By Lee Goff
The podcast currently has 30 episodes available.
In this episode, I am talking with Andrew McBurney. He is a dynamic character that launched a SAS platform designed and created for Agencies. I'm excited to share his model with you today because I know a lot of you out there looking to get into the SAS model.
Takeaways From This Episode:
One of the main focuses talked about is local and organic SEO for service-based businesses but a giant problem in that space is reviews, right? It's hard to get them. Even companies that know they should be getting reviews are not actually getting them. Why? Because they do not have the right solution - which is - the right software being used.
Hearing his story will help you to understand why I love the framework of getreviewrobin.com. I have seen more and more of the platforms take this approach, and it is paying off. Because at the end of the day agencies are the ones out there serving small business owners. This platform is created and designed for Agency owners.
"What Made You Think About Going Down The Riskier Path And Targeting The Smaller Audience?
He describes his steps like selling a scalpel to the patient instead of to the doctor. Actually giving the patient the skills to do what needs to be done. He talks about where he originally heard this saying and how it just resonated because it is exactly how this feels.
Starting With Niching Down And Why It Is So Important.
Not only Niching Down but picking the right niche. Andrew made a few wrong assumptions about niche marketing and he can help you keep from making the same mistakes. Once he mastered it, he realized the more he niched down, the more he doubled down on his niche, the better for the clients and that everything across the board was better - marketing-sales got easier.
lt For Agencies And Makes It So Much Easier For You.
So many times review platforms have no benefit to the agency. They will have a package program that you can't use or they want to upsell you. Review Robin gives the purchasing power back to the agency. It gives you the flexibility that you deserve. Because at the end of the day, the agency is doing all the heavy lifting. It's not that hard to create technology, it's really hard to get out there, build a reputation, sell it and service small businesses, right. So in Andrew’s opinion, you guys are doing 80% of the work. Why should a review platform punish you and make you pay more?
Biggest Hurdles To Overcome In Building Out A SAS
1. Do not be feature Happy is the number one thing...keep it simple, stupid, please, please, please.
2. Know what features to build and don't fall in love with your own ideas.
3. Know how your platform is doing. One thing they lacked in the early stages was not knowing the errors happening behind the scenes.
4. Customer Service - actively going out of your way to make sure your clients are winning.
Having these systems in place makes you sleep better at night because, at the end of the day, you want to be able to know what's going on behind the scenes. With this system, Andrew was able to leverage different technologies and methods from different disciplines and make a system that works for you personally.
Shameless Plug Check out their websites getreviewrobin.com or you can email Andrew, directly at [email protected] and see how specific they are in what they do.
Nick Deck - An Agency Owner And Offshore Delegation Enthusiast Who Runs Agency Sidekicks. Today He Spends The Better Part Of His Week Enjoying Time With His Family At The Beach In Their Hometown Of Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. Hear His Story And How He Can Overcame The Fear Of Delegating And How Delegating Specifically Relates To Agency Owners' Lives. Total Lifestyle Change For Agency Owners.
In today's episode, we talk about delegating and how freeing it can actually be for Agency Owners. Nick talks about learning the hard way that delegating is sometimes not a very easy thing to do, especially when you're working with offshore help. He spent way too much time in that hiring and firing process. Losing hours of time and money - But, figured it out and now has the answer and that answer is - Agency Sidekicks
Takeaways From This Episode:
Agency Sidekicks takes some damn good human beings, puts them through a training program, gives them on-the-job experience, then prepares them with the fundamentals of a wide variety of different digital marketing skills so they can be your amazing “agency sidekick”. Meaning, they are ready to be there for all the agency duties you do not have the time to do. For Example, if you need someone who needs to learn Facebook ads, HubSpot, or whatever it is, they take them and focus on training and prioritize that training for them. They do the training for you and make sure your sidekick is prepared for whatever position you are needing to be filled at a fraction of the time and cost. And if they get stuck on any of the stuff they're working on with you, the team at Agency Sidekicks is there to take care of the situation. They have a team of experts that are there just to support these guys. Basically, Agency Sidekicks ends up saving a lot of that babysitting, hand-woven kind of stuff that comes up when you're delegating stuff offshore.
