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Kicked Out On Purpose: From $50M Sprint Territory to a Seven-Figure Agency Exit · Agency Advantage

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, welcome to the Unfucked Agency.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Brad.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is the show where agency owners quit pretending that everything's fine and actually talk about what's broken and what they did to fix it.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Every agent owner listening to this show has fantasized about getting the check, selling, and walking away with options.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us won't, but today's guest sold his on his terms, hit Inc.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: 5000 on the way out, and is one of the few people I can actually ask the questions you'd ask if you were sitting in this chair.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: He's also been a recording artist, a performer, and a coach more than 15 years in the game, served over a thousand businesses, and shows up to every conversation that makes you want to grab a second beer.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Matt Coffey is the founder of Profit Engines.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to get into the actual mechanics of selling an agency, the Rockstar Life, and the difference between being busy and having direction and a hard rule that he lives by about who he lets on his boat.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Matt, welcome to the show.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Greetings.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Matt, you know, I I I had this intro here that I rocked through and everything, but why don't you kind of give us like a 60-second high-level version of like who Matt is, what what's profit engines, who do you serve, and uh what does your week actually look like here in uh 2026?
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_02: So three questions.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: So who am I?
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: Is the first one you asked.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: So I think going back in time, uh being a corporate warrior back in the days of the 90s, I know that might be terrifying for some people to even hear that.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: We were fully fledged corporate warriors back there.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, I kind of learned a lot about what it meant to be in highly performing engagements.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I had fairly large territories.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: I managed a$50 million territory for Sorrent at one point during the early 2000s.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, it it was it was okay, but I I kind of, you know, one day just pounded the table and said, I've had enough with this.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: And the entrepreneurial spirit, you know, was sort of underlying all the things that I had done up to that point.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_02: And it finally released, and and around 2010, I just started consulting.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: I don't I didn't have any idea what I was gonna do, but I wasn't gonna stay in a corporate environment.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: So I did start doing some uh some consulting because I knew a lot of businesses that might need someone who knows what I knew, which is a lot of experience and so forth.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: So I built a website to show my consulting chops and my consulting wasn't taking off, but people wanted a website like the one I built.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: So I started to do that.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh I started to now, whenever I went to anywhere near me, I was asking people, hey, you know, do you need any work done for websites and logos?
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: Because I tended to have a knack for it.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I sat down with my dentist around 2011.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: She's like, Yeah, you know, I really need a website and I need um, you know, I'm sitting in the chair getting my tooth filled.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: And she's just like, Well, yeah, I do need help.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: And that was my first real client that became the first recurring client, and that grew from 2011 to 2013-ish when Chase Buckner called me up and said, I'd like to be part of your team because he saw me.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: I, you know, I go far back enough that I actually my first podcast was with Gary Vaynerchuk.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like I I'm sort of like in that realm of like dinosaur level of this business, where you could call up Gary and get an interview, or at least call his assistant and get an interview.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: Anyways, so other than that, it progressed.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_02: Chase and I went forward and and built, you know, a multi-million dollar agency.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: And uh he then eventually went to uh uh GHL and I eventually sold the business.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: But the entrepreneurial spirit, that's kind of what I am.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm a very um, I would say I call it living louder.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: I I really do make an attempt to have a louder life, uh, an experience or experiential life.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_02: And that was sort of one of the things both Chase and I agree.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's like he wants to surf, I want to play a band stuff, and away we go, right?
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: And um, so I would say that's me in a nutshell is sort of living louder, trying to become um something exceptional in life as opposed to sitting around and waiting for things to happen.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: Or again, it's not always about the money.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: To me, it's been about um the life experience.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that's kind of the best way I would put it if you want to know me.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um what does my week look like?
