Podcasts about Agency

Society has a way of leading you to believe that the path laid out in front of you is unchangeable. But just because you see other people following the same path, doesn't mean you have to follow it. In fact, embracing the power you have to create new ways of moving through the world is how you own your agency and create change in the world.     Today, I'm having a conversation with Trudi Lebrón, one of my personal coaches, who specializes in diversity and inclusion work and creating just and ethical businesses.     Listen in as we discuss how you can create opportunities for yourself by claiming your agency, and how that can translate to creating business and institutions that treat people better.     Get full show notes and more information here: https://unfuckyourbrain.com/221

The transition from solopreneur to agency owner is … a lot, to say the least. It can be really scary, but it can also be really rewarding. And as long as you stay grounded and follow your dream, you'll find yourself living the high life in no time. That's exactly what happened with this week's guest Kari Roberts. Kari knew it was time for a pivot, so after completing she finished working with me in one program, she immediately enrolled in Agency Thrivemind – my 12-month program for those looking to start, grow, and scale agency model businesses. And that's where Kari & Co was born!Kari and her team provide virtual and back-end tech assistants for coaches and creatives. In this week's episode, Kari and I discuss her pivot into agency ownership and how she's settling into her new role. This Week We Talk About: When she knew it was time to pivot from solopreneur to an agency owner How she's grown as a leader going from a solopreneur to an agency owner Where Kari gets the confidence to grow her business and take the next step How she deals with the New Level, New Devils If you'd like to become a master of time management, check out this downloadable Time Blocking Template courtesy of Kari Roberts. PS: Are you ready to grow and scale your service-based business? Do you know for a fact that it's time to level up, and you know it can be done, you just need to learn how? Then you're ready to sign up for the Agency Thrivemind Program! Our Agency Thrivemind Program is a 12-month experience that gives you everything you need to make your wildest biz dreams come true. Building an amazing team, getting out of the client work weeds, and finally scaling your revenue well into the six figures WITHOUT running yourself into the ground (#sustainability), that's what we're here to do! When you join, you'll learn all about the 6 Pillars of a Thriving Agency AND get the hands-on support you need to implement them, all alongside fellow agency owners who are building their freedom business, too.Sounds like a match made in heaven? Check out this page for more information. Applications are open NOW so secure your spot today! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is one thing that you can do inside your agency to increase your sales.

We spend the bulk of our day trying to be productive managing work in web browsers like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Safari. Yet we allow our productivity to suffer for a single reason. The solution does not include more extensions or apps. It starts with a shift in your philosophy on how you want to approach using the most important tool of your work day. If you follow this productivity tip and strategy, you'll find yourself with a clearer mind and a better ability to start deep, creative work whenever you want. Plus, your coworkers will no longer see your "messy room." Listen to find out what I mean.Watch the video version of this episode.Links Episode 73 - My Productivity UNSYSTEM Episode 74 - Declare To-Do Bankruptcy Episode 72 - What is Web3? Follow newsletter @kenyarmosh /in/kenyarmosh kenyarmosh.com

