How to Scale an Agency with Tyler Narducci 

Tyler Narducci 0:01
Follow your gut. Because even when it seems like it’s might not be the right thing to do, or the opposite of what security may feel, if you are feeling driven to start your own business and do your own thing and take control of your own life, then it’s the right path.

Chris Bruno 0:14
Welcome to the all about digital marketing podcast, the show that dives into the best strategies, tactics and tools for entrepreneurs and marketers looking to exponentially increase their results online.

Travis Ketchum 0:28
Hey there, welcome back to all about Digital Marketing. Today, we have a special guest, Tyler narducci. From the done for you agency programme. How’s it going? Tyler?

Tyler Narducci 0:36
It’s going well, how about you?

Travis Ketchum 0:38
That’s going great. Thanks so much for being here. I really appreciate it.

Tyler Narducci 0:41
Thanks for having me on.

Travis Ketchum 0:42
Yeah. So do you want to give us kind of a quick rundown about you know, what your business is and what you tend to do to help people and we can kind of do take a deeper dive from there.

Tyler Narducci 0:51
Absolutely. So I am a digital marketing agency owner myself, I started my own digital agency, back in 2015. grew that up from 2015 to 2019, over the course of those four years, and then in 2019, I shifted to helping entrepreneurs basically do what I did, but faster than I did it. Right. So I help digital marketing agency owners online freelancers, digital marketers, and new agency owners launch and scale their digital agencies.

Travis Ketchum 1:23
That’s awesome. Yeah, I mean, agencies are such a wide field for people to be in. So I’m sure that you have kind of an unlimited, unlimited marketing, especially, you know, with the sort of feeling of the market changing right now. It’s like people get kind of nervous about what to do next, or how to scale or agencies or how to start an agency. Seems kind of like blue sky.

Tyler Narducci 1:44
I mean, yeah, it mean, a lot of people will say, Oh, it’s saturated at the other day, like, there are, you know, so many millions of businesses out there, and they all need marketing. And in 2022, they all need digital marketing, right? So there’s just so many, there’s so much potential, that the work never dries up, right. And there’s not enough good agencies, I say, good. There’s not enough good agencies out there to meet the demand. And so you know, my mission really isn’t to just crank out digital marketing agencies, but it’s to make the industry better with good agencies that are providing great work

Travis Ketchum 2:23
that their clients love. of us, it’s a really good point, because I think a lot of people that have hired agencies, you know, are self included, it’s, it seems like there’s a lot of people that you know, have have a shingle out front that says they do XYZ, but when you hire them, it doesn’t always turn out the way that things are promised. And, you know, you and I happen to work together, right for for some stuff on email side of things, and often, I’m sure you were sceptical, even of our product, right? Like, yeah, do what it says on the tin, you know, I’m turning you turning stone into a true believer is such a powerful thing. I’m always amazed that so many agencies exist that don’t really seem to fulfil, yeah, truly to the level that they’re advertising. So how do you guys take a look at an agency and try to help them understand like, is it something that you can actually fulfil? Do you reposition stuff? Do you try to help them be better at what they do? I mean, like, what is what is involved there? And how do you sort of sort through that? Because it seems like that would be kind of a tough filter. Everyone says they do amazing stuff. But how do you actually get there or make them you know, more, more reliable at their fulfilment, potentially,

Tyler Narducci 3:27
totally. So the secret sauce, really, that goes into it, especially for a newer marketing agency owner, is linking up with fulfilment, partners, and contractors that aren’t so new at this and really have their processes and their fulfilment down, right. So a path that a lot of newer agency owners get stuck on is okay, I want to start my agency, and I’ll kind of do everything all at once. I’ll wear all the hats, I’m gonna be my own lead gen. Team, I’m going to be my own sales team. I’m going to do all my own client work and all my own fulfilment, I’m going to, you know, close all the deals myself, and you really, very quickly burnout. And so one of the things that I help, you know, the agency owners that join the Dunphy agency programme with is we partner them with expert fulfilment providers that, you know, they’re not really interested in going out and getting the clients themselves. They’re not interested in the sales section. They’re not interested in getting in generating leads. They’re just really good at Google ads, Facebook ads, SEO, what bills or whatever their specific thing is, they’re just amazing work. Yeah, they’re just amazing providers, right. And their pricing is really, you know, to be in within our included in our pre vetted Contractor Network for agencies, their pricing has to be great, meaning it’s a it’s a white labelled pricing so that the agency owner can make profit on it. And then the quality has to be really good as well. So we we vet the contractors on our network for their quality and their pricing and of course, their experience with the need to have lots of white labelled case studies. So these newer agency owners can step into the into the ring, use those case studies have that experience. And then as soon as they land their first few contracts, you know, they have the competence in their sales process, because they know their contractors can provide. And then this beautiful thing happens when the contractors and the agency provides, right, and they, they have a great client, and the client is happy. They refer the, you know, the agency to their friends and family, they get more clients, and everyone is happy. So really, the secret sauce is don’t try and do it yourself and learn on your clients, partner up with people who are really, really, really good at this and have already been doing it.

Travis Ketchum 5:40
I’m so happy to hear you say that because I can’t count the number of times that I would say like, you know, what I’m going to pick on a little bit like the Click Funnels Facebook group is sort of notorious for this where it’s like, I just sold a $15,000 client on Facebook ads. How do I do Facebook ads?

