The Agency Hour
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The Agency Hour
From Freelancer to 15 Staff: The Real Story with Josh Moore.
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We've pivoted a little bit. We're doing uh a lot more done for you services for our clients. You're one of them. We're doing done for you content services. I sat down the other day and worked it out. I it's ver for me, it's very straightforward to get to like a completely separate business. I'm not saying I'm gonna do it, but it's very straightforward to get to seven figures a year with using AI and I reckon three staff, you could get to seven figures a year very easily. It is it's the opportunity is outstanding, and I don't think I've ever seen in my lifetime, I don't think I've ever seen an opportunity quite like this. It's I feel like you know, entrepreneurs that want leveraged income back in the day in 2007-2008 when I started my WordPress agency and I started helping other WordPress freelancers put together care plans and have recurring revenue and have manage WP, you know, streamline your processes. It was great. I can manage all my clients' websites in a couple of hours a week now and and generate monthly recurring revenue. But you know, I feel like this is a this is a quantum leap forward. Here we are 12, 15 years later. And uh what we can achieve with AI now in in an hour, you know, we can achieve uh almost a week's worth of output in in a couple of hours. It's it's I don't think uh I think we're still trying to wrap our head around what that looks like uh in terms of what our businesses might look like in a year's time. I mean, can we scale with our existing team? Can we double, triple, 10x our revenue and our profit? I think we can. Hey, just before we dive in, a big shout out to Manish and Brent and Cushbu and the whole team at E2M Solutions. They are our prime sponsor here at the Agency Hour and Agency Mavericks. They help us make this content possible. Frankly, without them, it wouldn't be possible. So a huge shout out to E2M Solutions. If you need any WordPress development, if you need WordPress care plans taken care of, if you need any local SEO campaigns, if you need content for your clients, if you need AI built into your agency, please go and talk to Brent Weaver and the guys at E2M Solutions. We'll put a link in the show notes here. Uh you can get a discount off your first month. They are a white label agency based out of India and the US, and all they do is serve digital agency owners and help you uh take work off your desk so that you can concentrate on growing your agency. So go and talk to Brent and the team at E2M Solutions and get on board. All right, let's dive into the podcast. Hey, welcome to the Agency Our Podcast. My name's Troy Dean. I'll be your host again today. And on this week's episode, we have a special guest all the way from New Zealand across the ditch, as they say, Josh Moore, who is the founder and CEO of Duo Plus. They're a full-stack digital marketing agency. They're one of our clients. They've been in Mavericks Club for over three years now. They are also one of our content clients. We've started rolling out Done For You Content Services for agency. So if you're a digital agency owner and you know you need more content to help position you as the authority and bring in more clients, but you don't have time to do it, then you should reach out to us because we're offering this as a separate service now. And Josh is one of our Done For You content clients. He's grown the agency from zero to 15 staff over the last 12 years or so. Uh he started it by himself. Uh, he built a team, he's just taken over the second half of the building on the top floor of where he is. He's just built a podcast studio and launched his own podcast. He's also got a software app that plugs into zero that helps you map out your recurring revenue. This is a fascinating conversation. If you are a digital agency owner and you want some insights into growing your digital agency, this is a great episode. Josh talks about leadership and about how every day he's figuring out how to extract himself more and more from the agency and empower his team to do the heavy lifting. All right, without further ado, let's go and meet Josh Moore from Duo Plus. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to welcome back to the Agency Our Podcast. Josh Moore from Duo Plus in New Zealand. Hey Josh, how are you? I'm doing good. Excellent. Now, this is your second time on the Agency Hour Podcast, that right? Yeah, that's right. Second time. Something must have gone right the first time for us to invite you back. Um for those that don't know, who are you? What does Duo Plus do? Who do you serve? What services do you offer? Give us the too long didn't read version.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, great. So Duo Plus, full service digital marketing agency. We're based in Hamilton, New Zealand, and we service clients across New Zealand and Australia. We work with a lot of trades, and then so especially subtrades, plumbers, drain layers, uh electricians. So we have a lot of those, but then we also have um some healthcare dentists, orthodontists, and a few e-comms. So we haven't niche down in terms of um industry as such, but what we really focus in on are um industries where people can click and then buy quite quickly. And so if it so for the trade is if electrician, you're not searching for an electrician and then just waiting for three months to decide. You're looking for that person that day. And so we specialize in that quick decision type of industry and we do very, very well at that type of marketing. Got it. I mean, that's a niche in itself, right?
