The Power Plays Podcast

How He Scaled His Agency to $15K/Month in the "Worst" SMMA Niche (Restaurants)

• Keaton Walker

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In this interview, Keaton Walker interviews his student Yewan, a 21-year-old student, who built a thriving $15K/month social media marketing agency (SMMA) in the highly competitive restaurant industry. Yewan shares his humble beginnings, landing his first client, and the strategies he used to overcome the challenges he faced in one of the worst SMMA niches. Dive into Yewan's approach to content vs. ads, effective hiring practices, and the key drivers behind his agency's rapid growth. This video offers a goldmine of actionable insights that can help you outmaneuver the competition and achieve similar levels of success. Enjoy!

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Timestamps:

00:00 - Overview     
00:17 - Introductions      
01:22 - Yewan's beginnings     
03:57 - The first client!      
08:50 - GHL Sponsor Segment      
10:38 - Struggling with your ads?      
12:25 - How Yewan Scaled     
14:16 - All about ads     
20:09 - Content vs Ads     
22:38 - Things you should know about hiring     
33:20 - Yewan's agency growth     
38:02 - Lead vs sales      
43:12 - Talking about sales     
52:12 - Creating an agency at 20 years old     
56:58 - Future plans

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#smma #gohighlevel #restaurantbusiness

Yewan:

11 million in revenue this year, just like look at other people's stuff, copy it, change a little bit and then run it for yourself. See if it works. The agency game is just really driving results for the businesses that you work with and making great connections with those people. I recently turned 21. I do this because I have fun.

Keaton:

How's it going, everybody? Welcome back to another interview. Absolutely blessed to be here with, uh, Ewan, who is a former agency dominance student and a friend of mine. Has crushed it in the last year and a half or so, since he got into the agency game is at 15 K recurring in the restaurant niche of all places. Um, and I'm just, I'm so excited to hear, I've heard bits and pieces of your story. As you know, we had got on coaching calls, et cetera, through the first like eight months or so, but I haven't been updated since then. So I'm really excited to see what you've implemented. Um, what, you know, lessons you've learned and what's been hard, but, uh, I think there's going to be a ton of value in here for a lot of people. So thanks for coming on, man.

Yewan:

Yeah, no problem. And pleasure's all mine. I mean, I wouldn't be where I am today without, um, really good people around me that showed me. How to build the things that I wanted to build and get good at the things that I wanted to do. So always love to give back and meet new people, um, and find ways to help them.

Keaton:

So give us a background. I want to, if I remember correctly, you like, just happened to find agency dominance, like on a random day. And like, that was the day that I was launching it or had like, just was pre launching it or something. And you joined, uh, Um, is that how it happened? And what were you doing before that?

Yewan:

Yeah, I found one video. I actually watched one video as a podcast with somebody who had built a restaurant marketing agency, Jace from DineLine. Um, and I was like, Well, that's sick. He's done something in the, in the, or like he knows something about restaurant marketing. Um, but prior to that, I had no idea, like absolutely no idea, um, what I was doing and I had signed a client actually. So I signed my first client and then I was like, Oh, actually, how do I do marketing? Um, so I sold. Somebody first, then I was like, um, better get some education, learn how to actually, uh, market and, and do the things that I wanted to do. I've been interested in the space. I read a lot. So interested in psychology and things like that. Um, and just trying to learn as much as I possibly can. Um, but yeah, prior to that, and you're like,

Keaton:

18 at this point, right?

Yewan:

Yeah. I wasn't even into like the online business space at all. Um, I was kind of just like trying to fill needs where I, I, I worked in a restaurant and, uh, I, prior to that, I'd driven, like done like door dash and just a bunch of different weird things that I'd like kind of gone around and just like, I had no idea what I wanted to do and was kind of trying to figure things out.

Keaton:

And this was like. Almost a year after you graduated high school that you, yeah, you watched that podcast episode.

Yewan:

Yeah. And I just like happened upon it. I mean, obviously I had been like doing a little bit of research into the internet space because I was served your video obviously, but, um, not like super like, Oh, I'm going to start an agency waiting, waiting, waiting. I was like, No, I'd sold the client and somebody had come to me and yeah, I was actually the, the reason that I bought your course was because I had been calling businesses saying, and just trying to figure out like what to sell them. And then people started being interested in marketing and I was calling like everyone from a car dealerships to auto body garages to moving companies, just like literally calling them and seeing like what they wanted to buy. Like that was, and I had no idea, so I had absolutely no clue what I was doing.

Keaton:

And that first client was, it was a moving company, if I remember correctly, right?

Yewan:

Yeah, it was. It was a moving company.

Keaton:

Okay. And, um, talk to us about those first few months, like you're trying to service that client. If I remember correctly, there were a few other like deals that kind of came your way. You're trying to niche down, but weren't really sure where to go. How did that feel in the moment? And, and where did it end up?

Yewan:

I still feel very similar. I'm not going to sit here and say that everything's changed. Um, but during those first months I was so nervous and like, I didn't really know what I was doing. I'm maybe not nervous, actually. I was probably just like, I had no clue. And so I was just like learning everything on the fly. How do I do this? How do I set this up? I'm doing everything yourself as well. And trying to do a really good job. I think the biggest thing for me was I just wanted to care, like really care about the person's product, about their business, about how I can help them. Um, cause that's what I had sold them was essentially initially there. And at all times, you're always selling a product that's going to help somebody achieve the goals that they want. So I wanted to be able to do that for the person. Um, but yeah, it was hard not knowing what you're doing and I don't think it gets easier. I think you just realized that, you know, less.

Keaton:

Yeah. Yeah. You're still in the messy middle in many ways. Um, which, you know, it, but you're right at the same time. Like it never, the questions never stopped coming. They're just bigger or different or things change. And like, you feel like, you know, the right principles, you feel like you've got some good SOPs written out. And then the next week everything changes and you rethink your whole life and your whole business. And, um, it's a never ending cycle. So, yeah. Um, yeah. That's kind of how it works. So you, you got that client, you had a couple other, just like random deals. How did you decide to niche down into restaurants and how did you get your first restaurant client?

