Tim Kilroy (CEO of Retriever and eComAllies & Agency Coach, Consultant & Advisor at TimKilroy.com) joins Mikael to talk about how agency owners can build a better business model that actually fits their goals and personality.

Tim has launched 3 agencies. One crashed, while the other two ended up being sold. His current consulting/coaching tagline is “more revenue = more profit = more happy”, which at first glance might seem like a service that increases your agency's profit, thus increasing your happiness level, while in reality something completely different. His approach boils down to optimizing revenue and profits so that agency owners can enjoy life, instead of being constantly miserable due to the amount of work and stress that agency ownership often comes with.

There is no right or wrong way to run an agency. Tim advises that you let go of the processes that you’re simply not consistent at, and stop trying to model your agency based on other people’s ideas. One of his clients had lost up to 400k in 2 years by trying to run his agency based on guidelines provided by outsiders. This is where a lot of agency owners end up with the wrong coaches, as they buy into a business model adjustment that simply doesn’t fit their personality and actively works against their strengths.

Tune into the full episode to learn more on how to run your agency in a way that fits you!

HIGHLIGHTS:
0:00 Intro
1:30 revenue = profit = happy?
6:09 Choosing the right coach
7:40 Journey into coaching
11:14 Building your agency the right way
14:39 Increasing your pricing is a must
16:35 The ultimate growth tactic
19:39 Leadership is a must
22:42 What first time CEO’s get wrong

Connect with Tim - https://www.linkedin.com/in/timkilroy/
Connect with Mikael - www.linkedin.com/in/mikaeldia/

Joshua Tiernan (Founder of No Code Founders, Tiny Empires and Chief Growth Officer Network) is a no-code development expert who’s built and sold 4 companies. He joins Mikael Dia to discuss..

A no-code business is hard to define. Most of these businesses fall under the SaaS category, and are typically built using platforms such as Webflow and Bubble which don’t require the level of technical expertise needed to build software from scratch. It can also be used to describe communities, newsletters and blogs that aren’t attached as part of an individual businesses marketing strategy, but instead exist as independent beings.

Before discovering no-code, Joshua had tried to launch a few businesses, all of which didn’t succeed. With time he learned how to hack together different software tools to craft new solutions, which is a type of no-code development. Bubble was a real gamechanger, allowing him to build his first business that was acquired only 6 months later.

Joshua’s community has been active for 5 years and has gathered over 20,000 members. He hasn’t been intentional about marketing, but that being said he’s been consistent on organic social media channels. His first few thousand members found out about the community through Joshua interviewing other community members. He then started partnering with no-code platforms that helped spread awareness and started building out user generated content, which spread the word even quicker and got them to the 20,000 mark. 

Tune into the full episode to learn what it takes to build a 20,000 member no-code community!

HIGHLIGHTS:
0:00 Intro
1:56 What is no-code business?
4:03 Who should consider no-code?
5:41 Joshua’s first exit
6:59 How Agencies work with Joshua
9:18 Growing the no-code community
12:19 How to keep your community engaged 
13:45 The biggest selling point of communities 

Connect with Joshua - https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuatiernan/

Connect with Mikael - www.linkedin.com/in/mikaeldia/

This episode is a snippet from a podcast with Liana Ling - the Lead Gen Queen and CEO of AdSkills -  an expert of Meta Ads specializing in helping coaches and info product sellers drive down their Cost Per Lead (CPL).

For the full conversation, check out the previous episode of the Funnel Vision Show!

Liana Ling - the Lead Gen Queen and CEO of AdSkills -  is an expert of Meta Ads specializing in helping coaches and info product sellers drive down their Cost Per Lead (CPL).

Her path to AdSkills was one that many marketers unknowingly take. She was seeing great results with her approach, which led to her getting international recognition for sharing her insights in front of larger communities. Her peers saw her outperform standard methods, which increased her thought leadership in front of broader audiences and ultimately landed her the CEO role at AdSkills.

