Say it Online

How did Crystal Gaskin, the owner of Found it Digital, take all the unique challenges of working in fashion and retail and turn it into digital marketing gold? Find out as I sit down with Crystal to learn how to scale up your team (even if you're just one person), and balance your ever growing list of current deadlines and new projects. 

Crystal is an Arizona native who loves brunch dates with her chi-mix puppy named Corbin, weight lifting, reading, and doing outreach with her church families at CFTN and Faith Christian Center.

Her expertise is web development, brand identity, execution, and strategy for paid media, organic website traffic, and email marketing. She leads the Found it Digital team of creatives and marketers as they help small businesses, specifically local boutiques and direct to consumer brands, grow their online sales and visibility.

Follow her and the team on instagram at @founditdigital for educational captions on branding and digital marketing; IGTV tutorials and training; and creative inspo, Adobe Creative tricks & retail industry updates in their Stories.

Tune in to learn how to:

• Set realistic goals based on your team's capacity

• Balance your time between current deadlines and taking on new projects
• Hone in on what key qualities to look for when hiring help outside your team

Connect with Crystal at founditdigital.com and on Instagram @founditdigital.

We're back for part two of "how to handle decision fatigue." 

You know we love a good process here at Anansi. 

So we did what we do best, we talked about how to create processes, patterns, and safeguards to keep your projects on track when you (or a member of your team) are stuck because of decision fatigue. 

In this episode, Celene and I dive into what decision fatigue looks like from the other side. What do you do when someone has dropped the ball due to decision fatigue, and how can you safeguard against it in the future?

Tune in to learn how to:

• Identify next steps when someone drops the ball due to decision fatigue
• Stay in control of your project — even when you're struggling to make a decision
• Decide if you want to be a part of "the cult of busy"

When you decided to start your own agency I bet you thought that making your own hours meant a breezy 4 day work week with every weekend off?

Then how did it turn into working 24-7, 365?

Today's guest, Natasha Votypka found that not having 24hr availability with clients makes her even more successful as a web designer and developer? Learn more as I sit down with Natasha to talk about how saying no to certain projects and setting clear "office hours" lets digital agencies book projects that are more valuable to them.

A veteran interactive designer, web developer, and digital consultant with over 20 years of experience, Natasha Votypka combines both creative and technical skill-sets with extensive project management chops to bring rich interactive experiences to your audience. As a digital consultant she works to create a clear and detailed digital strategy for your growing business.

Her design approach is intuitive. She listens to her clients needs, looks at their market, and zeros in on bringing them the best possible web solution and strategy for their business. Whether it's a small business site or Fortune 500 solution, she brings the same level of expertise, devotion, and passion to her client's online presence.

In this episode, Natasha dives into how to manage expectations and set boundaries with clients, how to specialize in your field, and how to define the type of life that makes you happy.

Tune in to learn how to:

• Set clear boundaries with your clients.
• Shift from being a freelancer to a value-driven provider.
• Make wellness a baseline instead of an afterthought.

Connect with Natasha at nvwebdesignstudio.com and wellnesscoachnv.com.

Do you have those moments where the thought of just one more notification coming out of your phone makes you want to drive over it with your car?

Us too.

It's called decision fatigue — and it sucks! It's every digital agency owner's kryptonite. That's why we decided to sit down and talk about all the many, many, MANY, decisions it takes to just run your agency day-to-day.

In this episode of Digital Agency Real Talk, Celene and Say dive into how to prioritize your decision list, how reducing life decisions can help at work, and how to keep moving when you feel completely overwhelmed by choices.

Tune in to learn how to: Pinpoint which decisions are yours and which you can delegate Minimize decisions in your personal life to reduce decision fatigue at work Recognize when in the day you're best equipped to make bigger decisions

Want to follow along with our episode transcript? Click here!

We literally couldn't fit this topic into just one episode, so this is just part one — part two will be out February 28.

When did the fallback response to "how are you?" become "busy"?

As agency owners, we've learned to operate at a certain level of panic, stress, and busy-ness. We live in a world of "hustle" culture — always piling on more jobs and new goals. What ever happened to enjoying our lives? Isn't the whole reason you started your own business so you could make your own schedule?

That's why Taylor Cashdan wants to stop the culture of entrepreneurs glamorizing how busy they are. Learn more as I sit down with Chris to talk about side-hustle culture, and how to set healthy boundaries around work and life. 

Taylor Cashdan is a North Carolina-based multidisciplinary creative and community builder that's passionate about the intersectionality of people and design. He has a burning desire to collaborate with others to create exceptional work for people who give a shit.

In this episode, Chris dives into our addiction to stress, why humans think it's perfectly okay to sacrifice our wellness to fulfill a goal, and why you shouldn't wait until you're in an emergency situation to take self care seriously. 

Tune in to learn how to:

• Prevent your passion for what you do become your downfall 
• Stop stress taking over your life
• Set clear boundaries around work and life so you can be a more successful business owner and human

Connect with Taylor at taylorcashdan.com/stressfulstuff and at his side hustle www.blacksoulclub.com. Taylor is also on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

We're back behind the scenes here at Anansi for more Digital Agency Real Talk. This time we're talking about values.

What values does your agency live, breathe, and die by? Your core values shouldn't be just vague words that look nice painted on the wall. They should define how your business runs.

In this episode, Celene and I dive into how we identified Anansi's core values, and how we use them to connect our team, and drive our processes.

Tune in to learn:

• How to define or redefine your agency's values
• How to weave your values into your everyday processes and policies
• Why you should have a set of values for your agency

Ah, the elusive unicorn that is work-life balance. A mythical goal for any person — a seemingly impossible goal for entrepreneurs. When you own and run a business it's easy to see the work part of the equation creeping up and taking over the life side of your world.

