The link to the podcast can be accessed at the top of the page. A full transcript of the podcast can be accessed below. Thank you for listening, and happy marketing!
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Speaker 1:
Welcome to The Agency Founder Podcast. Are you ready to grow your marketing agency? We pull back the curtain to show you how real marketing agency founders struggled, built and scaled their agencies. Practical advice, lessons learned, wins and losses. We hold nothing back. Now your host, Jeromy Sonne.
Jeromy Sonne:
Welcome to The Agency Founder Podcast by Moonshine Marketing. Every single week, we interview the successful founders of marketing agencies at different points in their journey to pass on their victories, defeats, challenges and lessons learned to help you take your agency to new heights. This week, we’re speaking with John Coyle of Explosive Growth Marketing, an agency focused on maximizing growth and customer acquisition for national brands looking to scale. John, thanks so much for being here with me.
John Coyle:
Of course. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to talk agency life.
Jeromy Sonne:
Yeah, right. National brands looking to scale, that’s an interesting niche. How did you land there, if you don’t mind me asking?
John Coyle:
Yeah, of course. Rewind back to 2014, I worked for this SEO agency and we… this massive SEO agency at the time. I think we were the biggest SEO agency in the United States in terms of number of clients. We had like 17,000 clients. They were all local businesses. It’s not super hard to get local businesses ranking in Google. It was just a process. It was an assembly line. They have like 500 employees. Some people knew a bit about SEO, a fair amount about SEO. You got the opportunity to learn a lot while you were there. But yeah, it just was massive volume of clients, all local, all small type of thing. Actually, interestingly, at that time there was this online group on for runners, marathon runners.
John Coyle:
They hired me their director of marketing. I was the only employee. I had no idea what I was doing, but I did my best. I started running Facebook ads for them. I transitioned from the agency I was at. I was doing that part time on the side while I was working at the SEO agency. I transitioned from there, I went to another agency that is really big. They have some clients that… I think their biggest client actually does $1 billion a year, but they focus heavily on auto dealership groups. There’s a lot of revenue there. Again, we’re talking local marketing.
John Coyle:
I was the head of paid social there because the qualification was that I had to run some ads on Facebook. I got the head of [inaudible 00:02:38] job because Facebook was pretty new at that time. It was running lots of local stuffs, lots of lead gen. Then that agency actually started working with some e-commerce brands. When I first started running some ads for e-commerce brands, that was when I was like, “Yeah, this is what I’d like to do. This is what I want to do. I want to work with just a few clients at a time, but clients that can feel really big because they have the ability to sell all over the country instead of having to work with a bunch of accounts that can only sell in a local area.”
Jeromy Sonne:
For sure. 17,000 is a few more clients than I’ve got, admittedly. That’s really interesting. What’s the experience of working with that number, just diving into your background a little bit more versus that more focused approach that you’re talking about now.
John Coyle:
Yeah. For that agency, the whole thing innate, in orientation on the first day you work there, they literally say, “This is assembly line SEO.” It’s not like they’re ashamed of it. They’re literally taking people who are raw, their employees who are completely raw, and they’re teaching them to do one specific task as it’s related to SEO. They just create a massive assembly line of college kids all the way up to… Some of the managers there that are older and more career oriented, but a lot of times, those people are more focused on managing teams than really being SEO strategists. They have one SEO strategy team there that are high-level marketer SEOs, but they really… To handle that many clients, this is what I noticed was it has to be process oriented, not people oriented. You can’t be doing something that requires a lot of thought work from your team because to handle that many clients, you have to have a massive team and you can’t expect them all to think the same and stuff like that.
John Coyle:
Yeah, I just realized like, yeah, if you want to grow really, really big as an agency serving local businesses, you have to get a lot of clients because local businesses usually have smaller budgets, and they have set budgets. Then, to get a lot of clients, you have to create just something that’s out of the box turnkey process to get those clients’ results that fit their budget and fit what they’re paying for.
