$20K–$100K/mo Agency Owners Share How They ACTUALLY Get Clients (2026) transcript

I've never talked about this on YouTube because I don't think it would do super well. You should be on your edge of your seat listening to this one because I think it's actually really really good. Probably one of the cheapest ways to get the highest quality leads possible. >> Every time I've made this post, I get three clients almost every single time or sometimes more. It reverses the roles like you no longer are selling them.

They're trying to like almost sell themselves to you. >> If you were to hypothetically break down everything that you knew about that entire business, every single business that has any level of aspiration and ambition to scale would want to work with you. If you're broke and you like want to make this work, like you got to leave your shame at the door. >> Don't like forget that you have a solution to a real problem that they have.

And like you're doing them a favor, you just need to like figure out the right way to convey this. >> And he ended up closing like half of them and he's a 17-year-old kid in high school. >> It works for beginners and it can work well. You can really scale this up. You're checking multiple boxes of growing your business in like one kind of 20 to 30 minute activity. You can basically get like a 10x open rate on any Instagram message that you want to send >> without even knowing who it was or I will buy whatever it is you're selling because it was so unique. >> You could set this up with one 10 15 minute like it's really not that hard.

But I would honestly say it's the the single best thing I've done to get clients. >> I've actually never heard that before. That's like really smart. >> How's it going everybody and welcome back to the latest segment on this channel called What's Working? And today we're joined by five different guests. And we're going to leave this podcast with 18 of the best ways working right now in 2026 to get marketing clients, highle clients, whatever you're selling, there's going to be something in this podcast for you.

And for context, the minimum amount of revenue in this room is $24,000 a month, and the maximum is over a million a month. So, it's safe to say there's some strategies in here that will apply to you and help you if you're below those numbers. Uh, so we've got the legend Dom Morurell all the way from the UK. He's a content specialist, so a lot of his is going to focus on content. Then we've got Hayden Lawrence. He has over 100 clients on reputation management, websites, that type of thing, right? >> Mhm. >> Then we've got myself.

I built and sold a six-figure agency and now I help other people do that. I've helped over like a thousand beginners get started. Jasper Akin, who has a web agency with over 60 clients and has also helped probably over a thousand beginners get started with a high level agency. Klay Lawrence, who specializ in getting Google reviews for local businesses, 60K a month. >> Yeah. 66. >> All right. 66. And Justin Silverman, the founder of Merchant.

If you haven't heard of Merchant, it's pretty dope. It helps you optimize local businesses Google profiles and he has over 16,000 local businesses using it. So pretty cool. What's going to happen in the podcast is that each one of us is going to share our top three ways of getting clients working right now. Either that we've done ourselves or that we've seen and we wish you had the time to implement. And so if you're looking to get clients in any way, shape or form, this is going to be for you.

So, let's start with uh Justin on this end. >> All right. The first one's uh probably the easiest to do, and it's what people really don't want to do. It's just put yourself out there on LinkedIn and let your network know what you're up to. Because the amount of people that will come up to me and be like, "Oh, you know something with like Google Maps and how I can get customers or reviews? Like, can you help me?" Like, it's crazy just because people around me know that's like the world that I'm in.

And so when you're just getting started or even if you have a couple clients, if you haven't just taken that that semi- embarrassing moment and just put it that that post out there on LinkedIn, it's like, "Hey guys, this is what I'm doing. If you know anyone, let me know." Or if you need help, let me know. Like, take the 3 minutes and just make that post. Like, you will probably get, you know, a little bit of traction just from that one little thing. >> 100%.

And don't give up if something doesn't come right away. I just had closed a client last week and it's from someone I knew from high school that I haven't talked to. I haven't seen in person for 10 plus years and he was like, "Yeah, I was talking to this window cleaner and like you were the first person that came to mind cuz you keep posting stuff." >> Yeah. Something like that actually just happened. Someone from college, you know, over 10 years ago reached out is now like the head of marketing at a large property management company.

And I was like, "Hey, I saw that you're you're running this business. Let me look into it." And just because, you know, I decided to put myself out there. >> So cool. Love that one. Okay, Clay, number three. >> Yeah, that's solid. That was going to be the first one that I was going to share, but I got a I got a unique twist on it. Um, >> hey guys, quick pause here. One of the things that I hear the most often from listeners of my podcast, people that watch my YouTube channel, people in my orbit, is that they've been trying for weeks or even months.

They believe that this whole SAS agency thing can work, but they haven't been able to close their first client yet. And usually when I talk to them, they're spending several hours a week watching YouTube videos, listening to other podcasts, perusing Facebook groups, trying to see if there's something in there that can help them. But when it comes to turning that knowledge into actual business results, they're stuck. And the real problem here is that all of your algorithms, especially YouTube, are just engineered to serve you up the hypest content possible that keeps you stuck in this cycle, thinking that your breakthrough is going to be in the next video.

That's where you're going to find the silver bullet. But the reality is, you probably already know what you need to get your first 10 clients, let alone one. You don't actually need more information. You need less information. What you need is a super focused plan that shows you what to do, how to do it with real examples from real people and showing the results they've gotten from this process. So, after having these conversations literally hundreds of times, I decided to put together a resource that can do exactly that for you.

It's called the Highle Launchpad. And in it, you're going to get a super tight six lesson course that you can watch in under an hour, apply it, and literally have your first client in a week. So, if you're ready to get out of the treadmill of just watching content and not making any progress and you just want one space where you can pay attention and get everything you want, the launchpad is only $5. It's available in the description of wherever you're watching or listening to this.

I'll see you inside. So, uh, even now in 2026, but, um, last year or two years ago as well, uh, when I was getting started with Review Harvest, what I started doing after I had a little bit of traction, I maybe had a couple clients, was I just posted a few day in the lives of basically saying like, "Hey, day in the life of me starting my own marketing company, helping local businesses get reviews." And I would just like show a time lapse of me sitting at my computer and if I like, you know, if I went out and grabbed something from the mail or it was just pretty boring videos, pretty much just me in front of my computer.

Um, but I would just kind of talk about um what I did that day with like an, you know, just B-roll throughout the day of just shots. And what happened was was that all the people that already followed me, like probably everybody listening to this online probably has a personal Instagram page or Facebook page that has 300, 400, maybe a,000 followers. And I think we're so scared to like break down that barrier. We're like, "Oh, I want to get clients, but I don't want anybody to know that I'm doing this whole thing, you know?" But if you can just break that barrier down, there's going to be a couple hundred people in there that already know, like, and trust you.

And so, if you just let them know, here's what I'm doing. Here's the value it provides to a business, and like here's kind of my unique twist on it. I made three day in the life videos um over the course of like maybe two or three weeks. And um I got three clients from my network of people that already knew me, had followed me um and were like, "Hey, I have this thing, you know, I have this business and I'd love to try all out." So we still have a lot of those clients. >> And one of the coolest parts about that is it forces you to actually say what you're offering, too. >> Yeah. >> Cuz if you just say, "Oh, I'm like doing this marketing thing, like maybe you might get some people, but where you were so specific, >> then you knew what to sell them when they came to you and they were the right kinds of people were reaching out to." >> Yeah.

And I think it too, like being vulnerable about it helped. Like like I would post day in the life videos where I was like, "Yeah, today was a rough day. Like I'm doing this thing. Here's my offer. Here's the value it provides. And today, you know, I had a a rough sales call or today I you know, things didn't go as planned." And just like being real uh builds so much trust. Um because you'll see those like most likely the first five or 10 you're going to post are just going to be shown to your followers and stuff, but you'll see videos like that get 5,000 views, 10,000 views all of a sudden.

Um, and so if you tell people um, you know, kind of genuinely what you're doing and what you're going through, it could build a lot of trust um, from the get-go. >> Jasper, number three. >> Yeah, I building off the kind of social media idea. Um, there's a method that I like to call the Facebook group method and I'll join groups that are like local town talk groups. So like there's one in Riby where I live that says it's called I love Riby and I'm allowed to talk about it.

