TCC Podcast #232: Making Magic with Marcus McNeill

 

The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:

Our Event for Copywriters
Marianne Williamson
The E-myth Revisited by Michael Gerber
Jonny Stellar
Magic
Kira’s website
Rob’s website
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground

 

Full Transcript:

Rob:  If you’re a longtime fan of this podcast, or I guess any other podcast, you’ve probably had the experience of listening to a guest share their story and what they learned, and then had to reach for a pen and paper to capture the ideas that they’re sharing, so that they don’t get lost, or so that you don’t forget them. Maybe you’ve even had to pull off the road as you were driving, or tell your kids to be quiet so that you don’t miss something that you could use in your business. 

That’s exactly how we felt more than a handful of times in this interview. Our guest for the 232nd episode of the Copywriter Club Podcast is Marcus McNeill, the founder of Magic. And as we spoke to Marcus, we found ourselves taking more notes than usual, trying to capture the wisdom that he shared about building his business. Fair warning, you might want to grab a pen and a notebook, or pull off to the side of the road, as you listen to this episode. 

Kira:  Before we share our interview with Marcus, this is the last week for a while that this podcast is brought to you by TCC, Not in Real Life, our event for copywriters and other smart marketers. And the reason for that? Well, it’s just about the last week you can get a ticket for our event, which happens April 7th through the 9th. If you want to learn firsthand from experts like Joanna Wiebe, Todd Brown, Jereshia Hawk, Joel Klettke, Eman Ishmael, and so many more. You need to get your ticket today. To do that, visit thecopywriterclub.com/tccirl-1. There’s also a link to that information page in the show notes of this episode. 

Rob:  So, hit pause now to get your ticket, and then jump back into our interview with Marcus McNeill, which begins with us asking Marcus why and how he started Magic Agency. 

Marcus:  So, starting Magic, I would recommend going back a little bit further back. When I was in my early 20s, I was working in the corporate world and I absolutely hated it. So, I packed up all of my possessions and a crappy Honda Accord with no air conditioning and barely even operated, and drove from Texas to California in hopes of the California dream, living by the beach and all that. Serendipitously, although I’m a Texas raised kid and had never been exposed to yoga or meditation, or consciousness teachings of any kind, I got a job working with Deepak Chopra. I’m not sure if you guys know who he is, but he’s a relatively famous spiritual teacher. 

He teaches primordial sound meditation and just general spirituality. I learned those consciousness tools from him and it changed my life. It rocked my world. It changed everything. I was, at a very young age, responsible for launching marketing campaigns to promote his teachings, and for whatever reason, that led to more opportunities being the voice behind luminaries. I was working with the names of Eckhart Tolle, and later Byron Katie, and Kim Eng, and Marianne Williamson, and spiritual centers and spiritual organizations preaching things that really had a huge impact on my life. 

They allowed me to get myself out of panic mode and come back to a place of centeredness and balance, and confidence in myself, which was something I struggled with for many years. Anyways, I became addicted to the world of digital marketing because I was 23 something years old, and was serving hundreds of millions of impressions of messages, of people who I truly admired, who were doing amazing things in the world. Every conversion was a conversion into somebody’s personal development. We were converting them into a better way of being in the world, and that was extremely rewarding. 

From that, I started working in Agency Land, first as a copywriter, then as a strategist and account manager, and then later, quickly after, I became the Director of Strategy, running strategy for all of the clients at that particular company, and all of them were purpose driven. And I wanted to do more and I wanted to do it better. So, the typical freelance story that many of you could probably relate with is that I started out doing freelance gigs with small little companies in town, and then over a couple of months, I had a business that was too big to manage on my own, so I hired a team. 

Then once I hired a team, we called ourselves an agency, and then we grew bigger than I thought we would, or bigger than I ever intended we would, and that’s what brought me to where I am today. I started Magic three and a half years ago with my co-founder, Gareth. Today, we have 35 team members. We focus on scaling the customer acquisition and the impact of organizations that are elevating consciousness, and enhancing health and wellbeing, and reversing climate change. That’s where we like to play. That’s what gets us inspired. So, that’s a bit about how I joined the world of digital marketing and why I started an agency. 