Jeromy Sonne:
Yeah. No, that’s a really interesting different approach. Contrasting that and what I was hearing from you is now your agency is you’re working more with people maybe, and you’re a little more focused on the relationship and how you can scale because with large national brands, right, it’s how much can we get so long as the return on ad spend or whatever metric is solid. Is that a fair characterization of what’s going on now? Tell me about that experience.
John Coyle:
Yeah. That’s, ultimately, I realized I didn’t really love working in that kind of assembly line environment, mostly because I realized that I really, really like marketing. I really like learning about marketing tactics, strategies, thinking through problems, actually having put in thought and having some creative problem solving. That was what I enjoyed doing. At that company or at companies like that, it doesn’t matter how smart of a marketer I ever get to be, unless I get onto the internal marketing team for this company, the team that markets the agency, or if I get onto the strategy team, I will never really be utilized. That side of me that really likes to actually problem solve and look at each individual account and say like, how can we get better results? It would have never been possible there. That’s what I like to do.
John Coyle:
Yeah. So that’s what it’s like working with more national brands. I say like, “Look, in order for our agency to make more revenue, we don’t have to go get”… A lot of times local businesses, if you ask any local business owner like, “Hey, what’s your monthly marketing budget?” I will bet you dimes to dollars, at least 5 out of 10 will say 500 bucks a month. Just spit it out. That’s 500 bucks a month probably even going to spend on marketing, no matter what kind of return you can show them. It depends on the local business. Of course, some spend more on stuff like that. That’s just standard, right?
John Coyle:
If that’s the case, you can’t really fight for more budget out of those people. So, you just have to go get a ton of clients, whereas with a brand that wants to scale nationally, like you’re saying, if I’m working with an e-commerce brand and they say, “Hey, if I’m running Facebook ads for them, and that’s the scope of work I’m doing for them.” They’re like, “Yeah, we need a two and a half ROAS, and as long as we’re getting a two and a half ROAS, we can spend 100,000 a month or 150,000 a month, or 250,000 a month or something like that.” Usually, my pay is tied to that level of either the revenue they’re bringing in or their ad spend or something like that. So, I can make more money… I just wanted to put myself in a situation where I get to make more money for being a better marketer, not for banging through more clients more efficiently.
Jeromy Sonne:
Yeah. That’s actually really interesting and something that has come up yet, but I know is really popular, especially inside of the performance marketing circles and the Facebook advertisers. A lot of people talk about doing either performance marketing or tied to ad spend or something like that as opposed to a flat fee or an hourly. Can you talk a little bit about how to put those deals together because it’s got to be a little bit custom every time? Why you like those deals over maybe a more traditional hourly rate or something?
John Coyle:
This can be a deep well that I have a lot of thoughts on because I’ve changed my pricing model, wiggled it around, and adjusted it. It’s ongoing, right? Even right now, I am. I’ll just convey what I’ve learned about pricing model and how it ties to your business. So before you decide how you’re going to charge people, what you need to decide is what is it that you’re really good at from an agency perspective? Are you really good at bringing in new clients? Are you really good at actually running campaigns for clients? Are you really good at scaling? What I realized early on was that… Well, I don’t know, early on, it probably took me way longer than it should have. What I really like is I like to be compensated well for running marketing campaigns.
John Coyle:
I don’t like to be compensated well for doing biz dev and running my own ads and doing sales calls five times a day or 10 times a day or whatever. That’s not how I like to be compensated. That’s not how I like to grow my own business. I like to grow my own business by running ads or running email campaigns or text marketing campaigns or whatever. So if that’s the case, if that kind of person you are, if you’re like, “Hey, I want to be a really good marketer, and I want to make good money based on how good of a marketer I am,” then the pricing model you need to choose is one that isn’t going to have you chasing clients a lot. So, one that will retain clients well, and one that will make it so that when the client results are really good, you get paid well and the clients will stay with you.
John Coyle:
So typically that means that when the client results aren’t good, you don’t make as much. I’ve priced up until fairly recently is I’ve had some kind of flat fee or a revenue or a percentage of ad spend. Like you said, the performance side of it or the bonus side of it, you could say that always is like a little bit different depending on what kind of business model it is. For example, if it’s a subscription box and they have a really great front-end offer where it’s like a $1 first month or something like that, a percentage of revenue, it is a great deal for me because if I’m running Facebook ads, the acquisition revenue per sale is only going to be $1, and they might be able to afford $30. So, then, it will be something like a percentage of ad spend.
