Don't Sell Websites: Take the System I Used to Build a $250K/Year Agency

Who This Session Is For

Sam opens by naming three specific audiences he designed the talk around, though he acknowledges that anyone in the web agency space is likely to find it relevant.

The feast or faminers are earlier-stage agency owners or freelancers who complete a website project, earn money, and then find themselves without work while they hunt for the next project. Their income is unpredictable and stressful, and they lack a recurring revenue base.

The maintenance onlyers are web designers who have built up a portfolio of maintenance plan clients, sometimes 10, 20, 30, or even 100 of them, but who have never offered anything beyond the maintenance retainer. They are sitting on a warm audience of business owners who could benefit from growth services, but have not been presented with that option.

The chronic underchargers are agency owners who are already offering some form of marketing or growth service to clients but are stuck charging a few hundred dollars per month. They know they should be charging more but lack the confidence or framework to make the jump.

The Core Argument: Why You Should Stop Selling Websites

Sam makes a pointed economic argument to frame the session. He calls out what he describes as "the big lie on the internet," which is the idea that $100,000 per year is enough for a business owner to thrive. His position is that in 2026, in many American markets, it simply is not. He uses his own city of Bend, Oregon as an example, where the average house price is $750,000. At $100,000 per year, affording rent is itself a stretch.

His conclusion is that selling websites exclusively, unless you are operating in the enterprise space, makes it structurally difficult to earn enough. The solution is not to abandon web design but to build a recurring revenue stream on top of it by adding a growth or marketing service. For Sam, that service is local SEO, but he is explicit that the same logic applies to email marketing, social media management, paid advertising, or any other recurring service.

The Math: Low-Ticket vs. High-Ticket Recurring Revenue

Sam builds a simple financial model around a target of $30,000 per month in monthly recurring revenue, a number he describes as one of his own business goals for the current year.

He presents two paths to that number: Low-ticket at $300 per month: To reach $30,000 per month, an agency would need 100 clients. $300 per month feels easier to sell because it is not a large commitment for the client, but the operational complexity of managing 100 client relationships, and the team required to service them, is substantial. He illustrates this with a visual of a large group of people representing the team and client load needed.

High-ticket at $1,500 per month: Because $1,500 is five times $300, the math reverses neatly. Only 20 clients are needed to reach $30,000 per month. The team required to service 20 clients is significantly smaller and easier to manage. The business is leaner, has healthier margins, and is far less operationally complex.

Sam acknowledges that asking for $1,500 per month, which represents $18,000 per year from a single client, carries psychological weight. He concedes that feels like pressure. The rest of the talk is structured around helping agency owners overcome that pressure.

He also offers a motivating snapshot for those just getting started: even four clients at $1,500 per month generates $6,000 in MRR, or $72,000 per year. He is careful not to oversimplify the business model but uses the example to make the opportunity feel tangible and achievable at a small scale.

Sam's Credentials and Business Background

Sam is in his fourth year of business. His agency, Then Can SEO and Websites, is based in Bend, Oregon and focuses on local SEO and web design. In his most recent year he generated $265,000 in gross revenue. He is transparent about not being a seven-figure agency, noting that many attendees of the Web Agency Summit are at that level, but positions his trajectory from zero to that point in four years as a meaningful proof of concept.

He employs approximately seven subcontractors and employees in the agency. Roughly two years prior to the session he launched Local SEO Academy, an online education community for web designers who want to add SEO to their services. The community has over 90 members in its community tier. The academy offers courses, weekly Q&A calls, weekly co-working sessions, and monthly expert trainings.

Sam emphasises that the content of his talk is not AI-generated or theoretical. It reflects the actual day-to-day practices of his agency and the curriculum he teaches through the academy.

Pillar 1: Mindset

Why Mindset Comes First Sam is aware that leading with mindset can put off analytically inclined audience members, and he addresses this directly by asking his "type A's" not to leave. He positions mindset not as a soft motivational topic but as the foundation that determines whether the tactical work will stick during difficult periods.

The "Why" Exercise He asks the audience to think back to the moment they decided to start their business. For most entrepreneurs, the answer connects to one of two freedoms: time freedom or money freedom, or some combination of both. Sam shares that his own motivation was approximately 60% time freedom and 40% money freedom. His family lives three hours away in a different part of Oregon, and he wanted the ability to schedule his own time off rather than squeezing weekend trips around a fixed work schedule. He also saw a hard ceiling in his previous industry and chose to build his own ceiling rather than go back to school to extend someone else's.

His practical recommendation is to return to that original "why" when things get hard.

Staying connected to the founding motivation makes it easier to push through difficult periods and also makes it easier to see why building a higher-ticket offering is worth the discomfort.

