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- [00:00]
A
You end up gaining so much experience, so much faster than working in one business because you're handling 10, 15 clients.
- [00:09]
B
I'm very picky about who we will work with. No amount of money is worth living with an asshole.
- [00:15]
A
Fires are no longer. This piece of paper is on fire. Yeah, our fires are. Your children are on fire.
- [00:22]
B
When people tell me like, yo, we want to scale. You want to scale fast? I'm like, okay, are you sure you want to do that?
- [00:26]
A
This is a different ball game. This isn't about money anymore. Hi, and welcome to another episode of Special Ops podcast. I'm your host, Emma Rainville, and I'm here to give actionable insights to direct response marketers and e commerce sellers. Today I have the amazing Mitch Barham from Barham Marketing, a really good friend of mine and fellow driven member. We're talking about agencies and what it's like to be an agency owner, how to hire agencies, and we even have, like a crazy moment where we chat about scale. So without further ado, please welcome Mitch Barum. We both own agencies. I own a coo, fractional services agency. For all intents and purposes, you always say that you own ads agency. However, I've worked with you, and I know that you're running more of a CMO fractional service than you are an ads agency. Because you kind of have to.
- [01:25]
B
Yes.
- [01:26]
A
But there's so many challenges that come with owning an agency and so many hurdles. This is what I love about owning an agency. You end up gaining so much experience and so much knowledge, so much faster than someone working in one business because you now have the ability, particularly when you own the place and everybody looks to you for the answers of what they can't figure out. You end up seeing so many things that would take 10, 15 years to see in just one year because you're handling 10, 15 clients and probably a lot more than that. But 10, 15 clients are having issues and you're trying to sort it out. My overall experience as an agency owner, even though I wanted to lie and say I didn't own an agency for years, people be like, oh, you have a fractional COO service? No, I do not. We are your full time coo, even though we each work fractionally.
- [02:24]
B
Yeah.
- [02:24]
A
Which is true for us. But why add all these layers of complexity and confusion just because I didn't want to be an agency owner.
- [02:32]
B
Right.
- [02:32]
A
And so I've now, like, really embraced. I own an agency.
- [02:38]
B
You've come to the dark side.
- [02:40]
A
I think it's the light. I think I'VE come into the light. I have the opportunity to gain so much experience and see so many things of what so many people do to mess up so many things. Knowing what not to do sometimes is so much more advantageous than knowing what to do. Tell me how you feel about owning an agency and when someone says what do you do? What do you say?
- [03:11]
B
Yeah, so I reluctantly, I'm kind of the I say I haven't even embraced it fully of I own a digital marketing agency. I mean I could, I'll say that sometimes, but it just, I don't know the word agency.
- [03:24]
A
Jeepers creepers.
- [03:26]
B
Yeah, it gives me like the heebie jeebies. So what I usually end up saying is like I run paid ads for, you know, businesses to get more sales and clients. Sounds a little bit cooler. Used to call myself like, oh yeah, we're media buyers. But that's kind of changed with all of everything. So. But no, for the most part, I mean we're full stack digital marketing agency is what I say most of the time now. Because to your point, like we're 100% doing far more than what a media buyer does. A media buyer does at all. I mean from. There's just so many different layers to it. I love that you said the like basically like a fractional CMO because that's what I feel like a CMO to 40 plus businesses. Which is fun though because I get to see behind the fourth wall of all these different niches and all these different businesses. And so when like one problem arises over here. Oh well, yeah, like okay, I already solved that over here. And so we just kind of tweak the problem or the solution and fix it over here. And we're never just held to ads. Like we're not just answering ads questions from our clients. So it's the amount of data 100. I, I love everything you said about how much we get to see and like experience. I get to experience what, 40 years worth of business in one year because there's 40 clients, let's say. That's pretty cool.
- [04:52]
A
Yeah, I agree. What I love for you, and I know you hate to toot your own horn, what I love about you is so I have a CMO in my business and he's more operations than anything else. And that's Richard.
- [05:09]
B
He's great. I love Richard.
