AL EP 47: Stephen Kommer – Be Quick to Help & Slow to Judge

Show Notes

You can connect with Stephen Kommer & Ascension Digital Marketing here –
Web: https://ascensiondigital.org/
LinkedIn (business): https://www.linkedin.com/company/ascension-digital-marketing-agency/
LinkedIn (personal): https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-kommer-aa832a162/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stephenkommer/

Episode Transcript

00:00:04:02 – 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.

00:00:11:07 – 00:00:18:16
Stephen Kommer
And I’m Lucas James, founder of Twist I am which scaled from 0 to $200000 a month with my own agency.

00:00:19:21 – 00:00:45:21
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.

00:00:46:08 – 00:01:08:24
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 you’re now listening to Leverage for Growth. Everybody. This is Jesse Gilmore, founder of Niche and Control and creator of Leverage for Growth.

00:01:09:00 – 00:01:23:07
Jesse P Gilmore
Welcome to the Agency Leverage edition. Today I’m here with Stephen Kommer, the founder of Ascension Digital Marketing, a digital marketing agency empowering businesses to take on the digital frontier and rise above the competition. Thanks for coming to our show today.

00:01:23:18 – 00:01:34:24
Stephen Kommer
Thank you so much, Jesse. I really appreciate the opportunity to not only chat with other people in the space, but also someone like yourself who driven and committed to helping agency owners through and through. So thank you for the opportunity.

00:01:35:10 – 00:01:39:03
Jesse P Gilmore
Absolutely. You tell us a little bit about the history and background of your agency.

00:01:39:12 – 00:02:03:19
Stephen Kommer
Absolutely. So it all started a little over 11 years ago. Actually, April 19th was the 11 year anniversary in doing any sort of professional agency work. It started out doing predominantly web design and SEO. I was 14 when I started doing agency type work. I knew at that point in time that I had an authority issue. I had to be my own boss because I just wasn’t going to accept anything less.

00:02:03:19 – 00:02:24:24
Stephen Kommer
So as soon as I had that realization started Googling low overhead ways to earn an income online and stumbled across a bunch of Alex Becker videos talking about the value of SEO and things like that. So that’s where it started. And then after about four years, it really started to be more paid media paid ad centric. And it’s been a wild ride ever since.

00:02:25:11 – 00:02:46:10
Stephen Kommer
Today, our core focus and competencies are high level brand growth strategy as well as implementation in the sense of done for you services between Facebook ads, Google ads, Snapchat tech talk. I mean, pretty much any sort of paid media email and SMS marketing. And then also just in general offer creation and consultancy.

00:02:46:20 – 00:03:04:14
Jesse P Gilmore
Hmm. Awesome. I love the fact that your if felt entrepreneurship in your bones and had jumped at an earlier age and what it kind of what were some of the things that you learned in the way beginning stages that kind of set you on a path of where you are right now?

00:03:05:01 – 00:03:28:14
Stephen Kommer
Well, I think it’s just being honest with yourself, right? If you know what you want and you’re being honest to yourself about what those things are, it’s just finding a mechanism of action to get you to that place. For myself, I try and lead value first lifestyle, and I’m very quick to help and slow to judge. I think that’s a pretty good philosophy for life that if most people followed it, I think everything would be much better than it is now.

00:03:29:01 – 00:03:50:18
Stephen Kommer
But ultimately I understand people have their own proclivities and ability to make their own choices, but that has been the single biggest thing that I think has given me. The push to start as far as the continual push is to continue growing. I think that there are varying needs in varying industries across the board, right? And they change just like everything else.

00:03:50:18 – 00:04:08:13
Stephen Kommer
So as long as you know which way the tide is turning and you can be ahead of the game, I mean, it’s a no brainer. You have to be able to pivot. I think that’s all about what entrepreneurship is. It’s how agile are you in the business landscape, right? So I actually currently have six marketing agencies that are all owned by a sanctioned they’re all subsidiaries.

00:04:08:21 – 00:04:23:03
Stephen Kommer
I have three that are pricepoint dependent so that we can help everyone at any stage of budget or, you know, their own businesses growth and revenues and then three that are industry specific so that we can cater to those different markets as they pivot and tides turn and things like that.

00:04:23:17 – 00:04:29:02
Jesse P Gilmore
Mm hmm. And so with the 11 years first of congratulations on 11 years.

00:04:29:09 – 00:04:30:02
Stephen Kommer
I appreciate that.

00:04:30:10 – 00:04:48:21
Jesse P Gilmore
And in 11 years, you talked a lot about kind of different changes that have happened. How have you been able to kind of adapt to those changes? Obviously, you talked about the different businesses, but maybe on like a more of a grounded level. How have you kind of in the last 11 years found that grounding in the midst of change?

