Logan Lyles (00:07.643)
Welcome back to Agency Builders. I'm Logan Lyles. You have probably heard my voice on the podcast so far, but I want to introduce some new voices. Maybe you've heard them in previous episodes, but this is our first of our co-hosted commentary style where we've got four folks on the mic at once. So forgive us if this is a total train wreck, but I don't think it will be. We've got Cassie Shea, Jay Owen, and Tyler Pygett here.

our expert builders as I often refer to them here within the agency builders community. Cassie, Jay, Tyler, welcome on. It's fun to be with you guys.

Jay Owen (00:42.193)
Thanks for having us.

Cassie Shea (00:42.287)
Glad to be here.

Tyler Pigott (00:42.356)
Good to see y'all.

Logan Lyles (00:44.412)
All right. Well, as we will iterate with this format, but I like the idea of letting people know kind of what to expect. We're going to have three sections to these episodes where we've got all four of us on the mic. The first we're to break down some agency advice that we found online this week that might be linked in. might be a YouTube short. It might be a Twitter slash X thread, something like that, some agency advice, because there's a lot of advice out there, but

Some of it's good, some of it's bad, some of it needs some more context. So we're going to give you some commentary on that. We're often running polls either on LinkedIn or to our private Slack community on agency builders. So we're going to riff on a poll this week centered around EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system already has been referenced in an episode, eight episodes into the podcast, and then give you a peek into one of the conversations within the agency builders community that's going on this week and give you our thoughts on it. So.

With that, let's jump into our agency advice. You guys, I saw this post from Pete Caputa, the five things, five questions you should ask as an agency to, to think about, should I join a partner program, especially with a SaaS company? He ranked these in kind of reverse order of importance, firsthand experience, reselling for a commission, co-marketing. Does it help you differentiate? And can you,

Can you build strategic services around the product? For me, when I saw this, I think that a lot of agencies look at number four. By the way, if you're only listening to us and you're not following us on YouTube, go check us out on YouTube and you can actually see us sharing our screen during this segment. But number four, reselling for a commission and three co-marketing. I feel like a lot of agencies focus there and they don't get down to number two and number one on Pete's list. That's kind of my first thoughts. Who wants to kick us off with a riffin on some of this agency advice?

Jay Owen (02:36.657)
Yeah, I'm happy to jump in and then Cassie, talk, feel free to add to or create your own content. Things that I think stand out to me are actually differentiation. One of the things that we talk about a lot at business builders is that you need more than one thing to differentiate you as an agency. And for us, there are basically three things. One, we've got 25 years of growth experience, but that's not a totally unique difference. There's a lot of agencies that have had, you know, decades of experience. Two,

we're a HubSpot Platinum Partner. That is also a different share, but there's thousands of HubSpot Platinum Partners. And three, we're a Storybrand Certified Agency. And so those three things together, however, there's only literally a couple of agencies in the whole world who are HubSpot Platinum Partners and Storybrand Agencies and have 25 years of growth experience. And so I actually lean on that differentiation the most. I always see number four, reselling for a commission as like a nice bonus, but it's never a primary...

thing with regards to partnering or or establishing a primary software product for us or to refer to other people.

Tyler Pigott (03:44.717)
That's great. I think as I just look through like a lens or filter of what types of companies or SaaS companies or whatnot to partner with, I'm always thinking like, what's the win-win, right? Like, does, how is it a win for me as an agency? How's a win for this business or, know, for this, you know, software company in this instance? Because oftentimes people forget about that, you know, like if a software company is coming out with something, it's only beneficial to them. So kind of who cares?

And then vice versa, many agencies look at it through, well, how is it only beneficial to me? And so I love all of these points because reality is, is there is an element of, of kind of win-win for all the above. I feel like a lot of people get stuck on number four, which Logan, kind of mentioned this kind of leading into it, which is as, Hey, what's in it for me? Kind of like that mentality, which is great. But I would echo what Jay said about differentiation. think number one, just being someone that

built a horizontally-niche focused business on people that were running on HubSpot and got to be a fairly high-level diamond partner for a lot of years. We did this. We literally partnered or came alongside of a software company, learned a ton about the software, hired people specifically that were gurus or experts in that software, and then built tons of strategic services around it from onboarding and implementation to...

you know, advanced build outs and reporting and all sorts of things that you can do on the platform. There is a ton more money in that element than there was in commissions. Right. So like it that enabled us and our team to kind of have a bit more of a direction on that on that side of things. So I love this list. I think it's a like really comprehensive list. I just would encourage people to work all the way down it, not just stop it. I love this platform. I should be a partner. Well, hold on. You know, like are there other elements to it, which this is a great kind of

you know, guess checklist, you will, answering some of the questions that are in the midst of it.

