Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: We've pivoted a little bit. We're doing a lot more done for you services for our clients. You're one of them. We're doing done for you content services. I sat down the other day and worked it out. It's. For me, it's very straightforward to get to, like a completely separate business. Not saying I'm going to do it, but it's very straightforward to get to seven figures a year with using AI and I reckon three staff, you could get to seven figures a year very easily. It is, it's. The opportunity is outstanding and I don't think I've ever seen in my lifetime, I don't think I've ever seen an opportunity quite like this. It's. I feel like, you know, entrepreneurs that want leveraged income back in the day. In 2007, 2008, when I started my WordPress agency and I started helping other WordPress freelancers put together care plans and have recurring revenue and have managed wp, you know, streamline your processes, it was great. I can manage all my clients websites in a couple of hours a week now and generate monthly recurring revenue.
You know, I feel like this is a, this is a quantum leap forward.
Here we are 12, 15 years later and what we can achieve with AI now in an hour, you know, we can achieve almost a week's worth of output in a couple of hours.
I think we're still trying to wrap our head around what that looks like in terms of what our businesses might look like in a year's time. I mean, can we scale with our existing team? Can we double triple 10x our revenue and our profit? I think we can.
Hey, just before we dive in, a big shout out to Manish and Brent and Khushboo and the whole team at E2M Solutions. They are our prime sponsor here at the Agency Hour and Agency Mavericks. They help us make this content possible. Frankly, without them it wouldn't be possible. So a huge shout out to HM Solutions. If you need any WordPress development, if you need WordPress care plans taken care of, if you need any local SEO campaigns, if you need content for your clients, if you need AI built into your agency, please go and talk to Brent Weaver and the guys at E2M Solutions. We'll put a link in the show notes here. You can get a discount off your first month. They are a white label agency based out of India and the US and all they do is serve digital agency owners and help you take work off your desk so that you can concentrate on growing Your agency. So go and talk to Brent and the team at E2M Solutions and get on board. All right, let's dive into the podcast. Hey, welcome to the Agency Hour podcast. My name's Troy Dean. I'll be your host again today. And on this week's episode, we have a special guest all the way from New Zealand across the ditch, as they say. Josh Moore, who is the founder and CEO of Duo Plus. They're a full stack digital marketing agency. They're one of our clients. They've been in Mavericks Club for over three years now. They are also one of our content clients. We've started rolling out done for you content services for agencies. So if you're a digital agency owner and you know you need more content to help position you as the authority and bring in more clients, but you don't have time to do it, then you should reach out to us because we're offering this as a separate service now.
And Josh is one of our done for you content clients. He's grown the agency from 0 to 15 staff over the last 12 years or so.
He started it by himself. He built a team. He's just taken over the second half of the building on the top floor of where he is. He's just built a podcast studio and launched his own podcast. He's also got a software app that plugs into Xero that helps you map out your recurring revenue. This is a fascinating conversation. If you are a digital agency owner and you want some insights into growing your digital agency, this is a great episode. Josh talks about leadership and about how every day he's figuring out how to extract himself more and more from the agency and empower his team to do the heavy lifting. All right, without further ado, let's go and meet Josh Moore from Duo Plus. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to welcome back to the Agency Hour podcast. Josh Moore from Duo plus in New Zealand. Hey, Josh, how are you?
[00:04:13] Speaker B: I'm doing good.
[00:04:15] Speaker A: Excellent. Now, this is your second time on the Agency Hour podcast, right?
[00:04:19] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. Second time.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: Something must have gone right the first time for us to invite you back.
For those that don't know, who are you, what does Duo plus do? Who do you serve? What services do you offer? Give us the too long, didn't read version.
[00:04:32] Speaker B: Yeah, great. So Duo plus full service digital marketing agency. We're based in Hamilton, New Zealand and we service clients across New Zealand and Australia. We work with a lot of trades and then so especially sub trades, plumbers, drain layers, electricians. So we have a lot of those. But then we also have some healthcare dentists, orthodontists and a few E Comm. So we haven't niched down in terms of industry as such, but what we really focus in on industries where people can click and then buy quite quickly. And so for the tradies, it's the electrician. You're not searching for an electrician and then waiting for three months to decide you're looking for that person that day. And so we specialize in that quick decision type and we do very, very well at that type of marketing.
