The Trade Show Strategy Behind a Six-Figure Niche Agency (ft. Matt Aldrich w/ Pet Engine Marketing) | Episode 218

Speaker A: This is like my worst nightmare to talk about this. My agency came back with a quote for seven grand and I'm like, there's no way she's gonna buy this. So I ended up building her a website behind my agency's back. Cold email, cold calling. Really, really low percentage of success. But I went to this trade show and I saw coaches and consultants presenting on stage and I was like, I need to be on that stage.

Speaker B: Wait, so you get paid to do

Speaker A: the trade shows, to speak?

Speaker B: Yeah, but I thought it would make more sense for people to be like, no, no, like I'll volunteer speaking. But no, it the other way around. But yeah. Thanks for uh, thanks for actually, actually joining us. Um, what's really funny I wanted to mention this too is that we uh, like my kind of like mentee, I guess the only real mentee I've ever had actually came from a digital nomad group. So like uh, for everybody listening prior to recording this, Matt, uh, was talking about how he kind of wanted to live the digital nomad lifestyle when he first started his agency. But you know, as, as anybody who starts in our business knows, um, it's better just to be have a home base and just kind of work from there. But um, that's what Marcus wanted to do. And I commented on like a digital nomad post of his, I think, and he reached out and then I've been mentoring him for like, I don't know, too long, four years. And, and uh, and he, he's really like blossomed into like a really good digital marketer now and starting his own agency. And when he was starting his like very first agency, when I was teaching him all about like niching and I was like, okay, you know, you got to get certified in Google Analytics, get certified in Google Ads, like it's all free. Like learn this stuff for free. Pick a niche that you think you'd be uh, like that you'd really enjoy. And the niche that he picked was pet grooming. And I was like, that's actually I thought was a pretty decent niche. He's in Scotland, but like, but you have a lot of like tangential verticals that you can go into. You can go to vets and you can go into pet supplies and you can go into all these other different kind of pet related, um, industries or brands. Um, but it didn't pan out. He ended up um, stopping, doing that and then going to work for an agency, which is what mine and Cody's advice normally is. If you don't have an experience, go Work for one. And he's been doing that for the last few years and kind of succeeding in it. Uh, and then you had reached out not even to be a guest on the podcast, just to chat, just a coffee chat. And then you were into the pet industry and I'm like, oh, I'm going to get this guy on the podcast because we're going to talk about pets. So Matt, uh, could you give us uh, just a brief introduction who you are, what you do?

Speaker A: Definitely. First off, it's a pleasure to be here. It's nice chatting with you guys and longtime listener, first time guest, so it's cool. Um, I run Pet Engine Marketing. Pet Engine Marketing is a digital marketing agency that works exclusively with pet businesses. We mostly work with your small to medium sized local businesses. So retailers, service providers like groomers or trainers or boarding or daycare facilities, maybe some sitters, walkers, vets. We do work with a few brands that are more national, but the majority of our client list is you know, the small kind of mom and pop independent pet business owner.

Speaker C: But this is um, this just comes to mind I have to ask because I remember it being like one of the biggest domain sales of all time. It was a pet e commerce brand and I'm blanking on it because I don't have pets and I don't remember but I remember the domain selling for many multi millions, if not billions.

Speaker B: Are you talking about Chewy?

Speaker C: That's it. There you go.

Speaker A: Everybody knows about Chewy.

Speaker C: I don't. I'm sorry. But I knew that that happened. And so is that the dream that you, that you work with, with Chewy or a type of Chewy or what would. What's the ideal client?

Speaker A: Honestly at this point, my clients, the like, the majority of them are so anti Chewy that I think I'm anti Chewy. I don't think I'll ever work for Chewy. I don't.

Speaker B: Yeah, Chewy, take that.

Speaker A: Yeah, I don't want. I mean I've like always said that I would rather help like mom, um, and pop business, pay their employees more or put food on the table or support a local community or whatever rather than try to help someone get a second private jet or a second vacation home or something. And like I came from working behind the register at one of these independent pet supply stores when I was a teenager. So that's like how I got started in the pet industry to begin with was I was working in one of these stores in high school and was one of my first jobs and kind of Came up through the industry that way before ending up eventually graduating college. Sales role, marketing agency, and then doing my own thing and working my way back to the pet industry. But I just think like, my upbringing in a store has made me want to help out those kinds of owners.

Speaker B: So you, so you went to, you started working at an agency at some point then?

Speaker A: I did, yeah.

Speaker B: What kind of agency was that?

Speaker A: Kind of a big one. Um, local to me. I'm in Michigan. But they owned a bunch of publications and not small publications. Conde Nast, uh, Vogue. So like they were a pretty big agency. Digital was just one piece of what they did. They did a lot of print. I think over time the print market kind of dwindled as it has. But when I was working at the agency there, they, uh, had several locations. Where I was at was just one local one and there were probably a dozen or so people working out of my location itself. So it was a big, a big industry and a big agency. And I didn't fully grasp it being that big when I was working there.

Speaker C: Was there anything pet related there at the time at all?

Speaker A: Nothing, no. They had a retail arm, they had an automotive arm. I think they had like two other verticals that they focused on. But one of my clients when I was working there was actually that first pet store that I worked at as a high schooler. And I had, you know, I was mostly in a sales role at that time as an account executive. And I had reached out to her. We had still had a close relationship. This was in, I think, 2017. And at the time she didn't, she didn't even have a website. She had like nobody managing her Google business profile, nobody doing any email marketing, no strategy, nothing really, you know. So we ended up in like doing a small engagement through my agency for a few months. But then I left a few months after that, started my own agency. She was my first client. She's still a client today. So it's been a, for her specifically, it's been a long journey and a long working relationship for us.

Speaker B: So despite that being like a small business of hers, a local pet store, you worked for a much larger agency. Like you were saying, they still had solutions for the small businesses that they could afford.

Speaker A: They were really trying to push, um, local brand awareness is what they called it. And what it really was was probably a bunch of Google display ads and a bunch of meta impressions and they were taking a really high margin off of the ad spend there. And this was again back in like 2017, 2018, so it was not as built up as it is today. Certainly the landscape and environment was significantly different. But I remember trying to sell like a 1200 per month deal, and I'm sure the ad spend was like, maybe a quarter of that.

Speaker C: Interesting.

Speaker A: If I had to guess, you know,

Speaker C: were they doing media publications there too, or. Or was it purely, um, selling the marketing portion or. You know what I mean? Like, there are some agencies that, especially when you start getting into media, that are also doing the publishing portion too. So they actually have writers on staff and that sort of thing.