Tyler Narducci 5:54
Yeah, it’s so unethical, like, it is so unethical to sell, you know, with the comp with, you know, giving this false pretence that you can provide, and then trying to figure it out or learn on paying clients, it’s just not right. And you don’t have to do that. Right. Like there are so many great white label providers. Now, I do understand that it is hard to find great white label partners that provide good work, come in at a good price, have have case studies ready to go from day one, I realised that we’ll work with you on strategy and pitching your clients from you all through the sales process, I realised that that is a difficult thing to come by, which is why it’s a pillar of my programme, right? It’s why it’s one of the giant value propositions of identity agency programme, you don’t have to go out there and endlessly look for contractors that you can know love and trust with your clients. We have that ready to go for our agencies.

Travis Ketchum 6:46
Yeah, I would think that that’s probably one of the biggest IPO battles. And that’s how you get those situations where people are like, you know, Guru XYZ told me, you just go high ticket and

Tyler Narducci 6:58
high ticket that’s just like, such a such a buzz line. Right? Yeah.

Travis Ketchum 7:01
And, and I see why it’s positioned that way in the marketplace, right? Because you can understand, like, you can walk them to the map, and it’s like, you know, it’s almost as hard sometimes to sell $100 Thing is, is so a $10,000 thing. And so you say we want to acquire a customer like you know, get better margins, yada yada, like I see how bad becomes a seductive thing for someone to look at. But if you can’t fill it, like you’re a fraud,

Tyler Narducci 7:27
right, and you’re just churning and burning through clients, like you’re and you’re not, you’re not building, long lasting relationships that are going to help your agency grow. Like you’re just constantly trying to replace the one you just lost because they weren’t happy

Travis Ketchum 7:42
with the product. And that’s assuming you can sleep at night with the ethical part, we just talked about the fact that you are selling something, you can’t actually fulfil

Tyler Narducci 7:50
100%. But at the same, like I don’t even know, like I have, I’ve been in the digital marketing agency space. And like, there are a lot of players of all different ethics out there. And it’s really sad. And like, that’s why that even that part didn’t even cross my mind. Like, there are a lot of people out there that can sleep at night, unfortunately with that, right? And so it’s like, maybe we should just, instead of pushing that angle, it’s more like, it’s more like it’s not good for your agency. It’s not good for the client. It’s not good for ethics. It just you shouldn’t do it at all.

Travis Ketchum 8:20
Yeah, no one wants to be in a business that like every day you wake up, you feel like you’re starting over.

Tyler Narducci 8:24
Yeah. Yeah, it doesn’t, it doesn’t really make much sense. But if you can avoid all of that, like I said, by just linking up with contractors that you know, are gonna do great work from day one, and just don’t even try. Don’t even like if you’re going to be the agency owner. I always tell my clients that to the agency owner is not the fulfilment provider, you’re not you’re not your own ads team. If you want to be an ads, that’s fine. That’s great. It’s a great line of work. Do you want to be an ad? Do you want to be in web dub, but that’s not the agency owner role. So if you want to have an agency, then you need to learn how to be a CEO, you need to learn how to be the boss, that that, you know, manages the ads teams that manages the sales team that oversees the processes and operations, it looks at the bottom line looks at you know, your your internal costs. That’s the agency owners role, not the administration role. So it’s kind of like just choosing the path that you actually want to go on.

Travis Ketchum 9:17
Hmm, yeah, that’s it brings up a really good point, because I feel like a lot of people that they get into an agency, their motivation isn’t that they want to run Facebook ads, right? It isn’t that they want to do the insert widget here. It’s, it’s in correct me if I’m wrong, is your area that you work with, but like, you know, we end up with a lot of agencies and stuff, using our software and stuff over the years and it usually feels like you’ll want to do an agency one too, because they enjoy the freedom that comes with like having some control over when they work who they work with that kind of thing. And then it also comes from just the desire to own and operate a business as more of a managerial role. Either you’ve created for yourself as opposed to wanting to do every little, you know, flip of the switch and whatever else for fulfilment, because that may not be where their passion is, even if it’s something that they understand and they could be good at. It’s probably not the reason they started an agency in the first place, is that correct?

Tyler Narducci 10:16
That’s correct. I think, you know, there’s, there’s a few paths you can take, like many people, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this. In fact, many of our, our actual white label providers and our, you know, pre vetted Contractor Network are freelancers. They’re amazing, incredible freelancers, right, and there’s the Freelancer path, where you are going to kind of, you’re not going to have a big operation, you’re going to be capped at your own daily 24 hour max capacity that you can hold, you know, you’ll be able to pay your bills, you can have a nice life, you can have the freedom of not answering to anybody, or going into an office, which is such a beautiful thing. Like I at this stage of my life, I can’t even fathom having to go back into a nine to five, right, and a freelancer path, they you break free of all those chains that you know, the regular rat race that everyone’s trying to escape. So it’s a it’s an awesome path, but it has many, many limitations. But if you like the fulfilment, if you’re not, you know, super focused on growth, you’re alright with paying your bills, you want the freedom, great path, if you want more. If you want more than that, that’s not enough. If you do want, you do want growth, you do want to see, you know, six, seven digit possible futures, then you’re going to need to step out of fulfilment, you’re going to need to step out of the Freelancer role. And we work with a lot of digital marketing freelancers that are like, Alright, I’m ready to step up in my business, and get out from under it, because they feel like they’re a little trapped there. And then we have to deal with a lot of, but no one can do it better than me, you know, I’m doing it really well. And, you know, these clients are really special to me, and they’re my bread and butter. And if I hired this person, they don’t do so well, you know. And so there’s all those types of transitional things that we deal with a lot. But But yeah, it’s kind of it’s kind of a two paths, you have to take neither one’s wrong, but they are very different.

