How We Grew to be a $250k P/M Facebook Advertising Agency in 14 Months

Most affiliates have the perfect media buying skillset to crush it as an agency but most don’t have the systems or know-how to execute successfully. Account shut-downs, bans, funding, and the very high-highs and the very low-lows – sound familiar?

Finally deciding to approach your business model as an agency allows you to grow significantly while diversifying your risks and minimising the peaks and valleys of being an affiliate.

Dee’s handing you his exact agency structure and lead generation sales process for getting your agency off the ground and setting it up for long-term success.

Speech by Dee Deng | Head of Growth, Right Hook Digital

Dee Deng Speech Transcript

I got the post-lunch crowd. And I got the sleepiest crowd I think, but at least I don’t have the drunk crowd. So, I’m happy there.

Hello everyone. Welcome to my talk. I’ve got 30 minutes to talk about something I’m super passionate about. I could chew everyone’s ear off, which is how we grew our agency.

So, the 1-2 Combo Client Acquisition Funnel, which also is known as, how our agency grew from zero to $250k a month in 14 months.

No referrals, no friends in high places, no ex-Google. None of that sh*t.

No fancy brands. We haven’t gotten to work with any fancy brands and we just had one funnel. And I’m here to show how you guys can do it too, right?

It’s super humbling to be here. I see a lot of giants in the room. It’s super humbling to see that you guys are even like, I get to exist in the same room as you guys.

So this is super cool for me.

Our Entire Funnel

My only job here today really is to show you our entire funnel so you can just swipe our sh*t and crush.

As affiliates, I think it’s really interesting that on the media buying side, you guys are like the mega, right?

There’s like regular marketers and then there are like, affiliates, who just know everything about the internet. Pretty much run the internet.

And then there’s this other model, which is what we do, which is facing clients and really having to deal with that of side sales and all that.

So if you can apply that skill on the media buying side and understand how you can transfer it to the other side, it’s a really good model because you can switch it on real quick.

And you get to spend other people’s money, which is kind of dope too, which kind of turns into your own money, right?

Let’s move on real quick. I see a lot of faces out there right now, a lot of Conor McGregor’s looking at me going, “Who the f*ck is this guy? I don’t f*cking know him.”

A Tech Start-up Founder

So, let me” tell my story real quick. I was a tech start-up founder. 2014, founded my tech startup, right?

I fell into the whole raise capital, build a tech start-up, go raise money, and you’ll eventually get some cash.

Because you got all these other articles coming out of TechCrunch saying, “Off the back of the napkin, this one start-up raised this much money from Sequoia etc.”

I chased that dream hard. Got to flew myself over Silicon Valley, got to pitch Guy Kawasaki, in person, which was kind of cool.

That startup drove me broke.

I took this screenshot because I wanted to remind myself of a position that never wanted to be in ever again. And I’d love to share this story with you guys, please, if you guys would oblige me.

I took this screenshot sitting in front of the television at 6:30 PM, watching TV with my wife sitting next to me and my stepson. I saw a bill come out of our account that was really big, and then that’s what happened after that bill came out.

The Struggle

And I looked to my left and I thought, “Should I tell them? Yes or no.”

I didn’t tell them, until today, “Honey, I hope you’re not watching this.”

Until today, my wife honestly does not know, right?

So I just had to figure out a way, and the agency way was the way out. Let me double whammy this. After this week happened, the following week, we got this letter.

It’s kind of blanked out there and I know there a lot of words. Effectively, we got served, right?

My Stepson’s dad wanted to do some gnarly stuff. And I had to tell my wife I had no money to fight this. If he wanted to push, I can’t do anything, right?

That’s when I really understood. With the resources that I have at hand, I know my stuff in certain ways, how can I spin up money as quick as possible.

I’m pretty good on the phone. Let’s do that. I can provide services. Let’s do that. I know media buying. I got a co-founder who knows media buying. Let’s do that.

Money = Freedom

So, that’s what I learned. I learned that money equals freedom.

You like the yellow? I hope that really punches you in the face and wakes you up a little bit.

Money equals freedom. Everyone knows that.

But for me personally, money is freedom from fear. I was living in fear for a really long time. And that’s the story that I’m hoping to share now and then be able to tell you, it’ll all makes sense later, I promise.

There’s a funnel. It’s not some kind of click-bait-y sh*t that I’m telling you a sob story about my life right.

