Finding Your Niche And Scaling Your Agency

Finding Your Niche And Scaling Your Agency to be established by John Jantsch spoke more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Brent Weaver

In this escapade of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Brent Weaver. Brent is on a mission to help 10,000 digital agency proprietors achieve opennes in business and life by helping them own their marketplace. Brent is the founder and CEO of uGurus, a business training, and education firm dedicated to this mission. He likewise hosts one of the leading podcasts in the business niche–The Digital Agency Show and is the author of Get Rich in the Deep End: Commit to Your Niche, Own Your Market, and Audaciously Scale Your Agency.

Key Takeaway:

Brent Weaver is known for and on a mission to help digital agency owneds own their sell- whatever that are likely to be. Too numerous authorities rely on word-of-mouth referrals or squander announce dollars to grow their business. In this escapade, we dive into Brent’s framework that can help you attract the claim patrons, establish your jurisdiction, and build a marketing engine that will help you acquire a solid, changing patient base.

Questions I question Brent Weaver:

[ 1:32] Are you all in on the idea that you must pick a niche? [5:31] How do you characterize scale, and how does it differ from growth? [7:59] In the agency world, there’s a good deal of conference around fees versus project initiatives — what’s your take on which footpath to go down? [12:49] Can you dive into your 5 A fabric from your diary and too talk a little bit about how you assure the role of content today? [16:09] Can you apply us a 10,000 -foot view of what uGurus is and what you offer?

More About Brent Weaver:

Get a copy of his journal- Get Rich in the Deep End: Commit to Your Niche, Own Your Market, and Audaciously Scale Your Agency Learn more about Brent’s business- UGURUS Brent’s Podcast- The Digital Agency Show Podcast

More About The Certified Marketing Manager Program Powered By Duct Tape Marketing:

Check it out here .

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Duct Tape Transcript

John Jantsch( 00:00 ): This episode of the pipe videotape commerce podcast is brought to you by the Salesman Podcast, hosted by Will Barron brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network. Look, if “youre working in” auctions, wanna learn how to sell or really peek at the most recent sales bulletin. Check out the sales podcast where host will Barron aids auctions professionals learn how to find buyers and in big business in effective and ethical ways. One of my favorite occurrences lately, how to personalize your marketings outreach at big scale, who doesn’t want to do that? Listen to the salesman podcast, where you are get your podcast.

John Jantsch( 00:48 ): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct strip commerce podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Brent Weaver. He’s the founder and CEO of uGurus a business training and education busines in digital organization seat. And he likewise hosts one of the leading podcasts in that niche. The digital agency show he’s the author of get rich in the deep end, is under an obligation your niche, own your busines and audaciously scale your enterprise. So Brent, welcome to the show. Awesome. Be here, John. Thanks. So did I say niche, right? What do you think? You know, I’m a dyke somebody, myself though, you know, it is what it is, right? I mean, I it’s, it’s it’s perhaps my Texas comes through, right. Well, you, it exits better with the riches or in the niches right. Than, uh, than in the niche. It really doesn’t verse at all.

John Jantsch( 01:38 ): Does it? So let’s talk about that. However you, uh, stres it. Let’s talk about cuz that, that is certainly common advice. Now I narrow down to, to a niche come really good at serving that niche. I find a good deal of families, particularly parties that are starting out or trying to grow, they get really be concentrated on recollecting, oh, I have to pick dentists or whatever it is. And you are familiar with, I have to only working in collaboration with them and then they find out six months later or they dislike it. So, you are familiar with, how do you, are you all in on that, obviously it’s part of your ti claim of your book, but are you all in on that or do you temper that in any way that that would be more helpful? I anticipate, uh, to especially people getting started. Yeah. I, I entail, there’s definitely pros and cons to, to being a generalist versus a, a spec.