Travis Ketchum 12:07
Yeah, there’s two things that stuck out to me from that particular piece. One is, you know, a freelancer is basically a job you have control over as opposed to like a, quote unquote, business, per se. Yeah. Right. Because a business is something that should be a sellable asset, in my opinion, like it should have value to someone else. And I think it’s easy, as someone who did this at one stage of my life for a brief period of time, to delude yourself as a freelancer, that you are a business and a sellable asset. But no, you’re you’re a person, you’re a hireable asset, but you’re not a sellable one thing, that’s very different delineation and the second component about like, I totally understand, this is a general entrepreneur fear of like, no one can do X, Y, Z, as well as me, right, like, so for me, that’s like deliverability management, right? Like, making sure email absolutely pops in hits the inbox. I’ve spent a lot of time money, Howard, who’s, you know, effort to create a system that can do that. But like, I still have this fear oftentimes of like, well, you know, as someone you know, I think you said your insurance was like, 20% to 60%, open rates, right? It’s like, I have this fear of like, if someone only got 20 to 50, are they not going to be as well? Like, are they not going to be as invested in their relationships like, no dummy. But if you can do you know, 20 to 50. And you can do it for a million people, instead of a small subset. That’s a more valuable thing. And so I think about like, same is true of sales process, or support, or whatever, it’s, you don’t need one person to replace your output necessarily. If you can get five people to do it. Half as well. You’ve still increase your output, increase your success rate. And that’s such a hard thing for entrepreneurs to let go of here. I mean, you’re down the path. You probably still struggle with it to some degree, I’m sure.

Tyler Narducci 13:59
Oh, yeah, I actually one thing that I did not personally let go of until I would say late last year. So almost a year ago now is when I fully let go of it, but I mean, I had had my agency since 2015. So I held on to this with a death grip for six years and I just started seeing because my own attention was getting pulled in so many other directions but I held its death grip on managing my own ads for my own agency and the end the programme as well. So we run a lot of ads for the programme to get applications and have people booked in to speak with us and I’ve been running running that myself for you know, as long as we’ve been around and my attention was just getting pulled in so many different directions that the quality, the cost per you know, per lead and it was going up and everything and so it’s just like, should have brought in a professional ads team. I literally teach this all day every day, and I still had a death grip on I finally let it go, broaden it out seem best thing I ever did. They’ve been amazing. They’ve done so well. And, you know, it was just one of those things that your ego is in the way. And you’re like, you know, I know what he can do it better than me. So I kind of, I know, I know exactly how it is for a lot of agency owners, and I tell them, just expect is fully expect a dip. Like if you’re just ready for a dip in performance, but that it will pick back up that they will get the hang of it. And they will eventually, if you hire the right person, be better than you are, then you understand that even if it is a dip, the time and freedom that you’re giving yourself by stepping out of that process is going to allow you to grow the business so much faster.

Travis Ketchum 15:39
Yeah. And I think that’s a perfect example. I’m so glad that you you shared that story. Yeah. Because because, as you said, you taught that right. And it’s, it’s so often the term and it’s like the cobblers kids have no shoes, right? Because collars or shoe makers, it’s so often true. It’s like you know, it works. You do it day in and day out for everyone else. And it’s it’s similar to like, you know, when we have a problem in our business, it’s really hard for us to look at it and come up with a creative solution to get out of it. But you look at someone else’s businesses, because you’re looking at it from a fresh perspective, fresh eyes. It’s glaringly obvious, usually what the problem is, yeah. And so trying to have that self reflection is a big piece of it, and, and being able to let go, because that’s where the growth happens, right? Because you’re, you’re letting someone else take over. And eventually, like you said, it should exceed. But the other thing too, is, I guess, setting expectations, right? Like if you expect a dip, anything above that is crazy.

Tyler Narducci 16:36
Yeah. And also, but like when you do kind of let go the process like not micromanaging them, like letting them kind of, you know, really own the process and really own what you were doing and and allowing them that autonomy to be better than you were is really important.

Travis Ketchum 16:55
For sure. So since you tend to work with a lot of people, would you say it’s fair to say it’s a lot of freelancers that are trying to make that jump? Or is it people that are looking to start an agency for the first time, which one of those two cases is more common?

