Smart Agency Masterclass with Jason Swenk: Podcast for Digital Marketing Agencies

Did you know if you keep saying you're too busy it probably means you're not charging enough? Are you ready to start charging what your digital agency is worth? Being too busy is the quickest way to not only burn yourself out but also your team. I've been there, and let me tell you I was on the verge of shutting down my agency from being overworked and undervalued. We were doing so many things wrong. We were talking to the wrong clients, working long hours, and worst of all, barely making ends meet. If any of this sounds familiar, it's time to get out of your own way and start charging what you're worth. How can you get your prices to where they should be? Understand the value and results your agency delivers. Build trust with clients through an offer ladder. Position yourself as an authority in your space. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM In this video, you will learn the three pricing structures you can use to get you to a place where your pricing will both be more on par with the results you deliver and will give you an advantage over other cheaper agencies. Most agency owners believe at some point that low prices will give you an advantage over the rest. However, I'd argue that increasing your prices actually works to your advantage. As an adviser, I go through the financials of thousands of agencies, and in up to 90% of cases, I recommend they increase their prices. The suggestion alone makes them back away in fear. I get it, most agency owners worry about things like losing the pitch because their prices are too high. However, I counter with "What if you lose the pitch because your pricing is too low?" You don't think this can happen? It happened to me! Years ago I got a call from a prospect that needed a website. I nailed the call and was invited to their office to present an offer. Their office was HUGE. Who was this company? I proceeded to make the pitch and said my price: $10,000. They actually laughed and I was so confused. Was the price too high? Well, it turns out this company I'd never heard of, Berkshire Hathaway, was expecting to spend around $300,000 on the website. They loved the pitch and were excited to work with us until I named my price... because it was too low they thought it wouldn't deliver the results they expected. So how should your digital agency pricing be structured? How can you come up with a price that shows your value, increases profit, and allows you to win more deals? A lot of businesses tend to set a price and then not think about it again for years. When there's one element of your business that affects everything other element so much, it's definitely not something to be forgotten. Pricing should evolve as much as your business does. 3 Digital Agency Pricing Models 1. Hourly-Based Pricing Should agencies charge by the hour? Honestly, I'm not a fan. This is my absolutely least favorite model. Charging by the hour sounds like a great idea, but as you get better and more efficient at your job you'll be working fewer hours and thus making less money. It's also the option that makes clients more nervous because there's a variable of the unknown. However, I do believe there's a time for hourly rates. If you're doing something new and it's hard to estimate how long it will take you, then it's the best option. 2. Value-Based pricing This pricing model is the intersection between what your services are worth to the client and what you're willing to take. Unfortunately, it's very hard to get a pulse on the perceived value. Try to gather as much information as you can from clients so you can fully understand what they need and how you can help them. I can't tell you the number of times I've met with clients and asked them for their budget to find that it's much higher than I would've quoted, so we could have possibly lost revenue or lost the deal altogether. 3. Performance-Based Pricing What if you only got paid for performance? Would you be profitable? Mastery member David was having trouble charging anything more than $3,500 per month. He was in a race to the bottom that involved over-delivering and under-promising. David focused too much on what others in his niche were charging. After hearing countless success stories from other mastermind members, he got the courage to make a change. He picked a client who he knew he could make tons of money for and asked for a percentage of the revenue he would generate for the company as payment. That percentage turned into a $1 million payday six months later. The trick when it comes to this model is coming up with a formula to pick the winners. If you generate this company X amount of business, can they scale as quickly as you're sending them business? What's the metric you can control? If their sales team won't return calls then you need to change the performance to an agreed amount of leads. Getting Your Prices to What They Should Be I'm a big advocate of agencies increasing their prices but it obviously

Are you effectively using storytelling in your agency's marketing? Storytelling is an invaluable tool that makes your prospects feel heard and understood. It's a way to relate to clients and communicate how your help solve their problems. Storytelling creates better communication that's more effective, more memorable, and easier for people to understand. Today's guest started working as a scriptwriter until he discovered business storytelling was a coveted skill he could help business owners develop. Over the years, he has implemented 3 methods that help facilitate clients' access to storytelling tools. He explains some of the logic behind these frameworks and how anyone can train themselves to be a compelling storyteller. Douglass Hatcher is the CEO of Communicate4IMPACT, an agency that helps coach people in the art and science of business storytelling. They take what business owners do naturally – telling stories – and help them apply that to what they do professionally. In this episode, we'll discuss: Using business storytelling effectively. 3 methods to improve your storytelling skills. Secret to building a successful agency sales team. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Discovering the Power of Business Storytelling For most of his career, Douglass was a speech writer. First in the public sector, for congressmen and a senator. Eventually, he moved on to the corporate world where he wrote speeches for the CEO of MasterCard. This led to requests to help with their presentations and pitch decks. That is where he first heard the term business storytelling. Douglass quickly learned that it's an actual craft to tell a story in the business context. In addition to creating presentation decks, he ended up helping develop a two-hour course on storytelling for the company. The course was more popular than he could have imagined. That is when he realized there is a market for this service and started his own agency. The Significance of Effective Business Storytelling Richard Branson and Steve Jobs are great examples of successful business owners who care about effective communication. Not all leaders put communication ahead of everything else in their business. Of course, your data, financials, and numbers matter; but at the end of the day, if your audience doesn't understand what you bring to the table, you're in a tough place. That said, Steve Jobs wasn't always the confident and expressive presenter we remember today. Douglass recalls a TV interview with an anxiety-ridden Jobs who even vomited between takes. From that point on, he worked hard to become a great communicator spending up to thirty hours on each of his presentation slides. If you look at any of Steve Jobs's presentations, he doe not focus on selling the newest iPhone or iPad. He's more focused on communicating through storytelling. Instead of saying that the iPod was the latest and greatest mp3 player, he said "the iPod is having 1,000 songs in your pocket." Rather than just selling features, Steve Jobs was the master of telling the story of what a product will do for you. 3 Methods to Help Improve Your Storytelling Skills 1. The ABT Method ABT or And, But, Therefore is the three-word vocabulary necessary to tell a good story. It was first popularized by Randy Olson who was inspired to apply the ABT method after seeing a documentary by the South Park creators where they talked about using it for their scriptwriting. AND represents the way things are BUT is the turn or the change THEREFORE is the outcome with a resolution. Basically, the idea is that instead of saying "My product is this, my service is that," you use the framework: "My services are this AND this, BUT if you use it this way you will get X result; THEREFORE, this can happen." In storytelling, without change, there is no story. Likewise, in business you're trying to solve a problem, to change the customer's situation for the better -- that's where storytelling comes in. 2. What, So What, Now What WHAT is the thing you want to talk about SO WHAT is "why do we care" NOW WHAT is about what's next. In this framework, you ask these questions to identify, analyze, and draw sense from an event. Douglass uses it to train clients to tackle situations where they have to answer a question under pressure. He gives the example of a famous director who experienced technical difficulties on stage when the teleprompter went out. As a result, he chose to walk off stage. If he had this tool he could have stayed on stage and improvised a way to engage the audience. The goal of this framework is to keep you from tanking in moments of high pre

When was the last time you took a break from your agency? Do you stress out just thinking about taking time off? Do you feel like everything will fall apart with you? This is usually the case when agency owners need to create SOPs and delegate more to their team. Getting serious about SOP documentation levels up your agency, sets up the team for success, and increases its overall value. It starts with an important mental shift and understanding your agency will actually benefit from you taking a step back. Today's guest is a process and systems expert who focuses on establishing all the necessary systems and procedures to make sure you have something to lean on. If you're doing all the agency work, you're rarely able to put 100% into anything. This is why she focuses on teaching how to leverage rest and create simple systems to increase your agency's longevity. Alyson Caffrey is a systems and process creation expert and the founder of Operations Agency. She helps founders get their agencies out of their brains and centralized to help them be more impactful. She's also the author of The Sabbatical Method: How to Leverage Rest and Grow Your Business, a guide to help return business owners back to their families. With it, founders learn that taking a break can increase your business's longevity, uncover some inefficiencies, and professionalize operations. In this interview, we'll discuss: Taking a step back increases your agency's value. Simplifying SOP creation to have an immediate impact. 3 keys to successful digital agency processes Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Why Agency Founders Need to Be Intentional with Their Time Like many service-based business owners, Alyson hadn't planned to start an agency. She was working as an Operations Manager in Colorado when her husband got a career-defining opportunity that meant moving cities. Not long after that, she was approached by several former clients to continue providing some services, and she was suddenly an accidental agency owner providing SOPs and operations support. With no children and her husband occupied in the military, Alyson had a ton of time to dedicate to her business. This meant she was able to serve clients at a really deep level in the beginning. However, when she became a mom she was confronted with the need to take time off. As the operations expert, Alyson knows she should've had her processes documented, but like the cobbler's children with no shoes, she had not prioritized it. She now attributes the birth of her son to finally being more intentional about the time she spends working in her business and making sure she can spend time away from it, too. Taking a Step Back Helps Increase Your Agency's Value Agency owners work very hard to build a business with the idea that at some point, they'll have freedom and the ability to take breaks. However, once the agency starts growing it never seems to be the right time to take time off. Many agency owners are they're forced to decide between their agency and their personal life. That means missing important events and strained relationships. Alyson says for her it was a high-stakes moment when she realized there was a problem. It all starts with a mental shift and understanding you're selling a transformation, not your time. Many agency owners think they're the only ones that can lead their business to success. However, once you remove yourself from the equation of day-to-day operations, the agency's value instantly drives up. When you can step away from the agency to recharge, or even just to work on the business and not in it, that single benefit is a game changer. Three Steps You Can Take to Start Empowering Your Team Where can you start to systematically take action to make the necessary changes? Alyson started by changing how she performs inside her business. Screen recording. Instead of just going in and doing the work, Alyson started to screen-record while she did it. Become the advisor. Next, she provide the resources and guidance for her team to get the results but didn't do the work for them. Test the framework. Alyson decided to test out her client-facing frameworks with her own team to see which processes they could set up using them. How to Simplify SOPs and Have an Immediate Impact on Your Agency Although the process of creating SOP's and documenting processes can take time, Alyson saw results almost immediately. After screen recording her processes, she was able to delegate some things to her client success manager. This small act freed up some of Alyson's time so she could focus on more important elements of the agency. Start with the administrative tasks, which can be delegated overnight once you record the process. Things like sending client reports and scheduling meetings do not require a special skill set. Nothing will fall apart if you, as the agency owner, are not doing it. You can focus on other areas of the business while still allowing client

Do you view your digital agency clients as a means to an end? Are you and your team taking a real interest in your clients in order to understand them as a person first? Creating relationships is at the core of every successful agency. That's why today's guest finds his background in accounting a helpful skill in understanding what is important to his agency clients. Budgets and bottom line are one thing, but clients want to be treated like humans. He is on the show to share the insights he has learned about client relationships, how he weaves that into the interview process, and two pivotal moments that helped him have confidence and courage as an agency owner. Spencer Hadelman is the founder and CEO of Advantage Marketing, a Chicago-based marketing firm that provides digital and traditional media solutions. His agency has served big brand clients like the University of Berkley and Hello Kitty and also invests in multiple companies with their recent e-commerce acquisitions. In this episode, we'll discuss: Why creating relationships is at the core of every successful agency. One unique interview tactic that assesses agency employees. Why you need confidence and courage to be an agency owner. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Podcast Takeover!! Get to know your Smart Agency Guest Host: Dr. Jeremy Weisz is the co-founder of Rise25, an agency that helps companies launch and run podcasts profitably. He followed Jason's podcast and eventually joined the mastermind and has been a guest on the podcast before. Today, he's helping Jason bring something new to the Smart Agency podcast audience by interviewing a special guest and getting a new perspective on the show. Serving Agency Clients According to Their Specific Needs Spencer describes his business as a full-service marketing firm since he believes the label "agency" scares people off sometimes. He understands clients don't always need help in every area so his company has 3 subdivisions: Digital advertising: Helping clients with search and Google campaigns, as well as paid social. Traditional media: Including television ad campaigns, radio, billboards, and direct mail. Content creation: Mainly content for their organic social campaigns. They also do website design, logo design, branding work, etc. Some clients require all three services while others choose just one pillar depending on their needs. Overall, clients seem to appreciate that, depending on their strategy, they have different experts working on their marketing needs. They aren't just pushed to one division completely. It's great to have a different perspective from someone in a different division and in the end, it's all about the results. Why Human Relationships Are at the Core of Every Successful Agency Even though Spencer majored in accounting, he credits the knowledge and skill set he got from his education as an important part of his marketing work. In fact, having those accounting skills is something he recommends to anyone wanting to own a business someday. Marketing courses and working at other agencies gave him the experience he needed to learn about the industry; however, accounting is what still helps him understand the clients' businesses. Working at other agencies he learned about media buying and the evolution of changing technologies. The biggest lesson he took away, however, was that clients want to be treated like humans. It's not just about their budget and coming in focused on how much ad spend. It's about creating long-term relationships. Whether it's a startup or a huge brand, if clients are putting their faith in you, you need to take a human approach to it. It was those relationships with clients that gave Spencer the push to start his agency. It seemed like a logical next step, after realizing clients didn't really care about the agency and were more excited to work with him and his team. A Unique Interview Tactic that Helps Assess Agency Employees Spencer likes to prepare potential new hires for possible hostile reactions from clients. This is something he does even during their interview process. He reads their CV in front of them and shows a dismissive attitude just to see their reactions. In his opinion, it's a good way to see how someone handles conflict and difficult situations. To balance that with a fun work culture, he organizes outings, retreats, and contests. To help the team integrate and have fun, he comes up with different activities throughout the year. This reflects on the way the team interacts with one another and helps create strong relationships. 2 Pivotal Moments That Shaped Confidence and Cou

Why is VaynerMedia attracting the best brands that everyone wants to work with? Do you think it is because they have the best team? Do they have the best process and deliver the best results? Out of the millions of agencies… Why do we all know who that agency is? Simply put, they are well known because their founder understood the game of attention. You can to that level of success too by learning to promote your digital agency through content. In 2006, Gary created Wine Library TV, where he reviewed different types of wine in the hopes of getting the attention of wine buyers. He started by sharing his thoughts about wine on social media and ended up becoming known for his insights on digital marketing. Years later, he founded VaynerMedia after growing his dad's wine store to over $100 Million! Pretty much out of the gate, his agency was working with brands like Pepsi and General Electric. But why were they coming to them? Gary knew what others didn't, which is that whoever can get and keep people's attention, will win 99% of the time. Once I figured out this I never went back. I thought if I had the best team, service, and results people would line up to work with us. As you may guess, I was WRONG. I had figured out a formula to get the perfect clients by reaching out through calls, emails, conferences, and even showing up at their offices. However, I never figured out how to get clients to come to us until I started following Gary. In this video, I'll share: How agencies are getting their perfect clients to call them. The type of content you need to be creating to get clients' attention. Why Content is a MUST for Digital Agency Owners First off, let's just be clear that creating content is not a nice-to-have piece for an agency. It's a MUST. If you want to stand out from the crowd and get noticed, you should be creating content. Usually, agency owners I chat with have one main fear around content. They don't want to be the face of the agency and that holds them back from creating content. They think "if I create it, all the clients will ask to work with me directly" which is just not true. Gary Vaynerchuck is not out there working every single client engagement that comes to VaynerMedia. If you create content that gets your niche audience's attention and provides value, they'll now trust you and compare everyone else to you. Do you think this is a competitive advantage? OF COURSE IT IS. Using Success Stories to Promote Your Digital Agency In this video, you'll meet Marty, a mastery member who already had previous success in a well-defined niche. However, his agency was not growing as fast as he'd like. We recommended they highlight some of the agency's successes through video case stories. His audience wanted to hear stories from other businesses they could relate to. These were simple videos that answered: What's the conflict? How did they overcome it? What is life like now that it is resolved? You may think the work was done once the case stories were ready. Job done, time to open up the floodgates. Not necessarily. Now it was time to promote this content. They began to run ads and guess what? They got the attention of their ideal audience. Clients like Delta were now calling them wanting to work together. Sharing success stories will allow you to not only showcase your expertise but also demonstrate the real-world results your agency can deliver. Promoting Your Brand Through a Podcast Another type of content I've seen work very well for agencies is a podcast. A podcast can be a great opportunity to interview experts in your field while adding color to the conversation. It'll take time to build an audience, but it's fun and easy to do. You'll also learn a lot from others in the process and establish yourself as an authority. By sharing knowledge and expertise you'll be showing your audience you know what you're talking about. Creating a podcast and interviewing experts in your area will also help you create credibility by association. Once you're seen as an authority, it'll become much easier to attract and convert leads. How to Content to Educate Your Audience This one's always a winner. One of the best ways to create content that will resonate with your audience is to educate them. By teaching your audience how to do something you're providing real value that they can use to improve their lives or their business. What type of valuable information should you share? Make sure it's some of your best stuff. Too many times people try to get away with sharing some really small pieces. The problem with this is people will assume you're giving away your best stuff and that your best stuff sucks. What I've found is that people are interested in knowing how something works but they're rarely interested in doing it themselves. They want to understand, but in the end, they want someone to come in and do it and get it right first. So don't be afraid to show them. Clients want someone who can solve their problem fa

Does your agency truly understand your clients' needs? Are you proactive about learning their business? Is your team constantly looking for new, innovative solutions? What can you do to earn clients' trust to retain and even upsell them? Today's guest has been an agency owner for 30 years and knows the business well. He understands which questions to ask to gain clients' trust and teaches other agency owners to do the same. He'll reveal what clients are looking for in an agency according to a recent survey. Drew McLellan owns Agency Management Institute, which serves small to mid-scale agencies helping them grow. He's on the show sharing insight from a recent survey. Drew's agency runs an annual survey where agency clients respond to focused questions that give agencies some insight into what they can improve to have a better relationship with them. This year, the survey focused on agencies' struggles to grow their existing book of business. In this episode, we'll discuss: What do clients think about agencies? 4 things you can do to build better relationships with clients. 2 big mistakes you should avoid with clients. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. What Do Clients Think About Their Agency Relationship? Most agency owners are great when it comes to their services but don't have the tools to run a business profitably. Having run an agency for thirty years, Drew knows the industry well and now focuses on helping them. His agency runs an annual research piece called the Agency Edge. In its ten-year history, they've mostly talked to people who hire agencies, as was the case this year. The central theme this year was agencies' struggles to grow their existing book of business. Clients are taking a longer time to hire agencies, and even once they've hired them, they're slow to assign a first project. So how to get more from the clients you already have? Basically, the gist of the research was to get respondents to reveal how, when, and where they give an agency more money. The results were fascinating -- most fell into one of three categories: The ideal agency client: This is the client we all want to have. They want their agency at the table talking about strategy and truly believe they couldn't run their business as well without the agency. The client looking for a specialist: This was the largest group, accounting for over 45% of the respondents. These are businesses that are pretty happy with their in-house team but are in need of extra sets of hands and depths of expertise in certain areas. They expect the agency to come in and partner with their team. They don't expect them to get in on big-picture strategy. The client who thinks everything's too expensive: This was fortunately the smallest group. These clients see agencies as a necessary evil that is too expensive. If they could avoid giving an agency more money, they will choose to do that. Naturally, the research focused on the first two groups, which are the ones likely to spend more money on agencies. What Do Clients Really Want From Their Agency? No matter the different topics they've covered over the years, Drew and his team keep finding these same groups. The undesirable clients who see agencies as money-sucking machines are thankfully always the minority. However, Drew does note this was the first year where that minority came off very strongly about their views. This might be an indication that brand leaders are becoming more leery about partnerships. Moreover, there are now more agencies out there than ever before, which means there are more bad agencies too. With more people out there who don't know how to market and adequately provide a service, it drowns out the good ones. This creates a rejection of the concept of agency, which leads to businesses trying to avoid that label. In terms of how to identify these client categories, they're actually spread across the board. Businesses that want agencies as a partner could be big brands or small startups. Overall, clients want an agency partner who really tries to understand their business. Basically, they want the agency to care enough about their business to come up with good ideas; even if those ideas don't necessarily impact the agency. This could be a problem when account people are order takers who don't understand the clients' business and don't know which questions to ask to have insights into their business problems. 4 Things You Can Do to Build Better Relationships With Clients Learn more. Based on survey responses, agency owners could invest more time and energy learning how their clients do their work. This can mean a numb

What sets digital marketing agencies apart? How can you destroy your competition to succeed? Are you struggling to stand out in a crowded market? Do you want to crush your competition and become the go-to agency in your industry, but don't know where to start? What if I told you there's a way to separate your agency from everyone else? Whether it's an SEO, ecommerce, or email marketing agency, your agency can still sound like everyone else despite having a niche. Having a MeToo agency will only have you winning the race to the bottom. The next logical step after choosing a niche is finding ways to position your business as the top choice for clients. From crafting a unique value proposition to building a strong brand identity, you need to know how to set your agency apart from the competition. In this video, I'll share… How one agency transformed from a "Me Too" agency to an industry leader with a huge waitlist of clients that are willing to pay a premium for the best. Why your marketing isn't clear and how to fix it. I'm also going to show you the simple formula for developing an elevator pitch that makes people say where have you been all my life. My positioning script board that you can download and use to make your own marketing stand out. So, how can you be more competitive in such a crowded space? Let's about how to position your agency to stand out. Most digital agencies struggle with positioning in a way that truly resonates with their audience. Having unclear marketing leads to several bad things: Your clients won't know who you are. Nobody is clear on how you can help them. Your marketing campaigns fall short. Potential clients won't buy from your agency. It's frustrating because you know you have a great service to offer but you're talking to an empty room. Crush Your Competition With Marketing Messaging That Really Works Let me tell you about my friend Jose, who had an agency with a well-defined niche, but was converting at less than 20%. My first thought was to ask him about his elevator pitch, which was "We design websites for non-profits"... Clear, understandable, and to the point. However, the problem was that it only mentioned who he helped and what he did. No one cares what you do; they care what you can do for them. After thinking about the results his clients wanted and why, we came up with an elevator pitch that mentioned how they helped nonprofit clients achieve their goals of raising awareness and finding donors and volunteers. We walked him through our positioning scripts and came up with a new approach. The new elevator pitch was clear on who they actually helped, what they want, and why in just a couple of sentences. That agency is now dominating their niche. The Positioning Script That Can Help You Reach the Top Our formula to help agency owners improve their positioning includes five questions. Ideally, you'll spend at least 10-15 minutes on each. You'll be ranking each of the provided options to answer: What does your client want? What is keeping your client from getting what they want? How does their problem make them feel? Why shouldn't people have to deal with this in the first place? What is the root cause of your problem? Once you have your answers, you can start following the script to tell a story and create your new elevator pitch. This is what we did with Jose and this is how you too can get the best results. Get access to these resources at JasonSwenk360.com/attract. Now you can create authority and position your agency in the right way. That's where great content comes in, which is our next step in the Attract Series. Whether you're just starting out or looking to take your agency to the next level, this video is a must-watch for anyone who wants to dominate their industry. So what are you waiting for? Hit the play button and start becoming the go-to agency today! The Ultimate Guide to Unlocking Your Agency's Potential If you want to stand out from the noisy agency space and attract your ideal clients in order to crush the competition be sure to check out our FREE video course: AgencyMastery360.com/Attract Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? If you want to be around amazing agency owners that can see what you may not be able to see and help you grow your agency, go to Agency Mastery 360. Our agency growth program enables you to take a 360-degree view of your agency and gain mastery of the 3 pillar systems (attract, convert, scale) so you can create predictability, wealth, and freedom.

