Ep 124 – Joe Rojas, Start Grow Manage – Building a Freedom-First Business
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Featuring: Joe Rojas, Start Grow Manage
In episode 124, I sit down with Joe Rojas, founder of Start Grow Manage and author of How Entrepreneurs Thrive. Joe has built and sold multiple MSPs, each time leveraging the power of deep niching to accelerate growth. We talk about the pivotal inflection points in a business’s lifecycle, why niching works across any industry, and how systems and values create businesses that can run—and grow—without the owner. Joe shares his framework for moving from “job” to “business,” the core values that drive his work, and how agencies can increase profitability by solving real business problems for clients. We also discuss the parallels between MSPs and agencies when it comes to client retention, lifetime value, and building a life you actually want to live.
Key Bytes
• Niching accelerates growth because it clarifies your offer and your audience
• The difference between a lifestyle job and a lifestyle business is scale and delegation
• Core values must be discovered, not invented—and hiring should be based on them
• Profitability can start with your existing clients, not just new ones
• Long-term success comes from solving clients’ business problems, not just delivering servicesChapters
00:00 Welcome and guest intro
01:06 Joe’s journey from the Army to building and selling MSPs
03:18 Understanding the “Start, Grow, Manage” stages
05:03 Why Joe wrote How Entrepreneurs Thrive
06:33 The $1M inflection point and profitability mindset
08:16 Helping clients reclaim their time and freedom
12:20 Building core values that drive the business
16:46 Hiring for abundance mindset and cultural fit
21:07 How Joe’s book applies to agencies today
24:07 Why technology changes but strategy doesn’t
26:08 Expanding accounts by solving deeper problems
28:37 Mapping the client journey for better results
30:21 Rapid fire questions and closing thoughts
Joe is the Founder at Start Grow Manage, based in New York, and author of How Entrepreneurs Thrive. He empowers Managed Service Providers and entrepreneurs to overcome the challenges of business formation to create profitable, growing businesses. As a serial entrepreneur himself, he has faced the challenge of making new and growing businesses work. His career started in the military, where he became an expert in information technology, eventually forming his own managed services company. Through that experience, he discovered the formula for businesses and learned that entrepreneurs are good at what they do but struggle to build a business.
Connect with Joe on their website.
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Steve / Agency Outsight (00:01.336)
Welcome to Agency Bites, a podcast dedicated to helping creative entrepreneurs thrive. I'm Steve Guberman from Agency Outsite, where I coach agency owners to build the business of their dreams. This week, my guest is Joe Rojas, the founder of Start, Grow, Manage, based in New York and the author of How Entrepreneurs Thrive. He empowers MSPs, managed service providers, and entrepreneurs to overcome the challenges of business formation to create profitable, growing businesses. Joe, it's great to see you again. Thanks for joining me today.
Joe Rojas (00:30.493)
It's great to see you too. I'm so happy to be here.
Steve / Agency Outsight (00:33.474)
Yeah, me too, man. So we recently met Backstory and I fell in love with your journey, like super deep niching and the level of expertise that you bring and the way that you structured your business to help a single vertical like entirely exceed. And so really want to dig into the value of that, but talk about kind of your journey to getting to where you are now, some of the bumps in the road and like how you got, how you started out in this space.
Joe Rojas (00:59.967)
How far back do you want me to go?
Steve / Agency Outsight (01:02.2)
How long do we have? You know, with the quick story of what's your background.
Joe Rojas (01:06.991)
So I'll give you the quick story. So in 89, I went in the army in 1989. I got all my technical training there. Then I came out, I worked for the Department of Defense for a few years. Then I got pushed by a biomedical engineering company and I did that for a while. Then I went to an IT company out of that. That was one of my lieutenants in the army.
I was still in the Army National Guard. So he ran IT companies. So I went and worked with them for a year. And then I started my own MSP, break-fix MSP kind of back in 1999. And then I sucked at it for a bunch of years. And then I figured it out. And what I figured out is that if you niche, you grow fast.
