Agency Life

Many agency owners don't begin with the end in mind.  Did you?

If you answer questions like "How much do we need to make?" with "I don't know...more!" or "When will I be able to retire?" with  "Not now!"...

...you're not alone.

Seasoned agency owner, Karl Heasman, Founder of Greycott Consultancy has had his own successful exits and now helps other agency owners prepare for acquisition--by beginning with the end in mind.

In this episode, he shares:

• Where to start looking for potential buyers for your agency (with a few surprising additions to the typical list)
  
  
• How to determine a potential timeline for an exit
  
  
• The important financial metrics you should be tracking now

Karl also shares practical advice for managing conversations internally when you've decided to pursue a relationship with a "growth partner."

Resources mentioned in today's conversation:

• Get your copy of The State of Agency Operations Report (2023)
  
  
• Connect with Karl on LinkedIn
  
  
• 3 Keys to Building and Agency Thats Lasts w/ Matt Heinz
  
  
• The Merger that Accelerated their Agency’s Growth w/ Bob Ruffolo
  
  
• Traction by Gino Wickman

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. 

Many agencies--just like yours--are echoing this common refrain:

Either it’s feast or famine right now. 

In today's episode, Joe Sullivan shares how his agency, Gorilla 76, is experiencing a "feast" season where demand is exceeding supply. 
 
They’re having to tell clients they can’t start working with them for several months–even if they’re ready to sign and start today.

It’s a good problem to have, but one that they’ve still got to solve.  An aim for what Joe refers to as “managed growth.”

For context, Joe and his co-founder, Jon, lead their team of 29 full time employees in a marketing agency focused on the industrial and manufacturing sector.

In this conversation Joe shares:

• What they’ve been doing that’s likely lead to this increased demand for their services
  
  
• The tools they use as a leadership team to spot issues (like growing too fast or too slow) ahead of time and proactively address them before they fester
  
  (Hint: Joe’s team are big believers in some EOS tools we also use here at Teamwork.com) 
  
  
• Specific recommendations on how to avoid burning out your team during times of high growth, and how to manage demanding clients

Resources mentioned in today's conversation:

• Get your copy of The State of Agency Operations Report (2023)
  
  
• Connect with Joe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gorilla76joe/
  
  
• 3 Keys to Capacity Management w/ Amber Kemmis
  
  
• Officevibe (employee survey tool Joe's team uses)
  
  
• The Level 10 Meeting Format
  
  
• InstantAgencyTools.com
  
  
• Secret Tradecraft of Elite Advisors by David C. Baker
  
  

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. 

Should you productize your services?

Does a productized service business completely differ from the standard agency model?

Can both models co-exist within the same business?

These are all questions we answer in today's conversation with Sam Shepler, CEO of Testimonial Hero.  

He transitioned from leading a full-service video production agency to founding a productized service business in 2018.  In this episode, Sam shares the 3 specific benefits of productizing your services--and the potential pitfalls to look out for.

Sam's team has some good successes to learn from, hitting Number 342 on the Inc. 500 list in 2022 and having successfully scaled beyond $3MM in annual revenue.

As he shares the lessons from their journey, we touch on:

• The "trinity" of benefits in productizing your services
  
  
• How to avoid competition from AI and low-cost service providers (even with a highly repeatable service offering)
  
  
• Specific financial do's and don'ts to keep in mind if you're heading down this path.

Resources mentioned in today's conversation:

• Get your copy of The State of Agency Operations Report (2023)
  
  
• Connect with Sam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samshepler/
  
  
• Follow Sam on X: https://twitter.com/SamShepler 
  
  
• Sam's tweet thread we discussed: 7 things I’ve learned running a $3MM Productized Agency
  
  
• The webinar about agency profitability metrics (gross margin, net margin, etc): Growing Your Agency Too Fast or Too Slow w/ Drew McLellan
  
  
  

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 500 agencies surveyed.  

Agencies from around the world with different specialities: marketing, creative, web development & PR agnecies included.

Agencies of all sizes, from those with less than 10 to those with more than 500 employees.

The team here at Teamwork.com recently partnered with Audience Audit, a research agency who focuses on this sort of analysis for agencies themselves, to take on an extensive analysis of the state of agency operations.

In The State of Agency Operations Report, you'll find insights into how you as an agency leader (and your company) benchmark against your peers in key areas:

• client churn
• time-tracking effectiveness
• billable utilization rates
• over-servicing clients, and
• your approach to new AI tools

This week, we brought 3 panelists onto the Agency Life monthly livestream to discuss some of the key findings in a roundtable discussion & this week you'll get a chance to listen in if you didn't get a chance to join the discussion live.

Connect with each of the panelists here:

Susan Baier, Founder of Audience Audit

Gray MacKenzie, Co-Founder of ZenPilot

Nicole Pereira, Founder of  CULTURISH


Download your copy of the report here:

The State of Agency Operations Report

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. 

If your agency’s become a trusted advisor to your clients, then you’re probably getting asked for recommendations and advice all the time.

I can border on a feeling of frustration if you’ve faced this enough:

Can you help with this?

Do you know anyone you’d recommend for that?

If your clients are asking about other areas where you *can’t* help, you hate to not be able to help.

But…

What if you could add more value to your clients AND tap into partnerships that could generate net-new clients for your agency?

Sam Dunning, Co-Owner of Web Choice, an SEO, Web Design and Web Development Agency serving B2B brands, has done exactly that–quite successfully as you’ll hear from a few examples he shares in today’s episode.

