Robert Craven interviews Jason Swenk

VIDEO: 47mins

AUTHOR: Robert Craven and Jason Swenk

In this month’s GYDA Member Hub interview, Robert interview Jason Swenk. Jason is an ex-digital agency owner who now run’s a unique consultancy helping marketing agency owners grow their agencies faster.

Jason has literally written the book for growing an agency from nothing to an eight figure agency. He is one of the most sought out advisors to agencies in the World, by showing them an 8 system framework that worked for growing his agency, working with brands like AT&T, Hitachi, Lotus Cars, and eventually lead to selling his agency.

Jason is now the agency advisor and mentor that guides marketing agencies through a proven framework for growing their agency faster.

They discuss:

• Characteristics of agencies struggling or thriving

• Growing a successful agency

• Living the lifestyle – is it possible when you’re growing an agency?

• The five roles of an agency owner

• Snake oil salesmen

• Self-sabotaging – what do you want, what sort of agency do you want to run?

• Growing an agency – does the reality live up to the dream

• Seth Godin’s favourite agency

• Jason’s framework for growing an agency

• Differentiating your agency – how to position yourself

• Business development and sales

• Price discounts – Jason’s opinion

• Jason’s golden nugget advice for agency owners

Transcription:

Robert Craven  00:45

And hello, and welcome to the guider initiative podcast. And today, it is my eminent pleasure to have all the way from the United States, the wonderful Jason Swenk, Jason kind of needs no introduction. If he does need introduction to you, then it's a bit like, oh, that's odd. So where have you been all the time? So Jason does what I do, but he does over there, and I do over here, and we've been having some absolutely amazing conversations the last few weeks. Hello, Jason. 

Jason Swenk  01:16

Hey, Robert. Thanks for having me on the show.

Robert Craven  01:18

Just so so for the one or two people who may not know the thing that is Jason Swank. Just give us a quick sort of couple of sentence introduction to who you are.

Jason Swenk  01:29

There's probably a lot more than one or two. But you know, I work for Arthur Andersen right out of school, and I was an accidental agency owner. I designed a website, make it fun, all my friends that look like Justin Timberlake. And I created a fake, bad fake website called in shit, it got popular. Someone asked me to design a website, and I charged him 500 bucks over and over and over and over again. And so I was an accidental agency owner, and did that for 12 years, grew it up to an eight figure agency and sold it. And then like any entrepreneur, we thought, we're going to retire, got bored, got depressed, had to do something credit an iPhone app that sucked. Old competitors reached out were like, how do you do this? So I was like, let me create a resource I wish I had when I was running my agency. And that's what I do know. That's quick enough?

Robert Craven  02:22

That's absolutely great. So this is being recorded. Mid mid May 2020. lock downs are vaguely being released or not being released. It's a night. I mean, it's a night, it's a nightmare out there. I mean, what's what, what are you seeing with the agencies you work with? What are you seeing? How are you seeing them respond to what's going on?

Jason Swenk  02:51

Well, the ones that are not tone deaf, are doing really well, right. And I would say about 75% of agencies are doing even better than when it started three months ago. Because a lot of businesses, conferences, hospitality restaurants, they can't reach their audience. And so with digital marketing and the digital agencies, they can fill that gap in. And so some of the biggest challenges right now for agencies are finding the right people and like, like picking the right people, because a lot of people are unfortunately getting laid off. And then another 25% that were actually going after, you know, the markets that were closed, or they may have just been riding the coattails of an amazing market for a couple years, they're suffering. And they really need to get that clarity of what they want to create who they want to go after. And then they can really kind of change the course.

Robert Craven  03:49

So let's just divide those out into two. I mean, I agree entirely. There's people who are kind of organised and sorted, kind of, even if they didn't see it coming, they move very, very quickly. And there's a whole bunch of saying, well, when it's back to normal one, well, it's back to like it was last year. So can we separate out the behaviour of the two? Is it possible to say the ones who are struggling? Have this sort of characteristic, the one who is doing well or has this sort of characteristic? And if so, what do you reckon the differences are?

