Navigating the Challenges of Agency Life with Russell Dubree

The Virtual CPA Success Show: Episode 85

Jamie

Hello, everybody. Welcome to today's episode. Today we have Russell Debris from Performance faction here, and he's going to talk to us about life with agencies. So I'm really excited to talk with him about some of his experiences and some of the lessons he's learned and really what makes agencies unique. But before we get to that, want to welcome Jody to the show, as always.

0:00:38

Jamie

Yeah.

0:00:39

Jody

Thanks, Jamie.

0:00:40

Jamie

All right, Russell.

0:00:41

Jody

This will be an exciting one because Russell and I went back gosh, it was like 2014, 2015 at an Operation Summit, so it's been a long time. At that point, he was an agency owner, and I like to kind of hear what his path has been and what he's doing now.

0:00:57

Jamie

Yeah, and I can't wait for our conversation eight years from now, too. So we'll make this a thing, right?

0:01:05

Jody

That's right.

0:01:10

Jamie

Start with your path a little bit again. Like Jody said, he talked to you last time eight years ago, and at that time, you were working with an agency, and now you're obviously doing something different. So we'd love to hear a little bit about your path. Yeah. Who the heck am I? What the heck am I doing here? Yeah. Back in 2006, I started an agency with my brother in law, of all people, and we focused mostly on building websites, online technology, that sort of thing. And I was joke. I knew nothing about that business building websites or really anything tech, period. So I always joke, if he'd been in a completely different industry, that might have been the business I started, but it just happened to be a marketing type company. So after the first few years there, we really barely made it through, quite honestly. And I tell folks, you can't put your fingers close enough together in terms of how close we were to actually having to shut our doors several times, but really figured things out around 2012, hit our stride.

0:02:04

Jamie

And just for context sake, we went from, like I said, near shutting our doors around a million dollars in revenue to about 5 million in two years, and then actually eventually sold the company for an eight figure valuation back in 2017 and continued to stay on and grow the business as all things mergers and acquisitions go. Very positive story. And then maybe like, a lot of folks during the course of Pandemic started to think maybe there's another life, another path for me.

0:02:29

Jamie

And that's when I kind of started to go down what I'm doing today and basically consider myself business coach growth advisor, but specifically focused on creative marketing, service oriented type companies. Great. So I noticed you said eleven years ago. You turned around not eight years ago. So I don't want Jody taking credit for that. He told me what to do, or I learned from him what to do with all the money we made. Right, okay, so you already bring it in at that point.

0:02:55

Jamie

Awesome. So I think today you mentioned talking about and I think this is a really exciting topic for us because we work with a lot of agencies and every agency we talk to. It's definitely a unique business. I want you to kind of go through what you think are the three reasons why running it is uniquely challenging. So let's dive into these three items. All right, well, I'll just start going and you feel free to throw in all the questions there. But I think the first one ends up being such a low barrier to entry and in some ways that can be really good and positive.

0:03:24

Jamie

I joke that to start our agency, we bought our first set of leads from a place online, and then we went to Staples and we went to Chipotle. We didn't need to really do the last two. And you could probably even argue we didn't need to do the first one. That's just kind of how we chose to get our first set of business. And what I think happened with that, you can start an agency as kind of a glorified freelancer or outright freelancer, and you just have your network. And that's how you get your first couple of clients. And you can even start to grow from there, pick up a few more for your network, but at some point that becomes restrictive to your business because think of if you're opening like a brick and mortar that you have to figure out how to get a lot of people in your door fast.

0:04:06

Jamie

You just can't go to your network and say, come meet at my restaurant. You need way more people than that. So your survivability is going to depend on so much, many more factors, and your ability to market, get clients on your own and stuff like that. Whereas an agency can kind of be what's the phrase? The frog and boiling water where you can grow to a decent size just based upon referrals, but at some point that becomes a wall, I guess you could say, right. In terms of your ability to grow further.

0:04:33

Jody

In that first part there, with your growth, you went from a million to 5 million in a pretty relatively quick time. What was the reason for that.

0:04:44

Jamie

One? We just kind of gotten the point. Like I said, we bought all those leads initially and then we kind of started to grow our business based on referrals. And then this is, I think, another problem that we probably almost suffered as well. You land that really large client that was a big catalyst for our growth and allowed us to reinvest in the business but at the same time, we hadn't quite figured out how to really go manufacture our own lead. So I think in the course of that, we kind of just said once we saw the writing on the wall that this client isn't going to sustain us for the long term.

