The Digital Agency Show | Helping Agency Owners Transform Their Business Mindset to Increase Prices, Work Less, and Grow Profits

Craig Ballantyne is the author of The Perfect Day Formula and The Perfect Week Formula, and has been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, Inc., GQ (with a story), Men’s Health, and others. He started as a personal trainer and has evolved into a wildly successful entrepreneur across a myriad of industries. He’s helping people with discipline and productivity, mindset, and many other things.

Joe Marcoux is someone who is a master of sales objections - the “Sales Sensei”. He has a two-step approach that will help you overcome all objections. He is the founder of the S.O.S. Dojo (the Sales Objection System). Joe and his team of Black Belts help business owners and their teams become confident communicators by creating Buying Conversations.

Tudor Dumitrescu built a direct response agency with a team of 18-people and is currently building a second agency helping digital agency owners walk the same path he did and scale to 7 figures. They focus on helping businesses attract top-tier clients from LinkedIn.

Jack Skeels is a thought leader, researcher, writer, speaker, podcast host, coach, and two-time Inc. 500 entrepreneur. He spent the last decade working with over 200 agencies, consultancies, and project-driven organizations to make them better, faster, and happier. His current business is AgencyAgile.

Jason Swenk is the agency advisor & coach who guides marketing agencies through a proven framework for growing their agency faster. Jason has literally written the book for developing an agency from nothing to two 8-figure agencies. He is one of the most sought advisors to agencies in the world, by showed them an 8-system framework that worked for growing his agency, working with brands like AT&T, Hitachi, and Lotus Cars, and eventually led to selling his agency.

Greg Hickmanis the Founder and CEO of AltAgency™, one of the top training and consulting companies for digital agencies looking to grow and scale by packaging their expertise, installing systems for growth, and leveraging automation to save time and divorce their time from their income. They’ve helped over 600+ agency owners transition from time-for-money services to selling their knowledge and expertise.

Sean Tambagahan is the founder/CEO of Butler Branding - a full-service creative agency in Central California. They also teach the business of branding to creative entrepreneurs who are looking to grow their business.

Russell is a born and bred entrepreneur, having started multiple 7-figure businesses and helping hundreds of other businesses repeat that success. He is now on a mission to simplify the world of marketing. Passionate that entrepreneurs are the mind, heart, and engine of the world, he is driven to improve the world through better business.

Dana DiTomaso is President & Partner at Kick Point and Founder & Lead Instructor at KP Playbook, where she helps people and teams do better marketing. Alongside the team at Kick Point, Dana teaches people and teams how to set goals and track results so that they understand what strategies and tactics bring real value. In addition to speaking at conferences about reporting and analytics, SEO, and brand building, Dana is the weekly technology columnist on CBC Edmonton AM, and she teaches analytics at the University of Alberta.

Bryan McAnulty is the founder of Heights Platform: the all-in-one AI-powered online course and community creation software that empowers thousands of creators in more than 100 countries to build knowledge businesses. Bryan's entrepreneurial journey began in 2009, when he founded Velora, a digital product design studio, developing products and websites used by millions worldwide. Stemming from an early obsession with graphic design programs and Legos, Bryan is a designer, developer, musician, and truly a creator at heart. With a passion for discovery, Bryan has traveled to more than 30 countries and 100+ cities, meeting creators along the way.

Jeff Miller started his Agency out of his parent’s spare bedroom. From there, he landed $3,000 to $10,000 monthly clients with his in-person “wallet out” pitch, was hit by Covid, and then re-grew it to 50 clients using 1 “stupid simple” ad.

Brian Dordevic is the CEO and founder of Alpha Efficiency, a 7-figure web design firm. They have over 500 websites made and counting with a team of 30+ around the world. He offers fresh insights on marketing and design at conversioninsider.com. He just moved to the U.S. within the last 10 years. He’s been crushing it in our UACADEMY Pro program and has just made the jump to the Elite-level program.

Chris Stegner is with Very Big Things, also known as VBT–a leading digital products agency helping companies become impossible to ignore by digitally elevating their brand, experiences, and innovation. VBT designs and develops digital experiences for startups and enterprise clients by fusing cuttng-edge technologies and techniques with an innovative approach to create amazing user experiences. They’re based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida with over 70 employees in their offices across two countries.

