Vit Muller: 00:00:00

how do you think your experience in the ring

Vit Muller: 00:00:01

influences your approach to building systems and marketing?

Charles Craggett: 00:00:05

honest to God, I think that training martial arts is one of the

Charles Craggett: 00:00:09

most eye-opening things that you can do.

Vit Muller: 00:00:12

The comparison between SMS and email and which one you

Vit Muller: 00:00:15

found converts better and why,

Charles Craggett: 00:00:18

In our opinion, and from our numbers, text messages

Charles Craggett: 00:00:21

seem to get the best conversion rate,

Vit Muller: 00:00:23

okay, well let's get rid of the email altogether.

Vit Muller: 00:00:25

What would you say to that?

Charles Craggett: 00:00:27

I would say why

Charles Craggett: 00:00:28

you might be jumping over dollars to pick up pennies by trying to

Charles Craggett: 00:00:32

eliminate email.

Vit Muller: 00:00:33

Do you have this feeling like, am I catching up?

Vit Muller: 00:00:36

Am I catching up enough?

Charles Craggett: 00:00:38

I don't have that feeling.

Charles Craggett: 00:00:40

And the reason why I don't have that feeling is because

Vit Muller: 00:00:45

what's been like a recent success story for you?

Charles Craggett: 00:00:48

we recently grew a landscaping company

Charles Craggett: 00:00:51

their annual revenue by 60%.

Vit Muller: 00:00:54

If they wanna reach out for, for your services.

Vit Muller: 00:00:56

what's the best angle there?

Charles Craggett: 00:00:58

Facebook, you can just look up my name.

Charles Craggett: 00:01:01

you'll see me sitting next to a tiger.

Vit Muller: 00:01:06

Hello everybody.

Vit Muller: 00:01:07

Welcome to another episode on the High Level Experience podcast.

Vit Muller: 00:01:11

Our guest today is a fellow high level agency owner from Cleveland, Ohio.

Vit Muller: 00:01:15

This guy's got a killer background in sales marketing and he's all

Vit Muller: 00:01:19

about bringing a systems based approach to local service businesses.

Vit Muller: 00:01:24

When he is not busy automating the marketing world, he is throwing

Vit Muller: 00:01:27

down in the MMA ring, this dude can not only build your business,

Vit Muller: 00:01:31

but also, probably kick your butt.

Vit Muller: 00:01:33

So today we're diving into some juicy topics like systems focused marketing.

Vit Muller: 00:01:40

he infamous rule of 7 And the ultimate showdown, SMS versus email, and

Vit Muller: 00:01:46

which one really converts better, Please welcome to the show fellow

Vit Muller: 00:01:50

High leveler Charles Craggett

Charles Craggett: 00:01:58

how's it going everybody?

Charles Craggett: 00:01:59

I'm glad to be on.

Vit Muller: 00:02:00

Great to have you on the show.

Vit Muller: 00:02:01

Charles Mate, you've got this, pretty fascinating mix of

Vit Muller: 00:02:05

marketing genius and MMA prowess.

Vit Muller: 00:02:08

how do you think your experience in the ring influences your approach

Vit Muller: 00:02:11

to building systems and marketing?

Charles Craggett: 00:02:14

honest to God, I think that training martial arts is one of the

Charles Craggett: 00:02:18

most eye-opening things that you can do.

Charles Craggett: 00:02:21

it teaches you how to focus under pressure game plan.

Charles Craggett: 00:02:26

when you're training, it's best to sometimes follow a system, follow

Charles Craggett: 00:02:31

a program, and ultimately I just kind of take those sorts of lessons

Charles Craggett: 00:02:37

about the essence of martial arts.

Charles Craggett: 00:02:39

And I apply a lot of it not just to my business, but to my life overall.

Vit Muller: 00:02:45

I like that.

Vit Muller: 00:02:45

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:02:46

Talking about systems, I've done, a little bit of jujitsu training, a while back.

Vit Muller: 00:02:51

and there are systems to that too, right?

Charles Craggett: 00:02:53

Yes, a hundred percent.

Charles Craggett: 00:02:55

Yeah.

Charles Craggett: 00:02:56

Jiu-jitsu's, no joke.

Vit Muller: 00:02:57

What martial arts do you train?

Charles Craggett: 00:02:59

Muay Thai mostly.

Charles Craggett: 00:03:00

I do a little bit of everything, but I prefer the kickboxing and striking.

Charles Craggett: 00:03:04

So, Muay Thai and boxing are my two, main things that I get into.

Vit Muller: 00:03:09

Brilliant.

Vit Muller: 00:03:10

And how often do you train?

Charles Craggett: 00:03:12

at this point, still four days a week.

Charles Craggett: 00:03:14

Yeah.

Charles Craggett: 00:03:15

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:03:15

it's important to exercise, isn't it?

Vit Muller: 00:03:17

I mean, running an agency is, it's a lot of sedentary work,

Vit Muller: 00:03:20

so it's, it's good for balance.

Charles Craggett: 00:03:22

Oh my gosh.

Charles Craggett: 00:03:22

Yeah.

Charles Craggett: 00:03:23

When I first started this agency, I kind of was, doing the sleep under your desk

Charles Craggett: 00:03:28

work sun up to sundown kind of thing.

Charles Craggett: 00:03:30

and that did help with building the agency.

Charles Craggett: 00:03:33

But then I looked at myself, I'm like, oh, I'm fat and I'm tired.

Charles Craggett: 00:03:37

I had to go ahead and get back on my activity.

Charles Craggett: 00:03:40

Otherwise, you know, just like you said, this can be a very good job, a

Charles Craggett: 00:03:45

very good gig, a very good business, but ultimately very sedentary.

Vit Muller: 00:03:50

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:03:51

Well that's, so, yeah, I was actually gonna ask you that if you were doing

Vit Muller: 00:03:54

martial arts before you got into the agency world, sounds like it was the

Vit Muller: 00:03:57

other way as a need to do something.

Charles Craggett: 00:04:00

No, it was one of those, I've been training martial arts on and

Charles Craggett: 00:04:03

off for maybe the better part of 10 years.

Charles Craggett: 00:04:07

And, I just go through these periods in my life where I'm maybe working on something

Charles Craggett: 00:04:12

or I'm trying to accomplish something specific and I get very tunnel vision.

Charles Craggett: 00:04:17

It's a gift and a curse.

Charles Craggett: 00:04:19

and so sometimes I let all things go by the wayside.

Charles Craggett: 00:04:23

And one of the easiest things to let go by the wayside, especially when

Charles Craggett: 00:04:27

you're working from home, is going to the gym or things like that.

Charles Craggett: 00:04:32

and then for a second there too, it's well, you're making good money.

Charles Craggett: 00:04:36

you're getting these clients in the door.

Charles Craggett: 00:04:38

Do you really need to get kicked in the head?

Charles Craggett: 00:04:40

And it's Yeah, you do still need that.

Charles Craggett: 00:04:42

You need that as part of your life because it makes you feel human.

Charles Craggett: 00:04:46

It makes you feel alive, so,

Vit Muller: 00:04:47

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:04:48

And keeps you humble.

Vit Muller: 00:04:49

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:04:49

this is a good point though, like the tunnel vision.

Vit Muller: 00:04:52

That's something I can relate and I, and I would bet that a lot of people

Vit Muller: 00:04:55

listening can relate to that as well.

Vit Muller: 00:04:57

Like where, at least for me, it is like that where I'm either super distracted

Vit Muller: 00:05:03

because I've got a lot of tabs open and I'm trying to stay on top of the latest

Vit Muller: 00:05:07

AI and manage inboxes and build custom.

Vit Muller: 00:05:11

Automation and I've got a meeting coming up and lots of different things

Vit Muller: 00:05:15

that this strikes you through the day.

Vit Muller: 00:05:17

But then I, when I get lucky and I get really organized and I've

Vit Muller: 00:05:20

got a day without meetings, I can go like full on into one thing

Vit Muller: 00:05:24

and go really deep and detailed.

Vit Muller: 00:05:27

And sounds like you, you know, you've got the

Charles Craggett: 00:05:30

Yeah.

Charles Craggett: 00:05:30

Yeah.

Charles Craggett: 00:05:31

And that was

Charles Craggett: 00:05:31

something that I had to, yeah, I had to be intentional about working on that.

Charles Craggett: 00:05:36

because, you know, your health is your wealth.

Charles Craggett: 00:05:38

You can't do anything unless you know you're healthy, both

Charles Craggett: 00:05:42

spiritually, mentally, and physically.

Charles Craggett: 00:05:45

Right.

Charles Craggett: 00:05:45

and that's why I, that's why I really enjoy martial arts.

Charles Craggett: 00:05:48

It kind of hits that trifecta for me.

Charles Craggett: 00:05:50

Of all three of them.

Vit Muller: 00:05:51

What inspired you to start your agency?

Charles Craggett: 00:05:54

So I was working in insurance sales.

Charles Craggett: 00:05:59

at the time I had my own agency and we had built it up pretty well.

Charles Craggett: 00:06:05

I had a team of about 10 agents at the time, and COVID wound up happening.

Charles Craggett: 00:06:12

I'm sure we all remember COVID, and then everybody got locked in their

Charles Craggett: 00:06:15

houses and everything like that.

Charles Craggett: 00:06:17

Well, they still expected us to sell life insurance to people, but they

Charles Craggett: 00:06:22

gave us the most rinky dink phone system, communication system

Charles Craggett: 00:06:28

I've ever experienced in my life.

Charles Craggett: 00:06:30

And since I was an agency owner, I was thankful.

Charles Craggett: 00:06:34

I had a little bit of pull.

Charles Craggett: 00:06:36

So I said, well, I'm just going to build my own internal marketing system.

Charles Craggett: 00:06:41

I'm gonna sit down and I'm going to learn how to do these things.

Charles Craggett: 00:06:45

So it started with me learning how to set up CRMs, and that's how

Charles Craggett: 00:06:49

I got exposed to go high level.

Charles Craggett: 00:06:52

And then that turned into learning about a variety of different,

Charles Craggett: 00:06:56

advertising strategies, whether it's paid ads, SEO web design, answer engine

Charles Craggett: 00:07:03

optimization, whatever it is, right?

Charles Craggett: 00:07:05

I just decided to just become a sponge because I wasn't doing anything else.

Charles Craggett: 00:07:09

We were locked in the house.

Charles Craggett: 00:07:11

So, I was able to, in between sales and while building this internal

Charles Craggett: 00:07:16

marketing system, teach myself about all these different types of advertising.

Charles Craggett: 00:07:22

And when I finally launched that system for my agency, we were still

Charles Craggett: 00:07:27

hitting record breaking months even during a global pandemic.

Charles Craggett: 00:07:32

So I'm like, wow, these systems can really work.

Charles Craggett: 00:07:36

And a friend of mine reached out to me, he's in the window replacement business,

Charles Craggett: 00:07:41

and he's Hey, I see what you've built as far as running your marketing through.

Charles Craggett: 00:07:47

Do you think it could work for a business like mine too?

Charles Craggett: 00:07:51

And I said.

Charles Craggett: 00:07:51

Yeah, I could.

Charles Craggett: 00:07:52

I don't see any reason why it couldn't.

