417 - Building MRR Through SEO Growth Plans (Sam Sarsten's Live Presentation from Web Designer Pro CON 2025)

In our 2025 in-person Web Designer Pro Conference, Sam Sarsten (the Local SEO King inside Pro) presented for us live, sharing his top lessons learned in building his MRR primarily through SEO Growth Plans.

In this special edition podcast, I’m giving you access to the full replay + Q&A sessions (which has been reserved for Pro members to this point.)

I hope this helps you seriously consider, or at the very least, think about what growth plan type service you can offer to help build your monthly recurring revenue.

And if it’s SEO, be sure to check out the SEO Surge Summit that Sam is hosting later this month in Feb 2026!

I’ll be a speaker along with many other Web Design and SEO Pros.

Head to the show notes to get all links and resources we mentioned, along with a full transcription of this episode at joshhall.co/417

Transcript

Welcome And Why This Talk Matters

Josh Hall 0:02

Welcome to the Web Design Business Podcast with your host, Josh Hall, helping you build a web design business that gives you freedom and a lifestyle you love. Hello, friend. All right, we got a fun and extra special episode here of the podcast. Been talking about doing this for a long time, and I felt like now is a great time to share with you one of the live presentations that we had at our in-person Web Designer Pro conference last year in 2025. This presentation that you're gonna hear or watch if you're watching on YouTube is from Sam Starsden, who is the kind of he's become the local SEO king in Web Designer Pro. Right now he's our current featured success story. And in this live presentation, he shared with us how he has built up his monthly recurring revenue specifically through SEO growth plans. So if either one of those is of interest, building your monthly recurring revenue and SEO and or growth plans, this is one not to miss because Sam is really transparent in this one and exactly what he's done to build his monthly recurring revenue in this presentation. And if you're watching this at the time that it comes out, it's perfect timing because Sam is actually hosting the first ever SEO Surge Summit. So again, if you're watching or listening to this at the time of its published date, you can get your free ticket to the SEO Surge Summit. I am a speaker along with some amazing SEO and web design professionals. So grab your ticket for that. As I mentioned, we'll have some more links in the show notes for this one, which can be found at joshhall.co slash 417. Sam is the founder of Local SEO Academy, which is the kind of like little brother community to Web Designer Pro for those who want to go deeper into SEO. And speaking of Web Designer Pro Con, our next event is coming up in April 2026. And if you are a Web Designer Pro member, if you're watching the video, you're looking at it here, you have got to jump on your ticket ASAP because we have 50 tickets and we've already got 36 folks and spots taken. So there's only 14 spots left at the time of recording this, maybe even less when I actually publish this episode. So if you're a Web Designer Pro member, make sure you jump on your Web Designer ProCon 2026 ticket. And without further ado, enjoy this live training from our last in-person event from Sam Sarsden on how to build your monthly recurring revenue through STO growth plan.

Sam Sarsten 2:27

Thanks, Josh. Round of applause for Josh getting us all over the country out to here. All right, what a beautiful day. It reminds me of Oregon out there. All right. So let's get started by being a little vulnerable. So I want you to be honest with me, if you're willing to. Who's scared to charge more money? I mean, I'm scared to charge more money, right? Now here's the real vulnerable one. And you don't have to raise your hand if you don't want it for this one. But who's scared to charge more money because you don't think you deserve it?

unknown 3:03

This guy.

Fear Of Pricing And Deserving More

The George Case Study: First SEO Win

Sam Sarsten 3:04

I've felt that feeling before. Yeah, me too, Mark. Where's Jay? I gotta tell him this is my yes moment. I hear you and I see you. And this email newsletter is for you. Just Kane's presentation. Today I want to tell you how we can get a little unscared together. All right, and I want to start by telling y'all a story. Because I like to tell stories. And by the way, A, I made this presentation a week ago and I didn't have a chance to touch it. So I'm gonna bounce around to different slides. And so I apologize if you are uh prone to seizures, then you should look away because I will be moving around a lot. Um, but just listen to me and maybe look at the cat because he's kind of funny. So I want to take you back to November of 2023. I'm standing outside of George's shop in Bend, Oregon. He's a custom cabinet maker. He's been doing it for over 20 years. He's really great at what he does. He just moved from California and he had a shop when I started working on his website about three months ago that was pretty full. But these were all California jobs. And in November, when I was getting ready to pitch SEO to George, I didn't know what was behind the door. But what was happening over here outside of the door was I was trying to hype myself up because I had started doing web design in 2023 and I'd already started to learn about this feast or famine cycle. I had a couple projects, things were great, then I didn't have a couple projects, and so I was panicking. Then I got another project, and that was great, and I didn't get another project, I had to dip into my savings, and I said, okay, I think I need to do what I see people that are crushing it doing. Because at the start of 2023, I made probably the best decision I could in business, and I did what everybody else in this room did, and I joined Web Designer Pro. But one of the very first things I did is I started to scope out who's crushing it. And I found that people that had a growth plan on top of their web design services seemed to be the ones that were really crushing it. I said, What growth plan do I want to do? And I ended up picking local SEO. We'll maybe talk a little bit more about that later. And so George was gonna be my first client. I knew it. I told myself that. And so there I am, sitting in front of the door, getting ready to pitch it. And I told myself, all right, Sam, you're gonna go in there and you're not walking out for anything less than $500 per month and a three-month commitment.

unknown 5:37

Yeah.

