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Everybody has a Jesse Gilmore. Agency transformation coach and founder of Niche and Control. Author of the Agency Owners Guide to Freedom and the creator of leverage for growth. I’m the host of the leverage for growth podcast, and I know that in order for you to scale your agency successfully, there are multiple shifts that need to happen within your mindset, skill set, and leadership style.
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I am 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 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 at niche and control economy assets that is niche in control.
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Dot com slash case study.
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And.
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You’re now listening to leverage for growth. Hey everybody. This is Jesse Gilmore, founder of Niche and Control and creator of leverage for growth. Welcome to the agency Leverage Edition. Today I am here with Ari Pruett Pinsky, the founder of Steady Growth Partners, an advertising agency helping B2B companies that are spending over 10,000 a month and ads to drive sales.
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And that leads through building a data infrastructure needs to reduce lead costs and generate consistent sales. Thanks for coming to our show today, Ari. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. Yeah. So can you tell us about the history and background of your agency? Sure. That’s a great place to start. Okay, so we’ll we’ll maybe take a step back and start, with the career starting point, on the agency side.
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So I started I started working for an agency, about ten years ago now. I was the first employee. There was a New York based, digital marketing agency. They did a really great job of, kind of making me feel before the interview, like they were a big agency. And then when I showed up, it was just like me and the CEO sitting there.
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And I was like, where’s the rest of the company? But, long story short, I was there for about eight years, starting off as a first employee by the time I left there. We were three offices on the East coast, 65, 70 employees. And, I was, you know, running the sales and marketing department there.
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So I was going in and pitching clients like Forbes and AMC networks, and it was, really fun, right? Cut my teeth. You know, on the paid media side. And then at a certain point, I, I kind of looked at what I was doing and wanted to shift a little bit into doing something on my own, starting my own agency.
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And I feel like a lot of times the natural progression of, like, starting an agency doesn’t start as an agency. And where it started was I was doing a lot of consulting on the side, friends, businesses, referrals. And I got to a point where I was just totally maxed out of, you know, doing a full time job at the agency.
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You know, kind of consulting on the side. And I naturally, I left the agency, I started taking on more consulting clients, doing everything on my own, doing all the work on my own, all the sales, all the execution, you know, everything. And then you max out your hours doing everything on your own, and it’s. You turn around, you’re like, I guess I’m starting an agency.
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So I started an agency. And, and steady growth, steady growth. Partners was was born about two years ago. And, and it’s it’s been it’s been fun. It’s been, it’s been a fun ride. Up until now, hopefully that’ll continue for a long time. But, yeah, that’s that’s kind of the that’s kind of the, the, the founding story of, of how we came to be.
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Very cool man. Yeah. Yeah. I’m assuming that there is a many agency owners that hear that story and they’re like, that’s exactly how I started. Yeah. Yeah. It’s funny and it’s funny. We, I I frequent a lot of like, subreddits around digital marketing and agency life and all that. And very often I don’t really know, like where a lot of these people come from.
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But very often there’s posts around like, hey, I want to start a marketing agency. Where do I start? Like, what? Shit, what kind of agency should I start? What kind of services should I do? And it’s always like funny to me where like, that’s so backwards you don’t actually go out and start an agency. You go out and you start delivering marketing services.
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And when your marketing services are so good that you’re maxing out your hours because you have too many clients to actually service you, then ultimately have to hire people to help you. If you want to scale or you can stay. I mean, a lot of people stay at that stage of consulting, but no matter what, like, like that is like, that’s the starting point.
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You don’t start an agency without clients. So that’s just like the natural progression. I always like I always chuckle and comment on those, you know, those those those Reddit post around like what’s the starting point? How do you do that? And it’s just like you just start servicing clients and make them happy, and then you get more clients and you max out.
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So yeah, it’s always funny when people get things a little bit backwards. But it is really cool. So you had it on the side, you started doing a lot of consulting, made made the leap, and then, started kind of growing and building a team. You talk a little bit about that in that time where you were solo, and then you decided that you needed a team, because I think that’s one of the biggest transitions that people make is going from that solopreneur kind of thing to, you know, I’m going to start growing a team here.
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Yeah. It’s funny. It’s actually it’s a bit of a mix of two. It’s a mix of two things. The first is. Unless I was charging extremely high rates, which at that point I couldn’t command, I wasn’t happy with the income that I was making, which means that we have to bring on more clients. And the only way to bring on more clients, because I’m maxed out, was to hire people to then help me service those clients so I could bring on those extra hands to, like, do other things that I was doing.