Do you want to get your agency to the eight-figure mark and beyond? What are you doing to get to that level? Erik Huberman had started a few e-commerce companies and was unimpressed by the agencies he had worked with, so he decided to form a small team that could assist his clients. He quickly saw a positive response and created Hawke Media, an outsourced CMO and marketing team that customizes data-driven, performance solutions to help launch, scale, and invigorate businesses. In this interview, Erik talks about how setting financial goals helped him grow his agency to over $40 million. He also shares his marketing methodology and his book, The Hawke Method.  Plus the mistake many agencies make when they start growing, and much more. 3 Golden Nuggets On goal-setting. During the first year of his business, Erik saw things were going well and decided to set financial goals for the next couple of years. He met every one of them, so he believes there's a lot to be said about setting a goal and striving to hit it, and having incremental goals to get there. This will force you to step up when you're falling behind and keep you proactive in the market. In his case, he mainly used it as a scoreboard, as an indicator of growth. It really helped during the agency's first years and he noticed a difference when he stopped doing it around year six. Agency mistakes. According to Erik, some agencies tend to protect themselves a little too much once they get good and do it too soon. “They start throwing out long contracts, high minimums, they go upmarket, they only want to work with fortune 2000,” he says. He believes that this behavior alienates the people that got the business to that point. It is a solid way of doing business and works for many agencies, but Erik decided it wasn't for him and went on to build his business model on challenging himself to consider can you be one of the best marketing companies out there and still work with small and medium businesses too? Understanding the purchase cycle. A lot of marketers and agencies fail to understand the idea of a sales cycle or a purchase cycle. Many times agencies advertise for clients that ask for daily performance reports. “The problem with that,” he explains, “is that what we've seen in e-commerce is that for a $50 average order value will be about a three-week purchase cycle and about five weeks for a hundred dollars,” so understanding the purchase cycle will be critical for the agency-client relationship and a big part of setting realistic expectations about the work. Sponsors and Resources Verblio: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Verblio. Check out Verblio.com/smartagency and get 50% off your first month of content creation. Our team loves using Verblio because of the ease in their process and their large pool of crowd-sourced writers. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Getting to $40 million by setting financial goals & understanding the purchase cycle {These transcripts have been auto-generated. While largely accurate, they may contain some errors.} Jason: [00:00:00] What's up, agency owners? Jason Swenk and I got another amazing guest. And we're going to talk with Eric of Hawke Media and how they built an almost $40 million agency, or probably by now, they're already over 40 million and cresting the many, many commas, whatever in there. So, excited to get the episode. Let's jump in. Hey, Erik. Welcome to the show. Erik: [00:00:29] Thanks for having me. Jason: [00:00:30] Yeah, man. Excited to have you on. So tell us who you are and what do you do? Erik: [00:00:35] Sure. Uh, Erik Huberman, co-founder and CEO of Hawke Media. We're basically an outsource CMO and marketing team to companies. So we go into brands, identify full-time marketing and spin up different experts. All à la carte month to month. So it could be a Facebook marketer, email marketer, web designer. We've been around about eight years up to 70 full-time people. We run marketing for about 600 brands. And then we also have a venture fund and a financing arm as well, amongst many other things. Jason: [00:01:01] Awesome. And so why did you guys start an agency? What got you into it? Erik: [00:01:06] I built and sold a couple e-comm brands and through my own experience, as well as then I started advising and consulting for a lot of other brands found out that 99% of agencies out there for lack of better word are full of shit. And kept getting frustrated over and over again and went screw it I'm just going to hire my own small team to help these companies. And so built my little SWAT team and immediately saw the benefits. Like my clients started to like what we did. They started to grow and we started to need more and more people and just started to grow from there. Jason: [00:01:35] Awesome. So you guys have been doing it for eight years. You guys are almost 40 million or maybe over it. Talk about some of the progression that you guys went through. Like how long did it take to get over the million mark? Was it fairly quick? Did it take long? Like what clicked? That kind of stuff. Erik: [00:01:53] Yeah. In the first week of business, I shouldn't say first week, I think it was like… a month in, because for the first month, I wasn't sure… I was like I built this team. I started working on clients and I was like, maybe I'll build my next company and then turn this team into my own team. And so I wasn't sure what I was going to do there. And then after a month I was like, wow, this is really working. I should double down on this. And so I set a goal and I would put it on a thermometer. I was like, all right, the first four years we're going to do one, two and a half, five, 10 million. That's, that's the goals. And we came within 1% of all four of those goals. So I think there's a lot to be said about setting a goal and then really driving to hit it and having incremental goals to get there so you know how you're tracking against that goal. Because it forces you when you're falling behind to step up. If it's too easy of a goal, you actually end up, well you will hit that goal is still. Like it's, I don't think when you set a goal, you ended up blowing past it, you manage accordingly. So setting those goals really helped the first four years. And frankly, we didn't set goals for years five and six. And I saw the downside of that. I saw us not grow as fast, not do as well and not really know which direction we're going. But also, at that point we were big enough that it felt weird to just set another financial goal. It's like, yeah, but what are we really trying to do? And it took a couple of years to develop that, but now we're pretty clear. Jason: [00:03:07] And you listed out financial goals. Were there any other goals? And not talking about the incremental goals, I want to get to those in a second. But was it just revenue goals? And then, hey, what are the little ones that we need to do to get there? Erik: [00:03:19] Yeah, frankly, it was because that was the best scoreboard we had it. It wasn't any… It was intrinsic in the sense of like the goal was a goal cause it was the goal. It wasn't because then we could afford this or if you could do that. It was more of just an indicator of growth. And we assume that if we're hitting those numbers, we're also growing in the ways we need to be growing. And so we knew what the levers that we needed to pull were between bringing in new business, retaining our business, retaining our people, all sorts of specific metrics that helped us hit those goals. That became a factor of it. But it was, that was the end scoreboard. That was sort of the result that we were looking for. Jason: [00:03:50] So let's talk about the incremental goals at the stage to get to the million in the first year. And then let's talk about the incremental goals after that for the two and a half to five. I think that'd be interesting. Erik: [00:04:01] Sure. Yeah, we just knew basically, and this is a rough number, we actually got, every year, we got better and better at this in terms of like, where do we need to be this month, next month? How do we need to be tracking? But I also knew where were we six months in needed to be basically the run rate, assuming we went from zero to, you know, like the run rate for a million bucks is what? 80? Jason: [00:04:19] 82, 50. I think. Erik: [00:04:21] A month. Is that right? Yeah. Jason: [00:04:23] Don't make me do math on the podcast. Erik: [00:04:26] There we go. 82,500 a month. So anyways, we, I knew around 80 grand and so I was like, okay, so we need to be there within six months because then we need to make up for not being there the first six months. So we need to balance it out and assume that if we're going growing steadily, that'll be where we can do it. Now, in marketing Q4 is usually a little better, so we ended up going up. But, yeah, I mean, first year we did $1.01 million. Like, literally just beat it. And it was surprising, but we did it and it was all around uh, yeah, just aiming for it. So like when we, and again, I don't remember, it's been seven and a half years, but I, you know, assuming there were months where we were falling behind a little bit, that's where we ramp it up and be like we got to bring in more business, we got to retain, what are we going to do to make sure we hit these numbers? And so we would, it would light a fire under our ass to hit it because also those were ambitious goals to grow that fast. And to grow 150% next year and a hundred percent the next year and a hundred percent the next year we had to do a lot. So anytime we were off track, it just kicked us into gear that we have to hit that. Jason: [00:05:27] And I like that, you know, too many people set out a goal, but then they don't have an action plan in order to hit it or a place where they can measure it. And they just look, oh, January came, oh, we didn't hit it. Well, no shit. Like you, you were reactive to the market. You weren't proactive. You didn't try new things. You just kind of sat back. Erik: [00:05:47] Yeah. The term I hear from the best operators out there is leading indicators. What are the actual controllable leading indicators and get to that result? And in the first year we had no idea because like, I don't know how many people I have to talk to you to how many leads we get to… Like, we didn't have a funnel built. But I did know when we weren't hitting it the levers to pull. So I didn't have it down to a science yet. Now we do. Now my forecaster can give us our revenue within 1% and its forecast to the entire year accurately based on what the inputs are. And then it's just a function of manage, you know, being disciplined about the inputs is how you scale a business at this size. And even earlier, but statistics play out the bigger you get too. Jason: [00:06:23] Yeah. What are some of the, now that you guys have figured it out up till this point what are some of the leading indicators that are really important for getting over the eight-figure mark? Erik: [00:06:34] Yeah. So I would say having a really good handle on your average retention of a client is number one. How much… those clients once you have the retention. But it depends on your agency. We run an agency with that's a different type of scale. We have 600 active clients. So if you're running more of a traditional like creative agency, or if you have bigger clients, but smaller amount, the statistics get a little harder. But for us, because of the scale averages play out. And so we know our average lifetime value of a customer, we consistently try to improve that, but we know where it is and we measure against it constantly so that we can improve it, know that we're doing things that improve it. And then what's your cost to acquire a customer and what your pipeline looks like and what are your conversions on the pipeline? So from lead to qualified lead to, for us proposal, to service agreement, to verbal commitment, to assign the commitment, what is the breakage at each of those stages? And then we know based on the pipeline we have, how much business is going to come in the next month or two. And then we can also then know what does it cost us to get a lead? How much are we investing in marketing? Which ways are we going to drive those leads? So how many leads about can we assume? And then you get that waterfall when you can start to anticipate how many leads do you need, and then you manage against that. Okay. So we're going to need… whatever it is, a thousand leads this month to hit the numbers we want to hit next month. Let's go make sure we get a thousand needs. What are the ways to do that? Well, we have outbound marketing. We also have outbound sales. We have partnerships, we have every type of inbound marketing, advertising, etcetera. These are all things we can… leverages we can pull to make sure we hit the lead count we need to. And then frankly, at this stage all leads are not created equal. So we actually measure different leads at different values. Jason: [00:08:08] I love it. I love that you look at the leading indicators because then you can make the adjustment rather than wait, wait to the very end. Let's kind of switch focus, or maybe not switch focus too much, but let's talk about the Hawke Method. Tell us a little bit more about that. Erik: [00:08:23] Yeah. So it's been, you know, basically our marketing methodology that I've leveraged right now. It's been how I look at marketing for a dozen of years, but pop media has the entire time. I've spoken about this hundreds of times at different conferences and we decided to put a book together called “The Hawke Method” that we just pre-launched that's coming out in Q1 that basically kind of digest… In a really easy-to-digest way everything we think of when we're looking at a company and their marketing. So how do we look at their strategy? How do we assess what they're doing? And how do we know where to invest? Where to pull back? What channels to use? And so it goes from like the very high level, we call it “awareness, nurturing, and trust” the three pillars of marketing. And so we look at, are they covering those three pillars? Where are they not covering? And then we dive into and that awareness breaks down into advertising and PR and word of mouth and a few other things. And then even in advertising, where do you advertise? Is it Google? Is it Facebook? Is it Tik ToK, Snapchat, etcetera. And so we break down into how to look at all these different things in a way that we try to make it replicable as things change, meaning like it's a thesis and a methodology. It's not a tactic that works right now and won't work a year from now. And so, yeah, we basically put that together in a 200-page book and are putting it out there. And working on selling 20,000 copies and making it a New York Times bestseller, and we've already had several universities picked it up, like we're really making traction on getting it out there as a new way of looking at marketing. Jason: [00:09:50] What are, I mean, obviously you've seen a ton of agencies and you guys have acquired a bunch from what I've heard. What do you think a marketing front agencies do wrong for themselves? Erik: [00:10:04] Interesting. I… So this is my, a very controversial statement, but I think that they protect themselves too much when they get good. I think that the, what I see happen with agencies that I don't agree with that has worked for plenty of people, so I'm not saying that never do this, I'm just saying this is my own view. Every agency that gets good and gets a good reputation, starts to be seen well in a, you know, sort of in the ecosystem, they start protecting themselves. They start throwing out long contracts, high minimums, they go up market. They only want to work with fortune 2000. They do all these things that yes, they created, that's a solid way of doing business. I get it. But it alienates all the people that got you there. So I'm always kind of turned sideways to that. Why can't you build a business model and now thankfully we have, but this was our thesis, but why can't you build a business model of still being one of the best marketing companies out there, but still working with small and medium businesses too? I'm not saying don't work with Nike and the big guys, but you can work with small guys too. And so that's really what built it. I think that a lot of times is interesting. I watched a lot of agencies struggle to get up to the eight-figure mark, because they get a little pretentious and they in too early. There's agencies that are doing eight figures that I know that get pretentious and do just fine with it cause they can be. I'd say WPromote, you know, in the market they're constantly trying to go up market and stop working with small and medium businesses. They, you know, got, I think it was Gartner to rate them as one of the best digital agencies, like few years ago. And like, so they started getting a bunch of Fortune 500 interest and leveraged that. I don't know how it's gone for them in the past couple of years because actually those agencies hurt really bad in COVID. But I think that, you know, there's reasons to do it later, but a lot of companies jumped the gun and then they're like, oh, well, you know… One of my favorite things is like, we're staying small and boutique because we can serve our clients better. And I always go, okay, so you're telling me that I should hire you to scale my business and you don't know how to scale your own. Like, explain that one to me. Now, if it's a creative agency, different story, but I'm talking about like the growth and performance agencies that say they're staying boutique, like then you're not good because you don't know what you don't understand growing a business. Jason: [00:12:12] Are you looking for a content creation solution for your agency or clients? Verblio can help you with everything from blog posts, eBooks to video scripts, and a lot more. Verblio is a crowdsource solution to content creation with the pool of more than 3000 highly vetted writer who produce custom SEO-rich content. In fact, my team has been using Verblio and we love the ease of their process. With Verblio, we set the criteria for the style and the tone, and then they match you with the writers that have the expertise in your subject matter. Verblio is a platform specifically designed for agencies, and that's why for a limited time, they're offering my listeners 50% off the first month of content. Just go to verblio.com/smartagency to learn more. That's Verblio V E R B L I O.com/smartagency. Well, I think what happens is they hit, like, I look at it as like six stages of scaling an agency and they get to a point where their business doesn't have the right systems in place. Everything relies on them, they haven't shared the vision with their leadership team. They don't have a leadership team, right? They've gotten to this point by accident. And I think you can get over the couple of million by accident. Getting to the eight-figure mark is not by accident, but to stay there is true skill. Erik: [00:13:41] Yeah, you brought up this point earlier that I actually think relates to that. So I drove, uh, 85% of our business up until we were about a 7 million runway. And then it was the most ridiculous story, so I'm gonna skim over it. But I was hanging out in Monaco during the Grand Prix and saying the most, the richest people in the world, living their lives and went, yeah, I'm never going to be that in the way I'm operating right now. And not that that's actually my goal. It's not really a monetary goal, but it's more like I want the option. And so I immediately objected out of sales completely. It was scary as shit. Like I had a few sales guys. I was like from now on all my leads go to you. At this, I was keeping my better leads because I could close them better, but I'm like, but if I give them the sales, like they're still going to close a lot of them, right? Hopefully. Took that leap of faith. Thankfully had a good small group of guys that, uh, ended up doing really well with those leads. But we did dip. We went, that was June, July and August were down months for us and a little scary. And then we recovered and started scaling again. So, that was what got us into eight figure range, because that was the last piece. I never, on the execution side, I immediately brought on a partner that's my co-founder that did a great job of, as he put it, I'd made promises and he'd deliver on them and… Jason: [00:14:52] You deliver broken promises without him? Erik: [00:14:56] Yeah, exactly. You got to know your strengths, but, uh, he, he definitely did a great job on that side. And so we were able to scale that side from the beginning pretty well. So delivery wasn't as much of an issue. Cause I also, because I was the one driving sales, I did a lot of things that helped us sell. So I productized our offerings. I made things really easy to sell and really easy to put together and then build a team around that. So when I built a sales team, it was teed up for them in a way that was great too, which now we have one of the more higher producing sales teams in the industry period, or, you know, bringing on 80 new clients a month. So that was built because of that, but it took that leap to be like, all right, I'm done. I can't do this. And I continue to do that. And that was three and a half years in. And that became a good lesson, that over and over again, when I find myself, you know, diving into something, that's taking a lot of my time, if I can out eject, eject, whatever that is, and continue to hone in more. Like my focus more today is like a third strategic and working with our executives online, bigger initiatives to grow the business. A third growth, what expansion can we do? Whether it's M&A, whether it's launching a fund, what else can we do to build off this business? And a third promotional being on podcasts, you know, writing a book, that kind of thing. And that becomes more and more my focus. When I find things now pulling me out of that, I look for who else could have that. Jason: [00:16:08] Yeah. I always tell everybody your goal is to transform from the owner to the CEO. And like you said, it's kind of like four or five roles set the vision of the agency… Erik: [00:16:19] I went to a program two weeks ago that actually said the exact opposite. Jason: [00:16:22] Oh, really? Erik: [00:16:23] Yeah. Cause they said your goal is to transform from a CEO to an owner, meaning your business should be working for you, not you running the business. And I think the problem is what do people, you know, the CEO of your own one person company. But when you're an owner and you're just, you're, you know, you treat yourself as a chairman or an investor, the way you operate is different. And we're getting there. Like that's been, that was the goal for this year was to get our executive team in a place where I didn't have to do a lot of what they do. And we're there and we have a great executive team. We brought in COO two months ago. And so he's now stepping up and the goal was for him to run the day-to-day of Hawke Media so my focus can be on doing a better job for our clients, expanding the business. So again, strategic and growth, not managing the data that like, whereas our accounts receivable. Jason: [00:17:09] Yeah. And I remember I was chatting with one of my clients for many, many years. He started out around 300,000 now he's well over, they figure mark. And I remember telling him when you transform from the owner to the CEO, congratulations, you're going to be depressed. And I remember going through this, like I would go into a meeting and they go, Jason, I don't need you. And then I go to the next one, Jason, I don't need you. And I'm like, shit, the business doesn't need me. Like, what the hell do I need to do? And then someone's smart that run another agency was like, no, look, set the vision, communicate it often. Be the face of the organization. Coach your leadership team, you know, assist sales when you need to like add color, right? That's, that's all I'm good at if you want me to do follow up and that shit like, nope, like… Erik: [00:17:53] You were probably really good at it at one point. Jason: [00:17:55] Oh yeah, well, when you had to be, right? But then, then when you start tasting that really fancy champagne, I don't drink champagne, but I guess when some people drink fancy champagne or what is it Don Perignon or I don't know. I drink the Coca-Cola's I guess, right? I drink about a thousand of those a day. Erik: [00:18:15] There's gotta be something unhealthy about that, but I don't know. Jason: [00:18:18] Someone told me it rots your teeth eventually. I'm like, I don't care. The Coke I used to clean my race car engine, so I might as well stop drinking that. Erik: [00:18:15] Yeah, that's probably a good idea. Jason: [00:18:18] Awesome. Well, Erik, this has been great. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you think would benefit the audience? Erik: [00:18:35] Yeah, I would say the one big thing that every, or not every, but most marketers miss that is just a huge one for agencies too is the idea of a sales cycle or a purchase cycle or consideration period where… When you advertise for a client, they're looking for daily reports on the performance. Yet what we've seen in e-commerce specifically is for a $50 average order value it's about a three-week purchase cycle. For a hundred dollars it's about five weeks. For $200 it's about six weeks. And then it goes between two and three months from there. The issue there is like, if, so, if I raised your budgets today, you're not going to see the performance on it for months potentially. And so understanding that purchase cycle so that you report against it is critical in the agency-client relationship, as well as just clients understanding the market. And we see this, we get into this fight a lot where it's like our ROAS this it's like that's a seven-day fucking window. You have a $400 product. What are you talking about? So… Jason: [00:19:26] Well, it's about too knowing the right clients to bring on. Cause, you know, I always say there's no such thing as a bad agency client, there's only a bad prospect or a bad process, and you've got to kind of figure it out and be like, hey, if this is a bad prospect, let's not let them in. And like, I'm like, dude, if you're at zero ROAS, eventually you're going to be so far in the green, who cares? You're getting free advertising. Erik: [00:19:55] A hundred percent. Jason: [00:19:56] So one last question I had, I lied, I guess… I remember maybe sometime back and maybe you've changed this. Do you guys still not have any contracts or long-term contracts? Erik: [00:20:06] Yeah. We prefer month-to-month. Jason: [00:20:08] Why is that…? Obviously, it's working well for you. I've seen some people struggle with it. I've seen some people love it, so… Erik: [00:20:16] Yeah. It's not easy. I was on the other side and everyone was asking me to get married before they ever went on a date with me. Just felt screwed up. I'm not here to protect my vendors is kind of how I felt about it. And I, sorry to use a derogatory term in our space, but if I'm running a brand and I'm hiring you to do my marketing, I don't give a shit if you want a long-term contract, I'm not signing it. And we still stand true to that. When people try to give us longer contracts we just say no, and if you don't want our business, that's fine. We walked away from a few software companies who were like, we have never used your software so like if you want to give us a three month trial we'll do. Because as they said, it's not enough time to ramp up in a month. I'm like, if you want to give us a three-month trial we'll do it, but I'm not signing a three-year contract. You're out of your fucking mind. Like, that's just doesn't make sense to me and so we just stuck to that. And then right now, or like our mission statement is accessibility to great marketing. The idea is we want to be nimble, flexible, accessible, and built that way and be the best at what we do. So by being month to month it forces us to be able to be flexible and nimble. We're just used to it. Our business has to function that way. Jason: [00:21:16] Yeah. And then going back to, you know, your leading indicators and knowing your lifetime value of a client like you can calculate, like, when I look at, you know, our mastermind average member is in their 24 month. And like when you know that that's predictability, because I always tell people, you know, when we go to buy an agency, a lot of times, you know, when you acquire agency, you want to know predictability. The longer-term contracts, a lot of times you'll get a higher valuation because of the predictability is there. But if you can show a track record of having your clients stay this long, that will act the same way. Erik: [00:21:51] And I will say, cause we've dealt with all those conversations. Like if you're looking for an investor to value or a buyer, get a smart one that understands your business. Don't go with someone that's using a cookie-cutter approach to buying the business because you're not going to get a good valuation. And my wife's a senior executive private equity. We have a venture fund. I look at those numbers all the time and it's like, I've had all those stupid conversations. I had… You know where it's like either you're stupid or you think I'm stupid because this, what you're saying is not actually how it works in this world. And that's another good piece of advice I got a long time ago is have your pulse on, if your plan is to sell, which thankfully is not ours, but I get it for a lot of people. Have your pulse on the industry, know what it is to do M&A in your industry. Talk to a banker once a quarter, talk to people, keep your information so you know what the multiples are, you know, what's happening, you know, who the buyers are having a relationship with them. And if again, your goal is to sell, call the people that would buy you and ask them what they would want to buy and just build that. It becomes really easy. Jason: [00:22:45] And I love that. I'm like, yeah, if you know, like make a target list now of the people you have love to buy you and start forming a relationship with them now. Erik: [00:22:54] Yep. It makes it so much easier to get a deal done. And then, you know, you can trust them. They can trust you. Like that part is so important and yeah, I mean, there's no reason for them not to tell you exactly what they want to buy. You just make it easy for them. Jason: [00:23:05] Unless they don't know what they want to buy. And there's a ton of people out there like that. Erik: [00:23:10] Yeah, then don't sell to them cause you don't want that type of buyer. You want someone that's very confident and knows what they're doing so that you can able, depending on what your outcome is too. The only thing I'd say the caveat is if you're really looking at just straight exit debt out and it doesn't matter as much who the buyer is, but that's a hard thing to do with an agency. And you're probably going to do a lot of headaches with an uneducated buyer. Jason: [00:23:29] Well, yeah, and you're not going to get the valuation or the money that you want. If you want straight out buyers like us, we'll be like, all right, what's wrong? Like, what are you not telling us? Erik: [00:23:40] Yep. We've looked at those deals. We actually, funny enough, we just passed on one. We look at those deals, but we offer less. We're like, key, like if you're not there, you're, there's a loss in value. Jason: [00:23:51] Yeah, exactly. And that should make you feel good. Erik: [00:23:53] The fact, especially if you're a sub eight-figure agency, like you can't tell me that you're not driving the boat. Jason: [00:24:00] Yeah, exactly. What's the title of the book and where can people get it? Erik: [00:24:03] You can get it at hawkemethod.com, hawkemethod.com. Jason: [00:24:07] Awesome. Well, everyone go check that out. Erik, thanks so much for coming on the show. And if you guys want to be around amazing agency owners that have been to where you want to go and be able to see the things that you might not be able to see and just have a lot of fun and share the strategies. I want you to all, to go to digitalagencyelite.com.  This is our exclusive mastermind for experienced seven and eight-figure agencies and beyond. So make sure you go there now, go to digitalagencyelite.com and until next time have a Swenk day.

