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Verbatim text
Lee:: Welcome to the Agency Trailblazer Podcast. This is your host, Lee. And on today’s show, we are talking with Lee Goff about how to exit your agency. So sit back, relax and enjoy the ride. Welcome to a conversation today with me, Mr. Lee Jackson. And just to confuse you, we have Lee on the line. Hey, Lee, how are you doing?
Lee Goff:: Hello. I’m. I’m doing very well. How are you doing?
Lee:: If this was video, people would see two bald guys with beards, both called Lee, and they would be like, there’s been a glitch in the matrix.
Lee Goff:: That is hilarious.
Lee:: This is Lee goff, guys, if you can’t tell, we have slightly different accents. Uh, we have Lee Goff from Atlanta, Georgia. And then we’ve got Lee Jackson here from England.
Lee Goff:: Hello everyone. This is going to.
Lee:: Be a cacophony of accents.
Lee Goff:: Just in case you’re confused. This is Lee from Atlanta not across the pond. So just just making sure uh.
Lee:: Uh, this is this is always a good start. This is a highly unprofessional podcast about professional subject. So I’m very glad to have you on, and I’m very glad that you are a fellow banter folks, if you want to find out a little bit more about Lee Goff and how he ticks, check out agencysuccessroadmap.com and have a chuckle at the fact that there are two guys called Lee who are both bald, who both have beards, both supporting agencies around the world. How cool is that?
Lee Goff:: The latest season transitioned into coaching. So yes.
Lee:: Exactly. So let me just quickly share how we met. And then I’ll let you introduce yourself. So folks, just so you know, Lee was able to connect with me through social media retargeting. I think I must have visited something of his at some point, and then through Instagram of all places. There was an ad for his really cool book, The agencysuccessroadmap, which I went ahead and purchased. Again, you can find that on agencysuccessroadmap.com. Um, and that’s how we then connected. And I asked him to come along on the show and uh, there you go. So if you are into Facebook or considering Facebook retargeting or all of that sort of stuff, you really should be looking into it anyway. Now I’ll shut up, mate. I would really love it if you could do your own introduction and tell the world a little bit about yourself, your favorite drink, your favorite color, and maybe something that you think nobody knows about you.
Lee Goff:: Oh, put me on the spot. Okay, let me spotlight that. Yeah. Okay. So, uh, you know about myself, you know, Lee Goff. I am 45 years old, you know, got my passions in life or making agency owners lives easier, raising my daughter and, uh, living a happy and healthy life. Right. So, um, we are all the time outdoors were huge outdoors people. So we’re always running and playing tennis and canoeing and, you know, we live on. Yeah, we live on the lake. So we got a boat. And, you know, we’re just always, uh, big time outdoor enthusiasts and just very active lifestyle kind of people. Right. So, uh, what is one thing that probably nobody knows? Uh, you know what? I think a lot of people can answer that pretty easily. Me, I am pretty pretty out there. I’m pretty broad. I mean, I don’t hold a lot of cards. Does that make sense? So, uh, you know, my mom here, if you want some of the country. My mom, always my mom always say to me, life is like a box of jokes. Exactly, exactly. And, you know, she said, she said, don’t ever ask me a question unless you’re truly prepared to hear the answer, because he is going to tell you 100% the truth as he sees it, and he will not sugarcoat it at all. So I’m pretty much an open book, you know what I mean? Um, a lot of people don’t might not know that, you know, um, I don’t put it out there a lot, but but I’m a believer. I think you are as well. And I take a lot of I take a lot of pride, you know, I mean, a lot of my close friends. But in the professional world, a lot of people probably don’t know that. But, um, and so my daughter and I are very active in our church, and I played tennis last night. Uh, you know, with a bunch of bunch of guys in the church and things like that. So, uh, that’s that’s something that in the professional world, a lot of people might not know about me in the personal world is very prevalent.
Lee:: Cool. Well, thanks for opening up about that, man. You literally are an open book. And another thing people might not know is that you really like bow ties. I do.
Lee Goff:: I love bow ties. Yes. Uh, and if you’ve ever tried to tie a bow to an original, not a clip on. Not a little cheesy thing, but an actual tie. You know, an original, like, you know, like a the kind that looks floppy. And if you’re a bow tie guy, you know, it can’t look perfect. It can never look perfect. It always has to look a little sloppy. But yes, bow ties are awesome.
Lee:: So I just want you to say bow tie for the rest of the podcast. Bow tie. Sorry, mate, I really shouldn’t be teasing your accent, but it is just so cool.
Lee Goff:: You know what’s funny? What’s funny is the southern dialect in the United States is the closest thing to the British dialect left in the entire culture.
Lee:: It is Did it come from London or something?
Lee Goff:: Well, uh. Well, I don’t know. I think it would have come more from the Manchester. That’s the more. That’s the more country version of England. Right? The northern. It’s reversed. Right. So it would have been come from more the north side over there then, then the south side per se over here.
Lee:: So that’s true. But that’s a whole other podcast. That’s a whole other podcast.
Lee Goff:: Yeah.
Lee:: Which we’re gonna launch. Keep your eye out for it soon. Now, mate. I would really love to jump in a time machine with you. Sure. Tardis. Or it can be whichever way you want to travel. Really? But I’d love to go right back in time to how you got into the industry. How did you get into agency life? But could you share that story with us?
