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

Would you like to dive into the NFT world? Agencies are finding ways to use NFTs to connect their clients with their audiences. What's an NFT and how can you get in on it? Today's guest has worked with big companies that recognized their potential as collectibles. He also created his own NFT project with a charitable and environmental focus and now shares his experience. Chris Madden is the cofounder of Matchnode, a digital ad agency with clients that include the Chicago Bulls, Lending Tree, New Balance, and many more. He also started Seabums, an NFT project that focuses on massively improving ocean health that has donated more than $140,000 to ocean charities. Chris had been studying the rise of NFTs and learning how his clients were successfully implementing them into their businesses. Eventually, he decided that diving into the experience was the best way to learn. In this episode, we'll discuss: How to land big brand clients. How to get started in the NFT world. Getting creative with NFTs for clients. Sponsors and Resources Wix: Today's episode is sponsored by the Wix Partner Program. Being a Wix Partner is ideal for freelancers and digital agencies that design and develop websites for their clients. Check out Wix.com/Partners to learn more and become a member of the community for free. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Podcast Takeover!! Get to know your Smart Agency Guest Host: Dr. Jeremy Weisz is the co-founder of Rise25, an agency that helps companies launch and run podcasts profitably. He followed Jason's podcast and eventually joined the mastermind and has been a guest on the podcast before. Today, he's helping Jason bring something new to the Smart Agency podcast audience by interviewing a special guest and bringing a new perspective to the show. From Starting Small to Getting Their Dream Client Matchnode started as a small agency with no outside funding and worked with whatever clients they could get. It was mainly a Facebook agency and expanded to Google ads and other paid ad platforms. Chris and his partner slowly built the agency and one day they got the most amazing lead off their website: the Chicago Bulls. By that point, they had done the work to be visible by such a big organization and were ready for the task. Basically, his agency helps the team sell tickets by promoting things like family night or different theme nights. They have a budget for each season and an expected return (about four dollars per every dollar spent). They then meet with the Bulls' creative team to figure out how they can turn their digital content into great paid social media ads that drive returns. There are a lot of moving parts to figure out, but they are continually working to track better and convert better. Overall, it has been a great experience and has led to several other clients in that space. These opportunities are thanks to all the work they did since their first year. Helping Clients Transition from Traditional to Digital Marketing Now the agency works with big established brands who, after a long history of working with traditional marketing, are embracing digital marketing. Their marketing budgets used to focus largely on traditional marketing and now it is more focused on digital. Matchnode helps them make the transition. It's very different from working with digital native companies where the senior executives may understand the importance of having a presence in the digital space. With these types of brands, there is some resistance from executives who don't really understand digital and need to be won over. Because of this, the language they use to talk about metrics, and way that they approach the problems changes. According to Chris, one of the most effective weapons against this resistance is numbers. With digital, the numbers are so clear that clients unfamiliar with this space are often surprised. They may be familiar with more traditional means like a billboard, but when they see how detailed the results for a digital ad are, it's very convincing. Diving into the World of NFTs Chris had been watching the development of the crypto space and wanted to dive deeper. As a digital ad agency working with the clients they worked with, it became clear to him that digital experiences were moving toward NFTs. He decided the only way to really learn was to jump in with a project of his own. He created Seabums, an NFT project with the mission of massively impacting oceans' health. The first collection dropped in December 2021 and so far Chris has been enjoying the experience. Working a lot with Facebook, he and his team witnessed how the digital space was changing. They purchased bitcoin as an agency and prepared for a future in which digital interactions and digital networks would be owned by people instead of centralized systems. With NFTs came the chance to own any digital object. In the broader landscape, NFTs are still limited in terms of their use but Chris believes

How can you boost agency profitability? Do you have a clear plan for being profitable? Some agency owners start out thinking they want to get to $100 million. But, whatever you expect to get at $100M, could you get it at $10M? How about right now? Most likely, what you really want is freedom. Today's guest found out getting there is just a matter of setting up the right processes and having the right team. In tandem, these two elements remove the owner from daily operations and eliminate the need for your input at every step. Chris Rodgers is the founder and CEO of Colorado SEO Pros, a boutique SEO agency that helps market leaders solve complex SEO challenges. His team achieves big results with an exceptional SEO strategy, AI technology, and top talent. He shares his experience in his first few years with his agency, and how he learned the importance of knowing the agency's value and having the right people in the right seats on the bus. In this interview, we'll discuss: Early mistakes when you're building your agency. Why raising prices is a real game changer to increase profitability. Changing your hiring strategy to get the right people on the bus. Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Treat Your Agency SEO As Important As Your Clients' SEO Chris started his career working in corporate marketing. He was first attracted to the digital marketing side because of all the data and tracking and the transparency it provided. When he moved to Colorado, he worked as a senior analyst for an agency and, after a failed venture, eventually decided to create his own agency. His agency started in his home office with an intern that showed up to work in his pajamas. (#Agencylife, right? :) He first started contacting businesses ranking on the second page of Google results to tell them why they needed SEO. Their answer: What is SEO? Chris knew he needed to change his approach and went back to work on his own website's SEO. Eventually, his website knocked down the biggest company in Colorado for the #1 spot in Google results and they started getting leads from all over the country. This was a huge step for his agency and got them to a new level where they were actually struggling to keep up with demand. At this point, it was still a two-person operation and both he and his intern were SEO specialists. He still needed to figure out how to build an agency around their SEO services. Common Struggles the Early Years of Running an Agency Lack of knowledge on building a business around his skills led to some early mistakes. Chris and his team started off offering custom solutions as a way to differentiate from their competition. However, they experienced years of setbacks by not having the correct processes in order to scale. By the second and third years, Chris had periods where he really couldn't afford the salary for his team. The swings of the business were especially hard. If they lost a client, all of a sudden he had to skip a paycheck for himself in order to make payroll for everyone else. For a couple of years, every time he felt they were starting to grow, there was a new setback. It seemed like he was never making enough money to pay his employees what they needed to make while also growing his agency. The True Game Changer to Increase Your Agency's Profitability Things started to change once his agency got to $1 Million revenue and beyond. There was just more room to breathe. Chris focused on determining their ideal client. In order to grow the agency's reputation, it needed to work with higher-profile brands on large and complex projects. They searched for brands that recognized the value the agency brought and paid accordingly. However, the true game changer was raising their prices. They doubled their minimum prices and increased their contract length. They were finally getting paid on the value they delivered. In part, they were able to do this because they had a vault of case stories and a reputation for success. In hindsight, Chris realizes that while considering the value the agency delivers what he did in the backend was sabotaging the effort. Always be aware of the value you provide. Don't start out too eager, doing too much for your first big clients. They can leave you in a heartbeat. Instead, start the year by setting clear goals for your agency. Look at the value you deliver. Think about the salary you personally want to make that year. Then ask: What revenue does the agency need in order to make that happen? How many clients do you need in order to get there? How much would you need to charge? Break it down to smaller, attainable goals and then

What story are you telling prospective clients about your agency? With audiences getting savvier about skipping over or blocking traditional marketing, it's important to tell a story that engages your audience. Today's guest specializes in creating such narratives for his clients and offers some tips for agency owners who want to leverage this strategy. Zachary Slingsby is the founder of Human Factor Media, an award-winning branded content team that makes short films for brands. Their creations drive higher brand recall, awareness, and affinity than any other form of modern marketing. In this interview, Zachary explains how his love for stories led to a career creating content that resonates and why your agency's branding should not be an afterthought. In this episode, we'll discuss: How to be better at storytelling. Change the narrative and stand out. Why your branding should not be an afterthought. Sponsors and Resources Verblio: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Verblio. Check out Verblio.com/smartagency and get 50% off your first month of content creation. Our team loves using Verblio because of the ease in their process and their large pool of crowd-sourced writers. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Agencies Must Be Intentional About Marketing Their Brands Zack's love for stories began with his love of film and literature. However, for him the traditional artistic path was filled with a number of frustrations so he decided to change course. Marketing provided the perfect niche to use this skill set in a time when brands are now acting as stages for their audiences. Engaging and entertaining storytelling is now a must for modern companies and a major focus for anyone developing their brand. It's common for agency owners to forget to market their own agency. Many expect to have time to develop their branding later but find that is not really the case. Many agency owners work around the clock and don't have the systems in place to create the freedom or lifestyle they've wanted since the beginning. You'll find that, unless you're very intentional about treating your agency like a client, it won't happen. Most never put the effort they should into their own marketing. Why Storytelling is an Important Marketing Tool Storytelling may be a bit of an overused term by now, but to Zack, it's the best invitation to let your audience know "this is who I am". Good storytelling is an effective and, in some ways, very simple way to get people to join your culture. In essence, commerce is all about lowering the uncertainty about one another so that we can exchange value. This is where true narrative value becomes an asset. It's a superpower that small companies can really tap into. A commerce giant like Amazon can never hope to feel like a local presence in the user's life. By contrast, agency owners can use storytelling to create fans that later become clients. Let your audience know who you are outside of work so they can feel they know the real you. Instead of looking to compete with big brands or big-name agencies, offer something they can't. Why You Must Create a Narrative That Wins Your Audience's Attention Every brand and agency has similar marketing options thrown at them. Because of this, their value propositions look strikingly similar, especially if it's a niche with a lot of competition. Those companies will often end up competing in the same space, using the same marketing, and the same messages. So, why not try to use narrative value to distinguish yourself? With so much competition, the way you speak to people becomes the only value you have. The way brands like Lexus, Patagonia, and Northface are committing to storytelling tells us they've identified something about where the market is. Users want brands to get past the age of commercials. We expect brands to compete for our attention in the same way that our favorite media company does. Jason likes to use the example of Apple -- they don't sell products in their ads. They create a vision and tell a story. The launch of the iPod wasn't just another MP3 player, it was "1,000 songs you can store in your pocket." You Don't Have to be Big on Every Platform So how can you use narrative to your advantage? You know that including a healthy dose of video in your marketing will make a great difference, but it doesn't mean you know how to use it. There are incredible success stories like Gary Vaynerchuk, who built his agency empire on video content. Everything changed once someone on his team started following him around to film his day and make daily vlogs. Of course, this won't necessarily work for everyone; we don't all have adventure-filled days. You can also find successful examples of agencies that have created a presence on YouTube by making their team and office part of their content. In any case, Zack's advice is to choose one platform and focus on growing your audience there. It doesn't have to

Do you dedicate time to work on your agency's marketing? Would you hire a dedicated team to handle your agency's short-term and long-term marketing strategy? Today's guest talks about two common mistakes that sabotage your pipeline and how he built a dedicated marketing team for his agency. Jeff Gapinski is the founder and president of Huemor, a web design agency that focuses on building memorable website experiences. They focus on helping their clients vastly improve your key metrics, and display your brand with pride. After eleven years in this business, Jeff says the biggest change came with building a sustainable pipeline by focusing on his agency's marketing. In this episode, we'll discuss: Building your agency team around your needs. 2 mistakes to avoid in building a sustainable pipeline. Long-term and short-term strategies for marketing your agency. Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Building Your Agency Team Around Your Needs Jeff had been freelancing since college when he got a referral for a very good opportunity for e-commerce. Ecommerce was quite new and, although he was a talented designer, he knew he would need help. He put together a team to tackle this challenge and the client was pleased with the results. It was a natural progression from there to forming an actual agency. After finding a cofounder for his agency adventure, Jeff went on to hire several former classmates for key roles. He admittedly built the team around the needs of their original client but quickly figured out this was not sustainable in the long term. Subsequently, the agency went through a couple of iterations as they shaped the team to what it needed to be. For the first few years, he was the sole project manager, which he acknowledges lasted too long. It wasn't until year three they finally hired a dedicated project manager. By contrast, the agency now has six project managers and a director of projects. Things now run much more smoothly. 2 Mistakes that Sabotage Your Agency Sales Pipeline When it comes to building a sustainable pipeline, Jeff believes agency owners make two common mistakes: Falling back on their network. Many fall into the trap of using their immediate network to get business. This usually consists of contacts from past jobs and referrals from existing clients. Ultimately it is a very limited pool. Not marketing the agency. Agencies seldom spend time working on their own brand identity. In fact, they tend to end up with a very generic site and generic marketing you can theoretically stamp any logo on. Work on Your Branding to Differentiate Your Agency Always keep in mind brand identity is paramount for an agency. It is the foundation you build on to get business. However, many agencies use their website primarily to show their clients' work and hence their identities become their clients. Of course, you don't want this because clients will likely change over time. With this in mind, Jeff and his team set out to create a very distinct visual identity. They created a mascot featured on their website which sets them apart from other agencies. They tied their website and mascot to the concept of space, which relates to the idea of breaking boundaries and going to places unknown. These elements tie their brand identity together. According to Jeff, it has been a huge differentiator for the agency and they have gotten positive feedback from prospects and clients. Short and Long-Term Strategies to Build a Sustainable Pipeline You should be thinking about your strategy in terms of long-term and short-term moves. Companies, in general, make the mistake of trying to do all the strategies at once. With this method, nothing really gains traction. A long-term strategy should include any sort of owned media as a cornerstone of your brand. This will take six months or even longer to gain traction. This includes podcast, SEO, and content marketing. Of course, you also need a short-term strategy to bring in results while you set your long-term strategy into motion. This includes things like paid ads, cold LinkedIn outreach, paid social, etc. Both are essential because one is sustainable and built for the long term while the other secures opportunities immediately. For their long-term strategies, Jeff's team writes long-form content targeted at marketing managers, produces long-form articles once a week, and then adapts those for email distribution and posts on LinkedIn and other social channels. They also plan to eventually start a podcast. 4 Key Hires to Build Your Dedicated Marketing Team It's normal to get distracted by client work and as the agency grows

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

Are you tired of waiting for clients to provide content? Is your agency thinking of offering content creation as a service? The demand for content is on the rise and research shows content creation is profitable for agencies. However, many agencies are not using content creation to its full potential because they don't understand the value of content marketing in 2022. Ryan Sargent is the Director of Content Marketing at Verblio, the world's friendliest content creation platform. Verblio builds content marketing for other marketers at scale by pairing specialized, niche writers with advertising agencies and marketing professionals. The team at Verblio are the experts at content creation and he's sharing secrets on ways agencies can make better use offering content creation and strategy for their clients. In this episode, we'll discuss: 5 ways agencies use content marketing in 2022 The disconnect between agency and in-house client content strategy. Why is it harder for your content to rank? Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources Verblio: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Verblio. Check out Verblio.com/smartagency and get 50% off your first month of content creation. Our team loves using Verblio because of the ease in their process and their large pool of crowd-sourced writers. 5 Ways Agencies Use Content Marketing in 2022 To continually keep the pulse on how audiences consume content, Verblio does an annual 'State of Digital Content' survey gathering information from the market. In its third edition, received data from 450+ marketers with a focus on digital agencies. The results were segmented based on the size of the agency. They got some fascinating takeaways from it, including: Content creation is profitable: At least 75% of participants expressed that content is very profitable at their agencies. This presents a really clear sign that content is something people pay attention to and that agencies will continue to offer. Creating content for your clients not only increases productivity (you're not waiting for them to provide it), it also increases profitability. Win-win! It's all or nothing: Agencies are either "all in" on content or not; and the numbers show it. According to the results, bigger agencies recognize the power of content. They report that 75% of their revenue comes from content creation. By contrast, smaller agencies reported Content creation is on the rise: Increasing from the past, more agencies are producing 10 or more pieces of content per client. In past surveys, most agencies reported producing 5 pieces of content per client. The demand is there -- is your agency helping service the demand? Core content is still king: Agencies are still focused on the bread and butter of core content, like blog posts and landing pages. Most are not diversifying in other forms like podcasts, for instance, which are far more time-consuming. Content marketing is vast, but core content is still king (even in a changing economy). In-house content creation: Most agencies surveyed produce content in-house. When they outsource content creation, they usually do so through freelancers. Disconnects Between Agency Content vs Client Content One thing Ryan finds particularly interesting is that in-house marketers look at conversion stats as a measure of success. Meanwhile, agencies are more likely to look at engagement stats. If agencies look more at conversion stats they would find this resonates more with clients because that's what the in-house teams are focusing on. Also, in-house teams are far less likely to find content refreshes compelling. Agencies see the value of refreshing existing content and consider it low-hanging fruit. In-house client teams don't see value in refreshes and therefore don't prioritize it. The roles reverse when it comes to ebooks and white papers, which in-house marketing teams see as powerful tools, but agencies don't focus as much on. Is it Getting Harder to Create Successful Content? A generalized feeling is that it's getting harder to create successful content. So if you feel like it's harder to rank or get social engagement, you're right! Demand for content is growing. However, the increase in demand is also the reason it's getting harder to see those conversions. Readers are getting pickier and there's a lot of mediocre content out there. We've entered an age of content in which the audience knows to ignore the banner ad. Because of this, your content must accurately show intent and provide value. A Happy Medium Between Education and Entertainment Content What is the right balance between content that informs and educates versus content that entertains? Getting it right depends on how well you know your audience and understand the purpose of the content. For example, if you're a B2B company very focused on education and all of the sudden decide to create an entertaining ad, you shouldn't be surprised if

Do you offer too many agency services? Are you trying to be a jack-of-all-trades, making you the master of none? Does your broad service offering dilute your team's focus? Today's guest is an e-commerce expert whose agency works exclusively with one e-commerce platform he believes is better than the rest. In this interview, he talks about what's next in e-commerce and what you should look to improve in your website. Guillaume Le Tual is the Founder and CEO of MageMontreal, an agency committed to building powerful e-commerce websites to increase clients' sales. They work exclusively with the Magento platform. Why? According to Guillaume, the agency tried working with other platforms and found Magento is the best open source e-commerce platform on the market. In this episode, we'll discuss: Narrowing your agency's service offering. Hiring for culture fit and values. Niching down to avoid diluting your team's focus. Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Podcast Takeover!! Get to know your Smart Agency Guest Host: Dr. Jeremy Weisz is the co-founder of Rise25, an agency that helps companies launch and run podcasts profitably. He followed Jason's podcast and eventually joined the mastermind and has been a guest on the podcast before. Today, he's helping Jason bring something new to the Smart Agency podcast audience by interviewing a special guest and bringing a new perspective to the show. Narrowing Your Service Offering and Focusing on a Horizontal Niche Guillaume started his career as a visual artist building background art for clients like The National Bank of Canada and Warner Bros. He gained experience in web design, digital marketing, and e-commerce and eventually decided to start his agency, MageMontreal. According to Guillaume, he and his team tried dozens of other e-commerce platforms before settling on working exclusively as a Magento agency. They offer complete e-commerce website design and development, maintenance, and integration of Magento with third-party software. Now, they are one of very few Magento-certified agencies in Canada and can see the best decision for their business was focusing on one very specific niche and cutting down on their service offering to be the very best at just one. Remember, a niche can be a specific market (vertical niche) or a specific skillset (horizontal niche). What's Next in E-Commerce? Guillaume says we're still a long way from truly developing AI to what we've seen in movies. Most companies are not at a point where they are truly using AI. However, it is used in for things like product recommendations. Using Adobe Sensei, for example, users can get product recommendations based on shopper behavior, popular trends, and product similarity. If a suggestion does not convert into a sale, next time it will make a different suggestion, which indicates that the machine is learning. That would be the low-hanging fruit available right now. It can also be used to improve the search bar, for example, to get more relevant search results. It's really a step-by-step process to integrate this technology into your company. It requires prior steps like cleaning up your data and standardizing your processes to be able to implement this. After implementing marketing automation at every step of your email process and onboarding process, the next level would be using AI to help you run that. There's also some interesting work done with progressive web apps (PWA). Basically, this is a hybrid between a native app and a website so you get the benefits of both. So even though it's a website, in terms of maintenance you don't have to constantly download the latest version of the app. It's a website, so you always have the latest content. It also has some limited offline capabilities. And it includes push notifications for marketing like you would have with a native app. Hiring For Values and Resourcefulness When it comes to his hiring process, Guillaume prioritizes the agency's values. He recommends not overcomplicating it and having a list of three or four things the candidates must comply with. "Do not compromise when it comes to your values," he advises. Whether it's sales or HR, if the candidate does not meet these requirements, they're not the right fit for your agency. Also, take your time with the process if you have to because rushing leads to mistakes. Above all, he prioritizes a strong work ethic and desire to provide the best possible service. He asks candidates to provide examples of times they feel they provided excellent customer service. He also looks for resourcefulness. Sometimes it can be an issue when an employee

