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Nick Bennett and Erica Schneider of Duo Consulting explain the microagency model: one offer, a lean pod of senior people working across accounts, around 60% margin, and a revenue ceiling the owner picks on purpose.
Agency Forward explores the future of agencies as tech and AI drive down the cost of tactical deliverables. Topics include building competent teams, developing strategic offers, systemizing your business, and more.
New episodes delivered every Tuesday.
Chris DuBois 00:01
It's easier than ever to start an agency, but it's only getting harder to stand out and keep it alive. Join me as we explore the strategies agencies are using today to secure a better tomorrow. This is Agency Forward. Nick, welcome back to the show, Erica. I'm going to assume just longtime listener, first time caller, but you don't need to admit to anything there. Listen to every
Nick Bennett 00:30
episode.
Chris DuBois 00:31
I did want I want to talk to you guys about micro agencies, and so where do you want to start with this? That's the longest pause we've ever had. Yeah, where should we
Nick Bennett 00:45
start? Where should we start? Why micro agency?
Chris DuBois 00:48
There we go.
Nick Bennett 00:49
I think we should start why.
Chris DuBois 00:52
Feel free to. They are the
Erica Schneider 00:53
best way to scale your revenue, keep your margin, and not dilute your value,
Nick Bennett 01:01
and not hit your life,
Erica Schneider 01:02
and not hit your life.
Chris DuBois 01:04
Yeah, I think both of those are are very true. Let's let's probably start actually. How would you guys define the micro agency?
Nick Bennett 01:16
You know how everyone who's ever run a traditional agency tells you don't do it. We're going for the opposite of that. So, how would you define it? Small, lean team, like one pod, one delivery pod, um, 60% absolute margin. One offer, massive impact. So it's not a super concise definition. It's not just like, oh, an agency. That's no. I think it's more so like the sentiment and direction that you're trying to build, and it has a ceiling. Like we don't want to build into oblivion. We don't want to build forever, and all of the hassle that comes with it. Like we want to build a business that we like like to be a part of. Because every single person we've talked to, they're like, "Yeah, I don't hate doing this. I just like think it could be bigger than what it is right now. But I also don't want it to be that. Like I don't want to hate my life. I don't want to have a million people. Like I don't like. I think that there's there is a there's something in the middle. There's another option between keeping it really really small or just growing into oblivion or building something you don't like, and we agreed, and so we said, "Let's do that."
Chris DuBois 02:45
Yeah, yeah. I think there's a so a lot of people look at the size and they say, "Well, I can just use contractors now," because like most people are using contractors in some way way more than they were like over past years. But even there, it's like within as a number of contractors you have starts to scale, at some point it's like you're still managing all of these people. So like, yeah, they're not under your house, like your roof, but you still have to deal with all of that. And so, is there have you guys noticed like a sweet spot for team size or like how many people they have to manage that you just like general rule of thumb they could use.
Nick Bennett 03:22
I don't know if there's like a team size as much as it is how you integrate people and how you compensate them to get the outcome you want. So most people will integrate a contractor into their business like vertically, and they'll be like, "Okay, Chris, like you own accounts A, B, and C, and you do everything for accounts A, B, and C, and you basically have like a part-time job working for this company, right? And whether you're w2 or not doesn't whatever, but it's like the way you they integrate you into this business is like you handle everything top to bottom, and we think that's like a flawed way of doing it because it's like you're over rotated on one person for a single account. So we believe that integrating people horizontally across accounts is the easiest and most effective way to do it, and it de-risks everything because you're basically taking hey, what is the? Because when you're vertical too, you end up doing a bunch of stuff that you're not good at. You just like this is the nature of the work. It's like not everybody wants to do all of the things, or is the or is like equally skilled. So we can take the place that you're most skilled at, and you can do that thing, that task or activity across all clients A, B, and C. So there might be three people on each each account, but everyone's doing the thing they're really really good at. And then we'd comp people based on how many accounts they hold, or like a percentage of revenue, some sort of variable comp, so that they have more agency over the outcomes, and they have they have a lot of incentive to be efficient. And if they want to make more money, they can be more efficient and take on more accounts, right? I know I used to manage $500,000 worth of business for an agency, and I got paid $110,000 a year. I was like, that seems lopsided. I don't. I shouldn't. I don't need to get it all, but I should probably have more than I'm getting, and so this idea of also we want to reduce dependency for these people who work for any contractor, for anyone who's working for anybody, reduce dependency, align incentives. We find that to be the most fun and effective way to do this.