Yewan:

I hated competing with other people. Um, and every agency coach online, after I had watched your stuff, I was like, Oh, there's other people teaching this stuff. So I went and listened and they'd like did like these tier lists. And every single tier list that I found online was like, restaurants are terrible. Don't go into restaurants. Don't do it. And I was like, perfect. Nobody's going to be doing restaurants. I won't have to compete with a bunch of people. Like the dental industry or any of these other industries are going to be awesome. Awful, horrible. I don't want to have to like be like the fifth or seventh guy that they've been cold called by to that day. So I was like, yeah, I'm going for restaurants. It's going to be easier. Um, and yeah, so I niched down and I really quickly started making content.

Keaton:

Okay. And it was short form on like Instagram right?

Yewan:

Short form on Instagram and Tik TOK and also long form for my videos as well. So YouTube content, one YouTube video a week.

Keaton:

And I just want to applaud you, anyone listening, like follow in Yuwen's footsteps here, because he, if I could describe him, you were talking about that, you know, feeling uncertain, but also feeling like you want to do a really good job. What I saw was like irrational confidence, um, which is awesome. It's such a good skill, even if you're not, your skills aren't a hundred percent there, just the sheer willingness to go out there and publish content on stuff that you're learning. And you're a couple of steps ahead of the next person on being willing to do that. Instead of getting in your head about it. Um, I saw you progress a lot faster than a lot of the cohort that kind of came in at that time, because you were willing to put your face out there, put your Knowledge out there and start to attract people instead of solely relying on outreach, which is uh, what a lot of beginners feel like they have to do.

Yewan:

I think even if you're just living life, you should be making content. I mean, I'm pretty big on content and I think it's just because when you can reiterate the things that you're learning, um, it like reinforces the things. I mean, and like, you don't have to make content. Obviously if you have a team of people underneath you, you're teaching them. So that's reinforcing what you're learning. But, um, or, or it can be like writing a blog or whatever. I think finding a way to carve out your space on the internet and attract people is really, really how you want to grow a business online these days. Now, obviously I don't know everything, so I'm sure there's other ways to do it.

Keaton:

I put my stamp of approval on that message for sure. I like the idea of rehashing things and kind of putting a journal, maybe a public journal out into the world about what you're learning or. Business, uh, content, what would you say to someone who's starting out and it's like, I don't even know what type of content to make because you were, if I remember correctly, like, it didn't take you long to start booking calls from a lot of the, the posts that you started making. Right? Like. A couple weeks. Yeah. Yeah. Hey guys, just jumping in here to give you a quick word on our sponsor, high level before we get back to the interview. If you don't know already, high level is the top sales and marketing solution for any business, but particularly agency owners or anybody that needs a software product to resell to their existing customer base. It has everything you need to capture, nurture, and close leads for marketing clients. And the best part is high level believes in not taxing the agencies. On its platform. So you can get unlimited clients for one low lat monthly fee. The best features include a CRM funnel website and email builders, course hosting platform, robust marketing automation builder, a consolidated chat stream with WhatsApp, email, SMS. Instagram DMS and Facebook DMS, reputation management, social media, posting, tracking and analytics, and so much more. And as if that wasn't enough, high level is fully white labeled, meaning that you can take the platform and put your own brand on the desktop and mobile app and resell it to your industry for whatever price you want. Essentially what high level has done is brought the bar for starting a software company way lower. So normal people like you and I. Can help our clients with an amazingly robust software without paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in development costs. I am not kidding. When I say hands down, high level is my favorite software of all time. It has been integral to my success with my agency. It helped me increase my client's results and retention. And I use it every single day for my own business. And if you sign up for high level today, not only will you get a 30 day free trial, which is not available. on their website, but you will get all of the bonuses listed at it's Keaton. com forward slash mastermind, which gets you support templates and courses to kickstart your high level journey and get those first few clients or scale to your next few clients. If you're already a high level customer, you can also get all of those bonuses by upgrading to the next highest plan underneath my link instructions for that are also at it's Keaton. com forward slash mastermind.

Yewan:

Look at other people's content. And then go, you have to be confident enough to say, you know, I can do this a little bit better than this person, or I can say this in a different way from my perspective, a life perspective, that'll be more interesting. And that's probably like the two things that I would advise. And if you're stressed about making content, I started making content and I wouldn't even post my face. And I would literally record into like, My phone's microphone and I would just post like black and white videos just to like practice like speaking on camera. Like, and the, the content is horrible. Like it was absolutely terrible. I had no idea what I was doing. Um, and yeah, you just have to try. I mean, you don't even have to post it. Like you can just record a video, edit it and then keep it.

Keaton:

Yeah. And you get that first one made, even if you don't post it. Like for me, it took a month to make my first video, YouTube video from actually. Like starting the preparation, like scripting, making the slides, all that kind of thing to when it was actually published because I was so nervous. And so decreasing the importance of that by just saying, I'm not going to publish this. If it's not good enough, um, and getting over that initial month of not doing anything is going to get you to the point where you're comfortable. Faster. And everybody that's a big time influencer today started thinking that they weren't good enough or weren't interesting enough.

Yewan:

The other thing that I'd add to this is like basically. You think that other people care about your content. And I did, I thought that my friends were going to bully me. I was, I like, I mean, obviously I wasn't that worried about it, but like that's definitely a fear in the back of people's heads.