Are you having a hard time finding the right candidates to fill roles on your team? Does your hiring process take culture fit into account? A solid hiring process is key to agency growth. Today's guest has worn many hats in her career in the agency world and has learned to always keep the recruitment pipeline full at all times. How can you manage to do this? It's a combination of various steps. Amy Pyles is the president of Saxum, an integrated digital agency that works with brands balancing purpose with profit. In her role overseeing the inner workings of the agency, Amy relies on her leadership team to create the type of culture where they set up people for success and keep the agency steering towards its goals. In this interview, we'll discuss: Building agency culture and constantly recruiting. Keep your recruitment pipeline full at all times. How to grow your agency team talent. Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Cultivating an Agency President from Within Amy is not the owner of Saxum but does operate the business. Her agency career started right after finishing her master's degree. She started as employee number 25 at an agency that was just starting its growth journey. It was 2008 and Twitter had just come out, Apple was about to launch the new iPod, Facebook was just opening up to work as a marketing platform for brands, and everybody was building custom websites and apps. With so much happening, it was definitively the right place and right time to enter the digital marketing space. She left the agency 8 years later as a business with 250 employees, offices across the country, and working with brands like Walmart. She started working with Saxum right away to lead their digital practice. Over the years, she led some departments, was promoted to Chief Operating Officer, and now has the role of President. Creating Agency Culture That Supports Constant Recruiting Many agencies have a hard time bringing in talent and building up the team to keep up with demand. Amy finds one of the most important elements when recruiting is having a clear purpose for your agency. Being able to connect with purpose on the talent side has been an important piece of how they recruit. Her team leverages culture as a key operational element in growing the agency. Thanks to their culture partner, Giant Worldwide, they also have a framework to manage culture and talent development. And, they take several steps to ensure their talent pipeline is always full. Remember: You should always be hiring! Sometimes agency owners will say they're having a hard time finding talent but if you go to their website there's for recruiting. This should be clear as soon as a user enters your website that you are hiring. Set up the right systems to create your recruitment pipeline and be consistent in keeping it active. At Amy's agency, everyone knows that "what gets measured, gets managed". As you focus on operations, think about what you're measuring (and don't measure too much!). That's what will get managed. It's been pivotal in the way her team builds competency and builds the discipline needed in operations. 6 Steps to Keep Your Recruitment Pipeline Full at All Times At her agency, senior leaders are responsible for filling the pipeline for their departments. Basically, they should always have in mind at least two positions they should fill next and ensure these steps are covered: Developing relationships: Each team leader should think about where they could be developing relationships with possible recruits. This could mean keeping an eye on other agencies in case they want to "poach". LinkedIn: Their LinkedIn is always running and Amy says they get great input from there. Paid ads: A part of any serious recruiting effort. Referrals: This is a piece people tend to lose sight of. However, the best source of freelance talent and full-time talent is from existing employees. So they try to incentivize that and hire from within their network. Internship program: They have a robust intern program that has worked great for them. Ideally, they'll have up to ten interns to grads working at the agency at any given time. Keep in mind that bringing in interns to your agency won't save you any time. In fact, it is a long-term strategy and requires a lot of time and planning to do it well. Quarterly meeting: Finally, they have a quarterly meeting where every department head goes through the pipeline. As to the question of hiring junior or more experienced staff, her agency does prefer to hire junior staff and train them. Of course, you will need to hire more experienced talent sooner or later

Are you an accidental agency owner trying to grow fast? Rapid agency growth isn't necessarily the best way to grow. When you're going through the ups and downs you want to get to the other side quickly. But slow and steady wins the race and for one agency, hitting the one million dollar mark changed everything. He went from running a "mom and pop shop" to growing a 10-person agency. He shares how he recovered from rapid growth by getting focused and his lessons on the importance of branding while growing his agency. Robert Giovanni is the CEO and co-founder of IronPlane, an agency dedicated to designing, building, and optimizing exceptional eCommerce experiences. Robert says he's made mistakes and learned a lot in the process of growing his agency. He experienced the awkward stage of an agency's growth of being in no man's land. He now offers a perspective on how to get your agency past that awkward growth stage with lessons he's learned over the years. In this episode, we'll discuss: Getting over $1 million in revenue. Choosing ideal clients and firing ones that aren't. Getting comfortable hiring in advance of need. Branding your agency and your team. Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Discovering the Opportunities in eCommerce Robert discovered opportunities in selling online back in 1988 when he sold a chess set. He built a website to sell this set purchased in Russia and sold it for around $8,000. He quickly started to buy and sell products online, which eventually led to requests to build websites for other people's product sales. And with that, an accidental agency was born. Step by step they started to build a relationship with clients, many of which he retained for several years. Before he knew it, he was operating a digital agency that started to grow. Robert's perspective always focuses on helping clients figure out what they wanted for their business (drive revenue, improve their bottom line.) By 2012, he knew it was time to get serious with its branding to further it's his agency's growth. Getting Over the Million Dollar Mark According to Robert, reaching that milestone took about three to four years. In the beginning, he had about two big clients and, as he describes it, he was a "glorified consultant." He hired another person to help him with daily tasks when the agency was near one million and felt content. This was until one of his clients decided to end their contract abruptly. It was a big blow for the agency and Robert knew in order to prevent something similar from ever happening again he needed to make things more official. He worked on defining the agency's purpose and branding. He hired more people and really prioritized getting out of operations so the agency was not a one-man show. It took another three years, but after these changes, the agency finally got past one million. Choosing Your Ideal Clients and Firing Clients That Don't Fit After getting past the point of being a "mom and pop" agency with only 2-3 big clients, there was still much to learn. At the start, the agency was taking any client that came their way. They were trying to grow and it seemed foolish to turn away any client at that point. This is a normal part of any agency's growth process. You feel afraid of turning down any business opportunity; even if you know a client is not a good fit. However, it's important to recognize the importance of choosing clients that are a good fit for your agency so you can wasting time on the ones that aren't. For Robert, it was when the agency had grown to about 10 employees. He was no longer part of every sales call and had a number of good clients. There was a particular client that was never a good fit and the team knew it from day one. However, it was a big project and they signed the contract anyway. What proceeded was weeks of Saturday calls and nightmare meetings until Robert decided to end the relationship. It was the first client he had to fire and it turned out to be the point where he sat down with his team to talk about being pickier with potential clients. From this moment on, they worked to better define the agency's values and make sure they were clearly stated on their website. He knew his agency could bring tremendous value to any client. But the client's values needed to match the agency's or they just wouldn't be a good culture fit. Failing to define these values will leave you directionless in your agency journey. Rapid Agency Growth and Losing the Human Touch In early 2020, Robert felt the agency was really hitting it when it came to marketing and bringing in new clients. However, the team was faili

What are your goals for agency growth? Would you like to grow your agency to 7- or 8-figures? That is exactly what this agency owner did when he built a highly successful $50 million-dollar agency with a team of 400 people. He did it by staying ahead of the curve with technology and building leaders who evolve with the growing agency. Robert Henderson is the co-founder and CEO of JumpCrew, an agency that generates demand for 2B2 customers by building a qualified pipeline through fully dedicated sales teams. Robert has built a successful agency by growing in the direction of the market, staying ahead of the curve, and building strong leadership. In this episode, we'll discuss: The future of marketing in the metaverse. Staying ahead of the curve with technology. Building a leadership that evolves with your agency. Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Building a $50 Million Dollar Agency Many agency owners starting out are interested in "tricks" to get ahead and grow their agency as fast as possible. They seem so interested in growth they don't stop to think about the value they should be providing. When he started out, Robert saw many businesses shied away from learning how to acquire new clients. Communicating value is something he really leans into with each new client. He doesn't sell a one-size-fits-all solution because it's specific enough or aligned with what the client needs. Instead, his team focuses on how to deliver value in a way that aligns with the client's goals. Also, they are self-aware enough to turn away clients when they feel that they can't deliver this value. Whatever the reason, they try to be really candid about good and bad fits. The most important piece of building a successful agency is aligning with the right people. Every business is ultimately about people and when you create an environment where each team member is an expert in their area you don't need to know everything. Partnering with people who really know about their particular area will you set your agency up for success. The secret is having people that are really good at executing what they know. The Effect of New Technologies and the Metaverse on the Future of Marketing Robert and his team learned the power of content marketing while automating content for local businesses. They learned what the market needed by being in the mix. They grew in that direction by adding new products and services based on the feedback from clients. Robert is a believer in new and emerging tech tools and giving platforms the credit they deserve as they develop. Sometimes we can't imagine the progress a new technology will represent in our particular space. For instance, 10 years ago no one was interested in being a guest on a podcast and now they have become a very popular marketing vehicle. Looking ahead, Robert believes in ten years from now the meetings we're having on video today will all happen on the metaverse. People from all over the world will gather in a space that feels very realistic. The adoption of mediums like the metaverse will come with the technology and infrastructures to support them. At this point, adopting this new technology will maybe shape the way the supporting technologies start to develop. He believes the possibilities are endless as we still can't imagine the many ways that we'll use it. The development of paid search started with the rate of adoption of social media platforms. Similarly, the development of the metaverse as the possible future of paid ads will depend on how people start to adopt this new technology. These tools are bound to change the way agencies work and advertise and, of course, being the first to adopt them successfully would be a great advantage. We need to continue to study and educate ourselves to be able to see where it is heading. Staying Ahead of the Curve with Technology Staying ahead of the curve is mostly about educating yourself and trying to understand what the opportunities look like to capitalize on them as they come. We're in a learning phase for technologies like the metaverse. We know it will be a part of the future but we don't know exactly how that will look. Right now it's about trying to create more connectivity between your team in what is set to be a more sophisticated environment. Robert believes this is the low-hanging fruit available right now for all until we can figure out how to get our partners and clients into it. However, the technology is still in the very early stages. For instance, no one wants to work 6 to 7 hours with the VR goggles on. There's still a long way to go before it is adapted to everyd

Would you like to attract more clients with outbound sales? Do you need to build a successful sales team that gets results? Today's guest is a sales expert who helps agency owners get out of sales and build a successful sales team. It's all about building consistency and using your network to create relationships that will help you grow your agency. Dan Englander is the CEO and founder of Sales Schema, a B2B agency that secures ideal prospect relationships. His team goes out to the market and helps clients get meetings and focus on new business. Earlier in his career, he led new business for a creative services company and helped them get to seven figures. After starting his agency in 2014, he has learned a lot about how companies go after new business. More recently, he shares his perspective on sales and how to improve at it in his new book, Relationship Sales at Scale. In this episode, we'll discuss: How agencies can do better at outbound sales. Using your network to get to your ideal clients. What works when it comes to finding and training salespeople. Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM When is the Right Time to Transition Out of Sales? Transitioning out of sales requires two main steps, according to Dan: who's doing what and developing consistencies in the sales process. We all fall into the trap of dedicating too much time and energy to clients and none to your agency. Once you stop focusing on sales you'll be on another level to focus on growing your agency. If you're an agency owner and the salesperson, think about spending half your time on sales. Eventually, get yourself to the point where you can just focus on the top of the funnel and have someone help set meetings. Clear the other half of your time to focus on your agency. Do this with the mindset of gradually getting out of sales altogether. Agency owners commonly try to hang on to sales because they feel clients only want to talk to them. That's a misconception, considering how many owners have managed to grow their agencies to massive proportions by getting out of sales. It's not the easiest thing to do, but once you have a repeatable sales process it becomes easier to get someone else in that seat. Where do some agency owners go wrong with this transition? They jump to it too early before figuring out the repeatable process. They just throw a salesperson into it the mix and expect them to figure it out. That sets them up for failure and, once they do, it is easy to convince yourself that you're the only one that can handle sales successfully. How to Create a Repeatable Sales Process Agency owners struggle, sometimes for years, to find the right salesperson and this has a lot to do with having the right systems in place. Dan likes to break it down into a process where you start at the very top of the funnel. Think about how you're getting meetings. Break down your conversion process from the first appointment to the proposal. Follow that with breaking down the process from proposal to close. Of course, this may vary depending on how complex your sales process is -- documenting everything is key in order to set up your salesperson for success. When it comes to how to get meetings, Dan and his team find outbound is a really good way to do it. Whatever you're selling it stands to reason that your market will be relatively small. Your target audience is not everyone in the world so you don't have to build a massive inbound funnel. There are really a finite number of relationships you can build in your area. With outbound, you can start building those relationships before the client actually has a need. Then you are top of mind when the need is there. Building Relationships With Outbound Sales One of the things Dan's agency does for clients is referral-driven campaigns where they make a list of ideal clients and identify who could introduce them to those clients. Basically, they identify friends of friends, narrow them down to contacts in the first degree and ask for an introduction to someone in their network. A lot of people have no problem making that connection once you're upfront about what you want. They usually start with an accounts-based list of thousands of companies. Instead of trying to find the golden company that you may want to work with but have no meaningful connection to, find a number of companies you're actually connected with. The connection you make as a result might not get you a campaign that lasts very long, but it will help you get that level of trust in order to get you a referral. What Works When it Comes to Finding Salespeople? This is something Dan still

Have you clearly identified your place in the market? Have you selected a core leadership team to help you take the agency to the next level? Do you unknowingly have a principle-agent problem? After 10 years in the business, one successful agency owner shares the steps he followed to skyrocket growth. He covers everything from the importance of having a top-notch leadership team to communicating the goals and vision and solving the principal-agent problem. Manish Dudharejia is the founder and president of E2M Solutions, a full-service white label digital agency. His agency works as a trusted partner to scale your agency business behind the scenes. E2M has been serving agencies for 10 years and currently works with about 130 agencies across the U.S. In their growth process, Manish has had to learn to manage big teams of over 100 people, as well as create a culture that prioritizes employees and identifies leaders within the organization. In this episode, we'll discuss: Finding your agency's place in the market Tips for managing a large team of over 100 employees. Identifying the principle-agent problem and how to solve it. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Finding Your Agency's Unique Proposition and Providing Value According to Manish, understanding his agency's unique sales proposition was a key factor in its success. He was clear early on that his core expertise was more about sales, branding, and customer service. He knew that is what he needed to offer clients in order to provide value. And, he never stopped learning about leadership. Like most agency owners, Manish didn't know anything about hiring and training a team when he first started. Now he manages a team of nearly 150 people. Another key aspect of E2M's growth was understanding what the market needed and how to serve those needs. Manish understood India is one of the countries with the highest number of English-speaking young people. This makes it a great place to outsource services. The resources and opportunities were there to create a company very competitive in this space. It just took having great systems in place and a really professional, prepared team. It's about having the self-awareness to identify how you fit into the industry. What are your strengths? How does your expertise fit what clients need from you? Manish saw a gap in the agency space where agency owners didn't have time to invest in hiring and training a team. That's where his team comes in to white label when agencies need them most. Finding and Managing Your Core Leadership Team A lot of agency owners struggle with operations and growing a team as the agency scales and needs to expand its staff. They may go from having a team of five to a team of 20 and feel overwhelmed. Manish now manages a team of nearly 150 and his management philosophy is to have a core leadership team. He usually works closely with his 6-7 leaders and makes sure they know who is responsible for what. It's important your team leaders understand and communicate the agency's culture, vision, and goals. Failing to do this leads to a disconnect between the employees and the overall agency's goals. Where can you find top talent to lead and manage your agency team? Manish believes in building leaders within the company rather than hiring outside talent. He believes there is always someone out there who would love to do a job you hate doing. Instead of holding on to tasks you don't like for fear no one else can do it, find someone you trust that can take it over. He is also against micromanaging and believes that if you chose someone to be part of your leadership team is because they've proven themselves and you trust their judgment. The Principal-Agent Problem and Why You Need to Solve it Manish recently learned about the theory of the principle-agent problem. Fortunately, he had been taking the right steps to face it. It is the root of most problems related to employee and client dissatisfaction. It is basically a conflict between the priorities of a person you've chosen to represent you vs. the priorities of the client. The root begins when the incentives of the agent and the principal do not match. Manish uses the example of Uber and how their main customer dissatisfaction problem begins when the incentives for the principle (the client) – getting to their destination and enjoying a good service – do not align with the incentives of the agents (the drivers) – completing as many rides per day as possible. As an agency owner, you are essentially hiring people to provide a service that satisfies the clients' needs. However, you should always make sure to put the right incentives in place so those employees are also satisfied. Remember your employees are your most valuable asset, so if they're not happy something definitely must change. 3-Step Framework to Getting the Right People in the Right Seats Once he found his place in the market, Manish focused on having the right people

How can you propel agency growth while removing yourself from operations? How can you manage a fully remote team while keeping an active, fun work culture? What is it like to work with big tech brands? Today's guest saw a huge jump in her agency's growth during the pandemic and discovered the benefits of growing a remote team. Now she is figuring out what an agency office like looks like for her team in a post-pandemic world. Lisa Larson-Kelley is the founder and CEO of Quantious, a premier marketing agency specializing in emerging technology. She's grown the agency from a 2 person operation to a team of over 15 people working with the biggest names in tech, like Meta (formerly Facebook) and Shopify to name a couple. Her agency growth started to really take off just as the pandemic hit and she found many benefits in working remotely. In this episode, we'll discuss: Creating an agency that becomes a trusted partner for big brand clients. The benefits and opportunities of working remotely. The most important decision for massive agency growth. Podcast Takeover!! Get to know your Smart Agency Guest Host: Dr. Jeremy Weisz is the co-founder of Rise25, an agency that helps companies launch and run podcasts profitably. He followed Jason's podcast and eventually joined the mastermind and has been a guest on the podcast before. Today, he's helping Jason bring something new to the Smart Agency podcast audience by interviewing a special guest and bringing a new perspective to the show. Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Building an Agency as a Trusted Advisor in the Tech Sector Lisa started her career in design back when working in tech didn't seem like an option. She was passionate about tech and coding and eventually became part of a group of developers that worked at Flash Media. Joining Flash was the perfect jumping point to get back into coding and on the development side. Her work in app development opened the door to attend conferences as an expert and continue to learn about tech. For years she was immersed in emerging technologies, first as a developer herself, and then as a trainer and marketer. As a marketer, she knows how to tell complicated stories in a simple manner and built a team of like-minded people. Her agency has become a trusted partner working with the biggest names in tech like Meta and Shopify. Working as a secret weapon for these companies, they work on things like back-office operations and augmented reality experiences. With Meta, they worked on ways to show the many possibilities of using their collaboration software for businesses, Workplace, which they had struggled to market. Typically, her agency is called to assist a company that is adjusting to its growth process. They need support from an experienced team that can help them with onboarding, documentation, and processes. Their mission is to make their client look good and don't really feel a need to have the spotlight. Finding Success in a Transition to a Fully Remote Team Lisa was just thinking about investing in a bigger space to accommodate new team members when the pandemic started and she was forced to make the drastic shift to going fully remote. They were about 10% remote before, with some of the team working from home at least once a week. However, it was still a big adjustment to make overnight. We all remember how uncertain those first few weeks of the pandemic felt and the struggle to get used to the new reality. Thankfully, they got settled into the new situation quickly and Lisa realized it was actually going really well. The work didn't stop for her agency, as more and more companies were interested in the tech they needed to go fully remote. The work grew and so she needed to hire more talent. She realized she wasn't necessarily limited to hiring in New York area any longer and started recruiting all over the US. It was a shift that really enriched the quality of their work as an agency. Instead of investing in a bigger office space, she figured out how to manage people across different states. Now they focus on keeping everyone connected with daily meetings, Slack, and some creative solutions like work games. They have "Teaser Tuesdays", where everyone competes in games like Wordle as a way to connect and have fun. All in all, they make sure to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries, invest in professional development, and show their appreciation to keep the team motivated and creative. What is the Future of Remote Working? Lisa sees a lot of push and pull over staying remote or going back to the office in the tech world. On one hand, a home office is now ve

