Transcript
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Hey there, this is James Carberry, founder of sweet fish media and one
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of the CO hosts of the show. For the last year and a half
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I've been working on my very first
book. In it I share the three
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part framework we've used as the foundation
for our growth here at sweetfish. Now
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there are lots of companies that have
raised a bunch of money and have grown
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insanely fast. We've talked to a
lot of them on the show. We've
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decided to bootstrap our business, which
usually equates to really slow growth, but
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using the strategy outlined in the book, we're on pace to be one of
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inks fastest growing companies in two thousand
and twenty. The book is called content
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based networking, how to instantly connect
with anyone you want to know, and
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I'm thrilled to tell you that the
book has officially launched. If you're a
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fan of audio books, like me, you can find the book on audible,
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or if you like physical books,
you can find it on Amazon.
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Just search content based networking or James
Carberry. That's car bea ARY, inaudible
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or Amazon and it should pop right
up. If you're listening to this between
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January seven and January ten, you
can snag the kindle version of the book
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for just ninety nine cents. All
right, let's get into the show.
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Hey, there everybody, drew McLellan
here from Agency Management Institute. Welcome to
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another episode of the agency track on
BB growth. Super excited to be your
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host on this track. Thanks to
James and the rest of the crew at
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sweet fish for inviting me to do
this. I love talking about agency stuff,
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so it's great to have a channel
like this where I can have these
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conversations with you. So, if
you're not familiar with Ami, we've been
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around since the S and our job
is to help agency owners run their business
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better. So we don't teach you
how to do your client facing work,
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but we do help you learn the
best practices around running the business of your
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business better. So whether we're talking
about finance and metrics to know whether or
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not you're financially healthy, whether we're
in making sure that you are getting the
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twenty percent profit at the end of
every year like we recommend, whether we
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are talking about how to handle the
employee turnover you're having, those are the
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kinds of issues that we talk about
a D Ami. I have all kinds
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of workshops and live events and coaching
and all kinds of other stuff that we
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do. We work with about two
hundred and fifty agencies a year and we've
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been around since the S, so
we certainly know the agency space. In
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addition to doing that work, one
of the other reasons why we know the
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agency space is every one of us
that works at Ami still actively owns and
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runs their own agencies. So we
are in the trenches just like you are,
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and we're just sharing best practices from
the industry. So anyway, that's
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what we do all day. So
what I want to talk about today is
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agency positioning. So this is an
age old issue and question. I probably
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talk to an agency owner about this
every single week and for many agency owners
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they struggle. You know that you
should position yourself, you know you should
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differentiate yourself. The same speech you
give your clients about not looking and sounding
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the same as everybody else out there, you know applies to you as well.
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But it is much more difficult to
do when you're talking about your own
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business than it is the clarity that
you have when you're looking at someone else's
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business. So I want to talk
a little bit about all of that.
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So you know what the problem is. The problem is that when you introduce
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yourself as a full service integrated agency, which is how you all, by
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the way, introduce yourselves, then
all of a sudden you sound like everybody
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else. You are the General Practitioner
and, as I have often said,
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here's the deal with being the general
practitioner. It's very limiting in terms of
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who you can serve, both in
terms of the kinds of businesses and the
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geography. So no one's going to
drive by five general practitioners to get to
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the airport to get on a plane
to go see a general practitioner and another
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city. But man, if I
want to see the brain surgeon at Mayo,
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I absolutely will drive by several hospitals
to get to the airport to fly
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to Rochester, Minnesota, to go
to Mayo Clinic and talk to that specialist.
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And that's what position is really all
about. It is do you want
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to be the general practitioner or do
you want to be the specialist? And
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I will say to you that you
know what's a best practice for your business.
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So I'm going to talk to you
about some of your options, but
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honestly, you already know what to
do. The real question is do you
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have the courage to do it?
Because one of the reasons why, and
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by the way, this is great
insight for you in terms of your clients,
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one of the reasons why you don't
want to specialize is because you think
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you're leaving money on the table,
and I'm going to argue with you that
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actually, the more specialized you are, the more attractive you are to prospects,
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the more clients come knocking on your
door rather than you going to them,
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and typically the more profitable those clients
are. When you serve the butcher
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and the baker and the candlestick maker, it is harder to make money and
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all those different industries. IS EASIER
TO BE SUPER SMART About one industry or
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one area of specialty rather than trying
to be smart about every business. The
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other part of specialist versus General Practitioner
that you need to think about is from
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the clients perspective. When you are
hiring an agency and you are the director
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of communications or the VP of marketing, here's what's going on in your head.