And so picking the group's important. That's like the first step. You don't want to go and join all these like business groups because you think like, oh, business groups will have business owners in them, but they're the spamiest groups ever. They're just like a bunch of marketers like us trying to sell people stuff in them. And so I found those local town groups, even though not everybody in that group is a business owner technically.

I found, you know, maybe 10, 15, 20% of them are business owners. And so I'll go to those groups and I'll make some sort of post like this. I'll say, "I'm doing a free website for one business in the area who could really use one. No strings attached. All I ask in return is for a positive testimonial from you if you like the website we build for you." Something like that. Just like really short post to the point. And what will happen is like all these business owners will start commenting, "I need a new website.

I need a new website." I'll DM each of them. I'll just say, "Hey," I'll comment back to them. I'll say, "Hey, I sent you a DM." And then once I get them into the DMs on Facebook Messenger, I'll just start a conversation. Hey, saw that you commented on my post in the community, um, saw that you guys might be looking to get a a new website. And they'll say, "Yeah, we've been looking to do." And they'll just kind of open up to me, tell me, you know, about their business, what they need, and then what I found is they try to sell themselves to me because I told them, I'm going to pick one of them to do the free website.

And like they saw that 20 other people commented. And so, you know, tell me about your business. I want to learn more. and I'll just get into a good conversation. Some of them I'll jump on the phone with and talk to them over the phone to build even more rapport with. And then um I'll just tell them at the end of the conversation, hey, like let me talk to the others that commented. I'm still deciding which person I'm going to go with for the free website.

And they're always like, "Okay, let me know." Or whatever. And then and I'm not lying. I will at the end of talking to 20 different businesses, I will pick one of them and I will do it like no strings attached, no setup fee, no monthly, and actually do a free website. But then I have 19 other people now that I will reach back out to, have already had good conversations with, and I'll say, "Hey, we already picked Joemo Plumbing as the free website.

I'm sorry we didn't end up going with your business, >> but because you commented and because I can really tell after our conversation that you guys need a website, I would love to do it for a discounted price." And then I can decide what that discount is. Every time I've made this post, I've done it at least five or six times. I get three clients almost every single time or sometimes more. Just a really good way to show that you're local.

It works really well if you do it in the community that you're actually part of and don't try to like fake it in other cities and states that you're not actually living in. And then it reverses the roles like you no longer are selling them. They're trying to like almost sell themselves to you of like why they should go with you. a lot of them will still buy from you if you give them that, you know, discounted price or whatever at the end.

So, >> okay, my number three is using a local directory to start the conversation. So, no matter what you're doing, like having some kind of bridge before you get into a sales conversation is super helpful. And this one, um, a friend of mine, Tom Gatis, we did a full podcast on it, but he has a directory software where like in an afternoon, you can have one set up for wherever you live. And you could make it for like like Justin lives in LA, which is kind of big.

So you could do a smaller area, but you could do like LA home services like network.com or something. You can put people on this directory and without their consent. You just list their business just like they're listed on, you know, some other sites even if they haven't requested to be on there. And then you can drip out emails to them or you can call them and be like, "Is your name, phone, email correct here?" They say yes or no.

You're like, "Awesome. It's great to meet you by the way. I'm the founder here at XYZ uh thing. Like we're just trying to help out, you know, local contractors." And then what he does or what other people have done is say like, "By the way, I saw this thing on your website. don't have a chat widget or like, "By the way, I ran this free marketing report on your Google Maps listing. Do you mind if I send it over? I noticed a couple things that could use fixing and they by this point know that you're a real human.

You're not trying to scam them and you've already done something to help them, which is give them a if if you don't know anything about SEO, it's called a backlink. So, a local directory linking to your business's website is just good for you SEO wise." Tom told a story about a guy who was going to networking events and just getting ignored as like the AI marketing guy because everyone was kind of wary of him and like didn't know if he, you know, think he could actually help them.

And then he went to the networking event after setting up his directory and he's like, "By the way, I have this free directory. If you guys want to be listed on it, let me know." Like every he was the magnet in the room that everyone was going to and trying to talk to. And then what you can do is kind of bundle in the services that you already were going to sell. like merchant for example where you um you know are upping Google maps rankings or what Clay sells just Google reviews or a website or whatever bundle that in with a premium listing on the directory.

So, you sell the premium listing for, let's say, 500 bucks a month. Basically, everything you were going to sell to them anyway, but it's has this extra thing of being like, you're a premium listing, you're at the top of my directory, which your directory would won't be getting a ton of traffic at the beginning, but it's still has the value because of how much other stuff you're bundling in with it. And uh it's just the closest thing to like really simple beginner outreach that almost anyone can duplicate.

And they don't have to be super sales inclined. So, I I love that one. It's I'm list I'm saying it first because I know people are gonna click off the podcast. That's probably my my real number one. >> All right, Hidden. >> I'll do the same thing. But yeah, so my my number three would be running um local ads in your area to get clients for your marketing agency. Again, I know, you know, I had the same thought when I first started running ads.

It's going to be super complicated. I won't be able to do it. You know, I'm not going to be able to, you know, how to figure out Facebook and all that. But that was the the moment where my agency kind of took off. Um, and again, it's it's really not that hard. So, basically, you know, if you live in a really small area, it's going to be a little bit harder, like just very small population. But, um, if you're in any midsize town that's local, people know each other, you, you know, see people at church or restaurants or whatever it is, people are probably going to recognize your face, they're going to recognize something in a video.

So, what I did was I'm from Michigan, Ann Arbor. I went to uh the big house which is just like I mean you know college sports or like religion in in in Michigan and other areas as well. But basically, you know, just holding up my phone, calling out local business owners, um, talking about my offer, and then just having the big logo in the background. And that can be a stadium, that can be a landmark, like a statue, something that people will recognize in the area.

And then any lead that came through that I would call, the first thing they would say is, "I just filled this out cuz I saw that you were local." Like, "I just filled this out cuz I saw that you were this." They didn't really even care about what I was saying in the video. It was just I need a marketing guy. I can tell that you know you're local so I can trust you. And then it just opens up the conversation. So again, you could set this up with one 105 minute YouTube video.

Like it's really not that hard. But I would honestly say it's the the single best thing I've done to get clients. >> Love that one. >> I've actually never heard that before. That's like really smart. As someone that comes from a different world, that's like super cool. Is that something that all of you guys do or >> I've never done it, but somebody asked me like if I were to restart a couple years ago and I said I'd literally go to the state capital of Utah, film that. >> And I know that I'd get like and you could depending on like what your script is, you could get some like lower like smaller type businesses, but like >> if you say like, "Hey, Salt Lake City businesses, do you want to be like the top HVAC company that everybody recognizes and thinks of?" You could sell them a pretty huge package if you're good enough at what you do.

For most beginners, you're going to want to do something smaller. But >> what I can say too is that I've done this ad, same script. You know, it goes back to sales just being about trust and making relationships. And it's just like when you can be the local guy, it just puts you ahead of everybody else that's hammering their phone all day, you know? >> Yeah. At the time, I started with only like $35 a day. Like I started um getting leads, like high quality leads for like $5.

And like when you run run local ads, typically you run ads and you're looking at like, okay, not that many people are going to respond, not that many people are going to show up to a call, you know, not that many people are going to close. And you have like all these drop offs. But with the local ads, every single conversion rate is better. More people respond because you're local. More people show up to the call cuz you're local.

More people close because you're local. And also like like you said, like you start to get recognized. That's I spent I have 15,000 yearround residents in my town. I spent like less than $6,000 on ads over three or four months. And literally anytime I went around and talked to a business owner, they're like, "Oh, yeah, I see your ads all the time. I see your ads all the time." >> Oh, that's amazing. You had you had a spin on that campaign, didn't you?