Values as a Compass Sam goes further than the "why" exercise by talking about core values. His primary core value is service, which he says is the reason he showed up to speak at the Web Agency Summit at all. He wanted the chance to help someone in the audience who might be struggling.

His recommendation for identifying core values is practical: go to Google, search for a values list, pull out 10 to 20 values that resonate, and sit with them for about a week.

Narrow the list down to five. Then rank those five, because when two values come into conflict in a real business decision, you need to know which one wins. He encourages agency owners to align their primary core value with their business so that even on hard days, everything feels coherent and purposeful.

Pillar 2: Lead Generation

The Central Principle Sam cites two mentors on this point. His late business coach Gary used to tell him that business is about exposure and presence. Another mentor, Eric Dingler, makes the point that you cannot make sales hiding under your desk. The implication is that many web designers

and agency owners spend all their time executing client work and very little time in situations where they can actually connect with potential new clients.

Strategy 1 (Extroverts): Single-Category Referral Networking Groups Sam's top recommendation for extroverts is joining a single-category networking referral group. In the United States the largest and most well-known version of this is BNI (Business Network International). Sam himself is not a BNI member but belongs to a similar group modelled on the same format. He receives no compensation for recommending BNI and is transparent about that.

The format of these groups works as follows: each business category has one seat, meaning there is one attorney, one accountant, one web developer, one graphic designer, and so on.

Members meet once a week for 60 to 90 minutes. Each session includes a one-minute commercial from every member, and on a rotating basis members get a 10-minute presentation slot. These presentations are opportunities to educate the group about what you do and what kinds of referrals you are looking for.

For web designers and agency owners specifically, Sam highlights the value of finding "power partners," other business owners who serve the same client base but offer different services. Photographers, videographers, social media managers, paid ads specialists, and even other web designers at different stages of their business are all potential power partners. Sam mentions "co-opetition," a term he credits to web design coach Josh Hall, as a useful way to think about relationships with other web designers. He knows the larger agencies in his area who can take on projects he cannot, and he knows the freelancers who are just getting started. He refers up and refers down accordingly.

Sam's view is that these groups, if approached with genuine participation and a mindset of giving, build some of the strongest and most durable professional relationships available to a local agency owner. He notes that post-COVID, the value of real human relationships in business has only increased. He suggests that if he were starting from scratch today, this is where he would begin.

Strategy 2 (Introverts): Niche Facebook Groups For those who are not comfortable with in-person networking, Sam offers an alternative. He does not have a personal Facebook profile himself, but he points to niche or special interest Facebook groups as a powerful channel for introverts.

He uses the example of a local group in Bend, Oregon called "Bend Boss Babes," a community of 52 local female entrepreneurs who refer to each other and ask for recommendations within the group. He notes that he is not permitted to join it but finds it a useful illustration of the type of community that exists in most areas.

The strategy for these groups is identical to the networking group strategy in spirit: join relevant groups, show up consistently, and be helpful without selling. When someone in the

group asks a question about websites or Google Business Profile or digital marketing, answer it genuinely and thoroughly. Over time you become the go-to person for those topics in that community.

Sam acknowledges that this works best across multiple groups, so he recommends joining several to find which one is most active and most aligned with potential clients.

The Single Most Common Mistake in Lead Gen Sam is emphatic on this point. The most common mistake agency owners make in lead generation is trying to do too many things at once. He references the style of advice often associated with Alex Hormozi, where operators are encouraged to test multiple strategies simultaneously. He disagrees with applying this approach to lead generation for local agencies.

His recommendation: pick one lead generation activity and commit to it for at least six months, and ideally twelve months. Membership in a BNI-style group typically runs for a year anyway, which naturally enforces this discipline. His belief is that if you show up consistently to one of these groups for a full year, it is almost guaranteed that you will get clients. Even if you do not, you will have built a network of strong local relationships that will pay dividends over time.

The BNI Leech Strategy As a practical starting point for someone not yet ready to commit to a membership fee, Sam describes what he calls the "BNI leech strategy." He acknowledges the name sounds more nefarious than it is. The idea is to visit each of the five or so BNI-style groups in your area twice each. You are going genuinely, to find out which group is the best cultural fit for you and which has the most relevant members. Along the way, you will naturally make connections and may even generate a lead or two that converts to a client. Sam used this approach early in his business to land his first client who was a stranger, someone he had no prior relationship with before starting his business. In some cases, the revenue from those early connections might even be enough to pay for a year of group membership.

You are going genuinely, to find out which group is the best cultural fit for you and which has the most relevant members.

