SPEAKER_00 0:00

Yo agency owners, you know how it goes. More plans, more pressure, more problems to solve. You built the machine, now you're stuck in the grind. More revenue coming, but you're running out of time. Agency advantage. Rad starts breaking it down. Better people, better systems, better moves all around. Leadership, leverage, profit, and scale. Real world lessons from the wins and fails. Build it smarter, lead the team, take your freedom back. Agency advantage. Now you're on the right track.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Agency Advantage. We're talking to someone who has built the thing that most agency owners only talk about: a real agency with real culture that runs without the founder touching everything. Nick launched Nick the Marketer in Birmingham, Alabama in 2018 as a full service shop serving anyone and everyone who walked in the door. Then he made the move most agency owners are too afraid to make. He niched down hard. And today his flagship brand, Patient Care Marketing Pro, serves one vertical urgent care clinics with a global team helping over 250 businesses along the way. Nick didn't grow with a churn and burn body shop. He grew his agency with culture and people integrated from all over the world. If you've ever wondered how to build a team that cares about the work as much as you do, especially when that team isn't physically present in your office, this one's for you. Nick, welcome on.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

Brad, thanks for having me, man. I'm I'm super honored to be on here and appreciate you giving me the invite.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, Nick, I obviously had this intro that our friend Claude, you know, just generates for us for all these episodes. We're kind of talking about that prior to hopping on here. But why don't you kind of give me a little bit of a background, you know, going back to 2018 in uh in Birmingham, what did the first version of like Nick the Marketer look like? Uh, and what were you personally doing day to day in that?

SPEAKER_02 1:52

You know, it's interesting that you say that Nick the Marketer probably shouldn't have ever even existed. And I I was working, uh I worked in radio. And then from radio, I saw the writing on the wall that that more digital formats were were what were taking over. And I kept losing clients to digital marketing agencies. And I was like, well, I better figure that out. So I went and worked for an agency, and that agency just simply didn't deliver anything that I thought should be delivered with excellence and all that kind of stuff. And I was like, you know what? I'm just this isn't working. I'm just gonna go back to radio. Uh I gotten a call from the manager and they're like, hey, we want you to come back. And then I I quit my job, like I put in my notice, and I'm on like the third day of working out my notice. And the radio says, Hey, just kidding, we're shutting down the radio station and going to a different world, we're flipping the format, not shutting it down, but flipping the format. I was like, crap, I'm not going back there. I've learned all of this. I guess I'm gonna go start a company. And I came up with all these stupid names like Digify and Tradigital and all this stupid crap. And every time I would tell somebody, they would be like, dude, your name's like you're Nick the Marketer. That's just who you are. So that's like I almost called it, dude, you're Nick the Marketer, but Nick the Marketer is where it landed. Yeah. You asked the question, Brad, what did it look like in the beginning? Man, it was me at my kitchen table. And it's funny, I put a picture of it on my website. So it's me sitting at the kitchen table with my wife going, What the crap are we doing? And I just worked my network. So it was me calling people that I knew, just saying, Hey, I'm starting this thing. I'll do it for you for free if you'll just like give me a testimonial, or you know, after 90 days, if you like it, pay me. So that's what it looked like right out of the gate.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

Yeah, you know, it's it's crazy. I bet it was just Facebook. Okay. So like in this case, it was just ads. It wasn't like going in and building building websites or I'm gonna do the SEO campaign. Like you went throughout Facebook ads, which was, I mean, at that point, 2018, that's around when like Facebook began to really pull back on like what we could do with like custom audiences and all those different things. So it's kind of also a weird time to kind of get into the the ad game as well.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

Tell me about it. Yeah. I mean, I I had this, I had all of the success in running Facebook ads for other clients. And here I am starting my own thing. And then what used to be like a eight or ten dollar cost per conversion tripled. What did they call that? The Facebook snap, or was it the clap? I can't even remember what it was. Something like that. Yeah. Felt like an STD, that's for sure. But yeah, and and I quickly realized uh Facebook wasn't gonna be the only thing I could offer if I was gonna be successful and feed my family.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