Charles Craggett: 00:07:55

And so he paid me a couple hundred bucks.

Charles Craggett: 00:07:58

I didn't know what to charge at the time.

Charles Craggett: 00:07:59

He paid me a couple hundred dollars.

Charles Craggett: 00:08:02

I set up his whole system for him, taught him how to use it, everything like that.

Charles Craggett: 00:08:07

And he really enjoyed it.

Charles Craggett: 00:08:10

He enjoyed it so much that he started telling more and more people about me.

Charles Craggett: 00:08:13

And it just sort of dawned on me, wow, I could make a business out of this.

Charles Craggett: 00:08:19

and that's when I started going on YouTube and I realized, oh, there's a

Charles Craggett: 00:08:23

lot of people who are building these sort of marketing and automations

Charles Craggett: 00:08:28

and digital creation agencies.

Charles Craggett: 00:08:31

So it started off with us just building CRMs for people.

Charles Craggett: 00:08:36

Then we added advertising, then we added things like web

Charles Craggett: 00:08:40

design and custom automations.

Charles Craggett: 00:08:42

And, you know, we've just been growing and I'm really blessed with that.

Vit Muller: 00:08:48

That's, well, well done.

Vit Muller: 00:08:49

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:08:49

So you started as an, just so I understand that you were an agency

Vit Muller: 00:08:53

working for an insurance company and helping them get more life

Vit Muller: 00:08:57

insurance deals, and then you build an agency around that, like a vendor.

Charles Craggett: 00:09:01

yeah, so in, and I'm not sure how it works over where

Charles Craggett: 00:09:05

you're at, but when you work for an insurance company, you create an

Charles Craggett: 00:09:11

insurance agency underneath that company.

Charles Craggett: 00:09:14

So you're writing insurance for them, but it's your own individual agency.

Charles Craggett: 00:09:20

But it was just purely an insurance agency,

Vit Muller: 00:09:24

Right.

Vit Muller: 00:09:25

So B2B, B2C.

Charles Craggett: 00:09:27

yes.

Charles Craggett: 00:09:27

And so, mm-hmm.

Charles Craggett: 00:09:29

And so then I got the idea to actually start a marketing and

Charles Craggett: 00:09:36

automations agency after building out our internal system, seeing

Charles Craggett: 00:09:41

them work and saying, you know what?

Charles Craggett: 00:09:43

I could go B2B and instead of haggling with, people about $60 a month, I'd

Charles Craggett: 00:09:50

rather go through the process of maybe haggling with a business, for

Charles Craggett: 00:09:55

a much larger contract where we're really moving the needle and getting

Charles Craggett: 00:09:58

more business in the door for them.

Vit Muller: 00:10:00

Are you still in the insurance space?

Charles Craggett: 00:10:03

I still, I actually have a couple clients that are in the insurance

Charles Craggett: 00:10:07

space, but no, I've since left insurance.

Charles Craggett: 00:10:09

I don't sell it anymore.

Charles Craggett: 00:10:10

I don't have a team.

Charles Craggett: 00:10:12

I just have my original book of business that still pays me a little bit.

Vit Muller: 00:10:16

Yeah, because I mean, let's talk about sales, right?

Vit Muller: 00:10:18

The idea of.

Vit Muller: 00:10:19

Cold calling or I don't even really know, like the business of selling insurance.

Vit Muller: 00:10:25

It's interesting to me though, but the idea of speaking to somebody on

Vit Muller: 00:10:29

the phone and like having to sell them insurance, I have no idea if

Vit Muller: 00:10:32

that's something I would enjoy doing.

Vit Muller: 00:10:34

how does that work?

Vit Muller: 00:10:35

how do you sell insurance?

Charles Craggett: 00:10:36

It wasn't, it wasn't the most fun thing, but the way that

Charles Craggett: 00:10:40

we used to sell it was people would mail in a postcard or something of

Charles Craggett: 00:10:45

that nature to our company saying that they're interested in life insurance.

Charles Craggett: 00:10:51

we would get that card.

Charles Craggett: 00:10:52

We would give them a call if they decided to go through the

Charles Craggett: 00:10:56

process and get a quote with us.

Charles Craggett: 00:10:57

That's great.

Charles Craggett: 00:10:58

More often than not, we had people telling us to piss off and all the

Charles Craggett: 00:11:02

other stuff, you know, so it is exactly like what you think it is.

Charles Craggett: 00:11:07

However,

Vit Muller: 00:11:08

wait, hang on.

Charles Craggett: 00:11:09

was really enjoyable.

Vit Muller: 00:11:10

Wait, you say mailing, they had to mail it back.

Vit Muller: 00:11:13

That sounds I mean

Charles Craggett: 00:11:15

It was archaic.

Charles Craggett: 00:11:16

Yes.

Vit Muller: 00:11:17

that's

Charles Craggett: 00:11:18

Like

Charles Craggett: 00:11:18

insurance is.

Charles Craggett: 00:11:20

Yeah.

Charles Craggett: 00:11:20

So back during that time especially, insurance is kind of archaic.

Charles Craggett: 00:11:26

It doesn't move very quickly with new technology, stuff like that,

Charles Craggett: 00:11:31

because there just aren't a lot of people who come into that industry

Charles Craggett: 00:11:34

and really push to innovate things.

Charles Craggett: 00:11:36

Right.

Charles Craggett: 00:11:37

Because it's in it, especially in America.

Charles Craggett: 00:11:40

Insurance is like one of the biggest institutions, bar

Charles Craggett: 00:11:44

none in the United States.

Charles Craggett: 00:11:46

There's an ungodly amount of money flowing through these insurance

Charles Craggett: 00:11:50

trusts and everything like that.

Charles Craggett: 00:11:52

And so they're like, what's the incentive to improve?

Vit Muller: 00:11:55

right.

Charles Craggett: 00:11:56

we're already beyond loaded.

Charles Craggett: 00:11:58

We've got these customers who pay us a, b, C per month.

Charles Craggett: 00:12:01

extrapolate that across the entire United States.

Charles Craggett: 00:12:05

Why would we worry about changing anything?

Charles Craggett: 00:12:08

And so that works for them all the way at the top.

Charles Craggett: 00:12:11

But as a young hungry kid that was coming in and trying to build a business

Charles Craggett: 00:12:17

in insurance, that didn't work for me.

Charles Craggett: 00:12:20

so I

Charles Craggett: 00:12:21

was the person who was gonna innovate.

Vit Muller: 00:12:23

yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:12:24

Well, it sounds that was actually a perfect opportunity for you because

Vit Muller: 00:12:27

there wasn't nobody doing it, so, I mean, yeah, it's just mind boggling that people

Vit Muller: 00:12:32

were sending by post stuff, so Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:12:34

So that's an easy one actually.

Charles Craggett: 00:12:36

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:12:36

go digital.

Charles Craggett: 00:12:38

exactly, we started advertising online.

Charles Craggett: 00:12:41

doing, it was a simple Facebook ads funnel.

Charles Craggett: 00:12:45

we pushed it to an ebook offer, that just kind of educated on them on things

Charles Craggett: 00:12:51

they needed to know about life insurance.

Charles Craggett: 00:12:53

once they signed up for that ebook, they got the notification that they

Charles Craggett: 00:12:57

could book a consultation call with us.

Charles Craggett: 00:13:00

once they jump on the call, then it's just us consulting them on their

Charles Craggett: 00:13:04

options and getting 'em signed up.

Charles Craggett: 00:13:06

So we were able to really simplify that process and we were one of

Charles Craggett: 00:13:11

the only agencies at the time really doing stuff like that.

Charles Craggett: 00:13:15

And now, you know, more and more people have discovered this stuff.

Charles Craggett: 00:13:19

They're doing more of it now, and these agencies are really doing some phenomenal

Charles Craggett: 00:13:24

things in insurance using high level and other CRMs and stuff of that nature.

Charles Craggett: 00:13:29

But, We, like you said, we were one of the first ones to do it, and this is,

Charles Craggett: 00:13:35

doing this as an agency and selling B2B is, it's way more enjoyable than B2C

Charles Craggett: 00:13:42

selling over the phone doing insurance.

Charles Craggett: 00:13:44

So, transitioning to building my own, automations and marketing

Charles Craggett: 00:13:50

agency was a no brainer.

Vit Muller: 00:13:52

Yeah, brilliant.

Vit Muller: 00:13:53

that there are principles that apply to any industry when

Vit Muller: 00:13:56

it comes to marketing, right?

Vit Muller: 00:13:57

You gotta build awareness, then move them into considering you,

Vit Muller: 00:14:01

and then go into decisions.

Vit Muller: 00:14:02

So with insurance, like you said, you had a funnel, you were driving

Vit Muller: 00:14:06

people from art into a, a lead magnet.

Charles Craggett: 00:14:09

Yes.

Vit Muller: 00:14:10

What I'm curious to know is your conversions.

Vit Muller: 00:14:13

I would suspect the conversion from a lead magnet onto book in a call.

Vit Muller: 00:14:16

That's where typically you see like a big drop off.

Vit Muller: 00:14:18

Right.

Vit Muller: 00:14:19

Um, what you found worked well at optimizing that.

Charles Craggett: 00:14:24

So honestly, where we found a lot of success

Charles Craggett: 00:14:29

was, of course, we're using the ebook as the top of funnel, right?

Charles Craggett: 00:14:33

We're using the ebook as the top of funnel and the main goal, yes,

Charles Craggett: 00:14:39

we want conversions and things like that, but the main goal of the ebook

Charles Craggett: 00:14:43

was really just to build our list.

Charles Craggett: 00:14:46

Okay.

Charles Craggett: 00:14:47

Hormozi talks a lot about the power of having a list and the compounding

Charles Craggett: 00:14:52

effect it has on your business, right?

Charles Craggett: 00:14:55

So it doesn't matter whether you're, 'cause right now I don't

Charles Craggett: 00:14:58

work, in insurance anymore, right?

Charles Craggett: 00:15:01

I'm primarily working with local service businesses.

Charles Craggett: 00:15:03

But this applies the same way, right?

Charles Craggett: 00:15:06

Where if I've got this list of people who were somewhat interested in my

Charles Craggett: 00:15:13

product or service, and I've now got their email and their te and their phone

Charles Craggett: 00:15:18

number so I can reach out to them at will any given time, that's where I'm

Charles Craggett: 00:15:24

getting most of the conversions from.

Charles Craggett: 00:15:26

So that's how we focused on optimizing that.

Charles Craggett: 00:15:29

We're like, Hey, great.

Charles Craggett: 00:15:30

If they come immediately through the ebook and then book an appointment that

Charles Craggett: 00:15:35

happened maybe 20, 30% of the time, right?

Charles Craggett: 00:15:38

And then we maybe had.

Vit Muller: 00:15:40

That's a good number,

Charles Craggett: 00:15:41

Yeah.

Charles Craggett: 00:15:42

and then, but then we, we have to factor in that even though these

Charles Craggett: 00:15:47

people might have booked a call, they might not have showed up to the call.

Charles Craggett: 00:15:51

Right?

Charles Craggett: 00:15:52

So, you know, so, so it's really closer to maybe 10, 15% when

Charles Craggett: 00:15:57

you take that into account.

