we have to do this again. Like, dang, that was hard to find that. You know, it’s hard to find those people that want to spend that much money. It’s. It’s very difficult to find those people. But it’s very easy to find somebody who wants to spend 2 99. And it’s easy to close them because, look, I get in a meeting, I wish this was a joke. And I have people that come in to do Salesforce and I tell them the story every time. And it’s actually happened multiple times in the last two months. I have a client will come in, basically be like, hey, this is what I do, a concrete company. I lay concrete for driveways. I’m like, okay, cool. They’re like, I need a website. This is what I want to do. I need a content form, an estimate form, some pictures and blah, blah, blah. What is that going to cost? I’m like 299amonth. They’re like, okay, and that’s it.
John:
I have them sign the digital contract right there and we move on. I mean, when you do these packages like this, you’re setting your agency up to basically be able to quickly give people a price without wasting their time and get a yes or no right then. So if it’s a no, you can move on to the next person. If it’s a yes, you get to work. And now you’ve just increased your monthly revenue. I mean, you just saved a tonne of time. Time. It’s fantastic.
Lee:
You kind of feel like I want to shout, like preach or hallelujah. But I’ve got some more questions before we wrap up. So on these sorts of packages, it’s 299amonth. Obviously, if you onboard those nine people that you mentioned earlier, that’s phenomenal. You’ve got nine. I think you’re about to onboard them all. How do you do? Are you providing them with absolutely from scratch design or are you using a range of templates per region, as it were, not region per niche? So if you’re a plumber, we’ve got a plumber template that will slightly evolve based on your logo or is it a from scratch design? And then the second question on top of that would be at 299amonth, how are you managing to, say, pull out nine websites, as it were, within that one month, or do you have some sort of agreement with them that it’s going to take a couple of months to get the build done?
John:
Anyway, those are pretty much great questions and something we like to try to highlight. And we’re also working on tweaking a little here and there. So, you know, somebody signs up, but they do get a site that we build from scratch. So I’ve yet to take any templates and basically copy and paste to another user. I’m really big on this whole tailored concept where, look, I’m not going to give you a template, but I’m also not going to make it custom to what you’re asking for. I’m going to build something that I believe looks good and functions for your business, which makes it fun for me, to be honest. And a lot of my guys right now are trying to tell me, like, John, we can only do this for so long at this rate. I’m like, yeah, and I’m going to run into a problem here soon, to be honest. I can’t spend as much time. So I’ll either be able to bring on A designer or figure out a better way to automate, like exporting. Some of my Beaver builder, you know, saved rows and templates and stuff to just quickly import and switch stuff out.
John:
But I’m a big fan of just making it from scratch because I think it’s cool and it gives a unique, unique product to the customer that other people aren’t just doing right now. Some of them would rather just grab like Avada theme on themeforest and you know, import the first thing and then give them whatever it is. And I’m like, oh gosh. So we kind of use that to sell on people who are a little harder sells. And then when you bring up how long does it take? So that’s a great question. And we’ve found what I think is almost. It’s getting to be a perfect solution to development time. So on average we get somebody to sign the proposal. Their site is live in about 10 to 15 business days on average. So what we do is they sign the proposal. What we do is immediately capture their credit card and we do their first month’s payment. And then the second we run that payment and it goes through, I send them an onboarding form to fill out. It’s like a Word document. Eventually I want to make it in the Gravity forms. I just haven’t convinced myself to do it yet.
Lee:
You mean you’ve been too busy building websites?
John:
Exactly. So I actually, it’s. There’s actually two very valid reasons. So for, for Word, I mean, we’re selling these to small businesses, business owners, restaurants, dental offices, you know, the whole work. These guys don’t barely know how to work computers to an extent most of the time. So we give them a Word document, which almost everybody knows how to open and edit. They just simply fill in the Word document. The images they insert into it usually stay at full resolution, which is cool. It asks them like, tell me your services, tell me your about you. It actually captures their godaddy information if they have that for hosting. So I get their domain login information, right? Then I get their address, contact information, everything I need. I tell them, I’m like, hey, we just ran your first month’s payment. While I need you to. I need you to fill out this form. While you’re filling out this form, we’ve already started setting up your server in the backend WordPress instal. As soon as we get this form back to you, back from you, we’ll get you your first website in five to 10 business days. So what I’ve done is I’ve created a sense of urgency where, hey, you’re already paying me, so if you don’t want to fill this form in, that’s totally fine.