Nick has some tips on how to overcome the fear of delegating. Most people have the fear of the job not being done the way they want it done if it is delegated. And, you know what, you're right. In a lot of cases, you're probably going to be able to do the task better than the person you're delegating to. But if you can get it 90% of the way and it accomplishes the same goal, in the end, It still works.
Nick explains how it is broken down by your ROI. What is a certain role costing you and what is the return on the investment. For example, the high-value wages, high-value roles that you have. If you're paying somebody 25 - 50 bucks an hour, make sure they're doing stuff that's worth 25 to 50 bucks an hour, if not, do not have them do that type of stuff. Hire Agency Sidekicks to take care of it $10 an hour.
Shameless Plug - Week To Week To See If They Are A Fit For You. Win-Win
Agency Sidekicks has a $10 an hour, 15 hours a week minimum and it is week to week. If you don't love it, after the first week, you can cancel right away. They always ask people to give it to the good old college. At least three or four weeks - you will not regret it.
Agency Sidekick has you covered. See if it resonates with you, see if the tasks that they list make sense. After that, It it probably worth a 15 or 20-minute chat just to see if they are a good fit. If it's a good fit, they will work hard to make sure that you've got all those things delegated the right way. Book a call on their website or message Nick directly. [email protected]
Imagine Going From A Sort Of Chaos Into Control. Changing The Day Starting And Running Us To Us Starting The Day And Running It. Having That Confidence, To Say, “I Know How My Day Is Going To Go”. Chris Has The Systems, The Protocols And The Practices Where You Can Show Up And You Can Determine What Your Day Looks Like.
Takeaways From This Episode:
In This Episode I Am Talking With Chris McLean - A Peak Performance And Transformation Coach (He Will Explain In More Detail). He Helps Agency Owners Transmute Chaos Into Control And Frenzy Into Flow. Through Intentional Mindset Flow - Hacking Into A Scientifically Backed Agency Performance System. Gotta Hear This.
I Believe We Should All Use Our Strengths To Pour Into Agency Owners. Chris Has A Story That I Think Resonates With The Majority Of Agency Owners. Hear Chris Experience And His Solutions To Burn Out And Much More. We Are Talking About Topics That Need To Be Addressed.
Chris is a peak performance and transformation coach. He helps agency owners transmute chaos into control and frenzy into flow through intentional mindset flow hacking into a scientifically-backed agency performance system.
Chris explains that transmutation comes from the foundations of psychology and science, and the outcome is the ability to turn something into something else. That's really the idea of transformation. Ideally what we want is transformation like a butterfly. Once the caterpillar becomes a butterfly, it transforms, it's not going back to a caterpillar. True transformation is sort of permanent. That is where we want to get people. We want to take them to whatever goal they are needing and it be irreversible that that's the new baseline, and then we transform again. That is the idea of transmutation.
It becomes a habit and not just a hobby.
We want those redundancies, those systems, those kinds of nitty-gritty, daily stuff, that feel really unsexy to become SEXIER. Chris teaches you how to get into your peak performance of hacking, dropping into flow states, getting into higher states of consciousness, getting your most important work done in those types of states and that's pretty sexy. Going from a sort of chaos into control. Changing from the day starting and then running us to us starting the day and running it. Having that confidence, to say , “I know how my day is going to go”. Chris has the systems, the protocols and the practices in the habits where you can show up and you can determine what your day looks like.
Peak performance is operating in a state where you perform your best, you're doing your best work and you're also really enjoying what you are doing. It's quite a complex beast to actually be an agency owner, whilst maintaining creativity, right. And that can feel really chaotic. Chris wants to get people out of that and have them actually find the fun again, find the enjoyment, actually enjoy what you're doing. Even if that is filling out data in a spreadsheet, doing your finances, doing your accounts if you can do that work in a peak performance that is what we call a flow state.