[00:05:17] Speaker A: Got it. I mean, that's a niche in itself, right? Like I think the word niche or, you know, niche as they say on the other side of the planet. I think it's massively misunderstood. I think people say, well, if I'm going to, you know, people say I need to niche down, that means I just need to focus on dentists. I don't think that's what it is at all. I think dentists are a target audience. Right? Chiropractors are a target audience, plumbers are a target audience. But your niche is like what it is you do and how you do it. And I think if you're taking people who are in need of something, they have high intent, they're searching, they click, they buy in a very short space of time. That's as far as I'm concerned. And I understand that's a niche in itself, right?
[00:05:55] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what we do. And that's what we talk about to our customers as we were. Really good. If somebody comes to us wanting to do the organic social media, three posts a week, we say, hey, look, that's a great idea, but that's not us. We send them elsewhere.
[00:06:09] Speaker A: Got it? You can always send them to me, you know, Josh, because we're getting into that game.
More on that later.
Now, before you were, before you decided to start. And by the way, for those of you who are watching this on YouTube, you'll have to excuse, I do have nail polish on. We were up in Noosa last week on school holidays and my 5 year old, I promised her I would take her to the nail salon to have her first experience getting her nails done. And I promised that I would get them done as well. And now I'm just keeping it on to freak people out. So school pickup is very funny. School drop off and pickups, all the other parents going, what's going on? You're wearing nail polish.
So before you started Duo plus, what was your backstory? What were you doing? And what, what prompted you, my friend, to have an idea to start your own agency?
[00:06:55] Speaker B: So, yeah, I'd been in corporate marketing roles before that. So I was the national marketing manager of a large education firm, so a private education firm in the tertiary sector. So we eight campuses across New Zealand and my job was running the marketing and sales team to make sure all the courses were full. So that was my role. Before that I was in a real estate marketing role.
But yeah, I'd been at that national marketing manager role for five and a half years. But for many years I'd wanted to be in business for myself. And when I was in that role, we did everything except TV or billboards. So we did newspaper advertising, we did brochures, we did radio, website. Of course, Facebook ads were emerging, so that was just in the right hand column. There were no Facebook ads on mobile back then. And Google Ads was of course pretty strong. And so in that process, I could just see that digital marketing was more cost effective, more measurable, more efficient than anything else. And so when I finally stepped out and went into business for myself, then I wanted to do a digital marketing agency.
[00:07:57] Speaker A: And what did that look like when you started your own thing? Was it just you freelancing, doing everything, getting your own clients, doing all the delivery, or did you start building a team from day one?
[00:08:06] Speaker B: Well, I'm not a developer, so I'm quite technically savvy and I'm really good at talking to clients. I'm good at marketing. So I came in as a marketer and then I needed to find some contractors for web development. And so I had referral from someone who said, hey, these guys are great. And saw some overseas guys who we did their first websites through. And look, they were cheap and they did a good, an okay job. But I just found that I was spending so much time doing the quality assurance the.
And saying, hey, this isn't working, this isn't working. And I knew enough about code to have a look at it and say, why on earth have you duplicated this three times? And that type of stuff.
So it was enough to get going and to sell a few clients on websites. But then after maybe it was less than a year and it was just costing me so much time doing these reviews that I just said I need to start to build a team that will actually will be able to put proper processes in place, standards that we're happy to follow and do that every time. And then that's when I started to hire a team in house.
[00:09:13] Speaker A: I just want to park here For a second. Because you said something there that's interesting. You said that you needed to start to build a team that would put proper processes and standards in place.
Most agency owners I know, and I've worked with, you know, thousands of them over the last 15 years, they don't hire people because they don't have their processes ready.
You're not being a developer, very difficult for you to put those processes in place before you hire someone. So what was the mindset there that you realized that you needed to hire someone and that they would come in and build the process? Because most people are just too scared to hire someone because they don't have their processes ready, but you've approached it completely the other way.
[00:09:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I guess because I didn't have that skill set, I had enough to review the process and discuss it through and say where we wanted to go.
But because I didn't have that skill set, I did need to rely on their expertise with it, which is really helpful because in other areas where I do have the skill sets I like you say I'm the one who ends up creating the process or being much more hands on in it and learning to delegate the process. Development is a bigger journey when you have those skills yourself. So it is that tension when you don't have the skill in a particular area. It's a lot easier to delegate. Including the definition of the process.
[00:10:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, and this is, I think a lot of people think that they know enough about every part of the business that they'll build the processes before they hire someone and it just slows them down. Like if you're gonna, if you hire two people and you're gonna document the processes before you hire them, how are you gonna do your job and document two other jobs before you hire people? And this is, I think, I actually think it's an, I actually think it's an excuse not to hire people. I think it's a, the reason people don't hire is because they're afraid, which I'll unpack in a second. And I think they use this as an excuse to not hire people because they, if I don't have my processes ready, I can't bring anyone on. How were you confident that you were going to earn enough revenue to pay the wages of people that you brought on on the team?
