Agency Life

Agency clients often want more strategic consulting from the agencies they hire.  At the same time, many agencies feel like the services they’re delivering are often undervalued by the clients they serve.

If both of these are true, then why are so many agencies caught in what Pete Caputa calls the “Tactician’s Trap” where it feels like you’re on an endless hamster wheel selling implementation services without being valued for the strategic insights you can provide to your clients.

Today’s guest, Max Traylor, known as The Consultant’s Consultant, unpacks a (maybe slightly controversial) chapter from his book The Agency Survival Guide, entitled Burn Your Implementation Business to the Ground.

Now, whether or not you’re whether to do that quite yet, in today’s conversation you’ll hear Max explain:

• His own journey from selling marketing services to productized consulting
• The 1 simple tweak that lead to a 10x price increase for one consulting package
• The 3 steps to start selling strategy that you’re already capable of delivering

Resources Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

An Agency’s Guide to Measuring And Improving Billable Utilization (Ebook)

Connect with Max on LinkedIn

Agency Survival Guide: How to Productize Consulting Services by Max Traylor

Max Traylor’s Consultant's Survival Guide

How to Prepare Your Agency for an Acquisition w/ Karl Heasman

The Business of Expertise by David C. Baker

The Go-Giver by Bob burg and John David Mann

Nearbound and the Rise of the Who Economy by Jared Fuller

The Client (a film by Umault)

Pete Caputa’s LinkedIn Post about the "Tactician Trap"

Want to watch the video version of the podcast on YouTube?

Check it out here: Agency Life Podcast on YouTube 

Have a question about today's topic? Text it to us here!

Want to get more content to support your agency life?

Subscribe to the Agency Life newsletter, check out past episodes & find more content at teamwork.com/agencylife.

This podcast is brought to you by Teamwork.com. 

He went from working 70-80 hour weeks to building a 7-figure agency with 50% profit margins while only working about 1 hour per week.

Today he’s the founder of GrowthDaily.com & AgencyReviews.io & he’s known by his 45,000 followers on X as @MarketingMax, but several years ago he was an agency co-owner struggling to make the sort of money he wanted to make (and enjoy the work in the process).

That’s when a timely LinkedIn post came across his feed & recommended a book that change the course of his agency–and his life–forever.

In today’s conversation with @MarketingMax, you’ll learn:

• The book that changed the game for his agency
• The 2 core principles that he learned (& how to implement them in your agency)
• How he used time-tracking and project profitability data to double his agency’s growth nearly over night

Resources Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

An Agency’s Guide to Measuring And Improving Billable Utilization (Ebook)

Follow @MarketingMax on X

Subscribe to the Growth Daily Newsletter

Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You by John Warrillow

The Client (a film by Umault)

Hiring Secrets from an 8-Figure Agency CEO w/ Eric Siu

Want to watch the video version of the podcast on YouTube?

Check it out here: Agency Life Podcast on YouTube 

Have a question about today's topic? Text it to us here!

Want to get more content to support your agency life?

Subscribe to the Agency Life newsletter, check out past episodes & find more content at teamwork.com/agencylife.

This podcast is brought to you by Teamwork.com. 

How can you leverage thought leadership to gain new followers, win new clients, keep them longer and increase referrals for your agency?

Susan Baier, Founder of Audience Audit, where they help agencies create thought leadership content based on quantitative research that builds trust with potential clients, has seen thought leadership done well (with great results) and has seen it done poorly (with wasted time and money).

Based on her team’s on research into the topic, in today’s conversation you’ll hear from Susan:

• The 3 specific elements you have to have to execute great thought leadership
• What potential clients want (and don’t want) to see from your content efforts
• How to discover your agency’s point-of-view (the foundation to your thought leadership efforts) through a process Susan calls “The Rant”

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

An Agency’s Guide to Measuring And Improving Billable Utilization (Ebook)

Connect with Susan on LinkedIn

Achieving Managed Growth for Your Agency w/ Joe Sullivan

3 Steps to Owning Your Niche in 90 Days w/ Nick Bennett

A Simple Formula for Setting Your Growth Goals w/ Drew McLellan (Webinar)

The Client (a film by Umault)


Want to watch the video version of the podcast on YouTube?

Check it out here: Agency Life Podcast on YouTube 

Have a question about today's topic? Text it to us here!

Want to get more content to support your agency life?

Subscribe to the Agency Life newsletter, check out past episodes & find more content at teamwork.com/agencylife.

This podcast is brought to you by Teamwork.com. 

Over 1/3 of agencies frequently struggle with overservicing clients.  You’ve likely felt the pain yourself.

When projects are going well out of scope and things are taking longer than your team planned, it can have a major impact on your agency’s profitability.

