Do Clients Trust Your Team… Or Just You? - Comet Fuel

In this episode, Jarod Spiewak, founder of Comet Fuel, shares his unconventional journey, the pivotal shifts in his business model, and the hard-earned lessons behind building a system of value. 

Key Takeaways

• Why saying “yes” strategically can unlock bigger client opportunities
• Ensuring you have R&D happening in your business
• The importance of tracking customer acquisition cost (CAC) for long-term growth

Details for an agency planning workshop event November 10th and 11th 2025. 

Episode Transcript

Russel (00:01):
Welcome to An Agency Story podcast where owners and
experts share the real journey,the early struggles, the
breakthrough moments, andeverything in between.
I'm your host Russell Dre,former eight figure agency
owner, turn Business coach.
Sold my agency and now helpsagency leaders create their
ideal business.
Every agency has a story, andthis is your front row seat.

(00:23):
This is an agency story.
Welcome to the show today,everyone.
I have Jared Spiewak with CometFuel with us here today.
Thank you so much for joining ustoday, Jared.
Yeah, thanks so much for havingme.
Well, I'm excited to get intoit.
To start us off right outta thegate, what does Comet Fuel do

(00:44):
and who do you do it for?
Yeah,

Jarod (00:45):
absolutely.
So Comet Fuel is a revenuemarketing agency.
We help service-based and SaaSbusinesses scale from about one
to$2 million a year, uh, toabout five to$10 million a year
through our product that we callclicks to cash, which
essentially is a four stepsystem.
The first step being craftinglead gen generation systems.
The second step being refiningmeasurement systems.

(01:07):
The third step being building asales machine.
And then the fourth step beingbuilding a growth team.

Russel (01:11):
I love that.
I love a good transformationalbased positioning and clearly
articulated who that is, whatyou do for them and how you do
it.
Sounds like you've put a lot ofwork into getting that so
simplistic and concise.

Jarod (01:26):
Yeah, I mean, like everything, it's a work in
progress.
I think it's been, uh, a longjourney.
We've been working on thisproduct since sometime in 2020.
We released an initial versionin 2021, and then since then
it's, it's evolved a lot.
I'm sure it'll continue toevolve, but yeah, there's just
been a, a lot of trial and errorfiguring out exactly not just
how to communicate it, but also,what it actually does behind the

(01:47):
scenes.

Russel (01:48):
I'd love to dive more into that process, but we'll
work chronologically as wetypically do on this show.
And young, Jared has a prettyfascinating, if not unique
story, and tell us about whatyoung Jared was doing and where
he was headed in his life.

Jarod (02:03):
Yeah, sure.
So there's a couple differentplaces that I'll start my story,
but most commonly it's when Iwas in high school.
So I started college at 15,graduated high school at 16.
So I had a very early start tomy career, and I did that by
literally the first day offreshman year.
I went out to my guidancecounselor and I said, Hey, how
can I be here for less time?

Russel (02:24):
And why?
Why was that important for you?
Like what was the driving factorfor that?

Jarod (02:27):
I just didn't like school.
Simple as that.
I was, uh, fair.
I was a CD student, not reallythe best student.
I would literally just kind ofsit in the back of the class,
not really talk all semester.
When I did talk, literallypeople would be like, I didn't
know you had the ability totalk.
But I would just sit back therelike reading manga or um, doing
Sudoku and, teachers left mealone'cause I didn't bother
anybody.
And yeah, I just kind of showedup and then when the bell rang,

(02:49):
I left.
And I wasn't very interested inanything that I was doing, so I
wanted to do less of it.
And the solution was actuallygoing to two high schools at the
same time.
So I ended up going to both mymain physical high school and
then a virtual high school,which was all self-paced courses
that still counted as credit.
And most students took thisbecause they wanted to avoid
summer school or because they,you could take up to eight

(03:11):
classes per semester.
And so if you're like a straightA student taking all eight
classes and you wanted to, um,you know, take a couple more,
then that's usually when theywould, um, go to the online
school as well.
But there's nothing preventingme from.
Just signing up and gettingthose credits.
So I was essentially just doingthings, uh, twice as fast and
the online school was a loteasier.

(03:32):
Um, that is fascinating,

Russel (03:33):
man.
Wow.
All right.
Well, and then you were goingdown a path, not to derail, but
truly fascinating.

Jarod (03:39):
Yeah.
So from there I started collegeearly.
I went to school for marketingand initially I thought the goal
was to kind of climb thecorporate ladder'cause that's
what was, uh, kind of instilledinto me.
Um, doing anything on my own,wasn't really, uh, didn't think
it was really in the cards or atleast not full-time on my own.
So I went to school formarketing.
When I was 17, I got my.

(04:00):
First and only corporate realestate, um, corporate marketing
job for a real estatedevelopment company, uh, here in
New Hampshire.
And so what these guys do isthey buy these old mill
buildings from the 18 hundredsand they bring them up to code
and then they rent them out.
Most are residential, a coupleof them are commercial spaces,
but it's a very well recognizedcompany locally.
And so it was one of thosethings where it's like, wow,

(04:21):
like my first ever real job isthis.
A company that at the very leastlooks great on a resume and I'm
gonna be able to climb thecorporate ladder from here.
Uh, about six to eight monthsin, I realized that there wasn't
a future for me at thatparticular company, but I still
believe that the corporateladder was where I was going to
be.
So I ended up, uh, signing upfor a site that was little known
at the time called Upwork.

(04:41):
Pretty well known now and.
My goal, there wasn't to reallyfreelance, but it was to gain a
portfolio so that when I wasdoing these interviews, I didn't
have just, Hey, here's this18-year-old at the time who has
like a year of experience, but Icould actually go there with,
you know, work product andportfolio items, so on and so
forth.
So I signed up to Upwork.
I was charging$5 an hour justtrying to grow my portfolio.

(05:04):
Uh, I was interviewing at acouple places.
I was just trying to do a bunchof other stuff on the side, just
trying to figure out where is myfuture and.
Off of that, I ended up gettinga full-time job offer from a law
firm marketing agency, whichended up selling a couple years
ago.
And, and, and you

Russel (05:19):
were like 18 or so, is that what you said?
Yeah, 18.
Yep.
Oh my gosh.
Okay.
Yeah.

