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

Does your agency align with a purpose or cause? Are you hiring diversly to bring in different viewpoints? Today's guest has a lot of experience working with non-profits, which is how she's become an expert on purpose-driven marketing and recruiting, as well as avoiding natural bias in business. She shares some of the ways she implemented purposeful branding and diverse hiring in her agency to bring positive changes and grow her agency. Lyn Wineman is a marketing veteran with over 30 years of experience with award-winning work. Her agency Kid Glov has been recognized as one of the best places to work in Lincoln, Nebraska. They are a marketing, branding, and advertising boutique agency with about 25 employees that helps clients create exceptional brand experiences. Their name goes back to taking great care of their clients, their brands, and the people within their culture. In this interview, we'll discuss: Where to start and how to execute a rebrand. Removing bias and diversifying your team. Taking on clients that align with your agency. 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. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM 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. How to Rebrand and Get More Attention for Your Brand In 12 years, Lyn's agency has helped over 100 non-profits with their brand messaging and strategy. In some cases, this entails tightening up their tagline and message, while in others it goes all the way to their logo and name. Overall, non-profits with great branding tend to do better, get more recognition, and are generally easier to find. When it comes to rebranding your business, Lyn reminds clients that no one will ever create something that is universally loved. "It's better to be the pistachio-flavored ice cream than the vanilla ice cream that no one loves". You can accomplish more with something a small percentage likes than something 100% of people are willing to ignore. Where to Start When Doing a Rebrand for Your Client or Your Agency Since they work with non-profits, Lyn and her team knew their process needs to be focused and affordable. They start with a discovery session with key leaders of the non-profit. There, they talk about what makes their brand and where they see themselves in the future. This is followed by an online survey and a competitive review. Finally, they do a brand archetype profile and create a brand strategy and positioning statement. Next they strategize the launch plan including who they need to talk to and how. To this end, they help clients plan meetings, presentations, and parties to present this new identity to their employees, the board, top donors, partners, and finally the public. They also help with their website and anything else to ensure their name and new image are well received. Because the process of rebranding many times includes a new name for the organization, Lyn warns clients they will get comments about how it was unnecessary to do this. People are usually comfortable with the familiar and react negatively to change. However, changes to their client's image and branding are done as the result of a lot of studies. It's all about thinking outside of the box and garnering attention. How Purpose and Implied Bias Play a Role in Branding Data shows that >70% of people nowadays want to align with brands making a positive impact in the world. This percentage is even higher when it comes to younger generations who want to work with brands that make a difference. Lyn's agency has always had a strong focus on non-profit. With these new trends, they're getting more and more companies come to them to create purpose-driven messaging and social impact campaigns. Part of the challenge creating a campaign is identifying implicit biases in a message. We all have biases we may not even notice. In these cases, the first step is awareness. It requires willingness to look within and identify some of their own biases as an agency as well as the customers' biases. Often these beliefs are not rooted in bad faith and are just the result of our surroundings. Making an effort to improve this is not just the right thing to do. Data shows how increasing diversity and inclusion in advertising translates to more conversion and sales. It is an excellent way to build trust

Do you have an agency business partner? Are you considering bringing on a partner? Or experiencing challenges with your partner? Many people are afraid to start an agency with a partner because they think it will end badly. And it's true, striking the right balance with a partner is no easy feat. However, finding a partner that compensates for your shortcomings makes it all worthwhile. Today's guests have had a successful agency partnership for over a decade. As expected, they have faced challenges along the way and found success by inserting their own style into their agency formula. Alexis Krisay and Melissa DiGianfilippo are the owners and partners of Serendipit Consulting, a full-service marketing and creative agency in Phoenix, Arizona. They've been partners at their digital agency for almost 15 years. It seems like a long time to work alongside a co-owner. However, with backgrounds in PR and marketing, they found they complement each other very well over the years. Recently, they started a podcast together called Will it Stick that covers bold marketing campaigns and PR stunts. In this interview, we'll discuss: The secret to a successful agency partnership. Why key differences can lead to synchrony. How a mastermind can help you get intentional about your business. Sponsors and Resources Wix: Today's episode is sponsored by the Wix Partner Program. Being a Wix Partner is ideal for freelancers and digital agencies that design and develop websites for their clients. Check out Wix.com/Partners to learn more and become a member of the community for free. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM The Learning Curve After Starting a Digital Agency Alexis grew up being familiar with the agency world. Her father owned a digital effects agency in LA and she visited the studio all the time. She loved the relaxed and fun environment and aspired to create something as cool. However, she never actually thought she would have an agency. She met Melissa working together for a real estate developer. That's when they discovered they made a really good team and thought it would be cool to have a project together. After securing a few freelance clients, they knew it was time to leave their jobs and officially start their agency. There was a learning curve, of course. They charged their first client $8,000, which seemed like a pretty good deal at the time. However, they quickly learned to take the project scope into account. They were doing everything for this client and the amount of travel warranted a much higher price. The Secret to a Successful Agency Partnership As Jason says, when it comes to partnerships, "you either know the bad partner or you are the bad partner". That's not necessarily the case here. Sometimes a partnership lasts a couple of years and then one partner gets bored with the business and wants to do something else. Maybe the agency outgrows one of the partners and they are no longer relevant. Working with agency owners from all over the world Jason has known many successful partnerships. How do some agency owners make it work? Alexis and Melissa have encountered challenges, of course, but their partnership has continued to work. Most of all, they credit the immense respect they have for each other. They respect each other's passions, opinions, and expertise and work hard to each stay in their separate lanes. According to them, this respect makes it so they're not afraid to "fight productively". These arguments are productive because leave the conversation with a full agreement on both sides. There's no "I told you so" when you reach a compromise. This synchrony certainly didn't happen overnight, but with practice they've come to know each other really well. What works especially well for them is they each compensate for the other one's shortcomings. Each has her own area of expertise and respects the other. If a situation requires one of them to cover for the other, they'll of course do it. However, when in doubt, it's better to pause and say "this is my partner's expertise. I better call her to be sure". Aligning Goals in Agency Business and in Life Making sure your goals for the agency align is one thing, but your overall goals must also align. If you and your partner are at different points in life then you might want different things from the business. If one of the partners is much older, then they may be looking at exiting sooner. However, there is room for some differences to improve the relationship. If you look at each of their profiles, Alexis and Melissa are very different from one another. This works really well for the agency because one of them is the visionary while the other is the planner. Why does this matter? In the end, your partnership affects far more than just the agency. It affects your entire life, so make sure to enter that "business marriage" with someone that complements you. Get Intentional About Your Agency With the Help of a Mastermind About five

Have you ever asked your team what they don't want to do anymore? What would your employees eliminate, if they could? One agency owner started asking these important questions and unlocked rapid growth by implementing their ideas and truly innovating processes. For his agency, niching down and adopting innovation as an agency value made all the difference. He discusses how he implemented those changes and the 5 big questions you need to ask your team. Josh Webber is the co-founder of Big Red Jelly, an agency focused on digital branding, web design, and development. His team helps businesses focus on all the steps a business should complete before working on advertising and marketing. Although his agency is five years old, Josh has been in the agency world since graduating college, working at several agencies around the country. As is often the case, his agency started as a full-service digital marketing agency. The decision to niche down came after the pandemic. This marked a point where his team started to focus on what they did best: branding. The decision led to exponential growth for his agency. He now shares how focusing on innovation and making the jump to niche down changed everything. In this interview, we'll discuss: How to make innovation a top value at your agency. Why innovation can also mean simplifying processes. How to get a fresh perspective to bring new ideas. 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. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Overcoming Hard Times By Niching Down For Josh's agency, the two years leading up to the pandemic were years of slow and organic growth. Once Covid hit, more than a third of their clients had to close shop and were unable to pay invoices. It seemed as good a time as any to do something they've been discussing for a while and niche down. Josh had been listening to several experts talk about the importance of niching down and owning your niche. Ultimately, they pulled the trigger and it was the best decision they have ever made. In fact, their finances started to improve almost immediately. If anything, Josh only regrets waiting so long to do it. Luckily, he was able to turn the regret into creating a culture of innovation within the agency. Innovation is probably at the heart of most agencies' mission and vision. What's actually hard is clearly defining it with actions. There is a gap between how many agencies place innovation as one of their top values and how it's actually one of the lowest when it comes to seeing this investment take place. Most agency owners want to be innovative but fail at "how". How Can You Find and Implement Innovation Within Your Agency? In the agency world, you're either moving forward or going backward. What can you do to make sure you're always moving forward? Josh and his team organized a vision meeting where they defined innovation for their agency. They started by "abolishing" some terms like "that's just the way it is" and "this is how it's always been". By doing this, they started recreating their culture. The concept of innovation in the agency space is usually attached to creative roles, which is a mistake. Anyone can innovate and it's the youngest people on the team who usually bring a completely unique perspective. So, step one for Josh's team was deciding that innovation would be a huge part of the agency moving forward. Secondly, they focused on meetings, processes, and implementing tactics to ensure this. Making huge changes in the agency is never easy and some team members may not be on board. In Josh's case, about 30% of the team weren't accepting of the changes. It was his opportunity to see who was willing to be part of an agency transformation. There will always be people who don't like change. However, in the digital marketing space you have to be innovating and changing or you will be left behind. 5 Questions to Kickoff Innovation in Your Agency After defining innovation and bringing ideas to implement it, the team next focused on what they could remove from their processes. The idea was to get employees talking about things they were tired of doing and it was a big success. You can become so inflated with processes and SOPs the question "what can we remove?" brings a lot of suggestions. This helped Josh see innovation doesn't have to be adding more and more. It can also be about removing what no longer serves a purpose for the agency. In advance of the meeting, Josh sent his team some questions to get them thinking about what should be eliminated: What would you like to do more of? What would you like to do less of? Is there something that has always confused you? Is there something that you

Are you trapped working 24/7 in your agency? Do you know who to hire and how to empower them to make the right decisions? How do you build the culture for a growing team? Discover how one agency owner built and scaled a successful agency with multifaceted hires who wear many hats. She is currently working on her building her second agency and shares some of the lessons she's bringing to round two. Gina Michnowicz is the CEO and CCO of The Craftsman Agency, an agency specializing in experiences and creating magical moments. They work with clients that want to do something innovative across the digital space and also in-person events. They started their journey working with big clients like Disney and Cisco, although they also work with some small and medium brands as well. In this interview, we'll discuss: Finding your first employees who can wear many hats. Creating the right culture and empowering your team. How to avoid burnout as an agency owner. 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 in their process and their large pool of crowd-sourced writers. Starting an Agency with Big Clients Right Off the Bat For Gina, ending up as an agency owner was the moment her career came full circle. Right out of college she interviewed at an advertising agency. However, they didn't have any open positions at that moment so she ended up working in HR. She then worked at a management consulting company running part of the digital practice. The idea of starting her own agency came from others who enjoyed working with her and offered to be her first clients. This is how Gina's agency started with two big clients, Cisco and VMWare -- a big break for a young agency! While most agencies work for many years to earn big clients it can also be quite challenging considering they can be very complex and political. Big brands tend to be siloed, which can make things difficult. Luckily, Gina is very good at picking the right clients and was able to handle it as a new agency. Hiring Multifaceted Talent to Get Your Agency Off the Ground Gina started working by herself but reached the breaking point very quickly, during the first quarter. She was lucky to have someone from her old job who wanted to work with her. It turns out this was a very multifaceted person who could wear many hats. Finding this type of talent is super helpful when you're starting out and don't have a lot of resources. More recently, she continues to rely on more traditional ways to look for new talent for her agency. She is very active on LinkedIn, where she built a large network she can rely on when it comes to looking for new talent. She also uses ads, although they tend to bring in more unqualified candidates. Gina's agency is in the process of creating an intern program to receive candidates from some great schools. She finds this is a great place to start recruiting because today, young adults graduate with fantastic instincts and insight. Creating Culture By Getting to Know Your Team Your team members need to feel empowered to make decisions. Admittedly, it's hard to let go of control. Gina sometimes catches herself wanting to intervene and take control of a situation. In these cases, she reminds herself the leadership team can handle it. It's not only okay to step back, it's important to do so. It's also important to make sure the leadership team is very connected. If you are disconnected at the top, this feeds into the rest of the team. As leaders, we have to show up as our best selves. If we're not, permeates the rest of the organization. It also comes down to relationships. Are you working on building relationships with your team? Do you know them as people beyond their agency role? Get to know the person, not just project manager. Talk to your team about what they are passionate about, and what they like doing. It's important to create opportunities and spaces where these conversations happen naturally by encouraging team activities. How to Avoid the Burnout Point Having trusted key employees who became her right and left hand helped Gina avoid the trap of overworking. She delegates important tasks to them and keeps a healthy work balance. Unfortunately, one of those key employees had an unexpected leave during the pandemic. In order to stay profitable, Gina and her other trusted employee took on those tasks and worked non-stop during the pandemic. As a result, the agency had a phenomenal 2021 but they were both burned out by the end. To reclaim her time, she made herself a new routine that includes time to meditate and walk each morning and small workouts throughout the day. Blocking time to rest has also worked. Now, she now tries not to pack her entire day with meetings if she can avoid it. Y

Want to make better hires? Looking to improve your agency's employee retention? Many times, a high turnover rate is a consequence of a flawed hiring process. You need to understand what you're looking for and how each person will contribute not only to the agency's effectiveness but also to its culture. Today's guest has developed a system that took his agency's employee retention from 30% to 80% by just adjusting the way they assess new hire candidates. Shannon Hansen is the owner of Lightfoot Media, a full-service agency focused on helping companies maximize their ROI. He started his first business at age 21 and learned lessons as some of those ended in bankruptcy. In 2012 he ended up in the digital industry figuring out how to make money online with mortgage lead generation. Over the years, the business expanded as he figured things out. He has experienced both great successes and great failures that led him to regroup. For Shannon, being on such a good path and then having everything go south was an opportunity to stop and wonder: what happened? He learned lessons and figured out how to move forward after picking up the pieces and starting over once again. Starting over led him to what he describes as the most fulfilling stage he has ever reached in business. He hopes it can help others too. In this interview, we'll discuss: What are you doing wrong in your agency's hiring process? The six-step framework to transform your agency hiring process. Understanding what drives your agency employees. 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. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM 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. What Are You Doing Wrong in Your Agency Hiring Process? CPRMPPS is the roadmap Shannon now uses in many business areas. However, this winning formula actually started with his staff. In a span of six months, his agency lost four senior-level employees. It was a big blow for his agency and he admits they were not equipped to fill these positions internally. Shannon and his partner didn't understand how they ended up in the position; they weren't all bad apples. After much reflection, it all came back to the hiring and employee selection process. So how could they improve their hiring process? What should they do to avoid similar situations in the future? This is how they came up with a system consisting of 6 steps (abbreviated CPRMPS) to their new hiring process. Basically, these steps serve as a guide to quickly tell whether a person is a good fit for the agency or not. According to Shannon, hiring individuals that fit with this model has increased their employee retention rate from 30% to 80%. It really marks a before and after in terms of the agency's culture. As a team, they are now much more effective and the atmosphere is incredibly positive. With this process, Shannon and his team score candidates in each of the following categories from 1 to 10. No person who scores lower than 7 in any of these areas is considered to be a good fit for his agency. 6-Step System to Transform Agency Employee Retention Rates Coachable: There are two main things you should be looking for in this area while interviewing: 1.) Do they ask questions? 2.) Do they take feedback? It's pretty straightforward, yet very few people ask questions even if they're encouraged to. This can typically indicate they're not coachable. Of course, it could also mean the person is shy about asking questions, but this can also be tested in the next step. Problem-solving: The team tests candidates on the skillset needed for their role. The team takes this opportunity to test the person with a particularly difficult problem to solve. They are once again encouraged to ask questions. If they are not willing to ask questions when facing something very difficult, then they're definitely not coachable. It's safe to assume that, if hired, they would face very difficult situations on the job. It's a bad sign if they're not capable of asking for help. Reliable: When looking at a candidate's resume, Shannon considers 3+ years at a particular job as a sign of reliability. It's not necessarily a game-changer, especially if they're really young. However, they also test reliability based on when they show up for the interview. Early or on

Would you like to build authority with a speaking career? Want to generate new agency business from a stage, unsure how to get speaking engagements? As an agency owner, speaking can be lucrative when you're speaking at the right events and to the right audience. However, there are some things you should be clear on before you begin. Today's guest has been a public speaker for over a decade and now prepares others for the speaking life. He shares a few tips on how to start your journey to build a successful speaking career. Grant Baldwin has been in the speaking industry for most of his career. He now runs a speaker coaching company called Speaker Lab, where he teaches people how to find and book paid speaking engagements. After being a full-time speaker for ten years, he was frequently asked what it takes to make it as a speaker. So he decided to start teaching the ins and outs of finding and booking speaking gigs. In this episode, we'll discuss: The five steps to building a speaking career. Knowing where to find your audience. Strategies to get noticed by event planners. Money is not the only way to get your value back. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM 5-Step Roadmap to Build a Successful Speaking Career Booking speaking engagements is a great way to build your personal brand. It's also a great way to build your agency's brand and attract more clients. Grant teaches the Speaker Success Roadmap which goes through the five S.P.E.A.K steps to help you build your speaking career: S - select a problem to solve: This is a good first step for any type of future speaker. You should be able to answer: Who do I speak to? What problem am I solving for that audience? Many agency owners make the mistake of wanting to cast the net as far and wide as possible. People who do this tend to say they speak to "people" and have a message for everyone. The more clear and focused you are, the easier it is to find and book gigs. It may seem counterintuitive but focus on being really good at one thing. Doing this makes it easier to book gigs on a consistent basis. You may think that big agency personalities like Gary Vaynerchuck tend to speak to everyone, but it hasn't always been like that. Gary actually started off talking to wine people. That's how he started building his brand. Once you get start building your brand, you can branch out to broader audiences. P- prepare your talk: This step is about being very clear about the solution you're providing to the audience's needs. What are you doing to provide this solution? Will it be through webinars, seminars, or maybe keynotes? They all work; it's just about being clear on the means of delivery that works best in your case, for your audience. E - establish yourself as the expert: Two key marketing assets all speakers need are a website and a demo video. Your demo video is like a movie trailer, a short video (2-3 minutes) that sparks people's interest. This video helps event planners get a sense of your style and whether or not you'll fit with their audience. A - acquire paid speaking gigs: This is the part you want to fast-forward to. A common mistake speakers make at this point is doing nothing. They have the first three steps so they figure now they just sit and wait. Unfortunately, it just doesn't work like that. You need to have a system and a process in place to actively reach out to at least five events and generate momentum. K - know when to scale: A lot of people interested in speaking are also interested in writing or consulting. Of course, it is possible to do all these things, but Grant argues not all at once. It is up to each person to figure out how speaking fits into their overall plans and goals. Building Your Speaking Brand by Knowing Where to Find Your Audience In his case, Grant has a website for his agency and a different one to promote his speaking brand. Both websites point to each other and serve two different purposes. If a potential client wants to learn how to get more speaking gigs, they're directed to Speak Lab. If they want to hire Grant as a speaker, they're directed to his personal page. However, once you know who your audience is and have a website, you can't just post the link on social media and wait for clients to come. When you're clear about who you're speaking to, it's easier to find events where you could potentially speak. Where does your audience gather? If you're running a digital agency, you probably already have an idea of the types of events, gatherings, and associations they are attending. Once that's clear, it's a matter of reaching out to the event planner and conferences and starting a conversation about why you're a good fit for their audience. It's not about convincing them to hire a speaker; they were already going to do that. It's more about presenting yourself as the best option. Like with agency clients, you may reach out and find the planner is not hiring at the moment. Nonetheless, reaching out

