849: Agency Survival Guide: Productize a Service Business and Stand Out in a Crowded Market with Max Traylor

announcer 00:00 marketer of the Day episode 849 agency Survival Guide productize, a service business and standout in a crowded market with Max trailer.

Robert Plank 00:14 Welcome back to the podcast. We're here with Max trailer, who coaches, consultants and strategy teams to productize their services. He is the host of the interview show beers with Max, He's authored the book, agency survival guide, How to productize consulting services and do other things better too. You can find them at Max trailer.com. And I really highly suggest that as this interview is ramping up, you have that webpage open in a browser tab because I just clicked on it about two minutes ago. And I was immediately engaged, sucked in intrigued entertained. So we're going to have a fun conversation. So Mac battery talking to you.

Unknown Speaker 00:53 Thrilled to be here. Thanks for the wonderful intro.

Robert Plank 00:56 Well, you're very welcome. And so what I liked about just my very first impression of you seeing about 30 seconds of what it is that you're doing is you very quickly bring up a problem, you introduce a story, you kind of have a little bit of what not to do, instead of just giving us the facts giving us the details, you give us something intriguing. So tell me some things. Tell me about what has you intrigued? What has you passionate? What's your current focus? What is the problem we're solving today?

Unknown Speaker 01:26 Well, at a very young age, I realized that my, my father was different than all the other dads he was home all the time. And so he became like the cool dad and went to Disney World all the time. And I walked into his office, he tells the story because I don't remember it. But I walked into his office when I was five years old. And I asked him Dad, where do you make the money. And he had to explain to me that MIT pretty thought it was, I thought he was printing money. And so he explained to me that that was illegal, but that he had a digital scalable, residual, digital, digital scalable residual business model. And what that basically meant is, he did something once and got paid forever. And so my, the lesson to my five year old business self was to put your personal life first, and build a business that works around your personal life and not the other way around. And I think that is the biggest problem in our society today. And I think that it's a really interesting and fun time, because magically, the entire world was exposed to their own ability to run their own thing. And we're seeing the largest shift from corporate America to independent consultants and people starting their own businesses. And I think it's all the time.

Robert Plank 02:45 And I agree with you completely that it is I mean, I think that you and I, we have those of those great uncles or those grandparents who they got a job working at the gas station at age 18. And they worked until age 65. And that's all they really had to worry about. But then times of change. And the downside to the old way of working was that you kind of worked yourself to death. And you didn't have fun, sort of like you're mentioning there, you don't get to build your your business or your income around your lifestyle. But now in this modern age, with medical advances, and all those sorts of things, we will be living to 100 we will be changing careers. There's this miracle, this magic of remote work where you can work anywhere, if you don't like the career you're in, if you don't like the side hustle, or whatever you have going on, you can ditch that and change that. And so what do people need to know? Because it all sounds it sounds a little bit scary, first of all, right, that there's all this up ending chaos. But then there's sometimes that that thinking of like, well, what do I need to do to get to that lifestyle that your dad had that you mentioned? Because for a lot of people, it's like, well, how do I get there? What's What in practical terms do I need to do? So tell us what we need to know about, you know, scaling and taking some action.

Unknown Speaker 03:59 I guess the first thing my grandfather always said, you have to know the territory. So you know, we're either selling knowledge or we're selling things. And I think a lot of people that are just getting out of corporate America in doing their own thing find themselves in the consulting space. They're selling knowledge. And the key to a lifestyle is to be able to charge a price premium. Meaning that you're charging more than just your you're not trading time for dollars in a way where you're going to be price shopped against against the next person, you are able to charge for the time that you're not working. Instead of instead of trading your time you are charging for a lifetime of accumulated knowledge you're charging for access to that. And so for people just getting started, they need to realize that this is a complete game with zero rules. If you are charging for something that is perceived as valuable, and difficult to replace, then you can charge Do whatever you want. And I'm convinced that you can sell anything to anyone at any price one out of five times. What holds people back is their limiting beliefs?