[00:11:10] Speaker B: That's the big question, isn't it? So when I started, I didn't have the revenue in order to bring on a full timer. And so I just decided to go out to market looking for a Part time person. And I just thought is there anybody out there who will actually want to be a developer part time? For me it seems like an unattractive offer but I found someone who was fantastic and he was in the city I'm living in. He was actually living here but working in a city an hour and a half away and was wanting to actually transition back to working here if he could. And his current job had actually just reduced down from five days to four days a week. They were a little bit light on work. So initially I was able to pick him up for a day a week which was perfect for me. And then he wanted to transition further back and so we increased it two days and then finally full time. So that was definitely favorable for me to help take those steps. I think the lesson out of that is that we think in our head that somebody. There's only full timers out there wanting work. And look, there's a lot of people who only want full time work. That's true. But there's actually often really talented people who have unique circumstances who might just slot into your team perfectly well. So I've learned a few times go out to market asking for what you want and hey, there might be someone who just fits that, that fits into the journey that I'm on.
[00:12:30] Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. There's a lot of. Also, you know, anyone who's a parent has, is highly motivated to have flexible work hours if they're doing pickup or drop off or they just want to work three days a week from home or. And I think post Covid people are a lot more open minded to flexible work arrangements. And so yeah, I think you don't have to, you know, be able to generate, you know, 200 grand a year in revenue just to pay someone a $70,000 full time salary. There are more flexible options. And so you bought this team member on how long ago is this? What year are we talking?
[00:13:06] Speaker B: 2014.
[00:13:08] Speaker A: I think it was 2014. 12 years later. What does the team look like these days?
[00:13:12] Speaker B: We've got 15 on the team now and we're all in house so we don't have any overseas outsourced staff. We're actually all in the same physical building and we do have some remote work as in a few of the team work one day a week from home or maybe two days a week. But we are quite unique from an agency from that point of view. So all in the building together. And now I must say it's the.
I know people in agency mavericks who have built an overseas team. And there's definitely some attractions to that, especially in the economies of things. It is more expensive paying a local team, that's for sure. But the team culture that we've been able to build is incredible.
We find too that clients, they do really like either face to face or at least the team's calls. Knowing that we're local, we live here, and look, we have people from overseas on our team as well. But we've got a couple of really talented guys from India who are on the team, but they live here. And when they first came here, they had to learn our geography and they had to learn all these things that we take for granted when we're just. Cause we've grown up around it and they're running ads and what's the difference between this city or this state or they understand that target market. Look, they've had to learn that, and we can do that really well.
I'm not saying that they'd have to live here to do that, but that is definitely an advantage when they've driven to a number of these places of actually in the office having the conversations and we can pick things up quickly. So look, that's worked really well for us. It's expensive, but we have an incredible team, an incredible culture, and like, one of the things we do, we go out for lunch every two weeks. I pay and we go out for lunch as a whole team. And it's just one of those great things to connect everyone together.
[00:14:57] Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. And it's just, I guess it's just up to your appetite for risk, isn't it? Like, if you don't want any risk, you can hire contractors overseas in an emerging economy and not have the risk of employment. New Zealand employment law is. Is, you know, very tight, as is Australia.
You don't employ people in Australia or New Zealand lightly because once you do, it's a responsibility and a commitment. It's. You can't just like, you know, in the U.S. i know there are some states in the U.S. where you can just terminate someone's employment at a minute's notice and you don't need a reason, and they have no protection whatsoever as a worker. Australia and New Zealand are very different.
Workers are very well protected from that kind of thing. So it is a risk to employ, but as you say, and it is expensive, but the benefits are that you have a great team culture. I think of it as like a sporting team. Like, imagine trying to build a basketball team by practicing on Zoom every week. Right? That'd be Pretty tricky. It's a similar, similar kind of mindset. So well done.
Fifteen people on the team and recently you took over the other half of the building, is that right?
[00:16:00] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. So we're in a commercial building here and on the level that we're on, we'd really maximise the space that we were in. So that's when we had 14 people on the team. We were quite crammed in. We've got our own couple of meeting rooms in there and then also all the desk space.
And one of the things for us wanting to grow is I had to look around and say, well, where are we going to stick people as we keep hiring? And the company that was in the other half of the top floor of the building here with us, they decided to move out. And so it was going to be doubling our space. And honestly I didn't need that much space initially, but, you know, these leases come up, it's a five year lease once someone signs it. So it's a big commitment. But also if somebody else takes that, then I'm stuck without space to move the team.