Chris DuBois 05:36
Yeah, it's I mean it's more appealing for everybody too, right? Like finding the the entrepreneurs, I guess, like the people who are they want to have that entrepreneurship, but without as much of the risk. I was literally, I mean, I was running someone else's agency, and like I was capped on on my revenue, even though I was putting in 60 to 80 hours a week. Well, the other
Erica Schneider 05:59
reason why variable comp makes sense is that these people are very senior, so I think that was implied, but I don't know if we said it out outright yet. Like they could easily be running their own business in that vertical that they are very good at. But yes, it's much easier to hop into someone else's business and feel like you are a semi business owner of that line of business in their business, if that makes sense.
Chris DuBois 06:23
Yeah.
Erica Schneider 06:24
And so, however much work you take on, you get to do. And because they're so senior, you're paying them well, but you also don't run the risk of diluting the value by bringing on junior people, which is one of the biggest problems with traditional agencies. You get all these senior people in the sales process, maybe in the strategy, and then you get handed off to someone who doesn't know what the hell is going on and can't communicate well. And so these people are the opposite of that. They are very senior. They almost act like mini business owners within your business, and the trust and the value are just there from day one. You're still overseeing them, but it's much easier to manage people like that than very junior people that you have to train up that are, you know, potentially going to dilute all of the value of the service.
Chris DuBois 07:08
And it's great for like for their positioning, where so many companies have been burned by the the swap out of a senior level person in the sales process and hand off the junior talent. Like I had a recent client who like there are only three people on his team, and all of them are senior level talent, and so it's like they get to combat that that belief that someone has or that worry in the sales process, but by just saying we can't swap you out, like we are all senior level talent. So like even if I was going to trade you with someone, it's like it's we're all at that level.
Nick Bennett 07:45
People can bullshit their way through it, and so this is where we find the founders' role matters greatly in the micro agency model. Is that the most founders we work with love selling, and they love the high level principal work that needs to be done on each account. They just might not want to click all the buttons and do all the deliverables anymore. So we'll usually delegate the deliverables, and then they will stay on as like principal strategists and oversee the accounts. And so you're not getting handed off like the founder sells you, and the founder oversees the the strategy of and is accountable to the success of the work. They might not be responsible for all of the work and the clicking of the buttons, but they are accountable to the success of the client, like the ultimate success. And so, there's no handoff to be done, and we find that to be like massively effective and just a fulfilling model for people.
Chris DuBois 08:48
Do you find they they're kind of capped though for how many clients they could be taking on? Do they hit that sooner before they have to complete like look at reorganizing?
Nick Bennett 09:02
Like how many accounts could one founder realistically run strategy for?
Chris DuBois 09:06
Yeah,
Nick Bennett 09:07
I mean it just depends on the business. It's certainly more than if you're doing everything. You know the founders that have to run everything top to bottom. Of course, like if you delegate all of that and you're just running point on every account and selling new business, you can certainly manage a lot more. But is I mean, of course, there's going to be a limit to how many accounts it is. And the question is, is like, how far do you want to go? Like, most people are like, cool, like I'm I'm happy with this. If they want to offload the strategy work from themselves to somebody else, like that's great. Go ahead and do it. We have some clients that choose to do that. We have some clients that are like, great. I have found, I have seen the top of the mountain, and they're like, I'm going to just cruise here. I love it here.
Chris DuBois 09:53
Right. Well, and you also get the benefit, like at some point, right, of just having a wait list where you can say, hey, we can't take on more, but. Because I'm full, it's like that. There's a scarcity to that, and so some people will say, "All right, I'll wait for you," which then means you can increase prices and right demands there.
