Direct Answer
Steve Toth built Notebook Agency's inbound engine by turning client work into reusable proof, then distributing that proof consistently through LinkedIn and a weekly newsletter. The agency still sells: Steve publishes, consults, qualifies, prices, proposes, and builds relationships. What it reportedly did without was a dedicated sales team.
The playbook is not "post more." It is result, document, teach, invite, deliver, repeat. Strong work creates a specific lesson. Public teaching earns attention. A clear next step converts that attention into conversations. Delivery creates the next proof asset.
Watch: Steve Toth's Inbound Agency Playbook
Credit: This article is based on Ahrefs' interview with Steve Toth, the supplied transcript, and Notebook Agency's public properties. The evidence labels, inbound-system model, 90-day plan, and measurement framework are editorial additions.
What the Case Shows, and What It Does Not
| Claim | Evidence status | Responsible interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| Seven-figure revenue, 25 employees, and 99% inbound leads | Interview-reported snapshot | A founder account at the time of recording, not audited financial disclosure |
| FreshBooks cluster generated $50,000 per week in traffic value | Interview-reported SEO metric | Estimated paid-click equivalent, not revenue or profit |
| Signaturely reached about 400,000 organic visits | Interview plus public client testimonial | A client result with public corroboration, but no raw analytics are published |
| A LinkedIn post produced a $5,000-per-month client | Steve's recollection in the interview | A useful mechanism, not a typical conversion rate for social posts |
| Notebook Agency has no sales team | Interview framing | No dedicated sales department; founder-led selling and conversion still occur |
Notebook Agency's current public site describes a team with more than 15 in-house SEO specialists and services spanning organic search, AI search, content, technical SEO, digital PR, analytics, local SEO, and conversion work. Public numbers can describe different dates and definitions, so do not force every headcount figure into one timeless total.
1. Build Proof Before Promoting Expertise
Steve's strongest career signal began inside FreshBooks. The team identified invoice template as a high-volume keyword, built a core page and 110 supporting pages, and reportedly reached the top position. He also describes hundreds of published posts and substantial search traffic.
The important move was not simply publishing at scale. The project connected keyword demand to a business with a direct reason to serve that demand. It created a result specific enough to explain: target, supporting architecture, ranking, traffic value, and business relevance.
Turn every strong project into a proof record
- Starting condition and business objective
- Why the opportunity was selected
- What was changed and who did the work
- Timeline, constraints, and important failures
- Before-and-after metrics with their exact definitions
- What the evidence does not prove
- A repeatable lesson another operator can use
2. Publish the Work, Not Generic Expertise
Steve says he posted the invoice-template result on LinkedIn while waiting for an Uber. The post gained attention and an inbound inquiry. The lesson is not that casual posts outperform a sales process. It is that specific operational proof is more persuasive than repeatedly claiming to be an expert.
A useful proof post has five parts:
- Situation: the real problem and why it mattered.
- Decision: the non-obvious choice or method.
- Evidence: the result, with the metric defined.
- Lesson: what transfers to another business.
- Invitation: subscribe, reply, book a consultation, or inspect the full method.
This is founder-led distribution. The work generates the idea, the idea earns attention, and the call to action makes demand capturable.
3. Use Runway to Protect Positioning
Steve did not leave FreshBooks immediately after the first inbound win. He freelanced while employed and says he saved about $100,000, enough to survive roughly a year if the business failed. He left when staying in the job was beginning to cost more than leaving.
Runway is not only a survival buffer. It changes negotiation. A founder who must close every prospect is more likely to discount, accept a poor scope, tolerate late payment, and promise work outside their advantage. A founder with time can preserve a minimum engagement and decline the wrong client.
Do not copy the dollar amount. Calculate personal runway, business overhead, taxes, insurance, payment delays, pipeline volatility, and a recovery margin. The objective is enough time to make a deliberate decision under a weak quarter.
4. Price the Outcome and the Constraint
The interview traces Steve's monthly retainers from roughly $1,200 to $5,000 and then $10,000 after a paid consultation with a crypto prospect. That conversation gave him evidence that the market valued access to his judgment, public track record, and ability to execute.
A single high-priced acceptance does not prove that every future client should pay the same. Use it to test a clearer commercial model:
| Price input | Question | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Business value | What qualified demand or risk can the work influence? | Pipeline, margin, search demand, conversion, avoided spend |
| Complexity | How many markets, templates, teams, and dependencies are involved? | Audited scope and delivery plan |
| Scarcity | What judgment or experience is genuinely hard to replace? | Relevant proof and named expertise |
| Capacity | How much senior attention does the engagement consume? | Team plan and opportunity cost |
| Risk | Which outcomes are controllable, and which are not? | Assumptions, exclusions, and measurement agreement |
5. Turn Private Notes Into a Public Knowledge Asset
Steve began collecting tactics in Evernote, then realized one note could become one weekly email. SEO Notebook converted private learning into a repeatable public artifact. The newsletter did three jobs at once: it forced Steve to clarify his thinking, gave practitioners something useful, and kept his expertise visible to future clients.
