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

For the past two decades, Charlene Li has been helping people see the future. She’s an expert on digital transformation, leadership, customer experience, and the future of work. She’s the author of six books, including the New York Times bestseller, Open Leadership, and co-author of the critically acclaimed book, Groundswell. Her latest book is the bestseller The Disruption Mindset. She is the Founder and Senior Fellow at Altimeter, a disruptive analyst firm acquired in 2015 by Prophet. Named one of the most creative people in business by Fast Company, Charlene is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School and lives in San Francisco.

Since the mid-90s, WRIXON founder Aaron Wrixon has been paid for writing well over 7 million words. Aaron has written for more than 120 different industries across the English-speaking world, with a focus on writing for agencies and their clients. He lives in Canada, surrounded by women—his wife, his two daughters, two dogs, and a bearded dragon. He recently became a Wall Street Journal bestseller.

Martha Krejci is a high-vibin’ mama, wife, business coach + (no fluff!) growth strategist. Featured in Oprah Magazine, Fast Company, Cosmopolitan, Shape, and Huffington Post among other places. She teaches openly through courses, group coaching, and other tried-and-true resources. From finding your passion to building a business that works, she teaches it all to anyone that's ready. Moms (and dads!), get ready. You’re gonna feel this...

Rand Fishkin is cofounder and CEO of audience research software startup, SparkToro. He’s dedicated his professional life to helping people do better marketing through his writing, videos, speaking, and his book, Lost and Founder.

Phil Lockwood is the Founder and Chief Visionary of Distill. His focus is on developing and evolving simple, high-returning web marketing efforts that help his clients implement and grow. He’s a regular guest and speaker on numerous podcasts and conferences, like Bloomberg, Businessweek, ABC World News Tonight, USA Today, Wired Business 2.0, and many others. He has also recently released a successful Youtube channel, called Always Be Changing, where he’s literally traveling the world, still running his agency, and sharing his experiences with this audience.

Keith Roberts is an author, entrepreneur, and keynote speaker. He created the OAK Journal to fulfill his personal WHY - Through kindness and generosity to help others see who they could become. Keith regularly speaks to entrepreneurs, start-ups, and corporate clients to empower them with the tools to achieve any goals. You can be the best version of yourself by hanging out with us today on the podcast!

Clifford Almeida is the CEO of Hire A Whiz, a web agency that has a portfolio ranging from small businesses and nonprofits to Fortune 500 companies. He is also the founder of MyWebAudit.com, a SaaS that helps web professionals and digital marketers generate and close more deals using actionable website audits. He is also a graduate of our 10k Bootcamp program!

Jen Buzza is the co-founder and web advisor for WebClio, a digital agency based in the Los Angeles area. She’s also Visionary for a company called WorkSitter, she’s a business mentor at Hub 101, and (most importantly!) the Lead Mentor for UGURUS. She has mentored, coached, and trained over 1,000 agencies within our Pro, Elite, and Bootcamp programs.

Jimmy Hays Nelson, aka Coach Jimmy, has been a high-performance business coach for over a decade. Jimmy's unique skill is helping his clients to seamlessly connect their personal stories to their product or service, creating a strong "know, like, and trust factor." He helps get more leads and more clients, as well as connect more deeply with clients.

Susie Carder started out as a low-paid hairdresser trying to support her two little girls. So she decided to do whatever it took to create her own business. After much blood, sweat, and tears she went on to create, not one, but two $10 Million companies! Her core genius is the ability to simplify complicated issues by creating simple proven systems that are guaranteed to create dramatic growth. She has helped over 100,000 entrepreneurs.

Rahul Alim is the founder of Custom Creatives, a Digital Marketing Agency that connects companies with their dream clients. He has helped brands such as Realtor.com, Geico, Advertise.com, Reach Local, and 1,000’s of local businesses. With 16+ years of experience running his agency, he now coaches agency owners to grow 6-figure businesses with his proven G$D Sales Method.

Dino Watt is the Founder and CEO of Our Ripple Effect, Inc. and one of the most exciting business relationship trainers in the world. He is an award-winning mentor and author. He has been featured on ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX News, and TEDx. As a high-performance practice advisor, Dino has frequently been referred to as “The Tony Robbins of Private Practices”.

Frankie Fihn is the author of the book Beyond The Agency Box. He has been in digital marketing since 2007. He is an entrepreneur, shaman, speaker, author, and world traveler. He has been featured with the world’s number one marketer, Jay Abraham. He has also written for several magazines, he has been featured in numerous podcasts and articles, and he has spoken on stages all across the world.