Nick Bennett 10:11
Yeah, it's just the the question we post every client that's like on this in this process is like, "When is Enough, enough, right? Like some, I'll tell you. Like there's and there's a wide spectrum. There's no no wrong answers. Like I had one client a long time ago. She got to like 25,000 a month. This was like long before Erica and I teamed up, and she was like, "This is the best thing that's like literally ever happened." Like I'm so happy. I'm just gonna like cruise here and like run this little business of mine, make a bunch of money, like love my life. Like I'm not working too much. Like I see my kid, I drop him off and I pick him up every day. Like I'm so happy. I love all my clients. Everything's great. I want to stay here. Um, we have some clients that like hit. So we had a client that just hit 140,000 a month, and he was like, "This is cruising altitude. Like I just want to acclimate here, and I just like he has a solid group of contractors that help him run the business in the way that we're describing. And he's like, I just want to be here. Like I actually don't want to push any harder or push any further. Like he started if he sold an extra account, he's like, ooh, like too much. Like he felt
Chris DuBois 11:20
it. We have a
Nick Bennett 11:20
client that hit $330,000 a month just recently, and he was like, "Let's get to five." He was like, "Let's go to five. Let's go to 500,000. Can we do a million a month?" Like, I think we're. I think we could do a million a month. And I'm not saying this to make any like it's just dropping all these random numbers, but I think the the sentiment is like you get to decide how much and like how much is enough, and there's nothing wrong with deciding that 25k a month is enough. There's nothing wrong with deciding that one whatever, right? Like it's just whatever, whatever, however you want to do it,
Erica Schneider 11:54
right? But I wouldn't call 25k a month a micro agency. Oh,
Nick Bennett 11:56
oh, totally, totally. That's a separate, yeah, 100%. I'm just making the the the the whole idea of like where do you want to draw the line like and where do you feel like cruising
Chris DuBois 12:10
yeah would again okay out of curiosity when you ask the question like what is enough no one knows
Nick Bennett 12:19
the answer
Chris DuBois 12:20
yeah I guess that was nobody ever coming in with like an idea. No, I mean you
Erica Schneider 12:24
have an idea, and then you hit that idea, and then all of a sudden that feels really small, and you're like, I mean, it's not enough. I need more. Um, I think it's when you when the pain outweighs the gain, it's enough, I guess. Um, and then you can figure out if you want to do something about it, if you want to just cruise. Because doing something about it generally means hire more people, hire like a mini strategist person, right? Which which the 300k month client has done. He's got like someone who can help him manage the strategy now, which he didn't have at 200k. So that was like a 300k problem, and yeah, like a lot of people aren't keen to manage a team, and some people are like, "Why would I not manage a team if I can grow my business?" So it it depends on so many interpersonal factors and desires. Also, I think when it comes to business building, a lot of it is affected by the season of life that you're in. Some people have young kids and they're like, I can't give any more hours to this. Some people have older kids and or no kids and they're like, I'm going to do this. I mean, kids aren't the only factor; it's just the one that's that's top of mind because we, you know, Nick and I have young kids. And sometimes you have to potentially make value trades, right? So that becomes a mindset thing. Like, am I comfortable bringing on someone else who can be a mini strategy me person and handle client relationships potentially at the expense of value as we figure it out? Yes or no, right? That's a mindset thing. If you want to grow, the answer is an obvious yes. We'll take a bit of whatever comes, and hopefully, we'll come out on the end of it's as valuable as it's always been. And sometimes the answer is no. I don't want to scale. And then the exit question comes into play all the time too. Do I want to build something to exit, or do I want to cruise, own this forever, get a fat paycheck every month, and just do this, you know, for a while. Yeah.
Chris DuBois 14:29
How do you guys handle the decision? Because, like, what I've found, the better, the best option is just lean into optionality of like, let's build it as if you could sell, but sell us, but keep getting, yeah, keep leaning into it as much as you want to take the profits now. You guys have any any thoughts on that?
