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Mike Allton: Now, have you ever felt the urge to break free from the corporate grind and start your venture? Of course, you have. That’s why you have an agency, but the leap from a secure corporate job to the uncertain world of entrepreneurship is daunting, and filled with risks and unknowns.
Joe Nyahay did just that, leaving behind a stable corporate career to build his own agency—a move that could have gone either way, but, in just six months, proved to be a resounding success. Today, Joe, the founder of LFG Business Group, joins us to unpack the lessons he learned from this dramatic transition. From overcoming initial fears of financial instability to crafting a successful digital marketing strategy and leveraging workflow automation, Joe’s journey is a treasure trove of insights for aspiring entrepreneurs.
If you’re contemplating making a similar leap or simply want to learn from Joe’s experience, this episode’s for you.
Leaving Corporate America Behind
Mike Allton: Let’s just start (if you could) by walking us through that decision that you’ve made to leave corporate America and what motivated you to take that leap.
Joe Nyahay: Sure. Well, I think, in many cases for folks, it either happens one of two ways, right? Either you decide to leave corporate America, or corporate America makes the decision to take you out of it.
- This was a case where I was shocked in the sense that I was prepping to leave corporate America and build my agency in the backend.
- It was just a matter of that last little push.
- And, if I could paint a picture, it was almost like I had my backpack for skydiving on. I was looking over the cliff, and I was ready to go. I kept looking back and now’s the time. Is it not? Maybe I’m not too sure. And, just as I took my final look over, that’s when the CEO of the last company kicked me and pushed me off without me even knowing that it was going to happen. So I was prepared but also not prepared.
- I faced a whole realm of day-to-day activities and thought processes that I didn’t even know existed—but ultimately I think I knew that for me to control my destiny, for me to take every bit of imaginative thought that I had built up over the years for creating an agency helping businesses do what I love to do day to day, [that] the only way to do that is, well, if you work for yourself. I’m thrilled I made that decision. I had two options then: Do we either go back into corporate America or grow this agency to blow it up and be what I wanted it to be?
- And it was the latter. I chose to grow the agency. I connected with a lot of people. I learned a ton. I networked, and it was extremely scary to do so, but I’m here to say that the value behind it and what I’ve been able to achieve and that anyone can achieve, honestly, if they believe in themselves, and the direction they’re going, and have a framework can happen.
Mike Allton: I know a lot of the folks that I’m connected with are going to resonate with everything that you just said. They’re working for Meta, Google, and Amazon in big tech roles and constantly facing actual layoffs or the threat of layoffs. You know, we’re recording this as mid-2024 layoffs continue for a lot of these organizations, but I’m wondering:
What were some of those fears that you had in mind?
You talked about staring off the edge of the cliff. You had your parachute, but you’re like, “I’m not sure if I want to do that yet for sure.”
What was going through your mind? What was holding you back at that moment?
Joe Nyahay: Well, for 15 years, I was used to getting paid on the 1st and the 15th. And, like many other analytical thinking folks, I had a massive Google Sheet that was built out for all my finances. I knew what was coming into the penny, what was going out to the penny. It was being invested the whole nine yards and looking off that cliff.
Metaphorically, there’s no 1st and 15th anymore. “When will you get paid? How much? These are invoices that are being paid. Are they being paid on time?” There was a whole other realm. You can only do so much work yourself, and then you have to hire a team and then grow that, and then leverage other companies to help you grow. And there are multiple avenues to go down.
I think that the biggest fear was I had this much in “I need to pay each month. Am I going to be able to easily surpass that?” and not worry because the 1st and the 15th were ingrained in my mind. And now it’s who pays when you get paid. And hopefully that all lines up, and it all adds together. Right? That was my biggest fear.
Mike Allton: That makes a lot of sense. And I’m going to want to come back to that for a second, but I also want to go back to that moment after you’d been laid off.
You had that choice, right? Go back to corporate America or start your agency. You decided to start the agency.
What were some of the first steps that you took? What did you do to set yourself up for success?
Joe Nyahay: I think we use the word “success”, and it can mean several different things.
If I could turn back, would I change several things when I started? Absolutely.
