How To Utilize A Joint Venture In Your Business With Guest Michael King

Josh Nelson
Alright, well Hey everybody! Thank you for joining us on this session. I’m super excited for this episode of the agency success podcast. Today I’m interviewing Mike King from LASIK marketing agency. I met Mike at the traffic conversion summit. We’re both active members of digital marketer certified program. And I sat in on his session at the traffic and conversion summit. He unpacked some really cool ideas on how he’s growing his LASIK marketing agency and some really innovative things he’s doing to serve his clients well, and so I was just like, man, I have to have this guy on the show and just kind of interviewing and unpack kind of his unique philosophy and what he’s doing so, Mike, thank you so much for joining us today.

Mike King
My absolute pleasure and I got to return the favor. I had the opportunity to kind of sit in on your session and I got a ton of value out of that and that has driven me to kind of you know, jump into your private you know, Facebook group which for those of you that are in here, if you aren’t in it, you got to be in that group. I think you dropped a phenomenal amount of value Josh and I just got to give massive respect and kudos to you my friend. So let’s get at it.

Josh Nelson
Thank you, really appreciate that. So I think the best place to start, you just tell us a little bit about your your agency as it sits right now like approximate number of clients approximate monthly recurring revenue. Everybody wants to know, kind of like the the current size and years in business.

Mike King
Yeah, yeah. So, bit of my background is, you know, we’ve been I went full time in our agency on January 1 2017. So we’re just over two years into this right, monthly recurring revenue. So we’ve got, I’d say, roughly 12 to 15 clients right now that we’re working with monthly recurring revenue just around $40,000 clients pay us 3500 to $5,000 a month, and we are razor sharp focused in ophthalmology, specifically ophthalmologist that want to do more laser eye surgery and so we’re really dialed into our niche and things have been going great and it’s, we’ve been able to get to this point. I haven’t actually prospected yet to be honest, it’s all been through strategic partnerships, and like speaking gigs and a bunch of other things you can go through later. So, that’s been a lot of fun so far.

Josh Nelson
I love it, I definitely want to unpack that it’s gonna be a key piece like, Where are you getting these clients from? How did you get there? I think that’s worth like really bringing up is not a ton of clients, but a higher average transaction value. And you know, I always talk about the rule of ones, right, one target market, one program, and the fastest way to grow your agency. And one big piece is what are you charging on a monthly basis? If you’re charging 750 a month, you have to have a ton of clients to get to seven figures. At $3500 Michael, you can get there with what like 30 or 40 clients, you’d be a seven figure agency.

Mike King
Yeah, yeah. And and it’s, it’s like, the key for us is once you’ve got something that works in a specific niche in a specific market, what what I did and to kind of get a little bit of the backstory of how I got to this point. So after I just have there’s like 10 or so just over 10 years ago back when I finished working for Tony Robbins, my brother who’s an ophthalmologist invited me to kind of come work in his clinic. And so you name it, I’ve done it. I’ve worked in, you know, the the operating room, I’ve counseled thousands of patients, I’ve managed the phone center, I was his VP of Marketing. And to be honest, what happened is that I was kind of getting to the point where I felt a little bit sick and tired of that industry. And I was like, You know what, I’m ready to go out and be my own business person.

And what caused me to actually decide to go into this as a niche for my business offering is it actually took on a real estate investor as a client. And what happened is that I was like, you know, if you’re an A player, you want to know, what’s the offers that are converting the best, who are the best marketers in that industry? And, you know, I was able to apply a lot of the stuff that we learned through dm, but it was like, I was kind of floundering. And I was just thinking to myself, like, I’m not really like I’m a small fish in this massive ocean.

There’s so many vendors already in the real estate market. So while I did a decent job with him, I realized right away, like, I can’t scale anything that I already know in the LASIK space. And so that’s what caused me to say, you know what, let’s take all the stuff that I’ve learned in the last 10 years and ophthalmology, and how can I scale that intellectual capital that I already have those campaigns that already work? I already know how to convert a client in this space. How do I transfer that intellectual capital to a non competitive market to a practice that wants the same result that I’ve gotten, you know, at King LASIK?

And that mindset shift, I think the biggest one of the catalysts that helped me out with that was I proactively went after and I’m a believer that if you want to work with somebody, you got to reach out to them and just, you know, whether it’s offer your time or services to get in front of them. And Jay Abraham was somebody that that was somebody I wanted to work with, and I was able to be the moderator of a 26 week course that he did every single week. He was on delivering with high level entrepreneurs and I was monitoring that call with him, and also on the back end in his group. And the benefit of that is it really helped me out with the psychology of how you can be able to market in one niche. And so seeing what you’re doing right now is like, Oh my God, that’s like bang on everything that you’re saying is exactly the way that I think people should focus on a niche. So

Josh Nelson
I love how you casually mentioned that you worked for Tony Robbins, and got a chance to work with to Jay Abraham to like the biggest legends in the industry. Right?

Mike King
Yeah. But, you know, the key is, is the way that I was able to work with Tony and the way that I was able to work with Jay is the exact same thing and it’s the same way that I was able to speak at Traffic and Conversion Summit. Your life is short, you know, and if you know what your why is and you know, like, What do I have to lose on asking for what I want, you know what I mean? And the thing is, is and and when you’re able to be focused in one niche, it allows you to have absolute certainty in your ability to execute, you know what I mean? Like, you’re now the person. So what I would rather do is instead of trying to focus on how can I serve this industry and that industry and that industry, I want to say to myself, how can I partner with world class marketers that know stuff that I don’t and be able to bring them into our industry. That’s the way that we’ve been able to grow and provide such awesome value and have a strong lifetime value of our clients is because we’re bringing them the fresh stuff, you know, I mean, we’re iterating our marketing continuously. So yeah, it’s been a lot of fun man.

Josh Nelson
I love how you you kind of took your your experience in ophthalmology, and then you kind of took your experience in business development type stuff, and then decided, like, how do I weave this together? And that’s how you landed on this on this niche that you’re in today. Were there any other critical pieces of how you kind of got into digital marketing as a whole before you know going down that path?

