SPEAKER_02 0:00

Every country is different and every language is different, every culture is different, and you can do a lot of things with AI, but uh you also need to have the human in the loop for the starting DDR, because otherwise gonna fail.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Hey, welcome to the Agency Our Podcast. Our vision for 2026 is to make this podcast the most helpful podcast on the planet for digital agency owners. Here's my call to arms for anyone listening to this podcast. If there is anything that you are struggling with in your agency, whether it's AI, whether it's hiring a team, whether it's pricing, whether it's cash flow, whatever it is, mindset, I don't care, whatever the problem is, if you're a digital agency owner and you're listening to this and you have a question, email me. My email's Troy at agencymavericks.com. That is my email address. It's not monitored by the VA or AI. It's me. I read every email. So just send me an email and I'll make a podcast episode to help you, whatever the challenge is. Everything you need to grow, scale, and run and exit a successful digital agency is here in our ecosystem. We have an amazing network of agencies and partners and people. I've been doing this, you know, for about 16 years now. So there's not much about scaling agencies that I don't know. So if you've got a question, just shoot me an email, Troy at agenciesmaverics.com, and we'll get you answered. On this episode of the Agency R podcast, we are talking to one of our Mavericks Club members, Renee Spiker from Spiker Co. in the Netherlands. He's been around uh in business, he's been running agencies for 30 years, over 30 years. He's been in our ecosystem for a while back when we were called WP Elevation, uh, and he's here to talk about how AI is changing things, how he's approaching it, what he does, who he does it for. Uh this is I my hope for you is, I've been saying this for over 15 years now. My hope as a result of this episode of the podcast is that you realize the most valuable person in this whole agency ecosystem is the person that sits between the client and the technology, regardless of what the technology is. You know, back in the day when WordPress happened, web developers were like, well, there goes our job.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

We don't need they're not gonna need us anymore because they just download WordPress and it's a content management system.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Of course, what happened as a result of that? There are more agencies on the planet than ever before because clients needed help with WordPress. And then page builders happened.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

And all the WordPress agencies went, well, now we're out of a job because they're just gonna download WordPress and use Elementor or be the builder and build their own pages. And of course, what happened?

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Well, there were more agencies than ever because more clients needed more help with the technology. Now AI's happening.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

And everyone's going, well, I'm out of a job, they're just gonna use AI to do it themselves.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

And what's happening? There's more agencies than ever because clients now know what's possible, they've seen a glimpse of what's possible with AI, they don't have time to figure it out, they don't have time to do it, they just want an outcome, and so they need you to help them. Now I'm not saying you need to be an AI agency, I'm just saying you should be using AI to increase your productivity and add more value to your clients. Now is the best time in the history of the planet to be in the agency business. With the technology at your fingertips, you can scale a seven-figure a year agency with three staff. Right? That is my challenge for everyone listening to this. If you're already a seven-figure a year agency, let's add another seven figures with only three extra staff. It's totally possible. And that's a mission that I'm on personally. We have launched another agency, I've started another agency here, and we are only serving our existing agency clients. So think of us as the mechanic that fixes the mechanic's broken-down car in the front yard. We are the agency that works inside agencies. And my mission is to get that agency for seven figures a year at at least a 75% net profit. Yeah, totally possible. And that's the mission that I'm on just for fun, just to prove that I can do it, and also to hopefully share the journey with everyone listening to this. So, without further ado, just gonna remind you if you've got any questions about running your agency, email Troy at agencymaverics.com. I will email you back, and hopefully I will answer any of your questions in a future episode. I'll do my best to do whatever I can to answer your questions in an episode or on a YouTube video, but I'll email you back and let you know. And uh double down. Now's the best time to be running an agency. So double down, avoid distraction, plan the work, make sure you've got a quarterly plan, and then work that plan. Yeah? Alright, without further ado, let's go and meet Renee Spiker from Spiker and Co. For those that don't know, and for me, how do how do I pronounce your name correctly? Renee Spiker? Yep, it's Spiker. There we go. Spiker, so the J is completely silent. There we go. Okay, great. And uh where are you based, Renee?