From $800 To $999 And 12-Months

Mindset Shift: Web Designer To Growth Partner

What A Growth Service Looks Like

The Math Of MRR And Capacity

The Delta Framework: Creating Urgency

Sam Sarsten 5:37

Yeah. And I walked in there and I didn't know what George's shop actually looked like at that point. You see, there was only one tiny project left. His pipeline had dried up. Like a lot of small business owners, he was teetering on the edge of maybe not being able to make it to the next quarter. And so when it came time to say $500 for three months, I said, I'll do your SEO for $800 if you commit for three months. And lowering that money, lowering my status, did that help him say yes? Of course not. He said, Let me think about it. And so I walked out of that place thinking I was stupid. I compromised my confidence that I built up, and the guy still didn't say yes. But somehow, by the grace of the universe and whatever you believe in, maybe, that Friday, a contact form submission came through for custom shelving. The one keyword I did get him to rank for out the gates. And that project was only worth around a couple grand. It was enough for George to say, all right, here's the 800 bucks. Let's see what happens. Well, I tell you, something really cool happened to George's business over the next year and a half of working with us on SEO. Because not only did that shop slowly but surely fill back up, he was able to hire some help, and then a full-time assistant, and then four full-time helpers. He had to expand to a different shop space, and now he's got over 26 jobs in contract right now, and he's crushing it. And almost all of those leads come straight from Google through the work that we've done with the SEO. The little almost child that was scared to walk through the door and say, Will you please give me $500 per month? Let's help George make $250,000 in a quarter at one point. So it's not that I didn't have value, but I didn't believe it because I was scared. So again, how are we gonna get unscared together? Well, let me tell you a little bit later, all right? So in June of 2024, I've started to build up some confidence. And I said, okay, I gotta switch this up a little bit. You see, at first I was too scared to try to get people to commit, but I learned that wasn't working out well, especially for SEO. I had people leaving at the third month, the second month, and the first month. I don't know about you guys, but anyone stabbed SEO, they've only been around for one month, there's not a whole lot you can do. So I said, All right, there needs to be a commitment. And actually, I wish Michelle was here. I hope she watches this replay. She copy boosted my local SEO service page in our community where I'm at. And I launched that page on a Monday, and on Tuesday, somebody texted me and they said, Hey, your calendar is full. And you said to just text, so I'm texting you. And that was actually Michelle's suggestion. She said, if you're just gonna put your number and you want them to text you, just tell them to text you. Well, anyway, long story short, this person hops on a Zoom, we start talking, and at that point, I had become a little unscared. So I said, it's gonna be $999 with a 12-month commitment. And oh boy. I didn't think they were gonna say yes. I thought they were gonna be like, no, we have to work with an established agency or no, that that's too much. They said yes. They said yes. And I tell you what, every person I say that to does not say yes, of course, because that's how sales goes. But over a dozen clients have said yes to that over the last year. And now my little agency with a small team that's not just me anymore, has over $15,000 a monthly recurring revenue. And yes, let's go indeed. And this isn't just a humble brag fest or a not so humble brag fest up here, okay? This is to tell you like you can do this too. All right. In 2020, like in 2021, I didn't know what SEO stood for. Okay. In 2023, I joined Pro, right? I was introduced to the podcast in late 2022. I joined Pro in 2023. Gross revenue was 21,000. 2024, because I said I'm gonna commit to a gross service, got to 129,000 gross revenue, have four team members now. And as of April 30th, the gross revenue is $90,000 so far this year, all right? Plenty of people, like I said, $15,000 a month of recurring revenue, well on track to over $250,000 like you alluded to. I'd like to hit $400. We'll see what happens. So let's get unscared together. But if we're gonna do that, we got to start working right here. We have to change our mindset. Eric Dingler, who a lot of us know, uh, recently said something where he says, People don't need a website. And I don't know about y'all, but when I started to show up to networking events, I would say the same pitch that a lot of us probably do, where I would say, I build websites for small businesses. And what I started to notice is that people would say, Cool, so does Squarespace. Now the thing that I noticed was the second question would be, hey, do you know how to rank higher on Google? And that's what kind of got me intrigued in SEO. But the thing is, is I I've seen the websites that a lot of you have built, and they're fantastic. You guys make amazing websites. I like to think I make amazing websites too, but that maybe isn't enough for everybody. So it's not that you're not a web designer. If I could edit this slide, what it would say is you're not just a web designer. You can also be a growth partner. Now, there's a lot of like people out there that are trying to push these buzzwords. People are gonna know what a growth partner is. So don't think you have to call yourself that. Don't print business cards that say you're a growth partner. Just know in your head, you should be focusing on these things. Time to use a laser pointer, Josh. How do we get more leads, increase revenue, and move your clients toward their business goals? If you can create the momentum to get them closer to their business goals, then that's gonna unlock a new tax bracket for you. All right, this is where I'm gonna bounce around. The way that you can do that is not by completely changing your business. You're still gonna need to make these amazing, beautiful, responsive websites because the website is the hub of your digital marketing, right? Everything flows into the website. Josh talks about that a lot. So you still have to make badass websites. But I think if you can just add a growth service on top of that, that's where you can really see the growth. That's where you can start charging more money. So if you don't know what a growth service is, maybe you're newer to Pro or you haven't heard all these things before, there's a couple things that you should be looking for. One is you want to have something that creates forward momentum, right? Something that helps them get closer to their goals. You want the results to be somewhat trackable. I don't set up Google Analytics conversion tags on my clients' websites. But what I do is I show them that the keywords are trending up. I show them that the impressions are trending up, I show them the comparison of contact forms from before and after. And that can be enough. If they can feel the results, sometimes that's all you need. A lot of people don't like looking at monthly reports. The key to a growth plan is how do we get a consistent monthly deliverable? And there's a lot of ways to do this. And I'm not telling you that the way that I do it is the way you have to do it. All right. If you love copy, then maybe you should be doing email marketing, right? Jay just gave us a masterclass on email marketing. Maybe you think, hey, I think I can help my clients get better open rates, be more engaged with their audience, and start to take up more pocket share. Well, that could be your growth service that you offer on top of websites. You know, maybe you're really good at making social media content. I know Andy is. And so, you know, maybe that's the growth service that you have. You can do paid ads, you could do social ads, you can um there's you know, you could um do national SEO, you could do local SEO like I do, right? There's so many things that you can do, but this is a way to help your clients reach their ultimate goals. And I think this might be the most important slide. I was talking to Josh about his very first course, the maintenance plan course from 2018, right? And I remember actually one of the very first things I did from in Josh's sales funnel was like how to become or how to make your first 100,000 web design or something like that. You know, that lead gen uh tool you have, and it's like 100,000 ain't what it used to be, right? Uh I don't know about you guys, but Bend is very expensive. And so uh I'm gonna use the number of $10,000 a month recurring revenue because I think $120,000 is is okay. It's still maybe not enough. But if you're charging $100 per month for your maintenance plans, which I'm gonna take a while, I guess, and say some of you might be too scared to even charge $100 for that because I know I am for my lowest tier. You need a hundred clients to get to $10,000 a month of recurring revenue. That's a lot of clients. It's a lot of clients. And also, that means you have to build 100 websites before you have those 100 clients. It can take a long time to get to that. And so the magic thing that a lot of people try to tell you on YouTube and stuff is that, oh, look, if you can just charge $1,000 per month, then you'll only ever need 10 clients in your business and you'll be super rich. But that's not really true. Because there's some lies here, and I'm gonna try to dispel some of those rumors. The first thing is that you're not gonna charge a thousand dollars out of the gate, just like I didn't with George, right? And so you're gonna have a couple clients that aren't making you $1,000 per month. And so that means it really is gonna be more like $15 when you get to $10,000 of monthly recurring revenue. But the other thing a lot of people don't talk about is your own capacity as a human, you're not gonna be able to support that many clients. So that means you're gonna need a little bit of help. Now, me, I'm trying to build a team. I want to have a business that I can maybe take a little bit of a step back from. Maybe that's not your vision, but you are probably going to need help at some point. And so that means you got to pay that person, which means it's not really 15, maybe it's more like 20. But still, if you can find this kind of sweet spot, this Goldilocks zone, this just right, it's a heck of a lot less than 100. Maybe it's just a few dozen. And that makes it more reasonable, right? If you can get one client per month for the next two years with a little bit of churn, does that seem like something you could do? Does that seem reasonable? I see some nodding going on. Yeah, you could do that. And sure, you're not gonna charge a thousand dollars per month for the first client, but you can get to that, you can build up to that. Let's figure out how to do that. One of the biggest takeaways I want you to have today is the delta. Do I have any math nerds in the room? Math nerds. Come on, not a single person. Okay. Delta is a triangle, it's a Greek symbol, and it usually means change or difference. Anyone know what I'm talking about right now? Am I completely lost? Okay, I see some nods. Okay. You guys know what I'm talking about. All right, so me and ChatGPT got together and we named this thing the Delta Framework because we got to figure out what the difference is between where small business owners are and where they wanna be. Okay? Where they're at right now and where they wanna be. There's a big difference between that point. If we can figure that out and we can talk to them about that difference, and if we can show them that maybe we can't solve all their problems, right? We can't do their laundry, we can't drive their kids to soccer, we can't, you know, make tariffs go away. But maybe we can get them a couple more leads per month through Google. Maybe we can help them write emails so they get open more and engage with their audience better. Maybe we can create social media content that actually gets engagement. If we can do that, and that will make that price tag be a lot more digestible. So these are the nine questions that I actually use. But before we get into that, before we get into that, I want to talk about two homework assignments for you today, okay? The first homework assignment is I'm gonna call it your elevator pitch. Okay, because we a lot of us go to networking events or online networking events, and you want to be able to have an elevator pitch. And so uh Carolyn, can you ask me what do you what do you do?

