Agency Life

On this episode we chat with Olga Andrienko - Head Of Global Marketing at SEMrush. She takes us through so many key insights into the world of digital marketing.

In this episode we chat about:

• How she started in her career and SEM Rush
• What SEMRush is and what they do 
• How using the tool will benefit your business and your clients
• How to get started on a partner program
• The power of SEO 
• The value of automation
• Growth opportunities for agencies
• Allocating budgets online
• How to grow with your clients 
• Educating yourself on how to optimise a new audience 
• Why agency owners have a powerful voice 
• And much much more

Olga is the Head of Global Marketing at SEMrush. Together with her team she has built one of the strongest international communities in the online marketing industry.

Olga speaks at the leading industry's conferences such as SMX, Pubcon, BrightonSEO. She is also a judge of the UK Social Media and Communication Awards.

SEMrush is an all-in-one Marketing Toolkit for digital marketing professionals.

All-in-one Marketing Toolkit

for digital marketing professional

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/olgandrienko/
SEMrush: https://www.semrush.com/

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On this episode we chat with Dan "the Agency Man" De la Cruz about Improving yourself, your agency and how to avoid making common mistakes. Nothing gets Dan more excited than helping agency owners create amazing businesses, and hurts him more than to see agency owners struggle with simple things in their business. Simply because they do not know what the solution is.

Dan also runs a community of agency owners from around the world, where he helps them to run better agencies.

We chat about:

• How he started by creating events for marketing students in university
• Mistakes made becoming an agency owner 
• The downfall of his first agency
• The pressure of being an agency owner from 2 different perspectives
• Why wellness is important for yourself and your business
• Having a community for support 
• Rebuilding your life 
• How his journey in Agency Collective started.
• Learn how to improve on your and avoid common mistakes
• What Dan is looking forward to for agency owners in the future. 
• His podcast called “Say no” 
• Why sustainability will become more and more important in the future

Say No Podcast https://www.theagencycollective.co.uk/say-no-podcast/?mc_cid=8ba8e3a5b2&mc_eid=b11f981cdb

The Agency Collectives

https://www.theagencycollective.co.uk/

Check out their youtube channel for loads of tips from inspirational agency founders:
youtube.com/c/TheAgencyCollective

Twitter:
twitter.com/agencycollectve

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In this solo episode of Agency Life, Clodagh chats all about time management in your agency. 

She covers:

• Definition of Time Management
• Time Management in Numbers
• How is time linked to your profitability
• Professional Services Specifics - This is how we spend time and what it costs
• Typical Time wasters
• What can we do to manage it better?
• Covey’s 4 areas to focus on in Time Management
• How should we prioritise our time?
• Group Task - How can I impact and improve my time management in a client case and for myself?

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In this episode we chat with Abbygail Wood - Founder of The Content Lab. Helping digital agency owners save time, increase profits and engage with customers through innovative content strategy and content writing. 

Abbygail shares her career journey with us and interesting insights on content creation.

We also chat about:

• How her business started with her husband
• The content struggle
• Why blogging is not dead
• An abundance mindset in your agency
• Networking in the industry
• Unique selling point with content
• Focusing on the final benefit 
• Abby’s personal and professional goals 
• Doing the most difficult task first
• How to create results driven content
• Knowing how to create the agency you want 
• The future of Content Lab
• And so much more. 

https://www.thecontentlab.ie/
Eat that Frog

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In this episode we chat with Sarah McIntyre, the Founder & Chief Strategist at BRIGHT Inbound Marketing in Sydney Australia. Listen to her career growth, advice and learnings over the past few years.

We chat about:

• How Sarah started with HubSpot (Before email) 
• Her Career & starting BRIGHT Inbound Marketing in 2019 
• Changes in the industry 
• Start off with a small project and scale from there 
• Industry changes over 11 years
• Being true to yourself and determining your own success for your agency.
• leveraging your network to get stuff done
• Scaling back to scale forward 
• How to work with difficult clients 
• How meditation helped her personally and in business

Sarah LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahjmcintyre/
BRIGHT Inbound Marketing: https://www.brightinbound.com.au/

WhatPods

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On this episode of the Agency Life Podcast - Clodagh chatted with Rachel Jacobs from Ecommerce Partnerships who not only takes us through very insightful ways to change things in your agency with your financials, projects, processes, etc but also how to implement the new changes successfully.