So yeah, absolutely. It's one of those things like you look back and you're like, in the in the time, you're probably like, holy shit, like what's gonna happen? I, you know, put in this notice, I'm gonna go work back for the radio. Now they don't want me to come work because they're, you know, pivoting and everything. And it's like, okay, like I can either go find a job or I can bet on myself. And I'm sure it was like scary as crap at the time. You know, when I launched my agency back in 2023, like I had just closed down a business six months prior, went and worked a job, was like, this job's not for me. Uh, and I had put in my notice. And then, like, two weeks afterwards, like as I go all in, my wife worked for a company that had a large contract with like the VA and the in the Department of Defense. Well, then all of a sudden I'm seeing on TV all these things with like Congress going after this company and like their implementation of like the healthcare records and this and that. And they had just gone through an acquisition, and I'm like, I don't got a good feeling about this. And then June 15th, she got laid off from her job. And we were like dependent on that income. But it was like, what the hell am I gonna do? It's like I can go back and work a job or I can just double down and just go all in, and that's what I wound up having to do. But like looking back, it's like that's probably one of the best things that, you know, happened to me, and probably one of the best things that could have happened to you was everything that happened in that case.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

Well, I mean, I certainly believe that everything happens for a reason, and you know, you back it up with work, right? Yep. I think the secret secret there is just having somebody who's in your corner and believes in you. My wife, we have she was, she is still and was a stay-at-home mom or a homaker or however you want to do it, which I wouldn't trade my career for hers in a hard freaking rock star, right? But you know what? When your wife has every reason to be concerned and scared and nervous, no income, no safety net, it's me and my computer, and she believes so much in my ability to perform and my ability and my integrity and my character, she believes it, right? Like I'm not even certain about it. But she's like, no, man, I know you. You if anybody can do it, you can do it.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

It's you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:44

Boy, that'll put wind in your sales like nothing else, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:47

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, have gone through that. And as you said, I wouldn't trade what I do for what my wife does for the world. We got two kids under two, and it's like, yeah, like I after you and I record here, uh, she has a few errands to run. So I was like, Yeah, I'll watch the kids for like two hours this afternoon. And I'm like, I gotta have an extra two hours of all this chaos right after he wakes up from a nap. Like that's that's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 7:09

But two under two, you're a raging psychopath, my friend. Good job.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

Yeah. Oh well, and then on top of that, I have a company that's a year and a half old on top of that too. So I I joke and say that I technically have three kids under two, and it's chaos.

SPEAKER_03 7:21

But that's right.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

So let's go back to you know we're we were talking about the uh, you know, it's Nick the Marketer, Facebook ads, you realize like you have to do uh things beyond Facebook ads to really grow this company. But at the time you're probably also, you mentioned just calling anybody up and saying, hey, I'll do this for free. Just let me prove this use case and we can work out like what it looks like, you know, financially for this. Right. So you go through this evolution of you're serving anybody and everybody, you just do Facebook ads, uh, then you start offering more services, but then eventually we get down to niching down into urgent care. Obviously there's a there's a long gap between that, but what got you to that point of like, hey, I can no longer serve anybody and everybody out there, and I have to niche down on just this niche.

SPEAKER_02 8:09

Well, a couple of things happened. Well, one, COVID happened. I think a lot of people, their their entire world changed when obviously when COVID came around. Um what I found in that season is we had people jumping ship like crazy. I'm not talking about employees. They were like, can we please keep our job?

SPEAKER_01 8:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:28

And then we had clients that were like, pause our campaign, cancel, whatever. Um, so that happened in 2020. So we April and 2018 is when we opened the company. And then you had the all of 2018, all of 2019, and then here's 2020. So we're we're right at two years in business in April of 2020. It's right at two years. And we went from having this like significant growth spurt to just a fall off the cliff in 2020. But what happened is during that time, two things happened. One, I found an organization that would help me understand what a niche looked like. And I had a niche self-identify, which was the urgent care space that needed our help. We had an urgent care that was multi-location. And while everybody else was jumping ship, they were like, no, we'll give you more money. Help us do this. We have these micro sites. We have this, we need your help. Like, I need everything on the website. So they kept my team employed um during that season. So it's like it naturally happened. It wasn't that I selected the niche, it's almost like the niche selected me.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

Selected you, yeah.

unknown 9:32

Right.

SPEAKER_02 9:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

You know, I've I've mentioned multiple times in this podcast, you know, and you and I were talking about some like rebrands. We've gone through the podcast, but multiple times have people on here that they're like, yes, COVID sucked. But it was a silver lining for a lot of people, right? Right. Uh and it seems like that's kind of what it was here for you guys with with niching down. And the the organization that you're talking about, I'm assuming it's Josh Nelson and his group was seven bigger agency that really helped you kind of niche down and really grow your your agency after that.