unknown 18:39

You're asking me.

Sam Sarsten 18:40

Ask me what do you do? Yeah.

unknown 18:42

What do you do?

Sam Sarsten 18:43

I build websites for small businesses.

unknown 18:45

Oh.

Speaker 1 18:46

Uh yeah, but you can do that on Squarespace.

Sam Sarsten 18:49

Exactly, right?

Speaker 1 18:51

Yeah.

Sam Sarsten 18:52

So that's what I used to say, right? And a lot of people, that's that's usually a version of what they say. But I think there's a better way to do it. So ask me again, please, Carolyn, uh, what I do.

unknown 19:05

What do you do?

Speaker 1 19:06

Um what is it that you do? What do you do?

Crafting A Better Elevator Pitch

Running The Sales Conversation

Presenting The Offer Without Hype

Choosing And Proving Your Growth Service

Community Offer And Resources

Homework: Pitch And Questions To Practice

Q&A: Plan Structure And Tools

Sam Sarsten 19:09

Yeah, so you know how like some small businesses will sometimes have trouble showing up higher on Google? So we help them show up higher on Google. And then usually after that. Almost nobody says that. Yeah. Um a good follow-up question after that. They might say, you know, how does that work? Or uh what you know, why would that matter? Or they'll say, Oh, you do SEO, and they have that kind of tone. And then I get to say, yes, but here's how we do it differently. And it always opens up a different conversation. And then, of course, because I'm a huge Dale Carnegie fan, I immediately flip the script and try to say, and what do you do? Because I want to hear more about them. I want to get them talking, right? Notice that that little subtle change there was talking about what we actually do for our clients. If you can do that, then you're again not just a web designer, you're also a growth partner. You're showing these new people that you're meeting at these networking events how you could potentially help them or more importantly, maybe their friends, because there's this giant network behind them. So I encourage you, as you're back on your flight or your drive home, to think, what do I do for my clients and how can I refine my pitch? And also notice that as I said that, I stuttered, I said um, I looked up like I was thinking, but that was totally memorized. The less robotic it sounds, the more organic it will be. So practice, practice, practice. Same thing with this, but we gotta dig into it, okay? Now, when you actually get on a sales call with people, there's some things you want to do before you jump into the actual sales questions. I think it's massively important, and maybe Jason's gonna tell us how he uh can, you know, get over 2 million or whatever it's at. It's probably like $100 million now with this systematized. It seems like it's always up by another digit every time I see the next pro training. But uh, I'm gonna dig way deeper in different ways to do this for just systematized websites. But uh, this is how I do it with a growth plan. The big thing is you want to start with um one, I really want to know what their current state is, and I also want to build rapport. You know, hopefully we've already talked a little bit before this, but sometimes I don't get that chance. And so I want to talk to them a little bit. And that's not talking about the weather, that's not talking about sports teams. This is so important, okay. This is like this is mindset stuff right here, but this is massively important. I want you to think inside your head right now, and if you agree with me, you just nod a little bit. When you build websites for people, do you help them? Seeing a lot of nodding. Good. The people that aren't nodding, you just got kicked out of pro. But you help people, right? You freaking help people with these websites that you build. And so I believe, and maybe I'm wrong, but I believe you have a duty to help as many people as possible. Unfortunately, that means we have to sell to people, and a lot of people don't like selling. But if you stop thinking about it as selling, this is something I had to do. Maybe you don't have to do this. Maybe you're a salesperson in your past life, and it's okay. But as somebody that doesn't have a sales background, I had to stop thinking about it as selling, thinking about how can I help more people with their businesses. Okay. And so you have this duty to help people, and we're gonna try to do that. And now I'm I can guess because I know most of you, that almost none of us do cold outreach or cold emails. Okay, maybe a couple people dabble a little bit, but for the most part, I would say that's nobody's like main strategy. Maybe I'm wrong. Follow up with me later if I'm wrong and call me out. Fight in the parking lot. No, I'm just kidding. Um, but almost nobody does cold outreach in this group. And so that means that everybody is coming to you for some reason. Okay, I'm not saying everybody's a great fit, but everybody came to you because you know, Jen at this grocery store said, Oh, yeah, Carolyn makes you know websites. You know, this person filled out your contact form. This person saw your post on Instagram. Like, these people are coming to you. Do not be scared of these people. They want your help. They might not be a good fit, we're gonna figure that out. But when you start the call, you can go straight into like, so what's got you looking at websites today? You know, what's got you thinking about SEO? Why are you looking into email marketing? And you can start the conversation right off the bat and get right into the business. Now, eventually, once it feels like there's some trust being built and the sales pressure is starting to dissipate because you're showing up as this trusted resource, you want to start asking about the Delta. All right, and instead of digging into these questions, I'm just gonna try to go through like a loose little script here because I'm running out of time and I want to leave a lot of time for questions, okay? And so uh let's pretend like there's a company out there called Columbus Electric. The guy's name's Mike, and we're talking to him today about SEO, okay? So, you know, I'm gonna ask him the question that I often do, and I'm gonna say, so don't say the person's name by the way, they know that's a sales tactic. So tell me, like, where's your business at these days? Well, uh, you know, last year was pretty good. We did about 250,000, uh, which I'm pretty excited about. Oh yeah, that's really good. And so um, yeah, yeah, that that's great. Yeah, I'm pretty stoked about that. And you know, we've we've done pretty good this quarter. We're probably on track for like 300,000 this year. Okay, 300,000, that's good. Um, so like, you know, by the end of this year, like where would you like to be? Like, you know, you're here right now, where would you really like to be? Um, you know, if we get to that 300,000, that