Are you looking for the right formula to take your agency into the multi-millions? Getting to the million-dollar mark can happen easily, but getting to the multi-million level takes strategy. It's all about building processes, hiring a team, and choosing a niche so you continue to grow. Today's guests found themselves in a situation where they needed guidance to take their agency to the next level. They share the #1 most instrumental decision that changed their agency, key steps to their successful growth, and more. Chase Williams and Ryan Klein are the co-founders of Market My Market, a digital agency that uses marketing and systems processes to help law firms and franchises grow. They do organic in the digital space, such as SEO, content marketing, web design, lead gen, and more. Over the years, they have set their agency apart by not taking a "package approach." Instead, they are look for gaps and put together plans for their clients based on newly identified opportunities in their digital marketing. This approach has helped them build long-term relationships and take their agency to the multi-million dollar level. In this interview, we'll discuss: #1 most important decision to spark real change in your agency. Searching for the right salespeople. 4 key decisions to get over the multi-million dollar mark. What to look for in an ops manager. 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 in their process and their large pool of crowd-sourced writers. #1 Most Instrumental Decision Sparking Change in Your Agency Ryan and Chase were working 9 to 5 jobs at a law firm and an agency. They kept getting approached by friends to build websites, which they didn't actually know how to do. However, since it meant extra money, they were willing to learn. Soon they were working 60+ hours a week, so they decided to quit their jobs and focus on their new venture. They went on to bootstrap the agency from Chase's basement in Brooklyn. Years later, they now have 37 employees in two offices. Chase recalls, the most instrumental decision they made to spark true change for their agency was working with Jason for guidance. With his support, they started focusing on niching down. First with a specific core service of SEO and next a vertical niche in law firms, which accounted for 60% of their clients. At the time, they were taking any type of job pitched to them, whether logos, websites, or graphics. Once they started to focus on helping law firms and building processes around that, they saw a real change. This was really important to building a proven system they used in order to adapt and scale. Finding the Right Salespeople with an Aggressive Commission Structure At first, Ryan and Chase didn't realize how difficult it is to find a good salespeople. They started by hiring a very charismatic person who didn't have a lot of experience. After about six months of educating and working on his skills, they felt he could do it on his own. However not long after he left the agency to work for another company. After all the time and resources spent mentoring him, this left them feeling deflated. This so common - agency owners are their own best sales person. Looking back, they were trying to learn what works and what doesn't. Furthermore, they understood no one is going to pitch the agency's offering better than you. Their best find came once they were willing to poach talent and pay them really well. The alternative is taking the time to train younger, inexperiences sales people who take their new skills elsewhere, or more seasoned sales people incentivized to stay. In short, they pay a decent base and offer bonuses that are basically a piece of what the person sold. It's tough to find good salespeople and even tougher holding onto them for a long time, but this approach has really worked for them. What to Look for in a Agency Operations Manager When it came time to look for someone to handle operations, Chase and Ryan went for the office manager route. This led them to a couple of administrative people who were highly organized. Ultimately, it came down to high-level organization and an awareness of the need for processes and systems. The person they found had worked for several startups and local governments but never actually at an agency. This can be a major plus. Finding someone who has experience building systems and can bring their particular experience to the agency world can lead to a great fit. 4 Key Moves To Will Help You Get Beyond Million Dollar Mark Focus on the proposal. The proposal is the driving tool documenting everything you're going to do for the client. This is where you reassure them they made the right decision. It is a contract, but it is also a narrative

What big agency failures have you had? How did you overcome them? Most people don't like to talk about failure but we all know it's part of being an entrepreneur. The road to growing your agency is filled with them and it's good to reflect on how we deal with failure. It's also important to look back on things that seemed like the worst-case scenario can turn out to be blessings that lead us to new and exciting paths. Today's guest has turned his past failures into an opportunity to share the lessons that can come from failures. Justin Skinner is a self-proclaimed professional failure. He's also an entrepreneur, author, and podcast host. When Justin's dream of becoming a professional baseball player didn't take off, he focused on graphic design and photography. He ended up working at a couple of digital agencies and eventually became a real estate entrepreneur. Neither of these careers was what he thought but he found great success and happiness in this unexpected path. Most recently, Justin has been spreading the word about the benefits of failure with his book and podcast, The Professional Failure. In this episode, we'll discuss: Trying to minimize the risks when growing his agency. Learning from his failures as a leader. The big failure that changed his career path. 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 in their process and their large pool of crowd-sourced writers. The Road to Growing an Agency is Filled with Failures In the agency business, the road to growth and success is normally filled with a list of failures. People normally want to hide those failures and not talk about them. The truth is even big names like Frank Kern has experienced some failures in their incredible career. It's an inevitable part of learning and growing. Agency owners may get to the point where they want to give up and see no way out other than selling. Jason sees this type of exhaustion all the time when advising agency owners. However, he believes discussing failures can help you realize you're not alone and find solutions faster. There are many different ways to go about building an agency. For Justin, it made more sense to grow with contract workers. According to him, this allowed more flexibility and freedom from project to project. The agency did end up having one key employee who did a great job. However, they end up never adding other employees. The benefit of course is that they didn't have to worry about employees in slow months. It definitely depends on how you want to manage your agency and the vision you have for its future. In Justin's case it was the best decision because it provided clarity on their bottom line and allowed them to forecast net earnings for the year. Biggest Failure Turned into a Huge Success Justin has had several failures in his career. One that turned out to be a big success down the road was his dream to play professional baseball. He played in high school and college and had several friends who got drafted so he assumed he would too. This dream never came true. Although he was crushed, he now realizes his life wouldn't have led to him growing a successful business and becoming an author if he had continued to pursue a career in sports. Losing this dream led to many opportunities he couldn't have imagined at the time. It's all part of learning to identify yourself with who you are rather than what you do. Justin realized he wanted to be a resource for others, whether he was an agency, owner, baseball player, or realtor. This has really helped him find joy in whatever he's doing. Pivoting is part of life and sometimes you'll find you no longer enjoy what you're doing, so it's good to know you can pivot to something else. Lessons in Agency Leadership One of his biggest failures was when he hired the agency's one and only employee. Since he was used to working exclusively with contractors, it was hard for him to manage someone else's time. He didn't know how to train an employee and wasn't clear on the tasks required for the job. Without clear direction, the employee had nothing to do sometimes, which led to frustration for both. Justin had to learn how to become a better leader who is clear about his expectations. When you hire someone you shouldn't assume they'll know what to do. Keep in mind why you are hiring this person. You're probably trying to save time. However, if you can't figure out how to communicate their tasks properly, you'll find yourself giving instructions over and over. The result of this poor communication actually adds more work, instead of saving you time. Jason has struggled with this in the past and he realized he needed someone to manage and guide these new employees. He recognizes he doesn't have the patie

How will your agency face an economic recession? Does your positioning allow your agency to evolve and come out stronger? If you haven't been preparing for a similar scenario, now is a good time to make some changes. Think about your agency's position in the ecosystem of today's market and how it could pivot to improve it. Today's guest has seen some tough times in his 10 years in the business. He shares some of the changes agency owners can make to adapt and thrive during a recession. Manish Dudharejia is the founder and president of E2M Solutions, a full-service white-label digital agency. His team works mainly with digital agencies to help them solve their bandwidth problems. After 10 years in the business, E2M has worked with over 450 agencies across the country and currently has a staff of 160 people. He's a repeat guest and friend of the show, who has shared the complexities of the Principle-Agent problem and big decisions for a successful agency. Today he's helping us learn about surviving and thriving in an economic downtown. In this episode, we'll discuss: How the right positioning is the key to facing a recession. How, even in the middle of the recession, your agency can keep growing. Why a recession is a time of opportunity for small and mid-sized agencies. How to can face possible layoffs if business slows down. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM How to Prepare Your Agency for a Recession To survive a recession, your agency needs a very strong position in the market and products/services that solve real problems. With a clear vision of your agency's positioning and offer you'll know exactly who your clients are. This requires some reflection about things you can improve and simplify in your offering. Regardless of a recession, if you're having issues with onboarding, then you have a problem with your product or service. A recession is a great time to test out your product or service. If there's an absolute need for what you offer, then your agency can go through a recession seamlessly. One mistake agency owners make during a recession is to stop offering some services. Many assume that, if things are slowing down, the business slows down as well. This isn't necessarily the case. A recession is still an opportunity to make the most of your existing clients. It's easier and more economical to retain existing clients than find new ones. The key is being more communicative with your clients. Reach out and start a conversation to find out what they need. Are there any other ways your agency could be helping them? You can do this without sounding "salesy" but by listening, taking a genuine interest in their business, and looking for new opportunities. 2 Tips to Keep Going During a Recession Continue marketing. During hard times, agencies should continue marketing and producing content. Write a weekly post and send a newsletter to clients to make sure they're engaged. You want to ensure your customer service is top-notch so you're not losing your existing clients. This is how your agency will continue growing in a recession. Be flexible. A little bit of understanding, empathy, and flexibility goes a long way with both existing and new clients. This applies especially to brands and industries being heavily affected by the recession. Why Agencies Have a Good Chance Withstanding Hard Times Agency services, like website building and maintenance, are essential for companies. Even in the middle of a recession, businesses want their websites to be up and running. They are still likely to hire agencies for essentials like websites, SEO, and content as a way to engage new clients. Don't assume a recession means staying put and waiting for the fall. Embrace new activities and services and maximize other areas where you can. A recession may be a time when your agency loses some clients, that is true. However, it can also be a reset and an opportunity to go after new clients at a higher rate. Agencies that survive in a recession are the ones who get really specific about the clients they're going after and the problems they solve. Of course, people freak out when things start to slow down. Nonetheless, this won't last forever. At some point, they'll see the need for marketing to accelerate their business. The economy is cyclical and it will come full circle again. Recession Can Be an Opportunity for Agencies Mid-size and enterprise-level businesses look for cost-effective solutions in times of recession. This means it's a good time for small to mid-size agencies to land an enterprise-level client. In a recession, those clients won't look for enterprise-level agencies because of the cost. That also means an economic downturn is a great time to pivot your messaging and position your agency to tap into new opportunities. A lot of agencies don't realize their positioning might be off during difficult times because they're just trying to survive. You need clarity to figure out your positioni

Are you considering a merger in the future? Have you thought about the logistics of managing the resulting agency? How would the structure of that newly merged agency look? There are many things to consider with a possible merger, like making sure it equally benefits both the team and the clients. Today's guest entered into M&A as the solution for the future vision of his agency. He was lucky to find a merger partner who turned out to be a great fit for his managing style, which is key to their success. Kevin Hourigan is the president of Spinutech, a digital marketing agency that takes a data-driven approach to craft measurable results for clients. Originally, Kevin founded Bayshore Solutions, which offered web design services, interactive marketing, and e-commerce for clients in 55 countries since 1996. More recently, Kevin and his new partner decided to merge their agencies becoming an end-to-end solution offering greater value to clients. He now chats about the decision to go ahead with the merger and how they structured the resulting company. In this episode, we'll discuss: Surviving economic downturn and adapting to the market How to structure and lead an agency after a merger. Building culture and inspiring a large team. Sponsors and Resources Wix: Today's episode is sponsored by the Wix Partner Program. Being a Wix Partner is ideal for freelancers and digital agencies that design and develop websites for their clients. Check out Wix.com/Partners to learn more and become a member of the community for free. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM 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. How to Adapt to the Changing Market Needs Back in January 1996, only 1% of companies had a website. At the time, Kevin owned an outsource-IT company that helped small businesses manage their servers. He and his team also liked building websites and offered that service to clients. However, the most common response was "what's a website?" Other clients would argue they didn't need one. So at first Kevin's company was marketing a product that companies didn't understand or value. He recalls, about six months after they started offering website development some of those clients started calling them back. That's how they started and slowly grew their model to building a 10-page $5,000 website. By 1998 the team had grown from 3 people to 30 team members and continued to grow to 250 team members by the year 2000. Little did they realize, the burst of the dot-com bubble was just around the corner and they were once again left with a 20-person team. It was a stressful time, with many businesses around them disappearing. They managed to stay afloat by adapting to the market which resulted in keeping some core clients. Lessons and Recovering from a Down-Turned Economy Looking back, it's easy to see the mistakes made during the dot com bubble. The growth was immense and came in too fast. Many businesses spent money they didn't have on the best websites and the consequences were disastrous. After going through such a rapid decline, going from making 250K per project back to 15K per project, why continue? Kevin was actually ready to quit at that point. He came close to going public with the company and already had a couple of angel investors. Although he felt it wasn't a viable plan, the investors wanted to move forward because they believed he could make it. And his agency did make it -- years later he was able to buy out those investors. Three years after scaling back to a 20-person staff they had grown to 50 employees again. The agency figured out who they serve and the value they brought to those clients. Economic growth and recession is cyclical, but your agency can survive and even thrive in a tough economic climate What is the Future for Agencies? Kevin owes much of his success to his ability to adapt to the market. While his company started out as an IT services business, he realized web development was the future. Even though clients didn't see it right away, they eventually came around and embraced the internet era. Then in 1996, his company went full-on with web development services. That was their sole focus for a while until the digital marketing side of the agency emerged. Once again they adapted to the demands of the market. What's next for the future of agencies? Kevin believes the future of agencies relies on staying two steps ahead. The way agencies stay in the game is always being ahead of emerging technologies and being digital experts to their clients. As long as agencies maintain a level of expe

How many hours per week do you spend working IN your business? Do you need a better work-life balance? Would you like to focus just on the work you really like? One agency owner went from dedicating 50+ hours/week to her agency to working 10-12 hours per week. She did it by recognizing her strengths, setting up the right systems and coaching her team. Andrea Jones is a social media strategist who runs OnlineDrea, a digital agency operating done-for-you social media services. They handle all social platforms and do content creation from video editing and graphic design and primarily work with online business owners in the coaching services. A big shift in her personal life limited the time she could dedicate to the business. Therefore Andrea drastically changed the way she ran things. Fortunately, she managed to do it in record time and found it was just what her agency needed. In this interview, we'll discuss: Transitioning out of client work and into the CEO role. Scaling back from 50+ hour workweeks to 10-12 hours. Coaching your team and building the right culture to take a step back. 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. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Are You Afraid of the Word "Agency"? Andrea has always loved the internet and the process of content creation. She started a blog in 2004 and even a YouTube channel in 2007. What really jump-started her career was moving to Canada, where she started freelancing and slowly built a team. However, she admits she was scared of the word agency; so for many years she thought of herself as a freelancer who "just happened to have a team". Her work as a freelancer started as a necessity while she worked on her legal status in her host country. Nonetheless, in time she realized the repeatable nature of social media had landed her a really good agency business model. Removing Yourself from Client Work and Scaling Back to 10 Hour Work Weeks If you're an agency owner, it's not uncommon to work 50+ hours a week. Maybe you love your agency and don't even realize you also need a break. Andrea went through a similar situation where she was working 50-60 hours per week. She says she wasn't looking for a way out because she really enjoyed the work. However, when she got pregnant, she knew she couldn't get through such long work days. She made a decision and started removing herself from client calls, hired more staff to support clients, and hired her first official employee. This made a real difference, although she admits it was a long journey. In the past, every time she iterated the structure of the agency she was still at the center of it. It was only after she got pregnant she realized everything was still going through her. The real change came once she accepted this wasn't sustainable any longer. Making this change was no walk in the park. It was easier than it could have been thanks to getting super clear about agency culture. She took the Clifton strengthsfinder test and her second strength turned out to be positivity. She had never seen it as a strength before, but she realized that's why some people worked really well with them. So when it came time to remove herself from sales, she knew she needed account managers with the same energy and she leaned on that in their training. Andrea knew she got it right when she got a message from a client praising her team's work. It is a difficult realization that clients don't need you, but it is exactly what frees up your time to do other things! Transitioning from Owner and Strategist to Agency CEO Changing the agency's structure also meant changing Andrea's role. She went from leading strategy to coaching her team. Instead of just being an agency owner, she really transitioned in the role of Agency CEO. It was a big change but she now feels more like a mentor than an expert. In essence, instead of being the person who provides the solution, she guides her team to finding the solution. The downside -- some of team members didn't make the cut. Not everyone was on board with this new direction or stepped up to the plate for their new responsibilities. Some people did end up leaving, which presented some unforeseen difficulties. In the end, this created more space to hire the right people and bring on new talent. Try to Not Rush the Process and Get the Support of a Mentor Agency owners need to proactively take steps to reduce the amount of time working in the business before they're burned out. Rather than being reactive out of necessity, you can set a reasonable timeline to do it successfully. It took Andrea about six months to achieve great results with her team. She admits a more realistic timelin

Does your agency develop content for clients? Do you have an in-house content team or outsource? What issues have you run into building your content team? The key to amazing content is building an amazing team. However, a common struggle for agency owners is not knowing the right structure or managing style. Today's guest will share some insight on what to look for when putting together your content team and the right questions to ask to ensure you're getting the best talent. Ryan Sargent is the Director of Content Marketing at Verblio, the world's friendliest content creation platform. Verblio builds content marketing for other marketers at scale by pairing specialized, niche writers with advertising agencies and marketing professionals. Ryan has been on the podcast before talking about Verblio's agencies are using content marketing. As content director, he knows his share of building and managing a content creation team. Recently, and thanks to Verblio's new podcast, he has had the opportunity to talk to other team managers from different agencies and learn that they all pretty much share the same issues, which he will explore in this interview. In this episode, we'll discuss: Where to start when building your content creation team. Asking the right questions to ensure you're hiring the right person. The best way to manage your content creation team. 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 in their process and their large pool of crowd-sourced writers. Where to Start Building Your Content Creation Team When it comes to building your team, structure is very important and the order you make your hires will set the stage for future success. For starters, you want someone who really owns the manager/editor role. This will be a linchpin of the team structure. Usually, someone on the director level will have to work a lot on strategy. This is particularly true for in-house teams. The team manager must know the type of content the team is creating and why they're creating that content. Management may not be the most attractive part of the job, but ultimately someone has to make sure that everyone's on schedule and the lights stay on. If you can fill that seat with someone who specializes in project management, you're off to a great start. A lot of times, people bring in a CMO person that will focus on strategy but are not willing to roll up their sleeves. What you need is a managing editor that can write content, develop a process, and then manage people under them. Why Your Should Develop a Process Early Something that Ryan kept hearing is that having a process is critical to ensuring that, whatever strategy you're pursuing, you'll find success. The process will allow you to generate content from a lot of different sources. If done right, you'll set up a process that will be repeatable and will generate efficiency all on its own. Creating the Content In-House or Outsourcing? Ryan was surprised to learn that when it comes to content, everyone's doing it a bit different. When it comes to where agencies are getting their content, the hybrid model is apparently very common. For every agency that is producing its content in-house, there are multiple that outsource at least part of it. The same is true for in-house teams. This is a place where agencies and in-house marketing teams are operating in exactly the same way. Everyone's mixing and matching, often depending on the type of content and industry. Should the Content Manager Read Every Piece of Content? Not all agency owners are equipped for managing teams. Some prefer to make the right hires from the start, give them the direction, and let them manage. People management is hard and can be tough to juggle with all the responsibilities that come with being an agency owner. Because of this, some of the same issues kept coming up and no definitive answer is yet available. For instance, as a content manager should you be reading every single article produced by your team? Furthermore, once they're producing dozens of articles a week, does your answer change? For Ryan, if you're running a content team then yes, you should be reading everything. However, he does agree that a content manager should only be reading pieces that are mostly finished. This is because: He wants to show his team that he trusts them, and He loves the creativity that comes out when he's not constantly reminding his team of the content strategy. Asking the Right Questions to Find the Right Talent When you're hiring people for your in-house content team it's all about asking the right questions. Ryan likes to open the interview asking about the best piece of content they've ever written, followed by how did they know it was their best pi