Charles Craggett: 00:15:59

But what we noticed is that by building that list and consistently sending out

Charles Craggett: 00:16:06

emails, consistently sending out text messages to the entire list, whether

Charles Craggett: 00:16:10

they booked an appointment or not, that's how we were able to get to a consistent

Charles Craggett: 00:16:16

30% conversion rate on the things that we were bringing in from the ebook.

Vit Muller: 00:16:21

Brilliant.

Vit Muller: 00:16:22

So long term nurture, follow up.

Vit Muller: 00:16:24

A lot of businesses, that's where they, that's where they miss

Vit Muller: 00:16:26

most of the opportunity, right?

Vit Muller: 00:16:28

they run ads or they have somebody run ads for them.

Vit Muller: 00:16:31

They try and follow up with all the fresh leads, and then they don't have

Vit Muller: 00:16:35

anything in place to nurture the rest.

Vit Muller: 00:16:37

How long did you, how long were your nurture sequences?

Charles Craggett: 00:16:41

typically we would have the most aggressive nurture

Charles Craggett: 00:16:45

sequences where we're reaching out to them every couple of days, maybe

Charles Craggett: 00:16:50

for the first two weeks or so.

Charles Craggett: 00:16:52

and it's more about, Hey, you got this ebook.

Charles Craggett: 00:16:55

Hey, you were interested in coverage.

Charles Craggett: 00:16:57

Hey, you know, so it's like we're trying to catch them while that thought

Charles Craggett: 00:17:01

was still in their brain, right?

Charles Craggett: 00:17:03

But after that initial aggressive two week campaign, we moved them to

Charles Craggett: 00:17:10

the long-term nurture where we're sending them a text and an email.

Charles Craggett: 00:17:15

An email goes out, every week, and a text message goes out like every 10 days.

Charles Craggett: 00:17:22

And then as that lead gets older, the cadence just gets a little bit wider.

Charles Craggett: 00:17:27

'cause we don't wanna spam people to death, nor do we

Charles Craggett: 00:17:30

wanna, you know, make our sales teams, sit there and have to dig

Charles Craggett: 00:17:35

through a bunch of old opportunities.

Charles Craggett: 00:17:37

We'd prefer that the computer reaches out to the old opportunities and they

Charles Craggett: 00:17:41

focus on the hot people who are coming through the door, as well as the hot

Charles Craggett: 00:17:45

people that, are responding to the messaging and email campaigns and stuff.

Charles Craggett: 00:17:50

So we don't want to bog our team down with the tedious follow-up.

Charles Craggett: 00:17:55

Right.

Charles Craggett: 00:17:55

So that was the main thought process there.

Vit Muller: 00:17:59

Yeah, most of listeners here are agency owners, so what we're talking

Vit Muller: 00:18:04

about here is not rocket science, right?

Vit Muller: 00:18:07

This is, Traditional principles of how marketing should be done and have been

Vit Muller: 00:18:10

long and nurtured, sequence in place.

Vit Muller: 00:18:13

one thing I am interested to know from you is, and that was in my intro, the, the

Vit Muller: 00:18:18

comparison between SMS and email and which one you found converts better and why,

Charles Craggett: 00:18:24

So,

Vit Muller: 00:18:24

is there even a winner?

Vit Muller: 00:18:26

Because, how do you compare that?

Vit Muller: 00:18:28

have you done only purely SMS and have you done purely email?

Vit Muller: 00:18:32

And then have you done both in tandem, what AB split test, what have you tried?

Vit Muller: 00:18:37

How do you come to that conclusion to whatever the answer is?

Charles Craggett: 00:18:41

In our opinion, and from our numbers, text messages

Charles Craggett: 00:18:44

seem to get the best conversion rate, uh, especially in regards to the

Charles Craggett: 00:18:48

services that we're working in now.

Charles Craggett: 00:18:51

we're working with landscapers, we're working with roofers, we're working with

Charles Craggett: 00:18:54

people like that, folks in the trades.

Charles Craggett: 00:18:57

the reason why we believe text messages work better is because, and I'm not

Charles Craggett: 00:19:01

sure if the same thing is true in Australia, but everyone in America

Charles Craggett: 00:19:06

walks around with their head and their phone twenty four seven, right?

Charles Craggett: 00:19:10

they're always holding it, they're always scrolling on it.

Charles Craggett: 00:19:13

They're always texting on it.

Charles Craggett: 00:19:14

They're always doing something on it, right?

Charles Craggett: 00:19:16

an email can come into your email.

Charles Craggett: 00:19:20

It might get sorted into a promotions inbox.

Charles Craggett: 00:19:23

And most people, they've signed up for so many different things over

Charles Craggett: 00:19:28

the course of their lives that their inboxes are just like loaded.

Charles Craggett: 00:19:34

With nonsense.

Charles Craggett: 00:19:35

So the likelihood of your email, even being seen, let alone acknowledged and

Charles Craggett: 00:19:40

then converting into a sale, is relatively low, which is why emails rely on volume.

Charles Craggett: 00:19:46

They're cheap to sell, they're cheap to send.

Charles Craggett: 00:19:49

and we can blast a lot of them out, very quickly with very minimal spend.

Charles Craggett: 00:19:54

Right?

Charles Craggett: 00:19:54

But text messages little more expensive.

Charles Craggett: 00:19:58

But we notice that way more people see our text messages

Charles Craggett: 00:20:03

than they ever open our emails.

Charles Craggett: 00:20:06

They're at least aware of us.

Charles Craggett: 00:20:08

And then it also kind of goes to what I really like the marketing

Charles Craggett: 00:20:13

concept of the rule of seven.

Charles Craggett: 00:20:15

Where someone needs to get in touch with your brand or be aware of your brand at

Charles Craggett: 00:20:22

least seven times before they typically transact with you or reach out to you or

Charles Craggett: 00:20:28

some, you know, whatever it's going to be.

Charles Craggett: 00:20:30

Right?

Charles Craggett: 00:20:30

So the fastest way to get to that seven touches is great.

Charles Craggett: 00:20:36

We ran an ad online, that's one touch.

Charles Craggett: 00:20:38

Cool.

Charles Craggett: 00:20:39

We sent you something to your email once you filled out our form.

Charles Craggett: 00:20:42

That's touch two.

Charles Craggett: 00:20:44

Now we're sending you a text message.

Charles Craggett: 00:20:45

There's touch three and we're hitting you on all these different channels, right.

Charles Craggett: 00:20:51

Since you engaged with one of our ads.

Charles Craggett: 00:20:53

Now our retargeting is gonna continue to show us to you again, right?

Charles Craggett: 00:20:59

We're going to

Charles Craggett: 00:20:59

continuously text you, we're gonna continuously email you.

Charles Craggett: 00:21:04

And typically what we see is that the text message is the straw

Charles Craggett: 00:21:09

that breaks the camel's back.

Charles Craggett: 00:21:11

You know, where it's you know what, I'm gonna reach out to these people.

Charles Craggett: 00:21:14

And really I think it's just because of simplicity.

Charles Craggett: 00:21:17

When it comes to text messages, we use just a simple yes campaign where we

Charles Craggett: 00:21:22

present a problem that we can solve for them and then just say, reply yes,

Charles Craggett: 00:21:27

if you'd like us to work with you.

Charles Craggett: 00:21:29

It's very simple and I'm sure you've set up numerous things like that,

Charles Craggett: 00:21:32

but, a lot of people will read it.

Charles Craggett: 00:21:35

I do have this issue with my roof.

Charles Craggett: 00:21:37

I do have this issue with my plumbing right now.

Charles Craggett: 00:21:41

I do have a new property that I need to put electricity in.

Charles Craggett: 00:21:44

Yes.

Charles Craggett: 00:21:45

You know, as

Charles Craggett: 00:21:46

opposed to maybe an email where you have to go to the website or reply

Charles Craggett: 00:21:50

to the email or something like that.

Charles Craggett: 00:21:52

So I think it's just simplicity and visibility that makes text

Charles Craggett: 00:21:56

messages work a little bit better.

Vit Muller: 00:21:58

What would the argument be for saying, well,

Vit Muller: 00:22:01

if we know, and we know, right.

Vit Muller: 00:22:03

SMS, we know SMS is better.

Vit Muller: 00:22:05

but okay, well let's get rid of the email altogether.

Vit Muller: 00:22:08

What would you say to that?

Charles Craggett: 00:22:09

I would say why you might be jumping over dollars

Charles Craggett: 00:22:13

to pick up pennies by trying to

Charles Craggett: 00:22:15

eliminate email.

Charles Craggett: 00:22:17

because even though email might not be the conversion point, it helps

Charles Craggett: 00:22:24

in the conversion process, you know, as, as long as you can maximize

Charles Craggett: 00:22:30

visibility with your marketing then.

Charles Craggett: 00:22:34

Everything just works itself out, right?

Charles Craggett: 00:22:36

So you wanna just have an overall budget for your marketing and an ecosystem where

Charles Craggett: 00:22:43

you're like, okay, there's text messages, there's emails, there's ads, and that's

Charles Craggett: 00:22:46

why we take a systems based approach to marketing as opposed to just trying to

Charles Craggett: 00:22:52

bits and pieces our way through, right?

Charles Craggett: 00:22:55

We wanna build an entire marketing machine so that not only are people coming in

Charles Craggett: 00:23:02

and converting consistently, but on your side, you guys have a standard

Charles Craggett: 00:23:07

operating procedure for how you guys are managing leads in intaking them,

Charles Craggett: 00:23:12

getting them booked into appointments and servicing them and collecting payments.

Vit Muller: 00:23:17

Absolutely.

Vit Muller: 00:23:18

Yep.

Vit Muller: 00:23:19

We've had, many episodes on this show, on the topic of database reactivation.

Vit Muller: 00:23:24

We had Rob Bailey on one of the very earlier episodes.

Vit Muller: 00:23:27

So, this is a very effective strategy and it works.

Vit Muller: 00:23:31

What is interesting is we are now in 2026 and, we're 20 minutes into this podcast

Vit Muller: 00:23:38

and we are talking about principles that, you know, I would've interviewed people

Vit Muller: 00:23:44

two years ago that work, and now we're talking about it and they still work.

Charles Craggett: 00:23:50

Mm-hmm.

Vit Muller: 00:23:50

however, AI is now entered the game as well, right?

Vit Muller: 00:23:54

So we have data enrichment, we can personalize the heck

Vit Muller: 00:23:57

out of it using prompt GPT.

Vit Muller: 00:23:59

We can use voice for inbound outbound now as well.

Vit Muller: 00:24:03

have you started to incorporate AI into your offering?

Charles Craggett: 00:24:06

yes.

Charles Craggett: 00:24:06

We have we do build custom writing agents, that help us put together

Charles Craggett: 00:24:11

the text and email campaigns.

Charles Craggett: 00:24:13

What we like to do is, we interview the client.

Charles Craggett: 00:24:17

Once they get onboarded with us, we talk to them about their family, their

Charles Craggett: 00:24:21

principles, what sort of business they're running, the entirety, right?

Charles Craggett: 00:24:26

And then we

Charles Craggett: 00:24:27

feed that recording, to chat GPT to build, an AI writing agent.

Charles Craggett: 00:24:33

And then on the high level side, we built a series of internal.