Robert Plank 05:15 Okay, well, that's what I'd say about that. I just had to let that sit for a second and think and sink in. So you're saying that we need to have something that is valuable, difficult to replace. And you also throw in there a little bit of it being a numbers game, like you said, it's, you're not going to hit the homerun every time it will be like that one out of five times where you make that happen. And so to kind of get our heads wrapped around that, that you have any interesting stories, case studies, kind of, I mean, like journeys to take us on here about how you've done it, or you've helped other people kind of make this shift from, as you said, trading time for dollars race to the bottom into maybe having more of a like a boutique uniqueness more like slow printer kind of lifestyle. What do you have?

Unknown Speaker 06:02 Well, it accidentally happened to me. When I started running a marketing agency, professional services business, my my dad thought that I was never listening as a kid is the exact opposite of digital scalable residual. And the worst part was when we hit our goals, and they were usually aligned with some revenue number, or an amount of new clients, my life got worse, dark circles under the eyes, my wife, now girlfriend at the time, was worried about me. But then I found strategy. And we had a really interesting opportunity at the agency I was running, to work with or to speak with 30 clients all at once. And it kind of broke the system because we didn't have the people to service and provide provide the services that we were doing. For 30 clients, the only thing we could do for them was to give them a plan, strategy thinking. And so we created a plan that we could we could use with all those clients, basically a big madlib, we created a workshop and some operating procedures to make it super efficient. And day one, we were charging $2,500 By day 30, we were charging $30,000. And we had positioned it as a content strategy for higher education. So we learned a bit about how to position how to position your knowledge and charge a premium for it. But that was a case where we invented something, we didn't do anything, we were just charging for the plan. It was a five hour process. And we were able to take the price point from $2,500 to $30,000. Because it was perceived as indispensable knowledge, it was intangible, you couldn't, you couldn't price shop it and the value was all in the eyes of the client. It didn't take very long for us to figure out that we could train other people how to do that. So we took our processes, we took our templates, and we licensed it to other agencies all around the world. All of a sudden, I was being woken up in the middle of the night, to agencies on the other side of the planet that were using our intellectual property, the 30 page madlib that we created, and a little workshop, and we were getting paid 20% Of all the work that they were doing, they would charge the $20,000 We'd get paid 20% Just because we owned the intellectual property that changed my life ruined agency life. For me, I left the agency very shortly after that. But it taught me that a strategy is a really fun place to be because you can charge whatever you want for it. And that if you can create a product a tangible solution out of your knowledge, then there's a lot of fun scalable revenue streams that you can play with.

Robert Plank 08:45 I agree there's like that, that amount of like, there's that leverage aspect where, you know, like you said, you don't have to trade time for dollars, you can just figure out this plan, and then others can implement the plan for you. And you mentioned earlier that there are these limiting beliefs, right? And that people say things like, Well, how do I how do I know if I've stumbled on the magic where I can go from $2,000 to $3,000? Or there's a limiting belief of how do I talk to enough people are how do I build the list, get the traffic run the ads, so when you share stories like this, and someone says, Let me poopoo on on what you just told me and someone says I can't do it for this, this and this reason. What are the usual objections you hear?

Unknown Speaker 09:30 Yeah, well, the objections Yeah, what a typical objection is my clients won't pay that much. You know, Oh, you want me to you want me to double my prices Max. My clients won't pay for it. The only problem with that is that I just asked them okay, well, when was the last time you tried? Most people listening to this have not attempted to raise their prices at all in the course of their entire career. So I've got a policy if you get a yes. double the price. If you get a no get for more than Those then split the difference? Because the reality is no doesn't mean no, no means we need to have an in depth conversation about how we get to yes, no is the start of a really valuable conversation of where the money's coming from what they really see value in. So it during a during a when you're bringing on a new client, if you get a yes, you don't learn anything, you just know that you are leaving money on the table.

Robert Plank 10:29 That's huge. That's powerful that and I think we've all been in that situation where we've got the Yes, and it felt like it happened too fast or you felt like like I don't know, I could have gotten more for what I did. Or I could have, like added more to the package and also increased the price and kind of not had to scramble for the next client after that. And so these are all things, interesting things to be thinking about.

