Say it Online: Recent Episodes
Anansi Content Solutions
In the digital space, clear and effective communication is crucial. It’s easy to misinterpret or completely miss something when you’re working with contractors and clients across the globe.
At Anansi Content, we work with digital agencies on a daily basis. We see what works and what doesn’t when connecting with your team. That’s why we launched Say it Online, helping digital agency owners communicate in a way that actually gets stuff done.
Setting clear boundaries – both personal and professional – is essential to our productivity and wellbeing. So… why does it seem so hard to do?
Justine Sones is a writer and stress management coach who loves drinking coffee, helping burnt-out humans set boundaries, and talking about things that hurt. During her career as a massage therapist, Justine’s practice was dedicated to exploring the roles that stress, pain, and relaxation play in healing the physical body. She came to realize that the support her clients needed required more than a massage, and made it her mission to help them.
Justine now spends her time writing about feelings and coaching other over-functioning humans develop healthy boundaries and practice sustainable self care as they navigate the messy intersections of partnering, parenting, preneuring, and pandemicking.
In this episode, Justine dives into how to separate stressors and stress, helping explain the process of stress so you can make clear, informed decisions for your own self care and wellbeing. She and Say chat about defining emotional and physical boundaries and how to identify when it’s time to set new boundaries.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Set clear expectations and boundaries for yourself and with clients
- Define what self care means for you based on your own unique needs
- Define yourself outside of your roles at work and home
Connect with Justine at justinesones.com and follow her on social media @justinesones.
If you think storytelling and data are incompatible, this episode is for you. In fact, identifying the connection between your analytics and customer behavior might just be the key to supercharging your marketing efforts – and Chris Mercer is here to show you how easy it is.
Mercer is the senior instructor, speaker, and co-founder of MeasurementMarketing.io. He has 20+ years of sales, marketing, and training experience, from speed reading to sales management, and more!
Thanks to positive feedback from audiences, Mercer has been a sought-after speaker at conferences and masterminds across the USA, Mexico, and Europe. He currently lives in Austin, Texas.
In this episode, Chris dives into how to turn data into stories that allow you to leverage numbers to your advantage. He and Say discuss common metric mistakes that are rooted in overwhelm (and contribute to more overwhelm!), and share why so many agency leaders are still struggling with Google analytics instead of using it as the asset it should be.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Set up a simple system to help you track, analyze, and implement metrics to push your agency growth
- Step in to review metrics with your internal departments and strategically forecast your numbers
- Implement Chris’ 5-step framework for data measurement
Connect with Chris at measurementmarketing.io and grab his FREE measurement toolkit membership by clicking here!
You know what SEO stands for, but do you really know how it works? If not, your agency could be missing out on huge opportunities to climb up on critical Google rankings. Eric Seropyan is joining the podcast to share how SEO rewards consistency – and why you should care.
Eric is the President of This is My South Bay. He is an SEO expert and teaches part-time at Orange County Search Engine Optimization Academy.
In this episode, Eric dives into EVERYTHING you need to know about SEO. He and Say chat about how Search Engine Optimization actually works and how it can be a game changer for small businesses.
Tune in to learn:
- What local SEO means (and why it’s so important!)
- What to consider beyond just content to make your SEO efforts more effective
- How SEO has evolved – and what that means for your business
Connect with Eric at thisismysouthbay.com.
Strategic planning has felt like a foreign idea for the past year. For many agency leaders, it can feel impossible to plan ahead as the world continues to throw curveballs at us. But one year into the pandemic, planning and working towards goals is as essential as ever.
It’s time you lean into the Fail Fast approach!
In this episode, Say dives into how to navigate strategic planning in uncertain times. In our last strategic planning episode, we helped you establish cycles, habits, and patterns to create your ideas and set realistic goals around them. Now, Say shares why we love the Fail Fast method of diving into projects head first. She gives you tips on how to pivot when needed and set up appropriate support for your team.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Pause, reflect on, and shift your goals as you go
- Support your clients and team by setting up extra check-in points
- Approach constant pivots when there are high risks involved
Ready to put 100% of your energy into a leadership role but worried about handing off sales to someone else? Say’s been there, and she’s got the perfect guest to break down how you can make it work.
Dan Englander is the CEO and Founder of Sales Schema, a fractional new business team for marketing agencies. He’s also the host of The Digital Agency Growth Podcast. Previously, Dan was the first employee head of new business at IdeaRocket, and before that, Account Coordinator at DXagency. He's the author of Mastering Account Management and The B2B Sales Blueprint. In his spare time, he enjoys developing new aches and pains via Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
In this episode, Dan dives into how to build a sales process that’s as simple as it is effective. He shares three key systems you need to build when you’re ready to scale your sales and agency growth, and how to evaluate whether to hire a sales manager internally or to outsource your sales team.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Seamlessly shift out of the sales role so you can focus on leadership
- Identify what your sales process needs before handing it off to a sales or account manager
- Evaluate whether to hire a sales manager internally or to outsource your sales team
Connect with Dan at salesschema.com and on LinkedIn.
What do Instagram algorithms have in common with the big presentation you’re putting together for your clients? Charlie Poulson breaks it down, giving you wide-ranging tips on how to build a million-dollar presentation!
Charlie is the CEO and Creative Director of Americano. At the intersection of artificial intelligence and aesthetics, Americano creates powerful AI-backed presentations for agencies and humanistic branding for unicorns. He's helped agencies of all sizes with a total of over $1.3 billion in new business using his unique proposal process based on DISC personality types.
In this episode, Charlie dives into how (and why) we tend to get in our own way, over-complicating situations or putting undue pressure on ourselves. He and Say chat about the benefits of humanistic branding and how that leads to building better presentations.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Simplify processes, from how you approach presentations or branding to how you grow and elevate your business.
- Integrate sensory experiences into your branding.
- Build a presentation based on the personality archetype of your clients.
Connect with Charlie at americano.design or directly at charlie@americano.design. Sneak peek at his presentation templates at americano.design/template.
Did you know that adults with ADHD are 300% more likely to start a business? Or that almost half of entrepreneurs have ADHD, either diagnosed or undiagnosed? So… what’s the link?
AJ Wilcox is a LinkedIn Ads pro who founded B2Linked.com, a LinkedIn Ads-specific ad agency, in 2014. He's an official LinkedIn partner, host of the LinkedIn Ads Show podcast, and has managed among the world’s largest LinkedIn Ads accounts worldwide. He's a ginger and triathlete. He and his wife live in Lehi, UT, with their 4 kids, and his company car is a wicked-fast gokart.
In this episode, AJ dives into the link between ADHD and entrepreneurship. He and Say discuss their personal experiences that led them both to starting their own businesses, and they get into the myths and misconceptions surrounding ADHD.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Understand the needs of your employees and create processes to help them thrive
- Empower employees to stay connected, learn, and grow together
- Identify ADHD symptoms if you’re undiagnosed, as well as understand myths and misconceptions surrounding it
Connect with AJ on LinkedIn and Twitter. Plus, get more insight on how to do LinkedIn ads right with AJ’s LinkedIn Ads Show Podcast.
We spend a lot of time talking about new trends in marketing, but sometimes it’s important to go WAY back to learn new lessons. On this episode of the podcast, Margo Aaron takes us back in time to examine both old and new trends.
Margo Aaron is a writer, recovering academic, and accidental marketer. She's the co-host of the popular YouTube talk show, "Hillary and Margo Yell at Websites (#HAMYAW)," which was named one of the Top 7 Marketing Shows of 2019.