SPEAKER_02 10:02

Yeah, 100%. I I as a matter of fact, it was almost a choose your own adventure during that time. There was this one thing that was a done for you, and I can't remember the dude's name. Obviously, I didn't go that route. It was it was like $20,000 up front and then whatever it was a month, but he was just gonna go in and just do it for you, and then you just collected checks, which to me seemed a little pie in the sky, but I did also didn't know. And I'm like, okay, well, you don't know what you don't know. And then right before I was about to sign up with him, Josh offered this free two-day workshop. And I mean, I remember I I remember on the day of the work, the the first full day, I remember taking my wallet, just like throwing it at the screen, shut up and take my money. This is what I want, this is what I'm looking for. I'd gotten more value out of that half day than I'd gotten in anything else previously in swipe and deploys and execution. I'm like, if this is the unpaid free version, right imagine if you paid for it. So and then it just happened to line up with he's like, no, you have to choose an itch. And I was so tired, Brad, I was so tired of the churn in the company. It just felt like a revolving door business because we had to reinvent a marketing strategy every time we took on a new client because every client looked different. And what would take 90 to 120 days to execute in a traditional agency, we can do in less than 10 days, sometimes less than five days, already up and and going in the urgent care niche. So niches, what do they say? Riches are in the niches?

SPEAKER_01 11:30

Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. And I'm sure even now with AI, like it just exponentially increases the time, like, or I guess decreases the time, but increase your capacity of like how quickly you can execute on a campaign. You mentioned sometimes five days. I imagine AI has a lot to do with that in terms of just getting people onboarding, you know, briefs filled out, data research, keyword analysis, all of those things too.

SPEAKER_02 11:52

Yeah, it's funny that you mentioned that. I I am a big fan of Mannis. And at the time of this recording, at the time of this recording, we're scrambling because we have so much built-in Manaus and it's burning to the ground as we talk. And I I granted, I know they're gonna spin up a new thing. And you know, I have no idea what'll happen there, but we're we're literally my my team is who doesn't even do dev is now all hands on deck redeveloping everything that we have built-in manus into our own systems, which leads me to a point is just like just like a normal employee can quit and leave you.

SPEAKER_01 12:28

Yeah. So can an AI oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was just uh I made a post today about this AI software that we're using rather than Victor, because Victor, you know, costs how much money, right? Yeah. Lindy. Yeah, yeah. And I mean it's for for the cost, it's like fantastic. I'm like, this is great. Uh, but I was testing a bunch of different ones, and one was called Pancake, and I'm testing it, testing it. And then I get an email from the founder that on Monday of next week, Pancake V1 that's integrated in Slack is no longer gonna be there, and they're completely pivoting direction of their business. And I'm like, wow, this is the first time I've ever used an AI tool that is now no longer gonna be in service for the use case that I wanted. And then like later that day or the next day, I saw the news with Manis and everything. And I never went down the route with Manaus, but I was like, oh, I know so many people. Yeah, I mean, it and it's just insane. And now we're seeing all these people that are like, hey, you should probably begin like self-hosting your own agents and everything like that, which is which is true. But then you have a dev dependency aspect of that too, where it's like, who's gonna maintain this and who's gonna help us grow this as we continue to bring more and more agents in-house and everything like that?

SPEAKER_02 13:39

So Brad, we're pioneers, man. Me, you, every agency out here dabbling, there is no blueprint, there is no standard, there is no SOP, there is nobody knows where it's going. Elon Musk maybe, but outside of that, like nobody knows where it's going. So we're we're we're we're pioneers of AI. I mean, I'm not talking about us, me and you specifically. I'm just saying, like, this industry is stress testing AI more than any other industry. I'm talking about digital marketing. We're stress testing it more than any other industry. And this will be the kind of stuff that like decades from now, they'll look back and say, what those guys did, what those girls did, what those businesses did laid the foundation of where it went. And we're in here just figuring it out. It's wild. It's wild. It's so cool though.

SPEAKER_01 14:28

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. So, you know, uh, you know, one of the things I do with AI is I use a lot for like my personal branding and content. You you have now your your your agency, like the patient care marketing pros. We had Nick the Marketer. Is Nick the Marketer around as an agency anymore? Is that more just like your personal brand now? What what has kind of happened with that?