What if I just work a little longer? What if I cancel plans just one more time? Can I consider myself a good business owner if I'm not working on my brand EVERY SINGLE SECOND OF EVERY SINGLE DAY?!

To quote today's guest, John Jantsch, "the entrepreneurial journey is sucking the joy out of what it means to build and run a business." He wants us to follow a different journey.

John is a marketing consultant, speaker, and author of Duct Tape Marketing, Duct Tape Selling, The Commitment Engine, SEO for Growth, The Referral Engine, and the founder of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network. His latest book, The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur: 366 Daily Meditations to Feed Your Soul and Grow Your Business, is a daily reminder to entrepreneurs that a better you makes a better business.

In this episode, John talks about how your mindset and how you react are the key to building a new version of the entrepreneurial journey. He digs into his personal experience with meditation and chats about how to use your bad habits to create better habits.

Tune in to learn how to: Redefine what the entrepreneurial journey means Build a better business by treating yourself better Create processes to help you get even a little bit closer to that "work-life balance" unicorn

Connect with John at selfreliantentrepreneur.com and ducttapemarketing.com.

Quick question — do you ever feel greasy when pitching your services? Your palms get sweaty when it comes time to drop those actual numbers on potential clients. Learn how you can harness that nervous energy into building stronger relationships with your clients. 

Jeremy Pope is a former clinical hypnotist who now helps entrepreneurs build scalable high-ticket businesses. He's been a top salesperson, sales manager, and sales trainer for international businesses, including the direct-marketing giant Guthy Renker. Now, he and his team build done-for-you big-budget sales departments, as well as help small business owners repair broken discovery calls. 

In this episode, Jeremy walks us through his sales process and why he believes that you should treat each new prospective client like a new relationship. 

Tune in to learn how to:

• Get your clients to connect with you and what you have to offer.
• Stop feeling sleazy everytime you run through your sales pitch. 
• Build a stronger sales process whether you're a team of 100 people, or just you.

Connect with Jeremy at theclosingengine.com and by joining Prosperity Pioneers Facebook Group to improve your sales and sales team.

Why do some projects seem so freakin' messy!? 

Your client has signed the contract. Your scope is clearly laid out before you, and the bright shiny vision of a new project is glistening in the distance. You drive off into the sunset. Cut to half a second later when you've crashed this metaphorical car into the ocean of "to-do" and are desperately trying not to drown. 

Maybe you should have had a better map — or a better project process (spoiler alert, I'll always find a way to loop it on back to processes). 

In this episode, Mary Shaw dives into the importance of having effective processes when tackling larger projects with more fingers in the pie, how she strategically prioritizes her "to-do", and how to balance family time with consuming projects.

Mary Shaw is a UX design consultant with over 20 years of experience in digital design. She's worked on hundreds of web projects for some of the world's largest companies and brands — we're talkin' Coca-Cola, Starbucks, and Conair.

She started consulting in 2006 after a career that produced over $5 million in agency and corporate websites, including a website for Dove that receives over 3 million visits during the Super Bowl halftime show. Now, while continuing to be a rockstar consultant, she helps other UXers level up their own business game.

You see, Mary Shaw believes content strategy and user experience design (UX) are two sides of the same coin. So, I'm sitting down with Mary to chat about UX design, prioritizing tasks for complex and large projects, and how she organically built her coaching services.

Tune in to learn how to:

• Not crash your metaphorical car into the ocean — by nailing your project processes.
• Un-messy your projects — by learning how to prioritize your "to-do". 
• Get closer to that ever elusive "work-life-balance" we keep hearing so much about. 

Connect with Mary at maryshaw.net/contact. To sign-up for her online UX career coaching program, click here. 

Mary has also shared with us Right Message, an awesome tool for analysing your website visitors so you can curate clear and targeted content for all your digital marketing.

Agency growth is good — unless it's unfocused and out of control. If you aren't setting personal and professional boundaries for yourself, your agency, and your relationships with clients, it's easy to get pushed around and totally lose track of your growth strategy.

Karl Sakas helps agency owners conquer their growing pains so they can increase their profits and reduce their stress. As a management consultant and executive coach at Sakas and Company, Karl has personally advised hundreds of agencies on every inhabited continent. He is the author of Made to Lead, The In-Demand Marketing Agency, and more than 350 articles on agency management. 

In this episode, Karl helps you confront the barriers you'll need to face to grow your agency, explains why you can never stop marketing, and digs into his Agency Satisfaction Index which identifies "The Four Stages of Client Relationships".

Tune in to learn how to:

• Manage power dynamics within clients.
• Identify if your marketing approaches are actually connecting you with your ideal clients.
• Set realistic expectations for yourself, your team, and your clients.

Connect with Karl on Twitter, LinkedIn, or at Sakas and Company. Subscribe to his newsletter by clicking here!

Get a free copy of his eBook Don't Just Make the Logo Bigger: Taking Clients from Painful to Profitable when you sign up for his free agency business tips. You can also access here his Agency Satisfaction Index and the Client Ranking Index.

Karl has given us a TON of resources based on this epic chat. Browse the links here for references and tools for conquering those agency growing pains!

• Agency 101: How to start a marketing agency
• Feeling trapped? How to escape the Agency Doldrums
• Avoid the "feast or famine" cycle
• 37 sales tips to grow your agency
• Extreme Referencing: Be sure they're the best candidate
• Think, Teach, Do: A more-strategic way to think about your agency's services
• Why you allow scope creep... and how to stop
• How to Fire Bad Clients
• Setting client boundaries: Reason-Options-Choose (R-O-C)
• Become a "Strategy-First" agency
• WeCroak mobile app