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Your what's going on in your head
is, if I get this wrong,
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I'm going to lose my job,
and we know that's true. We
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see what the short tenure is of
CMOS. So understand the risk that they
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take when they hire an agency.
So in their mind, in many cases
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they can't afford to hire a general
practitioner. They need to hire someone with
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a depth of knowledge that is some
sort of a guarantee that this agency is
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going to be good at what they
do, so that the client not only
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saves their job but maybe even gets
a raised or a promotion. So that's
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their mindset is I need to find
someone selfishly that helps me keep my job
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and helps me do my job well, and that's one of the reasons why
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specialists are so attractive. Every client
believes, and you've heard them say this
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over and over and over again.
Well, that may be true for this
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business or this industry, but my
business is different. They all think their
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business is unique and that you have
to have you have to have a special
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lens to understand their business. If
you have a depth of expertise in the
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category that they work in, the
audience they serve, the part of the
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country that they exist in. If
you have one of those niches, all
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of a sudden they afford you credit
for being able to be more helpful to
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them. So we just came out
of the field in the last couple months
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with some great research. Every year
Ami partners with a company called Audience Audit
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and we do well, we all
the agency edge research series. So since
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two thousand and fourteen, we have
gone out in the field every year and
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we have talked to people who hire
agencies, CMOS, business owners, vpiece
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of marketing, and we've talked to
them about different aspects of their relationship with
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agencies. And this year one of
the things we talked about with over a
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thousand individuals who hire, who are
actively working with agencies today, is we
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ask them about the proximity of their
agency. So how close in terms of
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geography is your agency and how much
does that matter? And I will tell
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you that over in some cases sixty
four percent. I'm going to give you
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the numbers by by budget in a
minute, but in some cases over sixty
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four percent of them said I choose
an agency that is more than two hundred
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miles away and the reason I choose
them is because they have a subject matter
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expertise that I value. So take
this into account if you want to work
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with clients under that have a budget
of under two hundred and fifty thousand dollars
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a year, only twenty three percent
of those worked with agencies that were more
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than two hundred miles away. When
you get to the quarter of a million
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to a million is over fifty percent
of them work with agencies that are over
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two hundred miles away. A million
to ten million, sixty three and ten
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million plus sixty four percent. So, depending on your agency size, depending
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on how how you're built, depending
on the kind of clients that you want,
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understand that, unless you are always
working with clients that have budgets of
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two hundred and fifty thousand dollars or
less, most of them, at least
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half of them in every other category, choose to work with agencies that they
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cannot have facetime with in terms of
were in the same room very often because
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they're two hundred miles away, because
they have an expertise that they want.
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So we said, okay, well, if you're willing to tolerate a clost
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an agency relationship that has a two
hundred mile or greater distance, why?
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What's what's in it for you?
What's it worth it? And they said
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is because they have an expertise.
And we said, okay, what kind
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of expertise, and here's what they
told us. I hired my agency because
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they have one of these kinds of
expertise. Number one, they have an
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expertise in a and this is not
any particular order that. Number one,
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because they have an expertise in a
particular geography. So, for example,
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we know the Pacific northwest better than
any other agency. So if you are
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a company doing business in the Pacific
northwest, we can help you reach that
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audience. Or, Hey, company
in Pacific northwest, if you want to
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break out of that region and you
want to share your products or service with
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the rest of the world, we
can help you position yourself in a way
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to do that. The second thing
they told us was we want an agency
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that is a depth of knowledge in
an industry or a specific audience. So
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either you are your brilliant at egg
or you understand how to reach millennial moms
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or whatever it is. So an
industry or an audience, or they want
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an agency that is a depth of
expertise in an ethnicity, so that you
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can work with the Hispanic population or
the Asian population or some other subset of
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your country's population that they want to
reach. And so they are willing to
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work with a specialist. Not only
willing, they choose to work with a
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specialist because of that depth of expertise. So then we said to them,
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is it ever because they're cheaper?
And only sixteen percent said they chose their
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agency that is far away from them
because the local agencies were more expensive.
