How to Unlock Hidden Revenue with a Non-Traditional Agency Model
Key Takeaways
- After leaving Andrew's team, Tristan spent about three months pitching several hundred business owners at networking events to find out what resonated.
- His highest-value work wasn't SEO or ads. It was breaking down a business, finding assets it already had, and turning them into quick wins.
- One session with a burned-out social media agency owner repositioned her around brand and culture work. She sold the new offer for 7,500 right away.
- A pavement management consultant with no sales process sent seven emails from Tristan's list. Two replies were worth about 40 grand.
- Send the proposal right before the call and walk through it live. Proposals sent cold get judged on the number alone.
- Tristan's biggest mistake was not being able to explain what he does. It cost him a prospect whose contracts run about half a million each.
Andrew Dymski hosted this episode with Tristan Ruml of Tortuga. Tristan had been on Andrew’s team before a hard transition at that business, and the two have been friends for about ten years. Nine months before this recording, Tristan left and started over. The episode is how he rebuilt: what he tested, what he sells now, and the mistake that cost him deals.
Several hundred pitches to find out what people would buy
Tristan had worked at an agency out of school and run his own. When he left Andrew’s team, the agency he’d been trying to build didn’t make sense to him anymore, so he went looking for what did.
I just started going to networking events and talked to several hundred business owners, just pitching them on different things to see what really resonated. I was like an addict for about three months, because I just needed it. First of all, I needed clients, but also because I wanted to figure out… I realized my highest value was not necessarily a traditional agency model. It’s more breaking down a business, finding assets or marketing assets and opportunities and leveraging them, so creating real quick wins for a business.
The mindset he had to drop was that an agency has to look like it does SEO or print ads. If the market needs something, you can build the business around it, and people will pay you if you can make them more money.
One session with a burned-out agency owner
Andrew asked for a recent win. The first was a social media agency owner Tristan met at a Columbus, Ohio networking event in April.
She’s like, well, I’m actually shutting everything down. Like, I’m done. I’m gonna go get a job. I can’t do this anymore. I’m so stressed out. I’m so burned out. She’d been doing it for two years. She’s like, on the outside everyone thinks I’m killing it, but I’m crushed.
They sat down for one session and broke down every past client engagement. Her biggest wins weren’t posts. Through review management for an urgent care group in Texas, she’d ended up fixing how staff treated patients and each other, and the business went on to open more locations.
It wasn’t like, oh, we did so well because of social media. It’s because she came in there and fixed core fundamental parts of the business that really just made the brand… She turned around and sold it for 7,500 after one session together.
Tristan called the repackaged offer a brand-culture mesh. Nobody sells it where they live, but similar businesses exist in California, Chicago, and New York.
Seven emails, two replies, 40 grand
The second win was a pavement management consultant who sells to cities and municipalities: 20 years of experience, a slow government sales cycle, and no sales process. They restructured the offer, built referral scripts, reworked the proposals, and then Tristan handed him a list.
We met last Tuesday and we put together a list. I’m like, you got to contact these people. These are the angles you’re gonna use. These are the scripts you’re gonna use… I followed up with him: how many emails did you send? He’s like, I sent seven emails. Okay, so what happened? Two people responded right away. He’s like, that’s 40 grand worth of business… He’s like, it’s gonna be multiple six figures booked out for 2019. He’s like, it’s unheard of. That’s gonna be like double the size of my business.
Tristan’s point about both wins: none of it was his SEO experience or Facebook ads. Everything they used to generate the business was already sitting inside the client’s business.
Send the proposal right before the call, not after
One fix came from a problem Tristan used to have himself (he credits an earlier Agency Journey episode for curing it): sending a proposal, then never hearing back, because the prospect looked at the number and decided without hearing the reasoning. The new rule: send the proposal right before the meeting and walk through the value live.
The next time he had one of those come through, he’s like, okay, I’m gonna follow Tristan’s process. He sent off - it was a local municipality - he sent off the proposal. He’s like, I drove in there, they had the proposal printed out there, we walked through it, we closed.
The mistake: he couldn’t explain what he did
Andrew asked for a lesson learned. Tristan’s answer was messaging, and it cost him deals when he most needed the money.
There was one account that I really wanted. Could have done really well for them. It was a B2B, really unsexy industry. Their contracts are worth like half a million… I really wanted to work with this guy, and you start putting that together and I just couldn’t explain what I did… It’s like, I gotta bring this to my partner and we’re gonna talk to him, and now you’re playing telephone, and now you can’t explain what the heck I do. Because now there goes the sale.
Walking away from all those networking events with only a handful of clients showed, he said, how poorly he explained himself. What helped was a copywriter who reframed everything around outcomes: what the client’s business looks like once the problem is fixed, and what keeps happening if it isn’t. For the deal he lost, that meant: not being able to explain what you do is costing you several million dollars a year.
When this was recorded, Tristan was heading into an October launch for a client going into 800 retailers through Whole Foods and Sprouts, acting as a part-time outsourced CMO. He’s most active on LinkedIn.