Discover valuable insights from Shanna Young and Kristi Simone, Co-Founders of YeS! Creative Marketing, as they discuss their diverse backgrounds in advertising and marketing consulting. Learn how their experiences shaped their agency’s approach and the significance of complementing each other’s strengths. With a focus on transparency and client-centricity, they prioritize generating real results and emphasize conversions over superficial metrics. As their agency has grown, Shanna and Kristi highlight the challenges of duplicating themselves and finding high-level individuals who can handle client interactions and strategy. Explore their journey, teamwork, and scaling challenges in this informative conversation!

AL EP 45: Shanna Young & Kristi Simone – Putting Your Clients First
Show Notes
Shanna Young has 27 years of experience in sales, marketing, and strategy. Prior to co-founding YeS! Creative marketing, Shanna has spent the last 6 years as Senior Account Director at another marketing agency, where she and Kristi Simone worked together. Having worked in a variety of advertising industries allowed her to learn and specialize in traditional and digital platforms. Along with learning the various marketing and advertising capabilities she also had the opportunity to work with many different industries.
Kristi has more than 31 years of marketing, strategy and sales experience. Prior to co-founding YeS! Creative Marketing, Kristi served 7 1⁄2 years as Chief Marketing Officer of Whiteboard Marketing where she developed the agency’s processes, sales and brand strategies. Prior to her role there, she was an independent marketing consultant for more than 15 years where she provided marketing strategy and implementation for local and national clients in multiple industries. YeS! is a full service marketing agency – both digital and traditional marketing.
Connect with Shanna Young, Kristi Simone & YeS! Creative Marketing here –
Web: https://yescreativemarketing.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yescreativemktg
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yescreativemarketing/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/yes-creative-marketing/
Episode Transcript
00;00;04;03 – 00;00;11;03
Jesse P Gilmore
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 James
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 P Gilmore
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;08;19
Jesse P Gilmore
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 and Control and creator of Leverage for Growth.
00;01;08;27 – 00;01;26;16
Jesse P Gilmore
Welcome to the Agency Leverage edition. Today I’m here with Shanna Young and Kristi Simone, the co-founders of Yes Creative Marketing, a full service marketing agency that generates results for small to midsize businesses on a mission to hit your target. Thanks for coming to our show today.
00;01;27;11 – 00;01;28;08
Shanna Young
Thanks for having us.
00;01;28;27 – 00;01;32;22
Jesse P Gilmore
Absolutely. Can you tell us a little bit about the history and background of your agency?
00;01;34;05 – 00;01;55;11
Shanna Young
A Sure. I’ll start with it. Well, we both have backgrounds in advertising, different capacities. I came from more of a specialty niches like promotional advertising, yellow page advertising, television advertising, all the different types of industries throughout agencies that you may utilized. Christy came from a different background. She came from me.
00;01;55;27 – 00;02;15;19
Kristi Simone
I came from a lot of different marketing consulting four years and years in marketing strategy. And then Shana and I worked together at a previous company for about seven and a half years and, you know, decided that was a full service marketing agency and we decided to start our own agency so we could help small and mid-sized businesses.
00;02;16;09 – 00;02;27;00
Jesse P Gilmore
Hmm. Awesome. And was there kind of like an aha moment that you’re like, now is the time to start an agency? Or can you kind of go back to that moment where, like, now is the time?
00;02;27;07 – 00;02;51;28
Shanna Young
It was just like, we’ve hit our growth. We were we were only working in one industry and both of us had oodles of experience in lots of different industries and we felt like we liked working in lots of different industries. It gave us insight. Yeah, we had definite niches and we were really good at certain certain industries, but been working with lots of industries, gave us the opportunity to pull ideas from different things that have worked.
00;02;51;28 – 00;03;02;06
Shanna Young
And you know, you wouldn’t get pigeonholed in suggesting the same things over and over and over again. So we really liked that we could work with a multitude of different types of businesses.
00;03;02;07 – 00;03;23;03
Kristi Simone
And instead of and I, we both have such different skill sets and different strengths that we complement each other really, really well. So we joked around for years about always start our own agency, you know, kind of as a joke. And then one night we kind of started really talking about it and one thing led to another, and six weeks later we were incorporated and rolling.
00;03;23;26 – 00;03;36;29
Jesse P Gilmore
Hmm. Awesome. So you talked a little bit about different strengths and complementing each other. What’s what would you say is, as one of your guys are strengths, what’s the other one like? How do you guys partner up?
00;03;37;18 – 00;03;53;19
Shanna Young
Well, I’m definitely in the more the sales and in the strategy part and worked in the different avenues. Like like she doesn’t have experience in television and I did. And so some of that capacity, whereas she is definitely more on the branding and the the consulting.
00;03;53;21 – 00;04;10;10
Kristi Simone
And the consulting side and just process kind of even the way we split our business up. Shana really is the one that handles the invoicing and the billing, and we each have a little bit of different roles. We work together on every client account, but individually, you know, like I manage our Facebook ad campaigns, she manages the billing.
00;04;10;10 – 00;04;17;25
Kristi Simone
So our there are certain other smaller, idiosyncratic things that we can kind of work together on, you know, to kind of make the agency work as a whole.
00;04;18;15 – 00;04;24;10
Jesse P Gilmore
Hmm. Very cool. And how long has, yes, creative marketing been in existence?
00;04;25;06 – 00;04;28;21
Shanna Young
It’s been a whole year. And a one, maybe one month. Yes.
00;04;30;13 – 00;04;40;11
Jesse P Gilmore
Oh, very, very cool. What are some of the things that you’ve learned in that first year that you’re going to be holding on to and carrying forward into the next couple of years?
00;04;40;26 – 00;04;48;27
Kristi Simone
No, we actually talked about that question before before we got on the podcast, just trying to figure out like some of the answers. You go first and then and then I’ll.
00;04;49;07 – 00;04;51;15
Shanna Young
Ask you what you were going to say and you.
00;04;51;15 – 00;04;52;29
Kristi Simone
Go first and then I’ll, you know.
00;04;53;05 – 00;05;07;10
Shanna Young
Hey, it’s a lot of work, right? I mean, we knew it’s going to be a lot of work, but you don’t really realize how much work it’s going to be until you’re in it. But as everyone says, you know, you don’t mind doing it as much because you know it’s for you and it’s for the long haul, that type of thing.
00;05;08;00 – 00;05;31;00
Shanna Young
So I think that’s something new that we’ve learned about. But now we’re looking at, okay, how do we change that moving forward? How do we incorporate other people in the right people? And, you know, we definitely have our specialists to help us in all the things we do. We obviously could not do everything we do by ourselves. We have a great team of people that help us and we really have partnerships that we are really, really strong.
00;05;31;00 – 00;05;41;29
Shanna Young
I mean, we talk to some of them daily and we utilize them as consultants. We don’t. They’re not actually employees right now. So I think that’s a big thing. But but the thing that kind of started is, yeah, I talk about.
00;05;42;00 – 00;05;45;17
Kristi Simone
I don’t know, we talked about, you know, making sure that.
00;05;46;03 – 00;05;46;12
Shanna Young
One.
00;05;46;12 – 00;06;07;16
Kristi Simone
Of the things that we would hold on to throughout our growth is kind of just that moral standard to do right by our clients 100% of the time. And you know, coming from, you know, previous agencies, you know, sometimes agency, you know, you’re there to get the sale. You know, you you know, there is that perspective. And so we walked into our kind of, you know, our Yes.
00;06;07;16 – 00;06;20;26
Kristi Simone
Creative marketing agency, knowing that we were always going to try to make the right decisions for our clients, even if that meant not recommending certain services to those clients. Because, you know, even though we wouldn’t get that that specific service if it’s not right for them or.
00;06;20;26 – 00;06;28;15
Shanna Young
Even that particular client, if we’re the right fit together, that doesn’t make sense either way. So we’ll be honest about it.
00;06;28;18 – 00;06;41;23
Kristi Simone
So just do right and then dig deeper. I think that’s the other thing. I think that’s the other thing that is so unique about Shannon and I is we are always asking, are we doing the right thing? Are we is are we actually getting results for our clients and.
00;06;41;24 – 00;06;55;01
Shanna Young
Right. Yeah. We don’t care about the clicks. Yeah. We don’t care about the clicks or the precious. What are the impressions and clicks doing? Are they growing your business? Are they getting people in your store, in your seats? Like that’s what we care about, the actual conversion.
00;06;55;01 – 00;06;55;11
Kristi Simone
Yeah.
00;06;56;03 – 00;06;56;10
Jesse P Gilmore
Hmm.
00;06;56;19 – 00;06;58;01
Kristi Simone
Really? Just doing right?