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This is not about money. In
fact, what they told us was,
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we know we're going to pay more, but we are hiring somebody with a
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depth of expertise that is really valuable
to us, so we're willing to do
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that. So the other reason why
I want you to think about specializing is
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if you ever think you're going to
sell your agency, one of the factors
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that influences what your agency is worth
is are you a generalist or are you
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a specialist? And if you're a
generalist, your agency is going to be
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worth less. So you need to
understand that as well, and I'm telling
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you I see proof of this every
day. Remember, not only do we
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work with two hundred and fifty agencies
over the course of a year, but
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I see their financials, I see
their P andl I see their balance sheets,
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and the agencies that have a specialty, the agencies that the liver some
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subject matter expertise beyond marketing. Are
The agencies that are crushing the bottom line.
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They are the agencies that are growing, that are hiring more people.
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There the agencies work prospects are knocking
on their door rather than them having to
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go out and chase those prospects.
So I'm seeing proof every single day that
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this is a more profitable and viable
way to build out your business. I
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believe in this so much that I
wrote a book about it. It's called
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cell with authority and it's going to
be out in the next couple months and
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it's all about how do you do
this? How do you create an authority
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position for yourself and then sell from
that authority position? So I know this
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works. It's worked for my agency, it works for Ami, I've seen
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it work in tons of other agencies. So I am a huge fan of
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this methodology. There are some of
you out there to say I don't want
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to do it, I want to
be the general practitioner, and I get
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it. I understand that there are
some reasons why you would want to do
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that. You get to stay local, you don't have to travel a lot,
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you get to know your clients really
well because you have a lot of
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opportunity to have face time with them
if you don't have to say no because
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somebody's not in your niche or industry, and you can work with lots of
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different people. So that's both a
pro and a con right. So typically
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those clients are smaller. So if
you want to grow your agency, it
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means you have to have a lot
of small clients. But I understand that
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for some of you that's how you
want to run your agency and it's an
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absolutely fine choice to make, as
long as you understand that there's a price
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to pay, and the price you
pay is typically the budgets for your clients
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are going to be lower. Typically
you're going to charge less for the work
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that you do. Everybody is your
competitor because everybody else is also out there
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saying there are a full service integrated
agency. It's hard to know everything about
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everybody. So if you are the
general practitioner, you have to understand every
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business out there that is under your
roof in terms of clients. So that's
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a much bigger struggle in terms of
keeping your team educated and keeping yourself educated.
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Sometimes it makes the stories you tell
the case studies and things like that
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more complicated because you are serving the
butcher and the baker and the candlestick maker
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and the case study for the butcher
doesn't really apply to the candlestick maker.
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So sometimes the clarity of your story
is challenging to tell and and it's also
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difficult, more difficult to go find
more clients because they're everywhere. So if
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I am an egg agency, I
know there are three or four trade shows
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and there are a couple associations and
there are some key industries within the egg
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industry that I need to focus on
to get more clients. If you are
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a generalist, it is everybody in
anybody. So it's difficult to narrow that
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list. But it is a choice
and as the owner of the business,
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you have every right to make that
choice, as long as you make it
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from an educated point of view.
Right. It is not a fact or
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a sentence you must serve to be
a specialist. It is a choice.
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I believe it is a better,
more profitable, easier choice, but that
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doesn't mean it's the only choice and
you certainly can choose not to narrow your
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focus. So when you do narrow
your focus, let's say you are not
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someone who wants to be a general
practitioner. What it does is it's simplifies
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and magnifies all kinds of key variables. It simplifies your content. Now you're
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writing for one audience and one industry
or one region, whatever it may be.
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It simplifies finding employees, because you're
looking for people who have experience and
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expertise in the industries that your agency
serves. It's simplifies your Biz Dev Strategy
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and the targets that you go after. It also simplifies what trade show should
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I go to? What awards should
we apply to? So there's all kinds
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of things that get easier when you're
a specialist. It also allows you to
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raise your prices, because we all
know that a specialist is worth more than
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a general practitioner. So what happens
next? How do you do that?
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How do you figure out what you're
positioning is? How do you figure out
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what your niches are? I am
a huge advocate of saying, you know
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what, it is very healthy for
an agency to not sit on a one
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legged stool. That is a very
uncomfortable stool to sit on. Somebody knocks
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that leg out of the stool,
you go down to the ground. So
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I advocate that agencies have a couple
areas of specialty and that ideally they're connected
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in some way. There's some connective
tissue that stabilizes the stool in case of
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an economic downturn or a scandal in
the industry or whatever it may be.