Connect With Lee:
https://www.marketingagencycoach.com - Website
https://www.facebook.com/groups/digitalmarketingagencygroup - Facebook Group
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfTWUizmjG2mTtyAQ2zZx7A - Youtube
Cloudways - Managed Cloud Hosting Platform Simplified. A Managed Cloud Hosting Platform Where Teams Can Build, Deploy, Scale & Manage Phenomenal Web Applications
In Today’s Episode, I Am Talking With Brent Weaver, A Brand Evangelist For Cloudways, A Cloud Based Hosting Program That Helps You Manage More Efficiently And Can Cut Your Hosting Costs Up To 70%.
Brent Weaver Is On A Mission To Help 10,000 Digital Agency Owners Achieve Freedom In Business And Life By Helping Them Own Their Market. We Are Talking About Simplifying Hosting Experiences Because We Believe In Empowering Individuals, Teams And Businesses.
Takeaways From This Episode:
Cloudways has set high standards of performance, committed to complete freedom of choice coupled with simplicity and agility in every process. Backed by an innovative approach, their platform is built on best-of-breed technologies and industry-leading infrastructure providers that create smooth managed cloud hosting experiences. And, they do this by investing in the right talent and by organizing the perfect teams, diversifying revenue streams by adding (and building on) solid recurring revenue. Why agencies need to abstract the technical layer if they're going to offer hosting.
Brent talks about being in a situation where they had the keys to the client's infrastructure, emails, websites, e-commerce, processing millions of dollars in orders a year. And he had the thought if one of them gets hit by a bus like the client is kind of screwed, and so they decided, they needed to move their infrastructure. So, if they end up getting hit by a bus, there's still an infrastructure component. Boom - Cloudways. Cloudways does beautifully, it gives you access to that cloud hosting layer, but also provides that management layer on top of it so that you don't have to have any sysadmin people. Brent explains that in a little more detail.
It's really hard to replace a person who's in two very distinct seats - Like a lead developer, and sysadmin all in one. And replacing that person who's like an amazing developer. It's kind of a unicorn person. It can be expensive and also hard to find. So, Brent always tells people, anytime you have that team member that basically has become a unicorn in your business, It’s best to try to separate that.
Cloudways has what they call their agency partner program. They took some of the advice from the Mavericks and they went in and did customer development, user experience research with agency owners and said, “Hey, what do you guys actually need from a managed hosting provider?” They came back with three main things:
Brent would love for more agencies to explore Cloudways as a managed hosting provider. Whether you're on WordPress or using another system that is hosted, looking at them to provide that infrastructure would be probably a smart move. Their team has been an absolute joy to work with and I can highly recommend them.
www.marketingagencycoach.com
What Are Some Of The Drivers For Project And Agency Profitability? Why Do Projects Go Over Budget? What Can We Do About It? Ben Aston Can Show You How To Save Money.
In Today’s Episode, I Am Talking With Ben Aston With The Digital Project Manager (DPM). He's Actually The Founder Of The Largest And Fastest Growing Communities For Digital Project Managers On The Planet. He Is A Prince To Practitioner, A Certified Scrum Master, And With More Than 15 Years Of Delivering Visual Project Management And Leadership. His Wealth Of Knowledge When It Comes To Project Management Is Second To None. We Get Into Some Pretty Good Wonderful In-Depth Questions.
Takeaways From This Episode:
First, we explain the difference between the project manager and the account manager. I think project management is all about delivery, it's about delivering value, fundamentally, and taking ownership of delivering value. So for the right amount of money, within the right amount of time, the right work has to be delivered. And as project managers, I see this as a strategic role in which the project manager is the guardian of delivering value, whereas the account manager is more about understanding the brands developing the relationship with the clients.
The profitability really starts with the new business process. It's really important that the new business team is getting the right clients and selling the right projects. Often what's happening is the wrong projects are being sold and the wrong clients are being acquired.