SPEAKER_02 5:00

I'm uh I'm in Buren. It's it's a small town, I think um 45 minutes from Amsterdam. Oh, cool, awesome. Is it the same direction as Leiden from Amsterdam or is it a different it's southwards, so it's more uh uh to Eindhoven, Maastricht. Uh okay. It's more uh to to Paris, Brussels.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Okay, got it. So it's more it's more it's more west, is it? Or east? Leiden, Leiden is more west. Okay, got it. I went to WordCamp Europe in Leiden uh a long time ago. I don't know, I can't remember what year it was. Um I have to confess something, I've never been more stoned in my life than when I went to Leiden. Me and three friends, I know I won't tell I won't say who they are, but me and two friends actually, we're at WordCamp Europe. We're there was another Australian there, and there was another guy there who's American, and we all looked at each other and we're like, we'll go to a coffee shop after WordCamp first day. We'll go up, we'll go to a coffee shop. We went at this coffee shop and I didn't know what to order. And so I said to the guy, just give me something really mild. I just want to have a conversation with my mates and have a laugh, right? He gave me this joint called a black widow. I said, That doesn't sound mild, that sounds like it's gonna knock me over. And he said, No, no, trust me. I said, Okay, fine. So I had this little black widow and it was beautiful. We had a great night. Oh, agree. And uh the next night, we said, Well, we're just gonna do that again, right? So we went back to the same place. I ordered the same thing, within five minutes, I could not stand up. Yeah, I don't know what happened. But I'm sure, I'm sure I'm not the only person that's experienced that in Amsterdam. I in fact, I can tell you there were quite a few people at that work camp trip that had a few trouble putting a sentence together the next day. Anyway, um, now for those that don't know, who are you and what are you doing here on the Agency Hour podcast?

SPEAKER_02 6:58

Yeah, I'm Renee Spiker. I have an agency in Bern, it's 45 minutes from Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and uh, I'm a member of the Mavericks Club. So when uh we're going to chat about our agency, I think.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

Yeah, absolutely. When did you start the agency? How long have you been running it?

SPEAKER_02 7:17

Uh 1991. So that's more like 30 years ago.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

Hang on. Wow. Was it like a what what what was it in 1991? Were you selling newspapers? Was it a digital agency? What did it look like in 1991?

SPEAKER_02 7:34

You you don't had you you didn't have uh any digital agencies then. Um I think we built the first websites in 1995. Uh um I think uh well, my my uh my family is uh uh is a printing family. So my uh brother and father had a printing shop and I worked there for one year. And it was the time that uh the Apple came out with uh the Mac uh CI, I think that was the first one, something like that. But all the other printing companies are uh still in uh putting the text manual together with uh um yeah uh films, uh plates and things like that. And the Mac came out, and I was I think uh 20 years old, and I told my family to to buy us a Mac, and that cost us, I think it's now $30,000. Well, well so that that's the the starting of the post script uh age for uh the printing industry. That that's my when my company started.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

So uh Well, we're we're a similar age. I think you might be a little bit older than me. I was kind of graduating, hot leaving high school in in 1990, 91, kind of grew up with the Vic 20 computer, then we had an Amiga 500, then we had you know, and then and then we got into desktop publishing. I remember desktop publishing was like yeah, wow, the CD ROM. It was like multimedia, it was mind-blowing what you could do. What services were you provide? Were you like were you printing like annual reports or brochures or catalogues? What were you what were you doing?

SPEAKER_02 9:14

Yeah, it was all kinds of things. It were were um uh newsletters, uh and magazines and brochures, flyers, uh business cards, all kinds of things because because yeah, the world wasn't that uh advanced as as it is now. So um all was done with uh with proofs on faxes and and uh dial-in modems uh came up I think in uh around 1995, something like that. Yep. So um yeah, I started out with a Commodore uh 64. Yeah, yeah.

unknown 9:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:51

And there I I uh saw the first uh drafts of desktop publishing, and I was uh blown away about the capabilities and what you can do with a small computer instead of the bit once we had at the company. So um yeah, we bought a Mac in uh 1991 and started with that. Excellent.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

I think it was about '93, I reckon, or ninety-four, just before I moved over to Melbourne. I was working selling advertising space in a music magazine in Adelaide called Rip It Up, and I would sell literally selling blank space in a magazine, and it was either a half page, a full page, a quarter page, an eighth page, and then you would send the client a bromide. You would you would fax them the bromide, which is the proof of their ad. They would approve it, they would fax you or ring you the approval back, and then it would go into. And I think the at the time, I think the guys might have been using Quark Express to lay out the the magazine on a big computer. I was fascinated. I mean, I didn't make any money in that job because I wanted to hang hang out in the studio all the time and watch them build the magazine. And they're like, You need to be out on the road selling advertising space, so it'll have a job, right? I didn't last there very long. Okay, and so so fast forward now you're running a digital agency. What do you predominantly sell to clients these days?

SPEAKER_02 11:11

Uh probably um strategy plans and content marketing because because uh my clients uh a lack of strategy. Um I serve mid-sized clients, uh clients with uh 35 a staff of 35 to 200, 300 people. They don't have an own marketing manager in-house or an they have an assistant sometimes, and we we do the strategy, we write the text, we we uh do practically everything for them uh to get them on the market.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

And uh do you have any clients today that that you had in the early 90s still or or any connection, like any like children of clients that you had in the 90s that you've still got now?

SPEAKER_02 12:01

Yeah, there's still people hanging around from the early days, yeah. Yeah. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

Um and and so what is you I want to talk a little bit about how things have changed. Uh, you know, as I said, you and I are a similar vintage, and what's happening with AI now is just like, I mean, when we were kids, man, you just could not have imagined how smart the robots were gonna get, right? We'll talk about that in a moment. But um when when you first decided to go digital, like I'm curious how have you managed to change your skill set over the years and also your team, how have you managed to kind of reconfigure who you work with and your team and and upskill them over the years?

