AL EP 44: Tim Woda – Build Your Processes Early

Show Notes

Tim Woda is the founder and CEO of White Peak. He is a bit of a serial entrepreneur who is obsessed with data and growing traffic, sales, and revenue. Tim Woda is the founder and CEO of White Peak. He is a bit of a serial entrepreneur who is obsessed with data and growing traffic, sales, and revenue.

Connect with Tim Woda & White Peak here –
Web: https://whitepeak.io/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/whitepeak.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/white-peak-growth-partners-llc/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/whitepeak_io

Episode Transcript

00;00;04;03 – 00;00;11;03
Jesse
Everybody is adjusting to your agency. Transformation coach and founder of Mission Control Greater of Leverage for Growth.

00;00;11;08 – 00;00;18;19
Lucas
And I’m Lucas James, founder of Twist I am which scaled from 0 to $200000 a month with my own agency.

00;00;19;25 – 00;00;45;24
Jesse
We are the host of Leverage for Growth Podcast Agency Leverage 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. 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.

00;00;46;09 – 00;01;09;12
Jesse
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 kingdom, 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.

00;01;10;00 – 00;01;31;25
Jesse
Welcome to the Agency Leverage Edition. Today I am here with Tim Wodak, the founder of White Peak Marketing, a full service digital marketing agency that knows how to grow businesses. In fact, everyone on the White Peak team has experienced starting building and growing their own successful business before joining the team. Thanks for coming to our show today, Tim.

00;01;32;04 – 00;01;33;14
Tim
Absolutely. It’s a pleasure to be here.

00;01;33;27 – 00;01;37;14
Jesse
Awesome. Can you tell us a little bit about the history and background of your agency?

00;01;38;02 – 00;01;58;12
Tim
Sure. Well, I like to describe myself as an accidental marketer. Never in a million years that I think that on an agency, really my whole professional background, I was a serial entrepreneur. I was involved in startups and, you know, raising money, growing those businesses and ultimately selling them. And I was always on the growth side of the business.

00;01;58;13 – 00;02;24;02
Tim
Well, 2016, after a successful exit, a former business partner, I guess a business development partner, had reached out and inquired whether I’d be interested in running their marketing for them. And it was a law firm, and I’m not all dressed up in a three piece suit kind of guy. And I wasn’t really wasn’t interested. But I said, Hey, while I’m trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up, you know, I’ll be happy to do some consulting with you.

00;02;24;15 – 00;02;47;28
Tim
So about four months into this journey, I realized that as I was developing strategies and plans for this huge law firm, 385 lawyers, big firm to execute. They couldn’t execute their way out of a paper bag, so I was constantly referring them to different vendors and people that I knew who could help them execute. And at about four months, I guess, a lightbulb went off and I said, Oh my gosh, this is stupid.

00;02;47;28 – 00;03;05;11
Tim
I should get these people on payroll. And so that was kind of the beginning of the journey. And I guess about eight or so months later, I fired my one client and said, Hey, you have got a team now. I’ve got a plan for really going to do an agency. And so that was that was how we got started.

00;03;05;11 – 00;03;10;07
Tim
And it was really accidental. I guess. I’d never, never thought it would happen.

00;03;12;02 – 00;03;17;14
Jesse
That’s awesome that the aha was I got to put these people on payroll, right?

00;03;18;00 – 00;03;36;10
Tim
I mean, that was just sending money out the door. Right. And it never occurred to me because I wasn’t ever thinking like an agency. I’d always been an entrepreneur and so, you know, sometimes, you know, what my dad used to say? Even a blind squirrel bumps into an acorn once in a while. That’s really what happened out of.

00;03;37;10 – 00;03;51;10
Jesse
So you’ve had it since 2016 and most likely bringing people on payroll, having them go. What kind of led towards you seeking out people that have owned businesses before? Can you talk a little bit about that door?

00;03;51;10 – 00;04;30;03
Tim
So my wiring is that of an entrepreneur. I love to build and start things and I knew that that was an area of differentiation that I had from some agency owners. Not that all agency owners have. It started something. They obviously have. They’ve started their agencies. But I had been involved in, you know, four or five other start ups that had gone through the the process of capital raising and building, you know, MVP products and, you know, proving out markets that, you know, so those things that are unique to starting a business, I had gone through those.

00;04;30;03 – 00;04;53;13
Tim
And so when I was starting to put together the team for white people, I said, well, you know, there’s companies that specialize in all sorts of niches, right? Old saying niches make riches is true, you need to specialize in something. But what I didn’t see a lot of was companies that were built specifically to work with funded startups, kind of postwar avenue startups.

00;04;53;21 – 00;05;27;09
Tim
And if they were, it was really based upon their processes and their their heart’s desire to focus on that niche rather than from the DNA self. And so, you know, one of our hiring criteria is, you know, tell me about your experience starting your own business. And it’s like, well, how did start about business? Okay, Next. So, you know, we understand that just because someone has, you know, is looking for a job or that they may be a candidate that we’re trying to recruit, they don’t have to have been this smashing success in their own business.