Speaker A: Yeah, they offered that as a service too, you know, or as a product, I should say. And I had one client that had signed up for something like that, but I wasn't even there really for long enough to see a lot of this stuff come to fruition.

Speaker C: It's hard.

Speaker B: I just.

Speaker C: I don't know. Like, I know it can work and it happens, but I just have a hard time with some of those business models understanding how they manage it. Uh, well. And it's a different time now, right? I mean, especially when it comes to any writing, any content writing at this point. Like, that's. That's tough. It was tough then. It's. It's been an apocalypse now. So whoever's sticking around in that place,

Speaker A: it's been an apocalypse. That's a good way to describe it.

Speaker B: I mean, one of, like, One of the KPIs for writing now is just going to pass an AI content detection check. Like, that's it.

Speaker A: Yeah, very different.

Speaker B: Yeah. How, uh, so you started. When did you start Pet Engine Marketing then? What year Was that?

Speaker A: Early 2018. So we're about eight and a half right now.

Speaker B: Okay. Okay. Yeah, that's pretty close. We started EverGrow in 2019. January 2019. I mean, I started the EverGrow brand in 2017. Uh, it was just a DBA from, like, my personal brand, but I never really got any clients. I just spent a year and a half cooking before.

Speaker A: Uh, I did that too. You know, like, I called myself an agency far before it actually.

Speaker B: It was just you.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I went through the freelancing kind of growth path, you know, like that for, like my first client, this, this pet retailer, you know, I mean, I was doing like, everything for them for peanuts, you know, 500. 500 bucks a month, doing all sorts of stuff.

Speaker B: So did you leave your agency and then take them on a client? Or, like, did you. Did you just leave and then start an agency? Like, what was that transition period looking like? And then like, what does the growth of the agency look like after that?

Speaker A: I felt like I remember leaving that agency, like, resigning that day and going out to the parking lot and being, like, feeling super uncertain about my options in future. Like, I felt like I was so unhappy there. Not necessarily with the work, but just, like, having to be there and, like, dealing with it. You know, I just. I didn't feel like I had any other option but to start my own thing. Like, I genuinely felt like I couldn't. I was unemployable. Not because, well, I.

Speaker B: This is so funny you said that, but what pushed you over the edge to resign that day?

Speaker A: A couple things. Um, first was, I think I was just not. I was not happy over the summer. And so I wasn't working hard enough, especially from a sales perspective. And starting in that business, you have a. You have a book of business that is nothing, right? So you're pushing a boulder uphill. You know, like, it's really difficult to generate some sales momentum. I didn't even really, like, have a niche to begin with. I really just had the name of the agency that pretty much got a few meetings. But the rest of it is cold outreach. It's phone calls, it's emails, it's visiting people in person. It's hard. It's kind of soul sucking, and it's tough work, and if you're not happy, it's even harder. And so I think that, uh, affected my performance and affected the amount of productivity that I was putting in. And so some difficult conversations with my boss. And I was just like, you know, I'm not happy here. I don't know what I'm gonna do instead, but I don't want to be doing this.

Speaker C: I had. It wasn't, um, in an agency, but I had a similar experience where I worked at K Jewelers for a little while. And you. I don't know, depending on how much of my personality comes through the podcast, I. I am not the right fit for that at all. And I remember just telling them that too. And when I had my interview, uh, at the first agency that I. That I worked at with Jake, and they brought that up in the interview and they just said, so you. I mean, this is on your resume. You didn't really work there that long. You didn't do anything in the meantime, what happened or what went. What went down? And I just told him, I was like, it was awful. And it's not that the job was awful. I was awful in that position and I should not be there. I'm not the kind of person who should be in that place or that role. And it was a risk, too, to, like, tell, you know, tell somebody that's looking to hire you that. Because you could say that again once you're in that position. But it did work out for me. But there's. There's truth to it too, right? Sometimes you're just in a place where no matter, uh, no matter what changes about it, there are certain criteria that just aren't going to make it possible for you to be happy there. And you got to do whatever you have to do.

Speaker A: It's true.

Speaker B: I was laughing earlier because you said I felt like I was unemployable. And Cody. Cody said this on the podcast, too. And I just died laughing. And it was a long time. It's like pre episode 100, I think. And he goes, it's not that I'm unemployable. It's that I'm hard to employ. I thought that was so funny, but also so accurate for I think anybody who's, like, entrepreneurial, driven. Cause it's like. Cause it's like you have standards of, like, how you want to work. But it feels weird because, like, your standards don't conform with everybody else's in the world. Like, everybody else can just show up to a 9 to 5 and just be like, yeah, I'm going to do these things. And it's like, yeah, ah, but I'm not. And like, I. And I'm also going to say it to your face whether I, like, whether I think something is a bad idea or. Or something. And it's like, that alone makes me hard to employ, you know?

Speaker C: You know how. Okay, actors are like a good parallel to this, I think, where people would be like, oh, yeah, they have range. They're so able to be this many different people. I have zero range. I have no range at all. I'm just who I am. And it's. It's worth a lot of money in an extremely small space. And outside of that, I'm worth nothing. Like, it's just. I cannot stretch it all. And the worst part about it is I'm not even the sales guy. Like, I can't even do sales. So to be in that position is. It's awful. I don't recommend it for anybody. But, uh, I'm glad that you've. I mean, because you said cold calling, outreach, that sort of stuff. So you. You don't have a partner, right? It's just you.

Speaker A: It's just me.

Speaker C: You've got it all Figured out at least enough, right?

Speaker A: To some. To an extent, sure. You know, like I wrote, yeah, the agency is six figures. Like, I make a comfortable living. I also literally yesterday had like, such a severe case of imposter syndrome where I was like, I have no idea what I'm doing. And like, that still exists day to day, and I'm eight and a half years in it, you know, so, sure, I've learned a ton, but I feel so far from the finished product, and I feel like all the time I'm hoping that, like, I can pass this stage of business, whatever this stage is, whatever the goal posts are for this or the markers are, and like, get to the next stage. Like, that's like, it's still feels that way, you know? And I also recognize that if you had offered me this position, this situation eight years ago. Yeah. I'd, uh, have bitten your hand off for it, you know?

Speaker C: Yeah. How. What would you say? Because building an agency from zero to earning six figures is the. A feat by itself. And I want to know through that, that process as it relates to, specifically to your niche too, if. If it's applicable. If not, that's fine too. But what do you think you are better at than? That's hard to say after you just talked about the m. Imposter syndrome thing. But I still want to ask because you're doing. You're doing things right. You're doing something right.

