The Agency Hour
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The Agency Hour
Leveraging Ai for Audits and Growth Plans
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You could literally take the results of the My Web Audit Report here and just punch that into the click up template as a list of items that need to be fixed and then just start rolling it out. This is this is a complete turnkey solution. I love it so much. Welcome to the Agency Hour Podcast, where we help web design and digital agency owners create abundance for themselves, their teams, and their communities. This week we're joined by my good friend Cliff Almeida, founder of My Web Audit. Cliff and I have been friends for a long time, hung out at several of our live events, and he has been on the show before. And unless you've been living under a rock, you'll know that Cliff is an absolute rock star within our community. My Web Audit helps agencies and SEOs close more deals faster and easier. And in this episode, we explore leveraging AI for audits and growth plans, how quick wins can impact your relationship with your clients, and how to build massive trust and add massive value with your agency without biting off more than you can chew. I'm Troy Dean. Stay with us. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, please welcome back to the Agency Hour Podcast, Cliff Almida from My Web Audit. Hello, Cliff, how are you?
SPEAKER_01Hey Croy, pleasure to be back here, man. I'm doing uh pretty good, all things considered.
SPEAKER_00This is like, what is this? Like your 24th appearance on our podcast?
SPEAKER_01I've been blessed to come on a couple of times.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. Oh man, it's so good to have you back. Now, we were just uh chatting pre-camera uh pre-show, and you were saying it's it's been a year, right? There have been it's I'm seeing this everywhere. Like everyone I know is really happy to see the back of 2023 and launch into 2024. What's been going on in your world and uh how have you managed to navigate the challenges that you've had this year?
SPEAKER_01Um yeah, that's a loaded question, uh, Troy. So, you know, complete transparency. I I think a lot of times in the agency world, you hear one thing or you see the tip of the iceberg, but not everything that's underneath, right? And so it's been a um a challenging year, probably the the the hardest since maybe 2015. For me, 2015 was the year I started doing coaching. We connected then and I had to make tremendous investments in my business because I was getting burnt out. My marriage was taking a hit, had two kids, um three and four at that time, right? And so um, yeah, this year started out crazy. It was January 3rd when um I started having fireworks pop off on the left side of my eye. Ultimately, that was the start of a retinal detachment. Oh, wow, dude, that must have been terrifying. It was what was even more terrifying is when I called um the retinal specialist and they said, till you start going blind, we can't do anything. So, like that's the healthcare model in America. And so um seven days later, um, I was in surgery when I lost 80% um vision in my left eye.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Wow. Next time that happens, dude, if it touch what it doesn't, but if it does, just get on a plane and come to Australia. We've got great healthcare system here.
SPEAKER_01Right. Yeah. So got out of that surgery. Oh my gosh. Got out of that surgery being told that uh the lens implant I had from a previous surgery um had problems. They had to cut it out, damaged part of my iris, and that instead of um a two to four months, two to four week recovery, it was going to be more like um three to four months. And so um I had a follow-up surgery April 27th, um, and then had to go through another two to four weeks in recovery. Two weeks of that almost was face down because you have to, when you have a surgery, you have to be face down, and then ultimately the liquid they put into the back of your eye has to hold your retina in place. And it was so it was a crazy, crazy journey um along the way. Um, you know, focusing on mindset, practicing gratitude, leveraging the team and the processes that we've invested years and thousands of dollars in time um actually came into effect. So yeah, it's been a crazy year. Wow.
SPEAKER_00How what's going on? What's how do you keep, you know, they say that everyone's got a happy place in your head that you have to go to, right? How did you, you're face down, your business is running, you you got you have no control at this point, right? You're completely powerless, you can't use a computer. How what's got well how did you what were you telling yourself over and over again to just keep your spirits up and keep positive and how did you do that, man?
SPEAKER_01I can I can tell you the first couple of weeks um was real tough. So I'm grateful for my wife to just say, hey Cliff, like um there there isn't an option of not doing anything, there isn't an option of hopelessness. Obviously, um I'm a dad of two, like you, and um and I had a team we had and we had clients we needed to serve. So the first two weeks, she gave me some space and and I and I had nights where there were tears, and um, there were times of gratitude where you don't know what you have till it's lost, kind of thing. So the idea of uh losing vision completely in my left eye, but then knowing that I'd spent 40 years where I could see at some capacity, right? Practicing gratitude while struggling. Um, I think after two weeks, it gave me some time to process internally the feelings. And then um it was faith over fear because at the end of the day, I had to figure out what to do to move forward, not knowing what all of this would look like. So, you know, empowering my team more than I ever have before, right? Because there were things that I held on to that I could never do, um, ensuring that I practiced gratitude for what I did have at that point, which is a vision in my right eye, um, focusing on mindset, understanding the fact that when you spiral downhill, if you don't change that trajectory, you just go further down and ultimately get into a worse place that you have to crawl back out of, right? So one of my friends told me, hey, you know, Cliff, really practicing gratitude can change your perspective. And so that was one of the things I did every morning and every evening, just waking up, thanking God for what I did have, thanking my family for what they were doing. And between my faith and my family, that support system was the catalyst to take me through it.