Margo's writing has been featured in Inc, Entrepreneur, The Observer, ThinkGowth, HubSpot, Copyhackers, Thought Catalog, Thrive Global, and Business Insider. Her website, That Seems Important, was named one of the Top 100 Best Websites for Writers by The Write Life.
Today, Margo teaches classes on modern marketing, ethical sales, and persuasive copywriting — including Honest Selling Secrets: How To Be Good At Sales Without Compromising Your Ethics (with over 3,100 students and over 125 positive reviews) and The Copy Workshop (built with Seth Godin for the Akimbo platform).
Margo is a proud graduate of Emory University (BA), Columbia University (MA), and Seth Godin's altMBA, where she won the prestigious Walker Award.
You can find more about Margo and her courses on her website That Seems Important.
In this episode, Margo dives into the difference between marketing and ethical marketing. She and Say talk about the history of marketing since the industrial revolution and how it’s grown into a totally different landscape.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Be authentic in your marketing efforts
- Stand out against millions of competitors on Google
- Establish care and trust with your audience
Connect with Margo at thatseemsimportant.com and on Instagram. Plus, check out her YouTube Talk Show by clicking here.
Struggling to get clients to communicate their issues with copy? Not sure what they mean when they say that copy is “too negative”? Caelin has been there, and they talk to Say about why it’s so crucial to have your copywriters engaged in the entire project process.
Finding the exact right words when you can’t quite articulate what you do is Caelin’s speciality. They have a knack for seeing you, your customers, and the intersection where that perfect, precise, and compelling message lives.
Caelin’s been writing since they were 10 years old when their cousin told them they had “no imagination”. After spending 8 years in sales, they found copywriting in 2015 and haven’t looked back — because the only thing better than writing a story that moves someone to tears is writing a piece of copy that moves them to buy.
When they’re not at work, you can find Caelin reading up on the epigenetics of trauma, yelling at their Tarot deck, and desperately trying to keep their houseplants alive (even the fake ones!).
In this episode, Caelin dives into how negative is too negative when writing copy. They chat with Say about how to speak to the emotional challenges and barriers of clients without alienating them – and why active listening is so important to that process.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Understand where your client is at in their user state of awareness
- Use copy to encourage your audience to make an informed decision for themselves
- Help clients assess their content more effectively
Connect with Caelin at anansicontent.com.
Most agency owners seem to think PR and marketing are the exact same thing. Newsflash! If you don’t know the difference, Michelle Calcote King is here to tell you that you’re probably missing out on some opportunities.
Okay… so how are PR and marketing related? They’re kind of like cousins: there’s a lot of crossover, and they compliment each other well, but they definitely aren’t the exact same thing.
Before founding Reputation Ink in 2011, Michelle was the Senior Vice President of a national PR firm focused on corporate law firms. In that role, she managed a team of 18 senior-level consultants residing in 16 states, and oversaw client service delivery for a range of small, medium, and large corporate law firms across the country in 25 states.
In 2015, Michelle was named a “Woman of Influence” by the Jacksonville Business Journal. She was recognized by the paper in 2008 as one of the city’s “40 under 40” up-and-coming professionals.
Currently, she serves as Chair of the Legal Marketing Association's Jacksonville chapter, is a member of the Florida Bar's Grievance Committee, is a trustee for the Jacksonville Regional Chamber of Commerce, and is a board member with Greenscape of Jacksonville.
Michelle has secured media coverage for clients in outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and CNBC. She’s also safeguarded her clients’ reputations, serving as a spokesperson and media strategist in high-stakes crises across the U.S. and Canada, including train derailments, union/management disputes, wide-scale corporate layoffs, and more.
In this episode, Michelle dives into the importance of identifying goals for creating clear marketing and funnel strategies. She and Say discuss what goes into an effective PR role and the part that copy plays in the process.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Assess if a PR firm is worth the investment for your agency
- Approach brand activism authentically
- Know when to turn your attention to PR as a strategy for business growth
The first step to agency success is always clarity. Unfortunately, it’s something that most agencies continue to struggle with. And Say wants to find out why.
So, what’s holding your agency back from achieving growth through clarity? Say and Jason Swenk are getting into it.
Jason has literally written the book for growing an agency from nothing to two 8-figure agencies. He is one of the most sought-out advisors to agencies in the world, and shows them an 8-system framework that worked for growing his agency — working with brands like AT&T, Hitachi, and Lotus Cars — and eventually led to selling his agency.
Jason currently hosts the Smart Agency Masterclass Podcast, the #1 Digital Marketing Agency Owner podcast for sharing the strategies and stories from real agency owners of what is working today in the agency world, and how they got to where they are now.
In this episode, Jason dives into his 8 systems for agency growth, including why you can’t JUST focus on the areas where you’re currently struggling. He and Say chat about where agencies tend to miss the mark on clarity and why it’s such an ongoing struggle.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Avoid the biggest hiring mistakes that agencies make
- Let your core values drive how you run your agency
- Take a strategic approach to growth instead of just focusing on the area you’re currently struggling with
Did you know a bad hire could cost your agency upwards of $15,000?
Over the last five years since Say started Anansi, our leadership team has consistently been asked by digital agency owners how we built such a passionate and dedicated team that totally rock their roles.
So, what’s the secret? There is no secret: it’s by design.
Say’s finally spilling the beans about our kick-ass hiring process in our upcoming Ace Your Next Hire 6-week group training, and giving you a sneak peak on what to expect in this bonus Say it Online episode.
If you’re ready to FINALLY build the team of your dreams, where people actually care about your agency, your clients, and your values (and where turnover is rare), this training is for you.
In this episode, Say covers:
- The hiring mistakes she made that led to building our killer process
- What to expect each week during the training, and how she’ll help you implement your new hiring process as you learn
- The hard evidence on how and WHY this training will significantly improve your hiring process
Rule #1 of marketing: if you don’t know your audience, you’ll never create effective content. That’s why Say chats with Anansi Content Strategist Jacob Smith about how to drop the jargon and speak directly to your community — even if you have more than one.
Jacob strives to approach his work objectively. His goal is unraveling the ways to communicate complex ideas with anyone.
Prior to becoming a writer, Jacob worked as an industrial equipment trainer. There he learned how to communicate complex ideas to any audience, from a certified machinist on the floor every day to human resource managers unfamiliar with the technology’s jargon. Cross-functional communication is his secret sauce.
Away from work, Jacob loves screenwriting as well as making music. He currently has an album released on all major streaming services under the name Oddly Oaktree.
In this episode, Jake dives into the fear many clients have about letting go of their old, familiar (sometimes generic) copy and how to optimize the user experience based on what your audience needs.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Avoid the biggest mistake copywriters make in today’s marketing world
- Simplify language and training internally
- Effectively write for multiple unique audiences
Our newest strategist dives into the pros and cons of coercive marketing, how copywriting is basically narrative writing, and the final piece of marketing that MOST clients don’t think about.
Finding the exact right words when you can’t quite articulate what you do is Caelin’s speciality. They have a knack for seeing you, your customers, and the intersection where that perfect, precise, and compelling message lives.
Caelin’s been writing since they were 10 years old when their cousin told them they had “no imagination”. After spending 8 years in sales, they found copywriting in 2015 and haven’t looked back — because the only thing better than writing a story that moves someone to tears is writing a piece of copy that moves them to buy.
When they’re not at work, you can find Caelin reading up on the epigenetics of trauma, yelling at their Tarot deck, and desperately trying to keep their houseplants alive. (Even the fake ones!)
