Welcome to Your Asset Plan,
Josh
LET’S GET STARTED
How to use your
Asset Plan
This is your personalized command center for building your business as an asset—so it can generate wealth, give you time back, and support your life.
Inside, you’ll find your diagnostics, tailored priorities, and a clear, actionable plan to step fully into ownership.
1️⃣ Watch the walkthrough video.
2️⃣ Move through each section at your pace.
3️⃣ Note questions and reflections for your follow-up call.
4️⃣ Take aligned action. This plan is built to move you forward.
Your CEO Snapshot
Where you are now, where you’re headed, and what’s standing in the way
This section captures your current business stage, your goals, and your key challenges—so your Asset Plan is built around your real priorities.
Watch the overview video below which reviews your entire Asset Plan in detail. This is the “meat and potatoes” of your Asset Plan, so don’t skip it!
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Josh, right now you’re still the engine of all three businesses: Heart First Agency, HF Weddings, and PHILM. You’re handling 90% of the tasks yourself, with editing being the biggest time drain. That leaves you in an operator role, deeply involved in day-to-day delivery instead of directing growth.
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You’re in the $250K–$500K revenue stage, with weddings and PHILM providing consistent profitability and structured pricing. The agency, while capable of producing great work, is still priced and packaged more like a freelancer operation, which limits scalability. You’ve proven demand across all three lines but the systems, positioning, and financial clarity haven’t caught up to your ambition yet.
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You’ve built multiple revenue streams that all have proof of concept. Weddings are steady, PHILM is unique in Wilmington and cash-flowing, and the agency has a portfolio of strong work.
You’ve created personal freedom and flexibility with your schedule, which means you’re not chained to the business even though you’re still carrying too much of the load.
You have a clear vision for the future: $250K take home, high-level creative projects, and scaling PHILM, which means we’re not starting from scratch but building on a strong foundation.
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Delivery bottlenecks: Editing and studio resets eat up your time and keep you stuck in operator mode.
Lack of positioning: The agency has no sharp differentiator in the market, making it harder to command premium pricing and build consistent demand.
Financial visibility: You don’t have clear contribution margin by offer, which makes it hard to make smart growth decisions.
Overlap of focus: Running three businesses without streamlined systems makes it harder to scale any one of them.
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For you, freedom looks like working hard, making great money, and still having the time and space to enjoy life with your fiancée, son, family, and friends. On the business side, you’re aiming for:
$250K personal take-home
Only 10 weddings a year
Landing a Netflix-level creative project
Opening a second PHILM location in another city
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You’re shifting from operator/improviser, doing 90% of the tasks, pricing projects inconsistently, and reacting to client needs, to owner and creative director. That means directing the work instead of doing it, building standardized packaging and positioning, and creating systems that free your time to focus on growth and higher-level opportunities.
Performance Dashboard
There’s power in the data
Watch the video breakdown of your personalized Performance Dashboard, which covers data-backed scorecards across:
We assess the health of your business across four critical pillars:
Profitability (Is the revenue working for you?)
Brand Strength (Is your brand communicating clearly and converting?)
Marketing ROI (Is your visibility translating to growth?)
CEO Role (Are you working in your business—or leading it?)
Your Business, Diagnosed
What’s working, what’s lagging, and what’s ready for transformation
We’ve assessed your business across the 5 Pillars of the Asset Ecosystem™, using a clear color indicator:
🟩 Green: On track
🟨 Yellow: Needs attention
🟥 Red: Immediate focus area
Click into each pillar to see your findings and targeted recommendations.
Owner Mindset
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Owner Mindset is your ability to step out of doing and into directing. For you, this pillar matters because you are juggling three brands and you want freedom, bigger creative opportunities, and a higher personal take‑home. You only get there when your time is spent on vision, relationships, and decisions rather than editing, resets, and admin.
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You’re still doing about 90 percent of the work yourself, with editing as the biggest time sink. That leaves you short on time to promote, sell, and shape the direction of the agency. You like the flexibility you’ve built, and you are open to delegating, but creative quality control has burned you before which makes handoff feel risky.