would be good. Now here's the thing: a lot of people aren't gonna tell you the truth here. They're gonna give you like a realistic answer. But I want to know where they really want to be. Okay, so 300,000 sounds nice, but like, is that all you want to get to? Like, where would you really like to get Columbus Electric to? Like, is it always just gonna be you doing the installations and all that stuff? Uh well, yeah, you're right. I I would really like to add a team member, and you know, ultimately what I'd really like is to have a truck of guys. And so, yeah, I've you know, I've run the numbers before, and that would be more like 750, but it's gonna take a couple years to get to that. But I think we can get there. And how long's that gonna take? Uh I mean, I'd like it to take less time, you know, maybe a couple years. Okay. So what are you doing to get there? Uh well, you know, I show up to the chamber, that's where we met, right? Um, I've been getting a lot of referrals. Oh, that's good. That means you're doing good work, right? Yeah, yeah. Um, but I I, you know, I started posting on Facebook and you know, all that stuff, but I'm not gonna dance on TikTok. So, you know, we we these are like real conversations, by the way. Um so you know, we hired this SEO company last year, and you know, we paid them a ton of money, and it feels like we maybe got a couple contact form submissions, but it really didn't help that much. Well, um, so like what's got you looking for this now? Or what's even a better question to ask uh before you really start getting into a different topic is to get people to almost fantasize about that desired state. Like, oh, what's that really gonna be like? Okay. So at this point, they've given me a position to talk. I could either talk smack about this company, but I don't think that's a good thing. That feels like a sales tactic, right? So I'm gonna try to bring them back around. I would say something like, um, well, that you know, that that kind of stinks that it sounds like you didn't really get your money's worth, but like, tell me more about this desired state, because it sounds like you don't have any team members right now, right? And be like, yeah. So, like, what would that do for you if you could have team members? Oh, well, it'd be great because I could take a big step back from my business. That's a big thing that a lot of people say, right? Um be like, oh, so you're doing all the work right now? Yeah. So what has that been doing for you personally? Like, you know, how many hours are you having to put in? Well, you know, you're a business owner too, so you probably get it. But you know, I'll be doing like 50 hours a week, and it's you know, it really stinks because last year I was the coach of my little league, uh my my son's little league team, and I I had to take a step back from that this year, and and that's been really rough. Ah, really rough, yeah, that can be hard. So, um, you know, what happens if we don't do anything about uh getting closer to that goal of building a team? Well, I guess I'm just gonna have to keep putting in the hard hours and keep grinding and hustling, right? That's what we do as business owners. Well, what's that gonna do for you personally? Notice that little pause there. Well, I guess it means I'm not gonna be able to be the Little League coach next year, uh, but that's okay. You know, I can I can keep grinding and hustling. But then this is an important question. This is a way that you can add urgency is how long are things gonna be like that? Or how long can things stay like that is actually the way I wanted to word that. And a lot of times people will give you a time frame, right? They'll say, well, you know, I could do it for another season, or I can do it for three months, or I could do it for a couple years, but a lot of times there's a time frame to it. And this is the point where you can really start to challenge them. You've built trust, you're being seen more as an ally than a salesperson at this point, and you can say, like, it sounds like it's time to make a change. And they'll say, Whoops, they'll say, Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's kind of why I was reaching out to you. And then the real question now is so what's going to be different this time? Like, how are you going to move towards that goal? And what I'd love for this person to say, and sometimes they say, and sometimes they need some help, but I want them to say, Well, what I've learned is that I can get more leads from Google. And so if I can just show up a little bit higher, I think I can get those leads. And if I could get those leads, then that means that I can hire the next person. If I can hire the next person, I can take a step back. If I can take a step back, I can coach the little league team. That's right. Victoria gets it. Sometimes it's not that easy, right? Sometimes you gotta push and prod a little bit and suggest the path and things like that. But if you can get them to see that just like that, then I don't have to give them a sales pitch. I'll just ask. Hey, I think what we do can help you guys out. Do you mind if I share with you how we can help? And most of the time they say yes, because actually in a sales call, we're primed to say no. And so every time you give somebody a chance to say yes, they're more likely to say that. Interesting, right? And then I, this is your chance to sell. You get about five to ten minutes, and what I usually say is here's the three things that I think are most important for local SEO. Here's the three phases that we do to support that. And a big thing for me is I don't make a big promise at the end. I usually tell them, like, hey, I actually can't promise I can get you to rank number one because I don't work for Google and I don't know how the algorithm works, but we follow best practices and we've seen results like XYZ with company ABC. And I think we could do something similar with your company. So I can't promise you're gonna rank number one, but I do promise we're gonna work our asses off for you. And if that's the kind of business you want to work with, then we'd love to work with you. And then usually they'll say, Okay, well, how much is it? That's when you got to be unscared. And you say, Whatever it is, expensive. Steve Schram's got it. And then we'll see what happens. Again, not everyone's gonna say yes. I have people that we get to the end of the call and they're like, whoa, that's way too much, right? And that's okay. You know, maybe I could have better systems to weed those people out, right? But again, over a dozen clients have been brought on with this system, including a new client last week that's gonna be $15,000 for a year for SEO and websites. So I know this works, it keeps working, it can work for you. And it doesn't have to just be