Lee Goff:: Sure, sure. Um, I was, you know, I grew up in South Mississippi and down there was just wasn’t a whole lot of opportunity. And this is actually. And this is I’m dating myself. It’s all I am, you know, but, um, the internet wasn’t even around, you know, literally when I was in college is when AOL and all that stuff, you know, uh, really started to burst out onto the scene in the early 90s. Right. So, uh, I was intrigued by it, but I didn’t know anything about it because I wasn’t raised around. I literally knew nothing about any of it. Right? So, um, uh, I wound up, uh, a friend of mine living in Atlanta, and he was like, dude, go buy this book and read these three chapters or whatever. I can’t remember what it was. He’s like basically, basically, if you want a job in Atlanta at a at a fortune 100 technology company, go pick up this book and read these chapters and then let me know when you’re done. So that’s what I did. I went pick up the book, I read it, I learned it, you know, I learned it literally in a matter of like four days, an entire book and like 3 or 4 or whatever it was. And, uh, they got me an interview. I got the job. And that’s how I started to cut my teeth in technology. A very soon realized that I sucked at technology. Like, at least you’re honest. Oh my gosh, it was miserable. It was miserable, man. I am not an engineer. I can’t write one line of code to this day. I really cannot write. I can I can tinker with Clickfunnels and Infusionsoft, but I cannot, you know, I cannot do any any advanced work at all. And so long story short, I was there for about 10 or 11 months. I resigned because I didn’t feel like I could ethically do the job the way I was. You know, I’m just not. I’m just not my personality. So I went into a leadership position in another company, and the CEO there hired a web at the time. It’s called Web Marketing Company, and they basically attempted to extort money out of us. And I had more technical background than he did, which is not saying a lot, but I had a little more leeway. And so I assumed the project and I very soon figured out that this company was, you know, uh, not only doing unethical stuff, but doing illegal stuff. And so once I found out what it was happening and I reported it to the CEO, we went up getting them for the authority, you know, attorneys and cops involved. And I took over the project, eventually went to fire in that company and started, uh, my first agency as a result of, uh, being pissed off. Truth be told, I got ripped off, and I was not happy. I was not happy. So, uh. And so I did. I started my agency, and, um, uh, my wife, uh, at the time, I were divorced. Now, unfortunately. But, you know, uh, um, um, uh, she wrote code. And so that’s what we did is how it started. And then due to the fact, ironically, due to the fact that I was not technical is what made me majorly explode so fast. Just because I didn’t talk to them in technical terms. I talked to them like a business owner and they love that. They’re like, oh, wait a second, so you can do all this technical stuff, but you’re actually normal. You talk to me like a normal business partner. I’m like, yeah, that’s me, that’s it. And people loved it and people loved it. So that all started in the upstairs bedroom. And then over the next 14 or 15 years, it literally evolved from what I call from the bedroom to the boardroom. And, um, so it went from just me and my wife and then me and another, my wife, she went up, leaving after the first year. You can’t figure your husband and wife work together, you know? You know, but, um, and, uh, leaving to get another job. We were married for a long time, and, uh, still have a beautiful daughter and feel wonderful. Good, good friends. So it all turned out good, right? But yeah. Exactly. So. And so it went from there to a little small, sweet. And then next thing you know is we’re in a 5000 square foot log cabin with 40 something plus employees. And, uh, you know, I’m running the agency by the numbers, and, uh, uh, I had to to to remove myself from being the solopreneur and to evolving into an entrepreneur, and then from an entrepreneur to into a legitimate CEO. And if any of you are out there trying to do that, you you understand how hard that is. That is an unbelievably hard thing to do. Okay. And then from becoming being a CEO, I actually removed myself from the CEO position and put myself into an investor capacity, meaning that I had actually retired from my agency working two hours a week and running it just from the KPI spreadsheets and meeting with my leadership team two hours a week. So I literally retired from my agency at the age of 40, and then I sold it, um, in 2016, I was, uh, 43 years old. And so that’s my that’s that’s the kind of the time machine. Right. And so we literally.
Lee:: Flew from beginning to end.
Lee Goff:: Yeah, yeah.
Lee:: Three minutes.
Lee Goff:: That’s amazing.
Lee:: I feel like you may have told this story a few times.
Lee Goff:: I have a few times I have and then after and then I just to wrap it up with a bow, I guess. And then after selling my agency a bow tie my r c c c, that’s awesome. And so to wrap it up with a nice little bow tie, um, um, uh, after that I took some time off. I had some I had a major heart attack because of the stress from building. My agency almost killed me. Literally, literally. And that leads me into my now mission in life, uh, is and that is is to is to help agencies make honestly, just make agency owners lives easier. You know what I’m saying? It’s just that it’s that simple because it’s very hard. It’s very difficult. It’s, uh, it can be very stressful and it can be it can be a it can be a lonely journey sometimes. Right. And so. Absolutely. And so, uh, I hired two very, very, you know, presidents and Dean’s list sales and marketing people straight out of college. And, uh, for an entire year, I spent 150, $200,000 developing, uh, my entire coaching program. So 75 tools and all these online courses and books and group coaching and one on one coaching. And I mean, because, you know, I built my agency and, and and I know it worked for me. Right. But I wasn’t 100% certain that was going to correlate 1 to 1 over to everybody else’s model. Right? I had to kind of generic ties it and kind of confirm that everything I had done would actually translate over, and most of it did. Some of it didn’t. Right. But that’s what I did that for, is we, we we really dove hard core for the pretty much an entire about 11, 12, 11.5 or whatever, pretty much 12 months, um, into researching and creating these tools and just making sure that what we came out with was the absolute most real world and most real impactful, like Move the Needle program that we could, that we could, that we could put out to the market. So very proud of it. We came out with a really, really good solution is is changing people’s lives. And I love it.
Lee:: So I love it. And folks as well. If you check the show notes, you’ll also see that there is a Facebook group that you can be a part of to see what, uh, what Lee and his growing, rapidly growing community are getting up to as well. Now, I’d love to just dive around in that time machine for a little bit. Um, because I’d like to go back again a little further into that point where you were trying to remove yourself from the day to day. Yep. And, um, pulling yourself into more of a CEO role, can you just explain how, well, maybe some of the challenges you had with that, but also how you were able to go from the guy that everybody wants to talk to? Like, I talked to Lee, I, I have I use this agency. Lee is the guy I go to talk to through to, you know, having the team and you are now the CEO. How did you transition? What were some of the tricks that you, uh, maybe applied for that or your struggles?
Lee Goff:: Uh, I tell you, right before I dive up into that, I want to give I want to give everybody a little a piece of advice. And and in September of 2012, um, you know, again, God has a way. Whoever, whatever your version of God. I’m not here preaching whatever your version of it is, whatever your higher power is. Has a way of coming down and kind of taking us really what we think we’re smart, we think we’re, you know, we we think we got it all figured out, right? Um, but the reality is, is we don’t. Right. And that was me that was 100% me. And he God kind of came down and just grabbed me by the throat and said, hey, yeah, stop being a pompous ass and wake up, okay? And that’s and so he did that in a way to where after again, uh, my wife and I had been together for, I think 12 years, and we, we, we were about to file for the divorce. My father had just passed away, all of this and and of course, going through divorce. And I’m a very active dad. And I have my daughter, 50, 50, 50. She’s with me half the week and she’s with her half a week, but I’m still losing her half of the time. Right. And it was it was devastating. Just broke my heart. Right. And then of course, I was going through I didn’t know if I was going to lose half the business. And there’s a lot of other stuff that all happened in a matter of like 120 days. It was unbelievable. It was all like, Holy good God, man. Okay, I got the point, bro. You know what I’m saying? Like. I see what you’re trying to say. And so here’s what happened. Only as a result of of of external powers did I ever even attempt to go down the path of removing myself from what I’d call, like, a dynamic entrepreneur? Okay. An inspirational kind of type guy. Entrepreneurial sales, business development guy. Uh, into a into a much more structured CEO role. Okay. And so I would the piece of advice I would give everybody out there is, is albeit it can be scary to admit that you’re not the best, and it can be scary to admit that you need to delegate. And it can be scary to admit that you are not right all of the time. The day that you can humble yourself and attempt to actually remove yourself from your operations is the day that you will remember for the rest of your life, just like I do. Yeah, I remember sitting in that office and I’m looking at at the time they were my management team. They were employees that had risen to the top. But they were not leadership. They were not partners. They were they were at that time managers. And that was more of a mistake on my part than anything else because I had, um, I had not embraced their leadership. I had always, I would dare to say, stifled it because I was just so hell bent on and on the mission that I would I would almost oh, not almost. I would overpower everything around me. Does that make sense? Yeah. And so as this stuff is happening, I had called a meeting with them and I looked and I looked at them and I said, I have got to do one of two things. I’ve got to either scale the business back or remove. I can’t continue to work 60, 70, 80 hours a week. I have got to go focus on my family. Got two right. Um, and they all looked at me. And I’ll never forget this. I won’t ever I will never forget the look in their faces as they’re looking at me like I’m a fucking idiot. And they look at each other. Is he really that dumb? And they look back at me and I’m like. And the light bulb, they didn’t I mean, you know, they they said they were polite and they were professional about it, you know, and all that fun stuff. But the look said, it told me everything I needed and everything I needed to know. They’re like, what the hell do you think we’ve been here for? For I can’t remember. How long were you? Five. They’d all been with me for at least, I don’t know, 4 or 5 years. I don’t remember how long they’ve been. Yeah. I said, what the hell do you think we’ve been here for? You know, like, almost like, duh, duh. Get out of the way and let us do this thing. Right? And, um, and it takes a lot of humble pot to be able to swallow that pill. And here’s and here’s what happened. So here’s what happens. We are that good. We are that talent. We are that smart and we are that driven. And that’s the problem. Um, we think that we can do everything better. And the results are typically a lot of times it’s accurate. Now, the reason being is because a lot of times we cut corners on hiring and we don’t get the right people in there. There’s a lot of reasons why that happens, but most of the time, most of the time. It’s because we are safe. That’s our that’s our identity. We get we build our identity around being that guy or that girl. Okay? And the minute that I actually started to relinquish control to to the three different departments in my agency and actually give them ownership and leave true leadership, true ownership and true leadership, my agency started to explode even more. It was already it exploded. Every single year. We grew at least 30, 40, 50% with without going into any debt at all. It was wonderful. It’s wonderful. But whenever I sort of removed myself from the agency, it actually started growing faster and running smoother and had higher profits. And I was like, dude, what the hell was I the problem? And I was, well, I was it’s a very tough pill to swallow, right? And honestly, most entrepreneurs never they can’t swallow that pill. They never, ever can ever, ever humble themselves enough to actually hand that over. That’s why it’s such so hard and such. And that’s why everybody who sees someone who’s actually gone through it, they look at it in admiration because they know how hard it is to be able to give your baby, literally your baby that you gave birth to in my upstairs bedroom over to three people and say, hey, by the way, don’t kill my baby.
