Unleashing the Power of Agency Marketing with Logan Lyles

intro (00:00:00) - Welcome to the Virtual CPA Success Show for creative agencies. The go to resource for agency owners looking to scale their business. Join us every week to stay ahead of the curve and position your agency for future success.

Jamie (00:00:15) - All right, Jody, very excited for this episode we just recorded. I think our listeners are going to get a lot out of this. I was, I almost forgot to stop the recording because it was getting so interesting, but I think that our listeners are definitely going to go a lot of different directions with this one.

Jody (00:00:28) - Yeah, for sure. I mean, Logan covers a lot of great little nuggets there that I think every agency owner can get out, especially in times like this, where you really need to really focus heavily on marketing and figuring out how to make that marketing train, you know, continue on. Relying on referrals is great, but when things get tough, you know, so does. So as that dries up, so having a good marketing process in place is wonderful.

Jody (00:00:54) - And make sure that you stay to the very end because Logan has a really great state of the agency guide that he's willing to share with everybody out there. With a little over 500 people in the industry, our agencies and the industry of all different sizes and kind of getting best practices and so forth from so really great tidbit at the end and I definitely think you're going to enjoy this episode.

Jamie (00:01:19) - Yeah. Agree that state of the agency report is what is talked about a lot among almost every person I talk to is why isn't this being done? It sounds like they have a lot of resources. They talk to a lot of people in order to create that. And like I said, think everybody's gonna get a lot out of this one. You know, think that any agency that's listening to this, you have a lot of talented people in house that can help you with having a great marketing plan. And it's a shame that not a lot of companies are using it. So think just listening to this podcast will fill a page of notes for you.

Jamie (00:01:47) - So enjoy and excited to have Logan on. We might bring them on again because this was a really good, good podcast, so enjoy. Hello everybody. Welcome to today's episode. I’m very excited for today's topic. When this email came through and I read, the idea was like, this is exactly what we need to talk about. So I'm really excited to talk with Logan Lyles from Teamwork. His idea was, you know, he talks to a lot of marketing agencies just like we do, and it's surprising how many of them the amount of time they spend in their marketing resources themselves. So we're really going to dive into that topic and how you can spend a little bit more time on an area that you're really smart on. So Logan, welcome to the show. Love to hear a little bit about your background and kind of how you got to where you are now.

Logan (00:02:27) - Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for the intro. As I like to say, it's about time that the cobbler's kid having no shoes is something that we do away with.

Logan (00:02:36) - I hear that so often, especially from marketing agencies. I was just at inbound as I know some of your team was a few weeks back and I asked a bunch of agency owners if you had an extra $10,000 a month, where would you spend that? 40% of them said we would invest it in our own marketing. So I think it's something that a lot of agencies are thinking about, but not quite sure what to do, where to go with limited resources, especially as they're facing constraints in maybe as the labor market has changed, as the macroeconomics have changed around us and they're kind of getting squeezed from both sides. And so hopefully we can talk about some things that will be approachable and make it a little bit easier for them to solve that common problem. How I kind of got into hashtag agency life and marketing is kind of a wandering journey. So I graduated college in 2008 with a journalism degree. So obviously anyone who has been in the workforce since then knows that, hey, great recession, great time to hit the job market, also great time to hit the job market as journalism was going through some major disruption, major contraction.

Logan (00:03:43) - I'm out in the Denver area in Colorado, and it was within six months after I graduated where one of the major papers, the Rocky Mountain News, that was known here in this space for so long, shut its doors for good. Right. And that sort of thing was happening. So I promptly got in to local, regional and B2B technology sales and kind of sold my way in of like, Hey, I was a journalist, I know how to start conversations with people. Maybe I could sell first two years, hated sales, absolutely hated it, almost quit. But I heard that if you can make it into two years in B2B sales, then you can really build a career. And so I ended up finding my niche in sales, but I was always the salesperson who really loved marketing from my journalism roots. And I like to find ways to educate folks. And I saw kind of the rise of what HubSpot was doing with inbound marketing and content marketing. And so in 2018, after about ten years in sales, I got the opportunity to join an agency myself, a B2B podcast production agency called Sweet Fish Media, and I took over sales from the founder there and jumped in to consulting with in-house marketing teams on how they could use a podcast for their marketing.

Logan (00:04:54) - And so I spent four years in various leadership roles. We hit the Inc 5000 list a few times just outside the Inc 500, but had some great growth there and that was really where I kind of dove full bore into marketing. And fast forward a few years later, now I'm serving in a marketing role at teamwork. I host a podcast for agencies and so I'm passionate about helping agencies, um, from my time of learning the challenges of what it's like to run, grow, scale and agency. And obviously my passion in sales and marketing, that's an area I see where, as we said, there's a common challenge, but I think there's a common opportunity as well.