How do you get noticed by big brands? And eventually, get noticed by big agencies for an acquisition offer? It's all about making decisions that put the client first. That is what this guest shares in his story about starting out in the early days of social media, finding a hole in the industry, and how his agency's rapid growth led to an unexpected acquisition offer. Daniel James is the founder and CEO of Mint Performance Marketing, a growth agency working with brands that take a strong stance. His team helps brands build their business profitably with integrated omnichannel growth marketing execution. He's led marketing strategies for AOL, Toyota, Disney, and more. His agency saw rapid growth, getting to seven figures within a year, and caught the eye of the global agency group Social Chain, which acquired it in 2019. He'll now discuss how the acquisition conversation started, how he estimated a fair value for his agency, and much more. In this episode, we'll discuss: Running a full-service agency to have a bigger impact on brands. How to use influencer marketing for your agency. The importance of customer experience to create loyalty. How the acquisition conversation started and how he justified his valuation number. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Podcast Takeover!! Get to know your Smart Agency Guest Host: Dr. Jeremy Weisz is the co-founder of Rise25, an agency that helps companies launch and run podcasts profitably. He followed Jason's podcast and eventually joined the mastermind and has been a guest on the podcast before. Today, he's helping Jason bring something new to the Smart Agency podcast audience by interviewing a special guest and getting a new perspective on the show. The Evolution of Social Media from it's Beginnings Daniel has been in the digital space for a long time, beginning as a MySpace employee. At that time, MySpace was one of the first recognized social media platforms that really took off. For Daniel, it was a blast working there feeling the excitement of what they were helping build. It was a very creative environment where they were encouraged to do innovative things. MySpace was always a creative community where you would code your own page. Later on, companies like Facebook took over with a more user-friendly communication tool. From that point, the platform struggled although it still exists today. All in all, it was an amazing opportunity to visit Los Angeles and work with the MySpace team there. That is when he decided to move to LA and run his own marketing agency. Finding a Gap in the Market to Have a Bigger Impact on Brands Daniel didn't study marketing but was lucky to have a solid formation from the people around him and working on different big brands. After a while, he wanted to have a bigger impact on brands and noticed a gap in the communication between different agencies all working on the same brand. This inspired him to start his agency, Mint, with a vision of being a full-service agency for disruptive ecommerce brands. As an agency, they don't try to cover absolutely every service. For instance, they don't do SEO. However, in their core focus of acquisition and retention Daniel strives to offer a full and non-fragmented service. One of his current clients was working with several agencies until recently. Although it worked for him, it meant he had different teams for CRM, influencer, social, and Google. Instead, having now all those teams under the same umbrella means they work cohesively to drive the most efficient, scalable, and profitable performance. The Do's and Dont's of Influencer Marketing Daniel's agency uses influencer marketing to harness creative's connections with their audiences. What brands normally want from influencers is a person-to-person connection to their audience. In his opinion, influencers do a great job because they're contextually relevant to the platforms. People respond better to a familiar face than to stylized commercial content (although there is a place for commercial content). The influencer approach increases the chances of content being viewed as not just an ad. Daniel's agency prefers to provide a script however they're careful not to restrict the influencer. They've already figured out a way to engage their audience. That said, it doesn't mean they'll be great at getting your message across. This is why they provide guidelines that still allow creative freedom and improves the chances of success. Influencer marketing is about community first. The worst mistake Daniel has seen when it comes to using influencer marketing is when people don't think through the c

Have you ever heard the saying there are riches in niches? Are you an overworked owner of a stagnant agency? Maybe you have grown your digital agency to seven figures but can't figure out how to get beyond that and are feeling stuck. The door to growth can be unlocked with one key and that key is choosing a niche. But how do you choose the best niche for your agency? Will narrowing down your focus limit your agency's potential? Everyone is talking about niching down and picking your "perfect avatar" But do you want to know the biggest mistake that no one is telling you about when it comes to niching down? In this video, I will share with you: The biggest mistake digital agency owners are making when it comes to niching. How to choose the best niche for your digital agency. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Do You Have to Turn Away Clients Outside Your Agency's Niche? When you hit the point of stagnation in your agency's growth, you're usually working more and making less money. It doesn't seem fair. However, agency owners are often reluctant to niche down because they fear limiting the agency, hurting the business, or losing leads. But... How many leads do you have right now? How's the agency doing? If the answers are not all positive ones, then you have more to lose if you don't pick a niche! And this is the biggest mistake people make when picking a niche. You don't have to get rid of existing clients or turnaway inbound leads outside of the niche. Who said you couldn't still work with those clients? When you pick a niche it means you'll now only be marketing to that niche. And the more specific you are, the more clients you'll attract. Think about it this way, if you're having heart issues, would you go to a general doctor or a cardiologist who specializes in heart issues? In fact, the more specialized the better because they know all the special nuances about the heart and your condition. By focusing on a specific niche, you can build a deep understanding of: your clients' needs, their audience and their audience's needs, and the challenges they're going through Offering a specialized service helps you stand out in your industry as an agency with expertise others can't match. You will stand apart from the generalists and "me too" agencies that do a little bit of everything. How Do You Choose the Best Niche for Your Agency? When my friend Chris moved to niche down his agency services he started to only work with clients using Magento. With this horizontal niche, his agency became specialized in this software they became the leader in this technology. They were able to charge premium prices and pick and choose which clients they wanted to work with. As the expert in your niche, you're able to charge higher fees, your team will become more efficient, and your agency's profitability will skyrocket. Once you start servicing your ideal customers, you'll build a stronger relationship with them leading to repeat business. The positive word of mouth and referrals you get from those relationships will help you become the choice, rather than just a choice. I've created a system to help you pick your niche. Download my Niche Grader here, where you'll also find other systems and resources. I've found that if you make a list of the niches you're thinking about choosing – whether it's lawyers, real estate, doctors, etc – and start ranking them on a scale of 1 to 10 according to the questions presented. You'll find questions like "do you have experience in this niche?" Or "Is this large enough to support your business?" Once your list and scores are ready, you'll see the biggest score will almost always be the right answer for a niche you can dominate. Of course, a niche alone won't get you all the way to the top. You'll need to pair that with clarity, strong messaging and authority, which is all part of the attract video series. Do You Want to Master the Art of Attracting Clients? FREE COURSE: Discover the 4-system process to ATTRACTING the perfect agency clients at https://www.agencymastery360.com/attract In a 4 videos series, we'll break down the steps you need to take in order to gain clarity, empower your team, and create the freedom you've always wanted in your agency.

Are you guilty of making one of the biggest agency sales mistakes? Do you rely too much on referrals? Do you have three channels working to find new prospects and fill your pipeline? Without this, you're always playing catch-up leaving no time for working on growth. A lack of systems hinders your agency's growth by keeping the owner tied to daily operations. As today's guest learned the hard way, you can't rely too much on any one specific channel of lead generation. He shares the lessons he learned on maintaining a balance and working hard to set up the different channels to secure new leads. He also recalls the pitfalls and mistakes made as well as the ways he learned to set up his agency sales team for success. Chris Brewer is the cofounder of OMG Commerce, a digital agency that's highly experienced in crafting Google search ads designed to target traffic that converts. Their team is really connected to the Google ecosystem and knows what's new and noteworthy, what's tested, and what's not quite ready for primetime. In this interview, we'll discuss: 4 biggest sales mistakes growing your digital agency 3 systems to setup for agency sales success. The worst and best day in an agency owner's life. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Pivoting to the Agency Service Offering with Market Demands Chris and his business partner Brett Curry are both serial entrepreneurs and accidental agency owners. In 2009, after selling his business and feeling miserable about it, Chris attended the Dan Kennedy Super Conference in Dallas. This conference was a great place to network and Chris actually left with a pretty good idea for a new business he later presented to Brett. They started selling Google Maps optimizations to local businesses. That first year they sold $30K worth of optimizations. This allowed them to pivot to other areas which provided opportunities for repeat business. They turned their Google Maps model into SEO and PPC and continued to grow their agency in other service areas. Their most recent focus is on eCommerce. 4 Sales Mistakes to Avoid When Growing Your Digital Agency With such a long history in the business, Chris is embarrassed to admit it was only eight years ago he realized he needed to get out of sales. Now he shares mistakes made while growing his agency: Not focusing on outbound. When the agency was growing, it seemed there was no need to focus on outbound. However, there came a time when the inbound pipeline dried up and they scrambled to hire for outbound sales. This is reactionary and, as Chris says, "hindsight's always wonderful in agency land." Jason recommends a 3-channel approach to lead generation: inbound, outbound, and a strategic partnership. Relying on referrals. Chris and his partner worked hard to establish themselves as a reliable and trustworthy partner. With that kind of reputation, other agencies felt comfortable sending them referrals. However, if most of your strategic partners are other agencies, they'll hold onto business when things get slow for them. Conferences and events. Before the pandemic, conferences were the place to network since all the big brands were usually there. As we've seen, things change quickly so it's important not to rely heavily on events you haveno control over. Lead gen companies. They turned to the many emails they regularly got from lead gen companies coming after their agency. In the end, however, the ones they chose didn't play out too well. It was a disappointing experience, but he still believes in outbound. 3 Systems to Set Up Your Agency Sales Team's Success By now, Chris has figured out what he does best and the value he brings to the agency. At some point, he felt he wanted to share the spotlight and get approval. More recently, he decided he wanted to step back and do what he does best, which is relationships and connecting with people in a non-sales way. An owner always sells better than an outside hire. There are various reasons for this, but Chris thinks it starts with compensation. An owner will just step into a conversation and make sure they're getting the right kind of clients. They're in no rush to meet a sales quota or specific commission, so they can properly separate prospects from suspects. Additionally, they have a high degree of credibility and trust which helps put people at ease. There are certain things an owner can teach their team to attract and covert clients: Agency-specific experience isn't necessary; nuances of the agency business and service offering can be learned. Your sales team can navigate sales calls when you prepare them with responses to the com

Why did I almost QUIT my multi-million dollar agency to get a job? It sounds crazy to think that I'd gotten to that point – for many is a measure of success – and was willing to let it go. I needed to learn to plan for the future and create a vision statement for my agency. You see, I envisioned owning a business as the ultimate path to freedom, but it was ending up being the exact opposite. Like most agency owners, I started off wanting a business that provided me with predictability, freedom, and wealth. However, there came a point where I felt like a prisoner to the agency I had created. I was doing EVERYTHING! Every little decision in the agency was going through me. My team was not making a single decision without me and everything was falling on my shoulders. I was stressed out and miserable. It's easy for agency owners to become overwhelmed by the daily grind. This habit will only take you so far and the agency will eventually plateau. You need to take time to plan for the future and envision the agency you want to build. Your vision dictates your eventual success. Here's what I want to discuss with you today: The first of two keys that led an agency from barely scraping to being nearly an 8-figure agency. The 5 most important questions which allowed my agency to grow faster while I worked fewer hours. The secret that led to eventually selling my first digital agency to a huge firm. I've seen many agency owners skip these steps, but it's the foundation that your agency is built on and the most important thing we make sure the members of our Agency Mastery do. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Setting the Vision for Your Agency I always say running an agency is like getting on a boat with your team. As the captain, you set the course. However, if your team has no idea where you're going, they'll keep coming to you to steer the boat in the right direction. After a while, it'll get pretty frustrating. It happens to a lot of us and things will never truly change for your agency until you figure out the two keys to successfully leading an agency, here's the first one: Communicate your vision. This means not just gathering your team and explaining your vision once. For them to steer the boat even in your absence, you'll have to communicate that vision often. The Five Most Important Questions Every Agency Owner Should Answer When I say I almost made the decision to take a job a quit the agency I mean I even did interviews. One of those interviewers asked me the most important question I've ever been asked and one I encourage you to ask yourself: 1. What do you want to do every day and what do you want to avoid? The answer to this question was the beginning of my vision. I realized I didn't have to shut down the agency. I just needed to create a vision and plan that allowed me to work on the things I loved and delegate the ones I didn't want to work on. 2. What type of agency do you want to have? Do you want to have an agency you can one day sell? Then we need to figure out what to do to get it to that point. Do you want to create a lifestyle business where it's built around your lifestyle and you can do what you want? Do you want an incubator agency where you use the business to build products and companies? Or do you want to be high-priced or high-value, low-price? Deciding the type of agency you want will make it easier for you and your team to make decisions along the way. 3. Where do you want revenue to be in the next year? And in 5 years? After the first 3 to 5 years with the agency, I felt like we were hitting a glass ceiling. I was being reactive to the business coming to me and never thought about where I wanted to take the agency. Once I started thinking about the number I wanted to reach – which was over eight figures – I was able to start formulating a plan. By planning ahead to the number I wanted to reach, I realized I either had to 5x the number of clients I had or 5x my pricing. The first one just wasn't an option without depleting my team, and if you can't implement the second then, then you have the wrong clients, which leads me to the next question. 4. What types of clients, industries, and engagements excite you? I was taking on the wrong clients and saying yes to the wrong engagements. One time, the agency took on a client who wanted to build the next big thing for golf. It was an industry we had no experience in and it quickly became apparent the engagement would be a nightmare for all. We kept missing deadlines because we had no prior experience in this industry, the client demanded constant meetings, low budgets and unrealistic timelines; the worst part was that we took time and focus from other clients. It was tough for the team's morale and made me question everything. This is what took me to the point of considering shutting down the agency and taking a job. Looking back, this could all have been avoided if I'd just been clear about the type of clients

Is it difficult for you to delegate to your team? Are you still handling everything yourself? Does your team feel empowered to take the initiative or do more work? If you're still at the center of everything, it's time to unlearn your old ways and elevate your team. When you do, you'll experience limitless agency growth. Today's guest thought clients expected to work directly with her and therefore found it hard to step away from daily operations. However, she learned to let go of this limiting mindset and embrace collaborative work. It was a humbling experience to see how much empowering her team made everything better. Now she finally gets to focus on strategy, growth, and agency culture. Julianne Fraser is the founder of Dialogue New York, a digital marketing consultancy specializing in building influencer marketing strategies for lifestyle brands. For five years her agency has worked with corporate giants like Adidas and startups like Brooklinen amplifying their stories through influential voices. In this episode, we'll discuss: Growing agency employee growth paths. Building a collaborative approach to improve client relationships. Elevating your team to develop strategy on their own. Keeping high standards of quality as the agency grows. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. What Influenced the Vision for an Influencer Marketing Agency? Julianne got into the industry just as brands started to understand the power of social media. She worked as a consultant at a startup accelerator where she gained valuable insight into the art of building client relationships. In her career, she laid the foundation of strategy work for many startups. Since then, influencer marketing has become a bigger part of marketing budgets. Just last year, investment in this area added up to over $16 million. Working at several companies over the years, she also learned there are varying approaches to influencer marketing. The PR Approach, understanding relationships and creativity but no measurable results, Performance Marketing Approach, where they measure returns but no creative strategy, and the Automated Influencer Marketing Approach. Having done all three approaches throughout her career, Julianne felt there was an opportunity to develop a strategy that incorporated all their benefits. Her agency officially opened its doors in 2017 as a solo venture operating from Julianne's apartment. After 6 months her first hire was someone to handle execution. That time gave her a solid perspective on the ins and outs of all aspects of the operations; this was very useful as she grew her team. How to Develop Agency Employee Growth Paths Julianne felt humbled by the experience of hiring and mentoring a team. It's been one of the greatest challenges but also one she greatly enjoys. Her view on how to hire, train, and manage has changed with experience. In the beginning, she mostly hired based on skill. Now, however, she's learned the importance of culture fit and having a team that's excited to learn. In this sense, she admits to being old school in her approach to employee growth in the agency. Initially, new hires in coordinator junior roles were promoted to associate or manager after a couple of months. Now, however, she crafts her team's growth by catering to their passions and talents. She credits her business coach for teaching her the benefits of coaching her team for the role they want. Basically, getting people with very different abilities – whether for customer service, negotiations, or systems – on the same growth track will just ensure they'll get bored and leave. It was a limiting belief based on old-school conceptions of growth and it took years to unlearn it. Now she pinpoints each team member's zone of genius and develops individual growth plans for them. It has worked wonders and helped her increase retention and creating a great culture at her agency. Building a Collaborative Approach to Improve Client Relationships For the longest time, Julianne was convinced she had to manage all client relationships. Like many agency owners, she believed clients were coming specifically to work with her. It was an old-school limiting belief that got in the way of her agency's growth. Furthermore, she thought she should be the one developing all the strategy work for clients. Fortunately, she realized the agency would grow by adopting a different approach. Building trust with clients is very important to the relationship, so there was a lot of work put into training. As to the strategy work, instead of doing it from start to finish, Julianne could break it into stages. Bringin

Can your agency employees make decisions without you? Are you frustrated that you keep putting out fires or re-explaining yourself over and over? Documenting processes isn't the glamorous part of being an agency owner. However, it's a necessary part of growing your and the first step to exiting daily operations. Today's guest runs an advisory agency where they help customers achieve profitability by documenting processes. He'll talk about the biggest mistake agency owners typically make when it comes to documenting processes and how you can tackle this daunting task. Chris Gwinn is the founder of Great Lakes Advisory, an agency that helps digital agencies implement EOS by creating more consistency, productivity, and profitability by documenting their processes and developing KPIs. They also offer customized training to ensure all processes are up to standard. In this episode, we'll discuss: 3 ways to identify your agency's core processes. How to start documenting agency SOPs. The biggest mistake people make when documenting processes. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. The Benefits of Having Clearly Defined Processes In 2015, Chris' dad was struggling with his business; constantly putting out fires and dealing with personnel issues. He asked Chris to take an objective look at their operations and financials. As he started to dissect operations and interview employees, he quickly found out they had NO did not have any documented processes or training, and didn't measure any KPIs. "It was essentially throwing them in a room and see if they'd figure it out on their own." There was no way to verify whether or not anyone was following processes. His first instinct was to clearly define all the processes and organization. They needed clarity with step-by-step processes that lead to a specific result. It was also important to tie those results to specific KPIs so they could measure outcomes and build training around it. He felt that this plan would help all employees be better prepared to fulfill their tasks. Dissecting the company's financials and operations to build a process playbook helped him see how processes impact an organization. Employees feel the organization is investing in their professional development. The team becomes less reliant on their managers. At the same time, managers have better visibility into the operations and filled less of a technician role. Finally, having processes in place help the owner step away from daily operations and reduce hours working in the business. 3 Steps for Prioritizing Your Agency's Core Processes If you're not a detailed, process person, the thought of developing and implementing processes might give you some anxiety. However, you don't necessarily have to put all the processes in place at once. According to Chris, the idea that you have to document absolutely every part of the operations is wrong. Instead of trying to document every single process, he advises focusing on the highest-impact items. A good way to prioritize your core processes is to separate them according to these categories: Impact. What are the 20% of processes that represent 80% of your agency's activities and results? For most agencies, this is the sales process and client onboarding. Be sure to standardize these core processes. Priority by headcount. How many people are performing certain processes? If it's 50 people, then that would be a priority over a process only one person is performing. Frequency. If it's an ad-hoc process performed quarterly or annually, it ranks lower on the priority list than processes performed weekly or daily. How to Start Documenting Agency SOPs If you ask a salesperson to document what they do, they might not know where to start. Once you have a list of priorities and break it down by the different departments, identify the subject matter expert. Who owns that particular process? It is usually the head of that department. Basically, identify the process owners, the name of the process, how frequently it is performed, and how long it takes to perform. From there, you can share additional information, applications, or resources and outline the simple steps. The idea is to create a resource that one person can follow from beginning to end without having to reach out to another person or another department. The goal of an SOP is to always achieve the same result or outcome by following the same steps. Biggest Mistake People Make When Documenting Processes Overall, the biggest mistake Chris sees when it comes to documenting processes is thinking it has to be perfect from the start. In those cases, people spe

