Speaker 118,000 total revenue. How many clients do you have today? Knocking on the door of 60. Wow, holy cow. I'll call five businesses in an afternoon. I find 90% of the people that I call from local Facebook groups.
Speaker 2You'd be making 30,000 a month, plus the $170,000 in upfront fees. Meet James. He's a dad of five in Phoenix, Arizona, and he quit his nonprofit job with zero clients and zero revenue. Then he started pulling over landscaping trucks, and one of them started paying him $300 a month. 16 months later, 60 different businesses pay him every month, and last month he made $18,000. Five phone calls in an afternoon, all from Facebook groups. And by the end of this episode, you'll have both his opener and his 30-second checklist. In a minute, you're gonna see how the math breaks down on five calls a day. And halfway through, we're gonna talk about tuna M&Ms. And at the end, 500 customers with zero reviews. Please enjoy. What did you do last month? 18,000. Total revenue. Wow. Mostly profit.
Speaker 1Yeah, I have been investing in some additional tools, but yeah, that was my best month ever last month.
Speaker 2So by the end of this episode, will we have enough information to get started on building a business that sells websites and tools to small businesses that can make us at least $10,000 a month?
Speaker 1Yes and no. Yes, because you'll learn the local approach that gets people to wanna talk to you. You'll know what the offer is and why there's value. And then you have to go, learn exactly how to deliver it. But if you can do the learning part, 100%.
Speaker 2Yeah. What did you set up with your current business before you quit, if anything? Like, did you have any revenue or anything? Zero. Really? Nothing.
Speaker 1I was chasing landscapers. Like I would take pictures of trucks and there was one time I took a picture of a landscaping truck and then like two months later, I saw the same truck drive through my neighborhood. I happened to be on my bike talking to a neighbor about a tree that was growing over my wall. So I chased the guy down in his truck and pulled him over, like, "Hey, I wanna talk to you." And he thought I was gonna get mad at him for passing out his business cards on the driveways. And I was like, "Come over to my house, I wanna show you this tree and tell me about your business." He ended up being my first client for like essentially the marketing agency that I later figured out, okay, I'm gonna help these guys with their website, their review system, their, you know, just basic tools.
Speaker 2Okay, and he was Hispanic? Okay, so you're speaking to him in Spanish. He comes and looks at the tree. How does it go from there?
Speaker 1We sat down, I said, "Tell me about your business." This is like a 22-year-old kid who's an orphan who's in Arizona trying to build his business. He played his home-recorded mariachi song about the American dream. And I was just like, "Man, here's a guy who's got a two-year-old kid trying to make it." And I was like, "Look, I wanna help you. I'll help you register your business." So I helped him. He said, "Yes." I was like, "What's it worth to you if I could help you register your LLC, get a brand on your truck, and get you a website? What's it worth?" And he was like, "Trescientos?" And I was like, "Deal." - What was that? - 300 bucks. - Okay. - So let's do it. So he came back over a couple weeks later, registered his LLC, redid his branding a little bit. - Did he have a website? - Not at the time. He had a suspended Google business profile. - Okay. - So I spent four months unsuspending it, diving down the rabbit hole of Google business profiles and how to get them unsuspended. -
Speaker 2Do you have any experience there? You're just figuring it out. -
Speaker 1No, I was just down every internet rabbit hole and Twitter and thread and talking to people. And his case ended up being really difficult. I ended up finding out that somebody else had made him one years ago that had the same phone number and that was suspended. So it got unethically triggered and this whole thing. And so I was like, "I'll never do this again." And then I realized after doing it four more times- - That was an outlier. - That that was an outlier. And it was really hard, but I earned my stripes. But I was like, "Look, I will help you. You're gonna be my first client. I wanna help landscaper guys like you and I'll do whatever I can to help you." So I did. And he's still my client today. And I ended up also getting him like 15 customers in my neighborhood. - How? - Facebook group, my local neighborhood Facebook group. - You're posting? - I would just say, "Hey, neighbors, if you want a guy who works hard, who does really good work, and he's not gonna charge you like the big companies, he's great." And I did some posts and those paid off over time, like over and over. And sometimes I'd have friends, like my irrigation's leaking, "Hey, I got a guy." And that has kind of become part of what I do now, which is like networking and referrals. But that's how it started. - What's his name? - Cesar. - Cesar, all right.
Speaker 2It was 22 years old that all started. - Shout out to Cesar. - What does he pay you today? -
Speaker 1He gets a pretty good deal. - I'm sure. - So I do his website and I made him some business cards, some QR codes, and got his reviews going. He pays me $200 a month. - That's a great deal. - It's a good deal. I told him, I said, "I'm gonna take care of you." Like, "You're doing this with me, I'm gonna help you." I have not contacted more than 1,000 individual businesses. - 4% of anyone you dial.