John Coyle:
Same with a lead generation campaign. If the primary goal is leads, usually, it’s a percentage of ad spend. If it’s e-commerce, like maybe more “traditional” e-commerce brand, where they need a two or three ROAS, then it might be a percentage of revenue or a percentage of ad spend. Ultimately, I’m actually just looking for something that works well for me and for the brand, and allows everybody to maximize the relationship. So, up until recently, I’ve had flat feet or that. In talking [inaudible 00:11:36] to another agency owner recently, he only charges a percentage of ad spend. That’s it. He doesn’t charge a flat fee at all, which I think it gives a lot of agency owners pause or a lot of agency, people like me, pause because it’s like, “Well, what if the campaigns are going bad? I’m not going to get paid anything or I’m going to get paid really, really small amount.”
John Coyle:
This is what I realized the trade off was is average churn time for me usually is between 6 and 12 months. It’s usually like when a client campaign, when they’re in a bad season, right, or they’re in a slower period with their ads or something like that. I ended up charging the flat rate a few months in a row because we’re not hitting performance and we’re not hitting performance bonuses. Then it gets to the point where it’s like, “Oh, the flat rate is too much for them to pay.” They churn a lot of times. He, and the whole time, have been running an agency for 40 years now, has never once had a client churn because he only charges for ad spend because what happens when the things aren’t going well, they scale down spend. Why would they ever fire him? He only gets paid for what he manages.
John Coyle:
So, I was like, “Oh, that’s really interesting.” If you want to get paid well for being a good marketer, being a good ad buyer, you want to set up a model, and I’m not saying everybody should just go out there and not charge flat fees or whatever, you want to set up a model where, yeah, you don’t have to chase clients very much. So, you retain clients and you make good money when things go well, and you’re motivated to get an ads manager to grind out creative or do whatever it is you do to get results. That’s what we’ll end up paying you more.
Jeromy Sonne:
That’s super interesting. I think that, that really aligned interest in regards to how you’re compensated versus how the client performs really. I think, probably, it does do a lot for retention. It probably does. Can you talk a little bit about what that does on your end? What does your team look like? What’s the makeup? How does that long-term client retention and focus on just a few people effect, how you structure things internally for your agency?
John Coyle:
So, the internal structure is the challenge to what I’m talking about. I think that, for me, a lot of why I wanted the flat fees was because people who subcontract for me want flat fees. I can’t just convince them, “Hey, why don’t you just take only a percentage of my percentage or something like that?” It’s not them, that’s the entrepreneur. It’s not them that owns the business. So, their whole thing of working for someone else is like, they don’t have as much risk for not as much reward. So, usually, they want flat fees. So that is actually the challenging piece.
John Coyle:
So I don’t know that I have a ton of insight on structure, but I’ll tell you what essentially I’ve seen work for myself and for others I know who use a similar model, where they really only get paid on performance. Side note, I’m not saying go pick up whatever client you can and just say, “I’m only going to charge you a percentage of ad spend.” There is a vetting process, so that you’re not working… You’re trying to protect yourself against having clients that like, “Ads really don’t work at all for them.” So you never really get paid because then you’ll just have like, again, you’ll go back to have 25 clients, all of whom don’t spend very much. It’s the same thing. So, there is a vetting process there. It also gives you that unique selling proposition of like, “Look, my pay goes up and down. It’s in the client.”
John Coyle:
So internally though, oftentimes subcontractors, team members, whatever it is you do, they will want some flat fee in some performance upside. So, the way that I work with that compensation structure is I say, “All right. Well, we will do a flat fee,” and you can base it on whatever. I think what tends to work is for a new employee, a new subcontractor, whatever, trying them out on one project. So if they’re a media buyer, you just say, “All right. Well, I’m going to put you on one client and have a little bit of a test run together. Let’s get in a field and play together and see how that goes.” Then you just pay them per client, pay them a flat fee per client or an hourly rate if they prefer an hourly rate, but you balance it.