In this episode, Scott & Bradley discuss new born babies, colorful neighbors, personal and agency goals, and insurance industry predictions for 2022. ///////////// The $100 Million Dollar Agency Makeover Enter for a chance at one free year of agency consulting! In effort to share the secret sauce, the GloveBox team has partnered with The Insurance Guys Podcast for a unique giveaway. Click here to ENTER >>> Sponsor: GloveBox A seamless all-in-one platform connecting clients to your agency and their carriers. Maximize the client experience with both Agency and Carrier self-service features. Check them out here >>> Get the CoverWallet Insurance Guys Deal Here >>>

In this episode of Power Women In Insurance, Linda Marie Fisher and Teresa Kitchens talk about how Linda went from commission-only sales for an agency to opening her own agency and running a rock star team. Episode Highlights: Linda shares her journey to becoming an insurance agent. (1:33) Linda thinks back to the moment when she was able to secure her first high-end client for her company. (5:29) Linda tells us what she gets out of attending conferences. (11:51) Linda explains that to make the company successful, we have to take care of our employees. (15:03) Linda shares what she gives to newly hired agents, and how this helps them improve as a team. (20:37) Linda recalls a moment in time that gave her the passion to be the leader she is today. (26:52) Linda shares that listening to her employees is her best problem-solving strategy. (35:49)  Linda advises us to connect with people that are in the position of where we want to be. (38:47) Linda says that this industry is so giving and that all we need to do is to surround ourselves with the right people. (40:03) Key Quotes: "If you look at a lot of agency owners and why we became owners, it's because we love to sell." - Linda Marie Fisher "This business is a relationship business. It's not just this relationship with our team. It's our team's relationships with our clients, to our team's relationships with the carriers, it's our team's relationships." - Linda Marie Fisher "You get to a time when you have to make a decision. Either I'm going to stop growing, and I can handle it all myself. Or I've got to hire people to help me with this. Yeah, well, if you're going to hire people to help you with this, you better figure out how to be a leader." - Linda Marie Fisher Resources Mentioned: Linda Marie Fisher LinkedIn Cardinal Insurance Contact Teresa Kitchens Sterling Insurance Group

What are the differences between an agency and working in-house? How does an agency view things like: time, meetings, scope creep, and the creative process. Are they different than an in-house team? Quinn Lanzon is the Director of Marketing at OneUp Components. Previously he worked for 2 agencies and has noticed some differences between the two after jumping the fence. Quinn shares some of his observations in this episode examining the differences and similarities. Follow Quinn and OneUp: @trailgrammar @oneupcomponents Produced by: @portsideproductions @backcountrymarketing @coleheilborn

In today's podcast, we are talking with Caroline Adams about the new research by Bobsled Marketing that is coming out on January 27, called the Amazon Maturity Matrix. What are the really smart and active brands doing to counteract the internal pressures that hold them back in the ecommerce space? How can you create meaningful, long-term change for your company? Make sure you tune in to find out! Caroline is a Project Manager at Bobsled Marketing where she manages clients who trust Bobsled to grow and manage their Amazon sales channels. Caroline has  spent the majority of her career as a product marketer across various industries from consumer product goods to publishing to not-for-profit. As a true proponent of learning, she morphed into the ecommerce world and was trained by an ex-Amazon employee. She joined the Agency side of the business about five years ago and loves working along clients to help them reach their Amazon goals.

This is the audio from RQM+ Live! #46, recorded 13 January, 2022. As we enter 2022, we'd like to reflect on what's happened over the past year in the world of FDA and medical devices. We'll be sharing our insights to how the Agency did in 2021 and a recap of the most important, cross-cutting regulatory changes. Additionally, we'll provide a forecast of what we can expect in 2022. This discussion will cover the following and more: Impact of COVID on FDA resources and submission timelines in 2021 Updates on breakthrough and new developments for innovative devices, such as the Safer Technologies Program (STeP) FDA Process Improvements, including the eSTAR pilot FDA 2022 focus areas, including MDUFA V Negotiations expectations and CDRH 2022 Guidance Priorities The panel of former FDA CDRH and industry subject matter experts: Kevin Go – Project Engineer, RAC – RQM+ (former FDA CDRH Lead Reviewer) Allison Komiyama, Ph.D., RAC – Former Founder and Principal Consultant, AcKnowledge Regulatory Strategies (now with RQM+) Nancy Morrison, RAC – Executive Director, Regulatory & Quality Consulting Services, RQM+ Bryan Pinder – Project Engineer, RAC – RQM+ (former FDA CDRH Lead Reviewer) Ryan Randall – Senior Engineer, RQM+ (former FDA CDRH Lead Reviewer) - Questions: 3:40 -- What was 2021 like on the inside at FDA? 13:21 -- Could you summarize the updates and changes at FDA in 2021? 14:52 -- Allison, you've worked on many STeP applications - what's been your experience? 20:08 -- Let's talk about the eSTAR program... good, bad, any experience with it so far? 27:21 -- What is new in digital health at FDA? 31:58 -- Are you able to get Q-Sub meetings now? 33:17 -- What's taking up FDA's time? It can't be EUA's, right? 35:37 -- Is there any data on the clearance time using eSTAR? (the answer is no) 36:00 -- How about the status of EUAs... what's going on with them? 40:35 -- Any other impactful changes at FDA that people should be aware of from 2021? 46:47 -- What about biocompatibility? 48:10 -- How about MDUFA? 49:06 -- Any other key things anyone wants to point out before we wrap up? - Next RQM+ Live! show: 27 January: RQM+ Live! #47 — Have we been looking at EU MDR equivalence requirements all wrong? - Stay informed: See all expert content Subscribe to our blog Follow us on LinkedIn - About RQM+ RQM+ is the leading international provider of regulatory, quality, and clinical consulting services for medical device and diagnostics manufacturers. The company delivers transformative solutions by providing unrivaled collective expertise fueled by passion for client success. The experts at RQM+ are collaborative, laser-focused on client needs and committed to delivering high-value solutions that exceed expectations. For more information, please visit RQMplus.com. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/deviceadvice/message

Goldie Agency Owner, Julian Goldie, concludes talks on strategies for handling Google algorithm updates. Google's algorithm is constantly evolving. SEOs must stay in the know and act accordingly to minimize impact on site performance. Today, Julian discusses what happens to your SEO strategy after a Google algorithm update. Show NotesConnect With: Julian Goldie: Website // LinkedInThe Voices of Search Podcast: Email // LinkedIn // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The head of the UN labour agency warns that a recovery in the international labour market is still a long way off, with a lot of uncertainty for workers and businesses, hoping for the economy to bounce back. Guy Ryder, the Director-General of the International Labour Organization (ILO), spoke to UN News at the launch of the agency's World Employment and Social Outlook Trends (WESO) 2022 report, which offers gloomy projections of increased unemployment, and widening inequality between developed and developing countries. Conor Lennon from UN News asked Mr. Ryder why the estimate is so dramatically different from the previous report, released in June of last year.

This week on the podcast we are chatting with Derrick Michaud of Shelby Row Productions! We are talking about how he got his start in music and then pivoted into the wonderful world of podcasting after several years of touring as a musician. His story is fascinating and full of excitement!  - Follow Derrick:  http://shelbyrowproductions.com http://instagram.com/srp_productions - Follow Me:  http://beacons.ai/justtheletterk

In the era of virtual communication, sending out paper wedding invites can be wasteful, expensive, and an inefficient way to communicate with guests. So while technology can seem daunting and complicated, creating your wedding websites - or - WedSite can be an easy way to dazzle your guests with a modern spin on classic wedding communication.  If you're reading this, you may feel lost on where to start creating a website. You may be wondering: What information should be on my wedding website? How much does a wedding website cost?Where should I do my wedding website?What's the most popular wedding website?Can I pay someone to make my wedding website for me?Some couples are very excited to make their wedding website. Others drag their feet and aren't so enthused. Whether you're in the first camp or the latter, this interview with Ksenia Snegireva from West Avenue Wedding is going to give you a lot of ideas to make your wedding website amazingHere's a summary of our interview:Meet Ksenia Snegireva of West Ave. Agency [7:03]How  to start making your perfect website[14:07]What information do couples NEED to include on their website? [16:26]How tech savvy do you need to be to build a wedding website?  [18:17]What are the domain fees and website costs? [22:15]  How do wedding websites replace invitations? [27:21]In what ways can a website be utilized to handle changes in the wedding, and communicate with guests?   [34:39]How to keep from automated emails from going to spam? [40:44]What moments give you the most joy and are the most meaningful to you? [45:26]Links Mentioned in the Episode: West Avenue AgencyWedding Vendor Email Templates and Interview Questions GuideConnect with West Avenue AgencyInstagram: @west_avenue_weddingOnline: www.westavenuepaper.comFacebook: @westavenueweddingThank you to our podcast sponsors! Visit the Ask the Planner Wedding Planning Template ShopLoveStream - Get 10% off your virtual wedding package with my code Ask10!