It starts at the project brief level, when we understand things from their perspective, understanding the why behind it, we have a much better chance of being able to deliver on that value. Scope Management is another way to eliminate the profit loss. Being prepared for a bit of pain in the project kickoff meeting. Basically having that painful conversation upfront will save you a whole lot of pain later. Clearly explaining there is an impact on the cost.
Ben talks about one of the services they offer to people in business and that is a membership. The membership is really about connecting people who deliver projects in a digital world and helping them become more confident, helping them become more skilled and have them get connected and really have those conversations around project delivery. So come and check out their membership on the digitalprojectmanager.com/membership. If you know that you're in need, or maybe someone in your team is in need of some project lifecycle training to understand how to get from A to B on the project, check out their DPM School. It is all about taking people through that project management journey of delivering a project. They teach people about initiating projects planning their managing and controlling projects, which he talks about in this Podcast. We talk about how they create that map, how they create the route from A to B and get people to the end of the project as profitably and with as little pain as possible.
And yeah, I really hope together we can help agency owners and leaders become more profitable in the way that they plan, sell and deliver their projects
Website: https://marketingagencycoach.com
Podcast: https://agencycoach.buzzsprout.com/
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/digitalmarketingagencygroup
In Today’s Podcast, I Am Talking With Andrew Pfund, The CEO Of Memberium. Unlike Most Other Membership Platforms, Memberium Is Built To Work Exclusively With Infusionsoft And ActiveCampaign. Which Means There’s A Deep Integration Between Your CRM Which Allows You To Have A Much Higher Level Of Automation In Your Site Compared To Other Platforms. Memberium Is A WordPress Plugin That Allows You To Create Automated Membership Sites Or Courses That Will Be Able To Grow, Thrive And Operate On Their Own. Hear The Top 5 Things This Platform Can Do And How Anyone Can Use This System Because It Is So Easy - It Is Simple, Brilliant, And Effective.
Takeaways From This Episode:
Andrew talks about the one thing that used to drive him crazy -- how long it took to get certain deliverables from clients just to start a project. He admits it was mostly his fault because he did not have an efficient enough process in place to collect the needed information.
Create Templates, Brand Palettes And Videos That Will Tie Everything Together
One way to do that is to provide templates and brand palettes and basic transparency into what you're doing. It is wonderful. In the beginning stages of the onboarding, you can give them training on what they need to know. Most clients are not experts at copywriting, marketing or designing so that's why they're hiring your agency. One of the reasons you can not get the deliverables you are needing is because new clients do not know how to write copy, or they've never done this before. So, you have to train them.
Automated Email Reminders
Another really cool thing with having an automated membership site that's closely connected with Infusionsoft is sending out automated email reminders. Andrew addresses automatically collecting files, and deliverables from your clients, rather than having to chase them down, and get it through multiple emails, you can provide some training on what they need to do first through your membership site.
Automatically Apply That Credit Card To Their Past Failed Invoice
The third benefit Andrew talks about is automatically applying credit card information. If you're an agency and you're offering any type of subscription service, Memberium has an option to make sure you keep getting paid.
Automating Scheduling Meetings With Clients
Automating scheduling meetings with clients. If they've successfully gone through your onboarding, your training, and they've submitted all the files that you've needed, then they can schedule a meeting with you or somebody on your team.
Offering A Follow Along Type Of Service
The fourth way you can use a membership site is by offering a follow along type of service. This is a process that guides a client through how to do something on their end, and they do all the work.
Offering A Custom Client Portal
The fifth way is offering a custom client portal. For your longer-term clients, there are ongoing training calls and more so you can create your own type of client portal that allows them to access recordings, all of their past calls and also access the resources that you have available for them.
