[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: Welcome to Big Ticket Pros, the podcast for agencies, coaches and high tickets service providers who know what it takes to thrive in competitive markets. I'm your host Josh Thomas. You can find me on all social media at JT literally.
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[email protected] Once again, that's conversational funnels.com Today's guest is Adam McChesney. He is the founder of Builders of Authority and BOA, has personal branding and digital marketing group coaching one on one coaching and a done for you digital marketing agency. Adam, welcome to Big Ticket Pros. What's the best piece of advice you would give to someone just starting out in your industry, failing forward?
[00:01:17] Speaker A: So I think so often people that start agencies or coaches and consultants, they're so worried about getting it right the first time. And I know I was in that same boat when I got started full time back in 2020. I was so afraid to make mistakes that I didn't take probably as quick as action as I should have. And you're always going to fail, so you might as well fail forward and learn from it.
[00:01:41] Speaker B: Yeah. And you know, I, I think that that's the most appropriate statement for you to make, that you walked away, I remember you walked away from a comfortable job to start your own thing. You were successful for that, with that. And then you went another direction for a while and you were successful with that.
And then you had to make another direct pivot after that and you're also successful with that. But there were a lot of failures along the way.
But it's not like this clean, just straight uphill path to success. Right?
[00:02:19] Speaker A: Exactly. And so I think a lot of people look that have been following me for a while. They look and they're like, wow, you've done so much in a very short period of time. And I made a post a couple weeks ago on social media where like four or five people within a couple weeks I went to an event in Orlando and then I was at a different event in Vegas and then I was on a group coaching call and everybody was like, Adam, like, everything that you touch turns the gold. It seems like you can't lose. And I'm like, no, you're only looking at my wins. And I try to do a good job of sharing the losses and the struggles and things like that, but part of it is that I fail so quickly, and I learn from those mistakes, and I don't let what other people would derail them. Like, I get derailed, obviously, but, like, I don't let it end me or end the business, and I pivot, and I make sure that I learn from it and go to that next level.
[00:03:10] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's. It's kind of like, hey, man, you just. Everything you touch told turns to gold. And you're like, hold my beer.
[00:03:19] Speaker A: Yeah. How long you got?
[00:03:22] Speaker B: Let me show you some stuff.
[00:03:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: And so. Well, it's a. It's an interesting. It's an interesting topic. Just because you brought it up. I actually had a podcast that I ran for years called how to Lose Money.
And one of the sections of that podcast, after they. They would tell their story of failure or whatever, we had this section called Failing Forward. And it was like, all right, great. So that sucked. Now what. What did you learn from it? How did you recover from it? And. And so I'm just curious. So for somebody out there that maybe is afraid to take that risk, can you just walk through, like, what is your process when you hit the wall and you fall down and you got to figure out how to pivot and reorient yourself? You know, since it's happened several times, is there a process that you go through for that?
[00:04:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I think every process is a little bit different, but in the regards of moving past it, I think the biggest thing is getting back to the basics.
So usually when I've went into, like, a large failure, it's. I tried to go. And I know talking about failing forward and failing quickly, but usually there's quickly, and then there's way too freaking quick, and you make rash decisions. You partner with the wrong people, you spend money that you probably shouldn't have, you hire the wrong person, you take on the wrong clients, and then you do that over and over and over again. And instead of correcting the mistake the first time, you double down on it. It's kind of one of those things where you're like, all right, I'm gonna, you know, start eating better next week. Well, when you say, okay, well, I'll just. I'm not going to do Monday. I'm going to do Tuesday. And then you keep doubling down on that bad decision. That's kind of the process that's been a recurring theme in my life. So it's taking a step back, but then getting back to the basics.
And usually when I fix those things and get back to the basics, which is kind of where I'm at right now, it's worked out really, really well where we try to not overcomplicate the process.
Everybody says, you know, new levels brings new devils, which it does. What gets you here won't get you there.
[00:05:26] Speaker B: You.
[00:05:26] Speaker A: Yes, but there is a lot of things that are similar.
Right. And so those are usually the key aspects of what we need to do to get through something.
And so often we try to over complicate what that process actually looks like.
