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Everybody has a Jesse Gilmore agency transformation coach and founder of Niche and Control, author of the Agency Owners Guide to Freedom and the creator of leverage for growth. I’m the host of the leverage for growth podcast, and I know that in order for you to scale your agency successfully, there are multiple shifts that need to happen within your mindset, skill set, and leadership style.
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I am on a mission to interview marketing and PR agency owners on their journey to six, seven and eight figures and leverage the lessons from their journey to save you time, energy, and money to get your agency to the next level. If you find value in these episodes, watch the case study video to learn more about leverage for growth and how we successfully scale agencies at niche and control e-commerce assets that is niche in control.
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Decomp case study.
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US.
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Awesome, man. Good to. Good to be here. Thanks for having me.
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Yeah. So I started Gidley. You know, really out of necessity. I was doing an MBA program. Was running out of money faster than I thought I would be. And, the goal of the MBA was to buy a business, or I was really, like, really into the ETA. Using the SBA loan by a blue collar business world.
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And, you know, my second semester of the MBA program, I was like, run out of money. I needed. You need to get out, get some cash flow in order to be able to search for business after I graduate. And avoid getting a job. And, yeah, it had. I had a background selling to the market.
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Home service owners. I had started a little software company with some partners. You know, five, six years earlier. And, so I knew the market. I knew that people needed good SEO, and I just got after it.
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Yep. I did.
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You know, I, I like I’ll make a little plug here for MBAs. Right? Like, I, I know a lot of people think that they’re, not necessary anymore or maybe not worth the time off. But for me, like, I went and got an MBA with a really, really narrow focus, which, again, was to buy a business. I went to BYU, which is as far as, like MBA goes, extremely affordable.
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And I came to find out through the program that when I started Gidley, there was a ton of resources at the university that helped me be successful. Right. Like I was getting credit for working on my business. There’s grant money. I actually didn’t get any grant money. Which is a whole nother story. I probably got a little bit of that, but didn’t get any grant money.
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But, you know, they gave me office space. I was able to connect with people. Like, it just it was it was phenomenal. Right? Like being able to play that student card. And so for me, I came out of the MBA with no debt. You know, no, no school that I think I had a little loan I took out to live off of, that I paid back right when you graduated and, yeah, it just it was it was it was easy for me to build the business during the program because that’s all I cared about.
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Like, I wasn’t looking for a job. My classmates, you know, they were out there networking with companies that they might want to go work for. And, you know, employees at those companies. And, like, that’s not I didn’t spend my time doing that. Like, I went to probably half the classes my classmates went to because I was getting credit for my business, and I was networking with business owners that were doing what I wanted to do, and selling.
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So it was it was a phenomenal time. And in hindsight, like, my wife would never have let me quit my job to start a business. It’s just that the risk profile doesn’t match up there. And frankly, I probably would’ve had a hard time doing that too. Like. Yeah, I know myself. The MBA, it was a really good kind of bridge where it’s like I’m not expected to make money during the program.
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I didn’t burn the bridges leaving my company that I. That I was working at beforehand. So, like, that was always in my back pocket. Like, I could go back there like it was a really, really effective two years because I had such a narrow focus.
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I.
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Yeah.
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So officially, you know, I say I launched it in February of 2023. So it’s been a little over two years. I dabbled a little bit in it this summer prior to my MBA program starting. You know, I had a former partner that was I was doing something similar and was like, hey, you should you should do this.
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Like, you’d be good at it. I’m like, oh, I’ll give it a shot. And, you know, I closed three customers and was like, man, this is hard and it’s not what I want to do. So I just kind of kind of let things ride with them and, you know, laid off, laid off Michael collar and kind of shut things down, not expecting to get back into it.
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But then when the time came where I’m like, well, again, I need a little bit of money. I’d had that, you know, 3 or 4 week experience where I’d built some of the framework to, you know, go out and actually build that agency. So I say I launched it officially in February, but I did have, you know, a little of 3 to 4 week stint, six months earlier.