Unknown Speaker 10:52 Well, that sorry, I think my three year old just slammed into my office door. Maybe it wasn't looking. But you made a good point there you said, you know, add things to the package, so I can raise my prices. The other limiting belief is that activity equals value. So if I want to make the thing more valuable, if I want to raise my prices, I need to add things to it. When in reality clients appreciate simplicity, clients appreciate the having to do one thing and not five. Not to mention, it's a heck of a lot easier to take action on a plan that recommends you do one thing, and not, not 30 or 40 things. So I would I always encourage people to figure out to interview your clients figure out what they find the least valuable, and take that out of what you're doing. And raise the price.

Robert Plank 11:44 Interesting addition by subtraction and your mate. I mean, you're reminding me of all these kinds of things that I've had to unlearn over the years. And I'm still not super great about it. But it was even telling my wife yesterday that I had a sales call and I was presenting to someone this one package. And my wife said, why don't why didn't you offer this one? You say that? And I said because they didn't ask for it. Because I was more in the mindset of asking questions, figuring out what they wanted and kind of working together to coming to an answer. And you're making me think back to when I was younger, I had the problem of info dumping. Right? I said, I would say I could do this, this this is this. And it just added this complexity? And the answer was, I don't even know what I'm looking at. And so kind of along those lines, since we're talking about like simplifying, taking things out to make it more of a direct path. Can you tell us about any like mistakes such as this that you've made, or things that maybe we could learn from as far as you doing it the hard way, and you may be showing us the shortcut of like, don't do this, avoid that.

Unknown Speaker 12:48 Don't wait for your best clients to show up. You gotta go get them. If you're not staring at a list of your next 40 ideal customers, you're doing it wrong. Because the most powerful question in business once you figure out what you want to do, and I suggest that you figure out one thing that you want to do not a menu of services, not Hello, Mr. And Mrs. Client, what would you like today, you're not a waiter, figure out what the your best, most powerful and valuable strategic process and do that and only that, you might have to call it something different for people to buy it. But do one thing, after you figure that out, the most important question is who is going to pay you the most. Because it's all perceived value. The money you make has nothing to do with what you do. It has to do with who you're selling to who you're working with what they perceive the value today. So my biggest mistake was not not being aggressive and intentional about my sales pipeline sooner. I've been doing it for six years now. And it probably took about two years for me to get really, to really understand the numbers and what I had to do. So that I always have a surplus of clients. But for years, I did the marketing thing. I created content, I waited for my best clients to show up and clients showed up. But my best clients didn't show up. I left a lot of money on the table and worked for a lot of people that really represented an opportunity cost. So that was that was a big lesson is really get serious about who you want to work with. And say no to a lot of deals that don't fit that criteria.

Robert Plank 14:28 And so you're making me think that there's a situation a few months ago where there was a little bit of like an 8020 problem where I have these two problem clients that were just they were the source of all my anger, frustration sucking up all this time and I had to do this hard decision you're mentioning of just like firing these clients because it just it wasn't worth it. It wasn't looking at working out. And so this whole idea of finding your ideal clients having this list of your dream customers, some people talk about it, but it feels like one of these concepts where it's it's often a cliche but not really, like explain very much in practical terms where people say things like, well have a customer avatar, but then you don't see them doing the things you're mentioning of actually going out and contacting these people. So as far as this this list of ideal clients, where does it come from? Is it? Like, is it some combination of like your existing customers or people who see in the marketplace, or when you say, you know, ideal clients, ideal customers? Where do we begin to brainstorm this list?