Where you would then use case studies in different towns. >> Yeah. Yeah. I I literally all I would say is like, and you know, we've talked about this before, but basically using a local business as a case study, especially one that they would recognize. So like the two case, one of my best ad ever, um, I live in like the 30A area of Florida. that's what people know it as. And so I'd say like, "Hey, I took 38 Blaze from X to Y reviews." And just plug in whatever you're selling, right?

You can whatever result you provided. I took 38 Blaze from X to Y and I took 38 golf carts from X to Y as well. Those are both prominent businesses in the area that have the name of our town in the business. And so, not only was I calling out 38 business owners, but I was also showing them business businesses or business owners they know personally that I got them a result. And so you can take advantage of like all of the all of the local trust and all the good things going on there.

You can just that's I was able to literally close clients for like less than $40 an ad spend. >> Wow. And you can guys if you don't have the money to spend on ads but you do have a case study, you can also post that same thing in the local Facebook group. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. >> And that that's like it's not even likely to get taken down because it's so helpful. Like if you just give give give in the Facebook group like here's this case study like here's everything that we did.

We gathered the list of customers. We texted them. We got 150 reviews from that initial text. Now we integrated with this. Like spell it out so they could do it themselves. And I promise you you're going to have dozens of people reaching out to you from that case study because they don't want to do it themselves. >> Great one, Hayden. >> Appreciate it. Mhm. >> Um, so as Kita mentioned, I run a content agency, which means my perspectives are quite unique and my three are going to be very different from you guys.

Uh, to break down like what that three is going to look like and I guess a teaser for the audience. The first is going to be a style of content that you can make even if you have like four IQ and you have like no clients whatsoever. The second is if you have maybe like one or two case studies, really applicable for you. Um, and again, really easy to make. The final one is for the people that don't even want to make content. they just want outreach strategies.

This one outreach strategy I have personally used to sign clients even though none of you guys have probably ever used it before. I'm really excited to see what you think of it when uh when I share that. So >> for context guys, Dom had what do you have on Instagram? Like 10K >> uh I want to say about 13. >> Okay. Yeah. So 13K on Instagram and he's worked with some of the biggest names in the content space. like >> yeah, >> he he has NDAs with with some of these people, but genuinely like he's pursued by some of the biggest names in the online space because of the style of content he makes despite having a relatively low follower count. >> Anyway, uh the first content style that I'd recommend for the beginners with four IQ or above is live demonstration content.

So, the main mistake that people make when they do create content is they just kind of preach. They just think I'm gonna teach a bunch of stuff because I watch a YouTube video by Kea and I'm just gonna like regurgitate stuff that you might say to other people whether they're trying to like help people with agencies or sign clients for their like local business or whatever. The issue with that is it doesn't stand out.

Nobody cares and it doesn't show any actual proof. So even if you have no case studies, no experience, what you should do instead is demonstrate how you would execute something. So, that could be a live funnel build or a live ad setup or whatever else you guys do. Um, >> like here's how I would change this person's website. >> Exactly. >> Even if you've never changed a website before. >> Exactly. It's essentially if it was a YouTube video, it' be watch me build a X per month ad strategy in 20 minutes.

And you would then upload that. You again, you don't need any case studies to do that. you can just talk through your process or what you think the best process is for building that for a pretend local business >> or one that you're trying to reach out to but you haven't actually signed them yet. And then when you've broken down that strategy and anyone sees that, they now know that you know what you're talking about even if you don't have the case studies to back it up yet. >> I think that's great.

I mean, think about Hayden's example of running the ads. Even though that advice is amazing, it would just make it so much more helpful if someone could see on screen him selecting like send those leads to a uh to like a landing page instead of using meta lead forms, you know, and the landing pages say, you know, X Y and Z to actually get them to to take your call when you do call, right? Because I think like there's like the conceptual, then there's actually like the doing it in practice and if you just do it in practice and show it, like anybody can then follow and just so much more helpful. >> Yeah.

I think for beginners, probably in your guys' industry, correct me if I'm wrong, would probably be something like a live website build. If you posted a video to Instagram of you rebuilding a website from scratch, you don't have to have any real experience beyond like watching a few videos on how to do that. But then local businesses can see that video and see that you're 10 times better at building websites than they are.

And they might just pay you straight off that and they don't need to see any case studies or anything. Can you speak to like would you put it on Instagram or YouTube or both or how what platform would you start on? >> Yeah, it really depends on where you're at um and what you're currently doing in the agency. So, for example, if you run meta ads uh like your Hayden, I'd recommend you build an Instagram brand like as soon as possible because people are going to be able to see your brand, right? >> So, when they get fed an ad on Instagram, it will say your name, it'll link to your page.

So if you have a brand, if you have followers, if you have content, then they can see that even if they didn't necessarily convert off the ad, they might follow you, they might consume more content and then buy. Uh whereas if your YouTube is separate, obviously they're not going to see that. That being said, YouTube is definitely easier to like get clients from. It just requires more understanding of content and effort up front.

So if you're someone that has a lot of time, then I would honestly recommend YouTube because that's where I started. That's where I started signing clients that just like came to me and I didn't even know what I was doing and I could just sign people for multi4 figure deals. Um, but yeah, Instagram is definitely easier for for beginners if you don't have that much time and you don't really know what you're doing and you don't have the time to learn.

You just want to like post and find out. It's way easier because you can post multiple times a day. You get better at speaking on camera. You get better at hooks and everything just naturally. >> I like I like that too cuz like I you guys probably get it too. Um, I mean, as you grow on social media, you'll get DMs all the time of these people sending a little video and it goes into your spam box, at least mine all the time, and it's like, >> "Jasper, what's up?

Looks like you're crushing. I made this quick video for you showing how we can improve whatever." And like since they're all just in like my DM inbox, I just delete them all and never even watch them. But I like the idea of like posting it on your page and like adding that business in the description of the post cuz there's no way they don't see it because when you tag somebody in a post, they always will see that and you put it out live.

And and I think half the battle of like getting clients is just letting them see what your offer is in the first place. A lot of them just delete the email or delete the DM or whatever outreach you do. And so like that's one way to like for sure get in front of if they have an Instagram page and you at them on their on your post that you make about their business and how you would improve it. I think that's that's money. >> Yeah.

To add to that, I realize we're spending a bit too much time on this, but um something that I've seen work really well for people is they will just pick the biggest name in that niche. So if it was like the plumbing businesses in Michigan or something, you just pick the most popular one with the most reviews. You do some kind of like live rebuild of their website. Even if they don't see it, all of their competitors might see it and they know like this is the top guy in the space.

They might see that as an advantage if they work with you because you just proved that their website wasn't as good as it could have been. >> I think it's also like super important to put them all in context with each other because something like branding is amazing and should be done like always throughout your journey as you're starting and scaling, but that's not going to get you your first client in the first 90 days realistically.

You know, same with like how long did it take you guys to get any traffic on YouTube, right? You probably made videos for months before anything. Whereas like running ads, you'll get a client maybe same day if you optimize it well. So like you want to make sure that you're picking the right strategy to get clients that will be like a long-term momentum growth so you can scale, but also something that's like shortterm so that you don't lose all of your like, you know, your uh your positivity too early on and give up. >> Yeah. >> All right, we're back to you, Justin.

What's your number two? The favorite part of what I do is I get to work with so many people that are either in the beginning phases of their agency and they just got their first client, now they're trying to like fulfill it all. Um, or they're trying to start the agency. And the number one mistake that I hear all the time from the most number of people of everything you could possibly think of is like worrying about the details that don't matter.

Like when you're just getting started, I'm not a lawyer, but I would not set up my LLC first. I wouldn't spend three months making sure my website is perfect. >> You know, some of our like our best agency resellers have probably the worst website you've ever seen and they're selling websites to small businesses, >> right? Like until you have revenue, >> all of those other things are like luxury things that are just distractions >> and going to take away your ability to actually get clients. >> So like it I think as it's it is a strategy to get clients, which is only focus on getting clients. >> Anytime you're thinking about like your website, do I need a business card?