Have you heard of the four-day week? Is it something you've ever considered for your agency? Many people feel it is a good way to find the work-life balance we all dream of, while others argue it's not practical. Today's guest decided to give it a try and now explains how he came to that decision and how it has worked out for his team. Chris Free is the president and partner of Chromatic, a web development agency that has been in the business for 15 years. As a remote agency since its beginning, Chris and his team work to create a sense of camaraderie among employees. They wondered if a reduced work-week would make it even harder. He shares why and how he decided to implement the 4-day workweek and the result so far. In this episode, we'll discuss: Why they decided to try the four-day week. The process to implement this new work style. His team's response and productivity results. 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. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Do You Need a Break from Hustle Culture? Chris always dreamed of owning his own business, although he never pictured it would be a digital agency. After graduating with a degree in interactive media, he figured he would work in video production. However, he quickly realized there were no such jobs he could find in Chicago, so he leaned on his programming skills. He ended up at a 10-person startup advertising. His work at the agency helped him realize he had a ton of value to offer, so he joined two developer friends and started looking for clients. Just a couple of years later, they bought out the original founder and started adding more partners and employees. For him, the most challenging moment was when they started growing and he didn't have time to work on what he loved. As an agency owner, he was in sales and dealing with management problems and felt trapped. After years of growing his agency and working on sides of the business he didn't really enjoy, he pondered the idea of the four-day week. How to Start Slow With Flexible Time Off Chris learned about the concept of the four-day week while reading about the downside of hustle culture. This book explains that you need to build a rest ethic as much as you build your work ethic. At the time, they needed a change so he and his partner agreed to test it out at the agency. They started by implementing a half day off every Friday. The results on the business side were not really impactful. However, on the human and cultural side, it was tremendously beneficial. Their staff absolutely loved it, especially after the recent pandemic-related burnout that everyone lived. The result has been so successful that he sees no way back. 3 Common Concerns When Moving to a Shorter Workweek Financial Concerns. In the beginning, Chris was worried about torpedoing the business, which had never had any debt. He and his partner chose to start with half days off in the summer months, from from Memorial Day until Labor Day. Once the test was over they realized it had not had any material impact on their finances, so they continued through the rest of the year. When that test was successful, they decided to extended it to the entire day off. In terms of the benefits, their profitability isn't up yet, but they expected it to be a longer play that pays for itself in terms of culture and retention. Clients Buy-In. How would clients feel about it? In the beginning this was a pressing concern for Chris. However, the response was surprisingly positive. Of course, there are still ways for them to contact the team in case of an emergency so clients don't feel abandoned on Fridays. Company culture. Chris and partners were concerned about fostering camaraderie among the staff. They've been remote since day one, so building culture has always been a conscious effort for them. While agencies that have an in-person model create that camaraderie naturally, remote agencies work hard to manufacture it. They have continued doing this with team retreats and weekly calls where they don't talk about work. Overall, the staff is very happy with the change to a 4-day work week. How to Be Better Leader and Prioritize Self Care For many years Chris has had a hard time with work-life balance. He realized prioritizing his own well-being would make him a better leader. Transitioning to a shorter workweek was the push he needed to really take that seriously. It's not uncommon for agency owners to get burnt out from long hours and oftentimes working on parts of the business you don't necessarily enjoy. It might seem counterintuitive to take time off, however taking care of yourself is the key to success. Your future self will thank yo

What is your client onboarding experience like? Is it seamless and easy? Do your clients feel important and seen? This is the first impression new clients experience with your agency and it might be the most important interaction. Today's guest has been an agency owner for more than two decades and has adapted to the many changes in the industry. He shares how he has adapted to changes in the market, how he has an agile approach to project management and the most common mistakes in building the customer onboarding experience. Michael LaVista is the founder and CEO of Caxy Interactive, a Chicago-based software and technology agency that helps companies unlock 4-5x growth by setting up new and efficient systems. Their expertise includes user-centered design, content management systems, e-commerce, mobile app development, and much more. Michael is also the author of Superpowered, a book that goes over the seven leadership superpowers that technology executives can use to grow a more profitable organization. In this episode, we'll discuss: The benefits of an agile approach to project management. Ways to attract great agency talent. Avoiding mistakes in new client onboarding. Sponsors and Resources Wix: Today's episode is sponsored by the Wix Partner Program. Being a Wix Partner is ideal for freelancers and digital agencies that design and develop websites for their clients. Check out Wix.com/Partners to learn more and become a member of the community for free. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM 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. When it Comes to Agency Growth, Either Adapt or Die Michael has been in the agency business since the "dot-com boom" in 1999 when his agency helped clients adapt to the arrival of this new tool. Back then, they believed all you needed was a great idea, then smack a ".com" on it, and you'd make a million dollars. "It was like the wild wild west," he recalls. Over the years, they've had to change their focus five or six times, from e-commerce to content management and more. Agency owners know you either evolve or die, so after their past focuses were commoditized to audiences they finally landed on offering tech solutions for business growth. They help companies whose current systems impede their growth. With their help, they unlock 4-5x growth. Over several decades in the business, they've amassed a remarkable client list, including Motorola and North Western University. Roadmapping Growth By Updating Client Technology Systems Michael's agency creates a technology roadmap for profitable companies that want to grow but still run on spreadsheets and home-grown strategies that don't scale. They re-engineer their clients' businesses taking advantage of available technologies. As much as we're all aware of the available tools, not many are implementing them from a digital transformation point of view. They commonly run into companies with systems designed around how they worked at some point in the past. A company starts as a single store but as they grow to multiple locations it may have new challenges. So, instead of being based on an idea, these companies' systems are based on things that can easily go wrong. What happens then? What Michael's agency does is helps these businesses engineer a system that will help them grow and open up. A common misconception about their agency is their work with a company changes everything and replace employees with technology. According to Michael, in all the years working with different companies, upgrading their systems has never resulted in massive layoffs. Moreover, commonly the person doing the mundane tasks eliminated by the new systems are the owners and executives. Benefits of Taking an Agile Approach to Project Management In his career, Michael has learned the human mind is set up believing it knows step-by-step how something works.. The reality of course is that any big project has unforeseen complications. In these cases, you should be ready to adapt. This is why he likes to use the agile approach to project management, meant to help teams deliver results with fewer headaches. In short, they lay out a general plan highlighting what they want to accomplish and they prepare for the fact that the "how" will likely change depending on circumstances. This allows them to deliver exactly what the client is paying for with the right priorities. Having a list of priorities ensures they always know what they should be focusing on in case the plan changes. For example, if you have prioritized ten goals you know number 10 is a go

Have you built a scalable lead gen system to boost your agency's growth? Most agencies start with referrals. But eventually, you need a reliable lead generation system to keep your pipeline full. Today's guest found himself at that point when his agency reached $80K in revenue, at which point he realized the agency needed to step up in terms of lead generation to reach multi-million in revenue. Jeremy Moser is the co-founder and CEO of uSERP, an SEO agency that earns SaaS companies high authority backlinks on the most coveted websites. When it came time for his agency to outgrow the referrals model, he turned to several strategies that helped his agency exponential growth. He now reflects on the lessons he learned about agency growth, the process to building his lead generation system, and why he picked Twitter as the platform to build a network and brand. In this interview, we'll discuss: Going beyond cold emails to get past the $80K mark. Why Twitter is a great place to form connections. Podcasts as useful tools for SEO. 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. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Helping Build an Agency Before Becoming an Owner Agency Jeremy landed a job right out of college at a general marketing agency and web development firm. During his time there, he got to see a massive transformation after the founders split and went on to create separate agencies. Jeremy ended up staying with one of them and spent five years witnessing its growth, from being the only employee to being one on a team of 30. During this time, he got to see the highs and lows of building an agency, seeing it go from a project to an actual company with organization and structure. Helping build the agency and witnessing the trials and triumphs, and what worked and didn't is what helped him decide to eventually start his own venture. Figuring Out How to Build a Lead Gen System Up until about the $80K mark, Jeremy's agency grew pretty much on referrals. He was tapping into his existing network, approaching past clients from his previous job by offering new services. It proved to be a good growth path for the early stages of the agency. However, they realized it just wasn't sustainable if they really wanted to continue growing and reach multi-million in revenue per year. It was time to be intentional about lead generation by being active and aggressive about it. However, referrals aren't scalable. So a lot of agency owners at this crossroads decide to hire a lead gen agency. Both Jason and Jeremy disagree with this strategy. Jeremy says hiring a lead gen agency to do cold emails for your agency won't work without brand awareness first. It's very unlikely in the early stages of your agency you'll find high-profile clients simply by sending cold emails. As a result, he put his efforts into the long game with social media and organic content. For Jeremy, this worked better than the alternative of hiring a lead gen agency. It was a good way to build connections with founders and marketers at different companies, and it was one of the major drivers for them to scale past $80K per month. Using Twitter to Make Real Connections When he turned his attention to building a following on social media, Jeremy focused especially on Twitter. When he joined he didn't really see much potential there to actually connect with people. However, at some point, there was a big shift in the algorithm and the platform's users. He started posting what he was doing for his agency; sharing their wins and losses helped him build connections with other agencies and brands. He realized many of his Twitter followers were working at big companies. He decided this was the right platform to reach them on a personal level rather than someplace more transactional like LinkedIn. While LinkedIn is always more sales-driven, with people trying to build connections on that basis Twitter was a more organic way of meeting people. 2 Strategies That Helped Build the Agency's Brand Other strategies that helped boost his agency's growth included creating content for third parties and an acquisition that led to their foot-in-the-door offer. Guest blogging: Try being an expert contributor for industry news outlets. Jeremy is a writer for Search Engine Journal, a top SEO publication. In the long run, this was a good lead gen strategy in the long run. They write detailed articles about SEO and link building that their potential clients could be interested in. This in turn gets them a lot of articles linking back to them or referencing them and ensures people searching for this information find uSERP. Acquisition and the FITD: Jeremy's agency acquired a Sa

Do you spend too much time in endless meetings? Do you have the right systems in order to be efficient with your time? Are you ready to reclaim your time and focus on working on the business? Today's guest helps his clients use technology to implement automations and SOPs to build an ideal future for them. In this interview, he shares his personal experience learning to reclaim his time to strategize, plus ways he makes more time to work on the business and how you can do it too. Marquis Murray is the CEO and founder of Ditto, a systems improvement consultancy helping customers get the most out of technology by improving how they work, aligning their teams, and helping them understand the current state of their business. They help clients work toward a future where they can set aside time to focus on their goals. In this episode, we'll discuss: First steps to implementing the systems to reclaim your time. Benefits of communication with clients and employees. Setting aside blocks of time to work on the business. 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 in their process and their large pool of crowd-sourced writers. How to Stop Wearing All the Hats as an Agency Owner Marquis started his career as a digital marketing manager for another agency. He left this job because he wanted to start his own business, be the boss, and make his own hours. Unfortunately, as agency owners know, that's not always how it plays out. However, he is thankful he had some of those lessons early on. As he started gaining clients and growing his team, he quickly found he was no longer able to wear all the hats. He was spending a lot of time in HR and onboarding. He didn't have any systems in place so his team kept coming to him with the same questions. Out of frustration, Marquis started building systems and visually documenting how he did things to send to his team when they had a question. In time, this evolved into the standard operating procedures and work templates his agency has today. He sees this a lot with clients building a business and realizes there's much more involved in actually scaling the business. One of the places where business owners are commonly not spending enough time is in internal team onboarding and communications. Now, when someone joins Ditto's team they receive what he feels is a well-thought-out overview of their responsibilities and available resources. Without those systems in place, he finds confusion and frustration. Setting up expectations from day one minimizes those feelings and everyone is more productive. Start by Documenting Your Own Tasks Normally, when we talk about SOPs, people can get overwhelmed and don't know where to start. A great place to begin is your own role. Whether you're writing it down on paper or using a screen share tool like Loom, document what you do and get it out of your head. You can set apart a day or part of your day where you don't use your phone or computer, just a pad and a pen, and write down everything. Start by answering "What am I responsible for?" You may be responsible for sales, so document what that looks like. What does it look like when you close a sale? Record sales calls -- good and bad -- for training purposes. What do you do next? Where does the invoice get sent? How do you set up a project brief for a new client coming in? Whatever your current responsibilities, start there. First, take a review of your days and identify what you are doing right now that you could delegate. Which meetings can you eliminate or delegate? That will free up some of your time so you can document tasks your team should be doing and get more efficient. Set reasonable expectations for yourself and know you won't be able to do it all at once. Start small so you don't get overwhelmed and you'll eventually find the freedom you deserve. 4 Ways to Categorize Your Responsibilities Marquis suggests sorting your tasks and responsibilities into these categories: Do - urgent and can't be done by anyone else Defer - can be completed later, when time allows Delegate - something that is able to be completed by others Delete - unimportant or won't drive the business forward There's no silver bullet for everyone, the idea is to get started and implement what works for you. Benefits of Constant Communication with Agency Team and Clients The worst mistake you can make with your team or clients is to assume communication has happened. We tend to believe just because we communicated something once everyone has received the message and understands it. In reality, you can never communicate enough. If you've only shared it once, you should probably repeat it at least three more times. When it comes to internal communications, you can try d

Do you have 1-2 big clients making up most of your revenue? Is the majority of your agency's livelihood tied to just one major account? Riding the wave of a super client can be nice while it lasts but when the client leaves you will be forced to make some difficult decisions, just like today's guest. The choices are to shut down the agency or rebuild and hope for the best. Learn what he did to get through this predicament twice and how he protects his agency from it ever happening again. Andrew Greenstein is the co-founder and Co-CEO of SF AppWorks a digital agency dedicated to exploring and harnessing new technology. With 10 years in the business with his current agency, Andrew recalls a few instances where they'd been on the precipice looking down and have managed to rebuild. In this episode, Andrew talks about ways to avoid this happening to your agency and the systems he has in place to avoid it happening to him agency again. In this interview, we'll discuss: Falling into the trap of having a "Super Client." Buying your agency more time to work things out. Proactively preventing the super client trap. 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. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Falling into the Super Client Trap In 2008, Andrew's first company created a music platform that grew and got to partner with MySpace before having to shut down and start over. The plan was to assemble a team of developers and designers build websites and apps for other companies. The idea was to use funds from that company to build another startup. That never happened and over ten years later that agency turned out to be their most successful startup. In their first few years with the agency, they needed a foundational client to get things going. They that client by helping one of his friends build a marathon training app. Of course, they had other clients and made several other websites but this client accounted for most of their revenue. Once the marathon app failed to secure another round of funding and shut the project down, they were left desperately looking for a client that could replace them. Riding the Wave and Forgetting to Develop Your Sales and Marketing Andrew and his partner decided to go back to their day jobs and kept working on the agency in their free time. They did eventually get other clients about a year later and one of them became their next super client. They poured everything into working with this client while working alongside a larger agency. Over the next four years, they grew their team from two developers to thirty. They had enough cash flow to invest in the agency, grow their team, grow their services, and explore new areas. Life was good and they felt everything was falling into place. However, they were growing on the back of one super client and, therefore, were not developing their own sales and marketing. Once that client shut down the project, they were left without a stable income. When you're riding the wave, everything is exciting and it seems like nothing can go wrong. We see this type of thing happen all the time. Maybe the agency owner is just too busy with all the growth and doesn't consider "maybe we have too much revenue tied to this client". Like Andrew, you may be aware your agency is too reliant on a client but there's just no sense of urgency to remedy the situation. However, when the moment came, he wondered why he didn't prepare more aggressively. In the battle between urgent and important work, they had spent all their time working on the urgent and not enough on the critical task of diversifying. Buying Yourself Time So Things Can Work Themselves Out History repeated itself and the first decision they needed to make was what to do with a decent-sized amount of money they had in the bank. Should they just shut down the agency and walk away with the profit? Or take that money, reinvest it, and hope it worked out? Because they loved their team, they decided to try to figure it out and came up with two strategies to keep the agency alive: First, they really needed to work on marketing and sales to attract and convert new clients as quickly as possible. They hired an agency to help them with sales outreach. They also decided to use their human resources to build an internal startup to go the investor route after six months. Neither of these plans worked. In retrospect, Andrew sees that sales outreach is a mixed bag and an aggressive way to get clients. If you happen to get some clients with the right message at the right time, it can work. One introduction can lead to a long relationship, especially in the software business. However, it takes a time to build it

Do you have issues with employee retention? Are wondering what you can do to make your agency a more attractive place to work so you stop losing employees to the competition? Today's guest has made retention a huge focus in the development of his agency. So much so that he's only lost two employees to the competition in the past three years. He now shares how he realized it's all about focusing on the right things. He's sharing some of the most important areas you should be working to improve employee retention. Rob Gaedtke is the president and CEO of KPS3, a digital agency that builds brands and creates technology that moves people to action. They are now about 64 full-time employees with roughly $9 million in revenue and continually work on ways to take care of their most valuable resource, their employees. In this conversation, Rob shares some of the important questions you should be asking to reduce yourself in order to employee turnover. In this episode, we'll discuss: 4 steps to help you stop losing employees. Keeping track of employee progress and being open to change. How to empower employees and encourage their growth. 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 in their process and their large pool of crowd-sourced writers. Learning to Value Your Most Valuable Asset As an agency, your employees are your most valuable resource. After all, we are in the service industry and people are our bread and butter. So much so that keeping that talent could be even more important than keeping clients. If you manage to keep the right employees, they'll keep the clients. Likewise, if your employees are happy, your clients will also be happy. Rob and his team have been focusing on this as the agency grows. What they found is that if you're focusing on the right things you have a better chance of retaining your staff. For instance, are you losing employees to other agencies or to different passions? Are you filling the ranks with your own team or are you having to look outside the agency? These are important questions that could lead to why you keep losing talent. 4 Steps to Help You Stop Losing Employees to Other Agencies Making big statements like "employees are our most valuable asset" sound like an empty platitude unless you're making the right moves to show this appreciation. At Rob's agency, they took these 4 steps to stop losing employees: Be in it for the right reason. Your goal really has to be the development of the employee as a person, even if it comes to losing them. Have financial transparency. Everybody can see the agency's full financial statement. They know how what it costs to run the agency and how much profit goes back to the owners and employees. Have an open door policy. There's this idea that it's bad when someone leaves you to go do something. Rob believes we need to break that connotation. When an employee leaves, they're not doing it to hurt you. They're doing it because it's what's best for them. It's easy to take it personally, but if you step back it opens the door to part on good terms and to have them even returning at some point if it makes sense. Encourage personal growth. A lot of employees may leave a job because they want a promotion. But growth opportunities should be available for them within your agency. Rob also believes if somebody wants to grow in an area where your agency doesn't have business in, you could give them the opportunity to develop those skills. Even if it's half-price or at a loss. If you put it in the education bucket, it's benefitting an employee. The same goes for a different industry that the agency doesn't normally work in. Keeping Track of Employee Progress and Being Open to Change Rob's agency has strategic growth initiatives to get employees off on the right foot. They have mandatory reviews that occur after someone's first 30 days, 60 days, and 90 days. After that, the review meetings happen at the six-month mark and eventually become annual. The idea is to get a fruitful discussion going beginning the first month and then get more in-depth as time passes and more goals are met. On top of that, everybody is encouraged to have weekly one-on-one discussions. A lot of the discussions are focused on what each employee needs and what the agency can do to support their goals. Also, the agency is open-minded to employees changing departments if they are not enjoying the work. A department change is very important and something you can only ever address if your manager is tracking your progress. Encouraging and Empowering Agency Leaders When an agency is growing, you have to make sure the leaders grow with it. Every worker needs to feel challenged, respected and empowered. You can have a fun agency wh

Are you tracking your agency's gross margin? How about the EBITDA? KPIs are super important and something every agency owner should be aware of. But which KPIs you track depends on the priorities you set for the agency. Do you want to grow fast? Are you planning to sell soon? Having a clear vision and goals makes a difference when it comes to what you're measuring. Today's guest shares the most important KPIs he believes all agencies should be keeping track of and what you can do if some of them dip below where they should be. Jon Morris is the CEO of Ramsay Innovations, a company dedicated to helping agencies get greater insights out of their finances so they can grow at a faster rate. In his area of specialty, Jon is used to advising companies on ways to improve their finances and now shares some of that useful insight. In this interview, we'll discuss: The most important KPIs for agencies. What to spend on sales and marketing. Revenue as a percentage of client base. Dos and Don'ts of using a line of credit. 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. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM How a Minority Investment Can Help Growth Jon started working from his home in 2004 in an agency called Rise Interactive. Several years later, he took a minority investment and grew it into one of the largest independent digital agencies, managing about $250 million in media before he sold it. When he took the minority investment, his agency's fees were around $20 million. At the time, he wanted to invest more in sales and marketing. Their mission as an agency was to be the leader in leveraging data to help brands make smarter marketing decisions. However, the reality is that if you line up 50 agencies they would all say that they are data-driven. They had to answer why they were more data-driven than the rest. $20 million in fees may seem like quite a lot. However, the cost of building technology and putting together a sizeable team is a major investment. Looking back, he knows taking the minority investment was the best move because back then he just didn't have the capital for the technological investments. When you build technology you need a fully dedicated team that eats, sleeps, and dreams the product. Every agency has a very standard leadership structure, with a client service team, a sales a marketing team, and operations and finance teams. In their case, they added another pillar that was product development and strategy, which included: UX developers Engineers Product developers Development Operators Quality Assurance The Most Important KPIs for a Digital Agency For Jon, the most important KPI for an agency is gross margin, which is different from adjusted gross income. The first thing you need to do to get to your gross margin is to know your revenue. He breaks revenue into two categories: gross revenue and net revenue. Having worked with many agencies by now, Jon knows it's not very easy getting these numbers. Often times it's a matter of getting the data clean to figure out net revenue vs. gross revenue. A lot of agencies are very focused on payroll divided by revenue as a ratio. However, payroll generally includes everything from sales and marketing to operations. What you want to do is get to your costs of service. To do that, you need to go through every single line item to determine whether or not it is dedicated to client work. If you have an employee that is dedicated to a client's paid search campaign, then that's going to be a cost of service. On the contrary, an employee dedicated to HR is not a cost of service. On average, his clients are at a 40% gross margin when they start working with his agency and their goal is to get them to 50%. Why Cost of Service is the Most Important KPI? If you are selling something for $1 million and you get $500,000 in fees and $500,000 in gross margin, then you now have $500,000 to put back into your business or in your pocket. However, if that same $1 million is costing you $800,000, you only have $200,000 to invest in your business. Therefore, you can have two agencies doing the exact same thing both around $5 million in net revenue. In the end, one made a profit of $1.5 million and one lost a few hundred thousand dollars. The difference is their gross margin. Percentage of Revenue Spent on Sales and Marketing The next metric you should be focusing on is what percentage of net revenue you're spending on sales and marketing. Again, divide your payroll to group sales and marketing people into "sales and marketing costs". In theory, if you spend on sales and marketing you have a better chance of growing than if you don't. What you're willing to spend o