Are you struggling to connect the dots between agency services and the results you drive for clients? Do you produce leads for clients without being sure if they're following up? What about your own marketing efforts? Do you have a process in place for outreach and follow-up? Throwing money at marketing initiatives without correctly measuring their performance can leave agencies with unanswered questions and uncertainty. An effective CRM is the answer; which is why today's guest has specialized in helping agencies enhance their sales process with the right tools. In this interview, he talks about some common mistakes agencies make with follow-up and processes and how they can improve. Jason Kramer is the founder of Cultivize, a marketing technology company that helps B2B businesses and digital agencies streamline their sales and marketing process and retain more clients. He's one of the world's few certified strategists and implementers for the SharpSpring platform. In this episode, we'll discuss: What to look for in a good CRM platform. Why agencies should insist clients use a CRM. How to improve your agency sales follow-up process. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Podcast Takeover!! Get to know your Smart Agency Guest Host: Dr. Jeremy Weisz is the co-founder of Rise25, an agency that helps companies launch and run podcasts profitably. He followed Jason's podcast and eventually joined the mastermind and has been a guest on the podcast before. Today, he's helping Jason bring something new to the Smart Agency podcast audience by interviewing a special guest and getting a new perspective to the show. Changing Your Niche to Adapt to the Market Back in 2001, Jason Kramer was working at an agency in New York with big clients like Virgin Atlantic Airways. After 9/11, the agency went from 60+ people to 14 people very quickly. At the time, he was already doing some freelance work on the side so his choices seemed clear. He could either go work for another big agency or he could start his own business. That decision led to starting his first agency, focused on web development services. After a while, it became harder to sustain his business with the emergence of new tools that made website design more accessible. He eventually sold that agency. In his new agency, Jason and his team help B2B businesses and agencies streamline their sales and marketing process and are top Sharpspring integrators. Technology alone doesn't solve problems, so Jason's secret sauce is leveraging his experience in order to identify pain points in his clients' processes. Next, they pair clients up with the right technology to meet their goals. The challenge is having the right team to adopt the technology. It's a lot of moving parts and Jason's key to success is his team's hands-on approach. They're involved from the very beginning and have a deep understanding of how to customize technology to reach clients' goals. What to Look for in a Good CRM Platform When they first start working with Cutlivize, many clients don't have CRM technology in place. So the first step is to analyze whether or not a SharpSpring is a good fit. Their criteria for a good CRM include intuitive adoption for new users, affordability, and fully inclusive of add-on capabilities. Most of their clientele doesn't have a CRM and is starting from scratch with SharpSpring. About 30% of their clients transition from another CRM platform to SharpSpring with their help. However, that 30% usually needs some convincing to consider the idea of migrating to a new system. When clients are using another platform, they've usually stuck to that technology simply because they've been using it for a long time. Some clients are using dated systems and worry they won't be able to export their data. Another big concern is training the client team on a new CRM. In those cases, Jason asks to see how the company uses this technology on a daily basis. The majority of clients discover they're not actually using the technology as much as they thought. Whatever the concerns, the most important element to ensure a successful migration will be that the sales team is a part of that conversation. Why Agencies Should Insist Clients Use a CRM The Cultivate team has worked with over 30 agencies helping their clients get more out of a CRM for their clients. Jason says those agencies are leaving money on the table because any agency is only half the equation. They're normally getting leads into the organization. However, it's up to the client to actually talk to those clients, close the deal, and report the results of those leads. You can eff

Do you lack a clear vision for your agency? Communicating the vision is the best way to empower your agency team. An unclear vision leads to a lack of direction and makes it more difficult to scale your digital agency. Today's guest has grown his agency to nearly 8-figures and admits only recently things have become more clear. He expands on how a lack of direction was one of his first mistakes with the agency and how he has been getting through rough times thanks to the support of other entrepreneurs. Ryan Kutscher is the founder and CEO of Circus Maximus, an advertising agency focused on brand narrative and content creation. They are entrepreneurs, branding, and advertising specialists led by a constant team of proven professionals. As an entrepreneur, Ryan's passion is building brands, telling unique stories, and creating scalable systems that help brands grow long-term. In this interview, we'll discuss: How to be the beneficiary of your own hard work. An unclear vision leads to a lack of direction for the team. 2 ways to stop being the problem solver and empower your team. Finding the right support to get your agency through hard times. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. How to Be the Beneficiary of Your Own Hard Work Prior to starting his agency, Ryan had freelanced and worked at several good agencies as a creative, so he knew the industry. At some point though, he felt he had to at least try to have the American dream of owning his own business. This way he would be the benefactor of the hard work he'd been putting in. Additionally, at that point his career was about smaller goals like selling ad campaigns, being a Creative Director, and becoming a CEO. It seemed all those goals were leading to him wanting to own the business that generates the ideas. Initially, Ryan had a business partner who specialized in strategy. They figured a strategist and a creative would make a great agency partnership. However, it wasn't as successful as they'd thought because they didn't create a pipeline based on their specialties. Instead, it felt like they were running two separate businesses under the same name. This wasn't the vision he had for his agency and he wasn't able to do the things he enjoyed and is good at. He realized he needed to give it a try on his own. An Unclear Vision Leads to a Lack of Direction The first couple of years after starting the agency Ryan had no real vision. When you go into a market you should have a clear message, target audience, and specific offer. Ryan didn't have any of this and just jumped in knowing he is good at advertising. He realized in order to build the agency he wanted, he needed processes, pipelines, and people that would bring his vision to life. The first step was clearly defining the vision, followed by communicating that vision to everyone in the agency. He found that communicating the vision led to attracting the right people for his team. He's made a lot of progress since taking that first step. However, as the owner, he still felt he was constantly making adjustments and imprisoned by the agency. Defining lack of direction. Making so much progress but still feeling trapped in the business is a sign of a lack of direction. For Ryan, having a lack of direction felt like the agency was running him. He had no way to identify what was going right or wrong and had no clarity on all the moving parts. If you don't know what's going wrong, what to do to improve it, and how to measure it, you don't have a clear vision. Good or bad, you should know why certain things at happening at your agency. 2 Ways to Stop Being the Problem Solver and Empower Your Team A lot of agency owners make the mistake of solving their team's problems rather than empowering them to make decisions. To prevent this, start showing your team how to be more proactive in looking for solutions. For instance, Jason recommends using the 1-3-1 rule. That is, when an employee comes to you with a problem, they should prepare three possible solutions and the one option they like best. Practicing this enough will help them learn they already know the right answer and they can stop coming to you for it. The Socratic Method. Ryan uses this method which basically consists of asking questions. The idea is that, through these questions, you can guide someone to see they already know the answer. It's a way of walking them toward it on their own rather than providing it for them. For this method, you have to fight the instinct to just give your team the solution. Once you empower your team, you'll be free to start acting as the agency's CEO and exit the day-

Have you considered hiring remotely to help cut costs? Where would you look for remote employees that are still a good culture fit? Finding the right talent can be very challenging even if you're looking locally. Trying to find great talent in a different country could be next to impossible without the right help. Today's guests run an agency that offers white-label services and runs highly efficient recruitment services for US companies. They've perfected a process to find the best talent in Latin American countries and connect them to small and medium US companies looking to source top talent. They'll reveal the basic parameters they consider as part of their recruitment process and how they match candidates according to their clients' needs. Carlos Corredor & Antonio Santana are the co-founders of Condor Agency, a digital marketing agency that helps US companies become more competitive by leveraging the best talent in Latin America. They serve as an agency partner that offers managing services and also recruits talent directly for their clients. In this episode, we'll discuss: Finding a gap in the market and providing high-quality services. Tapping into the Latin American market to source top agency talent. Understanding clients' needs and best interests. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources Dot & Co: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Dot & Co, client management specialists that will help digital marketing agencies keep their clients happy. With the help of their knowledgeable account managers, agency owners can step away from the day-to-day and focus on driving results. Check out dotandcompany.co/smartagency and get 20% off your first month working with them. Podcast Takeover!! Get to know your Smart Agency Guest Host: Dr. Jeremy Weisz is the co-founder of Rise25, an agency that helps companies launch and run podcasts profitably. He followed Jason's podcast and eventually joined the mastermind and has been a guest on the podcast before. Today, he's helping Jason bring something new to the Smart Agency podcast audience by interviewing a special guest and getting a new perspective to the show. Finding a Gap in the Market and Providing High-Quality Options Over ten years ago, Carlos and Antonio were on the client side of the business, unimpressed by the quality of the work from agencies. Some didn't understand their business and took forever to deliver results. Fortune 1,000 companies and other big clients get most of the agency's attention. Seeing the low quality of service agencies provided for small and medium businesses, they realized there was an opportunity to serve that sector. Their agency, Condor, began as a managed services agency that worked with B2B companies in consulting, finance, and IT. They leveraged Latin American talent to help small and medium US companies grow. Years later, as things changed with the pandemic and people seemed more open to the idea of hiring remote talent they also started recruiting directly for their clients. Their recruiting service is targeted at agencies, offering an opportunity for smaller agencies to find skilled talent at more affordable rates. Connecting US Companies with Untapped Latin American Talent Coming from Venezuela where salaries were much lower, Carlos and Antonio were struck by the cost of agency work. This was especially shocking considering how little attention agencies pay to small and medium clients. However, they had a lot to learn from the US market. Living in Chicago, they could see agencies delivering top-notch, specialized work. Nonetheless, they paid much more attention to the bigger clients. As a result, smaller clients were not seeing the same level of service or results. They were built to serve Fortune 1,000 clients, charging around $200 an hour or more. They were also very well structured, with dedicated teams handling the different service areas. Hence, if they were serious about entering the agency space, Carlos and Antonio needed to play in the same league. They needed to offer quality and speed in order to be competitive in the US market. Additionally, they understood Latin America is a great source of untapped talent that most US agencies hadn't considered. At first, they struggled with employee retention and learning to be leaders. With time, they developed a solid recruitment system. Prioritizing Soft Kills and a Good Culture Fit for Agency Roles As an agency constantly looking for talent, Condor has a scoring system to assess candidates' skills. One of the most important factors is proficiency in the English language. These candidates are referred to American companies so they must be able to maintain conversations and provide clear explanations. Soft skills are also highly valued, as well as being a good culture fit. They'd rather hire someone who is passionate about learning and improving than someone with the right skills who's just going through

Are you letting fear stand in the way of success? Have you ever lost a big opportunity because you wanted it too badly? Are you guilty of skipping your own processes only to have it bite you in the ass down the road? Often time entrepreneurs get overly focused on a specific outcome and ignore the bigger picture. Today's guest has started many businesses with more than half being lessons on what not to do. He shares several of those lessons and the most important, million-dollar lesson that helped him get over his fear, trust the process, and double the agency's MRR. Derrick Kuhn is the Founder and Managing Director of Brillity Digital, a full-service digital marketing agency. He's had a total of eleven businesses over the years and considers Brillity to be the culmination of everything he has learned. Now he leverages that experience into an agency that combines business consulting with a true digital marketing strategy. In this interview, we'll discuss: The $1 million lesson of not niching down early enough. Losing a big opportunity and respecting the process. Listen more and talk less to increase agency sales tenfold. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources Dot & Co: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Dot & Co, client management specialists that will help digital marketing agencies keep their clients happy. With the help of their knowledgeable account managers, agency owners can step away from the day-to-day and focus on driving results. Check out dotandcompany.co/smartagency and get 20% off your first month working with them. Growing Up with a Passion for Business Derrick always wanted to be an entrepreneur, taking after his dad, who was a mega-success in the corporate world. Growing up seeing his dad's business success infused a passion for becoming an entrepreneur. His first opportunity came right before graduating from college. Some of his friends were programming geniuses but had no idea how to run a business. They had around $100,000 in uncollected Accounts Receivables and needed his help. He collected most of it in about a week just by taking action. It didn't take massive business skill but he knew he had what it took to make it as an entrepreneur. The Million Dollar Lesson of Not Niching Down Early Enough Derrick warns us to be careful of getting overly focused on a specific outcome versus the larger picture. Some agency owners put on horse blinders and will step over a $1 Million opportunity while looking for the $100,000 one. Opportunities in the digital space are infinite. There's no use in saying only one tool or path will get you to success when that is constantly changing. People who focus on only one way to do things and don't adapt will not find the success they want. However, on the opposite side are the agency owners chasing 1,000 things at once. This was one of Derrick's mistakes. In his last agency, he found great success in the healthcare space. They grew tremendously within that niche accumulating a lot of expertise and a good reputation. However, he didn't recognize the golden opportunity to stay in a high-demand niche market. On the contrary, after separating from his agency partners and starting his current agency, he decided to cast a wide net to land clients in a variety of industries. Looking back, walking away from the equity he built in an established niche was a wasted opportunity. Derrick says he abandoned his niche because it was the first time he was a solo agency owner without partners and felt fearless. Being responsible for his team he knew immediate cash flow was super important, but in his haste to grow the new agency, he overlooked the value he'd already built in the healthcare niche. In his mind, once he figured out the new business he'd go back to the idea of specializing. Nonetheless, he did end up losing valuable time establishing his new agency's expertise. A Lesson on Respecting Your Agency's Sales Processes After analyzing strategies for engaging new prospects, Derrick decided to put them through what he calls the Apex Strategy Process. Basically, this is a stage to set expectations, do research, map out the ROI, etc. Unfortunately, when the agency had an opportunity to get what would've been its biggest client in years, the team got too excited and skipped this step. They went straight for the close on a big contract and wound up losing it. At that moment, Derrick decided every sales process, marketing, etc. needs to be funneled in through this strategy. Prospects who don't want to go through the process are not ideal candidates to work with the agency. It soon paid off. By committing to the strategy, agency sales increased tenfold. The lesson is -- respect your own processes! Why Asking a Lot of Questions is a Key Part of Sales Part of Derrick's strategy to succeed with clients is asking a lot of questions. When it comes to sales, success increases when prospects spend more time tal

Are you considering adding video services to your digital agency? Do you use video as part of your agency marketing strategy? Do you know how to leverage the power of video for you and your clients? Video is an integral part of any successful marketing strategy; particularly when video case stories are included. Nothing engages an audience as effectively as video content. Furthermore, it's a great way to showcase your brand's personality, build authority, and improve SEO. As a video marketer, today's guest understands that people remember, share, and buy stories. He shares what many people get wrong when they roll out video content and the best way to get fast results with video marketing. Ian Garlic is the founder of Story Crews, a video marketing agency that helps clients tell their stories in video. His team focuses on collecting, crafting, and delivering emotional video stories that help his clients get more leads, better clients, and more sales. He's also the creator of the Garlic Marketing Show and Authentic Web Agency. In this episode, we'll discuss: Why is video the best foot-in-the-door offer for your agency? How video helps with client retention. The best approach to add video services to your agency. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Leveraging the Power of Video Stories to Sell Results Fifteen years ago, Ian was working for Thomson Reuters as an SEO consultant in Long Island. He had left his career in commercial real estate to pursue his passion for marketing but was not doing well at all. Looking at what the best consultants in the company did, he realized they all collected stories they would later use while selling. To change things up, Ian decided he would collect those stories in video. With video, it's easier to convey emotion and more easily show people what they need to see. This strategy was the move that transformed everything for Ian. He was no longer selling websites or SEO, he was selling results. After adding video to his strategy, Ian quickly grew to be among the top-ranked in the company for the next few months. However, he started noticing all marketing looked the same, which made clients hungry for something different. Luckily, this was back in 2007-2008 after Google purchased YouTube, and Ian knew this would change everything. Shortly after, he left the company to start his own digital agency. What Makes Video the Best Foot-in-the-Door Offer? Ian believes video is one of the best foot-in-the-doors offers that exist. With video case stories, the client talks about themselves. Most like video format and it is approved quickly. Clients get results quickly from the video too. It just comes down to having the right systems. When done the right way, video as a foot-in-the-door offer is an effective way to gain more clients because the content is 100% unique. Furthermore, doing shoots with a client means spending the day with them strategizing, which will make them feel like you're an extension of their business. It's an opportunity to improve your clients' results by really diving deep into their business. How Video Helps With Client Retention At his agency, Ian started selling websites and SEO, with the video strategy as just part of the package. However, slowly his clients began to realize the power of video. They feel video built their authority in the industry and helped elevate the know, like, and trust factor by being genuine. Videos can quickly become the best metric to measure success. Ian's agency sends clients very detailed reports – which most don't read. However, bringing eager customers to your clients thanks to video content is what keeps them coming back. Starting with the Right Strategy to Get Fast Results with Video Many people start uploading videos to YouTube one day because they have a great idea and want to try it out. Very few, however, have a strategy behind that video content, which means they ultimately don't see results. According to Ian, people don't get results fast enough because they start too far from the right place. Even Gary Vaynerchuck made nothing from YouTube for a couple of years. However, he had the determination, money, and time to keep going. Most people give up after not seeing results for the first six months. That's why Ian starts with video case stories, which get people results faster. Nonetheless, faster results don't mean clients get an influx of cold traffic right away. It can be six months before they start seeing results and one year until they have a successful YouTube channel. For agencies, one of the most common issues is speaking to the real problems of your target

Are you trying to grow your agency fast? Trying to posture as a big agency to impress clients? There are a lot of big decisions to make when you're growing. However, you could be making mistakes that actually hold back agency growth. Today's guest learned some lessons from growing too quickly the first time. He shares what he learned and how he overcame it to grow more consistently. He talks about leaning too hard into vanity metrics and hiring a team too soon as well as which roles to hire first. Christopher Marrano is the founder of Blue Water Marketing, a digital agency that works with direct-to-consumer brands to generate sales using SEO, Google ads, and Facebook ads. Chris started his agency focusing on SEO and grew quickly solely with referrals. However, he did not know which systems to implement to scale and it almost failed as a result. He soon learned from his mistakes and now has a successful agency that continues to grow. In this interview, we'll discuss: The downside of growing too quickly. Why you shouldn't get sidetracked by vanity metrics. Why sales should always come first. A strategy to fill your agency's pipeline by trusting your results. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources Dot & Co: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Dot & Co, client management specialists that will help digital marketing agencies keep their clients happy. With the help of their knowledgeable account managers, agency owners can step away from the day-to-day and focus on driving results. Check out dotandcompany.co/smartagency and get 20% off your first month working with them. The Downside of Growing Your Agency Too Quickly In 2010, Chris was fresh out of college and into a job market still feeling the impact of the '08 crash. Finding his first job after studying advertising took longer than expected, he ended up working at a pretty prominent agency. He worked on big accounts like Lending Tree, Match.com, and National Geographic. It was the perfect preparation for the complexities of agency work. Since the digital revolution hadn't taken the world by storm yet, he was still working on traditional media. He later worked on the client side while learning more about the new digital technologies. Eventually, he needed a break from the corporate ladder and started to freelance, which led to his starting Blue Water Marketing in 2016. Chris' agency broke the six-figure mark very quickly. After reaching that milestone, he went straight to renting an office, hiring a team, and focusing on a niche. However, within a year everything came crumbling down. He was forced to lay off his team, working alone in that office space with the one client he'd had from the start. This led him to question the decision to even start the agency. Are You Getting Sidetracked by Vanity Metrics? Vanity metrics have always been a thing. Even when Jason was growing his first agency, conversations with other agency owners would eventually lead to asking "How many employees do you have?". If they didn't have 50 or 100 employees, they would posture based on media spend or revenue. Looking back, it never really mattered -- it's more about the value you provide not the size of your team. That said, there are still people that see a big office and a big team as indicators of a successful agency. However, the move to virtual meetings has made it so that in-person client visits are few and far between. The problem wasn't his vision but rather giving too much value to vanity metrics. Nowadays, his vision hasn't actually changed much since that first attempt. In fact, maintaining that vision is what helped him get through the difficult times. He let himself get carried away by the vanity of being perceived as a legitimate business. Having a team and an office made clients take his agency seriously and, he thought, would help attract more clients. It was sort of the Field of Dreams approach of "if you build it, they will come." Chris still values having his team work in the office, for at least part of the week. But now it's not about the vanity metrics but rather because he likes the camaraderie and relationships the team can only build while working in the same space. Defining Your Worth as Agency Owner When everything was crumbling at his agency, Chris took a step back to figure out what went wrong. He brought in a person to work with him on an effective way to grow and scale the agency. They knew there was something there but first, they had to figure out the why behind the failure. This person is now his agency business partner and they've continued to focus on things they can improve each quarter. They also work hard to identify and speak to a unique audience and develop effective processes for their teams. From that experience, Chris learned measuring his self-worth based on competitors' and clients' perceptions isn't good for the business. Currently, he focuses more on team unity a