Keaton:

So how did you go from getting one or two restaurant clients to, uh, you mentioned you got, you had like a 20, 25 K a month recently. The MRR is kind of stabilizing around 15, um, what made the difference between, you know, 2 to 3 K a month to 15 a month,

Yewan:

I guess, hiring people. So, like, finding people, like, I was willing to hire people before. I even had enough money to hire people. Um, I think that might be a little bit backwards, but I knew that I didn't know very much about, like, Delivery and what we could, what I could sell to restaurants as a product. And so I was constantly trying to make connections with people, um, constantly trying to find people that knew way more than me. So like, I now work with like really closely our media buyer, who's has like 10 plus years of experience in the restaurant industry. So they know everything, they know how to set up all the conversion tracking that leads to really good reporting. And so like. They're just super strong and know things that I would never know. And that gave me the confidence to go out and really say, you know, we can do this and we can do this really well. And you should sign up and work with us. Um, and I think the difference that really helped me was, um, obviously content and then direct outreach, um, and also running paid ads. So I was running, I was saying to people, Hey, look, I can grow your business with paid ads. And then I was like, well, can I grow my own business with paid ads? And so I turned on paid ads, took me a while. I spent a bunch of money, lost a bunch of money. Um, but, uh, pretty quickly took like that. And that gave me another stream of inquiries and calls, which is, which really helps.

Keaton:

Okay. There's a lot to unpack in what you just said. Let's talk about the paid ads first. Um, how much would you say you spent before? You got your first client and how long until you actually had an ROI?

Yewan:

Ooh, probably like, I probably spent about like 3000 until I got my first client from a bid ad. Um, now I don't think that's really like super right. Um, because like you can definitely, if I had to go back and do it again, I would look at my competitors, like a big agency that's doing ads. Um, and I would just, Literally copy and paste their videos. Uh, it's like, it sounds kind of like, like, I mean, obviously always put a spin on it and always try to do better and put your unique input into it, but like. Look at their funnels, look at the way that they've set up their VSL. Look at, um, try to understand what they're selling. The biggest guys in my space are running, uh, in the restaurant space or running Google ads for restaurants. And there's something called local store visit conversions, um, on Google, and that's what they're tracking for results. And. I didn't know that for a really long time, but I did a bunch of research. I just dug into their company. I was like, Oh, what are they running on YouTube? What are their, you can go one way that you can see like what they're doing is just by looking at, um, like their client testimonials and then going and looking at their clients, the most recent testimonials and looking at their. Those venues or those, like, let's say it's a dental office, those dentists ads, and then you can see like what they're running right now for their ad campaigns. But yeah, just like look at other people's stuff, copy it, change it a little bit, and then run it for yourself. See if it works. Cause they've spent like a big agency will have spent like thousands and thousands, thousands of dollars in the ads. So you're taking something that's proven and it's worked for. Essentially years and years. Now I'd recommend like watching a podcast about them or like seeing how long they've been in business before you copied their ads. But like, yeah, you can, you can copy their ads. Um, and I'll always try to improve on stuff. Like I didn't just copy people's stuff. I try to improve on it and take it to my niche. And I was, I try to be. Respectful. One of the people that, um, actually learned a lot from was, uh, Jarek and the guys from hitched, just because they, they're doing, and now they're, they're working with wedding venues and I'm working with restaurants, but like their, their sales, those ticket sales, the type of sales translated. And so I was just like, I was like, it was a blessing to have them on. Keaton brought them on and I met them for the first time. Both of them actually. And it was amazing. I got to like, I think I probably asked the most questions out of anyone. I'm put the call. So I was just bombarding them. Cause I was like, this is perfect. I need to interview these guys, um, and get as much information out. But yeah, then I went in and looked at their funnels, looked at all their stuff. And I was like, Hey, I could probably duplicate this and take their winning strategy, bring it over to the restaurant space and use some of their stuff. Some of the structuring for the way that they book calls for their,

Keaton:

their, yeah, looking like just a couple degrees over. Um, I heard, uh, this in the YouTube space applies to any content, but like, don't look at people who are like light years ahead of you. Look at people who are one to two steps ahead of what you're doing. So if you have 5, 000 subscribers, look at the person who has 10, 000 and like, see what. Worked for them because looking at the person who has 3 million subscribers, like they're in a different league and it's a little different than what you're describing. But, um, it's the same as it's, uh, you know, I think you should start a new Instagram and call it like barely ethical. Life hacks, um, because the amount of research that you're describing that you did, like copious amounts of diving into how do other people run their business and it's, it's all free and online. And, and, um, I'm glad you put in the caveat of, of changing things and not just copying. Cause there are people that will just straight up do that. Um, but it's, You know, it's, it's the way a cookie crumbles. Like that's how it works.

Yewan:

Yeah. I mean, there's people that have done the things that you want to do before you. I mean, Keaton started an agency, built an agency. And I went and learn from him to learn how to build an agency. But there's also people who are running the agency that you want to run and just have, like, are doing like a hundred K. So you should definitely go look at what they're doing, copy them, but definitely improve on them, what they're doing.

Keaton:

Or even just do it a little bit. Sorry to cut you off. Do it a little bit more personalized. Like they're going to cop, like the big agency is going to be doing a lot of copy pasting. If you can just say like, Oh no, we don't copy paste like those big guys. We're going to customize and make sure it works for your area. You've differentiated yourself enough to get the sale.

Yewan:

A hundred percent. The. And I say this like, Oh, I went in like, cause I think it's funny, honestly, that I went in and I copied other people's funnels. But like the, and honestly, everyone's done that because if you've ever watched a video online on how to build a funnel or how to get clients, whatever, you're copying somebody else's work. But the thing is, is that if you were to take somebody else's stuff. And reinvent it, make it, especially if you're smaller, make it more personalized, make it feel like you're doing a service. And we're still small. So that's what we do. I mean, that's literally what we're doing right now, which is we personalize our services, um, to a client's needs within a certain range of like, Customization

Keaton:

as, as far as going back to the original conversation, which is how did you go from, you know, 2k to 15 K it's like a hybrid approach of content ads and outreach. Did you see those start to play into each other where someone would be like, Oh, I saw your content and I saw your ads and you reached out to me or maybe just two of the three.

Yewan:

Usually it's ads to content. Um, and then, uh, yeah, outreach. So if you're running your funnels properly, you should be collecting people's emails, phone numbers. Um, and name so technically quote unquote, like it's not outreach because they've signed up to your email list, but like, yeah, outreach as in like, yeah, they opted in to my, oh, I'm getting balloons. Um, so outreach as, uh, outreach as in like, they've opted into my funnel. I'm reaching out to them,

Keaton:

but you were doing like cold calls at one point, right?