Speaker 2So that's gonna be 200 minutes. If you wanna make 20 cold calls a day, that's gonna be 200 minutes a day divided by 60 minutes. So three and a half hours. And the reason I said that, "Well, let's do 25 because if your close rate's 4% and you wanna get a customer a day, that's gonna be 25 calls a day times 10 minutes divided by that. So four hours of prospecting a day, theoretically, would equal $2,000 up front and $349 every month, right? So after, call it three months of being in business. And you're probably not able to charge $349 right up front. You want some case studies, you need a track record. And you're not gonna work Sundays, of course. So that leaves 28 working days per month times three months. That's 84 days of making calls. That equals 84 clients. 84 days times 349. So your monthly recurring revenue, theoretically, would be $29,000 after three months of spending four, four hours, that's a long time. I'm not saying this is easy. Half of a workday, six days a week, you'd be making 30,000 a month plus the 170,000, $70,000 in up front fees that you made from those people. Poke holes in that. -
Speaker 1Yeah, I think, so time is part of it. People ask me all the time, how many dials per day? How many calls are you making? And I'm like, today I had time to make two calls. -
Speaker 2Sure, yeah, it's never linear. -
Speaker 1Yeah, it's not perfect, but I would rather make three really high quality calls that are local, that I've already done 30 seconds of research on, than call 300 random phone numbers. So quality over quantity all day. And I don't have necessarily, like, the pedal to the metal. I'm also trying to build some processes and get the business in a place where I can try to scale better. The difference is calling high quality prospects local and take the different approach. I think my conversion rate is higher than average because of all of those things we talked about. But yeah, if you just sat down and did it and you had a really good implementation fulfillment, I think it's not too far off. -
Speaker 2If someone is just an absolute terrible salesperson and their close rate is 1.5% instead of four, it's over 10 grand a month in three months. Okay, so what were you doing for your job before all this? -
Speaker 1So I spent almost 11 years doing small business training programs in developing countries. -
Speaker 2So that's what you had quit? -
Speaker 1Yeah, I just decided, like, it was time to earn more and learn more. I was kind of just at the point where I needed some, like I needed a new challenge. And I'd always kind of liked the idea of owning my own business and I had kind of helped my parents with their family business. And I did get to kind of the point where I'm like, own my time, you know, owning your own business a lot of times is, you're a slave to your own business in some ways, but I just like, I want freedom, flexibility, and I want to like build something that I can own and be proud of. So I was like, I'm not gonna, I had some opportunities for other jobs and I was like, no, I'm gonna build something. So I just decided, yep, I'm gonna move on and build something. - What was your day-to-day like in your job when you quit? - So I lived abroad for almost five years, moved back to the US and so I was remote. And so on a lot of calls, some travels, traveling, but yeah, full day and just working on projects, meetings, some travel, training, full days, yeah, remote. - Okay. - So I was remote before it was cool. Like pre-COVID, I was remote. So I was like, I've always been remote, which has its ups and downs, like pros and cons. I just committed to a date, like I'm gonna commit to this date. My landscaper fired our whole street because he wanted to raise prices but was afraid to offend us. And so he would rather just go get new clients. - That's wild. - And I was like, what? That's crazy, obviously crazy. And then a lot of other people were like, hey, I wish I could just pay Carlos on like a recurring monthly subscription. So I was like, that's amazing. How many times do you have clients that are just begging for a subscription to pay one and the business is like not offering it? That seems like a cool opportunity. So I was like, okay, what if I could build like just a simple thing to help landscaping guys get their job? - Get their clients on a recurring subscription. That's where I started. -
Speaker 2How does your second client come to pass? -
Speaker 1My friend, yeah. - Business owner? - Business owner, side hustle at the time, event letter rentals. So like light up four foot
Speaker 2wooden letters for parties. - Yeah, we were at the Alabama game and it was like homecoming 2026 with the big bulbs in it. -
Speaker 1Yeah, homemade, cool little business. Have a website, but it's under optimized, not very good. Lots of room for improvement. I said, hey, I'd love to, like build this some stuff for you. No Google reviews at the time. I tried to leave one. And then once I got access as an admin on the Google business profile, my review disappears. And I was like, okay, we're at zero. Let's get some reviews. Let's build your website again. So that was client number two. -
Speaker 2How did that conversation go? Was it awkward? -
Speaker 1No, it was like, all right, Kevin, I would love to help you with this. I'm trying to learn this. It'd be great if I could build this for you. It's like, wow, we gotta get the website away from the family member who's sort of doing it, but not really. - I'm not really doing it enough. - There's always weird stuff like that, right? so I said look I'll make it worth it like I'll talk to him whatever it takes like do you want to do it yeah we did it so we did it so rebuilt the website we ended up getting up and running I started learning how to do review automations so got a bunch of google reviews for him from previous clients yeah yeah so ran the first ever google review reactivation got 15 20 30 reviews and uh we all started turning he
Speaker 2started getting organic inbound hey if you like this episode please just hit subscribe real quick spotify apple youtube wherever you're watching and listening to this it would mean a
Speaker 1ton what did you charge him I think I charged five hundred dollars up front to build it and then 300 a
Speaker 2month okay and then looking back for those first two clients if you were to require them today what is that worth what are those two clients worth like what could you charge for them