In this episode, Caelin dives into why the mainstream marketing approach and narrative/models don’t work anymore and why you need to work with an expert. They also share a process to reduce cognitive overload and give examples to notice when you’re overwhelmed and exhausted – before it leads to compromised decision-making.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Be mindful of how you process information to reduce cognitive overload
- Tell if your clients are experiencing cognitive overwhelm (and set boundaries to prevent it!)
- Create win-win relationships as part of how you do marketing
Want to follow along with our episode transcript? Click here!
Books referenced in this episode:
- Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere) by Lisa Cron
- The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write with Emotional Power, Develop Achingly Real Characters, Move Your Readers, and Create Riveting Moral Stakes by Donald Maass
Hold up – what does positioning even mean? Lucky for you, we’re talking to an expert about it.
Brendan Dell is an author, messaging strategist, and go-to-market advisor to the world's fastest-growing B2B technology brands. His book The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging helps organizations tell their story.
His positioning framework – The Market of One Positioning Framework – helps brands tell their story and differentiate themselves in red ocean environments.
Brendan’s clients include Expedia Group (Fortune 500), Accrue (500 Start-Ups), CrowdCompass then Cvent (Deloitte Fast 500), TOPO (Leading B2B Analyst Firm), UserTesting (Deloitte Fast 500), Nuance (Fortune 1,000), Panasonic (Fortune 500), SAP (Fortune 500), Brother (Fortune Global 500), and 100+ more.
In this episode, Brendan dives into how to find that ONE word or phrase that positions your company and represents your value to clients. Basically, he’s helping make sure you’re unforgettable!
Tune in to learn how to:
- Use Brendan’s positioning framework for your agency
- Get a hold of positioning even if you’ve been struggling for years
- Remove the stigma of niching your agency
Think you know what makes a podcast successful? Think again!
John Corcoran is a former White House writer, speechwriter, attorney, author, and B2B podcasting expert. His company, Rise25, helps B2B businesses connect with their ideal clients, referral partnerships, and strategic partners using done-for-you podcasts and content marketing.
In this episode, John dives into misconceptions about podcasts, sharing why most people fumble by focusing on getting ads or sponsorships instead of putting focus on uplifting and growing their network.
John chats with Say about how he created a results-driven podcast centered on great conversations and content that brings real value to the world.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Build value for both the host and guest
- Get started on building an audience as a beginner
- Measure the success of your podcast using the right goals and metrics
Connect with John at rise25.com and smartbusinessrevolution.com.
“How can we design experiences for everybody if we don't really have everybody in that process?”
Perfecting your customer experience could be the most important thing you do at the start of the year. And we’re making sure you follow all the right steps to do it with ease.
Jeannie Walters is the CEO/Founder of Experience Investigators, a global Customer Experience consulting firm. She has 20 years of experience helping companies improve loyalty and retention, employee engagement, and overall customer experience.
Jeannie is an international keynote speaker and has a TEDx talk all about microinteractions, those small and often-overlooked moments in the customer journey that have a huge impact on customer emotions. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP), a member of the CXPA's CX Expert Panel, and a LinkedIn Learning Instructor.
Jeannie was named in the Huffington Post as a "Top 100 Most Social Customer Service Pros on Twitter" and the Online Marketing Institute's "Top 20 Digital Marketing Strategists," and recognized as "One of the Top Customer Experience Influencers To Know" on CX Day.
Jeannie has co-hosted the top rated podcast, Crack the Customer Code, since 2015, and is an active writer. You can find her work on CustomerThink, The Future of Customer Engagement and Commerce, and Forbes, as well as in university-level textbooks. Jeannie and her team launched the Year of CX on CX Day 2020. Anyone can sign up for free resources at www.yearofcx.com.
Jeannie lives with her husband and 2 growing boys and a spoiled dog, spending her free time cheering on young athletes and choir singers alike, and spoiling the dog.
In this episode, Jeannie dives into the importance of knowing your customers so you can find opportunities and relate to them.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Build a customer journey for diversity and inclusion with Jeannie’s framework
- Bring perspective and personal experiences into building exceptional customer journeys
- Ask yourself the right questions to increase critical thinking around diverse customer experiences
Connect with Jeannie at experienceinvestigators.com, yearofcx.com, and on LinkedIn and Twitter.
The key to a comfortable, productive work environment is effective boundary-setting, yet it doesn’t always feel as easy as it should be to speak up about your boundaries.
In this episode of the podcast, Say gets into WHY it’s so essential to be clear, concise, and consistent with your boundaries. She shares her 3-step framework to setting better boundaries and discusses the difference between managing a stressor and setting an effective boundary.
Plus, she sheds light on how setting boundaries in your processes and client management will make your life so much easier.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Decide what to do when someone breaks your boundaries
- Help others navigate your boundaries
- Let go of the fear of setting boundaries
Connect with Say at anansicontent.com/saygabriel or send her a quick email at say@anansicontent.com
Need a killer recipe for SEO success? This episode is for you!
Chris Dreyer is the President and Founder of Rankings.io, an agency that specializes in personal injury lawyer SEO. His agency ranks personal injury firms for the most lucrative keywords in the industry with end-to-end SEO, from content creation to technical optimization.
“Most personal injury attorneys struggle to rank at the top of the search results. That’s why I’m here: I help elite personal injury law firms generate motor vehicle and serious injury cases through Google’s organic search results,” says Chris.
In this episode, Chris dives into how he niched down into SEO for personal injury firms based on data – and all the mistakes he made along the way. He chats with Say about why copy is crucial at the beginning of your SEO process, the power of link building, and so much more.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Identify the difference between site SEO, technical SEO, and local SEO
- Recognize what you’re doing wrong with SEO and how to correct it
- Use SEO strategy and metric tracking to make decisions quickly
Connect with Chris at rankings.io.
Need a killer recipe for SEO success? This episode is for you!
Chris Dreyer is the President and Founder of Rankings.io, an agency that specializes in personal injury lawyer SEO. His agency ranks personal injury firms for the most lucrative keywords in the industry with end-to-end SEO, from content creation to technical optimization.
“Most personal injury attorneys struggle to rank at the top of the search results. That’s why I’m here: I help elite personal injury law firms generate motor vehicle and serious injury cases through Google’s organic search results,” says Chris.
In this episode, Chris dives into how he niched down into SEO for personal injury firms based on data – and all the mistakes he made along the way. He chats with Say about why copy is crucial at the beginning of your SEO process, the power of link building, and so much more.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Identify the difference between site SEO, technical SEO, and local SEO
- Recognize what you’re doing wrong with SEO and how to correct it
- Use SEO strategy and metric tracking to make decisions quickly
Connect with Chris at rankings.io.
When projects go wrong, you’re probably left wondering if a bad client or a crappy process is to blame.
After a 15-year corporate executive career, including being a plant manager at 25, Jason Kanigan has run his own businesses for the past decade. Since 2016, he has run Cold Star Technologies, a company that installs and improves processes and systems for other organizations, especially those in the space industry. He is the host of the Cold Star Project and the Make Space Boring show. Jason is also a member of the Board of Advisors for the Operational Excellence Society, which designs and installs Lean Six Sigma and OpEx programs for organizations of 1,000+ staff.
In this episode, Jason dives into how to build effective processes for your agency – and all the far-reaching benefits of those processes. He shares the most common challenge leaders face in smoothing out processes and sheds light on why Blitz Scaling isn’t an ideal long-term process for your agency.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Determine if your issues are caused by a bad client or a crappy process
- Identify the type of business model you have versus what you need to reach your goals
- Effectively document your core processes
Connect with Jason at coldstartech.com.
