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

Are you looking to grow your agency fast while maintaining a work-life balance? Eager to start mastering boundaries without compromising growth? Today’s guest talks openly about growing her agency to over $1 million while fiercely protecting her personal life by establishing clear boundaries. She highlights the ongoing need for self-awareness to identify where these boundaries may be “leaky” and the importance of having people on the team who understand the challenges you face. Learn tangible tactics for aligning your agency’s growth with your personal well-being. Caitlin Copple is the owner of Full Swing Public Relations, a PR agency with a mission to help leaders be seen and sought after so they can reclaim their power and build the platform they need. She describes herself as an unlikely agency owner who was able to grow her agency over the million-dollar mark in less than four years. Once this milestone was cleared, she realized the power of small business owners to change the world and was ready to tackle new challenges. In this episode, we’ll discuss: Working smarter and thinking about future acquisition. Aligning agency growth with team well-being. Building self-aware leadership.   Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources Agency Analytics: Tired of endless manual reporting in order to show your clients the value your agency delivers? It's time to check out AgencyAnalytics, the best automated client reporting solution for marketing agencies. Try it for FREE for 14 days when you head over to  AgencyAnalytics.com/Smart and sign up. It's time to see how life feels on the other side of manual reporting madness!   Learning About Limits as an Agency Owner  After a decade in marketing, Caitlin took the leap to start her agency, while still young enough to risk but seasoned enough to succeed. Exceeding her initial goal to match her salary in five months, she researched the industry, motivated to overcome dismal stats for women-owned agencies. Caitlin credits mindset as instrumental in confronting the challenges of scaling. It’s a word that gets tossed around a lot in the coaching world but there's also truth to that. We all have an idea of what we can achieve and there's something about growing a business that helps you constantly expand that vision. That’s part of what she enjoys about the ride. Moreover, once you can generate revenue on demand, you can start setting the parameters for your life. And as someone who really values her freedom, she has really enjoyed that part of being a business owner. Working Smarter and Preparing the Agency for Possible Future Acquisition For Caitlin and her business partner, there was always a line in the sand regarding what they were willing to do to succeed. Working long hours and sacrificing time with family was never an option. After all, running an agency was supposed to free up their time to focus more on family. They even make sure to take five consecutive days off without cell phones or checking emails. Therefore, the decision was made early on to try to work smarter and not necessarily harder. They sought to staff up, even though that meant their margins would be smaller. They built the agency with a very clear alignment around What's a number that would make this journey worth it? And where did they need to be in the next years to ensure the agency’s position provides options? They’re making sure they’re prepared for the future, including the possibility of being acquired by somebody who shares their values. More recently, after making that early investment in operations, they’ve been documenting SOPs. This way, they aim to run the business more effectively and be prepared for a future sale. They started this in 2021 and have so far documented everything from onboarding to how to approach a press release. Being very intentional about these values has helped them build the type of business they'd want to work at while still creating opportunities for their future. Mastering Boundaries with Agency Growth Through Policy Having people on your team who are going through the same challenges as you can be a great support for your growth. This is why Caitlin and her partner work so well as a team. They both understand the importance of drawing a hard line on what you’re willing to sacrifice for the business. In this sense, their partnership works a lot better than partners with big age gaps who are not in the same place in life. As to their team, their agency attracts a lot of working moms wanting to be part of this boundary-honoring culture. Flexible policies, paid parental leave, instant healthcare - each perk affirms their commitment to work-life wellness. By living their values, they continue building a team as dedicated to family as success. Building Self-Aware Leadership by Establishing Clear KPIs Caitlin has made her share of hiring mistakes. To be fair, she also admits she wasn’t the best leader sometimes but has continued to grow and learn. Improving your leadership skills will take both humility and confidence. For her part, Caitlin recommends investing in your own self-awareness, whether paying for business coaches or whatever works for you. “It never stops,” she says; you’ll always be on a journey of self-improvement so you can show up for your organization. How did these bad hires turn out? Unmotivated workers are not hard to spot in a remote agency. They have systems to track productivity. Anyone who is not self-motivated and committed to following the processes will not succeed. Caitlin also tends to hire friends and has had mixed experiences with this practice. However, getting comfortable with having hard conversations and setting up clear parameters helps navigate those relationships. It’s important to set up clear expectations and boundaries from the beginning. Having KPIs for the business and for each employee will remove the personal aspect from the relationship. This way, it becomes about data, not feelings, removing personal biases. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? If you want to be around amazing agency owners who can see what you may not be able to see and help you grow your agency, go to Agency Mastery 360.  Our agency growth program enables you to take a 360-degree view of your agency and gain mastery of the 3 pillar systems (attract, convert, scale) so you can create predictability, wealth, and freedom.

This podcast explores the impact of AI on the agency world and how agencies can embrace it to thrive. It discusses how AI outperforms marketers, the future of AI in the agency industry, and the role of data optimization in maximizing AI results. The guest, Bryan Trilli, shares insights on AI applications for digital agencies and the power of AI in understanding images and video. The podcast also touches on the benefits of using white label services, the power of AI in personalizing marketing, and the legal issues surrounding AI bots resembling actors.