Pillar 3: The Sales Call

Selling the Delta, Not Deliverables Sam identifies the sales call as the pivotal moment where most agency owners undercut themselves. The root problem, he says, is that most agencies sell deliverables. They pitch the

client on a list of tasks: Google Business Profile posts, meta descriptions, schema markup, sitemaps, and so on. When you sell deliverables, clients evaluate your price against that list of tasks, and the number always feels too high relative to the perceived effort.

The alternative is to sell value, and the tool for doing that is what Sam calls "the delta." He borrows the mathematical symbol for difference and applies it to the sales conversation. The delta is the gap between where the client is right now and where they want to be.

The conversation Sam recommends goes roughly like this: ask the prospect what their current revenue looks like. They might say they did half a million dollars last year. Then ask where they want to be. They might say $750,000. Now you have a delta of $250,000. The next question is: how do we get there? This reframes the entire conversation away from SEO tactics and toward business outcomes.

Sam then recommends going one level deeper by asking what achieving that growth would mean for the business. The prospect might say it would allow them to hire more staff. Then ask what that would mean for them personally. When a business owner starts answering that question, Sam says, "things really start to shift." They are no longer evaluating a list of tasks. They are imagining the life and business they want, with your agency as the path to get there.

Practicing the Sales Call Sam's practical recommendation for improving at the sales call is straightforward: practice.

He mentions practicing with his dog and boring his friends by talking through SEO and web design concepts. The limitation of that approach is that most of the people in your life do not understand the subject matter well enough to give useful feedback.

He uses this as a segue into a promotional offer, an SEO Sales Call Bootcamp he is running in June where participants can practice every step of his sales system and receive real feedback. He frames this as something for people who are serious about making the shift to higher-ticket services.

Pillar 4: Delivery

Why Delivery Matters Sam's argument for a strong delivery system is simple: if you charge the big number, you have to produce results. Without results, clients do not renew. With results, clients stay, refer their contacts in other industries, and become advocates for your business.

Local SEO as a Recurring Service Sam's chosen growth service is local SEO, and he makes the case that it is well-suited to agency owners for several reasons. First, it is genuinely learnable. Sam characterises local SEO not as one technically complex discipline but as "a lot of easy things." The difficulty is

keeping track of all of them and executing consistently. Second, it is inherently recurring in nature. Unlike a website build, SEO requires ongoing attention, which means ongoing retainers.

The Three Core Components of Local SEO Sam breaks his delivery framework into three pillars: 1. Google Business Profile (GBP) Management The process starts with ensuring the client has claimed, verified, and fully optimised their Google Business Profile. Ongoing management is light, usually one post per week. One of the most significant local ranking factors for the map pack is reviews, and Sam's approach to review acquisition is notably low-tech. Rather than using an automated review tool, his team provides clients with a review coaching script, a template they can send to their own clients asking for a review. The result, he argues, is higher-quality reviews because clients naturally write longer, more detailed responses that include pictures, mention the neighbourhood, and describe the work done. These are precisely the signals that influence map pack rankings.

2. The Website: Service Pages and Location Pages For local SEO, the website structure is critical. Beyond the standard pages (home, about, contact), clients need a dedicated page for each service they offer and, in most cases, a dedicated page for each service in each location they serve. Sam acknowledges nuance here: smaller towns may not warrant full service-specific location pages and may be better served by a single city page. But the general principle is to create a page for every combination of service and geography that the client wants to rank for.

He also notes that these pages do not need to be perfect at launch. Over time, content can be added: featured projects, client success stories, case studies (anonymised where appropriate). The initial build creates the structure; ongoing content development adds depth.

3. Authority Building Through Backlinks Sam is direct about the necessity of link building. On-page optimisation and GBP management will take a client a certain distance, but eventually rankings plateau without external authority signals. Backlinks, links from other websites pointing to the client's website, are what push rankings higher. He describes getting backlinks as the "dirty B-word" that people sometimes want to avoid but cannot.

When a client ranks higher in search results and appears on more search engine result pages (SERPs), more people click through to the website. If the website converts well, those visitors become leads, which become business, which makes the client happy and committed to the retainer.

The Systematised Delivery Flow Sam describes a three-phase delivery framework that he uses across all clients, while always beginning with a custom strategy: Phase 1: The Strategy Sprint Before any work begins, the agency conducts a thorough strategic analysis. Sam credits Nathan Gotch with the line "we don't do guessio, we do SEO,"

which he says reliably gets a laugh on sales calls and neatly captures the idea that every action should be informed by data and research rather than guesswork.

Phase 2: The Build Phase

Following the strategy sprint, the agency builds the location and service pages that form the structural foundation of the SEO campaign. This is the website work that creates the targeting framework for all future optimisation.