SPEAKER_02Like I I think the word niche or you know, niche, as they say on the other side of the planet, uh, I think it's massively misunderstood. I think people say, well, if I'm gonna, you know, people say I need to niche down, that means I just need to focus on dentists. I don't think that's what it is at all. I think dentists are a target audience, right? Chiropractors are a target audience, plumbers are a target audience, but your niche is like what it is you do and how you do it. And I think if you're taking people who are in need of something, they have high intent, they're searching, they click, they buy in a very short space of time, that's as far as I'm concerned, and I understand that's a niche in itself, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that that's what we do, and that's how we that's what we talk about to our customers, as where we're really good. If somebody comes to us wanting to do the organic social media three posts a week, we say, Hey, look, that's a great idea, but that's not us. We send them elsewhere. Got it. You can always send them to me, you know, Josh, because we're getting into that game.
SPEAKER_02Uh more on that later. Um, now before you were before you decided to start, and by the way, uh, for those of you who are watching this on YouTube, you'll have to excuse, I do have nail polish on. We were up in Noosa last week on school holidays, and my five-year-old, I promised her I would take her to the nail salon to have her first experience getting her nails done, and I promised that I would get them done as well. And now I'm just keeping it on to freak people out. So you it's school pickup is very funny. Uh school drop-off and pickups for all the other parents came, what are you, what's going on? You're wearing nail polish. Um, so uh before you started Duo Plus, what was your backstory? What were you doing? And what prompted you, my friend, to have an idea to start your own agency?
SPEAKER_01So, yeah, I'd been in corporate marketing roles before that. So I was the national marketing manager of a large education firm, so a private education firm in the tertiary sector. So we had um eight campuses across New Zealand, and my job was yeah, running the marketing and sales team to make sure all the courses were full. So that was my role before that. I was in a real estate marketing role. And but yeah, I'd been at that national marketing manager role for five and a half years, but for many years I'd wanted to be in business for myself. And when I was in that role, we did we did everything except TV or billboards. So we did newspaper advertising, we did brochures, we did radio, um, website, of course, Facebook ads were were emerging. So that was just in the right-hand column. There were no Facebook ads on mobile back then, um, and Google Ads was, of course, um pretty strong. And so in that process, I could just see that digital marketing was more cost-effective, more measurable, more efficient than anything else. And so when I finally stepped out and went into business for myself, then I wanted to do a digital marketing agency.
SPEAKER_02And what did that look like when you started your own thing? Was it just you freelancing, doing everything, getting your own clients, doing all the delivery, or did you start building a team from day one?
SPEAKER_01Well, I'm not a developer. So I've I'm quite technically savvy and I'm really good at talking to clients. I'm good at marketing, so but I came in as a marketer, and then I needed to find some contractors for web development. And so I had uh referral from from someone who said, Hey, these guys are great, and so were some overseas guys who who we did their first websites through. And look, they were they were cheap and they did a uh a good, an okay job, but I I just found that I was spending so much time doing the the quality review, quality assurance, the reviews and saying, hey, this isn't working, this isn't working. And I knew enough about code to to have a look at it and say, why on earth have you duplicated this three times and that type of stuff? So so it was enough to get going and to sell a few clients on websites, but then after maybe it was less than a year in, it was just costing me so much time doing these reviews that I just said, oh, I need to start to build a team that will actually be able to put proper processes in place, standards that we're happy to follow and do that every time. And then that's when I started to um hire a team in-house.
SPEAKER_02I just want to park here for a second because you said something there that's interesting. You you said that you needed to start to build a team that would put proper processes and standards in place. Most agency owners I know uh and I've worked with you know thousands of them over the last 15 years, they don't hire people because they don't have their processes ready. You're not being a developer, very difficult for you to put those processes in place before you hire someone. So, what was the mindset there that you realized that you needed to hire someone and that they would come in and build the process right? Because most people are just too scared to hire someone because they don't have their processes ready. But you you you've approached it completely the other way.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I guess because I didn't have that skill set, I had enough to review the process and discuss it through and say where we wanted to go. Uh, but because I didn't have that skill set, I did need to rely on on their expertise with it, which is really helpful because in other areas I where I do have the skill sets, I uh like you say, I'm the one who ends up creating the process or being much more hands-on in it and and learning to delegate the process development is a bigger journey when you have those skills yourself. So it is that tension. When you don't have the skill in a particular area, it's a lot easier to delegate, including the the definition of the process.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, and this is, I think a lot of people think that they know enough about every part of the business that they'll build the processes before they hire someone, and it just slows them down. Like if you're gonna, if you hire two people and you're gonna document the processes before you hire them, how are you gonna do your job and document two other jobs before you hire people? And this is, I think I actually think it's an I actually think it's an excuse not to hire people. I think it's a the reason people don't hire is because they're afraid, which I'll unpack in a second, and I think they use this as an excuse to not hire people because they if I don't have my processes ready, I can't bring anyone on. How are you confident that you were gonna earn enough revenue to pay the wages of people that you brought on on the team?
