7-Figure Consulting Business With 1 Product

How can experience in corporate sales roles and a digital marketing side hustle become the foundation for a thriving 7-figure consulting firm? Phil Risher, founder of Phlash Consulting, shares his unique journey, which included running a personal finance blog, living in a converted school bus, and dramatically boosting a client’s business before launching his own consultancy focused on home service businesses.

Phil reveals the strategic thinking behind his service model and how he differentiates his firm. He emphasizes embracing the consulting aspect over being just another agency: “I could have called it Phlash Digital… but I didn’t. I called it Phlash Consulting. Why? Because we’re a consulting company. We take your data, we analyze your data, we make decisions, we help you grow your business. We’re not just a cookie-cutter digital marketing company.” Today, Phil details his path to building an 11-person team and achieving 7-figure revenues.

In this episode you will learn:

• Phil’s unconventional path from corporate sales and content creation to consulting success.

• How delivering massive results for an employer paved the way for launching his firm.

• The crucial transition from hourly billing to a scalable, productized service model.

• His phased approach to scaling delivery: leveraging white-label partners before building an in-house team.

• Effective lead generation strategies for a niche consultancy, including content, podcasts, and free marketing audits.

• Using the Profit First system and performance-based pay to manage finances and incentivize team growth.

• How Phlash Consulting differentiates itself by embracing a true consulting identity over a typical agency model.

• Actionable advice on niching, positioning, and building a resilient consulting business.

Welcome to the Consulting Success podcast. I’m your host Michael Zipursky, and in this podcast, we’re going to dive deep into the world of elite consultants where you’re going to learn the strategies, tactics and mindset to grow a highly profitable and successful consulting business.

Before we dive into today’s episode. Are you ready to grow and take your consulting business to the next level? Many of the clients that we work with started as podcast listeners just like you, and a consistent theme they have shared with us is that they wished they had reached out sooner about our Clarity Coaching Program rather than waiting for that perfect time. If you’re interested in learning more about how we help consultants just like you, we’re offering a free, no pressure growth session call. On this call, we’re going to dive deep into your goals, challenges and situation and outline a plan that is tailor made just for you. We will also help you identify where you may be making costly and time consuming mistakes to ensure you’re benefiting from the proven methods and strategies to grow your consulting business. 

So don’t wait years to find clarity. If you’re committed and serious about reaching a new level of success in your consulting business, go ahead and schedule your free growth session. Get in touch today. Just visit Consulting Success – Grow to book your free call today.

Phil Risher, formerly in business development for a major air duct cleaning company, founded Phlash Consulting to fill a need he observed with generic marketing agencies – service businesses needed tailored strategies, not ineffective cookie-cutter plans. Phlash acts as a fractional CMO, working hands-on to bridge digital marketing and business development. They create clear, customized marketing plans for local B2C service businesses (HVAC, plumbing, etc.) struggling with unclear direction and uncertain ROI, ultimately driving sales and boosting owner confidence.

Connect with Phil Risher

Discover more about Phlash Consulting

Hey Phil, welcome.

Hey, Michael. Thanks, man.

Yeah, excited to have you here. There’s been a lot of growth in your journey. I know from having you as a client in our Clarity Coaching program a while back today, you have, you just told me, a new hire. You’re up to 11 people. So excited to dive into this really have you share your journey how you’ve, you know, gone from just getting started in the early days to where you are today. But let’s back up for a moment. I’ll hit that rewind button because you were working, I believe, at a pretty large, was it an air duct…

Yeah.

…kind of cleaning company or something? So just take us back, like, how did you get—we’ll get into the whole entrepreneur, business builder, how you’ve grown a team in a few minutes. But what was that environment like for you working as an employee in a company? And ultimately, why did you decide to leave that to start your own consulting business?

Yeah, it starts a little bit before then. When I came out of college, I was in the Enterprise Management Trainee program. So I came right into that, running an Enterprise branch, getting paid off the bottom line, having a team of, you know, 2 to 15 people, a couple-million-dollar branch. And I did that for a couple of years, and then I wanted to do sales. So I went into corporate, and I sold fleet management services to home service businesses. So these were like $20 to $50 million businesses, and I was selling them fleet management services. So I learned sales B2B through that.

At that time, I had started writing a blog about personal finance. I had paid off my student loans and done some other things. And so I started sharing that stuff online, and I built a WordPress website. I started doing SEO, email marketing, and I ended up getting featured in Forbes, CNBC, all these cool places where I got backlinks. So when I went into these B2B sales meetings, I would ask these businesses, like, “How are you doing marketing? What are you doing? I was just featured in Forbes. You know, what are y’all doing?” Basically.

Yeah. Yeah, nice.

And so I actually quit my job at Enterprise and went to do this blog thing full-time. I actually bought a tiny school bus and I made a little tiny home. And I made content and traveled around the country. So I’ll make YouTube videos, blog content, emails, just like cool stuff. Just like learning all this digital marketing, basically.