Jarod (05:23):
So I, uh, yeah, they offered me a full-time job work
from home making double per hourwhat I was making at the
corporate job.
So two weeks later I was out ofthere, and then I was, uh, doing
law firm marketing for a littleunder two years before I ended
up starting my own agency.

Russel (05:37):
Wow.
Okay.
I, I mean.
When you think about, and I, I,obviously you've always been
you, but I don't know anybodypersonally that I've ever heard
that's, yeah.
Graduated high school, early,done that got their first
full-time job, and one someoneeven willing to take a chance on
something like that.
Um, I mean.
I don't know what the questionis even there, other than just
very fascinating.

Jarod (05:59):
Yeah.
I mean it's something that evenat the time I wasn't really
thinking too hard about it.
It was just things I was doingright.
There was no real like, wow,like this age doing this thing.
It was just, this is just thenext thing that I'm doing and it
just felt normal.
It felt fine and then I did it,and then, yeah.
Over time people have come inlike, Hey, like, you know that
that's like not the typicalstory that people have, but for

(06:20):
me it's just.
Just, it's just what I did and Ijust personally don't think that
much about it, but I understandthat it's not, yeah, the normal
path that people

Russel (06:26):
take.
I mean, I guess maybe just youlook at something where you want
to go and whatever that nextthing is, but you kind of just
throw out what traditional normsare, how to get there, and it's
like, where's the quickest bestpath to get to?
Where I'm going is, is that justpart and parcel to your
thinking?

Jarod (06:41):
Yeah, I mean, I'd say that's pretty fair.
When I know what I'm trying toachieve, I tend to do it fairly
quickly and effectively.
My downfall is deciding what ofthe 85,000 things that I wanna
do is the thing that I wanna do,and that takes up 90% of my head
space, and then 10% of the timeis just actually executing on

(07:01):
that thing.

Russel (07:02):
But it's kinda like a measure twice cut once approach,
right?
Rather than diving in headfirst, you take the time to
explore it.
But then again, as part of thatresearch and thought process,
yeah, what's the fastest path?

Jarod (07:15):
Yeah, I mean, I would say more like measure a thousand
times before cutting once, butfair, fair too.
Yeah.
I do try to just find the pathof loose resistance because at
the same time I'm also, uh.
I also consider myself fairlylazy.
Like the way that I think aboutsomething is if you ask me to
click a button like a thousandtimes, I'm just not gonna do it.
But I will find a way toautomate clicking that button.
And if I can't find the way toautomate clicking that button,

(07:36):
I'm just not gonna click it.
Like, I just don't see a point.

Russel (07:38):
Yeah, I mean, it's given a lot of um, uh, four Hour
Workweek Vibes.
I don't know if you've readthat.
I haven't.
Are you familiar with theconcept or whatever?

Jarod (07:46):
I own the book.
I've owned it for like 10 years.
I've never, I haven't evenopened it.

Russel (07:50):
Yeah.
You know what's funny is Iactually did the same thing.
'cause I think just by concept Iwas like, we're our work week.
Get the heck outta here man.
Come on.
But when I read the book,there's some out there takes,
but then there's also just thatsame thought process of just.
Be strategic where you want togo and just brainstorm.
You know, again, forget norms.
Brainstorm what it's gonna taketo get there.

(08:11):
And I think even kind of talksabout be a little lazy, like
there are things you can justlet go that can happen and will
be fine.
Or you'll figure out, again, avery fast solution, how to take
care of those once you see allthe things fall through the
cracks.
But, um, I might encourage youto read that'cause it might, If
nothing else, give some, um, Idon't know, I don't even know if
you need validation, but justsome interesting takes on what

(08:31):
very much seems to be youroperating style.
Um, yeah, I'm gonna have to,yeah.
Well, fascinating.
Okay, so you're at the point,like, when did you decide to
start your agency and how didthat go about?
And tell us a little bit aboutthe, the very early days.

Jarod (08:43):
Yeah, sure.
So while I was working for theLaw firm agency, I was focused
just on SEO at the time.
So I eventually became, I wentfrom an on-page SEO person to
the lead, SEO strategist, and atthe time I was just like, okay,
like I just wanna knoweverything.
So I was reading all the blogposts, watching all the videos,
listening to all podcasts.
But not everything that I waslearning about was actually

(09:04):
applicable to the sizes of thesites I was working on or within
the legal industry.
So I ended up doing some amountof freelancing on the side to
really just test out ideas.
There were, you know, conceptsthat I've heard about that, some
people said worked, other peoplesaid didn't.
So I started taking on someadditional clients on my own.
And as that started to justgrow, it was just this sort of

(09:26):
natural progression of goingfrom full-time at the agency
down to part-time, to eventuallyno time when I hit this point
where I was doing.
20,000 a monthly recurringrevenue.
I was in an event in Thailand atthe time.
I flew back to the States, had ameeting with my manager,
business as normal.
And I was telling her what I hadbeen like working on, like what

(09:46):
I was up to.
And she just kind of looked atme.
She says like, what are youstill doing here?
Like, why do you still workhere?
Um, because like I said at thetime, like.
I did not believe that there wasever really a future that I
would do something on my own.
I think I was making a lot ofmoves behind the scenes that
made it appear as though I wasgonna make that decision.
But I really didn't feel asthough I'd ever be able to let

(10:07):
working at least a job part-timefor somebody else go.
'cause I just did not have theconfidence that I would really
make it on my own and be able tosustain it for a long period of
time.
And if it did fall off a cliff,I wasn't confident that I'd be
able to bring it back up.
So I was very, very hesitant.
To really make that fulltransition.
But after that conversation, Idon't remember the exact
timeline, but very quickly Ikind of made the decision like,

(10:29):
okay, I am going to kind of goabout this on my own.
And that was at the end of 2017.
And then, you know, I startedthe first iteration of my
agency, which was originallycalled Blue Dog Media back in
February, 2018.

