In this episode, you will hear Part 2 of interview with Scott Harkey, Co-Founder & Managing Partner of the (close to) $100M, 160 person full service marketing agency – OH Partners, one of the fastest growing independent marketing agencies in the US, located in Phoenix, AZ & Las Vegas, NV.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode:

• What were the co-founders of OH Partners thinking when they decided to hire a CEO to be their boss?

• Scott shares how they found out what a GREAT culture can do, through their new CEO, not a GOOD culture. 

• The specifics on why Glassdoor’s company review platform is a major KPI for OH Partners and how they leverage it for success.

• Steps to evaluate whether to hire a CEO to take your spot, along with pros and cons for doing so. 

• Strategies to win the “New Business Game” for agencies. 

• What Scott Harkey and his team do to drive aggressive outbound growth through national events, thought leadership, speeches, and more. 

• Why agency owners should have a primary role in driving new business growth.

• OH Partners growth goals and 2B-5B revenue/year client sweetspot.

• How smaller agencies can compete for clients vs. bigger agencies and why Scott strives to be the smaller agency competing against the bigger ones in a pitch.

• How OH Partners breaks down their 150 person firm and agency structure. 

• How Scott helped grow OH partners close to $100M organically in 10 years and the mindset they created to do it.

• Scott shares the truth behind why the lack of new business development is the reason most agencies fail financially.

• The simple structure behind OH Partner’s biz dev team that they call, “their special forces unit”.

• The partner, deal, and acquisition opportunities Scott is looking for at OH Partners. 

• Visit this podcast episode’s page for contact details and more insights!

What You’ll Learn In This Episode: 

- Why we all hear people and culture are paramount and why it is still true.

- Why reviews from company and employee review sites like Glassdoor are one of Scott’s top KPIs.

- Valuable insights on talent retainment and what retainment % OH Partners made possible. 

- Why as an agency owner you should be the one focused on getting new business. 

- Scott’s business development philosophy. ( “Always be pitching”, being hyper focused on what accounts you can really make a difference on with their business, and the industries you do well at and understand.)

- How to win the new business development game with big accounts and strategies that maximize your win rate. 

- OH Partner’s ratio of retainer, project, and AOR clients and how you can structure your ratios for growth, longevity, and stability. 

- Insights from OH Partner’s approach to client diversification.

- How to build deeper connections with prospects and clients, so you can uncover their core issues and desires professionally and personally. 

- The big benefits and personal challenges Scott and his Co-founder had when they hired a CEO as their own boss for OH Partners.

- Scott’s vision for OH Partners and what he’s doing to take it to the next level. 

- What OH Partners is actually doing to retain its talent and why their new CEO was so crucial to enhancing talent retention. 

- Stay tuned for Part 2 of this episode in episode 7 of The Build, Buy, Sell Agency Podcast.

- Visit this podcast episode's page for contact details and more insights!

What You’ll Learn In This Episode: 

- emagine’s story from starting out as a duo of college dropouts to entrepreneurs with a long-standing mid-size agency.

- How narrowing down from a website and digital marketing generalist to a niche specialist created abundance and growth.

- A lesson on how to test the market and stop undervaluing your marketing or web design services and charging much more. 

- What the major turning point was for Bill when he went to a conference on web design and how that led him to dramatically increase his prices.

- Why going niche, focused, and specific, was one of emagine’s biggest successes early on.

- emagine’s evolution from generalist, to serving a handful of industries, to only healthcare, and now to focusing on niching down even more within healthcare.

- The impact of going from generalist to niche specific clients for emagine, internally.

- How Bill’s agency came to embrace outbound sales and outperform typical agency business development norms. 

- Why niching down has been extremely helpful in winning new business in specific sectors and outselling agencies that are less focused.

- How to stop having a lame generic USP that every other agency has and truly differentiating yourself for clients. 

- How Bill staffs and structures his comprehensive outbound marketing team to create a consistent and reliable new business pipeline, better than most other agencies.

- The one thing you need to apply to yield better responses overall from outbound marketing.

- Reliable outreach frameworks you can apply to your agency if you are targeting mid-size or large organizations. 

- Why quality of outreach is better than volume, especially if you are targeting large organizations.

- How Bill’s web design firm acquired a small SEO firm and why it was crucial to their growth. 

- How to capitalize on an acquisition, even if the target’s business model is not the same as yours.

- The deal structure that was arranged for emagine’s acquisition. 

- The unfortunate truth Bill discovered after pursuing strategic partnerships with traditional agencies, as a digital agency.

- Why Bill is now focusing on partnering with complementary companies that don’t do digital marketing at all. 

- Partner and deal opportunities Bill is looking for now. 