Jody (00:05:36) - Yeah. Logan To cut you off there real quick, I mean, when you said you work for a podcasting company, it made a ton of sense because if you if for those that can't see the video, Logan's picture is like, perfect. It's got the background, it's faded out. He's got the he's got the mic in front.

Jody (00:05:54) - It just looks like the perfect podcast. I mean we interview a lot of folks and you're definitely dialed in, nice job there for sure.

Jamie (00:06:02) - Appreciate you making us look bad, Jody.

Jody (00:06:04) - Yeah Jamie on the hands got a crooked picture.

Logan (00:06:09) - I can help you guys level up for sure. 

Jody (00:06:11) - You need to help him. I'm perfect. Of course. 

Jamie (00:06:15) - I'm down in Colorado Springs, so you can just drive down here and help me so I'm not too far away from you. So you can just.

Logan (00:06:18) - Do a little studio makeup.Extreme Makeover Podcast. Studio edition.

Jody (00:06:24) - That's right. Exactly.

Jamie (00:06:24) - Give me a bookcase. 

Jody (00:06:28) - Now, Logan, your topic definitely hits home. You know, we work with a lot of agencies and it seems like in conversation with those folks, they always put their marketing always at the very back of everything. So it's sales, sales, sales. We get to drive marketing. But when it comes to marketing their product, you know, their website, their everything, it seems to get back a backstage and

Jody (00:06:53) - I'm kind of curious about why. Why do you think that happens? Because I can tell you with the finance side, it happened to us to, you know, finance side. We're great with finance. It took us a while to really develop and build our own finance side because we were really, really vision on clients and really driving that sales side. But I'd love to get your take on why that's first of all, an issue in the marketing, because it is for sure.

Logan (00:07:15) - Yeah, I'd love to start with why, as Simon Sinek says, Right. So think that's a great question. I think it's two reasons. One is limited resources, right? If you're listening to this and you're an agency and maybe you sell to SaaS companies, it's like you're not venture backed, you're bootstrapped, you don't have, you know, all this, all this marketing budget to put into paid ads and all these other things. So I think some of the solution is getting scrappy and finding the levers where you don't need to pull as much to get as much return out.

Logan (00:07:46) - I think the second thing you just hit on there is especially for agencies that are involved in any sort of marketing, whether that's brand or performance marketing or different sort of marketing. When you look at your internal resources, who are the best people that can do the best here? They're going to get offered up as tribute to the clients first and foremost, right? And carving out time when it could go to billable hours, whether you bill by the hour or not. Right. That's time. That is at a certain hourly rate that you should be accounting for. Right. We're talking finances on this show. Usually you should be. Then it's hard to say no, that's going to be dedicated here where we're not billing for anything. And so I think the answer is similar there. How can you get the most bang for your buck out of those hours from the people that could contribute the most to your marketing? I think the upside is that, you know, I host a weekly podcast release on Thursdays called Agency Life.

Logan (00:08:45) - And I think one of the things about agency life is that the people are the product, the people are the place, As I heard an agency owner say recently on the show. And I think that there's opportunities without doing some of the same things that you see with big budgets from B2B SaaS companies that you can lean on that fact that the people are really the product. The people can be the face of the brand, even more so in agencies because of the nature of client service work, that there's an opportunity to leverage that with some things where again, you can kind of pull the lever a little bit and get an outsized impact if you lean into those personal brands on your team.

Jamie (00:09:24) - Yeah, I agree. I think one of the things that I'm drawing to right now is a lot of clients that I'm working with and a lot of companies we're talking with are a little worried about the way the economy is right now. Think the clients are taking a little bit longer to close and just the outlook for the next 3 to 4 months, there's a lot of companies that are a little worried about it.

Jamie (00:09:42) - And one of the things that last time this happened, we talked to a lot of our clients about this is this is a good time as long as you have a good cash reserve and as long as you're in a good place financially, this is a really good time to invest in things like this. So especially when it comes to like team members, you know, if you're looking for the head of marketing and people are understaffed or underutilized right now, maybe it's time to make that move because ultimately it's going to bring you more revenue. Is that advice that you would follow? Or what about, you know, the timing of making that change?

Logan (00:10:08) - Yeah, I think one thing that I saw on LinkedIn the other day, I wish I could remember who posted it so I could give them a proper shout out, but actually it was Nick Bennett with Tax. So they he is kind of longtime in-house marketer now their firm is offering basically kind of on demand services, not necessarily a standard agency, but kind of fitting in that client service, delivering marketing services.