Rob:  So, I have a feeling that this question may take us in a different direction than what I was originally thinking we would be talking about, but listening to you talk about your experience and where you’ve been, I’m wondering about the consciousness tools that you’re talking about, as tools to use in business. Are there… we could probably spend a whole hour talking about this, maybe even more, but are there two or three things that you’ve learned from experts like Deepak, Marianne Williamson, that are applicable in business in ways that maybe we haven’t thought of before? 

Marcus:  Yeah, that’s a really good question. I would say that, ultimately, Deepak’s teachings were a catalyst for growth in my life, spiritually, and that led me all kinds of different directions. That led me to experimenting with psychedelic healing. That led me to going to festivals and, and Burning Man, and going to yoga retreats and all kinds of things. So, if there’s anything that I would take away that, I’ve applied to business, it wouldn’t necessarily be a sitting practice in meditation, but it would be the vulnerability and openness that creates in yourself, which gives you greater capacity to be a great leader, because you can see that in others and help guide them into a greater version of themselves. 

Kira:  So, maybe this question ties into what you just shared, but you mentioned that you experienced this boost of confidence, confidence with yourself, from working with these leaders. You mentioned some of the tools that you use, but what really worked? What practices worked on a daily basis to help boost your confidence during that time? Especially for copywriters who are listening, who maybe are struggling with confidence and they know that’s holding them back, what is something, or a couple of things they could try in their everyday? 

Marcus:  Yeah, that’s a good question. I noticed this because when I started meditating, I realized that I have this Negative Nancy inside my skull, that’s always telling me why I’m wrong or why I’m bad, or why I’m not good enough, and I feel like that is a common ailment. Most people can relate to that. They call it the monkey mind. When I started meditating, I would detach from my thinking, and a better word for that is I would observe my thinking. 

Instead of controlling me and being me, then I became just the observer, which means that the thoughts were more like a flowing stream and I wouldn’t cling on to them so much, and then they would dissipate and I would feel a bit more quiet. So, that was my experience. I had an extremely low self-esteem. I was picked on all through elementary school, middle school, high school, and didn’t really come into my own until I was maybe 23, 24 years old. So, confidence was always something that I struggled with, and this was something that made a difference for me. 

Rob:  Yeah. I have a feeling that we’ll come back to this, maybe as a theme, as we talk about the different things that you’ve done in your career, but yeah. Tell us a little bit more about Magic and the work that you guys are doing ongoing. I know we got kind of the cliff notes version, but having a team of 35 people working together, just help us understand that environment just a little bit, and what you guys are doing on a day-to-day basis. 

Marcus:  Yeah, good question. I set out on a path and, and the reason I even wanted to create Magic is so that I could build the most bad-ass elite conscious marketing team that I possibly could, and convert traditionally trained, direct response marketers into messaging light workers of sorts. I wanted to apply those amazing skillsets towards missions that really matter. So, what we do on a daily basis is work extremely hard to really grow these organizations. Some of them are political in nature. Some of them are traditional businesses. Some of them are at the intersection of where our skill sets really come in handy, like online courses and e-commerce, and all that, but what I’m most excited about is the origin of these companies, and what they stand for. 

A couple of examples. We worked with an organization called Decriminalize Denver back in May of 2018, and they were on a quest to decriminalize magic mushrooms, otherwise known as psilocybin mushrooms, which are hallucinogenic naturally occurring mushrooms in nature that have tremendous healing properties, that the scientific community has been privy to for decades, and it’s just now coming to the public awareness. We launched a donor acquisition and awareness campaign, mostly on Facebook and Instagram, with a shoestring budget. The result of that is we became the first city in the United States to ever decriminalize magic mushrooms for personal use and possession. That was incredibly meaningful in my life. 