Mike King
Yeah, so if I think back, I think it was roughly 2000, like my first real entrance into digital marketing happened roughly around 2013. Just purely by necessity of like, okay, we could tell at that point at King Lasik, we’re like, we’ve got to up our game, you know, we’ve got to have a better way to follow up and follow through with our patients. And so that’s when I first kind of got into Infusionsoft. But, you know, really, for me is more out of necessity for the job that I was in at that at that time. And then when I realized I’m like, hey, like, I kind of got latched on to digital marketer stuff. And you know, what happened is like, I realized just how if you apply this stuff, it really can make a difference. And what I realized is like, that’s an asset. And that’s kind of partly through working with Jay I’m realizing this asset, this this result that I’ve been able to get from for this practice this client of mine, I can replicate that, because I know how people I know how this avatar converts in this industry.

Let’s take all of what I’ve learned. And it kind of got to that critical point near the end of my time working at King LASIK. I’m like, I can bring this to other markets as long as a non competitive so I think just the mindset, like I actually was at the point where I was like, almost sick of working in ophthalmology, but it was because I was sick of working as an employee. And now I cannot believe how excited I am to get to do what I do. But it’s like, I caution myself from ever expanding out of it because I know I already know what I can do in this space. So it’s it’s pretty a pretty amazing man.

Josh Nelson
Yeah, no doubt. And for those of you that don’t know, I mean, the LASIK is the surgery you do on your eyes, relatively high ticket what’s an average LASIK procedure run these days?

Mike King
Yeah, and in case you’re wondering, why is a digital marketer for laser eye surgery wearing glasses,my cornea, I’ve got a degenerative cornea, I can never have LASIK. The average ticket price is 3500 to $5,000. Now there’s an important consideration here, which is that these doctors…so laser vision correction can only be done once. Granted some people three to 5% of the time need a second correction. But here’s the important consideration is that these doctors are always in lead acquisition mode, meaning there’s a finite amount of people every single month searching for laser vision correction, right? And I want my clients to be in the top three on Google AdWords for that I want them to be one of the preeminent choices to do that. So the key is you do LASIK once and that’s it so they’re always wanting more leads to kind of come in the door and that’s where the benefit of one of our services or our offerings is our LASIK marketing system. I’m basically taking what has enabled us to grow King LASIK so quickly and bringing all those processes and deliverables into our clients. So it’s easily scalable within 30-45 days, it’s live in their practice.

Josh Nelson
I love it. So can you talk just a little bit about what your what your delivery mechanism is like what is it that you do for your your opthamology clients and the Lasik centers that you work with.

Mike King
Yeah. So if you think about it, what does a an ophthalmologist they need to have everything from an online scheduler, they need some conversion assets like a LASIK self test, they need to have something like a pricing funnel because if we look on SEM rush, we realize that almost half of the searches that are happening right now around LASIK relate to cost. So what we use is data and information that we know that is already happening right now. And we provide all the different conversion assets, all the different email notifications, text reminders, landing pages, basically all in a nice little box for them. And so what happens is that i have i’ve strategically partnered with what I believe one of the best Infusionsoft agencies, implementation agencies out there, get you wired, and what they do is they service all the backend stuff, all this stuff work for our clients.

So we’re essentially the thought leaders and the project managers of our system. And I’ve got an implementation partner because frankly, I’m not smart enough to kind of do all this stuff on my own. And so I leverage another agency to do that. And so it’s been pretty sweet.

Josh Nelson
That’s fantastic. I think one of the cool things you said there, then also, we’re kind of critical baked into your presentation at TMC was you’re not just thinking narrowly, let’s generate some leads for these guys. You’re thinking, like the full customer life lifecycle really is, how do we generate the lead? How do we make sure that lead actually shows up for the appointment? And then how do we maximize the conversion rate from appointment to sale? I think you’re going much deeper than the average digital marketing agency, the average internet marketing guy, which gives you a massive competitive advantage, even in in any space, let alone the specific space that you’re in.

Mike King
Yeah. And what I mentioned at T&C is it’s like we’re fishing, right? Like it’s not enough to just if you’re an agency and all you’re doing is helping that client to get a fish in the boat. That’s not enough because until that fish is processed and sitting on the dinner plate, until that lead has actually come in for a consultation and actually had surgery. If you’re only offering one piece of the funnel, which is the lead acquisition part, then what happens is that you got to inoculate yourself against the fact of them saying, hey, like, I’ve got all these leads, and no one came in for console. So I believe that by again, by enabling us to focus on one niche, I know how a laser vision correction candidate converts, I don’t know how a HPC client works. I don’t know how a real estate person converts. I don’t know any that I know how this person works. So I’m very adept at figuring that out. But you have to you have to help the client to know what their conversion rates are to a consultation in our space.

So every single week, I know not only what our lead count is, but I know what their conversion rate is to a consultation. On top of that, I also know what their conversion rate is to surgery. So we offer the sales training, we offer the, you know, the phone, training, all that stuff, which again inoculates us against the competition, because if we have that full funnel, because I know it, because I’ve already worked in the space, I know what they need to kind of get the ball in the door. And then the last part is, hey, reputation management, referral marketing. So you got to see it all the way through not just the lead part, but all the way through the end of it. And the last point I’ll say is, if you’re watching this video, and you say, that’s all great, Michael, but I don’t have the skill set to do that, or I don’t know how to do that. That’s fine. You can strategically partner with somebody else who has that level of expertise and bring them in and bring them into your space and be able to be able to do a rev share with them.

Josh Nelson
Yeah, yeah, great, great stuff. And, and another reason to be niche focused, right. You can really go that deep you can understand like the conversion elements you can get past surface level I’m going to get you ranked all the way through to I’m going to generate leads I’m going to generate literal revenue into your business. I think that’s where all of us as digital marketers have to be going. We can’t just be thinking we generate the lead, we gotta be thinking, how do we how do we maximize the revenue? How do we maximize the profitability through innovative online marketing? I think you’re, you know, leading the charge on that front exceptionally well.