So look, we took, took the punt and it was a bit of a sitting down thinking about it. And at the same time I was looking at hiring our own sales and marketing manager, so to actually drive growth for us.
And so in that journey, we took them both on at the same time. We were like, we're gonna double the office space, we're gonna bring on our own sales and marketing manager. So a huge step up in terms of overheads and so the profit shrunk down to zero for a bit there. But it was just that sense of going, this is the next growth step for us, so we can see where it's gonna take us. It's just gonna hurt in the short term, but it's part of the big picture as to where we're going.
[00:17:25] Speaker A: I just want to unpack this mindset though, because, you know, this is, I'm just going to call it, right? This is why entrepreneurship is hard. Because most people, and when I say most, I'm going to say 99.5% of the population, are just not prepared to make that internal mental commitment to themselves, to their company to take on that kind of extra overhead and that kind of risk. And you're on a five year lease, you've just employed another New Zealand employee. These are not decisions that you can undo. You can't just command Z and undo this. If it doesn't work out in three months time, like you're in it now, right? You have to make this work.
Most people just aren't prepared to take on that kind of responsibility.
Why? What is it about you or your upbringing or your background or your history or experience that makes Josh Moore capable of taking on this responsibility and making it work with a smile on your face and a really positive attitude? I mean, I don't think I've known you for a while now and I don't think I've ever seen you in a bad mood. You're always smiling, you're always optimistic, you're always happy. What is it that you know, what can we unpack or bottle there that other people can learn from?
[00:18:43] Speaker B: Yeah. Cool.
[00:18:44] Speaker A: So.
[00:18:44] Speaker B: Well, this one was like, this was one of the decisions that I thought about for quite a bit. This was a fairly big commitment. And so I was hesitant for a bit there in working it through and just thinking, do I take this step or not? And because it not only was a new staff member, it was a completely non billable staff member. It's just all overheads being our sales and marketing manager.
But to be honest, when I was going through that journey of wondering, so I'm a Christian and I pray about my business a lot and I was praying about this one a lot, going like, God, like, is this the right step? Because this is expensive if we get it wrong. And I'd been praying intensely about it for a few weeks and honestly I felt God say to me eventually when I was just praying going, God, what decision do I make? And I just felt God say, just get on with it.
And so for me, it was that little whisper that went like, I've only had a couple of times in my life where I felt like I've heard God really clearly and that was one of them. And it was just like, just get on with it. And I'm like, okay.
And so made that commitment, hired my sales and marketing manager, signed on the lease. And for me too, like part of that journey, when things then get rough and the profit goes to zero or negative for a few of those months there and you're looking at it like for me part of is leaning back on that saying, but that faith aspect to go, well, God, I'm pretty sure you said just get on with it. So I'm getting on with it. Please help it come right?
And that's been the journey and the growth really has started to come, which is exciting. We're hitting profit consistently now and again, even with all these extra overheads and then a big picture as to where we want to go. So I mean, that sounds pretty woo woo for a bunch of people I know, but for me, not at all part of the journey.
[00:20:34] Speaker A: Not at all. And whether you're a person of faith or whether you're religious or not, like, I think for me, I come back to a couple of sayings or cliches that have really helped me through periods of like this over the years, which is, you know, fortune favors the brave. You know, it's a, it's a cliche. Like if you, if you, if you make a bold decision, you know, the universe or God or whatever your faith is, will conspire to, to reward you because you've been brave. And the other saying that the other mantra that I love, there's two actually. One, I'm gonna get tattooed on my arm soon, but that's a whole other story. But the other, the first one is opportunity dances with those already on the dance floor, right. And so you got to just turn up and get in the ring and, and, and, and, and be active and be involved. And the final one, which is the one I'm gonna get tattooed in a, in a. Not in English. It's a whole other conversation we'll have another time. But I'm gonna get this too Shall Pass tattooed on my left inner arm here. Because whatever season you're in right now, if you're in a season of negative profit because you're reinvesting in the business, or you're in a season of, you know, maybe you've hit hard times in the economy or things are changing or AI is disrupting your business or whatever it is, you just have to realize that nothing is permanent, that this too shall pass. And then you come through that, then you're in a period of high growth and high profit. Enjoy that while it lasts because this too shall pass.
[00:21:59] Speaker B: Right? And so that's right.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: I think that, you know, there's, there's whatever, whatever helps you stay grounded and stay centered.
I think it's important to listen to those inner voices, whether it's a voice of faith or whether it's, you know, you have some other practice that allows you just to quieten down and listen to the inner voice. I think that's really important because as entrepreneurs, we are faced with decisions that most people just will never have to make.
