Answering Client Questions Before They Are Asked

Jordan Lally:0:02
Welcome back to the High Ticket AI Assistance Podcast. Everyone, please welcome the one and only Mr. Nathan Smith. Nathan, welcome to the show, my friend. How you doing?

Nathan Smith:0:10
I'm doing great. Thank you for having me.

Jordan Lally:0:12
Yes, sir. Happy to have you on, man. Now, can you please give us a high level overview of essentially what the company does and who you guys serve best, who you guys help best.

Nathan Smith:0:22
Yep, so SEOptimize is an agency that started by doing just primarily SEO, if the name doesn't give that away. but as everything has evolved, and search isn't just Google anymore. Now looking well, we do meta ads, Google ads, and all that fun stuff. looking into video content, social media management and all that, basically to own the full marketing funnel for the brands that we manage.

Jordan Lally:0:43
Gotcha. And how did everything start? What were you doing like before this? Why SCO? Like talk to us about that that leap of faith that you that you once had to, you know, become an entrepreneur, man.

Nathan Smith:0:55
So I always wanted to start my own agency, but I kind of started by growing other people's agencies first so I can learn what not to do before starting my own.

Jordan Lally:1:07
Gotcha, gotcha. Okay. So you worked with other agencies, you learned what to do, what not to do. Definitely don't want to do that. And then you said, Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna start my own. Was there a pivotal moment like something happened with your previous boss or you had enough coins saved up where you were like, I'm doing this by myself, like I I'm doing this for me.

Nathan Smith:1:28
the pivotal moment was the last agency kind of switch gears they went. By the time they were like ready to get acquired, they were kind of changing everything up. I was too important and all that fun stuff. So I kind of got replaced. And then pretty much we made an agreement that you know I would start doing my own thing and he would help me do that since I helped him grow his. So it worked out in the long run. The day that you know I got the info wasn't fantastic, but

Jordan Lally:1:50
That's super cool.

Nathan Smith:1:57
It's been a great run since.

Jordan Lally:1:59
Gotcha. So correct me if I'm wrong, but you did it 'cause you had to. In a way. But looking back though, like you said, it worked out pretty okay. You know, how long have you all been up and running? Like multiple years, right?

Nathan Smith:2:04
Yes, yes.

Nathan Smith:2:13
almost two years at this point, yeah.

Jordan Lally:2:15
Yeah, yeah. So no, solid man, solid. so we did SEO and then you said you you're now talking about or at least pivoting into meta ads, Google ads, social media management. What is the thought process behind that? Why not just do SEO?

Nathan Smith:2:34
because right now it just doing SEO doesn't really get the brands or the companies like exactly what they're looking for. So the way that search has evolved, a lot of the top of funnel stuff that used to work for SEO doesn't really drive conversions anymore. It doesn't really drive traffic. You can go ask a question to Google, you can go ask a question to Claude, ChatGPT, whatever. You don't even have to go to the website. But it all became more bottom of funnel and just driving traffic that way, which still works.

Jordan Lally:2:55
Ha ha ha.

Nathan Smith:3:00
But then to get all the engagement to get people to actually know who you are without just being the source of the answer for people to recognize the brand, then you gotta be showing up anywhere and everywhere.

Jordan Lally:3:11
you take a holistic approach, it to me it kind of sounds like. Not not just targeting bottom of the funnel. And I think when you really work with elite level marketers, man, I feel like that's what not the only thing that works at scale, but and for all businesses, but if you hand someone I'm gonna steal this phrase from Cole Gordon. You can give somebody the the bacon that they want, but in but whatever's what what's wrapped in the bacon is like the pill that they actually need, is like the medicine that they actually need to grow their company. And w the way that he breaks it down is is how can we create a business model to where my clients' businesses cannot run without ours?

And when you do approach what what you're doing with SEO, with meta ads, social media management, Google ads, that's almost their entire marketing department. It's like, dude, if I stop paying Nathan and his company, like I have no more ads, I have no more SEO. Like I'm kind of fucked. You know what I mean? So I I think what you're doing is is a really, really great idea. Great idea. So hats off to you, my friend.

Nathan Smith:4:14
That's the goal, yeah.

Nathan Smith:4:21
Yeah.