SPEAKER_02 14:52

So it's evolving. We just launched uh our new website on Monday, believe it or not. Okay. For Nick the Marketer. And what it's becoming is a hub for our other brands. So Patient Care Marketing Pros is one of our brands. Obviously, it's our product, it drives all the revenue of the company. Um, but walk-ins welcome is our podcast. It's just for urgent cares and it's just urgent care marketing and conversations. Also, I I am working on postcards with Preston. So uh what you may not know about me, Brad, is I have a special needs son. And so he is 16. And one of the things that we want to do, this look I can't go without saying I'm a pilot, right? So that had to come in at some point, but there's a point to saying that, right? So so while I'm out visiting our urgent care clients and and while I'm out interviewing people, I'm I'm taking him with me and we're just picking up a postcard from his perspective. So I'm videoing him and we're creating postcards from Preston, which is just simply wherever we go, get a physical postcard of the experience and let him talk about the flight, the place, and everything. And we're creating a YouTube channel called Postcards for Preston. So anyway, it's become Nick the Marketer has become a hub for the things that we're doing rather than Nick the Marketer. I'm also an agency coach. I mean, I so so Nick the Coach. I've written, I just finished my second book that that we're working on getting to print and everything. So Nick the author. So Nick the Marketer has just become this hub of all the things that we're doing.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And and I I had a I had a feeling that Nick the Marketer was kind of shifting more towards that personal brand, right? Like and you think of, and one of the things I always tell people is I've built Talent Fuse completely off my my personal brand. Like we're about to kick on ads. We've not ran ads throughout the company. You know, you not, you and I have talked in the past about how ads have helped you all grow. But it's one of those things, like eventually, like who knows, patient care marketing pros could sell, right? And you could sell the agency. And oftentimes we assign our identity as entrepreneurs to our business, right? And so I believe like personal brand, Nick the Marketer in this case, can become or is your identity. And then you have all these brands as you've kind of talked about under it. Um I do want to talk about next was talking about your podcast. I don't want to jump to that, but I do want to just get given the fact of your the YouTube channel you're launching for your son and everything like that. I think that's awesome. Is that like going to turn into some sort of like nonprofit? Are people going to be able to have, you know, postcards mailed to them? What's the the actual vision for that?

SPEAKER_02 17:22

Yeah. So ultimately, it's not even about me, right? The the I tend to be the pilot and taking him places, but really it's all about viewing where we're going through his eyes and how he sees the world. And Preston has autism. It's functioning enough to where he can take care of his body and feed and and he's he's a smart in his own way. Um, but he's not functioning enough that I ever think he will live on his own, although that is still our goal, if that makes sense. Like we would love for him to develop in such a way that he'll live on his own. But I would like for that to be a place where one, he can express his true self, and two, um, if it can get enough of a following or enough of a place where I don't know, maybe Garmin or Poor Flight or some of those companies, because I'm a pilot, want to sponsor it, then what a unique opportunity for him to earn an income independent of government assistance and all that kind of stuff. Like, because that's not what we we want him to every human being, in my opinion, while I say that, at least 50% of the human beings, I'll say it that way, so we don't go down a political route. At least 50% of the human beings want to provide some kind of value to society.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:34

Okay. So that being said, he is no different. He wants to add value. And I think that's a way that he could add value without physically having a W-2 employment job that is going to treat him like a second-class citizen.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

Yeah, absolutely. Well, as as you launch that, and you know, if there's other avenues down the road that you're like, hey, I want to get this out there, I'm more than happy to do what I can to help promote and support that and get kind of his vision of what he sees through his eyes out there. Definitely would would love to help out with that. So let's see. Yeah, absolutely. Let's let's kind of pivot into the the the podcast. So you host Walken Walkins welcomes, you know, 200 plus episodes for urgent care operators you guys have. You know, we talked earlier in the podcast, you know, Josh Nelson and his seven-figure agency, and they talk like, you know, one niche, one offer, and then one like channel of acquisition as well. I know just from conversation, you guys have the podcast, you have Facebook ads, you have YouTube channel, uh, you know, all those different things. How much of your growth do you credit to becoming like this voice in your niche? And what would you tell an agency owner about? You know, whether it's beginning their own podcasts like walking welcomes, doing a YouTube channel, launching ads, like what direction would those uh would you recommend those agency owners go?

