Search Interviews:

Jeremy Weisz 14:14

Aaron, talk about, I love that example. How do you redirect that conversation? Because you don’t want to dismiss, hey, Aaron, tell me about your company and what you do and the pricing. How do you redirect it at that point so that, okay, I know I need to get into the problem and everything else?

Aaron Levenstadt 14:35

Assuming, when you’re asked about the problem.

Jeremy Weisz 14:37

Yeah, exactly, you’re asked, because I see that happening all the time for sure. Like, hey, tell me what you do. How’s the pricing work? It’s just a natural, you know, conversation for sure.

Aaron Levenstadt 14:48

Yeah, I think the thing to do is say, listen, hey, Tom, Jeremy, I appreciate you asking that question. We’re going to get to all that, but there’s a few things that we got to take care of before we get to that, and we’re going to get your questions answered today. We got 33 minutes on the clock left today, and I’m glad we’re all able to get here and make this time on each other’s calendars, but I do need to make sure that we talk about some key things that we get on the table, and then I’m going to, I’ll get into the nitty gritty with you.

And that is, I think, a completely reasonable thing to do is you’re there to pitch, and I think part of this is the frame of reference around this construct. It’s both of your time, it’s their time, and your time. And your time is very valuable, as is their time. And there’s a mutual respect that should be established. And you have a way that you want to run the conversation because it’s in the best interest of everybody, including the prospect to get the information this way. I’d redirect in something like that, like, hey, like, listen, we’re going to get to all this. Don’t worry. Like, we have 33 minutes. We’re going to get to all your questions. But I want to start here. Let me start at this point. And we’d have a few other things that we do throughout the course, where if you get a question, you have to be ready to redirect it. And I mean, there is going to be a time where they can ask questions, but they’re going to allow for that.

You almost want to think about it like, a little bit like a landing page, in the sense that there’s a structure to the landing page, right? It opens up with this, then you have testimonials, then you have something else, then you have media mentions. It’s a structured presentation of information. And the way that you should think about the pitch is not dissimilar, in the sense that there’s a structure to how it goes. And a part of that is going to be a sandbox where you get to a point where you’re going to open up the sandbox, and the prospect can ask, well, they’re going to have time to ask any questions they want, but it’s only after they see the first three sections, or six sections of the landing page before that opens up.

Jeremy Weisz 16:56

Yeah, no, I like the thought process of thinking of as a landing page. I know, I love some of the direct response copyrights I own, like the headline gets him the subhead. Subhead gets him the first sentence and so on. Sometimes people will, I mean, just scroll to the bottom and try and look at what the pricing is. But on a landing page, usually it’s a learn more type of situation. But no, I like that thinking is that structure, because it is a conversation that’s kind of going through the points that you know, that trying to answer the questions that you know they’re going to have before they ask them. You talked about role models.

I’d love to, I don’t know if we break it up into two parts, if there’s a reason to but like, I think of what you talked about as kind of resources, which are external resources. And I know you’ve read a lot of different things as far as psychology, etc, so if you have specific resources, you recommend people check out that you like. And then we could talk about role models. And maybe role models bleed into obvious mentors, or just role models that are distant role models through their courses, etc. So I’ll let you kind of take that, if there’s resources you recommend, and then we could talk about role models, and they may blend together.

Aaron Levenstadt 18:16

So I think a couple of things on role models. So I think, I’ll go specific on agency, and then we’ll kind of maybe pan out a little so I think as leaders of the agencies are building their firms and growing their firms, scaling their firms, maybe eventually wanting to head towards an exit, having role models and people around you that have done this journey before that have scaled and sold for life-changing, multi-generational wealth outcomes you need to surround yourself with these people. You need to be in rooms with them. I think that is mission-critical. There’s a couple stories I’ll share on this. One is personal, and then I’ll pan out. So as I was going through my journey, as we’re kind of in the middle of our scale stage, this was a few years before our second exit is, I sat down with this prominent business guy, and I had the good fortune to get on this calendar through mutual introduction. And we sit down, and he basically asked me to send the numbers before the meeting.

So I sent him the numbers, our business numbers, or P and L or whatever, before the meeting. And we sit down. He says, hey, I had the chance to take a look at everything that you sent over. You got a really good business Aaron. Well, like, thanks. He’s like, you know, who’s, as you’re thinking through scale and sale, like, who’s on your advisory board? I was kind of like, well, I mean, I have friends that I bounce the stuff around, and I got people in business that I know, and I’m in, like, YPO and EO, which are, like, a mix of all different. Are business owners, and there’s an e-commerce person and a SaaS guy on those things. And I get different perspectives.

