He Stopped Answering His Clients' Phones. A Third of His Revenue Walked.

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0:28 Hey, what's going on everybody? Welcome back to another episode of Agency Advantage, the show where agency owners share behind the scenes of everything they went through to grow their agency from the ground up. Today I've got James Donovan with me, owner of Accounting Leads. Now I wanted James on here to share how he intentionally blew his business up. He dropped a bomb in it, took it back to the bare bones, and began from scratch. He's been doing this in accounting and bookkeeping for years now, has a book in the industry and hosts the Accounting Leads Now podcast. James, welcome to the show.

0:59 Thanks for having me, Brad. I'm looking forward to this.

1:01 Yeah, absolutely. So, James, let's kind of take everybody back to the beginning prior to kind of, you know, tossing this bomb, I'm going to call it in your agency. And then this may actually lead into that. But uh, you know, there's a hundred, probably thousands of different niches you could choose, right? And so, how did you end up in marketing for accounting firms and as your niche?

1:23 Yeah, it was a really smooth transition from marketing on um adult websites, doing affiliate marketing from adult websites to accounting, as as you could imagine, a very easy transition there. I bet. Um no, so I was I was doing affiliate marketing for years ago. That was my last corporate job I had. Okay. Was laid off, and I knew I wanted to do something on my own and be able to travel. I didn't get into accounting right away. Like most people probably starting out, it was whatever can pay the bills. I was biking around, truly biking around at different shops, like knocking on doors in Toronto, worked with some hair salons, quickly realized that's not the space for me. Um, had some like massage therapists, and then COVID hit, went into residential cleaning, and then it was like, oh, it makes sense to go into commercial. Did that for about a year and a half, and then I felt like we were capped at a 40 mile radius. And now looking back, I feel like that's a crazy thing to have stopped me from staying in a space. Um, for better or for worse, a friend of mine was generating leads for accounting firms. There was no real rhyme or reason. He was like, hey, what you're doing for commercial cleaners, I'm also doing for accountants. They can we can get people nationwide for them, should give it a try. So I ran up a campaign on LinkedIn to try to get some accounting um clients myself. Quickly was introduced to the employee retention tax credit during COVID. We ran with that for quite some time. And then once that was done, I felt like we were kind of in the industry already, at least knew a little bit about it. So we were just asking our clients, like, what else do you guys do that is worth a lot of money, that makes sense, where the demand is. And we've kind of shifted around. But yeah, for better or for worse, we've been uh in the accounting space now for the better part of five years. Four, four, four or five years, yeah.

3:11 Yeah, absolutely. Well, and like the the accounting cycle probably has to be difficult in a way, right? Because like depending on the firm you you're working with, like some of them, like it's like tax time is the time of the year where they make all their money, right? And then they have to let it sit and be able to manage. But a lot of these accounting firms, like most people think, hey, my CPA accountant just does my taxes, right? Then when it's not tax season, they're doing auditing. And you know, some of them now are rolling in like fractional like uh CFO type services. And so it's not just like that tax time of year for a lot of these firms, but I'm sure for you, you know, as you guys are doing the marketing aspect of things for these firms, there's a long sales cycle in a way for some of these accounting firms. Um, and so how have you guys had to, how have you overcome that? Or is it something that you don't really see as an issue?

4:03 Well, we we were down the path when we did a lot of LinkedIn outreach for our clients of finding them fractional CFO leads and tax planning leads, like the higher ticket offering for them. That was fine. What we ran into, and it still works, but LinkedIn is a very busy platform. So it was it was really hard to compete there in people's inbox. Not only that, the average business owner doesn't know what a fractional CFO is or what they do. So going in fairly cold into a sales call where you're like, hey, we're gonna charge five grand a month to do, you know, X, Y, Z, that business owner, they don't know they need it yet. So there's so much education that was required there. And what we were finding was we were struggling a little bit on like the volume of leads we could get through LinkedIn outreach. So we were owning that piece, which will somewhat lead into what we're gonna talk about for the bomb in the business. But then also on the client side of thing, they were so used to referrals. So now giving them a lead where they're trying to sell their five or ten thousand dollar a month service, but there's not enough authority built and they haven't nurtured the lead. Like there was, we almost we, I mean, we did get to a point where we were actually selling the leads for them on behalf of their firm because they were struggling to do that. We've changed all that now, and and we're running a lot of local service ads, bringing people in at a lower ticket, like your bookkeep in your monthly accounting. And now kind of Trojan horse, you're in the business, you can see all of the gaps. It's a much easier conversation to now go, hey, business owner, by the way, XYZ is what we can jump in on versus right away trying to say, we're gonna come in and do all this and it's five grand a month.