SPEAKER_02 19:53

So I think all of the channels are relevant when when done with a end goal. Okay. So what we are trying to do through the channels is create credibility and expertise so that when people encounter us, they have a library of expertise that they can fall back on to say, hey, these guys probably know what they're doing. All right. We call it uh internally, we call it manufacturing fame. That's the best way to to say it. We're manufacturing fame, not because we want to be famous, but there's the old ad it's not what you know, but who you know.

SPEAKER_03 20:30

Right.

SPEAKER_02 20:31

Well, I disagree. It's not who you know, it's who knows you. Right. So I believe the more people who know who we are, and you couple that with the credibility that all of these platforms allow us to pour into, that is the secret ingredient to being able to grow a company. And it is not quick, it's not fast, it it's not it is a slow, arduous burn. But there you go. Uh I I if so if I were gonna tell somebody to start somewhere, I think it is it it was your original question. Start on the platform that you feel most comfortable being consistent with. That consistency is is key though. Like diligence is excellence in the ordinary over time, right? So any platform that you can be diligent with, that's where you want to start. If it's a podcast, great. If it's YouTube, start with YouTube Shorts, but yeah, YouTube.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

Right. Yeah, absolutely. You know, and I would 100% agree, like with you know, me and my personal brand, like Facebook is what I was comfortable with. So like I went all on Facebook, right? And then we did the podcast, and then we did, you know, all these things. Uh, do you feel in terms of like a lot of agencies go out there and like you you hear this like, hey, just go out and run ads, right? And like the ads are gonna solve all your problems. Obviously, that's not the case. Ads don't solve all your problems, but do you feel like from the success that you all have had on running ads for your agency, do you feel like having this omnipresence elsewhere in terms of the podcast, YouTube, like Everything you've done up until ads to build that up. Do you think that's helped with your conversions? And like you you mentioned manufacturing fame. Have you think do you think that's helped you manufacture fame when it comes to ads?

SPEAKER_02 22:10

Yep. So a couple of questions that were in there. I'll try and do it in the best way I can. First of all, Facebook ads before we had built the omnipresence through the channels, complete disaster. I burned thousands and thousands of dollars with no results. Stop the ads, built for years, by the way, not weeks or months, but years of data and podcasts and webinars and showing up at live events and shaking hands and you know knuckle bumps. Then, I guess it was May of last year, so 2025, we turn on our ads and all of a sudden they're wildly successful. But the people that are signing up had already encountered us in four or five or six different channels. And they're telling us this. Hey, man, we watch your podcast all the time. And I'm like, well, why didn't you come from the podcast? Well, because this is where I found you too. Like on the podcast, you didn't tell me to sign up, but here on Facebook, you told me to sign up. So that's what I did. I just did whatever you told me to do.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

Yeah. Which is wild. But it's it's one of those things like those who are building those channels now, whether it's the podcast, whether it's YouTube, like you can also do things to like get yourself ready to run ads, right? For retargeting everything like that. So like Nick, like whenever you booked this link, right? It had like it was my website name slash podcast booking or whatever the URL was, right? It actually has that redirect has a Facebook pixel tied to it, right? And so then the idea is that once we launch ads, like there's the retargeting mechanism and everything like that. And so those who have the podcast have the YouTube channel, like if you have on your YouTube like a call to action to some sort of like free audit or free, you know, PDF or whatever it is, like make sure that you have all of like the and we're agency owners, right? You think it's like, yeah, duh, we should have tracking set up, but make sure you have all those things set up. So that way, then when you get to the point of kicking on ads for your agency, like you already have some data in a way against that pixel that can then be used for retargeting to your point. Like then people were like, hey, well, you didn't ask me to sign up after the podcast or off the the uh YouTube free guide or whatever, and you ran an ad and I did type thing.

SPEAKER_02 24:17

So Yeah, we must have done a hundred episodes before we ever told anybody, hey, register for something. Right. We just didn't know. Like, you know, uh Brad, I'm really good at just kind of doing what I'm told. So when Josh or or you know Alex Rmosy or, you know, my pastor, you know, you name it, I'm just gonna do what you told me to do because you said it's gonna work. So if it doesn't work, it's your fault.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

Yeah, absolutely right.

SPEAKER_02 24:41

But nobody, nobody up at nobody up until that point has said, hey, you should probably pixel something or you should probably put a call to action on there. I was like, well, once you told me, I did it. Well, we just thought it was obvious. I'm like, I just did what you said. I didn't do any extra.

