Smart Agency Masterclass with Jason Swenk: Podcast for Digital Marketing Agencies

Scout Driscoll, founder of Design Scout, shares her journey in establishing an agency with a unique culture based on recognition, not promotions. She discusses working with founder-driven clients to create rebellious brands, hiring based on values, and reframing annual reviews into coaching sessions for personal growth.

Guest Karley Cunningham discusses overcoming fear of failure by applying lessons from bike trails to business, focusing on purposeful planning, avoiding fear-based operations, and thriving instead of just surviving. The episode explores building strong brands, adapting strategies for growth, embracing risk, resilience, and fostering a growth mindset in agency ownership.

Guest Phil Case shares insights on scaling agencies from millions to tens of millions, the journey to $50 million revenue, attracting talent through SVP structure, maintaining profitability, and transitioning from services to SaaS products. Topics include sustainable growth, agency evolution, client growth strategies, and optimizing profitability while navigating industry challenges.

Jason Barnard, a branding expert, shares insights on personal branding for agency owners. He discusses the benefits of evolving personal brands and the importance of consistency in branding efforts. Topics include building trust, success through branding, optimizing online presence, navigating brand evolution, and building authentic relationships.

Molly Baker, founder of Indie Consulting, shares insights on selling strategy, client relationships, and account management in the agency world. She emphasizes the importance of trust, value creation, and genuine connection. Topics include selling strategy to gain trust, developing a repeatable process, offering client workshops, and unique account management approaches.

Miles Marmo, founder of Agency Squid, shares how he prioritized team well-being by letting go of their biggest client during the pandemic. He emphasizes valuing employees, celebrating small wins, and creating an incubator agency model. The episode highlights the importance of choosing the right team over toxic clients and navigating agency ownership challenges.

Robert Brill, agency owner, stresses the importance of SOPs in navigating rapid growth phases, emphasizing clarity and consistency. Insights include correct SOP implementation, delegation benefits, and promoting from within to keep the team engaged and motivated.