Jordan Lally:4:23
Do you would you say it has been? I guess let me let me ask you this. When you are like trying to acquire clients, marketing your own services, do you lead with SEO and then like cross-sell, upsell into meta-ads, Google Ads? Or do you kind of identify what they need and then say, okay, this is this is what you need over here, whatever services that

Nathan Smith:4:45
I start with SEO because that's my background, that's what I know the most about. And I can go spin up an SEO strategy or look into their website, their competitors, or whatever. and pretty much know exactly what we need to do within a couple hours, if that. So that's where I always start. And then from there I get all the information I need, like who their competitors are, what are they doing, what are they doing on social media, all of that. But I start with SEO because that that's the win I know that I can achieve. And really SEO.

Is how you get them to stick long-term. So ads, they can go run ads right now and go get conversions today. But SEO is a long-term game. So if you go pay me 60 grand over the next six months, then you stop paying me for three months. You just wasted 60K. Because eventually that SEO is gonna run out. You're no longer gonna be the number one position organically. So you somewhat have to continue to pay me on the SEO side, and then I up. basically upsell the rest.

Jordan Lally:5:45
That's that's what I've learned recently as well, is SEO is not a one time thing, bro. If you

Nathan Smith:5:49
No, it's a medicine that companies don't understand that they need and they will basically become a long term patient for.

Jordan Lally:5:55
I love how you broke that.

Nathan Smith:5:57
For a lifetime patient.

Jordan Lally:6:00
I mean, yeah, man, as long as you are doing your job, they're happy, why would they ever leave, you know?

Nathan Smith:6:06
Yeah, that's the whole goal. And that's pretty much what I build around in terms of like keeping clients happy and making sure that they know what we're doing at any given moment. So we pretty much become a second thought. Like nobody questions why they pay us because they know we're doing the work that we set out to do. And we have the trust with all of our clients that we do exactly what we're saying we're.

Jordan Lally:6:29
Before we take a turn direction regarding client management, because I know you have a very interesting story with that, if you don't mind sharing, what do you feel like has changed the most and how has the company adopted with AI SEO a few years ago, with SEO now that Claude, Gemini, and whatever the hell else is is out there now kinda eating up all the all the SEO?

Nathan Smith:6:55
we adopted as an agency or how how's it just adopted in general?

Jordan Lally:6:58
I would say generally speaking and then from a strategic point of view, sh strategic standpoint.

Nathan Smith:7:06
Generally speaking, it's it's changed a lot in terms of like we talked about, like you no longer drive the amount of traffic that you're used to. So the hardest thing to talk to clients about is if they're used to getting 50,000 organic users a month last year, the year before, but now they're getting 10,000. That 10,000 is more valuable than the 50,000. Because you're getting more conversions with that 10,000 because it's a lot more niche down. It's a lot more, it's basically targeting your ICP exactly.

Where that 50,000 was just try it was just a number. But they love to see that big number and they thought that what was actually that's what they were paying for. But when you break it down and you actually look at the numbers year over year, you're getting more conversions now with less traffic. That's how it's evolved in a way that people don't understand.

Jordan Lally:7:56
I think that is a great I mean, if you not that if you're a smart business owner, 'cause I don't wanna offend anyone, but like if you care about what all business owners should care about, and that's driving new business, who gives a f what the frick the vanity metrics are? Like, I had fifty K website visitors, but how many dollars would was that?

Nathan Smith:8:11
It could be It could be ten people, but if five of them convert, it's better than ten thousand in ten converting.

Jordan Lally:8:21
Exactly, exactly. Frick your v fuck your vanity metrics. Like I want like cash in hand, like actual revenue driving the business. So

Nathan Smith:8:28
Yeah. That is something though from just an SEO and agency and just whatever perspective, something we deal with all the time. 'Cause everybody looks at their historical past, their historical numbers, and they compare that to what they're getting now. And it's basically tr educating them every single time you meet with them to stop looking at the those old numbers.

Jordan Lally:8:51
Have but has their revenue increased? I'm not sure. Can you track that?

Nathan Smith:8:55
Yeah. either if it's an e-commerce brand or something like that, you can easily track it. Obviously, they purchase a product, you know exactly how much it was. but for somebody you can, if it's just a form fill or they schedule meetings, whatever it is, then we take our meetings with clients to understand what those form fills actually were at. Just did it today. We actually broke it down in terms of I think it was like twenty-seven different leads that they got throughout the month of July so far with Google Ads. He thought they only got three good ones. But we sat there for 30 minutes, broke down each one.