[02:15] – Building Digital Authority Through Blogging and Content

I didn’t know you did that, man. I, I remember—that’s funny. I’ve seen these kinds of things like, yeah, there’ll be buses and I’ll say like the, whatever, “The Traveling Bus.” I was like, well, I guess these are YouTuber people. But you were—what year was this when you were doing this?

That was in 2017, 2018.

So you’re like an old-school YouTuber kind of, well, I guess not YouTuber, but doing things that weren’t popular for many years later on. That’s interesting. Wow.

I tell people, like, I was the influencer before influencer that wasn’t influencing anyone, that was trying to influence people, basically.

You were influencing yourself. That’s what you—Yeah. Self-influencer.

I had about 30,000-40,000 people to my website every month. So I had good traffic, but I didn’t know how to monetize. So I had this digital marketing experience. I just didn’t know how to monetize it, but I was good at getting eyeballs on my stuff. So when I got back from traveling, I was like, “Ugh, I could go do speaking or something else.” I’m very creative. And one of my clients from selling fleet management, he followed me on Facebook through my whole thing. And then he reached out to me and was like, “Hey, what’s your plan? Like, I need a director of business development at my company.” And I knew the trades. I also knew running a local service business because I did that.

[03:27] – Driving Growth with Local SEO and Strategic Partnerships

And so I went to work there, and literally in the first like three months, I was like, it’s game over. Like, I know digital marketing, I know how to run a local service business. He was a $3 million business; in the first 10 months, I took him to $4 million in revenue, and I took his profit from $300,000 to $900,000. Like, it was humming. And so he starts telling all of his friends like, “This guy’s a beast. You should, you know, go to lunch with him or something.” And I was only making about like $70,000 or $80,000nd, a I knew the impact I was making. So I was like, “Hey, my one year’s coming up. I should be making at least six figures.” And he was like, “Well, maybe you could work with some of these other companies and just charge like $50 an hour. And instead of working for me 40 hours, you could cut your time in half to like 20 hours and still do all the same stuff, but then work with like two or three other people. And then you would make $100,000, and maybe it’s all good from there.” So that’s literally how I got into it.

There you go. I wonder if he’s looking back or has ever thought, “Wow, I should have just found a way to keep this guy, Phil, more engaged in what we’re doing and help us go from $4 million to $10 million or something like that.”

Yeah. Well, here’s the cherry on top. He named my company Phlash Consulting. It’s my name Phil with PH and my wife’s name is Ashley, and we call her Ash. So, Phlash. And I stayed on with him. I still work with that company to this day. So five, six years later, I helped him get to $5 million in revenue and then sell to private equity. And he had a seven-times EBITDA exit. So like, crushed it. He literally tells me to this day, he’s like, “You’re a godsend. I don’t know what I would do without you,” basically. So everyone, it’s all win. Everyone’s winning all around.

[06:11] – Productizing Services to Escape the Hourly Rate Trap

Looking back, what did you do to his company that you think might be applicable to a typical consulting business today? Or set another way, you know, what did you do then that maybe you’re applying in your own consulting business today?

For sure. So he was doing $3 million and he had 36 Google reviews, which is not a lot for a home service business. His bread and butter was B2B partnerships. So he would be partnering with HVAC contractors and getting referrals from them, and then he would give them a cut of every deal that he would get. So every deal, he would give them 20% of the revenue for the lead that they gave him. Well, if we were to shift all those people into regular COD residential-style customers and not give a referral fee, you basically get a 20% profit boost right there. So within the first year, we took him from 36 Google reviews to almost a thousand Google reviews, and then he started dominating from a local SEO perspective. 

How does this tie into consulting specifically? First off, build referral partnerships because that’s one way where you don’t need to have this whole SEO and all this stuff. You can just get referred from, you know, CFOs or other people that are going to refer you. The second thing is, get Google reviews, you know, build a presence online, do some SEO of some sort, and then you can get other people coming into you, which is more of a higher-level strategy, I would say.

And just so, on the referral partners, I actually had a conversation with a client about this yesterday and kind of building up what I refer to as like the partner ecosystem. So for those who are joining us right now going, “Well, like, what does it actually look like?” I mean, Phil, you touched on one or two there, right? But it could be accounting firms, it could be law firms or attorneys, it could be software partners. Essentially, ask the question of who else touches or gets in front of or has access to your ideal clients? Yeah, look for partnerships there where you can send each other business. And when you have a few of those set up, really good things can happen.

Yeah, exactly. So like for us, CFOs are usually looking at the numbers and they’re like, “Hey, we need someone that’s going to help with marketing.” So, “Here’s a great company that knows their numbers, work with them.” And then we would give them some type of referral fee for referring us.

And so in your case, when you talk about CFOs…

Fractional CFOs.