local SEO. You can do this with whatever your growth service is. But how do you actually practically do it? I'm trying to remember what all my slides are here. Oh, look at all this stuff. I'm just exploring. The big thing here is well, yeah. The big thing here is there's three parts. The first thing is you need to go on a soul searching journey and you gotta figure out what gross service can you offer. Okay, because I don't think we should all become digital marketing agencies. You're gonna get burnout, you gotta focus Jen. Um you gotta, sorry, I was talking to her last night. Um, right and though. Yeah, no. Um, but I think if we try to do too many things, it's really hard to be good at one thing, right? And so, what do they call it? The jack of all trades and the master of none, right? And so find the thing that really lights you up. You might not like local SEO, so I'm not gonna try to pitch local SEO to y'all. But, well, I am in a second, but wait for that. Um but only for the people that want it. For the people that have other gross services out there, then you know, do those things, okay? But pick your service, and then what you're gonna do is you're gonna use the laser pointer like Josh told you to, and you have to test and prove. For those of you that don't follow Alex Hermozzi, he's got this whole sales thing, and he tells you that when you first start out, you suck. I don't think you suck. That's what those are his words, not mine, okay, by the way, just so you know. But the thing is, like you're inexperienced when it comes to this growth service. And so it would be good to find one of your A clients that you have, offer it for free. Use them as a case study, use them as a testimonial, and move forward immediately and try to start charging. I would encourage you to charge 50% of what you'd like to charge, okay, for that next client. Keep striving. Maybe it's one of your current clients, you're just adding on this service, right? You have this pool of people that you can immediately market to. And then when you get to that third client, maybe it's 75%, right? You're building up that confidence, you're getting more case studies, you're showing that you can do this. You're and also, by the way, your real first client should be you. And then finally, it's time to say the big number, okay? Say the big number and say it proudly because you showed up to Columbus and now you're a little less scared. Now, I don't remember if I'm allowed to pitch or not, but I'm gonna do it anyway. So if you think local SEO can be the growth service, then don't worry about all the words that AI put in here. All I want you to know is that if you go to local SEOacademy.co slash WDP con and you put in the code WDB con w whatever the hell that says, I'm gonna do a massive discount I've never done before because I want more people in the community tier. You're gonna get 90% off your first month. Okay, it's less than $10. All right, you probably spent more than that on coffee this morning. Maybe not, Columbus is cheaper than Ben. But anyway, um, you're gonna get a massive discount because I want you to see what's in there. What you're gonna see is you're gonna see what's important for local SEO, how to deliver it to clients. You're gonna see the actual SOPs that got me to my first hundred thousand, and you're gonna we're gonna continue to keep adding resources for selling just like this. And also, there's a pretty awesome community, and we have weekly QA calls at 11 a.m. PDT. And so if that time's free, you should definitely sign up. And if you don't like it after the first month, just cancel, okay? I just want you to try it out. All right, and if you're already in local SEO Academy, because I see some of my friends in here right now, and you want that discount for a month, reach out to me in circle and I'll figure out how to do it on the back end. All right, but here's your homework, everybody, okay? Figure out what your growth service is gonna be. And then I want you to work on that pitch. How do you actually help clients move closer to their desired state? And then go back to the replay, because there will be a replay available. That's why there's a mic on me right now, and start working on these nine questions. Practice them with your partner, practice them with your kids on the way to school, practice them with your dog like Shannon does with her presentations. Um but practice these questions because I'm telling you these are great. And also, I'm sure you're gonna get more information from Jason later. And like just like get good at selling and don't think about it as selling if that if you need that, like I needed that. Think about helping these people. Think about how you're gonna help more small businesses reach their big goals. That's what we're doing. Remember, you're not just a web designer, you're a growth partner. All right, stop being scurred, get unscurred, and let's do this. What questions do we have? So Shannon's gonna be talking about anchoring and all that stuff later. And so I'm excited to hear about that. I have tiers in kind of a different way. So I'm a fan of having less options because I think there's a lot of like choice fatigue out in the world. And so I always tell people we have one plan, it's the SEO TLC plan, it's $9.99 per month for 12 months, that's it. Um, but I have like an upsell, which would be also with a website, but I only pitch that if they need it. And if they need it, then I will sell it like that. If they aren't quite ready for that, but they do need a website refresh, I might have them go to that. But I've tried GBP management only, I've tried other things, and it's just I don't I don't do it. I'm probably leaving money on the table, but that's just where I'm at. Well, my second question. This is it, yeah. Um so last June I got my first contracted SEO client. So I was pretty stoked about that, right? And uh I also and the next month, it was like July 9th or something like that, I had my podcast interview with Josh. But around that same time, I was looking at my numbers from June, and I actually took a loss in June of 2024 because I'd spent in Q2, like Q1 was gonna be like Q2, and it didn't happen like that, and so that was bad. And so I remember, I don't know if I told Josh this story, but I went into that interview in the deepest state of imposter syndrome because Josh was going, you know, was basically selling this podcast episode of like, look at how much MRR this guy's built, he's crushing it, pro success story, but I'm losing money. I know the feeling a little boy right there, and I didn't really like I didn't have like I didn't have the courage. I was scared. I was scurred, I didn't have the courage to tell Josh that before the call, so I just like went forward and it's like fake it, tell you, make it, here we go. Um hold on. Yeah.