Timestamp to put the emails together. They actually got 10 really good quality leads. They only spent five grand to get there. They're about to close over half a million dollars within those leads. So he started out the meeting basically telling us we were getting a bunch of shit spam leads. After 30 minutes of digging, his entire attitude changed.

Jordan Lally:9:47
That's funny. On on that topic of, you know, handling clients at scale, I know I'm gonna pause. Editor, do your job. is it is is it okay if we talk about like your previous roles handling like eighty clients under management? Can we talk about that or

Nathan Smith:10:06
yeah, we can. Should I s yeah, I fuck it, yeah.

Jordan Lally:10:11
You're good? Okay, cool. Back in. So on our initial call, bro, you said that you were handling at one point like eighty clients on under management. And like dude, after for me, like fifteen, I'm like, I'm gonna kill myself. This is way too fucking much, bro. So how for for one, how has learning how to deal with like eighty clients at one point in time, how have you learned to keep all of them happy, all of them essentially on the up and up without them being pissed at you like the one client you're describing here?

I guess what is like like the mental mode, like the mental model you have when when dealing with clients?

Nathan Smith:10:48
The easiest way I can put it, the one thing that I train myself and I train my team, and I basically tell anybody that asks me something around this, is if you can answer a client's question before they ask it, you will always win. So how we do our reporting, how we do, how we communicate to clients, how we do everything is geared towards answering the question before they ask it. Because like I said previously, if we become a second thought, they know we we already have them covered. We're already doing the work, we're already going to basically Do exactly what we said we were going to do, they no longer question what we're doing or why we're doing it. So that's the one thing that I tell everybody the same thing. If you can answer a question before it's asked, you always win.

Jordan Lally:11:31
Do you do that with tracking dashboards and actual tracking of KPIs and just metrics in general?

Nathan Smith:11:38
Yeah, it's a combination of that. And it's a combination of just reporting every single week of what we do. So every Monday, all of our clients get an update. This is what we're doing throughout the week. This is what we have planned. And it's like listed out as SEO task, content task, whatever it is. So they know exactly what we're doing. Friday, they get a recap. This is what we said we're gonna do. This is what we did. So they start their week knowing what we're gonna do, they end with their week knowing what we did. So

Jordan Lally:11:44
Gotcha.

Jordan Lally:12:05
I like that.

Nathan Smith:12:06
As we basically become their marketing team, rather than managing a marketing team, all they have to do is look at an email and know that we were what we're doing and that we did what we said we were gonna do.

Pretty much as easy as that.

Jordan Lally:12:19
Nah, I love how I love how you simplify. That's that's that's super cool. And I think someone else was saying this, but because the agency space has such a bad rep for people saying they're gonna do X and then they they don't do fucking X and they do Y. So by you just simply stating on Monday, Hey guys, we're gonna do all these things for you, and then the Friday, here's the things that we did, and it just happens to match all the things we said we're gonna do, like the the the trust

Nathan Smith:12:34
Yeah.

Jordan Lally:12:48
The not not rapport, but like the faith in like, okay, if at one point in time I'm gonna pay Nathan and his company for meta ad services or Google ad services, I can trust that they're gonna do what the fuck they say that they're gonna do. Why? Because they have proven it time and time again on the SEO side in this example. Do you kind of find that they trust you more so? Or how long do you feel like and this would probably a bad question? I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna frame it. best way I can. But when you say like how long does it take for that trust to be built after maybe like a few weeks of them like dealing with your company? Like okay Monday you send out the deliverables. Friday you said what like what you guys did. Do you feel like that kind of helps like with them trusting you and your company? Like you said, like we're an afterthought. Like they they trust us, they pay us and like okay, okay, okay. So obviously it's

Nathan Smith:13:43
Yeah. So the way that I built this into basically our client, how we deal with clients is the first month at minimum, you are we're gonna be holding your hand. It's it's required. Any piece of content that we have, you're gonna review it. You're gonna give my team feedback. You're gonna make sure that every word that we say, how we're saying it, the terms we're using, whatever it is that matches your brand voice, is gonna make you one hundred percent satisfied before it goes on your website.

So from a content perspective or anything that we do, even if it's little things like meta title subscriptions, we'll send it to them before after. So if they want to read it, they can. But I require it minimum month one for a new client. They have to review everything. They have to be a part of the process. From there, the trust is already built. They already know we know their brand voice. They already know we're not going to make a mistake. Because if we did, my team is trained. If you make a mistake one time, you better not make it the second time around. So we we literally have.

