The key to winning over right-fit clients in any economy with Jason Swenk

Hey, before we get to the show, I just wanna remind you that we have created a private Facebook group just for you, our podcast listeners. There are almost 1500 agencies, agency owners, inside that Facebook group every day talking about what’s going on inside their shop, asking for resources, gut checking decisions, talking about everything from pricing to hiring, to biz dev. All kinds of things are happening there. We’re starting conversations. You guys are starting conversations. What I love about it is the community’s coming together and sharing resources, encouraging each other, and just sort of having a safe place to talk about what it’s like to own an agency. So all you have to do is head over to Facebook, search for a Build, a Better, Agency Podcast group, or Build, a Better, Agency Podcast.

And you’ll find the group. You have to answer three questions. If, you don’t answer the questions, we can’t let you in. But they’re simple. It’s, do you own an agency or do you work at an agency? And if so, what’s the URL? What are you trying to get out of the group? And will you behave, basically? So come join us. If, you haven’t been there for a while. Come on back, If, you haven’t joined. Join into the conversation. I think you’re gonna find it really helpful. All right, let’s get to the show.

It doesn’t matter what kind of agency you run, traditional digital media buying, web dev, PRR brand, whatever your focus, you still need to run a profitable business. The Build, a Better, Agency Podcast, presented by a White Label IQ, will expose you to the best practices that drive growth, client and employee retention and profitability. Bring his 25 plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant. Please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Hey everybody. Drew McLellan here with another episode of Build a Better Agency. Super excited to have you back if this is a return visit for you. Really grateful for those of you that come back week after week and take a listen. I think you’ll be glad you did this week. And for those of you that are new, welcome, we are here to help to try and give you a sense that you are not doing this all by yourself, and that there are some best practices and better ways to think about the business so it can serve you and your family and your team and your clients in the way that you want it to. So we have a great guest today, somebody you’re most of you will be familiar with, and I’m looking forward to picking his brain a little bit.

But before I do that, I just wanna remind you that registration for the Build a Better Agency Summit, which is gonna be May 21st and 22nd of 24 in Denver for the first time, is open. We have great, great speakers, great content. We’re very focused on biz dev process and ai, I think are gonna be big topics. So we are going to have experts who are gonna help you figure out how to crack the nut of new business, both with existing clients, how to grow those clients, and also new clients, how to get in front of the right prospects, how to get their attention, how to earn their trust, and how to close the deal.

So we’re gonna be talking about a lot of that. We’re gonna be talking about best practices that agencies are employing with ai, and we’re gonna be talking about building our teams and all kinds of other great topics. So as you know at the conference, the tickets don’t get less expensive as we get closer to the event. So If, you know, you’re gonna be with us in Denver, May 21st and 22nd. Grab your ticket now. Grab your hotel room now and you’ll be all set for next year. I know it seems far away, but honestly, it’s only about five months away. And so we’re gonna be there in a heartbeat. So join us at the Build a Better Agency Summit. Super excited to see all of you there.

So lemme tell you a little bit about our guest. Many of you’re familiar with Jason. Swank, he has owned agencies. He has bought and sold agencies, and now he serves as an agency consultant to digital shops, big and small. And we’re gonna talk a little bit about a book he’s got coming out, but also just some of the things he’s seeing on the landscape right now with his clients and kind of align them with what we’re seeing as well. So I’m excited to kind of have feels like Office Hours with a colleague. So I’m looking forward to the conversation and I think you’ll find it insightful as well. So let’s welcome him to the show. Jason, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Yeah, thanks for having me back. Drew,

I think everybody probably knows who you are and what you do, but just in case there’s somebody on the planet who’s not familiar with you, just give everybody a little bit of sort of your backstory and how you came to be doing the work you’re doing with agencies today.

Yeah, so in 1999, I had a friend that looked like Justin Timberlake from NSYNC and created a fake band, fake website called In. Shit. Nice. It got popular. And then people started asking me to design websites. And so I was an accidental agency owner. And then eventually a couple years later, we started doing websites for like Hitachi at and t, LegalZoom, just to name a few. And then in 2011, we were fortunate enough to grow it over eight figures and sell it. And then for a couple years, like most agency owners, you’re like, oh, I’m never doing this agency thing again. Right, right, right. I’m gonna go, I’m gonna go design an app. Right? ’cause I thought the grass is greener on that side.

Hated it. Because I was just lucky enough that some of my old competitors in the agency space reached out and was like, Hey, how’d you, how’d you sell? How’d you do this? And I started putting a podcast together, helping them out. And I’ve been, you know, running a mastermind for agency owners for the past decade now. Yeah. I can’t believe it. We’re old, right?

We, we are a little old. Yeah. I, I don’t like to think of it that way. I like to think of it as seasoned, but Yeah.

Wiser. Yeah, wiser, right? We got the gray hair, right?

That’s right. That’s right. I’ll, I’ll take that. Yeah. So I know you are working on a new book that’ll be out probably within a month of this hearing, but the focus is on how to attract what we call it, our, in our world. And I think you do too, right? fit clients. And so, you know, 2023 has been sort of a boy, it’s been a brutal year for most agencies, as you and I both know in terms of new business. And yet there are some agencies who are knocking it out of the park, who are still getting those inbound inquiries from the clients that are really in their sweet spot. So I wanna talk today about what they’re doing that’s different.