David Wood - after life as a consulting actuary to Fortune 100 companies, David built the world’s largest coaching business, becoming #1 ranked on Google for life coaching. He discovered that “shiny object syndrome” is an epidemic among high-performers, he coaches rockstar business owners to double their revenue, achieve more in less time, and be extraordinary entrepreneurs, partners, parents, and leaders.

Elliott Bayev and Daniel Moskowitz take a combined 50 years experience in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and building 8-figure sales teams and bottle it up inside a powerful new International Bestselling book: Sales Jiu-Jitsu – The Secret Black Belt System for Champion Leaders.

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 his new book - Memos From The Head Office.

Marisa Murgatroyd started her career as an artist who was told by her father that she had no marketable skills. She figured out how to build a multi-million dollar business anyway and has shown over 10,000 students how to succeed online — many of whom also felt like they had “no marketable skills”. As the Founder of Live Your Message & Creator of the Experience Product Masterclass, she's on a mission to reinvent online education around the world so results and engagement become the norm and not the exception. Marisa has personally sold over $23M in online courses and programs that have student success rates 10-30 times higher than the industry standard. Marisa has been featured in: Traffic & Conversion Summit, Mindvalley Momentum, Evercoach Summit, LaunchCon, and the Conscious Business Network.

Debra Scarpa, president, and Ashley Blaesing, operations manager, of Friday Marketing work in the niche of Home Designer Marketing. They help home design professionals such as interior designers transform their businesses and brands to attract their dream clients, sell their projects for more, stay current online, and get their time back with automated systems. Between them, they have over 40 years of award-winning design and marketing experience and absolutely love working with people who value design just as much as they do. Debra and Ashley have been UGURUS members for several years.

Taylor Benterud is COO & founder of BetterAMS. They specialize in Amazon advertising and help brands on Amazon doing between 7-10 figures grow faster through better ad management. They started in 2016 and exploded in growth going from about 300k/ year in 2019 to doing 1mm in 2020. They’re pacing to do 1.5 mm this year with >25% margins.

Imogen Allen Is a Website Strategist and the creator of The WIF®, She is on a quest to help stop projects waiting on content for all web agencies once and for all, and passionate about helping others find their website identity and championing websites that speak to humans in a language they understand.

Nicole Osborne was just voted one of 2021’s Top 30 Marketers that Inspire by MarketEd.Live, along with the likes of Rand Fishkin, Seth Godin, and Andrew Davis. A marketing coach for digital agency owners, she’s based in London but is originally from Eastern Germany. She runs a program called Wunderstars.

Maggie Patterson is the editorial director at Scoop Studios and the creator of Small Business Boss. With two decades of experience, Maggie has spent her entire career in client services and has been a successful entrepreneur for 15 years. Today, she works with freelancers and agency owners to help them implement smart strategies for business growth. She has also worked with clients like Microsoft and HP. Her work has been featured in Entrepreneur.com, Fast Company and Virgin.com.

James Chapman is the Founder and CEO of Plain Sight, the best way to make connections wherever you go both online and in-person. He has dedicated the bulk of his career to creating space for ambitious people to thrive and come together. In 2015, he launched an evening workspace for side hustlers to collaborate which led to the idea of Plain Sight. In 2017, he started and ran Detroit Demo Day, which has lead to over $4mm in funding throughout the city of Detroit. The majority have been minority- and women-owned businesses.

Manish Dudharejia is the founder and CEO of E2M. He’s a techno-entrepreneur and techno-marketer professional. He has over 10 years of experience in this industry, working closely with lots of different people associated with technology, entrepreneurship, and digital marketing. E2M is a white-label web design and marketing shop based in India and San Diego. They have a team of over 100 and over 150 active clients. Manish is responsible for their overall company operations, sustainable strategic growth, team mentoring and retention, and so much more. E2M is much loved by many UGURUS members.

Piccia Neri is a UX expert and global speaker, helping businesses and agencies win on the web by putting users at the center. She loves educating designers & developers in the best UX & UI practices via workshops, courses, and talks in 3 languages. Piccia is also a UX project lead and a Maverick at Cloudways.

Jennifer Berson is the President & Founder of Jeneration PR, an award-winning Public Relations & Social Media Marketing firm specializing in promoting beauty, baby, and lifestyle brands. Jen’s retainer clients range from small and mid-sized brands to multi-billion dollar publicly traded companies, and everything in between.

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.