John:
And also if you don’t fill the form in completely, I’m not going to do the website. So it’s kind of cool. I get all the information I need about their business because I’m no expert on concrete, I’m not an expert on dental. So I let them kind of tell me and then I optimise the copy to an extent to work for, you know, better for SEO if I need to. But this sense of urgency to create with the potential client has sped up our development time significantly. And what it does is, you know, it’s almost this border between custom and just a template where my client is now telling me these are the pages I need to have on my website to be happy. These are the pages I think, you know, somebody’s looking for. I make them and they’re like, wow, you got all my pages and it looks nice. Woohoo. All right, good to go. And then I launch it and it’s that simple. I wish there was like another way to explain it, but it’s seriously this concept of monthly and then onboarding it in a way that, where they give you a lot of the stuff is 10x us.
John:
I it sounds like you know, Grant Cardone, we’re 10xing but like I literally.
Lee:
Cannot stand that guy. I feel like I want to punch his face.
John:
I know, it makes me so when you see his growth con, he’s got Steve Harvey. I’m like, who is buying these tickets? But I get what he’s saying and it’s true. With this concept, we’ve really been able to scale out our business, make sure I can pay my own salary, my business partner can pay a salary and everybody can pay themselves. And now we can take more risks. If we want to do a custom POS integration for E Commerce, you can bid it out now and not worry about wasting three months. You know, even today. I’m going out to a meeting this evening for a really large IT company. It could be very profitable. It could not be. I, at this point I’m not too worried because, you know, I can still pay my bills at the end of the day now and I can kind of take a, this half day risk of, you know, seeing if this is going to work or not. So this is like a peace of mind. And again, it’s, it’s good monthly income and if you can make it scalable, it’s even better. And then you can upsell my digital, I can upsell my content.
John:
For our digital. We almost tell people, like, if you don’t sign up with a mountain site, we’re not going to do your digital because we’re going to send people to your website and we don’t know if it’s optimised. So if you’re mad when it doesn’t work, we don’t want to deal with that because we didn’t mess with your website. So everything is like this little, like ecosystem that kind of goes together. But the process was the hardest part to figure out. And I would say if anybody’s trying to do this, spend most of your time figuring out how you’re going to process this. I’m talking straight from like, you’ve got the client to say yes. All right, now your process starts. You need to get a process to get them to digitally sign the proposal, capture their credit card information onboard them, design it and launch it. Those are like the key steps. How do you do that as fast as possible? I’m averaging between that whole process, five to 10 hours of actual work, according to my toggle. So how do I get that even lower? There’s a bunch of different things you can do, so I don’t know if you want to go too much into details, but I can even say, like, look into stuff.
John:
Like, I’m a big Flywheel hosting guy. I don’t. I like Flywheel for hosting, but WP engine is pretty much the same. But what Flywheel does, and I think WP has it now, is Flywheel has blueprint, so I can build out my blueprint website. And essentially when I create a new instal, it instals the blueprint. So that means every single plugin I know I need on every website’s immediately installed, fully updated in white, labelled to whatever we want it to look like. And after that I just got to go right into designing. So I’ve saved myself, you know, an hour and a half of installing plugins, adding a licence in and the whole nine yards. So that is like Automation 101, you know, how do you skip five different steps with one little click? So it’s all kind of, I’m like, kind of getting off track. But like, there’s so many things to think about.
Lee:
It’s beautiful and it’s. I think that’s one of the journeys at any level of agency, wherever you are, if you’re a one man band or if you’re a 50 person strong, you know, finding ways that you can cut out all of those steps. So you know that Automation 101, we’ve got Zapier that will take our event tickets. So we’ve got an event this year with Troy Dean here in the UK and we’re selling event tickets that will automatically go through into our account system and track the payment and reconcile it against the bank, all automatically so that my accountant doesn’t have a heart attack. So, you know, but it. But it also takes out absolutely hours and hours of spreadsheets and messing around and paying freelancers or personal, you know, VAs to sort stuff out. So no matter what size of agency you are, it is absolutely essential to track time, work out what you’re doing and see how you can do it the quickest. I have one last question before we have to come into land, mate, because we’re probably near the end of some people’s commutes and that is how do you deal with.
Lee:
You’ve got this 15 day, say, cycle. In an ideal world, how do you deal with somebody who is going to. How do I reframe the question? Obviously some people, people aren’t going to see what you’re going to design. They’re going to have to trust you at 299amonth that you’re going to build a site that they’re going to love. So how do you get around the fact they may not love it, they may want to have lots of changes, they may want to take your time, just like a standard project that drags on for three months. How do you get around that?
John:
That’s a great question. So I would say right now we’ve got the over 50 people sign up. We’ve never had this issue and it’s actually been a surprise.
Lee:
That is a surprise.