For the Cold Star Project, click here to listen and here to watch. For references mentioned during the show, see below:
- Mind mapping vs process mapping - Jason Kanigan / the Cold Star Project
- Principles of Technology Leadership - Bryan Cantrill
Notes on Cal Newport's Deep work - Brian Johnson
Ready to scale your business but unsure of where to start?
Say chats with Ellen Yin to break down why it’s essential to shift your mindset when you’re getting ready to scale. They discuss everything from common mistakes to how to handle the hiring process.
Ellen Yin is the founder of Cubicle to CEO, an online membership that teaches service providers how to monetize their skills and use a step-by-step client attraction system to create their first $10K month – without a large audience or complicated marketing strategies. Through her social media agency, Ellen Yin Media LLC, Ellen has worked with multimillion-dollar brands, Fortune 500 executives, and best-selling authors. She has been featured on MTV and in publications like Glamour magazine, The Penny Hoarder, Women’s Health, and Her Campus. Ellen is also the host of the award-winning Cubicle to CEO Podcast, which features weekly interviews with top business leaders and successful entrepreneurs.
In this episode, Ellen dives into what it takes to scale to six figures, what it takes to scale to seven figures – and what the differences between those two are. She chats about why investing in her team was crucial in moving her business to seven figures, and breaks down how her digital products help her reach her goals.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Deal with the fear of giving up control on projects to employees
- Identify when and who to hire next, and whether they should be an employee or contractor
- Avoid the biggest mistake Ellen sees when solopreneurs try to make their first 10k
Connect with Ellen on Instagram, by listening to The Cubicle to CEO Podcast, or by joining her free masterclass by clicking here.
Still dealing with clients who think their websites are “one-and-done,” expecting them to magically bring in and convert leads as soon as they go live?
This installment of Digital Agency Real Talk is all about finding a rhythmic flow for your marketing and using the right framework to assess the strength of your strategies and processes.
In this episode, Say dives into her 2019 conference experience – a cycle that’s usually profitable for Anansi, but wasn’t that year. She uses The OODA Loop framework (Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act) to analyze the situation and dive into problem solving and course correction.
Tune in to learn:
- How to propel your business and marketing growth using the OODA Loop Framework.
- The power of iterative and cyclical marketing.
- How to debunk client’s “if you build it, they will come” expectation of one-and-done websites.
Trying to build a team that’ll help your agency grow – and make you sweat a little less when you have to hand off work?
Say chats with Jake Jorgovan about exactly that, getting him to share all his secrets when it comes to hiring the right people for your team, from common mistakes that business owners make when hiring to why your onboarding process is so crucial.
Jake Jorgovan is a serial entrepreneur, author, podcaster, and business advisor.
He is the founder of Lead Cookie, Content Allies, and Arete Incubator. Through these companies, Jake has generated $40M+ in sales for his clients. Jake is the host of the Working Without Pants Podcast and shares the raw lessons of his entrepreneurial journey at Jake-Jorgovan.com.
Jake’s professional focus is to build companies that enable freedom of time and financial profitability. He does that by being an active entrepreneur in the trenches and through training others on entrepreneurship, leadership, sales, and marketing.
Jake has a degree in entrepreneurship from Belmont University and has been awarded Nashville’s Youth Entrepreneur of the Year. He has spoken at conferences such as SXSW and has been featured in publications such as Inc and Forbes.
Jake lives a nomadic life and has traveled the world while running multiple companies.
In this episode, Jake dives into how to anticipate when you’ll need to hire next, how to support your new hire throughout the onboarding process, and why you should NEVER hire in a hurry.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Identify green and red flags throughout your hiring process
- Build teams that love to work together (and get stuff done!)
- Nurture employees who have potential but haven’t found the right space or direction to fully hone their skills.
Connect with Jake at jorgovan.com, contentallies.com, and leadcookie.com
Say is flying solo in this installment of Digital Agency Real Talk, sharing tips and tricks based on her own experience navigating mental health and wellness while being the leader of a digital agency.
In this episode, Say dives into the importance of getting in touch with yourself as a human rather than just as a leader or business owner. She talks about how to get stuff done when you’re leaving too many things half-done (hint: you’re probably spread too thin!) and shares how she uses “Five Minute Moments” for destressing.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Prioritize mental health when everything around you is crazy and is impacting your capacity to put work first
- Simplify what self care looks like (it can be 20 minutes alone with a cup of coffee!)
- Handle being overwhelmed and navigate your reactions to situations in stressful moments
Connect with Say at anansicontent.com/saygabriel.
It’s not always easy being vulnerable with your team. Luckily for us, Jeremy Pope knows the value of being vulnerable – and he’s sharing how his most embarrassing business year ever led to major breakthroughs for his own growth.
Being honest with employees and making tough decisions about your business is part of the unsexy side of being a business leader, and that’s what this episode is all about.
Jeremy Pope is a former clinical and stage hypnotist who now helps entrepreneurs build scalable high-ticket businesses. He’s been a top salesperson, sales manager, and sales trainer for international organizations, including the direct-marketing giant Guthy Renker. Now, he helps small business owners repair broken discovery calls.
In this episode, Jeremy dives into how he came to the decision to close down his business, discusses how to rebuild your mental and emotional stability after making such a tough decision, and sheds light on why making connections is so crucial for growth.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Navigate your identity as yourself and as your business
- Make hard decisions when it comes to your business
- Identify your “thing” so you can stop spreading yourself too thin and focus on your zone of genius.
Connect with Jeremy at salescalloverhaul.com/show. You can also join his free Facebook community at salescalloverhaul.com/join.
Books referenced in this episode:
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Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Stress for Success by Jim Loehr
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The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
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Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't by James C. Collins
While we’ve all been affected by COVID-19, the pandemic has hit digital agencies in some uniquely challenging ways.
Especially with recession rhetoric being thrown around, there’s definitely been a degree of panic for many agency owners. That’s why I’m thrilled to be chatting with Karl Sakas about the processes that have helped businesses stay afloat over the past six months – and how you can pivot from “staying afloat” to thriving.
Agency growth is good… unless it gets out of control. Karl Sakas helps agency owners grow profitably, so they can work less and earn more.
Karl has personally advised hundreds of agencies on every inhabited continent. He is the author of Made to Lead, The In-Demand Marketing Agency, and nearly 400 articles on agency management. When he’s not helping clients, Karl volunteers as a bartender on an antique train.
In this episode, Karl dives into what’s really going on with digital agencies as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on. He talks about why some agencies are struggling, and shares how others are thriving by pivoting their messaging.
Tune in to learn:
- Karl’s cost-cutting tiers designed to identify how to keep your agency afloat.
- The importance of setting SMART (Specific, Measureable, Assignable, Realistic, Time bound) goals for your business.
- Why it’s crucial to communicate your team’s capacity and efforts to clients.
Are LinkedIn ads worth your time (and money)?
I’m diving into the do’s and don’ts of LinkedIn advertising with AJ Wilcox, breaking down some major misconceptions surrounding the platform and helping you understand how to build the right marketing strategies for your business.
AJ Wilcox is a LinkedIn Ads pro who founded B2Linked.com, a LinkedIn Ads-specific ad agency, in 2014. He's an official LinkedIn partner, host of the LinkedIn Ads Show podcast, and has managed the world’s largest LinkedIn Ads accounts worldwide. AJ is a ginger and triathlete, he and his wife live in Utah with their 4 kids, and his company car is a wicked-fast go-kart.