00:04:49:05 – 00:05:10:03
Stephen Kommer
So I’m always forced to bring myself back to what is the fundamental operations of a business or at least one that operates efficiently. Right. And I think businesses are just three core components. First things first inputs. If you don’t have people to service, then you have nothing to output, right? So that’s the first thing you got to have sales.

00:05:10:03 – 00:05:26:03
Stephen Kommer
You have to have proof of concept, you have to have a strong offer to get people in the door. However, if you get people through the door and you don’t have the ability to create the outputs that are promised or are necessary to the survival of your business, there’s obviously a problem there. And the third and final component is the management of both.

00:05:26:03 – 00:05:56:01
Stephen Kommer
Some people scale too fast for their own good and end up struggling and getting back to square one after maybe putting themselves into debt or spending too much money on ads and not really focusing on perfecting retaining customers, but more so just getting customers right. And I think that the thing that separated myself from a lot of agency owners in the past is I did it for myself first for people in my network for free so that I could get the skills and chops necessary to actually justify doing it to people that I don’t know for money.

00:05:56:10 – 00:06:27:13
Stephen Kommer
Right? I don’t think enough people focus on perfecting the inputs and the offer and the outputs and the skill set to actually be able to create anything that’s manageable for creating an actual business. So I think that’s that simple framework of the three fundamental things all businesses need to at least maintain and then scale, get lost upon a lot of people that are just looking either for money quickly because they’re in an unfavorable financial situation or like the idea of business, but don’t understand how each of those three things are so difficult in and of themselves, let alone together.

00:06:28:11 – 00:06:46:07
Stephen Kommer
And I also think people are not as trusting as they should be. I myself have been burned a lot of times by employees with seemingly good intentions that ended up not being the case. And likewise, I have had people that, you know, had a great time working with me that ended up growing to do different things, which I can’t hold them back for doing, right.

00:06:46:07 – 00:07:03:22
Stephen Kommer
I can’t hold that against them. So bearing that in mind, it’s just about managing teams, managing expectations, managing customers expectations, and then creating a sense of homeostasis through that entity that you want to last forever, or at least until you exit or whatever your plan is.

00:07:05:06 – 00:07:25:18
Jesse P Gilmore
And do you mean things that kind of came to mind when you were saying that one of them simplicity, they took all of business and broke it down into three pillars, which was awesome. And then the other part was based around mastery that’s leading towards or leaning on continual learning and continually being able to do it for yourself before you’re doing it for others.

00:07:26:14 – 00:07:43:16
Jesse P Gilmore
Oh, I wonder how, Because I’m also kind of like a daily discipline person. So like, how does that how are you able to manage six businesses keeping things as simple as humanly possible in the midst of, you know, maybe a world that’s very complex.

00:07:44:01 – 00:08:06:24
Stephen Kommer
So it starts with systems and people are a part of that system, right? And technically, I own nine companies outside of the marketing agencies. I am a co-founder of a venture capital and venture debt firm. And then I also am a co-founder at a talent management company. And then likewise in my local area, I have it’s effectively like a free business awareness page that that’s self-managed at this point.

00:08:06:24 – 00:08:25:06
Stephen Kommer
I just have a community manager doing that. But it’s all about having systems and people in place that can do the heavy lifting that either don’t have the time or bandwidth to do. So that’s the first thing. And then secondly, it’s just about open communication with your clients. Well, you know, I let every client have my direct personal cell phone number.

00:08:25:06 – 00:08:42:00
Stephen Kommer
Aside from my work line. I always want to be the first to know about a problem, because then that means that I can hold people accountable quickly before things start to spiral or continue down a path that they shouldn’t. So I think it’s just a sense of openness. I know a lot of people, once they get in the business, they want to put as many gatekeepers as possible.

00:08:42:00 – 00:08:59:01
Stephen Kommer
And I’ll say this I know that the average retention for most agencies is 1 to 3 months. My average retention is two and a half to three years. And I think it’s due in part to the fact of just open lines of communication, being willing to answer questions and really let people know that you, as the business owner, are here to support their business.

00:08:59:10 – 00:09:20:04
Stephen Kommer
Right. Because that’s what at the end of the day, people want. They want to know that they have not only someone in command, that they can help the rest of the team work towards their best interest, but likewise to know that they have that support system there in the first place instead of just being, you know, ghosted or oh, you have to go through the proper channels, most small businesses can’t run like a corporation, right?

00:09:20:07 – 00:09:46:13
Stephen Kommer
You can’t have meetings once a week and then hope that stuff gets done between then and if it doesn’t. Okay, two weeks have passed. That’s not efficient. Small businesses need to move fast because they need to make money fast. They don’t have a Coca-Cola operating budget. They don’t have an IBM operating budget. They have John and Mary’s sandwich shop who might be making 2535 grand a month and maybe taking home $8,000 a month as their end pay.

