All right. Today, we're talking about how to grow your agency in an age of uncertainty and disruption. My guest today is Jason Swank. I'll tell you more about him in a second, so stay tuned. Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution podcast where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders and thought leaders, and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now, let's get started with the show. All right. Welcome, everyone. John Corcoran here. I am the host of this show. And you know, every week I talk to interesting CEOs, founders, entrepreneurs from all kinds of companies. We have had Netflix, Grubhub, Redfin, Gusto, Kinko's YPO, EO, Activation Blizzard. Go check out the archives. Lots of great episodes for you to check out there as well. And we've also had lots of experts in the agency space as well, including Carl Smith from Bureau of Digital, David T. Baker, Roger Herning of Off Madison Ave. This one is going to blow all the rest away because he's got all kinds of great ideas. And he's been a great mentor and friend of myself and my business partner, Jeremy, as well for many years. Of course, this episode, before we get to that, this episode brought to you by Rise 25, where we help B2B businesses get clients, referrals, and strategic partnerships with Done for You podcast and content marketing. And you can learn all about that in our new podcast, CoPilot platform at Rise25.com. All right, so my guest here today, Jason has been in the agency space for 20 plus years. He's a founder of the agency mastery 360 and the host of smart agency masterclass podcast, started his career as a web developer for Arthur Anderson after college and then built up an agency and now helps other agencies to scale up as well. I've had one on the podcast, but it's been at least five years since we had them on last time. So I figured he'd come back on, especially given all the changes that we've been seeing in the market with companies, with technologies coming along. Jason, pleasure to have you here today. And let's just jump right in here. So you have the unique vantage of working with 100 plus agencies every month, hearing what their challenges are. And in many ways, that is a barometer for the rest of the larger economy, because agencies serve every other type of business out there, helping them with all kinds of challenges from getting traffic and attention and publicity to building websites, creating all kinds of solutions, software solutions, things like that. Let's just talk about some of the different trends of disruption and technologies that are coming across your desk right now. Well, I mean, you got to kind of start off with AI, right, of all the stuff that it can do, you know, I was messing with Luma the other day. And I said, create me a video of my cat watching this TV show. And it did it perfectly, right? Yeah. And then you obviously have seen like the actors going because you can create, you know, videos of people, famous people that don't even give it permission. I mean, it's just, it's kind of, it's, it's scary. It's but it's exciting along the way as well. So. Yeah. Yeah. And so there's kind of a couple different ways of reacting to that, especially if you're an agency owner, one is seeing it as a massive threat. This is going to take away our livelihood. And the other one seeing it as an opportunity. And, you know, how are you seeing people react to these sorts of technologies? Well, I mean, on both sides, right? But I can't see remind people AI won't take your agency away, but people that use AI will. Like, for example, you know, one of the things coming in the next couple of years, I mean, I'm already seeing it. You're already seeing it on Instagram and social medias are these fake influencers. And I'm not talking about the slimy cheesy ones. I'm talking about the AI influencers, ones the brands can control. So if I was an agency and I was constantly like an influencer agency, you better bet I'm just going to create a ton of fake or AI generated profiles. Yeah. Because then I can control a lot better. Yeah. Right. Like, so that's just a small example. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And I know you're overwhelmingly a positive person. So you tend to see opportunities and things. How do you help someone who isn't that positive, who is kind of focused on the negative of it? Honestly, I can't help the negative one. You know, it's just you're you have to make the decision like Darby and I were having this conversation the other day. And he was kind of pulling the stick for my rear end because I was up on my like, I was really pretty mad about this, where every once in a while on my newsletter, I will send out, hey, John, are you wanting to do blah, blah, blah? Is there something I can help you with? And then they raise their hand saying, yes, I would like help. And then we'll say, cool, pick a time to meet. And they don't pick a time to meet. These are the pessimists. These are the ones that have a negative thing because they think we're going to get on they think they're going to get on a call. That's a sales call, where it's not, right? Because they're coming at it for a negative experience versus, let me see what these people have to offer. Yeah. Let's see if I can take one idea away. Yeah. Right. And I was on a podcast not too long ago. And they're like, what's the biggest difference between the most successful people? I said they make decisions quickly. It doesn't matter if it's right or wrong. They make