Speaker A: Totally.

Speaker C: What are you better at than everybody else that is working for you?

Speaker A: You know, it's weird. I sat down with another agency owner a few months ago, and one of their. One of his team members asked me, what's your superpower? And I had, like, no immediate answer. And I've. I guess I've spent a few months kind of thinking about that. But, you know, there's probably not one thing that, like, maybe we do differently or that I do better than anybody else, but I do think I have a ton of reps just like speaking with pet business owners. And it's more than like, just knowing some of the lingo or, or like some of the common terms. It's like understanding things like their pain points, their margins, kind of what they're feeling based on what their customers are going through, because I'm also one of their types of customers. Like, I feel like I do have a pretty innate understanding of what they're going through as a business owner. And I think that is probably the closest thing that I have to what I'm best at. Like, I'm able to relate to this small business owner in a way that maybe other agencies or other people that pitch them on services just don't. And I've had other people say that as well, like just in the way that I communicate or come across to them.

Speaker B: And not just small business owners but like in the pet industry specifically. And I have we asked the listeners some questions that they wanted to ask you specifically in the uh, in our discord. Like you know, Matt's in the pet industry, like what are questions that you have asked? And I know in the premium version of this we're going to go over some of those questions but like, like even talking about like okay, well KPIs buy business, like I'm pretty sure a pet groomer is going to have a different target cost per lead than a vet. And like those are the questions I want to dig into uh, later. But I want you now to kind of like tell me more about like your growth process and because like you left. So we're going to go back up for a second. So you left the agency, you were, you were doing these, these things for your first client, which used to be a client of yours at the agency for like basically pennies, just trying to like get the wheels turning. What were you then doing? What was like the next move where you're like okay, this is now my strategy for growing this agency to beyond just this one client.

Speaker A: Yeah. So back in. Mhm. This would have been 2019, I went to my first trade show in the pet industry just as a guest and I really went there with the intention of just learning like trying to network a little bit but have conversations, see what was going on and get a more close look at trying to understand what my target audience was looking for, going through, dealing with all sorts of stuff. So like that on the ground, face to face learning was super, super important. And I also think specifically for the pet industry these trade shows are still really important. It is such a relationship driven industry. I think trust. Maybe you guys can enlighten me. I think trust plays such a huge role in the pet industry and I think it might be more important in this industry than others. Like I can only imagine it's very different from an industry like SAS or even to an extent automotive. But

Speaker B: what we go through is there is an element of trust because it seems like every local business has been burned at some point. Um, and for some reason I buy it that trust is harder to come across in the pet industry and I don't know why, I don't know if it's the personality of the people who own pet businesses. Um, let me tell you a little

Speaker A: bit about the people that own pet businesses. They nine out of my, like nine out of 10 people that I speak with in the, in the industry, they didn't get into business to like own a multimillion dollar business. They got into business because they wanted to help pets and they wanted to help people with their pets. And like that passion driven type of business is I think so different than different industries. And because of this like proximity to pets and animals, I think that's where this necessity for trust comes from. And so I learned at these trade shows too, like they, they want to shake your hand, they want to see you in person, like they want to have these conversations. The, the other types of outreach that I had done, cold email, cold calling, like I um, did these things. Really, really low percentage of success. But I went to this trade show and I saw like coaches and consultants presenting on stage, educating. And I was like, I need to be on that stage. Like I need to get into that position. And it took three years, but I had to like generate the connections and have the experiences and continue to put myself out there with connectors, partners, education coordinators to eventually be in a position where I could educate others on how they could improve their business from a marketing perspective but have an audience of people that were like genuinely interested in it.

Speaker C: I have to ask because you were talking, we're talking about the personalities and the type of people who choose to build a, any sort of pet related business. And whenever people talk about passion, I think a good parallel that I think of just because I kind of grew up around it was martial art dojos, which are pretty notorious for not making money and being really bad businesses, great communities. But as businesses not profitable and usually side projects and that sort of thing. How do you, or how did you, how have you. What does that process look like when you try to discern who has the chops to actually make it and do it or it's just not going to be profitable. Like do you, are you asking questions and discovery calls or. You know what I mean? Or does that not actually happen? It's just the perception that I have.

Speaker A: That's an interesting question. I think like it's taken a long time for me to kind of get an idea of like what our red flags and green flags are for prospects. You know, like as an example,

Speaker B: I can give you two of ours.

Speaker A: Yeah, sure.

Speaker B: Anybody, uh, named that'll get bleeped. I work with, that'll get Bleeped out. Uh, and then uh, I've said this on this podcast too. But like um, the uh, uh, if, if the, if the company is very like um, in their values and their website, they put anything religious all over it. Um, and like we're a Christian led organization. I have no problem with. I'm a Christian myself. But this, but there is a very strong correlation with difficult clients and then putting religion before business.

Speaker A: Fair, fair. And you probably didn't know that day one.

Speaker B: No, I didn't. And I was like, I was happy to take on some because I was like, oh yeah, yeah, fellow Christian, great. But it's like always, always difficult.

Speaker A: Yeah. I mean the first examples that come to my mind is in our agency. We call them like people that are needing a savior. You know, where there's so many issues in their business that are happening right now that marketing is not gonna fix it. You know, and like, even if I, even if I could generate you $10,000 overnight, it's not gonna solve all the problems and you're gonna end up expecting way too much, way too fast and it's gonna fizzle out and it's not gonna make anybody happy. And it took a while to be able to recognize them. The other one that I realized, and this was like very early on I was like, you know, I'll just go to Google and look up local pet stores and probably 80% of them are not gonna have a website. And I would reach out to them on Facebook or email or whatever kind of contact information I could find. I was like, you know, obviously I can get these guys a website. I can start them up on some email marketing. You know, some SEO like this should be easy. They're doing nothing. They don't even have a website. Well, I realized they don't care, like they don't value a website, otherwise they would have had it, you know. So it took a while for me to realize there's certain owners who recognize the value of marketing. And if they don't have that beforehand, no amount of me telling them or educating them on why they need to do something is going to make this an easy relationship.

Speaker B: I wanted to save this for the premium part. But like, I'm trying to figure out how to ask this. Like, okay, so you found like you were like, hey, I'm just going to reach out to some of these pet sites that, or pet brands that don't have websites and it's an issue, be an easy sell. And they didn't value it. So did you just have to keep calling until you found someone that did.