Do you want to communicate results and build trust with clients? Need to streamline reporting without sacrificing quality to show the full value your agency offers? Effective client reports are the best way to communicate your results to clients and improve their trust in your services. However, putting together detailed reports can be time-consuming unless you're using a proven automated reporting tool. Today’s guest offers an integrated solution that helps agencies offer complete reporting without having to actually build the reports. Their services help agencies save time and reduce churn. Having built his software company from scratch, he’s intimate with challenges like hiring missteps, building leadership, and learning to let go, which he also shares in this interview. Joe Kindness is the owner of AgencyAnalytics, an automated client reporting solution for marketing agencies. With Agency Analytics, agencies can connect all their clients into one system and bring in all that data to create the reports. You can even automate this by setting up those reports for your client to get monthly, or weekly, or they can log into the platform to see a dashboard. In this episode, we’ll discuss: How the pandemic sparked their growth by popularizing remote work. The risks of scaling fast. Learning to build a strong leadership team. The right time to let go control of the agency.   Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM   All In On Remote: Cracking the Hiring Code Post-Pandemic Joe and his partner started like many agency owners by completely bootstrapping the process of building their company. It was not a straight path to success, but rather a start that took them to several stops before finding the best formula. “That first thing you try will definitely fail. And it won't be the thing that takes you to the end. But it's part of the journey,” he shares. After starting the AgencyAnalytics back in 2010, they still had only 14 employees by 2020. Early on, they figured hiring would be the easy part. They’d already built great software, now it was time to open a Toronto office and welcome all the people who would want to work with them. Unfortunately, they found out it's very hard to scale and find great people. It took a lot of attempts before they figured it out. What were they getting wrong about hiring and attracting the right people? Looking back, there were several factors. For instance, Joe remembers how hard it was to attract people to a remote business pre-pandemic. People thought it was a scam. Once the pandemic opened the doors to popularize the remote model, they knew they had to go all in. They hired a recruiter, HR people, and all the support they needed so Joe wouldn’t have to handle all the interviewing alone. Soon they found a rhythm, gained some traction, and started to hire some generalists. Expand Cautiously and Evolve to the Needs of the Market Rapid hiring initially brought pure excitement after a decade of bootstrapping. But the thrill of scaling soon gave way to overwhelming demands. Joe added HR support, although uncertain it justified a full role. The results spoke volumes. Offloading time-consuming interviewing let Joe refocus on the agency. This milestone embodied their measured growth mindset: Test new roles cautiously, validate impact, then scale boldly. Another calculated risk? Transitioning from a niche SEO tool to an integrated agency solution. Though known for rank tracking, reporting capabilities showed greater potential. Months of pushing and prodding led to decisive commitment. Joe knew niching down as a comprehensive agency resource felt right, though not without uncertainty. In the end, their courage to strategically evolve paid off. For Joe, exciting growth requires patiently navigating uncertainty. Thoughtfully elevate support roles, validate successes, and then expand courageously. Keep your vision broad but your validations focused. Bringing Strategy into Agency Leadership Rather Than Just People Managers When you start hiring, you mostly hire people to do and manage stuff. At some point, however, you’ll need to bring in team leaders. For Joe, it started with understanding what a true leader’s role is. A leader is not just a manager of people. A leader brings in strategy. Therefore, being able to get to that point where you can afford or attract a person to handle the strategy is a really key moment. Joe’s advice is that once you get to that point where you can bring that person in, just do it. Don't get too caught up in the equity or the salary you’ll give them. The right person will give you a positive ROI and will be key to helping the company get to the next milestone. How to make sure you find the right person? There’s always a chance you’ll hire a bad leader, and they’ll end up creating more work for you. Take the time to ensure you’re choosing the right person. Don't just hire the first resume that looks great because you need help fast. More recently, Joe and his partner have used recruitment firms to find leaders to ensure they run a thorough search. It is quite expensive, but they already have a wide network to pick from and will only recommend the best fit. When to Relinquish Control and Trust Your Leaders Even after you’ve hired great leaders, you may find it hard to let go and step away. Joe and his partner know every facet of the business therefore sometimes fall into micromanaging. Luckily, his leaders understand they have years of experience working on all things. The systems they built are not perfect; however, something there did work, which is why they were able to grow as they did. Leaders should get processes that work better for a bigger company but this can’t happen overnight because it will break everything. Find leaders that recognize that even though you didn’t do everything by the textbook, it worked and now they need to transition that to the more scalable way. You’ll be more likely to evolve and grow with someone with this mentality than with someone who just wants to come in and change everything. Having someone who respects the work you’ve done so far helps you, the owner, relinquish control, which is really hard to do. For Joe, it became easier once he hired the right leaders and recognized he was now the worst person in the room. The aspects of the business you’re most passionate about will always be the hardest to let go. However once you can build a team you trust, you’ll gladly step away. Moreover, you don’t necessarily have to. The idea is getting to a point where you can choose to work in those parts of the business you most like but that the business doesn’t necessarily need you to do it. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? If you want to be around amazing agency owners who can see what you may not be able to see and help you grow your agency, go to Agency Mastery 360.  Our agency growth program enables you to take a 360-degree view of your agency and gain mastery of the 3 pillar systems (attract, convert, scale) so you can create predictability, wealth, and freedom.