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's rather quiet, you know.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: As I think one of the things I've learned about going through a whole cycle uh of selling an agency is don't be that guy who has to be busy.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: Be that guy who takes care of himself.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: I call it like the the better project.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: I'm always trying to get better, either you know, physically or or or you know, talent-wise or or production-wise.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: Or so I'm always trying to do better things.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_02: So I I've thought, you know, to keep my calendar open to get those things done.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_02: So I I kind of keep space in my calendar to do things.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, I'm just like anybody else, I've got to meet with my team and I've got a handful of accounts that we've got now that I built.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's a half million dollar business at this point.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's a little bit more than ample.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, rebuilding an agency makes you kind of get into the mode where you have to do some sales, and we bring up, you know, we pick up an account per week, and we're certainly getting that back to where I want to be, which is back into another seven-figure business.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_02: But my my calendar is pretty much empty.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I try and keep it empty.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: I try and only keep sales, a small 15-minute meeting with my team daily just to keep up with everything.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: And then I'm sort of filling my calendar with what I want to do, as opposed to the calendar filling me up.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: So I would say I'm pretty limited on like what I approach for like keeping myself into these busy calendars.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't remember what was the third thing you asked?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: There was another third part.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: The yeah, the uh the third aspect was like, what is profit engine, uh, which is kind of your agency now that you have now that you have now.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so so what I did when I sold the last agency, as I took my business uh sort of I cherry-picked the people that I wanted to come with me uh on the next journey when I sold my business, where they kind of eventually osmosed back to me.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um and we're basically doing all the same things with a little bit more pizzazz with obviously all the stuff with AI, but you know, it's it's customers come to us and just don't want to deal with it.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: And when I mean it, it's like whatever, like marketing and emails and ads and content and think for me.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: That's what they want.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: They want me to come up and say, Hey, you do it.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: I know you can you know how to do it, so you just do what you guys need to do.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: And and that's pretty much what we end up doing.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: Clients are very surprised at the acumen I have when I speak with them because I'm usually going into business and business operations and financial strategies, and they're just like, Okay, whatever you said, just go do that, right?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_02: Because I'm an older person in this environment.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_02: They kind of look at me and they go, Well, you've got some rings on the tree.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_02: So we'll we'll we'll trust you.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: So we're just a full service agency with more, a little bit more, which is we have a lot of AI stuff running in the background with with our clients, and we also have a call center, so we're booking uh our clients' calls for them as well.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you know, looking back at my notes here, like you had customer bloom and you had practice bloom.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: So obviously, like practice bloom was, you know, a very niche, like medical niche agency.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, is Profit Engine is that a niche agency, or are you kind of taking the approach of like, hey, with this agency, I'm I'm not gonna niche down?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it it's so funny because I'm repeating the same exact pattern I did to be successful before.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um, Customer Bloom was the original agency, which was a niche less agency.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't really have a niche, and nor did I really care.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_02: I just got clients and we booked.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: And as I said, my claim to fame is I hired prisoners out of um a prison facility for work release that they could make phone calls for me, and they called everybody in New Jersey and just basically shoved me into appointments.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: I don't even know what they were saying, but they got me into appointments.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, and so I started my business by having some prisoner in Wisconsin calling in New Jersey saying, hey, this guy's gonna come see you about marketing.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't know what they would say, but they said something to keep me in there.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: And um so I started just and it didn't really matter.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so we built basically the business from there.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: Around the time Chase joined my company, we started thinking, like, hey, look, these medicals are really active.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: And we started actually in the spine and uh chiropractic and physical therapy, started doing a lot of that, like more, I would say break fix medical, and then we migrated towards med spas and weight loss centers and so forth over time, and then that became pretty much wellness and stuff like that, became the um the next version of the company, which was practical.
