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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you've been paying attention, then you know this is the year for AI content creation like ChatGPT. (Even Ryan Reynolds and Mint Mobile know it :) Should your agency be using it too? Are you worried about turning off clients over this technology? Or could you make more money using it? There are drawbacks, which is why agency owners need to know the best way to leverage AI for content. Today's guests are experts in content creation as they talk about pros, cons, and how agencies can use AI like ChatGPT to be more efficient and grow their business. 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 marketing agencies and marketing professionals. Verblio is a preferred partner of the show and Ryan is a repeat guest who brings amazing insight. This time, he is joined by Megan Skalbeck, the content marketing manager at Verblio handling strategic initiatives. The team at Verblio are experts at content creation and have done a ton of research on how agencies can leverage the power of Artificial Intelligence and AI tools. You can check out their survey results at verblio.com/ai. With those results in mind, they shared some of their conclusions on the best ways to use AI for content creation while keeping high quality standards. In this interview, we'll discuss: How agencies can make more money by integrating AI tools. Weaknesses of AI and a hybrid plan for using them effectively. Why aren't more agencies using AI? 3 tips for making AI more effective for your agency content. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources Verblio: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Verblio. Check out Verblio.com/smartagency and get 50% off your first month of content creation. Our team loves using Verblio because of the ease of their process and their large pool of crowd-sourced writers. Links to other episodes featuring Ryan Sargent: https://jasonswenk.com/creating-content-for-clients/ https://jasonswenk.com/content-creation-team/ How Agencies Can Make More Money by Integrating AI Tools Where do content creation experts stand on whether or not to use AI? Basically, if your agency isn't planning on using AI at all in 2023, you are making a mistake. On the other hand, if you think AI is going to replace freelancers, fool Google, and you'll never need a writer again, that's also a mistake. The reality is, agencies need to be using AI as soon as the next few months. We should all learn to use AI not as a catch-all, but as an actual tool. To this end, work with people who really understand AI. Find the balance. As it stands right now, AI tools can produce a lot of words. However, there are a lot of weaknesses: Factual accuracy. There's actually no guarantee the content produced by an AI is correct. Sentence structure. A blog post created by AI does not necessarily have a logical structure or make sense at all. Weakened SEO. Google knows AI-generated created content apart from what is human-written. It is tempting for agencies to look at AI as a way to produce content at a much lower cost. However, with these weaknesses, the best alternative is a hybrid approach. Take content created by AI and improve it with human editing. We shouldn't view AI as a service or a finished product. It can do great work in saving writers from a blank page. With the right prompt, AI is great at generating ideas and continuing thoughts. As long as the writer is there to review and (probably) make significant edits, it can be really effective. First Steps to Integrate AI as Part of Your Strategy in 2023 Curious about AI? Try a free version of any of the existing tools. This way, you can get a sense of their potential and learn how it works. If you're not interested in exploring these tools in your own time, work with someone who is doing this. The important thing is to have a vision of how to integrate these tools into agency work. Don't try to just jump into technology because it's new without a vision for how it serves your agency. You don't want to be the agency getting content that ranks but doesn't convert and never makes money for the client. AI is an incredibly powerful tool. However, it will add costs, both financially and in terms of time and effort. Instead of hiring an entire team of in-house writers or relying on the free version of the AI tool, find a partner who can provide AI expertise. Why Aren't More Agencies Using AI for Content? Can agencies use AI to make money? Yes, absolutely. But are they doing it yet? Verblio's recent marketers survey reveals NO, agencies are actually lagging behind in the use of AI tools. Verblio found agencies have been slow to adapt because they're afraid of losing clients. They fear it could break trust or threaten the agency's position with the client. But, how true is this? Clients

