Hey Daniel, welcome aboard. Great having you. How much did you make last month with your automation business and how much did you make in the preceding month as well? — Oh man, so I went from in the first three weeks we went 0 to 10k and now I'm coming up on 8 weeks and we'll be hitting 20k MR. So it is a rocket ship. — Gez. Uh what do you owe that to would you say? I mean, I see a lot of people coming into Maker School, Make Money with Make and the various communities, and well, we do have some people that like execute quickly and get results. What would you say is the unique thing about you that allowed you to hit that 20,000 in about 8 weeks? — I stopped thinking. That was my worst enemy. I just was like, you know what? I'm just going to if I'm going to get punched in the teeth, teeth as fast as I can because the faster I get that out of the way and I'm just it's been a volume game. So, I owe it to you saying like, "Hey, get the numbers out and then figure it out. Get the applications out, figure it out. " And it's that's what I owe it to is the volume and uh stop trying to be not trying to be perfect with everything. — That's really big. I Yeah, I feel like so many people aim for perfection before they've even made it 10. There's so many people aim for 100% before they even make it 10% of the way there. It's like focus on the problem you have right now and then worry about being perfect later. — What were you doing before you started all this stuff? — So I was a consultant. I was a consultant for law firms and consulting in what would be a fractional COO role more than anything. Just helping structure organizations. And the funny part is for all my clients, I was doing the automations anyways and I was so naive to the market in the automation space. I had no idea that I could actually turn around and just sell the automations. So like I was running myself into the ground doing all of the analytical work and the automations on the side. And yeah, this is uh this made my life a lot more simple, that's for sure. — Was it primarily enterprise SMB? What vertical? — So it was from about 1. 5 to 10 million. So small mediumsiz business. It was all different practice areas for law and then I dabbled in other markets as well, but that was just the one that kept coming up in that space. They're taught to be fantastic lawyers. Um but they're never given time to taught how to run a business. — Understood. So they spend a lot of their time on the fulfilling of the legal stuff, but not actually on how to run a legal business. — Absolutely. Yeah. And in the niche on the niche, we kind of talked about this before. It's a really interesting place. There's three core companies that operate and sell services to organizations between 1 and 5 million. And they sell operating systems. That is it. They sell how to structure your business. They're called EOS scalable and scale up. They just walk business owners through how to install ORC charts, how to install cadence, stuff that you or I may seem as so simple. This is massive business for them. Like selling out conferences globally every year at $5,000 a ticket. And it was shocking to see that as well that people pay for that. You know, I'd go as far as to say that's another big skill of yours that you entered into this program with. You know, whereas a lot of people, I think, just naturally have limiting beliefs surrounding how valuable a service is. In addition to turning your brain off, you already knew how valuable this was. And hell, you obvious you already knew how valuable a very scaled down version of this was. These are just road maps for implementation. I mean, a lot of systems and stuff like that we sell actually do the implementing. So, I imagine that probably allowed you to start pitching much higher right off the bat. Yeah, — absolutely. Yeah, that was it is I was able to be in the mind I guess of the business owners that are trying to automate and a lot of them are in that place uh that the operations are chaotic. They're stressful. They can't even see them. They can't see the forest for the trees and they're going down one of three routes. They're either going to go towards these OS companies that are going to charge them through the nose to get them to draw process maps or they're going to try and automate it themselves and just burn the midnight oil teaching themselves tech or they're just going to have to hire an automator. And that third avenue is what you guys kind of helped me even discover that it exists. And uh yeah, that's been wild. I don't even know how else to put it, man. — Knowledge asymmetry for sure. Good place to do some arbitrage. You know, some people don't even know that like drag and drop solutions. A lot of this stuff that used to take old teams exist, which is really the biggest thing. Just like, oh, I know this. You don't. Have you dabbled with um you know, I know we talked automation a lot, but like have you dabbled with sprinkling AI on systems and stuff like that as well? You've done some cold email and GTM stuff. — Yeah. Uh that has been actually the biggest pull through the automation. It's a little bit of the old school. the problem isn't the problem statement, right? They'll come in and a lot of the clients are asking for automation. I'm like, well, you know, we can automate this, but there's 27 other things that we can automate or we can just plug AI into this automation and really break you free. And I think that's been a huge part of the creation of the recurring part, the revenue on the back end, and what's put me in a box of an IT company. I'm building this machine, but someone's got to grease the wheels while you're moving. And uh they just Yeah. They're like, "Hey, I run a business and you do the AI, and I'll call you when I need you, but just keep the machine running. " — Yeah. It's almost like a peace