Logan (00:10:35) - And one thing that he pointed out as an opportunity was that right now companies are seeing, adding headcount and investing in full time employees as a riskier thing. Right, Because it's more of a commitment. And so I think one thing in this economic environment that does actually play to our favor with all the things agencies have stacked against them right now is that companies are looking for ways of where could we contract for this, where could we hire for an agency, where could we have kind of a fractional support here where we need the help but we don't have the budget? Or even if we do have the budget, we're worried about making the commitment to a new FTE. So I think that that's one thing where the timing actually is good for agencies right now to invest in their own marketing and to find new pipeline with those customers where they might be thinking, oh, they're not going to be, you know, increasing spend here. They might be shifting some of that full time employee budget over to being allocated to agency work where they could step in and help.

Jamie (00:11:39) - And if you don't have someone who is constantly thinking of stuff like that, you're going to miss the boat. Right. And think that's the point of what you said, is that like everybody gets so stuck in their ways when they don't have someone thinking outside the box of thinking of what's the best way to approach my marketing. But if you have some. Anyone who's thinking about that all the time, working on all that time, you're going to be ahead of these curves and and yeah, you're going to have some bad months, but you're gonna be able to turn around a lot more quickly because you're going to see trends like this or you're going to see opportunities because someone's always got their eye on that ball.

Logan (00:12:08) - Yeah, absolutely. And I think you hit on it there, too. A lot of agencies when it comes to marketing and sales, the founder is still very heavily involved. A lot of it is what I see is there's growth through word of mouth and referral and I'm a big fan of word of mouth and referral, but if you don't have a systematic approach to that, if you don't have something someone thinking about how are we generating new pipeline, how are we positioning ourselves, then you're going to see some real peaks and valleys.

Logan (00:12:38) - And that can be tough, especially when you're bootstrapped. You know, you don't have you're not venture backed like the SAS companies that maybe you sell to.

Jody (00:12:47) - Mm hmm.

Jody (00:12:48) - Yeah, because we look at companies, the strong ones have a strong sales process and a strong cash position. Those are the two really, that I see are the really big positions. They not only sell, but they're profitable where they can actually build cash and keep cash in the company when they don't have one or the other. I see that in times like a recessionary period, they seem to fall. And you'd mentioned that to that, hey, you can't really rely on referrals alone. And a lot of times it's pretty easy. You know, referrals are coming in super easy to rely on them. But if you rely on referrals, that can dry up pretty quickly because, you know, it could. And I think the idea is having that sales process, that sales pipeline, that engine in place and with a marketing firm, you know, that could be a do or die situation for those, especially if they're looking for the big fish all the time.

Jody (00:13:41) - And, you know, having that sales process I think is important. But also having that sales process, even when they're super busy, they don't slow down. They continue to build on that sales process and continue to bring on the next big fish, you know, or the next small fish to fill the pond up. Your thoughts on that? I mean, am I off target on that or are you seeing that as well?

Logan (00:14:04) - No, not at all. One of our most downloaded episodes on the podcast host agency Live with Dev Basu from Powered By Search. He talked about this very simple HubSpot workflow that his team has set up, that he's like just setting this up, is going to revive some old deals, is going to give you kind of raise the bar a little bit, raise the floor that you're standing on because like you said, going off of the peaks and valleys. It's good and the good times. But if those valleys are too low, you can be in some serious trouble.

Logan (00:14:37) - So what can you do to just kind of raise the floor so those valleys aren't quite as low? And the advice that Dev gave in the episode was just creating kind of what they call a lost lead reviver. So oftentimes when you're selling consultative, which most agencies are, it's not a product, it's not self-serve, it's not kind of product led growth. How can when those people say, you know, a marketing budget got frozen or something else got prioritized, this is pushed to next quarter. Most founders or even if you have a dedicated sales person within the agency, don't have that rigor of when are we going to follow up, how are we going to re engage? So he gave some very tactical things and just some basic HubSpot automations and workflows that you can trigger when you move your deal over to here to to stalled or even if you move it to close loss and you can create some very quick automations that if especially if you're a HubSpot solution partner, you should be able to activate very quickly within the agency.

Jamie (00:15:38) - Yeah.

Jody (00:15:39) - Yeah.

Jamie (00:15:40) - The interesting thing is, is like, you know, the math is pretty simple, right? A lot of companies we work with have a 25% win rate or somewhere around there, right? So that means you need four clients or you need four leads to get a win, right? So like, all you're trying to do is chase down those strong leads. And so what you mentioned right there, even if it brings you in one lead a month, that means each quarter you're adding one additional client, right? So you really got to again, we're math people. We're numbers people. So we always bring it back to something like that. But again, ultimately it comes down to is what you need to do to grow your business? And so guess I'm curious, you mentioned that as one strategy, but where if you're a company that's listening to this podcast and you're like, you know, they're exactly right. We don't spend enough on our marketing and you've already given some ideas.