If you're in the early stages of your agency, what should you prioritize in order to grow? With so many things to track and so many hats to wear, how do you know what's most important? What deserves your time and attention? As a solopreneur with a startup, building relationships and establishing values for your are crucial for growth. Yet, some owners are not equipped to maintain these parts of the business. So, how can you prioritize these factors when growing your agency? Today's guest, Christy Pretzinger, understands that solopreneurs are not in a position to oversee relationships consistently. That's why she hires compatible talent to help her develop and sustain team-building programs and workshops. These initiatives cultivate a supportive culture and ensure her team embodies their values. Christy talks about maintaining a positive company culture and explains the importance of relationship building, how she attracts like-minded people and her strategies for maintaining client and employee relationships. In this episode, we'll discuss: Why it's important to build relationships when seeking opportunities. Strategies for maintaining client and employee relationships. Growing an agency during uncertain and challenging economic times. Christy Pretzinger is the President and CEO of WriterGirl, an agency that helps hospitals and healthcare organizations create patient-friendly website content to grow their brand and strengthen their position in the marketplace. Since 2005, Christy has grown WriterGirl from a freelance writing business into a nationally recognized healthcare content consultancy. She is passionate about building environments where people can thrive and strives to reinvent how we view the work world. As an experienced entrepreneur, Christy shares her experiences with younger agency owners to help them grow. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Podcast Takeover!! Get to know your Smart Agency Guest Host: John Corcoran is the co-founder of Rise25, an agency that helps companies launch and run podcasts profitably. He followed Jason's podcast and eventually joined the mastermind and has been a guest on the podcast before. Today, he's helping Jason bring something new to the Smart Agency podcast audience by interviewing a special guest and bringing a new perspective to the show. Episode transcript: John Corcoran 0:00 Hey, I'm John Corcoran taking over for Jason Swenk in this episode of The Smart Agency Masterclass, and I run Rise25 and Rise25. We are an easy button to help businesses get more clients and referrals with done-for-you podcast and content marketing. And for over a decade, we've been helping companies to give to their best relationships and partnerships through a podcast. I also am a longtime podcaster and have done Smart Business Revolution Podcast since about 2010. And I got to know Jason by listening to his podcast, and then we joined his Digital Agency Elite Mastermind, we've attended his events. And we wanted to learn from someone who grew in multimillion dollar operation with over 100 staff and then sold it. So if you are an agency that wants to grow, contact Jason and his team because they can help go to digitalagencyelite.com. But you can also email [email protected]. And so I was also honored when he asked me to take over the show as a guest host. So check out today's episode with an amazing agency owner. Today we've got Christy Pretzinger, and Christy is the owner and CEO of WriterGirl. It's a fast-growing organization that creates content and provides strategy for hospitals, and healthcare organizations across the United States. Christy went from being a freelancer to an agency owner. So we're going to talk about that journey. And she uncovered her passion for creating an environment where people can thrive writing a book on sharing your experience around doing that, just that. And one of the things that she talks about, and we'll talk about this interview is about viewing culture through the lens of a balance sheet, and helping fellow business owners and others who have a direct impact on the culture. So Christy, I'm excited to hop into those topics. And first, let's start at your origin story, how you got into the agency world into becoming an agency owner, you'd been a freelancer, and you actually ended up, you knew a woman who a former client of yours, who'd started your company, WriterGirl, and you ended up partnering up with her. So talk a little bit about how that came about. Christy Pretzinger 1:55 Okay, thanks for having me, I'm happy to talk to you. That's, I guess, an interesting story. She was a clie

Looking to improve agency margins and profitability? Which key metrics are important to track? Are you paying yourself a salary? How much cash should you have in reserve? If you're hoping to sell soon, you shouldn't underestimate the importance of starting to pay yourself a salary. Potential buyers will pay attention to this and many other details you could start to work on right now. Today's guest owns a CPA firm focused on helping agency owners scale by getting their finances in order and avoiding the biggest mistakes in agency finances. Chris Hervochon runs Better Way CPA, a CPA firm that specializes in virtual CFO services for agencies. Over the past eight years, his company has provided services to marketing agencies and nonprofits all over the US. He provides some insight into the key metrics you should be measuring, why you should pay attention to your gross margin, and more. In this interview, we'll discuss: Avoid the biggest mistake in agency finances. How to increase your margins. Why you should pay yourself a salary. Key metrics to manage agency cash flow. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources Verblio: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Verblio. Check out Verblio.com/smartagency and get 50% off your first month of content creation. Our team loves using Verblio because of the ease of their process and their large pool of crowd-sourced writers. The Biggest Mistake in Agency Finances The biggest and most common mistake Chris sees agency owners make with their finances has to do with cash management. Usually, they fail to understand how cash moves in and out of the agency. Also, how it'll move into and out of the agency in the future. This is critical because it's how you can really understand how to grow in the future. As an owner, you must understand the way cash moves within the agency impacts clients, the work you do for them, and how you collect payments. This impact the people you pay to work for the agency. All of this helps you get a clearer vision of how you're going to scale and bring in the next client. Pay Attention to These Key Metrics Profitability. When it comes to profitability, you need to be over 15% or 20% to be good. 15% or less is when the alarm starts ringing and you need to pull some levers to figure out what's going on. Net income. If you're using some sort of accounting software and looking at P&L, net income is your bottom line. Gross margin. This varies wildly across agencies because every agency operates so differently. In this particular case, measure yourself against yourself and track that over time. Make sure you're maintaining or increasing margins over time. Cash reserves. Every business should set aside cash reserves to fund growth. They help pay for unexpected costs that occur throughout the year, and they're often kept in your business account. Pipeline. Make sure to have a process to measure your pipeline. This bleeds into your forecast and indicates what roles you need to hire, when, as well as who you need to fire and when. Why You Need to Pay Attention to Gross Margin Gross margin is your revenue minus variable expenses (cost of sales). This is the percentage of revenue you can keep in order to pay fixed expenses and then pay yourself. In short, the costs you're going to incur every time you generate a dollar. If your margins are very low, it's hard to pay for fixed expenses needed to operate the agency and deliver your services. If you don't have enough money to pay your team, for example, you might start making bad decisions, like cutting staff, expenses, and software. At that point, you don't even have enough to pay yourself as agency owner, which is definitely a problem. This is why you need to pay attention to margins and make sure you have enough money every time you generate a dollar of revenue to pay those expenses. In the end, having revenue is good, of course; however, there's really no point to it if it won't allow you to pay for your fixed expenses. What Works for Agencies When it Comes to Increasing Margins? According to Chris, pricing and how you price will always be the biggest lever you can pull to increase profits. This may be difficult in our current economic times. However, that's your biggest opportunity to move the needle. How can you increase prices? Build up value so you don't face pushback from clients when it's time to raise prices. Have value conversations with your clients. Ensure your sales and pricing functions are split. Be open to flipping some internal capacity to external capacity and bringing in contractors. This can be beneficial and prove to be more cost-efficient than having a full-time employee. Cut unnecessary software costs. Take a look at who's using what software and get rid of what's not needed. It's Important to Pay Yourself a Salary as an Agency Owner Many agency owners don't realize the importance of paying themselves a salary. They skip t

What do you need to know about selling your agency? Is the market right for a sale or acquisition? What does a successful M&A deal look like? It's actually a good time to sell and there's no shortage of buyers. If you are prepared and have guidance, an acquisition can be smoother and faster than you think. Today's guest specializes in mergers and acquisitions in the agency space. In this conversation, she shares how to realistically determine your agency's valuation, two common questions about acquisition deals, and what you can expect when you sell your agency. Amanda Dixon is the founder and CEO of Barney, an M&A advisory firm for agencies. In her career, Amanda went through a couple of exits as an entrepreneur and describes the experience as atrocious. She saw a need for a company that understands the valuation of digital assets. As a result, she created a firm that has helped over 150 media, marketing, and tech companies through acquisitions. In this interview, we'll discuss: How long does it take to sell your agency? How to realistically determine your agency valuation. Answers to 2 common questions about M&A for digital agencies. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Selling a Digital Agency In an Unrepresented Market After growing her own business in the digital space, Amanda decided to sell and started looking for a professional valuation. Unfortunately, she found herself surrounded by people who just didn't understand new technologies and how to value digital assets. She was selling her own, life-changing agency but felt ignored by the market. Since larger firms were not returning her calls, she went with a broker who didn't have the experience or sophistication to sell a business the size of hers and the results were not quite what she expected. Through that experience, Amanda discovered a huge opportunity for a niche firm for this kind of acquisition. Businesses valued How Long Does It Take to Sell Your Agency? Selling your agency can be a painful and complicated process. Many times, agency owners get into it not really knowing what to expect. It can drag on for a long time if, for example, the buyer keeps coming back with last-minute changes. In these situations, agency owners may be afraid to pull out of the sale for fear or financial repercussions. In the height of the pandemic, without in-person meetings, the process took around 90 days. With in-person meetings back, this adds a couple of weeks and sometimes months to the process. Overall, in the worst-case scenario, it is currently taking her team around 5 months to complete a sale. For Amanda, the most eye-opening discovery working in M&A is that it doesn't have to drag on forever. For starters, one of the things that delays the process the most is finding the buyers. Since her firm is focused on digital-based business, that part of the process is faster. Approved sellers that work with them are referred to several interested potential buyers. This is good because deal fatigue is a very real thing. Having a buyer pool interested in your particular industry helps to create a sense of competition. With several potential buyers, you can have more control and ultimately choose the one that makes sense financially and fits your team and your culture. How to Realistically Determine Your Agency Valuation Agency owners are typically very eager to know their agency's worth. The multiple of EBITDA formula is a good place to start and is what Amanda's team analyses first. EBITDA = Earnings Before Interest Tax Depreciation Amoritization Of course, this doesn't offer a clear picture of the agency's financial state. For instance, they see many agencies that have grown too fast and have too many team members. In these cases, since their margins may be low, it's hard to judge financial health with just the multiple of EBITDA. On the other hand, if an agency isn't staffed enough and are at a breaking point, they may have 50-60% margins which is not scalable. The next step is determining where the agency falls within Barney's valuation range. They consider factors like client concentration and new client acquisition. Of course, agency owners don't always agree with the results and believe they're worth more. However, it is a very efficient formula for determining agency's value. Why Agency Owners Need Executing a Profitable Acquisition Process Many agency owners are caught offguard when someone shows interest in buying their agency. This results in wasting a lot of time and the sale never happening. Amanda strongly believes most agency owners need representation through the acquisition process. They

Would you like to increase agency lead generation and have so many prospects you get to pick and choose who you want to work with? Finding the right lead gen strategy is an important part of your agency's growth. Today's guest has found a simple framework that worked for him as well as many of his clients. By just fine-tuning 3 aspects of most lead generation strategies, you could be quadrupling leads in just one month. Dave Valentine is the owner and founder of Avadel Agency, an outsourced sales & development rep agency that helps clients fill their sales pipelines and book meetings. He owns eight businesses and tested the success of his lead generation framework in several different industries. Today he shares how going back to the basics can help you quadruple your leads and unlock a new level of growth. In this episode, we'll discuss: Why a quality case study should be kept short and to the point. How an outrageous offer can help you get your agency to seven figures. Inventive ways to use old tools that are regarded as outdated. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources Verblio: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Verblio. Check out Verblio.com/smartagency and get 50% off your first month of content creation. Our team loves using Verblio because of the ease of their process and their large pool of crowd-sourced writers. Dave is an entrepreneur who started his first agency at the age of 25. Looking back, he has made some common mistakes, like making his agency a catch-all and trying to be everything for everyone. In spite of this, he built the agency over 7-figures. However, relied too heavily on him and clients expected Dave to be involved in everything. In the end, this led him to sell his former agency and start Avadel. Now, growth comes not from relying on one person but from how they generate leads. 