Do you charge for strategy or give it away for free? Are your prospects aware of the value of your thinking and research? Charging for strategy benefits both the agency and the client but so many give it away. However, when you charge for strategy, you'll grow faster and easier. Instead of giving away value for free, you can improve your processes and offer a highly detailed offer and a productized option. Today's guest found himself in this situation as his agency started to grow. He feels one of his biggest mistakes was not charging for strategy sooner. Now his team gets paid for thinking as well as doing. Here's how you too can charge for your brainpower right now. Spencer Powell is the owner of Builder Funnel, a strategic marketing agency focused on helping design-build remodelers and custom home builders achieve sustainable business growth. With a combination of inbound marketing, software, and proven strategy, they shorten their clients' path to revenue and profit goals. In this interview, we'll discuss: Why giving away strategy is a mistake. Agency and client benefits of charging for strategy. Giving your sales team tools for success. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Why You Should Get Paid for Strategy Spencer's journey in the agency industry started twelve years ago. Not knowing a lot about the business, he made mistakes early on. One of his biggest mistakes was not charging for strategy. Building a highly specialized offer and charging for strategy completely transformed the agency. So how did he turn it around and start getting paid for the thinking and the doing? Like any new agency, the first years are all about gaining clients' trust and figuring things out. That is why giving away strategy didn't seem like a big mistake at the time. A couple of years down the line, however, they became much more focused and experienced. Spencer realizes now they should've started charging for strategy. Their process includes looking into clients' Google Analytics and putting together a custom game plan which took significant "thinking time". So they add that time into the proposal. According to Spencer, it is part of the plan they present and it makes sense to include it in the proposal. He wants his proposals to have some element of customization to them. Adding "thinking" and research is a logical part of creating a really good plan. The Agency and Clients Both Benefit When You Charge for Strategy The shift to charging for strategy is fairly recent for Spencer's agency. It all started with setting the goal of becoming the best agency for remodelers and custom builders. They picked a very narrow niche and started working towards that north star. Spencer knows ensuring that #1 spot would take a lot of groundwork to create a sound strategy and great execution plan. As they listed all the things they should do to create the best possible plan, the steps kept increasing. It was a good opportunity to justify charging for strategy. When strategy is billable, they're able to spend an appropriate amount of time on it. In hindsight, their free strategies weren't customized enough. All their clients got similar steps to follow. Now, they take a few weeks to review a clients' analytics and come up with a custom, detailed 12-month plan. Building a Sales Team and Giving Them the Tools to Success Two or three years down the line Spencer realized the need for salespeople selling custom marketing plans. But what level of knowledge and experience would his agency sales team need? Do they need to know the remodeling industry? How to sell and market within it? He was convinced he would never find salespeople with this specific expertise, so he decided to productize. Now, Spencer is three months into hiring his first salesperson. When hiring, he didn't look for agency experience. He specifically searched for a person with experience in their niche The new addition to the team worked out perfectly and he can already see the benefits. However, you can take someone who's really good at sales and teach them the industry and services if you have the right systems in place. With a productized offer, salespeople learn how to manage sales objections and value points. Eventually, as CEO you only need to assist with sales to add color and track progress. The key is to provide them with a solid process and the right tools. Stories as part of the toolkit. Why is the agency owner always so good at sales? Because they have the stories and can use them on sales calls to draw in prospects with details on how they helped past clients. When you start sharing those stories with your

Could your ego be standing in the way of your agency's success? Do you want to perform at peak level but struggle to break through an invisible ceiling? It might be time to reinvent and put energy into a mindset that helps you get there. There are a lot of people claiming to know the "secret to success" but most ignore the core issues of the mental game. Today's guest has been the coach to pro athletes, public figures, and leaders by helping them improve performance by starting with improvements to their mental game. Todd Herman is a global leader, speaker, author, and mentor who helps amazing talent, like Kobe Bryant, reach a new level in their careers. He coaches elite pro athletes, leaders, and public figures on the topics of performance, strategy, mindset, and execution. Todd is an insider in the thought process of not only elite performers but legends in their fields. In this episode, we'll discuss: Overcoming ego death by developing an alternate persona. Separating the different sides of your identity. Being authentic and intentional as your identity superpower. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources Dot & Co: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Dot & Co, client management specialists that will help digital marketing agencies keep their clients happy. With the help of their knowledgeable account managers, agency owners can step away from the day-to-day and focus on driving results. Check out dotandcompany.co/smartagency and get 20% off your first month working with them. The Path of the Mental Coaching Game Todd got his start in 1997 coaching high school football players and got really good results by helping them with their mental game. Back then, mental game coaching wasn't really an industry, a market, or even a niche. Nevertheless, he got results and parents started reaching out to pay for private coaching lessons. Since his coaching career started in the world of sports and being a big believer in mentorship, he reached out to Harvey Dorfman, a giant in the mental game industry. With Harvey, he got to go behind the scenes and see what it's like to work with professional athletes. This is how he started moving more into the world of peak performance and mental game coaching. Since then, Todd has improved his methods and moved on to coaching Hollywood and Broadway talent, and top CEOs. Whatever his clients are trying to conquer, he usually goes back to the principles of the inner game, strategic game, and execution game. With this, he builds programs and systems to tackle their goals. As Todd's coach, Harvey had a huge impact on his career. His best advice was that you don't need to act a certain way in order to deliver value. He didn't need to be the kindest or the most aggressive or appear a certain way to help his clients. He just needed to be honest and use everyday words, without the need to posture with big words. Overcoming Ego Death by Developing a New Persona Todd met Kobe Bryant when the athlete reached out to his coach Harvey while going through a difficult time due to a public scandal. It was 2003 and Harvey described it to Todd as Kobe's "ego death" or an identity challenge. Harvey referred Kobe to Todd at that time, as he specialized in that kind of crisis for athletes. As Todd explains, when an athlete needs to step into a new world or new type of challenge, like a college athlete going to a professional league, they need to shed some of their old identity. The longer it takes them to do that, the greater the chances they'll never succeed in that new area. At that time, Kobe was going through a moment that forced him to shed his image as a young, naïve player. This was the source of his crisis and he needed to figure out a new identity to get back in the game. Todd worked with him to cultivate a new image of Kobe, both ON and OFF the court. With Todd's help, Kobe developed an aspirational persona of a stone-cold killer who never gives up -- The Black Mamba. Naming the persona is an important part of the process that helps people tap into their alter ego. Kobe attributes his moment of clarity to the movie Kill Bill where he discovered the black mamba and instantly felt inspired and connected to it. Developing Your Own Alter Ego Persona People tend to think they can get to the same success level by modeling their life exactly like celebrities. In reality, the idea is to look at them as sources of inspiration. If you take Kobe and The Black Mamba as the source for your alter ego, you won't see similar results. An alter ego has to inspire you with its attributes and qualities; then customize that to your current ambitions. Any person looking to build their alter ego should be very honest about what they want. The problem is that many people don't know how to articulate it. This is the basis of the alter ego you end up creating. In Kobe's case, the black mamba was created to help him get through a very specific mom

Do you feel stuck on how to unlock your agency's growth potential? Are you struggling to communicate your agency's competitive advantage in order to stand out? Most entrepreneurs hit a point where the old strategies don't work anymore. There's when growth requires a different skill set to take your agency to the next level. Today's guest has centered his career and agency around figuring out the secrets to rapid growth. He shares some of the common mistakes he sees clients making, and how you can prepare your team for quick growth. Mark Patchett is the founder of Growth Shop, a digital agency specializing in growth marketing. His agency provides brands with a proven methodology that removes the guesswork with the firepower of a team that will help them grow. They've helped build brands like Victoria Beckham Beauty and hundreds more. Today he'll break down his thought process around growth and how to understand your position in the market. In this episode, we'll discuss: How positioning creates a competitive advantage. 3 mistakes that prevent you from understanding growth. Preparing your team for rapid growth. Using reviews to understand your position in the market. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Podcast Takeover!! Get to know your Smart Agency Guest Host: Dr. Jeremy Weisz is the co-founder of Rise25, an agency that helps companies launch and run podcasts profitably. He followed Jason's podcast and eventually joined the mastermind and has been a guest on the podcast before. Today, he's helping Jason bring something new to the Smart Agency podcast audience by interviewing a special guest and getting a new perspective to the show. How Positioning Creates a Competitive Advantage Positioning is a tricky beast. Mark's competitive advantage is that his agency team has actually built companies in the past. Most performance agencies do some Facebook ads and maybe ad creative. However, when you have experience building a company you know this is just a fraction of it. Having in-depth knowledge of entrepreneurship means Mark's team can take the conversation beyond just Facebook. Furthermore, his agency offers a platform where clients can see all relevant data in one unified view. Clients get an executive view with all the key data in order to pinpoint why their business is performing well or not. 3 Mistakes That Prevent You from Understanding Growth As someone who's looked under the hood of many big companies, Mark has seen some of the biggest mistakes they make when it comes to understanding growth: Not understanding attribution across different platforms. They may say Facebook isn't working because they're not making as much as they'd like to from it. However, once they learn about the blended metrics they understand it might be doing more than they think. Neglecting conversion rate optimization and positive reviews. Their clients learn if they increase the conversion rate, lifetime value, and average order value by 26% they'll be making more money without spending more money. Assuming customers understand the brand. In these cases, they use a reverse elevator pitch. Basically, as soon as someone lands on your homepage, without even scrolling, they should be able to tell exactly what you do uniquely. Most companies don't pass that test. Using Reviews to Understand Your Agency's Position in the Market As part of their onboarding research, Mark's team uses what he calls one of the easiest hacks in marketing. Instead of expensive brainstorming sessions to answer the question "Who are we?" companies should be looking at their customer reviews. For starters, export all your reviews and run a Wordlab analysis. You're looking for positive and negative reviews so you can extract common themes. How are your customers talking about your brand? What's resonating with them? They will be things that stand out or patterns you'll find. Next, do the same thing with your competitor's reviews to find out what they're doing well and not. Learn what your clients really care about and use that information to build your next ads instead of doing expensive consulting activities. Preparing Your Agency's Team for Rapid Growth Not everyone is ready for fast growth and it can break a business. Rapid growth can be exciting for many, but client service and operations people usually just see it as a tsunami coming at them. To prepare client services for the onslaught of new business, his team does a lot on the automation front. There are options like AI chatbots that get great results. However, the biggest hurdle is in delivery. Most client service problems are under control if y

What key metrics are you tracking for your agency? Do you know which KPIs are crucial for making proactive decisions to benefit your agency? There are 4 key metrics that enable you to see into your agency's future and make smarter growth decisions. Today's guest runs a CPA advisory firm that provides agencies with the tools they need to come up with original solutions for their unique challenges. He shares the four key metrics every agency should be tracking to predict their future moves. Jody Grunden is the founder of Anders CPAs + Advisors, a virtual CFO group focused on the creative agency space. His team serves as a catalyst for those striving to achieve their highest potential and carry this mentality on to their clients and community. In this episode, we'll discuss: Crucial metrics to track for your agency. The target average utilization rate for agencies. Assessing profitability and gross margin to make adjustments to your prices or staff. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources Dot & Co: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Dot & Co, client management specialists that will help digital marketing agencies keep their clients happy. With the help of their knowledgeable account managers, agency owners can step away from the day-to-day and focus on driving results. Check out dotandcompany.co/smartagency and get 20% off your first month working with them. The 4 Crucial Financial Metrics You Should Be Tracking for Your Agency Jody and his team help their clients focus on their goals and achieve their highest potential. They help improve their client's business by teaching them to focus on four main metrics: Cash metrics Production metrics Financial metrics Pipeline metrics Keeping track of these metrics makes a huge impact on your agency allowing you to predict your cash position every month and make key decisions ahead of time rather than being reactionary. 1. Cash Metrics This is annualized revenue; something all agency owners should have knowledge and control over. Keeping track of how much cash you have in the bank determines your next steps in the business. The goal is to have at least 10% of your annualized revenue in the bank at all times. So if you have a $3 million agency, you should have $300,000 in the bank. Why ten percent? This amount covers 2 months' worth of expenses for a service-based business. Of course, this is the minimum. It's better to strive for 30% or six months' worth of expenses. There's no right or wrong answer. Some agencies are fine with 4 months' worth of expenses in the bank, some need less. How do you decide on the percentage your agency requires? Just look at your different risk factors. Are you focusing most of your resources on just one client? Do you have older, retiring partners? In those cases, there is high risk and you need a higher percentage. Do you have high recurring revenue? If so then 10% is fine. Anything over 6 months might be overkill and money you could be using to reinvest in the agency. Why You'll Need at Least Three Different Bank Accounts Jody usually advises clients to have three different bank accounts; a tax account (for 40% of net income); an operating account (money to pay bills), and a cash reserve account (a money market account or a high-interest savings account). Just keep in mind that if that money is sitting in your operating account, you'll be losing opportunities. The name of the game is making money on your money. Jason and Jody agree that you should also get a line of credit when you don't need it. Treat it as a safety guard and preferably have it renewed every two years instead of annually. It's not designed to be used on a daily basis. That's what your cash reserve is for. 2. Production Metrics This is the metric agencies use to build a solid forecast. This forecast should be dialed into your non-financial metrics and may change every month. There are two very important metrics to getting that forecast right: Utilization Rate - what your team is working on and the percentage of their total hours spent on billable work. Average Build Rate - which is not what you're charging clients but rather the work being done. If you charge by the hour and you're not accurately tracking the time spent working that reduces your average build rate. These two metrics will help build a dynamic forecast because it's all based on people. You'll be able to build a month-by-month forecast and break down exactly what your agency should do on a monthly basis to achieve your revenue goals. Average Utilization Rate for Agencies How many hours does an agency typically work? This varies from agency to agency but on average they expect to work 30-32 (billable) hours per week. This is a benchmark of the number of hours you expect your workers to put in each week. Basically, the number of billable hours (work hours minus culture hours) divided into the number of available hours will give you your

How often do you look at your agency's churn rate? Do you know the lifetime value of a client? What are your client retention strategies? Do you dedicate time to client retention like you do to client acquisition? It all starts with monitoring the right metrics, understanding what clients really want, and being proactive in client services. Today's guest is an agency sales and client service expert who manages end-to-end sales activities for a white-label agency. She shares the key metrics you should track and tips to help you master client retention. Kushbu Doshi is the VP of Sales and Customer Service at E2M Solutions, a white-label agency with clients around the world. She is a customer service specialist with a passion for strategizing, making realistic action plans, and following up on their implementation to get real results for agencies. Kushbu has been on the show before to talk about how to improve your customer service. In this episode, we'll discuss: How to calculate client retention rate. Questions that lead to better client retention. Dedicating time to retain existing clients. Important KPIs to improve agency-client relationships. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM How to Calculate Your Agency's Client Retention Rate The team at E2M Solutions has created metrics meant to track their performance in terms of client retention. The most important step to start getting a sense of how your team is doing with client retention is establishing your client retention rate. You can figure this out by establishing how many clients you have at the start of the quarter (S) and at the end of the quarter (E). Client Retention Ratio = (E ÷ S) x 100 So basically, if you have 100 at the start of the quarter and 80 at the end of the quarter, your retention rate will be 80%. Ideally, your client retention should be above 75%. Any number below should be something you address with your team to find out what's not working out. Effective Ways to Master Client Retention Client retention starts with the sales conversations and setting the right expectations from the very beginning. There are many things you could start doing at your agency to increase retention level. For instance, after calculating your retention rate, you can appoint a client service person to start tracking client success. E2M decided client service has to be a stand-alone role instead of something handled by the project manager or the team working directly with the client. This person ensures the client is happy and the agency is matching client expectations. They have keynotes for every client containing their goals for the next 1-3 years. These details help the agency determine how to work with the client, what may not work, and how to upsell or cross-sell new opportunities to extend the relationship. Additionally, they also do periodic calls in which they go over expectations and progress. Basically, it's about keeping an eye on your clients and staying curious about their plans for the future. Are they open to expanding services? What kind of niche do they want to target next? Ask Bold Questions and Improve Client Communication Kushbhu's team is trained to ask bold questions in the sales call to find out why clients want to be associated with their white-label agency. What are the major pain points her team will solve? If you can get clients to talk about their whys, you'll come out confident about exactly what they want. Many times these conversations help reveal what the client thinks they want is not actually what they need. Additionally, in most cases, clients are pleasantly surprised to receive this type of personalized attention. This type of action helps win trust and mutual respect. Do You Dedicate Time to Retaining Existing Clients? Kushbu strongly believes the time spent getting more leads should match the time spent retaining existing clients. After all, if your churn rate is high then what's the point of just focusing on getting more clients? The E2M Solutions team dedicates a specific day of the week to review existing clients' challenges. Are those clients working well with the current team? Are they matching the delivery times of previous weeks? A review of these metrics determines whether they're on the right track to retain clients. The rest of the week is dedicated to new client acquisition. Many people don't focus on retention until they lose a few clients. Once they think they figured it out, they move on to the next issue. With a client service team in place, E2M always has dedicated efforts to client retention. Using AI to Figure Out What Clients May Like Kushbu and her team are starting to experiment with AI to see how to best utilize this tool. For now, they have been using ChatGPT to create personas and ask them about specific scenarios. For instance, they have tried the command: "if you were a client success manager what would you do in this scenario?" They also share a client's characteristic

How are you branding your agency? Do you treat the agency like a client and market purposefully? Your agency's brand is much more than just a name or logo. The way you brand your impacts the type of clients you attract. A rebrand can be daunting. However, sometimes it's the best way to regain control and attract your ideal clients. Today's guest purchased an agency and decided to strip it down and rebuild the agency she envisioned. She shares the reasons for the rebrand and some of the surprising results in her team and marketing efforts. Avril Tomlin-Hood is the CEO and Founder of boa, a Vancouver-based digital marketing agency specializing in media buying. After committing to elevate companies that want to effect positive change, boa now works exclusively with plant-based and sustainable brands. She recalls why she decided to rebrand her agency after six years and her surprising new role at the agency she enjoys more than expected. In this episode, we'll discuss: Rebranding to build the agency you really want. How a mastermind helps combat isolation. The surprising way a podcast can change your agency. Why you shouldn't forget to invest in your agency. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources Dot & Co: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Dot & Co, client management specialists that will help digital marketing agencies keep their clients happy. With the help of their knowledgeable account managers, agency owners can step away from the day-to-day and focus on driving results. Check out dotandcompany.co/smartagency and get 20% off your first month working with them. Rebranding to Build the Agency You Really Want Ten years ago, Avril worked at a media buying agency. After four years there, the owner was ready to move on to other things, so Avril took over and bought the agency. The agency has gone through a few iterations doing white labeling services and branded agency work. A year ago, after a failed employee acquisition, she realized it was time to invest in the agency's brand to be in more control. In hindsight, the acquisition was never going to work because the structure didn't allow for independence. Once the deal fell through, she knew it was time to try something different and focused her energy on an agency rebrand. Years after acquiring the agency, she had never really invested in the brand. It was sort of just there while the actual work had shifted to white labeling services. Hence, despite having owned the agency for many years it never felt like it was actually hers. She renamed it boa and decided to focus less on white labeling and more on media buying. The shift also includes working exclusively in a niche of brands that want to have a positive impact on the planet. Finding an Agency Community to Help Set Goals and Combat Isolation Lots of agency owners feel like they're making decisions on an island. The game changer for Avril is following a friend's advice to get a coach. This way, she got the help she needed to figure out her goals, strategy, and the support she needed to get there. Furthermore, joining a mastermind like Agency Mastery made a big difference when it came to combating isolation. The community really helped her work through her feelings of being stuck. It also helped her see the options and opportunities for the future, by meeting people who were three or five years ahead in their agency journey. Finding an Integrator and Focusing on Building a Leadership Team We all know how hard it can be to find great people. One of Avril's most significant successes in this area was hiring a trusted "right-hand" person who has been moving into an operations position. This person fills the role of the Integrator and her addition to the team has been a game-changer for the agency operations. Avril's own role as Visionary has helped her have a clear and defined vision for the agency. She is no longer in the weeds and can focus on the agency rather than being stuck in it. This is something she now communicates to her team. She focuses more on reaching the agency's goals and measuring KPIs that matter in the process. Avril believes growth is all about building a leadership team. Right now, she requires all hires to have leadership potential so they can manage a team in the future. The Surprising Way Starting a Podcast Can Change Your Business Recently, Avril has added podcast host to her role. Starting a podcast wasn't in the original plan but she has found it is a great way to grow her agency's audience. It was hard to get her head around the concept and she didn't know what she would talk about on the show. In the end, she realized the podcast didn't have to focus on what the agency does. It should focus on her target audience, which is why she interviews innovative and sustainable brands. The podcast has actually made it easier for her to reach out to her ideal clients. Instead of sending a cold email, she invites them