So as agencies are going into planning for 2024, they can stop being so victimized by the economy and all the other things and really put some things into play so that they don’t have to wait or they don’t have to chase, but they actually can get knocks on their door from people who are really the right fit for them. So let’s talk a little bit about sort of your perspective on the agencies that are doing it differently and better and are sort of leapfrogging over some of the challenges most agencies had in 23.

Yeah. The, the ones that are struggling are the ones that are being reactive, or they were, you know, most agency owners are accidental. Right? Right. Kind of goes back to my origin story. So when you’re accidental, you really think all the business is always gonna come to you. Right. And then their businesses

Based referrals and word of mouth and Yep.

Yeah. Right. And, and most cases referrals just aren’t scalable or Right. If, you break down how referrals work is they’re constantly referring their friends that are at the same level Yeah. Or the same part, right? So you’re never kind of moving upstream. Yeah. And that’s like when I started doing $500 websites and then doing million dollar websites, there was a big delta.

Right, right, right,

Right in there of what we had to overcome. Right. There wasn’t much difference in the website, honestly. It was just who we were going after. Yeah. And that leads me back to the people that are doing really well. It’s about the who, right? Right. It’s about who do we want to go after? Who do we need on the team, and who do we need to become in the agency? Yeah. You know, like you, you’ve seen this most of the time where an agency has grown and then they’ll plateau, right. And then they’ll be like, why the hell did we plateau? Like I thought we

Were, why am I stuck? Yeah.

Right. But it’s because of the owner, it’s grown to the pace of the owner. Yeah. So that’s why I’m like, who do you need to become in order to get to the next part? And then it’s also like If, you go back to the, the first who about like, who do we need to go after? So I always tell agencies, we need to get that clarity first. Yeah. Like, this is the foundation of who we’re going after. Where do we want to to go? Who do we need to offer? And a, a cool exercise that everyone listening can do is going, if I was gonna be paid on performance only, who would I work with and what would I do for them?

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Right.

And right. It’s, it’s very easy to say. And when you think about it, you’re like, hell yeah. But we do all these different things that distract us.

Right? I think one of the problems with referrals is just that, right? So not only are they potentially at the same size as the client, but now you’re not deciding who you work with. Right? The market is deciding. And so just because Bob the client is a great client, doesn’t mean that Bob’s golf buddy, who also owns a business, is gonna be a great client. And when you rely on referrals, to your point, you’re reactive. You are accepting what, you know, we talk about, you know, the bad, the the bad model of new business is you just cast out this big net and whatever swims in the net that day you eat. Right? And some days it’s salmon and some days it’s a boot.

And rather than spearfishing, which is what you’re talking about, which is, okay, I know I’m gonna swim by a bunch of fish ’cause those aren’t the ones I want, and I’m gonna go after the exact ones I want. So I think you’re absolutely right.

Yeah. And, and then what, what you want to do is once you figure out who you’re going after, what you want to do for them, then I, I like to see, think about how can I position the agency to not look like a me too agency, right? Too many agencies look like everyone else. What do they talk about? How many coffees they drink, how many dogs they have in the office? Right? How many awards they have? No one cares about that. Like If, you go to my website, you know, my personal website, Jason swank.com/about, you won’t see anything about my story until the very bottom

Right.

I ask questions because I need to put the prospect or the visitor on the pedestal. It’s about them. Right? How can I help them and what problem can I solve for them? And that’s a cool thing with ai, right? Like the agencies that they get paid the most solve the biggest problems the fastest. So then If, you use AI with it, like, oh my gosh, like, you’re gonna crush it. Right? So that’s kind of really kind of the, like the first system is clarity. The second system is really positioning. The third system is really how are you getting new business? Right? And like you mentioned it a little bit about referrals. Like referrals aren’t scalable, right?

So you need to kind of have three channels. Like when I’m looking at an agent that we’ve bought 10 agencies in the past two years, like legitimately bought them, not a BSS roll up. Okay. Right? Right. Like hand over a lot of cash to ’em. But what one of the things we’re looking at is like, do they have multiple channels and is it reliable?

Right?

And I always looked at three channels, an inbound channel, which you mentioned an outbound channel. And don’t hire one of those lead generation, you know, the outbound calling companies, they don’t work.

Oh my god. 1200 emails a day. Hey, Drew, do you have room for 50 new leads a day? No, I don’t actually. Stop. We’re good. We’re good. Yeah. Yeah.

Right. Like, if, if it worked, you wouldn’t be running this stupid ad. Right.

Right.

And then the third is strategic partnerships, and we can kind of break down those as well.

Yeah, I was gonna say, let, let’s talk about those a little bit. So for you, what are you seeing are the inbound channels that are working best for agencies right now?

Podcasts.

Yeah,

Podcasts. Podcasts. Podcasts. Like everyone that knows me, get out your drink and play the drinking game because every time I say podcasts, all my mastermind members always like drink.

Right, right.

Because look, you’re highlighting people that probably wouldn’t talk to you. You’re highlighting clients that you probably wanna work with, right. And you’re highlighting your expertise.