Started An Agency

We started the agency. This was January. Sorry about the nudity on screen. This was January of this year. We had a team of four.

And this is a really humbling experience for me standing on this stage, being able to talk to you because this was us at the company retreat.

That screen I’m pointing at is actually James van Elswyk, presenting his thing. And I sent that message to him to say, “Hey man, you really inspired me.”

And he replied, and I now get to be here. So, kob-khun krab everyone.

So anyway, after being able to start everything up, I was the guy on the phones.

Anything you see in light blue, and this is my actual calendar.

Sales Call

You see school pickup, and violin, like super boring dad sh*t in there. School drop-off in the morning but everything else you see in blue, those are sales calls.

And I was the only guy on the phone taking all of them sales calls.

And after a while, that’s how we started growing. We ran ads, had our funnel, had these calls coming in. And we started getting results.

Then we started getting more results.

And that’s when our confidence grew, and we got more results.

I’ve seen some crazy sh*t. That’s real, that’s a real campaigns by the way,

But what’s most important is we started seeing growth for our client.

Nice and thick to the right in blue.

And, more there.

That’s how we eventually grew from a team of two, to a team of four, and then our first year was super awesome.

This was like us going legit or something. That’s a first-year anniversary. July 3rd, this year.

And now, as I stand in front of you today, this is what our team looks like.

The Team

We straddle a stupid amount of time zones. I’m very fortunate to have the team that I have. But I run a remote team.

And this is the kind of DNA of the team that we’ve got, and that’s all because of this one funnel. I kid you not.

I remember being in the crowd right, and being one of those people that went, “This f*cker is not gonna show his funnel.”

Like, what are you doing? He’s only gonna show me the stuff that’s not working anymore.

Funnel hack me right now, if you want. Go on there and actually like use your ad spend and funnel hack me. It’s all there, right.

The amount of cynicism I think that comes with sitting in whichever seat that you’re at, will reflect the amount of takings that you have.

So the less cynicism you’ve got the more you’re going to learn.

I steal everything. I’m lucky to get to sit there and be able to steal everything from everyone and get the best stuff and that’s what we do.

All right. So let’s move on to the actual meat and potatoes.

Round 1: The Formula

Number one, let’s talk about The Formula.

So like I said before, no referral partners, no big brands. And also, when we started the agency, no framework. Like, I didn’t have an agency mentor, so to speak, to kind of take me through it.

So I kind of had to fumble my way through.

Anyone here Harry Potter fans? Any Harry Potter nerds with me? Oh my god. You nerds don’t watch Harry Potter, okay.

In Harry Potter, there’s this thing called The Deathly Hallows, right?

They got the spells of wand thing, the invisibility cloak thing, and there’s something that where you can’t die.

We use that and pretty much broke it down into this.

So if you need a sound business model, you need sales, you need operations fulfillment. For us it’s our media buyers, for us our account managers etc, and you need finance.

You got to keep the money in your business, right?

And then smack in the middle, you got systems. The systems hold the whole thing up.

If we don’t have systems, we pretty much don’t have a business because we’re in there all the fucking time.

And then finally, we’ve got leadership, right? That is what, at the core of it, any business is. Agency or not.

“Oh, so you take the photo but you don’t put your hand up when I asked for Harry Potter. Okay, it’s all good bro.”

Consistent Quality Leads

So, listen, once you got this going down, then really, all you need is just consistent, quality leads.

And that’s how we were able to grow to where go, and that’s how I was able to get this volume of calls.

Now again, it was only me on the calls because we don’t need that many clients to be able to make enough money for what we need right now.

And if we get more calls, we hire more people, and that all works out because we have those Deathly Hallows. The triangle, the circle, and that line in the middle.

Okay, so let’s move on real quick.

Round 2: The Ideal Client Persona

Everyone talks about this. Everyone in marketing talks about like, what’s your persona, do you know your persona.

And you’ve got to, if you’ve gone through any type of marketing, they’ll make you do the fill in the form where it’s like, “It’s Sandra who lives in California, who’s this old, and loves these things. She reads these publications but doesn’t do that. And she likes this but doesn’t do that.”

So we came up at the start with a super robust, like super robust ideal client persona.

You do ecom, you got money? We’ll take you.

That’s what we had, that’s literally what we had, right? Because we needed cash flow. What are you gonna do? I can’t be picky.

And this was what we ended up with.

