Jeremy Weisz
What made you decide to start it
Jason Swenk
wasn’t my idea. So it was a, our CEOs, Thomas Thomas’s idea. And he came to me, he had a small agency, right? And this is a really amazing story, right? So Thomas came to me, he has five kids, too, which is nuts. Wow. Looks like he’s 20. But he’s not. So at first, I was like, well, who is this person? So I did some research. But he was like, Jason, like, we followed your advice for years and years, and we’ve grown our agency, his agency was irrational, up in Canada, and at the time, they were a little over a million in revenue, right? net profit was, you know, a lot lower. And he was like, we want to grow through acquisition. I was like, Okay, I was like, Well, tell us kind of idea, what do you want? And they’re like, we want you to be part of this, we’re putting some other people keep people together. And I said, Okay, I was like, you know, you’ve kind of like, we have the same values, that kind of stuff. And he just put together a really amazing team, you know, from people, you know, obviously, I’m, I’m the, you know, the
Jeremy Weisz
industry expert, kind of,
Jason Swenk
I always hate that like, like, I understand agencies, right? So I’m on the agency side, that we have a banking side, we have a legal side, we have a tax side, we have an m&a side, right. And so like you get all the expertise of these types of people. And you can do amazing things like in, I was telling you in the pre show, 11 months ago, we started from zero, and we’ve done seven acquisitions already. So it’s
Jeremy Weisz
how long does it when, when you How does the vetting process work? So like someone comes to you what happens?
Jason Swenk
It’s pretty quick, right? So here’s the other will tell people will be like, Look, we want to close in 90 to 120 days. And we tell them up front, we’re like this is how we’re going to structure the deal, right? We’ll be like, this is how we’ll evaluate your agency. So we’ll say let’s look at your net profit, we’ll give you anywhere from four to five acts as evaluation. And then 50% of that is going to be a cash buyout up front. And another 50 is going to be equity in the new entity. And our whole goal is to grow it to 50 million in EBITDA, and then sell it or go public. And we’re actually getting getting a lot closer than I thought right now. And so and then we say the other 50% equity, our whole goal for you is to make 10 times that, right? You have that, you know, that milestone that we actually hit. So let’s say your your agencies, valued at 10 million, we’ll give you 5 million in cash, right? If they and here’s another deal, too. I that I really like of what we’ve done. If they go well, Jason, I want to hold on to the agency for a little bit longer. Because I think next year we can double we’d be like cool, no problem. We’ll give you an extra we’ll give you that valuation, but that other valuation will be in an earnout. And we don’t put a time to it. That’s the kicker, right? A lot of times when people put a time to an urn out, you can get like an I’ve been screwed on this one. When I sold my agency, right? And so we’re like, hey, whenever you double, then we’ll give you that valuation and then you’ll get the, you know, the extra cash and all that And so
Jeremy Weisz
takes a risk off the table for them.
Jason Swenk
Actually, yeah. And it takes chips off the table, right? So think about people have built this business over the years. And there’s a lot of uncertainty coming up. But they’ve been doing well, they’ve been trending up. But they’re like, I’d like to cash in some, like, perfect, right? So and then they have this huge opportunity for even a monstrous because going back to that $10 million valuation, if we could turn that other 5 million equity in the 50 million, right? I like or even half that. So
Jeremy Weisz
yeah, we’ll talk about that. Because it’s, it’s very, it becomes very attractive, the larger you get in. And so I want to talk about the initial people, because you sort of have to sell them the vision. And now you don’t because you’re you’re you have the you know, the proof in the street cred. But I want to talk about the earnout for a second. Because it’s so rare. It’s interesting, Jason, like you go out and you kind of create things that you wish you had, right, you create the agency, you know, the playbook and the mastermind, everything. And this is kind of the acquire you wish you had. And so I want you to talk about because the earnout piece, what you typically instruct people in a typical, I guess acquisition fashion, what you instruct them to do about the earnout. And now, what you guys are doing is different. So what’s your typical advice, and what happened to you with or now, I use it
Jason Swenk
