Podcasts about one agency

We talk with Nicole Plozza, Principal from One Agency in Townsville about the local real estate market and compare some number to Melbourne. ► Subscribe here to never miss an episode: https://www.podbean.com/user-xyelbri7gupo ► INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/therealestatepodcast/?hl=en  ► Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100070592715418 ► Email:  myrealestatepodcast@gmail.com    The latest real estate news, trends and predictions for Brisbane, Adelaide, Canberra, Gold Coast, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. We include home buying tips, commercial real estate, property market analysis and real estate investment strategies. Including real estate trends, finance and real estate agents and brokers. Plus real estate law and regulations, and real estate development insights. And real estate investing for first home buyers, real estate market reports and real estate negotiation skills. We include Hobart, Darwin, Hervey Bay, the Sunshine Coast, Newcastle, Central Coast, Wollongong, Geelong, Townsville, Cairns, Ballarat, Bendigo, Launceston, Mackay, Rockhampton, Coffs Harbour.     #sydneyproperty #Melbourneproperty #brisbaneproperty #perthproperty   

What if you could cut your task from hours to minutes—wouldn't that change how your agency operates?Imagine if what took you 14 hours now takes you 2 hours, or what took you 4 hours now takes 35 minutes?For Matt Rouse, co-owner of Hook SEO, those numbers reflect the reality of how AI is raising his agency's productivity.  In this episode, Matt shares how AI has drastically increased productivity at his agency, helped him streamline operations, enhanced client services, and even developed new offerings.Here's what you'll learn:How this agency cut task times from hours to minutes using AI Discover the AI tools this agency uses to automate tasks, reduce costs, and deliver more value to clients.Find out how using AI helped this agency create a new service with lower costs and increased profitability.If you're wondering whether AI will take over jobs in the agency space, Matt answers with a resounding yes—but with a twist. Tune in to hear how AI has changed the way this agency works and gain practical insights on how your agency can harness AI to save time, improve quality, and remain competitive.Show LinksBook: Will AI Take My Job? WebsiteLinkedInDigital Marketing Masters PodcastHook SEOGet the Free Agency Together Newsletter.Join hundreds of agency owners receiving insights about growing and leading a small – less than 50 people – mighty agency. Try the free newsletterHey thank for hanging out with me at the Small But Mighty Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode it would mean the world to me if you hit the follow or subscribe button in your podcast app and share it with a friend. And I'll see you on the next one. Get the full show notes and more information here: https://audreyjoykwan.com/podcast-ep110Podcast Edits by Lindsay Curtis

Ever wondered how to effectively manage burnout in property management? Join this group podcast featuring insights from industry experts like Bec Halton, Simone from One Agency, Shelby from Rose Petal Properties, Skye from Taylored Property Management, and Kelly Seaton from the Leasing Network. Discover the root causes behind the escalating burnout rates in the property management industry in Australia, from surging client expectations to the lack of technological support. Skye shares her firsthand experience with burnout and the critical importance of taking annual leave, while Simone offers practical solutions like employing external third parties to manage workloads during staff leave. This episode goes beyond identifying the problem to provide actionable strategies to combat burnout and foster a supportive work environment. We highlight the importance of a balanced approach to control and delegation, the significance of clear role definitions, and the benefits of teamwork in both large and small agencies. Through personal stories and expert advice, this episode is a comprehensive guide for property managers aiming to sustain their well-being and thrive in their professional lives. Lots of tips from a wide range of business owners on how they are managing it in their office. The team at The Grout Guy are the leading experts in regrouting, waterproofing, and tiling services nationwide. Property managers find comfort in their 10-year waterproof warranty on all full shower regrouts. Visit thegroutguy.com.au to rejuvenate your properties tiles and grout now!www.thegroutguy.com.au Inspection Express and Paperless Office is the leader in innovative, time saving property Inspection Software.Property Management Software | Inspection Express & Paperless Office (ipropertyexpress.com) Business owners are building their rental portfolios faster than ever and Property Managers can't possibly do it all!Keep your property managers doing what they love and outsource the things they don't to a company that thrives on positive feedback and guarantees a premium personalised servicewww.propertyassistwa.com.auSupport the Show.

Are you working in a business where they are not that keen on getting more technology? Simone Fogarty is an award winning Director and Senior Property Manager at One Agency, Orange. Recently awarded Property Manager of the Year at the REI Awards, Simone shares her remarkable 17-year journey from receptionist to esteemed business owner. This episode was meant to be about creating efficiencies and processes within your office when you are not able to advance with technology. How can you make the most out of your trust software?? Turned out to be a discussion on how you can maximise your Property Me Subscription, which is totally fine!Learn about the integration of essential tools like PropertyMe, AgentBox, and TAPI, which streamline everything from maintenance tracking to communication. Whether you're part of an agency with advanced tech or one that's still catching up, Simone offers practical tips to maintain efficiency and effectively manage tasks. She also emphasizes the importance of having a well-structured team, including trainees and virtual assistants, to tackle backend tasks and social media.Simone provides actionable insights that can simplify your day-to-day operations. By leveraging email tracking, centralized inboxes, and task management within PropertyMe, you'll gain valuable advice on reducing stress and improving overall efficiency in property management. The Associates Co provides fully trained professionals to assist you with scaling your property management department. They are ready to hit the ground running! Once a luxury, VA's are now a staple in every business, whether you are managing 5 properties or 500+Head over to www.theassociatesco.com Business owners are building their rental portfolios faster than ever and Property Managers can't possibly do it all!Keep your property managers doing what they love and outsource the things they don't to a company that thrives on positive feedback and guarantees a premium personalised servicewww.propertyassistwa.com.au Todays sponsor is InspectRealEstate: They are a global software company that specialises in tech solutions for the real estate industry and are one of the most important programs in my business. Their products are designed by agents & property managers who have been in your shoes, to allow you to be more productive and streamline tasks. For a free demo, call 1300 942 721 or visit inspectrealestate.com.au

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has changed a big part of the American landscape over the years. Established during the Franklin Roosevelt administration, TVA has a large cache of what are known as cultural heritage documents. With the deadline looming to present digitized records to the National Archives and Records Administration, Federal Drive Host Tom Temin checked in with TVA's senior manager for enterprise records, Rebecca Coffey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Illinois State Rep. Eva-Dina Delgado (D-3rd), joins Lisa Dent to explain why a bill she’s co-sponsoring that would combine the CTA, Metra, and Pace into one agency. Rep. Delgado discusses why the merge would benefit Illinois commuters. Follow The Lisa Dent Show on Twitter:Follow @LisaDentSpeaksFollow @SteveBertrand Follow @kpowell720 Follow @maryvandeveldeFollow @LaurenLapka

In this episode, Josh Rosenberg, CEO of Day One Agency, joins Fred Cook to discuss the results of a real-time ethnographic study about Gen Z media habits that Day One and the USC Annenberg collaborated to conduct. The discussion uncovers the nontraditional news sources and the 'always on' media engagement that characterize Gen Z's unique media landscape. Josh shares his insights on how brands can tap into these behaviors to make a meaningful impact on a generation that is reshaping the rules of engagement.Fred and Josh discuss how the concept of "prime time" has evolved into a continuous phenomenon for this generation, with many waking up and immediately reaching for their phones. And they reflect on the rise of the "recommendation generation," where influencers and peers hold significant sway over brand perceptions. From the importance of trend-responsive content to the creation of 'writer's rooms' for monitoring platform trends, Josh emphasizes the need for agility in content creation.For the complete study and more on media and how to reach Gen Z, visit the Day One Agency website at https://d1a.com/perspective. This study is published at https://d1a.com/perspective/day-one-agency-usc-annenberg-gen-z-study Still have questions? Ask GenZ directly at askgenz.com.Disclaimer: This conversation was recorded prior to the introduction of H.R. 7521, a bill that could effectively ban TikTok in the United States. As such, this podcast episode only provides insight into how organizations and Gen Z thought about TikTok without the implications of a ban.Featuring:Josh Rosenberg, Co-founder & CEO, Day One AgencyHost:Fred Cook (@fredcook), Chairman Emeritus of Golin, a global PR firm. Author of “Improvise - Unorthodox Career Advice from an Unlikely CEO” and Director of the USC Center for Public RelationsFollow us: @USCCenterforPR (Twitter, Facebook and Instagram)Newsletter: News from the USC Center for Public RelationsVisit our website: https://annenberg.usc.edu/research/center-public-relations A production of the USC Annenberg Center for Public Relations at the University of Southern California.

Mark Williams, President and CEO of Brokers International, joins Andrew in this episode of Business Ninjas.Known as The Original Agency Builder™, Brokers International is one of the largest and most experienced insurance marketing organizations (IMOs) dedicated to helping agency partners and financial professionals build their businesses. Founded by Roger McCarty, Brokers International remains a family-oriented organization, driven by core values of teamwork, integrity, work ethic, and customer service. Through innovative marketing solutions, exclusive tools, exceptional service, and in-depth sales and operational support, Brokers Solutions help agency partners and financial professionals grow their businesses and better serve their customers. When you partner with Brokers International, you'll gain access to extensive carrier relationships and diverse income solutions to fulfill a variety of client needs. From annuities and life insurance to wealth management and investments through their sister company, Brokers Financial—Brokers International has all the resources and product solutions you need to help you reach your full potential. Learn more by visiting Brokers International's website: www.biltd.com-----Do you want to be interviewed for your business?  Schedule time with us, and we'll create a podcast like this for your business:  https://www.WriteForMe.io/-----https://www.facebook.com/writeforme.iohttps://www.instagram.com/writeforme.io/https://twitter.com/writeformeiohttps://www.linkedin.com/company/writeforme/ https://www.pinterest.com/andysteuer/Want to be interviewed on our Business Ninjas podcast? Schedule time with us now, and we'll make it happen right away! Check out WriteForMe, more than just a Content Agency! See the Faces Behind The Voices on our YouTube Channel!

October 11, 2023 - One Agency

Imagine a federal procurement shop where you use every technique, except the Federal Acquisition Regulation. And you don't do grants, either. And you've got congressional backing for your novel approach. That's the case for one of the government's newer agencies, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, known as ARPA-H. For a look on the inside, Federal Drive Host Tom Temin spoke with Diane Sidebottom, ARPA-H Director of Acquisition and Contracts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are you resisting the advice to niche down and become a specialist? Do you think niching down means losing opportunities and turning down clients? It's normal to fear a change like this but when you understand your ideal audience, you can't lose. Your ideal prospects will notice that you speak their language and understand their challenges. That leads to building trust and authority as well as a pipeline full of prospects. For one agency, everything changed once they realized they already had tons of success in an uncommon niche. It took time but this agency doubled revenue when they went all in. James Kaye is the co-founder of Big Games Machine, a video games PR agency with unique experience in delivering consumer and B2B PR campaigns for clients worldwide. Although it has tons of experience in the gaming industry, James' agency wasn't always marketed to that niche. The decision to speak to its ideal audience changed everything for its business. He discusses how this small change helped them double their revenue. In this episode, we'll discuss: Doubling their revenue by positioning themselves as a specialist agency. Struggling to fill his agency's pipeline. Why choosing a niche doesn't mean you'll turn down all other clients.   Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service.   Like many, James and his business partner are accidental agency owners. They had both worked at different agencies before reuniting to create Big Games Machine. They started as just two consultants working from their kitchen tables on different sides of the country. Growth was slow, but it snowballed into an agency little by little as they started to take people on. Overall, just learning to run an agency was a bumpy road that led to many failures before starting to see the successes. Now even after nine years of growing the agency, he's still learning and making mistakes. For instance, new business remains a constant problem that he's still figuring out. On the other hand, one of the most valuable lessons for him has been the importance of finding the support of a coach to guide you and trusting his agency could grow in a specialty niche. The Biggest Inbound Marketing Mistake Many agency owners struggle to build a pipeline after growing on referrals in the beginning, which is not scalable. This is actually still a struggle but James has learned his pipeline is his lifeblood so he's always willing to try something new. In terms of the work they do at the agency, they divided it into two segments: Consumer, where there's a lot of competition with many agencies doing consumer PR, B2B, where they'd really found their footing. At his agency, they work in video games PR, which is a pretty small niche. Luckily, they are pretty good with SEO, which has become a big part of their inbound marketing strategy. The problem James has found, however, is that as a unique specialist, it becomes very difficult for a third party to represent you eloquently and passionately. Over the years, he's tried pretty much everything in terms of building the pipeline. He partnered with a LinkedIn agency to give cold emails a try and found this did not work for his agency. Of course, some things take 6-12 months to start showing results. Looking back, he thinks they were too generalist in their inbound marketing approach. How Seeking the Help of an Expert Changed Everything There are a lot of options out there for agencies trying to accelerate their growth; it might seem like you're simultaneously drowning in options and starving for good ones. Loads of bad options are out there and it's up to agency owners to decipher which ones are legit. James found a good fit and started integrating systems for agency growth. One of the most impactful was making the decision to become a specialist. Up to that point, his agency was called Big Ideas Machine and was more of a general Tech PR agency. They served B2B and consumer customers but hadn't managed to book a consumer client. The feedback they were getting was that the agency didn't look enough like a games agency. He decided to create a different brand called Big Games Machine hoping to attract consumer clients on the gaming side. Stop Resisting the Shift to be a Specialist Agency and Pick a Niche In James' experience, it was a big mess trying to run two brands and two websites at the same time. It came to the point where he and his partner sat down to consider their choices. They had 25 years of experience in the game industry and that was their area of expertise. In fact, looking at their B2B clients, they were all in the games industry. They had resisted the idea to niche down even though they were getting no traction as a generalist agency. That was the lightbulb moment. The big shift came when they finally decided to get rid of Big Ideas Machine and consolidate Big Games Machine as their main brand. By doubling down on that niche they occupy a very unique space. No one else does B2B in the gaming industry quite like they do. Now that they do B2B and consumer work for the games industry, people quickly understand what problems they solve. With this change, James understood it's not only about picking a niche but also about how you position yourself in the market. Additionally, he recently hired a new head of new business marketing with experience and contacts in the gaming industry that has been getting very good quality leads for the agency. Does Choosing a Niche Mean Turning Away Other Clients? When pushing to remain a generalist agency, it was because James was thinking about the business they would lose as specialists. What if a client from another industry approached them? Would they have to turn them away? One of the biggest mistakes people make when they're choosing a niche is thinking they'll need to say no to other clients. The idea is that you're only marketing to ideal clients in a niche, but can still take on projects outside the niche. The Best Advice to Fill Your Agency's Pipeline James best advice to fill your pipeline is to play the long game and go all in on content. He feels this is the best way to gain your prospects' trust, which you'll do by solving a problem for them. How can you do that? Start by creating amazing content, whether it's a podcast, blog post, or newsletter. It'll be the best thing you can do for your agency. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? If you want to be around amazing agency owners that can see what you may not be able to see and help you grow your agency, go to Agency Mastery 360.  Our agency growth program enables you to take a 360-degree view of your agency and gain mastery of the 3 pillar systems (attract, convert, scale) so you can create predictability, wealth, and freedom.