Jay Owen (05:41.201)
Well, it might be helpful to like for context for those who may not have listened to all of us before, you know, I'm actively running an agency and helping lead agency builders as a community. Tyler built an agency, sold an agency, worked for a large agency and is now doing all kinds of other things in the sales and consulting land. And then Cassie does a lot of coaching and leading of executives in all kinds of different spaces. So each of us hopefully will bring a little bit of a different perspective. So Cassie, if you were coaching somebody

you know, to think through what kind of software they would provide, like what are the things that you would ask them to think about in these contexts?

Cassie Shea (06:15.652)
Yeah, I'm gonna actually keep it really short and zero and on just one key point for the co-marketing potential. And when I think about strategic partnerships, I think about where are you in the market as an agency? What is your differentiator? Where are you in the market? Who are you serving? And when you think about partnerships, I would think actually about the customer journey. So where is your customer journey mapped out? If there's anything that's unclear, start there. And when I think about partnerships, I think about who is downstream and who is upstream from the service that I'm providing.

And so if I think about partnerships from that lens, then I'm looking at how do I make friends with or develop relationships with people that are maybe

one step ahead or behind of where my customers really are. And then I look to build strategic partnerships around that so I can always be a referral partner for someone else and also receive referrals into my business. So I think the umbrella takeaway I would give from this list, which is comprehensive and Jay and Tyler gave great points, I would just look at the customer journey. Where's your agency and who are you serving? And if you think about strategic partnerships, how can they plug in either to add value to

have a feeder program to create referrals or how can you also be a great referrer out for more complex problems so that you have your strategic partnerships mapped to your client journey.

Logan Lyles (07:37.831)
That's really great advice, Cassie. The upstream and downstream, I love that visual, just looking at the customer journey. You're experiencing new clients that are coming to your agency. There's problems that they're solving before they come to you. There's ones that they're solving or trying to solve beyond what you can do. And it goes to that win-win. I would just encourage people, the law of reciprocity is real.

Tyler Pigott (07:38.0)
Great.

Logan Lyles (08:01.039)
Right. Just like you wouldn't go to a conference and just pitch yourself and pitch your, like, we all know that guy or gal who that no one wants to talk to. But when you're walking around asking people, who could I refer for you? Who's your ideal client? How can I help send you business when you approach it that way? As Cassie said, and also Tyler with your win-win comment, then you are going to benefit from that law of reciprocity. If you're looking upstream downstream and asking who can I help, you're going to get some help in return. So.

Great thoughts there. would say overall, let's give this one a thumbs up or thumbs down. Everybody thumbs up on on Pete's post in general here with the added context. Tyler was slow.

Tyler Pigott (08:40.073)
thumbs up and I mean, I slow. just was, you know, like I am wearing an orange hoodie currently if you're not looking at it. And that's like right on brand with HubSpot. So I'm just going to give myself a little pat on the back for showing up. Well, can I add one? Can I add one more thing? Yeah. It's to the differentiation comments that Jay made. One thing I would look through and add to this list would be how does the partner program allow you to differentiate inside of it? So many people and so many software companies create these like

Logan Lyles (08:48.284)
Yeah. Yes, I'm the only one who's go for it. Yeah.

Jay Owen (08:49.615)
you

Tyler Pigott (09:08.832)
pool of people like this army of, these people can work on our software. But then you're like, well, okay, from a customer standpoint, how do they narrow down who they should actually work with? And so it is helpful to look at like, is there ways to elevate differentiate within a partner program as well? But usually the successful ones do have ways in which you can kind of have different tiers or whatever it looks like. But that was helpful, I know for us, and we both mentioned, and I both have been in the HubSpot community mentioned that kind of differentiation. So

Logan Lyles (09:37.257)
And it's changed over the years. mean, early days of the HubSpot Partner Program, there were certain ways you could differentiate that you just can't today. There was a blog post that I forget the number, but it was literally like the 6,519 best HubSpot Partner Agencies. Okay, you can no longer just hang your hat on, we're a HubSpot Partner or we're a HubSpot Partner at this tier, right? All right, well, number two, our second segment that we're gonna go to is all about some poll data. We're gonna be...