That’s not I’ve got the big, “Oh, my god, I did the multimillion dollar launch. I scaled the company 10X. I took this company from small to over a hundred million dollar…” Yeah, sure. I’ve got all those stories, but that one is the one that I’m most proud of because we were the underdog and we won, and that forever changed the political landscape, and you’ve seen a domino effect of other organizations across the country that are following suit, which is opening up our ability to heal our collective consciousness in an industry that has not seen any innovation in 60 years, which is mental health. So, we’re helping to heal the mental health pandemic in our country. 

Kira:  Okay, so many questions just about this. Let’s just start with how you did it through that campaign on a shoestring budget, how you were able to accomplish something so huge. What did it take or what were some key ingredients that made that a success? 

Marcus:  One of the key ingredients is that we were losing… we were willing to lose money on something that we believed in. So, I didn’t make any money on that campaign. I actually lost money paying my team to execute. That was number one, sacrifice. Number two was our approach. We conducted customer research… I guess you could call it donor or voter research in this particular case… to identify what the skepticism are, what the fears are, what are the judgments that people are having about this particular substance, that have originated from way back in the 60s with the whole drug war that is still going on today. 

So, we broke down our audience into three core categories based on political leaning. We had a Republican avatar, we had a Democratic avatar, and we had a Libertarian avatar. Then we constructed campaigns speaking directly into the hearts of each one of those categories. That’s a fairly vague way of splitting up a campaign, but we did get a bit more granular inside the account. In general, though, and for explanation purpose, the Democratic campaign was all about your right to heal. This should not be an illegal substance because people can use it at their own discretion to heal the ailments that they are suffering from. 

There’s evidence that magic mushrooms help with PTSD and depression, and anxiety, and a whole host of other things. The conservative angle was all about the pride of America and the pride behind our armed forces, because our armed forces are going overseas and fighting our wars, and coming back with PTSD, and mushrooms should be something that they should be allowed to try for their PTSD. How can somebody be allowed to fight in our Wars, but not have the freedom to choose their own healing, right? So, that was all about our patriotism and supporting our veterans. Veterans have very, very high suicide rates. 

Something like 30 veterans kill themselves on a daily basis. So, that is something that can be prevented with this substance. Then the libertarian route was you should be able to do whatever you want, as long as it’s not harming anybody else. This is a naturally occurring plant that can grow in your backyard, and if you eat it, then you can go on your own journey, but as long as you’re not driving a vehicle or harming somebody, then you should be able to do this. That was, in general, the focus of our messaging. We also used video content and storytelling, and many other methods that I’m sure your listeners are familiar with. 

Kira:  Okay. So, before we move away from psilocybin, can you share… I mean, you mentioned that that case was huge and there was a ripple effect. Can you just also give us an update on where things stand right now, legally, at least across the U.S., with psilocybin? 

Marcus:  Right. Things are bubbling up. There’s an organization called Decriminalize Nature that has successfully decriminalized all entheogens in several cities. Santa Cruz soon followed, Oakland soon followed. Then there were initiatives that popped up in the entire state of California and in Oregon for medical use, and Washington D.C. decriminalized as well, and we’re looking at a potential campaign, Colorado statewide, in 2022. So, it’s a similar path that cannabis followed. Now, cannabis has been becoming more and more decriminalized, and more and more legalized over time in more and more States%, and that’s the pathway that I see for psychedelics, but we shouldn’t confuse the two because the substances are quite different and need to be respected as such. 

Rob:  So, I’m really Interested in how you identified the avatars for each of these. It’s fascinating to me that in each case, you’re identifying the positive feelings and connecting it with something that people are feeling strongly about. Is that the same approach that you take with all of your clients, or is that unique to the political world where you might have parties that are, in some ways, diametrically opposed to each other? 