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Delivery tasks are crowding out leadership. Editing and studio resets are owner time traps that can be offloaded quickly. The analysis shows outsourcing editing can free roughly 60 percent of your time, and a simple post‑shoot reset role preserves energy for sales and direction.
The agency is being run like a talented freelancer shop. Without standardized packaging and pricing, you stay in the weeds and cannot scale through other people. That keeps you solving work one project at a time instead of building an asset.
Decision making is harder than it needs to be because financial visibility is not great. You are not tracking contribution margin by offer and the current accounting setup is compliance oriented rather than decision-making oriented. That blocks confident delegation and hiring calls.
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Outsource editing and culling immediately
Select two vetted partners and run paid test jobs this week. Target a 10 to 20 percent margin give‑back in exchange for a 60 percent time win. Document specs, file structure, turn times, and a quality rubric so handoffs are clean. Keep final color tweaks in‑house for brand control until trust is built.
Create a PHILM “studio reset” role
Post a standing task for a reliable assistant to reset the space after each shoot. Scope includes sweep cleaning, cyc wall touch‑ups, organization, and gear staging. Budget two hours per booking and pre‑block calendar holds so it happens without you.
Install protected CEO Time on the calendar
Block three recurring sessions each week for revenue‑generating and owner‑level work only. Use these blocks for sales pipeline, agency positioning, and relationship outreach. No delivery work in these blocks. Treat them as non‑negotiable to reinforce the identity shift.
Define your Owner Job and a Delegation Matrix
List the two to three tasks only you will own long term, such as creative direction, key client relationships, and long‑range vision. Everything else becomes a handoff candidate. Create an SOP for creative QC to address your concern about off‑brand outputs, then assign edit, cull, and basic production tasks to contractors.
Upgrade financial visibility to support owner decisions
Engage your accountant or a fractional CFO to build a live dashboard that tracks margins, cash flow, and net profit against goals. Add contribution margin per package so you can fund hires and set workload caps with confidence. Use this to reverse engineer your take‑home target.
Brand & Market Clarity
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Brand and Market Clarity is about owning a sharp position in the market, then backing it with a simple demand engine that brings in the right buyers on repeat. For you, this matters because the agency is talented but broad, the website and socials do not signal a clear edge, and search visibility is weak. Until we choose a lane and design a consistent pipeline, you work too hard for each sale and leave money on the table.
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Channels are mostly Meta and word of mouth. When you post consistently, it works. The challenge is time and motivation to keep it going. Paid marketing has been minimal.
The agency serves “small biz, local entrepreneurs, people in sales,” which keeps you broad and reactive. Weddings and PHILM each have a clearer story than the agency.
Website and SEO are underperforming for the terms you should own locally, and the brand lacks a specific differentiator in-market.
You want to niche the agency into higher-end creative work like commercials, docuseries, and short films, while still keeping revenue coming in.
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The portfolio is excellent but functions like a catch‑all, which blurs what you are known for and depresses perceived value.
There is an immediate, proven local niche you can own. Your recent real‑estate‑agent work shows fit, and the broader “home ecosystem” market in Wilmington is large. Positioning toward agents, brokers, builders, inspectors, and related services gives you a scalable category to dominate.
The site and socials are “meh” with weak SEO and inconsistent posting. That blocks inbound demand and keeps you dependent on manual prospecting.
Packaging is unclear. Without standardized offers and outcomes, you sell like a freelancer and cannot command premium pricing or delegate delivery with confidence.
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Choose a primary niche for the next 6 months and build a sharp point of view
Pick “Real Estate Growth Films” (used as an example due to recent work) as the beachhead, then expand to the full home‑services ecosystem once the engine is humming. Draft a one‑sentence position: “We make cinematic sales assets for top agents and brokerages in Wilmington.” Assemble a 60–90 second niche showreel and three fast case studies from recent work to anchor the story.