Julian Goldie, Owner of the Goldie Agency, discusses strategies for handling Google algorithm updates. Just the mention of an upcoming update from Google puts the SEO community on edge. However, all updates were not created equally and will have different levels of impact. Today, Julian breaks down what Google algorithm updates are about. Show NotesConnect With: Julian Goldie: Website // LinkedInThe Voices of Search Podcast: Email // LinkedIn // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Luke Fontaine is a marketing consultant, growth and operations strategist, financial architect to entrepreneurs, and recording artist. As a business owner and independent expert, Luke has advised over 100 companies ranging from 6-figure solopreneur businesses all the way up to 9-figure giants. With experience in marketing strategy, operations management, technology systems and more, there are few organizational roles Luke hasn't excelled at. Currently, he serves as a partner and COO of Online Coach University and has been the co-architect behind the company's rapid ascension into multiple 7 figures. If You Enjoy The Thought Room Please Subscribe and Give Us a 5-Star Rating ★★★★★ and Review on Apple Podcasts or give us a shoutout on Instagram with your favorite moment from this episode for a chance to be re-shared. Find me on Instagram @hallie_rosebud and @thoughtroompodcast.  If the Thought Room means something to you, I want to know.  Your voice means the world, and YOU matter to me.  Please consider writing me a line or two, or share your excitement by tapping the link below.    ↓Quick link to leave some ♥ LOVE ♥  for The Thought Room: ↓    → https://kite.link/Review ←  As a thank you, download my free gift to you: 5 Minutes to Freedom Meditation  https://www.hallierose.com/meditation This episode is sponsored by:   BetterHelp Online Counseling: Click here → https://betterhelp.com/thoughtroom  Code: THOUGHTROOM for 10% off your first month     Ayahuasca Retreats at Soltara Healing Center:  Click here → http://soltara.co/thoughtroom $200 off Ayahuasca retreats at Soltara Healing Center with code THOUGHTROOM.  3rd Eye Cacao:  Click here —> https://thirdeyecacao.com/thoughtroom Use the coupon code “THOUGHTROOM” for 15% off!   Why cacao? As an excellent alternative to coffee, cacao is rich in theobromine, a native relative to caffeine. Theobromine's heart-opening effects energize the body and elevate the mood.  Third Eye Cacao is organically grown, hand picked and sun-dried. Just boil water— Third Eye Cacao is easy enough for your morning ritual, and pure enough to be used for cacao ceremonies! (Check out Ep. 40 with Third Eye Founder, Neil Ryan Dumra).  Topics Explored:    7:28 - How curiosity and music led Luke to entrepreneurship How Luke regained control and found lightness after a harrowing experience in the music industry Why Luke turned music into a passion and pivoted to building a digital agency from the ground up 17:26  - Reframing our failures as lessons and successes How attachment to certain outcomes can create the perception of failure 22:22 - Finding our why so we can set the right benchmarks of success How envisioning our perfect day can help us find clarity in business 29:56 - Luke's top tips for new entrepreneurs The importance of being in integrity, finding mentors, and asking what you can offer when starting out Should we build businesses out of our passions or compartmentalize them?  Using success metrics rather than emotions to guide our business decisions 33:54 - The critical importance of rest and reflection in running a successful business How to take the first steps toward starting a business when you are juggling other obligations  52:22 - How to get out of your own way and stop helicopter parenting your business 57:04 - Synchronicity and trusting the chaotic organization of the universe Luke's trip to Iceland that led to business developments and run-ins with rockstars Learning to embrace the seasons of life and the cyclical nature of being in the cosmic dance Resources:   Luke on IG | @luke_fontaine “Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less” by Greg McKeown     Connect with Hallie Rose: Thought Room IG | https://www.instagram.com/thoughtroompodcast/  Hallie Rose IG | https://www.instagram.com/hallie_rosebud/   YouTube |http://bit.ly/ThoughtRoomYouTube  Website | www.thoughtroompodcast.com    WAYS TO SUPPORT THIS SHOW!    → SUBSCRIBE: Apple, Spotify, YouTube     → LEAVE A SHORT APPLE PODCASTS REVIEW: https://kite.link/Review  Would you please consider leaving a typed review on Apple Podcasts? It takes less than 60 seconds and even a line or two makes a really big difference in helping to land prominent guests and help others discover the show!    →  SHARE: Spread the word! Text a friend this episode!  Tag @hallie_rosebud @thoughtroompodcast on your IG story or feed

During the lifetime of an agency, how that agency/agency owner approaches business development evolves. In the beginning, an agency's first clients are people the agency owner knows personally. From there, as the agency matures and grows, it morphs into working with people who have been referred to the agency by happy clients. Many agencies never evolve past this level of business development. It can be challenging to see options for the continuum of business development beyond the normal routine.   Today's episode is continuing our deep dive into agency biz dev. Building up the previous discussion about the importance of finding a niche, Drew looks at the 5 stages that create the continuum of business development and explains why 85% of agencies never reach the most effective and sophisticated of levels. You get to decide where on the continuum your agency lands. But to make an informed decision, you have to know your options. A big thank you to our podcast's presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They're an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here. What You Will Learn in This Episode: The five stages on the continuum of business development Why offering deals never serves in the long run The need to be interesting instead of interested Statistics related to how prospects find their agency The ideal structure for an agency

“Being a teacher (coach) is not just having and spewing your knowledge. The whole beauty of it is people get to understand, apply, and feel empowered to take on the advice or knowledge that you give them.” - Patrice Poltzer   Patrice Poltzer is the founder of a NY-based video storytelling agency who is passionate about helping brands and entrepreneurs tell their stories on video. Before founding her agency at the top of 2017 and working with brands ranging from Afterpay, Netflix, Lululemon to female-founded startups such as Parsley Health and Trestique, she was a Gracie-award-winning producer and digital reporter at the TODAY show for 6 years. Prior to that, she learned how to tell stories in the field at CNN.com and Bloomberg TV.    Patrice also runs group coaching programs and Masterminds to help small business owners lean into their own brand stories to show up more confidently on camera, secure press, and land investor funding. Her favorite social media platform is Instagram where you can find her giving you a behind-the-scenes look at life in NY with 3 small boys and running a business out of her apartment. Her camera-shy Brit husband didn't realize he signed up for a quasi reality show but here he is. Please reach out if you have any storytelling or video questions as that is her jam!   Check out Patrice's agency at PatricePoltzerCreative.com. You can follow her on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. Sponsor Today's episode is sponsored by Aura Merchandising, a proud women-owned full-service brand marketing, and global sourcing agency. Visit them at www.auralimited.com.   Find Us Online! Website: iamJulietHahn.com Instagram: @iamjuliethahn Twitter: @iamjuliethahn LinkedIn: Juliet Hahn FB: @iamjuliethahn Fireside: Juliet Hahn Clubhouse: @iamjuliethahn YouTube: Juliet Hahn

Today I am chatting with Salome Fourie about her journey from corporate to quitting her job, starting as a Social Media Manager to eventually becoming a certified Online Business Manager (OBM) and starting an agency that pulled her husband home and out of corporate. Salome talks with us about how she got started in freelancing, pivoting into the Online Business Manager world, finding clients, and what she does as an OBM. She gives advice to anyone who is thinking about starting freelancing or to those who are thinking about pivoting. Salome's journey to freelancing and pivoting her career is inspiring. Tune in to hear more! Thanks for listening! Connect with me on Instagram at: @micala.quinn SHOW NOTES: www.micalaquinn.com/episode194

In this episode, Joe will walk you through a simple but effective white hat local SEO strategy for building high-quality backlinks. Local backlinks increase the relevance of your website so that you can rank higher for local search terms in Google. This tried-and-true method will yield fantastic results by allowing you to build guest posts and sponsored posts at scale.

In episode #1977, we talk about the importance of agency partnerships when it comes to mergers and acquisitions. Around 20 percent of deals fail and poor due diligence is a big part of why. The great thing about agency partnerships is that they help companies get to know each other very well. This forms a great foundation for a merger or acquisition and lays the groundwork for one plus one to equal three! TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:20] Today's topic: How Agency Partnerships Can Lead to M&A. [00:27] How a working relationship can lead to a merger and make one plus one equal three! [01:19] The importance of agency partnerships for laying the groundwork for M&A. [03:04] How important a solid diligence process before a merger or acquisition is. [03:37] Never do a deal in less than 30 days! [04:02] That's it for today! [04:03] Go to https://marketingschool.io/live to apply for our next event in Austin, Texas!   Links Mentioned in Today's Episode:   Subscribe to our premium podcast (with tons of goodies!): https://www.marketingschool.io/pro   Leave Some Feedback:     What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review.     Connect with Us:    Neilpatel.com Quick Sprout  Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel  Twitter @ericosiu

A tangle with the Velstrac ship brings the crew together aboard their new starship.Please support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/SouthernTomfoolerySouthern Tomfoolery Playshttps://www.southerntomfoolery.com/https://discord.gg/7KPfMCzhttps://twitter.com/SouthernTomfoolhttps://www.facebook.com/SouthernTomfoolery/https://www.instagram.com/southerntomfoolery/Starfinder - Signal of ScreamsTitle Music:"Signal of Screams Theme" by Adam KellyOther music:Kevin MacCloed - Incompetechincompetech.filmmusic.ioTabletop Audiotabletopaudio.comPurple Planet Musicwww.purple-planet.com/

Are you beyond tired of agency life & want to make the switch to private practice? Allison guides you through the steps in this week's Ask Allison episode of the podcast.  Sponsored by: TherapyNotes™ For free resources, including our weekly worksheets & our 3 Steps for a Full Practice training, visit www.abundanceparty.com/free.

inBeat Agency's Co-Founder, David Morneau, wraps up discussions about using influencers to grow your business. When brands are scouting for influencers, quite a few challenges may arise. These range from large costs associated with Macro-influencers to having to go through negotiations with an agency. So, today David talks about Influencer Seeding, your untapped marketing strategy. Show NotesConnect With:David Morneau: Website // LinkedInThe MarTech Podcast: Email // LinkedIn // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode of Agency Freedom Podcast, James talks with Matan Slagter, the Co-Founder and CEO of Armadillo, an emerging player in the home warranty space. Armadillo is one part tech company and one part residential service company. They are making the legacy players very uncomfortable. Learn more about Armadillo and their partner program at https://www.armadillo.one --- Visit our website to join our email list, sign up to be a potential guest on the show and never miss an episode: https://www.agencyfreedom.com Connect with Agency Freedom Podcast on Facebook at the Agency Freedom Podcast group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/agencyfreedom Email us at podcast@riskwell.com with ideas, questions, complaints or your favorite grilling recipe.