Day One Agency, Campaign US' Independent Agency of the Year and PRWeek's Outstanding Midsize Agency of the Year 2023, is hyperinterested in reaching and influencing the next generation: Gen Z. In wanting to delve deeper into how (and why) Gen Z consumes media, the agency recently partnered with USC Annenberg Center for Public Relations on a mobile ethnographic “Ask Gen Z: A Deep Dive into Gen Z's Scrolls” study that provides how brands can reach Gen Z, whose attention is increasingly fragmented across different corners of the internet, at all hours of the day. Recorded from Cannes Lions, Day One Agency CEO Josh Rosenberg; its director of creative strategy Eli Williams; and USC Annenberg Center for Public Relations director Fred Cook discuss the generation's changing media diets, their complex relationship with their feeds and how actively they're reshaping the media landscape, along with happenings from the Croisette.

Day One Agency, Campaign US' Independent Agency of the Year and PRWeek's Outstanding Midsize Agency of the Year 2023, is hyperinterested in reaching and influencing the next generation: Gen Z. In wanting to delve deeper into how (and why) Gen Z consumes media, the agency recently partnered with USC Annenberg Center for Public Relations on a mobile ethnographic “Ask Gen Z: A Deep Dive into Gen Z's Scrolls” study that provides how brands can reach Gen Z, whose attention is increasingly fragmented across different corners of the internet, at all hours of the day. Recorded from Cannes Lions, Day One Agency CEO Josh Rosenberg; its director of creative strategy Eli Williams; and USC Annenberg Center for Public Relations director Fred Cook discuss the generation's changing media diets, their complex relationship with their feeds and how actively they're reshaping the media landscape, along with happenings from the Croisette.

Day One Agency has had a big week. The nine-year-old firm won Outstanding Midsize Agency last Thursday at the PRWeek Awards U.S. with judges citing its 59% growth over the last two years and the fact that it is now the lead creative agency for many of the brands it represents. Day One cofounder and CEO Josh Rosenberg joins The PR Week a week later to discuss his firm's ethos and growth strategy and discuss the top PR, communications and marketing news of the week, including: - PRWeek's 2023 Women of Distinction and Women to Watch lists; - The cast of “Ted Lasso” visits the White House press briefing room; - Twitter's smelly media-response strategy; - Penta's acquisition of Copperfield Advisory; - And much more. Follow us on Twitter: @PRWeekUSReceive the latest industry news, insights, and special reports. Start Your Free 1-Month Trial Subscription To PRWeek 

Paul Davies, CEO of One Agency interviews Adrian Bo, CEO of Adrian Bo Real Estate Training. In this episode we discuss,* The importance of stoicism * How agents can be resilient & overcome rejection* How agents are managing their own expectations with a fit mindset* Why agents need to be focusing on NCI instead of GCI Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's Corn! You have to move quickly to tap into culture as an advertiser. Jamie Falkowski is the Chief Creative Officer at Day One Agency, and they know how to move quickly and on strategy. Day One Agency is a creative communications agency built for the next 10 years (and 24 hours). Jamie's efforts have caused nearly 50% business growth at the agency over the last year in partnership with clients including Nike, Meta, American Express, Chipotle, Walmart, Beam Suntory and more. His break-in story includes some celebrities like Whiz Kalifa, Drake and more. ALSO he's always looking for talent. So listen up! Day One Agency: https://d1a.com/ Day One Agency IG: https://www.instagram.com/d1a/ Connect with Jamie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamiefalkowski/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/breakenter/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/breakenter/support

Do you struggle with educating clients on relevant messaging? Great messaging addresses the audience's emotional connection with an issue and sometimes that means it's not all about the product. Educating clients on looking beyond their product can be tricky. However, once they understand it they'll see significant growth. Today's guest increased his client's topline revenue from $35 million to $230 million in just 18 months by understanding who their message was aimed at. For his second podcast appearance, he discusses how he fell in love with helping challenger brands and how he helps them rise above the plateau to success. He also shares 2 mistakes you might be making that are costing you money. Bill Harper is the founder of WM Harper, a strategic branding agency focused on brands in need of transformation. His team helps companies that have hit a plateau. These are challenger brands that haven't quite hit their potential goal and need help figuring out how to get to the next level. In this episode, we'll discuss: Why clients need to understand it's not always about the product. Building an agency machine that runs itself. 2 Mistakes are a big waste of time and money.   Sponsors and Resources Wix: Today's episode is sponsored by the Wix Partner Program. Being a Wix Partner is ideal for freelancers and digital agencies that design and develop websites for their clients. Check out Wix.com/Partners to learn more and become a member of the community for free. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Podcast Takeover!! Get to know your Smart Agency Guest Host:  Dr. Jeremy Weisz is the co-founder of Rise25, an agency that helps companies launch and run podcasts profitably. He followed Jason's podcast and eventually joined the mastermind and has been a guest on the podcast before. Today, he's helping Jason bring something new to the Smart Agency podcast audience by interviewing a special guest and bringing a new perspective to the show.   Helping Brands Understand Relevant Messaging Bill has worked with many exciting companies in his career but BMB&B is probably where he learned the most. There, he got to work with big-name brands and got inspired to start his own agency. He has built several businesses from being a consultant to running an agency. However, as he puts it, once you've been bitten by the ownership bug it's practically impossible to go back. Working with a company like Blockbuster, Bill realized sometimes the agency does not have a lot of influence to change big brands. Typically, this type of company is very focused on maintaining its position in the market. That is what keeps them up at night. However, Bill fell in love with helping brands with billion-dollar potential but stuck in a multimillion-dollar universe. These brands just need a push to go from an awkward stage to center stage. Most of the time, they have similar strategies to the bigger players but they haven't figured out how to implement them yet. If the client is willing to embrace a change in the way that they think about relevant messaging, they help them create a path forward that makes sense and helps them scale. How to Get 3X Top Line Revenue in 18 Months for Your Client Part of Bill's journey with clients is getting them to understand what they want is people's attention. Sometimes is not really about the product, which can be hard for clients to accept. It's not about listing the new features and talking about the tech. That is what everyone else is doing. When you're doing research, look for the thing people engage with emotionally. For instance, his agency once made an ad for Delsey luggage where they removed all the technical details about the product and focused on being lightweight. The emotional connection was in the audience's frustration with travel. It had changed from being something exciting into being inconvenient. The idea was to address this existing frustration by focusing on how the product leaves the consumer in a better emotional state. Once you find what consumers are either striving toward or moving away from then you have something to play with. Few brands have logged into that insight, but once they do, their growth is significant. Another great success came when his agency helped the Breast Cancer Index achieve sixfold growth of its top-line revenue. The client originally asked them to increase their top-line revenue from $35 million to $250 million within 3 years. They exceeded expectations mainly by understanding who they needed to address. In the case of this hyper-specific test, the way to get oncologists' attention was by giving patients the information they need to begin the conversation. With a combined strategy of influencer marketing, digital marketing, trade shows, and event marketing, they were able to reach $230 million in just 18 months. Building an Agency Machine That Can Run Itself What Bill recalls from his first few experiences as an agency owner is valuing the work when he should have been thinking about the value of the agency itself. With time, he learned ultimately it is about making sure the owner is NOT involved in every aspect of the business. You need to build an agency machine that can run independently from you. This requires a solid understanding of who you're working with and a solid process for hiring the right people. That transition, which of course did not happen overnight, made the biggest change. Learning how other people view the agency's value was instrumental. Bill realized the most important things to him were not necessarily important to everybody. For instance, in the early stages, he did not realize the importance of not being involved in the business. When you start an agency, you wear all the hats. And if you do it well, by some point you give them all away. So many leaders feel the need to be involved, as though the agency will go off the rails without them. However, this is indicative of someone who is just trying to protect a lifestyle rather than grow a business. Hiring for Values to Build a Great Agency Culture Bill used to hire almost exclusively based on talent but was struck by how hard it was to create agency culture. Most recently, he shifted to hiring for personal values. Of course, talent is not disregarded, but values are the deciding factor. He no longer expects people to find joy in his dream. He prefers to hire someone who is chasing their own dream, as long the agency fits into it. Furthermore, he watches out for people who are running from something and looks for the ones who are running toward something. It's more about their goals than about their history at other companies. He understands if someone wants to use their time at his agency to learn and someday have an agency of their own. Knowing this gives him an understanding of how they value their time there. Another change he introduced is letting employees write their own development plans for the year. He used to do it himself but this way they get to define the things that excite them the most. In doing that, he finds out what's important to each employee and what they dislike about their job. Now that he focuses on bringing in people who value the same things, building a great culture is no longer a hard task, even in these times of virtual workplaces. 2 Common Mistakes That Are a Waste of Money Buying growth - There is a misconception that you can continuously buy growth. People have become so fixated on buying their way to success but there's no rationale behind it. Trackability gives people a false sense of security, which has manifested in everyone's lack of patience. We all want immediate results. However, trying to AB test your way to success will most likely lead you to unnecessary spending. Adopting new tech - Entrepreneurs commonly race for the newest thing whether or not it makes sense for your brand. The truth is you don't have to be on every single social media platform. You just need to be present where your audience congregates most. If you build a following on just two platforms where your audience is, you're already ahead of the competition! At the end of the day, it all comes back to the metrics of the company. Once you take the eye off that ball because you're fixated on the idea of buying more, you may as well be burning your money. Bill's advice is “don't be dazzled by the movement, be dazzled by the achievement”. Want the Support of Amazing Digital Agency Owners? If you want to be around amazing agency owners that can see you may not be able to see and help you grow your agency, go to the Digital Agency Elite to learn all about our exclusive mastermind.

It's finally here friends! In the third episode of our dating advice series, we discuss three questions that you can ask yourself when you need to know if he is the "one." Emphasis on the quotation marks! Later in the episode, Sara dives deep into sharing some of her best advice on  engagement and marriage: don't live like roommates, show gratitude, be humble, make time for eachother and actively love. Romantic relationships are tricky, but sister we believe in you!

What are your goals for agency growth? Would you like to grow your agency to 7- or 8-figures? That is exactly what this agency owner did when he built a highly successful $50 million-dollar agency with a team of 400 people. He did it by staying ahead of the curve with technology and building leaders who evolve with the growing agency. Robert Henderson is the co-founder and CEO of JumpCrew, an agency that generates demand for 2B2 customers by building a qualified pipeline through fully dedicated sales teams. Robert has built a successful agency by growing in the direction of the market, staying ahead of the curve, and building strong leadership. In this episode, we'll discuss: The future of marketing in the metaverse. Staying ahead of the curve with technology. Building a leadership that evolves with your agency. Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Building a $50 Million Dollar Agency Many agency owners starting out are interested in “tricks” to get ahead and grow their agency as fast as possible. They seem so interested in growth they don't stop to think about the value they should be providing. When he started out, Robert saw many businesses shied away from learning how to acquire new clients. Communicating value is something he really leans into with each new client. He doesn't sell a one-size-fits-all solution because it's specific enough or aligned with what the client needs. Instead, his team focuses on how to deliver value in a way that aligns with the client's goals. Also, they are self-aware enough to turn away clients when they feel that they can't deliver this value. Whatever the reason, they try to be really candid about good and bad fits. The most important piece of building a successful agency is aligning with the right people. Every business is ultimately about people and when you create an environment where each team member is an expert in their area you don't need to know everything. Partnering with people who really know about their particular area will you set your agency up for success. The secret is having people that are really good at executing what they know. The Effect of New Technologies and the Metaverse on the Future of Marketing Robert and his team learned the power of content marketing while automating content for local businesses. They learned what the market needed by being in the mix. They grew in that direction by adding new products and services based on the feedback from clients. Robert is a believer in new and emerging tech tools and giving platforms the credit they deserve as they develop. Sometimes we can't imagine the progress a new technology will represent in our particular space. For instance, 10 years ago no one was interested in being a guest on a podcast and now they have become a very popular marketing vehicle. Looking ahead, Robert believes in ten years from now the meetings we're having on video today will all happen on the metaverse. People from all over the world will gather in a space that feels very realistic. The adoption of mediums like the metaverse will come with the technology and infrastructures to support them. At this point, adopting this new technology will maybe shape the way the supporting technologies start to develop. He believes the possibilities are endless as we still can't imagine the many ways that we'll use it. The development of paid search started with the rate of adoption of social media platforms. Similarly, the development of the metaverse as the possible future of paid ads will depend on how people start to adopt this new technology. These tools are bound to change the way agencies work and advertise and, of course, being the first to adopt them successfully would be a great advantage. We need to continue to study and educate ourselves to be able to see where it is heading. Staying Ahead of the Curve with Technology Staying ahead of the curve is mostly about educating yourself and trying to understand what the opportunities look like to capitalize on them as they come. We're in a learning phase for technologies like the metaverse. We know it will be a part of the future but we don't know exactly how that will look. Right now it's about trying to create more connectivity between your team in what is set to be a more sophisticated environment. Robert believes this is the low-hanging fruit available right now for all until we can figure out how to get our partners and clients into it. However, the technology is still in the very early stages. For instance, no one wants to work 6 to 7 hours with the VR goggles on. There's still a long way to go before it is adapted to everyday use and usage is what will help shape that. Evolving Team Member Roles as the Agency Grows One of the most difficult phases for his agency was at a point when a lot of things were working great but they couldn't figure out why some others were not working at all. In hindsight, they just didn't have the right infrastructure and didn't have all the right people in the right seats. It's really fun to be part of so much growth but it can also be a struggle to remain motivated and challenge yourself every single day, month, and year. Robert's leadership team has been with the agency since they were just ten people. This team has helped grow the agency to over 400 people. How did they do it? First of all, they've had to continue growing themselves. Their role in the agency business has changed and they've reinvented themselves several times. Being open to the idea of constantly evolving in order to be able to grow has really helped them support the agency's growth. Each employee remains flexible and open to change for their own growth as well as that of the agency. Building Leaders Who Help Grow a Strong Agency Robert built the leadership team in such a way that they've basically been with him since the very beginning. Of course, they were not all prepared for a leadership role from the beginning. Building an agency as a team of just 10 people helped a lot when it came to building camaraderie. They had different titles but were very much equals and shared the same values. It also helped build a level of communication not often seen in a team where they are able to have hard conversations and be very honest with each other. Robert also encouraged an environment for taking risks. He feels it is important to challenge leaders to take risks without the fear of making mistakes. This doesn't mean they make mistakes all the time, but in order to go for innovation, the team needs to know that it's ok if something doesn't work out as they'd hoped. Want the Support of Amazing Digital Agency Owners? If you want to be around amazing agency owners that can see you may not be able to see and help you grow your agency, go to the Digital Agency Elite to learn all about our exclusive mastermind.