John Coyle:
So for you, with the client, you have really high reward on the outside and really bad revenue on the downside, and you’re taking away that risk factor. They still make money even if things don’t go well. As much as I want my people to make tons of money when things are going well, and they have the opportunity to make good money when things are going well, it’s not like the reward side has to be really more balanced in my favor. So when things scale really high and go really well, I do really, really well and my team member does well.
John Coyle:
The reason because I need to store up past reserves for when I need to pay them their flats when things aren’t going well, if that happened. So, that structure, like it’s still the same structure, but then yeah, see if you can get team members to reduce hours if things aren’t going well across all your accounts, or if they’re per account and then account isn’t going very well, you can just say, “Hey, I’m going to take that account back” or you’re just going to focus on your other ones for now or whatever.
John Coyle:
There’s ways [inaudible 00:17:10] up and down on their flats, but their flats are the risks that you incur. So, I just make sure that [inaudible 00:17:16] really high, the amount that I’m making versus the amount I’m going to pay out in flats on average is going to be very favorable for me. So, that things have to go really, really south in order for me to be like, “Oh, crap, I’m not making any money.
Jeromy Sonne:
For sure. Yeah. So, I mean, honestly, that’s the way that we do it. So what we do is most of our work, we work with some brands directly, ones that have like an internal marketing team or whatever, and they just need media buying help, media buying strategy, analytics, that sort of thing. Most of our work comes through working with content creative agencies. What we do is we just take a percent of their percent of their take. That seems to go really well. We don’t do flats plus percent, but we do minimums. So, you either have to hit that minimum or if we’re scaling up beyond that, then we’re going to scale up beyond that. So, I’ve found that as a happy medium for us, at least.
John Coyle:
I’ve bounced around. So, I used to say, “Hey, you need to be at this minimum.” The easiest way for me to think about this in terms of what I do is like, let’s say somebody wants me to run their Facebook ads, and I’m going to do it on purely a percentage of spend, I used to say something along the lines of like, “Hey, you have to be at this minimum spend for me to take it on.” What I found in a lot of cases is that you leave clients on the table doing that and they could be really good clients. For example, they could be a wholesaler who’s looking to go direct to consumer, or they could be someone who’s grown largely through Amazon, and they’re looking to go direct to consumer or something like that.
John Coyle:
It’s like, everything is there for them. They’ve got ability to make good creatives. They’ve got ability to do a lot of stuff, but you’re saying they have to spend 30k a month before they can work with you or whatever it is, and you leave good clients on the get go. I used to do a minimum type of thing. Now what I do is I’m more casual about the conversation. I just say, if they’re already spending a certain amount, then I’ll just come on at the percentage, if it’s agreeable. If they’re hitting my minimum, I don’t even need to say anything. I’ll just come on. But I will say like, the conversation will go, something like, “Yeah. We just do purely a percentage of revenue or purely a percentage of spend, but just know that if our number gets below this for a few months in a row, it’s not like we’re going to drop you or something like that. If we have to allocate the resources on your project to something else for the time being, I may reallocate those resources.”
John Coyle:
We just want to be aware of that. We just want to make sure we have that ongoing conversation. That’s not a very official way to have the conversation, but most brands get it. They’re like, “Okay. Yeah. If you’re not making very much, you’ll keep your finger on the pulse, but allocate resources elsewhere, or maybe you’ll pause for a little bit. I just tell them the possibilities. There’s been times, not for me, but for someone I used to work with who does the same model, I used to subcontract for him, where he eventually just realized like, “Hey, we’re never going to hit your target CPA to scale. We’ve tested so many things. The things we’ve asked for on your side just aren’t getting done fast enough. The other clients and projects came along that are more promising. So, we’re going to have to pause this until you guys are able to do X, Y, and Z or something like that.”
John Coyle:
So, yeah, that’s how it looks like on the minimum side, but they’re not spending at all. They’re not hitting my minimum when they want to come on. I’ll just set up a flat fee for a test campaign type of thing.