Steve / Agency Outsight (01:47.118)
Okay.
Joe Rojas (01:56.711)
Right? And so I niche to personal injury lawyers. I grew it. I sold it. I did it again. I grew it. I sold it. I did it again. And I was like, I think I got something here. And so, you know, I grew the third one and I kind of hung out for a while, had some kids. Everything was going great. And then I sold it and I was about to start again and a friend asked me if I could help him grow his. And so I started helping him. And then a friend that runs an accounting firm asked me if I could...
Steve / Agency Outsight (01:56.867)
Mm-hmm.
Joe Rojas (02:23.71)
help her grow and then somebody else and then somebody else. And then next thing I knew I had a bunch of clients and I was a consultant. But I wasn't growing. And a few years into it, I was like, oh, I know what I'm doing wrong. The other three businesses grew really fast because I niched. I'm not niched. So in 2021, we niched to managed service providers and then we went.
And so, haven't looked back since.
Steve / Agency Outsight (02:55.918)
Interesting. Now the format of the way that you operate, start grow, uh, shoot, just drew a blank on it. It's on your shirt. Start grow manage. Um, that wasn't from the door. Like that was something you developed over time. Also, you said, I you said you hit a ceiling and you're like, right in the ceiling. How do we expand this thing? So what was that process like for you? Or that realization, I guess, more than anything.
Joe Rojas (03:04.189)
Man it.
Joe Rojas (03:10.471)
Yeah.
Joe Rojas (03:18.568)
Well, yeah, I think, you you have to really think about when, and the way we've categorized this is like, you know, from zero to 500,000 annual revenue, you are a start, you know? And that's really, you have one set of problems, which is how do I get customers, you know, how do I sell, what do I sell, who do I sell it to? That's really, those are the start problems. And then you kind of,
Steve / Agency Outsight (03:32.462)
Mm-hmm.
Joe Rojas (03:48.435)
figure out who you're selling to and what it is that you're selling. And when you figure that out, then you have some grow problems. Like who should I hire? What processes should I put in? What tools should I use? And then as you get bigger, and now you have 10, 15 people and you're managing everybody, you're like, I can't manage everybody. How do I delegate? How do I? So as you get over like 2 million,
you now have enough people inside of the organization that you shouldn't be managing, it shouldn't be flat. The organization should be flat. So how do you restructure so that you have managers and the managers are managing people and then you're managing the managers. So that's really what the whole idea behind is that there's these inflection points in your growth, right? And they're the inflection points that we saw for ourselves. And then they're the inflection points that we, that
our clients have. So as we saw those inflection points for ourselves, that led to Stark Grumman and that's how we ended up there.
Steve / Agency Outsight (04:54.382)
And at what point in the process of niching skyrocketing building out the systems of stark remandage did you did you write the book.
Joe Rojas (05:03.756)
I actually had written the book before, right? Because the book was really about niching. That's really what the book is about. It's like you want to go fast, you have to niche. So I wrote the book first. We're actually in the process of writing the Star-Grow Managed book now, right? Because the Star-Grow Managed book is really going to be specifically around the MSP space. The How Entrepreneurs Thrive is really the
Steve / Agency Outsight (05:07.159)
Okay.
Joe Rojas (05:28.476)
the story of how do you niche, what do you need to think about and what are the things that you need to do to grow a business over a million dollars? And it applies to any business. So you have a business, you can go. I was in the Army for nine years, so I wrote the book like a field manual. in the Army, we have a saying, right? RTFM, read the freaking manual. And if you read the freaking manual,
Steve / Agency Outsight (05:45.485)
Okay.
Joe Rojas (05:55.327)
you get the solution, right? Like it's like, everything in the army is in the manual. Everything you need to do to get your business to a million dollars is in this book. It's not complicated. You need about 20 to 30 clients to get to a million dollars. So how do you get those clients? What do you need to do? It walks you through the process step by step.