SPEAKER_02 12:41

Yeah, well, uh, I was always curious uh about new technologies that that helped because uh when when yeah, I yeah, we had a lot of uh changes since uh 1991. Uh the websites were uh one thing. Uh I think 1995 was the first website we built with Page Mill from from I think that was Apple, yeah. Or uh Eldest PageMaker uh had that. But um we we built the first websites. Um I started off uh an internet company, a website building company uh uh aside, uh that later uh I joined our company as uh again. But but then you get digital prints, you get um that was a big step forward. Um and well, web design will was always there, uh, and the changes in web design are incredible as well. Uh you know, but um I always trained my team to to take some some time to learn new things, and I always talked about my experience because I also was uh experimenting with new techniques and and seeing other things. And um in our weekly uh meeting we always talked about it, and so so the company evolves um in the years, and uh yeah, we had some rough times as well because uh one when everything goes from from uh uh well when everything became digital, uh I had to let people off because I had too many people in my company. And yeah, yeah, it's a shame. But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

If you've been in your business for 30 years, you you you you're bound to go through some hard times, even without even without a technology disruption like the internet and like AI, like you you've been in business that long, you're bound to go through some some challenging times anyway. How do you there's a couple of lots I want to unpack you, but um let me come back to the hard times in a second? Uh how do you how do you carve out time to learn new stuff? Like you we're all busy serving clients, right? And what do you do? Do you like I'm interested in the tactical stuff? You just block time in your calendar and say, right, I'm gonna put aside four hours a week where I'm just gonna turn off all the distractions and learn new things, or is it more organic than that? You just like in your downtime over lunch breaks, how do you structure your your week like that so that you keep up with new technology?

SPEAKER_02 15:07

Yeah, it's more organic, uh, I think. Uh when I was young, I had all the I spent all my time behind the computer. So that's uh uh I I think it was seven days a week or on work. But the last years I I do it uh uh organic, but also uh make some time in my agenda to do it. So I block uh four hours a week for just uh taking a look at the new things, trying some things out, um yeah, still learning.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

I I think you you may have to stop learning learning when you are in this yeah, and it's like I just think it's an incredible time to be alive right now because I was talking to friends of mine the other day, I sent them a screenshot of something I was working on, just some buddies of mine who are not in this industry at all, and they're like, oh my god, man, you're like you are they're a mate, like they're like you're constantly learning. I'm like, dude, if I don't learn something every day, like what is the point of getting out of bed, right? Like, I just for me it's like it's like food for my brain, right?

SPEAKER_02 16:04

Yeah, it's for me the same because because and that's that's why I'm I'm more than 30 years in this business, because I like to learn, I see things, uh magical things with AI at the moment. Um, we're doing it ourselves. I uh my jaw drops uh sometimes when I I'm working on something and I think yeah, this is now possible. Uh we are more productive than ever. And the quality of work is is uh so high at the moment because AI is helping you to get better and better and better in a real world.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

And can and and and consistent, right? Like consistent. I've been using Manaus a lot lately, and um I've I've kind of dialed in now, like I've slowed down, and I and I've thought, okay, I'm treating I'm treating all my AI like an intern. Yeah. And so I spent a day, well not a full day, but I spent yesterday whenever I wasn't on client calls, whenever I wasn't doing content in any white space in my calendar, I was like, right, I'm training Manners today how to produce social media images that uh we can use over and over again. And so I took, I take photos of in the studio and I hand write things and then I put that into Manners and I say, right, here's an example of what I want. I just want you to produce the same one but with a different caption, right? And it takes a while, but once you train it and it's producing great content in Manners, you just save that as a skill and you can reuse that skill over and over again. And so then I said to Max today, dude, we can produce a hundred social media images in about eight minutes. Yeah, right. And they're consistent, they're perfect, they're exactly what I want. Like no human can compete with that, but you have like I think like working with a new employee, you have to put the work into training the AI up front, otherwise it's quality in, quality out, right? You'll just get sloped out if you don't actually train it. How do you manage your overwhelm? Like, and I kind of want to go back to what you were talking about before about having hard times in in business, but also having all this new technology to play with can sometimes be overwhelming. How do you manage your mindset around okay, how do you look which is how do you look after yourself so that you don't burn out? I guess that's the question I'm trying to ask.

SPEAKER_02 18:20

Yeah, yeah, that that's taking some downtime as well, because uh uh you can't always sit behind a computer, uh especially as at our age, but but yeah, uh well, yeah, I I uh um I have other hobbies. Um I I'm still uh in the in the fire department here in in Byrne, so uh I have to train for a week uh uh and do that thing kind of things. It's totally different from the work I do, and I'm also a volunteer with some some uh other uh organizations. Uh that yeah, that keeps my head off out of uh the business. Yeah, I still I still uh well like to work. I I like my job, I like the way it's going. I uh yeah, I'm I'm not the kind of guy who sits down and thinks uh AI is gonna take over my job or something like that. It's the end of the world, like some people think that is, but uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

So so your approach to AI is that it's it's gonna help you be more productive and help you provide a better service and more consistent output to your clients, right? And it's just kind of like having another team member or another three or four team members that are doing particular tasks.

