AL EP 29: Alex Kafure – Utilize Task Management

Show Notes

Alex Kafure, the founder of Kafure Consulting, talks about his background in digital marketing and how he started his own agency. He highlights the importance of task management and organization in running a successful agency, and how it has helped him stay focused and record his ideas. Kafure also shares his philosophy on success, which involves empowering his team to do more and embracing new technology while still valuing the human element in decision-making.

Connect with Alex Kafure & KAFURE Consulting here –
Web: https://kafure.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexkafure/

Episode Transcript

00;00;04;02 – 00;00;32;14

Everybody is adjusting to your agency and transformation coach and founder of Mission Control, Greater of Leverage for Growth. And I’m Lucas James, founder of Twist, which scaled from 0 to $200000 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;23 – 00;01;00;19

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 for growth and how we successfully scale agencies quickly at Niche in control Icon slash Key Study at Niche in Control Icon slash Kingdom.

00;01;02;15 – 00;01;24;25

You’re 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 Alex Topher, the founder of Prefer Consulting, a full stack digital marketing studio on a mission to help take your brand to the next level from strategy to implementation.

00;01;25;01 – 00;01;46;09

Thanks for coming to our show today. Thank you so much, Jesse, for having me. Absolutely. Can you tell us a little bit about the history and background of your agency? Yeah, definitely. I guess to say it in the quickest way. My parents were both agency owners. They ran a digital marketing agency back in the eighties, believe it or not.

00;01;46;09 – 00;02;22;27

So better to date them too much. But they were using CorelDraw and some of the earliest programs. And I sat on my dad’s lap and I always really appreciated computers and engineering and grew into designing websites when I was younger and ultimately went to school for for marketing and and worked for a lot of agencies and a lot of in-house marketing teams just grinding, always realizing that the companies were paying other agencies a lot of money to do the services that I was doing for one of their departments and felt like, Hey, it seems a little bit much, but maybe I should go on the other side and see what it looks like.

00;02;23;26 – 00;02;47;12

In 2017, started your consulting and offered paid media advertising management for some of my former agencies that I worked with and here I am. Long story short, it it worked out in my in my benefit a lot of long nights and a lot of grinding. But ultimately I learned that offering the services and doing it the way that I think is best is is ultimately the way to go.

00;02;47;25 – 00;03;11;09

Mm hmm. That’s cool. Hearing about learning from your father from, like, the 1980s and seeing on the lab, I’m sure that that had a big impact on the way that you view business and entrepreneurship. Oh, yeah, for sure. I would say that my mom’s got a real keen eye for design, and I always just appreciate it. Her ability to produce like logos and things like that out of nothing.

00;03;11;09 – 00;03;34;25

And my dad engineered a lot of the framework of the systems that they used. So it was really cool to see the collaboration. And ultimately I wanted to kind of foster that same business mindset within my own agency. So I have a lot of technical background that I bring to the table, a little bit of a design as well, and that helps me kind of be a part of all the different facets of business growth.

00;03;34;26 – 00;03;55;24

And throw in some finance experience now. And it’s been a long journey. And you had talked a little bit about working for other agencies before starting your own, even during the time that you’re working for the other agencies. Did you always know that you were going to be an entrepreneur? It was part of kind of like the earning your stripes or.

00;03;56;10 – 00;04;15;25

Talk a little bit about what it was be It was like inside of the other agencies for sure. I felt like I never knew really what the word entrepreneur meant when I was younger. I just thought it was something that, you know, is kind of fancy sounding and but I was always trying to start some little business on the side, and I didn’t realize that that’s actually what an entrepreneur ultimately is.

00;04;15;25 – 00;04;43;18

And, you know, oh, this website might work. Let me let me build a WordPress site, you know, this weekend and try something. And I would do that regularly and never really tell anybody about it. And and ultimately I realized like, okay, that’s entrepreneurship at it’s at its core. And so, yeah, working with these agencies helped me identify some of the business models that I was really interested in, that I wanted to find a way to influence or find niche products that would grow within certain categories.

00;04;43;28 – 00;05;00;16

So it was hard for me to do it for my clients. You know, you’re not going to be able to say, Hey, try this product, and they’re going to be like, Oh, well, we love what the agency came up with. Let’s change our whole business model. So instead I would I would work it on the side and, and I ultimately grew traffic both organically and through a little bit of pain.

00;05;00;16 – 00;05;17;07

And I saw like, this is a lot easier than I thought it was kind of start from scratch. And, you know, luckily for me, I also like the way a couch feels to sleep on, so I didn’t mind getting all the way down to sleep, but on a couch if I needed to, if things didn’t work out. So it was like worst case scenario.

00;05;17;07 – 00;05;42;19

That was my mom’s couch, but luckily it never ended up there. But you know, you get close sometimes. MM Yeah. The commitment of an entrepreneur is a lot deeper than what people normally think. And I’m sure that on your journey since 2017, you’ve kind of gone through some like ups and downs and, you know, the journey of being an agency owner.

00;05;42;19 – 00;05;58;05

What are some of those things that you’ve kind of learned along the way that maybe if you were to know, like, you know, someone listening or even if you’re talking to yourself, you know, a couple of steps back, what would be some of the things that you wish you would have known that would save you time, energy or money?