SPEAKER_00Man, man, man, man, man, man. I'm I'm trying hard not to tear up here, dude. I mean, it's I had you know, if family are just it's how lucky are we? I'm gonna try really hard not to cry on the podcast, Italiff. How lucky are we to have family to support us and cradle us and care for us in those moments? You know, it's we I had some pretty big health scares this year with both of my kids and everyone's in a good place now, which is great. Man, if I didn't have my wife during that time, I don't know what I would have done. Like we we just lean on each other so much. And um you're right about gratitude, like it's the ultimate circuit breaker, isn't it? Yep. If you're because because what's if for I I can go I can go very dark very quickly. It's just a it's a thing. I don't know why, but I go very dark very quickly, and I have to I have to catch it, otherwise it's for me it's a slippery slope, and it happens very fast, and and I go very dark, and then you're right, it's a long way back. And gratitude is for me is the ultimate circuit breaker. It's like, hang on a second, I was driving to work this morning listening to a song, and in the middle of the song there's this voiceover part where this guy's talking about the fact that you know, just because you don't understand how you're breathing and how your body works and how you're growing doesn't mean you're not doing it. Yep, and just because you don't understand how the universe works doesn't mean it's not working. That's right. Right? And I had that, I was driving along and I had that moment where I'm like, I have no idea how I'm breathing, but I'm so grateful that this body of mine keeps providing breath and blood and oxygen to my cells. I'm so grateful for that, and I have no idea how it works. And the moment I had that thought, I my whole energy for the day shifted and I became enthusiastic and optimistic and more energized. And so, you know, well done for you to be able to catch that in the moment and practice that gratitude because it makes all the difference. And you know, good good partners also allow us in those moments, allow each other to go dark. I heard this great story once where the um something terrible had happened to the husband, had a really bad accident, and the wife said, I gave him 15 minutes every day to feel sorry for himself. And that was it. Once the 15 minutes was up, he had to get on with living, right? Because we're still a family, you're still here, we need you, we love you. Um man, how can I ask, how's your vision these days?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, um, it is uh sh it with my glasses, it's pretty good. So I have a pair of glasses. Um, initially, when they went in for surgery, they corrected it for 27 inches, which is the difference between give or take, my shoulder and the computer screen. Um, ultimately, because of the complexities, it was actually the earth eighth surgery on my eyes. So they ended up here. So this is what I can see, which is where I can hold my cell phone. But past that, I have a pair for reading. What's interesting is I'm nearsighted in one farm, the other. And so I have two pairs of glasses and two different focuses. So, you know what, all things considered though, um again, I can see better than uh obviously I'd say millions of people out there. I did I say if I wasn't in America, all things considered, I'd have been blind in most parts of the world.
SPEAKER_00100%. Absolutely. Absolutely. My my mom's gonna have a procedure on her legs uh for the blood circulation, the same procedure I had a couple of years ago. It's it's a it's a it's a keyhole. I was awake the whole time. It's keyhole. They put a uh a catheter up your veins that don't work. I had a problem where the blood wasn't pumping back up to my heart, so I had swelling legs. They put a catheter up the vein and they burn the vein off inside the leg. So the blood has to find a new way to go back to the heart. It's worked. It's been an absolute success. I watched the whole thing happen. They ate local anesthetic from the waist down, so I couldn't feel it. And the whole time I was sitting there going, How lucky am I that I was born in Australia? And I have access. I mean, this wasn't covered under our public health, so it cost me a bit of money, cost me a few grand per leg, but it was, you know, like, how lucky am I to have this opportunity? I mean, it's ridiculous. There are most people on the planet don't have these opportunities and don't have this access to this healthcare. So we're extremely fortunate. Hey, thank you for sharing that with us, and I think it's really important because you're right, most of us look at each other's lives on social media, which is the stupid highlights real of how wonderful things are. It's very rare that we get to actually see what's really going on and hear the challenges. So I really want to thank you for sharing that with us. And uh, and good on you for being here and now you're here on the podcast. And so are you back at work in and in some kind of capacity?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah. Starting um June, I was back on I even did coaching, so like my coaching stuff would stop for six months just so I can focus on things I'm doing, and we're going hard now, so trying to catch back up on things that I missed, my goals, and actually giving myself grace also. Um, because I'm I'm an overachiever, so I did reset some of my goals just so that I took I was fair on myself considering the fact that I lost a big part of the first um part of the year. Yeah, but I'm I'm back and going hard. And I think one of the things that I know that you um talk about is um leveraging you know growth plans and marketing plans as a consultant. And one of the things that we started with the innovation of AI, which everyone kind of knows unless you've been living under a rock and the circumstances I did uh I went through, um, we've adapted and evolved My Robotit, where My Robotit helps identify growth insights for people, whether you do websites, GBP, SEO, uh now we're moving to digital marketing, uh paid ads, I should say. And what what my role was in the business, because we have people that do most of the handwork, I do a lot of the mind work. And so um, over the months I was out, um, we're grateful that we usually book out over a quarter or more, but they were things that I needed to do. And so one of the great things that came out of this challenging situation was us trying to figure out how do I take what I have in my mind um and get the insights from our audits and leverage AI to be able to start building almost like a chief marketing officer based off of data insights. And so um, what's really neat is um as of in the next couple of days, in the over the next week, we'll be releasing what I call growth insights for Google Business Profiles and local SEO to our customers. And then over the next quarter, we'll actually be leveraging um AI and our data insights for all our audits. And the the cool part about it is my team will then be able to leverage our audits to be able to build, in essence, marketing, actionable marketing uh roadmaps um for 180 days or or longer for our clients versus having me do that. So through all of this and the magic of AI and automation, um, I can definitely say I'll be freeing up more of my time and helping our customers get results faster for their customers.