Jamie (00:16:19) - But my big question is, is where would I start? Like, what would I do as first steps in order to really start investing in my own marketing?

Logan (00:16:26) - Yeah. So there's two pieces. The second piece I really want to touch on is some tactical things that you can do. Even if you don't have a dedicated person and you don't hire that director of marketing within the agency, how can you kind of do it by committee very successfully and without a ton of investment in tools or paid channels, Those sorts of things that worked really well for us at Sweet Fish, when we activated what we called an employee evangelism program on LinkedIn. So I'll get to that in a second. But first, what I want to touch on is, you know, kind of like we kicked off this conversation, starting with why in this conversation, before we talk about how to market your agency, we should talk about what the heck your marketing, right? And I had a great conversation with Nick Bennett, who was previously at a very well respected HubSpot solution partner agency impact that merged with Marcus Sheridan's group.

Logan (00:17:19) - He's now on his own and he's founded a consultancy called Harness and Hone, and he helps agencies with what he calls niche design. And this line that he said has just been burned in my brain for the last couple of weeks since I interviewed him on the podcast. And he said most agencies try to market the solution and convince clients that they're the best. So that might be the solution of the channel or of the tool of like a HubSpot or something like that. What they should do is market the problem and then they become the default solution. But what most agencies aren't super clear on is what is the problem that they solve because they kind of do everything for everyone. They work with some manufacturing companies over here, some tech companies over there. They do some website design, they do some paid ads, right. And so often the conversation around niching down has just been about, well, what industry do you want to niche down into or maybe what channel or maybe a combination of both. And his suggestion was really get clear on the problem that you solve and then start talking about that problem because then people will come to you as the default solution.

Logan (00:18:23) - And both of us called out Chris Walker and refined labs and agency that's grown tremendously over the last couple of years. I don't necessarily think about them for the paid LinkedIn campaigns that they run for companies and that I think about the problems that they talk about how, you know, the modern B2B marketing playbooks are broken. The attribution methods that we've been using in marketing don't really work anymore. And so I think that if you are going to go down this path of what I'm suggesting with a LinkedIn evangelist program or something like that, before you start marketing on any channel, LinkedIn, email, any sort or whatever you're investing in, you need to get clear on what the heck it is your marketing and I would suggest, and I know Nick would as well, is get really clear on the problem that you solve and start talking about that. So I'll just pause there and see if you guys have any thoughts on that before kind of jumping into the tactics that I'd suggest from there.

Jamie (00:19:24) - Yeah. I think the interesting thing with that is the nice thing about what you just talked about is you have a lot of people in-house that you can have this conversation with, right? Like you can bring, you know, some of your best people and be like, Hey, let's talk about what we offer as a service and a those people know what you offer as a service, and B, they're really smart marketing people.

Jamie (00:19:42) - So like you could have a really good internal roundtable to really come up with what that solution is. And again, without actually moving someone into that role, you could say, okay, let's brainstorm as a team and probably come up with some really good ideas because you have the resources already in-house and it's going to take, you know, a handful of time just to do it. But think that's my thought of listening to you to say what you just said was, Man, these companies are missing the boat here. They're not using the resources they have in-house a couple times a month just to talk about what their marketing strategy is. I'm curious, Jodi, kind of what you thought about what he said.

Jody (00:20:11) - Same thing.

Jody (00:20:12) - Yeah, same thing. I mean, it's kind of like the why, you know, why us? Because we're going to solve that problem for you. And you're kind of indirectly selling yourself because you're presenting the problem and talking about the problem and probably many different ways. And so I love the idea making that big and bold at the very front of your marketing material, your website, whatever that might be, and then LinkedIn, and then going from there with you being the solution without really there's no really sales pitch at that point.

Jody (00:20:40) - It's more like you're the thought leader because you brought that information to them and brought the problem into them and maybe even give them the solution in the same regard. And hopefully they can do it themselves. Maybe they can't and then they can come to you either way with questions or, you know, a helping hand type of thing.

Logan (00:20:55) - Yeah. And I think the leg up that agencies have is that you have so many of these smart people who are talking to clients all day long, right? If you're a SaaS company, for instance, you've got to go from marketing and you got to go ask the salespeople and the people, Can we listen to your calls? Can we hear what you're talking to customers about? And if it's kind of an outside sales team, that becomes really tough. And so marketing can be very removed from the voice of the customer and those interactions with the customer in an agency, you've got people in client service, you've got people in all sorts, you know, every role, and everybody's wearing different hats within the agency.