In this episode, AJ chats about the limitations of organic LinkedIn outreach, why you should never follow LinkedIn’s ad campaign recommendations, and the green and red flags to look for when considering an ad campaign.
Tune in to learn:
- The biggest myths — and mistakes — when it comes to LinkedIn ads
- The most valuable CTA to move leads through your funnel
- The difference in strategy when approaching LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google ad campaigns
How do you create a sales process so bullet-proof that it works across virtually any industry?
Tania Hogan is here to answer that question. I chat with our amazing account manager Tania about how she’s found success in sales across a wide range of industries, including growing a sales team from 2 to 7 during the 2008 recession.
She’s putting her years of experience in sales to use helping you to refine your processes and figure out what to look for in a sales manager.
Tania's superpower is building authentic connections with every person she meets. Lucky for you, she's your first contact here at Anansi Content.
Tania has sold everything from denim to diamonds, and is known for creating innovative approaches to driving business forward. She's all about developing focused strategies that achieve long-term results, and lattes with honey and cinnamon.
When not leading our partners through the Anansi Onboarding Process, Tania is chasing after her 2 young nephews, and exploring thrift shops in downtown Vancouver.
In this episode, Tania dives into...
Tune in to learn how to:
- Use the power of story to find success in sales across multiple industries
- Define what it means to qualify a client and create a clear qualification process
- Authentically connect with customers to find logical solutions to their problems
On this installment of Digital Agency Real Talk, I’m talking to a very special guest – myself!
Which is oddly appropriate, because this episode is all about the importance of self-work. It all boils down to this: especially in the midst of such turbulent times, if you aren’t taking care of yourself, your business will be the first thing to suffer.
So let’s avoid that.
Would you believe me if I told you that I’ve been more productive working for 20 hours a week than I was when I worked 60? I’ll telling you how!
I’m diving into why working on yourself is actually doing work for your business. Plus, I talk about the unfair stigmas that surround nurturing mental health and seeing a counselor.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Unlock patterns of stress and overwork based on issues or challenges you’re experiencing in your personal life
- Lead by example so you can cultivate a powerful, effective, and hard working team
- Cultivate better solutions to ongoing issues by stepping away
We’ve heard so many stories about businesses struggling through the pandemic. But what about the success stories? How have certain businesses managed to thrive through the chaos and uncertainty?
Jeremy Miller is here to share how he and his team have been able to scale during COVID-19. The secret? He had already recession-proofed his business.
Jeremy is a globally recognized branding expert, and the bestselling author of Sticky Branding and Brand New Name.
Jeremy can tell you in vivid detail what every recession, starting with the 1989 market crash, is like. He has learned through real, boots-on-the-ground experience. During the 2008 recession, LEAPJob (Jeremy’s family business) did not have any slippage in sales. They actually grew, even while the rest of the industry was cratering.
Since the start of the crisis, Jeremy and the Sticky Branding team have been working with companies to recover the customers and revenue taken by COVID-19, and helping them to slingshot out of the crisis.
Tune in to learn how to:
- How to adapt your marketing and strategies to serve your clients’ changing needs.
- Shift your mindset to put structures and habits into place that will push you forward.
- Be a leader that nurtures a safe space for new ideas to come, rather than shutting down every idea that isn’t your own.
Most of you probably thought that working from home would be easy. The good news is that it can be (we’ll get to that!), but for a lot of workers, COVID-19 making businesses go remote has presented a whole new set of challenges and stresses.
As our screen time has increased, human interaction has decreased. At the same time, the lines between work and home lives are blurred more than ever. So I chatted with Taylor Cashdan about how to make working from home work for you.
Taylor is a North Carolina-based multidisciplinary creative and community builder that’s passionate about people, design, and all the intersections in between. He has a burning desire to collaborate with others to create exceptional work for people who give a shit.
With nearly a decade’s worth of experience, Taylor currently spends his workdays as part of Fidelity Investments’ design system and digital standards teams, his nights freelancing for a variety of clients, and any time in between building his local design community. Previous roles include a variety of in-house positions within the management consulting realm, ad-tech, and HBO all focusing on brand and marketing maturation.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Take control of your space for work and play, so your worlds aren’t melting together.
- Control your schedule (Just because your devices are always on, it doesn’t mean you should always be working!).
- Take a practical approach to your well-being and de-escalate stress.
It’s time to get uncomfortable!
In this installment of Digital Agency Real Talk, we’re not just getting uncomfortable – we’re getting real.
I chat with Anansi Content Strategist Jazzmine Multanti about the realities of racism (even when it’s subtle, it’s always around), how living in India has affected Jazzmine’s racial identity, and so much more.
Jazz doesn't leave the house without a notebook and pen, knowing very well at any moment inspiration can strike.
Storytelling, discovering new social innovations and critically analysing marketing campaigns are what makes her jump out of bed in excitement every morning. Along with her passions for travel writing and community development.
When not behind her laptop, Jazz is either on her aerial silks or seeking her next great adventure in India, where she leads backpacking tours and runs north India's first zero waste guesthouse.
In this episode, Jazz and I dive into our lived experiences as people of color, discussing why it’s so important that we build and provide platforms for BIPOC to thrive. We talk about how living in India has impacted Jazzmine’s racial identity, and the need to stop the cycle of black issues being put on the back burner.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Identify where you can make small changes, even in your language, based on casual experiences with your community.
- Align your personal values into your agency’s values, so you can connect with and support diverse communities.
- Choose what you want to support and how to put actions into place to achieve a goal.
Looking for more information on how to support BIPOC-owned agencies and entrepreneurs? Check out our blog post with 7 ways to support BIPOC businesses.
If you self-identify as a woman and are looking for a diverse community of women to connect with in the digital space, join our Women of the Web Facebook group by clicking here.
Delegating can be a major challenge when you’re running a business – especially when you know that you can do certain tasks better yourself.
But that’s the cynical way of looking at things!
Delegating gives you the opportunity to put 100% of your time and effort into the most important tasks, rather than running the risk of spreading yourself too thin (we’ve all been there!).
It also allows you to find new superpowers among your staff that you may have never known existed if you hadn’t given them a shot.
In this episode, Celene and I dive into what to delegate, who to delegate to, when to start delegating, and how much you can delegate to one person.
I share my theory of delegation, and we chat about the importance of investing in your staff upfront, so you can feel comfortable delegating tasks when needed.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Start delegating work even when you don’t want to
- Create effective processes that make delegation easier
- Decide when you should be delegating based on why you need to delegate
Is radical wellness high on your list of priorities for your agency?
We’re here to tell you why it needs to be.
In this episode of Digital Agency Real Talk, Celene and I dive into the importance of encouraging your team to create habits centered on wellness.
We chat about the fact that working hours don’t always equal productivity. And if your team isn’t trained to recognize signs of burnout, you could end up with a disaster on your hands. That’s why we’re providing tips to cultivate a healthy culture in your agency, placing wellness on the same level of importance as productivity and quality of work.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Keep your team accountable to their wellness needs
- Build an agency culture that normalizes discussing mental health and burnout
- Create habits that of wellness
For books referenced in this episode, check out:
- When the Body Says No - Gabor Maté
- Clockwork: Design Your Business To Run Itself - Mike Michalowicz
On the path to finding our superpowers, we’re usually our own greatest obstacle.
Imposter syndrome, that nagging voice inside our head that says we’re not good enough, holds too many of us back.
When you’re overcome with anxieties that you don’t fit in, aren’t up to the job, or can’t live up to expectations, it’s impossible to do your best work.