5:42 Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and it's one of those things like you you don't think about you mentioned like most business owners don't know what a CFO can do, right? And it's like, it's not just like managing like the cash flow aspect of things, but it's also like, hey, how can we be proactive rather than reactive in managing your money, managing the taxes and everything behind your money? And like, hey, if you spend in a certain way here, or you do these types of things and activities in your business, or you have this type of documentation for certain things, like you can then write off X, Y, Z type thing. And a lot of those things people don't realize. And to your point, you you can't see that necessarily, you can't really see that unless you're inside of the business, right? So, you know, you've built a lot of you've kind of gone through these phases of like trying to figure out what works for your clients and everything like that. Um, but from you guys in terms of your team, like it's a relatively small team for the size of agency that you are, but you've built a lot of surface area around that. You know, you got the book, the podcast, uh, an online community, you do the conferences. Um how are you, for those who are listening, they have an agency? Uh, and I know you and I got connected through the seven-figure agency community, right? And you get in that community. It's like drinking from a fire hose. And it's like, you should go run ads, you should go do LinkedIn, you should do a book, you should do webinars, right? How have you been able to manage all of that with such a small team?

7:07 Yeah, it's a really good question. Um, I definitely wouldn't say I'm the poster, the poster child of the seven-figure agency community, but I think the most important thing, and and Josh does a really good job at the end of each intensive of pick like your four rocks or your four projects you want to tackle over the next quarter. So for me, when I got my book published, I knew I was speaking at an industry event. Uh I think at the time it would have been like May 3rd, and we were wrapping up the March intensive. So I knew like I need to have the book ready to go for that date. Otherwise, this is a massive miss. I really stuck to that deadline to make sure I had it ready, and it was awesome. I was able to hand out a copy to every single person in the room while I was on stage. I think probably to this day, if I didn't have that very strict deadline, the book would probably still be sitting in draft on the computer. So that was really important to just get done and hold myself accountable to that. And then boom, now it's done. Now we can print off those books with Amazon for every conference to go to. Don't really have to touch it. It's very easy lift now. The podcast, same thing. I think it's just dedicating time to like actually go and start. And the nice thing with Seven FA is they they have the entire playbook of how to go and set it up. Like I didn't have to try to figure out where where to host it, how to do it. We've made some iterations since then, but at least that got us, you know, not it got us 100% of the way there. And then we've just made adjustments. So, yes, there's a lot of things from other intensives that we've written down that probably haven't got to. Shiny objects come up, fires come up, but I have our I always put our sheet up in my office of like what I said I would do. So it's that nice reminder. And if I'm kind of drifting off, I I can get pulled back in. And then you're only human. You got to give yourself some some grace as well and just yeah, react and adapt to what's going on.

8:55 Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's one of those things like, you know, people think like I have to go out and I'm gonna do a podcast, right? So I have to go get the podcast camera and the teleprompter and the mic and everything like that. Like when I had my agency and I launched my podcast, like literally, I posted on Facebook a picture of my wife and I, and I was like, hey, I'm launching a podcast. Here's who I want on it. Like thinking I'm gonna get like like somebody challenged me to launch a podcast. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'll post about it, thinking it's gonna go nowhere. And then I was booked for like 32 weeks. Like it was like I had boom, boom, boom. And now it wasn't niche, it wasn't like how it is here with agency vans where I'm like, I just talk with agency owners. Um, but I mean, I was booked out, right? So then I was like, well, shit, I'm launching a podcast, right? And so then I had to go out and you know, find the uh, you know, have the graphic created and all everything like that. Those types of things are great for using platforms like Fiverr, even our our intro here for the agency advantage podcast, like someone on Fiverr, I paid like 250 bucks to do the intro, and I found out he used some like AI platform to create. So it's not even somebody actually recording the audio, like it's a hundred percent AI generated, but I'm like, I don't care. Like I placed the order and it was done, right?

