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

How can agencies prove value to their clients and eventually charge more? That's the solution Paul Deraval offers in this episode about founding NinjaCat. After entering the agency world later in his career as a software developer and finding the competition was everywhere, Paul shifted his focus. As Paul says: Who makes money in a gold rush? It's the guy selling the pickax." So he decided to offer his unique data reporting technology to agencies and created Ninja Cat in 2014. They are a digital marketing performance management platform built for agencies, media companies, and brands and help agencies create a . He joins the podcast today to talk about how agencies can prove their value to retain customers and the benefits of having automated reporting. 3 Golden Nuggets The crack in the fortress. Paul found that many agencies were using big black box algorithm platforms for reporting capability that was very limited in scope. Not really designed for that use. And paying a ton of money for it. He decided to focus his business on solving this problem and be the best in the world at helping agencies prove their value to clients by knocking their client reports out of the park. Deliver a story. Know your clients and know their appetite for data. More data isn’t always better. So, before delivering an 80-page report that they may not even read, ask what they would like to know and then deliver to them on a silver platter a data story that says here's what we did for you, here's the impact that had on your business. And don’t forget to be clear on the point “here’s why you should continue to do business with us.” Focus on the meaningful. What do agencies get from using Ninja Cat for their client reports? They get to focus on the meaningful instead of the monotonous. Instead of data chaos and data wrangling and client reporting they automate that process and spend more time actually optimizing campaigns and building client relationships. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Using Data Reporting to Tell the Story of Your Agency's Value Jason: [00:00:00] What's up, agency owners? Got another great, amazing podcast interview coming right up. This guest has a really interesting story and we're going to talk about how can you really prove your value, prove your worth, your ROI? So you can actually charge more and hold onto your clients better. Because a lot of times, if you don't know the value your clients don't know the value and you're probably not going to hold onto them. So let's go ahead and jump into the episode. Hey, Paul. Welcome back to the show. Paul: [00:00:36] Hey, Jason. Thanks for having me. Jason: [00:00:37] Yeah, man. I'm excited to have you on. So, uh, tell us who you are and, uh, tell us a little bit about your background. Paul: [00:00:45] Yeah, sure. Uh, my name is Paul Deraval. Um, currently I'm the CEO and co-founder of a company called Ninja Cat. We help, uh, large scale agencies and media companies prove value to their customers through, um, automated and highly effective, um, data stories as we call it dashboards as well as, uh, automated PowerPoints and PDFs that really help you as an agency prove value to your customers. Jason: [00:01:11] Awesome. Very cool. And so tell us, how did you come about starting this? And, you know, I know it's an interesting story. Paul: [00:01:21] Yeah. So, long story short. Um, my background is a software entrepreneur. Prior to this, built a SAS company called uh, Easy Facility, an all-in-one platform for health and fitness clubs, like a YMCA or yoga studio. The one tool you needed to get all your different jobs done from member payments to personal trainers, scheduling, mobile apps. Everything. Very big product. Um, was fortunate enough in, did that from 2003 to 2009, uh, when we got acquired, and that, enabled me to do some angel investing. And, uh, one of the investments I made through a, a referral from a, a family friend was, uh, to two brothers starting, um, a digital marketing agency primarily focused on auto dealers. Uh, I'm a software entrepreneur and was looking to make software investments. I was like, ah, you know, I don't understand the agency business. Um, you know, really shouldn't invest in what you don't know, but, I'll take the meeting. Um, but what caught my eye during the meeting was, uh, a digital marketing agency focused on auto dealers, but had their own unique selling proposition, which was two parts. One was an ad creation technology that would scrape an auto dealer’s website, find out what inventory they had in real-time. Take that 2010 Honda civic and create a Google ad for it and take it down when the, when the, um, car was removed from the site. I thought that was pretty nifty. Um, and another component of some technology that they built to help them differentiate was, uh, some really nice reporting dashboards. Uh, that basically offered transparency to these auto dealers. Showing them exactly here's where your dollars are going and here is here's the impact it's having, right? Here's how many map views it’s driving, how many phone calls it's driving. Um, so that got me excited to the point where I said, all right, I don't understand the agency business, but, um, I'll make a small bet. Um, from there, the agency for about two years, uh, they grew, it was a boutique agency with, with a handful of clients and just run, run by two brothers. Um, the things that we learned in that journey of those first two years was a couple of things. Some of the challenges we faced, uh, was one the segment we were serving, um, back then around at that time that the 2011, 2012 was, you know, customer education. Working with auto dealers in the Northeast who were, you know, more traditional used to advertising in print and, uh, you know, radio and TV. And convincing them they should be putting dollars into Google and Facebook, uh, was one thing. Then the harder problem was convincing them to do it again, right? Retain, expand, and spend more on these digital marketing channels. So, um, we, we were making progress, and definitely, our unique technology helped us. Uh, but another challenge we faced was, um, that was pulling us back it's just how competitive, um, we, we found ourselves in the markets that we were in. And so many agencies out there, right? From, you’ve got your enterprise agencies, your mid-market. And then you have your solopreneurs out there, you know, slinging, PPC, SEO services, some very qualified and some very unqualified. And we were battling all of them and would just go walk into a dealer or for cheaper clicks. The dealers wouldn't know what that meant. And then there was a battle to like, retain that customer. So it was okay. It just wasn't going, it didn't seem like it was on a trajectory to scale into anything, um, meaningful of an agency. Thankfully, um, around the end of 2013, a competitive agency actually was trying to push one of our auto dealer clients. And, uh, our clients show them the dashboards that we were providing to them. Um, and that agency, uh, actually came to our team and said, hey, would you ever consider white labeling those dashboards? Um, I've seen them, you know, I'm in the business, but have you ever thought about that? The team came to me and said Paul, what do you think? And that was really, uh, one of those true light bulb moments for me. It was like kind of everything going on at once. Like what's our challenges here, right? One of our biggest challenges is, um, that the agency space is, is so competitive, right. And we're fighting with, with everybody out there and the thought was all right, well, we have this unique technology, this reporting ad creation. Who makes money in a gold rush, right? It's it's the gal or the guy selling the pickax. So instead of fighting with everybody, what if we became the arms dealer, right? And sold our unique technology to the agencies out there, giving them a chance to, to compete, uh, and thrive. So, um, I got really excited about that thesis, went home, uh, executed a textbook execution of a lean market validation experiment. Created an Unbounce landing page. I just tested the reporting first, automated reporting from the ad creation. While it was cool, it really wasn't delivering on all the promises of some of that, um, you know, automated ad creation. So I wanted to test out the value prop of, you know, automating report improved value to your customers. One week I came up with a ridiculous name. Created the Unbounce page, uh, got the leads. And then I just did a bunch of discovery calls and found out where the market was being underserved. And what I kept hearing was like, the Acquisios, the Marins, these big black box algorithm platforms helped automate. But the biggest challenge I kept hearing was they were using those platforms for the reporting capability. You know, they weren't so much delivering on some of the promises of campaign automation optimization. But they were not… they were still paying for those tools, using it for reporting capability that was super limited in scope, not really designed for that use case. And paying a ton of money for it, like a large percentage of their media spend. So I was like, wow, there's, there's an exciting opportunity here. There's a crack in the fortress, right? For somebody to come in here and focus on a specific problem, be the best in the world at helping agencies prove their value, uh, to, to clients by just knocking client report out of the park. And then from there, there's a grander vision of helping them take over some of the other jobs from reporting to monitoring, to contribution and such. And we've grown since, but that's, uh, I just made a long story longer. But that's, uh, that's our founding story of Ninja Cat. So we've been at it since 2014. Uh, we pivoted, I came on as CEO. After that experiment, we, we sold off some of those customers and have been, uh, just running, running for that sense. Jason: [00:07:37] So I, I love that story. And I do believe that, you know, proving your worth is showing your clients reports. Now, one of the challenges I've seen over in, in the past is, you know, you're… You know, we've all had these clients, like you're giving them amazing results and then they come to you and they're like, I'm switching. And you're like, what the heck? Right? And you're like, I've been sending you reports. And they're like, well, and what I've seen is they'll check out the report for the first week and then they'll ignore the rest. So what's the best way that you've seen agencies present the reports? Or how do you, how do they, how does, how does the client understand the reports and the first off? Cause a lot of times I've seen I've, I've seen reports from a lot of different tools and I'm like, man, I'm confused. So, what have you seen work for agencies? You know, that are using your platform for really kind of showing the client the value and then really taking it up a notch? Paul: [00:08:46] Sure. So some general things, uh, we've seen and we've done to help our customers elevate their client reporting so that they can achieve the objective of a better proving value. So they can retain and expand within those customers. I'd say the ingredients, the key ingredients is like… First and foremost, I would say, know your audience, right? Um, know their appetite for data, right? Uh, and then deliver it to them on a silver platter a data story that says here's what we did for you. Here's the impact that had on your business. And here's why you should not only continue doing business with us. But here's why you should do more business with us. Look at all these opportunities. High-performing campaigns limited by budget, whatever it might be. So it is not a one size fits all solution, but I think those ingredients of like knowing your audience and their appetite for data and delivering on a silver platter. And if I, if I break that down, what does that actually translate into from like best practices is. You know, um, everyone thinks dashboards first for client reporting because we're data geeks, right? We love dashboards. They’re sexy. They're cool. I can access them on my mobile phones, whatever. We've been doing this since 2014 and we have stunning dashboards. Like you can recreate any dashboard on our product. One of our first finding than we thought we were screwed as a company, cause we started off dashboard-only, was like, oh my God, less than 10% of clients ever logged into these dashboards on a given month. We're screwed. We can't sell this, right? We're selling snake oil. You shouldn’t be doing reporting dashboards. So I think that's a reality. I think even Google is this data studio blog post published something similar. Like, you know, 10% of clients or something, uh, on average, uh, ever log into dashboards, right? So, one, it's a mix dashboards are critical and kind of table stakes. They offer a sense of comfort and transparency that I can access my data whenever I want and see where my dollars are going and you're not doing anything shady. But the reality is while you might be able to win them with a dashboard. With the transparency and building that trust that's so essential to any client relationship. To truly then retain and expand it's that deliver on a silver platter, right? It’s push methodology versus a pull methodology. Which means a push report, some form of a PDF or PowerPoint or web presentation that is less dashboardy, right? Dashboardy is more kind of exploratory. Like data vomit, as I call it, meters and gauges and stick your clients into that and they'll probably misinterpret that data, which I think is one of the big problems. So you give them a dashboard with meters, gauges, data vomit, leave it up to them, to interpret the data for you. To say that you're doing a good job for them. And, you know, probably at least eight times out of 10, they're going to misinterpret that data, uh, in that data vomit. And it's not doing you any, any justice. So it's finding that balance of a dashboard that gives comfort and transparency mixed with on a silver platter, a data story that covers those bullet points. As I said earlier, here's what we did and why you should continue doing business with us and more. And it looks different, right? As an agency, you got to figure it out. You might have different, um, sizes of clients. We have some agencies and media companies that have thousands of very small span clients. And you've got to invest the appropriate amount of time to your client reporting for that segment versus your, your high spend, you know, uh, enterprise clients, right? And what we've seen is you need to automate on the low end, right? But make it feel high touch. If it's just a dashboard and expect them to log in, that doesn't feel as high touch as I can log into a dashboard. Oh, and I also get this beautiful weekly, monthly PDF or PowerPoint with a very digestible story. And then at the high end, right? Walk your customers through it. Or at a bare minimum, don't just send a report. Like in Ninja Cat, and I'm sure you do this and other products, we have workflows that is either set it and forget it, fully automated. Or set up a don't forget it, where the teams can come in at the agency, look at the data and then add their insights, their recommendations, and next actions. And then send it to the client. So those are just some of the best practices. Don't lean… My first biggest suggestion, be aware of data vomit, right? Uh, to be aware of dashboards as your primary, medium of communicating value to your customers. When statistics just over overwhelmingly show that, you know, they hired an agency because they want it to be white glove full service. Don't make them go find the data and expect them to tell you why they should continue doing business with you. You need to be the one telling your customers why they should be continuing to do business with you. Jason: [00:13:09] Yeah. Yeah. I love that you said you got to know your audience too, right? Like really read them and be like, is this person really analytical? Is this person visual? Does this person just be like, I just care about the results. I don't care about how you do it. Just go do it. Or like, you know, do they want to know all the details? Like I think that's so important. A lot of people skip that. And you should really concentrate on that, on the onboarding process of your clients. Like, because I had a, we have our digital agency experience, which is at our house in Durango where our mastermind members come in. And I had, um, a keynote speaker come in, Joey Coleman and he talks about how the first hundred days is the most important if you're going to keep this client for a long time or not. And if you could put that in your onboarding process and really figure out that, like, do you want to know all the intimate details that we're doing? Do you just want to know the results? Like how do you want me to show you that we're working for you? And I think if you just do that, then you could use a cool tool, like Ninja Cat, where. You know, if they want just a basic report, automate the crap out of it, or if they want to meet every week. Okay. Do that. You know, whatever it is. I think that's so important that I think too many of us miss. We have a huge tool. Paul: [00:14:29] One hundred percent. Yeah. That's that's, it's like a report should have, yeah, layers to it, like an executive layer, more strategic layer than a more tactical. And if you're excited about that tactical, but your, your audience isn't, you show up to a meeting and you start overwhelming them with the details. You know, and, and they are like CML or somebody that's high level that doesn't care. They're not actually paying attention to the thing they cared about the most. Why did I spend time on that executive-level first page thing when I should have spent time on the first page? Did I sell more cars? Yes or no? Uh, should I continue doing this? Yes or no. Don't spend an hour talking about negative keywords with me if I don't care about that, right? So, uh, more data isn't always better, and it really…  Just ask the customer, what is the best way? What, what level of detail do you want? Uh, and then just, you know, deliver that to them. Jason: [00:15:13] Yeah. Well, I think we covered a lot of the mistakes. Did we miss any mistakes that agencies do with reporting and upselling and growing those accounts or keeping them? Paul: [00:15:25] No, and just… you know, aggregation. Um, it's a really important thing, right? Is, uh, looking at things, making sure you aggregate. I know it's hard, uh, when you have so many different channels. But making sure you really nail that, um, executive layer of a report, that should be the, the answer to the question that they're, they're seeking. The so what. And then backed up by the, the details under it. But, um, we've seen that too common and it's like, wait, you're giving your client this 80-page report? Jason: [00:15:49] Oh, my God. Oh, that hurts my head just thinking about it. Paul: [00:15:52] Really, really. I, I, no. We, we've had a hundred plus, uh, and some of our clients today still do it. But you know what? They're actually, to your earlier point, my earlier point, there are some audiences that need and want the hundred-plus page report, right? Because they need to see the data broken out. Hospital system by department, by all these different things. If that's what they need, that's what you should deliver to them. So it's not a don't ever give a hundred page report. It's, it's know your audience, but, uh, tell that holistic the holistic story, right? I think when you, you can't fill in the blanks and you show up to a call. And you can't connect, you know how all these different channels are impacting other channels. It's not as good as if you can, clearly. So do your best, find tools, solutions that can really allow you to tell that holistic story and show how every channel impacts, um, each other, even channels that you might not manage, right? Like, why am I ads not performing? Well, look at your reviews, like your reviews on Google. If people saw your reviews, they people probably aren't clicking on your ads. So what impact are your reviews having on your, on your adwords performance? Jason: [00:16:50] That's awesome. Well, Paul, this has all been amazing. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you think would benefit the audience before we tell them about where to go? Paul: [00:17:00] Uh, geez. Good question. Um, that you didn't ask. No, I mean, that's… I think that's, uh, uh, I think we covered at least what we're most used to helping agencies, right? There's lots of jobs to be done. But, you know, the thing where we've focused on being the best in the world that is helping prove value through your client report. And I think we hit a, at least the, the cliff notes and hopefully there's a couple of actionable takeaways that everyone got out of this. Jason: [00:17:27] Awesome. Uh, where can people go to learn more about Ninja Cat? Paul: [00:17:32] Yeah. So, uh, we have a dedicated landing page for, for this podcast. Uh, you can go to ninjacat.io/masterclass. Jason: [00:17:42] Awesome. And, uh, and tell us, what's the number one thing agencies love once they switch over to you guys? Paul: [00:17:52] Uh, that they can focus on the meaningful instead of the monotonous, right? So, instead of data chaos and data wrangling and client reporting. When you can automate that at an effective level then that's meaningful. Really, let's spend more time actually optimizing campaigns and building client relationships. But when you don't have automated reporting and you spend 60 to 70% of your time, which we've seen is common, right? On client reporting because you need to do it. Well, what if you can automate that? What then will you do with that time shifted from, from the monotonous to the meaningful and, and see what impact that has? Jason: [00:18:32] Awesome. Well, Paul, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. We really do enjoy. And, uh, for all of you guys that want to really improve the value that you're doing and really streamline the reporting and just be able to run a better agency. I want you guys to all go to ninjacat.io/masterclass. Go do that now. And until next time, have a Swenk day.

Vasa Martinez is the founder and CEO of Growthbuster, a remote marketing agency that has helped food and beverage brands reach new heights with community, creative, and innovation. After years of CPG experience working with many brands, Vasa started building his own company focused on the outsourced marketing department. Today he joins us to talk about his experience with brands, how he positioned his agency as the solution clients need, and why you need to follow your north star. 3 Golden Nuggets Bet on yourself. A lot of times a company might be really attached to “vanity metrics” and turn to buying followers. This is a really ineffective measure, as they usually find out when they hire an expert. Trying to steer clients away from shady practices like bots or buying clients, this company started making bets that they would grow their social media in four months. Trusting their methods has helped them win many of those bets. Follow your North Star. As a rule, Vasa and his team make it a point to work with companies that are solving a problem in the world. This aligns with their core value of “human first, business second”. That has led to saying no to brands that could bring in a lot of revenue but don’t really fit with the agency's values. For his part, Vasa says their north star is not growth if it comes at the cost of his values or his team’s mental health. Don’t compromise your team’s mental health. This is a very demanding industry but running a solvent business, working with some really cool brands, and scaling your agency shouldn’t come at the cost of your team’s mental health. Respect people’s rest time. As agency owners, we sometimes end up working weird hours but don’t expect everyone on your team to do the same. Follow Your North Star and Position Your Agency as a Solution Jason: [00:00:00] Hey, what's up everybody? Jason Swenk here, and I'm excited to have another really good episode, a really amazing guest. He's going to talk about how did they position their agency as an outside marketing solution for companies coming in. So let's go ahead and jump into the show. All right, Vasa. What's going on, man? Vasa: [00:00:25] What's up. What's up? How are you? Jason: [00:00:27] I'm excited to have you on, so tell us who you are and what do you do? Vasa: [00:00:30] My name it's Vasa Martinez. I'm the founder and CEO of Growthbuster, an outsourced marketing department. I'm also the CMO of Outer Aisle, which is a food brand that creates cauliflower sandwiches and pizza crust. Jason: [00:00:43] Very cool. And so with the agency, how'd you get your start? Why did you guys jump into this world? Vasa: [00:00:48] Well, I found that I had some ideas that I wanted to see brought to life, and working as an employee wasn't the best way to do that. So in the back half of 2017, I started consulting rather than being a full-time employee. And that turns into, uh, you know. At the beginning of 2018, I incorporated what became Growthbuster and started building from there. Jason: [00:01:06] Awesome. And talk about kind of, why did you choose to kind of position? Or why are you guys going after the outsource marketing department? Vasa: [00:01:17] For me, it's, it's nice to have a group of specialists and a group of generalists all on the same team when we work with different brands. I’m typically running point on, on the account. So we never pass it off to an account manager that's just out of college or anything like that. So having that team behind you, that support, is the most helpful. You know, having the graphic designer or having, you know, an email marketer or a copywriter, uh, rather than just focusing on being a paid agency or a social media marketing agency. It just wasn't enough for me and part of it was, you know, I treat GB as a CPG company. We work mostly with CPG companies, food and beverage, and I was listening to a lot of our potential clients, what they wanted. And wherever we could, we solely tacked on, you know, those, those resources. Jason: [00:02:00] So, how do you position yourself different than all the other agencies out there? Vasa: [00:02:04] Well, I don't really look at too many other agencies, to be honest. I, I focus on what we do and what we do best. Um, you know what my background is at Quest Nutrition and creative and community was one of our main focuses in the marketing department. We also, you know, as my first stint in marketing, I left a previous industry. Really enjoyed it, and we had our own creative department as well. So we never worked with any agencies. So I've kind of learned like the project management systems, you know, all the copywriting, everything as a generalist at first. And I went into content marketing for one of the arms. That's kind of why we went in that direction, is simply because it's what I started with. It was nice to have and I love it. Jason: [00:02:40] Very cool. And so what are some things that really you guys do really well that you've figured out over the past couple of years of running the agency? Vasa: [00:02:50] So we've always been known for our creative. Uh, we work with a couple awesome brands like Magic Spoon. In the past, we've worked with just some of the coolest CPG challenger brands out there. So we're definitely known for our creative. But early on we used to be known for how quickly we can escalate social growth. We don't buy followers, we don't use bots. We don't do anything shady like that. So we would literally have bets with new clients that we would double their social within the first four months, one month onboarding three-month execution. And we won a lot of bets that way. Since then, you know, everything's always changing on IG and Facebook. So we've really made adjustments and evolved along the way. So, um, back then, community and creative, 100% we were known for, we still are, but since the pandemic, we really dove into our innovation department. What that is, is basically acquisition and retention with an emphasis on SMS. Jason: [00:03:37] So when you would go to your clients and you would bet them, hey, we can double this. What were some of the things that you did that would help get more engagement, double their, you know, numbers and all that? Vasa: [00:03:50] I can think of one good example. And we're still currently with them three years later and that's Outer Aisle. They have 18,000 followers when we first started and 93% of them were in Rio de Janeiro. Interesting part there, is that Outer Aisle doesn’t ship to Rio de Janeiro. And we really had to displace those followers that cannot be buyers and bring in a lot of folks who could be buyers. So what we did was run our playbook on the content marketing, identifying what the RTBs are, our reasons to believe. For Outer Aisle that’s low-carb, gluten-free, grain-free bread that's delicious. And easy. So, and it's virtually of pretty much anything. So the goal of ours was trial. Our influencer funnel, we work on just constant trial. We call it targeted trial. And from there, we bring them down the funnel to five different ways to win. That's, you know, sentiment. What do they think about the product? They hate it. Hey, thanks. We'll see you later. They love it. Well, what else can we do together? Can we send you more? Um, do you want to be an affiliate? You want to be activated for our next paid campaign and retail rollout? Uh, do you want to be an ambassador? Things like that. So the trial, like product in mouth, was 100% a main focus for us. Um, really honing in on what the messaging was at that time. It was a little bit different. We did a rebrand in 2019 and the messaging at that point, was always focused on low carb, grain-free gluten-free. That's what people care about. And we focus our influencer efforts there. People started seeing it. We started attracting the social proof using that on the back end, using that in ads. The other component of that was, um, brand partnerships. We worked with a lot of different low carb keto brands, grain-free brands. And what we did was by, I think it was, was actually like two months that we doubled out their following from 18 to 36K. And when we looked at the displacement where the original was 93%. It was now closer to 40, 50%. And at this point today it's 93% US for the 142,000 followers. Jason: [00:05:38] Oh, wow. Yeah. You know, not too long ago or maybe, maybe this? I don't know. I keep losing track of time. Two years ago, I had Facebook reach out and was like, hey, we're reaching out to influencers in this space that we want to grow your account. I was like, sure, you can grow it. And the next thing I knew, I had like 40,000 more whatever likes on Facebook. And then I started looking at the names and I'm like, what is going on? It was all like, I couldn't even pronounce the names and I couldn't believe Facebook would do something like that. And so, yeah, that kind of perked me. I really like your, your strategy of how, uh, how you've grown it. Vasa: [00:06:18] Yeah. The tough part about that too, is what stakeholders don't realize. And we don't work with brands that buy followers or have bought followers. We've done it in the past. We've literally switched their accounts and started fresh. What they don't realize is that what to them is a vanity metric like, oh, investors need to see a hundred thousand followers or my peers need to see a hundred thousand followers and know I'm legit. When you start passing your accounts off to a paid agency and they, they believe that these are real. There's not much for them to work with. But on top of that, let's just say that they’re, they make it look like audience for engagers and you just bought engagement. They're making it look like audience of people that are ghosts that just don't exist. So, um, that's one thing that people don't realize when you, when you tell them, hey, you're wasting money and this is why then they're like, oh, buying followers isn’t that cool. Jason: [00:07:05] Oh, yeah, definitely. Well, I'm still trying to, I'm so complexed at what Facebook did. I'm sure they probably outsourced it to someone to do that, but I kind of laugh. I kind of leave it because everybody kind of uses me as the lookalike audience. I'm like, oh, you're going to target to the wrong people, suckers! Vasa: [00:07:22] Yeah. That's very true. Jason: [00:07:25] Awesome. Well, what's your guys' North Star? Like what, what really kind of drives the agency for, uh, you know, getting to the next step? Vasa: [00:07:33] Yeah. So our north star is being human first business, business second. Always has been, always will be. There's a lot of times in my history where my career, where ethics, weren't the number one thing that I've come across. So for me, I learned a lot about how to be from learning and watching people and seeing how I don't want to be. So that's how I run the agency. What our north star is, it's not necessarily growth. Yeah. Growth is nice, you know, to be a $10 million agency instead of one half for 2 million. Yeah. That's great. But at what cost? You know, employee, um, mental health is important to me. Like we worked 40 hour weeks. I never had hit people up on the weekends. My, my signature literally says, hey, I work weird hours. If you see this at the time, when you're not working, just reach out to me when you are working, don't think about responding to it. So for me, the north star is running a solvent business, working with some really cool brands and not sacrificing employee's health as a result, I can tell you this, I didn't look like this when I first started GB. So I I'm like the first-hand experience of what I don't want my employees to feel like or turn into. But at the end of the day, you know, another, another north star of ours is, uh, we don't work with brands that don't solve a problem. We've said no to a lot of brands that, yeah, we could have done so much more in revenue. But we love working with brands that are solving a problem for people. And that really starts, again, going back to my experience at Quest Nutrition, we solved the problem there. Not me personally, but it was solved before I got there. And that was creating a bar that was actually good for you. And we've turned down lucrative offers with brands where they just weren't as… we'll say, just their north start was a bit skewed, you know, there's ingredients in there that, that weren't very good. So that's our second north star is working with brands, helping brands grow that are really solving a food problem. Jason: [00:09:18] Did you start off that way? Because a lot of times it's hard to, you know, especially when you're getting, getting started of go or really kind of figure out who you actually want to go after, right? To gain that clarity. So what were some things that did you just take your past experiences at sound like, and be like, I don't want to do this, this, this, and kind of process of elimination, to figure out the north star? Vasa: [00:09:40] Well, yeah, so I working with, with a low carb company and… My last role at that company was senior influencer marketing manager. So I had a lot of relationships that influenced the world, brands that were reaching out or, you know. Once I left, um, you know, there was another, vegan low-carb protein bar that reached out. Consulted for them for a little bit, a low-carb vegan chip reached out. So having the experience with the product, but also the influencers I would reach out to. Couple that with being a one-man show then. And also having just a really focused laser precision on I'll help run, you know, like social and I'll run an influencer, I'll put the content calendar together, um, and we'll grow your social. Those are the really like the box that I put myself in as a consultant. As we've grown and as I've grown, I'm working more as like the outsourced CMO, whereas my team serves as the department. So, um, how I worked with those brands is just... Again, I, I picked and choose. There was, I think my first two brands were those, no carb, but they were called Dee's naturals back then, K Shake, which is a keto shake. And they were all very second nature to me because I was just working on all of those products at the time I was there. Jason: [00:10:47] Very cool. And when you started, you know, obviously when you were, when you started, it was just you, so how'd, you decide who to hire as you were growing? Vasa: [00:10:59] Yeah. So I worked with a couple of freelancers at the time I brought on one of my other closest friends. He was freelancing and just helped me out with influencer, what we call influencer partnerships. Organizing the influencer calendar. His name's Simon. But the first, first hire hire was my friend, Danny, who I brought on his VP of growth. And he helped Halo Top really hit that next level as a unicorn. And that was a really intentional choice because I needed another me in the field. He was previously an engineer before he got into marketing. So he has that engineer mind where he can really set the structure of things. And that was important to me because it was very complimentary. But we also had similar skill because we literally sat next to each other at quest. So that was the first hire. Once that happened, you know, the next thing I brought on was a creative director. Maybe it was a bit early, but we quickly started hiring in 2018. We brought on a, a retail marketing manager in 2019, which is different for an agency, you don't typically see those. But when we start working in our innovations, um, tactics, you know, manufacturing, coupons, digital coupons, those sorts of things that all helps. So bringing on that one, anchor that could support me was the priority. Jason: [00:12:06] Yeah. I always tell, uh, all the people I'm coaching of like, hey, well, you got to kind of hire based on the things that you're currently doing now that you don't want to do anymore, rather than hire though things that you have no clue about. I'm like, no, no, no, you'll do that later on. But in the very beginning, you need to replace yourself. Not your exact twin, but you need to replace kind of those smaller things that you're doing, that we all have to do when we're first starting out. Vasa: [00:12:37] Yeah, a good place for me to be eventually that I'm working towards is really focusing on the finances personnel, some, some higher-level strategy for similar brands, but fully cognizant. Eventually, I shouldn't be the, the reason that the business kind of runs and stays afloat, you know? Jason: [00:12:53] Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I always tell people, you know, as you're building the business, you're in it. And then, uh, and you're going like the what and the how, and I'm like, no, no, no, no. All you have to do is be like, this is where we're going. And this is the who who's actually going to go do this. Who do I need to hire? And then that kind of transitions to, you know, working on the business, which then you have that freedom to do what you want. Because I can promise you this, um, we're not all about hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle. It's like, hustle, have fun hustle, have fun, right? So, uh, and a little bit more in between. So is there anything I didn't ask you that you think would benefit audience? Vasa: [00:13:36] Not that I can think of. Jason: [00:13:38] Perfect. Well, what's a website people can go and check you out? Vasa: [00:13:41] That’s growthbuster.com, www.growthbuster.com. There's no S at the end. Dan Akroyd and all those guys, aren't part of the team. Um, so that's Growth Buster, singular one word, .com. Jason: [00:13:56] Well, I was going to be like, hey, we need to create a really good theme song, you know. Because while I was in the agency I wanted to create an app that eventually turned into an iPhone app called Goldberg. The first name was called Chubby Busters. And we used to, we had a theme song that I would sing. We'd be like, when you're feeling fat and your pants don't fit. Who are you going to call? Chubby Busters. But then we were like, no, one's ever going to say we're going to be with Chubby Busters. Vasa: [00:14:22] Yeah. That sounds like, that sounds like an agency I would own right now, too. Jason: [00:14:27] Awesome. Well, go check out the website and, uh, if you guys liked this episode, so, and you want to hear more of it and make sure you actually subscribe so you don't ever miss out on a new episode that we're pumping out all the time for you guys. So you guys can scale faster. And also, make sure you guys leave us comments or review the podcast that will help us reach more people. And if you guys want to be surrounded by amazing agency owners on a consistent basis where we're constantly talking about what's the strategies working. So you can scale your agency faster and not work all the time and have that freedom that you really want. Make sure you guys go to digitalagencyelite.com. That is our exclusive mastermind go there now. And until next time have a Swenk day.