- [05:10]
A
Right. But on the offer that you worked with me on, you became our CMO for that offer. For all intents and purposes. What I love about having your model versus a fractional CMO and What I love about my model versus the typical fractional COO is the proof is in the pudding because I can't sell. Say your team didn't execute right on what I told you to do, because I'm telling you what to do. My team is executing on it and then it either works or it doesn't. So I have full autonomy over what we do and full accountability over whether or not it works. And for you, you're saying, hey, we need these kind of ads, we need this kind of filming, we need this kind of copy. We need to change this. I'm going to go in and change the page and then if the ads don't back out, it's 100% on you.
- [06:01]
B
100%.
- [06:02]
A
Which is why it blows my mind sometimes that people will go hire a fractional CMO and a fractional media buyer and not go with an agency like yours. Because it's. I'm going to know really quickly and I'm going to say this this way intentionally. Are you the one to run this offer for me or not?
- [06:21]
B
Yeah.
- [06:22]
A
Because operationally I know I can hit a home run eight times and then hit a dud on another. And that product just wasn't for me and my team. We didn't have the knowledge or the experience to move quickly enough. And so now when I'm sitting and I'm meeting with potential clients, we're really careful about what we take on because I know that I can get a home run with a fitness company. I know that I can get a home run with the supplement company. I know that I can get a home run with a biz op or biz dev company. I don't know anything about a gadget, somebody selling a gadget with some newsletter nonsense on the back end. I don't know anything about that. I don't know anything about creating an offer that caters to home services. So I don't take those clients on because I know where I can get home runs. So talk to me about how do you choose the clients you work with and the products you know best? Because I know that you don't know everything about everything out there. And I think this is the problem with agencies is they act like they do. Because what works for Peter doesn't necessarily work for Paul.
- [07:34]
B
No, 100%. Just because it works for one supplement company as an example, doesn't mean that that same exact structure is going to work for another supplement.
- [07:42]
A
You have to know how to test those structures 100%. But if you know how to do Supplements, you know how to do supplements?
- [07:47]
B
Yeah. Oh for sure, for sure. On the e comm end for us. I mean, yeah, I'm very picky period about who we will work with. Cuz to your point, I don't know everything about everything. There's a lot of coaching offers out there. I won't touch, I won't touch real estate, I won't touch insurance. I won't. There's just things that I don't know enough about and I've never really tested or tried those. Even then when I talk to people on the E comm end I really love products or offers that are repeatable so. Meaning retention, you know. So like supplement companies. I love selling companies. I spent 18 years in the supplement industry building my own brands so I can sell that.
- [08:24]
A
Right. Same. So I, yeah, I can, I can roll with any supplement company. Might take a couple of iterations.
- [08:30]
B
Oh for sure. Yeah.
- [08:30]
A
But I can roll with just about any cell. Like there are some people that are just selling BS in a bottle and trying to use disease claims and I'm not touching those.
- [08:38]
B
Well I won't even do like the guys that like I can look at their website when they submit their lead information and notice, oh you're just white labeling some company's product. Like no. What makes your magnesium different than going down to the store and buying Nature's Bounty or whatever it's called, you know now Foods magnesium. Like there's no usp. So in certain industries there has to be a certain usp, you know, and I want to make sure that the margins are there. There's a lot of back end stuff that like hey, if this goes right and it will, when this goes right, can you handle it? And not only that, but then on like the service based I have to know a lot of your backend operation stuff that like falls into like your wheelhouse and if they don't have it, then we need to implement it and make sure that this is going to work because again my own experience of growing my own businesses before the agency, like a lot of things go into the success of any business and ads are only one part and yeah, so I'm very.
- [09:39]
A
Operations is only one part. You can have really great operations and crappy marketing and it's not going anywhere.
- [09:44]
B
Yeah.
- [09:45]
A
But if you have really good operations, it's testing constantly so you'll eventually land on the right copy.