SPEAKER_00Right. And so for those that don't know, you've you still have an agency. I do. And you have a software company called My Web Audit, which uh so you know, let me explain it to people who and let me explain it in in kind of my terms, my uh understanding of it to people who may not be familiar with it. The problem here's here's what I think is the problem, right? The problem is when a client comes to us, they have what they think is a problem that needs fixing or an opportunity worth going after. Uh the pr the real problem, I believe, is that the clients don't actually know what their problem is. It's like go when you go to the doctor, how many people you walk into the doctor and you've done some self-diagnosis on Dr. Google, right? And the doctor, my doctor will say, Listen, let me do my job. Just tell me all the symptoms and let me figure out what the actual problem is, rather than coming with a printout from Google telling me that you know you've got this rare blood condition that only affects three people on the planet, right? Let me diagnose the problem. So the problem is clients come to us, they don't actually know what the problem is, they've got symptoms. So through our experience as agency owners and working inside multiple businesses, we can pretty much go, well, okay, well, I think the problem is maybe this. Let's prescribe this, let's try this, let's see what works. My web audit, it's is in my experience, is like a secret weapon for the GP, right, to look at all the symptoms, run in a very short space of time, run this tool over their entire online landscape and figure out where the gaps are. That's right. And if you and and what typically happens is you then present that to a client, and the client will say, Oh, I didn't even know that that foot was broken. Uh, we need to fix that because now you've mentioned it. Yes, I can feel it. I have a pain in my right foot, but I didn't even know there was a problem there, right? That's right. So I see it as a tool that pretty much allows you to just write the next 12 months' worth of work with a client, unless they've got everything dialed in, which is never the case, in a very short space of time. It's like uh it's like a superpower that allows you to prescribe the right medicine moving forward. The the challenge, and this is the challenge that we're trying to fix with growth plans, is the challenge I think that a lot of agencies have had is they go in, they start talking to a client, and they try to bite off the biggest thing up front, whether it's a new website, a rebrand, a whole new campaign, whatever it is. And my what I'm advocating now, and what's working really well across all the agencies that we're seeing doing this, is hey, let's just go in and get a quick win for the client. That's right, build massive trust, add massive value. You do that over the span of the first 90 days, and then they will basically do whatever you tell them to because you've built so much trust, right, in in the relationship. That's right. So that's kind of that sets the scene. Um, if you haven't um checked out My Web Audit, we will put a link underneath this, and yes, I think it is our affiliate link. Uh, we'll put that underneath the podcast so you can go check out My Web Audit. So tell me now how you are, because you run an agency and you have this software tool which you kind of built to scratch your own itch. How are you now leveraging the new developments at My Web Audit to roll out these gross plans in your agency? Just walk us through the workflow there and the process.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so um, if you don't mind, I think showing maybe. Do you want me to explain while I show? Can I share my screen?
SPEAKER_00Definitely. Yep, let's explain while we show. And for those of you who are listening to this, you will be pleased to know that we record this podcast as a video podcast. We use the fabulous Riverside platform because it records very high quality audio and video. And so I will make sure that we post this episode of the podcast onto our YouTube channel so that you can see the screen that Cliff is sharing and he will explain it as he walks through. And I'm just going to maximize the frame there. There we go. So now we are looking inside my web audit. So uh go and check out our YouTube channel, Agency Mavericks, and you'll be able to watch the video recording of this so you can follow along.
SPEAKER_01Sweet. All right. So cool. Let me give you some context. Let's talk about quick wins. All right. So this is an example of a company that comes and speaks to us. We work primarily with seven and eight-figure companies. Um, this strategy can be used with companies of all sizes as long as they're willing to invest in their business and your services. And so what we have here is a Google Business Profile Audit. All right. Talking about quick wins, it takes about two minutes to run an audit. What you're generally going to see for anyone who runs audits, whether you do it in our tool or manually, you're going to be able to look at things commonly like the profile. Do they have photos, categories, things like that? Right. Past that, we can connect into the insights and pull data, and then we'll talk about what passed and what failed. I'll actually go into the high value stuff. So once we do that, we also have a section that talks about the serb results, which is are you in the local map pack or are you in the search engine? Uh, top 10. And if you're not, then we want to look at why. So in this case, we can see here, and I'll show you what where the AI comes in and how we can add value. So past talking about GBP, a client really doesn't care about their GBP, like you said. Like Troy, they're just saying, I need a service, and usually it's because their root causes they need to grow. They need more leads, or um they're looking for more customers or revenue. In this case, we're able to tell them, hey, look, like you may rank somewhat over here, but anything past a mile or two, you're not ranking. By showing them the competition, we are now able to tell them you're losing business to these people. But past that is we're able to look at other insights. Now, this matters to us. What's really neat with the AI stuff we've now done is literally in two, two to three more additional minutes, we have all kinds of advanced prompts based off of data analytics where we can now tell them, hey, look, we think based off of the keyword, in this case, let's just say we were looking at a plastic surgeon. We know that we need to infuse plastic surgery and plastic surgeon uh in the description. We look and analyze, by the way, this would take people hours to do the research, right? Like we analyze the categories, say, based off of the top 10, we know these are the categories you should be using. Um, here are additional categories to put yourself into. We're analyzing keywords based off of commercial and transactional value, and all of this is now AI done, right? We've even created relevant QA that they could put on their website and do microschema markup, but of course put onto the GBP profile. We've analyzed the review ratings. I won't spend a lot of time going through all of this, but the idea is when you look at how to optimize a GBP profile, let's just say it's me and you. Um, we know the things to look at, but let's say your team members, they don't. Now, what we've done is because of these reports, you can present this as a paid deliverable, or you could put them onto some sort of retainer and execute this. So because it's about adding value, I'll actually show you what our agency does. We have a 90-day program called Put Your Business on the Map, right? So we have a landing page we take them to, and that's where we talk to them about the benefits. Um, we put our offer together. This is something we're offering um to our annual plan owners now, are taking our full funnel, done-free funnel, and giving it to them because it'll make it super easy then to implement this and then use an audit to execute it, right? So, one of the things we do in our agency, like you do in your coaching, um Troy, is that you can offer a guarantee, right? Because you know the services you offer. Now, we even we even put in a framework here for the agencies who aren't familiar with using and implementing the services to say no, but we can help you get there, or companies like ours who have a proven track record can use this. And we have everything from uh everything from the landing page offer to the emails that you send out to your customers to get them to sign up and all of that. So if anyone uses your link and invests in the pro or annual pro or agency annual plan, this costs us thousands of dollars to write. You know what it looks like to hire a good copywriter. And we've done the research, built the offer, and put the entire framework in place.
