Tony Ricketts on Building a 7-Figure Agency, Niching Down, and the Future of Local Marketing

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hey there, My name is Danny Lebrand and welcome back to
Local Marketing Secrets. Today I'm joined by Tony
Ricketts, the founder and CEO ofLandline Marketing.
Over the past nine years, Tony has grown Landline into one of
the most recognized niche agencies in the country, serving
more than 200 lawn and landscapecompanies and generating over
$3,000,000 in annual revenue. Beyond Landline, Tony is also

(00:21):
the founder of Crystal Insights,a new AI powered call analysis
software and agency Titan, a platform in development to help
digital marketing agencies manage their business and
fulfillment. In this episode, we'll dive into
Tony's journey from being a hands on web developer to
becoming a systems driven agencyleader, why niching down is the
key to growth, and what trends in marketing are shaping the

(00:43):
future for service businesses. Now, without further ado, Tony,
welcome to the show. Hey, Danny, thanks for having
me. I'm glad to be here.
Absolutely, man. So I wanted to dive into your
background and I found this really interesting.
So you had an agency before yourcurrent agency.
But what I didn't know and you you just mentioned to me is that
you're actually a software engineer before that first

(01:04):
agency. Can you, can you just tell me
more about that and more of yourbackground?
Absolutely. Yeah.
Well, it starts back from when Iwas a kid, actually.
I started learning coding and programming when I was about 10
years old, which would have beenin the early 90s, and started to
start to understand how the Internet worked.
Right when the Internet first came out of something I was very
obsessed with and passionate about.

(01:24):
And as I, as I grew older, I stayed with it, continue to stay
up to date on the latest technologies and stuff like
that. Now again, this was 20 some
years ago, right? So, and all those technologies
now are all dated and antique stuff.
But I did that all through high school.

(01:45):
And then after I graduated high school, I went to college and I
got a formal degree in software engineering.
And then I went and worked for some marketing agencies actually
doing the software side of the business.
So after I decided to go out anddo some stuff on my own, I
started Rick, it's web design, which is the first agency that
you're referring to. And that was kind of a mixture

(02:05):
between a custom SAS company anda marketing agency kind of put
together. So what we would do is companies
would come to us and they would want us to build their custom
software to be able to run theirbusinesses.
Most of them are like local typebusinesses and then they would
want us to promote that softwarefor them and promote their
businesses. So we kind of had both sides

(02:26):
into it. And I ran that business for
about 10 years before I decided that it was very difficult to
scale. It was very difficult to scale
because we would work with anybody, right?
It was more of a generalist typeagency.
And every industry that we worked with, we'd have to
relearn their industry. We would have to build software

(02:46):
from scratch. It was chasing projects, didn't
have a lot of reoccurring revenue and growing a software
business is very expensive. Software engineers are very
expensive and it was we didn't have AI like we have today.
So it was very difficult business to be able to scale to
the point where I wanted to too.So that's where I decided that I

(03:07):
wanted to change the focus and focus on the reoccurring revenue
side, which was the marketing side.
And I decided that I needed something to be more
productized, something that we can repeat over and over and
over because that's the only wayto scale.
You know, I was once told a saying that stuck with me
forever. And that is if your business

(03:30):
requires specialists to scale, it will never scale.
So the first business I had requires specialists in every
aspect of it from the software engineers to when we went to the
marketing side to having you know, senior ad buyers and
things like that. And it was very difficult to
scale. So we decided that we needed to

(03:50):
find a niche where we could put together a systematic approach
to all of the marketing servicesthat we were offering and build
that into more of a a prepackaged program that we can
resell and re execute at scale. And that's exactly what we did
and that's how long line was wasborn.
So we decided to choose the lawnlandscape industry.

(04:11):
There were a couple of differentreasons why we chose that, which
I'm happy to dive into if you'reinterested.
But we decided on lawn and landscape.
And over the last nearly 10 years that we've been running
long line, our programs have shifted as we've seen and tested
results across you know probablyat this point hundreds of
millions of dollars in AD spend and leads generated to be able

(04:34):
to dial it in so that we can continuously grow and scale a
business model that was very difficult to scale in the past,
which was all about coming up with those very specific
programs and re executing them repeatedly.
Yeah, definitely. No, it's super interesting.
You come from the software background and I, I saw, you

(04:54):
know, you have this, this new SAS or at least software company
Crystal insights. And you know, I see a lot of
people trying to get into software, but to know now it's
like, oh, Dang, you, that's actually your background.
That's where you came from. That's super cool, right?
Yeah. And I wanted to go into the
software side because that's my roots.
That's where I started, but I needed in my personal life and
journey, I needed the marketing side to learn what I didn't know

(05:18):
back then when I wanted to startthe software side of the
business. So when I was running Rick's Web
design, you know, it was SAS development, but I was
developing SAS for other people,right?
I was building their dreams and what they want to do, and I
didn't build stuff for myself. And that's what Crystal Insights
is about, is about not only solving a problem that we saw

(05:38):
and needed to solve in long linemarketing for the agency, but
actually building something for myself versus building something
for everybody else. So that was kind of one of the
big changes in with my background being in software
engineering, this this one was alot easier to start executing
and build with my background with the funding that Longline

(06:00):
offered and all those types of stuff versus being a broke
college kid trying to find my way.
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah.
Let's let's touch on Crystal Insights a little bit later.
I'd, I want to go back into the niche stuff because even though
I don't know, it feels kind of basic.
A lot of people that I've talkedto are still trying to find a
niche. You know, either they're just