And he’s like, no, like, that’s not what I mean. Like, okay, well, what do you mean? He’s like, who do you have around you that has done the exact thing that you want to do? Because this turn of phrase has really stuck with me, says you can’t ask somebody for directions to a place that they’ve never been. Like, they’ve never been on that road. So, like, it’s cool to be in that YPO thing. But like, and nothing wrong with YPO. Like, it’s fine. But like, the people that are in that group, if they haven’t done, they haven’t gone down the road you’re gonna go down if they haven’t run that marathon. You know, their advice might be helpful, but it also, like might not be the advice that is going to be super helpful for you, and I’ll give a very specific example on that.

So when I first joined YPO, I met — there was a guy in my group who I clicked with. Really, really good, good guy. He was in the e-commerce business, and I was talking about our firm and how to go about expanding it and different growth channels. And he’s like, the best growth channel, it’s worked for us. The absolute best thing we did in our business, Aaron, was we started layering in new offerings. So, this is in the YPO group, and the colleague on the YPO table says, you should really be doing that, like, look at your offerings and start building in new offerings. It’s a terrible mistake in the agency world. It probably works in Ecomm to a certain degree, because, like, you’ve manufacturing already set up, and you can cut a new product and throw something on the website. The cost of doing that is relatively low, but adding new lines of business and service in an agency is effectively adding a new business to the agency.

So I don’t think his advice would like I think it was very well-intentioned. I just think it was not applicable. And somebody who has been through the agency scale and exit trajectory that you need to talk to. And the person that I sat down with, the prominent business person, that’s who you need to surround yourself with, and he was saying, you need to have those role models around you. And that’s a big part of what we’re doing at Join Agency Alliance. A big part of it is surrounding agency owners, of people that have done it to get access to their brains and to kind of live in their shoes and embody their experience. So that’s specific to the agency and painting out. So throughout as I was going down my exit trajectory, and since I’ve exited, I spent a lot of time reading about investing in investors, and I’m just kind of really interested in this topic and really like reading about it for whatever reason.

So there’s this investor, this guy, his name is Guy Spear, and he’s, I mean, within investing circles, he’s pretty well known. He’s kind of mentioned in the same breath as Warren Buffet, same kind of value-style investor. And Guy Spier, I actually think this is in he’s written one or two books. And in one of his books, he talks about this, the importance of role models. And he has two stories on it. One is he still does this, I think, to this day, where he uses puppet as his role model. And what he will do, what Guy Spier will do, is he will literally, like he has, I don’t think he has access to buffet like, he’s not like, on like, I can’t call him to get advice. I can’t join the group that he’s in. But what he will do is he will literally, like, dress like him. He will sit down at a desk with like, a buffet chair, because he’s seen the chair the guy has.

He puts down a poke and a hamburger, like buffet would, and he literally tries to embody him. He’ll speak like him. He’ll write like him. He is embodying his role model, right? So Spier his role model is Warren Buffet, and he’s literally drinking the drinks that he drinks, eating the food that he eats, and is trying to get into his essence when he’s in his investment selection process. And this is so human, because it is at the root of humanity, right? I have a four-year-old, and my four-year-old, like he mimics half the three-quarters of the things that I say, for better or for worse, right? So, like, this is just human. You know, the young hunters would have to learn from the elders how to do it, right? That’s the core of human growth and civilization. So it’s very human. And having those role models is really, really important. And Spier, he talks about another experience where he joined a group where he had people that were further ahead of him on this investment track.

And one of the guys that was in the group was a guy named Bill Ackman, who’s also, like, a very well-known investor. So Spier joins this group. Bill Ockman is in the group as like, kind of more, you know, whatever, like, more of the like I’ve kind of done it already, person in the group, or people in the group, the role models in the group. And he basically what Spear says, as he tells a story about how he is talking to somebody else in the room about one of his investment ideas. And it was something like a version of like Fannie or Freddie Mac that focuses on farming, but whatever, the specifics are not super important here, but he mentions this investment idea, and he’s like, basically saying, I’m going to go back to the office next week, and I’m going to be purchasing a large chunk of this company.