So you saw that calendar, you can kind of do the math here, right.

$40 cost per lead. $53 cost per call, and then $265 cost per new client. Bringing up numbers. Pretty cool, right?

But, there’s a “but” here. A big but.

The team f*cking hated me because I closed them. On the back end it’s like, “Hey man, so uh, I just sold out of my stuff. I forgot to tell you.” And then everything just crashed because they weren’t high-quality leads.

So we have the consistency, we just didn’t have the quality. And my team hated my guts, right?

Ongoing Management For Clients

The one thing I’ve learned, if anything in the past journey that I’ve had to date, so far, is that ongoing management for clients is like a marriage.

And I thought personally, it was me. Like I thought that everyone was marriage material, right?

Dead wrong. There are some people that are not a good fit, right?

How does this relate to the funnel? It relates to the funnel because if you don’t have the right filtration on the front, in terms of what’s on the screen, and then beyond that, if you don’t have the right filtration on the phone and you’re eager to say yes, then what ends up happening is you’re gonna close a lot of clowns.

And then you’re gonna be the clown that closes the clown.  So you’re just gonna be in the world of pain, right?

So that was the one thing that we learned really, really quickly. And I learned it too because I was on the front end and I was also doing execution as well.

It was a super painful thing and we looked like dicks.

So then what happened is we went, “Okay, we got to go back to the drawing board. Let’s do up our personas.”

Right Hook’s Ideal Client

So, this is what our persona looks like right now, right?

Effectively, we know, where do you want to target them, what type of demos they are, in terms of the types of their business? And we found a sweet spot, right.

It has nothing to do with the size of the company or the clout or anything like that. It really comes down to finding that sweet spot and knowing that we can scale them.

If we can scale them we’re sweet, right?

Because we get to be on a performance model. It works out really, really nicely guys.

Okay and then on the right there. You can see the psychographic focus. Respects our expertise, willing to listen, business sense, humble.

Business sense, oh my god, the amount of like dropship bros that watch two YouTube videos and all of a sudden, “I’m an entrepreneur, and like, what the f*ck’s your agency gonna do for me Dee?”

No, I’m sorry. Thank you, but no thank you. We got a course though. Go to the course. That’s what we do.

Quality Leads, Non-fit Leads

So, we learnt how to monetise the quality leads and we learned how to give value to the non-fit leads.

They still have a pain point, that’s why they fill in the form in the first place. At least we can still give them value in some other type of way.

So net effect out of that. Cost per lead $98, cost per call $196, cost per new client $490. That’s kind of sh*tty like, that’s pretty f*ckin expensive.

But if you look at the client value, that’s where it really dawned upon me we’re doing something right.

We went from getting $9,000 out of a client over 3 months to $27,600 averaged out. And that’s only because we haven’t called hard enough on the other side, right.

That’s really on the front end. Being able to have that quality part is so, so important. So, so crucial.

And the best part, not even talking about the cash flow, the best part, the average team happiness score? Through the roof!

Everyone loved me! I was a champion all of a sudden.

You know why? Because everyone was asking my team, “Oh my god, what should I do next? Can you give me some strategies please?”

They were primed and we loved it so much.

So how do we get to this point, right?

Round 3: The Funnel

Let’s talk about the funnel. This is the part where, hopefully, if you want to steal my shit, get your phones out because this will be it.

This is the funnel that we use, okay.

Top of funnel, cold audiences. A lot of edutainment videos.

I don’t have time during this time to talk about edutainment videos, but if you go back to the Affiliate Conference Facebook page, I do a little breakdown there.

If you don’t know me, I want you to love me. If not, I’ll show you another video. And I hope that you love me there.

If not, you’re not a good fit. That’s fine, right.

Video views up the top, 75% we retarget you. We move you to warm audience.

Testimonials

Testimonials. Every time we get to grow a client and we send out a report, where they got a green arrow pointing up, I’m on the phone.

“Hey bro, got time for a quick testimonial? Let’s just jump on Skype real quick. I’ll record the Zoom”

And that’s it, right? That’s how we get testimonials. We show that we’re not full of shit.

Because at the end of the day, if you are looking for an agency, you’re looking to work for pretty much anyone that you’ve never met before, the number one thing you’re gonna think is, “Is this marketer full of sh*t?”

So we really focus on that part.

Hot Audiences

Hot audiences. We show case studies and a bit more direct response.