Jason Yormark realized the job stability he always hoped to find behind a desk was waiting for him as an entrepreneur. That's when he decided to take the risk and founded Socialistics, a B2B social media agency. Three and a half years later his agency, based in Seattle, helps tell businesses stories in ways that not only drive audience and engagement; but more importantly, real business results. Today, he joins the podcast to talk about how you should treat your agency, the benefits of long vs. short-term contracts, and more. 3 Golden Nuggets Don’t be afraid to disrupt. When Jason started thinking of ways to disrupt and help get his new agency noticed, he thought about offering clients an option that would get rid of something that they typically hate. Long-term contracts came up as something that clients don’t usually love about their experience with marketing agencies, and so he started offering monthly contracts and got good results. In time, many of his clients have opted to change from a monthly contract to a long-term contract. Treat yourself like a client. A lot of agencies don’t dedicate enough time to building their brand. They get so busy with business development and clients and that it is the first thing to get pushed aside. Building your brand takes time and consistency when it comes to putting out new content, blog posts, social media, etc. Jason’s advice is to make sure that somebody in your team is responsible for treating your business as a client. You can still outsource if you're doing the content. Are you a good writer, or maybe a natural in front of a mike when it comes to recording a podcast? Great! However, that doesn’t mean that you have to take care of every step of the process. Get an SEO editor or a video editor that will take on the heavy lifting. This way, you can focus on your expertise and putting that content out there. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Don't Forget to Build Your Brand and Treat Yourself Like a Client Jason Swenk: [00:00:00] What's up everybody? I have another amazing guest coming for you in just a second. We're going to talk about why you should treat your agency as the number one client. As well as we're going to talk about long-term or short-term contracts, the benefits, the disadvantages. We're going to argue back and forth. This is going to be a really good episode. Now, before we get into chatting with Jason, our guest, I want you to do something. I want you to take a screenshot off your phone of listening to the podcast and upload that to Instagram and tag us because I want to thank you for listening to the show and do a big shout-out to you. So let's go ahead and get into the episode. All right, Jason. Welcome to the show. Jason Yormark: [00:00:44] Thank you for having me. Jason Swenk: [00:00:45] Yeah, man. I'm excited. So let's start fighting. No, I'm just kidding. No, tell us who you are and what do you do. Jason Yormark: [00:00:53] My name is Jason Yormark. I'm the owner and founder of Socialistics. We are a B2B social media agency. Jason Swenk: [00:01:01] That's awesome. And so how did you get started? How'd you fall into this crazy-ass world? Jason Yormark: [00:01:06] Well, I thought, I mean, I've always had an entrepreneurial spirit my entire life. But, uh, I was always searching for stability in my life professionally, and I always thought that that was, you know, a nine to five or sitting behind a desk with my paycheck and my benefits. All that good stuff. But, uh, marketing is a pretty volatile career path, I learned. And once I started to kind of see other folks experiencing the same thing I wasn't. So I didn't feel so bad about myself, you know, jumping around job to job, whether by choice or not. So that's stability I was always looking for was right in front of me all the time. Which was doing my own thing, controlling my own fate. And I just reached a point in my life. You know, I was a little bit later for me, where I could make that leap, take that risk. And get it right. And that happened about, uh, three and a half years ago. Jason Swenk: [00:01:52] Awesome. I love it. Well, let's talk about long-term contracts and short-term contracts. Tell us kind of how you started, where you're at now and what have you seen work? Because, you know, I have my own point of view and we'll see is we come together. If not, that's good. That's probably… that builds interests. Jason Yormark: [00:02:10] I've always been hesitant to admitting this to my other agency, friends. But, and this is going to be a little bit cringy, but, uh, we predominantly up to this point, we've done month to month contracts. And for me, it was a couple of things out of the gate. Number one, everybody's got a different agency story in terms of how they start and what they have to work with. I, you know, I had nothing, you know, I had to. And a lot of folks, I'm not the only one, a lot of folks, you know, start with nothing. You have to scrap and you have to get, you know, some clients up in the beginning and kind of make some decisions that maybe you otherwise wouldn't later on. But, you know, I just wanted to disrupt, I was always fascinated by companies like Uber, who just disrupted transportation. All they did was create this awesome piece of technology to connect drivers and, and people that need rides. And all, you know, I can imagine them sitting in a room and thinking like, what, what are the things that people hate about this? And I thought about that from an agency perspective. Like, what do clients really dislike about what they experience with agencies? And I thought, you know, long-term contracts and I knew this would be a way to disrupt. And I knew it would wait to create some momentum. I knew there'd be some risks with it. You know, the value of an agency is obviously can be dictated by that. But at the time I was like, I didn't care about that point. I just wanted to create something that would allow me to never sit in a car for two and a half hours, three hours every day and sitting behind a desk. I just wanted to create something with some momentum. So we launched with month to month, and it definitely created some instant momentum for us. We were able to maybe win some, some projects that we otherwise maybe wouldn't get. And my theory, my philosophy with it has always been a couple of things. Number one, if you do great work, if you treat clients well, if you deliver results, they're going to stick with you. And if they can't, it's going to be for reasons out of your control. And the pandemic was a perfect example, right? Some clients, look, I don't want to be the reason why an agency has to let go of some of their employees. Like, if they have to press pause on something, then I'm okay with that. So it really worked for us out of the gate to kind of create the momentum that we needed to build a foundation to stick. And to be able to have a business that I could have for the rest of my life. So it worked in the beginning. Jason Swenk: [00:04:11] I see that point and I really do agree with it because at the end of the day, like, think about it this way. Selling agency services is very different than like coaching someone, right? So a lot of times when I'm actually going to someone and saying like, well, you got pretty big goals, right? Like over the next year, it's going to take us awhile in order to accomplish that. Because I'm always looking, like I want to be what I call the chasee or the, I want to be the one getting chased, right? Rather than pushing sales, I want them to be pulling me towards you. And a lot of times what I'll do, and agencies can do this as well. Going, all right, well, we want to make sure you're the right fit for us. And for what you need to do, we believe it's going to take a long time to do, a year. We want to see your commitment level in order to do it. And so that's why I've always talked about doing longer term, and then it's more predictable, right? But I also agree with you. You know, it's easier to sell something that's out. Because it's less risky, right? You can make a decision. All right, I blow a month, two months here. Okay. But like you were saying, if you deliver amazing work, they're not going to want to leave. And then if they get in a situation like we just went through with COVID, right? Let's say you're going after the restaurant industry. The whole industry was shut down for months. Are you really going to stick it to them because you have a contract? No, you're going to let them out. At the end of the day, it's kind of like. You're just trying to figure out, do you really have that commitment level to me? Because I have a commitment level to you and I need to know that. That's the biggest thing I look for. Jason Yormark: [00:05:54] Yeah. And for us, I just feel like. We're growing, you know what? Even at the time, it's like, look, if somebody doesn't want to pay you, they're not going to pay you. Like, even, even the best contract language in the world doesn't mean you're going to see that money. And like, you know, in the beginning, especially the first year, like where are we really in a position where we're going to hire somebody, a lawyer and go to court? I’m like, no. If somebody doesn't want to pay you, they're not going to pay you. And I think in the entire history of our business, one client didn't pay, uh, an invoice. I, you know, I tried going after it and it, we didn't get it. So at the end of the day, it's not, it's just semantics almost. Because, again, if you do great work, they're going to stick with you. And if they can't, then they're probably, they weren't a good fit to begin with. We've had plenty of clients that would come into a relationship with us and I vetted them out the best I could. I think they've got good potential, but they get in and either they treat my team like crap or they weren't ready. And we didn't know that. And there w it wasn't a good fit. I'd rather grow a scalable business with the clients that makes sense for us then just trying to trap people into long-term contracts. Because even if they do sign a long-term contract and they're not a good fit, I'm just the kind of guy that's going to be like, look, this isn't working and we're going to go our separate ways anyway. So it really hasn't impacted our agency not having that. And certainly, you know, it's evolved for us, you know. Now we, my, it was funny, an interesting story. My, my team came to me and they were a little bit frustrated because some clients left because they weren't a good fit. And they said, well, what if we, you know, we think maybe we need to reconsider this. We kind of had a back and forth with the team. And ultimately what we decided is why don't we just create options, right? Let's give them the option of, okay, here's, here's your month-to-month price. And here's a long-term contract price discounted. It's your choice. We give the client the choice. What do you care about most? And a lot of what's happening a lot is some of them will take us up on the month, a month. And then after a couple of months, oh, these guys are awesome, actually deliver results. I like these guys. Hey, could we switch to a long-term contract? And then we kind of move into that. So we give them the option. So that has really actually worked really well for us. And now our balance of clients is shifting. Whereas like, you know, a hundred percent of them are month to month. Now that those numbers are changing. It's becoming like 70/30. I expect it to be half and half, which is good for us because, you know, I want an exit strategy. I'm not ready yet. I'm a couple of years away, but I know by the time I'm ready for that. I think that a good percentage of our clients will be long-term contracts. Jason Swenk: [00:08:18] We’ll get you there quicker than you think. Or so you have the option. I mean, it's, it's kind of hard to interview, cause I know so much already I'm being in the mastermind. But that's a great point, Jason, too, of what you were saying about we give the option. Because at the end of the day, you got to think about how can I remove friction from them, making a decision? And then whatever, if, if they're like, hey, I still don't trust you yet. That's kind of why, you know, like in the mastermind and the playbook, we always talk about the offering ladder. Do the foot in the door, then a project. Show them value, and then they're going to want that retainer, but I like how you have, hey, if you want short-term contract. It's kind of like a SAS model, if you think about it, like on a technology, it's like, it's this, if you pay month to month, it's this. If you pay, you know, if you commit to a year… And I like to hear that a lot of clients are going to that, because that was going to be my next question for you. For people listening, going well, do you have an exit strategy? Because I know as a buyer of agencies, that's one of the things we look at. Because we need that predictability. Jason Yormark: [00:09:31] Well, plus, I mean, for me it was, I felt like, well, if they look at the history, if they see. Because honestly I could go back to a good percentage of our clients right now and say, hey, you know, I want, uh, for the, you know, I want to kind of solidify our agency a bit, build the valuation up. You've been on month to month for a year or two. You okay with just sliding into a year-long contract? Most of them are going to say yes. So I think that it's just building those foundational clients over time. I'm not worried whatsoever that when I start thinking seriously about an exit strategy, that I'll be able to transition a good percentage of the ones that we have. And this new approach that we're taking, you know, we'll get there. But as a, as a young hungry… If you're just starting out and you don't have anything, that's a great way to disrupt because it eliminates a lot of the barriers to saying yes. And what's interesting is it's almost kind of like a foot-in-the-door offer by itself. Because the whole idea of in my opinion, the foot-in-the-door is to get them to say yes, more easily. Like the commitment’s lower, they get a taste of who you are. And that month a month approach… I mean the first month is strategy. So they're in essence getting a foot-in-the-door offer in some capacity. But ultimately I'm just trying to get them to yes more easily and more quickly. Jason Swenk: [00:10:39] Yeah, I love it. Well, I love that strategy and there's so much to take away. So if you guys are listening, we'd love to know your comments on that. You know, because I think all of you should do that offer if, uh, if you're charging month to month now. See about giving them the option at a, I wouldn't say at a discount, I would just say, we're going to charge you more if you're on month a month, right? Jason Yormark: [00:11:00] Exactly. Jason Swenk: [00:11:01] Let's change, focus a little. Because I feel a lot of agencies don't dedicate enough time to building their own brand, their own marketing, treating themselves as a client. So what have you found working for yourself? Jason Yormark: [00:11:14] Yeah. So I, you know, it was interesting. Every agency it starts out and like, you're just, you're so busy with like business development and selling and getting clients. It's, the first thing to get pushed to the side is your own stuff. And it's very easy to do and most do that. And we did, to a certain extent, we didn't take it serious. We just kind of dabbled, oh we'll put a blog post out. Then, you know, a month later, oh, we probably need to put another blog post out. And it just doesn't work. I found that. You know, we were… as a startup, I didn't have a tremendous amount of money to just throw out stuff. And I knew I had the luxury of creating a runway. I created the brand when I had another job. You know, I, I knew that it was going to take a couple of years for the name and our website to permeate on the web and kind of start to get some organic reach. That takes time, you know, it just takes a long time for that to happen. And I just consistently made a commitment to putting know blog posts out and putting content out and putting social media content out. And it gets frustrating because it's like, it's the sum of all that effort over time that really eventually gets you to a good place. Then, now we're three and a half years in or so, and we're getting about 20 to 30, you know, inbound, organic leads. Just from people searching. And that doesn't happen overnight. You have to treat yourself like a client. You have to prioritize. And the, the minute that we realized that, you know. I just, you know, I got someone on my team, Socialistics is their client just like anybody else. The accountabilities are there, the expectations are there. We don't let it slide no matter how busy that we get. We do not, you know, we just don't move away from what we need to commit to. And now that consists of, you know, weekly blog posts, right now, bi-weekly podcast episodes. Certainly social media every day. But it's just, it's just the sum and the consistency of that. Or, I mean, yes, it's got to be strategic and you need to pick keywords and phrases and work that in and, and be smart. But it's just that consistency that you have to kind of stick with it. And the best advice I can give is, you know, if it's just you, then it's gotta be you. But when you start to build a team, make sure that somebody is responsible and accountability is around your business, as a client. That's the best thing that you can do if you're serious about, you know, building a pipeline for yourself that doesn't require you shoveling money on paid ads all of the time. Jason Swenk: [00:13:34] Yeah, I look at it as if it's just you or you're going all right, Jason and Jason. Which, uh, we'll call it the J&J show, I guess. Then we’ll be like, all right, that's all good, but I'm already too damn busy or anything. And I always go back to my motto. If you're saying you're too busy, you're not charging enough. It's the leading indicator for most challenges. If you can charge enough, then you can start hiring the right people. And most of the time we hire the wrong people. I want you guys to start thinking about you in the center and thinking about all the stuff you do, right now. The $10 tasks, the $100 tasks, the really cheap tasks. And think about who can you hire to do that stuff, to get some stuff off. And do only like, you know, Jason's talking about like he's doing content development. He can only create that if he's doing the podcast, right? That's what he should be doing and that's what I want all of you to focus on. Because it has to be like three pillars, inbound, outbound, strategic partnership for building a sales system or a lead generation system for your agency. So hopefully you guys get that. Jason, this has all been amazing. And I actually agree with you. I was hoping we would disagree. So I guess I hooked people in on the intro, but, um, is there anything I didn't ask you that you think would benefit the audience? Jason Yormark: [00:14:58] You know, just based on what we talked about and you kind of touched on it just now. You know, just because when you're doing the content, that doesn't mean that you can't outsource, whether it's somebody internally or whether you hire somebody. And a perfect example of that is like the podcast, which I love doing podcasts. It's easy. It's easier to me, right? You’re just getting in front of a microphone and blab for 20 to 30 minutes with somebody. Not to mention it's awesome to just to meet other people in that way. But I don't do the editing. Like I don't do the editing. I don't, you know, I don't want to do any of that technical stuff. I did it at first just to kind of get a feel for it. But you know, a couple hundred bucks a month. There's plenty of resources out there that'll take on all the heavy lifting. So literally all you have to do is put the microphone in front of your face. Talk for 20 minutes, send it to somebody else they'll edit it. They'll publish it. It's fantastic. You know, it's a really low investment in time. The same thing with blogs. Like if you're a great writer, then write it, then send it to somebody to edit and SEO optimize it and publish it on your website. Like don't spend your time doing all of those extra things that make it feel too heavy. Like you can outsource a lot of that and really just focus on your expertise and putting it out there. And the minute that we kind of got those systems in place, it becomes a repeatable process and we're able to make it work. Every day, every week. And it's worked really well. Jason Swenk: [00:16:07] What's a website people can go check the agency out? And what's the podcast name that they can search to go, uh, listen? Jason Yormark: [00:16:13] Yeah. Well, our name's unique, so just search for Socialistics. But you can find us at socialistics.com. The podcast is called Socialistics, social media agency stories. And, uh, you know, just type in the name, you'll find us. Jason Swenk: [00:16:26] Awesome. Well, go check that out. And if you guys enjoyed this episode, I would love for you to do me a favor. We haven't asked for going to iTunes or whatever platform you have and review it. And then also, if you want to be surrounded by other amazing people, I want to invite you guys to go to our free Facebook group called the Digital Agency Owner Insiders. You can go to jasonswenk.com/insider. So that should direct you right there as you a couple of questions and only agency owners are in there. So go do that. And until next time, have a Swenk day.

