11:10Adam Erhart · Tutorial
How to Get Your First Agency Client (And How I'd Turn It Into $10K/Month)
An 11-minute playbook: one service, five clients, a stacked second offer, and the math that makes it add up.
June 5thThe argument in one line.
An agency that sells one service to one type of client with one pitch through one channel is up to ten times more likely to close than one that sells everything to everyone.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You run a marketing agency or freelance consulting practice and struggle to convert leads into paying clients.
- You have a long list of services you offer and cannot figure out why prospects keep saying they will think about it.
- You are just starting an agency and want a repeatable system before you try to add complexity.
- You sell to local service businesses and need a clear positioning angle that stands out from generic outreach.
SKIP IF…
- You already have a focused niche and a full client roster — this is entry-level positioning, not advanced retention or scaling strategy.
- You work with enterprise or mid-market clients where multi-service relationships are the expectation, not the exception.
The full version, fast.
The human brain does not respond to more options by making better decisions — it shuts down. The same study that proved this in a grocery store (six jam flavors vs. twenty-four, ten times the sales) predicts what happens when an agency pitches ten services: the prospect says they will think about it and never follows up. The fix is the One Block Method: choose one type of client, name one problem they pay to solve, build one offer around it, and pick one channel to find them. Commit to all four for ninety days before changing anything.
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00:00 – 00:52
01 · Why selling more makes it harder to close
Opens with the core claim — more services = fewer clients — and previews the One Block Method.
00:53 – 01:18
02 · Credibility setup
Host establishes authority: three 7-figure agencies, 1,500+ clients, now a solo one-person operation.
01:19 – 02:32
03 · The jam study — choice overload proven
Iyengar and Lepper 2000 experiment: 6 flavors sold 10x more than 24. Introduces choice overload.
02:33 – 03:19
04 · What choice overload looks like in a sales call
Recreates the overwhelmed-prospect moment: listing 9+ services until the brain glazes over.
03:20 – 03:47
05 · One Block Method overview
Names the framework: one offer, one person, one problem, one channel. Each step removes a decision for the prospect.
03:48 – 05:47
06 · Step 1 — One Person
Pick one vertical. Rejecting broad categories like small businesses. The niche referral flywheel.
05:48 – 07:43
07 · Step 2 — One Problem
Pick the one painful, expensive problem your niche has. For local service businesses: reviews, missed calls, or new customers.
07:43 – 10:57
08 · Step 3 — One Offer
Build the single service that solves the single problem. Example: Google review automation for landscapers at $197/month. Rule: no second offer until 10 paying clients.
10:57 – 13:20
09 · Step 4 — One Channel
Choose inbound or outbound. Recommendation for beginners: outbound Loom videos, 20/day, every day.
13:20 – 13:40
10 · Recap
One person, one problem, one offer, one channel. Clearer message, simpler sales, faster delivery, more clients.
13:40 – 14:30
11 · Three warnings + close
Warning 1: brain resistance is normal. Warning 2: this is temporary. Warning 3: 90-day channel commitment minimum.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Six jam flavors sold 10x more than twenty-four — the same math applies when an agency lists its services.
- Prospects do not think an agency with twelve services is capable; they assume it specializes in none of them.
- When you niche to plumbers, every plumber you close is a referral engine to every other plumber they know.
- One offer at $197/month with 10 clients is a better foundation than ten offers at $50/month to nobody.
- The channel you pick takes 90 days to produce results — quitting at two weeks is not the channel failing, it is the channel starting.
- A Loom video showing a prospect their own Google review gap converts better than any generic cold email because it is specific before the first reply.
- The one-block constraint is not permanent — it is a forcing function to get your first 10 clients before the business can absorb complexity.
- Broad positioning feels safe to the seller and invisible to the buyer; specific positioning feels risky to the seller and magnetic to the buyer.
- Not all client problems are equal — pick the one that keeps them up at night and costs them money, not the one you find interesting.
- Inbound builds pre-warmed leads but takes months; outbound gets in front of people today but requires volume and consistency.
- Every service you add to your pitch is another decision the prospect has to make — and each decision is another chance to walk away.
- Choice overload is not a preference, it is a neurological response: overwhelmed brains default to no decision, not a better decision.
How fewer choices close more clients.
WHAT TO LEARN
Cognitive overload is not a personality trait — it is a predictable brain response to too many options, and it ends sales calls before they start.