of mind payment that they're making. I uh got an accountant, I think what, six or seven months ago now, and he had this package called the peace of mind package. It was I don't know how much money I don't want to dox my accountance rights or anything but you know it was like several thousand dollar and uh I was just like that's what I want. I want peace of mind. You know I just want to know that when I spend money it goes into this black box and this black box just takes care of all my tax stuff. And what do I get back? I get 100% foolproof fantastic accounting. And I feel like it's similar in many ways with systems, right? — Yep. — I imagine people are probably relying on you as like the fractional systems guy then. So it's like an evolution your previous role. — Yep. Big time. — Perfect. Exactly. That I mean that's like the perfect setup, right? Then you get form deep relationships with clients and Yeah. sky's is the limit. — Yeah, it really is. And it's uh their favorite saying is I'm paying you so that I don't have to think about it. Like that is it. like I ju just let me know that it works and you'll notice when it doesn't and let me pretend that the world is rosy so I can focus on my business and — yeah the stuff that I do. Yeah. — Yeah. It's great. And we all have I think that's a good business to be in um and a good place to be for clients cuz like you said with your accountant money is the easy part. There's unlimited amounts of money in the world, but finding somebody that can allow you just to not think about one less thing during the day, it's worth its weight in gold. — It's insane to me that we're even having this conversation because of just how many limiting beliefs I hear around money constantly 24/7. And just the fact that you said that, I think goes to show why you're as successful as you have been in just a short period of time. There is an unlimited amount of money in the world. That's not really the bottleneck at the end of the day. and just like, dude, that's suffusing every call you have with a client. — Like, hell yeah, man. Yeah. Much respect. Very impressive growth. — Thank you. Yeah, that uh it's crazy. You can see people that have that limiting belief and you can't force them to see the truth, but it's, you know, um when I draw these automations out and I'm I kind of use like the pipeline analogy. like information flows just like water through these pipelines and our automations are just sticking a straw into it. And uh I'll segue that into the money flows around the world every day. Trillions of dollar changes hands every single day. Your business has a responsibility to just put a straw into that pipeline and it's never going to stop because if it stopped the world stops and in the history we would have never seen that. No matter what the money will never stop flowing. — I don't know if you're into sci-fi but the spice must flow. Very idea. You got it. — Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. The spice must flow man. And that's sick. — Yeah. I love Dune. Can I ask you then, speaking of spice, what was like the numbers goal that you had when starting with this stuff? Like when you transitioned from whatever you were doing before to automation? — You know what? I had no expectations coming in. None. I just figured let's give this a shot. Uh I'll be honest, like I like to learn and funnel hack and see what is going on in the world. So, I was like, you know what? I'm expecting I'm going to lose money signing up for this, but I'll learn something new. Who cares? So, I didn't really even have a goal. Yeah, I've tested out a lot of different niches and growth programs. Uh whether it's Tackie Moore in the coaching space, Brian Mark and the personal training, I love learning how people execute from the inside out. So, I was kind of taking that approach where I'm like, let me just see what he's done for himself. Like, he's got the proof. You got the proof. let me see how he's, you know, going about this business plan and this business structure. So, there's more to learn. — Yeah, that is super cool, man. Uh, slipped on a banana peel and landed on $20,000. So, — yeah. Well, thank you for that. I owe you that. So, I appreciate it. That should tell you something about your program, man. Like, oops, accidentally uh went to 20K. My bad. — Oh, yeah, man. That's what I'm talking about. That's cool. Sounds like uh honestly — you just you're just a curious person and you're just curious about things and I think that's just as valid a reason than others. I get so many people that come into the business model and that ask me to help, you know, shepherd them through it that like they have like crazy monetary constraints and they like really need to make things work and they have desires obviously to like free themselves from 9 to5 obligations or societal expectations or whatnot. And so I've seen people come in through all various directions and it's really illuminating to me to see which ones tend to correlate the best with results. I can tell you confidently, believe it or not, the guys that like come into stuff and they like need to make things work and it's like they're holding a gun to their we have to make this happen very rarely actually end up making it happen compared to the people that — that don't. Um, and I think it's just because of that pressure thing when you're in a place that you're driven not necessarily by, you know, like where's my exact like next dollar coming from and more so just like, okay, like let me work this business model out, maybe try and break some limiting beliefs or whatever. I think you go a lot farther because you're able to get a little bit of perspective, right? — It's like oxygen, right? A little bit of cash flow. And if people come into this zero dollar, it's very difficult for them, I think, to like be able to take that