SPEAKER_01That's the big question, isn't it? So when I started, I I didn't have the revenue in order to bring on a full-timer, and so I just decided to go out to market looking for a part-time person. And I I just thought, is there anybody out there who will actually want to be a developer part-time for me? It seems like an unattractive offer, but I found someone who was fantastic. And he was um so in the city I'm living in, he was actually living here but working in a city an hour and a half away, and was wanting to actually transition back to working here if he could. And his current job had actually just reduced down from five days to four days a week. They were a little bit light on work. So initially I was able to pick him up for a day a week, which was perfect for me, and then he wanted to transition further back, and so we increased it two days and then finally full-time. So that was yeah, that was definitely favorable uh for me to help take those steps. I think the lesson out of that is that we think in our head that somebody, there's only full-timers out there wanting work. And look, there's a lot of people who only want full-time work, that's true. But there's actually often really talented people who have unique circumstances who might just slot into your team perfectly well. So I've learned a few times, go out to market asking for what you want, and hey, there might be someone who just fits that on that fits into the journey that I'm on.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, 100%. There's a lot of also, you know, anyone who's a parent has is highly motivated to have flexible work hours if they're doing pickup or drop-off, or they just want to work three days a week from home, or and I think post-COVID, uh, people are a lot more open-minded to flexible work arrangements. And so I yeah, I think you don't have to, you know, be able to generate you know, 200 grand a year in revenue just to pay someone a $70,000 full-time salary. There are more flexible options. And so you brought this this team member on. Um, what yeah, how long ago is this? What what what year are we talking?
SPEAKER_00Uh 2014, I think it was. 2014. 12 years later. What does the team look like these days?
SPEAKER_01We've got 15 on the team now, and it's and we're all in-house, so we don't have any over sour uh overseas outsourced staff. We're actually all uh in the same physical building, and we do have some remote work as in a couple of the team work one day a week from home or maybe two days a week. Uh, but we are quite unique from an agency from that point of view. So we're all in the building together. And now I I must say it's the where I know you know people in agency Mavericks who have who have built an overseas team, and there's some definitely some attractions to that, especially in the economies of things. It is more expensive paying a local team, that's for sure. But the the team culture that we've been able to build is is is incredible. The um we find too that that clients they do really like either face-to-face or at least the the team's calls, knowing that that we're local, we live here. Um and look, we have people from overseas on our team as well. Uh, but uh look, we've got a couple of really talented guys from India who are on the team, but they live here, and when they first came here, they had to learn our geography. And they had to learn all these things that we take for granted when we're um, you know, just because we've grown up around it, and they're running ads. And you know, and what's the difference between this this city or this state or they understand that target market? Look, they've had to learn that, and we can do that really well. I'm I'm I'm not saying that they they'd have to live here to do that, but that is definitely an advantage when they've driven to a number of these places or they've or they've actually um in the office having the conversations and we can pick things up quickly. So look, that that's worked really well for us. Um it's expensive, but we have an incredible team and incredible culture. And uh, like one of the things we do, we go out for lunch every two weeks. I pay, and and we go out for lunch as a whole team. And it's just one of those great things to to connect everyone together.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, 100%. And it's just I guess it's just up to your appetite for risk, isn't it? Like if you don't if you don't want any risk, you can hire contractors overseas in an emerging economy and not have the risk of employment. New Zealand employment law is is you know very tight, as is Australia. You don't employ people in Australia or new or New Zealand lightly because once you do, it's a responsibility and a commitment. It's you can't just like you know, in the US, I know there are some states in the US where you can just terminate someone's employment at a minute's notice and you don't need a reason, and they have no protection whatsoever as a worker. Australia and New Zealand are very different. Workers are very well protected from that kind of uh thing. So um it is a risk to employ, but as you say, the and it is expensive, but the benefits are that you have a great team culture. I I think of it as like a sporting team. Like imagine trying to build a basketball team by practicing on Zoom every week, right? That'd be pretty tricky. Umil kind of mindset. So well done, um, 15 people on the team. And uh recently you took over the other half of the building, is that right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's right. So we're in a commercial building here, and on the level that we're on, we had we'd really maximized the space that we were in. Uh so we that's when we had 14 people on the team. We were quite crammed in. We've we've got our we've got our own couple of meeting rooms in there, and then also all the desk space. And one of the things for us wanting to grow is I had to look around and say, well, where are we gonna stick people as we keep hiring? And the the company that was in the other half of the top floor of the building here with us, um they decided to move out. And so it was so it was gonna be doubling our space. And honestly, I didn't need that much space initially, but you know, these leases come up like it's a five-year lease once someone signs it. So it's a big commitment, but also if somebody else takes that, then I'm stuck without space to move the team. So look, we took took the punt, and it was a bit of a um sitting down thinking about it. And at the same time, I was looking at hiring our own sales and marketing manager so to actually drive growth for us. And so in that journey, I we took them both on at the same time. We were like, we're gonna double the offer space, we're gonna bring on our own sales and marketing manager. So a huge step up in terms of overheads, and so the so the the profit um you know shrunk down to zero for for a bit there. Um, but it was just that sense of going, this is the next gross step for us. So we can see where where it's gonna take us. Uh it's just gonna hurt in the short term, um, but it's part of the big picture of to where we're going.