Steve / Agency Outsight (06:18.862)
20 to 30 retainer clients in the MSP space is about a million in top line revenue. Why, so, and a lot of people focus on a million dollars as like a plateau point or an inflection point. Why do you use that as a pivotal point?
Joe Rojas (06:23.132)
Yeah.
Joe Rojas (06:33.948)
Because that is a point where you can actually make some decisions and hire some people and do some things. Before that, what you have is a job.
Steve / Agency Outsight (06:42.008)
Mm-hmm.
Joe Rojas (06:43.248)
Right? Because you're doing most of the work. Sometimes for us, profitability comes in right away when we're working with our clients, because we always think about profitability. If you're not making money, shouldn't be in business. So we always start with a profit mindset, you know? And in the MSV space, it's great because because it's monthly recurring revenue, it gives you the
Steve / Agency Outsight (06:44.598)
Where does profitability come in?
Joe Rojas (07:12.594)
the opportunity to really understand where your profit lies. And so you can get profitable with five clients. You don't to wait till you get $2 million to get profitable. You're profitable upfront, right? And then from there, I have a client that came in in December of 23.
Yeah, December 23, he was at 500,000, but his profitability was very low. And by the end of the year,
He had doubled in size, but his profitability went to 27 % from like 6%, you know? that was a game changer. He retired his wife. You know, he like, it was a game changer. And so that's really why I do what I do is to help people be able to make those kinds of moves where you can.
Steve / Agency Outsight (07:56.162)
Yeah, that's huge.
Joe Rojas (08:16.67)
retire your wife or say, I'm gonna, you know, I had a client that we worked with about four or five years ago. And when he started, he was at a million annual revenue, but he was working like 120 hours a week with three kids. What's the point? Right? So we helped them go from 1 million to 5 million, but better than that, we helped them to go down to about 40 hours a week.
Steve / Agency Outsight (08:46.09)
That's the most valuable part of the change that you impacted with.
Joe Rojas (08:46.302)
All right? So.
He joined the city council. He's coaching his daughter's basketball team. He's the lead player in the softball, the men's softball league in his town. He's like doing all these things that are amazing. It takes three weeks vacation with his family and he leaves his phone in the hotel room. That's unheard of for an MSP. Unheard of.
Steve / Agency Outsight (09:00.302)
Mm-hmm.
Steve / Agency Outsight (09:13.398)
It's unheard of for an entrepreneur in any, in any industry. We are tied to the businesses that we build and we don't prioritize. Yeah, we don't prioritize time with our families. so the most valuable thing you gave him, forget about the extra 4 million top line revenue. You gave him time back. Most valuable thing. I love that. And that's where I think you and I align is like, how do we help entrepreneurs build businesses that they're not tied to, that they can have freedoms around, whether it's a lifestyle business or
Joe Rojas (09:20.658)
because we build jobs.
Steve / Agency Outsight (09:42.06)
the systems are in place that help them be free or the people are in place. Yeah. Love that.
Joe Rojas (09:46.783)
But you can't have a lifestyle business if it's not over $2 million, I think. You wanna have a lifestyle business, you have to get it up high enough where you can hire competent people to run the business when you're not there.
Steve / Agency Outsight (09:51.938)
Yeah, I agree.
Steve / Agency Outsight (10:01.378)
Yeah, otherwise you have a lifestyle job and and again, you got to know that going into it Yeah, I've got a lifestyle job when I don't work. We don't make money verse a lifestyle business When I don't work my business continues to grow without me. That's what we're talking about Yeah, yeah
Joe Rojas (10:02.27)
Because, yeah, you have a lifestyle to adopt.
Joe Rojas (10:17.086)
That's what we're talking about. And I remember those points. I remember when my daughter was born, I took three months off. I was gone. I didn't call the office. did nothing. I was gone. was like, being with my kid, it was the best. I came back, we were percent bigger.