SPEAKER_03 19:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:40

It it's constantly you you can check your work, you can you can make it better with AI, you can uh ask for advice and uh uh is this the right way we are doing the right way I'm thinking about this strategy, and and then you get some suggestions you never got before. It totally thinks outside of the box, so uh that that's also uh yeah that's also great. So yeah, I'm I'm I'm really glad with it.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

You and I met, I think, in person the first time in Virginia. Is that right?

SPEAKER_02 20:17

No, I I think in in Washington.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

Oh yes, sorry, that's what I meant. In in in um at our event, yeah? That's right, that's right. Uh our Mavcon, our live event, which I think was 2023? End of end of 2023, I think it was. Yeah. You'd been in our ecosystem for a bit, you had been, you know, I think you'd bought some of our courses, you were consuming our content and stuff. What what made you get on a plane and fly to the US and come to uh one of our live events? What what was the what were you looking for at that time? Like what was the problem you were trying to solve?

SPEAKER_02 20:53

Well, I I saw my my uh my clients and my business was changing a lot uh since uh we last did our training with uh WP Elevation. And um I felt that I need to catch up catch up with it with the industry, and I thought that the best way to do that is to meet uh you but also other agencies that are in the program and see what they are doing and learning from them. And oh well, uh I never regret that that meeting and never regretted the comment there because I learned so much in two or three days, and uh I had for months work cut out for myself uh to change my agency because because if you don't change your agency on time, I think uh yeah, you're gonna br uh you're gonna get less clients, less clients, and you have to lay people off and something like that. But um yeah, I always try to to keep up or be somewhat on for in front of the the agency world. So

SPEAKER_01 22:00

I'd like to say I was the smartest person in the room at that event, but I wasn't. There was plenty of there was Thomas Amos, Adam Silverman, Johnny Flash, Jen Tzukowski. There were a lot of really smart people at that event. And and, you know, uh Tim um uh from Thailand uh uh and a lot of really smart agencies in the room as well, including yourself. And I think the um certainly for me over the years, those events are have been, you know, you can hang out online all year, but when you meet in person at those events, they're transformational because you just spend like 72 hours talking to other agency owners, telling not only like business stuff, but just telling life stories and connecting with people and realizing that we all come from a very similar background. And then there's lots of just opening the laptop and just sharing, here's how we do this, and here's how we do this, and here's what you might learn one little thing that just gives you an edge or saves you some time. What is it about? Um, and this is not meant to be an ad for what we do at all, but I'm curious uh for anyone listening to this who might be a little bit skeptical about, you know, a community of agencies or getting into a program like this, what is like have you always done, have you always looked for people to surround yourself with people who can help you, who can come in and offer advice? And I mean, I know a lot of people are just like, well, I know everything I can do it myself, I don't need any help. What do you think is is that just who you are, or have you or have you cultivated that mindset over years?

SPEAKER_02 23:21

Yeah, I cultivated that over the years because when you're young, you think you can do anything yourself, and and especially the uh the people of uh this generation thinks they can always stop things with with YouTube. Uh and they're correct for uh I think 60 or 70 percent of the time. Uh but yeah, um uh surrounding you with the right people and get and getting advice is something uh uh it moves you quicker, it gets you better in faster time, uh and you you uh see things that you normally won't see because uh yeah, you you have yeah, you're programmed in a way uh that you you can't see everything outs outside of it, and um yeah, how how can I can I say that right? Um you get new perspectives from from people that you don't get if you don't do it yourself, because then your own perspective is is leading, and you think that's the only way to do it, and if you meet with other agency owners and you talk with them, you hear uh their side uh of the story and their perspective, and you learn a lot from it.

SPEAKER_01 24:38

Yeah. Some of the most valuable conversations I've had are with mentors of mine um who who have whether they're coaching businesses or software or agencies or whatever, whatever business it is, who have a bigger team than me and who um have come across problems that I haven't even thought about yet. I didn't even know they were problems, I don't even know that that would happen, right? And uh, you know, I have friends of mine who have big who have had big teams in the past and who have shrunk their teams dramatically with AI. Buddy Mine owns a software company, he shrunk his team from 35 to eight, right? Because he did using AI to write all the code. And he's like, dude, I sleep way easier now because I'm not looking after 35 people on my team. And I never thought about it like that. It's like you you do feel responsible for your team and you do kind of have to look after them, not only like pay them, but you need to kind of look after them emotionally and psychologically and make sure that they're performing and make sure that they're looking after themselves and do that for 35 people is a lot. Tim Kelsey does it for over 100 uh from Pronto Marketing in Thailand, one of our coaches here. Um, and you know, I've had conversations with him. It's like, I didn't even know that was a thing. I did it just had no, and so when you get to that point, hopefully you're a bit more prepared because you've been talking to people who have walked that path. Whereas certainly when I was younger, I think I was guilty of that staying in my little silo and going, Oh, I can figure this out myself. And you can, you can figure a lot out by watching YouTube videos and listening to podcasts, especially now compared to you know 30 years ago. But I think having someone sit down with you and figure out what to do next and help you get it done, I think is an invaluable experience, particularly if everyone in the ecosystem has the same kind of business model, right? There's no dentists here or or vets, we're all agencies, right? Yeah. Um now you kind of came up through the WordPress ecosystem too, didn't you? You were building WordPress. I are you still I'm curious, you're still using WordPress to build websites? Do you think like is it?

