Episodes

**Cold open (Jake takes a deep dive into agency Reddit and it sucks)** **Skip the Cold Open at 10:20** Last year, we recorded from our hotel in Colombia and recapped our finances from 2022 and how much we grew. This year, we're doing the same thing and recapping 2023. We had some explosive growth and also faced some challenges along the way that caused us to not grow as much as we wanted to. We also cover things we spent more on and things we spent less on. ---------------------------------...

**Cold Open (Jake has a question for the audience)** We keep seeing gurus make the money part of owning an agency really simplified. How money is spent and finances are handled in an agency at $10k/mo and at $100k/mo look very different but no one talks about it. Cody and Jake do a deep dive in how money looks at different levels of the business. ---------------------------------- ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ As always, if you enjoyed this episode or this podcast in general and want to leave us a review or rating...

**Cold Open (Jake and Lauren sneak onto First Class train in Japan)** **Skip the Cold Open at 13:18** There seems to be some confusion around the practical application of having a CRM in an agency. Jake aims to clear that up in this episode. Aside from the typical derailments, Jake talks about: What a CRM technically is (you're probably already using one and don't even know it) Why you should be using a free CRM at first How Jake uses it on a daily basis How it helps Jake close more sales...

**Cold Open (Jake and Cody talk about their Hubspot automation)** **Skip the Cold Open at 7:08** There are many different lead generation agency models out there. On one hand, an agency can only be responsible for delivering leads. Another lead gen agency may also follow up with those leads for the client to make sure they close. We address why we don't like lead gen models in which it's the agency's responsibility to follow up with the leads. We also explain common objections to the idea of...

**Cold Open (Cody's had his credit card hacked twice in two months)** **Skip the Cold Open at 9:00** Jake and Cody answer the questions: What is networking? Who do you network with? Why should you network? For starters, it depends on what you're trying to do. Are you trying to grow your business or get better at growing your business? Because they're two different things. If you're trying to grow your business, Jake has tips and explains why you shouldn't care about networking with other ...

Ahrefs has been in the SEO community chatter quite a bit since the pricing model change so we thought it'd be good to bring Tim Soulo himself on the podcast to talk a little bit about the reasoning behind that. But we wanted to get more value out of the episode than that. In this episode, Tim gives us some useful keyword research tips both using paid tools as well as free tools and sheds some light on the accuracy... or lack thereof... when it comes to the metrics that SEO tools spit out inclu...

**Cold Open (Jake's optimal morning)** **Skip the Cold Open at 3:06** We hear a lot of people quitting their day jobs in order to start an agency in which they have no experience -- only "knowledge" they've gained from online resources. To be frank, this is a dumb idea. We have grown our agency to near the half-million dollar mark while Jake still has a full-time day job. Doing this has allowed safe and steady growth while keeping full-time benefits and the same standard of living. So where...

**Cold Open (Lissette is gone and we're sad)** **Skip the Cold Open at 5:30** We keep seeing agency owners emphasize the importance of documenting processes in order to scale, but there are a few problems with this. Most people: Don't know how to document their processes Don't know where to put their documentation Don't know what to do with it once it's documented Don't treat it like a living, breathing document Don't even know what their processes are In this episode, we go over what "d...

**Cold Open (Cody is back from surgery)** **Skip the Cold Open at 4:26** Jake is seeing way too many people looking for "appointment setters" and "high ticket closers" for agencies and SMMAs in Facebook groups. Building an agency off of this model will ultimately kill your agency. This also brings up an interesting point -- if you own a social media marketing agency... how good are your social media marketing services if you can't even get clients using the services you provide? Instead of ...

**Cold Open (Jake has to do dad stuff)** **Skip the Cold Open at 2:45** Cody and Jake often find listeners and other agency owners stuck. Whether they're stuck at only a few clients or struggling to move past $20k/mo, a few things keep popping up over and over again with these agencies who struggle to scale passed their current status. With these 6 things, nothing should be able to stop you from scaling your agency: You’re trying to scale too fast You lack a foundation Your processes aren'...

**Cold Open (Nobody with a beard is happy -- Cody has a beard)** **Skip the Cold Open at 6:30** If you run ads for your clients, you've likely run into a few issues... The budgeted amount wasn't spent Too much was spent The account spends inconsistently and you have to spend too much time managing the spend You're getting too many accounts and it's hard to keep up We discuss the 5 ways we manage client ad spend and budgets for platforms like Facebook and Google. We answer questions like:...

**Cold Open (Cody wears random shirts he finds / Having a tough week at Evergrow)** **Skip the Cold Open at 6:41** We had a listener of ours ask what our opinion was on HighLevel (GHL) as he was hearing a lot of agency owners promoting it and it seemed to have a lot of features he could sell. I had a pretty honest conversation with him about why we don't use GHL and reasons why he should or should not use it. If you build your agency in someone else's playground, you don't have a good agency...

