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Building an agency is rarely as clean as the highlight reels make it look. For Brandon Spears, the journey included lost revenue, maxed-out credit cards, a niche pivot during COVID, and the pressure of figuring out client acquisition before the runway disappeared.
In this Mastermind Speaker Series session, Brandon shares the hard-earned lessons behind building multiple six- and seven-figure agencies, including what actually makes Facebook ads for agencies work, why trust is the real sales bottleneck, and how agency owners can simplify their funnels, offers, and operations. His story is a practical reminder that growth is not just about hustle. It is about grit, positioning, proof, and systems that support scale.
That! Company’s voice is built around clarity, confidence, and care, with content that is helpful, professional, and focused on making agency partners’ lives easier. This session fits that spirit well: direct, practical, and refreshingly honest.
From Almost Shutting Down To $130K Per Month
Brandon did not begin with perfect conditions. He explained that he was “pretty much forced” to start his agency during a difficult season of life. Early on, he picked up local clients by approaching businesses with poor or nonexistent Google Business Profiles and offering digital marketing help.
Then COVID hit.
At the time, he had grown to roughly $15,000 per month in revenue, but many of his law niche clients paused or canceled almost overnight. He dropped back to around $3,500 per month and had to rethink how he would acquire clients when in-person selling was no longer an option.
That challenge led him into online client acquisition and, eventually, Facebook ads.
The road was not smooth. Brandon and his partner were about $18,000 into credit card debt before they closed their first significant paid-in-full client. Then, in one Friday evening, they collected roughly $22,500, paid off the credit card, and found the momentum they needed. Within three months, they reached about $130,000 per month and took on around 60 clients.
The lesson was not “take reckless risks.” It was this: once the offer, funnel, and sales process clicked, growth accelerated quickly.
Why Facebook Ads For Agencies Usually Fail
When agency owners say Facebook ads are not working, Brandon often sees the same underlying issue.
It is not always the ad platform.
It is not always the targeting.
It is not even always the closer.
The deeper issue is trust.
Brandon described the current market as a “trust recession,” noting that prospects have been burned often enough that they are more cautious than ever. In his view, people usually do not say no because of price. They say no because they do not trust the agency enough yet.
That makes social proof one of the most important assets an agency can build.
Before running aggressive paid ads, agencies need:
- Case studies
- Testimonials
- Clear client results
- A strong demo or sales deck
- A compelling offer
- Credibility through references or “power partners”
As Brandon put it, a great closer can struggle with a weak offer and no proof, while a mediocre closer can perform well with the right offer, demo, and social proof.
Build Trust Before You Try To Scale
For newer agencies, Brandon recommends focusing heavily on credibility before expecting paid ads to produce high-ticket sales consistently.
That may mean taking on trial clients, working with a revenue-share structure, or starting with people who already know and trust you. The point is to create wins you can document.
This is where many agency owners skip a step. They want to scale ads before they have proof that their offer converts, their fulfillment delivers, and their clients can speak positively about the experience.
A better early-stage approach is:
- Get a few clients through warm relationships, trials, or low-friction offers.
- Deliver strong results.
- Turn those results into testimonials and case studies.
- Use that proof in your ads, landing pages, VSL, and sales calls.
- Scale once the trust assets are in place.
It is not glamorous, but it works. And in agency growth, “boring but profitable” tends to beat “fancy but fragile.”
The Simple Funnel Brandon Uses For Agency Client Acquisition
One of the most practical parts of the session was Brandon’s explanation of his agency funnel.
He does not recommend overcomplicated funnels for agencies trying to generate sales calls. In fact, he has seen simple funnels outperform expensive, highly designed ones.
His basic funnel structure is:
- Facebook ad
- Simple survey landing page
- Qualification questions
- Booking page
- Thank-you page with a short VSL
The survey qualifies the prospect before they reach the calendar. For example, in a contractor niche, Brandon might ask whether the person owns the business, whether they are licensed, and what revenue range they fall into. If they do not meet the criteria, they are filtered out before they hit the conversion pixel.
That last point matters. He emphasized optimizing for qualified conversions, not just cheap leads.
Why The VSL Matters
Brandon places a short video sales letter on the thank-you page after someone books a call. In his current process, the VSL explains what the service does, how the software works, how lead generation works, and what the starting price is.
This does two useful things.
First, it educates prospects before the call. They arrive with a clearer understanding of the offer.