(06:20):
about to start an agency or maybe they've had a generalist
agency for a while and now they're looking at niche down.
You explained a little bit of why an easing down, but why
specifically did you choose lawnand landscape?
So there were a couple of reasons and it actually LED up
to a previous failure is where lawn and landscape came from.
So I knew that I needed to nichedown and my first niche was not

(06:43):
actually lawn and landscape. It was my second niche.
My first niche was real estate and I failed miserably in real
estate. And I'm and I'm happy to talk
about failures because failures are what push you forward and
how you learn. So when I first started niching
down, I chose real estate. And one thing that I learned
from there was that we had abouta dozen clients and one thing I

(07:05):
learned is when we would generate a lead for them, it
could be a long time before theyactually saw money from that
lead. You know, these were real estate
agents that we were working with.
So whether we've got them a buyer or a seller lead, as I'm
sure you know, people spend months looking for houses,
right? So, you know, Danny, you're
looking to buy a home and you goand click on one of our Realtors

(07:27):
ads and you reach out to the realtor and you start looking
for a home. But it may be 6 months before
they ever make a dollar off of you, right?
Yeah. And that, that made a very
difficult, that made it very difficult to keep the clients
long term, right? The churn would, would come very
quickly after just a couple of months and not seeing real

(07:47):
dollars coming in the bank account, regardless of how many
leads are generated. So one of the things that I
learned from that was that I needed a niche where we could
put money in the bank for the client right away.
So that was one of my #1 things I looked at when I decided, OK,
this is not working. We've spent like 6 months trying
to build this real estate side and we've made thousands of

(08:09):
dollars. You're right.
And yeah, I mean thousands, likenot ten, like a couple of 1000
bucks every like 6 months. So this obviously is not going
to work and we need to find a way to shift.
So there were a couple of thingsthat we looked at.
One number one was we had to be able to get the client dollars
in their bank account right away.
Another thing that we looked at is I wanted a niche that I had

(08:33):
a, an abundance of companies that we could go after.
You know, where as like say in real estate where I went with
there's only so many Realtors and there are a lot of Realtors,
don't get me wrong. But one thing that I didn't
realize is that you know when you want to pull in data from
their MLS that you're stuck to the Realtors in that MLS.
So the scalability of the real estate side was very difficult.

(08:54):
Well, with lawn and landscape between the US and Canada,
there's like 600,000 companies. Yeah.
So that was very attractive to me that there's a huge pool of
potential customers that we can go after here.
So check those first two boxes. And then I, the, the final thing
that we ended up deciding on lawn and landscape was it's

(09:15):
because when I was in college getting my software engineering
degree, I spent two years working on a landscaping crew
doing mostly soft scape installations and landscape
maintenance. And knowing a little bit about
the industry, I decided that this would be a good fit because
it checks those first couple of boxes.
And I know a little bit about the industry.

(09:35):
Let's go after this. One of the thing we did look at
while we're doing this, which I would not recommend looking at
this today, we kind of touched on this prior to the podcast
starting here was I did look to see which niche didn't have a
ton of agencies already going after it.
Now at this time, there were hardly any going after lawn and
landscape and that was one reason that we chose it as well.

(09:57):
But I would not use that as an indicator today to determine
which niche to go into, right? Just because there's other
agencies going after a specific niche doesn't mean there's not
plenty of room for everybody, right?
And that that's my opinion. So you mentioned you know how
many clients that we work with and we're the largest multi
$1,000,000 agency focusing on this space and we have less than

(10:19):
1% of the industry. Wow, yeah.
So there's plenty of room for everybody out there.
So if you're looking for your niche to go into when you're
starting your marketing agency and you wanted really do
plumbing and HVAC, don't worry that there's 300 other agencies
after it, right? Do you, right?
If that's the industry you know and you feel like you can be
successful in, then go for it. Go after it.

(10:42):
Yeah, definitely. No, like I like I was mentioning
at before the call, that's that's part of the reason I
chose pest controls because you know, at least at the seven
figure agency seminar that I wasat, seemed like no one else was
doing pest control. But now that they're obviously
other people doing pest control and it seems like more or less
every industry kind of evens out.
Like, you know, there's there's not many pest control companies.

(11:04):
So that makes sense that there'sgoing to be less agencies, but
still, it's relatively, I'd say the same amount of competition,
but obviously there's different aspects.
That's also something I want to ask you as well then how can you
compete with these other agencies?
You know, even even though you guys only have like a small
percent of the market share, youguys still have a big agency.
How? How do you win over these other

(11:25):
agencies? So one of the things that I've
always focused on is is I do want to be the best, right?
That's that's the never out of sight.
We always want to be the best, but it's not about being the
best, it's about being the best known.
Yeah. And that and that's what's going
to help you grow and beat some of these other places.

(11:50):
People like comfort and if they've seen a name over and
over and over many times over the years, they feel comfortable
in that name, right. So like if we were to look at
other non related industries andservices, let's say something
like handling your payroll for your business.
Very important aspect, right? Same thing with your marketing.

(12:11):
It's an entire department of your business.
There's big names out there like, you know, paychecks and
companies like that, that handlepayroll for companies.
And they may not be the best, but they're the best known.
And as a business owner, maybe this small company over here
that nobody's ever heard of is actually the best.