Unknown Speaker 15:29 Well, you begin with your best customer today, begin with your best customer, go on to their LinkedIn profile. And then get on the phone with somebody that really likes doing research. And those people are out there, and you give them that profile and say, find me 10 more. That's it, that's all you got to do, maybe cost you 100 bucks, they'll do some hours of, they'll do some hours of study. And they'll come back and you'll start to see the patterns in, in what you can publicly identify about people that says that they will make for a great customer, a friend, somebody that somebody that you can connect with, there's a lot of information out there on the internet. But I do it all, I do it all by hand. I mean, I don't do any of it. But I have researchers that research around the clock and consistently find me, my best customers. And each quarter I do some experiments, I say I want to, I want to talk to a pocket of people that I've never spoken to before, maybe agency owners that have financial backgrounds, because what I do has a has a good financial value proposition. I learned that agency owners that have creative backgrounds, I can't really have a business discussion with them. So it's not worth talking to them. Well, it is worth talking to them, but not at the not at the not at the cost not at the opportunity cost of talking with agency owners that have financial backgrounds, or business backgrounds or have run and sold their own business before. All those things you can't, you can't just create a list, you have to you have to have human beings interpreting what they're seeing on their websites and on their profiles, but it's worth it.

Robert Plank 17:09 And this kind of person is called a LinkedIn researcher.

Unknown Speaker 17:12 There's any researcher, okay, anyone will do it. Not a lot of people are running around saying I'm a researcher. And yet, there's a lot of people out there doing research for money.

Robert Plank 17:26 And this is an interesting idea. Hear that, but you're saying well, look at it's almost like a look alike audience but done by hand and done on LinkedIn. And this is an interesting idea, because you're saying, well, instead of, instead of jumping in to some new profession that I know nothing about are some new type of person, I already have this best customer. So I already have maybe a little bit of a rough case study, I already can talk a little bit of the lingo already, there's probably a ton of just invisible factors of ways that it kind of excites you working on their business. And for some reason you work well together. So why try to reinvent the wheel. And so you're saying, and so I also like your, the way you phrase it there with your saying, I want to talk to a pocket of customers. And that's kind of that's kind of sometimes a little bit of a brain drain Messer upper is that you're thinking well, how wide? Or how deep? Do I need to go? Right? Do I go deep on like 10 people? Or do I need to overload my schedule and talk to 100 prospects? So when you say I want to talk to a pocket of customers, does that mean for you, like 10 people this month, or 20 people this month, because there's always that that issue of when we say I know, I need to get myself out there, I need to do like a little bit of a short burst, what is a good size or a good thing to shoot for as far as like a pocket of new potential customers?

Unknown Speaker 18:49 Well, well, it is a numbers game. So I always have, I always have 15 conversations with new prospects every month. Because I know that out of 20 people I speak with, half of those are going to become opportunities, meaning that they are a good fit, and they are interested in how I can help them out of those 10. About half will turn into proposals and I'll close one out of five if I'm pricing correctly. So regardless of who I'm going after I stick with those numbers, but I look at it as you know, a pocket might be okay. I understand that there are only so many agency owners with financial backgrounds. Now my researchers are going to go out and they're going to try and guess how many are identifiable on the internet, just by taking a pocket of agencies, how many financial backgrounds Okay, so let's say there's 200 How long is it going to take me to get through that pocket? Well, if I'm reaching out to at a month, it'll take you know, I'm bad at math, but three or so three or so months, so I know that at the end of month one I'm gonna have to start doing research. I'm gonna have to start looking for another pocket My My niche, if you will, I'm commercially focused on helping marketing agencies and marketing consultants. But the subsets of those I mean, I've, I've probably targeted 50 different individual subsets of agencies or independent consultants. And it's all it's all an experiment to me, but to train your mind and to get really good at those conversations. To your point, the you know, the best, the best question people ask is, What have you done for someone like me lately. And so getting yourself in the getting yourself in the mode of talking to something as detailed as agency owners under $5 million, with financial backgrounds, you're gonna get a lot of practice with that financial conversation, you're gonna get that value proposition down. And at the end of that pocket, at the end of that three months, you're gonna be able to say, Okay, I know exactly what I can do. If I choose to go after these financial, financial background. agency owners, I know the numbers, I know the value proposition. I know how many there are, now I can go pursue another pocket. And I do think that is a limiting belief. Like there's not enough. There's not enough clients out there for me to, for me to have a viable business. I only work with three clients at a time. And the tenure is probably three and I work in quarterly engagements. So the tenure is probably three quarters, how many clients do I really need? Just enough to make the numbers work just enough to make the numbers work. Exactly. And there's usually enough, like there's i You're in a very rare scenario, when there's not, you know, 100 to 500 lookalikes of an ideal customer you gotta get you gotta get pretty darn detailed. So I don't I don't come across that often.

