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The Agency Hour
The MavCon Experience with Emily Bryant, CEO of Agency Mavericks
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We have a limited amount of tickets available. So really the right person for that is someone who is looking to grow and scale with their agency and just be around like-minded people. Like you mentioned before, a huge part of the event is that community aspect and the networking and making connections. And I know I've already heard multiple stories about people who attended Mavcon now doing some work together.
SPEAKER_00Welcome to the Agency Hour Podcast. This week we're joined by none other than the CEO of Agency Mavericks, Emily Bryant. That's right. She is the CEO of my company. In this episode, we discuss why Emily became my boss as CEO of Agency Mavericks, Mavcon, which is our live in-person mastermind event that recently happened on the Gold Coast, and how our team was able to pivot the schedule and still run a successful event for our clients at the last minute when I fell sick with the flu and spent two days in bed. We also talk about what you can expect from our next Mavcon event, which is happening in October in Virginia on the east coast of the United States. And also we touch on the upcoming high-level summit, uh, which will be happening the week after Mavcon in Dallas, Texas, which I'm speaking at. I'm very excited about that. I'm Troy Dean. Stay with us. All right, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the agency hour, our CEO here at Agency Mavericks, Emily Bryant. Hey Emily, how are you doing?
SPEAKER_02I'm fantastic. How are you?
SPEAKER_00I'm great. Thanks for joining us on the show.
SPEAKER_02Oh, it's my pleasure. It's about time I hopped on one of these.
SPEAKER_00For those that don't know, uh some people may not be aware of this, but you are actually the boss here at Agency Mavericks these days.
SPEAKER_02I am. I am. So it's it's fun. I still try and sometimes refer to you as my boss, but really it's probably the other way around. Uh but it's great. Just yeah, really excited. We've got an amazing team here and love our team and and love our community.
SPEAKER_00So just to clarify this for everyone, because I know some people might be scratching their head while they're listening to this, um, is that I own the company, I'm 100% shareholder and I'm the director of the company, but I'm no longer the CEO. Emily is the CEO and makes all the decisions and does the hiring and the firing and works out what we're going to do next. And maybe you can just share your experience as to why we made this decision back in so you were appointed CEO first of July, so you're almost at the end of your first twelve months. But we you and I had been talking about it since kind of February or March that year. Why did why did we make this decision from your perspective?
SPEAKER_02Well, I think a huge part of that of course was you wanting to step back in terms of doing more of that of the work that you love doing, more content and not being so much in the day-to-day. Because it's a busy space being in the day-to-day running of a business. And I'm very operational. So I was stepping into that space a lot, having done a bit of work in the marketing side of the business as well. And I think it just was a bit of a natural progression, really. I was wanting to take more on, really enjoyed it, was starting to lead the team a lot more, and it it just made a lot of sense.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, you were you were essentially doing the the job from January 2022 through to, you know, by the end of March, April, I was like, okay, well, you know, I just don't need to be here. Um, I was pretty burnt out by the end of 2021, and I remember calling you and on on the Sunday saying, I'm I'm not coming back to work tomorrow. I was supposed to come back to work on the 10th of January 2022, and I'm like, I'm not coming back to work tomorrow, I'm taking another couple of weeks because I'm cooked. And then when I did come back, I was like, I'm just gonna come back on light duties, I'm just gonna, you know, hover around the peripheral and um kind of see what happens and make special comments from the sidelines, but I don't really want to be involved too much. And then, yeah, so by the end of March, early April, it became pretty apparent to me that you were capable of doing the job, and also I just really didn't the best thing for the company, I just didn't want to do the job anymore. I've been doing it for over 10 years, and I just didn't want to do it anymore. And also, I just I just realised that I wasn't the best person for the job. I'm not detail oriented these days, I'm more kind of high-level big picture stuff, and my sweet spot is really content creation, creating frameworks, coaching, presenting live events, which we'll talk about in a sec, and you know, kind of managing people and building the team and all that kind of stuff. I was just kind of done with it. And so I I for me it was like the best thing for the company and the best thing for our customers is to hand the reins over to someone who's got the energy and the hunger and the desire to really do this because I yeah, I was just sort of burnt out and wanted to get back into my sweet spot, which has been great for me because you know I'm now just doing the stuff that I love doing. I'm working less and we're growing. Yes, we've we've had our we're having our best year ever. So uh, you know, it's very exciting. Our team's changed dramatically, it's been a massive year of restructuring for us. And um, and it's funny, we're all kind of reading the 10x is easier than 2x book at the moment by Dan Sullivan and and the other gentleman, Dr. whatever his name is.