Somebody, the guy that he tells us to, retells this to Bill Ackman, who’s literally in the same room. And then, before the meeting lets out, Bill Ackman goes back, comes back to Guy Spier, and he says, Hey, guy, before you make that investment next week, call me. So Guy calls him, and acting says, you know, funny enough, I’ve been researching this same business, and I’m going to take a significant short position, right? So I’m going to bet against the company, right? The same company that Guy Spier was going to bet on. And whatever guy is like, Well, can you like? What? Why? Like? Can you explain this? So Ackman explains it, and basically the details we can don at the end of the whole thing. It’s in the book.

But basically, like Ackman uncovered that it was like quasi fraud and whatever, not really marketing, what they were actually doing. And had Spier not been in that room, and got in that advice from the role model, from Ackman he talks about in the book, his investment career, like would have been maybe over at that point in time, like he never would have materialized, because he was going to bet, I mean, something close to the farm on this. And it was only by being in that room with the right people that had done this before that had a different vantage point, that could see things differently, skin on the shoulder of that giant Ackman, in this case, that he was able to course correct and not go down this path that would have ended in near or, if not, utter demise. So, I think role models are helpful from both of these vantage points, in the sense that you model their good behavior, and you can learn a lot from things that are doing really well.

And then also you can learn even more arguably, from the mistakes that they help you avoid, because they’ve done it. They’ve done this before. So, in our community, we had somebody share. They were going down their scale trajectory, and they had unveiled a few different lines of service, tried to come up with a SaaS offering to complement their agency offering. And make a long story short, it was like $11 million mistake. They spent $11 million on this before they finally had somebody be like, this is not the right course, and you’re not making progress, and whatever the advice that they got. But unless you have that course correction as you’re navigating the depth of the Mid-Atlantic, like it’s easy to make these large mistakes that you need, you need mirrors around you to help you avoid. So that’s my initial thinking.

Jeremy Weisz 27:55

I love that. Do you want to talk about your role models in the agency space. And there is a video version, if you are listening to the audio, we are on Join Agency Alliance, so I’d love to hear your role models in agency space. Maybe some of them are on this page. Actually, I had Wes Matthews on the podcast. That was a great episode. But before you answer that, I do wanna, I brought up the Guy Spear website, and so people could check out. You could see The Education of A Value Investor is one of the books you’re probably referring to here.

And he’s got, actually, a list of other of his favorite books on here, self-help, psychology, additional books. He’s got, Tony Robbins Awaken the Giant Within The Intelligent Investor. And so there’s a bunch of these other ones, and a whole other page of DeliveringHappiness Berkshire Beyond Buffet, and all these other ones. So you can check out that on GuySpear.com to learn more. And there’s all like a treasure trove of books here that you could check out, but your role model. So thanks for sharing that. Aaron, super valuable — your role models.

Aaron Levenstadt 29:07

Yeah. So within the role models that we have in the group, everybody that we bring in are people that are vetted in the sense that we understand their scale trajectories, we understand the degree of success that they had in building their businesses. They’ve scaled incredibly successfully and had one or more exits. The exits have been material, ie like life-changing or multi-generational wealth. They’ve done it. These are people that have, and this is, by the way, just a few of them. There’s a bunch more. You just can’t put it all up on the screen, and these are people that have run the marathon, they’ve gone up the mountain, they’ve gone on that Oregon Trail from the East Coast to California.

Have made lots of mistakes that they openly share, and they do it because they want to give back and they want to help other people. Scaling this kind of business is really hard. It is really hard to do. And these people that have done it, that are involved with our group, they are amazing people in that they genuinely want to share and help others that are going through it, because to get through the Oregon Trail, you need food, and you need friends, right? You need, you know, talk about those, me in a little bit more detail, but, you know, these are the kind of friends that you want to have around you. They’ve, they’ve done the trail. They know how to get to the glories of California. So that’s who these people are.

Jeremy Weisz 30:54

On your journey, what was some of the good, or maybe not good advice that you got that helped? You mentioned one with the e-commerce founder. But what about from, you know, your agency role models? What are some of the good lessons or advice you learned?

Aaron Levenstadt 31:10

I’m obviously getting, I mean, I’ve had advice that, like I mentioned with that gentleman I sat down with. He was like, you got to wrap these people around you and figure out ways to get in the room with them. So that’s one. Another one, I would say, is on a sales point. So again, as I was kind of figuring out sales and then training a sales team, and I think this is overlooked in the agency world, but the importance of being compelling. And how does one be compelling when they are engaging a client for the first time, through whatever pitch process is there and then thereafter, once they’re working with your team, how do you consistently be compelling? Because I think a big part of the world is yeah.