What's my new domain name going to be? Is my logo flashy? What are my contracts going to look like? Like if you're asking those questions before you even like pick up the phone and had a conversation with the lead, like you're you're totally down the wrong path. >> Yeah. Yeah. I also think that like psychologically it makes the outreach harder once you spent 6 months working on your onboarding process and your welcome emails and your website, then like you have all this like sunken cost into like, okay, I'm going to make a cold call and the first one's going to go bad.

You know, the first one's not going to be great and then you be like, I spent six months on this and this is what it's going to be like. Whereas like instead you go to the day one and you make a 100 calls, you haven't lost anything besides whatever time it took you to make the calls, you know, and you might have gotten a client from that, you know, >> and you'll learn that like those onboarding emails that you made are worthless because like that's not how the call went. >> Yeah.

Something else. >> Exactly. >> Clay, number two, >> all the people that you know and interact with, whether it be digitally or whether it be in your life. thinking of all the business owners, you know, and I think that people like freak out like I don't know any business owners, you know, I don't have a bunch of people uh that I know that just own businesses, but literally you probably go to a restaurant in your local town all the time.

You probably go to a gym in your town all the time. You probably interact with 10 to 15 business owners every single week or businesses every week that you're not even thinking about. And so the very first thing I did um when I was getting started and I was like slow and I needed to figure something out was I just went to my phone contacts and I literally just said hey their name I'm starting this thing where I help you get XYZ benefit which was like rank higher on Google get more customers um I'm doing it for the first couple people um for free just in exchange for feedback or exchange for testimonial um you know do you know any business owners who'd be interested so you can send this message to all of your friends or all your parents' friends or whoever Um, and they all know business owners.

Um, and you know, or most of them do and at least one business owner. Um, and you'll start to get referrals. And the thing is you can start like getting clients even still to this day for review harvest at like 66K a month is still kind of like the hardest thing that we do. Like just getting someone to trust you enough to pay you is like that is still our bottleneck. And so in the beginning you're doing the hardest part of even like larger agencies, but you're doing it with no resources, no experience, no skills, no knowledge.

And so when you start with just your warm contacts, people that follow you on Instagram, people that follow you on Facebook, uh your friends, your parents' friends, your your phone contacts, you get to genuinely start on easy mode with people that already trust you. I mean, you could offer to pay them 50 bucks to let you fulfill the service. they probably won't take your money, but like you just want to remove all the friction you can from getting those first five clients because once you get five clients, not I mean I don't honestly think not even if they're paying you, but once you've like delivered five results for a local business owner, you get the process and it makes it that much easier. >> Out of my first four clients, one of them was our family barber. >> Nice. >> And the other was our landscaping company.

And it was both both of them it was like, "Hey, I'm brand new to this starting this. I have no idea what I'm doing. Like super apparent with it. >> Um but I'd really love to do it for you for free and uh and now they're both paying and they've been paying for over a year. So >> that's awesome. It also is just a great way for you to get experience and you know mess up without having somebody's card on file. >> Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

And if you're a homeowner or if you own anything and and you you are buying anything, I recommend you talking to them about their business because like when we bought a house, it's like all right, we got to get screen in porch, talk to them about business. We got to get pressure washing. Now we do the reviews and they exchange them for uh uh pressure washing our house. And so like every single business that we hire, I'm specifically going to Google and strategically finding people I think would be a good fit and then calling them and asking for a quote, you know, and sometimes getting four or five quotes and asking about, you know, hey, what do you do for reviews?

So, it's worth just getting like the the like the the dust off and getting your first couple clients no matter what. And just because you gave away the first client for free and the next one you only charge $100 a month doesn't mean your third one when you're more confident can't be 500 a month and then your 20th client you know 2,000 a month. Like the pricing thing is really interesting where a lot of people will pick within this huge range and they're offering the same thing.

And I think it just comes down to like confidence. So like build up your confidence and don't make don't worry about the money for the first couple clients. Just get that confidence to then charge you know. >> Yeah. And I can't tell you how many times people that I've talked to that are getting started are working a part-time job and I'm like awesome. Does that part-time like does do you know the b do you know your boss?

And they're like yeah like would that boss let you do some marketing stuff for them for free or pay you a little bit more on your income or whatever it is. My very first client that's still paying us to this day um was $2,000 a month and I had worked for them in high school and I was like I'm in college. I don't want to get a job when I graduate but I'll do marketing for you. And that was like literally broad marketing.

I was like, I'll take videos, I'll post, I'll do Google business profile stuff, I'll do your website, whatever. And they they still pay us to this day, like 3 years later, four years later almost. >> I think I think they should know that we were with a small business operator yesterday and it was like uh like there was blood in the water. Like this guy had no chance for you guys not to sell him on something. >> Yeah.

The guy driving our boat when we went wake surfing, Hayden was on him like wide on rice trying to sell him a CRM for his new dealership. I've got his phone number and a reminder on my calendar in two months. >> Let's go. Um I was going to say working hourly, like if you're selling those people locally or like in your Rolodex essentially or your old employer underrated. Like say I'll work for 15 bucks an hour. then you don't have to sell them a monthly retainer and like they're you could even say five bucks an hour just as long as you swipe the credit card and they like feel like they're getting a good deal.

Um >> yeah, it's it's uh it's almost better than a free trial because they trust that like they feel they don't feel as bad about it and they can't ghost you because they got to pay you. >> Uh so I've got u with this one I got three different experiences. Um but the method is giving away like kind of like custom gifts >> to businesses. So the first one when I was like very first starting I was still working at my mortgage job.

I was trying to sell to other mortgage companies because I had already set up all the marketing for the company that I worked for. So I was like I'm going to go to companies in other states, other mortgage companies in other states and try to sell them the same thing. And um so for this one company, I like had looked them up on Google. I thought they'd be a really good candidate for like they had had a bad website. They had low Google reviews, all the stuff, all the signs that of somebody who needed us and needed our help.

And I printed out I went to like my local graphic design shop. I got like a couple different mugs made with their logo on it. I got stickers printed out with their logo on it. Things that they may have already had, you know, because they they, you know, own the business. but I just wanted to go over the top for them. And so then I walked in and I delivered all these like little goodies that I had printed out from the local uh graphic shop.

And it maybe costed me like $40, $50 to print everything. Um but they like were super appreciative that I had taken the time to like do all this stuff for them before I even walked in. And um they were like one of my very first few clients that I landed um that was a different mortgage company than the one that I worked at. Second one is actually an affiliate of mine. He's a 17-year-old kid who lives in Riby, Idaho, in the town that I live.

And I met him at the gym um working out and he ended up signing up for GoHigh Level and wanted to start an agency. And anyway, uh what he did is he like just went he like got a box of crumble cookies and he walked into like 10 different businesses in the area, gave them each a box of crumble, which you think like, oh that's a lot of work, but really a box of crumble cookies like 10 15 bucks. So, it's not that big of an investment, you know, he spent whatever 150 bucks between the 10 businesses and he ended up closing like half of them like and and he's a 17-year-old kid in high school.

Um, >> that's such a cool story. >> So, that's number two. >> It sounds expensive, but that's cheaper than meta ads. >> Oh, yeah. >> It's better than getting a Zuckerberg. You know, you actually build >> way less anxiety. Like, but meta ads will give you anxiety through the roof as a beginner. >> Worst case scenario, give out cookies. You gave some people some cookies. >> Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. you're not going to get cussed out.

You know, >> they they really appreciated it and he's like young kid, too, which might have helped him out. You know, I'm like high schooler in the area and and anyway, but um and then the third one was one that actually worked on me. So, um, you know, Walt and, um, Johan with, uh, white labelled suite, they they've now sold it. But >> anyway, they, uh, one time W or >> this is a software company that gets you leads that you can do cold outreach to in the high level space.