decisions quick. The worst decision is indecision. Yeah. And so I can't help the negative people, unfortunately. You also say that the best solution is not to go chase the things that are changing. So AI would be an example or chat GBT, try and become the world's biggest expert in Luma AI or something like that or creating little video snippets out of AI, but rather to focus on the things that we know are unlikely to change in the next 10 years. Yeah. Like you said, we all see the people that are chasing the next trend. I'm not saying AI is a trend. It's here, right? You got to kind of grapple with it, figure out how you're going to use that kind of stuff. And so you're always looking at how do I leverage the next big thing and how do I get a leg up and early adopter and all that kind of stuff. I'm not saying not to do that. But the big focus, and there's a thing we were talking about, Jeff Bezos mentioned this, and it was like, what's the question you wish someone would ask you? And he goes, it's not what's going to change. It's what's not going to change, like in the next three to five years. So if you're an agency, what you need to be focused on is, look, how can I solve faster problems for people? Because your clients want you to solve problems, but quicker. How can you solve them more efficiently? And then you start thinking of solutions for that, or what's not going to change? Well, people are always going to want to have an easy experience or understand what you're going to do for them, rather than be the wizard or a vase behind the robe, and I want to know what goes into the sausage. And then on the side, if I'm going to eat the sausage. Yeah. And it's funny, too, because you mentioned that AI is here already. And yet, you and I and others who are in your community, and we've been in your community for, I don't know, four years now or something like that, been to your events, which are awesome. Tell them the one thing you learned. Do you remember the one thing that you learned that you now you're putting me on the spot? Let's see. The alligator, the alligator, how to get away from an alligator? Do you remember get away from an alligator? Oh, geez. Remember, you got a zigzag. If an alligator is chasing you. It's zigzag. You got a zigzag. Okay. Yes. I remember that now. I have the best video, like, John and I were sitting at dinner, and I just broke out the camera. I go, John, what'd you learn? And just like, we were joking around, and we were talking about things we learned, and you said, we were talking about alligators and how to get away from an alligator if it's chasing you. Because zigzag, they can't catch you. Yes. Exactly. Well, the funny thing is that, you know, we're so focused on these emerging technologies. I mean, I like tech and all that kind of stuff, but there still are a lot of people out there that are not focused on it, you know, and maybe that just means that they're going to be caught by surprise by it. But is there opportunity in that? Because there are, you know, I think the assumption sometimes, especially in the agency world is, oh, you know what? Everyone's aware of this, and all of my clients are going to be using these AI tools. When the truth is, they may not be, you know, they still is a huge part of the market that wants it done for you solution. And whether you use software, whether you use Canva that's been around for 10 years now, or Photoshop that's been around for 20 years, or use some new tool that just has been around for five months, they don't care. They just want it done. You know that on the head, clients do not care about how you do something. They just want it fixed. And look, agencies are designed to be the middlemen. Clients want you to solve a problem that they're having, and whoever can do it faster, and more trustworthy, they're going to pay, you know, money to. And just like when the alligator analogy of like when an alligator is chasing you, you get a zigzag. So if the market's going one way, you should go the other way. So for example, if everyone and a lot of people now are automating the crap out of their business, and it's good. But we're also ever since COVID, we don't meet in person much anymore. It's all over Zoom, or a video call, or a phone call, or a text message, or a Slack message. So if everyone's doing that, what if you actually visit your clients on a regular basis? Imagine how much more connected you're going to be with your clients. You know, a member of the mastermind, Marty, he always talked about within the first month, I always made sure I have visit my new clients. I don't care how far away they are, because no one else is visiting them. Yeah. Yeah, it'd be really interesting to see how that affects the lifetime value of those clients. They stick around a lot longer. I interviewed him on the podcast. He had some other great ideas, including his little rhino pins. Yes, the donation, yes. They do a donation for each of the clients, and they nail them a little metal pin for the... Actually, I think there's a name of the rhino that they... Yeah, they adopt a rhino. Yeah, they adopt a rhino. And they continue to make donations on an annual basis to that rhino, even after the client has left. And I think they send something in the mail to tell them about the donation, which has got to... You've got to think these clients are like, "Oh, geez, we should really go hire them again." They're making these donations in my name. Yeah. So, that's kind of interesting, is kind of thinking about how you can