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Josh Knox posted on a Monday that any business owner using Stripe is in trouble. A few hours later, someone in his feed posted that they had just been booted from Stripe. The next morning, someone else did the same.

This is the first live consult on the show. Josh runs Noomerik, a payment processor that replaces Stripe, and his clients are agencies. He explains how sponsor banks and risk decide who gets cancelled, how he pays agencies up to 70% of the profit on processing fees, and where he is stuck getting his message out. Then I tell him what I would do about it.

Joshua B. Knox is the founder and CEO of Noomerik, a payment processor that agencies can resell to their clients.

In this episode:

• Why Josh says Stripe cancels accounts over risk, and what he does differently
• How sponsor banks and processors sit behind every card payment
• Why Josh spreads one merchant across more than one bank
• How zero percent processing works with dual pricing (a credit card price and a debit price)
• How to build your own checkout on a payments API
• How the agency partner program pays: up to 70% of the profit on processing fees, according to Josh
• The $27 a month backup account Josh wants you to put behind Stripe
• Why a payments portfolio sells for 60x to 120x monthly recurring revenue
• My advice for Josh: one short a day, a lead magnet in the comments, and leading with passive recurring revenue
• Why I would turn his best Facebook post (4,100 views, 74 comments) into a video

Chapters:
0:00 Cold open: what a payments portfolio sells for
0:22 Intro
2:32 What Noomerik does and why people get booted from Stripe
4:56 Sponsor banks and how payments compliance works
10:04 Where Noomerik fits if you build your own checkout
10:55 Why Stripe cancels accounts (it comes down to risk)
14:50 Spreading risk across more than one bank
16:56 How zero percent card fees work
20:55 Building a custom checkout on the API
22:31 The agency partner program and how it pays
27:47 Is Josh worried about LC Payments in HighLevel?
29:07 Agencies moving to their own tech stack
31:43 Josh's challenge: getting his message out
36:49 Why AI removed the barrier to entry for video
38:57 One short a day and why people quit
40:59 Be opinionated and bring your payments expertise
42:26 Give away a lead magnet in the comments
44:48 Turn your best text post into a video
48:24 A $27 a month Stripe backup as the first offer
52:08 Lead with passive recurring revenue
53:45 Payments portfolios and why your own tech stack is worth more
55:14 How basis points and card issuing pay
56:33 Where to find Josh and Noomerik
57:09 Troy's outro: bring your personality online

Connect with Josh:

• Noomerik: https://noomerik.com

Mentioned in this episode:

• GoHighLevel: https://mvrx.link/ghl (affiliate link)
• Leave us fan mail: https://mvrx.link/fanmail
• Be a guest on the show: https://theagencyhour.com/apply
• Work with us: https://theagencyhour.com/headless

Every episode of The Agency Hour: https://theagencyhour.com

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I fired my accountant this month. A firm with a boardroom and a lot of staff quoted me $20,000 to replace him. A remote firm that uses AI and only works with Xero clients quoted about $460 a month for the same job. That is about a quarter of the price.

That gap is coming for your agency too. This week I go through the HighLevel announcements from Level Up in Dallas, what is free now and what still costs money, and what a quote for an empty boardroom tells you about pricing your own work.

I am also starting free live consults on the show. Bring me the thing that is stuck in your agency and I will coach you through it on air. Leave me a voicemail at https://mvrx.link/fanmail and tell me you want a consult.

In this episode:

• What HighLevel announced at Level Up in Dallas, and what is free for agency users now (fair use applies)
• What is still paid: the agents that do the work, and the AI Employee plans per sub-account
• LC Payments, HighLevel's own payment processor, and the goal Varun stated of sharing about 40% of its payments profit with Founder plan agencies (it is in Labs and not live yet)
• Why Managed Agents getting their own computer matters
• Why "we'll set up AI for you" just became a free button, and what to sell instead
• A survey of 279 SEO professionals: 44% are more worried about AI than a year ago, and 43 of 85 agency SEOs fear smaller teams
• The $20,000 accounting quote against about $460 a month, and who pays for the boardroom
• Why a Xero-only niche lets a small firm do the same job for a quarter of the price
• Your homework: list everything in your price that your client pays for and never sees
• How to get a free live consult on the show