Jason Swenk  04:29

Yeah, so the reason why I also told you my origin story in the very beginning, remember I said I was an accidental agency owner, and so many people that are that they take a long time to get clarity for where they actually want to go, and they're just reacting to the market. And when you react to the market, well, you're gonna go with the market, right? So when the markets write really good, you're probably going to be doing well. But when it goes bad, you're going to see struggle because you're, you don't know what to focus on. And so the agencies that are doing really well, they had complete focus, complete clarity. And they knew how to adjust very quickly. Right. So that was the biggest difference. And it took me like, when I created my agency, it probably took me six years to figure out the clarity. I was just reacting. I was like, oh, cool, like $500, $1000, $10,000 websites cool. And then when I got clarity, I was like, I could charge $100,000 engagements, I could get million dollar contracts.

Robert Craven  05:35

Hang on a second, just because you've just done this thing that people often do when they go. So we were really, really poor. And then five years later, we were really, really successful. And you've kind of missed out, you've missed out the bits in the middle and the bits that the audience won are, are that, okay? It's alright for you to just say that. Jason? Yeah. Sold, you sold your agency, but what do I need to do? So they gain clarity. Okay, so how do you mean, how do you reckon they do that is a book that says 10 ways to 10 ways to get clarity.

Jason Swenk  06:12

It's really pretty easy. But it takes a long time to do, I'll tell you a quick exercise that happened to me. So about six or seven years in, we were a multimillion dollar agency, and I hated it. Literally, I wanted to quit. And my wife was feeling the same thing she told me to quit and take a job, which is the ultimate failure, right? Like, you're like, Oh, my God. And so I went to go interview with a small company called NASCAR, for the CMO, and they asked me: What do you want to do every day? And what don't you never want to do again? And I thought about it, I couldn't answer it there. Right. So I went home, and I got a sheet of paper, and I started writing it out. And what I did is I drew a circle on a sheet of paper about the size of my fist. And I started with thinking, what is the stuff I never want to do ever again, and writing out on the outside of that circle. And then once I did that for a couple hours, then I thought about, well, what's left? What do I love doing right? Because at the end of the day, people don't care about growing their agency, they want to create freedom in their agency to pick and choose to do what they want to do be able to live the lifestyle that they want. That's the ultimate goal that they want. It's not to sell it and have tons of money, it's the freedom. Because if you sell it, you have to work for someone else for a little while. You could go crazy. And so if you do this with this sheet of paper, now it takes some time to figure all this out. But once you do it, then you can say on everything outside that circle, you were like, can I say no to it? Can I delegate? Can I set up a system for it? Can I fire these clients completely. 

Robert Craven  07:56

What happens, Jason because what happens? Because what happens? Do you do that? Cool, fantastic. But if you're a five or 10 person agency, who's going to do it, and when is it going to happen? So all that's all the all the all the good stuff, you know, and you and I've seen it with clients, you know, they they write a list of 50 things they're going to do and you get to the end of the session, you say, what's, what's the one the one thing you're gonna do? And it's a no, no, no, no, no, no, I've got, I've got this list of 50 things I'm going to do. And you and I know that they're not going to do it. And even if they do that, the next time they meet whatever it is, or whatever book, whatever it is, they're gonna write 50 things I need to do. And that's really, yeah, bonkers, you know, so what you need to come away from a meeting or a consultancy session with just the one thing you're going to do. So my, my, my challenge or my pushback, is, in some senses, I'm all I'm doing. So if I was a client of Robert Craven, and I was told to do that. It sounds fine. It sounds great. But revamping the website, I'm gonna have to do that at the weekend. Thinking about changing the proposition on the weekend, finding a VA, I'm gonna have to do that at the weekend. Because I've got clients and I've got one or two staff I don't know how I got the staff but and since I've got staff everything's got I'm not making any money and and they're not doing the right things and I'm not doing any work and they're in this they're like rats trapped not able to get out of it. So do they think they just have to get so low that they go it's kind of shit or bust to be blunt?