0:05:15

Jamie

How are we going to replace several million dollars of business on an ongoing basis? Kind of forced us through some of that, where I think a lot of times you see some agencies maybe rise up and then decline because they cut to live off that gorilla client for a while. And then if they didn't figure out how to generate their own leads and whatnot in that process, then you kind of see the decline. Yes. One of the books that we talk about a ton is Emyth. And so I think what you're talking about is the technician. Right? And so, like you're saying, there's a low barrier of entry because it's very easy to be a technician who has one large client and be like, oh, I could easily do this on my own and take this client with me. And so why don't you talk about the when you talk with clients, do you often refer to that book or how do you help them get out of that stage where they're just one technician who's really good at doing something versus training other people and growing that business into something different?

0:06:08

Jamie

Well, that's a really fascinating art about what I do is yeah, whatever. Someone's natural skill set can be so varied. I think, too, with an agency, you might be a creative, you might be a tech. Some people have neither of those skills. They might be more network or business development oriented, which is actually a great help to them in that process. I think it's really just looking at the individual, what's their strong suit, and then how do we match, how do we create a strategy that's going to not force them completely out of their comfort zone, but maybe to some degree and really just offset where their natural strengths lie or wherever, you might say?

0:06:44

Jamie

I think a lot of that the sole for a lot of that is I don't know if we want to get too deep in the weeds of the solutions yet, but is positioning and how do we know who our clients and customers are? And so we do a lot of work with the folks and agencies I talk to on yeah. How do we start to know who we want to be next to in the room to maybe turn those conversations into leads and eventually clients?

0:07:13

Jamie

Great. We're ready to get to uniqueness number two. Let's hear what number two. Yeah. Hopefully this doesn't ever sound too bad, but I think it comes down to that. The marketplace really doesn't know how to necessarily pick a great agency. And so you often see them pick arbitrary factors like price which is never a really good way to shop geography, right? Who's in our town or our city or just hey, I need an agency to do this. Who does someone know which referrals are always great, but we don't necessarily know if they're going to meet the needs of the solution or whatever.

0:07:51

Jamie

And so if the marketplace isn't very good at differentiating, then it kind of gives us going back to that frog and boiling water, where if you look at probably most agencies book a record, they're all local clients or something like that, and then we kind of in this, or I guess you could say marketing companies do their portfolio shopping, right? Oh, that's a cool website, let me go find the company that did that and I'll have them do that for me. Which again, could be so many different factors there.

0:08:20

Jamie

And then if we talk about the death by referral that we kind of mentioned as being an essential thing as well, that these agencies I think a lot of times tout while we're 100% referral based, but that's sort of the kiss of death, if you will, in terms of sorry, I lost my track there. But yeah, you can't inflate scale referrals because you don't know where they're going to come from and we don't know who's out there talking about us going to give us that next referral.

0:08:53

Jody

Yeah, it's kind of funny you mentioned that because the way that we do our marketing is that we don't have a busy team. It's just Jamie, he'll field some phone calls, I'll field phone calls and Adam will fill them. But the whole thing is market driving by the market, right, getting out and becoming that thought leader, getting out there and really doing a lot of content marketing and really just being the person that they want to come to.

0:09:17

Jody

And it's very difficult actually to get to that stage. But once you're there, the leads just keep coming and so they keep coming and then it's simply a follow up. The nice thing about it that leads are typically qualified too, so they already know a lot about you. They've already gone through all the barriers that you would typically have to go if you're doing a cold call type scenario. And so the closing ratio seems to be a lot higher and the dollar amount seems to be a lot higher as well. And so I think what you're getting to there is that you can't rely just on referrals. You've got to really kind of be out there and create that content out there so that people really look for you and reach out to you.

0:09:58

Jody

Even today a third of our business comes through referrals, referrals from clients, referrals from other CPA firms, referrals from you name it. And then a third of it comes from just getting out there and speaking, getting out there, being that thought leader and then kind of tailing onto that. The other third comes through the content marketing, the website People, googling Virtual CFO Services or Googling Creative Agency, whatever that might be. So two thirds of our business really comes through that marketing funnel that you're talking about, which I think is crucial to success, really, of any agency out there, is finding that funnel and kind of differentiating yourself a little bit so that people come to you.

0:10:38

Jamie

Yeah, that's a great point. I've seen it so many different levels. I've seen agencies hit the referral wall at a million. I've seen them hit and I think even our own case, we kind of hit that wall at 5 million, where until we really solve things beyond that, we had a $5 million business based upon referrals. But so, yeah, it really runs the gamut of where that really becomes a difficult point for an agency.