Would you like to get out of your agency's daily operations? Do you want more time to work on the business rather than in it? Have you set up boundaries and the right systems to make that happen? Have you made the key hires to help you do it smoothly? One agency owner found a way to force herself to exit from day-to-day operations in order to create more work-life balance. Jessie Healy is the founder and CEO of Webtopia, a digital agency focused on e-commerce growth for sustainable and purpose-driven product brands. She started to build her agency around her freelance business and quickly grew it into a successful remote agency. However, she found herself basically chained to her desk and made a few key decisions to correct that. In this episode, we'll discuss: How your values can help you select a niche. Force your own exit from day-to-day operations. A hiring system that eliminates 90% of bad matches. Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Transitioning from Freelancer to Agency Owner Jessie was 7½ months pregnant when she lost her job and turned to freelancing. It's something she was already considering but had delayed because she was unsure how to start. She wondered: How do freelancers get business? Where do they find clients? Thankfully, it was not as difficult as she thought. She posted her skillset on a forum and started getting work right away. Jessie started her agency as a freelancer and first-time mom who wanted a flexible schedule. As she grew her business, she first hired other female freelancers looking for the same type of flexibility. However, the workload increased and she found herself in management hell. She was chasing people down to make deadlines and attend meetings. In the end, she realized if she wanted any sort of work-life balance and growth for her agency she needed an in-house team. They continued to be a fully remote agency but as employees now, every team member is committed to the agency and committed to the process. She no longer had to chase after her team because they were online when she needed them to be. It was a key turning point for her agency. Building an Agency as a Trusted Partner For Clients As the amount of work grew, Jessie realized there was an opportunity to fill a gap in the market. She had worked on the client side and found that, even with a good budget and hiring experienced agencies, she could not make them show up to calls. She felt there was a gap in the market for agencies that would work as a partner for clients. So from the get-go, her agency started to work with small e-commerce companies as their marketing department. They focused on the creative side of storytelling as well as the science of media buying. According to Jessie, most agencies were focusing just on the media buying aspect but her agency stood out for focusing on both. They also focused on strategy, which she felt from her experience on the client side that agencies were really lacking. How Your Personal Values Can Help You Niche Down Jessie admits that in the very beginning she was willing to do any sort of agency work for £50/hour. She would even take on menial or boring tasks like paid search. That is until she learned about the benefits of niching down. Ecommerce became the obvious choice for her, since she had always been focused on consumer marketing. Additionally, sustainability has always been the most important value for her so she brought that to her agency work. When you have strong values for your agency, eventually you'll find yourself working with brands that share those same values. As time went on, she noticed they were working with a lot of female founders and a lot of sustainable brands. Jessie figured they were repelling brands that did not share those values and attracting the ones who did. She took to LinkedIn and started posting about sustainability. Eventually, she started working with charities and participating in tree planting activities and slowly built a clientele that resonates with her values. Now the agency is approached more and more by sustainable brands that share her passion. As When you find your agency's unique identifiers, implement the change you want to see in your agency and you'll attract people with the same values. 4 Key Agency Hires to Exit Yourself From Daily Agency Operations When she moved to New Zealand, it put a lot of distance and time difference between Jessie, the team, and clients. She spent a year planning the move during a time when she felt she was constantly chained to her desk. She felts she was always either answering emails or jumping into meetings. Moving gave her som

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

Has your agency struggled through tough times? Could you pivot quickly if necessary? Back in 2020 many businesses, including digital agencies, were scrambling to adapt during the covid pandemic. Today's guest got her agency to the other side and almost back at pre-pandemic revenue. To do that, she put together a series of guiding principles her agency team sticks by as they search for ways to carry on. She shares lessons on why building leaders and leveling up leads to amazing agency growth. Robin Blanchette is the founder and CEO of Norton Creative, an agency that specializes in the restaurant industry. With a niche like restaurant hospitality, her clients were particularly affected by the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns. Many in her situation tried different approached and found what worked for them. For her, it was 50% about diversifying and 50% digging deeper into her niche. In this episode, we'll discuss: How the pandemic affected her business. The principles that kept her team afloat. The importance of building leaders. Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Choosing an Agency Niche Based on Experience and Passion Robin was not an agency person by nature. She worked for an agency once in her 20s and never wanted to do it again. She had a background on the client side so as CMO and Media Director got to work on all the pieces of running marketing for restaurants and developed a real love for that industry. Although she really enjoyed this work, she was also a single mother of small children. She was looking for something that would allow her to be more present in her kids' lives. She naïvely thought running her own company would allow her that time and the agency was born from the idea. Choosing a niche was a no-brainer because Robin already had a background in the restaurant industry. That's where her heart is and what she is drawn to. Could she sell other things if necessary? Yes, but that's where her expertise is and where she shines. Since then, they've worked with about 150 restaurant brands whether for projects or partnerships. Adapting Your Agency Model In a Downturned Economy In early 2020, most of Robin's clients were in the restaurant business and were closing due to the lockdowns. She had the worst week of her career as many clients couldn't pay. Many were laying off staff and even she had to let go of some employees. It was a tough time, but one of the things she remembers is everyone's level of compassion and understanding. Even laid-off employees understood the decision and Robin really felt a sense of community in those moments. Thankfully, not every client had to shut down; many changed their model to drive through and delivery and kept going. A lot of people used creative measures and figured out how to stay in business during those months. This helped Robin and her team stay afloat and keep fighting as well. Some may think the pandemic proves that choosing a niche could be a negative. And back in 2020, Jason advised mastermind members to dedicate 50% of their efforts to continue to support their industries and 50% of their resources to explore new industries that were thriving with the new events. For her part, Robin decided to go even deeper into the restaurant industry. They did a lot of pro bono work and provided support to their clients. They also did a ton of branding work for digital businesses, which they now continue to do for bigger brands. All in all, they did some work outside of their niche while also digging even deeper into their industry kept them afloat in these difficult times. 4 Guiding Principles for Getting the Agency Team Through Tough Times The pandemic was certainly a hard time for many businesses. Agency owners had to get creative and look for new opportunities to get their agency past these difficulties. Like many, Robin did think of shutting down at some point. After all, she didn't have to answer to shareholders. However, her team was looking to her for leadership. Inspired by them, she decided to not give up and figure out what was next for the agency. Everyone had to be focused and working, so she created these 4 guiding principles: Focus on what you can control. Don't waste time or energy on things you can't control. Instead of worrying about the unknowns, what do you know to be true and how can you use it to your benefit? Get comfortable getting uncomfortable. Every member of the team needs to be flexible and take on new tasks and truly be a team player, even when something is a little outside their comfort zone. Assume positive intent. The uncertainty of a health crisis and changing economy is

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

What is the life cycle of a video marketing agency? How can you transition from accidental agency owner to something else in order to fulfill your goals? What does life look like after you sell your video marketing agency? Today's guest hadn't seriously considered selling until he stepped back to realize the bigger picture. He remembered his original goals and realized there were other projects he wanted to focus on. This guest shares the way he started and grew his agency into something a team member actually wanted to buy. He also shares how he created a smooth transition for the buyer and decided what is next in his entrepreneurial journey. Doug Dibert is the founder and creator of Magnfi, a video software platform, and also the founder of Crossing River, the video marketing agency he recently sold. Like most agency owners, he fell into the business by accident when he started making wedding videos and soon turned that into a business. However, as Doug grew his agency he started thinking about selling and pursuing his filmmaking passion. In this episode, we'll discuss: How to differentiate your video marketing agency. Knowing how and when to sell your agency. Finding the right buyer for your agency might be easier than you think. Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Starting a Video Marketing Agency Doug went to film school and actually started using the school's equipment to do paid jobs. He mostly worked filming weddings and got inspiration from a class on documentaries to try to apply those techniques to his wedding videos. So he took the material he filmed at one of those weddings and made a small trailer video. He posted it to social media and went to sleep. The next morning, he had thousands of views, shares, and messages from brides asking if he could do the same for their wedding. After a while, he also started getting requests from businesses that wanted to invest in video marketing. This is how the agency was born. They produced videos for businesses all over the world and focused on small to medium-sized businesses. Then the '08 recession hit and the agency lost all its marketing clients. Thankfully, the wedding video business stayed strong so the agency stayed afloat and also started to do videos for social media. Video is such an important tool and every company should utilize it. Back then, Doug had a hard time standing out among big video production companies. He thought about how to differentiate himself and concluded that instead of being a video production company they would focus on video marketing strategy. Their services went beyond creating video content. It included helping clients optimize their YouTube channels and animate their logos. They especially focused on creating content around the client's strategic goals. The word got out and they became the go-to video marketing agency for businesses. Creating a Platform to Systematize Video Content Creation Back in 2015, Doug rejected a few clients who wanted to film videos on their phones and send them to the agency to be turned into professional-looking video content. He didn't see the potential at the time. Later Doug realized 90% of his clients wanted videos shot and edited the same way. He got the idea to create a platform to systematize video content creation. Simple videos like testimonials, "about me" videos and expert tips are the core of what every business needs to see some real growth. With this in mind, Doug set out to create this platform for low-cost video content creation. His goal was to satisfy 90% of clients' needs and, in case they wanted something more personalized, they would pay an extra fee for those services. Seeing the Bigger Picture and Deciding to Sell Your Agency Doug's big goal when he started was to make movies. The opportunities to create videos for companies came by chance and the agency started to grow. He had people willing to invest in him as an entrepreneur who wanted to see if he was able to grow a business, so he focused on that. The shift in his mentality came from having a business coach who helped him see the bigger picture. He learned you have to continuously open your mind to new possibilities or you will remain stagnant. When his coach realized he wanted to make movies, she asked "why not next year?" He had been thinking about growing the agency more and delaying selling a bit longer. However, thanks to his coach he started thinking -- "why not next year?" Back then he was stuck being the hands-on agency owner who wanted to do everything. This shift encouraged him to start hiring people to replace himself and focus on what he did r

Is your agency purpose-driven? A shared purpose is something your employees will rally around and identify with. It is critical to create a sense of belonging and have their buy-in. Today's guest built a successful agency with a great culture his employees really appreciated. When he exited the agency, he felt so inspired by the outpour of messages from those impacted by its culture that he decided to write a book on creating an agency with a purpose and a soul. Ralf Specht is an author and business leader dedicated to making soulless companies a thing of the past. As the CEO of a global digital agency, he focused on building a culture focused on connecting the different teams. Years later, he received many messages thanking him for the agency culture he had created. In this episode we'll discuss: His proven framework for building culture. Why you should have a purpose if you want a successful agency. How he made culture a hard fact. Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Building a Global Agency When Ralf accepted the challenge of creating a global agency, it started with offices in four countries and 80 people. It was certainly a challenge but he remembers it as the highlight of his career. He focused on creating a sense of belonging and a culture that really motivates employees. All companies should have a purpose and a soul and that should come before any revenue goal you may have. You should also have core values that speak to the behavior you want to see in your agency. This will be the way to establish yourself and really start growing. By the time he left years later, Ralf had grown the agency to 19 offices and 1200 people. When he retired, he received many messages thanking him for the culture he had created for the agency. He felt this message was too valuable to keep it to himself, so he was inspired to write Building Corporate Soul and Beyond The Startup. 3-Step Framework for Building a Great Agency Culture Hiring based on beliefs, attitudes, and soft skills are buzzwords that get thrown around a lot these days. In their beginnings, Ralf and his partners sat down to think about the culture and values they wanted to see in their agency. At first, they set out to write a list of the behaviors they wanted to see in the agency. This proved to be difficult so they changed their approach to list the behaviors they did NOT want to see. It was easy starting from there and it also helped them shape an idea of who they wanted to become. This exercise eventually led them to figure out their purpose. It's an exercise he recommends to all agency owners because answering the question "why are you here?" will be crucial to implementing this framework: Shared Purpose (Being): We've been discussing purpose in the agency world for years. However, Ralf believes that if the end game of a purpose conversation is a great PowerPoint deck, then you achieve nothing. He prefers to talk about shared purpose, which has to be a.) shared by the company's leadership and b.) shared with all stakeholders. Shared Understanding (Believing): This includes all strategic elements like the mission, vision, and values plus an often overlooked fourth element "spirit." For Ralf, spirit speaks to the intended company culture. As the agency leader, what sort of culture do you want to see in the organization? Shared Behaviors (Belonging): Studies show that the number one reason why employees are now leaving their workplaces in spades is that they don't have a sense of belonging. The real work will start after you have shared purpose and shared understanding defined on paper. Up to that point, it is all about strategic thinking. Now you have to actually make sure that the behaviors in your agency reflect what you wrote to establish shared behaviors. Agencies are not any different than any other company in the sense that they very much need to implement these principles as much as they would recommend their clients to do so. Creating Consistent Culture Across Different Agency Offices Ralf's agency started as a global agency, which posed the challenge of building a culture where the different teams felt part of a whole. To address this, he and his partners enforced a single P&L mindset and a mantra of better, faster, cheaper, with an emphasis on better always being #1. With that, everything within the organization was set up to support collaboration rather than competition between offices. They also designed complementary roles across the four offices. Therefore, the offices had to work together or they would not be able to deliver on the various client briefs. As to the belonging elem

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

Are you setting up the processes you'll need to sell your agency one day? How would you go about weeding out the red flags to identify the right buyer? Today's guest started his agency at 25 and didn't think he'd ever want to sell. The pandemic made him reconsider, but he needed to find the right buyer. Someone that would benefit his clients, his team, and allow him to still be a part of his agency's future. Aaron Levenstadt was working at Google when he started offering SEO consultancy services to referred clients. When some of them asked for on-going support, he started Pedestal Search. His agency focuses on helping businesses drive more productive traffic from search engines to their websites or stores. Now, years later, he found the right buyer and continues to be a part of his agency's growth. In this episode, we'll discuss: How he decided to sell. Red flags in possible buyers. How to identify the right buyer for your agency. Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM A Lesson on Accelerating Agency Growth Early-On Aaron started his agency charging $6K a month for SEO and analytics services, which was great for a new business. He believed rushing to scale too fast could affect his ability to provide a good service. It took him 6-7 years to get over the $1 million mark. There were many lessons involved over the years of that agency growth process. One big lesson was learning how to explain what they do as an agency. Part of niching and finding your audience involves learning to clearly explain what you can and cannot do for clients. Once they nailed that part and had the processes to support it, growth accelerated. He also chose this time to start raising prices now that the agency had found an audience that resonated with its message. Getting Serious After Hitting The $1 Million Dollar Mark Getting to the $1 Million mark was the moment when Aaron actually started to get more serious about the agency's future. He and his team laid out a blueprint of how the company should run and got to work. It was a good moment for him to start replacing himself in several tasks and move to more of a strategy-based role. Basically, they developed an organizational chart where they could look at ratios of account strategists to see how many clients each could handle comfortably. The result was 4 to 9 clients per strategist depending on the size of the account. They then added an execution and delivery layer to the chart and started filling those roles, which freed Aaron to focus on more strategic and directional level thinking for the agency. Two Major Red Flags in Vetting Potential Buyers for Your Agency Selling the agency was not the goal from the start. Aaron saw himself working in the agency until the end of his career and saw no need to sell it. This is where having guidance like the Digital Agency Elite Mastermind is really helpful. Aaron didn't really consider acquisition seriously until some of his mentors started to ask questions about his future and legacy. Questions like "where do you see the agency going in the future?", and "are you planning to grow your staff of 25 employees, or to 50 employees?" got him thinking Around that time, he started to get emails from companies interested in buying his agency. It was the start of the pandemic and he got regular inquiries. However, he still wasn't sure. In dealing with potential buyers, Aaron found a few red flags he shared: Why are they interested in your agency in specific? If they cannot articulate a reason then they are just shopping around and are not serious. What is their reason for acquiring an agency? Are they buying to grow in a niche? Do they want to expand in a specific service area? Are they buying you for your team and processes? If they are not anchored to a why then aren't legitimate. If you're going down the path of deciding to sell, you need to understand where a buyer is coming from and where they are going. In Aaron's experience, buyers back then were only thinking about the low-interest rates and didn't have a real plan. A serious acquirer needs a full plan to cover different key factors like the culture fit which is so important for the possible success of a merger. Identify the Right Buyer With a Commitment to Your Agency Vision Aaron finally found the structure and vision he was looking for when he started talking to a buyer with a very clear vision from the beginning and showed a sort of confidence in what they could do together. Of course, there were difficult points where Aaron was not sure if he wanted to go through with the acquisition. He had built this agency working by himself wi

Would you like the confidence to raise prices and triple your agency's growth? Are you ready to empower your team and transition to a true Agency CEO? That's exactly what today's guest has been able to do over the past couple of years. She is on the show talking about overcoming her two biggest challenges: removing herself from sales and the fear of raising prices. What she realizes now is that she was standing in her own way and letting go has actually led to amazing agency growth. Taking a leap of faith and reinventing her role was what her agency needed to reach its full potential. Audra Brehm is the founder of Brehm Media, a social media agency that focuses on the fashion and beauty world. As she grew her agency, she doubted whether clients would see their value and agree to pay once she raised her prices. As CEO, she realizes the right client will see the agency's value even when you don't. In this episode, we'll discuss: Raising prices to affirm your agency's value. Determining which clients are a good fit for your agency. Empowering your agency team and removing yourself from agency sales. Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Why Raising Prices Affirms Your Agency's Value Audra was looking for a new job in Denver when an interviewer asked her why she hadn't opened her own agency. She really couldn't come up with a reason and thought "why not?" That company ended up being her first client and, as she's embarrassed to admit, she started charging $800 a month for social media and marketing services. She was just excited to be starting her own business. Entrepreneurs commonly become a "yes man" in their early stages and figure they'll eventually get other clients and raise their prices. Audra admits she hasn't always had a good idea of her agency's value, but listening to their clients talk about the agency was an excellent way to understand their worth. If the client could see her agency as its marketing arm and an extended family, then she knows they are positioning themselves as a valuable partner. As someone who loves to learn, she strives to always be ahead of the curve. If they can do that as an agency, then she knows they are providing value. So then, why wouldn't people pay what they charge? The thought of raising her agency's prices used to be terrifying. Every time they increased, Audra worried she would lose clients. If she could go back, she would tell herself not to be so afraid. It's ok if clients decide to leave after you raise your prices. The ones who stay are the right clients. In retrospect, Audra thought the agency would be ruined with a reputation of being too expensive. Now she realizes her agency's value and knows the importance of raising prices. The reputation isn't about being too expensive, it's about being receiving the elite value Brehm Media provides. Transitioning Out of Agency Sales and Empowering the Team As the agency has grown, Audra had a really hard time taking a step back from sales. She doesn't like to feel out of control, however, empowering the sales team meant putting control in other people's hands. Getting out of day-to-day operations was the first time that she actually questioned what she was doing in the agency. In time, she found a new way to continue participating in the sales cycle by handling the final sales calls with new clients. She found that relationship-building before taking on a client is actually her favorite part of the sales process. So instead of taking herself completely out of sales, she gets to engage and learn more about clients while still letting go of some control and empowering her team. Plus, she feels clients appreciate the fact that the entire agency has their back, including the owner. It can be hard for many digital agency owners to transition out of day-to-day operations, but finding ways to still be part of your agency will help you with that transition. Later on, you may even find that you don't need that small role anymore. Audra has embraced her role as CEO and realizes the team won't need her as much. Now she can really live the work-life balance agency owners strive for. Last year was the first time she went on a family vacation and didn't take any business calls or check emails for two weeks. She had confidence that her team could handle anything that came up. Finding Ideal Clients That Are The Right Fit For The Agency It's good to be self-aware enough to recognize when your agency can't deliver the results clients expect. For instance, if a client expects a 10x return in a month and you know you can't deliver, then tell them. Are there agencies out there that co

