AL EP 31: Pete Griffith – Learning to Adapt

Show Notes

As a former creative director for over 20 years at the world’s largest ad agencies, Pete Griffith’s work for numerous Fortune 500 companies not only gained impressive creative recognition but boosted their bottom lines. But when work meant spending more time away from his family than with them, Pete started his own agency and never looked back. He now oversees every aspect of marketing, communication and strategic planning at Mentum.

Connect with Pete Griffith and Mentum here:
Web – https://yourmentum.com
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/yourmentum
Twitter – https://twitter.com/YourMentum
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/company/your-mentum

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;05;26

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;05;26 – 00;01;34;08

Everybody is adjusting to a more agency transformation Coach and founder of Mission Control, creator of Leverage for Growth. And I’m Lucas James, founder of Twist that I am which scaled from 0 to $200000 a month with my own agency. We are the hosts 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;01;34;17 – 00;02;05;15

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 and Slash, you are now listening to Leverage for Growth.

00;02;05;22 – 00;02;25;25

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 Pete Griffith, founder of Momentum, a full service marketing agency devoted to health care brands, people care about on a mission to spark emotions that change behavior. Thanks for coming to our show today, Pete.

00;02;26;09 – 00;02;52;27

Hey, thank you very much for inviting me. Appreciate it. Absolutely. Can you tell us a little bit about the history and background of your agency? Yeah, You know, I started out at some of the world’s largest ad agencies and doing international big campaigns, had the big nice class office and phenomenal VP and titles and all that. And, you know, I got it into my 30, maybe late thirties, and I started looking around.

00;02;52;27 – 00;03;19;19

I didn’t see too many older folks at the agency. So I went to like, where did they go? Well, what happened to them? I also saw that the pyramid, you know, was fewer and fewer jobs. As you obviously advanced in the profession. But also in those jobs were only in a few cities in America. Like, it wasn’t something like a teacher or a fireman or something.

00;03;19;19 – 00;03;40;05

They could have a, you know, get any city you wanted to live in. And then I just I didn’t feel like I was in control of my life. And then a great example is we had worked on a large cracker account and doing phenomenal, you know, one advertising word for it and boosted their business literally got millions of dollars.

00;03;40;05 – 00;04;03;23

And it was on kind of an autopilot thing in our corporate office from New York, came by and one day and said, great job. Phenomenal. Thank you. We’ll take it from here. And I called my wife and I said, hey, pick me up. She goes, great. I got some news. I sent I got some news. She picked me up and I said, Yeah, they let me go.

00;04;03;26 – 00;04;25;15

And she said, Yeah, we’re pregnant. So that was kind of a you talk about an aha moment. I know that’s a ha more than like a oh moment, but that kind of really made me thinking that I kind of wanted to take a little more control about my own career or my own life. And, and, you know, we had an act.

00;04;25;15 – 00;04;46;01

We had a saying at the ad world, if you don’t come in Saturday, don’t bother coming in Sunday. Right. I was at the mercy. I’m just working 24 seven and I just didn’t picture myself. You know, the old if you work 50 years, you retire with a lot of money and then you can enjoy five years. You know, I didn’t want that.

00;04;46;01 – 00;05;05;26

I had kids that were doing phenomenal things, and I just wanted to be more of a parent than a provider, you might say. So that was the thing, the scary moment. I had some entrepreneurial DNA, I think probably inside of me, and I just said, you know, I got tired of saying if I ruled the world, I would do it this way.

00;05;05;26 – 00;05;25;16

And I said, Well, I’d better put my money where my mouth is here and just try it, because I would regret it if I didn’t. So that’s why I took the leap. And that was back in 2009 and then we’ve been going ever since. Mm hmm. Yeah, I think it’s funny. The aha moment is really at home. And then you’re going, okay, I need to dive right in.

00;05;25;16 – 00;05;52;20

And so what were if you can bring yourself back to that kind of that leap where you’re, like, done with the ad agency now moving into entrepreneurship, what were some of the things that either like, what did you experience? How was that for you in the way be getting so big every thing changed. Obviously, I think, you know, my I thought, here’s my first thought I had because I loved playing golf at the time.