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Let’s say, you know, like sales or admin work and myself be the one who spends like all the time and execution. But that’s where the second piece comes in, which is I have been doing execution and I’ve been working kind of like in the trenches of paid search and pay social for a long time. And while I do love the space and I think it’s, it’s there’s a lot of there’s a lot of continued learning and there’s a lot of, you know, changing landscapes you have to stay on top of.
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I was a little bit burnt out on the execution side, and I haven’t really spent a lot of time on the business growth side. And that was the part that really excited me. And looking at like, you know, hey, I could create a brand here. I can spend time on learning about like growing a business which like to me was like really excite ING.
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And I happen to know paid media really well. I’ve run very successful campaigns. I’ve run teams that have run very successful campaigns, and I’ve also done a lot of work on selling paid media, which is a lot of consultative selling. So it’s a little bit different than like, you know, maybe a cheaper like SAS tool type of selling.
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And I love that part and I love that, you know, people side of what people Services is, which is like what a marketing agency is and the relationship side and like those two things converging basically kind of made the decision to me to say like, alright, well, I’m, I’m going to bring people on, but like, what are like who are those people meaning like, I’m going to if I’m bringing people, you know, if I’m bringing people on the bus, we got to get them in the right seat.
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Right? So what are they ultimately going to do? And the decision was, I want to bring people on that are highly technically capable to run paid ads, paid search, paid sales, or for our clients so that I can actually take a step out of that. I can assist on the overall strategy side, but I can also spend a lot of my attention on building the company, building the agency, spending time in the relationship side, which I’m very passionate about, and really understanding how to grow a people services.
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And that’s where we started. You know, the first place you start as freelancers, you start to just bring on people and try to figure out like, like, how do you like what is important to me? And let’s make a bunch of hiring mistakes in the freelancer side where the commitment isn’t very, you know, large figure out where to look, how to look, how to, you know, integrate them into, you know, your processes on Clickup and slack and, you know, communication preferences and all that.
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But there was definitely a lot of learning there. But that’s kind of how I viewed the, you know, the next step of like, who to bring on, like, why am I bringing them on? And what should they ultimately be doing. And you know what? What’s their role within the agency. Yeah I think that’s a big, big piece of the puzzle and figuring out the right people, figuring out the right seats, being able to make mistakes early.
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Is a big, big piece of it. If you were to look back just from that one. Kind of like jump before we kind of get into the growth of the company. If you were to look back on that and give somebody that might be in that spot right now some advice on things that you learned that might, shortcut some of the, the lessons, what would you tell them?
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I think the, the, the number one lesson is that at least that took me too long to learn is to, really understand what you’re good at, but more importantly, really understand what you’re not good at and, like, try to pick up on those signals of, like, what? Like what gives you energy? Like, what are you excited to do?
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What, like, really brings you alive and like, if it’s nothing that has to do with anything that you’re doing or your agency maybe like find something else to do completely. But if it’s, you know, within the agency space or within, like the marketing services space, there’s a lot of different components to it. And like I mentioned before, like I love the people side of it.
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I love the sales side of it. I love the relationship building part of it. I do also enjoy it, like the technical aspect of what we do on the marketing side. But when I started to really understand and realize, like, I can definitely find people who are much smarter than me, I mean, that’s not hard to do and that are better than me at the technical side of the marketing and like facilitate and allow them to really, like, grow within an organization and allow myself to really do the things that and like spend time with doing the things that I love to do.
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Like if I understood that and I, I like picked up on that quicker, I would have been able to move myself quicker to get to that point. And even things like, you know, design, which I’m terrible at design and like that was one of those things that I realized very early on, okay, let’s, you know, let’s bring on a designer very quickly.
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And I spent a lot of time and a lot of work finding a designer, a honestly quite expensive designer. But my God, incredible, incredible designer. And he’s the one who was able to, like, really facilitate us being able to, like, push what our vision was, you know, out into the world. But I think from a device standpoint, really pay attention to yourself, really pay attention to what gives you energy because it’s it’s just a grind.
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So if you’re doing the things that you love to do, if you’re doing the things that that you’re good at doing, just double down on that, man. Just double down on the things that you’re good at and figure out, like how you ultimately like fill the gaps and the things that you just are not really that great at.
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Awesome. Yeah. And one thing is really cool about your story, is eight years in an agency where it was new and the CEO building it to 65, 70 employees or so, there’s probably so many different lessons that are learned from that experience that you can pull into your own agency experience. What are some of those kind of lessons or things that you kind of took from that experience that you’re now bringing into your agency?
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Yeah, I actually I’ll start with the what did I unlearn? Because I think one of the pieces, like when my only experience is, with one company or one agency, and that’s really where, like, I, you know, for all intents and purposes, like grew up in this space, you start to like, feel and like the, the people that I work with, like the CEO, they’re the CEO at that point, who’s now actually the CEO there.
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And like the team there and the group of people was like the they were unbelievable, incredible human beings. I loved every minute of like, being there and being in the trenches with them and creating those relationships. And I do very much miss it. But when I then stepped out and started my own agency and started my own thing, you.
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I always had this voice in the back of my head of like, well, you know. This is how you do things, or that’s how you do this piece. And it’s like, well, why do I think that way? And there’s like a million different ways to be successful and there’s a ton of different like routes and like, like, like positions or rather not positions, but like directions you can take to ultimately get to the like that final destination.
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And I think it’s all like part of the same thing of like realizing what you’re really good at and like leveraging that. But I think for me, it was a lot of kept I kept having to like take that initial feeling of like, well, I would have done it this way if I was, you know, back where I was or they did it this way successfully or and, and that’s, that’s really like a positive thing to say.
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Like there was a lot of, you know, successful things that I learned there, but unlearning a lot of that and kind of like finding my own way to do it, really. And it took me a long time to do that, really influenced and continues to influence, like how I do things, but also really helps continue to build my confidence.
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And I think like one of the, like on confidence, I think like confidence is a huge, huge piece of like doing what we do on the agency side. And again, it’s really like a people driven business. And I think that, like one of the, one of the lessons that I learned from that experience and, and and like what I try to impart on my team here and what I really try to like, repeat to myself here is the the kind of like the three ness or the, the long leash of like just just try and just make mistakes and as many mistakes as you possibly can and learn from that.
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And like I tell my team all the time and like they have probably heard me say this a million times, but as a reminder, the first client phone call I ever had, at that point, the my former agency, you know, CEO was like, it was so bad. Like he hung up the call in middle and like, when when you but like I continued going and it was like, all right, let’s just like, figure out like how we like, take these calls.
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And it was just like, just reps, like just reps, just like continue doing it and continue making mistakes, continue failing. And if you have that type of environment, the pressure that like you’re able to remove really allows like people to shine. And there was a point within like my journey of working at that, like where I came from and you know, between then and where I am now, there was a journey where I was actually the head of marketing at a like a really, like, fast growth, startup.
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And it was post a very large and $50 million round. And I was, you know, taking what I learned in the agency side and went into to, to, you know, that business and that startup with a lot of confidence. And they had the complete opposite type of culture, which was, we’re hiring you to come in. You have to already have all the answers.
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And if you don’t, then why don’t you? And did we make the wrong hire? And you know, there wasn’t any kind of like, room for learning. And ultimately, like, I hated working there and that entire environment was just so negative. And like, I just want the complete opposite way. And like, that was like the biggest learning of really just creating that space and that openness to allow the team to really test, learn, and, and really, you know, make mistakes in the way that, like, if you’re not making mistakes at all, you’re just like, you’re really not expanding your capabilities and you’re really not you know, learning as much as you possibly can.
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And I think that that environment really allowed, like a, a very, a very strong sense of camaraderie. And like, we got your back no matter what. Just just go out and like, just do it. Do whatever you need to do and you know, when you come to whoever it is, your superior, your boss, like group, you know anyone and you have a question.
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Also come with like a few answers that you you think you might, you know, you know, a few answers that could potentially solve, you know, that that problem. And it’s like all part of the same thing. It’s like, I don’t really know how to do this, but like, I think it might be this. It’s like, all right, just go out and try it and just go out and like just, you know, the Mark Zuckerberg thing, just like, you know, move fast and break things.
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Yeah. Yeah. What’s really cool is from those experiences you learned a lot more about what you value and organizational values and organizational culture. And there’s a saying, culture eats strategy for breakfast and. Yeah. And and I think there’s probably some lessons that you’re bringing into your agency when it comes to the culture side.
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One of the things that you mentioned was like the continuous improvement or being able to fail fast and win fast, what are some of the other things that kind of stand out to you? And when it comes to the organizational side that you’re you’re kind of bringing in, for your team? Yeah. So I,
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I feel like one of the, I feel like the word agency just, like, has a bad rap. Like, it just has, like, this negative connotation to it. And I hate that. And one of the things that we try to do and that, like I try to do, is bring a sense of and like it’s on the employee side and on the client side, but bring a sense of predictability.