Charles Craggett: 00:24:39

Agents, that are just handling things like appointment, booking, client

Charles Craggett: 00:24:43

qualification, things of that nature.

Charles Craggett: 00:24:46

But yeah,

Charles Craggett: 00:24:47

no, I mean, AI is definitely on the move and it's very useful.

Charles Craggett: 00:24:52

I, I think some people, they try to over-optimize with AI and they

Charles Craggett: 00:24:56

kind of suck all the soul out of their business, and people don't

Charles Craggett: 00:25:00

really, people aren't really responding super well to AI in the sense that

Charles Craggett: 00:25:07

they're like, I don't really want to talk to a bot, and that's fine.

Charles Craggett: 00:25:11

Right?

Charles Craggett: 00:25:12

What we want to do is we want to use AI as a means of just connecting people.

Charles Craggett: 00:25:17

We wanna make sure that you're talking to the hottest lead.

Charles Craggett: 00:25:21

So the AI is going to handle the qualification, the simple appointment

Charles Craggett: 00:25:26

booking, the simple questions that a person might ask, but the person who's

Charles Craggett: 00:25:32

genuinely interested and wants to work with you, we're pushing them right to.

Charles Craggett: 00:25:37

that prospect so that they can get their service and do it as

Charles Craggett: 00:25:41

quickly as humanly possible.

Vit Muller: 00:25:43

Brilliant.

Vit Muller: 00:25:44

Yes.

Vit Muller: 00:25:45

So you do that all through workflows.

Vit Muller: 00:25:47

You build your, like workflow actions or have you also

Vit Muller: 00:25:50

delved into the, agent studio?

Charles Craggett: 00:25:53

I haven't dove super deep into the agent studio.

Charles Craggett: 00:25:56

We built just a couple of, inbound call agents, as well as SMS and email agents.

Charles Craggett: 00:26:03

so I'm still playing with it and I wanted to learn a little bit more about it, as

Charles Craggett: 00:26:09

you know, so we can progressively scale up the AI side of what we're doing because

Charles Craggett: 00:26:14

we know that's where businesses are going.

Charles Craggett: 00:26:17

Right now, we're working on, finalizing something within an AI

Charles Craggett: 00:26:21

engine optimization SER service.

Charles Craggett: 00:26:24

there's just lots of moving parts that we need to go ahead and make sure

Charles Craggett: 00:26:28

that, we're placing into our business.

Charles Craggett: 00:26:30

So AI's there, it's not going anywhere.

Charles Craggett: 00:26:34

but we believe that you should be using it to systematize things, not just replace

Charles Craggett: 00:26:40

humans, which is the common buzz word.

Charles Craggett: 00:26:42

And, you know, or buzz phrase rather, that people are pushing out

Charles Craggett: 00:26:46

there, AI's going to replace us all.

Charles Craggett: 00:26:48

And I'm like, well, no, I think it's gonna empower us.

Charles Craggett: 00:26:51

I think we'll be able to do more with less.

Charles Craggett: 00:26:54

and in my case, we run a really lean agency because of

Charles Craggett: 00:26:58

things like AI and automation.

Vit Muller: 00:27:00

Yeah, you brought an impo important point, earlier at the start

Vit Muller: 00:27:04

of talking about the AI where, you know, it's powerful, but some people

Vit Muller: 00:27:09

just overdo it just for the sake of implementing AI across everything.

Vit Muller: 00:27:14

but the critical thing here is the strategy around it.

Vit Muller: 00:27:17

So.

Vit Muller: 00:27:18

This is where, and this is still fairly early, I mean, well early, right?

Vit Muller: 00:27:22

ar, ai has been around for fair bit.

Vit Muller: 00:27:24

But the rate of innovation that's happening is just so fast.

Vit Muller: 00:27:28

So that's, that's a factor as well.

Vit Muller: 00:27:33

But definitely having a strategic approach to how you utilize it is key.

Vit Muller: 00:27:38

what I'd like to know from yourself, being in the agency space for a while.

Vit Muller: 00:27:43

how do you personally, deal with this?

Vit Muller: 00:27:47

Like the rate of innovation, how it's like significantly faster, like

Vit Muller: 00:27:52

on daily basis, you know, like what I'm trying to say, it's back before

Vit Muller: 00:27:57

ai, it was like, well, there were principles that were like pretty.

Vit Muller: 00:28:02

Set in stone, you know, services like SEO and ads and even marketing.

Vit Muller: 00:28:07

And it was just a matter of getting some experience and being good at it.

Vit Muller: 00:28:12

But then, okay, cool.

Vit Muller: 00:28:13

that forms my foundation, that's my service offering.

Vit Muller: 00:28:17

And you could build a business around that.

Vit Muller: 00:28:18

And then now things are shifting so fast that do you have this

Vit Muller: 00:28:24

feeling like, am I catching up?

Vit Muller: 00:28:27

Am I catching up enough?

Charles Craggett: 00:28:28

So I, I don't have that feeling.

Charles Craggett: 00:28:33

And the reason why I don't have that feeling is because I like to work with

Charles Craggett: 00:28:40

business owners who are like, even though there, the fact that there's a

Charles Craggett: 00:28:44

lot of innovation happening is actually a benefit to us as agency owners.

Charles Craggett: 00:28:51

Okay.

Charles Craggett: 00:28:51

Because we can position ourselves as the person who's Hey, look, we

Charles Craggett: 00:28:58

understand all of these different things are changing in marketing, in

Charles Craggett: 00:29:02

systems, in tech, in this and that.

Charles Craggett: 00:29:05

There's a lot of great things out there.

Charles Craggett: 00:29:07

There's also a lot of BS out there.

Charles Craggett: 00:29:10

It's going to be part of the services that we offer you to implement the

Charles Craggett: 00:29:15

things that we know work so that you don't waste time, money, and energy.

Vit Muller: 00:29:21

Yeah,

Charles Craggett: 00:29:21

So that's, where my, that's where my framing is I'm like,

Charles Craggett: 00:29:25

let's take advantage of the fact that there's a lot of stuff out there.

Charles Craggett: 00:29:29

We, since we're nerds and we're going to be in the weeds, learning about this

Charles Craggett: 00:29:34

stuff anyway, and since we've been exposed to a variety of tools in the past, we

Charles Craggett: 00:29:40

have the expertise to say, okay, that tool's bullshit, but this one's great.

Charles Craggett: 00:29:45

Right.

Charles Craggett: 00:29:46

sorry, I forgive my French.

Charles Craggett: 00:29:47

but this one's not that great.

Charles Craggett: 00:29:49

This one's, solid.

Charles Craggett: 00:29:51

This needs to be implemented into your business.

Charles Craggett: 00:29:53

This one is just redundant if you put it in your business, right?

Charles Craggett: 00:29:57

So we can be the person who is able to consult the busy business owner who

Charles Craggett: 00:30:03

doesn't have time to learn marketing systems, all that other stuff.

Charles Craggett: 00:30:07

I mean, my guys are tradesmen.

Charles Craggett: 00:30:09

They're up on roofs, they're fixing pipes.

Charles Craggett: 00:30:12

They're doing the work that keeps things moving, right?

Charles Craggett: 00:30:14

They don't have a whole lot of time to stop and learn how to

Charles Craggett: 00:30:18

fiddle with an AI integration.

Charles Craggett: 00:30:20

That's my

Charles Craggett: 00:30:21

job, and that's what I'm going to position myself as we're a solution

Charles Craggett: 00:30:26

for not only your marketing, but also your internal systems, because I

Charles Craggett: 00:30:32

wholeheartedly believe they're connected.

Charles Craggett: 00:30:34

And that's why when we get with the business, we typically do an

Charles Craggett: 00:30:38

overhaul of their internal systems.

Charles Craggett: 00:30:41

Just to make it easier for the leads to be distributed, for workflows

Charles Craggett: 00:30:45

to be smoother and all that stuff before we start bringing leads in.

Charles Craggett: 00:30:49

Because if the workflows aren't optimized, then that just means

Charles Craggett: 00:30:54

they're gonna burn money on ads because they're gonna be missing opportunities.

Charles Craggett: 00:30:58

'cause things are just coming into the void.

Charles Craggett: 00:31:00

So

Charles Craggett: 00:31:01

I think that as long as we present ourselves as the value is our expertise

Charles Craggett: 00:31:08

as well as our execution, we'll be fine.

Vit Muller: 00:31:11

yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:31:12

Doing the diagnosis of a client.

Vit Muller: 00:31:14

Super important.

Vit Muller: 00:31:15

Otherwise you'd be scaling, scaling, dump truck on fire.

Charles Craggett: 00:31:20

Yes.

Vit Muller: 00:31:20

we had a call before this interview and we dove into the, you know,

Vit Muller: 00:31:25

the euro, you're big on system design and, and I'm very much like that as well.

Vit Muller: 00:31:29

So we had a good chat there before, but for the listeners.

Vit Muller: 00:31:32

Maybe we can dive into that a bit more again and talk about the topic of

Vit Muller: 00:31:38

what goes into putting together, you know, there, there are services that

Vit Muller: 00:31:43

are pretty, pretty good to go out of the box, but then you're gonna get a

Vit Muller: 00:31:47

client that's got like unique use case and they need something very bespoke

Vit Muller: 00:31:51

and they want the whole overhaul.

Vit Muller: 00:31:53

So that's when you know, like I go into discovery and then I go into the system

Vit Muller: 00:31:58

design and I map it out on a whiteboard first, and then go over rounds of follow

Vit Muller: 00:32:06

up discovery calls with the client to make sure that, I get all the additional

Vit Muller: 00:32:10

feedback and then end up being a detailed visual representation, what that system.

Vit Muller: 00:32:17

Would be, and client is on the same page as me, and then only then I

Vit Muller: 00:32:21

can properly court it, and then we go into actually build it in

Vit Muller: 00:32:25

the, you know, in their account.

Charles Craggett: 00:32:28

Yeah,

Vit Muller: 00:32:28

What's your process?

Charles Craggett: 00:32:30

so our process is similar.

Charles Craggett: 00:32:34

part of, I mentioned earlier that when we intake a new client, we do

Charles Craggett: 00:32:39

an extensive interview with them.

Charles Craggett: 00:32:41

again, there's numerous reasons 'cause that video has

Charles Craggett: 00:32:46

a variety of different uses.

Charles Craggett: 00:32:48

Right.

Charles Craggett: 00:32:48

part of the questions that we ask is about their internal workflow.

Charles Craggett: 00:32:55

And the interesting thing about trades businesses is that.

Charles Craggett: 00:32:59

A lot of these guys do not actually have an internal workflow.

Charles Craggett: 00:33:05

They just kind of know what to do.

Charles Craggett: 00:33:07

But there isn't a standard procedure of how things play out and much

Charles Craggett: 00:33:12

less is anything automated, right?

Charles Craggett: 00:33:15

So to us that's actually a benefit because we would prefer to build

Charles Craggett: 00:33:20

it from scratch instead of trying to retrain somebody on a bunch of

Charles Craggett: 00:33:24

systems they've never used before.

Charles Craggett: 00:33:26

Right?

Charles Craggett: 00:33:27

if they're used to a bunch of chaos and going between a bunch of softwares

Charles Craggett: 00:33:31

and everything like that, and now we come into their business and

Charles Craggett: 00:33:34

they're like, well, now you're just gonna work inside of go high level.