(12:31):
But I'm going to be terrified togive them something so important
and pay so much money when I know that this company over here
will at least get the job done right.
Will they be as good as this company over here?
Maybe not, but they're going to get the job done, otherwise they
wouldn't be where they are today.
So having that being the best known helps comfort the buyers

(12:52):
when they come to you. So in the art industry and
marketing, I always say that we're looked at like a mechanic,
right? We're never trusted, right?
Every time you get the mechanic place and you need your
windshield wipers change, you come back with a list of $5000
and stuff that needs done to your car, right?
And I wouldn't drive it away if I were you, right?
That's how they make Cadio and everybody that we deal with has

(13:15):
a Horror Story working with the marketing agency and they don't
trust them, they don't like them.
So being the best known is that's not a wall that we have
to break down. When we start our sales process
with potential clients, we don'thave to convince them that we're
not going to RIP them off and run away with their money and
they're going to get nothing outof it, right.

(13:36):
We're we're beyond that level because of the reputation that
we've built in the space. So how going back to your
original question, how do you beat out those other agencies?
Being the best known is one of the biggest things.
Social proof is another big thing.
When they see you're working with the other people that they
know in the industry and look upto and see that you've helped

(13:57):
them get there, then that's going to help you be able to to
close more clients. Also being consistent is another
big thing. When I first brought salespeople
into the agency, I always wantedto ensure that when somebody
would ask us a question, they didn't get that that
salesperson's answer, they got long lines answer.
So every salesperson that comes into our company, they have to

(14:18):
go through a six month training process that's very long and
deals with shadowing and training.
But one of the key ways that I built the systems to train that
is we built a list of every single question we were ever
asked. This is before AI and we had a
human listen to every single sales call that we had over the

(14:39):
years and they notated down every question that was asked
and the answer that we gave to that question.
And then our salespeople study that like of server would a menu
working in a restaurant, right? So that whenever you ask a
server a question about, hey, what's on this dish or you know,
how they can be cooked or whatever, they all give the same
answer, the same response. And that's what we wanted to put

(15:01):
in place with our sales team so that when you're asking
questions, whether it's from an experienced salesperson or not,
you're still getting the proper and correct answers that that
delivered the value that the person is looking for and asking
about. So when you put all those things
together, that's where you're going to really start.
It's not about the competition, it's about focusing on you and

(15:22):
making sure that you're presenting yourself in the best
possible way. And don't even worry about what
the competition is. And if you look at like our
pricing for example, a lot of people will say shop on price,
we're the most expensive agency out there compared to everybody
else. I mean, if we have a entry level
program that small, that small companies that are just getting
started can, can get on. But outside of that, your

(15:44):
minimal investment in our fees is 50,000 a year and that's
where we start in pricing, right?
That's our base level price point which puts us higher than
99% of all the other agencies just in our base level pricing.
You know, let's not even discussthe $100,000 plus programs that
we have that you'll have to thatyou'll have to put out in order

(16:05):
to be on one of our bigger programs.
So it's all about how you frame it, present it, who you are as
an agency and all those things put together.
It's no one individual thing. Absolutely.
No, I I completely agree. I really like that first point
on you don't necessarily have tobe the best, but you have to be
the best known. I mean, I totally relate with
that. And it it makes complete sense

(16:25):
because I mean, the goal is to get everyone to the bottom of
the funnel, right? So you can't get people to the
bottom of the funnel if you don't build up that massive top
of funnel and everyone knows about you.
And now they're I don't know, a lot of people will probably fall
through the funnel. They've might not never need you
burp, yeah, might not need you or whatever, but a lot of people
just naturally knowing you, thenthey'll bring them down to like

(16:48):
and trust you. And you know, the, the whole
funnel thing there. And also I was going to mention
that the same thing can be applied to home service
companies, right? I mean that's this is like a
huge part that they need to focus on.
Absolutely, 100%. Being the best known is a big
thing. That's why you see companies
like plumbing, HVAC companies that have much larger marketing
budgets than long hair pest companies.

(17:09):
That's why they buy TV commercials and that's why they
buy the billboards and do all those things so that you can
constantly see that name over and over and over and over.
You see what I'm saying? So how we started it in getting
that recognition in the industryis by attending industry events
and conferences. So we got our very first

(17:29):
customer through the Equip Expo,which used to be called the GIE
or Green Industry Expo back in was that 2016 is when we did
that October 2016. And that's where we got our
first client. And it was because we had a
booth at a big industry event. And The thing is, is when

(17:52):
businesses go to these industry events in these conferences,
they come with an open mind. They're there to learn, they're
there to see what new vendors may be out there, what products
are coming out. So they they come open and ready
to be sold, right? Not necessarily closed off like
you're a cold person approachingthem.
And then when you're there, theyjust automatically assume that

(18:16):
you're a semi large company because you're there as a
vendor. And that's one of the things I
recognized right away with my small little crappy booth where
I went to Walmart and bought bought a rug to put down there
because I didn't even have a carpet and it looked hideous.
I didn't have any money to actually pay for a boost.
So I bought tables at Walmart. I bought computers at Home Depot

(18:37):
and then or Office Depot. And then when I was done, I
returned all of it, right, because I couldn't even afford
these out there. But after I think we were there
for one more year in that small booth and then realized the
value of these conferences. And that's where we started to
upgrade and start doing the big boost, right where we would
invest twenty $30,000 going to these events.