Speaker 1so today I'm I spent the next four to five months like doing custom proposals for home service businesses trying to do the same thing basically website and a review system and some other little things on the side and I would do like this custom proposal of okay I'm gonna I'm gonna set up your email for you this this this and I'd make this like sheet and I finally got away from that to just here's the package it's that it's 9.99 for setup month one and then 30 days later the monthly recurring is 350 so I did that for like six months fast forward to a couple months ago I increased my setup fee to two thousand so my last eight or nine clients have been on two thousand month one half today half in two weeks 30 days later 349 okay do people balk at that it depends some people do and then we just talk about value and price and figure out if it's a good fit and sometimes I adapt it so I'll have sometimes a really new business I'll say hey no worries like if you're not ready for that yet that's okay what do you want to do and they'll tell me and I'll say cool you tell me what your budget is I'll back into it I'll just cram as much value as I can and whatever budget you want to start with and uh I did that once on a cold call and it was a local electrician he's like yeah I just moved here I'm just getting started I started like a few weeks ago I know I need all this stuff but I'm not ready yet call me in you know however long I was like well what if we just built you a website for 30 bucks a month he's like yeah sounds good so I got him to close the deal on that first call for 30 a month made him a simple one-page site set it up and guess what two months later we build the whole thing and what do you pay you like the full 2k this was before I was like well I'm just gonna do it in between right now but yeah we I think we upped it to 250 okay a month okay and I was happy I'm like this is client for me like client number 20. Wow I was like great I'm just happy to like work on this for people and get the wheels turning so how many
Speaker 2clients do you have today knocking on the door of 60.
Speaker 1Wow holy cow are they all local to Phoenix mostly yes probably 90 percent okay some in neighboring Tucson okay how did you get clients three through ten three through ten was neighborhood landscaper friend HVAC guy who worked on my house and then cold calls okay when did the cold car call start right away I started calling right away okay yeah do you have experience with cold calling no the closest thing to it is probably warm calling which was my college Cutco knives okay yeah okay so
Speaker 2you started cold calling how did you decide who to call like where did you look
Speaker 1up their numbers yeah so what most people do in kind of this agency space is like scrape leads so they'll use out scraper and they'll pull a bunch of leads together never did any of that all I did was like I'm gonna try to find a local business that I can call and talk to and offer to help them so the short answer is I find 90 of the people that I call from local Facebook groups okay
Speaker 2you just join them all and you search old post or you just wait for new posts
Speaker 1Facebook now knows what I want to see so I can open Facebook anytime and like find a handful of businesses and it says some
Speaker 2homeowner saying any good recommendations to cut my lawn and you're just looking at all the comments
Speaker 1yeah so it's contractor groups local community groups and it's either a homeowner looking for a plumber a roofer or whoever or it's a contractor looking for subcontractors or it's the new contractor who isn't even licensed is putting himself out there trying to just promote himself so my pickup rate is really good because I'm calling the guy who's trying to get called yeah and he's local and so I'll call I'll go to the comments on these Facebook posts and collect business cards yeah and information and stick it in my spreadsheet which at some point I'm gonna figure out how to automate with a bot of some kind yeah then start calling these guys say hey I saw you on this Facebook post oh
Speaker 2yeah yeah so you've got like four things going for you when you call these people as opposed to like a mass scraped number one is recency they were probably posted about recently right so it's relevant more recent more relevant number two you have the local tie-in
Speaker 1right so that's the
Speaker 2most important one okay so you're most you're more trusted than all the other cold calls I get number three they're wanting to get called so that's going to be a cell phone number from someone that wants that cell phone number to be called number four is the other trust factor of hey not only in my local but I just saw this in the group like I'm calling you because I saw your number right as opposed to like I'm calling you
Speaker 1because I scraped it when you tell somebody I saw your Facebook post sometimes they get really excited yeah it worked somebody called me right like don't be too excited I'm selling you something so I have this thing called tuna M&Ms to what M&Ms tuna M&Ms okay M&M with but the tuna fish is inside okay so this is what happens on a call like this you see a bowl of M&Ms and you're like oh I'll have one and then you bite into it and it's tuna yeah it's not what you thought it was no you might like tuna but you want to eat tuna when you want when you want it when you bite an M&M you think you've ever bitten something you think it's something and it's something else yeah it's like blows just shocking so that's what this is like you have to on this cold call you have to they think you're a what a customer yeah a potential customer an M&M turns out you're tuna fish so you have to navigate that transition from they think I'm a customer yeah to I'm actually not but
Speaker 2here's why you should keep talking to me because the worst thing that could happen there is when their ego their pride gets involved and they feel stupid and then they're going to say no to you just because they feel stupid and not because they actually don't want your offer yeah so that's what you're trying to
Speaker 1get ahead of yeah but I'll say like the way that I try to do these calls is focus on building trust first and so I don't call to pitch anything I'd yeah but I'll say like the way that I try to do these calls is focus on building trust first and so I don't call to pitch anything I usually just call to pitch because I don't know what to do I don't trust first and so I don't call to pitch anything I usually just call and say hey I saw that you're here in the area this is where I live that's my opener and oh yeah what's going on what do you need and then I can tell based on what how they respond if they're gonna be difficult or not yeah or standoffish on guard or then you kind of navigate that vibe a little bit but the idea is build some goodwill and trust before they even know why I'm calling and then when I have that transition it's pretty easy now I've gotten hung up on a few times I've gotten hung up on a few times but very rare and the ones you do I'm like that's fine sorry to