Do you struggle with educating clients on relevant messaging? Great messaging addresses the audience's emotional connection with an issue and sometimes that means it's not all about the product. Educating clients on looking beyond their product can be tricky. However, once they understand it they'll see significant growth. Today's guest increased his client's topline revenue from $35 million to $230 million in just 18 months by understanding who their message was aimed at. For his second podcast appearance, he discusses how he fell in love with helping challenger brands and how he helps them rise above the plateau to success. He also shares 2 mistakes you might be making that are costing you money. Bill Harper is the founder of WM Harper, a strategic branding agency focused on brands in need of transformation. His team helps companies that have hit a plateau. These are challenger brands that haven't quite hit their potential goal and need help figuring out how to get to the next level. In this episode, we'll discuss: Why clients need to understand it's not always about the product. Building an agency machine that runs itself. 2 Mistakes are a big waste of time and money. Sponsors and Resources Wix: Today's episode is sponsored by the Wix Partner Program. Being a Wix Partner is ideal for freelancers and digital agencies that design and develop websites for their clients. Check out Wix.com/Partners to learn more and become a member of the community for free. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM 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. Helping Brands Understand Relevant Messaging Bill has worked with many exciting companies in his career but BMB&B is probably where he learned the most. There, he got to work with big-name brands and got inspired to start his own agency. He has built several businesses from being a consultant to running an agency. However, as he puts it, once you've been bitten by the ownership bug it's practically impossible to go back. Working with a company like Blockbuster, Bill realized sometimes the agency does not have a lot of influence to change big brands. Typically, this type of company is very focused on maintaining its position in the market. That is what keeps them up at night. However, Bill fell in love with helping brands with billion-dollar potential but stuck in a multimillion-dollar universe. These brands just need a push to go from an awkward stage to center stage. Most of the time, they have similar strategies to the bigger players but they haven't figured out how to implement them yet. If the client is willing to embrace a change in the way that they think about relevant messaging, they help them create a path forward that makes sense and helps them scale. How to Get 3X Top Line Revenue in 18 Months for Your Client Part of Bill's journey with clients is getting them to understand what they want is people's attention. Sometimes is not really about the product, which can be hard for clients to accept. It's not about listing the new features and talking about the tech. That is what everyone else is doing. When you're doing research, look for the thing people engage with emotionally. For instance, his agency once made an ad for Delsey luggage where they removed all the technical details about the product and focused on being lightweight. The emotional connection was in the audience's frustration with travel. It had changed from being something exciting into being inconvenient. The idea was to address this existing frustration by focusing on how the product leaves the consumer in a better emotional state. Once you find what consumers are either striving toward or moving away from then you have something to play with. Few brands have logged into that insight, but once they do, their growth is significant. Another great success came when his agency helped the Breast Cancer Index achieve sixfold growth of its top-line revenue. The client originally asked them to increase their top-line revenue from $35 million to $250 million within 3 years. They exceeded expectations mainly by understanding who they needed to address. In the case of this hyper-specific test, the way to get oncologists' attention was by giving patients the information they need to begin the conversation. With a combined strategy of influencer marketing, digital marketing, trade shows, and event marketing, they were able to reach $230 million in just 18 months. Building an Agency Machine That Can Run Itself What Bill recalls from his first few experiences as an agency owner is valuing the work whe

Do you live by your agency's core values? Have you spent time defining those values? Do you communicate them with your team? Many accidental agency owners haven't however it is a critical component of growing your business. For some, it's a one-time exercise that is just as quickly forgotten. Your values are the guiding principles leading the way your agency team operates. Today's guest shares how he built a value-based agency, how these 5 core values affect everything his team does, and the biggest challenges he has faced while scaling his agency. Will Roberts is the founder WebBox, a digital marketing and web design agency that collaborates with clients to create unforgettable experiences and campaigns. His agency strives to provide a relentlessly responsive service, which is one of its core values. Will shares why each of those values is an important pillar of how the agency operates and how he has chosen to celebrate his team's small victories. In this interview, we'll discuss: Building an agency based on 5 core values. How to solve your recruitment woes. Learning to celebrate small victories. 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. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Being the Change You Want to See in the Agency World Like many agency owners, Will started doing some freelance work for some friends and family to gain experience. He got paid £75 for his first website – which he laughs about now. He quickly learned working for friends and family was not the best strategy, but thankfully he started getting calls from local businesses wanting his services. It was the first step toward growth. He was still halfway through university in 2008 when, after a few interactions with agencies, he became interested in the industry. One of the big problems he saw was that agencies didn't really care about their clients. Regardless, he knew there was potential for someone willing to raise the game by introducing some changes. Building a Digital Agency Guided By Core Values Plastering your values on your meeting room wall and actually living those values are very different things. Will had the opportunity to see how some agencies worked back when he was in college. He saw many things that could be improved and decided to build something different. He noticed a lack of direction resulting in poor client service. Employees were often not really aware of or held accountable to the company's core values. For his part, Will has worked to build a value-based agency. It is an important part of who they are as an agency. His team is even encouraged to bring up if they ever feel the agency is doing something that is contrary to these values. Everything they do goes through five core values that were part of creating an agency that was focused on users and clients. 5 Core Values that Steer Agency Growth Collaboratively Creative. They try to not go into meetings with an attitude of "it's our way of the highway". Instead, they open the conversation with their intent to collaborate. Mutual respect is key - clients know their niche really well and his team knows UX. Bringing those two together ensures better results. BrutallyTransparent. As an agency, you have information that can make or break a client's website or online presence. Some agencies may choose to withhold that information. However, WebBox chooses to be transparent. Many times what a client wants is not necessarily what they need. Getting them to understand this leads to difficult conversations. This transparency also goes through to their accounts. They share timesheets with clients so they know how their resources are being spent. Seriously Skilled. WebBox brings on highly skilled specialists only. This is true for both clients and team members, who are actively encouraged to set time to train and get better at what they do. Proactively Ambitious. As an agency, they want to be ambitious and keep growing, but they are also ambitious for their clients. Client growth is also their victory as an agency. Relentlessly Responsive. It is not unusual to wait days and even a week to get a response from an agency. Will decided his agency would make it a priority to get back to clients quickly, within the hour. They believe if they're going to partner with clients, then they're going to be there when they need them. Challenges He Has Managed to Overcome While Growing His Business Keeping their sales pipeline full. An important part of scaling your agency is putting systems in place to keep your pipeline full. If your agency is still 100% project-based, remember your pipeline can be a risk. This was the case at Will's agency, so six years ago they introduced r

Are you struggling with client acquisition? Do you offer a ton of services but still can't scale? Wonder what else you could be doing to get the attention of the right clients? In today's episode, we'll learn how an agency went from getting most of its business from cold emails to evolving its acquisition model. Our guest also shares the mistakes he made in his first two agencies which led to massive success the third time around and a merger deal which led to more growth. Chase Dimond is a partner at Structured Agency, a highly-collaborative eCommerce marketing agency. With three agencies under his belt, Chase now reflects on past mistakes and shares how he grew this agency to a team of 100 people working from 6 countries working with brands doing 7-9 figures online. In this interview, we'll discuss: Mistakes and learning what not to do with your agency. 3 challenges of an agency merger. 3 ways to acquire new agency business. Tips for growing a following on Twitter. 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 in their process and their large pool of crowd-sourced writers. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Learning Hard Lessons on What Not to Do to Grow a Digital Agency Chase formed his first agency as a side gig hustle from his full-time job out of college. As a kid who, he admits, thought he knew more than he actually did. He didn't have case studies but he was lucky to purchase a dating website for Bernie Sanders supporters that ended up going viral. It was the best way to attract clients and he learned a lot from the experience. They quickly scaled that agency to $30K per month on the side of their full-time jobs, but offering 8 different services as a side gig wasn't sustainable. The partners disbanded the agency and focused on their full-time jobs. A couple of years later, he gave it another try at creating an agency with some friends. Admittedly the lessons learned the first time didn't stick. This time, they got it to about $80K/month but went their separate ways after a falling out. From that experience, he knew he wanted to start an agency with a singular focus. Email had been at the core of everything since Chase's first business, so in 2018 he started an email marketing agency for eCommerce brands. They later merged with a paid social agency in 2020 servicing similar clients so now they can offer both customer retention and acquisition to their clients. Looking back, he can see that in the first two agencies he made the mistake of trying to offer too many services right away. It was impossible to staff and predict demand for each offering. This time around he's been successful because they focused on doing one service well and then merged with another agency offering a tangential service. 3 Challenges with a Digital Agency Merger Recently, his agency merged with another agency that had been a close referral partner for many years. They actually helped his agency early on with getting their first clients. They were already familiar with each other and offer complimentary services which naturally went together. They realized with more agencies specializing, brands have 8-12 agencies. They decided it would be best to bring together two core services under one roof and one P&L to keep servicing the same clients. There are still a few things lingering even though it's been 2 years since the merger: Establishing a united brand. They haven't figured out how to unite under one name. Clients know and refer to them by their separate names, making it difficult to establish a united identity. However, they might not have to. In Jason's experience, he prefers keeping the agency's name and identity so clients don't get confused. Cross-selling services is harder than expected. They used to sell people on an email campaign, which is a very simple service to explain. But now they have to sell clients on paid ads as well, which is more complex and has a lot of moving parts. Figuring out how to cross-sell and educate clients is really important. Without it, the agency loses opportunities because your clients don't know or understand the services. Realizing shared costs and infrastructure. They still have operations on each side and haven't really crossed the chasm of understanding the other person's business model, how to offer their services, and how they differ. 3 Strategies to Acquiring New Agency Business 1. Building the Founders' Personal Brand In 2018, a lot of their business came from cold emails. Now they have evolved into content marketing, strategic partners, and developing the founders' personal brands. In this way they are focused on podcasts interviews, speaking at events, and creating out content to attract clients. 2. White Labeling One of the things they did early on is becom

Have you considered creating a course to attract clients? How about having so much business you need to start a waitlist? Creating a course is one way to pour your knowledge and experience into content that gains interest in your agency services. Today's show guest started making courses and offering mentorship which eventually led to a mastermind, where clients and potential clients share ideas and experiences. She's sharing how this positive for her agency led to having a waitlist of clients wanting to work with them. Katie Wight is the founder and CEO of KWContent, a social media marketing agency specializing in growing audiences, engaging consumers, and amplifying clients' impact through their best-in-class content and social media strategy. Recently, Katie decided to offer courses where brands get access to her agency's frameworks and methodologies. Today, she shares the success this move turned out to be for her agency. In this interview, we'll talk about: Toxic leadership that holds back the team. Generating so many leads you can pick and choose clients. Developing your own client community or mastermind. The biggest lie about agency growth. 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. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Toxic Leadership That Holds Back the Team After a great experience in her first job, Katie worked for several months at a company where the toxic work environment fostered by the leadership led to very high turnover rates. At first, she was very excited to work with them. However, she slowly realized they didn't necessarily live their external company values and mission. This was an immediate turnoff for someone who really values company culture. Additionally, she went from having flexible work hours to having to adhere to a strict work schedule. Lack of alignment and a roadmap makes it really hard to delegate tasks. It eventually became an obstacle when Katie was setting up the company's content strategy and growing the brand on social media. Unfortunately, this had been previously handled by the founder, who did not provide proper direction. It was a situation where the company leader was not ready to delegate control of the company's social media. Without this support, she just couldn't do her job properly. As agency owner, most of us aren't prepared to be good leaders from the start. It's not something that comes instinctively to most, however, stepping down from certain tasks is a necessary part of your agency's growth. In cases like this, failing to do so turned the owner into the problem. Why are so many amazing brands terrible places to work? It all comes back to leadership. Following this experience, Katie did the math on how what it would take replace her income. And suddenly, she had started an agency. Generating So Many Leads You Can Pick and Choose Clients Back in 2019, Katie's agency reached $500K in revenue and she started delegating some of her work. She knew she needed to systemize everything so she spent time and resources building that out. If you've gone through this process with your agency, you know that systemizing your creative process is no easy feat but it was just what needed done at that point. By the time the pandemic hit in 2020, she had a very small team and no "essential brands" as clients that could keep functioning during the lockdowns. It was a scary time but it became clear she had to lean into the educational component as a pivot for her agency. After spending so much time systemizing her process, she was ready. It was perfect timing since a lot of smaller brands were trying to figure out how to pivot online. The agency's first course offering was a very comprehensive view of the purpose of social media marketing: what it's meant to do, how to systemize it, and align it to your goals. It helped a lot of clients understand what they needed to focus on and what work they could stop doing. Some of them finished the course and asked for more or even mentorships in specific areas. Yet others wanted to hire the agency for their services. This was game-changing for Katie's agency because it brought a lot of business to the agency. While they used to pay for leads, now they have a waitlist for calls and scan the list of companies to pick and choose who they want to work. Offering Mentorship and a Client Mastermind for Additional Growth The first year of the course went really well and it impacted their sales, conversion rates, and overall business. Everything seemed to be working and attendees were asking for more. They also learned a lot about who they were capable to advise and the kind of work they most enjoyed doing. It was clear, foll

Are you too involved in your agency's operations? Too stuck working IN the business to work ON the business? It's time to fire yourself from some of operations tasks and increase agency valuation. Removing yourself from daily operations is a great way to prepare your agency for an eventual sale and increase its valuation when the time comes. Start by identifying tasks you don't like as well as the ones someone else could do much better. Tom Foster is the founder of Foster Web Marketing, a digital agency that helps doctors and lawyers get in front of their ideal customers. Clients usually come to them to build their websites, but many choose to also have them handle aspects like website optimization and content creation. After transforming to a fully virtual model, it took an acquisition offer for Tom to realize he needed to change some things in order to increase its value. In this interview, we'll discuss: Preparing your agency for a future sale. The different approaches to sale. Firing yourself from your agency tasks. Sponsors and Resources Wix: Today's episode is sponsored by the Wix Partner Program. Being a Wix Partner is ideal for freelancers and digital agencies that design and develop websites for their clients. Check out Wix.com/Partners to learn more and become a member of the community for free. What's your agency's valuation? Get the formula here. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM 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. Are You the One Bringing Down Your Agency's Valuation? Tom originally entered the world of technology to focus on sales and marketing in 1991 after serving a six-year tour in the Marines. Right after the Marines, he went to work in software sales doing cold calls, fax blasts, and selling translation software. He ended up being very successful early on and got into the software business in the floppy disc era. After forming his own agency, Foster Web Marketing, Tom started working on an all-in-one solution SaaS for website building. Creating his own software was a big undertaking, but there weren't as many options back then. The platform, called DSS, continues to be part of his agency's main offering. The platform offers CMS, CRM, lead management system and SEO tool, social media tools. Everything you'll need for DIY digital marketing. Recently, he received an offer to sell his agency. Although it was very flattering the time just wasn't right. However, it helped him realize he needed to fix some things to increase the agency's value to where he knew it could be. The most noticeable problem was that Tom was involved in everything. As the agency's visionary, he knew he needed to fire himself that were not the most effective ways to spend his time. Try a Different Approaches to Grow Agency Sales For Tom, constant communication is the most important aspect of training someone in a new task in your agency. Of course, he also likes to hire people who bring their own experience. He recently hired someone with a lot of experience in a different area of sales. There are different types of sales people and different approaches to the sale: Hunters find prospects and generate interest Trappers close the sale Tom used to exclusively hire trappers but now he wants a more well-rounded sales team. Rather than just continuing what he has done over the years, he's looking for a new or different approach. He understand what he's been doing has gotten the agency where it is. However, in order to grow it's important to hire someone to get them to the next level. Fire Yourself From Agency Operations When he first started the agency, Tom coded, designed, wrote copy -- all the things! Recently, he has been delegating most of those tasks, or as he calls it, firing himself from his many jobs. He trusts his team to do a much better job. It wasn't easy at first, but he started by delegating any task he didn't like and things he knew someone else could do better. He has a great agency team who he trusts and feels comfortable leaving the job to them. You might be the person holding back your agency growth. Consider all the tasks you're doing. Which ones can be delegated? Which don't you like or aren't good at? Lean on your team and delegate outcomes. There are probably tasks you really enjoy doing and don't want to let go of, and that's fine. Tom still jumps into sales and marketing once in a while but acknowledges those can't be his focus while also focusing growing the agency. Creating a Strong Agency Culture While Being Fully Virtual When the pandemic started, Tom's office had a staf

Agency owners make important decisions every day. But, what are the most important decisions to grow your agency? How can you make sure you're making the best ones for the agency? Simply put, the biggest, most important decisions are the ones that positively impact your agency in the long term. Those are the ones made with the future of your business and your employees in mind. Today's repeat guest has run a successful agency for ten years and now shares why he believes agency leaders should focus on making 10 big decisions per year while sharing a few of his in 2022. He also tells us why CEOs should allow themselves to be bored in order to spike creativity. Manish Dudharejia is the founder and president of E2M Solutions, a full-service white-label digital agency. His agency works as a trusted partner with agencies to scale their business behind the scenes. E2M has been serving agencies for 10 years and currently works with about 130 agencies across the U.S. Reflecting on the agency's 10 years in business, he now identifies the changes that would set his business on the path of growth. In this episode, we'll discuss: Why agency leaders should make 10 big decisions in a year. The yearly exercise to assess your past decisions. Why you shouldn't fear boredom. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM How to Make the Big Decisions and Grow Your Agency As an agency CEO, there are always a thousand things to do and many people depend on you to make the right call at any given moment. Manish believes that a CEO's job is to make 10 big decisions every year and tries to live by this. His agency turns ten in 2022 and that adds up to a hundred BIG decisions made over the years. Some of the most important decisions he has made led his agency to where they are right now. To him, being an observer and learning what not to do helped him build a successful agency right from the start. Decision 1: What is the right leadership style for your agency team? Manish started his career working at two companies where he learned how leaders should not treat their employees. He never felt like his well-being was a priority. One of the things that struck him the most was employees being micromanaged and not given room to grow. When it came time to form his agency, he asked himself "what's something I always looked for in an employer?" He also thinks about these lessons when he's making a decision as an employer and thinks about whether a decision would make sense to him if he were an employee. Companies solely focused on growth and profit end up being terrible places to work and have subpar customer service. However, companies that strive to be either employee-focused or client-focused greatly benefit from this approach because they are not putting themselves first. In the end, Manish is building his agency as a combination of these two approaches. An agency with a humanized approach to customer service which prioritizes employees. Decision 2: How do you manage employee satisfaction and retention? Manish says he has no strict budget when it comes to spending on employees. Usually, business owners create budgets at the start of the year, but he prefers to not set a limit and spends as much as necessary. Manish views this type of spending as an investment rather than an expense. His philosophy is "let's do what is needed". Decision 3: How do you show appreciation to your team? He also pays particular attention to payroll by paying top-dollar in the industry and never late paying his 150 employees. He knows how important this is for employees and has greatly helped his agency with retention. Employees feel taken care of and he's very proud of that. Employees are also an important element in his decision-making. If you're about to make a decision, you should ask yourself whether the result benefits everyone at the agency. Remember short-term decisions to save money will not have long-term effects. If it works for everyone, then it will have amazing results in the long run. Early Agency Mistakes: Trying to Do Everything for Everyone Within the first 3 years, his agency was seeing great success and started jumping into trying new technologies like mobile app development. Trying new technologies is not a bad move, of course, but trying everything dilutes your team's focus. Decision 3: What are your agency's strengths? Dabbling in too much diluted Manish's agency's profits, because the revenue generated in some areas was then put into developing these new services. They kept growing, but the profits weren't there. It was the information era and people got easily distracted by every new development. The moment there was new technology available, every agency wanted to be among the first to implement it into their services. Years later, this is still the case many times. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be at the forefront of new industry developments. In fact, many times it is the only way to get ahead of the competit