Do you have a personal brand? Did you create your brand with purpose and intention? Does it speak to who you are and your mission? Do you know how you can use it to create the opportunities you want to access in your career? Today's guest is a branding expert who created an agency focused on one-on-one brand development, coaching, and consultation for women leaders. After 20 years of helping create and fine-tune brands, she shares the right questions to ask yourself in order to unlock your brand. She also explains why the process could even make you uncomfortable. Laura Barnard is the founder of Breakthru Brands, a brand-building agency that empowers women leaders. Her team works to empower women and the LGBTQIA+ community to break through barriers and close gender gaps in leadership. Laura breaks down her agency's process to help unlock their clients' brands, and why it's so important to know yourself and your purpose to create a successful brand. In this episode, we'll discuss: Lessons on branding from big corporate brands. 3-Steps to unlock and activate your brand. Finding inspiration and purpose in your agency's vision. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources Dot & Co: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Dot & Co, client management specialists helping digital marketing agencies keep their clients happy. With the help of their knowledgeable account managers agency owners can step away from the day-to-day and focus on driving results. Check out dotandcompany.co/smartagency and get 20% off your first month working with them. Podcast Takeover!! Get to know your Smart Agency Guest Host: Dr. Jeremy Weisz is the co-founder of Rise25, an agency that helps companies launch and run podcasts profitably. He followed Jason's podcast and eventually joined the mastermind and has been a guest on the podcast before. Today, he's helping Jason bring something new to the Smart Agency podcast audience by interviewing a special guest and getting a new perspective to the show. Lessons About Branding from Working On Big Brands Laura's impressive background includes an MBA from the University of Chicago and a degree in Psychology from Harvard. However, if you ask her what influenced her journey the most, she'll say it was basketball, both playing in college and then coaching. It provided her with the discipline and leadership skills she uses in her career. Basketball was also how she got to know the first female leader that inspired her current path. Looking back at her career, Laura spent over 15 years working in corporate America focusing on brand management. Business school is when she first understood brand management. She was eager to apply her passion for psychology in her desire to understand why people think, act, and behave in the ways they do. Brand management emerged as a way for her to bring psychology into sales, strategy, and business management. Leading strategy for iconic brands like Skittles and Wrigley's, she worked to help big brands create an impact. It was a great opportunity for her to learn as much as she could about the business. The #1 lesson she took from that time was the importance of knowing your consumer really well. Understand what motivates them. Find out what they need and what benefits they are seeking. Laura also learned to manage large businesses with cross-functional teams, five-year plans, etc. Later on, working with Haribo, she had the chance to step into a leadership position and help a big brand establish itself in the US. By the end of that experience, it was that her future in the industry was to break out of stifling corporate America and make her own path as an entrepreneur. Finding Inspiration and Purpose In Your Agency's Vision After fifteen years of climbing the corporate ladder and improving her skills, Laura relocated with her family. New jobs, new schools, and new surroundings required some time off. She took the pause she needed to reflect on her next chapter. This was an opportunity to work in brand management but do it with more autonomy, more ownership, and ultimately with more purpose. She was inspired to use everything she had learned about brand management to start her own company advancing women leaders. This thinking led her to one of her first inspirations, her former basketball coach, Kathy. She wanted to help Kathy increase her impact as a woman leader and get her messaging to a wider audience. This experience helped shape her agency's vision of growing a network around sports leaders and eventually in other industries as well. 3 Steps to Unlock and Activate Your Own Brand Laura's team has helped over 100 women leaders define and activate their brands. In time, they've refined and adjusted what they do to form a very effective 4-week process that is clear and effective. Overall, the process is divided into three basic phases: Discovery. During the Discovery phase the team works to help people

Are you driven to grow your digital agency fast? Are there drawbacks to growing your agency too quickly? One agency went from chaos to $5 Million by doubling every year. However, growing too fast without the systems and processes to support it makes agency owners feel like they're always trying to catch up. Today's guest is the founder of one of the fastest-growing businesses in Dallas in 2022. Quickly reaching many milestones in a short time made it difficult to build the structure for that growth to continue. She shares some of the aspects she focused on, the roles she sought to fill, and the systems put in place to ensure her agency's success without growing too fast. Antonella Pisani is the owner of Eyeful Media, a digital marketing agency focused on paid social, paid search, SEO, copywriting, and digital strategy. Antonella's agency reached a 1000% growth rate in just one year. Although it was an incredible achievement, it also meant she constantly felt like she was trying to catch up to their growth and couldn't really focus on setting the agency's structure. In this episode, we'll discuss: The chaos of growing too quickly. Which agency roles to fill to create the right infrastructure. How to avoid scope creep to keep projects within budget. Why you need to focus on leadership training. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources Dot & Co: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Dot & Co, client management specialists that will help digital marketing agencies keep their clients happy. With the help of their knowledgeable account managers, agency owners can step away from the day-to-day and focus on driving results. Check out dotandcompany.co/smartagency and get 20% off your first month working with them. Overcoming the Chaos of Growing Too Quickly Antonella's agency grew very quickly, reaching a 1000% growth rate in just a couple of years. She constantly felt behind because they experienced 10 years' worth of growth in just one year. Looking back, that level of growth and chaos kept her so busy she failed to implement this structure much sooner. There are some things she wishes she had structured from day 1. It's not uncommon for entrepreneurs to thrive and even get energy from the chaos around them. However, not everyone thrives from chaos. Some people need more structure to be successful in their roles. So it's important to create a structure to allow employees to onboard quickly and get up to speed. Three years ago she decided it was time for a "year of infrastructure". As a first step, she and her team thought about the software pieces they needed in order to grow. They had some things figured out, like the software for billing clients and time tracking. As she looked at the available solutions, she realized the choice was about what type of business she wanted to build in terms of culture and values. It's not necessarily something you want to rush. Infrastructure can be created over time as you figure out what you want and what type of business you're creating. Who to Hire to Create the Right Agency Infrastructure After putting the software solutions in place, Antonella knew she needed to find solutions to help the agency scale. Her focus was adding people to the agency in a way it would not end up diluting the quality of work they did for clients. Of course, you have to get to a certain level before you can afford hiring managers. So once they started to grow, it was time to make some hard choices. Instead of hiring someone for SEO, they would focus their efforts on finding a group director or project manager. For Antonella, setting up the proper infrastructure started with implementing the software, hiring the managers they needed, and going back to check if they needed to make changes to the initial software. That year she focused even more on hiring people with experience to then build teams underneath them. She knew it was important to create the right hierarchy rather than having too many direct reports herself. Avoiding Scope Creep In Order to Keep Projects on Budget Coming from a role as VP of Global eCommerce for a big brand, Antonella had an idea of how much she needed to charge clients. She started charging $250 an hour on their first few projects. The biggest challenge was learning how to charge fixed-rate strategy projects, where she became her worst enemy. Pro tip: When clients keep coming with requests and it's not clear to them whether it's out of scope or not, it's best you take control of the situation. Say "it's no problem but this is out of scope." Clarify this one time you'll do it for free and send a $0 change order that they have to sign. This way, they're aware they're getting something they should be paying for. Next time they come to you for something like that, they'll know it's out of scope and expect to pay. Boosting Efficiency by Focusing on Leadership Training Right now, Antonella and her team are don

2023 recession talk: pull back or grow? For the first time ever, Jason Swenk, agency owner, advisor, podcast host, and speaker, is interviewed on his own show! Darby turns the tables on him in this episode, where they discuss mistakes, regrets, and the path to becoming an advisor. Jason also talks about why he feels recessions offer opportunities. He shares his views on an economic downturn and how you can grow when others give up. Don't let fear take over, be proactive and tune in! Jason Swenk is an Agency Advisor, speaker, and podcast host who literally wrote the book on growing and scaling a successful digital agency. Jason started, grew, and sold an 8-figure agency and today is a shareholder in another multi-million dollar agency. For the first time ever he'll be interviewed on his own podcast to talk about some of the mistakes he regrets and the path that led him to become an advisor. In this interview, we'll discuss: Ways being reactionary gets in the way of growth. How a recession is an opportunity for growth. How to get ahead of difficult conversations. The 3 best reasons to sell your agency. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Podcast Takeover!! Get to know your Smart Agency Guest Host: Darby Copenhaver is the Agency Scale Specialist at the Agency Mastery 360, which provides agency owners with the coaching, community, and tools needed to scale and find their freedom. He helps agency owners scale through a proven framework for growing their agencies faster and connecting with other amazing agency owners. Today, he's helping Jason bring something new to the Smart Agency podcast audience by interviewing a special guest and bringing a new perspective to the show. How Being Reactionary Gets in the Way of Growth Jason's journey to success in the agency industry was not without its challenges. In the early days, he found himself being reactionary, a major roadblock to growth. However, he learned from this mistake and discovered that having a clear focus and target clientele was key to achieving growth. As with many business owners, Jason had to grapple with the decision of whether to sell his agency or continue to run it. He started his agency during the dot-com era, hoping to grow it for a year and then sell it. But after the market crashed and he came to enjoy the business, his feelings changed. He realized that the desire to sell or keep going depends on where you're at in his life and the agency's growth trajectory. Why Recessions are an Opportunity for Growth Interestingly, Jason also saw recessions as an opportunity for growth. In the early 2000's dot bomb and again in 2008, as the market was crashing, his agency was reaching new heights. He and his partner invested more and found strategic partners, which helped them weather the storm and come out even stronger. Overall, Jason's story serves as a reminder that success in the agency industry requires a combination of strategic planning, adaptability, and perseverance. By staying focused, taking advantage of opportunities, and being willing to evolve, agency owners can achieve long-term success. Are you ready to tackle the tough conversations and come out on top? Jason, an agency owner, knows how difficult it can be to approach clients with their concerns and hesitations. But with a little transparency and a lot of courage, Jason was able to ease their worries and showcase the many opportunities that lay ahead. Being Proactive with Difficult Client Conversations But what if your clients just aren't ready to take the leap? Jason suggests making a top 100 list of ideal clients who share your values and can afford your services. Back in 2008, when his agency was struggling to stay afloat during a market slowdown. This strategy proved to be a game-changer. Jason was able to catapult his agency to new heights by targeting clients who were willing to invest and grow despite the challenges. Of course, there were some bumps in the road along the way. Some clients froze or reduced their budgets, which meant Jason had to make some tough choices. But by freeing up resources and replacing those clients with new ones, he was able to weather the storm and come out stronger than ever before. 3 Big Mistakes as an Agency Owner Looking back on his 12 years as an agency owner, Jason knows there are a few things he would have done differently. Firing Sales Too Fast. He regrets firing a salesperson too quickly without offering more support and guidance. Talent from Big Agencies Doesn't Equal Growth. He also learned the hard way that hiring people from bigger agencies doesn't always translate into success at a

Are you an in-person agency with office space? Are you a fully remote agency? Both models have benefits and drawbacks for the agency and your team. However, one agency is thriving on a hybrid office model that provides flexibility and freedom while maintaining culture and inspiration. Overall, most talent wants the flexibility of working from home but also appreciates the importance of in-person work. Today's guest ran a traditional in-person agency for 20 years. After going remote during the pandemic, shares how he made the decision to remain flexible with office attendance while maintaining collaboration and connections. Dean Trevelino founder and co-CEO of Trevelino/Keller, a boutique PR, and marketing agency based in Atlanta. As one of their core values, they believe focusing on staff should be part of the agency's DNA. Part of prioritizing their employees' needs has been deciding on a structure that works for everyone. Full-time in the office, fully virtual, or the option to do both. In this episode, we'll discuss: Will your team lose passion if they're fully remote? Benefits of a physical office. How a hybrid office model increases employee retention. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources Dot & Co: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Dot & Co, client management specialists helping digital marketing agencies keep their clients happy. With the help of Dot's knowledgeable account managers, agency owners can step away from the day-to-day and focus on driving results. Check out dotandcompany.co/smartagency and get 20% off your first month working with them. How an Established Culture Made an Easy Shift to Virtual Dean and his team had built their agency's culture over 20 years of in-person operations before the pandemic hit and forced them to go fully virtual. The debate about the best environment for running a successful agency was ongoing. Some advocated for personal contact and focus on work, while others emphasized the benefits of remote work and flexible schedules. Dean believed in the importance of connectivity and community that an office environment provided, as it had helped retain staff better than any other agency in the industry, losing only two people in two decades. Moving to a virtual setting was not an easy decision, but they had to make the change all at once due to the pandemic. Initially, they adopted a hybrid model where staff was expected to be at the office at least 60% of the time each month. However, the conversation later shifted towards more remote work, and rather than changing policies incrementally, Dean decided to go fully virtual. Will Your Team Lose Passion If They're Fully Remote? Dean's biggest fear was that losing in-person contact would result in everyone losing their passion for the business. To prevent this, they leaned more into education and encouraged staff to stay ahead of industry trends. They also introduced programs designed to leverage the benefits of remote work and promote team building, such as sending a random employee on a trip anywhere in the world every quarter. Ultimately, Dean's team successfully adapted to the new virtual setting, and the agency continued to thrive. The focus on education and team building helped maintain everyone's passion for the business, and the shift to fully virtual work proved to be the right decision. Benefits of Having Physical Agency Office Having a physical office to go back to can offer several benefits for employees. These benefits are challenging in a fully virtual model. While remote work provides flexibility, it can be counterproductive when urgent meetings are necessary. It is even more difficult across different time zones. Not everyone has an ideal workspace at home, which can lead to difficulties in taking client calls or having meetings. This can result in people feeling like they are always working, which can cause burnout. Dean established a compromise that employees may be required to be present at the office for a week if there are important meetings or clients visiting. This ensures that the agency continues to function as a high-performance team. This is decided by the senior staff, and every employee is expected to uphold this compromise. However, Dean also found it essential to be clear the team should not behave like they're remote when they are in the office. It defeats the purpose of having a physical office if employees forget how to act when they are there. Dean addressed this by reminding employees of previously established rituals. Things like joining the staff meeting in the conference room when they are at the office. Overall, while remote work offers flexibility, it is important to strike a balance. That balance maintains a high-performance team and ensures employees have access to an ideal workspace. How a Hybrid Office Model Helps Increase Retention One of the challenges of fully remote work is retaining new hires, part

Are you at the crossroads of deciding how big to grow your agency? Bigger isn't always better; in some cases, it makes more sense to create a lifestyle business. It's important to have a clear vision for your agency. For some, that means growing to 7- or 8-figures. However, for others, it means keeping a small, nimble team with lots of control over processes. This is why some agency owners decide to either wait until they feel ready to take on that challenge or continue to thrive as a boutique agency. Today's guest made the decision to run a small operation where she still feels in control of the agency operations. Rebekah Edwards is the owner of Clara, a digital marketing agency in the SEO and content space. Her agency niche is in the health and wellness space. Clara creates the clearest, highest-value, and most trustworthy SEO on the market. Since 2019, their team has been propelling clients to become expert voices in their fields. About a year after starting the agency, she realized she could start growing the operation, hire more staff, and take on more clients. However, it would've been a huge undertaking that didn't fit with her busy personal life. She is sharing why she decided to remain in control of her agency operations by keeping it small. In the years since the agency has actually dropped clients and is doing better than ever. In this interview, we'll discuss: Deciding to stay small and retain control of your agency. Dropping clients and saying no to the wrong clients. Common mistakes when trying to grow. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Podcast Takeover!! Get to know your Smart Agency Guest Host: Darby Copenhaver is the Agency Scale Specialist at the Agency Mastery 360, which provides agency owners with the coaching, community, and tools needed to scale and find their freedom. He helps agency owners scale through a proven framework for growing their agencies faster and connecting with other amazing agency owners. Today, he's helping Jason bring something new to the Smart Agency podcast audience by interviewing a special guest and bringing a new perspective to the show. Rebekah had never worked in the agency space before. However, she had worked as a freelancer in different areas for many years and was the managing editor for a website that saw tremendous growth. She decided to build an agency as she needed help and didn't have the time to fully invest in each of her clients. Together with her husband, they developed a system for hiring writers and editing things on the backend. They did this by doing white-glove work for people who would benefit from content-led SEO without Rebekah having to do all the work. Using SEO as a Lead Generation Platform Rebekah's agency uses SEO as a lead generation platform by creating long-form educational content in the health and wellness niche. This strategy enables them to create the type of results that appear when people Google questions like "why do I get headaches in the morning?" Companies can then convert those people to leads, sales, etc. Staying Small to Retain Control Over Agency Operations Despite many agency owners aiming to grow into one of the best agencies in the US, Rebekah doesn't necessarily want her team to be passionate about their jobs. Instead, she values them being good at their jobs, so they can finish and get home to their families. After creating the agency, Rebekah had to decide whether to continue scaling or carry on as a boutique agency. Being a boutique agency suited her role as an adoptive mother to two teenagers. She and her husband decided a lifestyle business was better suited for their needs. Rebekah can still act as a project manager and ensure that every client gets the promised results. She is open to scaling in the future, but the point of having an agency was to be with her family and have a more flexible schedule . Dropping Clients and Saying No to the Wrong Ones To prevent the agency from taking over her life and decisions, Rebekah plans to drop some clients this year. This way, the agency will be operating with fewer clients than they've had in a long time. Building a social media presence has helped her find her audience, and this way, she can scale without having to say yes to every single client. Common Mistakes to Avoid When Trying to Grow In the past, Rebekah made some common mistakes by trying to expand her service offering and train in-house staff to take on some of her tasks. However, this didn't resonate with what she ultimately wanted for the agency, and the team performed poorly in those cases. Rebekah feels more freedom to say no to the wrong c

Why do your clients hire your agency? Do you know the struggle or challenge that led them to you? Many agency owners think they know these answers. However, a deeper search could lead you to change your entire strategy. It starts with simply asking clients what they expect and need. Armed with this information you can rethink who and how you're marketing to your prospects. Today's guest talks about two mistakes he made at his agency and how he learned the importance of defining the client's north star in order to know what they really want. Valentin Radu is the CEO of OnmiConvert, an agency that provides e-commerce services to improve conversion rates and grow faster with their AB testing platform. The agency also has software, which helps them serve as a bridge between agencies and clients. Valentin also runs the CVO Academy, which seeks to democratize the way people grow in retail and e-commerce. In this interview, we'll discuss: 2 Mistakes to avoid early on. Learning to target the right prospects. A shift in mindset that helps you realize results. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources Dot & Co: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Dot & Co, client management specialists that will help digital marketing agencies keep their clients happy. With the help of their knowledgeable account managers, agency owners can step away from the day-to-day and focus on driving results. Check out dotandcompany.co/smartagency and get 20% off your first month working with them. 2 Early Mistakes to Avoid in Your Agency Starting a business is a challenging venture. It requires patience, dedication, and most importantly, a willingness to learn from mistakes. Valentin's company learned this the hard way. Initially, his company consisted of just a software division. However, they soon discovered that their ideal customers needed not only software but also services. This led to building a consulting arm within the company to work like an agency for large companies. It was a hard moment, but it ultimately improved their services. Valentin's agency encountered two mistakes that nearly ended their agency. However, learning from them ultimately improved their services. The first mistake was venturing into consulting services without fully understanding the results-oriented nature of the agency world. The second mistake was trying to serve all types of customers and markets, which burned a lot of money on a go-to-market strategy that ultimately led to increased churn rates. Learning to Target the Right Prospects After realizing that going after every prospect they could find wasn't working, Valentin's team began to put all their existing customers under the microscope. Customer research became the basis of their methodology to improve customer lifetime value. They found out who their best customers were and why they were buying from them. This allowed them to position themselves as the solution for similar prospects. Defining the Client's North Star Metric Valentin's agency developed what they call the "North star metric" for each of their customers. They reinvestigated existing clients, even after two years, to have a direct account of what they expected to get from the agency. Some of the responses were surprising. They found out that many customers appreciated their creative solutions and saw them as an extension of their teams. They weren't really after the numbers but rather stayed for the innovative ideas. Interviewing existing customers can be a great way to unveil hidden struggles and lead to real progress. It can change not only reporting but also marketing once you understand what your ideal client wants. Why You Need a Mindset Change to See Real Results Clients want a partner that will help them figure out their business model. It's essential that agency owners are willing to adapt to these changes. Valentin's agency handles data that show how much agencies are struggling to work as a bridge between clients that are using their technology and agencies looking for customers. Valentin believes the entrepreneurial journey is, in part, a spiritual journey. It's not just about the likes and the zeros, but also about who you are becoming in the process. Many entrepreneurs get comfortable and don't make any more progress. This means they end up with a mediocre company or struggling to find reliable people that would take their business to another level out of fear of change. Preventing Costly Mistakes Valentin's company learned the hard way that starting a business requires patience, dedication, and a willingness to learn from mistakes. They had to adapt to the changes in the market and redefine their ideal customer. They had to redefine their reporting and marketing strategies to meet the needs of their clients. Above all, they had to change their mindset to see real results. If you want to start a business or take your existing business to the next level, i

Are you delegating effectively in order to grow your agency? Do you have a satisfying work-life balance? Or are you working yourself to death? A lot of agency owners hit the early milestones by hustling hard. Many believe they are the only ones capable of doing specific tasks the right way. But this superhero syndrome ultimately gets in the way of your growth and results in being burnt out. Today's guest saw rapid growth with his agency, hitting the $1 million mark in just one year. However, he shares the toll it took and what he would do differently. Daniel Englebretson is the co-founder and CCO of Khronos, an account-based marketing agency helping B2B companies create demand generation from the ground up. His team assists clients as they validate, refine, and execute their go-to-market strategy by running targeted account-based programs that deliver a real pipeline. Daniel has spent most of his career in B2B marketing and is passionate about helping businesses solve problems. In this episode, we'll discuss: Value-based pricing and charging what you're worth. Key roles to hire in order to boost agency growth. Staying motivated after working around the clock. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Value-Based Pricing and Charging What You're Worth Daniel began his career in B2B marketing immediately after college when he was recruited to work on a demand generation project. Over the next few years, he honed his approach and skills while working on similar projects. He met his future co-founders as they collaborated on several projects. Together they developed their methodology for scaling up demand generation. Their goal was to revolutionize the sector by assisting businesses that had an old-school approach. The agency's first retainer was for $3,000 and was signed three months after Daniel quit his job to focus on building the business. However, it wasn't until two months later that the agency signed what he calls their actual first retainer, in the $15,000 range. From that point on, it took them only a year to reach $1 million. They have grown the agency 2X every since then. Daniel envisioned building and selling Account Based Marketing programs for the same price it would cost to hire an ABM director, around $15,000 per month. Related: How the Right Foot in The Door Offer Helps Land Bigger Retainers Key Roles to Boost the Agency's Growth Since the agency aimed to be its clients' fractional ABM team, the most critical role to fill was operations to help document processes. From there, their most significant hires were for process execution and staffing customer services. Daniel and his partners initially had reservations about hiring more leaders, but they recognized their blind spots and brought in an account manager to help define what customer success would look like for them and the roles they needed to fill. However, they later realized they had leaned too much on expensive leadership, which did not work out. Staying Motivated After Working Around the Clock While reaching $1 million in just one year was impressive, Daniel and his partners paid themselves the bare minimum that first year, allowing them to reinvest in the agency. Daniel handled all client-facing tasks and worked around the clock. He eventually realized the importance of work-life balance and separating his personal and professional identities. This led to reorganizing the company and having all client-facing roles roll under him, giving him the chance to focus on his role as the visionary. Daniel recommends having a coach, partner, therapist, or adviser to bounce ideas off. Often agency owners struggle to find someone to advise them when they start their agency journeys on their own. Turning outside the agency to find a coach or adviser can help owners get through the low points. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? If you want to be around amazing agency owners that can see what you may not be able to see and help you grow your agency, go to Agency Mastery 360. Our agency growth program helps you take a 360-degree view of your agency and gain mastery of the 3 pillar systems (attract, convert, scale) so you can create predictability, wealth, and freedom.