Right. So fractional CFOs, you’re not just picking any fractional CFO that works with any type of business because your business focuses on home services. So you want to target people who really specialize also in home services.

[08:35] – Referral Ecosystems and High-ROI Lead Generation Tactics

That’s right. So what I did was I went to Fiverr, F-I-V-E-R-R, and I found someone to build a list and I said, “I want a list of all the CFOs that work with home service business owners.” It cost me like $150. They gave me like 150 people. I had our admin go through and connect with all those people on LinkedIn. Then they start seeing all my content coming through, and they start referring us business. And then I just reach out to them via email to the people that I want to connect with and start building relationships.

Yeah. Love it. I mean, you’re very good at those kind of like quick tactical wins. You know, oftentimes people overthink, “We need to have this massive strategy or this multi-touch, you know, like crazy…” Like, they just kind of get bogged down in thinking big, but it’s too big. Like, they’re missing the opportunity for quick tactics or quick implementation, which then creates results that you can build on. 

So it sounds like the first client that you had was the person that you suggested. Let’s fast forward a little bit because one client, somebody can get lucky, right time, right place, network. But what did you do to get the next two, three, four, five clients in your business?

Yeah, so that first guy, he referred me to two people. So I had three clients right away. Because I did such a great job working at his company that he was telling all of his friends already. So basically now it’s like, “Phil’s a free agent,” you know, let’s figure something else out that works, kind of. And that piece, when I got my first three—so that was like literally a couple months into it—then I came to a crossroads because I was selling my time for money. I was selling $50 an hour, and I only have 40 hours to give, and I was maxed out. 

Then I got my second, my next referral. And I couldn’t ethically give more hours. So I could either hire someone else and then try to sub out the hours kind of thing, or I could productize our service into something that was value-driven, that was a monthly fixed cost, and then I could build it. And that’s what I chose to do. So from there, I would get referrals, and then I would try to flip those referrals. So basically I would say, “Okay, I had this HVAC contractor. Here’s our numbers,” because I know the numbers pretty well. And I would go to another HVAC contractor, and I would literally just go to a BNI networking group, for example. This is literally what I did. I went to these networking groups where I knew HVAC contractors would be, and I would just set up meetings with these people and tell them about the success.

Got it. Okay. So walk me through that. I mean, you mentioned that you made a very intentional decision to not just trade time for money, if you will, right? Shift away from hourly more towards productization. What did that look like? How did you kind of conceptually, you know, think about and structure and take what you’ve been providing in a very kind of custom, you know, one-to-one fashion and start to actually productize it into something that had more structure and something that could be recurring?

[11:22] – Structuring Scalable Consulting Offers With Profit First

Yeah. So the productized service that we built was all the problems that I had trying to grow my business working with digital marketing companies. So I knew the layer that I fit in, which was the consulting piece of the equation. And I knew if I hired a good digital marketing company and I layered in my consulting approach, that it would be a success because we have all the missing pieces. So what I did was I found a digital marketing company that I liked, that did all the right stuff, and I told them, “Hey, I’m going to bring you on clients, and I need you to do these several services for me, and maybe give me a little discount because I’m going to give you volume.” Then I’m going to piece myself in. And so I had this structure: 30% for them, 30% for me, 30% for profit, 10% for tax. That was like how I structured it. And when I built the plan, it was like, this is going to be the offer that I’m going to give to people, and then I’m going to layer this stuff in.

Did you tell people that, like, do your clients know that you are essentially white-labeling another agency or did you position it as, “This is part of my team”? How did you—I think people are probably wondering, well, like, how do you manage that potential complexity, if you will?

Yeah. What I would tell people was, “I went out and found all the best nerds that are out there that do this stuff, and they know all this stuff.” Literally, this is what I would say. “I found these nerds that are way smarter than me, that I know that they do this stuff right. What I do great is I take this data, and I use your CRM data, and I make it all work, and I make us win. So that’s what’s going to happen here. Don’t worry about that.” Yeah, we’re just going to win. So that’s what I told them, literally.

Right. And did you ever think about, “Hey, rather than paying somebody else 30%, like, why don’t I just build this myself?” And maybe, I don’t know, is that where you are, like, today, kind of?

Yeah. So, we built into that. The thing is that I didn’t know. Like, I didn’t come from digital marketing. So I literally don’t know. I was just tasking something today. I got a task—I got added to a task, and I’m like, “I don’t know. You guys are the experts. I have no idea.” So, it was nice because I don’t know, and I was just like, “Hey, this company already knows. It’s much easier to do that if I can make it work within the numbers.”

Yeah. Did you have any concerns about what you could or couldn’t control? Meaning if it’s a separate company so how did you kind of plan for that? Protect from any issues kind of popping up or deal with any issues if you had them?