Right? Like, how

Powerful has your podcast been for your business? I mean, mine has been on belief

Huge. Yeah, it’s huge. It is. It is probably the number one by far production and platform for, you know, I, I will at a conference, whether it’s our summit or, or somebody else’s, if I’m speaking or at a workshop, probably 80% of the people walk up and go, I’ve been listening to you for x for however long that is. And they’ll reference an episode or two that was meaningful to them. And

If, you don’t ever remember. Right?

Some of them I do, but some of ’em I’m like, oh yeah, what was that guest? But I think what I love about podcasts, and I’m curious if it’s for you too, is it’s a pretty intimate medium. I mean, they, they really feel like they know you. And so the, the whole, you know, know, like trust model, you’re way into the trust part of that, by the time they actually have an, a real interaction with you through email or at an event or whatever, but they really, they feel like they know you, they like you, otherwise they wouldn’t keep listening and you’ve provided great content and so they trust you. And so you’re much further along the sales cycle.

Yeah. I mean, there’s no selling,

Right?

And, and it weeds out people, right? Like, I mean, look at me, I’m, I’m not very corporate, right? Like Right. If someone’s in their agency and they’re really corporate, there’s certain people that they can go to, right. If they like my style perfect. Like, you’re gonna like the mastermind, you’re gonna like working with us. So, you know, it, it really kind of self-selects.

Yep.

But it’s un it’s unbelievable. People don’t give it time.

Right. Well, I, I read a statistic that most podcasts never get to episode seven.

That’s crazy. Yeah.

Like

You should’t

Launch a podcast. So what, they have less than two months. Right. We tell people, look, you gotta have 10 in the can before you even go live. Right, exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I mean, like, you’ve been doing it, what you were 10 years for

The podcast. Yeah. Almost. Yep.

Yep. So we probably started the podcast probably

About the

Same time, February or March is 10 years.

Yep. Well, and I don’t know about you, but I, I started it as a, huh. This is kind of a cool new thing. I just wanna play around with it for a little bit and see what it is and we’ll, you know, we’ll try it for three months and see if it gets traction. And, and If you would’ve told me then you’ll still be doing it every week, a decade later, I probably would’ve said, Hmm, I don’t think so. But you know, here, here we both are, right?

Yeah. I we haven’t missed the week in nine and a half years.

Yeah, right. Let’s do I we we don’t miss, yeah. Yep.

Yeah. And now we do two shows a week, which is, which is crazy. Now that’s

Brutal. Yeah. I don’t think I could do that, but Yeah. But nonetheless, it, it is absolutely a powerful track. So when you’re talking to agencies about starting a podcast, what are the mistakes they make? Or what are the, what are the guardrails you help them sort of define so that it is a sales tool for them?

Well, they, the, the, the one thing is, is they, they freak out on the technology, right? Like these are technologists, right? And they think the technology needs to be a Joe Rogan style, right? I’m like, look, we’re do, we’re recording right now on Zoom, right? I mean, it is bare bones or Right. The microphone you get now is like 50 bucks from Amazon, right?

So Right.

Guys like, stop over the technology or some, some people get held up because I tell them, I go, why wouldn’t you invite your best prospects on? They’re like, well, that, that seems slimy. I said, well, how long have you been listening to our show? And they’ll be like, five years, four years. Right? I’m like, I invite all my perfect prospects on the show, but my intent is to create amazing content first.

Right.

And the second secondary is if they wanna talk to us about helping out, great. If not, no problem. Right. But they’ll start listening to the show from it, and then they’ll come around. Right. In most cases. So,

Yeah. And a subset of them will never be clients, and that’s okay.

Perfectly fine.

Because they still help you create content that does attract other prospects.

Exactly. Yeah. And I always tell them, you’re gonna suck in the very beginning. Right. It’s gonna be horrible. Right. But you just wanna constantly, just like Mr. Beast says in his videos, how can I get an inch better?

Right. Each,

Each time.

Yeah.

And then, you know, then, then you’re good. So

Yeah, I, I don’t know that I’d wanna go back and listen to my first five episodes. Now

I remember verbatim my first four episodes, like, I remember my fourth episode, I interviewed Dale Ross of IHG International Hotel Group, and I asked him, which is a perfect lead in, I’m, I’m lead, I’m teeing you up for the out outbound. Perfect. I said, how can, how can agents, small agencies get into bed with bigger clients? Yeah. And he was like, here’s how, how to do it.

Okay. So we’ve now talked about inbound. What was his answer?

This was stop calling and doing the same thing everyone else is doing. Yeah. Like, stop inviting me to lunch, stop sending me gifts. Stop trying to ask me to play golf. You gotta do something different. Right? So his answer, this was when, you know, Facebook really kind of came out and ads and stuff like that. I think when we’re talking, and I think I said, well,

And by the way, if people didn’t think we were old before now, when Facebook came out, when it was a new thing,

Well, I’ll even date myself. My first client asked me to send him an invoice at the agency. I didn’t know what an invoice was and Google wasn’t around for me to Google it.

Okay. So I see your walker behind you.