Tyler Narducci 17:07
The three main people that we work with are going to be freelancers looking to make the jump, people who are starting out from scratch, they’re like the online entrepreneurs that see the opportunity in the market. And then the third is existing digital agency owners that are stuck. And they’re not they’re not scaling, their systems aren’t down, Pat. So they need help, you know, installing a more proven system to scale, those are kind of the three core

Travis Ketchum 17:34
types we work with. Okay, so what, what kind of decisions does let’s say the Freelancer have to make? Or like, what kind of questions and conclusions do they need to come to? Where they say, Yep, this is definitely like, I’m ready to make the jump. Like, this tells me I should make the jump? What are those key questions that you would ask someone that was in that Freelancer position? Because I assume it’s not for everyone? Because like you said, some people may really enjoy the full creative control and they’re happy with whatever ceiling they’ve found, because there’s going to they’re going to find one that’s not a slight that’s, that’s that’s a natural evolution. What would you tell someone to help them work through that? Should I or shouldn’t I make that kind of next step?

Tyler Narducci 18:18
Yeah. So first and foremost, is Am I happy with my current growth? Right? Am I Am I where I want to be right now? And if I’m, if I’m not where I want to be, am I going to be there without some type of change? In what we’re doing? Right? Like, I feel like in a lot of sales processes, you’ll be talking to the client, and this is for agencies talking to their businesses that they’re helping as well, like, across all sales processes. There will be this weird pushback from the prospects on Oh, no, but I’m kind of good. They’re like, I’m kinda good. They’re like, I don’t really need that. And then you’re like, Oh, you are okay. So why are we actually on this call? Right? Because this, both of them are inbound calls, like they knew there was a problem. That’s why they saw your ad they booked in to speak with you, because there’s a problem that needs to be solved, right? And then there’s this natural gut thing that happens on calls where they push back like, oh, no, I’m okay. Are you sure you’re okay? Why are we actually on this call and what what made you book in the call is a good a good place to go next, and that process to kind of dig a little bit deeper on that. But once you finally get to the point where yes, I’m not happy where I am. I do want more growth. Then, in terms of my programme, the next questions go into more of the three, the big three, I call them the, our big three. So the big three things that we saw in the junk free agency programme, our lead generation, so are you getting leads? And are they are they steady? Are they high ticket? Are they quality leads? That’s the first question are consistent qualified are probably the biggest pain points right? Consistent and qualified leads. Are you getting that if you’re not okay, there’s an issue that needs to be solved. One of the main things that we do is we instal agency lead generation system firms so they can get consistent quality leads. Okay, the second one would be who’s doing the fulfilment in your agency? Right? And then that kind of goes back to our conversation earlier? Is it you? And do you know what you’re doing? Or is it someone else? And how are they doing? It is the question. And oftentimes, you know, if it’s someone that’s brand new, it’s no one’s doing it yet. And I didn’t have the plan for that yet. Right. So we may be talking to someone pre that Click Funnels group host, right, which is a great thing. If we can catch somebody before it gets to that point, then fantastic.

Travis Ketchum 20:32
And to be clear, I’m not trying to like totally tear anyone down about the group thing, I just see the same thing. And it’s like, oh, man, please just,

Tyler Narducci 20:38
you know, yeah, no, not at all. And in fact, I’m actually a huge Clickfunnels fan. I love Click Funnels to death. But I get what you’re talking about with like the entrepreneurial community. There’s a third, the third bucket. So we have we do lead generation, we do fulfilment with expert contractors that are third bucket that we help people with is sales. If you’re getting leads, if you are able to fulfil, are you converting your leads into deals? And if the answer is no, then we have another problem. If you can get if all those three things are Yes, happy with my growth, have had plenty of leads I’m fulfilling and we’re sales are selling, then it’s probably not a best fit for us. Like you’re doing good. Keep it up. Right. But if you’re not, if one of those three three things is not, you know, a yes. Then there’s a there’s a problem in the system, and then our programme can help out.

Travis Ketchum 21:26
Gotcha. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I think sort of boils down to the real thing, like, do you have the systems in place to get growth if that’s what you desire, right? Because if the answer is you don’t really want growth, and you’re happy, then like you said, like Wyoming by on the call kind of thing. Right, like, keep keep rockin, you know, keep, yeah, you. Fine. But if you’re interested in growth, I totally agree. Those three things make a lot of sense on the pipeline about, if any one of those three things is

Tyler Narducci 21:52
broken, then it doesn’t work, right. You have to have you have to have all three, if you don’t, it’s not going anywhere.

Travis Ketchum 21:59
For sure, I’m sure there’s all kinds of car analogies you could use about not having gas or being in the right gear or whatever.

Tyler Narducci 22:04
But yeah, there’s a million analogies. And it’s really frustrating for a lot of agency owners, because, you know, I’ve talked to agency owners across the whole spectrum, they have 30 engineers, who are incredible closers. Like they could sell anything, but they don’t have any leads, they have no one to sell to. It’s a really sad story. Same thing with tonnes of leads, but can’t sell anything to anyone. That’s very common, as well. And then, of course, you know, no leads, there’s, there’s that lag, whatever. So oh, wait, no, there will be no fulfilment. Yeah. So. And then, of course, there would be, you know, the one we talked about earlier, where they’re trying to do it themselves, and it’s not working out.

Travis Ketchum 22:45
Because they don’t have the skill set perhaps and and that’s, that’s fine. But there’s also people that do that. You said they are interested in the the minutia of prospecting, or the closing, or the even the sort of the support they just wanted, they want to do the thing, right. may want to get paid for it. Yeah. Okay. And then, for the agencies that are there looking to scale, I guess it’s really still the same. Three questions, what is the most common thing that you think of stalling out an agency? Like where are they most commonly hitting a ceiling and not able to grow beyond a certain point?