00;05;27;10 – 00;05;46;29
Tim
The reality is most businesses, you know, end up having some hiccups along the way, but they know what those hiccups are, right. They know what keeps our clients up at night. They they’re able to connect the dots between like, hey, I know I’m working on this this campaign for you over here, but how are you planning on operationalizing fulfillment?

00;05;47;11 – 00;05;59;10
Tim
And the client’s like, I don’t know, I thought about that, you know, So we don’t put our clients in a bad spot by just saying, Yes, sir. Every time they want to go do something. We’re actually thinking about this holistically throughout the entire team.

00;05;59;25 – 00;06;23;08
Jesse
Mm hmm. And I’m I have like about five different questions they had. But the thing that that I’ve been thinking about since talking with you is really just how integrated business strategy and marketing strategy are. And what you’re talking about is, is that people have that have gone through something with business strategy and had to come up with the strategy themselves.

00;06;23;08 – 00;06;36;09
Jesse
Tried it in marketing. Yeah, they have empathy for your client. So can you talk a little bit about maybe that concept of business strategy and marketing strategy being combined? Because that’s kind of maybe in your DNA if you don’t?

00;06;36;10 – 00;06;59;04
Tim
Yeah, I mean, I think it starts where we really pressed into the question of why, you know, someone would come to us and, you know, obviously are talking to us because they want to grow. So they say, I want to grow. We’ll say why? And they’re like, well, because I want to make more money. And so we’ll say, okay, so before we go into figuring out whether you need to grow, is it possible that your business is just inefficient and you need to have better efficiencies?

00;06;59;04 – 00;07;16;27
Tim
I don’t want to spend your marketing money if it really isn’t supposed to be marketing money. And so we’ll start off by just talking to them about, you know, is this is this a revenue issue or is this a profitability issue? And if it’s a if it is a marketing issue, then we start out this, okay, we determine its marketing issue.

00;07;18;03 – 00;07;34;16
Tim
And so now we need to get more visitors on our website. And again, was it well, why? And they’ll say, well, because I need to make more sales. Okay, well, getting more bite at the apple is one way that, you know, more people on your site. Not everybody needs more visitors, but 100% of the people need better conversion.

00;07;34;25 – 00;07;51;23
Tim
So, you know, let’s let’s look at that. So we just ask the question a while out because clients tend to assume that they know the solution. And to me, that’s very similar to like when I go to the doctor’s and I’m like, Listen, doctor, I had been on whether the all day and I’m here to tell you what I mean, right?

00;07;52;13 – 00;08;27;19
Tim
They don’t know. They’re good at whatever they do and so will will ask questions and we talked ourselves out of a lot of revenue that way. But as a result, you know, the relationships we have with our clients are really, really trusting. They, you know, they end up spending more money with us in the long run because they know that when we say, hey, you need to do something, they know we understand their business and their business problems and their market and their competitors, not just because we are researching it to put together a campaign, but we are really trying to understand how to make this business successful in getting to what that definition of

00;08;27;19 – 00;08;29;24
Tim
success looks like is really important.

00;08;30;08 – 00;08;39;27
Jesse
MM I love it. And in your journey as an entrepreneur in multiple businesses before, what have you learned in this business that you haven’t learned and the previous ones?

00;08;42;18 – 00;09;11;16
Tim
Yeah, man, it’s like I’m learning every day. Like I’m learning with my chin. Okay? So, like, I just I’m leaning out there and just getting in the face constantly. I think. I think what I’ve probably appreciated more in this business than in past businesses is the importance of process. So and I, I hate to say this, but in previous businesses when we were funded by, you know, investors, for the most part, it’s really easy to throw money at a problem, right?

00;09;11;16 – 00;09;41;24
Tim
Like it’s just let’s hire more people. Let’s brute force our way through this. That’s that’s not what I’m doing with white people. I mean, a small team of about a dozen people. And so we have continually grown the business and added, I think this month will go to 13 like out of 30th person. But we’ve been really intentional about as we are growing with customers and revenue to not add people without killing our people and still delivering a great product.

00;09;41;24 – 00;10;02;07
Tim
So that what that has meant is that we have had that I spend most of my day focused on process and client strategy, so I didn’t have to do that as much before because I would just throw money at it. And and, you know, you really can’t scale an agency. Now, this is something I didn’t know when I started an agency there, because I never even worked at an agency, let alone run one.

00;10;02;17 – 00;10;23;14
Tim
But, you know, there’s a there is a problem with scaling at an agency is at some point you said, well, I need to grow, I need to add more people. But if I add more people, then I don’t become more profitable. So it’s almost no point to even growing right. Like, all I’m doing is increasing the size of my headaches because I’m making just as much money as I was before.