Jason Swenk  09:43

Well, what you're doing is you have to figure out the stuff you need to get rid of so you know who to hire, how to delegate. And the way you can prioritise, which, you know, a lot of people get overwhelmed. And I'm not talking about tactics. Here. I'm talking about where do you want to grow within the age and see right. And I think this was Stephen Covey, I can't remember thinking about you having two jars. And most of the time, when you have a tonne of stuff to do, you're going to do the little stuff first. Yeah. So you're going to put all these little pebbles into this mason jar, and it's going to fill it up about 75% of the way. And then the big item that had the biggest impact won't fit in the mason jar. Now, if you take that big item, first, put it in the other mason jar first, then the pebbles are going to surround it, meaning you're going to be able to do it. So I always when I was doing this, I realised the five roles I've needed to have or to be the CEO rather than the owner than here they are. Set the vision for the agency and communicate it to everyone in the organisation all the time. If you do this, then you're not going to be the tollbooth owner, where everything flows through you, right, think of a tollbooth, you need to open up lanes. But the reason why everybody's coming to you is because they don't know how to make a decision. So you have to set the vision, where are we going? Right? And that's why that sheet of paper is so important. And then once you communicate that, now they can go and do stuff like I. An analogy would be, let's say: We're in New York harbour, and we want to come to London, we want to come see Robert, right. And I have my whole team with me, but I don't tell them where we're going. They don't know. Or I tell them we're gonna go see Robert, but they don't know who Robert is. They don't know where we're going. And I say anytime the boat changes course, wake me up, I'll fix it. So every damn minute, I have to get up, change the damn course. And then I go back to sleep like it's just a nightmare. But if I just told them where I was going, then I gave them the power to make a decision about what's best for the agency, rather than what's best for them. That's the first rule. The second role is to coach and mentor your leadership team. Not your whole team, your leadership team, right? You can't coach everyone. And your whole job is to help them. Do better in life, do better in the business, give them the tools that they need all that the third, assist sales, don't do all of sales, you may do all of sales right now, which is fine. But in order to grow, if you want to grow, like if you're listening, this podcast you want to grow. This is not a lifestyle business you want to grow. You have to assist sales, add colour. Fourth, understand the financials. I was horrible in math. My math teacher always said, it's not like you're going to carry around a calculator in your pocket. Well, I want to, right, I have an iPhone, right? And then the fifth be the face of the organisation. And most people worry about that. And they go, Well, everything's gonna come to me then if I'm the face. Everybody wants to work with me, the greatest example is Gary Vaynerchuk. Do you think he works on people's deals? No.

Robert Craven  12:57

Cool. So do you think that there's, there's? I mean, do you think that there are people who just kind of get it, you know, and then there are people who get to a squeeze point. And, their wife literally says: You need to make some decisions, or their husband or their partner says, You need to make some decisions. Because look, because my thing is always you know, you're setting up in business. It's like this dreadful dream that's been sold about entrepreneurship, several dreadful dreams. I blame the Americans, for several of them.

Jason Swenk  13:34

Were always to blame for every they're always to blame each country,

Robert Craven  13:37

Under your butt. But there's, there's this dream that I'm going to run this business and it's going to be fantastic. I'll be an entrepreneur, not that I understand what that means. I'll be an entrepreneur. I was wondering idea. And what people don't realise is what they actually do is they're actually putting nails in their coffin, because from now on, they're dependent on staff. They're dependent on customers, they're dependent on suppliers. They're dependent on bankers. They're dependent on the economy. They're dependent on the city laws, and what they thought was going to give them freedom. Yeah, has actually done the very, very reverse. My first business was a restaurant. Yeah. And I thought freedom, freedom. I can't wait for Christmas and New Year. Yeah, the bookings were full on New Year's Eve, we had like 50 people already coming in with big tickets. And where are the staff? You know, they've all gone double time, I'll pay you triple time. No, no, I'd rather be at home with the family. So I ended up, you know, working because if it wasn't a system, because it wasn't a process, I couldn't understand how to make it happen, because we hadn't communicated. I mean, all that stuff, I understand. But I do think that the independent agent agency owner when they start off I mean, it's almost unfair because there isn't a player. Well, there are actually two playbooks. But there isn't a player book, you know that they land on their lap one. Secondly, there's a bunch of playbooks, which they look up on, on Facebook that say become richer than your wildest dreams with these five steps. Just give me $1,000, $500 da, da, da. And you and I have talked about these snake oil sales people who are just preying on the needy offering no benefit and just numb anyhow, we won't talk about them. They know who they are. And it's, it's and most agency owners go, Oh, I'm really good at making websites, I need some help pulling some mates, oh, this, I've got five people, oh, we need an office. And then a colleague client of ours, Paul, Paul sums that up really, really well, he suddenly realised that he'd been running an agency for 10 years, he had 18 people he was I think 40. And he had a choice, he was either going to grow an agency and turn it into something or he was gonna just plod along, as per normal, and literally making that decision and everything, everything almost to the letter that you're saying. Setting the course being clear, being clear about the trajectory, getting the right people on board, understanding his role working on not in being an think of himself as an investor and director. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Doom, boom, boom, boom, and he went from 18 to 40, 80 to 100 people to profitability got bigger, his position in the market value, suddenly he's being invited to come in. And it's almost like a case study. In intent, but not everyone can do that. You know, so I think some people are dead. I mean, and I, I'm not judgmental. If you're really happy doing WordPress sites, and you got three or four mates helping you do it, and you get your holidays, and you get to do mountain biking, blah, blah. That's fantastic. But don't do that and expect to sell the business for 10 million.