Ship a three‑tier Signature Offer Suite so buyers can say yes quickly
Create named, standardized packages with clear deliverables and timelines. Example architecture:
Starter: 1 Agent Story Film, 6 verticals, 10 photos
Pro: 1 Brand Trailer, 12 verticals across three listings, 20 photos
Studio: Quarterly content plan, monthly shoots, ongoing verticals and stills
Lock scope, revisions, and turn times so you can delegate. Retire the $900 “9 reels + 20 photos” style of pricing in favor of outcome‑based packages that match the niche.
Fix the website to sell the niche and to rank locally
In week one, rewrite the homepage to speak directly to agents and brokerages. In week two, add dedicated SEO pages for “Wilmington real estate video,” “brokerage brand films,” and “builder project films.” Add a Work page with three case studies and clear CTAs. Update the site to show packages, process, and FAQs. This addresses the “meh” brand feel and poor SEO callouts.
Turn on a simple weekly demand engine you will actually keep up with
Use a one‑hour weekly content sprint: pull 3 clips from each client shoot, write one problem‑solution caption for agents, post to IG and LinkedIn, then repurpose to short email. Add a monthly “Market Movers” studio day at PHILM for agents to book mini sessions, which doubles as lead gen and content capture. Consistency matters here, and you have already seen it work when you post.
Warm outbound plus proof
Build a list of 50 target agents and 10 brokerages. Send a short, value‑led email inviting them to a paid “Agent Story Film” pilot that includes one film and a vertical cutdown. Include one relevant case study link in each email. Track replies, meetings, close rate, and average order value so we can scale the highest‑return channel. This aligns with your request for help on funnel and packaging.
Revenue Architecture
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Revenue Architecture is how we package, price, and deliver your work so it scales without you and protects margin. For you, this pillar matters because weddings and PHILM already run on clear pricing, while the agency side is still sold like one‑off freelance projects. Until we standardize offers and delivery, growth will keep leaning on your time instead of repeatable systems.
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Offers & prices today. Weddings: $4,800 photo, $5,600 video, $10,000 both. PHILM: $125 for 1 hour, $100 per hour for 2+ hours. Agency: ranges like $900 for 9 reels + 20 photos; sales packages at $1,500–$2,000.
What feels easy vs. messy. “Weddings are easy.” Agency packaging and delivery “isn’t great,” and you’re not tracking profitability by offer. Annual revenue target called at $200K.
Effect on scale. Agency pricing acts like freelancer rates, not productized services. That makes delegation hard and raises burnout risk at higher volume.
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No cohesive packaging on the agency side. Without standard deliverables, timelines, and pricing, selling is slow and fulfillment is custom each time, which blocks delegation and scale.
Cash‑flow anchors exist. Weddings and PHILM use structured rates and convert predictably; they can fund the repositioning of the agency if we keep them humming.
Goal-pressure without system capacity. A $200K agency goal at current, custom pricing implies a heavy client count and owner delivery, which invites burnout.
Profit visibility is missing at the offer level. Without contribution margin per package, it’s tough to price correctly, hire confidently, or cap workload.
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Productize the agency into a 3‑tier Signature Suite
Create named packages with locked scope, timelines, and revision rules so others can fulfill. Example architecture for a real‑estate beachhead:
Agent Story Film: one cinematic profile, 6 verticals, 10 photos, defined shot list and 10‑business‑day turnaround
Brand Trailer: brand trailer, 12 verticals across 3 listings, 20 photos, quarterly planning call
Growth Plan (Quarterly): monthly shoot day, ongoing verticals/stills, quarterly trailer refresh
Retire the $900 “9 reels + 20 photos” construct and price for outcomes and time blocks, not clip counts. This shifts you from freelancer optics to an asset buyers can choose quickly.
Set price floors and capacity rules that assume delegation
Bake outsourced editing/culling into COGS from day one so price points survive handoff. Target a 10–20 percent margin give‑back to vendors in exchange for freeing your time, and use that to set a non‑negotiable price floor per package. Add booking caps per month to protect timelines and quality.