Have you used LinkedIn to generate leads for your agency? Do you know how to access your ideal prospects on LinkedIn? A lot of people get LinkedIn messaging wrong their results show it. It can be a very valuable platform when you use it the right way and master the type of messaging that gets engagement. However, very few do it right. Today's guest has a lead generation agency that specializes in creating targeted messages that generate responses from your ideal prospects. He shares common mistakes agencies typically make on LinkedIn and tips for improving your LinkedIn outreach. Nick Verity is the CEO of Cleverly, a LinkedIn marketing agency that uses data from thousands of outbound B2B campaigns to send proven, personalized messages to your dream clients on this platform. His team leverages high-performing data to engage your most qualified decision-makers, driving them directly into your sales funnel. In this episode, we'll discuss: Common mistakes with LinkedIn messages How to get LinkedIn messaging right. Accessing your ideal prospects on LinkedIn. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources Dot & Co: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Dot & Co, client management specialists helping digital marketing agencies keep their clients happy. With the help of their knowledgeable account managers agency owners can step away from the day-to-day and focus on driving results. Check out dotandcompany.co/smartagency and get 20% off your first month working with them. Starting Out as a Lead Generation Agency Nick got into the agency world figuring if he learned how to market he would always have a job. His business partner used to work in lead generation for a big tech company and had successfully used LinkedIn to create leads for himself. Of course, experience with lead generation came in handy when they decided to create an agency. Their original offer was a ton of volume on LinkedIn with fully done-for-you copywriting and targeting. It was very successful and they were soon charging $800 per month to send 2,000 connection requests on LinkedIn. However, things have changed since LinkedIn has limited connection requests to 400 per month. The Unusual Path that Led to Scaling the Agency Looking back, Nick sees they failed to work on filling their sales pipeline faster. Basically, they stuck to the same 20 clients for about a year. They were doing so much for these clients that it was difficult to focus on bringing in more business. This meant their agency growth plateaued. The eventual solution was dropping prices and making a switch to fully backend scalable operations coupled with a lot of automation. This was the solution they needed in order to scale. It was the key to pulling themselves out of the business. For Nick, making those changes and being delegating work is what made the difference between scaling and staying at the same level as other agencies. Many agencies take the opposite route of having fewer clients and charging more, but this is the change Cleverly needed in order to scale. The Most Common Mistake People Make on LinkedIn Most people ignore the "salesy," persistent messages we normally get on LinkedIn. You can see them from a mile away. According to Nick, most people get on LinkedIn thinking they're just going to pitch and sell, which leads to the many irrelevant messages we all know. With automation, it becomes even worse as they start to spread the same irrelevant messaging even more. It fills inboxes with the same type of generic messages and drives people away from the platform. Like cold calling and cold email, there are ways to make it work, there are just very few doing it right. How Can You Get LinkedIn Messaging Right? Step 1: Targeting. People usually look for copy hacks to improve their LinkedIn success. However, Nick says it all starts with targeting. Half the reason people assume the message is spam is because they see "I'm an insurance agent or real estate broker" and think "I don't need this." Think about targeting first. Don't just target everyone. Instead, niche down and make sure to hit relevant people. List your clients and try to target similar individuals. This way, you're saying something credible and relevant which increases the chance of success. At his agency, they use Sales Navigator to build a hyper-niche list of around 1,000 prospects. Step 2: Mindset shift. You're not on LinkedIn to sell. Instead, your goal is to start conversations and build a network. When you change your mindset to starting conversations, your messages are shorter and you'll learn to ask good discovery questions. Instead of pitching, lead off by providing value for free and see where it goes. Step 3: The conversation. You can start the conversation by boosting their ego. Complement them on the work they're doing and be specific on where you think they're doing really well. Next, you make a low-friction offer that's not a sales pi

Does your agency have a defined niche? Do you serve a specific industry or work in a specific vertical offering? We always hear the riches are in the niches, but it's all about balance. Growth comes from serving the right clients with the right offering. Boost client retention when your agency's positioning is clear on who you serve and the solution you provide. After all, you can't be everything to everyone -- you'll just end up a generalist, 'me too' agency. However, choosing a vertical and horizontal niche might be too limiting at first. Niching down too much and too quickly can leave your business vulnerable to the whims of the market. Today's guests learned this after seeing exponential growth and then panicking once a change in the algorithm threatened their business niche. Adam Smith and Laura Hanlon are owners and Co-Directors of Pink Leopard, a growth acceleration agency that helps e-commerce brands grow and scale through the power of paid social, search, and email. The majority of their clients are female-owned e-commerce brands with a primarily female clientele. This wasn't always the case, however. In its early days, the agency was exclusively focused on Facebook ads. However, a shift in the market forced them to reconsider if they perhaps niched down too, much too soon. In this interview, we'll discuss: Discovering a niche is too limiting. Growing from 1 hire to a team of 20. Boosting client retention with the right offering. Time tracking to increase profitability. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Starting an Agency and Selecting a Business Partner Initially, Laura worked in network marketing and used social media to launch and grow brands, as she had done with her own. It was a very different time and organization was the only thing you needed to grow. However, she quickly identified that paid social ads were the key to helping brands get to the next level. During that time, she also found a passion for e-commerce and started her own e-commerce store. In hindsight, it was too much on top of her agency work, but it helped her understand her clients' struggles. As her business grew, she was still a one-woman show getting more and more business thanks to referrals. This is when she thought about Adam. They had known each other for years, he also wanted to start a business, and his experience in business development and employee engagement complemented her own experiences. He was an ideal match for a business partner. Growing from the First Hire to a Team of 20 With Laura selling and Adam handling operations, the agency grew quickly. After just six months they hired an account manager to alleviate the handover from sales to delivery. This meant Laura could focus on running accounts while the account manager handled the back-and-forth with clients. However, when the pandemic hit, as it happened to many, agency growth soared. They quickly went from a 2-person operation to a 20-person team. Not every new hire was successful. In fact, they made the common mistake of hiring someone very junior when they didn't have the time to train him. Adam and Laura learned they needed to hire skilled experts, which proved to be a great move. Now, they have specialists leading and growing the teams while they focus on growing the agency. Can an Agency Be Too Niched? At first, Pink Leopard worked exclusively with Meta (Facebook) in the e-commerce space. They felt confident to be starting out with a clear idea of their niche and audience. They grew significantly during the Covid pandemic when a lot of brands moved to an e-commerce model or stepped up their e-comm presence. However, growth during the pandemic was very hard to maintain two years later, when things got back to normal. Additionally, the Apple/iOS changes removing data sharing were catastrophic for them as a Facebook agency. They actually lost a few clients, who were cutting costs after growing too fast during the pandemic. A lot of this had to do with taking on the wrong clients, Laura admits. In 2020 and 2021 they were taking on many businesses without properly vetting them. They later discovered these clients weren't a culture fit. In the end, they learned relying on a single platform like Facebook was just too risky. They pivoted to being all-in with e-commerce and diversified their services to include email marketing and Google ads. How to Boost Client Retention with the Right Offering Diversifying their service offering actually turned out to be a massive client retention piece. It has also helped with growth as they established trust with their clients. Their new expanded offering help

Not sure why you're stuck trying to scale your agency? Growth vs Scaling? What's the difference? There are four main reasons some agencies never scale. Today's guest has accumulated nearly 15 years of experience in the agency business and shares how he stays focused in order to scale. He also shares lessons that helped him get through difficult and why is usually the agency owners standing in their own way of scaling. Wayne Mullins is the founder of Ugly Mug Marketing, a boutique agency with 14 years of experience. The agency's design approach places a lot of emphasis on content and understanding the audience to convey an effective message. Their core value is that results should never be compromised for the sake of "good" design. In this interview, we'll discuss: Why your agency needs a north star to stay focused. The difference between scaling vs. growth. How agency owners sabotage their growth by not adapting. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources Verblio: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Verblio. Check out Verblio.com/smartagency and get 50% off your first month of content creation. Our team loves using Verblio because of the ease of their process and their large pool of crowd-sourced writers. Why You Need a North Star Don't let the name fool you; Ugly Mug represents the agency's philosophy of prioritizing results. It originates from a quote by David Ogilvy, where he said "I rather you show me an ad that's ugly and effective over one that is beautiful but isn't." This quote became Wayne's north star, keeping him from getting sidetracked by awards and accolades. Instead, he believes that agency owners should focus on solving clients' problems and getting results. What's the Difference Between Scaling and Growth? Scaling a business and growing it is often confused, with the latter becoming a buzzword. According to Wayne, scaling involves having more free time and working only in the areas you choose. However, growth leads to time constraints and doing things you hate. To scale, you need to have the right mindset, systems, and processes in place. 4 Reasons Why Some Agencies Are Not Scaling The owner's mindset is the main reason why agencies fail to scale. In the beginning, Wayne's ego played a significant role, and he enjoyed being the hero who saved the day. However, he realized that he needed a clear vision of where he wanted the agency to go to communicate it to his team. That way, they could make better decisions, and he wouldn't become a hindrance to growth. Many agencies fall into the scale hustle trap when they hit certain levels of revenue or employee numbers, believing that they only need to work harder to get to the next level. However, the key to scaling is having the right systems and processes in place, documenting them, and trusting your team to have autonomy. To scale, you need to balance alignment and authority. Without autonomy, everything is controlled, and without alignment, there's chaos. Everyone must be aligned with the agency's vision, and team members must have autonomy to make decisions. Ideally, you want to stay around the complexity line, which indicates that you're growing. The faster you scale, the more chaos you feel, but if you pull back, you're sabotaging future growth. Feeling overwhelmed means that there's too much on your plate, and you need to adapt your processes to grow. Wayne's philosophy is that agencies should focus on delivering results and solving clients' problems rather than just winning awards. Scaling requires the right mindset, systems, and processes, as well as a team aligned with the agency's vision and autonomy to make decisions. Don't be afraid of complexity, adapt to it, and keep growing. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? If you want to be around amazing agency owners that can see what you may not be able to see and help you grow your agency, go to Agency Mastery 360. Our agency growth program helps you take a 360-degree view of your agency and gain mastery of the 3 pillar systems (attract, convert, scale) so you can create predictability, wealth, and freedom.

Considering adding software as a service to your offering? Do you have a SaaS idea in mind? Having proprietary agency software is a great way to meet the needs of your clients. However, building it is no easy task and often takes longer than expected. Today's guests created an email marketing system which led to building their agency back in the early 2000s. They share lessons learned and challenges overcome in the process of building their email marketing agency out of a SaaS model. Robert Dodd and Joe Solano are the founders of XL Technologies, a digital agency specializing in helping US-based real estate brokers grow and scale their brokerages. They have over 20 years of experience and help their clients using their proven and tested agent acquisition framework. They also created proprietary software for real estate brokerages, which they use to help get clients better results from their campaigns. Their product, and the one that actually got their partnership started, is eCampaignPro. This email marketing system helps build targeted agent-to-agent email marketing lists. In this interview, we'll discuss: Discovering the right niche and selling a solution. The #1 common mistake sending cold emails. Recommendations on building your own SaaS. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Podcast Takeover!! Get to know your Smart Agency Guest Host: Dr. Jeremy Weisz is the co-founder of Rise25, an agency that helps companies launch and run podcasts profitably. He followed Jason's podcast and eventually joined the mastermind and has been a guest on the podcast before. Today, he's helping Jason bring something new to the Smart Agency podcast audience by interviewing a special guest and getting a new perspective to the show. Discovering the Right Niche and Selling a Solution Robert and Joe have been involved in internet marketing since the dot-com bubble era. Robert moved to Florida to work in a startup, which didn't work out. He met Joe through a project, and they started XL Tech together. They developed an email marketing system, which was a challenge to sell to businesses. They decided to niche down and adapted the system as a solution for the real estate market, specifically brokers. It was a great success. Evolving from SaaS to an Email Marketing Agency They identified common mistakes while managing agent-to-agent marketing relations and decided to provide a more complete solution. The concept of their agency was born from the need to help clients better use their software. Their company quickly grew with the success of eCampaignPro. However, they ended up getting into hot water with Google after some of their customers were spamming clients. As a result, their email traffic got blocked, which caused a significant disruption in the business. They decided to help real estate brokers strategically map out the right approach and leverage social media as another way to reach out to agents. Their agency used their understanding of their audience's pain points and motivations to create an agent acquisition framework. They take everything brokers may need to put together a fully functional and omnipresent marketing campaign to get their message out. They also handle all the pre-qualifications, appointment setting, and follow-up all the way to the onboarding process. #1 Common Mistake in Email Marketing Joe and Robert say that creating software to sell with agency services is an unbelievable undertaking and will almost certainly take longer than expected. One of the most common mistakes in people's approach to cold email is being too aggressive with the frequency and cadence. Therefore it's important to have the right balance between cadence and messaging to get the results you're looking for. With the way algorithms work today, it's essential to be tactful and strategic with your approach. They work out email sequences in their agency, which doesn't try to say everything at once. Sometimes they just contain a simple introduction. Then they wait to see how engaged the audience was with that message before following up. Although they grow brokerages from scratch to thousands of brokers, they've never taken equity. They acknowledge it's an interesting prospect they haven't explored and are proud of the results they can get for their clients. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? If you want to be around amazing agency owners that can see what you may not be able to see and help you grow your agency, go to Agency Mastery 360. Our agency growth program helps you take a 360-degree view of your agency and gain mastery of the 3 pillar systems

Do you have passion for your agency and clients? Have you identified your agency's purpose? Do you know your why and does your team buy into your vision? One agency had a hard time with this and decided to begin a startup incubator to fill the void. The results have been amazing for the agency, the team, and their clients. She managed to create a very cool agency model that both creates opportunities for startups with a lot of potential and also provides investment opportunities for her staff, even in the early stages of their careers. Laura Hutfless is the Co-Founder at FlyteVu, an entertainment marketing agency that helps brands connect to consumers via pop culture and purpose. Their work varies depending on the client, but it includes music events, influencers, endorsement deals, and more recently gaming. In short, they help clients try to keep up with pop culture and stay at the forefront. In this interview, we'll discuss: Why agency projects need to have a purpose. The process for working with incubator clients. Advice for agency owners starting to invest. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources Verblio: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Verblio. Check out Verblio.com/smartagency and get 50% off your first month of content creation. Our team loves using Verblio because of the ease of their process and their large pool of crowd-sourced writers. Why Every Agency Project Should Have a Purpose Laura started her own agency, but her niche was something she stumbled upon accidentally. Before starting the agency, she worked in the talent agency CAA brokering deals between talent and corporate brands. As brands began to spend more on entertainment and influencers, Laura was asked to work for them. She saw the need to help companies navigate the new influencer culture to stay relevant to younger consumers, which led her to start her own agency. She wanted to take on as many clients as possible to help these companies make sense of this new landscape. However, she felt that she was only helping people who already had a lot of money just make even more money; and she began to lose her passion for the job. To combat this, she decided that every project at her agency would have an actual purpose. This means working on either a movement, a change in culture, or a gift bag. Laura also applied these principles to her incubator clients, investing only in startups she truly believed in and incorporating causes that were close to her heart. Laura wanted 20% of the agency's revenue to go to charity. So, she created the FlyteVu fund, which clients, teams, and vendors can access, and which can reach up to $1 million dollars each year. One of her agency's first clients was Bumble. Although they did not receive equity, it was a mutually beneficial partnership that allowed the agency to earn credibility and learn a lot about the process and what a brand like that needs. Laura wanted to set up a startup incubator for future opportunities and to help entrepreneurs with great ideas and no funds. Now the agency has enough staff and hours to dedicate to these kinds of projects without taking payment. The Process of Working with Startup Incubator Clients When choosing incubator clients, Laura looks for mission-driven brands that resonate with her and her team's values, ensuring that it is something they believe in. There is a dollar amount attached to the equity they will receive in the company. This determines the hours spent on that client, and they are capped on the number of hours. Laura also looks at the brand's growth plan, strategy, and where they are in their timeline to better understand what the agency's role is and how far they can get them. Laura's agency offers services for incubator clients for a year. After a year, they can either go off on their own or retain FlyteVu as their agency and pay their fee. Laura also pays for the equity of companies that are not yet at a point where they can benefit from their services. When it comes to having dedicated teams, Laura only sees the need to have a separate account team. She wants to offer her staff opportunities for investment and wealth-building, which she never had as a young executive. By setting up her own incubator, Laura is able to give back and provide opportunities for entrepreneurs while also benefiting her agency. Advice for Agency Owners who Want to Start Investing If you're interested in setting up an incubator, Laura recommends you start small. It has taken her agency some time to figure out a process that was right for them and she is thankful she gave herself that time. "You don't have to dive in a big way," she says. A lot of these startups need a phone call a month or some advice. These entrepreneurs don't have the connections you have and at the beginning that's a huge part of the agency's involvement. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? If you want to