Charles Craggett: 00:33:38

Some people might be a little resistant to that, but in our case, what we've

Charles Craggett: 00:33:42

been finding is these people don't have any internal system set up.

Charles Craggett: 00:33:47

They have a bunch of disconnected softwares and they're like, whatever you

Charles Craggett: 00:33:51

can do to help us systematize this, do it.

Charles Craggett: 00:33:55

That's where we're at right now.

Charles Craggett: 00:33:57

And so part of that interview is finding out if they even

Charles Craggett: 00:34:01

have a workflow to begin with.

Charles Craggett: 00:34:04

but once we lock in on the workflow that they do have or lack thereof, we

Charles Craggett: 00:34:10

actually use chat GPT to help visualize and create a more optimized version of

Charles Craggett: 00:34:17

that workflow based on the tools that are available inside of go high level,

Vit Muller: 00:34:22

You said you work with service-based businesses.

Vit Muller: 00:34:25

what kind?

Vit Muller: 00:34:26

Plumbers, roofers,

Charles Craggett: 00:34:28

plumbers, roofers, painters, electricians.

Charles Craggett: 00:34:31

if you're working in the trades, we're working with you.

Vit Muller: 00:34:35

what's been like a recent success story for you?

Charles Craggett: 00:34:38

we recently grew a landscaping company by their,

Charles Craggett: 00:34:43

we grew their annual revenue by 60%.

Charles Craggett: 00:34:46

and that was just by implementing Google local service ads and a

Charles Craggett: 00:34:54

really strong CRM with consistent, month, monthly, and, biweekly and

Charles Craggett: 00:35:00

monthly text and email follow up.

Charles Craggett: 00:35:02

Yeah, we did that over the course of the year when we first got with him.

Charles Craggett: 00:35:06

he had a strong business, lots of word of mouth, lots of referrals, but

Charles Craggett: 00:35:11

just a lot of disconnected systems.

Charles Craggett: 00:35:13

Didn't really know how to make use of his contact list.

Charles Craggett: 00:35:18

He just knew he had a pretty big list of previous customers and interested people,

Charles Craggett: 00:35:23

and he was also paying like a thousand dollars a month or something to some

Charles Craggett: 00:35:28

local news publication, to just kind of put up a billboard or put out a little

Charles Craggett: 00:35:34

magazine about him or something like that.

Charles Craggett: 00:35:37

Not, you know, total waste of money.

Charles Craggett: 00:35:38

and so.

Charles Craggett: 00:35:39

We were able to come in, take the money that he was spending on all his

Charles Craggett: 00:35:44

non-functioning advertising strategies, move it to a digital approach that

Charles Craggett: 00:35:50

focused on Google local service ads and meta ads, and then we optimized all

Charles Craggett: 00:35:56

the backend systems, added text, follow up, email, follow up, newsletters.

Charles Craggett: 00:36:01

we're huge on newsletters, especially with something like landscaping.

Charles Craggett: 00:36:05

It's very visual.

Charles Craggett: 00:36:06

So we were able to send out some great imagery to people and say,

Charles Craggett: 00:36:09

dude, your lawn could look like this.

Charles Craggett: 00:36:11

Your yard could work look like this, but you haven't worked with us yet.

Charles Craggett: 00:36:16

You know?

Charles Craggett: 00:36:17

and so

Vit Muller: 00:36:18

stay top of mind.

Vit Muller: 00:36:19

Yeah.

Charles Craggett: 00:36:20

Yep.

Charles Craggett: 00:36:20

Yep.

Vit Muller: 00:36:20

in the service trade industry, there is, job management platforms.

Vit Muller: 00:36:25

I always find that, you know, you know, it's really hard to get away.

Vit Muller: 00:36:29

You know, not having to have those with clients.

Vit Muller: 00:36:32

in an ideal world, we would love a client to just use high level for

Vit Muller: 00:36:36

everything, but there's specialized softwares like ServiceTitan,

Vit Muller: 00:36:40

or service made ServiceTitan, especially the big one in the us.

Vit Muller: 00:36:44

so, you know, when you get a client like, you know, like a plumber

Vit Muller: 00:36:47

for example, you know, they kind of rely on that software a lot.

Vit Muller: 00:36:51

what have you found, like from your own experience when it comes to

Vit Muller: 00:36:56

clients who already have that, and integrating with high level works?

Charles Craggett: 00:37:01

So there are three giants here in the US that

Charles Craggett: 00:37:06

we tend to bump into when it comes to the operation software.

Charles Craggett: 00:37:11

There's ServiceTitan, there's House Call Pro and there's jobber.

Charles Craggett: 00:37:15

the beauty of all three of these is that they do have some sort of API

Charles Craggett: 00:37:22

integration that you can tap into.

Charles Craggett: 00:37:24

So what we like to do is we like to say, look, this is going to

Charles Craggett: 00:37:30

remain your operation CRM, okay?

Charles Craggett: 00:37:34

But we're going to do all of your marketing.

Charles Craggett: 00:37:38

Inside of go high level, the only people who are going to be inside of your job or

Charles Craggett: 00:37:43

your house call pro your ServiceTitan are the legitimately interested prospects, the

Charles Craggett: 00:37:50

ones who booked an appointment or the ones who you have a call booked with, right?

Charles Craggett: 00:37:55

everybody else just stays in the go high level CRM for us to

Charles Craggett: 00:38:01

manage, and we only pass the hot leads over to you, you know, so

Charles Craggett: 00:38:06

that.

Vit Muller: 00:38:07

you don't get the client to have to log into high level at all.

Vit Muller: 00:38:10

You do it all through, through the high level for them.

Charles Craggett: 00:38:13

Yes.

Charles Craggett: 00:38:14

And then we're able to set up automations between when they update something in

Charles Craggett: 00:38:19

Jobber or House Call Pro or ServiceTitan.

Charles Craggett: 00:38:22

it updates the messaging and everything like that, that they

Charles Craggett: 00:38:25

start getting inside of high level.

Charles Craggett: 00:38:27

'cause we're just using a series of different web hooks

Charles Craggett: 00:38:29

and everything like that.

Charles Craggett: 00:38:31

I'm not huge on the technical jargon.

Charles Craggett: 00:38:34

I'm good at finding people who can help me do creative things with code and tech,

Charles Craggett: 00:38:38

and introducing them to business owners so that we can create some really cool stuff.

Charles Craggett: 00:38:44

but we tend to like to keep people in the systems and tools that they're already

Charles Craggett: 00:38:50

using, especially if they are using a Jobber Housecall Pro or ServiceTitan.

Charles Craggett: 00:38:55

We love those.

Charles Craggett: 00:38:56

and then we just implement go high level as a marketing CRM for them.

Charles Craggett: 00:39:02

We manage it as part of the services.

Charles Craggett: 00:39:05

we build the automation so that data passes back and forth between the two, so

Charles Craggett: 00:39:11

that they can run their business the exact same way, but now it's way more optimized.

Charles Craggett: 00:39:17

all of the text messages follow up and everything like

Charles Craggett: 00:39:20

that happens automatically.

Charles Craggett: 00:39:22

Invoices are going out automatically, et cetera.

Charles Craggett: 00:39:25

So we're not just stopping at just optimizing and building

Charles Craggett: 00:39:29

a high level for them.

Charles Craggett: 00:39:31

our whole agency offers based around optimizing and, cleaning

Charles Craggett: 00:39:35

up their entire internal systems.

Vit Muller: 00:39:38

Have you ever thought about also like offering like a pure SaaS?

Charles Craggett: 00:39:43

I have thought about that.

Charles Craggett: 00:39:44

especially recently.

Charles Craggett: 00:39:45

I spoke to someone and they were just talking about just

Charles Craggett: 00:39:49

building out, a software and.

Charles Craggett: 00:39:53

I think the only reason I haven't done it is just because I do enjoy,

Charles Craggett: 00:39:58

just sort of being in the weeds as like a large agency owner, but at

Charles Craggett: 00:40:03

the same time, I'm recognizing that I'm probably leaving money on the

Charles Craggett: 00:40:07

table by not just having a SAS offer.

Charles Craggett: 00:40:11

so that's something I'd like to consider and I'd love to learn more about

Vit Muller: 00:40:15

And what I mean, sars, yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:40:17

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:40:18

I mean specifically just reselling high level itself, you know, under your own

Vit Muller: 00:40:22

brand, but like getting the customers to log in and utilize it themselves.

Vit Muller: 00:40:26

you don't have any clients like that doing it that way.

Vit Muller: 00:40:28

they all manage their business in like

Charles Craggett: 00:40:30

Yeah.

Charles Craggett: 00:40:31

No.

Charles Craggett: 00:40:32

I, I tend to focus on businesses that are already pretty well established,

Charles Craggett: 00:40:37

at least 500 k or better in revenue.

Charles Craggett: 00:40:41

and they're kind of at the point where they're not just trying to get a new

Charles Craggett: 00:40:46

CRM, they just want these tools handled so they're willing to pay more to have

Charles Craggett: 00:40:54

this particular problem of marketing and systems solved versus getting

Charles Craggett: 00:41:00

bits and pieces of it and trying to figure it out themselves, or hiring

Charles Craggett: 00:41:04

someone internally to do it for them.

Charles Craggett: 00:41:06

the

Charles Craggett: 00:41:07

beauty of AI and API integrations, automations, et cetera, is that it's

Charles Craggett: 00:41:15

the same way, whether we're just giving them a high level system or we're

Charles Craggett: 00:41:19

integrating with their current systems.

Charles Craggett: 00:41:22

And CRM, once we set it up, once it runs.

Charles Craggett: 00:41:27

We're just managing it at that point.

Charles Craggett: 00:41:29

And we're just there to fix any potential errors, answer any

Charles Craggett: 00:41:33

potential questions, make the light updates and everything like that.

Charles Craggett: 00:41:37

But, we would prefer to go through the process of finding a client who's going

Charles Craggett: 00:41:42

to pay us $3,000 a month, than, in my opinion, trying to push out a software

Charles Craggett: 00:41:49

for a couple hundred dollars a month.

Charles Craggett: 00:41:51

And, maybe they train, maybe they use it, maybe they give it a shot,

Charles Craggett: 00:41:56

they cancel it after a month.

Charles Craggett: 00:41:58

It's and this might be my limited thinking 'cause I just haven't

Charles Craggett: 00:42:01

thought that far, but me personally,

Charles Craggett: 00:42:03

I just prefer going after large agency clients.

Vit Muller: 00:42:06

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:42:06

I mean, look, if it's working, you know, this, the old saying, you know,

Vit Muller: 00:42:10

if it's working, don't change it.

Vit Muller: 00:42:11

It sounds like it's working for you.

Vit Muller: 00:42:13

So well done, mate.

Vit Muller: 00:42:15

That's, that's good.

Vit Muller: 00:42:15

So your pricing is about three grand and it's like a retainer thing.

Vit Muller: 00:42:19

Does that include managing their ads or is it like an upsell for arts?

Charles Craggett: 00:42:24

So we, ty we have, a few different service offerings.

Charles Craggett: 00:42:28

It also depends on where they're located, but our average retainer is around $2,200.