Nick Bennett 14:51
The majority of the businesses, like these micro agencies, rely so heavily on the founder that they're. Like not super sellable, right? In the state, like in that way, getting the founder out is like merely the linchpin to a sale. Um, but kind of to Erica's point, it's just like it's whatever season of life you're in and what you want out of the thing. So, like
Chris DuBois 15:20
a
Nick Bennett 15:21
better example is like people got into the business because they like doing the work, and maybe one day that will change. But right now they like doing the work, and they want to be involved in some capacity, and they want to make a difference for companies, right? For their clients, like they're very motivated by the work mattering. So selling is really far out on on what they're what they're looking for. Most people can't wrap their head around a business that does 100k a month, let alone a business they could sell. So the other part of this is like being able to help people have a more expansive vision for what's possible with this business, right? If you're thinking like, oh, like 50k is like is the limit, and we show up or anyone shows up and shows you a viable path to 150, you're gonna be like, oh, like I guess I never really considered that, or like, you know, or they think, oh, 150. In order to get there, I'd have to sell my soul or turn this into a business I don't want it to be, compromise my values or compromise our outcomes. And the reality is like, well, if you didn't have to do that and you could do it, would you? And if people, a lot of people choose to go down that path, but then it's like, well, cool. Do you want to sell it? They're like, wait, I haven't even like. Can I just get there first? Can I cruise there and like run this business and enjoy that, and then decide? And so that's usually where we find most people, or where most people find us. I guess is like in like that phase, that stage of life. But so to so to intentionally build something to sell it, I don't think I I think we're in a different kind of era too. Like there's there was a point in time where like the building and selling an agency was kind of like the that was just the path. Like can we build this thing and sell it? I don't think I think people just rather own it. it.
Chris DuBois 17:23
Yeah, I mean the lifestyle aspect of running your own business, I think, is definitely more appealing to people now.
Nick Bennett 17:31
Or just get out of the work and just own the business,
Chris DuBois 17:34
right? And just have it coming in every month. Just own it.
Nick Bennett 17:38
You don't have to sell it. Like there are, there's, there's more options than just a sale, and so, which might be right for some people, might not. But I don't I don't think that's like the ultimate goal. I think they just want to build something that matters and like that makes a difference for their clients and is like they can feel proud of. Like they just like it's more about like, do I wake up every morning and like hate putting my feet on the floor, or am I really excited to get out of bed and like do the thing?
Chris DuBois 18:08
Right. Is there have you guys noticed like a specific agency type that just does better with a micro agency model, like a service type offering?
Nick Bennett 18:21
It has to be some sort of like I don't want to call it like deliverable heavy, but there has to be some sort of like process and procedure, and like to the to to the work that seems to do really really well with it. Like demand gen, like if you're in demand gen, like you're golden. Like there will be no better. There's probably no better business to be in as an agency, or in like whatever marketing services than to build a demand gen to build in that way. There, any all everyone we know in that business is just absolutely crushing it, because there's like it's like those skill sets are easily found in the market, right? Everybody like it's easy to find people who run LinkedIn ads or run Google ads, so it's a very known quantity in that regard. It's very you can very easily standardize the the workflow in terms of just how the work gets done and how you set the strategy and how it's executed and who does what. It's just like very systematic. There's a lot of content, like people in the content business, ghost writers or whatever SEO, AEO, long form, short form doesn't really matter. That's also a business that we see or category business heavily adopting the the approach. But for example, like being in the coaching business is like a really tough one to scale because it's like very much like Chris's skill set. And to find somebody that has the exact same skill set as you, and then can deliver in the same way, that's been super challenging. So you can package it up, and there are elements of it that will scale up. But like your end-to-end program, the way that you do it probably won't scale up because no one's you right the black magic that is working with Chris can't be replicated and so we either have to repackage the program in a more systematic way that anybody could deliver or accept that this thing is this, and we have to go do something else. I mean, our own businesses, in some ways, that is something that we've we've actively had to work out. Like, there's a limit to what Nick and Erica, the duo, can can do because no one's us, and we can train people to do certain parts of this work, but like, not everybody has our experiences, and so because a lot of what we do ends up becoming more coaching based. So there are elements of this work that we're ripping out and putting into a micro agency scalable model, so that we don't have to be involved in every account in every circumstance. But it can't be the same program as we've designed it. Like we designed the perfect business for us, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to scale.
Chris DuBois 21:25
Yep. And so as long as you've decided on what is enough and that you're okay with that, then and then your model should be good.
Nick Bennett 21:34
Our model is good, and we do have enough for what this is. But we also believe that we can help more people.
Chris DuBois 21:39
Right.
Nick Bennett 21:39
This is like a very current, like a very now in the now thing. Erica just posted about this yesterday. She can share more about it. But I
Chris DuBois 21:44
liked
Nick Bennett 21:45
it. Thank you for your like, for your for your service. Yeah, thank you for your tenure points.
Chris DuBois 21:51
Thank you for that other service.