When the government spent billions on health measures in response to the pandemic, officials worried whether enough would flow to the poor and vulnerable. Such people live in both urban and rural areas. My next quest coordinated the work to get millions of vaccines and other medications to community health centers. She's the director of the Office of Quality Improvement at the Health Resources and Services Administration, and a finalist in this year's Service to America Medals program, Dr. Suma Nair.

Abe talks with Russ Castle of Castle Insurance about why he chose to sell in 2021 even though he wasn't planning on selling until 2031.

For many agency owners, it can be hard to become comfortable with delegating out important tasks and responsibilities to your team. As the owner, you've played a hand in every decision, but as your agency grows you need to learn that it is okay to trust your team and allow them to handle tasks on their own. Rich Brooks, the President of Flyte New Media and the Founder of the Agents of Change Podcast, discusses his own successes with delegation in his agency. Discover the keys to the success of an agency and the two biggest agency complaints that Rich overcame.What You'll Learn:Developing a Comfort in DelegatingThe Meme That Created Issues for RichFinding the Digital Marketing Training that WorksThe Keys to the Success of an AgencyHow Rich Overcame The Two Biggest Complaints with AgencyConnect with Rich:LinkedInAgents of Change PodcastResources:Connect with IanSupercharge your marketing and grow your business with video case stories today!Book a Discovery Call Today with Our ExpertsSubscribe to the YouTube Channel See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I spoke to Seven Figure Freedom member Sheila Heard, about how she became a total badass at sales calls! Sheila runs Patient Boost, which targets dentists. In the interview, Sheila talks me through how she upsells customers, deals with objections and runs her sales calls.   How To Double Your Revenue In 90 Days (Without Ads or Content Marketing): https://go.sellyourservice.co.uk/double Use this FREE “Sales Map” to find your your NEXT customer: https://go.sellyourservice.co.uk/sales-map

What happens when an agency inspector general appears to whitewash charges of sexual misconduct by a senior manager? In the case of the Securities and Exchange Commission, complaints from inside the SEC eventually resulted in an investigation by the IG from another agency. The Project on Government Oversight got hold of that report and the lurid events it uncovered. Joining the Federal Drive with more, POGO senior journalist Adam Zagorin.

Are you willing to start saying no to wrong customers to see real change for your agency? Kerrie Luginbill is a partner and Chief Strategy Officer at Old Town Media, a Colorado-based agency that since its beginnings offered a unique and agile approach to web design, development, and marketing by providing customers a business-driven approach. Now they partner with companies to create and implement marketing strategies that connect with their audience and inspire action. Kerrie discusses how she increased revenue by 4X in under one year. And now, after 15 years in the business, her agency crafted a "no-fly" list for customers, identified their target client, and the growth that resulted from this move. 3 Golden Nuggets Saying no to wrong prospects. Kerrie and her team really noticed a difference once they identified the right target customer for them and started to say no to the ones that did not fit that target. It was what catalyzed the growth, she says. Of course, it's not easy turning down business, but they found that saying yes to the wrong kind of customer really reduces the amount of space you have for the right ones. Especially when it comes to clients that are disrespecting your team. Learning to say no can be a way for you to protect your team and a catalyst for growth. The no-fly list. With that in mind, Kerrie and her agency began creating a no-fly list, writing down all the similarities that made some customers not fit in the target customer model. They started identifying red flags, like referencing another company's vision to explain their own. They wanted to work with companies that had a clear vision of where they wanted to go. Their biggest focus was value, because ideal clients must have a lifetime value customer that can afford them the margin to have an engagement with them that's large enough for them to drive value. Shifting to value-based pricing. It's very hard to get to value-based pricing when you're working with a small margin. Once you start saying no to low-margin clients you will start to identify people that share your values and with which you can form a strong engagement and a strong relationship. You can find that those clients are even easier to work with. This way, you start to reduce stress on your team, which helps reduce turnover. This is when you can start shifting to value-based pricing. Sponsors and Resources Ninja Cat: Today's episode is sponsored by Ninja Cat, a digital marketing performance management platform where you can unify your data, create beautiful, insightful reports and presentations that will help you grow your business. Head over to ninjacat.io/masterclass to enjoy an exclusive offer for podcast listeners. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Saying No to the Wrong Customers and Shifting to Value-Based Pricing Jason: [00:00:00] Welcome, agency owners. I'm Jason Swenk and here's another episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass. And on today's episode, I have an amazing guest who went from $500,000 in revenue to over $2 million in just under a year. And we're going to talk about the one thing that she actually did at her agency in order to accomplish this. Now, before we jump into the episode. I want you to do me a favor. I want you to take a screenshot of the podcast. And then I want you to upload it to social media and tag us so I can give you a shout-out for listening to the show. Let's go ahead and bring Kerrie on. Hey, Kerrie. Welcome to the show. Kerrie: [00:00:43] Hello. How's it going? Jason: [00:00:45] Awesome. I'm excited to have you on, so tell us who you are and what do you do? Kerrie: [00:00:50] Yeah, my name is Kerrie Luginbill and I am a partner and the Chief Strategy Officer at a creative agency in Fort Collins, Colorado. So just about 45 minutes North of Denver. Jason: [00:01:03] Awesome. I'll uh, we, we just moved to Colorado in Durango, so I'm starting to just try to figure out where everything uh is, but, uh, uh, I'm… Let's go ahead and jump into it and talk about what's the one thing, you know, that took you from 500,000 to over 2 million in less than a year? Because there's a lot of people that spend years, sometimes decades. Um, and they hit that plateau and they can't figure out what do they actually need. Kerrie: [00:01:34] Yeah, and full disclosure. It was more than one year. It was a couple of years, but there was a really distinct difference that we, we took a different direction that we took with the agency that really catalyzed a lot of that growth. And it was really identifying the right target customer for us and saying no to the customers that were not in that target. It's really hard as an entrepreneur to say no to business and to work. But what we found over the last couple of years is that when you say yes to the wrong kind of client, you are really creating, you're reducing the amount of space that you have for the right client. And that was really inhibiting us. And so we had to kind of fight ourselves. Our, the ownership, there are three of us that are partners and, you know, so we'd have to question each other and serve as checks and balances for each other so that we could stop taking in what was not helping us grow. Jason: [00:02:34] What were some things that you did in order to kind of really narrow it down? Because I always look at, you know, when you start an agency, you're just reactionary. Like you got a pulse, you got some money, like I'll take you on. And then you, you know, there's a, there's a switch like you guys went through, like, how did you start evaluating going this is the people I need to say no to? Kerrie: [00:02:58] Yeah, absolutely. It's funny you say that. I remember the first couple of years, uh, trying to launch the agency and literally taking anything. Um, and I think you're, we're all there at a certain point. And I think there's a level of professional maturity that comes with being an entrepreneur for a specific amount of time and starting to get things under your belt, bigger clients that give you a little bit more confidence to say no to some of those smaller clients. But what we did was we actually started creating a, like a no fly list and we would write down the similarities that would cause, you know, clients to maybe not be that ideal target customer. And started to find a lot of correlations between them and then started to build out the correlations between the clients that were really strong for our company and really fit with us well, and then between those two, we started to create essentially a target persona for our client list. And the biggest thing that we focus on is our client's customer value. So when you hire an agency, you as a, as any kind of business product or service, you must have the amount of margin that allows you to work comfortably with an agency. So, you know, businesses with really tight margins, uh, independent restaurants, salons, things like that are actually really challenging for us to work with. Because they don't have the margin in the day to day to be able to have a large enough engagement with to create a lot of value for them. So we started to tease that out and it really comes down to our ideal client is a client that has a lifetime value customer that can afford them the margin to have an engagement with us that's large enough for us to drive value. Jason: [00:04:51] Yeah. I love that. What are, what are some of the criteria? So obviously that's probably one of the criteria is of the no fly list. And I like that. I've never heard of that. I, I always treat it as kind of like a Vegas buffet. Like you try everything out and then the stuff that you were like, ooh, I don't like that. Like, you're not going to go back to that section anymore. But, and then by the time you come back to the, well, I guess a smaller buffet, the time you come back, the second time, you probably be like, ooh, I like this stuff. So what was some of the criteria on your no fly list at first? Kerrie: [00:05:25] Yeah. So I think at first it started, it wasn't very sophisticated. It was, you know, the little things that we were identifying. Um, typically one of my big red flags is if a client comes to us and they, they want help, you know, defining their brand messaging, creating, you know, creating a place for them in the market and they reference other company's visions to explain their own vision. That's usually a pretty big red flag because I start to, you know, it's almost like, well, is it your idea? Or did you see somebody else had a great idea? And now you're trying to replicate that. And so we really look for that strong vision from the client, whether we're working with the business owner, operations director or marketing director, it's really important that they have a vision for where they want to go so that we can work together to tease that out and really hone it in. But if they're referencing someone else's vision that has been successful, that's usually one of those red flags. Jason: [00:06:27] Oh yeah. Like I, I remember getting all the time, hey, I want to build… I get this great idea that no one's ever thought of, it's Facebook, YouTube, and Google put together. But I have a budget of like a thousand dollars. And I'm like, holy cow. Like, get me off the phone. Kerrie: [00:06:45] Yeah. You know, um, we, we were known for building websites in the, in the beginning. Because Old Town Media started creating websites before WordPress was, you know, really taking over the market. It was a much higher barrier to entry. And so everybody had to go hire a professional for their website. It wasn't something you could kind of go figure out yourself very easily. And so that created a reputation for us where we were known as a web shop for a lot of years. And people would come to us wanting a website for an idea before they had a business plan for that idea. That was another one of the big red flags on that list is if you don't know how you're going to operate business and you want a website because you think that that's going to solve all of your problems, that's typically not the answer. Jason: [00:07:42] Do you feel like you have to comb through mountains of data, jumping between multiple platforms to spreadsheets, to slide decks and backing in, in order to create performance reports for your clients? It's a constant drain on your agency's time and resources. And that's where our friends at Ninja Cat can help. Ninja Cat is a digital marketing performance management platform that really unifies your marketing data and empowers your agency to automate insightful, beautiful client reports at scale. Now, Ninja Cat keeps your marketing performance and presentation tools in one place, freeing you up from manual data wrangling. And it really gives your team more time to focus on strategy and growing your business. And for a limited time, my smart agency podcast listeners will receive $500 ninja credit when you go to ninjacat.io/masterclass to claim your offer and schedule a demo. That's ninjacat.io/masterclass. Yeah. Yeah, I know I, I love that you make sure that… I love the criteria because I think a lot of agencies we take on certain industries that have a low margin. And then they're like, hey, I'm at my cap. Like they can't spend anymore. I'm like, well, are they really? Like, how can you actually add value? And they're like, and they keep their pricing the same. Like, there's so many mastermind members that we, we, uh, they come in in the very beginning and they're like, oh, I'm at my cap. And then by the time we're like, no, no, no, this is who you actually need to go after… And as we're raising our prices and, and you tell me when you actually did this, when you actually started kind of implementing the no fly list and then your target persona that you're going after. I presume that you were able to probably charge more, which meant probably that you could hire the right people, which meant you had more freedom. Am I on the right path? Kerrie: [00:09:48] Yep. Absolutely. You know, and people still get through the no fly list every once in a while. And we actually we've broken out, you know, our ideal target to incorporate a percentage of clients that we'll take on that don't have the margin that we work with a little bit differently, but they have to be passion projects for us. It has to be something that we're really passionate about as a team. Um, but you are exactly right. Once you start saying no to those low-margin clients and, you know, you'll start to identify that the people that you have a really strong engagement with and a really strong relationship with, they're usually easier to work with too. And so you start to, you know, reduce some of the stress on your team, which increases, you know, how long your team members stay with you. You're reducing turnover. You're reducing that chaos in the company. And you can start shifting to value-based pricing. That's kind of the buzzword, I think, in the agency world is everybody's like, you know, time and materials versus value-based pricing. And it's really hard to get to value-based pricing when you're working with such a small margin. You're really, you know, serving as more than just a like brand or creative partner, but also a sales partner and like an advocate for smaller businesses. And I think it's just a very different relationship. Jason: [00:11:11] Yeah. How, uh, what are some things that you guys do in order to demonstrate, you know, the value in your pricing? So you can charge on value-based pricing rather than time and material. Kerrie: [00:11:24] Yeah. So it really comes down to making sure that you have really, really clear objectives and key metrics for your clients. And so it's actually kind of interesting. We use KRAs for our employees. So key result areas where you basically, you define an objective, you have actions that then will help you achieve the metrics that achieve your outcome. So, you know, you start with an outcome actions metrics. We've taken that KRA approach to actually how we look at our client engagements and we define them the same way. We say, okay, we're working with a client. We're doing content creation for them. What's the outcome we're trying to achieve? What are the actions we're taking? And what are the metrics we're looking at? When you can tie it into the data for them, and you can say, hey, when we pull this lever, you have more sales. And you can start to look at what outcomes you're achieving based on the actual actions that you're taking. That time of material dollar amount is not as relevant because there's such a strong value to actually achieving those outcomes. Jason: [00:12:36] I see a lot of agencies, they really don't focus on the results or they don't focus on kind of the leading indicators that will actually get the results. And, and like, and it amazes me because a lot of times when I'm chatting with an agency owner that wants to scale faster, um, it really kind of, and like I was chatting with an owner not too long ago, they had resentment for their clients. I was like, well, let's get to the real problem. And I told him, I said, the real problem is you're resenting your clients because you're too dependent on the clients. He's like, well, what do you mean? I was like, well, you're dependent on the wrong types of clients that aren't paying you the right amount. And I asked what's the value that you deliver to them? He didn't know. And I was like, well, how could you ever charge value-based pricing if you don't know the value? Like how are, how are they? So, um, I'm glad there's, there's agencies that are focused on the results. Cause I, I see when, when our mastermind members and the people that go through our frameworks, when they start kind of understanding the results that they deliver. And that's the key part is you gotta be able to deliver the results to your clients. There's so many people that go well, I took a course on how to start an agency from Joe, Joe. And I'm like, well, they taught you Facebook ads, but did they teach you like how to deliver the results and all that? Like, and they're just learning on other people's dime, which always frustrates the heck out of me. Kerrie: [00:14:05] Yeah. You know, and I think in those earlier days where you're working with smaller clients that maybe it's a solo preneur or some, you know, small margin kind of business, a lot of times they don't have their own data figured out. And so it becomes even more challenging for that agency to tie their outcomes to their results, because they're not getting the same kind of data back from the client. And that is… That's something that we've started working on. How can we actually help our clients get to more sophisticated reporting internally so that we can tie our, our actions to their results and start to get a little bit farther into that? But it's a lot of client education too, you know, a lot of times, um, it's explaining the difference between lead and lag indicators and trying to help them see that, you know, by the time you're looking at this number, it's already too late. And we should really be looking at these lead indicators and some of these numbers over here, because they're ultimately going to influence these lag numbers. So I think it's, it's really just marketing, especially in today's age, is getting a lot more sophisticated when it comes to data and being able to correlate activities to actual outcomes. And it's something that I think agencies are, are really, they need to be more responsible in getting there and focusing on that. Jason: [00:15:31] Totally agree. Well, this has been amazing. Is there anything Kerrie that I did not ask you that you think would benefit the audience? Kerrie: [00:15:40] You know, I think the biggest thing I wish that somebody would have told me like three or four years ago is it's okay to say no. It is okay to say no. If it doesn't feel right, or if you know, a client is not respecting your team or your time, it's okay to say no. Because when you open up that space, you are creating space for something better and a better fit and a better relationship. And that's what will grow, grow your agency. Jason: [00:16:08] Yeah. And, and those troublesome clients that you should say no to, like, if they're treating, mishandling your team, you're not making money on that end. Like, and I don't even care if you're making money on that. It's going to cost your team and your employees, which then just makes you have to do everything all over again, which is a complete nightmare. Um, and you go back and then you're just… Then you get to a point where you're selling for penny on the dollar to someone that's going to take advantage of your client portfolio. And I don't want that to happen. So awesome. Um, what's the agency website people can go and check you out? Kerrie: [00:16:45] Yeah, oldtownmedia.com. We're on Facebook and Instagram, but we probably put the most of our, uh, fun stuff on Instagram, so… Jason: [00:16:56] Awesome. Well, everyone go check out their website and Kerrie, thanks so much for coming on the show. If you guys enjoyed this episode and you want to be surrounded by amazing agency owners that are on a fast growth pace and really scaling their agency fast and they want to be surrounded by other amazing people. Um, so you can scale your agency faster, go to digitalagencyelite.com. This is our exclusive community our mastermind, uh, members where we just have so much fun together going through, you know, the frameworks that are working for other agencies. So go to digitalagencyelite.com. And until next time have a Swenk day.