Yewan:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Keaton:

I'll still do any of that or cold. Oh yeah. You got to

Yewan:

humble yourself. You got to hear people say, what the heck? Why are you calling me? Where'd you get my number? That's important. Yeah. You got to jump on those calls once in a while.

Keaton:

So how are you doing it today?

Yewan:

Not often. I have actually a team member that does all of the outbound calling. So I don't even do it anymore. I mean, I, it's like, I don't really enjoy it that much. Um, to be completely honest, outbound calling

Keaton:

as in. He's cold calling for you or he's calling leads

Yewan:

calling leads and then they'll do some cold calling once in a while But like usually it's just it's just all outbound to leads where it's interesting. We're at a transition phase So like we're scaling up to actually do way more outbound and change a lot of the stuff So hmm for right now that that's what we've been doing to get to here but like a lot of this is gonna change to get to our goals which are I want to get to like At least I want to get up to like 30, um, KMR consistently, which means I will need like some fluctuation and the, the strategy is a little bit different for that. So we've been building up and productizing our service more so that it's really easy to roll out to more venues faster. And, um, yeah, this entire year has been like getting to a point where we feel comfortable launching in that direction, which is just trying to scale.

Keaton:

Okay. I want to get to the future plans, but, um, I want to back up and talk about what you said about hiring and that giving you the confidence to go from. 2k to 15k. There's a few pitfalls. I think that a lot of people will fall into if they just take that advice at face value. It's just like, Oh, I just hire someone with more experience. I'm good to go. Um, so tell us, tell us the pitfalls to watch out for it. Tell us how you found your media buyer and then talk about how you transitioned from what you saw most of the other agencies doing, um, to what you're doing now, which is more like high ticket in the restaurant space.

Yewan:

The pitfalls and hiring in general, um, for me, it's been pretty intuitive. I'm not going to say like, I've figured it out and I haven't done enough interviews to figure it out. I mean, there's, there's people that have like interviewed like thousands of candidates and those, I would respect them as like somebody who like knows how to hire people. Um, for me, it's like pretty simple, like past experience. Have you done this before? Um, do I like spending time with you? Um, are you interested in learning? So like, do you read books? Um, do you, I'm like, my interviews are fine. Like they're like, like you get on a call with me. It's like super casual. Um, and I just want to know. You as a person, um, cause I'm going to be spending time with you. You spend a lot of time with the people that you work with. Um, so you want to spend time with people that you want to spend time with. I think a pitfall would be not knowing your stuff. So I say that like, these people know a lot more than me. They do. They know a lot of the technical stuff. Way better than I do, but overall I can look at something and I still understand what it looks like to go through an ad account. I understand how to audit these things. I understand how to build the right creatives, the right copy. Um, I'll still create ad creatives and I'm still doing tasks within the business because I want to learn. I want to get better and I want to keep. Trying to drive improvements. Um,

Keaton:

and it's bottom line, like nobody's ever going to care as much as you. Um, like that, even if you're paying them, I mean, maybe if you were paying them a hundred percent, but that wouldn't make sense, like you wouldn't be running that business, you like, I feel like what I hear you saying, and this is a light bulb moment for me, cause I've struggled to express it. It's like, you can see the big picture. Whereas the people that you hire, their visions are kind of fitting within your, bigger vision. And so even though they may be smarter than you in a certain area or have more experience than you in a certain area, they, they're, they're still kind of like the employee employer dynamic because you can see a little bit more of the vision that they can't. Is that what I'm hearing?

Yewan:

Yeah. You look at the business as like, like for me, I've tried to look at my business as a product because I want it to be Something that is like able to be scaled and able to be grown. And that works really well and is efficient and drives as much return for our clients as possible. I mean, at the end of the day, that's what keeps clients. That's what, um, Is the agency game is just really driving results for the businesses that you work with and making great connections with those people. Um, so like I understand that aspect and like, I understand the pieces that go into every sort of section of the business, whether it's like client acquisition all the way down to media buying and just trying to, I look at the whole picture of the thing that we're trying to build, which is to lend our company. Now, the. Individual roles within it, they get the pieces and they're trying to fulfill on those pieces. And so I guess it's trying to articulate the entire thing to them and, and hold that your job is to hold that while they deliver and produce results for this section or their technical basically enabling them to execute really well on what they're technically competent at

Keaton:

has been on it. What do you mean by hold that?

Yewan:

I feel responsible to create A really great product and to build something that our clients love. Our media buyers worried about, um, creating results through ads. They're not looking at like the way that we're communicating with clients as much. Other things that you mentioned, like, Oh, people won't care about your business as much as you do. And I would say that, or my hope is that they care to the extent that you care. So if you don't care about your business, they're definitely not going to care. But like, I'm up at like 12 at night, like on calls with people trying to like, like on calls with the team, like trying to get them to like, see the way that I see the business and, and try to also help them out. And like, if there's like, if we're onboarding three or four clients, I mean, they're doing delivery with them. Like, that's like, for me at this stage, I mean, obviously as we scale, that's not going to be. Something that I can do, but like, as it stands right now, that's, that's the way that I show that I care. And I think that's something that has helped a lot. Um,

Keaton:

with

Yewan:

them showing up and then putting in,

Keaton:

yeah. Breathing that vision into them.

Yewan:

Yeah. Breathing vision, but also just like, I mean, as simple as it sounds like just showing them what it's like to like how much I care so that they show up in the same way.