SPEAKER_00Right. So just let me park here for a second, right? Yeah, if you are on the pro or agency plan of my web audit, you will get an entire funnel, uh, all the copy and everything you need for these funnels so that you can send emails to everyone you know, send them to a landing page where you are offering them an offer like, you know, put your business on the map. It's a Google My Business option. Optimization campaign. So the copy for the landing page, the copy for the emails, the copy for the booking call script, the thank you page, the email sequence, all of that is done for you. All you need to do is copy this and paste it into your domain, your pages, and you've got a done for you marketing campaign here to drive people into uh signing up for a Google Business Profile accelerator for the next 90 days. Exactly correct. Amazing. And and the My Web Audit, the tool, will allow you to deliver this. This is, dude, this is amazing. I literally, yesterday, yesterday, Cliff, I cannot believe how much in alignment we are. Yesterday, I shot a video of an advanced clickup board that I'm giving away to some of our customers where they it's literally a list of growth hacks and fixes that you might work on with a client, mapped out over a 12 months program with all of the growth hacking methodology, the hypothesis, the i score, all of that stuff built into it, right? And it's templated so you literally copy and paste it for every client. You could literally take the results of the My Web Audit report here and just punch that into the click up template as a list of items that need to be fixed and then just start rolling it out. This is this is a complete turnkey solution. I love it so much.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. That's right. And so, for example, let's just say I started out over the 90 days to build this out. I'm already planting a seed. In this case, we've analyzed their data insights and we can tell them that look, you want to focus your website on a mobile first experience because 80% of your users who search who are searching for your specific business have accessed it on mobile. And that's because we connected with their Google data insights. So we can now put forth data based data-driven insights to be to support actionable results. So love it. Yeah, and and all now in um all done in matters of like five to ten minutes. You can kind of jump in, customize it, add your own information, and run it through. Our hope over the next quarter is to be able to be able to build out some sort of digital CMO, fractional CMO solution, where you could do an analysis of the website, the GBP, the SEO, and possibly paid ads, and then build together a growth plan that would cost them tens of thousands of dollars. So that's our dream. That's the that's the that's the dream.
SPEAKER_00This is the exact business model that we are advocating and that we are teaching here, and it is working like a champ. And so the the uh first pillar for us is selling some kind of paid discovery. We just don't call it paid discovery because everyone wants to pay for discovery. You know this, I'm preaching to the converted. You and I have had this conversation for years. Johnny Flash, who's a mutual friend of ours and one of our coaches, and started out in our program a hundred years ago, discovered my web audit, started rolling out these audits. Um, he's had an incredible success at charging, I think, $497 for the audit up front and then doing getting the quick wins for the client and then onboarding them into a larger project and a recurring. He's now got 18 staff or something. He started out on his own, right? He's been an amazing success story, largely because he leveraged the concept that I was teaching him in the old blueprint days, but also leveraged the tool that you built. And it was kind of funny that it all kind of happened at the same time. We were writing this WordPress wave, you built this tool. I was teaching these concepts, you and I connected and went, wow, we're saying the same thing. You've just got a tool to actually help implement it. Um, the fractional CMO thing or the fractional digital strategist, whatever you want to call it, I think is the absolute future for agencies. Uh, because it in our experience and what we're seeing across the board is that people that pay for some kind of audit up front, doesn't matter how much it is. Uh, you know, the sweet spot for most of our agencies is around about the $1,200 to $1,500 mark, but it could be $497, could be five grand. People who pay for some kind of consulting up front will typically be your best clients long term because they value, they've got skin in the game. The conversion rate from a paid discovery of sorts into an ongoing recurring package we're seeing across the board with all our agencies is 85% plus. Yep. And it makes sense because if someone's already invested $1,200 into this program, they want to pay you to help them implement and execute it. They'll be your longest-term clients, they'll be the best clients you've ever had, they're super profitable, it helps you grow your recurring revenue. And your tool allows us to diagnose and come up with a list of recipes really that we're gonna implement over the next three months, six months, twelve months to just keep getting the client results. And if we get them results with their GMB optimization, they're then gonna say, right, well, how do we get better conversions from our website? Well, I'm glad you asked. Let me run your website through my web audit and come up with a list of fixes on the website, right? We might not need to rebuild the website. We might just need to fix the current mothership by making all of these small optimizations, which is the fractional CMO model, rather than saying, let's rebuild the whole website. You might have to at some point, but we might not need to right now. We can just do these things now to get some quick wins. I love it. Now, having said that about WordPress, yes, I generally am concerned about the future of WordPress, but I'm confident they will innovate. That's been here a long time and it still does power some 35 or 42% of the internet or whatever the statistic is these days. And there are most of us are still building websites on WordPress for clients, and it makes sense. However, we do get stuck, we get we reach capacity, we can't take any more clients on. If you need help with WordPress development or SEO or content, you should reach out to our partner e2msolutions.com. They are a white label WordPress development agency and a white label SEO agency and a white label content writing agency under their brand RazorCopy. They are a wonderful partner of ours. They've been at all of our live events, they sponsor the podcast, they make this possible for us to bring this content to you guys, and they do amazing work. We have a lot of our clients using E2M to do white label dev and SEO work. And so if you are at capacity and you want to be able to take on extra clients and just focus on growing your agency and you need some help, reach out to Manish and the team, E2M. That's the letter E, the number two, the letter M, solutions.com slash agency dash mavericks. We'll put a link under the show. Notes here, uh, you get a great deal on your first month. Go and take them for a spin, have them build a site. They will blow you away. Excellent communication. They'll project manage everything. They live in your tools, so in your Slack, your base camp, your Asana, your ClickUp, whatever you use, they're very adaptable. Um their development work is great. Uh go and check them out. e2msolutions.com slash agency dash mavericks to get that extra capacity so that you can just focus on growing your agency and other like you know, turning up, meeting more clients, doing more paid discovery, running more audits, and prescribing more fixes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And I think I think in what you shared, um, Troy, I'd be interested in knowing if there has to be a mindset switch, mindset switch. Um, so when I speak, I I speak the same thing. I I wrote a 5,000-word blog about the importance of discovery and why I charge for it, right? Because let me ask you this as a coach, when you speak to agencies, do you feel I think there are two things that allow me to actually close more sales that a lot of agencies look at as roadblocks, which is one, I don't want to spend time with them. So I don't, so I don't um do an in-depth job. And the other one is, well, if I charge them, I don't want them to walk away. And and I'd like to know your thoughts on that. Like, how do you switch that mindset shift? Because from our end, practically applying this for the last five years, we've seen that actually I've not lost any clients in five years that have taken that are taken through paid discovery and I take everyone through paid discovery. One, two, I think that I'm better positioned to solve their problems by better understanding their business and get paid while I do it. So, how do you switch the mindset of those that are listening to us that are like, well, yeah, I'd love the idea of some sort of paid discovery or paid retainer before I actually do the work, but I feel like I'll lose clients or lose leads.