Lee:: Now there’s a story. It’s let me share this. Anyway, it’s so I’ve got Larissa who works with me. She started when she was 17 years old. As so we have like an apprenticeship scheme here in the UK. And she’s grown with our business now over the last four years. And I’ve realised in the last year that I can give her so much that she is able to do that. She is so much better than me at and it has been so freeing just knowing that like we’re running this big event, so we’re doing agency transformation live. We’re getting people from all around the world here to the UK. And I was saying that sooner, I know.
Lee Goff:: Love to have been there duty.
Lee:: Well it’s a big scary thing. And yet, you know, she is really taking the reins and is making this an amazing event by working hard, getting people involved, getting the right you know, the right accommodation, sorted out for speakers, getting the right food sorted out, uh, organizing all of our data, doing all the things that I thought I was amazing at a billion times better than me. So it’s not quite the same as running the entire business that you’re saying. But equally, we do get in our own way, don’t we? All the time. And I get in my own way all the time thinking I’m the guy who needs to do this.
Lee Goff:: It’s our own head track. It’s it’s limiting beliefs. I have a term for it called limiting beliefs, okay? And it very much is very much, like I said, limiting belief. And that says it says it exactly what it is. It’s we limit ourselves by our beliefs that we have, uh, certain perceptions around. Right. And and here’s what happens is once you actually realize that and I don’t want to make sure I keep this in context when I say when I when I say that when you realize that you’re the problem, please understand you’re the problem. Because when you get to the level that we’re talking about being a dynamic entrepreneur or getting to the CEO level, you’re typically typically around the three quarters of a million and above range. Typically this has the law of averages kind of thing, right? So please understand when I say that you’re the problem, you’re the problem to hit the next level. You’re not the problem problem. In other words, you’re you’re the one that got the business there. You drug it there, you’re sure will and got it there. So when I say you’re the problem, I mean that is if is if you’re like me and you’re you’re never you want to continue to grow, grow, grow and continue to be better, better, better. Well, you have to understand that that dynamic, really out there type of entrepreneurial mindset is a very much a detriment. When you’re a CEO. It’s bad. It’s actually a very much a negative. Okay. And so therefore you literally have to reinvent yourself. So you are the problem to get to the next level. But you are not the problem. Make sense. That makes sense. But okay. All right. And again a lot of people take what I you know, when I say that they take it out of context. So so what happens.
Lee:: Is, well, I am glad you actually said that because, you know, some of us Brits, we are snowflakes.
Lee Goff:: Well, hey.
Lee:: Hey, buddy. I’m joking with you, man.
Lee Goff:: It’s so fresh and special, so unique and precious. All right, so. All right. Don’t ever go. Don’t even get me started on that topic. Oh my gosh.
Lee:: Um.
Lee Goff:: Moving on, moving, moving on, moving on. And so, you know, and then, uh, what happened is that when I’m going to an Infusionsoft event, it was called Partner Con. And one of the founders, Scott Martineau, was speaking, and it was in I would say it’s like October of 2000 or sometime, you know, within a month or two after, uh, me having this meeting and realizing that I have to figure out some kind of leadership framework so that I can sleep at night with these three leaders, that I have now realized that I was the idiot holding back. Okay, how the hell am I going to sleep at night with these people running? Remember I gave her my baby? They have my baby in their hands as a. You have children? Oh, yeah. Okay. You know what I mean? So you’re handing your child to three other people and entrusting them to be loyal and dedicated and drive that ship in a way that takes care of your child When you heard it like that, it kind of brings on a different meaning, right?
Lee:: So I’m actually feeling anxious already.
Lee Goff:: Yeah. Right. Yeah. And so, you know, I had to figure out a way to make sure that I could sleep at night. Meaning, you know, they can’t make certain legal decisions, they can’t make certain PR decisions. They can’t make certain certain frameworks. Right. It’s called a leadership framework, right. Vision, mission, core purpose, KPIs and all these different things. Okay. And I went to partner and I learned the, uh, from Jim Collins, um, in a book called Beyond Entrepreneurship. Uh, it’s actually and if you’re out there looking forward, it’s actually called James Collins is the name of the author. I think this is one of his first ones. And it’s before he went to the name Jim. Uh, in writing, I’m sure he’s probably called junior. But anyway, point being is it’s called beyond entrepreneurship. And if you get the chance to go out there and read it, um, um, and what you’re going to find out is, is that it literally gives you a roadmap on how to build a leadership framework that allows you like people like me, the CEO or the owners to be able to effectively sleep at night without stressing the freaking max out about whether or not you’re going to get sued tomorrow, or whether or not a project’s going to call, or whether or not a client’s pay, you know, get a bad review or whatever it might be, right? You know, whatever it might be. Right. And, uh, and that can manifest itself in a lot of ways. So that’s what we did. Uh, we we implemented a philosophy that’s called, you know what? If I got hit by a bus, what if Lee got hit by a bus? What would happen? Right? You know. How long would it be before the company was shut down? And we had. We’d figured out it’d probably be about at first before we undertook this venture. We probably got 30 days. You know what I mean? Realistically. Right. Maybe 60. 90. We had we had wonderful client. I mean, it would have kept going, but it would have eventually fizzled out because, you know, just died. Right. And so we had that philosophy hit. What if we got hit by a bus and we started working towards removing the 100% and and that’s what we did. It took about, uh, I can’t remember two, two and a half years, I think. And by that when we got there, um, uh, over that course, I evolved into a CEO running it, running it like a CEO. And then I put a coup. And then eventually that coup replaced me as a CEO and I went into the investor capacity. So yeah.