Client port like client profiles built into all of our all of our dashboards and all that fun stuff like internally. If we make a mistake or we say something, if there's a term we can't use, it's documented in that. So it'll never happen again. So it's there's a way of building the trust without necessarily letting them know that we're even trying to build.

Jordan Lally:15:08
And I assume with that, like negative word to use, you'll cross reference that with some form some some form of system. If it does catch that it'd say, Hey, don't use this word type stuff. Like take that word out.

Nathan Smith:15:19
Yeah, so we we have our own content tool that we have developed for us specifically. So within that they have a client profile and you can add in guidelines, you can add in negative terms, you can add in whatever you want. So the output, our content development processor is like nine steps to every single piece of content that we touch. That's where it starts. Then it goes and it touches three to four humans before it even gets to the client.

Jordan Lally:15:41
That's super sick, man. What do you feel like I I guess looking forward over the next twelve, twenty-four months with AI with Geo, like with AI SEO with Geo, all that fun stuff, what do you feel like is is I guess more potent now than ever before? Or where do you feel like the industry's kind of going where like I'm leaning into this more because that's where I think the future's going? Does that kind of make sense at all?

Nathan Smith:16:07
From how we do it from a strategy perspective or just like how users go about it?

Jordan Lally:16:14
Oof. Let's start with how users go about it and then and then I think that will probably lead into the strategy.

Nathan Smith:16:23
Yeah, it all depends on the type of, I guess, industry you're going after. But yeah, from a user perspective, it really depends on where they're searching for. It's all going to start with the question. It's all going to start with the discovery phase. And then from there, it really it all depends on where they're gonna end up. So making sure that you are the one that either answers that question, and then right then and there, that's either just brand visibility. You're now like a trusted source.

They might not go purchase from you right then and there. They're gonna go to social media, but at some point they're gonna see your brand again. And if that question was simply like, how do I keep my teeth white? And then they maybe they did go to your website, then you can retarget them on Meta. And then they sh your ad shows up. And then they Google, hey, what are the best teeth whitening products? Then you're listed number one in a listicle on Forbes or something like that. Your brand just showed up again. That's five different touch points before they just purchase the product.

You have to be showing up in every one of those touch points before they even make a decision that your brand is the one that they should spend the money on. That's why in the beginning of the conversation, it wasn't we no longer just play with Google. There's so many different touch points that you have to go after that the user is going to take that path to figure out which brand or which company they want to work with. And you basically have to control the narrative around the information that they are fed.

Jordan Lally:17:43
Control the narrative. man. And and that's why when I ask what's more important, marketing or sales, and they I can't I can't fucking answer that question, dude, because but I think they're one and the same, honestly. When you say contr when you say control the narrative, that just brings me back to like my good old solar sales days. Where like you're kind of controlling the frame of how you explain the solution to these homeowners, right? You're controlling the narrative. You just explain controlling the narrative from a fucking five, six step and touch point place.

Nathan Smith:17:55
Yeah.

Jordan Lally:18:12
on the fucking internet, dude. Like that is literally that that's selling something, but you're also marketing your product and like you're controlling how the recipient views this. Like that takes so much fucking skill. I don't think people actually understand how much skill it actually fucking takes, dude. So just hats off to you, my man.

Nathan Smith:18:29
Yeah, it's I mean it's the easiest way to put it is like think of a billboard. You're if you can go spend thousands of dollars, five figures on a billboard, it's just gonna sit there. Can you track how many people actually looked at that billboard and then purchased your product or called your phone number? Absolutely not. But were they ever going to if you didn't see that billboard? Do we know? No. But the possibility of them calling you without seeing it probably slim.

Jordan Lally:18:54
No, absolutely, absolutely. Can you ca it kinda sounds like you work in various different industries like e-com, maybe home improvement, maybe other service businesses. Is is that the case? Do you kind have a a a wide area? Yeah. Who would you say is, and this might be like who who's the most fun to work with?

Nathan Smith:19:16
Most fun.

Jordan Lally:19:17
Yeah.

Nathan Smith:19:21
I don't know.

Jordan Lally:19:22
Yeah.