You know, if friends of mine that say, oh, you're so lucky, you've got your own business, and I say to them, you know, if you might, it might look like I'm lucky, but first of all, I'VE worked my ass off to get here. And second of all, you've never laid awake in bed at 2 o' clock in the morning worried about how you're gonna make payroll, right? If you've never had those sleepless nights, we can't have a conversation about this because you just, it's like, you know, for me, it's like parenting as well. It's like, and all due respect and no judgment, but before I had kids, I had, you know, a bunch of people say to me, oh, you know, you wait, you have kids, and I'll be like, oh, you know, how hard can it be? Or, you know, how different can it be, mate, if people don't have kids, and rightly so, they have no idea what it's like to manage kids, young kids, and try and, you know, be entrepreneurs and try and have a life, right? And the moment you have kids, you realize, oh, man, I had no idea what was coming until it, until it hit me, right? It's like, it's one of those, it's one of those kind of markers, I think, in your life. And again, no judgment, but if you've never employed people, you've never been responsible for looking after staff. And, you know, I know staff members that have families and have debt and have mortgages and they have responsibilities, and I take that seriously. I don't employ people lightly, and I do take that seriously. And if you've never been through that journey, it's hard to understand how difficult some of those, some of those times can be. So, you know, I just want to applaud you for, for having the grit and the faith to get through those times and to make those decisions, because as I said, most people won't. So it's been a pleasure to watch you do that now over the last three years. And again, I don't want to make this an ad for what we do, but what's changed and whether it's something that we've done or not is irrelevant. What's changed for you as you've grown? What are some of the things that you've implemented in the agency that you think have really helped and that have changed the trajectory and given you the structure and the confidence
[00:24:27] Speaker B: as the agency has grown? The key thing for me in my leadership is that I have to keep extracting myself from the delivery, and that's bit by bit, and then also in terms of even the management of the delivery, and then just keep moving out and empowering my managers as I put them in place, and leaders and so that growth journey, even though I'm not a developer, I'm very hands on with everything else. So we're a marketing agency rather than a web development agency. And so I was the lead copywriter, I was reviewing all of the content and I was reviewing the designs before they got put in front of the clients. And then I'd be meeting with the clients. And so all along that way I've had to be able to start to delegate to the team. And then now I'm very, very much a perfectionist as well. And so for us perfectionists, delegating can come with a real challenge because you see stuff that's not done right. And so one of the things I've proactively. Sorry, actively worked on is biting my tongue. And I quite literally sometimes just, just bite it, just gently when I'm letting a team member make a mistake or letting them have a conversation that they're struggling to find the answer. And I could jump in with the answer immediately for them. And I'm like, nope, I'm going to let them figure it out. It's in the documentation. They should be able to figure it out there. Or they could. If it's a judgment call, I'll let them make that judgment call.
And the frustrating thing is they won't make the same judgment call as what I want them to make initially, but part of that is letting them do it. And now if, if it's going to be horrendous, then you can jump in and fix it. But I remember saying when I was just practicing this, I had my head of ads and I was just starting to empower him more. He had a small team and then he was running it and then there was something that I was meeting with him and he asked a question and in my mind I'm like, cool, this is one where I can let him make the decision. And so I said to him, well, which way would you want to go? And there were two different options to choose from and he chose the wrong one, not the one that I would have done.
And then I said to him, oh, yeah, nah, let's do the other one. And as soon as I did that, I kicked myself knowing I've just tried to empower him and then I've let him make a decision and then I've cut his legs out from underneath him because he didn't make the decision I wanted to. And so that journey of growth is going okay, I have to let them make a decision and then actually let them have the influence to make the decision without me having to approve everyone. And so, so that is part of the journey. And then as we go along letting the teams so of grown up managers within the teams and then letting them have their accountability meetings with like my head of ads, she runs the ads team. I meet with her once a week, one on one, but she runs the ads team. Same with my head of SEO, he runs the SEO team. I meet with him one on one. My project manager is the same thing and so I'm not involved actually in the delivery so much and most of the delivery goes out without me even seeing it. Now I do see a little bit. I get to see a website sometimes before it goes live or just after.
But yeah, that's been part of that journey of trusting the team more and more sometimes.
[00:27:38] Speaker A: What I've learned over the years is that sometimes we think they're making the wrong decision, sometimes it works out that it's actually the right decision too. And that's a very humbling experience, isn't it?
[00:27:49] Speaker B: That's so true.
We think we know it all and then when we bite our tongue and then it turns out to go pretty well, we're like, oh, okay, yeah.