10:05 And so yeah, it's just done.

10:06 Yeah, and so my point being when I launched my my old podcast, like I just posted about it and then I used my iPhone as the camera, and I bought like some cheap, like $30 mic. I didn't have this nice mic I have now, the Sony camera, the teleprompter I'm using right now. Like, I didn't have any of that, right? Um, and so a lot of people get caught up in the um the mechanics behind it, and it's like, no, just go out and execute and and do the thing, which is what it sounds like you do between each and intensive. There's things that we miss, right? But you just go out and do the thing and execute um on there. Your book that you wrote, booked solid for accounting firms. Um, you know, what's the argument in it that firm owners like push back on the hardest rule with you guys?

10:53 I don't know if there's an argument within the book, but I would say the biggest argument in general that we hear or that's kind of embedded with accounting firm owners is word of mouth and referrals is their marketing strategy. I could almost like almost 99% of calls we get on. Hey, what are you guys doing for marketing? Word of mouth. Okay, cool, but you're on this call because you don't have enough clients. So who's speaking about your business? And it's, I don't know, it's weird. Like sometimes it's almost like they're not hearing themselves say like how con contradictory that is of like uh we just we grow from word of mouth, but no one's speaking about us. We don't have clients. That's why we need your help. Okay, so that's not really working then. And a strategy that you're 100% reactive to, that to me is not a way I would personally like to grow a business. So we're trying to, and Brad Ferris was really helpful with this of like, how do we coach our clients to be more proactive to strategically get referrals while also having different, you know, lines in the water, like local service ads, like your outreach on LinkedIn rather than just like, oh, someone sent us a referral this month, and it's been four months since. And I think the the trouble is a lot of firms, they get a lot of referrals during tax season. So then they feel like, oh, this is great. But it's like these are $100, $200, $300 tax returns. Awesome. You collect a lot of cash in a very short amount of time, but there's 12 months in a year. What do you do in the other nine, 10 months?

12:23 Right. Yeah, exactly. And like, you know, there's other aspects of business I mentioned earlier, like audits and everything like that. Um, you you know, like I'm gonna say this, it's kind of the same concepts of like marketing agencies I see all the time, and like Facebook groups as marketers are like, uh, I'm having trouble generating leads for my marketing agency. And it's like, isn't that what you're supposed to be doing for your clients, right? You know, it's different. It's a lot easier to do an SEO campaign or paid ads. Like, there's more demand for it for a roofing company that's searching for a roofer near me, right? Than it is for somebody searching like marketing agency near me, because you get a lot of like the people who are looking for a cheap, like $400 site type thing. Um, but you can still do those types of things, but there are other ways to market your agency podcasts, what webinar conferences, um, everything like that. Um, and then obviously, you know, things like your book. Um, so that's kind of how you got the accounting leads now launch, right? And you you have the marketing engine going, you guys are growing. Um, but I know at one point, you know, I mentioned the intro, you said you kind of dropped a bomb in your business, you know, ripped it down to the bare bones. What was happening that caused you to actually do that?

13:38 There's a lot to unpack there. You're really taking me back uh down trauma lane. We were at its core doing way too much for way too little. And we were, we were trying to be really three different types of businesses. We were we were handling marketing, we were kind of being like a virtual assistant to a certain degree, we were answering inbound phone calls, and then just handling like all the admin in between for like 1500 bucks a month. And then being told by some clients, why did you answer the phone saying hi and not hello? It's like, oh, oh my God. I I we we hand delivered this person to you. We've qualified them. They said they are fine with the the minimum payment, and you're not you you weren't closing them and you were still complaining about the way we said hi or hello. Um, it just got to a point like we we thought we were solving a problem by answering the phone because answer rates were low. So naturally, okay, how can we help solve this? I didn't realize how big of a kind of problem this would be when we started to do this at scale. So then, like, I was at a point where it was just every day we didn't have enough cash flow to hire additional support, and we were falling behind in some areas. So we couldn't ever get anything done throughout the day because all we were doing was just attending to like we would show up and it was just the fire has already been burning for hours before we got in every single day. And it just continued to get bigger and bigger and bigger. I was probably the worst version of myself to everyone around me. I was the worst version of myself to team members. Everything frustrated me. I just I hated what we were doing. And this was only last, like this past winter, like not that long ago. So um leaned on some of the coaches inside of 7FA, like asked, what are other people doing? I I heard there's people doing like the concierge model. And when I shared that we answered inbound calls, everyone kind of greeted me with the same reaction of like, are you serious? Yeah, they the business owner can't answer their own phone. So that really made me feel like, wow, what what have we been doing? And it was it was nice to be kind of like hear that because otherwise I think it was the like the stern shake I needed. We got to a point where I just I went into our database of all of our clients and I sent out a mass email and said, effective 30 days from now, we are not doing this anymore. A lot of people left because that's where they felt the value was in us answering their phone, not all the great opportunities we could generate in the intent. No worries. I was like, if we go down to zero dollars a month, I do not care because I'm so over this. A lot of people left, a handful of people said, no problem. And then everyone moving forward, here's our offer. And like we were able to get better at fulfillment because we weren't so busy doing that thing that was absolutely sucking our energy and resources.