So, they were reaching out to Jasper. >> Yeah. So, they wanted me to become an affiliate of their company, of their software. And I had never really given them the time a day. Like I'd seen them a few times at the high level events and stuff, but I never really gave him the time of day. So one time like Johan messages me on Instagram. He's like, "Yo, dude, what's your address?" And I give it to him just thinking he's might like send me a card or something.

And then like 3 months goes by cuz he's from Australia. And so he I guess he had shipped something but it took a long time to get to me. And all of a sudden at one day at the door this box shows up and inside the box is a shirt that says Sasquatch on it. So, it's like a Bigfoot, but it's like SAS, like software. And so, he combined my two favorite worlds. And very few people knew that I was like really big into the Bigfoot stuff.

They knew I was like into Go High Level, but he somehow figured it out. And he big into the Bigfoot. >> He combined my two favorite things into he actually gave me three different shirts and um all with like different Bigfoot me and SAS memes. Um, so anyway, I didn't it didn't say who it was from though and I had forgotten he had messaged me like months earlier. And so I put it on my store and I said, "Whoever gave me these t-shirts, I will buy whatever it is you're selling.

Just let me like slide up if it was you." And I had some people that said it was them, but it wasn't really them. And they were just joking. But um, Johan messaged me. He's like, "Dude, that was me. You remember when I asked for your address months ago?" I was like, "Yeah." So anyway, um we ended up doing like I I brought him in with my community and we did like a big uh you know, had him pitch his stuff in our community and um anyway, and I promoted his stuff a little bit from that.

But like I very rarely will respond to people that are trying to like get me to like, you know, market their stuff, but it worked. I was like, "Yeah, dude. I'll without even knowing who it was, I said, I will pitch whatever or I will buy whatever it is you're selling because it was so unique." Yeah. >> I can test that. I think I reached out to you years ago and uh this is the first time we've met. >> I'm sorry for >> it was worth the wait.

Don't worry. >> All right, here's my second one. I was going to put this one. I think the next one I have is actually number one. Like my favorite one that I wish more beginners would do. About six months into my agency, I ended up getting a business partner and he had a list of every single orthodontist's email because he had worked at a previous orthodontic marketing agency that had an orthodontist as the like CEO of it.

And the orthodontist was able to get everybody's email from the like database of orthodontists that you can access if you're part of the um if you're like a licensed orthodontist. So that's how they got their email list and they would like send broadcast to it and everything. So we kind of like inherited this email because that business shut down and he didn't care and whatever. So we had this like really valuable email list and most people would have done like standard cold email like hey I can get you eight more patients this month like reply yes if you want to like chat but we for whatever reason just like didn't know about that or didn't know to do that.

And so instead what we would do is send like a normal newsletter and like provide value in the email that we send. So I was at that time I would make like a YouTube video breaking down like here's what we did this week for whatever client or like you know five orthodontic marketing strategies or whatever. You don't have to make the YouTube video. You could just put it in the email. But we would make the YouTube video and then we would send the email and then say click here to watch the YouTube video.

And our YouTube channel also had like, you know, customer testimonials and interviews and stuff. And so I literally was coaching my nephew's soccer practice or soccer game. And the other coach, I noticed he had orthodontist on his shirt and I was like, I wonder what he's like, hey, are you an orthodontist? He's like, yeah, you look so familiar. And he like pulls up his email and he he's like, oh yeah, there you are. He was like, I don't remember opting into that list.

And I was like, "Oh yeah, you know, like sometimes it just happens like you know, you don't remember." But we would we literally get like a client a week from it was like a combination of strategies, but from that list, pretty much every time we would send an email, we'd get a client from it. So we book a couple calls. So I think if you can scrape like a really high quality list of a certain industry and then don't do normal cold email on it. just do value as if they had opted in and assume that they don't remember because they they I mean people opt into stuff all the time.

They start getting emails like that. I'm pretty sure there's people doing this to me because I don't half the emails I get I don't remember opting into that email list and it will fly under their radar of like all the other cold emails they're getting. And instead they're going to be like, "Wow, you you demonstrated your expertise in this and I want to buy from you. I want to talk further about this instead of like the direct pitch that everybody else is doing.

So, I think that one's pretty sweet. >> I totally agree with that one. I get I get a bunch of cold emails now that are kind of uh disguised as weekly updates in a certain industry and I I read them all. I I know I never subscribe. These are from companies that maybe I would consider them a competitor, but like they provide value and I love it. And >> you know, we've had a weekly newsletter for years and they're a huge pain to write, but they give value. you show you're an expert and and yeah and it pays off.

So yeah, I love that. I love that idea. >> For my second one, I think it'd be it's kind of more so of like a strategy than a story or anything. But if it was like let's say I was starting from zero, it would be, you know, end to end the fastest way that I think I could get a client. Um cold calling number one. But in terms of actually doing it, kind of the way that I like to think about it and how I've thought about outreach for the last year is is like a bullseye, right?

So, wherever you're from, kind of going back to the the local strategy, you're at the center of the bullseye. And then the further and further you get out, every ring is like less trust, right? So, the further you move away from that, um, without a brand, >> that's so smart. >> But yeah, like, you know, assuming that you don't have a brand or a big platform or anything, nobody knows who you are. So, the further you get away from where you're from, less people trust you.

So the way that I thought about outreach when I started my business was I'm going to stay as local as possible as long as I possibly can. So basically what I would do is um you know you can use different tools instant data scraper whatever you want to do uh out scraper scrape a list of you know depending on what you're selling if you're doing highle stuff I think any home service business works well any like high volume business I would scrape a list of every single landscaping company in Michigan where I'm from um first actually in my town cuz that's like the center cold call those business owners and basically burn through that entire list before I would switch to anything else.

And I would just slowly move out further and further. And I basically spent up until a couple months ago, I was still just outreaching within my state. >> Wow. >> Because there's so many businesses that you can >> This is what I thought you were going to say is type it into Google Maps like whatever it is. And there's usually, even though you can't do this anymore, there's a couple like houses that'll be like an HVAC company or a plumbing company.

Sometimes they're on the next street. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> And you could literally be like, "Hey, I'm your neighbor. Like I live on this street." And they'll probably recognize the street name. And that like there's probably like a hundred businesses within a mile of you that have a home address as and you could be like, "I'm literally your neighbor." And I you said you saw someone like actually door knocking door >> which is honestly it's it's similar in you know not finding them on the address but every time I would call somebody I'd be like hey I live 10 minutes from you.

I'm in the same town. when I'm starting this thing, you know, would you be willing to meet for coffee? That's something that Clay's talked about a lot, too. Meeting in person if you can in your local area. Um, that's I think when I've met people in person, I probably close like 90% of them. >> It's crazy. Especially if you buy them coffee or buy them lunch, like I honestly think just the reciprocity of like and you know, we don't sell like $20,000 stuff, you know?

It's like the reciprocity. I feel like people are just like, "Yeah, let's do it." Um, and also you uh you grew like so fast. It's like you you know two years ago you hadn't even you didn't even know this space existed you know and so like bad strategy like yeah it was a lot of work but like you made it work you know >> for sure yeah >> so this second style of content uh I referenced earlier helped me sign an 8 figure client or my first 8 figure client what is funny that I just remembered is it also helped me uh sell a gohigh level build which is super funny cuz like I'm so distant from that now but I I sold a go high level build for like 5 a halfk um which is pretty crazy >> this guy has so much random so many >> if you want to sell custom go high level builds then then still this um this I would recommend to people who already have like a couple of case studies not not necessarily because you need them but because you need the expertise in order to actually pull off this style of content.

