Bonus episode #2: A sneak peek of what our AOA hangouts look like

0:00Neil and I have an agency owners group called the agency owners association. All you have to do, just go to marketingschool.io slash agency. Once again, it's marketingschool.io slash agency to learn more. And now back to the show. All right, so we have a little treat for you. So this is a coaching call from the Agency Owners Association. This is a group that Neil and I have for agency owners to help you grow faster. So if you're in agency space, you are a services business. This is applicable to you. It's a little preview of a call. It's probably 10, 15 minutes or so. And you get a sense for what it looks like to be in the group.

0:33If you want to learn more about the group, you can go to marketingschool.io slash agency. Again, it's marketingschool.io slash agency. Hope you enjoy the episode. One thing I wanted to kick off with this week, and then you guys can start to go through your questions is, I'm sorry, I'm traveling right now. But one thing sticks out to me is the lack of founders that are unwilling to write. And I did a podcast interview with the CEO of Hatesleep. So it's a company I invested in. And, you know, his role is that if you want to do a one-on-one with him, you know, you basically have to write a memo, right?

1:11And I mentioned the book in my message yesterday or the other day. The book called Working Backwards from Amazon is a fantastic book. And it talks about how Amazon grew really off the back of writing these memos, right? Because a problem with a lot of these organizations is a lot of people come with half-baked ideas. They're not well thought through. And it ends up wasting a bunch of time, right, at the end of the day. um and especially like the the you know executives they end up wasting a lot of time too that the memos right building a culture of writing forces people to think it stops people in their tracks and you end up getting more clarity of thought and you end up taking better actions from it at the end of the day um and so you know he he um mateo that's his name he does that amazon does that and then um another company i invested in called levels they do the same thing too In fact, if you look for, if you go to YouTube, you type in, and I think it'll be all of my ideas too, because a lot of you are, I think everyone here is working remote first and if you want to build a high performance culture, you're going to have to be willing to write these memos, right?

2:20Like even today on my flight, I'm going to be writing a couple of memos. And these are memos where I'm thinking about strategic issues, right? So issues with recruiting, issues with maybe how maybe we're not moving quickly enough, issues with sales, with marketing, just anything that's bugging you. Because you as the founder, you're going to be able to push things a lot faster than other people. And I think I've said this a couple of times. My biggest mistake is expecting that I could hire a GM or a CEO and expect them to push the pace as quickly as I will. And that's just not the reality, right?

2:49Because another example is I hung out with my buddy Syed, and he has a holding company of WordPress businesses. And we're kind of just lamenting over the weekend that, you know, we used to think that we could just hire these people and leave them alone. But the reality is that's not the case, right? The best thoughts are going to come from you. And the best thoughts often come from writing. So we'll start it off with that. That's my little spiel for the week. And that being said, anybody, feel free to chime in with questions that you might have. And we'll rip through these. More a clarifying question.

3:17I've never been to one of these Hangouts. is the format more just problems, advice, things we're going through and people chime in on what they recommend solution or is there a particular format you guys follow for this? Yeah, it's more of a Q &A and I'm happy for anybody else to chime in when someone has a question, but it's typically been me answering so far. It's more scalable for me when I do these calls like this and then we end up sharing the recording with the group afterwards. Does that make sense, Abhinav? And Abhinav, I don't think you've, you and Kerry, can you introduce yourself real quick, who you are, what you do and one thing you need and then pass the Kerry?

3:49Yeah, sure. Hey guys, my name is Abhinav, based in Austin, Texas. Been here for over a decade. Run a software services agency. I've been trying to position myself as more of a zero to one for early stage startups and mid-stage startups to take an idea to market and figure out what that path looks like for you. And so trying to been building around that. Started a podcast six months ago to talk about the journey of building as well. And the biggest problem right now is more finding the right offering for my customers because I'm working in a space where they're not the most cash heavy businesses or startups.

4:23I'm trying to find the right offering and the right customer segment within the zero to one space. And I can go deeper into that, but that's a spiel. All right. Over to you, Keri. Hi, I'm Keri. I'm based here in New York City. I've had my agency group hugs for the last five years. It's a YouTube marketing focus agency, long form only organic. And we work with brands, businesses, and we started working with a couple of creators, which are totally different ball game. And like we do end to end. So from strategy to scripting, to production, editing, remote production, editing, and then uploads and optimization, A-B testing.