Lee:: It’s so cool, man. I’m living here in this story, and you’re completely right. We we’re not we’re not the problem, as it were, when it comes to getting to that point. But we are the problem when it when it is getting beyond that and being able to allow the people that we’ve brought up, the people that we brought in who have that natural leadership capacity allowing them to flourish as well, because, I mean, Steve Jobs could not have run Apple if if he’d have micromanaged every decision. Although I actually I think he did a little bit of that.
Lee Goff:: He did do it well at first. He did a lot of that’s why they ran him out now. Well, but you know, but then that’s also why they brought him back. And he and he evolved, I think, through the Pixar and other ventures. He, he, he evolved as an individual as well. So it was a interesting to see. I think it’s a natural rite of passage, you know, for people who are successful. So just to understand that, you know, you’re not the the problem, but the skills that it took to get you to that point, or a lot of times, the noose that you hang by when you try to get to the next level, and breaking through that seven figures and getting a leadership framework with KPIs and all that fun stuff in place.
Lee:: So I think one of the biggest things as well, agency struggle, is just how different everything is. So we’re constantly we hear the word, hey, you should productize your business. But we’re like, well, how can we do that? And we’re constantly like, every project I can think of is different. Somebody wants to build the new Facebook. Somebody wants a website that, you know, that does this in with special e-commerce integration. So it requires so many skills and so many people, and there’s so much involved in doing it, etc.. And there’s so much time invested in even winning the initial sale to the point where you lose money and only win one. Therefore, that one pays for all the time you wasted on all the others that you didn’t win, and it just becomes this huge, I guess, this huge stress or this huge blocker as well to growth. Because you guys. Yeah, exactly. How do you guys come over that overcoming that. Sorry.
Lee Goff:: Uh, well, you know, um, I started down the path of product innovation. Truth be told, us, when I started down the path, I didn’t even I didn’t I didn’t know it was product innovation when I was doing it. I had because the term wasn’t prevalent in our industry at the time. And so. But but how it manifested itself was like, this is like we we we noticed early that, good God, man, we cannot continue to put this much time into proposals. We cannot continue to do this. We are losing hemorrhaging money every single deal. And like what you were saying, we would win and we had a hell of a we had, we had. But me and another guy were closers. Both of us are great closers. And so we had a very high close percentage. But, um, on the 2 or 3 deals that we would lose, we would, you know, we would lose eight, ten hours. It’s a lot of time. Right. And it’s it’s way too much time. And so what we did is, you know, we figured out that we came up with just all we sell as one thing. That’s it. And you know, period. And I’m sorry, Two things one. There was a pre like a pre qualifier or if you’re just ready to go go kind of thing, meaning that if you come into my agency and you know what you want, meaning you have a plan. And I don’t mean like a brain fart, I don’t mean like a 32nd. Okay, listen up record. I’m going to spit it all out of my head. And here’s a plan. No, asshole. That is not a plan, okay? That is a vision. And the difference between a vision and a plan is when you actually have enough time, when you take the time to actually document the steps to achieve the vision and can convey it to someone else, that can be executed as a plan, meaning you actually take the time to write down your thoughts into a cohesive plan that not only you, but other people can follow. That is what I plan is okay, so if they cannot produce to you a plan, then they need to go through your discovery. And in in our case we called it I can’t remember like a strategic planning phase, we as a digital marketing strategic plan or I came up what we called it, but we sold it for $2,000. So you either pay $2,000 for us to come in and do a like a strategic plan. And granted, at the time they weren’t as good as what they probably should have been because we were making it up as we go. But now they’re now the plans are phenomenal, right? But at the time, they probably could have been a little bit better looking back on it. But, uh, you know, you either got that or you bought a block of ours, meaning that you have a plan. Okay, we can look at this plan. We can put an estimate a real quick. We’ll get our engineers, we’ll spend about an hour or two on it and put a quick estimate to it, and then give you an estimate of the hours. We think this is going to be a 400 hour project. We sell ours in 2040 or 100 or 100, uh, our blocks. Which one do you want? That was it. That’s all we sold, period. Well, we didn’t sell anything else. Now I want a project price. Too bad. I want to fix bids. Too bad that’s not how we do it. And see, this is where everybody goes wrong. Hmm. Everybody is the universal thing. And as far as I can tell, it’s pretty universal. 99%. I mean, it’s it’s pretty close. Close to universal like this. You get in a human, in an industry, in a human behavioral type scenario. And here’s what I mean by that is, is that that we are givers. We all want to give the shirt off our back to make sure our clients are extremely happy. We all give too much. We care if you care much, that’s what it is. We really do. We. And that’s a God’s honest, almost as universal statement you’ll find in an industry. And I can’t, and I’m proud to say that about our industry. Honestly. We do. We do. We really do care too much. And so under that context, you you are under the impression that by caring a lot and spending a lot of extra time on proposals and all that fun stuff that is actually going to build value in what you do, and you could not be more wrong, period. The only thing people really give a damn about is one themselves and the results that it’s going to get for themselves, period. That’s all they care about. So let me explain that to you a little further. If you go in there and say, oh my gosh, I spent ten hours on this proposal is oh so perfect. It’s beautiful. Look at it. It’s beautiful. It’s a snowflake. Okay. And and it says we have really dove off into this. And, uh, we spent a ton of time doing this. And for us to do, you know, steps A, B, C, and D, it’s going to be $10,000. Okay. I can go in there and say, okay, ma’am, I’m in your niche so I know exactly what you need. I don’t need to go through this big long proposal process because you need steps A, B, C, and D. I agree with what they’re saying. You do need that. And um, I’ve done those a whole lot. Um, I’m gonna charge a $12,000. I spent ten minutes on your proposal, but I’ve done it a lot. Mhm. Who are you going to hire?
Lee:: The guy who’s done it.
Lee Goff:: You’re damn right they don’t care if I spent ten minutes. As a matter of fact, they’re happy that I’ve optimized the process so much that I can get a proposal to them that knows exactly what they need. The exact steps. They need, the exact cost that they are going to pay and have a proven track record that they can predictably and reliably get the results for their prospects. Mhm. There will even pay more. They’ll even pay you more for it than they will if you do all the custom stuff. So where I’m going with it is this it’s your job as the CEO to determine your products okay. In a way that they can be built. Your prospects can take those products and build the custom solution for them, but you standardize everything behind the scenes. Now, this is a big, big deal because one, you can generate proposals. I actually I actually actually had a student of one time himself generating proposals after doing my proposal template. Two minutes, 46 seconds was his average two minutes 40s. And these were these were 5000 to $15,000 a month retainer clients. Okay, these are not small contracts. This. This the same student I’m talking about. Close to half $1 million in retainer contracts in 60 days or less using my proposal template, and never spent more than 3 to 5 minutes on a proposal.
Lee:: That’s insane.