Phase 3: The Care Phase

The care phase begins after the build and continues for as long as the client remains. Sam notes a slight timing nuance: GBP posting typically begins almost immediately after the strategy sprint, so it overlaps with the build phase in practice. The care phase is where link building begins in earnest, and where ongoing on-page SEO optimisations are made based on competitive research and emerging opportunities. As clients grow, they naturally bring new services and new geographic targets, which extends and expands the scope of the work without requiring a separate sales conversation.

A Key Line for Sales Calls Sam shares a line he uses consistently on sales calls and recommends others adopt: "I can't promise we'll get you to rank number one. But I can promise that we'll work our asses off for you." He recommends pairing this with proof of results from other clients to demonstrate that the commitment to effort actually translates into outcomes.

Local SEO and AI Search Sam addresses a question that is clearly top of mind for many agency owners in 2026: does the rise of AI-driven search make local SEO obsolete? His answer is no, for two reasons.

First, on a pure market share basis, AI search tools currently account for a very small sliver of total search volume. Google still dominates, and the signals that matter for local Google rankings remain highly relevant.

Second, and more importantly, the skills and strategies developed through local SEO map directly onto AI search optimisation. AI search tools surface businesses based on prominence, relevance, and authority, the same fundamental factors that drive local Google rankings. Even in a hypothetical future where Google's entire search interface is replaced by an AI model, the underlying work of building a credible, authoritative, locally relevant online presence would still matter. Sam notes that he and Pete Everitt (another speaker at the summit who covered SEO) share this view.

With results, clients stay, refer their contacts in other industries, and become advocates for your business.

Practical Action Steps

Sam closes the content portion of the session with concrete recommendations for each of the four pillars.

Mindset: Write down your core values. If you have done this before, revisit the list. If you have not, search for a values list online, identify 10 to 20 that resonate, sit with them for a week, and narrow to five. Rank those five so you know your primary core value. Align your business decisions and positioning with that primary value.

Lead Generation: Use the BNI leech strategy. Find the five or so referral networking groups in your area, visit each one twice, identify which group is the best fit, and consider joining. If you are more comfortable online, join several relevant Facebook groups in your area and commit to checking them several times a week, looking for opportunities to answer questions and be helpful. Pick one strategy and commit to it for six to twelve months.

Sales Call: Begin practicing the delta conversation. On every prospect call, ask where they are now financially, where they want to be, and what achieving that would mean for their business. Do the math with them: how many jobs does that represent, how much per month?

Practice this conversation as often as possible to build fluency and confidence.

Delivery: Learn local SEO thoroughly enough to deliver results. Sam's framework of GBP management, website structure, and authority building provides the foundation. He recommends his own Local SEO Academy as a structured resource for this, but the principles themselves are transferable.

Offers and Promotional Content

The session includes a pitch for two offerings from Local SEO Academy: SEO Sales Call Bootcamp (June 2026): A live training where participants practice every step of Sam's sales system and receive real feedback. Standard price is $299. A discounted rate of $99 was offered to Web Agency Summit attendees. Sam noted this was also included in the Local SEO Academy bundle below.

Local SEO Academy Three-Month Bundle: Three months of access to Local SEO Academy, which includes all courses, community access (90+ web designers adding SEO to their businesses), weekly Q&A calls, weekly co-working sessions, monthly expert trainings, and the Sales Call Bootcamp. Normally priced at $450, a one-month bonus was included for summit attendees. A QR code was displayed in the presentation for direct sign-up.

Free Resource: For those not ready to invest, Sam offered a free lesson from his SEO sales engine course in exchange for an email address. The lesson covers two things: the single SEO package structure he recommends (he does not advocate for tiered pricing), and a framework for how to get from charging very little or nothing on the first client to charging the full rate by the fifth client, without getting stuck undercharging indefinitely.

Sam also invited direct email contact at his agency email address, asking anyone reaching out from the Web Agency Summit to include that in the subject line so he can prioritise responses.

Closing Remarks

Sam closes with a direct appeal to each of the three audience groups he opened with. To the feast or faminers: stop accepting that cycle as inevitable. To the maintenance onlyers: stop denying your existing clients the growth services they need and that you could be providing.

To the chronic underchargers: stop undervaluing your work.

His final message is one of permission and encouragement to charge more, build recurring revenue, and take the steps, however incremental, toward a more sustainable and profitable agency.

The session host, Andrew, wraps up by noting the quality of Sam's presentation and pointing out the alignment between Sam's views on AI search and those of Pete Everitt, another speaker from the summit who covered SEO.

About the speaker Sam Sarsten The Local SEO Academy

Sam Sarsten runs The Local SEO Academy, teaching agencies how to build recurring, high-ticket local SEO services rather than relying on one-off website projects.