AL EP 18: Jim Lastinger – Finding Happiness in Niching Down

Show Notes

You can connect with Jim Lastinger & Deep Field here –

• Web: https://deepfieldinc.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jimlast

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 – 00:01:03:16

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.

00:01:03:18 – 00:01:25:01

You’re now listening to levers 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 Jim Last Singer, the founder of Deep Field, a digital marketing agency focusing on Google ads management and consultation for B2B and SaaS companies. Thanks for coming to our show today.

00:01:25:04 – 00:01:47:24

Hey, how are you? Glad to be here. Awesome. Can you tell us a little bit about the history and background of your agency? Yeah, so deep field is the evolution of me being an entrepreneur for a while, forever. Ever since I got out of college, I took a corporate job for a few years. But during that time, I was constantly building my own products.

00:01:47:26 – 00:02:13:00

So I kind of got my start entrepreneurial with, and building my own software products, membership sites, all that kind of stuff. Back in the early 2000. And to be able to compete against companies that were in similar niches that had much larger advertising budgets, marketing budgets, all that kind of stuff, I had to get pretty good at the the digital marketing side of things.

00:02:13:01 – 00:02:37:21

So whether it’s learning SEO, getting pretty good at that, learning all about the PPC world, even before there was Google Ads. So years of practice and training and, you know, implementing all of that stuff for my own companies got to where I was pretty decent with the marketing world. And eventually over time, people started asking me for marketing help, and that’s where the agency came from.

00:02:37:23 – 00:03:01:04

I was, you know, just one day doing my own thing. And then one week, for whatever reason, I had two different friends of mine within three days of each other email me asking, hey, can you do ask me over for, my attorney website? So I said, okay, that’s interesting. At the same time, so I kind of took that idea and ran with it.

00:03:01:05 – 00:03:24:04

And agency was born at that point. We literally got started by doing SEO for law firms that branched out to other kinds of, you know, local services, whether it’s like Hvac companies or something like that. And over the years, you did all different types of digital marketing services. They kind of evolved to the point now where I learned that, okay, SEO is fine.

00:03:24:04 – 00:03:45:20

I don’t really like doing SEO, so I’m going to do your PPC. I don’t really like doing Facebook ads, so I’m just going to focus on Google Ads. that’s where we are. And it’s been an evolution and a process, but we wound up somewhere that I’m pretty happy with. Yeah. That’s awesome. that multiple friends came in, all asking kind of the same thing.

00:03:45:22 – 00:04:07:24

It was very, very strange, but I take that as a good sign. Okay. This might be something to look into. Yeah. Did you, did you already know that you were going to be an entrepreneur? yes. Yeah. For sure, for sure. That’s, My whole family is always been, female. Then I definitely got that. I went to college.

00:04:07:27 – 00:04:32:12

I kind of regret ever spending time at college now, but I went to college with the goal of getting a job and using that income to build my own companies on the, And that’s exactly what I did. When I, when I got hired in July 2001 as an engineer, I said, okay, I’ll give this company five years while I, you know, because I gave myself a five year deadline to be able to start my own thing.

00:04:32:14 – 00:04:51:18

I ended up staying for six years, but after six years, I was ready to go. So, Yeah, I’ve always been entrepreneurial. you know, part of that just works with my personality. I don’t do well with authority or people trying to direct me that. That just doesn’t work well for me. So I like to do my own thing.

00:04:51:19 – 00:05:12:17

And even in the entrepreneurial world, I kind of do my own thing. So, Yeah, always been there. It’s cool. and you talked about how there was parts of the business that you didn’t necessarily like, and so you’ve been evolving over time. absolutely. And a concept that’s been brought up a lot as, kind of like life by design or business by design.

00:05:12:20 – 00:05:32:01

Is that something that you kind of, inherently kind of knew you were going to be able to make changes and. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, when people get into the agency world, they think that, okay, we’ve got to grow this thing at all costs. I’ve got to get to a certain amount of revenue. I’ve got to have a certain size team.

00:05:32:03 – 00:05:56:24

I’ve done all those things over the years. at one point, I believe I had up to 25 people here at the agency. that did not work for me. That’s to add too much effort of too much paying attention on a daily basis. And that’s not me. I’m more of a live by design person. I very much live by the, you know, work to be able to live as opposed to live to work.

00:05:56:26 – 00:06:11:29

So I like to be able to have my days be as free as I want to, or if I don’t want to work today, am I going to work today? You know, so I keep my number of clients intentionally low. I have no staff now. No team. That is just me. I’m so much happier that way. And,

00:06:12:02 – 00:06:27:02

Yeah, sure. I don’t probably make the income that I would if I would have had 25 people still on staff, but that’s fine by me. I’ve got so much more time in my calendar. I can do pretty much whatever I want to on a daily basis. I can do whatever I want to do with the kids when they get home from school.