16:27 Yeah, absolutely. Now, like, was this just like I just logged in and sent the email, or were you like in this moment of fear? Like you, you, you, you say now, like if I brought it down to nothing, right? I brought it down to nothing. But I'm sure for a lot of people listening, like, you know, in my case, like I couldn't do that. I got a wife and two kids at home that I'm the only income source that comes in our house. There is no sending an email and saying, well, we're no longer offering this and risking, you know, losing some people. Um, so it, you know, what was your thought process going into that?

17:02 It I I needed to look after myself at this point. Like, yes, I spoke with some of the coaches to figure out what to do. And like we had some, and that may have been a little dramatic, so we can't clip that piece and run with that. But there was a little bit more that went into it. Like, we had some clients who prepaid, or we had contracts in place with others.

17:24 Yeah.

17:24 But the the long and short of it was we went in and we did say, like, it wasn't one email to everyone, but it was the same version of like, hey, we have a duty to fulfill for you when this is done. We're done answering the phones, or hey, gotcha, you're you know, two months into a six-month contract, like we're going to bring this for another month or two, and then we're gonna reduce your retainer by X amount. So we're trying to give them like, but ultimately we did lose probably like a third of our revenue, like right away. But that to me, like my my piece and I was getting chill saying it because it's just like knowing that that was done and that conversation that was like weighing so heavy on me was over, felt so good after. And then it was like, cool, now we can move forward and just rebuild this a lot healthier. And now the relationship with team members are healthier, the relationship with clients are better, the relationship like it's just I feel better. And like everyone always says, if if you got to put the mask on yourself. So I feel better, I can lead from the front now because I'm in just a better headspace. So short-term pain. And if you told me, Brad, this is where we'd be in September and what we have going on now back in January, I there's not a chance I'd believe you.

18:39 Yeah. So it it in a way sounds like you got to cut the fat in order to be able to get to that next level in your agency. So for those of you listening, like if you got something in your business where it's like, I really just need to cut this because it's you know drowning us in a way and not able to allow us to get to that next level. You're kind of saying, like, if you can afford to take the risk, like just do it because it's gonna unlock a whole nother level of opportunities for you. Um, did you guys have to go through besides clients? Like, was there uh did you have to go through and cut like team members' costs, like those types of things too, and kind of reshape your entire team?

19:14 Yeah, yeah. We did, we did let go of a team member. That was that was probably one of the hardest things because this was a team member who was with me for almost two and a half years, and we had some really good times together. We we accomplished a lot. She's an amazing person. And like full ownership because of all this stress that came on from it. Again, I wasn't the best version of myself. I wasn't showing up properly, and and we were butting heads a lot, and unfortunately got to a point where that relationship couldn't be repaired. And I had to make the difficult decision that, you know, we we need to part ways. So that like that hurt, that was really hard. That weighed on me. But again, getting on the other side of it, and I I think she would probably agree if I was to speak with her or if she happened to hear this, she's probably in a much better spot now as well, and in a better position. So you mentioned like if if it's something you can afford to do, and I'm I'm not married, I don't have two kids like you, but I would still challenge to a certain degree, even if it like maybe not all the way to zero, because that's crazy. But like you gotta weigh out what your peace of mind is worth.