[00:27:58] Speaker A: How do you see your, your role in the, in the agency now? Like how do you view yourself if you're not an implementer, if you're not hands on with campaigns, if you're not doing account management or project management, how do you identify in the agency now and what is your role? Because I think a lot of us get a sense of self worth out of delivering things for clients and getting feedback from clients and feeling good about it. And if you're not involved in the delivery, how do you get that sense of usefulness?
[00:28:26] Speaker B: For me, my primary role now is leading the team and the leading the team means leading the managers rather than leading the whole team. There's that aspect of when I talk, the whole team hears and run different our all in hands on meetings. But the. Yeah, so it's leading the managers that's really crucial. The other part of the role that I am still involved in is terms of sales. So I have a sales and marketing manager, but him and I together are doing the, the sales and I'm the senior strategist at this stage. But part of our pipeline this year is to develop some of our senior managers into being able to do the strategy piece with clients. So again I've just got that picture as to what am I going to extract myself from next.
The other key thing is that I'm overseeing our Overall system development. So really, that architecture, the underlying pace, that helps us run faster. So I'm driving that. I'm not necessarily doing that. We have an automations guy on the team. He is doing amazing stuff with AI and automations, but I am overseeing the development of our systems.
[00:29:31] Speaker A: I just want to pivot the conversation a little bit towards.
You mentioned AI. And I mean, it's, you know, it's. It's here, it's. It's not coming. It's here and it's a tidal wave. What are you guys doing? Are you nervous about AI? This kind of, I think, ties into a question I like to ask people, which is like, what are you most excited about over the next 90 days? Are you scared of AI? Are you embracing it?
How are you using it? What do you think it means for agencies in 2026 and beyond?
[00:30:00] Speaker B: Yes, I'm scared of it and yes, I'm embracing it.
As you said, the tidal wave is intense.
So, I mean, one of the things for mavericks, getting on a call with other mavericks and so often the conversations turns to AI because it's going so f. And I find that is one of my crucial parts of keeping up to play with what other agencies are doing. Getting my mind stretched. Just the other day we got off a call and I walked out to the team and went. My mind is blown once again by some of the stuff that some of the other agencies are doing and just getting to hear glimpses and insights into that. So that's incredible.
What makes me feel scared about it is how fast it's going and whether we have enough resource to implement things as quickly as we should.
I think I read a quote the other day, AI is not going to take your job.
The other person using AI is going to take your job. And I think that's the same with agencies. So other agencies aren't our competition. It's other agencies using AI better than us so they're able to deliver faster, more efficiently.
That's the big challenge.
So, yeah, we're investing in it. I think it'll probably kill us all one day as Elon Musk's autonomous robots get implemented in every house, and then somebody hacks them eventually and they kill us all. But before that day happens, we're going to have some fun and we're going to have some real efficient businesses.
I love it.
[00:31:26] Speaker A: Whoa.
[00:31:29] Speaker B: Okay. That was just a test. Thankfully, not the whole fire alarm.
[00:31:32] Speaker A: Oh, well, the whole fire drill. Talking about autonomous robots taking over and killing us. There's that fire drill in the Building proof. Proof that you're not working out of your mum's basement. Right, there you go. Proof that you're actually in a commercial building. It has a fire drill, you know, I mapped out. So we've, we've pivoted a little bit. We're doing a lot more done for you services for our clients. You're one of them. We're doing done for you content services. I sat down the other day and worked it out. It's. For me, it's very straightforward to get to, like a completely separate business. Not saying I'm going to do it, but it's very straightforward to get to seven figures a year with using AI. And I reckon three staff, you could get to seven figures a year very easily. It is, it's. The opportunity is outstanding and I don't think I've ever seen, in my lifetime, I don't think I've ever seen an opportunity quite like this. It's. I feel like, you know, entrepreneurs that want leveraged income back in the day. In 2007, 2008, when I started my WordPress agency and I started helping other WordPress freelancers put together care plans and have recurring revenue and have managed wp, you know, streamlined your processes, it was great. I can manage all my clients websites in a couple of hours a week now and generate monthly recurring revenue.
You know, I feel like this is a, this is a quantum leap forward.
Here we are 12, 15 years later and what we can achieve with AI now in an hour, you know, we can achieve almost a week's worth of output in a couple of hours. It's.
I don't think, I think we're still trying to wrap our head around what that looks like in terms of what our businesses might look like in a year's time. I mean, can we scale with our existing team? Can we double triple 10x our revenue and our profit? I think we can.