Russel (10:42):
Okay.
You know, it's funny when youjust shared that, right, of what
comes across as very riskaverse, but already in what
you've shared.
I mean, you've made big movesalready, you know, in this
story, and we're just a smidgeninto this.
Um.
But maybe that is where, I don'tknow, just any introspection
there of just that because youdo think so deeply about what

(11:05):
you're going to do, that itdoesn't feel risky or that you
set yourself up for successbecause yeah, those, sometimes
those feel like those wouldn'tbe so congruent of these big
moves you've made.

Jarod (11:14):
Yeah, I mean the, I.
Kind of pedantic is I try toalmost like a chess board, which
sounds like a very, like, I'mmissing the word, but, uh, the
way that I think about it is,here are all the pieces that I
can imagine in my mind.
Here are all the potentialmoves.
Here are all the counter movesto those moves.
And only once I feel confidentabout all my potential moves,

(11:35):
how that might be countered andwhat I might do to counter that.
Do I feel confident enough tothen make a decision?
Which is why in my mind it takesme forever to make a decision
because there's.
85,000 things, as I mentioned,all being thought about at the
same time, which makes me veryhesitant to make any decision.
But once I can kind of narrow inon this is what I'm gonna do,
this is what might happen as aresult, and this is how I'll
counter based off of whathappens, then I just feel a lot

(11:58):
more confident actually makingthat decision.
'cause I feel as though I'vealready thought through
everything good and everythingbad that could happen, and I
already know how I will pivotbefore that.
Happens, happens.
What's interesting is that, aslame as it kind of sounds to say
this out loud, the reason why Istarted thinking like this was
because when I was in middleschool, I was reading.
That is called Death Note.

(12:19):
And I think it's gotten morepopular.
It's like a US based version.
Um, now I think as well.
But the main character likemy orKira, depending on how you wanna
pronounce it, like that's justlike way that he thinks.
And I thought it was just sointeresting how like he always
just thinks like, what couldhappen as a result of this and
like, what have you.
And I just literally would takethat same applicable thinking to
school and I'd be like, okay, Idid not do the homework

(12:40):
yesterday.
The teacher might not collectit, no problem.
They might collect it and not bemad at me.
That's fine.
They might be mad at me and theymight ask these questions and
this is how I'll respond to thembased off of how they respond to
me.
Um, and it just kind of stuckand it's worked out for me.
So, like I said, as lame asthat, it kind of sounds, as, you
know, I read like a comic andthen, took something major away
from that.
It has.

(13:00):
Worked in my favor, I'd say

Russel (13:03):
That's cool.
Um, I don't know how many highschoolers listen to this show,
but there are probably somesitting there if, if there are
any out there, uh, either gotparents are gonna ban this
episode from them or they'regonna, um, not that they even
should, but yeah, they're,they're gonna get some ideas.
You know.
It already sounds like you'vemade at least one pivot in times
of how you're thinking aboutyour product service and
delivering it in your agency.

(13:24):
I don't know if there's been,I'm sure there's been a lot of
micro iterations, but what hasbeen the major transition points
from how you started as aservice and how you're showing
up in the world to where you'reat today?

Jarod (13:33):
Yeah, so I'd say one of the biggest ones was
transitioning from freelancer toagency.
So at the time.
What I really liked about beinga freelancer was I felt as
though I had a deepunderstanding of my client's
businesses, their needs.
Everything that's going on.
And I understood kind of thebigger picture, but when I was

(13:55):
working with the agency and whenI was doing some white label
work for other agencies, uh, Ifelt as though that the clients
were just, a website.
Like I didn't really feelanything if things worked or
didn't work out for them.
'cause I didn't know them.
I didn't know who they were.
And one of the things that Istill do today is I still handle
pretty much all the sales, allthe account management, but like

(14:15):
90% of it because I still feltas though that the.
Personal touch that I canprovide.
Being the one in charge ofeverything, just.
Give so many advantages comparedto working with so many other
agencies.
We're gonna get assigned anaccount manager, a project
manager who's two, three peopleremoved from the person who's
actually doing the work.
You know, that's onlysustainable for so long.

(14:35):
But I have designed who we takeon as clients, how much work we
do, the type of work they we do,et cetera, around me still being
that main point of contact,foreseeable future.
So that was one, making thattransition.
We.
Initially started, we were anSEO company.
We did SEO, just forservice-based businesses.
And one big pivot point therewas I really struggled with

(15:00):
sales.
Like, I'm not very good atsales.
I can talk technical all day,but trying to like, uh, convince
people like see the vision, I'mnot particularly great at that.
And so what I did notice wasthat the way that SEO was being
sold was.
Here's my budget.
What can you do with it?
Or here's my website.
What budget will you charge?
Or how much will you charge me,uh, to work with me?
And then after you move forwardwith somebody, that's when you

(15:22):
figure out what you're actuallygoing to be doing.
Or you kind of have this kind oflike a pre templated, uh, plan.
So what we did on the sales sidewas.
Turn the service into kind of aseparate product.
So at first you'd go through aprocess that we called, uh, the
blueprint at a time, which, uh,funnily enough, then Ryan
Stewart released something thathe called the Blueprint.
Like a month?
No, literally two days after.
Like I announced it'cause I gavea talk and he gave a talk two

(15:43):
days later announcing hiscompany called the SEO
Blueprint, which, anyways,that's fine.
That, that was years ago.
I have no problem with that.
None at all.
Um, so basically what we did iswe took the first month of what
engagements would normally looklike and made that a separate
product.
We would say like, Hey, likeyou're not getting a proposal.
We're gonna have a call.
You're gonna pay us X amount ofmoney, whatever the pricing was
at the time.
We're gonna go through, do allthe auditing, create all the

(16:05):
plans and the analysis, and thenwe're gonna present you an
actual proposal that's gonna bemuch more robust than anyone's
gonna present to you.
Because we've put in dozens ofhours of work, we created a plan
that says, this is what you needdone on your specific website to
hit this specific goal.
This is what we recommend as abudget, and here's all of our
data and analysis backing up whywe believe this is how much work
you.
It actually needs to go intothis product.