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Yeah. I mean, so on top of the NBA, I actually had had a job. There’s a there’s a story. A story around why that happened and a deal. I was looking at that I needed a hillock for, and, But but I was I was also working. Right. So, like, the constraint on my time was felt like just so high.
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Right? We had two little girls under three at the time, you know, like, I wanted to be able to spend time with my wife. It was just it was a crazy time looking like in the moment it didn’t feel crazy. But looking back, I’m like, oh man, that was that was pretty wild. But because of that, I’m like, I was just forced into the systems, right?
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I’m like, I can’t go cold call. I just don’t have the time to cold call. And I was like, frankly, I was looking at it because I started out by saying, like, I just need a way to make some money to be able to go do what I really want to do, which is go search for a business and buy a business.
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I’m like, I just needed to cover our cost of living. And we were, at the time living on like 5 to 6 grand a month. So I’m like, okay, all I have to do is like, clear that. And and so I wasn’t super stressed about, you know, going out and getting $10,000 in the first two months in revenue because, like, I had a I had that job that was give me some money.
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I wasn’t expected to be making any money because I’m in the MBA program. And so, like, I went out and I hired a call caller and I was like, all right, let’s see what he brings in. If it’s not a time like, I won’t be that busy, and if it’s a lot, then I’ll be a little busier, right?
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Like it just it didn’t matter a ton because I didn’t need the money right away. But it was a long tail, like, I’m like, I need this money so I can, like, not have to have a job when I graduate. And so that was a bit of a luxury, right? Like being on the lookout for 12 months and say, well, I just need to be making $5,000 a month, 12 months from now.
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And until then, I’m fine. Right? If I go into debt like that’s not a huge deal because like, I can always just like up my cost of living a little bit and pay back the debt. And, and. Yeah, so because I was so time constrained, like I hired a cold caller and they just made calls and passed me warm leads, and I would follow up with the warm leads.
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I closed a few deals that way. I still had the three. Actually, I think I only had two of the three that I had closed the previous summer. So when we started in February, I think we closed February out right around like $1,000 in March. And then by March, we were at 4000. So I closed a few more deals in March.
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And at that point, I’m like, oh, this is going pretty well. So what can I do? Like, I’m I’m becoming a bottleneck here. I’m going to go hire some salespeople. And so I hired a couple of US based sales guys for a minimum wage, plus commission. And, neither of them really panned out. It’s a long story, but one of them is still with me today, and he’s been phenomenal.
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Right. So he did pan out, but he wasn’t good early on. And we had he actually left for a little bit. And and then you know school ended. So, so by the time like from March to the end of April, like I was just out of things because I’m like, I’ve got my SDR calling, I’ve got these sales guys.
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They’re supposed to be closing deals. They didn’t close any. But, but then when April like school got out at the end of April and I had a little bit more time on my hands, I had an office from the university, and that’s when I just, like, got into to closing deals. And I was able to go back through all of the leads that we’d had from February through April that that were in the pipeline of my sales guys.
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I like I didn’t have to it was nice because I was busy because we had like a couple hundred leads. Right. That had had some contact. I wasn’t just relying on, like, 2 to 3 leads a day for my cold caller. I was getting that, but I was on top of like, this backlog of leads. So just got after that.
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And then I mean, to to rewind a little bit more and talk a little bit more about just sales. But again, because of the time constraints, like I hired someone right off the bat to do the delivery work on the SEO side. He’s based in the Philippines. He’s still with us today. He actually runs, like, our entire SEO operation now.
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We’ve got I think he’s got, like, 12 direct reports. And it’s just grown with the company. Right. Which is kind of the vision I sold him on. And so. So it was just out of necessity. Like, I just couldn’t ever get involved in lot of stuff. I was like, well, I need to go sell. You can handle the SEO.
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And and I usually would, I had a freelancer early on that we did web development with. She was really good. I had to go through a few to find someone that was good. And, and now we have all in-house developers. But. Yeah, just the time constraints forced me into, It forced me into these, these delegation systems early on, and and they weren’t great.