Speaker 1 37:48

But yeah.

Q&A: Reporting And Expectation Setting

Q&A: Team, Roles, And Scaling

Sam Sarsten 37:51

But listen to this. So during the podcast, at one point, because I'm in this like, I'm in this like scarcity mindset, I'm I'm in, I'm in fear right now. I'm telling Josh, my coach, like, oh well, I've been, I've just been sitting down thinking about all the things I need to do next for my business. I need to get team members more dialed in, I need to set up systems, I need to do all this stuff. And at one point in the podcast, you know, we're in a podcast interview, and it becomes a coaching session like they always do, right? And he says, instead of thinking about what you need to do, what if you took a step back and thought about what you've already done? And I was like, hmm, that's some good crap. Yeah. Go back to the episode. Um, so like a couple days later, I got a notebook, I got analog with it, and there's this little hill next to my house with like a 500-foot incline, and I walked up to the top of the notebook and I just started writing all the stuff I did. And when I ran out of thoughts, I walked down and I walked back up and I started writing some more. And when I got done with that, I had this like little, you know, it was only like five to 10 pages, but it was like all the stuff I'd accomplished in a year and a half since I said, I'm gonna start my business. And it was full of crap. It was full of like really awesome stuff. And that got me over that hump. And the crazy part is in the first half of 2024, we made like 40,000-ish. And in the second half, we made 80,000-ish. So it's like, like, if not for that call, I don't know what would have happened. And also, like another crazy thing that happened, I don't want to get too intimate here, but like my parents had a their house had a house fire last year in August, like right after that. And I was able to basically pack up, leave, and assist them by staying in the hotel that they were staying in for a month because I have a location-independent business. Um, and I was able to basically support them for that month until they were able to get into the rental home and they've been rebuilding their home ever since. And I thought that was gonna be the worst month ever, but I was sharing with Eleanor the story last night where it's like during that month, one of my team members said, Hey, what if we started a Slack? And that was like the beginning of, oh, I have these subcontractors to I have a team of subcontractors and we work together. So, anyway, the whole point to get back to your thing is like when it comes to mindset, it's like I think like the biggest lesson I think I've learned in life is that I need to ask for help. And that's the whole reason why I joined pros. I saw this guy that seemed like he was genuine and was going to be helpful, and that's why I got in. And I ended up getting surrounded by hundreds of people, literally today, dozens of people that are helpful. Like so many of you have helped me along the way. Um, and it's just like whenever it feels like you're having some kind of mindset thing, like please have a WDP bestie that you can reach out to, get on a Zoom, and work through it because it's so helpful. So, yeah, that's what I can say about mindset. Okay, I'll answer the first question first. So uh typically, like the phase, and you can learn about this local SEO Academy, um, is uh first month is always the SEO strategy sprint. That's what I like to call it. And so you're basically we're building the strategy. The deliverable at the end of the first month is the SEO game plan. Here's what we're gonna do. Along the way, we optimize the GBP, we do a technical audit, blah, blah, blah. You can see that stuff later. The next phase is the building. That's usually months like two to four-ish. That's where we're doing service pages, re-optimizing, maybe building them out if they don't exist, building location pages, all that good stuff. After that, the most important thing for local SEO that nobody wants to talk about is building authority. You can't do that overnight. If you build these links quickly, it's gonna look scammy. So you have to space it out. And so, really, months five through 12, it's a lot of authority building. Along the way, you might find new locations to target, new keywords to target. You can build those pages. There might also be opportunities to maybe way down the road build like linkable assets through things like calculators and stuff like that. But like the vast majority of work on a week-to-week basis beyond the initial phases is gonna be building links, which are mostly local citations, um, and also like GBP management, which has to do with like updates and things like that. Um, the second question what do you mean by tool stack? No, I'll sell the farm. Um, well, uh SEMrush is my SEO tool of choice. So I pay I give them way too much money per month. Um I still use 17 hats for my contracts and uh proposals. Uh I uh I use Termageddon for my privacy policies, of course. Yes. Um and uh let's see, the the real questions. Uh I uh we have a very simple client portal that we use in Notion just to have like a centralized place. I don't think that's the best system. I would not encourage that. Uh I'm still looking for the best one. I'm currently uh I do my project management in Notion as well. We're currently exploring ClickUp with the help of somebody that may or may not be in this room. I don't know if they want to be identified, but anyway. Um but uh Pro is good for so many good uh great things. And so I'm looking at maybe ClickUp um and or maybe another tool, but actually switching over to true project management system. Well, well, it's kind of a combination of both. A lot of times we'll do like a backlink gap on the competitors, and then we'll do like bright local just because it's more efficient. Um yeah, but I like to break it up into two waves. Um, so we'll do like one wave. And the big thing too, and I've talked about this a lot, actually, there's a resource in the back. If you look behind you, there's a QR code that's got my face on it, so you can't miss it. I stole some space on the site ground table because they're not here and they couldn't they couldn't defend their space. Uh, but back there, that's my 30-day local SEO playbook. Somewhere in the back, I actually talk all about backlinks in days like 24-ish. Um, and so it's over a hundred pages, and there's also a video attached to it that's an over an hour and a half long. So if you haven't checked that out yet and you want to learn more about SEO, I encourage you to check that out. So hopefully this helps you sell some SEO. But if you want to learn how to do it, check