I mean, yes, results matter. And, I mean, I’m not dismissing the importance of like hitting client KPIs and metrics and whatever other things that matter. But this is a human business and part of what attracts people to one another are people that are compelling. And you personally, as a leader of an agency, have to be compelling, and your team has to be compelling. And what that means? We I’m happy to like chat on if that would be helpful, but I think that was some really helpful advice is I had never heard that before, but it is super important, and was very impactful. It was like, I again, like, kind of dove into, like, Okay, well, what does that mean? What’s the science around compelling this? How does one be compelling?

Jeremy Weisz 31:25

As far as, what did you do after you got the advice from the Advisory Board, what did, how did you think about the types of people you were going to try and attract an advisory board?

Aaron Levenstadt 33:04

Yeah, so you mean putting the thing together, the advice. So I think it was mainly around, well, a like, people that I, you know, through conversations, liked, so that was one and then two, it was a lengthy, arduous process was also people that could really articulate, like, how they went through their scale trajectory, and then the outcome around it. I mean, that was important. And I think that one is, yeah, so that was a big one as well, is understanding their arc. And there isn’t one arc, right? It’s not like there is a right path. There are actually a number of wrong things that you can do. But within the ambit of, like, scaling rights, there isn’t a single path.

So I think the other part of it was understanding how people that I surrounded myself with through this lengthy, like, I don’t took me, like, three or four years to figure out how to put this together. But then, once I had it, the idea of, I can resonate with this scale arc, even if it’s not the arc I’m going to follow precisely. I resonate with it. I get it. And this person has gone down that Oregon trail that I’m going to need to embark. They’ve done it, and I can understand how having their eyes and ears is going to be super helpful as I’m going down, you know, my trajectory.

Jeremy Weisz 34:27

What was the structure that you had? I’m curious. Was it when you talk to him, Hey, we’re gonna do a once a month meeting, or all of us gonna get together, it’s once a quarter. You do individual meetings. I don’t know if you end up offering them compensation, or how you do that. What were some of the things you did around that?

Aaron Levenstadt 34:50

Yeah, so there was some structure. So there was, we basically would have, I would have, like, one-on-ones, with different board members, with people around me and the advisory board. Some of it. Like, he would have a standing other times it was more informal and ad hoc. I just want to, like, pay, like, this thing happened, can we jump in for like, 22 minutes and chat through? So it was a combination of, like, formal structure chats, and then more informal, like, just tap to, can we get on for, you know, few minutes to talk about something? And then it was also depending on the situation we would have at times of multiple members in a room where I’m like, Hey, like, I’d love to get a couple different perspectives on this. And that was sort of the way that it was.

It was structured in that capacity. And again, I think the other thing too is we haven’t gotten into this yet, but one of the really important pieces of advice that came out, it’s my journey, was I talked about the compellingness, but through that structure, through those structured discourses, was also the importance of like niching and Katana fine our offering. So I use like that idea of being like a super specialist, and how we evolved as an organization once that advice was trumpeted, and I heard it multiple different times from people that I really trusted, but we kind of morphed, over time, from an agency that did a number of different things to an agency that just did the way that we would talk about it was we just did this one thing, which is helping your business get discovered as productively as possible on search. And that was the thing.

And when it got into other points where we would get asked, like, okay, well, we’re also thinking about doing some social and we’re also thinking about doing some tick tock and, and this is, this is harder, but you actually like, you actually say no. So you say, like, hey, listen, like, I appreciate that you want to, we would say things like this, we’re like, hey, like, well, we know the search thing you guys are doing. And we also want to layer in TikTok videos, TikTok ads, or whatever it might be. And the answer to that is we would say, like, listen, we no, like, we’re not going to take our money for that in the same way that if you asked me to enter a ping pong tournament on your behalf, I would not do that, either for money, because like or probably even for free, because it would be awful to watch or for anybody to have to ensure that experience to see me play ping pong.

It’s not what I do well, I and I think this is also something that the advice that came out of this really helped me understand was when you’re when you’re speaking with clients, potential clients, and current clients, reminding them that, and arguably, this is like, counter-intuitive, like, there are many things that you I am not good at. I am not good at ping pong. I’m not good at shooting pool. If you ask me to do those things, I’m not good at TikTok Video things. If you ask me to do those things, I’m not going to do right by you, right? But this thing, the search part of it that I’m going to knock out of the park, and my team is going to knock out of the park for you, and when you create that degree of distinction. So, another thing that comes up a lot in our agency Alliance meetings, is like, well, how do we create this differentiation? Well, that’s the way I just did right? It was this idea of we are.