Nathan Smith:19:24
I wanna say e-commerce is the most fun, just because from a branding perspective, it is the most fun. but in reality, the most fun are probably the CEOs that I work with that like have high ticket offerings. You get on a call with them and like once you again build their trust and you're you're just able to kind of do what you have to do, you get on a call with them and they're like, Hey, you know, we got you 15 leads, let's talk about it. And then they closed over a million dollars, you know, last month with those leads. But they only paid you ten grand. That's the most fun.

Jordan Lally:19:57
Right, right, right, right, right. What what what is it like?

Nathan Smith:20:00
They're looking at you like, dude, I don't know how you did that, but I will pay you ten grand for the rest of my life.

Jordan Lally:20:03
Yeah.

No, right, right. It kinda it kinda makes you wish you you structured some form of like Rev share that in that model, huh? When they when they make a box like that.

Nathan Smith:20:11
I'm actually working I'm starting one of those on the first. I've always I've always wanted to do it, and I'm actually going to.

Jordan Lally:20:17
shit.

Jordan Lally:20:21
Dude, fuck yeah, dude. Like best of luck with that.

Nathan Smith:20:23
So I'm actually funding basically all the SEO budget, all the ads budget, all the creatives budget, and I get a piece of everything that we do over the next three months.

Jordan Lally:20:35
Do so they have no base salary, base retainer to the company at all? It's pure purely rev share or profit?

Nathan Smith:20:42
Yeah. Well they've been a client for over well about two years now. And so the next three months are his busiest three months. It's his peak season. so he makes eighty percent of his it's a software. he makes eighty percent of his revenue over the next three months.

Jordan Lally:20:46
Okay.

Jordan Lally:20:52
Is it so?

Jordan Lally:21:02
What the hell what what the hell's the next three months?

Nathan Smith:21:06
Back to school season.

Jordan Lally:21:07
Back to school Okay, okay. I I I'm just curious, what's the software?

Nathan Smith:21:14
it is classroom walkthrough software. So basically, like educational instructor, principal, whatever it is, can go in a classroom and just use the app and give the teacher feedback right then and there. So a lot of schools are doing like old school stuff still, whether they're just like typing it out on a on a document or like literally handwriting it, whatever it is. This is an app, they fill it out, goes straight to the teacher, they get feedback instantly. They can go to the next classroom, do it again, go on with their day, whatever it is.

Jordan Lally:21:26
yeah.

Jordan Lally:21:34
Yeah, yeah.

Jordan Lally:21:42
Wow, okay, so it sounds really efficient.

Nathan Smith:21:45
Yeah. So ba it from a industry that needs updated and streamlined. It's one of the one of the big ones.

Jordan Lally:21:53
Any anything that is like government related is like fucking twenty years behind the times, dude. Like I don't know what the hell they're doing, but they're not even remotely close to the forefront of like the updates, marketing and sales, you know what I mean?

Nathan Smith:21:57
Or behind.

Nathan Smith:22:07
Yeah, so that I'm excited about that one. I've always wanted to that'll be like my test run, which is how I do everything. I start with one, test it, make sure it's gonna work, basically prove it. Now I can go do it with others.

Jordan Lally:22:20
No, th that's super cool, man. When it comes to the the sales aspect, it sounds like you have a team for account managers and fulfillment. Do you have like sales, sales team in place or are you are you running that?

Nathan Smith:22:33
I do not. I'm I'm the only one doing sales right now. Most of what we've been doing is either through referrals or upselling our existing client client base.

Jordan Lally:22:41
Gotcha. What is the if you don't have metrics on this, that's completely fine. I'm I'm sure it's hard to track, but do you have metrics on like where they came in from an SEO client and then we upsold them?

Nathan Smith:22:55
How many?

Jordan Lally:22:57
Sure, how many or like a percentage of like percentage probably would be easier 'cause it wouldn't give away everything.

Nathan Smith:23:03
this point over 50%. Yeah. It doesn't have it doesn't have to be meta or Google ads. It could be doing PR media placements, backlinks that they weren't doing before. Could be more content. but just upselling in general, easily over 50%.

Jordan Lally:23:05
Really? Dude, that's that's fucking

Jordan Lally:23:19
dude that no, that's so good, bro. That's so good. Yeah, talk about increasing L T V. What is the Fuck dude. I wanna ask about pricing but I don't wanna like give away the sauce if we're not cool with that.

Nathan Smith:23:33
Did that ass.