Are you trying to improve your client retention rate? How often do you communicate with your clients? Building a good relationship with your clients starts immediately after they sign on to work with your agency. Today's guest takes us through his process of creating a level of trust with clients that make them want to stay. With clear goals set from the start and constant communication, they've only lost one client in ten years! Jeff Barnes is Chairman of Barnes Health, the strategic healthcare marketing, and public relations agency be started in 2003. He began his career in the healthcare marketing and public relations space on the client side 34 years ago. Being able to look at things from the client's perspective has been a plus for him as he has really focused on building good relationships with them. He sets clear goals and always makes them feel like they are the priority. In this episode, we'll discuss: Keeping client churn rates at a minimum. Why constant communication and a clear process are the key. Why you should strive to find clients that really fit with your agency. Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Jumping From the Client-Side to Agency-Side Jeff had been working in healthcare marketing and public relations for 15 years before joining "the dark side" of the agency world. Basically, he wanted the freedom and more flexible hours of being an agency owner. Back then, there weren't many marketing firms in the healthcare niche, so he saw a good opportunity. Barnes Health started with one client and the agency has grown significantly since. He still has that first client and, actually, a total of four legacy clients that have worked with the agency for 20 years. Jeff has always preferred to work with a retainer pricing model. Some agencies may feel clients take advantage of working under a retainer expecting too many services under the retainer umbrella. However, the most important advantage for Jeff is having a guaranteed revenue, which helps him sleep at night. Nowadays, retainer clients account for about 95% of the agency's revenue. How to Keep Agency Client Turnover Rate At a Minimum The average agency turnover is 25% for a variety of reasons. With these statistics, Jeff usually gets bewildered looks when he says he's only lost 1 client in 10 years. What's his secret? Well, he's learned from speaking with his clients most agencies are exceptionally good at the front end. They sell their services with a dynamic attitude and promise that gets clients excited for working with them. However, client success is an important KPI and many agencies fail when it comes to customer service. There are two components to an agency 1) client acquisition and 2) client service. It is a lot easier to retain an existing client than to get a new one, so Jeff focuses on providing great customer service to keep the turnover rate at a minimum. He has trained his team to communicate with clients on a regular basis and have a quick response time for any questions they may have. Each client, big or small, should feel like they're the #1 most important client. Remember if you neglect clients, they'll probably start wondering why they're working with you and start looking for other opportunities. Answer the unasked questions -- and if you don't communicate it, they don't know it happened. Setting Clear Goals to Get Clients On Board With Your Strategy The moment a client agrees to work with your agency, you should quit promoting yourself and immediately transition to learning as much as you can about that client. Focus especially on their goals, objectives, and the criteria under which your work will be measured for success. The more educated and informed you are about every aspect of their operations, the more valuable you can be to your clients. Jeff's team typically gets clients to sign off on the strategic plan that they build together. They list the goals and objectives with clarity on who is responsible, the timeframe, and how success is to be measured. The overall strategy is documented and everyone on the team and the client is familiar with each step. It may be revised from time to time, but the client should always have access to the documents. Maintaining A Good Relationship With Clients Jeff favors constant communication with clients on a regular basis, even daily at times. In his opinion, this shows the agency is a very valuable resource for them. If there is no communication for three or four days, his team reaches out to make sure everything is in order - follow up on an email or run an idea by them. He also emphasizes how important it is to do th

Are you planning to sell your agency at some point in the future? How are you preparing to make the process easier for yourself and your team? Our guest for this episode created a lifestyle business that allowed her to lead the life she wanted. When she decided to sell, she realized the business was already set up to work without her, which made for a pretty seamless selling process when the time for an acquisition came along Jodie Cook is an entrepreneur, writer, and athlete who started as a freelance social media manager. She created and successfully ran her social media agency, JC Social Media, for ten years -- even growing it during the pandemic. She's sharing the story of how she grew her agency and sold it, without an earnout, in 2021. In this episode, we'll discuss: Why she decided to sell her lifestyle business. How she prepared for the selling process. Why you should hire a broker. Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions. E2M is a web design and development agency that has provided white label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Building and Growing Her Agency As often happens with agency owners, Jodie started as a freelancer and went on to create her agency once she had too much work to handle on her own. To promote services, she went to networking events telling people she was a social media manager until she got a few clients. After a while, she got to a point where she had a full-time job worth of work for herself and could choose between continuing as a freelancer or building a team. As for hiring, Jodie says she stuck to hiring other social media managers. It was a role she knew and could evaluate and train for and as a result, she developed a successful training process. However, she also sees her agency could only ever grow as far as her own knowledge would allow. And in hindsight, it would've made sense to scale by hiring for roles that are not her strength. Setting Up a Lifestyle Business Agency owners get into the business for various reasons but at some point, we can all expect to have some degree of freedom. Jodie found herself as the owner of a big agency where everything relied on her and didn't feel happy. This is when she did something that would change her life and her agency. She created a document with four columns where each column represented a step for how the business would start to change to a lifestyle business that could run without her. This was a very important exercise that would later allow her to be better prepared for a sale later on. The four columns contained: Every single process that happened at the agency Who was in charge of every task (at that moment, it was pretty much all her) Who would be in charge in the future (either by getting promoted or looking for a new hire) Her plan (actions she needed to take and even dates) Growing the Agency Through the Pandemic and Beyond Back in March 2020, just as the world changed with the pandemic, Jodie had been running her agency as a lifestyle business. She usually traveled for a couple of months of the year and the business ran very well. She was no longer needed there all the time for things to work correctly. This all came crashing down with the start of the pandemic. Clients in the hospitality and travel sectors were suddenly out of business and the agency shrunk by about 25% in one week. The shift meant Jodie got back to being very much involved in the business. Initially, she tried to figure out how to make a shift in the changing economy. This included a decision on whether or not to lay off part of her 16-member team. After a team meeting, they decided to carry on, secure the clients they still had, and work to look for new clients. The agency offered online webinars, replacing all their in-person events, and started to build the business back up. They not only managed to get back to where the business was before March 2020, they actually grew past it. Preparing to Sell a Social Media Agency With the agency back on track, Jodie asked herself what was next. She could easily go back to having a lifestyle business, but she really didn't want to be pulled back by another emergency like this one. So she made the decision to sell in August 2020. Once she got intentional about an acquisition, Jodie started to reach out to people that knew more about the subject and could point her in the right direction. The key is not discussing an agency sale with your team and just having a small group of trusted people who can help you navigate the process. Keeping it quiet until you have signed agreements saves you from hearsay and speculation by your clients and team. She eventually started working with a broker who clarified how to prepare for the sale process. Basically, i

Does your agency's branding stand out from the competition? Is your offering and positioning unique? Does it establish your agency's authority in your niche? Today's guest explains how he turned his speaking career into a thriving agency thanks to smart branding. Travis Brown is the founder and CEO of Mojo Up Marketing+Media, an agency focused on building unstoppable personal and company brands. Travis has been building his brand since long before stepping into the agency world. Now, with his diverse and talented marketers, he helps others figure out and grow their brands. In this episode, we'll discuss: Getting started with public speaking Leveraging speaking engagements to grow the agency What works with branding. 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 Taking the First Steps in the Public Speaking Space Before ever thinking about starting his agency, Travis began a successful career as a motivational speaker. One of the most valuable lessons he learned was that the hardest part wasn't the speaking itself, it was getting people to pay him to get on their stage and speak. He hired a coach early on who taught him to invest time in figuring out his brand and unique positioning. Once he learned to do that for himself, it led to more than 2,500 paid talks over 10 years. Travis started out speaking about leadership, management conflict, and corporate training and eventually turned to youth speaking. Later on, he got a creative position as America's anti-bullying coach, where he could use his experience while also having a big impact. This new role was an opportunity to get to another level as he toured the country and had interviews on national TV. In hindsight, this taught Travis the power of creating unique positioning in the market where, instead of competing with anybody else, he was complimenting them. After many years in that industry and working as VP of marketing in a bank, he decided to start his own agency to help other people build their brands. How Can You Start a Speaking Career? It is a powerful feeling to get up on a stage. It's the sort of experience which changes how people see you. In fact, Travis now rejects invitations to tradeshows without a speaking engagement. He recognizes the moment you step on a stage people will look at you as an expert, which is a game-changer for elevating your brand. Try to link speaking engagements to your area of expertise and your core beliefs so you really come off as an expert. Travis always takes the topic he's asked to develop and links it back to his branding, which is his specialty. How can you start? He recommends starting local. If you have a niche, look for an opportunity to do a breakout session. For example, if you specialize in marketing for dentists, reach out to the local dentist association. Once you do find an opportunity, build the presentation thinking like a marketer: Have video and engaging content. Offer valuable nuggets of info. Have a free offer to get them into the funnel. Following that, focus on leveraging the first speaking engagement into another and then another. Before you know it, you'll be on a big stage with an audience filled with your ideal customer avatar. Being on stage will put you in the position of being the expert who can help them. They'll get in line to hire you and your agency. Turning Speaking Career Into a Thriving Agency Travis says he has done it both the right and the wrong way. When he started his agency, he had accumulated a lot of experience in elevating himself and his brand. However, he didn't know how to grow an agency. He got out there and got a lot of business for the agency with his brand. He soon learned it couldn't be all about him. It had to be about the team and the focus really needed to shift to showcase their abilities. His first attempt to do this didn't go as well as expected. It was done too quickly and it didn't make sense to remove him so fast when his personal brand was driving all the revenue. He had to start over and get to a point where he transfers the knowledge and credibility over to the agency. A perfect example of how to do this right is Gary Vaynerchuck and Vayner Media. Gary is the brand, but clients never expect to work directly with Gary himself. Travis has started to introduce his audience to his team, instead of just making it the Gary show. This is how Travis is rethinking his model. Building your personal brand can be the fastest way to bring in revenue for the agency. You just need to know how to do it correctly so the agency can shine as well. What Has Worked for His Agency's Branding Right now Travis and his team are

Is it time to pick another niche for your digital agency? There are tons of benefits of niching down. However, there are a lot of concerns about making big changes and focusing on a specific industry. The good news is there are ways to test out a new niche instead of going all-in. Alano Vasquez is the founder and CEO of Cyberwhyze, an agency that helps cyber security companies become brands that scale. Although he found success and even more room for opportunity in this space, he has had other failed attempts at niching down and understands it can be scary to choose a new market and fail. However remember, failures are just lessons to help you move closer to success! In this episode, we'll discuss: Failures that become lessons learned when niching down. Testing out a new niche, rather than going all-in right away. Having the right team in place to give your freedom in your agency. 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 First Steps and Lessons Learned When Niching Down Alano was working in sales at a tech startup right out of college. He was laid off, unfortunately, but when another startup hired him, he soon realized they had no marketing. He decided to use what he had learned and focused on becoming a full-staff marketer. After learning the tech industry and creating his own agency, Alano started working by with any client in the B2B space. He worked with education, healthcare, and fintech companies trying to offer as many services as he could. Within 3 or 4 years, the agency hit a ceiling of about $1.5 million in revenue. In trying to work out a solution, Alano noticed a lot of density with the agency's cyber security clients. However, at the time he actually decided they would focus on the tradeshow space. It seemed like the right choice at that moment. Unfortunately, this happened right before the 2020 pandemic and the end of all in-person events for quite a while. They had spent time and resources on experiential and interactive marketing when everything went virtual because of Covid. How to Identify a New Niche for Your Agency After his first failed attempt, Alano and his team went back to the basics and turned to the opportunity in the security space he had noticed before. They focused on branding and content creation for cyber security companies. Before you pick a niche you pretty much start working with everyone so you can start to see what you like and do really well. You can see where you have success and start weeding out the things that you don't like or do well. To his surprise, Alano quickly realized this new market presented a big runway of opportunities and was dealing. His agency Cyberwhyze started working with big brands sooner than he thought. He has rushed to create the capabilities in order to keep up with what the clients wanted from his agency. Now sees a possibility to double down on this niche. You Can Test Out a New Niche Instead of Going All In In hindsight, his agency would have niched down much sooner had he followed the advice he now gives to his clients. Some of his clients have a few verticals and try to put out a lot of broad-stroke marketing, trying to make it a one-size-fits-all. He finds clients tend to do this to avoid going through the process of creating an entire website for each vertical. Instead, Alano suggests creating a funnel with positioning that speaks to each specific persona. Agencies can also apply this same principle. There's no need to build an entire website for a new niche, just build a funnel, test it out on LinkedIn and run some Google ads. It serves as insurance to make sure you're not going down the wrong path and it might help you feel more at ease when you eventually decide to go all-in. The Value of The Cheat Sheet as a Lead Magnet Coming from sales, Alano and his partner knew very early on they did not want to give away strategy for free. They found a way to productize strategy and sell it as a core component of their work. A good way to attract new clients to your strategy is a cheat sheet. CMOs love them and even bigger brands use them. Cheat sheets come in many forms and you can use them as an opportunity to offer something really valuable while capturing data to continue marketing to your prospects. Cyberwhyze offers a cheat sheet paired with a video webinar that explains how companies can use it to their advantage. This has helped them build trust and led many people to their website. Even some big brands have contacted him based on their cheat sheet, so the agency didn't have to jump through hoops to get their attention. It's all about realizing there's really no reason to offer strategy for free and later feeling remorse for it.

Are you measuring your client retention rates? Do you trust your team will build good relationships with your clients? A lot of agency owners focus on making the sale but neglect customer service. Today's guest will talk about why you may be losing clients and why it's important to have someone dedicated to client success. Khushbu Doshi is a customer service specialist with a passion for strategizing, making realistic actions plans, and following up on their implementation to get real results for agencies. She leads the customer service and sales division at E2M Solutions, a full-service white label partner that helps agencies scale their business. In this episode, we'll discuss: What works when it comes to improving your retention rates. Effective agency-client communication. How you should structure your customer service. Closing the Gap Between Sales Promises And Customer Service Reality Agency owners commonly focus on signing the deal and ringing the bell when they finally get that client. As important that is, you definitely don't want to drop the ball when it comes to following through in customer service. If you do, you'll end up losing clients and wondering why you have a high turnover rate. Why is this so common? As a customer service specialist, Khushbu believes many agencies rely too much on the newest tools and miss the human-oriented approach. In a world of modernization, we all lean on technology to do things for us. This can be great for freeing up more time to focus on the things you do best. However, when it comes to customer service, it can lead to paying less attention to new customers and turning your attention to getting new sales. It's common to see a discrepancy between the possibilities that agencies present to customers during the sales process and what actually ends up happening. To begin bridging the gap, we should focus on the fact that the values you show on that first call with the client should be consistent in their journey with your agency. This is the only way to really earn their trust. Managing Client Expectations After the Sale is Made We're not saying you shouldn't try to improve sales or use new technological tools available to improve operations. However, once the deal is closed and you have a new client, make sure all the promises made during the sale are actually met. If you promise the client they'll have tons of communication and feedback calls and then you don't really do that, you're already starting on the wrong foot. Clients may be very skeptical at the start of the relationship and may even start to question the decision to work together. They need to feel reassured that you're a trusted partner who looks out for them and their interests. Think of it this way, if you don't communicate it -- as far as the client is concerned, it didn't happen. Take immediate action whenever is required and immediately act once the client expresses concern or raises a red flag. Make sure that their journey with your team is seamless. Structure the different stages of your agency sales process. Once a client gets to a new stage, introduce them to the team members they are going to be working with, rather than just having a salesperson just disappear. That same salesperson can be the one to explain from now on, they will be working and communicating with a different team. Also, as part of the onboarding process, define the process and roles within the agency. Let clients know who on the team is responsible for each part of the process so they know who to turn to when they have a question. How Often Should We Communicate With Clients? This will obviously change depending on the stage of the client's process with your agency. In the beginning, clients need more frequent communication until they trust your methods and see results. Khushbu says her clients start with weekly meetings with the customer service team to ensure a seamless journey. This allows her team to meet clients' expectations and learn about their concerns as they move through the first stages. Apart from the weekly calls, she underscores the importance of letting clients know exactly what the team is doing. They should know the research they are doing, the number of team members working on it, something new added to the pipeline, and the time dedicated to these details. Additionally, try to personalize communication with each client by offering alternatives and asking what they prefer (email, Slack, etc.). Remember sometimes a phone call is the best way to let your client know you are invested in the work you do for them. Nothing replaces a personal touch. Communicating to Clients in a Monthly Newsletter Khushbu suggests creating a monthly newsletter for clients detailing what the team has been working on that month. Rather than being skeptical about your work, they will start to trust that you know what you are doing and will be glad to have all details about the next moves. In fact, many agency owners who started