00:09:46:21 – 00:10:10:08
Stephen Kommer
It’s it’s not as relaxed as many people who are growing a business think it is because they keep tending to forget that there are businesses way bigger than theirs as the only reason that things can be so slow is because it does have that many steps. But for most businesses that have like less than 20 to 50 employees, things have to move fast and a lot of people lose business as a result of that.

00:10:11:24 – 00:10:34:01
Jesse P Gilmore
Awesome. Now you’ve given a lot of kind of nuggets of knowledge along the way. And in the last 11 years, you’ve learned a lot. What are some things that you might pass on, like if you as you were talking to your earlier self or someone that might be one or two steps before you right now, What what advice would you give them that would save them either time, energy or money?

00:10:34:19 – 00:10:53:05
Stephen Kommer
Like I said before, I think it’s more so my life philosophy than business philosophy, but it applies to both. You have to be quick to help and slow to judge If you can put your best foot forward and help someone out with information you already have and taking 30 seconds to type it out and send it in a DM or an email or a text message or whatever, So be it.

00:10:53:05 – 00:11:17:17
Stephen Kommer
If you can hop on the phone with them and see what other questions they have after the fact. Even better, one of the things that really accelerated my growth in the space to at least give me some sort of name has been that, you know, I would buy all these courses, get in the private groups and then immediately just any question that came into the group, just spend an hour a day answering all of them and then hopping on the phone with people with bigger problems and, you know, just being that resource to them.

00:11:18:02 – 00:11:36:06
Stephen Kommer
Well, it puts you in such an advantageous position because now you’ve already created authority by being helpful without the expectation of anything in return. And the best part about that is if there was something that they had a question about that I didn’t know. I went out of my way to learn it. That helped me grow and give them the information that they didn’t have to then spend the time doing.

00:11:36:07 – 00:11:44:07
Stephen Kommer
I’m better off for it, more so than they are. They’ve just had the convenience that they didn’t have to do it themselves because not everyone knows intuitively where to look for that information.

00:11:44:19 – 00:11:51:23
Jesse P Gilmore
Mm hmm. Awesome. And what are you focused on right now? What’s success for you? Maybe in the next 1 to 3 years?

00:11:52:16 – 00:12:17:05
Stephen Kommer
So I am actually trying to pivot a little bit, given the state of the economy, my lowest tier agency price point. Why is dirt cheap? Anzco. I’m transitioning into a consultancy because a lot of businesses who are startups that are bootstrapped or have limited funds for bigger marketing initiatives, I want to be able to turn that into more of a consultancy where they’re paying for time instead of services.

00:12:18:05 – 00:12:36:02
Stephen Kommer
So I’m hoping to get that up off the ground with a new offer by the end of the month. The two offers that I’m running right now that are the full frontal focus for any sort of ad budget or ad dollars that I’m spending on ourselves right now is for ecommerce brands. We’re guaranteeing growth in 30 days or you don’t pay a penny till you do.

00:12:37:02 – 00:12:57:24
Stephen Kommer
And then same thing with asset esthetics, clinics, med spires, chiropractors, dentists, what have you, anything that’s kind of in the realm of cosmetics. We are offering 100 patients in 100 days guaranteed or your money back so that we’re on. We are ten for 11 right now. So that being said, it’s been going pretty well.

00:12:59:05 – 00:13:07:17
Jesse P Gilmore
Awesome. And what’s the best way for people to get in touch with you and or do you have any offers for them that they could take advantage of? And I think you talked a little bit about that.

00:13:07:17 – 00:13:28:00
Stephen Kommer
But 100%, please feel free to get a hold of me on Instagram via DM. My Instagram at is just my name. It’s at Stephen Comer Steep n Comedy. Ah, shoot me a Down with any questions you have. Love to answer them if you have them. And likewise, if you’re looking for any sort of coaching or consultancy to grow your agency.

00:13:28:00 – 00:13:42:19
Stephen Kommer
I do offer that as well, but I am limiting it from what used to be 20 to 25 people a quarter to ten. And just given how many things I have going on right now. So those spots do go quickly, but it doesn’t cost anything for me to answer a DM or an email, so please feel free to shoot any if you have them go.

00:13:43:02 – 00:13:50:05
Jesse P Gilmore
And for anybody that’s listening, I will put the links to Stephen in the show notes and I want to thank you very much for being on the show today.

00:13:50:16 – 00:13:52:14
Stephen Kommer
Thank you so much, Jesse. I really appreciate the time.

00:13:55:14 – 00:14:30:00
Jesse P Gilmore
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. 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

00:14:30:00 – 00:14:37:23
Jesse P Gilmore
dreamed about. Go to niche in control dot com slash key city that is niche in control dot com slash k city now.

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