Mike King
You know what the other thing which is a really key consideration that most people don’t think of, because now I’ve got a ophthalmology practice. And let’s say, San Antonio, or I’ve got one in Houston, I have one in Seattle or in New York, like having clients across all these different areas, gives me data points and intelligence to then be able to convey that information to my other clients for specific they’ll give a great example, clients were asking, Hey, our lead count kind of dropped in the last week or so. And you know, rather than Hey, is the sky falling kind of thing. I’m able to preemptively let them know like, hey, number one, we’ve taken a look at Google Trends looks like nationwide, the demand softening a little bit and looking at other clients of ours we realize that yes, their lead count is down a little bit as well. So I’m able to know that type of information.

Obviously, spring break was the reason. But I’m able to have that level of intelligence of conversion rates of cost per click and all this stuff across a wide variety of markets. And I can use that to my advantage when I’m communicating with with prospective client.

Josh Nelson
Yeah, no doubt. I want to hop back to something you know, where we use decided you were going to start a digital marketing agency, you were a little bit broad, I guess you were going into real estate. And then what was it that helps you shift back and say, Look, I should focus on a niche that I have experienced? Because I find this happens. People have a background in something like they, they had their own martial arts studio, and now they’re moving to internet marketing. And instead of just focusing on that martial arts studios, which would be a good niche, they’re kind of like, well, I’ll just try and find something else. What was it that helped you like reactor back on what you really already knew? Because I think maybe that will help some of the listeners.

Mike King
Yeah, you know what it was, out of necessity, realizing that it kind of sucks. And I was like, You know what, I know what I’m good at. And I know what I’m not good at. And you know, I have the mindset that if whatever it is that I want to do, I want to be the best in that industry at doing it. And I when you kind of fail at something, you know, and I would say it was it wasn’t a failure in the project. But I, I realized just how out of my depth I was how everything that I knew, was not really working. And what helped me through this was basically, I was constantly asked by the owners of get you wired. They’re saying, why don’t we focus on creating something for this specific niche? And what happened is that I said, you know, let’s do it. Let’s partner together. So if you’re watching this video, and you say to yourself, I’d love to create some sort of system, but I don’t have the know how to do that partner with somebody who has that level of of technical expertise to make it happen.

So that reduced my sort of fear or anxiety of it as I had a partner an implementation partner that enabled me to do that. And we went 50/50 on the build out of our system, knowing that they were going to be my implementation partner on the back end. So that reduce any sort of worry that I had that I had to build it alone. And that really helped me to make the switch.

Josh Nelson
Fantastic. I appreciate that insight. And we got a great group with us on live if you don’t mind, if you’re watching us live in the in the Facebook group, throw a thumbs up in there, and also kind of put, you know, start thinking about the questions you have because we’ll have a little bit of time to do some q&a. Sure as we go. So moving on, like as it relates to landing client, so you’ve got this background and LASIK you get your implementation partner that’s going to help you really execute well. How did you land your first handful of clients? Because that’s always a tough question. Cause look I’m going to be in the niche. What’s what was the method that to land that first 5K in monthly recurring?

Mike King
Yeah, so I’ll give you when you’re in the space. So I’ll tell you this, the best answer would be strategic partnerships. And what I mean is this is our space. In laser vision correction, when a surgeon is doing laser vision correction, they have to put a little card in the laser to use it right. So that laser is owned, for example by Johnson and Johnson. Okay, so Johnson and Johnson reps, what they want to do is they want to have as many of their clients using that laser as much as possible. So they have a vested interest in increasing the amount of surgeries that their clients are making. Does that make sense?

Josh Nelson
Yeah.

Mike King
Okay. So what do I do? I have partnered with the J&J reps and say, Listen, I want to provide massive value to your clients. You know, whether it’s a website audit, or Hey, I’m going to do this webinar for your clients or, hey, here’s a paid traffic audit. So offering our services directly to the J&J reps. And what they do is like, oh, my goodness, like the results you’re getting are phenomenal. Let me introduce you to client, a client, the client see, so that’s number one strategic partnerships, because we had we both had the same outcome.

The second thing I did was speaking at a trade association event. So I would go so, you know, find out in that association, what are the actual events that they’ve got? And how can I land a speaking gig at that? So that was a second way to get clients and the third would be okay, I got all these leads and people who are interested, how do I deliver a webinar or some content that adds value to then drive them to a discovery call so webinars, you know tree public, being in the association and strategic partnerships are the ways I grew.

Josh Nelson
I love it. I love it. So and I talked a lot about the associations I talked a lot about speaking. I always I like JV which is kind of your angle on Jamie’s was a little bit interesting. How do you like how do you find that rap like because it to me usually a JV would be like another guru already selling to the LASIK centers or somebody that’s a consultant to to those and trying to get them to promote you. Yours is more like you aligned with local sales reps that are selling something relevant to, you know, to what you’re selling, can you kind of unpack how you would even connect with somebody like that?

Mike King
Yeah, so so what I would think to myself as a give me from our example. So who is selling who already has access and trust with the clients that I’m trying to land? Right, who already has who already has that access? Right? And so then I say to myself, who is it that only has access and trust with them? But are our goals are aligned? Right? So the reason why I decided to spend as much time and effort and energy in with the J&J reps is because when that client sells more does more, LASIK J&J makes more money. You follow. So because so our work is completely aligned. Now, I’ve also worked with and I have done those partnerships with other marketing companies that are selling to that are selling into our industry where we have a non competitive offering that I’ve done as well, but the J&J reps because we’re not competing with each other and our interest are very much aligned thats the mindset and again, I would benefit, I would give shout out to Jay Abraham for that, like that mindset of how to think that way is what really made the difference.