20:24 Yeah.

20:24 Because like you can find new clients, you can redo those things, and letting go was hard, and it'd be hard to do again. But I I'm I'm so happy I did it.

20:33 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, in a way, as you were talking, I was kind of thinking back like uh last year, beginning of 2025. Like I had my agency, and then I was like looking at like kind of the same thing, like what can I cut, what can I pivot? I'm not happy doing this. And I was looking at my client book, and it was like agency owners, I had a few agencies that had hired us to basically go out and find web devs for them. And so we were kind of doing like our own little like talent fees model inside of the agency. I was like, those are the people I love working with the most. And so I had to kind of weigh this risk. We only had one kid at the time, but we had to weigh this risk of like, is it worth launching this new company and risking all of my clients in the agency seeing me run this other company and basically think like, oh, Brad's already on to the next thing, like and jump ship? Because I couldn't afford to do that, right? But we did it and it all you know, kind of same thing looking at the other side. It's like, why did I make that jump sooner? type thing, right? Uh, because you always uh hindsight's always 2020, right? So yeah.

21:29 Well, I I would love to ask you, like, what made you kind of find like step off the edge or like take that leap? Because you you kind of had it sounded like you kind of had your toes in both schools, and then you did it. Like, what was that final push where like I I'm I'm I'm doing it?

21:46 Yeah. Uh, you know, it's it's one thing for me not to achieve my goals for me, uh, but it's a another thing to not achieve goals and it affect the people that I love and care the most. And I uh Hit a point. My son was born in November of 24. Uh, my wife in the I think it was February of 25, was set to go back to work. And her dream was to be able to be at home with the kids. Uh, and I I remember, uh, so um Adam McJesney, who purchased my book of business and my agency in September of last year, he was a coach of mine, now a really good friend. And I remember being on a coaching call with him and just in tears. And I'm like, I cannot believe that I am sitting where I am in this agency and that my wife is back at work today. This was like day three of her going back to work. And that I failed her. Like I failed her, I failed our kid, like she cannot be at home with our kids. And so, like, um, he and I began conversations then about what it would look like for us to like merge our agencies, me go work for him and everything, and did a personality test and realized like we're the exact same person on paper on these like Colbier tests and everything. This is just gonna end in like a relationship gone bad. So we wound up not going that path, but then that's where I began doing like that deep research. And it was like, you know what? Like, I I have to give this like one last like hail Mary in a way to like be able to, by the end of the year, bring my wife home from work, right? And then we get pregnant with a second kid, my son wasn't out of the hospital, uh, all these things, and it was like becoming more and more of a reality by the end of the year. Um, but like sitting in February of last year when I'm like literally in my truck on this Zoom call, like just in tears, like I would have never thought where I'm at today, right? And it's just like, why don't we just say take the wheel, like the God universe, who who, whoever, whatever you know, people listening believe in to just like let God or the universe take control on there.

23:50 So well, and not this is kind of the host in me coming out, so I apologize. Yeah, you're good. I want to hide your podcast, but go right ahead. It sounds like you know, diamond diamonds are made under pressure, but you took action and like you, I don't know. So there's there's some times where just like you need that sounds like a lot of pressure, Brad. And that's that's crazy. And you know, I'm I'm pumped for where you're at now. I wouldn't want to go through what you were talking about, but it's sometimes like pressure produces like the best version of people and it gets them into something they couldn't have dreamt if they just stayed elsewhere. So I dude, I'm I'm happy for you.

24:25 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean it's it's one of those things like you uh when your back's against the wall, you know, the diamonds under pressure when your back's against the wall, that's when you you most uh persevere um in a way on there. So uh, you know, one of the things we're we're here on the Agency Advantage podcasts, and uh I know kind of looking through my notes here, um, we just recently went through a a rebrand of the podcast. I launched it under the name Unfucked Agency, like thought it was this cool name, uh, and it was, but like a lot of people were like, hey man, like I can't be on the podcast. I'd love to, but because I'm involved with this nonprofit or I'm an adjunct professor, whatever, I can't be honest. We had to change the name, right? And I had just launched it four episodes in. We have to change the whole name. It was ridiculous. Um, but it was served for the better because now I'm seeing a huge uptick in terms of people wanting to be on it. From what I'm seeing is your podcast used to be CFO Chronicles, and now it's the accounting least now podcast. Um, why did you guys go through that that process of like changing the name and everything?