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Like, there was a lot of stuff that broke over the ensuing months. As we grew and I’m like, well, yeah, Google Sheets probably isn’t the best way to track, tasks, you know? I mean, like, probably not, but but you got to start somewhere. Like, I just, I feel like, you know, my, my, my mindset is like, don’t over complicate things.
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Like, the most important thing in any business is sales. Like, you got to have revenue. If you’re out there building automations and like leveraging these, you know, task management platforms and all this crazy stuff, like you’re going and building that out and you have no sales, you just wasting time. So I’m like, do the hard stuff first. Go get revenue and you can figure out the back end.
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It might have cost me a couple customers early on because like maybe we missed the ball and like that happens. You know that’s a bummer. But you know the flip side would have been I spent all my time getting the systems dialed, and I just never go get customers. And then we’d be in a completely different boat today.
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Yeah. So, Yeah, we got through that first summer and. And check the box, right? Like I was. I was happy because I would. We’d hit 10,000 in revenue. That was, like, kind of the mark I was trying to hit. We had enough where I could say, like, yeah, we’re going to make the money we need to to cash flow.
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Our lifestyle. And because it like, it sounds silly, you know, and, you know, I’ve talked to my, my team about this. Like, I feel a little embarrassed by it sometimes, but. But because the end goal was to go buy businesses, it wasn’t to run an SEO agency. Like, at that point, I was like, okay, like I did it.
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I’m done. And it just, you know, sometimes luck comes your way and you know that that sales guy I hired originally, one of the two came back and was like, hey, I’m ready to actually give this a shot. And I’m like, well, yeah, dude, go for it. You know what I mean? Like, I don’t need to sell anymore because I cleared the bar that I was trying to hit.
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And so that was, you know, that was like June, June of 2023. And it just took off with him, right? Like, he just it’s something clicked and he was able to figure out how to sell. And we still had all the systems for leads coming in. Like, I was never going to shut it off. Because I figured, like, well, worst case, four months from now, I can just go call back for months of, like, backlog of leads.
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And, and so I wasn’t super focused on it through the rest of the that my MBA program, like the whole second year, I tried a few things, right. Like I tried to hire a bigger sales team and I wasn’t good at that. Like, I just I made some assumptions that were wrong. Right. And so that was like, huge suck on my time.
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I hired a customer success manager, which was incredible because that took me out of the day to day. And like, now I had an I had a system that just worked. I would close the deal, they’d get onboarded, they’d get the delivery done. They had someone contact for support, like we were delivering a really good service. And, and I just I didn’t have to be super involved.
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I was paying for it. Right. So, like, my cash flow was going down. But again, I didn’t need that cash flow. At that time. But then, you know, like, I, I graduation comes around in April of 2024. And at that point we were doing like $40,000 a month in revenue. And I’m like, oh man, I actually have like kind of a business here.
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You know what I mean? Like, this is kind of legit and I just feel like I accidentally stumbled into it. It probably took me another 3 to 4 months to really, like, accept that and, like, let go of the dream of, like, going and buying a business because I’m like, ultimately, what am I trying to do here?
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It’s like, I want to own a business so that I have time, freedom, and I control my outcomes and I can, like, live the life I want to live right? Time freedom doesn’t mean I don’t work right. Like sometimes I work a ton. In other times I work a little bit less. But like, I control my outcomes and I have a direct path to say, hey, if I want to double my income this year, I know how to go do it.
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It might require a ton of work, but I can go pull it off, right? Because I have this platform to grow with. And that was that was kind of the whole vision. And owning a business is like, live the life I want to live. And, I had a business under contract that summer, and a couple people close to me just said, like, man, you’re trading a business that, you know, that works with no debt for a business you don’t know that’s going to have a ton of debt.
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And I’m like, oh, that’s a that’s a good point. I wasn’t going to make much more than I was making right in, in goodley. And so I kind of just accepted it and was like, yeah, this is this is a good business. And, for the past will say 8 or 9 months now, I’ve just been gung ho on, like, this is what I’m doing, and this is the business I’m building, and I’ve continued to build a better team and invest more into the team.