Do you have the crystal clear vision needed to take your agency to the next level? John Quinton-Barber describes himself as a visionary and accidental entrepreneur. He had 30 years of experience in the media and communications industry when he decided he wanted to set up his own business. After eight years, Social is now a top 20 UK agency. He joins Jason to talk about how he remained focused on the future and the crystal clear vision needed to continue growing your agency, some of the hurdles he has found along the way, and the importance of investing in leadership to focus on the key aspects of your agency's past, present, and future. 3 Golden Nuggets Invest in the right people. The first years of a digital agency are about survival. John focused on keeping the agency running but, after hitting one million pounds, he realized it was no longer necessary or efficient that he took care of every aspect of the business. He started to invest in people to take care of yesterday (the processes, HR, IT, legal), someone to take care of today (making sure the agency creating great quality campaigns, working with clients, giving them the best service), and then focused on taking care of the future, which is about strategy, vision, and where you want to go. Crystal clear vision. After deciding that he was not running a lifestyle business and getting serious about making something really special, John said he never looked back and never experienced doubts. A crystal clear vision will help your business thrive in hard times. If you don't have that vision, you won't get to the next stage. John admits he made many mistakes and that, by year four of his agency, he was barely making any profit and plowing every penny back into the business. But now, in year eight, he is reaping the rewards of investing in his dream. Build up leadership. Finding the right people was key to keep the business running, but empowering them was crucial to keep the business growing. John's mantra is “if you weren't in the business for three months, would it run? And would it grow?” Recruiting can become difficult when you're searching for leaders that can make this mantra happen, so John focused on building leaders within his organization. He makes sure that every director completes a year-long leadership course and has the tools to succeed as a leader. He no longer is the only one focusing on the future, on the vision, and that is the key to continue growing. Sponsors and Resources Ninja Cat: Today's episode is sponsored by Ninja Cat, a digital marketing performance management platform where you can unify your data, create beautiful, insightful reports and presentations that will help you grow your business. Head over to ninjacat.io/masterclass to enjoy an exclusive offer for podcast listeners. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Trust Your Crystal Clear Vision Begin Investing in Leadership Jason: [00:00:00] What's up, agency owners? I'm excited to bring you another episode of the Smart agency Masterclass. I have an amazing guest all the way across the pond in the UK. And he's going to talk about how he's been scaling his agency over the past eight years and some of the trials and tribulations. Now, before we jump into the episode, I want you guys to take a screenshot, tag us on Instagram. And we'll give you a shout out, um, when the episode, uh, when, when you actually do that. So we can, uh, recognize you. So let's go ahead and get into the show. Hey,  John. Welcome to the show. John: [00:00:42] Jason, pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. Jason: [00:00:44] Yeah, man. I'm excited to have you on. So tell us who you are and what do you do? John: [00:00:49] My name is John Quinton-Barber. It's quite a posh name. It's a UK name, John Quinton-Barber. And I'm the founder and chief executive of a marketing digital agency called Social, here in the UK. Jason: [00:01:00] Awesome. And so how did you get started? John: [00:01:04] Well, I've always… I'm 50 years of age. So about 30 years in media and communications and PR. And when I hit about 43 years of age I had this urge that I wanted to set my own business up. And probably quite a few of the listeners will be relating to this quite now. I had this urge but in the back of my mind I felt, I can't do it. I can't do it. And I just took the leap and did it. So eight years ago I set up Social. Um, and what I wanted to do was just bring a different type of agency to the UK market. Because the agency world had gotten a little bit stale. It was offering PR, but it wasn't offering much else. Social was just about social media was just about emerging as the next big thing, next best thing. So I took the plunge and set up the agency, um, with not, not, not a lot of money in my pocket, to be honest. Um, but a whole scope of confidence. And yeah, eight years on, we've gone from what I said about, talking about the dollars, about $10,000. To now about $5.5 million dollars after eight years. So it's been one journey from two people to 48 people right now. And there's a whole host of learnings. Jason: [00:02:11] Oh yeah, definitely. I mean, it's… I remember kind of doing that jump, uh, you know, and there's many stages that you go through. Uh, if you think about it. And I always look at it as kind of like the stages of like climbing a mountain. Like at first you're kind of like surveying of like, do I really want to climb that mountain? Or, you know, which mountain do I want to climb? Um, what were, what were the stages that you went through over the past eight years that, um… were a point where you were like. I mean, were you ever at a point where you just was like, nah, this is not for me? Like, I want out. Or what… like describe some of the hard parts and how'd you get through them? John: [00:02:51] I've never had that. Never, never had that moment, Jason, where this is not for me. It's always, I've always felt it's for me. It's quite, almost like a mission, really a zeal within me to make this work. Um, the pain points. So as we know, when you set an agency up, it's about survival. You know, I've got family, I've got two young children. They were two young children at the time. It's about survival. I need to bring the income in. And you find yourself doing everything, you know, planning the business, servicing the clients, uh, wiring the, uh, the IT of the desk, sorting out the HR and the finance. So, um, in the first two years, that's what life was like. And we hit a million, a million pounds, so about $1.5 million, in about a year three. And that's when, for me, um, not the fun… Well, it was no longer, it wasn't fun anymore. But it was just like, oh my God. When it was about 10 people in the agency and we're bumping along about 1 million, life was good. You know, we could, we could, we all knew each other. We all knew each others' strengths. We could work together. But as soon as we hit that million-pound mark, that was it. We then had to refocus on actually, this is a business. And I had to make some decisions. Because I decided then it wasn't a lifestyle business. I was plowing back every bit of penny, every penny, back into the business. And taking a very modest salary. Because I had this vision that we can make this business into something really big and really special. And that's something I carry within me all the, all the while. And I'll keep all the while until the end until the big events at the end. Jason: [00:04:19] Well, I think… Yeah, no, I, I think you're, you really hit something I want to point out. You had a crystal clear vision. A lot of us, when we get started in the agency, it's kind of accidental and we really don't know where we're going. We're just reacting to all the work coming to us. And, but when you… and then I remember going through a pivotal point too, like you did of going all right, wow. It's like, you make this certain threshold and you're like, man, it's kind of not fun right now. Because the whole business has changed. But if I, if you don't have that vision of where you're going, you can't make it to the next part. It's kind of like, if I want to reach the summit and you kind of get up to like what I call, like, you know, the, the crux, right? That's kind of like in the middle, right? You're in the climb and you're like, well, I kinda liked it back at base camp. Like that's where the party was. But, uh, you know, talk about, you know, when you're at kind of that crux and you're going to like, Brett the million and a half, or, um, dollar mark. What did you have to do? Was it about building the team or…? John: [00:05:31] It was, I mean, my, my kind of like epiphany came when who is my chairman now, and he's in his sixties, late sixties. And he's not a PR man. He's a, he's a financer. And he said to me, he said, John, you created something special here. And you could, you could actually float this in years to come. And I was like float with it? I mean, I had to Google float it. What's that? Float it? You know, man, I'm trying to survive here. And that probably sowed the seed for actually the ambition I got. The belief I got in myself. So what I decided to do was okay, we, we, we're hitting the million mark. I'm now going to have to invest in a team around me to do the HR, to do the finance, to do the day-to-day. And I describe it like this, Jason, it's a… It's my, I always, when people say to me, I want to set up a business I say, okay, you need somebody to look after yesterday. You need someone to look after today. And you look after tomorrow. And what I was doing, I was doing yesterday, today, and tomorrow. What do I mean by that? Yesterday is basically someone that can sweep up after you. So basically all the kind of processes and the HR, the IT, and all the legals that on a business side becomes all consuming. Find somebody to look after yesterday. The today is about ensuring you're creating great quality campaigns, working with clients, giving them the best service, and ensuring that clients are happy. Clients are alright. And the tomorrow is about strategy. It's about a vision. It's about where you want to go. And I just, again, as I said by year three, when this hit me and my God between a million and probably 2 million, the pain hit me. It hit me where it doesn't hurt. I mean, made loads of mistakes, loads of mistakes. We're in the UK, I'm in Manchester, which is in the north of England. And you know, the, the eye on the prize was let's open a London office. You know, why? But, you know, we, we, we need to open a London office. And we opened a London office in year four and we shut it down in year five because we got it all wrong. We got the wrong people. We didn't have the right business strategy… We just approached it completely wrong. Delighted to say today in 2021, we now have another London office and it's doing really well. So we live in those lessons. Jason: [00:07:40] Yeah. I, I look at it as if you look at kind of three lines that an agency can be on, right? The first line… especially, you know, it happened what lasts last March, right? A lot of people panicked and they kind of went into, you know, a fear-based mentality. And I look at those businesses. They're barely surviving. Like they've just gone straight down. And then I look at other agencies, and I've been in this spot in the agency world for a couple of years of running the agency. You're kind of on this unfocused line and it's kind of the rollercoaster line…  Let's call it the rollercoaster line, right? And these are the preppers, uh, you know, these are the preppers of like saving up all the money and all that kind of stuff. And then you have, and I'm glad you mentioned focused on the strategy to the tomorrow. Let's call that the strategy line. These are the people that are in kind of positioning mode of going, like, how do we, um, how do we take over, uh, you know, more market share? How do we, um, acquire more talent? How do we acquire, which we've talked about in the pre-show acquire more agencies, right? And you're really kind of taking up another level. So I want everyone listening or watching to go, what line or have you been on and what line do you want to be on? And hopefully you guys want to be on the strategy line, but you may be like, you have to be honest with yourself of going, are we on the rollercoaster line? Because the only difference you said was leadership. John: [00:09:17] Yeah, no, we all, Jason, we're all on that. We all, we're all, you know, we all default back to those positions. You know, it's not, it's not all rosy and that's a model world, but I have to, you know, you have to dig deep. You have to dig deep in, in three things, in confidence, in your reserves, so your own health and wellbeing, because it's a big journey. But then you have to dig deep into your pockets and you'll have to invest in people, the right people. And I, you know, my, if you looked at my business about four years ago, you'd go, John, you know, you're barely making a profit. You're growing quickly. You're making it. You're spending quite a lot of money on the setting, so, business development team, finance, team, HR at a really quality number two guy. But you know, is costing me, uh, you know, it's a decent salary. Um, but that was that investment is now starting to pay off. We have got in our business now, eight PNLs. So we've had to really bolt on PNL's and you know, we're now starting to see the world. But the, the mindset for that is, you know, is sacrifice. You have to make the sacrifice. It's almost like when I hit year four, it felt like year one again, because I was having to kind of on this cycle of sacrifice. And now I'm on year eight and I am reaping the rewards. And so my, my message to anyone listening is if you've got a growth journey and growth plan, just go for it. Get the right talent. No, not the talent, not necessarily gonna deliver, you know, the, the, for the clients. The talent that is going to deliver for you sitting by your side to help you grow and scale your business. Jason: [00:10:50] Yeah. I love that. You said kind of invest in your company. And, and a lot of times people will misunderstand me a lot of times when I say, hey, the only thing that matters in your agency is your profit margin. And are you making money? That matters when you get closer to having an exit or, you know, liquidity event later on. But in the middle or in the beginning, I'm like, invest as much as you possibly can because you totally control everything. Like you can put money in the stock market, and I encourage you guys to do that as well, but that's you don't control any of it. It's like literally bet on red bet on black, you know, it's, I mean, it's a little more calculated. But