breath, to subsist for more than 30 seconds. you it sounds like had a successful fractional consulting business before this or whether you're working as a contractor or an employee of a business, you had a little bit of that oxygen, right? — Yep. You're absolutely right cuz uh when you think of the flip side to that perfectionism, the part of you that's saying I can't get this wrong, it's slowing you down from getting the volume is the exact same part that is saying I have to get this right so I can eat. So they kind of go hand in hand and it's hard to break those two pieces apart, right? It's like if I mess up this one proposal for a client, I'm not going to eat. So therefore, I'm going to stress about it far more than I have to. And that maybe that's why I am guessing a little bit here, but maybe that's why they go hand in hand and it kind of pervades the brain throughout the process. — Yeah. And then as opposed to just, you know, getting up and going, whether you hit 90% or something like that, you're trying to get those diminishing returns to do like the 100 on everything. Then you only send, I don't know, like four cold emails or something when you should have sent 400. — Exactly. Yeah. And then you're really scared to lose clients. So you're spending 20, 30 hours extra per client than you have to because you got to eat. So, you lose that client and uh and all of a sudden you didn't spend enough time getting new ones. And — I see it a lot in referral-based businesses where like people don't have established lead generation methods to turn strangers into paying customers. And it's one of the reasons why I avoid referral based business is like the plague because when it's a referral based business, like you don't know when the next client is coming. You don't have an equation where it's like, okay, cold email system. I put this much money in and then I get this much money out on average, right? — Yep. Instead, you're just like, "Oh my god, if I don't perform and really just kiss their ass, how am I going to eat next month? " You know, cuz I don't have any clients coming in. So, I think cultivating like strong outbound skills, super important. Like probably one of the most important things you can do, whether it's an a automation business specifically or some other business. — Totally agree. Nothing else matters. If you can't acquire clients, you end up being owned by your one client if you're stuck on referrals or two clients and you're an employee then. That's it. M — so if you don't get that skill, you'll always be an employee no matter what you do. — Agreed. — Let's break down the actual strategy that you followed then. What did you end up choosing niche-wise if you have a niche? And then if so, why did you pick that one? Tell me what that first client was like. Oh, I always love that story. — Oh man. Uh so I went I didn't even go industry specific niche. I went service based niched. So building out ERPs uh in ClickUp, ASA, all those project management softwares. Uh so anything on there that I just opened up the filter and I put in ClickUp and I said anything that says ClickUp, I'm going to apply to like whatever it takes. I don't care if they want me to translate to Spanish. — Yeah, I got AI. Whatever. And uh and oddly enough, the very jeez, the very first client uh he said three words to me and hired me. And I was just like, "What? " So I sent a proposal over. He watched it, I guess. And so he said, "This is great. You're hired. Fix this. " And that was it. and he just kind of like threw me to the wolves. I'm like, "Uh, there's supposed to be a process here. I'm supposed to get your login. " He's like, "Whatever. Here's all my login. Figure it out. " And then like crickets after I had to fix all the automations on his back end and they were all broken and I'm pretty sure they were copy and pasted off the internet. — You know those good old templates that everyone's getting. Oh yeah, we all know about them templates. — Oh yeah. Um and like none of it worked, man. None of it. It seemed like they tried to write code themselves and yeah. So I fixed it in record time. You know when you're hungry with that first client, right? And you're like, I'm going to knock this out of the park. Like I dropped everything I was doing. It was 7:00 at night. I fixed it really quickly, like within 3 hours. and close the contract out and said, "Hey, thanks. You know, uh, we got her fixed. I built a studio training video. I rebuilt everything. Here's a walkthrough on the automation, how it works, so that the next guy," and he actually got mad at me. — He He's like, "Great work. " Yeah, great work. Thank you. Uh, why'd you cancel the contract? Like, you're the guy now. I'm like, "I don't even know your last name, man. " He's like, "Yeah, well, you're the guy. Uh my I sent your contact info to my team and uh they'll reach out and you can fix all our other stuff, too. Okay. Well, I guess there's uh there's a market for this. So, away we go. — Incredible. Damn. Talk about like striking while the iron's hot. I think doing it in three hours is huge because clearly he was at his wits end. If he's this guy that's just like, "Fix it. Please, God, help me. " And then he just sends all his login. Uh he did not care. It was I was like, "Do you want me to sign anything? Like there's going to be client information here. Do you care? " Like nothing. He's ju just fix it. I don't care. It was uh his entire business couldn't uh onboard new clients and they it was a high volume business. So they had like it turned his intake pipeline into accordion and it was just backed up. When I finally fixed it, it had to go through like 50 gigabytes of client data and he maxed out his automation usage in like an hour. Um cuz it was so messed up. So it was good. Yeah. — Dang, man. Yeah. Struck while the iron's hot. And uh I guess