Charles Craggett: 00:42:36

and our current highest retainer is $3,500 a month.

Charles Craggett: 00:42:40

that does include ads management also, the entire go high level setup and an account

Charles Craggett: 00:42:48

manager that's there to update their, text and email campaigns if they ever need to.

Charles Craggett: 00:42:54

as well as just make changes and updates to their high level as needed,

Vit Muller: 00:42:59

Okay, great.

Vit Muller: 00:43:00

So you're in.

Charles Craggett: 00:43:01

and then I was gonna say too, we also, for our local people

Charles Craggett: 00:43:05

who are right here in, in the state with us, we also offer social media management.

Charles Craggett: 00:43:10

We're partnered with a, media production company.

Charles Craggett: 00:43:14

We send a videographer out to their place of business, walk them through

Charles Craggett: 00:43:18

the entire process of filming content, then, schedule it, post it on their

Charles Craggett: 00:43:23

behalf and generate leads that way.

Charles Craggett: 00:43:25

So when I say we build an all encompassing marketing system built around their

Charles Craggett: 00:43:31

business size, and that's why we like working with larger businesses.

Charles Craggett: 00:43:34

It's look, let's come in and solve all your visibility issues,

Charles Craggett: 00:43:38

organic on the social side, paid side text and email follow up.

Charles Craggett: 00:43:43

We'll cover all the bases, and I get to kind of be a fractional CMO, so to speak.

Vit Muller: 00:43:50

Yep.

Vit Muller: 00:43:50

Brilliant.

Vit Muller: 00:43:51

That's, I like the approach with, partnering up with a content

Vit Muller: 00:43:55

creation, video creation agency.

Vit Muller: 00:43:58

Even with ai, like there's, you know, there's an appeal that you could do

Vit Muller: 00:44:02

a lot of things with AI and videos, but I think, or like creating original

Vit Muller: 00:44:07

content, going to the business, recording them, showing them how they do what

Vit Muller: 00:44:13

they do at work and let the operators within their business, the plumbers,

Vit Muller: 00:44:18

the electricians, the specialists to, to position themselves as experts on a video.

Vit Muller: 00:44:23

I think that is, excellent strategy because it comes across more real.

Vit Muller: 00:44:29

Well, it is real.

Vit Muller: 00:44:31

And so, I mean, have you tried to do any, like AI produced video as a test?

Charles Craggett: 00:44:37

Me personally, I, I don't much like the AI videos.

Charles Craggett: 00:44:41

I mean, I understand that they work and I've seen that they can

Charles Craggett: 00:44:45

generate success, but that's just me as a personal, like human being.

Charles Craggett: 00:44:50

I'm not a huge fan of the AI content creation.

Charles Craggett: 00:44:54

plus, it's just like you said, we like that human element of

Charles Craggett: 00:44:58

going to a person's place of business, showing them the reality.

Charles Craggett: 00:45:02

you know, and then there's also the side of bringing it back to where people

Charles Craggett: 00:45:08

don't much care for AI that much, so I'm like, I think that a roughly filmed

Charles Craggett: 00:45:16

video of a business owner talking about his process for manicuring, your lawn

Charles Craggett: 00:45:22

would do infinitely better than an AI generated video with the same script.

Charles Craggett: 00:45:28

Right.

Charles Craggett: 00:45:29

Just because I think this is going to be somebody that's going to, I

Charles Craggett: 00:45:33

want this person to come to my house.

Charles Craggett: 00:45:35

I know who I'm talking to.

Charles Craggett: 00:45:37

It's not some computer generated thing.

Charles Craggett: 00:45:40

It's a human, it's a person, you know?

Charles Craggett: 00:45:42

and that's what we have to remember when we're in business, especially as

Charles Craggett: 00:45:46

if we're working with, customer facing business, just regular Joe's, when

Charles Craggett: 00:45:52

it comes to just regular consumers, they aren't as MindBlown by all of the

Charles Craggett: 00:45:58

things that maybe us business owners or MindBlown by yes, your business

Charles Craggett: 00:46:03

is more efficient if you use ai, but as a consumer, I don't respond to ai.

Charles Craggett: 00:46:09

I don't care about your efficiency.

Charles Craggett: 00:46:12

I'd rather you be a little bit slower and communicate with

Charles Craggett: 00:46:15

me like I'm a human being.

Charles Craggett: 00:46:18

So I'd

Charles Craggett: 00:46:18

rather it takes.

Charles Craggett: 00:46:20

Two days for a video to come out because you had to edit

Charles Craggett: 00:46:23

it and film it and whatever.

Charles Craggett: 00:46:26

As opposed to putting out a video in 30 seconds because you

Charles Craggett: 00:46:30

used a fancy prompt on chat GPT.

Charles Craggett: 00:46:32

That's just how consumers work right now, especially

Charles Craggett: 00:46:36

for our customer base.

Vit Muller: 00:46:37

Aside from that being a matter of preference ultimately

Vit Muller: 00:46:40

comes down to what really works.

Vit Muller: 00:46:42

And I tend to agree with you, with, on this, I think, yeah,

Vit Muller: 00:46:45

that's what people want.

Vit Muller: 00:46:46

and as there is more and more AI content being, being added on the

Vit Muller: 00:46:51

internet, I think that personal aspect is just gonna increase in value.

Vit Muller: 00:46:55

So, what would you mind sharing, just like for, as an inspiration for, you know,

Vit Muller: 00:47:02

fellow agency owners out listening to this who might be in a similar industry

Vit Muller: 00:47:07

as you, perhaps in different state, different country, but, how do you package

Vit Muller: 00:47:11

up the video content creation in terms of like, how many videos do they get?

Vit Muller: 00:47:16

how long does is the session, how long does the videographer spend

Vit Muller: 00:47:20

with the business owner and the team?

Vit Muller: 00:47:23

what's the example of that?

Vit Muller: 00:47:25

just if you wouldn't mind.

Charles Craggett: 00:47:27

Yeah.

Charles Craggett: 00:47:27

so when it comes to how we're managing the content creation,

Charles Craggett: 00:47:31

it's a monthly content day.

Charles Craggett: 00:47:34

We spend anywhere from two hours to three hours with the client.

Charles Craggett: 00:47:40

once per month, we'll tell the client, bring multiple outfits.

Charles Craggett: 00:47:45

bring multiple different pairs of glasses, shirts, whatever, so that we can give

Charles Craggett: 00:47:51

the illusion that all these things are being filmed on multiple different days.

Charles Craggett: 00:47:56

we'll have a series of questions already printed out, that are just

Charles Craggett: 00:48:02

designed to get a person to speak on film about their expertise.

Charles Craggett: 00:48:07

So in the case of, say, the landscaper who uses our company, we'll meet him

Charles Craggett: 00:48:12

at a job site and we'll just ask him, Hey, tell us about this retaining

Charles Craggett: 00:48:18

wall project that you're building.

Charles Craggett: 00:48:20

And he'll get the nerd out and talk about the project and how it's weighed

Charles Craggett: 00:48:25

and how we have to use the mowers around it and how we have to build it

Charles Craggett: 00:48:30

up the right way, and how we had to get permits and all that other stuff.

Charles Craggett: 00:48:34

we take it, we clip it, we post it for him.

Charles Craggett: 00:48:37

but.

Charles Craggett: 00:48:38

That's how we manage the content days.

Charles Craggett: 00:48:40

Usually about three hours.

Charles Craggett: 00:48:42

Have them change outfits or change locations during the

Charles Craggett: 00:48:45

course of that three hours.

Charles Craggett: 00:48:47

film anywhere from like, at least 30 reels per session, if not more.

Charles Craggett: 00:48:54

and then just progressively drip them out over time.

Charles Craggett: 00:48:58

Typically about, four posts per week.

Charles Craggett: 00:49:00

two videos and two, one image post and one carousel post.

Vit Muller: 00:49:08

Brilliant.

Vit Muller: 00:49:09

Now, if you are working with business that's got a large team of say,

Vit Muller: 00:49:12

plumbers and they're all across different job sites, ideally you'd

Vit Muller: 00:49:16

want to have variety of people in that business on video as well.

Vit Muller: 00:49:20

How do you handle that?

Charles Craggett: 00:49:22

So in that situation, what we would look to do is we would find

Charles Craggett: 00:49:26

maybe the three most interesting projects.

Charles Craggett: 00:49:30

That might be happening, right?

Charles Craggett: 00:49:32

And if they've got a whole bunch of plumbers and if they've got an

Charles Craggett: 00:49:35

extended need for more videos, then that would just mean we just increase

Charles Craggett: 00:49:40

the pricing and the amount of time that we might have to spend with them.

Charles Craggett: 00:49:44

But ultimately we would just take that three hours and go to all

Charles Craggett: 00:49:50

of those different locations.

Charles Craggett: 00:49:52

That's the beauty of working with a local service business is that they're

Charles Craggett: 00:49:56

servicing an area where someone is only 10 minutes away, 20 minutes away, right?

Charles Craggett: 00:50:02

So we can film at one location for an hour, take 10 minutes, drive around

Charles Craggett: 00:50:07

the corner to the next location, film there, then go and meet another guy

Charles Craggett: 00:50:12

at another location and film there.

Charles Craggett: 00:50:16

So we could do it all in one day, or we could break it up into a two day

Charles Craggett: 00:50:21

content session where we're at one or two locations on one day and then

Charles Craggett: 00:50:27

another location's on another day.

Charles Craggett: 00:50:29

So it really just depends on what the client has going on.

Charles Craggett: 00:50:33

and that's ultimately covered in discovery.

Charles Craggett: 00:50:35

but that's why we haven't really productized our offer.

Charles Craggett: 00:50:40

Right.

Charles Craggett: 00:50:40

Our offer right now is still, it's a custom based marketing proposal

Charles Craggett: 00:50:45

based on what we can do with them.

Charles Craggett: 00:50:48

And we tend to get them three tiers of visibility.

Charles Craggett: 00:50:52

our text and emails and paid ads is kind of our, this is our go-to that

Charles Craggett: 00:50:59

we pretty much sell to everybody.

Charles Craggett: 00:51:01

But then we stack in things like SEO, website design and management

Charles Craggett: 00:51:07

and social media management.

Vit Muller: 00:51:09

So the, so, so the video only comes in if they do one

Vit Muller: 00:51:12

of, if they opt in for one of these add-ons, that's not a default.

Charles Craggett: 00:51:16

It is not a default.

Charles Craggett: 00:51:17

No, it's, yeah.

Charles Craggett: 00:51:18

it's part of a package.

Charles Craggett: 00:51:19

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:51:20

So like your lowest package, which is just the automations and

Vit Muller: 00:51:23

the follow ups, that might be like a, still like a 2K, a month or less.

Charles Craggett: 00:51:28

Yeah.

Charles Craggett: 00:51:28

the lowest one that we have right now, we're just doing texts and emails for him.

Charles Craggett: 00:51:33

and he's paying 2250 per month

Vit Muller: 00:51:36

Okay, so if they go for social media and content

Vit Muller: 00:51:39

creation, that's where it starts to go into a couple of extra grant

Charles Craggett: 00:51:42

Yeah.

Charles Craggett: 00:51:43

To that, yeah, to that 3K month range.