Lee Goff:: It’s insane. It’s insane. And how he did that? This is one. He’s got it standardized. So you got a template for proposal two on the products. Whenever he is out there consulting or negotiating a deal, he’s listening to what they want. And over in his arsenal over there, he’s got products that are built in such a way, like what I call the Legos model, okay. In such a way that he literally comes over and says, okay, I’m going to take Lego one, Lego eight, and Lego 12. I’m going to bolt them all together. I’m going to put it over here and then say, hey Mister prospect, this is your custom solution. And it is. You built it out of your Legos, the Legos. Insane. Think about it. If anybody’s got kids, you know, you and I were talking about this. You can take the 20 same Lego Legos. Let’s say five blue, five red, five green, five yellow. Right. And that’s your little kit. And you give that little kit to ten different kids. Will you get the same thing from any of those kids? Nope. Not a snowball’s chance in hell. Not a snowflake chance in hell. Okay. Not gonna happen. Not gonna. Not going to happen. You will have ten different things. And here’s the beauty of it all ten of them will be equally as proud of what they have as. And all of them are going to be so unbelievably happy and proud that they built that. The cold, hard truth is, is they all had the exact same 20 building blocks. Mhm. So when you when you apply that, when you apply that to your products it’s a game changer. It really is a game changer. So if you’ve ever bought like a new car and you go in there and buy that new car, okay. And you customize it and you get the leather and the Harmon Kardon or whatever, you know, you get all the custom stuff and you go get in that new car, you smell that new car smell, but it’s not just a new car smell anymore. It’s your new car smell. That’s your leather that you picked. The color is yours because you picked it. So you walk out of there feeling like effing Superman. The reality is there’s another 10,000 cars out there just happened like your car. But it doesn’t matter because you built that car online. Tesla lets you build it online and you feel super awesome about it. So you got to do the same thing. The production model has actually been perfected for thousands of years. We are just so damn smart. It took us forever to figure it out because we were so smart we figured we could do it better, but the reality is it’s actually been right for a long time. We just need to adapt it into the digital agency space.
Lee:: So is the is the secret ingredient here though, knowing the target audience that you’re serving and the problems they have because you mentioned that earlier. You know, if I’m going in, hey, I’ve worked in your industry, I know the problems that you have, and I have these eight different Lego blocks, and I can give you three of those. It’s going to cost you this much or this block of ours for us to implement that. Yeah. Is that the secret ingredient?
Lee Goff:: Um, I’ll answer that. Yes and yes. I’ll ask that question like this. Okay. Prioritization can be done to a jack of all trades agency okay. But when you’re a jack of all trades and I will predict right now jack of all trades agencies are are dying on the vine right now. There will be some that will be really big and they’ll make it. They’ll be all good. I’m not not all of them are going to die on the vine, okay? But the overwhelming majority will die on the vine in the next 5 to 10 years. And the reason being is, is because every single, every single niche will be served with custom solutions that best fit their specific needs very, very soon. Uh, there’s a historical, factual based reason why this happens. I don’t think we have time to get into all that, but but trust me, it’s there and it’s happening whether you like it or not. So whenever you can get into a niche and let me explain this a little more detail. One of my students is niching down into the craft brewery space. Okay, so now she can sell a website that includes an API. Untapped integration. Untapped is the is a is an app on your phone? Uh, it’s like it’s like the Uber of rideshare. But but for craft breweries make sense. If you’re in the craft brewery space and you’re on, you’re on this app or you’re not in business, basically. Okay. So so you have to have this thing integrated with your website. Now you go to a jack of all trades agency and they’re like, okay, let me look into this. It takes hours for them to figure out the hell out. And then they realize what they ultimately what they’re going to realize is it takes them about 12 to 15 hours to get it done properly. That’s just it. It’s just and again, everything boils down to labor by the way of getting through that out time and money. This is when there you go. There it is. Okay. So and so and then and then they have to they have to quote for that. They have to put it in there. They got to charge 1500 or 2 grand to, you know, to, to be to keep the doors open. Right. Well you know, so now for them to build that website’s $10,000, well, she can go in there and say, yeah, I can build that website for five grand. It includes all of that and all of this and, uh, Google Maps and everything else. There’s like 4 or 5 bells and whistles that, that are perfect for them, but would cost a lot of money if you did them, like you said, having to reinvent it like start from scratch every single time, right? And so it’s just it literally is an unfair competitive it’s not outing. It’s an unfair competitive advantage. It’s just it’s the way it probably should have been years ago, honestly. Um, uh, but as people are niching out and as I’m coaching people to niche out and go down that space and that all the other coaches are doing the same thing, you can bank on the fact that every single niche is going to have very custom solutions that you simply cannot compete against, because they deliver more value, they can deliver them faster and they can deliver them cheaper.
Lee:: A good example of that is the way my business angle crowd work. So my target audience is people who listen to this know that I serve design agencies who need developers to build WordPress themes from their designs. So it’s really, really specific. And we have this estimate builder that our clients can essentially access, where they’ll say how many layouts they’re going to need or how many modules they’ll need to their page builder, or what types of plugins they’ll need. And we have a whole range of predefined plugins that we’ve built that will serve the the particular niches that they serve, etc. or obviously they can add third party solutions as well, but it very quickly allows them to build a price. They know I’ve got the podcast, so they know that I, I already provide advice to literally thousands of agency owners around the world. So I’ve got that credibility as well. And they also know that I’ve been doing this now for years and years and years for just them. And everything’s laid out. They know what they’re going to get. Um, everything’s on the tin, and they also know the price they’re going to have. And they just they buy that and they enjoy that. So they love their safety in it, whereas they.
Lee Goff:: Exactly.
Lee:: They could get what I do for literally a hundred bucks via Upwork. But they’ve had so many bad experiences spending those many 100 bucks with people all around the world who’ve then unfortunately let them down or not had the skills or had to spend hours and hours trying to work out what it is that needed to happen. That’s it.
Lee Goff:: Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. So predictable. Reliable people pay for predictability and reliability because you can build a business around that. And so what you offer is actually predictable and reliable results, and people have no problem paying extra money for that because they are no longer going to waste their time. They can they can build. They can plan. You know what I mean? Okay, if I can predictably, reliably get the result out of whatever the hell it is, then I can actually plan for step B and C and B, because I can rely on the fact that that’s going to be accurate. Right? So whenever they’re having to deal with an agency who cannot predictably and reliably any predict and produce anything because they’re literally dreaming it up as they go or figuring it up as I go with an obviously, uh, that that carries a lot of value. Okay. And that’s why product ization is such one of the many, many, many reasons. It’s such a big, big, big deal.
Lee:: So and you’ve kind of uh, with regards to prioritization, a lot of people will think, well, maybe it’s that I need to sell a pre-built website platform for a very particular industry, which is something that you can do. But I think one of the ways you’re saying that product or product ization should work is the fact that you are all you already are aware of the, let’s say, five key problems that people have. Therefore, you have the five key plus Lego bricks that you can put together while still providing a form of custom solution. It’s not necessarily I’m just going to take this off the shelf. This is I have assets to help you and experience and can provide you the full package.