Are you looking to grow your agency while maintaining a work-life balance? Not sure who and when to hire to achieve your agency goals and not work yourself to death? You can find the balance and reach your goals when you hire the right team. That's what today's guest learned when she figured out how to offload the things she doesn't love and focus on what she does love about being an agency owner. As a former TV reporter turned PR agency owner, she shares her journey of growing her agency and her strategies for increasing profit while decreasing workload. Although she used to default to controlling sales and all communication with clients, she eventually became addicted to building a team. Now as CEO, her day-to-day activities focus more on creating content that will bring organic leads to the agency. She shares her strategies for finding the right people to achieve her agency goals and wants to help agency owners understand the importance of overcoming the hurdle of marketing yourself as an agency owner in order to build your brand. Christina Nicholson is a former TV reporter and anchor who got into PR and is now the owner and CEO of Media Maven. Christina's first job after leaving TV was working at an agency for 6 months. Her agency experience wasn't the best so she decided to leave and started to work as a “professional freelancer”. From there, she slowly started building a team and, before she knew it, she now had an agency. Her agency gives people exposure in the media without spending on ads. Christina also has an online course that helps people DIY if they don’t have a budget for an agency. In this episode, we’ll discuss: Reducing the owner's workload and building a team. Building your personal brand to secure organic leads for your agency. Getting out of sales by establishing your role upfront.   Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM 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 11 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Check out Christina's previous Smart Agency interview back in 2019. Reducing the Agency Owner's Workload and Building a Team For Christina, the scariest part of building an agency was hiring people. She had a personal brand as a freelancer that she carefully curated with impeccable work ethics. Of course, she was nervous about bringing other people into that dynamic. However, by this time she was working around the clock, and was stressed out, and it was clearly time to get other people to help her. She initially had to force herself to back off and allow her employees to do their jobs. Eventually, she became addicted to building a team. The big change really came once she hired a person who could essentially replace her functions with clients. This way, she stopped being the middleman between clients and her team. This person was in charge of making sure that both clients and team members had everything they needed to be successful. At this point, she realized she was still making money and didn’t have a lot to do, which was amazing. Securing Organic Leads through Content For her first hires, Christina started posting in Facebook groups with contacts from her time working in media. This led to a few key hires that later made valuable referrals as she grew her team. For her most valuable hire to date, she was surprised to find this person in her personal network. At the time, she didn’t quite know she needed a director of operations. Once she was clear on what she needed, someone suggested she just post it on her personal Facebook to see what came up. Luckily, the right person quickly answered and she was able to fill the role that would change the way she ran her agency. It wasn’t a smooth process at first. Christina would continually answer emails before anyone else could. This is common for agency owners who are so used to doing things by themselves. However, it defeats the purpose of bringing on a team. Once she backed off and started delegating and empowering her team, she saw real change. When it was time for her role at the agency to change, she started to study how she got the clients she had. She realized most of them came to her organically after listening to her podcast or her posts on LinkedIn. It was time to focus on creating more content, building her newsletter, and recording her podcast. How to stop wasting time. Christina used to waste a lot of time on potential clients who had no idea what they wanted, no budget, and unclear goals. Now she dedicates time to qualifying her leads, asking for their budget and goals, and afterwards refers them to a team member who will be their point of contact. Leveraging Your Personal Brand to Promote Your Agency's Expertise A lot of agency owners resist the idea of becoming the face of their brand and start creating content. They feel this will create the expectation that clients will be working directly with them in their campaigns. This is not necessarily the case and Christina has found the best way to get that message through is by being very clear about the expectations once they sign on. There are many benefits to building your brand like opportunities for contributed articles, podcast interviews, and quotes. These will all help you reach people and attract new clients who see you as an authority and want to work with your agency. There has to be an expert behind the brand and agency owners should be that expert. Why do people want to be a part of Oprah’s favorite things or work with Vaynermedia? It’s because of Oprah and Gary. It all goes back to the personal brand. And clients know when they sign with Vaynermedia they're not going to work with Gary himself, but that his team has been chosen and trained by him. Getting the Owner Out of Sales By Establishing Their Role Upfront One of the biggest concerns for agency owners wanting to get out of sales is that clients will want to work directly with them. If clients come to know your agency through your content, won’t they expect to be working with you every step of the way? For Christina, it’s about setting expectations early. If a client specifically asks if they’ll be working with her, she explains that won’t be the case and talks about the option of hiring her as a freelancer at a much higher rate. However, she’s very upfront about why it is in their best interest to hire her as an agency. By hiring the agency, they’ll get a team of specialists working on their brand while she oversees everything. If they hire her as a freelancer, they’ll just get her. Building the best sales team. When it comes to her sales team, Christina prefers to hire people who used to work as publicists, at newsrooms or book publishing agencies. They have the right expertise and the stories to close those sales. It takes a lot of the stress off for her as an agency owner. Getting Over Discomfort to Market Yourself Effectively Are you afraid of appearing "too loud" if you start to market yourself? Maybe you’re uncomfortable with putting yourself out there. Remember that people need to know about you to do business with you. You have to be known to get leads and translate them into some kind of sale. It’s something Christina strongly encourages business owners to get over or else risk oblivion. Furthermore, that fear could stem from comparison with people online who are actually making false promises and displaying a lifestyle they don’t live. For Christine, the biggest mistake people make is believing they don’t have a big enough team or presence to get coverage. Nobody cares how big your business is or how much money you’re making. It’s all about having a story people will enjoy. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? If you want to be around amazing agency owners who can see what you may not be able to see and help you grow your agency, go to Agency Mastery 360.  Our agency growth program helps you take a 360-degree view of your agency and gain mastery of the 3 pillar systems (attract, convert, scale) so you can create predictability, wealth, and freedom.