be different. Are there other ways in which you've seen agencies stand out and embrace this idea of not chasing something that is an emerging trend, but rather chasing something that's not going to change? It always goes back to the basics, right? The basics work. Many years ago, when I used to play tennis in college, and this is going back when we had wooden rackets, I guess, I'm kidding. We had graphite ones. Yeah, but we had the rebound humps. You dressed like Billie Jean King on a tennis court. Yeah, a grass tennis court. My time was around Agassi, and my wife threw up my Agassi shorts many or a couple years ago. They were the most comfortable shorts I ever had. I'm sure. These are the ugliest shorts ever. When I was playing tennis, I remember I was one of the best in the nation, and I was losing to this player that on paper, I should have dominated. It was like 6-0-5-0, and my coach just was like, "You're overthinking it. Go back to the basics." I just said, "I'm going to take my racket back early. I'm going to look at the ball and see what happens from there." I wound up coming back and crushing and beating the kid. Just from going back to the basics, and the same thing goes with business. Just think of the basics. Look, your clients want to result, and they want to know you're taking care of it, so communicate to them. Just keep it really easy. Don't overcomplicate it. Don't create this Pandora's box that no one understands what's in it, or the Wizard of Oz, Curtain, or whatever it is. Just make it very simple. Don't overcomplicate it. Come up with terminology that no one knows. Just keep it simple. If you could explain it to your grandmother, perfect. That's what you want. I want to ask you about the importance of finding your tribe, and I think that this extends to both finding your tribe of customers that you want to serve, but also the community that you want to be a part of. I know that's been an important one for you. You decided after selling your agency that you wanted your tribe to be other agencies, but also before that went through different machinations of the types of clients that you want to work with. Let's start with first drilling down and the importance of finding the right clientele that you want to serve. What are sorts of advice you give to agencies that are struggling with that? If you're struggling with it, you just need to struggle faster, and you need to take on more clients and see what you don't like. I treat it as finding your client tribe is like a Vegas buffet. If you've been a Vegas buffet, it goes on forever. You're like, this is all part of it, like crab legs and fillet and steak. You can just imagine looking down and you're like, this is unbelievable. I can try everything, but it also gets overwhelming. It's like that cheesecake factory menu. You're like, oh my god, how many pages do you have? I don't know what to choose. I'll just start at one and just keep going down and then you walk out of that restaurant going, oh my god, I'm never going to eat again. You need to try everything. Then what you need to do is ask yourself this question or these two questions. Who? What type of criteria and what type of client and what type of niche could I knock it out of the park where if I was going to be paid on performance only, what would they look like? But you have to try out a bunch first and then you got to think about what service would I do for them? So if it was like, dude, I know YouTube ads and if I could find these lawyers that are already producing videos that are over the 5 million mark that want to grow and you just start layering on more layers and you're like, and do this, this, and this would be like, I could crush it. And it has to be with like, you're only going to be paid after you deliver amazing and they get amazing results. Now you're picking your perfect client that you can knock it out of the park. What's been happening is a lot of agencies have been taking on anybody and everybody. So they're just saying, yes, yes, yes, rather than no, no, no, no, no. And then yes to the really good one. So that's how I would find the tribe. That's how we went through it. You've seen the mastermind morph over the years, the community morph, and we've figured out what makes the best members. And we've figured out what makes really crappy members to the community. If you come in with an ego or you're not willing to share or you think you know it all, hey, there's a group you can go to. It's not ours. You go to them. So you just got to kind of weed through all this. It goes back to what I said, make a decision fast. Yes or no? Boom. All right. I'll live with it. Move on to the next. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about content creation because as you, I don't know if you would call this your 2.0 business because you had your agency phase and now you're in this phase for the last I think 10 years or so of serving helping other agencies. But content has been a huge part of it. You do podcasts, you do videos, you do emails, you do all that kind of stuff. And yet there are still plenty of businesses out there that don't do that. Obviously, I'm a big fan of it as well. What are your thoughts? You know, talking to other, I'm sure you have plenty of agency owners that don't, you know, practice their own the stuff that they do for clients by creating their own content. Well, I think they're more scared about putting themselves out there, honestly. And look, there's a lot of faceless brands out there that we all