Almost every struggling agency is handcuffed by five lethal myths that, if unchanged, guarantee their downfall.
And guess what? These industry giants (Udemy, WordPress, WeWork, Google, and Facebook) have been whispering these myths in your ear, secretly profiting from your blind spots.
We’ll expose these profit-draining habits, help you recognise if you’re doing them, explain why they’re killing your business and I’ll reveal a groundbreaking, easy-to-follow blueprint that could transform your agency overnight.
And the first habit probably has the biggest impact on your business and when you notice it, it’ll be harder to ignore than a mosquito with a flamethrower.
If you’re a marketing agency, what do you tell people you “do”?
A few weeks back I was on a group call explaining how I charge $1000 an hour for my consultation services and one of the men on the call, called “bullshit”.
So I asked him 2 questions:
- Why do you think that’s bullshit?
- What would prove it’s not bullshit?
And he explained that unless I could show my call records and invoices he wouldn’t believe me.
So, with literally nothing to hide, I logged into my call consulting platform and opened up “recent calls” where it showed calls of various lengths from 55 minutes to over an hour, the hourly rate, and the pro-rata invoice that I sent them.
Far from being satisfied, he was pretty mad.
“I cannot understand this!” he said on the call.
He explained how he was older than me, had more experience, and had worked on some massive projects but his clients baulked at his current prices.
So I asked him “What do you do?”
“Well” he said “I’m a marketing strategist consultant, I help businesses, primarily small service based businesses develop their marketing strategy to attract new leads and audience. We build websites, e-commerce stores, marketing platforms and we can do social media. I’m an award winning…”
He went on for a while talking like that.
You can’t mine for gold when you’re busy climbing mountains.
“Eric” I asked him “what do I do?”
And he said a few things as well as coach, consultant, etc. But, someone else on the call said “Mike helps agencies add $10,000 to their MRR”.
You see the trap that Eric fell into was building himself up rather than selling a specific and measurable problem that the customer had.
You can’t mine for gold when you’re busy climbing mountains.
Did you catch the mistake I mentioned? I said it word for word.
While Eric was over here, “adding value” by telling us all the elements of his working life, he failed to identify one massive problem that his customers had.
And to compensate for that, he said “We build websites”
HTML and Java builds websites.
WordPress and HighLevel builds websites.
YOU help e-commerce businesses launch new products to generate 5 figures in a weekend.
YOU help full time Mum’s launch a six figure side hustle.
YOU help course creators start a YouTube channel to get sponsorships.
But how can you possibly charge $1000 an hour?
Well…
The fastest and easiest mistake to fix, is mistake #2.
When I learned this, it was like I had been shown how to run a REAL business.
Not a hobby that made some money, or basically a self-employed job.
But a real business that made money even when I didn’t work.
Mistake #2 is the most common, damaging myth that almost all marketing agencies believe in.
I’ll give you a hint: it’s related to what Eric in my example above had a problem with.
Eric had spent years building up his expertise. He won awards, had years of experience, and was constantly investing in self-education, courses, and coaching.
There’s a misconception that the more skills you acquire, the more you can charge and the more customers you’ll attract.
And this is perpetuated by a very specific industry that wants you to believe that you’re worth more if you invest more.
Hopefully, you’re not one of the agencies who makes this mistake, but I see hundreds of people in my own list who are perpetual “learners”.
Imagine reading 10 books on swimming and never once getting into a pool.
Education can’t replace experience.
Courses, coaching, programmes – they all have their place, and yes, much of the time they can help expand your understanding of a topic.
However, a course is absolutely useless without one key ingredient.
And I say this as someone who sells courses.
The single most disheartening and demotivating habit that I see is when someone buys a course and refuses to implement.
But the problem is that we buy courses to improve our knowledge and we hope that will allow us to charge more.
But it doesn’t. In fact it’s doing the exact opposite.
And this leads to the 3rd profit killing habit that agencies seem to keep doing.
I’ll share with you where we get these bad habits, how to massively increase your prices and the single biggest habit that kills more businesses than any algorithm change or Google update.
You can’t increase your prices until you’ve worked with larger clients.
But you can’t work with larger clients until you can charge higher prices.
So how do we break this cycle?
And what I’m going to tell you is going to sound like putting the cart before the horse.
Earlier, I mentioned the two biggest profit killing habits that agencies have.
- Telling people you build websites
- Buying endless courses
Because this places the focus of value in entirely the wrong place.
If you are in this circle, building up your knowledge and expertise.
And your customer is the other circle, with all their problems.