there in lie of the results. Are you still working with him then? — Yeah. — Nice. — That's what I'm talking about. — Yeah. He won't let me quit. So Um, you know, it's funny because when Daniel joined Maker School, you know, he like asked the questions that most people ask initially and you know, like you can see his post history and stuff. There's like a variety of various things. How do I get started with this? that? His intro post and whatnot. And then uh yeah, it was like what two days, three days or something. He's like, "Oh, never mind all that. " He just signed six grand. It's like — moving on. — The hell did this happen? — Yeah. I was even there like, "Uh, what? " Even my wife looked at me and she's like, "What the [ __ ] did you sign up for? " And I was like, "I don't really even know, but I just followed the checklist and here we are. " Like, "Oh, okay. Well, cool. Have fun. " — That's awesome, man. How about the next couple of clients that you got then? So, this was number one. Still with you, obviously. Been eight weeks, but um Yeah. — What else? Uh so the next few um the next one actually was the same type of same type of deal. Um threw the proposal in and he just like was like it's broken fix it. I was like kind of expecting that to be the norm after that. But uh the following clients when I started discussing their problems in detail and going into the problem below the problem, — they wanted me to not only solve the automation, they brought me in and being like, well, you're going to be the guy who understands both business and automation. And what I'm starting to see on clients, you know, three through eight — was that these owners just want somebody to care about their business — and they want people who understand business and not just give them another widget and another piece of software. They want less and they're like, do you they want you to understand the purpose of the automation. — And so all of the discussions since then have been very root cause focused. you know, I'm losing 20 hours per week. It's causing stress in the business. And this automation, I hope, can fix it. And once you kind of get down to that real human issue, it's like all our business. It's not about the automation. widget. It's not about anything other than the human aspect of it. And so that is what has led to the big growth in recurring revenue. — Absolutely. Congrats on the eight clients in eight weeks. I mean, client a week, that is incredible. Keep this up. By the end of the year, you'll have 52. — Second, the point that you're making, which is that it's not really about the building of the systems. It's more so about how you position their needs and then solve those needs. Whether it relies on automation or not, right, independent of automation is really what we should all be rooting for here. Like, when I work with people, they don't hire me because I'm a systems expert. I am a systems expert. That's not why they hire me. They hire me because I'm a problem solver. they know whether it's a systems problem or whether it's a market and I'm going to be able to apply my intelligence to fix it. — So I find personally when you position yourself as that as like a strategist and as a consultant and really as a partner which is what the fractional op stuff allows you to do really easily. — Yeah. — You know you're able to get so much more of the upside as well. Rev share deals, big chunky percentages like five figure recurring monthlies, stuff like that. So definitely doing the right thing and damn I can't imagine how big you're going to be in like — I don't know 3 or 4 months from now if this is where you're getting to in 8 weeks. I see the problems and like organically. What one thing I want to chat about next is the challenges obviously because there's wins and then there are the downsides that come with them. — But like I have full faith in your ability to do it because uh succeed because you you're doing that right now for a bunch of other businesses, right? So, you're going to see the same problems apply in your own business, and you're just going to be like, "Oh, well, I'm already the fractional obsc. " So, — that's it. Yeah. Uh, it's funny you bring that up. Uh, one of my longest clients, uh, asked me, he's like, "So, you know, what are you going to do? " And, uh, you obviously know how to structure all this. And I realized that the value in the consulting isn't always the knowledge, but it's um it's the difference between perspective and perception. And uh it's like no matter how good I am, no matter what I know, I have to realize that there's nothing in the world that will give me the ability to have an outside perspective on myself. So that's where you need support. Like I'll need you, I'll need him because I can't look back at my business as an outsider. And I can still like say, "Hey, like here's the symptoms I'm seeing. here's the solution. But that's it. It's impossible to have perspective upon yourself. Fundamentally, laws of physics don't allow it. It's like, can a mountain look at itself? No, it can't. And — I can shift p uh perceptions and be like, I'll look at it through the fractional lens and this, but I can't step back. And that's where you need a support network because they can look at you and just not be in it. And so there the value of that is huge because I can still spin my wheels no matter what. No matter how experienced I am for days and days, but I can go to you and be like, "Here's the problem I'm having. My perception, my experience tells me this is it. " But you have the ability to look at it and not be influenced and say, "Yeah, well, you know what? It's because you're on fire over there and you can't see it right now. " So that's huge. — What a great mental model. I never really thought of it like that. But yet by definition, you can't get that perspective. A