(18:58):
And then it really started to pay off, right?
Because when they put you and a big, when you have a big booth
and you're right next to these big players that they recognize
these names like these are staples, Fortune 500 companies,
They put you at that same level that they hold those companies
to, right? So when they walk past and
here's John Deere and then here's long line right next to

(19:20):
them like, well, fuck, long lines.
Got to be somebody if they're sitting here next to John Deere
at this big ass booth, right? So that just that just gives you
that instant credibility that this is probably a a good
potential player versus somebodywho is just running general
Facebook ads, is sending out cold emails, is doing all the
cold calling with their V as those don't have that trust

(19:42):
factor to them. You see what I'm saying?
Those are you're a cold person reaching out to them versus
setting up a big display in a place that they feel only
reputable vendors are AT and they come approach to you,
right. It's a completely different
mindset mindship. You're going to close those
people at that conference much better, much easier.
And then you start seeing these people as people start seeing

(20:04):
you all the time, right? Because in my industry, lawn
landscape, there's a good. Three or four major conferences
a year, right? And you want to be at all of
them. Then there's all the little ones
and a lot of the same people will go to these different
conferences. So as they keep seeing you over
and over and over, they start building that brand recognition
in that trust. And then don't forget the vendor

(20:24):
partnerships. You know, we made a huge deal
with site one. I'm not sure if you're familiar
with the company site one, but they are the largest landscape
supplier in the country, almost 800 locations across the United
States. They do like a few billion
dollars in revenue. We were Fortune 500 and we are
their recommended marketing agency for all of their

(20:48):
landscape companies and spent almost seven years building that
reputation or building that thatrelationship to get that deal.
And see connecting with executives of a Fortune 500 when
you're some broke kid from Lafayette, IN is very difficult
to do. And the way that we did it was

(21:08):
we strategically placed our booths next to theirs at every
show that we went to. So, and even today, if the Equip
Expo is here in 2 1/2 weeks in Louisville, KY, when you go to
our booth, it is directly acrossthe aisle from site one, right?
So that's how I got that in is we made friends with them.

(21:28):
We talked to them because he remember the vendors, they have
the same people at all their booths at every show.
So when we would do these 5-6 shows a year, the people who are
working the Site 1 booth are thesame people at every show,
right? So we we would see them over and
over, right. We would joke in that with this
is the circuit is what we calledit back because we're all the

(21:50):
same people just going to these different locations setting up
our booths. Well, one of the ladies that we
became friends with that worked in the Site 1 booth ended up
getting promoted and became the director of trade shows, which
gave her a seat at the executive's table.
And she ended up telling us like, hey, you guys really need

(22:11):
to talk to these guys. They, we've been following them
around for like 7 years and I think we could really make a
good partnership with them. And the person who would make
that happen was at the table andit's like, OK, I'll talk to them
and maybe had a conversation with me.
And then couple months later, wesigned a new formal agreement
that will be their official marketing agency for Site 1

(22:33):
landscapers. And that was seven years in the
making. But how it happened was being
present at these industry eventsand getting to know the
industry. It had nothing to do with the
landscapers that were there. It actually had to do with
connecting with the other vendors that are serving the
same customers. Because remember, we're all
serving the same customers. So let's find ways that we can
work together and partner together.

(22:54):
So that's a good benefit that comes from being at these
conferences and being at the trade shows.
Yeah, no, that was incredible. That was like some serious sauce
for any agency owners out there.And I'll also mention that this
is definitely one step or several steps beyond the just
being known because this is setting the frame right of not

(23:16):
just, well, they see a random Facebook out of yours or like
you said, maybe you're just doing like some, some cold call
or something. But they see you associated with
all the top people. They see you have relationships
with all the top people in companies, So you're building
massive trust. And also I, I think the, the
first touch and the first impression is really important.
So let's say the first time someone ever sees you, they see

(23:37):
you next to all their favorite people and maybe they're
interviewing you or you know that they're recommending you
from their booth. It's like, well, I mean, I, I
don't know who this company is, but clearly there's somebody, I
mean, I have to check them out. I have to learn more about them.
So I just I just think that thatframe is really good.
Absolutely. And for me, it's always been
about giving too, right? Give more than you take.

(23:58):
That's what it's all about. And it and it doesn't apply just
to marketing agencies. It applies across the board to
everybody. Like let's take for example,
Crystal Insights, the software I'm about to launch, we've got
almost 100 agencies signed up for that software and I haven't
put a single dollar into marketing yet.
Wow, right. The reason that we do is because
for so many years I've given so much to the industry and I've

(24:21):
built a reputation in the space.And that's why this software is
already growing so quickly is because of of me being one of
the best known in the industry, right?
It's not necessarily am I the best in the industry?
No, but am I one of the best known?
Yes. And that's what I have is right.
It goes back to the best known versus, you know, being the
best. SO give right and that's how I

(24:42):
became one of the best known in the space was not just building
a larger agency for the industry.
It was giving what I know back to other people who are trying
to walk the same path that I walked.
Yeah, 100% yeah. Talk more about Crystal
Insights. What, what made you think of
that idea and how's it going andwhat, what is that?

(25:03):
Yeah, so. Crystal Insights is actually an
afterthought. Where originally started from
was our clients many years ago demanded from us that we need
better reporting. We need to, you know, we use
call tracking software systems and pixels and all that that
every other marketing agency does, right.
But when you use those lead tracking systems, it will tell

(25:24):
you, you know, how many phone calls did you have come in and
how many forms submissions did you have, all those types of
things. But as we all know, those aren't
actual representation of lead counts, right?
And then how many of them are brand new to your business?
How many of them are existing customers?
So we would do what most agencies did.
And it's like, here's how many phone calls came in, here's how
many forms submissions came in. And you know, this is what which

(25:47):
is spent, you know, all of thosetypes of things.
And the clients have complained that, well, you're saying we got
600 leads this month and we onlysee 300 in our CRM.
You know what's going on here? Why do your numbers never match
up with what our numbers are? And then we would audit and Oh
well, there's a lot of spam in here.