- [09:50]
B
Yeah. 100. I mean and so there's like on the E comm end I, I don't like to do one offs. I Like to make sure that like, you have the right profit in there, which always kind of blows people's minds because I'm like, funny story. I had this sales call with this person over in Europe and they have this amazing product and it's patented and it's, you know, blah, blah, blah, like, okay, great, well, what do you sell it for? What are your cogs? Like, I will ask you this on the sales call or really, it's a discovery cost. I'm not trying to sell you anything. I want to make sure that like, can I actually perform for you and do I like you and do you like me? And long story short, we ended up going through all the numbers and I was like, cool. Don't, don't hire any agencies. And they're like, why? I'm like, because you will make $4 per sale and you have zero chance of repeat buyers quick enough. You will heat us in 30 days because your bank account will have gone up a couple hundred bucks and I'm gonna have a hard time selling enough of this product at this budget to even cover our fee. So like you have a whole pricing issue and cogs issue that marketing is going to kill. It's like, we, we will put you out of business. Even though your revenue top line is going up, bottom line, you're going to go out of business. So I was like, I, this, I, I can't do this for you. So I get picky that. Like that too. Like that. And that a lot of agencies won't do that.
- [11:14]
A
No, no. A lot of agencies will try and figure out how to conform their offer to what the prospect wants, which usually means that they don't care about actually roi ing for you.
- [11:28]
B
100%.
- [11:29]
A
Super interesting. So we are similar. We have like a dating process that we do because you sign contract, it's like you're getting married to these people. A lot of people don't understand, like you're going to invest your time, your money for me. Do you know what's the most important thing for me? That I don't bring someone on that's going to treat my staff like crap.
- [11:49]
B
Oh huge.
- [11:50]
A
Because I spent a lot of time and money on working with these people and developing these people and building a team that I really enj. Like, I enjoy working with everyone on my team. I get on morning calls with Saka at 8:30 in the morning and it's like, it's my favorite call of the day. We have just 30 minutes that we connect and we're just going over email numbers and what email strategy we're going to put in place. And it's. It's my favorite call of the day and there's nobody on my team that when I talk to them, I'm like, and get me out of this call.
- [12:20]
B
Right, right.
- [12:21]
A
And so I just don't want to lose them. So for us, we implemented a starter package, and I've made that starter package so that we get paid. It's like 10k and it's a strategic operational blueprint. And overall, like, generally speaking, that'll make you money in and of itself, because I'll usually find money that you're spending that you didn't realize that you were spending stupidly. Things that you weren't utilizing properly, like just different elements or teams you're underutilizing AI and automations that you're not utilizing. And so we'll create this plan and if we don't like each other or if my team doesn't like you or you yelled at them too much over Voxer or. That's very specific. Or, you know, 10 other things. But I've been with Perry Belcher a long time, is how we know each other. Not only did we get through that starter package and he was a delight to work with, but even on the rare occasion like today, he pissed everybody on my team off. Everybody was upset, but it comes off completely different than someone they don't like. He said something that people didn't like and they called me like you would call your mom about your dad being disappointed in you.
- [13:30]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [13:31]
A
Not like, he's a jerk. He made me mad. I'm not working today. It was more like, I don't understand what I did wrong. How do I fix this? Perry's mad at me.
- [13:39]
B
That's huge.
- [13:40]
A
That's huge. And people enjoy working with him and they're excited to work with him. And. And we have other clients that are the same. So we do the startup package and it's. We're diving through your business and I'm doing a couple things. Number one, you said you can afford me, but can you?
- [13:55]
B
Right.
- [13:56]
A
If I'm going to suck out your profit margin from your business, and I'm going to do that, and it's going to take me too long to roi, because a lot of times for us in operations, it can take us six months to roi.
- [14:09]
B
Oh, for sure.
- [14:10]
A
There's sometimes I got to untangle a mess that you made over years.
- [14:14]
B
And we as entrepreneurs make huge messes.
- [14:17]
A
Huge messes. And to untangle that is like, you know, in order to not stunt revenue coming in, because you still have all the bills and you still have the mouths to feed the labor that, you know, people count on you. So in order to do it in a way that we don't stunt revenue or stop, you know, any growth that's happening or maintain what you're already doing, it can take a while. So I want to make sure that that's. That's something we can do. Number two, I want to make sure that you're either compliant or willing to be compliant. As huge C suite executive, I go to jail too.
- [14:51]
B
Right.
