[Top Agency Series] How to Run Your Agency Profitably with Marcel Petitpas of Parakeeto

Marcel Petitpas is the CEO and Co-founder of Parakeeto, an agency profitability platform that modern digital and creative agencies use to scope and measure more profitable projects in record time. They help agencies and consultancies automagically create accurate and data-driven estimates for their projects in seconds. They utilize information gathered from the Harvest time-tracking data of their clients to get the results they need for their project estimations.

Harvest data allows Parakeeto to view all information from past projects to show you exactly how much time it’s likely to take you to complete your next one. Their methods also provide real-time feedback on any changes made to the project and gives an updated estimate that compares the current project to previous ones.

 

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• Marcel Petitpas talks about working with Gold Front and how he helped them streamline their workflows
• What are some of the best tools for operational workflows and systems?
• How Marcel decided on integration partners for Parakeeto and why they integrated with Harvest
• What Parakeeto does for agencies
• Why are many agencies bad at pricing their services?
• How to use Parakeeto to charge more for your services
• How to price your services the right way for increased profitability
• Marcel talks about his journey from being an agency owner to consultant and being a SaaS founder
• How does Parakeeto work?
• Marcel shares who his mentors and biggest influences are
• Big mistakes agencies are making and Marcel’s top tech tools for agencies
• Where to learn about Parakeeto’s toolkit and the services they offer
• Marcel recalls the best advice that Dan Martell has given him, and the low and proud moments he’s had so far

In this episode…

Any company, no matter how great their products and services may be, will experience some financial struggle if they do not know how to value their offerings properly. This undervaluation of their company will, at some point, hurt not just their company’s financials but the kind of service that they provide to their clients.

At least, that’s what Marcel Petitpas says. He also believes that aside from undervaluing their services, companies also often make the mistake of not estimating their personnel needs, and they make decisions that make them sink in work with no pleasant bottom line. So what can companies do differently to get back on track and enjoy better business profits?

On this episode of Inspired Insider, Dr. Jeremy Weisz talks with Parakeeto CEO and Co-founder, Marcel Petitpas, about why agencies struggle to make a profit and what they can do to turn things around with the help of Parakeeto. They’ll also be discussing the top tools agency owners can use for optimal efficiency and to maximize their margins, how they can improve their pricing, and the best learnings Marcel gained about running and growing a business. Stay tuned.

Resources Mentioned on this episode

• Parakeeto
• Marcel Petitpas on LinkedIn
• Ben Zittlau on LinkedIn
• Parakeeto Toolkit
• The Agency Profitability Podcast

Special Mention:

• John Doherty on LinkedIn
• Jason Swenk on LinkedIn
• Reg Cheramy on LinkedIn
• Dan Martell on LinkedIn
• David C. Baker on LinkedIn
• Carl Smith on LinkedIn
• Marc Albert on LinkedIn

Podcasts/Interviews mentioned: 

• Episode 40 (The Agency Profit Podcast): The Agency Profitably Flywheel

Tools Mentioned

• SEMrush
• Stormboard
• Miro
• Harvest
• Asana
• Monday.com
• Airtable
• Quickbook

 

Episode Transcript

Jeremy Weisz

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, Founder of InspiredInsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders you know my style I love talking about past guests, not just the good stuff but the tough times. Some past guests include Pipedrive co-founder Omas. He talked about brain surgery, getting brain surgery getting married, moving from Estonia, the us all in the same year. At the time they 10,000 paying customers when everyday in 2013. Now they have over 100,000 customers so it’s amazing to see their trajectory and tools that are amazing for agencies, you know, and we’re going to talk about Marcel’s Parakeeto in a second, but shout out to John Doherty, the Founder of Credo who introduced me to today’s great guest. They helped top companies meet the best pre vetted digital marketing providers within a few days using their platform and company. Jason Swenk’s another person I respect in the industry I know Marcel, you’ve chatted with him, he helps agency owners grow their agencies faster. One of the smartest people we talked about how his newer company buys agencies and how they evaluate them. So check out that episode and Chris Martinez, Founder of Dude, they help digital agencies take on more clients and scale up with a flat rate unlimited web design development. And before I introduce to today’s guest, this episode is brought to you by Rise25, which I co founded by my business partner John Corcoran, and Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream 100 partnerships and relationships. And by helping you run your podcast for you, you know Marcel I’ve been podcasting since 2008. And it is, for me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at a way to give to my best relationships and profiling people I admire their thought leadership and what they’re doing in their companies are doing on my podcast is amazing way that I can give to them. So thank you for coming on everyone. If you’re interested in podcasting, you can go to Rise25.com and watch John, my business partner and I banter like an old married couple. But it really isn’t amazing for relationship building. Also, I want you know, I do when I do a lot of research for this Marcel, to figure out some of your thought leadership what you’re talking about so we can get deeper. What I one of the tools I use is SEMrush. And so shout out to sem rush. I use them for research, you can run your SEO, PPC, social media with they have over like 40 tools. And I’m not even using probably a fraction of them. They over have over 6 million users, and one in four fortune 500 companies as an SEMrush client. Are you saying you use them too?

Marcel Petitpas

I’m also an SEM user?

Jeremy Weisz

Oh, Awesome. And so I looked up Parakeeto, I found one of the most popular posts on your site, so I make sure to hit one of the most popular posts. So it was the eight I don’t know if you know this, but The Agency Profitably Flywheel was so 40 of your podcast is one of the most popular posts on your site, according to SEMrush. So what do I do? Of course, you know, at 20, I want to research what’s the most important stuff. So I read like the top 20% of what it tells me I should be reading and listening to about you. And they were kind enough to allow me to give anyone a 30 day free trial of their Guru account with no credit card required. I don’t get a cut of that or anything like that. Even if you sign up afterwards. It’s typically $200 a month. If you go to InspiredInsider.com/semrushguru, you can check it out and no credit card required. So check it out. Today’s guest I just told you Marcel Petitpas, who is co-founder of Parakeeto, he helps digital agencies run more profitably. And Parakeeto helps agencies and consultancies, create accurate, data-driven estimates for their projects and seconds. And they use the information from past projects to show you exactly how much time it’s likely to take you to complete your next one, broken, even broken down by role. And even if you make changes to the project, you get real time feedback on how your estimates compare to past project. And so if you are an agency or any company like what do you think of Marcel like profitability? profitability is key. So, Marcel, thanks for joining me.

Marcel Petitpas

Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here. Jeremy.

Jeremy Weisz

You know, I’m I want to start with how you came to this, okay. And maybe, you know, it came out of what you’re working on as a consultant. So talk about your big, big client you work with Gold Front, what did you learn through Gold Front?