Speaker 2bother you okay so your opener is hey John I saw your post in the Facebook group I live here in in Queen Creek or whatever then he's like oh yeah okay oh it worked cool then what I saw
Speaker 1your Facebook post and uh I had a few questions for you shoot so do you do uh do you do residential commercial remodeling like what's your what's your main service a little bit of everything great awesome is now a good time are you busy no it's good okay cool so is it okay if I tell you what I do yeah so sometimes that will happen quicker sometimes we'll talk for 10 minutes about before you get there yeah like oh how did you start I saw that you just got your license yeah that's awesome like congrats or family business I'm guessing family business because I saw your go daddy arrow website with your dad like you know something unique about them and then if if I think they are a little standoffish or like gonna be more difficult I will always try to have something of value to offer hey did you know that joesroofing.com your exact business name is available and anybody could go buy it right now might as well be you you want some help or something or a lot of times what I'll do is say hey like I wanted to meet you because I work with about 50 local businesses that could be great subcontractor referrals for you just wanted to like learn what you do so I can connect you with some people so I've made a lot of connections random calls so one time I called HVAC business but it was a personal post hey we're looking for some stucco work on our house so I called like hey you're looking for stucco yeah and you guys have HVAC business oh yeah yeah yeah I try to look it up guess what looked up their business the website's down and it's like by the way like what's happened to your website and I heard this whole story oh well we paid some over like some agency that took it overseas they were holding us hostage and charging us to fix stuff that they broke and this whole nightmare story is like oh man I'm so sorry if you want I would love to help you so I ended up getting them as a client wow and then I once you know a short time after that cold called a contractor and I said hey like I have a lot of connections to great local businesses that are owner operators if you ever need somebody like I'd love to connect you and I ended up connecting this HVAC business to that contractor who never was never a client and uh got them a job like a big HVAC job with this random guy that I called and so they paid me like five hundred dollars to say thank you which is cool but I have a lot of these like I'll just try to connect people add value yeah yeah call so here's the here's the paradigm tuna fish M&Ms that's one the other one is people hate cold calling and they hate getting cold called why because it's hard to do and annoying but if you're calling think about it like this if I'm calling to give you bad news it's a hard call to make if I'm calling to give you great news this is the easiest call you ever make yeah hey Chris you just won 500 bucks all you got to do is click this sketchy link no just kidding but like do something and here you go I have good news for you so I try to have the attitude of whenever I call somebody I've got I just have good news yeah hey if you want to work with me I would love to help you and it'll probably be the best decision you ever make for your business yeah if we're if not all good if your mother-in-law is doing your website no problem but I can show you this other guy that I started working with three months ago do the same thing for you it's good news how much
Speaker 2research are you doing before you call them
Speaker 1under a minute maybe 30 seconds. What's the checklist? I look for signals. So first thing I look for is like kind of a lame or AI logo, Gmail account, joesroofing at gmail.com. Okay. That tells me something about him. Not necessarily tech savvy or has enough time to set up his domain based email. Doesn't know what a DNS record is. Right. The next thing to go look at is, does he have a domain name? So first search is, is, does he have a website? Does he, does he own the name? Is the name available? I love calling guys that have their exact, you'd be surprised how many businesses are out there. They haven't bought their domain. And you're just like, dude, this should be the first thing that you do after you register that business. So look for domain, email, branding. I look at their Facebook page, look at their Google business profile.
Speaker 2That's it. You know what you could do? You could make a Grockbot or a Muse agent that cross-referenced every business local to Phoenix and their exact match domain name, right? joespoolcleaning.com. joespoolcleaning equals joespoolcleaning.com is available. That's a guy you call and that's what you lead with. Like you could have a spreadsheet of all of the yeses. Yeah. Within a minute.
Speaker 1That is the next thing to do. Yeah, for sure. So a lot of that, it's really just about like call with good news, be friendly, local, offer some value. And then if they're friendly, cool. Like, Hey, do you want to talk? I got some ideas for you. Happy to show you. Yeah. And then, uh, but like I called the lady, one of my clients had a lead come in on his website and it was a local interior designer and she's networking looking for ways to connect with contractors. So guess who called her? Me. I said, Hey, I just saw your, you reached out to my client and she had like a 20 year old website. I was like, I'd love to help you. Here's what I could do. And I would love to connect you with some other contractors. And she was like, great. So we did. So I got her on board, connected with my client. So they did some jobs together and then got her as a client, rebuilt her whole website and reviews and everything. So I called another contractor. This is actually my most, most recent client. And I said, Hey, uh, I saw on Facebook, you're looking for an interior designer. I just have a, no, a really good one. Here's her website. Check it out. And then I connected her. It's like, can I get you in touch with her? And I did. And she did a job for him. And I said, by the way, like, I'd love to talk to you about your business. There's probably some things I can do to help you.