Yeah, and there were issues. I mean, they’re, you know, like lead times went from X amount to X amount, and I couldn’t control that because they’re not my employee, but then the client’s looking at me. Or the results were not there on certain things, and it’s like, “Well, this is like that.” So I definitely kind of had to be at the forefront of it, out in front of it. And what I started doing was- let’s say there was going to be a big lead time. Then I would take what we’ve already built with that company, and I would hire someone and say, “Whatever they did, like figure out what they did, and let’s build an SOP off of this so that we have an SOP in case we fall into this again.”

Got you. Okay. So just to summarize that, you’re kind of proactively planning or preparing for if something goes wrong, let’s take what we have already seen work that we applied for another client, and let’s build a checklist, kind of a process for that that we can use, that we can run, and almost supplement to make sure that there is progress being made if things are moving a little bit slower with this other company.

That’s right. And the progression that I’ve taken now just thinking about this is, we hired a company that was an outsourced company to do some white-label type stuff. Then we layered in a contractor that we found through like Upwork or some other platform that was a little less expensive, more hands-on. And then we hired team members that were very hands-on and less expensive.

Got you. Okay. So how did your overall services change as you made the progression from, you know, you doing everything to now building in or adding this kind of white-labeled, you know, external company team agency to now today where you brought this in-house?

Yeah. So slowly we would take pieces away of things that they were doing as we grew our team. So like my first hire was a virtual assistant, and I would start giving her like, “Okay, just do this task.” And then I’ll have them not do this task, which it’s a little bit manual, but it’s not as, you know, you don’t have to be very technical. So slowly I would chip away at it, and there’s— We don’t have any tasks now that are outsourced, but probably within the last year, we’ve brought everything in-house. But it as it got more technical, we’d slowly bring people on because it got more expensive to bring people on. 

Sorry, one important thing that I want to make mention to this, which really helped me scale, that I think a lot of people should know, is that because I built it this way, I didn’t have any overhead. It would scale with me. Each time I got a new client, I would just bolt on this new expense so I could scale up and down without much risk, which was really nice.

[16:09] – From White Label to In-House: Building a Lean Team

Looking back, is there one thing that you did or didn’t do? Like a real lesson learned about that partnership with this other company that you brought in? And I’m asking, kind of bringing this up, Phil, because I think, first of all, it’s a very smart way of building a business, validating a need in the market without having to allocate a lot of capital. Right? So that’s smart but I think the devil’s advocate will say, “There’s a lot of stuff that you can’t control.” There’s, you know, issues around intellectual property and rights and, you know, just all the legal kind of potential concerns. Anything kind of stand out for you as, “Hey, like, yeah, this is the biggest thing I would say to somebody if they’re looking to replicate the model that I used,” or, “Hey, this was like a really big issue that we had, here’s what I would do to make sure that it didn’t happen again?”

Yeah. People can look at it as a negative or try to hide behind it. I looked at it more of as positive that I have all these people behind me. I’m not just a random consultant out here who’s trying to put this thing together. I have reputable companies that are partnering with me, that are doing this stuff for thousands of businesses and people, that are working with me because they value our partnership. So the first thing is like, lean into it. It’s actually a pretty good thing. 

The second thing would be because you lean into it and you overshare with the client that like, “These people are a part of it,” it’s not like, “Oh, well, they’re going to see my stuff,” and that kind of stuff I think just having great communication with that upfront. There’s no hidden bait and switch or any of this kind of stuff or like, “Oh, they just sold this and they’re just making this margin on it,” or something like this. Like, I was very clear. This is how we’re structured. I pay these guys, I get paid for this, and this is how it works, and it’s going to work.

Yeah. I think I would guess, just from, you know, knowing you a little bit, Phil, over the time that we’ve done some work together and having, you know, a bunch of conversations, that your optimism and kind of positive mindset plays a big role in the success that you’ve had. Because you’re right. Like the example that you’re sharing right now, a lot of people would start from the position of, “What’s wrong with this? Why won’t this work?” Right? And they’ll create all kinds of reasons. And what I’ve seen you do is essentially say like, “No, no, like, I’m going to make it work. I may not know exactly how yet, but like it’s going to work.” And you just kind of keep taking steps forward and forward. And that’s what I think has allowed you to progress from, you know, into seven figures of annual revenue, into a team of 11 people and growing. 

How have your prices changed over that period of time? And I’d love to hear- so I’m going to give you two questions just to let one of them think about it. So the first is, yeah, how have your prices changed? But the second part that I’m really wondering about is the transition that you made from working with that external agency to now bringing people in-house, was there a formula or how did you make the decision to hire the next person, the next person, the next person? So was that based on certain revenue milestones, number of client milestones, profitability milestones? Like, what were you using to decide when to hire somebody and, you know, and kind of build the team and then how did that maybe tie into your pricing?