You can go to https://memberium.com/ check out their free resources. The free E-book called Nine ways you can add value to your membership site without adding or creating new content is a great way to start.
www.marketingagencycoach.com
In today's Podcast, I am talking withTroy Howard. He launched SoTellUs, the world’s only review platform that lets businesses instantly capture video, audio, and written reviews from their customers using an app in less than 30 seconds. The very best reviews are automatically marketed online for the businesses through their website, social media sites and search engines. This combination of video reviews, powerful review marketing and automated referral system has changed the review industry as we know it.
SoTellUs is a reviews and referral automated management system. I've been using it for a while now and love it. It's a family-owned business and they just do it right. They do it right with verified listings on Google, the only one where you can do video testimonials and have them syndicated over to all the major platforms verified on Google and everything.
Takeaways
Not only can it help your clients get reviews on Google, Facebook, Yelp, and hundreds of other review sites, you can actually capture a video review from your client right there in less than 30 seconds. Then the system markets those reviews for you. You can have 1000 great reviews, but if nobody sees them, they don't really matter. SoTellUs system takes those reviews, and it just turns them into marketing juice. It pushes them out through your website, the search engines, your social media sites. It is a complete marketing system that helps you just take the social proof you have and put it everywhere for your potential clients to see.
I can't tell you how important reviews are in today's society! Think about Google, think about Amazon, they have trained us as a society not to buy anything without checking out the reviews. Seeing what other people are saying about it is a priority for us now. In fact, there was a study done that showed that 88% of people consider a review, as good as getting a personal recommendation from their friend. THINK ABOUT THAT FOR A MINUTE!
The good news is their system allows you to automate the whole process. Troy talks about some of the automation, and how it makes it so much easier for you to get reviews. They did a study on 35 years or younger age groups and found that 89% of people in this group don't care about reviews that are older than three months. It doesn't matter if you have 500 reviews from a year ago and they are all five stars, if they're more than three months old, that the younger generation does not care. They see that you used to be awesome but what about now? So, it is important to have this automation in place that is consistently bringing in those reviews. And what their system does is it gives you a couple of different ways to do that. There is an app on your phone so when you're out there, you're with one of your clients and they start talking about how wonderful you are - you can capture it and it is ready to use immediately. Hear Troy talk about how easy and convenient it is for you and the client to give a review and it is posted on all your social media.
They found that by sending someone an invite, like an email invite to do a review, about 10% of the people one out of 10 will actually do it. but ask them to do it in person like and they found 70% of the people will do it. Not only do you get 70% more reviews, but you also capture the excitement.
Bonus - SoTellUs allows you to sell a platform that's going to give your clients a lot more reviews or give them a lot more referrals, and you get mailbox money.
www.marketingagencycoach.com
Alyson Is A Rock Star When It Comes To Getting Agencies To Run More Efficiently! She Breaks Down Operational Issues To Make Them Clear, Easy, And Actionable.
In Today’s Episode, I Am Talking With Alyson Caffrey. She Is The Founder Of Operations Agency And Creator Of The Operations Simplified Framework. At The Core, Allison Comes In And She Helps Agencies Get What's Called Their Standard Operating Procedures In Place. She Is Best Known For Helping Streamlining Behind The Scenes Of Multiple 7-Figure Businesses. Alyson Has Shared Her Expertise With High-Level Agency Communities Such As Digital Marketer, UGURUS, And One Hour Funnel. She Is An Expert At Breaking Down Operational Issues To Make Them Clear, Easy, And Actionable. Hear How She Can Truly Make Your Business Run Smoother And Make Your Life Easier.
Takeaways From This Episode:
In a nutshell, Alyson helps people be kind to themselves and be kind to their businesses by creating systems that they can leverage and really lean on when times get crazy.
One of the big stressors is oftentimes we feel like something big is coming up and we don't have time to really adjust or pivot and be able to be kind to ourselves. That's where Alyson comes in - she takes your operations and makes them flow better and more efficiently.