Are you searching for ways to stand out from your competition? Niching down is one way to do it, but that alone might not necessarily cut it when it comes to getting noticed. One school of thought drilling down even more in a technology or service vertical. And don't underestimate how far genuine honesty and asking the right questions will take you when it comes to earning authority and trust. Adam Pearce and Peter Gardner are the CVO and CEO of Blend Commerce, an e-commerce customer experience agency for Shopify businesses. Adam and Peter believe that Customer Experience (CX) is the cornerstone of both customer acquisition and long-term customer retention. They focus obsessively on improving clients' CX pre-, during-, and post-purchase. They've been through some rocky years as they grew their agency but the real change began once they learned to see each others' strengths and built a community of agency owners willing to help each other. In this interview, we'll discuss: Figuring out your agency's direction and niche. Developing strategic partners and allies instead of competing. 4 tips to build client trust and stand out from the competition. 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 in their process and their large pool of crowd-sourced writers. Tough Lessons About Working with an Agency Business Partner Neither Adam nor Peter were working in e-commerce when they first met through their wives. They both had the idea of starting their own businesses and found the right vehicle when they learned about something called Shopify. Adam was a bit skeptical at first, but he joined Peter and they started their agency journey with Peter in charge of development while Adam handled marketing. Seven years later, they have grown from a team of three to 20 people. They've seen some rocky times in their agency, of course. One thing they wish they would've learned sooner was understanding each other better. Failing to do so sooner was the root of most of their problems. They'd always been clear about what they wanted to achieve with the agency but they both had very different ideas about how to get there. Adam is a very structured thinker and planner while Peter is more of an idea man. They were pretty much opposites in that sense, which is why they clashed. The light bulb moment came once they realized rather than getting upset at each other for doing things differently, they could just work on different parts of the business while aiming for the same goal. Is Choosing a Niche Enough to Help You Stand Out? The answer is: not necessarily. Picking a niche is an important part of your digital agency growth. Many agencies start doing a little bit of everything and eventually specialize in something they're great at. Picking a vertical like WordPress or Shopify usually depends on getting an early start. For instance, just picking Shopify as a niche won't cut it nowadays because the market is saturated. When Adam and Peter first started they were one of maybe two agencies in that niche. Now there are many and as a result, they've had to niche down further. They niched down in the service offering by moving more into the retention side. Now they see themselves as a customer experience agency and focus more on the long-term value of a customer for their clients. They were smart in realizing the necessity to be laser focused, not just in the Shopify space but in picking a service vertical as well. They think they have missed out on work due to a lack of experience in a particular service vertical. However on the other hand, they also win a lot of projects because there are not many agencies that specialize in lifetime value before, during, and after the sale. Why Other Agencies Are Potential Allies Instead of Just Competitors If you feel you have to destroy your competition, you may be missing out on valuable strategic alliances. Adam and Peter have always treated other agencies like friends and partners. It's something we promote and encourage with our Digital Agency Elite Mastermind members as well. Early on and not knowing how to get more clients, they decided to approach bigger more established agencies. They presented themselves as a trustworthy referral partner and asked them to send any leads they didn't want their way. Before long, they actually did start receiving referrals from these bigger agencies. Of course, they also found agencies that were less than willing to engage with them. They even got some competitors trying to stop their progress. Luckily, they had already built good relationships with many agencies so these attempts not only didn't work, but backfired. It's a mentality they still practice now that they are a bigger agency as they try to help smal

How do you leverage relationships to get results for your clients? How can you leverage an acquisition to grow your agency faster? Today's guest has a lot of experience in targeted product sampling and built her agency around taking products directly to consumers. It's an industry where getting the product into the hands of the right influencers will make all the difference and your success will hinge on building the right relationships. She also used acquisition to grow her agency faster and tells us it's not as daunting as it seems. Laurel Rundle is the founder of Aha! Marketing, an agency focused on targeted product sampling. They deliver millions of samples to consumers each year to thousands of locations by putting clients' brands at the center of human interactions already happening. They've worked with companies like Gerber, Gillette, and Dove to drive trial and awareness of their brands. In this episode, we'll discuss: Working with big brands to get their products in consumers' hands. Leveraging partnerships and influencers. Using acquisition to grow your agency faster. 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. 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. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Starting a Digital Agency Based on Consumer Behavior Laurel had worked in retail but was not very aware of product sampling when she went to an interview at Samples Incorporation of America. She got the job and worked there for many years. By the time she left she developed an interest in consumer behavior. She went right to starting Aha! Marketing, which is her digital agency focused on consumer behaviors with the goal of getting as many samples out as efficiently as possible. Her agency works across brands, categories, and audiences which makes the work very interesting. It is a fun business for her and she loves figuring out each campaign depending on the product and where they find the preferred consumers. Every brand campaign is delivered through one of their proprietor networks. Potential consumers aren't approached randomly but rather a part of a carefully selected group. Finding the Right Influencers for a Product Launch If you're searching for restaurants online and a friend recommends one, you'll probably go to the one your friend recommends. That is the same response Laurel and her team tries to recreate by working with influencers. There's nothing quite like trying a product yourself. However, opportunities for this had been limited during the pandemic. Now, two years later, there are many renewed opportunities to get in front of consumers. One of the markets where they've been making a lot of progress is new moms. They typically reach expecting and new moms through OBGYN practices and a network of midwives and doulas. Influencers normally have many questions about the product quality, brand, and logistics of receiving the products. If you are prepared to answer these questions and they like the product, you'll make a very valuable relationship. These influencers are people who normally have a close relationship with new moms so their recommendations are at the top of their considerations. Her agency works with other agencies as well as with brands directly. It involves a lot of detailed logistics to get the brands out there. If they agree to recommend the products, influencers are expected to provide feedback and probably photos. Finally, the number of samples depends on the brand. Some are sent to hundreds of locations and others to thousands of locations. Working With Brands To Do Targeted Product Sampling When it comes to working with the brand, it starts with the type of campaign they're trying to build to determine the best approach for a particular product. Some other basic information includes how many samples they're sending and how many consumers they want to reach. For some campaigns, they rely on intermediaries. For instance, for one campaign they targeted people at gyms and had intermediaries approach the trainers to recommend the product to their clients. They got feedback from both the intermediaries and the consumers. They usually recommend brands add a QR code on the packaging of the sample because it helps drive responses. Furthermore, they often organize photo contests with

Would you like to dive into the NFT world? Agencies are finding ways to use NFTs to connect their clients with their audiences. What's an NFT and how can you get in on it? Today's guest has worked with big companies that recognized their potential as collectibles. He also created his own NFT project with a charitable and environmental focus and now shares his experience. Chris Madden is the cofounder of Matchnode, a digital ad agency with clients that include the Chicago Bulls, Lending Tree, New Balance, and many more. He also started Seabums, an NFT project that focuses on massively improving ocean health that has donated more than $140,000 to ocean charities. Chris had been studying the rise of NFTs and learning how his clients were successfully implementing them into their businesses. Eventually, he decided that diving into the experience was the best way to learn. In this episode, we'll discuss: How to land big brand clients. How to get started in the NFT world. Getting creative with NFTs for clients. Sponsors and Resources Wix: Today's episode is sponsored by the Wix Partner Program. Being a Wix Partner is ideal for freelancers and digital agencies that design and develop websites for their clients. Check out Wix.com/Partners to learn more and become a member of the community for free. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM 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. From Starting Small to Getting Their Dream Client Matchnode started as a small agency with no outside funding and worked with whatever clients they could get. It was mainly a Facebook agency and expanded to Google ads and other paid ad platforms. Chris and his partner slowly built the agency and one day they got the most amazing lead off their website: the Chicago Bulls. By that point, they had done the work to be visible by such a big organization and were ready for the task. Basically, his agency helps the team sell tickets by promoting things like family night or different theme nights. They have a budget for each season and an expected return (about four dollars per every dollar spent). They then meet with the Bulls' creative team to figure out how they can turn their digital content into great paid social media ads that drive returns. There are a lot of moving parts to figure out, but they are continually working to track better and convert better. Overall, it has been a great experience and has led to several other clients in that space. These opportunities are thanks to all the work they did since their first year. Helping Clients Transition from Traditional to Digital Marketing Now the agency works with big established brands who, after a long history of working with traditional marketing, are embracing digital marketing. Their marketing budgets used to focus largely on traditional marketing and now it is more focused on digital. Matchnode helps them make the transition. It's very different from working with digital native companies where the senior executives may understand the importance of having a presence in the digital space. With these types of brands, there is some resistance from executives who don't really understand digital and need to be won over. Because of this, the language they use to talk about metrics, and way that they approach the problems changes. According to Chris, one of the most effective weapons against this resistance is numbers. With digital, the numbers are so clear that clients unfamiliar with this space are often surprised. They may be familiar with more traditional means like a billboard, but when they see how detailed the results for a digital ad are, it's very convincing. Diving into the World of NFTs Chris had been watching the development of the crypto space and wanted to dive deeper. As a digital ad agency working with the clients they worked with, it became clear to him that digital experiences were moving toward NFTs. He decided the only way to really learn was to jump in with a project of his own. He created Seabums, an NFT project with the mission of massively impacting oceans' health. The first collection dropped in December 2021 and so far Chris has been enjoying the experience. Working a lot with Facebook, he and his team witnessed how the digital space was changing. They purchased bitcoin as an agency and prepared for a future in which digital interactions and digital networks would be owned by people instead of centralized systems. With NFTs came the chance to own any digital object. In the broader landscape, NFTs are still limited in terms of their use but Chris believes

How can you boost agency profitability? Do you have a clear plan for being profitable? Some agency owners start out thinking they want to get to $100 million. But, whatever you expect to get at $100M, could you get it at $10M? How about right now? Most likely, what you really want is freedom. Today's guest found out getting there is just a matter of setting up the right processes and having the right team. In tandem, these two elements remove the owner from daily operations and eliminate the need for your input at every step. Chris Rodgers is the founder and CEO of Colorado SEO Pros, a boutique SEO agency that helps market leaders solve complex SEO challenges. His team achieves big results with an exceptional SEO strategy, AI technology, and top talent. He shares his experience in his first few years with his agency, and how he learned the importance of knowing the agency's value and having the right people in the right seats on the bus. In this interview, we'll discuss: Early mistakes when you're building your agency. Why raising prices is a real game changer to increase profitability. Changing your hiring strategy to get the right people on the bus. 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. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Treat Your Agency SEO As Important As Your Clients' SEO Chris started his career working in corporate marketing. He was first attracted to the digital marketing side because of all the data and tracking and the transparency it provided. When he moved to Colorado, he worked as a senior analyst for an agency and, after a failed venture, eventually decided to create his own agency. His agency started in his home office with an intern that showed up to work in his pajamas. (#Agencylife, right? :) He first started contacting businesses ranking on the second page of Google results to tell them why they needed SEO. Their answer: What is SEO? Chris knew he needed to change his approach and went back to work on his own website's SEO. Eventually, his website knocked down the biggest company in Colorado for the #1 spot in Google results and they started getting leads from all over the country. This was a huge step for his agency and got them to a new level where they were actually struggling to keep up with demand. At this point, it was still a two-person operation and both he and his intern were SEO specialists. He still needed to figure out how to build an agency around their SEO services. Common Struggles the Early Years of Running an Agency Lack of knowledge on building a business around his skills led to some early mistakes. Chris and his team started off offering custom solutions as a way to differentiate from their competition. However, they experienced years of setbacks by not having the correct processes in order to scale. By the second and third years, Chris had periods where he really couldn't afford the salary for his team. The swings of the business were especially hard. If they lost a client, all of a sudden he had to skip a paycheck for himself in order to make payroll for everyone else. For a couple of years, every time he felt they were starting to grow, there was a new setback. It seemed like he was never making enough money to pay his employees what they needed to make while also growing his agency. The True Game Changer to Increase Your Agency's Profitability Things started to change once his agency got to $1 Million revenue and beyond. There was just more room to breathe. Chris focused on determining their ideal client. In order to grow the agency's reputation, it needed to work with higher-profile brands on large and complex projects. They searched for brands that recognized the value the agency brought and paid accordingly. However, the true game changer was raising their prices. They doubled their minimum prices and increased their contract length. They were finally getting paid on the value they delivered. In part, they were able to do this because they had a vault of case stories and a reputation for success. In hindsight, Chris realizes that while considering the value the agency delivers what he did in the backend was sabotaging the effort. Always be aware of the value you provide. Don't start out too eager, doing too much for your first big clients. They can leave you in a heartbeat. Instead, start the year by setting clear goals for your agency. Look at the value you deliver. Think about the salary you personally want to make that year. Then ask: What revenue does the agency need in order to make that happen? How many clients do you need in order to get there? How much would you need to charge? Break it down to smaller, attainable goals and then

What story are you telling prospective clients about your agency? With audiences getting savvier about skipping over or blocking traditional marketing, it's important to tell a story that engages your audience. Today's guest specializes in creating such narratives for his clients and offers some tips for agency owners who want to leverage this strategy. Zachary Slingsby is the founder of Human Factor Media, an award-winning branded content team that makes short films for brands. Their creations drive higher brand recall, awareness, and affinity than any other form of modern marketing. In this interview, Zachary explains how his love for stories led to a career creating content that resonates and why your agency's branding should not be an afterthought. In this episode, we'll discuss: How to be better at storytelling. Change the narrative and stand out. Why your branding should not be an afterthought. 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 in their process and their large pool of crowd-sourced writers. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Agencies Must Be Intentional About Marketing Their Brands Zack's love for stories began with his love of film and literature. However, for him the traditional artistic path was filled with a number of frustrations so he decided to change course. Marketing provided the perfect niche to use this skill set in a time when brands are now acting as stages for their audiences. Engaging and entertaining storytelling is now a must for modern companies and a major focus for anyone developing their brand. It's common for agency owners to forget to market their own agency. Many expect to have time to develop their branding later but find that is not really the case. Many agency owners work around the clock and don't have the systems in place to create the freedom or lifestyle they've wanted since the beginning. You'll find that, unless you're very intentional about treating your agency like a client, it won't happen. Most never put the effort they should into their own marketing. Why Storytelling is an Important Marketing Tool Storytelling may be a bit of an overused term by now, but to Zack, it's the best invitation to let your audience know "this is who I am". Good storytelling is an effective and, in some ways, very simple way to get people to join your culture. In essence, commerce is all about lowering the uncertainty about one another so that we can exchange value. This is where true narrative value becomes an asset. It's a superpower that small companies can really tap into. A commerce giant like Amazon can never hope to feel like a local presence in the user's life. By contrast, agency owners can use storytelling to create fans that later become clients. Let your audience know who you are outside of work so they can feel they know the real you. Instead of looking to compete with big brands or big-name agencies, offer something they can't. Why You Must Create a Narrative That Wins Your Audience's Attention Every brand and agency has similar marketing options thrown at them. Because of this, their value propositions look strikingly similar, especially if it's a niche with a lot of competition. Those companies will often end up competing in the same space, using the same marketing, and the same messages. So, why not try to use narrative value to distinguish yourself? With so much competition, the way you speak to people becomes the only value you have. The way brands like Lexus, Patagonia, and Northface are committing to storytelling tells us they've identified something about where the market is. Users want brands to get past the age of commercials. We expect brands to compete for our attention in the same way that our favorite media company does. Jason likes to use the example of Apple -- they don't sell products in their ads. They create a vision and tell a story. The launch of the iPod wasn't just another MP3 player, it was "1,000 songs you can store in your pocket." You Don't Have to be Big on Every Platform So how can you use narrative to your advantage? You know that including a healthy dose of video in your marketing will make a great difference, but it doesn't mean you know how to use it. There are incredible success stories like Gary Vaynerchuk, who built his agency empire on video content. Everything changed once someone on his team started following him around to film his day and make daily vlogs. Of course, this won't necessarily work for everyone; we don't all have adventure-filled days. You can also find successful examples of agencies that have created a presence on YouTube by making their team and office part of their content. In any case, Zack's advice is to choose one platform and focus on growing your audience there. It doesn't have to

Do you dedicate time to work on your agency's marketing? Would you hire a dedicated team to handle your agency's short-term and long-term marketing strategy? Today's guest talks about two common mistakes that sabotage your pipeline and how he built a dedicated marketing team for his agency. Jeff Gapinski is the founder and president of Huemor, a web design agency that focuses on building memorable website experiences. They focus on helping their clients vastly improve your key metrics, and display your brand with pride. After eleven years in this business, Jeff says the biggest change came with building a sustainable pipeline by focusing on his agency's marketing. In this episode, we'll discuss: Building your agency team around your needs. 2 mistakes to avoid in building a sustainable pipeline. Long-term and short-term strategies for marketing your agency. 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. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Building Your Agency Team Around Your Needs Jeff had been freelancing since college when he got a referral for a very good opportunity for e-commerce. Ecommerce was quite new and, although he was a talented designer, he knew he would need help. He put together a team to tackle this challenge and the client was pleased with the results. It was a natural progression from there to forming an actual agency. After finding a cofounder for his agency adventure, Jeff went on to hire several former classmates for key roles. He admittedly built the team around the needs of their original client but quickly figured out this was not sustainable in the long term. Subsequently, the agency went through a couple of iterations as they shaped the team to what it needed to be. For the first few years, he was the sole project manager, which he acknowledges lasted too long. It wasn't until year three they finally hired a dedicated project manager. By contrast, the agency now has six project managers and a director of projects. Things now run much more smoothly. 2 Mistakes that Sabotage Your Agency Sales Pipeline When it comes to building a sustainable pipeline, Jeff believes agency owners make two common mistakes: Falling back on their network. Many fall into the trap of using their immediate network to get business. This usually consists of contacts from past jobs and referrals from existing clients. Ultimately it is a very limited pool. Not marketing the agency. Agencies seldom spend time working on their own brand identity. In fact, they tend to end up with a very generic site and generic marketing you can theoretically stamp any logo on. Work on Your Branding to Differentiate Your Agency Always keep in mind brand identity is paramount for an agency. It is the foundation you build on to get business. However, many agencies use their website primarily to show their clients' work and hence their identities become their clients. Of course, you don't want this because clients will likely change over time. With this in mind, Jeff and his team set out to create a very distinct visual identity. They created a mascot featured on their website which sets them apart from other agencies. They tied their website and mascot to the concept of space, which relates to the idea of breaking boundaries and going to places unknown. These elements tie their brand identity together. According to Jeff, it has been a huge differentiator for the agency and they have gotten positive feedback from prospects and clients. Short and Long-Term Strategies to Build a Sustainable Pipeline You should be thinking about your strategy in terms of long-term and short-term moves. Companies, in general, make the mistake of trying to do all the strategies at once. With this method, nothing really gains traction. A long-term strategy should include any sort of owned media as a cornerstone of your brand. This will take six months or even longer to gain traction. This includes podcast, SEO, and content marketing. Of course, you also need a short-term strategy to bring in results while you set your long-term strategy into motion. This includes things like paid ads, cold LinkedIn outreach, paid social, etc. Both are essential because one is sustainable and built for the long term while the other secures opportunities immediately. For their long-term strategies, Jeff's team writes long-form content targeted at marketing managers, produces long-form articles once a week, and then adapts those for email distribution and posts on LinkedIn and other social channels. They also plan to eventually start a podcast. 4 Key Hires to Build Your Dedicated Marketing Team It's normal to get distracted by client work and as the agency grows