mountain cannot perceive itself, right? A person cannot perceive itself the same way that uh you know other people can. It's really cool because um what you said there about a support network is uh is golden. I think this applies not just in business obviously it's just in everything. We can't really appreciate our own blind spots. One little hack that I used to do is I would ask myself if I was a friend, what advice would I give me? And you know, obviously you can approximate this stuff. You obviously can't get the true perspective, but I found that was pretty valuable because it was like, oh, if I was a friend, I just say, "Quit doing this stupid [ __ ] you [ __ ] Do this. Make 10 times more money. " Then I do it and I make 10 times more money. — Exactly. — You know what's really interesting? All of the um this is me just uh yapping about my own business growth, but all of the biggest boosts in my business have always come about through one-off conversations. Completely random. Completely random one-off conversations. I feel like I'm the least creative person on planet Earth. Y — because every major business shift I've ever made in my entire life has always just been like hey man so I'm kind of going through this right now. What do you think? Oh well yeah you know uh this is what I would do and I'm just like and then I do it and then I make like 100 grand a month and it's like whoa — right. — It's wild. I can like literally and I journal about this. Feel free to check it out on my blog if you want. But it's just like oh this person said this 2. 5 years ago and then I was like napping and in my nap I was like wait didn't that guy say that one time? Oh I should do this. and then I do it and then I make way more money. Like everything is always based off of the outside perspective. So I'm really appreciative of you bringing that up. That's one of the reasons why I like conversations like these, by the way, because a lot of the time I get juice as well. — So selfishly speaking, it's really cool seeing all the progress you made. — And speaking about progress, Daniel, — with great power comes great challenges or something, but — how has it been actually managing this? What would you say are the biggest challenges of uh eight clients in 8 weeks? Do you know it's actually uh trying to temper their excitement? Uh it's trying to shave the froth off all the hype that everyone is seeing in the news and capabilities of AI and automation. You know, I care about these people. I get wrapped up in the excitement. I'm like, "Yeah, I can build this for you and and let's do it. " And the biggest challenge there has actually been having to throttle that and what I want to deliver for them and saying, "Yes, I can deliver this. Let's be real about the expectations along the way. " Um, and it's kind of like talking to to, you know, your kid or your best friend and you're like, "Yeah, you're going to get it. Let's do this. " But and just you're not letting them down, but it's just tampering those expectations. That has been the hardest because they are so excited about it. They're excited about their future. They're excited to have, you know, somebody working towards that. And uh you don't want to crush their hopes and dreams. But yeah, it's — of a skill to learn, huh? Geez. I feel like when you nail that, it's going to reap dividends, not only in your business life. — I really hope so. Um, I got a client who's like, uh, he's like, you know, you're my hype girl. And I'm like, what? He's like, you're my hype girl, man. Like, everything's possible with you. Like, let's do it. Let's go. $und00 million company coming up. And I'm like, oh god, I got to stop. — Like, I screwed up big time. — Yeah. Yeah, we can do it. Like, but like, let's forget it's like working out. You're going to have a six-pack. We just got to run a 100 miles first. Um, so that's the hard part. And I for you or me or there's a lot of people out there where it's like, yeah, just do it. It's just do it. But you forget that a lot of people don't like doing it. — And I for sure. — Yeah. — And you need to do it before you see anything. Of course. — Yeah. It's like the um you know, I don't know, soccer mom starting a new workout routine and she looks at the bicep curl, she's like, "Oh, if I do this, I'm going to look like Arnold. I want Arnold. " And it's like, — takes a long time to look like Arnold. — It does. It really does. Yeah. And so that's been definitely the most difficult part. I can work 20 hours straight. I love working. Um and I can deliver what they want. I just have to work on not getting them so excited. Yeah, your energy is infectious, Daniel. So, I very much appreciate that. I don't think there are a lot of other people that would say love working, could work for 20 hours straight. It's just like the best thing ever. You know, they they make their work play and they just want to play all the time. I think we've sufficiently done the zero to one with AI automation at this point. So, for you, it's more of a question of how do we turn the one into 100? Uh what's got you so bottlenecked these days? — The bottleneck now is going to be structuring. how to structure the organization to grow properly. — Um there's really I'm tuning over three models. I think finding people to help is going to be easy but — doing it to scale is going to be the difficult part cuz — this model there's been like three models in this space that have been successful but I don't know if it's going to hold up in the new way of doing things, you know. Um, — give me an example. — So, I guess your old school model is, hey, let's just go out, let's hire three guys to run automations. Um, and then you scale and you add salespeople and then you add AR and then and you add a project manager and away you go, right? — And then, I'm sure you saw this one, it moved online