5:03And what I am focusing on is this just scaling this business in general because there's a lot of different steps in doing all the different parts of YouTube and really finding the right clients that are ready to dedicate the time and effort to growing on YouTube because as you know it is a lot yeah and Carrie are you are you Korean or Chinese I'm Chinese okay that's what I thought um yeah never know um but Carrie if you can um if you can send me maybe like send me a message and score or something with your one-sheeter because we're getting more and more asked for YouTube stuff. And so my whole thing is, just so you know too as well, Abhinav, we get an overflow of leads and we try to send them out to the group.

5:46And I think the rule with Ezra is basically you have to participate, right, in order to qualify each week. So that's what it is. So anyway, who else has got some questions we could answer here? And by the way, anybody feel free to chime in. It doesn't have to be just me answering. Does it have to be about writing? But also I do have a question. It can be anything. Okay. I mean, I do have a question about writing. Yeah, do it. Do you write like on your laptop? Like you don't, you're not like talking about like physically writing. Literally, what is it? I do. So a lot of it's Apple notes. I'm writing on my phone or I'm writing on my iPad or my laptop.

6:24But I will say that whenever I get a chance to write on a physical notebook, I feel like it sounds maybe rah-rah, but I feel more connected to it. And I feel like I've actually, like a lot of people have said this, right? Like when you write in a physical notebook, you're more connected to it. It seems like it actually sits in your mind more than like, you know, when you're writing on a device. Yeah, that's what they say. I think there's a science behind that because when you're using your muscles, there's a different part of the brain that's kind of doing the thing. So, I mean, that's the reason that it kind of sits more.

7:03yeah you kind of get the connection with that writing oh yeah i think that's a good point i think my question for you all would be if maybe if you could drop into chat to type in like what's your number one problem right now and maybe that's one thing you all should write a memo about right and i'm happy to share a template um and like a memo template that i've done recently just so you guys get a sense for how this looks um and then you guys can experiment with it because i think you guys most of you are going to find that it's very clarifying all right real quick i need to tell you about the group that Neil and I created called the Agency Owners Association.

7:35And this is a group that's similar to entrepreneurial organizations such as YPO or EO. By the way, Neil and I are both a YPO, but we thought it'd be really cool if we're able to create a group that's dedicated to agency owners to helping them scale. So you can be at six figures, seven figures, eight figures. We have different groups for different levels. All you have to do is go to marketingschool.io slash agency. Again, that's marketingschool.io slash agency. And you can go there to apply. And I will tell you right now what we're doing is there's an online community, We do calls every now and then.

8:02There's stuff that we share in there that we don't share publicly. And you can, at least the online community, you can cancel at any time. So you can go there to learn more about it. And that being said, back to the video. Can I ask something about that's connected, that's connected to writing. And actually, this past week, I listened to some of the podcasts like Sam Parr. Maybe I think it's even you as well, some other guys as well, which were saying the same thing that you have to get good at I think yeah Greg Greg yeah Greg shared this as well you know that you have to get get good at copywriting which which means writing you have to get at good at getting the writing so I'm trying to write but for me I'm trying to write to see what's my what I'm thinking to organize my thoughts and all that and recently I am trying to figure out what's my unfair advantage where I really think that I can lead or where I can differentiate myself apart from other agency owners especially so I think I'm still struggling to find the focus and all that so how do you use writing to really dig into those areas as well to really understand what's my advantage or to use that for your own strategic vision for your own company.

9:28Yeah. So you're talking about writing in two contexts. So one is you're talking about writing in terms of building an audience. The other writing is just writing for your organization to really get things done. The phrase I put in there is like writing is like casting a spell on your organization, right? Because you're basically writing a document and then things actually happen from it. And it's pretty amazing because all of you as founders have this invisible hammer where you can push things through, right? And you're probably not aware that you have that much power. Your word goes a long way, right?

9:56And so I think that's one piece, Allianne. I think you have to think through what are the core problems right now, maybe one, two, and three, and then start to write about, hey, this is the problem right now. This is the potential solution. Here are the resources required. And here's what we're trying to accomplish with this. And then by when as well. And then you can read it in a meeting with the right stakeholders. and then you can push a product through after you, or like a solution through after you debate it and discuss it with the team, right? So that's one piece. The second piece is, Elian, when you talk about creating content for the public, I guess my question for you would be, what are you actually world-class at?

10:38Yeah.