(26:07):
Or these are all people that were already customers that were
calling in about their service because they click their Google
business profile, right? And they called the number on
the website. So there's a lot of non lead and
just regular business transactional type calls in
there. So our response was, OK, well,
we're going to do what every other agency does and we're

(26:29):
going to have to hire people that are going to listen to
these phone calls, that are going to review these form
submissions and be able to dictate what they are, right?
So no doubt is this a qualified lead, is it not?
What services are they looking for?
That was about the gist of it, right?
That's what those people would look for and that helped, but it

(26:49):
wasn't great. I would say that it would be
8090% accurate, and of course our clients demanded more.
We want to lead accuracy, and weall know it's almost impossible
to do full accurate lead tracking across the Internet
because of the way that the Internet works.
But they wanted more accuracy and they wanted it faster.

(27:10):
The problem is with the humans, right?
We do 40,000 leads a month aggregated between all of our
clients. So that's 40,000 phone calls and
form submissions. It's got to be, right?
That takes some time. You got to actually physically
listen to this stuff. Noted down.
So at best, our reporting date, it was like, I, I mean, this is
best case scenario, 3 or 4 days behind, but usually like a week

(27:33):
or so behind, right? So we're not even going to see
this week's data until our call listeners can get to it later
next week or the week after because they got all these
leaves that they're get trying to get through.
So we decided when AI came about, how can we use this AI to
get more instant, faster, more accurate results?
So we, we built that into our what converts system because

(27:57):
what converts is what we used todo all of our lead tracking and
we would connect into their API,pull down the leads and the
calls and the recordings and allthat send that to AI, let AI
analyze the same thing that the call listeners were analyzing
and then give it back to us and we'll push it back up to what
converts. And that's what we did and it
worked really, really well. It's like, oh wow, now we're

(28:19):
actually getting all of our leads notated.
And are they actual leads? Are they not leads?
And it could pick up extra things like how much money was
quoted for this particular service and a couple of other
additional data points that werereally good to know that our
call listeners never actually did.
And we had that up and running for about a month or so.
And we showed a couple of other agencies that I'm friends.

(28:40):
It was like, hey, check this out, how we're using this for
AI. It's like, oh gosh, we need
that. We really need that ban.
And then I saw other big agencies like say, Josh Nelson,
for example, was ones like, man,I'm trying to do something like
this is like, how would you recommend we can do something
like this? And I was like, man, you know
what, we should probably just build this into a software,
right? That we had no intentions of
building this into a software. We need to solve a problem for

(29:02):
long line so that we could get better reporting for our
clients. And it was working good in what
converts. But one of the things that was a
downfall from the way that we did it is there is no way to
look at the data aggregated together.
So we were stuck with in what converts limitations.
So that's when we decide, OK, well let's just go ahead and
build this into its own stand alone software.

(29:23):
We can build our own interfaces and we can look at data
aggregated together. But more importantly, we could
actually look at it overall for the agency.
And then we can pull out things like what are call answer rates?
What percentage of the qualifiedleads are existing customers
versus brand new customers? What questions do these people
get asked? What kinds of complaints do our

(29:44):
clients get? What are some of their
competitors? Who are some of the competitors
that are being mentioned, Right.These are important business
decision data that everybody flies blind on because the
companies we work with, our average clients like 7 million a
year, those business owners are not on the front lines answering
the phones. So they don't really have a good

(30:05):
pulse on what are the complaintsthat they're getting or what
questions are they being asked or what praises are they
getting, what compliments? And so we put all this together
into a software that now enablesboth sides, the agency to get
that critical reporting that they needed.
So those qualified leads and thecall answer rates, because as we

(30:26):
all know in this industry, my industry, you're the same way.
People just don't answer their phones very well, right?
That's not, that's not unique toour industries.
That seems to be every home service industry.
But what was that call answer rate during business hours
specifically? And what were those qualified
leads? How many of them are new versus
existing? That's what we need to know is
the agency. Those are our big numbers.

(30:48):
But on the flip side, we can nowoffer to our clients, what
questions do you get asked, whatcomplaints do you get, what
praises do you get? And then the clients love that
from their side, right? Because now they can make Better
Business decisions based on the stuff that they see coming in.
They can better train their people when they cause outside
of just those things that I mentioned, it also evaluates all

(31:09):
of the representatives. So what was their confidence
level? What was their knowledge of the
products? What were some of their
weaknesses? What were some of their
strengths? What were some of their missed
opportunities so that you can goin there and click on one of
your employees that's a salesperson or on the phone and
see all of that data that the AIis basically just listening and
pulling out 51 different data points from that phone call for

(31:33):
both the agent and the customer.And you can then look at that
data in any way, shape or form that you want.
So it's been a huge help to us. We've completely shifted how we
do our reporting in long line tofocus on this approach of
qualified leads versus missed opportunities.
And those missed opportunities come from, I hate to say this

(31:55):
number and it's actually better than every agency that I've seen
use our software so far. But during business hours, only
about 70 to 72% of our phone calls get answered, not long
lines, long lines is 100%. That's one thing I've always
pushed. But when you look at our
clients, they only answer about 70% of the phone calls that come
in during business hours. You know, that's, that's

(32:17):
between, you know that that's going to be like 30%.
So when we go to talk to our clients and they tell us, OK,
our budget this month for ads isgoing to be $3000, but we should
just respond to, well, why don'tyou just take 1000 of it and,
and water it up and throw it outthe window because you're not
even answered the money, the leads for that money as it sits
right now, right? So being, but they never had

(32:40):
those insights before, right? There was never a way to be able
to know how many of your phone calls are being answered by a
human during business hours without the help of AI
technology. And now that we have AI
technology, these are insights that have never been able to be
known by a business owner before, and now they can make
better decisions. Yeah, definitely.