Jeromy Sonne:
Sure. I think that makes sense. Well, it’s interesting. It’s actually really gone deep into the pricing model and stuff like that, that I haven’t really gotten to explore with other people, but it’s fascinating really. Is there any other [inaudible 00:21:09] going off of that theme a little bit? As you see your agency growing, and you’re going and looking at this performance-based model and stuff like that, do you think you’ll be able to keep that up? Is the dream to grow?
Jeromy Sonne:
Obviously, the dream for everybody is to grow bigger, or maybe not. I know some people that their goal is to stabilize and should just hit a monthly average target and keep that for the foreseeable future. Assuming that you’re looking to grow, as you grow your team, as you grow your agency, are you just going to move up and try and work with larger and larger brands to grow revenue that way? Are you going to try and move laterally, work with more clients, but at a national scale already? What’s your growth plan, I guess, is what I’m curious about.
John Coyle:
So, that’s a good point. So what I would say is that the first thing you should think about in terms of a growth plan that most business owners don’t, and this is all business owners, not just agency owners is, what is it that you really like doing? What’s in your zone of genius? So what’s something that you’re really good at and you really enjoy doing? Which aspects of owning your business, running your business is that? Then, what you really want to think about is, as I grow, I really want to grow in that role. I want to continue to do what I really like, or there’s this aspect that’s really exciting me, that’s the role I want to grow into. I I think you should be honest about yourself whether you’re actually really good at something or if someone else can do it or whatever.
John Coyle:
So that’s a big thing is that, for me, for anybody growing an agency like mine, for example, a lot of people would just be like, “Yeah, I know you go after bigger”… It’s a combination of you scale up your current clients. You go after bigger clients, and you create more products that you can offer your clients. So, maybe, if you run Facebook ads for them right now, you can run their Google ads and then you can get paid on that spend, too, or that revenue, too. You can run an email and you get paid on that revenue, too. We’ve done a combination of all of that. But at the end of the day, what you’ll realize as you bring on more clients, or as you bring on more products, you will realize that you become more managerial, right?
John Coyle:
So, if you really like running campaigns, you’ll do less of it as you bring on more clients or more projects or more team members. It’s like if you really love running marketing campaigns, then I think the route for you is to try and figure out how can I get in with just a few brands that I believe are on this really great growth trajectory, and then tie my companies growth trajectory to theirs, but that doesn’t still also thinking about you want to be diversified enough that you’re protected, and the floor is not going to fall out from under you if a client leaves or something like that. Yeah. If that’s what you really like doing, that’s where you should look. That’s where we’re at right now is we’re looking at how can we have maybe closer partnerships with a few of our clients that we really like working with. We really like the work that we’re doing [inaudible 00:24:31] on those clients. We believe that they are going to grow really big.
John Coyle:
How can we do that where we’re essentially working on a few projects and our company growing at the rate it’s going to grow based on how well we’re doing as marketers. We’re still diverse. We’re still working on enough different projects that if one of them isn’t going well for it, that for a period of time, or if one of them decides to part ways with us, it’s not going to be detrimental to us. So, my whole thing for growth is my growth goals aren’t just around revenue and profit. They’re also around a number of clients I’m working with and a number of team members.
Jeromy Sonne:
Interesting. So, it seems like a diversified growth strategy, not like we’re going to grow by getting more clients or we’re going to grow by going after bigger clients. It’s a little bit of columns, A, B and C.
John Coyle:
Yeah. It’s a little bit of everything, but really more, the vision is to say, “I want to work with a team, a small team of people who is all highly skilled and really smart. I want to work with a small group, a handful of clients, who are all really great clients and really great to work with.” Those are the two caveats. But I also want to grow to this level of revenue or something like that. But revenue doesn’t count unless those other things are met because I realized that type of environment is going to be where I actually get to do the marketing strategical things that I really love doing.
Jeromy Sonne:
Yeah. I think that’s a good point about whether or not you like running an agency or you like running marketing and figuring out that about yourself and being inspective when it comes to what it is that you’re trying to build and be intentional with that. Would you say that, that’s a fair, a really thing that you should learn early on so that you can head in the right direction?