Exactly. Yeah. But yeah, I’m still hiking mountains, climbing mountains and all that kind of stuff. But, so I said, if I called you up and I said there’s a new thing called the Power Editor in Facebook, and it allows us to really re-target the people that going to your website, but may have not booked. I’d love to see if there’s a chance for me to just show you how it works. He would always have test projects and test money available. Interesting. So then you can get your foot in the door. Right. Right. And so like, so I’ll give you another example. What I always believe, and this is what agencies don’t do, they wait for business to come to them.

Yeah. And these are the ones that are struggling. If, you have a specific, like If, you can make a top 50 hit list of the agencies you want to go after. Make it figure out who is that contact and then figure out what are the opportunities that you could help them with or the problems that they may have. And then reach out to them in a unique way. So for example, if I was going after someone that did, you know, I just had this person on a podcast, I can’t remember their name, but they sold, obviously I don’t use it like skincare or skincare cream for men.

And I was like, really? Men do that? Like, I was like, okay. I was like, I don’t, right. My skin’s all rough from the Colorado sun, but I go, would this get your attention? I said, if I bought your product, and I applied it on a video and I said, Hey Drew, man, I really love this cream. It’s really made my, my skin a lot softer now, when I bought it, I never got like any kind of videos with it or any kind of onboarding about how to use it or how often I should actually use it. I have some ideas for you on a marketing front. I’d love five minutes of your time. Let me know. He’s like, I would take that call all day long.

Yeah, right. Because I hear I’m here, I’m here to help. Right.

Exactly. Yeah. And they could look it up and he goes, first thing I would do is make sure I look up your name and see If you bought it. Interesting. So make sure you don’t have your assistant buy it. Make sure you buy it.

Interesting. Okay. So for you, outbound is again, not a system or process where everybody gets the same thing at the same time. But it’s, I want to talk to Jason. I know enough about Jason’s business that I can demonstrate that I understand his product or service, and I actually have an idea of something to talk to him about.

You’re pro you’re providing value, right? Rather than,

And are you recommended to your clients that you, they, I know this is a novel concept, but they pick up the phone and call them. Are they sending an email? Are they sending snail mail? Right. What, you know, are they, how, how are you seeing clients actually get a conversation?

They’re hitting ’em up on whatever channels that they’re on. So if they find ’em on Instagram, they’ll send that video. Okay. If they’re on LinkedIn, it’s a little harder, right. Because there’s so much crap going past on LinkedIn. Yeah. A written note is amazing. Right. A phone call is a lot harder just because a lot of people are working from home now and everyone has a cell phone. And honestly, I don’t want to be like, I always market how I wanna market, or I wanna sell how I wanna be sold to. If someone calls me on my cell phone, the chances of me picking up is very unlikely. And if I pick up, I’m there gonna mess with you. Right. I’m be like, hello. Right. You know, I want you to mess with.

Right?

So you gotta do something a little different and it’s not a, it’s very targeted, you know, you know, campaign.

Yeah. You know, one thing I, one thing I think agency owners miss is I, I think they think of biz dev as a volume game. No. And the reality is, if you’re targeting the right size client, you know, and you want to grow 20% year over year and you know, you get much more than 20 or 25%, especially If, you factor in attrition. You know, you’re gonna break every sys, every system you have. I mean, that kind of growth year over, it’s super easy when you’re two people, it’s really hard when you’re 25 people to do that year over year. So the reality is, if you’re targeting somebody who’s five to 10% of your AGI, you only need a couple wins. Right. It’s not a volume game, it’s the, it’s about getting the right clients who are gonna stick around for more than a year that you can grow once you get them into the fold.

Yeah, exactly. So what you’re describing sounds onerous if you’re trying to win a hundred clients, but it sounds very doable if you’re hoping to win three.

Exactly. And it’s also about the offer, right? Right. Most agency owners and agencies have the wrong offer, or the owner is doing the offer and the sales, which is very unattractive for someone wanting to buy your agency. Or very honestly, very, it devalue devalues you to the prospect because you’re like, the owner’s actually reaching out. Like they don’t have a team. Like, am I gonna be, is the owner gonna be doing the delivery and all this kind of stuff. Right. So it devalues. So I always tell people, you need to have like an offering ladder and you need to make it.

So let’s hang on, let’s, let’s, let’s make a meaningful pause right here, and we’re gonna take a quick break and then when we will we come back, we will talk about the offer ladder so that everybody sticks with us for the whole episode. So, all right, we’ll be right back guys. Hey, I know you wanna get right back to the show, but I wanna remind you that the 20 23, 24 salary survey, salary and benefit survey actually is out now with brand new data from over a thousand agencies of how they’re paying their team members, what kind of benefits they’re including in their packages. And you can find that on the a AMI website under resources and it’s just 99 bucks.

So if that’s helpful to you, go grab it and use it in your planning, in your conversations with team members as you’re building out career paths and things like that is super helpful to sort of see what everybody else is doing, what everybody else is paying. It’s broken down by geography and also by agency size. So hopefully that would be super helpful to you. All right, let’s get back to the show. All right. We are here with Jason Swank and we are talking about biz dev. And what he’s seeing is working in 2023, which for most of you has been kind of a head banging on a brick wall sort of years. So right before the break we were talking about having an offer and actually having an offer ladder.