Jason Swenk  17:25

Yeah, you know, I had a mastermind member, call me this week. And he goes, Jason, I need to talk to you, right? I'm like, Sure, man, let's let's chat. And he goes, everything is going extremely well. Like I can't get it. Like, it's everything's going amazing. And he was like trying to self sabotage. He goes, I don't know, I'm like, Look, you've put 10 years into this, you deserve this. Right? Like, and we try to self sabotage ourselves. And, and I think to have what you were saying, I think we need to all be self aware of what we're good at, and where we need to go. Right? The ultimate goal is not to sell for a lot of people. And that's perfectly fine. Ultimate goal is not to grow a big agency, that's fine. But I think a lot of times when I talk to people, they go, I don't want to grow big agency. Well, the thing I can tell that there's fear there because of the unknown, the uncertainty. And I'm like, Well, what do you want? Let's start with you. Let's gain that clarity of where you want to go. Let's develop a plan. Right? And let's follow this. And let's figure out like the five roles I described. That's not for everybody. Some people don't like, I'm a visionary. I like coming up with ideas, executing I'm okay on right, even though I can execute. But a lot of people struggle with that. So if you're really good at sales, if you're really good at operations, like you just got to, you got to work on your strengths, not on your weaknesses, I think a lot of people struggle with that. And like a case in point. Walmart over here is like a data, volume, business, but they're known for like crappy service, right, and low prices, and their strength is low prices. So if they wanted to fix their weakness, which is like barely paying their people crappy experience, where they would have to pay a more, which then would affect their strength. And so if we're self aware of what we're good at what we're bad at hire for what you're bad at. Once you have that clarity of where you want to go, and then you can get there and look like what you're saying is a lot of people they think we're going to have freedom creating a business, but I see it in different stages, right? Think about it, Robert, when you started your business, how exciting was it in the very beginning, like you were at this fun stage, right? Like, you're like tastic. I'm selling stuff, I'm making money. And then you go, Well, let me create another restaurant or, you know, in my part, you know, let me let me bring on another client, and then it gets a little bit more complex. And then I'm like, Well, if I have More Clients, I need to get more employees. And then you get more employees. But then you need complexity and you're going through what someone calls I can't remember who likes Whitewater. Right, and everybody goes through Whitewater. And then you can make a decision. Do I go back to the fun stage, and you and you know, you're in Whitewater when you say, or your clients say to you, Robert, and you're like, I just wish I could go back to it when it was fun. And they have a decision to make, they can go back to the fun stage, which is totally fine. You're more like a freelancer and, and it's not a scalable business, which is fine, right? That's fine for people. Or you could say I want to push through where I have more of a predictable model for scaling. And that's the telltale sign that you need to create systems, the right systems in place in order to assist your team and to get the right team. So then you can go on to wherever you want. Because, look, when I ran, when we were at 100 people, it was a lot less complex, or complex and easier for me than it was when we were 20 people.

Robert Craven  21:09

That's only because you got it sorted out that you had a tape report than they did. They did their thing. And I think that there's so yeah, I've been working with an agency owner with 24 people and she phoned me up and said, I've made a decision. I went oh, great. What's that? She said, I've sat them all. And I'm going to work on my own because I can earn 100,000 pounds on my own and I can earn 120,000 pounds, running 24 people and to be honest, I can choose my clients and do what I want to do. So I'm sacking all of them today. It's okay, so I totally get that. I guess my grumble is that so many people have been sold to grow the business you'll be you'll be you'll be richer and you'll be happier dream. And we've talked about this before the actual number of people who sell 100 person agency to Dentsu or essential or whatever it is, is one in one in a million and there's no reason to think it's going to be should be no reason to think it's going to be me just like there's no reason to think that I'm going to be ending up playing in the Rolling Stones it's very unlikely.

Jason Swenk  22:30

That could happen you could….