His description of The Go-Giver adds the distribution principle: give useful knowledge one-to-many, then make the ways to reciprocate visible. Readers could subscribe, invite him to speak, book a consultation, or become clients.
The business value comes from consistency and specificity, not from withholding every tactic. A buyer can understand a method and still hire the team with the context, tooling, coordination, and accountability to execute it.
6. Delegate Below a Deliberate Value Threshold
Steve describes setting a deliberately high target hourly value for his own time and delegating work below it. This is not permission to abandon delivery or inflate an hourly rate. It is a forcing function for identifying the few activities that require the founder.
| Founder should own | Team can own | System can support |
|---|---|---|
| Positioning, flagship methods, senior relationships, hiring standards | Research, production, account operations, reporting, specialist execution | Templates, checklists, dashboards, automation, knowledge retrieval |
| Important exceptions and trade-offs | Work with a clear quality definition and escalation path | Repeated steps with stable inputs and inspectable outputs |
Delegation works when the method is documented, quality is visible, and someone remains accountable. Hiring people to absorb undocumented chaos only makes the chaos more expensive.
7. Adapt From Capturing Clicks to Influencing Decisions
Steve describes an early fear that AI answers would remove search clicks. His current answer is not to abandon SEO. Notebook Agency now pairs organic search with AEO and GEO, aiming to influence how products are represented and recommended inside AI-assisted buying journeys.
This changes the measurement layer. Top-of-funnel traffic still has value, but it is no longer the complete scorecard. Track:
- qualified organic traffic and assisted conversions;
- branded demand and direct visits;
- mentions, citations, accuracy, and recommendation contexts in AI answers;
- sales conversations that name search, newsletters, LinkedIn, or an AI assistant;
- late-stage pages and sources influencing buyer decisions;
- revenue concentration by channel and offer.
The durable move is the same one that powered the original agency: observe a market shift early, document a useful method, test it on real work, and teach what survives.
A 90-Day Inbound Agency Playbook
| Period | Build | Exit criterion |
|---|---|---|
| Days 1-30 | Choose one client type, one painful problem, one measurable offer, and one proof-record template | A prospect can understand the result, scope, evidence, and next step in five minutes |
| Days 31-60 | Publish one practical proof note each week; capture email; offer one diagnostic call | At least five qualified conversations reveal repeated needs and objections |
| Days 61-90 | Refine qualification, raise the minimum where evidence supports it, document delivery, and delegate one repeatable task | The offer produces margin, proof, and a case study without founder-only heroics |
Keep the first system small. One channel, one cadence, one offer, one conversion path, and one review meeting are enough to discover whether inbound is compounding or merely generating applause.
Measure the Inbound Engine
| Layer | Metrics | Decision |
|---|---|---|
| Proof | Case studies published, claims verified, client permission, reusable lessons | Do we have evidence worth distributing? |
| Attention | Qualified readers, replies, saves, shares, subscribers, branded searches | Are the right people learning from us? |
| Demand | Qualified inquiries, source, problem fit, deal velocity, close rate | Is attention becoming a credible pipeline? |
| Economics | Average engagement, gross margin, acquisition time, retention, concentration | Can the agency grow without weakening delivery? |
| Capacity | Founder hours, senior review load, rework, team utilization, documented processes | Is the system becoming less founder-dependent? |
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Video Chapters
| Time | Section | Time | Section |
|---|---|---|---|
| 00:00 | From copywriter to agency founder | 08:08 | Catalog tactics and launch SEO Notebook |
| 02:03 | The FreshBooks invoice-template result | 09:52 | Delegate below the founder's value threshold |
| 03:01 | A LinkedIn post creates inbound demand | 10:22 | Grow Notebook Agency and the inbound engine |
| 04:34 | Build runway before leaving | 11:41 | Adapt from SEO traffic to AI-influenced decisions |
| 05:41 | Launch into the 2020 lockdown | 13:59 | Launch before the platform looks impressive |
| 06:33 | Signaturely, BrainStation, and $50K months | 14:49 | Why Steve keeps building |
| 06:48 | The consultation that doubled pricing | 15:51 | Steve's AI knowledge avatar |
Sources and Further Reading
- Ahrefs: How I Built a $1M+ SEO Agency With No Sales Team (primary video and supplied transcript)
- Notebook Agency: Official Website, Services, Team, and Public Results
- Notebook Agency: Official Structured Company Information
- SEO Notebook: Steve Toth's SEO Strategy Newsletter
- AI Notebook: Steve Toth's AI Search Newsletter
- Kevin Kelly: 1,000 True Fans
YouTube lists the primary video's publication date as 9 September 2026. This article was reviewed on 27 September 2026. Headcount, revenue, lead-source percentages, rankings, traffic estimates, traffic value, pricing, subscriber totals, clients, and service offerings can change. Unless supported by a linked first-party page, figures attributed to the interview remain creator-reported.