with your agency, you can totally control the situation way better than anything else. So if you're listening, make sure you're investing heavily. You don't have to have 32% profit margins year over year. I know a lot of people reach out and they're like, I'm worried I'm at 15. Like, well, you're not even close to selling, so don't worry about it. John: [00:11:56] Awesome. No, it's true. It's true. And it's, um, you know, I, I do a lot of reading, obviously around some of the most successful companies. And you know, the successful companies didn't make a profit until, I said, you know, two years for listing or, or selling. And profit isn't really important if you… and I keep telling colleagues if you want to makes it grow. But you know, my, my mindset when I, it's interesting, my, my pits, some peer agencies in the UK that I… I would have a drink with and we chat too. And, um, sometimes I look at them through real kind of like, uh, envious glasses because you know, they're out having holidays four or five times a year, pre-COVID and… And that's great, you know, I'm all for that. I'm all for the lifestyle business. I think that's fantastic. You made a decision. But for me, it's just, as I said before, Jason, is quite a mission with me. I've got a mission and I'm going to make it, it's going to happen. I will scale this business and I'll take it to the UK A market. Uh, because I believe with that we've got a great proposition for investors. The one thing that, um, Jason, again, you'll be, you'll be so familiar with this is that culture of people. So while this is all happening with today, tomorrow and yesterday and invest in the center, um… we ha, I had to make sure that that Social probably has to be one of the best agencies to work for. Um, to say we invested a lot in the culture is wrong. It sounds like it's forced. We nurtured the culture that we were creating and we've got fantastic culture now. And I know every business owner says that and that, you know, generally have. And we continue to invest in that now with our people. Um, so the pandemic, uh, for, for us, didn't really hit us. You know, we, we grew through the pandemic, both financially… and we added nine new people during the pandemic year. So, but kind of how I think the… all that, all that groundwork in the first five years helped us through this tricky year. Jason: [00:13:56] Do you feel like you have to comb through mountains of data, jumping between multiple platforms to spreadsheets, to slide decks and backing again in order to create performance reports for your clients? It's a constant drain on your agency's time and resources. And that's where our friends at Ninja Cat can help. Ninja Cat is a digital marketing performance management platform that really unifies your marketing data and empowers your agency to automate insightful, beautiful client reports at scale. Now, Ninja Cat keeps your marketing performance and presentation tools in one place freeing you from manual data wrangling. And it really gives your team more time to focus on strategy and growing your business. And for a limited time, my smart agency podcast listeners will receive a $500 Ninja Credit. When you go to ninjacat.io/masterclass to claim your offer and schedule a demo that's ninjacat.io/masterclass. Why I know some people, like, you know, they're on the strategy line and usually you can accelerate your growth in a time like this. And they're literally, like, we don't want this to end because we're like, we're just reaping the benefits, uh, you know, for it. So let's talk about kind of like the transition from building the right team, right? So I look at that as kind of when you're building the right team, you're, you're in the crux. But then, kind of the next level up, I look at the crest and you're starting to build the leadership team. So let's talk about that because not many people do. Um, what are you, what… what does your leadership team look like? And, and how did you go about building it? Like what was, and would you go in the right order? The same order? So a lot of times people go marketing sales or do sales and marketing, you know, operations, that kind of stuff. John: [00:16:03] Well, for me, the first, the first kind of… the first again Eureka moment or epiphany moment for me was, uh, the operations side of it. Um, and so I brought in who is my number two now, Rob, managing all of the operations side of operations side of the business. And that was the, the first kind of key hire in this space. We are now a leadership team of nine across the business, um, head solve and directors. Um, and you know, that that team has taken time to build. And that team is, you know, we're a trusting team. Um, we work well together. We also get friction, which is, which is healthy I see. Uh, and I believe in, but yeah, the, for me, it was very much about operations, operations, you know, the business had to operate, um, and had to operate effectively. So bring that person in. I had a mantra about, and this is a really good test for anyone who's listening, the mantra is if you weren't in the business for three months, would it run? And would it grow? B. And obviously your priority is it has to run, so get it right. Make sure. And it's a good exercise to do is visualize. But just don't be happy with it running, it's got to grow. So what do you need to make it grow? So to make it run, I brought the right people in and then to make it grow, I've empowered the people in the business. They need to make it grow. Not just me. Um, and again, I'm off after next week for a whole month now. I'm taking a sabbatical. My phone is off. My everything's off. They can't get ahold of me unless it's burning down and that's the first time in eight years. But again, um, and again, I really want to reach out to anyone who's listening who's in that, in that probably two, three, four year phase. Just stick at it, because you get the right people and the right counsel and advice as any business, you can make it. Jason: [00:17:55] Yeah, I look at it as… And, um, and I'm actually showing a lot of our mastermind around this now of going, what are the things, if you audit your calendar for the past couple of weeks… What are the things that totally drain you? Which are the things that give you energy? And then when you look at the ones that drain you, because that's the things that like, you have too many of those that's when you're like, screw it. I'm outta here. Like, I don't want to do it anymore. All right. Or let me sell for this low valuation. I'm just, I'm done. Um, which you benefit from when buying. You know, you're like, oh, you've got low energy? I'll buy you, right? So if you guys are in the UK, obviously, go check them out. Um, but what I tell people is look at the low energy and then outsource or delegate or hire for that stuff. Like, I, I don't know why we always hire for things we don't have any clue on… like on. It doesn't make any sense. I mean, I've been guilty of this. I'll be like, I know nothing about pay-per-click. Let me go hire someone to do pay-per-click. Rather than like, I know everything about UX so let me hire UX, because I can manage that. And then figure out a process like it's just, it's just goofy. Um, what are some things… switching focus a little bit, what do you do in order to build your leaders within the organization? Because you know, at our top level masterminds, we're always talking about that. And also recruiting, recruiting is a really big thing. Like we cannot find enough people, it seems like. So how are you building leaders and then is recruiting your biggest issue too? John: [00:19:34] Uh, on building the leaders. It's, uh, it's important that we've got the program. So if you there's a few ways, we went with an external provider who does a year-long leadership course and I send… I, I want to say congratulation to my leaders that I'm dead proud of them. Uh, got the card here… the cards are there.  Um, so I went through it, I went through it, uh, three years. And now quite a lot of my, well, all my leads will be going through it. Um, and that's a day, month commitment for them. And they have, you know, they, they, they, all the topics are from culture to finance, to leadership, to behaviors. Um, I make people go through that process and I see them during the year just grow and blossom which is fantastic. And then I encourage them individually to find a mentor that's not me, someone that I can confide in probably about me, you know. If you want to moan and groan about me and they need someone external so they can have that. Again, we have identified a person for them in their life. Um, and you know, the, the company pays for that, it, it's a paid thing. So that you can never get enough, all the external kind of like counsel. Myself, I have a mentor, I've had one for five, six years. I belong to a board, the top of the alternative board, which when I was in America, I sit on the alternative board every month. And I just sit there and cry about people and money, cause that's always come up. But, um, but yeah, so leadership for me is I want to just, you know, embrace that. I said to my, one of my colleagues today, my strategy here is to get you working less and your reward going up every year. And that's what we've got to get through as a leader. And if you're working less in the business, then you know, you're, you're winning for me. Jason: [00:21:24] Yep. And then what about recruiting? Is that a, a big challenge for you guys like finding enough talent? John: [00:21:30] Absolutely. It really is. It's a, you know, to the point where it depends on the, it depends on the, on the area you're recruiting. So imagine digital social that's really, really sought after for obvious reasons. And that's challenging to recruit in them areas. So we want to, we want to do a blend of three things. We want to grow our own, um, so grow our people that we've already got into business. Because, you know the're very valuable to us, not just in monetary terms, but, just in, in their futures. We want to, I think mentioned before we were looking to acquire an agency. So we're looking, you know, where we can't, where we can't build a team because the talent pool, looking for jobs or employment isn't there. We're looking now just to, to hire, to, to acquire a boutique agency, particularly in the digital space. Um, and the third, the third area is looking at apprenticeships. So we're looking at bringing kids out of school and instead of kids going to, we call it school, university straight to us and we'll run a program with them. So that's something we're looking at for the next, for the next eighteen months. I I'm glad to hear, or we shouldn't be really glad to hear, that it's the same in America. But the talent is just strange. We're going through a strange time. Jason: [00:22:45] Well, uh, what we found, you know, in our agency and, and all the other agencies in the mastermind is when you get to a certain level… And it's around about 3 million you're you're cause you've, you've built an amazing team, you're building the leadership team. But it's hard to continue to find really, really good people. And it takes them a while in order to adapt to all the processes that you have. And so a lot of times what we'll do is we'll say like, kind of like, we'll bring someone in on the junior program and show them a couple of tracks. You can go kind of the skilled track, or you can go the manager track and then show them the different layers or levels that they can go up, you know. And it makes a huge difference because you know, like I'm thinking of, of Zach's agency now, like to train their account strategist, it usually takes about two years. Right? Like, so you got to start thinking two years prior, like how do we get all these people up? And it makes a really big difference. So, yeah. It's, I always love when I chat with people all around the world. And they're like, yeah, it's very different over here. I'm like we get all the same issues. John: [00:24:02] Good to know. Yeah, it is, I imagine. And it's about to how much, I mean, one of the things is obviously pay reward is very important. Isn't it? Of course, but actually culture again, progression L&D. If I'm honest, you know, our lead in development is just catching up, you know, we've, we've got, we've made huge strides in the area. We've got so much more. So we working on that, so we're just, we are catching up the, this the, you know, the, the high growth of the last eight years, um, to make sure we've got all that in place. Jason: [00:24:30] Awesome. Well, great. Well, um, is there anything I didn't ask you that you think would benefit the audience? John: [00:24:37] Um, I think, I think for me it's about looking after yourself, you know, and I think again, just, just it's really part resilience is really, really key. And nothing more has been mentioned, so I, what's been mentioned a lot more of the last 12 months is wellbeing. Um, second is acknowledging that, you know, you are human. Acknowledging that you are… You know, you haven't got all the answers. Acknowledging that it's lonely then, and obviously you've got a mastermind course, which is fantastic, Jason. And, and again, if, if you can find something like that, or find something where you can find a buddy or a mentor for yourself, absolutely take it on. Because it, you know, you've got to have that in your, I think, in your life, if you want to grow, grow big, because it is a challenge. Jason: [00:25:24] Yep. Well, John, where can people, uh, what's the website address people can go? Especially if you're in the UK and you're going, hey, I want to, I want to be a big, bigger part of a team and you can buy me, John. So where can they go? John: [00:25:36] Oh, knock yourselves out, if you will. Um, well it's very simple. It's social.co.uk. Jason: [00:25:41] That's great. That's awesome. I mean, that's a very easy URL. I've had some guests on that literally they spell it out like five times and you still wouldn't even get it. So congrats on getting that. And thanks so much for coming on the show. And if you guys enjoyed this episode and you're in the UK and you want to possibly sell, go check them out. And know this is sponsored, uh, but he did drop a lot of amazing bombs. So go check that out. And if you guys want to be surrounded by amazing people on a consistent basis, I would love to invite all of you to go to digitalagencyelite.com. This is for agencies all over the world. Where we share the strategies that are currently working and little shrink moments, right? Like we can like cry on each other's shoulders to get us through. But go there and until next time, have a Swenk day.