Robert Craven  22:33

Be the young member wouldn't I? But, that dream is sold Okay. The other thing which I kind of really object to is this dream. This dream is sold which is you start on the kitchen table dining room table into the garage, into an industrial unit into the city centre. Suddenly you go 150 people along a commerce centre with a 25 million $50 million dollar chequebook and say, Here you go. So one, what the hell do you do with your 25 million because because 5,000,020 5 million, your lifestyle is not going to change that much, I would argue. Secondly, it's not that much fun mowing the lawn, taking the kids to school mowing the lawn, taking the kids to school, especially when he spent the last 10 years going in and making stuff happy happen. And I just think that people are often chasing the wrong thing. Going No, That's it really I just I think they'd been salty. They've been sold a puppet away, which is, when you get 200 people, you'll be able to sell the business, you'll have more choice. I'm not sure if you don't have more choices. So I did an interview last week with Sammy Mansurpoor agency, UK. And he did. He did all the math and discovered that 24 people was the perfect sweet spot for his agency doing what he did, where he had a large enough team doing everything else where all the individuals in the business felt ownership and reward where he knew everyone and where they were able to do awesome work. And he knew that as a 50 person agency, one he wouldn't get as much money out of the business, but also it wouldn't be such a great place to work. And so he's literally put a ceiling on 25 people and what he'd rather do is work with better clients doing better work with his team at 24 than ending up running a 50 person agency, which means he needs to have another board level and he needs to have land investors. 

Jason Swenk  24:51

So, I was talking to Seth Godin, and I asked him I said: Who's your favourite agent on my podcast Okay,

Robert Craven  25:01

I was talking to Tom Peters last week.

Jason Swenk  25:04

I was talking to Bill Clinton,

Robert Craven  25:05

Donald Trump. Anthony Robbins anyhow.

Jason Swenk  25:09

All right, and everything's sunshine and rainbows. We're, we were selling covers of it now I'm just kidding. So, and I asked Seth, I go, who's your favourite agency. And he goes, there's a UK agency that just didn't want to, they were just like that. They were at 50 People, they didn't want to hire anybody else, they felt like it was a perfect sweet spot. And what they did is they said, if we can't hire anybody else, we don't want to take on any more clients. But we were going to get very selective at the clients that we take on. And if clients do some stupid, they're booted, right, and they will bring on another one at a higher price. And that was perfectly fine for them. I always tell everybody, when you're running an agency, or any type of business, you always want to have the ability to sell one day. But I told a lot of people I was chatting with. So I represented a couple of clients that I help find agencies to buy. And I also have an agency in Canada that I own, that we buy bigger agencies that are over a million and EBITA. So I know it happens a lot. Because in the past three weeks, we bought like four agencies. So Right. And these were all like a million in profit and over. So in that might give us a whole nother conversation to that we can kind of go be like if you do want to sell but I was talking to one agency that wanted to sell I said, based on where you're at, and what you're doing, why do you want to sell? Like, if you're making a million or like, let's bring the numbers down? Let's say you're making 250,000 a year? Why do you want to sell just, you told me you want a million dollars for your agency,

Robert Craven  26:48

Right, four years, four years.

Jason Swenk  26:52

Right. And then and you're still loving what you're doing. Right, I always just tell people to get to a point where you have the option, like when you have options, and you can make better decisions rather than not set a timeframe. Because if you set your timeframe, I want to sell in 2020. You don't know where the market is going to be, even though this is probably a good time to buy and sell. But if you love what you're doing, keep doing it and just get rid of the shit you don't like, go back to that list. And then it just makes it so much fun. Like toward the end of our career at our agency, the reason why we sold was the agency didn't depend on me for everything. Right? The business could operate without me. And like I was working with one of my oldest longtime clients, five years, I can't get rid of this guy, I love him to death. And I told him about the five roles, you know, the five roles that I told you guys about that would be awesome. And he was able to take off a whole month in the summer, and not even check email. And then he came back. And here's the warning to all of you listening, once you achieve this, he comes back and he is totally depressed. Because he'd go into a meeting. And everybody be like, No, I don't need you that I'm good. And they go into the next meeting, I'm good. And I remember having a conversation with him and I even went through this, I'd be like the business doesn't need us. The business needs us for the next phase in our life, not what we used to do and what we shouldn't have been doing. So just keep that in mind. When you guys do achieve that in the next couple of years or whatever you want. Whatever you set out, you'll get depressed for a little while. But then you'll be like, Oh my God, my business is scalable now.