well, so my earnout was based on a set time, right? So I got a lot of cash up front. And then I had a lot tied up into an urn out, or in the event that they sold again. And so they picked a date to sell, right when we got dipped outside of a window of a certain revenue goal that we couldn’t control anymore. Right. And when we were acquired, you know, our brand went away, all of our control went away people who everything was restructured, so it was really kind of messed up. And so you got to kind of find out too, I always tell people, like, why are they buying you. So I found out they were just buying us for revenue. And they wanted to do a quick sale, quick flip. You know, after that, so, and I was going into it, not knowing anything. But I was still happy with the transaction because you know, the money that we got up front. And that’s what I always tell everybody always treat an earnout like, you’ll never get it. Right. But if it happens, amazing, right? So always like going back to, you know, if you’re, if we value the agency at 10 million, treat the 5 million, you know, as like, would you be happy with just that, right. But the cool thing that we’re we’re doing Republix is we’re letting them operate. And we’re not even telling anybody, we bought you other than your team. Right? Even your clients will tell them nine months later, because we want you to operate that and we’ll support you off. However, we can get you over that line, whether you need more cash, more leadership, you hate doing this one thing, we’ll take that over, and then we’ll reach out to the clients be like, hey, how’s everything going? You know, nine months later? And then when they’re like, Oh, great, man, you guys are fantastic. Well, hey, I want to let you know, we got sold nine months ago. Yeah. Right. And so it’s just it’s been working out way better than I thought.
Jeremy Weisz
You know, Jason talk about that with the controls and keeping the leadership team on because I imagine, maybe Thomas decided, wait, what do we do we have, maybe we could have economies of scale and take certain things off. But it sounds like you made the decision conscious decision decision to say, we’re keeping everyone on we’re keeping it as is. What was that decision? Like? And I guess, is there anything that people lean on you for? Like, you know, what, I think we should use you for this type of thing, even though we have an in house.
Jason Swenk
Yeah, I mean, the biggest reason why to keep the leadership team on is because if that owner or that leadership team wants out, they control everything, right. And if they do want out, maybe someone would buy them, but they’re going to have a lot bigger earnout because there’s way more risk for that acquire to buy them. Because a lot of times the leadership team is everything. That owner is everything. And that’s another thing too, as agencies whether you know, like if you guys have plans to sell, or maybe you want the option, that’s what I always tell everybody have the option to sell. Because if you create an amazing business, amazing agency, that you’re doing the stuff that you love doing, and it doesn’t require you to do that crap you don’t like anymore and you have a lot of systems. You don’t have to sell, right? You’re getting a huge check every month or every year. You’re doing what you want. Why would you sell unless it could be a huge, huge exit and a lot of time See, like I was telling I don’t I can’t remember if I told you guys on the first interview we did when I sold I was completely depressed, right? I don’t know what I was gonna do. So there’s you just have to wait like lose your purpose. Exactly until I found this I was like, Oh, thank God. That’s like,
Jeremy Weisz
what’s the concern Jason with, you know, what do you look for in the personality of the founder, because there may be a concern that they’re going to leave their entrepreneurial. Yeah, I think you’ve talked about how when you sold, you’re like, I’m a bad employee, I don’t want to stay, I want to work for someone else, even though you’re still working for yourself. So is there something you look for in the founder that you’re like, Okay, we’re gonna pay them. And then they’re like, Oh, cool. I’m going to the Bahamas. Jason, thanks.
Jason Swenk
Well, with with me, you know, I didn’t, I didn’t really understand the vision. They never explained the vision to us, right? The culture was there. I felt, right. So the culture has to be there. But I think the founder that you’re acquiring, has to share the same vision, and believe in that vision. That’s the most important thing. It’s kind of like, you know, if you’re getting on a boat, you got to know where that boats going, you know, if it’s going to Australia, you don’t want to go to Australia. Well, you’re going to be on that boat for a long time. You can’t get off. So I think that’s the number one thing. Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Weisz
What’s an example of that? Like, let’s say you, you’ve probably gone through a lot of due diligence with companies that listen to EBITDA, you know, it’s there. The growth is there. But the founder vision was not there. What was that conversation? Like? What What were they saying? that it didn’t fit, but everything else fit? Or maybe there wasn’t a scenario like that?