Are you worried about losing top talent at your agency? Struggling with high employee turnover that hinders your agency's growth? It can be hard to find and keep the right people to help achieve your agency's goals. Our expert guest is a repeat on the show who shares the importance of retaining employees and how you can ensure you never lose an agency employee again. Joey Coleman shares insights on how to create a remarkable employee experience to prevent turnover. He dives into the top reason employees leave and the impact it has on agency growth. You will learn practical strategies to never lose an employee again and ensure the success and scalability of your agency. Joey Coleman has spent 20 years teaching organizations how to keep their customers and employees. How? He turns them into raving fans via his entertaining and actionable keynotes, workshops, and consulting projects. With his model, he helps companies enhance the experience they’re delivering to customers or employees and how to make it as remarkable as possible. In addition to being an entrepreneur, speaker, and recovering lawyer, he is also the writer of the recently released “Never Lose an Employee Again”. In this episode, we’ll discuss: Why do companies lose employees? Are you making these mistakes during employee reviews? How to create a remarkable employee experience.   Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM 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.   Why Do Great Agencies Lose Great Employees? If you talk to most agency owners and ask why they lose employees they’ll say it’s because they were offered more money. However, the biggest study on this matter conducted so far indicates that, yes, some employees do leave for more money. Surprisingly, though, just 9% of the people interviewed left for better compensation. What did the remaining 91% list as the reason for leaving their jobs? Well, almost 1/4 of respondents left because there wasn’t a clear path for their future with the organization. They didn’t understand what could be their next role within the company. They thought they had to leave to move upward. How do you approach the conversation about their future? Give them the option to decide. Ask them what they hope to achieve at your agency. Do they see themselves in a leadership role or do they prefer to develop their skill set? It’s important to highlight this decision doesn’t have to be set in stone throughout their time at the agency. In fact, this is a conversation you should revisit at least once a year at the annual review – which Joey believes should be a biannual review – where the employee should have the opportunity to change their answer without negative repercussions. You shouldn’t expect a level of certainty from your creative, non-client-facing employees. When you’re dealing with creatives try to think creatively about how you manage and deal with them in that way. What You Should and Shouldn't Do During Employee Reviews Would annual reviews become something employees are actually dreading? It depends on the type of workers you employ. Entrepreneurs typically hate reviews and may prefer "coaching sessions." And surely you can choose to have entrepreneurial employees. However, that structure will ensure you don’t have a good retention. Instead, employees who like stability and like to know what will happen in the immediate future will almost always appreciate a review. They like to know that their work is being appreciated and areas where they can improve. However, there are some things you definitely SHOULDN’T do, like walking into the review announcing you’ll be pointing out the areas where the employee is deficient. You also shouldn’t use that to justify not giving a raise. Instead, Joey recommends 360 reviews, where you’ll review your team members and they’ll review you all well. He likes to structure these reviews with STOP, START, and CONTINUE questions. In this sense, you could ask employees “What are some things I should stop doing and why? What are some things I should start doing? And “What is something I’m doing that you’d like for me to continue to do?” Pay special attention to the answer for CONTINUE because that’s where you’ll learn what’s most important to them. This way, you’ll cultivate an environment of honesty and accountability without being overly critical. Are You Incentivicing Employee Burnout? What is the actual workload you’re expecting employees to handle? Many agency owners don’t realize that employees start complaining about not having a healthy work-life balance because that’s how much they feel they’re expected to work. We’re expecting the work time to dip into their personal lives. When was the last time you took two consecutive weeks of vacation? If you can’t even remember the last time you did that, how can your employees think it is acceptable behavior? 3 Ways to Create a Remarkable Employee Experience Recognize that onboarding a new employee should be measured in months, not hours. So many owners think they’ll quickly bring a new arrival up to speed and they’ll immediately start producing. Stop thinking that way. Instead, take everything you’d like them to learn and break it into a day-to-day framework over the course of weeks. Avoid new hires remorse. After accepting a job offer, an employee will doubt themselves and start wondering if they should’ve asked for more money or taken a different offer. This will occur between the moment of accepting the job offer and their first day in their new position. Normally, the communication they’ll get from the company leader during that time is nothing. Instead, use that time to reaffirm their choice. Get clear on your personal psychology. Whether spending time at the shrink, meditating or at a mastermind, you need people on the outside of the agency who feel comfortable holding up a mirror and be honest about how you’re showing up. Team Time is Sacred: Prioritizing Employee Meetings Most agency owners will move heaven and earth for a client meeting but will constantly cancel meetings with team members. Nothing destroys engagement more than giving your team signals that they don’t matter. Those are the meetings that should never be canceled. Candidly, you have more clients than employees and clients will be easier to replace. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? If you want to be around amazing agency owners that can see what you may not be able to see and help you grow your agency, go to Agency Mastery 360.  Our agency growth program enables you to take a 360-degree view of your agency and gain mastery of the 3 pillar systems (attract, convert, scale) so you can create predictability, wealth, and freedom.

Have you hit a growth ceiling? Looking to supercharge your agency growth? Eager to learn from someone who grew over 250% in three years? In this episode, our guest shares his against-all-odds journey of growing his agency by over 250% for the past three years. He pulls back the curtain on how investing in personal growth, seeking support, and building a senior leadership dream team helped propel this growth. From perfecting their hiring structure to clearly defining each new role, you’ll learn their step-by-step blueprint for scaling successfully. He also stresses the importance of investing in communities, coaches, and your own development as an agency leader. Discover how to get urgent insights on shattering growth barriers from someone who’s been in the scaling trenches. It’s time to spark your agency's growth story. Samir Balwani is the founder of QRY, a paid media agency specializing in helping e-commerce brands grow predictably and profitably. They help clients with paid search, social media, and whatever they may need to buy. Check out Samir's previous interview, where he talks about employee happiness and productivity. In this episode, we’ll discuss: Navigating rapid agency growth. Setting up an effective hiring process to supercharge your agency growth. How a supportive community can expand your business mindset.   Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources Would you like to create a magnetic agency? Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is brought to you by the Agency Mastery Attract Masterclass, a free video training series where you'll learn how to build a better agency by becoming an authority in your niche and mastering the art of client attraction. Check it out at AgencyMastery360.com/attract.   