Standardize delivery with SOPs and a day‑rate backbone
Under each package, publish the shoot day structure, asset list, edit queue rules, and turnaround SLAs. Use a simple day‑rate backbone inside packages so production schedules are predictable and contractors can be slotted in without you. This solves the “isn’t great” packaging/delivery problem you called out.
Design a simple, high‑leverage revenue mix for the next 2 quarters
Keep weddings and PHILM steady while the new agency suite ramps: hold your “10 weddings” target at premium bundles, maintain PHILM utilization with mini‑session days, and drive 2–4 agency package wins per month in the chosen niche. This funds the reposition while you train editors and reduce owner delivery time.
Install offer‑level profitability and a quoting calculator
Build a live sheet that calculates contribution margin per package at different price points and vendor rates. Quote only from that calculator. Track win rate, average order value, and fulfillment time by package so we can tune scope and price without guesswork. This is the control system that underpins profitable scale. Google sheets is fine for this.
Financial Intelligence
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Financial Intelligence is about seeing exactly where profit is created, where it leaks, and how cash should be allocated so you can make owner‑level decisions with confidence. For you, it also determines how easily you can secure financing for a second PHILM and fund the agency pivot. Today the numbers do not give you that clarity, and personal expenses flowing through the business make outside capital harder to access.
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You use QuickBooks and work with an accountant, yet you are still asking where the money is going. You are not tracking profitability by offer and you are not watching core metrics consistently.
Our review shows decent net margins once a likely one‑time depreciation hit is removed. Cash flow from the agency and PHILM exists, but the picture is muddy without package‑level contribution data.
Your current accounting support appears compliance‑oriented, not decision‑oriented, and you lack a live dashboard to monitor margins, cash, and profit against goals.
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Net margins look workable if we strip out the unusual 2024 depreciation expense, but the absence of contribution margin by package means pricing and hiring decisions are guesswork.
Running personal expenses through the business reduces reported profit and makes lenders less friendly for a second PHILM or any agency pivot that needs capital.
Weddings and PHILM are reliable cash engines that can fund the transition if we keep them steady while the agency is repositioned.
You do not have a simple, real‑time view of margins, cash flow, and progress toward your take‑home target. The current setup is not giving you owner‑grade decisions.
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Make the books financing‑ready within 30 days
Stop running personal expenses through the business and reclassify past items for the year if possible. Create clear coding rules for meals, auto, travel, and owner draws so reported profit reflects the true performance of each business. This raises bottom‑line optics and improves lending options for a second PHILM.
Stand up a live Owner Dashboard
In Google Sheets or your BI of choice, track revenue, COGS, gross margin, operating expenses, net profit, cash balance, and cash flow by month. Add offer‑level tiles for weddings, PHILM, and agency packages. Review weekly. This shifts your accountant relationship from compliance to decision support.
Build contribution‑margin calculators for every package
Build a quoting sheet that pulls vendor rates for culling and editing, target turn times, and shoot day costs. Price only from this calculator so each sale meets a required margin after outsourced labor. Use it to tune scope, set price floors, and decide when to hire.
Adopt a monthly close and cash allocation rhythm
Close the books by the 10th. Review GM percent, net margin, and cash runway. Allocate a fixed percentage to taxes and reinvestment. Tie progress to your $250K take‑home goal with a simple reverse‑engineered target mix across your 3 businesses.
Use weddings and PHILM to fund the agency pivot intentionally
Set quarterly targets for those two cash‑positive lines and route a defined portion of free cash flow to agency repositioning and editor training. This keeps lights on while you productize and raise pricing on the agency side.
Operational Systems
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Operational Systems turn your work into repeatable, delegation‑ready processes so the business runs without chaos and without you in every task. For you, this matters because editing and studio upkeep are consuming prime hours, the agency side isn’t standardized, and your pipeline and delivery aren’t wired into simple, reliable workflows yet. Until ops are productized, you stay the bottleneck.
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You’re doing the bulk of delivery, especially editing, which crowds out CEO time. Team = you, one employee, and contractors for everything else.