Mike Poznansky was still in college when he started working at Red Bull's college marketing division. Since then, he realized the need for agencies that understand students and deliver at the scale and quality necessary to keep up with large consumer brands. That's why Mike founded Neato and now works alongside the world’s best brands to design and run creative marketing programs that bring new value to both brands and students. He's here to talk about pre-qualifying leads so you can separate the good ones from the ones who are just fishing. 3 Golden Nuggets Separate the fishers from the rest. Sometimes clients come in and say “give us ideas” and you may have to if you’re a beginner and want to earn their respect. But there will come a point when you need to consider how much work that entails and come up with other options. Mike recommends telling potential clients the agency will interview the target audience and put together a scope. This research involves a payment to make sure that it's at least worth their while. It’s a way to separate the fishers from the ones who will actually pay for your services. Involve the client in the process. The times of coming up with an entire concept and presenting that to the client are over. It’s better to involve the clients in the process. This way, you can understand their reasoning when they reject something and have a better chance at getting them to believe in your vision. You also have better insight on important things not reflected on a brief. Have real human conversations. This goes for both your audience and your clients. Take the time to regularly speak with your audience to really understand what they need. Also, talk to the people on the brand side, on the client-side. Try to figure out what they're challenged with, because it could be something that they haven't even considered. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM How to Qualify Leads and Stop Wasting Time on the Wrong Ones Jason: [00:00:00] Hey, what's up, everybody? Welcome to another great show. The smart agency masterclass. I have a really good episode today coming up with Mike, who's built a really amazing agency and we'll get into that in a second. Now, before we jump in, I want you guys to take a screenshot of the show. And then I want you to post on Instagram and tag us so then we can give you a shout-out for being a loyal listener. So let's go ahead and jump into the episode. Hey Mike, welcome to the show. Mike: [00:00:33] Hey! Thanks for having me, Jason. Jason: [00:00:35] Yeah, man. I'm excited to have you on. So tell us who you are and what do you do? Mike: [00:00:39] Yeah, my name is Mike Poznansky. I'm the founder and managing director over at Neato. We're a full-service marketing agency that helps brands connect with young audiences with a focus on gen Z and college students. Jason: [00:00:51] Awesome. And so how did you get started in doing this and how did you connect to that particular niche? Mike: [00:00:59] Yeah, I actually was pre-law. When I was in college, I had the, I had every intention of going to law school. I was thinking about being a sports agent or maybe working in intelligence. And through a strange set of circumstances, I connected with Red Bull. My passion work was in the action sports world and a company I was working with partnered with Red Bull on an event. And the employees over at Red Bull said, we have a job for college students that we think would be perfect for you. So, I was a senior, I became a student brand manager for Red Bull. At the time, I wasn't a big fan of marketing. I just saw it to be as something that was too disruptive or annoying, you know, kind of pestering. And through my work with Red Bull, even as a student, I discovered that it could be something that actually doesn't take away from your experience, but adds value to your day or to your life. And I ended up continuing with Red Bull and working for them full time. I spent, uh, over a decade there and eventually was running their college marketing program for North America. While I was at Red Bull, we were one of the first brands to invest in marketing to college students. We had a, a really large program that was very scaled. It was a well-oiled machine. So a couple of things happened that inspired me to get in the agency space. One, we started saying, how could we utilize this program to not only build the brand, but build the business? We had over 300 really capable well-connected students across the country. So we started experimenting with ways we could utilize them. And some of the programs we add to drive traffic into retail or pull product off the shelf or support our business in the on-premise. We were really blown away by the results. And then as we scaled, we needed some external help. And just, I realized that there weren't any agencies out there who were focused on the space that understood our business and that had high standards of quality. So just realized there was this void that I set out to fill with Neato. Jason: [00:02:56] Yeah, I see that so much where people are looking for something and they have no agency experience. And there was just like, let me just go into it, let me just create it. And a lot of times you don't take that bad baggage with you from some of the bigger agencies. What has it been like over the years of growing it and scaling it? You know, when it comes to your team or like, have you moved upmarket with your audience? Because agencies are always going through different cycles. Mike: [00:03:25] Yeah. Yeah, it's tricky because I think we started solely focused on college marketing and it's a very core part of what we do today. But one of the challenges we found with college marketing, in particular, was that it's very tactical. So a lot of the briefs you would get, there's an existing strategy. There may be even an existing campaign and they're just looking for someone to really execute. And it may be something that you don't think necessarily works for the brand, or even worse, works for the audience. And one of the big differentiators for us is saying the needs of young people and the needs of brand's ambition don't need to be mutually exclusive. So we believe young people are happy, happy being marketed to as long as it adds value to their lives. So sometimes when we get these really tactical briefs, we feel like they weren't a great fit for the audience. Or they weren't a good fit for the brand. And we found ourselves in a tricky position. And, of course, then you would naturally say, well, share your point of view and that works. But if you, if you have a tactical brief, and sometimes if you're working with some of the folks at that stage who are just there to execute the program. They aren’t the one setting the strategy. And they're not the ones who may necessarily be part of those discussions and all that. So for us, I'd say the biggest challenge has been working ourselves, I guess, as you say, kind of upstream a little bit to be a more part of those strategic discussions. And to change some of the perceptions of what college marketing or youth marketing or field marketing could look like. Jason: [00:05:00] So what are some things that you've done that you've seen work to fix that? Because I saw that a lot and I think a lot of agencies do, where they get this tactical thing in and they need to really move upstream to really talk about strategy. You know, I remember we were working, um, I can't say the name of the brand. But I can say it's a large beverage company in Atlanta with a red logo. And, uh, so we were doing a campaign for a young urban market. Well, the guy that was making all the decisions was a fat white guy. Old white guy. And he was like, I don't get the campaign. And we're like, we know you're not going to get the campaign. Like you're not even, you're not, you're so far removed from even relating to them. So what are some strategies that have worked for you in order to going from tactical to more strategic? Mike: [00:05:51] Yeah. For us, it's tricky because if someone comes to you with this baked brief and strategy, and they aren't even hiring you to be a strategic partner, you're not really in a position to credibly say, we don't believe in this or this won't work. I mean, most likely, the outcome of that would be you just won't get the business, right? They find someone else who's onboard, especially if it's a new relationship and you don't have that existing credibility. So what has helped us in the past? First of all, saying… look, we have a ton of experience in this space, but I'll call BS on anyone who says I am a, I am an expert in youth culture. I'm an expert on young people. Because the more you do it, the more you realize it's always evolving. So the first thing we'll always do is we'll talk to the audience. Have conversations with young people about the category, about the initiative, about maybe even the strategy and the campaign. And then I'm not sitting there in a position going up to anyone on the client-side and just saying, look, this doesn't work. We don't like it. We're saying, hey, you know, we talked to a bunch of young people about what you're setting out to do and here are some of the things we learned along the way. So it's much more credible and it's puts you in a position to be a little bit more of a, of a partner. And someone who's collaborating with them than someone who just has a big ego and a strong point of view that's different from theirs. So everything we do is really driven by insights and we fundamentally believe that that's a critical part of our process. Jason: [00:07:24] Yeah. And I also see it as a lot of times, I would walk away from business that if they were just so driven by that. I would actually take it a step further. You know, I interviewed, um, one of the Harmon brothers who does all the funny viral videos or ads on the internet. And they only take on the ones that they actually believe in the product. So they've done like Squatty Potty. And I was like, you believe in that? They're like we do, right? Like we saw the science, and tested it out. I was like, oh, that's kind of interesting. But they were like, we only do work of products that we know we believe in that we actually can go do and prove, and actually have results. And I think that's a big departure from a lot of agencies out there that just say, oh, you got a check? Oh, you need to find someone? I remember many times where we would actually walk away from an RFP and be like, look, this is not our process, we're not going to do it that way. And them coming back and being like, why would this one company, this small company pull out versus, you know, Tribal and DDP and Grey? And all these big agencies are giving us free work. It would make them think in order to, I really get to the next level. Mike: [00:08:38] Right. Yeah. It could be a little bit more provocative, right? But if it's grounded in truth, I think it works. And it's something we've, I would say, wrestled with a little bit is just how honest and straightforward you are and the initial part of that conversation, right? Because you have a strong point of view, but it's tricky because you have this incentive. Look, you want to work with them and not just because they're going to pay you. But for us, we could say this is a powerful brand. Like they have some really cool resources and assets, and we think they could bring a lot of value to young people's lives. We think they could have a really positive impact. So for us, it's just saying, you know what, let's go through a little bit of a journey and figure out if they can and are willing to get there. Jason: [00:09:25] Yup. Now, do you do that through a small paid engagement or are you doing that on your own dime? Mike: [00:09:32] That was the first thing that came to my mind, right? Because that's hard work and it's a lot of work. I mean, even if you want to find people, interview them, synthesize those insights, share them. Ideally, we'll do that and we're getting paid. Usually, what happens? This happened recently with an organic foods brand. We came in, they came to us and they said, listen, we want to market to students. Here's what we're trying to do. Give us ideas, best ideas win and win the program. And, you know, give us the best ideas and you'll become our agency partner. And I said, listen, I could pull a bunch of stuff out of a hat, but I haven't talked to young people about organic foods. I haven't talked to them about your brand. I’ve been having a ton of conversations with them lately, but not about this subject. So what I would propose is that we go and do that and then we'll put together a scope and we'll get paid to make sure that it's at least worth our while. And it, it helps the client too, because we could say at the end of this all at the very least you will have these insights and you'll have something you could work with, whether it's something you do on your own or something you do with another partner. So ideally we're, we're getting paid. Earlier on, when someone was coming up with us, uh, to us with a tactical brief, we had to do it for free because we didn't earn their trust and respect yet. Jason: [00:10:44] Yeah. Yeah. I was talking to a couple agencies a little while ago and literally, I was like, if you're just starting out, you're going to have to do the grunt work. You're going to have to take it on the chin and do some of the free work. But once you start getting a little bit momentum, then you can actually be more selective and say, no, I'm not going to take it on the chin. We're going to do it this way. Then I'd always tell people, like, treat it this way and say, look, you're going to pay us to develop you a really good strategy. Here's three outcomes. You'll love the plan and you'll go execute it yourself, which you were just talking about. You'll love the plan you want to work with us, which is the most common. Or third, you don't like the plan. I'll give you your money back. So you really have nothing to lose. And then it literally takes them from like, are they really a qualified prospect or are they really just effing you up, right? Like just trying to get free work. And I found that by doing that, that separates the fishers or the, uh, the people just fishing from the real buyers. Because I look at it too like, I think it was Dean Jackson that said, uh, you know, 50% of the people will never buy from you, but the other 50% will. But you have to figure out when. Like, there's a small percentage that will buy right now, which are like 15%. And then the other 35 is like maybe 90 to two years down the road. And you have to kind of figure that out. So like I'm trying to eliminate the non-buyers right away. I love that you get, you're getting paid for it too. Mike: [00:12:14] Yeah. And I think one of the things that's helped us in that process too, is that I'm not a big fan of, um, you send us a brief, we go away for two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, whatever it is. We come back and do this whole dog and pony show with a bunch of ideas. And then in that process, we learn that there's a bunch of other things that have happened since then. Or a bunch of things that were maybe missing from the brief or there's other decision-makers in or departments who weren't a part of writing the brief. So what we like to do is co-create with our clients and have a bit of a collaborative process and creative development. Because in real-time you're getting that input and that feedback. And like I said, it just, it's, it's impossible for them to capture all that on paper. In that process, you could see what they're really up for, right? Because we'll have a client that will come to us say we want big ideas “we want huge disruptive ideas.” And we… this happened to us very early on and they came to us and they said, these ideas are too big. Well, you wanted big ideas. That's what you asked for, right? So I think bringing them along in that process, in the creative development process, and turning it into a conversation instead of everybody working in silos could help you feel that out too. Jason: [00:13:27] Well, they don't want big ideas. They want results, the smart ones. And so I totally agree that you have to do it with them. Yeah. The, the time of what is it like Bewitched? Was it? The show Bewitched, when Darren would pitch the work for Larry, which was his boss, right? Like those days are over, like literally if you're not building with them, because then they have more skin in the game. And you can ask them, be like, what do you think if we did X, Y, and Z? And if they say no, I think it's a dumb idea. You find out why is it a dumb idea for in their head, especially if you believe in this. And then you get them to a point where they’re like, oh yeah, I like that idea. So then when you present the ideas, they were all there. Like they feel like it was all theirs. And then they're like, man, I really feel like we're connecting. We're like, well yeah. Like we just did this, this engagement together. And then, you know, we found that they're 20 times more likely to engage with you if they have a good engagement or the first, rather than just going, oh, let me give you a bunch of ideas. Like, oh, I hated that. We got away from that very quick. Mike: [00:14:32] Yeah, it's full of assumptions, right? I mean, you just, it's a tricky process. And then sometimes you could spend a week or two going down a path. And if you would just learn this one thing, that path may not be viable for them. Or it may be a trigger point for someone who is the decision-maker there because of a bad experience that you just, you don't know those things. Yeah. And on results, I agree with you. I mean, one of the things we like to do, especially with the people who are paying for it, or running the departments that are part of this program or experience or process. Is just say, okay, let's pretend it's December or it's the middle of the year. We're all sitting in a room and we're looking back on this program and we're celebrating. What would we be celebrating? What do we really want to get out of this? Because sometimes you'll find that people will bake in all these goals and KPIs and objectives that don't align with the needs and wants of decision-makers. Jason: [00:15:25] Yeah. I always looked at when a client comes to you, like if you think of kind of the past, the present, the future, when they come to you, it's because they're stuck. And then, right? That's in the past, they're stuck, they've tried a bunch of things. Then in the present you think about, well, they have a problem. And the future is, they just don't know what they need to do. And so we have to do, as agencies is we really have to kind of look and go, how can we switch their state? Like get them to a resourceful state rather than a stuck state, right? The past. And then in the present, we really need to pinpoint what is the real issue. Like we need to be urgency detectives. Because the clients like they, sometimes they don't know and they, they're like, they don't really know the problem. And so really we need to identify what's the actual issue. We need to kind of paint that picture. Then, in the future, it's just. Let's just shrink the scope and let's just make it really simple for them to understand. And when we do all that, now we can take that prospect to, you know, someone actually believing us. Rather than just saying here's all these big ideas, but that's what we've seen work really, really well. Well, this has all been amazing. Is there anything I did not ask you that you think would benefit the audience? Mike: [00:16:41] Yeah, it's a good question. The only thing I would say is just how you identify those problems. I think has been a little bit of a learning for me and I, you know, I've just getting ahead of it. I've just found that the most effective way to do that is through real human conversations with the people on the, on the brand side, on the client-side, to really figure out what they're challenged with. Because it could be something that they haven't even considered. You know, I think a lot of people can get almost in a little bit of this like automated mindset where they're just they're writing briefs around specific campaigns. Or they have, they have a line item in their budget they're trying to fulfill. And then through conversations with them, you could identify things that they're really struggling with, that you could potentially help on. And maybe it's not a good fit and you could pass it on to someone else or whatever it may be. But I think, I think those real human natural touchpoints are really important to understand what the needs are of your clients and figuring out if there are ways that you could support them in navigating those issues. Jason: [00:17:42] Awesome. What's the website that people can go and check you guys out? Mike: [00:17:47] Yeah. We're at neato.agency, n-e-a-t-o.agency. Jason: [00:17:51] Awesome. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show. And if you guys enjoyed this episode, I want to make sure you guys subscribe. It's just so you are always notified when we have an episode. And then if you guys want to be surrounded by amazing agency owners, where we get together on an ongoing basis to really work on the business, rather than in the business. And really be able to create that freedom where you can pick and choose and do the things you want to do in your agency, so you can eventually get to a point where you can actually sell it or exit the stuff that you don't like to do anymore. I want to invite all of you to go to digitalagencyelite.com. That is our exclusive mastermind. And until next time have a Swenk day.

Kevin Daisey works hard to stay on top of changing trends in digital marketing. He is the founder & CMO of Array Digital, a digital marketing agency specializing in search engine optimization, social media, and digital advertising; and also Rival Digital, a digital agency niched in the HVAC market. Today he joins us to chat about how to create a recurring revenue machine. And also how establishing tight processes will not make you lose clients if they’re the right clients, and how his agency benefitted from eliminating the least profitable services. 3 Golden Nuggets Becoming a recurring revenue machine. After his accountant asked what he was predicting for next month's revenue and he had no answer, Kevin realized they needed to get serious about the business. So, he and his partner decided to implement 12-month payment plans and started converting clients to that plan. Clients pay for 12 months, even if the project was done in four months, and they can forecast on collecting that revenue. Figure out which services are bringing in more clients. Investigating all the services that they offered and identifying which ones were recurring and which ones were not, helped our guest make some changes in his agency. A lot of agencies try to do too much and think that to double in size, they need to do double the amount of services. And that's actually very incorrect. In the end, they figured out which services they could eliminate and which ones they should go all in. That helped them grow their recurring revenue in just eight months. Have a tight process. Establish a very solid outreach and communication process to establish clear payment options for your clients. If checks are just not convenient for your business, you can establish other options, like ACH, and offer a discount to encourage customers to use that method. You can also establish penalties for delayed payments. If you clearly communicate the benefits and downsides of each payment method, there are no excuses. Kevin and his team trusted their vision and were happy to see that customers started to comply with this new process. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Secrets to Becoming a Recurring Machine Jason: [00:00:00] What's up everybody? Jason Swenk here and on today's episode I have an amazing guest from our mastermind who runs a really amazing agency. And we're going to talk about creating a recurring machine, but before we get into it, I want you to do me a favor, take a screenshot of listening to the podcast. And upload it to Instagram and tag us, because we want to reach out to you and give you a shout-out. So make sure you go do that now and let's get into the episode. Hey, Kevin. Welcome to the show. Kevin: [00:00:36] Hey, Jason. Thanks for having me. Jason: [00:00:38] Yeah, man. I'm excited to have you on. So tell us who you are and what do you do? Kevin: [00:00:42] So my name's Kevin Daisey and I run two agencies, one called Array Digital and, Array Digital is a full-service digital marketing agency that primarily focuses on working with law firms. Also, I have another agency that we started in September of 2020, which is niched in the HVAC market. So HVAC contractors, companies around the country, uh, with websites, SEO, social media, and on, on advertising. Jason: [00:01:12] Awesome. I love it. Well, let's go ahead and get into it. How can people listening, how can they create a recurring machine? Kevin: [00:01:21] Well, let me, uh, I guess start with kinda what led to where we are and obviously where we are is a far cry from where we want to go. But, uh, in order to get there, we had to have recurring revenue. And so back about a few years, my business partner, Eric J. Olson, who’s actually a member of the mastermind as well. Me and him formed Array Digital together, after both running our own agencies for quite a few years. And we both struggled with one thing, which took us a while to figure out, by the way. We didn't have predictable recurring revenue, we had lots of projects. Now we have some small services and hosting and maybe some support to some degree. But it was never enough to actually operate the company, pay payroll and things like that. So it was really just kind of a way to supplement and maybe have recurrent customers in the future. But on a monthly basis and cash flow, we didn't really have a lot to stand on. And so we were really focused on software and mobile apps at one time and we had a lot of software developers that had $100,000 salaries and up. And we just really saw, when we had a slowdown at one point in sales, which was Eric and I at the time, how are we going to have the payroll is massive and how are we going to pay this if we don't have projects this month? Around the same time, we were meeting with a, an accountant who actually ended up being the worst accountant we've ever had… ever. Like we fired the guy, his, it was a terrible experience. But he did this one life-changing thing, which we sat down with him to plan. We tried to start having a budget and we were just at a million dollars in revenue and we're like, hey, it's time to kind of get a budget and start to plan out things a little bit better. He asked a question: what are you guys predicting for next month's revenue? And then next quarter's revenue? And we were just like blank stares. Like, how are we supposed to know that? We don't know that, we have no clue. I guess we can assume if we get these projects to this point, then we should expect to build this much and whatever. But we really had no good answer for him. That just made Eric and I think a lot about that question and how we were going to even grow and scale pay payroll. Like we're, we're this close to going out of business. Tomorrow. So that kind of really got us thinking. We got, we got serious about it. And he proposed that if we're doing a $100,000 software project, what if we took it and extended it to a 12-month payment plan instead of, you know, $25,000 a month for the next four months? Even though the project would be done in four months, they can pay us 12 months and we collect that revenue. So this, the concept right there was kind of like, well, how are we going to pay payroll? If we collect $7,000 a month instead of $25,000 a month or whatever. And so we had to take baby steps that ultimately led to us investigating all the services that we offered and which ones were recurring and which ones were not. Digital marketing, which was at the time a smaller piece of our business, SEO, and website support stood out as the only ones that we had that were recurring and they were very profitable. We have the website done and we're still collecting money every month for support. SEO was an ongoing service, which is in-house. So we didn't have to, there was no cogs, really. So we looked at that and we're like, wow, it's just such a small piece of our business though. It was like, you know, 10% of our revenue, but it was predictable revenue. So after a lot of thinking, a lot of thoughts or, I mean, a lot of thought on our services and then the challenges with sales on the software side, it ultimately led to us cutting software, cutting mobile app development. And digital marketing was the winner at the end of the day. And so we put all our focus on that. We up the ante, and we made sure to secure the other services like social media and advertising, which is something we didn't do. We did websites and SEO. So we started hiring in that department. We actually had to let go or our software people, we made sure they got other jobs and had other positions. And then we started hiring and learning digital marketing more than ever. We grew from… our overall revenue did not change in the year. So we were a million dollars. But we went from, I think, 17% recurring revenue to a 100% in eight months. So where we were having a hundred plus thousand per month on contract that we could predict every single month for services that we were rendering. So that was kind of the major change. And then any questions about that, but then I can go on to kind of now how we refined and fine-tuned to become more of a machine and a process. That continues to allow us to grow. Jason: [00:06:34] Well, I love, I mean, there's so many agencies that are in that similar boat, right? And they're, they want that predictability or that peace of mind. Because I remember going through the same thing, you know. Our out for more predictability was just building a pipeline, but we never even thought back then, because 80% of our business was projects, and it was extremely profitable. But we just created a huge master pipeline, so that was our main focus. But I like the approach that you guys took because there's a lot of people that are going, I want some predictability. And I'm glad that you had a really good experience with a bad CPA to make you guys change that focus. And I also like, and I don't want to skip over it, because a lot of agencies try to do too much. I like how you audited, what are the most profitable pieces, you know, in your agency? What should we eliminate? What should we actually go all in? Because too many people just try to do everything. And they think, well, if we want to double in size, we need to do double the amount of services or double amount of the things. And that's actually very incorrect. Like a lot of times in the mastermind we talk about, look, if you can focus, you're going to be so much more successful in that one thing. So I love that. Now, let's talk about, you talked about how we got there right on the recurring. What did you learn from that? And like, what's changed since then to now? Kevin: [00:08:10] Sure. Absolutely. I think so that's a big part of it. So, getting there was at first going to our existing clients and trying to convert them into a, more of a monthly plan, um, upselling them on the other services that we did offer and focusing on that. So we had to convert a lot of clients and of course we signed on new clients with new offerings, so there was a sales effort as well, but we did it pretty quickly and pretty easily. And we didn't expect it to work that fast. But then we started to look at how do we collect the money? How long does it take to collect the money? What's our expenses out and how do we refine this, this whole process to be very focused? And then, you know, with the least amount of, I guess, manpower as possible. So we're really sort of looking at efficiency. At first, we were mostly paid by check and so we started to realize, okay, well man, 30 days. Jason: [00:09:05] Checks in the mail! Checks in the mail! Uh, hated to hear that. Kevin: [00:09:11] Yeah. So, okay. If you have recurrent revenue, that's great. But if you're not collecting it in a timely fashion, it doesn't matter. So next thing you know, your payrolls are on top of each other. You're, you're coming out of pocket for, uh, expenses. So basically you're, you're floating the bill for your clients and you're, you're paying for your staff and all these other things, and then you're expecting them to hopefully pay you back. So there's another, uh… your mastermind I'm pretty sure is where we got this from is getting that money in the door faster and how important that is. And so, at first, it was like, well, we, you can't build people… expecting to pay in 14 days, but we did it and we tried it and it worked. And then we had some people saying, well, try that in seven. Well, that's insane. No, one's going to pay net seven. And so what we did is the extreme. We started offering a discount for ACH, or a penalty if you pay another way. We also put in a net seven terms with a late fee if you were later than seven days. If you want to pay by check, that's fine, but here's our rules. And we have a very swift process for turning clients off, which was never fun to do. It’s not something we want to do. But say, if we have a website for you and you're three weeks late, so the 30 days is not even reached yet, your site goes off, your servers are stopped. Uh, we have a very strict process. And then when the client calls and says, I can't believe you guys would do this. We have a really solid outreach and communication process for they know, many times over that they're going to be. You know, get late fees or get turned off. And so then we always say, hey, we offer ACH. That's how we run our business. If you don't decide to go that route, you know, you can choose these other methods. But they have their downside. So how about we get you on ACH? So we avoid this problem completely and, you know, we have predictable invoicing too. Our bill is the same every month. We have what we call all-inclusive service, where we never charge a dollar more, and whether or not, we make more ads or we, we talk to you more or whatever, it's just built into our costs. So we say, hey, it's ACH, same bill every single month. And then we can continue working for you. We have the ad funds we need all that stuff and we don't have to worry about it. Jason: [00:11:37] I love it. You know, it's um, you never know what people are going to say until you actually do it. I, I remember many years ago a client, one of our first clients, I think this is probably in like 2000 and they didn't pay their invoice and they just kept giving me the run-around. And I took down everything and I just literally put unpaid bill, you know, and then I put their contact info. Because what I didn’t want to have happen was that client going well, you took down my whole business. People couldn't reach me, even though the internet was websites were fairly new. But as, as like unpaid bill to your designer, but you can contact them here. So when we actually did, when he did try to, when I did take them to court, they were like, oh, you take down my business. I was like, no, no, all the contact info is right here. So I don't suggest doing that, but that's what I did when I was a young punk shit. I just didn't care. I was like, well, you can sue me for it, I don't have any money back then. Kevin: [00:12:42] Oh no. It's, I've been in some situations before. And I think, you know, all those, those moments that you remember make it easier to do some of the things we do now. But we love our clients. We want to give them the best service possible, and to do so we need to be funded by what they agreed on. Which is in contract in a timely manner, so that nothing goes down, nothing stops. And so it's very easy to say, hey, listen, we love working with you guys, we want to perform for you guys. If this bill is not paid, the performance and results are affected. So ACH, we give you a discount, we encourage it and it helps us perform better for you. So we have 80 some clients. And it's funny because some of my sales members will be like, we can't do this. Like, this is absurd that we could give them no net terms and that they have to pay upfront for a service like agencies don't do that. Well, we do. And we have 80 clients that have no problem with it. We rarely have a problem. And if we do have a problem, it's because we signed on the wrong client. Jason: [00:13:50] You nailed it on the head. Uh, and it's also, it really starts from, I feel, the very beginning. Like traditionally you think of an agency or the salesperson for an agency is they're the chaser, right? They're chasing that prospect, the chasee. But what you have to do is you have to kind of flip it where you want them to be chasing you. And the only way to do that is by flipping the conversation, asking the right questions and kind of pulling them versus push. Like, I always tell people if I start pushing on you, like, I literally come up to you, Kevin, I start pushing you. What are you going to do? You're going to push back. And that's what salespeople do versus, you know, if you think about like telling a story of a client that you've had for a lawyer, right. And then, or let's… I only relate to agencies because that's the world I live in. So I was like, I'm not going to make up a lawyer thing and there's no lawyers listening anyway. Kevin: [00:14:48] That’s right. And if you are, call me. Jason: [00:14:51] But, uh, like if I was exactly, I hit, hit Array Digital up for him. But, um, if I'm talking to an agency, I'll be like, hey, you know, one of my, um… I was talking to agency the other day and they are basing their whole business on word of mouth and referrals, which just isn't scalable. That's what they told me. And I'll be like, well, what we do is we show you the exact framework that's working for my agency, other agencies, like with that, and then I ask a question, this is what pulls them in. Does that resonate with you? Does that make sense? Do you have any questions on that? Like I'm pulling them closer rather than pushing, being like, well, let me talk about my service. And I'm taking breaks between like me throwing up on them. I think too many salespeople do that. Like they don't take those breaks. And when you do then, uh, you can be the chase, you know, or they're chasing you. Kevin: [00:15:44] No, I love that. It's where we want to be. We don't want to be the cheap option. And we don't want to be the ones that, uh, well, you can pay us whenever you want and don't have any process. We want them to realize that we have a tight process. We have a plan, we're focused on the results. And in order to do that, this is how we operate. If you want to work with a company like us, that charges maybe more. We have what we call professional services, which is basically an extra fee that weeds out a lot of potential customers or clients and whoever questions that line item, “well, why do I have to pay for this?” They're probably not going to be a fit and we don't need to jump through hoops on telling them why they need to pay for that every time. So it's clearly stated in that line and that it's really. You want superior service? Communication, unlimited, uh, responses and all the help you're looking for? That's what that line is for. So yeah, it costs extra to work with us. And we want the client that says, that's what I want. I want a Mercedes, not a Kia. There's a different service level when you, you buy a car like that, that a dealership. So we're not for everybody, but. My biggest fear is honestly signing a lot of little clients at a small amount per month that are, you know, we have some, you know, client can come in for a pretty low amount of with us. We don't have any kind of like crazy tiers because a lot of them lead to larger business over time. But at the end of the day, my concern is a lot of small clients that, you know, really break operations. Jason: [00:17:16] Exactly. Well, I love how simple this is to create a recurring machine because a lot of us just try to over-complicate things like it. Literally, the simplicity of it is going, look, we're only going to be in recurring and you have to pay us on these terms. And if we do this, we're going to have more predictability and we can grow and we can scale and, and, and all of that. So that's fantastic. Is there anything I didn't ask you, Kevin, that you think would benefit the audience? Kevin: [00:17:45] Yeah. I really think being part of the mastermind. The Digital Agency Elite is, is really allowed us to test these things, ask questions and, uh, being part of a mastermind has been a huge thing for us. So a lot of these questions and things that we've done, you know, we haven't done them in just. It's like we have someone, a sounding board, hey, we're going to do this. What do you guys think? We might still do it if it's I want to do that, but we at least got some opinions and we can share our thoughts and insight with them. And it's a great way to get where do you want to go faster. So just think, maybe you have a process for billing and have a process for onboarding, uh, have some rules in place for your clients. And again, if they're the right clients, they're going to have no problems with it. Jason: [00:18:32] Awesome. And where can people reach out to you guys? What's a website address where people can check both agencies out? Kevin: [00:18:38] Yeah. So you can check out Array at, arraylaw.com. And then Rival Digital is the HVAC company that we operate is a rivaldigital.com. Jason: [00:18:48] Awesome. Well, thanks so much, Kevin, for coming on and, uh, giving us a really simple strategy that can be a real game-changer. Because if we have that predictability in our agency, we can bring in the right people, we can have the confidence, we're not making decisions from a scared point of view. And, uh, it's just a, really a great strategy. And if you guys want to be around other amazing people like Kevin and his partner, where you can have them act as your sounding board and see the things you're not able to see, I want to invite all of you guys to go check out the digitalagencyelite.com. Now this is not for everyone. So go check it out and until next time have a Swenk day.