What You’ll Learn In This Episode:

• Why sales is not a dirty word and lessons on embracing it in your agency. 
• How and why AB&C structures business development and revenue growth as a part of the internal culture expectations across all agency roles. 
• Why there is an extreme benefit to adding business development team members to your agency who came from different industries outside of advertising.
• AB&C’s expansion and the plateaus they hit over the 20 years pursuing it.
• How to define your next plateau and get to it through organic growth, partnering, and acquiring partners.
• How AB&C leveraged partnering with competitors to grow their agency.
• How AB&C creates valuable partnerships from a tactical approach to drive agency growth.
• How keeping an open mind to acquisition opportunities with current partners you are working with can be crucial to helping drive agency growth.
• Why staying true to your core values as an agency is so important in driving not only growth, but stability in your agency when doing biz dev. 
• The big realizations Paul had when it comes to clients when picking an agency can be so high stakes to them personally. 
• How ABC approaches existing partners for acquisition to create a merger of equals under their agency.
• Why going for acquisition instead of just partnering results in 100% focus on your progress via combined efforts, instead of partial focus on the partner’s end. 
• AB&C’s growth goals over the next three years and why they’ve shifted from focusing just on aggressive growth to that AND what makes their people happy and how they can bring the best value to clients. 
• Why you need to have a dedicated person solely focused on business development in your organization.
• Why it is important to appreciate business development as a professional craft.
• Why your new business team does not absolutely need to come from an agency. 
• Why having someone dedicated on your team to exploring acquisitions or connecting with people in the acquisition space can be incredibly helpful to your marketing agency’s strategic growth. 
• How AB&C kept aligned on their growth vision over 20 years.
• Why you should have someone on your team, day in and day out, thinking about revenue generated today, next week, next year, in five years, in ten years, and onward.
• How AB&C’s agency wide 3 year goal setting is done. 
• How to think about turning partnerships into acquisitions for your agency and reasons to do it. 
• Specific partnership or deal opportunities AB&C is looking for, and the best way to approach them. 
• How to get a hold of Paul Pomeroy at AB&C.

Contact Our Guest:

• Paul Pomeroy - President - Aloysius Butler & Clark
• abccreative.com

Hosted By:

• Shane Perkins, CEO - Unite Digital
• Agency Network Focused On Mid-Market Clients
• The Build, Buy, Sell Agency Podcast

What You’ll Learn In This Episode:

• Why having a tendency being the smartest one in the room is to your disadvantage and how to fix it.
• What an agency structured more like a corporation looks like and why it matters, especially if you are trying to create a full service agency.
• Learn the advantages of utilizing a team in Latin America and what the biggest challenges are.
• How to build a leadership team that will challenge you and each other, with highly productive results.
• Intriguing reasons for weekly leadership meetings lasting up to three hours.
• JC’s findings on running meetings and why they are less successful when he runs the show, instead of his team.
• Why JC is leading Palm Era a different path than typical agencies supporting millennial culture desires and how that is affecting his agency.
• The inspiring market opportunity JC saw in the market to become a full service agency and why he did it.
• The internal model Palm Era set to confidently say they really do everything as a full-service agency.
• How JC went from a former career in finance to running Palm Era.
• Why JC’s ultimate goal is to sell Palm Era by 2025 and why he preaches this to every team member.
• How to address concerned employee's questions about your agency being sold in the future.
• How to handle conversations with your team members if an acquirer wants to do layoffs, before the deal happens.
• Why a larger agency can relieve pressure on your agency to generate new business, if you are acquired.
• How JC sells his team on his exit vision and why they are ecstatic about supporting the vision or have no interest.
• How JC plans on growing through raising capital and acquisition.
• Ways to approach picking an acquisition valuation model and why JC is focusing on equity swaps as an acquisition growth strategy.
• What killed JC’s equity swap deal and what he learned from it.
• Why JC would not take a different approach to his deal that was unsuccessful.
• The specific deal and partner opportunities JC is looking for with other agencies.

Contact Our Guest:

• JC Cedeno- CEO - Palm Era
• [email protected]

Hosted By:

• Shane Perkins, CEO - Unite Digital
• Agency Network Focused On Mid-Market Clients
• The Build, Buy, Sell Agency Podcast

What You’ll Learn In This Episode: 

• How to have the confidence to stop being a small agency of people just “making a living” and scale.
• Why you need to tackle business problems with your cool solutions and not just build cool stuff. 
• The importance of adding some scale of research and strategy into your agency solution set for clients, no matter what agency you run.
• How your reputation itself can attract bigger accounts.
• Building your agency’s reputation by becoming a thought leader and how to do it. 
• Why clients are just buying a point of view and how to get them to buy yours. 
• How you and your team can recover emotionally and financially from failing a big client pitch. 
• Why having confidence, being tenacious, and having fun will help you grow your agency. 
• How Adam’s “Days of Action” policy that his team created, added extreme value to his employees and viral media attention and how you can do the same.
• What type of partnering opportunities Adam is looking for that you can contact him about. 

Contact Our Guest:

• Adam Kleinberg, CEO - Traction
• [email protected]
• Twitter: @adamkleinberg

Hosted By: 

• Shane Perkins, CEO - Unite Digital
• Agency Network For Mid-Size Agency
• The Build, Buy, Sell Agency Podcast

• Dan Cobb at Daniel Brian Advertising shares the mind shift he had that helped take his full-service marketing and advertising agency from $10M to $20M.
• The impact of getting away from price focused clients to clients that want to create movements.
• How Dan found and partnered with a few producers in LA to create a multi-million dollar platform and profit stream for his agency.
• This episode is part of our Agency Leader Series on the Build, Buy, Sell, Agency Podcast.