know. Like we couldn't tell you who the leadership is, like Starbucks or Coke or Pepsi, right? But there's also a lot of smaller businesses that you know very well, Gary Vannerchuk. Like, okay, let's do a test. You know who Gary Vannerchuk is. Yep. Okay. Cool. Had him on the podcast, actually, many years ago. Fantastic. Yeah. Shameless link link up there. Yeah, exactly. There you go. What sports team does he want to buy? The Jets. There you go. Exactly. Are you great friends with him? How do you know this? Yeah. Right. Yeah. He posts content and he posts content on a regular basis where we know like and trust him or we know maybe don't like, but we know him and we've seen him grow throughout the years. It's the same thing of what we've done. All right. Like, it was funny. My team wanted me to watch some of our first videos that I put together. And they actually filmed me watching me. You have to like strap me down to do that. Yeah. Well, the funny thing was, as I was watching these, like there was one, it says, there's no bad agency client. There's only a bad prospect or a bad process. And I could quote it to the T. Like, you could see me, like, oh, I know this. Like, it didn't change. Yeah. Right. And it was pretty funny. The only thing that really changed was maybe have a little bit more confidence on video, kind of like your radio voice. Like, it was funny. Like, when you were doing the intro, I was like, who is this? Like, it didn't sound like the John I know before. I was like, welcome to movie phones. Like, who is this? We have to explain the movie phone is for some of the younger listeners here. The Seinfeld episode. That's my favorites. Or, well, that or the master of your domain, I think is my favorite classic. Yeah. Yeah. So, all right. So content creation. So it's kind of the psychological element is a big part of it. It's just like getting over the being comfortable with being in front of the camera, putting yourself out there and then also sharing some of those personal elements of your personality, like, you know, passion for a particular sports team. Or it's to, or it's another way, where they're afraid if they put out what they know, no one will come to them because they put it out. But it does, it actually does the exact opposite. It attracts more people. So when people go on YouTube or they listen to a podcast about doing something, they want to learn. Yeah. And then they hear, they watch your video, John, on how to, you know, get on the best podcast in the world, which is yours and Jeremy's, right? And, and so, they watch it to learn. And then they're like, okay, I understand how to get on it. But then they're like, I don't want to fucking do it. Yeah. I want help with this. But I, but I understand how John and Jeremy does it. So let me go to rise 25, because I understand the process. They've helped me, I've trust them. So let me have them go do it, right? Like, it just, it builds trust faster than anything. Because if you come out, in a sense, like, I've always come at the sense of, of creating the content with the per, like me a long time ago listening to myself. Or I even look at it if my sons want to create a business or yet an agency, if they want to do, they can watch dad talk about it later on. And they'll be like, I know, like I've seen him have success. He's showing us exactly what to do. Okay, like, I already trust him. Like, that's how I go about it in my content that I create. Because at the end of the day, you got to think about your audience and what do they want. And I've always wanted to create a resource I wish I had when I was running the first agency. And so that's how I create the content. Or here's the other reason they don't create it, is they don't know what to talk about. And one of the easiest response to that, like how to come up with ideas of what topics to come up with. They can do what I'm doing right here. You can literally hit record on your computer. And as you're talking to your clients, you can take bits and pieces of you giving advice. Or you can go back to your email of your client's biggest questions. Just answer those, create those videos. Yeah, those questions that you get asked over and over again. Yeah. Yeah. And it's easier than ever now not to get into the tools area, but you can take that, transcribe it. You can put it into one of many tools that exists and new ones that will pop up in the future that will say, here are some topics that came up in this discussion that you should create content around. Or if you want to get really geeky and nerdy and futuristic, create your own influencer. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Or here's another interesting one. I just, David Mirren Scott is the author of Fanocracy and a bunch of other books just spoke to this conference that was that last week. And he took all the content that he had created over like 10 years or so and put it all into a private chat bot that he had access to. And then he could ask questions and then use that for creating new angles on things. So like he would come up with kind of a topic that was a slightly different angle on something that he talked about before, maybe combined, you know, like, for example, like the Super Bowl is coming up, right? Not right now, but if the Super Bowl is coming up or the NBA Finals or something like that, you could say, you know, come up with a piece of content that talks about, you know, something in Super Bowl terms, but, you know, focused on my particular area of expertise. I'm going to