Is your agency work affecting your family life? Are you challenged by finding the right talent to assemble a team to take over some of the work? Today's guest thought she'd always be a solopreneur but as her workload mounted, she realized she needed reinforcements to maintain her level of service and keep clients coming back. Getting the right talent to balance it all was not easy but she relied on a largely untapped talent pool: moms looking to keep their careers thriving while raising their families. In this episode, Sara discusses her experiences scaling her agency and balancing motherhood with a creative career. Sara Jensen owns Brighter Messaging, a digital agency that helps small businesses manage their online presence and generate leads through content-based marketing. Sara shares her journey from being a solopreneur to running a digital marketing agency. In this episode, we'll discuss: Building a compensation model to empower your team. Taking advantage of the largest untapped talent pool. Getting wiser about client choices. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources Clutch: This episode is sponsored by Clutch, the #1 marketplace for agencies just like yours. With their innovative process, your agency will be matched with highly motivated buyers looking for the exact services you offer. Leave the lead generation to Clutch and let your team focus on delivery. Get started for FREE at clutch.co/smartagency by creating your agency profile. Delegating for Success: From Solopreneur to Agency Owner Starting as a freelance writer, Sara began to build her agency right as she had become a first-time mother. That was twelve years ago and she was building her agency from the ground up while navigating motherhood. At the time, she was ghostwriting, blogging, and juggling clients' demands. As the business grew, clients began requesting more services, and Sara realized she needed to level up by building a team. The first role she hired was a virtual assistant, although she admits to being hesitant and unsure of how to work with someone else. Despite her initial reservations, Sara took a leap of faith and trusted her VA to help her navigate the process of delegating tasks and creating processes. One of the key challenges she faced was the fear of losing control and not being able to deliver the same level of quality to her clients. This fear is common among entrepreneurs who are used to doing everything themselves. However, Sara's willingness to trust her team members and let go of some responsibilities ultimately led to the growth and success of her agency. Incentivizing Success: A Compensation Model to Empower Your Team Sara's assistant was the first person to introduce a project management system – Asana – to the agency, changing everything about how they worked. To this day, it's become an essential element of how her team works together and how she manages to get her ideas from her notepad to the team. Having introduced a more structured system to the team's everyday work and communications, Sara understood the importance of building processes and started to do so herself, a task she later delegated to the new project manager. For her, having consistent processes is a huge piece that helps set clear expectations for everyone on the team. Another important factor for finally letting go of many tasks was being intentional about the compensation piece. At her agency, the team works as contractors and they've structured their compensation model around client retainer packages. Each role within the agency gets a portion of those retainers, as an incentive to be more invested in the client's success. By building trust, setting clear expectations, and providing opportunities for growth and development, agencies can create a culture of success and achievement that benefits both the team and the whole agency. Taking Advantage of The Largest Untapped Talent Pool Another important aspect of how Sara has structured her agency to serve the interests of the working moms that mostly make up her team is offering flexible hours and part-time work. Most of her team members have side gigs and are in some stage of motherhood figuring out how to have a career while still dedicating time to their families. For Sara, offering flexible work to moms is a very important part of her business model. In her view, moms are a largely untapped talent pool simply because they opt out; they don't think they can work while taking care of the family and most companies certainly don't offer choices for them to do so. Getting Wiser About Your Client Choices to Prioritize Your Family Life For agency owners, their family life suffers if they fail to flip the switch from agency mode to family mode at the end of the day. However, Sara believes it's misleading to think of it as something you can switch on and off. It depends on the day and what she's doing. In her experience, it also gets easier when you get wiser about the type of clients you choose. Setting expectations and boundaries early on is a big part of ensuring clients respect the balance between work and family life. Sometimes this means the agency loses certain opportunities that just weren't the right fit. However, by making these choices the team solidifies the values they uphold and stays within that lane. In Sara's case, it took a long time to get to a point where she could prioritize family time and set boundaries with clients. In this sense, a big part of this shift came from investing in coaching to clarify what she wanted their life to look like and defining her values and goals. Through this process, she was able to identify the types of clients that aligned with her values and boundaries. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Do you prioritize new clients or building lasting relationships? Would you be willing to lose money on a client in order to build a long-lasting relationship? Today's guest has built two successful agencies banking on the power of planning for the long term instead of focusing just on the numbers. She'll explain how she and her partner formed their vision of an agency where people could do their best work, clients felt heard, and it would all translate into business. Tune in to learn all about the visionary approach that led her and her partner to success. Kim Lawton is a successful agency owner with two agencies under her belt. She's the founder of Inspira Marketing, a 300-employee agency reaching the nine-figure mark, as well as the president and CEO of Enthuse Marketing, a purpose-driven group committed to building brands through effective experiential marketing strategies. She shares her journey building two agencies and discusses her approach of over-resourcing client relationships, her role as the chief possibilities officer and president/CEO, and her entrepreneurial journey from a young age. In this episode, we'll discuss: The four pillars of relationship building. Risking losing money for long-term client relationships. Strategic hiring to fuel growth. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. The Four Pillars of a Relationship-Driven Agency Although she's an accidental agency owner, according to Kim she's been an entrepreneur since the age of fourteen, when she managed her father's pizza shop and fell into the role of marketer. It wasn't until years later, working at an agency during the rise of experiential marketing, that she truly started to believe in her marketing abilities. It was there that she met her current business partner. As Kim and her partner dreamed of owning their own agency, they kept a journal to define the key elements they wanted to include. Their primary focus was creating a place where people felt seen, heard, and empowered to do their best work. They believed this would translate into a successful business. Rather than focusing on the numbers, hourly billing, or time spent on each account, like most agencies, they made the strategic decision to invest in relationships over profit. As they planned how this would look as a profitable business, Kim and her partner decided their agency would be built on four main pillars: People: Their investment in talent. Organizational development: Tools they invest in that help people do their jobs more effectively. Client leadership: How they show up for their clients. Growth and reputation: They measure the previous three elements and look at that to establish how the agency performed that year. It may seem counterintuitive for business owners who prioritize profit margins and bottom lines, but it was a conscious choice to become their clients' preferred solution, even if it meant potential short-term financial losses. Their long-term relationship investment approach not only allowed them to create long-lasting relationships, but it was also a good way to quickly identify bad clients. If the client didn't value the time they were investing in their project, it was easy to say goodbye to them and not look back. Maximizing Client Relationships: A Strategy for Long-Term Success How do you start to set up a structure where the business is set to lose money with each client for the first year? Kim suggests allocating a portion of marketing expenses to client service. This approach allows agencies to prioritize nurturing existing client relationships, leading to increased business opportunities and revenue. Of course, it wasn't a reckless strategy, Kim and her partner set a maximum 15% loss threshold per client and assigned specific departments to absorb these costs. They also regularly evaluated the value provided to clients and sought to exceed their expectations. Despite occasional overinvestment in certain clients, they take pride in sustaining numerous client relationships over sixteen years. Pro tip: Kim and her partner went above and beyond for their clients and meticulously tracked any additional hours spent outside the scope of the project and presented these as zero-dollar change orders. This showcased their dedication and established a strong foundation for future collaboration. This transparent and proactive approach not only fostered goodwill with clients but also paved the way for potential opportunities in value-based pricing and performance-based marketing. Consistent Outreach for Consistent Results: Leveraging Cold Calls Cold calling has proven to be a successful strategy for many agencies and it has certainly been the case for Kim. In the initial stages of the agency's development, one of its primary objectives was to transform cold calling into an effective strategy. Today, at their agency, this approach is known as the "nifty fifty" and has resulted in a steady stream of opportunities and business expansion. Kim and her partner committed to contacting a set list of 50 individuals each week, holding each other accountable for completing these calls. For Kim, it's all about timing. There's a right time and place for these calls, but by regularly reaching out to her network and staying connected with past clients, they were able to uncover new opportunities, referrals, and partnerships that ultimately contributed to the success of her business. Balancing Client Needs and Agency Vision: Their Path to a Second Brand The opportunity for their second venture came from a client engagement, prompting them to develop a specialized team dedicated to delivering the client's brand message within the hospitality industry. As discussions progressed, the client realized that their agency's brand, focused on experiential and client-facing elements, did not align with their objectives. They sought an approach more grounded in education, prompting whether establishing a dedicated business department would suffice. Kim and his business partner's wife, an educator eager to reinvigorate her career, collaborated on a program tailored to the client's requirements. While the results met the client's expectations, a new challenge emerged: the exclusive focus on the program overshadowed the agency's identity. Consequently, they restructured the agency to revolve around the new program, shifting the focus from the client to the new business. Strategic Hiring to Fuel Growth Kim and her partner were deliberate in their approach to building their agency, understanding the impact of every hiring decision on the agency's success. They were determined to avoid the common pitfall of reactive hiring that leads to a cycle of downsizing and expansion. Instead, they focused on strategic, long-term growth and sustainability, ensuring that each new team member added value to the agency. In order for this to work, they instilled in their team the importance of considering the long-term effects of their hiring decisions and aligning them with the agency's annual plan and budget. Employees were involved in the decision-making process, fostering a positive work culture and team cohesion, ultimately leading to improved client satisfaction and retention. Effective delegation is also crucial in maintaining balance within the team. In this sense, Kim's agency used a specialized company to conduct weekly assessments measuring employees' strengths and weaknesses. This approach allowed the agency leaders to gauge each team member's performance in real time and identify areas where they excelled or struggled. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Seasoned business executive Tim Condon discusses the key factors that set successful agencies apart, focusing on organic growth, generating 100,000 leads in one day, and shortening the sales cycle. Gain insights into agency success strategies and navigating growth stages.