- [14:51]
A
I get sued to have been sued with clients before. And so if my name is going to show up on a letter, I need to be able to get up and say, I'm new here, and we've been working towards this, and this is what I got hired for, and you have to allow me to do my job. And if you're not, if, if you're not going to do that, then I can't move forward with that client. And then, you know, there's that whole other component. Or are you an.
- [15:17]
B
Yeah. No amount of money is worth dealing with. An.
- [15:20]
A
No, I used to actually up the price.
- [15:22]
B
Ah. An fee.
- [15:24]
A
Yeah. When Travis and I first started Shockwave, if someone was just a real, like, pain in the ass, we just added an asshole tax to it.
- [15:31]
B
I like it.
- [15:32]
A
Yeah. Except for I hated my life and there's no amount of money that's worth that. So eventually we came up with the starter package to keep people. Because we had a couple of things that happened. One, people went from being really nice on a sales call to a total dick. Two, people said that I got all the money in all the world, and you can go, you know, spend all the money on copy that you need and the lawyers and everything else. And then all of a sudden, one day you get a call when you're halfway through a project. I've got to start making money today or I'm not going to be able to pay my mortgage. Like, oh, my God, what do you mean we wouldn't have done it this. And then we've had those people that just seemed absolutely awesome. But then their expectations were, you're sitting on Voxer on Sunday afternoon waiting for their message, and if you don't answer immediately, it's 10,000 question marks or they
- [16:20]
B
are in slack just emojiing their message over and over again, trying to get your attention. I've had that before.
- [16:28]
A
I would lose my mind.
- [16:32]
B
I've even had it where they, you know, my phone number is out there. So they'll find my phone number and then, you know, text me. But then, like, I don't answer on like a Saturday or Sunday or whatever. It's like, yeah, I'm gonna get to it Monday. They'll ex do the exclamation mark on their own message and then the question mark. And I'm like, bro, it's Sunday. But no, I love that. We definitely do date. All those issues. Yeah, they all. They happen and it's so much fun.
- [16:55]
A
But on the other side of things, when you work with awesome clients, oh, it's amazing. And they're really good at being a business owner. They understand numbers and understand when you give them their numbers, sometimes there's that and that's okay too. But it's a really great ride and it's really awesome to sit back and go, we did this thing.
- [17:20]
B
Yep.
- [17:21]
A
And this thing was awesome. Yo, we interrupted this pod to tell you to like and subscribe. What are you doing? Why haven't you liked. Why haven't you subscribed? Just subscribe. What's the problem? In all seriousness, subscribe so that you get notifications every time we drop new content. Additionally, if you have not signed up for our visionary vault, what the hell? Www.specialopspodcast.com Go sign up. It's free. We never try and sell you and we're putting all kinds of stuff in there to help you with the operations of your business because we're passionate about it and we want to share operational excellence with our direct response. E commerce and online selling. Family, what's your favorite part about having an agency versus your own? Because you've owned your. Like I have. You've owned your own products and you've owned agencies running other people's products. Which do you like better?
- [18:08]
B
That's a interesting question because on one, like, the control freak in me likes to, you know, like my own stuff.
- [18:15]
A
Same.
- [18:15]
B
I control everything. So, like, the control freak, you can't
- [18:19]
A
tell me what to do. It's Mayans. Yeah, yeah.
- [18:22]
B
And then. But on the other hand, what's awesome about the agency side, like, when I only had one, I never really only ever had one. Let's be honest. At one point, I had six e Comm businesses at one time. Realized I was going insane. Pared it back down to like two. But I was still. I had a higher chance of shiny object syndrome. So even though I still have that, but, like, I would try to spin up tons of business, the agency, what's fun for me. I have a level of ADD that I need to keep my brain busy. I love the spider web of the different niches, different in different industries, different. I also got an accent that was weird, but like, it's all a spiderweb the way I look at it. So I'm non stop solving problems. Yeah, but like, not necessarily. We're not talking bad problems, but like algorithm problems or helping with like an inventory issue or supplier issue or know, email marketing. Like all these things that we integrate into creative. What changed all of a sudden? Why is red working better than blue? It's like a murder should never work
- [19:27]
A
better than blue, but it always does.