SPEAKER_01 24:55

Yeah, right. Absolutely. Well, so on the on the notion of like people like you know, telling you what you should do, right? And you just do it, or you just let them execute. Oftentimes as as leaders, we have our team that like the team in a way, like I've taken the mindset, like my team tells me in a way what to do, right? Like I have I have the vision, but my team's the one that's executing. They're the ones that's in the trenches and everything like that. So on the notion of team, you've you've grown somewhere to, I think, what, between like 16 to 50 people or so is kind of where we had in our forum on the drop down there. But like what broke for you guys culturally at each stage? And what did you have to change about your own leadership to fix it as you began to evolve?

SPEAKER_02 25:41

So what broke culturally at each stage? That's an interesting question. I don't think I've ever thought about before. So, well, the first thing that broke is when we first started to hire because I was overwhelmed. The problem is, is I just knew that I needed help, but I didn't identify what the help was. So culturally, I brought on a high performer and gave zero direction. Okay. Guess what? Gone. They're gone, right? So it took me getting a coach to point me in the right direction and ask me the right questions to understand what I actually needed to hire for. And once I did that and had some direction, then I could start hiring. So the first culture break was hiring without knowing what I was hiring for. And some people think they do. They think they got, I'm hiring a Google Ads manager, or I'm hiring a an SEO, or I'm hiring a content creator, whatever. They think they know what they need, but that's not actually what they need. What they needed was somebody that was gonna go sell because they really like doing those things, right? Or, you know, you name it. So that was the first cultural break.

SPEAKER_03 26:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:50

What did I have to do to level up my leadership? Well, consume leadership books. Listen to people that are where you are and seek out coaches and mentors and actually do what they tell you to do. That's that I think is the secret ingredient, is everybody wants a mentor, but they don't they don't do what they're told. I think that's been the biggest, one of the biggest secrets to success is just okay, you well, you said this is my next step. You see something I don't see, I'm not gonna pretend like I know everything, and I'm just gonna go execute the strategy that we talked about. Even when I'm when I'm talking to the people that I coach that are agency owners now, my first comment to them is this will only work if you execute on the things that we mutually agree that you need to execute on. Right. So if you come back to me in 90 days and you haven't done anything that we talked about, we're wasting both of our times.

unknown 27:46

Right.

SPEAKER_02 27:47

Because my answer will just be do the things that we already talked about. I'll see you next week.

SPEAKER_03 27:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:51

You know? Yeah. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:54

Did that help? Yeah. Is that what you were looking for? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And it's, you know, it's one of those things like you we go through these phases where it's like that the team that got you here won't get you there, right? We were both just at a, you know, the seven figure agency event in July, and they had this whole session on like A players versus B players and C players, right? And oftentimes you have to evolve your thinking. And uh, you know, during that session, my director of operations is joining that, you know, via Zoom. And like we were having some of these conversations of A players versus B players, and she's messaged me. She's like, this is this is the answer that that that we needed, right? Like I needed something else to convince her like to go out and do this. And then we get back, and then like, you know, a couple of days go by, she's like, eh, I'm having second thoughts, blah, blah, blah. You kind of get those like post-conference blues, right? And I'm like, no, like you, we just have to execute and do this, right? So I'm kind of, as you're talking about thinking of that, like oftentimes people just go and get this advice, right? They go and get, you know, how many people in the room at, you know, when we were there at some bigger agency are actually going to execute the things that were talked about that week and not just execute it for a week or two, execute it for weeks and months afterwards to really see those results. And that's not just in terms of like the content generation or whatever you need to do to grow your agency, but how you can grow as a a leader in in your in your organization as well.

SPEAKER_02 29:18

No, you're you're spot on. You're spot on. It's funny, just taking that advice. I was talking to uh a a good friend of mine who is further along in his marriage than me. And we were we were just talking through, first of all, my wife and I have an amazing marriage. So I don't want to give any like negativity there. Um, but there was this one area I want to prove improve on. Like I want her to feel like I'm pursuing her better. And he's like, Well, why don't you buy her flowers outside of Valentine's Day or Mother's Day? It's like that's a really good idea. Talked to him in in, I want to say I talked to him about 30 days later. And I I brought up the same thing. He goes, Well, did you buy her flowers? I was like, No, I didn't. He goes, Well, why don't you start with that? Like, we already talked about it, right? So I was like, okay, all right, that's my bad. So it was just funny, is uh all the knowledge in the world. Uh, you know, they say knowledge is power, totally wrong. Applied knowledge is power. If you don't apply it, it's completely worthless.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