to I'll bring in the work and it's just market arbitrage. I'll hand that work off to lower paid talent overseas and I'll manage relationships and easy peasy. Um, but I'm seeing with a lot of the recurring clients that, you know, they want that relationship with you. They want to talk to know that you're working on their project and they're paying big dollars for it. So, you owe that to them. And I don't know if that arbitrage model works for that. So, uh I'm kind of toying with the idea of adopting the models from that you would see in like financial services, the legal space, heck even hair salons of just you bring it in and you do a fee split and that expert in AI and automation owns that relationship and your responsibility is more of a collective. So, I don't know. I guess it's a little bit of a test. — Yeah. Well, this is the perfect conversation to have on this call. So, fan freakingtastic. See, the thing is most people are bottlenecked at the lead genen side of things, right? Like right up at the top. — Now, you obviously owing to some of your past experience and uh just the fact that you're just ooze charisma. — Thanks, man. — Thank you. — You don't have a bottleneck there, right? That's not your problem. So, naturally, the question that you're trying to answer is, okay, cool. Assuming the lead stuff is taken care of, which it obviously is, where do I go from there? and how do I fulfill this in the most economical means possible? The reality is you can use any one of the models that you talked about. It's just a matter of margin. It's a matter of goal. — So, I guess if we were to like backwards uh reverse engineer this like how big would you want an agency like this to get to or an operation let's say because you don't even know if agency is the model that you're going to settle on? — Yeah. Uh you know what I would say based off what I'm seeing with this be a pretty fun ride to take it to 10 million — annually. Um, just from what I've seen in the past, the demand is there in the beginning and you could stretch that all the way to 10 million without having to worry about punching in a weight class that you don't belong or having to make that jump to enterprise level. So, I would like to take it that far. — Yeah. — Yeah. That sounds — Well, I haven't scaled an agency to $10 million. Let me just let that be known first and foremost. So my understanding of how to get much further than you know a million and a bit a year is uh is understandably limited. I don't see any fundamental reason why the models that I'm going to talk about with you don't apply at those numbers but I imagine you have that like age-old thing whereas the company gets bigger the margins go down in a people in you know in an agency in a people focused business simply because a smaller share of the total work that your staff members do on aggregate is about fulfilling the client and more of it starts being like internal collaboration and communication and alignment and all the [ __ ] words you see in fancy slide decks. So, — I think there are a variety of ways that you could probably do something like this. Um, — it's just a matter of like, you know, what you want those margins to be. Like, yeah, look at all the agencies that are about $10 million a year that operate with that like standard um AE or like account manager style relationship and you have a fulfillment team and it's kind of a distributed fulfillment team, but then the account manager is like the one-on-one communicator and then you have some project managers in there. They're not like breaching like 3540%. You know what I mean? And that's like good. That's like really good. So — yeah, — you know, with AI, with leverage, I bet you could probably push that up a little bit more, — get to like 45 50% margins on an operation like that, even with like the established thing cuz it's a working model and all you're doing is you're basically just like turbocharging it. — Exactly. — I feel like if you really want Yeah. Like if you wanted to push out even more, obviously you'd need to reimagine the whole agency model in general. There uh there's this one designer out there, Brett from DesignJoy. Have you heard of this guy? — I have not. No. solo agency, very similar to what I do really if you think about it. — Solo agency does 120k a month. So it's like 1. 5 million a year and he's one guy something like that. 120k 100k. I might be butchering it. I think his peak was like 160. — So the entire way that he operated is just like entirely himself with templated comms where I think it was like once every day or once every 48 hours, something like that. He just had like templated columns, a big library of templates with project updates and then like templated fulfillment because he's he was a designer. He could, you know, his scopes were as simple as, hey, I want you to redesign this landing page. He just get the request. He'd match it to the template that made the most sense, make a couple of edits, send it back, right? — Y — his offer was really sweet. But, you know, when I'm thinking about scaling one of these like microlean mega agencies to $10 million a year with that same mindset, I think you could probably go pretty far. — It would involve reinventing, I guess, what a relationship means. He does like no calls basically which is like his big alpha. — Yeah. — Um so I don't know. Do you have any thoughts on that? Like I'd been curious to hear because I know you have a lot of experience. You're talking about private equity and those sorts of firms. So I'd be curious to hear if you think that has any legs. I could see that working. — I could too. I really can. And I think in that space you kind of got to follow in the footsteps of giants, right? His design space, he knows what he's going to deliver. It is carbon copy. there's not a lot of uh variance in his