[00:05:41] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. And so speaking of back to basics, one of the things that you like to talk about and Something that I 100% agree with is about how to build a proper offer stack.
So let's talk about this because this is something that is fundamental to being successful not only on if you're running ads on Facebook, if you're trying to sell something in 2025, but also in just regular organic conversations. Could you talk about what is your philosophy on the offer stack?
[00:06:17] Speaker A: Yeah, so for years I didn't really have an offer stack. So that was problem number one. It was like buy this thing or I had multiple offers but they were kind of the same thing. It was like this SEO package or this SEO package plus ads or this website or this website or this website.
And so as I really launched Builders of Authority back In November of 2023, I now had a low ticket offer that went with my high ticket stuff.
And so for the first time I was able to cater to people that ended up not signing up with me at the higher ticket and or they signed up with me at the higher ticket and they probably didn't need that and probably shouldn't have done that, but they wanted to work with me. Right. So we all have the clients where they stretch to go work with us and then it's like, okay, this wasn't the right time. This doesn't make sense. I didn't have something to downsell them to.
So now we have the group coaching component, whether it's personal branding or digital marketing or go high level stuff and we have the done for you digital marketing agency and then I have one to one coaching on top of that.
So in most aspects, right, we now have either an up or a down sell on most of the stuff that we're selling pretty typically that I didn't used to have.
So it makes being able to provide the right solution to the right person at the right time that much easier. And when you can do it all internally versus hey, no, you got to go talk to this person and that person and this person at another company, it allows for you to do what you do best. And so we're even seeing now that the people that a year ago bought our downsell are now upgrading themselves in inside of our high ticket. Whereas if we didn't have that down sell, they'd probably be with another company in another space and never came back.
[00:08:05] Speaker B: Yeah, it's, it's one of the hardest things for us to allow is to take basically everything that you know and all of your expertise and all of your knowledge and just squeeze it into like an ebook and charge like 10 bucks for it.
And, and you're like, well, well yeah, but I mean it took me years, I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars learning this. But nobody cares, right? What they care is that you're going to solve their problem. And nine times out of ten, if you can sell that ebook for $10, even if you're giving everything away, most people are not going to act on it. They just want the information.
And it's just a way for them to understand, like have you shift their perspective, see your method. And that makes it easier for them to say, well yeah, actually I would like to just hire you to do it.
[00:08:59] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Implementation is the fee information, whether they get it from me or you or the hundred thousand people that they can get it from on YouTube, that's, that's free, right? They're coming to us for information, turned to implementation and accountability.
[00:09:18] Speaker B: And so what would be for somebody who's just, just kind of exploring the idea of building an offer stack, what would a, like a skeletal offer stack look like? Obviously varies via industry or who you're talking to or what kind of service you offer. But if I was just going to put together like some basic outline of wine, what would you do?
[00:09:39] Speaker A: Yeah, so I think something very, very low ticket. That is a digital product that you have to do nothing with.
That's the foundation. So whether it's that ebook, it's a course that you put together one time, like that's the foundation to be able to build on top of it in that next aspect, it's one to many.
So group coaching is kind of our thing above just the course that we have.
So then it's one to many and then it's done for you of the stuff we teach in one to many and then above and beyond that it's one to one.
So something that you can sell digitally that's on a storefront, people can go and while you're sleeping you get sales. Then stuff where you Whether you have 20 people in your group or now I have a hundred plus people in my group selling one to many. My time doesn't change. My team's time doesn't change. We still show up the same time, same place, whether it's 20 people or 100 people. And then we have the done for you the implementation on the one to many and then we have the one to one stuff for people that have all the way elevated themselves or just gone straight to the top if that's what they need.
[00:10:41] Speaker B: Yeah, great. Yeah. And that's the, that's the best way to look at it. So just there are steps along the way and each step requires a larger commitment from the customer in terms of financial commitment or a mental bandwidth commitment.
But it also is going to get them there a little bit faster. And so it's one one way that I like to talk about the like the organic marketing approach is slower, it's a less upfront cost but it does take more time and more energy. Whereas paid ads is faster but it's a higher upfront cost but it takes less time and less energy.