So hopefully that answers the questions, but…

Josh Nelson
No, it definitely does. I mean, Jay, Abraham’s famously, I think he’s his favorite one of his famous quotes of many years. You’re just one JV away from a million dollar business. Right? Yeah, I’ve heard him say that a lot of times on audios and trainings and things like that. So very, very cool insight. So let me let’s talk about so let’s talk about the client acquisition strategy as it sits right now. Is that still what those three pretty much of the main avenues, the JV, he’s the Speaker of the association involvement?

Mike King
Yeah, we were adding on and I wrote them on my, on my board here, so I’ll rattle through them. Speaking of which we talked about, publications is the next one. So we have gone out, and I’m looking at what are the five to seven publications that relates to ophthalmologists. And, you know, we’ve compiled it all the nice little Google document. We’re now going to be proactively creating articles writing them and submitting them to again be positioning ourselves as a thought leader in the industry. So trade publications is the next area of focus events like I’m going in two weeks to ASCRS, which is the the big public, the big Association where there’s thousands and thousands of ophthalmologists that would be there. So I’m going to have a booth at Johnson and Johnson’s event. I had been invited to speak by care credit.

So care credit is another strategic partner where Hey, they’ve got what do they do? They do financing for ophthalmologists. So care credit wants to know, how do I help our clients to increase the amount of surgeries that we are doing? What do I do, I help those practices to increase their surgery volume. So I got invited to speak with care credit. And it also flew me out to Hawaii a couple months ago to speak at their event. So that’s what’s happening in two weeks.

And the third thing which we haven’t launched yet, is we’re going to be geo targeting you know the hotel that this event is at with an offer right so I’m going to be doing some Facebook ads to see hey, you’re an ophthalmologist you’re in this place we’re going to geo target and blanket you with ads. So we’re going to be getting into Facebook ads that are geo targeted based upon people who are at this event. Other ideas. LinkedIn we’re going to be doing I’ve got a list of here’s the the next 30 videos that I want to be filming kind of similar to what Dennis does and so much what you’re doing, like just dripping out content. I filmed a couple of them already, but we’re going to be taking that content and be much more regular at at worst weekly with dripping out content on LinkedIn because that’s where a lot of our target market is at.

I love your idea on the newsletter. I think that’s a phenomenal idea. So we picked out our target 100 Yeah, there you go. The target 150 clients so what I want to find is I don’t just want to work with any ophthalmologist. I want to work with the ophthalmologists that are eight that most importantly doing paid traffic. Number two are the ones that are ranked on the first page of Google. Because if you have our system and you aren’t running paid traffic, it’s like having a Lamborghini in the garage that doesn’t have any gas.

Josh Nelson
I love it.

Mike King
Right? So So what you want to do is, we use Bright Locals local search checker to find out and position ourselves. I’m in Phoenix who’s advertising in Phoenix. I’m in Boston, who’s advertising in Boston. So we use that data, put it back into a shared Google Sheet document, we’re getting all their addresses. And then we’re going to do is the newsletter, and then direct mail. So we’re actually going to a cool idea that we’ve got you know, those viewfinders in the in the 70s and 80s that have like a cool, you know what I’m talking about where you kind of flick your hand like this, yeah, little click, click, click. Yeah, we’re going to be creating one of those and sending them out like kind of a lumpy mail style to our target our target 150. We’re also going to look at we’ve got three or four other regular direct mail pieces, we’re going to be tripping out to them and then you know marketing as well.

So once as we build up our list and get better at it, we’re gonna be dripping them out to your point beyond the present.

Josh Nelson
Yeah, I love it. That sounds like a great, like a great marketing mix to really make yourself known in that in that space. And the cool byproduct is those hundred and 50 people hear from you again and again. But you’re also creating content, it’s going to make you super relevant to anybody that runs a holistic center. Really? Yeah, totally. Yeah. So I think that’s a critical, critical insight is you’re focusing on people that have the propensity to to invest, right, they’re already spending, they’re already on page one. You’re not trying to create a LASIK center that’s just living off referrals and force them into marketing. You’re finding someone that already has shown a propensity and a belief in marketing and say, Look, I’ve got a system to make your car go faster. Yeah, right.

Mike King
I think that is an incredibly insightful thing that I would encourage everybody to think through and I’ll give you an example. What really caused me to to go through this is so we actually lost a client where they are they think buying into our system is going to solve everything and get them the results that they want. But the reality is, is if you aren’t getting a phenomenal amount of organic traffic right now, it’s very difficult to to scale and to get it to the level of results that they were looking for, you gotta run paid traffic. So the best ones to to convince you that are the ones that were already doing it. And because this practice wasn’t willing to, to to invest in paid traffic. I was like, Listen, guys, it’s probably best that we actually like this is a $3,000 paperweight that you’re spending for every month, it’s not getting you the results that you want. And I believe that we have that fiduciary responsibility to not over serve or under serve our clients to any extent. And so that’s why people who were willing to spend on paid traffic. If your not willing to spend on paid traffic, I almost don’t want to have you as a client. Or let me rephrase that you’re not an ideal fit as a lazy marketing system client. Maybe you might be better served in a mastermind or on a monthly private group or something.

But if you want us to implement and be in your practice, you got to spend on paid traffic. That’s why targeting to your point in that video you had posted, finding not just 1000 practices want to work with the top 150 really honing it down, then I can give all my energy to them.

Josh Nelson
No doubt, great, great inside. And so for you guys that are just kind of going after anybody you can get your hands on, that’s fine if that comes in, but make sure when you’re going out to attract business, you’re attracting the Highland high end guys, the guys that have the propensity to advertise, the guys that when you do get them, you can actually get a result and they’re going to stay long term will have a big ramification on the overall success of your of your business.

Mike King
And to that point, Josh is I am very, very reluctant on taking on project based clients because I can and specifically ones that are outside of our product offering because I cannot begin to tell you, those are the clients that take the most time and energy and they feel like they kind of own you like I don’t want to set the default frame of, we know what the heck we’re doing. Like this is the system, this is what we’re going to implement. We’re constantly iterating. But when you’re doing these one off projects, and you’re essentially creating a cake, brand new cake for that client, like, they, it’s so much harder to implement and to scale that, right.