Nick Butler is the founder of Ireland Website Designs, an agency that specializes in e-commerce websites. As the name implies, he’s based in Ireland. Nick was able to leverage some of the challenges of Covid last year, and helped Irish retailers move to selling online. It’s given Nick an amazing opportunity to grow his business, and launch a SaaS app called LearnOn. Nick has been a member of the UGURUS Pro community for the last three years. He’s also a UGURUS Bootcamp grad.

Shaun Clark is the co-founder and self-proclaimed nerdy software engineer of HighLevel. He’s on a mission to help every agency in the country be more successful and profitable, and even change the way agencies are operated. His platform currently serves over 9,000 agencies that work with over 170,000 small business owners on the HighLevel platform.

Iris Shoor is the founder and CEO of Oribi—a competitor to Google Analytics. It’s an AI-based analytics tool that is dedicated to making analytics easy. She’s had two successful startups and this is her third company.

Janelle Allen helps business owners create and market online courses. As a trained Instructional Designer, she believes that every company is in the education business. She's worked with corporations such as Pearson Education, Potbelly Sandwich Works, Starbucks and Apple to create training and online courses, using principles of adult learning and design. In 2016, she pivoted her mission to help small business owners create profitable courses that change lives. Janelle has helped UGURUS build courses as well.

Ben Marcel is the CEO of Torapath Technologies, consisting of two divisions, an MSP and digital marketing agency, serving the SMB professional services market in Baton Rouge. He is also the franchise location owner of Code Ninjas, teaching future web developers and agency owners how to code by building video games. Ben is a Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses graduate and a recent Baton Rouge Business Report Forty under 40 honoree.

Brian Gardner is the former partner and Chief Product Officer at Copyblogger Media, and also the founder of StudioPress (acquired by WP Engine). He is a designer, a WordPress expert, and in his free time, you can find him frequenting the local Starbucks or running a nearby trail.

Ronik Patel built the web agency JD Softtech in both Boston and Ahmedabad, India, and found he wanted a way to help other agencies. So he took a team of highly qualified website developers and web designers and launched UnlimitedWP, a white-label WordPress partner for growing agencies. Ronik now leads a team of 50+ to help digital agencies grow.

Selle Evans is the founder and owner of Masterly, a digital marketing agency focused on a personalized marketing experience. She is also a certified sales and marketing coach. She was previously in Inc 5000 for being CEO of one of the fastest-growing companies in America, and in Fortune as Inner City 100 and named one of the brightest CEO's in Houston.

Jeff Venn owns Create Studios, a 10-person agency that he runs in eight hours a week, and is a mentor to millennial and Gen Z entrepreneurs. Jeff's taken a forward-thinking, progressive approach on how to build and run his businesses, and how he builds and runs his days.

Colin Hewitt is founder and CEO of Float, a cash flow forecasting and scenario planning SAAS application. Prior to founding Float, he founded the digital agency IfLooksCouldKill and ran it for 10 years before selling it. Float now has over 30 people with offices in Edinburgh and Sydney. They’ve reached a goal of over one million in recurring revenue annually, and now have a goal of ten million.

David‌ Pisarek ‌lives‌ ‌to‌ ‌break‌ ‌things‌ ‌-‌ ‌having‌ ‌worked‌ ‌across‌ ‌non-profit‌ ‌sectors‌ ‌designing,‌ ‌programming,‌ ‌and‌ ‌management‌ ‌for‌ ‌30‌ ‌years,‌ ‌David‌ ‌launched‌ ‌Wow‌ ‌Digital‌ ‌Inc.‌ ‌in‌ ‌2017,‌ ‌with‌ ‌the‌ ‌goal‌ ‌of‌ ‌providing‌ ‌transformative‌ ‌websites,‌ ‌design,‌ ‌and‌ ‌branding‌ ‌for‌ ‌non-profit,‌ ‌NGO’s,‌ ‌and‌ ‌charitable‌ ‌organizations.‌ ‌ ‌ Breaking‌ ‌apart‌ ‌processes‌ ‌and‌ ‌tearing‌ ‌down‌ ‌department‌ ‌silos,‌ ‌David‌ ‌uses‌ ‌his‌ ‌background‌ ‌to‌ ‌effectively‌ ‌bridge‌ ‌the‌ ‌gaps‌ ‌between‌ ‌IT,‌ ‌Marketing,‌ ‌Communications,‌ ‌and‌ ‌Fundraising‌ ‌departments‌ ‌to‌ ‌align‌ ‌processes,‌ ‌streamline‌ ‌operations,‌ ‌and‌ ‌ultimately‌ ‌help‌ ‌his‌ ‌clients‌ ‌achieve‌ ‌digital‌ ‌success.‌

Ben Gabler is the CEO & Founder of Rocket.net. He has spent the majority of his career building and managing various hosting companies/platforms including HostNine, HostGator, GoDaddy, UK2Group, IX Web Hosting, and StackPath. He was employee #10 at HostGator.com and helped build a foundation that would ultimately scale to a $100mm business. He sold his first company in 2010 for 7 figures.