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Your job is to have. So
a three legged stool would be two areas
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of expertise or specialty and again,
hopefully they're connected in some way. So
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maybe it's an audience and maybe it's
an industry that that audience is often found
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in. And then the third leg
year stool is going to be what I
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call the junct or. So those
are all the clients that you've had for
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years that don't fit into either of
your areas of specialty, but they're profitable,
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they work, you can do good
work. Or maybe somebody comes and
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knocks on your door and says,
Hey, I have a big bag of
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money, I know that you are
a specialist in Agg but I'm a manufacturing
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company and you know what, I'd
like to hire you. Okay, if
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you can service that business until you
build up enough strengthen both legs. So
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that's a temporary okay. There's a
period of time when it's fine to take
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clients that are outside your area of
expertise, but at a certain point,
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as you've built up the volume of
clients that you have inside your expertise,
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the ideal scenario would be to say
to that client, that prospect with the
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big bag of money, actually we
only work with egg clients or audiences that
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serve, you know, family businesses, because a lot of egg businesses are
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family businesses. So there's my connective
tissue. So, since you're a manufacturing
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company and you don't fit that criteria, I'm sorry, but we're not the
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right fit for you. But I'd
like to introduce you to a friend of
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mine who owns an agency who would
be a great fit for you. That's
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the ideal scenario right, but it
takes a while to build that up.
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So if you're going to do what
I call the UN psycho method, which
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means you're going to sit on that
one legged stool, then I want you
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to mitigate your risk. So maybe
it's a geography rather than an industry,
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whether it is the audience that you
serve, it's got to be a broad
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enough audience. So an audience,
for example, they are always going to
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be millennial MOMS. So no recession
is going to impact that. Knows Industry.
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Scandal is going to impact that industry
is much harder to niche two to
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one industry. Certainly we have agencies
within the AMI family that do that,
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but I'm much more comfortable with them
sitting on a three legged stool. But
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if you're going to do geography or
audience it's okay to be on a onelegged
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stool because those things are not you
know, the Pacific northwest isn't going anywhere,
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so you can always have a depth
of expertise in that. The Millennium
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moms again not going anywhere. You
could also have a depth of expertise in
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a methodology. I've got an agency
inside one of our peer networks that they
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only work with challenger brands. So
that's a methodology they have that helps those
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challenger brands take on the big gorilla
in their industry. So, whether it
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is a three legged stool or a
unicycle kind of stool with a one leg,
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how do you do it? Well, first of all you start looking
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for clues. You start thinking about
how you are already more specialized than you
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think because honestly, a lot of
you have our three force of the way
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they're you just haven't taken the final
step of committing on the website, in
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your content, in your business prospecting
targets. You haven't fully committed to the
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niche or the industry or the audience. But your you kind of know.
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There's there's this in the back of
your head. You sort of know.
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So you start looking for clues.
So here's what you do. You start
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with what you've already done. Look
at your body of work, because those
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are proof points that you already know
that industry or that audience or that geography.
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Look at yours and your team's expertise
and already what? What have you
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already done, either at this agency
or at other agencies or at other jobs?
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What is the market place need?
Obviously it doesn't help you if you
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try to sell something that nobody wants
to buy. And also, what is
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the competitive landscape if there are a
ton of agencies? So, for example,
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if you tell me your niches healthcare, I'm going to tell you that
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is not a niche. Every agency
I know has some sort of healthcare client.
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They have a hospital, they have
a doc in a box, they
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have a farmer client, they have
a medical device. That's way too broad
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to be a specialty. You could
tell me that you specialize in rural health
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systems. That's a great specialty and
there aren't a lot of competitors in that
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space. So the competitive landscape,
if there are a ton of agencies that
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say they do the same thing,
what it means is you haven't gotten narrow
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enough to actually define an industry specialty
and then also look at what's profitable.
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So is the work agi heavy?
So are you going to keep most of
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the money that you charge a client? Is there a consistent need? So,
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for example, if you're an agency
that does a lot of brand work,
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you know that once you develop a
brand for a client, typically you
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have to go find another client that
needs a brand, as opposed to a
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lead GEN agency. Well, every
client always needs more leads. So that's
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this ongoing, consistent need. Are
Employees that have knowledge in this industry or
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audience or deliverable? Are they findable
and are they trainable if they're not findable?
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So is this something I can teach
or is this something I can hire?
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And are there enough of them,
meaning clients out there, prospects that
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you can absolutely build your business around
them. And keep in mind you don't
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want a thousand clients. So you
don't have to have that many in an
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industry or a niche or an audience
to make it a viable specialty for you.