Erica Schneider 21:55
I mean, my half of the business is delegable, but Nick's is much harder. So, anything that's delegable is that a word? Delegable feels like a word. Delegateable. You're the
Nick Bennett 22:07
words person, so delegable.
Erica Schneider 22:09
I think it's a word.
Nick Bennett 22:10
Delegatable.
Erica Schneider 22:11
I don't
Chris DuBois 22:12
know. Delegatable. Yeah.
Erica Schneider 22:13
Don't know. Listen, listen. Someone go to Google. Anyway, anything that you can that you can delegate. I mean, like we have a rev, we had a rev ops client who delegated too much of the strategy, and that became a bottleneck. But the button clicky bits, he found people who could click the buttons, and then he could keep the strategy. Not that he can't offload the strategy, but that takes more time, more work. So
Nick Bennett 22:47
the strategy has to be packaged, though. Like you can't offload something that is nebulous.
Erica Schneider 22:51
Yeah, yeah,
Chris DuBois 22:52
right.
Erica Schneider 22:53
You need a system.
Chris DuBois 22:55
Yeah, it's and so that you have to kind of weigh everything too. Because if it is just like the button clicking, it's like, well, I can get super junior level talent just to knock that out. Is it worth having, like, just an intern level, you know, talent come in to click the buttons while I do the strategy, or should I bring in someone more senior who can do that and some of this other work that I could pass off?
Nick Bennett 23:21
Actually, don't think that matters. Like junior, senior, like in that context, I don't think that's the litmus test. It's more so like, like I want somebody who is going to be able to do the work at a high level at whatever speed. Like as long as the work gets done, I don't necessarily care. Like it needs to be at a high quality. It's like it's just can you package up how you communicate with clients and how you make decisions and how you guide people. If it's just black magic and it's like, well, like I understand, like I was trained by coaches in the past and I have a lot of sales experience through previous jobs and I learned marketing from a elite HubSpot tier partner, like in the golden era of HubSpot agency stuff, so like those experiences contribute to how I guide my clients through a program in the same way that your military background and contributes to that, and all of the other experience that you've had leading, being the CEO of of an agency and all that stuff, but like for you to find somebody else that has the same instincts and intuition as you to be able to do that, like it's just harder to package up. So to Erica's exact point is like when he offloaded the strategy before it was defined, customer lifetime value like went down went from like 12 months to three, and so it's like, oh well, it's very obvious we need to take this back, take this off of our contractors, take it and own it, and then really well define it if we're ever going to offload it. But he found out this particular example, he's like, I just like I'm going to do it. I like doing it. I just thought offloading it was what I was supposed to do, and it's like actually no, you just do whatever you want. There are. Rules, but as a coach, so to your original question, what business doesn't work well as a micro agency? It's like anything that you can't really well package up or quantify, or like, or help people define how a decision is made. So your ability as a coach to make decisions and guide people is all intuitive, and like, well, how do you how do you give somebody all of the data and all the information that you have so they can make come to the same conclusion you did? It's not impossible. There are plenty of coaching businesses that scale or that have scaled, but I would argue that people don't have great experiences with most of those businesses.