(16:27):
And then that was essentiallythe proposal that we actually
did.
And, uh, it was hard to positionthat at first, but once we kind
of figured out the messaging, itwas just a different approach.
And because it was different, itstuck out in people's minds a
lot.
And then they were much moreimpressed with that proposal
because it wasn't generic.
That's something we put, youknow, 20 minutes of work into.
It was literally initially 80hours of like manual work and

(16:47):
eventually we automated andstreamlined it to about 25, 30
hours.

Russel (16:51):
There are just a couple notes that I was just taking as
you're going through that, and Iwant to circle back just for the
folks at home to just hear moreabout the concepts, but one of
those that you were sharing, andI think this is very common.
It's not removing yourself fromsales and even some of that
account management function.
That one, I think so many ownersdon't understand how much

(17:11):
experience and value they bringto the sales process because of
their own experience andknowledge that is so hard to
duplicate.
Unless you have a lot of reallygood intentionality in breaking
that down and how you share thatand communicate that and have a
process that supports that andnot indifferent and even in the
client account managementfunction that you know,
sometimes when.
Owners want to remove themselvesfrom an AM role.

(17:35):
They don't know that they'rebringing the strategy piece with
them to, and that someonethey're oftentimes putting in
that role doesn't have that.

Jarod (17:40):
Yeah, so what I find is a couple things.
Like one is.
People get so much more excitedwhen they hear that it's the
founder that they're having aconversation with and it's the
founder that they're gonnacontinue to have a conversation
with.
It's the same exact reason whythe mortgage lender that we use,
why we use him is because he hasa decent sized company.

(18:01):
But if I need something done,he's gonna do it.
If I need to close on a propertyin two weeks, we're gonna close
on a property in two weeks.
'cause he can make that move.
And it's the same exact reasonwhy I've done that as well.
If somebody needs somethingdone, I have the ultimate
authority to say.
Yes or no, it doesn't have to gothrough three or four people.
And on the sales side, that isone of the selling points that
almost everybody mentions isthat man, we've had

(18:23):
conversations with a bunch ofdifferent agencies and they're
always usually debating betweenus and a freelancer very
quickly.
They write off a lot of theother agencies that they're
talking to.
'cause they almost always say, Idon't like that.
Their team is so big, I feellike I'm gonna be left behind.
I don't like that the personthat I'm gonna be talking to
isn't the one doing the work andhas never done the work before,

(18:44):
and I don't like that.
That person that I'm talking tois still two to three people
removed.
And so we do get a lot of peopleexplicitly saying that that's
one of the reasons why theyended up working with us.
And then on the backend, I justkind of optimize the sales and
account management process tomake it as efficient as possible
so that people don't need toreach out that often.
So that, you know, the salesprocess takes as little time as
possible to enable myself tostill be in that position as we

(19:08):
continue to grow.

Russel (19:09):
Yeah, I mean, makes sense and kinda, I approach
things you're, you're solvingproblems that will solve other
problems or get ahead of thegame.
Another interesting thing Ithink you did mention is license
and just the license that anowner can carry in both of those
roles and how important that canbe to think on your feet and to,
you know.
We don't wanna go sell thingsthat are completely different

(19:29):
than the process, but, you know,just allows a little more
customization in thoseconversations to be valuable, be
strategic.
And then I think this is gettingmore common, but what we were
kind of talking about as a paiddiscovery aspect that where it
know, is a little buried orentry for a client and gives
them something too ultimatelythat if they didn't.
Choose you for execution, whichin all likelihood they're

(19:50):
probably going to, that theystill have something that is
valuable that they can take tomarket elsewhere.
That is becoming a lot morecommon in the agency space.
Are you picking up yourinspiration from other places,
or do you tend to be the onethat kind of derives it on your
own?

Jarod (20:04):
Earlier on it was really just looking at what others are
doing, adopting their processand then iterating on it over
time.
When we transitioned fromfocusing on SEO to ads in 2019,
behind the scenes in 2020publicly, I stopped paying
attention to a lot of content.
Like I don't really put out awhole lot of content myself

(20:26):
anymore.
I don't really am involved in alot of the groups.
I don't really go to theconferences because.
As we kind of transition fromSEO to ads, like I didn't know
anybody in the ad space where Iknew a ton of people in the SEO
space.
And so I've just gotten overtime, less and less involved in
the actual industry.
And I have noticed that the waythat I will solve problems when
I talk to other agencies, likewe have solved the problem in

(20:48):
very different ways because Ijust don't know how others have
solved it.
I'm just like, this is my idea.
And like, maybe it's good, maybeit's bad, you know, sometimes it
is, sometimes it isn't.
I definitely do, you know, I'llstill read stuff and I'll take.
Inspiration from various things,but not nearly as, I'm not
nearly as involved as I was acouple years ago.
Yeah,

Russel (21:05):
and I, I'm honestly a big advocate of that.
And not to say we can't takeinspiration, that we should be
closed-minded and not learn fromwhat's going on in the world and
understand really the essence ofwhat it is, rather than try to
copy.
But I think it is to importantin this very thought driven
strategic work to embrace ourown journey, that we don't want
to actually get the answers andthe tactics from someone else
because.
How they arrived at it couldhave been 50 billion different

(21:26):
ways than we're ever gonna see.
And so it is that journey ofthat exploration that failing,
that figuring out what works anddoesn't in your own unique way
that I do think ultimatelycreates the secret sauce.
So we can look out the window,but we don't need to be staring
out the window.
And maybe is another way to putit.

Jarod (21:42):
Yeah, I think that there's a lot that you can learn
and you can definitely speed upyour timeline for learning.
A lot other people haveexperienced the same exact
problem that you're experiencingand they have solved it one way
or another and you might, tryfive ways that didn't work the
same, five ways that didn't workfor them.
And, you missed out on here'sactually the super simple
solution.
Um, but what bothers me is whenpeople.

