ladies and gents in today's video i really just want to pull back the curtain of the darker sides of smma you know the aspects that haunt agency owners that keep them up at night and really what you can do to first of all uh be aware of these things and mitigate them now this is coming from someone who's been in the agency game for four years has had a creative agency then a social media marketing uh advertising blend and then gone exclusively to having an advertising agency so you know i've dealt with nightmare clients i've dealt with angel clans i've dealt with 300 a month retainers i've dealt with over 20 000 in a single month in billables between base and performance fee like anything you can imagine in between and i really just want to give you an uh accurate depiction of what some of the darker sides of agency life is like because look it's all fine and well you know talking about the the highs of of being an agency owner but you know you got to know what in life there's nothing that's exclusively positive you know it's always a bit of give and take and no matter what business you're in uh there's going to be aspects that just aren't as fun or enjoyable but you can also do things to mitigate them as i said uh so let's go over those now real quick before we get started if you want to be in with winning a piece from my clothing line gadget go ahead and comment down below and more importantly make sure you have post notifications turned on because i pick a winner from the people that comment in the first two hours because those are you guys that have post notifications and comment within the first two hours i have so much love for and rather than selling an article from gadgey at the retail price i would rather go to you i don't mind paying the shipping i don't care where you are in the world my team will handle it so the winner for today's giveaway will be the pin post if it's not i apologize just go ahead and remind me in the comments my team will see it but it should be a pin post within the first hour so go ahead and make sure you're subscribed and turn on post notifications and make sure that you go ahead and drop that comment and on the next video you can go ahead and see if you have won so the first dark side of having an agency and to be honest i feel as though this kind of happens in any business but i still think it's worth mentioning is just the rollercoaster of emotions you know the immense feeling of helplessness when initially you're getting no responses back from your outreach all the way from that to getting your small win you know just the joy of setting your first meeting to the thrill the undescribable thrill of signing your first client it doesn't even matter how much you sign them for it's just what that first clan does for you is is undescribable to the despair of losing your first client or maybe uh not delivering the sole results that you thought and by the way you will get to a point with your agency after two three years potentially to be honest some even agency owners even manage this after the first year where 95 of your clients you deliver incredible results for but especially when you first start don't don't expect that you're going to be at that level it takes a while to calibrate as an agency owner and know which clients you can and which clients you can't get results for because not every single client you can help out there you know some clients some business owners can't even help themselves you know how are you expected to come in and transform their business but in those instances you also start to get a little bit more self-aware as an agency owner and you start to get more aware as to what promises you can make and what expectations you can set because with some clients you genuinely know that you can add an extra 20 30 40 50 100 200 500 k a month to their to their businesses revenue whereas with some clients you know you could you could potentially bring an extra five leads a month for a realtor or or you know only make the clan uh four thousand five thousand dollars a month return on ad spend but even for that clan it may be immense now one thing that always always always always got me through any of these swings as an agency and by the way they don't stop they get more you know kind of when you first start your agency it feels like a roller coaster the roller coaster doesn't stop you know it it just becomes a little bit more steady to give you a perfect example uh march of 2019 i lost three clients in the space of 48 hours they all brought it in-house which i guess for me is even more painful you know i think it would be less painful if we weren't getting results for them because i it would be easier for me to stomach all three of these clients we were getting incredible results for and i understand when you know for example one of these clients that's over five figure a month a retainer and would that deal with just base fee no performance like i understand you know i've always understood the thinking with clients where they're like okay i'm gonna bring this in-house because i can have for you know the same price as you we could have four uh performance marketers working full-time you know i've always understood that but every single time a client has left to bring it in-house it seems like they just come back six months later and we almost have to start again fresh for that and it's just anyways point is um i know what it's like you know at that point i had had my agency for two over two and a half years i know what it's like to lose 25 000 pounds 30 000 in bottom line profit because my expenses for the agency were still the same yet we had three clients and and two of those were whales and as i said that equated to 25 000 pounds of bottom line revenue in the space of 48 hours you know uh one saying that i say all the time you guys know is when it rains it pours and that's in a positive and a negative aspect it's funny it seems i don't know about you guys but for me as an agency owner it seems like when i sign clients it's it's a cluster of clients you know i usually