Robert Plank 21:51 Okay, so even I imagine that if you were to get like, almost too detailed, and that's a higher price.

Unknown Speaker 21:58 Yeah, there you go. Exactly. You're, you're a quick learner. Right? Exactly. Yeah. Your your demand must remain above your capacity. That's where price premiums live.

Robert Plank 22:12 Awesome, powerful. This is all great to think about. And you always you always hear about, again, another cliche of like, well, your, your prospect should feel like you're reading their, their diary without them even realizing. And sometimes you're thinking of things that they haven't even considered or haven't even done yet. And so So yeah, by pursuing this look alike idea, that's an easy way to do it. And everything that you've mentioned here is very doable. As far as living the lifestyle on your terms. And even like knowing your rough numbers, you're rough math, knowing like, I need to talk to this number of people to get them into this bucket to get them into that bucket. And that means that in order to keep the business growing, I need to have this pocket and work through the pocket in this amount of time. It's all like, easy enough to wrap around your head, it easy enough to know what your inputs and outputs are going to be. So this is a really awesome, amazing plan. And I want to make sure that in the next few minutes, we get to promoting you and your agency and your book and your website and all that fun stuff. But right before we get to that, Max, is there anything you feel like we left out of this conversation? Is there anything that we need to just stuff in in the 11th hour to make sure that people really get a lesson to go home with anything coming to mind? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 23:27 grow is a really, like, it's a really tough word for me. You know, like, my original story growing was revenue growing was the amount of clients when we grew in that way. It was painful. And so any, any entrepreneur or especially solo consultants, that are independent consultants that are selling their knowledge and, and their time, they have to figure out what grow means to them. You know, go back to what do you want? What do you want your personal life to look like? Grow for me, I'm making the money I want to make, I don't want to grow, the amount of clients I work with, I don't want to grow the amount of money I'm making, I have no interest in that what I want to grow is my personal time. So this year, I'm taking three months off last year, I took six weeks off. This year, I'm taking three months off, I'll work I'll work January, February, March, take a month off May June, July, take a month off and so on. Because I know that I want to play more golf, I want to hang out with my kids. I've defined growth for me in a way that I'm motivated to achieve it. You got to find that for yourself.

Robert Plank 24:30 That is very good. I will be chewing on that all day today. What does growth mean for me? And so for those of us who want to grow in whatever term that means for us personally, what is the next step here? How do we if we're if we're intrigued, amazed and turned on and so much more of what you told us today? Where do we go? What action do we take to kind of keep this conversation going?

Unknown Speaker 24:51 Well, Max trailer.com Yeah, I tried to make it simple. You do as well, Robert. That's where you can find me. It's where I hang out. That's where my podcast is. You can download a free copy of my book. If that speaks to you. I do. I do small group workshops to keep my mental exercise going. It's my productize workshops, the most valuable thing I do for clients. And I do it every two weeks for people that are thinking about this and want to make progress because I love doing it. I find some clients doing that. And, you know, I need the mental exercise. So, head over to Mac's trailer.com There's a little form there that says schedule a call with me. And I think you're a good fit, you'll get an invite to the next workshop.

Robert Plank 25:30 Okay, well, we let's hope that anyone who is the right person to take the next step with you is the right fit. And if you're listening this podcast, which you are, then don't be the reason why Max fatigues on his mental exercise challenge him keep his next intellectualize going the place to go is M A xtraylor.com that is Max trailer.com and we will see you there and thanks max for showing up and having a good time with me. Cheers, Robert plank. We really appreciate you being a listener of the marketer of the date Podcast the place to go right now. If you want to know more about running your own podcast is def Why podcast.com/free Go there right now claim your free gift dfi podcast.com/free