SPEAKER_02 26:41

We're still building in WordPress with Elementor now, and uh yeah, well, well, we are trying to to to get I I'm experimenting with getting AI to do to make our websites, uh uh for the most part. We we're still designing itself ourselves uh with the help of AI, but trying to get um a working website with with just with AI and and maintain but with AI, and I think we are not four far from it. I think um next year or or in two years, people will make websites in the right way, just with AI, I think. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:23

And do you and do you think WordPress is is still a legitimate I I ask this because I'm having this conversation a lot with people who are in groups, in Facebook groups, in in chats, in Slack channels. People are asking a lot, you know, should I be doubling down on WordPress now? Or and I don't know the answer to this. I've I've tried to, you know, vibe code some websites and bring them into a and bring them into WordPress. It's a it's pretty clunky at the moment. Um I don't think there's a great solution to vibe code Elementor sites yet. Uh maybe I'm missing something, but do you think WordPress is still gonna do you think we're still gonna be using it in a couple of years' time, or do you think we'll be vibe coding our own content management systems in in bolt or or replit?

SPEAKER_02 28:04

Yeah, it's hard to say because because I I saw the new Elementor with AI in it, uh the first uh uh testing of that, and that looks promising too. I did some five coding with with WordPress and Elementor, uh uh it works. Uh it's it's not there yet, but it's close because I can change make designs uh uh together with AI and and get templates for Elementor out of it, and they are for I think 85-90 correct. Then you have to change only 10% of it. So it's it's going uh the right way, but but I don't know if you need uh uh an underlying CMS like WordPress in a few years under it. So that's probably we were developing the CMS with the the website as well in one go because it's easier, it's faster. And I think the the the results is that the the website is much faster at at the end.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

Yeah, it is. I mean, I I I uh I'm gonna ask you some technical questions in a minute, which you may or may not be able to answer. And I know this is super nerdy, but I know there's I know I can feel it. I know there are people listening to this podcast having the exact same experience now. My I haven't built a website for a long time. My wife has gone out on her own as a psychologist. She's like, I need a website. It's like, oh, build you one. That'll be fun, right? Do it in WordPress, do it on Elementor. Far out. It's a lot of work. And I'm and I've been vibe coding stuff in Bolt over the last few months. So I said to her a couple of weeks ago, I said, you know what? I'm just gonna start from scratch. And I vibe coded her a website in Bolt. It took about an hour and a half, and she's super happy with the result. And I'm just Bolt Cloud now, which is essentially Netlify, hosting on the front end, super base, and GitHub. I've got the code in a GitHub repo, and Bolt is my kind of browser-based IDE, if you like. I'm like, this is it, babe. Like, you're not gonna blog. It's a static website, there's no plugins. I've got resend set up so the contact form goes to our email address. We're done. Like, I don't need to put this on WordPress, right? No, that's true. I don't, I don't think that's a scalable solution, but I'm telling you, the WordPress, because of the backwards compatibility stuff and because of where it's come from, I think it needs a complete, I just think it can need a complete redo. I don't think there's any leadership in the WordPress project. And I mean that with all respect to everyone who's worked on it. I just think it's floating at sea completely rudderless at the moment. And I don't know, I don't think it knows what it is or who it's who it is or what it's doing. So what if what are you using to vibe code designs and bring them in? Are you doing it in Elementor or are you using vibe coding and lovable and then bringing that in? And what's the tech? Do you know, or your team doing this?

SPEAKER_02 30:51

Or yeah, we we I I do it myself and my team is also doing it, but uh we work with Claude Kort and Claude's co-work to design and and and put it in uh in Elementor now. Oh well, and uh yeah, I've dipped my toes now in Mayness as well. So uh maybe that's uh a good solution for building the CMS in the back end because I saw some really great results with it. So it it it probably is gonna be a combination of AI tools that's be the best solution. I think not one AI tool is doing all the work that you want. So uh yeah, we also use JetGPT or Gemini as well. But most of the work is in Claude and Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:38

Same. Claude is uh a lot of fun, and I haven't even I you're you're the one that actually has put me onto Claude Co-work because I saw that tab appear like a couple of weeks ago in the on the desktop app, and I'm like, oh, I'm just gonna ignore that because I don't I can't haven't got time. And you mentioned the other day on one of our calls, and I'm like, all right, Renee's getting ahead of me. I'm gonna go and figure out Claude Co. So I'm asking Claude to teach me how to use cowork at the moment, and um uh early signs are it's it's amazing. Um, but again, it's like, how do you how do you triage? How do you go, okay? Well, this is something I need to learn versus this is something I can just park until next week or next month. How do you what's your compass to make that decision?