Logan (00:21:35) - At least I did. And they're talking with customers all the time. And so my suggestion would be very much like what you guys said there. Start a weekly roundtable where you just start discussing what were the problems that our customers are facing that came up in conversation this week. They can be the problems that our customers just signed up with us for to solve. They can be the problems that we're presented on a discovery or qualification color, a strategy call with a prospective client and start talking about those. And here's what I would suggest you do. Start doing that regularly. After you do 2 or 3 times, start recording those. You can just record those on Zoom or you can take out a license of 20 or 30 bucks a month of Streamyard like we're recording on here. Or I use Riverside FM for recording podcasts. Very inexpensive tool will help you record higher quality audio and video. If you use something like Streamyard or Zen Caster or Riverside FM, just do it in a roundtable discussion and record the whole thing.

Logan (00:22:38) - Don't worry about the long form because you might bring up clients. You might say stuff about, Oh, I shouldn't have said that on that client call or whatever, but I guarantee you you will be talking about client problems. You will be kind of exposing your expertise, as you guys said earlier, just kind of by default. Because if you're talking about the problem and even if you're not like, here's the solution, the fact that you intimately understand the problem is what your clients are looking for. And so start that kind of informal get together about talking about client problems that you solved or that you're strategizing with them on move to starting to record those. And guess what? You probably have team members on your team that could take the transcript of that and turn that into blog post, turn that into written posts for LinkedIn. There are tools or if you have team members on the team that can turn that into short form video clips. Short form video is huge. With the rise of TikTok and now YouTube shorts trying to compete there and see a lot of short form video.

Logan (00:23:36) - At least I do myself performing really well for myself and others on LinkedIn, which is probably one of the main channels your buyers are on. So start that conversation. Just hit record and don't worry about the long form, don't worry about, Oh man, if we only had the resources to start a podcast or a weekly live stream, right? Because you're never going to do it right. It's going to it's going to take forever because there's going to be other campaigns and things that you're doing for your clients that are going to that are going to take precedent, but just set up that regular rhythm. You're probably already having these conversations anyway. Record it, but just record the long form just so you can pull out the short form content. And then and then my next recommendation would be, don't just push that out through all the company channels. Don't just post that on the LinkedIn company page, the LinkedIn Instagram feed or excuse me, the company Instagram feed, but see from your team who is willing and able to spend a little time getting active on social and use that regular roundtable recording session to break that into micro content and then share that out through the personal brands because it ties back to what we were talking about earlier.

Logan (00:24:49) - The people are the product, right? If you can showcase where the people who understand the problem, who are talking about it, you have the ability to create multiple thought leaders who are kind of mini evangelists for the brand within the agency that bigger organizations. Oh, okay. We got to launch employee advocacy program. We got to get everybody back in the boxes. This H.R. wants to get involved. And but no, it really sets over in marketing. You don't have those problems if you're like, you know, five, ten, even 30 or 40 person agency, like you can do what the heck you want. So you actually have a leg up there over those companies with bigger budgets to do stuff with your marketing and especially with organic social, that they don't have the freedom and the flexibility to move as quickly as you do.

Jody (00:25:33) - Yeah.

Jody (00:25:35) - I'm going to tell you right now, my hands went, you know, kind of blew up a little bit there because we kind of do a very similar thing.

Jody (00:25:42) - We meet our CFOs meet every Friday. We talk for an hour about what's going right, what's going wrong, all the different things, why we haven't videoed that, recorded that and shared that with the marketing department. To slice and dice like you mentioned, is beyond, I guess, kind of silly on our part. You know one of those obvious Mr. Obvious just hit me in the face there with a bat and I just realized it was a bat. But you know, anyways, it's one of those deals. I mean, I think it's great. And I think the second part you mentioned about it is not just pushing it through the traditional company feeds, you know, having it push through the specific CFO feeds, you know, the, you know, if Jamie's got if he's a CFO, he's bringing it up, bringing a question like that up, why not put it on his feed? You know, little snippets like you had mentioned there, whether it's, you know, LinkedIn or whatever the social media content is.

Jody (00:26:32) - So I think that's brilliant. I mean, I think if anybody gets a little tidbit from so far from this, I think that is just that's ingenious. You know, nice, nicely worded, nicely thought of.