Vladimer Botsvadze - Ranked as the No. 1 Global Marketing, Social Media, and Retail Thought Leader by Thinkers360 in 2023 with over 130,000 followers across his social media platforms, Vladimer is a world-renowned digital transformation and social media influencer and keynote speaker who initiates change, drives growth, and positions brands as market leaders in their industries.

Galen Low is the co-founder of The Digital Project Manager, a training community hell-bent on sharing knowledge to amplify the value of responsible project management in a digital world. Over the past decade or so, he's worked at boutique agencies and large consultancies to help shape and deliver human-centered digital transformation initiatives in government, healthcare, transit, and retail.

Farhad Khan is is an engineer turned enterpreneur. He builds membership websites for associations and has built some of the largest membership websites in Canada. He came up with the 5 Step Member Journey Model™ which is used by many associations through his workshops. He also has a SaaS platform that he’s developed in this niche. He’s a graduate of the UGURUS Pro program.

Jackson Corey and Lucas DiPietrantonio are our guests today. Lucas is the cofounder and CEO. He currently oversees global strategic initiatives for the agency, and has personally worked with brands like Crate&Barrel, Olipop, Neccesaire, Dwayne Johnson, and more. Jackson is cofounder and Chief Creative Officer. He oversees creative efforts for client leadership and internal ventures.

Benjamin Lander started his career working for Mercedes-Benz headquarters in Germany. He founded an event agency and led it to 100 employees in 5 Years, then handed over the agency to a Managing Director in 2018, who has been successfully running it since. Coming out of the experience of building a company from scratch, he’s been helping others do what he finds most difficult. Today, Benjamin and a small team of consultants help agency owners around the world build high-performing teams, implement efficient processes and utilize state of the art technology for efficient strategy execution.

Jeff Couret is the founder and president of SEOak, which helps digital agencies deliver SEO results to their clients, effortlessly and profitably. He is also an amazing UGURUS mentor and previous guest on this show.

Melissa Morris - as the founder of Agency Authority, a project management and operations consultancy for agency owners, Melissa Morris uses her 10 years agency experience to help business owners maximize their team, increase their productivity, and grow their profits. Firmly committed to breaking the ‘long hours and bad pay’ stigma that plagues the agency world, Melissa and her team help business owners and their team members do the work they love without sacrificing client satisfaction, the bottom line, or their own sanity.

Cahill Camden is the Founder of Press Jockey, an AI-powered press tool that helps businesses get up to 5x more press, with 90% less effort. He’s also the CEO of Digital Vision Media Group, an agency that offers fractional CMO consulting and helps web3 and technology companies optimize for growth.

Alyson Caffrey is an operations strategist and the founder of operations agency. A digital agency show veteran, this is her third chat with Brent on using operations to grow and scale your digital agency. She is the author of the Sabbatical Method: How to Leverage Rest & Grow Your Business. She focuses on helping her clients build scalability AND sustainability through ops. She is a mom to two little boys under three and loves chatting about growing businesses and growing families.

Kaci Ackerman went from dental office manager to being furloughed due to Covid to running a six-figure business in less than two years. Kaci is a Certified Business Manager and ClickUp expert. Kaci has helped over 1000 business owners streamline their business with ClickUp. She saves CEOs 10 hours a week and increases their profit by 25% with a robust and automated ClickUp system. Some fun facts: queen of typos & truth bombs, allergic to alcohol, Netflix binger, sports fan, bike rider, Friends obsessed (she's 100% Monica!).

Jules Dan is the List Master & Profit Extractor from down under. He rode on a Koala just to get here on time. He’s probably the most sarcastic daily email writer out there. And even with concerning talks between his high school teachers & his parents. “We repeat an example 2-3 times with other students…but with Julian…we have to show him TEN!” Somehow, he’s managed to suck out $15 million in sales for his clients using email. Now he’s at war with A.I. to help entrepreneurs sound personable, unique (and profitable) with every prompt.

Kaleb Jae is the owner of a Webflow development team, specializing in servicing passionate designers to scale their website fulfillment and deliver premium custom-built websites for their clients, zippy fast. He has built over 150 websites and is an official Webflow partner. He has two of the most highly-rated websites in the Relume showcase.

Before anything else — Valentin Radu is a perseverent experimenter. He has gone through various jobs, companies, and entrepreneurial ventures before identifying customers' real needs and defining the perfect go-to-market strategy. Valentin is the CEO & Founder of Omniconvert. He leverages his industry expertise at Omniconvert—his SaaS company that provides growth solutions to mid-size eCommerce websites looking to become customer-centric. Omniconvert helps eCommerce companies find hidden gems in their data, improve Customer Lifetime Value and Customer Retention & deliver personalized customer experiences across all channels.