[19:17] – Incentivizing Your Team With Performance-Based Pay

Yeah. So we operate on Profit First, which is Mike Michalowicz’s and his book, Profit First. So basically we have different buckets. And those buckets, I told you, like 30%, 30%, 30%, 10%. It stuck like that for a while. I was like, okay. Once I got to around $200,000, $250,000 in revenue I was basically making, you know, $100,000, $150,000-ish. So I had $50,000 where I could hire my first consultant and then give them upside. So all of our team members are on performance pay. They’ll get a base pay, and then each client that they get, they’ll get some type of retainer off of that client. Again, it allows us to scale up and down without having high overhead and gives them upside to maintain their clients. So they’re incentivized to keep their clients and make everyone happy, and then I don’t have to be involved in everything day-to-day. That allowed me, when I knew the numbers, that like, okay, in this account, we have X amount of dollars over every single month, $5,000. So now I can hire someone for $60,000 and then grow that as well. 

As far as our pricing goes, our pricing literally has probably doubled since when I started on our monthly retainer. We only sell one thing. And so that monthly fee fits all of that and fits the buckets that we need it to fit. So, yeah, I mean, I’m not scared to raise prices. We’re usually probably, I would say, in the 80th out of 100% of the most expensive thing. But I look at that as a badge of honor. When people tell me, “Oh, that’s expensive,” I’m like, “Yeah, it is expensive because it’s great.”

Right. Okay, so a couple things I want to go into. The first is you talk about this kind of incentive that you have with your team members. Just break that down in a little bit more detail. Is that that you’re paying people maybe a little bit of a lower base, but they have greater upside potential? Or is the base kind of industry average? And just how do they actually receive that? Is it based on them bringing the client in or managing the client or—just give us a little bit more detail into it.

Yeah, for sure. So the way that I have it structured is I’ll bring them on with an average salary. Let’s say it’s like $70,000, $80,000 that we’ll allocate on a monthly basis that we’re going to pay them. And so they’re set at $80,000. Each client that they get, they get a percentage of the client’s monthly revenue. So let’s say it’s, you know, 10%, 20%, 30%. They’re basically working their way up to $80,000 monthly. And then they’re participating in all the upside, where I’m basically allocating those funds to get them up and running and then push through that.

Is that shared, though, evenly with everyone in the company, regardless of their position? Or does the percentage change based on what their role is?

Yeah. So the consultants, they all have the set amount. But then we hired an Operations Director of Digital Marketing, and it’s kind of a different structure with him. The way that we structured it was, our goal is to get to X amount of clients. We’re at X amount of clients. So each client that we get, you’re going to get a raise accordingly. So that way, this position, when we have this many clients, should be making X amount. So we allow him to kind of work into that. The beauty is, like, then you don’t have to be giving out these 2% raises or fighting with people on raises. Like, you want a raise, just go get another client or keep your clients happy. You also know that they’re going to do whatever it takes to keep their people happy because they’re going to maintain their pay.

Right. Makes a lot of sense. The other question I had for you is you mentioned that you have one offer, right? One product, if you will. I love that, just the simplicity of it. So, a couple things will relate to that. So the first is, I think just for everyone to see that you can have a business that does you know, millions per year and just have one product or one offer, right? You don’t need to have four, five, 10 different services or products to achieve seven figures plus in revenue. But my question for you on that, Phil, is again, the devil’s advocate or kind of somebody looking at that from a different perspective might say, “Like, how did you do that? Because there’s so many different things that I could provide, so many different ways that I could help.” So I’m wondering, can you share a bit of your journey of how you essentially have shaved away, right, or cut back all the different things you could offer only hone in on, this is the one thing that we offer? Like, what does that look like and what did you remove? And how did you kind of arrive at?

[23:29] – Niching Down and Winning With One Productized Offer

Yeah. So I started the company six years ago, and the first two years was really figuring out what the heck do we do and who do we do it for and all that. And within those first two years, like, it was through COVID. There was a lot of things going on. So I was, at one point, I was like, you know, doing sales consulting for a tech company, and I was at Harvard pitching it to doctors and like doing random stuff. And what really helped me was when I just narrowed in on who do we serve? One to $10 million in revenue, home service business owners that are targeting B2C homeowners. Like, that’s our bread and butter. This playbook that we have, if we execute this exact playbook for those people, they’re going to win. They might tell us, “Oh, well, that doesn’t work for us. This doesn’t work for us. That doesn’t work for us.” It doesn’t matter. We might do a little bit more of this over here. We might do a little bit more of that over here. At the end of the day, this is what you get, as a marketing team is basically what we’re selling. You bolt this marketing team onto your business and you get a developer, you get a content, you know, all that kind of stuff. And you might do a little bit of this, a little bit of that. But at the end of the day, it’s a marketing team.

How do you position what you’re offering compared to others, right? So you’re not the only person or the only company working in home services marketing, right? How do you talk to the marketplace? How do you talk to prospective clients and buyers about, you know, the difference that you bring?