SPEAKER_02Um can't remember that off the top of the day.
SPEAKER_00Um Brayden Harvey or something? Ben yeah, anyway. Um and and they talk about kind of letting go of the 80% that you're currently doing that's not that's holding you back, right? And that is, you know, there's a lot of stuff that we continue to do in life and in business just because it's comfortable and it's routine. But if we're honest with ourselves, it's kind of holding us back. And just focusing on the 20% that is going to allow you to, you know, make that next 10x jump or and you know, the whole 10x thing, no no one's actually saying you have to 10x your results, right? But if you think about doubling your results, you'll just continue to do more of the same of what you're doing. Whereas if you start to think about how you can 10x your results, you realize there's a whole bunch of stuff that you just need to stop doing and let go of. And uh, and that's been, I think, for me anyway, um, we're continuing to do that, we're continuing to kind of go through that that cycle and big restructures to the team. We have less team members now. Um our numbers have changed dramatically. We have more coaches now. We're not selling courses on the website anymore. There's been big changes over the last 12 months, and so uh thank you for navigating all those changes and helping us get through those, you know, times and giving us our best year ever. Well done.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. Appreciate it. Couldn't do it without you and the team, though. But it's it has been a team effect.
SPEAKER_00Cool. So we we also wanted to spend a little bit of time today talking about MavCon, which is our live event that we run three times a year for our mastermind members. And uh you you we were doing these in-person pre-COVID, and then COVID happened, of course, and we were doing them virtually uh using a platform called AirMeet, which was great, but it's you can't beat in-person. So last September we went back out to San Diego and ran our first in-person event post-COVID, and then we ran a virtual event in February, and then we just went up to the Gold Coast here in Australia and ran a live event a couple of weeks ago for our Mavericks Club members, which was awesome. However, on the I I flew in on the Saturday, we had this whole schedule lined up, and I flew in on the Saturday, and um by about 11 o'clock Sunday morning, I was in bed with the flu. And there I stayed for Monday. I did not attend the event at all on Monday, which threw a massive spanner in the works. What was going on? It was the first time I met Anna, Anna had flown over from New Zealand, first time um Anna had met Max. So it was a great team building exercise. I was really looking forward to meeting everyone at the cocktail drinks on the Sunday. I was upstairs in bed, I couldn't move, I was so sick. What was going on for you guys knowing that I was out of action and not available?
SPEAKER_02Well, first of all, probably a little bit of denial. Like we're like, it'll be fine, it will be he'll be back, it won't be a problem. And then really it was hoping for the best, of course, and by that stage we'd been or Anna had kind of been like your mum and helping you and getting you medicine and coffee and whatever you needed, and then it was when we were at the cocktail party, and it was a shame because people were so excited to meet you because it were quite a few of our clients that had to meet you in person because of not having back at live events. So during the cocktail party, I could there was a bit of noise going on and what's wrong? And then we were wondering you know, did you have COVID? We had to get you some tips, and then it was starting to realize he might not be around tomorrow for the opening event and the full schedule. So there was a lot of what's our plan B going to be, and we're very, very fortunate to have the amazing Simon Kelly at the event as well. He floated in on the Sunday night, so got up very early on Monday morning. Luckily, I was still on New Zealand time, which helped gave me a little bit of extra time in the morning, and we reject the whole schedule. And Simon helped me to open the event, and we also had some amazing clients step up and help host some of the sessions as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Matt Jones did a great job stepping up on stage, interviewing some people and uh and filling in. And I I mean, I was just I just had to radically surrender. I was just like, I just cannot get out of bed. I had the sweats, I had the chills, I was aching, I had a fever, I could barely get out of bed to go to the bathroom. I was just like curled up in bed, just going, This is horrible. I cannot believe this has happened, but there's absolutely nothing I can do about it. Except and I was getting messages up from people in Slack, and a couple of um uh clients had my my mobile number and I was getting some text messages going, You okay, what's going on? And and uh I was like, Yeah, I'm not I'm not nervous, I'm not having an anxiety attack, I'm actually really sick. This is not the man flu, this is the actual flu. I'm really sick.