Yeah, absolutely. I'll I'll just quickly say on the the flowers aspect, that was something that somebody told me long ago, right? And as you said, like I'm always listening to people who are further along than me. And so like oftentimes like I tell my wife, don't expect flowers on Valentine's Day or whatever. Like, I'm gonna do it when I feel it's necessary. But now my son will be two in November. Like I think it was just a couple weeks ago. Like I we I I had him for the afternoon, and we went inside uh Dearburg's or whatever it is out here, and uh we just went and grabbed flowers for him for for my wife. But I had him pick the flowers, right? And then like he's like walking through holding the flowers and they're as tall as him and everything. And everybody's like asking him, like, what did uh dad do wrong? Is it birthday? Is it you know anniversary? And I'm like, no, just just because. And so it's crazy how many people just do, you know, that simple action just because it's a holiday or whatever it may be. So that's right. On the on the aspect of teams and changing as leaders and culture and everything like that, one of the things that I think is important here is, you know, retention, both on the client side, but also for internal team members, can kind of be like a silent killer in a way for agencies. What do you guys do internally that keeps your people from leaving your agency for the next, you know, shiny offer, the next company that's out there?

SPEAKER_02 31:39

Right. Really good question. So, well, first of all, let me lay out our core values. All right, because I think if you know our core values, then you'll understand how we're able to retain people, right? So our first core value is culture trumps everything. And culture is what happens when the leader leaves the room, right? So what is it? Well, we show up. Our clients know that we care and that we're delivering. We care about each other and we sew into that through workplace uh languages of appreciation at the workplace. Uh the six working geniuses, Pat Lincioni, disc profiles. It's super, I need simple. So I can't do like the ideograms and all that kind of stuff. Like I need simple disk. That's four. I can handle that, right? Like that's me. But so I'm pouring in and I'm talking to them at the level, I'm talking to them the way they need to be talked to. I'm appreciating them the way they need to be appreciated, and I'm recognizing where their geniuses are and not trying to make them something they're not. So I'm letting them be who they are. That's huge in an environment that's nurtured by everybody. Win-win partnerships. We're going to talk internally because it's just as internal as it is external, right? So is it a win for you, the employee? Is it a win for me? The employer is a win for our clients, right? So if that all matches up, we're in good shape. You probably like what you're doing here. Exceptional client experience. If we're delivering an exceptional client experience, our team feels value in that. Here's what I mean by that. If our clients are winning, there is a pride in your work that comes along with that. That's a retention like multiplier. Because how many people have been in an agency or even a workplace where you're selling something or you're doing something or you're trying to build something and it's just not working for the clients and it's just trash? At some point, you're a great example. Is my first sales job was selling timeshare. Okay. Before you judge me, I got out of it very, very quickly. But the minute I stopped believing in the product, I could no longer sell it and I had to go get another job. I lasted for about six months. Not because I couldn't sell, I sold a lot of timeshare. I just no longer believed in it because what my clients that I had sold were saying to me. Anyway, all that to come back, they lost me at that job, a good closer, a good salesperson, because they weren't delivering on their promises. Right. And then finally embrace ownership. That's our last core value. If you allow your team to own their work and to like embrace that they did it, they built it, it's their idea, they're delivering it. Again, that ownership. So those are our core values, but that's also our retention model.

SPEAKER_01 34:17

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You know, and it's it's one of those things like I've been through like what you're talking about, where it's like you just didn't believe in the product anymore. I think it also is for agency owners too, right? If you don't believe in your own delivery engine, uh then it can be tough to go out and sell and try to grow your agency if you don't believe in the quality of results you have and everything like that. And so uh, yes, that correlates with team members, right? But also correlates with us as agency owners as well as as as we're growing. One of the things as we wrap up here, I wanted to quickly touch on uh is you know, some of your team is, you know, uh, you know, they're in in Alabama remote. You now have, I believe, some team members that are global as well. I imagine you guys didn't begin with a global team, right? And so what did that shift uh look like for you from like oftentimes it's like a shift in in beliefs of like, hey, my team has to be, and I imagine the pandemic a little bit had to do with this, but my team has to be 100%, you know, here in person to now our team is remote, to now we have this team that's in different time zones, different cultures, all that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 35:24