Steve / Agency Outsight (10:26.446)
What a gift.
Steve / Agency Outsight (10:31.128)
Yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (10:35.682)
So what
Wow. So when your daughter was born, what was the structure of the business as far as size? You had a number two in place, you had systems and...
Joe Rojas (10:45.854)
So we had a number two in place, at a number two and a number three, and I had 18 people on staff. we were at a size where, I was mostly at that point, I wasn't client facing. The people that I dealt with was my staff. And that's where you wanna get. Where you wanna get is that the people that you're talking to all week long are your team.
Steve / Agency Outsight (10:51.874)
Mm-hmm.
Joe Rojas (11:16.316)
you're working with them to help them solve problems. But that way when you're gone, nobody notices you're gone because they don't talk to you anyway.
Steve / Agency Outsight (11:27.234)
Yeah, there's no client that's demanding your time anymore because you've offloaded that to somebody else.
Joe Rojas (11:32.703)
Yeah, I knew I had made it in that business one day when I was in the office. Phone rang. I picked up the phone and I said, Hi, Ron, how are you? And he said, yeah, you know, can I talk to Ben? And I said, I'll talk to you. can help. No, no, you can't help me. Can you talk to me? But I can talk to you. No, no, no. I was like, OK, all right, you got it. And then, you know, I transferred to call and that was that.
Steve / Agency Outsight (11:49.321)
Hahaha
Joe Rojas (12:01.662)
And I knew that that was the day that I knew I was out. And so that's what works is when somebody calls is like, oh, can I talk to Charlie? Can I talk to Ben? Can I talk to Eli? I talk to somebody else? It's not me.
Steve / Agency Outsight (12:20.558)
What a gift. so work, the work that it took to get to there is putting the right systems in place because systems are scalable. People are not. And, and those systems tie back to your goal and, and vision as the owner, but the support you had from your team to say, yeah, this is where we're all rowing to in the same direction. you followed your own manual, I imagine. Yeah. So that can apply to anybody. You said, yeah.
Joe Rojas (12:28.435)
Yep.
Joe Rojas (12:40.808)
Correct.
Joe Rojas (12:46.482)
So you have to, yeah, can apply to anybody, right? So it's like, if you wanna build a team, you have to have a good set of core values so that you understand, they have to be, they can't be permission to play values. So no integrity, no honesty, no none of that stuff. Those are like fundamentals that you're gonna interview for, but that's not what makes you different, right? They have to be real differentiators, right? So if I look now, I'm gonna pull them up, because I don't wanna screw them up.
Steve / Agency Outsight (13:10.319)
What are yours?
Steve / Agency Outsight (13:16.396)
they changed them while you were out on maternity leave on you.
Joe Rojas (13:18.869)
You know? But I wanna, so back then I had a different set of values. I wanna pull mine up now because I wanna read you the descriptions, not just the values themselves, right? So there's loving what you do. And that value is about where you are, being where you are when you're there. Like really being where you are when you're like, I love what I do.
Steve / Agency Outsight (13:33.185)
Interesting,
Steve / Agency Outsight (13:40.974)
Hmm.
Steve / Agency Outsight (13:46.242)
being present in all of it.
Joe Rojas (13:46.471)
And I want the whole team to love what they do so that they can be present. So what's missing to have them be there? Our second value is figuring it out. And that is about being willing to not know, to not have the answer, to be open to exploring solutions. This doesn't mean that you have to do it yourself.
It's just being willing to not know. That's how you figure it out. Right. Then there's rigor. And for us, rigor is about precision in our work and the willingness to go the extra step to get it just right. You kind of go that extra little bit so that somebody can be like, wow, that was amazing.
Steve / Agency Outsight (14:37.452)
Love that. That's that surprise and delight that we talk about with the clients. Like, we didn't expect that. That was a really nice touch. Thanks for the handwritten card or whatever. Yeah.