(33:01):
No, I've I've seen that with my agency and also with this
marketing program that I'm a part of pest control
millionaires, a lot of phone calls because a lot of these
guys, maybe they're smaller, let's say, because I know, I
know you're working with bigger companies, but especially these
small guys, I'd say that maybe they're under 500 KA year or so
and they're probably out tacking.
They're probably out, you know, maybe it's just them or maybe

(33:24):
it's just them and one tech or two techs and now they're not
picking up the calls because they're in the attic or they're
spraying or they're doing, or now they, they're trying to pick
up the phone while doing the service and they can't do that.
And they're like, oh, well, I need more leads.
I need more leads. It's like, no, dude, you, you
like you said, you're losing like a third of your leads,

(33:44):
maybe half of them. So that's that's really the the
part to focus on before generating tons and tons more
leads and. That's why we qualify our
clients, right? We have 4 things that we look
for when we qualify client to put them in a particular program
that we offer. So we're not like a restaurant

(34:05):
where you have a menu of items to choose from, right?
We have four programs that we sell and you have to fit within
the programs. So like if you're under
$1,000,000 a year, that's our starter program, right?
If you're between 1:00 and 3:00 million, that is our accelerate
program. If you're between 3 and 10
million, that's our elite program and 10 and over is our
tighten program. If you're not at those revenues,

(34:26):
you're not going to be at any ofthis.
So what I'm saying here is that you can't be doing $300,000 a
year and get on the Accelerate program.
And the reason for that is exactly what you just said,
you're not ready for it. That 3000 or $4000 a month
program that we charge for that will generate so much business
for you that it will crush you as a $300,000 a year company.
You're not ready for them yet. So that's why we asked those

(34:49):
four questions about your people, your location, your
services and your revenue. So the people, we want to make
sure you can answer the damn phone, right?
That's one of the biggest thingsthat we asked me to repeat.
Well, how many people do you have in the office that can
answer phones? If the answer is zero, then
you're definitely going to be not a good fit if you're over
$1,000,000 in revenue, right? So you've got to have that.

(35:10):
Then we look at the location, right?
Are you out in a rural area and your goal is to add $3,000,000
in revenue and you've got 10,000people in your town?
That's not going to be realistic, right?
So that's why we asked that question.
The third one was going to be your services.
We're niche here, right? We don't do HVAC, we don't do

(35:30):
roofs, right. If you, if you come to me and
you've got a roofing company andyou want to get roofs, I can't
help you. I don't know anything about
roofing, right? If you got landscape company,
we've got 100 million plus dollars spent in landscape and I
can tell you all about that one,right?
So we want to make sure that theservices that you offer are ones
that we know that we can confidently get your results
for. And then that last one was going
to be your revenue. In my industry of lawn and

(35:52):
landscape, we don't have huge margins for the lawn and
landscape companies. The very best well maintained
and operated lawn and landscape companies that are focused on
chemical treatments can typically see anywhere between
20 to maybe 25% net margins, maybe, right.
But if you're focused and say like maintenance, then mowing

(36:14):
and cleanups, you're probably looking at like 8 to 10% net
margins at best, and everybody else will fall somewhere in the
middle. So lawn and landscape companies
don't have huge margins, which means they can't operate like an
HVAC company that spends 25% of their entire revenue on
marketing. Recommend that you don't go over

(36:34):
5%. And as you get bigger, that gets
smaller and smaller and smaller.So when you're $1,000,000
company, we don't recommend thatyou spend any more than $50,000
a year on your overall marketing.
That's not just us, that's all of your marketing put together
that you're going to spend in the company, including your ad
dollars. So you've got to you, you've got

(36:56):
to stay within your bridges. You know what I mean?
You can't bite on more than thanyou can chew otherwise.
And as an agency, it took me a long time to realize that,
especially as you're starting off, you want to take on
everybody that would that you can, right?
Especially if they're in your niche, right?
Oh, I'm trying to get in the lawn and landscape.
I've got a lawn and landscape company here that wants to use
us. Let's bring them on.

(37:17):
That all costs, right? And you will end up with more
headaches if you do that versus if you cherry pick your own
clients and work with people that you know you can get a
result for. And when you do that, you're
going to see results consistently.
You're going to build a good reputation.
Your clients will be very happy.And then you'll start to be able
to work with the bigger companies because I'll tell you
working with the big companies are the easiest ones to work

(37:40):
with. But all of our clients are all
pretty much larger except for wehave that small program to
please cite one. When we made that deal right
before, we never worked with companies that were under
$1,000,000. And they said, well, if we're
going to make you guys our recommended marketing agency,
you've got to be able to supportall of our customers.
So that's what we created that smaller marketing program at

(38:03):
that point in time. Otherwise I would have never
done it. But the bigger companies,
they're not and I wouldn't, thisis a bad word to use if I'm
going to use it anyway. They're not gambling, right?
They're not. They're not putting it all on
the line like a company that's doing 2 or 300,000 a year.
You know, I had in my beginning days, I had a client still with