Jake Jorgovan is a Serial Entrepreneur, Author, Podcaster and Business Advisor. He is the Founder of Lead Cookie, Content Allies, and Arete Incubator. Jake is also the host of the Working Without Pants Podcast and shares the raw lessons of his entrepreneurial journey at Jake-Jorgovan.com. Jake’s professional focus is to build companies that enable freedom of time and financial profitability. He does that by being an active entrepreneur in the trenches and through training others on entrepreneurship, leadership, sales & marketing.

Kelly Campbell is an Agency Transformation Coach based in New York. She's a former owner of a digital agency for 14 years. She helps creative, media, and tech leaders transform life and agency. She has been a keynote speaker at agency growth conferences, and has been featured in The New York Times, Woman Entrepreneur, Forbes, and Medium. She’s a Forbes Business Council member, and has been a consultant for Facebook and NASA.

Drew McLellan ‌has worked in advertising for over 30 years. He started his own agency, McLellan Marketing Group, in 1995 after a 5-year stint at Y&R. Drew has been published in Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, Ad Age, New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Business Week, and many others. The Wall Street Journal calls him “one of 10 bloggers every entrepreneur should read”. He’s also written several books and helped thousands of agency owners grow their businesses.

Trey Stinnett AKA “The Flow Coach”. He helps small business owners build their ideal teams so they can get past *hard* and live a life they love. Trey has worked with guys like Damon John and Tony Robbins. He currently is living in St. Petersburg, Florida with his wife and 2 daughters.

Michael Fisher is the director of inbound sales and represents the frontlines of Choozal for any and all prospective clients interested in their programmatic ad-buying services. For 18 years, he’s been focused on B-to-B contract sales and has developed over 5,000 partnerships - helping Choozle land over 2,000 clients. Choozle has been a bit pandemic-proof this year - having hired 16 people and grown by 35%.

Andy Cabasso is a digital marketing professional, speaker, lawyer, and occasional wedding officiant. He is the co-founder of Postaga, an all-in-one platform for link building and email outreach. Prior to Postaga, he started, grew, and then successfully sold a digital marketing agency for 7-figures.

Barry Alt owns Motorhead Digital. He has worked with over 225 clients in his niche - automotive. He’s been published 8+ times, he has been working with some of his clients for over 20 years. Laura Sutherly owns Agtivation, and has worked with over 450 agricultural clients, has over 320 agriculture websites that she’s built, she’s been able to successfully 3x her income while doing 25% of her work. Both Barry and Laura have been long-time clients of UGURUS and find success working together as “success partners”.

Meredith Vaughan is CEO of world-acclaimed Vladimir Jones agency. She joined Vladimir Jones in 1999. Between 1999 and 2008, when Meredith became their president, she grew agency billings by more than 600% and became CEO in 2014. She continues to ensure that Vladimir Jones brings to life their focus on building meaningful relationships that last. Clients include Tourism Santa Fe, Snowmass Tourism, Nebraska Tourism, Otter Products, American Indian College Fund, and Black Hills Energy.

Lee Goff is an entrepreneur who grew up in the deep south, based in Mississippi he founded an agency called Get You Wired in 2003 with absolutely nothing. He scaled it and exited that business after growing it to the largest Infusionsoft agency in the world, doing multiple 7-figures. He has been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine, Forbes, Magazine, and has helped lots of digital agency owners to scale their business.

Jason Swenk has literally written the book about growing an agency from nothing to two, eight-figure agencies with clients like AT&T, Hitachi, Lotus Cars, and eventually selling his agency. We’re going to talk to him about his new agency. If you remember he was on episode #14 here on the Digital Agency Show.

Phil Gerbyshak is kinda into sales. He's a sales speaker, a sales executive, a sales mentor, a sales podcaster, and a sales coach. Phil has written 5 books, more than 3000 articles(!), and has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and many similar publications. He was recognized as one of 25 Sales Leaders to follow by Crunchbase. When he's not in the field selling for Process and Results' clients, he spends time with his family in Clermont, Florida.