Click here to get your strategy report, click here to have a call with us, click here to learn how we can do an audit and maybe help you out.

And then, once they become a prospect, we still spend money to retarget them.

Because I want to prime them before they get on the call. So that we really minimise that dropout rate.

And you see, in the middle there, there’s that phone. We’re effectively driving everything towards that call and then figure out what we can do once they fill in the form, before or after, okay.

I’ll be able to talk about that part in a minute. And then on the right, email as well.

Emails

So, we really had almost no email before. So if you called in, you’ll have one form that said, “Thank you for your booking. Your Zoom meeting link is here.”

No time to remind them, like none of that stuff. It sucked hard.

I was waiting on the call 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. They didn’t show up. And I didn’t know why.

Because you know, we just had too many things going on. Now we’ve got at least a minimum 4-step sequence, which we kind of work on every month just to change it up a little bit.

But hey, email 1, you’re in the right place.

Ryan Deiss spoke about this previously, where he was talking about every time that someone takes an action, you take them somewhere else.

You want to remind them about the previous action and let them know they’re in the right place. Okay so “Hey, you’re in the right place.”

Email 2, I’m gonna slam you with more testimonials.

And then by the time we get to email 3, it’s what to expect from our call. Think about what you want out of it. Make sure you have your brand guide ready. And make sure you have all these other things.

Know your numbers before you come on the call. The last thing I want to do is ask you about your business numbers or your gross margins. And you’re like, “Let me just pull out my calculator real quick.”

We’re just wasting time. I want to keep that call really short because I respect their time, I respect my time.

And finally email 4, more testimonials.

Even if they book the call within the next 48-hours, I let them run anyway. And they’re a 24-hour space apart.

Top Of The Funnel

Okay, let’s talk about top of funnel. Let’s talk about edutainment videos. This is it right here.

All you see is either Dee’s face or some other face talking about Dee’s team.

The reason why this is so important and this is what really changed everything for us.

I mean, literally, everything is just me jumping on video and talking to people and showing something that is really, easily digestible on one side.

So, I make it fun. I actually like, try to make it look like a YouTube vlogger and have effects and stuff like that.

And then show some stats. Again, All I want to prove is that I’m a real human, I got your back, and I’m not full of sh*t.

Those are the only three mental ticks I have to tick off for someone and that’s my only job, right?

And then, I let other people say that, “Hey these guys are not full of sh*t. They help me grow my stuff.”

That, psychologically, really helps it through. And by the time they get on the call, thank god, it’s amazing.

And then, after that this is where they get brought to, right.

Let’s Get Things Rolling

We bring them to here, we ask them a bunch of questions.

Look at how sh*tty this form looks, guys. It’s still like this. It pains me but it’s still like this.

It hurts me so much as I’m standing here talking about this right now and showing you guys this.

But this is the sh*tty form, until today. Again, if you go click on my website right now, this is the sh*tty form.

Wufoo, thank you for making it so hard to edit the CSS. Wufoo.

This is the form. You can see here it is really, really simple. We’re working to change the CSS on this or use a different provider.

But we asked them a bunch of questions. It scrolls down a bit more. About your revenue, about your spend, about your margin, where you want to head.

All I’m trying to find out are two things.

I want to find out what your business is like. More importantly, I want to, kind of, if I can automate and find out what you are like, right?

So I kind of ask them questions also about what their target CPA is, or what their target return on ad spend is.

And if someone goes like, my minimum, you know, they get a field where they can answer the question in open text, and if they say something like, “My minimum ROAs to be able to afford an agency is 12x.”

I’m like, “No thank you. I’m out.”

Minimum? Come on now. Like really, I know I talk about Harry Potter sh*t. I’m not Harry Potter, okay.

There are certain realities to this. So all what we’re doing is looking for a fit.

This is the funnel to do that.

Guess What You See Again

Right after you fill in this form, guess what you see again?

This face, right? It’s all about rapport, it really, really is. And it seems so like, me, me, me, me, me, and I felt the same way too before jumping on this. Like, “I don’t want to be that, like…”

I don’t want to drop names and kind of offend a few people. But I don’t want to be like those people, right. They’re just on camera. They’re just talking sh* t.

And then, next we get retargeted and they keep talking sh*t and all that.

It felt like I was spamming people with my face and not giving value and boring them. But honestly it changed everything.