- [19:29]
B
Right?
- [19:29]
A
Right.
- [19:30]
B
So weird.
- [19:31]
A
So weird. Murder board though. Also love murder boards. I have them as well.
- [19:36]
B
Yeah. And so you get to like string all these things together and it's. It's so much fun. And then what of course is like the most fun. We have one client right now. They technically I would just want it to be a part of what they were doing because it's such a unique product that I was like, okay, it's like, I never do this, but I'm so interested in this. Like, I'm gonna make this special deal with you and I just want to be a part of this. Like, this seems so interesting. And so to the point that like, they were able to raise tons of extra money. They're using our face on their pitchboard. So my face is in like their pitchboard to go raise more money. I didn't even know about it. The first time I saw it. I was like, oh, okay, cool.
- [20:21]
A
And we have this guy running our ads.
- [20:23]
B
Look at this guy with the beard. He does our ad stuff. But they're so excited about their like, direct to consumer growth, which has then also resulted in B2B growth. And they're bored. Like, they're bored, which are really smart people. Got behind us on a few issues when they're like, they were trying to push back on us and their board was like, no, he's right. Like do what he's saying to do because look at what's happened. And then there she's just over the moon. Like we get emails, like guys are just have meeting with the board and they approved this and we just raised a whole bunch more money. Thank you guys so much. Like, that level of excitement that I get to see from these business owners, from their growth just makes my little heart so warm because that's totally me.
- [21:07]
A
You don't have a heart.
- [21:08]
B
I don't. My black heart just Kind of just slowly goes like one beat and then it's like, oh, I do. Yeah. No, but I don't know, like seeing that level of excitement and I get a weird level of enjoyment from watching the growth stress them out. Because I've been there, I'm been there numerous times and it's like, okay, we're doing this, right? And. But when people tell me like, yo, we want to scale, you want to scale fast. I'm like, okay, you sure you want to do that?
- [21:36]
A
Yeah. This is a different ball game. This isn't about money anymore. This is about making sure you don't get match listed on your merchant accounts, making sure your merchant accounts don't run out of capacity, making sure you don't run out of inventory. Making sure the middleware, who would have thunk the middleware on your members area doesn't bust and nobody can get in causing a bunch of chargebacks. Making sure that you, at the right time, at the perfect time, introduce enough customer support to handle that scale. And all at the same time, making sure that you're able to pay for your traffic sources in a way that doesn't put you out of business. Because I've seen more people who run out of money from scaling than not selling 100%. Like, by far huge. And the challenges and the things that come up at scale when you go from a million a month to 8 million a month, even if you do it over an entire year, if you thought you were stressed out at a million, if you thought you were stressed out about not being able to like, oh, am I going to be able to make payroll? Am I going to be able to get enough new customers? Am I going to be able to. If you thought that was stressful, having more money than you know how to deploy coming in, but the bills come in a little bit faster and the challenges come in faster and the fires become an inferno.
- [23:00]
B
Oh, and they get so much bigger. Like, I love it when people are like, oh, you got these big businesses. Like, you don't have the same problems we do. I'm like, no, we do. They're just bigger.
- [23:09]
A
Right.
- [23:09]
B
Like our, our fires we have to put out, require.
- [23:12]
A
Our fires are no longer. This piece of paper is on fire.
- [23:16]
B
Yeah.
- [23:16]
A
Our fires are. Your children are on fire.
- [23:20]
B
Yes.
- [23:20]
A
Do you know what I'm saying?
- [23:22]
B
Hundred percent.
- [23:23]
A
It's how it feels. Yeah.
- [23:25]
B
Hide your children. They're catching on fire.
- [23:26]
A
Right, right. Hide your kids. Anyway, yeah, that's really interesting scaling for me. That's why I'm an agency. It's 100% why I'm an agency, being able to be part of that thing but never having to sit in the mundane maintenance of it. Because everybody wants to sit in the maintenance of it after they go through it, right? There's a certain level that you scale to and it's like, I need to sell, I need to maintain and chill out for a minute. And I'm like, boring.
- [24:01]
B
100.