Do you want more clients? Thinking about increasing your offering to attract more clients? Truth is, the opposite strategy is what helps a lot of agencies grow. Scale back to scale up! That's what this agency did when they took the scary approach of cutting back on their service offering and niching down. However, the results speak for themself. That is how one PR agency went from functioning as a full-service to niching down and focusing on just one area. Learn the motivation that led to making this transition and how he prepared for it. Matt McAllister is the Managing Director at Candor Content, a content marketing agency that helps technology companies grow by driving organic traffic and generating inbound leads. Their content programs turn websites into organic traffic magnets by publishing content that attracts visitors, builds trust, and forges enduring relationships. With a team so passionate about writing and content marketing, it's hard to believe the agency was first focused on PR. Matt offers some insight into that transition process and their eventual success. In this interview, we'll discuss: Simplify your agency service offering and say no to the wrong clients. Going all in on niching down. Is the emergence of AI affecting content marketing agencies? Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Shifting Focus From PR to Content Marketing Matt started his agency 12 years ago, initially focusing on the PR side of the industry. At that time, he believed that most companies allocated a budget for public relations and that he would find clients easily. He did not consider content marketing because it was not yet a big thing. However, he had a content-centric approach to doing PR, offering to publish articles, research reports, and take over clients' blogs. Around 2015, HubSpot became popular and many companies realized the power of inbound marketing. They needed content to fuel their inbound engines, so Matt and his team focused more on creating content. However, in the early days of his agency, they fell into the trap of trying to be all things to all people. They gave clients a full-service offering where they would do anything needed, including branding, design, and positioning. This approach proved to be very stressful because they were a small team and had to rely on freelancers. Simplifying the Agency Offering and Saying No to the Wrong Prospects Eventually, they realized that it was time to strip down their services and focus on what they enjoyed doing the most. Niching down and saying no to the wrong customers is a natural part of growing an agency. But it's not as simple as it may sound. You have to consider possible risks and start implementing it with some clients first to assess the response. The hardest part will be drawing a line in the sand and start telling clients you will only work on a specific space. This involves offering referrals for all those wanting other services outside that expertise. It's important to take the time to feel well-prepared for the shift. Too many agency owners pull the ripcord too early and go back to what they feel is safe before seeing results. Fortunately, they started to see results right away. Existing clients responded with more budgets for content creation, something they already knew his agency was good at. Additionally, new prospects trusted them in this area of expertise. They figured they must be really good at that if they were willing to focus on that one area. Going All In On Niching Down to Attract More Clients Realistically, you may go through a few rough weeks where you lose clients that don't fit your new niche. The important thing is to push through that point. Matt's agency lost about 10-15% of its overall revenue at first. "It was scary," he admits, "we're a small agency so this was a significant part of our revenue for sure." He was definitely tempted to take some of the PR work opportunities that they have following their shift to content. Thankfully, his partner reminded him they needed to go all in on their strategy for it to work. Big changes like this benefit from having people around you who will hold you accountable for your commitment. If he could go back to the agency's first few years, Matt would have brought on help sooner. It's common for agency owners to decide to do everything themselves at first to cut costs. "I called it an agency," he recalls, "but it was me and a couple of freelancers." Looking back, he would have liked to have more trust in the project and given more work to other people. Scaling Back Services to Scale Up the Agency As far as the transition, he wou

Do you have an irresistible offer that generates leads? What if you had a pipeline full of qualified leads? Webinars can help you get the attention of your ideal prospects. They are a great tool to attract clients and offer value. However, there's a possibility you end up over-educating your audience unless it's done right. Today's guest built a career in webinar coaching and designing high-ticket offers to generate sales. It took him years to identify how he was failing to attract the qualified leads he needed to maximize his sales. But now he shares his script for creating a power offer that will get you tons of sales-qualified leads. Joel Erway is the founder of The Webinar Agency, which helps clients build high-converting sales presentations and webinars. They primarily work with thought leaders, coaches, and consultants, including Russell Brunson, Mike Dillard, and many more. He is also the author of High Ticket Courses and the host of two podcasts: Sold with Webinars and Experts Unleashed. Joel shares how he discovered his marketing was missing a potential pool of clients who had the right urgency and wanted to buy and how he used power offers and mini webinars to harness that potential to great success. In this interview, we'll discuss: Why your agency needs to add mini webinars. Marketing-qualified leads vs Sales-qualified leads. Creating an irresistible power offer to generate more leads. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources Verblio: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Verblio. Check out Verblio.com/smartagency and get 50% off your first month of content creation. Our team loves using Verblio because of the ease of their process and their large pool of crowd-sourced writers. Podcast Takeover!! Get to know your Smart Agency Guest Host: Dr. Jeremy Weisz is the co-founder of Rise25, an agency that helps companies launch and run podcasts profitably. He followed Jason's podcast and eventually joined the mastermind and has been a guest on the podcast before. Today, he's helping Jason bring something new to the Smart Agency podcast audience by interviewing a special guest and bringing a new perspective to the show. Why Your Agency Needs to Add Mini Webinars Joel, the webinar guy, had a bit of a revelation after struggling with getting paid traffic to work for his business. He realized that relying solely on giving out free value to eventually turn into sales wasn't working for him. He wanted to flip that model on its head and make some changes to his process. After doing some research and attending various events, Joel finally stumbled upon a book called How to Create an Irresistible Offer. This book helped him understand what he was doing wrong and how he could fix it. He realized that his long-form webinars of one or two hours were only generating marketing-qualified leads, which weren't enough to convert into sales. He needed to focus on sales-qualified leads to see a significant impact on his business. Differentiating Marketing Qualified Leads vs Sales Qualified Leads To differentiate between marketing-qualified leads and sales-qualified leads, Joel explained this. The former is interested in the topic but not necessarily ready to buy. The latter is in the market, likes the process, and recognizes the problem they need to solve. The challenge for Joel was how to accelerate the process and move more marketing-qualified leads to sales-qualified leads. He found that publishing offer-driven content was the key to getting a lower cost per acquisition. So, he decided to expand his offers to include mini webinars instead of only doing long-form ones. This change helped him generate more sales-qualified leads and ultimately increased his conversions. It was a game-changer for his business, and he became a thought leader in the webinar space. Creating the Power Offer as a Way to Attract the Right Leads According to Joel, the key to getting more clients is by making power offers instead of constantly marketing yourself. A power offer is a short but compelling statement that offers a solution to a problem your audience is facing. It's all about getting your potential clients to think and engage with the idea you're presenting. If it's good enough, you might even get some hand raisers. Once you have your power offer, the next step is to create a three-step funnel. That will guide your leads from making a promise to closing the sale. The funnel includes a power offer ad, a landing page, and a mini webinar. Power offer ad. This is your sales-qualified offer containing the promise you make on how you can help potential clients get results while avoiding certain hurdles. Landing page. Clicking on that power offer ad will lead them to a landing page with sales-qualified lead messaging. The messaging here will be very similar to the first step, something like "We're looking for clients who need help with this. If you're interested, apply here"

Are you feeling threatened by AI? Are you worried that it could replace your agency's creative work? There are so many uses for artificial intelligence and it is here to stay. So it's time to embrace it and unlock the power of AI for your agency's growth. From creating meeting summaries to building websites, there are so many applications people aren't talking about yet. Today's guest has explored many of these tools at his agency and offers a few tips on the ones you should be testing to become more productive. Carl Cleanthes is the founder of Epic Made, a digital art and animation studio that does most of its work in the entertainment advertisement space, including NFTs and PFP collections. In his agency, Carl has implemented the use of AI to generate images that can serve as a reference for the work they do. However, he has also discovered other very useful AI applications that any agency owner can implement to boost productivity. In this interview, we'll discuss: How AI is helping creators and agency owners. The benefits and power of AI in creative work. Will AI replace your agency? Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. How AI is Revolutionizing Creative Work The conversation around AI is a layered and complex one, and not without controversy when it comes to copyright. At its core, however, artificial intelligence is a tool to help make human beings more productive, more creative, and allow them to execute their ideas faster and on another level. Many people became aware of AI tools mostly through the use of ChatGPT or some image-generating artificial intelligence software. In reality, AI has been around for a long time but what's really getting people excited now is the machine aspect of it. The Benefits of AI in Creative Work Pumping in a data set and creating content from that seemed like a distant possibility not very long ago. Now, AI's ability to do this is just getting better and better, with the possibility to generate tons of content in just seconds. This record-breaking shift to AI we're seeing with ChatGPT is largely thanks to how intuitive it is. The ability to just drop an idea there and get very good and in some cases amazing quality text that needs very little editing is something that is helping get productivity to levels we could only dream of in the past. Will AI Replace You or Your Agency? Of course, not everyone has a positive interpretation of these developments. Some people fear AI will replace them. Instead, we should reframe it as adapting to the many ways in which AI can help us improve what we do. For writers, it's a great tool to get that first idea to start your text. In fact, people who are just using it to create a text and then copy and paste are missing out. The real great results will come from combining the ideas the AI can give you with your own writing. Carl doesn't believe AI can fully replace human creativity. It will, however, hurt the bottom of the market. It won't make sense to pay someone to do something you can now do yourself with AI. The Power of AI in Business Productivity Most agency owners have heard of ChatGPT or Jasper. However, their widespread use has made some people think this is the first AI tool of their kind. This is not true at all; these types of tools have been available for years and have many uses. For instance, Carl uses Fireflies and Otter AI, which are AI bots that join your meeting, record it, transcribe it, note all the questions, and automatically email that to everyone in the meeting. He also uses Midjourney for image generation. In this case, he uses it to generate ideas instead of manually searching for references on the internet. It's a good way to get a sample of what's out there on the internet with the added benefit of saving time. For copywriting, he uses some of the more known ones and also recommends Neuroflash. These tools are not only great for generating ideas for posts but also a good way to spice up an email or get a start on tedious tasks like writing a letter of intent. There's still much to learn about the subject, so the important thing is to stay informed and constantly learn about this topic. You'll find AIs for building landing pages, thumbnails, creating websites, so many functions most people are not yet aware of and that can really help you boost productivity. TikTok is a Good Place to Start Researching AI Applications Many people are unaware of the vast range of AI tools available, from building landing pages to creating websites. TikTok is an excellent platform to start researching and learning about AI applications, with informative and easy-to-dige

Did you know that applying behavioral science to your agency's work will result in better outcomes for your clients? By utilizing research-backed methodologies, you'll gain a competitive advantage. With extensive research on how to decipher customer thought processes, behavioral science is an incredibly useful tool for influencing and predicting their behavior. Our guest today, Shirin Oreizy, is the founder and CEO of Next Step, a marketing agency that specializes in using behavioral science and research methodology to help clients achieve their marketing goals. Their approach is different from traditional marketing, which often puts all customers in the same box. Instead, Next Step seeks to de-risk the process and provide evidence-backed results. Shirin discusses the basics of the behavioral science approach, why it is so useful for agencies, and how her agency's methods lead to the best possible outcomes for clients. In this interview, we'll discuss: The role of behavioral science in digital design. 4-phases to use behavioral science to your agency's advantage. The importance of process transparency to gain clients' trust. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. An Under-Utilized Tool that Became the Agency's Differentiator Behavioral marketing agencies have changed the way companies approach business, by offering unique solutions and products designed to meet the specific needs of their clients. While many agencies may rely solely on website design, graphics, and typography, successful agencies understand the importance of behavioral science in creating unique products and driving conversions. Shirin's interview explores the four-phase methodology used by her agency to leverage behavioral science, as well as the benefits of process transparency in driving sales. The Role of Behavioral Science in Digital Design The gap between what we know we should do and what we end up doing is significant. Behavioral science takes into account the fact that people's emotions, environment, and social factors heavily influence their decisions. By studying these behaviors, agencies like Shirin's can identify gaps in existing marketing plans and develop tailored solutions that meet the unique needs of their clients. Understanding Human Behavior to Design Unique Solutions and Products Behavioral science is a social science that takes into account many external factors. It's important because people's emotions, environment, and social factors heavily influence their decisions. Behavioral scientists take into account things like people's laziness, biases, and heuristics, which are often overlooked in traditional marketing practices. The 4-Phases to Use Behavioral Science to Your Agency's Advantage Shirin's agency has developed a research methodology called the science of design, which uses behavioral science as the backbone to understanding a situation. It's a combination of qualitative and quantitative research to try to figure out why consumers prefer a product or ad. The 4 phases are as follows: Behavioral Science Assessment: Their behavioral science researchers analyze how the client is currently marketing. They identify gaps and issues that can be addressed immediately. Qualitative Research: This phase involves talking to about 10 people to verify the agency is moving in the right direction. Quantitative Research: This phase involves testing the different hypotheses against each other. The goal is to figure out what works. The test groups have significant numbers so there is no question about the results. Incorporating the principles: Designers and copywriters get involved to incorporate these principles into the work they're doing for the client. Why Process Transparency Will Help You Sell More Process transparency is one of the core principles of behavioral science. Research shows that human beings value effort, hence explaining the process behind a product or service ensures clients will value the result more. Clients with information about what happens in the background are willing to wait longer, increasing the likelihood of driving conversions. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? If you want to be around amazing agency owners that can see what you may not be able to see and help you grow your agency, go to Agency Mastery 360. Our agency growth program helps you take a 360-degree view of your agency and gain mastery of the 3 pillar systems (attract, convert, scale) so you can create predictability, wealth, and freedom.

Do you have trusted referral partners? Every considered merging with an agency partner? A merger can be a good way to expand your service offering, but surviving a merger is a whole other thing. The right partner gives you access to highly skilled professionals, more creative ideas, and proven methods to maximize success. Today's guest found a great, longtime partnership. However, when it came time to merge their agencies, both opted to maintain ownership of their individual entities. He explains the thought process behind this decision and the road that led to his eventual acquisition. Gus Wagner is the president and owner of The Rocket Group, a full-service agency based in Missouri. In its long history, the agency has worked in all sorts of different sectors with businesses, organizations, and nonprofits; focusing on government communications and politics. Established as a virtual organization since its beginnings, the agency has always worked with independent contractors to help build and perform their client marketing tools and activities. For this episode, he recalls his agency journey and how he and his partner decided to set up a separate agency to work together and not lose control of their individual businesses. In this interview, we'll discuss: Protecting agency ownership when collaborating with a partner. Should you sell your agency to a competitor? When and how to announce an agency acquisition. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources Verblio: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Verblio. Check out Verblio.com/smartagency and get 50% off your first month of content creation. Our team loves using Verblio because of the ease of their process and their large pool of crowd-sourced writers. In 2001, Gus, a sales and marketing manager for different manufacturing companies, quit his job and decided to start his own agency. After 21 years of working with The Rocket Group, he had completed numerous opportunities and projects, specializing in tools to help his clients communicate online and in the real world with their customers and prospects. Gus is also a certified social media strategist and enjoys training interested parties in these ever-changing modern communication platforms. Over the years, he has made valuable strategic partnerships, with some colleagues working with his agency for more than 5 years. On a daily basis, his agency works with 19 state associations, 200 individual member public utilities, and one national organization. Protecting Agency Ownership While Collaborating with an Agency Partner However, there was a time when Gus decided to set up a separate agency to protect ownership of his original business. This happened when he officially formed an agency partnership to maximize his success. Instead of merging their agencies, they created a third entity owned by both of businesses. Whether because of different industry niches or partners who didn't want to get too involved in the entire agency's operation. Many agency owners are always networking and passing business back and forth but keep their businesses separate. In fact, clients are often aware of this. For Gus and his partner, it was a case of simplifying things for the clients. This way, they would have to deal with one entity instead of two. It seemed like the best way to go about these partnerships since Gus also didn't want to sell a piece of his agency. This is because many businesses don't want to give up ownership of their organization, especially to someone they don't trust. When it comes to selling your agency, there are many things to consider, such as your employees, clients, and the value of the agency itself. Should You Sell Your Agency to a Competitor? If you decide to sell, it's important to make sure that the buyer is someone you trust and that the process is done right. In Gus's case, he was approached by a competitor who wanted to acquire his organization. They accepted and closed the deal in March 2020. The buyer was a known competitor who had been working with the same pool of clients for some time. It was a smaller agency trying to win social and digital campaigns for public utilities. They were trying to do it differently and weren't being very successful with that client base. They were put in touch by a client who had worked with both and they got to compare strengths and weaknesses. The conversation grew from there. At that time, Gus's agency was growing more than he and his partner were comfortable with. Hence, it was attractive for them to form a larger structure to take over that growth. It took about six months from the initial conversation to signing the paperwork and making the announcement. How and When to Announce an Agency Acquisition Announcing an agency sale can be challenging as clients may assume the services will quickly lower in quality. However, if you wait until they have positive comments about the service to announ

Are you running your agency, or is your agency running you? Are you lacking the freedom you thought you'd have in your agency? Many owners start growing their agency, getting more clients, and hiring more people and quickly find they've built a prison for themselves. Today's guest went through this and came up with a method to regain freedom and buy back your time. He now helps clients set up systems to identify their buyback rates and delegate tasks so they can maximize time and revenue. Dan Martell is the CEO of SaaS Academy, the largest coaching company for software CEOs. He has owned and sold several agencies and continues to invest and buy companies through his company, High-Speed Ventures. As a troubled teenager, Dan discovered his obsession with computer programming while serving time in a detention home. Many years later, he started and sold several companies. He has two venture companies and has been an angel investor in about 50 companies. He is currently CEO of SaaS Academy and is further developing his personal brand as an author. Today, he talks about his new book, Buy Back Your Time, where he details the method he created to help business owners regain their freedom. In this interview, we'll discuss: How to calculate buyback rate and conduct an audit of your time. 3 mistakes entrepreneurs make when they reach the pain line. 5 key hires to help you delegate and reclaim your time. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. How to Calculate Your Buyback Rate The "buyback rate" is a concept that many entrepreneurs are embracing to avoid the "pain line." This is the point where they can no longer balance their personal and business life. Dan's book explores the buyback rate in-depth and discusses how it can help you build a successful business while enjoying your personal life. Dan, the author of Buy Back Your Time, teaches entrepreneurs to calculate their hourly revenue value to determine their buyback rate. To do this, divide your annual income by the number of hours you work per year, then divide that amount by four. The result is your buyback rate. Calendar Audits to Identify Tasks You Can Delegate Once you have your buyback rate, it's time to audit your calendar. Dan advises clients to audit their calendars for two weeks, highlighting tasks they enjoy in green and tasks that drain their energy in red. Each red task should be rated on a scale of one to ten based on the cost to outsource it. Tasks rated as one will cost ten dollars to outsource, tasks rated as two will cost twenty-five dollars, and so on. After classifying tasks, Dan suggests that you work through the $1 tasks, the ones that will cost the least to outsource. While this might not free up a lot of your time at first, it's important to build the muscle of delegating. Dan warns that buying back your time isn't about going to relax. It's about using that time to generate more revenue for your agency. It's important to avoid the "pain line," the point where people start making rushed decisions. The "pain line" can cause entrepreneurs to stall, sabotage themselves, or sell their business, even if it's thriving. Dan has developed a replacement ladder with five levels to help you buy back your time gradually. The levels are Executive Assistant, Delivery, Marketing, Sales, and Leadership. The Five Steps in the Replacement Ladder Dan suggests starting with an Executive Assistant, who can help with scheduling and administrative tasks. Next, hire for Delivery, so you can delegate client work. Marketing and Sales come next, where you delegate lead generation, conversion, and follow-up. Finally, when you have a team in place, you can focus on Leadership. Dan emphasizes that buying back your time isn't a one-time event. Instead, it's a loop that you should continually refine. It's essential to solicit feedback from your team to prevent stagnation. In conclusion, the buyback rate is a useful concept for entrepreneurs who want to balance their personal and business life. By identifying the tasks they can delegate, entrepreneurs can focus on generating revenue and avoid the "pain line" that often causes them to stall, sabotage themselves, or sell their businesses. The buyback rate allows entrepreneurs to buy back their time gradually, building a team that can take over their day-to-day tasks, and create a successful business while enjoying their personal life. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? If you want to be around amazing agency owners that can see what you may not be able to see and help you grow your agency, go to Agency Mastery 360. Our agency growth prog

What are you doing to keep your team happy? Do you have an amazing culture? Is your team passionate about the agency's vision? Do they understand their growth plan beyond their current role? Your employees are your most valuable asset. That's why one agency owner shares his strategy for maximizing employee happiness and how that's led to massive productivity for his e-commerce media agency. Samir Balwani is the founder and CEO of QRY, a media buying agency for e-commerce and direct-to-consumer brands. Their media methodology and testing framework called the QRY Paid Media Process has enabled e-commerce brands to reach new customers and accelerate growth. In this interview, we'll discuss: The importance of people management for team happiness and productivity. Favoring process-driven thinking and management layers. Thoughts on DTC moving to an in-store product line. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources Verblio: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Verblio. Check out Verblio.com/smartagency and get 50% off your first month of content creation. Our team loves using Verblio because of the ease of their process and their large pool of crowd-sourced writers. Podcast Takeover!! Get to know your Smart Agency Guest Host: Dr. Jeremy Weisz is the co-founder of Rise25, an agency that helps companies launch and run podcasts profitably. He followed Jason's podcast and eventually joined the mastermind and has been a guest on the podcast before. Today, he's helping Jason bring something new to the Smart Agency podcast audience by interviewing a special guest and bringing a new perspective to the show. Importance of People Management for Employee Happiness and Productivity People management is a critical factor in keeping employees happy and productive, yet it's often overlooked by many businesses. Samir, the founder of an agency that specializes in working with direct-to-consumer e-commerce brands, understands the importance of prioritizing people management. He's implemented various strategies at his agency to ensure that his team is engaged and motivated, even as the company has grown. One of the keys to maintaining a sound work environment is to create a culture of feedback and communication. Samir has implemented 360 reviews, growth plans, and annual plans to help his team stay passionate and excited about their work. He also recognizes the importance of preventing burnout by ensuring that workers feel valued and appreciated. Allowing employees to voice their concerns and be heard is a crucial part of creating a space where they can thrive. Favoring Process-Driven Thinking and Management Layers at his Agency Another critical aspect of people management is fostering a process-driven approach that doesn't hinder innovation. Samir believes that layers and organizational structure are essential to allowing people to learn from those with more experience. His agency has a coordinator level, a manager and strategist level, and a director level, which has helped to empower employees while also providing them with the support they need to grow. Being a Data-First Business and Sharing Valuable Information As a data-driven business, Samir's agency collects a lot of valuable information about the e-commerce marketplace. They've created a benchmarks page to share high-level trends and KPIs with their clients. This helps to build trust and demonstrate their expertise. Should Direct-to-Consumer Brands Make the Move In-Store? Samir also believes that direct-to-consumer brands will need to reconsider their approach to brick-and-mortar stores in the coming years. These stores can provide valuable validation and brand awareness. However, they may not be the best fit for every brand. Working with wholesale partners like Target can be a more strategic way to build brand awareness. It also allows a brand to grow without cannibalizing a company's entire product portfolio. Improve employee happiness and productivity in your agency. Take a cue from Samir and prioritize people management. By creating a positive work environment that values communication, feedback, and innovation, you can set your team up for long-term success. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? If you want to be around amazing agency owners that can see what you may not be able to see and help you grow your agency, go to Agency Mastery 360. Our agency growth program helps you take a 360-degree view of your agency and gain mastery of the 3 pillar systems (attract, convert, scale) so you can create predictability, wealth, and freedom.