3 Things To Increase Agency Lead Generation in 30 Days According to Dave, increasing your agency's lead generation in record time will require just three key elements: Quality case studies. Most people think a quality case study needs to fill two pages or more to get client's attention. Dave believes all you need is a sentence that follows this formula: We work with X company and got Y results in Z time. Additionally, if "Z time" is 90 days or less, it is incredibly compelling. When you put that in an email or an advertisement piece, it will get people's attention. Outrageous offers. Dave credits this element with helping him get six of his businesses to seven figures. An outrageous offer is something that sounds too good to be true. Actually, it is a way to increase your profits and book more meetings. More meetings give you an opportunity to assess clients so you can pick and choose the ones you want to work with. It's really about understanding what your deliverables are and how good your team is. Cold emails with creative follow-up. 86% of the meeting booking they do at Dave's agency come through cold emails. This statistic surprises most people because we all tend to shut down this kind of outreach. We get hundreds of emails every day from people trying to sell us something, so how do you cut through the noise? Dave recommends those emails be short and to the point. "Two to three sentences is the sweet spot," he says. Also, look to create human connections. Let it come across that they're dealing with a person, not a bot. Lastly, he uses creative direct mail follow-up, like a piñata with a QR code that sends them to a calendar to book a call. Dave has found a lot of success in taking these strategies seen as old and outdated and leveraging them to generate new business. Why You Need an Outrageous Offer to Attract Leads The "outrageous offer" is a bold move that can bring great results for your agency. It's always a great way to stand out and put pressure on the competition. Of course, you have to be careful in how you word it. Don't promise something you can't deliver. A good way to ensure you're not over-promising is putting conditions around the offer. For example, if you're a web design agency, you can guarantee you'll have a client's website ready to launch in 12 weeks. The condition is they get you all the information required within the indicated timeline. It's a way to hold clients accountable for their outcomes. This doesn't work for every type of agency and sometimes you have to take some risks. When creating an outrageous offer for a flight school, Dave and his team offered a test flight at $49.99. Most flight schools make a similar offer at a much higher price point of $300, because it covers gas and the pilot's time. Their outrageous offer meant losing some money. They trusted the process and as a result, saw a 4x increase in lead generation with the same ad spend. And, their close rate stayed about the same! In the end, they soaked up all the leads their competitors were getting. Over the years, Avadel has successfu

Is your digital agency too reliant on you? Are you always putting out fires and answering questions? Is your team empowered to succeed without you? It's all about being intentional with how you spend your time and creating the processes to support your role as agency CEO. In this episode, a time and profit expert shares ways you can stop being the superhero at your agency and instead be the super visionary. Mike Michalowitz is an author and entrepreneur who focuses mostly on researching ways to make businesses run more efficiently. In this research, he noticed most businesses starve for profitability and very few achieve it. He's been on the podcast twice before chatting about his books: Profit First and Clockwork. His book and framework, Profit First, has changed the way many small businesses approaches profitability. One of his other best sellers is Clockwork, where he disrupts the "hustle harder" mindset. He's sharing how agency owners can reinvent their role in the agency to work less and still do the things they love. In this episode, we'll cover: Why you should strive to be the super visionary instead of the superhero. How a four-week vacation can help you ultimately exit operations. How to start empowering your team. Do you know the most important function at your agency? 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. Why Your Superhero Syndrome Is Your Agency's Bottleneck Agency owners are commonly the bottleneck at their agency. The processes make it so everything has to go through them. It's not efficient at all, causes a clog in project completion, and exhaustion for the agency owner. Michael calls this the Superhero Syndrome. Many agency owners believe they are the best at everything and can fix everything. They are the agency's superheroes. However, having a superhero fix everything ultimately weakens the police department. This is what happens to agency teams. They can become too dependent on the owner always solving issues. According to Michael, instead of being the superhero, agency owners should strive to be super visionary. What the agency really needs is for the owner to have a clear vision of where the agency is going and then drive the team to get there. How to Set Yourself Up as the Super Visionary Part of having the clarity to become a super visionary is empowering your team to follow your vision, as opposed to you making the decisions. Michael believes the easiest way to position yourself as the visionary starts with one word: shareholder. The term entrepreneur has become overused. It used to me "someone who had an idea then took the risk of organizing a team and resources to pursue it." Now, it's become "someone who works like an animal." On the other hand, a shareholder is someone who receives earnings and never says "I need to go to the company to solve something." As an agency owner, you've taken on an extraordinary risk the only shareholder. Only about 15% of the population ever takes this risk and 3% manage to do it successfully. Sure, in the beginning, you're the only resource and work a ton. However, you should exit operations as soon as possible. As a shareholder, you should