NTD News Today—1/13/2022 1. Inflation Hits 39-year High 2. Inflation Hits Businesses and Customers 3. McCarthy: Jan. 6 Panel Is an 'abuse of Power' 4. Defying Mandate, 2 Army Commanders Relieved 5. Fed Agency Makes List of Religious Exemptions

My guest today is John Cavendish. John is the CEO of Seller Candy, which is the Expert Amazon Operations arm of an Amazon business. They provide unlimited support and solutions inside Seller Central at an experienced level without the hassle of onboarding and training members onto their team. John is a successful Amazon seller himself. Today we are going to talk about all things operations.   Links from the episode:  Amazing Selling Machine - https://www.amazingsellingmachine.com Capitalism Conference - https://www.capitalism.com Dynamite Circle - https://www.tropicalmba.com/dynamite-circle-events Tropical Nomad - https://tropicalnomad.spaces.nexudus.com/en Investing.io - https://investing.io   Podcasts John Recommend: Freedom Fastlane by Ryan Daniel Moran - https://podcasts.apple.com/freedom-fast-lane My Wife Quit Her Job by Steve Chou -  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-wife-quit-her-job-podcast The Tim Ferriss Show - https://tim.blog/podcast Modern Wisdom by Chris Williamson - https://podcasts.apple.com/modern-wisdom   Books John Recommend: “The Surrender Experiment: My Journey Into Life's Perfection” by Michael Singer - https://www.amazon.com/The-Surrender-Experiment?tag=10mj-20 “The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, And Join The New Rich” by Timothy Ferriss - https://www.amazon.com/4-Hour-Workweek?tag=10mj-20 “New Sales Simplified: The Essential Handbook For Prospecting And New Business Development” by Mike Weinberg - https://www.amazon.com/New-Sales-Simplified?tag=10mj-20 “You Can't Teach A Kid To Ride A Bike At A Seminar: The Sandler Training's 7-Step System For Successful Selling” by John P. Hayes - https://www.amazon.com/You-Cant-Teach-A-Kid-To-Ride-A-Bike-At-A-Seminar?tag=10mj-20   Books Anatoly Recommend: “Awaken The Giant Within: How To Take Immediate Control Of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial Destiny!” by Tony Robbins - https://www.amazon.com/Awaken-Giant-Within?tag=10mj-20 “12 Months To $1 Million: How To Pick A Winning Product, Build A Real Business, And Become A Seven-Figure Entrepreneur” by Ryan Moran - https://www.amazon.com/12-Months-Million?tag=10mj-20   Youtube Channel Anatoly Recommends: Ryan Daniel Moran - https://www.youtube.com/c/RyanDanielMoran/videos   Connect with John: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejohncavendish Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jgcuk Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejohncavendish Twitter: https://twitter.com/johngcavendish Company Website and Social Media: Seller Candy - https://sellercandy.com  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sellercandy Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SellerCandyPro Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sellercandyamz YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/videos   Want to sit down with Anatoly 1 on 1 ? Even though I keep saying I AM NOT A GURU, many of you ask to sit down and pick my brain. I have decided to do a 1h HELP calls. There are 2 purposes: 1st to support you in your journey and second also to be able to break even on the production of this podcast (each episode editing, marketing, guest research etc takes about $60 - $150 to produce). Now you can schedule 1h with me, and we can talk about launching products, hiring, product research, keywords, mindset, how I did an Ironman or anything at all. Link is here - https://calendly.com/anatolyspektor/anatoly-connsulting-1h    ANATOLY's TOOLS:   Product Development: Helim10 - I use it for  Product Research, Keyword tracking and Listing Optimization .  SPECIAL DEAL: Get 50% your first month or 10% every month: http://bit.ly/CORNERSIIH10  Pickfu - I use it for split testing all of my products and for validation ideas .  SPECIAL DEAL: First split test 50% 0ff  https://www.pickfu.com/10mj   Trademarking: Trademark Angels - For all my trademarking needs.  SPECIAL: Mention Anatoly and 10MJ podcast and get 10% Off your trademark.   HR: Fiverr -  I hire my 3dMockup person and images label designer here on Fiverr - http://bit.ly/10mjFIVERR Upwork - I hire people long term on Upwork - upwork.com  Loom.com - for creating SOP's, I record everything on Loom and give to my VA's Keepa.com - to track historical data such as prices   ANATOLY's  3 Favorite  Business Books: DotCom Secrets by Russel Brunson - I think this is a must read for every online entrepreneurs - http://bit.ly/10MJDotCom 4 hours work week by Tim Ferriss  - This book changed my life and made me become an entrepreneur - http://bit.ly/10MJ4WW The Greatest Salesman In The World  by Og Mandino - Old book but it goes to the core of selling -  http://bit.ly/10MJGREATSM    DISCLAIMER: Some Links are affiliate, it costs you nothing, but helps to keep this podcast on the float   Have questions? Go to https://www.10millionjourney.com Follow us on Instagram: @10millionjourney

Co-Founder of inBeat Agency, David Morneau, continues discussions about using influencers to grow your business. In marketing, paid social teams are always on the hunt for user and influencer-generated content to power their new ads. Likewise social media teams always need new content to post. Today, David looks into content crowdsourcing that fuels social growth. Show NotesConnect With:David Morneau: Website // LinkedInThe MarTech Podcast: Email // LinkedIn // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

People out there will pay for your skills, you just have to find them. One person who's done an excellent job of finding them over the last 9 months or so is Georgia Austin from WizardOfContent.com. Georgia took her skill of writing, and despite a crowded world of other writers out there, did over $500k worth of work through the Fiverr platform last year, including $90k the month before we recorded. In this episode, Georgia shares her top tips for getting started on Fiverr and quickly gaining traction. As well as explaining why being a Fiverr seller doesn't have to be a race to the bottom and how you can command high rates by knowing your worth. Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear: Georgia's best practices for getting started on Fiverr how she manages her huge order volume how Georgia is transitioning to a standalone agency Full show notes

David Morneau, inBeat Agency's Co-Founder, talks about using influencers to grow your business. In a time where it's quite difficult to stand out, brands are using influencer marketing to do just that. For a variety of reasons, it's not always the biggest influencers that are sought after. Today, David discusses growing D2C brands through Micro-Influencers. Show NotesConnect With:David Morneau: Website // LinkedInThe MarTech Podcast: Email // LinkedIn // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In many med mal and trucking cases, it's not always clear if an employer is liable for the actions of their employee. The issue of Agency is vital for knowing whom you can sue and what you can potentially recover for your client. Today's podcast clarifies general issues of Agency and points out how recent changes in Missouri law severely limit the damages you and your client can recover from medical malpractice. An insightful episode for lawyers and laypeople because negligence can happen to anyone.