Are you a proactive or reactive agency owner? It's common to come into the business not having a full understanding of what it takes to grow your agency or the type of issues you could face. Today's guest tells us about the process of growing his agency, ditching the competition mentality, and how he wants to help agency owners prepare to grow their businesses. Bear Newman founded his agency Bear Fox Marketing with the belief that running a digital marketing agency specializing in SEO wouldn't be as difficult as it actually was. Years later, he says it was one of the best things he ever did but admits he wasn't quite prepared for some of the challenges. He has overcome a lot of obstacles, including losing clients that accounted for more than 50% of revenue. Now, with a full staff of employees and as he starts to step away from day-to-day operations, he crafted The Bear Fox Principle, a book to help prepare agency owners for what they should expect in the path of growing their business. In this episode, we'll discuss: Running an agency is more than just knowing how to do the work. Why one client shouldn't be more than 20% of total revenue. Why winning doesn't mean crushing every other agency. Sponsors and Resources Agency Dad: Today's episode is sponsored by Agency Dad. Agency Dad is an accounting solution focused on helping marketing agencies make better decisions based on their financials. Check out agencydad.money/freeaudit to get a phone call with Nate to assess your agency's financial needs and how he can help you. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Running an Agency Is More Than Just Doing the Work Bear was doing SEO work as a freelancer when he decided to open his own agency. "I may not have fully thought through that career move," he jokes. At the time, his reasoning was just, why not? How difficult can it be? He soon realized there's a lot more to running an agency than just being able to do the work. For starters, he had no idea what he should charge clients in order to run a successful business. For his first SEO account, he planned to bill $750 a month. That has definitely changed by now. He also had to figure out every side of the business, from sales to servicing and marketing. Now his agency has great client reviews and is the #1 rated agency in Idaho. He has employees that are much better at selling the agency's products and work on marketing, ads, and creative content to keep the pipeline full. There's a Lesson in Every Experience While Growing Your Agency A lot of agency owners live by the words "if you fail to plan you plan to fail." Bear does believe in the importance of planning, but he also knows that you can't plan for everything and tries to figure it out whenever he can't. For example, he once got a meeting to pitch for the largest pest control company in the Valley. The marketing director quickly let him know he was just meeting with him as a courtesy because he was never getting that account. Instead of feeling bad, he decided the experience of pitching the project would be enough. With that in mind, he went ahead with the pitch, trusting it would at the very least help him improve. In the end, he ended up winning the account. Once he did get the account, however, he had no idea what to charge. Some people may say he should have anticipated that, but for him, the beauty of the agency world is also having the confidence to say "whatever comes at me, I'll figure it out." Stages of Starting to Build Your Digital Agency Team For Bear, his search for an agency team really began when he realized he was unable to keep up with the workload. He wanted to maintain the quality of work and didn't want to be everything to everybody. Like many agency owners, he focused on specific challenges. Bear knew needed a team of specialists who were really good at what they did so he could start to delegate tasks. When he started his search for employees, the most important quality for him was having the right attitude towards hard work and never choosing to do the minimum. Candidates were offered a client brief and the opportunity to create 2-3 Facebook ads and landing pages. If they only did two, he knew it wasn't a right fit for him. It was important to find people who always strive to do everything above and beyond for clients and the agency. The Worst Thing His Agency Overcame The first year of Covid was the hardest for his agency. Two of his clients were making the transition to handling their marketing in-house and they accounted for about 53% of his total revenue. It was a really hard time, but he had to come up with a solution. He could either downsize and prepare for the loss in revenue or he could face the problem head-on. He decided to hire a sales team to get that revenue replaced. Of course, the team was going to need time to set in and build the funnel. Bear made the bold move of hiring two salespeople, just in case one of them failed. If this didn't work, he wou

Are you thinking about buying an agency? What about just buying one department of agency to compliment your service offering? There are many reasons to consider acquiring another agency, like client lists or intellectual property. However, buying one for its resources made the most sense for this podcast guest. When a few red flags made him take a step back, he found he could structure a deal in the form of buying just the department he was most interested in rather than acquiring the whole agency. It takes the right circumstances and aligned interests, but it worked for both agencies involved. Like many agency owners, Antoine Gagne started his agency, J7 Media, by accident. He hosted events that drove a lot of people in and realized he was good with social media. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram were still sort of new in Canada, so he started off selling social media management packages. He saw a lot of success in this market and eventually niched down to specialize in Facebook advertising. More recently, he has ventured to buy other agencies to expand his services. In this episode, we'll discuss: Niching down to grow the agency. When to raise agency prices. Buying an agency department for the resources. Sponsors and Resources Agency Dad: Today's episode is sponsored by Agency Dad. Agency Dad is an accounting solution focused on helping marketing agencies make better decisions based on their financials. Check out agencydad.money/freeaudit to get a phone call with Nate to assess your agency's financial needs and how he can help you. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Getting to the First Million in Revenue and Beyond In his beginnings, Antoine started an agency that offered social media management and content creation services. He eventually decided to focus on an area that was most profitable and where the agency really shined. As a Facebook ads agency, they were so specialized it was easy for clients to refer them to people looking for these exact services, which led to a stable sales cycle. Antoine really recommends figuring out one service that you're good at and you're able to sell repeatedly. Once you settle on this, the key is to not give up, he assures. Keep going until it becomes easy for you to get more and more clients. At this rate, you will get to your first million in revenue. For Antoine, once you figure out how to keep it simple and go all-in on one service you do really well, you find that getting to the second million is actually easier. When To Raise Your Agency Prices Failing to recognize when it's time to raise prices is a common problem for agency owners. Additionally, most fear this move will make them lose out on prospective clients. To be clear, the point where you find a service you can sell repeatedly while improving and consistently getting better clients should also be the point where you get ready to raise your prices and think about your profit. If you have an agency and you're not focused on profit then you may be in the wrong business. The sooner you realize agency owners should not be looking primarily at just top-line revenue the better. In Antoine's case, the shift began with looking at the different parts of the agency and using this information to structure its prices. He figured out how much the agency was making from each department and then decided he wanted to make 40% net revenue from those parts of the business. Next, he needed to decide what the agency should charge and how many clients it would take to meet the goal. It basically took some backward math to figure out how the pricing. As to the fear of losing clients, all new clients agreed to the new price without further pushback. For their part, existing clients were gradually moved to this new price point at a different pace. Why You Have to Focus on Net Margin Instead of Revenue Getting J7 Media on the path to growth required a clear vision of the net margin Antoine was hoping for and adjusting the prices around it. A lot of people tend to start with the revenue in mind and plan around that. The problem comes when they don't make any profit. This is a much more advisable way to go about it, especially if you plan to sell someday because your agency is valued on EBITDA. It's normal to start out with the revenue in mind and slowly get to the point where you realize you should be focusing on net profit. It'll change the way you look at your business and the way you approach your agency growth. This mindset prompted Antoine to create new services to improve the profit margin instead of thinking about revenue. It was the starting point to grow into a healthier financial situation. Why Buy an Agency Department, Not the Whole Agency There are various reasons to acquire a company, like their client list or intellectual property. For Antoine and his agency, it was about resources. On one hand, they noticed their clients needed more from them. On the other hand, a lot of things had cha

Do you know how good branding establishes your agency as an authority? As a result, you will grow your agency faster. The fact is, being relatable and establishing yourself as a trusted advisor to prospective clients gains their willingness to let you help them solve their challenges and achieve their goals. Our guest today shares how branding helps establish authority and how she turned her agency from a side hustle to a full-time priority. Annie Scranton had worked at several media companies when she founded her own PR agency, Pace Public Relations, focused on getting their clients media attention and placement to highlight their work. After losing her job as a producer at CNBC, Annie sent an email to her network and got an answer asking if she could help get media for a client. It came natural to her. She got that person an interview and knew this was the path for her future career helping actors, CEOs, and authors get access to media. In this episode, we'll discuss: Turning a side hustle into a full-time opportunity. Branding yourself vs. branding your agency. The importance of a solid pitch. 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 Turning an Agency From a Side Job to Full-Time Priority Annie's PR venture began as a side job that wasn't really her number one priority at the time. After years of working in several media outlets, she knew many influential producers and reporters. This was her currency to take the business off the ground and allowed her to offer clients access to the media. Nevertheless, she admits she undercharged for many years, a common issue for startups. This may have slowed her growth a bit, but eventually, Annie's pricing model evolved to monthly retainers. She finally made the decision to focusing on her business full-time once she had enough of a safety net to take the risk. Twelve years later, her monthly retainers are now up to 10K and she has offices around the world. First Steps to Growing an Agency Annie was lucky to have a big network of people answering her questions about the first steps she needed to take with her business. Since PR is a service industry, she didn't have to manufacture a product or answer to investors. Once she made the decision to fully focus on building her agency, she hired a web designer to put together a website, opened a corporate email, and was ready to start growing her business. She quickly learned the importance of hiring a good accountant, since she hadn't realized how much money she need to put away for taxes. It was a rough reality check. As soon as she couldn't handle the amount of work on her own, she started looking for her first employee. She started by delegating the low-level admin work to dedicate more time to getting new business. For this, she decided it would be best to hire and train someone who already had a background in media. Ultimately, overcoming the anxieties that come with being responsible for payroll was one of the best decisions she could make for her business. The Difference Between Marketing Yourself vs Building Your Brand Annie is a big believer in the power of building your own brand. In the debate between branding yourself or branding your agency, she thinks we should all do both. However, it is also a matter of your needs and your particular industry. For her business in PR, it really is all about the image she presents of herself as someone that can get you access to the media. Therefore, her branding is about 75% focused on her. Your prospective clients want to work with you and your team, not your "company". People want to work with people that are relatable and that share their values. It can be aspirational in a way. You want to follow their journey, career path, and success. Remember that this is why it is so important to brand yourself. It attracts people in a way that just branding your business won't do. No, Branding Yourself Doesn't Mean You'll Do Everything It's true that creating a situation where clients strongly identify your agency with your personal image may lead them to expect to work directly with you. However, Annie says it is true to a much lesser extent than people may imagine. At the startup phase, the owner is doing pretty much everything, which is why you should really love what you do. However, if you hire really smart people that you train well then you won't have to do everything. It's natural to grow and evolve within your agency to the point of being focused on growth and your vision for the agency. When it comes to building your brand, Annie recommends posting and interacting on LinkedIn. It's a very powerful tool if you use it well and it's where she has gotten tons of new bu

Are you doing your own bookkeeping? Are you paying too much for someone else to do it? You might be wasting valuable resources that could be focused on growing your agency and your profitability. In most cases, it's not an agency owner's area of expertise and CPA's charge a ton for this service. It's worth it to hire someone who understands the scope of what you do and how to keep your books. Today's guest is an expert in accounting for agencies and his company, Agency Dad, helps agency owners forecast their finances and establish a strong fiscal foundation for their future. Nate Jenson is a certified management accountant, internal auditor, and fraud examiner who founded Agency Dad, an accounting company that focuses on profitability for agencies. He offers bookkeeping services for agencies but their main focus is helping agencies understand financials and what's driving profitability. Nate has been on the show before talking about the financial benchmarks and KPI's that can help you plan for the future of your agency. In this episode, we'll discuss: Why you shouldn't do your own bookkeeping. The high cost of bookkeeping mistakes. How tracking time will help you improve profitability. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM YOUTUBE AUDIO LINK Why You Probably Should Not Be Doing Your Agency's Bookkeeping Bookkeeping is not the sexiest topic and most creatives are not interested in it. However, a lot of agency owners do their own bookkeeping, even when it typically isn't their area of expertise. Nate advises against this for several reasons, although he admits there's a point in your startup when it's OK. There is a situation where handling your own bookkeeping makes sense. If you're just starting, have only a few clients, one invoice a month, and no employees, then it's perfectly fine. It can also be the best for you as you try to scale your agency and need to keep costs low. Once you start growing, the complexity of the data grows exponentially. You get to a point where maybe you just hired your first employee, have several clients, and diversify your service offering. Then tracking that data becomes more important and more difficult. And, knowing the data leads to making better decisions for future growth. Finally, you should also consider opportunity cost. If you started an agency, maybe you're an expert on SEO or getting clients. Imagine how much money you could be making if you focused on what you're good at instead of bookkeeping, which is most likely not your greatest strength. 2 Reasons Not to Use Your CPA For Bookkeeping A lot of people use their CPA for bookkeeping because they lump all the "financial stuff" in the same category. But a CPA and a bookkeeper are drastically different. And, Jason and Nate agree this does not provide the best results for your agency. This solution keeps your books clean and reconciled but Nate says there are several reasons he does not recommend it: It is the more expensive option. Most likely, you will overpay to have your accountant do your bookkeeping. However, more importantly -- CPAs usually keep books based on their tax knowledge. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, however, on the backend, it doesn't help you make good decisions for running your business or to move forward.It all starts with the data entry and your vision for the agency. If you want to make smart growth decisions you need a good bookkeeper to help you with the data. What do you need to know from the data to make good decisions? Can you hire a new employee? How much should you charge? Can you give your team a raise? Imagine you want to sell your agency soon, you would probably have very specific questions about valuation and how the decisions you're making right now will affect your business. When would you like to sell? In one year? Five years? In terms of the data, you have to know what you're putting in and why so you can answer those questions in the backend. If you are planning to sell and do not know this information it could be a red flag to potential buyers. You should know the financial outlook of your agency at any time. If you want to have an opportunity to sell you should have everything in order. And if you want to sell in the future, you want to know what you can do as of now to maximize your value. The High Cost of Making Bookkeeping Mistakes According to Nate, 96% of data analysis happens at your data entry. This means that if you don't know how to properly enter the data you will run into trouble. Overall, you want to do everything right in your bookkeeping from the beginning. Nate has been hired to "clean up books" and fix years of improperly kept data which sometimes takes months. If it's too complex, he even prefers starting from scratch and rebuilding everything. Having the right systems and the right processes in place can even help save money you're already spending in bookkeeping. In one of the worst cases he's ever seen, Nate rebuilt his c

Do you have a clear agency vision? If so, have you shared it with your team and have their full buy-in? It takes courage to make changes that will help you scale faster. You need clarity to define your vision for the agency and a team that shares that vision. It may rock the boat a bit too much for some in your team. However, when you surround yourself with people that believe in your vision you'll see results so much faster than working with those who resist it. Arti Sharma is a marketing and business leader who had worked for 15 years contributing to the growth and success of several start-ups and Fortune 500 companies when she created Measure Marketing Results Inc. As a marketer, she felt a lot of people were talking about marketing but no one was measuring it. She saw the opportunity and started reaching out to some old clients offering to build a campaign for them. Her business has changed a lot since then, but the most significant change came about five years ago when she redefined the agency's goals and created a vision script. In this episode, we'll discuss: Why finding clarity is the first step toward change. Your mission statement and vision script. The importance of surrounding yourself with the right people. Sponsors and Resources Agency Dad: Today's episode is sponsored by Agency Dad. Agency Dad is an accounting solution focused on helping marketing agencies make better decisions based on their financials. Check out agencydad.money/freeaudit to get a phone call with Nate to assess your agency's financial needs and how he can help you. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM How To Find Clarity for Your Agency Digital agencies nowadays find themselves in a very crowded space. In order to stand out, agency owners must answer the question "how do I differentiate myself from everyone else?" Usually, agencies go to Jason with a variety of problems that are standing in the way of their growth. The majority of those problems stem from a lack of clarity which affects the agency owners' ability to focus on niche, services, pricing, and even leadership. Five years ago, Arti ran a successful company that had changed between building websites and offering SEO and SEM services. She started to question what she was building and whether it aligned with her personal and business goals. In essence, the agency's mission statement "influence, inspire and impact" had not changed. However, she realized her clarity was lost somewhere along the way. As agency owners know, sometimes this can happen as you worry about all sorts of issues like building a team, getting new clients, and maintaining sales. Holding Your Agency Team Accountable to the Mission The real change began in January 2020, when the team met to discuss the mission statement and create a complete vision script establishing how they would operate based on that mission. From then on, they made the commitment to hold themselves accountable to the mission by measuring operations, serving customers, hiring, and sales and marketing. Turns out it was perfect timing. The company navigated the pandemic by serving its customers and building a niche based on the new commitment. Looking back, those were uncertain times for any business, but their new commitment was the push they needed to think outside the box and actually live their mission in daily actions. Arti's team is still working on their changes, but so far they've become Hubspot partners and changed their offering to be more of an account-based marketing and sales enablement company. They've even built another business, an agency for agencies that wish to outsource some of their services. The Importance of Creating Your Agency's Vision Script Measure Marketing Results' mission statement remains the same and continues being true to its goals. The next step Arti took was redefining the vision statement in accordance with its goals and creating a script. To do this, they got really specific and identified, among other things, who their ideal clients are, where they would find them, what sort of impact would they have on their business and growth. They broke that vision down as much as they could and this provided much-needed clarity for the agency. Creating this vision script ultimately impacted their systems, sales scripts, thinking about where they would find clients and partnerships. It became clear that the agency would need to align itself with companies like Hubspot and leverage its tools to expedite the agency's go-to marketing strategy in the world of inbound marketing. Crafting your Value Script entails: Defining your core values. Having a vision of where you want to be in 2 years, 4 years, and 10 years. Big action items for each year to move toward your goal. The Vision Can't Stop with the Leadership Team Defining your agency's vision is another important step, but you need your team's commitment to make it a reality. The problem many agencies have is the vision stops at the

Do you want to start charging for strategy instead of just execution? A lot of agencies out there are getting paid for execution and giving away strategy for free. They end up being viewed as a commodity instead of for the value and expertise they bring their clients. It's mostly about learning how to cross that bridge. Our guest today specializes in helping business owners make this transition. It involves a lot of trial and error, trusting your experience, and learning to listen to clients. Stephen Houraghan is a brand strategist who helps businesses amplify their brands and teaches designers and brand builders how to specialize in this area with his Brand Master Academy. He started his career working in finance and stockbroking and eventually left that world to start his own agency offering web design services. With the rise of freelancer platforms, Stephen saw clients wanted more value, so he tapped into strategy, which in time opened the doors to a different type of business and relationship with clients. In this episode, we'll discuss: Stop giving away strategy for free. The thought and process of selling strategy. Listen to clients to create authority. 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 Figuring Out How to Charge for Strategy When Stephen started working as a freelance designer he tapped into his professional network and was getting lots of referrals. He was doing what he loved and money wasn't a worry. However, this started to change with the rise of freelancer platforms. Clients were pushing back on his prices and he realized he needed to offer more value to retain customers. He started his agency and thought about how to compete with freelancers. Being more competitive would require solving the right problems for clients and offering more. He turned to branding, something he really loved to do. Eventually, that led to piecing together the puzzle of brand strategy. Brand strategy is the key to making competitors irrelevant. Offering all the pieces of building a brand to clients put Stephen on another level, no longer competing with freelancers who just offered a logo or website. It took years of developing and improving his process but now clients do not compare based on logos and brochures but rather based on long-term success based on the strategy behind these items. How to Test Your System for Selling Strategy No matter how you fell into the agency world, there comes a point where you have to turn what you've learned into something which proves value to your clients. The bridge you need to cross to get to that point is experience. You need to realize you already have the building blocks to shift to this model. No one jumps into a creative project and just drags pixels around. It takes thought and a process. This process may be more or less detailed and, for some, it involves research and building a brand persona. Begin by documenting it and you will slowly develop it from there. Usually, freelancers and new agencies will not charge for the labor involved in the process. Taking this step will really make a difference in your growth because there's no ceiling to what you can charge when you sell strategy. For his part, Stephen started by splitting up his services. He increased his design prices but made sure to sell them as the product of a comprehensive process. At first, he included the strategy for free as he slowly transitioned to taking his clients through his system. With time, his system became much more comprehensive as he tested and refined it. A big part of doing this was pushing the impostor syndrome away. Of course, you have to be very careful to not just slap a title on yourself as you start to sell brand strategy but trust your experience. It is about building the system, but it is also about building confidence in yourself, your system, and knowing that clients need that system whether they know it or not. What are the Elements of Brand Strategy? Knowing the concept of brand strategy is a start but you need to understand its elements and how to tie them together to create more value for clients. Stephen identified a lot of common elements, including buyer persona, competitive analysis, positioning, storytelling, brand personality, brand mission, etc. The challenge was to figure out if every single one of these elements applies to every business, in what order, and how he could go about developing them. Asking these questions was the start of putting together a system to build a brand. It all starts with the customer, naturally, but it goes beyond the persona. You have to dig into their journey and understand each of the challenges in that journey. From there, it's about