I think the overwhelm comes from Max and I were working in the same room yesterday, which is not common, but he came in and got the laptop and sat in the studio with me and at various points during the day, we just looked at each other and went one thing at a time, one thing at a time, because we are so excited but also slightly overwhelmed by all of the things we could do that we've also realized that we don't have enough life left to do all of the things that we want to do with AI, because it's just the opportunity is unbelievable. And, and I think the advantage for those of us that have been around the block a little bit is, you know, there's a lot. And again, all due respect and no judgment, but there's a lot of 22 year olds trying to start an AI agency. And I think what they lack is, again, all due respect to any 22 year olds listening to this, I'm not ageist, but I think what they lack is the real world experience of knowing how to package up solutions for clients. Right? And we see AI as just, just a handful of team members that we don't have to hire that can get a whole bunch of stuff done. And we already have the solutions in our head. Right. We're not relying on AI to come up with the strategy or the solutions. We're relying on AI to come up with the implementation and help us be more productive. So it is a very exciting time and I think a lot of us are still trying to figure out what it actually means and what it actually looks like. And the other thing, if you talk to anyone outside our space, you go and talk to the local business owner. They have no idea. Like they're just using ChatGPT like it's Google, right? If they're using it at all, they're just asking it like it's a search engine. They have no idea what is possible with AI.
[00:35:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that automation piece is incredible.
[00:35:09] Speaker A: I think some of us get caught in this bubble where we think everyone knows what you can do with AI because we know it, because we talk to other people who know how to do it, but no one's got a clue what is even possible with AI. So it's exciting times. What I want to talk about your sales process for a second. You said that you're still doing sales, you've got a sales and marketing manager.
Where do the leads come from and what is your typical sales process look like?
[00:35:34] Speaker B: The leads historically have been word of mouth or from our own SEO rankings. And so we did some Google Ads many years ago and we turned them off because we had a consistent flow from other places. We've just recently started running, well, in the last three or four months, our own meta ads for the first time since the agency's been running for 12 and a half years and we're finally running our own meta ads and getting consistent leads in from them.
So the typical sales cycle now would either be a referral or somebody coming in from ads. We have the triage call. So we follow the Mavericks method of so triage call. And so I don't do those. That's my sales and marketing manager, he does those and then he determines which thing we offer them from there. If it's going to be straight Google Ads or SEO, like quite a simple marketing solution.
We then book them in for a free strategy session, 45 minutes. And we generally close them on the spot in that session. And I am in that strategy session and that's where we're going to be training some other consultants to be able to do that. Well, if they're wanting a new website, then I love the paid discovery method. So doing the website roadmap because that people used to, you know, they want a quote, they want a fixed price quote, but what am I building for you? And then you end up doing all this work for free before you've even really been able to identify that. And so we sell them on a website roadmap. If they're wanting a new website then that's. We say, look, this is what's included. We go through this and we deliver for them, including a site map. So a full mapped out site map as part of that process, understanding their customer and what needs to be on the website really well and the functionality they need. And so we charge them for that and at the end of that we. And give them a fixed quote. And so that works extremely well as well. Now it was. So it's really good from a sales process, but we were finding it was costing us a fair bit of time doing all that work. We have the meeting with them and then we put together a whole lot of the research and then the presentation back to them. So that's where we're working heavily with AI at the moment to streamline that down. We were taking somewhere between eight to 10 hours depending on the complexity of the job of the roadmap. And then we're reducing that dramatically now, which is good. So we're down to about, we're going from eight to 10 to down to about four hours at the moment. But we're looking to get that down to much, much quicker, hopefully under an hour with all the human elements in terms of prep.
[00:38:03] Speaker A: Yeah, great.
The other thing about paid discovery, and not to toot my own horn here, but I'm all in on it. I mean, I'm quite bullish on paid discovery just because I've seen the impact that it's had on so many applic agencies that have adopted it, is that it, not only does it help you get the client on board quicker because you're not trying to sell them a $15,000 website that they don't understand. Right. It's like, well, I don't even know what I'm paying for because I haven't seen anything. So you're selling them something smaller, cheaper, less risky on the front end. But also then it just, it almost eliminates scope creep. Right? Because they can't come back halfway through because they've already. If you have a strategy call with someone, they think you've heard every word they've said and we know that that's just not true. Right? Whereas if they, and also because it's free, how seriously do they take it? How much skin in the game do they have? If they pay a small amount of money for a roadmap and you scope it out, they pay more attention to it. They know that you've heard them because you're reflecting it back to them. And then they can't come back halfway through the process and say, well, where's the members login section that we spoke about? Because it's not in the roadmap, it's not in the wireframes, it's not in the site map. So not only does it help you on the front end with the sales, I think it eliminates scope creep, it also helps with the team because the team know exactly what we're building before we start to build.