Chris DuBois 25:36
Well, and it's like they take story brand. It's like they're not pitching to like the founders who have already like figured this a lot of the stuff out, and they just need a little help because they have these like unique challenges. It's like they're going to smaller like home services, mom and pop shops. That it's like rinse and repeat kind of what they're doing. But also, I would argue,
Nick Bennett 25:56
I would argue, Storybrand is not like a coaching environment. Like it's just like walk me through, teach me how to make a hero's journey in like a message map or whatever the hell they're doing. Like, okay,
Chris DuBois 26:08
yeah,
Nick Bennett 26:08
like it's it's a plug and play process, which is what makes it scalable, right? It's just well defined, and you can help guide. And some people are probably better at it than others, but I think the the difference is that like Donald Miller's intuition is what makes it really good. Right, if you were to like to go through with him compared to anybody else. Yeah, but I would argue that a lot of people have a really fucking terrible experience going through the story brand process with a certified coach and stuff. Like, I think that process sucks. Like, we've hired other coaches that are certified or scaled up coaching companies. I don't. I personally don't think that's the way, and I don't think people are rather very fulfilled to build something that is like kind of okay. Like I would rather build something smaller that has a massive impact, and like we all enjoy ourselves, and people, our clients are super happy, and like I know this is all anecdotal, but I don't. I just think just looking around, I don't think I don't think people are like super jazzed that like oh like like I'm a story brand consultant and like this stuff changed my life. I mean maybe it did. I don't I don't know. Yeah,
Chris DuBois 27:18
but I mean I can give you an end of two here because I was thinking about it for my own business, where, like, so I got my 11 levers, and I will work through it with every client to find the stuff. And like, I had this morning the second session of an intensive, and I mean, we hit some like some ideas that I was like, I didn't even know where they came from with me, but the market there is no like competitor that brings up any of these, and the market would very much want someone to offer these things. And like we found it. Like I feel like we really nailed it for this guy. And as I'm writing the book on this, I'm thinking through like I need to be able to show someone in a way that's like codified on paper that they could just follow this and get a close result. But like I don't know how. Like, I can't give them all of that. And so, if I were not because I don't want to, but because I just don't know how. Like, to take all of those like random insights that pop in my head from doing so many reps of this, it's really hard. But so if I did bring on a team member who could, and I tried training them up, and I gave them the model, I gave them literally the questions to ask and like follow this. It's like I don't know that they could go into you know like a full blown agency and do this. They would have to do it for like smaller agencies who are just starting or something. Like they're not paying as much, so now it's like I'm watering things down. Stakes are lower, yeah, yeah. And so it's just like, but then why would I want to do that? Unless then it's a volume play, and now it's like, am I really helping or am I just doing this for a cash grab? It's really
Erica Schneider 28:43
different when you're talking about judgment based on like intuition in the moment, as opposed to with like demand gen. There's judgment, yeah. But it's like, oh, the other agency that doesn't give a shit would turn off this keyword because playbook Y tells them to. Whereas in our anecdotal experience of being senior awesome people, we know that actually if you keep this keyword running for a little bit longer, based on your specific constraints and whatever the hell, it'll probably pay off in three months. Like, but that's something that you can teach someone. Right. Yeah. Pretty. Pretty. Pretty. There's systematic, there's systematic playbooks that you can create from your pattern recognition. Much easier when it comes to do we turn this thing on and off, or what's the what's the headline that's gonna like blow these people out of the water, like that fits your position in market that competitive alternatives don't like that's a completely different set of things that are happening in your head that like half the time you don't even know why. Whereas in demand gen, like you know why you can point to a reason. It's much different,
Chris DuBois 29:52
quantifiable,
Erica Schneider 29:53
so much more quantifiable. Anything
Chris DuBois 29:55
you got, you can have data to back up and support. Yeah, would obviously be easier to show. One,
Nick Bennett 30:00
I also want to be clear. It's like demand gen is not an easy business to be in. No, in that way, like I think.
Erica Schneider 30:06
No, I mean he's been doing it. The our client's been doing it for like 15 years.
Nick Bennett 30:10
Yeah. Oh, like it's just like it lends itself really well to being able to like delegate. It is delegatable. Um, and I think that's like like it arguably makes a coaching business like very undesirable if your aspirations are to to scale out. So one thing we've done to help people do this is we've defined like the five models of a micro agency, and I think if you get these five things right, or at least you understand how they play or what role they all play in your ability to build this type of business, I think you know you'll turn the knobs and fine tune them over time. But I think if you do it right, you will have you'll be able to do whatever you want.
Chris DuBois 31:06
All right, a couple. Well, I guess one quick question before we actually wrap up here: Do you guys ever have like a kind of a revenue per like FTE target that you would hit. I mean, obviously it's subjective, right? And people are willing. If you're willing to take on more work, and like that's what you want to do, cool. But is there ever like a number that you're just like, if you as a solopreneur should be able to make this much before you even consider looking at bringing someone else in?
Nick Bennett 31:41
Yeah, we wrote about this in the revenue wall. It's most solopreneurs will go between like 30 and 50k a month before they hit the wall. I'd say the majority of people closer to 30. Some people are crazy, and you know they might give up time, you know, quote unquote, personal time to push further, but somewhere between 30 and 50k is when people hit the wall and they like can't do much more. Like there are some outliers of people who are like, you know, selling some crazy deals to crazy big companies, but I'd say the majority of normal people that we talk, that we know, like these former tech operators will be able to set up around 30 to 50, and then it's like, okay, how are we gonna delegate and automate this thing, or standardize and like really get everything put some meat on the bones.