SPEAKER_02Oh, we were saying to people, because you we were delivering things to your door, and we're like, no, he is sick, he looks terrible. The room is completely black, it's hot in there, it's it was awful, it was awful.
SPEAKER_00And then and the Tuesday, I managed to drag my ass out of bed on the Tuesday and come down to the event for a couple of hours, and uh Anna had the hotel come into my room and basically nuke my room, like spray it down with like radioactive spray and get rid of all the germs and remake the bed, which was really great. Anna was amazing, she was amazing, she but she nursed me through that really. She turned up at my door with bananas and coffee and medicine and rat tests and everything I needed. Um, and uh so huge shout out to the team for just pivoting on the spot and getting through that and delivering an amazing event. And then I came down on the Tuesday morning and made an appearance. It was, you know, that really helped me. I got I got worse after that, by the way. But uh but it did it help it kind of helped me. I don't know how I don't know how I got, I don't know how to this. I'm reflecting on it now. I don't know how I went down there on the Tuesday and got up on stage and did that presentation.
SPEAKER_02But in the You were re-energized. We could literally see your energy coming back because you love doing that so much.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it was. It did really, it did really re-energise me. And seeing all my c seeing all our customers in person, like seeing Matt Jones and Angie Neal and Peter Wright, who in who said hello to me in the hallway and I didn't recognise him. Um you know, um uh Sam from actual marketing, meeting all of our customers in real life, uh Braden Davy, it was just, you know, uh Beth and Peril was just a huge because you see we see these people on Zoom all the time. Uh we interact them, interact with them in Slack on a daily basis, but to actually meet them in real life and get to know them was you just can't you can't compete. You can't compete with uh with in-person events. So what were some of the takeaways? Just kind of set the scene a little bit for those that have never been to one of our live events. What um what's the kind of format? What's the room look like? What's uh what what are sort of some of the key takeaways?
SPEAKER_02Sure. So we do always start with a welcome event. So it was really lovely on the Sunday night to start to meet some of the clients in a a social setting, and we ended up going out to dinner a few of us. So that was amazing just to get them to know them on a personal level. And then on the Monday morning, of course, it's the registration and getting your lanyard and your your agency metrics cat and all that fun stuff. Uh and then opening the doors, and you know, we've got a wonderful setup, so huge shout out to Max and the audio team for getting everything set up with all the cameras and everything and lots of you know tables in there for people to come and hang out. You know, we think a lot of I'm very detail-oriented. So we think we've got a lot. So all the tables had plenty of plugs because obviously in our space you always have your laptop with you. So it's it's important. And it's we also had uh amazing sponsors from E2M in person. So they had a a booth at the back of the room. And yeah, it's a great setup in there.