I’m Pointing At You

So on this video, I literally, you see that I’m pointing at you. I actually said, I say in the video, “Hey, go check your calendar right now. Go, accept the meeting right now.”

And that dropped our call drop-off rate by like 30%. Just by doing that.

Then at the very bottom, I just have a call to action, which is our Facebook group and our Facebook page.

So, that I can keep giving value. And, you fall into our sphere of influence, pretty much. And so, even if you don’t sign up, you’re in the group.

You see more value, you’re gonna come back again later. That’s the game that we play.

And in terms of the back end, this is our Infusionsoft. This is one of the simple campaigns that we have.

Essentially, as you can see here, it’s reminding them of where they are.

If you’re qualified, I’ll take you somewhere. And if you’re not qualified, I’ll take you somewhere else.

So again, hot tip for you guys that are watching at home and sitting here. If you want to figure out what something else is, just put in like under 5k in revenue. You see what it is.

Honest to god, before we had a product to give them, I would boot them out to Google.com. Just straight out.

I was tempted to boot them out to like Disney.com or something like that. But that was what we did back then. And now we have an offer to give them.

There we have it, right?

Edutainment Videos

So effectively, you get to see my face, you get to see the edutainment videos, and you get to meet me before you meet me, which really really helped a lot.

And then this happens. Just listen up, there are no subtitles. I apologise but…

“I just want to take the opportunity to say that the presentation that I saw you guys doing, that was exactly what made the contact you guys. It was a completely personal selection. I thought you guys were really smart and I wanted to work with you guys.”

“And then I started looking at your videos on there. And I watched that interview and I was like f*ck, you know, he’s got a good personality. I’d rather work with, you know, him.”

“He’s got a man crush. Yeah a little man crush.”

“That’s funny, that’s so sweet, that’s cool man.”

And, that’s it there. “F*ck, oh my god, mate. I’ve got a man crush, mate.”

It’s rapport. The reason why I had to block out their faces is because it’s an actual live call.

We record all of our sales calls. So that my sales team can go back and learn and I can go back and learn from my mistakes. And figure out when I can say things.

Sales is where I really geek out.

Hey Chad, if you guys are listening, whoever wants to geek out about like sales methods. Yo, that’d be fun.

Because that’s where you really get to then pull the cream and get to leverage all that rapport. And then on that call, you get to build more rapport, find out what they really want.

It’s great. Which is the next part, actually, to this.

Round 4: The “Pull” Method Close

The Pull Method Close, right? So many agency owners, it’s so funny. So many agency owners hate sales.

“Oh my god, I hate sales. I just want to like, I just want to media buy, I just want to run like Facebook ads, I just want to do all that stuff. I don’t want to fuck with clients.”

If you hate sales, then hire someone who loves sales or bring on a co-founder that love sales and loves talking on the phone and understands the dynamics between humans.

Because that’s me. I was that half of the equation and the other half too.

Fortunately, I’ve got that. I love sales and I really hope that you guys do too.

And how many people here, and for the Pull Method Close, how many people here have like, gone through some type of a guru course?

Or some type of, I will help you, you see the ad, it looks really compelling you sit down, you watch 25-hour webinars, like, “If you stay till the very end I got this thing.”

And then, when you call through you, get like, this guy.

Getting Sold To

You think you’re gonna talk to the real person. And the thing about this guy is he’s just going to like try to close you, like trying to close you, try to close you.

Like anyone got that? Like get real with me here. Give me some feedback. Yeah exactly.

As humans, we hate getting sold to. If I walk into like, Best Buy and that person comes up, “Hi, how can I help you?”

It’s like, leave me the f*ck alone. I’m not ready, I’m not ready, right?

But the moment you are ready and you’re standing there going, I’m just looking for some assistance. What tends to happen? No one’s there.

Magically in the store, all of a sudden everyone’s busy, right?

So, in the sales aspect, if someone hypes it up on the front and they build all this trust. And on the back, you got this guy being like, “Hello you want to buy the course?”

No.

“Okay, I have this other program. No problem, my friend.”

They’re just like trying to close, right? And I was guilty of that too. I was like, “Yeah man, so then we got this thing. We do Google, we can do email, we can do dadada.”

I wasn’t listening, I was just talking. There was no pull.

So now, okay, I’ve got a bit of time, I’ll drop this one.

“How Can I Help?”

Because this is all it is really. It’s “How Can I Help?”

