Greg Lee is the Founder of Brand Flights, who provides high quality marketing for brands like Ferrari. He’s been in business for over 10 years and has learned some important lessons along the way. One of the biggest challenges he faced over the years was scope creep, which is when a client gradually asks for more and more than what was agreed upon. Greg advises you to define what you want your agency to be and to keep the scope limited. Otherwise, it can become a lot more work than what you’re getting paid for. Basically, don’t be afraid to draw the line and stick to what you initially agreed to do for your clients.
AL EP 25: Greg Lee – Define The Scope of Your Service Ahead of Time
Show Notes
Connect with Greg Lee & Brand Flights here –
Web: https://brandflights.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregdlee/
Episode Transcript
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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.
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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.
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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 at Leverage Edition. Today I am here with Greg Lee, founder of Brand Flights, a full service marketing, advertising and public relations agency servicing fortune 500 companies and startups. Thanks for coming on our show today.
00:01:25:21 – 00:01:49:01
Hey, thanks for having me, Justin. Nice to meet you here. Yeah, absolutely. Can you tell us a little bit about the history and background of brand flights? Yep. I worked at a number of agencies over the years, and, I guess 2011 became a partner at a company called Billups Design. And, we were positioning the company to get acquired, which was successful.
00:01:49:03 – 00:02:19:17
and we had used, some creative related to Ferrari. which attracted the, the company that acquired, them. And so at that point, I spun off, brand flights or started brand flights and incorporated in 2013. And, continued on working with Ferrari and a bunch of dealers, Rosetta Stone. we picked up L.L.Bean along in partnership with, the other the old agency, and just kind of have grown the business, since then.
00:02:19:19 – 00:02:43:23
And it’s been it’s been great. It’s, we’ve expanded quite a lot with Ferrari and, you know, it provides, a good level of freedom. I have three kids, so I, really enjoyed that part of it. being able to, you know, to work in an office and also remotely. so that’s been a big part of why I went to direction that I did with the building, the company.
00:02:43:26 – 00:03:06:12
Have you always, known that you were going to be either an entrepreneur or a business owner? or do they how how did that happen? I wouldn’t say I’ve always known that, but I’ve been naturally drawn to that. I’ve owned three businesses over my lifetime, and it’s just, I don’t know. I guess it’s in my nature and in my DNA, as they say.
00:03:06:12 – 00:03:26:16
But I do enjoy, you know, owning a company and being entrepreneurial. at times it can feel, like a lot, you know, when you’re brand new, setting out and trying to, get win clients or, and maintain clients, you know, there’s, a lot riding on it when you have, you know, family and kids and stuff to support.
00:03:26:16 – 00:03:49:15
So. But yeah, I guess that’s the excitement and that’s that’s what drew me to it. Yeah. And, as you brought up, they have three kids. I have I have two kids and a third one, coming in in a couple months. how have you been able to, you know, navigate kind of like, a lot of our listeners are either having kids and they’re like a parent and a spouse and also an entrepreneur.
00:03:49:15 – 00:04:11:21
And so it’s I kind of like this big juggle. maybe what is, if you don’t mind, diving a little deeper. how how has that worked for you? And how have you kind of figured out that kind of balance between the family and the business? it’s, you know, originally when I was working at another agency, it was long hours, a big commute each way.
00:04:11:24 – 00:04:37:10
And the kids were younger at that time. You know, the oldest was probably 7 or 8 years old, and I was starting to coach soccer, and it would be like, formula one race back to make it, so practice, you know, at 6:00. And, I found the biggest change was, in, in creating a balance and time for the kids to coach and do things like that.
00:04:37:12 – 00:05:07:22
Was moving, getting an office much closer to home to, So I got one within a couple of miles of the house. and then, you know, I could always work at home as well. and, you know, so Covid really was a non factor. We’ve been used to working remotely. and, you know, the only thing is it is nice to get out sometimes and, and interact with people in person, but, that was a big game changer for me.
00:05:07:24 – 00:05:28:25
to, to be much closer and eliminate that, in my view, a waste of a commute. and so that that was a big step and it allowed a lot more free time. You know, after work with the kids where I wouldn’t be sitting in traffic for an hour, ten minutes each way. So that was that was a huge step.
00:05:28:27 – 00:05:57:14
yeah. And just making the effort in the time to, you know, stop working. Although in the beginning it was tough because, you know, you had to deliver for new clients and trying to win clients to just stay above water. So I’d find myself working till the wee hours of the night a lot. But, eventually I’ve, you know, tried to pack my work and into the day and, and then do other things with the family, so.
00:05:57:17 – 00:06:15:07
That’s awesome. Yeah. it’s always a balancing act, trying to figure out the life and business by design and trying to make it so that, you know, especially commutes. that was one of the things when I was working in corporate America, I was like, oh, man, I’m constantly driving all this. Yeah. You know, and, I’m sorry to be able to switch it.
00:06:15:09 – 00:06:39:16
so going back to the brand flights. So, how long has, your agency been in existence? it’s it was founded in 2013. and before that, it existed sort of as a consultancy, but it became official in 2013. So I guess it’s ten, ten, 11 years, whatever. That’s now. Yeah. yeah, it’s been a while, so I guess we made it.
00:06:39:18 – 00:07:06:20
Yeah, that’s that’s awesome. in the last ten years, I’m assuming that, there’s had the ups and downs and there are some lessons learned that you’ve had on your journey. if you were to give kind of like, maybe your, your previous self or, you know, maybe five years ago or so, give some, like, advice, to maybe even people that are listening that might be 1 or 2 steps, before you, what would be some of the advice or leverage that you could give them?