However, a few of the bits of framework that I knew worked well, that I’d like to say I prepped for. I mean, I have a whole bunch of books back here, and there are lots of business books on the framework of building a business, how you go about not so much working in the business but working on the business to grow it, revenue-generating activities. All kinds of stuff. And I think after reading all those through and through and doing this on the side while still in corporate, that was the leading thing that helped me prepare for these next steps.
You Can’t Always Believe the Gurus
Going live with the agency, if you will, I knew that I learned very quickly the fundamentals that these YouTubers teach you: “Just start your agency or SaaS company right off on the side right here. Here’s a template to go and do so. Buy this course. And in no time, you’ll be making this much money.”
There is no authenticity in it. There’s no genuine care behind those and they fail quickly. It does not work.
And there’s a lot of gurus out there that say, “Well if you do this, this, this, and this, sure, it’ll work.”
If they’re leaving out several key components, and those key components are the networking that they’re leveraging, the companies that they’re connecting with that are offsetting a lot of 1099 contract workers and such to grow the company that is bringing them leads, bringing them resources, etc.
There’s a lot on the backend that they’re not showing on YouTube.
The one key thing that was working was I was showing genuine care to the folks that I was talking with. I was taking extra time to learn about their business and then really offering additional lead magnets to them in essence, in person afterward, giving them a call. “Hey, I enjoyed a conversation. Here’s a five-step PDF on these few things that could help you.” And the discussion that we talked about, follow up with them. “Here are three more things I think would be tremendously helpful to you. Here’s a podcast I just did that talked about something you exactly do in your business. It’d be great to listen to, I think, and would be of value to fix this one problem that you have.”
That is what helped scale the agency. ‘Cause now people are talking about me, and they’re sharing the value about me. And they’re saying, “Joe, in a world of corporate America where no one cares, it feels like you just go in, just blow their money, and leave—this was different, which is what I wanted all along.”
I just fell back on the fundamentals of “I care” and that worked.
Finding a Framework That Works
Mike Allton: I know many agency owners, whether they were following a guru when they started or just following their gut and thinking, you know what? I need to focus on the service that I’m good at. And I maybe did it for a couple of clients, and I’m just going to start an agency. They go into it without all that prep that you did. I think that’s one of the huge differentiators.
You spent time thinking about, “How am I going to structure this? How am I going to work on the business and not just in the business? Was there a particular framework or structure that you went with?”
Joe Nyahay: Ooh, boy. I would say it’s a combination of six or seven books.
Honestly, I follow Alex Hormozi, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Dan Martell. Kent Billingsley has another book that sells, Entrepreneur Millionaire.
Overall, I wanted to define the key thing: What is the problem that people are having? What is the driven solution that I’ve created and what makes me unique?
I use the same framework with all my clients, with coaches, consultants, businesses, and e-commerce, you name it right there. [If] they have a cookie-cutter website with cookie-cutter copywriting, I’ll help you as a business coach: “I don’t know anything about you. What makes you unique? You just sound like everyone else.”
When I redefined all of that, that was a key differentiator that had people going, “Oh, okay. As opposed to like, huh, what do you do? Like, what makes you different? Like, I’m onto the next.” So that funnel-building mindset and learning from—I’ll call them gurus—but gurus that have brought in hundreds of millions of dollars for their company and have proven it. I’ll follow those all day.
Nothing against young YouTubers with this stuff, but the guys that have success with one client and feel like they can make a whole company around that and try and coach on it. That’s not how it works.
Mike Allton: Exactly right. They don’t understand all the other variables that went into making that one situation successful and may not apply to anybody else’s.
And I love that you’ve brought this unique perspective. I mean, running an agency is not a religion. There is no prescribed right way or wrong way to do it. There are a lot of options, and you’ve looked at all those, and you took the best parts from all of them, which is fantastic.
I want to go back to the financial part for a second because you touched on something that is a huge fear for anybody who’s thinking about going out on their loan or missing out on those regular paychecks.
How did you manage your finances in those early stages when you knew that income was going to be so uncertain?
Joe Nyahay: Leading up to that point, I had no idea what actual anxiety was. No clue. Never had it. It was never felt for anything. And always in my life, if I needed to make more money, I was able to find a way to do so. It was never a problem [until] that point when I was working with the finances and growing the business after corporate.