In this episode of Say it Online, I chat with Anansi Content Strategist Michaela Kemp about how she’s overcome imposter syndrome and learned to stop fearing failure.
Michaela is a queer Canadian writer with a passion for all things pop culture. She has a Bachelor of Arts focusing on creative writing and gender studies, as well as a certification in Holistic nutrition. She found her way to the copywriting world after a life-changing gender theory class. Once you see how marketing has shaped the way you construct your world, you work to be a better marketer.
Away from writing, Michaela spends her time wandering the forests of Canada’s most Western edge, working with a local hospice as a grief and end-of-life volunteer, and making sure her cat is spoiled.
In this episode, Michaela dives into identifying impostering syndrome and how to overcome it. We chat about how Michaela learned to stop being afraid of failure and start focusing on positive learning opportunities.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Build trust with clients so that they see you as the expert
- Set important early expectations with partners and clients
- Turn your perceived weaknesses into strengths
Connect with Michaela at www.anansicontent.com
Are you using the right metrics to track and plan for growth?
With so much data at your fingertips these days, it can be difficult to know what you should be tracking, what to do with the numbers you find, and how to leverage that data for growth.
Understanding KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and how to utilize them is a powerful tool for any business strategy, and in this episode we’re breaking it down for you.
Keith Perhac is the founder of SegMetrics, software that helps you get 100% clarity on where your leads come from, how they act, and how much your marketing is REALLY worth.
Keith is also the author of "The 90-Minute Guide to Building Marketing Funnels That Convert," a top-down guide that walks you through every step of setting up and optimizing your automated marketing funnels.
In this episode, Keith dives into how to choose the right KPIs for your business, and how to utilize those metrics to set and achieve new goals.
Tune in to learn:
- How to start tracking KPIs for your business
- Ways to identify and align the right KPIs with your unique business needs and goals
- How to set expectations with your team to track their KPIs
Connect with Keith at segmetrics.io/hi/say-it-online for 30% off, and on Twitter @harisenbon79.
For the budgeting tool Keith and I go crazy over, check out YNAB.
Change is something we’ve all been forced to think about a lot lately.
Around the globe, businesses are finding new ways to adapt, connect, and remain productive while COVID-19 keeps us all on our toes.
In this episode of the podcast, we’re giving you a peek behind the curtains at how Anansi has managed to thrive during turbulent times.
In the latest installment of Digital Agency Real Talk, I chat with our Chief of Operations Celene Hoag about how our team has adapted to a new normal in the face of a pandemic.
It has been a long and complicated process, but Celene has found ways to turn chaos into a catalyst for positive change and continued growth for our business and partners.
In this episode, Celen and I dive into how to get ahead of the unexpected by planning for everything.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Take unexpected change and turn it into something positive for your business
- Seek help when change is overwhelming
- Learn our three steps to handling and adapting to change
Are you using Search Engine Marketing to your advantage – or still struggling to figure out what it is and how to leverage it? Either way, this episode is for you. I chat with Brandy Lawson, who breaks down the power of Search Engine Marketing to drive growth and help push clients to reach their unique business goals.
Brandy is a lover of ridiculous shoes, advocate for the best and highest use of technology, bringer of clarity, and recovering know-it-all. At FieryFX, her marketing and consulting agency, she makes it simple for business owners to attract the right clients and make business decisions easily, without all the trial and error. Brandy is passionate about her work because she experienced the failure of her parent's first business and knows how critical being found and working effectively are for businesses to survive—and then thrive.
In this episode, Brandy dives into how to turn data into a tool to tell clients’ stories, and helps simplify the often-confusing jargon associated with SEM.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Effectively navigate and utilize Google Analytics to your advantage.
- Understand the difference between SEO and “pay-per-click”.
- Build an effective user journey based on SEM metrics.
Finding a productive work/life balance when the world seems off balance can be a challenge, but it isn’t impossible. Take it from Anansi Content Strategist Anam Ahmed, who our entire team looks to as a shining example of “having it all.”
Anam is a word junkie — and loves working with organizations to tell stories that make people want to enthusiastically jump up and down and take action.
With over a decade of writing and editing experience, she’s written for a lot of areas, from travel to technology, business to babies, and beyond.
In this episode, Anam discusses how you can make sure your work doesn’t creep into your everyday life, create a schedule that works for you, and get things done without sacrificing quality time with family.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Identify when and where you need boundaries, what they are, and how they work within your lifestyle.
- Stay focused when working from home, especially when your kids are at home all day.
- Define your own personal criteria of what fulfilling work means to you.
If the current pandemic has taught us anything, it’s the power of being flexible and adaptable as an agency owner. But it’s just as important to focus on your strengths as you pivot.
That’s why Sarah Olivieri, from PivotGround, revamped her entire agency by automating processes, mastering the powerful skill of delegation, and focusing on one goal at a time.
Sarah is a nonprofit business strategist, #1 International Best Selling author, and former Executive Director. She has been featured on over 30 podcasts and is the creator of the Impact Method™ — a framework that helps nonprofits simplify their operations, build aligned teams, and make a bigger impact without getting overwhelmed or burning out.
Sarah has over 15 years of nonprofit leadership experience. She was the co-founder of the Open Center for Autism, the Executive Director of the Helping of War Foundation, and co-author of Lesson Plan a la Carte: Integrated Planning for Students with Special Needs.
In this episode, Sarah and I dive into why scaling your organization doesn’t always mean growing your team, the importance of sticking with a goal for a longer period of time, and why you should always have a partner to work with to keep you organized and accountable.
Tune in to learn:
- How to break those big goals down into bite sized chunks
- Why you should always assume that you are miscommunication — and how to be intentional with your communication
- The value of saying “no” during your sales process
Connect with Sarah at pivotground.com and on Facebook and LinkedIn.For sales books mentioned by Sarah, check out The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson.
I don’t know an agency owner who has had a perfectly smooth project from start to finish. Bumps in the road always show up — even with some of your best clients.
You know those classic client problems, the “never responds to emails,” or the “miss meetings with zero notice and then complain that their project is delayed,” or (our absolute favorite) the “disappearing act.”
These issues might not derail your entire project, but they make your projects way more of a hassle.
Today on the podcast, it’s all about how to keep your everyday projects running smoothly. This week, Anansi Content Strategist Maximilian Conte shares what he’s mastered around building a great process to keeping clients on track from start to finish.
Maximilian’s long-standing love of writing has found him working in a number of unique fields, eventually stumbling into the world of marketing — and he’s never turned back.
Having accumulated a wide range of writing experience over the years, from television and film to healthcare and technology, Max loves challenging himself by creating strategy and content for clients across a diverse number of verticals and industries.
When he isn’t writing, Max is probably hanging with his chinchillas, grabbing a beer with friends, planning an adventure abroad, or winding down with Netflix or a good book.
In this episode, Max and I dive into his experience going from petrified of leading client meetings to receiving compliments specifically about his skill at handling clients — meetings and all.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Set crystal clear expectations with your clients around what they’re responsible for
- Get your client to actually stick to your process
- Identify red flags as early as possible so you can keep your project on track
Connect with Maximilian at www.anansicontent.com.
Are you an “idea” person or a “make it happen” person?
Most agency owners tend to be amazing at the big picture game. You’re planning for future growth, creating team trainings, devising new product and service launches, and crafting a plan to push your agency to new heights.
But then you have to actually make those shiny, wonderful plans happen. Suddenly, it feels like an overwhelming number of decisions and tasks are pressing down on you.