Sam and his team at Web Choice have intentionally built partnerships with two types of organizations that have created two new sources of pipeline for their agency:

Software companies offering solutions related to their area of expertise and other agencies offering the services they don’t.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• How to identify the right potential partners based on your niche and ICP
  
  
• The two ways to engage with these partners to drive new pipeline for your agency
  
  
• Three specific tactics you can use once you’ve established a new partnership

And, since SEO is their agency’s specialty, he also shares three specific blog collaboration plays you can run with a partner company.

Connect with Sam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samdunning/

Find his podcast here: Business Growth Show

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. 

Where would you spend an extra $10,000 a month if you suddenly had that extra cash to invest in your agency? 

No strings attached--available today--where would you use that sudden infusion of capital? 

That's the 1st of our Fast Five questions you've likely heard us ask before on every episode of this show. 

Last week we had the chance to ask this same question to more than 20 agency owners and their team members while several members of the Teamwork.com team descended on Boston for INBOUND 23.

In this #INBOUND23 recap episode, you'll learn:

• The 5 response types we got from agency leaders to this question
  
  
• The #1 response that got nearly 40% of the votes
  
  
• And, 3 things you can do if you feel the same as the majority of agency leaders that we polled in Boston
  
  

You'll also get a unique chance to hear from more than 20 agency leaders as you hear clips from them sharing candid responses on the convention center floor at INBOUND.  

The full list of interviewees is listed below.

Also, mentioned in this episode:

• Last week's episode (in case you missed it) 3 Steps to Owning Your Niche in 90 Days w/ Nick Bennett
  
  
• The Agency Niche Design Playbook

Thank you to all the agency owners & team members who contributed to this conversation (in no particular order):

• Nathan Reiche
• Kevin England
• Mike Eastwood
• Pasha Irshad
• Suma EP
• Abhinav Sahai
• Shana Steigerwalt
• Jailyn Glass
• Stefan Lynton
• Michael Samson
• Chris Carolan 
• Selim Maalouf
• Rob Jones
• Nate Turner
• Justine Gaignard-Parent
• Adam Stahl
• Tim Davidson
• Amara Omoregie
• Ãndrea Peck
• Cameron Collins

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. 

Do you feel the pressure of having to rely almost solely on word of mouth and referrals to continue growing your agency?

If so, you're not alone.

Even if you have all the systems and capabilities to grow your agency, you may not be effectively marketing your firm...and it's often for a common reason:

You've become an "interchangeable agency."

If you're like most marketing agencies, it's difficult for you to tell clients the problem you really solve.

You struggle to get clients to see (and believe) that you're different.

If that's you, you've been unknowingly positioning yourself as an interchangeable agency.

The answer is to stop marketing your solutions and trying to convince buyers that you're better.  Instead, start marketing the problem (and become the default solution).

In today's episode with Nick Bennett, Founder of Harness & Hone, he shares the 3 steps you can take to clearly define (and dominate) your niche.

You'll hear from Nick:

• How to go beyond the typical niching by vertical market
  
  
• How to clearly define the problem you solve
  
  
• How to develop your POV around that problem
  
  
• How to deploy that POV out into the market and into the right discovery channels for your unique audience.

Get access to the free, ungated resource Nick mentioned in this episode:

• The Agency Niche Design Playbook

Connect with Nick on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nichbennett/

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. 

Just because you're a good baker, doesn't mean you can run a successful bakery.

It's the same for agency life.

You may be great at content marketing, branding, website development or building custom software, but none of that means you'll be great at all the things required to run an agency that delivers those services.

It also doesn't mean you'll enjoy all the necessary elements of running an agency either.

Maybe you've felt this typical pain that's described in The E Myth by Michael Gerber,  must-read for every entrepreneur and agency owner.

Matt Heinz, Founder & President of Heinz Marketing, has felt these realities in the nearly 15 years, he spent building and maintaining his agency, which employs about 20 people today.

In this episode, Matt shares the role EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System, has played in helping him scale beyond himself as an individual consultant about 15 years back.
 
You'll hear from Matt, the 3 things that have been critical to the journey of longevity for his agency:

1. How to define a purpose for the business (that's beyond how much money you want to make)
   
   
2. How to recognize your working genius and hire for the parts that you can't master (or don't want to)
   
   
3. How to document your plan of action and put it into a system that's actually visible to the whole team.

Connect with Matt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattheinz/

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. 

Do you have less in your agency's pipeline  now than you did at this point last year?

If so, you're probably not alone.

But, what's even better? 

There's something you can do about it--something that doesn't require anything spammy or even overly salesy.

You can leverage what Dev Basu calls The Dead Lead Reviver. 

It's a 5-step process that he & his team have leveraged to...

• Revive old deals
• Add more to their existing pipeline, and
• Close new clients that had previously told them "No."

Dev's agency Powered by Search is an SEO focused digital agency for B2B SaaS companies, and he completely understands the desire not to be pushy with prospects in your agency's pipeline. At the same time he shares a very effective (yet surprisingly simple) framework in this episode, that can revive old deals in 5 easy steps.

Connect with Dev on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/devbasu/?originalSubdomain=ca

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 get your team to track their time, let alone do it accurately?

That's a question that we've heard so many times from agency leaders, and it's one that many struggle to answer effectively.

Deb Andrews, Owner of Marketri, a successful marketing agency with nearly 20 years in business, says it all comes down to 4 P's that help you explain the WHY of time-tracking to your team.

In in this conversation, we'll answer questions like: 

• What are the 4 P's of Time-Tracking?
  
  
• How do they connect to one another?
  
  
• How can you create a culture where time-tracking is a valuable operational tool?

Connect w/ Deb on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marketridebbieandrews/ 

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.