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.
We host some of the smartest minds in business…
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Seth Godin
Best selling Author of Purple Cow, This is Marketing, Linchpin, Permission Marketing
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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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Amy Porterfield
Renowned online marketing expert and educator
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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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Pat Flynn
The leaders in the podcast space
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Joey Coleman
Recognized for his expertise in customer retention & enhancing client loyalty
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Neil Patel
Founder of CrazyEgg, Kissmetrics, and other multimillion dollar companies
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Dan Martell
Author of Buy Back Your Time. Influential coach in SaaS startups.
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Todd Herman
Coach to Elite pro athletes, leaders, and public figures
Waze Co-Founder, Uri Levine, Falling in Love With The Problem Not the Solution | Ep #691
What would you do if you sold your agency tomorrow? Are you clear enough on your purpose that you could keep on creating value? Today’s guest is the founder or a beloved app that changed the way people drive nowadays. He eventually sold that company but hasn’t stopped looking for ways to improve people’s lives through his startups. He’ll share what he’s learned from failure, why he was out of the company as soon as he sold, and why you should always look to understand users to create real value. Tune in to learn valuable insights into building successful startups.
Build the Confidence and Agency Team Needed to Succeed with Torey Azure | Ep #687
Do you trust yourself to lead your agency to success? Does your team follow your lead on the decisions you make to get there? Today’s agency owner has successfully grown his business over the years, gaining more and more trust in his decisions as he accumulated more experience. Although he doesn’t regret past decisions, he realizes he could have retained a majority stake in his company and made it on his own had he trusted himself like he does now. Tune in to learn about his experience in growing his agency and how he built the confidence to succeed.
Let Go to Grow: Hire the Right People & Achieve Work-Life Balance with Brendan Chard | Ep #686
Do you find it challenging to carve out your niche or turn away less-than-ideal prospects, fearing missed opportunities? Today’s guest started his agency as a college student and pivoted to digital services as the internet was barely becoming a thing. One of the biggest shifts and struggles in his journey has been overcoming the fear of tuning down revenue and letting go of the notion that his way was the only approach clients would respond to. Tune in to learn valuable insights on navigating the agency landscape, committing to a niche, and maintaining a thriving business while prioritizing well-being.
Knowing When to Let Go is the Key to Agency Growth with Suken Shah | Ep #684
Would you say your agency is like your baby? Could you be so emotionally attached to your business that you may be stifling its growth? Today’s guest will share his experience growing an agency and the turning points that allowed him to make real progress in its growth. From learning to communicate his agency's vision in a way that inspired buy-in to the surprising struggle of carving out space for a personal life amidst the chaos of entrepreneurship, his biggest challenge was letting go of the belief that he alone was the driving force behind its success. Tune in to learn his valuable lessons and tips for agency success.
Maximize Your Agency’s CRM for World-Class Relationship Building with Steve Holm | Ep #680
Is your agency leveraging CRMs to tailor personalized client experiences and nurture long-term client relationships? Are you tracking customer interactions from first message to delivery? In the dynamic world of agency-client interactions, CRM tools play a pivotal role in streamlining operations and enhancing customer experiences. Today’s guest has made customer satisfaction his focus even since his start as a graphic designer and now offers a CRM system designed specifically with agencies in mind. Tune in to learn valuable insights on client management and relationship-building strategies for agencies.
How Alex Rossman 8xed his Agency in 2 Years | Ep #677
Do you have enough of an appetite for risk to trigger exponential agency growth? Have you considered strategic partnerships as a growth strategy? Today’s guest changed the music scene for entrepreneurship and managed to grow his agency from $2 million to $16 million in just two years. How’d he do it? After getting past common initial struggles like developing sales and hiring the right people, he focused on strategic partnerships and found the right formula to scale his marketing agency. Tune in to learn from his incredible growth story and strategic approach to agency success.
More Important Than Money, A Discussion With Agency Owner Robert Lee | Ep #676
Would your agency keep running and growing if you had to take a month off tomorrow? Or would it all fall apart? Which systems could you start implementing right now to keep this from happening? Today’s guest went through difficult times last year and his focus wasn’t fully in the business. These struggles proved to be too much for a recent purchase, which he had admittedly rushed; as that acquisition started falling apart and becoming a burden, it started to take a toll on mental health as a result. In the end, he had to sell. Now he thinks carefully about the processes and systems that must be in place in case of an emergency. Tune in to learn how he navigates his agency to allow himself time to focus on the things that are more important than money.
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 Matt Shields Built A $400K/mo SMMA | Ep #673
Are you looking for motivation to get your agency off the ground? How has your client acquisition strategy evolved since you started? Have you tried building client communities to foster a competitive spirit that will lead to client wins? Today’s guest is a young entrepreneur who turned to marketing as a teen knowing college just wasn’t for him. He focused on learning and building a solid base and now has an agency getting close to 500K in revenue and has purchased and is working on growing another two agencies. He and his partner understand their strengths lie on getting businesses off the ground and recognizing potential for growth in partnerships. However, they’re still figuring out how to scale to eight figures. Tune in to learn from his inspiring journey and gain insights for your own agency growth.
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.