Anna Shcherbyna is the CEO of Remotivate. And, leveraging her decade of experience in Business Operations and International Recruitment, Anna's recruitment agency helps online businesses hire remote staff worldwide. They handle all the due diligence relating to candidate communication, arranging interviews, discussing salary expectations, and conducting reference checks. Today, she joins us to talk about how to find and attract your agency's dream team. She shares why some job search platforms are better than people may think, why it’s better to invite candidates to apply for your agency, and why you should never hire for the fire. 3 Golden Nuggets Create a process. After going through profiles in some of the job search platforms (our guest recommends a few good ones) instead of going straight to interviewing the candidates, try to have a process in place. Identify 5 requirements for success in the position. You can incorporate that into a questionnaire, a skill test. This weeds out candidates who don’t care enough. Finally, ask them to create a video. This will answer so much, from their motivations to what do they say in the video and how they say it. Be in control of the narrative. Something that can really help you be in control of the type of candidates that will go through your hiring process and subsequent interviews is to not just post and wait for candidates to apply. Instead, after searching through some profiles, you can invite some candidates to apply for the position. This way, you’ll have much more control over the type of candidate you’ll be interviewing and filter out the ones who maybe have the wrong motivations or are just not good quality candidates. Don’t hire for the fire. Take the time to truly understand the position you’re hiring for. Try to have a clear idea of what success looks like in that position. What kind of background are you looking for? What level of experience would you prefer candidates to have? This will help filter candidates and speed up the process. Anna’s advice is “don’t hire for the fire, hire for the long term.” Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Jason: [00:00:00] What's up everybody? Jason Swenk here and I have another amazing episode for you where we talk about re, remote recruitment. If I can actually get that out, I don't know why that's so hard. But we're going to talk about how to find the right senior-level managers and hiring them remotely, as well as how can we evaluate and make sure that the right one. So, it's a really good episode. Let's go ahead and get into it. Hey Anna, welcome to the show. Anna: [00:00:32] Thanks so much for having me, Jason. It's a pleasure to be here. Jason: [00:00:36] Yeah, I’m excited. I almost wasn't able to say remote recruitment. I don't know why it's such a tongue twister this morning for me. But for the people that don't know who you are, tell us who you are and what do you do? Anna: [00:00:48] Yeah, absolutely. So my name's Anna Shcherbyna. I'm actually originally from Ukraine and I help online businesses all over the world, help them hire remote staff internationally. Uh, it's been an incredible journey and the experience to work with companies that have all kinds of needs. And I believe, as you mentioned, we do focus on managerial and leadership positions, but we've always get some fun roles and fund requirements. So it's kind of the, uh, the new age of headhunting, so to speak, uh, at times that's what it really comes down to. Jason: [00:01:17] Awesome. Well, let's go ahead and dive into it. Let's talk about where can we find these people, right? So, you know, we're, I'm an agency owner. I'm looking to get some more help, so I don't have to make all the decisions. I need, like I already, I'm maxed out at managing these people. I want to build my team up. I think a lot of times people just default to going to LinkedIn or Craigslist or wherever. So what is your recommendation for people listening of how can they find some of these amazing talents? Anna: [00:01:46] Yeah, absolutely. I do think that a lot of people, when they're transitioning, especially into hiring remote staff, that's where the challenge comes in because they still go back to the old websites. As you mentioned, LinkedIn is very popular Craigslist, things like that. And it just doesn't work for remote stuff. You want people who know what they're doing and really have the right skills and abilities and understanding of the remote space. They're not going to be there. I mean, you can find amazing people on LinkedIn, don't get me wrong, but in terms of what we love to do, Upwork is actually one that surprises everyone. I'll say this because a lot of the times people assume that Upwork is for projects, just for projects for short term. But actually if someone's new to the platform, they haven't really realized how it works properly, and so you can find some incredible people who are just looking for that opportunity. And a lot of them are looking for more consistency. So Upwork is an amazing one. Um, AngelList has been incredible for us. We've loved that. And also with AngelList, you kind of upgrade, there is an upgrade on there where you're able to get access to their database, which is awesome. And then be able to go out and invite candidates. We use Indeed, it's actually been a lot better for remote hiring as well. Most recently, they've really done a lot of growth in that sense. So Indeed has been quite good. I'd say those are our top three, though we’re, we're constantly experimenting. So right now we're trying out Dynamite Jobs, we're trying out We Work Remotely. And I just say like, it's really good to experiment. I've heard great. Like We Work Remotely is one that I've heard, works wonders, but not for all positions. Those three that I mentioned is just, those have worked the best for us for the type of positions, like the managerial leadership type positions that we're normally hiring for. Jason: [00:03:25] So I thought AngelLists was really more for, and maybe they've, they've changed it. Or was it Angie's list? Or am I thinking of the right? The same one. Anna: [00:03:36] You definitely are. The same angel.co like I think before it was very much for startups like tech world, all of that. You have the right idea in mind. They definitely have evolved to now where you can find professionals of all kinds. They're very remote-focused because, again, a lot of companies are going remote. And so it's definitely an amazing, amazing website for finding great candidates. Jason: [00:04:00] So let's say we go on Upwork because, you know, I've, I've found really good designers on Upwork and, and stuff like that or people actually doing the work. But if we're looking like I know a lot of people listening in, they're thinking, well, I need a manager. I don't need someone to actually do the work. So like, how do I post something on Upwork going I need a Director of Ops or a Manager of Operations to come in. So do I post something like that on Upwork? Because usually, it's like, hey, I need this for what I understand. Like, I need someone to do, you know, this landing page or this logo or whatever it is. Anna: [00:04:33] Yeah. I mean, here's the thing, again, Upwork has incredible potential because it's all about the mindset. When you go to LinkedIn, you're trying to get people away from potentially those that already have jobs, whereas upward people are going on there already with the mindset of, hey, I need a job. And as I mentioned, a lot of them, they are getting in there and they don't really know how to break through, they don't want to deal with the hassle of all these different clients. And so something we do and something I always recommend is, it's all about how you filter. So filter for the ones that don't have a lot of success on Upwork, which is counterintuitive because most people are looking for the ones that have earned the most, have the best reputation… But those people are already successful, why would they go from client work back to full time? It's, you know, they're making a ton of money, they've made it on the platform. It doesn't make sense for them. So we'll go ahead and post those types of high-level positions, head of ops and all of that. But the ones that are going to be inviting are usually the candidates who have limited experience on the platform. They are hungry for an opportunity and they are much more likely to take on that opportunity. Jason: [00:05:36] Oh, that's clever. That's clever. And so let's say we're hiring a director of ops. What would you post on Upwork to in order to attract them to click on? Anna: [00:05:47] So, okay. Two things here I want to say. So first of all, in the job description. I'd say definitely make it very personable. We get a lot of feedback that the more personable a job description is the better candidates react to it. But I want to say that the trick that we have found really works isn't about just posting and waiting for candidates to apply. We actually go out and invite candidates because then we take control of the narrative. Who's applying the type of candidates, the quality, and also a lot of candidates are not checking every single day what's, you know, what's live. And so you're actually missing out on a ton of opportunity. So if you go out and that's why I love, we love AngelList network, you can actually invite those candidates to apply and get so much better results rather than waiting around and getting candidates who maybe have the wrong motivations or just not good quality candidates, because they're just, they're applying because they need a job and they're just clicking on everything. Whereas when you're inviting, there's, you know, there's a quality control there. So sometimes we even put a job post as private and so people won't be able to actually apply unless we invite them. Jason: [00:06:50] Oh, I like that. And so when you go into the search on Upwork or AngelList, is there other than, are you new? And like, you know, it's actually a really good point of like, I don't have much experience on the platform. They're new. What else are you looking for? Anna: [00:07:07] Uh, requirements. It always comes down to the requirements. And I'll be very honest, I think a lot of business owners don't take the time to truly understand who they need and what will make those people successful. When you have a clear understanding of what success looks like, like, okay, I'm going to need someone who has at least three years of experience in operations. They have, um, a background in recruitment, they have experience with running a SAS business or being an operation specialist in SAS, and you, if you're looking through applicants and applications, you'll be able to see those things. So figuring out your requirements of what success looks like, and then really searching for those among the applications is going to make a huge difference. Jason: [00:07:46] Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of us, and I've done this in the past, or I might be doing this right now. Who knows? I probably am. Thank you for beating me up because there, there's a lot of us that we probably go, we just need a marketing associate. But we really haven't thought about what… we just want them just a marketing associate. We'll just put them in, but really hasn't identified what success looks like for that marketing associate and like, what do they have to have? I think that's really very crucial that a lot of people actually skip over. All right. So, so now that we've come up with the requirements, like, as we've done our homework, so you don't yell at us, we don't want you to yell at us. And then we've gotten creative by using Upwork and AngelList and Indeed, and we're starting to invite people to apply, which I, I've never thought about. Like, that's brilliant. So, when people start applying, is there any special thing that I always try to bury something in the middle. Like, hey, you got to do this weird thing or put this to the subject titles, see if they actually read it. Is there anything that you do like that? Or how do you evaluate to make sure that they're not just padding their resume? Anna: [00:08:58] Absolutely. Absolutely. So I always say create a process. And again, start at the beginning, right? Because let's say you identify your top five kind of things for success, right? Your top five requirements for success. You can then translate that to, like, for example, for us, we do a questionnaire, a skill test, a video, you know, you can put steps in place that test for those initial requirements. And that's going to be so important to really identifying, not only do they have what it takes to be a great team member or a part of your team and really solve your problem, but it's going to be able to also identify their motivations. So being able to see that they're going to jump through quite a few hoops before even having an interview. And a lot of people don't want to do that. They're like, yeah, thanks, I'm interested in this role, yeah, when can we chat? And we're like, well, right after you go through our process. Apply here. And that actually filters through a lot of people who don't really care too much. I would say I'm not the biggest fan of adding like those little trick questions in job descriptions. Because people who are looking for jobs, they're not as consistent in reading the job description, I would say. So definitely having the, the steps is a lot more of a thorough process to see, not only do they qualify, but they are really interested in the position and they're going through and following through on the different steps. Jason: [00:10:16] So walk us through the steps that you would take someone. Anna: [00:10:18] Yeah, absolutely. So the, what we do is we have a questionnaire. So for example, let's say you need five years of experience in Facebook, running Facebook ads. So we'll ask: How many years of experience do you have in Facebook ads? What's the budget that you have handled per month? Uh, we’ll ask about what types of businesses have you done Facebook ads for? And there'll be like a dropdown or check the boxes of which industries you've done. So we we’ll add the requirements in the questionnaire, because that way, even if they didn't read it, which sometimes happens, we'll be able to filter through that. Because candidates say, hey, I actually don't have this. Or I only have three years of experience. So the questionnaire and yeah, like the questionnaire really helps assess that. Now we have a small skill test that we've created that tests for the hard and soft skills. We have done this internally and we've created what works for us. But I talk about this all the time. Like I do a webinar now and again, and I talk about how there's so many tests out there, like personality tests, hard skill tasks, like let's say you even need to test somebody's abilities with Facebook ads. There's so many different tests out there. Do a bit of research, find what works for you and incorporate that in the process. So having some sort of questionnaire looking into there, the requirements, if they meet them, having some sort of soft and hard skill test. It doesn't have to be crazy long. Just a few questions here and there to understand and better filter those candidates. Then we have a video, which again, we're asking a few questions. We're asking for a two minute video, super easy and straightforward. But again, we're looking at, can they follow directions? Right? Can they actually respond at like, what are they saying? How are they saying it? What what's the attitude that we're getting? Is this something that they just put together, walking your dog on the street. Which actually happens like we've either had like a girl in a farm. She's walking around in her, like near her farm. She's showing the farm. She's like, hey, this is where I am. Absolutely not. But walking the dogs, driving in the car to work, I mean, we've got some crazy videos. Oh, a guy eating sushi. I think that was one of my favorites. He's like, I'm going to wing this. So I just ordered some sushi, but it helps stand the mindset of candidates, how they work, like who they are as human beings, and really understand if that's going to be a culture fit. And it just says so much, their video say so much. And so, that really helps us understand. And it not only does it kind of test for their personalities and interests and things like that. We're also looking at their English abilities. So we're seeing, I mean, we're hiring internationally and so we don't want to waste time having an interview. If we don't like it, they might be great at writing but then when it comes to speaking, they might not be able to, don't have the abilities. So that video really ticks a lot of boxes and a candidate usually doesn't always, like they don't really anticipate it, I would say, in terms of what's really being expected. But that's what we're looking out for, great communication skills and interest for the position, honest responses, a great environment. And then we'll do the interviews and move into that phase. First interviews, client interviews, and then towards the end, we'll do reference checks. So it's quite a thorough process and it helps really collect all the information you need for a successful hire. Jason: [00:13:27] Yeah, that's crazy about the videos. You know, we, we ask for that as well. And I remember there was this one guy that we got a video I was getting so dizzy because he's walking around his pool, like holding this and I'm like, h my God, and the shaking like, oh, stop. Anna: [00:13:46] Yeah. Make it stop. Stop. Absolutely. Jason: [00:13:50] That's funny. Well, this has all been great, Anna, is there anything that I didn't ask you that you think would help out the audience with their remote recruitment? Anna: [00:14:00] Yeah, absolutely. Twister tongue twister of the day. I would just say that start from the very beginning and put the time to truly understand research the position you're looking to hire for. Don't hire for just a fire like that. And we do all have fires. I have fires. We all have fires in the business that we need to take care of, but don't hire for the fire. Okay. That's not, I got a rhyme in there. Don't hire for the fire, hire for the long term. Jason: [00:14:25] It was like a Billy Joel. A Billy Joel song. Anna: [00:14:28] Yeah. So definitely take the time to understand who you're hiring for, what are the requirements, and what will they do once they have, you know, taken care of that fire. What's that long-term plan? And when you have that, everything becomes so clear. So start from the beginning and best of your time from the very start to have a successful hire at the end. Jason: [00:14:49] I love it. What's a website people can go and check you out? Anna: [00:14:52] Absolutely. So it's, letsremotivate.com. Jason: [00:14:56] Awesome. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show. And if you guys enjoyed this episode, I want you guys to do something. Take a screenshot, go on Instagram and tag us and say, hey, I liked the show. And then we'll give you a shout back. Also, if you guys want to be around other agency owners, we have an amazing Facebook community. It's free. It's totally free. Just go to jasonswenk.com/insiders and request access into it. We asked a couple of questions just to make sure you’re an agency owner, and you have a team. That's the requirement in order to get into there so you can ask the relevant questions and protect the community. So go to jasonswenk.com/insiders and you'll go to that page. And until next time I have a Swenk day.

As co-founder and creative visionary at Harmon Brothers, Daniel Harmon uses storytelling and humor to create ads that convert. Since 2014, he has helped create videos that changed the way we do advertising today, and that at the time were confused with funny sketch videos that had to assure audiences "Yes, this is real. This is a real ad." Now, he joins us to talk about how the Harmon Brothers found their comedy niche, how they find the right creative thinkers to write their unique ads, and how the company teaches their entire system through the Harmon Brothers University. 3 Golden Nuggets Hiring unique thinkers. The Harmon Brothers have developed a very unique style of advertising that stands out for its comedy. To build this style, Daniel says they have focused on getting very creative people with comedy backgrounds in the writing room. You’re going to be much better off teaching a comedian to be a marketer than a marketer to be a comedian. Creating ads that convert. When it comes to creating great ads that convert, the starting point will always be finding a product or service that you’re passionate about, that is offering real value, solving a real problem and on which you’re already sold as a customer. That way, you’ll me much more effective at communicating the benefits of that product, as opposed to doing it just because that’s your job. Stop copying the big agencies. Smaller and medium-sized agencies look at bigger companies and decide that they have to do what they’re doing, which is a mistake. Depending on the stage of the company, there's different ways to focus your advertising. Try to model how someone actually got there rather than looking at where they're at now and try to duplicate that, because you may end up looking silly. Sponsors and Resources SweetProcess: Today's episode is sponsored by SweetProcess. If you're looking for a way to speed up processes in your agency, SweetProcess will provide the systemization you need to scale and grow your business. Check out sweetprocess.com/smartagency and get your productivity up. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM How to Create Amazing Ads that Convert More Clients Jason: [00:00:00] What's up everybody? Jason Swenk here and I have an amazing guest on the show. One of the Harmon brothers who is going to talk about how you can turn your poop into gold. Literally. Their videos are so funny and their ads reach so many people. And I'm happy to have them on. So let's go ahead and get into the show. Are you frustrated with how long it takes you to get stuff done in your agency or tired of your team missing steps or falling through the cracks? You know, you may be looking for an easy way to capture SOPs to scale your agency faster and easier. Now, our partners that Sweet Process have created an amazing tool to help you overcome all these frustrations. Sweet Process really lets you create a step-by-step instruction from every task in your agency. From writing proposals to executing client work and responding to client requests. So everything gets done more easily. No more mistakes or missed steps. Plus you'll have a central place where everyone employees, contractors, or even VAs can access your procedures anytime from anywhere. The best way to learn about how suite process really can streamline your agency is to start using it. So exclusively for the smart agency masterclass listeners, you can try it out for 28 days free of charge. No strings attached. Just go to sweetprocess.com/smartagency. To start your free 28-day free trial today. That's sweetprocess.com/smartagency to get your SOPs down and your productivity. All right, what's going on? Welcome to the show. Daniel: [00:01:49] Thanks for having me, Jason. Glad to be on. Jason: [00:01:51] Yeah, man. So for the people that have been kind of hiding under a rock a little bit, tell us who you are and what you do. Daniel: [00:01:57] I'm Daniel Harmon. I'm Chief Creative Officer at Harmon Brothers, and we're known for ad campaigns like Squatty Potty, Purple, Chatbooks, Poo-Pourri, FiberFix Lumē, Kodiak Cakes, Camp Chef, all these different campaigns that have, um, helped companies generate over 1.5 billion views and over $400 million in sales. And anyway, that's, that's kind of what we're known for is mixing some elements of sort of direct response advertising stuff that gets people to act and buy immediately with really traditional branding elements of storytelling. And that's kind of our sweet spot. Jason: [00:02:36] Yeah. And I love that. How did you guys kind of fall into that sweet spot? Because a lot of agencies, they start off and it takes them forever. So how did you guys progress through that? Daniel: [00:02:49] Sure, for us it started a little bit with a company called Orabrush. My brothers were co-founders of Orabrush, Orabrush is a tongue cleaner that, um, helps remove the gunk off of your tongue. And that's where 90% of bad breath comes from is the, uh, is the gunk out of your tongue. So in trying to market the Orabrush, they weren't having any kind of retail success at all. And the co-founder, the inventor of the Orabrush. Dr. Bob approached my brother about, um, being able to sell, um, online. Then with the Orabrush, they made a video that not only educated about how the Orabrush was cool and how it worked, but it also entertained at the same time. And a lot of the elements that we use in our videos are drawn from just classical sales principles, right? Things that you would use in a door-to-door scenario, things that you would use in telesales, email marketing, it's all very kind of problem/solution-based advertising. And, um, that was the case with Orabrush, where it was all based on the fact that people have a problem of bad breath. They don't want to breathe that onto other people. It's embarrassing. And then the Orabrush provided a solution where it would clean the gunk off of your tongue. And most people didn't know that good oral hygiene would include your tongue and not just your teeth, right? Most people know to brush their tongues, but the toothbrush wasn't really designed for brushing your tongue and this product was. And so it was educating about that, but then, um, adding the twist of the entertainment value and kind of a personality and character with it and some, and some branding really. I think that is a lot of what was missing traditionally through the years on things like food commercials, right. That they all kind of felt a little bit cookie-cutterish, but they all were in sort of a, such a similar pattern that they, they were mostly distinguished by how different the products themselves were rather than by the personality that was pitching it or the story that was being told around it. So with the success of Orabrush they ended up getting distribution in places like Walmart, CVS, Walgreens, Boots, I mean, international stuff all over the place. The company ended up actually being sold to a company called DenTek and, um, that's kind of where that started. I actually was an employee of Orabrush as an art director there, where we created, uh, over a hundred videos over the course of a little over two years. And so kind of learned the craft of that. Then later on, when we resigned from Orabrush, we, um, the first campaign we did was, um, with Poo-Pourri. And that one people know for the girl, that's the British girl sitting on the toilet saying all those terrible candid things about her bowel movements and how much they stink and that kind of thing. But that's kind of where that formula for us started to solidify. And then later on it was Squatty Potty. It became much more so, and then Purple and so on. But yeah, hopefully, that answers the question. Jason: [00:05:55] Yeah, definitely. I want to know more about the blooper reel. Like you guys have to have the best blooper reel out there for Squatty Potty and the Poo-Pourri Daniel: [00:06:04] When we were filming Poo-Pourri and we were listening to the lines that she was saying, of course, this is 2013. And so most of us, our perception of what can kind of be done in the advertising space in this way has changed a lot. I mean, obviously, Harmon Brothers has done a lot to change that perception, right? In how you can kind of joke your ways through certain taboo subjects. If you're writing the right line, you don't want to get super offensive it anything. But as I was listening to the lines that she was saying, as we were filming them, I was, as I was saying to myself, no, one's going to believe this is a real ad. They're, they're going to think this is a College Humor sketch. They're going to think this as an SNL thing. No one's going to think this as an actual ad. And so my brother Jeffrey was like, well, okay, think of a solution. What do we do? And I was like, well, I think we have to tell them. Jason: [00:06:57] “This is an ad” Daniel: [00:06:59] Well, we didn't do it exactly in that way. While we were on set, um, I came up with the line that, yes, this is a real product. And yes, it really works. And it became kind of a catchphrase in our advertising to some degree where people, we see them use it all over the place. We don't use it as much ourselves anymore because we think it kind of sets the viewer off a little bit or can even be distracting. But to some degree, we feel like that's a good space to be living in is if you kind of have to remind people “no, we're not just joking around.” This is, this is real what's going on right now. And it was very effective. Um, I can't remember how many people told me that when they were watching the ad right up until that moment when we said, yes, this is a real product. And yes, this really works. They had actually believed that they were watching some sort of like a spoof or sketch or some sort of just comedy gig of some kind. Jason: [00:07:48] Yeah. Walk us, um, because a lot of people want to understand kind of the framework of how. Because we all want to create including myself, so all of my audiences, agency owners, and I always like to say we exist to provide a resource. We wish we had, so we can scale faster, right? And 90% of our content is educational, but 10% is supposed to be funny, you know, like humor, like we talk about what is an RFP means, Real Fucking Problem, Request for Punishment. Like all these different things we try to put in there. And a lot of people struggle with, you know, finding a way to stand out and you guys have really have a formula or a framework. Walk us through a little bit of that. So the people listening can have an idea and be like, okay, this is how I can start. This is how I can kind of morph it and see if it actually works. Daniel: [00:08:40] Yeah, for us standing out has a lot to do with just asking ourselves, have we seen this before in the way that we're doing this? I am not one to, admittedly, I'm not one to really follow a whole lot of what's going on in the advertising industry. Meaning there's a lot of advertisers that are really into things like the award shows and… Jason: [00:09:05] oh, don't get me started on that. Daniel: [00:09:07] I just think you end up advertising to advertisers. You ended up trying to please your peers. Rather than actually speak and relate to customers. And so, um, I don't really go down that road and I, I ask myself more as we're doing the content, have I seen, have I seen something like this or are we doing something fresh enough as we approach this, that it's going to make them stand out? And it's not necessarily that it's always, that the character is always something that's just never been done before. I'm sure there's been a prince used in advertising before in some way, right? Um, in the way that like we have the Squatty Potty, we have the unicorn, there's never a pooping unicorn, I don't think, prior to that point in advertising. But using a prince I think had been done before, but in the way that we used it maybe it was a little bit different, right? Or the girl on the stall talking directly from a toilet perched on a toilet. That was something that was very, very different. Or Goldilocks releasing some eggs that fall down on a bed. Those were all kind of things that we felt like, um, hadn't really necessarily been seen before. A French woman singing, um, kind of in a Broadway style, uh, play-type environment for Lumē. All these things we felt like were just different than anything we'd seen before. And so for us, the basis of coming up with a lot of those ideas is really coming, um, is involving really creative thinkers into the writing process. And, and, um, a lot of that is for us centralized on comedians. So we're looking not as much for people that are extremely experienced in advertising and marketing. We're looking for people that have a lot of reps and a lot of skill developed in the areas of stand-up, improve, and sketch comedy. And then we feel like we can better guide the marketing and advertising language around that. That it's going to we're, we're going to be much better off teaching a comedian to be a marketer than a marketer to be a comedian. And that gets us some very different thinking because their jobs are like on a day-to-day basis are like, okay, what kind of cool thing can we come up within in the sketch? Or what kind of thing can we make fun of? Or what's some observational thing that I've seen that I can use in my standup that I have never heard anyone say before. That's kind of just second nature to them. And then that's kind of our, our starting point for being able to stand out. I'd say. Jason: [00:11:32] I love that. And so for the people listening, I guess, do they need to go and find their funny friends that are doing standup? Daniel: [00:11:43] Short answer? Yes, that's what I mean in Harmon brothers university in our courses, that's one of the things we teach is the idea that a community it's easier to turn a comedian into a marketer than a marketer to a comedian. And so we do recommend following funny people on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, that kind of stuff. Wherever you get your stuff. Facebook, I don't, I don't care. And then kind of looking at the patterns of what they use in their humor and things, but even maybe reaching out to some of these people