Smart Agency Masterclass Podcast with Jason Swenk
Bi-weekly interviews, strategy, and advice for building your marketing agency the smart way.
The popular agency podcast has just turned 10 years old and covers everything from starting a successful agency to selling your agency.
#1 Agency Leadership Podcast. Check Out Our Past Guests.
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Seth Godin
Best selling Author of Purple Cow, This is Marketing, Linchpin, Permission Marketing
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Guy Kawasaki
Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist of Canva and former Apple chief evangelist
Choose The Best Niche For Your Digital Marketing Agency | Ep #608
Are you an overworked owner of a stagnant agency? Maybe you have grown your digital agency to seven figures but can’t figure out how to get beyond that and are feeling stuck. The door to growth can be unlocked with one key and that key is choosing a niche. But how do you choose the best niche for your agency? Will narrowing down your focus limit your agency's potential?
4 Biggest Agency Sales Mistakes & 3 Sales Systems to Setup Success with Chris Brewer | Ep #607
Are you guilty of making one of the biggest agency sales mistakes? Do you rely too much on referrals? Do you have three channels working to find new prospects and fill your pipeline? Without this, you're always playing catch-up leaving no time for working on growth. A lack of systems hinders your agency's growth by keeping the owner tied to daily operations. As today's guest learned the hard way, you can't rely too much on any one specific channel of lead generation. He shares the lessons he learned on maintaining a balance and working hard to set up the different channels to secure new leads. He also recalls the pitfalls and mistakes made as well as the ways he learned to set up his agency sales team for success.
Create a Vision Statement for a Digital Agency to Fuel Growth | Ep #606
Why did I almost QUIT my multi-million dollar agency to get a job? It sounds crazy to think that I’d gotten to that point – for many is a measure of success – and was willing to let it go. I needed to learn to plan for the future and create a vision statement for my agency.
Unlock Limitless Agency Growth By Empowering Your Team with Julianne Fraser | Ep #605
Is it difficult for you to delegate to your team? Are you still handling everything yourself? Does your team feel empowered to take the initiative or do more work? If you’re still at the center of everything, it's time to unlearn your old ways and elevate your team. When you do, you'll experience limitless agency growth. Today's guest thought clients expected to work directly with her and therefore found it hard to step away from daily operations. However, she learned to let go of this limiting mindset and embrace collaborative work. It was a humbling experience to see how much empowering her team made everything better. Now she finally gets to focus on strategy, growth, and agency culture.
Maximizing Digital Agency Profits By Documenting Core Processes with Chris Gwinn | Ep #604
Can your agency employees make decisions without you? Are you frustrated that you keep putting out fires or re-explaining yourself over and over? Documenting processes isn't the glamorous part of being an agency owner. However, it’s a necessary part of growing your and the first step to exiting daily operations. Today’s guest runs an advisory agency where they help customers achieve profitability by documenting processes. He’ll talk about the biggest mistake agency owners typically make when it comes to documenting processes and how you can tackle this daunting task.
Empower Your Agency Team & Be the Beneficiary of Your Hard Work with Ryan Kutscher | Ep #602
Do you lack a clear vision for your agency? Communicating the vision is the best way to empower your agency team. An unclear vision leads to a lack of direction and makes it more difficult to scale your digital agency. Today's guest has grown his agency to nearly 8-figures and admits only recently things have become more clear. He expands on how a lack of direction was one of his first mistakes with the agency and how he has been getting through rough times thanks to the support of other entrepreneurs.
Tapping Into Latin American Talent to Grow Digital Agency Profits with Carlos Corredor | Ep #601
Have you considered hiring remotely to help cut costs? Where would you look for remote employees that are still a good culture fit? Finding the right talent can be very challenging even if you’re looking locally. Trying to find great talent in a different country could be next to impossible without the right help. Today’s guests run an agency that offers white-label services and runs highly efficient recruitment services for US companies. They’ve perfected a process to find the best talent in Latin American countries and connect them to small and medium US companies looking to source top talent. They’ll reveal the basic parameters they consider as part of their recruitment process and how they match candidates according to their clients’ needs.
How One Digital Agency Doubled MRR with Derrick Kuhn | Ep #600
Are you letting fear stand in the way of success? Have you ever lost a big opportunity because you wanted it too badly? Are you guilty of skipping your own processes only to have it bite you in the ass down the road? Often time entrepreneurs get overly focused on a specific outcome and ignore the bigger picture. Today’s guest has started many businesses with more than half being lessons on what not to do. He shares several of those lessons and the most important, million-dollar lesson that helped him get over his fear, trust the process, and double the agency's MRR.
Add Video Services to Your Digital Agency (the Easy Way or the Hard Way) with Ian Garlic | Ep #599
Are you considering adding video services to your digital agency? Do you use video as part of your agency marketing strategy? Do you know how to leverage the power of video for you and your clients? Video is an integral part of any successful marketing strategy; particularly when video case stories are included. Nothing engages an audience as effectively as video content. Furthermore, it’s a great way to showcase your brand's personality, build authority, and improve SEO. As a video marketer, today’s guest understands that people remember, share, and buy stories. He shares what many people get wrong when they roll out video content and the best way to get fast results with video marketing.
Lessons from Growing an Agency Too Fast with Christopher Marrano | Ep #598
Are you trying to grow your agency fast? Trying to posture as a big agency to impress clients? There are a lot of big decisions to make when you're growing. However, you could be making mistakes that actually hold back agency growth. Today’s guest learned some lessons from growing too quickly the first time. He shares what he learned and how he overcame it to grow more consistently. He talks about leaning too hard into vanity metrics and hiring a team too soon as well as which roles to hire first.
About the Show
The popular agency podcast has been around since 2014 and covers everything from starting a successful agency to selling your agency. What makes this podcast a must-listen is Swenk’s background as the founder and CEO of an agency for over a decade. Swenk brings his own experience to the table, besides the expertise of his guests. He mostly covers topics that help growing agencies scale to the next level.
YOUR HOST
JASON SWENK
Smart Agency Masterclass
Jason is a family man who also happens to have created a couple big marketing agencies, helped thousands of agency owners, and had a big agency exit too.
