AL EP 52: Adam Elbendary – Hustle Culture Leads to a Shorter & Sadder Life

Show Notes

As an award-winning digital marketing agency owner and visionary campaign strategist, Adam Elbendary has a reputation for helping businesses meet and surpass their growth objectives. He has an impressive track record of delivering exceptional ROIs for professional service and software companies through his proprietary lead generation systems, which regularly achieve best-in-class customer acquisition costs. In 2019, Adam founded Cleverman Inc., a results-oriented lead generation agency where he is the acting CEO. No matter the growth stage, Adam and the Cleverman Inc. team know what it takes to grow an organization.

Connect with Adam Elbendary & Cleverman Inc here –
Web: https://clevermaninc.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elbendary

Episode Transcript

00;00;04;02 – 00;00;11;03
Jesse P Gilmore
Everybody is adjusting to your agency and transformation coach and founder of Mission Control, Greater of Leverage for Growth.

00;00;11;08 – 00;00;19;22
Adam Elbendary
And I’m Lucas James, founder of Twist, which scaled from 0 to $200000 a month with my own agency.

00;00;19;25 – 00;00;46;06
Jesse P Gilmore
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. 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;21
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 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;08;23 – 00;01;27;17
Jesse P Gilmore
Welcome to the agency Leverage Edition. Today I am here with Adam Elbendary, founder of Cleverman Inc, a tech intensive digital marketing agency focused on it driving sales, qualified leads and appointments for service and fast small to midsize businesses. Thanks for coming to our show today, Adam.

00;01;27;20 – 00;01;28;24
Adam Elbendary
Thanks for having me.

00;01;28;26 – 00;01;34;15
Jesse P Gilmore
Excellent. Have you could you tell us a little bit about the history and the background of your agency?

00;01;34;17 – 00;01;54;10
Adam Elbendary
Yeah, for sure. So I started my first agency with the business partner as soon as I finished college in 2016. Like a lot of agencies, we were kind of figuring out our service offerings over the first few years and then finally gaining that clarity. My partner and I decided to split so he could focus on content marketing and I could focus on paid mediums of advertising.

00;01;54;10 – 00;02;23;26
Adam Elbendary
So I started Government Inc in July 2019, brought over all of my contractors and clients, and we spent a few more years really figuring out what we wanted to specialize in. We were doing influencer marketing, e-commerce, advertising, regeneration, some larger WordPress builds to keep the lights on until I decided to finally buckle down around 2 to 3 years ago and automate clutter in front of back to exclusively focus on lead generation for professional service and software businesses.

00;02;23;28 – 00;02;33;17
Jesse P Gilmore
Hmm. Awesome. So, Adam, let me let me ask you, what led you towards becoming either an entrepreneur or an agency owner?

00;02;33;20 – 00;02;55;16
Adam Elbendary
I always wanted to kind of march to the beat of my own drum doing something. Sorry for the corny reference there, but I actually started a marketing agency because I had been making hip hop and R&B music since I was 16. I met with all these labels around 2014 while I was still in college, and I quickly realized during these label meetings that one, I didn’t really trust their marketing.

00;02;55;19 – 00;03;20;26
Adam Elbendary
And two, because I was a smaller artist who was still in school, I wouldn’t be a priority to them. So after the same experience, every time I decided to start a marketing agency as soon as I graduated college. So I’d have the knowledge, the expertise, resources, the team and general wherewithal to not only ensure my music succeeded in the marketplace, but to start almost any business I wanted at any time.

00;03;20;29 – 00;03;26;01
Adam Elbendary
That’s that’s the goal. So that’s that’s kind of the way it went.

00;03;26;03 – 00;03;46;23
Jesse P Gilmore
Awesome. I love hearing the back story and and there’s always either like an aha moment or something that kind of just sets up everything for you to start it. So it’s awesome to hear your story. You talked about having multiple agencies. Can you talk a little bit about the previous agency work that led towards government?

00;03;46;25 – 00;04;22;09
Adam Elbendary
Yeah, for sure. We I think one of our first clients when I started, the other agency that I was working on was a lead generation client. And I realized that we did it pretty well. And I always had a knack for automation. So you kind of need automation when you’re doing lead generation to take the burden of like automated SMS sequences and lead info being transferred to the client CRM, etc. and take all of that manual labor off of the client.

00;04;22;11 – 00;04;56;24
Adam Elbendary
And like I said, we were doing a ton of other stuff like influencer marketing, e-comm, advertising, web development. But I found that we did lead generation. We did everything very well, but I found that lead generation was something that we could do better than most agencies because of the knack for automation that I have. Not to take all the credit I, the amazing people on my team, but yeah, that’s, that’s where I realized that we could really shine for sure.

00;04;56;27 – 00;04;57;06
Adam Elbendary
Mm hmm.

00;04;57;13 – 00;05;06;21
Jesse P Gilmore
Absolutely. And it’s good that you found a niche both based around the type of person that you’re working with and also kind of like that product market fit based on competence.

00;05;06;24 – 00;05;35;05
Adam Elbendary
Been niche down as much as many agencies usually do. If we did and we really want that that quote unquote niche route that most agencies go down, I would have said we only did lead generation for solar or we only did regeneration for dentist. But yeah, no, I focused on automating the company front to back so that we had this framework that would work for all professional service and all software businesses.

00;05;35;08 – 00;05;41;00
Adam Elbendary
I guess you could say I’m, I’m a little bit greedy in that sense. Yeah, sure.

00;05;41;02 – 00;05;55;17
Jesse P Gilmore
I mean, over the last two and a half years or so with this agency kind of narrowing the focus, what have you learned that’s kind of like helped you along the journey that maybe you wish you would have known in the past?

00;05;55;19 – 00;06;18;14
Adam Elbendary
Two things I would say, and they’re they’re kind of cliche. Well, the first one is a little cliche. So one balance is really important, I think, to anyone listening, especially those who are on the younger side. And they think that abiding by American Hustle culture or typical American also culture, and that they could, quote unquote, sleep when they’re dead, so to speak.

00;06;18;16 – 00;06;42;06
Adam Elbendary
But it’s not. And if you’re go, go, go all the time, you’ll just live a shorter, less meaningful. And unfortunately sad or life. That’s just that’s just the reality of it. And that’s what I’ve learned. The second day, and it’s a counter to that I really find the balance and the imbalance. There will be these periods of time, could be a month or a quarter or six months where you’ll have to be working a good amount more.

00;06;42;06 – 00;06;50;07
Adam Elbendary
And that’s perfectly okay. But make sure you’re still eating well, sleeping seven or 8 hours a night, punching grass and exercising for sure.

00;06;50;09 – 00;06;59;29
Jesse P Gilmore
Mm hmm. Everything kind of comes in different seasons sometimes it’s like big waves and then going back and forth. But making sure you’re sustainable is kind of what you’re saying.

00;07;00;04 – 00;07;06;25
Adam Elbendary
For sure. Like what Bruce Lee said, Be like water under you fluid. Like what?

00;07;06;27 – 00;07;24;25
Jesse P Gilmore
Well, that’s awesome, man. So now you’ve given a lot of kind of like tidbits on different ways of either saving time, energy or money for agency owners. What’s kind of like something that you’re working on right now? Like, what are you excited about? And maybe in the next 1 to 3 years or so.

00;07;24;27 – 00;07;56;08
Adam Elbendary
We’re actively. So I finally finished automating the business. September 2022. We’re scaling now, which is fine, comes with its challenges for sure. So I would say that I’m in one of those seasons where activity is a little higher and I would it’s almost like it’s almost binary. I don’t know. It’s it’s like grow and not grow. Like it’s a very basic goal that I have, I guess for the next 1 to 3 years.

00;07;56;08 – 00;08;00;07
Adam Elbendary
And it’s just grow. Grow the agency big time. Mm hmm.

00;08;00;10 – 00;08;08;18
Jesse P Gilmore
Awesome. Very cool. And do you have any offers or anybody that can take advantage of or what’s the best way for people to get in touch with you?

00;08;08;20 – 00;08;41;26
Adam Elbendary
Yeah, for sure. So anybody listening can go too clever Unicom. Fill out our lead volume in our calculator and then book an intake call with us on the subsequent page after they get their result. We do things a little differently than most agencies. We actually take prospects through an intake call review and record their service or solution offerings, target audiences, ideal client profiles, a few other things, and then takes 7 to 10 days to conduct some thorough keyword and competitive research and lead volume and profitability projections to ensure their potential campaigns with us are actually viable.

00;08;41;28 – 00;08;59;05
Adam Elbendary
And if our findings point to a successful campaign or successful gen campaigns and we produce a proposal including our findings, if our research findings don’t point to successful campaigns, and we only send our findings and explain why an investment into page regeneration would be unwise.

00;08;59;08 – 00;09;11;00
Jesse P Gilmore
I love the transparency that you have with that. And for anybody that’s listening right now, you can get the links in the show notes for Adam and Carmen. And I just want to thank you very much for being on the show, Adam.

00;09;11;02 – 00;09;15;17
Adam Elbendary
Thank you very much for having me, Justin. I appreciate.

00;09;15;20 – 00;09;50;02
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;09;50;02 – 00;09;58;00
Jesse P Gilmore
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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