Brent Weaver( 02:24 ): Right? I symbolize, apparently if we are thinking about analogies, I entail, I have a, a general practice physician that I run check on a regular basis and it’s really easy to get an appointment. I can simply kind of pop in there. He various kinds of knows a little bit about a lot of things, but you are familiar with, when it comes to like getting feeling surgery, I’m obviously not gonna go to him. And I have a, a sneaking suspicion about which one is a member of the better country club. But, but you are familiar with, I think that when it comes to enterprises, if you don’t, if you don’t desire world markets or the type of business, I convey, I think it’s, it’s good to separate like the market from the customer. I signify, if you work with 10 dentists and you recognize like you time don’t like reading pictures of people’s cheeks, like that’s thoroughly cool.

Brent Weaver( 03:02 ): I’m on my 13 th grocery working with digital bureaux. So this idea that you’re gonna find the one, you are familiar with, the first time you go out there, I think is, is probably not a good hope. So I fantasize people should be willing to, to try it. But the reality is if you do work with, uh, a specific market, that’s a lot more repeatable, you can build processes, you can find team representatives that understand what you’re doing. You is generated by corrected volunteers. Yeah. There’s a lot of upside to having a, a chosen market. Yeah. And I think something you said there is an important distinction. I signify, what I always kind of bristle at is when people, I work with a lot of tribes starting, you know, jump-start out of corporate and wanting to start an bureau and they’ve been told you need to pick a niche.

John Jantsch( 03:37 ): And so they, they try to, but they don’t don’t have the experience yet to do that. And I think what you just said, you are familiar with, a great deal of time you find what you like are concerned with. And I actually, you are familiar with, I think you can find a restrict focus in types of like within a niche types of business or types of business owners or behaviors, you know, of businesses, you are familiar with? And, and I mull the that’s, I think that’s a key part of it, but there’s no question once you is my finding that, as “youve said”, you are familiar with, you are in a position to a Facebook ad campaign for, you know, someone in Milwaukee is probably gonna be just as good for somebody in Omaha. So, you know, so, and like, you know, I think it’s good to also, you are familiar with, you kind of brought up the niche within a niche. Yeah, yeah.

Brent Weaver( 04:19 ): Concept. So like one of my patrons, he, he actually does focus on dentist. I don’t have a lot of clients that focus on dentist, but he has 27 patients in the market. Right? Yeah. They all pay him about three grand a few months. And he gets most of his clients from one Facebook group that has 38,000 members. Now I I’m, I don’t know what 27 over of 38,000 is, but you are familiar with, he has a thriving business with 27, like a tiny little like sliver of world markets. Right. So I reckon ultimately what happens when people start to focus on a market is they do find themselves teaching down so far, either through a canal or a type of client or assortment of buyers. And I think if you are the type person that likes smorgasbord, you can also look at a horizontal busines with, is advisable to, you are familiar with, only if you, let’s say independent experts at Shopify stores.

Brent Weaver( 05:04 ): Yeah. Hey, cool. We’re gonna build websites for a lot of different Shopify accumulations. Right. It could be jewelers could be, artists could be, you are familiar with, clothing makes, right. It doesn’t have to time be a vertical. Yeah. I belief I kinda like the variety as part of it, you get kind of digested after a while.

John Jantsch( 05:19 ): So in the name too you have scale your bureau. I run into a lot of parties that fluster growing and magnitude, you are familiar with, and a good deal of, for a lot of people, when they talk about scale, what they really time aim is getting bigger, you are familiar with, having more clients, how do you define scale first off and, and does it differ from growth?

Brent Weaver( 05:38 ): Well, you are familiar with, that’s a great question. So I think that you use that expression committee yeah. Earlier very, which I love. Right. So, so to me, scale is we’re actually developing systems and processes that are repeatable and that we’re ripening the business by getting the owner out of the stuff that they’re coming birthed of. Right. And, and I know a lot of agency owneds that are in truly successful changing businesses, but lover, like I have a lot of grey-headed hair, but like they’re stressed out, they’re overworked, they’re involved in every join they’re involved in every purchaser. Right. Like they have growth, which is awesome. Right. But they don’t have anything that’s actually scalable. They’re still like the hotshot that’s spinning all the plates. Yeah. And so I fantasize within whether it’s, it’s choosing a market horizontal or horizontal or a tied furnish, like you have to find that element in your business, that lowest common denominator, that atomic force for scale.

