The First Agency That Failed Hard

Josh's journey didn't start with success. Right out of high school, he started a web design and hosting company called Devicom. Wrong business model, selling to the wrong people. It didn't work out.

He had to shut it down and get a real job. He worked in B2B sales for several years at ADP (the big payroll management company) and a document imaging company.

But the whole time he was working in corporate America, he was a student of the game. He listened to all the audiobooks: Rich Dad Poor Dad, E-Myth Revisited, Secrets to The Millionaire Mind. All those books pointed back to the same thing: if you want to be successful, you've got to create a business and invest your money to create passive income.

"In trying to figure out how to restart a business knowing that I had failed the first time, one book really stuck out to me: Secrets to The Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker. He talks about entering the corridor and sometimes the best way to start is to go get a job in the industry that you want to start your business in," Josh explained.

So Josh landed a job with Reach Local, the big pay-per-click management company doing over $250 million in revenue at the time. He figured they're obviously doing something right.

The Reach Local Education

Josh spent about a year at Reach Local in sales. It totally changed his thought process on how to charge, the value proposition, and his beliefs in what digital marketing agency services were worth.

But there was a problem. It was fun to learn how to sell it. Fun to see that companies needed and craved these services. But it was also distressing.

"Sitting down with that local dentist or local roofing company and going through the reports and seeing there was phone calls but there weren't actual revenues that generated in excess of the spend," Josh said.

He took what he learned and decided: now I'm going to start my own business. I'm going to do it different. I'm going to do it better. I'm going to make sure my clients get oversized results.

That's when he started Plumbing and HVAC SEO back in 2010/2011.

Seven Figures in Two Years

The growth was insane. They hit seven figures in the first two years.

Initially they were going to be a generalist agency, selling to anybody with a business just like at Reach Local. Roofers, dentists, chiropractors, eye doctors.

Within the first month and a half or two months, they realized being a generalist wasn't going to work.

"The dentist that we met with wanted to see other dental clients we'd worked with. Every new client you get in a different industry was a whole new ball of wax. You got to figure out what their keywords are, what their value proposition is," Josh explained.

They had one plumbing client getting great results. They decided to double down. Polish the program, position themselves as the experts, document what they did for that client.

One client turned into two, turned into dozens. Probably half a million dollars revenue in the first year. The second year was explosive growth.

They were on a run rate of an average of five clients per month at an average of $1,500 per month. Account for how many they landed versus churned, and it wasn't crazy numbers to bring on five clients per month to hit seven figures.

Why Plumbing and HVAC?

Josh had hand-selected five potential verticals. He thought maybe it would be restaurants, eye doctors, or roofing companies.

But they had a former plumbing client with a great conversation, a need, and got him an amazing result. He referred someone else. Then they could show those results to the next prospect.

"After we saw what we did for him and the results he referred us to somebody else, we were able to say hey look at the results we got for this particular plumber. Look at where he's ranking, look at how many leads he's getting, look at how he's added trucks," Josh said.

As they got deeper into the trades, they realized what an amazing industry. So much demand, it's non-discretionary. In an economic crisis, it doesn't go away. It's a needed service.

The other interesting thing in home services, specifically plumbing and HVAC: there's a lack of tradespeople willing to do that kind of work. Supply is outpaced by demand. The industry is only going to grow as the US economy continues to expand.

They fell in love with the industry and doubled down.

The Move to Full Service

They started out just as an SEO company. Build the website on the client's domain, do all the content, on-page optimization, citation development, everything to get ranked organic and in the maps.

They did good work and got clients ranked. But they found it doesn't happen overnight. Sometimes a couple tweaks, bam, they shoot right up. Other times it could be three months, could be six months.

"We know our clients expect consistent measurable results. We need to be able to deliver quick wins. If they're going to sign up for $3,000 to $5,000 per month, they're not going to pay that for six months and hope we can deliver," Josh said.

They recognized they needed a healthier mix. So they went full service digital marketing.

Today, yes, SEO is still very big. But they're also running paid advertising: local service ads, Google ads, retargeting. That's the lead gen side.

But they also recognized just generating leads isn't the answer. If leads don't convert into booked jobs that don't convert into revenue, the client will still blame you even if they got leads.