Speaker 2If you haven't already noticed my guest here makes his living all through go high level. And I talk about them all the time because I use go high level and I love them. So please use my affiliate link. If you like this podcast, I'll get a little kick back. You'll get 30 days free trial to try it, which everyone else only offers 14. So use my affiliate link below. If you want to see how go high level can change your life. Cause it's honestly changed mine. Do you have any numbers on what percentage of your calls get answered?
Speaker 1I started tracking a few months in, I just have a big fat spreadsheet because I'm all, I'm calling all local. I want to make sure I don't call the same person twice. Anyway. Yes. Track them. I'd say pick up probably. I mean, I have days where I'll get eight out of eight, pick up the phone and I'll have days where it's like, you know, two out of 10, three out of 10. It depends, but I'd say average is like 50, 50. Maybe a little more. Okay. So pick up rates pretty good. And then what about close rate? So I haven't tracked this perfectly, but to date since I started coming up on like 16 months since I officially started.
Speaker 2I cold call specifically. Okay. So you've contacted 800 and something, 900 and something somewhere in there and call it 60% of them have answered. Yeah. More or less. Okay. So let's say you've spoken to 450 people. Probably more than that. Sometimes I'll call, I'll call them back. Right. They don't answer. 600 people. Yeah.
Speaker 1I've probably, I've,
Speaker 2I've probably at least talked to 600. Okay. And that's someone that even answered, but then hung up on you. You're going to count that.
Speaker 1Yeah. It's a pickup. And a lot of them are, a lot of them I have categorized as follow-up later. Okay. Or I'll make them priority to follow up with. 600 unique business owners. More or less, maybe, maybe six to 700. Okay. Actually interacted with. Let's say 700.
Speaker 2Yeah. All local to Phoenix or mostly? All local to Phoenix and surrounding areas. Okay. And I'm just going to do some very rough back of the napkin math. So 23 million small businesses in America, most of them are going to be home service businesses. Phoenix has like, call it 1% of the US population, because I know DFW has 3%, call it, you know, 1%. So, so 330,000 local businesses in the greater Phoenix area, that's a lot. And you've spoken to 700 of them. Right. So I'm just trying to show an example of like how wide this opportunity is if you never went outside of Phoenix. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Okay. So you spoke to 700, you said you had 90 clients total. Right. Right now, current paying monthly clients, almost 60. Okay. How many all-time clients, either monthly or otherwise? I've only lost maybe five or six. Okay. So 66, 67. Yeah. And then how many of those came from cold calling?
Speaker 170%. Okay. 75%. 50, 50? Yeah. Most of them by far. Some referrals, one or two that found me and a few friends. So call it 8% close rate? That's where I had it pegged when I did some math like a few months back when I was from people that answered. Yeah. People you spoke to.
Speaker 2Yeah. So it might be 4% from anyone you dialed.
Speaker 1Yeah, more or less. I mean, if someone doesn't answer, like I'll just keep them on the list and keep calling. Yeah. Actually, it's funny that the guy that I, my most recent client who I introduced to the designer, I had seen him before, months before, called no answer. He's busy. So I called him again, but with like, "Hey, got a connection for you." Mm-hmm. So I keep people in the, in the pipeline.
Speaker 2Yeah. What are you making, like at your today's pricing, what are you making per month on average from your clients? $349. $349. Okay. And you don't really know what your true lifetime value is yet because you've only been in business 16 months, but so far it's looking like 10% churn per year.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's pretty low. I mean, the only clients I've lost have been, "Oh, this business shut down." There's always like some kind of odd case. Yeah. So the churn has been quite low. That's part of the reason I like the business is because it's recurring revenue. The churn is low. I think I have lower than average churn because I take a really personal approach. Which doesn't scale in price. It doesn't scale infinitely, right? That's my next chapter is trying to get to that version of this, but it's great for now. Like it's been a great way to start. Do you have any data
Speaker 2on how long your calls last on average? Like including the ones where they don't pick up. You've got 20 numbers to call, 12 pick up, eight don't. How long do you spend on the phone?
Speaker 1Yeah. People always ask me this, like, "How many dials per day are you doing?" Because people that are cold calling struggle. Like I've made, I've talked to guys that have made 3,000 calls. I'm like, "What are you doing?" With like triple line dialers? Yeah. Who are you calling? I don't have time for that. Yeah. So I'll sit down and make, I'll call five businesses in an afternoon. Because if I talk to them, it's going to be anywhere from five minutes to 30 minutes. And I'll invest more in that conversation if it's going somewhere. Sometimes they go nowhere quickly. That's fine. But yeah, it's the average conversation is probably 10 to 15 minutes.
