AL EP 50: Marieke Van Der Graaf – Focusing On Your Niche

Show Notes

Connect with Marieke Van Der Graaf & Branding Personality here –
Web: https://www.brandingpersonality.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/hensel
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marieke/

Episode Transcript

00;00;04;02 – 00;00;32;21
Jesse
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;03;20
Jesse
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;03;22 – 00;01;27;09
Jesse
You’re now listening to Leverage for Growth. 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 Marieke Van der Graff, founder of Branding Personality, a digital marketing agency that works with you to craft your story and share it with your audience. Thanks for coming to our show today.

00;01;27;11 – 00;01;29;08
Marieke
Thank you. Thank you for being here.

00;01;29;10 – 00;01;36;06
Jesse
Yeah, absolutely. Can you tell us a little bit about the history and background of your agency?

00;01;36;09 – 00;02;15;19
Marieke
Yes. So I’ve always been working in marketing. I studied marketing years ago, different life. And I basically started the agency when I moved to the United States in 2007 at that time, I had worked already a lot with social media. Obviously at that time, social media looked very different. I was my start was with the honestly, it’s doing search engine optimization in 1996 for like companies websites.

00;02;15;21 – 00;02;48;07
Marieke
Obviously there was no Google, so it was Yahoo very different optimization strategies. And then when social media came out, I felt like SEO kind of was the way of connecting. The more people know about you, obviously, the more you would be found in social media was just connecting with people instead of websites and platforms. So in 24 or so, I started working with recruitment agencies to work with LinkedIn to help them find candidates online.

00;02;48;07 – 00;03;20;29
Marieke
And that’s like the first dip into social media. Personal branding was really important, so I talked a lot about that and then I moved to the United States in California, and Twitter was coming up. Facebook was, I think, about to open up for everybody. And I basically because I was in Europe, Twitter was a lot more popular at the time.

00;03;20;29 – 00;03;51;10
Marieke
That fear and I think still is way more popular over there. I was on Twitter 24 seven and I got asked for speaking gigs as soon as I was off the plane and really hear about Twitter and social media. So that’s kind of how I got into it. I had a story to tell about social media and how to use it for business, and that’s kind of how was already 15 years ago we that that long Yeah.

00;03;51;10 – 00;04;23;11
Marieke
So yeah so I started the personal branding social media and then eventually that evolved into an agency. At the height of its time, it had about ten employees. One of our bigger customers that people nationally were at least recognizes goodwill. The secondhand stores we went in their stores made little videos or pictures of telling stories, what happened in the stores about the products and things like that.

00;04;23;11 – 00;04;59;12
Marieke
That was really a lot of fun. I had four people in my agency working on that account, so that was really cool. And then in 20 1514, I moved to Cambodia for a completely different job opportunity ability and I ended the agency. So I stopped everything and I came back a year later because of personal things. A lot of things changed, came back and my I didn’t have the agency anymore.

00;04;59;12 – 00;05;28;09
Marieke
The people were not working with me anymore. So when they I kind of shifted more so into consulting with companies. And that’s that’s really where I’m where I do. The bulk of my work right now is consulting. I come in, I look at the marketing budgets, how to spend the money, try to find money, and then see how we can redistribute that, that money that’s being spent.

00;05;28;10 – 00;05;53;01
Marieke
Because working with business owners, they are so busy with everything and marketing is usually part of their tasks. And so I come in, I’ll and what happens are the business owner that has 10,000 things to do. They’re like, okay, there’s a marketing person that wants to do Facebook ads and like, okay, you’re hired. Let’s do Facebook ads or Let’s do this, so let’s do that.

00;05;53;07 – 00;06;12;11
Marieke
And there’s no really constructive strategy that that that makes sure that they’re spending the right amount of money on the right right things. And it’s just kind of like a collection of everything happening. So so I kind of restructure all of that to make sure that we spend money where it’s actually making money. So that’s what I’m doing now.

00;06;12;15 – 00;06;15;16
Marieke
So the little overview. Yeah.

00;06;15;18 – 00;06;21;04
Jesse
Yeah, yeah. And do you have a team working with you now?

00;06;21;06 – 00;06;39;22
Marieke
I have a business partner and then I have mostly I work with another agency actually, that does a lot of the work for us. So whatever we what I do mostly consulting and the rest is executed by another agency. Mhm. Yeah.

00;06;39;22 – 00;06;43;06
Jesse
It’s good to have strategic partnerships.

00;06;43;08 – 00;07;04;03
Marieke
Yes. I mean I feel like because since my year in Cambodia I’ve been doing a lot of different things and it’s just recently that I’ve been on my path to say, okay, this is what I want to focus on. I want I’m back in marketing and this is my main thing and I want to just keep growing this.

00;07;04;05 – 00;07;14;26
Marieke
So now I think in a year from now, I probably would have more team members that are W-2 instead of just outsource. Yeah.

00;07;14;29 – 00;07;41;23
Jesse
And throughout the time in agency, we’re all consulting world, marketing world. There’s been a lot of changes like you talked about from 1996, you know, and so forth. How have you adapted to the changes within the agency kind of world over the years? Has anything kind of worked for you to be able to be adaptive?

00;07;41;25 – 00;08;07;28
Marieke
I mean, yeah, I think like the way I worked with so much has been changing, so much so I think what I like about an agency is just really how I can make it work with whatever life face I’m in. Really. And I had a lot of things going on with the past year and now I’m like focused on really marketing agency.

00;08;07;28 – 00;08;18;06
Marieke
That’s it. That’s my main thing. And now I want to really grow it into yeah, into something more conservative than it has been over the last two years. Yeah.

00;08;18;09 – 00;08;36;04
Jesse
Mm hmm. And did you always know that you were going to be in, like, a not maybe like an agency owner, but like an entrepreneur? Was that something that you knew from the get go? Like, I’m going to be I’m going to be a business owner as opposed to, you know.

00;08;36;06 – 00;09;01;01
Marieke
I mean, my my father was an entrepreneur. He had a moving company. So I thought the better way to do it would be like a senior job at a big company. That was what I was striving for at the time. But I mean, I just felt like I want to, you know, if you started the company, I have a lot more to say than my my job title lets me to say.

00;09;01;04 – 00;09;16;10
Marieke
So it’s like, okay, I have all these ideas and I can do anything in a job place and I have to keep my head down and focus on my own stuff. That’s not really who I am. I really want to change things. I want to implement things and take the risk myself. If it doesn’t work, it’s my fault.

00;09;16;10 – 00;09;48;25
Marieke
If it works, I want the credits for it just as much so. So I just think I’ve always been an entrepreneur, but because of, you know, seeing the struggles of an entrepreneur isn’t always been easy. I did not decide, did not think that would be ideal for me. I was looking for more security and stability. But in the end, I mean, I’m just I started my own newspaper when I was eight years old, so entrepreneurship was kind of in my blood.

00;09;48;25 – 00;09;52;26
Marieke
So I don’t think I could I could have avoided it. So. Yeah.

00;09;52;29 – 00;10;28;27
Jesse
Yeah, I love it. It’s always fun looking back on your first company when you were eight, you know? Yeah. If you, if you were to So our audiences, there was like six figure agencies trying to get to seven. And there’s some things that you probably learned and in your journey of entrepreneurship and marketing, if you were to kind of go back or maybe, you know, teach somebody or at least give some advice to somebody that might be maybe one or two steps behind you, what would you tell them?

00;10;29;00 – 00;11;05;27
Marieke
Um, so I think I learned a lot from when I had an agency before and now is that I would say as a marketing person, the draw is really you can work for any company. You’re like, you have a skillset that works really well. However, that’s really the risk of over over commitment to. So my focus is really try to focus on a system you create, implement that and focus on this is what I deliver instead of yes, you want to do a Yes, of course I can do the Oh yeah, we want to do this, this.

00;11;05;27 – 00;11;24;19
Marieke
Yeah, we can, we can do all of it. We can all and then obviously you can, but you’re you have to learn everything. You have to find the right people. There’s a lot of commitment. And now I’ve focused far more on the specific. This is the solution I want. This is the niche I want to focus on and everything else is.

00;11;24;23 – 00;11;40;25
Marieke
I know there’s business to gain, but it’s not all for me. I rather focus on my clean journey and making sure that agency growth specifically for for yeah, for, for the kind of companies I want to work with and not everybody.

00;11;40;27 – 00;12;01;25
Jesse
Mm Yeah, that is definitely one of the mindset shifts that people have to have where they can serve everybody doing everything. But then the impact is really minimal and then I’m through over commitment, right? And then deciding to go, okay, this is the group, this is what I want to do, this is how I’m going to serve them.

00;12;01;27 – 00;12;04;03
Jesse
That’s definitely a mindset shift.

00;12;04;06 – 00;12;25;26
Marieke
I know, especially I think as marketing people, we all like everything and everything is exciting and we’re usually very curious about things. So it’s really something. As a marketing person, you have to learn and understand that we grow much further. If we focus on a specific nature, specific solution that we’re bringing to the market. Yeah.

00;12;26;00 – 00;12;36;21
Jesse
MM Love it. And so what is success for you in the next like 1 to 3 years? What are you working on or hoping to achieve with your agency?

00;12;36;23 – 00;13;06;22
Marieke
I actually would like to work with some global brands. I’ve worked all over the globe myself. I lived and lived and worked in Brazil, Romania, Cambodia and from the Netherlands and then obviously in America. In America. Over the past 15 years, I’ve been very much California focused because America is it’s a big country, But I’m very excited to focus on bigger growth opportunities abroad or help American companies move abroad.

00;13;06;22 – 00;13;30;25
Marieke
And because the economy is not that great here. But if you look outside of the United States and you see countries like Cambodia or probably not Europe, honestly, but countries in Africa, they’re growing so fast, like you just have to participate in the in the in the retail environment, for example, to to profit from the growth. You just have to be there.

00;13;30;25 – 00;13;43;08
Marieke
Here you have to struggle and fight to grow your business there. You just have to be to offer a product. And I think we just should just be more open to go where the money is flowing. Really?

00;13;43;10 – 00;13;53;16
Jesse
Yeah, I love it. 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?

00;13;53;19 – 00;14;22;13
Marieke
So best thing is finding me. You can Google me. Our branding personality. Seacom I’m actually, yeah. So running persons are just Google my name. Erika Vanderwerff. I know it’s not easy. I’m on LinkedIn. You can find me there on Facebook. I’m very responsive there. And if you want to have a conversation by phone chat or WhatsApp, feel free to reach out to me and I’ll definitely have with good talk.

00;14;22;16 – 00;14;31;16
Jesse
Well, we’ll include all those links in our show notes of this episode. And thank you very much for joining us on the show today.

00;14;31;19 – 00;14;33;02
Marieke
Thank you. Happy to be here.

00;14;33;04 – 00;15;08;11
Jesse
Those awesome 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

00;15;08;11 – 00;15;16;22
Jesse
you’ve always dreamed about. Go to niche in control dot com slash case study that is niche in control dot com slash case that we now.

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