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Like, we’ve invested a ton into our team and our processes and our systems and, and like I said, like we do, you know, it’s funny, dude. It’s sometimes I do this podcast and actually I have a customer, you know, that was, you know, you get bad customers, right? And this customer reached out and was like, hey, I heard you on a podcast.
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Like, I never want to work with you again. You just outsource everything. I’m like, okay, whatever, dude like that, that’s fine. Like in reality, we don’t outsource anything, right? We build teams globally, but their internal teams and like we deliver a great service just because, like I have time freedom doesn’t mean we deliver bad service. It means it means that I’ve.
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I’ve paid right for for the team to go do this. It’s a trade off. Like I could go spend 15 hours a week in my business. This is what people don’t realize. Sometimes it’s like I could go spend 15 hours in my business and let’s say I make 200 grand doing that right. Or I could make 110 and hire somebody for 90 grand.
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That’s going to go save me probably 12 hours of work, right? So, you know, it’s just a trade off, right? Like, the owner doesn’t necessarily have to be the one running the day to day of the business. And I think most business owners you talk to will say they don’t want to do that, whether they’re blue collar business owner or, you know, an agency owner or like even, you know, doing anything.
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Right. Like the whole point of being an owner of business is you want to work on the business and you want to have a platform to grow. And spending, you know, 12, 15 hours a day in the business, like talking to customers. It’s just like you can pay somebody to do that and you can focus on on some bigger things.
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So, you know, that’s where I’ve been focus for the last nine months, and, and, and things have been good. We’ve, we’ve, we almost doubled again from April to April. And, you know, things are things are humming along. So I’m hoping to, to build another sales team, and scale that up again, hopefully, like, with some lessons learned, we’ve got two full time, US based salesmen and four full time stars right now.
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And I’m hoping to get that up to, like, maybe six and six in like, 12. In the next few months, our delivery teams up to, like, maybe 17 right now, like its delivery teams doing really, really well and actually trying to promote, you know, that customer success manager I hired to kind of be like the CEO, the business now.
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So I can just focus on growth. And he can he can kind of handle all of our systems and everything. So things have been really good, man. I’m like, it’s I feel really lucky, to have landed where I am sometimes. Again, it feels a little bit by accident, but, you know, there’s a lot of work along the way.
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Yep.
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You know, it’s a good question. Okay. And maybe even before I answer, I want to hit a little bit on what you said about freedom again. Because. Because this has been something that’s been kind of top of my mind, right? Where, I didn’t know what I was searching for was freedom, right? Like, you know, I’m 30 years old.
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And when I was 25 and working, you know, I had, like, a actually a really good job, working in healthcare right down in Dallas. Like, at that point, I thought, all I want is money, right? Like, I want to make as much money as possible. And it’s a little naive. I think it’s normal for people to think that way.
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But I had, like, some mentors who kind of told me like that. You’re you’re stupid. That’s not all that matters. And, but but in reality, like, I go back and I look with hindsight and I’m like, really? All along I was just searching for freedom, like. And I had a lot of freedom in that W-2. I think any time that you, you don’t have to own a business to have time.
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Freedom. Right? Which is really just control over your time. If you do a good job and people can depend on you and know that you’re going to get the work that needs to get done, done. And like this is the most important part is you work for the right person, like you have the right boss. You can have time, freedom, you know what I mean?
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Like, I controlled probably 70% of my calendar when I worked that W-2. And, and as long as I got my work done right. And like, I built a reputation for getting that work done, like, I had time, freedom to say, hey, I want to go take a little time during the day to go to Costco with my family or, you know, play with my daughter, right.
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Who was one at the time? Like, you can have that freedom. And now I look ahead to to where I am today, and it’s really cemented in my mind that that’s all that matters to me. Like the money comes and goes, right and and you can achieve like I feel like I’m like, literally sometimes I feel like I’m the wealthiest person in the world because I’m like, I control 100% of my time.
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I don’t do anything I don’t have to do right, like, or don’t want to do. Like sometimes I do stuff that I’m like, I would rather not do this. Like, I don’t love closing my books every month, but but like but it’s just like, that’s okay. And and my point being like you can achieve time freedom and time wealth far before you amass like a huge number of dollars.