Lee Goff:: Yes, definitely. And this actually both in what’s called the client path. And I’m going to spend a few minutes on this one. Okay. Um, okay. Yeah. Ultimately it boils down to your client path. Okay. And and so what I mean by that is this is when somebody comes into your basket, do they have a plan or not a plan. Right. Okay. Great. If they have a plan, give me the plan. First step in that client path is your assets. Right. Do you have landing pages? Do you have banner ads? Do you have website? Do you have whatever it is okay. Next one is going to be traffic. So after you’ve built the assets, landing pages, banner ads, whatever it is, you have to actually go turn on the traffic, meaning you have to go in and actually implement it all within the, uh, you know, Facebook ad manager or WordPress or whatever it might be. Make sense? Mhm. Okay. I got a little bit wrong. I’m sorry. Anyway, backtrack a little bit on the assets part. If it’s a WordPress that’s only up front in traffic, it’s more the media buying and things along those lines. It’s more like that the media Facebook ads and things like that okay. Third one is going to be conversions. Meaning after you get the traffic sources going to those assets, then you have to focus on like, you know, optimization or follow up, like for example, eliminating follow up failure with some email marketing campaigns, things along those lines. Right. So conversions and follow up have a tendency to kind of fall in the same category okay. After that you get into, um, uh, getting to what’s called your maintenance packages and then you get into your reporting packages. Okay. So that’s a typical client path, meaning they got to. Okay. Do I have everything I need? Great. Now that I have it, can we get traffic to it? Great. Now that I got traffic to it, can I get better conversions? Great. Now that I got conversions, can I optimize it? Yes I can. Can I get better reporting? Yes I can. How can I maintain it. That’s logical for people. That’s a normal. That’s that’s normal. That’s the way people think. It’s the way people think. Right? So it’s your job to lay out your Legos, your products in a way that satisfies all aspects of that client path. People always wonder, well, I want a residual well, no fucking shit. Everybody wants residual. Duh. Okay. But you have to build out the assets first to get there. If you don’t offer those assets, they’re going to go somewhere else to get the assets, and then that person is going to end up getting the residual. Mhm. So you have to satisfy all of the client path. And your Legos have got to be thought through in a way that allows you to build custom solutions for every single step in the client path. So in the digital assets side of things or we have two different websites a products one, they’re they’re both base website products five pages home page about us contact us directions whatever it is. Okay. Services. All right. And this is on a templated base, this custom base. The templated base is 5000. The custom base is 10,000. You never base the price of a website on the page count is. The minute you do that, you commoditize yourself. And you’re no better than the page builders at web com and GoDaddy. So don’t ever do that. Okay, now that you’ve got the base, that’s five pages templated or custom, now you can add three pages to it. A block of three pages that are templated is $1,000, a block of three pages that are custom. There’s $2,000. How many pages do you need? Lego, Lego, Lego, I need 20 pages. Great. Okay, so it comes with five. That’s five Legos of three pages. Now we’re up to, uh, a $10,000 website for if it’s templated or what a hypothetical. Right. So great. So now we’ve got the assets there. Done. Now on your website. Do you need any document management. Great. We’ve got a wonderful Dropbox integration. It’s wonderful. It’s an API integration. It’s a product. It’s awesome. It’s $500 one time fee. Okay, great. What else do you need? Uh, I need a, you know, whatever it might be. I need a, you know, insert whatever it might be, right? It can literally be anything but make sure it’s a product they can bolt on. Now, that product has got to be very clearly defined, very, very, very clearly defined. Okay. And now that you’ve got your products, the cold hard truth is we all know the reality is you’re probably going to be at best. But let me rephrase it. In most cases, the products will satisfy 100% of their needs. There will be those clients that it can. It’ll at best satisfy about 80% of their needs because they have very specific, very unique, very custom things that they want to get done. And that’s perfectly fine. You do not you do not turn them away. You build as much of a solution for their pain points out of your Legos as possible, mitigating the amount of custom work that you have to focus on. And it does not slow you down. Hey, I tell you what. Let me get a proposal on the stuff we know that we need to get going on. Here’s a great song. Get started. While they’re working on that, you and I can spend some time on the custom stuff. So now that we’re engaged and they’re spending the money, it’s no big deal. If you want to go spend 4 or 5 hours because you know you got there in the hopper now it’s okay. Does that make sense? But don’t don’t go spend all the time doing custom proposal stuff whenever it’s ridiculous. You don’t lose money. Okay. So the goal of product innovation is not to get rid of custom work 100%. It is to mitigate it as much as possible and allow the owners to cherry pick the clients and the custom work that they want to work on. Make sense?
Lee:: That makes perfect sense. I like what you’re saying here as well. With regards to you can get going sooner. Yep. So here here are the Legos. That or the Legos, as we would say here. Uh, here are the Legos that we can get started on now. Immediately. There’s not going to be a blocker.
Lee Goff:: To you.
Lee:: Progressing with your plan. Exactly. Mr. or Mrs.. Client. Um. And we can. So let’s get cracking. And in the meantime, let’s then build on this conversation. Okay. You need to then produce this. This thing on the side, this custom Lego brick that we can build for you. It’s going to take a bit more time, but you can still at least MVP. We can get you something. Uh, you know, you can in advance. Yeah, you could.
Lee Goff:: Even take it a step. Remember, it’s all about barrier. You got to remove all barriers to entry. You got to make it really, really, really, really, really easy for them to go. Oh, wow. This is a no brainer. Thanks. Here’s $5,000 right? That’s the goal right? I mean that’s that that’s the kind of the goal. So how about I mean again under the same exact example that we were just talking about okay, okay. We’re talking to a client and our Lego’s satisfies 80% of whatever it is. And it will if you build your Legos properly and, uh, it’ll satisfy the overwhelming majority. And over time, you’ll find tune those Legos to where it’ll probably satisfy 100%, because you’ll know the industry so well, you know, and by the way, by going in a niche direction, you actually build a reputation. You build a database with your content. You build momentum in a direction. If you’re doing a jack of all trades every single time you start a project. It’s like starting a brand new business every single time. That’s why you got.
Lee:: It also means the proposal is going to take your hours as well, because you need to try and work out, you know, industry speak. And who the.
Lee Goff:: Hell am I selling? Industry. Yeah. Who am I selling to? Who am who? You know what kind of money? Everything. Everything. Okay. So anyway, so you can build momentum going in the right direction. Back to the example of the of the building. This the custom solution. So you go in and say okay great. These Legos we know that we got to rebuild your website. We know that we need this and we know that we need this. Correct. Great. I tell you what, man, I know you’re in a hurry on this this other custom piece. We know we got to get it done. That’s going to take some time to do that. So let’s we have a discovery phase where I can actually get my engineers on it and say they’ll do it for us. It’s typically $2,000 if you move forward with these Legos. I’ll throw in that discovery phase for free.
Lee:: Oh, I see what you did there.