SPEAKER_00They'd flown in from India too. The E2M, our sponsors, who we'll talk a little bit more about in a moment. They'd flown, three of them had flown in from India. It was their first, two of them was their first time in Australia, including Manish, the founder. He was just he was like a kid in a candy store, wasn't he? He was so excited to be there. He was just so happy to be there. Um, the other thing, one of the other details I want to mention about our live events is we I've been to plenty of live events where they just cram you in like sardines, and especially if it's a pitch fest, right? Our events, there's there's no pitching at our events because people who come to our events are typically already paying clients or they're about to become paying clients. So there's no selling from the stage. We don't have guest speakers pitching their programs, there's no run to the back of the room and sign up, there's none of that bullshit at our events. Uh, some of those live events that I've been to, they cram you in like sardines. They're just like um there's theatre style set up, which is just seats in rows, so that you don't even have a table to put your notebooks or your notebook or your laptop on. Then there's classroom style, which is just chairs and tables in rows, so you're just looking at the back of someone's head in front of you. And then there's banquet style, which is what we do, which is round tables. So you're sitting at a table with six or seven other people, but you're looking at each other and you're connecting with each other and networking and talking to each other throughout the day. Now, I will just tell you that cost us more money to do it that way because we need a bigger room because we don't want to cram people in like sardines. We want to have plenty of space in the room. In fact, we moved the room a week before the event. We were in a different room in the hotel, and when I saw the photos, I flagged it and said, this room's a bit small for the number of people we've got. And so the hotel moved us into a different room at the last minute. Thankfully, they had availability because I wanted more space. Um, and that's really important because I think it's, you know, one of the most one of the most powerful things that happens at these events, as much as I would like to say that it's all about the content and the presenters and the speakers, it's actually about the connections and the community. You know, we were talking to Peter Wright the other day on the phone uh after the event, just getting a bit of a download from him, and he said one of the things that he didn't expect was the networking with the other agencies. He said that was amazing just to be able to talk to other agencies who are in a similar place to him, who have solved similar problems and are going through a similar journey. And you don't get to have those conversations unless you're sitting in a round table environment and networking and workshopping with each other. So that's one of the details that we're really particular about. We'll never cram people in like sardines. And the other thing that we're really particular about is the food, is making sure that wherever we go, because I've been to so many events where you go out and you quickly grab a sandwich and you come back in and then you pass out because you're in a carb coma. Uh, and so we always try and make sure that um the food that's available, sometimes we feed some of our customers, sometimes we don't, sometimes our sponsors take them out for dinner. Like E2M surprised us on the day and decided to take everyone out for dinner on the Monday night, which was great. Uh, but we always try and make sure that the food is, you know, healthy and lean and conducive to uh you know being awake and thinking. So there's a lot of thought and a lot of detail that goes into planning these events.
SPEAKER_02Not to mention the coffee.
SPEAKER_00That's yes, that's right. Coffee is also very important. And of course, these events. So I do want to talk about E2M a little bit. These events are not would not be possible without our sponsors, right? Because these events are expensive to hire hotel rooms, to fly our team in, to set up all the AV stuff. Uh, I mean, we have two televisions in the room, two big 75-inch televisions in the room so that people can see the slides. I think those things cost us a couple of grand each just for the event, right? So there's headsets, there's microphones, there's um lighting, there's multiple cameras set up. We record the event so that we put the recording up in the members portal for our members for those that live overseas and can't make the event, for example, or those that just want to go and re-watch the recordings, like Mike Spratt, who like watches everything we do multiple times. Um, so all that shit costs a lot of money. And uh we decided a few years ago, we'd been doing Mavcon for a few years and we didn't have any sponsors, and then we decided a few years ago to open it up to sponsorship because it's such a targeted, intimate community that there's not there aren't hundreds or thousands of people at these events, right? There are dozens of people at these events. But if for the right sponsor to get in front of these people, they are the perfect targeted audience and it's a very intimate setting. So you get lots of time talking with attendees. You're not on stage pitching, you get lots of time just hanging out, talking to people and helping them solve their problems, and it's great for relationship building. So E2M, who are a white label dev agency based in India, they have about 180 staff, they've been going for about 10 years. They are founded and run by a guy called Manish, who's just an absolute legend. I went out and had dinner with him while I was up there, even though I was quite sick. We managed to go out and have dinner. And he and I, well, I mean, you know this, we're just in such alignment with our values and um how you know what we feel about the agency community and how we believe in agencies and and we're all here to serve them. But we do different things. We educate and we coach these guys, do white labeled dev services. So E2M came along and sponsored the event. They flew, as I said, three of them flew out from India to be there at the event. They closed a bunch of business at the event, which was amazing. Bunch of our customers are like, Well, I've been afraid to grow because I don't have the capacity to take on any more clients, and now I've got a relationship with E2M, not only a relationship with E2M, but a relationship with Manish, the founder, that I know I can get on a call with these guys and I'm gonna get the best of the best, and I've now got the extra capacity to take on extra projects. So it was very lucrative for the sponsor, it was very uh beneficial and lucrative for our clients, and it helped us put on a great event. So, you know, it's a win-win-win, which was awesome. Um, in other news, we can announce now that yesterday we signed an exclusive sponsorship deal with E2M for the podcast. So moving forward, not this episode, but moving forward, you will get to know more about E2M and Manish. He will be on the podcast throughout the year. They are sponsoring every episode of the podcast for the next year exclusively. They're the only sponsor that we're having on the podcast. So we are so excited about this.
