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We share our thoughts and ideas on how to grow a business.
We want to double the agency.
You say triple, we can talk about
that, but in order to triple
it, you have to first double it.
So who cares?
I
think we had just talked about keeping
this a lifestyle business that would
kind of stay small because we never
thought it could get to this stage.
I remember specifically being like, I
don't know if we had eight to 10 clients
back then or something like that.
And I remember thinking when we went from
eight to 10 or something, it felt like
we were really stretching our limits.
And I, I feel like we literally said
out loud, Oh my god, what, no, this is
never gonna be like a 30 client agency.
This is gonna be our first video
in, what are we calling this?
This new Series
or I don't, I don't even
know what we're naming it.
I think we had discussed scaling
up or something like that.
Yeah.
Something to do with
scaling up a business.
Well, we can have a second
video where we debate that.
Cause I still think it should just
be the growing convert channel or the
growing convert podcast, but it is 2024.
We're recording this on January
5th, 2024, and this is going to
come out with the article that
is talking about this new phase.
Of the growing convert business
and agency I'm pausing because
it's not really a new phase.
Nothing major is changing, but we
have a very specific goal, um, which
is we want to double the agency.
You say triple, we can talk about
that, but in order to triple
it, you have to first double it.
So who cares?
So we want to double or
slash triple the agency.
Um, in the next two to three years.
Is that accurate?
Yeah, that's accurate.
And what the article is talking about,
and what we're going to get into the
details of here, um, is, well no, what
the article is talking about is why.
To summarize here, if you guys haven't
read it, you should read the article.
But to summarize briefly, we just think
that we have the pieces in place now.
To build and operate an agency that
is much bigger than both you and I
originally thought would ever be feasible.
I was going to say that the looking
forward in terms of why we want to grow
it, I think it's important to, to look
back and talk about what our mindset
was even two to three years ago, in
terms of, we never thought we could even
get to this stage of, I think we have
something like 20 clients now, or we
had 20 clients at the beginning of 2023.
And I remember a conversation in the
agency, and this was probably 2018.
I think we maybe had seven
or eight clients at the time.
And we thought that there was just
no possible way that we could double
the agency there and ever reach 20
clients because we kind of were the
operational bottlenecks at that point.
We were still really
involved in the agency.
We didn't really have a, an operational.
Infrastructure that worked at the time.
And we were trying to figure out
the roles in the organization.
Even still, I think we had just talked
about keeping this a lifestyle business
that would kind of stay small because we
never thought it could get to this stage.
And I remember, I remember
specifically being like.
I don't know if we had eight to 10
clients back then or something like that.
And I remember thinking when we went from
eight to 10 or something, it felt like
we were really stretching our limits.
And I feel like we literally said out
loud, Oh my God, no, this is never
going to be like a 30 client agency.
And as we're going to show a talk
through in this video specifically,
um, we are at or near and have been
at or near through all of 2023.
around 20 clients, maybe
17 or something like that.
And so our doubling goal is 20 to 40.
And the tripling goal would be to 60.
And that, just to emphasize what
you're saying, I thought at some point,
I thought 20 was just ridiculous.
Because I was like, how could you like,
I'm like, bursting at the seams trying to
help operate this 8 to 8 client agency of
what we were doing, and I was like, 20?
Like, that's just like insane.
Oh, are we gonna have to have
directors, and then managers,
and then senior managers?
Which, you know, flash forward, we do not
have any of that and it's still just fine.
But yeah, we never thought it would
be possible, but let me just kind
of, to give everyone that early
preview and to finish that story.
So read the article.
The idea is we feel like we have the
key things in place that any business.
Would need to scale.
So why not scale that?
We've spent all of this time.
I don't know how many years
was seven, eight years
of our life.
2015, since we started growing convert the
site 2017, since we started the agency.
So yeah, coming, I think it's
about six and a half years for the
agency.
Yeah.
So it's six and a half years of our, you
know, sweat equity here building this.
Um.
And so if you have the pieces in
place to scale a business and you've
spent years getting that in place,
you should scale the business.
Why not?
Like you, you did the work to do it.
Um, and so what are those pieces?
It is first and foremost, in
my opinion, for any business.
Ours is obviously a
service, but product, right?
You have something that
people want to sell.
We've built this system, pain
point SEO based, but a lot of
more than pain point SEO that has
gotten notoriety in the industry.
So like we should be able to scale it.
And something that I love to talk that
I want to talk about that you think
is, is kind of cringe level braggy is
like pain point SEO as a search term.
If you look on ClearScope or other
searchers, it has search volume.
It's like 40 monthly searches a year.
But that's insane to me because,
in my memory, Painpoint SEO was
something that like, you and I came
up with on a phone conversation a
long time ago where we were like, oh
my god, like, this is like a thing.
And we should, we should talk about this.
And so the fact that other people
are searching for it is amazing.
Um, and so we have that
the product is really good.
We get outstanding results for clients
and I will die on that hill, like
way better than other people get.
Cause we see what the previous
agencies they've worked with have done.
Then number two, do you have, um, now
it's in whatever order, but like, do
you have the, uh, a channel to get them?
Yes.
And we're going to talk about that.
We talked about that in the.
In the post, we have, we've started
off with non SEO content back in the
days of community content promotion.
You can look that up on our blog,
um, or we can maybe even link
to that in the notes and then
eventually SEO we did on ourselves.
And well, the article talks about is
us starting to do this video series
of bringing back this self case study
aspect where people follow us in
addition to continue to doing SEO.
So we have a product number one,
number two, we have channels in
which to get those customers.
And number three, we have the team
and operations to execute on it.
And that has also been
a massive bottleneck.
I don't know how much we're going
to get into it in this video, but we
will definitely have multiple other
episodes and videos where we talk
about our challenges on the team.
We'll get into a little bit here.
So that takes a lot of time to
get, like you have like this essay.
We're number one, going
back to number one product.
In my opinion, we're very much,
not just a run of the mill SEO
agency that everyone else is.
We're going to start with an SEO
technical audit and then we'll
buy links from you and blah, blah,
blah, and give you keyword research.
We like, we like do have a really
good process and now we finally have
the, and we've, we can do marketing.
So number two has always sort
of, um, come easier to us.
Although there's a reason
we're doing this series.
And then number three, we have
now the team to execute on it.
And so that's the premise of this
whole series is we thought we
want to, we, we have the pieces
in place to double or triple.
This agency and now, and then the
second big component is unlike what you
were saying at the beginning, we now
don't feel like we're doing everything.
So the idea of having a 20 client agency,
kind of where we're running at now, a
30 client, 40, 50, 60 client agency,
what used to sound like that would be a
horrible life, I never want this ever.
Is now like, Oh my God, like
it could, yeah, we can
see the path to get there.
Yeah.
And it, and it almost should.
And the other aspect on the team part,
we can talk about that is like, and
I was talking to this this morning
when we were talking about this
video is like a huge part is the team
and that has enabled all of this.
Like what I'm saying is like
now we have roles in place.
So just to kind of highlight it, and
I think we'll do other videos on this.
Our main operations is run by, for
every account is run by a content
strategist, which implements
kind of what people know of.
It's like the grow and convert process.
What keywords are we targeting?
What pieces are we doing?
All of them are writers.
So there is no like project manager role
where they're not a subject matter expert.
The content strategist can run the entire
account a hundred percent by themselves,
but they can choose to work with a writer.
So it's usually a pairing of a
content strategist with one or
two writers on a given account.
And that's kind of that dynamic.
Another thing that makes me think
we sh that's justifying this is
like it almost, it's almost not,
we can scale at this business.
So we should, but it's almost like
we should is we have built kind of
a cool work situation for our team.
And a lot of them absolutely love
it specifically to brag about it.
Fully remote.
All of us are remote.
We're Benji in San Diego and me
in San Jose and the team all over.
And then not only fully remote,
we talk about this on our
careers page, fully flexible.
And that's not just like you can
go to the gym at two o'clock.
You can, but in addition, you
can just work when you work.
Yes.
Natural overlap with like, you know,
working hours, us slack and communication.
Like that's obviously like what most of
us, almost all of us do, but not always.
Like David on our team is, lives
fully nomadic and he's often in like
Korea and a lot of it is asynchronous.
So you can just literally work
when you want, um, and, and you
can fully flexible on load as well.
You can scale up on your clients,
your income goes up, you can scale
down on your work and your income
goes down and we're okay with that.
Um, and so a lot of them are
like, I want more, like, I want
to have this be my entire income.
I want more income, whatever.
And so the team, a lot of the
team is like, wants more of this.
So it's like, well, that also
is providing pressure to scale.
So all of those things are in place.
I'll
stop here for a second.
Yeah.
Well, I think it's important
then to, to discuss.
So I'm going to talk a little
bit about why we're even sharing
a lot of these details publicly.
So putting out a public goal for
those that haven't been following
us since the very beginning.
This was something that we did in
the very beginning of the site to
just start growing the site and
to build trust with our audience.
Because we were an unknown entity
in the content marketing space.
And we started talking about
content marketing strategy.
And we wanted to show that we knew
what we were doing by growing our
own site and holding ourselves
accountable to certain metrics publicly.
And so.
This is kind of taking us back to our
roots and sharing our growth goals
of us doubling or tripling our agency
over the next two to three years and
talking through the challenges that
we're currently facing in our business,
um, the successes, like everything
that goes along with it, because
there's a lot of other businesses that
I feel like are in the same stage.
They've, they've built a solid
foundation in their business.
And now they're looking at that next
stage of growth, trying to think, how
are we going to get there both from
a team perspective, from a marketing
perspective, there's just so many aspects.
And, and we felt like there's a
lot of people sharing like their
journey of starting the business
from scratch, going from zero to one.
But then there's not a lot of people
sharing how to scale a business
operationally from a channel perspective.
And so we thought that we could
start sharing this and just
have that open conversation.
Now people ask questions and be involved.
And for us personally, I know looking back
on the content that we produced as, as a
company, that was some of the most fun.
Times in the business was that
that beginning when we were
sharing all this publicly.
We're trying new things We're
getting feedback from people
people would send us emails.
And so yeah, we kind of just want to
do this all over again But instead
of doing it in a written format we
kind of wanted to test video just so
that we we could kind of share the
conversations that we were having behind
the scenes Uh, we could connect with
people face to face instead of just
only through, uh, written articles.
And so, yeah, this is just
gonna kind of be a test over
the next Two to three years.
The goal is to share a video a week.
Not all of them will be long.
Some of them will just be short and be
on a singular topic and others will just
be kind of conversations that Davis and
I have often pontificating on stuff that
don't normally get shared because we think
that this would be really interesting
to other people who run businesses
or who other people, other people
who are just thinking about growing.
Okay.
So let me ask you a question
I've asked you before.
Not when we're recording
that's already pissed you off.
So I'm going to piss you
off on the recording.
So if we say, okay, you guys think the
business has the foundation to scale.
Why not scale?
You can do it without breaking your backs.
The team even wants it.
Um, and so you're in a position to do it.
Why this like self case study thing
you, you got here without this.
I mean, other than the very
beginning, you're an SEO agency.
You guys talk about pain point SEO.
Why not just do pain point SEO?
If you're.
Marketing and SEO theories are so good,
then why aren't, why do you do this?
Why are you doing this YouTube slash
podcast and the self case study?
Yeah, I mean, I think
it's a couple of reasons.
So one, we're going to continue
focusing on our own pain point SEO.
So just so everyone knows that
only started what November
of, what year are we in?
2024.
So November, 2022 was when we really
started investing in our own SEO.
So we have the fact that
you even know that, like, how do
you know something that specific?
If someone asked me that question,
I'd be like, I have no idea.
Like we've been doing it for a little
bit, but, but we need to be very specific.
When Benji says this, a lot of you
may be thinking, what do you mean?
November, 2022 that hasn't been growing
convert been doing content forever.
Yes, but it is actually,
and we can explain this.
It's actually not been SEO content
for the bulk of growing convert.
What we do for clients, the majority
of which have product businesses.
Most prominently sass, but
absolutely not all, um, is SEO based.
But for us, what we have done
historically was written blog posts
that are, what would you call it?
I don't know, like more like shareable,
opinion y stuff that we've shared in
our communities that have had some level
of like organic sharing type growth.
Or,
or we, we did do pieces that
were targeted at keywords.
I think, I think the main difference
was that all of the articles up until
November, 2022, well, not all, but I
would say like 90 percent were written by.
You or I, or you or me.
And so 99 percent in November was we
had someone on our team just use our
own process for our own articles.
So interview us, have a cadence
that we were actually trying to
hit two to three articles a month
that were published on our site.
So we just, we needed to build that
consistency and we needed to get it off
our plate because we got to the point
where we just didn't have time to.
Right.
Articles anymore.
And so it wasn't getting done.
And so how having it offloaded
to someone on our team.
So we've been publishing two to three
articles every single month since then.
And we've started to really see
our SEO traffic grow, the keywords
that we're ranking for grow.
Uh, and it's been a
slow, but good process.
Now we're starting to get
good leads coming from it.
But I think if we're starting to think
about doubling or tripling our business.
From here, yes, we'll continue
investing in that channel, but because
that has taken so long to kind of
build that up, we are thinking, what
would be a fun way to grow a bigger
audience beyond just through SEO and.
We felt like being transparent and
sharing these things would attract
businesses that are very similar to us.
So a lot of our own clients
are kind of the same stage
that we're at in our business.
Maybe they've grown through one channel.
Oftentimes it's paid ads or they've
tried content marketing before, but
haven't gotten it successfully to work.
And then now they're looking
up to layer on a new channel.
And I think It's not to say that
we necessarily need to do this, but
I think it's a smart thing as we
look to the future of our business,
having multiple channels to grow.
And so we'll continue to invest
in SEO and our own content.
We also do ads to promote our content,
but now we want to see if we can grow
a YouTube channel on top of that.
Uh, just to have a second channel
that we can lean on for, for leads.
And I think it serves a
slightly different purpose.
And like, when we were talking about
what, what we could potentially do
as another channel, we didn't want
to just do top of funnel content for
our blog, go after like the terms
content marketing and things like that.
We were thinking, how
do we, how do we grow?
A top of funnel audience.
So people that are not necessarily
directly interested in our service
right now, but could be in the
future that were more engaged.
And that was something that we
actually wanted to do as a business.
And we thought we were
uniquely positioned to do.
And again, reflecting on our business,
we felt like this was something that
we would actually be passionate about.
And consistent with, because that's been
a challenge with both of us as well as
testing new things and getting over it
really quickly for those who've followed
us, we've gone through multiple iterations
of different things that we've tried.
So we've tried like YouTube SEO and we
just weren't enjoying those videos a lot.
And then we did like these
really long form videos.
And again, just from a topic
perspective, we didn't really feel like.
We were super into it and we just
kind of got over it after a while.
But we felt like we have these
conversations very consistently
anyways, just about the growth of our
business, where we're at challenges.
And so we just thought, why not
record these conversations and
share them publicly, and hopefully
they can help other people.
That all, all good answers.
I agree with, let me add some
more perspective on, on why.
This, Oh, you guys are
pain point SEO people.
Why not just do pain
point SEO to keep growing?
Um, a few more things.
Number one, because we can do.
And so, like you said, like Benji said,
we were the ones writing all of it.
Now we have cam an amazing member of our
team doing the majority historically of
the pain point SEO work and actually.
A lot of other strategists have
been joining in and adding to that.
So we have the team working on ranking
for these kind of like, you know, keywords
or whatever, bottom of the funnel.
There's a whole, probably a separate
conversation of how the pain
point SEO process gets slightly
modified for service businesses.
And that I think you need to do more
jobs to be done, but let me not go there.
So we just can do more.
So like, why not?
Because you and I can do
other things and add to it.
That's number one.
Number two.
Actually, this is going to go
into the service agency thing.
There's actually a difference in lead
quality, in my opinion, from someone
who just kind of Googled you and they
reached out because they resonated.
That's still good.
That's still good.
They Google some mid funnel,
like how to do SaaS content
strategy or something we rank for.
And they say, wow, I really resonated
with the things you guys said.
It's a different approach and
I want to have a conversation.
That is great.
That's how pain point SEO should
work for a service business.
But that's not as good as the leads we
get that have said, I have been following
you guys for four years, for five years.
And now I'm finally at a company or in
a state or whatever to hire you guys.
That lead, think about
that lead conversation.
Do you know how many businesses
would love to get those leads?
We get them.
Yeah, that's
actually a good point that I forgot about.
That was something that we, when we
discussed doing this, that was one
of the reasons when, when we, When we
thought back to the very beginning of our
business, when we, when we were sharing
these articles, a lot of our leads came
from the people who were reading those
updates and they said, Oh, you guys
share more detail than anyone else.
We, we just feel like we
know and trust you better.
And so again, doing this kind of series,
I think helps build that relationship
and rapport with our audience.
And what you and I talked about
when we decided what to do.
So Benji and I had a
conversation where we were like.
We want to scale faster.
Sure.
PaintPoint SEO is going
to continue to scale us.
Like we're getting leads, but
we want to go even faster.
What can we do?
And cause you and I personally
have the time to do something.
And we talked about all
kinds of different things.
Um, and we said, well,
like we need something.
That's not just the super
bottom of the funnel.
The person who's looking at an
agency today doesn't know us.
Then we're almost a commodity,
you Google something.
So the pure application of extreme
bottom of the funnel to our business
is like ranking for best content
agencies, blah, blah, blah, blah.
We can talk about our efforts
to do that separately.
If you do that, if you rank, you
are a commodity to that person who's
reached out because there's a bunch
of other content agencies on page
one and on the different list posts.
And I know this because I've done
this for the, my AB testing agency,
growth rock e commerce CRO agency.
I think growth rock is
number one or number two.
But they reach out, they've
reached out to five other agencies.
So they're just like, what's your price?
How does it work?
Different conversation that someone
said, I've been following you for years.
And like, that's when they've been
following you for years, you're
the only one they're talking to.
There is no competition.
They're just like, I've been waiting
to work with grow and convert.
And so we said, we want to do
something more top of the funnel.
And like Benji said, it's like.
Well, we're sure as hell not doing top of
the funnel that's like ranking for content
marketing Like it's just that's just
like to beginner level and then it was
and it's super competitive in the
marketing space I don't want to
compete against all all the other
companies that are doing that who
have Massive budgets to do that.
We wanted it We wanted to do
something that was different and
that that plays into what we're
good at and what differentiates us.
Yeah And that what we enjoy like we like
talking about this We like making these
videos and we love that beginning of grow
and convert where we created this six
month challenge And everyone was like
like supporting us and rooting us on so
then this is gonna be now Everyone's talks
about how to, a lot of people have these
self case studies from zero to something.
And so now we're saying we are
already a million dollar agency
from a revenue perspective.
We have reached 1 million ARR years ago.
We've done that for a while.
And probably what we need to get
to that we were planning on talking
about at the beginning, but we haven't
gotten to is 2023 was this crazy up
and down year and that'll be probably
what we close this conversation with.
Okay.
Um, and we're now talking
about what does it take?
Let's do a case study to let
people follow when a business
has a foundation that we have.
Well, I talked about the beginning
product people and process.
Did we just steal that from our
wonderful client innovation cast?
I think I might have, but you know,
we have a product, we have a channel.
I said marketing channel to get
them and operations to do it.
Um, and you have some basis of clients,
you making a million dollars or whatever.
And then you want to double, triple
the, um, the client count in our case.
What, uh, what does that take?
And we were like, yeah, let's just do
that self case study again, because one,
there's not a lot of people at this stage,
a million dollar plus business scaling.
And there's, um, and we really enjoy it.
And we think that can be a nice
compliment to our traditional pain point
SEO that we're going to keep going.
So that's that topic of
why we're doing this.
Today's sort of deep dive then.
So our normal cadence of these videos,
we're not going to do all this preamble.
This is this first kind of announcement.
And again, read the post.
If you haven't, that kind of
summarizes it much more articulately
than Benji and I ranting like this.
But, um, the normal cadence
is these videos slash podcasts
are going to deep dive into a
particular challenge we're having.
So let me preview some that we've
already kind of brainstormed.
Um, Today, we're going to deep
dive for the rest of the time
we have into the craziness.
That was 2023 for us.
We lost a ton of clients.
We lost 40 percent of revenue.
We're going to walk through them and
go client by client of why, you know,
why did we lose them and what happened?
Um, and then how did we get them back?
And then after that, we have
topics we want to talk about,
about like hiring and operations.
That's been huge.
It's hard for us to find writers because
we are so what's the word fastidious
about the writer quality we want.
And it has been a massive challenge.
We have turned away clients many
times in our history because we
didn't have the team to execute on it.
It sucks, but it has happened.
We're going to talk about
what else we can talk about.
We're going to talk about some
sort of anxieties in the industry.
How long is SEO going to be a thing?
You know, what is chat GPT and
generative AI going to do to writing?
Are people going to still want to pay a
premium for agencies like us to do it?
And that kind of dynamic and
there's probably like a different, yeah,
I mean, different marketing channels
that we're testing, client issues, like
people issues, just operational structure.
I mean, there, there's so many
aspects to, to grow in the business,
providing a good work situation for
our team and what we've done there,
what we want to continue to do there.
So today's thing is 2023.
Like I said, 2023 was crazy.
We had our highest revenue ever.
And I don't know if we want to talk about
this now, Benji, but in this case study.
What we decided is we want
to be transparent, we want to
be specific and quantitative.
So not just talk about these business
things in this like real kind
of airy fairy way, but like talk
about client count numbers, right?
Right now in the
spreadsheet, I'm hoping you
have kept it updated.
I think it's seven.
I think it's 17.
I see
17.
We're at 17 clients.
Now we'll talk about the nuances of
the, that can mean different things.
It accounts some small clients.
We now have paid search as
well, but whatever, 17 clients.
Um, we have decided we're going to
use client count as the like public
metric for this and not what a lot
of people do, which is like revenue.
We're trying to grow to X million.
We've just kind of had this philosophical
view since we started the business that we
don't want to brag about how much money.
The business makes or how much money
we make personally, I feel like there's
so many people that do that online
and we just didn't want to be that.
And I think the focus on the client
count and the business growth.
I, I think it's probably just a better
metric for everyone to focus on.
Uh, it's, it's not about bragging about
we're some 10 million dollar agency.
Like, there's so many case
studies that go into that.
And it's just not our personalities.
Yeah, I think that's a very
articulate way to put it.
So, um.
2023, it feels like 10 years
went by, but let's give everyone
the perspective of numbers.
So, so as Benji was saying, the client
count allows us to have this be a
concrete conversation, a quantitative
conversation, which is very Yeah,
and it's not to say we'll not talk
about numbers like, like we can
talk about the cost of our service.
All that, all that stuff
is public on our website.
So we don't, we're not going
to shy away from numbers.
I just don't think it's, it's worth
tracking monthly revenue or ARR or any of
those metrics that we track internally.
Um, but we're happy to share those kinds
of metrics, like how much our clients
costs and that some clients pay us more
because we do more work for them or do
more articles or do more link building.
So I think we will go into that
on, on some of the calls, but I
just wanted to preface that just to
brag about this self case study,
what we're about to do, and
we're going to be doing through
2024 and I hopefully long after.
Where else are you finding
a business at our size?
publicly stating how many clients
they have and publicly talking
about the ups and downs of it.
If you know of one, please send it
to me because that would be great.
So sure.
There are some, we just don't follow.
Sure.
Yeah, there
probably are some, I have not seen this.
So that's why I'm excited about this.
January, 2023, we had
18 clients, May, 2023.
God, that's just, what is that?
That's just six, seven months ago.
And it feels like an eternity ago, 19
clients, but that was where January
and May were basically tied for the
highest revenue.
Yeah.
Okay.
Then this is crazy from May to June, we
went from 19 to 14 clients and stayed
at 14 clients in June, July, August, and
September for four months and reached.
A low of revenue in August that is
let me just do the math on my side
Yep Oh, maybe not 40 percent, but i'm
seeing that that was 66 percent of peak
revenue So it's you know losing 30 36.
Yeah, you guys might I feel like if
you're listening you're like guys
Like you went from 18 to 14 clients.
You lost four clients like big deal
Maybe that's worth talking about, Benji.
Like it felt like a really big deal.
Like I felt like I was really,
well, to put things in a context,
we, we didn't have this low of
revenue as a business since.
December, 2020.
Yeah.
That's where I know, November, 2020.
So imagine in a period of what, three
or four months, you go from the highest
revenue you've ever had as an agency to
back to where you were three years ago.
Like it, it, it was scary.
It makes you question things.
It makes you question yourself.
You're like, what are we doing?
Like we supposedly know
how to do marketing.
We supposedly know how to do this.
Like, what are we doing?
Um, and, and so just to update, well,
so let's go through that period.
And what I want to do, I think, I
think it's important to talk about
the reason why that happened and
just also the mindset during that
time, because I remember there were
a lot of conversations that were
like, are we doing something wrong?
Do we need to do something
different on marketing?
And, and I mean, to cut to the chase,
I think we, we stayed the course.
For, for most of it, there was, there was
a positioning issue in the very beginning
of the year, but that was resolved even
before that peak revenue and may happen.
Was it?
So what Benji's talking about is
somewhere around January, 2023, again,
you, it was, it was before
that we, we, we launched.
So we, we changed our positioning, I
believe in November, 2022, November,
December, 2022, to focus more on SEO.
So we had historically.
Positioned ourselves as a
content marketing agency.
And just really quickly, the reason why
we, we actually have a whole video on
this, that you can watch on our channel
and an article, I will explain it
because I'll take the blame for it.
I think it was my idea.
I remember exactly when I thought
it, I remember the client.
It was a client we had for a while.
It's going to be one of the clients
that, that churned that we'll go over.
And she said on a call, like
something, something, our SEO agency.
And I was like.
What
they were also paying like
10 to you on top of us.
And I was like, she's retaining a
second, like an SEO agency, that's 000.
And I remember talking to you and
being like, Benji, like, I think
what's happening is they're just
creating this mental bucket in their
head of SEO agency and they need
to fill that budget with an agency.
Then these clients have a separate
thing where we're a content
agency and it's just separate.
And I'm like.
What is your SEO agency doing?
And she, she explained it.
She sent over stuff and we
were like, are you kidding?
Like we can do this.
So I said, there's this budget that
people have earmarked for SEO agency.
We are effectively doing that, but
we're positioned as content agency.
So we're leaving that budget on the table.
Why don't we position ourselves as an SEO
agency and we could get all that business.
That was my idea.
You can read the article
and watch that video.
We'll link to it, but basically, and a lot
of this, we don't know what's causal here.
We changed multiple variables
changed at the same time.
There were a lot of
economic things in 2023.
That's when everyone
started pulling budget.
We feel like anecdotally that what
happened was, and some people to be
give credit when we talked about this
on LinkedIn and all, they left comments
saying this or in our email list,
someone, people have said this SEO
agency, which just became a commodity.
That people don't think of SEO agencies in
a good way, and we don't have a strength.
We don't have a history in
that positioning or also.
Yeah, exactly.
So we felt like we lost our
differentiation from a content perspective
because people just felt like we,
Oh, now you just produce SEO content.
Like it's not, it's not good anymore.
It's not, there's no
thought leadership in it.
There's no unique opinions.
You're just another agency that
produces bad content essentially.
And so we changed, when did we change
that?
March of 2023.
Oh,
wow.
So the dip, wow, I didn't
think that good thing.
Your memory actually is good.
So the dip happened
even after that, right?
So it's between May 19 clients and
then June, July through September.
14.
Um, well, what I think what
precipitated that was that our lead
volume was really, really strong
in the back half of 2022 into 2023.
So I think until like January or
February had tons of leads coming
in, we're closing a lot of business
and then it just kind of stopped.
In, in February, it was just really
dried up and that's when we started
having the conversation about do we
change positioning and then I, and I
think then the, the lead volume was
compounded by, that was the time where
the stock market started going down a lot.
You started seeing a lot of BC companies
saying they can raise funding anymore.
Then you started seeing the tech layoffs.
And so all these kinds of
things happen at the same time.
So.
So positioning issue, then leaves started
drying up because people didn't have
budgets to spend their like marketing
teams were losing headcount, then their
marketing budgets were getting dried
up, like people are firing agencies.
And so then we went through a period last
year where I think there was like five
or six months where there was very, very
few leads and the leads that came through
weren't even ready to spend money yet
just because they didn't have the budget.
And then on top of that, then.
We had churn issues without
being able to replace them.
So historically, like every agency
has churn, uh, we have churn too.
It's, it's not massive, but usually
we're able to replace a client
within the same month or within
the next month after we lose them.
And because we lost, I think
there are probably five or six
clients that we lost last year.
And then there was a period of
time where we had no new leads.
It just, it got really bad.
And that's kind of where we
started questioning everything.
So what we had planned to do that I want
to do now is like, let's go through the
clients that churned right around May.
So Benji and I are looking at our
own spreadsheet, which obviously
we can't share, it has all of our
numbers and we're not gonna, we
obviously can't share the client names.
That would be really a
bad thing of privacy.
But, um, so the first client.
So these are clients that churned
somewhere around that like spring of 2023.
So we can just talk about it because
I think we had this narrative of like,
Oh, the economy, we're losing clients.
But I think what my guess is,
and I haven't actually done
this until this very moment,
that our business was for sure
lagged because I remember having
these conversations with clients.
What do you mean lagged?
I think people felt the effects
of the economy way before we did,
because we were hearing talk of.
agencies losing clients and
doing massive layoffs in like
February or March of last year.
And we were still growing up until May.
And so we didn't really feel the
effects of all those economic
issues until probably June.
And it's not to say we
didn't feel the effects.
Definitely lead volume slowed,
but in terms of client churn, we
didn't really have that until later.
So let's go through all these clients
that churn and just kind of get a feel.
If we actually go one by one, how many
of it was like an economic economy thing
versus something else and just kind of
see quantitatively what's happening.
Number one client I'm seeing the
last payments were in May of 2023
and then they churned was a, um,
what, like a local construction based
physical product company we can say.
And I don't know how you
want to characterize this.
This was a crazy one.
We got hired.
by a two person marketing team, a
CMO and like a manager, um, in April.
And then we, one day in June when things
were going well, we just heard the
CMO has been laid off with no notice.
and they have to lay off all
of their vendors because their
business was hurting a lot.
It's in this kind of
construction kind of zone.
I think this is definitely in
the economy hurt that business.
So they couldn't pay vendors.
So they had to like, let us
go.
Yeah, that, that, that one was for
sure an economy thing, but we gotta,
we gotta start a lot lower than that.
I'm looking at row 31.
So most of the client churn, By
the way, it happened with clients
that were with us for a few months.
Like we're just starting beginning
of engagements with them.
And there are things that happen.
So this one was a, an agency that focused
on, uh, development for e commerce sites.
Man, this one's complicated
in terms of why they churned.
I think there was differences in
opinion on how to grow marketing.
I think there was certain people
bought into content inside of
the company and others not.
I personally, I think
that's why they left.
I don't know.
I mean,
to be totally transparent,
and you can disagree with me.
I think this you could bucket
also a little bit in the
results thing, and that's
sure.
It's definitely a competitive space,
and it would would have taken probably
another year to start really seeing
rankings come in because you're going
after keywords like Magento development.
And this site was done content
before, or if they have, they were
doing AI or something else, but
they didn't have a strong domain.
And so it was extremely competitive.
And I think, yeah, they just didn't
have the patience to wait it out.
Was
it, so you're saying it wasn't that
we had rankings, but whatever their
messaging was, wasn't leading to leads.
It was like, just rankings
took a long time to happen.
Yeah, we
were just still at the point
of just starting to generate.
Okay,
so I'm gonna take notes
on the side so that
everyone I think we were what like six
months in or seven months in So for
certain businesses, especially like
an agency who if he doesn't really
have a strong domain It takes time to
start getting results like that So like
what I would bucket this into
like kind of like natural churn
you take on some clients It's a
competitive industry rankings.
Take a while.
They want to try something else
Yeah, okay, go to the next one.
I'm just gonna log this and we'll
summarize it for everyone listening.
Next one, man.
We just started with them.
I think they had another internal hire
that was focused on content and We got
cut and I do remember our, our fee was
a large percentage of their revenue And
so I don't know if I would have hired
us at the stage that they were at.
They were still What were you at?
20 Okay, I want to say that they
were sub two million and spending
ten 10, 000 a month on us.
So it's a decent portion of their revenue
I would say most of the businesses that we
work with are typically over five million
in revenue Usually a lot larger than that.
So our fee is is a very small portion
of their total revenue So again, I
think gets into it and yeah realize
that they can't spend that much So
this is definitely not an economy thing.
This is maybe Like, we took a gamble
on a not great client fit in that
they were a little bit too small.
We do that sometimes.
Like, we, we have, we have those criteria.
They need to be big enough.
But sometimes if we like talk to
them, we really like them, they,
they're patient, we take it.
And we have one client
that's been with us forever.
An account that you're um,
kind of on or, or supervised.
And they were a gamble and
they've lasted for years.
So we took a gamble on this
one and it didn't work,
right?
28, that was an issue where we had an
internal champion that I think got let go.
And then a new CMO came in, didn't
see the value of what we were doing
and just kind of immediately cut us.
That
I definitely characterize
as natural agency churn.
That's just It happens in agencies.
You have a champion that loves
your philosophy, wants to do
your thing, especially for us.
The whole thing we were talking
about earlier, we have someone
who's like, I've been following grow
and convert forever or whatever.
And I really believe in it.
They leave for whatever reason and
whoever's remaining or the new regime
is like, no, I want to do things my way.
It just happens.
So.
That has nothing to do with
the economy or whatever.
This one was a large company
and in hindsight, I don't know
if we should have taken them.
Just like internally, it was
so hard to get anything done.
It was hard to get, we
would try to publish pieces.
It would take like a month
or two to get them reviewed.
Then I had to go through legal.
It was just like such an uphill battle.
And so we had a limited contract
with them to begin with.
I think we did like a
six month engagement.
And then I think we had maybe half
the articles published at that.
And then they wanted to
see results come from it.
It wasn't our fault.
We had all the articles done.
They just, it just sat in there
like a million different departments
need to like review and stamp
this because that's how ginormous
companies work.
Yeah.
So, but I, but I think in terms of.
Getting to a successful engagement,
it's important that we stay on rhythm
in terms of publishing schedule.
And when articles get delayed two
or three months from publishing,
then it takes another couple
months to start getting results.
It's just from a time
perspective to get results.
It doesn't really make sense.
And so I think that was,
that was a large issue there.
Next
one up from that was just.
Results took a while.
They actually had done
SEO in a really good way.
They were kind of did a lot of
growing converting things before us.
They wanted to work with us.
They didn't follow us
for a while, I think.
And, um, you know, we worked for
six plus months and it was also
in a really competitive space,
seven months.
I mean, we, we got rankings there, but I
think this, from what I remember, the CEO
really wanted to start seeing good leads
coming in and we only had like one or two.
That had come in at that point and so
it was just gonna take a while to prove
out that the channel and they just
Didn't have the patience at that point.
So if
I just summarize are
there many more left, but
like yeah, there's a few I think there's
two more we should get to or three
more that we should get to This one
we fired the client after one month.
It was just not a good fit said something
to one of our Team members that we didn't
think was appropriate in month one.
And that was it.
We tend to fire clients.
We just don't think are good
fits because as an agency,
you're, this wasn't not a good
fit from like a traditional standpoint.
Yeah, there was a great business fit.
Was a great fit, but it was
exactly what you said is after the
first piece, they, they made some
comments that we thought were rude.
Um, and you know, kind of like
talking down to our team member and
we have zero tolerance for that.
And we said, this is rude.
You did not need to phrase it this way and
we don't want to work together anymore.
And, um, he was actually
pretty cool about it.
And, but side note, the team, like
when you do that stuff for the
team and you sacrifice revenue
for them, like people notice and,
and they really appreciate that.
So like that's, that's also
just like natural churn.
Like every once in a while,
statistically you're going to get some.
You know, a whole client
and you got to let them go.
Or if you don't, then your life
is actually probably worse.
So that has also nothing to
do with the economy or anything.
This one was interesting and that we'll
say results took a while, but we were
getting rankings for them, but there
is a conversion issue and kind of
what we realized digging into it was
historically their business had all been
built off referrals for the large part.
And so from a cold audience,
they weren't really getting.
the demo volume that we
thought was acceptable.
And so it was just kind of a mutual look.
We tested this as a channel.
It wasn't working and we're
gonna kind of part ways.
Okay,
so let's, let's, let me kind
of summarize what I've noticed.
I think I've written down eight
of them that we went through.
Not all of them churned in
that may of 2023, right?
They churned some combination of.
January to May ish of 2023.
And if you're counting like eight,
but I thought you only lost four.
You went from 19 to 14.
Yeah, because you're getting
new clients at the same time.
Um, uh, so you're getting
new clients at the same time.
Our peak client count
was actually April at 20.
So 14 is six less than them.
If we just look at them, the
first one we said the construction
business was economy, and then
it was like results took a while.
Like it was a competitive space.
Uh, a small client that didn't work, our
champion left, limited contract with a
big company to begin with, Uh, competitive
space, the client was rude and we fired
them, like, results took time or whatever.
I would classify all of the rest of these
as just like, Non economic issues, yeah.
Yeah, they're just natural churn.
They're natural agency turn.
You're an SEO agency.
You do your best, whatever.
And like, sometimes like you
take a gamble on a client.
Sometimes the client's
patience is not high enough.
Sometimes like you just say,
we're very honest upfront.
We say.
This is a competitive space.
This is going to take a lot of time.
It's a matter of your patience and
they stay for six months and it's up to
them if they want to continue or not.
There's nothing wrong.
We still feel very
confident in our process.
We think the keywords we're
choosing are the best ones.
We think the way we're ranking
is basically the best way.
So like, it's not like In any
of them, did we do a crappy job?
And, but also it's not like the economy.
And so just like side rant
on Twitter, no one does this.
Like it's always someone
else's fault on Twitter.
It's always like the economy
and all the other agencies.
So like we felt that we were like,
well, all these other agency people on
Twitter and LinkedIn are talking about
how like they're down, whatever percent.
Or, or like their, their agencies are
like fired 70 people last year and,
and said it was like economic issues.
And so, yeah, I think we described
some of the, the, maybe the lead
volume issues to the economy for sure.
Exactly.
So this is the churn was natural for us.
So we didn't actually see in
2023, a bunch of people, some.
Again, that first one in this batch
was like, you know, like we're
literally, we're firing the CMO,
not just you guys and all vendors.
Cause we're like, we are losing business.
We're losing money.
That's fine.
Um, the rest, it was like natural churn
for various reasons, but where we did
see the economic effect, we think,
and this is where things get muddy.
So remember, it's hard to prove it.
Yeah.
We also have the SEO positioning
that didn't work back to the
content marketing position that did.
Is we didn't see the normal
amount of new client acquisition
that would make up for that.
All agencies lose clients
at a certain clip.
You try to keep it low, blah, blah, blah.
But you need to then gain at
a faster clip to keep growing.
And we didn't see that.
It was just like leads were lower.
Other agencies reported that as well.
And when we had good leads and
the conversations went super well,
we thought like in any normal
situation this was gonna close.
It would just like stalled
and stalled and stalled.
And like, I think people
were just shyer or whatever.
They had prescriptions
from the board or whatever.
It's just like slow spend.
They couldn't get budget approval.
They were just not as easy to like
pull the trigger on the budget
approval.
Well, and we'll say it's economy
is because we saw dips in our
clients results until about.
August.
And I do remember like demos were
down, leads were down and we saw
the trend across all of our clients.
I think starting in March or may of
last year, and then in August, right.
When we started seeing lead volume picked
up all that kind of stuff resolved itself.
And then we, we saw clients go to
new highs and a lot of the accounts.
And so that's kind of why we
do think that there's some.
correlation between the economy and
our own lead volume is because we
did see those trends across all of
our clients and our own business.
And then it all picked up
at the same time in August.
And then we had a really strong back
half of the year where I think we ended
up maybe three clients lower than where
we started or two clients lower than
where we started and probably down
what 10, 10, 20 percent revenue still.
Yeah.
I mean, if the max client count
that I'm seeing here is April 2023
at 20 We are now at 17, so we,
we made up a good chunk of that.
And again, because client count and
revenue is not a perfect correlation,
some clients, they sign up for
bigger amounts or what have you.
Um, our, just to complete the story
for everyone, the current revenue
is Well, I would do it off
December instead of now,
cause now I'll be even higher.
But where we ended the year, it
was still down a decent amount.
Yeah, we ended the year at 80
percent of our peak revenue.
So if the low was 66 percent of our
peak, we're still 20 percent under
peak revenue at the end of the year.
And then we closed a little bit more.
So this today, January we're at 90%.
So we're within 10 percent of
peak and, you know, knock on wood.
Hopefully the podcast doesn't
jinx this, but we should have a
couple more closing soon, so we
should be able to be back at peak.
So the mood is very different.
My mood is very different.
Um, well, I, I think one other interesting
thing to talk about just, I know, I know
we've gone way longer than we thought.
We said this was going to be 30 minutes
and of course it's an hour, but.
I think hopefully people will find
it interesting, but during that time
period, there are a lot of conversations
that May, June, July, where lead
volume was flat, like, is there
something wrong with our marketing?
Is there something wrong
with our positioning again?
Or do we stay the course?
And, and I kind of remember you
questioning a lot of the marketing
channels and, and I was just like,
I feel like every, if historically
our business has been good.
And there are these economic
issues going on right now.
Why would we switch everything up?
Like, why not just stay the course?
We kept, we, we doubled
down on marketing spend.
Last year we probably spent
more money on marketing.
Actually, I know we spent more money.
We probably spent double or
triple the amount on marketing
that we've ever spent before.
Link building, our own content, ads.
We kind of just doubled down on spend.
Thinking that most people pull back spend.
When there's economic issues and
we should just keep spending and
hopefully it'll resolve itself.
And that did happen.
So I would say again, August, August
and September, I think we're to
our highest months ever for leads
coming in that were really good.
Uh, and then we closed a bunch of leads
through the back half of the year.
And, and I think it's
just an important lesson.
I think when the economy is bad, if we had
stopped doing our own SEO or stopped doing
ads or just tried completely pivoting
our marketing and doing something else.
I don't know that we would have
ended the year maybe 20 percent down.
I think it probably would
have slowed us down even more.
Um, but I think it was
important to stay the course.
And I think now that we're coming
into this new year, we want to
layer new things on top of that.
So we did test a couple of
different marketing channels last
year, like Clutch, for example.
We need an entire video about
what a disaster Clutch was.
That, that kind of stuff and just
different ads and like YouTube ads.
I think we tested for a little bit.
We tested LinkedIn.
We tested some new stuff, but it wasn't.
In replacement of what
we were already doing.
It was, let's keep investing or doubling
down on what's working and let's test
some new things to see if there's
anything that would, that could win.
And I think this whole series is another
test of that, except I think we're more
committed to this because it requires
a lot more time investment, uh, to
build up a channel like this, but yeah,
that's kind of where we're at right now.
Looking into the new year, I think we
have to think about ways to do things
differently from a hiring perspective.
So that's something that
changed late last year.
Davis got way more involved
on the writer training side.
And so we've had someone kind of
being the, the front facing person,
uh, vetting the writers that come in.
And then we historically have had a gap of
then how do we train them into the role?
And so Davis stepped back into that.
And I think that was something that has.
Been working really well towards the last
two or three months and has given us a
lot more capacity on the operational side.
That should really help our growth going
into the next year, because I think if
we're going to grow, we need to both
figure out how to grow new client demand.
And we also need to figure out
how to grow the supply side.
So the people that are going
to do the work, both the
writers and the strategists.
And historically we've been super
constrained on the operational side.
We've always had more leads than we
had people for, and so now we're just.
Thinking about both sides of our
business as a funnel and trying to get
better towards growing each of those
funnels, uh, at the same time, instead
of historically having a lot more demand
than we can handle because otherwise,
I don't think we're going to be able to
double or triple our business because.
The amount of time it takes
for us to train and hire people
is like, I would say it's like
three, yeah, three to six months.
And so we got to be very good and
keep that funnel always open on the
hiring side so that we can fulfill
demand like when it comes in.
So if this works and if our SEO
works and it really takes off and
again, we don't have the people
that to solve this problem.
Like we can't grow the business.
And so I think these are some of the
conversations that we want to have
on future videos, going into the
details of how we think about the
hiring funnel, like what, what has
worked, what hasn't worked, how we're
thinking about growth from here on out.
I
think lessons, lessons just before we
wrap of, of what we just went over of
our 2023, I think you had a good one.
Let me see if I'm putting words
in your mouth or I'm summarizing.
You're basically saying one lesson is
like when things are going badly, resist.
Tell me if you agree with
this, resist the urge.
To throw out the baby with the bathwater,
which is, which means in this case,
like resist the urge to just like
ditch the stuff that got you there.
Cause it's like, what you're
saying is we had certain marketing
positioning, our ads, our SEO.
By the way, when people say ads, we
will have a separate video on ads.
We're talking about like,
what, a couple thousand bucks
max, like mostly on Twitter.
Like we're not doing mass
amount of advertising.
So most of it is Google and then
just historical word of mouth
from all of our previous content
we've done.
Yeah, people often think it's a channel
problem and they'll say, Oh, this
channel just doesn't work anymore.
I'm going to stop investing in it.
And they'll like cut spend to it.
And it's like, no, it might just
be a period for some reason that.
That it stops working as well.
It doesn't mean you stop fully investing
in it, especially if it's a proven
channel that's already worked for you
before.
So that was your lesson.
And what I wanted to get across from going
client by client is another lesson is
like, get into the details and quantify
assumptions you are quick to make.
It was so easy in 2023.
By the way, we didn't talk about, and I
don't want to get into it at this point.
We're an hour in, uh, like there
was this whole thing, March, 2023 or
spring 23 is when chat UBT came out.
So everyone was like, do you
guys even still have a business?
Can't we just write these
articles in chat GPT?
So there was this whole like, oh my god,
and you know, and then like should you
become an AI agency?
Right.
Yeah, like we're sure yeah people
writing these articles like our
agency is embracing AI and we're
gonna help you write the prompts We
were like no like we're just gonna
write really good articles and now
Chat GPT is almost used as a way.
It's like a joke now.
It's used.
I should be careful There could
still be a we have a we can
have we have a separate video.
We can write more videos We can record
more videos on this but like as of
today when I'm recording it is used as
a way to talk about like Bad writing.
Anyway, what I was gonna say is get
into the details if you don't go
into like one by one Why did they
leave what we haven't done this here?
We could go one by one.
Why didn't these leads close and verify
your assumptions so easy to be like
the economy, the economy, the economy.
Actually, our churn was natural
one out of the eight or nine.
We just reviewed on this call on this
recording was actually do the economy.
So it was like, oh, the
leads are not closing.
So the one thing we did do differently.
If he remembers, we implemented our
normal rate on our thing is 10 K.
It's public on our website.
We implemented the thing saying, why
don't you, if, if someone's signs a
year contract and sticks with us for
a year, we'll do eight K a month.
And we take that pretty
big 20 percent hit there.
On revenue, which
basically flows to bottom
line.
Well, yeah, I think it's also important
to talk about why we did that.
We just noticed, I think our average
client engagement was 13 months
at that point in time and, and
the people who had stayed with us.
for a year typically have gone
on to stay for multiple years.
And so again, I think I think a
lot of client, like, first of all,
we do month to month contracts.
And so I think a lot of people
churn in that six to seven month
range and don't have the patience
to make it to, to the full year.
And we thought if we can incentivize
people to make it for the full
year, there are a lot more likely to
stay with us on for multiple years.
And so it's, it's good
for us to take a 20%.
Hit in the first year, get that full
year of revenue and the likelihood
of them staying with us for a period
of years longer is much higher.
Yeah.
It's
a bet.
We don't know yet.
We just implemented that towards
the second half of 2023, and we've
had a few clients already accepted.
Yep.
Um, and they want to do that anyway.
So like some of that is
there, but yeah, be careful.
Like.
Quantify things, validate your
knee jerk reaction assumptions.
Don't ditch the stuff
that's got you there.
And yeah, hopefully you
guys find this interesting.
We're gonna get into a bunch of details
and record these videos of the things
we're thinking about or trying to grow
this business that's already established
to kind of a double and triple state.
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