Lee Goff:: Yeah, you’re gonna fucking do it anyway, dude. You’re going to do the you’re going to do the discovery phase. You have to. Yeah, you have to. Okay. If you’re going to do your job, you have to. So now but again, but again you got products and you have a strategic planning product. So it’s very logical for you to say, hey, listen, I gotta get my engineers on this. I’m not a programmer. I can’t do an estimate on this. And by the way, even if you are a programmer, you shouldn’t be doing the damn work. So you should get the person doing the work to give the estimate, because guess what? Not all of your skill sets are the same. Just say it. Okay. So all right. So point being is that you’re gonna have to get an estimate. And by saying, hey, our Legos, we know you need this. We know you need this. And I’ll tell you what, just to sweeten the pot a little bit, I’m gonna throw in this discovery phase where I can bring in all my senior engineers and designers to really focus on the custom part, but we don’t need to hold everything up. That’s probably going to take 2 or 3 weeks at least, because we got to do our homework, right? Duh. Right. We’re not going to we’re not going to I’m not going to waste your money for you buddy. Mhm. Okay. All right. So let’s get started on these I’ll throw in the discovery as a signing bonus is typically two grand. And I’ll go in and get everything started on the customer. So that way we’ll have a detailed plan on the custom work in about 2 or 3 weeks, right around the time they’re going to be wrapping up and coming around the bend on the website, we’ll have the detailed plan ready to go for the custom work. What do you think? Sold. Hey, I’ll send an order. I’ll send it. I’ll send an order form link right now. Better yet, I’ll tell you what. You got the credit card right there with you. Oh, no. Because I have a pen right here. And by the way, another one.
Lee:: It’s one, two, three, four.
Lee Goff:: Yeah. Nothing. Another little caveat to you guys. Every time you say I’m going to send you an order form link, I want you to know that you’re actually you you literally you literally just got through because you like digital stuff so much, like sending the digital link or something. I don’t know what the hell it is anyway. Take the damn credit card on the phone.
Lee:: So get them to pay there and then don’t give them serious.
Lee Goff:: Are you serious? Like, take the damn credit card on the phone, man. Or you woman, whoever. Because if you send the link to them, guess what? They’re going to click that link and they’re actually physically going to see the number on the screen. Guess what that does that makes them rethink the epic purchase again.
Lee:: I’ve I’ve I’ve.
Lee Goff:: I’ve.
Lee:: Imagined taking the card over the phone. I got to be honest. And not nowadays, but are you serious? Yeah.
Lee Goff:: It’s just actually it’s actually over here.
Lee:: People like. I don’t want to give you my details.
Lee Goff:: Are you okay? Okay. It’s actually, it’s actually safer to do it over the phone than it is to to do it in any other way. If even if it’s SSL, it can be hacked and then get it.
Lee:: Yes. Yeah. Well, I’m gonna have to try that next time. So when I get a yes on the phone, which I’ve had, get the.
Lee Goff:: Credit card number.
Lee:: How that goes.
Lee Goff:: And if you’re really, really smart, you I’ve already got them to run a tripwire. So you got the credit card on file and say, hey, I’ve already got credit card ending in these four digits. All I need is a security code and I’m good to go. Different story for different day. Let me just roll on in for a second on the production model. All right. So okay, so let me elaborate on this whole Legos thing okay. So um, let me pull up my little production spreadsheet so I can get you all the details right here. All right. So product ization is, again, the way you build it back to the client path example I was talking about a while ago. Okay. And so if you build your products in such a fashion that you literally can, like I said, satisfied the overwhelming majority of it. And it has to be like Legos. Okay, so the blue Legos are traffic, the green Legos are assets or whatever it might be. It all goes down the client path you have. So, for example, you’ll have some Legos that require another Lego. Okay. So I’ll have. So for example, in the follow up client path in the state in the client past stage, a follow up, I have a cart abandonment campaign or I have eliminate follow up failure camping, whatever, whatever it might be. Right. Well, obviously you can’t sell those campaigns unless they actually have the CRM. So you have a prereq to buy Infusionsoft, short spring, whatever the hell it is, right? And then you can sell them that. So that’s a 2000. You got to add it on. So the way you build your Legos is how you do it. The number one. And what I want to roll on about is the number one mistake that everybody makes. I wish I could I wish I could get a video. I wish I could show you I’m pointing at my big stack of Lego. So the biggest mistake that everybody makes is they try to make these Big Mac daddy whole enchilada, freaking conquer the world. Uh, good. You know, by now, you know, these big effing packages that include everything that they could possibly ever want. So here, let me explain. Let me explain why that is a bad idea. And also let me explain that I’ve done that a hundred times. Okay. So I know it’s a bad idea. And I know exactly because I’ve done it a hundred times. And so here’s what happens. And by the way, it’s with the absolute best intent that you’re doing this. I know why you’re doing it because you really put that much thought into it and you’re like, wow, this is really it. This is really what they need. And I admire that. The reality is, is this before they get to you, they probably already got like 14 pieces of that puzzle already in play. Let’s say it’s 100 piece puzzle. Okay. They’re coming in to hire you and you think they need to hold a puzzle. But the reality is, is they’re not is they’ve been in business for a while. There’s a damn good chance they got half the puzzle in place already. Happens all the time. Matter of fact, it’s more normal for that to happen than it is for them to never have any pieces of puzzle anymore. So now all of a sudden you have this really big, huge package that now there are. Okay, take that one out. Take this one out. Take that one out. Well, guess what happened. Those are probably the most profitable effing pieces of the puzzle you got. Now that you just sold something you know you’re going to lose money on. Basically, what happens is when you pull specific pieces of your puzzle out, it just turned into an underpriced, custom bespoke job. And I have a saying it’s one of my favorite sayings and I learned it from my British friends bespoke. I turned it into this thing. It’s called bespoke Equals Be broke because you’re going to be broke if you continue to do bespoke work. So what happens is this when you do the Big Mac Daddy enchilada packages, inevitably they’ll be like, I don’t want that piece. I don’t want this piece. Can we add that piece? Okay, they’re going to do it whether you like it or not. They’re already trying to mix match. They’re already trying. With their little Legos in their head. Because that’s what they want. They don’t care about what you want. They remember. Remember as much as you have. If you’re still battling or whether or not they care about you and care about what you know, all that fun. Let me just go and tell you real quick they like you. They’re probably friends with you, they admire you. But I promise you, the only thing that they really care about are the results for them and their family. And it’s normal. That’s not a bad thing. It’s the way it should be. You have to take care of your house first, and only then can you take care of the people. Right? So point being is this don’t go to market with a Big Mac daddy package or a Big Mac daddy whole enchilada, conquer the world kind of thing. Granular. Don’t sell them a beat. Sell them the grains of sand that go on the beach and let them build their own beach. If they want lava black, you know, look, there’s a lot of different types of sand. A lot of people don’t know this, okay? Some of it comes from just, uh, some just shell breaking up. Some of it comes from lava rock breaking up. Some of it comes from coral breaking up. Coral sand is God. It’s like snow. It’s solid, it’s gory. Unbelievable. Some people might want a really, really white beach. Some people might like it to Lava Beach because they were raised in Hawaii. I don’t know, whatever the hell floats their boat, man, I don’t know. It’s not us for us to decide. It’s up to us to give them the tools to let them be empowered to decide. And I’m gonna tell you right now, when you do that, when you do that, it is a life changing moment. It takes a little while to get it in place. It’s not easy when I’m talking about, by the way. If not, I have one guarantee. It’s called a hard work guarantee. So, and I like to put this in all of my podcasts and everywhere. And I want to throw this out there because I do this. Here it is. My my group coaching program is absolute perfect. Perfect for the for the freelancer. Uh, you know, the 40,000 up to the half $1 million, uh, range. Okay. And then, of course, my one on one coaching is for anyone above that level. Okay. Now I’m. Both of them will work for either party, but that’s just kind of what they were built for. Now, I’m saying all of that because I have one guarantee. It’s called the hard work guarantee, and it’s called the Hard Work guaranteed, because I am the exact opposite of all of the other so-called guru ninja experts out there. And, Lee, I think this is one of the one of the reasons you and I are connected so well is because both and I when you and I started talking about this the other day, we’re like, yeah, man. I mean, we’re both all over this, right? Because because I cannot stand. Look, if you first and foremost how people fall for this stuff, it amazes me. But but I gotta say it, if they’re selling you the sizzle, the steaks going to suck. Buy the steak, not the sizzle. Meaning if they’re promising you that building a business is easy, or if they’re promising you that they have some kind of super secret algorithmic platform or formula or whatever it is that’s going to make you really rich in the next 30 days and get $10,000 a month retainer clients. I’m just going to let you know right now. 99.99% of the time it fails.