Found out what anxiety was, and I was constantly looking at the finances.
“It was tough. I would say that it was, without question, the hardest part behind it, because now you’re burning through some savings. You’re potentially adding stuff up on credit card debt. You’re rapidly trying to bring in new business.
And by doing so, it almost comes across to the prospect and leads as, “Please, please, please come through and pay this invoice. Please.”
It can’t come across that way.”
There were a lot of levels from: “Am I going to make ends meet this month? Is this the right method?” Then my mind goes down a path of shiny object syndrome. “Well, is this type of agency that I built out the right one? Well, maybe I need to switch to this type of SaaS, or maybe I need to change my product offering here. Maybe I need to change this.”
All of that is, I think, going to happen with each agency owner or someone who leaps in from corporate America to start their business. But ultimately, if I look back now, I would have just stuck with the exact thing I came up with, and taken the fear out of it, and said, “Joe, just [stick with] what you have. Trust your gut, and stick with what you’ve done. You know, that’s great value. You like doing it. It’s provided value for others when you’re growing that agency. While you’re still in corporate America, you’ve got people, a group of fans that have done this with other business centers, etc, that say this is great value. Why are you trying to change it all over the place? You can’t go and replace the entire corporate salary as a director or VP overnight. That’s not going to happen.”
I think the patience level was, whoo, that was the hardest component right there. Thinking I needed to remake my entire salary in 30 days? That’s not going to happen.
If I were to do this all over again, I would probably say, I would have given myself mentally a little bit more time to reach the revenue goals that I wanted to hit in a shorter period, you know, realistic timeframe. If I can do that in six to nine months, fantastic. I wanted to do it in 15 days. And I mean, every mentor I was talking to was like, “I mean, hats off to you for that drive motivation, but you just started a company yesterday.” I was merging two agencies into one. It was now going to be the me agency.
You have to grow your audit. You have to build up a bunch of content for this. This is going to take some time. And I was trying to move too fast.
I think if I were able to slow down, appreciate the value that I was bringing, know it does work, and just take it step by step, and believe in myself. And, with that, I mean, the revenue I was doubling, tripling, quadrupling almost every month—it just fell into place easily.
The mindset shift I had to do was I needed to change my mindset from “I need to make this much revenue each month and have bills to pay.” But instead, change that to “I want to help this many companies each month and grow that, and with that comes revenue.”
So it was able to push that thought of dollar signs and frustrations out of my mind and put it back in my mind helping businesses, which is what I do, and that work.
Mike Allton: That is an incredibly powerful mindset shift.
Branching from You to Other Employees
I know everybody listening can resonate with the idea of looking at the number of prospects, the number of outstanding invoices, and writing those wonderful emails. I’m just circling back to see if we can continue this conversation, right? Touching base to see if we can get this invoice paid. You’re focused on the revenue, and you’ve got bills to pay. You may have employees at this point. Did you have employees at that point, or is it just you?
Joe Nyahay: It was just me doing, I would say, 80 percent of the work.
Now I had VAs that were helping with the tedious tasks here and there, but it was just me. I needed to learn how to close well. I wanted to learn all the areas of digital marketing outside what I didn’t know. I’m a mechanical engineer by trade, so the data, the details, and analytics are where my mind is at. The strategy thought process was also there, but I needed to redefine where that was in my mind. So I didn’t want to be the greatest at every level there. I know what I’m good at in marketing for sure. Do I need to be the greatest closer in the world? Eventually, I’ll hire a sales team, but to get started, I have to close these calls. So here I am reading books on how to close, objective handling, etc. And now I’m at a point where I can pass that off and have others do so, which is great, but it took time. I was trying to move too fast. It took time.
What are some of the other differences that you’ve noticed between your role in corporate America and now your role in agency life and running your own business?
Joe Nyahay: Oh, boy. I would say, in agency life, even the 1099 workers I have with me and the VAs and the companies that I work with and partner with—to leverage going back to that care component in corporate, it feels like it is a world of difference between caring about what you’re doing day to day.
If whoever’s watching is in corporate America right now, it may sound familiar to you where the alarm clock goes off. You’re getting up, and who wants to get up, get changed in the attire they want you in, put on your badge and your belt, and go into the office? “Hi, Judy. How’s it going? How are you, Tom?” Blah. Every day for the rest of your life, Monday to Friday. It’s miserable, miserable.