Mixing Agency and Startup Mindsets Samir had the luxury of working on the agency side as well as the startup side at a large enterprise. This is why he places himself in between “accidental agency owner” and carefully planning this move to own an agency. Working at American Express, he realized the top brands had figured out the best results come from hiring true subject-matter experts. A creative agency would focus on making the most beautiful brand product; On the other hand, a media buying agency would focus more on numbers and performance scores. That interplay ultimately leads to the best results. This is why he advises clients against hiring a full-service agency. “You really want that back and forth to get the best results for your business,” he says. This is what he set out to do for mid-size businesses. He didn’t realize at the time he would end up creating an agency. However, the second he realized the business he was building, he focused on creating a ten-year plan for success. In this sense, his client-side experience with agencies was very useful in helping him set up his own agency for success. Very early on he started structuring a senior and leadership team, investing in sales and marketing, focusing on a niche, and all elements he knew were key to reaching his goals. How a Clear Long-Term Plan Helps Supercharge Agency Growth Thinking in the long term is a key part of actually reaching your goals. It means you’ve sat down to consider what you want in 10 years or 20 years' time. This focus helped Samir clarify the agency’s mission and vision and the next steps for that to become a reality. With a success plan already in place early on, Samir had the tools to identify the next stage the agency was moving towards and what he would need to do to push his agency through the next goal. This involved careful thought around hiring his senior team, which he knew would free him up to focus on agency marketing like content creation and podcast interviews. Growing Pains at Warp Speed: Navigating 250% Agency Expansion Growing 250% in just three years may sound scary for most. Fortunately, Samir had no idea what was about to hit him when it all started. He and his team thought they were prepared and had solved many things ahead of time. However, they would soon learn they were not nearly as prepared as they thought. The years of rapid growth were a real lesson in prioritization and preparing agency processes. Ultimately, this got them to a point where the agency will now continue to steadily grow without so much effort. Thinking back, the biggest challenges included blowing past the growth stage gates most agencies go through. All agencies will go through different growing pains at different points of their growth. $250K in revenue will present different challenges than $1 million in revenue. In his case, his agency grew so fast that the issues kept changing as they were still trying to solve them. Pro tip on team management: When you’re growing that fast there’s always a new fire; and without any time to slow down, how can you make sure you won’t burn out your team? Samir made sure to hire an HR person early on to establish an efficient hiring system, performance reviews, and all elements that would help the agency maintain its reputation in the market. Defining Roles, Metrics & Reviews: A Formula for Efficient Hiring An important reason people usually struggle with senior leadership hires is unrealistic expectations. If you hire someone expecting them to solve certain problems and you find yourself telling them how to solve those problems, then it’s not a very successful hire. Samir prefers to trust his senior leaders are experts in their fields. He asks them to draw out a 30-60-90 plan and lets them get right to it. “I have never not been surprised by the output when we give the team autonomy to do things the way they want to do them,” he assures. Or, as Jason suggests, assign outcomes not tasks. Sometimes the team knows better! But how to get the right people through the door in the first place? Samir gives all the credit to his culture team and clarify on each role. Basically, they’ve clearly defined every role they hire in terms of responsibilities, core KPIs, and quantitative and qualitative feedback. In fact, they don’t hire anyone unless they have a training plan, a clearly outlined role definition, and planned performance reviews. Having all this in place before starting the interview process allows them to be more efficient in their search. Expanding Your Worldview to Help Trace the Path to Success Being a business owner can be quite lonely at times. Not a lot of people can understand the ups and downs of it. For Samir, being able to talk to other entrepreneurs about this experience can be redeeming at times. In fact, one of his first investments was an executive coach, after recognizing he needed to tell someone what he was dealing with and get helpful feedback. In this sense, he found great value in joining mastermind groups with fellow entrepreneurs. This provided a supportive community to share experiences and learn from others facing similar challenges. These groups offer the opportunity to hear viewpoints from a diverse range of people, even those outside of their industry. After all, success leaves clues so being around other agency owners and taking pieces from their growth path can help you build your own silver bullet. That’s why curiosity is one of their core values at his agency and something they work hard to instill in every team member. Going Back to Basics in Business Many agency owners undervalue the importance of their books and how clean they should be. This is the only you'll have a clear understanding of your business. Samir’s very first hire was an outsource CFO and it was critical in setting up the business for success. He always knew their cash flow, which clients were profitable or not, and if they needed to raise their prices. This is why he recommends all agency owners focus on the fundamentals and financial backing that comes with it as a key to success. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? If you want to be around amazing agency owners who can see what you may not be able to see and help you grow your agency, go to Agency Mastery 360.  Our agency growth program enables you to take a 360-degree view of your agency and gain mastery of the 3 pillar systems (attract, convert, scale) so you can create predictability, wealth, and freedom.

Have you ever considered acquisition as a growth strategy? What about acquiring five or even ten other agencies in order to grow? A lot of agency owners consider M&A for growth but think there are financial barriers preventing them from taking the leap. However, have you ever considered M&A as more of an investment strategy?  In this episode, our guest shares his insights on the power of mergers and acquisitions in the agency industry. He discusses how he initially thought M&A was only for businesses with large amounts of cash but now realizes the surprising accessibility of acquisition andhow it more achievable than he thought. He also shares his hands-on experience purchasing companies with lower EBITDA values and how it has the potential to significantly boost his own company's EBITDA. Jon Bast is the owner of T3 Marketing, which started as a full-service marketing agency and is currently in the process of changing to focus on CMO services for car dealerships. He’s been in marketing since graduating college in 2012 and launched his agency in 2016. Jon has been a member of Agency Mastery since 2017 and believes the agency mastermind community has been an important part of his growth as an agency owner. More recently, he's been learning about the accessibility of acquiring companies to grow his agency. In this episode, we’ll discuss: Increasing agency valuation up to 12x. Different models of agency M&A investing. Advice for agency owners hoping for growth through M&A.   Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources Would you like to create a magnetic agency? Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is brought to you by the Agency Mastery Attract Masterclass, a free video training series where you'll learn how to build a better agency by becoming an authority in your niche and mastering the art of client attraction. Check it out at AgencyMastery360.com/attract.   Increasing Agency Valuation Up to 12X  Like many agency owners, buying other agencies had long been on Jon's mind, though it seemed out of reach. But as his agency scaled, acquisition opportunities came into view. Now knee-deep in the process, Jon wishes he'd studied up sooner. In the past, he and his partner entertained options, but none felt like the right strategic fit. That changed in 2021 when an agency aggregator approached them. This sparked a six-month preparation process for acquisition. Though the deal ultimately fell through, it lit a fuse within Jon. With this new insight, he focused on proactively pursuing acquisition targets that aligned with his agency's goals. One important thing he learned in that failed process was the term "multiple arbitrage." With this strategy, agency owners can add value to their business ranging from 3x up to 12x. However, a common concern is how to add value, and multiply sales, yet still retain clients and be scalable. This growth rate is something he never thought he’d see until he understood the power of M&A. Jon thought it was pretty much impossible to get to $2 million in revenue fast, but he now realizes it actually is realistic. Now he understands by adding the right agencies to his portfolio, his business can get to $2 million in EBITDA through the power of M&A. Creating a New Agency Vision Around Mergers and Acquisitions Jon’s team has semi-automated their outreach. They identified 100 possible purchase options and narrowed down the list to 50 to start contacting. They also created an acquisitions brand, which is associated with a bigger vision of acquiring companies and reselling them in 2-4 years. The owners of the acquired companies are presented with the option to keep a percentage of a business worth 5x and take a second exit in 2-4 years. Jon has also learned that in many cases owners are looking for an opportunity like this. Some have been operating the business for several decades and are ready to move on; others really need someone to step in and operate the company. After a couple of conversations, Jon finds these owners are willing to sell just so they no longer have to operate the business. Different Models of Agency M&A Investing Jon’s vision is