(22:03):
Have the solution, but theydon't understand the why behind
it.
Like they don't understand themechanics behind it.
A very basic example might besomething like, uh, like a
landing page.
I'll talk to various businessesor agencies and they're like,
oh, like we build landing pages.
Like, cool, I was too, but like,why do you build landing pages?
It's like, well,'cause you needa landing page.
Like, do you, what's thepurpose?
What is the utility?
Why do landing pages exist?

(22:24):
Like, what are you supposed touse'em for?
Um, and it's like, well, I wasjust taught that.
You build landing pages and thenyou send the apps to the landing
page and it's like, alright,well the purpose is to convert
better than the other assetsthat you have.
And a very common conversation Ihave with people as well.
If you don't know what yourwebsite converts at, then you
don't know if your landing pageis actually converting better.
And so you're spending thousandsof dollars building all these
assets that you're gonna sendtens of thousands of dollars,

(22:46):
they're gonna point tens ofthousands of dollars of ad spend
to for an asset that you don'teven know if it's doing its job
because.
You know how well that converts,but you don't know how well the
alternative converts it.
You know?
That's just one example.
But yeah, I just find that ifyou just look at what other
people are doing and you copythat solution, which is fine as
a starting point, but you don'tunderstand like what actually
brought them to the point ofthat specific solution, and what

(23:08):
specific problems to define, itmay not solve the exact problem
for you.

Russel (23:11):
No, I love the way you explained that and Right.
Ultimately too, when you go downthat route is you probably
abandoned things long before youactually even give them an
opportunity for success becausethey appear to not be working.
And in all reality, that's justpart of the process.
But you might be going down aright or wrong path, you don't
actually know because you reallyhaven't reverse engineered it in

(23:32):
a very intentional and specificway.
It's more copying, whichgenerally we don't wanna do in
business too often.
Something else that you sharedthat really stood out as.
It really seems like you'releading with value in terms of
what you're creating and doing,and then figuring out on the
backside, well, how do I dothat?
How do I streamline that value?
And that's kind of where, and Iget in the whole camp of where I

(23:54):
don't like measuring hours in anagency because that's not a
measurement of value, that'sjust a measurement of time.
But ultimately we just need tocreate something of value and
then we can figure out how we dothat simpler, easier, et cetera.

Jarod (24:07):
Yeah, I mean.
One thing that's becomingincreasingly difficult is what I
used to do is I would go, here'sthis thing that I wanted to do.
Here's this new strategy.
Here's this new approach.
Here's this new concept ofexecuting this thing.
We're just gonna do it andfigure it out.
And then once we kind of figureit out, then we'll figure out
how to, like, how to pitch it,how to refine it, bring it to
market, et cetera.

(24:27):
And that would be fine,especially when I was the only
one doing pretty mucheverything.
'cause it didn't matter what Ipriced at, if it's$500, I make
$500, if it's priced at athousand, whatever.
And so it was very easy to just.
Say conceptually, this is what Ithink I'm gonna be doing.
Yay or nay, here's a fairlyreasonable price.
Okay, great.
Lemme yeah, what feels good?
Lemme figure it out and thenrefine it over time.
And that process then brought usto being hemorrhaging cash

(24:50):
because as the team grew and asother people were doing that it
was like, oh man, this isactually like r and d is
actually very expensive whenyou're not the one doing it all.
Um, and so we've had to changehow we.
Release things or kind of adaptthings over time because it's
just so much more expensive.
Where we don't have as muchflexibility before is just to
say, here's like a low price andwe'll just figure it out because

(25:12):
it's almost a hundred percentprofit.
'cause I'm doing it all versuslike, I'm gonna be paying people
a couple thousand dollars to goand figure this out.
Um.
We're just gonna have to keepspending that money over and
over and over and over againuntil we've really figured out
how it's supposed to work, andthen how can we streamline it
from there.
So, yeah, that it is a goodapproach, but it's an
increasingly complex andexpensive approach.

Russel (25:34):
But I think honestly is.
Anything good takes aninvestment like that and it
takes that refinement and itkind of falls back into this.
You know what I think I'velearned of not over 20 years of
business now is there is no easymoney.
You kinda shared that story.
What might appear to be easymoney maybe isn't.
And that ultimately theregression to the mean will
always be, there is no easymoney unless you do the hard

(25:56):
work to make things easier andactually make that investment
in, in the r and d process likeyou shared.

Jarod (26:02):
Yeah,

Russel (26:03):
absolutely.
Going back to even how you spoketo the very succinct way,
you're, you're thinking aboutthis offering and your
positioning today.
Tell us more about where thegoals are at and where the
future is and how you're lookingto grow the agency from here.

Jarod (26:17):
Yeah, so to give you kind of a quick rundown, when we
transitioned to ads initially,the thought process was to
develop a SaaS product.
At the time, we were workingwith fairly small advertisers.
I would say the biggestadvertiser we worked with was
spending about eight grand amonth on their ads.
And so, as you do, we werebuilding systems and processes

(26:37):
and documentation and all thiskind of good stuff.
We got to a point where it wasfairly repeatable and I have
enough development knowledgethat I felt comfortable turning
what we were doing into whetherthat's like writing scripts that
will run in spreadsheets, orwhether that's writing scripts
that'll run inside of adaccounts, or you know.
Outside of that accounts, whathave you to say, we could

(26:58):
actually probably automate agood process of this, turn it
into an internal SaaS andeventually turn it into a
private label SaaS, and theneventually turn it into a public
SaaS as we kind of refine thisover time.
And then all of a sudden weended up getting a lead and
they're spending like 12 grand amonth on their ads or something
like that.
Not massive, but they ran intothis weird issue where their
previous agency just couldn'tsolve a problem for the past,

(27:20):
like four or five months.
And the client was just gettingreally annoyed that they were
making no progress.
So they brought us in.
It was a somewhat technicalissue, but it wasn't that hard
for us to solve.
So we looked like heroes intheir eyes.
And as we started to work withthose larger ad accounts, we
were like, well, the S justisn't really gonna work for
them.
Because it was meant to be like,Hey, you go in, do this exact
thing every single time, andthat's just how it works.
But this type of work was justso much more custom and so.