out the playbook. Yeah. A lot of times what I try to I what I've learned is that setting expectations is really important. And so being able to do that, and that's probably something that I could have mentioned in the sales call, but somewhere along the way, I try to tell them, and this is usually what I'll say. So I'll say it's a 12 month commitment, and they'll be like, I don't know if I want to commit to 12 months. I'm like, well, I'm gonna tell you why. It's because this takes time. And my goal is to start getting results to trickle in around months three, four, and five. So that way you want to stick around for months 13, 14, and 15. All right. That's the thing I have kind of stuck in my head. And so in those first couple months, my goal is to show them positive regression. Right? I want them to see that, I want to see that their keyword ranking is bad, their heat maps are red, and things like that. Well, maybe they're not so bad. I tell them whatever the whatever the truth is, right? Here's your baseline, here's where you're at. And then what I want to show them at the end of month one when we present the game plan is, you know, maybe we've been able to make some small wins that month. Sometimes, not always. And then in month two, we're like, oh look, this keyword ranking went up, right? And then maybe it's in month three, we're like, oh look, now the impressions are starting to go up overall for the whole site. Oh look, now this is starting to happen. Oh look, the first contact form submission came in. Did you get that? Just making sure you got that contact form submission. Was that a good lead? And really following up in those early days. And one thing that I haven't been the best at is, you know, and anybody that's scaled will probably know this is like when you go from having five clients that you know really well to having, you know, over 15 clients, it can quickly become overwhelming to follow up with everybody. And so uh one thing that we're trying to get better at right now is just checking in with everybody every month. And this is actually Michelle's strategy, but sending a loom where you just check in, show the numbers, and kind of interpret it because people don't like to look at reports. People don't I I pay so much money to HCA Analytics every month so that way we have it, but nobody freaking looks at it because they don't know how to interpret it. They're not experts, right? And so having my project manager go through and say, here's what you know this number means and here's what this number means. We've only done this for a month so far. Um, this is something I used to do, but we're already getting immediate feedback that that's really helpful. And so it's really to answer your question more succinctly, it's just trying to show that positive regression the first couple months so that way they have the trust that it's gonna keep going in that direction. Judah? Yeah, so everybody's a subcontractor. And so uh I kind of look at my business like I have two arms of it. That's the way I try to look at it. And so on the website side, we have Marika, who is web project manager slash designer. Uh so I met her in Bend's, but she currently lives in Vermont, and with the magic of technology, we're able to work like she lives in the same place. Um, she's paid on like a project um for the design work, she's paid like project-wise, kind of like you would see in Josh's Scale Your Way course. Uh for her project manager work, she gets paid hourly. So we have like two separate contracts for that. Um and then we have a developer, Rihana, who's based in Bangladesh, and she gets paid project basis. She's also my video editor, so she gets paid monthly for that. Um, over on the SEO side, I have an SEO project manager. His name's Gabe. I found him in Bend. Uh, and he currently lives in Washington. Um, and so he's hourly, and we have just slowly scaled his hourly rate and his hours up as we got more clients. And then eventually we need a technician. Our technician's name is Sajib, he also lives in Bangladesh. Uh, and again, same thing, working hourly, slowly scaling his hours and uh his wage up. And so that's kind of what the team looks like right now.

unknown 46:55

Yeah.

Q&A: Educating Clients And Fit

Sam Sarsten 46:57

Yeah, let's go. Yeah. So Victoria's question is about um like how much education do we have to do with clients? I think it depends, right? Some, I would say the majority of our clients now, and I'm trying to like be very cognizant of where I'm at now and where I was 18 months ago, right? So where we're at now, most people have worked with an SEO company before. So they know what to expect, they probably had a bad experience, they know that it works, and they just want to work with somebody they can trust now that's gonna give them better customer service. And so those people I can talk a little more shorthand to. But I also remember that with most of the clients in the early days, there were more startups, they were just getting started, things like that, or they're less established. And so trying to explain to these people um, you know, here's kind of how backlinks work, you know, authority is really important. That's what's gonna, that's how Google determines who to rank higher, and that's something you have to build over time. If you do it too fast, it's not natural. Google won't respect that. Um there is a piece of education. Sometimes I talk about that on the sales call, sometimes it's little things that we'll like sprinkle in. Like sometimes we'll talk about stuff on the kickoff call. Sometimes we'll we do a checkup halfway through the first month, and where we might explain things like, hey, we noticed that your pages aren't optimized. Hey, we noticed that you have a bunch of broken links on your site from the last web designer. We're gonna fix these things for you. This is why it's important. And you know, in the game plan, we're gonna say, this is what we're gonna do next, here's why. Um, and so that's that's kind of the education pieces in those first couple weeks, first couple months, and then always just kind of leaving the door open. But I mean, really at the end of the day, like most clients aren't like, why did you build a backlink at topolow.com or whatever it is, right? Because they don't care, they're too busy, you know, doing electrical jobs or plumbing or HVAC or you know, they're you know poking people with the little acupuncture needles, right? They're they're so wrapped up in that, they just want you to get them more clients, customers, patience. And so they're just like, I don't know how your voodoo works, but just keep it working, right? So it depends. Um don't have kids and don't have a partner.