So go ahead Jason, explain sort of what you mean by that and what you’re seeing as working.

Yeah, so If, you look at most agencies or the traditional way is to pitch them a retainer and the core service, right? Right. Which is If, you look at it, it’s a hard decision for the prospect because it’s risky, right? And a lot of agencies want it for a long-term commitment, which makes it even harder. But then what most agencies do is they’ll actually go, okay, it’s a month. A month, or you can cancel a 30 day clause. So now you have no predictability,

Right? Which,

Which is like shooting yourself in the foot. So what I always like to do is how can I meet with that prospect? How can I turn them into a client in like a day or two days? How could I increase my winning percentage to like 90%? It’s kind of like the what, what’s that? The anchorman when he is like, it works 60% all the time, you know, the sex panther, whatever, right? So it’s kinda like this, but what you wanna do is it, I’ve developed kind of what I call the foot in the door offer. And what it is, is like, Hey Drew, what I’d like to do with you based on your challenge that you told me around lead generation, what I’d like to do is let’s meet for an hour to two hours.

Now I do charge for this. Yep.

And

You’re gonna get a lot of value from it. And here’s the three possible outcomes. You’ll love the plan, you go execute it yourself. That’s the case. I wish you luck. Number two, you’ll love the plan and you’ll wanna work with us, which we can talk about. And that’s actually the most common, or number three, you don’t like the plan, I give your money back. So there’s nothing for you to lose. But on this agency blueprint that I’m gonna do for you, we’re gonna map out what you’re doing and what currently can do and we’re gonna do it together. So most comp, so there’s a lot of agencies that are doing something like a service before their big offer, but what they’re doing is they’re going back and doing it without the prospect.

Right?

And so then the prospect doesn’t trust it because they didn’t build it,

Or they’re not creating relationship along with the work. Right?

Exactly. And so when you can build it with them, it’s kind of like that you remember that show Colombo that that investigator Yep. And he’d always, like, he always knew the answer, but he would always ask the questions to lead them.

It’s kind of the thing. Right. And usually If, you recall, and again, we’re aging ourselves, you kids can Google this or look on the YouTube, but you know, he would always like half walk away and then turn around and go, oh wait, one more question. And that always the zinger question. Right? I about that. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Yes,

I forgot about that. But, and then once you do the foot in the door, the foot in the door is all designed to point out one big problem and you gotta figure out like you’re, you’re a problem detective. Right? Right. And then that big problem, what you do is then you position a project, not the retainer, you position a project to fix that problem. And then when you start delivering the value in the project, that’s when you can position a retainer at a lot higher rate for a longer term with no, you know, no kind of like 30 day, 60 day out clause.

Right? Right. So when you’re, when you’re helping agencies develop basically the third model, so foot in the door, simple project, which I’m sure is a flat fee for a flat deliverable, whatever that is. And then the retainer, which is, hey, you know, that worked out pretty well. There’s a lot of other things we now know based on what we did there that you need this, this, this, and this. So, you know, we’re happy to do that. How are, how are you, because, you know, retainer for some clients is a, is a dirty word. You don’t call, it’s like agency retainer of record, right? Yeah. So how are you helping agencies frame that so it’s more palatable to clients today? Yeah.

So what you’re doing, like there’s really kind of not much of a framing because now, like you think about you’ve had that blueprint session or that foot the door session, you’ve had that project and, and then once they start, like, I’ll give you an example. I was working with an SEO agency who was charging $5,000 a month and it was month to month. And he would basically keep his clients for six months, which is a whole nother issue, right? Right. So every client he would sign, he’d make $30,000, I said, let’s do a foot in the door, we’re gonna charge 2,500. And then, you know, going back to what he was charging was 5,000 a month. I said, how long does it take you to show results?

Or an ROI? And he said, two months. I said, cool, we’re gonna do a three month project to fix this issue to get them for this one term up. So in the month two, when they started seeing the results, I said, this is when we’re gonna start positioning the ongoing marketing support, right. Almost act as kind of the, the C outsource CMO for this one division or like a practice director, right? Right. That’s gonna lead this. And now they’re able to position that at 9,000 a month for 12 months. So If, you add all that up a little over 12 months, it’s well over six figures,

Right?

For every client you get. Right. And there’s not much like, and you’re getting out of the proposal process, there’s not really a proposal process. It’s literally here’s the contract because they’re trusting you. Like there’s no contract

Before. They’ve already seen the uptick in the results. Right. Big time. Yeah.

And then I also wanna let people know when they’re doing the retainers, an easy way to kind of make it a little different is like half the retainer should be on hours just so you don’t get overran by the client.

Hmm. So talk a little more about that.

Yep. So what most people do when they’ll say, oh, we’ll do a $10,000 retainer, and the client will be like, well, because you have to kind of constrain the client a little bit. Right?

Oh, right, right.

Or they’re gonna take advantage of you. Yep. So the really great agencies, their whole retainer is all strategy. Yeah. So there’s no hours in it, but most agencies can’t come outta the gate to do that. So I always tell them, do half on hours and kind of limit what you’re going to do and the other half on strategy. So you’re always protected and then you don’t have the run over, or you never want to have your clients always going to you going, how many hours are left? Right. Can we roll them over? Like, I’m like, it’s not T-Mobile.