Jason Swenk
Yeah, we talked to people all the time that were like, Hey, this is not the right fit, right? Like we could just tell there. And most of the time, it’s kind of like a gut, you know, intuition. Right. You’re like, there’s something not right. Like, you’re telling me you’re this much an EBITDA, all of your employees or contractors. But you’re saying you’re not in the business hardly anymore. And you you want to stay on, but then you have all these other businesses on the side like, right, like, it’s like, it just doesn’t align like they seem
Jeremy Weisz
like they’re not all in,
Jason Swenk
you can see the writing on the wall, like, they just want to get as much from you. And they’d be like, peace out.
Jeremy Weisz
Right? Yeah. So you kind of see maybe a pattern of they have other things going on, maybe you know, they’re not all in on what they’re doing. Maybe you see a sense of their passion for what they’re doing. What about the so early on, when you’re getting those first few companies like listen, you get 50% equity in this larger thing, we sell it, you’re gonna make 10 times. Now it seems almost obvious, right? It’s like, okay, we’re growing at a clip of X amount. Get on board before, we can’t take you anymore, right? But at the time, what was it like selling those first few companies on that vision of we’re gonna be a quote, because I guess Thomas had to sell you on this. And then, you know, you have to each company talk to in the early stages, it’s not like, Oh, this is obvious, you guys are growing it, whatever amount.
Jason Swenk
It was easier for me because I can kind of look at it be like, what’s the worst that could happen? Right? Like, I’m not selling my company. Right. But I also had to have, like, I believed in what he was doing. But then I was always, also had in the back of my head, like, this is a 6040 shot 60% it’s going to blow up 40% of the work. So I was willing to take that risk with the amount of time that I needed to put into it. Right. For the first couple agencies we bought. I think they’re a little crazy, honestly. All right, like, it was a gamble. Like they literally went to Vegas, it was like put it all on red. I mean, justly, right, like, well,
Jeremy Weisz
they still get I guess 50% cash, and then equity. And then they have that option that that non, like taking time earn out so that they still get something but there we
Jason Swenk
didn’t have like a track, right? It’s still
Jeremy Weisz
a gamble for that for the equity piece.
Jason Swenk
Yeah, exactly. Because I always tell everybody, I’m like, hey, talk to some people that have gone through it. If they can tell you, right. You know, tell them about your their experience and that kind of stuff. And in that scenario, like because we didn’t do it before it was like they just had to trust, trust us. And just believe in it. And yeah, so yeah, it was it’s interesting. It’s a gamble.
Jeremy Weisz
What have you learned in the process, like, you know, obviously running your agency from the first day you started it. When you talk about well, I didn’t even know what a proposal was to, to the end of it when you’re an expert. What have you learned so far in this process of acquiring companies from that you’re like, what Wow, in the beginning, I didn’t know XYZ. But now this is super valuable for acquisitions?
Jason Swenk
Well, I understand the KPIs right, that you should be really looking at on an ongoing basis to make sure that you’re trending in the right direction. Like, you know what, like, everybody always talks about top line revenue. Oh, no, like, you know, not to poopoo on on Gary Vaynerchuk, because he’s incredible. But he would always talk about 100 million dollar agency, I’m a $200 million agency. And there’s a lot of agencies that followed him, obviously, because he’s an amazing person, amazing business person. But he’s also giving people the wrong number to shoot for, it’s not about getting that number. It’s about getting, what is the profit? How much is the actual agency making. And if I had to guess, because, you know, knowing a little bit about, you know, you know, who he is and what he’s doing, he’s using that agency as a breakeven or even a loss leader in order to build the other stuff. So a lot of these agencies are like, Oh, we need 100 million, 200 million, and I used to look at it that way, as well, growing an agency going, you know, all, you know, looking at these, you know, tribal DB or DB o and graze of the world and all these big agents, they’re like, we need to get to that level. But then if you really kind of uncover some of that, if you look at their books, they may not be as profitable as you think. And so I always tell everybody, you know, the most important number is EBITDA, right, which is net profit, general sense, right? The next is, you know, what’s your monthly reoccurring revenue? Right? Like, and try to put that we our agency was about 75%. projects. 25%. reoccurring? Hmm. We just had a really good system for generating leads, and sales and building the pipeline. But it is stressful, right? Especially when you have a lot of people. So reoccurring revenue was another KPI wanted to see, you know, growing, also kind of what I briefly talked about, like act, you know, the average contract term that you have, you know, what’s your churn rate? Or your retention rate? Right, you know, and keeping those under? And then what’s your average expansion revenue? Like the accounts that I’m getting today? So if I’m bringing on account at 100 k a month? Well, what’s the average I can grow that to? Can I double that? And then the last part is like, net promoter score, you know, what’s your net promoter score? Like? Are people promoting you? Are they like, Oh, yeah, average? Are they talking shit about you?