Alyson Caffrey, Founder & COO of Operations Agency, has identified the 5 biggest scoping mistakes across dozens of agencies that are often leading to this overservicing problem–and ultimately underperforming profit margins.  

In today’s conversation, you’ll learn:

• What those 5 common mistakes are
• How to spot & avoid them (to improve your agency’s performance & profit)
• A talk track for managing revision requests that’ll make your team & your clients much happier (because what is agency life without those additional client demands?)

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

Connect with Alyson on LinkedIn 

Connect with Operations Agency on Instagram

An Agency’s Guide to Measuring And Improving Billable Utilization (Ebook)

How to Avoid Unprofitable Client Work (Webinar) 

3 Steps to Simplify Your Capacity Planning (Webinar)

How To Drive Client Results 70% Faster w/ Kate Vasylenko

The Client (a film by Umault)

Want to watch the video version of the podcast on YouTube?

Check it out here: Agency Life Podcast on YouTube

Have a question about today's topic? Text it to us here!

Want to get more content to support your agency life?

Subscribe to the Agency Life newsletter, check out past episodes & find more content at teamwork.com/agencylife.

This podcast is brought to you by Teamwork.com. 

Clients who are “happy” may still leave you.  But clients who are seeing results–and seeing them fast?

Now, that increases the value you deliver and decreases the chances that new clients will churn.

So, how did this digital marketing agency drive client results 70% faster, increase customer satisfaction scores and start getting glowing feedback from more clients?

It was all about strategy.

More specifically, they did away with the old divide between their strategy and client services teams and introduced a new client-facing role solely responsible for consistently updating the client’s strategy and delivering client results.

By creating this new role that now works alongside their project managers, they’ve been able to decrease the feedback loop between performance data and the strategy the agency is executing for their clients.

In today’s conversation with Kate Vasylenko, CEO of 42DM, you’ll hear:

• Why they hired marketers with more in-house experience for this new role
• The questions they asked to find the right talent 
• How they made this structural change to their client delivery team (so you can learn how to do the same)

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

An Agency’s Guide to Measuring And Improving Billable Utilization (Ebook)

Connect with Kate on LinkedIn

The State of Agency Operations Report

Hiring Secrets from an 8-Figure Agency CEO


Want to watch the video version of the podcast on YouTube?

Check it out here: Agency Life Podcast on YouTube

Have a question about today's topic? Text it to us here!

Want to get more content to support your agency life?

Subscribe to the Agency Life newsletter, check out past episodes & find more content at teamwork.com/agencylife.

This podcast is brought to you by Teamwork.com. 

Isn’t it refreshing when someone further down the path is willing to share the successes AND failures they’ve seen along the way?

That’s exactly the type of conversation you’ll get from today’s episode with Eric Siu, CEO of Single Grain, Founder of Leveling Up and Co-Host of the top-ranked Marketing School Podcast.

Eric’s journey has taken him from having “no idea how to run a business” at 27 to now having scaled his agency into 8-figures, all while building a media brand, authoring a book and becoming a recognizable name in SEO and modern marketing more broadly.

Despite his successes, Eric does hold back from sharing his missteps along the way and (most importantly) the lessons you can take from them.

For instance, you’ll hear:

• What roles should be contractors vs FTEs in your agency
• The CEO’s actual role in hiring during times of growth
• Counterintuitive ways to identify and recruit new talent

In addition to sharing his hard learned hiring secrets, Eric shares:

• The 2 best operating systems you can steal from to make your agency run more efficiently
• When and where pay-for-performance pricing makes sense for most agencies

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

An Agency’s Guide to Measuring And Improving Billable Utilization (Ebook)

Connect with Eric on LinkedIn

The Agency Owner’s Association with Eric Siu & Neil Patel 

Working Backwards by Colin Bryar & Bill Carr

Free Tool to Run Your L10 Meetings in EOS: Instant Agency Tools.com

The State of Agency Operations Report

Never Split the Difference

Have a question about today's topic? Text it to us here!

Want to get more content to support your agency life?

Subscribe to the Agency Life newsletter, check out past episodes & find more content at teamwork.com/agencylife.

This podcast is brought to you by Teamwork.com. 

Today he runs an agency doing $25MM in ARR with around 150 employees.  But–as the story usually goes–this success didn’t come overnight & started with much more humble beginnings. 

From not getting paid by one of his first clients to gaining traction with small monthly retainers on Fiverr to now running a successful performance marketing agency for SaaS companies, Garrett Mehrguth, CEO of Directive, has learned a forecasting model that’s allowed him to scale his agency well beyond those humble beginnings.