to sell his newly acquired agencies as a larger entity. The team takes the top talent from these agencies and has them come together to discuss ways to leverage each other's strengths. Right now they’re focused on looking for specific capabilities. With experience, they’ve learned the importance of acquiring capabilities instead of synergies. There are many models for this type of sale that don’t necessarily require millions of dollars to start. For instance, in the Alex Hormozi model, they invest and do management consulting with the option to buy the business. Then they sell it off piece by piece, rather than selling the parent company. Overall, Jon's advice is to strive to buy something that is established instead of buying and then building from scratch. You’re buying someone’s perfect formula that took years and years to come up with. You’re not just buying a product so don’t just limit yourself to looking at just EBITDA. The true value to you may be different than to the owner who has emotional ties to the business. Advice for Agency Owners Hoping to Grow Through M&A When it comes to agency M&A, Jon encourages agency owners to think big. In his experience, once he started thinking about acquiring not just one but 5-10 agencies, that vision led to more people attaching themselves to him along the way. This is why he believes in the importance of allowing yourself a limitless vision. Jon highlights the potential and feasibility of acquiring other agencies, even for smaller businesses. For his part, Jason suggests narrowing down the focus to one or two key actions. Jason finds many agency owners overwhelmed when they consider the steps needed to double their agency in the next year. However, when he asks them to consider what it would take to 10x their agency, the list is much smaller and more manageable. This indicates that focusing on a few key actions can lead to significant growth. By thinking big and expanding one's vision, it becomes easier to attract and align with the right people and resources to achieve growth. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? If you want to be around amazing agency owners who can see what you may not be able to see and help you grow your agency, go to Agency Mastery 360.  Our agency growth program enables you to take a 360-degree view of your agency and gain mastery of the 3 pillar systems (attract, convert, scale) so you can create predictability, wealth, and freedom.

Does your agency website convert as well as it should? Why do clients buy from your agency? It might be time to take an objective look to determine how your agency website can convert more clients. It’s a practice that will help you improve as a business and get a pulse on your audience’s decision-making process. Today’s guest founded one of the first CRO agencies in America and has a lot of experience understanding what his clients need versus what they want. He's sharing his story about growing his successful agency and ways you can improve your website to convert more clients by looking at the functional, emotional, and social reasons they buy from you. Khalid Saleh is the CEO of Invesp, one of the first dedicated CRO Agencies in North America. His agency has worked with the likes of eBay and Target, as well as smaller startups. As an eCommerce software architect, Khalid built his career devising ecommerce and optimization solutions for companies like American Express. Today he’ll reveal how some of the most important changes to a business website must come from careful testing and how, in that process, he’s usually humbled by clients. In this episode, we’ll discuss: What clients want vs. what clients need. Improve your agency website to convert more clients. Getting to the core of why clients buy.   Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM 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. Podcast Takeover!! Get to know your Smart Agency Guest Host: Dr. Jeremy Weisz is the co-founder of Rise25, an agency that helps companies launch and run podcasts profitably. He followed Jason’s podcast and eventually joined the mastermind and has been a guest on the podcast before. Today, he’s helping Jason bring something new to the Smart Agency podcast audience by interviewing a special guest and getting a new perspective to the show.   What Clients Want vs. What Clients Need Khalid got the opportunity of a lifetime to work with Motorola revamping their ecommerce website in 2005. It was a dream come true for any software engineer as he had access to all the technology he needed to build the best website. The project took endless nights of hard work but the site was ready in three months. However, after so many hours of work and resources poured into the website, they quickly learned the site was not converting. They had almost no orders. As a software engineer, this was outside Khalid's expertise. The site was built as expected so his job was done. Nonetheless, Khalid became very interested in how something like this could happen and the idea for his agency, Invesp, was born. Now his agency helps brands increase conversion rates by getting to the core of their goals. It boils down to what clients want versus what clients actually need. Often times clients think they just want to revamp their websites, but they actually want help growing their business. Improving Your Agency Website to Convert More Clients Khalid and his team know that website CRO starts with looking at the website from the client's perspective. Once he understood that clients chose his agency in order to grow their business, his team made some adjustments to the agency website. First, they got rid of any language that sounded too formal. He wants clients to feel like they’re being greeted as a friend. He also removed ambiguous language and tried to be very clear about what his agency does. Too often a company’s website uses vague language. As a result, people leave not having any idea about what they do. In this sense, the friendly language must be balanced with practical descriptions of the ways you help clients. Next, clients browsing the website may worry their team lacks experience. So they added social proof of the different companies they’ve worked with and the results they’ve achieved. They even added video testimonials to offer additional evidence and not just claims of success. Khalid and his team designed the website according to what they wanted the client’s user journey to look like. They strategically mapped it out to answer their main questions and concerns and address their core needs. This is what he did for his agency and part of how he helps clients increase their CRO. Why Clients Can Humble the Most Experienced Marketing Agency Experts In his keynote speeches, Khalid often refers to being humbled by clients. Sometimes all your research and testing does not prepare you for the clients’ reactions. Even though the research indicates one option is the most likely to bring more website traffic and clicks, you may be quickly humbled by the actual response. It’s something every business owner, marketer, or designer can relate to. Anytime you run an experiment in marketing you have a hypothesis. You may be proven correct or find you’ve misinterpreted what the audience wants. With several options, one wins, and the others lose. Why did some of them not work out? This is a tricky question you should always ask to get a better understanding of what works for your audience. Some clients may agree there are reasons to change a design but don’t think testing is necessary. They can’t choose one design out of several options so they figure any of them will do. This is where Khalid’s team insists on the importance of testing each design out. Usually, the results end up surprising everyone. Out of four designs that seemed equally good maybe two actually reduce the conversion rate, while the results for the other two show a clear winner. This is why testing is so important. Getting to the Core of Why Your Clients Buy from Your Agency Anyone who’s been through business school has probably heard that “no one buys a quarter-inch drill, they buy a quarter-inch hole”. That saying refers to the practical results you expect to get when you buy a product. In reality, for every action we take there are functional results, social results, and emotional results. For instance, if you buy a car you’ll be able to get from point A to point B (functional), you’ll feel like you’ve accomplished something (emotional), and maybe get your peers’ praise (social). However, getting people to admit this is difficult. You must be very good at customer interviews by structuring them in a conversational style. After establishing the conversation, Khalid recommends going back to when the problem began. Ask questions that take the prospect back to the moment they decided to make the purchase. The more they remember and open up with details about their purchase decision,  the better results you'll get about the emotional and social response to the purchase. These results are better than just asking direct questions about the product and purchase experience. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? If you want to be around amazing agency owners that can see what you may not be able to see and help you grow your agency, go to Agency Mastery 360.  Our agency growth program enables you to take a 360-degree view of your agency and gain mastery of the 3 pillar systems (attract, convert, scale) so you can create predictability, wealth, and freedom.