We learned so much in this episode and sure you will too. Rachel and Clodagh also chats about:

• Why structure  and organisation is important 
• How she started in e-commerce 
• Projections and cash flows
• Tightening up the sales process
• Increasing the lifetime value of your customers
• Not charging enough money.
• Working too many hours 
• Not being able to project 
• The problem with agency owners not stepping away 
• Having decision fatigue in your agency 
• Why agency positioning is important - look at the clients you liked working with and the ones you disliked and analyse it.
• Scaling time vs scaling money 
• How to charge money in the sales process
• Creating a business of your dreams
• Why working a 3 day week works for her and how she got to this point
• Aligning your business goals with your personal intentions 
• And so much more

Agency Partnerships website: https://ecommercepartnerships.com/
Rachel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelmjacobs/

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Welcome to 2020 and to our brand new Season of Agency Life. In this episode we chat with Gareth Jones who is the CEO of Oxygen Agency in China. 

He takes us on his journey of how he started out as being an Entrepreneur from the UK to China. Gareth is the epitome of an entrepreneur and dives deep into his world of agency life.

We chat about:

• Starting out with HubSpot in China
• Overcoming issues with client service in the agency
• The importance of processes & retainers.
• Working in China and the Chinese ecosystem 
• Why project management is important 
• Hiring Process at Oxygen Agency
• Purposeful growth in 2020
• Working on profitability in the new year
• Having more intention with clients and client work
• Going into software 
• What his ah-ha moment was 
• Client success
• Realising when a project is not profitable
• Firing a client that is not a good fit 
• Balancing home and work life as a business owner.
• Starting with your why 
• Working out what your values are

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This is the very last episode of Agency Life for season 2 and for 2019! In this Solo episode with Clodagh talks about Personal & Professional Highlights for 2019 and Recommendations for 2020.

She talks about:

Lowlights

• Closure of my own agency - really tough - learned a lot that I can share with other agency owners - what does not kill you and all that  
• Lost friendships through the closure of my previous agency 
• and more...

Top 5 highlights for 2019 

• Speaking at T&C in SD & DAX in NYC - the Digital Marketer Community is incredible their education, community and events are top class - end of March - SD for T&C 2020 get it in the diary.
• Being on a panel at Partner Day before Inbound on the topic of people and culture which is one of my favourite topics to help agencies in.
• and more 

Recommendations for Agencies in 2020 

• Focus on Profitability - yes increase your revenue but a focus on how you can increase 1% of your profits each month will add another 12% to your overall at the end of the year. 
• Marketing AI Tools - get ahead of this before your clients do.

If you would like to learn more about working with me an the team at Growit to help you increase results for your clients, return and retention of your team drop me a line - [email protected] 

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For the finale of our second season of Agency Life Edition we chat with Sean Anderson who is the Co-Founder & CEO at Hoxo Media.

This is a not to be missed episode as Sean shares very insightful tips on his successful transition from recruitment agency to Inbound marketing agency. Clodagh has worked with Hoxo Media closely for nearly a year and has seen 100% growth in their revenue. Read all about it here.

In this episode we chat about:

• How Sean and Amar started Hoxo Media 
• Creating 6 months of content every day 
• Inbound Marketing for recruitment 
• Signing 6 clients in 1 month before starting the business by creating content.
• 50 clients around the world
• Using video on LinkedIn 
• Creating a podcast for your agency 
• Document rather than create 
• The difference between a recruitment and a marketing agency 
• How to have a difficult conversation with an employee/partner that is not in the right seat in your agency
• Building a growth algorithm for your business
• Showing people your agency culture and not telling them 
• How working with Clodagh changed their business
• Working it out = making it happen
• Doubling agency value in 6 months
• Advice for Agency Owners 
• And so much more...

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In this episode we chat with Nathan Anibaba from Agency Dealmasters in Birmingham. Nathan loves helping B2B agencies grow, professionalise and sell.

We chat about:

• Early Days of Joining HubSpot 
• Measuring ROI using HubSpot
• How to win new business.
• Starting Agency Dealmasters
• Launching a sales course 
• What agencies are doing well and what they are not doing well.
• “How to proactively target your dream clients and get more business” 
• Building a relationship with your clients before you sell to them 
• Sales process and consistency 
• Having a good sales process and following it 
• Core values in a business
• The mistake of not paying for quality 
• Reading is a superpower
• Tips and advice for people starting a new agency.
• And so much More...

References

• Agency Dealmasters: https://www.agencydealmasters.com/
• Jill Konrath: https://www.jillkonrath.com/sales-books

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