Tyler Narducci 23:24
Generally, that those two those two stalling points are going to be on lead gen or fulfilment, either they are, you know, selling and they’re getting leads, but like, their team is maxed out, and they’re trying to hire and train. But they’re not able to do that fast enough, and also retain their help long enough for them to continually grow. And so that that continues to be a big point for a lot of agencies. And then also on the lead gen side, if they do have, you know, access to more like expandable teams, quickly expandable teams like we have, then I find that a lot of agencies a tonne of agencies banging their head against the wall on lead gen. Which is really ironic because one of the biggest things that agencies do for their clients is provide them leads. And you find a tonne of agencies who have big struggles on getting leads for themselves.

Travis Ketchum 24:16
Right back to the cobblers kids have no shoes.

Tyler Narducci 24:20
Yeah, so I would say the two biggest selling points are gonna be on fulfilment, and and lead generation as well.

Travis Ketchum 24:27
Because like I said, if you’re at a certain level with an agency, you probably are pretty good at closing, right? Like, yeah, it usually just comes to bandwidth of the team, or in flow just you need right?

Tyler Narducci 24:38
That’s right. And it’s so sad when you see an agency that has a tonne of like really qualified leads, but they just don’t have the capacity to bring them on. And it’s like, because you can close them. You have them they want to join and you cannot fulfil because you just don’t have the capacity right. I also see a lot of agencies that I personally find Ain’t that they have set themselves up wrong, like they. So my my like, tried and trued way that I fully believe is the best way for an agency to grow, you know, more grassroots style is to partner up with contractors where they build fulfilment providers and grow that way, because it gives you that that expandable resource that you can give a per project to. And the beauty of it is you don’t have to pay them until the client pays you. So they’re completely covered. There’s no upfront costs where some agencies, they try to do it in this in the same way that other business models are built outside of the agency world. So they want to hire an account manager, they want to hire an ADS person, and they’re paying salaries that they may not be able to pay yet, because they don’t have the clients yet. And then they’re scrambling to close deals, and get those leads in the door to pay for these liabilities that they put in their business. prematurely. Right. So that’s a problem, too.

Travis Ketchum 25:58
I mean, that’s great if you’re a VC funded startup, right. And so you just want to build for the growth that you think is going to come right like dreamstyle.

Tyler Narducci 26:07
Yeah, the beauty of the agency model is you don’t have to do that, like you almost you can bootstrap this business model. So well, and you don’t have to pay people until you have the clients in place to pay for them. Now you do need to take the time out and either join a programme like mine, who is going to give you access to these people, so you can meet them, have the confidence, build your team out and have them ready to go. Because I wouldn’t recommend that you go out and sell a package and then scramble to go find that fulfilment team, either. You need to have those people in place. Yeah, there might

Travis Ketchum 26:41
take too long, you know, you have to have time to vet them, whatever. And then the person who paid us like, Dude, it’s been two weeks.

Tyler Narducci 26:47
Exactly, exactly. So you never want to be in that position, either. Even if you are following the white label path, you want to have those white label people in place ready to go, I’ll call you when we close the deal. Right? I know what the pricing is, I know how the onboarding goes, and I’m ready to go from day one. That’s why you know, it’s the first step really, plus,

Travis Ketchum 27:07
you need to have an idea of what your costs are going to be up front so that you price it appropriately for the for the sale, right? Because if you think oh, I’m pretty sure that someone will do this for let’s say, two grand, and I can charge four. And then you go to have them do it. And the real costs are five or

Tyler Narducci 27:23
six. And I’ve seen that and it’s wild to me, I’m like, why wouldn’t you go? Just take the time. And and people don’t realise like these freelancers. And the white label providers, they are more than happy to sit and talk with you share their pricing, get, you know, work partner with you give you their case study so that you can use them. Of course not using the actual business seems like they’re white labelled case studies, so that you can bring them work, because what a sweet gig for them. They don’t have to pay for any marketing. They don’t have to close any leads. They don’t have to generate any leads. They just get work coming from you. It’s an amazing gig for them. Right. So they’re happy to sit with you and meet with you and partner up with you prior to you bringing in those leads. But you need to have the actual conversation. Yeah,

Travis Ketchum 28:03
without the framework. Yeah. Yeah. And from the service providers point of view, like you said, it’s a pretty sweet gig, it’s, it’s basically cost of acquisition of zero, right? Like, this is our price. Yeah, you know, take it or leave it. And if you bring someone you know what the price is, it’s we’re not here to haggle. It’s just like, this is the deal. And you should feel good charge more than this.