Speaker A: Value was slow going in the first couple of years. Like I took deals that I would never take today with people that I would never take today. You know, like I had to cut my teeth on this stuff. And you know, I learned on the job too. You know, like I, this is what I mean, I left the agency. I felt like I had no choice but to start my own thing. And so I uh, like I learned how to build websites myself and that became the first kind of thing that I was able to sell. And then with this pet retailer that I worked with, you know, the results, true attribution was difficult to get, but you can see like an email list grow, you can see impressions on Google grow. Like my first reporting dashboard was an Excel sheet that I updated Monday monthly. Like this was super basic stuff because I was not going to be able to afford like an actual reporting software. But I had to learn how to like communicate and show value and then deliver on results. And it has taken a lot of time, you know what I mean? Like I just didn't come from

Speaker B: not

Speaker A: enough of an agency background where I could immediately open my own thing and start charging two grand a month. Like even if I had these deals that I was doing, like the amount of work that I was doing for $500 a month is insane. You know, but like even if I had given that to an agency and asked for, or sorry, given that to like a bigger business and asked for $5,000 a month, like it wouldn't, I would not have been able to provide a deliverable that was worth that much. So I couldn't. Like it's not as easy as saying, well just raise your prices. The deliverable wasn't polished enough, it wasn't good enough. I wasn't good enough at selling it or explaining it or delivering it either. Like it's just been a non linear growth process to get from where I started to here.

Speaker B: Uh, I hope everybody writes that down or like replays that because like this is like a key point that we hit on all the time, which is you can't, yeah, you can't just charge $2,000 out of the gate. Like you have to, like there has to be value. People have to see the value in it. And like just because everybody else is doing it, that does not inherently make you comparable to that value. So like we like, we're very similar too. Like we could absolutely charge uh, 1500 bucks a month for what? Right now we're charging 650amonth. For just because one, we do know the quality is there, the quality is there comparative to what our competitors are offering. But like one, our business model is meant for scale and also for the value that we deliver that we know we can deliver in the allotted amount of time that it takes. It doesn't need to be priced that and it. And um. But I think people really do struggle with um, this. I don't think they have like the self reflection or like the introspective, um, view that you do because like even you are just like putting barriers on yourself saying like, I can't, I'm not going to charge $2,000 if I don't think I'm valuable, uh, enough for that.

Speaker A: It works both ways, right? Like there are some, I don't know, a lot. The, the agency changes all the time, right. Like I, I kind of wish I had some form of, I don't know, maybe mentorship that's like you're, that would speed up the process of me getting from one place to another in the agency. And like, I do work with a business coach and he is extremely helpful. But at the same time I'm like, again, this imposter syndrome might not be as big a deal if someone was just like, hey, you should think about the deal this way and you should price it this way and you should present it that way. And that's what's worked for me for the last four years. Like that would be helpful in my opinion because like, you know, uh, it's just always changing a little bit and like I can't. I gotta make sure that what we're delivering for this service is profitable for them and for us. Mutually profitable, you know, Like, I don't want this to be. I certainly am not. Like, like I said, my ideal client is like a mom and pop that's putting food on the table and keeping people employed. Like they don't have an $80,000 marketing budget, certainly don't have 80,000 per month to spend. It's uh, not, you know, they can't just like burn this cash. It' it's all important to them. So it adds some responsibility and some pressure and some, it's required me to think about it more, more closely. Right. Reflect on it.

Speaker C: I uh, like that you said the growth was non linear.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker C: Because that's. I told Jake this week I had a day where I did everything that I tell myself that I like and helps me grow. And every single one of those things went badly on the same day. Like everything I tried that is supposed to make me better. I just looked back and was like, that, that kind of bombed in my perspective for, for each of those things. And that's hard. It's hard to take that and then just go into the next day and be like, well, I'm gonna do it all again because, because that's what you do. But there really is no other choice too. I mean, that's, you're gonna have those days. And as long as you can look at the things that you specifically know, you need to, to work on and, and identify as the trouble things that need to be advanced, you keep doing it and yeah, there's gonna be some Ls.

Speaker A: Yeah, like you said, you don't have a choice. Right. Like, it's your business. There's nobody else to blame for it being the way it is. And like, when we go back to what I'm m talking about, like pricing and how if I don't feel like the value of what I'm delivering is worth what I'm pitching it at, I mean, you'll hear from all sorts of people that are like, you should value your own time at X amount, you know, or it's like if you're doing, if you're spending 40 hours per week on something and you're only getting paid $400, well, your hourly rate is really low, you know, Like, I understand that, you know, but also it's, it's kind of a, it's a math equation in the sense where it's like, I do want to get paid a, uh, specific amount at least. And it has to also make sense for the client. I can't just, uh, I'm not comfortable with it. I'm not comfortable structuring a deal and

Speaker B: people shouldn't be comfortable that way, to be honest, because that's not a recipe for a long term success. Um, but we kind of went through the exercise as well when we first started too, because we were selling websites on pennies and we were spending more time on building websites that it was equaling to less than McDonald's wage. So like, we could have just done that, but obviously, like, everybody has to go through that. Like, everybody starting their business has to work for, you know, four bucks an hour basically to be what it breaks out to.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And the other side of it too is like, uh, you know, sometimes I hate the advice of like, you should be paid what you're worth. Because it's like, no, like, personally, like, if someone was like, I want to work with Jake Hunley and Not Evergrow. Yeah, absolutely. You're going to pay my rate, right? You're going to pay me what I think I'm worth outside of Evergrow. But at the same time, you're building a business that is in a sense kind of detached from you. Like it is you, but it's also an entity that you created or else you wouldn't have set up an LLC under a different name. So your pricing, you're going to get paid by what you're worth through the economies of scale. And your pricing has to be somewhat reflective of that unless you plan to be an operator in that business forever. And so, uh, My hourly rate, 250 an hour. Evergrows hourly rate, 150 an hour. But like I still work on my clients just, just as much as I do, you know, personal, like personal consultations and things like that. So it just, the difference is I don't have the economy of scale in my personal brand definitely.