Right. Right. And even T-Mobile doesn’t let you do that anymore. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So I’m curious, a lot of the, I was just with a client earlier this week and we were talking about sort of, ’cause your examples are, and I know most of the agencies you work with are digital that I think agencies that do countable work, right? So I give you a dollar, I get $3 worth of leads or whatever. I, you know, I think we know that, that that demand and that accountability for ROI is just getting more and more and more. So I’m curious from your perspective, where, where does a, where do agencies that do brand work and things that are really hard to tie ROI to, where do you see them in the future?

How do you see them continuing to be valuable and sought after in a world where everybody wants to count their pennies?

Well, that, and that’s kind of like the other half of our, our business when I was running the agency. So our agency back in the day, the first one was design and branding, and the other half was development. Yeah. So when we would do a development retainer, we would do half hours, half half strategy for the creative. It was always on their expectation. So a long time ago, I had a a or prospect call me, I rocked it on the call. I never knew who they were. They invited me to their, their office. I pitched ’em a 20 or $30,000 website. They laughed me out of the, out of the office. I’m like, I go back to the office.

I’m like, they’re like, who was it? I’m like, oh, some company Brookshire or something. They’re like, Brookshire Hathaway, right? Like, yeah, that’s it. Yeah. They’re like, Hey, dumbass. Like that’s one of the biggest companies.

They should add it a zero. Right?

They were expecting 300,000. Yeah. Right. So it’s always about Figuring out, what’s the budget, what’s the expectation? And then making sure you are there with that. So when I, whenever we do any design branding, it was always based on value and what their expectations were. I’d always have, you know, our baseline that we had like to break even, but then I always had 25% for profit and 25% unknown. So that was always my floor. Right. But if I knew that their expectation was up here, heck yeah. I’m gonna meet you up here. Right? Because then they’re gonna, they’re gonna like laugh me out of the window, you know, out their offices.

So I’m curious, as you look into your crystal ball with AI and everything else that’s going on, what, what does the agency of the future look like? What, what, where will we continue to add value for clients? Yeah.

I, I think with ai, it just will start, it will keep reducing the amount of team members that you need. I don’t believe AI will replace the agency, but people that use AI will. So think about if we went back, if we went back to, you know, I’m 46, so if we went back to kind of my dad’s realm, right? Like, computers weren’t really there. You needed a ton of people to do a ton of stuff,

Right?

Right. And then even when I was running the first agency, we had like a hundred people and we were 13 million. Right. So we needed a lot of people. Now to get to 13 million, you could do it with 20. I believe that in the next couple years, I bet someone will create a billion dollar brand with one person with ai.

Interesting.

And it just, it just makes us, it’s a great useful tool, right. To just make us so much faster. It goes back to what I was saying, right. More

Efficient, right?

Yeah. People will pay, like, people pay the big agencies a lot of money because they solve the biggest problems the fastest. Right? So the faster we can solve the big problems, the more money you can make.

Well, I mean, that’s the whole point of Jay Bearer’s newest book, right? The power of this of speed and how that’s become a currency that is really critical to clients.

Exactly.

So If, you were starting an agency from scratch today. What skill sets would you have inside your shop?

It’s more around managing people, honestly. ’cause like, think about the doing, right? I literally went to AI the other day, come up with a monthly social media campaign for making me rank higher in this one particular industry. It’s spit it out.

Yeah.

I, I was like, I looked at it, I was like, damn. I was like, I would’ve done this, this. Ooh, I like that. Like I didn’t go do that. Right, right. Like, right. So it’s more about, it’s the same type of people I would hire now, because I’ve always wanted to hire people that are resourceful, that are always wanting to learn. Right. And to build like that community. So those are the types of people I would still hire, but also the curious ones that can actually use these types of tools, right? Like, you could take this podcast, go to an AI tool, it spits out a number of different shorts, then you can take another one and say, Hey, change this up. Make Jason, like Jason said this thing wrong, or, you know, whatever it is.

And then they can fix it and then it can post it. And like, you can do all this

Right. In an instant,

In an instance. Yeah. But the one thing that AI will not replace is community.

Right.

And just the interaction. It can’t do that. Not right now.

Right. Well, and I think the relationship, you know, I think agencies that are thriving are the ones that can create great relationship with clients and they become their thinking partner. And again, it, it is something different than a machine can do. It is, it is human to human, for sure.

Yeah.

To your point, it is about people who can connect and manage, not in a manipulative way, but manage people and relationships.

Yeah. It’s, it’s all relationships. Like Yeah. You know, I moved when we moved out to Colorado in the middle of nowhere, like a lot of times we’ll go like, man, we gotta get in town. We’ve been on the mountain too long.

Right, right, right. Yeah. We need to see some people.

Yeah. Well, like I saw enough barren lions, like let’s, let’s go see some real people.

Yeah. So what do you think as, as you look to 2024, what are, what are the two or three big challenges that agencies need to anticipate?

I think it’s focus that there, they’re with your content, and I think my content right? Think about we are always talking about foundational stuff.