Charles Craggett: 00:51:46

But if we're talking just texts, emails, automation, set up, et cetera, that's

Charles Craggett: 00:51:50

usually anywhere from $2,000 to $2,200.

Charles Craggett: 00:51:55

then when you start stacking in the other services, that's

Charles Craggett: 00:51:57

when you start getting to that

Charles Craggett: 00:51:59

2,500, 3000, 3,500, et cetera.

Charles Craggett: 00:52:03

and then the other thing that we do too, for my agency owners is

Charles Craggett: 00:52:07

we have a small setup fee that's built into the initial one.

Charles Craggett: 00:52:13

So if it's $3,500 per month, their first month is $4,000, that $500 just

Charles Craggett: 00:52:20

creates a little extra breathing room as you guys get everything built out.

Vit Muller: 00:52:24

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:52:25

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:52:25

And you could potentially reinvest it back into acquisition for more

Vit Muller: 00:52:29

clients through paid ads and all that.

Vit Muller: 00:52:31

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:52:32

with the video.

Vit Muller: 00:52:33

So can we talk numbers here a little bit in terms of like business,

Vit Muller: 00:52:38

like the business model, the scalability and profitability?

Vit Muller: 00:52:43

In my view, when I hear, you know, your base offer, it seems like that would

Vit Muller: 00:52:47

be the most profitable because it's.

Vit Muller: 00:52:50

It's a snapshot, you just tweak few things.

Vit Muller: 00:52:52

If you're doing it the right way, you're probably doing it

Vit Muller: 00:52:55

on the back of custom values.

Vit Muller: 00:52:57

So that's even easier to set things up as far as the campaigns goes.

Vit Muller: 00:53:01

But then when you start getting into very custom service, like video creation,

Vit Muller: 00:53:06

going to sites, recording that might be like you said, two, three hours a

Vit Muller: 00:53:10

month plus post-production afterwards, clipping it and all that stuff.

Vit Muller: 00:53:14

that's, that has a real, expense talk associated.

Vit Muller: 00:53:19

So, what have you, if you looking at your numbers, what do you see?

Vit Muller: 00:53:24

It's like the bread and butter for you.

Vit Muller: 00:53:26

Is it the base offer because of scalability or not, and why?

Charles Craggett: 00:53:32

So it's actually our custom plans are sticky.

Charles Craggett: 00:53:38

Which is ultimately what I'm going for.

Charles Craggett: 00:53:41

I would rather have 15 consistent clients that are ready to work with me for the

Charles Craggett: 00:53:48

next three to five years, and we're going to build their business together.

Charles Craggett: 00:53:55

versus just kinda like getting people in en mass, right.

Charles Craggett: 00:53:59

with that like simple, scalable offer and the beauty

Charles Craggett: 00:54:03

of how we do our social media and our custom proposals and everything like

Charles Craggett: 00:54:07

that, is, it's still highly profitable for us to handle the things like text

Charles Craggett: 00:54:14

messages, the emails, et cetera, right?

Charles Craggett: 00:54:16

that's no problem.

Charles Craggett: 00:54:17

It's just a snapshot.

Charles Craggett: 00:54:19

we just add in the cost of completely outsourcing these additional services.

Charles Craggett: 00:54:26

So the social media management is in no way handled by me.

Charles Craggett: 00:54:31

It takes nothing away from what I'm doing or anything like that.

Charles Craggett: 00:54:35

It's just a simple value stack.

Charles Craggett: 00:54:37

And I've worked in like a, let's say I go and meet a plumber, he

Charles Craggett: 00:54:43

wants to do social media management.

Charles Craggett: 00:54:45

I bring the program back to the media production team that I work with, and

Charles Craggett: 00:54:50

they say, we can do it for $850 per month.

Charles Craggett: 00:54:54

I'm gonna go back to the client and I'm going to add that $850

Charles Craggett: 00:55:00

into my package, plus maybe two to three to $400 as profit for myself.

Vit Muller: 00:55:07

Yep.

Vit Muller: 00:55:09

a bit of a buffer there.

Vit Muller: 00:55:10

Mm-hmm.

Charles Craggett: 00:55:10

yeah.

Charles Craggett: 00:55:11

The media production team still gets their full amount.

Charles Craggett: 00:55:14

They're not giving me a discount or a deal or anything like that.

Charles Craggett: 00:55:18

I get to add a lot of value to the service that I'm providing for a client.

Charles Craggett: 00:55:24

The client becomes very sticky because they know that Charles is handling all

Charles Craggett: 00:55:30

areas of their marketing, and they're very satisfied with the program.

Charles Craggett: 00:55:34

So when somebody comes in and they're like, oh, I can build

Charles Craggett: 00:55:38

an AI receptionist for you.

Charles Craggett: 00:55:39

Oh, Charles has somebody that can do that.

Charles Craggett: 00:55:41

I don't really need that.

Charles Craggett: 00:55:42

Oh, we could run your paid ads.

Charles Craggett: 00:55:44

Charles is already running our ads, actually.

Charles Craggett: 00:55:46

He's got a team on that as well.

Charles Craggett: 00:55:48

So that's why we kind of look at ourselves as this frac, we like this

Charles Craggett: 00:55:53

fractional CMO model because it allows us to get really creative and just sort

Charles Craggett: 00:55:59

of create these strong offers to where these people are going to be sticky and

Charles Craggett: 00:56:05

work with us consistently over time.

Charles Craggett: 00:56:08

Instead of that.

Charles Craggett: 00:56:09

I think they say the agency churn rate sometimes is six to eight

Charles Craggett: 00:56:13

months, something like that.

Charles Craggett: 00:56:15

Most of my clients have been with me now for about two years.

Vit Muller: 00:56:18

Well done.

Charles Craggett: 00:56:19

You know, and again, it's just because we're sticky.

Charles Craggett: 00:56:23

We wanna handle a lot of the internal stuff, do a good job, take the stress

Charles Craggett: 00:56:27

off of their plate, as well as just be an expert sort of right hand.

Charles Craggett: 00:56:33

This is my marketing guy, you know, all

Charles Craggett: 00:56:36

things marketing, all things system.

Charles Craggett: 00:56:38

We've got a Charles for that.

Charles Craggett: 00:56:40

And it eliminates a lot of the need to communicate with other companies

Charles Craggett: 00:56:44

about other stuff, unless, of course we weren't doing our job.

Charles Craggett: 00:56:48

But the reason why our customers have been with us for two years

Charles Craggett: 00:56:52

is because we do our jobs well,

Vit Muller: 00:56:54

Yep.

Vit Muller: 00:56:54

Yep.

Vit Muller: 00:56:55

That's brilliant.

Vit Muller: 00:56:55

Charles.

Vit Muller: 00:56:56

Thank you so much, mate.

Vit Muller: 00:56:57

I appreciate you sharing this.

Vit Muller: 00:56:58

there's a lot of lessons here from this valuable info for the rest of

Vit Muller: 00:57:02

the folks listening that they can consider some of these strategies.

Vit Muller: 00:57:06

I mean, the big one that stood out for me is scalability.

Vit Muller: 00:57:11

Like you are able to provide a full stack offering, but outsource those

Vit Muller: 00:57:16

type of services, that would be a lot more difficult to scale, such as

Vit Muller: 00:57:22

that video production, because now you're talking about, you know, as

Vit Muller: 00:57:25

your business grows, you're gonna have more customers to go and drive around

Vit Muller: 00:57:29

with the videographers and all that.

Vit Muller: 00:57:31

That means more employees.

Vit Muller: 00:57:32

So

Charles Craggett: 00:57:33

Yeah,

Charles Craggett: 00:57:34

and that's on the onus of the videographer.

Charles Craggett: 00:57:36

He's

Vit Muller: 00:57:37

That's right.

Charles Craggett: 00:57:38

more video people and stuff like that.

Charles Craggett: 00:57:40

And he's in the same position as me where he's very happy to grow.

Charles Craggett: 00:57:44

He's excited about it.

Charles Craggett: 00:57:46

He is Charles is bringing me consistent new business.

Charles Craggett: 00:57:49

Every time he gets a client, I get a client.

Vit Muller: 00:57:52

I was gonna say, does it work the other way as well?

Charles Craggett: 00:57:54

Bingo.

Vit Muller: 00:57:55

then he refers them over to you.

Vit Muller: 00:57:56

Yeah.

Charles Craggett: 00:57:57

yes.

Charles Craggett: 00:57:57

100%. he's had people that just started with social media management, but

Charles Craggett: 00:58:03

then once he diagnosed their problem, he's okay, well this is what we can

Charles Craggett: 00:58:08

do for you if we just did social media management, but this is what we could do

Charles Craggett: 00:58:13

for you if we did it in a package and we

Vit Muller: 00:58:17

Oh, so they package you into their package and then they

Vit Muller: 00:58:20

add their markup or they send them your way and then you give them a

Vit Muller: 00:58:24

affiliate commission or whatever.

Vit Muller: 00:58:26

Whichever

Charles Craggett: 00:58:26

yes,

Vit Muller: 00:58:27

how much tr how much, sorry, I jumped into, yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:58:31

how much would

Charles Craggett: 00:58:31

say, it's like having salespeople without having salespeople.

Vit Muller: 00:58:35

Yeah, absolutely.

Vit Muller: 00:58:35

Exactly.

Vit Muller: 00:58:36

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:58:36

I'm a big fan of leverage.

Vit Muller: 00:58:37

I'm a big fan of, referral partnerships with companies that

Vit Muller: 00:58:40

serve the exactly the same market.

Vit Muller: 00:58:43

but not in competition is kind of like the fundamental how that works.

Vit Muller: 00:58:47

But the next level to that is if it's actually somebody that ask

Vit Muller: 00:58:50

complimentary services to what you do that's like the ideal.

Vit Muller: 00:58:54

So that, that is a perfect example right there.

Vit Muller: 00:58:56

do you, how did you strike up that relationship?

Vit Muller: 00:58:59

Did you find it, it took a while to build trust to make that

Vit Muller: 00:59:02

work, or was it pretty much

Charles Craggett: 00:59:04

No, you know, me and him, the owner of that media

Charles Craggett: 00:59:08

production company, we met at a local real estate investment event.

Charles Craggett: 00:59:14

And both of us were relatively new in our businesses at that time.

Charles Craggett: 00:59:19

he was just working as a photographer and videographer for that event, and I was

Charles Craggett: 00:59:25

handling their social media posting and things like that, trying to figure out

Charles Craggett: 00:59:30

exactly what this agency was going to be.

Charles Craggett: 00:59:33

So, we met, we wound up liking each other a whole lot.

Charles Craggett: 00:59:38

I wound up sending some business his way.

Charles Craggett: 00:59:40

He sent a little bit of business my way, and eventually it dawned on me

Charles Craggett: 00:59:46

as I started talking to these larger companies and they're like, Hey, Charles,

Charles Craggett: 00:59:50

do you do anything with social media?

Charles Craggett: 00:59:52

Hey Charles, do you

Charles Craggett: 00:59:53

do anything with this?

Charles Craggett: 00:59:54

And it's I have an agency model.

Charles Craggett: 00:59:58

Which is very fluid, and you know, people just want their problem solved.