SPEAKER_02I just want to unpack this mindset though, because I you know, this is I mean, I'm just gonna call it right, but this is why entrepreneurship is hard because most people, and when I say most, I'm gonna say 99 and a half percent of the population are just not prepared to make that internal mental commitment to themselves, to their company, to take on that kind of extra overhead and that kind of risk. And and you're on a five-year lease, you've just employed another New Zealand employee. These are not decisions that you can undo. You can't just command Z and undo this if it doesn't work out in three months' time. Like you're in it now, right? You have to make this work, but most people just aren't prepared to take on that kind of responsibility. Why what is it about you or your upbringing or your background or your history, your experience that makes Josh Moore capable of taking on this responsibility and making it work with a smile on your face and a really positive attitude? I mean, I I don't think I've ever I've known you for a while now, and I don't think I've ever seen you in a bad mood. You're always smiling, you're always optimistic, you're always happy. What is it that that what you know what what can we unpack or bottle there that other people can learn from?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, cool. So, well, this one was like this was one of the decisions that I I thought about for quite a bit. This was a fair, uh, uh fairly big commitment. And so I was hesitant for a bit there in working it through and just thinking, do I, you know, do I take this this step or not? And because it's not only was a new staff member, it was a completely non-billable staff member. It's just all overheads um being our sales and marketing manager. Um, but look, to be honest, like when I was going through that journey of wondering, so I'm a Christian and I pray about my business a lot. And I was praying about this one a lot, going like, God, like like, is this the right step? Because this is expensive if we get it wrong. And I'd been praying intensely about it for a few weeks. And honestly, I like I felt God say to me eventually, um, when I was just praying, going, God, what decision do I make? And I just felt God say, just get on with it. And so for me, it was that little whisper that went, like, I've only had a couple of times in my life where I felt like I've heard God really clearly, and that was one of them. And it was just like, just get on with it. And I'm like, okay, let's go. And so made that commitment, um, hired um my sales and marketing manager, signed on the lease. And for me too, like part of that journey when things then get rough and the profit goes to zero or negative for a few of those months there, and you're looking at it. Like, for me, part of is leaning back on that saying, um with that faith aspect to go, well, God, I I'm pretty sure you said just get on with it. So I'm getting on with it. Please help it come right. And and that's been the journey. And the growth really has started to come, um, which is exciting. We're hitting profit um consistently now. And again, even with all these extra overheads, and then a big picture as to where we want to go. So, so I mean that that sounds pretty woo-woo for a bunch of people. I I know, but for me, not at all.
SPEAKER_02Not at all. And whether you're whether you're a person of faith or whether you're religious or not, like I think the the for me, I come back to a couple of sayings or cliches that have really helped me through periods of like this uh over the years, um, which is you know, fortune favors the brave, you know, it's a it's a cliche, like if you if you if you make a bold decision, you know, the universe or God or whatever your faith is will conspire to to reward you because you've been brave. And the other saying that the other mantra that I love, there's two actually, one I'm gonna get tattooed on my arm soon, but that's a whole other story. But the the other uh the first one is um opportunity dances with those already on the dance floor, right? And so you've got to just turn up and get in the ring and and and and and be active and be involved. And the final uh one, which is the one I'm gonna get tattooed in a in a um not in English, it's a whole other conversation. We'll have another time, but I'm gonna get this too shall pass tattooed on my left inner arm here because whatever season you're in right now, if you're in a season of negative profit because you're reinvesting in the business, or you're in a season of, you know, you maybe you've hit hard times in the economy, or things are changing, or AI is disrupting your business, or whatever it is, you just have to realize that nothing is permanent, that this too shall pass. And then you come through that, then you're in a period of high growth and high profit. Enjoy that while it lasts because this too shall pass, right? And so I think there you know whatever helps you stay grounded and stay centered, I think it's important to listen to those inner voices, whether it's a a voice of faith or whether it's a you know you have some other practice that allows you just to quiet down and listen to the inner voice. I think that's really important because as entrepreneurs we are faced with decisions that most people just will never have to make. You know, if friends of mine that say, Oh, you're so lucky, you've got your own business. And I say to them, you know, if you you might it might look like I'm lucky, but first of all, I've worked my ass off to get