Tyler Pigott (09:51.795)
Yeah, that's helpful.

Jay Owen (09:54.907)
Yeah.

Tyler Pigott (09:56.145)
Right. Right, right.

Logan Lyles (10:04.99)
bringing this to you guys as listeners, either from a poll we run on LinkedIn or to our community. And I just dropped one, this was kind of preempted by a conversation we were having on Slack in the community, does your agency run on EOS? And if you're looking at the poll here, if you're watching us on YouTube, 38 % yet said yes, 28 % said kinda, because a lot of agency folks I talked to adopt certain parts of EOS. So.

Over 50 % over 60 % if I can do math quickly of the folks at least that responded to this poll are using EOS to some degree. Someone in our community said there's kind of a cult-like following to EOS within agency builders. And so that just prompted me to want to ask you guys, what about EOS do you think is gaining so much traction? What parts do you think are useful for folks?

in the conversation you're having with other agencies. Cassie, maybe we start with you since you were third chiming in last time.

Cassie Shea (11:05.686)
I think the basic comment I would have is have a system.

What I think EOS does at the fundamental level is it gives you a way to measure, are we progressing toward our big goals? And so whether it's EOS or a different operating system, I think it's critical, whether you're a solopreneur, frankly, or you have an agency with 25 to 50 to 100 people, you need to have a system to measure, are we succeeding with our goals? And so what I think EOS does really well is it gives clarity on the scorecard.

are we winning or are we losing? And EOS builds goals around quarters. I actually personally love to build goals when I work with clients. I encourage them to build goals every week and every month because the danger of having a quarterly goal system is if you miss your target in a quarter.

that's a big chunk of the year that you can get discouraged and bummed out that you didn't hit the target. But if you actually target yourself on weekly goals, so you can have quarterly goals, but I would recommend highly breaking it down into weekly segments, because then if you have a week that doesn't work out, you can check that up to experience and keep going. So I really think the takeaway with having a system is having a system. And EOS is time-tested, proven, it's been around for I think over 25 years.

and businesses have been operating more profitably. The last thing I'll say with the system is forcing you to look at your numbers on a regular cadence is going to make an outsized difference in how you operate your business. So having a scorecard, look at your numbers, I would say daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly. But if you're not looking at them daily, at least weekly, know your numbers. And the system just helps you do that with discipline and consistency.

Logan Lyles (12:50.017)
Yeah. That makes me think of two things. One, if you missed my one-on-one episode with Cassie that dropped a week or two ago, check that one out. She goes in depth into managing your time, money, and energy on these sort of weekly sprints and reviewing those sorts of things. So it's great add on to that conversation. If you miss that, go check that one out after checking out today and something you said there, Cassie reminded me of, I think there's a chapter in your book, Jay, isn't it?

Buck the system, but have a system or something along those lines,

Jay Owen (13:20.113)
Yeah, ignore the system, but have a system. Exactly. And I think one of things I'd add to what Cassie said is what she's talking about about breaking goals down even further, it's like least common denominator, kind of makes a ton of sense. And the first time I really realized how much I needed it like that was during COVID, because all of a sudden the ability to just have these bigger windows of what could be done or what, you know, when something needed to be known by wasn't true anymore. So I think in times of crisis, whether it's a

Cassie Shea (13:36.997)
Mm.

Jay Owen (13:49.937)
2008 housing crash, which my agency went through or a COVID situation that we all went through. At that point, especially, you have got to have tighter windows. So all of a sudden, things that I typically tracked on a monthly basis, I'm now tracking on a weekly basis. Things that I was tracking on a weekly basis, I was tracking on a daily basis. And I do think it does make me think when she says that, well, how could we change some of that in our own systems? Are we breaking our goals down enough into particular categories?