Marketers come from various backgrounds, but a lawyer turned marketer isn’t something you see every day. Liana’s transition from legal to lead gen started during her legal career, as she worked for a boutique firm that required everyone to wear many hats. This led her to the conclusion that she needed to be her own boss, as working for someone else was driving her crazy. Her true entrepreneurial beginning was when she bought a digital marketing franchise,  which ended up being the right move, as with a franchise you inherit their existing systems and structures - things that are highly time consuming to build from scratch.

Finding her niche in Meta Ads was quite the journey. She started out doing a lot of work with many platforms, until figuring out a winning advantage in Meta by truly understanding the inner workings of the platform. This became a hot topic soon, as getting ROI from social media is notoriously difficult when selling B2B - especially outside of the LinkedIn ethos. When entering a new market, Liana suggests that you find the top performers within that vertical and make it your mission to talk to them. Whether that means grabbing a coffee, meeting over Zoom or producing a podcast episode together, the network and knowledge you’ll gain will do wonders in making you the easy choice for your potential buyers.

Tune in to the full episode to hear more on how Liana Ling became the Lead Gen Queen!

HIGHLIGHTS:
0:00 Intro
1:12 From $30 to $5 CPL
4:34 How Liana became CEO
8:21 Lawyer to Lead Gen Queen
15:23 Up your pricing and find your gimmick
19:33 Should your business use Meta?
24:59 What works on Facebook in 2024

Connect with Liana - https://www.linkedin.com/in/lianaling/

Connect with Mikael - www.linkedin.com/in/mikaeldia/

Mate Prgin (Founder & CEO of Enzuzo) is a data privacy expert, joining Mikael to help marketers transition out of the world of readily available, private customer data. Now that regulations no longer allow you to track everything that your ideal client profile does on the web, the industry specialists need to rapidly adjust or risk becoming completely ineffective almost overnight.

With the loss of third-party cookies, you should start prioritizing first-party data strategies, have better privacy measures, and ensure compliance. Europe is getting hit first - with Google Consent Mode driving a loss between 30% - 90% of their funnel visibility. Enzuzo is enabling agencies with a new source of revenue, derived from complying with the new rules.

Investing in compliance is a scary thought. No matter how well you do it, you’ll lose a bit of visibility at first. Mate suggests that you really think about the placement and content of your opt-in banner and optimize to drive people to hit “yes”. If they choose to click “no”, that data is still important to help you adjust further. The behavioural model doesn’t serve smaller websites well, as in order for it to kick in, you need at least 100k visitors per month.

Tune into the full episode to learn how to thrive in this new world of marketing data!

HIGHLIGHTS: 

01:10 There’s a problem with data…
02:12 Mate’s story
03:50 How Google is killing your visibility
08:48 Optimize your banner
10:36 What happens when they click “no”
13:31 The future of marketing data 
16:25 Are data scrapers doomed?

Connect with Mate - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mate-prgin-680498/

Connect with Mikael - www.linkedin.com/in/mikaeldia/

This episode is a snippet from a podcast with Jason Swenk, who built and sold an 8-figure agency and then moved on to coaching agency owners on how to scale to 7-8+ Figures with life balance in mind. 

For the full conversation, check out the previous episode of the Funnel Vision Show!

Jason Swenk built and sold an 8-figure agency and moved on to coaching agency owners on how to scale to 7-8+ Figures with life balance in mind. 10 Years ago he started the Smart Agency Masterclass podcast, which is now ranked at the top 1% of marketing podcasts, helping his business reach and help over 20,000 agency owners. 3 years ago his newest venture started buying agencies and now they’ve grown to over $30 million in revenue.

As an agency grows, so does your ability to close more lucrative deals. When Jason started, he was selling websites for $500 with no real science behind the pricing. Over the years he went upmarket and secured website deals as large as $1,000,000 for a website for LegalZoom - a single contract value that many agencies don’t even dream of.

