3 Steps To A Six-Figure SMMA

So look, there is a considerable amount of fluff out there in the SMMA industry. There’s, you know, there’s kind of two camps. There’s one camp where people go so granular and just focus on the minutia, which I think is a positive thing, but they just get so bogged down by it. And then there’s the high-level people and these are the sorts of people where it’s like, Oh, just charge that client 2000 a month with like no reasoning behind it. Or these are also the people who are like, yeah, you do this. Or you just had one client and then you signed two clients and you signed three clients and then you have a six figure agency and it’s like they’re trying to make it out that it’s as simple as that. So in today’s video, I really just want to break down the three steps to a six figure agency.

So look, when I think of accomplishing any goal in life, I always just have this idea in my mind. And it’s pretty much the principles that Gary Keller talks about in his book. The one thing, by the way, that’s one of those books where literally you just have to read the title and and if you spend enough time thinking about it to yourself, you’re like, okay, I get the lesson. As many of you guys know, I read a book a week for four years and that’s something I’m doing again this year, and this is just a total side tangent from the video, but like I’m thinking back to all the books where I could have just read the title and the blurb and got them pretty much everything I needed to know from the book. But anyways, now today I’m going to give you the three steps to building a six figure agency.

There is one out of those three steps where if you do it, in my opinion, the rest of the three pretty much almost become irrelevant. But the real power is when you have all three of these in play working together harmoniously, and that is when you’re going to just have a joy with your agency. So before we also just get straight into it. Can I ask that you go ahead and smash the like button right below this video. As you know, we’re trying to get to 300,000 subscribers this year. At the time of recording this with our current growth stats, it comes out to just over 200,000 is the estimated subscriber count by the NSC year, but the more time I set aside from the real businesses to actually make these three videos for you, hopefully you guys find value from them. Reciprocate a smashing the like button and we wrote this channel this year, so the first step to building a six figure agency is set meetings with consistency.

This really is that one thing. This is the thing that takes care of everything else because to be very honest, if you’re setting five meetings a week, so you’re having 20 meetings a month negatively, you are going to close two clients out of those like a 10% closer and keep in mind you will have cancellations, no shows, but booking to actual client at 10% close rate. Is it really that hard? It’s pretty bad to be honest. And especially when you’re getting that frequency of experience and that frequency of practice and training in, it won’t be long until you’re closing in a much higher percentage. So having the ability to consistently set meetings, it means that no matter what, you’re practically going to make sales. And I tell all my students agree, you didn’t see it. I’ll call and I’ll tell you the same thing. You should always be signing clients on the three months minimum and then from there ruling month by month. Now if you’re just good at setting meetings, you’re okay at sales, but your service delivery is crap and you don’t do a three month minimum at the end that you’re going to keep a clown on for a month. And then you’ll lose it with the three month minimum. And it gives you a lot of extra security and guarantee. So that is why to be very blunt this is the one thing that if you get right, this is one thing where if you have a monastic obsession with it, it kind of takes care of everything else. But as I said, we’re going to get onto the other two points and when you block the synergy between three you are going to be having a jolly time as an agency owner. So just staying on this point of setting meetings with consistently.

As I said, you don’t necessarily need to be the craziest closer. You don’t need to be the best salesperson and just between you and me, I actually think most of sales is a fallacy, especially when you’re talking to more sophisticated buyers. In my opinion, 70% of their decision is made before they even get on the call or within that first 10 minutes of the call. So you can jump through loops and this and that.

But other thing you need to realize as an agency is this is an ongoing multiply mode service. It’s not like you can kind of just trick them and do some hard close or some tactic you learned from some video and then they get the product and then that’s it. No, it’s an ongoing month time on thing. So you actually have to keep and maintain a relationship with this person, for them to keep paying you obviously the three months and then from there on a month by month cases. And the other added benefit of being able to set meetings with consistency is that it’s throws you into such an abundant mindset because at the entity, you know, look, if you’re averaging around five meetings a week and you have a 20% close percentage, as I said, after some good practice shouldn’t really be that hard, then you’re going to know, okay, if this client doesn’t close, who cares?

Like if I set five meetings a week at least, or if I set 10 meetings in 14 days, I am 100% going to close one. So there is a lot to be said in life about being someone who is just very solid, very abundant in of themselves. And as I said, that permeates through your sub communication. You actually gonna have to do a lot less selling and you’re going to get much better results. So moving on to number two is keep service delivery simple. A common struggle for a lot of agency owners out there is they feel as though they have just golden handcuffs. To be very honest, this is actually the case when my agency really started to take off March of 2017 I very quickly scaled to four clients. I had an athlete which is now rebranded to Jen Flo. I had a personal trainer called James Taylor.