Keaton:

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's personality types certainly play into this because there's so many people that are just like, it doesn't matter how much woo woo we believe in this. Like we're helping people. You give them, they're like, I'm here to collect my paycheck and go home. And some of those people can be amazing workers. They can be incredible employees to have on board, but if they don't fit culturally. It just depends on like where you fit and what your goals are with the business. But I would say I'm probably a bit more cynical than you at this point. Just having more, more experience with more people. Like,

Yewan:

yeah,

Keaton:

a hundred percent. Um, but I love, I also haven't run a Twitter or a Facebook or like some massive company where culture would really play into, um, the success of that. And. A lot of CEOs talk about it a lot of the time. Uh, but I, I feel like in the, the deepest darkest moments or the most honest moments of the employees, it's, it's still about the paycheck and like my work life balance and you know, whatever, I can go find another job type thing. Like they're, they're a client in that way where it's like, if you're not making them money and treating them right, they're going to leave

Yewan:

for

Keaton:

sure. Are you seeing that? Are you seeing that you're, you're. Efforts to breathe that vision into your team is working.

Yewan:

I definitely can like tell if somebody is really transactional. Just when, like, usually when you're interviewing someone, you can tell if they're really transactionally. I think the way that you tell is like, if someone's interested in learning, like if they get excited when you show them something new that they haven't seen before, and they want to learn this thing, that's a really good marker for somebody who's going to take the go the extra mile, take the time and be interested in actually, like, not just collecting a paycheck. But. I, in this case, trying to learn, but if learning is a great point, doing great things, then that would be a, I think that's probably what I've got for the Morris most, which is like that, like that learning, that learning principle, because like, for me, like I know sort of my character, which is like, and so I'm like, well, I can just try to sort of find people that are not like me actually, I think that that's a. You want to find people that compliment you, but people that have and want to learn usually care or are going to do extra things to learn.

Keaton:

Yeah. And that's a great point. And maybe I think you, you articulated better than what I was trying to say. Cause there's, what I'm trying to say is there has to be an X factor. That's like, I'm here. For this and not just the money in order for somebody to really have that buy in and I think a lot of the like corporate bullshit, whatever that people like to throw out, like people just choke on that and it's like suffocating, but the real reason they stick around. in startups or other businesses is because it's interesting and they're learning something and that kind of growth mindset type person, um, would be the right person to have around. And that's a great point

Yewan:

for sure. And I mean, don't be afraid also to like hire. For me, I've had good experience with hiring people that are like. To maybe even like 5 percent or no five degrees off of like the actual, like, they're like, not like they still need like kind of training, not super training, like a lot of training, but like they've done the thing that you want them to do in a different industry in that essence, like you can hire for mindset and the way that they see the world. And not worry about technical expertise. Cause you can have someone that's doing the thing that they've been doing for 20 years and absolutely hate it. I mean, and so like, you want to find someone that like, is more like interested in learning. Loves, um, is, wants to do the thing that you're offering them, like essentially your value prop or your job and, um, the way that you want to hire more for what they, what they're looking to do.

Keaton:

How did you find your, your media buyer with 10 years of experience in the restaurant space?

Yewan:

Content. He watched my content. He was, he was learning. He was researching and he was like, this is cool. If you're interested, like for myself, like I go out and I watch every video that I possibly can. I watched the podcasts for the. Uh, or listen to the podcast for the top, like agencies in our space. I try to find as much information. There's usually a really good breadcrumb shell left behind by successful or bigger businesses, so you can go and find a lot of stuff in there, but he was doing the exact same thing and he just happened to buy my content. Send me a DM.

Keaton:

Yeah, that's awesome. Um, so how did you make the transition from quote unquote, typical restaurant marketing and for our listeners and viewers fill in what most agencies are doing and how you decided to go to this other more high ticket space and how that's been going for you?

Yewan:

I mean, we can start with what most, what I initially started doing and what most other agencies are doing, which is they're trying to get customers through the door at restaurants. So they're trying to drive. Just revenue numbers up, get more people to come into restaurants, sit down, eat food, um, book a reservation. One thing, it's not super trackable, so it's challenging. One way that you can do quote unquote trackable marketing is just by being a Google partner and sending people, like, the amount of people that visit the location, the store, like in store visits. I think that has some implication and like is accurate and I think it's good. I mean, it's not, the issue I had with it was like, it's not like, it's not like a true revenue number at the end of the month, which is like, this is how much business we drove for you. For example, for Keaton, which this was actually happened. I knew that I wanted to find something different to sell for these businesses because of the time I spent in agency dominance, which was basically, King was like, yeah, we would understand the amount of revenue that we were generating for our clients because a new patient start was worth X amount of dollars. And we were at, or, and like a new, and like, we knew that we were going to generate them like whatever, 18, 000 over if we got this person to actually book in, uh, and, and show up to their appointment for their orthodontic treatment. But I was like kind of, because I'd seen that I was looking for that always within the space versus Just like, Oh, uh, we're generating sales through, um, like people seeing you, people see you online basically, and they're coming to the restaurant. That's the alternative. And it works like the guys that DineLine did a video and they're on track to do 11 million in revenue this year. Maybe I, maybe I'm completely off. The point is that they've scaled up doing it the other way. So there's not like one right way. I wanted something different for the business that I was going to run. Which was more trackable results.

Keaton:

What did you land on and how has the process been of building a, a quality product in that, that sector of the restaurant niche?

Yewan:

Yeah. So within the restaurant industry, people. So walk in business, what I was just talking about. And then we also sell catering and, uh, private events. Um, and those are higher ticket sales. So like one private event is like 5, 000, um, catering orders, depending on the type of catering and what it is that those will be anywhere from 300 and all the way up to. Um, they can be really, really large as well. Orders now, I mean, these are revenue estimations, but that's been the, uh, yeah, I was like, Oh, this is like, and honestly it hit me when I was looking at the way that, cause I was like, the guys that hitched were selling weddings. Jeric and, uh, I'm blanking on

Keaton:

Hunter,

Yewan:

Hunter, Jeric and Hunter were selling weddings and they're like, that's how they're, and people seem to really love their product. And I was like, Oh, okay. That's. That seems more enticing. And then I was like, there is for us, it's like, well, we can sell private events at restaurants and they are people booking these large parties. Um, and they make higher margins on those parties and it drives sales and, and, and revenue for the business, um, in a much more trackable way. And at this point, we've also set up our, um, tracking so that we know The total amount of a contract that's booked in. So every single time that somebody like closes out a deal, it gets assigned, uh, in, in the space called a BO or, uh, just like a assigned contract, um, we'll have that revenue tracked in that report. So at the end of the month, we know the amount of leads that we generated, the amount of, um, Book either book calls or book tours. And then we'll know the final sales amount.