Speaker A: And labor hours come into the equation too. But like, I mean, I remember like back when I was working at that agency that I was telling you about, um, my, my first client, the retailer, she didn't have a website in 2017, right? So I went back to that agency, got a quote. I'm thinking, you know, she needs a digital billboard, right? We're talking a homepage, an about page, some FAQs, some reviews, and a contact page, like nothing crazy. My agency came back with a quote for like a custom built website for seven grand. And I'm like, there's no way she's gonna buy this $7,000, five page website. So I ended up building her a website behind my agency's back. I tried to do it for free. She insisted on paying me $750 for it. But it enabled us to do this like local brand awareness campaign. Because if you don't have a website, where else are you gonna send traffic? And like I said, a few months later, I was gone. And still at the time I was like appalled that my agency was like, you know, five page website, $7,000. And I guess like over time, like today I'm like, you know, $7,000 for five pages. It's kind of the going rate, it's at least closer to what I would, you know, would have gotten paid for $750. You know, so things have changed. You know, like you said, the uh, what the agency can charge just based on the amount of expertise that you have in the building is significantly different.

Speaker C: But I think, I think my beef with the Whole charging what you're worth. Is that the type of people who say it, uh, are usually equating their individual self worth with their professional worth and self injecting that to the point that what they mean is if I don't make this much money then I personally as, as a human suck and it's going to hurt my ego and I, I have an issue with myself because of that. And that's, there's a big problem if that's what you're doing, is if you're self injecting that much of yourself and your self worth into the business. Like you have to do a lot of it. If you're an entrepreneur for sure, uh, you, you have to do that because it's necessary in order to push a business forward. But going too far and then you're hurting yourself unnecessarily and you're going to offend yourself when nobody asked you to. Like there's, there's a delineation and it's good to know it.

Speaker A: That's a good point. You know, I don't know what happened to Jake. I can't.

Speaker B: Oh, for some reason somehow my mic went on mute. Like my physical mic. Weird. Uh, so speaking of pricing, I wanted to talk about uh, like what you're actually charging, um, pet clients. Because it, to me it feels like, it's like it can be all over the board depending on who you're working with. So how do you like, what's your, what's your typical package that you offer or service that you offer and then what are you charging for that and how does that change from client to client?

Speaker A: This is like my worst nightmare to talk about this, but we're going to do it anyway.

Speaker B: Well, you came on the show so you will talk about everything we ask.

Speaker A: I know, I know, it's cool. No, so I've been really, really trying hard to stick to my guns and not take a deal for less than 2, 500amonth. And I've been semi successful at it. There are, I, I talk to plenty of leads where this is simply not feasible. You know, where, where they're at in the business or the type of business that they run. It just doesn't make sense for them.

Speaker B: And, and do you come to that conclusion for them or, or do they already know that and they're the ones telling you?

Speaker A: Sometimes actually I think it is possible for us to charge 2500 and they're still kind of sticker shocked by it because. And this goes back to like what I mentioned earlier about these types of business owners, they're not necessarily in business to run a business, right? They're in business to help pets and their people. Which means um, the concept of a marketing budget is sort of foreign, right? Most of them think of marketing budget coming out of owner take home and that means every dollar has to work really, really hard. And it usually uh, means that they expect results quickly and really clear, really good results. These are kind of red flags, like it's difficult to navigate around those expectations, right? So when I talk about like a business that's like a retail store that's doing 1.5 to maybe $2 million a year, you'd think dude, you've got plenty of money. Well, fair. Your average margin for a store like that is probably 40% on the products that they sell. Then obviously they've got all the overhead, right? Staff rent, uh, anything else that they do. Most of the time they, they genuinely. And a lot of them as well, they, they've been in business for long enough where they opened 20, 30 years ago. They didn't necessarily really need to think about a marketing budget at the time. Like they, the landscape was just different. And so when I say to them like, hey, if you took 5% of your revenue conservatively on a uh, $2.2 million store, spending 3 to 4,000 per month total in marketing is reasonable expected. Some of them are like, well right now we pay a couple hundred bucks for this software. I've got my niece who's running the social media and uh, we don't, we don't have $2,500 a month. And I'm like, you do, but it's just going into your pocket, you know. So a lot of m them don't like the idea of a marketing budget is foreign to them. And so that is something to navigate in terms of. I know that was long winded, but

Speaker C: in terms of what that was important. Like I, it's a, it's a trigger for me when um, especially actually it's more with agency owners when they mentally, when they don't create intentional allocations for things and they just equate any and all income that isn't, that isn't immediately outgoing as their money. Like that's, that is a recipe for long term disaster for when it, when it comes to growth. Like you need to mentally prepare and put a place that you're going to allocate X funds for X things. That way you're not emotionally attached to the money. And that's like the phrase that I use all the time is you're emotionally attached to the money and that's a problem. And you need to emotionally detach because that's what business is like. That's what's growing. That's, that's growing up. That's the big boy pants.

Speaker B: Well, if they did the profit first system, this wouldn't be a problem because like the profit first system literally detaches you from all the money.

Speaker A: Yeah, I read that book too. A few years ago.

Speaker B: We had, we had Mike on the podcast.

Speaker A: Yeah, you told me about that. Yeah, I got to check that. I got to check that episode out.

Speaker B: But his, his time is valuable because only gave us 25 minutes.

Speaker A: I'm not surprised.

Speaker B: Or 20 minutes, I think. So we talked, we talked about him and then we had him on and then we talked about him again after to make our normal.

Speaker A: I think when you write a book or two, you automatically get to raise your hourly rate. And that's why writing a book is. It's on my to do list at some point. But.

Speaker B: Oh, we have, we're having a guest on about, literally about writing a book. Like, it's like he's a ghostwriter, he's a ghostwriting agency. And one of the things that he does is he writes niche relevant books for agencies in specific niches to establish authority and credibility.

Speaker A: Love it.

Speaker B: So when he comes on, you gotta listen to that one.

Speaker A: I will, I'll check it out for sure.

Speaker B: I want to talk about your acquisition method a bit because earlier you mentioned that it's hard to communicate the value of marketing to some of these people if you're cold calling them. I think you mentioned getting on a stage or talking about going to conferences and getting on those stages and talking. So like what? Um, first just to set kind of a framework, like what revenue level of an agency are you at right now? And then what's your acquisition method that matches that?