• 9:27
  unknown: Yeah.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: Now, then that went to multi-you know seven figures.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_02: But anyways, now I started profit engines, same thing.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: Multidimensional, we serve anybody, we're you know, at half a million, and now we're starting patient engines, which is our next version, because I'm released now from my two years that I couldn't sell to medical when I had my sale of my agency.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so literally, like the clock started ticking a couple weeks ago, and we've already gotten a bunch of new medical accounters.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: We're just like flowering it right now.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: I just did commercials for the medical side.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: It's gonna so it's gonna blossom, you know, or bloom again.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_02: But this time instead of practice bloom, it's patient engines, and instead of customer bloom, it's profit engines, different models, but same exact people.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, absolutely.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, as you're kind of now migrating back into like this like niche of like the medical space and everything like that, like what got you even back with like practice bloom, or even now going back into this niche, it's like what was the moment that you realized that the medical play was the niche to go, like that was different than your kind of generalist agency you had before?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: So I'll I'll do the before and I'll do the after.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I have the luxury to do this, which most people don't.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_02: So what we found, and this is important for your your audience who's listening, high transaction value, high velocity, that is the key.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: So a lot of transactions with high revenue, right?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: So if you looked at the time of the kind of movement of us from spine to PT to Cairo to med spa's to weight loss centers, it went in that same exact order.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: We started with low velocity but high, high revenue, which was okay.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: It worked.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: But then we moved into sort of Cairo, which was too low revenue, but really high velocity.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: And then we went into PT and sort of like all that sort of world of trying to get something functionally built out of that.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: And inevitably we started to stumble across um higher value coming from medical um any of the aesthetics world or or wellness centers, which had higher transaction values and higher velocity.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: And that is the same thing that happened now forward to two years ago after I sold my agency.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: I had two years of just general working with um regular, you know, general customers.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: And then now that I'm released, we're doing the same thing.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: So I couldn't really sell to medical for the last two years.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't have a choice.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: But, you know, the process when I have the conversation is so elementary to me to have a conversation with a practice owner or a doctor.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: They kind of just want to listen because I've done this for so long.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's almost embarrassing they have like a question that is like so like I would say below my pay grade that I have to actually sort of bite my tongue and let them kind of get into their own way and then explain how that's not gonna work and then reverse engineer it, and I'll tell them because of X, Y, and Z.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't think, again, this is where the challenge of maybe some of your listeners come to that doesn't come with just like being able to spit it off of a chat GPT or clawed answer.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't work like that.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: You've got to literally have that conversation with a practitioner or an owner or a doctor that they'll understand your values on how and why you want to do it.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I think there's the challenge that we're all running into now, which is like, you know, the the the level of uh intelligence that's out there is so high, meaning that they could read or the or the agencies can read or they can they can they can imbibe this stuff.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_02: But is there a true understanding?
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: Right and that is a big difference.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it yeah, and it's like you're like you could be on a sales call and not really know crap about the industry and just be like prompting Chat GPT and say, hey, here's what I'm talking, here's what, like, what does this term mean?
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: And you can you can act like you even know what they're talking about, but eventually you're gonna get to a point in those kind of conversations where that person who owns that practice is gonna realize, like, hey, this guy doesn't really know what the hell they're talking about.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: Versus in your case, it sounds like you you know everything about it because you've been working with this industry for how long.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like these people could come onto these calls and talk with you, and it's like there's no question as to whether or not Matt knows like what he's what he's talking about.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: I think one of the things that I'm doing, right, and I think I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I think one of the things I'm trying to get to is I'm already foreshadowing what they're gonna ask and what their questions are and pre-establishing ground rules and conditions that they know need to be met.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_02: And whether that's through understanding the product details, um you know, in the case of GLP ones, we sell tons of those products, uh, titration amounts, um, vendors that support the uh network of people that are in the space.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: There's so many things that you know you start to have a conversation of like, oh, oh, oh.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and we've even gotten to the point where we're, you know, we're connected to a lot of different vendors who help with supplying our uh potential customers with things that they might need in order to make their practice better.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: And again, these are just stuff that I've just done forever and ever and ever.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: And so there's usually a lot of unknowns when it comes to working with practices, but when you start to set up conditional arrangements with them in their in their head, where these are the things that they need to consider when they start working forward with you, it it it adds just a level of leverage to your conversation that they don't typically have.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's kind of um, you know, there's a lot of trepidation in the market.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: I know people who are listening to this understand this because they're they're in the trenches and I'm still in the trenches.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I know what the trepidation is, is that everybody's been burned, or at least burned multiple times, right?
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I I think you know, the it's the level of not necessarily what I just said of like all the stuff and all the connections and all my predic preconditional stuff.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's not just that, but I think what it is, it's a level of um business acumen that helps the client live the life that you can give them and trying to explain to them where are you going in your life?
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_02: What are we trying to do?
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I have those discussions at a very deep level to say, what's the point?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_02: What are you trying to do?
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: Like, where are we going with this?