Do you feel that your agency has hit a plateau? Are you wondering what steps you could take to reignite your growth? Maybe it's time to get out of your comfort zone. Maybe you're not making your agency's needs a priority. Maybe you're just too close to your business and can't see the forest for the trees. In this week's podcast episode, our Agency Scale Specialist Darby Copenhaver shares the common challenges he's hearing from agencies. In his role, Darby speaks with agency owners who are looking for a leg up, whether that means working with Jason or not, to identify their issues and create a game plan for overcoming them so they can achieve their growth goals. In this episode, we'll discuss: Overcoming the most common issues for agency owners. How to get more clarity so you can scale. Branding yourself vs. branding the agency. Why the fear of missing out (FOMO) is holding you back. The Most Common Reasons Agency Growth Reaches a Plateau As agency owners, we put so much energy into our clients' success and strategies and we forget to do the same when it comes to our own marketing and growth strategies. Because of this, many of the agency owners that come to us frequently feel stuck. They've plateaued and can't figure out what comes next. In Darby's opinion, this is rooted in a lack of prioritization. We tend to put ourselves last because we want to do the best we can for our clients. This is very common, but we need to make time for the things that we want to accomplish in our businesses. Remember there's a difference between making time and having time. There's always time where you make it. You may not think you have time, but you must make the time to overcome the plateau you're on. How Clarity Will Help Overcome the Plateau You're On We've talked about the importance of niching down and the benefits it can bring for your business. However, it is still a very common fear, and understandably so. Agency owners feel they're missing out on something or going in a certain direction will mean leaving many opportunities behind. This kind of thinking pulls you in many different directions at once. A clear vision of the goals you have for your agency will make all the difference. Improving yourself and your agency will take dedication and intent. Reaching your goals is just as important as reaching the goals of the people you work with. This is something that we often discuss in the Digital Agency Elite mastermind when we advise members to say no to some things and delegate tasks to free their time for focus on what they really want to do. The Understanding That Comes With More Clarity Once we start to cover some of the things that may be slowing their growth, agency owners start to recognize some small changes that could make a big difference for their agencies. One of the most common ones is capitalizing on their existing relationships. They realize they haven't taken the time to recognize opportunities with existing clients and grow revenue from there. There's so much low-hanging fruit there that they don't realize. With the help of the mastermind team, they realize they need to go after those opportunities and empower their team to do so as well. Many of them also overlook the importance of creating content and building authority. Having clarity about who you are as an agency, who you audience is and what you offer can lead to building content of value around that. This can only improve your business because providing value-driven content instead of generalized marketing tips will lead to better opportunities. Should You Brand Yourself or Brand Your Agency? Sharing your personal branding helps you align with the right clients. Remember that people buy from people and tend to not trust companies and corporations. Personalizing things will help you establish yourself as someone clients can trust. You can see bigger companies commonly offer a personification of the business (like the Geico gecko) people can relate to. And in Jason's social media, you'll see posts about his adventures on the mountain, which personifies his brand and attracts the type of people that share his love of adventure. Many agency owners believe that branding themselves will mean that they'll be expected to do everything themselves. It's a misconception that people need to get past because it's just not realistic. If you buy a Tesla, you don't expect to deal directly with Elon Musk in the purchase process, but that's the personality that probably attracted you to that company and that product in the first place. It's about investing in the leader and having the confidence that their team will work in consonance with what those figures represent. Some mastermind members that took the step to do their own content on Youtube or their own podcast find that many times clients and employees approach the agency because they wanted to work with them. They are attracted by the personality and the values that they represent and now this content has

Do you have a clear vision of your agency's future and your role in it? Would you like to sell your agency or just transition out of the role of CEO, maybe to Chairman? We all have to confront these questions at some point as we consider our agency's growth trajectory and what's next. Today's guest may help you start to think about how to structure your agency for your eventual exit. Zach Williams is an entrepreneur and longtime mastermind member who founded Venveo, a digital agency that focuses on the building construction space. He's been on the podcast before talking about the 2 strategies that grew his digital agency's revenue by 4X. After many years in the business and growing his agency from just four people to over 65 employees, Zach started thinking about the best way to continue moving the business forward. He concluded it was time for him to step away as CEO, while continuing to contribute to the agency's vision. In this episode, we'll discuss: How he made the decision to become a Chairman instead of CEO. How he structured the agency to be able to get to that point. What support Zach needed in order to get through the difficult times. Redefining Success and Gaining Clarity In Your Agency A lot of agency owners get into the business because they love the work and then end up hating it. For Zach, it was important that he built something that he loved while trying to keep a clear idea of his role in it and what he brought to the table. Once the company saw real growth, he started to redefine his idea of success. He started by clearly setting out his goals for the business and his personal goals. He found that what he brought to the business as an individual no longer served the goals for the business and it became clear then that he needed to exit for both the business and himself to thrive. Zach was always very focused on business growth and getting the agency to be self-sustaining. He never wanted to be the type of entrepreneur that focuses solely on EBITDA. His goal was to create a business that could grow beyond him. Making the decision to really focus on that changed the way he and his team structured the company, the people he brought to work on the business, and even the clients they took, which made for a really smooth transition process when the time came. How to Make a Smooth Transition Away from Agency CEO Other than having a clear vision of what type of business he wanted to build, Zach credits these as the most important steps he took to grow his agency: Picking a niche. This is probably the most important thing you can do. You need to understand who you are targeting, what's the value that you're bringing them, and how are you going after them. Understanding this made all the difference for a company that business remained a small-scale operation with four employees for many years until they knew who to target and how to get better at sales. Improving sales. Looking back, Zach recognizes that he initially didn't really like sales, which affected his agency's growth. He knew he needed to improve a lot in that area and finally did so following Jason's advice. He saw results right away, landing his biggest deal shortly after starting to implement Jason's advice. Hiring a Director of Operations. Once he started filling the sales pipeline, and his confidence grew as a result, he started to build into infrastructure operations. He hired a Director of Operations and a counterpart to oversee the client strategy and continued to grow 20%-30% year-on-year. The turning point was understanding that filling your sales pipeline will lead to a waterfall effect where having more opportunities will get you to a point where you can increase your prices, which will lead to hiring the right people. This will all allow you to follow your vision. Why You Must Trust Your Team and Empower Them Make Decisions Agency owners can have a hard time giving up control, even when they say they completely trust their team and are convinced they have the right people in the right positions. You can't really grow unless you give people the autonomy they need. This will not only give you more time to focus on what you really want to do, it will be good for the business and your team will grow more confident from that trust and the knowledge that you have their back. They are going to make mistakes and that's ok. If your team doesn't think they can take risks, then that's on you as a leader. It will even help you get rid of team members who resist change and want to stay in a box. The Process to Getting a New Agency CEO Ready For Zach, when it came time to select and start to train a new CEO it was a no-brainer to go for someone inside the organization. This person was already a team leader who had worked in the company for years and really knew the business, was a culture fit, and had a good rapport with team members and clients. As to the transition, he mapped out daily tasks that he could start to exit. He identified par

Are you starting to grow your agency and feel the need to keep adding services and saying yes to every potential client? Getting out of that startup mindset is difficult. However, you will be glad you did it when you start seeing better results for your agency by just learning to avoid complexity and focusing on the right things. Kait Le Donne worked in marketing in her 20s and started to do brand consulting for small businesses on the side. She came up with a plan to help a client become a known entity and get more speaking engagements in their field by writing a book. The strategy was so successful she found a new career path and founded Brandwise Media, a niche agency specializing in helping business owners build audiences excited to buy their books and using those books as a vehicle to drive up brand awareness for themselves. In this episode, we'll discuss: Getting out of the startup mode. Narrowing down services. Why you need to raise your prices. 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 How Would You Simplify Process If You Could Start Over? Raise your hand if you can relate. When you start to scale and people want to work with you, you start to add more. You have more revenue, so you add more people and keep adding services. It becomes about asking yourself, what more can we do? What more can we add? Two years after starting her agency and with other seasoned entrepreneurs around her, Kait realized the reality of growing broke. Her top-line revenue was increasing and expenses were increasing in correlation. In short, growth costs. At some point, you really have to ask yourself if you had to rebuild your business, would you do it in the same way? For Kait, the answer was no. She realized she had fallen into the trap of thinking that the more she offered clients quantity-wise the better her agency would be. In reality, creating value is not a matter of more is more. It can come with pulling back and going back to what you do really well and establishing profitability there. Then you decide if you want to grow that and how. She started to question "do we really need these complex processes?" "Do we really need this many clients? Or do we just need less clients at the right price point?" She encourages any agency owner that has started growing their business to ask themselves these questions. The bigger the better is a truism that many entrepreneurs fall for. When you're in startup mode, it's normal that you just throw a lot of stuff to the wall to see what sticks. With experience and growth, there will come a point when you start figuring out your path. What Can You Do To Start Narrowing Down Services? There are many ways to go about it, but Kait identifies three main aspects that really helped her get on the right path for her agency: Start prioritizing the right clients. Letting go of clients that are just not the right fit for your agency may sound frightening, and you may expect it to be a really difficult conversation. However, most likely it won't be as bad as you imagine. At the end of the day, anybody in a service business will respect it if you tell them "This is what we need to do to continue working together. And if we can't, then that's fine." You can go your separate ways on good terms. Simplify the process. Kait and her team came up with what they call the Brand Turbo Charger Process, which in short contains the five or six parts of the process from the moment the client enters the door to the moment they leave. "There is a time and a place for a complex web of SOPs," she acknowledges. "But this has been very illuminating for our business." Figuring out the time to bring full-time employees. Not only the right time to bring in a new team member but also having the right employees in the right positions. When does it make sense to take this step vs. when your staff is largely compiled of contractors, which a lot of us do as agency owners, and there is a time and a place for it. It may sound overly simple, but it is all about gaining clarity of where you want to take your business. Lose the Fear of Raising Agency Prices Once you have a clear vision of the future of your business and start prioritizing the right clients, it's time for another difficult step. Ask yourself what was the last time you raised your prices? Raising prices may sound like a risky way to lose a lot of clients, but it is the next logical step for a growing business. You can double or triple your business just by making some simple changes instead of adding services. Kait let her clients know her prices would go up by 10% at the start of 2022. All the right clients already expected this move. You may think that cl

Are you looking for ways to improve your customer service? Have you implemented a customer success strategy in your organization? Nils Vinje is an author and leadership coach who founded the first-ever customer success firm, Glide Consulting, to help organizations improve their leadership skills and teaches the tools you may be lacking to implement a proper customer success strategy, which he details in his new book 30 Day Leadership. In this episode, we'll discuss: 5 keys to improving your clients' success. Tracking where you stand with your agency's clients. 4 Pillars to becoming a better leader. Sponsors and Resources Agency Dad: Today's episode is sponsored by Agency Dad. Agency Dad is an accounting solution focused on helping marketing agencies make better decisions based on their financials. Check out agencydad.money/freeaudit to get a phone call with Nate to assess your agency's financial needs and how he can help you. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM We've all had a bad customer experience some time in our lives. Maybe we feel exasperated by a customer service team and has failed to solve a problem several times or is slow to provide answers. As agency owners, we need to be aware of the consequences of inefficient customer service and how it will affect brand loyalty. It often boils down to lack of onboarding and a clear, no real-time assistance, and mostly the absence of a clear strategy. So how are you getting success for your clients? How can you improve your customer service? 5 Keys to a Great Customer Success Strategy According to Nils, it is very common for organizations to lump customer service with other areas like sales. It takes a village to serve a customer and there must be a team responsible for this task. "You have a product strategy," he tells owners, "you have a sales strategy, what's your customer strategy?" He often gets blank stares. Because of this, he prepared his own 5-Step framework for customer success: Being PrescriptiveLet's say you ask for lawyer referrals to do some kind of business deal. You get two referrals, one that confirms his experience in the area and asks you what he should include in the contract and one that gives you a list of things you should cover, a series of recommendations, offers a perspective of the best scenario for you and finally asks how you would like to proceed. You should strive to be like the second lawyer. Clients are not paying you to be asked what they want to do. Be the trusted advisor right from the beginning. TransformationClients are usually expecting some kind of transformation from buying a service. They are at point A and want to get to point B. It is up to you to define what is the absolute best transformation for your clients before they ever go through your process. Ask yourself how you could provide the best possible value for them. That is the destination because then they will very likely renew and expand their relationship with your agency. A Fresh Start. This is the moment right after your client signs up to work with you. Their openness, willingness, enthusiasm, and ability to get things done will never be higher than at that point so this is the moment to set expectations regarding how you will continuously drive value to that customer over time. Engaging Middle. There is a sense that all the intense part of the process happens at the beginning and then we get into a rinse and repeat the cycle. This rhythm is important. However, we must not miss the opportunity to continue to add value to our clients and come to the table with recommendations on what to improve and what to change. Crushing the Milestones.According to Nils, businesses need to architect the right milestones for their customer strategy and build stepping stones to get there. This way, you can understand whether you are on track or off track with a customer. If you answer each of these steps in a very detailed manner, then you now have a customer's strategy. Keeping Track of Where You Stand With Clients Client churn is going to happen, and that's ok. It will be an opportunity for you to upgrade. The key is to know when it's going to happen because it's the surprise that kills you. When you have a strategy in place for your customers, you can know how on track or off track they are, and that can give you a very good indicator of how likely they are to renew. If your client retention rate is not as good as you hoped, what are you doing to fix this? Jason likes to recommend a system of monitoring client satisfaction with a stoplight approach: red, yellow, and green. Everyone starts out at yellow and hopefully moves to green once they start seeing results. Clients in the red are the ones in danger that need intervention because they're at risk. How can you communicate better with your red and yellow clients? How can you help them more? Or is there something they're not telling you? Intervention is the key. Improving your customer retent

Build It and Maybe They Will Come? Unless You Get Different and Stand Out from the Crowd Do you want your digital agency to stand out from your competition? Putting together a compelling message for your audience is not enough to really make an impression. Differentiating your agency is an important part of getting your audience's attention and getting your message across among the slew of marketing messages they get every day. Mike Michalowicz is a small business author and entrepreneur who has devoted himself to making entrepreneurship simple and answering the question What makes entrepreneurship successful? He is the mind behind many great books like 'Profit First', a favorite among mastermind members, and his latest 'Get Different'. Mike has also been on the podcast before to discuss how to grow your business without constantly working in it. In this episode, we'll discuss: How to stand out from the competition. Ideas that break the norm and introduce an unexpected element. Ripping off other industries. Sponsors and Resources Agency Dad: Today's episode is sponsored by Agency Dad. Agency Dad is an accounting solution focused on helping marketing agencies make better decisions based on their financials. Check out agencydad.money/freeaudit to get a phone call with Nate to assess your agency's financial needs and how he can help you. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM How Can You Stand Out From Your Competition? Ask yourself "are you better than the competition?" You have to have a definitive answer, and no, it does not mean better in all capacities, but there must be an area where you shine. If the answer is yes, then you have a responsibility to market yourself appropriately. You MUST be noticed. If you don't, then clients will end up choosing a lesser offering and it will be your fault. Every business has the opportunity to be the best in its category. If you're not, you may have some fine-tuning to do, but the opportunity is there. Worst Marketing Examples We tend to think bad marketing is marketing that doesn't speak to us, that we don't like or is offensive. But the fact you noticed it means that it was better than 99% of the marketing out there. There's marketing all around us every day that we don't even bother to notice. That's the worst marketing. Being seen is the first hurdle. The second hurdle is getting the audience's attention for the right reasons. Don't try to emulate something that isn't true to your brand or the attention you get will be becoming a ridicule and an example of bad marketing. How to Market Your Agency For Mike, the way to be noticed is to be different, to break through the common noise that is always circulating in every market. Look at your competition and notice the same four or five things that everyone is doing over and over again. Those are the four or five things you should never do because they are easy to ignore. Why? This is the result of Habituation, which is the action which our brains see something that is not relevant, qualify it as such, and ignore it from then on. Mike goes back to the "Hey, friend!" message. The first time he received that email he was curious, but as soon as he noticed it was just a cheesy marketing technique, he began ignoring it. You never want to be the common "hey, friend" in your marketing, and the way to avoid it is to introduce something unexpected in your messaging. Steps To Stand Out and Not Be a "Me Too" Agency In the agency world, when you're just starting out you may look at your bigger competitor and try to copy everything they're doing. It makes sense because they have achieved the success you want, but this creates sameness in the industry. Instead, consider identifying whatever the common approach is and thinking, how can I flip it? For example, Mike knew sending email blasts was a common practice in his industry and took a look at a couple to see the most common features. The look was almost always white background and black text. He thought, "how could I change this?" and came up with the invisible ink email blast, with a black background and black text and directions to highlight the email to reveal the message. The clickthrough rate was double that any other email he had ever sent, all because he did something different. He also recommends doing a simple R&D (aka: "rip off and duplicate") by looking outside of your industry. Take a look at what people are doing in vastly different industries and find out what you could replicate in your own content. Be Bold "The reptilian mind tells you that doing different equals death," Mike says, but in modern society, it is the way to get noticed. Also, "different" has an expiration date. It will last until too many people start replicating it, so milk it while you can and start working on your next approach. But don't worry; it will take time before others dare to replicate it. It's also important to clarify different doesn't have to be completely outside

Are you having trouble selling yourself and getting prospects to see the value you can provide for them? In this episode, James Muir joins Jason to talk about closing more sales and his book, The Perfect Close. James shares the process leading up to it, 4 high leverage areas in sales, how to prepare messaging that works to get a high close rate, and the two questions that can improve your closing percentage without ever sounding pushy or manipulative. 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 4 High Leverage Areas in Sales The truth is there's no messaging that will suddenly overwhelm people with persuasion and approval. You have to do your research and make your that you're delivering the right message to the right audience and using the correct medium. James breaks down this process into four high leverage areas in sales that will you to improve your closing rate: Market. The single best thing you can do to improve sales is sell only to ideal clients. Targeting the right customer will be pivotal because everything else falls below that in your funnel. If you get that wrong, everything you're doing in sales will fall on deaf ears. Message. Now that you figured out who you want to target, what is the message you want to send? It's a very narrow window to get your message across once you have their attention, so you have to make sure that you're delivering a high-impact message. Medium. Now that you know who you're talking to and what you're going to say ask yourself where do these people hang out? Remember to meet the customer where they are (social media, trade shows, etc). Motivation. This is about personal motivation, what gets you out of bed in the morning? Getting all these elements just right will require a lot of work and the right motivation will help you get through it. Are You Talking to the Right Prospects? For his part, Jason recommends thinking of N.B.A.T. before engaging in any new project conversation. These steps will help you save time and energy on the wrong prospects. N – Need: Ask what the specific needs are and what specific end results they're expecting. Ask how this project fits in with the overall company vision. If they need to pull in another person to answer that question, hold onto that nugget of information. B – Budget: Ask for the budget. More often than not, you won't get an actual number so act like a reverse auctioneer… Start with a ridiculously high number saying, "Is your budget $500,000, or $400,000, maybe $300,000…?" They either give you a more realistic range or the name of someone who knows. Hold onto that nugget of information, too! A – Authority: Were they able to answer the questions about need and budget? If not, and they gave you another name or two, then you know who you really need to be talking to. T – Timing: Only you know what you can do and how long it takes. You might really want or even need this project but, if the timing has unrealistic parameters you are setting yourself up for failure. Messaging to Increase Your Agency's Close Rate There's really great research available on how to create effective messaging and identifying the different elements you should consider when crafting a sales pitch. Some of these elements include determining the Issues or problems the customer has, as well as the goal they're trying to achieve. Then there's the Trigger event, which are occurrences that lead to a sales opportunity and will indicate the best time to sell your product or service. The most challenging part will be the Insight or unconsidered needs, where you get your prospect to see a compelling enough reason to buy by tapping into their unconsidered needs, which are shortcomings, challenges, or missed opportunities that they haven't considered yet. This will help you create a value proposal of how you can produce some results for them. The natural outcome of this will be Skepticism, which is the perfect moment for you to reveal your mechanism of action, the thing you do for the customer that produces the desired results. For this, you will need Proof. There are many types of proof you can present, but you can get the best results with third-party validation because it is the hardest to fake. You don't necessarily have to follow this order, but this is the mechanism that will get buyers to make a decision now and not wait. Related: Overcoming the Top 5 Agency Sales Objections 2 Questions To Improve Your Closing Percentage Before you go into any meeting, you should have an idea of what you want the outcome of this meeting to be. You should have an idea advance and a couple of alternate advances. If you have that prepared, then you're ready for the two quest