here. And second of all, you've never laid awake in bed at two o'clock in the morning worried about how you're gonna make payroll, right? If you've never had those sleepless nights, we can't have a conversation about this because you you just it's like, you know, I I for me it's like parenting as well. It's like and and all due respect and no judgment, but before I had kids, I had, you know, a bunch of people say to me, Oh, you know, you wait to have kids, and I'll be like, Oh, yeah, you know, how hard can it be? Or you know, how different can it be? Mate, if people don't have kids, and rightly so, they have no idea what it's like to manage kids, uh young kids, and and try and you know be entrepreneurs and try and have a life, right? And and the moment you have kids, you realise, oh man, I had no idea what was coming until it until it hit me, right? It's like it's one of those, it's one of those kind of markers, I think, in your life. That and and again, no judgment, but if you if you've if you've never employed people, you've never been responsible for looking after staff. And you know, I know staff members that have families and have debt and have mortgages and they have responsibilities, and I take that seriously. I don't employ people lightly, and I do take that seriously. And I think if you've never been through that journey, it's hard to understand how difficult some of those some of those times can be. So um mate, I you know, I just want to applaud you for uh for having the grit and the faith to get through those times and to make those decisions because uh, as I said, most most people won't. So um it's been a pleasure to to watch you do that. Now, over the last three years, and again, I don't want to make this an ad for what we do, but what's changed what and whether it's something that we've done or not is irrelevant, what's changed for you as you've grown? What are some of the things that you've implemented in the agency that you think have really helped and that have that have changed the trajectory and and given you the structure and the confidence?
SPEAKER_01As the agency has grown, the key thing for me and my leadership is that I have to keep extracting myself from the delivery. And that's a bit by bit, and then also in terms of the even the management of the delivery, and then just keep moving out and empowering my managers as I put them in place and and leaders. And so that growth journey, even though I'm not a developer, I'm very hands-on with everything else. So we're a we're a marketing agency rather than a web development agency, and so I was the lead copywriter. You know, I was reviewing all of the content, I was reviewing the designs before they got put in front of the clients, and then I'd be meeting with the clients, and so all along that way, I've had to be able to start to delegate to the team, and then now I'm very uh very much a perfectionist as well. And so for us perfectionists, uh delegating can come with a real challenge because you see stuff that's not done right, and so one of the things I've proactively or sorry, actively worked on is biting my tongue. And I quite literally sometimes just bite it just gently when I'm letting a team member make a mistake or letting them have a conversation that they're struggling to find the answer, and I could jump in with the answer immediately for them, and I'm like, nope, I'm gonna let them figure it out. It's in the documentation, they should be able to figure it out there, or they could, if it's a judgment call, I'll let them make that judgment call. And the frustrating thing is they won't make the same judgment call as what I want them to make initially. Uh but but part of that is letting letting them do it. And now if if if it's gonna be horrendous, and you know, then then yeah, okay, can jump in and fix it. But I I remember saying when I when I was just practicing this, I had a my head of ads and I was just starting to empower him more. He had a small team, and then he was running it. And then there was something that I was meeting with him, and he asked a question, and in my mind, I'm like, um, cool, this is one where I can let him make the decision. And so I said to him, Well, which way would you want to go? And there were two different options to choose from. And he chose the wrong one, not the one that I would have done. And then I and then I said to him, Oh, yeah, no, let's do the other one. And as soon as I did that, I kicked myself knowing I've just tried to empower him, and then I've let him make a decision, and then I've cut his legs out from underneath him because he didn't make the decision I wanted to. And so part of that that journey of growth is going, okay, I have to let them make a decision, and then actually let them have the uh the influence to make the decision without me having to approve everyone. And so that is part of the journey. And then as we go along, letting the teams uh so of grown-up managers within the teams, and then letting them have their accountability meetings with like my head of ads, she runs the ads team. I meet with her once a week, one-on-one, but she runs the ads team. Um, same with my head of SEO. He runs the SEO team, I meet with him one-on-one. Um, my project manager is the same thing. And so I'm not involved actually in the delivery so much, and most of the delivery goes out without me even seeing it now. I do see a little bit. I get to see a website sometimes before it goes live or just after. Um, but yeah, that's been part of that journey of trusting the team more and more.