John Coyle:
Yeah. So, well, I think I’ve seen in the most successful agencies in our space is that their leadership really starts to get in the groove of what they clearly like to do and are clearly good at. One example, Right Hook Digital, they’re really big Facebook advertisers for e-commerce. Their leadership team has really grown into the roles that they like to do. So like Dee, he’s their head of sales and business development. That’s what he is into. He’s into talking to people about marketing and talking to people about what makes e-commerce brands successful and stuff like that. Going to events and meeting people like, that’s what he’s all about. Scott, their other founder. He is all about really being in ads manager. So, he’s grown into this role of like, “I am the head of how we stay ahead of the curve on Facebook.”
John Coyle:
So, another example, is Tier 11. So Ralph Burns is the head of Tier 11. I would be willing to bet he doesn’t spend a lot of time in Facebook ads manager anymore, but he really does like having his finger on the pulse of Facebook manager and creating content about it. So speaking and doing podcasts and stuff like that. So, Scott would be an example of, yeah, introspection helped him realize I love running campaigns. So he’s grown into that role whereas Ralph is like, “I love geeking out about marketing and teaching it to other people.” So he’s grown into that role. Dee says, “I love geeking out about marketing with other people.” So he’s grown into that role.
John Coyle:
I think, a lot of it is like when you’re planning your growth, you’ve got to have that little venture. You have to see what success and love of your everyday life looks like for you. Then, what is the model for this agency and team that will create that for me? It’s not easy. I don’t know. I feel like I’m saying that like, sounding like I had it all figured out. It’s an ongoing process for me.
Jeromy Sonne:
For sure. I got you. I say a lot of things that I’m trying to figure out myself. So totally get it. So, one last question, just to get in your head a little bit. For folks that are listening to you and say like, “Hey, this sounds really good. This is what I’m going for.” Where you’re at right now, what’s your biggest challenge you’ve faced in the past? What challenge are you looking towards next as you see where you’ve come from and what you’re trying to grow into?
John Coyle:
All this stuff I’m talking to you about is the answer to both of those at a high level. Knowing thyself and getting figured out. So, there’s been phases where we brought on massive numbers of clients, massive numbers of team members. We were running ads, and it goes really… You could say that that’s really successful because we made a high-revenue number doing it, and we had a lot of clients, and we’re able to grow the business. What I realized was that it was like, “Oh my gosh, this is an operational. I’d have to grow into being just an operations person to run it this way.” So, I scrapped that, reset gradually to a different way. We’ve probed it out a few different ways.
John Coyle:
I’d say like a lot of what we’re talking about is the biggest challenge. To be maybe a little more specific, biggest challenge for me has been other aspects of being a business owner. So, if you’re looking at starting an agency, or if you’re an agency owner for a while or whatever, if you’re an agency owner for a while, I don’t know if this advice applies to you because you know this already. But if you’re looking at starting an agency realized that… That’s what I’m trying to say here is that, ask yourself why you’re wanting to start an agency and what it is about it that attracts you because there’s going to be a lot of just running a business stuff that doesn’t have to do with marketing. If you want to do it because you like marketing, but if you’re like, “Hey, I just want to run any business. I don’t care if it’s an agency or not.” That’s fine. Or team members, hiring team members, knowing the right… how much should I be making? How many clients should I have? To hire team members, [inaudible 00:30:43] that out. It’s difficult. It’s very difficult. At least for me, that’s been my biggest challenge. Yeah.
Jeromy Sonne:
I actually totally hear you. I think that, that is a really good point that you hit on. I just want to address real quick. I see a lot of people, they take courses and they’re like, “Oh, Facebook ads. I’m going to start a Facebook ads agency.” Then, there’s nothing wrong with that in theory. But the truth is, is that I see a lot of people that really just want to be entrepreneurs. I’ve actually started actively dissuading people like that, where I’m saying like, “Okay, you don’t have a passion for marketing. You don’t really, in some cases, don’t really even understand marketing.”