And not only are we like, yeah, you know, we do search, but we’ll also kind of do this and that, but search is our main thing. But, yeah, we can help you with social we don’t know. No, you literally, you do not do that, and you do not take money for it. So that was a, I think, a big unlock, and that kind of got woven into our entire agency infrastructure, from staffing to hiring to tools to what we say in conversations with clients.

Jeremy Weisz 38:55

I love the super specialist. Obviously, these people, if someone’s out there. Like, you know what? Aaron, I love this. I definitely need a board of advisors. These people are successful. They’re busy. How do you attract them? I mean, again, like even paying them. They probably don’t need the money anyways, right? How are some ways people should think about compensating in whatever way you think?

Aaron Levenstadt 39:22

Yeah, I mean, compensation is a part of it. So I think you have to think about that, and whether it’s cash or equity or combination. And I also think a big part of it is, is so there, I mean, that is real, and I think that has to be thought about. The other thing that I think, too, is like anything in life is these are people that you are in the process of building relationships with and meaningful relationships with, and those relationships require investments, on both parties, right? So I would always be thinking about even like with my, people that were my advisors as I went through my journey, you know, and then thought people that are advisors in agency alliance is, I’m always thinking about, like, hey, like, what’s going on in their world, and how can I be helpful to them, right?

So, like, for example, like, I got off of a call with one of our advisors from Agency Alliance yesterday, and I happen to know of a person in the investment world that what this guy is doing is exactly in line with what this investment person I know can help him with. So immediately I put them on an email and like, I’m here whatever you guys need. I’m here to be helpful. So this idea of like, yes, they are there to help you, but you are also investing in the relationship and that, I think, is it?

Jeremy Weisz 40:42

How do you help them as well?

Aaron Levenstadt 40:44

Yeah, exactly. It’s a relationship. It’s a human relationship, right? So I think that that’s a, that’s a big part of it, and yeah, and then yeah, the other parts of it too. But yeah, that’s not a small piece of it is just consistently thinking about how you can be helpful in return.

Jeremy Weisz 41:07

No, I love that mantra. I try and live by that mantra. So thanks for bringing that up. There’s two pieces, right? I want to talk about you sold a couple companies, but you also invest in a couple companies. So I do want to start off with maybe some of the lessons you learned with selling. Maybe someone out there who’s going to be selling in the future should think about?

Aaron Levenstadt 41:34

Yeah. So I think on the selling side of it, I mean, I’ll share a couple of things that will try to be couple things that are tangible. I think one of the things that I learned through the course of sales process is, I’ll share two things on this. One is the importance of having a conversation at the outset. That I think is perhaps surprising to people that haven’t done it, and would be a bit you might be a little like quizzical on what would this make sense? So I got this advice I got as I started down this exit trajectory. And it goes like this. So when you’re in conversations with an acquirer, and you get into the conversations, and you start getting into media conversation.

You’re beyond the introduction meeting. You’re getting into management meetings, which are a little deeper, but a little bit before the letter of intent. And you’re getting into it with them, I would highly recommend doing something like this, where you are in a room with them, and there’s a frame around this conversation where it’s like, the acquirer, who’s like, asking me these questions, and is inquiring about the business, and expects, I mean, almost kind of like, it expects you to be like, really selling your business, because they have the capital, they have whatever, they’re bringing things to the table. And the kind of construct is like, well, you’re selling the firm to them. And I think that’s an easy thing to fall into when you’re in the position of the agency owner or leader that is having that conversation, and you feel like you need to sell the firm to them. And the advice that I got was to do the exact opposite. So once you get into the meetings, and you’re down, you’re getting to the meetings.

And what I said was, hey guys, like you guys, seem like great folks, and I want to make sure that we’re on the same page. Moving forward through all this, I’m going to give you, I forgot what it was, seven or like the Letterman top 10. Well, I forget the exact number now, but I’m going to give you like the Letterman top 10 of why you should not buy this business. And I actually sat there and I could almost saw like, I mean, they kind of closed their house at one point, but the jaw open was like, you’re going to tell me all the reasons why I’m going to tell you all the reasons why you, if I’m in your shoes and I’m a buyer, thinking about buying my business. Here are all the reasons why I would not do this to, I’m happy to go into this for.

Jeremy Weisz 44:08

Yeah, go ahead. Maybe, maybe one or two, just to give people a sense of how you thought about it.

