AL EP 15: Tracy McCoy – Don’t Undercut Your Value

Show Notes

Tracy Mccoy received her Bachelor’s Degree in Hospitality from The University of Central Florida and is the Founder and President of Get Fish Slapped Digital Agency specializing in Creative Marketing, Content Creation, Social Media, and Digital Advertising. Being a strong advocate of family and work life balance, Tracy left a successful career in hotel operations and launched her own company that would reflect her beliefs. Partnering with her husband James and their daughter Rylee they started the agency that has grown to a team of nine, eight years later. Get Fish Slapped fully customizes all of their client’s campaigns and content to specifically fit their business and budgetary needs. Oh about the name… Tracy and the team have a passion for awakening people and businesses to their social media opportunities. Life and business get us so busy occasionally we need something to snap us out of the rut and reset our focus. Hence “Get Fish Slapped”.

Connect with Tracy McCoy & Get Fish Slapped.
Web: https://getfishslapped.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/getfishslapped
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GetFishSlapped
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/GetFishSlapped
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@getfishslapped
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/get-fish-slapped-llc/

Episode Transcript

00:00:00:00 – 00:00:32:22

Hey, everybody, this is Jessie Michael Moore, agency and transformation coach and founder of Mission Control. Creator of leverage for growth and I’m Lucas James, founder of Twist Attire, which scaled from 0 to $200,000 a month with my own agency. We are the host of leverage for growth, podcast agency leverage and Episodes. We know that in order to scale your agency successfully, there are multiple shifts that need to happen within the founders mindsets, skill sets, and leadership styles.

00:00:32:24 – 00:01:02:02

We are on a mission to interview marketing and PR agency owners on their journey to six, seven and eight figures and leverage the lessons from their journey to save you time, energy and money. In order for you to get your agency to the next level. If you find value in these episodes, watch the case study video to learn more about leverage growth and how we successfully scale agencies quickly at Niche in Control Decomp case study at Niche in Control Accommodation.

00:01:02:04 – 00:01:28:06

You are now listening to leverage for growth. Hey everybody, this is Jesse Gilmore, founder of Niche and Control and creator of leverage for growth. Welcome to the agency Leverage Edition. Today I am here with Tracy McCoy, founder of Get Fish Slapped, a digital agency with a passion for awakening people and businesses to their social media opportunities. Specializing in creative marketing, content creation, social media and digital advertising.

00:01:28:08 – 00:01:55:25

Thanks a lot for coming to our show. Oh you’re welcome. I’m so excited to be here. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. Can you tell us a little bit about the history and background of your agency? Sure, absolutely. so I had worked worked in the grind for other people for a little over probably 12, 15 years. And I was at a point in my life where I was ready to do something different and work for myself.

00:01:55:27 – 00:02:12:15

so my husband and I, we had moved out of Miami and moved to a small town in Sebring, Florida, and decided that we were going to start a family. And with that, I was doing some consulting on the side, and that turned into a little bit more, and I decided I should turn it into a business.

00:02:12:15 – 00:02:34:27

I thought it would be a great way to have some work life balance with, with the baby on the way and, you know, thought it would be a great kind of side gig. Well, the side gig quickly turned into a full time deal, and, we got really busy very quickly. shortly after I had the baby, and, we’ve just grown from there, so we’ve been in business eight years, and we have nine employees at this point.

00:02:34:27 – 00:03:03:01

So it’s super exciting to see what started as this dream, to have a little bit of work life balance and, be able to spend some time with the family and do it for myself. It’s turned into, an entire a real company now. So it’s very exciting. Awesome, awesome. that’s really cool. A lot of times agency owners kind of start off as kind of the side gig, and then for some it kind of just, blossoms really fast, kind of in those earlier stages.

00:03:03:03 – 00:03:25:16

yeah. When you were deciding that it was going from a side gig to a full time, what were some of those kind of, either moments or kind of like this is this is actually going to blow up. Did you did you have any experiences that were kind of like, whoa. So when I first started the company, I was nine months pregnant, so I didn’t necessarily intend on it taking off very quickly.

00:03:25:16 – 00:03:42:25

And my intention was to kind of slowly get things moving along. But once, I had multiple people starting to reach out to me individually saying, you know, I’d like to work with you, I’d like to work with you. It was all just kind of one on one. I thought, you know, I really ought to make this into a business.

00:03:42:25 – 00:04:09:24

This is like, I don’t want this to be the freelancer. Tracy. Eventually, I’d like this to turn into a business and depends on how fast it grows. But I want to take it somewhere, and it’s not just going to be me. So I decided to create an LLC and, officially start the business when I was nine months pregnant with my daughter, had her, and then started taking on some clients, and then started reaching out to people who I’d work with in the past and took on some really large clients.

00:04:09:24 – 00:04:30:28

And then from there were like, oh my gosh, this is going to be something, this is going to be big. And my husband, about nine months into starting the business, then came on full time with our company. So it was a pretty cool transition. So that’s where we started with just the two of us around a kitchen table and flying all over, and then it and slowly transitioned into where we are now.

00:04:30:28 – 00:05:01:10

So my big moment, I guess, was when we all of a sudden it’s just like people were calling, just based on previous experiences before starting the company. And then that led to everything that’s happened along the way. and all hasn’t been easy, but it’s definitely there’s always going to be those ups and downs. But we were able to persevere through several different, you know, fluctuations and have had some really strong continued success, which is pretty cool.

00:05:01:13 – 00:05:19:12

And there’s a time that you talked about going from like the idea of a freelancer into like a real business owner and a lot of times that’s a mental shift for agency owners. they, they, they think that the way that they impact the world is based around their service as opposed to creating something a lot bigger.

00:05:19:14 – 00:05:35:27

what were some of the things, if you can remember, back to, the duplication of self, you know, like trying to make it to where you’re not the one doing the work, having other people do the work. what were some of those things that you either put in place, like procedures or processes or, how did you know?

00:05:35:27 – 00:05:58:24

Kind of how to duplicate it? So that way your clients get the good service that you had offered. originally. Absolutely. So that is actually one of the hardest things I feel like anybody goes through as a business owner, whether you’re an agency or you just own a business in general, when you’re when you’re hands on and doing everything, and then you have to pull back and go, I’m too busy to be able to do everything.

00:05:58:24 – 00:06:22:11

How do I give this to other people? that in itself is scary. So, part of the biggest thing that’s always set us apart was our speed to market and just customer service in general and just taking great care of our clients. So we really were careful around, who had those one on one conversations and everything with our clients.

00:06:22:14 – 00:06:45:23

So as we as we would assign like client managers, we try to keep that between myself, my husband and another person on our team who’s been with us a long time, and then the rest of our team is that, you know, you have all these people working behind the scenes to make it happen for that client. So we really tried to make sure that we didn’t lose complete touch with what was happening with our customers.

00:06:45:25 – 00:07:19:16

But, we were able to continue moving things along. I guess you could say, awesome. And, like, there’s been a lot of kind of learnings that you’ve had over the last eight years or so. If you were to think back to maybe your previous self, you know, you maybe like 1 or 2 steps, you know, before where you are right now, what kind of advice would you give somebody maybe that’s listening, that would either shortcut kind of their way to success or save them time, energy or money.

00:07:19:18 – 00:07:41:27

getting to where you’re at right now. Sure, absolutely. So at least in the state of Florida, you can start your own LLC by just going to some business, dawg. And it’s very fast and easy to do to find your name and start your business. it’s a pretty seamless process. I think some people get caught up in going to all of these different websites and they’re like, oh my goodness, I have to pay thousands of dollars for somebody to create my LLC.

00:07:41:29 – 00:07:59:11

You know, you can do it on your own, and you could probably spend I want to say it’s less than $100 to get everything all set up with your in your LLC and everything else. so I would say definitely look in those directions, talk to a CPA to get some really solid advice on where to start and you know what to do next.

00:07:59:11 – 00:08:21:09

And that’s been one of the biggest things for us that’s helped keep us successful. aside from client management, is working with great accountants that are able to to give you good advice on how to structure your business along the way as you grow. as if you miss a step there, you know, a lot of money and taxes so that that would be one, one piece of advice that, we were not super excited about.

00:08:21:09 – 00:08:37:29

At one point we’re like, oh my goodness, what did we do? We need to be an S Corp. This is not okay. So we we made that shift. And then another thing that I would say is when you hit rough times, just always remember you can always go work for somebody else, but you can always work for yourself.

00:08:38:01 – 00:08:53:15

And I think that was some that was a mantra for me, that it’s like I want to create the future, that I’m going to have. And I think looking at it, taking a couple of steps back, there are lots of instances where we could have gone, oh my goodness, you know, like, let’s just throw in the towel. Like this is really hard.

00:08:53:15 – 00:09:09:19

You know, we’re losing money this year. This isn’t a good a good thing. But then we’re like, but we can get through this, get through it. And we can always go work for somebody else. It’s not like there’s not an opportunity somewhere to go work for somebody. So we just always kind of keep that in mind as you’re starting out.

00:09:09:19 – 00:09:27:13

You know, the opportunities there and you feel like that you’re able to go out and kind of seize that moment and do it, because you can always go do something else some other time. You know that this this moment might not happen again, though, to start your own business. So, I think that’s one of the biggest takeaways for me.

00:09:27:16 – 00:09:45:11

we’re starting our company. And another thing, just to always kind of remember, and I feel like this is something that I still personally struggle with, but if I say yes to something, I’m going to have to say no to something else. So always think about what if I say yes to this? What else am I going to have to say no to?

00:09:45:11 – 00:10:12:01

So if you’re going into your agency and you’re thinking, I want to build my client base, I don’t want to discount everything and give everybody half off. Well, they might not have a whole lot of skin in the game. And you say yes to all those discounted services. Now you don’t have the time for that really big client that just walked in the door because you’re chasing your tail with all these other customers that don’t appreciate your services because they want everything they want, a maserati for the price of a Hyundai.

00:10:12:08 – 00:10:30:17

And it’s, you know, not always kind of, you know, work out that way. So that’s another thing that we’ve learned as well as just really making sure that you put value on your services and what you do that, that it is valuable, even though you may just be starting out and not to undercut yourself too much otherwise, you know you will pay the price for it.

00:10:30:17 – 00:10:44:18

And sometimes you do have to say no to a client. They may not fit your core values and fit your customer base. So it might even though it might look great and shiny and they’re going to give you all this money, you might get a month or two down the road and it turns into a really bad situation.

00:10:44:18 – 00:11:01:12

So you really want to think about how you get your clients, and make sure that they’re the right fit on both sides. so those are I think there are more takeaways than you asked for, but those are a couple of different things that I would definitely want to share with somebody who’s just getting started, for sure.

00:11:01:14 – 00:11:26:28

no, I love it. All those, that advice is really important. Having the right clients, having the right, financial structure, and being able to persevere because you can always, fall back on a job if you really needed to. That’s awesome. So what? if someone is, listening and they want to get in touch with you, what’s the best way for people to either get in touch with you or do you have any offers for them that they could take advantage of?

00:11:27:00 – 00:11:49:11

so if you’d like to get in touch with me, you could visit our website and fill out a contact form. and then from there, we can go ahead and schedule some time or you could email me directly at Tracy at Get Fish slap.com and our website is get fish slap.com. And no, I’m sorry, but I don’t have any discounts or special offers out there because we don’t undercut.

00:11:49:13 – 00:12:08:24

so I’m sorry, but we we are what we are. We’re very reasonable. We’re fair. and that’s really something I pride myself on so we don’t discount our services. That’s awesome. And, for, Tracy, I’ll put all of the links in the show notes. thank you very much for coming to our show, Tracy. It’s been awesome.

00:12:08:27 – 00:12:30:21

It’s a pleasure. Thank you for having me call agency owners. If you want to transform your agency to sustain and grow without your direct involvement, where you can stop working in the business and switch to working on the business where you can regain control of your time, delegate effectively, get paid what you’re worth, and have your team run the day to day.

00:12:30:28 – 00:12:48:29

Go to niche in control.com/case study right now to learn more about leverage for growth, you can book a free strategy session with us to look at your systems. Understand what needs to be done in order for you to scale and get a free strategic plan for the next year. To live the life of entrepreneurship that you’ve always dreamed about.

00:12:49:01 – 00:13:13:16

Go to niche in control.com/key city that is niche in control.com/ksat. Now you.

Transcripts are auto-generated and may contain errors.