Speaker A: So we'll probably do close to 400 this year and we'll probably spend, yeah, between 5 and 10% all told on marketing. None of it on paid ads. Um, that goes towards trade shows and meeting people and having a booth and um, some other memberships here and there. But for me, it's really difficult to quantify how much it costs for me to get like a lead. Like, I think I'm in a lot of different places and close with a lot of different partners and connectors. And some of that is by design, you know, Like I. Four years ago I started a second business in the pet industry called the pet industry network. Uh, I've got a co founder there and it's essentially like a BNI for the pet industry. And our members are only business to business service providers. And so those like 12, 13, 14, 15 of those members are like my closest referral partners and my best network for generating referrals. And in an industry where trust is so important and cold outreach is so challenging, those warm referrals are way easier to close than anything that I do. That's cold. So between time spent that, uh, because I kind of consider like the amount of time that I put into the pet industry network as part of my marketing expense too, the amount of time that I spend kind of working that group as well as running that group with my co founder. And the booths at the trade shows, the couple of trade shows per year, the number of webinars that I do, the podcasts that I'm on, I think I just show up in a bunch of different media and a bunch of different ways and then people Google things like pet business marketing and we show up because of the amount of SEO effort that I put into growing it. You know, seven years ago, like SEO is like the really. That was the thing that I really went in on heavily when I first kind of entered the space. I think I was like, I was writing three, three blogs a week myself for the website. And this was in like 2020 when you couldn't do it with AI. So I was productive.

Speaker C: I know people who will say sort of similar things about feeling obligated or that it's necessary to be at uh, booths and trade shows. And they too can't quantify it. They just know that if you don't do it, the doors aren't open. And I do wonder how many niches are like that where it is completely and not completely. All possible things are possible, but like you're, you're really shooting yourself in the foot by not doing it. There's got to be others too. Um, but I know that it would be hard for me like in. To have the talk with Jake we have before actually where we talk about it and we say, but these are the expenses associated with it. And then sometimes they're. Some of these booths will be, hey, it's 10,000 bucks to show up or something like that. We're like, that's a lot of money. That's a whole lot of money. That's really hard to justify when we already have this other thing working. So I could understand for some of the other niches too, where, um, if You've done things and it's not working. Like you've tried the other things and it just hasn't, then maybe, maybe those doors have to be open in order for the network to accept you.

Speaker A: Yeah, and I also think, I agree with you. You know, I'm sure there are niches where it's like, if you're not going to these, you're just not like, tuned in. I also do think a lot of the other marketing work that I do is about building trust. Honestly, it's like being close to other credible, authoritative figures in the space. And I'm not talking about like the, uh, like the dog trainer on Netflix, you know, I'm talking about like, other people that work specifically with my types of businesses, you know, and the podcast that they run or the communities that they do, being a webinar guest on, um, on their stuff. And I do a lot of stuff for free too. Like, I'll be, I'll give your audience a webinar in the, in the hopes that like, you know, six, 12, 18 months down the line when they need more serious help, I'm the one that they're going to reach out to. And like, my philosophy for education too, both in person at these events and on these webinars, is I can, I can show you how to do it. I can tell you how to do it, I can tell you what to do. But I know that most of my prospects are wearing multiple hats. They are way too busy to do it themselves at a high level. And so if they want it done right, they're eventually going to come to me.

Speaker C: You said the webinars and mentioned, like, doing it for free. I think it's important for listeners to know, though. I think as the owner, it's, it's fine and appropriate to think of it that way because that is the way that you're doing it. But when people talk about how they're investing in marketing or something like that, they'll discount that and they'll say, well, we aren't spending money on advertising or marketing. Well, you're, you're, you've got sweat equity there. Like, you're putting in time and hours that if you were going to pay somebody else, that'd be expensive and it would be money that you were paying for it. So just because you need it yourself, that's still like a big marketing investment.

Speaker A: I agree. And I should be clear. The, the trade shows, like the on stage education, that's not free, like, I demand a price for that. That takes travel, like I gotta build the prep. Build the sideshow. I gotta prep. Like, I gotta deliver.

Speaker B: Wait, so you get paid to do the trade show speaking stuff?

Speaker A: To speak? Yeah.

Speaker B: Okay. I, like, flipped the script on what I thought was involved. I thought, like, it would make more sense for. For people to be like, no, no, like, I'll volunteer speaking because it's good visibility for me and I. But. So, like, but, you know, it's the other way around.

Speaker A: Well, depends what trade shows. You know, some of them still lowball speakers. And I've said no. You know, like, I got, I got invited to speak at, uh, a small pet. Ah, conference in France. And they would have paid for just airfare, but they wouldn't. They weren't going to pay the speaking fee. They weren't going to pay for, like, the hotel or wherever I stayed. No stipend for food. And I was like, no, like, that's not worth it.

Speaker B: I have so many questions on this topic that you're going to answer in the premium for cutting because I want to know fair.

Speaker A: I would love to. You know, um, the one thing you should know as well is, like, the pet industry in the United States is bigger than anywhere else in the world. It's more developed, it's more fleshed out, it's larger from an economic standpoint. There are more business owners, there are more pets, there are more consumers, there are more brands. Like, it's just bigger in every single way around the world. It's just not as developed. And it's getting there.

Speaker C: But I have an opinion on this. I have a take.

Speaker A: They have money to pay speakers here. They do. And the big trade.

Speaker C: You know why?

Speaker A: So they do.

Speaker C: Because pet owners are an oppressive group. It's true. In the US They're a technical majority. So that's true there. Uh, it is. It wasn't always like this, but at this point, they, they have enough influence that it's the not pet owners that have become the minority. And then they're weird, right? It's not in all cases, but it has become more and more of that. Yeah, I feel strange about it because I grew up with pets and I don't have them now. I'm like, look, I don't hate them. I just don't want hair, man. Like, don't judge me for that.

Speaker B: You're going to.

Speaker A: You can't, uh, you can't deny the data. You know, like, three out of four homes have a pet. And millennials now the largest age group in the US and also the largest pet owning group in the US and they also spend the most on their pet. And, you know, the, like, the way that we as millennials think about our pets is vastly different than the way our parents thought about pets. Vastly different.

Speaker B: Yeah. Laura and I are crazy about our pets. We cook. We, uh, we cook their food every night. Like they have, like they have a, they have a meal that I could eat.

Speaker A: Part of the family.

Speaker B: Yeah. Except for their supplement, I don't think I'd eat that. It's like, sprinkle it on.

Speaker A: And yeah, they're your kids and you're, you know, that's not uncommon the way that, like, what you're talking about, like, it is. That's how millennials are.

Speaker B: Uh, I had one last thing to mention, and I wanted to bring it up towards the end. And we don't have to go in, like, super big detail because we're getting to time here, but we, um, can cover more of it in the premium cut too. But when we had our discovery call, you kind of seemed like you were going through a little bit of an existential crisis in your agency. And I was like, we got to talk it out. What's going on? I think last time I remember, you were at this point where you're like, I gotta figure out how to get past this barrier. And, uh, there's just like a lot of mental load and capacity that you're dealing with. So spill it.