Is your leadership style genuine and sincere? Do you have empathy where your team is concerned? Do your clients display empathy for their end-users? When Lonn Shulkin first started working at Bam Strategy, they had just lost their biggest client and were in the process of pivoting and taking the opportunity to shift their focus to find their ideal customer. Eleven years later, Lonn is now the CEO  at Bam Strategy and is dedicated to motivating consumer behavior through strategy, media, platforms, and creative initiatives. He sat down with Jason to discuss how they went from losing their biggest client to getting to eight figures, how they started building their sales team, and how empathy has helped them increase client and employee retention. 3 Golden Nuggets Building their sales team. Losing a client that represented 70% of their business meant the agency had to find a way to pivot and use that experience with a global client to diversify. After realizing what they were great at, they got specific on who their perfect audience was and then focused on the business development side to build the sales team around that. Investing in leadership. This agency has been able to improve its employee retention by understanding that each individual employee needed the time and attention and the effort from them to understand their role in the company. They worked to create an honest relationship where an employee could go to them if they had other job offers and give them a chance to discuss why they should stay. They also started doing more social activities as a group to create bonds and created leadership programs to start building up their leadership practice. Putting in that work results in a culture fit that permeates to all employees. Teaching their clients empathy. Just like they built employee retention and loyalty by implementing empathy into their company culture, Lonn says they now try to extend that concept to clients to teach them how to care about their customers in the same way. It's been a big driver of growth and success caring about the end-user in the same way because that's what creates brand loyalty today. Sponsors and Resources Verblio: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Verblio. Check out Verblio.com/smartagency and get 50% off your first month of content creation. Our team loves using Verblio because of the ease in their process and their large pool of crowd-sourced writers. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Grow Your Agency & Increase Employee Retention Through Empathy {These transcripts have been auto-generated. While largely accurate, they may contain some errors.} Jason: [00:00:00] What's up, agency owners? Jason Swenk here, and I have another amazing guest who has grown an eight-figure agency, very, very profitable. Done it through amazing team, amazing systems and done it with empathy. And so let's go ahead and get into the show. Hey, Lonn. Welcome to the show. Lonn: [00:00:28] How's it going? Great to be here. Thank you for having me. Jason: [00:00:31] Yeah, man. Uh, so tell us who you are and what do you do? Lonn: [00:00:34] Uh, so Lonn Shulkin. I am CEO at Bam Strategy. Been with the agency for 11 or so years, and just very passionate about growing teams and certainly what we do, which is working as an agency with pretty large customers bring brands that you would know that really focuses on digital experience. So not necessarily the UX stuff, but how we can actually engage customers and communicate with them on a one-to-one basis. Jason: [00:01:05] Awesome. Tell us kind of the progression or the different cycles that Bam has actually gone through in the past… I guess two decades. Lonn: [00:01:14] Yeah, it's quite the ride. I'm sure it's a common ride as a, as I've heard from other guests on your show. But, um, when I joined 11 or so years ago, we had that, that one really big flagship client was taken up 60 or 70% of the business and… yeah it was pretty scary times. And I think at the moment they had actually told us they were, they were a global brand and they had told us that they were going to consolidate all of their marketing in the US and we're based in Montreal in Canada. So that was a moment where I had just joined the company and we had to figure out how we were going to, um… Luckily, we had a bit of a runway from the client, so they gave us a couple of years notice there, but usually you don't get that in my experience. Um, but we had to figure out, you know, how we were going to pivot and shift and how we're going to use a lot of our experience with this big global brand to diversify. And so that was probably phase one coming in… the agency is actually 25 years old so coming in as sort of the new guy, there was a lot of work to do as far as aligning teams. And, and for me as a new leader, just sort of figuring out who are my people who share my vision and who buys into that and who can help me craft the company that we, we want it to be and grow it, because at the time growth was not always in an upwards sort of direction. So lots of up and down. And then we had that big client and so really shifted to focus on those leaders in the company. And that's when I'd say we started shifting into phase two, which is more focused on biz dev, not a ton of RFPs, I would say, although we won a few. But a really big focus on when we had opportunities going all in and choosing those right opportunities cause we started to understand a little bit of what we were great at at the time. And just putting our all into the pitches that made sense and throwing away the ones that didn't, and I think that was really key for us. And that's when we started winning a few and got a little bit of diversification. Jason: [00:03:25] I like that you got specific on who your perfect audience is. It sounds like. And then you built the sales team around that. Too many people go, oh my God, I'm gonna lose my biggest client. And my gosh, that was so nice of them to give you a huge runway. And that doesn't happen. I've seen so many agencies go in there. They give you a good runway. And I liked that you focused on the sales team because a lot of times people just say, hey, sales, go find business, but they don't give them direction. So let's talk a little bit more about the sales team that you guys created. Were these hunters? Were these farmers? Talk about the makeup of what you guys did. Lonn: [00:04:09] So we've tried everything, as a joke between my partner and I, I mean, we played with the concept of telemarketing having hundreds of calls going out. We had a junior or mid-level salesperson. We had a software sales guy at one point who was more senior and, but it was still outbound calls. And what we found time and time again is that, and it's still like this today as we've grown to be much bigger, we have our core what I'll call farmers who are really good at client relationships and growing those relationships. And as I guess, leaders of the organization, what we need to do is leverage those farmers to develop leads as well as our own networks, because the blind pitches, while we've won some, and they are, you know, if I listed our clients, they would be some of them, the longest standing most meaningful relationships we've had have not been what I call formal pitch clients. Or formal RFP that goes out to 20 agencies. So we don't have this Biz Dev person sitting here who just, all they do is call people and try and get opportunities for us. We've just not seen that deliver the kind of results we want. And we find that it, um, we still get the word of mouth leads that we would get, and we still get the blind RFPs that, that we might get, but we tend to just build on those relationships we have and get referred and find leads that way. And that's, that's, what's worked for us. Jason: [00:05:49] Do you know, there's two winners to every RFP? Lonn: [00:05:53] I'm sure. Jason: [00:05:55] There's the one that wins the project and the first one out. Like, I always hated RFPs and I actually always turned them down. I just realized that RFP stands for like requests for punishment, real fucking problem. Like it was just like, I hated RFPs because just like you were saying, unless I had someone on the inside or we wrote the damn RFP because that's usually who wins the RFP. Lonn: [00:06:23] Yeah. I mean, listen, you can, you can sell your soul to the devil in an RFP and maybe get a pretty serious look on price, but then you're not happy that you have the business. Jason: [00:06:33] I was chatting with a guest not too long ago, and he was telling me after the show… I wish I recorded after the show. I think maybe that should be a whole new segment because that's when a lot of the good stuff comes up, but he was telling me he on a lot of pitches, sometimes they'll spend a million dollars on a pitch. And I'm like, holy cow, like that's a huge gamble. He's like, well that'll win like 3 million for the year. I'm like, that's not a gamble I would do. And I do a lot of dumb stuff. Lonn: [00:07:03] No. I mean, even if you're a really great agency, I can understand the margins on that would not work. So I think we need to be able to show in the pitch that we care. And if they don't give us an opportunity to do that, we're out of the pitch for sure. Like that's, it's just either, it's going to be so easy that I can just send a spreadsheet in an hour with, with some sort of price and I'll just take a shot at it. Or I really need to be able to show who we are and showing who we are comes as you know, from a lot more than some document. Jason: [00:07:33] So now that you started building the sales team that are farmers, what was the other part of the teams that you actually your leadership that you started putting together in order to really kind of take the agency to the next level? Lonn: [00:07:47] So Chris, our founder, had always created this… I joined a company that had an incredible culture. Let me, let me start with that. And there was, I'd say for the size of the agency at the time we had more of an investment in HR and leadership, than other companies I had been at. And so my background previous to them had actually been at a company that sold HR solutions specifically around motivating and engaging people. And so I would say that with me coming in, we, we doubled down on that. We doubled down on the concept of having more HR investment than other agencies. We figured out that if we could get really awesome people in and keep them here, because that's a huge problem for agencies, that alone would allow us to have sustained relationships with customers. And that has proven time and time again, to be an awesome investment for us. Jason: [00:08:43] Give us some examples of what you doubled down on in HR. Lonn: [00:08:48] So at first we thought, uh, and this it sounds funny and COVID times, but at first we thought that ping pong tables and fruit and all those things were important. And they were. We quickly shifted to understanding that each individual employee needed the time and attention and the effort from us to understand their role here, what they actually were going to do and how they were actually going to grow. That was critical. And so every single employee had a performance discussion. And so HR would get very involved in creating those forms and making sure that every person had those discussions. And we would do those multiple times for per year. And we still do those. We, we changed them from very formal and like scoring based to much more conversational, getting to that human side of things and actually understand what makes the person tick. And with the ultimate goal of, of course having great people and them being happy, but ultimately knowing the market that we're in and how much people get poached and move around to, to make more money we wanted, I guess that goal was to have a chance when someone was poached, we wanted them to either say no, or give us the first chance. That was sort of my, always the, the goal I put out there is that I want it to be so good that someone would even with a big paycheck in front of them, someone would come to us and give us a chance, basically. Jason: [00:10:21] Are you looking for a content creation solution for your agency and or clients? Verblio can help you with everything from blogs, EBooks, to video scripts and a lot more. Verblio is a crowdsource solution to content creation with the pool of more than 3000 highly vetted writers who produce custom SEO-rich content. In fact, my team has been using Verblio, and we love the ease of their process. With Verblio, we set the criteria for the style and the tone, and then they match you with the writers that have the expertise in your subject matter. Verblio is a platform specifically designed for agency, and that's why for a limited time they're offering my listeners 50% off the first month of content. Just go to verblio.com/smartagency to learn more. That's Verblio, V-E-R-B-L-I-O.com/smartagency. Yeah, I was going to say in our mastermind, one of our members, he always does this and I always preach this to the mastermind. He always said to his employees, if I do anything or anything happens in the agency that you don't like that demotivates you, or you're not happy with where you think "I need to go take an interview", or "I need to get my resume ready", come to me right away and let's chat about it. And there's been so many people, so many mastermind members that have saved great employees from literally just starting the interview process, because once someone gets an offer somewhere else and then they tell someone about it, dude, they're gone. Lonn: [00:11:57] Yeah. It's tough. It's tough at that point. So we started recognition programs. We started doing a lot more social activities as a group, so to create bonds, to create… There's a great book actually called, um, 12, which is by the Gallup organization. That's just about the 12 reasons, 12 things that motivate employees that are non-compensation based. And we started doing that with all our managers. We started doing a leadership program internally with our managers, where we would go through personality types and conflict types and all the classic leadership programs to start building up our leadership practice so that, that could trickle down to people. And that retention, I think is a huge driver of client retention. Jason: [00:12:43] Yeah, I think that's huge because you know, I look at there's six stages an agency goes through and the last stage is really building the leaders in the organization. It's kind of like, you know, in the very beginning, it's kind of getting leads. Having a sales system and then the owner gets to a certain level, but, and then a lot of times people stop there. But if the leader that one leader is smart, they'll try to build multiple leaders where they're not the toll booth. And that's, that's really pretty smart about figuring out what works because everyone's different. But the people you hire, I find if you hire on values, they're going to be very similar in their values, but different in skill set, different in everything else. Lonn: [00:13:31] Yeah. And so that culture fit, we always emphasize that and we call it being a Bammer, but that's critical. And there's been a big shift in that permeating from me and our leadership team to now everyone knowing what that feels like. And we can't necessarily articulate it, but it feels like something. It's very cool to see that permeate down to, to everyone, even a new person who comes in and they're like, oh wow I, I feel it too. And we're on zoom every day right now, so it's, it's very cool to see that start to happen. And the other thing I'll say that I think is really interesting is that as we've grown those people, we invested in as leaders, 10 years ago, our, our leadership today and so that's really cool. They've been with us for 10 years and even if they were leaders back then they are much more mature and awesome leaders that I would be happy to give the keys to the car. Jason: [00:14:30] Yeah. The one thing I learned about selling the first agency was when I turned into an employee, you don't have to motivate the good employee. But you have to worry about de-motivating them. And I was de-motivated by a number of different actions. That's the biggest thing I worry about with my team and I tell the mastermind members, I'm like, if you have to motivate an employee, you hired the wrong employee. I'd tell them like, like, get rid of that person. Lonn: [00:15:01] A hundred percent. Yeah. If they're not happy here, they, the writings on the wall, right? Like that's… We want them to go because they can be happier somewhere else. And I think that's the other concept of empathy is I would rather them be somewhere else and be happy than be unhappy here. Jason: [00:15:15] from someone that's been fired from almost every job that is totally true. Some people held onto me too long. Wendy's fired me the first day. So they, they had no empathy. I appreciate them because I wouldn't be where I was without them firing me and telling me I can't work at fast food anymore. So thank you, Wendy's. I've never publicly thanked them before. Well, awesome. Um, this has all been amazing. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you think would benefit the audience? Lonn: [00:15:48] No. I mean, listen, we're working a lot on extending that concept to our end customers and trying to teach them how to actually care about their customers in the same way as we care about our employees. And I think, you know, that's for us been a big driver growth and success now is how we actually sit with our customers and say, you, you need to care about that end person buying your product in the same way you care about your employee because that's what creates brand loyalty today. And that's to me, the joy of, you know, the cookie going away and all those things that people are scared of is actually, we have to actually show a value now. And to me, that's exciting. And if you're an agency who can deliver value to customers and help your customers figure that out, it's a bit of a holy grail, I guess. Jason: [00:16:31] Awesome. Well, what's the website people go and check out the agency? Lonn: [00:16:34] bamstrategy.com. B-A-M strategy. Jason: [00:16:37] Awesome. Well, Lonn, thanks so much for coming on the show. You did amazing. Make sure you guys go to their website, check it out. And if you guys want to be around amazing agency owners on a consistent basis, that can see the stuff that you're not able to see and be able to hear the strategies that are currently working, not strategies from 10 years ago. But are currently working right now. And just have a lot of fun and connect with amazing people. I want you guys to go to digitalagencyelite.com and fill out an application. If we feel that you'll be right, we'll have a conversation and we'll chat about it. And then we'll start introducing you to all the other amazing members all over the world that run agencies that can help you grow and scale faster and have a lot of fun. So until next time, have a Swenk day.

Let's talk about CDC... CDC is the National Public health Agency of the United States under the Department of Health and Human Services. The main goal is the protection of public health and safety through the control and prevention of disease, injury, and disability in the United States and worldwide. CDC focuses national attention on developing and applying disease control and prevention. Today, we will discuss my personal thoughts on CDC, both positive and negative. I will speak about what I believe they did well, what they could improve on, and where I think they went wrong. I will also explain why I have such a push-pull, love-hate relationship. Moreover, CDC becomes the soundboard of COVID-19, and COVID-19 Recommendations, COVID-19 restrictions. Unfortunately, there have been some missteps during the entire process. There has been some miscommunication. There's even been some controversy, and I'd want to talk about it and how it's affected me as a public health professional, as a physician, as someone who has to care for patients. This episode aims for you to learn more about: The 2nd Anniversary of the first COVID-19 case in the US CDC mixed messaging My thoughts on the reduced quarantine recommendations Be able to be more inquisitive about your health information Understanding that the CDC is still a trusted source of information Tune in to today's show and learn about "My Love and Hate Relationship with the CDC." Sign up at www.listentodrberry.com  to join the mailing list. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and share the episode with a friend or family member. Listen on Apple Podcast, Google Play, Stitcher, Soundcloud, iHeartRadio, Spotify Sponsors: Lunch and Learn Community Online Store (code Empower10) Pierre Medical Consulting (If you are looking to expand your social reach and make your process automated then Pierre Medical Consulting is for you) Dr. Pierre's Resources – These are some of the tools I use to become successful using social media My Amazon Store – Check out all of the book recommendations you heard in the episode Links/Resources: Dr. Berry's Website DrBerryPierreTV Dr. Pierre's Health checks Dr. Berry's Twitter Dr. Berry's Instagram Dr. Berry's Clubhouse CDC Quarantine Isolation CDC Covid Timeline Social Links: Join the lunch and learn community – https://www.drberrypierre.com/joinlunchlearnpod Follow the podcast on Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/lunchlearnpod Follow the podcast on Twitter – http://www.twitter.com/lunchlearnpod – use the hashtag #LunchLearnPod if you have any questions, comments, or requests for the podcast For More Episodes of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry Podcasts https://www.drberrypierre.com/lunchlearnpodcast/ If you are looking to help the show out Leave a Five Star Review on Apple Podcast because your ratings and reviews are what is going to make this show so much better Share a screenshot of the podcast episode on all of your favorite social media outlets & tag me or add the hashtag. #lunchlearnpod Download the MP3 Audio file, listen to the episode however you like.

In this episode, Scott sits down with Carey Wallace of Agency Focus to discuss your insurance agency's valuation, how to get it done and what to expect. We also explore why agencies are using EBITDA instead of revenue to determine both the purchase and sales price of YOUR Agency! Work With Carey Wallace To Grow Your Agency >>> Click Here ///////////// The $100 Million Dollar Agency Makeover Enter for a chance at one free year of agency consulting! In effort to share the secret sauce, the GloveBox team has partnered with The Insurance Guys Podcast for a unique giveaway. Click here to ENTER >>> Sponsor: GloveBox A seamless all-in-one platform connecting clients to your agency and their carriers. Maximize the client experience with both Agency and Carrier self-service features. Check them out here >>> Get the CoverWallet Insurance Guys Deal Here >>>

For a small business owner, adding another task to the to-do list can seem like the straw that broke the camel's back. Chloe - Anne Swink is a small business owner herself and runs the Chloe - Anne Copy Agency. As a copywriter, she comes across many small businesses that have never actually defined what their core values are. This lack of a foundation can create a number of problems for business owners, who might not even realize it because they're too busy running the day-to-day of their business. In this episode, she shares some practical, easy-lift steps to help small business owners define their values, organize them, and most importantly act on them. Follow Chloe - Anne: @chloe.anne.copy Produced by: @portsideproductions @backcountrymarketing @coleheilborn

Today on the show we opened our phone lines to first let our listeners vent about anything that has been bothering them for our segment "Get it Off Your Chest". Next, we opened the phone lines to if any of our listeners would return a bag with 300k in it, after a video surfaced of a girl getting teased for allegedly returning a bag to Nelly with 300k in inside, but only received $100 for returning. Also, we opened the phone lines to see if any of our listeners have given out or was given a fake number, after Nia Long revealed that Chris Rock gave her fake number after their date a long time ago. Moreover, Charlamagne gave "Donkey of the Day" to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease, Dr Rochelle Walensky for confusing the facts on covid. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

You've heard of email bankruptcy. Now, I want you to feel OK to declare to do, task, or project bankruptcy for better productivity and a quieter mind.Even if you follow a certain system, your to dos, tasks, ideas, projects, tickets in dev trackers, etc. add up over time. While they may not be in front of you each day, they carry more of a cognitive load than you realize.As you go about your day, that means there's always another thing to do in the back of your mind. That can cause you to get distracted, try to relate what you're doing to other tasks, or develop stress and anxiety.There's no time like the present to simply start afresh. In today's show, I'll share what to do bankruptcy is and how to get started with it.Watch the video version of this episode.Links Thomas Frank on The best way to tame your overwhelming to-do list David Allen's Getting Things Done Basecamp's Shape Up Chapter 7 Follow newsletter @kenyarmosh /in/kenyarmosh kenyarmosh.com

When I was younger, my Dad told me what to look for if my car doesn't start. "Matt, if your car doesn't start, there are only three things that can be wrong. Something is wrong with the starter, the fuel system, or the electrical system". The same type of analysis can be done with your agency if you're not hitting your numbers.