Jamie (00:26:42) - Yeah, definitely think the other part too. And I think this is how we're using all that video is internally. So everything you mentioned was externally which makes sense because we're talking marketing but also like, you know, with the way the world is going and especially with all the AI data is so important. And so that's one of the reasons that we're recording every one of our meetings. We're getting transcripts of that, and you can use it as internal wikis, you can use it as internal soundbites, you can use it as training videos. And so the more information you have, the more you can use it for. And we use an app called Firefly right now for recording our videos. And what that allows you to do is actually take the soundbites and send them to people.

Jamie (00:27:18) - So if we're sitting here talking for an hour and a half and we talk about everything and and we're in that meeting that you just talked about, everybody's talking about their problems that they've seen and how they've solved them. And really talking through that. If someone comes up with this really great solution to how to solve a problem, I can take that sound clip, send it to someone else and be like, Hey, guess what Logan just solved for their client. You might be able want to use this on your client. Now, that hour and a half meeting, I'm just taking a two minute soundbite, sending it to Jodie and being like, this might really help on that client you were telling me about. And so think that that's the key. Like I think every company and think agencies with the amount of technology they're in are already thinking about this. But with the way the world is going, the more information you have and the more you have documented, the more you're going to be able to use this stuff.

Jamie (00:27:58) - And so now's the time to record everything you do, document it, and then you can like you're able to use it in so many different ways. 

Logan (00:28:05) - Yeah. Can I ask a quick question? Because this is very much in line with something we're doing in our own marketing and teamwork that I think applies to our audience too. You guys are using fireflies. We use Gonk IO. There's a lot of call recording tools that are less expensive for agencies. You've got a tool called Fathom, I hear talked about a ton. Doesn't matter the tool, but the application is fantastic. They initially were really developed for sales call coaching and like the idea that the sales calls were this black box and managers can't really see in and coach and that sort of stuff. But there's so many more applications if we just kind of clue into them like we're talking about here, do you guys use those to record ongoing client calls with with your CFOs or account managers or whatever?

Jamie (00:28:49) - Yes, that's the next step. We're starting to go down, right? So we are starting to record all of our client calls.

Jamie (00:28:53) - And like you said, as the director of advisory, I can think of like 20 things I want to use them for. One is, is training not only like a new CFO, hey, let's look at this call. Let's go over the game tape together. But also, if I have a CFOs been doing it for 12 years, I could use their video and be like, Hey, look at this. This is how this person leads their financial statement meeting, not necessarily how you need to do it, but you can watch them do it. You can watch how they do it. So yeah, like I said, think information is so important now and again. We've been recording a lot lately, but we've made it kind of not mandatory, but I'd say in the next week or so we were rolling this out to make it mandatory that everybody's recording everything they're doing because there's just so many different ways that we can educate. We can say there's just so many different ways to break down these tools.

Jamie (00:29:36) - And like you said, yeah, marketing is a big part of it too.

Logan (00:29:39) - Yeah, yeah, yeah. You bring up a really good point about coaching, you know, Mark Roberge in the sales acceleration formula talked about kind of the common problem with sales, whether you're bringing someone on in an agency or a service based business like yours or our audiences here or a SaaS business is you bring on a new sales person and they shadow one person and they think that that's how sales is done, that's how they think the client service is done within that organization. But if you're recording them all, then you can say, Hey, here's Joe. He's really good at this. Here's Sally. She's really good at this piece and kind of get the best from the other existing folks. So I like what you called out there, the call recording in an agency setting, any sort of client service work you're able to not only just coach and improve, but you're able to take the examples and share those more broadly.

Logan (00:30:29) - The other thing you can do, I love how you guys are sharing, Hey, we're going to make this mandatory. The conversation there is probably similar to what we have at teamwork being a project management and client operations platform with time tracking built in. That's why a lot of agencies use us to not only manage the tasks and look at the project health and those sorts of things, but to track their time and manage utilization rates. It's kind of a similar conversation. We always hear, Oh, the team doesn't want to track time. You might hear the same thing. The team doesn't want their calls recorded, but I think you guys are on the right track there of explaining this is not just like finding the bad apples and pointing it out and slapping your hand when you don't do well. There's marketing implications. There's improving our service implications. And one thing we've started to do to tie it back to why I was excited to kind of go down this rabbit trail of call recording in client service work. You know, you make a really good point that data is really important.

Logan (00:31:26) - I would say that even more important than that today is trust. And especially when people are buying from an agency. I've been there where I was selling and I would see the prospect lean forward and be like, Logan, this has been a great conversation. I think you really understand our strategy. Who are you going to hand me off to if we sign up with you guys?

Jamie (00:31:43) - Yeah, right,. Just had that conversation yesterday. 