create jobs. By doing the work yourself you're stealing the job from people who want and need it. Michael believes viewing yourself as a shareholder, you'll have a better understanding of your role as someone who takes care of strategic planning, vision, and creating jobs. It's important to remember you have the right to reinsert yourself into work in a way that gives you joy. If you love sales, then find a way to assist in sales without it being fully dependent upon you. That's perfectly valid; just make sure the agency can run without you. Creating an Agency that Runs Without You How can you prepare your team for your ultimate exit from operations? Michael recommends the "four-week vacation" in which you spend four consecutive weeks away from the agency with no physical or online connection. Why four weeks? He looked at how much time goes by before a business starts repeating cycles. Across all industries, it is monthly. Therefore if an owner is able to be away for 4 weeks, then they can be absent forever. The challenge for any agency owner who wants to exit operations is to book a four-week vacation at least two years from now. If that gives you too much anxiety, it's probably an indicator that you have a problem. In the end, this test is more about the agency having a vacation from you than you getting a vacation from it. People tend to think working on the business instead of in it is something that happens after you work hard enough. It's actually the result of a lot of intentional

Would you like your agency to be more profitable? Have you analyzed which of your clients are profitable and which engagements are losing money? You may feel you're doing everything right but still aren't profitable. However, it could be just a case of learning how to assess each client's profitability and raising prices on legacy clients. Today's guest shares ways you can learn about agency profitability and increase your profit margin. Russell Benaroya is the owner of Stride Services, a digital agency that provides outsourcing, bookkeeping, accounting, and CFO services for digital agencies. They provide timely, accurate, and actionable data so business owners can make decisions based on hard facts. In this episode, he shares some steps to assess whether a client is profitable, why you should look at your service as a product, and much more. In this interview, we'll cover: How to make smart, profitable decisions to grow your agency. 3 Questions to determine why an account is not profitable. 2 Steps to evaluate if a client is profitable. Raising prices for legacy clients. 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 to Smart, Profitable Decisions About Prospective Clients For Russell, the agency space is at an interesting point where agency owners are starting to learn more about the type(s) of clients they serve. It's important they understand each engagement and the level of profitability it brings to the agency. It is a moment of opportunity and transition where agency owners must be informed and armed to make smart decisions. How can you make smart decisions for your agency's profitability? Financial information isn't particularly telling for many agency owners. It doesn't tell them anything about how to act around a particular engagement. Russell believes you have to keep peeling back the layers to get to the information that really matters. Basically, you need data on how much revenue you're making for a client but also what costs, time, and direct expenses are you putting into the client? With this information, you can assess whether or not they are profitable for the agency. If the answer is no, then why and what can be done about it? This investigation leads to taking action at the client level. 2 Steps to Assess a Client's Profitability Russell's agency uses these two techniques to help agencies that need to assess whether or not a client is profitable: Viewing financial and time data in one place. Let's say you're using Harvest for time tracking and have some direct expenses sitting on Quickbooks online. Russell and his team bring that into a unified environment and quantify the value of the time put into an account. Once they put that information together, it becomes easier to see the client or engagement's profitability. Understanding the shadow bill rate. This is especially relevant for agencies on retainer-based agreements or monthly recurring revenue (MRR) subscriptions. The shadow bill rate is a fairly easy calculation that takes into account the monthly recurring revenue and what you would be billing if you charged hourly a rate equal to the resources needed for that client. That ratio is what Russell calls the "win for all" and it's an indication of whether or not your MRR is sufficient for a level of profitability. 3 Important Questions to Measure Agency Profitability If you had to track just one metric in an agency, Russell recommends it's the golden metric: the "win for all" ratio. He feels it is the single most important metric that forces you to ask yourself: Did we price this client incorrectly? Do we have process issues affecting our efficiency? Are there issues on the client side keeping us from being effective? This is the biggest driver for assessing profitability and becoming self-aware of what's standing in the way. How to Increase Prices to Legacy Clients There are many reasons your "win for all" ratio may be low; pricing is just one of them. If that is the case, it's time to ask yourself how many clients you have on legacy pricing. It's common for agencies to have more than a few clients at almost half under current prices. There's a huge opportunity cost there. As humans, we avoid conflict which makes it hard to increase prices. Instead, most people start to over-service clients to make sure they're very happy and then increase prices. However, this is not the right way to go about it and involves spending more resources on that client. Russell says agency owners need to have a "state of the relationship" discussion. This allows the opportunity to understand how the client views the work and then explain it's time to i