SPEAKER_00So uh part of this is mindset, part of it's tactics, right? And so from a tactical point of view, so the the it's fear is what it is, right? It's people like when I talk to agency owners, and I so I had an agency owner in Tasmania the other day who's dealing with an RFP issue with a local council. So request for proposal, right? And everyone knows request for proposal is the vendor has already been chosen. Yep, the client already knows who they're gonna use, but they have to do their due diligence and they have to get three quotes to meet the criteria for the audit trail. And so they send out this RFP, agency spend all this time writing proposals and they've already chosen the vendor. So he said to the council, how do you know your RFP is going to get the best proposals? Who wrote the RFP? He eventually sold paid discovery to help them rewrite their RFP. Yep. Right? Genius. So the first thing is people are afraid to charge because our business model has been based for years, has been based on this do a free consult up front, do some analysis, then come back with a proposal. It's a sucky business model. I don't know who taught it way back when, but it's just a decision. You don't like you don't get to go and see the GP for free. You walk into the GP, they charge, and they don't fix anything, by the way. GPs do not fix anything. They diagnose and prescribe. Yep. And we pay them every day of the week. We don't get it for free, and we don't get to negotiate on their process. We have to sit in the waiting room, they're always late. We then have to go into their consulting room. We get 15 minutes if we're lucky, any longer, and we pay more, and we have to pay the bill before we leave the building. Right? There's no negotiation on that because they wear a white coat with a stethoscope. Well, in fact, these days they wear chinos and polo shirts, but anyway. Um so we don't get to negotiate because of their positioning. So my argument to agency owners is trust the proof that we have of people selling paid discovery. Now, that's a big ask. And so then what we do is we say, we are going to give you everything you need to sell and deliver paid discovery sessions, including a white label, slide deck, participant workbooks, facilitator workbooks, email templates, similar to what you're doing here. It's like I'm removing all the excuses. All you have to do is follow the process. And uh Sarah and Caitlin, social media marketing agency in Newcastle, basically managing social media, organic and ads for food and wine companies, had never sold paid discovery, were terrified of the concept, sold their first one, I think, for $1,200, got such great feedback and closed the client, they went, actually, this is worth more than $1,200. They put the price up to $1,500. Now they've found their sweet spot at $1,800. They sold $1,800 paid discovery a couple of weeks ago and off the back of that signed a client for $4,900 a month for 16 months. That's a $78,000 contract from an $1,800 paid discovery. That's right. This happens all the time. This is what we're seeing. And three weeks prior to that, Sarah was like, I couldn't get my head around the idea of selling paid discovery. How far they've come in a few weeks just by trusting the process and implementing what hundreds of agencies and people like you and I have been talking about for years. Everything you need is there. You've just given people a funnel, right? The tool is there, the email templates, everything they need is there. They just need to ask themselves, why am I not, why am I afraid of selling paid discovery? And is that fear based in truth or a myth? And chances are it's based on a myth because the moment someone pays you for discovery, that myth no longer exists, and you are now operating with a new truth, which is someone will pay $1,200 for a paid discovery workshop. That is a new truth, and that is now the baseline. I like that. So that's it's part mindset removing the fear, but also giving them very practical things to do so that they don't have so that they're not floundering.
SPEAKER_01Yep, yep. No, I like I like that. As you were explaining that, I was like, I remember that time when I had to, I I think I did my first discovery for 500. Now our baseline starts at 1500. And um and you get better clients, right? Because then you read up the people, they trust you more, they look at you as the trusted expert, um versus uh the person that just trading time for money.