**Cold Open (Cody brings up NVIDIA article / When is chasing money no longer worth it?) **Skip to Cold Open at 8:07** We're joined by David Tobin of TobinLeff M&A Advisors to discuss what agencies need to consider when thinking about selling their business. Jake mentions how he sees a lot of small agency owners (freelancers) looking to sell their "agency" in groups. We ask David very pointed questions on whether it's even feasible to sell an agency that only consists of one person and a clien...

**Cold Open (Jake and Cody talk about rebranding the podcast)** **Skip the Cold Open at 7:11** A listener of the podcast submitted really great questions and we wanted to take the time to respond to all of them on the show. This is part 2 from episode 74 where we answer questions 7-10. There were 10 questions, we answered the last 4 in this episode: Why did you decide on digital marketing? What did you wish you could have done sooner to make you more successful today? How do you avoid burn...

**Cold Open (Jake delivers a keynote at a lawn care business conference)** **Skip the Cold Open at 7:42** A listener of the podcast submitted really great questions and we wanted to take the time to respond to all of them on the show. There were 10 questions, but we were only able to get to 6 of them on this episode: How did you learn more about building websites and utilizing SEO? What would you focus on learning first? Should I build my business first or learn marketing first? What do yo...

**Cold Open (Handkerchiefs / The Everbros Lost Episodes / Vulgarity) **Skip the Cold Open at 17:27** We see a lot of rookie mistakes new agency owners are making that's causing them to not get any sales or make it passed the $10k/mo mark. At its core, it comes down to commitment to your expertise and your niche. In this episode, we don't just tell you what we think the mistakes are, we also talk about things you can do to prevent these from affecting you and your agency. The 7 mistakes are:...

**Cold Open (Do you take non-professional email addresses seriously?)** **Skip the Cold Open at 06:13** This week's episode comes to us a week after Jake talked about getting his Facebook account hacked and the implications that the hack had on the entire agency and our clients. During the period of this hack, Jake decided to partner with Aura. After getting his Facebook account back and getting the agency back up and running on the Facebook side of things, we thought it would be good to make...

**Cold Open (Cody is sick... again / GoDaddy's Weird Marketing Strategy** **Skip the Cold Open at 11:10** This is a topic we've been holding off on talking about until the dust settled -- but in July, Jake's Facebook account was hacked. It doesn't sound like a big deal until you realize that Jake's personal account is connected to all of our clients' ad accounts... Jake details what happened, what he had to do to get it back, and how he had to deal with the fallout with this basically crippli...

**Cold Open (Cool things about Colombia from Colombians)** **Skip the Cold Open at 10:03** On this episode, we're joined by Carolina Rincon and Isabel Gaviria from OnTop's legal team to discuss how agencies can hire and pay foreign and overseas contractors the right way from a centralized portal. We've talked about OnTop multiple times throughout the podcast so we thought we would bring them on. Many of our listeners rely on contracts to invoice them or pay them through payment processors like P...

**Cold Open (Cody asks Jake what his take is on wash rags...)** **Skip the Cold Open at 7:48** Jake was asked by a listener what goals we aim to achieve in our agency on a recurring basis. Frankly, there aren't a lot of goals we have. The more goals you have as a small agency the more analysis paralysis you experience and it keeps your eyes off of the true intentions of growing your agency. Cody also gives his take on goals in general and how he hates them. He also hates camping -- did you know ...

**Cold Open (Homeownership is turning Jake into an old man. Jake also talks about his vole problem)** **Skip the Cold Open at 9:00** On this episode, Jake and Cody talk about the fallacy of the phrase "work on your business rather than in it". Too many people take this too literally and too soon. In order to work on your business, you have to work in it and you have to do it for a while. If you try to jump the gun and work on your business before doing the important work from working in it, you ...

**Cold Open (TikTok releases search ads / Subscribe to Stacked Marketer)** **Skip the Cold Open at 11:13** Cody and Jake talk about how adding more services to your offering won't necessarily get you more clients or help you grow. What you should do instead is figure out what you're actually selling. You're not selling SEO and Google Ads, you're selling leads. You're not selling organic social media posting, you're selling branding. Attempting to sell a service you're not an expert in is a slipp...

**Cold Open (We discuss the worst things we've ever bought online)** **Skip the Cold Open at 8:54** If you're looking for advice on scaling an ecommerce marketing agency, this episode is for you. Cody and Jake are pretty notorious for not speaking well of the ecommerce niche. Not because ecommerce is bad to get into but because ecommerce companies that have a high enough budget to pay agencies and remain profitable are few and far between. In this episode, we're joined by Mike Begg from AMZ Advi...

**Cold Open (Cody gets detained at customs)** **Skip the Cold Open at 14:00** In this episode, Jake talks about his personal journey over the last 3.5 years going from a negative income making $42,500/year at an inside sales position at the beginning of 2020 to making $200k/year by 2023. Something that was not mentioned in this episode is that Jake had a negative income at $42,500, meaning more money was coming out for bills than was coming in from his day job. Additionally, Jake didn't gradu...