Speaker 2If they answer. Yeah. And zero minutes if they don't. Yep. So six minutes on average, eight minutes. Somewhere in there? Mm-hmm. Okay. So if your churn is 10% a year, $349 a month, that's not including the upfront payment, which is now $2,000. It's been less in the past. So $349 a month times 10, $3,500. So we're looking at like, call it $4,000 a year per client. If your churn is 10%, that means they last 10 years on average, your clients. I think that's how that math works out. Yeah. So the LTV, the lifetime value of your average client at today's pricing is, give or take, 10% a year. So if your churn is 10%, that means they last 10 years on average, your clients. So give or take, $40,000. And that probably seems really high, like, what is it called? But it's like, assuming LTV or churn stays 10%, monthly stays $349. We're not even including the upfront $40,000. Lifetime, right? Where it's going to take a decade to get all that money. So I'm putting all the asterisks where there's things to go here. Yeah, yeah. And some of them upsell later. Yeah. There are other services that I'm doing. Sure. So. So $349, theoretically, if your close rate is 4% on anyone you've dialed. And of course, there's going to be follow-up calls. You don't usually close them on the first call, I imagine.
Speaker 1Only ever done that four times. First cold call on the phone. No video call at all. Okay. It's rare. It's fun. Yeah. But usually, it's close on the demo call or the follow-up or subsequent call. I've also had people that I've talked to, and after eight months, we stay in touch and then we close. Right. Later. The reason why is because my name pops up on caller ID and they see that I'm a real person. Yeah. This is James Oakes. Makes a difference. Yeah. I didn't know. And then I realized, oh, you can see my name sometimes on caller ID. Yeah. So more likely to pick up. I had a month and a half where I was just striking out. I didn't know why. I just kind of stuck with it.
Speaker 2All right. So you're at 60 recurring clients today, mostly Phoenix-based, mostly home services. You've been at this 16 months. What did that 16-month arc look like? What was your revenue and profit like along the way?
Speaker 1Yeah. Profit. So right now, I have some luxury expenses because I'm investing in some tools and some additional support. But if I had to really shave it down to the basics of cost, it's the VA and the software. So I have a virtual assistant that does the website, the SEO, just the backend stuff, which I did myself for way too long. Mm-hmm. Right? You want more leverage quicker? That is one thing I'd go back and do differently is find the right VA sooner. Mm-hmm. Because this is pre-AI Studio vibe coding days. I was taking a template and customizing it myself. Yeah. Per second. For seven hours. Tedious. Which is now.
Speaker 2Those days are behind us, aren't they?
Speaker 1They're behind us. And I will say there's nothing better than being really excited to do something and then six months later dreading it. Yeah. That means you've learned something and you've made progress. So I look back with fondness and disgust. Oh my gosh, I spent seven hours one day making that website that now I've already redone for that client because the new one is way better. Yeah. Okay. I've gotten somewhere. Yeah. But yeah, so VA, the software, and some other tools. So 85% to 90% profit margin. today. What do you pay the VA? 800 to a thousand a month. Okay. Awesome. And where are they? Philippines. And 300 a month for the software. I was, I started on the 297 plan. You can start on 97 and make three sub accounts, your agency account, a demo account, and your first client. I skipped that. I was like, I'm not doing that. We're going to 297 because I'm going to make, make sure that I commit to making this work. So started 297 upgraded to 497, which is the agency pro plan, which lets you do rebilling and that kind of stuff. Not necessary, but it's been good to have. Any other costs? Nothing hard. Like I'm paying for loom. So I use loom all the time.
Speaker 2Yeah. So give or take every three months, what was your monthly revenue and profit like until today? So yeah,
Speaker 1first, the first three months I had, you know, five to seven clients, a thousand bucks a month. Yeah. I went from a thousand to 3000 and then six months in, I think I had around 17 clients. Okay. That was after this little lull period where I had a month and a half that was no, no new clients. Six months when I kind of turned the corner and started averaging about a client a week. What changed? You know, I don't really know other than I did dial in the offer. So instead of doing a custom proposal, I was like, okay, here's the package. And I just tried to add as much value as I could to be extra helpful and be different. The idea was, Hey, this is what it's worth. Here's what I charge. I'm going to give you tons of value because I want to help you. And it'll be good for me.