Is it time to replace yourself within your agency? Could you grow faster with by bringing on someone in a president role? What do you expect from someone in this seat? Today's guest was brought into a digital agency to help run the business as the owner stepped back. He now recalls his journey adjusting to the role of president and gives tips on what you should expect when you start looking for someone to replace you. Chintan Shah is the President of KNB Communications, a full-service marketing and PR firm dedicated to healthcare, especially in the area of health technology. He started his career in marketing, product development, and product management, and eventually found himself leading a sales and marketing division for a medical device company. After overseeing an agency's integration into this company, the agency owner actually reached out to him to let him know she was looking to step back from daily operations. She needed someone to help her run the agency. Fortunately, Chintah was looking for a new adventure in his career, so it was perfect timing on both sides. He has now been leading the agency for six years. In this episode, we'll discuss: Where to start the search for new agency leadership. Leveraging experience in sales as the president of an agency. 4 KPI's that define and measure the success of new agency leadership. Sponsors and Resources Wix: Today's episode is sponsored by the Wix Partner Program. Being a Wix Partner is ideal for freelancers and digital agencies that design and develop websites for their clients. Check out Wix.com/Partners to learn more and become a member of the community for free. Related article: https://jasonswenk.com/digital-agency-ceo/ Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Filling a Key Agency Role Starts With Your Personal Network The way this agency owner reached out to Chintah is a perfect example of how you should start with your personal network. They had worked together for three years previously, so it was natural to share the need to hire and ask for candidate referrals. When you're looking for someone to replace you, you may not want to start by openly broadcasting your intentions. For instance, you can start by reaching out to former clients and contacts within your network to let them know that you're looking for someone. It's important to understand the criteria of what you're looking for. What do you want that person to do? Make a list to identify some of the top criteria, which will depend on your priorities. You may be looking for experience or someone who brings something new to take your agency to the next level. Do More Sales Equal Faster Agency Growth? Chintan believes there are a lot of similarities between the sales side and the marketing side of a business. Sales is part of the few key components that will help grow your agency. Do more sales fix a growth problem? As a former salesperson, Chintan believes this is not the case at all. Of course, it is part of overall agency success, but you have to have scalable processes and tools, and technology to help you grow. As he started this new phase of his career, he leveraged his experience as he learned other parts of the business. Learning about the agency's growth. Bringing in new business. Defining core capabilities. Looking for new growth areas. He also immersed himself in the PR aspect of the agency, an area where he really leaned on his team's expertise and willingness to teach him. At one point, he thought he needed to have a key role in all aspects of the business. However, he learned that having confidence combined with the right processes is the key to letting go and trusting the team. Hiring an Outsider to Run Your Digital Agency Chintah's advantage when it came to fitting in with his team was that many of them already knew him. Furthermore, at the time he joined the agency, the team had shifted after a few key players left. The timing was ideal for an outsider to come in and run the agency without causing unnecessary friction. Some things changed in the hierarchy as their relationship changed from working as a client to working in the company. It was Chintan to establish a new type of relationship with the team. Looking back on the process, he admits he could have been more aggressive in getting new clients. When he came in and started assessing the state of the agency, he took a look at their clients. He worked on really defining the agency's capabilities and growth potential. However, a lot of their digital marketing services needed improvement. In hindsight, he should have leaned into that faster to secure new agency business and grow a little bit faster. 4 KPI's that Will Help You Define Success Running an Agency Most agency owners should not be in a position of managing the full team. As you grow your agency, you'll need to delegate several things while you focus on strategy. One of those delegations is management (and there are only 5 roles of an agency CE

Are you tired of waiting for clients to provide content? Is your agency thinking of offering content creation as a service? The demand for content is on the rise and research shows content creation is profitable for agencies. However, many agencies are not using content creation to its full potential because they don't understand the value of content marketing in 2022. Ryan Sargent is the Director of Content Marketing at Verblio, the world's friendliest content creation platform. Verblio builds content marketing for other marketers at scale by pairing specialized, niche writers with advertising agencies and marketing professionals. The team at Verblio are the experts at content creation and he's sharing secrets on ways agencies can make better use offering content creation and strategy for their clients. In this episode, we'll discuss: 5 ways agencies use content marketing in 2022 The disconnect between agency and in-house client content strategy. Why is it harder for your content to rank? 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 in their process and their large pool of crowd-sourced writers. 5 Ways Agencies Use Content Marketing in 2022 To continually keep the pulse on how audiences consume content, Verblio does an annual 'State of Digital Content' survey gathering information from the market. In its third edition, received data from 450+ marketers with a focus on digital agencies. The results were segmented based on the size of the agency. They got some fascinating takeaways from it, including: Content creation is profitable: At least 75% of participants expressed that content is very profitable at their agencies. This presents a really clear sign that content is something people pay attention to and that agencies will continue to offer. Creating content for your clients not only increases productivity (you're not waiting for them to provide it), it also increases profitability. Win-win! It's all or nothing: Agencies are either "all in" on content or not; and the numbers show it. According to the results, bigger agencies recognize the power of content. They report that 75% of their revenue comes from content creation. By contrast, smaller agencies reported Content creation is on the rise: Increasing from the past, more agencies are producing 10 or more pieces of content per client. In past surveys, most agencies reported producing 5 pieces of content per client. The demand is there -- is your agency helping service the demand? Core content is still king: Agencies are still focused on the bread and butter of core content, like blog posts and landing pages. Most are not diversifying in other forms like podcasts, for instance, which are far more time-consuming. Content marketing is vast, but core content is still king (even in a changing economy). In-house content creation: Most agencies surveyed produce content in-house. When they outsource content creation, they usually do so through freelancers. Disconnects Between Agency Content vs Client Content One thing Ryan finds particularly interesting is that in-house marketers look at conversion stats as a measure of success. Meanwhile, agencies are more likely to look at engagement stats. If agencies look more at conversion stats they would find this resonates more with clients because that's what the in-house teams are focusing on. Also, in-house teams are far less likely to find content refreshes compelling. Agencies see the value of refreshing existing content and consider it low-hanging fruit. In-house client teams don't see value in refreshes and therefore don't prioritize it. The roles reverse when it comes to ebooks and white papers, which in-house marketing teams see as powerful tools, but agencies don't focus as much on. Is it Getting Harder to Create Successful Content? A generalized feeling is that it's getting harder to create successful content. So if you feel like it's harder to rank or get social engagement, you're right! Demand for content is growing. However, the increase in demand is also the reason it's getting harder to see those conversions. Readers are getting pickier and there's a lot of mediocre content out there. We've entered an age of content in which the audience knows to ignore the banner ad. Because of this, your content must accurately show intent and provide value. A Happy Medium Between Education and Entertainment Content What is the right balance between content that informs and educates versus content that entertains? Getting it right depends on how well you know your audience and understand the purpose of the content. For example, if you're a B2B company very focused on education and all of the sudden decide to create an entertaining ad, you shouldn't be surprised if

Do you offer too many agency services? Are you trying to be a jack-of-all-trades, making you the master of none? Does your broad service offering dilute your team's focus? Today's guest is an e-commerce expert whose agency works exclusively with one e-commerce platform he believes is better than the rest. In this interview, he talks about what's next in e-commerce and what you should look to improve in your website. Guillaume Le Tual is the Founder and CEO of MageMontreal, an agency committed to building powerful e-commerce websites to increase clients' sales. They work exclusively with the Magento platform. Why? According to Guillaume, the agency tried working with other platforms and found Magento is the best open source e-commerce platform on the market. In this episode, we'll discuss: Narrowing your agency's service offering. Hiring for culture fit and values. Niching down to avoid diluting your team's focus. 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. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM 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. Narrowing Your Service Offering and Focusing on a Horizontal Niche Guillaume started his career as a visual artist building background art for clients like The National Bank of Canada and Warner Bros. He gained experience in web design, digital marketing, and e-commerce and eventually decided to start his agency, MageMontreal. According to Guillaume, he and his team tried dozens of other e-commerce platforms before settling on working exclusively as a Magento agency. They offer complete e-commerce website design and development, maintenance, and integration of Magento with third-party software. Now, they are one of very few Magento-certified agencies in Canada and can see the best decision for their business was focusing on one very specific niche and cutting down on their service offering to be the very best at just one. Remember, a niche can be a specific market (vertical niche) or a specific skillset (horizontal niche). What's Next in E-Commerce? Guillaume says we're still a long way from truly developing AI to what we've seen in movies. Most companies are not at a point where they are truly using AI. However, it is used in for things like product recommendations. Using Adobe Sensei, for example, users can get product recommendations based on shopper behavior, popular trends, and product similarity. If a suggestion does not convert into a sale, next time it will make a different suggestion, which indicates that the machine is learning. That would be the low-hanging fruit available right now. It can also be used to improve the search bar, for example, to get more relevant search results. It's really a step-by-step process to integrate this technology into your company. It requires prior steps like cleaning up your data and standardizing your processes to be able to implement this. After implementing marketing automation at every step of your email process and onboarding process, the next level would be using AI to help you run that. There's also some interesting work done with progressive web apps (PWA). Basically, this is a hybrid between a native app and a website so you get the benefits of both. So even though it's a website, in terms of maintenance you don't have to constantly download the latest version of the app. It's a website, so you always have the latest content. It also has some limited offline capabilities. And it includes push notifications for marketing like you would have with a native app. Hiring For Values and Resourcefulness When it comes to his hiring process, Guillaume prioritizes the agency's values. He recommends not overcomplicating it and having a list of three or four things the candidates must comply with. "Do not compromise when it comes to your values," he advises. Whether it's sales or HR, if the candidate does not meet these requirements, they're not the right fit for your agency. Also, take your time with the process if you have to because rushing leads to mistakes. Above all, he prioritizes a strong work ethic and desire to provide the best possible service. He asks candidates to provide examples of times they feel they provided excellent customer service. He also looks for resourcefulness. Sometimes it can be an issue when an employee

Are you having a hard time finding the right candidates to fill roles on your team? Does your hiring process take culture fit into account? A solid hiring process is key to agency growth. Today's guest has worn many hats in her career in the agency world and has learned to always keep the recruitment pipeline full at all times. How can you manage to do this? It's a combination of various steps. Amy Pyles is the president of Saxum, an integrated digital agency that works with brands balancing purpose with profit. In her role overseeing the inner workings of the agency, Amy relies on her leadership team to create the type of culture where they set up people for success and keep the agency steering towards its goals. In this interview, we'll discuss: Building agency culture and constantly recruiting. Keep your recruitment pipeline full at all times. How to grow your agency team talent. 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. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Cultivating an Agency President from Within Amy is not the owner of Saxum but does operate the business. Her agency career started right after finishing her master's degree. She started as employee number 25 at an agency that was just starting its growth journey. It was 2008 and Twitter had just come out, Apple was about to launch the new iPod, Facebook was just opening up to work as a marketing platform for brands, and everybody was building custom websites and apps. With so much happening, it was definitively the right place and right time to enter the digital marketing space. She left the agency 8 years later as a business with 250 employees, offices across the country, and working with brands like Walmart. She started working with Saxum right away to lead their digital practice. Over the years, she led some departments, was promoted to Chief Operating Officer, and now has the role of President. Creating Agency Culture That Supports Constant Recruiting Many agencies have a hard time bringing in talent and building up the team to keep up with demand. Amy finds one of the most important elements when recruiting is having a clear purpose for your agency. Being able to connect with purpose on the talent side has been an important piece of how they recruit. Her team leverages culture as a key operational element in growing the agency. Thanks to their culture partner, Giant Worldwide, they also have a framework to manage culture and talent development. And, they take several steps to ensure their talent pipeline is always full. Remember: You should always be hiring! Sometimes agency owners will say they're having a hard time finding talent but if you go to their website there's for recruiting. This should be clear as soon as a user enters your website that you are hiring. Set up the right systems to create your recruitment pipeline and be consistent in keeping it active. At Amy's agency, everyone knows that "what gets measured, gets managed". As you focus on operations, think about what you're measuring (and don't measure too much!). That's what will get managed. It's been pivotal in the way her team builds competency and builds the discipline needed in operations. 6 Steps to Keep Your Recruitment Pipeline Full at All Times At her agency, senior leaders are responsible for filling the pipeline for their departments. Basically, they should always have in mind at least two positions they should fill next and ensure these steps are covered: Developing relationships: Each team leader should think about where they could be developing relationships with possible recruits. This could mean keeping an eye on other agencies in case they want to "poach". LinkedIn: Their LinkedIn is always running and Amy says they get great input from there. Paid ads: A part of any serious recruiting effort. Referrals: This is a piece people tend to lose sight of. However, the best source of freelance talent and full-time talent is from existing employees. So they try to incentivize that and hire from within their network. Internship program: They have a robust intern program that has worked great for them. Ideally, they'll have up to ten interns to grads working at the agency at any given time. Keep in mind that bringing in interns to your agency won't save you any time. In fact, it is a long-term strategy and requires a lot of time and planning to do it well. Quarterly meeting: Finally, they have a quarterly meeting where every department head goes through the pipeline. As to the question of hiring junior or more experienced staff, her agency does prefer to hire junior staff and train them. Of course, you will need to hire more experienced talent sooner or later

Are you an accidental agency owner trying to grow fast? Rapid agency growth isn't necessarily the best way to grow. When you're going through the ups and downs you want to get to the other side quickly. But slow and steady wins the race and for one agency, hitting the one million dollar mark changed everything. He went from running a "mom and pop shop" to growing a 10-person agency. He shares how he recovered from rapid growth by getting focused and his lessons on the importance of branding while growing his agency. Robert Giovanni is the CEO and co-founder of IronPlane, an agency dedicated to designing, building, and optimizing exceptional eCommerce experiences. Robert says he's made mistakes and learned a lot in the process of growing his agency. He experienced the awkward stage of an agency's growth of being in no man's land. He now offers a perspective on how to get your agency past that awkward growth stage with lessons he's learned over the years. In this episode, we'll discuss: Getting over $1 million in revenue. Choosing ideal clients and firing ones that aren't. Getting comfortable hiring in advance of need. Branding your agency and your team. 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. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Discovering the Opportunities in eCommerce Robert discovered opportunities in selling online back in 1988 when he sold a chess set. He built a website to sell this set purchased in Russia and sold it for around $8,000. He quickly started to buy and sell products online, which eventually led to requests to build websites for other people's product sales. And with that, an accidental agency was born. Step by step they started to build a relationship with clients, many of which he retained for several years. Before he knew it, he was operating a digital agency that started to grow. Robert's perspective always focuses on helping clients figure out what they wanted for their business (drive revenue, improve their bottom line.) By 2012, he knew it was time to get serious with its branding to further it's his agency's growth. Getting Over the Million Dollar Mark According to Robert, reaching that milestone took about three to four years. In the beginning, he had about two big clients and, as he describes it, he was a "glorified consultant." He hired another person to help him with daily tasks when the agency was near one million and felt content. This was until one of his clients decided to end their contract abruptly. It was a big blow for the agency and Robert knew in order to prevent something similar from ever happening again he needed to make things more official. He worked on defining the agency's purpose and branding. He hired more people and really prioritized getting out of operations so the agency was not a one-man show. It took another three years, but after these changes, the agency finally got past one million. Choosing Your Ideal Clients and Firing Clients That Don't Fit After getting past the point of being a "mom and pop" agency with only 2-3 big clients, there was still much to learn. At the start, the agency was taking any client that came their way. They were trying to grow and it seemed foolish to turn away any client at that point. This is a normal part of any agency's growth process. You feel afraid of turning down any business opportunity; even if you know a client is not a good fit. However, it's important to recognize the importance of choosing clients that are a good fit for your agency so you can wasting time on the ones that aren't. For Robert, it was when the agency had grown to about 10 employees. He was no longer part of every sales call and had a number of good clients. There was a particular client that was never a good fit and the team knew it from day one. However, it was a big project and they signed the contract anyway. What proceeded was weeks of Saturday calls and nightmare meetings until Robert decided to end the relationship. It was the first client he had to fire and it turned out to be the point where he sat down with his team to talk about being pickier with potential clients. From this moment on, they worked to better define the agency's values and make sure they were clearly stated on their website. He knew his agency could bring tremendous value to any client. But the client's values needed to match the agency's or they just wouldn't be a good culture fit. Failing to define these values will leave you directionless in your agency journey. Rapid Agency Growth and Losing the Human Touch In early 2020, Robert felt the agency was really hitting it when it came to marketing and bringing in new clients. However, the team was faili

What are your goals for agency growth? Would you like to grow your agency to 7- or 8-figures? That is exactly what this agency owner did when he built a highly successful $50 million-dollar agency with a team of 400 people. He did it by staying ahead of the curve with technology and building leaders who evolve with the growing agency. Robert Henderson is the co-founder and CEO of JumpCrew, an agency that generates demand for 2B2 customers by building a qualified pipeline through fully dedicated sales teams. Robert has built a successful agency by growing in the direction of the market, staying ahead of the curve, and building strong leadership. In this episode, we'll discuss: The future of marketing in the metaverse. Staying ahead of the curve with technology. Building a leadership that evolves with your agency. 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. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Building a $50 Million Dollar Agency Many agency owners starting out are interested in "tricks" to get ahead and grow their agency as fast as possible. They seem so interested in growth they don't stop to think about the value they should be providing. When he started out, Robert saw many businesses shied away from learning how to acquire new clients. Communicating value is something he really leans into with each new client. He doesn't sell a one-size-fits-all solution because it's specific enough or aligned with what the client needs. Instead, his team focuses on how to deliver value in a way that aligns with the client's goals. Also, they are self-aware enough to turn away clients when they feel that they can't deliver this value. Whatever the reason, they try to be really candid about good and bad fits. The most important piece of building a successful agency is aligning with the right people. Every business is ultimately about people and when you create an environment where each team member is an expert in their area you don't need to know everything. Partnering with people who really know about their particular area will you set your agency up for success. The secret is having people that are really good at executing what they know. The Effect of New Technologies and the Metaverse on the Future of Marketing Robert and his team learned the power of content marketing while automating content for local businesses. They learned what the market needed by being in the mix. They grew in that direction by adding new products and services based on the feedback from clients. Robert is a believer in new and emerging tech tools and giving platforms the credit they deserve as they develop. Sometimes we can't imagine the progress a new technology will represent in our particular space. For instance, 10 years ago no one was interested in being a guest on a podcast and now they have become a very popular marketing vehicle. Looking ahead, Robert believes in ten years from now the meetings we're having on video today will all happen on the metaverse. People from all over the world will gather in a space that feels very realistic. The adoption of mediums like the metaverse will come with the technology and infrastructures to support them. At this point, adopting this new technology will maybe shape the way the supporting technologies start to develop. He believes the possibilities are endless as we still can't imagine the many ways that we'll use it. The development of paid search started with the rate of adoption of social media platforms. Similarly, the development of the metaverse as the possible future of paid ads will depend on how people start to adopt this new technology. These tools are bound to change the way agencies work and advertise and, of course, being the first to adopt them successfully would be a great advantage. We need to continue to study and educate ourselves to be able to see where it is heading. Staying Ahead of the Curve with Technology Staying ahead of the curve is mostly about educating yourself and trying to understand what the opportunities look like to capitalize on them as they come. We're in a learning phase for technologies like the metaverse. We know it will be a part of the future but we don't know exactly how that will look. Right now it's about trying to create more connectivity between your team in what is set to be a more sophisticated environment. Robert believes this is the low-hanging fruit available right now for all until we can figure out how to get our partners and clients into it. However, the technology is still in the very early stages. For instance, no one wants to work 6 to 7 hours with the VR goggles on. There's still a long way to go before it is adapted to everyd

Would you like to attract more clients with outbound sales? Do you need to build a successful sales team that gets results? Today's guest is a sales expert who helps agency owners get out of sales and build a successful sales team. It's all about building consistency and using your network to create relationships that will help you grow your agency. Dan Englander is the CEO and founder of Sales Schema, a B2B agency that secures ideal prospect relationships. His team goes out to the market and helps clients get meetings and focus on new business. Earlier in his career, he led new business for a creative services company and helped them get to seven figures. After starting his agency in 2014, he has learned a lot about how companies go after new business. More recently, he shares his perspective on sales and how to improve at it in his new book, Relationship Sales at Scale. In this episode, we'll discuss: How agencies can do better at outbound sales. Using your network to get to your ideal clients. What works when it comes to finding and training salespeople. 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. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM When is the Right Time to Transition Out of Sales? Transitioning out of sales requires two main steps, according to Dan: who's doing what and developing consistencies in the sales process. We all fall into the trap of dedicating too much time and energy to clients and none to your agency. Once you stop focusing on sales you'll be on another level to focus on growing your agency. If you're an agency owner and the salesperson, think about spending half your time on sales. Eventually, get yourself to the point where you can just focus on the top of the funnel and have someone help set meetings. Clear the other half of your time to focus on your agency. Do this with the mindset of gradually getting out of sales altogether. Agency owners commonly try to hang on to sales because they feel clients only want to talk to them. That's a misconception, considering how many owners have managed to grow their agencies to massive proportions by getting out of sales. It's not the easiest thing to do, but once you have a repeatable sales process it becomes easier to get someone else in that seat. Where do some agency owners go wrong with this transition? They jump to it too early before figuring out the repeatable process. They just throw a salesperson into it the mix and expect them to figure it out. That sets them up for failure and, once they do, it is easy to convince yourself that you're the only one that can handle sales successfully. How to Create a Repeatable Sales Process Agency owners struggle, sometimes for years, to find the right salesperson and this has a lot to do with having the right systems in place. Dan likes to break it down into a process where you start at the very top of the funnel. Think about how you're getting meetings. Break down your conversion process from the first appointment to the proposal. Follow that with breaking down the process from proposal to close. Of course, this may vary depending on how complex your sales process is -- documenting everything is key in order to set up your salesperson for success. When it comes to how to get meetings, Dan and his team find outbound is a really good way to do it. Whatever you're selling it stands to reason that your market will be relatively small. Your target audience is not everyone in the world so you don't have to build a massive inbound funnel. There are really a finite number of relationships you can build in your area. With outbound, you can start building those relationships before the client actually has a need. Then you are top of mind when the need is there. Building Relationships With Outbound Sales One of the things Dan's agency does for clients is referral-driven campaigns where they make a list of ideal clients and identify who could introduce them to those clients. Basically, they identify friends of friends, narrow them down to contacts in the first degree and ask for an introduction to someone in their network. A lot of people have no problem making that connection once you're upfront about what you want. They usually start with an accounts-based list of thousands of companies. Instead of trying to find the golden company that you may want to work with but have no meaningful connection to, find a number of companies you're actually connected with. The connection you make as a result might not get you a campaign that lasts very long, but it will help you get that level of trust in order to get you a referral. What Works When it Comes to Finding Salespeople? This is something Dan still