give you an example the time recording this um last month i signed five clients all in the space of one week it seems like i always sign a bunch of clients at the same time and it weirdly enough i always seem to lose clients at the same time anytime we've had a client tell us that they're coming to be honest at this stage of the agency we really only lose a client because they won't decide to bring it in-house um but yeah it's weird it seems like it kind of always happens together so that's one thing to keep in mind when it rains the pores both positively and negatively and a way to emotionally deal with that and it's i've been saying this for years and years and years is this too shall pass that is by far the easiest thing to keep in mind and uh and you can go ahead check out the description down below it's gadget. com and i think at the time that this goes out uh the new season two of gagi should be out and one of the shirts my personal favorite shirt from there is this too shall pass so go ahead and cop that wear it and be a good reminder to you that everything in life in the agency world is seasons and you should never fight the seasons you should accept them and you should understand it's all part of the process as i said it's really important to disassociate from or disassociate and stop labeling things as this is good this is bad it's all part of the process you know and you need night and day you need different seasons you need good and bad you need these dualities in life because first of all things would just get stale you would never grow you know i don't need to lecture you there but um that's the other thing i've really noticed with agency owners is kind in that first 18 months it feels as though they're enslaved by those emotional highs and lows a lot of times they're kind of self-imposed and and what i and what i see usually with agency owners after 18 months is a maturity and a resolve and um really that they can weather the storm whether it's good bad whatever it may be so that is number one number two is you need to be able to live with churn now every single person watching this should be signing clients on a three-month minimum like that should just be a a given that was one of the biggest things that i did in beginning of 2018 is every client starting from beginning of 2018 it was a three-month minimum because i just thought about it and i'm like look this is prior to 2018 i'm signing clients they're coming on board there's no monthly minimum so they could leave after the first month and that first month is usually the most stressful that's also where they're doubting themselves and it's just you need to have that three-month minimum in there so that way it gives you adequate time to actually go ahead and get results for them and so that way you don't allow for the chance for them to uh you know not be able to disassociate from their emotions and just think like oh this isn't going well because in the first month which you know in the first month you might have spent seven to ten days to actually onboard them and get their ads lives if you run an advertising agency oh you know it's been 20 days and you know i haven't got an adequate amount of leads when you know there needs to be some sort of synergy there you might actually need to tell them how to nurture those leads or you might need to put the system in place to nurture those leads but you might need to show them how do you actually convert those leads etc you know this you know there's so many different uh caveats and so many different things that go into it so nonetheless you should be doing three month minimums that said you should also be able to stomach clients leaving you trust me when i say it is much easier to keep a client than it is to sign a new one and i think looking back over my four years there's so many pivotal points that i've i've reached yeah just so many junctures i've arrived at and i realized that i've been doing things wrong or i maybe potentially have been focusing on the wrong things 2020 uh is really the year where i realized like retention is probably the most important thing when it comes to an agency and i'm even doing things this year uh like with one with one client yes it's not much but i actually dropped their fee by 500 pounds there's their set feet you know looking at the retainer i mean they were still on our lowest or cheapest possible retainer but still like i lost out on what like one-eighth of my retainer on my monthly retainer by dropping their fee by 500 pounds but i dropped their fee by 500 pounds because they were already a happy client but they did another six month extension so they did three months then there was a one month into you know where it goes into rolling month by month and i started having this realization i'm like if i can get clients to 12-month retention on average and by the way right now my retention is just about seven it's like you know i did the math and i divided um all the clients i've had average retention's just that and it comes out to like 6. 8 something so it's almost seven months and i have never met an agency owner with a retention of like over 12 13 14 50.
i've never like you need to understand that like your average also includes clients that stay for the three-month minimum and that that happens a lot usually what i find is any clients that do leave are usually the ones at the three-month minimum like after a client stays on after four months really they're most the time in our agency they're staying on to be with us for 9 10 11 12 sometimes even a year longest we've ever had a client stay on for is something like a year and a half just under a year and a half so i think around like 16 months but anyways my point is um if you can get your retention to a point where it's even at like seven months that that's very very healthy but if you can start getting it to a point where it's like nine or 12 months i mean dude you're a boss because keep mine if your average retention is 12 months that means that some clients are leaving three months and some clients are leaving after 18 24 months okay like that's you know that's something that people really do need to understand and really do need to remember for me my agency as i said it's the reason it comes out to like 6. 