and seeing if they'd be available to get involved, or maybe going to your local standup club or improv group or whatever it is. There's usually somewhere nearby in your state or your, or your area that, um, some sort of a culture or a community that you can tap into of people that are already in that world. And, um, I think using them as a resource is, is really good. And it's not always easy. There are, there are comedians that approach it very much from the standpoint of like, well, this is art and I'm doing art. So don't tell me what to do with your advertising stuff. Well, at the end of the day, it still has to sell, right? It has to move the product, it has to brand. It has to do all those things. Then it can't just be funny and it can't be tangental all the time for the messaging. Um, there's, there's ways that you can kind of channel that creative energy to be more productive for what you're doing. But yeah, I think it's a really good idea to go. Go involve people that are already funny rather than trying to teach yourself to be funny in order to get it done. Jason: [00:13:14] Oh, yeah, that would be horrendous. That would be, that would be really bad for a lot of people. Daniel: [00:13:20] Yeah. Like for myself, I'm, I'm not even like the funniest person around. I do have a good sense of humor, I have good comedic timing and mine more applies in the way that I go about filming and editing and enhancing what's there in, in writing. I mean, I can write jokes and that kind of thing, but like, I might be able to write one joke in the time that it takes some of these other guys and gals that we get involved. Um, like they can write 10 in the time that I write one. It's just not as efficient. And I'm pretty darn good at making that stuff that they write be funny in the end product. But as far as like originating that on paper, that's not going to be. There's going to be other people that, that have more superpower in that area. Whereas it would be a lot of toiling for me to do that. I can help out a ton in the advertising language and the sales persuasion and all that kind of stuff. And I'll all writing zingers here and there. But as far as like that really creative stuff that's needed. Yeah. We're always looking to outsiders to help with that. Jason: [00:14:18] I’m going to guess, you know, I'm in Atlanta today and there's obviously tons of improv and all kinds of places all over. And I bet if you went to some of those and you went up to someone and be like, hey, do you want to be involved in this? I bet they'd be like, heck yeah, I want to be involved in this. Daniel: [00:14:35] Yeah, they'd probably in most cases be over the moon excited because what you'll find is that most comedians aren't actually making a living being a comedian. They are developing it as a skill set on the side and they're passionate about it and they'd love to make a living with it. But as far as it's their full-time living. Ooh, it's, it's a small subset of that community that is actually making, making money and not waiting tables somewhere or, or not working in some sort of a warehouse job or in a kitchen or whatever it is. Like, most comedians are very happy for the opportunity to write something funny and be paid for it. Like that's probably going to be really exciting to them. Jason: [00:15:19] Oh yeah. After we find the talent or the creatives to help you with the idea. What's really kind of the next thing that we'll, will shape what we do to get these ads to convert or get people's attention. Daniel: [00:15:32] Yeah. I mean, I'm kind of going backward here, but the starting point for us is finding a product or service that we're passionate about. That if you can speak from the perspective of the customer, meaning that you've been sold on the product yourself, you've kind of had that aha moment of you as you've used it. Then you will be much more effective at communicating that to other people because you’re sold, right. You're not just selling people because it's your job. I really feel like, and I repeat this around here all the time that nothing sells better than the truth. And so if you get to that authenticity, that's a much better starting point. So for us, we're very choosy about what kind of clients we partner with, especially on our big campaigns. Because we want to really ensure that we have passion for it, that we have someone that has actually has belief in it. That's heading up the project that are whatever creative directors on it is really, you know, wants to, to sell this thing rather than just I'll has to, because it's part of their job. And so that's for us as a good starting point is finding a product or service that's offering real value, solving a real problem for people and is genuinely making the world a better place in some way. Jason: [00:16:45] Yeah. I remember, um, we were talking in the pre-show about Daryl Eaves, your producer for Squatty Potty. And I remember him telling me he was he how he was trying it out before. He would actually do it and he's like, it actually works. And it was pretty funny. Daniel: [00:17:01] That's essential to it. We have people that are mailing us their products, um. You know, fairly regularly we see new stuff come through the door and just so we can get our hands on it and start experimenting with it and start falling in love with it, or just being like, you know what, this isn’t for us. I remember a food product that came through the door the other day. And I, I, it was several different flavors of this particular kind of, uh, it was a, it was a snack cookie or something like that. And I, I tried one and another, another one and I was just like, nah, I just can't get behind this. I just am not, I'm not liking this. I'm not seeing how, how we can sell this because this doesn't taste great to me. And anyway, that's kind of the process we go through. Jason: [00:17:41] Very cool. So now that we have passion behind the product, we've hired the creative team, what are the things that you've seen that will make, make something sell, make an ad actually work. Daniel: [00:17:54] Yeah. So some of them are to relate with the customer in their pain. If you can dive into the problem that they're experiencing and you can effectively capture in video what that pain looks and feels like, then, um, you're relating with them and then they're perfectly set up to the solution, which is what your product or service that you're, um, that you're selling is going to be providing. So I think in the case of, for example, let's just take FiberFix, for example, when we did our ad for FiberFix FiberFix is a fiberglass a wrap or tape that essentially can fix almost anything. And it's in its a hundred times stronger than duct tape. And it's, um, it's stronger than steel by the time it all sets and hardens. We go through this scenario of a guy on a Saturday that has a broken sink underneath, like something leaking underneath the sink. So he goes to get the part to the hardware store and he comes back and realize it doesn't, it doesn't work. So he goes back to the hardware store and he misses all this time with, uh, where he could be watching football. As opposed to, if he would've just had the fix there with FiberFix where he could have just immediately taken care of that on the spot, then he would have been in really good shape. And so that made the pain very relatable to the situation that people that people face. So I think that's one of the best ways to speak to people is the specificity of what the customer goes through in the way of the problem that they face on how the solution of the product relates to them. Jason: [00:19:27] Yeah. You know, that's one of the things that we always ask when people engage with us. Or whenever we chat with them or in any of our Facebook groups is like, what's the things that are keeping you up at night? Or one of the things we did in one of our communities is like, what's the dumbest request you've ever gotten from a client? And then they'll just, oh, I mean, it's literally, you're reading some of these and you're like, yep, checkmark, checkmark, checkmark. So I guess my next question from you, and don't obviously don't name the client, but what's the dumbest thing someone's ever asked you for as a client. Daniel: [00:20:00] Oh, gosh, I try to erase those moments from my brain. Oh, the dumbest request. I think sometimes some of the dumber requests come when they try to force. It's and it's never actually, I don't think happened in our case, but when they try to say, oh, you should really cast this person as the lead in a role. And specifically, they're thinking of like a celebrity and we're like A, that is nowhere near your budget so you can't go there. B, whether or not they'd even want to be involved that's a whole other question. And C, they're probably not even right for the part, even though they, you think they are kind of a thing. So I'd say that's one of the funnier things that sometimes happens is that when the client's like, oh, we should, you know, if you really got, um, Tina Fey. Jason: [00:20:52] Or Tom Cruise. Daniel: [00:20:55] Well, yeah. That’d be awesome if you can do that. You know, maybe we should ask American Express how they pulled that off. Oh wait. They had billions of dollars. That's how they pulled it off. So that's kind of one of the funnier requests that comes through. And sometimes I'd say. I'd say the bigger mistake that we sometimes see clients make is just focusing on the wrong things. And by that, I mean a feature or an aspect of their product or service that's really important to them and they think is really cool. But when you actually listen to the customer base of what's the most important to them, what's the problem is solving, might be almost a little bit distracting. It's might maybe not even something that needs to be brought up and they're just like, oh, we really want this to be a part of it because you know, doing this long form ad and we're, we're, we're going on record two or three minutes so surely you can find a way to fit this in. It's like, it doesn't matter about the length. You still got to keep things focused, right? And so that's, that's another thing that happens sometimes is people just want me to stuck everything possible into it. Jason: [00:21:56] So, and that happens to all of us creatives, right? The client thinks they actually know better than us. Daniel: [00:22:04] Yeah. Sometimes they do. Jason: [00:22:06] Sometimes, but I remember we were doing a campaign for Pro-Line Boats and this was in 2003 when Flash was really popular, but we still had dial-up and they wanted to put a four-minute video of us chasing their boats on a helicopter on the homepage. And I was like, you gotta be kidding me. Like, how long is this like going to spin? If you remember the spinner, right? So how do you get around when clients do ask for something that you know is way off? How do you reel them back in? Daniel: [00:22:43] Primarily, I usually try to explain it in terms of data. So if we have any data from prior campaigns, that can point to the fact that they're going down a direction that's not going to be good for them. Then we can illustrate that with stuff we've done in the past. And then that kind of takes some of the subjectivity out of it. It makes it a little bit more objective. So if you have data to rely on to show the client, okay, that's not quite right. And the other one is sometimes it is on a gut level and you just kind of know, like, no, that's, that's not going to work out. And I think it's worth having those discussions and falling on the sword on behalf of your client to some degree, because they're hiring you to do something that they can't do themselves. That's the reason they're hiring you in the first place is because they know that they, they only have a certain level that they can get to and they need you to take them to the next level. And you essentially bend over or just kind of tower to every request that they have because they're the client, I think you're actually doing them a disservice. So what I ask myself, when we have those moments is. Am I falling on the sword just because on the creative and this is my art and that's, that's what I want? Or am I doing this because I think the client is genuinely going to hurt themselves? And if it's that I really feel, or especially if I have the data to show that the client is going to hurt themselves, then I'm going to fight that battle. If it's more of a preference kind of thing, then there might be areas where you can compromise. And like I said, sometimes the clients are even right. Sometimes they'll have an insight of something legally that you can't do, and they know about that and they can kind of steer you right in that way. Or some other aspect of things that will be more factual or whatever it is. And you need to be able to listen to those moments. But I'd say more so the real question to ask yourself is, am I doing this because I'm on my high horse a little bit, because I'm the creative and they're not? Or am I doing it because I genuinely want to protect this campaign? I want to protect their brand for them. If that's the case, then it's, it's a battle worth fighting. Jason: [00:24:50] Yeah. I love it. Well, this has all been great. Daniel, is there anything I didn't ask you that you think would benefit, you know, the agency owners listening? Daniel: [00:24:58] Um, yeah. So one thing is for us where we do so much of the direct sales and direct response style of advertising, and then the branding. I would say when it comes to branding and comedy and being funny and storytelling that you want to go further and further and further down that road and have maybe less and less direct response elements, the bigger you get as a company and the more competitors you have. When you're early stage, and you're very differentiated in your market, then you need to be a lot more clear and a lot more direct. In a way, um, I mean, you can be funny at the same time and stuff, but you need to be really focused on that sale when you're kind of in that startup phase, because you're just educating people on something that's brand new. You're maybe telling them about a product or service that they've never heard of before. And you need to kind of gain that trust initially with communicating clearly about how you solve a problem for them. But as you get further up into the market and you, and you have more competitors, if you think of someone like Nike, or, um, Ford or Apple doing a redirect response out of some kind, they would feel really out of place, right? Or red bull. Like it doesn't make a lot of sense at that place. You need to be just telling really great stories and you need to be relating with people emotionally and just highlighting a benefit in a clever way. But, um, you can't be going through and be like, I know it can't be the exact same format then because you're in a different place at a different time. And so I would say depending on the stage of the company, there's different ways to focus your advertising on that spectrum of, from direct response, clear, over here to branding. You want to be careful of not getting ahead of yourself in trying to be too clever and too funny and too, too many bells and whistles too soon, as opposed to kind of focusing in on the message that really matters. Jason: [00:26:55] Yeah, I totally get that because you know, a lot, what happens in the agency world is we look at the biggest agencies in the world. And then the little guy, or even the medium-sized guy, we go, well, we got to do what they do. You know, perfect example is looking at their websites. If you look at a big agency's website it is the ugliest. It is the worst thing. There is no conversion point. You can't figure out how to have a conversation with anybody. Like. We need a big H on our homepage. I'm not talking about Harmon Brothers. Daniel: [00:27:29] No, I got the dig it's okay. Right. Yeah. Jason: [00:27:32] Right. Got it. You got it. You got the punchline, but we need to model, like you were saying model how someone actually got there rather than looking at where they're at now and try to duplicate that because, yeah, you're going to look kind of silly. Daniel: [00:27:47] There's a time and a place. And you've got to kind of move along that path as the brand grows. Jason: [00:27:53] Yep. Tell us a little bit about your, you guys' amazing course where people can go. Daniel: [00:27:59] Yeah, so essentially we've developed an entire internal train that we use for our writers, for our editors, for our creative directors, for everybody to be able to create the kind of advertising that we do, brand the way that we do, sell the way that we do. And it's all on harmonbrothersuniversity.com. And it's our entire playbook. We don't hold anything back. We, we've put it all on there. The exact same internal training that we give here is what we put out on there. And so for anyone that wants to learn how to do this themselves, as opposed to hire it done, they can go to harmonbrothersuniversity.com, and they can sign up for the courses that are there. There's things like the 14-day script challenge, which is basically two weeks to get you from a blank page, all the way to a script that's ready to film. Um, which is a really cool course. And there's other things like the easy ads that sell course, which kind of gets you into a bunch of different little forms of ad formats that you can put out there on, on Facebook, Instagram, and so forth. Anyway, it's just been a tremendous resource for people where, um, literally the, our students have driven millions and millions of dollars by following the principles and learning from these courses. And, yeah, I, I would for sure say, uh, for people to check it out and they might even dive in and learn enough to be like, you know what? I just want to hire you guys instead. And that's fine too. It works both ways, but anyway, that's, that's our entire playbook there for people to learn from, if anyone wants to do this and hopefully it can help some companies out. Jason: [00:29:28] Awesome. And, uh, and yeah, they're not sponsoring me, but I just think what they do is really pretty amazing. So go check it out. I do have one last question, because I think that this, especially of what you guys have done with Harmon Brothers University. So a lot of people are like, well, why would you put your whole thing out? A lot of agencies think about the same thing. I look at it of going, I think it's a smart decision because everyone wants to know how, but a lot of people don't want to know how to do or to actually do it. And then the second part, I think. And hopefully, I'm not answering your, taking your thunder from this. The other part is, I bet you probably could pick like the people go through it and you're like, man, this guy is really good or this gal's really good. Let me just hire this person. Has any of that happened? Daniel: [00:30:14] Yeah, both those things we knew, we knew when we were seeing the success that we were, that people were going to copy us either way. And so we just said, why not just put it out there? And educate people on how to do it, right. That eventually some of them will come back to us and we've seen that for their own campaigns. And then I just have a little bit of the altruistic attitude and I think we, we do here internally of, you know, kind of you reap what you sell, right? If we put things out there that it'll come back to us in some positive way, even if it's not always measurable. And so I would say we haven't regretted that in the least in going that direction. Jason: [00:30:47] Awesome. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show. Lots of great takeaways and a lot of fun, making fun of each other back and forth. And if you guys enjoy this episode and you want to be surrounded by amazing agency owners on a consistent basis where we're making fun of each other, we're seeing the shit that you're doing wrong, and we can actually point you in the right direction. And you want to have a therapy group. I think a lot of it it's that so that we could feel sane and we can actually scale a little bit faster rather than have the shit between our ears, and you know, block our growth. I want you guys to go to digitalagencyelite.com. Check it out if it's right for you, do the application and maybe we'll chat and then maybe we'll see you on the inside. And until next time have a Swenk day.

Duncan Alney made the decision to focus his agency on social media back in the late 2000s when MySpace was still a thing. Now he's running a 7-figure agency and is has niched it down even further. As founder and CEO of Firebelly, Duncan juggles the roles of catalyst, program overseer, problem solver, and strategist within the organization. Today he joins us to talk about how he accelerated his social media agency, the benefits of letting go of your fears, and why you have to let go of your ego to reach the next level. 3 Golden Nuggets Letting go of your fear. When Duncan made the decision to focus his agency on social media, he started rejecting other types of work. It was a scary moment, but he had a “burn the boat” mentality. They would succeed in this new space or they would go down trying. In the end, they committed to following their own compass. Shortly after, they started winning awards by having a clear point of view and claiming their spot in the industry. The phases of running an agency. If you look at running an agency in stages, the first stage will be building. After that’s done, the next phase is all about direction, in terms of the values that you will set up for your business and will guide you in the decisions you make in the future. Once you established your direction, you will need to put some systems in place. Many people like to skip this part, and they will regret it. The combination of the direction and the systems is what will help you scale and get to the next phase of delegating. Get past your ego. A lot of agency owners want to be needed, and that can be a problem. Remember that your clients go to you to solve a problem. They are not necessarily reaching out to you because they like you or feel you’re the only one that could solve that problem. Learn to delegate. A sustainable business has to be able to run without you. Even Apple was able to continue its mission and vision without Steve Jobs. Sponsors and Resources Agency Dad: Today's episode is sponsored by Agency Dad. Agency Dad is an accounting solution focused on helping marketing agencies make better decisions based on their financials. Check out agencydad.money/freeaudit/ to get a phone call with Nate to assess your agency's financial needs and how he can help you. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Getting Past Your Ego and Put Clients in the Middle Jason: [00:00:00] Hey, what's up everybody? Jason Swenk here, and I am excited to bring to you an amazing agency owner who's going to talk about how he accelerated his social media marketing agency. He's in the mastermind. He's always a bundle of joy and always makes me laugh when I chat with him. So welcome, Duncan. So, for the people that have not experienced the Duncan effect, tell us a little bit about who you are and what do you do. Duncan: [00:00:28] I am Duncan. Much like Prince or Madonna or, you know, with this Duncan nothing else is needed. I'm the founder of Firebelly, and, um, we were a social media marketing agency. I'm also a dad and a husband/partner and a son. And yeah, I have a lot of joy in my life, so I try to bring it to everyone else around me. Jason: [00:00:51] Awesome. And so talk about how did you get started with your, uh, social media agency? Duncan: [00:00:57] So we started doing social media marketing in the late 2000s, really like 2007, because we were a branding agency and there wasn't any real differentiation. And I already had noticed at that point that SEO was moving very quickly. You know, websites were becoming more and more technical and I really wanted Firebelly to own a space. And so we decided, hey, this social media thing is new, let's, let's jump into it. So that's how we got into it initially and then over the years, you know, my business has, has really gone from being a lifestyle with some employees to being a real business in the last really two to three years has been, you know, with profit incentives and a social impact and thinking about ourselves seriously as a business, as opposed to, hey, get some people in here to do some work. Jason: [00:01:50] So let's kind of dive into that a little bit. So what were you going through at the time when you said, hey, I want to make a switch? And then what did you do? Duncan: [00:01:59] At the time, the company was sort of an extension of myself. You know, I had been like a lot of people a solo player with a bunch of freelancers and contractors. And what I was really good at at the time was actually doing the work. And so I did some exceptional work for brands. You know, whether it was tactics or strategy, well, probably mostly tactics, but you know, if someone wanted PR done for a launch or a trade show, or they needed a video made or email marketing campaign or a website like I was the guy I brought the right people to the table. But what I realized is, with all of that there's a reliability issue when you're working with freelancers and contractors. I mean, I don't care who they are. They're not your employees. So I was looking at employees mainly because I also wanted to start sleeping. Cause I was working with the development team in India and I didn't know how to say no. And so there were no boundaries and really, like, getting started in social media was sort of like saying, okay, we just kind of picked something, actually. It was in the MySpace days and we did a launch for a restaurant and I did the PR launch with the local media. And my colleague who we've been working together for 14 years, Chad, said let's use My Space and we'll geotarget the people that are within a 10-mile radius. So those people, you know, 10 miles is not far to drive to a pub for a good shepherd's pie and some, and some Guinness and the PR got on all the TV stations, but the social media created, and I'm not kidding a line of 300 people when they opened. And so we thought, hmm, I remember sitting in our tiny conference room and I, and I said to Chad, I said, we should just do this all the time. He looked at me like I was nuts. Like, he looks at me like that a lot. And that was it. That's the story. We… at the time there was no category, right. Nobody was really doing social. So we couldn't get anybody to talk to us. So the first few years, you know, if we wanted work, we bought the work. I mean, meaning, like we said, we'll do it. You know, cover some expenses and we'll just do it. Cause we were trying to build case studies and build, I guess, experience and expertise in the space. And so we did that and, uh, we were humble about it. You know, we, we acted like we knew what we were doing, but that we were figuring a lot of things out, which was kind of the situation in social at the time. Jason: [00:04:24] That's how we all are in everything. Duncan: [00:04:28] And then, uh, you know, then we found that, I mean, that we got a, you know it was a slow news day in Indianapolis and I got on the cover of the business section and Tony Dungy, who was the coach of the Colts at the time, had a photo on there that was one fifth, the size of mine. And it talked about, you know, us doing social and a couple of alums from my college called me and one thing led to another. We were doing crazy good work for a little restaurant chain and they hired us to do work for Qdoba. And next thing you know, we went from one brand to another and we were working for the blue chip nonprofits. And I think at the end of the day, those days of social media have come and gone. There was a lot more hype in those days and we probably got caught up with some of the hype as well, but these days it's, you know, it's definitely very different. It's all moving the needle, you know, and actually creating some outcomes. But there were years where we had, you know, what a lot of agencies do that say they’re social media marketing agencies. They can't really make a goal for that social media marketing, because either they don't have the focus or the expertise or they, they can't make the commitment, right? And so they fund all that work with some behind-the-scenes email, or they're doing websites or they're doing other stuff, but they're hanging their hat on social. We decided it was probably like five or six years, six years ago, like, you know, screw it. We don't care if we go broke, which we nearly did go broke. We're only going to do social. We're going to turn any other work away. That was a major, a major transformation. So that was like, what eight years in? And we decided, you know, we basically, I should have put a referral agency in place or talk to Chris Dryer about an incubator agency or something like that, and, you know, send all. We just gave up most of the work and, uh, we started off and, um, I think the experience and the expertise was definitely tested because now you got to do it all the time. And that's all we did. We focused in and we started doing ads and extended into influencers. We were ahead with a lot of that stuff. Actually, we were doing influencer work in 2012, and we've done it the hard way. You know, we've built frameworks and we build winning relationships for brands and their audiences and the influencer. And so I think that that kind of like commitment and focus isn't easy, but that's what it takes to win. Jason: [00:06:51] Yeah. What are some things that you attribute to the growth? That looking back you're like, that was a pivotal point for really kind of catapulting us to where we are now and where we're going. Duncan: [00:07:05] That's a great question, Jason and I, and I think that there are a few things that come to mind. I think the pivotal moment, if there, if there was a pivotal moment was losing the fear and saying, okay, we're… I think there's a quote about burn the boat, so you can't leave. It's like basically, we said, okay, we're either going to succeed or we're going to go down trying. And so I think losing the fear in terms of doing other work and also losing the fear of taking all business. You know, understanding that all businesses not good business, those things were critical. And I also think like we switched from doing, we've never, I've never been good… our company has never been good at following, you know, blind best practices. So we've always just followed our own compass and like saying we're not going to be afraid of doing what we want to do, and we're going to follow our compass on what we think the right way to do it has been. And it's a learning experience. The learning has not stopped. Even today we're constantly learning new things, but I think that embracing fear… as we're going to be afraid but we're not going to be afraid to do it. Jason: [00:08:15] I love it. There's so many agencies that they're so crippled by what they don't know that they can't push through and make that next step that's so needed. And I love that quote, I think that was from Tony Robbins about, you know, if you want to take the island then burn the boats, because then there's only one path forward. Because if you have a backup plan, well, you're not going to go at a hundred percent and then you're actually going at it as kind of half ass of going well, I succeed, I succeed if I don't that's okay. Like it's like, no, you live or die by succeeding. Duncan: [00:08:49] And I think part of it has been, at least we have a small team. Even now with massive growth we still have a small team. And I think part of that has been to lead from the front and not only lead from the front, but you know, this is where our stories start converging. Where when I first met you, you know, we read you a playbook, we read your book and we thought core values? Hmm. You know, we have a vision to be very good at what we do, and what are our core values? And so having core values really changed the way we saw the world and the way the world saw us. Suddenly, like. we had a framework for employees, well for colleagues, for partners, you know, for clients. And I've been several occasions where we have said no to clients based on our values. So… I lost the original question, so you’ll have to remind me. Jason: [00:09:40] Oh, I lost it too. I love hearing your answers. No, we were, we were talking about what was the thing that really kind of catapulted you to the next, the next level. Duncan: [00:09:51] So I think that looking at the values and looking at where we wanted to be was really great. I think also like finding a community of agency owners has changed the game for me. So, you know, I wasn't going to the best HR person. I was going to the best HR person for agencies, I was going to the best finance person for agencies. I was talking to agencies that had gone from 300,000 to 600,000, you know, or from 600,000 to a million. And I was surrounded by people that had walked my path before. And, you know, I think that community of, from a leadership standpoint, for me, that was a huge change. I think for the company seeing me confident about the future and seeing me say that there is no question about whether we're going to succeed. We're going to succeed or we're going to go down trying. I think that made a big difference. But then I think also a place where people started to find out about our successes. I think we won an award. In late 2018, uh, we won Sprout, which is sort of the defacto social media management system, in my opinion. And, uh, we want to Sprout award and suddenly like people were looking at us differently and we were