Have you clearly identified your place in the market? Have you selected a core leadership team to help you take the agency to the next level? Do you unknowingly have a principle-agent problem? After 10 years in the business, one successful agency owner shares the steps he followed to skyrocket growth. He covers everything from the importance of having a top-notch leadership team to communicating the goals and vision and solving the principal-agent problem. 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. In their growth process, Manish has had to learn to manage big teams of over 100 people, as well as create a culture that prioritizes employees and identifies leaders within the organization. In this episode, we'll discuss: Finding your agency's place in the market Tips for managing a large team of over 100 employees. Identifying the principle-agent problem and how to solve it. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Finding Your Agency's Unique Proposition and Providing Value According to Manish, understanding his agency's unique sales proposition was a key factor in its success. He was clear early on that his core expertise was more about sales, branding, and customer service. He knew that is what he needed to offer clients in order to provide value. And, he never stopped learning about leadership. Like most agency owners, Manish didn't know anything about hiring and training a team when he first started. Now he manages a team of nearly 150 people. Another key aspect of E2M's growth was understanding what the market needed and how to serve those needs. Manish understood India is one of the countries with the highest number of English-speaking young people. This makes it a great place to outsource services. The resources and opportunities were there to create a company very competitive in this space. It just took having great systems in place and a really professional, prepared team. It's about having the self-awareness to identify how you fit into the industry. What are your strengths? How does your expertise fit what clients need from you? Manish saw a gap in the agency space where agency owners didn't have time to invest in hiring and training a team. That's where his team comes in to white label when agencies need them most. Finding and Managing Your Core Leadership Team A lot of agency owners struggle with operations and growing a team as the agency scales and needs to expand its staff. They may go from having a team of five to a team of 20 and feel overwhelmed. Manish now manages a team of nearly 150 and his management philosophy is to have a core leadership team. He usually works closely with his 6-7 leaders and makes sure they know who is responsible for what. It's important your team leaders understand and communicate the agency's culture, vision, and goals. Failing to do this leads to a disconnect between the employees and the overall agency's goals. Where can you find top talent to lead and manage your agency team? Manish believes in building leaders within the company rather than hiring outside talent. He believes there is always someone out there who would love to do a job you hate doing. Instead of holding on to tasks you don't like for fear no one else can do it, find someone you trust that can take it over. He is also against micromanaging and believes that if you chose someone to be part of your leadership team is because they've proven themselves and you trust their judgment. The Principal-Agent Problem and Why You Need to Solve it Manish recently learned about the theory of the principle-agent problem. Fortunately, he had been taking the right steps to face it. It is the root of most problems related to employee and client dissatisfaction. It is basically a conflict between the priorities of a person you've chosen to represent you vs. the priorities of the client. The root begins when the incentives of the agent and the principal do not match. Manish uses the example of Uber and how their main customer dissatisfaction problem begins when the incentives for the principle (the client) – getting to their destination and enjoying a good service – do not align with the incentives of the agents (the drivers) – completing as many rides per day as possible. As an agency owner, you are essentially hiring people to provide a service that satisfies the clients' needs. However, you should always make sure to put the right incentives in place so those employees are also satisfied. Remember your employees are your most valuable asset, so if they're not happy something definitely must change. 3-Step Framework to Getting the Right People in the Right Seats Once he found his place in the market, Manish focused on having the right people

How can you propel agency growth while removing yourself from operations? How can you manage a fully remote team while keeping an active, fun work culture? What is it like to work with big tech brands? Today's guest saw a huge jump in her agency's growth during the pandemic and discovered the benefits of growing a remote team. Now she is figuring out what an agency office like looks like for her team in a post-pandemic world. Lisa Larson-Kelley is the founder and CEO of Quantious, a premier marketing agency specializing in emerging technology. She's grown the agency from a 2 person operation to a team of over 15 people working with the biggest names in tech, like Meta (formerly Facebook) and Shopify to name a couple. Her agency growth started to really take off just as the pandemic hit and she found many benefits in working remotely. In this episode, we'll discuss: Creating an agency that becomes a trusted partner for big brand clients. The benefits and opportunities of working remotely. The most important decision for massive agency growth. 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. 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. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Building an Agency as a Trusted Advisor in the Tech Sector Lisa started her career in design back when working in tech didn't seem like an option. She was passionate about tech and coding and eventually became part of a group of developers that worked at Flash Media. Joining Flash was the perfect jumping point to get back into coding and on the development side. Her work in app development opened the door to attend conferences as an expert and continue to learn about tech. For years she was immersed in emerging technologies, first as a developer herself, and then as a trainer and marketer. As a marketer, she knows how to tell complicated stories in a simple manner and built a team of like-minded people. Her agency has become a trusted partner working with the biggest names in tech like Meta and Shopify. Working as a secret weapon for these companies, they work on things like back-office operations and augmented reality experiences. With Meta, they worked on ways to show the many possibilities of using their collaboration software for businesses, Workplace, which they had struggled to market. Typically, her agency is called to assist a company that is adjusting to its growth process. They need support from an experienced team that can help them with onboarding, documentation, and processes. Their mission is to make their client look good and don't really feel a need to have the spotlight. Finding Success in a Transition to a Fully Remote Team Lisa was just thinking about investing in a bigger space to accommodate new team members when the pandemic started and she was forced to make the drastic shift to going fully remote. They were about 10% remote before, with some of the team working from home at least once a week. However, it was still a big adjustment to make overnight. We all remember how uncertain those first few weeks of the pandemic felt and the struggle to get used to the new reality. Thankfully, they got settled into the new situation quickly and Lisa realized it was actually going really well. The work didn't stop for her agency, as more and more companies were interested in the tech they needed to go fully remote. The work grew and so she needed to hire more talent. She realized she wasn't necessarily limited to hiring in New York area any longer and started recruiting all over the US. It was a shift that really enriched the quality of their work as an agency. Instead of investing in a bigger office space, she figured out how to manage people across different states. Now they focus on keeping everyone connected with daily meetings, Slack, and some creative solutions like work games. They have "Teaser Tuesdays", where everyone competes in games like Wordle as a way to connect and have fun. All in all, they make sure to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries, invest in professional development, and show their appreciation to keep the team motivated and creative. What is the Future of Remote Working? Lisa sees a lot of push and pull over staying remote or going back to the office in the tech world. On one hand, a home office is now ve

Would you like to get out of your agency's daily operations? Do you want more time to work on the business rather than in it? Have you set up boundaries and the right systems to make that happen? Have you made the key hires to help you do it smoothly? One agency owner found a way to force herself to exit from day-to-day operations in order to create more work-life balance. Jessie Healy is the founder and CEO of Webtopia, a digital agency focused on e-commerce growth for sustainable and purpose-driven product brands. She started to build her agency around her freelance business and quickly grew it into a successful remote agency. However, she found herself basically chained to her desk and made a few key decisions to correct that. In this episode, we'll discuss: How your values can help you select a niche. Force your own exit from day-to-day operations. A hiring system that eliminates 90% of bad matches. 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. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Transitioning from Freelancer to Agency Owner Jessie was 7½ months pregnant when she lost her job and turned to freelancing. It's something she was already considering but had delayed because she was unsure how to start. She wondered: How do freelancers get business? Where do they find clients? Thankfully, it was not as difficult as she thought. She posted her skillset on a forum and started getting work right away. Jessie started her agency as a freelancer and first-time mom who wanted a flexible schedule. As she grew her business, she first hired other female freelancers looking for the same type of flexibility. However, the workload increased and she found herself in management hell. She was chasing people down to make deadlines and attend meetings. In the end, she realized if she wanted any sort of work-life balance and growth for her agency she needed an in-house team. They continued to be a fully remote agency but as employees now, every team member is committed to the agency and committed to the process. She no longer had to chase after her team because they were online when she needed them to be. It was a key turning point for her agency. Building an Agency as a Trusted Partner For Clients As the amount of work grew, Jessie realized there was an opportunity to fill a gap in the market. She had worked on the client side and found that, even with a good budget and hiring experienced agencies, she could not make them show up to calls. She felt there was a gap in the market for agencies that would work as a partner for clients. So from the get-go, her agency started to work with small e-commerce companies as their marketing department. They focused on the creative side of storytelling as well as the science of media buying. According to Jessie, most agencies were focusing just on the media buying aspect but her agency stood out for focusing on both. They also focused on strategy, which she felt from her experience on the client side that agencies were really lacking. How Your Personal Values Can Help You Niche Down Jessie admits that in the very beginning she was willing to do any sort of agency work for £50/hour. She would even take on menial or boring tasks like paid search. That is until she learned about the benefits of niching down. Ecommerce became the obvious choice for her, since she had always been focused on consumer marketing. Additionally, sustainability has always been the most important value for her so she brought that to her agency work. When you have strong values for your agency, eventually you'll find yourself working with brands that share those same values. As time went on, she noticed they were working with a lot of female founders and a lot of sustainable brands. Jessie figured they were repelling brands that did not share those values and attracting the ones who did. She took to LinkedIn and started posting about sustainability. Eventually, she started working with charities and participating in tree planting activities and slowly built a clientele that resonates with her values. Now the agency is approached more and more by sustainable brands that share her passion. As When you find your agency's unique identifiers, implement the change you want to see in your agency and you'll attract people with the same values. 4 Key Agency Hires to Exit Yourself From Daily Agency Operations When she moved to New Zealand, it put a lot of distance and time difference between Jessie, the team, and clients. She spent a year planning the move during a time when she felt she was constantly chained to her desk. She felts she was always either answering emails or jumping into meetings. Moving gave her som

When was the last time you raised your prices? Do you know your profitability on each of your clients? If you haven't raised your prices for legacy clients in a while, you're probably losing thousands of dollars of revenue. Fear of increasing prices is a very common issue for agency owners. However, overcoming that fear might be easier than you think once you get out of your own head. As Agency Scale Specialist on our team, Darby Copenhaver talks with hundreds of agency owners and finds that one of the most common fears is raising prices. It is a hard conversation that you should have with yourself and your clients. If you are transparent and communicate your value it will never come as a surprise. In this episode, we'll discuss: Agency owners' fears around raising their prices. Understanding and communicating your agency's value. Good systems to raise your prices and be more profitable. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM 2 Most Common Fears Around Raising Agency Prices Darby spends a lot of time helping agency owners get to the next level and says many of them are scared to raise their prices. For the most part, they seem to be fine with raising prices for new clients but stop themselves from increasing for existing clients. They will typically justify the decision by saying those clients helped them get to where they are now. However, that is like not taking credit for all the work you've done to grow the agency. Loyalty to Legacy Clients - As an agency owner, you may feel a certain sense of loyalty to your oldest clients. They've probably been with the agency for years and it's logical that you want to continue that relationship. You may also believe in order to raise prices, you need to provide additional value. However, if you've been working with a client for five years you should consider that you are most likely much better at what you do after five years of experience. Those clients are now getting a better quality of services and strategy for what they were paying five years ago. This is not how it works in any other industry. Balancing Capacity and Pricing - Another big challenge agencies face is bandwidth. They find it hard to keep up with fulfillment and delivery as the agency grows. By not raising your prices, you're handcuffing yourself to a client at a discounted rate. Meanwhile, you're bringing in new clients at higher prices. It will take you the same amount of time, effort, and energy to complete the tasks for the legacy clients as for a new client. Basically, you won't have the time and bandwidth to bring on more new clients paying the right price. In this sense, your loyalty is getting in the way of your growth. Understand and Communicate Your Agency's Value Darby usually asks agency owners if they are effectively measuring and communicating client success frequently enough. It is commonly a question that takes agency owners a few minutes to answer and very few have a good answer. Communicating client success can be a challenge depending on the type of agency. To start, focus on asking the right questions. You should really know what the client cares about from your onboarding process. This way, you can know what to measure for success. If you're doing that part correctly and getting it right from the beginning then you're setting yourself up for success. You'll be able to relate back to them the results that you're getting in a matter that they know, understand, and care about. Communicating the value you're providing to clients is also crucial when it comes to the team. Your team should understand the value of their work for each client and why you charge what you charge. If you're not communicating value efficiently to your team then you're probably not communicating it to your client either. 3 Good Systems For Raising Agency Prices Have a healthy sales pipeline. You have to have predictability so you can be selective. If you're raising prices for new clients coming in, you should have new opportunities lining up right behind them in case you need to rethink your pricing strategy. At the end of the day, it's an experiment, so make sure you have a plethora of opportunities so you're not just relying on the few you have in front of you. Include price as part of your success conversations. Part of the success conversations you should be having with clients needs to be laying the ground for upcoming price increases. Talk about what you're investing in new technology, talent, training, etc. In short, all the things the "behind the scenes" things they don't see but are contributing toward getting them more effective results. Start with the right mindset and expectations. Be prepared to lose clients as a trade off for more profitable ones. Expect that you may lose a few legacy clients and set the new pricing in a way that you'll be OK when that happens. Digital Agency Elite Mastermind members have said after getting the courage to double their prices and preparin

Has your agency struggled through tough times? Could you pivot quickly if necessary? Back in 2020 many businesses, including digital agencies, were scrambling to adapt during the covid pandemic. Today's guest got her agency to the other side and almost back at pre-pandemic revenue. To do that, she put together a series of guiding principles her agency team sticks by as they search for ways to carry on. She shares lessons on why building leaders and leveling up leads to amazing agency growth. Robin Blanchette is the founder and CEO of Norton Creative, an agency that specializes in the restaurant industry. With a niche like restaurant hospitality, her clients were particularly affected by the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns. Many in her situation tried different approached and found what worked for them. For her, it was 50% about diversifying and 50% digging deeper into her niche. In this episode, we'll discuss: How the pandemic affected her business. The principles that kept her team afloat. The importance of building leaders. 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. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Choosing an Agency Niche Based on Experience and Passion Robin was not an agency person by nature. She worked for an agency once in her 20s and never wanted to do it again. She had a background on the client side so as CMO and Media Director got to work on all the pieces of running marketing for restaurants and developed a real love for that industry. Although she really enjoyed this work, she was also a single mother of small children. She was looking for something that would allow her to be more present in her kids' lives. She naïvely thought running her own company would allow her that time and the agency was born from the idea. Choosing a niche was a no-brainer because Robin already had a background in the restaurant industry. That's where her heart is and what she is drawn to. Could she sell other things if necessary? Yes, but that's where her expertise is and where she shines. Since then, they've worked with about 150 restaurant brands whether for projects or partnerships. Adapting Your Agency Model In a Downturned Economy In early 2020, most of Robin's clients were in the restaurant business and were closing due to the lockdowns. She had the worst week of her career as many clients couldn't pay. Many were laying off staff and even she had to let go of some employees. It was a tough time, but one of the things she remembers is everyone's level of compassion and understanding. Even laid-off employees understood the decision and Robin really felt a sense of community in those moments. Thankfully, not every client had to shut down; many changed their model to drive through and delivery and kept going. A lot of people used creative measures and figured out how to stay in business during those months. This helped Robin and her team stay afloat and keep fighting as well. Some may think the pandemic proves that choosing a niche could be a negative. And back in 2020, Jason advised mastermind members to dedicate 50% of their efforts to continue to support their industries and 50% of their resources to explore new industries that were thriving with the new events. For her part, Robin decided to go even deeper into the restaurant industry. They did a lot of pro bono work and provided support to their clients. They also did a ton of branding work for digital businesses, which they now continue to do for bigger brands. All in all, they did some work outside of their niche while also digging even deeper into their industry kept them afloat in these difficult times. 4 Guiding Principles for Getting the Agency Team Through Tough Times The pandemic was certainly a hard time for many businesses. Agency owners had to get creative and look for new opportunities to get their agency past these difficulties. Like many, Robin did think of shutting down at some point. After all, she didn't have to answer to shareholders. However, her team was looking to her for leadership. Inspired by them, she decided to not give up and figure out what was next for the agency. Everyone had to be focused and working, so she created these 4 guiding principles: Focus on what you can control. Don't waste time or energy on things you can't control. Instead of worrying about the unknowns, what do you know to be true and how can you use it to your benefit? Get comfortable getting uncomfortable. Every member of the team needs to be flexible and take on new tasks and truly be a team player, even when something is a little outside their comfort zone. Assume positive intent. The uncertainty of a health crisis and changing economy is

Would you like to create more freedom in your agency? How can you spend less time making decisions? How can you make the right decisions to grow your agency without too much emotion or personal bias? It's time to improve your decision-making skills and spend less time on small agency tasks. Today's expert uses science to explain how you can greatly improve your decision-making skills in order to create the role you really want within your agency. All you need is discipline and the right framework to keep yourself accountable. Dr. Frederic Bahnson is a surgeon who found a new career path in coaching. Initially, he needed information on how to make a career decision and found valuable resources that helped him not only with his career but with other aspects of his life. He decided to share those tools and created his own framework, which he now shares in his book Better Than Destiny. In this episode, we'll discuss: Why struggles with decision-making could start with your ego. 3-step framework for making better decisions How to know when it's time to replace yourself in daily agency operations. Sponsors and Resources Wix: Today's episode is sponsored by the Wix Partner Program. Being a Wix Partner is ideal for freelancers and digital agencies that design and develop websites for their clients. Check out Wix.com/Partners to learn more and become a member of the community for free. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM The Process and Skill of Decision-Making As much as we theorize about decisions, we can all fall into these same mistakes again. Decision-making is a skill and as such, you'll get better with practice. You develop a framework, evaluate how you're doing with it, get feedback, and observe the results about why something might have gone wrong. Sometimes you can attribute a bad outcome to bad luck. You can't control everything, but always make sure to assess the results you get from implementing the decision-making process. Pay attention to how you go about making important decisions and see if it's effective, and if not, go back and revise. The important thing is to have a process. Being Honest and Self Aware Making Decisions for Your Agency You can approach decision-making from many angles. Dr. Bahnson encourages us to remember we all have biases and blind spots. You may have tendencies to go for things that will be beneficial in the short term but not so much in the long term. There are systematic ways in which we make decisions that are not in our best interest or fail to follow through with the decisions we've made. We find ways to justify this to ourselves but if we were honest we could identify the patterns of how we consistently fail to make the best decision or double down on a bad decision. We fool ourselves into thinking we can't give up on a project because we've already invested so much in it. You may think giving up is admitting the resources you poured into something are really lost. That leads to you digging and digging deeper into a hole, ultimately not where you want to be. Is Your Ego Playing a Role in Making the Right Decision? Some of it is ego and some of it is just your ego tripping you up into thinking you're being objective. You think you understand yourself well enough not to worry about biases. Recognizing your own biases when you're calm does not mean they won't be a problem for you. That perspective disappears once you're in the heat of the moment. You start to make decisions based on your emotional reaction or the status quo and not consider that you're being affected by your blind spots. This is something that we can much sooner recognize in another person than in ourselves, which is where our ego comes into play. Should we completely remove emotion from the equation when making an important decision? No, Dr. Bahnson does not recommend that. Understanding how we feel about something is an important part of the decision-making process. The idea is to use emotion as a piece of information but it shouldn't be in the driver's seat when we're making a decision. One way to do that is to have a process you can implement as a series of steps to making a sound decision. 3 Step Framework to Making Better Decisions Decide how much time, effort, and resources are worth spending on a particular decision. Don't fall into the trap of small decisions when you're building your agency. Otherwise, you may end up spending too much time on things like what color to paint the walls. It's not that the details don't matter, just not so much if you're doing it at the expense of strategy. Think about what's important to you when it comes to a particular decision. People approach different decisions in different ways depending on their priorities. What are your priorities and how much of a role do they play in the decision you're making? Consider your options and narrow them down to a few viable ones. If you determine the decision is in fact important and you need to spend