call you out. Like, really, you mentioned the Super Bowl, but we are in the NBA Finals. I don't know. I'm about six months off. But you know, when there's something timely coming up, right? You know, it could be summer vacation or something like that. You know, yeah, because we're recording this in June. I had to call you out on that one. And actually, another book, another resource I'll mention is just to sell as human by Dan Pink. And that book talked about information asymmetry versus symmetry. It used to be that there was this big disparity between the market and you and you had all the knowledge and they would come to you. But now people can educate themselves and they're going to do it whether you want to or not. So they might as well be consuming your content that you put out there so that they can educate themselves and also build trust at the same time so that by the time they get on a call with you or your team, they you don't have to spend all that time building that trust. Yeah, there's there's no trust building, there's no selling. Like when anybody joins our community or engages with us, we always ask them kind of a survey or most of the time we ask them a survey on the thank you page and ask them two questions. What are you most excited to learn and why did you join? And out the past decade, most people have said I've been listening to your content for so many years. I was just ready now. So think about how big of a moat you can create around your business if you start creating content. Now you might be thinking too, oh, well, I've missed the boat for creating content. The best day to plant a tree is 20 years ago or today. You just don't want to get down 20 years into the future and be like, Oh, shit, I started a podcast yesterday. Yeah, exactly. I agree as well. And that goes for other forms of content as well. One other thing I know I was on the clock here, but one other thing I wanted to ask you about was you've built and managed teams before hired people before. And your proponent of hiring people that you don't have to manage. Talk a little bit about that. How do you find people that you don't have to manage? Well, it's it's tough. Well, you just got to look for first, like you're not going to find people unless you know what you're looking for. I think a lot of entrepreneurs or visionaries like us are horrible managers, right? You got to think like we're thinking a thousand miles per hour, people cannot execute as fast as we think. That's what makes us such bad managers. And then we compare everyone else to us. And so like I've been interviewing for this marketing person for a couple of weeks on just it's been horrible. We've gone across one that was really good. And we'll see on the other one. But a lot of them will say to me, well, what does my day look like? And I was like, did you read the job description? Did you hear what I talked about? Like, I want you to be self managing if you have to come to me. And I tell my I've always told my team this when I started getting a little wiser, which was like last year. Now is a couple years back. But I'm like, if you have to come to me to ask me what you need to do, I can find someone faster and cheaper. I want I'm going to tell you where the boat is going and what direction we're going. And then you make the decision of what you think is best because I hired you as an expert in your particular field. You have knowledge. I may not have. I want to be the dumbest person in the room, which is not hard. Right. And so I just tell them, look, you make the decision. You tell me I work for you. That's how I've always treated it is like, how can I support Darby? How can I support Stacy? How can I support support Jody? How can I support all these people? Hey, just tell the monkey what to do. Like, I'll go create this video. Okay, cool. I'll go do it. Right. Or like, what particular questions should we ask on this? Great. Tell me, I'll go execute it. Right. I'm fine with being setting the vision for the, you know, like I look at it as the kind of, you know, four or five roles, you're really to kind of go from an owner to a CEO. And one is coaching a mentor, your leadership team, being the face of the organization, understanding financials, you know, being, you know, understanding the KPIs that are important and, you know, assisting sales if you want. So, you know, I've always told my team, I want you to manage yourself. Here's the goal. Go out, have at it. And when you can do that, you'll have so much more freedom in your business. Like, that's what we all want. We don't want to grow our agencies. We don't want to grow our business. We want more freedom to pick and choose to do the things we love doing. And we want to work with really cool people. I'm curious, because you mentioned coaching your leadership team, but you also said, I don't like managing people. Yeah. So talk about the distinction between those two. So managing someone is telling them what they need to do. And they're constantly coming to you to solve their problem, that you actually hired them to do, right? It's kind of like what we do in the mastermind, right? The 131, like, what's the problem? What are the three things you're thinking about? What do you think you needed to go do? If they do that enough, they're not going to come to you anymore. Right? And so if you implement little things like this, that's coaching them. Also, too, of like, finding out where do they want to go? Like, do they want to own their own business one day? Cool. I'll