SPEAKER_00That's right. That's right. And and and so one of the things I learned is um this is a bit of a when I started off, this was a bit of a a cheat. It's now more, it's more genuine and authentic now than it was, but it was a bit of a cheat back then, but it works. When I've got on a f when I got on an initial call with someone, I would limit it to 15 minutes, right? Because I'm like you, I don't want to spend 45 minutes with someone who's gonna pick my brain for free and then do nothing with the information. Like what am I a school teacher? Like uh I'm a consultant, I need to be paid. So I said I would block off time in my calendar for a 15-minute phone call. And immediately after that, in my calendar, I would schedule something else. Whether it was looking at my own Google Analytics or whether it was um, you know, reading a book, I would have something in my calendar. And so when I was on a call with someone, I would say, Hey, look, I've only got 15 minutes because I do have something else in my calendar after this call. So let me just uh ask you a few questions and then tell you how we work. And the moment you do that, people are like, oh wow, this person's busy, they have a process, they're not just a freelancer here to hang out and for me to pick their brain. And so I owned the frame of that phone call straight off the bat, and that was a and yeah, I'd get off the call and go, great, well, now I don't really have anything to do. I've just scheduled faffing about on my own website, but that's okay. The positioning was good now. That's right. These days I actually do have a busy calendar, so it's more genuine. But I think just having that, that, that mentality of a GP, you've got to have the mentality of a doctor. You you analyze, diagnose, and prescribe medicine. And then when they're on a growth plan, they're engaged with you, that's when you start fixing the things. That's right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I I like the fact about having a process and sticking to it. One of one of the things we do as a feedback loop for us is as soon as we close a deal or finish a project, we ask, what are the what are the reasons they chose us over um the competition? And the last project we did, the guy was like, You came with the process, you stuck with the process, you provided the insights, and and it was worth that. We paid more to move forward too. And I was like, Great. And and and I got an email from them saying, Hey, um, our team was so impressed with this. We own another business, and we'd love to have you take us through the same process. Because in the process, they also come to realize that they don't really know their business that well. If you do it desperately well, they're like, okay, now we need to now pass that back to you.
SPEAKER_00That's right, exactly. What one of the things that we teach in the pay discovery method is um the Kanban board concept where, and this is it fits so well with MyWeb Order because MyWeb Order gives you a list of all the things that need fixing, right? So what we literally do is we just map that out on a Kanban board. Doesn't matter what you use, we use we use click up to share templates because it's easy to share, but it doesn't matter, you could use Notion or whatever. Um, we map it out to click up uh on a Kanban board, and then we literally drag them in order. We say, well, if we were to work together over the next 90 days or 12 months, whatever, this is what we would do in order. Here's the plan. We'll do this first, then this, then this, then this. And each one of those cards on the click up board has the process behind it of the checklist of what needs to happen. So when we lay that out visually and the client's like, wow, first of all, we don't have a plan like this. Second of all, no other agency I've spoken to has a plan this well dialed in. This is the plan. It makes perfect sense to hire us to help implement the plan because we have a plan. And that's what they're buying. They're buying the fact that you have a plan to help them. You have a process. Love that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. Sounds like a lot of big changes are coming in and that you have implemented since the last time I was in your program. Wow.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Oh, it's yeah, it's unrecognizable from the last time you're in the program, it's changed so because it has to, because the business, you know, the business model. I mean, I just I just can't, you know, I had this conversation with someone yesterday and I said, when someone they said, oh, what happens when someone just emails you and says, we need a rebrand and we want to quote, or we need a new website and we want to quote? First question I ask is, Great, I'd love to give you a proposal on um, which the truth is I don't, but I say to them, I'd love to give you a proposal on building a website, um, I'd love to know how this fits into your overall digital strategy. Can you send me a copy of your digital strategy for the next 12 months so I can see how this fits in and we can make sure we get it right? And at that point they say, Oh, we don't have a digital strategy for the next 12 months. And I'm like, Oh, well, in that case, we need to go through a digital game plan session or a digital roadmap workshop to figure out what that strategy is. And that's paid discovery, ladies and gentlemen. I can't imagine a situation where I would build a website for a client who walked in the door as the first engagement. I would want to get them a quick win and fix something first, and then I would be the one to decide if they need a new website, not them. The client, by and large, clients don't have the skills or the knowledge or the experience to tell you that they need a new website. That's right. That's right. It's your job to tell them when they need a new website.
SPEAKER_01I totally um agree. I I try to use, I try to play to, not try to, I I it's a truth. So I play to um their their, I don't want to say their ego, but I'll say something like this: like, Troy, let's just say you were the lead and you spoke to me, I'd say something like, Hey Troy, do you truly believe that in 30 minutes I'm gonna be smart enough to be able to understand your business, your challenges, and put forth uh a solution and get you the desired result, which is what you said is grow your business 30% over the next year. And I just I'd be like, listen, Troy, if you think that I can do that, then I should be charging you 20 times more what I'm gonna be just a year, or two, I'm selling you snake oil like a lot of other people would. And it then hits them because they realize, right, they've spent years generally going through blood, sweat, and tears to get them to where they are, and for them to really believe that someone else on a 30-minute strategy call can truly transform their business, that's unrealistic. And my hope is for them to vocalize that themselves. Because sometimes, if I say well, most of the time if I say it, then they're just like, that's BS. But when they realize that, then they're like, Okay, I understand the importance of giving you the time and then taking it through there. I like I like that question about asking them about a digital growth strategy plan because 99 out of 100, not nine out of 10, 99 out of 100 will be like, we have no clue, and I'll control it. Good. That's why we're here to help you, and that's what we can do.
SPEAKER_00I love that way of positioning discovery that's the other quick, the other thing I love saying is if anyone else has given you a proposal based on the information that you've given me, based on if if you've given someone else the same information and they've given you a proposal, they are guessing. And I don't want to guess. Yeah, I want to be super clear with expectations and really accurate with time and cost. And based on the information you've gave me, if I gave you a proposal right now, I'd be making it up and hoping for the best. And if anyone else has given you a proposal, that's what they're doing. And they instantly differentiate you from the competition and put you in a blue ocean. They just can't compete with you then. Yeah, yeah, I love that. Cool. Wow. What do you what do you might what are you most excited about with AI over the next over the next 90 days?