I love EOS, we operate via that. And the way that happened for me was years ago, I was at an agency event with a bunch of other agency leaders and owners, and I was just expressing some of the common frustrations and problems that I was struggling with. We just hit about a million dollars, which is a pretty big pain point actually for lot of agencies. And I was like, I don't know how to fix all these things. And I had three separate people in three separate conversations go, have you read Traction with EOS built in? And I was like, no. So I read it on the plane home. And I thought, why am I not doing this?

But there's also other great systems, scaling ups, a similar also great system. There's all kinds of other tools and methodologies. And we've kind of found we followed the system really tightly and it worked really well for us. And then we've kind of adapted certain pieces to work better for kind of where we are. But definitely ignore the system, but you need to have a system.

Tyler Pigott (15:06.663)
I love that. I love the ignore. This is great because it fits well with like the entrepreneurial spirit a little bit like you're kind of kicking back. You know, one thing, the only thing I'll add to this echo what everybody else has said. The only thing I add to this is this is great because if you ever worked for me or were on the loan for creative team at some point, you know that generally I have lots of ideas and I'm always like throwing things against the wall to see what sticks. And the thing that I do love about EOS is that you meet pre like

proactively before a quarter or a year and establish what your goals are. You know, they're called rocks, you know, in this scenario with EOS, but you're really like, you know, landing on an agreeing and kind of like, you know, holding hands, if you will, around like this is what we're going to push forward this quarter of this year. And so what's super helpful is, is that for people like me, that is probably, you know, ultra entrepreneurial, has lots of ideas. It did give the ability for the team to push back a little bit.

and say, well, OK, cool. Love the idea. Which rock do you want me to then remove because this would have to replace it? And it was great because sometimes you just have to pull the card and go, actually, this is a better idea and higher priority. But most of the time, I was like, yep, you're right. I'll put it on the list. You know, and so just gave like this great permission for the team to really go, hey, no, this is the direction we're marching and some Yahoo like Tyler, they can't walk in the room and just completely change everything, you know. So I'm making fun of myself, but.

Cassie Shea (16:11.685)
Mm-hmm.

Tyler Pigott (16:33.33)
Hopefully for this one you can kind of relate based on just smaller team sizes and lots of crazy ideas.

Logan Lyles (16:41.02)
You're not alone in feeling that way, Tyler. I've worked for multiple agency owners who would definitely fit the bill as that visionary type. If you've read traction, you know, the difference between visionary and integrator. Also a great conversation, previous episode with Jeff Taron from Gunder on that as well. And I remember being with James, the founder of sweet fish media when I was working with him on his team and we read 40 acts speaking of other similar.

Tyler Pigott (16:48.272)
Hahaha

Logan Lyles (17:07.835)
platforms, the four disciplines of execution. There's a line in that book that says there will always be more great ideas than there is time to execute on those. that, I think the fact that he saw that and showed me, was like, Hey, I know what I've been doing when I've been walking in the room, like Tyler saying, Hey, why don't we do this? Why don't we do this? Giving people that system to be able to push back. And you mentioned rocks and that's where I want to round out in our conversation today, Tyler, because we had a great question from.

one of our community members. I won't name her by name because I didn't ask her if we could on the show, but she asked having run EOS for some time. What rocks have you seen create the most impact? And that sparked a really good conversation around setting rocks. so jumping off from EOS and plus, you know, we're nearing year in time doing annual planning. I want to ask the three of you, what are some of the advice that you give to folks in setting rocks or quarterly goals to continue on this? Keep pulling on this thread if you will.

Jay Owen (18:07.621)
Well, for us, would say, you know, I would try my best to make sure that all of us are putting rocks or quarterly objectives, some people would call them, that are specific, measurable, attainable, time-bound and realistic. You know, it's kind of the smart goal mentality, even though I this in the wrong order, but close enough. And I think that's it. You know, where I've gotten ourselves in trouble sometimes is having this kind of more vague thing. You need to know, like, did you do it or did you not?

Is it on track or is it not? And if you can't answer that, it's not clear enough, it's not specific enough, it's not gonna create any traction.