So the first style of content that I gave you was the like live um demonstration style which can work for anyone whatever level. The issue with it though is that people perceive you as kind of like a freelancer or maybe you're only good at one thing. So if you rebuild a website, they might just be like, "This is probably some kid who rebuilds websites for fun. Can I give them $100 to just do it for me?" So yes, it might help you sign some initial clients, but it's not great for really scaling.

Whereas the second style of content will actually position you more as an expert where people do want to pay you like the big bucks for like, like I said, a gohigh level build, 5 a halfk. Um, and what that style is is what I would call a breakdown or you could also call it a deep dive. So my strategy was I would pick genuinely the biggest person I could find in the industry that I wanted to target. So for me it was like info guys, but obviously it's just like niche agnostic almost.

So uh the biggest video that I had was Shelby Sap who I think at the time was doing like 2 mil a month. I just made up the number um in the actual video. What I did is rather than just breaking down the one thing I wanted to sell, which might have been the Gohare level or might have been the content or the ads, I'd break down her entire strategy from top to bottom. And so in doing so, I could prove that not only did I know how to do one specific thing, but I understood the industry as a whole.

Like I understood the entire creator economy. And so the lead quality coming off the end of that were people that looked to me as an expert that could help them with everything. even if I only sold content, it's like I understood sales, I understood systems, I understood ads. And so that would position me as like a much um more premium product, I suppose. >> So how would you do that in a local sense? Like what would you be breaking down? >> It's tough on the local level to be fair, but if there is like a really obvious business that all local businesses aspire to be like, so it's not necessarily breaking down a local business.

So, I don't know. I don't know the the US companies here, but there's there's a plumbing business in the UK called Pimlo, which is national. I think you might even operate in like Scotland or Wales and stuff like that. If you were to hypothetically break down everything that you knew about that entire business and the model and how they made money and their team, org charts, everything like that, every single plumbing business that has any level of aspiration and ambition to scale would want to work with you because you are so much smarter than everyone else in that local area.

Yeah, I have a good example of how to implement this in a local setting. I two weeks ago or three weeks ago, I was trying to get uh some turf care done at our in our house because our grass was being bad. And I uh filled out a form on a website for this company and didn't get an email, didn't get a text, got nothing. It's like seven days later, somebody shows up at our house. I forget that I even filled the form out.

I thought this guy's coming to door knock us and sell us. Um but he wasn't. I fill out the form and so talks to me, goes through I'm like, "All right, great." I literally asked him, I said, "Can I pay annually now to save some money?" And he was like, "Oh, the office handles that." You know, the office the office will send you an email or whatever. And so then he leaves 5 days later, uh, like still no text, no email.

Turns out my buddy down the street has a long company and provides a service. And so you could basically whatever business you've worked with or you've gone through their sales cycle, you've like interact with on a day-to-day basis, you can break it down and say, "Hey, here's all the places that this was a bad experience for me as a customer and here's how I would change this for this business." We'd fill out the form on the site.

I'd get a text and email and confirmations before I show up to your house. Right after like once we get there, we can, you know, collect money through the connector app. Just tap to pay. Um, and then from there you'd know exactly when your schedule is cuz even the company that sold me and actually um is doing our service, they never they never told me that they were doing it. They didn't tell us that, hey, we're done.

The only way I found out was there was a sign in like the back corner of our yard that said pesticide has been sprayed and like so even them like the communication has been awful. So whatever customer journey you've gone through personally locally, break it down, find out how you can improve it and then make a video about it. >> All right. I mean the number one one has to be cold calling. So, like, Hayden, I'm going to go a little deeper on on that.

When I started, uh, I the whole business was funded with $4,000. And I had a VA in the Philippines who would cold call and try to get someone's attention and then once they were ready, he would then like hard transfer it over to me so I could do the closing because I didn't have the time. It was a side hustle. I didn't have the time to like be doing all of the, you know, the hour. You could call for like seven hours and have one good conversation, right?

I didn't have that that time. And then I took the approach of just getting them to talk. So basically saying, "Oh yeah, like I would first love to hear what you're doing for marketing." And what you're going to learn in that conversation is that they have no idea what they're doing. And most likely they hate either uh like Yelp or Thumbtac. And bam, you have your in. Right? Do you know what they've tried, what's not working, where they're uh, you know, what like landmines you shouldn't then pitch, and then you just kind of explain.

You let them talk and talk and talk and talk. Oh, yeah. I hear this from business owners a lot. Yel, the yak, the uh the uh the Yelp ad campaign, you know, didn't work, whatever it is. Um, and then you be like, "All right, well, let me explain like what I think you need help with." And then like you have their website up, you have the Google profile up. All right, I see that you have, you know, 4.2 uh rating on Google.

You have 17 reviews. your last one was from 4 months ago. Well, like you know the people that are getting all the the calls, you know, 35% of the clicks are going to the person ranking number one, you know, 30% number two, 25 number three. You know, you're number seven. So, you're getting like 2% of your market's leads because of like these couple things you're doing. Um, like let me let me like explain how I can help you. >> And then you've already kind of like built some rapport.

You know what they don't like and what they like. And then you just go for the kill. And by that I mean you say like you know what do you have like 15 minutes right now >> so that I can just get you like it's not hard I just need to like understand your business >> so I can like get get you like the right solution that's going to get you the kind of leads that you want. >> Um and get them onboarded on that call. You do not want to take a warm call and be like how's next Wednesday at 3 p.m. because like >> they're going to be like on a roof fixing a gutter at that time >> forget about the conversation they had. >> Yeah.

They're going to forget 100% about you. So, like, you know, don't don't like forget that you have a solution to a real problem that they have and like you're doing them a favor. You just need to like figure out the right way to convey that you know what they need and that they can trust you. And so, >> um, get the credit card on that call, onboard them that call immediately. Give them the value and follow up with email.

Like, do not go cold. Yeah. >> Right. Cuz then they're immediately going to charge back, you know, your your charge if like they feel like they just like paid. >> Yeah. got scammed. Um, and like it's not hard to start cold calling. It it it sucks. Like nobody wants to do it. Maybe Hayden does, but uh but like all of our top performing agencies, they're cold calling machines. Like they just figured out the script, the value prop, how to get the leads, and like it's free.

Just go to Google Maps, type in plumbers in East Lansing or whatever city in America you're in, and just literally start calling down that list. or you know like there's there's lead scraping things. They'll give you a bigger database. You don't want to spend some money. We build a free tool because like we we just answer the question so many times how to get leads to cold call. >> Yeah. >> So like cold call man it's it's brutal but it's it's the best. >> Can I add one thing to that too specifically for merchant?

Um cuz I mean for anybody that isn't watching obviously you know I think a number of us are selling merchant now in terms of just helping businesses rank higher but obviously cold calling once you get them on the call at least for me with the businesses that I've sold now like what I recommend to other guys is the most powerful part of that call is me just sharing my screen and going like so where where are you showing up right now and we'll just search up like let's say they're a landscaper in in Tampa or whatever right landscape ers in Tampa.

The most powerful part of that sales call is me sharing screen, scrolling down very slowly so they can just feel every single time that that scroll goes by and they know that they're further and further down that list. Um, and you don't really even have to say anything else cuz it's just so obvious there, right? Once you tell them that those top three businesses get the vast majority of traffic and then >> they're like it's almost every time they'll just sit there for a second and go >> so what what do we need to do >> you know and it's just like >> yeah and and Balin will do that Balin will say like even on the call he won't be sharing screen if they're like you know not in the office or something but it's like all right I'm going to do a search right now all right search and then he'll just start naming the businesses that are above them and like oh got to click on next page whatever and B's like anytime you say a name of a competitor and they're like, "That guy's ranking above me that's chucking a truck.

He's got insurance. His work sucks." Whatever. Every single time you get them to like speak up about a competitor, he's like Ball's like, "That's closed deal right there. I go ahead and take the cash to the bank cuz they're coming." >> Uh, I did a full podcast with Balin. If you want to watch it, it'll be out before this one. >> You can watch mine first. >> And um, and to add to what Justin said about onboarding them right away, I So, the person that I closed last week, my first merchant sale, I didn't have any SOPs ready. like didn't have the email.