Speaker A: Fair. Well, I will say lots of things change. I think we spoke, what, like six weeks ago, maybe four to six weeks ago, something like that. And things change quickly. Lots of things change. Right. If I remember how I was feeling four to six weeks ago, it felt like I probably hadn't had a proper disconnect or vacation in a long time. I was feeling really burnt out from a few. One particular project where I was like, throwing a huge virtual trade show event for the pet industry, which was a, uh, smashing success, I will say. But it was a massive lift. It was a ton of work. It was exhausting. And I had just like finished up another multi month project that was just, I was burnt out, you know, and at that point I was, I was going a little bit crazy. I was definitely going through it. I feel a little bit better these days. I took a week in San Diego. This was, I don't know, two weeks ago. So I'm feeling a little bit refreshed. I can actually, like, tolerate sitting in front of the computer for more than four hours. So, you know that that's a good sign.

Speaker B: But we can tell when we have our discovery call. I was like, he's going through it.

Speaker A: I really was. No, I think, like I mentioned this a little bit earlier, really trying to stick to my guns about like a 2,500 per month minimum, you know, and we talked about this in the discovery call too. But if I can, like, if I can sign, let's say four 2,500 per month clients and get $10,000 in revenue, me and my team will be infinitely happier than If I sign 10, 1000 per month clients. That will be so much more work. At least three or four of them will churn and fall off and I'll be pissed off about that. My team will be unhappy. We'll be overworked. So it's been a, this goes back to what we were talking about. Like, how do we, how do we present ourselves with a deliverable and a package that is priced appropriately for what it can provide financially for this business owner? And that has been a huge learning process too. Like earlier this year, January, February, we ditched all of our social media work, which was a huge decision. It was something that we had provided for years. But the biggest issues were one, it was basically untrackable in terms of how much effort and how much time we were putting into it versus how much money it was making the client. For the most part, we could see on the back end metrics like low reach, low engagement. It's not a real, it's not from behind the scenes. It's not this like raw, uncut kind of behind the scenes work that is actually having an impact in today's social media. So if it's not that and we're spending a bunch of time on it both internally and the client just like wants it done, like, to them it's just activity. And like, my team was burnt out. I was annoyed. Clients were unhappy.

Speaker B: And I, um, was like, was this organic social?

Speaker A: Yeah, organic ads. And like, it worked six years ago, you know what I'm saying? Like, back then you could just post stuff and it would, the algorithms would work, people would see it. And now that is not how it works. And so we pivoted a lot. We were like, my team can. I told clients, I was like, if you posted twice a month a video of you doing some behind the scenes stuff, it would outperform what my team has created for the entire month. And this was difficult to get across to them. Like, they were like, so you, you're not gonna post on social media anymore? Who's gonna do it? What's gonna happen to my business. And I was trying to tell them. I was like, nobody could post on it and you wouldn't notice a difference financially. And they were shook by this. Like, their minds were blown. And it is.

Speaker B: Do they believe you?

Speaker A: They trusted me. They trusted me to guide them through it. And a few of them now are, like, reaping the rewards as we've, like, shifted a lot of our effort and that budget and that time towards doing things that were not just like an activity or a check the box or a deliverable. You know, like, I'm, I'm done with this, like, package where I'm like, we'll post three times a week for you, or we'll send four emails a month, or you'll get two blog posts a month. Like, I like that stuff is just too easy to replace, uh, or farm out with AI these days. I don't think the value is there anymore, and I don't think the result on the time spent on it is there anymore. So now I'm much more, like, focused on trying to sell something where it's like, dude, we, we are good at these things. It's email, it's paid ads, it's strategy, it's websites, it's SEO, um, and it's some design and it's overall, like, marketing direction and consulting. Like, we're good at those things for these types of businesses. I'm gonna help you get from A to B. If where you're at right now is 500,000 in revenue and you want to be at $750,000 in revenue, okay, that's not going to happen overnight. I'm going to do anything that we can to get you to that goal. It might be email, it might be SEO, it might be ads, it might be all manner of those things. But if that is a $250,000 goal, one, I know that posting three times a week organic social media is not going to get us there. You know, Like, I know that too. But also, if we get you to $250,000 extra, uh, in revenue per year, what is that worth to you? And I'm trying to really price myself in a way where it's like, yeah, if I can prove that we can start to see some green shoots in three, four, six months and get us on the way to $250,000 extra in revenue, you shouldn't really have a problem paying me $2,500 for, uh, that. In fact, we're still underpriced. But if we can do it, if we can Deliver and get you there, you will happily pay $2,500 a month. If I can get you 250 grand in revenue per year, I would do that every day of the week.

Speaker B: Yeah. And knowing that you have the confidence to be able to actually deliver on that too, like, because you've been in the industry for so long.

Speaker A: Yeah, we're not perfect. We make mistakes. Sometimes it doesn't work as well as we want it to.

Speaker B: I like to tell clients that we have a 90% success rate, and so there's a chance you're in 10% that it doesn't work with what we trying to do. But 90% is pretty good.

Speaker A: 90% is pretty good. And I might have to. I've talked myself out of sales. Honestly. Like, I'm too honest. I'm too transparent.

Speaker B: I'm like, I mean, just. Just look at, like, but if you do everything, aggregate, and you look at all the things, uh, because, like, clients be like, what can I expect with ads? I'm like, well, you can expect 85 bucks a lead because we've aggregated all this information. And it's not just me, like, blowing smoke. Like, I know we. We have this aggregated. And then if we also look at, like, our churn rate, for example, like, if we look at. Okay, well, if we have a 90, I think we have like 94%, um, month over month retention rate. Um, I can also look at the clients this year and say, okay, out of all the ones we gained, how many? How many? Just subjectively, like, which ones did we not do a good job for? Or could we not figure out the market? And it's like one or two and like, that's it. And it's like, okay, well, just as a percentage, like, we're 90% successful. Like, 90% of the time we have happy clients, and that's great. And maybe you're a 10 percenter, and that's totally fine, but I don't want you working with us and then leaving and then thinking we suck, when really you're just part of the 10%. And I'm sorry we couldn't do a better job for you.

Speaker A: How many, like, how long of a window did you give before you decide to, you know, hey, we didn't figure it out.

Speaker B: Yeah, usually like, six months. Like six months puts us through one of the two busy seasons. One of the two busy seasons for us is, like, April and September. Um, uh, so as long as they're through there, that. That's usually, um, we should be able to see Some success with local. Local advertising, but otherwise, um, fair. Cool, man.