scope. So, if you go that way, I think you've even told us before, you got to pick a niche and not even a niche. You got to pick a product in the niche that you can rinse, wash, and repeat over and over. And you're kind of like operating as a mini SAS at that point, — right? And it's an interesting model because you're in the middle. If you're only delivering automations at this very narrow framework, technically you're a SAS. There's no difference. Um but you're — like a managed hightouch SAS essentially. Yeah. — Yeah. So um it's if you want to go that route, uh it is definitely doable. I think it's there's a lot of margin there and a lot of opportunity there. It will come with different problems. That's for sure. — Definitely. — I have a theory and that's that all sufficiently advanced automation agencies cease to be automation agencies. Hear me out here. The whole idea of being an automation agency is essentially just being a software development agency or consultancy with extra steps. And as we know those suffer from massive scope problems, right? Because every time somebody comes in with a freaking app request, I it's just it's so different every time. Like that's the core bottleneck in the software development agency. It's just like how variable the scopes are if you want to build custom bespoke projects. — Y — so automation agencies like people trying to run them the same way inevitably always like run into some sort of upper limit there. So what's the solution? Productizing obviously but how do you productize this generalized thing? Well, you obviously can't by definition. So uh what you do is you basically just look back and you're like hey what are all the systems that I've sold over the course of the last like 3 years? Then you assemble this giant library of templates and then you just pick the ones that have the smallest scopes that are the easiest to fulfill. You get that customer avatar and then you just attack them and you cease to be an automation agency and you start being a whatever that system is agency. So no longer an automation agency. You're a CRM development agency. You're a cold email agency. You're a speedtole agency, a GTM engineering agency. Do you know what I mean? And then you just use the same systems that you developed in order to like produce the deliverable and then you sell the deliverable. So it's exactly what you're talking about. — That's it. And you're right on the money. And it's the funny part is when you look at SAS, old apps, they're automations with a widget on top and a brand. — It's that's just it. Like Uber, whatever, Airbnb, it's can you automatically order me a car? Can you automatically book me a place at this person's house? It's all automation. And if you want to go that route, you want to build that brand, that's great and you can do that. What do you think about the downfall of that side? — Well, obviously grow a lot more fragile. Obviously because you're no longer heavily diversified like you know if a new technology comes out that does the thing that you are asking and just does it way better because it's like a dedicated solution some SAS app everybody moves over there why the hell would I do that it's like uh website design or something like that it's like well we all have Squarespace now you know we have WordPress and web flow so comparatively value goes down the thing is you can sell anything to anybody just depends on how big of a scale you want to get to right like there are still website design agencies like Brett's that do over $100,000 a month as a solo op despite the fact that website design's been around for 30 years. So, are you going to build like a $100 million a year website design agency? No. But, you know, can you build like a 100k a month one? Like, yeah. So, matter of scale, I would say. But, yeah, diversification is the main one. That's the main thing. And then, um, yeah, just like market supply. I mean, you know, when you're doing B2B, like GTM engineering, for instance, is all about just going to market usually cold email, personalization, the whole stack that I think you've done a ton of sales on now. And uh what happens when Google or Microsoft just like completely closes that avenue, right? They just say, "Well, you know, we have this new AI intelligence that can detect with 98% certainty whether or not you're a cold email guy. We're just not going to allow it. " — Well, then your whole freaking business model is up. But if you're a bespoke automation agency, it doesn't really matter. — That's it. Exactly. — Those are my thoughts. — It's and I totally agree with you with uh with a singular service, you're at threat to just market disruption. you're a threat from your very providers that you're using to execute. Um let's say you're creating voice agents and you throw a rapper on top and you're like, "Hey, we sell receptionists for auto mechanic shops — and then all of a sudden 11 Labs says, you know what, we're closing off open access and we're just going to sell this oursel. " Then you're hooped. And so there's a really big threat there. And then like you said, what happens when there's another competitor that is actually SAS, not putting a rapper on and they're just better. And you kind of see in this in the agency space. Uh I have a friends who are like running Facebook ads and Facebook was really blunt. They're coming out and they're saying, "Hey, look, we're building AI so you'll never need another marketing agency. It's going to happen. " And now because he was so narrow, the very thing that made him successful so quickly is now a threat to his existence because he could not provide other marketing services on other channels. He wasn't a marketing agency. He was a Facebook lead agency. You pay a price for that speed and that growth and that margin and it is risk to your future. — You hit the nail on the head