So how do I find out how I can help?

Really, the only way I can do that and it’s a bit of how can I help, but then also at the same time, I’m gonna make you feel a bit shaky about your current situation, dear super confident prospect.

So, we’ll jump on the call and I’ll ask him, “So, tell me a bit more, how’s business?”

I always open with how is business. We all love talking about business.

“How’s business?”

“Oh you know like, I’m working at this agency. Now we’re having a bit of trouble. This, that, that the other. I feel like they’re not doing as well as they can, I feel like something.”

Okay, this is a feelings person. I got to go feeling mode. “Oh you feel that way huh? Yeah, I know how frustrating it might be. So give me a bit of an idea here. Like, do you know your average month-to-month conversion rate?”

“Oh no. I’m not, I’m not too sure about that. I gotta go check.”

“Huh, interesting.”

That’s all I do, I don’t say a fucking word. I just look like I’m typing or writing a whole bunch of stuff.

You know like when you’re at the therapist and the therapist just goes, “Huh, so your dad never hugged you. Interesting.”

But they don’t tell you why they’re asking that question. They’re just saying interesting.

But whenever that happens, there’s a certain awkwardness that comes on the other side. That’s what I know I’m in control the conversation. But then also two, that’s the way I know I can help.

Ask Another Question

I’m trying to figure out what you know, what you don’t know, in a really conversational kind of way.

I’ll ask you another question. “Okay so are you guys using GTM?”

“Oh my god, what’s GTM?”

“Interesting. No GTM. Does not know. Prospect does not…”

Sometimes I do that too, “Prospect does not know GTM. I’m sorry just gotta save that for the team. Don’t mind me, I’m just taking notes.”

So by the time I get to that point, at the very, very end, one, this person just asked me a bunch of questions that I don’t even know I had to ask, right?

And then, I move on to the other part, which is, “Okay, let’s talk about how we can help and let’s start looking at that.”

So, either we present an audit. We put that in front of them.

“So would it help you then to find out what your CVR is and did you know that, I did a really quick look, did you know your website is actually at 14 seconds, bro? Do you know what that does to your conversion rate, bruh?”

“What do you mean, 14? Isn’t that quick?”

“Are you serious? Interesting.”

So that’s all I’m doing again and again and again. You can see why the sales part is where I like really, really geek out because this part you can swipe anyone’s sh*t.

That other part, I can go deep yo. But I only have 3 minutes and 30 seconds. So, I’m gonna leave it there.

But that’s effectively it. If any one of you do want to talk about that, I would love to jam out with you.

Split-testing Calls

That’s the lesson that I had to learn by split-testing sales calls.

I didn’t know that that was what I was doing intentionally, but that’s what I was doing.

I was trying different angles, I was trying different modalities. And, I was trying to be the, sometimes you need, Paul help me out here, what’s the, Gordon Ramsay! Right.

Sorry I didn’t even need you there.

Sometimes the prospect needs a Gordon Ramsay. Like just like, sh*t all over their business because they’re like, “Oh my god, I have a guru now to help me.”

And some other ones need you to bro down with them a little bit.

“Yeah, bro, like this is just totally chill man. Like, we’ll just like, take some of your money and then we’ll spend it, we’ll test it, and if it scales then it f*cking scales bruh.”

And that’s what they want. That’s what they need from me. I’m not trying to impose myself on them, it’s pull.

End Of The Funnel

It’s never, push. Okay, that’s the end of the funnel.

So you guys saw the top, where I’m talking about different topics. Whether it’s analytics, whether it’s creative, whether it’s Instagram stories.

Whatever floats your boat, you’re gonna come down a certain path, which helps me too, because I know that you’re more of an analytical person.

Because you really jive with that stuff, right? Or are you gonna be more of a feelings person.

Let me talk about brandy, brandy, type of stuff. I’m gonna pull you in that way. “Oh my god, yes, your brand is really important. Let me tell you about this performance metrics thing.”

And that’s where it’s at.

Round 5: Put This Into Action

So final step, really, honestly is putting this into action.

I’ve been to so many of these conferences, where you just get bombarded by stuff.

And then, it’s like church camp. You get super pumped. Next week, you don’t do sh*t, right?

So do something about it.

If any of you are an agency owner, I wish I had this. And that’s really what I’m aspiring to do here is I wish that I had someone who was willing to do this for me back when I was first starting out.