Right. Yeah, I I I was under the well, first of all, we're we're all an island of misfit toys business owners, I mean. And typically a person will start a company because of everything they hated about the jobs they had previously. And they'll build something special to them that was all the things they wanted out of a career. And I I am guilty of doing that. All right. Well, is is how we started the company and how we hired, and it was local and we want to impact our local compute community. What we started finding out is our loyalty wasn't matched. Okay. Which means you said something earlier. First of all, I've had to grow in leadership, I've had to grow in our core values and all these kind of things. That's separate. But, you know, if somebody got a $10,000 raise somewhere else, culture is only going to carry you so much when the paycheck is way too shiny. They're like, I maybe not as good a culture, but I've I would like to make some more money, right? Yeah. And that's just a reality, right? Well, what happened was the more I started seeing turnover and the more I had to fill roles, the more open I was to just people who could deliver the work. Okay. And I ran into companies like Go Staffy and Rep Stack, two amazing companies, in my personal opinion. I know not everybody shares every opinion, but I love them. And they started bringing people, and we we say treated, we still do. Like they're not a contractor to us. They are part of our team. They are part of our team and they feel it. And there's such little amount of turnover there, less turnover, bigger impact. And what I mean by that is a dollar to them is way different to a dollar to somebody here down the road. So I'm making a bigger impact. They are stoked to be a part of the company, and they're delivering exceptional work. Well, they're checking all my boxes. So I had to rechange, uh, rechange. I had to, I had to rethink my strategy of do I really care about this or do I care about the real impact on a human life that I'm making and the clients that we're going after? So that was a shift in my mind. And now we're in crisis is the wrong word. Crisis is the wrong word. At the beginning of the summer, I no longer required our hybrid local team to come into the office. And essentially they stopped coming. Right. And so we're having to re-identify. I have this office, just like you talked about. I've got this big office that has two or three, two or three people in it at any given time where it used to be completely packed. And me being a physical touch person plus a quality time person, those are my two languages of appreciation. Well, those are starving. But you know what? My team is thriving. And so as a leader, I'm gonna set aside my needs for the greater needs of the team, and I'm a suck it up buttercup. I don't have to like it. It's just got to work for everybody. It doesn't just have to work for me.

SPEAKER_01 38:14

Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's it's one of those things. You mentioned impact, and I'll quickly touch on this. Like my wife and I just got back from a vacation in Punta Cana, and I was talking with one of our bartenders, and he's like, Yeah, I work, he works 12 hour days, and he gets to do 12 on, three off, or 24 on, six off. And I was got back, was talking to my team, and I was like, and we just brought on a new team member who uh she's in the Philippines, mother, her daughter's 11. And uh, and I was like, hey, like I just got back from this trip. I I know you're new here, like we're just, you know, we're talking everything like that. And I'm like, you know, I just want to make sure I have two kids. Like, is you working overnight? Like, is that gonna be okay? She's like, I actually get better sleep and I I'm more present with my family by working overnight because I don't have to travel two hours to my job that I have to use to work. I don't have to work, you know, 10 days in a row to only get a day off type thing. And it's things that hit here in America, we're not used to that, that type of like working environment, right? Uh and so, yes, you can make a huge impact just in terms of the monetary aspect, but also quality of life too. Oftentimes the the remote opportunity that we give them is far better than what they could get in the country that that they're in, whether you know it's the Philippines, Columbia, El Salvador, or wherever it's at in that case.

SPEAKER_02 39:35

So I think the biggest way to be able to make remote work is you have to have a high level of trust. And in order for you to have a high level of trust, this takes us back to the things in leadership and culture where you have to have guardrails. Our guardrails are our core values. And so long as we're keeping the pulse on our guardrails, trust can be built or broken, by the way. Trust can be built or broken that way. And that is a, I am in the throes of becoming a better leader during this time. I'm not there today. I'm working on it, right? I still struggle from time to time on this transition that we're going through. It's only a couple months now over the summer. I'll let you know on the other side, Brad, how that goes. I think we're going to be okay though.

SPEAKER_01 40:18

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Nick, thanks again for hopping on. That's a wrap on today's episode. Uh, this episode helped you. Please share it with another age zoner who's trying to do it all alone and subscribe so you don't miss the next one. But until next time, this is the agency advantage.