SPEAKER_01Very excited.
SPEAKER_00Very excited because it, you know, once we help agencies grow their recurring revenue and get their sales dialed in, the next problem they have is delivery and fulfillment. And so having a partner like E2M who can help them with white label, development, design, SEO, really, you know, care plan management, all that stuff really helps us get our clients plugged into that ecosystem so that they can continue to grow and not worry about the capacity issues. So we're very, very excited to have E2M on as a sponsor and very grateful to Manish and the team there for believing in what we're doing here and and buying into it long term. It's it's super exciting.
SPEAKER_02And just to add to that too, Manish spoke on stage and was interviewed by Matt Jones, one of our Mavericks, and it was only meant to be a half-hour session, and they kept going for I think it was an hour and a half in the end, because Manish just has a wonderful story and has grown an amazing team. Yeah, and people learned a huge amount from what he's been doing. So that is part of what people share on this podcast going forward as well. Is you know, Manish has a an amazing team culture and a really epic building that they work out of as well. So there's a lot that this audience can can learn from Danish about growing a large team.
SPEAKER_00100% 180 staff and uh been doing it for over 10 years. White label development and SEO and design for agencies. That's their entire business model. They focus on WordPress. Um, they do are looking at other platforms, um, but their their core focus at the moment is building WordPress websites, doing SEO care plan management, doing some design work. Um, and I mean 180 staff just I'm exhausted just thinking about it. Like, how do you manage that? But they've done an amazing job. And the other team members, I can't remember their names, but the other team members he had with them were just super awesome as well. They're just they were just so excited to be there and so energetic and enthusiastic. So uh looking forward to having Manish on the show more over the coming uh year or so. Um, I think we should probably talk about uh Mavcon in October, right?
SPEAKER_02Yes, we're flying out to the US, right?
SPEAKER_00So we're coming to the States, we're coming to the United States of America in October for our next live event, MavCon, which will be Mavcon number 15 or 16, I think.
SPEAKER_02I think so.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So we started at the start of 2018, and I think we did two that year. We did one in San Diego and one in Thailand, and then I think we've done three every year since. So 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023. So I think 16 actually was was Gold Coast. So I think this will be 17 in um in where are we doing it? In Virginia?
SPEAKER_02Yes, yeah, just out of Washington. So can't wait. The hometown of one of our coaches, Johnny Flash. Johnny Flash. Yeah, we've so excited. We've got some amazing surprises. I think there's even some surprises that we're keeping back from you, Troy.
SPEAKER_00Oh, really? Wow. Is there is there a are the Foo Fighters coming to play at the MavCon? Oh my god, that would be amazing. I mean, I'd just have Dave Grohl in his guitar, frankly. I mean, I'd just have Dave Grohl on stage asking him questions. I love that man so much. He's amazing. Um, so this is this is also our interestingly, this is our first MavCon on the east coast of the States, which is very exciting. So anyone in that whole kind of Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Washington, Virginia area, Maryland, no excuses now. We're coming to the East Coast, uh, Atlanta, anyone around that whole area, come up to Virginia in October. What are the dates?
SPEAKER_02Uh, they are the 16th to the 18th of October. Hopefully I've got that right. But middle of the month, it's the week before the high level summit. So we've timed that nicely.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So the so the Go High Level, uh, which is a software that we use and recommend um sales and marketing automation CRM for agencies to resell to their clients. Uh, if by the way, if you want to check that out, gohighlevel.com/slash troydean, I think is the link. You can go and check that out. You get a 30-day trial instead of a 14-day trial. Uh, and you also get our snapshot loaded into your high level account with all our fancy automation set up for you. They're having their live event at the end of October, the 21st through the 25th or something around about those dates, in uh Texas, which I've never been to, in Dallas, Texas, right? So excited. Man, I like I'm gonna go to the Grassy Knoll. Oh, me too.
