Agency Bytes

Featuring: Melissa Morris, Agency Authority In this episode, I got to speak to Melissa Morris from Agency Authority where she works with agencies on process and system optimization. Melissa and I talk about how agencies can leverage the proper systems, tools, and processes to grow healthily and use these tools to optimize agency availability and profitability. Melissa shares some of the benchmarks and areas that agency owners and operations managers should watch for in a growth stage in order to avoid some of the pitfalls that come with scaling. As the founder of Agency Authority, a project management and operations consultancy for agency owners, I use my 10 years of agency experience to help business owners maximize their teams, increase their productivity, and grow their profits. Firmly committed to breaking the ‘long hours and bad pay’ stigma that plagues the agency world, my team and I help business owners and their team members do the work they love without sacrificing client satisfaction, the bottom line, or their own sanity. Connect with Melissa on their website, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook.

Featuring: Ryan Watson, Upsourced Accounting In this episode, Ryan Watson from Upsourced Accounting delivers an exciting talk about agency numbers, accounting, benchmarking, and things to watch for in agency growth. He and his team are deeply niched as an agency accounting firm and he shares some of their viewpoints on how they help agencies monitor the “right numbers” at the right stage of their lifecycle. These lifecycle stages bring forth the hierarchy of financial needs for agencies and how they differentiate from stage to stage. Ryan is an experienced operations and finance leader for creative agencies and venture-funded startups. As a partner at Upsourced, he helps scaling agencies build better plans, see the future, and drive profits. Prior to Upsourced, Ryan led operations and finance for a large influencer marketing and ad agency, Ahalogy, where they built the team to over 50 people and $10M in annual AGI before selling to Quotient Technology (NYSE: QUOT) in June 2018. Connect with Ryan on their website, YouTube Podcast, and blog.

Featuring: Chris Puma and Steph Hastings, The Inturnship For the first time in the history of this podcast, I got to have two guests on board when I spoke to Chris Puma and Steph Hasting of the Inturnship. The Inturnship is their response to the impact of covid on student internships and how they're flipping this part of the industry on its head. Acting as an agency, led by seasoned agency veterans, The Inturnship is pulling in talented interns who are mentored to do real-world client work – for pay. Competing with the “mock-up world” of most ad schools, their teams handle creative assignments ranging from full brand strategy and identity to ongoing social content to interactive websites and content strategy. To date, The Inturnship has a placement rate of nearly 90%, delivering well-trained interns into their first “grown-up” jobs in the industry. Chris Puma is Associate Creative Director at BASIC/DEPT® the most webby-awarded agency of the past decade. In 2020, he Co-Founded The Inturnship to help create a new process and pipeline for emerging talent. When he’s not working on his own career, or helping others begin theirs, you can find him tending to his indoor plant collection or snowboarding at Mt. Hood. Steph Hastings is a Senior Web Designer at prAna Living, a small active clothing brand based in Southern California. The right mix of good storytelling and functional design is a beloved daily practice and one that we focus closely on at The Inturnship. When not leading the charge with design projects, Steph is walking her corgi jasper, or hitting the trails for distance runs. Connect with The Inturnship here.

Featuring: Khalil Stultz, Lima Partners In this episode, I spoke with Khalil Stults from Lima Partners and I Know a Guy about his career path that lead to him discovering his entrepreneurial bug and how he leaned into it. He shares some of his experience in growing a digital marketing agency by 240% after buying into it as an equity partner. He also talks about how he leverages capital through liquidity events for growth strategies. Khalil is an M&A advisor and expert and shared his insights on the ideal DNA of a sellable agency and how to get to that stature. He shares how owners can put their company through the “vacation test” to see how the business will collapse or thrive in their absence, and what those results mean for the growth and possible acquisition of the company. Khalil Stultz is an Investor | Growth Consultant | Actively Acquiring & Growing Small to Medium-Sized Businesses If You're In Need of an Exit or Expansion...I'm the Guy. Connect with Khalil on LinkedIn or his website.

Featuring: Yolanda M Tucker, Tucker Trained Does your agency respond to RFPs for business development? If so, you have to dig into this episode where I get to speak to Yolanda Tucker, from Tucker Trained, about how to navigate the ins and outs of procurement, RFPs, and the nuances that can give your agency the edge in these otherwise painful business development efforts. She shares some of her tips on how agency owners can disrupt the RFP process to get ahead and what procurement teams look for in a potential winner of an RFP. Yolanda’s expertise in understanding where to find and how to navigate RFPs, contract negotiation, and procurement processes helps businesses go far beyond winning RFPs and how they can lead to higher revenue and profits. She also shares about the benefits of small business certifications, including women-owned, minority-owned, and veteran-owned, to name a few, that open doors to billions of dollars of business opportunities. Yolanda M. Tucker has over twenty years of procurement experience as a Contracts Manager in various industries. Yolanda holds an MBA in Business Administration, a second Master’s degree in Acquisition and Contracts, and a Certification of Transportation Regulatory Law from the Florida Coastal School of Law. Connect with Yolanda on her website.