00:06:27:04 – 00:06:47:12

So that’s definitely kind of my inverse. That’s really cool. So you’ve gone through a transition of growing the agency all the way up to 25 and then deciding that it didn’t fulfill you on a deep level and then you, scaled down in order for you to have the life by design. Can you talk a little bit about that trend transfer?

00:06:47:15 – 00:07:14:29

Because there’s a lot of people out there that are agency owners that are like, buying into the seven figure deal. I mean, even in our own packaging, we’re talking about seven figures, right? but, it has to fulfill you, and there has to be some happiness there. So you talk a lot. Right, right. we have one other wrinkle that there is, about five years ago, when I started all this scaling down, I was in the scaling down process, and I got a leukemia diagnosis.

00:07:15:01 – 00:07:33:27

So I was gone from the business for 3 or 4 months. And, you know, in that time, as you kind of thought about, well, what do I really want to do? You know, when I, when I get back to work, do I really want to be, you know, on sales calls two, three, four hours a day? Do I want to be in client calls two, three, four hours a day?

00:07:33:29 – 00:07:48:17

Like, no. Do I want to be managing people 2 or 3, four hours a day? No, I don’t want to do that either. So I was kind of thinking, well, how how can I go back to you, you know, how can I do away with all the things that still have the income that I want to be able to live the life that I want?

00:07:48:20 – 00:08:08:06

And I just kept coming back to, you know, what was it like when I first started out? You know, always have, you know, that same number of clients and your 5 to 10 clients that you can service pretty easily, before you have to start scaling. And so I’m going to, going to go back to that. So that’s kind of what I did.

00:08:08:09 – 00:08:32:24

That’s cool. So you know people that are listening that might either be on the journey of scaling up or trying to figure out kind of life by design or business by design. if you were to kind of go back to your previous self like you earlier and give some, you know, tips of advice, I guess, what would you tell them or your previous self?

00:08:32:27 – 00:08:48:14

yeah. There’s lots of things that I’ve kind of had to figure out along the way. So one thing was definitely, you figure out what you’re really good at. You know, a lot of people give you the advice to do what you really enjoy as far as and the work that you do. I kind of disagree with that.

00:08:48:14 – 00:09:10:16

I figure, you know, do what you’re really good at. That way you can charge higher rates and spend less time doing it. If you’re really looking for the life by design kind of, and goal, that way, you’re not just mindlessly burning hours doing something that, you know you can. You’re bringing in income, but you’re not bringing in optimal income at something that you’re can be an absolute expert at.

00:09:10:19 – 00:09:29:15

So that’s one thing is figure out what you’re really good at and then kind of focus on doing that. you can always tell clients like, like me, I don’t do Facebook ads anymore. I always tell clients, if you’re cool with that, you’re cool with hiring another person to do the Facebook ad side. That’s perfect if you need me to do it.

00:09:29:18 – 00:09:45:22

Or probably not a good fit, because I’m not going to give you the best results there that somebody else that’s you know, a counterpart to me that focuses just on the Facebook side, they’ll be able to do a better job for you. So, upfront, upfront, my clients, they know that I am I’m more or less a mercenary at this point.

00:09:45:22 – 00:10:10:16

But I do one thing. I do it really well. So, yeah, that’s one thing to think about. And, I had another thought, but it’s going well. Let’s let’s run with it. Let’s run with that topic, because that’s actually a really good one. because a lot of people get nervous about either niching down to either a certain industry type of client, type of clients, like a graphic.

00:10:10:16 – 00:10:34:16

I mean, there’s, people get nervous about doing that because then they think that they’re not being able to serve more people. In actuality, you serve people more powerfully. But, what it that’s on them, I completely agree. give you an example. So I’ve been kind of in the weeds for the last 18 months, you know, working on client stuff.

00:10:34:16 – 00:11:01:01

And I’m just now getting to the point where I’m getting ready to update my website. And because all of the services I offer are things I don’t do anymore. So thinking about just the benefits of missing down. Like, now I know what copy to put on the website. I know exactly who I’m talking to. so yeah, if you niche down, you’re definitely gonna be talking to a smaller group of people, but you’re going to have a much higher success rate with that group of people.

00:11:01:04 – 00:11:22:03

And not to mention, you can again charge higher rates. The niching down is definitely something I’ve done. I’ve changed niches a couple of times. You know, we started out when I niche down. My first niche down was to work only on, Shopify stores do ads for Shopify. but now I’ve kind of shifted that over to software companies and SaaS companies, B2B.

00:11:22:05 – 00:11:39:24

But yeah, niching down is it’s really the only way to go. What you want you to know, what you want to do, what your skill set is, the ones that you can charge the most for. You definitely want to niche down in the customers that you can choose. And for anybody that’s listening that’s trying to figure out what their niche actually is.