Aaron Levenstadt 44:13

Yeah. So things like, we had this. We had a few clients at the time that their contracts would come up towards, I forgot what it was like November or something. And they would always cancel their contracts because they had to wait for their budgets to renew. And their budget cycles were like, they were like, re-renewed in February or something. So there was this point where we’d have, like, I forget the exact number, but let’s just say it’s like a 15% revenue drop off, like in November. And we had that for the last like, three years, something like this. And I flagged that. I’m like, you guys are going to see this in the numbers, and you’re going to be like, why is there a huge 15% drop in November? And you’re going to wonder, like, what is going on? And I want to explain this to you now so you understand, like, part of this is a cyclical thing where contracts have to renew.

So, some of our contracts aren’t on auto-renew. And I’m flogging this for you right now, and I can go through a couple more, but just to continue this through is the benefits of having this conversation at this stage for any listener that’s thinking about going through this, or we’ll go through this. I mean, hey, like, it feels really weird that you would do that, but get over that, because when you do this, it is super helpful, and I would almost say powerful for two reasons. One is, you’re building a ton of trust, like you’re basically saying, hey, if I’m sitting in your guy’s shoes, here’s the skeletons in the closet, I’m opening the closet now, before we get into any kind of due diligence, and I’m showing you every garment, right? The stuff that you would never want to wear, and I’m showing it to you now, right?

That’s one reason, so from a trust-building perspective, the other reason is just to infuse this example of the point that I just mentioned is, eight or nine months later, when we actually got into due diligence, and now there’s lawyers involved and teams of people that whatever weren’t involved in that initial conversation, the obvious, somebody flunked this, this exact thing that, well, there’s a huge drop. And now there’s an email thread. And my lawyer is like, oh, they’re now, there’s somebody who’s really concerned because they’re seeing this drop in November. Nobody understands. I just wrote back. I’m like, hey guys, like, cc the people that I had the initial conversation with guys. We talked about this in that meeting, this was reason number six.

End of email, and then it came back. Was like, oh, shoot. Like, yeah, you’re right. Move on. There’s too much else to talk about. So you’ve already dealt with it before it comes up. And you almost make them like, when it does come up, they’re like, a little, like, sheepish, and like, Oh yeah, you did talk about that. And why are we spending cycles on it? Now, again, you’ve already flogged this. And a couple others were like, things like, you listen, this is not a pure SaaS embedded business in the sense that, yes, we do have retainers, and we have retainers that, in most cases, auto-renew, but we’re not baked into the back end data infrastructure of the company, and things can happen that are outside of our control. And I share this one example of a client that we were working with that decided to sponsor the Olympics that year, whatever.

Forget which one, but like a winter or summer Olympiad, and they were like, yeah, like, okay, well, this can take a lot of budget. We’re gonna have to pause the program until we renew budgets next year, because sponsoring the Olympics is a big budgetary undertaking. So that is completely absent of any consideration about how we were doing as a service provider. So no matter how great you are, there are going to be things like that that come up. And I let them know that. And so those are some of the things that came up in that top 10 Letterman style.

Jeremy Weisz 48:03

Aaron, I love that. I know we only have another minute or two, so I just wanted to have you. I want to point people to joinagencyalliance.com to learn more, and just take a minute or two and just talk about Agency Alliance and how it works.

Aaron Levenstadt 48:17

Sure. So what Agency Alliance does at its core is it activates the three essential elements of scale that I learned through my journeys. So it does three things. One is it activates a peer network of similarly situated owners and leaders. The second thing that it does is it activates the advisory network of people that have done this exact thing that leaders of agencies are going to have to do. That’s the second — the third thing that it does is it supports members in marketing initiatives that would be very difficult for marketing owners, or, sorry, agency owners, to do on their own.

So for example, like we do something called database reactivation for certain members, which is basically just, we help them awaken leads that are sleeping in their database. But I have the exact system for how to do that, because we do that my firm, so we bring that to the table as well for members that it would benefit. So it’s really this trifecta of peer network, advisory from people that have done it, and marketing, lead gen support, and you can’t really scale properly without those three essential components. And that’s what it offers to its members.

Jeremy Weisz 49:40

Aaron, so much more to talk about, but we’ll save it for another day. I really appreciate it. Everyone check out, joinagencyalliance.com, more episodes of the podcast, and we’ll see everyone next time. Aaron, thanks so much.

Aaron Levenstadt 49:55

Thanks for having me.