(38:23):
me today that went and got a credit card that had a $5000
limit and they said this is all we got.
If you can't make this happen, we're out of business, right?
It's like that. That's not it.
That's not a good feeling to be in as an agency owner that
you've got to try to make this happen.
And I ended up taking it on. I shouldn't have actually wrote

(38:44):
a whole blog post about it. Actually you can read.
And that client is still me today.
They do millions of dollars a year, the year now in revenue.
So that one is not working out, but I wouldn't say they all work
out like that for sure. So make sure that you take
clients that are ready for the programs that you deliver right
and preset those programs don't have.
But what do you want, right? People don't know what they
want. They want to grow their

(39:04):
business. So they come to you.
You need to be a consultant to them.
You need to set yourself as the expert.
Well, you're currently at $2,000,000 a year in revenue.
You want to get to 5 million over the next two to three
years. Here's how you do it, right,
because they don't know how to do.
That's why they're coming to you.
And when you take that approach,you're going to close a lot
more. And we only present one program,

(39:24):
by the way. So if they come to us and
they're at $2,000,000 a year, they're getting the Accelerate
program presented to them and that's it.
They don't even know. We have three other programs
that's available for them. So, tidbits about how we sell.
No, that was Agency Goldman again, that was, that was
awesome. Really like that.

(39:44):
I, I want to pivot here and I, Iwant to jump into marketing
strategies. And you know what, we'll talk
about this for maybe the last 5-10 minutes or so, but what are
you seeing is working best? And also just preface with this
that it seems like everything ischanging so much.
Everyone's so worried about all the AI stuff.
And like you said, there's so much new software, so many new
ways to track, you know, you even have your own new software

(40:06):
company. What are you seeing in marketing
and and what's working well for your clients?
Right now we are in a unique time for marketing, a time that
we've never seen. Our industry with the with the
influence of AI is going to be impacted more than most
industries are for. For us, AI is the equivalent of

(40:31):
the invention of the tractor forthe farmer.
And when the tractor was invented, that changed
everything for the farmer. And that's going to change
everything for us too. It's changed everything from the
way we produce and fulfill our work to how we analyze our work,
to how we get results and the actual results that come and
even the types of platforms thatare driving those results.

(40:54):
You know, I very much believe, and I would bet a lot of money
on it here, in the next one to two years, you're going to start
seeing ads in these AI platformslike ChatGPT and Claude and
Perplexity and Gemini, and all of these are going to start
showing their ads. So that's going to bring in all

(41:14):
of these new platforms that we're going to have to worry
about years. For years there's been for our
industry three major players, and that's it, right?
There's Google, there's Microsoft, there's Meta, right?
Those three drove the bulk of it.
And Google and Meta drive 90 percent, 95%.

(41:35):
And Microsoft gets that other little fiber temp.
Yeah. Right now we're going to have
every major AI platform as its own independent platform that
we're going to have to optimize for, run ads for.
So imagine, let's just take, youknow, the four biggest ones off
top of my head. That's going to be things like

(41:56):
ChatGPT. That's going to be Claude,
Gemini, Grok and Perplexity. There's five.
Let's go with those five. That's going to be 5 advertising
platforms that we're all going to have to learn and figure out
how to optimize best for those platforms, right?
And now the, but there's also a million others out there too,
like say Manus, which is a newerand upcoming one that's still

(42:17):
very large. It's going to have add
platforms. So all of these AI platforms are
going to become new sources for leads that we're going to have
to figure out how to build, optimize, track and do all of
that for. But that's not there yet.
It's not there now. I actually did a session 7
figure agency a few weeks ago about how to get ranked in the

(42:38):
in the AI models. So when somebody's talking to
ChatGPT, well, who's the best pest control company near me?
How do you show your clients there?
And we actually did a pretty decent deep dive in trying to
understand where the AI models are getting this data from.
And basically what it turned into was do good normal SEO,

(43:01):
write good content and you'll show up in these models, right?
Yeah, all, all of the ones that were getting recommended to as
of today, on October 3rd, 2025. This could be different.
October 4th, 2025. As of today, they were using
their Internet search tools, reviewing the top X number of

(43:22):
listings and then pulling in theones that it felt was best based
on the one snippet of content that came from those pages.
So he generally is a one to two sentence snippet that came from
each page and the result in the AI made the decision based on
that. So later down the road, maybe
they will go further down the pages and find, you know, 20-30
forty options. Maybe they will actually crawl

(43:44):
all the individual pages. Maybe they'll hold their own
indexes. Who knows where it's going to
go, but that's what we saw now is if you do standard SEO pretty
well, you'll get recognized and shown in the AI models.
But that's still not what's driving for us right now.
The biggest driver is still the biggest driver it's been for the
last couple of years, which is Google local service ads.
And I think you will continue tobe that way at least over the

(44:06):
next 12 months. But after that, I see the AI
models becoming the number one driver for for new leads to come
in, maybe not right away, but you're going to start to see
that uptick here over the next 12 months where OK, these guys
are now starting to become a major player in the lead

(44:27):
generation space, not just as AImodel to get recipes or whatever
that people use them for. Yeah, definitely.
Awesome. OK, So local service ads,
biggest one for your clients right now.
But moving forward, you see thatthe AI models and specifically
advertising in those models is going to be super important
also. That's, and I, I completely

(44:47):
agree with you on this. Someone asked me in my group
yesterday and I said essentiallythe same thing.
It's like, oh, you know, there, there's so many different LLMS
and so many different ways to show up.
And you know, these, these gurusare telling me this and that I'm
like, dude, if you do proper SEO, like you're already showing
up well on Google, you're ranking for all these keywords
and getting traffic on Google, then you should be doing pretty

(45:07):
well on these other platforms aswell.
It's, it's not like some whole new way to optimize.
You're essentially doing the same stuff, right?
A. 100% and I want to also throwthere too.
The thing about SEO is like, I know we all talk about it and we
offer it. We have it on here.
We do SEO, right. But how you're successful with
SEO is putting your stuff out there and being transparent.