Joe Rojas (14:38.642)
Right? And then they...
Joe Rojas (14:44.06)
Yeah.
Joe Rojas (14:48.092)
And that just takes a little bit of rigor. Then there's human-centric. And human-centric is the notion that a business has seven characteristics. Number one, it makes money. Two, it puts humans first. But it can't put humans first if it doesn't make money. Three, it has strong values, mission. And it'll go through great lengths to protect those. It will lose money to protect its values, vision, mission.
Then it inspires rather than manipulates. It operates from a perspective of abundance. It respects the environment and is collaborative. And from there, you can build a human-centric process-driven business. Your business is either identity-driven or process-driven. If it's identity-driven, it cannot work without you. If it's process-driven, you can disappear and the business will go on forever.
Steve / Agency Outsight (15:40.93)
Yes.
Steve / Agency Outsight (15:46.656)
Anybody can disappear. Yeah.
Joe Rojas (15:48.125)
Yes, anybody, anybody in the organization can disappear. And then the final value or fifth value is playing the infinite game. Right. And so playing the infinite game is the notion that nobody has to lose for other people to win.
Joe Rojas (16:06.12)
So.
Steve / Agency Outsight (16:06.766)
So let me ask you two follow up questions. So the first is, did you, so scarcity and abundance are two very different mindsets. They compete with one another, they borrow our brain space. I was on a call this morning with a group of agency owners and somebody said, how do I instill an abundance mindset in my team? Other than obviously leading, as a leader setting the example, how did you instill, that's your core value.
And so there's some spiritual alignment there. That is not something that you typically read in a business textbook. That's not covered in an MBA. How did you instill that in your team through process?
Joe Rojas (16:46.792)
Well, interview for it first. If you find somebody that has a scarcity mindset, it'll show up in their speaking. Right? You'll hear it in their conversation. I don't have enough time and I don't have enough this and there's not enough that and there's not enough, not enough, not enough, not enough, not enough, not enough, not not a person that I'm going to hug. Right?
Steve / Agency Outsight (16:50.178)
Okay.
Steve / Agency Outsight (17:09.816)
Do you think that's reprogrammable or retrainable or anything or?
Joe Rojas (17:13.438)
I say that it's easier to have a monkey that's a one-eyed monkey, one-legged monkey land the space shuttle on the moon than it is to reprogram somebody's core values. So have to interview for core values, right? So when you discover, you never create core values, you discover core values. So you start an organization, even if it's just you and another person,
Steve / Agency Outsight (17:28.802)
Deep, Yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (17:38.894)
Mm-hmm.
Joe Rojas (17:43.376)
If you look hard enough in that organization, you're going to find the four or five core values that drive that organization. They're already there. Now you just have to find more people that match those core values.
Steve / Agency Outsight (17:49.901)
Right.
Steve / Agency Outsight (17:56.458)
And every few years as the company evolves and grows and people swap out, you'll develop a new set of core values. It's got to be looked at again every two, three years without a doubt. Yeah.
Joe Rojas (18:05.66)
Yes, yes, you can. You can look every two, three years. We look every once in a while, but we found that these this it took us a while to get here. Took us about, you know, a few years to get here to get to these core values. But I think these are it for us. Right. And so, yeah. So but there's a lot of thinking that went in to really thinking about what those are and what our mission is. Right. And so.
Steve / Agency Outsight (18:14.52)
Mm-hmm.
Steve / Agency Outsight (18:20.942)
I love them. Yeah, they're deep.
Steve / Agency Outsight (18:29.836)
Yeah. Did you bring somebody in from the outside to guide you through the process of extracting these values?
Joe Rojas (18:34.174)
It's actually what we do, Yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (18:38.635)
I know that, but I also know there are lot of people that that's what they do and still bring somebody in from the outside because we're too close to it.