Do you want to level up leadership in your agency and empower your team? Providing resources and training to your leadership team is important in helping build their confidence and creating a trickle-down effect to the rest of the team. Today's guest believes it all starts with the hiring process and creating an agency that is desirable to work for. He is on the show sharing how he and his agency business partner maintain a balanced relationship that benefits the agency and how they've created an agency that is in high demand not only by clients but by protective employees as well. Brett Curry is the CEO of OMG Commerce, a performance marketing agency that manages YouTube, Google, and Amazon campaigns for growing ecommerce brands. They’re a Google Premiere partner and Amazon partner. Brett is also the host of two ecommerce podcasts Spicy Curry and Ecommerce Evolution, where he highlights what’s new and coming in e-commerce. In this episode, we'll discuss: Creating balance with your agency business partner. Cultivating leadership and empowering your team. 2-step strategy taking e-commerce brands to the next level.   Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources Would you like to convert more prospects into clients, charge what you're worth, and maximize profits? Check out our free video training all about pricing, building a sales team, and getting the owner out of sales so they can focus on profitability. Head over toAgencyMastery360.com/covert Listen to our Smart Agency podcast episode with Chris Brewer, OMG Commerce where he shares 4 major agency sales mistakes and the systems you need to sales success.   Pivoting Away from the Full-Service Agency Model For as long as he can remember, Brett has been captivated by the world of advertising and marketing. Even while on vacation, he can be found diving into the latest marketing books and publications. His passion was sparked early on when he discovered direct-response marketing gurus like J. Abrahams and Dan Kennedy in his teens. Though the mediums may have changed over the years, as an agency owner he has maintained that intrinsic drive to understand what makes great marketing. Brett and his partner first started the agency in 2010. By then, he had a successful career in marketing and owned a company focused on print, TV, radio, and direct mail. The agency started a project to try their luck with online advertising. They started with local Google map optimization for businesses and was a hit right away. With time, they started doing website design, copywriting, and TV advertising. However, it quickly became too much and they pivoted away from that full-service model. It was time to drop some services and focus exclusively on an area where they truly shined. The clear answer was search marketing. It combined all the things they were really good at as a team, so they went all in. Right away they formed some key partnerships and started working with ecommerce clients. Creating Balance with Your Agency Business Partner Starting out, both Brett and his partner had existing businesses to lead, so balancing the agency became a challenge. How could they each utilize their skill sets and still work as a team? They share the most important value which is their trust in marketing and leadership style. When it comes to their individual strengths, Brett is really good at pitches and leading teams while his partner loves everything about the sales process and is very good about following up. This is how they complement each other and divide the workload. For agency owners with co-founders, Brett recommends having very clear expectations about what each one brings to the table. It’s good to have this in writing from the beginning instead of figuring it out along the road. In fact, this is something they still revisit 16 years later when they talk about how their roles need to shift every couple of years as the agency grows. The most important thing is having a good understanding of each partner’s personality and areas of genius. Get clear about how you’ll work together and which decisions you can make individually and which must include all partners. Cultivating Agency Leadership and Building a Great Team For Brett, everything rises and falls on good leadership. To ensure he’s creating the best conditions to build great team leaders, he leads a monthly leadership development training open to everyone in the agency. He’s a big believer in providing the right resources and training to empower people to make decisions. This is the fastest way to prevent a bottleneck where every decision has to be run by you. Having good leaders working alongside you ensures they can make decisions. It’s not easy to do for agency owners. We love to solve problems! But you need to show people you trust them to make decisions. Finding and training great leaders starts with the hiring process. Brett is proud of his agency’s process and the type of people their culture attracts. They’ve had some disastrous experiences with past hires, which have mostly traced back to hiring friends of friends. They’ve since learned a lot from their mistakes and made great key hires who have been with the agency for a long time. How to attract the right people to your agency team. Brett loves podcasting and speaking at events and admits he would do it just for fun. However, he says a really cool benefit of having a podcast and being a regular speaker at industry events is not only attracting clients but also attracting employees, too. 2-Step Strategy to Take eCommerce Brands to the Next Level Brett declares YouTube as one of the fastest-growing and most used platforms by younger generations. If you want to learn or research something, YouTube is the place to go. It has reach and targetability so you can be really specific about what you want to reach. As opposed to other platforms where the video is just doing part of the work, on YouTube the video is everything. YouTube videos must interrupt, grab attention, overcome objections, demonstrate the product, get the viewer to take action, and have the right pacing. Furthermore, it's important to understand video ad campaign structure to identify how to bid, measure, and look at things to get the most out of your video. It’s not enough to measure direct conversions. Many people watch an ad and then go to Amazon rather than click through and purchase directly. Owned by Google, YouTube holds all the search behavioral data you need. They’ve been collecting the data for decades and you can tap into that keyword search behavior and target people based on that. Build your audience based on what people search on Google so they’ll see your ad. YouTube really understands audiences and creatives. Brett has witnessed many shifts in the marketing game over the years. However, he still thinks email remains as powerful as ever. It’s a good way to warm someone up to your brand and cultivate them into a great client before they buy. Once they do buy, it’s also a great way to get them ready to get the most out of the product. It basically facilitates repeat purchases and product launch sequences. Put them together for a strategy that takes brands to the next level. YouTube ads are a great way to get people introduced to a product and send them to a landing page to opt-in to an email list. Then, use email to close the deal. In fact, in Brett's opinion, a direct-to-consumer e-commerce brand email should be responsible for 30% to 45% of revenue. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? If you want to be around amazing agency owners that can see what you may not be able to see and help you grow your agency, go to Agency Mastery 360.  Our agency growth program enables you to take a 360-degree view of your agency and gain mastery of the 3 pillar systems (attract, convert, scale) so you can create predictability, wealth, and freedom.