Robert Craven  28:39

It is, you know, it is partly about a lack of not knowing what the not knowing what the road ahead is, you know, and and as my mother says it's better to travel in hope than arrive in vain. And I think often people work so hard to get to 10 million turnover, a million EBIT or 100 people or whatever, or divide those numbers by four, it doesn't matter, whatever that whatever that target is. And, you know, it's like, wow, you know, because we go to networking events and all the other agency owners are there. Yeah, we got 100 people. Yeah, we've got five offices. Yeah, we got offices in New York. And you're thinking: Wow, isn't that great? But then if you look at the bags under their eyes, you know, you look at how often they're on the phone very often and that's all because you were pointing out the complexity. They've failed to create something simple. So your formula so to speak. Does it always work or does it do it? Does it need some bits of the recipe to make it work? 

Jason Swenk  30:01

Oh, yeah, so I've system framework. But like anything you have to build on it, you can't just replicate it like, because I'm totally different from someone else. You're totally different for me, right? And so, but there's, if you follow the kind of the foundation, right, like, so I grew up playing tennis, I played in college, and I would, I was really, really good. And so when I would be losing to the opponent, my coach would be like, going back to the basics dummy, right? Like, go back to what we showed you like what you can like, stop thinking of like, all this complex stuff, just go back to basics. So the basics I see is clarity, right? What we tried to chat about, position your agency in a way where you look different from everybody else, and then figure out the right offering in the right order, right. And then you can go to the prospecting strategies, but see, people go, I want to get to whatever size agency and they go right to a prospecting or a funnel hack, or whatever that crap is, right? And they skip the foundation. And then once you have the foundation, and you're charging the right amount, now you're making the right amount of profit. If you make the right amount of profit, you can hire the right people, you hire the right people, then you can start getting the better clients and you can move up and you don't have to do everything. So there is a framework to follow. Everybody has a framework to follow.

Robert Craven  31:26

So I'm gonna pick through two things you mentioned there, okay. So the first one is about positioning. You know, I mean, I, I'm sure you do. I do it. You put 25 people in the room. You got half an hour to spare. You look at their websites, they're all identical. Yeah, we create bespoke offering picture of someone climbing a tree or pulling a rope to add value. What makes us different is customer focus.

Jason Swenk  32:02

I love it when they say customer focus, and we focus on results.

Robert Craven  32:05

Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, You all look the same, you look identical. It's like really beige and beige and LeMans. And dull and, and uninteresting. For the customer, the customer, there's just no difference. Everyone's got a ping pong table. They've got darts, board, and a dog, and it's just like, right. So be interested to know your idea about how agencies should position because they all are on the same courses from Google and HubSpot. They're all employing the same people. They got the same machines, they got the same equipment, same software, same hardware, same pricing, same contracts. So how do they position and how do they differentiate themselves?

Jason Swenk  32:53

Well, let's look at first how they all get here. How does everybody look like me to the agency? And I really think smaller agencies, we look at our competitors or bigger agencies, right? And they look at the big agencies that have a stupid big H on it, right? They're like, oh, cool, we need to do something really artistic and, and this kind of stuff. And they're copying everybody else. And they're also focusing on themselves. Now, if you talk to the bigger agencies, right, like you, you guys probably do and we do there. And we ask, like, where's your business coming from? I'm talking about the really big agencies, none of it's coming from the website. They're just using that as a recruiting tool. And they're like, we've built up the relationships and all this kind of stuff, right, we're getting the legal zooms like we were. And so, but the smaller companies think we need to model that, and they didn't look at the path that helped them get there. Right. So and, and I think all the agencies are positioning themselves as, like the superhero. Right? In someone else's story. When and when you position yourself as a superhero, like, let's say, You position, I'm at an agency, I positioned myself as Batman, if I say, I'd be like Robert and Robert, are the best agency advisors in the world. Like if we said that right? On our websites, you'd be like, you're an idiot, right? Like who are you? And that makes you Robin, right? We're in those ugly green tights. Now what we need to do is we need to position ourselves as that trusted adviser Alfred, right, so that it lets the person coming to your website or that prospect be Batman, because everybody wants to dress up as Batman, I want to like I want to be Batman, right? And so it's all about positioning. And you can do this by asking questions, right? So if you go to my website, or like go to my about page, right, Jason swank.com/about. And I start off with questions. I don't mention anything about selling a big agency or whatever until the Very, very bottom, like I go, Hey, you might be here, because you're maybe struggling with leads, or you might want to like, might be struggling with scaling your agency, or maybe you don't want to do this anymore, whatever it is, you might be in the right place I might be able to help you. Right? That's how people need to position themselves. And this goes for all businesses, right? I'm tired of it, we get the best people, we get the best portfolio, no one gives a shit about your portfolio.