Are you in the growth phase or the scale phase of your agency journey? Do you need generalists, specialists, or both? Knowing where you're at is the key to knowing who to hire to get where you're going. Today's guest is in the scaling phase and believes this is when an agency needs to hire specialists. Before that, it's all about hiring generalists that can handle multiple tasks and get the business to the next stage. Manish Dudharejia is the founder and president of E2M Solutions, a full-service, white-label digital agency. His agency works as a trusted partner to scale your agency business behind the scenes. E2M has been serving agencies for 10 years and currently works with about 130 agencies across the U.S. Manish is a valued partner of the show and as a repeat guest, he shares his experiences solving some of the most common agency growth challenges. In this episode, he shares some of the hiring decisions that may be holding back agency's growth. In this interview, we'll discuss: When to hire a generalist or a specialist. The differences between the growth phase and the scale phase. Why automation is the next step after hiring specialists. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM A Common Hiring Mistake for Agencies in The Early Growth Phase If you're past the initial growth phase with your agency, what would you have done differently to scale faster? Like many agency owners, Manish didn't know a lot about building a team back when he started his business. More than 10 years later, he has learned that when you're starting an agency or you're in the growth phase, you want to make sure you start off with a team of generalists. Generalists are people who are not necessarily tied to a specific role. They are able to work in several different roles during the agency's growth phase. After reaching certain goals and entering the scale phase is when you need to hire specialists. After opening his agency for business, Manish started looking for specialists right away. He figured he couldn't run the agency without them. The Importance of Hiring Generalists in the Early Growth Phase When starting an agency or in the growth phase, it is essential to hire individuals who can be flexible and perform multiple roles. These individuals, known as generalists, can provide much-needed support in various areas, allowing the agency to save costs and reduce the number of people to manage. Hiring generalists during this stage also enables the agency to avoid having idle employees and ensures that the quality of work does not compromise. 3 Advantages of Hiring Generalists In the early growth phase, it is common for agency owners to approach growth-related problems by hiring more people. However, this approach can be both costly and time-consuming, especially if the right employees are not found. On the other hand, hiring generalists provides several advantages, including: Reduced Costs: By hiring generalists, the agency can combine multiple roles into one, saving on costs and reducing the number of people to manage. Increased Resourcefulness: Generalists are known for their resourcefulness, which is an essential trait in the early growth phase. These individuals are versatile and can perform multiple tasks, providing the agency with much-needed support. Improved Quality of Worhttps://jasonswenk.com/amazing-agency-talent: Hiring generalists ensures that the quality of work does not compromise, as these individuals can perform multiple roles and provide support in areas where it is needed. The Right Time to Hire Specialists As the agency moves from the growth phase to the scale phase, it is time to start thinking about hiring specialists. Specialists bring unique skills and expertise that generalists may not possess, and they play an essential role in scaling the agency. Once the agency has reached a certain level of profitability and established a talent pipeline, it is the right time to start thinking about hiring specialists in each department. Hiring generalists in the early growth phase is crucial for the success of an agency. These individuals provide versatility and resourcefulness, saving the agency costs and improving the quality of work. As the agency moves from the growth phase to the scale phase, it is the right time to start thinking about hiring specialists who bring unique skills and expertise to the business. Want the Support of Amazing Digital Agency Owners? If you want to be around amazing agency owners that can see what you may not be able to see and help you grow your agency, go to the Digital Agency Elite to learn all about our exclusive mastermind.

Do you want your eventual exit to benefit many instead of a few? Want to motivate and empower the team by making them personally invested in the agency's success? Have you thought about employee shares or stock options? Learn what you should do and what to avoid in this situation from the CEO of an employee-owned agency. It was an unconventional exit strategy by its owner. However, it the new ownership structure offers many benefits for all involved and is a very interesting way to positively ensure that everyone at the agency has skin in the game. Leeann Leahy is the CEO of VIA, a full-service advertising and marketing agency based in Portland, Maine. They are an award-winning team and one of the largest independent agencies in the business. How did they do it? Many years after its creation, the last remaining original partner decided to build a very interesting ownership structure that would benefit all employees instead of a select executive team. Leeann discusses the process of putting such a structure together, the challenges, and the many benefits it creates for the business culture and overall employee commitment. In this interview, we'll discuss: How to set up an employee-owned agency and mistakes to avoid. Finding the right agency employee ownership option. Why successful ESOPs start with a foundation of good culture. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources Verblio: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Verblio. Check out Verblio.com/smartagency and get 50% off your first month of content creation. Our team loves using Verblio because of the ease of their process and their large pool of crowd-sourced writers. Create Something Larger than Yourself with an Employee-Owned Structure In a sense, Leeann grew up in the agency world. She was a child actor in several commercials, so she grew up around the business of advertising. At one point in her life, she swore off that world. However, she fell right back into it with account planning. Since then she has had a successful career working at both large and small agencies. Ten years ago she moved to Portland, Maine and became the CEO of a very interesting employee-run project. When the agency was created, its three owners had a vision of creating something larger than themselves. This is why they named it VIA (Vision, Instinct, and Action) instead of something tied to the founders. Over the years, two of the partners left and, as the last one prepared to step away from his active role, the agency got a lot of acquisition offers. With Fortune 500 clients and awards for best culture, the agency was a valuable asset for any buyer. Instead, the remaining partner had something very different planned for his exit strategy. He set up an agreement whereby he would give the agency to the employees. This was not a typical employee-ownership program. It was completely bespoke, with lawyers and accountants advising against it. However, they started a program measuring the agency's performance each year and if they reached certain metrics, the owner would gift a portion of his ownership in the form of options. The program, which they called VEEP (VIA's Employee Equity Program) was meant to last for ten years. Fortunately, they were actually able to do it all by year seven. Finding the Right Agency Employee Ownership Structure Seven years after starting VEEP, employees could convert their earned "options" into shares. This is when they realized the lawyers and accountants were right. The original agreement had the best intentions; however, it didn't take tax implications into consideration. The problem was that the conversion from options to shares was prohibitively expensive because of the agency's growth over the years. As a result, they were forced to reevaluate their situation. They looked at many different types of structures that didn't involve giving up their independence. In the end, they landed on an ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Program), a program overseen by the government. It has huge tax exceptions, so there are benefits for both the employer and employees. It is basically set up as a qualified retirement plan. Now everyone at the agency is given more shares every year at no cost to themselves. That grows over time and, by the time they leave the agency, they'll have something they can roll over into an IRA or cash out. This way, they're actually earning as the agency grows and everyone is invested in the agency's success. 3 ESOP Models Depending on the Owner's Future Role in the Agency Does the owner get paid out in an ESOP structure? The short answer is yes. Of course, they had to find a way to make it work both for him and the employees. In VIA's case, the owner was paid out in two segments with a down payment and the rest over time. Technically, it was all done through a trust. They set up a trust that "bought" the agency and allocated shares to the employees. This way, the Board o

Do you want to grow your agency through an acquisition? What it would look like to merge with an agency offering complementary services? What if you could expand your team by acquiring another agency's talent? An acquisition might feel impossible, but done right can be an amazing growth strategy. Today's guest never thought he would acquire not one but two agencies. He saw acquisitions as an impossible growth strategy that required enormous amounts of cash. In the end, it was just about finding the right partners. He is on the show to share his experiences buying out his partners and eventually making two acquisitions. Todd Nienkerk is the co-founder of Four Kitchens, a digital agency that makes websites for organizations that educate, advocate, and reform. Their team builds digital content platforms, design systems, and apps for ambitious organizations. After nearly selling his agency and then growing back stronger and expanding his team and offering through acquisitions, he shares some of the changes he made to get to this point, as well as some of the unexpected challenges of the acquisition process. In this interview, we'll discuss: Taking a big risk to rebuild after a failed acquisition. 3 big structural changes to grow your agency. Why acquisitions aren't an impossible strategy. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Podcast Takeover!! Get to know your Smart Agency Guest Host: Darby Copenhaver is the Agency Scale Specialist at the Agency Mastery 360, which provides agency owners with the coaching, community, and tools needed to scale and find their freedom. He helps agency owners scale through a proven framework for growing their agencies faster and connecting with other amazing agency owners. Today, he's helping Jason bring something new to the Smart Agency podcast audience by interviewing a special guest and bringing a new perspective to the show. Taking a Big Risk to Rebuild the Agency After a Failed Acquisition Todd started the agency with several partners he met working for a student publication. With over 16 years in the business, they worked with large media companies and small non-profits, education reform groups, and universities. Over the years, however, his other partners wanted out of the agency. At the start of the pandemic, he still had one partner left. They were coming out of a rough year and Covid affected the agency much earlier than other organizations in the US and Canada. The agency kicked off 2020 with a massive gap to fill with clients, with things only getting worse later that March. Luckily, they didn't have to adjust to remote work, since they'd made that transition years before. However, they weren't at all sure about their chances of pulling through. They started looking for a way out and reached out to an agency that could acquire their business. The acquisition didn't work out and with PPE loans starting to take shape, it suddenly seemed there was a way out. Todd took a risk and made his business partner the same acquisition offer in order to assume 100% ownership. It was a bold move at such an uncertain time but he is thankful he took the risk. It took a lot of readjusting, rethinking the way they did business, and making pretty significant changes in early 2020. However, he got his investment back by the end of the year and went on to have a very successful 2021. Not only did Todd and the team manage to get the agency profitable again, but in 2022 they acquired several other agencies to expand the business. He is the sole owner of the agency which is the largest it has ever been. 3 Necessary Structural Changes to Grow the Agency When it came to the agency's second chance, Todd didn't have a magic formula. In fact, much of what he did were necessary steps for growth (niching down, building a leadership team, etc). However, it took hitting bottom and almost selling the agency for him to be ready to face the hard truths. For starters, Todd focused on the key people in leadership positions. He knew the ultimate outcome for the agency would largely depend on the mindset of the people at the top. It's not even about what they do, but their approach and attitude can change the tide and really influence people's commitment to the work and overall enthusiasm. Taking the risk to assume full ownership of the agency and commit to its success reinvigorated Todd. It motivated him to put in the extra effort to make the agency as successful as it could be. With this in mind, he dared to address 3 fundamental issues he'd avoided: Leadership changes. Some people in the leadership team weren't in the right role. They had gotten th

Do you have the confidence to charge what you're worth? Do your clients understand your agency's value? Understanding your value is an important part of growing your agency. It requires strategy and attracting the right clients. Most of all it requires a lot of confidence. If you truly believe in yourself and your pricing, the right clients won't think twice about paying it. Today's guest specializes in taking her clients to the very highest levels in the market. She believes agency owners need to stop charging mainstream prices and start charging luxury prices in order to scale faster. Kathryn Porritt is the owner of Icons Incorporated, a boutique agency that helps personal brands make the transition from mainstream pricing to luxury offers. Their clients land multi-million dollar deals in one transaction! They usually have big consulting gigs and commercial deals. Icon's job is to create connections for people for the sake of leveraging their personal brands at the very highest level. In this interview, we'll discuss: Growing your agency by starting at the top. Positioning yourself as the best at what you do. Why niching down is an important part of finding confidence. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. What Are You Left With if You Don't Build Your Brand? When they start their business, agency owners tend not to put enough into growing their own brand. The thinking being it is essentially to not get too involved so the agency is more attractive for potential buyers upon the owner's eventual exit. For her part, Kathryn has gone through a similar process where she created, grew, and sold an agency. After the sale, she thought "what am I left with?" Without another business, advisory gigs, or book deal to fall back on, she had to take the lessons learned and start over. After that experience, she advises agency owners to work on both their personal brand and the agency's marketing in parallel. In the end, it takes time to build a personal brand into something profitable -- and now is the right moment to start. Even if you ultimately decide to sell, if you've protected your personal brand, you probably have a list of people who will follow you on other projects. That's freedom. It allows you to explore other things once you sell. This way, you' can build a profitable brand and have a legacy. Starting at the Top and Growing Your Agency With a Luxury Pricing Model At some point, agency owners wanting to grow their business need to increase prices. Most of the time, they don't even have a reason to justify their current prices. For Kathryn, part of the problem is most have experience with charging mainstream prices. Mainstream business strategies teach an ascension model, where you start from the bottom, build an audience, increase your offers, and eventually find people who will pay high ticket prices. The core problem is most agency owners are not aware there's a different way to get to the top. They don't teach you the luxury strategy. The main difference between the mainstream and luxury models is that the latter will start at the top and then works its way down to still create an impact. In essence, with the luxury model, you understand you have a true leadership position in the market. These are trendsetters and are not looking to the market for answers about what they're building. When you start at the top, you're in the #1 position and work with fewer clients. For agencies, this means working really deeply with a handful of clients. Kathryn finds clients who work at this level are easier to work with. Of course, you have to be really good at what you do. If you can provide a really specific world-class solution to a problem, then you can absolutely start at the top. The key element is having the audacity to go after a core set of clients who will invest heavily to have that world-class proximity. How to Position Your Agency in a Luxury Model According to Kathryn, in order to position yourself in a luxury model you must drop humility at the door. It sounds harsh, but it doesn't mean you can't be a good or nice person. There's also no need to post pictures with a private jet and brag about how much money you have. In reality, it's about showing such a level of confidence and certainty that you are magnetic. Kathryn calls it "iconic embodiment" which is the moment where you step into the most arrogant version of yourself. This is the key to positioning the luxury model. If, as an entrepreneur, you can walk into a meeting, sales call, or pitch with that level of power and the knowledge that you're the right person for the job, you'll be unstoppab

What do you think about hustle culture? Do you have a healthy work-life balance with your agency? Does your team? As the owner, you set the tone for the agency's culture. And what is important to you by extension becomes important to the team. Today's guest owns a boutique agency she started after quitting her job in the tech space after feeling exhausted from 80-hour work weeks. She started fresh in Belize with a new mindset about the type of work-life balance she wanted and the culture she'd create for her agency. Jeanna Barrett is the founder and Chief Remote Officer of First Page Strategy, an award-winning remote growth marketing agency. She has 17 years of inbound marketing experience working with venture startups, digital agencies, and fortune 500 companies. Six years ago, Jeanna left the US and built a business in Belize. What started as freelancing grew into a full inbound marketing agency with 40+ experts across the globe. Beyond the success of her agency, she's most proud of the culture she was created with her remote team. Jeanna encourages different passions outside of work and promotes a healthy work-life balance. She shares her journey of creating an anti-hustle culture for her agency. In this episode, we'll discuss: Recovery from the hustle culture and burnout. Prioritizing boundaries to create healthy agency culture. Embracing your team's passions and hobbies. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources Verblio: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Verblio. Check out Verblio.com/smartagency and get 50% off your first month of content creation. Our team loves using Verblio because of the ease of their process and their large pool of crowd-sourced writers. Podcast Takeover!! Get to know your Smart Agency Guest Host: John Corcoran is the co-founder of Rise25, an agency that helps companies launch and run podcasts profitably. He followed Jason's podcast and eventually joined the mastermind and has been a guest on the podcast before. Today, he's helping Jason bring something new to the Smart Agency podcast audience by interviewing a special guest and bringing a new perspective to the show. Recovering from the Hustle Culture and the Burnout it Causes In 2016, Jeanna was living in San Francisco and felt burned out by the non-stop work hustle and grind culture. She realized the "dream offices" popular in the tech world, with free lunch, snack bars, entertainment, and laundry service exist only to justify 80-hour work weeks. Jeanna was ready to leave the perks behind. She was eager to live a life where she didn't have to work all the time. She wanted time and freedom to focus on the things that make her happy. Building a business in Belize may not be what she originally intended, but it is exactly what she needed to have a work-life balance. It is an opportunity to create a work culture valuing and encouraging different passions and pursuits outside of work. Her agency focuses on employee performance based on tasks completed and not on the amount of time spent in front of a computer. A Lesson on the Benefits of Doing Content Marketing Right Fortunately, after 15+ years of working in marketing, Jeanna had a network she could tap into. She was looking to work as a freelancer and started by calling old clients and colleagues. Eventually, her freelance business evolved into an accidental agency. Getting her first big client was a lesson in content marketing. At one point, Jeanna wrote an article about how she left her career and moved to the Caribbean. It offered advice for people looking to do something similar and work remotely. In the article, she mentioned the company she used to establish her business as an LLC. Ironically the company had fired their SEO partner and contacted her to take over the role. She had not yet formed an agency but decided to give it a try. She started with a small entry-level contract, so she just hired two consultants to work on SEO content. After that, they scaled every year, based on the services and the needs they cover. By year two, she added another three people to work on that account, and year three added another three employees. At first, they worked exclusively on content creation but as the relationship developed they slowly added other services like email marketing and lead generation. Prioritizing Boundaries to Create a Healthy Agency Culture Since the beginning, Jeanna had a certain culture in mind for her agency. It was always one of the most important pieces of what she was trying to build. To avoid going back to old habits that ultimately burn people out, she focused on building a culture where the work would not leave employees feeling exhausted or stressed. No one is happy working under those conditions. Instead, she created a work environment that encourages a work-life balance. You are more efficient when you're not constantly replacing people and everyone is noticeably happier. It woul

Do you feel like you're in no man's land? Growing beyond the $1 Million mark and beyond 7 figures can be a very gray area where the agency is making more money but the owner is working more than ever. This is no man's land and it's a sign you need a strong leadership team to get the agency to the next level. Today's guest is an accidental agency owner, like most, who found the transition to Agency CEO reignited her interest in the business. She now runs an agency that serves its clients and aims to have an impact on the community. Ruth Bernstein is CEO and co-founder of Yard NYC, a New York-based creative agency that helps turn brands into cultural beacons. They've worked with brands like Amazon, and Walmart with the belief that purposeful brands can both drive cultural relevancy and good business. After growing as an agency and getting past certain milestones, they have also worked to turn themselves into a brand that creates change. In this interview, we'll discuss: How to raise prices and charge what you're worth. Why culture misfits that can cost your agency big opportunities. Navigating no man's land by hiring a leadership team. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Starting a Female-Led Agency During the Industry's Mad Men Era Ruth and her partner Stephan worked on the client side in London and had never worked at an agency. At one point, while working with media companies, they started looking for agency partners in the fashion, wellness, and beauty space. They were looking for partners who could bring strategy to the table, were female-led, and really understood how to work with in-house teams. It was the '90s and still the "Mad Men" era in the agency space and none of the candidates met these requirements. This is how they became accidental agency owners. They had never worked for an agency or run one but their search on the client side revealed there was a niche for this type of agency. Coming from the client side, they already had credibility and went for big-brand clients right away. How Culture Misfits Can Cost Your Agency Big Opportunities Mistakes help us grow. And one of those from Ruth's early agency days was delegating negotiations with a prospect to a consultant. It wasn't right for the agency and nearly made them lose their first really big project. At the time, Ruth was in charge of strategy and Stephan was heading up the creative side. Neither of them had negotiated an agency deal. Since it was a big client, they figured it would be best to delegate negotiations to a consultant who could help make sure it was solid. Unfortunately, the consultant's tone and manner of handling the deal nearly made them lose the client. In hindsight, this person did not align with the agency's culture or vision. The client approached Ruth and Stephan because they knew and trusted them. As a result, they learned communication is a key piece in showing prospects what it's like working with their agency. There's nothing wrong with getting help in areas you don't have experience. However, in this instance, they just needed the confidence to handle it themselves. How to Raise Prices and Charge What You're Worth Pricing is not easy. You have to do your homework and understand competition and what the client is willing to pay, as well as your own value. As a smaller agency working with both bigger and smaller clients, Yard NYC geared prices toward smaller clients. However, it got awkward when those clients started growing and it was time to raise prices. For a lot of agency owners, this is a really difficult conversation. Usually, it's more difficult to raise prices for legacy clients than for new clients. Even some of the mastermind's members with very successful agencies have gone years without raising prices to legacy clients. Under Jason's guidance, they learned to look at the opportunity cost between new and old clients. At the point where the difference is just too big, it's time to approach those clients, have a conversation about value, and explain a price increase. Almost all clients admit they'd been expecting a price raise and had no objections. By raising prices on existing clients you can increase revenue without increasing workload. A Non-Traditional Approach to Partnering with Clients After years in the agency business and witnessing success stories for many of her clients, Ruth realized there were other ways to gain from a client's growth. The team at Yard NYC came up with a partnership program of co-investing in some client businesses and providing marketing. They work with some clients who receive venture capital funds and saw the clien