But I just didn’t know what to search, didn’t know where to find. And by being able to put into action, I was able to have those mistakes right.

Learn from my mistakes. They’re fucking expensive and it can be really embarrassing sometimes.

I’ve messed up in so many ways, it’s not even funny anymore. But that’s it there.

If you have any questions, please hit me up. These are my deets here.

I am the most responsive in the first one. My email is just, you’re gonna get an auto-responder saying that I’m here right now.

And we’ve got a Facebook group as well, where we just try to add as much value as possible. And it’s all free.

We just get to go in there, interact with a whole bunch of other ecommerce founders, marketers, head of marketing for some others.

We’ve got one of the performance marketers in UK Disney in there, just jamming with us sometimes. It’s a fun place to be.

But everyone, I really appreciate you for your time.

That was my little spiel. Thank you.

Q&A

Chad:

Dee. You did not disappoint man, nice work. Awesome. For everybody, all presentations are going to be shown on YouTube after. Free of charge. So, be sure to check that out later and don’t worry about recording right now. We’re gonna do some Q&A.

Dee:

Yes sir.

Chad:

That’s sound good?

Dee:

Yes sir.

Chad:

Alright. So we’ve got the Slido up.

Dee:

That is so cool, by the way.

Chad:

I know, I love it. If you guys aren’t familiar with it, head to Slido.com and then plug in AWA18. And all questions will be presented at the top there. So starting off with the first one, can you share some examples of ads and emailers used for targeting? Well, you just presented, so maybe if they do follow you afterwards.

Dee:

Yeah, follow me up. I’ll show you my sh*t but those screenshots that I showed, those were for the most part the actual ones that are still live now. Well in terms of emails, I can show you emails for sure. I got all kinds, I’ve got prospecting emails, I’ve got posts.

Average Client Retention

Chad:

Yeah. Follow Dee online. He’s got lots of good content. What else do we have for questions? There we go. Average client retention, do you do rev share or fixed fee?

Dee:

So we have, again, if you heard from the presentation, a lot of what we do is listen and then prescribe. If it makes sense, we typically start off fixed fee.

Chad:

Yeah.

Dee:

Just so that we can test it out. I want to date you, I’m not gonna go in hard and be like, oh straight away. I’ll be like, “Yo I’m willing to suck sh*t on money at the start.”

Chad:

Yeah.

Dee:

But let’s talk about what happens after the first 3 months. So that gives us a lot of leverage because I want to come correct you.

Chad:

Yeah, take her for a date first.

Dee:

Yes sir. I’m going to take you out for date. You’re gonna take me out for date.

Chad:

I like that.

Dee:

We’ll keep, we’re happy to cop a bit on the chin on the front. And on the back, we’ll go to perform, usually a percentage of revenue, and also depending on the client, sometimes it makes more sense to do percentage of spend.

Do You Provide Equity With Team Members

Chad:

Yeah, that makes sense. Team question, up next. Do you provide equity with any team members of yours?

Dee:

Do you give key people in your team, equity? So fortunately, because I went through the tech startup route, I kind of know the structure of that. That if you want to start an agency, also please don’t start, like don’t go to a fish and chip shop accountant. They’ll give you the worst corporate structure. So that’s what we did and we are undoing that right now. It’s a really expensive bill. It’s hurting me. But share options. So, not equity, share options.

Chad:

Okay, sweet.

Dee:

To the key people only.

Biggest Pain Points Managing A Team

Chad:

Nice. Another team question, actually. What have been your biggest pain points managing your team. This person has a team of four but wants to grow. Any lessons you can share with the individual?

Dee:

Interesting. I’m kidding. So, any biggest pain points managing the team. Which one isn’t a big one? Okay, so I think one being remote is very tough. Because I don’t get to walk into the office and see whether they are tired for the day or a bit drained or a bit defeated. And because we run on Zoom calls, you can kind of be on air and look like, “Hey Dee, how are you today?” So that’s a really tough one. I feel like I’m not doing enough for the team.

Chad:

Just to interrupt though, remember when we were going through, actually, it was one of your slides, I think. You had your whole scheduling down pat. Is that a shared schedule that you have? So you know what each of your team members are working on? Or…

Time zone

Dee:

Are you talking about the time zone one?

Chad:

Remember you had that shopping in there, when you were supposed to be doing a team meeting.