Brent Weaver( 06:31 ): And I don’t think that’s as necessary if you’re exactly interested in growth, but if you’re trying to create something really scalable and get yourself out, I, I think that you’ve gotta find some common denominator. And I study most people, you are familiar with, you start getting 10 crew members and, you are familiar with, 25 buyers or something, if you don’t have those structures or treats, I imply, it’s just gonna be growth will actually be a problem. Won’t it? You know, I’ve talked to a lot of agencies, I’ve done a lot of field trips and, and, and site visits and hand on interrogations. I mean, you are familiar with, we were at effective UI. Gosh, it, it was likely seven or eight years ago. And they had, you are familiar with, 120, 130 squad representatives. They worked with organizations across a huge myriad of the luck 500 and fortune 5,000. They had a very diverse adjusted of beings that worked there.

Brent Weaver( 07:15 ): Their lowest common denominator, I predict, was kind of two things. One, it was around the UI UX of, you know, these different businesses and that kind of problem solving. But the other was Deb billable hour. Like they were unapologetically focused on maximizing the billable hours that, that business sold, you are familiar with, they weren’t confused on their representation. They knew what their pose was. They knew generally how much clients needed to spend for them to be a client of their business. And so I think that, you know, they achieved insane growth, but like, it was really complicated. They had to have a lot of really smart, a lot of really expensive stipends. And so while I witnessed that they, they got a lot of growing. I don’t know if I would’ve looked at their business and said, wow, that’s a really scalable organisation. I could see that growing to a thousand people.

Brent Weaver( 07:55 ): Right. Yeah. Like it was impressive, but like, I don’t know if I would consider that to be scale.

John Jantsch( 07:59 ): So there in the agency world, there’s a lot of conversation around retainers versus project work. I convey, where do you fell off? I’m guessing, you are familiar with, if you’re gonna own your sell, if “you know youre going”, you know, symbol and carton your offerings, you know, you’re probably going to be more towards the retainer. I make, I, I think it depends what your goals are.

Brent Weaver( 08:17 ): I intend, there’s some pros and cons, you are familiar with, you are familiar with, often a fee affair ends when there’s, you know, some unhappiness with the client and vendor relationship. Right’s like, retainer’s ending. Yeah. What am I getting again? Who is this person we’re paying? Why are they doing your credit card every month? Right. And so I think that you can, you know, there are some pluses to a project where you’ve came this fixed life cycle.

Brent Weaver( 08:42 ): Yeah. And you can really create a choreographed ordeal for your buyers in that space. What I would level it up to, without even thinking about whether a fee is best or whether, uh, job best, I think there’s different types of, of, of production that lend themselves to both. But I meditate as an busines, it’s how do we create a killer offer? How do we do something that when we’re sitting in front of a client, it’s like, it’s so good. You know, it’s like, it can’t be refused. And so I think that should be always be the goal, right? Whether it’s, you know, a, uh, a big $50,000, you are familiar with, slope, you are familiar with, how is impossible to remove hazard for the client? How can we mitigate risks? How can we promise or show proof of results to where we’re gonna really blow ’em away and simply stir them so excited to move forward.

Brent Weaver( 09:25 ): And so I envisage once you figure out like what that give is, and, and I think that’s one of their reasons for I love people that are focused on a vertical is because we get to really understand that customer as a, you know, as they relate to the entire market, we can craft an present. We can understand what our churn is. We can understand what our refund rates are. We can understand what our success rates is, right. We can actually look at that material at proportion and we can create better and better offers, you are familiar with? And so I fantasize when you get to the point where you can make an offer where you say, you are familiar with, 85 K a month, and if you’re not getting, you are familiar with, if you didn’t get 10 consumers in the next 90 epoches, I’m gonna give you a hundred percent of your money back.