when you said essentially that there are trade-offs. you're obviously very experienced at this stuff and so I think you can see the parallel but a lot of people ask me hey Nick why do you run this business yourself for instance and I think actually you were one of the people that were like you know what are you doing what where the hell do you want to take this stuff and then I thought about it and then I think of it in a very similar way okay when you productize and so on and so forth that's supposed to offer these like bespoke solutions or heavily diversify you're putting your eggs in one basket and then as a result if that basket is good and you chose the right thing you grow really fast right so in my case you know founder exceptionalism I'm really good what I do. I put all my eggs in that basket and then I just grow really fast. What's the downside to that? Well, brand equity. How do I sell this business in the future? It's all me, right? I can't sell make money with make or soul. I can't do that [ __ ] because 99% of my leads would drive. Nobody wants to deal with some other person. — Yeah. — In that same way, you can see it as like the trade-off between productizing and then putting all your eggs in one product versus having like a suite of products, let's say. Now, in investing, corporate finance, right, diversification is the only free lunch. And um I think about that similarly. So, I think that there's like an 8020, you know, like don't put all all of your eggs in one basket, but if you really believe in something and you have some like market intelligence, — you should probably put most of your eggs in one basket and then like hedge with your eggs in a few other baskets. — Absolutely. And it kind of goes against everything we're taught, right? You're like, focus, eliminate distractions, cut out all the noise, throw every egg in that basket and run as far as you can and worry about it after. Worry about it when you're getting paid. And it's such a weird like you're playing jump rope with your mind the entire way cuz you're like at what point, okay, I'm here now. How do I diversify? Cuz I ignored it back there. Do I restructure? What do I do? Cuz this is what I do now. This what I'm known for. And it uh man, that's the fun part of business, but it also like it sucks. You never feel safe ever. — No. No, you don't. But that's the thrill of life, dude. We live in like a we have talking robots now. Okay, dude. I was at sushi with a friend of mine and a l a robot cart came up with a little freaking Pikachu face and it said, "Hello, sushi. " And I freaking took out the thing. Like the fact that I'm even able to do any of this stuff is insane. — It is. It's exciting. It is. We're living the Jetsons. Who wouldn't want to build that stuff? be a part of history, right, — dude? So few people would get the Jetson's reference these days. It kills me. It's very it it's a sad place in the world. — Sad state of affairs. Simultaneously a great state of affairs and a sad state of affairs. — Yeah. — All right. Well, I just got a couple more questions for you before we wrap up. — Yeah. — What's your advice to people that are watching this right now that may be thinking, "This sounds really cool, but I don't really know if I can do it and it's possible. " — You don't have a choice anymore. you're it's a time in history where you got to figure it out and you're either going to be on the side of somebody who understands how the world runs and works or you're not. So my advice is to use that perspective and learn it. We all have a brain. We can all learn things. It's not a matter of intelligence. It's a matter of will. — Well said. In the same vein, I see a lot of people asking, "Is it even possible to hit 10,000 bucks a month or something? " and they think that you need some like core nugget of knowledge in order to do so. And my answer to that question, I was just like, it's not a it is definitely not a core nugget of knowledge problem. It's like a it's like a reps problem. — Yeah. — You know, when you see some big dude at the you're pretty those shoulders looking pretty juicy, Dan. I'm sure you hit the gym. When you see somebody like Daniel in the gym or whatnot, the question is not like, can I look like him? Obviously, you can cuz he looks like him, right? People out there look like him. It's just like he's done about a million more repetitions of certain body part than you have. So that's really the gap, just the number of reps that you need to do in order to get there, I would say. — Yep. You're absolutely right. And uh to do it, you got to get excited about breaking things and failing. It's just go out and be like, how can I mess this up? And you'll be okay. The faster you get that done, to the other side. — Absolutely. What's the next step for you then, man? Where you want to take the agency? I have started doing light interviews with uh a few people to bring team members on. I'm exploring the fees split model uh as a collective and I'd like to build it out that way especially with the large volume of freelancers out there. We're all freelancers. We all went out on our own. We all started our own business because we like the freedom and flexibility. So, how do you create an organization that gives everyone that and delivers results for clients? And it seems that model works best. So, build a group of people that love doing this and uh just funnel all of our efforts together through one point. — Sounds poant. I wish you the best of luck in that. Thank you very much for your time today. I really appreciate it. — I'm stoked as hell to watch you and support you on that next leg of your journey, man. Hey, I appreciate everything you did for me. Uh, you gave me a road map to get started and uh helped me cut through the noise and it's just been go go ever since, man. — Till next time. direction.