SPEAKER_02Sometimes what I've learned over the years is that sometimes we think they're making the wrong decision, but sometimes it works out that it's actually the right decision too. And that's a very humbling experience, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01That's so true. We yeah, we we think we know it all, and then when we bite our tongue and then it turns out to go pretty well, we're like, oh okay.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. How do you see your your role in the in the agency now? Like how how do you view yourself if you're not an implementer, if you're not hands-on with campaigns, if you're not doing account management or project management, how do you identify in the agency now and what is your role? Because I think a lot of us get a sense of self-worth out of delivering things for clients and getting feedback from clients and feeling good about it. And if you're not involved in the delivery, how do you get that sense of usefulness?
SPEAKER_01For me, my primary role now is leading the team. Um, and the leading the team means leading the managers rather than leading the whole team. Oh, there's there's that aspect of when I when I talk, the whole team hears and I run different our our all-in hands-on meetings. But the, yeah, so it's leading the managers, that's really crucial. The other part of the role that I am still involved in is terms of sales. So I have a sales and marketing manager, but him and I together are doing the sales, and I'm the senior strategist at this stage, but part of our pipeline this year is to develop some of our senior managers into being able to do the strategy piece with clients. So again, I've just got that that picture as to what am I going to extract myself from next. Uh, the other key thing is that I'm overseeing our overall system development. So, really, that architecture, the underlying pace that helps us run faster. So, I'm I'm driving that. I'm not necessarily doing that. We have an automations guy on the team. He is doing amazing stuff with AI and automations, um, but I am overseeing the development of our systems.
SPEAKER_02Uh I just want to pivot the conversation a little bit towards um, you mentioned AI. And I mean it's, you know, it's it's here. It's it's not coming, it's here, and it's a tidal wave. What are you guys doing? Are you nervous about AI? Uh, this kind of I think ties into a question I like to ask people, which is like, what are you most excited about over the next 90 days? Are you scared of AI? Are you embracing it? Are you how are you using it? What do you think it means for agencies in 2026 and beyond?
SPEAKER_01Yes, I'm scared of it, and yes, I'm embracing it. Um the the as you said, the tidal wave is is intense. So, I mean, one of the things for Mavericks, getting on a call with the with other Mavericks, and and so often the conversations turn to AI because it's going so fast, and I find that is one of my crucial parts of keeping up to play with what other agencies are doing, getting my mind stretched. Just the other day we got off a call and I walked out to the team and went, my mind is blown once again by some of the stuff that the some of the other agencies are doing, and just getting to hear glimpses and insights into that. So that's incredible. What makes me feel scared about it is how fast it's going and whether we have enough resource to implement things as as quickly as we should. Uh, I think the the cons I read a quote the other day, um, AI is not going to take your job. The person you, the other person using AI is going to take your job. And I think that's the same with agencies. So other agencies aren't our compet competition, it's other agencies using AI better than us, so they're able to deliver it faster, more efficiently. Um, that's that's the big challenge. So, so yeah, we're investing in it. I think it's uh yeah, it'll it'll probably kill us all one day as as Elon Musk's um, you know, autonomous uh robots uh get implemented in every house and then somebody hacks them eventually and they kill us all. But before that day happens, we're gonna have some fun and we're gonna have some real efficient businesses. I love it. Whoa. Okay, that was just a test, thankfully, not the fire whole fire alarm.
SPEAKER_02Oh wow, the whole fire drill talking about autonomous robots taking over and killing us. There's that fire drill in the in the building. Uh proof, proof that you're not working out of your mum's basement, right? Proof that you're actually in a commercial building that has a fire drill. Um you know, I've mapped out so we've uh we've pivoted a little bit. We're doing uh a lot more done for you services for our clients. You're one of them. We're doing done for you content services. I sat down the other day and worked it out. I it's very for me, it's very straightforward to get to like a completely separate business. I'm not saying I'm gonna do it, but it's very straightforward to get to seven figures a year with using AI, and I reckon three staff, you could get to seven figures a year very easily. It is it's the opportunity is outstanding, and I don't think I've ever seen in my lifetime, I don't think I've ever seen an opportunity quite like this. It's I feel like you know, entrepreneurs that want leveraged income. Back in the day in 2007-2008, when I started my WordPress agency and I started helping other WordPress freelancers put together care plans and have recurring revenue and have manage WP, you know, streamline your processes. It was great. I can manage all my clients' websites in a couple of hours a week now and and generate monthly recurring revenue. But you know, I feel like this is a this is a quantum leap forward. Here we are 12, 15 years later. And uh what we can achieve with AI now in in an hour, you know, we can achieve uh almost a week's worth of output in in a couple of hours. It's it's I don't think uh I think we're still trying to wrap our head around what that looks like in terms of what our businesses might look like in a year's time. I mean, can we scale with our existing team? Can we double, triple, 10x our revenue and our profit? I think we can. Um I think the overwhelm comes from Max and I were working in the same room yesterday, which is quite which is not not common, but he came and got the laptop and sat in the studio with me. And at various points during the day, we just looked at each other and went, one thing at a time. One thing at a time. Because we are so excited, but also slightly overwhelmed by all of the things we could do, that we've also realized that we don't have enough life left to do all of the things that we want to do with AI because it's just it the opportunity is unbelievable. And uh and I and I think the the advantage for those of us that have been around the block a little bit is you know, there's a lot, and I again all due respect and no judgment, but there's a lot of 22-year-olds trying to start an AI agency, and I think what they lack is again, all due respect to any 22-year-olds listening to this, I'm not ageist, but I think what they lack is the real world experience of knowing how to package up solutions for clients, right? And we see AI as just a handful of team members that we don't have to hire that can get a whole bunch of stuff done, and we already have the solutions in our head, right? We're not relying on AI to come up with the strategy or the solutions, we're relying on AI to come up with the implementation and help us be more productive. So it's it is a very exciting time. Um, and I and I think a lot of us are still trying to figure out you know what it actually means and what it actually looks like. Another thing I I if you talk to anyone outside our space, you go and talk to the local business owner, they have no idea. Like they're just using Chat GPT like it's Google, right? If they're using it at all, they're just asking it like it's a search engine. They have no idea what is possible with AI.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that automation piece is incredible.