Erica Schneider 32:35
And if you're at 50k on your own, chances are you're not doing any marketing. I mean, there's no time. So generally, at that state, if it's just you, you are running a referral-based business, which is risky. How long can you stay at 50k from just referrals?
Chris DuBois 32:55
Preach. I mean, that's my entire marketing philosophy. It's just like you can't.
Erica Schneider 32:59
There's no time for it. How are you going to do that?
Chris DuBois 33:02
Yeah, it's a I call it delivery drag when you're you're so busy with delivery that you don't do anything else. So the only business you can do is through referrals because that's when your clients see your work. Yeah. All right. Let's a quick 8020 rule. If you right now, for any agency owner who's considering the micro agency model, where would you recommend they start looking to have the most impact on their business?
Nick Bennett 33:35
To start to to do one, to become one, to
Chris DuBois 33:39
move towards one, to have a simpler kind of like? Are they looking at their offers? Are they looking at cutting services? Are they looking at what the team's doing?
Erica Schneider 33:47
Yes.
Nick Bennett 33:48
Yes.
Chris DuBois 33:50
I mean, we had a guy. We
Erica Schneider 33:52
had a discovery call with someone who was an agency doing around like low seven figures, and they were selling, you know, like five things, and he came in like all stressed. You know, I don't know what I'm selling. My team's doing that and this. You know, my team's bloated. 2015, 20% margins. If he's lucky, um, so we were like, if we work together, we got to figure out what the main thing is, and then we got to get rid of the team bloat. Employ the deploy the vertical model instead of having just random people doing random things. Get your margin back up. So I would say it's circumstantial. Like that was his problem. Some people come in and they have the you know their offer is really tight, and they just have like absolutely no idea how to do lead gen because they've been running based on referrals this whole time, and then they convince themselves they either hate sales or they're bad at sales and biz dev, and they just can't do it or they won't do it. It's cringy. Um, so that's just a whole other like we got to get your marketing arm flexed. We got to figure out what's your positioning. In this market, how are you going to stand out? How are you going to talk about it? How are you going to market it? So it just depends, right? I mean, it always depends.
Chris DuBois 35:09
Yeah,
Nick Bennett 35:10
yeah. I would say the majority of people start with offer, though, because you can't standardize. You know, if you don't know what we're doing here, you can't market it. If we don't have a thing, if we don't know what we're doing here, it makes it hard to structure a sales process or build the economics of it, the delivery model. Like, can't really do anything if we don't have a line on what the actual offer is. Right? It's like our motto is like keep the main thing the main thing, and so if we don't have a main thing, that comes first because then everything else is downstream of that. And I would say most places, most people don't have a main thing, and it's the most frustrating experience in the entire world for them.
Chris DuBois 35:58
Yeah. All right.
Nick Bennett 36:00
So make a main thing.
Chris DuBois 36:03
With that, I'm not going to ask you guys what book you recommend every agency owner should read because I want to talk to you about the book, the forthcoming book from QO Consulting. I guess is under House Olo Scale.
Nick Bennett 36:16
Yeah, House Solo Scale. Sorry. All
Chris DuBois 36:18
right, but can you get your
Nick Bennett 36:20
because because it's a it's a property that we own we co own with Katrina,
Chris DuBois 36:25
right? She's
Nick Bennett 36:26
our co thinker and co writer on those on those books.
Chris DuBois 36:31
Share the process you guys have gone through because this is a bit different for how most people would write a book.
Nick Bennett 36:37
All right, every month we publish a mini book, and that mini book is a chapter in our big book. And we've been publishing these for a year, and now we have written a book, and so that book, the micro agency model, is almost ready. It is not a very specific order. We played
Erica Schneider 37:06
the with the order of which books should go in which order for like the past two months. I would say that's been harder than expected. Yeah, and then obviously the transitions, like the little things that you don't have to worry about when you're writing the mini books, making it all actually puzzle together,
Chris DuBois 37:25
right?