First, they come in and take a look at your business model. What SEO’s do you actually need? What services are you providing? Making sure that everything has a place, right, it's kind of like a puzzle that you need to put together first. The second thing that they do is they take a look at your assets. So your team members, the things that you've currently got in place, like your projects, your tools, those types of things and then the final thing they look at is the integration. What can we make automated? Where can we take out the big lengthy process and save you some money or some time? Then once all of that is wrapped up, they document your recipes for you.
Alyson explains that ops and quarterly planning really do go hand in hand, they recommend that all of their clients do quarterly planning, meet monthly to kind of check the pace and then obviously track those things week over week. Just knowing with clarity where to move forward into the next step is a game-changer.
Oftentimes, people will take on too many projects in a quarter without project planning, have no idea the bearing that it actually has on their day to day. You have to break down each project. Alyson talks about one of her favorite exercises which is personally writing out her perfect week. Saying, “Okay, leadership team, if I had my perfect week, what would this look like as it relates to my job description?” This exercise is for strategic planning and holding people accountable to projects. Alyson talks about her processes and how to present the workload to the leadership team not coinciding with the other meetings we have talked about but talking over key descriptions of their job description.
There are four main buckets they like to attract, sales, metrics, delivery and services. Are you asking questions like, What’s next on the horizon? What do we need to systematize and just if you are struggling with where to start, reach out to Alyson at Operations Agency. She is brilliant and can truly get you where you want to be in your agency.
https://marketingagencycoach.com
Today I'm talking to Dan Fitzpatrick, Head of Agency Success at SPP, he helps agencies scale and productizes their business. He and Chris Williams are the founders of SPP and they have a passion for helping agencies tackle those accounting and project management issues. SPP is a software platform that basically takes care of all of your accounting from beginning to end. It is a very advanced system that is actually simple to use. It works with agencies from just getting started all the way up to a multi seven to eight-figure agency. This platform is amazing.
Takeaways From This Episode:
Dan starts off with what he thinks is the most important thing when you're thinking about getting started. And, that is you probably want to concentrate on getting some sales first, to actually getting your business up and running. So often he has businesses who come to him, especially new business owners wanting to sign up but they are just not ready. They haven't really built a solid foundation of a business yet. He and I talk about getting your business going and then when they're ready give SPP a call. Dan is very honest and tells it like it is. He wants to see agencies succeed.
If you want to scale a business, then you need to think about scaling the client base. That's really where I think a new business and where SPP can come in. Once that client base is established, and the sales are actually rolling in, then it becomes more apparent that you need a system in place to help you.
To summarize what I heard there from Dan, if you're just getting started, get a few clients, get some money coming in the door, get some deals first, then at that point, as soon as you get those few clients it is time to start looking at systems to replicate yourself. I think it becomes pretty clear when you need these systems. It gets so complicated so quickly and that’s where something like SPP makes sense. It’s all consolidated, everything's in one place, and you're not having to deal with all of these different systems. It's all about getting that business up and running first before you start thinking about what systems you might need in place.
In so many cases there’s a lot of time wasted on what we call the “non-revenue” generating work. SPP comes in and takes care of those time-wasting activities so you can spend time delivering work for your customers. And, if you are ready and wanting to build a scalable business or agency then you take my productization model and apply it to the SPP platform. Hear how putting all of this together is critical to understanding your profit margins, understanding scope creep, and keeping your clients happy and billables. It really is that simple.
Dan talks about what he finds really interesting and that is the number of agencies they come across that are actually already offering a kind of a productized service. But they don't actually realize it. Having a solution like SPP’s platform helps agencies define what and how to productize their service. Now from making that initial sale to collecting information from the customer, delivering the work, reporting upselling, all of this stuff, once you start putting this into a system, it kind of takes you out of your normal, day-to-day working bubble.
If you're interested in checking out SPP, they offer a 14-day free trial. They do not take in any payment details, they won't ask you for your credit card. So head over to SPP.co to check out the trial and feel free to reach out to them at any time.
Please visit https://spp.co for more information on their a
The podcast currently has 30 episodes available.