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: So that it's not just about like all the esoteric stuff of like, hey, I can do this cost per lead and I can get you this many customers.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's actually being a partner in their life.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I've I've changed a lot of people, and people will say this to me, they're like, you've really helped me like become a better business owner.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: And that's a whole nother discussion.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's one of those things, like oftentimes, you know, it it'll it also sets you guys apart, right?
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because everybody else comes in just talking about cost per click and all these different things, versus you're like, hey, yeah, we we can talk about all that crap, but like let's talk about your goals and where we can get to.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because I imagine a lot of these practice owners, like, they probably haven't had, depending on where they're at in business, some of them may have not had a day off in how long or not been able to take a vacation without you know having to worry about are they gonna make payroll costs or whatever it is.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, hey, how can we get to that point where you could take two weeks away from your practice and the engine on the back end is still running and you don't have to worry about anything in terms of Legion and marketing, everything like that as well.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: You know what they also want?
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_02: They don't want to work.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, none of these guys want to work.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_02: Like they want somewhere, somehow, to get out of this.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: And we've been helping them start coaching businesses and training systems to get additional revenue into their business.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: You know, one of our clients when I started with him was at a like a negative ten thousand a dollar a month revenue.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: He was just he called he he wanted coaching, he needed help, blah, blah, blah.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_02: And we took him for a big ride.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_02: A big ride.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_02: And now yesterday I spoke with him.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_02: He's doing$700,000 a month in recurring revenue.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_02: And he's actually been approached by Hollywood, by the D'Emilio sisters and their capital group, uh, to put him into production.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, there's unbelievable stories because of the trajectory that have been able to help people mentally with making better decisions and growing their mindset as well.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why I think this comes down to those couple of things that most businesses need, which is they actually need a cheerleader.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: And they need marketing help.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to take a quick little pivot.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: You mentioned like this client of yours, you know, being approached to be by Hollywood and everything like that.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: But let's talk about you being on stage for a minute.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, you've been a recording artist, performer, all of that.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: What did being on stage like teach you about running a business or growing your agency that like somebody who has like an MBA could never could learn?
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I mean, thinking on your feet's the only thing you really have.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um I mean, I think being terrified um because you're in front of a lot of people and you have to perform.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's there's it's naked.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_02: You are on stage, there's a lot of faces looking at you, lights are on you, people are staring at you, and you know, I've done this for a long time, so it's I'm over the sort of the butterfly stage or anything like that.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, when you get to certain levels, I I can remember when we warmed up for George Thoroughgood and the stage was like 10 feet off the ground.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_02: I looked up, it's 40 feet high, there's risers of lights everywhere, it's 40 huge stage.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like going, this is like really like size.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_02: If I fall off the stage, I'm gonna kill myself.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: But what I'm trying to make a point is that um I think the reality is that the rules of business are very much the same in the rules of running a band and and being successful and performing uh and being around the right people and the coaches that I've worked on both sides.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: I have a coach on the music side, you know, Scott Sherrard from Littlefeet has been a producer for me, uh a mentor, and we were good friends, and we we we have and he's been an amazing um experience that I had.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_02: The same thing I have with James Schranko uh from Australia, who's who was amazing to help me when I was growing my business.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: I've had coaches that have been just fantastic people who've who can give, you don't have to like think for yourself.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_02: You should ask people, like get some help if you're trying to get to the next level.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: So certainly thinking on your feet and being able to perform and being able to know what you're supposed to do and being prepared at all times is sort of what I have to do, whether in business or in in on if I'm on stage.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um the the reality is that I've done that by utilizing really good coaching and and paying for it, right?
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_02: Because it's not cheap.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: But also product-wise and and and stuff that I have, is I I'm really you know trying to develop and produce things that are really effective.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_02: You know, whether I'm doing a music video or whether I'm doing a production for a customer, I I really think that it's gotta be a top-notch, if not like if someone doesn't experience what I want them to experience, which is they should be wowed, whether it's the business or it's the or it's the music, you know, I I'm not satisfied.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so you know, I think there's some level of um gradual experience that you have to go to get to these levels.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_02: But for me, it's been a you know, uh, an unending sort of upward climb to be better, as I say, I call it project better, where I'm trying to get better at all the things that I do all the time.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: So let's now kind of pivot into like the the acquisition of you selling practice bloom and customer bloom.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like, walk me through how that conversation like even began.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: Was it like an inbound conversation?