Second, it increases trust. The prospect has already seen the process, the platform, and the pricing. That makes the sales conversation shorter and more focused.
Brandon even said that if a prospect shows up without watching the VSL, he watches it with them before continuing the pitch. That may sound simple, but it creates consistency. The prospect gets the same core message every time.
Choosing A Niche: Personality Fit Matters
When asked which niches agency owners should consider, Brandon pushed back against the idea that there is one perfect niche.
His view: every niche is saturated, and every niche can work.
Instead of chasing whatever niche someone else says is hot, agency owners should look for alignment between:
- Their experience
- Their communication style
- Their confidence in the industry
- The size of the market
- Their ability to understand the client’s world
Brandon had success in blue-collar and contractor niches because he understood the work, the language, and the people. He grew up around contracting, windows, doors, and home services, which made those conversations more natural.
That is a valuable reminder. If you can speak your prospect’s language without sounding like you memorized it from a webinar, you have an advantage.
The Power Partner Strategy
A “power partner,” as Brandon defines it, is a happy client or industry contact who can help push skeptical prospects over the fence.
This person acts as a reference, brand advocate, or credibility bridge. If a prospect is interested but hesitant, they can speak with someone who has already worked with you and had a good experience.
Brandon’s approach is simple: when he finds a client who likes the service and communicates well, he asks whether they would be open to being a reference. In some cases, he offers a sales commission for closed deals.
For agencies still building their brand, this can be a powerful shortcut to trust. Not a shortcut around doing good work, of course. More like a shortcut made possible because you already did the work.
Facebook Ad Structure: Test Cleanly Or Learn Nothing
Brandon also shared a useful framework for ad testing.
Many agencies lump multiple interests into one ad set. The problem is that when the campaign succeeds or fails, they do not know which audience actually caused the result.
His recommendation is to test one audience per ad set.
For example:
- Broad targeting in one ad set
- A single industry interest in another ad set
- A separate relevant interest in another ad set
This gives cleaner data and makes it easier to understand what is working.
He also warned against overloading campaigns with too many creatives when the budget is small. If you are spending $25 to $50 per day, running too many ads can prevent any single creative from getting enough data. His suggested starting point is one image and one video per ad set.
Creative Is Becoming More Important Than Targeting
Brandon noted that Facebook’s targeting options are changing, with some ad accounts already having fewer manual targeting controls. His takeaway was clear: agencies need to get better at creative.
As platforms lean more heavily on algorithms and broad targeting, the copy, video, hook, and offer do more of the work. The algorithm needs signals, and your creative provides them.
That means your ads should make it obvious who you serve, what problem you solve, and why the prospect should care.
For agencies running paid ads, this is a shift worth taking seriously. The old game was often about finding hidden targeting combinations. The new game is increasingly about giving the platform strong creative and letting it find the right people.
What To Hire For First As Your Agency Grows
When asked about first hires, Brandon broke agency time drains into three buckets:
- Sales
- Customer service
- Fulfillment
Sales and customer service require set hours. Fulfillment can often happen outside normal business hours.
Because of that, he recommends hiring based on which function creates the biggest bottleneck or which one the agency owner dislikes most. For him, onboarding and customer service were bigger drains than setting sales appointments, so his first hire is often a customer service representative.
This is a smart way to think about hiring. Do not just copy another agency’s org chart. Hire to remove the constraint that is actually slowing your growth.
Key Takeaways For Agency Owners
Brandon’s session was packed with practical advice, but the biggest themes were straightforward:
- Grit matters, especially when the agency journey gets uncomfortable.
- Facebook ads for agencies can work, but only when the offer, proof, and funnel support the sale.
- Trust is often the real bottleneck, not price.
- Simple funnels can outperform complicated ones.
- Case studies, testimonials, and power partners make closing easier.
- Niche selection should fit your experience and personality.
- Clean testing matters if you want usable ad data.
- Creative is becoming more important as targeting options change.
- Hire based on your real bottlenecks, not someone else’s playbook.
Agency growth does not come from one magic tactic. It comes from building the right offer, earning trust, following up consistently, and creating systems that help you scale without becoming the bottleneck.
And for agencies that want to grow without carrying every fulfillment, sales support, and client communication burden alone, partnering with a team that can operate under your brand can create room to work on the agency instead of staying trapped inside it. Learn more about our White Label PPC support.