"We decided we got to put some marketing automation in place. We got to help them figure out how they can convert those leads into sales. And more importantly help them think about how do we turn the one-time customer into a repeat customer," Josh explained.

Their program today: drive leads, convert the leads, track the results. Make sure they know down to the dollar how much they spent, how many leads they generated, what the return on investment is.

Any agency in today's market should be thinking how do we bring those three things to the market.

The Birth of Seven Figure Agency

Josh loves education. He was at all the local SEO meetups. As people saw his journey and the company grow while others were still at their first client or first $10,000, people started asking: Josh what did you do different? How can I replicate your success?

"At that point I decided hey look I've got a seven-figure agency, why don't I call this thing Seven Figure Agency and teach you exactly how we built our agency to seven figures," Josh said.

It started as a course: here's how we set up the business model, here's how we land clients, here's what we do from a deliverable perspective, here's how we operationalize.

The course sold pretty well. But Josh found some people took the course and rocket shipped while others didn't.

A course in a vacuum only does so much. It's just information. Most people need the course plus ongoing training, ongoing support, ongoing: let's keep you plugged in, keep you energized, keep you taking action.

So it transitioned to a full mentorship program with sessions every week and getting together live and in person three times per year.

What You Actually Get

When somebody joins Seven Figure Agency, they get the entire suite of services: all the training on how to land clients, deliver results, retain clients, scale.

They get a 90-day game plan on their situation: here's where you are today, there's a thousand things you could do, but what are the three things that will move you forward over the next 90 days?

They have coaching sessions Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. They get a dedicated seven-figure coach that's grown to seven figures helping them along.

Then they get together in Miami for what they call intensives three times per year. Going deep on building the plan, keeping energized, seeing other successful agencies masterminding, and remaining on the cutting edge of what's actually working in today's market.

"It's not just about revenue. It's about let's grow the agency, let's grow our team, let's create freedom, but also let's make sure we're delivering the best results we possibly can for the clients we serve," Josh said.

The Leadership Team That Created Freedom

When I asked about Josh's leadership team at Plumbing and HVAC SEO, he broke down the evolution of an agency as you grow and scale.

First thing you need help with: operations. If you're physically clicking the buttons and doing the work, that prevents you from innovating and creating freedom.

Second position: account management. Once you get to 15 or 20 clients, they need to be checked in every month, shown what's going on, see the vision for where things are headed. As the owner you're usually still meeting with clients until you get to that place and you're bottlenecked.

Third: administrative support. HR, hiring, firing, paying the bills. You need a marketing administrative assistant.

That gives you the basic framework to get stuff done. But as you grow to seven figures and multiple seven figures, just having a team of people doing work doesn't free you up.

"What you need is leaders. I'm a big fan of EOS, the Entrepreneur's Operating System. We invested in an EOS implementer at about the $3 million mark in the business," Josh said.

That forces you to create an accountability chart and leadership team. Now they've got a leader in operations who oversees a leader in website development, separate leader in SEO, separate leader in paid search, separate leader in account management.

Each leader understands their responsibility is to hold the team accountable but also to innovate in that area. What's the latest changes? How do we make sure we're on top of it? How do we make sure we're moving things forward?

It also forces you to create a meeting rhythm. Josh personally meets every Wednesday with that leadership team. They follow the EOS Level 10 meeting process. Those leaders then meet with their teams every single week and run that same process.

"Having that leadership team in place has created the ability for continued innovation within the organization without me having to be on all those meetings without me having to make all those decisions," Josh explained.

The Three Books Every Agency Owner Needs

Josh gave me three must-read books:

Traction (the EOS book): At the Seven Figure Agency seminar, they passed this out for free. Josh said it helps you build the leadership team and operational infrastructure.

The E-Myth Revisited: Helps you understand your business isn't the job. As a digital marketing agency owner or local business owner, you might understand how to do the work, but that's a function, a job in the business. A true entrepreneur doesn't do the work, they lead the team that does the work and create the infrastructure to provide that service to the marketplace.

Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell: Helps you recognize it's not just about creating more capacity to do work. If you want freedom, look at your calendar quarterly and monthly and figure out where your time's going that isn't in your genius zone, that isn't at a dollar level matched with your value to the company. Buy back your time whether that's getting a personal chef, someone to take care of the lawn, or hiring a CEO.