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: Was it, you know, you were at the point where you're like, hey, I'm ready to sell and be done?
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Was it was it brokered?
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how did all this begin?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm sure everybody would love to know that I have some secret sauce or that I was able to do this without much, let's just say, drudgery.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um I did the thing that would make sense for me, which I started to try and sell to business brokers.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_02: Try and give them marketing advice.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_02: I could we call them up and say, hey, how about we trade?
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_02: I'll give you marketing, you give me uh advice on selling a business.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_02: So this was probably around 21 or 22, just after COVID.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I started to say, well, if I'm gonna try and plan an exit, I've got to start kind of two years in advance, right?
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_02: Because I I this is the you just don't go sell a business.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_02: You you graduate to understanding how to sell a business, and then you get into selling the business, right?
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: So I spent time with a couple of different broker um agencies working, trying to help them with their marketing.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: And and that got me like inside all their content and get, you know, I kind of got the inside view.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I'd worked with a couple of them.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so I kind of got what needed to be done, right?
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_02: Books have to be straight, things have to be done correctly, and you gotta have operations and you have to be out of business, right?
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_02: So, meaning that if you want to sell a business, ideally you should not be able to uh be part of the business.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_02: Meaning if someone wants to buy your business, if you have to be part of the sale to make it happen, then it's really difficult because those that's what ends up being a challenge.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: Because if you if you remove yourself from the business, is it going to explode?
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_02: That's the big question mark, right?
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_02: So I gotten to a certain point around um the summer of 2023.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_02: We were very active and my team was handling everything.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: I had about 30 people on my team, and um I was basically kicked out of the company, meaning I kicked myself out because I didn't want to be in a position where I couldn't say that I actually could remove myself, right?
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so day-to-day operations were being handled by my second in command, and she was a just an absolute animal, horsepower, unbelievably like one of those persons you get that just was the right fit for my uh background.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_02: And uh and she was able to run the company uh without me, and the team was able to run.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: And so by 2023, I was starting to get bids, right?
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_02: I was getting, I was getting seven-figure bids, um, multiple seven-figure bids, because people really wanted to have this segmented medical business that I created.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: And we were on all cylinders running hot.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_02: And uh it turned out, uh I I again I've got several different agencies who wanted to just make me a part of their world.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: And and and there were good offers, but they were all kind of like third down, a third on this, and then a third over here.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_02: And that's sort of the traditional offer you're gonna get, which is a you're gonna get 30% cash, and you're gonna get 30% in uh some sort of financing, and then you get 30 set 30 bonus, and then there's a 10% override.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: There was no real good cash offers on the table.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_02: And what had happened was my second in command actually had a windfall.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, she her somehow, you know, her situation with where she lived, uh the forest rangers burnt down a whole part of the town and part of her house was burnt.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: And four, and so anyway, she got a windfall from the government, and we started to negotiate uh a number for her to just take over.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: And it took it was and it's still difficult for me to even talk about this because I think it's like cutting your it's like losing a child.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like I I lost my child, like I sold my child off.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and so that was it was a good transaction.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: It it was diff it it's just like anything transactions that of this value.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody kind of doesn't feel good at the end because you know it's it's sad.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's like not only is it we didn't get what we wanted, we we departed and we were good working partners together.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: And that was the thing that really was, you know, as I said, she was an absolute animal on the op side.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: I was an animal on the sales side.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_02: It was just going like crazy, but I knew I wanted to sell because I wanted to move on.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: And um again, not that there was anything wrong with the business.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_02: It was just time for me, because I had been doing it for quite a while, and I said, you know, I need to sell this.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I also knew I could take advantage of, you know, potentially uh taking that uh money, putting it into the market and and really sort of like getting um a better um leverage from capital.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_02: And then that's exactly what happened.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_02: So we transacted somewhere around April of uh 2024, and um part of the deal was that you know I couldn't sell the medical and so forth and whatever.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_02: So I started to sell to all the you know people around me here in New Jersey and and just pick up clients one by one, and we're already back to you know half a million so over the last two years.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and it's one of those things like I I had sold my book of business with my agency in September of last year, right?