00;05;59;25 – 00;06;24;24

That’s a good question. I’d say probably just sticking to organization, having a task management tool of some sort. A lot of time it was just whatever was in my head, whatever is top of mind. I put energy and focus towards that and sure, that would give me my undivided attention at that moment, but it would often leave things on the backburner that maybe shouldn’t have been and should have been just a chisel that on a daily basis.

00;06;24;24 – 00;06;47;07

So when I incorporated task management into my my, my ultimate business model, it really helped me stay focused and also helped me kind of keep a record of ideas. I’m one of those people that kind of does my best thinking when I’m in the shower. So I had to come up with a way to get out in and really just write something down and then incorporate that into a task management tool.

00;06;47;07 – 00;07;17;15

So I’d say to my younger self, you know, figure something else besides, you know, just keep it in your head and, and always write everything down and keep a nice record log and check check a box off the list every day. Mm. And I know one of the biggest kind of mindset shifts that happen within creative agency is, is they, there’s kind of like this mental battle between standardization and process and then creativity and innovation and this is totally a different topic than what I normally would talk about.

00;07;17;15 – 00;07;49;28

But for anybody that’s maybe listening, that maybe is on the creative side, that’s avoiding the kind of task management system, which is what you’re talking about. What advice would you give somebody to kind of embrace those processes or standards? Yeah, you know, that’s that’s a tough one as well, because I, I struggle with that still. You know, sometimes you’re just like you’re feeling motivated, you’re feeling creative, and you really want to dive headfirst into something and and oftentimes to reference a writer designer, you have writer’s block or designers block where you didn’t feel it at the at the time.

00;07;49;28 – 00;08;08;13

You were supposed to do it earlier, but now you’re feeling it, You know, how do I not jump into it and stick to the to the task I had scheduled? And I think it’s ultimately about just being really good at your note taking if you’re not going to jump headfirst into something right now, at least write down the thought process of, if you would, what would you do?

00;08;08;24 – 00;08;29;16

And really just make sure to to spell things out. I think with computers and keyboards, you can do a lot faster typing than you can do writing on a piece of paper. So the notepad and the notepad concept, maybe you just upgraded to something a little bit quicker so you don’t lose time and and lose the thought or the recording devices, you know, any type of recorder.

00;08;29;16 – 00;08;49;27

But that for me is, is really important because I often find myself just coming up with the best ideas right after a meeting where I’m about to go into another one. So it’s like I just got to write it down and I got to make sure to get back to it. I love it. So what is what is kind of like success for you and your agency over the next like 1 to 3 years?

00;08;49;27 – 00;09;18;25

What are you working on? What do you excited about? I know a lot of people are kind of fearful as I am. I’m quite the opposite, very incorporated into the business, into as much as I can. When it comes back to note taking and tax management making use of notion and their tools, building out some really creative things within the platform, just layering in as much technology I can as as I can in order to make things more efficient for the agency.

00;09;19;19 – 00;09;43;02

It’s not about cutting staff or reducing the amount of people that you have that are capable of doing things, but rather empowering them to be able to do more. I think that’s ultimately what’s going to divide us from from the other agencies. We’re not going to be lean and mean. We’re we’re going to have a really strong team that that has all the the power and capabilities of any other agency out there.

00;09;43;25 – 00;10;01;20

And I think that’s what we’re focused on now more than anything, is just making sure we don’t go stale with all these tools that are coming out. And and oftentimes there’s especially within paid ad management, that’s what we specialize in. There’s tools that automate everything and people are afraid like, oh my God, my job is going to go away.

00;10;02;11 – 00;10;31;17

And I think ultimately the human element is so important in making gametime decisions, you know, understanding, you know, is this creative doing better than another creative just because the algorithm says it is, you know, let’s dive deeper into the psychology behind why something might be working. And so I think it’s it’s ultimately for us, it’s embracing now what’s coming and really making use of it and applying it to the fullest instead of ignoring opportunity.

00;10;31;22 – 00;10;54;24

But we we embrace it. I love that entrepreneurial spirit. Yeah. Cool. So what is the best way for people to get in touch with you or do you have any offers for them that they could take advantage of? Yeah, I mean, I would say the easiest way is just to visit our website, Care.com. Kay Evans and Frank you r e dot com and or just write to me.

00;10;54;24 – 00;11;15;13

Alex Kirkham I’m always here, always available, ready to listen, ready to work with anybody who has some ideas. No cost to get on the phone with us. We love doing consultations and audits to help people understand what’s going on with their with their business. And I’d say, Jessie, any anybody that comes from your podcast will offer them 20% off of any business that they do.

00;11;16;03 – 00;11;37;20

I always just appreciate working with, you know, fellow players in the space who who have a great audience. And we’re always looking to help anybody lift their business. So please just feel free to reach out to us. We’re always here. And for anybody that’s listening in the show notes, I’ll have all the contact details for Alex. And thank you so much for being on the show.

00;11;37;26 – 00;12;03;03

Appreciate it. I really appreciate the time. Jesse is really excited to see where where things go for you 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;03;12 – 00;12;20;28

Go to niche in control dot com slash 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;21;14 – 00;12;42;03

Go to niche in control dot com slash k city that is niche in control dot com slash kasumi now.

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