124: Discover Your Own Passion, Knowledge and Advantage with Agency Consultant Jason Swenk

Jason Swenk talks to us about creating the resource you "wish you had" that satisfies the criteria of: 1. something you're passionate about, 2. something you're knowledgeable in, 3. an area where you have a unique advantage, and 4. something that is helpful and educates people. He tells us how he started, grew, and sold an agency, and shares some cutting edge techniques including the early bird list and progressive profiling with thank you pages. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvhsMYGDtBM Display TranscriptRobert Plank: Today's expert guest is Jason Swenk. Have you ever asked yourself how can I start an agency? How can I scale my agency? How can I generate more leads? How can I find time to do work on the business and not in the business, and what systems do I need in place, or even how do I position myself to sell my agency? We're in the right place. We're talking to the right guide. We're talking to Mr. Jason Swenk. How are things today Jason? Jason Swenk: A man. How's it going? Robert Plank: Super fantastic. This whole agency thing, or web agency, I've got to be honest. I've heard it thrown around. I've heard this term being used at live events. I've been to events where it's like these talks offer agencies only, but I have to admit after seeing it thrown around and seeing a few different, I guess, agencies, I'm still at a loss as to what an agency is. Could you fill us in a little bit? Jason Swenk: Yeah. It's basically a professional service firm that does marketing or technology for their clients. There's so many forms of a digital agency. The traditional agency everybody thinks of Mad Men, right? I create the Super Bowl ads, commercials, that kind of stuff, but on the digital side there's so many agencies that actually creates websites or do just social media, or mobile apps, or email marketing, or whatever it is. That's what a digital agency is. Robert Plank: Does it have to be a team? Jason Swenk: Yes, because if it's just one person you're a freelancer. Robert Plank: Oh, okay. You could have a 2 person agency technically. Jason Swenk: Exactly. Robert Plank: Well, cool. Now that were on the same page with that could you tell us about yourself and about your agency, and what it is that you do? Jason Swenk: Yeah. Back in 1999, back when Al Gore invented the Internet, thank you Al, I worked for a company called Arthur Anderson who was the paper shredding company of Enron, and worked for them for about 6 months. At that time I was a computer programmer and I really hated what I was doing but I didn't know what I could do next. I was just lucky my friend looked like Justin Timberlake so I created a website making fun of of NSYNC back in the day when they were popular, and it was called NSHIT. It got really popular and started designing websites for people because people were like, "Hey, can you design me a website?" I was like, "Yeah, sure." I was like, "Five hundred dollars," and they were like, "Yes." I was like, "Oh. Cool," and then the next person comes along and I was like, "a thousdand dollars," and I just kept going up until someone said no, and just started doing websites for a lot of cool people. I struggled for a couple years just because, we were always profitable, but for the first couple years I didn't know even what an invoice was. I didn't know how to run a business or really how to get it off the ground. I didn't have that clarity of where we were going, and then when I started focusing on that that's when we started making, crossing over the 7 figure mark and crossing over that mark, and all this kind of stuff going forward. Robert Plank: How much of this do you do yourself? Do you just manage a team or how hands-on are you personally?