What is the life cycle of a video marketing agency? How can you transition from accidental agency owner to something else in order to fulfill your goals? What does life look like after you sell your video marketing agency? Today's guest hadn't seriously considered selling until he stepped back to realize the bigger picture. He remembered his original goals and realized there were other projects he wanted to focus on. This guest shares the way he started and grew his agency into something a team member actually wanted to buy. He also shares how he created a smooth transition for the buyer and decided what is next in his entrepreneurial journey. Doug Dibert is the founder and creator of Magnfi, a video software platform, and also the founder of Crossing River, the video marketing agency he recently sold. Like most agency owners, he fell into the business by accident when he started making wedding videos and soon turned that into a business. However, as Doug grew his agency he started thinking about selling and pursuing his filmmaking passion. In this episode, we'll discuss: How to differentiate your video marketing agency. Knowing how and when to sell your agency. Finding the right buyer for your agency might be easier than you think. 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. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Starting a Video Marketing Agency Doug went to film school and actually started using the school's equipment to do paid jobs. He mostly worked filming weddings and got inspiration from a class on documentaries to try to apply those techniques to his wedding videos. So he took the material he filmed at one of those weddings and made a small trailer video. He posted it to social media and went to sleep. The next morning, he had thousands of views, shares, and messages from brides asking if he could do the same for their wedding. After a while, he also started getting requests from businesses that wanted to invest in video marketing. This is how the agency was born. They produced videos for businesses all over the world and focused on small to medium-sized businesses. Then the '08 recession hit and the agency lost all its marketing clients. Thankfully, the wedding video business stayed strong so the agency stayed afloat and also started to do videos for social media. Video is such an important tool and every company should utilize it. Back then, Doug had a hard time standing out among big video production companies. He thought about how to differentiate himself and concluded that instead of being a video production company they would focus on video marketing strategy. Their services went beyond creating video content. It included helping clients optimize their YouTube channels and animate their logos. They especially focused on creating content around the client's strategic goals. The word got out and they became the go-to video marketing agency for businesses. Creating a Platform to Systematize Video Content Creation Back in 2015, Doug rejected a few clients who wanted to film videos on their phones and send them to the agency to be turned into professional-looking video content. He didn't see the potential at the time. Later Doug realized 90% of his clients wanted videos shot and edited the same way. He got the idea to create a platform to systematize video content creation. Simple videos like testimonials, "about me" videos and expert tips are the core of what every business needs to see some real growth. With this in mind, Doug set out to create this platform for low-cost video content creation. His goal was to satisfy 90% of clients' needs and, in case they wanted something more personalized, they would pay an extra fee for those services. Seeing the Bigger Picture and Deciding to Sell Your Agency Doug's big goal when he started was to make movies. The opportunities to create videos for companies came by chance and the agency started to grow. He had people willing to invest in him as an entrepreneur who wanted to see if he was able to grow a business, so he focused on that. The shift in his mentality came from having a business coach who helped him see the bigger picture. He learned you have to continuously open your mind to new possibilities or you will remain stagnant. When his coach realized he wanted to make movies, she asked "why not next year?" He had been thinking about growing the agency more and delaying selling a bit longer. However, thanks to his coach he started thinking -- "why not next year?" Back then he was stuck being the hands-on agency owner who wanted to do everything. This shift encouraged him to start hiring people to replace himself and focus on what he did r

Is your agency purpose-driven? A shared purpose is something your employees will rally around and identify with. It is critical to create a sense of belonging and have their buy-in. Today's guest built a successful agency with a great culture his employees really appreciated. When he exited the agency, he felt so inspired by the outpour of messages from those impacted by its culture that he decided to write a book on creating an agency with a purpose and a soul. Ralf Specht is an author and business leader dedicated to making soulless companies a thing of the past. As the CEO of a global digital agency, he focused on building a culture focused on connecting the different teams. Years later, he received many messages thanking him for the agency culture he had created. In this episode we'll discuss: His proven framework for building culture. Why you should have a purpose if you want a successful agency. How he made culture a hard fact. 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. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Building a Global Agency When Ralf accepted the challenge of creating a global agency, it started with offices in four countries and 80 people. It was certainly a challenge but he remembers it as the highlight of his career. He focused on creating a sense of belonging and a culture that really motivates employees. All companies should have a purpose and a soul and that should come before any revenue goal you may have. You should also have core values that speak to the behavior you want to see in your agency. This will be the way to establish yourself and really start growing. By the time he left years later, Ralf had grown the agency to 19 offices and 1200 people. When he retired, he received many messages thanking him for the culture he had created for the agency. He felt this message was too valuable to keep it to himself, so he was inspired to write Building Corporate Soul and Beyond The Startup. 3-Step Framework for Building a Great Agency Culture Hiring based on beliefs, attitudes, and soft skills are buzzwords that get thrown around a lot these days. In their beginnings, Ralf and his partners sat down to think about the culture and values they wanted to see in their agency. At first, they set out to write a list of the behaviors they wanted to see in the agency. This proved to be difficult so they changed their approach to list the behaviors they did NOT want to see. It was easy starting from there and it also helped them shape an idea of who they wanted to become. This exercise eventually led them to figure out their purpose. It's an exercise he recommends to all agency owners because answering the question "why are you here?" will be crucial to implementing this framework: Shared Purpose (Being): We've been discussing purpose in the agency world for years. However, Ralf believes that if the end game of a purpose conversation is a great PowerPoint deck, then you achieve nothing. He prefers to talk about shared purpose, which has to be a.) shared by the company's leadership and b.) shared with all stakeholders. Shared Understanding (Believing): This includes all strategic elements like the mission, vision, and values plus an often overlooked fourth element "spirit." For Ralf, spirit speaks to the intended company culture. As the agency leader, what sort of culture do you want to see in the organization? Shared Behaviors (Belonging): Studies show that the number one reason why employees are now leaving their workplaces in spades is that they don't have a sense of belonging. The real work will start after you have shared purpose and shared understanding defined on paper. Up to that point, it is all about strategic thinking. Now you have to actually make sure that the behaviors in your agency reflect what you wrote to establish shared behaviors. Agencies are not any different than any other company in the sense that they very much need to implement these principles as much as they would recommend their clients to do so. Creating Consistent Culture Across Different Agency Offices Ralf's agency started as a global agency, which posed the challenge of building a culture where the different teams felt part of a whole. To address this, he and his partners enforced a single P&L mindset and a mantra of better, faster, cheaper, with an emphasis on better always being #1. With that, everything within the organization was set up to support collaboration rather than competition between offices. They also designed complementary roles across the four offices. Therefore, the offices had to work together or they would not be able to deliver on the various client briefs. As to the belonging elem

Do you want to scale your agency but fear growing too fast? Today's guest was part of the exponential growth of a big-name agency and never thought he want to work in the agency business as a result. However, he took the lessons learned from that experience and grew his own agency making sure to work on what he loves and build a team around what he doesn't. Hernan Vazquez is the co-founder of Scale Driven, a digital agency that helps clients develop high-level marketing strategies that generate revenue at scale. He was part of the success of Frank Kern's agency and its eventual failure when they grew too much, too fast. . He later took those lessons to start implementing the benefits of developing your own brand to grow your agency faster. In this episode, we'll discuss: Why you should do what you like and hire for what you don't. Why it's normal to question owning an agency. Lesson learned from fast, exponential growth. Sponsors and Resources Wix: Today's episode is sponsored by the Wix Partner Program. Being a Wix Partner is ideal for freelancers and digital agencies that design and develop websites for their clients. Check out Wix.com/Partners to learn more and become a member of the community for free. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Hernan has been in the digital agency business for the past 14 years. Throughout his career, he always did media buying, SEO, and paid media work for a few clients. He was also the marketing director on the client side for several brands. At one point, when he was feeling burned out from all the work, Hernan sat down and wrote out the amount of time spent on each job, the revenue per hour it brought him, and the fulfillment he got from each. In the end, agency work was the most profitable and fulfilling. So he decided to go all-in and the agency went from being an afterthought to being his sole focus. Do What You Like and Build a Team Around What You Don't Hernan has built several teams for agencies and he has always been involved in every aspect, from operations to marketing. However, those experiences have helped him realize he does not enjoy the operations portion of the business as much. If he were to start over, he would hire leaders faster. Oftentimes, agency owners are a bit cautious when it comes to starting to fill roles in the agency. This is commonly out of fear they won't sustain the business enough to make payroll. This was certainly the case for Hernan, but now he realizes there are creative ways to compensate and motivate employees independent of revenue and cash flow. For instance, he later hired someone in charge of recruiting and developing new talent. He offered that person a percentage of revenue and they accepted. He is now building a sales team and the sales director was offered a similar deal. As he has learned, you don't necessarily need cash flow to afford those salaries; you just need the right people who share your vision and can maintain mutual trust for building the agency. Hiring people who excel in areas where you don't allow you more time to focus on the things you truly enjoy. Being self-aware of what you like and are good at is the key to knowing what pieces you can delegate, eliminate or hire for. It's Normal to Question Owning an Agency Agency owners can get to a point where they are working on things they don't like and feel exhausted. Many feel like prisoners to the agency they've built and this is typically when they start looking for a way out. For Hernan, he was working as Frank Kern's main ad guy and then transitioned into the role of CMO. He ran ads for 30+ clients and also did some coaching for Frank's students. When the agency started to grow, he also had to hire media buyers and train them. However, when Frank partnered with Grant Cardone and the agency saw exponential growth, going from 30+ clients to 220+ clients in eight months was a huge adjustment. The team went from a handful of people to a staff of more than 60. They were also getting a lot of different types of clients, which is not what they were used to. The problem with explosive growth was, that although the revenue and demand were there and they were hiring people to keep up with the demand, they just couldn't catch up to the demand operationally. Hernan was stuck hiring and training a lot more media buyers and handling the ads for many more clients while also running the marketing for his own agency. He understandably ended up burned out and wanting an exit from the agency world. Lessons Learned From Fast, Exponential Growth After a year of feeling burnt out, Hernan observed other agency owners who really enjoyed the work. "What are they doing differently?" he thought. The difference was they were operating in their area of expertise. Hernan is a marketing guy who really enjoyed that aspect of the business but got stuck deep in operations. That's why he no longer enjoyed the work. He thought if he could just rebuild that concept of th

Are you setting up the processes you'll need to sell your agency one day? How would you go about weeding out the red flags to identify the right buyer? Today's guest started his agency at 25 and didn't think he'd ever want to sell. The pandemic made him reconsider, but he needed to find the right buyer. Someone that would benefit his clients, his team, and allow him to still be a part of his agency's future. Aaron Levenstadt was working at Google when he started offering SEO consultancy services to referred clients. When some of them asked for on-going support, he started Pedestal Search. His agency focuses on helping businesses drive more productive traffic from search engines to their websites or stores. Now, years later, he found the right buyer and continues to be a part of his agency's growth. In this episode, we'll discuss: How he decided to sell. Red flags in possible buyers. How to identify the right buyer for your agency. 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. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM A Lesson on Accelerating Agency Growth Early-On Aaron started his agency charging $6K a month for SEO and analytics services, which was great for a new business. He believed rushing to scale too fast could affect his ability to provide a good service. It took him 6-7 years to get over the $1 million mark. There were many lessons involved over the years of that agency growth process. One big lesson was learning how to explain what they do as an agency. Part of niching and finding your audience involves learning to clearly explain what you can and cannot do for clients. Once they nailed that part and had the processes to support it, growth accelerated. He also chose this time to start raising prices now that the agency had found an audience that resonated with its message. Getting Serious After Hitting The $1 Million Dollar Mark Getting to the $1 Million mark was the moment when Aaron actually started to get more serious about the agency's future. He and his team laid out a blueprint of how the company should run and got to work. It was a good moment for him to start replacing himself in several tasks and move to more of a strategy-based role. Basically, they developed an organizational chart where they could look at ratios of account strategists to see how many clients each could handle comfortably. The result was 4 to 9 clients per strategist depending on the size of the account. They then added an execution and delivery layer to the chart and started filling those roles, which freed Aaron to focus on more strategic and directional level thinking for the agency. Two Major Red Flags in Vetting Potential Buyers for Your Agency Selling the agency was not the goal from the start. Aaron saw himself working in the agency until the end of his career and saw no need to sell it. This is where having guidance like the Digital Agency Elite Mastermind is really helpful. Aaron didn't really consider acquisition seriously until some of his mentors started to ask questions about his future and legacy. Questions like "where do you see the agency going in the future?", and "are you planning to grow your staff of 25 employees, or to 50 employees?" got him thinking Around that time, he started to get emails from companies interested in buying his agency. It was the start of the pandemic and he got regular inquiries. However, he still wasn't sure. In dealing with potential buyers, Aaron found a few red flags he shared: Why are they interested in your agency in specific? If they cannot articulate a reason then they are just shopping around and are not serious. What is their reason for acquiring an agency? Are they buying to grow in a niche? Do they want to expand in a specific service area? Are they buying you for your team and processes? If they are not anchored to a why then aren't legitimate. If you're going down the path of deciding to sell, you need to understand where a buyer is coming from and where they are going. In Aaron's experience, buyers back then were only thinking about the low-interest rates and didn't have a real plan. A serious acquirer needs a full plan to cover different key factors like the culture fit which is so important for the possible success of a merger. Identify the Right Buyer With a Commitment to Your Agency Vision Aaron finally found the structure and vision he was looking for when he started talking to a buyer with a very clear vision from the beginning and showed a sort of confidence in what they could do together. Of course, there were difficult points where Aaron was not sure if he wanted to go through with the acquisition. He had built this agency working by himself wi

Would you like the confidence to raise prices and triple your agency's growth? Are you ready to empower your team and transition to a true Agency CEO? That's exactly what today's guest has been able to do over the past couple of years. She is on the show talking about overcoming her two biggest challenges: removing herself from sales and the fear of raising prices. What she realizes now is that she was standing in her own way and letting go has actually led to amazing agency growth. Taking a leap of faith and reinventing her role was what her agency needed to reach its full potential. Audra Brehm is the founder of Brehm Media, a social media agency that focuses on the fashion and beauty world. As she grew her agency, she doubted whether clients would see their value and agree to pay once she raised her prices. As CEO, she realizes the right client will see the agency's value even when you don't. In this episode, we'll discuss: Raising prices to affirm your agency's value. Determining which clients are a good fit for your agency. Empowering your agency team and removing yourself from agency sales. 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. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Why Raising Prices Affirms Your Agency's Value Audra was looking for a new job in Denver when an interviewer asked her why she hadn't opened her own agency. She really couldn't come up with a reason and thought "why not?" That company ended up being her first client and, as she's embarrassed to admit, she started charging $800 a month for social media and marketing services. She was just excited to be starting her own business. Entrepreneurs commonly become a "yes man" in their early stages and figure they'll eventually get other clients and raise their prices. Audra admits she hasn't always had a good idea of her agency's value, but listening to their clients talk about the agency was an excellent way to understand their worth. If the client could see her agency as its marketing arm and an extended family, then she knows they are positioning themselves as a valuable partner. As someone who loves to learn, she strives to always be ahead of the curve. If they can do that as an agency, then she knows they are providing value. So then, why wouldn't people pay what they charge? The thought of raising her agency's prices used to be terrifying. Every time they increased, Audra worried she would lose clients. If she could go back, she would tell herself not to be so afraid. It's ok if clients decide to leave after you raise your prices. The ones who stay are the right clients. In retrospect, Audra thought the agency would be ruined with a reputation of being too expensive. Now she realizes her agency's value and knows the importance of raising prices. The reputation isn't about being too expensive, it's about being receiving the elite value Brehm Media provides. Transitioning Out of Agency Sales and Empowering the Team As the agency has grown, Audra had a really hard time taking a step back from sales. She doesn't like to feel out of control, however, empowering the sales team meant putting control in other people's hands. Getting out of day-to-day operations was the first time that she actually questioned what she was doing in the agency. In time, she found a new way to continue participating in the sales cycle by handling the final sales calls with new clients. She found that relationship-building before taking on a client is actually her favorite part of the sales process. So instead of taking herself completely out of sales, she gets to engage and learn more about clients while still letting go of some control and empowering her team. Plus, she feels clients appreciate the fact that the entire agency has their back, including the owner. It can be hard for many digital agency owners to transition out of day-to-day operations, but finding ways to still be part of your agency will help you with that transition. Later on, you may even find that you don't need that small role anymore. Audra has embraced her role as CEO and realizes the team won't need her as much. Now she can really live the work-life balance agency owners strive for. Last year was the first time she went on a family vacation and didn't take any business calls or check emails for two weeks. She had confidence that her team could handle anything that came up. Finding Ideal Clients That Are The Right Fit For The Agency It's good to be self-aware enough to recognize when your agency can't deliver the results clients expect. For instance, if a client expects a 10x return in a month and you know you can't deliver, then tell them. Are there agencies out there that co

Are you trying to improve your client retention rate? How often do you communicate with your clients? Building a good relationship with your clients starts immediately after they sign on to work with your agency. Today's guest takes us through his process of creating a level of trust with clients that make them want to stay. With clear goals set from the start and constant communication, they've only lost one client in ten years! Jeff Barnes is Chairman of Barnes Health, the strategic healthcare marketing, and public relations agency be started in 2003. He began his career in the healthcare marketing and public relations space on the client side 34 years ago. Being able to look at things from the client's perspective has been a plus for him as he has really focused on building good relationships with them. He sets clear goals and always makes them feel like they are the priority. In this episode, we'll discuss: Keeping client churn rates at a minimum. Why constant communication and a clear process are the key. Why you should strive to find clients that really fit with your agency. 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. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Jumping From the Client-Side to Agency-Side Jeff had been working in healthcare marketing and public relations for 15 years before joining "the dark side" of the agency world. Basically, he wanted the freedom and more flexible hours of being an agency owner. Back then, there weren't many marketing firms in the healthcare niche, so he saw a good opportunity. Barnes Health started with one client and the agency has grown significantly since. He still has that first client and, actually, a total of four legacy clients that have worked with the agency for 20 years. Jeff has always preferred to work with a retainer pricing model. Some agencies may feel clients take advantage of working under a retainer expecting too many services under the retainer umbrella. However, the most important advantage for Jeff is having a guaranteed revenue, which helps him sleep at night. Nowadays, retainer clients account for about 95% of the agency's revenue. How to Keep Agency Client Turnover Rate At a Minimum The average agency turnover is 25% for a variety of reasons. With these statistics, Jeff usually gets bewildered looks when he says he's only lost 1 client in 10 years. What's his secret? Well, he's learned from speaking with his clients most agencies are exceptionally good at the front end. They sell their services with a dynamic attitude and promise that gets clients excited for working with them. However, client success is an important KPI and many agencies fail when it comes to customer service. There are two components to an agency 1) client acquisition and 2) client service. It is a lot easier to retain an existing client than to get a new one, so Jeff focuses on providing great customer service to keep the turnover rate at a minimum. He has trained his team to communicate with clients on a regular basis and have a quick response time for any questions they may have. Each client, big or small, should feel like they're the #1 most important client. Remember if you neglect clients, they'll probably start wondering why they're working with you and start looking for other opportunities. Answer the unasked questions -- and if you don't communicate it, they don't know it happened. Setting Clear Goals to Get Clients On Board With Your Strategy The moment a client agrees to work with your agency, you should quit promoting yourself and immediately transition to learning as much as you can about that client. Focus especially on their goals, objectives, and the criteria under which your work will be measured for success. The more educated and informed you are about every aspect of their operations, the more valuable you can be to your clients. Jeff's team typically gets clients to sign off on the strategic plan that they build together. They list the goals and objectives with clarity on who is responsible, the timeframe, and how success is to be measured. The overall strategy is documented and everyone on the team and the client is familiar with each step. It may be revised from time to time, but the client should always have access to the documents. Maintaining A Good Relationship With Clients Jeff favors constant communication with clients on a regular basis, even daily at times. In his opinion, this shows the agency is a very valuable resource for them. If there is no communication for three or four days, his team reaches out to make sure everything is in order - follow up on an email or run an idea by them. He also emphasizes how important it is to do th