00;10;23;14 – 00;10;43;17
Tim
It’s just we have we’re doing more revenue and I got more expenses. So for me, this business has been all about, you know, refining processes, developing better and better ways to train and develop people to cross pollinate skill sets so that people can help people out who are already on the team rather than just throwing more bodies at things.

00;10;44;02 – 00;11;06;04
Jesse
Hmm. I love it. These are not the scripted questions that I would normally go with, but if you were to look back on your journey from 2016 till now and you were to kind of give yourself advice, maybe on your journey that would save your time, energy or money, what advice would you give either your previous self or our audience?

00;11;07;10 – 00;11;37;08
Tim
Yeah, I would say that the speed at which we are able to onboard new clients is is really huge. You know, the first few years that we started this, it took us a lot longer to get new clients kind of fully up and running. And again, it was processes. You know, we, we had so many processes in place about how we were going to execute campaigns and we have a bunch of processes related to selling.

00;11;38;29 – 00;12;03;28
Tim
You know, realistically, we could have gotten our processes in that first 30 days buttoned down. I don’t think the clients would have performed better, but we would have stressed less like, you know, the first 30 days of a new client coming on board was always a real headache. It was almost like painful to get a yes, right? We were like, Oh, crap, now we have to like, digest this.

00;12;04;06 – 00;12;21;24
Tim
And the reason why that’s important is because we’re not a niche. The focus is on a vertical right. We’re not like, Oh, well, I know all the dentists, I know what dentists think about. We’ve got a nanotechnology company as a client, we’ve got a bikini designer as a client. You know, we’ve got, you know, an online school as a client.

00;12;21;24 – 00;12;30;25
Tim
So the first 30 days for us, it was really painful. And if I had to look back on it sooner, I would have come up with a process for ramping the clients up.

00;12;31;09 – 00;12;38;16
Jesse
MM Awesome. And what are you working on right now? What are you excited about in the next maybe 1 to 3 years for AYP?

00;12;38;27 – 00;13;07;15
Tim
Yeah, two things. The world we’re, we’re starting to productize some things that have in the past been services. So we are taking some techno biology that we have developed in-house because my background has always been an entrepreneur in the SAS technology world. So we, we’ve developed some technology that we’d use ourselves and we’re prioritizing that so that, you know, I’m kind of anticipating, I hope I’m totally wrong and I’m anticipating the economy to get tougher before it gets better.

00;13;07;26 – 00;13;24;04
Tim
And so we want to have a way for someone who thinks that they can’t afford an agency to be able to utilize services that we can bring to the table and that comes in the form of technology. So it’s lower cost, it’s self-service, but then someone can kind of offer it and hire us as as they need based.

00;13;24;04 – 00;13;42;16
Tim
So that’s the first thing. And then the second thing is that the second half of this year, from the first time, we actually will focus on a specific industry vertical. So I’m basically for that particular device that is considering the throw out it is like, let’s figure out how to crack the code on that, but that’ll be something cool for us to try.

00;13;43;05 – 00;13;45;01
Jesse
Hmm. Awesome. It sounds exciting.

00;13;45;07 – 00;13;45;16
Tim
Yeah.

00;13;46;29 – 00;13;51;26
Jesse
Well, what’s the best way for people to get in touch with you, or do you have any offers for them they could take advantage of?

00;13;52;06 – 00;14;11;14
Tim
Yeah, sure. So our website is the best place to be just as a white peak. I know. And you know, most of what we do is we design and build great websites and then we do a lot of SEO campaigns. So we do a lot of other stuff that kind of is born out of that conversion optimization and landing pages, ads and stuff like that.

00;14;11;14 – 00;14;36;18
Tim
But those are two main things that we do. And so if someone is interested in working with us that they are the agency or, you know, once a couple some white label type stuff, or if they are an end user client, one of the things that we do on the CSA that I’m not I don’t think a lot of companies do is we actually provide a money back guarantee essentially if we don’t improve your search results performance, you know, past.

00;14;36;29 – 00;14;52;13
Tim
And so we kind of feel pretty confident in our ability to improve search performance. And so someone is like, Hey, I have a client or I have a business and I can’t afford to put any money at risk, great. Transfer all that risk to us. We’ll take that on. And if we don’t make you better, then you’ll pay us any money.

00;14;52;29 – 00;14;53;05
Tim
Mm.

00;14;53;18 – 00;15;03;17
Jesse
Awesome. I love it. So for anybody that’s listening, you can check the show notes for all the URLs to White Peak. And I just want to thank you very much, Jim, for being on the show today.

00;15;03;29 – 00;15;05;27
Tim
Yeah, it’s been my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

00;15;09;13 – 00;15;43;16
Jesse
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 to delegate effectively, get paid what you’re worth, and have your team run the day to day. 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

00;15;43;16 – 00;15;51;21
Jesse
always dreamed about. Go to niche in control dot com slash case study that is niche in control dot com slash case now.

Transcripts are auto-generated and may contain errors.