SPEAKER_02 32:21

Yeah, well, I'm not trying to switch over things uh uh that quickly because if you switch over from one tool to another, to another, you never learn the tool the right way, not all the insights of the tool. So uh we started out with with uh I think most companies with Chat TPT and uh and and did our work there and then uh saw Claude um and now Maynis and and and yeah Gemini. Um and then yeah, I really like to to put in some hours, a lot of hours in in the tool before I change it. Yeah. Every week or every month there's there's a new thing, there's a new uh tool, there's a new shiny object. Uh yeah, there is, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 33:11

So that's right. It is, and I think that's the opportunity that we have now at our fingertips is we have all these really highly skilled interns that can work for you know a couple of hundred bucks a month, really. And um the the the job the I think the job that we have is to say, okay, well, what is the bottle, what's the one bottleneck now? Like for us, it's images. Because we're doing done for you content services for our clients, as you know, the one thing that's gonna hold us up is images. And so I said to Max the other day and Jane, there's two ways this is gonna roll, right? One is the clients are gonna give us a Google Drive full of images. I don't think that's gonna happen, to be honest, right? I mean, I've been around a little while. I've done I've had a few clients in the past. Typically, they're not very great at giving you content when you need it. So I, you know, part of what we preach to our clients is just do it for them. And so I think uh we need to set up systems where we can plug a client into an AI and say, right, let's build out a brand guide for this client and then let's have the AI work in a silo. I think Maynus is the where we're going to end up with this, uh, is it will just produce all the images required for Spyker and Co. Right. And and those images will be attached to the content and they will be on brand and will be within the brand guide and the brand style of your agency. Um, because if you had time to to get images to us, well, you'd already be doing it, wouldn't you? You'd already be, you know, and you're not, which is why you've come to us. And so we're gonna, we don't need to hire, you know, even Max, we're we're looking at rolling out a done for you video service as well. And we've been toying around with the idea of building out a team of video editors in the Philippines. And Max just said to me today, he's like, dude, I think what we're gonna need to do is build out a small team of people who know how to vibe edit because vibe editing is now a thing. He's doing it, he's he's not touching the keyboard, he's talking to the computer and telling the robots what to do with the edit, and the robots are editing the video, and he's like, I don't need to be a video editor anymore. I just need to know what done looks like and you know how to describe it. And so that all of a sudden has now we've gone, okay, we've been holding back on this done for you video service because we don't have capacity. Now we're thinking this might happen in the next three months as opposed to the next six months, right? We might just bring it forward because we have the capacity because of AI. And so I think the challenge for all of us is to figure out what is the bottleneck that if we unlock will either improve our profit or help us grow revenue and bring more clients on, right? Yeah. What I'm curious about is how how productized is what you do for your clients? Like, do you do you have clients come in where you just kind of have to do custom bespoke stuff for them, or is or is what you do for your clients pretty much the same all the time?

SPEAKER_02 36:08

No, it's it's it's mostly bespoke because uh uh people come with us with uh the complete package uh of questions. There's not only SEO and not only a website, but it's it's mostly a marketing issue or a big branding issue at that at that moment. So it's bespoke, but we are uh the last two years we did productize a lot of them. Uh but we we made a uh a system you can pick uh things out and then it makes uh uh it makes the uh a complete package for a client and and the one client is somewhat other than others, but uh yeah, we we try to productize as much as we can because then you can automate it with AI. And the problem with AI is if you do only bespoke work, uh you teach it every time again, and that's yeah, yeah, and that's very that's very then you're very difficult and impossible to scale.

SPEAKER_01 37:05

Um now, uh, how do you uh how do you know what to do with the team? Like, are there are there services that you just don't provide? Which is like we just don't do that because it's not within our wheelhouse, and are you happy to say no, we don't do that and refer people on, or are you are you trying to be everything to everyone?

SPEAKER_02 37:22

No, there are things that we are not doing, but that's uh um mostly uh uh manual work, I think. Uh like uh finage and and and uh that kind of things. Um and we are outsourcing um um social media marketing, so uh that that's something we don't do in hours, but we have uh uh freelancers that do that for us. But um, yeah, I'm I must say that with AI it it that's also coming closer to us now because AI can solve a lot of the problems as well. And you see uh also in social media marketing and as social advertising that's AI is is going uh is becoming very big there. So uh probably it it's gonna be another computer in our uh company that's gonna solve that problem as well, right?