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so for me it was far different because much smaller and to the point where like part of the conversations we're having is like how involved is Brad in the business?
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: How involved is Brad in the agency?
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: And like if this happens, like who's gonna churn, who's not gonna churn, like all of those different things.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: So we were going through all of those different conversations, and like I had a floor of like this was the minimum that I was gonna make.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: So if like everybody canceled, I was guaranteed something, right?
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: But I had this max, right?
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm banking on that max, hoping the floor doesn't happen, and like thankful by the grace of God, like I think all but one like kept going, right?
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then there was one that canceled right at the beginning, the rest have been with that, with that uh that agency since.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it was like when that happened, I was in the early days of building talent fuse and everything.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: And thankfully, I had kind of from the beginning decided, like, hey, I'm not gonna be client-facing.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, like from the moment that somebody on boards with us, like, it's not Brad.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I did I do these sales calls right now, and then after that, it's not Brad.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I done it that way because of what I saw with my agency, it was like, okay, like I cannot build this the same way, right?
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: And you and you learn from past mistakes of like, what can I do differently this time?
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I imagine right now with what you're building, you're like, hey, probably sooner than you did before, you're probably already trying to get out of like sales calls and sales conversations, account management, everything like that.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's like, hey, I don't want to be involved with that.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, again, I'm we I only have six people on my team right now.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: I don't mind doing the sales because not there's not that many.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_02: Like, we're not running ads, we're not going crazy.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: We're just literally just sitting here and people are just showing up because we're doing so much damn content that people find us, right?
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: So I mean, that's our that's sort of our product.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_02: Our we have this product called Content OS where we're doing a thousand pieces of content a month, and you know, people just show up.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_02: They're just like, I saw you do whatever and I need some help, right?
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: But I think you're right.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: So here's what I want to hang my hat on, which this is another lesson for your viewers.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_02: The good thing about building a massively big agency or multi-million dollar agency, you know, when you're pushing 200, 250,000 a month and it's just cranking and blah, blah, blah, and you're bringing in clients left and right, right?
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's really difficult to keep them.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_02: And and that is a negative five times out of 10 because it does things that you don't expect.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, you lose a customer or you lose the revenue, you but you you lose faith in the market.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: The market starts to not see you as the player.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: The reviews start to be this guy sucked because no one would call me back and blah, blah, blah.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_02: And and then your your your team is like, what's wrong?
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like, why is this happening?
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: Because look, we were bringing on like 30 plus accounts a month.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_02: It was absolutely bananas when we were in our heyday.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_02: Just we couldn't hire fast enough to even keep up with it, right?
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I never want to have that happen again.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so our retention rate now is like 99.9%.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_02: Like, no one leaves us because we take care of everybody.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_02: As I said, a project better.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like always trying to make things better.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't think there was any rhyme or reason because I didn't know.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know we couldn't handle bringing on 30 new clients a month.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, come on, guys, let's go.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: But I wasn't doing the management, right?
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, as you said, you're out of the you're out of it.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_02: Like, and so yes, I was helping with ops, and we had people in ops that were probably the best selections for people who would be able to handle a lot of stress.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think what I've learned is to grow consistently, to grow at a pace where everybody gets a handhold, everybody feels like they're getting a good experience.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_02: Even when we're not doing like even if we have problems with it, like their ads suck or something happens, they they come back to me and say, Look, I'm not mad at you guys, let's just figure it out, right?
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and that's that's a much better conversation than you guys don't listen to me.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_02: No one's called me back.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_02: There's emails, I can't find anybody.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_02: You guys, I I hate you and slay on the phone, right?
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I never want to be in that conversation again.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's there, there's gonna be randos that it obviously something will happen, and and that's not something as I said, 99.9 to 0.01%.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_02: There's always that one guy, yeah, or gal.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_02: But other than that, I mean, keeping the ship steady, I mean, I look at my email in the morning, there's never anybody complaining.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_02: There's never like it's a rarity that I have a problem.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_02: Nothing's blowing up.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_02: There's like I used to be terrified to open my email in the morning back in 2023 because I knew we had so many customers with so many challenges, and then I would get mad at the staff, and then the staff would get mad at me because I would tell them, go get your work done.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, again, I I think that's the lesson.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_02: I'd say think about churn as the most important thing.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, new business is good, but keeping business is more important.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so on that kind of same note, like if there's somebody who's listening, you know, they're at that, I'm gonna say like 50k, 60k monthly recurring revenue mark right now, and they're like, hey, I want to be able to sell this thing in like three years, five years, whatever it may be.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: What are like the three things that you think they should be doing or begin doing this quarter so that we come, you know, three to five years from now, they actually could sell?