Charles Craggett: 01:00:04

If I can create a good deal and a strong package for these people, then

Charles Craggett: 01:00:09

yes, I really could handle all of their digital marketing, and if they've got

Charles Craggett: 01:00:13

the cash to handle it, then they're going to do it 10 times outta 10.

Charles Craggett: 01:00:18

So that was ultimately how that got started.

Charles Craggett: 01:00:21

I went to Nick and I presented the idea and I was like, Hey look,

Charles Craggett: 01:00:25

I'll pay you whatever it costs to handle the social media marketing.

Charles Craggett: 01:00:29

I just wanna outsource it completely to you, but you just

Charles Craggett: 01:00:34

let me know what you need to make and I'll work it into my pricing.

Charles Craggett: 01:00:39

And Hormozi talks about things like price anchoring and stuff like that, right?

Charles Craggett: 01:00:44

Where he's you should have at least one offer.

Charles Craggett: 01:00:48

That's just huge.

Charles Craggett: 01:00:50

Just a big, massive offer.

Charles Craggett: 01:00:52

If somebody takes this big, massive offer from time to time, life is good.

Charles Craggett: 01:00:57

But the idea is that if they can't do the big massive offer, they can

Charles Craggett: 01:01:03

probably do the 2250 per month and at least get their foundations built.

Charles Craggett: 01:01:08

Then once things start rolling in, Hey Charles, can we add SEO?

Charles Craggett: 01:01:12

Hey Charles, can we add social media management?

Charles Craggett: 01:01:16

Right,

Charles Craggett: 01:01:16

so that's

Vit Muller: 01:01:17

of a flywheel.

Vit Muller: 01:01:19

Bit of a flywheel with your offerings.

Vit Muller: 01:01:20

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 01:01:20

We kind of do something similar with our setup fee.

Vit Muller: 01:01:23

I'm more of a SaaS based, so I resell, high level under our own brand.

Vit Muller: 01:01:27

And then focus on like education, their team etiquette, their team, not

Vit Muller: 01:01:32

necessarily the business owner because they're not the ones that will do it.

Vit Muller: 01:01:35

They're always busy, but onboarding their team, etiquette their

Vit Muller: 01:01:38

team, so then they're building their own, like a marketing arm.

Vit Muller: 01:01:41

And I always say, look, this is how you keep more money in your pocket

Vit Muller: 01:01:44

that you can put towards arts.

Vit Muller: 01:01:46

rather than paying agencies on retainer, that's kinda like

Vit Muller: 01:01:48

the, you know, the hook there.

Vit Muller: 01:01:50

and it works.

Vit Muller: 01:01:51

but with the setup, when they sign up, we charge three, two, two and a half

Vit Muller: 01:01:54

thousand dollars for the account setup.

Vit Muller: 01:01:56

And that includes, setting up one calendar, setting up the AI agent,

Vit Muller: 01:02:00

basic voice, ai, all those little things, the email, the phone system.

Vit Muller: 01:02:03

but then on that page we say, look, you can pay it and we're gonna

Vit Muller: 01:02:06

do all these technical things.

Vit Muller: 01:02:08

Or you could do it yourself.

Vit Muller: 01:02:10

We've got resources and you just follow, you just delegate

Vit Muller: 01:02:13

one of your team members.

Vit Muller: 01:02:14

And sometimes people pay and sometimes people don't.

Vit Muller: 01:02:16

what then happens is they delegate it to somebody and they, they

Vit Muller: 01:02:20

might be successful at setting up, basic things like, linking up their

Vit Muller: 01:02:24

socials for the social planner so they can start scheduling stuff.

Vit Muller: 01:02:27

But let's say the phone system or the email system, they get stuck on that,

Vit Muller: 01:02:32

but at that point, they've already done a bunch of things already.

Vit Muller: 01:02:36

So we can't go back to them and say, Hey, pay for the account setup,

Vit Muller: 01:02:39

because so what we've done is we broke it down into individual services.

Vit Muller: 01:02:42

Like email setup is this much, phone is this much.

Vit Muller: 01:02:45

So that creates a bit of a flywheel.

Vit Muller: 01:02:47

And we just got like this, services, it looks like a restaurant, a À la

Vit Muller: 01:02:52

carte, and they can just go there and it's oh, what's your status?

Vit Muller: 01:02:54

What's your main courses?

Vit Muller: 01:02:56

We just have a bit of a funny, I'm, my background is, I used to work in

Vit Muller: 01:02:59

the restaurant as a chef, but That, that way they can just go and they can

Vit Muller: 01:03:03

just like, okay, yeah, I need this.

Vit Muller: 01:03:05

I got stuck on that one.

Vit Muller: 01:03:06

I'm gonna check that.

Vit Muller: 01:03:08

I'm gonna order that.

Vit Muller: 01:03:09

I'm gonna also order that to go with it, and then this other

Vit Muller: 01:03:12

thing, I'll go, I'll get as well.

Vit Muller: 01:03:13

And then they just go in and it's because it's defined, we've got a,

Vit Muller: 01:03:17

we've got the description of that service defined, so the scope is

Vit Muller: 01:03:20

there and the price tag is there.

Vit Muller: 01:03:22

So we don't have to go okay, let me quote you.

Vit Muller: 01:03:25

It's unless it's a automation side of things, that's always more tricky.

Vit Muller: 01:03:28

But yeah.

Vit Muller: 01:03:29

So yeah, so I, it is just on the topic of flywheel because you never

Vit Muller: 01:03:32

know, nobody ever comes the same.

Vit Muller: 01:03:34

Ideally we would love to, right, like everybody code the same buyer process.

Vit Muller: 01:03:39

like Tesla, you have to put a down deposit, then you pay the

Vit Muller: 01:03:42

remainder and you get a car.

Vit Muller: 01:03:44

Such a simple model.

Vit Muller: 01:03:45

I like that.

Vit Muller: 01:03:45

But with services, it's a bit different, isn't it?

Charles Craggett: 01:03:49

yeah.

Charles Craggett: 01:03:49

and see, we use a very similar approach because even though the proposals

Charles Craggett: 01:03:54

are quote unquote custom, it's still usually three different offers, right?

Charles Craggett: 01:04:01

Or three separate packages.

Charles Craggett: 01:04:03

One that's a little more lean, one that has some additional services

Charles Craggett: 01:04:08

added, and then the large one, that's our local domination package.

Charles Craggett: 01:04:12

You and it's designed to either just get people in at this high end

Charles Craggett: 01:04:17

local domination package or make the first two look really affordable

Charles Craggett: 01:04:22

and interesting and still be

Vit Muller: 01:04:24

that's, I was gonna say that.

Vit Muller: 01:04:25

that's the hormoz strategy there is, they've got some high ticket thing they

Vit Muller: 01:04:29

can compare against, and if it didn't have that, then that's like the top,

Vit Muller: 01:04:33

so then they're gonna look at that being the, the expensive thing, but

Vit Muller: 01:04:36

it's not, it's like the middle tier.

Vit Muller: 01:04:38

So yeah, it's a, it's all just psychology and all that stuff, so it's, yeah.

Charles Craggett: 01:04:43

Yeah.

Charles Craggett: 01:04:43

And I was gonna say, we've, obviously everybody on this podcast has

Charles Craggett: 01:04:47

probably heard of Hormozi or at least, been exposed to these concepts.

Charles Craggett: 01:04:51

But yeah, I mean, if you guys haven't, Hormozi and his pricing

Charles Craggett: 01:04:55

strategies are very strong, you might wanna check those out.

Charles Craggett: 01:04:58

for anyone listening that isn't aware.

Vit Muller: 01:05:01

yeah, if you've been living under the Rock,

Vit Muller: 01:05:03

definitely up Alex Hormozi.

Vit Muller: 01:05:05

I'd be surprised if there's somebody that didn't hear about it.

Vit Muller: 01:05:08

I mean,

Vit Muller: 01:05:08

again,

Charles Craggett: 01:05:09

are new.

Charles Craggett: 01:05:09

You never know.

Vit Muller: 01:05:10

well, yeah, of course.

Vit Muller: 01:05:12

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 01:05:12

And that's, no, you're right.

Vit Muller: 01:05:13

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 01:05:13

that's the role we play.

Vit Muller: 01:05:14

It's to make sure that we surface this for everybody.

Vit Muller: 01:05:17

And if you knew about it, then it's just a refresher for you and if you

Vit Muller: 01:05:20

did it and then go and check it out.

Vit Muller: 01:05:22

alright Charles, well we're at the end mate.

Vit Muller: 01:05:24

thank you so much for being on the show and sharing the insights

Vit Muller: 01:05:27

of how you run your agency.

Vit Muller: 01:05:28

it's valuable and always good to hear from, a fellow agency owner,

Vit Muller: 01:05:33

how you guys run, things in your agency, because ultimately it

Vit Muller: 01:05:37

helps everybody else level up.

Vit Muller: 01:05:38

So thank you so much for being on.

Vit Muller: 01:05:40

Charles, if somebody is listening, you know, I always like to think it's

Vit Muller: 01:05:45

probably most likely fellow agency owners listening, but you never know.

Vit Muller: 01:05:48

Could be, a business owner that is exploring high level and

Vit Muller: 01:05:52

stumbles upon this podcast.

Vit Muller: 01:05:53

and maybe they have service based, business, in your area if they wanna

Vit Muller: 01:05:58

reach out for, for your services.

Vit Muller: 01:06:01

What's the best, what's the best angle there?

Charles Craggett: 01:06:03

So if you wanted to reach out to us for our

Charles Craggett: 01:06:07

services, we can be reached at our website, www.getjobflowsystem.com.

Charles Craggett: 01:06:15

that's our job flow framework for home service businesses.

Charles Craggett: 01:06:20

and that's where we do that marketing and systems audit to see what they're working

Charles Craggett: 01:06:24

with and create that custom proposal.

Charles Craggett: 01:06:27

if you are an agency owner and you just wanna network, share some ideas and, you

Charles Craggett: 01:06:32

know, follow me on social or anything like that, my Instagram is Charles.nwm

Charles Craggett: 01:06:41

and then my Facebook, you can just look up my name.

Charles Craggett: 01:06:46

you'll see me sitting next to a tiger.

Vit Muller: 01:06:48

Okay, we'll put all those links in the show notes guys.

Vit Muller: 01:06:52

Charles, thank you so much for being on.

Vit Muller: 01:06:54

I appreciate you, sharing the insights about your agency.

Charles Craggett: 01:06:58

I appreciate you having me on Vit.

Charles Craggett: 01:06:59

Thank you.

Vit Muller: 01:07:00

Guys, thank you so much for listening to today's

Vit Muller: 01:07:02

episode on a high level experience.

Vit Muller: 01:07:04

If you've enjoyed today's episode, then please share it

Vit Muller: 01:07:07

with your fellow agency mates.

Vit Muller: 01:07:08

You never know somebody's starting out, they just need a

Vit Muller: 01:07:11

bit of help, and this could be a resource that helps them do that.

Vit Muller: 01:07:14

So, please share, for show notes, links and extra tips to help you grow your

Vit Muller: 01:07:17

agency or your SaaS with high level, please go to highlevelexperience.com.

Vit Muller: 01:07:23

Thank you and have a great rest of your day, everybody.