25:31 Yeah, so there we went through a big rebrand. And and this is almost painful to say as a marketing company for so the business is technically still registered as 9-2 media. It's been that since since we began. That's what goes out on our invoices. We have some email addresses with that domain, but forever our ads we would run as accounting leads now from an ac from that Facebook page. But then we'd show up to trade shows and have all this 9-2 media, you know, banners and assets. And people at accounting conferences are like, what's nine to media? Are you guys a media company? Like, what what do you do? Didn't speak anything to how we're helping firms. I was like, Well, we have this Facebook page that accounting leads now. Like it's it's very direct. There's no like wondering what we do. Our podcast was called CFO Chronicles, and this is when we were kind of making that shift from all the LinkedIn outreach to help attract CFO type clients, and then we were going to local service ads to get tax prep all the way up. So it didn't make sense anymore to keep kind of promoting a CFO narrative when we were also looking now to bring on bookkeepers and monthly accountants and tax preparers and tax planners. So when when was it? I think it was probably this past winter, I think. Um, just like went all in on the Accounting Leads Now logo, the Accounting Leads Now website, just changed the podcast there to be cohesive with the name. So that that's what we did as well. And um, I mean, similar to what you were saying, yeah, we had a we had a lot of episodes. I can't remember, we were we were past four. And but I also was like, we're not Coca-Cola. No one's no one's gonna care. Who's gonna care? And why don't we just think about like moving forward? And so yeah, that's that and that's it's been so much better showing up to trade shows now, like having these shirts and hats, and like our booth says it. And when people look at who the vendors are, accounting leads now, I like to think jumps off the page because it says what we do.

27:35 Yeah, you you do accounting leads now, right? And so it makes it a lot of things.

27:39 The urgency's there. So it's been a nice, it's been a nice rebrand.

27:43 Yeah. That's you know, that's exactly what we did. And it was like, you know, it's it's weird to do like, you know, I can't do like get get talent now type thing. I could, but like for us, it's like, you know, agency advantage, make it real easy. You know, it's something about agencies uh on the podcast. But then my Facebook group is Agency Advantage, our book that we're working on is agency advantage. So it's like all one part of like the talent views brand. Um, but you know, what we'll do is like at like trade shows up and FAs, we'll have like our talent views booth, but we'll probably have like one segment on there that just is like the Agency Advantage podcast, and you know, all of our branding says powered by talent views and everything like that to kind of have that uh that cohesiveness. Um but like one of the things we did is we had one of my team members had Claude Cowork go through our account and on our podcast recording platform, and basically all of my like first four episodes, I think it was four or five episodes that said unfucked agency, just basically cut that part out. So like now everything is relaunched under the new brand. And so we just basically cut like anything that said unfucked on there, and it was like, cool, like this, this works there. So uh for if you know anybody's listening, they're kind of thinking about going through like a a rebrand, like you don't have to like start a brand new podcast, like just just roll out the new brand on top of it. And we didn't even have to go that far as like changing that. Like we could just let it roll and add something in the notes of like, hey, we changed the podcast, but to your point, we're not we're not Coca-Cola, we're not Pepsi. So like what's the and what's the big deal?

29:09 Have some fun with it. I think we just we just hit it head on with a social media post and probably a video that just said, like, you know, lol at us. We're a marketing company that hasn't even been like talking about what we properly do, and we've been kind of doing this behind the scenes for years, but now we're just doing it head on. Uh-huh. Like we just attacked the elephant in the room right away rather than leaving speculation on the table. So I don't know. We just owned it and here we are.

29:34 Absolutely. So one of the things you said in the the intake form with us was you said uh that you were stubborn for better or for worse. Uh and so, like, do you feel like there was a point like when you were refusing to quit that it actually cost you something that you can't get back? Or do you feel like, hey, like that mentality I have has served me well?