Happy clients grow your business. So what is the secret to happier clients? Is your agency making a good first impression? Building a rapport with them on a human level? How are your setting your agency apart from the competition? We talked to one agency owner who always prefers to go for a true connection by building the relationship first. When it comes to employees and clients, he prefers creating genuine bonds that lead to a better agency and an overall better work environment. Tom Jauncey is the owner of UK-based agency Nautilus Marketing, a full-service digital agency specializing in WordPress and Wix. His agency works with clients on SEO and social media strategies to deliver a wide range of digital solutions on a worldwide scale. In the journey to growing his agency, Tom has relied on the value of human connection for his team, clients, and partners. Today he'll share how he makes a good impression on the first call with a client and what he has learned about hiring for culture. In this interview, we'll discuss: Why the first call is about the client. Building a rapport with clients to gain trust. How to make a good first impression. Forming a team and building a sense of culture. 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 Why the First Call Should Be All About the Client As another accidental agency owner, starting an agency was never part of Tom's plan. He went to drama school and had been on TV shows and movies. He started working in content creation as a freelancer while going on casting calls. He did social media for a couple of small and medium businesses. With time, clients kept asking if he could also do graphic design and other agency work. He found freelancers to help him with those new tasks and over time built an agency with a team of 17. Tom doesn't see himself fitting in with the typical agency model. He loves to surround himself with "fellow nerds" and prefers to get to know clients well. In fact, prospective clients typically say they are different than other agencies in the UK. He describes himself as a people person and hates agencies that see their clients as cash cows. Client onboarding a client at his agency starts by asking them about their problems. What are they worried about? What do they think they need? Most agencies follow a set process for each client on the first call. However, at his agency, the first call is more about building a rapport with the client. According to Tom, if you have a good strategy ready but don't work on having a good rapport with your client, you're setting yourself up for failure. The first call with your client is all about them. One good way to ensure you'll have a meaningful conversation is to send a video clearing up the most common questions before the call. This way, you're getting that out of the way and can focus on getting to know them. Making a Good First Impression and Starting Off a Positive Relationship For Tom, focusing on the human connection is the key to standing out among so competitor agencies that treat all clients the same. Another important differentiator is the follow-up. After every call, he likes to set aside a few minutes to prepare the proposal. This way, not even twenty minutes after the call the client gets an email linking to the proposal. Clients appreciate having this level of dedication and it's a good way to kick off things. Bad first impressions. On the opposite end of the spectrum, a bad first impression is trying to sell something without first building a rapport. Maybe you've received the kind of LinkedIn message where someone goes straight into sales mode claiming you're in the same industry. It's not a good look and an awful way to make a first impression. This type of tactic tends to be a massive turn-off. It has made many move off LinkedIn because they feel constantly bombarded with sales pitches. By starting a conversation and building a relationship where you're not immediately asking someone to buy something you're much more likely to get them on your side. Going Beyond Skill When Hiring Your Agency Team In the five years since he started the agency, Tom has really learned to value his team. He believes in hiring people smarter than him because it has been key to his agency's success. Having the right people in the right seats means less micromanaging. He trusts after he makes the sale, his team will deliver exactly what the client expects. It also means someone has his back when the client is asking for something outside of his expertise. Having a reliable team has been the most important piece in scaling his agency to where it is now. How he finds the right people. At first, he just started hirin

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