Is your team working together toward a clear agency vision? Do you trust your team and effectively delegate? Do the agency leaders also know how to delegate in order to scale the agency?  The agency owner is the Visionary and needs an effective operations leader to align the team with the vision by holding them accountable and having hard conversations. Today's guest is an Agency COO offers insight into an operator's role in keeping the team focused on the agency owner's vision. Zach Montroy is the founder of The Intention Collective, a company that offers strategic planning, growth acceleration, workshops, and leadership coaching for entrepreneurs. As an agency COO, he is passionate about helping companies grow and evolve into high-functioning, high-impact organizations. Today he talks about how agency owners can hold their team accountable and make sure everyone’s rowing in the same direction to get their the destination faster and easier. In this interview, we’ll discuss: Do you need more employees or better delegating skills? Why effective delegating begins with the agency vision. Operations leaders keep agency Visionaries more focused.   Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM 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.   Do You Need More Agency Employees or Better Delegation Skills? To Zach, one of the biggest obstacles for agency owners is clarity on how to hold people accountable. As leaders, we carry a huge weight on our shoulders and often think the answer to managing workload is hiring more people on the team. However, it all comes down to how they are delegating, holding people accountable, and driving clarity. Hiring more people can become the default response to a increased workload. However, if you were to examine your team’s capacity, you would probably find faults with delegating and clarity that is costing them time. Fixing these issues leads to more work getting done without the need to make new hires. Furthermore, oftentimes we convince ourselves that it’s easier and faster to just do things on our own. You may think “It’ll take me 15 minutes to do it myself but an hour to explain it to someone else.” The problem is that if we multiply that times 20 or 50 now all our time is going to things other people could be even doing. Agency owners should start by auditing their time for one or two weeks to catch how much they’re spending on low-level tasks. Ultimately, those 15-minute tasks add up to 10-15 hours a week that should be delegated to someone else. As an entrepreneur, is this the most effective use of your time? Effective Delegating Begins with the Agency Vision  Cutting down on tasks that are just draining you and taking away time from setting the vision for the agency reflects on your culture. Moreover, it’s very likely that there are people on your team who find joy in some of these tasks. It takes a lot of self-awareness to know which tasks to delegate and do it wisely. Identifying the things you need to do in the business goes beyond just wanting to scale. Instead, think about what you would need to do to 20x the business. There are probably two or three big things you should be focusing on. Everything else you should delegate. Ultimately, a clear vision makes all the difference in achieving your goal. Without a clear vision, your team is just working on what they think is important. It's like your team is together in the same boat but everyone will be rowing in a different direction. This is a result of not dedicating enough time and energy to being a leader. As the agency leader you set the boat on it's course and everyone else to follows. Do you know what your destination is? You need to define where you’re going as well as why and how you’re going to get there. Why Every Visionary Needs an Operations Leader Being an agency Operations leader requires a particular skill set. When you’re leading an agency it’s your responsibility to keep everyone focused. It’s the Visionary’s job to be thinking in terms of the agency’s future three, five, or ten years down the road. If they’re not doing that, it won’t grow and scale. In that sense, the Operatorations leader's job to determine what’s best now and establish a working strategy to follow. The Operations leader indicates how to align people behind the vision so that it becomes more than just an idea. They also establish priorities and make the hard decisions. If this leader is doing their job, they’ll probably say at some point “If we say yes to this then we have to say no to this other idea.” This may create a notion that operations are constantly saying no to the Visionary’s ideas. That’s not the case. They do say yes to things but they usually have to say no to something else. How Can You Hold Your Team Accountable to the Agency Vision? Pursuing the same goal as the company comes down to how you are holding people accountable. What does accountability look like? Zach says it comes down to clarity. People have to have deep clarity in their roles and contributions. The agency is investing in them and giving them trust to perform the job. Finally, when it comes to accountability, leaders need to have the ability to have hard conversations. Facing issues with the team head-on and with empathy will help you develop as a leader. The more a leader is willing to hold their team accountable, the less they actually have to do it. They’ll do it for themselves. Avoiding uncomfortable accountability conversations only leads to a lack of accountability. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? If you want to be around amazing agency owners that can see what you may not be able to see and help you grow your agency, go to Agency Mastery 360.  Our agency growth program helps you take a 360-degree view of your agency and gain mastery of the 3 pillar systems (attract, convert, scale) so you can create predictability, wealth, and freedom.