Jeremy Weisz
For Net Promoter Score, so how do you recommend because I imagine there’s, there’s some of each of these that most people don’t track at all. And they’re not doing at all,
Jason Swenk
they’re just looking at the bank account? For the most part. That’s what we did for a number of years, right? They’re like, Oh, that’s how I’m going to do my budget. Well, look at this bank account.
Jeremy Weisz
Are there certain software or tools you recommend? For let’s just take net promoter score? For example? Is there anything you recommend for that? And I’m curious, like, churn rate or anything like, you know, what would be for that, but boy, what do you recommend implementing the
Jason Swenk
net promoter score? I mean, any email marketing, or any email automation tool could actually do this. And so what we’ll do is every quarter, we’ll send out a brief survey says on one to 10, how are we doing? 10 being the best one, we suck. And then you know how, and it’s just one answer, right? It’s like 10 or eight. And so if you’re a tender eight, your promoter, if you’re a seven, or I’m sorry, 10, three, nine year promoter. Eight to seven, it’s okay. Six below, you know, you’re talking shit about him. Yeah. And then you trigger different automation. And then we just take the average. Now, there’s I, we were talking about in the mastermind, I can’t remember the tool that a lot of people are using that actually tracks that. But I bet if you typed in net promoter, your report or tracker? Yeah, I’m sure it would.
Jeremy Weisz
I know some people even put it in their email signature, you know, they’ll they’ll have it literally for every email signature is like, how do you rate my customers or whatever, you know, some of the companies, how do you recommend customer support and you can actually fill it out. But a dedicated email for is really going to make people pay attention actually fill it out, as opposed to, you know, click it in an email signature.
Jason Swenk
Yeah. And keep it simple. And we were talking about in the mastermind, we were like, should we do it once a week, once a month? I was like, God, no, it was like, like once a quarter or six months, you know, is enough. And then if you do do it once a year, I think you’re you’re missing out.
Jeremy Weisz
What have you found Jason with acquisitions of people not knowing their numbers, because you mentioned like average contract term churn rate, you know, average expansion are there is there one that just people neglect that they just need to start paying attention to right now?
Jason Swenk
Well, the bigger they get, obviously, the more people that they have helping so they can figure out those numbers. Right, but it is surprising with some people they don’t know. They just know their top line revenue. And and I’m like, well, what’s your MMR? They’re like, What? What? What’s your EBITDA? All right, or and, you know, it kind of throws them off. And it’s surprising to have some some of the bigger people that we chat with. But, you know, when we come across, like an agency that knows these numbers, like, we get more excited. Yeah. Right. Because we know there’s there, it’s going to be a good, good, you know, acquisition, the same thing. Like when we started going through our acquisition, whenever they asked us if we got it right, right, then we knew it. Like we knew our numbers. It’s kind of like, you watch the train wrecks on Shark Tank, right? Yeah, people come in, they don’t know their numbers. They don’t know how much it takes to acquire a customer. You know, they don’t like they have no plan. They just like, I have this cool idea. I’m gonna put this Elf on the Shelf.
Jeremy Weisz
This guy Jason Swenk passed on us we’re gonna make him pay
Jason Swenk
such a bad that
Jeremy Weisz
I’m What’s it? What should someone be shooting for as an agency for net profit? That’s a good percentage.