Marcus:  Well, we had a unique advantage because we had boots on the ground. In order to even get on the ballot, we needed to collect somewhere in the ballpark, I want to say of 65,000 signatures. So, I was chatting with the signature gatherers and asking them how their conversations were going. What are the people like who are signing right away? What are the people like who are asking questions and are engaged, and what are the people like who completely hate what you’re doing and are scared of it? 

I want to know everything. Then we could create those avatars based on the real interactions they were having in the street. So, that’s not our usual approach because we don’t usually have people talking to the general public on the street, but anytime we approach a new brand, the very first thing that we absolutely need to establish… that most agencies miss, that too many copywriters miss… is empathy. 

Truly looking into that other person’s eyes, and seeing and empathizing with their situation, and not passing judgment on it or not operating as if your perspective is popular, or running your own personal biases, or any of that. It’s starting with an open mind and curiosity, and going on a fact finding mission that is going to inform everything you do. Oftentimes, we try to work quickly, and quickly is the death of quality in many cases. I mean, look at all of the copywriting grades and you’ll see that they have an extensive research process. So, we do as well. 

Rob:  Yeah. Maybe, could you us through how you would apply that to a second client then, one that’s maybe less political, but maybe still in that consciousness realm or maybe even outside of that realm? 

Marcus:  Yeah, absolutely. So, we have a client in the coffee industry and they’ve completely invented coffee. They’ve reinvented it, I should say. Many of you might be thinking, “Well, I drink coffee every day. It didn’t need to be reinvented,” and that’s exactly my point. We have this new product that we are bringing to the marketplace, and luckily, people are absolutely loving it and they’re adoring it. We first need to find out what somebody needs to believe in order to try this completely new method of drinking coffee, because they’ve been going to Starbucks for 20 years, or they’ve been drinking ground coffee, or they like their espresso just how they like it, or they use a Keurig or whatever. 

There are so many other ways that you can drink coffee. How can we get them to completely buy into our new way, and either completely abandoned or partially abandon their routine. So, a big ask. We’re asking them to completely change their behavior, and for coffee drinkers, this is something that they cherish. So, what we wanted to discover is how people are using the product who are, one, super enjoying it, loving it, and those who are loving it a bit less. So, we surveyed a couple of different groups of people. We surveyed folks who have purchased the product once and did not purchase again, because we want to find out why. Is it a pricing thing? Is it a quality thing? Is it taste? Is it… whatever. Do they prefer another method? 

We also wanted to understand why people are subscribing gung-ho and dropping everything they’ve been doing in the past. A third group that we wanted to uncover… we have this spoon add on, because it only takes one tablespoon of this highly concentrated coffee in order to make a full cup. So, we were offering the spoon as a freebie in the first box, and we wanted to understand how people are using it, why people were using it, if it made sense to use it, what we could price it at, where they were storing it… all that kind of stuff. So, by really taking ourselves into the demographics, the psychographics and the user experience, or the experience of the product user, we could understand what types of messaging we should approach them with and exactly what audience segments we should be going after. 

And also which ones to not go after, because we know that this is a premium product and it’s not for everybody. In general, in a very, very short answer to a long-winded answer, is getting on the phone and surveying people face to face, which it gives you really strong qualitative data, but not a lot of quantity. We interviewed about 10 people, which is not enough of a statistically significant sample size to draw conclusions from. So, we also sent a survey to a few thousand people. Then we compiled the results and created customer avatars out of them. 

Rob:  I find this really fascinating because so many marketing experts, going back to Eugene Schwartz, talk about how you can’t actually change behavior, that you need to fit your product into the mass desires that are already out there. You’re basically saying, “Hey, we’ve got a product that’s going to require a change of behavior, a complete reset of a market mindset,” and doing that seems not just fascinating, but really, really difficult. 

Marcus:  Exactly. It’s a coffee subscription. Have you ever heard of a coffee subscription? 

Rob:  I’ve heard of some of the cups subscriptions, or did Keurig used to do a subscription where they would send you a machine, and then you were signed up for stuff like that, but I have not heard of anything since then. 