SPEAKER_02It's only a 20 minutes walk from the hotel. I've already looked it up.
SPEAKER_00That's incredible. So I spent, I did like a whole study in uh high school on the assassination of JFK. I was completely obsessed with uh with that whole thing. So that's gonna be exciting. I'm speaking at the high level summit too, which is awesome.
SPEAKER_02Um we'll have them at our event as well the week before. We'll have a couple of their team members at our event as well.
SPEAKER_00So we're running Mavcon the week before, 16, 17, 18 in Virginia. Then we've got a couple of days off. I think we might sneak up to Manhattan and have a bit of fun for a couple of days, and then down to Dallas, Texas for the high-level summit, which is very exciting. Um who is the right attendee for Mavcon? Because we do sell tickets to Mavcon for people who are not in Mavericks Club, right?
SPEAKER_02Correct. We have a limited amount of tickets available. So really the right person for that is someone who is looking to grow and scale with their agency and just be around like-minded people, like you mentioned before. A huge part of the event is that community aspect and the networking and making connections. And I know I've already heard multiple stories about people who attended MEVCON doing some work together and referring. And we also one thing we didn't forget to mention before is the third day of MEVCON is what we call implementation day. And that we do a few Pomodorous sprints and people get a lot of work done and put into action what they've learned over the prior two days because there's nothing worse than going home from a conference with all these ideas and then they just go on the shelf and you don't actually get around to implementing.
SPEAKER_00100%. You just got this massive to-do list of stuff that's never going to get done. The other thing I just want to say on that is, you know, not kind of uh talking ourselves up too much, but that third day, implementation day, again, it's just a sunk cost for us, right? This is why the sponsorship's so important because that third day, the reason we did that is because I I was sick of going to these live events and then going home with a workbook full of ideas and not actually getting anything done because you just get caught up in the business. So I wanted that third day of just getting stuff implemented and getting the m needle moving in the right direction. So one MavCom, we just said, look, let's just book the room for a third day, take all the PA system away and the stage and all the fancy stuff, and we'll just hang out in the room and get work done. And so now it's become a thing. Day three is implementation day. Sunk cost for us. There's we don't recoup anything on that day three. Uh, you know, it's just thousands of dollars that we spend to make sure that we've got a space for that third day that we can get stuff done. So um uh and it's yeah, and that's really where the networking, the community s starts to happen because people start to collaborate on that on that day and go, cool, well, I need to do this, you need to do that, let's work together. And a lot of cool things happen on day three.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's a great day.
SPEAKER_00So if you are potentially uh if you're in this space and you are potentially looking to sponsor an event like Mavcon, we are open to talking about sponsorship for our event in Virginia in October. If you know of anyone who you think might be a good sponsor, please send them to us. Um, probably support at agencymavericks.com is the best way to get hold of us. Um, or you can just, you know, find me on Messenger and ping me. Um if you're in the software hosting uh space uh and web agencies are your web design digital agencies are your target, then this is a perfect event for you. Feel free to reach out and have a conversation with us because we do have some sponsorship slots available. And we've also just published um a video with Manish speaking at our event in the Gold Coast a couple of weeks ago talking about uh the benefits of being a sponsor and and why he's so committed to continuing to sponsor our events. They again are sponsoring Mavcon in October, so they will be there, but we do have some slots available. Previous sponsors include Go WP, My Web Audit.
SPEAKER_02Well, they're they'll be a sponsor for October as well. So My Web Audit are our broadcast sponsors, so they they really help enable us to record and publish these amazing events for our members who come back. Perfect.
SPEAKER_00Awesome. Uh two Mageddon have also been a sponsor in the past. Um so yeah, if you're in this space and you're looking to target web agencies, feel free to reach out and have a conversation with us about sponsorship. Uh any other takeaways from Mavcon? What did we learn from Mavcon and the Gold Coast?