0:11:03

Jamie

I think the interesting thing when you said that I'd never thought of that before, that the marketplace doesn't really know how to pick an agency. So I think what my flip side of that would be is that as an agency, I'd rather be darn good at helping us. I'd rather be darn good at picking the companies I work with. And I think that's really important, and I'm curious how often you tell that to your clients, because I think that's the important thing for me is I talk to clients all the time about this and more from the pipeline side. We talk all the time about qualified.

0:11:30

Jamie

And a lot of times I'll have a client with a client, conversation with a client. They'll be like, what do you mean by qualified? I'm like, well, who would you work with? Is there a size? Is there a niche? Or what are the clients that you would not work with? And if they don't know, then like you said, then they're going to be as much trouble, and they're going to end up in a lot of really bad engagements.

0:11:46

Jamie

Oh, absolutely. Be careful who you get in bed with. I learned that lesson a few hard ways over the years, and I think that's actually a great third way or segue to the third one is a creative service is a hard service to go through. Right. You're not only talking thought leadership, but just the notion that who you're dealing with on the other end. How much do they believe they're the expert versus hiring you to be the expert and what's that relationship going to be like?

0:12:16

Jamie

They hold a lot of keys in terms of this is your stuff you're putting out for them. So they hold a lot of the keys to the kingdom in terms of what your ability to even do that versus an auto mechanic shop? I don't know anything about cars. When I go there, I put 100% trust and faith when that transaction occurs. But I think the creative service agency business isn't quite the same. Sometimes they might feel like they're just hiring you for the commodity of the skill versus the thought leadership and things like that. So, yeah, I think, as you said, navigating all those things up front so you can know, hey, is this going to be an easy relationship to do? Because not only do you have sometimes what's subjective results, that's a whole nother thing you could get into in terms of how great agencies are at proving the results they do. So if they're subjective. But then you have so many other players and variables now you have to get that information from the team or sorry, the client. You have to translate that to a team then to be able to execute on that so many variables that I think just make an agency business a really hard business at large.

0:13:20

Jamie

Yeah.

0:13:20

Jody

Culture is like a big thing for us, and it always has been. Trying to have a unique culture for ours, the culture is completely remote. We've been fully remote for almost ten years. And then how do we keep and maintain a culture of being remote? We meet with our team every six months and we have company retreats and there's a lot of cool stuff. We intentionally try to promote culture. And I would argue and Jamie could correct me if you think differently I'd argue that our culture is probably as strong, if not stronger than most cultures that meet in a brick and mortar environment.

0:13:59

Jamie

Definitely agree.

0:14:02

Jody

Do you feel that culture plays a big role in the agency world and does it translate to clients?

0:14:13

Jamie

Oh, my gosh. One of the biggest examples, I feel like that rings just so true. It's like, almost brought a tear to my eye when you just kind of say, that right. But the greatest relationships that we had as an agency where when we would be working together and collaborating, that you could walk in that room and that you wouldn't actually be able to know who was with what company. And it was almost like we were a common team and culture and just like, minds and so many things like that.

0:14:39

Jamie

Just even going back to what Jamie said of qualifying and knowing that that's how you guys are going to work together, that just makes an already hard business to have that not be an issue is a very sweet place to be. I can say that for sure.

0:14:56

Jody

Can you correct the bad culture as an agency?

0:15:00

Jamie

Yeah. Gosh, that's a really good question.

0:15:09

Jody

It seems like it'd be kind of tough because culture kind of is driven right from the owners all the way down, typically, and correcting a culture, actually steering a culture away. Jamie, what's your thought on that?

0:15:22

Jamie

Yeah, I think the best thing for culture to me is it should represent what the ownership wants the company to be. Right. Like, the culture that we have at Summit is a very true representation of who you and Adam are right. So when I came to Summit, I interviewed you two and I'm like, okay, I know what I'm getting into. And then when you're working there, is that actually what we're getting into? Right. And so I think that's a big part of it.

0:15:46

Jamie

I think the best time to change the culture is if a company is becoming something that you're not, right? Like if at some point your company has started to become something that is not what you believe in. And that would be a time that it'd be pretty easy to change a culture is to look at yourself, look at your core values and be like, okay, this is the kind of company I want to run, this kind of business I want to run. It's not that easier to change where if it's you, if it's you're the problem and you've created the bad culture, but it's naturally who you are, it's a little bit more difficult to change.