Jason Swenk
I think if you want to sell your agency and get a good multiple, you have to be over a million in EBITDA. Hmm. If you’re under that your valuation goes down dramatically. It could go down to two to three X, sometimes one. Right. So if you’re at 2 million and EDA, you know, will value your agency at maybe 300. Right. But if you can get to a million will value it at four to five. Right? And there’s just such a big Delta, you know, you know, you know, going through and then if you can get to 3 million a year ago, we can bump that multiple up a little bit more. Right. That’s the whole goal, like our whole goal with this agency, and a lot of agencies that are actually doing this, right. Like, this is not a new concept. We didn’t come up with a new concept. People have been doing this for a lot, you know, many years and in many different industries, right? But if you can get to, you know, 50 million EBIT? Yeah. Good. God, who knows what the multiple is? Yeah,
Jeremy Weisz
yeah. No, I have someone who I know who does this in the dental space. So maybe they’re good for your podcast? I don’t know. Maybe not. But um, from, from, if you think of gross profit, gross revenue, isn’t let’s say someone’s doing 5 million or 10, or whatever it is, what’s the percentage that would be good to shoot for? For net profit off of that? So if someone’s doing like $10 million? What are you like, Hey, you should be in this range?
Jason Swenk
Yeah, around 30% 30%. Yeah. And that’s mainly for service based business. I remember one of the major organizations that does a ton of surveys or a SP ad, I can’t remember. But I think for service based businesses, the average profit margins were around 31, or 33%. So I always tell agencies, I’m like, shoot for 30. If you can get more great, obviously, always want as much as you can. But, you know, if you’re in a growth year, like, or if you’re investing a lot, you know, that’s perfectly fine. Like, don’t worry about it, like you were talking about. In another group in the mastermind, we were talking about like, Alright, a lot of times, if you do want to grow through acquisition, let’s say you’re going to take out a loan of a million dollars, just keep that number easy. And then you you buy the agency, while you’re wanting them to make you 10 times that, right? Well, if he still took out that same loan, and you invest in your company doing what you need it, could you get that? The possibly the answer is yes. So there’s, there’s multiple, multiple ways to do it, you know, the, it’s kind of just fitting the right puzzle piece together.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah, with an agency to obviously, like, as you grow, you sometimes need to staff up. So some of the costs of labor are similar in e commerce, like if you grow, you start to have to invest capital, more inventory, because you have so the same thing goes, you kinda have to stafkf up as you grow, too. So you’re gonna you’re going to have to invest in in talent.
Jason Swenk
Yeah. And keep this in mind, too. A lot of times as business owners, not me, because I do everything by the book, we put some expenses on the books that you probably shouldn’t have. I’m perfect.
Jeremy Weisz
URL, race cars, check. I am on the
Jason Swenk
other exception. Yeah. And so it would actually hurt your number. Because at the end of the day, at the end of the year for your company, or whenever you do your taxes, you want that kind of almost to be as close to zero, right? So you try to do that. But when you actually go through an acquisition, what the choir is going to do, and what you should be doing if you’re working with someone smart, is you’ll recast so you’ll look at all The unnecessary unnecessary expenses you have on the books that are going to go away after someone buys you, and then you recast it. And you also got to make sure you’re paying yourself a decent salary. You can’t be like, my margins are huge, but I’ve never taken a salary in five years. Yeah, you got to pay someone to do your job unless you’re not doing anything,
Jeremy Weisz
because they’d have to replace you. And then they have to add the add that back end and subtract it off within a profit. Exactly, yeah. Um, other certain types of agencies you look at look for right now, like, or stay away from, like us, and
Jason Swenk
we don’t want this type of a traditional agencies. Right? We only want digital agencies, we want those innovators, we want the ones that are the best at SEO in a particular market, we want those email, we want the social, right, we want the design. You know, we want the technology companies, the dev shops, right? We, you know, our whole goal is to be that all in one solution that can get the results to all these clients that we need. And yeah, so it’s really the only agencies we’re not looking at it. The traditional ones.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah. Talk about that. So what what would be some examples of traditional agencies? Because like when people think I think Jason now agency, I don’t know, I picture only digital, like when you say, agencies, I just pictured digital. So when you say traditional Mike, what would be considered a traditional agency,
Jason Swenk
traditional, they’re not doing anything on the digital space. Right? They are just coming up with the idea for the commercial. And then they’re just doing a commercial for the Superbowl. But they’re not taking any of those assets and coming up with strategy in order to, you know, put that, you know, on Facebook, and Twitter, tick tock, whatever it is, right. So they’re just they got their blinders on, or they’re just media buying for TV, or billboards outdoor, right. But they’re not doing media buying on Facebook, or AdWords, or any of the other platforms. That’s what I look at as traditional. Yeah. And those those agencies, you know, though, I look at those as more as the madmen and they’re starting to really kind of they’re, the bigger ones have been acquiring digital agencies to get that expertise. Right, right. So there’s not there’s not too many around.