00:07:06:23 – 00:07:30:24
Well, I guess define you know, what you want your agency to be if you if you want to have 100 employees and you know, the cold calling companies all the time, then you have to set up a larger space, or at least the capability in the cloud to scale up with a big team of people and be able to mine, for me, that was, the path I moved away from.
00:07:30:24 – 00:08:05:21
I wanted to have a smaller, footprint and, and have been successful on that. but then defining, you know, do you want to focus on a real small niche, which eventually I kind of moved towards? because for me, if you become an expert in a particular segment and in this case, it’s a real particular segment, you know, you can really get deep into the details of the campaigns, the sites, the data involved and, and say automotive or whatever.
00:08:05:23 – 00:08:35:07
the other people just think gloss over when they talk. And so when you can really help and engage, that deeply with the clients, that’s key. So it’s either provide a product, limited product offering to a wider group of clients and be expert in the specific product, and you can scale it, and or become an expert in a particular industry, a little broader.
00:08:35:10 – 00:09:01:13
And, and that’s your niche. but to scale, you know, definitely to to keep the scope limited. And that was the biggest challenge that I’ve learned. I would get pretty deeply embedded with some clients being clients for 12 years and allowed scope creep to get it, and it’s always hard to draw a line and say, all right, you know, this is the retainer.
00:09:01:13 – 00:09:30:16
It’s exceeded. And, you know, this email or this whatever that you’re asking for is outside of scope. And that’s a difficult conversation to have. And that’s where having scale and, you know, a lot more people makes it a little easier if you’re productized and it’s a very clear delineation of, okay, you know, whatever we’re going to provide web maintenance, SEO, one email a month and you know this and it’ll be whatever it is in thousand dollars and it exceeds those things.
00:09:30:16 – 00:09:50:13
Then we’re going to go back and create a scope. I always I, I was not good at, doing that or I’ve gotten better, but, you know, early on when you’re really trying to maintain a relationship and it was effective and it works. But sometimes that can become a lot more work than maybe you’re getting paid for.
00:09:50:15 – 00:10:24:18
or, you know, that you could if you work for finite and defined. and so that’s, a fine balance. At least I found it to be. Yeah. Being able to create the agency by design as opposed to whatever your client’s needs are at the moment. Yeah. And if you know what I mean, if you allow it to get to I-I’d, it’s good because you, you get pretty embedded and sticky with, but there’s something to be said for a narrow, a narrow product x, and very defined relationship.
00:10:24:18 – 00:10:42:17
And then if it gets, you know, so you can either sell that wider or you have to draw your lines, if you, if you can see that scope keeps coming in and, you know, sort of blown out that what you’re getting paid for the deliverables. Yeah, absolutely. So what is, what is success for you and your agency?
00:10:42:17 – 00:11:04:03
What are you working on in the next, like 1 to 3 years? what are you getting excited about? I mean, continuing what we’re doing, we’re doing a, a lot of, like, video and programmatic, CTV and display over the years. And that’s exciting to kind of not moved away entirely, but slowed on the social side.
00:11:04:03 – 00:11:33:06
We were doing a lot of social campaigns, with the iOS changes, we found that to be more challenging, to deliver the same results that we had been seeing. enjoy the, the web side of things. The, you know, web 3.0 or whatever. I was working, with my old partner on some AI that they were doing augmented AR, augmented reality, and that was pretty cool.
00:11:33:08 – 00:12:02:14
how? Just different it is more app oriented, more call out oriented, for products. It was interesting to, you know, learn something new like that. I had not been I didn’t know much about it. So that was pretty cool. yeah. I don’t know that. And then maybe, maybe scaling the company up, to a certain point, where the scaling is a benefit to, to lifestyle and company as opposed to becoming a burden.
00:12:02:14 – 00:12:25:22
But that’s the that’s the challenge across the board. So the last five years so that that’s what I’m, I guess focusing on how to, you know, keep it going and then plan for either, you know, maybe the kids to take over someday or an acquisition, you know, thinking through those things like what’s the best? What’s the best fit for.
00:12:25:25 – 00:12:55:12
So for me, the company, my lifestyle, if the kids are interested and they’ve, you know, kind of grown up around it and seen, you know, I haven’t been on projects over the years naming and branding and logos and, you know, sort of the process of it. And they enjoy it, you know, but in the end, whatever makes them happy, you know, I would want them to move towards and not not be concerned about sticking with the family business unless they, you know.
00:12:55:15 – 00:13:13:08
And that would be a cool gift if it could occur that way, you know, where somebody, one of them was interested or all they wanted to, you know, work as they grow up and get older. That’s awesome. Oh cool. what’s the best way for people to get in touch with you or do you have any offers for them.
00:13:13:10 – 00:13:42:27
They can take advantage of? I mean, I’m quite selective with clients. so my website, brand flights.com, you know, I can give a call 610935 3800. and we could have a conversation that would just, depend. Typically, it’s, brands and specific projects and budgets, that. Yeah, that would be required to engage. So that’s kind of a I guess it’s a good position to be in.
00:13:43:00 – 00:14:02:07
and that’s. Yeah, that’s the position. Yeah, yeah. You got your niche, you know, who you serve and how to serve them. And, That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on the show today. it’s been a pleasure. All right. Hey, thank you very much. Have a great afternoon.
00:14:02:10 – 00:14:29:15
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