Yep.

Not the hacks.

Right?

Right. Like If, you go back to our agency playbook, like we developed that eight years ago. We’ve updated it along the way with new stuff, but it all, it’s like If, you play tennis, take the racket back, look at the ball, hit it like Right. It doesn’t change. Right. And so I think there’s too many shiny red objects. People are chasing too many tools that they’re, they’re personally trying to, to, you know, go after and they’re trying to do too much. But if they focus and focus to me means finish one commitment until success and pick that biggest item. Yeah. And then what I also want agencies to do is think about this is you need to get out of the day-to-day operations.

You don’t need to be doing marketing, you don’t need to be doing sales. You can add color to sales, and you definitely sure not need to be doing delivery. So those are the who’s like the, so the biggest challenges I want people to solve in 24 is find the who’s in those three areas as well as the fourth, who, which is the most important, who do you need to be become to lead this company? Because when I sold the first agency, when I sold it, one of the reasons was I felt like I was at the max. Right. I thought like, you know, as a, I think when I sold I was like 30 or something. So I was like, I know everything. I’m never gonna get any smarter. Right. You’re still that stupid young person.

Right.

A combination of ignorant and arrogant.

Exactly. Yep. That was it. Yep. And that now I’m humble and like just beaten down. So I’m like, yeah, I don’t know shit. Right. So that’s what I think the big challenge is, like focus, like stop chasing all the shiny red objects and find the right people. Invest in it. And I, I promise you over time your agency will be better and stop looking short term.

Yeah. So, you know, I, I am constantly preaching and I know you are too. Consistency trumps so much. And so, you know, when you are flitting from tactic to tactic, whether it’s for the agency or for clients or whatever, and it was like what we were talking about with the podcast, right? You don’t let anything actually take root and actually start to work and then grow. And I think, I think agency owners are all, for the most part, super driven, but also so easily distracted by the shiny object that it’s really hard for them to do the same thing. Which I find ironic because, you know, back in our day when we were running our own agencies, what would we say to clients all the time, you have to keep doing this stuff about the time you’re bored with it and you’re, you just are like, I cannot do another fill in the blank ad.

That’s when the audience is starting to notice it for the first time. And yet we, we do not understand that about our own biz dev efforts or, or any other effort inside the agency, just that that slow and steady consistency pays off over time.

Well, and they’re looking at it short term, right? Right. They’re looking at, oh, we had a bad month, we had a bad quarter. Oh, we had a bad year. If, you stretch out your business 10, 20 years.

Right.

Really, like, it’s not much higher. So, right.

Right. Yeah. It’s a little like looking at the market, right. You can say, okay, well I put money in in 1980 and look what that dollar’s worth now. And yes, it went up and down all along the way. I, I, I think part of the resilience of owning an agency is being able to ride that wave and not freak out when it dips and also not freak out and spend all your money when it peaks. Right. It’s, it’s, I’m gonna ride the middle either way and just stay nice and steady and consistent. Well

That’s why, you know, I, I mentioned, I kind of hinted a little while ago about you wanna build multiple channels. Yeah. Because if one channel goes down, you have another one. Yep. And you also wanna figure out what are the channels that are reliable and predictable. Yeah. And how do I create that reliable and predictable revenue so then you’re making easier decisions and you’re not reacting to crap, I can’t make payroll. Well, that, like, there was all kinds of indications, like I was telling you on the pre-show, like I’m about to get my private pilot license and in aviation it, it helps me really kind of think about business in a whole new way.

Right? Right. Like in aviation, we have checklists and it’s like, If, you don’t focus in the plane, you’re gonna fly into a mountain.

Right.

Like, there’s nothing, like, there’s no other distractions. It’s like you’re tuned into the instruments, which are your KPIs. Right? Right. You have your checklist so you don’t forget stuff and you have the SOPs. Right. You have that extreme focus and you’re constantly learning and you know, like you can be humbled in a second, like I’ve

Been Yeah, right.

I’ll get back from a flight and I’ll be like, I need to sell this plane. Like, I can’t do it. Right.

I should not go back up there. Right.

No. Like, I’m like, I barely made it back on the ground. Like I almost needed to use the parachute. Right. So

Yeah, I, I, I think it is challenging, I honestly for any human being on the planet today to focus, but I think for small business owners, boy, with all the things we could do and should do and, you know, fill in the blanks, it is hard to stay super focused. And yet we know that it is consistency that delivers good results and, and does even out the highs and the lows. Right?

Yeah. And, and as you guys are the leaders, right? Like you can make your own decisions, which is the most freedom that you, you can ever create, right? But you’re hindering your own self because you haven’t done like, like one of the exercises I always tell people to get clarity is like, get a sheet of paper, put your fist on it, draw a circle around it, spend 30 minutes writing all this stuff you hate in your business. Like when people come to me to sell to their agency, to me, a lot of times I try to talk ’em out of it, right. Not because it’s a bad deal, but I’m like, dude, If you, If you change one or two things. It could be up here, right?

And then it would be worth 10 times as much. Right?

Right. And you’d be having more fun and you’d be blah, blah blah. Right?