This episode of Digital Agency Real Talk is all about just that — how to get over your decision fatigue and take action. So, how do you take what you’ve learned and implement it? And how do you balance pushing yourself towards action with the need to slow down and be intentional? Tune in to find out.
In this episode, Celene and I dive into the basics of building a better “to-do” list, how to cultivate the mindset of a person who takes action, and the power in having an accountability partner.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Actively apply the things you’re learning to your business
- Decisively say “no”
- Figure out if you need to take more action or if you need to slow down
Be sure to check out Say’s favorite books for getting stuff done:
- Getting Stuff Done by David Allen
- The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan
And be sure to check out the Eisenhower Matrix for prioritizing tasks.
COVID-19 has shaken every industry.
Sales have stalled for many of us, and yet we all feel exhausted and overwhelmed.
Every country, state, and city seems to be in a different place with different rules and restrictions.
When this episode airs it will have been months since the official pandemic started. Some places are opening up and some are seeing the dreaded second wave of infections. So, how do you keep up with the chaos — without loosing your mind.
This week, Lois Koffi and I are sitting down together to talk about checking in with your clients, stabilizing your sales, and staying mentally well during COVID-19.
Lois is a professional speaker, trainer, coach, and Ironman triathlete who has helped thousands of people to create more in less time, so they can experience the abundant playground this world provides.
She believes that working in sales can truly stretch and grow people in a way that no other profession can. She is a 12-Week Year Certified trainer and has become a highly sought after expert in recruiting, selling, and developing sales leaders for many companies.
Lois is also a two time published author and is publishing an e-book this month dedicated to all her friends who died far too soon.
In this episode, Lois dives into how to stay positive during uncertain times, figure out when to keep pushing and when to take a break, and why she screens team members the same way she approached online dating.
Tune in to learn:
- How to nurture (not overwhelm!) your audience with consistent content
- How to strengthen both personal and work relationships even while you’re working from home (and dealing with a new crisis every day)
- What the most important things to look for when hiring your sales team are
You could be losing 22 days of work each month because of basic operation and admin challenges.
This isn’t a shocking statistic to scare you, it’s the reality of doing it all yourself. It’s also why Chris Martinez, Founder of DUDE, spends his days helping other digital agency owners outsource and hire the perfect people to help you do less operation and admin work.
Chris, and DUDE, helps digital agencies find the people, and processes, they need to take on more website and funnel projects, and scale profitably.
In 2015, after owning and running a digital agency for 3 years, he moved all of his web design and development to Tijuana, Mexico. It was a total game-changer for his agency. He quickly learned that Tijuana gives agencies all the benefits of outsourcing and none of the downsides.
In 2017, Chris launched DUDE to provide the perfect outsourcing solution for digital agencies.
Today, DUDE is working with digital agencies all over the US and Canada providing them the perfect outsourcing solution for digital agencies.
Best of all, DUDE is helping digital agencies to scale, creating new tech jobs in Tijuana, and little by little, DUDE's staff are changing the way that people perceive Mexico.
In this episode, Chris and I dive into how he took a bad month and navigated that failure with his entire team, why moving to Mexico was the ultimate eye-opener for his agency, and why delegation is the best skill you’ll ever learn as an agency owner.
Tune in to learn:
- How to create a hiring process that finds you your perfect people (Chris’ is 3-weeks long!)
- Why the Philippines isn’t your only option for outsourcing remote employees (and why you don’t have to try to cope with the time zone difference)
- How to finally delegate all those hats to other people on your team
What does Jimmy Rose, a former automation engineer, consider the number one mistake agency owners make when it comes to automations?
Tune in to the podcast to find out.
Jimmy is the co-founder of Content Snare, a software platform that helps professionals collect content and files from clients. His new priority is to help business owners regain their lives, be more productive, and get more done in less time.
In this episode, Jimmy and I dive into how to create more efficiency in your sales and admin processes, what his four buckets of things you should be automating are, and how he’s completely automated his podcast process for Agency Highway.
Tune in to learn:
- What automations to start with
- Why you need to focus on automating the things you always forget and (more importantly) the things you always avoid doing
- What happens if you don’t make the investment for automations upfront
Connect with Jimmy at contentsnare.com and jimmyrose.me.
Automation platforms Jimmy references during the episode include Zapier, IFTTT, Follow-Up Then, Sanebox, Integromat, Bonjoro, Clearbit,
Did you know that our Chief of Operations Celene has a six-tab spreadsheet dedicated to her gardening?
There’s no set-it-and-forget-it attitude or guesswork when it comes to her veggies, and there shouldn’t be when it comes to your marketing strategy. Sure we love a #failfast attitude, but you have to fail with a focus.
In this episode of D.A.R.T, Celene and I are comparing creating a marketing strategy that works to one of our all-time favorite hobbies — gardening.
A GOOD marketing strategy matches your product with the people who can’t live without it. A GREAT marketing strategy is monitored regularly to make sure that the right pieces are in the right places and moving forward in the right place.
Tune in to learn why your marketing strategy should be:
Cyclical and iterative
Focused on the elements you CAN control
Planned with the end goal clearly defined
You can have the most stand out, unique, internet-shattering content in the world, but if that content is buried in the darkest corners of the internet, no one will read it. That’s where today’s podcast guest comes in.
Jared Carrizales leads the team at Heroic Search, a link building and content marketing firm based out of Dallas, Texas. He has been in the digital marketing game for over a decade, helping everyone from solopreneurs to Fortune 500 companies grow online.
In this episode, Jared and I talk about all the behind-the-scenes work that gets your content seen on the first page of Google.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Measure your ROI, and make strategic decisions, with metrics
- Understand the personality types of partners you want to work with
- Build a relevant outreach list to swap backlinks with
There are pivotal moments in the life of your business. Those things that stick with you forever, that mark a change.
Seeing your website go live, finalizing your first project, and quitting that back up job all come to mind. I would add hiring your first employee to that list.
It’s the official end of your solopreneurship — and the start of scaling up to being a bigger agency.
We’re back with another episode of D.A.R.T (Digital Agency Real Talk) to cover how to make that leap from a business of 1 to a team.
In this episode, Celene and I dive into reasons why you might want to scale up, how to get over the fear of delegating and building trust with a team, and all the many reasons why building that team could be your greatest decision yet.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Identify exactly what type of role you want to have in your business when it scales
- Stop relying exclusively on referrals and start actively driving sales and leads
- Actually take that first step and hire your first employee
Why does design and great copy come second (just barely) for Tricia Littlefield of Ledgers Branding? Find out as I sit down with Tricia to talk about how to get every element of your client’s website working together.
Tricia Littlefield is the solopreneur behind Ledgers Branding and has been creating custom, conversion-focused websites for the past 20 years. Tricia specializes in getting overworked bookkeeping professionals, and Profit First Professionals, more time, more clients, and an easier sales process.
In this episode, Tricia and I talk about the magic that happens when all the elements of a website work together. What does it look like when the copy, design, and SEO (in particular organic SEO) sync up and get your client’s website on page one of Google? It looks pretty good to us.
Tune in to learn:
- The critical components Tricia includes in every single website she builds.
- Why building accessibility into your coding and web design should be a priority and not an afterthought.
- How to add elements into a website to move the reader further down your marketing funnel — and closer to working with you.
Connect with Tricia at LedgersBranding.com or on Facebook.
Dozens of people are going to try and sell you that one magical “ninja” hack that will skyrocket your business.
Lee Goff is not that person.