Speaker 2What are some parts of that offer that really move the needle for your clients that you didn't
Speaker 1expect? It's a good question. I mean, the list is basically like I do a brand package. So a lot of these guys have kind of a janky logo or a Canva or an AI logo. And I'll say, Hey, do you love it? Or do you want to redesign it? If you love it, I'll give you a package of high resolution, high quality design of your logo with dark and light background, every file type you'll ever need for print digital, everything, all the permutations of your brand logo in all the file types that you need. And that's something that I try to do for everyone. Yeah. Mostly because that's what I would want. Like I, yeah. And I want to build their website and their other stuff with a high quality logo and brand looks good. And that's why I tell people, Hey, I want your business to look so good that I'd be proud to represent it. So here's what we're going to start with. Like, let's start with your brand. So I do that. I set up their domain based email and I do like a little Facebook page optimization and design, and then a Google business profile optimization, and then review reactivation. And then I do some custom QR codes with their brand in the QR code. And they think that's cool. Right. And then I put that on some business cards and give them some brand new digital and print files for business cards. So just like a bunch of little things that. Yeah. They're not going to do.
Speaker 2Yeah. What do you use to make the brand package of VA? Okay. Are they using AI for that?
Speaker 1No, it's a, that's why it's so valuable is because it's actually like a folder that has 12 files, PNG, PDF, SVG files, like every file type and all the different versions of the, of the logo for each
Speaker 2one. Okay. And is that the VA that you have or a different one?
Speaker 1Just dedicated. I went, I went on Upwork. He's like, Hey, I need a graphic designer who can take I cause I had one client that needed this. And I was like, well, I'm just going to keep using this guy. Every time I have a client, he gives me the full brand package and I pay him 50 bucks and he's I've given him, I don't know, easily over, I don't know, 15, 20 clients. They've done that for now. So he's happy.
Speaker 2Okay. So four or 5,000 at six months, 3000.
Speaker 1Yeah. Let's see. Where was I? So six months I was at about 17 clients. A lot of my early clients, I gave them really good deals. Yeah. And sometimes I remind them, Hey, like if you were a client today, here's what you'd pay. Yeah. And, uh, but I'm just grateful that they were willing to work with me early. So they get, they get a great deal. So my MRR was lower on average. And that's still, if you look at my average, it's like, that's what pulls me down a little bit, but it's okay. Cause that's what got me where, how I started. So yeah, around, around six months got to like 17, 18, eventually 20 clients. And then the last six to eight months up to now I'm approaching 15,000 monthly recurring 85% profit margin. So I recently brought in a second VA who's bilingual to handle. Cause my, my approach is like very white glove, which I know is hard to scale in some ways, but it's also keeps the churn low and it also helps me close much higher conversion. So I'm happy with it for now. So training up a VA to do customer support and onboarding so that I can really just get out of the fulfillment. Game altogether, especially if you speak Spanish, there are a lot of people out there doing the web, the low ticket website offer. So my goal is to be a little bit different, add a lot of extra value, create a bit of a local network. I've referred people right and left. I had a guy that I cold called and he's like, yep, business is brand new. Not ready yet. Call me later. I just referred him a couple of jobs. I was like, Hey, I got a contractor client that needs drywall. I didn't got this guy. So I got him some paid jobs. Didn't ask him for anything. Hey, just like want to help you out. Guess what? Like two months later, he called me, Hey, I'm ready. Like, let's start. So local network, I'm going to keep doing that because it's fun. Like I like calling somebody to give them good news and say, Hey, I want to help you. You just started your business. Congrats on the license.
Speaker 2Let's like, and it's the law of reciprocity. They feel like they owe you something back because you're doing something for them.
Speaker 1Yeah. I think in the micro and the macro, like on the call, it's three minutes or five minutes or sometimes 10 of you telling me the story of your business. And then I say, that's awesome. Can I tell you what I do? Of course they're going to say yes. So that's where I get to talk. Hey, well, here's what I, I started this a year and a half ago. I'd love to help you. I work with other businesses like yours. Can I show you a couple things? And if the, if they're friendly and they're open, it's an easy conversation. Yeah. So yeah, hopefully more of that. And the goal is to get to at least a hundred clients as fast as possible and then hopefully have people coming to me. So. Yeah. What
Speaker 2is the website offer that you
Speaker 1said other people are doing? Typically it's like website and SaaS. So they'll do some kind of template websites they customize. And then usually there's something like similar where any lead that comes in, we'll get an automatic text response, a little bit of a lead automation. So usually it's something like that. Like miss call text back or
Speaker 2automated review response, a hundred bucks a month plus upfront.
Speaker 1Yeah. A lot of them are at $197, $297. Okay. It sounds like
Speaker 2you're kind of specializing in like newer businesses.
Speaker 1A lot of them are.
Speaker 2Which a lot of people would say, avoid them. They don't have any money.