01Why selling more makes it harder to close
- Adding services increases the number of decisions a prospect must make, and each additional decision is another chance to walk away.
- The agencies closing clients are not the ones with the most capabilities on paper — they are the ones with the clearest single sentence.
03The jam study — choice overload proven
- The jam study result (30% vs 3% conversion on six vs twenty-four options) is not a quirk of grocery shoppers — it is a description of how every brain handles a purchase decision under complexity.
- Choice overload does not make people choose more carefully; it makes them choose nothing.
04What choice overload looks like in a sales call
- When a service menu is too long, buyers do not conclude the seller is capable; they conclude the seller is unfocused, and they go hire a specialist.
- Let me think about it is not a maybe — it is a polite no delivered by a brain that gave up during the pitch.
06Step 1 — One Person
- Picking one client type is not a sacrifice — it is a referral strategy. Professionals in tight industries network within their trade and refer inside it.
- When you claim to help small businesses, you are invisible to every small business owner because none of them identify with that category.
07Step 2 — One Problem
- The one painful problem your niche will pay to make disappear is almost always one of three things: not enough new customers, missed calls, or bad online reviews compared to competitors.
- Solving a problem the client does not care about is not value-add — it is noise that dilutes the problem they actually hired you to fix.
08Step 3 — One Offer
- Adding a second offer before you have ten clients paying for the first one does not grow revenue — it dilutes the pitch before the model is proven.
- A single recurring-revenue offer at a modest price with ten clients is more durable starting ground than ten different services with no client at all.
09Step 4 — One Channel
- An outreach channel needs ninety days of consistent volume before you can draw conclusions about whether it works.
- A Loom video showing a prospect their specific problem converts better than any generic text because specificity signals preparation, which signals competence.
11Three warnings
- The resistance you feel when you narrow your offer is not a sign you are doing it wrong — it is the predictable discomfort of specificity, which is exactly what makes the strategy work.
- The niche commitment is reversible — it is a tactical constraint for the first ten clients, not a brand identity carved in stone.
Terms worth knowing.
- Choice overload
- A psychological phenomenon where presenting too many options causes people to make no decision at all rather than selecting the best one. Named by researchers Iyengar and Lepper after their 2000 jam study.
- One Block Method
- A four-part agency positioning framework: one type of client, one specific problem, one service offer, one outreach channel. Each constraint removes a decision the prospect has to make, making it easier to say yes.
- HighLevel
- A white-label CRM and marketing automation platform popular with agency owners. Used here as the delivery infrastructure for reputation management and review automation services.
- Loom video outreach
- A cold outreach tactic where a short screen-recorded video (typically 2-3 minutes) walks a prospect through their own specific problem before pitching a solution. More personal than text-based cold email.
- Agency OS
- The host s term for a pre-built set of HighLevel templates, automations, and snapshots that an agency can install directly into a client account instead of building workflows from scratch.
Things they pointed at.
01:19bookIyengar & Lepper jam study (2000)
Lines you could clip.
00:08
“The more services you sell, the harder it is to get clients.”
02:45
“They think this person does not really do any one thing well.”
08:45
“Specific feels risky, broad feels safe — but specific is what actually works.”
05:46
“When you become the agency for plumbers, every plumber who hears about you immediately thinks: this person gets my business.”
Word for word.
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metaphoranalogystory
00:00Can I tell you a secret? The more services you sell, the harder it is to get clients and most agency owners are making the exact opposite move that they should be making in order to get more clients. They're adding more services, more offers, more packages thinking that the more they can sell the more chances they've got of someone saying yes.
00:17But, the dark psychology of buying behavior says that the complete opposite is true. I want to walk you through the exact psychological principle that makes people buy from the person selling one thing instead of the person selling everything. I'll show you the research that proves it, I'll give you the four part framework I call the one block method and by the end you'll know exactly which one offer to pick, who to sell it to, what problem it solves and the one channel you should use to sell it.
00:40Every block on this table is a different service that you could offer social media, ads, websites, SEO, you name it. And right now, most agency owners are trying to sell all of them but the ones who actually get clients are doing this. Let me explain.
00:54I built three different 7 figure agencies, worked with over 1,500 small businesses, run thousands of campaigns and today I do it all as a one person agency with zero employees. And in all that time, there's one pattern I've seen that separates agency owners who get clients from agency owners who don't, it's this. Back in the year 2000, two psychologists at Columbia and Stanford ran an experiment that quietly became one of the most important studies in marketing history.