Speaker A: Good enough. Window.

Speaker B: I got a bunch of questions I want to ask you about a bunch of different stuff in the next session here. So, um, for everybody else, uh, well, how can people find you if they're not subscribed?

Speaker A: Yeah, definitely sign up for the premium. I'm excited for this next portion of the conversation, but if you want to reach me, I'm happy to answer questions I love, like mentoring and sharing my experience. So, uh, my email is all over my website, but my website is petenginemarketing.com. my email is jet. Jetenginemarketing.com and feel free to shoot me a LinkedIn invite as well. I'm m happy to network and chat and meet other agency owners.

Speaker B: Awesome, man. Well, thanks for joining us again. This is really good. Even the pleasure. Stick on. I'm gonna end the. End the recording, and then, uh, we'll head to the next one.

Speaker A: Cool.

Speaker B: Archery classes, huh?

Speaker A: Huh?

Speaker C: We were talking about hobbies, and I told them, you know, saying like, uh, I don't. I've done the American thing of the hobbies I select are monetizable hobbies to the point that it's hard to actually call them hobbies.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker C: Like, yeah. So I. My time is pretty much work, study, workout. That's it. And, uh, when I've thought about just pure hobbies lately, I've thought, I think I just might try archery sometime. I think it would be cool. One of those cool things that everybody thinks is cool and you want to try it, and I should just try and give it a shot and then realistically, it's one of those things, like, on a good month, I would do it once, but that's fine. I'm okay with that.

Speaker B: You're taking classes for it or you look?

Speaker C: Yeah, I'm sure that there's some around.

Speaker B: Oh, uh, you're thinking about it. You should do, like, knife throwing. That'd be way cooler.

Speaker C: Like, what if I do it once and I find out I hate it and I don't want to get invested,

Speaker B: but this is how I feel about this, how I feel about fencing. I really want to do fencing. I know Eva does it, and I'm talking about, like, the sword fighting, fencing, not installing fences.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Uh, that's more fun. Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah, It'd be way cool. But Matt, holy crap, that guy was full of information. It's so crazy because he seems so timid, like, when we talk to him, especially in the discovery call, and then he was like, oh, Yeah. I speak at events and do webinars. I'm like, what. Where did this come from?

Speaker C: I think he has a talent for. I think he does have the talent for taking complex things and saying them in a way that's easy to digest. Mhm. There's a lot of stuff that he said where I just was nodding my head. Banger. Yeah, that's. That's how you say it. And that's the best way to say it. That's the easiest way to get it across in a way that is digestible and consumable and you'll keep it in your brain.

Speaker B: Yeah. When he said, uh, like, he had. He mimicked a lot of the things that we said. Like, uh, you know, like he said he made a joke. He's unemployable. I'm like, no, you sound like you're harder employ. And then, uh, he couldn't match the value of a $2,000 or $5,000aM Month offer. Like, he had to feel like he had to, you know, price a lot lower because it wasn't polished. And like, it's so commendable because it's just like, not something that's in the. In the space. And I know we ended up talking for like two hours, and I feel like there's a lot of things in there that I wanted to bring back up in this post episode recap that I was just like, dude, everything he's saying is banger.

Speaker C: Yeah, there's a lot. It's hard. It's hard to be. I have this mixed feelings of like, I want to be concise with all of this stuff because I, I just want to be conscious. Time.

Speaker B: Yeah. With the length of the episodes.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: But, yeah, it's. It's. It's like a skill that we're gonna have to develop and improve on because it's. We. We're used to this, um, flow, but rearranging this in such a way that we're. We're intentionally structuring things to be, um, aligned on a certain timeline. That's kind of what we're trying to do with this new. The whole new structure. And it takes. It's just going to take practice.

Speaker B: What do you do when your guests spit and fire for 45 minutes straight? Like, I don't. Yeah, like, that's the hard part. And I couldn't stop him. Like, we got into the Patreon version of this because we wanted to start in the. In the premium version. We started talking about, like, I went back and I was like, okay, I want to know how you started speaking at events. I want to know how they started paying you. I want to know how you. How you started to reach out to other events. I want to know how your webinars work. Like, I wanted to know, like, because I want to do this. Like, I immediately. Right now, I want to go out and I want to go to the GIE website and be like, how do I speak? Also, do you guys pay? And then just follow exactly what Matt told us in that. In that premium version? Because, like, it just seems so much more complicated to me, and it didn't seem like, as worth it to spend money to go speak at this event for maybe no leads. But he's like, no, no, they pay you. Like, how did I not know this? And, like. And so, like, we wanted that version to be, like, 20, 30 minutes max. Again, it was like 47 minutes. And it was like, it's just. It's just hard because, like, we vet our guests to come on. And I was just talking to Cody about this before this episode started, but I was like. Or we had. We had a. We had a discovery call today, and I'm like, man, like, we're asking guests to deliver a ton of value, and we're one for one right now. Like, the value that was given in this was, like, it was so good.

Speaker C: Uh, yeah.

Speaker B: And I really think if. And, like, also Cody started asking about his. The pet industry network, uh, that he started, like, how we started that.

Speaker C: That was cool.

Speaker B: That was cool, too. Yeah. I was like, you should scale this out to other industries. And so he gave us step by step of, like, how he created this. This industry network where he's the only marketer in it. And then there's, like, I don't know, probably like, a CPA or probably like, some other, like, sales consultancy person in there, and they, like, vet them and they charge to be a part of it. They throw events. And it has been like, the primary contributing factor to his. His agency's growth. And, like, learning all about that and how he did that makes me want to do it in our niche.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's hard to tell somebody to say all of that in 20 minutes. Yeah, that's what we're trying to get to.

Speaker B: Maybe we should have just, like, worse guests on. I guess we had to squeeze it out of them, but no. Well, everybody, I hope you like this new format. Uh, again, it's our first time trying this, so, um, for the premium version, I mean, this episode's only going to be, like, an hour and 10. Which is, which is right where we want to be anyways. But there's another 47 minutes of content that Matt spit absolute straight fire and uh, well, to the Patreon. So check it out.

Speaker C: Leave us a review if you like. This.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: Did we say that already? I can't remember.

Speaker A: I don't know.

Speaker B: In the Patreon version we did,

Speaker C: uh, everybody everywhere. Leave us over.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Otherwise, um, if you're, uh, if you're a member of it, uh, go check out that other, other segment. And then if you're not, well, we'll see you next time.

Speaker C: See you.