Lee:: Well, they’re the ones getting rich, not you.
Lee Goff:: They’re the ones getting rich because they’re taking advantage of you. Well, let me rephrase that. You know, you’re being taken advantage of because you’re allowing them to. You personally are allowing them to take advantage of you. They’re not taking advantage of you. You are allowing them to do it. And they’re doing it very happily as they’re cashing their checks all the way to the bank. Okay. Period. So the truth is, building a business is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. It is unbelievably hard. There’s a reason that less than 2% ever to. Whatever. There’s so many debates about this, the less than 2 to 5% ever make it through the first 2 to 5 years, depending on whatever article you’re reading today?
Lee:: I was seven years the other day.
Lee Goff:: Yeah, whatever. You know, I.
Lee:: Thought I was doing well.
Lee Goff:: I know right well. And I’ll tell you what. I’ll tell you one statement that is 100% true. And that is, as most overnight successes take ten years. Now, if you get a good coach like me and there’s some other ones out there, we can speed that up dramatically. We can get you very successful quickly, but it will not be overnight and it will not be easy. It takes time. You have to build a system, you have to build the processes. You have to get the people. Okay. There is no look, let me explain something to you. If it was really easy, they would not be selling it to you because they’d be keeping all the damn money for themselves.
Lee:: Mhm.
Lee Goff:: Period. Nothing in life worth having is like a click of a button and it never will be. Ever. So if you’re looking for a real world, real world, it’s going to be somebody who’s going to give you the tools pointed in the right direction, empower you with experience and guidance, hold you accountable, give you real world expectations. And when you can see real world successes. Okay. That’s it. Okay, well that’s it.
Lee:: That’s good. And where can they find this?
Lee Goff:: I’m Lee man. I’m right here in front of you, buddy.
Lee:: Earl.
Lee Goff:: Uh, I ain’t getting paid to throw a little country in there at the end, you know, say. All right. So, uh, dog. Hot dog. Um. Agency success. Road map. Com. That is my book. Um. My book. Book. Earl. It’s the the name of the books agencysuccessroadmap. Um, it’s on Amazon. It’s on Kindle. The audible version should be hopefully live today or tomorrow. Hopefully it’s taking forever, but that’s a pain in the ass. Do you.
Lee:: Read it?
Lee Goff:: No, no, no, I know everybody.
Lee:: I know, but it just for that I’m telling you, right. Like, no, Lee, you got it. It, uh, I.
Lee Goff:: Actually have an HBO, uh, an actor from an HBO TV series, uh, that’s doing the reading. And he is really, really, really, really good.
Lee:: It’d be more impressive. It was Morgan Freeman, by the way. But anyway.
Lee Goff:: Yeah. Me too. I mean, I mean, I would have been I would have impressed.
Lee:: Welcome to the light weight.
Lee Goff:: That’s the British version.
Lee:: Of what that was. That was.
Lee Goff:: Even. What the hell? That was a drunk.
Lee:: That was a.
Lee Goff:: Drunk Sean Connery or something. I’m not sure what that was. So yeah. No, my book is at agencysuccessroadmap.com, and if you go there and you get a copy of the book at $7, by the way, I mean, it’s cheaper than a freaking a latte at Starbucks. Okay. I mean, come on. Right.
Lee:: So they’re expensive.
Lee Goff:: Yeah, right. They are, they are. Uh, and then um, but but you also get, um, you get $140 worth of free stuff along with it. So, you know, you get proposal templates, a free leadership online training course, and, um, my Capa guidebook and um, uh, non steps to millions of study guides. So it’s a really, really cool. Oh, and you get a free webinar series a whole lot of free stuff out there. It’s really really cool. It’s it’s intended to kind of let you learn about me and most importantly, give you dozens and dozens of real world actionable items after reading it that, you know, move the needle for your agency today. Right? So, um, agencysuccessroadmap.com is the book URL map. Primary URL is marketing agency coach. Com that’s where you can see more about my online courses and group coaching and coaching and all that fun stuff.
Lee:: So that’s awesome guys. So remember if you want to learn more from the beautifully accented League of then Head Over agencysuccessroadmap.com, check out that book. You can get it for $7 on that URL as more expensive on Amazon, and you get all those freebie freebies included, all those systems, etc. and you get the hard work guarantee, which is put in the work and you’ll see the results. And as opposed to your exactly instead of, uh, the, uh, you know, buy this for $7 and I will show you the system that will make you a millionaire in 30 days. So, uh, I want to close.
Lee Goff:: I want to close on one thing. I am unbelievably proud of my success ratio. Most coaches, most coaches are, at best, will get a 10 to 20% success ratio. And that’s because they just give them a big package and say go. And if they don’t do it, then they don’t. They don’t have successful. I’m very proud of my success ratio, my success ratio, about the best measurement I can get. And this is not exact science. It’s about 6,060%, somewhere around 60%, meaning that I have substantially improved the amount of time they can spend with their family, the amount of revenue they’ve got, or the amount of profit they’re making. Okay. And the reason that is, is because my tools are real and I get in the trenches with you. I’m passionate about it, so I’m very proud of that success ratio.
Lee:: So guys, if you want this accident guiding you along the.
Lee Goff:: Way and agencysuccessroadmap.com, hey.
Lee:: I’m gonna hold you accountable. I mean, you know, uh, yeah, I’m going to push you past I’ll put change begins at the end of your comfort zone. Okay. I’m at the end of your comfort zone, you know what I’m saying? So right there.
Lee Goff:: So special.
Lee:: Especially for you Brits as well. Come on.
Lee Goff:: Guys. Right, right right mate.
Lee:: Thanks so much for your time. You are a legend. I’m looking forward to developing our friendship further. Oh, this is good. Have a wonderful day. And folks, remember, it all starts with Lego.
Lee Goff:: It. And I’ll ask you all the Lego started agencysuccessroadmap.com.
Lee:: There you go. Yeah.
Lee Goff:: One more plug. That’s all right. Thanks, everybody.
Lee:: Bye bye. Cheers, mate. Cheerio.
Lee Goff:: And that wraps up today’s show. Don’t forget, if you are not part of our Facebook group, then check that out over on agency trailblazer.com/group. If you are not a premium member and want to take part in weekly calls and a community with accountability as well as workshops to help your agency, then check out agency trailblazer.com for more information. If we don’t see you in the communities, we will see you in the next episode.