Jeremy Weisz
But that’s maybe their that was their initial focus, you know, was kind of like offline component didn’t have a digital arm, and then they’re discovering quickly, like, we need to gain that digital arm. So they may start acquiring.
Jason Swenk
Yeah, that’s the people that haven’t they’re the laggards. They haven’t adapted. Yeah. ones that say we’ve done it this way for years and years. And we’ll keep doing it. I’m like, All right. Good luck.
Jeremy Weisz
I figured Jason, like, we’ll walk through maybe one of the deals you can mention name or not, but like from Okay, they found you, you found them? What’s one good example you can walk through? And you don’t have to, you know, obviously, you can protect the numbers, but maybe just talk about, you know, the typical deal structure and what ended up happening in that transition? Well, who’s one that would be a good example to chat with from the onset?
Jason Swenk
Yeah, let’s, let’s use the example that we just went through a little while, we won’t mention the names because we, but will this is the same, the same deal. So yeah, they were a little over the million in EBITDA. So we were like, okay, cool, we’ll give you a valuation of 5 million. So two and a half was cash. The other two and a half was an equity. They also got a leadership role. So they can continue, we kept right, we took over everything. And they can actually get dividends and or distributions. So as we go through more acquisitions and grow, they keep benefiting. And then they also had part of an earnout. Because they were like, well, we’re gonna do this next year. We’re like, Okay, if you do this next year, we’ll give you this, you know, percentage more in cash, you know, going forward. So it’s really pretty easy. And most of the time, I think, that took, like, 100 days, I think, from start to finish. And just to let everybody know, kind of like, we have an initial conversation, right? We’ll say, here’s the vision. Here’s, and we, I basically, whenever I’m chatting with them, like, here’s kind of here’s the deal, like there’s really there’s no negotiating like, we’re giving you the best deal. And then if they’re like, yeah, let’s proceed, then we’ll do a letter of intent. Letting them know, here’s the structure, and then we start going to our due diligence. And then we go through it, and then we go to closing pretty easy.
Jeremy Weisz
And then afterwards, what type of there any specific resources like okay, now you could tap an XYZ or is it more like business as usual? for them?
Jason Swenk
Well, they can They can always tap on the mothership whenever they need. And we’ll, we’ll let them. We just hired a COO. And she’s come from a background of just growing huge companies and really integrating everybody together. That’s the next big challenge for us, right? Because you just can’t like if you’re going to grow through acquisition, it’s not all about buying companies for the revenue buying, right? And then selling, you have to prove it all works. So now we’re going through the process of integrating everybody, but that’s what I also like about keeping all the leadership team and the brand everything together, it gives us a lot better runway to figure it all out.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah. Have you found those people tapping into or what questions they asking or expertise, so they tapping into now that it’s kind of they’re part of a larger organization?
Jason Swenk
You’ll have to ask Thomas, he’s more in the day to day got him? So I’m not. And I don’t want to be.
I can’t comment on that.
Jeremy Weisz
Do you find what opportunities do you see, actually, because you’re like, Well, you know, I see you guys do SEO, you could start so you know, offering these services, which is part of the mothership? How is the I guess, cross selling, going to increase everyone else’s? companies?