01:19Their names are Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper and they wanted to test what happens when you give shoppers more options. So, they set up a tasting booth at a fancy grocery store and put out different jars of jam. On some days, they put out 24 different flavors, lots of variety.
01:33There was strawberry and raspberry and apricot and marmalade, you name it. Everything that a jam shopper could ever want. On other days though, they put out just six flavors.
01:41Now, sense would say that the table with 24 flavors should sell more jam. I mean, there's more choices, there's more chances that someone finds the one they want, that means more sales.
01:51Right? Wrong. The six flavor table sold 10 times more jam than the 24 flavor table.
01:57Yeah, that's not a typo. 30% of the shoppers at the six flavor table bought some jam whereas only 3% at the 24 flavor table did. Same store, same customers, same jam.
02:08The only difference was how many options that they were shown. So why did this happen? Well, when you give the human brain too many options it doesn't get excited, it gets overwhelmed and an overwhelmed brain doesn't make decisions, it just walks away, it gives up, it stalls, it leaves the table.
02:24The researchers called this choice overload. Agency owners usually call it something else. They call it, why can't I get more clients?
02:30Look at this. I mean, that you're a local business owner and an agency reaches out to you and says, I do social media management and paid ads and SEO and web design and email marketing, do funnel building, content creation, AI automation, reputation management, and copywriting.
02:45At about service number six, that prospect is mentally gone. Their brain has glazed over somewhere between funnel building and AI automation and it never came back. But wait, it gets worse because people don't think, wow, this person can do everything.
02:58They think this person doesn't really do any one thing well. And then they say something that every struggling agency owner has heard before, that sounds great. Let me think about it.
03:08And then they do absolutely nothing about it forever. Now imagine a different agency reaches out to that same business owner and says, I help local businesses get more five star Google reviews on autopilot. That's my specialty.
03:20I'll get you more reviews so you stop losing customers to the business down the street with better ratings. Say something like that and you're gonna get a completely different reaction. Rather than being overwhelmed by a sea of words that they don't even understand, now they get it.
03:33This means they're more likely to lean in and ask questions and actually hire you. They don't choose the agency with the most options, they choose the one that's easiest to understand. So when you simplify your offer, they're not just a little more likely to choose you, they're up to 10 times more likely to choose you.
03:48So here's how you actually do this. I call it the one block method and there's four steps. One offer, one person, one problem, one channel.
03:56Every step removes a decision that the prospect has to make. Every step makes it easier to choose you. Less thinking for them, less complexity for you and a much easier business to sell.
04:05So, let me break each one down for you now starting with step one, one person. Watch this. The second you pick one type of person, a whole bunch of services just don't apply anymore.
04:16This is who you sell to and this is where most people make things way more complicated than they need to be. They say things like, I help small businesses or I work with entrepreneurs or my personal least favorite of all time, I help anyone who wants to grow. But small businesses isn't a person, it's a category that includes a software startup in San Francisco, a chiropractor in Ohio, a bakery in San Diego and a private chef in Nashville.
04:40These are completely different people with completely different problems and completely different budgets. When you say you help small businesses, what you're actually saying to every single one of these people is I don't really understand you specifically. So instead, you pick one type of business and I mean one, plumbers, dentists, roofers, or landscapers, or whoever but just one.
04:59Now, here's the question I get every single time I tell people this, but Adam, won't I be missing out on all the other clients I could get by picking just one? And the answer to that is no, you won't because this is gonna sound harsh but you weren't gonna get them anyway. The truth is when you try to be the agency for everyone you end up becoming the agency for no one but when you become the agency for plumbers let's say specifically, every plumber who hears about you immediately thinks, oh, this person gets my business.
05:26And here's the bonus, every plumber knows other plumbers. They go to plumber events. They have plumber friends.
05:32They're in plumber Facebook groups. So one plumber client turns into five plumber clients, turns into 20 plumber clients because you became the plumber person or the roofer person or the landscaping person or the med spa person or whatever niche you choose.
05:46Okay. So that's part one. One person.
05:48Just pick one type of business and only that type. Now, let's talk about step two, one problem. Once you've picked your one type of person, the next step is to pick the one specific problem that you solve for them.
05:58And again, this needs to be one problem, not a list of problems, not a bundle of problems, just one problem. Problem. And watch what happens when you pick one problem.