0:16:13

Jamie

Is it me? Am I the drama? Exactly. Yeah. Hopefully, I guess you could say in that sense, if it's like a 180, just complete toxic bad culture, hopefully we've qualified that, and that's just not going to be our clients. But I actually think you can change the culture as an agency, and it starts with small wins. If you've just got some fundamental trust that, hey, this is going to be a good partnership and relationship just as much as the agency needs to learn about that business, the business itself can learn about the agency. Because I do think agencies, not all, but a lot are known for having good cultures. You kind of mentioned just because it's a little more free flowing thought and less bureaucratic oftentimes.

0:16:58

Jamie

So if we can infiltrate some of that and some of these kind of bureaucratic more I don't know what the other word would be, but businesses don't quite operate like that. That has an osmosis effect almost, if you will, in terms of changing that organization. I have several examples of that over the course of time where we kind of got to see that, where they started talking like this, that whole kind of mind meld thing, and we started talking like them even. And that gave us such empathy, I guess you could say, is really a great place to start with that.

0:17:26

Jamie

But I think the other side of that, too, is I think culture change is hard. And a lot of times people jump off the boat during culture change because this isn't what I came into. Right. When you're changing culture, you have to be prepared to deal with loss of team or loss of clients or loss of things that just didn't match your culture. So I think that's what makes culture changes very difficult. Oh, sorry, Jamie. Jenny yeah.

0:17:49

Jody

What I was going to say is when you have the cultures between the two companies, the culture of our company and the culture of the client. Like you said, eventually the idea is that hopefully you kind of meet somewhere in the middle so that your cultures kind of intermix a little bit. And I think that's probably what's going to create that feeling of success with cultures in general.

0:18:13

Jamie

Yeah, I actually have a whole I got into speaking last year. It's kind of one of the forays I got into, I think, back in my agency journey and my Oscars or my Emmys from that journey where we got a best place to work in the Dallas area and we actually became a registered B Corp. And mostly pretty much all due to kind of our employment practices. So those were very proud moments for myself and one in terms of working with a client. Right. You talk about this, that conflict of culture.

0:18:43

Jamie

Sometimes this may sound like a really bad thing to say, that if someone didn't get fired in the course of our relationship that we probably weren't doing our job good enough. That a lot of times, especially in these bigger companies, there's some gatekeeper or some person that's not doing their job, that's fighting for job security, not value and wasn't what we walked in to do. But if we did our job right, that would kind of start to get uncovered or whatever, and they would do some restructuring in there. So again, not necessarily proudest thing, but again, I think it is a sign of that you're actually making change and doing good work if there's someone that's not providing value, holding up their end of the bargain, well, I think that kind of goes back to your first point, the lower barrier of entry. I think a lot of times people probably start a business a little bit more less mature in their career and don't realize that, oh, this is part of the growth process. I remember when I left Public Accounting for ten years, and my first act when I was out of Public Accounting was to do a reorganization and let people go. And that was really hard for me as a 28 year old, 29 year old that hadn't really been on that side of things. But then you realize how healthy it was for the organization and how all those people ended up okay, they found new jobs and they moved on, and they still talk to you. And so it's like being a low barrier of entry company. A lot of times you don't learn that until it's too late. Like you said, those are some of those bumps you take along the way. It's like, wow, this team is not performing. What's the problem? And then you realize it's only one or two people that just aren't on board. So I think that's part of the reason that would be a challenge with a lot of agencies, for sure.

0:20:16

Jamie

Yeah. Getting into the solution side of things, if you just talk about culture, culture goes so much more smoothly if a business is performing well, take the stress out of how we're going to keep the doors open or how we're going to make money. And so I think the first one really comes into just having good positioning. And imagine many agency people out there have heard of David Baker speak, and he has his podcast that speaks so much to the notion of positioning. Right. But what he talks about is getting to know your customers names. Right. That gives us a place where we know we can whether it's a conference or a list, we can buy that we have this very specific audience of people that we can try to figure out how to generate conversations with that are actually based upon the value we can provide. Not necessarily maybe pinning the tail on the donkey of oh, my gosh. We have this lead in the door. We have to be anything and everything to them just because we can't let them slip away because not that many come our way versus if we know we can kind of generate and manufacture these.

0:21:22

Jamie

We're so much more comforted by our activities and both internally and externally in terms of, hey, we know where we're going to get our next lead from. We don't need to stress about this one particular thing. And then you can focus on things like culture and investing in your team and that sort of thing. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. That's one of the solves. So, again, just to remind everybody, the three things you mentioned were low barrier of entry, that the marketplace doesn't really know how to pick a company. And then the last one was, it's a hard process to go through of getting the service and so give us one more solve before we kind of wrap up this podcast.