coach you to do it. Like, let me show you everything. Or how can I make you better or get you to more time? Like, I'm constantly going to my team, be like, hey, should you really be doing that? Like, what things can you offload to other people that are really like $10 tasks for you? Like, and where do you want to get financially? Like, how can I coach them to get there? That's when I talk about more with coaching and making them better leaders. So then as you add layers to your organization, they're doing that for the team below. And now you have all these rock stars on your team because, you know, most people are in kind of no man's lineup to about 100 employees. Like, you're into like, God damn, like, right? But once you get over that, they're hardly ever coming to you. Like, things are running, like, you're bringing in clients you've never heard of. They're delivering amazing results. People are actually, you know, sending you like, thank you gifts. And you've never met them. You're like, you know, we're doing this, like, this is awesome. That is pretty amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is all really interesting. And I love talking about these topics with you. We should do this, definitely do this a little bit more frequently than every five years or so. I want to hear the radio voice change over the next video. Exactly. I've honed that over the years. Anything else that you're kind of focused on or excited about or frequent theme that's kind of come up in the agency world. You know, what I'm always excited about is just go back to the basics, stop overthinking it, and just regardless of what decision you have in your way, A, B, C, U, D, E, pick one, execute fast. See if it works, you learned. I mean, if it doesn't work, you learned if it works, great. And then just move on to the next decision, stop overthinking things. Like you're, we're all making it over too complicated. It's very simple. And don't focus on the things you don't have in your agency. Focus on the things you have. Yeah, you do hear that as a repeating theme. You know, if I had a, you know, CMO from a agency, if I had a CFO for this agency, if we had more resources, we would buy this tool or software or whatever. Yeah. And honestly, to be grateful, like, for, you know, like everyone in the mastermind, they've been doing it for a long, long time. Do you know how many businesses have been, like, how long have you and John been running rise? It has been, well, we started almost 10 years now. Yeah, because we did our first, he and Jeremy and I did the first thing together about nine years ago now. Yeah. So you are such an amazing statistic. I mean, think about how many businesses, like even looking at, like, on a podcast, like how many episodes are you at, too? Oh, I think I'm officially somewhere past 500. Incredible, right? So if you look at the stats of that, of how many people just have one episode, like out of two, I think it was, let's just say the ratio is this. Let's say there's 2 million podcasts out there, 500,000 have only done one episode, 250,000 have probably not even made 10 episodes yet. So think about the statistics of that. Then you look at your business, right? You've been doing it 10 years. You've been doing it with a business partner. I know sometimes you guys want to kill each other, which is always fun. And we should actually do a podcast about those conversations. That would be really interesting. I'll take a little percentage of that. Little awkward. But yes. But like, think of like the stack, your odds are stacked against you on that. And when you start thinking about that way, you're like, shit, man, I made it 10 years. We have a thriving, profitable business. You start focusing on the things you have rather than, oh, I haven't cracked the billion dollar mark or the 10 million mark or whatever stupid number that people we make up in our heads. You start focusing on the things you have and the people that you've helped. Think about all the people you've helped create podcasts and get to the next level. That's very gratifying. Dude, right? Think about it that way. And you look at it, stop watching the news. Yeah, that's good advice. I told you all he was very positive. Jason, this has been great where people go to learn more about you and check you out and learn about all your upcoming events. Yeah, go to agencymastery.io. So agency mastery. Like you're going to master things agencymastery.io. And you can check out all our free resources over the past decade. And you have it at a event in Colorado, I believe, in October. That's where you learn about alligators. We learn about alligators. I think this is where it got us because there's an alligator farm, not too far, where they have white albino alligators. And I think I was trying to think we were trying to, where did that story come from? And you also didn't event in Austin, I believe, was a Jeremy spoke up. We did. Yeah, we do two events a year. One is called the digital agency experience. So if you go to digitalagencyexperience.com, you can check that out. But we run out a 100,000 acre ranch. They have 2,000 bison. If you're lucky enough, John will come again and he'll wear his woody outfit, which was awesome. And we all stay on the ranch, 100 year old ranch. Ride horses, have great conversations. It's a lot of fun. Yeah, very cool. All right, Jason. Thanks so much for your time. Thanks. Thanks for listening to the Smart Business Revolution podcast. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.