29:56 Yeah, that's a really good question. I don't know if there's anything that we I mean, time, maybe. Um, that's one of the first one that comes to mind. But I think the stubbornness to a certain degree is maybe a strength of mine where like I just know, like, I cannot lose unless I actually quit. And I know there's times where quitting that's gonna help propel you forward. I think we've like, we've micro quit in a lot of areas, you know, whatever that looks like, failures, quitting. I don't think quitting's always a bad thing. Um, but I think in the grand scheme of things for this, like we're coming up on seven years now since launching this, which is kind of hard to believe. And that's just from not quitting. It's just from like sheer, like, I'm going to make this work. I do not want to go work for someone else. And now I'm like, I do not want to have to let go of team members. So it's just I'm too stubborn to quit.

30:52 Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's one of those things like people say quit, right? And like I I had a FinTech company that we launched in college. We raised $135,000 from friends and family, uh, crowdfunding these investments, and had to close the doors after 18 months. And it was like in the moment, like I felt like I quit, right? I quit on being an entrepreneur, I quit on my dreams. Um, and it was like now I say that I tossed in the towel, right? And it was like this was just like I'm tossing in the towel for now, and I'm gonna come back to entrepreneurship. It was like six months later, I worked a job and was like, I can't work a job anymore, and we're opening up a marketing agency, right? Um, but there was times where in my agency, I probably should have tossed in the towel and I and I did not. Um, and so when do you feel like, you know, for some people, it's like um this aspect of knowing the difference when the thing worth like to be able to know the difference between the thing worth being stubborn about and then like things you should have let go, you know, a year ago, two years ago, type thing. How do you now looking back balance that?

31:59 I feel like us deciding to stop answering phones for clients and stop being that virtual assistant, which like you never even intended to be. It kind of just like became a thing. And then when asking team members, like, oh hi, what do you guys, you know, what do you guys spend your day on? Hearing it, I'm like, that's not what like we ever said what we were gonna do, but it just it morphed into this monster. So now I would think about am I happy? Like, is is this filling my cup? Do I see light on the other side of the tunnel? Is the team happy? Like, what's the general culture going on inside the company? But probably going back to like putting the mask on yourself and are are you happy with what's going on? Because if you're not, maybe it's time to let something go. And saw a great video or story from Chris Rodriguez the other day on Instagram where she was talking about letting like letting go of something to go faster, and then use the F1 analogy, like how they're always trying to slim down the car to go faster. And that really hit me because especially with AI and all these things, and there's there's all like you can build websites, you can do all these things for clients, but if you just get really good at one thing, you could probably go so much faster, or you can go so much faster. So now I'm kind of in the mindset of like, what can we get rid of that will actually serve us better?

33:22 Yeah, absolutely. Well, even that was us. Like we when we launched, it was like we're gonna do training and support for the talent and for the agencies. And then it was like, you know, a lot of this these agency owners were coming from seven-figure agency, and I was like, they don't want another call to hop on. I kept trying to like figure out how to make those calls work. And it was like, just focus on what you're good at, which is hiring talent and helping them retain talent. Uh, don't worry about the agency owners. Like, they're good. You got to focus on the talent and use like your account management calls and client success calls to really help like coach and educate them. Uh it was one of those things that we just had to realize, like, hey, this is not something that we should be but we should be offering, right? So we just cut that piece of the pie. Um, and for a lot of people, that's uh that's hard to do. Uh one of your takeaways is don't say someone else's no for them. Uh where is it that you learn that and what did it cost you before you actually learn that as a lesson?

34:18 I believe I got this one from William Attaway. So there's a a lot of you know ties into the 7FA community. Um, obviously that we're speaking about here. But Willie, I believe William said this to me, and it just, I don't know. I started thinking about it on sales calls to even like from an from probably earlier days of just thinking like, I don't, I don't know if this person is interested. Like, should I even should I even make the ask? If you don't make the ask, they don't even have a chance to say yes. But most most recently, what really kind of brought this back to my forefront, we are I'm co-hosting an event in Nashville in November, which I'm super excited about. This is actually the first time even mentioning it in a public setting outside of the three of us talking in a group. So we're hosting a 25-person mastermind, which we're very excited about. And we started thinking like who could we potentially bring on maybe for a sponsor? Like, could we just organize all this ourselves? Should we bring on a sponsor? And I reached out to a JV partner of ours, and I was going back and forth a little bit, wondering, like, no, they've been really, been really generous to us. Is me making this ask? Is this going to come across greeting? I started getting in my head, and then I thought, they can maybe they really want to do this. And I'm I'm saying no for them. And I made the ask, and they're coming on as a great sponsor for our first event. And I never really anticipated they even would have said yes. And that is just an opportunity wasted by not asking. Yeah. Worst case, they say no when I'm in the exact same spot I was.