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's a good question.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_02: And it's gonna be a different answer for each person's individual taste.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_02: The market's kind of looking for players in specific genres, right?
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: So a generalist agency isn't the best one.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_02: So uh, you know, as I said, after you've sort of maybe gone through a year or two of figuring out what you like to do and who you might want to serve, start to single it down because if you do want to sell, you're probably better off selling as a specific vertical or something.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_02: Again, it doesn't necessarily need to be a niche specific, it could be a horizontal niche.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_02: You could be just the guy who does reviews or whatever.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, something, but it has to be like so it's something that you could you could package up and say, this is this component you may be missing, Mr.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_02: Agency owner or business owner or whatever, something that you really want.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the second thing is as I mentioned before, if you're trying to do this, you've got to get someone behind you that's gonna be second in command that can take over and run it for you.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_02: Because the the the big thing that you're gonna have to consider when you start to get into the sales process is do you want to come along with the sale or do you not want to come along with the sale?
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't want to, right?
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_02: But some you may or the person listening to this may want to go along with the sale.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_02: So that might be a little bit more intrinsic to them to maybe be part of the business.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_02: But those two things are good.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_02: Now you want to talk about mechanics.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, obviously, you have to have all your books straightened out, you have to have all your contracts and all the things that you know you've done.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: And for me, I think what would really sell is the length of the customer that's been with you.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_02: Because that's what always ends up being the determinator for the value of your business, which is what's gonna stay and what's gonna drop.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_02: And right now I've had customers that have been me for a long time.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_02: Like they've been with me since the start.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_02: And and they've come back to me, right?
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, even after I sold the business, they they might have dropped off, but then they came back.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um but those those are the things I would consider, like length of customer, like the longer the customer stays with you, the more valuable that is to another buyer.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_02: So having those long-term relationships, as I said, churn is just it's the killer on all sides.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it also affects when you want to sell.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, last big question for for you.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, on the guest form that you filled out for us uh before this, you know, you said be careful about who goes on on your boat.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm taking that as a as a metaphor, as like the boat and business, like who you allow in your business to help you grow this machine, right?
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: But like what exactly is it you mean by that, and how can people protect themselves from who's on their boat?
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's all sides, right?
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's customers, it's employees, it's vendors, it's I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've been screwed by vendors who just say they're gonna deliver and then they don't they don't even deliver, they make it worse, right?
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um I've had people who have worked for me who have just blown apart, like literally like uh exploded, like out of nowhere.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_02: They just fizzled they were like good one day and then they're gone the next, right?
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_02: And then I've also had um really bad customers who have caused horrendous problems and created morale problems within, like giving people stress uh attacks.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, obviously you don't want that either.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_02: So it's it's on all sides.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's vendors, employees, and and and your customers, they all everybody needs to be on the same plane.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's funny how when I speak to people, like I kind of do a litmus test to see if they're actually worth dealing with.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_02: At this point, I don't give a shit.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I'm not gonna like put people into my boat that are gonna cause it to sway and rocket.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_02: Because I don't not I don't have the need to do it.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like, it's not like I have to tomorrow, you know, feed my family or you know, or something like that.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's right, it's more like I want to build a ship now going forward that's worthy of bringing people on board.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's like I have a little bit more um I guess exception to the rule is is a lot less now.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_02: I because I think you when you build a business, you'll take anybody who can fog a mirror because you're just trying to build revenue.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: And and sure, that works because you need it.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_02: But after a while you start to go, okay, maybe it's not the best idea to bring, you know, the guy who's throwing rocks as opposed to the client who's asking you for help.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Matt, thanks again for hopping on today.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if those who are listening, if you want to learn more about what Matt's doing, you can find him at profitengines.com.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I'm Brad, and this is the Unfucked Agency.