So that’s why I think building something that you can scale and then iterating and constantly improving it. And being able to convey to the client This is our optimization schedule, Mr. Lazy marketing system client. And they’ll give them that freedom to kind of throw at you these ala carte projects. I don’t like doing ala carte stuff. I don’t like doing project based stuff outside of our niche. It’s just it’s not an efficient use of my time. That’s smart. And that’s one of the reasons you’re going to go quick, right? You’re going to continue to grow and you’re going to continue to scale.

Josh Nelson
So let’s talk a little bit about fulfillment, right? So what is your fulfillment model look like you get a client. How does the work get done? How do you retain those clients? Let’s just talk a little bit about that.

Mike King
Yeah so, here’s what I realized quite quickly, is, you know, I, I admire what you’ve got, you’ve got the team and house like, that’s just amazing. And I think two years in, I realized, I’m going to get to that point where I’ve got my own, you know, agency, we’re all in house, whatnot. But I realized in the first couple years, my ability to scale and get results quickly and get to the revenue level that I wanted, is like, I can’t do everything. I can’t be a strategic advisor, and I can’t be the project manager and I can’t be the infusion soft guy and I can’t do all of this stuff. Our clients have a lot of different needs that they that they want to have. And so again, going back to Jay Abraham, I was like, who has the suit, who has the ability to provide the solution that my clients need, that I could partner with and also be able to get paid, you know, an affiliate fee for that right.

So I partnered with probably a half a dozen dozen different agencies on SEO see my point on infusion soft. You know, we partner with a phone call agency called optical to handle calls for our clients. So my ability to scale of what, what we’ve done is we have awesome project managers on our team that are all 100% remote. And then we also have our implementation partners that our project managers work directly with that do all the implementation for our clients. So we do stuff like graphic design, and we work in teamwork. And, you know, we communicate with our clients and everything that’s going on, but liking us to be the quarterback for our clients. So we’re the one stop shop for all these different vendors. So they don’t have to manage those relationships. But they need to know that we made a conscious decision to say, look, there’s people that are better at this than we are and we still value, you know, you as a client and we want to help you get this result. We’ve spent the time to bring these agencies in and then be able to make it so they can they can come in seamlessly.

So we have about half a dozen agencies that have had roughly you know 40 to 60 people working at their at their practice or at their their consultant agency that enable us to scale quickly. That’s how I’ve been able to do is by scaling through other people’s agencies.

Josh Nelson
I love it. I love it be the QB in the relationship totally put people in place. You don’t have to do it all yourself. Yeah, one question on that front, then it to the client, they’re paying that vendor that does the SEO or that does the pay per click directly? Are they paying you? Or how how do you have that structured in your agency?

Mike King
Yeah, right now we have it where they pay them directly can then just because, could I button it all together and one offering sure. But I I made the decision right now to be fully transparent on what’s going on. And then those agencies in turn once they get paid for my client will then pay back 10 to 20% back to us as a result of providing that referral to them. So I get the benefit of leveraging all the risks that they’ve done to create their agency, and have, you know, they spent all this time being best in class on paid traffic. And then I also get the benefit of giving the referral. So I’m able to make recurring revenue from those relationships.

Josh Nelson
Yeah, very, very cool, very, very smart way to structure it so that you don’t have to take on a lot of overhead and you don’t have to be bottleneck trying to serve the client. Focus on business development, being kind of the QB. And and letting the people that have the expertise come in and do their do their thing.

Mike King
Yeah. And and the other thing is, is that so when I gave you the number of like, hey, some clients will will spend $5,000 a month with with us, that doesn’t really that doesn’t include their SEO or any of our implementation partners. That’s purely you’re paying for our strategic insight and us being the quarterback and project manager. So that’s why financially it’s much more lucrative that way for me to kind of segment out the different vendors that we’ve got and then have them be paid directly.

Josh Nelson
Yeah, powerful. So on the on the fulfillment piece, one thing that you said at the at the traffic conversion summit I found really interesting was, you know, in looking at your clients websites and where the traffic was going on, like one page on the site, I think it was the pricing page had the most traffic. And so you really built a whole strategy around that. Can you talk a little bit about about kind of that lightbulb moment and how that’s impacted the results of your campaigns?

Mike King
Yeah. So I’ll carry you through the mental process that we went through to realize this for our clients. And I mentioned earlier on sem rush, which I think is invaluable. What we did is, let’s first of all understand so I put in their keyword magic tool and sem rush, we put the word LASIK, then what happens is that the keyword magic tool tells us all the different types of searches that are getting the most amount of traffic in our space, and we realized, like it’s meeting the intent and the searches that’s already happening in the marketplace, right? So now that we realized that like, hey, like nationwide, this there’s a lot of people asking for pricing and most doctors are afraid of actually engaging with people on that. On that end, they say, Hey, you got to come in for a consultation to find out if you’re a candidate.

You know, in our space, there’s people that offer 250 per eye and 500 bucks an eye, which is bs pricing. So what I realized that like, people are smart, they appreciate that level of transparency. So let’s put the word pricing up on our site. And in exchange for people to actually get our pricing, they just have to opt in right first name, last name, email, phone number, they then get sent our pricing, but the next screen after the opt in takes them to a page which I call our Swiss Army Knife page. So after every opt in, I want to send them to a confirmation page that has a video right? And in that video are other assets that they can consume, Patient guide, comparison guide, a, you know a Lasik calculator and also the ability to schedule an appointment. So I’ve met the intent that people have the question that the majority of people have in coming into our website.

We get the opt in. And then we condensed the buying cycle, I have a landing page with a video designed to get them more information and get them to schedule on the back end. So with pricing using that, we also will heat map the website. And we realized that having the word pricing to be the first on the navigation bar to be the first thing that people see has also resulted in increased conversions. And we got the information from hot jar.