Tyler Narducci 28:25
One of the things. So one of the ways that we keep our pre vetted Contractor Network for agencies so strong, is we’re constantly recruiting and vetting people for it at all times. And we’re also taking, we also take requests, like special requests from our actual agency members of hey, you know, I have this project, I need this type of freelancer or contractor and they’re not on the list, I’ve not found one, but I’d really like their pricing, or whatever it is, we’ll go out and recruit another one, just to add more in that niche or whatever that they’re looking for us will take special requests from our actual agency members. But we also, we also have a cold email campaign going out at all times where we, we do a lot of cold email outreach. And our pitch in the cold email outreach is actually not for the programme. Our pitch and our cold email outreach is to be a member of our pre vetted network, and we target freelancers and digital marketers, and they respond positively in droves. It’s a very successful cold email campaign, because if you’re a digital marketer, SEO specialist, and you get an email that says, you know, hey, we have a programme where we would like, you know, to vet you to possibly get a bunch of work from all of our agencies, is that something you’d be interested in? And if we get a tonne of positive responses from that, we vet them to go on the list. And then we also ask them, hey, now they’re on the list, you’re gonna get some white label work. Are you also interested in possibly starting your own agency and growing out of freelancer, you know, the Freelancer space, and that’s also very successful as well. So it’s like this really cool ecosystem that we’re building up

Travis Ketchum 29:59
for? So because it’s a two sided marketplace, right? Yeah, those are always interesting to me. So my, my previous opera platform was a contest platform called contest domination, which actually just sold a beginning of the month after a little over 11 years. Wow. And, and one of the one of the case studies that we had, there was a two sided marketplace. And I always find it interesting how businesses fill that, right? Because you have very different constraints about how you acquire a, say, a service provider, versus say, a buyer, right. And so this one in particular, it was it was a marketplace that matched wedding photographers, with people that need wedding photographers, right? And so it’s like, how do you find photographers and like, there’s a whole strategy there, they like cast a wide net, they execute really, really nice cameras, they have them answer a questionnaire, what kind of photographer are you? I’m a, I’m an amateur, intermediate, professional and professional wedding. Right. And so then they could still monetize the other data, but then professional wedding with you and then get the pitch. After entering about, hey, we actually have this marketplace where you can then get people that are getting married, and then they’d run also contests about, you know, enter to win, you know, David’s Bridal gift cards and that kind of stuff, people that are in that because it’s such a time sensitive thing, right? For them. It was like, how do you match people that are getting married right now, because as soon as they’re married, it’s game over. Like, they don’t need your services anymore. So it’s just a very complex marketing problem. And it took a lot of scale to get it filled. And so those those kinds of problems have always stuck out to me is a really interesting thing. I think your approach of saying, Hey, we’ve got a business we want to send you is is fantastic. I’m assuming you may have worked a little bit with with Mike mark on that. Probably? I don’t know. But

Tyler Narducci 31:43
I actually told him about a beat. Yeah, we did talk. We were working on that a little bit. And then I told him about the strategy. He loved that he loved the pitch. So is it’s been a really cool, it’s been a really cool angle. Rather than just like trying to sell your services upfront. It goes back to what a lot of digital marketers and, you know, the gurus talk about which is leading with value. And, you know, leading with, hey, I want to bring you work first, and then saying, Hey, do you want to build more up your own business even further? Second? It’s a much smoother pitch than, you know, just leading with Hey, do you want to join the programme? For sure?

Travis Ketchum 32:28
Yeah. I mean, I can’t count the number of cold emails I got. But it’s like, I’m a XYZ developer. And I would, you know, love to do mobile development for you or something. And here’s my prices. And it’s like, I’m never in a million years gonna respond to that. Yeah, at best if we haven’t rehiring I say, here’s a link, you can go apply for our coding tests. But it’s mostly it’s just delete, right? Because it’s, there’s nothing there for value for me as a recipient about what does that do for my business? You’re just basically saying, Well, you please pay me some money.

Tyler Narducci 33:01
Yeah, I had one pitch from and I could tell he was a really young guy, like he was he was young, but he was like, super hungry. And he was a video editor. And he, we saw my ads. And he wanted to create for me a new ad. And he, he sent me a cold email, where he pitched you know, the seen the setting, how it would work and everything. And I read through it, and it was and he was like, and I’ll only charge you like $300 for it. And so it was just like, it was really low. And he was gonna use professional equipment. He just really wanted the foot in the door kind of thing. And I was like, Yeah, okay, let’s go for it. And I it was one of the only times I just responded back to quoting him, I was like, Sure, show me what you got. Send me the invoice and let’s see it. And it turned out really good. I was I was really impressed. Like, wow, this kid, this kid really knows what he was doing. And I’ll definitely, you know, be giving him some more work and building more video ads with them. But, you know, it’s rare. It’s rare that those come through.

Travis Ketchum 34:00
Yeah, but it has to grab you right at the beginning. Right. And like he obviously had a compelling thing about what he wanted to do. He usually just like, hey, I would love to make a video ad for you. It’s $300. Now he like probably probably through the whole storyline, you can visualise it and understand it. And if you put effort into thinking it through, right, that’s the thing that’s usually missing from cold emails. It’s there’s, there’s no effort and visioning it through as far as how it’s going to be useful, what it’s going to look like how it’s going to be and that it was customised, truly customised to you as the business that they’re trying to pitch that’s such a missing piece.