“Our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasure.” —Rainer Maria Rilka Sometimes what keeps us from the change we want to see in our life are the dragons of our deepest fears. In this special episode of “A Change Mindset,” we reflect on what we've learned about change from our guests so far. We explore how our guests tamed their dragons of fear and discover that three themes — purpose, self-trust and patience — can help us push through fear and face change head on. Follow us on Instagram: @achangemindset @junloveyoung

Ryan Blackburn discusses the roster moves the Denver Nuggets have made over the last 72 hours (or will make soon) that should have Nuggets fans excited about the rest of the season. The Nuggets are looking for ways to solve their backup center spot for the regular season, and they're taking fliers on guards and wing defenders that could potentially be useful in the playoffs. Ryan discusses the moves, the updated depth chart, and why Denver may not be done making moves.

What's the weirdest temp job you can imagine? One outside time and space... This story appears in Tobias Buckell's collection SHOGGOTHS IN TRAFFIC AND OTHER STORIES, published by Fairwood Press. Content advisory: some discussion of murder/death

Tony Abascal from TEN Ibiza Agency on the Virtual Sessions presented by The DJ Sessions 1/10/22 About - Tony Abascal  Being a music fan since a very young age, Tony is now a DJ Agent on the renowned agency TEN IBIZA Agency. After working in several different nightlife parts like a promoter, PR, he discovered the passion in being in between events and artists, developing a strategy for their growth and development as a musician, so he decided to get educated and got a masters degree on Music Business in Madrid Spain, after this he got in touch with Oriol Calvo and entered the agency.  Together with the team at TEN IBIZA, they've managed to stay active with tours all over the world, from Chile to Egypt, Miami to the Maldives and many more with their artists such as Oriol Calvo, PIEM, Megablast, DJ Ino and more. He is also getting another masters with the new Music Business Academy based in Spain, from one of the big names in the music industry, Alex Montoya from Analog Agency.  @tonyabascal Tony@tenibiza.com  About TEN IBIZA AGENCY  Pure Balearic DNA flows through the veins of this project. Born in 2013, there is a great deal of respect and admiration felt for Ibiza by founders Oriol Calvo and Micky. #TENIbiza flaunts flow in a league of its own with a deeper understanding of social events, parties and music. It's a communal concept: a brotherhood tailored to fit anyone who feels truly connected to the authentic Balearic Ibiza sound, modern but right on trend excluding itself from any labels, class, gender or boundaries. #TENIbiza sole belief is music is the magic of the island, a universal language that connects us. In this premise #TENIbiza can adapt to either night or day, in a club, festival or beach club. Always making sure every last, minute detail is attended to. Feeling, submersing, connecting to the dance floor always aiming to create unique atmospheres resulting once in a lifetime experiences. Our urban Image, inspired by the most cosmopolitan cities around the globe and coupled with the authenticity and laid back vibe of Ibiza has secured TEN Ibiza's showcase and our artist agency program steady residencies in all the best clubs and festivals on the island and around the globe. @ten_ibiza www.tenibiza.com  bookings@tenibiza.com    About The DJ Sessions -   With over 2,200 episodes produced over the last eleven years “The DJ Sessions”, a Twitch and Mixcloud “Featured Partner”, has featured international artists such as: BT, Robert Babicz, Camo & Krooked, Simon Patterson, Lindsey Stirling, Mako, Morgan Page, Jes, Cut Chemist, Yves Larock, Bjorn Akesson, Alchimyst, Judge Jules, DubFX, DJs From Mars, Rudosa, Thievery Corporation, Sander Van Dorn, GAWP, Hollaphonic, Kissy Sell Out, Somna, David Morales, Roxanne, JB & Scooba, Massimo Vivona, Moullinex, Futuristic Polar Bears, Many Few, Joe Stone, Reboot, Truncate, Scotty Boy, Jody Wisternoff, Benny Bennasi, Dance Loud, Christopher Lawrence, Oliver Twizt, Ricardo Torres, Alex Harrington, 4 Strings, Sunshine Jones, Elite Force, Revolvr, Kenneth Thomas, Paul Oakenfold, George Acosta, Reid Speed, TyDi, Donald Glaude, Jimbo, Ricardo Torres, Hotel Garuda, Bryn Liedl, Rodg, Kems, Mr. Sam, Steve Aoki, Funtcase, Dirtyloud, Marco Bailey, Thousand Fingers, Dirtmonkey, Crystal Method, Beltek, Dyro, Andy Caldwell, Darin Epsilon, Kyau & Albert, Kutski, Vaski, Moguai, Blackliquid, Sunny Lax, Matt Darey, and many more.   In addition to featuring national/international artists “The DJ Sessions” featured hundreds local top DJs from their homebase of Seattle.   We have also undergone a massive upgrade in our TDJS studios and to our TDJS Mobile Studio to full HD streaming and HD audio to make the quality of the shows even better than before. Along with that we have launched a new website that now features our current live streams and past episodes in a much more user friendly mobile/social environment.   About The DJ Sessions Event Services - TDJSES is a WA State Non-profit charitable organization that's main purpose is to provide music, art, fashion, dance, and entertainment to local and regional communities via events and video production programming distributed through broadcast television and the internet for live and archival viewing.   "The DJ Sessions" is a Twitch "Featured Partner" and MixCloud "Featured Partner" series and has been recognized by Apple twice as a "New and Noteworthy" and "Featured Video” podcast. UStream and Livestream have also listed TDJS as a "Featured" stream in their lineups. The TDJS combined live streaming/podcast audience is over 125,000 viewers per week.   For all press inquiries regarding “The DJ Sessions”, or to schedule an interview with Darran Bruce, please contact us at info@thedjsessions.

As we start to dip our toes into 2022, many agencies have been pretty quiet on the biz dev front for the last 4-6 weeks. By the time we emerge from the holiday hibernation, we're approaching February and our pipeline is feeling a little weak. I decided to help you jump-start your agency biz dev efforts with a series of podcast conversations just between you and me.   I've decided to mix things up a bit. 2022 is my year to shake things up a little and why not start in January? Rather than my usual guest interviews, I'm going to spend this month with you, focusing on helping you take a serious look at how you approach biz dev. Here in episode 1, we focus on something fundamental to many agencies' success: defining a niche. I'm going to start by looking at why the old-school approach to biz dev no longer works and why selling has evolved into helping. From there, we'll explore why many agencies approach biz dev backwards and the list of criteria to consider when working to find your agency's niche. A big thank you to our podcast's presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They're an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here. What You Will Learn in This Episode: Why old school agency biz dev no longer works How selling has become about helping Why many agencies approach biz dev backwards The brutal truth about the need to niche down AMI as a niche case study The criteria to use when thinking about how to niche

How to create a media empire out of magic with Jay Jay Founder of the Ace of Spades Agency Jay Jay started his career years ago as a magician. He worked diligently and was able to grow his channel to over 400,000 subscribers and 57 million views.

In this episode, Joe shares his template for running a consultative sales process, offering a list of highly effective discovery questions that will help you build strong relationships with your clients and close more sales.