Josh Nelson
That’s awesome, beautiful, beautiful stuff. And I mean, really, really smart. Right? You’re thinking about how we get them to the page, how do we get them to opt in, you know, especially when higher ticket services like like LASIK, like Invisalign, like maybe a kitchen remodeling, right, they’re not just going to call and pick up a phone like they would in plumbing. And you’ve kind of looked at that you use some of the best in class tools to identify, you know, here’s something we can get an opt-in on and its pricing right. And that will probably apply in some of those higher end transaction services I just mentioned.

Mike King
Yeah. And and to to that point, I believe that the number one place that you want to focus on your clients to, to to to help them to improve what they’re doing is above the fold on the homepage. Most, most of our clients, you know, taking a page out of Donald Miller, you know, story brand, most of our clients doctors, what they do is they position themselves as the hero in the patient’s journey. We have done X amount of procedures, we have X amount of awards, look at how many degrees that I have as a doctor were this blah, blah, blah, p patients just don’t care. So what we’ve realized is that repositioning it to be about their journey, and helping them to get information to know whether or not that there were a candidate, that sort that is positioning and talking to your prospective client, you know what I mean.

Josh Nelson
Yeah, no, no, no doubt. That’s powerful. Very, very cool stuff. I love it. And thanks for your your willingness to share this kind of thing.

Mike King
Of course!

Josh Nelson
Right. So we talked about, we talked about the team and a lot of the services actually being implemented third party, but there’s a couple virtual project managers, can you talk a little bit about how you found those people how you manage and retain those people?

Mike King
Yeah, it’s, you know, for me, I’ve got the benefit of so I’ve got a full time, one of my strategic partners, or several of my strategic partners have a dedicated person in their agency that’s dedicated to us, right? So not having to deal with four or five different people in those agencies. So that’s number one. My virtual team, I actually met in dm engage. And, you know, it was somebody that, you know, I’m a believer that if somebody proactively goes out and searches and approaches you and says, I really would like to, hey, you know, I like what you’re doing. I’d love to, you know, get some mentorship or some insight or whatever it is to, I need some help. Basically, that’s somebody because that’s exactly what I did to to work with the people that I’ve worked with being proactive.

So I believe in the law of attraction on that and so then what it is, is that okay, look, I’ll give you two weeks. It’s unpaid and we’ll get an opportunity to work together and if at the end of that two weeks we both believe that this is an opportunity we want to explore further then you know and that’s that’s when I brought them on and hired them on so so I, I believe the value of working with somebody who speaks the same language that I do, which is that and the DM side of things was invaluable. So I I’ve gotten people that I’ve worked with directly from DM engage.

Josh Nelson
Beautiful, smart and find people that are already passionate about this topic right there reading there at the traffic conversion summit there in the DM engaged group. And like who better to work with and somebody that’s already avidly consuming this type of content.

Mike King
Totally. Yeah, it’s me being able to have that as like, like, I don’t want to go and say hey, you’ve got to watch Russ and Molly’s and Ryan’s and this and not this whatever Hey, in introducing them to dm I want people who are already indoctrinated into that way of of operating from a marketing perspective. Then what I could do is then train them on the Lasik side. But the task to do both is almost too much. So that’s why I want people who are already, you know, in the same community that that I’m in.

Josh Nelson
Fantastic. Have you mind if we look at some of the questions that are coming in on the Facebook group real quick?

Mike King
Of course.

Josh Nelson
Okay, hold on. Let me pull these up. Let’s see what we got here.So guys, this is also your cue. If you’ve got questions, now’s the time posted, man. We’re going to wrap up here in a couple minutes, but definitely throw them in. Um, let’s see.

David Thomas says yes, being a realtor, I thought I could help realtors, but they’re different breed and tough to get them to try Facebook ads yet. Realtors is a little bit of a tough niche.

Mike King
Yeah, I think you said that your top five niches that are hard to get into real estate was one of them, right?

Josh Nelson
Yeah, one of the three it’s really hard to serve. It’s it’s there’s it’s just a weird. It’s a weird breed. So Chris is asking, do you only do PPC for them? And what does your price model look like? We talked about that a little. I don’t know if you can unpack that a little bit more.

Mike King
Yeah. No. SoI’m assuming when they say to be only do PPC for them on the paid traffic side or?

Josh Nelson
Perhaps.

Mike King
Okay, I’m not Yeah, so so we do Facebook ads, we do paid traffic in our space. So we analyze the lead to consultation conversion rate for Facebook leads comparative to lead the consultation rate for you know, Google Ads leads. And the what I always say to a client is the the battle ground for you is that getting yourself to be in the top three position for the people that are searching for lazy today? Right, so the first place to win is on Google ads. And with respect to pricing, so I think it said $900 plus 9% of ad spend is what our vendor charges and he charges that and then I get it, I get a percentage back for every single client and that’s recurring revenue. I don’t really have to do anything. He services the client. We connect once a week and go through all the clients together but that’s a great way for us to offer that service and I don’t have to I don’t have to have him as an employee right on the Facebook ads side Facebook moves so quickly.

We’re we’re looking to to dominate right now and I’m actually work with Mollie Pittman on some funnels for the Facebook side and LASIK is simply because I want to bring the next level game to our space and so we’re doing stuff like Facebook Messenger, lot of retargeting, and we’re going to be going into the cold traffic side using stuff like Ali Wilson’s phone funnel as well to just really like grab the stuff that’s already working out there and then bring it in and to our space but our bread is buttered on paid traffic, then retargeting ads and then also cold traffic on Facebook and Instagram.

Josh Nelson
Nice. So to answer Chris’s questions kind of you have a flat fee that you charge which is your Michael King expertise right up and then they pay for the PPC element I paid for the SEO element, they paid ads element and so you know all in they might be 10,000 to 7500 a month?