Have you made these common mistakes that hold back your agency? Our guest, Sandy Smith is the President of Smith Publicity, has grown her agency for over 25 years and she shares lessons learned from 2 common mistakes she made over the years. Sandy's agency is focused on book marketing and author promotion services publicity. At first, a one-person shop they have grown to more than 30 employees with offices in Los Angeles, New York, and Canada. Sandy and her Senior VP, Marissa Eigenbrood, are on the show sharing how their expansion process led them to open an office in London that ultimately brought more problems than business. They also share why you should act fast when an employee just doesn't fit with the company and why you need to find someone you trust so you can transition from owner to agency CEO. 3 Golden Nuggets Identifying the source of customer service problems. Although the agency is US-based, it used to have a London office. Susan later identified this as the source of 95% of their customer service problems. London was an important market for the agency and held 10% of its business. However, it took too much work to get their UK clients to understand how the business worked in the US and get them to a place where they saw the value in the agency's work. In the end, these clients just weren't the right fit for the agency, and closing the London office was an important step to move forward. Waiting too long to do what's best for the team. Hanging on for a little too long after seeing someone just isn't working out in their role is a common problem for small business owners who try to avoid these decisions. Sometimes the person is not a good culture fit for the agency; you never want someone to mess culture up, even if they're great at what they do. For Sandy and Marissa, it was actually the opposite, someone was a great culture fit but who kept making the same mistakes in his job. After spending time and resources in retraining, they had to accept it wasn't working out and make the necessary change.. Transitioning from Agency Owner to CEO. With the help of Marissa, Sandy is in the process of doing something we know can be a difficult process -- transitioning to the role of CEO. We know by now that this transition is more of a marathon than a sprint. For Sandy, it has been about finding the right person to take over the tasks she no longer wants to handle and focus on the ones that she enjoys. "It's having trust and sharing, opening up our books, opening up our real thoughts," Sandy says. "And it's not an overnight process. It's many years of trusting and slow steps of giving control and giving insights and allowing, and this is the hardest part, for difference of opinion." Sponsors and Resources Agency Dad: Today's episode is sponsored by Agency Dad. Agency Dad is an accounting solution focused on helping marketing agencies make better decisions based on their financials. Check out agencydad.money/freeaudit to get a phone call with Nate to assess your agency's financial needs and how he can help you. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Avoid These Common Mistakes in your Agency Building Trust to Help You Transition from Agency Owner to Agency CEO Jason: [00:00:00] Hey, all! How's it going? Marissa: [00:00:04] Hi, Jason, how are you? Jason: [00:00:07] Doing good. So I haven't done two people on the podcast in a long time. So we're on these little boxes. I apologize for these little boxes, but for the people listening and watching, tell us who you guys are and what do you guys do? Marissa: [00:00:23] Oh, well, thank you. I am Marissa Eigenbrood. I'm the senior vice-president at Smith Publicity. We are a book publicity and marketing agency celebrating 25 years in business this year in 2022. We focus on working with, with authors and experts and publishers on building awareness around their launches and beyond. That's a quick summary there. Sandy, pass the baton. Sandy: [00:00:47] Yeah, I'm Sandy Smith, Sandy Poirier Smith, but no one can pronounce that, but Sandy Smith. And I'm the president here and co-owner of Smith Publicity. And we started off as like a one-person shop and now we have 31 of us, 32, Marissa? And we've grown pretty much every year. We've learned a lot. We've made a lot of mistakes and we've done some really great things. So we're excited, Jason, to talk with you and, um, pick our brains and see if we can help some of the people here. Jason: [00:01:19] Awesome. So, well, let's, let's jump into it. What's the biggest mistake you guys made? Marissa: [00:01:28] Love that. Wow. Sandy: [00:01:29] One I would say is, as we were growing, we expanded our offices. We are based in the US but we had a Toronto office, a Los Angeles office, a New York city office, and a London office. And this is back in the day where… while we have always been hybrid, believe it or not even 20 years ago we were hybrid, having that kind of a brick and mortar office kind of made sense

Are you afraid to niche for your digital agency because you think it means saying no? Are you scared niching down will pigeonhole your agency and limit its potential? Think again! There are so many benefits when you choose to focus your agency services on a specific market. Joe Giovannoli worked for a full-service agency right out of college and decided to replicate that model when it came to building his own business. Like many agency owners, he was hesitant to focus on a specific market. But once his agency, 9Sail decided to niche down to just SEO for law firms and construction, they started to grow quickly. Joe is on the show sharing about niching down twice, life after learning to say no, and the most exciting deal his agency has landed. 3 Golden Nuggets Niching down twice. There is a lot of fear associated with niching down and making the switch to only go after a specific market or provide a specific service. Joe did this twice, once to change their service offering from a full-service agency to an SEO & SEM agency. Then again to focus on two specific industries with law and construction. Both times it was a scary step and he found himself relieved at the results. "We started getting more referrals. We've started getting more qualified leads, and we actually started to establish a name for ourselves in those spaces," he says. Clients that take you with them. When asked about the most exciting deals they've gotten as an agency, Joe thinks back to the times they get referred by past clients. This is a testament to their work as an agency. Some of former clients have worked at several different companies over the years and each time they get to a new company they call 9Sail to work with them again. "That's the really exciting stuff," he assures "the deals that we get referred in from a past client, or we get referred in from somebody that's happy." Life after learning to say no. What is life after learning to say no to being the agency that does everything and choosing a niche where you can be an authority? "The word relaxed comes to mind," Joe told Jason. For starters, the team feels comfortable learning the space and knowing they're going to use this knowledge time and time. Rather than always needing to learn the nuisances of different industries. Also, niching gives them an opportunity to build their pipeline where they chose the clients that are the right fit for the agency. This results in a more predictable means for 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 Saying No to Trying to Be Everything to Clients & Finding Success After Niching Down Twice {These transcripts have been auto-generated. While largely accurate, they may contain some errors.} Jason: [00:00:00] Hey, Joe, welcome to the show. I'm excited to have you on. Joe: [00:00:05] Yeah. Thanks. Excited to be here. Jason: [00:00:07] Tell us who you are and what do you do? Joe: [00:00:11] Uh, yeah, so, uh, my name's Joe Giovannoli. I am the founder and CEO of 9Sail. We are a search marketing company for law firms and construction companies. So we work on both the SEO organic side, as well as the paid search side of a marketing strategy that a law firm or construction company might have. Our goal is basically lead generation for those, those companies. Jason: [00:00:35] Awesome. And, uh, tell me a little bit about you and how you got started in the agency. Joe: [00:00:40] Yeah. So I actually, uh, had started a company while I was in college. Uh, that was a social media marketing agency. And then coming out of college, I decided to work for a full-service marketing firm, you know, really just to get more experience. I did sales and, you know, moved from there to another agency and realize that, you know, I love this agency world. I love the pace of it. I loved working with different clients and speaking with different business owners and, and marketing leaders. And I decided to start my own thing. So kind of fell into the industries that we are, that we're in now, you know, law firms and construction companies were just two really interesting spaces for us to be in. And we identified some opportunity in the market so we went for it. Jason: [00:01:24] Awesome. Joe: [00:01:25] Yeah. We didn't set out to be just an SEO and SEM company. We were a full-service agency cause that's what I, only thing I knew and frankly, I didn't know that I could break off services at the time when I started the company. So we've been an SEO and SEM company for the last five years. Jason: [00:01:43] What made you kind of drill down? Like what was the turning point or what was the aha moment? Joe: [00:01:50]

Do you struggle to embrace automation in your agency's operations? Jordan Bell was already an ads expert that taught the ins and outs of creating successful ads when he started his agency Agency Bell, where he applied his knowledge to offer direct response ad mastery with AI-powered automation and retainer-level audience insights for law firms. In his interview with Jason, he talks about why it was difficult to embrace automation which ultimately became a game-changer for his agency. He also chats about the importance of really understanding what you're doing and not fully relying on technology as the ultimate solution, and why it takes a solid structure, more than just new technology, to get your agency through difficult times. 3 Golden Nuggets Embracing automation. Jordan was the guy when it came to ads. He could calculate the exact bid that we would need at a common conversion rate in like a specific keyword or targeting group. It was all manual. This is why it was very hard for him to embrace automation. In the end, it wasn't about getting into machine automation, but actually turning it into a competitive advantage for them, which became a massive milestone for his agency. Can you find your way through a problem? We all need to get back to the basics at some point to remember what's important. As Jordan puts it, you should learn to fly a plane before turning on automated navigation. "There's so much technology available to us that it often becomes the solution in people's minds," he says. They forget that, in order to be reliable, efficient and successful you should be able to understand what you're doing in the context of what we're trying to achieve or the larger vision and goals. At the end of the day, regardless of what task management program you use, can you write down what outcomes you need to be able to achieve when you know, you've got like 20 or 30 tasks due that week? A solid structure to get you through. These have been difficult times where many have had to learn to adapt to new circumstances. There are solid frameworks that protect any kind of business and Jordan has learned that it's not about getting to the new tech. It's more about the management side of running a business, being in charge of the outcomes, having a vision for the future of the business, designing the lifestyle. These years taught him to really consider what work he should be doing versus not doing in the business as an agency owner. 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 Using Automation as a Competitive Advantage & Really Understand the Context of What You're Trying to Achieve {These transcripts have been auto-generated. While largely accurate, they may contain some errors.} Jason: [00:00:00] Hey, Jordan, welcome to the show. Jordan: [00:00:04] Hey, thank you. Jason: [00:00:05] You know, the funny thing is, is whenever we record these shows, it's like we have chatted before, which we've been chatting for like 10 minutes, but I guess we have to do that for you listeners out here, making it believe this is the first time we're chatting. But, um, tell us who you are and what do you do? Jordan: [00:00:20] Yeah. So my name is Jordan Bell. I run a digital ad agency called Agency Bell. I've been doing it for about five years, but my experience in advertising and agency-type services is about over a decade or so. I'm a builder type of agency owner. I kind of classify them as like, kind of like the builders and engineers, the service people, the sales focus ones. I'm a true builder and a service type of person. So I built the agency really from a service perspective as a guy who was cutting his teeth in Google ads on large accounts for a long time. And getting really involved in the technology side of it and really enjoying the customized integrations. And so, you know, I ran an agency or I helped run an agency as a junior partner for a little while after my last corporate role, seven years ago or something and, um, after that I was teaching digital marketing courses, advertising courses at coding academies and stuff, and a couple of colleges and a while also consulting and taking on like really not really like, um, you know, corporate, not a lot of corporate projects. I had a couple like Fortune 500 ones, but, um, a lot of like, uh, hit the hammer, strike the from hammer to anvil, get the outcome type of in the trenches types of roles. I always enjoyed that. And, um, the consulting gigs came from teaching adults in CMOs. Good to go digital, stuff like that. And then eventually the consultancy, it just kind of became more and more until it became time to start an agency again. I'm an individual agency o

Do you want to sell your agency in the future? What strategic relationships can help you grow and possibly sell your agency? Roy Chong was working in the music industry for many years before deciding to make a drastic change and start over in digital marketing. Now with Noodle Wave Media he helps companies in the healthcare space thrive by developing meaningful strategies and tactics that move their marketing efforts towards success. In this interview with Jason, Roy discusses the most important decisions he made for his business, how he always envisioned a strategic partnership for the future of his agency, and why you should always take your passion wherever you go. 3 Golden Nuggets The most important decisions for his business. Roy never really saw a reason to rent an office space he could not afford at the time, so very early on he invested in having a remote working model with a team that could work from anywhere in the country. It shaped the way his agency works and its culture because he acknowledges that not everyone likes or can work remotely. Finding those types of people that shared this vision really helped build their culture. The second biggest decision was niching down to focus on the healthcare vertical, where the agency really found its footing and scaled to the point where he could sell the agency. Making the decision to sell. Roy always envisioned a strategic partnership for his agency. He knew it was in his future but just needed to figure out how it would work and what would be the right time to pursue it. Jason helped him by pointing out some things he needed to work on, which provided some time to add another layer of value for clients. He also had time to consider what he didn't want to lose with the deal, and the type of relationship he expected from this partnership. All of this ultimately led him back to Jason and to the partnership that would enable him to still be in charge of day-to-day operations. Taking your passion wherever you go. If you ever have to start again from scratch remember to take your passion with you. Passion is commonly depicted as what we do, "that isn't necessarily true," Roy says, "It's who you are." At one point in his career, he made the transition from the music industry to digital marketing. There is seemingly no correlation between both, but Roy argues what made the difference and helped him succeed in a new industry was taking a passion for helping people with him. 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 Finding a Strategic Relationship That Fits Your Agency Growth Goals {These transcripts have been auto-generated. While largely accurate, they may contain some errors.} Jason: [00:00:00] Hey, Roy, welcome to the show. Roy: [00:00:04] Hey! Thanks, Jason. Thanks for having me. Jason: [00:00:06] I'm excited to have you on the show. So, uh, for the ones that have not heard of you yet, tell us who you are and what do you do? Roy: [00:00:13] Yeah, so I'm the CEO and founder of Noodle Wave Media. We're a full-stack digital marketing agency focused on the healthcare vertical. I've been doing that for 11 years. Prior to that, I was in the music industry as a music producer, and I've got kind of that entrepreneurial spirit so I flipped a couple of the businesses along the way. Father of two amazing boys and a passionate creative and marketer. Jason: [00:00:44] And how did you get started and how long ago did you start your agency? Roy: [00:00:49] Yeah, so I started it probably in 2000, around 2010. I had just kind of rotated out of the music industry and I'd spent 10 years there writing music for artists and I got signed to a production deal in New York and I was running the artists for my idols, and then I did a stint in Korea. And then I decided, you know what, I'm kind of done with this it's time to start something new. And I realized at that time I'd been in the content game for 10 years. I thought, boy, combine that with using ability to create content and find a thread that resonates with people and tie that to helping small businesses, cause I had a marketing education and experience already, that could be something. And so I started that 10 years ago with that exact premise of leveraging content to help brand build brand equity for clients. But at that time, like, and you'll know this, Jason, like that wasn't a thing, really. Large brands we're doing that, leveraging YouTube and all kinds of other platforms, but the small business owner didn't really have access cause they just didn't know how to do it. So I started it at that time with that premise in mind. And I just remember people thought, yeah

Quinn Zeda had been running an agency for six years when she decided to start from scratch and focus on conversion rate optimization with Conversion Crimes. She and her team help clients identify mistakes in their website's design, messaging, and navigation that is stealing revenue from under their nose. Quinn is really big on user-testing and customer research. In her interview with Jason, she explained the roadmap strategy she implemented to get the type of projects she could execute the way she wanted to, how this strategy helped her slowly educate customers on why they needed much more than just a website, and how she learned to appreciate the importance of systems and operations. 3 Golden Nuggets The roadmap strategy. When she first started her agency, Quinn was charging $1,000 for a website. One of her frustrations was with those $1,000 - $2,000 projects was that she could never execute them in the way that she wanted to. To be able to deliver the results that she knew she could, without scaring clients off with a $180K budget, she started with a 10K retainer presented as a roadmap of things she could accomplish for the company. After a couple of months, clients were seeing some really incredible results and excited to go on to phase two. More than a website. Creating her roadmap strategy was a great way for clients to understand that they were not paying $250,000 for a website. It may be what they thought they needed, but going step by step and getting them to approve a foot in the door project Quinn was able to educate her clients to see that they needed much more. They would gather information on who their most profitable customer was and who was draining their teams of resources and, with those insights, create a plan of action for the branding, the marketing, and the strategy. The importance of SOPs. Once you start bringing in more customers you need to make sure operations run smoothly, especially with the new hires you will probably need. Quinn acknowledges she didn't really see the importance of systems, processes, and SOPs and the value they brought to the business when she first started her agency. It was only after her team started documenting some of these processes, even if it was in a very basic way at the beginning, and gradually became more detailed that she saw it was really a game-changer that saved them a lot of time. 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 Raising Prices With a Roadmap Strategy and Why SOPs Are a Game-changer {These transcripts have been auto-generated. While largely accurate, they may contain some errors.} Jason: [00:00:00] Hey, Quinn. Welcome to the show. Quinn: [00:00:04] Hey, thanks for having me, Jason. Jason: [00:00:06] Yeah. Excited to have you on. So tell us who you are and, uh, tell us a little bit about the agency that you started. Quinn: [00:00:12] Yeah, so my name is Quinn Zeda. I started freelancing right out of college, which then turned into too much work than I could handle. I started hiring more freelancers, which then kind of morphed into an agency where I started then kind of hiring my first full-time employees that were like really dedicated to me. And after running the agency for a few years, maybe five or six years on, then I shut it down and now I run a startup, um, Conversion Crimes, which is like a user testing SaaS. And yeah, when I ran the agency, we were doing user experience, conversion rate optimization really focused on helping basically businesses around the one to 5 million mark scale. You know, people kind of get a business to a certain point. They reach a glass ceiling and they kind of duct-taped everything together. They found product-market fit. They started making their money and they're like, yeah, but now like what we built doesn't represent who we are anymore. So we come in and kind of restructure that. So… Jason: [00:01:15] Very cool. And what was the biggest accomplishment that you had at the agency before you closed it down and why? Quinn: [00:01:25] Yeah, the biggest accomplishment, I think, was kind of really getting with the value-based pricing that we went on. So when I first started, I was charging like a thousand dollars for a website and I ended at a quarter of a million for a website. So originally, like when I started that, it was like, this client is like a thousand. The next one was 2,000. The next one was 4,000. Then at 8,000, I just kept doubling it every time I would send a proposal out. Granted, the deliverables definitely changed from each one of those jumps and kind of gave me more resources to get more clarity on the kind of projects that we wanted to do. And then I went from like