Logan (00:31:48) - Right? And there's this little bit of understandable skepticism and lack of trust. And so how can you address that with what we're talking about here and with marketing your own agency throughout the sales process? And I would say if you're using Fireflies or Fathom or Gong or call recording tool like that to start recording not only sales calls. But your ongoing client calls when a client is raving about you after you just did that and they're saying something, pause right then and just be like, Hey, Joe, what you just said there was a really good quote. Thank you for saying that.

Logan (00:32:21) - We're actually recording this call. As I mentioned at the top. Could we take that transcript and share that on social and maybe even chop that portion of the video out and share that we can share that with you so that you can proof it before it goes out. And guess what? Now you've got a very authentic customer testimonial, right? So often with agencies we think, Oh, we have to do a case study. It's going to be a big ask. We've got to do this. We got to dedicate someone to write it and shoot the video and all that sort of stuff. And then it never happens, right? You start recording these calls and you find those moments. Guess what? You can move faster. The customer might be flattered because you turn something out quickly and it showcases them and you. But also it could lead to that greater case study. And then finally, on the note of trust, it's something really organic that they weren't kind of primed and prepped to say. And we've all seen those commercials or the testimonial videos.

Logan (00:33:16) - It's like, did they say that or did the marketing team write it for them?

Jody (00:33:19) - Right, right, right, right.

Logan (00:33:21) - If you're pulling that right from a call you just had with them and then going back to our strategy earlier and saying, hey, we got this great quote from from a client and they were actually willing for us to take this 20s out of the video and optimize it for social and push it out. Can three people post this video like one this week, one next week, one one the other, Then you put that on your YouTube channel and the next time you're having that client conversation where they're like, Can you guys really do that? Who are you going to hand me off to? Hey, I'm going to send you a 32nd clip from a client that looks just like you. It's over on our YouTube channel. And now you've got that and like no huge client testimonial case study, you know, process to go through. Just bake that into your regular day to day.

Logan (00:34:02) - So same thing, kind of extracting the thought leadership out of your internal team and using not using the team in a bad way. There's a better way. But working with the team to distribute that, also just baking it into your regular conversations with clients to turn that into content that can help you generate more trust in your marketing and your sales efforts.

Jamie (00:34:24) - That's, that's so great. Yeah. Again, I'm taking notes here of other stuff I'm thinking through. I'm like, Yeah, there's just, there's just so many ways to use this and think going down this rabbit hole of recording obviously is going to give topics and think A lot of people are probably listening and being like, Oh, you know what else I can use this for? Because that's when you're talking. I'm like, Oh, you know, it's I could do this for. And I wrote it down and just like, think the topics are endless. But I wanted to say we are right here on time, so I want to make sure we still have time for our fun questions.

Jamie (00:34:47) - So we're going to jump over to that. But, you know, the fun question is you said you're from Colorado. And so anybody from Colorado, the first question that comes up is what's your favorite outdoor activity? And so I know I know Jody's not from Colorado, but Jody definitely has spends time outdoors. I want to start with that question. So, you know, you can spend a day outdoors. How are you spending that time? Or you spent a couple a weekend outdoors. How are you spending that time? So I'm going to start with you, Logan.

Logan (00:35:15) - Well, you know, being from Colorado and for anybody outside of the area, they might think, you know, skiing, snowboarding, that sort of stuff that I would go to. But I'm actually going to go to a summer activity that I don't do as much now since I've had kids. They're getting a little older, so maybe I'll have some more time for it.

Logan (00:35:32) - But I really think golf would be the one that I would go to. Obviously, we don't get year round golf like they do in Arizona or Florida, but the little known thing about Colorado is that our winters are really not like New England winters. We have 300 days of sunshine out here. So as much as the winter sports are great summers and even those mild days in the fall and occasionally in the winter are really nice for getting outside. Whether you want to go hiking or you want to hit the golf course. So that's where I'd go with that.

Jamie (00:35:59) - And how many times have you been at a Colorado golf course and like you're getting ready to tee off and you just have to stop and be like, Oh my God, look at that background. And you just have to get your camera out and be like, This is like the prettiest hole I've ever seen. 

Logan (00:36:09) - I played golf in high school and so I got to play a bunch of beautiful courses and I didn't realize, like, how many amazing courses I was getting to play for free as a teenager.

Jody (00:36:17) - For sure. Yeah. Yeah. The free parts, the key.

Jamie (00:36:21) - All right, Jody, what about you?