Now I don’t need an alarm clock. I can’t wait to get up and start doing and working with clients and building more into my company and hopping on podcasts and speaking with you and going on LinkedIn live and going to events and speaking at events. It used to be a draining thing of “I’m going in and I’m doing some work.” Yes. I enjoy this work, but does anyone care about what I’m doing? Does the product even work?
I could go on and on and on and on and on.
There are no aspects—or very few, if any—in corporate, whereas in agency life, I feel like once the ball gets rolling, and (obviously, if you have a good product, and there’s nothing scammy or snake oil about what you have), that validation is just injected into you daily of great work and compliments and care and people wanting to speak and talk with you. And that replacement was great. This is why I live life. This is the fulfillment I’ve been seeking, and I would never go back to corporate.
Mike Allton: Now, Joe, earlier, you told me about this digital funnel for your business that you set up.
Why was it so important? What were some of the elements maybe that you focused on? How did that contribute to your success?
Joe Nyahay: When starting an agency, it’s a person of one or just a few helpers at that point.
- There are so many aspects that could be automated and building out that funnel.
- So ultimately how do people find out about you? Where’s that top of the funnel? Where’s the awareness at what stage comes next?
- And after I built out, I mean, I have a whiteboard here. I would just write down loads of ideas of what that looked like. And then once those ideas were all created, how can I automate all those ideas and how can I have it on turnkey where the funnels just work on autopilot for lead generation, start nurturing them to start, start showing them value whether it be through automated content that’s put out on multiple platforms or let’s say cold emails that are going out and nurturing in those areas there—who knows what it could be? It could be several different ways, right?
- Once I find all the different areas of how I’m reaching people, the type of content I’m giving them the value that has to be behind it. Because that’s another thing, too. I was just starting to make content based on stuff that was on YouTube that had a high view count. No, when I changed that to just who cares about the Sony Camera that’s here and having an expensive guy on five or edit all the stuff behind you?
- I started doing selfie videos where I would just be recording like this, walking down the street or in a lobby or working somewhere. It skyrocketed because there was no script. The care behind it was raw, real. A couple of three, four quick tips and such like that. But I learned, yeah, everything cookie-cutter out there needed to be removed from my mindset.
- And if I just did it natural and authentic and everything I wrote down on my whiteboard for building my funnel and automating and connecting with folks, I would be saving a ton of time. It would be related to the problem that they have, and ultimately, there’d be a couple of icebreakers in there where they would say: “This is okay. I like how Joe has talked about this, this, and this. I want to learn more and schedule a call.”
Mike Allton: I love that you’re differentiating yourself in that way, by saying, “Look, I was doing these things, which is what I’m already doing for other clients, and I’m applying what I know about marketing, and learning,” which is another thing you mentioned that I thought was powerful.
You tried some things. And it worked so much. [You] tried some other things, and you found success in those endeavors. So I’m also curious about your personal growth.
What have you experienced through this transition? How has it impacted your approach to business or life in general?
Joe Nyahay: Oh, wow. I would say there’s been a huge impact there.
Connecting with others. Even just with my personal life and how I look at my day-to-day through my lens and in my head and then my relationship with my wife and even with other people and how I connect with them—I knew the book How to Win Friends and Influence People was powerful. And I read that years ago. Use as much as I could in my corporate life and just day-to-day life, right? But that book is my day-to-day now, how I talk and speak with people.
Mindshift shifting. Also, the mindset that was a big mindset shift I had was being optimistic or pessimistic. And I always believe we’ll figure it out. I’ll make it work. I had a client that said they’re interested. Great. Let me just add it in as someone who I closed on. I was constantly disappointed when people wouldn’t follow through. And there’s a lot of that in agency life. You’re going to have people that just want to learn about you. Maybe they’re trying to copycat what you’re doing. I changed that to almost like a pessimistic mindset instead of being upset and frustrated when a lot of people weren’t closing on the deal. I changed my mindset to: “They’re going to eventually close at some point. I’ll just keep doing my typical steps. I do this as a follow-through. I’m not going to get overly excited about it.” When they do close, I’m pleasantly surprised as opposed to frustrated. That shift just in business, I feel, was one where a load of stress could be lifted off my shoulders, especially in the early days, too. It was better to be pleasantly surprised by constantly pushing out as opposed to expecting everyone to close on what I had to offer.