Are you thinking of adding funny videos to your sales strategy? This eight-step framework may be just what you need to create successful sales videos. Joseph Wilkins has been creating sales videos since the half-hour infomercials that appear on TV. When his clients stopped getting the results they used to, he knew it was time to change spaces and switched to making videos for social media with his agency FunnySalesVideos.com. In his interview with Jason, he explains his eight-step framework to making successful sales videos, the process to make a solid video script, why you want professional comedians and actors involved in the process, and why you should never prioritize the comedy over the sale. 3 Golden Nuggets Eight steps to making funny sales videos. Joseph has been producing funny videos that sell for many years and has developed a list of eight steps that have worked for him and that will surely serve as a very good framework for anyone that wants to create these types of videos. These steps take you from really understanding who your audience is before even starting to think about ideas for the videos, getting in the habit of writing down at least 50 bad ideas before thinking about the ones that could actually work, the process of making a script that works and adding the comedy punch, hiring the rights talent, and more. And that's just 50% of the process. You're not trying to make the funniest videos. When it comes to videos like these, and as Daniel Harmon when he spoke with Jason about video ads, remember that you're not trying to create a video that is just funny. You're looking to create a video that creates sales. The comedy has to support the sale. If it doesn't, if it distracts from your main objective, then you should cut it out. "Some of the funniest jokes never end up in the video," Joseph confirms. This is why the creative director will always have to push to get a video that is different and new for the brand, while also being laser-focused on the sales aspect. On agency owners appearing in these videos. "Don't do it!" Joseph puts a lot of emphasis on this point. This kind of video is a top of funnel first impression video. You want to give it a good chance of grabbing the audience's attention and keeping it and getting them to click into your funnel. It's not completely out of the question for the company CEO to appear on a video at a later point in time, but always keep in mind they should not be the comic relief. Comedy takes true skill and Joseph prefers to leave it to the pros. 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 Leave The Comedy To The Pros & Follow These 8 Steps Funny Sales Videos {These transcripts have been auto-generated. While largely accurate, they may contain some errors.} Jason: [00:00:00] What's up, agency owners? Jason Swenk here and I have another amazing episode and guest where we're going to talk about how to create funny sales videos that don't seem salesy that really get people's attention and convert. So let's go ahead and jump into the show. Hey, Joseph. Welcome to the show. Joseph: [00:00:24] Thanks, Jason, it's good to be here. Jason: [00:00:25] Yeah. I'm excited to have you on, so tell us who you are and tell us a little bit about your agency. Joseph: [00:00:30] Sure. So I own FunnySalesVideos.com, which is kind of a recent breaker or rebrand to my original agency, which was Procreative. For 20 years we've produced videos that sell, and I'll give you a quick background. We started primarily in television. So back in the day, our very first project, we were focusing on infomercials. So, you know, those huge 30 minute long infomercials that people would find in the middle of the night flipping through their channels. Our very first project did over $200 million in sales and that kind of got us hooked and for the next 15 years that was our main focus, was television. But as you and I well know the way that people watch television, if they even do anymore, has dramatically changed in the past decade or two. And so about five years ago after producing, you know, tons and tons and tons of TV commercials, infomercials and web videos and we'd work for, you know, some of the biggest brands on the planet, Google, LinkedIn, Chevrolet, McDonald's, um, we're a very small boutique agency, but we like to pretend to be clients that we're not so that we can compete with the best of them. But anyway, after about 15 years, our clients basically said we're not getting the results that we used to, you know, we're spending the same amount of money running the creative we're spending sometimes even more for the media buying

Are you struggling to retain employees? Do you know how to keep scaling without burning through talent? When Robert Glazer started Acceleration Partners, he always had a vision of working with an international team. Now, his agency, which is focused on managing partnership and affiliate programs for high-growth brands, has 300 employees in eight different countries. Robert joined Jason in this episode to talk about how he avoids burning through talent, how he trains his employees to ask why, and what he invested in to get beyond the referral stage. 3 Golden Nuggets Beyond the referral stage. Robert ran a referral-based agency for about 15 years. Of course, it couldn't last forever and eventually, they started focusing more on sales and marketing so he and his partner would be less overwhelmed by the sales aspect. It's a stage every agency will go through and they faced it by investing in leadership, having great marketing, and great delivery. In the end, they have exponential revenue growth from the time they started scaling the sales and marketing team and hired a fully integrated sales and marketing team. On not burning through talent. With an agency that has been in Glassdoor's best places to work, what have they focused on when building their culture? Robert says they always had a vision of working remotely with employees from different countries. They have also focused on offering a work environment where employees can grow professionally, which is one of the main reasons people leave their jobs. In the end, agency life is not for everyone, some will love its unpredictable nature and others won't, but Robert made sure to create a culture that does not reward overworking employees unnecessarily and offers flexible hours. Asking why. On the subject of them not rewarding working extra hours with little results, Robert explains they have resorted to training employees to ask why. Why does the client need this data by tomorrow? Could this be solved any other way? Do they really need everything they think they need? "Don't assume, because they're asking for something that it's the right thing or you can't explain to them the trade-off or explain the consequences," he says. 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 Scaling Your Agency Faster Without Burning Through Talent {These transcripts have been auto-generated. While largely accurate, they may contain some errors.} Jason: [00:00:00] What's up, agency owners? Jason Swenk here and I have another great episode where we're going to talk about how you can scale your agency rapidly without burning through a ton of talent, because all of us have been going through and going, how do we keep employees and how do we find the right talent? And on today's episode, I have a guest that's going to talk exactly about that, that's done this. So let's go ahead and jump into the episode. Hey, Robert, welcome to the show. Robert: [00:00:32] Thanks for having me, Jason. Jason: [00:00:33] Yeah. So tell us who you are and what you do. Robert: [00:00:36] Uh, yeah, I'm Bob Glazer. I'm the founder and the chairman of the board of Acceleration Partners. Acceleration Partners is the largest global independent agency focused on managing partnership and affiliate programs for well-known and high-growth brands. Uh, we have almost 200 clients and, uh, I think, uh, getting close to 300 employees across eight countries and we manage programs across 25 different countries. Jason: [00:01:02] Very cool. And so how did you start the agency? What made you fall into this? Robert: [00:01:08] Uh, like most agency owners… No, I don't know anyone who started the agency intentionally. I just, you know, I started doing some work in the affiliate space. I found a lot of problems with it. I started helping a company fix its program. Uh, that company ended up being a huge success. It was called Tiny Prints. Sold them to Shutterfly for $300 million. People then spread out from that and start saying, hey, can we do that thing that you helped us with there? And then I couldn't do enough of those. So I hired some people, so, and sort of the rest was history from there. So we were very, for years, just all referral-based, uh, word of mouth, you know, 15 years. It's really in the last five years that we've had kind of sales and marketing a little bit before. Jason: [00:01:47] So, what were some of the stages that you went through, you know, in order, like, obviously go through the referral stage, right? And you only can get to a certain plateau. And I feel a lot of people listening to the show right now, you know, are at that level, right. They're kind of plateaued, you know, it could be

Can you effectively communicate what your business is about? With a 30-year background in marketing, Chris West noticed businesses normally handled their visual identity very well but need help when it comes to using their language. He started his agency, Verbal Identity, and has helped clients create a distinctive and impactful tone of voice for their brand. He is a big believer in the power of language and in this interview, Chris discusses the three levels of communication he teaches his clients, why humanity wins over corporate in social media, and his new book. 3 Golden Nuggets 3 levels of communication. As a digital agency, you need to differentiate yourself from your competition. When looking at how the world's biggest brands communicate, Chris identifies three levels of communication. At the 10,000 feet level, we have a vision of the world you want to create. What do you stand for? And even more powerful, what do you stand against? At 1,000 feet, we have the personality, which is a very important piece because customers buy into the personality of a business. Finally, at ground level, it's all about the details, especially when it comes to the language. Establish the language your business will use and identify with and communicate it to your team. Humanity wins. Even when it comes to some of the world's biggest brands, like Microsoft, people would rather follow Bill Gates on social media than his company. That is because they want to follow a person, someone they can relate to. It's important to be more than a corporate blank face that only speaks in business terminology and communicates merely in announcements. Dare to get personal, to share your likes and dislikes and you will attract like-minded individuals. And, perhaps more important, identify the ones that will reject you and cannot relate to you. Writing advice. When it comes to writing, some of the best advice Chris has ever gotten is "write like they're walking away". Be very intentional about your message and try not to rely on context and details to get your point across. Write like you don't have time to warm up your reader because you're already losing their interest. 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 These 3 Levels of Communication Will Help You Differentiate Your Brand From The Rest {These transcripts have been auto-generated. While largely accurate, they may contain some errors.} Jason: [00:00:00] What's up, agency owners? Jason Swenk and I have another amazing show for you and guest. We're gonna talk about the three levels of communication or language that you can actually check out in order to position your agency to be the choice. So let's go ahead and jump into the show. Hey, Chris. Welcome to the show. Chris: [00:00:25] Hey, Jason, how you doing? Jason: [00:00:27] Hey, tell us who you are and what do you do? Chris: [00:00:29] Certainly. I run a business called Verbal Identity and it came about because I have a 30-year background in marketing. And what I noticed was a lot of clients, business owners were really sweating their visual identity, but they were forgetting about their language. So really what we do is we help businesses use language better. Jason: [00:00:48] Awesome. Well, in pre-show we were talking about kind of the three different levels that you need to kind of really kind of position your agency. So let's kind of jump into it and talk about it. Chris: [00:00:59] Yeah, thank you very much. So I think the thing that really kills and bogs down agency growth is how are you different from every other agency? So you're a digital agency, so are a hundred other digital agencies. So how on earth can you stand out and be differentiated? And I think that when we look at how the best brands in the world and the best businesses in the world communicate, whether it's a small, you know, super fast grain startup, whether it's a big brand, like we've worked with like an Alphabet over in Silicon Valley, their communication really works on three levels. So if you're like at 10,000 feet, they're very clear and consistent always in their narrative. This is the world we believe in. So this is what we're going to stand for. And even better, this is what we're going to stand against. So if you're a digital agency owner, you can't just be a digital agency owner. You can't just believe that the world needs kind of better digital, whatever, whatever, you know, everyone's saying that, right? You got to say that we do it fast. We do it better. We understand our clients better, or we, you know, what is the truth about you, about the world that you were trying to create when you se

Are you struggling to get your agency beyond the million-mark? What benefits await beyond seven figures? Erik Olson merged companies with his current partner four years ago and they started Array Digital, an agency that, in its beginnings, focused on website development and mobile application services. They introduced digital marketing services as a smaller branch and then realized it became more popular than expected. In his conversation with Jason, Erik spoke about making the decision to niche down and why reaching the seven-figure mark made such a difference. He also talks about his book about the journey to a million dollars. 3 Golden Nuggets Why seven figures? It took Erik 11 years to break a million dollars in revenue but he really saw a difference after that point. Why seven figures? "It's a nice round number," he says. It's not random at all, only 4% of businesses reach the million-dollar mark, so reaching that number meant, to him, that he crossed the threshold of success. Once he did it, he realized that running the business became a bit easier. He finally had extra money to invest in their own marketing, getting clients gifts, a mastermind, and things that were unaffordable in the beginning. Invest in your people. A huge component of any business is its people and Erik knew this was another area that could see significant investment once the agency started growing. "When I hired my first employee, the only benefit that I had was paid time off," he recalls. As time went on, they were able to offer more benefits like dental, medical insurance, and even retirement matching. He's giving his staff what they need to be whole when it comes to their finances and the work itself. What he would do differently. If he had to start over from having a 300,000k business trying to get to one million, Erik says he would quickly focus on the ideal prospect. This is something that took him a long time but now he says he would 100% niche down at that point. "First and foremost, I would certainly identify very clearly who it is I'm talking to or want as a client. And then I would be pretty rapidly going towards niching." 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 What Are The Benefits Beyond the Seven-Figure Mark & How You Can Invest in Your Team {These transcripts have been auto-generated. While largely accurate, they may contain some errors.} Jason: [00:00:00] What's up, agency owners? Jason Swenk here, and I'm excited. I have another amazing episode. I have one of my mastermind members who runs a really successful agency. His partner has actually been on, so I thought I would bring him on as well. And we're going to talk about scaling to seven figures. I know a lot of you watching or listening are constantly trying to battle and you're really trying to get there. And it took me a number of different years to get there and he's going to talk about it as well. So let's go ahead. Get into it. Hey, Eric. Welcome to the show. Erik: [00:00:37] What's up, Jason? Thanks for having me. Jason: [00:00:38] Yeah. I just realized too. I've had Drew and Darren on and, and Kevin and you. Now you're the fourth person on the intro that you can see the drone, the drone flying out from experience. I see them, I see them, I could see the shining head off the edge. Erik: [00:00:57] Hey! Why'd you have to go there, man? Now that was awesome. As a matter of fact, uh, one of the pictures from the experiences my Twitter profile, picture up on the mountain, it was like the, I guess it's the first full day we hiked up Swenk mountain. Yeah, that was amazing, man. Jason: [00:01:14] It was fun, yeah, at sunset. So yeah, it was fun. And then obviously the ones we did on the ATVs, since you guys were the suckers in the back, you guys got dusted, but… Erik: [00:01:25] Yeah, I definitely should've brought goggles to that trip, that's for sure. Jason: [00:01:28] Exactly. Well, tell us who you are and what do you do? Erik: [00:01:31] Sure I'm Erik. Online I go by Erik J. Olson. I am the CEO of a digital marketing agency in Chesapeake, Virginia named Array Law. We have been in business for about four years. We, um, we've gone through a bunch of different iterations and I've run several previous companies. And so about four years ago, my business partner, Kevin Daisy, who was also on your show recently and also a mastermind member, we merged companies. And at that point, we decided that we were going to rebrand as Array Digital. And at the time we were focused on website and mobile applications, and we did this little thing called digital marketing off to the side. We had one person that we were just like, just go take care of that

Would you like to 4X your digital agency in less than 3 years? Joe Shelerud is the co-founder of the Amazon advertising agency Ad Advance. Joe was on the podcast two years ago talking about using automation to retain agency clients. Since then, he and his partner have managed to 4X their agency and have really seen the results of the processes they were just starting to implement two years back. In this new interview, Joe talks about growing the team, the agency's first key hires, the processes they implemented to train new team members, and much more. 3 Golden Nuggets First key hires before scaling. It has been two years since we last spoke with Joe and he has managed to 4X his agency in that time. According to him, one of the key things that he was focusing on back then was building out the automation, the systems, and the structure for his agency. He and his partner were still managing all accounts and the first step for them was to look for ways to reduce the amount of time they spent on daily tasks. Because of this, some of their first hires were developers to make sure they were building those systems and that structure. Hiring for culture first. When it came time to start building the team and start growing, Joe decided that the priority would be hiring people that were a right fit for the team. "Experience is great," he assures "but at the end of the day, if you get that one wrong fit within your agency or your group, they can take down the entire group." This is why the agency has mainly focused on 1. People who meet the culture bar, where experience is an extra piece of the puzzle, and 2. Hiring locally, which has worked better for their team. Establishing a training process. As they started hiring new team members, it was time to put together processes that would help them get up to speed efficiently. They started analyzing what day did every day in terms of client interactions, picking apart different pieces of tasks that we knew that they could no longer support in the long term. As they were able to do that, each of these little pieces became documents or little training videos, and eventually will be an entire training course. 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 4X Your Digital Agency in {These transcripts have been auto-generated. While largely accurate, they may contain some errors.} Jason: [00:00:00] What's up, everybody? Jason Swenk here and I have another amazing episode for you. We're going to bring on a past guest from two years ago, who 4X their agency. So we're going to talk about how they've 4X their agency, grown, outgrown, many offices and lots of cool things. So you can grow faster in your agency. So let's go ahead and get into the episode. Hey, Joe. Welcome back to the show. Joe: [00:00:31] Yeah. Thanks for having me on again, Jason. Jason: [00:00:33] Yeah, man. I'm, I'm excited. So for the people that have not listened to the first show and we'll link that in the show notes if you go to jasonswenk.com, but, um, go ahead and tell us who you are and what do you do? Joe: [00:00:44] Yeah. So for those who don't know me, I'm Joe Shelerud. I'm located up in Duluth, Minnesota. So we're up, but kind of on the tip of Lake Superior on the Western edge. You can take i35 up to where it ends and that's where we're based out of. I got my start in e-commerce actually selling on Amazon. I've got a chemical engineering background. And so I was selling these organic chemistry molecular model kits, and they're used for organic chemistry courses when you go through something like chemical engineering. And as I was going through that journey of building out my seller business, um, started really focusing on the advertising side. And as I was reaching out to different agencies to try to manage my own what I found is that the tools that I had built up in the strategies I put in place was actually a lot more complex than what I was seeing these other agencies that they were offering. So at that point I got this idea that, you know, maybe, maybe I could help out other sellers. So that was about five years ago. I combined up with, uh, Matt Wicklund who's our co-founder at Ad Advance. And since that point we've been really focusing on first on Amazon advertising, but now really branching out into all forms of e-commerce advertising. So, yeah, now we've had a lot of growth in happy to talk to you about it today. Jason: [00:01:58] Awesome. And yeah, I mean, well, I mean, the big thing that I want to know more about is, you know, it's been two years since you've been on the show, so, and you were like, we've 4X our agency since then. So what were

Are you looking for opportunities to make more connections? You could be just one conversation away from your next big client success that leads to scaling faster. Tom Schwab started his agency Interview Valet in 2014 with the theory that targeted interviews on established podcasts could be used much like guest blogging. This podcast guest strategy has grown into a business that provides the fastest way for authors, speakers, coaches, consultants, and brands to maximize the benefits of podcasting. In his interview with Jason, Tom expands on how to start conversations that lead to success in your business, how to get the contacts that will lead to those conversations, and why you should look for a true connection to get people interested. 3 Golden Nuggets Conversations that lead to success. The idea behind Tom's podcast marketing service is that everything great in his life has come from a conversation. He believes that in your personal or professional life you owe your most important connections to that initial conversation, it could be a customer you really wanted to work with, a business partner, a great employee, your best friend or spouse. "It wasn't a funnel. It wasn't a, you know, social media strategy. It was conversations." Because of this, he wants to emphasize the importance of human connection as something that can't be replaced by automation. How to get more conversations. Remember that more is not better, better is better. Tom tried to keep in mind that you can never say enough of the wrong things to the right people or the right things to the wrong people. So you should always make sure that you're talking to the right people in the first place. Are they interested? Make sure they're interested in having that conversation and then make sure it is a conversation by asking their thoughts on something, as opposed to just asking the same five questions and them just giving talking points. Look for a connection. How can you get the connections that will lead to the conversations you want to have? Try to figure out who you're going after and who's connected to them and see if they can connect you to them. You should look at putting together a targeted list and go over this with your sales team. But whatever you do, don't just treat it like a spam list. Figure out what's the connection? What's that degree of connection? And then ask. Remember that people usually want to have their friends, their friends of friends and people they want to be their friends on their podcast. So figure out how to fit in one of those groups. 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 Being One Conversation Away from Scaling Your Agency Faster {These transcripts have been auto-generated. While largely accurate, they may contain some errors.} Jason: [00:00:00] What's up, agency owners? Jason Swenk here and I'm excited to have another amazing guest. And we're going to talk about how you can scale your agency faster through one conversation. You're one conversation away from scaling faster. So let's go ahead and jump into the episode. Hey, Tom. Welcome to the show. Tom: [00:00:26] Hey, Jason. I am thrilled to be here. Jason: [00:00:28] Yeah, I'm excited to have you on. So tell us who you are and what do you do? For the people that have not heard of you yet. Tom: [00:00:34] I am Tom Schwab. I'm the founder of Interview Valet, a podcast interview marketing service. We help authors, coaches, speakers, brands, get their message out on targeted podcast interviews. And I'm here in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which proves if you could do it from Kalamazoo, Michigan, you could do it from anywhere. Jason: [00:00:54] Oh, that's awesome. Well, let's kind of jump into it. You talk about kind of you're one conversation away from really hitting it out of the park. So I guess elaborate a little bit more for us. Tom: [00:01:05] Yeah, as I look at it, everything great in my life has come from a conversation. And that could be that big customer that you acquire. It could be that partnership that you have. It could be that great employee. Heck, take it personally, right? Your spouse. It was probably a one conversation that connected you with them. It wasn't a funnel. It wasn't a, you know, social media strategy. It was conversations. And I think one of the things, while I'm a big proponent of automation, I think it can't replace human connection. And I think the bigger the sale, the bigger the relationship, the more trust is involved in it. We need to focus on conversation as opposed to just automation. Jason: [00:01:48] Yeah. You know, I just got off a sales mastermind call. So for our mastermind, we have our own little mastermind