Brent Weaver( 10:05 ): You know, I want, or, and, and one of your best friend, he actually even will write a check for five grand. He says, I’ll give you all your fund back and I’ll pay you $5,000 if I don’t get this outcome. And I think if you’re gonna to that target of being able to get, procreate presents, like you need to know your customer, like better than they know themselves. Yeah. You need to know your processes and your results better than, you know, anybody else. And you need to be so confident to be able to offer something like that, where it’s genuinely an volunteer that somebody can’t refuse. So I always push people to focus more on their proposal and, and too constructed the simulate that’s right for you, if you are able to want peace of mind and you want that consistent cashflow flow, then you are familiar with, it’s probably better to be on a fee kind of model. You know, sometimes people say that that projects are easier to sell the retainers. I, I don’t know.

John Jantsch( 10:48 ): Yeah. I tell you, the modeling that I enjoy is you sell a project that leads to a retainer, you know, since they are, it’s a lower jeopardy, you are familiar with, it’s a lower gamble for them. They get to see the evaluate, you know, they’re bought in now, like they have a relationship and they’re like, how can we keep working together? That that’s generally the pose we take, because it is, you know, person just fills you, you made up a lurch and you say , now it’s is about to be $5,000 a few months. It’s like, I don’t know what I’m buying. You know, I don’t have, I don’t have any experience of it. I convey, yeah, you got proof, you are familiar with, you got other parties you’ve cured, but that’s, to me, I review a lot of times people go for that long term retainer too fast in a lot of ways, even if that’s their model.

Brent Weaver( 11:24 ): Yeah.

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John Jantsch( 12:28 ): So you have a framework in the book, five A’s, you are familiar with, every good book has to have a free structure. I “re just saying”, when I was reading about the, kind of the layout of your fabric, I was very happy to see that you were telling beings we are really needed to think about content differently. That it wasn’t about more material. It was about content that was strategic and it wasn’t exactly blog poles. So I, I approximate maybe a comment on kind of how you watch the role of content, and then maybe we can get it into the five a yeah. Well, I think that something that should be thought about with any material is dissemination. Yeah. And I look at, you are familiar with, if you are trying to get into a new marketplace and you rendered that precedent earlier of, you are familiar with, parties leaving the corporate life and not having the experience.

Brent Weaver( 13:12 ): And so I imagine a mistake that a of beings reach is they, they start their business and they start their agency and think, oh worker, I it is necessary do content. Right. So they create a Facebook fan page or, you are familiar with, a business page and they cause their website. They start to blog on their own site. And, and in the book, I kind of talked about this garage band effect, right. It’s like, imagine if the Beatles, like, they’re like, all right, we’re gonna, we’re gonna make it big at night after night, they playing in the garage, right. They just like ho people of like, come and watch. ’em obviously they were all good musicians and they had a plan, but they, you are familiar with, what impelled them large-hearted was they went and pitched themselves to like the regional associations, the regional venues. And that’s what differentiates them from like the hobbyist circles that simply get, get together on Friday darkness and jam-pack and, you are familiar with, cigarette weed and booze brew together and have a good time.

Brent Weaver( 13:54 ): Right. Which there’s nothing wrong with that. Right. They’re probably having a really good time, but if they wanna make it big, then used to go and putting yourself in front of a evaluate and a jury is really important. It it’s so important to get that accept. And so when you’re thinking about content for your authority, I think it it’s equally, if not more important to think about that dispensation constituent, right. I’ve got out an idea. I have something to say and I need to go out there and find somebody who’s willing to give my substance on their plat. And I feel every time you then get a blog, post published, every time you show up and do a webinar on somebody else’s platform, the amount of credibility, right. The extent of elaboration, right. You have to show up a little differently when it’s somebody else’s, you know, somebody else’s stage right there, a filter, but they likewise have higher expectations.

Brent Weaver( 14:39 ): And so I think if you’re gonna approaching material as a “agencies “, you know, and it’s harder, cuz you’re not gonna, like at first, it’s gonna feel like you’re not getting anything out there. You’re like, oh worker, wouldn’t it merely find it easier if I could just tweet on my own detail. Right. So you’re not gonna is a lot of substance out there, but what’s gonna happen is when you do, you’re gonna build audience like that. So within the first six months of launching U gurus, you are familiar with, well a nobody. And we had a list of over 10,000 beings, a hundred percentage organically since we are went and got articles and content published on other existing pulpits that had been available for 10 times. Yeah.