Keaton:

What is the conversion end up looking like? Like how many people are actually looking to book a private event and spend, you know, 5, 000 on food for their friends and family in an area. And then how many of those that reach out actually convert typically

Yewan:

the Interesting thing about the agency space, which is the difference between leads and sales. Um, you can generate a lot of leads for a business, but not drive a lot of sales. And it's dependent on so many multi variable factors, like the biggest one being the actual sales team at a company. Um, so it's really venue dependent. We like to see about 20 percent conversion rates.

Keaton:

And it's, is it typically like a 5, 000 ticket price or what would you say on average?

Yewan:

It's really variable, honestly. They, yeah, 5, 000 for like 50, like it's a hundred per person. It would be like an average of how much they charge. And then, so like if it's a 50 person party, then that's 5, 000. If it's 20, that's 2000.

Keaton:

And what about like, do your clients call the leads or do you have to hound them? Have you thought about putting an employment setting agency in, um, how does that work out?

Yewan:

So really quickly. We were doing like Legion, like a while ago and. It was great for some people who just like love leads, love, love dealing with the prospects. And it was horrible for other people. Um, who were just like super busy business owners who just didn't want to follow up with prospects. So really quickly, I hired someone on to do a lot. We lost a client and I was like, this sucks. And then I was like, what can we do different? I was like, went back in the course. I was like, Oh, I didn't can do, he did appointment setting for his clients. I was like, well, I might as well do like. Quote unquote appointment setting, which is just somebody for them. It was like somebody who just outbound dialed every lead for us. It was, they outbound dialed, they took the prospect and they, um, they made sure they were qualified. They had an event, the event was more recent than not, and then they transferred them to the client to close out, send a contract to. Which helped a lot.

Keaton:

So you're, are you doing that for all your clients now? Or it's like an optional?

Yewan:

No, it's, it's not, it's we'll usually suggest it or advise it if their existing process is horrible or, or it's not producing results. So, because that was the biggest unlock or the thing that I loved about the space, which is like, when you're able to look at an entire pipeline and go, this stage isn't converting, this stage could be better. Our response rate could be better. I mean, like most agencies look at like the first, like, they look at the cost per lead they look at, and I'm really generalizing here, but like, initially, this is what we were doing, which is we were looking at cost per lead. We were looking at the amount of people that were responding to our messages, like automated messages. Um, and then we were looking at, um. The amount of people that were, um, moving forward in our pipelines. And we were like, we don't really know what's going on. Um, and so like, then we wanted to be able to look at everything, which is,

Keaton:

yeah, you're blind, you really are blind if you don't follow up with the leads

Yewan:

that you're really blind. If you don't follow up the leads and you're really blind, if you don't know sales attribution. Um, like, I think that's why e commerce and these other like super trackable. Advertising and in that space, like they do so well. It's just cause they know their data and then they're able to go and make decisions on what's working. What's not.

Keaton:

Sorry to go back. I wasn't, I didn't understand. So everybody that comes on has to get the warm transfer outbound caller.

Yewan:

No, no, no, no.

Keaton:

Okay.

Yewan:

So only for like, we'll look at the business and we'll be like, okay, these people already have a really great established sales process or these people, we know that they just don't. So we usually ask questions about that. Like even when I'm on like a first meeting with some, a potential client.

Keaton:

And how do you price it? If you do follow up deletes, we'll usually add

Yewan:

like

Keaton:

a

Yewan:

500 service fee for follow up.

Keaton:

And you have somebody that works for you like on a contract or hourly basis for all those clients or what's, how do you make sure that you have enough clients on there to warrant having the person on your team?

Yewan:

Yeah. So they're on a variable rate. All actually team members on my team are on variable rates depending on the amount of accounts they're on. Um, and that's number one, tied people's, uh, like they're tied to the success of the company. Okay. Not just like their hourly rate that they're going to make no matter what. So. If we lose clients, they lose money. We all lose money. We lose together. We went together. Um, and so that's how we've structured that. And then

Keaton:

we just pay them. Uh, talk to us about sales. Um, how has your sales ability increased over the last year and a half? And what are maybe the one or two takeaways you would give to somebody who's struggling with sales?

Yewan:

I was worse at sales a year ago, but I was pretty good at presentation and like, just like, Pulling people in, getting them excited about working with, um, me at the time. And then you,

Keaton:

you don't know everything that can fail. It's easier to be confident, easier to present better, not like go into all the details that you're like, this is what could go wrong or get in your head on the side. I had no idea. I had

Yewan:

absolutely no idea

Keaton:

what could go wrong.

Yewan:

Like, yeah, yeah, I could, I only knew what was going to go right, which is they were going to get more business. Um, but now, yeah. Yeah. Sales has been more calm, um, and collected. I've learned to listen a lot better. Um, and I have. Spent time obviously watching my sales recordings back. Um, I've learned that like for myself personally, if I do a really good initial product pitch, I like for myself, I like to do one pitch and talk with a client, understand the problems, show them our product, and then schedule a followup meeting if that's necessary. Um, And that's worked really well. Um, yeah, usually people that buy are going to buy if they like your product. And I'm come to a point where I'm okay with letting, like a lot of people like will hound other people, follow up, follow up as key follow up. Uh, but for me, I'm like, I don't follow up with people. Like you either want my product or you don't, and you can go talk to other companies and, you know, I just want to make sure that my initial pitch is so good that if they go interview somebody else to do the position or find another agency, they're going to be like, this is absolute garbage. What is this? I want whatever our product is. That's been like such

Keaton:

an underrated for all the sales advice out there in the world. It's amazing to me how little it's like just get in and say the pitch and make it amazing like yeah this How would this affect your family if you were able to do this or okay? You said you had a dog Your dog's life would change. I assume if you're ever to get them better child like nobody cares about that. It's weird Like ask some questions about their business and then just be like five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, whatever you need to actually explain, get to the point. So they can start asking the questions that, that they have doubts about. And if, if that pitch, the more you give that pitch, the better it will become. And the more you'll be able to kind of snipe the objections before they actually get to you. Um, but I've, I see a lot of beginners fall into this trap of like trying to follow this. 20 question script and never actually get to the pitch because by the time they've asked all the questions, the hour is up.