Mike King
Yes, I would say, okay, so a client would say so so let’s take our engagement out of it and look at the the other things that they’ve got. So they’re spending 3500 to five grand a month, the best break, a practice that would be spending $5,000 a month with us would be in a major metropolitan market. So it’d be like a Seattle or Las Vegas or whatnot, or, or New York, and so they pay for the vendor for paid traffic, which is let’s say it’s 1000 to 1500 bucks, their ad spend would be between five to 10 k minimum, some of our clients are spending between 30 to $50,000 a month on on on PPC. And then you know, I think the SEO part 3500 to $5,000 a month they’re spending on SEO, but again, we’re quarterbacking all this kind of stuff. So they, they when they’re doing 500 to $750,000 a month in revenue. They can afford top tier vendors that we’re bringing into play you know what I mean.

So that’s what I do is I use, I bring in top top marketing experts into my, what I call White Glove client to prove systems and funnels that I then drip down to my laser marketing system practices. So I use I use our white glove clients to kind of prove stuff and come with the fresh stuff. And then what I do is once it’s proven, we drop it on down to other clients.

Josh Nelson
I love it. Yeah, thanks for unpacking that, you know, really, really, really appreciate really smart stuff to you know, bring in not not average performers, but the very best in the industry talking about Mollie Pittman and Ali Bilson sort of, like world class people and plugging that into your niche. And of course, there’s a bigger ticket that goes along with with that time.

Mike King
Because you’re able to get the result more consistently.

Josh Nelson
Yeah. So then Scott Andreessen, what’s up? Thanks for joining us. He’s asking how much personal time do you put into setting up the client yourself? So it’s like when you talk about all of these little elements and you want to be the QB, but how much time is there on the phone and getting the logins and kind of kicking things off?

Mike King
Love that question. So the beauty of the so we’re talking about onboarding right now, right?

Josh Nelson
Yep.

Mike King
Okay. We have an ESOP, for onboarding a client that we’ve already created in the sense that the second that they sign for the first month, our HR implementation partner get you wired, does all the onboarding for that are now that we’ve kind of done it enough times, we know exactly what needs to happen. So it’s all essentially automated. So they handle the onboarding, which is the first 30 to 45 days is all done by your implementation partner, right? That’s the beauty of it. I don’t have to do any of that setup. It’s all done for them because we’ve got a replicable system to do that. It’s like we’ve already created this across this client client, that client, it’s just, let’s make it look branded for this next client that we’re doing it for. So all of that is done by our agency. We do project managers and meet with them probably once every two weeks, but it’s all done because we’ve created a standard operating procedure for that, and our implementation partner doesn’t.

Josh Nelson
So is that less than five hours less than 10 hours of your personal time less than,

Mike King
I’d say less than 10 hours over the last 45 days, five, five to 10 hours. I mean, I would probably say 10 hours, but it’s be between five and 10. And then each client once they are live, we probably it probably takes two to five hours a month of my time. Not even, but I’d say probably two to three hours.

Josh Nelson
Good, good. Perfect. And then you know follow up question to that is,since you’re plugging in these other agencies, and this is here’s the question. The question is, you know, do you worry about them jumping to in house, you know, just say, hey, look, now that we’ve got the names of these companies that Michael uses, we willll just kind of take take him out of the equation and just work with them directly.

Mike King
Yeah, and absolutely. I mean, they’ve got that ability to do that. But the reality is, is that I, not to toot my own horn, but I don’t know anybody who’s doing it on the level of digital marketing in our space that’s doing it on our level. And if somebody if if, if I believe that we were not serving them to the highest level, and that they would be better served taking it in house, I would tell them so and i would i would release myself from from being their agency. So I’m acutely aware that I can be fired at any time, I’m acutely aware that we need to be setting the charge. And that’s why my focus isn’t so much on, hey, how can I make sure that they don’t do this in house? As opposed to how can I have an optimization schedule that is so unbelievable in value, but and how can I provide them with information that nobody else gives them? So it’s just like, why would they even think about it right.

Now the other key thing which I didn’t mention is that our laser marketing system is set up as a subdomain on their website, meaning when you click on the word pricing, it goes to its ABC LASIK practice, it goes to LASIK ABC practice com. What that means is if they decide to stop paying us, we take all of our system completely out of there, they lose the landing pages, the self test, the online scheduler, all the emails, all the text minders, it’s basically off, and they can’t use it. So that’s how we kind of work to not, you know, we make ourselves have a really good lifetime value. Because if they stop paying, then we’ll get into stuff, right?

Josh Nelson
So you kind of have some, you have some hooks in there, it’s like, look at the value we’ve built, if you don’t want to work with us any more than that’s going to go away. And so that’s a good way to kind of make sure that we’re going to stick around.

Mike King
And if I don’t get the results of them and if i if i if i suck and I deserve to get fired, like like if you’re not getting the result for your client, what are you doing in business, right? And that’s why I think it’s so important to be focused on one niche is because I don’t have that mindset that they’re going to try to do this in house because to be honest, all the doctor cares to have is the result I’ve worked inside a ophthalmology practice for 12 years. I know what it’s like? They always want somebody else to do it for them. Yeah, very few practices will ever want to invest the time energy resources to do it in house.

Josh Nelson
Yeah, I think something you said there that’s really critical is you have to get the client result, right. That’s the only reason we as digital marketing agencies exist. Yes, we’re supposed to know how to come in and get a result. So you have to be laser focused on being able to take $1 and turn it into five plus, if you’re not doing that shame on you, you kind of do a little malpractice in your agency. The other piece of that is, it’s hard enough to get results for clients in your niche. Like I’m sure you’ve experienced, sometimes it doesn’t work right out of the gates for your clients. Sometimes it doesn’t work for our plumbing, HPC clients, we’ve got hundreds of them. So you kind of multiply the complexity, being in multiple niches. Hard enough as it is in one day job, let alone if you’re trying to recreate the wheel for every random client that rolls into your into your business.

Mike King
I’m really good at making ribs and that’s all I want to make. I don’t want to start going into making cakes and bunch of other different things. I want to keep perfecting my recipe. I just honestly I don’t, I’m just not hard wired to be in a wide variety of different niches. I’m a very much I got to be focused on on like what’s in front of me in hand and just perfecting it. I love conversion rate optimization. And that’s how we’re able to have our little hooks into the client, because we’re offering something that most other agencies don’t offer.