Jody (00:36:23) - All day, man. I just. I would love to go fishing on a fishing boat. A lot of fun there. Just kind of hanging out. Not really kind of mindless thinking golfing like you'd mentioned, golfing is. I love to golf. Not great at it, but love to golf. And again, to me, that's mindless thinking as you're beating yourself up in the head because you can't hit that perfect score all the time. But that's just a lot of fun. Hiking probably not so much. So I've about died hiking up in the we went to Jacksonville for the our team retreat and don't really want to do that again necessarily but all kinds of fun stuff Shoot we went parasailing That was a blast. I would do that again And. A heartbeat. Should just name a lot of engineering.

Jamie (00:37:09) - Don't forget about that.

Jody (00:37:10) - Canyoneering.

Jody (00:37:11) - Oh, that was.

Jody (00:37:12) - Oh, that was beyond cool. Yeah. Have you ever done that before?

Logan (00:37:14) - Logan Canyoneering No, No, I haven't.

Jody (00:37:17) - Oh. Jamie Tell him about it. It was pretty awesome.

Jamie (00:37:20) - It's basically the practice of going into a canyon and then going out of the canyon. But basically, while you're in there, you're doing hiking, you're doing propelling, you're doing water jumps, and so you're basically just going down the river and doing all these different activities. And so, yeah, we did that with my wife and Jody's wife a couple of years ago, and it was a great time. So yeah, that kind of leads me to, to mine. And I'm similar to you. Yeah. You think Colorado, you think skiing and snowboarding. But for me, that's a lot of work, right? Like getting my snowboard and getting it on the top of the car and getting out to the mountains, sitting in the traffic. So I'm definitely a summer, a summer guy in Colorado.

Jamie (00:37:52) - I love backpacking. That's my favorite. My kids are now old enough to the point where I can take them with me and we can, you know, find a backpacking trip, are going to go on for a couple of days and really just get away from it all and have no phones and just really be out in nature. And if can't go backpacking, it's definitely hiking. We try to get away. We get two hours. We're going to go for a hike. And we went for a nice one this weekend and got some cool pictures. And so that's just what yeah, definitely my… 

Logan (00:38:16) - Especially at this time of year where the colors are changing and everything. So good. Yeah. 

Jamie (00:38:21) - Cool.

Jamie (00:38:22) - Well, I think this was a great episode. We might have to have you back on. Think we could have talked for three hours on this subject and other subjects. But I think that the amount of information you gave us was amazing.

Jamie (00:38:31) - And I want to give you an opportunity to just talk about one last thing. I know we talked a little bit about your report that you've you've worked on that think our listeners will absolutely love based on the conversations I've had with them. So if you want to plug that and then after that, we'll wrap things up.

Logan (00:38:45) - Yeah.

Logan (00:38:46) - Well, you know, as the saying goes, comparison is the thief of joy and think that's true on the personal side. But from a business perspective comparison can be really helpful. And a lot of the agencies, you know, they might talk 1 to 1 about kind of opening up their books and sharing what's really going on. How profitable are you really with a few key folks? But finding that out from folks who might compete with you or who are a little bit further along and maybe they don't want to share all those secrets, it can be tough. And so Teamwork recently partnered with Audience Audit, a research agency that focuses on research for agencies so very meta and they have a lot of expertise in this space.

Logan (00:39:23) - Just like you guys, we surveyed over 500 agencies globally on things like profitability, their utilization rates, how are they tracking time, how are they thinking about AI or not all of those sorts of things. And so we've compiled all that into a research report called the 2023 State of Agency Operations. I'll provide a link to you guys. We can put that in the show notes slash episode description here. There's so many great insights that came out of that that I think agency owners would be really interested and intrigued to check that out. Also, we mentioned the podcast that I host every Thursday called Agency Life. If you're an agency owner or leader or you're working on the front lines of hashtag agency life, look us up on Apple Podcasts or Spotify wherever you do your podcast, listening. So those would be my two places where you could dig a little bit deeper if this conversation was valuable.

Jody (00:40:17) - Yeah, love the conversation, Logan. This has been really informative. A lot of great nuggets out there for all the listeners and this should be one of our better podcasts I think that we've had in a while.

Jody (00:40:27) - So appreciate it.

Logan (00:40:29) - Thank you guys for having me on. This has been fantastic.

Jamie (00:40:31) - A lot of nuggets for us too. I'm sure Jody and I are taking a lot of I know I can see it in his eyes already. Jody is like, Hey, can we meet for 30 minutes after this and talk about some stuff.

Jamie (00:40:39) - So think you've got me some work on my plate. So appreciate that as well. So.

Jody (00:40:43) - Absolutely.

Jamie (00:40:44) - All right. Well, thanks, guys. Appreciate your time today.

Outro (00:40:46) - Enjoy this podcast. Visit our website, summitCPA.Net to get more tips and strategy for achieving business success. We're here to be a resource in this ever changing industry.