(27:43):
We kind of got to this placewhere we're like, okay, well now
we're working with moreimpressive accounts, but the
work that we're doing is fairlygeneric.
Like there's no realdifferentiator to what we're
doing.
So kind of going back intostartup mode, if you will.
I just started havingconversations with clients.
I was like, okay, like talk tome about your business.
Like, what's going right, what'sgoing wrong?
Uh, doing the same thing withprospects.

(28:04):
And that eventually led me totalking about measurement, and I
started asking clients like,okay, like how much money did
you spend on your ads lastmonth?
Everybody can answer that.
Pretty straightforward.
How much money did you make fromyour ads?
And all of a sudden nobody cananswer that question.
And that was regardless of ifthey're a small business or
doing like, you know, a couplemillion dollars a year.
And we started diving into how,you know, the founder teams or

(28:26):
the, you know, the marketingteams in these businesses would
measure their own marketing.
And we found that most of'emjust simply don't.
The ones that do typically don'tdo a great job of measuring it.
And the ones that do do a reallygood job of measuring it,
usually they suffer from a fogof war where the information's
then not communicated to all theapplicable teams for the act.
Mm-hmm.
For the information to beactionable.
And so that started us down apath of really focusing on

(28:49):
attribution and measurement.
And we started doing a lot moresophisticated tracking and
attribution for clients and.
That's where clicks to cashstarted.
So this kind of started with mebreaking out a spreadsheet of a,
like a sales pipeline.
Here's your cost per click,here's your conversion rate,
here's your qualified lead rate,here's your close rate, here's
your A OV, here's your LTV.
Multiply all those together andyou get your ROI.

(29:11):
And I would show people, here'swhat happens if you just focus
on and incrementally improvingyour cost per click and your
conversion rate versus whathappens if you also target
higher value leads if youincrease your pricing a little
bit.
So on and so forth.
And the example would be, here'swhat most people do.
Here's a 300% ROI, and here'swhat you could do, and here's
like an 1100% R oi, whatever theexample was.

(29:34):
And so we started talking topeople like, well, if you start
actually measuring this, you canstart solving.
Deeper problems in the business.
'cause you can start looking atwho's your best salesperson?
Who's your best salesperson forthis particular marketing
channel?
What are your highest and lowestclose rates per thing that you
sell?
And are you focusing yourmarketing spend based off of
what is most likely to turn intosales revenue, you know, profit,

(29:55):
et cetera.
And so we started gettingreally, really heavy into that
and that we kind of repositionedour entire offering around it.
And we did that for about ayear, year and a half.
In that ultimately.
It's not that it didn't work,but what we found is that the
problem was a lot more complex.
'cause it's one thing to educatepeople about it.
It's another thing to say youneed to start using a CRM.

(30:16):
Yeah.
Your salespeople need to startactually keeping notes in here.
Like every time that you add anew whatever, your UTM
parameters need to be updated tomake sure that everything's
being attributed properly.
Oh, you have this.
Additional form systems,

Russel (30:28):
you basically have to go run their business for them.

Jarod (30:29):
Yeah.
And so we had, I think this was2022, uh, we lost money eight
outta 12 months of that year,which agencies are cashflow
businesses.
It's very hard to lose money in,in an agency.
And we were hemorrhaging cash,or worse month, I think we lost
about 25 grand.
And it was because it was soexpensive for us to set up and

(30:50):
maintain all these systems andhire the people to set'em up.
So one of the big lessons thatwe learned was actually we can't
just go in there with theexpectation that everyone's
gonna adapt to how we need themto adapt.
We need them to be bought infirst.
And the big issue is that we didnot have enough trust with these
clients because when we betatested this, whatever you wanna
call it, we started doing thisfor our existing clients.
People that we'd worked with foryears, people who already knew,

(31:10):
liked, and trust us, that if wesaid, Hey, you need to upgrade
your package on whateversoftware.
You're using, they did it.
If we say you need to switchsoftware,'cause they don't have
these features, they did it.
And then when we were doing itfor these newer clients, you
know, we'd share our casestudies from our existing
clients.
They get bought into that.
Theoretically we start workingwith them.
But when they're using a systemthat.
Can't do any amount of sourceattribution does not allow you

(31:32):
to add any sort of custom fieldsfor any sort of attribution.
It's really difficult for us todo what we were trying to do.
But that was one of the biggestthings that we had to realize is
that we were just trying to dotoo much too fast without really
trust to do it.
And we had to almost take a stepback and become more modest in
our approach, solve the initialproblem, help them recognize the
second problem, and then solveit when it was just a better

(31:54):
time and opportunity.

Russel (31:56):
I mean, wonderfully detailed explanation and I, I
really appreciate you reallygoing through that much detail
to see the inner workings of howthat plays out.
And we found the same thing inour business and we mostly
focused on websites, websitebuilding, but we'd get very into
the weeds of their business and,you know, try to do all kinds of
technology integrations andstuff.
Um, but if we started theconversation with all the things

(32:17):
like that, I mean, eyes glazedover and probably really kind
of.
Put the halt on an engagementbecause they were coming to us
and saying, look, we want ourwebsite redone.
You know, probably in your caseI want ads.
And they're not really, and tothe point, even trust, there's
not a lot of trust there.
So we had to tamper thatconversation early on.
Build the trust, solve theinitial need, and then, right,

(32:39):
you can dive deeper and deeperinto the business once you've
built that trust and alreadyproved you can do one thing
capable before you try to do 20.
Absolutely.
So, and it's so much

Jarod (32:47):
easier to not just get buy-in for whatever that.
Next step is, but also for thepricing of it as well.
Because we're in a space wherethere's always gonna be someone
who's willing to do it cheaperbecause there's no barrier to
entry to what we're doing,right.
Especially nowadays with, youknow, AI or whatever, like
anybody can be like, yes, I'llbuild you a website.
Here's like the AI website tool,put in a one sentence prop, copy

(33:09):
and paste done.
Um, gimme 50 bucks and it'sdone.
And for the consumer who doesnot really realize the
difference between a$50,000website and a$50 website, it's
really hard to get them to sayyes to that when the one looks
just as good in their eyes.
When you actually start to buildthat relationship, they're

(33:29):
willing to actually listen toyour arguments and actually be
like, oh, you're trying toeducate me, not just trying to
sell me on something.