0:22:05

Jamie

Yeah, well, I think the next wing, right. We all love two for three deal here. So you can solve three of these challenges with two things, but I think it's eating their own medicine, right? We hear the common phrase in the agency world of the Cobbler's kid has no shoes. And that's actually very disconcerting because if you don't believe in what you do enough to do it for yourself, are you that effective at what you're doing? And I understand sometimes if your problem is you got too many leads and you got too much work, then maybe it's fair.

0:22:36

Jamie

But sometimes that's not always the case. But I think that helps in two ways. One, experimenting on yourself, I always think is right. You throw your own kid a little higher in the air than you'd throw your nephew or neighbor's kid or something like that. So you're going to push the boundaries a little more with maybe your own marketing to figure out what actually works. Because while we do experiment, our clients, sometimes we can't just completely go off the reservation and then it proves our effectiveness, not only hopefully during the work itself, but to ourselves, right? That, hey, if we're going to be this type of company and we can prove this works for us, then heck, we can sell this to anyone that might have similar challenges or needs.

0:23:19

Jamie

And I think that's why, too. Why? You see, SEO companies tend to not have these same challenges because, one, they're naturally positioned at least on a horizontal level in terms of their offering, but they believe in what they do, so they do it for themselves quite extensively, and then that essentially generates leads for themselves. So all the while, if you're eating your own medicine, if you're giving your Cobblers kids shoes, you're building this foundation of value within your own business that, again, you can extend it to your services, but then obviously build and generate more business over time.

0:23:52

Jamie

Definitely, yeah. I think that's a really key point. And I think about as accountants, it's something similar that we have to think about all the time. It's like, okay, how are our books? The last thing you want to do is go to an accounting company that doesn't bill you on time and doesn't know how to collect and all that stuff. So I think it's really important that every business thinks, like, that's a really good tip. So I'm going to transition here to the fun part of our podcast. So what we'd like to do is kind of change direction a little bit and just ask a random question. So very early on on the podcast, Russell, you mentioned that you joined with your brother in law, and just because he was in this space, that's the space that you jumped into. So I'm going to ask the question that every kid likes to be asked. And what was your dream job as a kid? So when you were a little kid, what did you tell everybody you wanted to be when you grew up? And so I will start with Jody, just so I'm not putting Russell on the spot, but what was the job you told everybody you were going to be when you were a kid?

0:24:43

Jody

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a garbage man. I wanted to be something I can drive that really big truck and meet all these people throughout the neighborhood. Had a great friend that his parents his dad was a garbage man. And it was just one of those things I thought, wow, this that would be really cool. And then that was, you know, and, you know, and then it then it kind of shifted to my my next career.

0:25:11

Jamie

Right.

0:25:11

Jody

You know, what do I want to do after Anders? I want to be a bartender. So I want to actually be on a beach, be a bartender, and really learn how to make those really cool drinks. And I think I could just really have a great time serving up drinks more. Of a resort type atmosphere. So I did a double whammy there.

0:25:32

Jamie

Yes, you did. Was that after you were in a cocktail? That's what I say. You watch Cocktail one too many times, he's going to be Tom Cruise out there.

0:25:40

Jody

Exactly.

0:25:41

Jamie

That's funny. All right, Russell. So I can't imagine there were many kids out there in the world telling their friends and parents that they wanted to be a trash man. So that was probably got quite a bit of chuckles from a bunch of adults. But what about you, Russell? What were you telling people? So I think the biggest one I can remember that was for a good long while, was I wouldn't be a chef. I kind of naturally loved to cook, and I liked the whole idea of it. So I even started when I was young, looking at culinary schools and all that.

0:26:07

Jamie

And this is where I always tell people the life lesson and be careful what you tell your kids. But I remember my dad told me one day, and this is probably getting a little older, he's like, well, you need to get a college degree first before you go to culinary school. And I was doing the math in my head, and I was thinking like, that's eight years of school to be a chef. And I don't even know if I was thinking about money, but I was like, I might as well be a doctor if I'm going to spend eight years in school. This is a really bad thing to do. I'm pretty sure most chefs don't need a college degree, especially if they go to a decent culinary school. So that somehow got me knocked off that track. And then I think I went back to my secondary passion. I wanted to be a pilot in the military, and so that's actually what I did when I went to college. I went to Air Force RTC and was in the Air Force when I got out of college.