Yeah. So this is perfect for consulting. So I’ll tell you two things. First, I say this, “Listen, I was in your shoes. I was trying to grow a $3 million business to $5 million, and I was stuck working with these digital marketing companies that didn’t know anything about my business. And I was frustrated. So like, I was there with you. And I built this company to solve all those problems. Like, I literally went out and built a company to make sure that none of that stuff happens again. So I’m in your shoes, and I built this. Like I don’t know. I just know what I want it to be. And that’s what we built for.” So that’s the first thing. Second thing, I say this all the time, which is a good one, is this name right here, Phlash Consulting, I could have called it Phlash Digital just like everyone else, but I didn’t. I called it Phlash Consulting. Why? Because we’re a consulting company. We take your data, we analyze your data, we make decisions, we help you grow your business. We’re not just a cookie-cutter digital marketing company. It’s a consulting company. Those are the two things. And it works perfectly.

So think about everyone who’s joining us, yeah, how does that apply to you, right? So the two things I heard you say there: the first is you’re empathizing with them, right? You’re showing them that you understand the position that they’re in, which right away kind of, you know, creates that stronger level of trust or relationship. And then the next is you’ve picked an enemy, right? And it’s not like, you’re not talking bad about somebody directly, but you’ve picked an enemy, and so they can see and go, “Oh, okay. So you’re fighting against that.” Like, you’re creating that distinction between you and the status quo in your marketplace.

That’s right. That’s exactly right.

What does your sales process look like today? So just walk us through maybe from actually from initial lead generation, how are you getting leads? What’s working best for you? And then once you have a lead come in kind of into your system and like, what are the next steps in terms of how many calls does it typically take to close, or meetings? Just walk us through that kind of journey.

[26:38] – Lead Gen That Works: Content, Podcasts, and Audits

Yeah. So right now we have a couple different ways to get leads. We still get referrals coming in. I hired an appointment setter to do prospecting and cold calling on our target audience, so they set appointments. That way is like super cold, and it’s not the easiest way to close them, but it is appointment setting. We have content creation where I have a YouTube channel. I create weekly content, so we get leads from there and included in content is like an email newsletter, that kind of stuff. And then the last one is podcasting, where I podcast and I guest on other people’s shows. I would say the- really the three big ones are the referrals, content creation, and podcasting. It’s pretty much those things usually get leads coming in that are good, warm leads. 

The way our process works, we do an intake, which is a marketing audit. On that marketing audit, we go through and we give them literally the game plan and blueprint of how we would grow their business, right? Kind of like what you talk about in the program. You walk them through this exact audit, and then you give them the game plan and say, “If you want to work with us, great. If not, you can go for it.” We do not charge for that, mostly because right now, I want to get to the point where I need to start charging for it because we have so many. We probably do about 5-ish per week, one a day, like audits. So we have decent lead flow coming in. And once we get on a call for 30 minutes, to be honest, it’s usually like a quick close. Like it’s either then, or they’re like, “Let’s set up another meeting,” or “Right now it’s not the right time, but maybe sometime else is.” But usually it’s like, “Where have you been all my life? Let’s work together.”

Okay. So do you collect, as part of that intake and the analysis, are you asking them to submit a whole bunch of information before you even have a call with them? Or is it just on the call itself?

Yeah. So the beauty of digital marketing is that we can, you know, use different plugins and stuff to like analyze what they’re doing. So we then go and like, we’ll pull up their website, we’ll pull up their rankings in their area. And then in the first like five minutes, we’re kind of gathering that information. Like, “What CRM do you use? Are you doing this? Are you doing that? Are you using this? How are you doing this?” And then we go into our playbook and audit what they’re currently doing and tell them the best practices.

So you’re doing that on the spot. You’re not necessarily preparing a report beforehand and then meeting with them to go over it? Or is it a bit of both?

It’s a little bit of both because, like, we’ll go in and we’ll pull up their website and we’ll find all the areas of opportunity. Then when we get on the call, we’re presenting it to them with, “Hey, you should do this. Let me show you how you could do this or why you should do this.”

How much time do you think you and your team spend on each one of these?

Yeah. So our consultants, when they first start with us, they sell like this on Loom. They make Looms. So they pull up prospects from our email newsletter or prospects that they find on Facebook groups, and they pull up all their stuff and they create Loom videos that are about, you know, 5 or 10 minutes long, auditing their stuff and sending it to them. But they do this, you know, the first two or three months.

And how does that work? Do they get results? Do they win any business from that? Or is it more just a practice for them?