06:08Even more of these services fall away. Now, here's where most agency owners trip themselves up. They think the way to be valuable is to solve every problem their client has.
06:17They want to be the marketing person, the operations person, the website person, the AI person, the everything person. But here's what actually happens. The client thinks this person is spread thin.
06:27They probably don't go deep on any one thing. So they go hire a specialist for the problems that they actually care about. This is because not all problems are created equal and when you offer to fix a bunch of things that they don't really care about they tune out and they move on.
06:41So instead, you pick the one specific painful expensive problem your one type of person actually has. The one that keeps them up at night, the one that they pay a lot of money to just make go away. For local service businesses like landscapers and dentists and appliance repair and pest control and all of the other niches that I've mentioned earlier in this video, that painful problem is usually one of three things.
07:02Not getting enough new customers, missing phone calls and losing the business, or having terrible online reviews compared to their competitors. You pick one of those, not all three, just one. And the magic is that when you pick one problem and become the person known for solving it, every conversation gets easier.
07:18The pitch gets easier, the proof gets easier, the pricing gets easier, the referrals get easier. Basically, everything gets easier because you're not trying to sell 10 different things at once, you're selling one obvious thing. So that's step two, one problem.
07:31Pick the most painful problem your one type of person has and own it. Now, on to step three, one offer. This is where the whole table clears.
07:39When you've got your one person, your one problem and you pick your one offer, this is what's left. This is where the one block method really comes together because once you've got your one type of person and the one problem they have, the offer is pretty simple.
07:54All you're gonna do here is just offer them the one specific service that solves that one specific problem. For example, let's say you picked landscapers as your one person and you picked low review counts hurting their business as their one problem. Well, then your one offer is a Google review automation system that you set up and manage for your landscape or client so they don't have to do anything except sit back and watch new five star ratings start rolling in on autopilot.
08:19That's it. That's the whole offer. You don't also offer them websites, don't also offer them Facebook ads, you don't even mention those things exist at least not yet.
08:28More on that in just a second because the second you do you're back to the chaos pile of options that we started with that completely overwhelms the brain. Now, here's where most agency owners get stuck. They look at offering just that one offer, Google review automation for a $197 a month and they think that's not enough money.
08:44I need to offer more services to make a real income. But here's the thing about more services, they don't actually make you more money in the beginning. They do however make your offer harder to understand and harder to deliver, easier to forget.
08:56You are way better off at getting really good at selling and then delivering one offer to 10 clients before you ever even think about adding a second offer. Once you've got 10 clients paying you a 197 a month for reviews, then you can start thinking about adding a second offer to each of them.
09:10Maybe an AI receptionist for missed calls, maybe a revenue website to convert more leads, maybe a follow-up automation system, but that's a future problem. Today, your job is to pick one offer and sell it. Now, here's the good news.
09:23You don't have to build any of this from scratch. Everything I just described, the review automation and the full system behind it, all of that is already built for you inside of my agency OS which runs on HighLevel, the software I use to run my entire agency. If you grab the link in the descriptions below this video, you'll get an extended thirty day free trial of HighLevel plus my full agency OS.
09:42That's the exact templates and snapshots and automations I use for reputation management with my own clients. So instead of staring at a blank screen trying to figure this out, you just plug in your client's business and everything's ready to go. Pick your one offer, grab the trial through the link below, load the template, then go sell it.
09:57So that's step three, one offer. Pick one specific service that solves your one problem for your one person and deliver it in the exact same way every single time. Okay.
10:07Now, step four, one channel. This is the last part of the method and it's also where I see almost every beginner agency owner mess it up. Once you've picked your person, your problem and your offer, you get excited and then you try to do everything in order to find clients.
10:20Cold email, cold DMs, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, paid ads, networking, podcasts all at the same time and that's where it falls apart because two weeks later, you're exhausted. No clients and convinced that this just doesn't work. So, just like with the offer, pick one channel, just one way to find your one type of person and pitch them your one offer.
10:38Now, broadly speaking, you've got two big buckets to choose from. The first is inbound marketing. This is where you create content, run ads, or show up in search and people come to you.
10:48The good thing about inbound is that the leads come pretty much pre warmed. The bad thing though is that inbound usually takes a while to build up momentum. The second is outbound marketing.
10:57This is where you reach out to people directly. Think cold DMs, cold emails, cold calls. Now, the good thing here is that you can start getting in front of people today like right now in the next five minutes.