00;05;52;20 – 00;06;16;13

Oh my God, I’m going to be able to golf any time. I’m all right. I can I get I can call my own hours. I’m the boss. And what I suddenly realized was I would go to the golf course and on the first day I go, I should not be here. I should be back building this business. And the idea of 4 hours on a golf course was just like, this is not this is not profitable, this is not efficient.

00;06;16;13 – 00;06;48;27

This is just not. Right. Right. So you make that transition in your mind. And I suddenly appreciated everyone I had worked with and and was thankful that I kind of in a peripheral way, picked up on things like the accounting department, things like the department, things like strategy, everything that was out of my skill set. And I think that’s a that’s a hard thing for folks to understand, is like they go and going, I really know how to do this.

00;06;49;12 – 00;07;17;03

And owning a business and running a business is a lot more than that. I mean, you’re the you’re the janitor every night, right? You’re the you’re that you do the, you know, everything. So that was the first big shift. The other one was we started in 2009, which they called the Great Recession back then. So I had a stable of I made the leap and had a stable of clients and I was all good.

00;07;17;03 – 00;07;49;06

And then all of a sudden none of those clients were there and none of their budgets were there. Right. So I had to learn to adapt. And I went from selling beer and cheese and crackers to mammogram rams and cancer care and vasectomies. I mean, a complete shift in what what I my skill sets were and I used to joke that I went from convincing people would kill themselves to convincing people to save themselves.

00;07;49;07 – 00;08;17;05

So you know you you have to embrace change. Mm hmm. And there’s a lot of transferable skills that you learned. And, you know, in the ad agencies that you brought into entrepreneurship and, you know, and that transferable skills also works with different industries. What were some of those things that you kind of learned, maybe even switching the industry that you were focusing on?

00;08;17;15 – 00;08;40;18

Yeah. If you can bring yourself back, I know that some of our audience is either in that kind of switch from. So change was huge, right? So the obvious one is like, okay, we got to always we’re doing podcasts now. Right? I mean, ten years ago, 20 years, there was no podcast, right? So there’s the obvious technology that we have to keep up with.

00;08;40;28 – 00;09;00;15

But and, but that will always be. And that’s just, you know, taking some extra time a week to learn the new program and the new software or what’s out there. I never my daughter and my all three of my kids played soccer and that was one of the reasons I wanted to leave was to be with them. She now plays professional league.

00;09;00;15 – 00;09;19;27

We sat the other day talking about what’s the difference between making that next level. I think it’s the same with business. The soccer player. If you’re constantly looking down at the ball, what your what you’re good at, your footwork, you’re constantly looking down. You never see what’s going on. You never see the opportunities where you need to pass or what’s opening.

00;09;19;28 – 00;09;45;03

And business is very much the same way with mine was, you know, if I had focused on I do at least is what I did, I never would have been able to adapt. And when my clients changed, not only with like from brands that were either consumer focus to business to business or from food and beverage to health care.

00;09;45;19 – 00;10;23;05

But I also had to learn my the skill set of going from, let’s say, just doing ads or marketing to brand strategy. One of the first clients I had I can’t thank you. Thank you, Brady and Medical Associates. I told them, I know you hired me to do ads. I don’t want you to do a single ad for one year and why We did a big SWOT analysis for them, and we found that we could probably and we did give them another $3 million a year just to plug the leaky holes in their bucket.

00;10;23;12 – 00;10;46;01

In other words, they had acquired so much they wanted to do all these ads, they wanted to get more clients and they wanted to get more patients. And we said we can get you more patients just by having your doctors realize instead of referring a patient outside to a gynecologist, you actually have a gynecologist inside your own company.

00;10;46;06 – 00;11;11;29

They were acquired so fast that they didn’t even know the people or the the services of their own company. So I went from being an ad guy, right. And a creative person to more of a strategic business person who said, All right. My value is to provide solutions to make these companies more profitable or better or more efficient or whatever.

00;11;11;29 – 00;11;32;22

And that was a big shift for us because all of a sudden we were doing SWOT analysis and some and operational staff and convincing folks, you know, a call center might be better than individual, you know, things that were completely out of our skill set. But that change and that entrepreneurial ship said, okay, this is where we need to go.

00;11;32;22 – 00;11;55;11

Let’s, let’s find a way to do it. Mm hmm. That’s awesome. I like the fact that and one of the previous guest I talked about, don’t stay in the lane. Create your own lane and keep on main evolving over periods of time. I hear that within what you’re talking about. You know, you hired me for ads, but actually, this is a lot bigger, and I can actually save you a lot more with that.