00;06;59;05 – 00;07;09;24
Jesse P Gilmore
Mm hmm. I can hear the. The word integrity keeps on coming to mind, but is that kind of where you’re talking about? Like, where your words or deeds or actions are all matching and.
00;07;09;29 – 00;07;23;03
Shanna Young
Absolutely absolute transparent? If we see something’s not working, we’re going to say, hey, let’s not keep doing this and throwing dollars down the drain. Let’s move this. Let’s go to this root. You know, like we try to be totally transparent. Mm hmm.
00;07;23;03 – 00;07;34;01
Jesse P Gilmore
Mm hmm. Awesome. Another thing that you talked about is hiring people and kind of either growing the team or duplicating yourself. Is that kind of what your your main focus is right now?
00;07;34;12 – 00;07;55;05
Shanna Young
That’s our biggest struggle, is trying to figure out how to duplicate this, because that’s what we want. We need we need somebody that’s high level, that’s or people that are high level. We have our specialist to help this in all our avenues, but we really like to find that person or people that can do what we do because we talk to our clients on a regular basis and we’re meeting with them regularly.
00;07;55;05 – 00;07;55;14
Kristi Simone
Yeah.
00;07;55;24 – 00;07;57;04
Shanna Young
You only have so much bandwidth.
00;07;57;14 – 00;08;18;17
Kristi Simone
And I think so we are a full service agency. So they’re like Shana saying, it’s the two of us, but we have a dedicated web developer and SEO partner that we utilize for all of our website builds. He handles all of our SEO for clients. We have we have a couple of different freelance consultants that one person who handles all of our local SEO, Google business profiles and reviews strategy.
00;08;18;17 – 00;08;39;05
Kristi Simone
We have some social media people who freelance for us and and handle our social strategy. So for all of our search, we have a Google ads person that we that we that we work with. They’re all paid as a consultant. So we have, like Shana said, these great partners. But what we are finding out is we’ve grown we’ve grown to 30 clients within 12, 13 months.
00;08;40;09 – 00;09;05;00
Kristi Simone
And what we’re finding is we are we’re selling ourselves right. So we have these deep relationships with these clients. They have our cell phones, they’re contacting us, they’re talking to us, you know, weekly, daily. We have scheduled monthly meetings with clients and scheduled reporting that goes out. What what we need is someone like us now that we’re growing so that we can find another sort of account manager like us and then so that we can start bringing in more business.
00;09;05;12 – 00;09;22;26
Kristi Simone
Because you get to that point in your growth phase where you’re so busy working in it that you can’t work on it. And so, you know, we’re fortunate that we still continue getting all these leads coming in just from referrals. But we need we need somebody else that we can physically hire that’s going to take on that strategy level that we have.
00;09;23;09 – 00;09;32;06
Jesse P Gilmore
Mm hmm. That very exciting part of your agency. And we have have 30 clients now. You’re like, All right, now it’s time to grow.
00;09;32;18 – 00;09;37;12
Kristi Simone
Yeah, Yeah. It’s a great problem to have. We’re very thankful for where we are at.
00;09;38;04 – 00;09;44;10
Jesse P Gilmore
And for anybody that’s that’s listening. 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;09;45;19 – 00;10;12;23
Kristi Simone
So we the best way to get in touch with us is to either visit our website, which is, yes, creative marketing dot com, or you can email us at yes at yes creative marketing dot com and our offer would be we will provide a complimentary consultation and a very comprehensive audit of your online presence. So what is your website?
00;10;12;23 – 00;10;22;17
Kristi Simone
How is your website performing? How are you showing up on Google? How are you showing up on local search? What kind of reviews are you getting? Are you responding to them? We have a very section, yes.
00;10;22;17 – 00;10;23;14
Shanna Young
Yeah. How is that.
00;10;23;14 – 00;10;25;10
Kristi Simone
In how we audit our clients? Yeah.
00;10;25;25 – 00;10;33;07
Jesse P Gilmore
Mm hmm. Awesome. And for anybody that’s listening, I’ll put the URLs in the show notes. And I just wanted to thank you both for being on the show today.
00;10;33;21 – 00;10;39;18
Kristi Simone
And thank you so much. It’s great talking with you agency owners.
00;10;39;18 – 00;11;13;22
Jesse P Gilmore
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 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;11;14;08 – 00;11;21;02
Jesse P Gilmore
Go to niche in control dot com slash key city that is niche in control dot com slash case city now.
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