The Retention Framework That Keeps Churn Under 3%

Josh broke down three things that drive retention: onboarding, communication rhythm, and account management process.

Onboarding makes or breaks the relationship. They're signing up for $3,000 to $5,000 per month, placing trust in you, hoping it works out.

Be diligent on that initial conversation gathering usernames and passwords. Do the little unexpected things. Josh drops a gift basket in the mail. Most agencies don't do it. When you sign up and the next day receive a basket of goodies saying "hey we're excited about working with you," that creates a good expectation.

But the most important aspect of onboarding: engineer the quick wins.

"They need to not just see the activity but they need to actually get a lead or get an opportunity or get a sale as quickly as possible. Whether that's doing a database reactivation to their existing customer base or turning on a paid search campaign for certain keywords right away," Josh explained.

The quicker you can get some wins in that first week, that first month, the better you'll be long term.

Simplify reporting. Don't bury the client in data. Not automatic reports where they can see a thousand keywords and analytics data and they're like "what does that mean to me?"

Simplify it: here's how much you spent, here's how many leads you generated, here's what your return on investment is. Obviously combine that with here's why and here's what we're doing to make sure that number continues to trend in the right direction.

Meet with the client every single month. Have a team that can handle that relationship, can be on call and take those after-hours conversations.

When you do that, you can usually get your churn down to less than 3% on a monthly average.

The Communication Rhythm That Works

In the first month, overcommunicate. You haven't generated results yet, so show value: here's what we're working on, here's what we need from you. That's at least a weekly recap, maybe daily touches.

After that, monthly rhythm: here's what we're working on, here's where we're headed next, here's what the reporting tells us. Perfect world: account manager meets with the client every single month.

But some clients are too busy, don't want to meet. The danger is defaulting to "well I asked for the meeting and they didn't show up" and then four months in the client cancels.

Josh's solution: daily touches sheet tracking when was the last time I met with this client, when was the last time I sent a meaningful communication.

If the client didn't meet, record a Loom video: "I know you're busy this month, I'm sorry we couldn't connect. I wanted to walk you through what we're seeing on the reporting, what we worked on this month, what we're going to be working on the next couple months, what we need from you."

"That checks all the boxes for the client that's too busy. At least they know you cared enough to send a meaningful message," Josh said.

The Ideal Customer Profile

For Plumbing and HVAC SEO, the ideal client is doing at least a million dollars per year, typically between a million and $10 million is the sweet spot.

Usually they're still handling marketing as the owner through a variety of different providers. And they're growth driven, not just chilling with their million or $3 million business.

Early in the agency, they could work with anybody and attracted predominantly one-man operators. Most of those small clients would churn out in the third or fourth month. They were technicians still running plumbing jobs, looking to make a little extra money, not entrepreneurs.

But they retained most of the larger companies.

"We just set a little barrier at the beginning of our sales process: you're less than a million dollars per year or at least half a million, this isn't going to be a good fit. But if you're at this level, you're willing to invest, you see you're willing to do a long-term relationship, those clients we have great results with and they tend to stick with us long term," Josh explained.

The Ultimate Agency Funnel

Josh's funnel starts with low-barrier content: book, webinars, cheat sheets, guides. Whenever somebody opts in for something, it takes them to: "Hey here's the thing but you didn't just want that right? You don't want a book, you probably want someone that can actually implement what's in the book and get you the result. If that's you, let's schedule a time."

Every piece of content leads to: let's schedule a one-to-one.

Once they pick a time and date (they've already qualified as over a million dollars per year), warm them up with a video on the confirmation page: "Thanks for scheduling, it's going to be amazing. We're going to do a bunch of due diligence leading into this appointment. We're going to pull up your rankings, your website. We'll be able to show you exactly where there's room for improvement. Please make sure you prioritize that meeting. We're going to be prepared, you be prepared."

Then they ask them to watch a couple of case studies from other plumbing companies they've served that have gotten great results.

"If we can get them to watch one case study coming into the appointment, they're so much more likely to be like okay you guys know what you're doing, you've got proven results. I don't need you to convince me, I just need you to meet me where I'm at and show me how you can help," Josh said.

The One-Call Close That Works

Josh does one sales call. They find their clients are busy. When they give the time to meet, they make it about an hour and 30 minutes. First half is discovery.