Speaker 1Depends. And sometimes they don't, but I've closed a handful of guys that like brand new business. I'm like, Hey, look, you're not ready yet. Totally fine. How about this? Let's just build you a simple website for 99 bucks a month and just get you something. Yeah. And I'll help you with some other stuff too. Like I always do more than I charge for. Yeah. Yeah. And then I'm like, Hey, I'm happy to grow with you over time. Totally fine. So there's probably an argument that said I shouldn't do that, but I do. So it's good. A lot of new businesses. The golden prospect, this is going to be a great tidbit. The golden prospect is a business that is not brand new. That's been around for three to seven years and they don't have systems yet, but they've got good revenues. They've got revenue. They've got reputation. They're probably doing social media, but what really is awesome. Well, here's the other thing that's important before I say this, I don't promise people anything that I can't deliver. So I don't tell people, Hey, I'm going to get you 10 leads in the next month. No way. I want the expectations to be exactly where they should be, which is, Hey, I'm going to help you massively improve your online presence so that when people find you, they'll trust you. I can't guarantee. This is not a lead generation service. This is an upgrade your online presence service. Yeah. And I will knock it out of the park for you. And at some point the natural consequence is going to be, you're going to get some organic leads, especially if you do these five things that I'm going to teach you. That being said, the golden prospect is somebody who's been in business for three, five, seven years has maybe a CRM, but maybe no website, maybe a kind of a lame one. And they have no, or not very many reviews. Yeah. Because I, like I just did this for a pest control guy and he had a list of 500 ish past and current clients and guess how many reviews he had on Google zero. So I ran the review act reactivation and now he's at 80 something five-star reviews. And guess what? The leads are trickling in. Yeah. And guess what? He's more than paid for what he pays me. He's stoked. And so my, because guess what? That client's never going anywhere.
Speaker 2He left a lot of money on the table, not asking for reviews.
Speaker 1Well, and it was just because, you know, like they couldn't quite get the Google thing verified and figured out and they're doing some Facebook reviews, but there's no system to get the reviews. So that's the, the really core part of the SAS offer for me is all you got to do is press this button, ask for the review. And then that client is going to get the review request and two reminders if they forget, and then a three month message that says, we'd love to get a referral from you. And then a six month message says this, and it's just a little trickle out SMS automation, but getting him those reviews gets him up on Google search and people start calling him messaging him. And he starts seeing, oh, you got a review, you got a review, you got a five-star review. And then he starts getting leads just coming in. Yeah. So that is the golden prospect. I've done that a few times now where somebody has a list, a really solid list of past clients and you just go get those reviews. So I built this little review text automation that works well.
Speaker 2Is there anything I should have asked you that I, I didn't ask you about that would have been interesting for people to know?
Speaker 1No, we covered a lot of it. Okay. Like there's some great stories at the end of the day. It's really like my strategy has been local white glove personal in the age of mass outreach, which a lot of high clients get hit up all the time. Hey, I want to sell you this voice AI agent, but really it's all about people appreciate the personal approach. Yeah. And I do think it's the best way to start. I agree. Go get your first two, three clients for free, help a friend, help a neighbor, given whatever deal they need to let you get the value of learning to do the thing. Yeah. And then you can start getting those reviews. Yeah. And then you have some proof then go offer it, but do it in a personal local way and people really appreciate it. Yeah. So that's, that's where it's at. and uh there's a controversial take maybe that people say is this saturated i think yes and no it's there's a lot of people that need help and there's a lot of mass outreach so i think the opportunity is in doing personal local outreach yeah and that's the sweet spot well i mean how
Speaker 2many people do you think are targeting specifically phoenix area businesses a lot how many like oh man i know you're just gonna guess but like 50 other people like you 500 there's got to be hundreds let's say there's 300 all right remember there's 300 000 businesses in phoenix right so 300 000 divided by 300 that's a thousand clients per competitor right yeah
Speaker 1but the trick is there are a lot of people doing lazy outreach right cold email exactly cold dms their close rates are a point two percent but the the whole point is like that there are people out there that do facebook posts hey i'm doing a free website people know that game now like they just avoid that stuff yeah yeah but there are people out there that they need that call yeah like they're gonna wait for you yeah and they want to work somebody local that they can trust yeah well that's the opportunity
Speaker 2i think in the age of ai we want to work with humans more than ever and we need someone to pull the strings and push the buttons even if ai can do most of the work on the back end yeah there are literally hundreds of ways you can make tens of thousands of dollars a month through go high level it is a transformative piece of software that's how my guest is making riches all through go high level if you want to try it for free for 30 days it would mean a ton if you use my affiliate link you'll get 30 days risk-free it's linked below in the description go high level is absolutely incredible and you will not regret trying or if you just own a business and you want to clean up your systems and processes automated text back ai voice answering service like email workflows the works you need to check out go high level check out my affiliate link you won't regret
Speaker 1it where can we find you if we want to learn more i had a lot of people asking me hey what's your approach how are you successful with your business how are you successful with your business how are you successful with cold calling so i started recording everything that i'm doing and sharing it on youtube so i decided to start a movement instead of cold calling it's cool calling because we're making cold calls cool again yeah because temperature it's just it's not as cold yeah it's friendly it's a little warmer because you're local and you're offering some value it's not a hard call to make and it's just cooler people like it and it's fun one
Speaker 2minute of research goes a long way goes
Speaker 1a long way and being friendly and local and trying to help out your community makes a huge difference having a service oriented kind of mindset when you do this makes a huge difference so on youtube james oaks youtube at cool calling and uh i'm on school james oaks on school okay so thank you james come check it out
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