Brent Weaver leads the vision for UGURUS and creates educational programs that help agency owners work on their business to drive additional revenues, increase profits, and create freedom in their life. He built his first website at 15 and created his first web-design business at 17. That company grew into a successful, 14-person web agency that was acquired in 2012. Brent has helped thousands of other web professionals master business skills and has made more than $10mm as an entrepreneur. He published the best-selling book, Get Rich In The Deep End, in 2020. Brent is interviewed by his good friend, fellow entrepreneur Marc Gutman.

Meg Casebolt is the founder of Love At First Search and host of the Social Slowdown podcast. Meg loves to help businesses spend less time trying to hack the algorithms and instead creates SEO content that attracts your ideal audience to your website while helping entrepreneurs cut their dependency on social media for their business visibility.

Matt Walde runs an inbound marketing agency called Brightlark. He focuses on B2B SaaS companies and tech. They’re often challenged when it comes to growing and scaling their businesses. With Inbound marketing solutions from Brightlark, clients predictably attract, engage, and retain more of the right clients. Their clients see more leads, more customers, and a higher lifetime value from their user base. They've been in business over 16 years, and have helped over 400 companies grow online. They're a HubSpot certified agency, and a Google Premier Partner. He’s also a UGURUS Elite member.

Corey Quinn has a 25-year track record of extraordinary success as an entrepreneur, sales leader, and CMO of Scorpion - a digital marketing agency serving SMBs which he helped grow from 20mm to 150mm in recurring revenue in six years. Today he’s helping agencies unlock sales and growth by doing less, not more.

Stephen Woessner - For over 25 years, Stephen has been in the trenches working alongside and consulting with hundreds of clients — teaching them how to plant their flag of authority within the markets they serve, grow their audience, fill their sales pipeline with right-fit prospects, and ultimately, drive revenue. Stephen founded Predictive ROI in 2009 and remains its CEO and owner. He's the host of the Sell with Authority podcast and his marketing insights have been featured in Inc. Magazine, Forbes.com, Entrepreneur.com, The Washington Post, and other media. He’s the bestselling author of five books including his latest entitled, Sell With Authority, which he co-authored with Drew McLellan, CEO of Agency Management Institute.

Chris Do is an Emmy award-winning designer, director, CEO and Chief Strategist of Blind and the founder of The Futur—an online education platform with the mission of teaching 1 billion people how to make a living doing what they love. He currently serves as the chairman of the board for the SPJA, and as an advisor to Saleshood. He has many awards, and many fans, and is a leader in this industry.

Blair Enns and David C. Baker are highly successful entrepreneurs and authors, as well as hosts of the podcast, 2 Bobs.

We’re looking back to one of our favorite episodes, featuring Perry Marshall. His 80/20 rule is applicable in so many ways for agency owners. So, how will it help you get better results and grow? – Perry Marshall is one of the most expensive business strategists in the world. He is endorsed in FORBES and INC Magazine and has authored eight books. He completed the $10 million Evolution 2.0 Prize by Harvard and Oxford. He is a published scientist who aims to solve the number one mystery in artificial intelligence and life itself. His reinvention of the Pareto Principle is published in Harvard Business Review. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labs used his 80/20 Curve as a productivity tool. We’re chatting about lessons from his book, Memos From The Head Office.

Aaron Carpenter is the founder of Legendary Lion Creative Agency and Mental Health Marketing. In 2011 Aaron founded Legendary Lion Creative Agency to help small businesses grow and succeed. Since then he has worked with hundreds of mental health clinicians and group practices worldwide to help them grow their practice with his trademarked “Private Practice Growth System”. In 2021, Aaron joined the awesome mentor team at UGURUS to provide support for growing agencies worldwide.

Taylor McMaster is the founder of DOT & Company where she and her team help digital marketing agencies keep their clients happy—and keep agency owners (ahem, US) focused on what they do best—with full-service client account management services.

Garrett Mehrguth is the co-founder and CEO of Directive - a search marketing agency for enterprise brands headquartered in Irvine, CA. He is fascinated by the role that search marketing plays in empowering companies and people to connect, and has dedicated the last five years toward that passion. Since its establishment in 2014, he’s led Directive into expansion globally, including London, Latin America, Australia, and Canada.