10:41So because I'm still trying to kind of figuring out what's the thing that I'm really good at, i think um i i just write i started to write where my thoughts go um and when when when the audience kind of uh resonates with that uh one thing i think it's more about the blend of i'm starting to kind of uh figuring out that uh when when because i'm i'm from japan when i start when i do the blend of like japanese uh technology with the global marketing i think that's the part that where I think I'm kind of ahead from other people. So yeah, that's the thing that I'm... But yeah, I don't know how to put those into words.

11:29Elian, my interest to you would be... How about you? Can you guys hear me okay? Yes? No? Okay, sorry. So Elian, why don't you try for the next 30 days committing to writing 30 minutes a day and see what happens after that? yeah i've been doing that for past five days and yeah i'll i'll okay so just stay stay consistent for 25 days sometimes you might miss like i did the i did the accountability buddy thing right like i mentioned you guys last time and i think some of you have accountability buddies here right um that i think without the accountability buddy i wouldn't have been consistent but even then i still missed a couple of times so um just keep in mind it's okay to miss a couple all right so i wanted to take a second to tell you about leveling up founders.

12:14This is an event slash mastermind for people doing seven, eight, nine figures. These are founders that are doing that amount. And we've been doing this event for a couple of years now. We've had amazing speakers, but more than anything, it's about the people. What I mean by that is like-minded people want to hang out with like-minded people. And this is the best spot to connect with people of a certain caliber. And we vet every single person that comes through. So if people are, even though they make a lot of money, but their character, we don't really align with that. We're not necessarily going to let them in.

12:43We do this event in Beverly Hills and it's happening in the beginning of August. All you have to do to learn more about it is just go to levelingup.com slash founders. Again, it's levelingup.com slash founders. If you want to hang out with amazing people, Neil, my podcast co-host is going to be there. I'm going to be there. People like Syed Balki, he will be there as well. And again, it's going to be a great time. LevelingUp.com slash founders to learn more. Let's continue to see you inside. To move along here. Who else has got some stuff?

13:13Otherwise, I'm going to read through some questions. Okay, Brian's got a question here. What's the number one thing you focus on to scale quickly? So, I think it depends on the stage of your company. So, I think, Brian, maybe you can give us some more context around where you are right now and where you're trying to go because then this question depends.

13:37Yeah, I mean, it's just scratching six figures. The agency, it's relatively new. So I'm just trying to figure out what I can do to scale. I think one pain point is that it's easier to get some of these lower cost clients and a lot of the clients I'm dealing with are small businesses that don't have a big budget. I'm trying to branch off a little bit more into some larger ones that can afford a little bit more that are a little bit less price sensitive. Yeah. I was thinking about, you know, what that could look like over the next six to 12 months. Yeah. You know, Brian, I'll say one thing that's been working for us and we've never really done cold outbound.

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16:40So smartly.ai, that's a tool that will allow you to use a bunch of different inboxes to send maybe 500 or 1 ,000 emails a day, okay? And the key thing with the email is we've tried floating because we create a lot of content. We've tried floating content to people. That doesn't really generate responses. But now we've changed our first email to a really good offer. So the first offer is, hey, we'll design using AI, we'll design 10 landing pages for you and we guarantee that we'll be at least a 10 % lift over your current landing pages. You'll pay us$2 ,000 for these 10 pages. And if we don't perform, we'll give you your money back and And we'll even send you a legally binding document, right?

17:22So that email gets about a 3 % to 4 % response rate right now. And we're still tweaking it. But it comes down to, Brian, the offer that you have at the end of the day, right? How can you give people a no-brainer offer and really de-risk it for people? And it's working for us.

17:41I'm not sure if you mentioned it, but it doesn't make sense. I have someone doing cold outreach for me, so I can maybe ask him to try giving them an offer. Yeah, well, that's the Brian. So you have to be if you have someone you've outsourced it to like a contractor, right? Yeah. Yeah. So you got to be all over them, right? You can't that's one of those things where it's like it's nice to it's you know, to hope that someone can do it for you but like you basically have to micromanage them because it's a it's a high-risk thing like the offer you're gonna have to keep tweaking it if they keep tweaking the copy keep tweaking the headline.

18:13So that's what I would say Yeah, no, I'm on top of it. It's a a young guy and he's doing like mass emails and texts and he's getting the appointments and I've gotten some clients out of it. So it is working, but we have like weekly touch points and all that. So I'll talk to him, but that's a good idea. I think. Yep. Okay, cool.