Yeah. So If, you spend like 30 minutes writing down all the stuff you don’t like on the outside of the circle, like project management, sales, whatever it is. And then spend about 15 minutes on the inside you’ll realize going, oh my God, I can hire people to do this. Right? I can delegate this part, I can, whatever it is. Like I, I don’t have to do this anymore. And then you can shape it to fit your lifestyle. Now it’s not a lifestyle business, but like you should build a business around your lifestyle.

That’s right.

That you can grow and you can create that freedom. And then you’ve created this asset. Because I talked to so many agencies that I know their agency is not worth much if they sold it today. And they’re getting around, you know, they’re like, Hey, I’d like to sell it in the next two years. I’m like, man, you better start working your ass off,

Right? Because

You’re gonna be this big surprise coming for you.

Right? Yeah. I think, I think that is a challenge of, you know, how, how do you, how do you both think about the immediacy of now, but also always be thinking about two years down the road, five years down the road, 10 years down the road, and how do I declutter my brain enough to have room to do both of those things? Right.

That’s when you go to South Africa, right.

For a couple weeks or take

Your vacation. Yeah.

I have to say it was, it actually, it, you know, it’s really funny that you say that because we, we, so my wife and I, we, we took our computers, but we weren’t on ’em very much. I was mostly like, you know, editing photos and journaling the trip and things like that. And we purposely, ’cause we work in the business together, we purposely were like, you know, we’re not gonna talk about the business. We’re gonna stay super present. And we both came back with, you know, this laundry list of things,

Ideas,

Right. And it was just that we gave our brain room to bang things around in the back while we were looking at the giraffe or the rhino or whatever. But it was, you know, it was just processing in the back because we weren’t constantly overtaxing it. So it’s, it’s a good reminder that we do have to step away and, you know, and I’m sure that’s what happens when you’re flying too, right? You have to focus on something so present that, you know, our brains are amazing things. It’s cooking in the back and you get off the plane and you go, oh, KPI, but you know, yada, yada yada. So it, it is a good reminder that agency owners, again need to get outta the fray of the day-to-day.

So they can be the leaders that they’re capable of being.

Well, you need, I they need to create rules that they won’t break, right? Like my rules, I don’t do meetings on Mondays. I go do epic stuff on Fridays and I hang out with the family Saturday and Sundays. I do all my meetings Tuesday through Thursday. Right. So I’m always, I’m always on. Yeah. I’m never drained during the day because I’ve created those rules, you know? ’cause like most people they’ll say, and they, I like, I think you need to create rules for the year, the quarter. Like you, the, the year would be like, let’s go do an epic vacation right. To South Africa, right? Right. And then quarter, what’s my quarter rule and what we’re, what we’re gonna do?

What’s my monthly, what’s my weekly, what’s my daily, right? I’m not gonna work past this certain hour so I can be present with my family or whatever it is.

Right.

And you create those rules like that. The cool thing is, is you create your own rules,

Right? Yeah. That’s the beautiful thing of owning the joint, right?

Yeah. But they don’t know how,

Thank goodness. Or they break them. That gives you and I a job. Right. There you go. That’s right.

That’s right. That’s

Right. So, so this has been great. Speaking of having a job, if folks want to learn more about the work you do, if they wanna make sure they’re on a list so that when the book comes out they can get a copy if they want to start listening to the podcast. If they don’t already do that, what’s the easiest and best way for them to track you down? Yep.

So they can go to agency mastery three sixty.com/convert If. you go to the slash convert, like you can go to the, the regular route If, you go to slash convert. It’s gonna give you a number of different free tools. I created a four-part masterclass and it’s gonna give you some tools about how you can decide on your foot in the door. And it’s gonna go over a, a number, other different tools that will help you that completely free. And then when the book comes out, we’ll we’ll hit you up on the email and let you guys know.

Awesome. This has been great. I always enjoy our conversations. Thanks for being on the show today.

Thanks Drew.

Alright guys, this wraps up another episode. So lots of tangible, practical things, which you know, is my favorite kind of episode is when you can take some things and put them into practice and I think, I think Jason served up lots of different things that you can think about yourself, you can take back to the leadership team and charge them with thinking about, but new business doesn’t have to be as hard as it has been this past year for most of you. And so hopefully you can steal some nuggets from this show show and put them into practice as you start planning for 2024 and, and give yourself a runway to do it a little differently. Alright, huge shout out and thank you.

As you know, to our friends at White Label IQ, they’re the presenting sponsor of the podcast. So If you head over to White Label IQ dot com slash aami. You can learn more about the white Label design dev and PPC. They do. And remember they’ve got a deal where if you’ve never worked with them before, you can get a set of hours for free on your first project. So awesome people come out of an agency, they’ve owned an agency for 20 some years, so they understand how to partner with agencies and I think you’re gonna love both working with them and the results of their work. So check them out. I’ll be back next week because as Jason, and I said, you just don’t miss after 10 years, I’ll be back next week with another guest getting you to think a little differently about the business.

In the meantime, you know how to track me down, so I will see you next week. Thanks for listening.

Come back next week for another episode, designed to help you build a stronger, more stable and sustainable agency. Check out our workshops, coaching and consulting packages, and other professional development [email protected].