Joe Rojas (18:45.244)
We, did bring one of my mentors in to validate after we, you know, after we went through it, but there is three of us. So we kind of like, there was a lot of back and forth and a lot of, right? Until we landed here. And then, and when we landed here, was like, okay, yeah, this is great. This is it.
Steve / Agency Outsight (19:03.726)
Yeah, it's a process. It's a deep process.
Joe Rojas (19:12.126)
And then you interview for that, and you interview for that, and you interview for that. Sometimes you go through four, five, six different candidates and you're like, nope, not it, not it, not it, not it. It's frustrating, right? But then when you find the one that's it, you're like, yep, this one's it.
Steve / Agency Outsight (19:27.522)
Yeah. The challenge there is when you're turning down talent because you know that, yeah, they would do well in this aspect, but they don't embody our core values. And to your point, if you're not vetting for that, like skills are trainable. Values are not. They are innate in somebody and maybe you can enhance them and that kind of thing. But yeah. The infinite game.
as one of your core principles. Obviously, that an assignment cynic book reference? Is it like mandatory reading at the business? Like anybody that comes on board has to read the book?
Joe Rojas (19:59.185)
Yeah, yeah, is the same as any book reference. It is the same.
Joe Rojas (20:06.632)
They don't have to read the book, but they have to watch the video. I don't know if you've watched his video on the Infinite Game. And they definitely have to watch the video. And we have another video, the guy that actually came up with the Infinite Game, which was in Simon Sinek. I can't remember his name right now, but I have a video from him. And so everybody has to watch that video. Simon Sinek popularized it, but there was this guy that came up with game theory that...
Steve / Agency Outsight (20:13.198)
Yeah, it's amazing.
Joe Rojas (20:36.87)
you know, that came up with the empathy game theory. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so, yeah, and, but, but man, it was like, that's it right there, right? It's like, you just make, yeah, instead of thinking about it as a pie and like, if somebody takes a slice, you just bake a bigger pie and a bigger pie and a bigger pie and a bigger pie, you know? And so that's kind of how we look at it. We just like...
Steve / Agency Outsight (20:38.094)
It was a baseball reference or something like that. Yeah, yeah. I don't remember his name either.
Steve / Agency Outsight (20:47.406)
Yeah. Yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (21:01.976)
like that, yeah.
Joe Rojas (21:05.284)
Okay, well how do we bake a bigger pie now?
Steve / Agency Outsight (21:07.918)
Yeah. Before we hit record, we were talking about your book and you had said this manual as you referred to it. This is applicable to any industry, agency, MSP. You focus deeply niched on MSPs for marketing, for training, for everything. And I fully align with that. I'm tripling down on niching, shoving it down people's throats because man, I want people to succeed.
Joe Rojas (21:16.445)
Mm-hmm.
Joe Rojas (21:24.115)
Yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (21:35.254)
And we want people to succeed for the same reasons. We want them to have better lives. Their teams have better lives. I'm not driven by, want you to make a billion dollars. I want you to have a good life. You need money to have a good life, et cetera. But talk about some of the things that you think those core aspects of the book and how it applies for agencies in this day and age with the threats of AI, the economy is who knows what. So what do you say about the book and what you've built?
flying there.
Joe Rojas (22:06.782)
Well, the idea of the book is really to look at the different areas.
how do you create your core values, vision? It's the same stuff that we use now. We just have a different name for it now that we're in the MSP space, right? But it's how do you create those values, vision, mission, right? And the way we think about it is that the values are like your bow. If you had a bow and arrow, the values are like the bow, right?
The mission is like the arrow, it's what's going to get you there. And the vision is like the target way out there in the future. Right? So how do you create that? And then how do you define a product? And how do you define a market? And how do you solve a problem? And so the intention of the book is to get you to do that. So AI is just the new thing.