Chapters:
0:00 Cold open: I fired my accountant
0:16 Intro and free live consults
1:38 HighLevel says AI is free now. Is it?
6:20 LC Payments and the 40% claim
9:08 Managed Agents get their own computer
11:01 Stop selling the setup
11:42 44% of SEOs are more worried about AI
13:02 The Headful accountant and the $20,000 quote
16:19 The Headless accountant at $460 a month
18:25 Homework: what is in your price that clients never see
21:07 Free live consults, HighLevel and Viktor

Mentioned in this episode:

• HighLevel: https://mvrx.link/ghl (affiliate link)
• Viktor: https://mvrx.link/get-viktor (affiliate link)
• Leave us fan mail or ask for a live consult: https://mvrx.link/fanmail
• Work with us: https://theagencyhour.com/headless

Every episode of The Agency Hour: https://theagencyhour.com

Send us Fan Mail

Somewhere out there, a business is paying a full salary to a person whose job, two weeks of every month, is copying and pasting between spreadsheets. Command C, Command V, lunch.

One of our Headless Agency members told us about it on a call last week. We all lost it. Then I remembered how most agency owners spend their Tuesday, and I stopped laughing. This week I give you one question to ask before you hire anyone, and it tells you whether you're about to pay a salary for computer work that an AI employee should be doing.

This is a solo episode. Three stories from the Feed (AI search traffic, Anthropic's $16.8 billion quarter and what HubSpot's blog team learned from a year of going AI first), what's happening inside real agencies on our client calls, then the big idea: typing on a keyboard is basically free now, and your clients pay you for knowing what to do.

In this episode:

• The D or S test: write every task in a role, mark D if it needs a decision and S if someone could follow it off a checklist
• Why Marie Haynes's data on 145 million sessions shows ChatGPT sending 0.62% as many visits as Google organic, and why those visitors still convert at 13.8% against about 3%
• Anthropic's July to September revenue of $16.8 billion, up from $11.5 billion the quarter before, and why you should sell AI to your clients before they buy it from the lab
• What HubSpot's blog team found after a year of going AI first, and the MIT Technology Review finding that only 30% of managers and owners rate judging AI output as an absolute must
• A Sydney lead gen agency that moved more than 1,000 pages from Thrive Theme to Divi with an AI employee, at about $200, then $60, then $10 per site
• How a New Zealand content writer rebuilt a sales dashboard in a day, and the $78,000 roadmap it helped close at 1.45% of the client's target revenue
• Peter lifting his discovery sessions from $500 to $1,500, plus Jeremy, Candy, Daniel, Bashir and James and what an AI employee did for each of them
• Why more revenue does not need more hands on keyboards, and how the fear of AI comes from 45 years of identity built on typing
• This week's homework: open last week's calendar, mark every hour spent on steps someone else could follow, write the biggest block as 10 plain-English lines and hand it to an AI employee

Chapters:
0:00 Cold open: the copy and paste salary
0:47 Intro
1:08 The plan and fan mail
1:39 The Feed: ChatGPT traffic against Google organic
3:52 The Feed: Anthropic's $16.8B quarter
5:03 The Feed: HubSpot's year of going AI first
7:01 Inside real agencies: client calls
10:41 The big idea: typing is basically free now
15:49 The one question before you hire anyone
16:48 Homework and fan mail
18:38 Outro

Mentioned in this episode:

• Search Engine Land (Marie Haynes's AI search traffic data): https://searchengineland.com
• Viktor: https://mvrx.link/get-viktor (affiliate link)
• Tuesday's video, the three things that get an agency to a million with AI: https://youtu.be/9WeTF557N8g
• Leave us fan mail: https://mvrx.link/fanmail
• Work with us: https://theagencyhour.com/headless

Every episode of The Agency Hour: https://theagencyhour.com