19. Letting Go Of Control in Your Agency with Karen Sahetya

Running an agency is SO rewarding, but challenging at the same time, and it can be damn frustrating as you grow -- right?! For most agency owners, the goal of stepping into the CEO role is top of mind but can feel impossible at times.

When it comes to team structure, how can you set your agency up to ‘lose control’ and trust your team, while you step into the driver’s seat?

Meet Karen Sahetya, CEO of Brand Central Marketing

Karen is the CEO of Brand Central Marketing— a group of world-class Facebook marketers who specialize in generating leads for local businesses, course creators, and coaches. We wanted to know everything that Karen has put in place in her agency, and we treated this episode as our personal mentorship session so we could also learn best practices to set up our team for success. She comes with some pretty incredible stories and anecdotes to share from her not-so linear leap into the word of digital marketing and we couldn't help but dive in with questions.

Jumping from the big corporate life into the wild world of agencies, Karen's learned a thing or two about delegating, moving out of the entrepreneurial hamster wheel, and letting go of control in her agency as she started scaling. And although it's great to harvest your entrepreneurial spirit and grow your business, we can't all be working 16-hour days in the long term. Been there, done that 👋— it's more about finding a work-life balance for yourself that keeps allowing you to be creative and reflect on how far you've come. For Karen, this meant becoming intentional with her hires, killing it with her client selection, and learning that it's okay for your niche to evolve. What does she think other agency owners should know?

Spoiler Alert: Hire for your weaknesses. Outsource. Do what you can to get yourself away from the day-to-day operations.

If hiring is something you struggle with, take our advice and drop by www.dotandcompany.co/hiring where we just launched a Hiring Cheat Sheet to help you find your next dream Client Account Manager!

Tune into this episode to hear Karen spill more on how to release control as your agency grows, and learn how to adopt her best practices.

[HELPFUL LINKS]

Hiring Cheat Sheet: Grab our sample CAM task lists here.

[ABOUT THIS PODCAST]

Welcome to the Happy Clients Podcast, brought to you by DOT and Company-- the world's best and only team of client account managers for digital marketing agencies. Whether you're a virtual assistant, an agency owner, or a client-facing account manager, we all deal with clients. Lucky for you. client management is what we do best. On the happy client's podcast, we won't shy away from the ups and downs of managing clients in the agency world, but we'll be right there alongside you to learn together and share the real juicy stuff we'll undoubtedly face when it comes to client management. Now, let's dig in, chat CAM life and have some fun along the way.

Cheers, to happy clients.