Right? This is the new thing. It's just like when the internet came out, I really go, the internet is going to, you know, destroy all of communication and it's going to like, it's going to do this. It's going to, I remember all the stuff that they used to say about it and it didn't do any of that. It enhanced everything. Yeah. And created so many more opportunities and AI will create so many more opportunities and there'll be the next layer and the next layer. And, know, and every time I hear the same stuff, but this is going to be completely different like that.
Steve / Agency Outsight (23:29.782)
It enhanced so much. Yeah.
Joe Rojas (23:44.508)
that thing over there, that was like, this is nothing compared, like that was nothing compared to this, right? I'm sure that's what they said about the printing press also.
Steve / Agency Outsight (23:56.842)
And the nuances within that. So from when you went to direct to plate, it changed the industry. When you went direct to digital, it changed the industry. So yeah, all of these shifts.
Joe Rojas (24:07.568)
And so this is just the next shift, right? What is not gonna change is that people need strategy. So if you're an agency, what you wanna do is you wanna get ultra ultra niche and understand your clients problems better than they do. So that no matter what technology is available, you can fix things and guide things that they can't understand because they're good at what they do.
but they're not good at what you do.
Joe Rojas (24:43.142)
And so doesn't matter what the technology is. What matters is that you understand the business problems that they have enough to help them get return on investment on their spend with you.
See, I know any MSP that works with us will likely double in size the first year and then add a million dollars to you over a year after working with us.
Steve / Agency Outsight (25:07.68)
You can say that confidently because that track record you have, you have the systems for it and the evidence to support it. So that's what, when people are niching down, that's what they need is the case studies to support the evidence of the work that they've done. You've got that.
Joe Rojas (25:14.694)
I'm, yeah.
Joe Rojas (25:20.776)
So that guy that came that was at half a million dollars, we had a $30,000 a month of recurring revenues in the first four months from his existing client without adding a single client, not one, not a single one.
Steve / Agency Outsight (25:30.093)
Wow.
Steve / Agency Outsight (25:35.68)
Wow. Yep.
Joe Rojas (25:37.18)
We just went to his existing clients, looked at what wasn't working and said, hey, you know you can do these things to solve those problems. And they're like, yeah, we're happy to pay you more money to fix those.
Steve / Agency Outsight (25:50.614)
And it's the same thing with agencies. It's a service providing business. So, so many agencies, I need more business. No, you need to go into the business that you have and expand those accounts and train your team to expand those accounts and bring creative solutions and new ideas and new ROI into your current accounts. And so many don't.
Joe Rojas (26:08.146)
But how you do that is you help your client make more money.
When you help your client make more money, two things happen. One, they're never leaving.
Two, they're gonna tell other people.
Joe Rojas (26:25.81)
Right? So, and those are the things you want.
Steve / Agency Outsight (26:30.296)
Yeah, you want longer lifetime value of your clients and referrals that are bringing in business. Love it.
Joe Rojas (26:38.526)
And how you do that is you provide outstanding service and you understand the business problems that they have. Most solution providers are coming in.
to fix technical problems. I see agencies do that all the time. Oh, we will help you post 10 times a week. We will write two blog posts. We will do da da da, but it's not connected to the journey. And so what happens is if it's not connected to the journey, you will have all this noise that you generate. A lot of noise, but the client won't get any results.
Steve / Agency Outsight (26:56.398)
Hmm.
Joe Rojas (27:23.452)
because you're not guiding their prospect through a real clear journey that takes them from awareness to engagement, from engagement to subscription, from subscription to conversion, from conversion to excitement, from excitement to ascension, to buying that core product.
Steve / Agency Outsight (27:43.47)
Hmm.
Joe Rojas (27:44.447)
But if you're not guiding them through that journey, you might have amazing awareness. Oh, we're getting 25,000 visitors a month to the website. Well, how many are converting? Well, we're getting three. Even if we just get three, who cares if we have 25,000 visitors to the website every month? We have a problem. So you have your...