Yewan:

I don't think I've ever followed a script. Um, I've, I go into a sales conversation and I want to have, I want to genuinely like meet someone, like I went on the street and I wanted to build a connection. And that's kind of like. It's maybe a bit backwards. Maybe I would produce better results, but the people that I want to work with are people that I, I like and that I enjoyed meeting and I think that they appreciate like the right people will appreciate that the same way.

Keaton:

Yeah. And striking all I'm trying to say is strike the balance between that connection and like, honoring their time and actually getting good at pitching what it is that you do. Yeah. Be efficient. Nothing's worth to the salesperson that just, yeah, waste all your time.

Yewan:

Yeah. I would like, if I could, I just have an e commerce checkout where people could just buy the thing. I know that my market isn't sophisticated enough that they still need to be educated on the actual product that I'm selling. Whereas like for other companies I look at, I'm envious of people who are selling. Stuff through an e commerce checkout, but yeah, I know that that's. That's the future. If I do a good job making a bunch of good content, one day I'll have an e commerce checkout and you can come find my products from that e commerce checkout and I will have to actually

Keaton:

piece of advice. Uh, one thing we've been doing recently, um, is write out your pitch on a Google doc and just send that to people before they get on a call and just make it really concise. Like, Hey, this is, these are the three things we're going to implement. This is how it's going to change your business. This is how, you know. The actual process works, but make it like three pages, max it with a lot of white space and just a very clear language. Like, Hey, this is how this works. Um, and if you send that beforehand, the call. People already know the price. First of all, they're going to get on the call and be like, I have a couple of questions about this. It's essentially like a VSL just written out. Um, the, the original, you know, the VSL is actually the, uh, evolution of the sales letter. It's technically a sales letter, but it's short. Um, and just, I just call it an offer doc. And if you send that, um, I just had a student message me out last week. Like we worked back and forth, back and forth on this doc for probably two months. And he finally was like, I just needed to get back. I needed to get out and like, start prospecting. Like I'd just been holding back. And like the first person I sent it to was like, yeah, let's get on a call. So he's not to the point of getting rid of the call yet. But if you can articulate the offer concisely enough, eventually. The call can go away. So something I would might look into for you. That's super cool. Yeah. Calls are, and it's just getting harder and harder to book calls, especially from outbound as the first step. Like you kind of need a middle step. That's like, Hey, can we do an audit for you? Hey, can I send more information over? Not like, Hey, let's get on a call. Whenever anybody pitches me on a call right away, I'm like. Literally no, like there's no chance in hell. I'm getting on a call with you right now because you sent me one dm. Um, yeah, you're going to send me a five minute loom video pitching me whatever it is that you have first and I'm going to watch that on double speed and then I'm probably just going to move on. But if it's good enough, then. You know, I'll probably email you back and I still won't get on a call, but keeping, um, keeping in mind that business owners are busy and respecting that, honestly, like I see a big trend towards that happening in the next five to 10 years where the call will become less necessary than it has been in the last 10 years.

Yewan:

And that offer doc, would you send that in your initial, like, Like, would you send that just like right off the bat? Somebody else into your, I mean,

Keaton:

you, you have to have some, depends on the context of how the scenario is going, but like, let's say somebody reaches out, like you you're running ads, they generate. Like there's a, uh, you generate a phone number and an email, you call them. They don't pick up, you leave a voicemail. You're like, Hey, I'm going to send you a document that has information on it. It has everything you need to know about our offer. If you'd like to talk, we can talk after that. And the genius of the doc is that you're not dropping the price. Before you're able to give all the value, which is the big thing that most people say, like, don't get on a call or tell people that they have to get on a call because you need to pitch the value before you show the price. But the doc, you can do that. You show all the value. And at the end, you say, here's the price and just picture like somebody, this is like, I would say probably 50, 60 percent of leads are. This way, like they opt in and then they're done with their lunch break or they're done with whatever they're doing. And then five, 10 minutes later, they check their phone again, and they're on the toilet. They're on a walk there at a red light or something like that. And they pull it out and they can click on something quickly, read and be like, Oh, I, I think this is for me. And as long as it's like really hyper optimized, you should convert more people from. Being able to make a concise pitch like that. Then if you force them to the call,

Yewan:

well, you've just changed. We'll do an update in a year,

Keaton:

right?

Yewan:

And see how the selling went for you. Yeah, we'll see. I'll, uh, I'll test it out. That's super cool.

Keaton:

So with the time we have left, I want to cover what it's like to be your age going through all of this. Um, I can relate to in a lot of ways where it feels like I grew up really fast. Like I started hiring people. I started like getting on sales calls and getting myself in situations where I was probably a little bit over my head. Too early and like, do I have regrets about that in some ways? Yes, because I, I like more in a youth that I, I spent too much time working, but also on the other end of that, the financial freedom and the like time freedom on the other side of it now is amazing. How are you experiencing that? And how do you think about. How much time you want to spend working versus, you know, doing whatever else is interesting to you at what are you 19, 20?