Jordan Lally:23:34
Awesome. So SEO, it sounds like you're you're charging like really good clients ten grand per month. Is that strictly SEO or is that with meta ads, Facebook ads, or meta ads, Google ads, and SEO?

Nathan Smith:23:48
It depends on the client. I've had a client that was a sixteen thousand dollar five hundred five sixteen five per month client to do a sprint for them to get ranked number one for what they were trying to rank for. He was a client for three months previous to that. but the at the end of the sprint basically he paid me what was that forty eight, almost basically fifty thousand dollars, whatever it was, to get him number one. and we did it after three months. So it all depends on the industry and the client. but

Jordan Lally:24:09
Yeah.

Nathan Smith:24:17
And I was actually just talking to somebody about this earlier today. When you're asking about how SEO has evolved and why I'm very, and I'll get in I can get into why I'm very selective with the clients because this will make sense. SEOs evolved because it used to be you could pay $500 a month or $1,500 a month for an SEO campaign or whatever it was for somebody's management, you could actually get some results doing it. It's no longer really the case. So like our probably I wanna say on average.

Jordan Lally:24:27
Yeah, yeah.

Nathan Smith:24:46
probably close to $4,500 right now per client, probably exceeding that off the top of my head, it's probably 45. But it really depends on what they need. So it could be 10 pieces of content per month. It could be 20. It all depends on how long they've been doing SEO or if their brand's brand new and what the competitive landscape looks like. And then from a ads perspective, I only charge, I don't charge them a fee depending on how much they spend.

My fee is a fixed fee, you can spend five grand a month, you can spend fifty thousand dollars a month, but you're still gonna pay me the same. Because I'll on the SEO side, it's gonna cost you a lot more money to get those same results. So if you're only spending $1,500, $2,000, $2,500 for us to manage your ads, but then I come back to you of like, hey, this five grand SEO package, if we go increase that to $7,500 or $10,000, whatever it is, we can get there a hell of a lot faster. So rather than picking and choosing where they basically pay us more money or trying to get them to pay us more money for everything. I pick and choose and I'm very selective with.

Jordan Lally:25:53
That makes total sense. Typically, people who charge high retainers or high prices like you, by the way, hats off again, they have one absolute confidence that they can deliver the fucking result. Secondly, they have like proof showcasing that they've done it several times over and over again. I imagine that's the boat you're in.

Nathan Smith:26:14
Yeah. So that's where a lot of like our existing client bases come from referrals. So we if we go back to where I started, because obviously my life as as a SEO for the past like seven plus years, I started when I started SEOptimize, I think my first client paid me like $500 a month. first couple, just to like get them in the door. And then the one that's been with me for two years, I remember to this day, like first conversation I had with him.

He wanted to work with somebody that I know on like LinkedIn that's like huge in the SEO space, but their minimum price is five thousand dollars a month. And he didn't have the money for it. So I got him on board for a fifteen hundred dollar a month SEO package. And I was like, I'll give you the results you would get for that five grand. Because basically, in I was very upfront with him. I was like, I'm gonna use you as a case study. I'm gonna do more than what you're paying for, and I'm gonna get you the results that are gonna you're gonna win, and I'm gonna win. That Case study that one client easily brought me ten more.

Jordan Lally:27:18
It it's kind of a it's kind of a trick. Continue, continue, my bad.

Nathan Smith:27:23
No, that's just that's kind of where I was going with it in terms of like why I'm able to charge what I can now is because I proved it in the past.

Jordan Lally:27:32
One hundred percent bro. And like case studies really and I I I think the strategy that you use to for one, acquire clients. Like, yes, you have the knowledge how to do it, but because nothing is like factual, I have done this before, it's hard for people to just like take you up on your word for it, right? So getting people in the door for a low cost, proving out the model, and then telling people straight up. I'm gonna use this to case study, is that cool? Yeah, it's cool, perfect. And then just You use that case study to get more clients and then you build more case studies to get more clients and eventually you can just like stack stack the price towards like I only work with rich people. Sorry about it.

Nathan Smith:28:10
Yeah. And that's I'm very selective with who we work with. Like right now we have eleven clients and seventeen projects. We're probably doing more in terms of MMR than I'd say majority of the agencies that I know of that have been only in business for like less than two years. Actually, every agency I know that's only been in business for less than two years, we're doing more than them. but it all comes back to the trust that I built with those existing clients.

Jordan Lally:28:38
Yeah yeah.