There’s a good reason why most people don’t actually want to run an agency - the insane amount of stress. In the early days, your job as an agency owner is to do literally everything, which makes running your agency into an insufferable job that you hate 80% of the time. When Jason was going through that phase, he was very very close to quitting. He took a job interview with NASCAR, during which they asked him a simple question - what is it that you truly enjoy doing? This led him to rethink the way he approached his agency's structure and build out a model that works for him, unlocking a business model that could scale to 8 figures.

Scaling past the 7 figure mark requires a huge shift in your organizational structure. Jason  looked at two things - who do I need to hire and who do I need to become. Transitioning from the Founder role to the CEO role is a journey that ultimately unlocks scale, but it also is incredibly difficult to let go from controlling every task and deliverable. It’s even normal to feel a bit depressed when you realize that your team is steering the boat by themselves, and your input is no longer needed on every single decision. Once the adjustment period passes though, your life turns around and you’ll finally feel like an agency owner, not an overworked agency employee.

Tune into the full episode to learn the Jason Swenk journey!

HIGHLIGHTS: 

01:21 Jason’s journey from exit to coaching
02:48 Selling a million dollar webpage
06:31 Stop hating your own agency
09:48 How to scale past 7 figures
16:50 Making that first big hire
21:34 The 8 systems to agency growth

Connect with Jason - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonswenk/

Connect with Mikael - www.linkedin.com/in/mikaeldia/
Check out Jason's resources & coaching - https://www.agencymastery360.com/

This episode is a snippet from a podcast with Alex Glenn (CEO of Partnerhub®). 

For the full conversation, check out the previous episode of the Funnel Vision Show!

Alex Glenn (CEO of Partnerhub®) has worn many hats during his career. Started out as an agency owner, moved into SaaS, pivoted to consulting, and then he started a partnerships community where a member of the group expressed their operational pains that ultimately led to the inception of Partnerhub®. Now they’ve scaled to 3000+ companies with no signs of stopping any time soon.

The value of partnerships is similar to what a client referral brings - you’re starting sales conversations with people who trust you by proxy. It’s what 80% of users value Partnerhub® for, as the standard handshake partnership is typically not very fruitful due to a misalignment of goals and a lack of an action plan. Alex’s company solves this by vetting their clients, matching the right companies and activating partnerships instead of letting them dwindle.

The movement of adding Partnerships to your go-to-market strategy was largely pioneered by the tech industry. In fact, the term “Channel Partner” was coined by hardware providers to help them expand into foreign markets. SaaS adopted this approach, but with the intention of partnering with other software vendors to help solve large problems by building out infrastructures together. Agencies often build their services on top of these infrastructures, which means reselling and extra enablement become worthwhile activities. 

The purpose of Partnerhub® isn’t just to connect resellers - their goal is to create true partnerships through strategic matchmaking and ongoing guidance that helps their clients turn relationships into outcomes. One of their clients has over 3000 partners in their network (300 active) which is impossible to manage without a sophisticated system in place, and becomes a true pain in case a partner manager leaves their role. 

Tune into the full episode to learn more on how to build fruitful partnerships!

HIGHLIGHTS: 
01:13 What led Alex to found Partnerhub®
03:27 Do you really need a partner platform?
06:16 Different types of partnerships 
12:30 The Partnerhub® Journey
17:12 Partner Directory & Partner CRM
19:21 How to build fruitful partnerships 

Connect with Alex - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-glenn/
Connect with Mikael - www.linkedin.com/in/mikaeldia/

This is a snippet from the Kyle Vamvouris episode of Funnel Vision. For the full scoop, check out the last episode!

Meet Shawna Tregunna, CEO and Chief Strategist of Acclivity - a B2B marketing agency specializing in Account-Based Marketing, Content Marketing, Earned Media and Virtual Marketing. Their focus market consists of manufacturers, IoT providers, and innovative technologies.