SPEAKER_01 38:21

With a bunch of agents working on it, just a dedicated you know, iMac or something just running, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:27

Yeah, yeah, running a whole bunch of workflows. Uh yeah, also I have uh some AI programmers externally, and because there's so much going on in AI that I can spend all days on it uh to provide or I can talk to people who do that for us.

SPEAKER_01 38:46

Right. And you the the real like you we just don't have time to build all the things that we want to build, even though AI is so fast, we just right, we just don't exactly. This is what I'm realizing too is the opportunity cost, isn't it? Of you could spend 20 hours a day talking to AI on the computer and you still wouldn't have all the time to do the things that you want to do. Um I know I know you've I know you've partnered with eachwim a little bit, they're a big partner of ours. Um, they do have AI uh uh AI services. Um I'm now I'm now at a point, I think, where I've built some stuff where I'm like, I just can't get this over the line. Like, in order for me to get this over the line, and also I'm a hack of a developer, right? So there's probably security vulnerabilities right through this thing. So I need someone to look at it and go, this is not production ready, but we can get it production ready. So I'm pretty close to pulling the trigger on getting one of E2M's AI guys in here to work with me because I'm just I'm just at capacity, right? I'm just stuck now. Like I just can't get it done. And that's just internal stuff. I'm not like not even talking about doing anything for for clients, just internal work. When true agentic AI, like I've got a bunch of little apps on my Mac that I'm trying to just I'm trying to get off the keyboard completely. I'm just trying to talk to my computer with my AirPods and have it do things. A few things, little birds working pretty good, it's like scheduling appointments for me, it's checking emails, it's responding to emails, and I'm just talking to it, it watches what I'm doing on the screen, so it's got good context. It's not bad, you know. But when true agentic, this is a futurist conversation or or question, but when true agentic AI happens and we don't actually need to type on the keyboard anymore, how do you think that's gonna change the way that we work if we're not trapped looking at a screen and we can just talk to the AI?

SPEAKER_02 40:24

How do you think that's gonna it will uh make the productivity of yourself and and your company uh skyrocket, I think, because then you need some only you need to have people talk to the AI and watch if the what the AI delivers is the right stuff, and all the things in between, so the production things the the the the yeah that that's gonna happen with AI, I think. So um what what you need to invest in yourself is to be uh uh yeah, you must be strategic, you must know what you need to deliver to a client to get results, and AI can help you, but you still need to do it yourself because every client is different, every country is different. Um that's also something we uh we are having a lot of uh um clients that have um multiple agents or uh departments in the rest of Europe, and every language is different, every culture is different, and uh you can do a lot of things with AI, but uh you also need to have the human in the loop for the strategy there, because otherwise it's gonna uh gonna fail.

SPEAKER_01 41:40

And even with things like GDPR and you know, uh I know that I remember being at uh uh WordCamp Europe and talking to some of the German companies there, and they're like, dude, WooCommerce is just like at that point, which is not compliant in Germany. It was like like in terms of e-com, there's like so many regulations that it's very specific to Germany, right? And so you know, oh well, I vibe coded it with lovable is not gonna hold up in court, right? That's right.

SPEAKER_02 42:06

Yeah, yeah. So so that that's all and you you also need the human in the loop, I think. Uh um, but for for you for your company, it it means your agency is changing from uh uh production workers to only strategic workers and people who know stuff instead of doing things that they are being told to, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:28

100%. 100%. I when when when WordPress happened, I remember I built my first content management system, I wrote it in PHP and MySQL in Notepad Plus on an old Sony Vio laptop. And then WordPress happened, I was like, holy shit, I can do in half an hour what took me six weeks to build this thing, right? And then uh custom post types happen, right? And then page builders happen. And everyone, I remember when Beaver Builder landed, everyone was like, oh, we're out of a job. Uh no one needs a WordPress developer anymore, right? WordPress has just grown, like WordPress agencies have grown and grown. Then Elementor happened, right? And then click funnels happen, and then now AIs happen. I've been saying this for over 15 years. The most valuable person in the whole ecosystem is the person that sits between the client and the technology.

SPEAKER_02 43:15

Yeah, that's just that's right. And he's he's still gonna sit there because the client doesn't know how to do this and doesn't want to know how it's done. It it just wants results and wants to run its company and not your company.

SPEAKER_01 43:31

Yeah. You're you're working with bigger clients. I I will admit, you are working with, I would say most of the people that I talk to in this space work with small business owners, right? You're working with slightly bigger clients. Yeah. What is what is a lot of people are scared to go after mid market clients because they feel like the stakes are higher. I'm gonna be I'm gonna be charging more, but now there's more responsibility. If you could go back and Talk to a young up-and-comer who's starting an agency and they're in their early 30s and they're just, you know, what's the mindset between dealing with a s a small business and going after a mid-market client? What how did how's it different?