Nathan Smith:28:39
they're gonna go tell those people that they're referring us to, hey, they're gonna do what they say they're gonna do. Their team's excellent to work with. They'll answer every question you have. And you will never question really why you're paying them. And they obviously can get the results that they told you they're gonna do.

Nathan Smith:28:56
It's just they sell it for me is pretty much how that works.

Jordan Lally:28:59
When you hop no referrals for to two, I wanna say two things about referrals. One, it is the biggest compliment to a company when one of your clients or just anyone really is referring business to you. It's like, dude, you're so good, I trust my friend to pay you money. Like I'm hyping you up.

Nathan Smith:29:16
Yeah, it's it's a scary thing because you're like, if this doesn't go well But actually I don't know why this like came to mind. but like looking back at like my previous roles and like kind of why I think it works so well for us is because in like agencies that I work with in the past, and the reason why I don't really have like a sales team right now, it's because when I get on a call with somebody and I'm talking about SEO, like I've been doing SEO for seven plus years. That's my life. I can answer any question you have, I can build a strategy, like I said, in like a couple hours or whatever it is.

Jordan Lally:29:22
Right.

Nathan Smith:29:46
So it's not like you're talking to a sales guy who's like, yeah, I like I understand your pain points and like here's some search for them the keyword you're looking for, and like it's gonna cost this much. We have three different packages. No, like I'll give you every answer that you're looking for and I'll show you the proof of it and then I'll build your strategy to get there. So like the trust is already built because of my background. Like if I just go paid a bunch of people to do sales for me, go do cold outreach and bring a bunch of people in and like I'm the last touch point.

Between that first touch point and getting to me, there's no trust built. Which eventually I will get there and I'll hire the right people. Obviously, I just haven't needed to. But I think that is the biggest reason why I was able to scale the way.

Jordan Lally:30:30
I think everyone's I'm not sure if you know who Jeremy Haynes is on YouTube, but do do you know who that is?

Nathan Smith:30:38
I don't think so.

Jordan Lally:30:39
No worries. Essentially, he charges boot co bucks like you. He runs a meta ad agency. He charges 15k per month as a base retainer. And he does 10% profit share. Anything above 15K that the company makes in profit, they pay the difference in Rev share. Anything below, like the the they'll just pay the base retainer. And the reason why he can charge a pretty hefty fee is because he's helped like forty nine or fifty businesses scale past one million per month over the last over the last fifteen years. And like he has case studies, documents, whatever. fuck, where was I going with that, bro? everyone wants i in my opinion, I think every like SEO or every agency's dream is to work with less clients because it's less headaches and just earn more per client. You know what I mean? If you can have both, work with like a hundred clients While maintaining the stress levels of like ten and maintaining like high profit margins and like fuck yeah, best of both worlds. But like no one lives in a perfect world, like you know, you're pictures.

Nathan Smith:31:41
and when you get there, you need so many people to s maintain that level of communication, they take maintain the level of trust that you're built like They're you're gonna spend so much more money on building your team than you are building your client base. By the time you 10x what you already have, your profit margins are probably around the same.

Jordan Lally:32:04
Exactly.

Nathan Smith:32:05
So, like that's why I'm pretty much maintaining a small book of clients while reaching my goals still. But I can still be the face, not necessarily the face, because I just hi I literally just promoted someone director of client services. So she has taken me out of a lot of the day to day of like she's now a lot of my clients' point of contact. But her sole job is if a client has a question, she gets an email, she gets a Slack message, she gets back to them within five minutes.

Hey, I saw this. I'll get back to you. I'm gonna go talk to the team. If she doesn't know the answer, she can just go into click up, ask the team, get the answer, go back. The client was answered within 15 minutes, if not the hour rather than the next day. Her sole job is to keep my clients happy.

Jordan Lally:32:49
Dude, there was this thing that Alex said, bro. He was like, back when he had gym launch, he paid one of his clients paid someone and their only fucking job, dude, was to call the lead. Is yeah, yeah, call the lead when they came in or answer the fucking phone, bro. That's all they did. They like four extra business just on that one fucking

Nathan Smith:33:00
Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Smith:33:07
Yeah. Their job is basically wait around with this with this rings, you answer within thirty seconds.

Jordan Lally:33:13
No, exactly. No, I love it. Hey, ha ha hats out to you, man. That's super cool. what were we gonna say?