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And I think when people realize that that the younger you are that you can realize that the better. Because, you know, I’m 30 years old, I’ve got now three kids under five, and I’m just like, this is this is the time to have freedom, right? To be able to spend time with them. And I want the same for my team members.
00;25;07;27 – 00;25;28;12
Right. Like everybody at my company, for the most part, has that time freedom. They have to earn it. And there’s a level of trust you have to, to, to get to be able to say, I don’t really care what you’re doing at 2:00 on Thursday, as long as I know the work is getting done. But like, you know, I’ve had to reconcile that in my mind to like, how do I focus all of my energy on building time freedom, but like, lock other people into these tools?
00;25;28;12 – 00;25;55;23
And I do that by like saying, you can have that freedom. There’s nothing preventing you from having that freedom. Barring you are, you know, you aren’t dishonest and you aren’t slacking off and like, not getting your work done. So I just think that’s that’s been, you know, such a focal point in my life for the past year, is learning that, like, that’s really all that matters to me is like that I can go work on what I want to work on and when you can do that, like the money comes, right?
00;25;55;23 – 00;26;19;21
I’m not worried about the money. Because I’m just. I know it will. It will come over time. So, like, what am I most excited over the next couple of years for is just continuing to build like I, I’m driven to just build like I love to build. And you know, I’ve got my sights set on building a digital platform that, you know, we can serve small businesses.
00;26;19;24 – 00;26;43;17
I’m really into education. Like, you know, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve completed a master’s degree, and I’m actually thinking to be able to go to another degree, like I’m really in education, I think there’s a huge area, an opportunity for digital education. I’m teaching this fall at the university. Like, I just, I think there’s, there’s a, there’s a platform to be built there.
00;26;43;19 – 00;27;07;07
And, and, you know, I think that the more that I can build this, like, ecosystem where everything kind of leverages, like all my efforts are leveraged in, like, helping other businesses, whether it’s like building a global staffing company. Right. Because I hire globally and it’s like building a global staffing company and the infrastructure there to be able to go higher and higher.
00;27;07;07 – 00;27;24;18
High quality talent just helps my business a little bit more, right? Or scaling up paid ads, right. Like I could have a separate paid ads company that serves all of my company, all of my customers, I actually, and vice versa. Yeah. We don’t do paid ads now, but I’m like, that’s something that we could do build out.
00;27;24;18 – 00;27;47;00
And I just, I don’t know, I’m just excited. Like, I feel this immense freedom ahead to build what I want to build. And that’s really exciting. So that’s probably what I’m most stoked about over the next few years. And and like doing it with cool people. Like I’ve got a really good team of people and I’m excited to build alongside them.
00;27;50;00 – 00;28;12;03
Like.
00;28;12;06 – 00;28;16;25
What’s this weird?
00;28;16;27 – 00;28;35;09
Yeah. I mean, I’m on LinkedIn and Twitter a lot. I, yeah, that’s probably the best way to reach me. I mean, you can always email me, James at could the outcome. I’m. I’m easy to get Ahold of. I love connecting with people and, like, you know, I think that’s there’s a ton of value in building relationships.
00;28;35;09 – 00;28;52;06
So that’s that’s kind of where I’m, I’m focused right now.
00;28;52;08 – 00;28;54;19
Thank you for having me. It’s great to be on.
00;28;54;19 – 00;29;11;11
Agency owners. If you want to transform your agency to sustain and grow without your direct involvement, where you can stop working in the business and start working on the business, where you can free up your time, delegate work more effectively, price and position your services to finally get paid for what you’re worth and have the team run the day to day.
00;29;11;11 – 00;29;29;19
Go to niche and control dot com slash case study. Now to learn more about leverage for growth and also to book a free strategy session with us, we’ll look at your systems determine exactly what you need to do in order for you to scale this year and to create a strategic plan so that you can live the life of entrepreneurship you’ve always dreamed about.
00;29;29;22 – 00;29;32;27
Go to niche and control dot com slash case study now.
(All transcripts are auto-generated and may not be 100% accurate)