In today’s conversation, he shares:

• The 2 part financial forecasting model you need to grow your agency
• The common mistake agency owners make regarding executive pay
• How to set goals that are meaningful, yet attainable, for your team

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

An Agency’s Guide to Measuring And Improving Billable Utilization (Ebook)

Connect with Garrett on LinkedIn

Sign Up for Garrett’s Agency Academy Course

The 3 Benefits of Productizing Your Services w/ Sam Shepler

3 Steps to Owning Your Niche in 90 Days w/ Nick Bennett

5 Steps to Win More Clients with Benchmark Data w/ Chris Nault


Want to watch the video version of the podcast on YouTube?

Check it out here: Agency Life Podcast on YouTube

Have a question about today's topic? Text it to us here!

Want to get more content to support your agency life?

Subscribe to the Agency Life newsletter, check out past episodes & find more content at teamwork.com/agencylife.

This podcast is brought to you by Teamwork.com. 

It can be terrifying to allow your clients to “see how the sausage is made,” and this is one of the main concerns related to handling client communications within your project management or professional service automation software.

While there are benefits to streamlining your client communications and inviting them into the system that runs your agency–benefits like visibility, client perception & efficiency–each of those benefits comes with some pretty intimidating risks.

What if internal communication accidentally goes to a client?

What if we give clients “too much visibility?

In today’s conversation with Susan Fennema, CEO at Beyond the Chaos (an operations consulting firm that helps service-based businesses bring order to the chaos), she answers those questions and also shares:

• The 3 primary risks to client communications within the software where you manage client work
• How to mitigate those risks through a few key communication strategies
• Tactical tips for making your team more efficient without making it harder on your clients (hint: it has to do with a few specific integrations you can leverage)

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

Connect with Susan on LinkedIn

An Agency’s Guide to Measuring And Improving Billable Utilization (Ebook)

3 Steps to Avoid Furious Clients w/ Jackie Hermes

How This Agency Reduced Churn by 50% (with AI's Help) w/ Erik Huberman

How to Talk to Your Clients about Money (Blog)



Want to watch the video version of the podcast on YouTube?

Check it out here: Agency Life Podcast on YouTube

Have a question about today's topic? Text it to us here!

Want to get more content to support your agency life?

Subscribe to the Agency Life newsletter, check out past episodes & find more content at teamwork.com/agencylife.

This podcast is brought to you by Teamwork.com. 

Wanna know how a 200-person agency reduced churn by 50% from one year to the next?

Even though Hawke Media is one of the most successful marketing agencies in the United States and they’ve scaled to hundreds of millions in annual revenue, their journey hasn’t been without bumps in the road.

At the beginning of 2022,  they saw client churn on the rise and their CEO, Erik Huberman, knew he had to adjust their strategy to address a new challenge.

In today’s conversation, you’ll hear from Erik:

• How they created intense focus throughout the agency to reduce client churn
• The role of incentive structures & systematic churn analysis in their impressive churn reduction
• How they retrained their sales team to head off churn early in the client lifecycle
• What they realized was the Number 1 KPI impacting client churn (based on systematic AI analysis)

Have a question about today's topic? Text it to us here!

Want to get more content to support your agency life?

Subscribe to the Agency Life newsletter, check out past episodes & find more content at teamwork.com/agencylife.

This podcast is brought to you by Teamwork.com. 

What’s one mistake you’ve made as an agency leader you’ll never forget?

Several guests on this show have shared the same exact answer:  “I wish I’d invested in my own financial literacy sooner!”

But, what financial metrics should you focus on the most? 

Even if you answer that question—how do you (and your team) impact those financial metrics that matter most for your agency?

To answer these questions, in today’s episode, you’ll hear from Ryan Watson from Upsourced Accounting, where he & the team help agencies just like yours avoid financial pitfalls & achieve financial health.  Ryan’s a former agency COO & CFO himself, so he comes with financial know-how but also real agency life experience.

In today’s episode you’ll learn:

• The 5 Financial Metrics successful agencies get right (from Upsourced’s own analysis of agency client data)
  
  
• An introduction to the Hierarchy of Financial Needs (that will help you determine the right financial metric to prioritize right now)
  
  
• The building blocks to a successful Project Profitability Analysis (which Ryan says is the most important thing you can do to getting a handle on your agency’s gross margin)

Want to watch this episode on YouTube to see the visuals?

Check it out here: Agency Life Podcast on YouTube

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Connect with Ryan on LinkedIn
  
  
• Subscribe to the Upsourced Accounting YouTube Channel
  
  
• The State of Agency Operations Report
  
  
• Teamwork.com Profitability Reporting
  
  
• The 4 P’s of Time-Tracking Your Team Won’t Hate

Have a question about today's topic? Text it to us here!

Want to get more content to support your agency life?

Subscribe to the Agency Life newsletter, check out past episodes & find more content at teamwork.com/agencylife.

This podcast is brought to you by Teamwork.com.