Robert Craven  35:28

So the second question is do I hire a biz dev person? Question? Yeah, how many? How? Because? Well, we know we, we both know that there's an answer, which is, what's the breakeven point on a biz dev person, if they cost you $50,000, they've got to bring in pretty much $500,000 a year to wash their face and pay for their desk. And yet, the owner knows they can't do all the sales themselves. They were listening to Jason Swank, just on this call. So you know, don't do this stuff. So how do you talk through the don't we get a biz dev person? When do we get a biz dev person? What level of biz dev person do we get as a kid? Do we get a adult? What's your take on that?

Jason Swenk  36:17

I think the question is when? And it depends on where you're at right? If you're just starting out, or if you're less than five people. And you have to be self aware, if you're really good at sales. Keep doing it right now. Okay, and hire the operations person if, because like, I find you're really good at sales and are really good at operations. So if you're really good at operations right now, and operations are kind of going well, then I would start looking at how we can bring in a salesperson. Now, if it's the reverse, you have to get to a place where you can afford the right operations person to fix the back end stuff. Once you do that, then yes, you should always hire and build a sales team. I was interviewing at an agency. They're an eight figure agency now. But when they were a nine figure agency, but when they in two years, they cracked the 8 million or the 10 million mark. I was like, wow, how did you do that? Like, that's impressive. Like, like, that's unheard of, to write. And I go, how many people were you at that point? He was like, 100. I said, okay, cool. And 50 of them were salespeople. 50. And I'm like, holy cow, I barely could manage three salespeople. Right. But it's about like, I truly believe if you want to scale or grow your agency, you have to be a sales organisation as well. And so you can hire that first salesperson that can go out like you were saying, Have a quota, whether it be 500,000 or million, I always tell people they have a million dollar quota. And when you're hiring this person, before you hire them, ask them to tell them everything you think, where you want to go? Have them develop a plan, a 90 day plan for success before you actually hire the person then you can measure them because we're not we don't know how to. We're not sales managers, right, like accidental. I butchered tons of salespeople, and they were probably really good. Like, I remember Scott, he was an incredible salesperson and totally screwed him up.

Robert Craven  38:25

And we don't know the point is that biz dev and salespeople are really good at selling. They stand in front of you. And it's like, wow, this guy's really good. He's like, Yeah, because he's blowing smoke up my backside. Yeah, these are the photos of my kids. Yeah. Oh, it's a really nice guy. They're really good at selling, selling, not necessarily making the sale. Yeah, actually bringing home the bacon, but they're really good at selling. And they come in one after the other. Yeah, a really good guy, really compelling. And then you look at the resume, you look at their CV and realise none of them have been in post for more than nine months. You have to go, huh? So what's going on there that clearly is not able to deliver? So what's the question that I've not asked you? What's the question that most people asked me? What's the question? I ought to ask you. What's the question you'd like me to ask you?

Jason Swenk  39:19

Well, let's think about the sales person's side, right? Like, I, one of the things I want to make sure it's clear to everybody is like, yes, we're, if you like the plan, and you're and you put in place for the salesperson to be successful. I truly believe he or she needs to sell something simple. And a lot of times agencies are pitching marriage right off the bat by my huge retainer, okay, by this huge project, when Lotus came to us, and wanted us to bid on a micro. Yes, I know they came over like came across the pond what's up. But then you guys took it all back. So we did lose the account later on. So I was like, dammit, British. But um, they were pitching to a bunch of us for this microsite. And everybody pitched this huge engagement, we pitched a simple roadmap plan, right. And that's what I always tell people with your salespeople, your agency, sell a discovery, sell a roadmap at something very simple, I don't care if you lose money on it, sell this, you will win the deal faster. Once they engage with you and have a good experience, they have to have a good experience, they're 20 times more likely to buy from you again. So then we positioned a project. And then we positioned the retainer then we were the agency record for North America for Lotus for a couple years. And then they took it all back to the UK. So but yeah, so that's, that's an important point, I think it can make a lot of people different have like, think about something that you can slice off of your core offer, that you can make very simple that they can try you out. And they can and it doesn't have to be something elaborate, right? Like you're already giving this to him for free. You're just going to charge for this. And they're going to be like, well, everybody else is charging or giving it away for free. Why are you charging? Like, you're the question is, should you think about why is everybody giving this away for free?