Marcus:  That was exactly my awareness about coffee subscriptions before I met this brand. Since it’s a premium product, I wanted to draw something relative to their mind, that they could compare it with. So, what’s another premium beverage delivery that’s common? Well, wine. Joining a wine club. So, I wanted to create this as a wine club for coffee, where you get special edition, limited batch brews, and you get it scheduled delivery every month, and occasionally, there will be random gifts. So, not only was it about changing how people drink coffee. It was changing… providing this monthly experience that felt like you have this inside our membership with the product. Anyways, that’s another example of how we would conduct customer research. 

Kira:  When it comes to customer avatars, where do you feel like most copywriters, or a lot of copywriters go wrong, or don’t go deep enough, or miss the mark? Maybe because they just don’t have that experience yet, or maybe it’s where you, in the past, missed the mark, but have changed and evolved over time. 

Marcus:  Yeah. It’s interesting because if you’re a freelancer, and you take on a new contract, you don’t get a training period. If you’re an agency and you bring on a new client, you don’t get a training period like you would if you’re a new employee for a new company. You have to hit the ground, you have to quickly get an idea of what needs to be done, and you have to impress them, the client, quickly. Which oftentimes, that rush of pleasing a new account will completely degrade or eliminate the research process. So, yeah, I think that we’re just caught in a bit of a trap there. You have to plead your case early on, why taking a couple of weeks just to get acclimated to a new brand is going to be worthwhile to the client on the other side. 

Kira:  Let’s stop and interrupt Marcus for a moment to go adjust a little bit deeper on a couple of things. So, Rob, what stood out to you from this part of the conversation? 

Rob:  There are a couple of things that Marcus said that just… they were the writer downers. At the very beginning, he mentioned that when he’s thinking of conversions, he’s thinking of converting people to a better way of being in the world. I know he was specifically talking about the projects that he was working on at that point in his career, but it hit me that that’s exactly what conversion should be. If we’re doing our jobs correctly, we are helping people realize a better version of themselves, or a better way of being in the world. So, I love that phrasing that he used. 

Kira:  Yeah. There was so much that stood out in this part of the conversation. For me, it was really the proof that, as copywriters, as marketers, we can create such a big impact in the world. Oftentimes, well, I do struggle with am I doing enough as a copywriter, to work on the many problems we have globally? I think Marcus is such a great example, and what he’s built with Magic, about how you can make a difference. It might mean some projects don’t quite land as much income for your agency, but it gives you the tools you need to really do this great work, and he’s proof of that. 

Rob:  Yeah, and when you think about making a difference in the world, there are so many different ways to do that. I think that’s one of the things that Marcus has done really well, is identifying his niche… elite consciousness, marketing team. That’s what he’s built, and bringing together people that… he’s talking about creating light workers out of direct response marketers, and if that kind of phrasing doesn’t ring true for you, then you’re not part of the group that Marcus is going to serve, but for those that do like that kind of phrasing, he’s exactly the right person to be working with. The fact that he’s been able to drill down and create a niche there for what he offers, I think is just another way that he’s helped himself succeed. 

Kira:  Yeah, and a lot of this conversation was almost proof, again, that this is what’s possible. You don’t have to do the same things. You don’t have to follow his path, but look what is possible for us as copywriters. I think the speed of his growth with this agency is incredible. He mentioned three years… he’s grown the agency over three years and he has 35 team members, and they’re quickly growing. So, just to even know that that type of growth is possible in three years, just… such a reminder of what we can all do in three years, in two years, in one year. When you’re really focused and clear about your mission, you can really accomplish so much in that time, if that’s what you’re interested in. 

Rob:  Yeah, and related to that, Marcus was talking about not being afraid to lose money on something that you believe in, and going all in on his mission and that focus. He talked about losing money, but really, what he’s talking about is making an investment in something that he believes in. Obviously, we’ve talked about the different ways that people can invest in their business, but investing in your clients, investing in the successes that you want to see with nonprofits, or with your community. Those are other ways to invest in something that he’s done really well. 