Jeromy Sonne:
Not that, that’s a bad thing. We’ve all been beginners at some point. If this is a passion and you want to do it, then great. An agency is a hard business to get into. I don’t think people really understand how much of a grind it is to establish yourself and find really good clients, and then work with those clients in a very intimate sort of way, scale them up, deal with the different challenges that come with it. By the way, any services company is going to be lower margin than a pure product company or, at least in many cases. So, what are your thoughts on that? Do you agree with me there or no?
John Coyle:
I actually agree with you for the most part with some caveats. I think you’re right. I think you’re looking at it from the perspective of… You’re a little bit like me where you actually really love marketing and strategy and all of that. You’re like, well, some of these people just want to be entrepreneurs, and they don’t realize that an agency is an expertise business. Well, so, I’ll give you a few points that I disagree on. I think that one of the reasons people get into the agency life, and this is like a lot of times you see these people struggle and struggle and struggle is because it’s actually probably the easiest/quickest way to make your first dollar as an entrepreneur. You know what I mean?
Jeromy Sonne:
Yeah. That’s fair. That’s true. No, yeah, yeah. You could just go door knock and get $200 a month organic, social media management contract. Pretty much anybody in America could find some small business owner that would be like, “Yeah, sure. I need somebody to do Facebook for me.” I agree with that, for sure.
John Coyle:
Yeah. You’re providing a service. All you have to do is find somebody and say, “Hey, I’ll do this for you for money.” Providing a service to business owners, they tend to have enough money that you can actually start to gain a little traction and make a little living for yourself. So, I’ll say that. That’s why a lot of people get into this because it’s like, “Oh, this is the easiest business model right now.” They’re like, “I want to be an entrepreneur. I don’t want to work for a boss anymore. I want to work from home.” People getting into this space that are… or getting into the, I guess, make money online space or whatever. I don’t know. I’m really stereotyping and thinking of all the guru ads that are out there pitching the agency.
Jeromy Sonne:
To be clear, I’m not talking about somebody that works at an ad agency and is like, “I’m going to do my own,” or somebody that was a marketing manager or something. I’m talking about the bought a course crowd. You know what I’m saying?
John Coyle:
Yeah. So, I’ll say that because, yeah, actually, you create a quick win for people with the agency because they can find somebody who will pay them to do something for their business. Your point of like this isn’t a business to get into if you’re not passionate about marketing. I will disagree a little bit on that. You have to understand that about yourself from the beginning. So, you have to realize like, I am setting up a business right now, that I’m completely disconnected from. So think of it as like, you probably worked with some physical product companies, I’m guessing. Sometimes, you’ll reel up… You might work with a brand that sells home products to women. I’m using an example for myself. Home products to women, it’s run by bearded dude to… They’re like, “I don’t really care what the products are, what the brand is. I don’t have to be the market in order to do this. I don’t have to be passionate about home products in order to run a successful home products business.”
John Coyle:
Some people would disagree with that. I think that I do know some successful agency owners who don’t have a passion for marketing, but they understand from the beginning that this is just… I am the CEO of this business. So, I have to find the people who are passionate about marketing to run it, or I have to find clients where it’s basically just easy to get them results on more or less a turnkey basis, and nobody really has to be passionate about marketing. So, the SEO company I’ve worked at, I don’t think that… I think maybe when they started, they realized that they had the ability to get local businesses results. So that’s like how it got going. Beyond that, I don’t think that any of the people in the C-suite there were really super passionate about that’s your marketing anymore. So, I think you can see an agency like that, but when you’re going to do the work, you’ve got a good point. I don’t think most people realize that when they’re getting into it.
Jeromy Sonne:
Right. I’ll just put the ad up, and I’ll hit go ad, and then it’s whatever. I learned some secret trick or something like that. Then I’m going to get it out the door, but maybe I’m just being a grumpy guy. I don’t know. It’s possible. I’ve been grumpy before.
John Coyle:
A lot of people are like, “Oh, I’m going to go work with e-commerce businesses. They get their first client. It’s like a drop shipper. It’s somebody, who has no unique creatives. They’re not set up for anyone who’s experienced, knows they’re not set up for success with ads or whatever. This person’s like, “Oh, great. I got my first client. They’re so excited. They’re not getting paid very much.” They run ads and nothing happens. Right. They get no sales, and they’re like, “What? How? I thought that the whole challenge was getting the client.” They don’t realize that it’s like, “No, no. Getting the client, man. I don’t even know half the battle. It’s like getting the right”… Like you’re saying, the right clients can have success and then knowing enough to actually make it happen for them.