Josh Nelson
Yeah, no doubt. Will Hank, what’s up, Will says he loves digital marketer. He’s a good friend of Russ. So, shout out to the digital marketer in here.

Mike King
Russ is a good buddy of mine. I love it. That’s awesome.

Josh Nelson
Jonathan Luke, glad to have you with us. He says, so do you provide and so do you provide and hold the assets for the campaign, the landing pages, lead magnets analytic tracking, split testing, or are they handled by your strategic partners?

Mike King
So we the sort of the the blueprint, if you will, of what we’re going to be split testing, the methodology of like, like, the strategy comes from us, right? The strategy is, is I think the important part, but also having an implementation partner that we have unbelievable trust with to execute on that strategy. That’s how we do it. So the strategy comes from us, but the implementation comes from our partners.

Josh Nelson
Good stuff. So that means it looks like those are the questions we’re good timing with this because we’re we’re right within our within our 45 minutes to an hour mark. Um, if you’re getting great value from this, be sure to throw a thumbs up. Be sure to tag Michael in the in the comments and say, Hey, thanks so much for sharing this amazing information. You know, don’t don’t hesitate to do that that would be greatly appreciated.

As we wrap up with what other nuggets of wisdom might you say for that digital marketing agency owner that, you know, they’re they’re where they’re at, maybe they’re like mid six figures and we’re just getting started. They’re looking to get to the next level, but what value what insights or nuggets of wisdom would you have for them.

Mike King
You know, this is very self serving to you but I’d say make sure they’re in your group. You know, it, I think it’s like, you know, the more narrow your focus is, the easier it is for you to be able to get a result. And the easier it is for you be able to be able to scale it. I think a lot of the first thing is is like, what is your outcome? What do you want to be able to create? You know what I mean? And I think one of the best things that I would advise anybody is find people who’ve already achieved the result that you want, and do anything that you can to be able to be in their sphere of influence, do everything that you can to be able to add value to their life. Key, some points. The reason why I’m sitting here on this podcast is like, very clearly, I realized, Oh, this guy knows what he’s talking about. I want to be able to add value to what he’s doing. So that way I can be able to create that relationship.

And so I think if you’re a little bit confused, and you’re not quite knowing what the next step is, being able to be part of groups like what you’ve got or dm engage and just asking questions and being able to talk with people who’vealready got the result that you want. That’s probably the best advice that I can give to you. So that way, you’re not trying to spin your wheels and do it all alone. It’s a very lonely road, there is an entrepreneur. And I think you will find that successful people have that unconditional, I want to help you because the real successful people want to give you that belief and you can do it as well. You know what I mean? And that to me is the thing that surround yourself look at who you’re surrounding yourself with and be around winners because I think you know, it sounds it sounds easy to say that but you know, to me it’s I really believe it be around people who’ve already got result you want.

Josh Nelson
Powerful insight. So economical, anything else you want to add to the to the to the to the conversation before we wrap up here today? This has been amazing. Thank you so much for sharing your generosity of spirit. You know, listen, guys, he’s he’s opening up, like, Look, this is what I’ve done. This is what’s working for me. And, you know, be sure to share your love in the group for his willingness to do that.

Mike King
Yeah, the only thing I did that, I would say like, I’d love to meet a if we could have been some ray of hope and inspiration to them to kind of take action. That’s the key word take action on what we’re saying here. You know, I’m open to talking to anybody, if you want to reach out, and you want to have a conversation about your agency and what you’re doing, and I’m happy to do that for anybody that that takes that proactive step of doing that. But if you are in a nation, you are, you know, crushing it as well. I’d love to kind of hear that as well and hear any sort of tidbits that you’re doing. So I’m just grateful to been on the call with your Josh and I hope this has been a value to your to your group.

Josh Nelson
It’s been great. So yeah, if you’re, if you’re in the local agency success group, be sure to tag Michael thank him. He sounds like he’s willing to answer questions. So he’s in the group, so be sure to engage with him there. If you’d like more ideas, strategies and techniques on how to grow your digital marketing agency, how to choose a niche, position yourself as the expert, get clients coming to you systematized your product offering, be sure to go to seven figure agency com. That’s where you know kind of all of my information lives, I’ve got a great four part video series, where I just kind of outline how we grew our agency to multiple seven figures how we made the Inc 5000 List of fastest growing companies the last three years in a row, lots of great free resources there to have a seven figure agency com. And you know, it’s the first thing you can opt in for on the site.

Also, if you happen to somehow be listening to this outside of the local agency success group, maybe you’re listening on iTunes, or you see this up on YouTube, you can go to seven figure agency.com slash group, seven figure agency com slash group that will take you straight to the local agency success group. It’s a free Facebook group where we’re sharing great ideas, strategies, interviews, just like this one. We’d love to have you in there. And you know, it sounds like Michael, myself, the others in this group are really excited and passionate to share and help you take your digital marketing agency to the next level. So we’d love to see you in there. Michael, I’m going to give you the last word. What do you want to say to wrap us up today.

Mike King
I mean, I have to, I have to say it again, I’ve been in your group for few weeks. And there’s some groups that impress me and some that don’t, I’ve been incredibly impressed at the value that you’ve been dropping. It’s just if you are interested, if every everything is anything that’s been on this call today is got your wheels turning. I think that being in a group of people who are focused on one niche isn’t is incredible. So I just got to get my hats off to your group. That’s one that you know, there’s a lot of things that are vying for our attention out there. And you know, we get to consciously choose where we want to spend our time. And for me, spending time in a group of people who are after that result, like, just hats off to you, man, I think you got a fantastic group and I’m happy to serve the community.

Josh Nelson
Awesome. Well, thanks again, guys, for joining us live. Thank you again, Michael. This has been tremendous

Mike King
Pleasure.

Josh Nelson
We’ll talk to you guys later.

Mike King
Thanks, everybody. Take care. Bye bye.