Tyler Narducci 34:35
Yeah, there’s a mean you can do mass cold email. But if you’re going to do mass cold email, you really need to have something that’s going to grab people like a strong offer. But if you do, you can do more laser targeted email, kind of like what he was doing. And you know, in my programme, I talked to our agencies about, you know, different ways that you can do email we talked about, you know, masculine email, but we also talked about more one to one and I, I tell them, you know, do a loom, create a one minute loom with you talking over the person’s actual website. So they see you, they see their website, like, there’s no, they hear their actual name, and they hear their business name being said by you. So there’s no doubt that this video was made for them. And you’ll get, you know, a much higher response rate than and in most cold mass cold emails, they’re going to be, you know, a lot less that you can send out, obviously, because they take more time, but they can be a lot more effective in many ways.

Travis Ketchum 35:35
Yeah, you know, when I think about marketing and acquisition, I would always pick the more difficult, more expensive, a way higher value functions over, hey, this is cheap, and I can get lots of it, but it doesn’t really produce a lot of results. I think that’s a common

Tyler Narducci 35:52
for sure. For sure. It’s like buying leads versus, you know, a lead generation system that is more targeted, it’s going to cost more but more targeted for

Travis Ketchum 36:01
sure. In fact, some of our best leads have been exponentially more expensive, but, you know, they convert at such a higher rate they buy so, so much better, much better things. It’s, it’s not even a competition on what the actual cost per conversion is. And the return on investment is it’s usually pretty silly. Totally. Cool. Okay. And so, do you have any other advice at this point for people that are agencies or freelancers or things that you’d like to share with him? Just open ended?

Tyler Narducci 36:32
Yeah. I mean, I mean, so for me, personally, in my own growth story, I, you know, I worked for a company that really, really did not value me and the work that I did back in 2015, and I knew that I was worth so much more. And I knew that I could, you know, I could help so many more people and have such a bigger impact than just sitting in this office chair, and only doing, you know, marketing for this one little company. And, you know, I felt that in my gut. And I was really happy that I did follow my gut and started my own thing, even though at the time it felt really scary to do so. Like it felt like, you know, everything I’ve been taught since I grew up, like, you know, you want your health insurance, you know, you want that steady paycheck, and like, the the paycheck and the health insurance, that’s security, right. And I learned really quickly that that was not true. Like, I started my company, I might had a really short, I had a really goal, our short goal of I want to make double my income at the, you know, the salary job in retainer clients. And once I hit that goal, then I felt confident enough to tell my boss what I was doing. And after I told my boss, what I was doing, the worst case scenario was they say, you’re fired. And you can’t do that here. And so I was prepared for them to fire me by having my double salary and retainers at that point. But it was my hope that they would retain me as my next client, essentially. And let me not work in the office anymore. So I went in with this big pitch of you can pay me this is my pitch, I thought it was actually really good. I said, you can pay me half of my salary, which was already really small, but you can pay me half of my salary in retainer form and get all of the work that I’m already providing you. So less no benefits, you have to pay, you keep half of my salary and you get all my work. The only thing you have to give up is me sitting in that seat nine to five every single day. And to me it was like slam dunk like this is so there’s no way that they can say no, this is amazing offer

Travis Ketchum 38:46
to rationalise Parrish mountain emotional pitch, that’s the problem.

Tyler Narducci 38:50
Yeah, exactly. And to be like, this makes so much sense. Like the numbers are amazing for them. It makes so much sense. Right? And this is pre COVID Like this is like boomers run the world and you know you’re in the office and that’s just that and if you’re not sitting in the office then you’re not getting any work done. That’s the mentality right? And so I I came in I did my pitch or whatever, and my boss was offended How dare I do anything with my time other than work for them? Like I I’m being paid an entire $45,000 a year for this I better I better respect their time right and so I just like I’m sitting here listening to it and so she ended up giving me an ultimatum at the end of it and saying you can either stay here and work for us and give up so we viral or you can you know continue on this will be viral and we’ll part ways and obviously, I stayed with so be viral. And I

Travis Ketchum 39:56
motion to is you know Click Funnels to calm I believe Yeah,

Tyler Narducci 40:01
yes, my 10 million award up there. So I saved this will be viral. And I’ll tell you walking out of that office that day was probably one of the best days of my life, like it just like felt like this huge, you know, weight had been released off of me. And like, that was amazing. It was amazing. Like, it was like ecstasy, it was amazing. So I left there. And here’s the best part of this whole story is, two months later, just two months, I get a call from the other person that was in marketing at that at this little company. And she goes to whether you are not going to believe what just happened, I said, What and she goes, the owner who lives down in Brazil came up came in and told all 10 of us there’s like 10 of the employees at the time that the company has closed, the everyone is laid off. And it turns out that the other owner was like embezzling money. And it was it was a giant like Sham. And we were working in this like company, that was like not real. And no one knew all the way up to like the CIO CEO, who had just got us into Target and got us into CVS into Walgreens on shelves, everything, like it was just turned out, unplugged, you’re all fired. Sorry, by. And I’m just sitting here listening to this from going, oh my god, if I had stayed and gave up my clients and said, I’m this is what I’m going to do, I would be like kicking myself. So my advice with this story is to follow your gut. Because even when it seems like it’s might not be the right thing to do, or the opposite of what security may feel, if you are feeling driven to start your own business and do your own thing and take control of your own life. And your gut is telling you that then it’s the right path, go do it.