- [24:02]
A
Yeah, yeah. Scaling was a fun addition with the agency model. But what would you say if someone is out there looking to hire an agency, whether it be for media buying, whether it be for operations, whether it be for copy and marketing, you can go get an agency for customer service, AI integration. What are some of the things? And I'll give mine after. But what are some of the things that you think are really important for them to ask themselves? Ask the agency, do check, mark, whatever. What? What are the things?
- [24:38]
B
Oh, there's so much. Because like even I'll just stick with like paid ads, right? So I fully believe that like most people, you should know enough about paid ads to a degree like that you aren't going to get screwed over easily.
- [24:50]
A
You or someone on your team should know enough that you understand when the person's skewing the data.
- [24:55]
B
100 or when things, yeah, things are going good, things are going bad, etc, but not that you need to be in the weeds actually doing it. So like one, ask yourself, like, do you understand what's going to be done? Number two, are you really in a good financial spot that like, let's say it takes 1, 2, 3 months for something to really ramp up or 1,
- [25:15]
A
2, 3 agencies to find the right fit?
- [25:17]
B
100%. Can you live through that? It's kind of like having like, do you have savings? I mean, it's like literally like there's kind of like a, you need to have a savings account. And then when you're talking to agencies, like, I mean really it's relational, it's all relationship building because like you have to like them, but also to make sure they know. I mean, there's like different kinds of questions you can ask as far as like situational, like when this happens, what do you do? But that's always evolving right now, right? A lot. So that's a hard one to ask. The one I get asked a lot is interestingly enough, like, how many clients do you have? Because they want to know, like, do they actually have the time to manage you? Who will be managing your account? Because you'll want to know, like, are you going to be bounced around a lot. Is there like a lot of turnover inside of there? I get asked a lot about like how many media buyers do we have or how many people running ads and where are they? I have a control freak, so all my people are in style or in office that do the media buying. You can ask about case studies, but in all honesty, I don't like case
- [26:18]
A
studies because they're most always skewed anyway.
- [26:20]
B
Yeah, they're skewed. You can make them up and it's a document that. How the hell are you going to verify you're going to call the business? Probably not. They would hate you if you did that anyways. But no. So those questions for yourself, asking the agency, try to throw some situations at them and see how they would react to that. Are like, is the person who's going to be managing your account junior or senior? Then huge one. I still see how often are you going to be meeting, talking about strategy and reporting? Still a lot of a, like digital ads, agencies that don't send reports. And it still blows my mind. I'm like wait, you don't get reports? Because people will say to me like oh you guys send reports. I'm like what? Like how do you know what's going on? I try to get more than a once a month meeting, like bi weekly meetings, check in, you know, for a quick zoom. I don't know random things that I think are good to ask. You can get into the weeds about things but unless you really know like what Roas and Mer and profit merge. That's a good one. I like that. Ask them how do they judge winning campaigns or ads. So if they start at the beginning and say oh well, first we look at your impressions and then your click through rate and this and that run, run their juniors, seniors, we start at the end. I want to know what is your cost per closed sale, what is your cost per books call? What is your cost per lead? Where does that leave you? Margin and profit wise instead of like well your leads cost $5. So sorry, go f yourself Mr. Client. If they, if they say that, great,
- [27:53]
A
I love all of that. For me, if you're going to hire any agency, whether it be a media buying agency and operations, customer service, whatever, what is the deliverable that you're going to give me every week or every month, whatever it is, what is the deliverable at minimum? So if it's, you know, a marketing agency, how many emails am I going to get, how many pay, you know, split tests am I going to get served up like whatever it is. So what is the deliverable that I'm going to get? 2. What is the outcome of that deliverable and what happens if it doesn't happen? Because it's not always going to happen. No agency can say. You can't say you're going to get 100 qualified leads. But if I didn't, what are you going to do about it? What's going to happen? Are you going to put more people on it? Are you going to. Are you going to personally look at my account? Like, what, what, what are you going to do about it? And if it happens the second month, what happens? I want to ask those hard questions because the reality is things are going to go wrong and it's going to be outside that person's control. Or it might be in their control, but things change. Someone gets sick, you know, the. The person over your account gets ill. Like, what are you guys, the business owner, gonna do about it? How much of your time do I get? It's probably gonna be none, by the way. I would prefer them to be honest. If they say, as much as you need and they dance around that it like, run, run, run, run to the hills. Because for me, unless things are not going well, you're not gonna get much of my time. My staff is gonna get my time, which is way better. Every minute that I spend talking to make you feel preach about what we are accomplishing for you is time I can't spend with my staff educating them on what they need to be doing and what levers they need to be pulling. And that means the person pulling the levers isn't getting enough time because you demanded that I explained to you what you didn't need to know. Yeah, I love that we're talking about outcomes here. And the reality is you're paying me for a certain amount of time. And if you're going to take from that time, I'm certainly not going to give it back to you because you're a child.