Jason Swenk
Oh, big time, right. Like, it’s like, we’ll give them the tools or the identifiers be like, Look, now we have SEO, or now we have pay per click, or now we have UX, right, like we have all these expertise. Here are the leading indicators that could prompt us and then we’ll bring those up and ongoing meetings be like, Oh, you know, ABC had, you know, was talking about, you know, their conversion sock, Oh, cool. We just bought this, you know, convert, you know, optimization, you know, agency and all the other stuff. So let’s talk about that.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah, yeah, I could totally see because they’re, they’re gonna benefit in the long run, when the whole the whole, everything gets purchased. So them recommending not just for obviously, helping the client, but it’s also going to benefit their their equity stake.
Jason Swenk
Yeah. And, you know, it’s, it’s, you know, our whole motto is we’re better together.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah. Right. Are there any Jason, you know, services right now? I maybe don’t look at it like that. But like, Hey, we’re kind of we need this type of agency, we get this demand from like, all the all the customers like what let’s make exam like conversion optimization, like, what is there a service that people are? Find the asking for, like, we need to look in find the agency that does this, because that will not only be good for the portfolio, but it also will grow because we have all these referrals coming in anything particular
Jason Swenk
analytics, you know, analytics is always huge. Right? And, you know, so I mean, but at then, like, and also even in technology, too, right? Like, you know, even back at our agency, when we were creating content management systems, and e commerce systems and all that kind of stuff. It was like, how can how can we deliver a better solution? Right, it’s more about figuring out what’s the right solution for people rather than a particular service. Because now with like seven acquisitions, and, and all of that, like, we pretty much have all of that covered. Now, it’s just kind of bolting on, how can we get better, better, better, better, better?
Jeremy Weisz
And, you know, with with this, like, I know, with the agency, you have certain recommendations, you’re like, Listen, I recommend for yours. Like, I recommend project manager, you need to if you don’t have one, you need to get Project Manager for this business. It seems like you have the banking, the legal, the tax, the CEO, what do you think the next kind of build out of the team member is needed?
Jason Swenk
or about to bring in a CFO? Hmm? as well, right? You got to have that, that incredible numbers person that can make it all work. And I think that’s the last piece of that puzzle. And then we’ll figure it out from there, right? Like, that’s the thing about growing a business. It’s like playing a Monopoly game, like you don’t ever know where you’re gonna land. And you can try it like, you could try to figure it out. But it’s more about, you know, here’s where we’re going to try to take it and then just adjust as we’re going rather than have something in cement. And then you’re kind of it’s a little harder to, you know, turn the Titanic.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah. And Jason from an agency owner standpoint of sequential hires, what’s a typical, you know, I guess what’s your recommendation? Let’s say it’s like a couple person agency. What are the hires that people should be looking at in the in the horizon for as they grow?
Jason Swenk
Well, you got to kind of do a self evaluation first on yourself, right? Like, what do you really good at and what do you suck at? And you should hire based on what you suck at? Yeah, right. So, if you’re amazing at sales, great hire an operations person, or someone to help you with that, not to talk, excuse me, I’m not talking about hiring a CEO, oh, you know, in the very beginning, hire like an ops manager. Right? They can help out with the systems in the process. versus if you’re really good at operations and tasks and all that hire a salesperson, right, like, hire for your weakness, and then build a team around that. And the most important thing is, you have to, you know, figure out what are where are you trying to go, right, it goes back to, you know, our whole goal, like, our whole goal of existences, give the clients that amazing, you know, return on investment and sell, you know, or you look at, you know, ROI, you know, the Jason site.com is create a resource I wish I had, right, like, that’s the North Star. So if you can figure out your North Star, and then you figure out your core values, like what do you believe in? Then you can start surrounding yourself with amazing people that can do stuff that you can now we start having skin. Yeah.
Jeremy Weisz
Jason, first of all, thank you. Thanks for always sharing your knowledge. You know, I say, you know, check out his podcast and go to JasonSwenk.com you could check out his podcast everything he has going on. If you’re interested in selling your agency or know someone with an agency who wants to sell you can go to JasonSwenk.com/sellagency or you can go to Jason Swenk.com/footinthedoor if you’re interested if you are an agency you are interested in, you know how they map out the blueprint and everything else. Jason, thanks for all you do for everyone and putting out amazing content. Really appreciate it.
Jason Swenk
Oh man, thanks so much for having me on.