applying for awards and winning them, and we won so many awards and then getting ranked by so many different organizations as being a serious contender. I think those were all moments when suddenly we went from toiling and basically in an invisible place to being very visible and, and, you know, that has given us a voice. And I think using the voice has been really important, like, you know, to help other agencies to help people that are looking I'm very active in Sprout channels and I think, you know, teaming up with other agencies, talking to them about the role of social and helping them and them helping us. Those are the things. So I think maybe it's like claiming knowing our point of view, knowing where we want to be and where we are then claiming our space in the world have been sort of like, I think critical components of like all of that, but I think the key piece was saying, okay, I don't care what we're doing. I can't give people as a leader. I can't give people a dependable, safe place to work if I don't operate from a value standpoint and protect them and enable them to do a great job with definition and clarity, but also running a profitable enterprise. Because at the end of the day, and maybe crass to say that, but we have to balance people's lives and people giving people the environment they need to succeed with making money. Jason: [00:12:29] Yeah. I mean, I love that you said that when you had more confidence your team, and especially, I noticed that over the years of building the first agency is whenever I would come in negative or whenever I would come in worried that would portray through the whole company. But when I would come in excited, vibrant, like this is what we're going to do, like just, you know, anxious, it would inspire everybody and then it would take the emotions or add the right emotions to the company. And when I look at running an agency or building an agency, I look at it in kind of four phases. I look at it as the first phase is really kind of building. So let's say we're building a race team, right? We got to build the car, but the only way to build that car and get to being able to drive it is you have to know what kind of car do I want? I have to have that direction. And you talked about that a little bit of like once I had that direction and like the direction of these are the values that I want to surround people with, this is what I actually want. Then you started catapulting you to the next level, which is kind of driving the car. And then I look at kind of driving the car is the only way to get to the next level is through systems. And putting the right systems in place for your team. So now you can take that car and go to the racetrack. A lot of people try to skip levels and I've raced against them and they wound up very on fire or hurt. And they've just tried to jump to the racing level too quick and they don't have the right systems in place or they don't have the right crew members in place. Then, the only way to get to the next one is through delegation. And over the past couple of years I’ve seen how you've progressed through the levels of building, setting that direction, setting up those systems, learning how to delegate. That's hard for a lot of agency owners or any, any entrepreneur, honestly, to delegate something that you're like, ah, let me just do it. And then once you have all that, you have alignment, your team's winning races and you're onto the next level. Duncan: [00:14:38] I subscribe to that thinking. Or did you call them phases? Jason: [00:14:41] Phases. Duncan: [00:14:42] Yeah, I mean, I think that how I interpret that for our world is you live dominantly in one phase, but it's very good for you to be in all the other three phases at the same time. So, you know, in our case where I'm looking for new service areas. And in that situation, you know, going back to one, and then when you have a new service area going into two, and then the agency as a whole, you know, we're going through a ton of systems work and I'm beginning the delegation work, you know? So there's lots of things I don't know, which is a win. And for example, like going from 12 one-on-one meetings to three one-on-one meetings, you know, things like that. And also, like, I think people want to be challenged. They want clarity and metrics, but they also want a challenge and say, hey, can you do this? I, I believe you can, but can you? And I think that that has been, you know, I mean, it's interesting. I know it's a tough economy and you know, everyone's getting a lot of applications, but we've had jobs that are requiring five and six and eight years of work experience and literally, we're getting 500 applicants and just going through the freaking applicants, is heavy lift. But I candidly like losing a lot of the rules, like, oh, you know, we have to have an office. Well, do we? We have to have employees in one place. No, with the pandemic we just threw that rule book out that playbook out. And now we have employees in Miami and Tampa and New York and Michigan and LA, you know, with more to come. And I think that people see that and they see like, hey, I can be a part of this. Not that people are everything, but they are a major component. Right? I mean, people need processes and protocols, and infrastructure. So, but I think that that's what has attracted people. And going back to the phases, I definitely think we're in phase three. I hope we're going to get through phase three soon. Jason: [00:16:46] As an agency owner, it's hard to know when you have to make those big decisions. I remember needing advice for thinking like hiring or firing or reinvesting. And when can I take distributions without hurting the agency? You know, we're excellent marketers, but when it comes to agency finances like bookkeeping, forecasting, or really organizing our financial data, most of us are really kind of a little lost. And that's why my friend Nate created Agency Dad, specifically to solve these exact problems. You know, at Agency Dad, they help agency owners handle the financial part of their agency so they can focus on what they're really good at. Nate has spent years learning the ins and outs of agency business. He understands everything from how to structure your books, to improving the billing process and really managing your financial efficiencies. Agency Dad will show you how to use your financial data to make the key decisions from making your agency more successful and most importantly, more profitable. If you want to know how your agency finances stack up to the rest of the industry, Agency Dad can tell you how to do that. A lot of my listeners have already gotten their free audit from Agency Dad. And if you haven't yet, go to agencydad.money/freeaudit before August 30th and get your free financial metrics audit. Also just for smart agency listeners, find out how to get your first month of bookkeeping or dashboarding and consulting for free. It's time to clean up your agency finances and listen to dad. Go to agencydad.money/freeaudit. Jason: [00:18:31] Oh yeah, you definitely will. And then the only thing that I feel that keeps the successful companies and the winning stage is alignment. Everything has to be aligned. But like you were saying, you're constantly, always resetting on different things. Like I tried it this weekend. So, this weekend I played a game, one of the strategy games, Clash of Clans or whatever, some strategy game. And I was telling my son that I used to play this game, Age of Empires. Clash of Clans it's just too many damn options. Like I was like, I can't, I'm frustrated. I'm not playing anymore. Let's go play football or basketball, but they did empires. It was pretty basic. And it was just like, get more wood gold and food. And as you get more, you progress from the Stone Age to the next stage, the next phase, the next phase, right? I was like, that's just simple. And that's kind of how I look at as you progress up. That's why I always tell everybody, look, when you get the agency playbook, you gotta keep going through it every year, because you're going to have to, self-assess where you're at. And there's going to be different areas that you might be like, oh, I'm good there now. But next year you have to kind of go back and go pull that lever in order to really kind of scale. Duncan: [00:19:43] Agreed. Agreed. I mean, it's interesting. I'm about to start reading it again and I'm looking forward to that. Um, it's also interesting to see one of the things that I think a lot of people think is that bullshit get rich quick gospel that's out there. You can read that gospel and it will take you wherever you are qualified to go. It is not a silver bullet. It is not any system that those get rich quick people. You know, those epistles are not sincere and authentic. And I think that there's a lot of people that think, yeah, you know, anybody can start a social media agency. Sure, anybody can do anything. I mean, I think, I mean, we live in America and it's the land of second opportunities and you can have a second opportunity for the 60th time and you can post a picture with your beachfront property with a boat, and then you can like ask everyone in the community for help and you can't spell words properly, and you're basically, you have no model. And so I think that that thinking is out there. But I think that the thinking that wins is when you have a community around you, of people that are going to tell you when you're wrong and tell you when you're right. And you know, you need to have processes and protocols and alignment and mean you need to have a plan, you know? So I think that, starting a social media agency. Anybody can start a social media agency, but I think being a player in any space comes with time and experience and expertise. And in fact, even we are now saying, even if someone's a great lead for us, you know, I got a meeting set up with the defense contractor and that's not good business for us. You know, we are now wanting to work with food and beverage brands and beauty brands. Do we have a drawer of miscellaneous clients we're passionate about? Certainly. But for the most part… so that's another step forward, you know, which, you know, part of my journey. That's a very difficult step to make, you know, saying, okay, I'm only going to do this, but it also comes with. No, it does liberate you because suddenly you're on a, I'm on a call. You know, I still handle all the business development and I'll be on a call and I'm like… learning the space is going to be so challenging. We're not going to make any money for one year. You know, whereas if we work with the CPG food brand or a wine brand, it's like, we're going to kill it in month two. And so that I think is another piece about like accelerating your agency. It's like our common friend, Jonathan Jacobs. He is the undisputed king of thoughtful social for authors and for books, you know, and for kind of like literary things. That's a very specific niche. And he does some other things, but that's what he's known for. So I think that that is almost like the next step, right? It's you can't dominate unless you know what it is you're going to dominate on. Jason: [00:22:39] Yeah, I must, I must break it up into kind of three things or actually three major things. And then each major thing has three things. So if you want to get to a point where you can exit the business from the day-to-day operations or exit from selling it, right? That's usually what I see a lot of agencies that they chat with me about, or they joined the mastermind for. And if you look at it as kind of three things, how am I attracting people to my agency? And then out of those three things, it's kind of like, do we have a specialization? Are we building authority? And do we have a lead generation system coming to us from outside of, you know, word of mouth? And then I look at, you know, on the other side, you have to have kind of convert. Do you have a sales team? That's the next thing we're going to work for you, Duncan, right? So you're not doing all the sales. Are we having a high converting quick offer, right? That we talk about with the foot in the door and then are we selling on value? Right? Like you do an amazing job at selling on value. That's why you're so profitable. And then on the other side, the scale part. Because there's so many agencies that can actually attract, like, do amazing job at marketing and sell, but then they really drop the ball at the delivery one. Like, can they set up, you know, is the agency running without them? You know, are they profitable? Are they growing accounts? And so when you get those nine things all working together, that's really where you get to the point where you have that freedom, that predictability you're making the money that you actually want. And a lot of times people just have to do a self-assessment and go, okay, well, let's just work on this one part. Then it kind of stems to the next part, the next part. And then you just move up stages. Duncan: [00:24:29] I really do think, I mean, I think you can live in different parts, but if you're trying to get to a place where you have, I was having this conversation with someone a couple of days ago and they were talking about that business and I said, hey, isn't it just, you? And she said, yeah, I said, I didn't say this to her, but I talked to myself, well, it's not really a business. It's like a job you do at home, right? And so if you want to get to a place where you grow your business and your vision is basically capable of working without you, I think that's, that's one of the first signs that you really got something that works. You know, whether it's you leave for two weeks and no one needs you or whether it runs all year without you with limited input. I think that that is a difficult place to get to, and it is really, you have to get past your ego. And a lot of us agency owners have an ego where we want to be needed. You know, we want to think that we're the only one that can solve this problem. Well, they're not going to talk to you, they want me. And it's like, it's not true. They just want the problem solved and they want the outcomes. And at the end of the day, they may like you, but if they don't like you they're going to work with someone else anyway. So I think so I think there is letting go and, and saying like, what is, and it doesn't matter if you're at the agency world or any world, right. It's like a sustainable business has to be able to run without you. Like, look at Apple. So many people thought, even with Apple’s scale, that Apple could never continue without Steve jobs. Tim cook didn't have the vision. Tim cook didn't have the operations handle. And obviously, that's not true. Again, how, it's been almost 10 years since Steve jobs died a little bit less, I guess. But I think that that's the piece that you advise people really well on. And that's what people need to do to accelerate is you have to actually decelerate as an agency owner for the agency to accelerate. Jason: [00:26:30] Yeah, you have to decentralize like you cannot be this, you're not the center of everybody's universe. You kind of have to kind of step outside and put your clients in the middle. And if you could put your clients in the middle and then build everything around them that's when you can truly create something amazing. And even if you're listening and you're a one-man person, and that's what you want and you're happy with it. Perfect. Don't let us lead you down a path of hiring a team and all that kind of stuff. But, but if you're at a place where you have team members and you feel like you're at a place where you're kind of just stuck and you're like, oh, I can never add double the employees because there'd be double the headaches. That's the incorrect interpretation of what's going to go. Because if you hire the right people, it can actually give you that freedom that you've always wanted. And I love what you pointed out, Duncan, about the ego, right? Like I'm actually going through this right now. I'm about to hire a salesperson and a lot of times when I get on a call, people are kind of sometimes surprised that I'm on the call and they're like, well, I don't want to be like those other people, but like, you just literally made me think going, man, I got a big ego. Literally, it's like, no, like you said it, they want their problem solved. They want to be able to scale their agency faster, regardless if I'm on the call or not. And I think if that resonates with everybody, like, that's a huge takeaway. If you guys are listening. Duncan: [00:28:00] I mean, and I, and I think it's fine for the ones that don't want to do that. They either don't have the vision to see the path ahead of them, or they don't want to be on that path. And I think that's fine. I think that you have to be realistic about where you are and whether or not that's what you want to be or not. And so if you want to be the practitioner that works on it every day, and you know, you're the copywriter who runs the business and it's like you’re also the main copywriter, that's totally fine. But I think it's also a risky place to be, because if something happened to you, you know, what happens to all your employees? What happens to those people? Those are all lives that are reliant on you as a leader, and also what happens to your clients? And I don't want to seem like old thinking, but I mean, it's like you have like a responsibility and you have a, like a responsibility to those people and those groups, and also to your own legacy, like, you don't want to leave people in the lurch. So those are not easy things to think about. Just like writing a will isn't an easy thing to do, but it's like, almost like you have to say, what's my obituary for myself going to be? And what's my obituary for my business going to be? Like, if Firebelly died today, what will people write about? Thinking about that though, I will say, does raise some uncomfortable questions. It's like what you set out to do? And if not, what are you going to do about it? Right? Jason: [00:29:19] I mean, it goes back to like what, also too, what regrets would you have for not taking action quick enough? Well, great insight, man. Duncan, is there anything I didn't ask you that you think would benefit the audience listening in to really help them scale faster? Duncan: [00:29:35] You know, I recently launched my Firebelly podcast. Jason: [00:29:43] Yes, finally! I should find the applause button on this software. Duncan: [00:29:47] Yeah. And I think it's interesting because, you know, we had what I thought was a very clever name and I told you the name and you said to me, I don't know what that means. It was so nice and I was like, what do you mean? He goes, you said, I think it's a shit name. You know, you need to communicate who you are. And so we said, well, we are Firebelly and we're social media. So maybe we'll just call it the Firebelly Social Show. And it's focused on mission-driven brands in the food and beverage space. But I think that if anyone has an idea on a great… my son is here to say hello. Jason: [00:30:24] I know, hello! I saw him peeking in. Duncan: [00:30:29] That’s the famous Jason Swenk that I always talk about. If I say Jason, he'll actually say Jason Swenk? So, who are you? I think that, you know, as we're trying to make our way in this world of like being a leader, one thing that you have to do as a leader, whether you're a, uh, one-person show or whether you're an 80-person show. I think that people want to hear from you when it comes to stories. You know, the leader. Um, honey, it’s a podcast. Jason: [00:30:58] Gotta love the pandemic. Duncan: [00:31:05] On stories, and I think the reason you got to keep going on the stories is when you stop telling the stories, it's like, you don't exist anymore. And so regardless of your scale, you know, you gotta be somewhere present in those stories. So I think that's, that's a piece that I've been talking about a lot. Where do we stand? Whether you're Francisco Serrano running a nine-figure agency or you’re someone else running, you know, a six-figure agency. It doesn't matter. It's like as a leader, you have to really tell the stories. Jason: [00:31:37] Yeah. I love it. Well, what's the website people can go and check that agency out? And then also tell us where we can check out the podcast as well. Duncan: [00:31:44] So the Firebelly Social Show is everywhere. It's on YouTube, it's on Spotify and Stickler and Google Play and everything like the Apple music. So the Firebelly Social Show, if you have some ideas of who should be on the show, I'd love to hear them. And then we are firebellymarketing.com and DuncanAlney.com is soon to be launched. Jason: [00:32:06] Awesome. Well, so exciting for you on that, and thanks so much for coming on. And if you guys enjoyed this episode, which I know I did, and you want to be surrounded by other amazing people like Duncan. And Duncan is always usually the first one to greet every mastermind member that comes in. So I appreciate you so much for doing that. And you want to be in a mastermind where people really have a lot of fun. They care about your success. They want to share the wins, you know, share the lessons that we have because it's not always sunshine and rainbows. We'd love to have you fill out an application because we want to make sure it's right for you and you're right for the group. So go to digitalagencyelite.com and until next time have a Swenk day.

Stephan Spencer made himself too essential in his agency, resulting in working to exhaustion. After a much-needed break, he was able to gain clarity on the best way to scale his agency. In the 1990s he founded the SEO agency Netconcepts and in 2010 it was acquired by Covario. Stephan invented an automated pay-for-performance SEO technology called GravityStream. He is co-author of "The Art of SEO", co-author of "Social eCommerce", and author of "Google Power Search." Today, he joins us to talk about how he scaled his agency to the point he could take a sabbatical. Learn how he intentionally worked himself out of a job by building a leadership team that could take over the thought leadership role. 3 Golden Nuggets Figure out what can be automated. We’ve talked about the importance of getting rid of the more tedious tasks to focus on what you really want to do. One way you could do that is by figuring out what can be automated or scaled with some artificial intelligence technology. For example, GPT-3 is a game-changer that you can incorporate into your product to have a real competitive edge. Don’t work yourself to exhaustion. It’s important to work yourself out of a job. By being indispensable, you become the biggest roadblock to the growth of the agency. Stephan wanted to be the visionary, not the integrator or the implementer, so he brought on a COO, VPs, CFO, CEO, and built his team to make sure he no longer was the company’s only thought leader. Establish authority in a powerful way. You can make a huge impact and put yourself on the map if you can find a niche where you can author a book. Another thing that can make a big impact and get you your first big clients is find a big company and offer your services in exchange for testimonials and the use of their logo on your website. It communicates to other clients that you are preapproved by this larger company and more clients are sure to follow. Sponsors and Resources SweetProcess: Today's episode is sponsored by SweetProcess. If you're looking for a way to speed up processes in your agency, SweetProcess will provide the systemization you need to scale and grow your business. Check out sweetprocess.com/smartagency and get your productivity up. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Avoid Becoming Indispensable and Working Yourself to Death Jason: [00:00:00] What's up everybody? I have an amazing show coming your way. If you want to know how one agency owner built an SEO agency over $6 million and sold it. And even before that got to a point where they could actually go on a sabbatical and the agency keep running without them. Which is total freedom. And, and to come back. This is the episode for you. So let's go ahead and get into it. Are you frustrated with how long it takes you to get stuff done in your agency? Or tired of your team missing steps or falling through the cracks? You know, you may be looking for an easy way to capture SOPs to scale your agency faster and easier. Now, our partners that Sweet Process have created an amazing tool to help you overcome all these frustrations. Sweet Process really lets you create a step-by-step instruction from every task in your agency. From writing proposals to executing client work and responding to client requests. So everything gets done more easily. No more mistakes or missed steps. Plus, I have a central place where everyone, employees, contractors, or even VAs can access your procedures anytime from anywhere. The best way to learn about how Sweet Process really can streamline your agency is to start using it. So exclusively for the Smart Agency masterclass listeners, you can try it out for 28 days free of charge. No strings attached. Just go to sweetprocess.com/smartagency to start your free 28-day free trial today. That's sweetprocess.com/smartagency to get your SOPs down and your productivity up. All right, welcome to the show, Stefan. How's it going? Stephan: [00:01:52] It’s going great. Thanks for having me. Jason: [00:01:54] Yeah, man. So, uh, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do. Stephan: [00:01:58] Yeah, well, I've been doing SEO since, uh, the nineties. If you can believe it. Even before Google existed, I dropped out of a PhD. Jason: [00:02:07] Yeah. That was probably back when we could, uh, put all the keywords in the background and put it the same color. Stephan: [00:02:15] Yeah. You know, I never did that. I always thought that was a little sketchy, but yeah. That did work kind of for a little while, uh, back in those days. But the idea of having eight or 10 different search engines that you had to optimize for was a little nerve-wracking back then, if you recall, there is Infoseek and… Jason: [00:02:35] Lycos. Stephan: [00:02:36] Lycos, AltaVista Dogpile, MetaCrawler, Web Crawler, Excite. Yeah. It was just… Jason: [00:02:43] I remember all of them. Yeah, it was crazy. Stephan: [00:02:46] Yeah. That was an interesting time, but then Google changed everything and became the 800 pound gorilla. And I knew that I needed to reverse engineer that algorithm and figure it out. So I did, and our agency went from being more of a web agency, interactive agency to being a specialist SEO agency. And we really made a name for ourselves. Even I developed a technology platform for, uh, doing an end run around all the technical, uh, roadblocks that most SEOs face with regards to things like, uh, implementing URL rewrites and, and, uh, fixing architectural issues and so forth. I used a reverse proxy technology and created this software as a service. We had clients like Zappos and Nordstrom using it, and we charged on a cost-per-click basis, which was brilliant. Because we could go head to head with pay-per-click, you know, like, oh, well you're paying 50 cents a click on average or a dollar per click? We only charge 15 cents a click. So you should buy as much traffic as you can from us and if we don't deliver, you don't get the traffic, you don't have to pay. So it was a no brainer. Jason: [00:04:01] I love it. Now, was that part of the agency when you actually sold it or was this a spinoff? Stephan: [00:04:06] It was. Jason: [00:04:07] Very cool. Stephan: [00:04:08] It was. Yeah. So that technology was really the main reason why our company was valued at what it was valued at and, and we, we got, uh, the nice exit. In fact, I don't even know if we were just a traditional agency, like everybody else. If we would even have been approached, I have a feeling we wouldn't have been. Jason: [00:04:28] Now, do you feel that having that, and I've been talking to a lot of agency owners, you know, in the mastermind and over the years about, you know, if you can build that little black box that only you have. Because I saw part of that as well as our agency, we were one of the first to build our own CMS system because we started in 99, so a little behind you. And we built the e-commerce system, email marketing system. Now we probably weren't as smart as you and a lot of other people that are like WordPress and all these, because we didn't turn it into a SAS product. We installed it every time and we were always working on our clients. But do you feel that more agencies, especially the specialized agencies. If they could try to figure out how to build a technology that makes them unique. Does that really separate them? Stephan: [00:05:18] It does. It does. And I think figuring out what can be automated or scaled with some artificial intelligence technology and to not have to kind of, you know, brute force it. Because there's some really incredible AI tech out there already. Like for example, GPT-3 is a game-changer and you could sign up for their, their beta and start using it and incorporate it into your product and have a real competitive edge. Jason: [00:05:49] Fantastic. I have not heard of that, but I'm not in that realm. Uh, so everybody go check that out or tell us a little bit more about that. So people know. Stephan: [00:05:58] Yeah. Yeah. So there's a company called Open AI, openai.com and their flagship product is GPT-3. And GPT-3 stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer… three. In case you're curious. But the idea of it is that it can take your input. Let's say you, you ask for a GPT three to write you a poem. Write me a poem about Elon Musk and make it like a Dr. Seuss poem and lo and behold, it actually does it. It's, it's amazing. You could ask it to catalog and sort images based on the kind of animal it is. You can just ask it questions and it will answer those questions. It's phenomenal. So somebody who asked GPT-3 to write a poem about Elon Musk, like Dr. Seuss would write it. This is really hilarious. Uh, you can, you can Google it or you can drop this link into the show notes. I'll just share one stanza from that poem with you, “but I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll send my Mars Rovers to red planet you.” Jason: [00:07:15] Oh, that's… man, that would've been awesome for college, for me in college. To be like, do this paper for me and do it this way. Stephan: [00:07:25] And it seems to have a sense of humor. Yeah, it’s like, really outstanding. Jason: [00:07:30] This is a free tool right now? Stephan: [00:07:33] It's not free, but it's not prohibitively expensive. Jason: [00:07:38] Wow. Okay, everyone go check that tool out and they're not sponsors or anything. So that's just a really pretty cool tool. I'm going to go check that out. Let's talk a little bit about, now we talked about you built a particular technology that was your own, you know, four year SEO agency that enabled you to, to sell it. But what were some of the other things that you did in order to get to a point where you could go on sabbatical and the agency keep growing? Stephan: [00:08:07] Yeah, well, it's important to work yourself out of a job. If you are relying on your own steam, your own initiative and skill sets in order to do all the selling and to manage the client relationships. To help with a higher level projects, activities, and so forth, then by being indispensable, you become the biggest roadblock to the growth of the agencies. So I didn't want that for myself. I wanted to be the visionary and not the integrator or implementer. So I brought on COO and, uh, different VPs. And even to the point, I brought in a CFO to help with the growth and even a CEO so that I could just step back. And if I had my company acquired and I had to go with the company that defeats the whole purpose, because I want an asset that I can sell, I don't want. To go from being self-employed to employed by somebody else. That's the wrong direction. So I wanted to build a company that I could be able to run, but without having to do the day-to-day work and I wanted, uh, so to own it, but not operate it. And I wanted it to be an asset that I could sell at any point. I didn't have golden handcuffs that would keep me at the acquirers’ premises for very long. So I negotiated down the earn-out. They did want me to stay for a period of time, but I, the maximum I would do was six months. As soon as that six months came and went and then the check cleared, they were surprised that I, I gave notice. I'm like, really? How, how could you be surprised by that? I would just, I don't get that. Anyway, so that was, uh, uh, you know, kind of a quick story about how I went on and did other things. I, I started another agency. It started more as a lifestyle kind of business where I could just take months off at a time, even with a very small team. And I did do that. I signed up for Tony Robbins platinum partnership, which was amazing. I followed Tony all around the world. All these amazing life-changing experiences. Platinum partners pay a lot of money to Tony Robbins every year, but they get incredible experiences in very exotic places all around the world. So I did that for three years and it was incredible. It was life-changing and I was able to do that because I had a successful exit. Jason: [00:10:53] Yeah. That's great. A lot of times people want to hire for things that they don't know, right? And to bring into the agency. You know, I was chatting with a buddy of mine, Dan, and he was talking about, you want to hire people based on what you don't want to do anymore first and start, right? Like if you're at the center, so you start looking at the