Robert Craven  41:30

What's your what's your positioning? What's your position on? Price discounts? Especially Oh, God…

Jason Swenk  41:36

Why would you ever discount your services? Did your services go down? Do you stink? Worse, right? Like, you should always be raising your prices. If someone wants to, like, let's say you pitch $100,000 engagement, and they go: Well, that's not in the budget. Well, you just messed up, you should have figured out the budget in the very beginning. Yeah, okay. And people be like, and I know what I work with, like, I understand you guys are not as direct. As us Americans, I get it. Right, I'm gonna give you two ways you can get the budget 99% of the time. Okay. The first one is probably like, I can't do this. I'm not American. Right. So when I say, what's your budget, Robert, what do they typically say? They're like, I don't have a budget. Yeah. Right. Are you telling me like: cool, I love working with people that don't have budgets, so we don't have to worry about money anymore. And we could just try all these kinds of really cool tests. And then I shut up. Now you don't have to do that part. But it works because it sets up what I call the reverse auctioneer. And so everybody is programmed to remember the first number. So a lot of times what agencies do is like, I just need to know some kind of range, are you trying to stay around 10,000, 100,000, right, they're going to remember the 10,000 I do it reverse, like, I just need to know some kind of range to make sure I know if we can help you out or not, in what I can position to you, are you try to stay around $1,000,000 900,000 800,000 10,000 Start, like quadruple your numbers. Because you're trying to freak them out. Because everybody has a budget. They're just like, when you start really high, then they'll be like, well, I might not be able to work with you. I only have $25,000. Now we can help you out with that. I just wanted to give a range.

Robert Craven  43:22

But now they've announced $25,000. And we can, make our own decisions on that. Yeah, cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. We're coming up to the end of our time, which is a tragedy. I think there's gonna have to be a part two to this because we can actually do this all day. And, but I think I think we need to draw close to so if there is if there is a you go to a bar, you get you and you and an agency owner get hopelessly relaxed drinking and putting the world rights couple of bottles of wine is food, you come out of the bar, you put your arm around the agency owner, you wag your finger. So there's a couple of things I need to tell you about running an agency.

Jason Swenk  44:15

Okay, you learned the words there that was…

Robert Craven  44:18

And that was just the internet. What are your top tips? What are your sort of the nuggets that you think that the agency owners kind of need to tattoo on their on their on their hands and never ever forget?

Jason Swenk  44:33

Raise your prices? Well, I mean, literally, and if you keep telling Robert and I like you're too busy, that's a telltale sign you're not charging enough. Yeah. Right. The next thing is say no to the crap, like get that clarity and say no to the things that you don't want to do anymore. Or delegate that. Right, you can design whatever you want in your business. You are not a prisoner. Like that should be the tattoo. I am not a prisoner of my agency. Right? I can pick and choose to do what I want. I just need to be resourceful. I think that's where people kind of fall short. And they're going, well, we've done it this way. Always. No, no, no, no, especially with the COVID and all this craziness in the world, and it's never gonna go back this way. It was never right. So we have to adapt. And we have to be resourceful, and figure out what's the new way that we need to go about this. So raise your faces, and you're not a prisoner, and be resourceful?

Robert Craven  45:40

Absolutely awesome. It's really, really spooky. Jason. It's like, it's like. Our similarities are just stunning. And then obviously, obvious, obvious differences. But the similarities in the message is just just stunning, which is, which is fantastic.

Jason Swenk  45:59

But what the thing is, is they all work. That's why it's similar, right? That's why you've been successful. It's just,

Robert Craven  46:06

It's just, they work. It's brilliant. It's just, it's just so good. So I get to just say thank you. 100 fold for perfect nugget, perfect timing. Absolutely brilliant interview. All of Jason's links and contacts appear at the end of the show. So you can pick up on that go and see and go and check them out. As we were saying the other day, there's only about two books worth reading on digital agencies. And I really, really big, big thank you for everything you've done today. Jason, thank you so very much.

Jason Swenk  46:43

Oh, thanks. It was an honour to come on. Thanks so much. It's a pleasure.

Robert Craven  46:46

Thank you very much and goodbye.