After shoots, you’re personally resetting the PHILM space; there’s no dedicated reset role or checklist.
Agency work is sold and delivered case‑by‑case. No standardized scopes, timelines, or SLAs, which makes delegation and capacity planning hard.
Sales flow exists but isn’t systematized end‑to‑end. You capture inquiries and send HoneyBook proposals, but the funnel, follow‑ups, and post‑sale handoffs aren’t automated.
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Time leak at delivery. Outsourcing editing/culling would likely free up ~60 percent of your time at a 10–20 percent margin trade, which is a strong ops arbitrage for an owner.
PHILM reset is owner labor. A simple post‑shoot reset role (2 hours per booking) removes low‑skill work from your calendar and protects energy for sales and direction.
No production operating system. Without packaged scopes and turn‑time rules, every project becomes custom and you cannot reliably slot contractors or forecast capacity.
Sales‑to‑delivery handoff gaps. You’re fielding inquiries and proposals, but the lack of a defined funnel, task automation, and SOP‑driven handoffs creates friction and rework.
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Stand up an Editing & Culling Bench (two vendors, one backup) within 14 days
Run two paid test jobs with clear specs: file structure, shots to cut, grade references, music libraries, and a QC rubric.
Bake a 10–20 percent margin give‑back into package COGS and set turn‑times (e.g., 5 business days for reels, 10 for brand films).
Keep final color and sound polish in‑house until trust is built, then fully hand off. This move alone returns ~60 percent of your time to owner work.
Create a PHILM “Studio Reset” role and checklist
Scope: sweep, cyc wall touch‑ups, trash, gear staging, light restock; target 2 hours per booking.
Schedule: pre‑block a reset slot after every rental; assistant confirms via a simple form.
Tools: a laminated checklist by the door and a monthly supplies tote. This removes low‑value owner labor immediately
Productize delivery with SOPs + SLAs for each package
For each agency package, publish: shot list, crew plan, ingest and file‑naming, edit queue rules, revision policy, and turnaround SLAs.
Add a one‑page “Project Charter” that gets sent with every HoneyBook proposal so clients know process and timelines on day one.
Wire the sales funnel end‑to‑end (in the tools you already use)
Intake form → auto‑scheduler → templated proposal → payment → automated kickoff email that includes the Project Charter and asset‑collection link.
Create three follow‑up automations: unbooked consult, proposal sent no‑response, and cold lead revive.
ROI Impact
See an estimate return on investment for our recommendations. While we can not guarantee results, this is our best estimated range of impact so you can get a clearer picture of what’s possible when you make the right investments.
Outsource editing/culling (~50% of your time back)
Impact: Allows you to shift many hours a week from delivery into sales, positioning, and higher-value projects.
ROI: +$25K–$50K annually in new revenue capacity (conservative, assumes 2–4 new agency packages/month closed from freed time).
ESTIMATED ROI
$25k-$50k Revenue Annually
Productize agency into 3-tier Signature Suite
Impact: Shifts agency perception from freelancer to firm, raises close rate and average order value.
ROI: +$30K–$50K annually from higher pricing (15–25% lift per project) and reduced scope creep.
ESTIMATED ROI
$30k-50k Revenue Annually
Niche into Real Estate / Home Ecosystem clients (or other niche)
Impact: Creates a repeatable vertical, lowers CAC, and lets you own a category locally.
ROI: +$20K–$40K annually from recurring retainers or bundled projects (based on capturing just 5–7 clients with $8–12K annual spend).
ESTIMATED ROI
$20K–$40K Revenue Annually
Stand up live Financial Dashboard & contribution margin calculators
Impact: Directs you to cut/raise pricing where margins leak and gives clarity for scale.
ROI: +$10K–$20K annually by raising underpriced agency packages and avoiding “loss leaders.”
ESTIMATED ROI
$10K–$20K Revenue Annually
Fix website/SEO to rank for “Wilmington Brand/Real Estate Video”
Impact: Consistent inbound pipeline instead of pure outbound/manual sales.