I didn't know exactly what I needed. So, I was like, I'm going to send you an email later today with like everything I need, but I closed him on the call and I should have taken 5 minutes and like just gotten his EIN for A2P and like a few other things because it's been an entire week and he's like he like can't fill out the onboarding form for some reason. like he's asked like 15 questions about the onboarding form over email to my my team and I'm just like oh I should have like it would have been so much easier and like even built more trust if I was just like I know I need these things and um so it and now let's say I have to push his I you know I'm like hey sorry you know we should have collected this sooner for whatever reason I push his billing back a week that that decreases my time to the next revenue and decreases his experience with my business instead of just getting up and running as quickly as possible.

And you'll find like the most common thread between anyone that has a successful business is action, action, action. And so the right like game recognizes game. If you're like, let's get everything onboarded right now and they don't have to think about it again, they're going to love you. >> Yeah. So my final strategy I would say it works for beginners and it can work well but like it's one of those things that you can really scale this up and it does you are checking multiple boxes of growing your business in like one kind of 20 to 30 minute activity.

And so I started a podcast I call it the built local podcast. I think it makes sense if you're a beginner either start like a local area podcast for local business owners. Mine's like more specific just to like home service business owners. So you can either niche down or you can start with your local one. And then um we mainly started with uh clients. Uh so we work with our existing clients, but I have done this with people that were not our clients.

And what happens is I basically messages them, hey, we have this podcast. Even if your podcast has zero subscribers or zero views or anything, just like throw up a YouTube channel, make a little trailer or something. It doesn't have to be complex. Um but you can just start messing business and say, "Hey, I would love to learn more about your business. Here's what we're going to do. uh just download a software called Riverside.

It's like 25 bucks a month. Riverside will edit the podcast for you and it will give you short form content. And so you reach out to a business owner, say, "Hey, I would love to learn more about your business on our, you know, Riby Idaho business owner show." Um, here's what you're going to get out of it. You're going to get a long form video you can post on your social media and we'll tag your uh we'll tag your website in the description and put it on our site.

You get a backlink. you're going to get, you know, five short form clips that you can post onto your social media about why your business is so great, how you keep customers happy, all this sort of stuff. And so you can send out cold emails to people who aren't even your clients yet. Um, but you can basically get them on the podcast and now you'll build a bunch of goodwill on the podcast to then pitch them afterwards.

And so basically what happens is when you get them on the podcast, you just want to learn about their business, ask them those softball questions that create good short form content that you can send to them. Um, and then at the end, literally, these local business owners have never been asked to be on a podcast before. So, I've had people show up in a suit and tie. I've had people show up and say, "Hey, my son is so excited about this.

When are you going to post it?" He said that daddy's going to be on TV. Um, and it's just like they're just watching on YouTube. All I do is put it on YouTube, you know? So, they are so excited. I I'll have people like literally nervous saying that they took like his annex before uh the podcast like like it doesn't matter. Like literally people this was this was even before our like I think now our our channel has like a thousand subscribers but like this was before we had 1 th00and subscribers.

It was like a couple hundred subscribers and people are so excited to be on this podcast because they want to talk about themselves. They want somebody to be interested in what they do all day. This business is their baby. And so if you get to make a video about their baby, they're going to want they're going to one love you when you listen to them and you make content for them and two they're going to want to be on that show.

And so afterwards now you get a bunch of clips that they're going to post with your logo on them because in Riverside you can just put like your branding on it and so they'll all have like for example for us they all have review harvest logo on it. So now they're going to post content that you made with your logo on their social media. You'll have the opportunity to get them as a client um because you can sell them after they're like really excited and giddy because you just did a podcast with them.

You're going to post a long form video that could get some views and build a lot of trust. Also, at the end of the day, once you start doing this for your clients, just the last question you ask after they're all excited and everything's been going good, say, "What's your experience been like with whatever your business name is?" And you will get the best video testimonials. I mean, I have like 4minute videos of people raving about us.

Every single one of our highest converting ads we've ever run for Review Harvest has come from that podcast. And then once you do have clients, you can use that as an opportunity to ask face to face for a referral to ask to upsell them into something else cuz you basically just get to like but it sounds like manipulative, but it's not. I mean, you're genuinely learning about their business and doing something good for them and for you, but like you get them in this state where they're like so jacked up because they just talked about themselves for 30 minutes that they're like, especially when they're a client and they just raved about you for four.

Then when you get off and you're like, "Hey, your website looks like it needs some work." like, "Yeah, do you'all do sites?" I'm like, "Yeah, actually we do." Like, great. Here we go. You know, card on file. You want me to charge a card on file? And you're good. And so, it's a little bit more advanced and there's a couple more steps, but literally if you have a computer with a webcam on it and you can get $27 uh subscription to Riverside, like you could make this strategy work.

Um, and it scales. So, now all that content you're making is getting views, getting views, getting views. So, it's not like one to one cold outreach because one podcast you make can get you 10 customers. Uh, this one's pretty short and sweet, but uh, just asking current customers for referrals. Uh, and to break it down into some like steps, I guess, beforehand. Um, I'd say if you're a beginner, like first step would be, I think, is really important.

And I'm kind of a hypocrite in saying this because I never really did this, but like if I were to go back and start over, I would definitely niche down at the beginning. And I would pick three different related niches. For example, I'd pick like plumbers, electricians, HVAC, cuz every plumber knows an HVAC guy. Every HVAC guy knows an electrician, plumber. They all they all work with each other. Or you could do like hair salon, nail salon, and um barber shop.

You know, they all know each other. They're all in the same industry. They refer business to each other already. And so I'd pick three, you know, related niches, uh, that aren't competitors with each other. And I would then land, you know, with through many of these different methods we talked about today, land one of them as a client, right? And then once you get that client, do really good work for them. That's important.

If you don't do good work for them, they're never going to refer you over to the people they know. Um, and then once you do really good work for them, shortly after the just like highest point of satisfaction, so like maybe it's right after you finish setting up their brand new website and they love it, you want to say, "Do you know any other and then name the two other niches that you work with. Do you know any other HVAC companies or electricians that you've worked with that could use this same service and might need it?

And can you introduce me to them?" And so you would get them to start a three-way text message conversation and then introduce you through that conversation. So just kind of like starting with niching down with those three sub, you know, related niches, doing really good work and then asking them to introduce you. And then if to go even one step further, if you want to make it even more enticing, you could say, "Hey, for every person you refer to me, I will discount 50 bucks a month off of your service." And you could throw in some sort of incentive bonus that way.

But um yeah, just asking for referrals. You might as well if you've already got people you know and they know other people. It's a just a very non-salesy approach to land clients more easily and have immediate trust because they already know somebody that you know. So, >> and in home service, you know, a lot of these guys are part of franchises and so they're in their owner Facebook groups or like Discords or whatever.

And so if you do good work for someone that's just, you know, one location owner, just ask them if they don't mind sharing it with the other owners. And often times they do take referrals from each other. >> Yeah. And you you can't be in those groups as like a non-franchisee or a non owner of that type of business. Um but if you can infiltrate them with a client that even like pay your client off basically to like be your advocate in that group, that's that's pretty insane. >> And you can give them something to post.

That's what Rob Bailey used to do when Rob Bailey was growing his uh database reactivation marketing agency and like all these kickboxing gyms or like all these, you know, gyms and stuff. He would basically like give people the post and like talk about a video or whatever and show tell them what to say or what to do and like here it is. Yeah, I'll give you XYZ incentive to start posting in it. And then he would just they would post in their own, you know, owner's Facebook group.

So, >> okay. So, my third one, I've never talked about this on YouTube because I don't think it would do super well, but like you should be on your edge of the seat, your like edge of your seat listening to this one because I think it's actually really really good. Like probably one of the cheapest ways to get the highest quality leads possible and it would be going to paid events. So, in your city or in other cities, find something that's between like $200 and $1,000 to attend.