SPEAKER_01Man, um for me, I think uh it's gonna level out the playing field between myself and my team in being able to take the insights and build it together strategies that can deliver results. So saving time, um, allowing us to leverage, um, not just saving time, but allowing me to leverage my team more effectively because I do a lot of the telling still on the higher-end stuff that we work on. And so I think AI will allow for that. I am, I think like a lot of agencies, also concerned about what that does to our industry per se. Like speaking real talk, when you think about like the Webflow or the GoDaddies, not the builders that they have now, but I wonder which company, which tech company steps in over the next year and puts in a billion dollars to build you know, design and content well. But the good news for me is uh pre-COVID, we repositioned into driving results. And so we don't ever speak on like, hey, we're building your website. So when people come in and say we need a website, um, we use the five whys to be able to dive deeper, and it's usually results. Um, I'm excited, I would say, for what AI is going to do for my web audits. So when we think about AI vision, um the idea of understanding whether there's an effective USP or proper call to actions and design. I don't know how much you've spent how much time you've spent with OpenAI's vision API, but what's really neat is we'll be able to do an analysis of a website homepage screenshot now and be able to provide insights based off of that. So being able to leverage AI to grow our SaaS, I would say if you asked me two years ago, we would have been more concerned about the SEMrush and the AHRFs and these larger companies, but we're a nimble boat. So we can navigate we will be able to navigate AI, I think, a lot faster than some of the larger companies out there. And being able to do that to help our agency get to success even faster is going to be amazing. I e the report I showed you, it would take me about three and a half hours to do about six months ago. Now it takes me 15 minutes and then another 30 to edit, and then I'm getting paid, you know. My profit margins are now ninety percent plus versus before were more like fifty to sixty percent. Yeah. That's great. How about you, Roy?
SPEAKER_00What are you seeing in the Well, I'm seeing, I'm seeing more and more that if you're in the business uh a great question. Thank you, by the way. I'm seeing more no one, no guest on the podcast ever asked me questions like that. I love it. Um I'm seeing if you're if you're in the business of designing interfaces and and pushing pixels around a screen, I think you're cooked. I think the fractional CMO digital strategist model is the way to go. And the two examples I'm gonna give you, Reloom. Have you seen Reloom? I've heard of it. Reloom is a is a Reloom is essentially uh you give it a prompt, you tell it what you kind of what you want to do, and it builds wireframes and content. First of all, it builds a site map, then you approve the site map. The site map has has kind of descriptions and overviews of each page. You then approve the site map, and then it builds the wireframes with all the content for you in real time on the screen. I remember the first time I saw it, I I my jaw dropped as I've got a big TV screen here that's a monitor.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I was watching it build it in real time, going, oh my, that is unbelievable. So that is super exciting. And then on the other side, I've discovered a platform called framer.com, which is I believe is out of Norway.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_00And uh, whoo man, I I I prompted it. I told it about myself as a business coach and I wanted to build a personal brand website, and within 10 minutes, I could have launched that website, plugged my domain in with a CNAME record, and I would have been live. It was done. Content design, done. I'd maybe I would have added a few photos. Like it was, it's so I think I'm I'm I'm a little bit listen, I'm a little bit nervous for WordPress. I I will say this, right? We came from the we came from the WordPress world. They have to innovate in a big way. And I just I'm not seeing it. I'm a little bit nervous for WordPress because if I was launching a personal website today, right now, uh, just for my own personal purposes, I would probably go to something like Framer.com, which is super easy to use. I don't need it's built for marketing teams that don't want to rely on developers, right? So I don't need a coder, it's completely no code. And then I can stick in a bit of JavaScript from Convert Box and have my emails go into, you know, mail alight or active campaign, and I'm done. I've got like my online business. If I needed a full-blown CRM marketing automation piece, my preference these days is high level. It's an amazing platform. I know a lot of people think, you know, still think it's a multi-level marketing product. It's not uh, I know the founder's there really well. I've got a great relationship with them. It's in it's an incredible platform and it's developing at a rate of knots. The interface has had a massive upgrade recently, and it's great. And so that would be where I would do that. Now, what where does WordPress fit in? I don't know. I'm I'm I'm nervous for them. I'm really nervous for WordPress. And uh I know you and I grew up in that place, and and we went through a period of years where we're like, WordPress is gonna be here forever. And you know what they say? Like, I'm also nervous for social media. I I you know if Facebook didn't have groups, what the value proposition is like without Facebook groups, there is no value proposition for Facebook as far as I'm concerned. And most people that use Facebook are in a demographic now where we are in groups, and groups aren't monetized. Yep. So I don't know what the I don't know what the model is there. I'm nervous for that. Um I'm also nervous. What I'm really nervous for is the attention span of the generation coming through, right? Like a 10-second TikTok is too long. Yes. Uh, and some of them are. And I'm also nervous about how AI, how, how the the new generation of content creators are gonna use AI to pollute the internet with 10-second pieces of crap that all end up looking the same. I think the opportunity for original thinkers to rise to the top is gonna be great because I think there is there's gonna be a lot of vanilla ice cream on the internet, if you know what I mean, right? So you just gotta be boys and berry or chalk chip, and you're gonna rise to the top pretty quickly. Um so I don't know. I'm I'm I'm nervous for companies. I'm I I've also seen some AI companies recently just get with the latest updates to open AI with with right, with with with uh GPT agents, there's a whole bunch of AI companies that are just gone now. They've just hit the wall, right? They're like yesterday's news. So it's a very fast uh moving place. I think the thing that will never be outsourced or replaced with AI is the conversation that you have with a client where you prescribe, diagnose and prescribe the right medicine, just like the GP. I think that's really the model that we have to adopt as agencies is to sit with our clients, have our teams trained up to sit with clients and diagnose and prescribe. That's really the model, as far as I'm concerned. Assess, diagnose, and prescribe.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. I I love those insights. Um, Troy, I tell agencies I speak to is that usually I'm working with the sales or director of IT, and they don't want, like because they're they work for larger companies, they don't want to have the responsibility of leveraging a tool and it going bad. Like I become that. So as long as I'm valuable, have the conversations, I can establish authority, I can establish that I can do what I'm saying I am, I can do well. And I was just gonna say two takeaways for our listeners that I see in the AI space is what you talked about, where you know, if you can leverage authority, you can use AI now to get great topics. And then instead of writing ghost content, which is what AI does, you can take that and go deeper. And then for those that are in the WordPress space, um, I'm I'm I'm working on a playbook for how we execute um, I don't even want to call it a care plan anymore, but like just a retainer and how we've figured out ways to add value and not say we're fixing plugins. Because like that idea of fixing plugins for trading that time for money or security is way past us. And so if if agencies don't pivot past that, I think we're a year or two or more till people say like we're leaving because there are platforms that literally sing we never have to do this ever again, right?