Travis Ketchum 41:48
That’s such a wonderful story. Man, I’m so glad that you shared it. And, you know, one of these days, we can have a chat because I have a kind of a you know, a similar story of when you feel it, you feel it, it’s like it’s in your bones and you know, that you’re not doing the right thing or the right role, the right company at the right time. Like there’s just something off, right. Like it’s not in alignment with what you know you’re capable of, or what you feel your true calling is and, and getting in alignment that can be scary, right? I mean, like, you know, for me was having to tell my two month girlfriend now wife, but her, you know, her her dad who’s like, to the same kind of doctor for his entire career, and telling him, hey, by the way, I quit my job, you know, that has all those benefits to go, you know, do work for a best selling author and speaker and maybe try to do my own thing for a while see how it goes, you know, and he recalls it differently. But he’s, you know, at the time, I thought I was gonna lay down like a total dead deer I like idiot makes these decisions, you know? Yeah. But but you can feel it and making that leap ball can be scary. You really proved a point, right? Like, I glad that you pulled attention to the beginning this story about the perceived security of a regular paycheck, and health insurance. And, you know, what is it it’s not really secure, it’s it’s sort of like we’re lulled into this false sense of security, oftentimes about, well, the same money shows up, you know, every Friday, every other Friday, whatever interval it is, and you have got health insurance if things really go wrong, but if things really go wrong, it’s the business is unplugged, and you’re out of a job, and you’re starting over with no warning, you know, hopefully you have some savings, but the average American doesn’t.

Tyler Narducci 43:33
So I find true security is having multiple clients all paying you, because the chances of all of your clients deciding on the same day to fire you are just like, almost impossible, like it’s not going to happen. Now, you may have one or two clients that decide to pull the plug on one day, but all of them 100% of your of your income. No, it’s not going to happen. That’s why having you know, multiple clients is way more security at the end of the day than having one job. Because that one job is your one client. And you know, everyone that worked at this company that I worked for, thought that they were on a rocket ship to the moon, because they were dangling like they were paying us nothing. Like I said my whole $45,000 a year, they were dangling these carrots of you’re gonna get stock options. We just got into Target. We just got into CVS, we just got into Walgreens and you know, you guys are the first 10 people here at this company. We’re going to, we’re not going to give you a raise, but we’re going to give you stock options. And you know, the first time people at Facebook are now all millionaires that, like all these little carriers that they would dangle, right? And so these people that stayed in this company, like they felt so secure, and their future was so set. And then all it took was this guy to walk in the office that day and say it’s over.

Travis Ketchum 44:48
Yeah, they didn’t realise that the toilet paper in the bathroom was more valuable than the stock options.

Tyler Narducci 44:53
Exactly, exactly.

Travis Ketchum 44:55
Yeah, that’s you know, I took that story is like you No, not only a reinforcement of sort of my own personal beliefs, but like, hopefully, people hear that and they realise, like, you know, take a real evaluation of like, where they’re at if, if they’re in a normal job and, and normal jobs are great, like, if it’s a good fit for you, and it’s a good company, and you enjoy what you’re doing, and you’re well compensated. Have at it. But I think so many people, especially in this sort of transition of generations, who’s running the show being more open to is the value happening for me, they really have to be a W two employee sitting in one chair at one desk, probably not. And then the uneasiness right now, you know, you start hearing right now at this point in 2022, towards the end here about hearing about the companies that were the rocket ships, right, the the Facebook’s the apples, the Amazons of the world, are all saying we’re gonna cool hiring, we’re actually going to reduce some staff, we’re gonna make some decisions, you know, it may be a rocket ship, you just might not have a ticket for the ride.

Tyler Narducci 46:01
Exactly, exactly. Yeah.

Travis Ketchum 46:03
Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. This has been awesome, I think that there’s a lot of interesting things for people to think about, whether they’re a freelancer or their agency looking to break through, or they’re looking for that, you know, to kick things off as sort of an initial, you know, first sort of business opportunity and, and not in like the, you know, scammy work from home and, you know, run Excel sheets, but like a true like, I want to build a business, but I don’t necessarily have all the pieces, and giving them sort of a blueprint about what they can do. On the next steps. If if someone was interested in in learning more about, you know, what you brought up today, or getting more information or getting in touch with you? What’s the best way to do that?

Tyler Narducci 46:43
Yeah, so the best way to do that is to go to Sobey viral.com. So that’s S O B, E V, Ira al.com. And on there, you’re going to see, you know, testimonials of clients that we’ve worked with, and different, you know, case studies, and then also, there’ll be an Apply button on there. If you tap that apply button, it’ll take you over to our funnel, there’ll be lots of information about us and what we do. And if it seems like a good fit, go through that. And we’ll talk to you on the other side.

Travis Ketchum 47:09
Awesome. Well, I definitely urge people to do that, especially even if you already have an existing business. And you’re thinking about maybe bolting on some services, right? Because I think oftentimes, there’s good expansion opportunities about like, Hey, I do this one thing really, really well. But I know that our customer also needs XY and Z. Right, that that’s usually an interesting area to basically bolt on revenue. Yeah, I think it’s awesome that you because for me personally, like that would be my biggest question is how do I get high quality people that are pre vetted that I can basically white label and do so that’s, that’s an amazing service you offer and that’s certainly valuable. So go check it out, even if you have an existing business or especially if you’re one of the three categories you talked about. Thank you so much for your time and looking for a chat soon. Thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai