AL EP 16: Kevin McGrew – Build a Team of People with Project Management Skills & Superpowers

Show Notes

Kevin McGrew, digital marketing guru and CEO of Everzocial, navigates the digital world with the same cunning he once applied in the US Navy. With a penchant for bourbon and a flair for witty analogies, Kevin crafts winning strategies for small and medium-sized businesses seeking growth. Everzocial, the boutique digital marketing agency he leads, specializes in strategy, website design, UX/UI, and more, serving clients with revenues between $500,000 and $5 million. Kevin’s passion for human behavior and thirst for new experiences drive his agency’s success. Join us as we explore the digital marketing landscape with the man who makes complexity fun and accessible.

You can connect with Kevin & The Everzocial Group here –
Web: https://everzocial.com
Instagram: https://instagram.com/iamkevin (Personal)
Instagram: https://instagram.com/cigarmanofficial (Influencer)
Instagram: https://instagram.com/everzocial (Agency)
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinmcgrew/ (Personal Linkedin)
Facebook: https://Facebook.com/everzocial (Agency)
Twitter: https://twittter.com/everzocial (Agency)

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 – 00:01:02:04

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.

00:01:02:06 – 00:01:26:27

You are now listening to leverage for growth. Hey everybody, this is Jesse Gilmore, founder of Niche in Control and creator of leverage for growth. Welcome to the agency Leverage Edition. Today I am here with Kevin McGrew, founder of Ever Social, a full service digital marketing agency. Team of marketing mavericks full of out-of-the-box thinkers who are always looking for new and creative ways to help clients stand out online.

00:01:27:00 – 00:01:51:22

Thanks for coming to our show today. Thanks for having me, Jesse. It’s awesome to be here. Awesome. So can you tell us a little bit about the history and background of your agency? Yeah, absolutely. you know, I kind of came out. I stumbled into agency work, kind of accidentally. I’m a serial entrepreneur, have started several businesses over the years.

00:01:51:22 – 00:02:24:10

Tech companies, software based companies, services companies, and, always engaged with marketing agencies. And, you know, honestly, was very frustrated because a lot of, I felt a lot of the ideas I had kind of were better than what they had, you know? So I kind of, jumped into this, helping a friend. a friend of mine, back in, in when early Facebook days started, a business and needed some help getting customers.

00:02:24:10 – 00:02:54:10

And so we basically went out and started helping businesses before there was Facebook business pages to get on to Facebook. And, in that process, she just kept on asking questions on what do I do next, how do I keep this going? And so we ended up starting an agency together, called Eva’s Social. And as part of that, we started, training for, for we call them social media stagers.

00:02:54:10 – 00:03:15:11

You know, people that there was an expertise around social media back then. So we had to develop our own, team of people that understood how to deliver services. And so we, we call them social media stages. And we developed Eva’s Social You, which was kind of an online university to teach people how to do digital marketing. Early days.

00:03:15:13 – 00:03:36:24

And through that process, we had a workforce and we were able to grow a client base from that. And that’s kind of however social started, and with, ever social, you is it kind of like, like training at the same time as implementation? yeah. We were kind of learning at the hard way, you know, it wasn’t really a model.

00:03:36:24 – 00:03:59:27

A lot of advertising agencies were switching to digital at the time. there wasn’t like, what we have today in in the world of digital marketing agency, I wasn’t really clear was kind of the wild, wild West, but, social media was kind of new and a lot of businesses were looking for guidance and advice on how to enter the market there.

00:03:59:27 – 00:04:27:06

And so my background, being an entrepreneur, having started up companies, you know, I kind of say I’m a startup king. I’d, ideation is what I do, and monetization, I tried to figure out how to monetize our services. And, what I quickly realized was, you know, there was kind of no cookie cutter process. We tried retainers, we tried fixed pricing.

00:04:27:06 – 00:04:51:00

We found fixed pricing was easier to sell. And, yeah. So we evolved from teaching others how to kind of set up their own little business. We wanted subcontractors versus employees. So we were trying to teach them how to be their own boss. But what I realized quickly is people didn’t really want to be their own bosses. They they wanted to do a skill and and work for somebody.

00:04:51:02 – 00:05:12:00

So that’s kind of our agency kind of grew out of that because we ended up employing these people. And, landing clients. So, you know, I kind of had to learn the hard way, you know, I needed to generate so much revenue per year per employee. And that was really, I learned the hard way thing because, you know, how do you stay profitable?

00:05:12:00 – 00:05:31:08

There’s there’s a way to do it now that I’ve learned. But yeah, it was kind of a teach and was learning for us as well. You know what the market’s going to bear, you know. But yeah, we’ve learned all the way through how to adapt and, adjust our, our offerings to meet the, the market. Yeah.

00:05:31:10 – 00:05:55:16

so there’s been a lot of changes that have happened and over a decade. Oh my gosh. You know, I feel that’s where all this gray hair comes from you know. So yeah. Yeah. for anybody that’s listening and maybe is, is having a hard time adjusting, and, and kind of adjusting to the landscape. And we’re going through obviously a big disruption, at the time of this recording.

00:05:55:17 – 00:06:13:29

Yeah. what would be some of the advice that you would give somebody that, you know, is dealing with a disruption, trying to figure out a way to still have a, solid foundation? you know, based around your experience. Yeah, yeah. You know, I think what I’ve learned is, you know, there’s a lot of noise in the marketplace.

00:06:13:29 – 00:06:36:00

You know, everybody, whether you’re SEO or PPC or, you know, full service, you know, a lot of people, you know, find out what you’re really good at and lead with that, you know, and so being, you know, we kind of have a philosophy of, the only thing that a client really owns is their website, you know, and it’s kind of the price you want to build.

00:06:36:00 – 00:07:06:06

If you’re going to build a house, you want to build, property that you own, you know, and so start with the web. messaging is key today. You know, a lot of people we’re transitioning from, brochure where I call it to, you know, really speaking to your target audience, your buyer personas. And so, using landing, you know, just basically using your website presence as a way to educate and, convert new clients.

00:07:06:08 – 00:07:33:04

And so once you have that nailed down, then you support that with traffic, you know, so you have SEO, PPC are the two main elements that control how to drive traffic to your website. And then you have marketing automation, tools like email marketing, for e-commerce, you have, CMOs and other ways to communicate with your audience, but you really need the full, we used it like a triangle or a, pyramid.

00:07:33:07 – 00:07:57:18

The web is at the top. That’s the that’s basically what we tell our customers is, you know, lead with that. Every, every place else is rented, property. and then, you know, social media marketing, social media today, it’s very much a social proof, you know, organic, it’s kind of not dead, but organic is different. And so, you really got, more just mow the lawn.

00:07:57:18 – 00:08:16:17

You know, if you have a lawn, you gotta mow it. If you don’t, it looks disheveled, you know? And so a lot of people’s online presence, there’s no strategy behind it. People go check them out and the social proof isn’t there. They end up not buying from them. You can have a, you know, so everything’s kind of gotta talk together, be it’s under a strategy.

00:08:16:17 – 00:08:37:25

So I like to talk to other agency owners and really find out what they’re good at, you know, what’s their tip of the spear. And then how do you support the other services behind it to, to make that, that shine? So I don’t know if that answers your question, but that’s kind of the the angle I talk with other, entrepreneurs, other digital marketing agency owners.

00:08:37:28 – 00:09:03:01

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Having, strong foundation and having an integrated marketing strategy for your own agency. I know a lot of times, agency owners are so focused on other people’s businesses, you know, where, they have to do basically what they do for clients, but also for themselves. Yeah. You know, I’ve we have to eat our own, eat our own, you know, like, I, I recommend Yelp advertising to my clients, a lot of my local clients.

00:09:03:01 – 00:09:25:17

So we do Yelp advertising, you know, Google my business, is very important, you know, so you gotta optimize for local, you know, same with Google search ads. We run Google search ads for our business, and we’re constantly learning so that, and we’re applying those learnings because it’s changing all the time. Like literally as soon as you got something down, they, they change it.

00:09:25:17 – 00:09:47:06

So yeah, it’s it’s I definitely recommend that for any, agencies out there. You know, it’s even if you don’t need the leads, you know, is to be whatever you’re telling your clients to do, you got to be doing it as well. And that kind of leads towards you know, a journey that you’ve been on for over over a decade.

00:09:47:10 – 00:10:06:18

If you were to go back maybe like 1 or 2 steps and tell yourself maybe even your previous self or the audience, you know, some lessons learned or advice that you would give them that might save them some time, energy and money. You know, what would be some of those lessons that you’d give them, aside from the integrated marketing strategy that you talked about?

00:10:06:20 – 00:10:32:27

Yeah. I mean, if you’re building a team, you know, I think we we live in a world of, you know, side hustles, side gigs, overseas labor. You know, a lot of people are more skilled in today’s market, than in previous years. is really how to leverage people, you know? And so, we, we operate more like Navy Seal team than the Army, you know, kind of thing.

00:10:32:27 – 00:11:00:00

So we are we everybody’s got, project management skills with the super power we call it. So when you’re when you’re hiring, you know what we tried what we found is higher for the junior entry level positions and train them. Have a plan and and hired for the potential that they could grow within the company. If somebody just wants a tasks based job, that’s an outsource job.

00:11:00:02 – 00:11:21:05

You know, if you are somebody, learn and nobody really can come in and know everything about digital marketing. I found no matter what degree you have, how much education you have, it really is a learn on the go. And it’s, you know, especially agency work. You’re working with so many customers that, you know, it’s it’s it’s a different addiction.

00:11:21:05 – 00:11:46:19

And then somebody who’s worked marketing at a corporate environment where you just kind of producing Starbucks, products every day, you know, it’s kind of the people can get bored there. So I’m always looking for people that want the next challenge. And so I found that, hiring at the bottom and working the way up and, and constantly building into a team, you got a strong team that’s the key.

00:11:46:19 – 00:12:13:24

If you want to scale your business, if you want to be a solopreneur, there’s another whole model there for, outsourcing and having, team leads or partners that are doing. If I have Vas in the Philippines, for example, I hire a manager vas in the Philippines, you know, I hire somebody in the Philippines who’s a manager of Vas because that’s too much of a time suck for an agency owner or a manager, even to.

00:12:13:24 – 00:12:35:13

It’s like herding cats. And so, you know, there’s I think the people strategy is the hardest. And, you know, it’s a much longer discussion than what we have today. But I think if I was to go back to answer your question and, you know, tell myself, what hurdle, you know, to focus on and learn would be the, the people, situation.

00:12:35:13 – 00:12:58:29

And as an industry, you can adapt like Covid just blew everything up. You know, everybody wanted to be remote. Every, you know, everything was, and so we, we work from a co-working situation, so, we buy our team members, if they have local co-working in their area, we give them access to part time co-working. So they’re not stuck at home all the time, you know, things like that.

00:12:58:29 – 00:13:19:21

And and we found that that’s really we live in a world where co-working is much more acceptable and and available, you know, in the urban market. So we kind of strategize these things to as we bring people on board, we’re hiring in those areas so that they have those kind of networking capabilities locally. And yeah, it just helps.

00:13:19:27 – 00:13:42:23

Just from a mental health perspective, this is a crazy job, digital marketing. And you kind of almost got to be crazy to work in it, you know? But it’s fun. I mean, it’s I love it, you know? And so, yeah, that’s the advice is people focus on learning skills with people how to hire, have a hierarchy of of growth for people, a path for people.

00:13:42:27 – 00:14:10:05

And pay them to to get there. Now, you know, my pricing, how I pay people is you. Here’s the goal. And you get paid as soon as you are able to show your certificates or all the things that that job role has, you get that pay. So it’s always that carrot for the next level for them. And but they’re working, doing that job for at least six months before they earn that position.

00:14:10:07 – 00:14:31:07

So that’s really worked for me. I don’t know if that’ll work for everybody, but, you know, it just has kept us, you know, bigger opportunities have fallen in place. I can scale quickly because I know how to hire now. So, yeah. that’s, that’s such a key business growth kind of topic or a system to build that.

00:14:31:07 – 00:14:52:13

A lot of people, overlook, the people systems. so that’s huge. What is, kind of success for you? over the next, like, 1 to 3 years. What do you what are you working on? What are you excited about? I think, we don’t we’re not a niche, agency. There’s a lot of agency out there.

00:14:52:13 – 00:15:12:24

Very niche based niches make you riches. I tell that to my clients. But, I did niches. Excuse me. In the past, and honestly, I got bored. You know, we did lawyers for a while. We did dentists for a while. We did, medical, you know, and it’s great money. I mean, it’s good because you can a lot of efficiencies there and everything.

00:15:12:24 – 00:15:31:22

But, you know, I find that the turnover internally was higher. You know, it’s just it’s more of a grind. And, it’s not as fun. So we basically pick our clients. We, we, we kind of, we, we don’t have a we’ve got some lawyers, we’ve got some doctors, I have a TV doctor, you know, and that’s fun.

00:15:31:22 – 00:15:51:17

So I try to do things that are fun. And I’m looking for now at this stage in our growth, we’re looking for clients that are looking to grow. So if somebody is looking for somebody just to mow the lawn, just to keep the status quo, they’re replacing an agency for another agency. We’re probably not. We’re not the right fit.

00:15:51:20 – 00:16:09:23

We’re a growth agency. So we as long as we have a carrot, we know where they’re at now, what their growth wants to be. We’re all about it. And we have those skills to not just look at it from a marketing perspective. We kind of get in their business. We kind of really understand their profitability, their costing, monetization.

00:16:09:25 – 00:16:29:22

A lot of times we’re bringing, additional monetization ideas so they don’t have to bring out a new product, but they can make more money from a current product, through services, through other things. So we bring a lot of that fractional CMO perspective to the client. We don’t always sell that because it’s hard to sell. It’s kind of vague.

00:16:29:24 – 00:16:59:19

But that value after they’ve tasted it, they’re they’re addicted to it, you know, because now we’re squeezing more profit from something that kind of they thought hit the max. And yeah, we, we try to earn credibility to be able to push them, beyond their comfort zones. So, you know, we’ll we always look for quick wins when we deploy PPC, for example, we look at where can we be effective right away and get, ten, 5 to 10 times ROI?

00:16:59:19 – 00:17:17:20

Not all the time, but those are the kind of clients where we’re looking for that potential. You know, somebody selling cupcakes and needs to sell a lot of them to be profitable. You know, somebody selling a higher ticket item. It’s a little bit tougher, a longer sales cycle, longer costs are higher cost of acquisition. But it’s all numbers.

00:17:17:20 – 00:17:38:17

If you can show that lifetime value to the client, they’ll pay for it. And so that’s kind of where we’re at at that level of consulting where we we’re very, we don’t close the deal very quickly. We’re usually doing a lot of analysis, a lot of audits. We do SEO audits and PPC audits and really take a look at their whole business.

00:17:38:17 – 00:17:55:16

And then we see where we can win. And then we get really excited and, you know, and we paint the whole picture for the client. We here’s what it’s going to cost to be super successful. But let’s walk before we run. Let’s start here. Let’s get some wins. Use some of that money to pay for the other things that we’re doing.

00:17:55:16 – 00:18:20:26

So that’s where we’re going over the next 1 to 3 years is that that level. And we’re growing slowly. We’re being you know, I would say we’re looking to grow about 20% year over year, but that’s manageable with people, with, with, partners, you know, people that we outsource to and, you know, trying to, you know, expand like e-commerce is kind of everybody’s moving to e-commerce post-Covid.

00:18:20:26 – 00:18:42:20

So that’s something that we’re building up a lot more strength in. We’re, you know, klaviyo partner. We’re looking at email marketing. It’s not dead emails, not dead. You just got to be really good at it. And so we’re doing a lot more storytelling, brand storytelling. I’m I’m no I’m talking your ear off here. But I really want to give an agency owner a bunch of ideas.

00:18:42:20 – 00:19:04:25

You know how we’re we’re finding success. And, that’s kind of what’s got us excited as a team, as an agency on growth. Oh I love it. I love the all the ideas and and what kind of like stood out to me was the idea of like partners. You’re create like you’re integrating. You’re talking about the fractional CMO part.

00:19:04:25 – 00:19:30:17

You’re talking about a lot of different ways of making it to where there’s not only short term, but also long term wins for both you and the client. which gets you excited. Yeah, it’s it’s very much, you’re you’re an extension of their business. Like, a lot of our clients don’t have marketing teams in-house. We’ve done that where we worked with some larger, you know, I would say, you know, 200 to 500 employee companies.

00:19:30:17 – 00:19:57:06

They have a marketing team. We end up fighting with them because they’re two. They’ve hit their ceiling of ideas and they’re they don’t want to let go because now they feel like we’re outshining them a lot of times. And, you know, the ones that have worked with us, we’ve made them shine more, you know, because we taught them skills to be more, analytical decision makers, understand business, analytics and make better business decisions.

00:19:57:06 – 00:20:27:04

You know, one of the tools we work with a company out of Eastern Europe called, Ali and they have, a fantastic, omnichannel reporting tool using Microsoft BI. And, we plug this into our clients and immediately they, they can see where we need to optimize campaigns, spend more money, spend less money, and shift money around very quickly to be more effective.

00:20:27:08 – 00:20:51:24

And and that helps us because now we’re not trying to convince or sell them to it. We’re just showing them the data. You know, data is kind of, I think, the future of of smaller agencies, large agencies already do it. But they’re you know, I think doing it well is hard. So that’s kind of a skill that we’re working with partners that they have, done free services.

00:20:51:27 – 00:21:13:07

We bring it in, plug it in, and they do all the hard stuff. We benefit from it. The client benefits, and it’s a win win. So we’re that’s where I’m out there looking at cutting edge software, companies that are doing some great stuff. How do we partner with them. White label. And if we can and let them do the work that way.

00:21:13:07 – 00:21:32:24

I don’t have a staff that’s got to learn that and, and be an expert at that. So that’s, that’s part of our growth. Cool. That’s awesome. So, knowing that the the audience is mostly agency owners, what’s the best way for them to get in touch with you or, do you have any offers for them? Yeah.

00:21:32:25 – 00:21:56:00

I mean, you know, I’m I’m just a fellow agency owner. You know, I always say to people, you know, ducks flock, geese flock, but eagles, they don’t flock. They they they do a Craig, Eagles do a Craig. They get together for a purpose. And, you know, as eagles, we need to come together, you know, we need to brainstorm, share ideas.

00:21:56:03 – 00:22:16:10

I’m all, you know, there’s so much business out there. I’m all about working with, you know, meeting other agency owners. It’s fun. You know, I see it as fun. I don’t see it as competition. And so if there’s an agency owner out there that wants to brainstorm or, you know, connect or network, come friends, don’t try to sell me something on LinkedIn after you connect to me that it’s like that.

00:22:16:10 – 00:22:38:01

Like the worst thing is like, let’s, let’s date for a while. but, yeah, LinkedIn’s the best. Kevin McGrew all one word. And, I’m also. I am Kevin on Instagram. that’s my personal then I, we do a lot of influencer marketing, so I, I’m an influencer as well on Instagram. It’s called Cigar Man official.

00:22:38:01 – 00:22:58:04

I love cigars and bourbon. So I kind of tried it out too. So I know how to deal with a lot of these influencers out there. So if you like cigars and bourbon, follow me. Cigar man official on Instagram. don’t follow me on Facebook. That’s for my family. and, our business page is ever social at Ever social with the Z.

00:22:58:06 – 00:23:17:09

pretty much anywhere you go. So, yeah, I’d love to connect and, see how we can help each other. Awesome. Well, for every link that you were talking about, I’m gonna put it in the show notes. So anybody that’s listening, I can go to the show notes and see Kevin. They’re. And I just want to thank you very much for being on the show today.

00:23:17:12 – 00:23:42:11

Absolutely. A real pleasure. 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. Go to Niche in control.com/case study right now to learn more about leverage for growth.

00:23:42:14 – 00:24:18:26

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

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