8 something is because if clients leave pretty much always they're leaving at the three-month mark and the main reason that happens is because as i said they see the results like oh these results are great like this must be super simple to do ourselves let's bring it in house for what we're paying them and then you know they come to realization they're like oh not as simple as look it may be somewhat simple but you know the only reason we can command these prices is because quite clearly it's not as easy as it looks so as i said right now our retention is just about seven months my goal for 2020 is to get it to around uh just around 10 to between 10 to 11 because what that means is i will literally make 50 more profit so hypothetically as an example i would go from 400 000 pounds a year from the agency to 600 000 pounds by signing no extra clients literally by just having better retention and i think that is so so so so important so except that churn is a part of having an agency and i think the thing that is an even harder pill to swallow is that you could be getting clients incredible results and they'll still leave you right and it just comes with it it comes with having an agency um they said you can't stop a client if at some point they decide okay we want to build a culture of having everything in-house and to be honest like i can't blame them like i have so many things in my education company where we do it in-house and i've had people tell me like yo why don't you get a service provider to be so much easier and i'm like no at grades we have a culture of we don't have any contractors everyone is in-house and very well paid and that's just the way i like to do it as an agency owner so i guess i can't judge my clients for wanting to do it in-house even though we're absolutely killing it for them i don't know so look that's another thing that you're gonna have to live with um and sometimes it can be a very tough pill to swallow is churn is a part of having an agency whether you get amazing results for your clients or not and the only thing that you can do is work every single day to get your retention up by by delivering better results for clients incentivizing longer term contracts once again this is something where in 2019 i've been signing clients at a little bit of a lower monthly retainer it's something i've just been brainstorming a lot in terms of incentivizing clients to hit what i want to hit this year which is a at least nine preferably 10 or even 11 monthly average retention rate the last thing that you need to deal with as an agency owner is you are in the business of people i feel as though this is the number one thing that stops um agency owners and it's the other thing that makes a lot of these other businesses seem so like just seems so like easy and this and that like look at the end of the day like i unders trust me guys i totally understand the appeal of you see someone like you know when i first started my agency my day as an agency owner was a lot less sexy than um you know a lot of these like e-commerce guys like you know you see the stuff and it's like i wake up i roll over i check my stripe i've gone like a thousand orders i hop in my lambo and then i go eat some chipotle then i play some video games and i like i don't know i chug like four monsters and then like i i go shop for another lambo truck and then i go to bed and you know i made 100k that day with 0. 3 margins no you look all jokes aside um i understand like i understand with a lot of other business models people like the fact that you can almost hide behind your screen and you don't have any any one-on-one interaction i understand that but that's what i love about having an agency but i once again i understand it's petrifying for a lot of people as an agency owner you can hide behind your screen you can outsource pretty much everything as an agency owner you're going to help outsource and i recommend you do especially once you get to a certain point and that's really what i work on with some of my high level students is just getting to the point where everything in your agency is outsourced everything in your agency is outsourced and i don't mean that in terms of contractor at a certain point it's incredible to build a company culture and have a full-time team and the way that you build a really strong company culture and agency culture is by building a full-time team but anyways back to my point i think that you can outsource everything as an agency owner except for sales and i've had people tell me before no you can okay just because you can doesn't mean you should all right and of course you can outsource uh sales for your agency but this is kind of where it come this is kind of where once again i always think in my mind i'm like you got to ask yourself how many clients do you want to sign a month let's say you want to bring on um 10 new clients a month that in order to bring on 10 new clients a month let's say you have a sales conversion rate of 20 that means that you need to do 50 calls a month that averages out to two calls a day like out of a eight hour work day can you really not spend two of that literally driving revenue for your agency by taking sales like unless you get some point in your agency where you're at like 100 sales calls i don't ever see why you would outsource unless you've really decided that your agency is the thing that is going to be totally passive hands up and once again i don't really believe in passive income to be honest i think you can put systems in place and be the and be the orchestrator but at the end of the day you still have to give some guidance and shift some things around and stuff like that so the reason i say this is because having an agency you can't in order to drive the revenue you have to be speaking to another business owner so i know that a lot of you have some anxiety