00;11;56;00 – 00;12;13;17

I think there’s a if you look at the history of a lot of big brands or a lot of any brands, they started out with a business plan going this late. Right? Then all of a sudden, either the market changed or they found out there was a bigger opportunity here and they they slid this way. And I think that’s a really important skill, an important thing.

00;12;13;21 – 00;12;38;12

It’s not looking down at the soccer ball. It’s looking to where the field is and where where the opportunities are and following those. I think. Mm hmm. And we’re as agency owners, going through kind of like a disruption right now. So we’re in the middle of a whole nother kind of change with AI and things like that. And what would you say to some people that maybe are having a hard time with the changes?

00;12;38;22 – 00;13;02;26

So like you’re being able to adapt a lot. And so I think that’s one of your, you know, superpowers. So if someone’s listening right now and they’re either having a hard time, they’re embracing the change or figuring out how to make it work for them, what would be like one or two things that you’d say for them? Well, first of all, if they’re even if they’ve made that leap or they’re even doing that, they have it in within themselves to do it.

00;13;03;17 – 00;13;28;08

They have the courage there to do it. Whether they think they have it or not, they probably have all the skills to do it or not. And I guess some advice that I was given before I left was don’t think about necessarily all the skill sets or all the marketing that I was told. Picture yourself in 3 to 5 years, like how would you want to be living?

00;13;28;08 – 00;13;52;15

Where would you want to be? I did not want to be at the corporate office in the weekend that I was corporate, but just I wanted to be able to be with my kids. I wanted to be able to enjoy, you know, I still work as much, but I was able to picture myself where I wanted to be in 3 to 5 years and and and literally, like, what is that lifestyle?

00;13;52;15 – 00;14;11;08

What does it look like? What’s it feel like? You know, I got down to even like picking a Saturday out. What would my Saturday be? Three, three years from now? Right. And I’m doing that right now. I do it all the time. I’m like, you know, what would the retirement look like someday, right? We kind of all do that.

00;14;11;12 – 00;14;31;22

But I think as business owners, if we do that, then we can make those changes a little easier to us. Like, okay, I want to get here. And this adoption doesn’t seem as hard now or it’s worth the really a lot of extra time to learn it or to change or to or to become that because this is where I want to go.

00;14;31;22 – 00;14;47;19

And if I don’t, I’m not going to get there. Mm hmm. Yeah. One of the things that we help clients with that’s very similar to what you’re talking about, which is like that life and business by design, where you have kind of an understanding of where you’re going and then basically you’re just adjusting as you kind of go.

00;14;48;14 – 00;15;10;19

Did you learn that? Did you learn that in like as a W2 or did you learn that in entrepreneurship, or have you always kind of known you have to kind of like see it with your mind before you can actually experience it? Yeah, no, someone told me once, and I don’t know if this is going to be too out there or whatever, but I always pictured the path as very linear, right?

00;15;10;19 – 00;15;30;17

They do this and they do this and they do this. And it’s a step on a step on a step on a step. All the way up or this way, whichever way you want to go. And someone told me, it’s not like that. It’s a sphere. You travel around this thing, right? And the idea is to see and experience as much as you can with that.

00;15;30;17 – 00;15;46;15

And the more you do that, the the greater your skill sets is, the greater your enjoyment is, the greater fulfillment is if you just do this, you’re just going on a path and you get up there and what happens if you’re all the way up there and you go, I don’t like this view, and that’s all you know?

00;15;46;15 – 00;16;06;19

Whereas if you kind of, okay, I’m going to go over here now, I’m going to transverse over here, I’m going to do a little bit of this. You still want to be productive about it, But I think the more things you cover and the more perspectives you look at, the broader your skill sets and the broader your ability to adapt that change and to be more successful.

00;16;07;12 – 00;16;24;03

Mm hmm. And I think that’s also where fulfillment and happiness come from as well, where it’s not just based around what’s right in front of you or like you’re talking about with the soccer analogy, having it right by your feet and also what you’re staring at, you’re actually able to see, you know, that life or abundance is actually all around us.