- [30:05]
B
Yeah.
- [30:05]
A
Period.
- [30:06]
B
100.
- [30:06]
A
But if, you know, you want to bake into the cost. Oh, I want to call a strategic call with you once a month because I want to understand. Well, you can have that strategic call with my team and they're going to bring to you the strategy that I put forth and then you get to tell them, oh, I love that, or that's okay, but let's pivot to over here a little bit, which, in which case I may reach out to you. And that's not going to go on your Time. And that makes a hell of a lot more sense. Right?
- [30:36]
B
Yep.
- [30:36]
A
So that's, that's key for me. Two, this is my vision and these are my goals for my business for the year. How does you and your team play into this? And do you believe that you can be part of what I'm trying to accomplish? If you're running ads for me, you have to believe that you can scale me to what I'm trying to scale to. If you're running operations for me, you have to believe that you're able to provide the structure to create the projects that I have on my list that I want to do this year regardless. Like, these are my goals for this year. How do you fit in? And then finally, if we disagree on something and I don't want to move forward with what you want to do, what happens? And for me, as a business owner who runs people's businesses, who don't always want to do, we're always going to do what you want to do. You're the business owner. But you also have to understand that if it doesn't work, then that's on you. You're not going to come back to me and tell me. And that happens all the time.
- [31:39]
B
All the time. I've had that conversation many times.
- [31:41]
A
I gave you guys a great strategy and you couldn't make it work. No. We told you the strategy wasn't going to work. You hired us because we're the best at what we do. You chose not to listen, and here we are. I'm going to go fix it for you, but do you want to sit here and talk about why it's my fault when it's not, or do you want me to go fix it?
- [31:59]
B
Right.
- [32:00]
A
And often times, sadly, they want to sit and talk about why it's not their fault.
- [32:05]
B
Totally.
- [32:06]
A
Yeah. And if you change anything of a proven strategy, any piece, hey, look, I'm all for trying new things.
- [32:13]
B
Yeah.
- [32:15]
A
But when it doesn't work, pivot quick and go to what's proven anyway. That's like, that's, those are like the high level things. There's lots of questions that you could ask specifically for what you're hiring for. But honestly, like, if they can answer those things honestly, you have a great starting point. And the reality is no one, no agency, no person you're gonna hire, no one you're going to get coaching from is ever truly going to be the. Has all, be all for moving the need in your business. You have to be responsible for who you put in the room, who you put in, what seats, what you listen to, what you disregard, what you put on the shelf for later. Because only you intimately understand the elements of your business. And no agency is truly going to understand all of that. Mitch, thanks for this and being here.
- [33:14]
B
Yeah, thanks for having me. A lot of fun.
- [33:16]
A
Thank you for joining us on this episode of Special Ops Podcast. I'm your host, Emma Rainville. Don't forget to go to special opspodcast.com and sign up for our visionary vault. In there, you're gonna find all kinds of stuff, courses, checklists, templates, all the things to help you get to operational excellence. And it's always free, all the time. We never try and sell you there. Today, me and my boy Mitch made for you a checklist when hiring agencies. So go grab that. If you have any intention of hiring an agency or maybe chatting with one, whether it be for marketing, for media, buying, for operations, go ahead and grab that and run through that checklist with your prospects to make sure that you're bringing on a really good fit. Thank you for joining us on this episode and see you next time.