Kira:  And something else he mentioned was just the power of what he’s done with his research, especially for one of the promotions he shared with us where his team was out there collecting signatures and talking to people, and had boots on the ground. I think it was just a reminder, too, that even as copywriters, we’re not necessarily out there knocking on doors, collecting signatures, but we all are capable of scheduling interviews and still having those conversations. So, I know that’s a part of what a lot of us do. It’s not strange to have a customer interview on a video chat, but it was just a reminder to me that we can do more of that. Why limit it to four conversations? Why not have 10 or 20 to collect that data, and just have a much stronger message and campaign? 

Rob:  Yeah, or 65,000, like Marcus did. That would be the dream data collection system. As I was thinking, too, about the research that we mostly do as copywriters, or that we often do as copywriters, versus what Marcus did in the examples that he shared, is oftentimes, when we conduct research, we’re looking for the things that confirm what we already believe about our product, the thing that we’re selling. We’re not always honest about looking for the thing that our customers bring to the table. I thought that really comes out well when he’s talking about some of the legalization efforts and talking to different political parties who will all come to the issue with very different beliefs, very different belief systems and using research to establish empathy, which is really the whole reason to do research, is to figure out, okay, where are my customers today? 

My potential clients, what do they believe and how do I reach them where they are, as opposed to, again, just confirming what we already believe about the things that we sell and trying to encourage people to come over to the way that we think. Okay. Let’s go back to our interview with Marcus and talk a little bit more about what it takes to build a 35 person marketing agency. While we’re talking about doing things in an agency, I wonder if you could share some of the things that are our difficulties in starting and ramping up an agency. From this side, it feels really easy. It’s like, well, you just raise your prices, and hire people to come and work for you, but knowing several people who have started agencies and then backed out of it, even when they felt like they were having some success, clearly there’s a lot of complexity that goes on with that. Will you open our eyes a little bit to that? 

Marcus:  Yeah. You are right. Anytime I hear somebody wants to create an agency, I try to talk them out of it because many agency owners fall into the E-Myth. I’m sure you guys are familiar with the E-Myth. If you like copywriting, and that’s what you like, be a copywriter. Don’t just be an agency on her because you can make a little more money. Truly be honest with yourself about whether that’s what you want or not, because if you step into business ownership then, and if you want to grow a business… 

If you just want to cruise at a certain level, you might be able to do that fairly quickly, but if you want to grow a business, prepare for baptism by fire in all aspects of your life. You’re going to learn the ins and outs of HR, and legal and finance, business development, sales, client success, operations, taxes, everything. You’re going to have to know everything, or hire an expert to know it for you. It is the most challenging, stressful, difficult endeavor I’ve ever taken on in my life. It’s made me a better business person. It’s been very rewarding, but it’s definitely not for the faint of heart. 

Kira:  Okay, and less excited about starting an agency with Rob right now. Less and less excited, but what do you… I mean, what are maybe a couple of things that you wish you had known before starting it, that maybe just would have helped you grasp things faster beyond just like, hey, this is going to be really hard? This is not easy, but what else specifically should we be thinking about, and considering before jumping into it? 

Marcus:  I don’t necessarily mean to discourage people from starting an agency, but if I am, it’s probably not meant to be for them. I would say team first is the number one thing that… I know this now. I’ve known this for a long time, but I wish I truly would have understood that from day one. When you have an agency, your business is your people. You are not producing a product. You have a marketing team, you have a copywriting team, and prioritizing them and their mental health, and their happiness and their fulfillment, and creating an incentive structure that supports their commitment to your company, profit sharing, things like equity, things like that should be a primary focus from the very beginning, because you will invest so much time and energy, and financial resources into training, even if they’re an expert, that losing them just comes at quite a cost. 