I don’t have a personal trainer I was working with called Ruth. And I also had a cooking show. Funnily enough, and keep in mind, this is back when I still had a creative agency, so very quickly scaled up to four clients, then had a little period of inactivity. And then from there I closed zebra fuel fuel systems about Gregor garage. And there’s one more that I’m forgetting, but point is like I scaled up my business, maintain and then scaled again aggressively. And he was just a mess to be honest. You know, it felt like these golden handcuffs where as I said, you know, I’m 17 years old making 10 to 15,000 pounds a month and it’s incredible technically. But I felt just so suffocated by the situation now, now me three years later, you know, that happened basically around three years ago at this point.

I have so much more wisdom about systems operations, streamlining my service delivery. And to be honest, even when I had a creative agency, either it was that feeling of pool in handcuffs and not being in control and keeping my service streamline and simple. Then actually then led me to go ahead and create a, the SOP like the content timeline. If you’re an agency incubator, you know what I’m talking about. And for me to have this system where like every single client follow the same sort of timeline and routine for us to turn out their content monthly and grow their social platforms. So as I said, if I could go back now I know that I’d be able to have a super dope creative agency. So if you’re someone who has a creative agency, you’re shooting, editing, distributing content for clients, be dissuade. I was just still very immature in my agency journey and I didn’t have the same sort of macro view on how to run the business that I do a present moment in 2020 but that main issue, as I said, kind of came down to the fact that I scaled quickly.

But with the janky foundation, it felt like a game of Jenga to be honest, where like one next move and it feels like this entire thing is going to fall apart and that’s actually what happened. August of 2017 I had this good thing going, having a creative agency and then me thinking, Oh, I have this creative agency, but I feel like I have golden handcuffs, so I’m going to start learning this Facebook ad thing. And me and my infinite wisdom decided to pitch my current creative agency plans for Facebook ads. Just a supplementary 500 to 750 pound a month fee because I was still in my early stages of figuring out keep my, most of these retainer were 1.52 or 2.5 K a month. And what ended up happening was I did that for a month and then around 70% of my friends dropped me not only for Facebook ads because that was the thing that I just wasn’t good at and I didn’t understand.

But then they actually drove me for having a creative agency in the first place. So the main mistake that I made there was I overcomplicated my service delivery. I should have just had my creative agency clients kept those clients and then started selling new clients on Facebook advertising. Because for me, I think having two services is basically like having two different agencies. So really my best advice to you is if you’ve got sloppy operations, if you’re trying to offer three different services, you might scale quickly. But I’m telling you from personal experience and from personal pain, because that whole ordeal causes me a lot of pain and like my ego was hit because I was at a point in my life where four months prior I dropped out of school having a moderately successful agency, scaling it up and then literally in the space of one month losing 70% of my retainers.

And I was like twoish shame to even tell my mom. Yeah, it wasn’t. It wasn’t a fun time. And all of it comes back down to I did not keep my agency simple and I didn’t keep my service delivery streamline and simply start tacking on extra services. And that led to me taking my eye off the ball of the thing that was actually producing the income. So step number three to building a six figure agency is retain your clients for as long as humanly possible. Now this is the area that I would say isn’t given as much attention as lead generation or sales because quite frankly, it’s just not as sexy. You see client retention live such a burden off your shoulders as stated previously. In this video, you should all be signing clients on three month minimums, but if you can get your average client retention to eight to nine months, you’re in a very, very healthy spot.

And as I said, if that is your average attention, that gives you a lot of confidence that look when this client signs on for $3,000 a month, I know historically, look, they may sell on for 18 months. They may stay on for only the three month minimum. But knowing that historically they still on for eight to nine months, that gives you so much confidence in knowing that, okay, this is not $3,000 a month. This is closer to 24 to $27,000 expected lifetime value from this client. And here’s the thing, you know, poor business owners think front end. They think quick cash, good business owners think longterm. And I think about the lifetime value. To give you a perfect example of this, at IEG media, I have a few strategic referral partners, so that means I refer business to them. They refer business to me. Now when people refer clients to me, I give 50% of the first month.

Keeping in mind that our lowest retainer is $5,200 a month. Our average retainer, it stays around $7,500 a month. So when someone refers a client to me, usually I found that as close to that $5,200 a month Mark. But most of the time I’m like writing them a check for $2,600 to $3,000 just upfront. Whereas I know a lot of other agencies are thinking, Oh, let me give you 10 or 15% of it every month that they stand on. For me, it’s like, okay, you take a considerable amount of front end cash. I’m playing the long game. I’m keeping the client on for as long as humanly possible and when they stay on for nine months, I have only given away half of one month, so I’ve given away what one 18th of the retainer. Whereas most people are trying to give away 10 to 20% they’re giving away one 10th to one fifth of the retainer.