11:08The bad thing is that you have to do it consistently for it to work. Both inbound and outbound strategies work but you can only pick one. If you're brand new and you want to get clients quickly, my recommendation is outbound.
11:18Specifically, sending a short Loom video to your one type of person via email or DM. Here's why this works so well.
11:25A Loom video is just a quick screen recording where you talk for say two or three minutes and you show the prospect their current Google review situation. You point out the gap and then you offer to fix it. It's personal, it's specific and it stands out in a sea of generic cold messages.
11:40You record one short Loom video, you send it to a prospect and then you move on to the next one. Then you do that 20 times a day. Then you do it the next day and the day after that.
11:48That's the channel. Loom videos sent through email or DM every single day to one type of person. It's not sexy, it's not exciting, but it works.
11:56So that's step four, one channel. Pick just one outreach method, master it and then run it consistently until it works. Okay.
12:03So let's pull this all together. The one block method, one person, one problem, one offer, one channel. Get them all right and comes down to this, a clearer message, simpler sales, faster delivery and more clients.
12:14You're not having to compete with everyone anymore. You're now the person who solves one specific problem for one specific type of business and when that problem shows up, you're the one they think of. Now, before you go run with this, three warnings.
12:26Warning one, your brain is going to tell you this is a terrible idea. Seriously, when you pick one type of person, your brain is going to scream but what about all the other people that I could be helping? When you pick your one offer, your brain is also going to scream but what about all the other money I could be making?
12:41That feeling is normal. It's not a sign that you're doing it wrong, it's a sign that you're doing it right. but specific is what actually works.
12:50Warning two, the one block method is not a permanent decision. You're not picking your one offer for the rest of your life, you're picking it for now. Once you've got 10 or 20 clients paying you for that one thing, you can then start adding a second offer then a third, but until you've mastered the one, don't even think about the others.
13:08Warning three, your one channel meaning your one way of getting clients takes longer to work than you think. Most people pick a channel, run it for two weeks, get no results and quit. That's not the channel failing, that's the channel barely getting started.
13:21Whatever channel you pick, email, DMs or the Loom strategy I just showed you, you want to commit to it for at least ninety days before you decide whether it's working. Most channels don't start producing real results until you've put in enough volume which usually takes a few weeks of consistent outreach. If you look at the agency owners who actually build successful profitable businesses, they're not doing anything complicated.
13:41It's not talent, it's not the market, it's not AI. The agency owner who picks one block and commits to it becomes easier to understand, easier to remember, easier to trust. Now, if you want my complete system, my scripts, my frameworks, my templates, the full playbook I use every single day to run my own agency without any employees, the entire thing is built inside HighLevel.
14:02Click the link below, sign up for the free HighLevel trial and you'll get instant access to my full agency OS. Every snapshot, every automation, every template I use with my clients all ready to go.
14:12Then once you've got all that, the next question becomes how do you actually turn this into a real agency? Well, the full system from picking your one type of business to aligning your first 10 clients to delivering everything without burning out, all of that is linked up in a free training video that I've got linked up right here.
14:26So feel free to tap or click that now. I'll see you in there in just a second.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The counterintuitive claim lands in the first eight seconds: more services means fewer clients. Most agency owners are making the exact opposite move they should make, and a 2000 research study from Columbia and Stanford explains why the brain shuts down when it sees too many options.
Named ideas worth stealing.
03:47list
The One Block Method
- One Person
- One Problem
- One Offer
- One Channel
A four-constraint positioning system for new and struggling agency owners. Each constraint reduces the number of decisions a prospect must make before saying yes.
Steal forAny offer positioning exercise — works for products, services, or content strategy when you are spread too thin.
01:19concept
Choice Overload (Iyengar & Lepper)
When presented with too many options, the human brain defaults to no decision. Proven in a 2000 jam study: 6 flavors sold 10x more than 24.
Steal forAny sales page or offer architecture — fewer choices on an order form or pricing table means higher conversion.
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
10:08product
“Everything I just described — the review automation and the full system behind it — all of that is already built for you inside of my agency OS which runs on HighLevel.”
Embedded mid-video after explaining the One Offer step. Positioned as the delivery solution to the framework he just taught, not a cold pitch. Extended 30-day trial with done-for-you templates lowers the friction.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
Visual structure at a glance.
