blumercpas

Jason Blumer is joined by Trenton Moss, formerly of Webcredible, one of the UK's leading experience design agencies, as he explored how he built an agency for 15 years before sales and the whole business tanked overnight. After months of losses, he decided to sale. And this is his journey out of the chaos and into a coaching and training platform, Team Sterka.

Jason welcomes Andy Budd back to the Businessology Show for an insider look at what navigating inevitable transitions in agencies entails. They broadly discuss growth challenges and decision-making as leaders. While Andy also shares his personal decision to sell his company, ClearLeft, to his employees and how to think through these leadership moves.

"We’re not just making things someone thinks people need, hopefully we’re making stuff people really want and need, ” shares Jon Kolko of Modernist Studio on the unique and distinct work they are doing in their field. In this episode, Jon delves into the importance of curiosity and approaching design through empathy, which then leads to helping their clients envision and get excited about what the future could hold for them.

Jason Blumer welcomed Mickey Mellen and Ali Green of GreenMellen to this fourth episode in the Agency Recovery Series! Mickey and Ali share how the market has changed for them and how that has adjusted the ways they serve their clients. They also discussed how their niche hasn't involved picking a particular industry, but rather defining their ideal client. And how this position has uniquely prepared them for the challenges this year held.

This episode is part of a series of month-end specials where we will be bringing on strong agency leaders who have weathered this pandemic and hear strategies they've employed to navigate this new, ever-changing marketplace. Let us know if we can help your agency with recovery strategies by reaching out to us at info@blumercpas.com or checking our website [Blumer CPAs](http://www.blumercpas.com/)!

Jason and Marcel start off discussing how agencies have to navigate this uncertain time and how the ability to pivot and rethink in this new marketplace is vital. Marcel then shares his unique perspective on growth and what efficiently growing an agency means. He digs into the 4 Step Agency Profitability Flywheel they created to use when consulting clients.

Meghan Phillips of Honey joins Jason Blumer on this episode of the Businessology Show. Meghan and Jason talk about niching, designing internal processes and creating a tapestry with your team. Both Meghan and Jason are featured in Adam Davidson's new book, "The Passion Economy."
Come see Adam, Meghan and Jason at SXSW in Austin, TX!

Agency Labs is like a swiss army knife for agencies, providing just the right tool at the right time. By finding a major pain point in the design and agency world (and solving it), they found that they can serve agencies of any size with their technology and development needs, helping them to get off the production roller coaster.

In this episode, hear Jonathan Soares describe why they don't do remote work, why they work with agency partners only, and how avoiding emotional decisions and remaining analytical helps build trust.

We also discuss topics like business development, hiring, and how processes drive quality in the Agency Labs business model.

Raven and Finch helps companies build brands with music and sound, sometimes working directly with clients and sometimes consulting with other branding agencies.

Some of the topics discussed in this episode:

-Profile and profit projects

-The role of digital and technology in musical composition

-Helping companies clarify what they hope to achieve with music

-Understanding the importance of a competitor’s musical brand

-Sound logos

-Hearing as an untapped sense in branding

-What we can learn about musical branding from the James Bond franchise

-The role of first, second, and third screens and how sound can direct a customer from one to another

-The importance of knowing your customers’ musical tastes

Rob and Gavin share their journey as leaders individually and as CEOs of Artifact Group. Having recently celebrated thriller company’s tenth anniversary, we discuss how growing to a 60 team member company has required adjustments to their strategies.

We also discuss:

-What kind of work is so important that even clients can’t interrupt it

-How they have transitioned from doing design work (client work) to leading a team

-How developing a product for agencies affected them internally and why it became a spin off company (10000ft.com)

-The constant adaptations required as they look at emerging technologies

-Which kinds of companies need to devote resources to R&D

-The new skills needed by leadership as companies reach various stages of growth

-What it means to create an organization that will live on after you

Coming from the digital web side of an agency, Luke Summerfield learned that there are a lot of problems in how agencies deliver web deliverables to their clients. After some extensive research, Luke discovered that delivering websites is often unprofitable for an agency. He began to explore how this service could be delivered more profitably, and successfully, and came up with the minimum viable website (a name that did not resonate well with clients!).

This idea morphed into experiments within Hubspot's Partner Program that eventually came to be known as Growth-Driven Design. They've now launched a certification in Growth Driven Design in June 2016 to high acclaim.

In this episode, we talk to Luke about agency growth, the problems that all agencies face, and how an agency can begin moving toward selling web services to clients in profitable, and more sustainable ways.

We glean huge amounts of information from Mlicki's 15 years of experience in his agency (that has been around for 44 years!). We dive into how Rattleback made decisions around their positioning, and how trying to nail your positioning is always a moving target.

We discuss why he chose to focus on a professional services niche, which led to many other questions:
- what services are you providing to a narrow niche and is it perceived as more valuable just because you are niched?
- does your agency experience increase when you narrow your focus?
- does your value and price also go up as your experience goes up?
- are tools/philosophies (like Hubspot) required for agencies practicing an inbound marketing strategy?
- how can you 'deconstruct' thought leadership content into a digestible website?
- how can you get your clients to read long-form content?
- how could an agency remain a generalist in this day and age?
- how does a focus change your revenue model (from project to recurring revenue)?