So well done for adopting that.
Hey, final question.
I discovered long time after I met you that you have a little piece of software that plugs into Xero and Stripe. Is that the way it works or is it a zero recurring revenue thing? Explain it to me.
[00:39:31] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. So it plugs into Xero.
And so a lot of web development agencies like us, we have all of our hosting or our care plans just on repeating invoices. And, and so I had that. We had our repeating invoices running. Sometimes they'd be monthly. Some customers would say, hey, can we just pay it every three months? And so we'd do that plus our domain names and that's annually.
And so you've got all these repeating invoices and we wanted to know, well, what's our income going to be from recurring income next month or the month after that. And there was just nothing out there that would do it. So I had this really complex spreadsheet that had all these formulas in. And then whenever I sold a client or changed their hosting plan, I'd have to put that in there or a new client client or someone would finish. And it was constantly getting out of date compared with Xero. So in the end we built a software product it's called Beanbox. So Beanbox app and we've got hundreds of customers around the world using it now. And so a lot of them are web design agencies. You just sign up or you connect into your Xero account and within two minutes you've got a full forecast for the next 36 months as to your recurring revenue.
[00:40:39] Speaker A: Great. Beanbox app. We're going to leave a link to that in the show Notes. Also, I think I mentioned this recently to our accountant because we're zero users, we're also recurring revenue. We also have repeating invoices and so they've also got very complex Google sheets that we use to model our recurring revenue. So I'm going to reference this again and the guys, our accountant, one of the founders of our accounting firm is the founder of Ignition app, which I know a lot of service based businesses use for their proposals and invoices and stuff. So I will again send Beanbox app over to our accounts and get them to take a look at it and hopefully plug it in and you might pick up another customer from us.
[00:41:19] Speaker B: Sounds good.
[00:41:19] Speaker A: There we go. Awesome.
Quick question. What are you most frustrated by right now in the agency? If you could wave a magic wand and fix it, what would it be?
[00:41:29] Speaker B: The time we have to build automated systems. We don't have enough time. There's so much opportunity now, especially with AI with N8N and all of that, to connect it together. There are so many systems on our list that we would love to really fine tune and automate and we're getting through them slowly but the list gets longer than we then the tasks we took off. So if I could wave a magic wand, it would be, I don't know, three or four people who are just incredibly good at smashing out the automation aspect of it.
[00:41:59] Speaker A: Yep, yep. It's a very, I mean, yeah, it's very common. I think this is one of the most common, common challenges that every agency owner has right now. We have it as well. We. I just want to, you know, bring on more people or more AI agents to do stuff. I'm just, I'm trying to build agents to do things so I don't have to hire more people to do things. So very cool. Hey, thanks for spending some time with us on the agency. Our podcast. It's been awesome to be a part of your journey and your growth over the last few years and looking forward to continuing working together. Where can people reach out and connect with you?
[00:42:31] Speaker B: Yeah. So the main website for the agency is duoplus nz. So that's d u o p l u s dot nz and I'm on LinkedIn, so look for Josh Moore. And of course, if you want to check out Beanbox, it's Beanbox, a app.
[00:42:44] Speaker A: Awesome. And the podcast, please, please plug at the podcast because you just launched a podcast. Let's plug the podcast while we're here.
[00:42:51] Speaker B: Yeah, we've just launched a podcast. We've been working on it all year and it's just launched. So it's called the New Zealand Innovation and Export Podcast. I interview founders and CEOs of businesses that are, that are building innovative things and exporting. We've had some fascinating stories on there. So it's on all the, all the podcast platforms. So New Zealand Innovation and Export Podcast.
[00:43:10] Speaker A: Awesome. We'll also put a link to that in the show notes as well. All right. Thanks, Josh, for joining us on the Agency Hour again and look forward to keeping the conversation going.
[00:43:18] Speaker B: Thanks, Troy.
[00:43:20] Speaker A: Hey, thanks for listening to the agency our podcast. Please subscribe like share this with any agency owner who you think may find it helpful and let us know what you want to learn next on the podcast. We're all in on AI here and as I said, we're rolling out done for you content, so services. So if you are an agency owner and you know you need more content but you haven't got time to do it, hit us up. Send us an email. Just email me troyagencymavericks.com and I'll respond to you. That's my real email address and I actually monitor it. There's no AI or VA there. It's all me. So shoot me an email and we'll have a conversation. Otherwise, I look forward to seeing you on the next episode of the Agency Hour. Until then, I'm Troy Dean. Let's get to work.