SPEAKER_00That's right, correct. And that's one of the reasons that we moved all of our curriculum and training over to the circle platform, circle.so, is because I had a team of developers updating learning management systems in WordPress for years, right? Three developers full-time basically working on that thing is like, this is ridiculous, right? And you know, like so now we're on hosted platforms. The other reason I like high level is because it's a completely hosted platform. They've got 800 staff, 400 of which are developers, and that's you know, rock solid. Uh, it's you know, I can't, you know, having managing self-hosted stuff is is an overhead that business owners don't need. And uh I think what's it's interesting what Elementor, Elementor, Cloud are doing. I think headless is interesting. The fact that they bought um they bought um uh Stratic, I think is super interesting. So we'll see what happens in that space. I think headless WordPress with some kind of CMS in the background that's fully hosted and there are no I don't have to worry about updating anything, that's interesting. Um, I mean, now you're kind of talking in the this is what enterprise have been doing for years, right? Enterprise editorial teams have been doing this for a long time. And so I think bringing that technology to the small business or the content creator, I think is interesting. Um, I look at, you know, it's only a matter of time before all of our curriculum ends up in high level because they're basically building uh an alternative to Kajabi and Facebook groups and they're they're taking on circle and school and all those platforms. And the reason is is because I now, well, I now no longer have to use Zapier. When someone watches a training module in one of our courses, I can automatically tag them and send them an email and also have an in-app message pop up and congratulate them. I'll be able to do all of that in high level in the next 12 months. Wow. So all the gamification will be built in. All the stuff that when we launched the Blueprint all those years ago, we had this incredible platform. We had in-app messages with Intercom. We had emails going out. It was this amazing experience, gamification experience. And it cost us a bomb to do it. And we had not only team, but we had software, we had multiple applications running and zaps running all over the place. We'll be able to do all of that in high level in the next 12 months. And imagine being in a forum that looks like a Facebook group and asking questions, and some balloons appear in that Facebook group to congratulate Johnny, who's just completed module one of the paid discovery method. And then you're like, oh yay, go, Johnny, well done, right? That's the future. And that's it's and it's all integrated with my CRM and my sales guys are watching that, going, hey, I'm gonna knock on Johnny's door and say, hey, Johnny, you should get on an implementation call with one of our specialists and send them into a coaching program. That's the future in a platform like high level. And I don't need to update plugins, do you know what I mean? So yeah, yeah. Um, I know I'm I I am a huge advocate and a huge fan of high level because I know what the roadmap looks like. And so I think the technology is gonna get better, it's gonna get easier. Uh, our job, Cliff, you you know this, you and I have been saying this for a long time. Our job is to learn the art and the skill of sitting with our clients and helping them figure out what they should do next. That's our job as consultants. And um, so your tool, the stuff that we're teaching here, we're on the same page. And yeah, just looking forward to keeping this conversation going and trying to trying to bring this knowledge and this education and share the abundance with the agency owners listening.
SPEAKER_01Awesome. It's been a great conversation, Troy. We love, um, I should say we like, I'm working towards loving Go High Level. We're we've integrated with them as a tech partner and looking for deeper integrations. It's always a pleasure speaking with you. Uh I got mental notes, I'm gonna have to go right down from things I've learned. Um, you know, appreciate the journey, appreciate the time. And um hopefully your listeners have uh found this valuable. I'm in the group, so I'm in your community. If anyone has any questions, feel free to connect with me. Cliff at MavaBodit is my email, mava bodit.com. We have a great um deal going with Troy in the group. He has the link there. Um, we're doing something where we're honoring our Black Friday deal for those of you that um come in through Troy's group. So any of the bonuses we offered, um, including the one that we showed there for the annual pro and annual agency, just let us know you came from Troy's group, and we'll make sure that we honor that deal. Right.
SPEAKER_00Awesome. We'll put the links and the details under the show notes here. That's very generous of you. Thank you so much, Cliff. Look forward to doing this again, man. And I'm gonna tell Johnny, Johnny, you're not having Cliff anymore. Whenever Cliff's on the podcast, he's mine, man. We made all work and I want to do it again. Well, it's been a pleasure. Love Johnny. You know what would be super interesting? It would be super interesting to have me, you, and Johnny on the podcast at the same time because I feel like Johnny is the poster boy for everything I was teaching and all the tech that you've built, and he's the one that's implemented and executed. As I said, now he's like, you know, 18 staff and he's got an incredible agency. So we should get me, you, and Johnny on the podcast to celebrate one. That would be a great episode. I'd love that. Cool. Cool. Thanks, Cliff. Thanks for hanging out with us on the Agency Hour. Always a pleasure, cheris. Hey, thanks for listening to the Agency Hour Podcast and a massive thanks to Cliff for joining us. And I just want to thank him for being so vulnerable and sharing his incredible journey with us. It's really good to look under the hood and see behind the curtain, so to speak, the good, the bad, and the ugly. It's great to have him back, and we're super lucky to have had him on the podcast today. Okay, folks, please don't forget to subscribe and please share this with anyone who you think may need to hear it. I'm Troy Dean, and remember, Dr. Seuss invented the word nerd.