John Jantsch( 15:10 ): Yeah. I’m a huge proponent of being guests on podcasts. That, to me, that’s one of the answer so many issues on top of going your name out there and get somebody else to say, you have something to say, it’s huge for SEO, merely because, you are familiar with, I’m gonna promote the heck out of this escapade and probably item back to you gurus.

John Jantsch( 15:28 ): And that’ll be a delightful link.

Brent Weaver( 15:30 ): And now that I have a roster, right, I could promote it more. Right. I intend, which, which that happens, right. That let this happen. I imply, after a while you get to build up some resources and then you get to use those resources to create partnerships and to lean peculiarity other people and to, you know, there, there is some stuff with that, but I, I always say like there’s own media and there’s kind of media that you hire. And when, when you first start out, I think if you go into like the fee media gap, it’s gonna help you build platform for yourself last-minute. It’s a really long road to build your own audience.

John Jantsch( 15:58 ): Yeah. I’ve only been doing it for 30 years.

Brent Weaver( 16:01 ): So, so just like John, right. Just putting your 30 years in and you, you too could have a platform like pipe videotape marketing.

John Jantsch( 16:08 ): So let’s talk a little bit about you guru. You do, you’re doing, clearly you’re doing consulting with agencies and helping them develop, but you too do episodes, pretty good size episodes. You have an academy there. So perhaps time, uh, plainly invite parties to check it out, but likewise kinda give a bit, uh, 10,000 foot attitude of what the hell are you do at U Gus.

Brent Weaver( 16:28 ): Yeah. I appreciate that. So, so we’re a coaching training and community program for, or digital agencies to grow their business. We use that, you know, that market driven sit that we kind of talked about with five, a framework and, you are familiar with, witnessing your busines is various kinds of our baseline to help agencies scale. And we have a, a one year program it’s kind of a three time vision that people sign on for a year at a time. And I ever tell people, you know, it took me like took me eight years to like show all of the really big mistakes guiding an agency.

Brent Weaver( 16:56 ): And then it took me five years to really, you know, reparation accelerate and kind of grow a successful business through it. And so our perception from day one with Yu guru is always to see how can we do that? You know, that 12 time grueling, you know, event right. And shorten it up into a much smaller learning cycle and too give you some friends and some peers to enjoy that wander with, I, I had no agency friends except for my business spouse, which he was in the ship with me. Right. We had no agency friends for the really the first eight to nine years. We ran our business. I imply, I didn’t know, I didn’t regularly meet with, have lunch collaborate with in any meaningful road, actually any other agency owner for the first eight years of my business. And it was only, and it was hard.

Brent Weaver( 17:35 ): It was stressful. And in entrepreneurship was a lot more fun when you have friends.

John Jantsch( 17:39 ): Yeah. Yeah , no, I think there’s no qu, you are familiar with, especially the world we work in today, you are familiar with, COVID aside. I want, parties, you are familiar with, don’t have places that they go and be engaged in, you know, with the 20 P even if they have a team of 20 beings, it can be kinda lonely. So, so having, exactly, as “youve said”, somebody else who can say, well, here’s the mistakes I determined you, you are familiar with, maybe you can learn something from that, you are familiar with, simply various kinds of shortens the, uh, the bow for, for sure. And it’s time you gurus.com, right?

Brent Weaver( 18:06 ): That’s right. That’s right.

John Jantsch( 18:08 ): All right, Brent, thanks so much for something by the duct tape marketing podcast. And hopefully we’ll run into each other one of these days out there on the road.

Brent Weaver( 18:13 ): Awesome, being. Thanks John.

John Jantsch( 18:15 ): All liberty. That wraps up another chapter of the passage tape sell podcast. I wanna expressed appreciation for so much for aria in. Feel free to share this show. Feel free to give us assesses. You know, we adoration those things. Also. Did you know that we had created training marketing for your squad? If you’ve went hires, if you’ve got a staff member that wants to learn a marketing system, how to install that marketing system in your business, check it out. It’s called the guaranteed market manager curriculum from passage tape market. You can find it at duct videotape, marketing.com and exactly scroll down a little and find that tab that says training courses for your, your team.

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