A. Loder was a Tucson PD cop and made the move to Minnesota several years ago. A very well liked person, street cop and SWAT guy who was a big loss for our town but he gained a lot for his family with his decision. He explains why he made the bold move back to his hometown and how he handcuffed himself to a patrol car. Funny story and honest reasoning why he found a better life and jumped on it.

MELBOURNE Vs SYDNEY LOCKDOWN FOR REAL ESTATE MORNING MINUTES #LIVE WITH MICHAEL BURGIO, MARK NOVAK and SPECIAL GUEST ARIAN SACCO from One Agency

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

Are you frustrated being on an in-house marketing team working with external agencies? And vice versa? Client and agency relationships can turn sour for several different reasons, such as unreasonable expectations, misaligned objectives, overselling capabilities, or poor communication of needs. Today’s guest is Tyler Elliston, founder of Right Side Up. Tyler talks about how his company is structured to set up client relationships for mutual success using basic philosophical and strategic approaches. Actual measures and practical guidance can prevent and avoid problems from starting in the first place.    Some of the highlights of the show include: Right Side Up: What goes wrong and what should be done Both Sides: Tyler was a marketer and one of those difficult clients to work with Differentiators: Pricing, in-house staffing support, and indexing individual talent Wrong Workarounds: Use agencies as transactional vendors, hire/fire managers Control and Commitment: Lack of ownership mentality and product/market fit Radical Transparency: Figuring out frustration and honest about what’s needed Challenges: Starting business and building systems without sacrificing quality Solution: Hire great people to help solve problems and scale business Structure: If not aligned with client’s desires/interests, it’s not the individual’s fault Customer Satisfaction: Apply client mindset and treat business as if it’s your own Difficult to deal with? Apply high standards Set clear expectations Deliver on and strive to exceed them Treat people like people   Links: Tyler Elliston on LinkedIn Right Side Up Ben Sailer on LinkedIn CoSchedule   Quotes from Tyler Elliston: “Ultimately, our goal is to help them build a best-in-class organization that consists of full-time people, agencies (not us - Right Side Up), whatever sort of makes sense for their business. So, we try to take a more kind of holistic approach to their success.” “We really index on individual talent. We really believe that great marketing comes from great marketers.” “I felt like I had relatively little control over the talent I was working with.” “In a lot of cases, the problem is not the person. A lot of times, the problem is the structure that the person is in.”

They discuss Krispy Kreme's special doughnuts and campaign for the Mars Perseverance landing; Texas PR pros working through an energy crisis; and the launch of Dashboard Daily, Femme Forward and What It's Like to Be Black in PR 2.0. 

Rosenberg talks about the challenges that agencies face after a year of COVID-19, the value to brands of an effective social media campaign, and more. From PRWeek

Idag får vi besök av Roger Karlsson från One Agency för att lära oss mer om agil utveckling och hur du kan tänka för att komma igång och få in tankesättet i din organisation. Roger går pedagogiskt igenom allt från grunderna till exempel från sitt arbetsliv och vilka verktyg det finns att använda sig av. Vi får även höra hur man kan arbeta agilt i en större organisation och hur det går att mäta resultaten.  Avslutningsvis diskuterar Roger och CJ hur hemmajobbet påverkat produktiviteten och vilka fördelar det har fört med sig. Om det inte vore nog så sitter Roger även på data på detta som han delar med sig av.  Är ditt företag i behov av IT-kompetens, hör av dig till cj@ants.se eller läs mer om hur vi arbetar på ants.se 

Do you want to know what pricing model is right for your agency? Do your clients understand the value of the services you provide? Are you doing enough to make sure your clients stick around? Performance-based pricing can be a great model to help grow your agency, but only when clients understand the real value your agency brings to the table. In this episode, we'll cover: Is performance-based pricing right for your agency? How to help clients understand value compared to performance. Why your agency needs to set big goals. Today I sat down for an informative chat with Justin Buckley, partner at ATTN, a performance and growth digital marketing agency. After spending years working in affiliate marketing, Justin and his partners realized they were spending too much time and money building other people's brands. Two years ago they decided it was time to make something of their own. Justin's here to talk about how their unique pricing model and aggressive goal setting helped grow ATTN fast. Is Performance-Based Pricing Right for Your Agency? One of the most important decisions you'll make is how to charge for your services. Whether you charge on value or performance, there a few things to consider: What type of services do your clients expect of you? What type of time commitment does this mean for your team? How much control do you have over your client's results? When ATTN chose a pricing model, they chose to go with a hybrid approach. What this looks like is a combination of a flat fee and a percentage of ad spend. ATTN chose to build a performance model into their pricing structure since they are a performance agency. Ultimately, when they perform well, their clients perform well and want to spend more. The more their clients spend, the more the agency makes off the ad spend. This helps balance out the lack of control the agency has on the backend of operations as well as offset the cost of working with clients who aren't as focused on growth. As you grow, you'll quickly learn what works for your agency. Don't be afraid to charge what you're worth and be willing to put the measure of your agency's performance on the line. How to Help Clients Understand Value and Performance There's a risk that comes with performance based pricing. If the clients don't get the expected results based on your performance, you aren't going to get paid what you need to. At the end of the day, it's up to you to get your clients to see the value of your services and make sure your agency can achieve the right outcomes. Justin says the number one thing they rely on to help their clients understand what they are getting is communication. If you don't show your clients what you are doing and the results you're achieving, how else are they going to know? While it's important to have regular meetings to review benchmarks and create goals, it's also essential your clients know you're invested in them. Talk to them about what they want to achieve and get a real understanding of their vision. When you know what your client wants and what they are working towards, you'll have an easier time delivering results. Why Your Agency Needs to Set Big Goals If you're not setting goals at your agency, you have nothing to work towards. Whether you're creating an exit strategy, improving cash flow, or building your team, you need to have goals. Don't be afraid to set goals that make you uncomfortable. The best way to meet your goals is to break them into manageable chunks. Want to be at $10 million in profits after 10 years? Where do you have to be at year five to make this achievable? Now break it down even more. What does year three look like? Year one? Finally, figure out what each quarter, each month, and each week looks like. When you do this, not only do you have a way to hold your team accountable, but you can also start putting the right pieces into place and deploying the resources you need to hit your goals. As an agency owner, your job is to provide a service. And with this, you continually have to prove your worth. Talk to your clients, create benchmarks, and schedule regular check-ins. When you and your client are on the same page, you'll both find it easier to find success.   Looking for a Payroll and HR Solution for your Agency? Payroll and benefits are hard. Especially when you're a small business. Gusto is making payroll, benefits, and HR easy for small businesses. You no longer have to be a big company to get great technology, great benefits, and great service to take care of your team. For a limited time, Gusto is offering a deal to Smart Agency Master Class listeners. Check out Gusto.com/agency for 3-months FREE once you run your first payroll with them. Building Your Agency I have advice for challenges you will face building your agency including recognizing common agency mistakes, how to keep great agency employees in your team as well as fostering the connections made with clients. If it’s challenging growing your business, I have agency growth hacks, the best ways to improve management of your business as well as why building a remote team can be beneficial in the long run. Learn more about my experience, as well as tips, tricks, and insights by checking out my blogs that cover a wide variety of topics. You can learn more from my experience from my Ask Swenk series and my videos on my Youtube channel. Check out the advice and learn even more from other successful agency experts featured on Smart Agency podcast twice every week.

Join us as we check-in with the four co-owners of Firehouse Insurance in Mariemont, Ohio. Following-up on our last episode, these agents were previously captive agents and came together to form their own independent agency. Less than a year into operations, we talk about the motivation, the challenges, and the successes.

Today I'm talking to Dan Fitzpatrick, Head of Agency Success at SPP, he helps agencies scale and productizes their business. He and Chris Williams are the founders of SPP and they have a passion for helping agencies tackle those accounting and project management issues. SPP is a software platform that basically takes care of all of your accounting from beginning to end. It is a very advanced system that is actually simple to use. It works with agencies from just getting started all the way up to a multi seven to eight-figure agency. This platform is amazing.Takeaways From This Episode:How Does SPP Help An Agency Get Started?How Does It Help More Established Agencies?What Are The Top 2 Things SPP Can Help Them Improve?Explain How SPP Platform Has The Ability To Standardize Your Product Line And Deploy Across Multiple Clients.Dan starts off with what he thinks is the most important thing when you're thinking about getting started. And, that is you probably want to concentrate on getting some sales first, to actually getting your business up and running. So often he has businesses who come to him, especially new business owners wanting to sign up but they are just not ready. They haven't really built a solid foundation of a business yet. He and I talk about getting your business going and then when they're ready give SPP a call. Dan is very honest and tells it like it is. He wants to see agencies succeed.If you want to scale a business, then you need to think about scaling the client base. That's really where I think a new business and where SPP can come in. Once that client base is established, and the sales are actually rolling in, then it becomes more apparent that you need a system in place to help you.To summarize what I heard there from Dan, if you're just getting started, get a few clients, get some money coming in the door, get some deals first, then at that point, as soon as you get those few clients it is time to start looking at systems to replicate yourself. I think it becomes pretty clear when you need these systems. It gets so complicated so quickly and that’s where something like SPP makes sense. It’s all consolidated, everything's in one place, and you're not having to deal with all of these different systems. It's all about getting that business up and running first before you start thinking about what systems you might need in place. In so many cases there’s a lot of time wasted on what we call the “non-revenue” generating work. SPP comes in and takes care of those time-wasting activities so you can spend time delivering work for your customers. And, if you are ready and wanting to build a scalable business or agency then you take my productization model and apply it to the SPP platform. Hear how putting all of this together is critical to understanding your profit margins, understanding scope creep, and keeping your clients happy and billables. It really is that simple.Dan talks about what he finds really interesting and that is the number of agencies they come across that are actually already offering a kind of a productized service. But they don't actually realize it. Having a solution like SPP’s platform helps agencies define what and how to productize their service. Now from making that initial sale to collecting information from the customer, delivering the work, reporting upselling, all of this stuff, once you start putting this into a system, it kind of takes you out of your normal, day-to-day working bubble. If you're interested in checking out SPP, they offer a 14-day free trial. They do not take in any payment details, they won't ask you for your credit card. So head over to SPP.co to check out the trial and feel free to reach out to them at any time. www.marketingagencycoach.com

A virtual private network vulnerability that has been known since December. Stolen credentials of a power user. A poorly configured firewall. It didn’t take long for the hacker to own this unnamed federal agency. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency explains in the sort of depth rarely seen in public before how this agency suffered a cyber attack. In his weekly feature of the Reporter's Notebook, executive editor Jason Miller writes about this case study and why it's a warning to public and private sector companies.

Do you find that no matter how hard you work, you're just not profitable? Are you spending too much time on the wrong things? If you want to be successful, you need to evaluate your priorities and get rid of the stuff that's dragging you down.  In today's episode, we'll cover: 2 Lessons on reinvesting agency profits.  Why investing in the right team is the key to growth. Why your agency must embrace change.  Today I sat down for a really informative chat with Mark Bower, managing director of Woven, a brand engagement agency. After 20 years in the industry, Mark recently had to close shop on the agency he started. Now, with a new agency, he's here to share what he's learned and what he would have done differently to put his last agency in a better position.  2 Lessons on Reinvesting Agency Profits When you're in the thick of building an agency, it's far too easy to become fixated on growth, growth, growth. You get so consumed with getting bigger and more successful you justify putting everything back in the agency to promote even greater growth. But if you're not careful, this approach can land you right where Mark was. He had a few really good clients, but nothing to show for it. So how do you avoid this? Know where your profit is coming from: Sounds simple, right? The mistake Mark made was taking the profit from the larger, more successful clients, and reinvesting it into the ones that weren't doing so well. Watch out for this. Do an audit. If you're losing money because you're spending too much on clients that will never be profitable, know when to let them go.  Give yourself a rainy day fund: Mark says he took everything he earned and put it right back into the agency. When the agency began to fail, he had no way to bail them out. Take some of your profits and put it aside, whether it be in property, equity, or even the bank. And, I often tell my clients to take a line of credit when you don't need it. That way it's available when you do. Why Investing in the Right Team is the Key to Growth It's tempting to try to fix something that doesn't work. As humans, we're natural people pleasers. Letting go of a client, or team member can feel like a failure and cause awkward confrontation. But when you invest too much time forcing a relationship that isn't the right fit, you lose more than just money.  Mark says a lot of his agency business was project-based. There's nothing wrong with that. However, the team never had enough time to fill the pipeline. When your team devotes most of their time to putting out fires, they're unable to build relationships and generate more business. On the other hand, if you focus on what does work, you can invest in the right people who can help build and grow your agency.  Why Your Agency Must Embrace Change Have you ever heard this phrase: "That's just the way we've always done it."? If those words have come out of your mouth, eliminate them from your vocabulary now.  As an agency owner, it's important to have clarity. But you also have to be willing to change directions. Decide what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve it. Then, be willing to change your strategy completely in order to do so.   The market is constantly resetting. If you don't reset, your agency might become irrelevant. Embrace opportunities to reinvent yourself and surround yourself with people who will do the same. Not everyone will stick around when things change. And that's okay. Those that leave will be happy somewhere else.  It's important to put back into your agency, but it's even more important to do it right. When you take the time to focus on what works and what doesn't, you'll find it easier for your agency to grow. 

The Millennium Challenge Corporation invests U.S. foreign aid into developing nations, but not without a detailed paper trail of where the money’s going. The global campaign Publish What You Fund recently ranked MCC as the top federal agency for aid transparency, and the seventh most transparent aid organization in the world. For more on the people and processes that led to the agency’s high transparency score, Federal News Network’s Jory Heckman spoke with MCC’s acting-Vice President for Department of Policy and Evaluation, Tom Kelly.

In this August update from Fayetteville Police Chief Gina Hawkins we discuss virtual orientation for the upcoming Police Academy, the importance of her department's "One Agency, One Community, One Family" in the face of the current state of civil unrest.Listen is as we talk about the Faith Forum series, this summer's Empowerment Camp for youth, social media and more.