I use it more as a practice because you can get results, but it’s going to be cold. You’re not going to know… With Loom videos, you can see if they watched it and how long they watched it for and try to get them to close. What we found to be extremely successful with this is going into Facebook groups and finding people that are asking those exact questions and then creating a Loom and then sending it to them in Facebook Messenger. That gets pretty good activity. That’s not like our bread and butter because I don’t want them spending their time prospecting and that kind of stuff. To answer your question, to come up with all that stuff, it usually takes like 10, 20 minutes to just do a quick audit of stuff. And you’re pretty much, after you’ve done it a couple times, it’s like, okay, it’s the same thing over and over.

Yeah, right. What percentage of the people—so if you’re having, let’s call it, maybe 20 of these per month, how many people do you find tend to move forward and actually become clients, you know, within the next month or so?

[30:25] – Monetizing Non-Fits and Leveraging Affiliate Partners

Yeah. So we kind of have a couple different buckets. And this is where you can get really cool with your offers. So I only offer one thing, but we only serve $1M to $10M in revenue clients. A lot of times we’re meeting people when they’re too small. So that company that we partnered with way back when, they’re a referral partner for me, and they give me 10% every month when I send them deals. And they serve those smaller clients. So I’m still making money even if it’s not a right fit for us. If they’re the right fit for us, we usually close around 30%, 40%.

Yep. And do you do anything—yeah, with like let’s call them the 60% or 70% that do not move forward, how do you treat those? Do you do anything with them right now? Or do you just kind of focus on the new leads coming in?

Yeah. So what we do, I would say we do three things. First, we refer them to that other partner or some affiliate partners that we might have. We’ll set them up with them. Second, we give them so much value that they leave us a five-star Google review. We have over 50 5-star Google reviews just from our marketing audits. So at the end of the call, I’m like, “Did you get value out of this?” They’re like, “Oh my gosh, yes.” “Okay. Do you mind leaving me a Google review? It really helps us out.” And then the third thing is they go into our email newsletter because they’re going to be advocates for us, and they’re going to stay in touch with us, and maybe they do grow to that point and they come back and work with us. If not, at least they’re going to be out there sharing the wealth with people because they got so much value and they’re going to continue to get value.

Yeah, that’s awesome. 

Okay, so today you’ve got 11 people. Walk me through what’s been the biggest kind of challenge for you in getting to where the business is today? Because I think when you first reached out and you came into the Clarity Coaching Program, you were six figures in revenue, right? Probably lowish six figures or so, and that was maybe, I don’t know, was it 18 months, 24 months ago, give or take something like that. I don’t know exactly, but…

[32:06] – Breaking Bottlenecks With Smart Hires and Delegation

I think I was around like $500,000 or $600,000.

Okay. So yeah, you went from, from that level now into seven figures, right? So you’ve created some really significant growth. I’m wondering what’s been the biggest kind of shift for you in terms of where you’re putting your attention or maybe a lesson that you needed to learn, but that was really pivotal or critical to kind of get you to that next level of where you are today?

Yeah. So, you know, I was telling you like, “I don’t know anything about digital marketing,” and blah, blah, blah. But I was still doing a lot of the stuff because like, I know it, but it’s not like my specialty or forte or I like to do it. It’s just I know kind of what to do. So about six months ago, we hired a Director of Digital Marketing to literally run that whole division, which freed me up significantly to go and focus on what I’m good at, which is sales and marketing because I obviously, you know, I feel the pain and I can talk about it. So that’s really helped out a lot. 

The other thing is really like that, that performance-based pay with my, with our consulting team. It’s been huge because it just frees me up so much because they’re the ones that are solving the problems. They’re the ones dealing with the clients on the day-to-day. So I don’t have to be fighting the battles for them or with them. I can coach them through it, but I don’t have to be sucked in as the bottleneck.

Right. And when you hired the consultants, did they already have home services, you know, experience? Like, did they already have a level of expertise that you felt, “Oh yeah, they’re good to go,” pretty much from day one just with some minimal training? Or did they require a lot of training to essentially learn what you knew?

Yeah, I got it—I actually kind of did this backwards. So the first one that I hired, she worked with me at Enterprise, and she was in pharmaceutical sales, and she’s a really good salesperson and great customer service, great account management skills, but she literally knew nothing about digital marketing. And so I spent like the first two, three months coaching her, and then when I got her new clients, I was running calls for her with her on the calls. And it was kind of hard to break that relationship with those people because I was still intertwined. And now she’s been with us for like three and a half years or something, and she’s, you know, crushing it on her own. 

The second consultant that I hired had digital marketing for local service business experience, five years of it. When she came on, she brought so many SOPs and processes that were like, like, “Okay, let’s button all of our stuff up really good.” And she was much easier to get going. But she knows a little too much. So sometimes she gets into the weeds with our backend team instead of just focusing on being a great consultant. She can get bogged down with like, “Well, this technical thing is not like this, like that.” So it’s kind of a blessing and a curse. Now that we have such great backend processes, the guy, I just hired another consultant a couple months ago, and he has no marketing experience. But I don’t—I realized, like, at this point, it’s better that they don’t because we have such a great backend team, I want them to rely on those people and just focus on giving great service and serving their clients.