SPEAKER_02I think some of us get caught in this bubble where we think everyone knows what you can do with AI because we know it and because we talk to other people who know how to do it, but no one's got a clue what is even possible with AI. So um it's exciting time. What's um what's I want to talk about your sales process for a second. You said that you're still doing sales, you've got a sales and marketing manager. What do you what how do you where do the leads come from and what does your typical sales process look like?
SPEAKER_01The leads uh historically have been word of mouth or from our own SEO rankings. And so we've we we did some Google ads many years ago and we we turned them off because we had a consistent flow from from other places. We've just recently started running, well, in the last uh three or four months, our own meta ads for the first time since in the so the agency's been running for 12 and a half years, and we're finally running our own meta ads and getting consistent leads in from them. So the typical sales cycle now would either be a referral or somebody coming in from ads. We have the triage call, so we follow the Mavericks method of so triage call, and so I don't do those. That's my sales and marketing manager. He does those and then he determines uh which way, which thing we offer them from there. If it's gonna be straight Google Ads or SEO, like quite a simple marketing solution, we we then put book them in for a free strategy session, uh 45 minutes, and we generally close them on the spot in that session, and I and I am in that strategy session, and that's where we're gonna be training some other consultants to be able to do that well. If they're wanting a new website, then I love the paid discovery method. So doing the uh a website roadmap because it people used to, you know, they want a they want a quote, they want a fixed price quote, but what am I building for you? And then you end up doing all this work for free um before you've even really been able to identify that. And so we sell them on a website roadmap. If they're wanting a new website, then that's we say, look, this is what's included. We go through this and we we deliver for them, uh including a a site map, so a full, full mapped-out site map as part of that process, understanding their their customer and what needs to be on the website really well and the functionality they need. And so we charge them for that, and at the end of that, we can give them a fixed quote. And so that works extremely well as well. Now, it was so it's really good from a sales process, but we were finding it was costing us you know a fair bit of time doing all that work. We have the meeting with them, and then we we put together a whole lot of the research and then the the uh yeah, the presentation back to them. So that's where we're working heavily with AI at the moment to streamline that down. Like we were uh taking somewhere between eight to ten hours, depending on the complexity of the um of the job, uh, of the of the roadmap, and then we're reducing that dramatically now, which is good. So we're down to about, we're going from eight to ten to down to about four hours at the moment, and but we're looking to get that down to much, much quicker, hopefully under an hour with all the human elements in terms of prep. Yeah, great.
