White-Label-Agentur über 1,5 Millionen skalieren

0:00Unternehmer/Gast I sell white-label media services >> Yes. >> to PR firms. We do about Well, we've been stuck at 1.5 million for 5 years. I'd like to be at around 5 million in about 3 years from now. >> comfortable number. >> Yeah, just sounds good. >> [laughter] >> I believe what's stopping me is finding more PR firms, so clients. We've We've tried all the ads, um spent tons of money, horrible return.

0:25>> Well, ads obviously don't work. >> I think I'm the problem. >> Yeah, probably. Um So, you've been doing 1 and 1/2 million for 5 years. What's the average ticket size? >> About a thousand bucks a month. >> A month. Okay. Are you selling to SMBs? >> Yes. >> Okay.

0:49So, this will be a super valuable for everyone. So, everyone who sells to SMBs, um and do you sell any element of kind of like this could help you get some leads and get some anything around that with this PR? >> So, we mainly our high like highest LTV is other PR firms, essentially, who then resell it. >> your their stuff. >> Correct. >> Okay, got it. So, you sell it to them for a thousand, they upsell it, they sell it, whatever. >> right. >> So, then I guess the follow question is like why are those agencies not white-labeling your stuff?

1:20>> I think cuz they don't know about us. >> No, but you But like you have all the What percentage are coming from other agencies versus you selling direct? >> They So, all of our lead generation is organic, so they just come directly to us. >> The agencies. >> Correct. Yep. >> But they Agencies come to you. Yep. They then white-label your services and sell your stuff to other people. >> That's exactly right. >> Okay. So, do you have the same number of agencies that are selling your stuff last year as this year and the year before that and the year before that?

1:49>> No, it's the It's pretty high churn. for the most part. >> So, the agencies no longer So, this is literally 100% relevant to what what were just talking about. It's just instead of experiential marketing, it's PR, but literally the same exact thing. Um I'm guessing that you do not treat them like a customer, and that there is not a customer journey for them. >> Correct. >> In terms of what does it look like? Like first is Have you read the affiliate chapter in leads?

2:14>> Um no, I've not read it yet. >> You should read that. 29 bucks. Um >> [laughter] >> And so And so in the affiliate chapter, um there's a two-pronged strategy that I use when I have when I'm building a layer of distribution. And so we did this with Prestige Labs for the supplement company, we did this for Alan the software company, we did this like with school. Like I have I'm super accustomed to building through distribution layers. There's a launch, which is what you'll have to do to immediately get the win, because you won't have time to value for the affiliate, for the distributor, right?

2:43So they come in, do you charge them anything to white label? >> No. No, it's just a thousand bucks a month. >> Hold on. So you charge them a thousand dollars a month, and then they can white label as much of their services they want? >> That would be like 10 articles a month. >> Okay. >> past, we would do like unlimited articles for like 2500 bucks a month. >> Uh-huh. >> Probably don't love that idea, but we made a lot more money when we did it.

3:09So maybe we go back, but the problem with that is you'd have an agency that would publish 900 articles a month, and then you'd have an agency that would publish 10. >> Yeah. >> So it's like, well, maybe we can make more on those that are publishing 900. Do you have >> tiers? >> We We do have tiers, where it's like, you know, a thousand bucks a month for 10, or you could do, you know, more for more, essentially. >> I'm guessing the reason that they churn is cuz they're not using Like basically I want to figure out are they Are they churning cuz they're not using the articles, or cuz the articles are not good?

3:38>> Cuz they're not using it. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> So it probably makes sense that you probably need a lower tier for them, uh that has some sort of usage component added on. >> Yeah. >> might be something like 199 a month, plus a hundred per article or something like that. >> Got it. Got it. >> Because then it's like basically you want to be low enough with SMBs, which is who you're serving right now, like you want to be low enough that they don't turn on their bad months. Because their volatility is translating into your volatility.

4:05>> Yeah. >> Volatility of their customer >> That's right. >> is translating to volatility for you. >> Yeah, makes sense. >> So it's like what's the core like it's been five years, right? >> Yeah. >> And so there's a core assumption that's been wrong about how to build the business. And so when you serve SMBs in any kind of like marketing or agency capacity, who here does this cuz this will kind of get hands. Okay, then I'll be quick since like five of you. Um the Those businesses suck at being at being businesses.

4:32And so what you have the desire to do is start doing more and more of their work for them because they're like, well, I have to I'll get them leads for my chiropractors or my roofers or whatever it is, and then but they don't work the leads. And then but uh then I work the leads for them. I set them for them, but then they don't know how to sell. So maybe I should think about I'll do the sales for them. It's like no, you just missed the boat. It's like they suck as customers. >> Mhm. >> And you just either have to price so low that they will not cancel or you have to go high enough that they can't afford you because you're selling a different customer.

4:59Fundamentally. And the reason the whole SMMA space exists is because no one knows this. And you can make a million dollars a year, two million dollars a year, three million dollars a year revenue, not profit doing this and it's just like you can just grind. But it doesn't stack. And so we have to figure out something that creates some sort of retention either at the uh distributor level or at the SMB level. >> [sighs] >> I'm guessing the SMB level is probably is super unrealistic for your current business. >> Yeah. >> But at least at the agency level like the only problem like what's the what's the one constraint of the business?

5:28Is the the problem to solve is we have to get 80% of these agencies next year to still refer you business every month. If you do that, next year you'll be at three, the year after that you'll be at 4.5, the year after that you'll be at at six. It'll It'll stack. And that's the problem. And then with the extra cash, you can get more aggressive, you can get better agency blah blah blah. >> Right. Yeah, that makes sense. >> And so, that's the fundamental issues I think that you're priced too high for the majority of your customers and too low for the ones that you're going to maximize profit on.

5:55>> Mhm. Yep. Makes sense. Perfect. >> Happy to help. >> Thank you. >> [laughter] >> If you are a business owner and you are not growing as fast as you like, I'd like to give you a free gift. So, my team and I put together the $100 million scaling road map, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had and what stages of growth they went through and more importantly, where they got stuck and how they got past it. And so, we broke it into these 10 stages and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you put in your business information, it'll tell you where you're at and the most important part for you, what to do for each of functions of the business across product, marketing, sales, customer success, recruiting, IT, human resources, and finance. And so, no matter what you're struggling with, someone else has already struggled with it and solved it. And so, I'd like to give you this thing absolutely free. You can go to acquisition.com/roadmap, plug in your business information, and if you want us to actually help you de-constrain the business and you're trying to scale, we'd love to help you out. On the thank you page, you can just book a call with my team and we will look at the business, see if we can help, and if we can, we'll invite you out to Vegas and we'll do this in person live.