ROI: +$20K–$30K annually (2–3 new agency clients per quarter at $5–10K average).
ESTIMATED ROI
$20K–$30K Revenue Annually
Estimated Combined ROI Range
If you execute all of the above in sequence, conservative estimates put the annual lift at $105k–$190K in revenue capacity over 12–18 months, adding 50%-100% to where you are now. The bulk of this comes from agency productization, time leverage via outsourcing, and owning a local niche while PHILM and weddings fund the transition.
CEO Priorities
You don’t need a 50-step plan. You need clear, confident direction.
The following priorities are the highest-leverage actions to shift you from operator to owner and align the business with your goals of $250K take-home, fewer but higher-value weddings, a stronger agency, and eventual PHILM expansion.
Top 3 Priorities
The highest-leverage actions to align your business with your goals in 90 days.
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Buy Back Your Time Immediately
Outsource editing and culling: Identify 2–3 reliable editors, run paid test projects, and document quality standards (file structure, turnaround, grading notes). Build outsourcing into package pricing so it’s sustainable.
Hire a PHILM reset role: Post a simple part-time role for a studio assistant to reset after rentals (2 hrs per booking, with a checklist for cyc wall, cleanup, gear).
Protect CEO time: Block three recurring sessions on your calendar each week dedicated only to sales, positioning, and high-value client work. Treat them as non-negotiable.
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Productize & Position the Agency
Choose a beachhead niche: Commit to real estate and the home ecosystem (agents, brokers, builders) for the next 6 months.
Launch a 3-tier Signature Suite: Create standardized, named packages with locked scopes and timelines (e.g., Agent Story Film, Brokerage Brand Trailer, Quarterly Growth Plan). Retire custom one-offs.
Overhaul website/SEO: Redesign your site to speak directly to this niche, list packages clearly, and add SEO-optimized pages for “Wilmington real estate video” and related searches.
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Build Financial & Sales Infrastructure
Financial dashboard: With your accountant or a fractional CFO, build a live dashboard that tracks margins, net profit, cash, and package-level contribution. Review weekly.
Clean up the books: Stop running personal expenses through the business to improve reported profit and open financing options for a second PHILM.
Automate the funnel: In HoneyBook, set up an automated path from inquiry → scheduling → templated proposal → contract → follow-up sequences. Add a shared production board so jobs move seamlessly without you nudging each stage.
Quick Wins
Simple, immediate steps you can take to build confidence and create space.
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Hire a PHILM Reset Assistant
Post a part-time gig ad (college student, freelancer) for 2 hrs per booking.
Provide a simple checklist: sweep, cyc wall touch-up, trash, gear staging.
This clears low-value work off your plate immediately.
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Test an Editor This Week
Send one recent project to two different editors.
Provide file structure, grading notes, and a turnaround deadline.
Compare results, choose a partner, and start outsourcing all culling/editing.
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Update Website Homepage Headline
Rewrite your homepage to speak directly to real estate/agent clients.
Add one recent video and clear call-to-action to “Book a Discovery Call.”
This creates instant clarity and positions you for higher-value leads.
Biggest Lever
The one action that will create the most ripple effects for your business.
Productize and Position the Agency
Shifting your agency from custom, one-off projects to a clear 3-tier Signature Offer Suite, aimed squarely at the real estate/home ecosystem, is the lever that unlocks your next stage. Right now, custom pricing and broad positioning keep you in the weeds and cap your growth. By standardizing deliverables, naming packages, setting price floors, and aiming at one niche, you:
Free yourself to delegate editing and fulfillment because packages are consistent.
Command higher pricing and stronger close rates because buyers see clarity and expertise.
Build a repeatable sales funnel and marketing engine tied to a defined category you can own.
Create the foundation to hit your $250K take-home while opening space for bigger creative opportunities (docuseries, Netflix-level work).
This one change creates ripple effects across every pillar — operations, financial clarity, your owner role, and ultimately, your freedom.