Featuring: Brandon Wetzstein, In8Create In this episode, Brandon and I talk about how playing with Legos can help explore any topic within a workshop. Brandon talks about how building and reverting back to your childhood playtime can build metaphors to answer prompts. By exploring what creativity means to each person, Serious Play can be implemented in an agency, corporate environment, or any other space, to dig into a business’s challenges. Building strategy and exploring values with Legos allows the process to remove the emotion from the results through a flow state under the facilitation of Brandon's expertise. This process allows the process to get at the nuanced insights from a group of people, without the meeting after the meeting. Brandon Wetzstein is an energetic founder with a futuristic mindset. He believes that everyone has the capacity to be innovative and creative when given the right tools, support, and environment. He is driven by curiosity, makes a mean chili, and loves a good book that shifts his mindset. Connect with Brandon on his website and on LinkedIn.

Featuring: Nikki Rausch, Sales Maven In this episode, seasoned sales maven, Nikki Rausch shares some of the secrets in B2B sales, how to show up in opening relationships that lead to sales, and the full-circle benefits of asking for and making introductions and referrals. Her experience in setting up sales systems and guiding sales leaders in their systems is invaluable for agencies and salespeople alike. Nikki shares some secrets about how to create curiosity in account-based marketing, so we can learn to grow current accounts and increase the lifetime value of clients and offers. With 25+ years of selling experience, entrepreneurs and small business owners now hire Nikki to show them how to sell successfully and authentically. Nikki has written 3 books, all available on Amazon. And she has a podcast called Sales Maven which you can find on your favorite podcast platform. Connect with Nikki on Sales Maven, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and grab her free video training gift for listeners.

Featuring: Marcel Petitpas, Parakeeto In this episode, Marcel talks about how Parakeeto was born – how can smaller agencies leverage their data without enterprise software. Marcel talks about the value of the democratization of data within an organization where the cost of creating data has gone to zero and how to develop data management practices. We dug into systemic profitability issues in small agencies and the key metrics agencies should be watching out for to track predictable profitability. Marcel details the differences between delivery margins or the fundamental profitability of the offer and the cost of your services and what causes your delivery target to be below your goals. Similar to my coaching style, Marcel and his team don’t have a cookie-cutter approach to how an agency tracks numbers and defines success within an agency. Marcel Petitpas is the CEO & Co-Founder of Parakeeto, a company dedicated to helping agencies measure and improve their profitability by streamlining their operations and reporting systems, a problem he discovered while running his own agency back in his early 20’s. He’s also the fractional COO at Gold Front, an award-winning creative agency in San Francisco working with brands like Uber, Slack, Keap, and more. As well as the head strategic coach at SaaS Academy by Dan Martell, the #1 coaching program for B2B SaaS businesses in the world. In his work as a speaker, podcast host, and consultant, specializing in Agency Profitability Optimization, he's helped hundreds of agencies around the world measure the right metrics and improve their operations and profitability. When he’s not helping agencies make more money, he’s probably watching “The Office” or “Parks and Rec” on a never-ending loop and eating breakfast foods for every meal of the day. Connect with Marcel on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or Twitter.

Featuring: Veronica “Niki” Fielding, Digital Brand Expressions In this episode, I got to talk to Niki about how she intentionally transformed her agency prior to covid, and how these changes have helped them be more selective on client acquisition and more successful with client retention. She shares the secrets behind their team structure and how they win with company culture. Veronica “Niki” Fielding is the founder and president of Digital Brand Expressions. DBE excels at delivering quantifiable success against goals for middle market B2B and B2C companies through paid search, paid social, and search engine optimization. They’re all about setting goals with their clients, defining clear pathways to success, and then delivering on, and surpassing those goals. Connect with Niki on her company website or LinkedIn.

Featuring: Jody Grunden, Summit CPA In this episode, I got to talk to Jody about what it’s like running one of the first fully distributed CPA firms, and their acquisition process by Anders CPA + Advisors. He talks about how they set out to launch the firm as a change agent in the space and how they flipped the billing model on its head in the creative agency CPA and advisory space. While Jody doesn’t run a creative firm, he lets us in on the immense value of niching down into vertices and how it proves to scalability. Learn the secret of when owners should really start leaning on outsourced CFO services and why. Finally, Jody shares some of the trending KPIs they see agencies actively monitoring. Jody co-founded Summit CPA Group (Summit) in 2002, which merged with Anders CPAs + Advisors (Anders) in 2022. Summit, now a division of Anders, was the first fully distributed accounting firm. As the leading provider of Virtual CFO Services in North America, Summit provides professional Virtual CFO Services for over 100 companies across the United States, helping business owners dive deep into the financial side of their business to maximize profits, minimize taxes, and increase cash flow. Jody is also an industry speaker and a published author. He literally wrote the book on helping digital companies create a financial roadmap to success, Digital Dollars and Cents. Connect with Jody on his website, LinkedIn, or Twitter.