0:26:52

Jamie

And then my next gig was starting an agency. There you go. That's quite the path. So I was always a kid that didn't really have an answer to that question. I never really knew what I wanted to be and make different stuff up and say, okay, I want to be a lawyer, or I want to be this, and that really the job that resonated with me, which is a weird one. I took a psychology class in freshman year of high school and loved it. So I really like psychology. And they talked about an animal psychologist, and I was like, oh, that sounds really cool because I like animals. I like psychology.

0:27:23

Jamie

That's another one of those. A, there's not a ton of jobs, and B, like, you're not getting paid a lot of money to train Lassie to perform in a movie. So that lasted only a couple of years and then somehow fell into accounting. So I think that's where people go when they don't know what they want to do. So that's how I ended up there. But, yeah, I never had to answer that question. I hated getting asked it because I didn't always want to say professional athlete, because people look to you like, really? That's not going to happen.

0:27:50

Jamie

That would have been interesting. Animal psychology. I'm sure there's a lot of animals with some depression and issues and things like that. Exactly. Cool. All right, let's bring it back. Time for final thoughts. So listeners, listen to most of this podcast and have a lot of good takeaways, but let's give everybody a final thought and we'll start with you, Russell. Final thought? Well, I think that's never too there's so many people doing great work out there. And I think if they can solve some of these challenges that are inherent to making an agency so hard that they can actually get back to why they started the agency, and that's to do good creative work or to make a difference.

0:28:30

Jamie

And it helps eliminate so many of those just business challenges that I think either force a lot of agencies to shut their doors or make people tired. So if you can position your agency and learn to be really, truly effective and provide that value, I think it inherently solves some of those challenges. So good luck to people in that journey, and I look forward to seeing all the different niches that agencies can create out there.

0:28:56

Jamie

Great.

0:28:56

Jody

Jody? I would add to that. Russell, I think the biggest thing I think that agency owners need is they need a coach like yourself. I think they need somebody that can really kind of help them through the things that go well, but also help them through things that don't go well. Business coach for US was One Of the biggest things that we did that jamie, I probably would agree with you. Probably agree with me. There is when we hired one six years ago to help us through just communication, just through all the different things that you don't even think about that you as a business owner go through.

0:29:34

Jody

Because as an entrepreneur myself, it's like I never went to school to be an entrepreneur. I didn't know what it took. I got in there and I screwed up many, many things. And I wish I could do things over again. And it's nice to have that person just to be able to bounce ideas off of. They may be harmless ideas, but something you probably wouldn't ask maybe somebody else on the team because you wouldn't want to give that person the wrong idea.

0:29:59

Jody

So I think a business coach is so important to have, and I think everybody should have one, whether it's meeting with them on a weekly or monthly or quarterly basis. They really need to have somebody like yourself sitting there kind of helping them and directing traffic.

0:30:16

Jamie

I mean, I can't agree more and not that I'm even slightly biased today, but I can say we had the same thing. We had a business coach for eight years in our journey and I always tell folks I can't go back and pinpoint this one magnificent moment where it was worth every penny we paid, but it was all the knob turns, a little misdirections here, a little just even reframing and confidence building. And the second when I jumped back into this, I went right back and got a business coach. So I say if people great, you don't have to use me, but just know the power and the value of it and find someone that can be that role for you because it's always going to be worth its weight.

0:30:50

Jamie

I guess you could say there's maybe there's some bad ones out there, but it's going to be worth its weight and the money you pay. With that said, they don't have to use you, but if they do want to use you, how do they find you? Good question. No, my website is performancefaction.com. You can go in there, there's an easy link just to schedule a quick conversation. Everything good in life starts with a conversation and I just try to help folks and provide as much value I can early on. And if that means an ongoing relationship, great. Or if that just means a couple of nuggets that help them get to the next stage, I'm happy to do that for free. So, yeah, all good things start with the conversation. Performancefaction.com.

0:31:29

Jamie

Awesome. Great. Well, definitely appreciate you joining us and you definitely answered one of my questions working with agencies for the last eight years. It is a unique industry and it's been hard to put your finger on what makes it unique, but you've definitely got me down the right path. I appreciate you coming on for us and I think it's a great episode. It's my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

0:31:47

Jody

Thanks, Russell.

0:31:48

Jamie

Enjoy this podcast. Visit our website at summitcpa.net to get more tips and strategies for achieving business success. We're here to be a resource in this ever changing industry.

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