35:47 Yeah, absolutely. And oftentimes we we also think of like our own pockets too, right? It's like, well, I I couldn't do this right now, or I, you know, if this was me, I wouldn't do it, right? And it's like, but it's not you, it's not your pockets, it's not your health or you know, whatever that is that you're thinking of this no for on people. And so we constantly just have to get ourselves out of uh out of that mindset. James, as we as we wrap up here, uh one of the things I love asking on here, it just as we have different people in different phases of of their business, right? Like I uh the podcast that just released, uh actually today was with Josh Crouch, right? He he runs a nine mil a year agency. So like his problems are different than my problems, a different your problems, right? Um but is nine mil good? I I think so, right? Uh, but you know, I asked him this, and so I'll I'll ask you, is like, where where in your agency do you feel like you are still personally the bottleneck today?

36:41 Yeah, I mean I mean we were we were briefly talking about this before we hit record. Uh I just got back from a three-week trip in Europe, which is awesome. It's awesome to be able to step away from the business. And we were kind of laughing about it, but I'm coming back to an empty sales calendar because there was that is just something that I own inside the business of generating new opportunities, generating leads. So I'm very much the bottleneck there. Um, to a certain degree, I don't mind it. Yes, it'd be amazing if we had someone else kind of mining some of those opportunities, but just where we're at, size-wise, cash flow, all of the things, it wouldn't make sense to have someone else there. And I don't have this full system built around bringing in a sales rep. I would just set them up for failure. Just Josh put out a video the other day, like just hiring someone thinking it's gonna fix it is not what's gonna happen. And you could attest to that. I mean, you're in the space, but um, that's that's definitely where I'm the bottleneck. Like we we have our ads turned back on, you know, I'm I'm hitting our lists really hard. But yeah, there's when I leave, yeah, there's no sales coming in. And that's not like an ego thing, it's just the reality.

37:48 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's the exact same way with us, unless there's like client upgrades, right? Like those happen while I'm gone because my team can can handle those because I don't do like account management, but that's what you and I were talking about is I'm the exact same way. I went to Punta Cana with my wife in August, and it was like, one, I couldn't sit there and do nothing. So I'm like trying to figure out things to do. But then on top of that, you know, it's like I'm not then out there creating content. And, you know, my personal brand is what generates the business. And so we're very much in that mode right now of hiring some team members on to take this from where it's at. Like I have people who edit the podcast and everything like that, but it's like, where can we take this to the next, next level, right? You know, what what got you here won't get you there. Um, and so it's always an eye-opening thing. And then once we get this dialed in for us, and once you get it dialed in for you, then it makes sense to bring on a sales rep at that point because you have enough marketing demand coming in to then fill somebody else's calendar. And then it's even better because you're on vacation, and while you're on vacation, somebody else is closing deals for you, right? And so that's that's that's always the goal and the idea to get to. So uh, well, James, you know, as we wrap up, last question for you. For anybody who's listening and, you know, maybe is going through what you've gone through where they're like, I'm thinking about burning this whole thing down and just beginning it again. Um, or you know, maybe they're thinking about launching an agency. What's your one piece of advice to them?

39:12 Believe in yourself and and just do the work. Don't don't wait for the perfect condition. And just like the the first draft is better than than nothing. Like we're talking about with the podcast, our the like my first handful of episodes. I mean, honestly, even my episode last week, it's probably still hard to listen to, but it's way better than episode one was. And our graphics are way better than they were episode one. But we just got started and then we let consistency and momentum build. So if you're getting started, just be consistent and do the thing and believe that you can make it happen.

39:46 Yeah, absolutely. Well, James, thanks again for hopping on and thank you for those who are watching or listening this episode. Go follow James. Check out Accounting Leads now and his podcast. All the links are in the notes below. This one helped you share it with another agency owner who is still trying to do it all alone and subscribe so you don't miss next week. But until next time, this is the agency advantage.