WRIXON founder Aaron Wrixon has been paid for writing well over 8 million words. That’s the equivalent of 13 copies of War and Peace. Aaron has written for more than 150 different industries across the English-speaking world, and is a Wall Street Journal bestseller. He lives in Canada with his wife and two daughters. Do you have a SaaS company that could use some brilliant copywriting? Hit him up for some help!

Townsend Wardlaw has been a long-time friend and mentor to Brent, and has helped him create and accelerate multiple 7-figure businesses. Townsend is hired by founders to coach them through the $2M to $10M “Death Zone.” He’s seen more than $1B in revenue growth and $500M in exit wealth.

Marc Gutman is the founder and owner of Wild Story. They’re a brand strategy agency and they also do delivery and copywriting. He’s a brand strategy wizard, storytelling sorcerer, and business-building ninja. Today he’s here to spill the beans on his secret weapon: Chat GPT. (By the way - this intro was written by ChatGPT) Jarrod Harmon runs a company in Western Australia. They help business owners to generate leads, inquiries, and most importantly bookings to help them grow their business. Liam Higgins is a small digital agency owner. They serve businesses in Sydney.

Chuck Peters is the father of twins +1, married 15 years, entrepreneur, CEO, and salesman. Chuck 3X’d his agency’s revenue in 2022, breaking through a revenue ceiling that had been taunting him for years, and growing his team to over 20 people in the process. He niched down, scaled up, and is now a 7-figure agency. He’s worked with UGURUS for a couple of years.

Cameron Herold is the mastermind behind hundreds of companies' exponential growth and has earned his reputation as the business growth guru. He has built a dynamic consultancy with clients that include a monarchy and a Big 4 wireless company. The author of 6 books (with another on the way), Cameron is also a top-rated international speaker, having spoken on all 7 continents. The founder of the COO Alliance, the World's Leading Network for Seconds in Command.

Jack Shepler has been a member of UACADEMY for many years. He runs a digital agency called AYOKAY. He grew it from a small, creative, freelance practice into an amazing 7-figure agency that’s working with healthcare, nonprofits, and various other businesses, both national and international.

Jesse Brede is the owner of Lion's Share Digital, a full-service digital agency, Gravitas Recordings, an electronic music label, Gravitas Create, electronic music education, and co-founder of Pivotal Agency artist management and bookings. Lion's Share works with world-class brands, festivals, artists, and creatives. Gravitas has released 190 albums, eps, and compilations. He’s managed CloZee, Beats Antique, Desert Dwellers, Dirtwire, and Bluetech. Jesse is also a UGURUS client.

Abby Wood is the founder of The Content Lab, a white label copywriting and content marketing agency that helps digital agency owners get their time back, keep their customers happy, and increase their profits. She serves over 80 agencies with their copywriting needs, has an amazing team, and is also a mentor for UGURUS. She offers support and guidance that agency owners need to help them grow their business and live the life they want.

Shanice Miller is a business productivity consultant, specializing in project management, who helps clients ranging from small startups to multi-million dollar businesses save hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars. Her passion for identifying and solving inefficiencies began when she sold her first business, an educational consultancy that had been recognized in Forbes and BET. Over the last 10 years, Shanice has used her ability to identify operational inefficiencies and create solutions to not only help save her clients’ businesses (and hairlines), but also to fall in love with them again.

David Hart is a former agency owner and co-founder of the SaaS company, ScreenCloud which someone offered to buy for nearly $200m last year. He is also an investor, advisor, and NED for various early-stage SaaS businesses, and is currently writing a book about the transition from agency to SaaS owner.

Barry Moroney is the founder and CEO of Leadable, an outsourced sales development agency focused on helping SMEs get Enterprise clients. Having previously led sales and marketing teams for a number of international brands, Barry started Leadable to give agencies the opportunity to run highly personalized outbound sales campaigns at scale, without the prohibitive cost associated with building an outbound function.

Mary Ann Pruitt is the founder and owner of Mosaic Media Agency, which has over 40 team members. They offer media buying among other services, and work with budgets from a few thousand dollars to over 100 million.

Jen Buzza is the founder of Web Clio and is the UGURUS lead mentor. She keeps our whole team in line and focused on delivering amazing value to our many members. She’s had a huge impact on thousands of agency owners all over the world through our programs and through her own business and entrepreneurial practice.