SPEAKER_02Always have a plan B. I mean, obviously with organizing events, there's things that always come up. And I've been around event management for a long time, and there's always curveballs. We didn't really expect the massive curveball of you being completely out and sick. So we were very adaptable, and it was just amazing to still be able to put on such a wonderful, wonderful event, thanks to the people that were in the room and able to step up and help.
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah, and a huge shout out to Simon Kelly and Anna and yourself, Emily and Max and the whole team for just pivoting on the spot and and just you know, like not getting stuck, just going, well, the show must go on regardless. So we just need to get up on stage and talk. And a huge shout out to Matt Jones, too, he's one of our clients in Mavericks Club. He also runs a podcast called uh The Sight Shed, uh, where he he runs a podcast to help tradies with their marketing, and he runs a web agency and a digital agency called Tradey Web Guys, and so he's pretty co he's pretty comfortable in front of the camera and behind the microphone, you know. So he just jumped up on stage and interviewed Manish and Addison as well.
SPEAKER_01And Addison, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And the other thing I learned from Avcon is that Matt Jones is nowhere near as grumpy in real life as he is on Zoom on the coaching calls.
SPEAKER_02It was so great to connect with other person. I mean, so many clients.
SPEAKER_00I totally get him now. He's like he's not grumpy at all. He's just very driven and very motivated and uh very direct with his communication, which is great because at least you know where you stand. Hey, the other thing that I think we need to mention is that we have just we're growing our team here and we have just hired another what we call agency navigator, which is essentially a client success coach, to dial in more of our one-on-one accountability coaching. So tell us how we found Jane Jones.
SPEAKER_02Yes, so it's funny how you find people when they end up being in Melbourne, not too far from the studio. So it wasn't an international search. So we worked with Alexis, who is our essentially our fraction of office manager. Um, absolutely amazing. And her and her team ran the recruitment process for us after we had, of course, put together the job scorecard and outlined the type of person that we were looking for. And her team feet everyone. Then Anna and I reviewed the applicants, and there's a few processes within that, including a loom video from the candidate, which is very important. It does make a huge difference in any sort of recruitment process. Uh we had an amaz we had honestly, we were so lucky we had amazing people. Is that a tough choice? Uh, but we're really excited to to bring Jane onto the team.
SPEAKER_00Uh Jane has actually been doing this role in another coaching company in a different vertical, different industry. And so she's very experienced at this, and she's just joined us this week. She's been hanging out on some coaching calls and kind of getting to know what we do and getting to know our customers. And I'm really excited about this because, you know, one of the things that we've learned over the last few years, particularly through COVID, I think, is that one-on-one accountability and coaching is the most valuable thing we can do for our clients. It's also really hard to scale because you know, we just you need to find really good talent to put in front of your clients. You can't just have any old Joe turn up and run a one-on-one coaching call with your clients. And so good talent's hard to find, and then you need to train them up and get them to understand the way that we think. Um, so Anna's been doing a bit of that as agency navigator here, and she's been doing a great job. And it was great for her to meet a lot of our customers at Mavcon. Jane's now come on board, which is awesome. Um, and I'm really excited about this so that we can continue to, you know, a lot of coaching companies are actually removing one-on-one support and they're trying to scale to the moon by, you know, just putting curriculum in a member's website and running group calls and not actually helping clients with specific application of the information. And we're doing the opposite. We're dialing up the one-on-one accountability and support because we know that's what helps clients get uh the best results, which is kind of why we killed all the courses on our website as well. It's like, you know, the courses as as much as the courses are good and we still reference the courses in our programs, what we've realized is that if you buy the wrong course at the wrong time, it can just slow you down. Um, you know, the coach's job really is to, and and the client success coach's job really is to make sure that you're you've got access to the right training at the right time based on your flight plan and what you're working on right now and that you're focused and that you're not distracted by a shiny widget. So um, yeah, I just wanted to kind of make that point and kind of put, you know, underline that point that there is lots of one-on-one coaching here for our members, and it's not, you know, hey, here, go and do the course and the members' website and jump on a call once a week with, you know, 40 other people and try and get your questions answered. That um there's lots of hand holding because that's what we know helps get our clients the best results. So very excited that we're growing that part of our team. Me too. Awesome. Um what are you looking forward to over the next 12 months? Didn't prep you for this question.