around that and you have some you know and it and it is tough you know you're dealing with business owners it's um you're dealing with a lot of times sophisticated buyers you know and it will definitely stretch you as a person because you have to uh reach out to leads you have to do prospecting you're going to get no's it's it all comes with the game and it's all part of the process and like you know i i remember even um you know you're just getting really weird sometimes you can get in weird situations like i remember vividly one one of my favorite clients actually this this is back in 2017 when i was first starting and it was it was three founders and two of them liked me and one didn't and this other one really didn't like actually funnily enough him and i have ended up becoming really really good friends like they're no longer a client but him and i are good friends to this day funny because you get in these weird situations like for example um this person he was just he grilled me for 20 minutes uh you know how could you know anything you don't have a marketing degree you're 17 like all this stuff and you know you have to adapt and you have to be quick on your feet at times and you know looking back at that situation like it's it's one of those where um you're just you just get in the zone and i don't even really remember what i said i just remember i just instantly snapped into the zone and and dealt with all the objections and whatnot yeah it's something you deal with it's you you can't hide behind your screen but to be honest i think anyone watching this needs to know that having an agency it isn't a sexy business model you know some people like want to glorify having an sma what you can glorify is what it will do for you and your family and i've yet to see something that will provide a better lifestyle for you your family your loved ones because here's the thing and this is coming from someone who owns multiple other businesses is coming from someone who owns an e-commerce company someone who owns an education company i think everyone thinks like education companies are the bee's knees i have so many friends who run education companies and i'm not gonna say any names but even competitors of mine who i call them competitors but were friends in my own industry who have been like yeah i'm out like this is way harder than i thought it was no one told me that the margins were this thin and it is you know if you want to build a real education company not just like a you know uh a course business where you have one big month and then you know you never get customers again if you want to build a real education company it's a blood sucking leech you know so um that's the other thing that you need to and this is why i always i always always always tell you guys about pro this is why i always always talk to you guys about profit i tell you guys the margins of different businesses because you need to understand that revenue is so far removed from what you what actually ends up in your pocket what you can spend to take care of your mom what you can spend to buy that house for you and your new spouse like whatever it may be so um for any of you guys that can't stomach having a conversation and that's really all it is having a conversation one business owner to the other where you are trying to relay what you can do for their business if that is too much to handle to stomach for some of you guys i understand but to be honest i think it's a pretty small price to pay for how life-changing having an agency can be so ladies and gentlemen those are the three main things that um keep most agency owners up at night as i said it's the rollercoaster of emotions it's having to deal with churn and the last thing is at the end of the day you are dealing with people and there's actually one last point i want to touch on about that my number one goal of my agency is to build a machine and i think in 2019 i took that too far to the point where like first of all i never went to client checking calls because i want to remove myself from everything except for the sales aspect of it and you know lead generation we get 80 of our ads through cold traffic on facebook to the case study funnel and then generate and generate lead that way so like everything was taken care of except for the sales and that kind of like i told you earlier just because you can doesn't mean you should um funnily enough for me i think my problem with um having an agency isn't so much like i'm scared of dealing with other people or this or that it's more that like i wanted to remove the human out of having the service-based business in 2019 i said you just learned so many lessons like the longer you have an agency and like 2019 taught me that like you're still dealing with humans and you know one of our main focuses towards the back end of 2019 and 2020 was client delight and retention and kind of how the two interact because we had incredible client delight in the fact that we made our clients obscene amounts of money but i don't think the mi team built amazing relationship with our clients but me personally because of this obsession with wanting to be removed from the business i didn't give enough i didn't commit enough to my clients and build enough really solid rapport and show them that i care outside of just delivering them incredible results so i guess that's just one little sad thing i wanted to mention anyways my point is if you are watching this and you have an estimate or you have or you are about to start your agency i just want to commend you i want to salute you because it does take a lot of courage and um you know hats off to you now now one way to make it easier is to have the right community the right mentorship the right guidance in order to get you there so first link in the description you can go ahead and you can you can go to the agency incubator sales page and if you scroll down you can actually book in a call with it will either be max or caden depending on their availability but these are my two student integration managers here at growiency.