Tyler Pigott (18:43.02)
That's great. I would say two things that I'll add is one is that's really important in the EOS process since we're talking EOS is to establish, what are you trying to do? Like starts with your VTO, right? So you're gonna want to spend a lot of time on, hey, what are you trying to build? What's three years from now, 10 years from now? What does that look like? Or what are you wanting to create for yourself as you built a business? Because you really want your, you know, kind of annual plan and quarterly plans and all those types of things to.

somehow align with where you're trying to go a couple years down the road. I would say like I suffer from extreme ambition and there's awesome things about that but there's also challenging things and so I generally would historically make huge goals which are awesome and I think you should have some really big goals on there but you also have to have enough goals on there that are very attainable that you can actually put a check mark next to hey we did this.

because it's very discouraging if all you have is huge goals and you don't, maybe you land real close, which is awesome, but you can't quite say you did it. And it's just kind of can be discouraging. I'd kind of balance between those big audacious goals versus kind of like those really small ones. have some of all, if that makes sense.

Logan Lyles (19:54.846)
Yeah, absolutely. Cassie looked like you were waiting to chime in there.

Cassie Shea (19:59.322)
I was just like laughing coming up with an acronym in my head. I think goals should pop. So POP, there should be profitability goals, an operating goal, and a goal around people. Oftentimes we set goals around...

Profitability seems obvious, although I think there's a big distinction. A lot of what we talk about in the agency builders community is steering for profitability, not steering for top line revenue growth. Those can be two very different things, but at end of the day, I want a profitable business. I don't just want to make a lot of money. I want to keep a lot of money. And so steering toward profitability, sometimes that's increasing sales. Sometimes that's decreasing costs. But I think there should always be some North Star goal for your quarterly objectives around profitability.

operations. think again, another conversation we've been having a lot and this agency builders community is around AI. How is AI disrupting? I think it's crazy if you don't have some goals around bringing AI into your business. And I think that the last part about people is we want to be developing our people.

And I think the way that work is changing, especially with the advent of AI specific to creative agencies and industry, there's a lot of uncertainty and there's a lot of discomfort with the amount of growth that's going to need to happen in the next 12 to 18 to 24 months to keep on pace with how much technology is growing. And so I think you'd be remiss as a leader if you're not thinking about your people and thinking about how to help mitigate some of that uncertainty with building in skills that are going to map directly to your bottom line profitability. And I think Tyler.

a great point about the North Star goal. You need to know where you're going and I think we need to be thinking a lot bigger right now than we have been because technology is changing so much faster and Jay and Tyler and I are constantly talking about this about how to stay on pace, stay not ahead of the curve necessarily, but stay on leaning into the skin if you will. Like things are turning and changing quickly like how do we just like hang on for the ride and also be leaders in our field. So I think goals should pop, profitability operations people.

Tyler Pigott (21:53.184)
Ha ha.

Logan Lyles (22:02.456)
Wow, you just came up with that right on the spot.

Tyler Pigott (22:03.877)
She came up with that on the fly y'all. just like, come on. That's the reason I came to be honest. That was awesome. Like literally it was incredible. So good job.

Jay Owen (22:08.112)
She's much smarter than the rest of us.

Cassie Shea (22:08.141)
Hehehehe

Logan Lyles (22:11.423)
I was just telling Cassie, you know, after our first one-on-one interview, I'm like, you, you take the, the answers and you don't just give them, you format them and structure them in a way of, here's a list. And now she brought an acronym. So if you want to hear more from Cassie, these acronyms, these lists that she's going to give you that make stuff digestible, like those weekly goals, you can check off instead of just looking at quarterly or annual stuff. make sure you're subscribed.

Cassie Shea (22:24.111)
Shucks.

Logan Lyles (22:36.257)
Every week we're going to be getting together and bringing you our thoughts on agency advice that we find out there helping you filter through it and then bringing some data and bubbling up some of the conversations from our community speaking of which if you're not a member of the agency builders community and you're watching this on YouTube or you're listening to the podcast Shoot me a DM on LinkedIn. We can get you invited It's completely free but invite only because we want to make sure it is a place that continues to be for agency builders by agency builders

Cassie Tyler Jay, I'm gonna go around the horn. Thank you guys so much for joining me today This is fun, and I'm looking forward to more of our group episodes here on the podcast

Tyler Pigott (23:15.651)
Love it. Thanks y'all.

Jay Owen (23:15.665)
See you.

Cassie Shea (23:16.762)
Thanks.