The myth is that we need to find something in our circle that’s worth $1000 or $10,000 or whatever we want to charge.
And you’re looking in entirely the wrong place.
Let’s say we have a business who could be a customer who runs at $1M a year
And they have a $25,000 product that they sell.
What happens when one of those clients decides they’re not staying with the customer?
That’s $25,000 a year up in smoke.
Or what if our current lead generation process means that only 9/10 interested leads can even become a customer because they tried signing up once and the website didn’t work.
You’re missing out on $25,000 worth of revenue.
That – is a $25,000 problem.
Instead of building up your “perceived value” inside your circle, you need to identify $25,000 problems in your client’s circle.
If there’s one thing that has allowed me to charge such high prices, it’s not because I’ve got special accreditation or won awards.
It’s because I charge people $25,000 to fix a $250,000 problem.
You are undercharging for your services.
You’re basing your price on what you think the value is, not what the customer sees value in.
So where are we picking up these bad habits?
It’s fairly common knowledge that increasing your network is generally a good thing for your business.
More connections, more inroads to potential work.
But what if this was doing more harm to your business than good?
There’s a phenomenon called an “echo chamber” especially online, where you never hear outside opinions because you’re around people who believe the same thing.
I remember going to an industry event held by a large website company and my ideas about charging higher prices, selling more and – shock horror – making more money, were seen as a big gross.
In fact, I’ve even been banned from talking at some of these events because I have the wild and fanciful notion that agencies should be entitled to making more money.
I know – I’m obviously sick in the head.
And what was so perverse to me was just how many people told me the same things over and over:
Building websites with page builders isn’t real web design.
You need to build your portfolio before you can work with bigger clients.
You should be happy with the leads you get, not picky.
You can’t charge that much! I don’t even charge that much!
And on and on. You might even recognise a few of these thoughts.
And it was really upsetting to me because I thought this network was supposed to lift each other up. Support each other. Help.
Now admittedly I haven’t been to one of these events in a long time, so things may have changed.
But it did make me realise that perhaps “networking” wasn’t the single route to finding financial success.
And before we get onto the fifth and final profit killing habit, I would even go so far as to say that some people treat networking like they do courses.
Constant consumption, lots of ideas, very little implementation.
And since then, I can count on one hand the number of networking events I’ve been to and even fewer that have had a significant impact on my business.
You might love networking and I have some events that I adore (R3 and TrailBlazer).
But you are absolutely under zero obligation to attend any and all networking events in order to grow your business.
There are so many other activities that are more powerful (like the ones I’ve mentioned above).
Which brings us onto our final profit killing habit.
And this one’s a big one.
In front of you are two thumbnails.
Which one do you think got more views on YouTube?
The answer may just shock you!
I thought that thumbnail 1 was a better thumbnail.
But thumbnail 2 has had more views.
And this profit killing habit kills more businesses than any other.
But just before I dive into this, I want to explain that there is a hidden sixth profit-crushing habit that I haven’t explained yet. But I will do it at the end of this blog.
And that one has been with you since you started the business.
But back to habit #5 –
Let’s say you have a new project, and all the theory and lessons and courses and networking have told you that this thing should work…
Why is it so disappointing when it doesn’t?
For example, let’s say you follow all the “best practice” on landing page design.
The page loads fast.
It’s clean. Mobile responsive. Well designed.
All your training and education have shown you that this page should work.
But when you launch it…
Crickets.
And yet someone like me comes along, with zero design knowledge or expertise – I’ve never taken a web design course, and I’m able to charge 10x more for one page and my page gets way higher conversions.
How f###ing annoying is that?
That is the final profit killing and business killing mistake.
You care more about what goes into the project.
I care more about what comes out.
I have zero emotional attachment to my business.
I have zero attachments to the content, headlines, images, thumbnails, and page design.
If it works, it works.
I will gladly spend years getting things wrong and being seen as a failure – until I stumble across a process that works.
We get attached to our work because we define our value and place in society through it.
It’s not your fault, it’s a common failing in human culture to judge people based on their achievements.
While the insights you’ve just gained are game-changing, you’re probably wondering how to actually implement some of them in your business.
Believe it or not, there is a revolutionary single principle, untouched by 99% of agencies, which ensures unparalleled success.
The best part?
It’s foolproof, incredibly straightforward, and simple to understand.
Dive deeper with me in this video here and unlock the elite 1% agency blueprint that’s been kept under wraps… until now.
Don’t miss out on becoming the agency everyone wishes they were – click here and see how Erin transformed her business overnight.