And you're going to find a lot of times bigger companies will send their like managers and employees to the event. And you know, if it's a smaller company, like the owner might be there, but the fact that they've paid to be there means that the quality is way higher than your local networking event where you've got like, you know, the plumber, the insurance guy, the everyone there like doesn't know how to grow their business except by like begging other people to like refer them.

And I hate local group. >> Yeah. I hate being like, oh my gosh, I hate those groups. Like if you want to go somewhere where your soul will die, go to a BNI group. Please give me customers. >> These events are actually good because you'll get a lot of times you get like food included with it. >> And you'll you can go to like some really cool keynotes that you'll learn a lot of stuff from as a beginner. So you're like investing your own education. and you can write the business expense off.

And you're getting in a room of other people who already want to grow their business because they're there at a a like business growth event with keynote speakers and they have money because they're paying for this type of thing and they're not like incredibly busy just like running their business 24/7 and can't do anything else because obviously they have time to go to the event. So, Andrew Wilkinson, who wrote the book Never Enough, he's like a billionaire, almost a billionaire, let's call him, uh, big private equity guy.

This is he he did the design for Slack, and he got Slack as a client because he went to paid events. So, he would just buy tickets, go to whatever event, and it was like this crazy lifestyle that he did for two years. But once he came out of that, he had like some of the biggest names in the industry. Everybody knew him. And in the age of AI, like the number one thing you're fighting against is all these other teenagers who are sending AI outreach and you have already knocked down like the first three objections which is like I don't know if you're a real person.

I don't know if I can trust you and like everybody does this by talking to somebody like normal oneonone. um you're going to have like a way higher close rate and you get them all in one spot instead of being like, "Hey, do you want to meet up one-on-one and having to like drive across town?" Maybe they close, maybe they don't. That type of thing. Um and this is also a really good alternative, I think, to like door-knocking businesses because uh you don't have to do as much work. you just kind of you're just like there.

You have a drink in your hand. Everybody's there chatting. You get to talking about what you do and you um like people who are interested and need that thing will end up using you if you're good enough at talking in those situations. So, I think that's that's an underrated one. Third for me, I was going to talk about referrals, too, but but going back to referrals. Um, I think number one, just I don't know why I neglected it for so long, but I I would say just for myself and and now personally what I'm trying to do, just asking like for there were so many sales calls, so many onboarding calls where somebody clearly trusted me, had a great relationship with them, and then I'd just get off the get off the call and try to move on to the next one.

And I remember there was one guy, an electrical guy closed, but it was the first time that I was just like I onboarded him and I was like, "Who do you know that this would help?" >> Yeah. >> And he gave me like five names. >> And now one of them has paid like $1,000 a month for this whole year and he's referred me to three other people now that that are all paying clients just from that one ask, right? So, I think that's one thing that I didn't realize.

Um, you know, especially with the highle stuff of just trying to stack as many clients as possible. It was just like for me, I was trying to move on. Um, but super high leverage there. And then in terms of getting them to convert, I think another problem that I've had with referrals is I feel weird. I don't want to be salesy cuz it's like I don't want to burn the relationship that I have with the person because now I'm, you know, dialing their referral twice a day for the next week.

Um, so one thing that I did last week, I know I've heard about it before, but I just guy connected me with with uh he's a a um a drain cleaner and he teaches at a a martial arts studio and he was like, "This guy needs some help, but he's a cop, right? He doesn't trust anybody. He's like super skeptical of all this stuff." So just realizing that I I was like not going to cold call him, but I just sent a little video kind of like what Dom talked about.

I was just like, "Hey, man. Um, obviously, you know, we we got connected. Um, if we were to work together, this is probably what I would do, but let me just give you a couple recommendations you could just do yourself." Uh, and I just went through onto the Google business profile through the website. So, I was like, and then another thing I would do is making sure that when somebody fills out this form, somebody's getting back to them.

Within like 10 minutes of sending that Loom video, he was like, "Let's get on a call." Closed him. >> Um, but yeah, just just a couple things there. Yeah. I think one thing too is like sales in general and getting clients in general, but just like you gotta if you're broke and you like want to make this work, you got to leave your shame at the door. Like like I mean you're on a sales call and you're like if you're like, "Oh, I'm not going to ask for a referral yet." But seriously, ask for referral on every single customer touch point.

Like we need to do better that for review harvest. And every time I do like drill that with me and Carly or whatever like, "Hey, sales call, we're asking for referral." Because you will get people to say, "Hey, on a sales call, hey, do you know any other business owners who need who need reviews or who need this? Do you have any friends?" Something you will get people to say, "Well, let me try this out first and let me see how this goes." And so then I just simply say, "Okay, great.

So, you know, if we do whatever success looks like for you, maybe it's a new great website, maybe it's getting 25 reviews, whatever it is. If we do that, you do know some people that you get us in touch with." And like nine times out of 10, they say yes. And then you're like, "Okay, now you already have a commitment. So now when you're onboarding them, now when you're doing check-in calls or you're emailing them, you've already got kind of a micro commitment for that referral and you can ask again. >> I think also even though like it is like kind of embarrassing or like I don't know it it's hard to say, "Hey, do you know anyone else that might need this?" Remember like you would probably do a lot of stuff for $5,000 and you just asking that question is making you probably more than $5,000.

Like that's way easier than I don't know a buddy daring you to like do something crazy for five >> grand for sure. Okay, so the final strategy that I have for everyone watching is obviously outreach related, not content related. And it could genuinely be behind a payw wall. Um, I paid money for this information. The reason that it is so valuable is because you can basically get like a 10x open rate on any Instagram message that you want to send.

So, as Jasper alluded to earlier, nobody checks their their DMs. I mean, how many followers do you have on Instagram? >> Uh, uh, 50,000. >> Yeah. So, 50,000. you're not checking your DMs. Imagine you're trying to get the attention of someone with 200,000 followers, 500,000 followers plus, like the biggest people in your industry. This is like ideal for signing dream clients. So, I'll explain how it works. First, you add that dream client to your close friends list.

Then, you create a video pitch like on your story and ideally you build out some free value. It has to be hyperpersonalized to that person. whatever like would 100% get you a book meeting with this person. You then upload that to the close friends story and tag that person so that even if they don't follow you, they get a notification because it was close friends and they're the only person that can see that story because they're the only person on your close friends list.

On top of that, because it's your close friends list, that story is the first thing they see. So, you see all your close friend like green uh rings before you see the actual stories. So, they're going to see that before they even see their friends stories, unless they're on other close friends list. Um, and because you tagged them, they're obviously going to open it. So, like you genuinely get insane open rates on this.

Obviously, it just depends on how good your pitch is as to whether you get the meeting. Um, but yeah, like unbelievable way to get extremely high quality clients, like really high level people. >> Printing. >> Did that close you a client? >> Yeah, I know there are some people that have got like in touch with some crazy people like million follower plus people um just through that. Wow. Can you tell us like what the video said on the story? >> I think mine would have been something around like a free design that I did or something like that.

Um I don't remember entirely, but it would have been like a free funnel design that I just did with AI or something. Um like a webinar funnel or something. >> You have to realize like no matter how much money someone makes, they still pull out their phone and scroll on Instagram when they're taking a >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> That's unreal. That's like that's a that was a great last one. Yeah, that was bigger. You can tell this guy makes content, you know, like he knows. >> He knows what to say and how to say it. >> If anyone wants to connect with any of these guys, we're going to try to do like a sixway YouTube collab. >> Yeah, let's go. >> Um, if you want to sign up for Merchant Justin software, the link will be below.

It's completely automated way to rank Google business profile. So, if you have a Google Google business profile or you have clients that have Google business profiles, great upsell or intro offer. We'll see you in the next one.