00;16;24;19 – 00;16;43;16

Yeah. Yeah. And that’s really, really, really, really important because I think I’m going to guess that’s why most entrepreneurs, at least like me, maybe you, we do. We do. We didn’t want to follow that path. We there was something inside of us that maybe it’s a dream, maybe it’s or whatever this I can picture. This is what I how I want to do it.

00;16;43;16 – 00;17;14;28

And I think I can do it better. I think I can do it to make my life better. And that wasn’t the case, man. I mean, you know, you look back 20, 30 years that the opportunities necessarily weren’t like that anymore or back then as much. And, and it’s obviously the Internet has helped that. Obviously the whole idea of the small business has been opened up a lot better and it’s an easy thing to go, Oh, it’s easy.

00;17;14;28 – 00;17;41;25

I’ll just do that. But I will say, you know, the first 20 years of everything that I learned was in that linear path. And if you’re in your twenties, my son is and he’s an engineer now, and I keep telling him because I think he has a little bit of that in him. Right. And I keep telling you, you’re at the best place you could be right now because you’re at a company that you can learn all that stuff from.

00;17;41;25 – 00;18;03;24

Soak it in, not just what you’re doing specifically, but like every person that you interact with, learn what they’re doing and learn the value of what they’re bringing to that whole equation. Because as an entrepreneur, you’re going to have to do it all. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. And then find people that can do it better for you. Absolutely right.

00;18;04;03 – 00;18;37;10

And that’s the other thing, because we worked with a lot of clients that were entrepreneurs and build a business up to ten, $20 million and part of that or some of sometimes the fallacy is because you’ve done that, you feel like you can do it all and you can’t give that up and what you don’t realize is you’ve probably done all of these different skill sets at 80% rather than at 100%, which would your ego says, Yeah, but I’ve built this up to 20 million or whatever it is.

00;18;37;21 – 00;18;59;07

But they don’t realize, yeah, it could be so much more if you just kind of get over the reins or give over some of the control or whatever, whatever that grip on it is. But yeah, you have to start learning to trust them. And I know on other podcast, a lot of your folks have said that trust gaining or that trust is a really big transition.

00;18;59;07 – 00;19;16;12

So yeah. Yeah. Well, let’s talk a little bit about success for you. So what are you excited you know, happened in actually 1 to 3 years and what do you what are you working on? What are you excited about? Yeah. So, so what I pictured was to be able to raise my kids and have a great life and whatever.

00;19;17;08 – 00;19;39;27

They’re grown now and it’s time for me to like, okay, let’s take off the reins and go, go stretch a little bit. I have a friend that I’ve known for years. He was in the franchise business, so he’s he’s own franchises. He’s sold franchises, done that. And we literally just a few days ago started and got our license to do a whole new company special franchising.

00;19;40;09 – 00;20;19;27

And we found a niche where most people who say, Hey, I got a great business, I love to franchise this, there’s no real general contractor. There’s no one place to get everything that they need can be done all together. So between my marketing background and between his franchising background, we formed a company from franchising and we can, you know, deliver the entire everything you need to do to franchise your business for, you know, at the time we talked about this for a lot less than everything else everyone else is offering.

00;20;19;27 – 00;20;44;16

So we’re excited about that. And this entrepreneurial 20 year old is coming back to life again and starting something new. And you know, I’m starting it with another person, another really bright person. And there’s I think another dynamic to that when you start out is like, are you wanting to do this on your own or are you wanting to do this with someone else or a team?

00;20;44;16 – 00;21;11;07

And that dynamic is something that you need to think about. Mm hmm. That’s super exciting. And what’s 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? None other than we seem to always under-promise and overdeliver. And so, Pete, at your mentum dot com, you can see their website at your mentum dot com style franchising as well.

00;21;11;22 – 00;21;35;14

But our health care agency is still doing phenomenal stuff and hoping to do another 20 years of business. Mm hmm. Well, awesome. And for anybody that’s listening, I’ll put the URLs and connections to Pete in the show notes. And I want to thank you very much for coming on the show today. Thank you. Thank you. Good luck, guys.

00;21;35;15 – 00;21;56;15

You guys are doing a great job. 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;21;56;23 – 00;22;14;12

Go to niche in controlled 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;22;14;28 – 00;25;41;16

Go to niche in control dot com slash key city that is niche in control dot com slash case that we now.

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