If you have all this awareness, right? It's like, we have a million subscribers. Great. How many are converting? If they're not converting, then your content is no good.
So now they're subscribing. they're subscribing and they're not buying, then your offer is no good.
Joe Rojas (28:37.574)
Right? If they're not booking an appointment, your offer is no good. If they book an appointment and they're not buying, then your product is no good. Or the way you represent the value of your product is no
Steve / Agency Outsight (28:52.142)
the value within it or yeah.
Joe Rojas (28:58.366)
And if they're buying and they're not referring, then your delivery is no good.
So marketing is a journey that starts before they know who you are and goes all the way through the purchase process and beyond. It never goes away. So your delivery has to be extraordinary. And that's what this, I talk a little bit about that in the book and that's a process that we work with our MSPs on is really understanding that.
Steve / Agency Outsight (29:29.868)
Love it. On that note, trying to stick to my promise of under 25 minutes or less or so, think, man, that is like jam pack of here's how you win in an agency space based on your experience of, you know, start grow manage on these different levels for MSPs. And it applies to agencies and agencies are, they're falling short a lot. And it, I think it's a couple of levers they can pull that would tighten things up for.
better conversions on inbound for better LTV, better profitability, better systems to get the owner out of the day to day. so I love all that you shared, man. The book, obviously for sale online.
Joe Rojas (30:13.466)
It's in Amazon. Yeah. I'm to do the audio book soon. Yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (30:15.278)
Grab it on Amazon, folks. Awesome. All right, I want to wrap up with a couple of random rapid fires. you enjoy them as much as I do. if you could instantly master any musical instrument, what would it be?
Joe Rojas (30:21.192)
Shoot, I'm ready for it.
Joe Rojas (30:29.032)
The harmonica.
Steve / Agency Outsight (30:31.458)
Are you musically talented in any way?
Joe Rojas (30:33.342)
I play a little piano, a little bit of piano, but what I love about the harmonica is that it fits in your pocket. And so you can always have it with you at all times. And so I've tried a little bit, but I've just not been able to get quite there. But absolutely, I love it because you can have it anywhere you go. There it is. You just pull it out and you're ready to go.
Steve / Agency Outsight (30:51.907)
Very cool.
Steve / Agency Outsight (30:56.514)
Yeah, no big cases. Talking about core values, what's a belief that you held strongly five or so years ago that you look back and you said since kind of changed your beliefs about?
Joe Rojas (31:07.943)
Hmm.
That's a really great question.
When I look at my own personal beliefs, right, I've been pretty rock steady for about the last 15, 16 years, and that's leadership, community, and love, right? Those are my core, core, core, you know, and I try to add prosperity and I tried to add all this other stuff, but none of it sticks. Like for me,
A world without leaders is not a world worth having. Right? So it's really about how do we create more leaders? You know, so like I read Simon Sinek's Start With Why, and then I did the work, the framework work, and my why is to nurture and shepherd others so that they can find the leader within.
And so that's really like that's been the bedrock of my stuff. And then I try to add other stuff and it never sticks. Like I've tried. I've looked and I was like, oh, I'm going to add this now and it's going to be like great. And then it's like two months later, I don't even know what it was.
Steve / Agency Outsight (32:23.722)
Interesting. All right, so you know these are these three are my true north. They are my true, you know, inside values and nothing else comes close to them. I love that. So that's beautiful. Finally, what's a small decision that you made early in your, I will say agency career that ended up having the biggest impact?
Joe Rojas (32:26.76)
Yeah.
Joe Rojas (32:43.155)
Mitch.
Steve / Agency Outsight (32:45.624)
Bam. That simple. Love it. Joe, I thoroughly appreciate our time together. You're a hell of a guy. I'm so grateful. Thank you very much for joining me, my friend.
Joe Rojas (32:48.264)
That's simple. That's
Joe Rojas (32:57.701)
thank you for having me.