SPEAKER_02Um, the other thing about paid discovery, and not to toot my own horn here, but I'm all in on it. I mean, I'm quite bullish on paid discovery, just because I've seen the impact that it's had on so many agencies that have adopted it, is that it not only does it help you um get the client on board quicker because you're not trying to sell them a $15,000 website that they don't understand, right? It's like, well, I don't even know what I'm paying for because I haven't seen anything. So you're selling them something smaller, cheaper, less risky on the front end. But also then it just it almost eliminates scope creep, right? Because they can't come back halfway through because they've already if you have a strategy call with someone, they think you've heard every word they've said. And we know that that's just not true, right? Whereas if they pay and also because it's free, how seriously do they take it? How much skin in the game do they have? If they pay a small amount of money for a roadmap and you scope it out, they pay more attention to it, they know that you've heard them because you're reflecting it back to them, and then they can't come back halfway through the process and say, well, where's the members' login section that we spoke about? Because it's not in the roadmap, it's not in the wireframes, it's not in the site map. So not only does it help you on the front end with the sales, I think it eliminates scope creep, it also helps with the team because the team know exactly what we're building before we start to build it. So uh well done for adopting that. Um, final question. Uh I discovered um long time after I met you that you have a little piece of software that plugs into zero and stripe. Is that is that the way it works? Is it a or is it a zero recurring revenue thing? Explain explain it to me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's right. So it's it plugs into zero. And so a lot of web development agencies uh like us, we have all of our hosting or our care plans just on repeating invoices in zero. And so I had that, we had our repeating invoices running. Sometimes they'll be monthly, some customers would say, Hey, can you can we just pay it every three months? And so we'd do that plus our domain names, and that's annually. Um, and so you've got all these repeating invoices, and we wanted to know well, what's our income going to be from recurring income next month or the month after that? And there was just nothing out there that would do it. So I had this really complex spreadsheet uh that had all these formulas in, and then whenever I sold a client or changed their hosting plan, I'd have to put that in there, or a new client, or someone would finish. And it was constantly getting out of date compared with Xero. So in the end, we built a software product. It's called Beanbox, so beanbox.app, and we've got um hundreds of customers around the world using it now. And so a lot of them are web design agencies. You just you you you sign up or you connect into your Xero account, and within two minutes, you've got a full forecast for the next 36 months as to your recurring revenue.
SPEAKER_02Great. Beanbox.app. We're gonna leave a link to that in the show notes. Also, I think I mentioned this recently to our accountant because we're Xero users, we're also recurring revenue. We also have repeating invoices, and so uh they've also got very complex Google Sheets that we use to model our recurring revenue. So I'm gonna reference this again. Uh, and the guys, our accountant, one of the founders of our accounting firm is the founder of Ignition App, which I know a lot of service-based businesses use for their proposals and invoices and stuff. So I will again uh send Beanbox app over to our accounts and get them to take a look at it and hopefully plug it in. And you might pick up another customer from us. Um there we go. Awesome. Um, quick question. What are you most frustrated by right now in the agency? If you could wave a magic wand and fix it, what would it be?
SPEAKER_01The time we have to build automated systems. We don't have enough time. There's so much opportunity now, especially with AI, with NA10 and all of that, to connect it together. There are so many systems on our list that we would love to really fine-tune and and automate. And we're we're getting through them slowly, but uh the list gets longer than we get than the tasks we tick off. So if I could wave a magic wand, it would be, I don't know, three or four people who are just incredibly good at smashing out the automation aspect of it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yep. It's a very, I mean, yeah, it's very common. I think this is one of the most common uh common challenges that every agency uh owner has right now. We have it as well. We I just want to, you know, bring on more people or more AI agents to do stuff. I'm just I'm trying to build agents to do things so I don't have to hire more people to do things. So um very cool. Hey, thanks for spending some time with us on the Agency Hour podcast. Uh it's been awesome to be a part of your journey and your growth over the last few years and uh looking forward to continuing working together. Where can people reach out and uh connect with you?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so the main website for the agency is duroplus.nz. So that's du-plus.nz. And I'm a I'm on LinkedIn, so look look for Josh Moore. And of course, if you want to check out Beanbox, it's Beanbox.app. Awesome.
SPEAKER_02And the podcast, please, please plug the podcast because you've just launched the podcast. Uh let's plug the podcast while we're here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we've just launched a podcast. We've been working on it uh all year and it's just launched. So it's called the New Zealand Innovation and Export Podcast. I interview founders and CEOs of businesses that are that are building innovative things and exporting. We've had some fascinating stories on there. So it's on all the all the podcast uh platforms. So New Zealand Innovation and Export Podcast. Awesome. We'll also put a link to that in the show notes as well.
SPEAKER_02All right, thanks, Josh, for joining us on the Agency Hour again and uh look forward to keeping the conversation going. Thanks, Troy. Hey, thanks for listening to the Agency Hour podcast. Uh please subscribe, like, share this with any agency owner who you think may find it helpful. And let us know what you want to learn next on the podcast. We're all in on AI here, and as I said, we're rolling out done for you content services. So if you are an agency owner and you know you need more content, but you haven't got time to do it, hit us up, send us an email, just email me Troy at agencymaverics.com and I'll respond to you. That's my real email address, and I actually monitor it. There's no AI or VA there, it's all me. Uh so shoot me an email and uh we'll have a conversation. Otherwise, I'll look forward to seeing you on the next episode of the agency hour. Until then, I'm Troy Dean. Let's get to work.