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And then you also have to think
about what's palatable. So we talked
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about what's possible, we talked about
what's profitable, but you also need to
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think about what's palatable, because this
is your business and you're going to be
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spending eight, ten, twelve hours
a day doing this for a really long
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time. So don't pick something that
you hate. Pick something. It's got
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to be work that you love to
do. So if you love learning more
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about this audience, this millennium mom
audience, and how to influence them,
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great. If that is not something
that interests you, then find a different
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specialty. Can you find the clients
that you best serve in terms of size
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and temperament and all of that in
this industry or a niche? Will it
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allow you to do work that you're
proud to do? And is this sustainable?
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You don't want to have to keep
doing this exercise. So don't pick
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something that you think is going to
be around for three years or five years,
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whether it's an industry or an audience
or a geography, and then it's
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going to become irrelevant. Pick something
that's very evergreen, and then what I
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want you to do is, once
you've decided that, now go and find
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the right prospects, only, only, only chase the prospects that check the
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boxes, that fill in the blanks, that are going to help you be
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better or more accomplished at that area
of specialty. So don't chase after everybody
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and anybody. Be Very specific and
precise about who you chase after. The
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other thing I want you to do
is stop chasing after the little guys.
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Do not expend any effort prospecting for
any client that is smaller than ten percent
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of your annual Agi. Do not
waste your time and effort on small clients,
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because they are the devil to positioning. You want big clients that you
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can name drop, that you can
say, Yep, we are an agency
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that only does manufacturing and we work
with these five brands and at least three
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of those brands people are going to
go, Oh, I recognize that,
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oh I recognize that, because at
that what that does is it escalates and
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elevates your expertise, and your job
is, if you haven't already gotten experience
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in that industry as quickly as you
can, get your foot in the door
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so you have some proof points to
prove that you do understand your specialty.
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All right, final steps. You
got to decide. Are you really going
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to do this? You know,
it's not like you cannot be sort of
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pregnant right, same thing. You
either are specialist you're a generalist. You
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have to make a decision and you
have to make a commitment so that you
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can expend all of your efforts in
either direction. And again, both of
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them are viable choices. Regardless of
what you choose, you need to check
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to make sure your language, your
elevator speech, your website, your content,
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all scream what you've decided. If
you are a specialist, I do
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not want to see any generalist content
on your website ever again. Do not
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do a blog post about the new
pantone color doesn't matter. But you're talking
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about egg marketing, Egg Marketing,
the egg industry, Egg Marketing, tractor
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00:25:14.700 --> 00:25:19.380
marketing, seed marketing, anything related
to that industry, how family businesses are
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00:25:19.380 --> 00:25:23.130
impacting agg all of those sort of
things. All of those speak to your
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depth of expertise. Right. So
be really, really judicious about the language
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you use around Your Business and then
establish your authority position, be a thought
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leader, create content that is meaty, that is teaching the industry something,
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and then sell from that position of
authority. And finally, stop chasing anything
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that doesn't fit. So if they
are not in your specialty area, do
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not chase them. I know that
this is difficult, I know that this
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is scary, but I also know
that this is wildly profitable for the agencies
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that have been brave enough to do
it. And the worst position of all
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is straddling the fence. So it
is time for you to decide. Are
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you going to be a generalist or
a specialist? Both of them are viable
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choices, but stop dancing on the
line and trying to be both. Okay,
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hopefully this got you fired up.
Hopefully this guy you thinking a little
354
00:26:21.210 --> 00:26:25.769
bit. If you are interested in
what am I does, head over to
355
00:26:25.849 --> 00:26:30.250
agency Management Institutecom. We are happy
to engage with you there. Feel free
356
00:26:30.289 --> 00:26:34.160
to start listening to build a better
agency PODCAST. Hopefully you will find that
357
00:26:34.319 --> 00:26:41.000
helpful as well. But my message
to you today is decide generalist or specialist.
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Both find choices with different pros and
cons, but stop crossing over the
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line back and forth, which is
what most agencies are doing today. All
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Right, thanks again for listening,
thanks again to the crew at me to
361
00:26:55.150 --> 00:26:57.150
be growth, for inviting me to
do this, and I will be back
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with another episode soon. Talk to
you soon. We totally get it.
363
00:27:04.380 --> 00:27:08.019
We publish a ton of content on
this podcast and it can be a lot
364
00:27:08.140 --> 00:27:11.900
to keep up with. That's why
we've started the BOB growth big three,
365
00:27:12.339 --> 00:27:17.849
a no fluff email that wolves down
our three biggest takeaways from an entire week
366
00:27:17.890 --> 00:27:22.569
of episodes. Sign up today at
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