Do your clients struggle to understand what you actually offer? Do you make time to work on your agency instead of just in it? Sometimes, agencies lose business because they fail to cross-sell or upsell. But when you educate clients on how your agency can solve their challenges, growth is a sure thing.  In today's episode, we'll cover: Does your agency have a marketing strategy? 2 ways to help clients see the value in your services.  How to effectively lead your agency team.  Today I sat down with Kornel Kurtz, president and CEO of WebTek, a digital creative agency. Recently, Kornel has seen tremendous growth in his agency, and when you find out why, you'll take a closer look at your own agency procedures. He's here to talk about how to prevent clients from choosing other agencies for add-on services and how doing so can make a big difference to your bottom line.  Does Your Agency Have a Marketing Strategy? For most of us, marketing is our bread and butter. We can take on a new client and create a marketing campaign that will completely knock it out of the park. We're great at doing this for clients. But when was the last time you looked at your own agency's marketing strategy? Kornel has been in the agency world for over 20 years. And in that time, he has found a lot of success. But over the last two years, WebTek has seen 50% growth year after year. Why? It all comes down to marketing. WebTek has always marketed itself as a web development and SEO agency. But they found beyond that, clients were going to other agencies for additional services. Why? Because WebTek's clients didn't know the agency offered anything besides web development and SEO. When Kornel figured out what was going on, he created all-in-one marketing bundles that provide everything clients need in one convenient package. 2 Ways to Help Clients See the Value of Your Services We've all been to that one restaurant that has so many choices, you skip right to the special. When it comes to marketing, the same concept applies. Clients don't want to have to figure out what they need and make a bunch of choices. That's what you're for. When it comes to showcasing your agency's value, the answer is simple: Offer solutions, not products. Chances are, your clients don't know what they need, they just want to see results. Help the client understand their problem, then offer the solution.  Make it measurable. WebTek has an online portal where clients can log in and see a direct connection between a specific marketing campaign and actual results. When clients can easily view and understand the data, and realize ROI, they're more likely to trust your methods.  How to Effectively Lead Your Agency Team A lot of us start out as creatives, with no idea how to manage a team. So how do you know when to push and when to pull back? Kornel believes the key is to pick your battles.  Some people will be harder to manage than others. Pay attention to which employees need guidance and which ones can use a little room.  The goal is to hire a team that supports your vision and shares your goals. Don't tell them what to do. Tell your team the specific outcomes you are looking for and trust them to handle the rest. Employees love autonomy. At the same time, it's important to create procedures your team can reference and add to when necessary so they have a framework.  When it comes down to it, no one can sell your services better than you. Make sure your clients know what you offer and can see the value in your services. The results just may surprise you. 

Do you have the right systems but still struggle to grow? Do you look at the big agencies and wonder how they got to 7- or 8-figures? It's all about having the ability to work with the right clients who can afford to pay what you're worth. In today's episode, we'll cover: How to turn more prospects into clients. 2 Key factors to establish effective pricing. How to get to the point where your agency can pick and choose. Today I sat down with Eric Vardon, co-founder, and president of Arcane, a Canadian-based digital marketing agency. Eric started his agency in 2011 with a keen focus on analytics and a clear understanding of his business. He's on the show today to talk about how you can get your agency to a point where you're able to pick and choose which clients you want to work with.   How to Turn More Prospects Into Clients As a digital marketing agency, it's your job to get clients to see the value of your services. Clients aren't eager to hand over money for a strategy that might work. This is why so many agencies have difficulty finding success — they don't know how to convince clients to take the risk.  So how do you get a client to see the value in what your agency offers? Make the pitch less subjective. Show potential clients actual figures to show you've run the numbers and care about their bottom line.      Arcane does their homework and researches the client. Within the first couple of meetings with a potential client, Eric's team is able to understand the business' revenue goals and profitability. Using this information, they build a spreadsheet and proposal outlining the specific metrics needed to achieve results. When your client can actually see the numbers and ROI, they are more likely to take the leap.  2 Key Factors to Establish Effective Pricing Pricing is a big part of your agency's growth and success. Set the price too high and you'll have difficulty finding clients. Set it too low and the good clients won't take you seriously.  At the end of the day, your goal is to be profitable.  How much do you need to charge in order to achieve this goal? Track and monitor everything. Remember those spreadsheets? Eric says there isn't a process or analytic where they don't have some sort of spreadsheet. Take a close look at your transactions. What are your hourly rates? What are your account costs? And what are your expenses? Look at the big picture. Sometimes you have to look at what you are going to get out of a client in the long run and determine the lifetime value of this client. You may need to do additional work upfront because you know you'll make the margin back over time.  How Your Agency Can Pick and Choose Clients In the beginning, most agencies are stuck working with any and every client. However, eventually, we all want to get to the point where we can be more selective about which clients we do and don't want to work with. One of the best ways to do this is to bring on solid leadership and surround them with a good team.  While Eric is the co-founder and president of Arcane, he brought on a CEO and a COO to focus on the day-to-day tasks. His COO comes from the public accounting industry and has been a critical part of developing the agency's financial strategy. The agency's CEO is a former HR professional. She knows the human side and is able to use her experience to work with clients and foster a successful team. Together, they create the perfect balance.  Arcane's rapid success comes down to partnership, clarity, and accountability. Eric and his team frequently come together to discuss what they want, what makes them happy, and where they want to go. It's about understanding your agency's vision and communicating it to the team.  Sometimes it's the simple things that bring the most success. When you understand what it takes to make your agency profitable and create a plan to get there, the rest is yours to pick and choose. 

Comparing the past to the present, we see how the workforce crisis is impacting one of most resilient police departments in the Twin Cities – how the candidate pool is shrinking, and how the agency is adapting.Support the show (https://www.mnchiefsfoundation.org/)

Alli Mitchell joined the United Way of Rome & Floyd County in January as the agency was changing to what's called a community impact model. What it means: "The new funding structure focuses on specific programs proposed by local nonprofits that fit together collaboratively to take on challenges in Rome and Floyd County that no one agency’s mission can take on alone. The model supports the idea that nonprofits and communities are stronger when they are United in their efforts to address social challenges." Mitchell joined us this week at Brand Red Studios to discuss what's different about the United Way, the impact it has on the community and some of the reaction the nonprofit has faced because of those changes. We thank Brand Red for their production support of our long-form podcasts and Todd LaBerge for another excellent job producing this conversation with Alli Mitchell. The Druck Report is a production of Hometown Headlines Inc. Please join us for our weekday newscasts as well. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/john-druckenmiller/support

This week we talk a little bit about the Harlan County coal blockade, and then we dig in to Tarence's article in The Baffler about the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Obama Administration's POWER Initiative. You can read the article here: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/hollowed-out-ray Support us on Patreon! www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Having trouble getting your agency to the next level? Want to increase agency revenue but can't get beyond a plateau? Then it might be time to get a little uncomfortable and take some risks. If you really want to level-up your agency check out the big risk one agency took which yielded 4X revenue in just two years. In this episode, we'll cover: 3 hacks to help your agency level up and increase revenue. Why outbound will make your digital agency revenue soar. How to hire the right agency sales team. Today, I talked with Chris Brencans, CMO at OnTheMap — a full-service digital marketing agency. Chris's agency does something that may sound a little strange. Half of the agency's team are salespeople. That's right! 50% of the approximately 70 people at the agency are involved in sales, and business is booming. OnTheMap's revenue has grown from $1 Million to $4 Million in the last 2 years by investing in its salespeople and taking some risks. Chris is on the show to share some tips with us. 3 Hacks Help Your Agency Level Up Lean on your processes. If you don't have processes, you're driving the highway without cruise control, constantly speeding up and slowing down. Why make it harder on yourself? Once you build-out the right processes, you can take your foot off the gas and start working on other areas of your business. You shouldn't be spending a ton of your time on client work. Instead, build processes so you can work on the business rather than in it. Find the glaring problems. Here's the big secret — you already know what your biggest problems are. Chances are, everyone in your agency knows what they are. Ask your employees and be honest with yourself as you reflect on them. They may be hard to fix. But ignoring them is causing them to be bigger than necessary. Tackle your agency's problems because they are a roadblock to your growth. Take some risks! If you have processes in place (#1) and you don't have any big problems (#2), then you're not taking enough risks. And, your reservations are what's holding back your agency's growth. Take a leap - bet on your agency! Organic growth still requires money, time, and resources. Be willing to spend them. (Like Chris's agency -- their big leap was betting on their sales team and poof! 4x growth in 2 years.) Why Outbound Will Make Your Digital Agency Revenue Soar Inbound marketing keeps you successful. But it's outbound marketing which makes you successful. Chris's agency is 50% salespeople. They bet big on outbound, and it grew them from $1m to $4m. This isn't a one-off tactic. Neil Patel uses outbound to grow his agency, and I had one agency on the podcast who has grown to $6m in 2 years tackling outbound. Outbound just works. You can execute it on a lean budget. There are tons of killer strategies to follow. And it's easy to get started. You don't need half of your team in sales, like Chris. It just depends on your specific processes. But you definitely need one person, or a few, dedicated to sales. How to Hire the Right Agency Sales Team Attracting salespeople is all about salary, benefits, and culture. Selecting the right candidate(s) is all about these 3 things. Look for initiative. You want to give your salespeople some formal training, sure. But you should be able to hand them processes and let them run with it. This team is going to be handling valuable leads. Make sure you give them some room to prove themselves. I believe salespeople prove their worth in their first 60 days. If they aren't cutting it.... you know what you have to do. Find the right soft skills. They say good salespeople aren't made; they're born. That's sort of true. Amazing salespeople need the right soft skills. Look for empathy, leadership, and resolve. You want a team of great communicators. Always hire for soft skills first. You can train the rest of the skill sets but personality either works with your culture or it doesn't. Seek an eagerness to constantly improve. You want a team that's always looking to do better than last month. Do they set their own goals? Do they take constructive feedback? Make sure their hungry and eager to be successful.

Conversations & Coffee: Episode # 21 Kevin Thomas (One Agency Recruitment) In this episode of the Conversations & Coffee Podcast, we are joined by Kevin Thomas the Director & Co-Founder of One Agency Recruitment. Kevin is 31 years old and from Dublin. He created the business with a purpose to help people find jobs that match their values and aspirations while also helping our customers brands to grow as a result of his service. He believes in following your dreams and hopes he can help and inspire people to believe in their dreams. Kevin left school at thirteen with no formal education and is currently in the process of completing his MBA in UCD. Kevin spent 12 years working in Sales & Marketing and has been recognised by the Irish National Sales Awards on two occasions (2012 & 2015) as Manager of the year and overall winner in 2015. Kevin believes to succeed in life you need to believe in your dreams, follow your heart, self-discipline and work hard every day. I hope this journey inspires you to do more, and try harder or pursue that passion that is in you. Because we all have it; whether it be for Art , Music, Fitness or whatever it is that drives you. _____________________________ the

Conversations & Coffee: Episode # 21 Kevin Thomas (One Agency Recruitment) In this episode of the Conversations & Coffee Podcast, we are joined by Kevin Thomas the Director & Co-Founder of One Agency Recruitment. Kevin is 31 years old and from Dublin. He created the business with a purpose to help people find jobs that match their values and aspirations while also helping our customers brands to grow as a result of his service. He believes in following your dreams and hopes he can help and inspire people to believe in their dreams. Kevin left school at thirteen with no formal education and is currently in the process of completing his MBA in UCD. Kevin spent 12 years working in Sales & Marketing and has been recognised by the Irish National Sales Awards on two occasions (2012 & 2015) as Manager of the year and overall winner in 2015. Kevin believes to succeed in life you need to believe in your dreams, follow your heart, self-discipline and work hard every day. I hope this journey inspires you to do more, and try harder or pursue that passion that is in you. Because we all have it; whether it be for Art , Music, Fitness or whatever it is that drives you. _____________________________ the

How to sell your house and get top dollar in a market that's a bit dull. Insider tips on how to get you more, where to spend, where not to spend? Who should you get as a real estate agent and who should you avoid  Lara from The Block tells the story of selling her forever home that she built with her husband Brad to move to Byron Bay and Annette Pinkerton from One Agency gives an honest account of how a real estate agent could help you or hinder and how she gets buyers to fall in love with homes. Thanks to The Little Unicorn Early Education Centres, Explore, Play, Discover, Grow, Locally Owned, Child Focused enrol now.

Our most recent guest on The Innovative Agency podcast was Stephanie Olson. She's the Founder of We are Rosie, the advertising marketplace of the future. Stephanie and her team are disrupting how work happens as they focus on connecting brands and agencies with exceptional talent wanting, or needing, to work in flexible ways. Oh, and they have a 100% client retention rate. So, these are her thoughts on the future of work and how you can integrate remote teams into your business model and company culture.

Do you have one mega client that would cripple your agency if you lost them? If you have a client that represents more than 40% or 50% of your total revenue, don't let them hold you hostage. Check out how one agency knew it was time to say goodbye and took a leap that helped build the agency he always wanted. In this episode, we’ll cover: Why walk again from a $750k mega client? What does productization look like for agencies? The biggest mistake an agency can make. I’m talking to an agency owner who lost a mega-client and lived to tell about it. Jeff Conlon is the CEO of Ideas, Money, Art (IMA) the video marketing agency he started in 2004. He shares his story of actually walking away from a client that was over 50% of the agency’s revenue, and how that decision has helped him grow the business into what he’s always wanted. Why Walk Away from a $750,000 Agency Client? Do you have a big but difficult client you’re afraid to get rid? It happens to the best of us, right? We work hard to land and keep amazing clients, but sometimes we get backed into a corner where we need them more than they need us. That’s what *almost* happened with Jeff’s agency. Early on, IMA did a small project for a huge home services business worth over $100 million. That small project turned into a little SEO retainer and opened the door for them to work with 30+ franchises…. Well eventually, IMA was grossing $750K per year from this client. The agency always had other work, but this one remained more than 50% of their revenue stream. So, why would Jeff walk away from that kind of revenue? Over the years, there had been too much turnaround on the client side. After many years with one VP of Marketing, he retired and the position has been a revolving door ever since. The synergy was gone and could not be recaptured. Working with that client was more stressful than it was worth. When their contract came up for renewal, Jeff decided to walk away. The move was big, bold, and scary. But the agency has come out the other side and Jeff says it has been a huge relief. Of course, the downside was letting go of the account team dedicated to that client. But on the flip side, it forced IMA to work on their own business. They created their own lead generation system and developed a way to productize their agency services. And the new rule is… no one client can represent more than 20% of the agency’s revenue. What Does Productization Look Like for Agencies? With their newfound clarity and not wanting to be lumped together with all the other “full-service video agencies” (AKA “me too agencies”), Jeff and his team took a long look at their differentiating factor. That’s how they developed the Digital Marketing Quadrant. Instead of selling multiple services, IMA offers their Digital Marketing Quadrant as a strategy which paves the pathway for clients to achieve their revenue goals. Instead of offering tactics (SEO, PPC, etc.) the Digital Marketing Quadrant starts with a small engagement and then advances toward larger projects that lead the client toward their goals. Remember, your clients don’t care what you do, just as long as you get the results they want. Related: https://jasonswenk.com/seth-godin/ The Biggest Mistake an Agency Can Mistake With over fifteen years in the business, Jeff says he’s made every mistake in the book. The biggest, though, was not understanding the value his agency provides and not going after clients who understand it. This caused major strife… despite the fact that the agency had been growing rapidly for 3 years, profitability was in the single-digits. (This gives me nightmares, btw!) At the time IMA was at nearly $2 million in gross revenue, yet Jeff’s income had flatlined and the agency’s margins were dipping. Why? The agency was in a growth phase, so of course, they were adding staff and paying out benefit but otherwise spending unwisely... That experience, of single-digit margins, totally cured him! Jeff’s sights are set on 20% profit -- which is still way too low, but at least he’s aiming for double-digits :)  