I still keep that optimistic mindset in my day-to-day life. I know I need to turn it on and off.
Mike Allton: This is the real challenge when it comes to running a successful agency, ’cause you said it best earlier that you deeply care about your clients.
That is one of your main differentiators. That’s not only between you and corporate America, but you and many other agencies just don’t care about their clients. Or at least they don’t come off as caring, but—to your point—you want to show empathy with prospects when you’re having discovery calls and that sort of thing with them, but you can’t care because that’s too emotionally damaging when nothing happens on the road. So, that’s a challenge, right? We have to figure out where is that line. When do we start to truly care about them? When they sign the contract, when they become an actual customer, then we can invest in them emotionally and professionally and have that caring about their business and their outcomes.
Joe Nyahay: They’re not a client until they pay. And I feel like that has been ingrained in my head. I kept saying, “I got a new client. I got a new client. Did they pay? No, they’re going to pay. They are not a client until they pay.”
What would you say are the top three lessons you’ve learned from leaving corporate America and becoming an entrepreneur/your own agency owner?
Joe Nyahay: Patience [is] one that I brought up earlier. I was trying to move too quickly. I think another one would be believing in yourself. Now I’m an avid person who is a go-getter and says, “You can make it happen.” I’m climbing the tree, all this motivational stuff in the background.
We’ve learned, listened, heard, etc. We can listen to hundreds of hours on it, but at the end of the day, do you truly believe that the contributions you’re making grow your agency? Are you going to meet that milestone target goal that you’re trying to achieve? And what is that milestone target goal?
If it’s a monetary one, my suggestion would be to switch that from a monetary one to still a quantitative one instead of how many dollars I’m making, “how many clients can I help” and to build a team, a group of raving fans who enjoy the value and want to keep telling other people about that.
And then I would say a lot of them would be through lessons we’ve learned from thinking here: the value of time. What’s another one? I think time is our most valuable asset. Life goes by fast. Now I’m not 90 years old and can preach on this stuff as some guy on top of a mountain or anything. I’m under 40, but after all the 15 years in corporate, I look at it and think, “What have I learned?”
Well, I feel like the mountain of data that I’ve learned in 15 years is almost the same size as the mountain I’ve learned in like a year of running an agency. And I think the time that we put into corporate is what you want out of life ultimately, right? What, when everyone has an end date, do you want to leave a legacy? What is it, right? And how much time do you have to accomplish that task? And I think when I was out of corporate and was growing this time was the biggest thing for me. I don’t remember the last time I worked a 40-hour week. It’s 60-70+ all the time.
But I think that the value of my time now I can map out what my day looks like, meeting my wife for lunch or something like that.
That’s just the little things in life that care, right? Where to your family, to friends, whatever it may be, you now can move those time blocks around a bit and manage your time to be able to do those things where a nine to five for your whole life, you’re in a cage, you come in here, you stay here, you can’t leave, etc.
And looking back, I could never imagine going back into something like that. So, those would be my three.
Mike Allton: You may not be a 90-year-old man on a mountain, but you were definitely a Sherpa here. You’re sharing so much wisdom.
I love the fact you’ve touched on this a couple of times throughout the interview that you are so focused on reading. I can appreciate the value in that because what you’re doing is investing time upfront and leveling up your skills, knowledge, and information. You’re leaning on what other people have already accomplished. You’ve truly accomplished it. They’re not just putting up a five-minute YouTube video, right?
They’ve developed their thoughts, and they’ve put them into a book that you can consume and learn from, and that is helping you to save time and be more successful down the road. I love that time was one of your three most important things. I did an exercise early on where I identified that love, friendship, and time are my most important values. These are the things that I care about the most. I wear a little medallion thing around my neck that reminds me of those values. It was important for me, first of all, because it helped me recognize that when people waste my time, that’s why I get annoyed at them because they’re conflicting with one of my values, and that’s good for me to know because they’re not necessarily doing it on purpose, but it’s also, as someone who’s now on the other side of 50 and realizing I have less time ahead than I have behind me, it’s reinforcing within me that I need to be more mindful of how I am spending my time and how I’m investing in the things that matter most.