And also, if your team is happy, then you will survive the hard times. We just went through a pandemic. We’re going through the iOS 14 rollout. I don’t know if you guys have heard about this. I’m sure you have. Massive data loss. It’s basically the digital marketing version of a pandemic. Nobody’s in danger, by any means, but it’s unprecedented in our world. There will be endless curve balls, and as long as your team is unified and supports each other, and believes in what you are doing, there’s nothing you can’t get through. It doesn’t matter if you lose your biggest clients. It doesn’t matter if you need to pivot. It doesn’t matter if there’s a pandemic. You’ll make it through. We doubled the size of our company during the pandemic, because we came together as a team. So, that’s number one, is your team is everything. 

Kira:  So, for listeners who are still excited… they’re like, “Okay, I still want to build an agency,” what are some of the initial hires they should think about in the early days when they’re like, “Okay, do I need the project manager and then a couple of junior copywriters? Do I need a copy chief first?” What is the beginning structure over the first few years when you can’t bring on a dozen or so people? 

Marcus:  Right. For me, the first year was all about delighting our clients, if we could get that down, and that was the foundation we were going to build upon. So, we focused so, so hard on service delivery. That was everything to us, was delivering excellence in our services. I would say, if you are looking to grow an agency, like you really want to grow… I’m talking you want to grow to 50 employees, 100 employees, 500 employees… hire an HR team early, because if you are savvy with sales, and if you delight your clients, they will refer you happily to other clients, and closing them is so easy usually, as long as they’re a good fit, that you need to be able to handle your demand. 

Because I am the sole sales person in my company. I’ve tried to build sales teams multiple times, but I can’t do it because we close too many deals too quickly, and my HR team can’t keep up, because any time I close a new deal, they may have to hire anywhere between two to five people. So, if I close one deal, they have to close two to five. So, it has been absolutely pivotal to have that as a core competency, because we embedded our culture code in our HR department and they know the soft things to look for. 

Then over time, they started to refine their approach for finding the technical skill matches as well in a way that you can do that on the cheap. So, we have a full-time salaried American born HR leader, and then we utilize a fantastic team in the Philippines to do our recruiting for us to the tune of… I want to say like $12 an hour per person. So, it’s an incredible bargain and they’ve been just an integral part of our culture as well. So, it’s allowed us to, to be able to handle our own demand. 

Rob:  Marcus, will you break down what your team looks like? How many are… Do you have designers, and copywriters and programmers? What does that breakdown look like if the 35 employees? 

Marcus:  Yeah, absolutely. So, we have five or six copywriters, five or six graphic designers, four account managers. They’re responsible… they’re the main point of contact for the client. They’re responsible for strategy and success. We have three project managers. That’s the account managers’ sidekick. They handle detail hunting and administrative work, and communication, which allows our account managers to sit back and think more strategically. 

We have a copywriting director, who’s fantastic. You know her. Her name’s Jonnie. We have two creative directors who are responsible for guiding the design team. We have web developers, analytics developers, IT specialists, media managers for every major platform. See if I’m missing anybody. Our C-suite is just two people. We’re building a board of advisors. I think that’s the gist of it. I might be missing a couple of positions, but maybe that’s helpful. 

Rob:  Okay. Yeah, no, that’s very meaningful, just to get a picture of all of the tasks and the different things that people are doing. Then another question I have about this is talk a little bit about your financial philosophy. The reason I ask this is because having been in the agency world myself and having lots of friends there, we know that sometimes it’s a little precarious. The loss of a client can mean layoffs across a team. So, do you have a rainy day fund that to keep things going for two to three months as you try to replace clients? Is that something that you don’t worry too much about? What does that look like? 

Marcus:  That’s a great question. So, we do have a rainy day fund. I would recommend having six months of operational expenses saved up. So, for my company, it costs anywhere between $150,000 to $200,000 a month to keep the lights on and keep everybody paid, and that fluctuates because we do work with contractors. So, by that measure, we would want to have $150,000 in our savings account, and we don’t yet, but we’re building up to that, making good progress. Yeah, I would say it always stings when you lose a client, especially a big one. Especially a big one you care about, but you can’t take it personally because churn is such a natural part of the business for so many reasons. 

