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
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Gino Wickman
The creator of the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) and author of Traction.
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Mike Michaelowicz
Best-selling author of Profit First and Clock Work
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Neil Patel
Founder of CrazyEgg, Kissmetrics, and other multimillion dollar companies
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Joey Coleman
Recognized for his expertise in customer retention & enhancing client loyalty
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Amy Porterfield
Renowned online marketing expert and educator
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Pat Flynn
The leaders in the podcast space
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Jay Baer
Best Selling author of Talk Triggers, Hug Your Haters, and one of the best speakers
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Todd Herman
Coach to Elite pro athletes, leaders, and public figures
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Dan Martell
Author of Buy Back Your Time. Influential coach in SaaS startups.
Selling an Agency and Starting Over the Right Way, with Jodie Ball | Ep #675
Is the wrong prospecting process bringing you clients who are just not a good fit? Are you feeling trapped in a contract with clients you wouldn’t choose to work with? Building strong connections with clients based on common ground and understanding can significantly impact the success and fulfillment of partnerships in the agency world. Today’s guest saw her first agency end after all partners lost the passion for the work. The reason? Working with clients who didn’t fit the agency’s personality left them all feeling stuck and overwhelmed. After selling and starting over, she has made the right prospecting process a focus of her new business and is definitely seeing the results. Tune in for insights on starting over the right way after selling an agency that wasn’t working out.
Scaling an Agency to $500M, with Dimi Albers | Ep# 674
Do you dream of running a big agency? What’s your target number and how do you think you’d handle the added stress of an increasingly larger team? Today’s guest is the leader of an agency colossus: an over half-billion-dollar behemoth with around 4,000 employees spanning the globe, a scale very few founders could even imagine. He’ll share invaluable insights into engineering colossal, the leadership mindsets needed to wrangle this growth, and how his team value agencies in their search to form new partnerships to continue the agency’s growth. Tune in to this must-listen episode if you're looking for inspiration and practical advice on taking your agency to the next level.
How Kasim Aslam’s Agency Became the World Authority on Google Ads | Ep #671
Are you running a full-service agency? Have you already considered niching down? What about broadening your services once you do? Today’s guest built an agency that became a world authority on Google ads. Even though he eventually sold, he now believes more growth may have been possible with patience and the vision to expand his services after niching down, which he calls the “hourglass method”. Tune in to learn about his early failures and successes as a young entrepreneur, the lessons he takes from his years of experience and selling his agency, and why he believes agencies are the future of most businesses.
Agency Website Design Secrets from an Industry Pioneer with Mark Bevington | Ep #670
Does your agency offer web design services? What is your perspective on creating impactful agency web design? What do you think of how most websites are currently utilized? Today’s guest is an expert in website design with a growth-driven approach to agency web design. He’s been working in web design ever since the early days of the internet and believes nowadays many businesses are building low-quality websites focused only on sales. In his opinion, websites should have a strong technical foundation and create a journey that leads to engagement and conversions. Tune in to learn about his passion for creating impactful websites, how he developed a very effective foot-in-the-door, and how he’s embraced podcasting as a way to attract the type of client he wants to work with.
How Stevie Johnston 10Xed His SMMA To $500K/mo Recurring | Ep #669
Are you trying to grow your SMMA but can’t get past the referrals stage? What’s holding you back when it comes to continuing your growth and reaching eight figures? Today’s guest may not have written the book on how to start a SMMA, but he sure read it from cover to cover and then threw all the rules out the window. He is a young agency owner who started out with dreams of outgrowing his post-college job and gaining the sort of independence and success he knew could come from entrepreneurship. He endured long months of looking for his first client and the hardships of trying to stand out before finding the right niche. Tune in to hear about the challenges and advantages of being a young agency owner and his experience and insights in growing a SMMA.
Navigating Culture Building in a Remote Agency Environment with Jane Crisan | Ep #668
What kind of culture do you promote at your agency? Do you keep track of things employees say are hitting or not hitting the mark about the culture? How has your culture changed since the pandemic? Today’s guest runs a 260-employee agency and has put great care to ensure work flexibility and employee happiness are a big part of their culture. She believes giving employees reasons to stay at her agency are much more beneficial than the work of having to constantly replace key roles due to high turnout rates. Tune in to learn about the ways she has reintroduced in-person activities while keeping a mostly remote workflow and how she makes sure employees feel heard.
Cracking Profitable Agency Growth with Shannon Fitzgerald | Ep #667
What fears or limiting beliefs hold agency owners back from pricing their services assertively? What critical ingredients are you missing to confidently quantify value? Today’s guest co-founded a small yet highly profitable creative agency in less than four years by starting out with a clear concept of the value she provides. Charging according to your worth is usually a difficult subject for many agency owners, as it gets to the core of how they value their work. However, establishing your value and pricing it accordingly sits at the heart of every agency's growth potential. Tune in to learn how starting out with a clear idea of your pricing will help you find your ideal audience faster and weed out bad prospects.
A Deep Dive Into The Power of Franchise-Focused Digital Marketing with Alex Porter | Ep #666
Are you looking for ways to differentiate your agency? Have you considered expanding your agency’s offering with proprietary technology? Today’s guest markets to franchise systems and offers a platform built for their specific marketing needs. It’s a great way to cater to clients’ specific pain points while increasing his agency’s value. He details the unique challenges and opportunities of marketing for franchise systems, the strategic decisions behind developing proprietary technology to better serve clients, and the challenge of getting most clients to adopt this solution.
How Nicholas Kusmich Created a 4 Million Dollar Agency with No Employees | Ep #665
Do you have a hard time letting go of agency operations and overall control? Have you embraced your role as the visionary and taken a step back from minor tasks? If you haven’t, why do you think that is? Today’s guest realized at one point that autonomy was his personal core value and that his agency would fail unless he prioritized it. This realization led to a new point of view, where he imagines how he would run his agency if he knew nothing about the business. This exercise has greatly helped him detach himself from agency operations and trust the agency can run without him. Tune in for an interesting discussion about autonomy in business, having employees vs. hiring contractors, and the benefits of building a personal brand.
Getting to 7-Figures Fast by Juggling Curiosity and Control with Natalie Hogg | Ep #664
Are you an agency owner or an entrepreneur who wants to take your business to the next level? Do you want to learn how to grow your revenue, profit, and impact in the world? Have you found yourself chasing only the money and feeling dissatisfied later? Today’s guest grew her agency from zero to seven figures in just two years, while also making a positive impact in the world through her social responsibility initiatives. She has transitioned from being a consultant to being a leader and aligned her business with her personal goals and values, and has used her agency as a platform to create social change and help others.
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.