Russel (33:36):
Yeah.
Great example.
It just goes to this idea that,you know, ultimately.
And I think this is really howagency services, marketing
services are transitioning isgone is the day of providing the
service.
I showed up and did the sixInstagram reels and ran ads and
stuff like that and that's gonnacut it.
That we actually have to solvemeaningful problems.

(33:57):
We have to measure, we have toprove that value, but that
ultimately on the backside ofthat, if we do that similar in
the way the path it sounds likeyou've gone to, that's how we
can charge more.
That's how we can becomeinseparable from that company is
if we get our hands dirty.
And show and figure out how tosolve all these complex
problems, especially in largeorganizations.

(34:18):
That's the path to beingindispensable or priceless, I
guess you could say.

Jarod (34:22):
Yeah, and what I was really shocked about is we
spent, I was very hard on thisfor a while where I would say,
this is our product.
This is what we do.
No more, no less, like this isour scope of work.
Because, you know, everybody'salways worried about scope
creep, right?
And.
You also like resourcemanagement, utilization rates,
the whole shebang, and over timeI just started to say yes a

(34:43):
little bit more, especially aswe grew our team and I didn't
have to do everything myselfanymore.
What has happened is, as.
Our clients have got to know usmore and whatnot.
The floodgates have just openedof like, here's a problem I
don't know how to solve.
I'm just gonna toss you acursory email just in case you
know how to solve it.
And the amount of opportunitieswe've been able to find of
sometimes just people coming tous and just being like, we have

(35:06):
this, we're happy to pay you toimplement it.

Russel (35:08):
Or that's just the path you've gone down solving, and
either way you've gotta,whatever the level and.
Sophistication and that youwanna solve in your product and
service that you've identifiedas for that customer and what
that solution is, then so be it.
But it is that path and processthat I think is so important.
I mean, right.
You said you've made a heavyinvestment in your r and d and
understanding where this isgonna work and not work, and one

(35:31):
of the things I wanna make surewe get to, because.
What I'm remember from our earlystage conversation was this
knowledge that you have aextremely high acquisition cost
that you're willing to bear tofind these opportunities.
And I find that justfascinating.
'cause you don't, you don't heara talk, a lot of talk about that
from an agency perspective.
We do it for our customers, butwe don't hear this notion of how

(35:53):
much we're willing to spend toget customers.

Jarod (35:56):
Yeah.
So for us.
The rules that I'll typicallyapply for like a new channel is
I wanna see an$8,000 CAC or lesswithin three months.
A$5,000 CAC or less within, uh,six months and a$3,000 CAC or
less within 12 months.
And then a$2,000 CAC or lesswithin, uh, 24 months.
That's like a blanket, like ifwe're working together, like I'm
just gonna spit out thosenumbers and you know, we can

(36:17):
kind of adjust it in theinterim.
Um.
But for me, like I think thechallenge of an agency is just
getting people in the doorbecause there's just so much
noise out there.
The consumer OB generally can'treally tell the differences
between a lot of companies, evenwhen they're fairly
differentiated.
And so I'm willing to pay.
A lot of money on the front endand just consider that, you

(36:40):
know, learning experience atworst and at best, you know,
that's somebody who, you know,I'm confident that they're gonna
be happy with the work thatwe're doing.
I'm confident that we're gonnaretain them for a long time,
even if we don't retain them fora long time.
I'm confident that we'll be ableto get portfolio items out of
that, which will help us get thenext person on board a little
bit faster, A little bit of alower cost where.

(37:02):
As long as I'm tracking it, thenI don't particularly care what
the number is.
'cause if it gets too high, I'mtracking it and I can kind of
nip it in the bud there.
Um, you know what's scary to meis not knowing what the CAC is.
Like if the CAC is a dollar or$10,000, whatever,'cause I know
what it is, but I become veryuncomfortable when I don't have
a way to, not necessarily knowit down to the penny, but have a
way to get a rough idea of howlong it takes to get somebody

(37:24):
in.
How much does it cost?
But aside from that, like I'mhappy.
Throw the money at it, and if Idon't have the money, I'm happy
to finance the money to throwmoney at it or you know what
have you.

Russel (37:33):
I mean, you've proven to yourself, you're playing a
numbers game.
And yes, we wanna make thosenumbers as efficient as
possible, but if we know ourideal customer are willing to
say no, that to folks thataren't, you know, and even kind
of gave some different scenarioswhere folks just aren't.
Amenable to what you're tryingto do within their business.
That's an important part of theprocess.
Uh, and just so folks at homethat may not be familiar with

(37:54):
specific terminology in yourspace, what does CAC stand for?

Jarod (37:57):
Customer acquisition costs.
You know, how much money did youspend versus divided by the
number of customers that youacquired?

Russel (38:03):
I would be willing to bet.
A lot of agencies don'tnecessarily know what that is
for themselves, and so manyagencies are just living off a
referral, which feels like azero.
CAC in that sense.
But anyway, very fascinatingtake, And one last big question
for you, or entrepreneurs bornor are they made.

Jarod (38:21):
I think like anything, it's a skill.
Some people are naturally bornbeing better at things than
others, but, uh, like any skill,your natural ability is only
gonna carry you so far.
So I'm just living with it andfiguring out day by day.
But I think as long as you'reintentional and you're like, I
know this is the good, I knowthis is the bad, and I'm
actively working to improve thebad, I think you're going to be

(38:42):
okay.
Where people run into trouble,whether that's entrepreneurship,
whether that's your marketingcampaign, or whether that's, you
know.

Russel (38:47):
Your

Jarod (38:47):
personal relationship, your finances, what have you, is
it's, I've done nothing and I'mout of ideas.
I try to think it didn't work.
I have no idea.
I have not tried to figure outwhy it didn't work.
I have not thought about what Ican do next.
And so, you know, that's it.
That's a really bad position tobe in.
But if as long as you're tryingto figure out why you failed,
then I think you're gonna befine because you're able to show
that you're making progress.