Same thing here with your offer stack. We want it something that's just like a no brainer impulse offer. Like yeah, I'll give that a shot. I don't know Adam, I don't know Adam from Adam, but I'm going to give it a shot. And then they like it. Like all right, what else does he have? It's kind of the ascension model, if you will.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:11:44] Speaker B: Yeah. Awesome. And so I have a question for you.
A guy who has built three different agencies now successfully.
If you had to go back and like failing forward. Yes. But you didn't build this agency like you built your first or your second.
What is one tweak or shift that you made this time that you learned from your mistakes the previous two times.
[00:12:13] Speaker A: So I'm going to go in two different directions on this because I don't think it can be summarized in one. So there is who is Adam as like the CEO and the entrepreneur and the business owner and then who is the business or what is the business and how has that changed? So for those listening that may not know my story, I grew an agency to a million on my own. Then I became a franchisee of a digital marketing agency and green that to two plus million, became a partner of that agency, exited and started another one and we already hit a million dollar track record already.
Doing it differently this time though, the, the difference in who I am as the CEO, entrepreneur and business owner is a completely different person in those other two instances because I was so reliant on other people from a scarcity and a lack of self belief in myself.
So I was latching on to people that were telling me what I needed and wanted to hear about how good I was or whatever. But I also had all these weaknesses that they were going to fill the void on. And what ends up happening is, is usually those people never end up feeling the void. Nine times out of ten they see you down or hurt or struggling and then they, you know, basically pounce and take advantage of you. Right. So that's how I've basically overcame a lot of that stuff, is I just got the self belief after doing this now time and time again to say why am I making all these bad decisions and partnering with the wrong people and spending money on all these different coaches and things like that that have never actually done what it is that I'm trying to do. Why, why am I doing this? Because it was a lack of self belief and it was the scarcity mindset that I couldn't do it alone.
But how we transformed the business this time around was really focusing on all of the foundational things in business with core values and hiring the right team members and the processes and systems. All of the stuff that I traditionally didn't worry about until it was too late or I relied on other people to do. So my background is in sales. I want to go sell, I want to go brand, I want to go do all this stuff. So actually committing to do the work that I never did, knowing it would pay off time and time again for the future of what we're building is what I've had to take a step back and travel less, go to less events, work more on the business than in the business. It's, it's a weird feeling, but it's also a very freeing feeling knowing where I've made mistakes in the past and how I'm fixing those here in this new venture.
[00:14:51] Speaker B: All right, awesome. And so tell us a little bit more about your new venture and who it's a good fit for and where we can connect with you.
[00:14:57] Speaker A: Yeah. So Builders of Authority is comprised to basically two main things. We have our group coaching one to many. We teach Personal branding. So essentially if you're a marketing agency or you're a coach or a consultant of any kind or even contractors are in our group we teach you how to use your organic social media, your Adam McChesney, your Josh Thomas personal brand to grow your business or businesses. We also teach digital marketing. So light stuff when it comes to your website, your SEO, your Google business profile, paid ads. And then we also teach how to sell more with software and solutions for your agency or coaching stuff.
So that's great if you're looking for any one of those different aspects. And then we have our done for you digital marketing agency where we work primarily with contractors and home service businesses. We do website design, search engine optimization and then paid advertising. The best place to connect with me is going to be on Facebook and you can also go to our our free Facebook group if you just type in builders of authority on Facebook. I post daily content in there. And our website, you can go to my website personally which is Adam McChesney dot com.
[00:16:06] Speaker B: Excellent. Love that. Hey, we're going to wrap up from here. Thanks so much to our guest Adam McChesney for coming on and sharing a little bit of wisdom about what it takes to get things done to build a proper successful marketing agency. For those of you who are interested in learning more, you can connect with him directly on Facebook or go to Adam McChesney.com if you're an agency coach, professional services provider. Otherwise sell expensive stuff. We'd love to have you on a future episode. You can
[email protected] and once again, if you're wanting to learn about the new way, we're booking dozens of qualified calls per week with no ad spend.
Download our free blueprint@conversational funnels.com that's it for now. Hey, go get that big ticket punched.