Today we’re speaking with Rachel Albright the Vice President of Story at Day One Agency.You can find Rachel at:www.instagram.com/Rachpopwww.twitter.com/RachpopFind WIIM online:www.iamwiim.comJoin our newsletter:www.iamwiim.com/joinJoin our Industry Online Private Facebook Group: www.facebook.com/groups/wiimindustry

Feel like your agency is stuck or reached a plateau? It happens, whether you're just starting out or in business for many years. Don't get frustrated or settle for the status quo. Instead, it might be time to get back to the basics, get scrappy and get creative. With the right strategy, mindset, and persistence you can make some tweaks that help you jump that next hurdle and reach a new level for your agency. In today's episode, we'll cover: How working for free can really pay off. How to execute outbound sales. #1 most important agency growth tip. Why you should re-think your billing. Today, I talked with Colton Bollinger founder of JumperMedia.co, an Instagram marketing agency. Colton started out in 2016 providing free Instagram marketing services to some buddies and golf instructors. What started out two years ago as a solopreneur-venture has grown now to include two partners and a team of  44 employees! How Working for Free Can Really Pay Off Colton got really scrappy in the beginning, which meant bootstrapping his business and executing unconventional ideas. One of those ideas was to work for free and develop case stories. Sometimes giving away your services for free can actually help you grow. It seems counterintuitive, but that's exactly what Colton did and he says it was a major key to his early growth. He started by offering his Instagram marketing services totally free. Instead of making his clients pay, he asked them for video testimonials. These videos performed better than just a written testimonial and served as organic, value-adding references. He says his "clients" were more than happy to record testimonials to help him grow and succeed since he'd delivered them great results for free. How to Execute Outbound Sales Beyond his inbound leads, Colton knew he had to execute on outbound sales too. He started out by cold calling and sending super specific direct messages to prospects. (Kinda like Joey Gilkey suggested with his LinkedIn outbound strategy.) I always recommend a 3-pronged approach to prospecting -- inbound, outbound and strategic partnerships. That way when one channel dries up you can still scale and grow with the other two. Hyper-specific, highly targeted messages are critical. Don't be generic with a copy/paste message. Be unique, different and personal. Do your homework and point out what they're doing right and where they could use improvement. The more personalized you can make your outreach efforts the more of a payoff you'll see from them. Related:  How to Find and Train an Agency Sales Rockstar #1 Most Important Agency Growth Tip Go back to the basics! Here's the interesting thing about agency owners, we're all pretty similar in skill and knowledge. Most of us are just hustling to grow and scale their business the best way they can. But, if what you're doing is not yielding the results you want then it might just require one minor tweak. It's like a pro golfer (Colton was one!) or tennis pro (I was one!) who knows all the intricate moves and complex strategies of the game. But sometimes they just need to go back to tweaking their swing and BOOM! Seriously! Find little areas for improvement or small things that you can do differently. Those micrometer differences may be exactly what you're missing. It's almost never some giant thing that needs fixing -- it's usually a small tweak. Why You Should Re-Think Your Billing Cash flow is king... Don't settle for the old "the check's in the mail" excuse!  Colton said automating their billing and setting up recurring billing was one of the most important things his agency has done. Think about the way you're billing customers and look at ways you can improve cash flow such as: changing payment terms accepting credit cards charging a month or more in advance There are so many tools out there, Colton likes Moonclerk and Stripe recurring. Instead of waiting for the check to come in the mail, you can spend that money on client acquisition and grow at accelerated speeds. Reconsidering your billing options may give your agency the growth boost it needs. Are You Looking for Outsourced Copywriting for Your Agency or Clients? Verblio is a content creation solution designed specifically for agencies. Their writers can help with everything from blog posts to ebook to video scripts and more. Forget the hassle of finding and hiring your own writers. Verblio has a pool of more than 3,000 highly vetted writers who produce custom, SEO-rich content. You set the criteria for style and tone and they match you with writers that have expertise in your specific subject matter. Verblio's platform is designed specifically for agencies -- and for a limited time, they are offering my audience 50% off your first month of content. My team is using Verblio and loving it, so make sure you check them out.  

Every year the federal government reports levels of improper payments of around $140 billion. The problem seems impervious to efforts to end it. A study by Deloitte and the Partnership for Public Service finds at least one federal agency is having success. And state governments might have some practices worth trying. Mallory Barg Bulman, vice president for research and evaluation at the partnership, had more details on Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

In today's Federal Newscast, The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says it avoided handing out more than $4.5 billion in improper payments under one of its signature programs in fiscal 2018.

Are you looking for better ways grow your agency? Tired of the status quo? Missing easy targets and low hanging fruit opportunities? Then take some lessons from an agency owner who's doubled revenue every year for five consecutive years and growing at a crazy fast rate! In today's episode, we'll cover: Finding your agency's share of the market. What to expect in your agency's first year. 4 simple actions to grow your agency. 3 easy ways to maintain agency growth. Today I chatted with Tony Delmercado, co-founder and CEO of Hawke Media. With only five years in business, Hawke Media has grown from a 5 person team to 100+ employees and has doubled it's revenue every year, looking to hit the $18 million mark this year. With that kind of success, I couldn't wait to pick Tony's brain on how he was able to start and maintain growth of his agency. From his start to present day, Tony walks us through some simple tips and strategies he found successful. Finding Your Agency's Share of the Market Tony says you need to find a hole in the market and respond to demand. The catalyst for starting a company, whether you want to grow a brand or do marketing well, you need to either: Build a team in-house Multitude of challenges Work with an agency cost prohibitive - straight up expensive Unfortunately there isn't a good intermediate option. So Tony and his business partner turned to qualified friends that checked off necessary boxes. As their clients wanted more things, they built their agency's internal competency and hired more people with the necessary talents and skill sets. What To Expect Your Agency's First Year Work, work, work...and more work. Lots of hours and hard work. In the beginning, your agency says "yes" to everything whether it's speaking engagements, meetings, committees, public appearances, anything and everything to get your agency name and brand out there. Hawke Media, didn't take on investors or debt, they simply bootstrapped on the cash coming in. In that first year, because of this model, they were very judicious with their spending. Tony says his personal mantra is three-fold: Get shit done. Learn quickly. Be cool. He and his partner hustled hard that first year, living this mantra every single day. That's why it was easy to realize these needed to be their agency's core values. Since then, they have hired their team around these values. Your agency NEEDS to nail down and define core values and build a company culture. One of the best things about being an entrepreneur, is that you get to pick who you want to work with. Your agency needs to make sure that it picks well, that it gets the right people, good people, to keep a good cultural vibe. As an agency owner, Tony says, "it will never all be done". Your agency to-do list will always and continuously grow. Stop worrying about checking off the last box, instead start prioritizing and allocate  time to the important stuff. Your agency, but also you, will need to learn how to say "no" to those things that aren't necessary or can be better managed by a team member. Get rid of time-sucks, like recurring meetings that aren't necessary. 4 Simple Actions To Grow Your Agency Growth might not be easy, but it can be made simpler when you model after someone who's doing it the right way.... Use a CRM and some form of follow-up or reminder. You don't have to use an expensive service There are cheap options out there. Create some basic email automation Have a form to capture information. Develop a system to drop prospects into funnels for your agency. Use Google retargeting or GDN Don't underestimate the abilities of this service. This is still a powerful tool when done correctly. Pick up the phone. A call back or follow-up phone call, keeps lines of communication open. Build solid personal relationships while your competition is automating everything. PRO TIP: Don't forget about the low-hanging fruit. These are old or stale leads right at your fingertips. Create a system for routinely checking those out, too! 3 Easy Ways To Maintain Agency Growth Don't become complacent. Always look to do better and to improve. Be aggressive in marketing your agency. Looking for a Payroll and HR Solution for your Agency? Payroll and benefits are hard. Especially when you're a small business. Gusto is making payroll, benefits and HR easy for small businesses. You no longer have to be a big company to get great technology, great benefits and great service to take care of your team. For a limited time, Gusto is offering a deal to Smart Agency Master Class listeners. Check out Gusto.com/agency for 3-months FREE once you run your first payroll with them.  

Greg Hall, the assistant director and chief information security officer in the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys in the Justice Department, said the office hired Okta to provide a cloud service to federate its identity management capabilities.

If you’re looking for a unique, innovative and low-cost lead gen strategy check out this story. Live events can go far […] The post How One Agency Generated $165K Revenue Using Meetup.com appeared first on Smart Agency Masterclass: Podcast for Digital Marketing Agencies.

Today’s guest on Property Secrets has over 20 years experience in selling property, both commercial & residential. Before Real Estate Andrew Reeves worked in retail until his late 20s. It was Andrew's brother who first introduced him to the industry, after hiring him to work in his Real Estate Business. Andrew soon realised that his passion was with selling residential properties, and eventually he would go on to launch his own brand under OneAgency. Four years have passed and Andrew's business is stronger than ever driven by his passion for helping people and making a difference.   Andrew explains why now is the best time to sell and how the market is performing. He also discusses the importance of using outstanding photography and how significantly it impacts the marketing and selling of a home. Andrew shares his negotiation strategy and explains how he leverages buyers interest to achieve the most for his clients. “The difference between an okay agent and an outstanding agent will cost you thousands and thousands of dollars.” – Andrew Reeves   In This Episode of Property Secrets: Andrew elaborates on the roles and responsibilities of Real Estate agents at One Agency together with the opportunities they maximize when negotiating. He explains how psychology plays a key role for skilled real estate agents. Practical guidance and necessary things his team advises owners who are listing their homes for sale. Advice to owners who do not have enough money upfront for marketing their home. Whether involving a buyer’s agent make the negotiation harder or easier.   Andrew’s Insider Property Secrets: While Andrew can always teach the necessary skills regarding real estate and negotiations, he emphasizes an even more important trait for people who want to be a part of their team – having a genuine care for others. For him, it’s all about building trust and relationship and having a fear of failing the people who chose to put their confidence in them.   Reach Out to Andrew Reeves: Andrew Reeves on One Agency Penrith     Give Us a Rate & Review!   Thanks for joining us on today’s episode of the Property Secrets podcast – the show that provides you with an insider’s guide on how you can profit from buying, developing, or investing in property.  If you enjoyed today’s episode,  head over to iTunes and give us a rate and review to help us reach even more aspiring new entrepreneurs. Don’t forget to check out our website, visit us on Facebook, or check us out on Twitter to stay up-to-date on the what’s in store for you!  

If you’re trying to grow a agency, you know you’re going to need a foot in a door strategy to get […] The post How One Agency Doubled Their Business in 4 Months appeared first on Smart Agency Masterclass: Podcast for Digital Marketing Agencies.

In this episode, we’ll cover: 3 lessons on scaling your business into a multi-million dollar agency. How to have growth-minded hiring practices. […] The post How One Agency Owner Built 3 Multi-Million Dollar Agencies appeared first on Smart Agency Masterclass: Podcast for Digital Marketing Agencies.

In this episode we’ll cover: How one agency doubled business in just six months by giving work to other agencies. Building […] The post How One Agency Doubled Business by Giving Work to Other Agencies appeared first on Smart Agency Masterclass: Podcast for Digital Marketing Agencies.

In this episode, we’ll cover: 2 secrets to building multi-million dollar revenue. 2 things agency owners should quit being afraid of. […] The post One Agency’s Fast Track to $3 Million in Revenue appeared first on Smart Agency Masterclass: Podcast for Digital Marketing Agencies.

In this episode, we’ll cover: How to define your target market. 1 old-school outbound tactic that is getting massive 25% response. 4 steps […] The post How One Agency is Seeing Huge Success From Direct Mail appeared first on Smart Agency Masterclass: Podcast for Digital Marketing Agencies.

In this episode, we’ll cover: Gaining control of your clogged and cluttered email inbox. A system that sorts, organizes and stores emails in […] The post How One Agency is Using Slack to Limit the Time Spent in Email appeared first on Smart Agency Masterclass: Podcast for Digital Marketing Agencies.

For many, Facebook advertising is an untamable beast. Not only is it super competitive and constantly evolving, but it can also be flat our intimidating. With all those switches and levers, it can be hard to laser in on the tactics you need to optimize your advertising campaigns. But in this episode of the Call to Action podcast, we'll deconstruct a proven strategy that Matchnode, a Chicago agency, used to dramatically increase the ROI of their client’s marketing campaign.

For many, Facebook advertising is an untamable beast. Not only is it super competitive and constantly evolving, but it can also be flat our intimidating. With all those switches and levers, it can be hard to laser in on the tactics you need to optimize your advertising campaigns. But in this episode of the Call to Action podcast, we'll deconstruct a proven strategy that Matchnode, a Chicago agency, used to dramatically increase the ROI of their client’s marketing campaign.

I’m sure you’ve noticed One Agency, the innovative real estate brand that’s come out of nowhere to shake up the established real estate franchise model in Australia.

I’m sure you’ve noticed One Agency, the innovative real estate brand that’s come out of nowhere to shake up the established real estate franchise model in Australia.

In 2013, two agencies (Kidslink, a children’s mental health provider, and Mosaic Counseling, which offered a variety of services to children, men, and women) merged to form Carizon Family and Community Services. Our guests in this podcast explore the newly-formed agency’s experience incorporating trauma-informed care into its treatment philosophy and provision of service.