SPEAKER_02 44:15

Yeah, well, uh, actually, there is uh yeah, the difference is that you come with uh uh surgery in front of it. So if you work with smaller companies and we we did it ourselves uh uh a few years ago as well, um you only go for the results. So uh people come for a website, you build a website. People come for uh uh Google Ads, you make Google Ads. And uh now um the change is that you uh first gonna talk to the client. Is that really what you want, or is it you want more clients, or is it uh you want more uh uh workers in your company because there's there's yeah the the the the um you you can't get uh for some some jobs you can't get people here in in the Netherlands or in Europe because they are not enough of it. So that's that would be the problem, but then the solution is not always uh build a website or a web page or uh put some ads online and then uh it's not solved because everyone is doing that. So uh you need to talk with them about the strategy to get more people for that company or get more clients for the company, and you then you find out what the real problem is of that company, and then you're gonna build stuff, and that's the change you have to do. Uh you do a lot more work to get such a client, but after that it's far easier because all the plans are there. You can uh you have less communication about uh what should I write on that website, or do you need this or do you need that? Because it's all in the plans and you only have uh meetings with the client about how it's going, how's the weather outside because because almost running on itself, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:14

Right. And at that point, you at that point you're investing in the relationship with the client, yeah. You're not answering questions like why isn't the thing being done? Because you, you know, with this great saying here, plan the work and then work the plan. Yeah. Right. And a lot of a lot of a a lot of agency owners just are too scared to sell that planning stage, we call it paid discovery. People just don't sell that up front because I don't think people will pay for it, right? But the moment that you sell it up front and the moment that you install that in your agency, you watch a lot, a lot of other things in your agency run smoother, your team is happier, expectations are easier to manage.

SPEAKER_02 46:54

And the client is happier as well and stays for a longer time, and uh and you get more work out of them because they are happier. That that's that's the real thing. And if you all only work with small clients, well, you deliver your website, you will see them mostly for a year and not for a year or two years, and then they come back, something is broke, or they need to change. Yeah, 100%. So much communication, and so you need so much clients then. We have uh uh a pretty small amount of clients, but they are big and it's easy to have them. It's it's very yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:35

I have a steady uh income of work here, and it's recurring revenue rather than just project revenue. Yeah. I I was talking to an agency owner the other day that had 150 clients that he was hosting WordPress websites for, wasn't charging them anything, wasn't even doing care plans, hadn't spoken to any of them about any other services. I'm like, dude, you're sitting on a million dollars a year and easily like pick up the phone and call them, right?

SPEAKER_02 47:59

Like and charge them for hosting and and and for care plans and things like that. Yeah, that's how we started it. And now we're uh uh selling uh a lot of Fabric Ron Gravenu. Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 48:12

Uh hey, I'm respectful of your time and everyone else's time. Uh it's called the Agency Hour Podcast for a reason. I don't want to go over the hour. So I want to thank you so much for spending some time with us here and sharing your story. And also, one thing I love about this is that um, you know, I don't I I want people to understand that it doesn't matter where you live, it doesn't matter what services you're providing, it doesn't matter how long you've been in business, it doesn't matter how old you are. I mean, Renee and I, I mean I I'm 52, you're probably a couple of years older than me, right? Like 57. 57, there you go, right? Like this is and you're still you've still got the mindset that we are valuable to our clients because of AI. Like they our clients are now seeing all this possibility and they still need our help. So uh I'm hoping that this conversation is in has in is is going to inspire one person to just double down and keep going. I think it's a great time to be running an agency. And um I love the fact that I get to talk to people all over the world. It's five o'clock in the or almost six o'clock in the afternoon here where I am in Melbourne. And I love the fact that that our reach is all over the world and that we're having a positive impact on people all over the place. It's a very rewarding uh business for us to be in. So thanks so much for coming and sharing some of your experience with us on the agency hour. And uh I look forward to continuing to work with you. Thank you very much for the for the conversation. Awesome. Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode of the Agency Hour Podcast. Thanks for listening. Subscribe, like, share, do all those wonderful things for us on the algorithm so that we can get this podcast in front of more people. And again, if you've got any questions about running your agency, it's simple. Just email me, Troy at agencymavericks.com. That is my personal email address, and yes, I read every single email that comes in. So, you know, just email me. And a huge shout out and thank you to Renee for spending some time with us. I love the fact that he's in a country that we don't often hear from on podcasts, right? He's like full transparency. He's in the in his 50s like me, right? All we see is these bro marketers in America driving Lambos, man, and like making heaps of bank, right? And I love the fact that we have agencies in Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada, South Africa, South America, Malta, Thailand, the Philippines, the Netherlands, the UK, Scotland. I love the fact that agencies all over the world are benefiting from being a part of this community and learning from each other. And it doesn't matter what services you sell, as long as they're marketing-related services. We have video agencies, we have web design, web development, we have AI agencies, we have content, we have strategy agencies, we've had YouTube growth agencies, podcast growth agencies, right? Social media, short-form reels agencies, right? Whatever you're selling, if you're selling a marketing related service to other businesses, you're in the right place. So, yeah, enjoy the podcast. Send me an email, let me know what you want us to cover, and let's make 2026 your best year yet. I'm Troy Dean, let's get to work.