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So I feel like there’s a lot of agencies that manufacture stress and manufacture anxiety. And it’s not because they’re looking to stress out their team or create anxiety within the organization. I mean, I would hope not, but I think a lot of that is around the idea that they take direction from the outside as opposed to from the inside, and they don’t do a really good job at client management.
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And when you don’t do a good job of a client management and when you allow clients to dictate, you know, your process and you allow clients to dictate, you know, how you structure your communication with them. You don’t allow like your process and your structure to actually shine, and you don’t allow your team members to actually do the work that, you know, they’re really good at doing.
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Because what happens is they just are, you know, always on their toes answering to clients. And, you know, it’s the the salespeople promising things to client. And then kind of just like ghosting the rest of the team and then like, the team doesn’t really understand what the scope is. And the client is upset because they felt the scope was misrepresented.
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And like one of the and because of all of that and because of realizing like where a lot of these the people that I work with now and the team that we have now and just the broader like agency space, like where they come from, I very intentionally and very specifically come at it from the complete opposite, direction, which is we do everything we can to create predictable and to reduce, you know, anxiety and stress and like that peace, that predictability.
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Now, there’s nothing wrong with with putting some pressure and stress on yourself to do a really good job and to execute. But that pressure should come from inside as opposed to outside forces. And what we do very, very well. And from the minute we get on the phone with prospects, we set expectations very clearly, very conservatively, like realistic expectations.
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And we back up our expectations with delivering clarity. So when you deliver clarity. So for example, in an onboarding process, the client signs the contract, the client sends, you know, their deposit or their first month’s payment. You know, you send out that invoice and there’s there’s like all of a sudden they’re excited. And then what happens? There’s like this build process because you have like this discovery call and then like at that point where you’re starting to like do all this backend work, where you’re building out, like the data piece, where you’re building out conversion tracking, where you’re building out the campaigns, like the client is kind of like left in the dark, but
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we very intentionally don’t do that. So we very intentionally like in the initial stage of onboarding clients, we lay out very carefully. Here’s what you can expect in the first month of the relationship with us. Here’s what’s going to happen in week one, here’s what’s going to happen in week two, and so on and so on. And when you do that, and then when you communicate with the client after week one, okay, here’s just a very quick update.
00:21:53:26 – 00:22:15:38
I know we’re having, you know, our strategy call our launch call in two weeks from now. Quick update on what was done this week. A couple of questions for you. You then you proactively communicate as opposed to waiting for the client to say like, hey, what’s going on? Where’s this? Where’s that? So when you do that and when you are very like very intentional about your process and your team is very intentional about your process.
00:22:15:42 – 00:22:39:24
And I think also understanding the why behind the process and the why is because everything that we do is so that you like team can do a better job. It it flows much easier and it creates that culture of like, yeah, we’re empowered. We’re empowered. We’re the ones who know how to do this. The client’s hiring us and paying us because we’re the experts at doing this and in part of our expertise.
00:22:39:24 – 00:23:10:49
It’s not just the technical advertising side, it’s client services. And when you infuse that like confidence into your process, you set that stage for the client to take a step back and feel, okay, they got this, you know that we’re good. They got this. And like that feeling is is big. Like a lot of times you a lot of times you have these calls with clients and it’s not really about like the client remembering every slide of the presentation.
00:23:11:03 – 00:23:32:25
It’s really about like when the client leaves that call, that group call, that presentation, it’s an hour call. Like how do they feel after? And if they feel like they like you guys, us, our team like has it under control. Our team can take a deep breath and just follow a process. And that’s where I think it like that.
00:23:32:29 – 00:23:53:08
It’s the process builds the culture, the structure builds the culture, and it just reinforces itself in a way of like confidence and the way of ensuring and reassuring other new clients. We got this. We know what we’re doing. This is how we do things. This is how we communicate. This is the structure. So I think that is how you go ahead and actually like build a culture.
00:23:53:18 – 00:24:29:49
And I think that’s something that I very, very intentionally try to push and try to, you know, impart on the team, in like how we want to do things at steady growth. I love it, man. You know, process gets you long enough of an answer. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. In summary it, I mean I think that and some of the values that you talked about transparency, communication, intentionality, you know, being able to bring confidence to the process and following the process allows the, the client to actually feel that and the confidence as well.
00:24:30:03 – 00:24:48:39
Not only in, what you guys are doing, but also that they’re going to get what, what was promised. And so, yeah, I think those are really awesome values. When you look at, when you look at kind of like the future and you’re starting to look at city growth partners, what are you getting excited about? And maybe in the next 1 to 3 years?
00:24:48:43 – 00:25:20:26
Yeah. Am I allowed to use the term AI or is that to weed? How we manage that means that term. I can use that term. Okay, cool. I think it’s I think it’s really exciting to be a part of I mean, probably a lot of different industries, but the like, the space that we’re in, like the agency world, if you’re not part of a really big, bloated agency and you’re part of like the type of lead agency that we are that is highly specialized, we’re not a very large team.
00:25:20:29 – 00:25:53:42
We’re very, malleable. We can create whatever form we want, like on the fly. I think it becomes very exciting to look at, like the, like the fast paced developments on the AI side where we could not be in a better spot to ten our productivity. And just like blow a lot of these like larger, bigger agencies like out of the water and move very quickly to like implement what we’re seeing on the, you know, AI output side.
00:25:53:42 – 00:26:21:03
Like at least for right now, AI is not going to take over strategy. I don’t know, we’ll see what OpenAI, you know, releases next week. But at least this week strategy still comes from the human strategy still comes from, you know, that idea of like what is the actual prompt? But the execution piece, which is where a lot of these agencies, like large agencies, like legacy agencies, are paying for, we can we can utilize AI to, to like, really supercharge that.
00:26:21:03 – 00:26:51:39
So to me, that’s that’s really, really exciting. I think that there’s, you know, there’s always going to be a need for, demand generation style marketing. I think being able to really and like it’s the same concept of like, you know, the developments in AI and also what comes from that as, as, meaning like what other potential, you know, search platforms or social platforms will be, you know, the next big thing or part of the next big thing in advertising.
00:26:51:43 – 00:27:14:03
Like, I’m excited about being in the position to really leverage that, to really jump on that, to really be able to like, bring that to our like, you know, output and ultimately what we’re able to do for our clients. And it’s, it’s it’s fun. I think, I think I also like what excites me is the idea that people are not going anywhere.
00:27:14:03 – 00:27:44:36
And I love the relationship and the communication and the, you know, the management of like, how do you deliver a service and like keep other people happy and delivering that service? I think we’re really, really good at that. And I think it’s going to become increasingly more rare. And I think the agencies that really pay attention to developing their human skills and developing their relationship skills and developing their, you know, client retention skills are really going to shine.
00:27:44:36 – 00:28:15:21
And I think that we do a lot of work on that side. We do a lot of like, we we when it comes out in conversation or in the relationship, it seems very natural. But we do a lot of training around that. We do a lot of talking about it. We do a lot of, you know, analyzing what’s working, what’s not, you know, and I think that putting the the effort into it now and really getting very, very good at that is only going to, you know, further allow us to, to grow in the way that we are now.
00:28:15:21 – 00:28:37:42
So to me, there’s just it’s it’s exciting. There’s a lot of exciting, you know, a lot of exciting, you know, opportunities out there. And yeah, it’ll be it’ll be fun. It’ll be fun to see. Awesome, man. Cool. Yeah. And for anybody that is listening, what’s the best way for people to get in touch with you or learn more about the growth them?
00:28:37:46 – 00:29:03:08
Yeah. Well, my my home address is. I’m kidding. You can, you can, you can reach out to me on LinkedIn. You can find us at, tri steady growth.com. Yeah. I mean, probably LinkedIn. The best way to find me. You can you can check me out on, on Twitter x, at my just full name, yeah, that’s that’s pretty much it.
00:29:03:12 – 00:29:31:43
Cool. Awesome. Yeah. For anybody that’s, listening all the links to Ari and City growth, I will be in the show notes and. All right, just thank you so much for coming out, man. And talking with me today. Thank you. Jesse, it’s good to see you, man. 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 start working on the business where you can free up your time, delegate work more effectively, price and position your services to finally get paid for what you’re worth and have the team run the day to day.
00:29:31:44 – 00:29:50:07
Go to niche and control.com/case study now to learn more about leverage for growth, and also to book a free strategy session with us. We’ll look at your systems, determine exactly what you need to do in order for you to scale this year, and to create a strategic plan so that you can live the life of entrepreneurship you’ve always dreamed about.
00:29:50:11 – 00:30:24:42
Go to niche and control economy. Case study now.
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