Are you having a hard time hiring the right talent to build your agency team? Manish Dudhareija first started his journey as an entrepreneur nine years ago when he noticed there was a huge demand for skilled developers trained in the latest technologies and there was a gap in hiring, training that fit his expertise. He created E2M Solutions, a full-service agency that offers website design & development, SEO, copywriting, and content marketing. In this interview, Manish shares how agency owners can address the common struggle of finding and hiring new talent. He also talks about how advertising your culture can help attract the right people, and the creative ways you can make your agency stand out to top talent. Advertising your culture. We've talked about how many agency owners need to do more to market themselves to potential clients. Manish adds another layer to this: marketing aimed at attracting the best people to your team. You're really missing out if you're not marketing your culture to attract the right elements. He likes to use LinkedIn to showcase his agency's values and says he is as interested in candidates' personality traits as he is in their skills. In this regard, he is looking to identify do they have the right kind of attitude? Do they have the willingness to learn? Are they curious? Are they accountable? The answers to these questions will be just as important in the process of selecting a new team member. Be creative in your search. When searching for your ideal team, Manish recommends creating ads that contain some sort of challenge, like code in the case of developers. This will help your agency stand out from the many messages just stating “we're hiring” and is a way to spark the interest of the type of dynamic and curious individuals he wants to attract. On training his team. Manish has a team of senior developers whose main task is to be constantly researching and testing new technologies. Once the agency gets a new project, the team identifies the latest technology that they could work with and try to implement it. Later, when the opportunity arises, they propose that technology to their existing clients to let them know that they are always on the lookout for new developments in their area. This is also a good way to always have someone on the team that can train the rest of the developers and are creating the processes to do so. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Getting Creative in Your Search for New Talent For Your Agency & Advertising Your Culture {These transcripts have been auto-generated. While largely accurate, they may contain some errors.} Jason: [00:00:00] What's up, agency owners? Jason Swenk here, I have another amazing episode and we're going to talk about, because look, I've been chatting with so many agency owners over the past months, and one of the big things is hiring the right people and just finding the right talent. On today's episode, we're going to talk about some ways where you can find the best talent, should you hire seasoned pros or train them up? How do you train them up? And it really cool solution at the very end. So make sure you listen to the whole episode. So let's go ahead and jump into it. Hey, Manish. Welcome to the show. Manish: [00:00:38] Hey, Jason. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Jason: [00:00:41] Yeah. I'm excited to have you on. So tell us a little bit about your business. You know, you've been doing this for a while and you have over 110 people, but tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do. Manish: [00:00:52] Sure. Yeah. So I'm kind of an entrepreneur. I started this journey nine years back, uh, in 2012. So I founded E2M nine years back. And one of the reasons I founded this company is to solve a specific problem. That was kind of seeing, like, there is a huge demand of skilled and trained, you know, people, resources in terms of technology. And there was a gap, you know, I thought we can really feel where my expertise is, uh, strategy, uh, hiring, training people and, you know, injecting the traits like personality traits and how to have the force ready, where someone is looking for, like, you know, Uh, someone is not looking to hire people and they are looking for people who are trained to work with. So that's how I founded E2M. So it started like nine years back and we are kind of a white label, uh, you know, outsourcing company. Uh, we build websites, we do a lot of web development. With WordPress and Shopify and big commerce. And we work with digital agencies, regardless of the size, across the US and the other parts of the world. And yeah, you know, we help them scale their agency business with our white label services. Jason: [00:02:13] Awesome. Well, let's get into it and let's talk about, you know, a lot of agency owners struggle right now because there's a lot of demand for what we're doing, right? But it's really challenging to find the right team members. So what has worked for you? Because you guys have over 110 people what's worked for you to constantly keep getting the best people? Manish: [00:02:36] Yeah. That's a very interesting question. And, um, I think, you know, similar, like the US, we have an adequate role here in India and we are also facing similar challenges hiring people. But one of the things, you know, we are trying to do something is, so we often do a lot of marketing to attend the customers, right? But we never do a marketing to attract the people, right? Because we always think like, okay, you know, uh, that early the marketing has to be only to drive in the sales and leads. But I also feel like, you know, that you should also do a marketing to attract the people, right? So we do a lot of branding our HR team, and we have a social media team, we do a lot of granting on LinkedIn. We expose or culture, you know, more often on LinkedIn and that builds the transparency, that builds the, like, that kind of showcase what we are, what our value is, right? So, we pay a lot of attention in that we, uh, be are vocal and we speak loudly about, you know, what our culture is, what kind of initiatives we have. So it is not just about, uh, like, you know, the team outing lunch, or get together, but it's more than that, right? So one of the things, you know, which I believe is other than the skill, the traits are very important as well. The personality traits, right. We kind of, you know, when we look for the people, we just do not look for the skill, but we also look for the traits, like what kind of traits to the have, right? Do they have right kind of attitude? Do they have the willingness to learn? Are they curious? Are they accountable? Are they responsible? Are they good with working with the people? Are they having an open mindset? That allows us to train people faster, right? So obviously we look for the skill, let's say, if you are looking for a WordPress developer. Yeah. WordPress is something, you know, definitely that's the reason we are interviewing them. But apart from that, we also look for the traits, right? So we are kind of a company where we pay a lot of attention and a lot of importance to the traits. So that's kind of showcase, you know, in LinkedIn. And transparency, right? I think, you know, one of the things that… Where people love to be in a transparent culture, right? So we don't ask them, we don't lock them into the contract that you have to sign bond with us. You have to work for X number of months or years with us. It's kind of a very open culture we have where we explain them the benefits, how we are different. Uh, we showcase and we let our other people speak, right? So we are over… uh, so we are like one hundred people right now. So a lot of our existing, we talk about how we have a higher retention ratio. The other team members, they speak about their experience openly. So these kinds of things, you know, help us attract a really, really good talent and, yeah, happy, happy people. I would say like, you know, we get a lot of, uh, new hires through over existing members. So because they are already happily working with over here, right. So they do a word of mouth. See, it's the concept of like, you know, the customer brings some other customer happy customer will bring another, you know, a customer. The same concept applies when you were hiring people as well, right? That, okay, if you have a happy employees, happy you happy people working with you. Obviously they are going to bring other people, their friends and family members and friends and friends, they are going to bring that right. So I think, you know, there are the companies right now facing two types of challenges. One is hiring new people, as well as retaining existing people. Fortunately, we are only facing one problem, which is like, you know, this is a good problem to have, hiring new people, for which we are also like know, working in a way that we are getting rid of that problem, but we do not have the second problem is retaining the existing people because we have a very transparent culture in a way where, you know, people feel more accountable and responsible and they can end with them the kind of growth they're looking for. So that is helping us a lot to retain existing talent and bringing on the new talent. Jason: [00:07:21] I love that, you know, because I think a lot of agencies are missing out on always be recruiting. And, and be marketing to, you know, the people that you may need, because like you were saying, I think they're focused on, you know, oh, I need to market to the clients. And, and look, if we're all honest here, digital agencies do a pretty crappy job at marketing themselves, let alone marketing to the people that they want. But you know, as, as you guys are listening to this episode, I really want you guys to go, man, this makes total sense. You know, first I need to market to, I need to do a good job of marketing to my clients, because there's a lot of agencies that are built on word of mouth. But I need to commit to, you know, going forward to marketing our culture. Because when you market your culture to people you're trying to hire, it will actually help you with your clients, because they'll be like, oh man, that's pretty cool. Like, I want to work with this, this team. And the one other thing that we did, and you guys may do this as well, especially as, you know, your employees refer other employees to the team. We would do a commission structure or like a little bonus to them if, once we hired someone and they stayed for three months or longer. Manish: [00:08:38] Yeah, that's what we have already done. We already have that in practice. So it's, we also do bounty. So, you know, when you bring, refer to your friends and, you know, uh, any other candidates, if they get selected, you get a bounty of X number of amount once they complete three months. So we already had that in place. The other thing, you know, we are doing differently is something… We know that, okay, the, everyone is using a Facebook and Instagram, right? So generally we do our services and what is meant on Facebook and Instagram. We are also doing our hiding our ads. So we have paid budget, uh, specifically allocated for that on a monthly basis where we do already creative posts, where not… Okay, if you are looking for a WordPress developer, we put a PHP code and we say, okay, no, find an error on this. If you can find an error on this, you know, we are looking for you, right? So generally, you know, we do kind of this kind of creative ads and another example, you know, we, uh, that is kind of like, okay, our QA team is challenging that, okay, you know, if I'm going to review your code and I'm going to find X number of bucks, for sure. If you challenge that, okay. If you, if you do a code where I cannot find a bug at all, then we are looking for you, right? So a lot of this kind of interesting ads we run on Instagram and Facebook that also helps us to be in front of, you know, people who are not even sometimes, no, they are not looking for a change, but the way we present ourselves, it makes them interested to apply for the position and change their mind. So I'm actually reading a book right now, Atomic Habits. I'm sure you must have read. It's a really interesting book. I'm reading, you know, it's Atomic Habits. And, uh, one of the things, you know, that's book I read is see when you sell something, people are not actually interested what you are selling, but they get more curious, how you present it to them, right? So it's like when we have an opening, we just don't say we are looking for a WordPress developer, but we present in a way that, okay, we are looking for WordPress developer when we don't write it very obviously. And that's kind of, you know, attract them. Okay. This company is standing out and that's where we are getting a lot of attractions. Jason: [00:11:07] I love it. And I want to switch focus just a little bit, you know, as we kind of end the, or getting more toward the end of the show. How do you constantly…? Because I see agency owners struggling with constantly training their people with a new skill. So what have you seen work for you guys? Manish: [00:11:30] That's a good question. You know, so we have, you know, different people with different, uh, you know, skill set, right? So we have project managers who just look after the projects team and like that. Then we have technical leads, they are only there to solve developers, technical problems. And then we have a senior developer, some of our developers are just working on exploring the new technologies, right? So what we do is, you know, when we work with agencies and they are looking for, let's say they are hiring a WordPress developer with us, so then we ask them, okay, you know, there is a core vital, which is very important these days. We have started exploring onto headless CMS right now for building a fast-loading website, using react as a front end, WordPress is the backend, right? So we kind of identify what is the latest in terms of technology. And we have a specific people who are just working on, you know, doing research and exploring the new technologies. And then when there is an opportunity, you know, we propose that to our existing clients that, hey, you know, we have been working since long and this is something new. What do you like us to try it out? And they are always open for that. And that gives us a live project to work on. So it, it, it is kind of like, you know, we keep our eyes and ears open and we do a lot of research and we work with a lot of agencies. So we always get to know different problems than we have a technical team with just doing research, what's the latest out? And then, you know, they learn for us because they are highly experienced and then they, you know, teach that they kind of teach that to other developers as well. And that's how we train that. One thing we do when they are doing that, they make sure to have the processes, they make sure to have documentation, right? They make sure to have proper standards, coding standards in place. So there is documentation, there is a checklist. So the other developers who are being trained, they don't have to train on the wheel, they get drained faster. So this is something, you know, this is how we are managing basically Jason: [00:13:41] I love it. I love it. I love that you have dedicated people to, to that, that train the rest of the team. I think that's where, you know, people make a mistake of, especially when they bring in a junior person and they think they're just going to learn up very fast. If you don't have a dedicated person or a dedicated system for training them, it's going to be a challenge and it's going to cost you more than it would of just hiring the more experienced person. Well, this has all been amazing, Manish. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you think would benefit the audience? Manish: [00:14:14] Yeah, I think, you know, the one thing is that, uh, we work with a lot of agencies and help them scale and grow with our white label. So this isn't like that. So in case if any agency is facing a problem with management and you know, when you have projects on board, but you do not have anyone to help you executing those projects, then yeah we help agency owners, you know, with our white label services. So we have a special offer for our listeners today. So we are, you know, we have, we are productized our white label services. So we have different monthly plans to choose from. So if you are listening to this podcast, you can go to E2M, to our website we have specifically designed for this audience, which is e2msolutions.com/smartagency. So that's E and 2 is a numeric and M for marketing e2msolutions.com/smartagency. If you go to that, that is so when you, you know, use this link, and if you are going to sign up for any of our plans, you will get an additional 10% discount for first three months. Jason: [00:15:23] Awesome. Well, thanks so much for doing that for the audience. Make sure everyone goes there and, uh, check that out.culture And, uh, I think that will be a great resource tool in helping you all build in 2022, I can't believe it's 2022. That's crazy. So go to the website now go claim that offer and Manish, thanks so much. And until next time have a Swenk day.

Mike, Kuiper and their new companions await the Kuthites to construct their ship.Please support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/SouthernTomfoolerySouthern Tomfoolery Playshttps://www.southerntomfoolery.com/https://discord.gg/7KPfMCzhttps://twitter.com/SouthernTomfoolhttps://www.facebook.com/SouthernTomfoolery/https://www.instagram.com/southerntomfoolery/Starfinder - Signal of ScreamsTitle Music:"Signal of Screams Theme" by Adam KellyOther music:Kevin MacCloed - Incompetechincompetech.filmmusic.ioTabletop Audiotabletopaudio.comPurple Planet Musicwww.purple-planet.com/

In this episode of Agency Freedom Podcast, James talks with Trace Meek, Founder of Fetch Underwriting and the Managing Editor of the Insurance Daily News digital publication. To learn more about Fetch Underwriting, visit their website at: https://www.fetchuw.com. To catch up on the current news and updates in the insurance industry, bookmark and visit https://insurancedailynews.com/. --- Visit our website to join our email list, sign up to be a potential guest on the show and never miss an episode: https://www.agencyfreedom.com Connect with Agency Freedom Podcast on Facebook at the Agency Freedom Podcast group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/agencyfreedom Email us at podcast@riskwell.com with ideas, questions, complaints or your favorite grilling recipe.

Digital ad agencies got their worlds rocked from every side in 2021. What do they need to know if they want to survive (and thrive in) 2022?     In today's episode, co-hosts Ralph Burn and Kasim Aslam sit down once again with Nick Shackelford, founder and CEO of Structured Agency. Nick is uniquely positioned to talk about this because his agency saw so much growth and then so much loss in terms of brand acquisition and brand churn in 2021. Ralph says agencies had gotten lazy, and those days are done and gone, but he's still super optimistic about the agency space.   Listen in to hear why Nick thinks 2022 is going to be the absolutely best year for digital ecommerce and online marketing.   IN THIS EPISODE YOU'LL LEARN: Why you need a backlog or consistent inbound of content to test when running paid ads Why Ralph thinks some agencies that floundered in 2021 deserved it Why 2022 might be a great time to sell your agency  Why there will ALWAYS be a market for digital ad agencies (if you do it right)   LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: Follow Nick on Twitter Follow Nick on IG Structured Agency Konstant Kreative Geekout Events Typefully (Twitter tool) Tweet Hunter (Twitter tool) Perpetual Traffic Survey Perpetual Traffic podcast Connect with Ralph and Kasim on Twitter   OUR PARTNERS: No Limit Creatives gives you unlimited graphics/videos for one low monthly rate.  Clients Online, the go-to Facebook Advertising agency for businesses Keap, an easier way to manage every stage of the customer journey Endless reports and actionable insights from Oribi Get Roland's book, Zero Down, FREE Find out your Leadership Trust Score at Ready to Lead. Join Roland's next EPIC Challenge Register for our free Founders Board workshop   Thanks so much for joining us this week. Want to subscribe to Perpetual Traffic? Have some feedback you'd like to share? Connect with us on iTunes and leave us a review! For most people in the digital space, 2020 was a good year. On the traffic side, 

It's the beginning of January, which means a lot of us are thinking about goals and what we really want our next year to look like. What's your vision for your business in 2022?How do you want to evolve personally and professionally? How do you want your relationships to evolve? How do you want your business to evolve?Most people do this kind of goal setting once a year. They come up with some really loft goals and then struggle to stick to the plan. You go to the gym every day for a month! And then you stop…How do you set yourself up so that you don't simply come up with some intentions for the year and do them for a couple of weeks and forget about them? How do you actually set yourself up to achieve those things in the next twelve months?There are a few ways to do that, but today I want to talk about visioning.Tune into this episode to hear:Prompts for brainstorming your big goals for 2022, in your life and your businessWhy your income goal should be one among many goals for the year, not THE goalAn exercise for envisioning the futureLearn more about Pia: No BS Agency Owners Free Facebook GroupThe Show Your Business Who's Boss Crash Course Start reading the first chapter of my bookPiasilva.com