Clients can be transient and only need you for a brief period until they hire in-house. You could try your damnedest and there’s not a product market fit. You could do everything you can, and they just still don’t perceive it as good enough. Some things are just out of your control and you should always expect churn. If you have a couple of clients that are too big to lose, then you need to even out the balance of your client portfolio to avoid key client risk. So, it’s not always possible. For example, I was running a presidential campaign. We were running a presidential campaign at one time for Marianne Williamson, who’s a spiritual teacher. And at the time, she was 50% of our revenue, because we were churning and burning. 

We had 15 people on that account working basically 24/7 and spending an insane amount of money, and we were getting a cut of the ad spend. So, yeah, in that particular case, we knew it was this really quick churn and burn account that lasted four or five months, and we knew we couldn’t rely on it, so we started building the business underneath to prepare us for that, when that would inevitably drop, and I think you should do that for everybody, all of your big clients. That’s how I’d approach that. Save up your money, but also don’t be afraid to spend it. When COVID hit, for example, we signed up for the PPP. We got a nice loan. We opened up a $300,000 line of credit. That was our rainy day fund at the time, and then we started saving our cash. 

Kira:  So, after working on this presidential campaign, which is so exciting, what are some key lessons you took away from that intense time, that have you’ve carried through to other clients from that political campaign? 

Marcus:  Yeah. I’d say it was unsustainable. I’m kind of crazy. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to win, but I can’t ask my team to go to the same lengths that I’d be willing to go. One of the biggest challenges of having an agency is finding balance, making sure that everybody is taking care of themselves and not overworking themselves, because we are the primary revenue generating vehicle of, what, 15 or 20 companies at any given moment. So, we carry not only the financial stress of our own organization, but that of 15 others. It’s a lot. It’s a lot. It’s high stakes. 

So, in order to meet that demand, we’ll have employees who aren’t even asking to, or aren’t even being asked to work 10 or 11 hour days. Now, that begs the question, how can we reinvent the agency to where that is not how we operate? What do we need to do practically in order to change that? Because I’m committed to changing that. I don’t like that paradigm. So, that was one thing that Marianne’s campaign really brought into focus for me, is wow, I have an amazing team that’s diehard and willing to do whatever it takes, just like I am, and we need to be very protective of that energy for future clients, or else we’re just going to churn and burn. 

Rob:  Yeah. How do you approach growth? Again, drawing on my past experience, it feels like when agencies need to grow, they’re often really slow to hire because of the churn risk, and you can very easily get out in front of an account and spend more than what’s coming in. So, when you look at the next year or two, how do you pitch your growing so that you can support, but maybe not chase the needs that come along with it? 

Marcus:  Yeah. I would recommend agencies growing two steps forward, one step back. So, we’ve grown in the opposite direction before. So, in the month of December, which is historically a very slow month, I closed nine new deals. That is a lot. I don’t know if you guys know, but that’s a lot. 

Rob:  Yeah, that’s definitely a lot. 

Marcus:  I knew that that would put stress on the business and I knew that the HR team would need to hire to even complete the most basic deliverables for those clients, but they were enormous opportunities. We were signing companies that had raised $30 million or were super connected in some way. All of these opportunities are just so good. I couldn’t pass them up. I sacrificed myself. I was like, okay, I’m going to take on four of these new clients, and on average, our account managers can handle two. So, I was doubling my own workload on top of being a CEO, which was a bad move. So, I sold first and then trusted that over time, we would be able to fill in the team. 

That was a mistake because although we were able to hire about 10 people of the 16 people we needed, the team suffered. Everybody was overworked and everybody was stressed, and we went through a bit of a dark period where things were just really, really hard, and we’re coming out