Speaker 1 49:18

Um just kidding.

Sam Sarsten 49:30

Also, like don't sleep well, don't take care of yourself. No, I'm just kidding. Uh no, I've I think one thing that I've learned kind of from the last chapter of my life is that I really have to take care of Sam. If I'm not taking care of Sam, then I really can't do anything else. And so, you know, I'm really strict on uh a couple things in my life. Um, and so I'm always trying to make sure I'm putting my own oxygen mask on first. And so, you know, whether it's doing the things I need to do throughout the week, you know, having social interactions, going skiing most Thursday mornings just to get the frick away from everything, like I make sure that I do those things and that helps kind of clear my mind. Um, specifically the implement things. Um, yeah, it's I'm a big fan of time blocking. And so sometimes I'll just say for the next two hours in the midst of all the other chaos and fires and stuff, it's like I'm going to focus on this. Um, but yeah, really, it's been hard lately. Like that's the next chapter is probably bringing on somebody for ops that can help out, probably not full time, just a little bit here and there. Um, and that would allow it so I can get back into that role of maybe looking into how can I maybe we can do more or how can we do things better, which is something we need to work on. It's what we're actively working on this quarter. So uh, and I'm glad that I'm already getting some help from that. So I don't know if they want to be identified, but they're here, trust me. Um, yeah, we got time for one more question. Yeah, no, that's a good question. It's a real question. Um, it it does happen. Uh so I think it depends. One thing that is if you're gonna get into local SEO, this is something I should probably talk about in a lesson, local SEO Academy at some point. It's like you should be good at weeding in clients because not everybody's a good fit for local SEO. You know, I learned early on, my second client I charged $500 per month, I finally did it, um, with a florist. But florists only make $100 a sale on average. And so it's like they got to stack up a lot of flowers to get their return on investment. Now, she also did wedding floral things, and those are like start at three grand. So it's like one extra job per month, pays for it, and then some, right? So it's like finding people that are a good fit can be helpful. Again, like that, they really only have like one service, but they also need to rank higher. So that's a tough one, right? So, what happens if they're not getting results? So, there's two reasons for that, I think. One is the you accidentally took on the wrong client, like, or you don't know enough about SEO, which is something you can learn about more in local SEO Academy, is I want to take on somebody that I think is a possible that we can rank, right? Maybe it's too competitive in their space. Or and also you don't want to set the wrong wrong expectations. That's why I hate LinkedIn. You go on there and people be like, in 90 days, I'm gonna get you $100,000 for your garden business, uh, or we're just gonna work with you for free until and then like that's the stupidest business model I've ever heard in my life. Maybe they're crushing it, I don't know. But um, like if I go on there and I see the authority score of the top businesses are in the 20s and they got a brand new site that's got an authority score too, I try to be more realistic. Like, hey, we might not even get you on the first page in the next year, okay? We might not get you in the first page at all, but maybe we can focus on the Google business profile, right? And maybe that's not good enough for them. They don't work with us. Great. I'd rather not disappoint that person and not take their money than work with them and give them crappy service. Um, the other option, which is very possible, because I've noticed this, is I've had, you know, kind of growing pain seasons of my business where I'm maybe not giving people the love that they need. Um and I see a couple of people shaking their heads. Thank you for shaking your head so I don't feel so alone with that statement. Um, and it's like I just didn't give them the love that they needed. And so we're hitting months four, five, and six, and maybe they're still stuck on like pages three, maybe the bottom of page two, and they're like, I'm not really seeing the growth that I expected. And I can look back and see places where we could have done better. And for those clients, I'm trying to be intentional and considerate about how I approach those situations and just try to be honest with them and say, hey, we probably could have done better, and here's what we're gonna do moving forward. And so, like, you know, sometimes you just gotta take it one thing at a time. Um, but a lot of times it's because you overpromise and underdelivered, which is like the, or yeah, yeah, that which is like the worst thing you can do, right? You want to do the flip of that. Um, or you didn't do what you you could have done more. Um, and in that place, I think it's best to just own up to it and try to do better moving forward.

Josh Hall 53:53

So there we go, my friends. I hope you enjoyed this one. We'll have all the links mentioned over at the show notes for this episode, which are going to be found at joshall.co slash 417. I meant to mention this in the intro, but as you heard there, we did have a live interactive QA session, but um I forgot to hire like have a mic on the crowd, so none of the questions came to on the recording. But you did hear Stan's answers there. I hope all of that was helpful for you as you build up your recurring revenue through SEO and growth plans along with your web design services. Again, links for the SEO Summit that I'll be a part of at Stan's hosting will be on the show notes or go to jockhal.co slash serge if you're catching this before February 24th when it kicks off to get your free ticket. We'll have links to Stan's at local SEO Academy and some of the other stuff we've mentioned as well. So jockhall.co slash 417 is where to go after this one. Big thanks to Sam and big thanks to you for listening. And uh uh final reminder: WebAZigner Pro members, not even sure how many tickets are going to be available at the time of this release, so make sure you jump into WebAZ Pro and get your ticket as fast as possible if you want to join our next event in 2026. All right, my friends, cheers, have a great one.