Russel (39:08):
Great example.
you were sharing an analogy andI, I gotta expand upon this
'cause, uh, kind of seeing thisplay out and I've got a son
that's in sports and I rememberseeing this, you know, when he
was younger and you would seethese athletes, they're like, oh
my gosh, that kid's gonna be inthe NFL or whatever someday.
And, seeing the differentiterations by the time of high
school, you don't see thatperson anymore.

(39:28):
And it's not that they're notstill playing the game, it's
they.
Didn't develop some of that workethics.
They just had that naturalability and then they got
surpassed by the person that wasstill started to figure out what
working hard looks like anddoing that extra work.
And then you see that drop offtremendously once you get into
college level that you know nowyou've still got some natural,
but you, everyone's generally.
Worked to be there at somelevel, but, you know, just

(39:50):
really, you know, wrestling's mymain sport and, and to see the
survivors games where, I mean,I've seen Olympic qualifiers
that barely made their highschool team and that they just
stuck around.
They kept figuring it out andthere is no timetable for
success.
But maybe to kind of what itsounds like, your core point
there is you gotta just bewilling to continue to bash your

(40:11):
head into the wall and not stopat failure or what.
Looks like hard work.

Jarod (40:16):
Yeah, and it's intentional improvement.

Russel (40:18):
I want to go so far down this rabbit hole, but I
know we can't, and so that willhave to be for another day.
If people wanna know more aboutComet Fuel, where can they go?

Jarod (40:26):
Yeah, absolutely.
So if you wanna learn more aboutComet Fuel, go to comet
fuel.com.
And if you are a talenteddigital marketer and you're not
happy with whatever agency thatyou're working at now'cause you
feel undervalued or underpaid,then feel free to reach out and
I'll see if we can do somethingwith you.

Russel (40:39):
Beautiful.
Well.
So many great concepts youshare.
Really appreciate just the, thedigging in the unique path.
How do we create value andwhat's the fastest path to get
there?
I mean, there's 157 takeaways Ithink we can ultimately pull
from this episode and justreally appreciate you taking the
time to share that with ustoday, Jared.
Yeah, I appreciate you lettingme come here.
Likewise, likewise.

(40:59):
Awesome.
Thank you for listening to anagency story podcast where every
story helps you write your own.
Subscribe, share, and join usagain for more real stories,
lessons learned, andbreakthroughs ahead.
What's next?
You'll want to visit an agencystory.com/podcast and follow us
on Instagram at an agency storyfor the latest updates.

Jarod (41:23):
What the perception of somebody is an influencer, a
content creator, whatever, onthe front end versus what was
happening behind the scenes.
So to give you a part of mystory is when I was doing the
freelancing stuff, I got up toabout 8,000 a month of recurring
revenue, all profit.
And I was like, okay, what am Igonna do now?
I was in the online groupsbecoming a little bit more of a
recognizable name.
Ended up leasing an officespace,$900 a month, 2,240 square

(41:47):
feet.
All to myself.
It was'cause it was a basementunit and so on and so forth.
It was pretty cheap.
But this big office, peoplewould assume, big office, big
money.
Big office, big team, uh, but itwas just me all kind of by
myself.
And then, you know, so I'mgaining this more notoriety on
the public side and then signthe lease for the office a week
later.
My two biggest clients, nowarning, fire me.

(42:08):
I'm done at 4,500 a month whileI'm paying$900 plus utilities
for this new office.
I'm paying myself about 2,500 amonth, working 60 hours a week,
effectively,$10 an hour.
I just lost these two clients.
I'm scared I'm gonna lose more,so I lower my pay even more.
And now I'm effectively making$6an hour.
L publicly, I'm getting more andmore attention.
So time goes on, revenue startsto tick up again.

(42:30):
I get up to about 20,000 monthlyrecurring revenue when that
happens.
I was in Thailand at the timefor the first C-M-S-E-O event.
There's this podcast called TheLine Zeal podcast.
Very popular at the time, Idon't think it exists anymore.
We were filming in person thiskind of big event, you know,
bunch of people on, on set.
We had this nice apartment.
We had lav mics looked veryprofessional.
Episode comes out one to twomonths later.

(42:52):
As soon as it comes out, peopleare reaching out for advice.
They want me to come on theirshow, I'm being asked to speak
at events.
It just all of a sudden, itabsolutely surreal the amount
of, I wanna say like fame,because still very small in a
small space, but all of a suddenit's just like, wow, I'm making
all this money.
I'm being put in the spotlight.
This is more than I ever couldhave imagined.
But behind the scenes.
I had all these clients, nosystems, no documentation.

(43:13):
The 60 hour work week turnedinto a 90 hour work week,
sleeping at the office,developed a Polyphasic sleep
schedule, literally working tillI couldn't sleeping, getting up,
meeting, repeat, and thenstarted losing clients.
I forgot to bill people.
I was still doing work forpeople that I forgot that I
didn't realize weren't payingme.
I.
Forgot to do work for otherclients'cause it was just an
absolute mess.
So, uh, I don't know if there'sa moral to the story, but I just

(43:35):
find it, uh, funny andinteresting that while I was
being in, put in the spotlightwas the same exact time that I
had gone from making$20,000 amonth all the way down to$3,000
a month.
And so while I was doing well,it was almost crickets.
And then while I'm like, holycrap.
I might be, you know, bankruptout of business, whatever, and
who knows days.
That's when I was kind of beingpropelled and put in the

(43:57):
spotlight.
Here's the guy that you need totalk to.
This is the person I want on myshow.
This is, you know, the person Iwant speaking at my event.
'cause look at what they'veachieved and at the same time
I'm like.
And it's gone.
Yeah.
You know, so again, no moral tothe story, but I did think it
was interesting.

Russel (44:13):
Uh, there's a moral, I think you were, you were
highlighting at the beginning ofjust that you can't judge your
backstage by someone else'sfront stage.
You just ultimately have no ideawhat's going on back there.
And, um, not all things thatlook like success are success.
Um, but then, and justappreciate the open, honest
story there.