SPEAKER_02Oh no, that's okay. I've been thinking about this a lot though. Obviously, Mavcon in October will be my first time in the US, so that's gonna be exciting.
SPEAKER_00I can't believe that.
unknownI I know.
SPEAKER_00Wow, it might be a little bit of a struggle being away from the I'm gonna get you so wasted into Manhattan you won't recognise yourself. That's gonna be fantastic.
SPEAKER_02Oh Max will be there to look after me. No, tequila is like one thing that I cannot do.
SPEAKER_00Same dude, I can't do tequila either. I can't I did too much tequila on Great Keppel Island once and I cannot go to the.
SPEAKER_02Oh, my um yes, that was my drink of choice at my 21st and never.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah, don't trust Max to look after you, by the way. He'll lead you, he will he'll lead you astray, my God.
SPEAKER_02Anna, I'll I'll trust Anna. So definitely looking forward to that. Also looking forward to you know, we haven't actually done this for a while because our team is in all sorts of different time zones, but we're planning in July to finally all get together. It will be on a Zoom call. Hopefully, at some stage we'll get back to having our team retreats in person as well. But really looking forward to doing that in July as we come up to the end of the financial year in Australia. It's you know, like you mentioned before, it's been our biggest year. So looking forward to celebrating with the team. There's a lot of new faces around the team, and not everyone's connected due to being in different time zones. So really looking forward to that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. We've got so Alexis is kind of fractional ops manager, we've got Bogdan who's fractional sales manager, we've got Seb who's just come on as fractional CMO. Um, yeah, like it feels like the team is has changed so much in the last three months, even that it's very it's very exciting. Brett's now in sales, uh Andres is in sales, and Cade. And Cade, that's right. Yeah, so it's a very exciting, uh very exciting time, and I'm very much I'm glad that I'm not fucking sick anymore. Oh my god, that's so boring. Oh, I hate being sick. Anyway, um thank God for penicillin, it's a miracle drug and it works. Um so I'm looking forward to getting back into it and and uh getting re-energized and spending the next another 12 months helping agencies grow and achieve what they want to achieve. And I still think, you know, as as problematic as the agency business model is, which it is, it has its problems. Any kind of client services business model definitely has its problems. But I still think that the agency is the unsung hero of the economy behind every great small business is a great agency running great campaigns. And I still think, and I know in my heart of hearts, that there is a way to scale an agency model without booning out. I have a little bit of spare time on my hands now because you're running the show here. So I've started growing my own little kind of side hustle. I'm just taking on a handful of clients. It's it's kind of more consulting, less agency kind of work. Um, but I'm very, you know, I wish if I was starting an agency right now, you know, I wish that I'd I when I started my agency, I wish I had access to this community, is what I'm trying to say, because I just made so many freaking mistakes, as we all did. Um, you know, you end up trying to scale chaos and just being around the people that we've got on our team now and the coaches and the methodology that we've that we've adopted and what we're teaching. I wish I had this back in 2008 when I started out, it just would have fast-tracked my results and would have caused me, you know, would have solved a lot of headaches. So super exciting to be here. Thank you so much for joining us on the Agency Hour. Emily Bryant, our CEO. Uh, we'll have you back on the show at some point for sure.
SPEAKER_02Sounds great.
SPEAKER_00Hey, thanks for tuning into the Agency Hour podcast, and a massive thanks to Emily Bryant for joining us. It's been incredible to witness you take control of the company, and I can honestly say that our team is stronger, more confident, and most importantly, more profitable than ever, which is not only great for us, but we've been able to reach and help more clients as well. All right, folks, don't forget to subscribe and please share this with anyone who you think may need to hear it. Now, are you getting paid to close clients or are you still wasting time giving away your intellectual property for free and then writing proposals and hoping for the best? That model is outdated and broken. You should be getting paid to close new clients. If you'd like to chat with our team about how you can get paid to close, click the link beneath this episode and let's get to work.