John Coyle:
That’s a whole different thing than if you’re buying a course, getting into the agency space because you just want to be an entrepreneur. You can be an entrepreneur in other ways. If you want to start an agency, you’re not passionate about learning about marketing, then realize that you need to create an agency that doesn’t rely on you being passionate about marketing, or you need to go work for some… If you do want to create an agency [inaudible 00:37:27] go work for somebody for a little bit.
Jeromy Sonne:
For sure. Yeah. I will add the caveat that I was being a little… I was going after a very specific kind of person because a lot of folks that we work with are really smart content marketers or really great graphic artists, or brand designers, that sort of thing. They’re looking to offer full service. I think that’s great. I think that’s awesome. I’m just saying, if you’re just trying to get rich quick, I don’t know if this is the best industry for that. That’s all I’m saying.
John Coyle:
Okay. To drive your point home, somebody said this about the music industry. I think it really applies to the agency industry as well. They said there’s never been a better time to make a living as a musician, but there’s never been a worst time to get rich as a musician. I would say the same thing about agency life. It’s a great model to make a few bucks, make a living, pay your house payment, whatever. It’s very hard to get rich. So, if you’re looking to get rich, it’s a long road in the agency space.
Jeromy Sonne:
Yeah. Even if you’re going to do the fulfillment, right? You go out and sell and you’re all excited. You closed $1,000 retainer on that client. You’re looking for a fulfillment partner. Half of that, at least, goes out of the door immediately. So, it puts a lot more pressure on that sales side.
Jeromy Sonne:
So, I really appreciate you being here. I really like the tone that this took, honestly. I learned a lot about pricing and negotiations and introspection around the way that you want to grow [inaudible 00:39:10] the agency business, thinking about that at a high level. So, I really, really appreciate that. I let every one of my guests do a quick pitch for whatever they want at the end of every episode. So, I’ll give you a one or two minutes here to do exactly that.
John Coyle:
Yeah. I won’t pitch anything that I’m selling or anything like that, but I’ve got a couple of things. So, first of all, I run an agency mastermind. It’s free. We hop on a Zoom call every other Friday or so. It’s just various agencies, with various kinds of agencies. So, it’s really interesting. Yeah. We talk about this stuff. Some of it is mindset or self development. Some of it is like, how do we solve these problems around hiring, finding good people, training people, stuff like that. So, if you’re an agency owner and you want to get in on that, just find me on Facebook. That’s such a weird… Or email me. I’ll give you my email. It’s J-O-H-N @coyle-enterprises.com. So coyle-enterprises.com.
Jeromy Sonne:
C-O-Y-L-E-enterprises.com.
John Coyle:
Right? Yeah. So, you can email me if you want in on that, or find me on Facebook. That actually is the best way to get in touch with me. I know we can link my Facebook. My user handle is facebook.com/johncoyl without an E. So all one word. So it’s J-O-H-N-C-O-Y-L, if you want to connect with me on Facebook. Message me and say like, “Hey, I’m interested in getting in your agency mastermind.” We can get you into that.
John Coyle:
Then the other thing I’m doing that has been working, this is like more tactical for clients, getting results for clients. I’ve been doing a lot of collateral campaigns lately, where I’ll have multiple brands within… have similar demographic and psychographic marketers. We’ll collaborate on a campaign, and it makes the campaigns more profitable for everyone. I won’t go into the details here. But yeah, if you’ve got multiple brands or if you’ve got some brands that you feel like, hey, something new or different, or a different outside-the-box marketing idea might work for this brand, yeah, you can connect with me in the same way and talk to me about those.
Jeromy Sonne:
Excellent. Great. Well, that’s wonderful. Thank you so much again, John, for all your time and expertise. Again, got a lot of insights. For all of you out there listening, use that introspection. Think about what kind of agency you’re trying to build. Use the tactical advice about pricing, and happy marketing.