John:
I’ve never had this issue, to be honest. The only time. And this was actually, actually last week. We’ve got a big event that we’re doing a website for that we launched it. It was really cool, very contrasted colour design. It really basically took everybody’s eyes right into the add to cart for in a buy a ticket. The only feedback, he’s like, yeah, I like the. I like the colours but our board doesn’t. We want like a retro style. So I literally just went in and changed the colours, like purple and teal. And I’m not too happy about it, but like they were in love. They’re like, wow, this is beautiful. We’re so happy now. I’m like, no way. I’m like, this is great. But Also keep in mind, like I would say maybe we got lucky with this, but I mean, I’m also very responsive on our service. Like if somebody does have a change with text, that’s easy, the general style. I mean, most sites kind of have this same boxy look now you just gotta make it nice fonts and typeface. But if somebody did have to change at this point, I’ve got enough people signed up where I can spend some time to the side kind of doing that.
John:
So it’s almost like insurance in the us, you know, a thousand people pay for it, but only one person actually uses it. So, you know, everybody’s paying this low fee for us for service and design. Only like one or two clients a month actually take advantage of these changes. So in a way they’re all paying together to support this service. And maybe one day every single client will call me if the website’s down or something, but I’m hoping that never happens. But we’ve kind of set it up with this monthly revenue where we can at this point spend some more time if somebody really needs it, but we haven’t had to. So I’m actually pretty excited about that.
Lee:
I have one theory that is completely not tested here and I have just my own opinion to base it on. But I think potentially one of the reasons why you don’t get too much pushback as well is because psychologically this is a 299amonth investment. This is not actually in my head. I’m not paying £7,500 to you for this website. If I had to pay 50% of £7,500 and then I knew you were expecting another 50% in say a month or two months time, oh my gosh. My brain is going to be very much wired to making sure I get absolutely everything. Like, I want to put my stamp on it. I want to get this under the nose of everyone in my company. I want everyone to have an opinion and everyone to feed back to make sure that this 7,500 pound investment is right and that it’s done so that I’m going to pay you the next half of that payment, of which my math is terrible and I can’t work. What’s that, three, two, five or something like that? There you go. No, no, it’s no 3, 500. So there’s always more than that.
Lee:
So, yeah, so it’s. However, if, you know, psychologically I’m paying you 2, 9, 9amonth, it’s a completely different mindset. And I look at the site, I’m like, hey, holy crap, I’m paying 299amonth. This looks amazing. Cool. All right, let’s get this life jump done, you know, and forget about it.
John:
We thought that too. And that’s why we don’t do a setup fee at all. So a lot of, you know, people that might do this might also charge like $800 on top of the first month. I’m like, no, let’s just not make them think about a big price and just be like, oh, this is easy and just keep paying us because I’d rather have that, you know, and it’s worked to this extent and like, you know, if somebody does go long, I’m already got, I’ve already got their credit card on file. So they’re gonna get billed in a month anyways if it takes longer. So that’s also something to think about. Like they’re on auto bill, so if they want to keep making changes and they really want to nitpick it, that’s fine. I’m still going to get paid every month.
Lee:
Yep. Because that’s all part of the contract.
John:
Exactly, exactly. So it’s great.
Lee:
Well, with that said, mate, you have been a wonderful guest. Very, very educational. Thank you very much for all of your transparency. Like I said, selfishly, I wanted to pick someone’s brain and find out what’s going on in their world with this. And I know this has been super helpful for everybody. So folks, don’t forget you can connect with John over on truemtn.com that’s Mike Tango November.com because I’ve got a weird accent and you might not be able to tell what I’m saying. So all that’s left to say is thank you so much for your time. You are a legend. I’m looking forward to seeing how this goes on. I really hope you meet your 150 website target and thank you for being on the show, buddy.
John:
Absolutely. Thanks for having me and it’s been a pleasure. And, and if anybody doesn’t have questions on this, like, I’m here to help. You know, I’m a new agency and I never had the chance to really speak with people on advice or anything with this concept and you know, I wish I had that chance. So I want to offer it to anybody who’s in the same boat as I was. So I’m here to help.
Lee:
And he’s just got a such a sweet face as well, with that big smile and 25 year old face and annoyingly good hairline.
John:
So thank you.
Lee:
Thank you, mate. I’m 36. I’m already starting to feel jealous of the young ones.
John:
All right.
Lee:
And with that said, get off the show. Take care, mate. Bye. Bye. And that wraps up today’s show. Now, if you are looking for ways to help grow your business, then be sure to Check out the event we are having here in the uk, Agency Transformation Live. We’ve got speakers from around the world, quite literally, because we’re going to have Troy Dean there, for example, and you are going to learn how to get that next stage of transformation in your business, be that you launching from a freelancer into full agency life, or be that growing your existing agency. So head on over Agency Transformation Live. If we don’t see you there, we will see you in the next episode.