Chad:

Oh yeah. Yes, yeah, totally. That one, that massage. Yeah, that is that is one way that we coordinate, but they were also moving into having pods. Another big pain is, do you go pods based on expertise and personality? So a pod that way or do we go time zone? So there’s so many moving parts.

Chad:

What have you noticed?

Dee:

So, we’re trying to have our cake and eat it too. If we can you in a similar time zone and similar specialty. So, like health and wellness, athleisure, apparel, jewelry, supplements, then that that’s been working out nice so far. And they can have their mini Slacks.

First Hire

Chad:

Yeah, that make sense yeah. Yeah, okay cool. What else, what position would be your first hire for you if you started again from scratch? I remember, Jason Akatiff actually answered this in his presentation couple ago. I think, he said operations manager.

Dee:

Jason Akatiff?

Chad:

Yeah.

Dee:

Yeah, unequivocally, so patient zero for us is now our senior account executive, Beck. Beck, I love you.

Chad:

Shout out to Beck.

Dee:

Yeah, she is the glue between our clients and us. She also is a glue between our team. And I plucked her out when I was working at another company, I saw something in her. I was like, “Yo, if you want to come intern, I’ll just teach you for free for like an hour day.”

Chad:

Nice.

Dee:

Eventually, she just ate everything up. She had absolute zero, she was a cleaner before that. And, she owned an eco-cleaning company, like that type of stuff. Then now she’s senior. She bosses the clients.

Chad:

Look at that.

Dee:

She lays down the law. I love her to death.

Average Client Billing Per Month

Chad:

Okay, nice Beck. Okay, cool. We’ve got a little bit more time. A couple more questions. What’s your average client billing per month?

Dee:

I kind of showed you guys already. You guys see that part, where it’s like the 3-month period. Do some math you lazy f*ckers, $27,900 divided by 3. I don’t know what the math is, I know I’m Chinese but my math is sh*t.

Chad:

Okay.

Dee:

So, that stereotype is not right for me.

Lead Gen Traffic Source

Chad:

What else do we have? Is Facebook your only lead gen traffic source for you and your agency? Or do you have other tried others? Have you tried others?

Dee:

We’re trying to f*ck with LinkedIn right now.

Chad:

Oh, really?

Dee:

It’s really expensive.

Chad:

Once you figured that out, let us know.

Dee:

We’ll talk. Interesting.

Chad:

Yeah, you owe me some consulting hours after your presentation.

Dee:

You don’t know Linkedin ads? Interesting. Yeah, so we’re trying to f*ck with Linkedin. We do a bunch of outreach, so Instagram outreach for us. And we identify Instagram accounts, take their creative, play around with it without their permission, and then DM them back. Be like “Hey, we just tried to f*ck with some shit. Feel free to use it for your ad.” There you go for some of you guys who want to use that.

Chad:

What about YouTube?

Dee:

Not yet. I really want to mess with YouTube. I’m already so heavy on video there. Might as well just, Ty Lopez the hell out of it.

Chad:

We need more content. I think for Barcelona we’re gonna have someone talking about YouTube, so stay tuned for that.

Dee:

Stay turned for YouTube guys.

Who’s Running The Campaigns

Chad:

Yeah, okay. If you’re doing the sales, who’s running the campaigns? At the start, did you hire and train media buyers or contract it out?

Dee:

Right. So in this world, we got black hat, we got white hat. In my world back then, I had many hat right. Not Manychat. Many hat. This f*cker was many hat, right. If I’m not on the calls, I had to do this thing. And, if not on that, I’d do that. So I was pulling on average, and I kid you not guys, like 16-hour days. If you notice, after school pick up, I had to go back to work. But what you don’t see is after dinner. So, I can show my wife my face, so she remembers who I am. I’m actually back at the office again from like a 9 – 12:30 window. I was just like bang sh*t out. But that’s why the co-founder relationship was so helpful, because I don’t think I could have done it without him. I don’t think we could have just done it, in general, without each other.

Chad:

Well, honestly man. Thank you so much. That was incredible. Again, this will be online later. Everyone big round of applause.

Dee:

Hey can we do a selfie with the crowd? Would you guys help me with a like Ellen DeGeneres selfie? Because I really want to crush her selfie.

Chad:

Okay. Let’s do it this way.

Dee:

What’s good?!

Chad:

It’s a video, it’s a video!

Dee:

Get out of here!

Chad:

Okay, thank you Dee.