Nick Bennett 37:26
Yeah, like how do you stitch all these separate ideas into one big idea so it's not just like copy and pasted just all the mini books, kind of like in the order we publish them. But I will tell you is that the best long haul game in marketing right now, is is many bucks. I mean, it took probably about a year for them to like really take hold and make a difference on our pipeline. But I would say it is the single most cited sort source of new deals and new new net new revenue next to LinkedIn. But I think it does more heavy lifting on the nurture cycle. People show up and they're like, "Oh, I read every mini book," or they already know the process and the thinking. It's just a matter of, and they go, "How did you know all of that?" And I'd say it makes it makes a massive difference. And people are just sleeping on this idea.
Chris DuBois 38:21
All right, I'll do it. Well, it's just better than
Nick Bennett 38:25
hiding your book and then just being like, "I wrote a book," and then people go, "What is it about?" Versus like, people have read our book. I imagine the the philosophy is like, write a book that never ends.
Chris DuBois 38:36
Well, and yeah, one of the pieces of advice I got years ago when thinking about writing a book was like just live out each chapter, like decide what chapter you want to be writing, and then go like do the stuff and get the results, and then write that chapter, and now like boom, you have it, and so it makes perfect sense. Just why would you hold that from the world? Put the chapter out, and then yeah, consolidate it later if you want. And then I mean,
Nick Bennett 39:00
it's already so the book is delivering; it is creating value for us in our life, like money in the bank, and it hasn't even technically been published yet. Like no one else's book is going to do that if you're hiding it in a Google Sheet or a Google Doc or whatever as you write in, and you know, tinker with the manuscript and fuck around with the the the cover. I'm not saying those things aren't
Chris DuBois 39:24
easy. I'm doing this, doing this all right now, and you're just like my face
Nick Bennett 39:29
shitting on your entire process. Well, maybe Chris,
Chris DuBois 39:32
I'll I'll break some up. I could do some. All the chapters are massive. They're all mini books on in themselves. Like I mean, yeah, they're like five
Nick Bennett 39:40
to 8000 words, like yeah, that's what we're doing. I mean, I will tell you, it's the greatest. It's the greatest thing we've ever done for this business, next to just get starting writing online on LinkedIn and stuff. So, cool. Yeah, I would say the other, the other, other. Other thing about the mini books that people sleep on is like the ability to like give things away to people. Like it is an ungated, like super premium piece of content that no one else, nobody else has anything even close? They're like, like it does. It feels better. It feels like, oh, I wrote a newsletter about that. It's like, no, we we expanded on this idea as far as possibly could, and it includes everything we think or we we know about this topic. Um, and that has gone a really really long way, especially like just in the nurturing of leads and sales process to help move people forward who are stuck on any given concept, and I don't have to sit there and explain. I don't have to like try and convince people of anything or sell people anything. So that is that's that's the one. And you can work out ideas. We sat on Elevate the problem for like months. Like we wrote it and then we threw it on ice, and we were like, "Something's not right. It's not ready," and we just backburned it for a while. And then we had to have like, like you said, like live it. We had to have more experiences. We had to figure more out about that idea to complete it. And then we, when we dropped that, it was one of our most popular books ever. Can't do that with a regular book, like
Chris DuBois 41:22
right, yeah.
Nick Bennett 41:24
So,
Chris DuBois 41:25
I mean, makes sense to me. So, there you go, everybody. You got a nice little tip for how you should write your book. Last question for you: where where can people find both of you?
Nick Bennett 41:37
On the internet.
Chris DuBois 41:38
On the internet. On the LinkedIn,
Erica Schneider 41:40
Substack,
Nick Bennett 41:42
yeah, we're@substackhouseslopescale.com. There's a podcast that we will record again eventually.
Chris DuBois 41:49
Yeah, there
Nick Bennett 41:50
is a podcast. Hey, I had a baby and I moved all in the same five
Chris DuBois 41:55
weeks, so like, don't. Just saying, it has a little like sleepy symbol next to your podcast logo doesn't there?
Nick Bennett 42:02
Oh no, that's not good. That's bad optics. All right, so we're gonna record a podcast again, and then yeah, we're on we're on LinkedIn. We make noise there.
Chris DuBois 42:12
Awesome. Well, Nick, Erica, thanks for joining.
Nick Bennett 42:15
Thanks for playing.
Chris DuBois 42:22
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai