Owning the Outcome

Alison Leishman, cofounder of Spitfire Inbound, joins the show to talk about her team’s onboarding process. She teaches us about why defining and documenting a process is so important, how she customizes onboarding tracks by role and function, and how she ties a defined onboarding process to happy clients and positive results.

John Elmer, CEO of Bayard Bradford, leads with a sales-first approach to their marketing services. John teaches us why helping clients build the system to store, manage, and close sales opportunities is so important before driving marketing leads—and how you can help improve clients’ ROI metrics with a sales-first approach.

Joining us this episode is Sheila Mitham: CEO of Inbound Fintech. Serving primarily in the B2B space, Sheila educates us on how she incorporates thought leadership into her client engagements to address customer pain-points and build valuable, credible content.

Alexandria Hart, founder of Good Joo Joo, joins us to talk scope creep: what it is, how to avoid it, how to course correct when it happens, and how to leverage it into a conversation around extending an SOW.

Travis White, Managing Director of Neighbourhood, just recently rebranded his agency. Formally known as The Raiders, Travis talks through his motivations for a rebrand, how he knew it was time, how he handled the full rebrand process, and what the next steps are for the new brand.

We make it back home to Boston, where Damien Cabral of TribalVision shares how his agency was able to improve their profitability. Specifically, how they’ve created formalized career paths to improve employee retention, how they’ve built an expansive freelancer partner network for low cost delivery, and how they introduced a lower-tiered retainer price point to help combat client churn rates.

As CEO of Campaign Creators, Bob’s story is an interesting one: in 2016, Bob had an employee embezzle three hundred thousand dollars from his agency’s payroll account. In this episode, Bob shares this story in full and how he was able to rebuild his agency by refining his services, building more structured processes, and updating the way their source and qualify candidates.

Mike and Nikole Rose of Mojo Media Labs join us to talk about open book financial management: a practice in which Mojo shares their financials with the team to have everyone think like business owners. We talk about why they incorporated this financial transparency, how it’s impacted the organization, and how interested agencies can get started themselves.

We head to Dallas, Texas where Scott Baradell of Idea Grove sits in to teach us how he successfully made the transition from traditional PR to digital marketing. He explains why he moved from PR to a full menu of digital services, how his processes and team structure changed to account for this transition, and why PR and digital marketing are a great fit for pairing together.

It’s no secret: clients have become more tech savvy and in tune with the digital landscape, which has the opportunity to add friction to your team’s ability to consult and drive strategy. Paul Brienza from Laughlin Constable explains what this growth in sophistication looks like, how he has tweaked his model to account for these advancements, and how he prioritizes continuous improvement for his t...

In this episode, Jill Wilson of Simple Machines Marketing drops by to discuss the value her agency has found in finding their niche. She explains how aligning around a niche can positively impact marketing, sales, and service. We then dig into running workshops and why “getting a look under the hood” is so valuable for her team.

Beth Carter of Clariant Creative teaches us about the importance of finding right-fit clients. She shares why it’s so important to qualify for fit, how she identifies if a potential client is a right or wrong fit, and what impact this has on the client experience. We also talk about when and how it’s appropriate to move on from bad-fit clients.

Christine Mortensen of Sprk'd jump starts our stay in Chicago by talking about how she's developed her agency’s mission. We dig into why it’s important to make an impact to society, how you can go about creating your own mission, how you get buy-in from the team, and how it impacts your go-to market.

After working with agencies across the globe to help scale, Pete Nicholls of HubDo comes in the studio to share his tips and tactics on how to navigate the most common roadblocks agencies face around marketing, sales, and client delivery.

Darren Ratcliffe helps break down growth-driven design, the data-driven re-imagining of web design. Learn how his team transitioned from traditional web design to GDD, how he updated his processes for delivery, and what GDD has achieved for his customers.

All the way from Santiago, Chile, Ranya Barakat of IDS Agency sits in to share how she’s been able to build an effective team for her agency. We talk about her candidate pipeline, her interview process, and her focus on professional development.

Jackie Hermes of Accelity Marketing teaches us the art of being “picky”, the benefits of pickiness, and the ramifications for not being picky. It can be hard to say no, agencies should be selective in the clients they bring in, in the services they offer, and in the hires they make.

Tommy Butcher of LyntonWeb joins us to talk about managing a remote workforce. He starts at the beginning with the initial decision and the benefits they’ve seen since. He then walks through how they’ve built their internal processes to set their remote team up for success.

Remington Begg of Impulse Creative joins us to talk through conversational engagement, how agencies leverage chat for themselves, and where they should get started. He then pivots to how agencies should position conversational strategy to their clients and how the service can be scaled.

Ingunn Bjøru joins us to discuss how her team approached the M&A and creation of Avidly, how she knew it was time to open the discussion, and what the transformation into Avidly meant for her leadership team, her employees, her processes, and her clients.

Daryn Smith of MPULL talks capacity management and his recommendations for monitoring, managing, and optimizing your delivery team’s capacity. We discuss the tools his team uses, the processes they have developed, and how he takes advantage of under-capacity teams.

Eric Baum teaches us about the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), what it changed operationally for Bluleadz, and how other agencies can get implement it into their firm. He then navigates the history of his org chart and what the future holds.

Romi Dexter of Hype and Dexter, and her team, were able to take their agency from concept to platinum HubSpot partner in only nine months. Romi shares her learnings along the way, the processes they prioritized and mapped out first, and how they approach client delivery.

Ryan Malone discusses SmartBug’s team structure and how his agency’s org chart has changed over time to accommodate growth. We talk about team (or “pod”) structures, career pathing, and how SmartBug split up responsibilities by role.

Gabriel Marguglio of Nextiny Marketing joins us to talk video strategy: both as a customer service tool for your agency and as a service offering for your clients. Learn how to allocate resources and develop processes to start your own scalable video strategy today.