Nathan Smith:33:16
Yeah.

Nathan Smith:33:19
No, was gonna say that just comes with with time and experience of like every client I've ever worked with, well, at my agency and majority in the past, they all have had a bad experience.

And that's like the pain point that they start you with. And then pretty much if you build your agency around the client experience, not the results. And what I tell people is results are a given in my world. If I can't get you results, you shouldn't be a client. It's all about the experience that you have working with me and my team.

Jordan Lally:33:52
You've probably done this, but like whenever you go to five star restaurants, bro, like yes, you can probably have similar quality food at like a three or a four star restaurant. But when you go in but when you go into that five star restaurant, bro, it's like the quality of service, the experience, like where you are in the restaurant, or the people around you. Like they they know your name upon like sitting down type stuff. You know what I mean? And it's that level of experience and service which enables you to charge 10K, 15k per month.

Nathan Smith:34:08
Yeah.

Nathan Smith:34:14
yeah.

Jordan Lally:34:20
You know, post like twenty bucks per meal.

Nathan Smith:34:22
Yeah, you left thinking like I might not be as fool as I would have been if I spent half the money, but like that was worth that was that was definitely worth what they just charged me. Like I'm I'm happy we had that experience. Like I would do it again. I might not do it every month. I might only do it a couple of times a year, but I would do it again.

Jordan Lally:34:42
Exactly, exactly. and kind of a a question for you. So now that we have the director of customer service in place, you as the founder, what what do you feel like is the role you want to step into or what do you feel like the company's going over the next twelve months?

Nathan Smith:34:56
role that I need to step into is now being more the sales guy where I need to put like, well, this is what I have done over the last so we've been taking a new client in the last three months. We also haven't lost a client in the last three months. The whole reason was to build the systems, build the team, basically scale internally. So if I want to go get 10 more clients tomorrow, I could and nothing will break. So my job now throughout the rest of the year is pretty much getting net new clients.

And then obviously maintaining the clients that we have. So like I said, my director of client services, her entire job is keeping clients happy. But I still have a big role in like their strategy and overall. and like I get on meetings with them and all of that fun stuff. But that's where like my role is pretty much now what it has to be and where it's heading. And then over the next 12 months, pretty much maintaining where we're at and scaling in terms of what client base, hitting over six figures a month is gonna be. very doable over the next few months after what I built so far. and then really from there, it's over the next 12 months, it's really just not going after every shiny object that comes my way. Cause like yes, I want to do go into, I want to go into like video creation. I want to do, you know, different things, but we have to make sure that we perfect everything that we ha currently have before we get there.

Jordan Lally:36:17
Everything in due time. Right? And though and

Nathan Smith:36:19
Yeah. So it's could I sit here and tell you I could do all those things in twelve months? Yes. Well will I have the level of confidence that I do right now? Probably not.

Jordan Lally:36:28
No, that's that's super awesome, man. There's no doubt in my mind that you can do it, you know, especially th the the money that you are the clients that you have. I mean the fact that you promoted someone to a director role already with like inside of two years, like that's something you're proud of, bro, bro. That's super cool.

Nathan Smith:36:34
I appreciate that.

Nathan Smith:36:45
That was I'm not gonna lie, literally paying her every single month is like the best Philly ever. I'm not I'm not joking. Every time I do it, it's the best Philly ever.

Jordan Lally:36:58
You why is that though? I think I know why but but for us out here, just explain explain why.

Nathan Smith:37:04
Be just so being in business after two years and paying her what I am, I didn't think that I'd be able to pay someone that much money already. And just the fact that like she crushes it.

Jordan Lally:37:15
Right, 'cause she takes so much off of your plate, right? She makes my life so much easier. No, that's awesome. Director, if you're listening, shout out you, bro. Shout out you. That's awesome. Nathan, love the energy, bro. If they wanted to shoot shoot the shit with you more often, where can they find you?

Nathan Smith:37:18
She she crushes this like she is she's fantastic.

Nathan Smith:37:26
Yes, very much so.

Nathan Smith:37:34
my LinkedIn's probably just my name. my website is SC Optimize Lc.com.

Jordan Lally:37:44
Awesome. Well, thanks again for hopping on, bro. Again, it was really a fun conversation. so thank thank you again, man.

Nathan Smith:37:50
Appreciate you having me.

Jordan Lally:37:51
Yes, our audience, till next time.