Folks, I’ve got just one more question, for Joe. I’m wondering if you could share for anyone who’s going through a similar transition, either they’re thinking about it, or maybe they’ve just gone through this. They’re listening to this podcast, and they’re looking for ways that they can grow, improve, or scale their agency in a certain way.
What advice would you give them to help them succeed?
Joe Nyahay: A bit of it would be stuff that they probably heard all over the internet already, which I fully agree with now.
I’m in my phase of “find something you’re good at and be the best at it.” Find out how you can do better than everyone else out there at this component. And maybe that better piece is the customer service behind it. Maybe that better piece is an additional component and a value stack. Who knows, right? It may be additional mentorship. Maybe it’s a community, maybe it’s a course. But when it’s surrounded by something that you enjoy, what do we see?
Enjoy what you’re good at. I’m looking outside in Dallas right now at a bunch of tall buildings and whatnot, and they’re filled with people who go in who got a degree, that they’re not happy with doing a job, that they’re not happy with just to make ends meet, and they’re not happy. So if you find something you’re good at that you enjoy, that is probably the most important one right there.
Find a mentor. Any other advice I would give, I would just say, find a mentor. Talk to them about what you’re looking to do. Maybe it’s two-hour-long calls a month, but there are loads of opportunities to speak with a mentor out there. One that I spoke with in the early days—I mean, each time we would talk, I would go on and on about what I think needs to be done, or it’s not working, or this or that. And their voice to me was—there were lots of lessons I learned there, but it was almost always “Slow down. Take a look around. What were the key things that we talked about originally that you were good at that you want to focus on? Why are you shifting from those?” It was a very Socratic method of him asking me questions that I knew the answer to, but I had covered them with dirt. I think finding a really good mentor upfront, someone who’s been a CEO, a leader, a business coach, etc, is critical.
Believe in yourself. Believe in doing the hard work and value, and trust your heart and intuition of what will work.
[Related post: Self-Care and Scaling: Balancing Both for a Successful Agency]
Mike Allton: That’s terrific advice. Many of the folks on this show have talked about it. They’ve mirrored what you said about focusing on what you do best and then finding ways to delegate all of this stuff. Because as an agency owner, you still are responsible for taxes, payroll, and sales, whether you’re good at it or not. And marketing and execution and everything else—that could go into that particular business.
I like the point about a mentor. I’ve also talked to people about joining a mastermind, creating your mastermind, not one of those paid groups that you join, right? But find several other friends who are also, in this case, starting agencies of their own. You don’t have to compete. They could be across the country. One’s a web design agency, one’s an SEO agency. You can even refer business back and forth. But have that monthly call where you’re sharing each other’s wins. You’re sharing each other’s challenges, right? And you will get so much more out of that. So thanks for sharing with us.
Joe Nyahay: Yeah. You’re not in this alone. There are a lot of people who want to share that value because if anything, hey, being a CEO or even a big company, it is lonely at the top. It is. And who do you go to?
Well, if you can go to other agency owners who have struggled or gone through that same step process as you are, that’s just more motivation for you. As you just said, I hundred percent agree with you. They’re connecting with other agency owners, and people who are looking to start the agency, and sharing those wins. Oh, man, it’s gold.
Mike Allton: That’s why we’ve got two communities at Agorapulse.
We have our Social Pulse Community. It’s a Facebook group that’s open to anyone, whether you’re an Agorapulse customer or not. You’ll find a lot of social media managers working for big corporate folks and thinking about going to agencies.
And then for agencies that do join Agorapulse, we have a private group called Agency Love that is just for them to network and share their wins and concerns and challenges, whether it’s technical stuff, like how are you dealing with Google’s AI overviews and the impact on SEO to the more esoteric, challenging things like, “Hey, I need to exit with my partner, and how do I navigate that” kind of a question that you might not have the resources built in to talk about?
You’ll find all of those linked in the show notes.
That’s all we’ve got, friends. Thank you for listening. Thanks, Joe, for joining us.
Don’t forget to find the Social Pulse Podcast Agency Edition on Apple and leave us a review. We’d love to know what you think. Until next time.