And why’d you hire him? So if he doesn’t have the marketing experience, what was the experience or what did you feel made him a good fit and like you feeling obviously good long-term potential as well?

Yeah. So he actually used to be my manager at Enterprise and he has really good business acumen. Like he can have a very high-level conversation and build instant credibility with people, which when you’re dealing with other business owners, you need that level of communication. The digital marketing, it can be hard for the people that are, you know, the doers of digital marketing to be able to have those high-level conversations and analyze data and process it and give them consultative feedback. He can already do that. I know from his experience. He just says they need it fine-tuned a little for digital marketing. And then the Google AdWords, SEO, all that stuff, he can have a backend team support person on a call with him to help walk him through it.

Right. Got you. 

What’s a big challenge for you right now, Phil? Like what do you spend time thinking about? What do you spend time trying to kind of work through in your head as you think about where you want to take the business in terms of that next level?

[35:58] – Preparing for Scale and the Next Stage of Growth

Yeah. So we really need to, you know, figure out the SOPs and processes that are going to scale the business. The ones we have right now, they’re not broken, but you can see there’s leaks and all this stuff. So it’s a balance of, you know, pushing the team and not really hopping into it because like, I don’t need to be the one to solve it. I could, but like, it’s their job to solve it. So that’s been a little testy because some team members like, “Well, why don’t you hop in and help this? You know, why do you just let them?” And it’s like, “I’m a coach, not necessarily a player.” So that whole shift. And then the other piece, which is the sales and marketing side of things, it’s not realistic. I mean, you could get there to $10 million to have a salesperson as the founder, but it doesn’t really make sense to actually, like, build a business. So that’s kind of the next thing that I have to tackle and figure out who’s going to be doing the sales calls and how are they going to convert at my level or close to what I’m doing and what’s that going to look like. So that’s kind of the thing that I’m trying to figure out what’s going to happen next.

And what are you most excited about when you think about the future of what Phlash Consulting is going to be?

Yeah. I was just talking to one of our team members about this. Like, if someone were to offer me, you know, $10 million right now, I wouldn’t sell the company. It’s like, I just love what I do every single day that it’s just like, yeah, I don’t know what else I would do. So it’s just fun helping people grow their business, seeing wins. Like, we had a client that went from $1.5 million to $3 million in 12 months. And they’re like, “It’s the Phlash effect! Oh my gosh!” And then you have, you know, team members coming on that are making $80,000, and then after 12 months, they’re making $140,000 or something. And it’s like everyone’s winning, everyone’s doing great work, like everyone likes what they’re doing. I don’t know where, what else I would do that gives me that, you know, level of joy.

Yeah. What do you do on a daily basis or a regular basis that you feel kind of gives you a bit of a superpower, whether it’s health related or mindset related or, you know, studying or anything that you kind of do on a regular basis that you feel really contributes to the success that you’ve created?

[37:57] – Phil’s Daily Habits for Creativity, Learning, and Energy

Yeah. I would say three things. First, I listen to podcasts every single day. And that could be like, you know, your podcast, this podcast, or other podcasts. I listen to a lot of podcasts because I didn’t have a mentor group or like, you know, I wasn’t surrounded by these other business owners. And that’s a lot of, you know, the five people that you’re around is like what you’re like. And I realized, like, with podcasts, YouTube, you can basically like be around five people without contributing and just listening to them. So that’s been a big part. Also reading. I read 5, 10 pages every single day of different books. And then also exercise. So I doubled up my podcast and my exercise. I walk from like 4:00 to 4:30, 4:00 to 5:00 around that, and I listen to podcasts. So those things, because I just get so many ideas out of that, and I’m like, “Oh man, I got to do this. I should do that.” I would say those are the big things. And another really important part of that is when I get on calls with business owners and I’m like, “Yeah, you know, Profit First or these different things,” it just shows that you’re active, you’re learning, you’re getting better. And that definitely helped.

Awesome. 

Well, Phil, I want to thank you so much for coming on and always great to catch up with you. I’m excited to see where the business, you know, continues to go to as you continue to grow it. I want to may also make sure that people can learn more about you and about your company. Where’s the best place for them to go?

Yeah. Well, if you are a home service business listening to this, doing $1 to $10 million, you know, the whole thing, you can go to Phlash—

I don’t know how many of those we have. I got to tell you, I don’t know how many home service business owners, but get it in there. Get that call to action.

Phlash Consulting, P-H-L-A-S-Hconsulting.com. You can go there. If not, just hit me up on LinkedIn, Phil Risher. I usually hang out there. Happy to, you know, talk, hop on a call, do whatever, add value. So that’s the best place.

All right, Phil. Thanks so much.

Important Links:

Phil Risher

Phlash Consulting Website

Phlash Consulting YouTube

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