Whereas I’m giving away a closer to one 18th and most example because as I said, I’m not thinking front end cash. How can I collect as much cash? Day one I’m playing a long game and in 2020 it’s not only just about getting your clients great results. Yes, that is by far the most important thing when it comes to keeping a client on longterm. But at IAG media we make such an effort to build a strong connection, a strong bond with our clients because at the end day, to be very blunt, it’s hard to fire a friend. That’s just the honest truth. So as I said, my agency, we really put a lot of effort into building a lot of rapport with our clients. To be honest, we throw the professional boundary out the window and as I said in a lot of situations we become friends with our clients.

Like I remember was this one really funny photo. I think it must have been like 2:30 AM you can see all my phone. I don’t know why I’m like pulling my phone that way. Keep in mind, to be very honest with you guys, I was also rather drunk and so were all my friends at night. A lot of times the cleanse that I do have in London, three hours, I take him table clubbing, so one of my clients, Tyler Newman, there’s this, there’s this iconic photo because I’m drunk taking this photo with my friend Jamie who actually works at Herod. He’s the one I go to when I get all my Rolex, his APS, et cetera, et cetera. So anyways, I’m next to him and all my phone. I actually have a strike payment that came in from another one of our clients, the auto Billy and right next to me is Tyler Newman, one of our old clients that we worked with for I think around six months.

I don’t know, just something about that photo just makes me like giggle every single time. But look, am I telling you guys to go clubbing with your clients? No, that is not what I’m saying at all. You also need to take it on a case by case basis with other clients that we’ve worked with for example or ring, we kept a very strong professional boundary there. Or if I look at another one of our clients, Kevin Rose, once again we built a lot of reports, made a lot of effort even just to have a lot of dog conversations. He has this beautiful dog, Danny who works for my agency. Most of you guys know him the same breed as his dog. So just like building a lot of commonalities and sparking this client delight is super, super important. So one thing I implemented end of 2019 is actually on the onboarding funnel.

Clients punch in their personal details and we send clients out gifts of anywhere from a hundred to $400 I sent a client out in the past a little, a DGI pocket or something. So basically it’s like there’s fourK camera with a stabilizer on it and actually send this out to one of our clients. And one of the reasons I did this as well is because it would take forever to get ads from him. So I was like, you know it’s screwed. We’re getting him a gift and that’s what they’re going to help us turn out more ads and this was also a percentage of Roy’s deal. So I guess selfishly like I wanted better ads so we could get even better returns and intern have a higher commission. But an example that I guess a little bit more pure is we were talking with one of our clients and he really wanted to go with his wife to serve, to slay, but all the tickets had run out.

So where, where’s my wallet? This is the only time ever in history. I have used Amex concierge, so I called up Amex and this is after I bought here and to do a lot of digging and find out whether we could get it somewhere else, whether there was still available. You basically could see what we could do. Last was or call up annex concierge. I had zero faith that they would actually make anything happen. Long story short ended up getting them a box. I think the cost was 900 pounds for four boxes, which obviously makes up the front portion of the box. But anyways, yes, that’s a 900 pound expensive. Technically not very wise, but for me as said, I’m not playing the short game, I’m playing the long game. What that meant to that client, I can’t even begin to tell you does it have, from what I’ve seen in the past few minutes, I don’t want you to get the impression.

They’re like, okay, you should go club and with your clients you should shower. Your clubs will get, that’s not what I’m saying, but just spark some clients, like even just little things. My clients know that I’m a big watch guy, so I’ve sent my clients a hundred to $300 watches that I personally have in my own collection because they’re really good bang for buck and I wear them and I love the history behind them. Watches, like for example, the Timex que reissue from 1978 I love that Walter have the watch in my collection. It’s not a very expensive watch, but I love that watch. So I’ve sent that washer clients. I’ve had clients tell me that their sleep’s a little off. So I’ve literally sent them an orange. In the same token, I’ve had clients who once again told me that his sleep is off.

So I sent them a T2, which is my favorite tea company, glass teapot, and then four months supply of sweet dreams, which is the uh, loose-leaf cammo tea that I use. So just little things like basically what I’m trying to say here is to actually care about your clients, deliver them great results, but then once you do that and you get that locked in, you are 70% of the way to making sure that client stays on a hell of a long time. If you really want to lock it in and take it to 100% to come their friends build rapport and genuinely look out for areas in their life where you can add value. I think I’m hitting my point anyways. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you guys enjoyed this video. Drop a comment down below. Out of those three, which one do you think is the most important in building a six figure agency in 2020 as I said, it is important to be granular and in a lot of sensors focus on the minutiae, but at a macro level, this is what you need to do to get to six figures. And to be honest, this is what you need to do and even higher capacity as you try to scale the 2030 40 50 camera. So I hope you guys enjoyed that video. As I said, make sure you smash it. Like go and leave me a comment down below and let me reading all of them and responding to all of them. Lots of love guys. I will see you in the next video.