00:11:39:28 – 00:11:59:27

Do you have any kind of tips for somebody that’s trying to choose it. you know they might have three or. Yeah, five different industries that they work in and so forth. Yeah. It’s you. Yeah. The longer you’ve been at it, you’ll have a better idea. You know what? If you’ve got three clients now or if you’ve had 50 in the past and there’s a pretty big difference there.

00:12:00:00 – 00:12:24:19

But just look at the industry. That or type of customer that you’ve had the most success with. That’s kind of how I landed on Shopify in the first place several years ago, was I figured, wow. Looking back at all the results. I really look for Shopify store. So that’s what I’m going to focus on. And, yeah, just look at who you enjoy working with and where you’ve had the most success and kind of start from there.

00:12:24:19 – 00:12:42:20

You know, you’re not locked into it just because you decided that that’s what you’re going to do now. We can change it a year from now. It’s not working out for you. There’s no there’s no risk. You’re not risking anything. Yeah. One of the things I like that you keep on bringing up is based around what you’re really good at and what you can get results for.

00:12:42:23 – 00:13:02:23

because a lot of people will focus on niches. They’re like, oh I heard that dentists are good, but they’ve never been in, you know, working with dentists before and stuff. And so. Right. I like the fact that you’re focused on the value and client results when you’re thinking about pricing. Yeah. And when you niche down, you’re going to have happy clients, right?

00:13:02:25 – 00:13:25:07

And that’s where word of mouth and referrals come to you. And you have awesome case studies that just you kind of self-perpetuating at that point. Awesome. So what is, what are you excited about over the next, like, 1 to 3 years? you know, what are you working on? What are you excited about? so with the whole AI coming around ChatGPT, I was actually playing around with that a little bit this morning.

00:13:25:09 – 00:13:54:08

it’s going to be a different world. You know, advertising and PPC itself, as always here. It’s for you very consistently over the last year or two as becoming more and more automated. You know, there’s less levers for people like me to pull to get results. And, it’s interesting to see where it’s all going to go to see whether or not there’s a or there’s even a place for agencies two years from now as Google going to, you know, take away our benefits to customers.

00:13:54:10 – 00:14:18:21

So it’s a very interesting time to be in the marketing world. Absolutely. I would like so normally end of the show, but you brought up a good point about, agencies and and disruption. what do you think actually? like, do you feel as though the agencies could be completely replaced? or do you think that there’s always going to have to be some type of human aspect, that kind of,

00:14:18:24 – 00:14:47:00

Yeah. I mean, there’s always going to be some sort of human aspect. it might be more. It might be more people focused on in-house stuff as opposed to hiring outside agencies. I kind of see that probably happening a little bit, maybe like a fractional CMO or something like that, a little bit more often than hiring it and then outsourcing all of your, you know, marketing efforts to an agency might see something like that.

00:14:47:02 – 00:15:10:06

I’m not sure and certain, you know, certain aspects of digital marketing might survive better than others. I think SEO is probably still going to remain a kind of a manual game other than content creation, like the technical aspect of SEO is probably still going to be there. PPC is definitely. Yeah, there’s a less needs for agencies than there was ten years ago.

00:15:10:11 – 00:15:30:29

Absolutely. Because it’s more of a yeah, we used to just kind of be this complicated beast, you know, that people didn’t know how to navigate, but now it’s more and more just a black hole and where you can’t really see what’s going on or why can’t work. You just hope it works for you. So I think that’s definitely going that way because that’s in Google’s best interest, honestly.

00:15:31:01 – 00:15:53:08

yeah. See. Yeah. I guess for everybody that’s listening, the the key is really to be adaptable and focus on client results because absolutely, results are the thing that actually keeps the client going for a long period of time. Yeah. Yeah. If clients are happy and you will ultimately be happy and you’ll, you’ll be bringing in income, no doubt.

00:15:53:10 – 00:16:08:04

Awesome. So what’s the best way for people to get in touch with you, or do you have any offers for them that they can take advantage of? I don’t have any particular offers. I just mentioned that, you know, I’ve got to redo all my old marketing, so that’ll be coming soon. But, you know, the best way to get Ahold of me is my website.

00:16:08:04 – 00:16:31:25

It’s deep field inc.com. Com. I also have a personal website at Jen Lasting or.com that is, thinking about doing some courses here in the near future. So, you can definitely check that out as well. And looking to get into the TikTok world. So, tiktok.com/jen last year go next. and for anybody that’s listening on. But the links for for Jim in the show notes.

00:16:31:27 – 00:16:41:07

And I just want to thank you very much for being on the show today. Absolutely. Thanks a lot.

00:16:41:09 – 00:17:06:27

For the 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 and control.com/case study right now to learn more about leverage for growth.

00:17:07:00 – 00:17:36:29

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 incontrol.com/ksat. That is niche incontrol.com/ksat. Now you.

00:17:37:02 – 00:17:43:13

Got.

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