(45:29):
That's all it comes down to, right?
You want to produce content. You can't rank and show up or
something if you don't say anything out there, right?
You don't want to be the best kept secret, you know, open up
your doors and talk about what you do openly.
That way the search engines can find it, right?
You have to be genuine. You have to actually produce

(45:49):
good results, get, you might say, produce good results.
Like if you're a pest control company, you need to have happy
customers that are willing to review you, who are willing to
tag you on social media, who arewilling to engage with you and
who are willing to refer you anddo all these things.
And platforms like Google that have been worked focused on
ranking websites and web pages for the last, you know, 30 years

(46:13):
now, they've gotten very good atusing many different flags and
touch points to determine who's going to be good companies to
show. And that's where the reputation
and the content and the referrals and the social
engagements and even down to things like people hitting
driving directions on maps, right, that Google sees this

(46:33):
company puts a lot out there andengages a lot.
They've got to be somewhat decent, right?
And that's, they end up getting shown.
So it's, there's no special sauce, secret tricks.
It's just doing the things that you should do as a business
that's going to get you those SEO results.
And that's effectively what's going to get you the AI results
too. Absolutely love that man Yeah, I

(46:54):
know there there's a lot of people that are using like smoke
and mirrors and oh, here's the latest trick.
Here's the latest tool. But like you said, it's it's
much more simple, just like do agood job, demonstrate what you
do, you know, get the reviews, make make sure that you're
populating your website with allthe stuff you do all that stuff.
So cool. We'll yeah, we'll wrap up the
wrap up the podcast here. The last question I've got for

(47:15):
you, Tony, is what is your message for local business
owners or for local marketers? So what do you want to tell
them? What do you think they need to
know? A.
Couple of things when it comes to the marketing side for local
business owners. Don't be afraid to spend for

(47:36):
one. Don't you know, don't go looking
for the cheapest. This is not we're not selling
macaroni and cheese off the off the shelf in the store.
This is not a commodity product,right?
This. So don't be afraid to hire
somebody that knows what they'redoing, OK?
You want a higher chance to win,right?

(47:58):
Going back to say the gambling, I use that that metaphor
earlier. Let's use it again here.
You know, it's one thing if you're going to sit down and
gamble 5 bucks at a table where you're likely to lose versus
gambling 100 bucks where you're more likely to win, right?
So spend the money to gamble thehigher dollars, but do it on a

(48:21):
table where you're far more likely to win based on the
reputation. So that's one thing that I see a
lot from small business owners is they don't want to put that
kind of money out. They don't see it as an
investment, they see it as an expense, and it's not as an
investment. So that's what I would put out
there for them, for everybody. Embrace the AIAI is coming and

(48:42):
it's here and it's changing our world whether you like it or
not. It's like the people when cell
phones first start coming out orwhen the Internet first coming
out. Don't fight it.
If you fight it, you're going tobe left behind.
Even if you just learned the basics of how to use it, you're
going to be far better off. And as you dive more and more
into it, you're going to realizemore of its applications and

(49:05):
uses where it can help you become more efficient, more
accurate, do things faster and better, and all those types of
things. So I see a lot of people that
are still in the AI hate training right now and embrace
it. You learn it because you will
100% be left behind if you don't.
Amen. So be willing to invest, be

(49:26):
willing to take those calculatedrisks and learn about AI, start
using it, start trying to implement it yourself.
Also, I think that was a great, some great points there, Tony,
and I think it's been a great podcast.
I've learned a lot from you. And man, you are just I feel
like you've been on fire. You've had several like really
good segments here. So I just I thank you so much

(49:48):
for coming on the show. And where can people find you
and, you know, connect with you on social media?
I'm on Facebook and LinkedIn mostly, that's where you'll find
me. So just search for my name, any
of my companies on there. I'm a pretty open person and
keep everything public, so feel free to reach out to me there
and connect with me. Awesome.
OK, yeah, definitely go follow Tony on Facebook and LinkedIn

(50:11):
and anything else you'd like to plug or promote.
No, I would throw one other thing in there, no plugging or
promoting, just more of keep in mind every investment is not
about money. You, some of your best and
strongest in investments that are going to return the most for
you are from your time. When I started with AI couple

(50:32):
years ago when it first got high, I didn't know anything
about AI. In fact, I was on the AIA train,
I was an engineer. AI is dumb, it doesn't know
anything. And I spent my time to learn
about AI, to understand that wasan investment that I made that
costed me $0.00 to learn about it.
And today it handles probably 40to 50% of my agency's

(50:56):
fulfillment, and I've started two other software companies
based on it. So something I hated 3 years ago
that I didn't know anything about.
I invested my time and now my investment in time to that AI is
about to surpass anything my agency could have ever thought
it would be able to do. Dank.
So you have to be open to changenow more than ever.

(51:18):
Love that man. Yes, absolutely.
Sweet. I think it's been a great show,
like I said, and thanks so much for coming on then, man, this
has been a blast. Thanks for having me Danny.
I appreciate it. Of course, man.

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Danny Leibrandt

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