They can do it that way because they've surveyed them in advance. They've already answered that they run a plumbing company, invest a certain amount in marketing, have a certain amount of trucks, have a certain revenue threshold.

So they have the conversation: tell us about your business, what you're doing in terms of marketing today, your goal over the next 12 to 24 months, why that's important right now, why you don't just keep things the way they are. Really setting the expectation that there is an actual problem they're looking to solve.

Then they shift gears: "Hey look, you're at a million right now, you're trying to get to five million over the next two years. I think we can help. We've done some due diligence, is it okay if I show you what we're seeing with your online marketing today?"

They'll usually say yes. Pull up the screen, run their ranking report and analytics: "Here's the keywords you're not coming up for, here's why the website's not ranking, here's some things we're seeing in terms of competition for paid search."

Then: "Would you like us to show you how we can help?" They'll usually say yes.

Show a couple examples: "Here's a couple of our clients and the results they're getting today. Here's what I think you need to get to that goal you told me at the beginning. I think we need to do this, this, this, and this. This is how much it's going to cost."

They'll either say "yep here's the credit card" or "hey I'd like you to send me some more details so I can analyze this." Schedule the next conversation, put them into a hot lead follow-up, engineer a two-week decision timeframe: "We're going to waive the setup fee if you can decide in the next two weeks."

The Hot Lead Follow-Up That Converts

If they met with you, seemed like a good fit, said they were interested, agreed to the two-week timeframe, that hot lead follow-up sends a shock and awe package in the mail: copy of the book, testimonials, client references.

They had a great sales conversation, now they've got this physical manifestation.

Then a sequence of emails: "Hey it was great talking with you, I really think it's going to be a great fit. Here's some examples and case studies."

Next day: "Here's some references if you want to talk to a couple of our clients. Here's five clients that we'll be glad to have you call."

Josh doesn't hide references. He puts them right out there: feel free to reach out to these people, they love us, they'd be happy to chat with you.

My Main Takeaway

The biggest lesson from talking to Josh is that agency success isn't about landing more clients or having the best SEO tricks. It's about delivering oversized results through a systematic, repeatable process.

Josh's first agency failed because he had the wrong business model selling to the wrong people. He didn't just try again, he entered the corridor by getting a job at Reach Local to learn the industry. That year completely changed his thought process on pricing and what services were worth.

Seven figures in two years came from niching down immediately. They tried being a generalist for six weeks and realized it wouldn't work. One plumbing client getting great results became the focus. Polish the program, position as experts, document what you did.

The evolution to full service happened because quick wins are essential. Clients won't pay $3,000 to $5,000 per month for six months hoping you can deliver. Drive leads, convert the leads, track the results down to the dollar.

The retention framework that keeps churn under 3% has three parts: onboarding (engineer quick wins, send gift baskets), communication rhythm (overcommunicate month one, then monthly meetings or Loom videos), and account management (dedicated team handling after-hours conversations).

The leadership team built on EOS created freedom. First hire operations, second hire account management, third hire admin support. But to get past seven figures, you need actual leaders who hold teams accountable and innovate. Josh meets one day a week with his leadership team and they run everything else.

The Ultimate Agency Funnel converts because every piece of content leads to scheduling a one-to-one, then prospects watch case studies before the call. The sales call is 90 minutes: first half is discovery, second half is showing them what's broken and how you can help.

And critically: the ideal customer profile. They started attracting one-man operators who churned in months three or four. They set a barrier: less than a million dollars per year? This isn't a good fit. Those clients stick long-term.

Seven Figure Agency now has 137 people doing a million or more per year with $250 million combined revenue because Josh doesn't just teach theory. He built it himself, documented exactly how, and helps others replicate the same systematic process.

Want to learn more from Josh? Follow Josh Nelson Coach on Instagram. Visit 7figureagency.com to grab a copy of the Seven Figure Agency Roadmap or join them in Miami for one of their roadmap live events. For plumbing and HVAC companies, check out their services. Josh is one of the real ones in an industry full of gurus, he built his agency to seven figures and has helped 137 others do the same.

Listen to the full episode to hear more of Josh's insights on landing clients, delivering results, retaining long-term, and scaling up with the systems and team to create true freedom.