Yewan:

Yeah. Um, yeah, I recently turned 21. So yeah, still, still young. Um, I just asked myself, like,

Keaton:

am

Yewan:

I having fun? Cause like, I, and people are always like, rah, rah, like you should go do like, just put the work in, dude, you should grind this out. Like, dude, do you really want to live a life that you 19, 20? Absolutely hate everything you hate waking up in the morning, but you got to put the work in because you're going to be like Whatever you whatever the thing is in 10 years. I mean for me, that's like I do this because I have fun I have fun creating vsls. I have fun making content Um, i've stopped making content for like the past Two months, just cause I was like not having that much fun. I've obviously started recording content again and I'm stoked on it. But like, for me, it's like, yeah, I just look in the mirror. I go, is this fun? And am I having fun? And then, um, you can do so much with your life. Like, there's not like one, this is like some motivational raw, raw stuff, but, um, the, the, uh, you can do a lot with your life. So like you can go to school, you can, like, there's not really one right path. Um, and so like. You should be doing things that you like to do. Um, that's my sort of take on take on that. And I probably am sacrificing. MRR or revenue, but I'll go, um, out and I'll go surf or I'll go do other things. Like once every, not all the time, but I'll do it once in a while. Like go for, do stuff on the weekends that I wouldn't otherwise do. Um, yeah, I mean, just sports and yeah, so I try to find balance, but also I just love, I really love building companies. So like that challenge having that my life would be worse without. the agency without having the ability to work and build a product.

Keaton:

Would you say you do you, you're typically pulling like nine to five type schedule with a lunch or how many hours would you say you work?

Yewan:

Uh, it depends on the day. Uh, but like, I'll work from like nine in the morning till some nights I'll work To like 12 at night, but like other days I'll work, like some days I'll work nine to four and then go do other things for the evening. Um, and, uh, yeah, usually the late night stuff I'll do like a break. So like, I'll do like nine to five and then, or. Yeah. Nine to five and then take like a four, four hour break and then go like, or three hour break and then go like for the evening up to like 12 at night. If you're not having fun, you're not going to do the things like you're not going to do a good job. I think that for me, my mantra and like what I've come to realize is like the person that's going to do the best and build the best product is the person that cares the most, like about the client, about the product that they're making and about the solution that I have. And like, I mean, you're going to have, if you're just grinding it out, trying to make cure, like you, there's so many ways to make money. So you should do it in a way that you like to, and try a bunch of different things. And like, for me, that's yeah. Yeah. But I, I, yeah, I love building the product. I love thinking about, like we were talking about, like holding the, holding a space for the company. I love that. Um, and I love the challenge. Like you wake up and you have a problem to solve. You're like not where you want to be. You want to be. Um, you want to build something or do something better.

Keaton:

I love it. So talk to us about, give us five minutes on your plan for the future. Uh, you said you're going to go heavy into outbound. You feel like you're kind of at the point where your product has enough to try to go heavy into scaling or what's the, what's the impetus for trying to go from 15 to 30?

Yewan:

Starting out, I thought that I would scale up my business and then I'd feel good. Now I can actually say that I have built my business and I still want to build it bigger. So, um, I think that like, it's more of a challenge for me and I just want to have. Like a really, I want to be able to more so than anything, I want to be able to hire great people. I want to have a bigger team. Um, I want to give jobs to people that are really cool and. There's been people that I haven't been able to hire because we weren't big enough yet. And that's been like hard. And I think that like, for me, it's just like the challenge of building something that's really awesome is, is what I'm striving towards. Um, and my plan to do it is productize. So make it really easy, have SOPs for onboarding, SOPs for everything. Um, we already have it all built out. Um, and templatized. So really the thing is for me is just increasing sales throughput right now. That's my biggest focus. I've spent the past six months building everything. Um, everything up to the point where we're going to be able to jack up the amount of clients that we're bringing on. Uh, per month,

Keaton:

but it's not what's for outbound. Are you planning on doing calls or emails or

Yewan:

I'm going to do email. I think cold email outbound. Um, and then, uh, although I do like cold calling, I do, I do love me a good cold call. Um, no, I'm going to do email and then yeah, uh, ads and content. Um, I really like content because it's just this asset that keeps like, it's kind of, I mean, you have to nurture it obviously, but like people go back. I have people watch my videos from old videos and they'll come through and talk to me again. Um, yeah, content helps with every other piece of your business. Like, well, it helps with every other selling method that you're going to do, because it's a way to practice your pitch. People want to be part of something, um, that's like new cutting edge. I mean, if you're posting content about the stuff that like, if you're posting content, that's valuable and showing that you're like learning other people watching that content, it's going to be like, Oh, this is like, like, it's just like, yeah, it builds an ecosystem around the product that you're selling. Um, but yeah, I think being aware that I don't really know that much and I want to keep learning and that. The, um, yeah, the scale part or the scale piece, it'll be interesting to see. I think like I want to scale in a way that doesn't diminish the product. Um, so there's, we've been, because we're smaller, we've been doing pretty customized stuff. So templatizing harder and going for scale is going to be interesting to see how it works. Um, I think we've done everything that we can in our power to make our product really good. And like, All of our clients right now are on this templatized thing. Um, so they're all on the template. It's performing. And that means that like, I have confidence to go and put more people on it and drive that, um, drive sales for that.

Keaton:

Excited to, uh, have you back on when you're at 30 and then a hundred and then 11 million a year, like dine line.

Yewan:

There we go. Dine line. I'm coming for you guys, Chase and Jason Brett. No, those guys are great. I love that. They put out content and the stuff. And I just love, I love the, I respect the people that have put the time in to build a really great business. And then. Taking the time to share what they're doing with other people. Um, there's so many great examples of it. And so, um, yeah, if you can do that, if I can do that, that'll be something that I'm really proud of for a long time. So yeah, I'll be happy to come back on when I hit a bigger revenue numbers and I'm helping more people have a bigger team and feel maybe like I learned a little bit more, um, don't know a little bit less, but yeah. No, thank you. It's been a, it's been a real pleasure.

Keaton:

Yeah. Um, if anyone wants to reach out to you and I will, uh, put his Instagram below, is that probably the best way to reach out?

Yewan:

Damn me. Damn me. Um, if you're interested in joining our team, I don't know whether we have positions right now, but, um, yeah, if you want to just talk, I'm always keen to talk marketing and learn from other people. If you're doing something really cool, show me it. Um, I'll hop on a call sometime.

Keaton:

Beautiful. Thanks. We'll see you next time.