under-hundred-dollar tasks, email bookkeeping, account management, project management. All these things and going, how can I hire so all of that is done? Because that's working in the business and then you got to look at what's the other side, on the business. Well, that's content creation because you know, like what we're doing now only us can really create this, but we shouldn't be doing post-editing, or editing it, right? That's kind of why I'm trying to do this all in one take. Stephan: [00:11:44] Well, you're doing a great job of it. Jason: [00:11:47] Well, I hope. You just jinxed it now. And just do like strategic planning, leadership development and work on those things in order to, you know, surround yourself. So, when you go back at looking at the first agency and even the agency now that you have now, what was the order of people that you started bringing in? And would you, you know, obviously don't name the names, but tell us that the titles or their, their responsibilities and like, who did you hire first, second, third that started making this to a point where you could have that freedom in the agency. Stephan: [00:12:23] Yeah. Well, when I started, I wanted to bring on contractors first. I wasn't sure to what scale I would get and how quickly and I was bootstrapping. And I didn't have any money to speak of, I, I was up to my eyeballs in student loan debt. I was studying for a PhD and I dropped out in order to start the agency. So I started with contractors to deliver on the client work and the, the very first event that I, I networked at to get my first big clients, it was, I don't know if I'd call it dumb luck. It was maybe a mix of, of that and, and gumption. I was pretty cheeky to go and I talked my way into this event as conference called How to Market on the Internet. It was a very premiere event, costed several thousand dollars to attend. And I wasn't a speaker. I didn't even have the money to afford to attend at that point. Because, remember, I was up to my eyeballs in student loan debt. But what I managed to do is I got in for free by being a volunteer and they gave me the job of being a mic runner. So, imagine this, is 1995 and this is my first conference that I, uh, in my industry that I'm, uh, I'm at. And I'm the mic runner and one of the, the rooms and I, as a cheeky 24-year-old, I think that I know more than the people on stage and so I have the mic and I start chiming in. And I ended up getting a big stack of business cards by the end of that day. Two big accounts came from that, both of those each worth, uh, over half a million dollars in customer lifetime value to me. I didn't have to get funding. I just had to put myself out there in a very daring way. Now I did get uninvited from volunteering on day two. Apparently, some of the speakers didn't think this was too cute when I was doing, but I didn't know any better. I was, I was just trying to add value in a way that, um, you know, many people would, would be pretty nervous about doing. Anyways, so this is how I got my start, with contractors to help deliver on that work. And then I started working on a more kind of permanent situation. In those early days, I hired developers and, um, uh, systems, administrators and stuff like that to handle a lot of the technical stuff. But where it gets really interesting is when I decided, you know what? I'm going to move to New Zealand, because why not? Now everybody else has gone, I was in Madison, Wisconsin at the time. Everybody else was moving to Silicon Valley to make their fortunes. I'm going to do the exact opposite and go halfway around the world to New Zealand. I'd never been there and I just knew intuitively that it would be a fantastic place to live. So I applied for residency, permanent residency, and I got in. So then I convinced my wife at the time and my kids to make this huge move. And we did, and I had to start all over again, pretty much, because I wanted to keep the US business running, but I wanted more of a skeleton crew. I had an office manager at the time. We were like seven staff or something like that, or maybe it was nine and we scaled it down to three. Three staff. And the main person that I left in the Madison-Wisconsin office was the office manager. I promoted her and made her a managing director so she could get in to exclusive meetings with, with C-level executives and stuff like that because she had the title. And I went to New Zealand and I started with nobody there, no… uh. It was very stressful for a month or so, but the very first hire there was a, a general manager. That general manager I have found through a recruiting firm and then I was able to, using that same recruiting firm and the guidance of that general manager, find I think we had seven other people that we brought in within a two or three month time period. So we had to build the team fast, because we had a lot of work and we didn't have anybody to deliver on it because I, I scaled down the other, uh, office to just three people. So that was stressful, but really rewarding and fun. And once I had that general manager, it was just so much easier because he was the equivalent to a COO. And so if you have to find one person, it should be your COO. Maybe the very first person should be your EA, so that, that can free you up from a lot of the tasks that are bogging you down and are not high value tasks. But after that, for sure, the COO I think is the most critical role set that allows you to stand back and be the visionary and, and speak at conferences and write books and write columns for magazines and things like that. And not have to worry about the day to day of operations. Jason: [00:17:47] You know, the, the one thing that I see is when you're on the side of the fence of working in the business. You're always kind of thinking of what and how, like, what should I do and how should I actually do it? But if you're on the other side of the fence of working on the business, the only thing is, is like, where are you going? Why are you going there? And who. Like who do I bring in to figure out the what and the how and all of that. It makes things a lot easier. I see, like that operations person as crucial, just like you. But I also see like with certain agencies, it depends on the situation, right? I look at it as the first hire almost, you know, after like a project manager to manage some of the stuff. So you can keep doing sales because you got to think of like, when you're starting out, you're doing sales. But you also have to figure out how can I get leads before I hire a salesperson in order to help them? So I look at it as hire a marketing person to produce leads. Because you're probably already doing a lot of marketing things that you can get off, right? And then after that, bring in a salesperson to help you, because as you get busy with, you know, delivering all that work and building the relationships. You start dropping the ball and you actually start, you might've gone through this, I know I did, self-sabotage the deal. You like, you try to grenade the engine because you're like the car can't go any faster because I know we're going to do really bad. And then I look at it as like, how do we bring in that ops person in order to, to really help out? But everyone's in a little different situation. Like if you're getting a ton of leads and you know, you're in a good spot, then you can bring in that person. So you've got to self-evaluate, there's no one solution every time. Stephan: [00:19:32] That's a great point. And if the lead flow is what needs to be addressed first, you don't have to necessarily hire a salesperson. You could go with an outsourced firm that can help you with the appointment setting or with the closing or with all of it. For example, there's a… one company that comes to mind is called Meta Growth and they will recruit the salespeople. They're going to be commission only, and they become your team and you pay Meta Growth, a monthly retainer, and then a percentage on top of that, of the sales that, uh, their team generates or the team that becomes yours. But they continually train and, and if somebody leaves, they'll replace them and so forth, and that's a way to build an outsourced sales team pretty quickly. Jason: [00:20:26] Exactly. Let's talk about the GM and the operations person. What were their responsibilities to enable you to step away? And what were the other team members that you had to have in place so you could go on the sabbatical? Stephan: [00:20:43] Yeah, so it was a few years later after I went on sabbatical. We built up the Madison office again to one that was at one point we got to 35 staff over there. And, uh, we had a CEO and the CFO, or no, we didn't have the CFO yet with the CEO, we had the general manager the same one that was my first hire in New Zealand. And I ended up taking six months in New Zealand and yeah, it was just, uh, worked great. It was really refreshing and I, I was burned out at the time. This was back in, I don't know, 2004, 2005. I had just worked myself to exhaustion, really, and I was needing a break. So, uh, everyone was very supportive of me to just take that time off, which I needed. Jason: [00:21:35] Let's talk about that because there's a lot of agencies that work themselves to exhaustion. So how did that happen? Especially since you had, you know, everyone thinks hiring an operations manager. You know, like you don't have to do anything anymore. So how did you work yourself to exhaustion and what would you avoid going through it now that you know what caused it? Stephan: [00:21:59] Yeah, well, I, I made myself too essential to the marketing of the business, being the thought leader, the thought leader, right? It wasn't like there were five or 10 of us. I was the one who was, uh, writing books and, uh, writing columns and so forth. It wasn't until after I had the sabbatical and I kind of realized I needed to have that function of the business, be distributed out across multiple staff, that we encouraged other team members to start writing columns and, uh, speaking at conferences as well. But yeah, that was pretty much just my job was to keep going from conference to conference to conference. So I was on the road all the time. I was based in New Zealand, but I was spending probably a quarter to a third of my year in the US, and I had small children at the time, and it was not easy for me to spend all that time away from them. And that took a toll on me and, and on my happiness. So that was a big part of it, and then I was a workaholic. Maybe I still am to some degree, but I'm way better, way better than I used to be. It's, it's like, it's a socially acceptable addiction. But it's not okay. It doesn't help your health or your family in the long run. It's just a way of numbing out, I guess. And if this relates to you and you're feeling like you're kind of a workaholic, then you got to take some powerful action to address it. Don't just think, yeah, that probably is something I should get to someday. You know, you got to address it because it doesn't break the camel's back until it does. And you don't know when that's going to happen. So just preemptively address it. Jason: [00:23:52] I've learned that the hard way as well. And the only way that I've found through that is creating kind of rules on your time and really goals around your time. That is first, I feel. For many years I taught people in the agency playbook the framework for us that, hey, set your revenue goals first, then your create goal, and then your time goals are last. Well, when you do that, you're going to sacrifice your time because everything else should be leading up to the time. And thinking about why, you know, like one of the exercises I walk people through is going all right, write out your perfect week and what does that look like? And then tell me why, like, do you want to take your kids to the swimming practice or track? Or, you know, do you want to be home when they get home from school? That's why we work so hard, but then we sacrifice it. I've been breaking my rules on, on health. I've just working, you know, until I get back to Colorado and literally just, you know, kind of skipping, you know, the health stuff. So what worked for you? Do we have to go away for six months to do that or…? Stephan: [00:25:04] No, you don't. Here's the key. If you're chasing after, whether it's your health or your relationship or career, family, whatever it is, it becomes elusive because when you're chasing after one thing, you can't chase after all of the things. The only way that you can win at all of it, the business/career. And your health and finances and family and significant other, all that, is to chase after just one thing that has it all. And the analogy I give you is, I learned this in Kabbalah class, actually. It's, it's a prism and the white light shines in to one side of the prison and outcome all the colors. And the colors represent all the different aspects of your life. Friends and, and the business and family and health and all that. So stop chasing the colors and chase after the white light. So that's the light of the creator. Like whatever your spiritual beliefs are, just that encompasses everything. That's where I had the biggest breakthroughs is by stopping chasing after those individual things and just worked on me as a spiritual being and everything just seemed to fall in line. It's just like life was happening for me not to me, once I started focusing on the bigger picture. Jason: [00:26:44] I love it. I mean, that's, uh, it's so true. And, I think we always have to remind ourselves that. Because we'll say it now and we'll do it for a week, two weeks, maybe a month. And then there's something that breaks our cycle. You've got to constantly be disciplined and I think also kind of self-aware of when that triggers in order to go back. Because it's a, it's like that one, that one story I heard one time, it was a guy that was working himself to death, running a business so he could sell it and go buy a fishing boat. And then he wanted just to be a charter boat captain. Well, he didn't have to waste 30 years of working around the clock. He could have just been a charter boat captain from the start. And I think a lot of times we have to kind of learn those lessons the hard way, but that's why you guys listened to the show to hopefully speed up that success or avoid those, those failures from others. That's why we, uh, we have those conversations. Well, this has all been amazing. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you think would benefit the audience? Stephan: [00:27:56] I do think if, if you can establish your authority in a very powerful way, that is going to make a huge impact. So for example, a thing that really put me on the map, not only did, uh, the gravity stream technology really help with this, but I co-authored a book called “The Art of SEO”. I ended up coming up with other books as well after that but the big one is The Art of SEO. And if you can find a niche where you can write a book, maybe even get a publisher for it. O’Reilly was my book publisher. We have three editions of The Art of SEO and I'm working on a fourth edition right now. And that is a huge game-changer. If you don't have the time for that, maybe hire a ghostwriter to help you write it. You don't have to be the one to write it. You just have to be the author of it or co-author of it. So that, that can be a game-changer. Another thing that is along those lines that really made a big impact in the early days was when we went from building search engine optimized e-commerce websites to doing consulting for even bigger companies that didn't want us developing the sites. They just wanted us providing the guidance like SEO audits and all that sort of stuff and they had their internal teams implement it. Our first big account. We didn't actually make any money off of, and that was strategically on purpose. We wanted to get a really big name right out of the gate as a, a, a client for SEO auditing. So we approached Target, target.com and ask them if they would like a free SEO audit in exchange for use of their logo and a testimonial, assuming that they were happy with what we produced. And they said yes, and they loved what we produced made. Made them a lot of money and they were happy to give us a testimonial and use of their logo. So once we had that on our, uh, clients page and, and our testimonials page, it was a lot easier to sell, uh, other, other accounts that was, that was just super ninja. Jason: [00:30:14] Yeah. I, I remember landing the first big account and then it just, they kept rolling after that. They want to hang out with others, even though it doesn't matter. It, it really. It's just a name, but people think, oh, if the biggest companies work with you, they're the smartest. Which that's not true either, they're just, uh, they're just big. So, that’s awesome. Stephan: [00:30:37] Yeah. And so, but you come preapproved, it's like social proof and if you can shortcut that process, if you haven't worked with a really big name company. Imagine somebody so huge that everyone will have heard of it. And that could be one of your clients. Yeah. There's just a, it seems like a no brainer to me. Just offer them something irresistible for free in exchange for a testimonial. Somebody's going to bite somebody going to say yes to that and hello. Jason: [00:31:06] I love it. I love that. It's just grassroots stuff too, right? Like this is easy stuff we all can go do. So make sure you go do it. Where can people find out more about you and check out the books? Where can they go? Stephan: [00:31:20] stephanspencer.com. I also have two podcasts. So you were on one of them. You were on Marketing Speak. That's at marketingspeak.com. And then my other podcast is a biohacking and spirituality podcast. And that's Get Yourself Optimized, which is at getyourselfoptimized.com. Jason: [00:31:38] Awesome. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show. And if you guys enjoyed this episode and you want to be surrounded by amazing agency owners on a consistent basis where we can see the things you might not be able to see and also help you get over those hurdles, because we've been there before I want you guys to go to digitalagencyelite.com. This is our exclusive so community where we provide you the tools, coaching community. Everything you need to scale your agency faster so you can get to a point to exit one day if you want, whether it be exiting your current role or exiting the business. So make sure you go there now. And until next time have a Swenk day.

Roger Bryan has worked with some of the world’s largest companies as an SEO consultant. He sold his first website in 1998 before he knew what SEO was, and spent years working with nonprofits. His agency Enfusen was recently acquired by Growth Foundry and now he joins us to talk about how he has led agencies to great success and failure, and analyzing both. Roger also explains why generating revenue is the real focus of SEO. He also shares tips from his book and even a few crappy jokes. 3 Golden Nuggets Rebuilding the team is key. After resetting his entire team, Roger started from scratch by filling three major roles. First, he hired an office manager that would handle HR and systematize everything they were doing in the business. After that, he hired a general manager to take care of hiring both divisions of the business. Finally, he looked for someone that could assist him in marketing and sale for tasks like managing outsource vendors and content teams. Pay people what they’re worth. As Roger’s first mentor used to say, the salary you pay someone is what keeps them at their desk and the money that you pay them after that is what you pay them to help you earn more. Some people will take their salary and sit at their desk, but a few will work very hard to make you money and you should compensate them in return. SEO is not all about ranking. If you’re in SEO and you think your job is ranking websites, you’ve already failed. SEO is about generating revenue, so any task has to be correlated to a data point that leads to revenue. Anything that is not revenue-related it's just busy work and so much of what SEO professionals are doing is busy work. Sponsors and Resources Agency Dad: Today's episode is sponsored by Agency Dad. Agency Dad is an accounting solution focused on helping marketing agencies make better decisions based on their financials. Check out agencydad.money/freeaudit/ to get a phone call with Nate to assess your agency's financial needs and how he can help you. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Why Did One Agency Owner Fire His Entire Team? Jason: [00:00:00] All right. I have an amazing interview with one of my old clients who has sold a couple of agencies in the past. And we talk about a lot of the mistakes he made in running his SEO agency. Then we go into a lot of different tactics about how he fired his whole team in one meeting and then a year later he was at $3 Million. And what are the three major roles that he brought in to help? What did he pay them? What was the framework that he used for success and how he really positioned his agency from just being an SEO agency, to being a revenue agency for his clients? And that was a huge, huge thing. You're not going to want to miss out this episode. It's really great. Roger did an amazing job. So let's jump into it. Hey, Roger. Welcome to the show. Roger: [00:00:54] Hey, thanks for having me. Jason: [00:00:55] Yeah. I'm excited to have you on, you know, we were reminiscing about how many years ago was when you came out to Atlanta for a workshop with me. Can't believe how long ago that was. But, uh, for the people that don't know who you are, tell us who you are. And, uh, tell us a little bit about the agency. Roger: [00:01:11] Perfect. Uh, my name is Roger Bryan. I'm an SEO consultant. My former agency, Enfusen, was just acquired by a company called Growth Foundry. We do enterprise-level marketing, a lot of multi-location, franchise marketing, a lot of lead gen, SEO pay-per-click, specialized in healthcare, nonprofits, all across the gambit on the different industries that we work with. Jason: [00:01:35] Awesome. Well, let's kind of jump into it and we're kind of trying something new and you're the, you're the first guinea pig. So welcome to being the first guinea pig. And it's really kind of a thing of like a how-to series to figure out, you know, if you're an SEO agency because your agency that you sold was that, talk about how did you specialize in that? Because a lot of times people will start an agency and they start trying to do everything. You know, design pay-per-click, everything under the sun. How did you pick SEO? Let's start there. Roger: [00:02:10] I sold my first website in 1998 and it sold pagers in long-distance service. And what I found was is then I didn't know, I had never heard of SEO. I don't know that I even had met someone that had ever said the term before, but you're putting on content onto those pages to try to get people to find them. Uh, to me, it was no different than making your company AAA in the phone book a hundred years ago, so that people knew, would find you first. It was just as kind of simple. I got into the auto auction industry after that, and we had a website and we were working with nonprofit organizations and it was like, well, how do I get us to come up first so more people find us? I didn't get into paid traffic until 2005. So I spent seven or eight years just living off of organic traffic, not even knowing that that's what it was called. I've always just been… I've stayed focused on it, and always hired people to do everything else. Because I was good at it. To me, my left brain works. It's a science to me. And if you follow certain rules and you do the right competitive analysis, it's easy. Jason: [00:03:14] Walk us through some of the team structure, because obviously, you got amazing results for your clients because you were able to sell the agency. So walk us through, how was the team structured? Roger: [00:03:26] Yeah. I've gone through a couple of different iterations of this. So my first agency, when I sold it, we had 12 people on the team, but we also had a call center and we're taking in calls for the leads that we were generating. So it was a little bit more robust than just SEO services. Typically, when I think of an SEO agency, let's say sub-seven figure versus seven to eight-figure the, the differences between the two. The sub-seven figure, really you are the thought leader. You're the one that's looking at the data. You might have somebody else doing the research. You're making strategic decisions and you're allocating resources to certain people on your team. For me, that would be a content team, whether you have full-time, or part-time, outsource a link-building source that compliments your content team. Uh, one good web developer. We tend to, I used to tend to stick to WordPress until I started working with Growth Foundry. Now it's a whole different game with the clients they deal with and then one person that's going out and doing some type of syndication. So syndication means taking that content and putting it out into places. I've tried all of the different tools out there for social syndication or engagement syndication, or even manipulated social signals, a little decent outreach to the right outlets never, it never worked better. So especially in today's world where everybody uses automation on those things. And I think Google has found most of those. Getting one blog post picked up by one real news article is going to give you a hundred times the results of all of the automation tools that are out there. So I think I hit like 4 different people there. When you get into a larger agency and you're working with larger clients, say your retainers are six figures or more per year, you're going to have a strategist in there. You're going to have an account manager in there and they're going to be different. The account managers dealing with the relationship, the strategist is dealing with the success. You're going to have the same underlying. Four core sections that you're going to deal with, but those teams might be larger and have different points of interaction. I don't like having larger teams for the sake of larger teams, but you have to provide a level of service that demands the type of revenue that comes from working with those larger clients. Jason: [00:05:34] And then how was it structured? Like where you guys broken up into pods? Did these a strategists and the account managers, did they report up to an operations director? How was all that, you know, once you get above the seven-figure mark. Roger: [00:05:48] Yeah. What's nice is I've done this successfully once I've and done it completely wrong once. So I can compare and contrast. Jason: [00:05:55] So let's talk about the wrong first, like, and then get into the right way. Roger: [00:05:58] Absolutely. The wrong way is for you as an owner to be in the mix. And I there's a period at the end of that statement. There's no if ands or buts about it. So when I went and I sold my first agency, my team dealt with the customers. I signed checks and I looked at monthly reports. And if my team had a problem, we would talk about it. I had very little interaction with clients other than conferences, or once in a while, maybe I would chat with some of our larger clients. Now fast forward to my last agency Enfusen, I did everything wrong. I kept hiring kids straight out of college or interns, which there's nothing wrong with that, but I would want to be the point of contact. I didn't trust them enough. I didn't go out and hire the best people. Now with that being said, some of, one of them now runs Halle Barry's e-commerce business. So they've gone out and done amazing things. And if I would have trusted them more, Infusion would have probably flourished more. But I had, every week I was talking about each and every client to some extent, and it was exhausting and we never scaled that agency, no matter how hard I tried, we would scale and we would implode, we would scale and we would implode. So the worst part was I knew what I was doing. I look back now and I'm like, why the F, I don't know if you swear on your podcast, was I doing that? And the nice thing about Growth Foundry is I'm the Chief Revenue Officer, so I'm responsible for growth and strategic alignment within the SEO team between our software and services. So they've taken me away from the thing that I was doing bad in the last agency and giving me a chance to excel at what I'm good at. Jason: [00:07:33] No, you can always cuss. Uh, no kids are listening. You know, I look at it as. Thinking back at all the agencies I've chatted with and all the agencies we've done. I look at it like the first stage is like the doer, right? Like you're doing everything. And then you get to another stage. You're like the barker, like you're barking orders to everybody, but you're still the only one making decisions. Then you get to the delegation stage, and this is where you're delegating and you're trusting people. And then there's one above that where I see only a select few actually make it there. You know, one of our clients, Zach has actually made it there where he's starting to transition out of being the CEO and more to, you know, the chairman. And it's exciting to get to that leadership stage where now all you're doing is coming up with the vision and direction, passing it to your leadership team and that's it and you're hands-off. And that's total freedom where you can scale. You have the freedom, you have profitability, like let everybody else worry about all that shit. Cause there's always shit. It’s just a matter of who's doing the shit, right? There's always like, I guess we use another analogy of like cleaning out the barn. There's always someone that has to take the shit out. Like it just doesn't evaporate. So let's talk about kind of the right way that you, you've seen it. Now you've kind of talked about like why you guys were going through that roller coaster, right? The ups and downs, because that's where you're focused. What do you think the better model for SEO agency is? Roger: [00:09:13] Yeah, it focuses almost too simplistic of a word. But when you focus in on a specific type of client in a specific service with a specific deliverable, that problem kind of works itself out over time. If you allow it, of course, if you're arrogant and your ego is this big, you're going to make that problem exist forever. But when I look at those ebbs and flows, I could see them dictated on the partnerships that we were in and the service that we were providing. And it was different enough each time that it created that need for like a recalibration of the underlying offer and then the implementation and the systems and procedures, if that is not a way to scale and grow an agency. When you get to that point where you've got a dependable, predictable revenue stream from the service that you provide, and you know that every client you sell it to has a 100% chance of success, then you have this model that people can go implement. And there's bumps, there's hurdles, there's hiccups. It's not perfectly easy every time, but you can overcome them better if you're working towards the same strategic goal each time. So starting with that focus element is going to make things so much easier. Jason: [00:10:16] Then how is the team structured? The right way. So, you know, a lot of agencies listening and be like, all right, man, that sounds like me, Roger. Like, man, I'm doing everything. I'm the doer. I'm the Barker. Like we're in this red zone here. So how do we get to the yellow and the green? Roger: [00:10:32] Yeah, the campaign managers a big part of it. You can call them client success, managers, campaign managers, cat herders, whatever you want to call them. But they're the, they're the face. They're the ones talking to the client. Whether some large clients, you have weekly calls with most clients you have monthly calls with and their responsibility is to gather up all of the information. And make sure that as they're going into that call, that they're presenting success, not problems. And if they're focusing in on that, then they spend the whole month building up their data, looking at the reports, making sure everything's going well. And then most importantly, we've got 10 data points that define success for every campaign. They go in and they look well, this one wrong, is this one-off? Why is this one going down? And they're talking to the team, they're talking to the people running paid traffic. They're talking to the people that are building links or writing content and saying, why is this data point off of what are we going to do to improve it? And their questions are what drives success from the underlying team doing the work. Jason: [00:11:27] And these people, are they acting as an Account Manager and a PM or are these two different people? Because there's a lot of, a lot of people struggle with, and I have my own kind of 2 cents on that too. So like, are they the same person? They’re different, they’re the unicorns, what are they? Roger: [00:11:43] The unicorns are nice. I have one that I wish I could get back. But they are managing both. Now, I've scaled up to right around $5 million. I don't know, at $10 million, if that dynamic would change, I'm going to assume that it will. And with the work that we're doing at Growth Foundry and the trajectory that we have, um, you do have an SEO department that's responsible for SEO, that reports up to the campaign manager now. But the campaign manager still needs to reach down at certain points and find when things need to be done. Now, there's a head of SEO, there's a head of Facebook and there's a head of, um, Google marketing, and then there's a head of IT and software development here. So I knew into that with them and I see that different structure. And it's interesting for me, I'm not an exact, I mean, I'm Chief Revenue Officer. I'm not involved in any of that now. So as I bring my clients over and I bring over relationships, I'll probably see how I fall into that mix. Jason: [00:12:39] Yeah, no, I love that. And I always saw like, I guess it would work really well for where you guys were with if they had really good SOPs to follow. But I guess you would have to probably find that Account Manager that really understood this and understood the strategy and could actually probably challenge the client. I mean, that's kind of why a lot of us as agency owners, we've kind of fallen into that role because we know exactly how to help them. Like we're not order-takers. If you hire like an order taker, you're just going to get a Big Mac, like, you know what to expect with a Big Mac, but you're not getting that most amazing burger that like, you start smelling it and your mouth starts watering and foaming, right? Like we can like taste that burger. And that's really what we want those Account Managers. So I presume that and you learn your lesson from the first one where you probably hired experienced people. So. Where did you find these people? And then, you know, what was the kind of levers that you would pull in order to make sure that they were right? And how did we move them out? Roger: [00:13:45] Yeah, it's interesting because this was, it was not a smooth process. So I started my last agency in Summer of 2005. And I remember coming in, it was April of 2007 and we were growing exponentially. We had, we were in one niche. We had one product offering. It was a home run. We were trying to scale. And I, it was just, the wheels were coming off. Like everything was wrong. So I walked in one day and it just, the tension was there. One girl in the office started an argument with me and I'm like, you know what, that's it, everyone just leave. And the entire company was fired. And then I spent the next six months going out and finding the right people. At that time I was based in Washington DC, and I don't recommend that anyone walk in and fire their entire staff in one day, but it was, it was a year in the making. And we went from that year doing $1.2M, and remember that was the beginning of the year. The next year we did $3.2M. So it was the right decision to make. Now there was a lot of fresh out of college. In fact, the girl that I brought in her, name's Amy to run marketing for us at the macro level. I sold that company in 2012, nine years later, she's still there running marketing for that company. And they've grown exponentially since then. The Office Manager that I hired in that timeframe, still there, the General Manager that's running the company since I sold, was my GM. So those right people helped me get to the point scale, sell, and then they continued to run the business for the investors that bought it. Where did I find them? I plugged into the universities. I would go and do the job fairs, but I wasn't looking for like interns. I was looking for the people that had gone out and done something. In 2005, 2007, when you're trying to hire digital marketers, there wasn't a lot that they could have done. So if they had a LinkedIn profile and they were doing any type of content creation online, they were, they were first in line. Jason: [00:15:34] Yeah. I mean, I remember when we hired designers. You didn't have to like, and this is where I kind of failed at school. I didn't really kind of create any side hustle while I was in school. But the people that we would bring in, if we brought them in right after they got their degree, which wasn't really a requirement with us. They had to, or had that side hustle and they were already having a portfolio that they could show us. They weren't just like this is their first pony, you know, the first rodeo. Was what I was trying to say, right? I was like first pony? Like where did we get a pony? Roger: [00:16:11] Like, I don't know. You got cows behind you. So maybe the pony’s not too far. Jason: [00:16:14] That might be it. Maybe it was because I was watching Seinfeld. And, uh, when Seinfeld was at the table, he was like, I don't like anybody that has a pony. And then the, this, the old lady was like, I had a pony. Why don't you like me? So maybe I think of that. I don't know, listening on the show, make sure you guys come and go to the website and tell me if you have a pony or not. Roger: [00:16:36] We won't judge you. Jason: [00:16:38] We won’t judge you. But getting back to, I don't even know where we were actually going since the pony. I guess that's where I show you my ADD, like pony, what? Go over here. Roger: [00:16:47] You took me for a ride on your pony and now we're lost in the woods. Jason: [00:16:50] We are so screwed. We were talking about hiring out of college. So I like what you were talking about. Like they already had the expertise there. They were already doing it. How did you make, after you evaluated that, what was kind of the first task that you had them do to make sure that they're right? Because I'm sure you probably hired some people that, you know, like, oh man, that was a wrong hire. Following this method when you reset the whole company. Cause that's fascinating. Like that's so fascinating. You come in, everybody get out and then a year later you bring on new people. So let’s talk about that. Roger: [00:17:24] So there's been a couple of different iterations here too with the last agency and this was good or bad. The first 30 days that someone was hired, they would go through a whole set of tests, whether that be the digital marketer tests, some of the HubSpot certifications. And only about 70% of them would be able to complete the first set of tests. So a lot of them, it was just a natural, you know what? You can't pass these tests. You can't work for us. Including my brother, he tried to come work for us. He couldn't pass the test. He didn't get to work for us. Jason: [00:17:51] That's probably a good thing. You never had friends or family. Roger: [00:17:53] Yeah. I hired him in other businesses before. I don't even know why I tried. But that was a decent way. So you had something to show me now, can you do what we do? I had tried in the past, letting them launch a campaign. That was always a disaster because I wanted, I didn't want to spend money on my stuff. I wanted to spend money on customer stuff. I had one guy, he had a $250 a week budget to generate leads. You spent like four grand in the first week and didn't generate any and it was on my credit card. That was when I learned that that probably that wasn't going to work anymore. So every person is going to be a little different. Now we're trying to hire people that are coming from other agencies. That have been in the game for a little while. We don't have the luxury of time to train up from the beginning. If you can come in, maybe there's a little bit of retraining, but we need to put you in a role and we need you to go and then we'll figure out how to make it better and how we can scale. I learned that by watching one agency grow from like nothing to like a hundred million dollars over the last seven years. And I've worked with them on a couple of projects. I'm not going to name them because I don't want to say it's a good or a bad thing, but most of the projects I worked with them on failed. But the same people that were working on those projects five years ago are still there. And I bet you they're better now, now that they're a nine-figure agency. But that says it's, it's a choice, they chose to just take on every client, take on every project and then they found their niche once they hit scale. Again, not recommending that, but that's just another dynamic that I've seen people do. Jason: [00:19:20] Yeah. I probably know who they are. They will be nameless, but, um, let's talk about when you reset the whole darn team, who was the first three people and why they brought on. Like, the role, the roles. Roger: [00:19:35] Yeah. The first role was the office manager, because I needed someone to handle like the HR side. Obviously, if you go in and you fire everybody, you probably aren't thinking about HR too much. So they came in and their job was to help me systematize everything that I was doing in the business. From the way the clients are coming in. We had to have like insurance policies in every state that we were working in because of the space we were in. Getting that done, then the general manager to hire both divisions of the business, because there was a service and there was an e-commerce business. By the way, I didn't fire anybody in the e-commerce business side, they were fine. This was just the office and service staff. And then I needed someone that knew marketing and sales a little bit. Uh, I didn't expect them to go out and sell. I was the one going to the conferences. I was the one in the booths, I was the one building the relationships. And I enjoyed doing that, taking people out to dinner, buying them drinks and like, it's not that hard. And when she came in and got to work, and then she started managing our outsource vendors and our content teams, and at that time we were using a third party to do our paid traffic. It was just, it was like a light bulb went off in my head. Like, why did I ever try to do all this myself? But finding that person's hard because it, especially today, because in 2007, entrepreneurship wasn't as hot as it is now. And people weren't as willing to take as much risk as they are now. So there's that balancing act of if you're going to find that person now, you're going to need to pay them very, very well. You can't ask them to bootstrap with you as you're growing this thing, you're going to have to give them all the money, even if it means you're taking less. Uh, to grow the business because what's stopping them from going out and doing it themselves? It’s not that hard anymore. Jason: [00:21:13] As an agency owner, it's hard to know when you have to make those big decisions. And I remember needing advice for thinking like hiring or firing or reinvesting. And when can I take distributions without hurting the agency? You know, we're excellent marketers, but when it comes to agency finances like bookkeeping, forecasting, or really organizing our financial data, most of us are really kind of a little lost. And that's why my friend Nate created Agency Dad specifically to solve these exact problems. You know, at Agency Aad, they help agency owners handle the financial part of their agency so they can focus on what they're really good at. Nate has spent years learning the ins and outs of agency business. He understands everything from how to structure your books, to improving the billing process and really managing your financial efficiencies. Agency Dad will show you how to use your financial data to make the key decisions from making your agency more successful and, most importantly, more profitable. If you want to know how your agency finances stack up to the rest of the industry Agency Dad can tell you how to do that. A lot of my listeners have already gotten their free audit from agency dad. And if you haven't yet go to agencydad.money/freeaudit before August 30th and get your free financial metrics audit. Also, just for smart agency listeners, find out how to get your first month of bookkeeping or dashboarding and consulting for free. It's time to clean up your agency finances and listen to dad. Go to agencydad.money/freeaudit. I love that you said pay them what they're worth. Because there's a lot of people that I see. That are like, well, just we'll give you equity. I'm like, no, like you believe in this, right? Do it all yourself. But like you were saying, it's very easy for other people to do it. So walk me through, like, we don't know who they were. So can you walk us through, what were you paying the office manager? What did you pay the GM or like, what would you pay right now? I guess let's do that since we're in 21. Roger: [00:23:26] So right now, I'm in Ohio and our agency's based in Pennsylvania, not in a big city, so we do have a little bit of luxury there. You're not going to get quality under 52 a year. And this isn't even people working remote. Jason: [00:23:40] For an Office Manager. Roger: [00:23:41] Oh, well, when we talk about people now? Jason: [00:23:44] Well, let's talk about the office manager, the GM and the marketer, the three roles, and then you can go into the other roles too. Roger: [00:23:51] So right now we pay our office manager probably makes around probably in the 46 to 48 range. We do and, it's interesting, I'm trying to not get sidetracked. We've got three service businesses here. We have two 20,000 square foot buildings here and play 65 people. So it's a little different, that's not agency work. On the agency side, I don't even know what they pay anyone yet, which is interesting if I think about it. Jason: [00:24:18] Well, go back to like when you hired those three people. Roger: [00:24:21] Those three people all started at 52. Jason: [00:24:24] 52, wow. Even the GM. Roger: [00:24:25] That was in 2007. Yep. Jason: [00:24:28] Wow. Of you had to do that now. Roger: [00:24:30] I’d probably be 80ish. Jason: [00:24:32] Good. I'm just trying to give someone a context. Roger: [00:24:34] Yeah. There's a part to that too, that no one stayed at 52. Within a year you were dramatically different. In fact, at 90 days, things started changing, uh, especially for the marketer who was handling all the client business. You figure if she was managing millions of dollars a year in revenue, I think she was getting dropped like 10 K every quarter, as long as our numbers were going up. And I'm sure she's a six-figure earner now having been there so long. Jason: [00:24:59] Yeah. And that's the crucial thing is, is like pay them a fair salary. That's what we always did. Fair salary and then do bonuses on performance quarterly. And you know, you'll get them above, you know, rather than pay someone, you know, some people come in for a GM and be like, I want 200K I'm like, sure. You know, crap in one hand and wish on the other. See which one fills that first. Roger: [00:25:24] You know what’s interesting about this? My first mentor was a gentleman named Patrick Morsillo, he was a really old-school Italian guy. He's about 80 now. He owned the Greater Cleveland Auto Auction, which was the first real job that I had after the military. And he kind of trained me on business. If it wasn't for him, I'd probably always have the employee mindset coming from where I came from, but he told me he's like the salary that you pay someone is what keeps them at their desk. And he's like the money that you pay them after that is what you pay them to help you earn more. And he's like, not everybody wants more. Some people will take their salary and they'll sit at a desk and they'll plug, plug, plug, but there's a few of them in there that will bust their ass to make you money and you'll compensate them in return. I mean, and I've had that mentality. I mean, that was 2001 when I first started working for him, I was 23 years old and that never… they have something about cows going down and having sex in the field. Those two sayings have always stuck with me. Jason: [00:26:16] You just keep looking at the cows behind me. Roger: [00:26:20] I know, I can’t. But it really was. You'd have this thing about patience and cows having sex, but it was a whole ordeal. Jason: [00:26:25] I kind of want to go there. I kind of want to go there, but I won't because it was such a good, like, I loved the saying that, that he said about like, people stay there because of what you pay them, but they'll make you money for what you pay them above that. That's brilliant. I love that. Let's talk about. Was there a framework that you guys used at the agency in order to get people success? Because a lot of times I talked to some agencies that they're just kind of winging it and they really don't have a framework for specifically for rankings. Can you talk a little bit about that? Roger: [00:26:59] Yeah, it comes down to a deliverable. So what we had then, the compelling offer with a guaranteed deliverable. So we did non-profit fundraising. So I could walk into a Goodwill and I could say, hey, I want to help you raise money by doing car donations online. Here's the deal, you're never going to pay me a penny. I'm going to invest all of my own money in advertising. If it works, we're going to split the profit 50, 50 after expenses. If it doesn't work, you just wash your hands of us and I walk away and never problem. The offer dictated the implementation strategy. Over time, we had a campaign for Goodwill, we had a campaign for Red Cross, we had a campaign for Salvation Army. They were different enough to be representative of the brand, the markets and the style of marketing that they were willing to do. But every Goodwill I walked into and there was 140 Goodwills at the time and we were working with 52 of them. So we were almost at 50% of Goodwills in the US were working with us. We made that offer and then it was a dependable, predictable model. We knew you set up a landing page, you launch a separate website. You set up a landing page on our site, you set up a separate website, you set up a landing page on their website. You rank all three of them, the top of Google, so that no matter where they donate, it's coming through us. And then you later on paid traffic for broad keyword terms. And it's the same keywords every time, just in a different market. And then you adjust your bids relative to the competition in that market. And that was it. I mean, there's intricacies of how you got them to rank, but we're going back to 2008. If you sneezed your websites ranked, it's a little bit more complicated today. Jason: [00:28:30] Yeah, it was so frustrating back then. Roger: [00:28:33] I know. Well, I had eight websites on the first page of Google ranking for Goodwill car donation. You could not donate a car in the United States without it coming through us. And three of them are still on the first page today. I mean, that's, that's all you had to do to win. I mean, that was, that was, uh, that was a seven figure ranking campaign right there. Jason: [00:28:52] I like that you had the success. What are some of the gotchas that you've learned with that? Because. I love that strategy. That's very easy for them to commit and especially of how you phrased it too, which I elegantly picked up on. I was like, well, we'll split the profits after our expenses. So probably it was maybe they were getting 30%, but they're 30% is better than zero, which was really good. So walk us through some of the gotchas there. Roger: [00:29:21] So some of the, the, some of the gotchas there is at a macro level, the only way that an SOP or a campaign strategy works is if you have a defined outcome, like you can't go into SEO with the idea that your job is to rank websites, you've already failed. If you even started that. In fact, internally in our organization, we kind of, we don't use the term SEO. We use organic revenue optimization. Our job is to deliver revenue to our customers. So any task has to be correlated to a data point that leads to revenue. And if somebody starts talking off tangent about this thing, okay, how does this get me to revenue? Nine times out of 10, that will bring them back. And honestly, they'll realize you went, I don't even need to be worrying about this because it's not revenue-related. It's just busy work. In so much of what I see SEO professionals doing is busy work. They read something in a Facebook group. They want to go try it to see if it works, but they don't sit down and write down, okay. How is this going to get me from where I am today to more revenue because the client's being need for revenue. Very rarely does a client pay for rank. And I say rarely because there are some doctors and lawyers that will actually pay for it because their ego says they just need to outrank the guy down the street. They don't care about money. They're few and far between, but they do exist. Jason: [00:30:31] And there are bad clients. Roger: [00:30:32] They are bad clients. They stick with you until they get there. Then they fire you and then they yell and scream at you six months later when they're not there anymore. So you know that there are short ride, six-month to 12-month client, which isn't what you should be going after. Anyways, if you have a dependable, predictable model that leads to revenue, your scaling capabilities completely open up. If you're chasing a different result for each client on a different traffic strategy on a different type of offer, you will continue to be stressed out. You will never scale, no matter how much you try to put SOPs and people in place. It's that, that single, dependable, predictable deliverable that makes business scalable and repeatable. Jason: [00:31:09] I love that you focused on the revenue. Because a lot of times an SEO agency will be like, we'll get you on the first page. We'll get your ranked. But you're doing things after that to control that. Because a lot of times, even with a pay-per-click agency, right, will be like, let's use dentists. They're a great example of a very hard client to work with. Right. We send a ton of leads to them, but their, their dumb staff never answers the phone. They never get back and they’re like the leads are shit. Right. But you're kind of taking that out of going, like, we'll take it to here by picking the right market too. Right? Like it's very important. That's important. You pick a really bad market you have to be resourceful and figure it out. Like, I'm sure someone's going to figure it out. And I have some clients that really rock the dentist world, but they are a little bit more challenging, but I like how you did the solution. Roger: [00:32:06] The big thing that we needed to do in the nonprofit space that we're repeating now in the space that we're attacking right now is that we started answering the phones warm. So we set up a call center and answered the phones, got all of the information and went right into their scheduling system and put people in. It's not that hard to do. It's not that expensive to do. It can actually just be a couple hundred dollars a month. And if you've got multiple clients in the same space, that's nothing relative to the overall value that it creates. And it completely eliminated, like I remember one of my first clients when I moved back to the Ohio area after selling my agency, because I wasn't allowed to work in the nonprofit space for a certain number of years was a dentist. And to me, it was, it was a breeze. He went from said he was getting five phone calls, of course, no tracking in place. So like one week I generated like 76 phone calls, you know how many he answered? Three. So I drove to his office an hour away and I went in and I talked to his secretary or assistant, and I realized she wasn't there to answer the phones. And I was like, you know what? We should probably just stop spending your money cause we both wasting our time. But now we see like we're, we're scaling really large in the septic industry right now because we have the largest residential septic company in the state of Ohio. Jason: [00:33:14] Is it a shitty client? Roger: [00:33:16] It is. I get crappy jokes like that all the time. Jason: [00:33:19] Oh, I had to like, literally everybody listening was like, when is Jason going to say shit? Roger: [00:33:25] And the first key was setting up a call center. We quadrupled the number of conversions by adding in the phone calls. That means we didn't change anything with the marketing. But four times more end result just by setting up a call center and we use answerconnect.com. They're great. They're inexpensive sort of, we're kind of at that point now where we're asking ourselves that we want to have our own people doing this, but 24 hours a day, seven days a week you can get a live voice. If you call for services through any of our websites or partners, and in most cases we can direct schedule, not all of them, we're working on that. Jason: [00:34:00] I can only, I can imagine the call center would be like, you got shit? We'll help you with your shit. Roger: [00:34:06] I should throw that up on our tagline. We just, we just bought septictank.com. So we're going really heavy into growing this business. Jason: [00:34:15] The tagline should be like “we help you with your shit.” Sorry. Roger: [00:34:22] I don't know if that'll fly with like the Facebook mods or anything like that. Jason: [00:34:26] I know, I kknow. I just, hey, I got. Roger: [00:34:27] And when the team did their brainstorming under taglines for septictank.com. Don't worry, a lot of those came out. Jason: [00:34:33] Oh, I'm sure like how it would be such a fun project to be on. Roger: [00:34:36] Our engineers call themselves poop inspectors, so. Jason: [00:34:38] Oh, that's brilliant. Oh, that's awesome. That should be the title of the podcast. Let's talk about your book that's coming out or it's already out now, so, yup. “Local SEO secrets” Tell us a little bit about it. Roger: [00:34:53] So we've been putting out content for a long time and I'm pretty vocal in a lot of the Facebook groups that I'm in. We decided to take our top blog posts and put them together into a book and then reformat on them around a specific goal. And then I reached out to a couple people that I knew in the space that might be better at things like we got one guy to come in and talk about GMBs. Another one to call in and talk about the Google My Business, or Google Guarantee Program. One on e-commerce landing, page optimization, and one on PR for SEO. And we put them all together and just kind of packaged it so that we could give our customers a premier on SEO. So if you read this book, you're probably not going to be ready to do enterprise SEO, but you're going to be able to have a conversation with us about the different tactics that we're doing. Uh, it's the same thing. I published a book called “Data-Driven Marketing” in 2017 and it was written for the Microsoft partners that we were working with. It was like, hey, last year we generated $56 million in sales leads for Microsoft partners. Here's how we did it. Do you want to do it? Here's the book. It sold 10,000 copies on its own, but it was never really designed to be like a revenue stream from sales. It's, hey, I want to educate my clients cause educated customers actually stay around longer. I always hear agency people say I don't want to make them too smart because they might fire me. And you know what that happens from time to time, we had a customer paying us a quarter-million dollars a year for four years. And they're finally like, you know what? Roger, we got this. We'll come to you for one-off consulting. And I was like, okay, that's awesome. I just trained a multi-billion dollar company and how to do their own SEO. It took four years. They made me a million dollars, but. They moved on and that'll happen. Jason: [00:36:28] Yeah. Everything transitions. It's, it's kind of like when I work with people, like even yourself, like you bake it in, you, you help them out. And then they transitioned, they graduate and they get to the next level, they sell. You know, it's just, it all happens. And, and everybody should celebrate that. Not like I always hate when I hear, well, I don't want to teach them everything I know. I'm like, then what are they paying you for? Like, what are you even helping them for? Like, why are you throttling it? Like literally, it as much pressure as they can take, give it to them. And then they'll be your biggest advocates when they have a success, because that's why we're doing it. Right? Roger: [00:37:07] The head of marketing at that healthcare organization, it actually worked with me at a different company before that and brought me in because he's like, I like the way that you teach what you're doing, you don't just do it. And you know what. He left there and went to another company and guess what they hired me to. And another person from that health care company texted me over the weekend. He's was like, hey, I'm at a new organization. These are the problems I have. Can you come in and help consult? You actually get more business by training your customers to fire you. Then you do less. Jason: [00:37:34] Exactly. Give us one really killer thing in the book. And then we'll tell everybody where they can get the book. Roger: [00:37:40] Perfect. If there's one killer thing from the overall strategy in here, it's like flip it upside down. Don't try to read it upside down, you'll get a headache. But SEO, isn't about ranking websites. It's about generating revenue. So the one strategy that I tell everyone before you even start SEO is implement call tracking. Now, again, this is local SEO. So we're usually talking about a conversion path that is calls. I probably wouldn’t work with the pizza shop. I can't track the revenue that comes in from that. Implement call tracking and figure out where you are before you do anything else. It only takes 30 days. If your customer is telling you, they're getting 50 phone calls a week, you implement call tracking. They're probably getting five and you're going to have a real benchmark set now you're also going to listen to do they answer their calls. If they get a hundred calls and answer five, you've got to fix that. There's so many things you have to fix in order to make SEO successful. And we charge, we charge maybe 1500 or $2,500 a month for our additional audit roadmap and data capture. But after that, you will know for certain, if you can help that person and what agencies chase money. Most of them do and it's why their lives are so stressful and so miserable. Because they'll take money from anyone. Be willing to say no. If the data doesn't tell you, you can make them successful. Uh, Travis Saga has a great thing. He's like you only take on someone if he's willing, and this goes back to poop, to give them a bucket of poop that they can dump on his head if he, if he doesn't make them successful. And knowing that he only works with a certain number of people and the ones that work with him and brag about working with them. But pretend there's a bucket of poop sitting next to you. Don't take that customer on if they're going to dump that bucket on your head. Jason: [00:39:15] I love it. I love that there's so many different things to break down, but I love how you were like, just do one thing to see if they're going to beat an amazing client and do that in early on, rather than invest all your time and you getting paid a great deal from them. And then you're like, this is miserable. You're gonna lose your team. Right that you're going to get bad clients and it's just a constant rollercoaster ride. But if you do it and you reset it and you think, how can I make sure? And even going to the prospect, I want to make sure you're good for us. You know, it goes back to an interview I did with Seth Godin, where he was like, look, there's this one agency that only want, doesn't want to hire over 50 people. And if they only have 50 people, there's only so many clients they can take on and they tell the clients, if you ever do anything, if you dump a pile of poop on us, we're firing you. Talking about shit the whole episode. Roger: [00:40:11] Going back to poop. Jason: [00:40:13] You like how I came back to the poop. That's what I did. That's what I do. Where can the audience go check out the book? Roger: [00:40:17] I mean, I'll give you a link. They can go to rcbryan.com/localseobook. And I'll just leave it up for a limited amount of time, but they can actually get the digital copy for free. So we took the whole book. We turned it into like a course format on teachable. And what's nice is we're actually there's conversations going on in there. There's been tweaks. There's been additions. Some chapters have been dropped to the bottom because people didn't find them useful. Some chapters have been moved up, we've redone some of the intro stuff, things that you can't do once you have a hard copy, but there's a great community building around it of SEO professionals and amateurs, just learning and trading, uh, skill sets and, uh, swapping ideas in order to create the best strategies for people. Jason: [00:40:56] Awesome. Well, this has been amazing. Everybody go to that URL, go to it now and go check it out. And, uh, is there anything Roger, I didn't ask you that you think would benefit the audience? Roger: [00:41:09] No, but I think we did 3 million, no, 300 billion cubic feet of poop last year. You forgot to ask me about that. Jason: [00:41:19] All right. Well, if, if all you listening, if you enjoyed this episode and you want to stay away from getting the bag of poop thrown on you, you need to be surrounded by amazing agency owners. And we're only looking for five agency owners that are over 500,000 and under 20 million. If, if that is you and you guys want to add multiple millions on, we want to invite you to go check out the Agency Mastermind. This is where we share the strategies that people are crushing it on and you'll be able to see the bags of poop that you can throw away. So make sure you go to, you guys can tell it's not a script cause I'm putting poop in there. But make sure you guys go to digitalagencyelite.com and request the invite, put in your application. And if I feel that we can help you out and you'll be amazing for the mastermind, we'll invite you to come on and uh, so you can stay away from the shit. All right, until next time have a Swenk day.