So, why does Lee Goff, creator of the Digital Marketing Agency Success Group, favor sales skills and data over design and creative skills? Find out as I sit down with Lee to talk about his life as the owner of an award-winning agency and why he chose to move from agency ownership to coaching other agency owners.
Lee built a multi-million dollar agency out of his upstairs bedroom in 2003, and successfully exited it in 2016. After recovering from a heart attack, Lee dove headfirst into creating a comprehensive agency coaching program that focuses on the business side of agency ownership instead of technical skills.
In this episode, Lee dives into why he believes that mastering sales, driving leads, KPIs, project management, critical business systems, and process trump technical and creative skills when it comes to growing your agency.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Clearly communicate to your clients, and team, exactly what you need from them at each phase of a project
- Build legal processes directly into your service framework
- Get the fine print right in your contracts
Be sure to join Lee’s Digital Marketing Agency Success Group on Facebook, or connect with Lee at www.marketingagencycoach.com and www.agencysuccessroadmap.com.
Aaaand it’s here–part four of our Digital Agency Real Talk Growth Strategy series.
In this episode, Celene and I are focusing on how to build, sell, and market a Growth Strategy framework to your clients.
I know we aren’t the only ones who spend a lot of time explaining to clients that their website doesn’t actually drive traffic or sales.
At the highest level, a Growth Strategy is a means to continuously improve your reach, engagement, conversion, and retention in an intentional and focused way.
Tune in to learn:
- how to start offering this as a service for clients internally or through a white-label agency.
- why the responsibility of Growth Strategy always has to be with the agency and not the client.
- how to really communicate the value of a Growth Strategy to your clients.
In case you missed it, here’s what we talked about in our four-part series:
Growth Strategy Part 1: what a Growth Strategy is and WHY your clients need one.
Growth Strategy Part 2: the basic components of a Growth Strategy.
Growth Strategy Part 3: how to implement a Growth Strategy with your clients.
Growth Strategy Part 4 (this episode!): we walked you through how to implement a Growth Strategy as a service in your agency and sell it to your clients.
Recap!
We’ve covered the what.
We’ve covered the why.
Today on the podcast we are covering the how of growth strategy. If you’ve listened to the first two episodes then you know a growth strategy can be the missing piece for your client to find that effective marketing magic.
But how do you actually get them there?
In this episode, Celene and I dive into how to make a growth strategy happen. What are the steps? How do you adjust? How do you get your client to weed through their lengthy list of goals? And how do you keep those goals within the time (and budget) that your clients have to commit to marketing?
Tune in to learn how to:
get your clients to actually make a decision
help your client choose, and focus on, just one driving goal
lead your clients through the growth strategy, even if they haven’t done a lot of marketing and are still learning the ropes
Next week is the final episode of our growth strategy series. We’re walking you through how to build a growth strategy into what you are already offering as an agency.
Your clients have big goals. Many goals. Too many goals.
We’ve worked with a lot of partners who get those vibrant, sometimes chaotic, clients who just need help to focus on one thing at a time.
A HUGE part of building a growth strategy is helping your clients focus on the one, very specific, thing they should be doing now when it comes to their marketing.
Last week we talked about anchor versus growth strategy.
In this episode, Celene and I dive into what a growth strategy is made of.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Set effective goals with your clients and how to clearly define those goals
- Use data to track your goals
- Adjust as you go if something isn’t working
So you know what a growth strategy is, and what it’s made of, but where do you start?
Next week Celene and I are breaking down the steps you need to take to get your clients growth strategy rolling.
You know that one thing (project, process, service, or product) you’ve always wanted to create but it wasn’t a priority, or you needed to figure out creating a stable business first?
That one creation that sat in the back of your mind for years, filed away under “nice to have one day.” For me, that’s the Anansi Growth Strategy.
In this episode, Celene and I dive into what the heck a growth strategy is while we help you figure out if your client needs one (spoiler alert...they probably do).
Creating website content is only step one. It gives your clients a good base of operations, but it’s not going to convert leads and drive sales — even if your clients really really believe it will.
A growth strategy sets up a clear flow of business from initial visibility through to recurring referral, raving fan, whatever that last step is for you, and troubleshoots any blockages in that flow from beginning to end and treats them.
So how does it work?
Tune in to learn how to:
- Identify your (or your clients) growth goals and how you should be measuring them
- Decide when you should be doing a foundational strategy and when you should be doing a growth strategy
- Figure out exactly what you marketing goals are
This is only part one in our month long Growth Strategy Real Talk series.
Here’s what to expect from the four part series:
- Part two: we’ll break down the basic components of our growth strategy
- Part three: we go over how to implement a growth strategy
- Part four: we walk you through how to implement a growth strategy as a service in your agency and sell it
How does Lois Koffi fit an entire year’s worth of work into just nine months — without completely collapsing from exhaustion? Find out as I sit down with Lois so she can walk me through how she went from bankrupt at 30 to making multiple six-figures and still finding time to travel with her family of five.
Lois Koffi is a professional speaker, trainer, coach, and Ironman triathlete who has helped thousands of people to create more in less time so they can experience the abundant playground this world provides.
She believes that working in sales can truly stretch and grow people in a way that no other profession can. She is a 12 Week Year Certified trainer and has become a highly sought after expert in recruiting, selling, and developing sales leaders for many companies.
She is a two time published author and is publishing an ebook this month dedicated to all her friends who died far too soon.
In this episode, Lois dives into how getting your health on track will help you make more conscious decisions, why consistency is everything when it comes to building your sales, and how meditation can be the key to setting (and actually hitting) your goals.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Get people around you to respect your boundaries as much as you do
- Utilize Lois’ 8 by 8 touch system to maximize sales and build relationships
- Find your starting point, even when you’re completely overwhelmed
Connect with Lois at LoisKoffi.com and TeamWinningLifeStyle.com. To check out Lois’ helpful recommendations, jump over to thebrightpath.com for guided meditation, Jenny Harkleroad at Balanced You for success coaching, and be sure to read The 12 Week Year by Brian P. Moran.
Hiring can be beyond stressful. So, how do you know when you’re ready to take the plunge and hire?
For Left Right Labs, growing their team has meant that they get to focus on the parts of their business that they could spend all day immersed in. Today on the show I sit down with Gretchen and Trina as they talk about how you can stop wearing so many hats as an agency owner and hire the right people to wear them for you.
Gretchen and Trina are the founders of Left Right Labs, a branding agency that helps Wellness Influencers build bigger, better, and more beloved brands. With 13+ years of marketing experience and over 100 websites launched, they have supported celebrities, coaches, best-selling authors, thought-leaders, and more, in creating genuine brand identities online. Their clients have included industry leaders like Laila Ali, Optimum EFX, Ben Booker, Briana Michel, and The New York Ad Council.
In this episode, Gretchen and Trina dive into what “right-size” hiring means to them and how bringing on new employees with diverse skills has shifted their agency and helped them grow.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Delegate up, down, and laterally
- Figure out the parts of your business that really light your fire
- Built a diverse and effective team based on the order you hire
Connect with Gretchen and Trina at leftrightlabs.com or on Facebook and Instagram.
Be sure to check out Gretchen’s book recommendation Built To Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You by John Warrillow.
How does Carrie Mayo of MAYO Designs wake up and love her business more and more each day? Find out as I sit down with Carrie to talk about how building a more mission driven business was the catalyst for her to use marketing to create good in the world.
Carrie Mayo is the Founder and Creative Director of MAYO Designs. She leads their web and marketing team while overseeing the management, planning, and execution of each project. Dedicated to making an impact beyond a business’ profitability, Carrie and her team recently chose to realign the business and their target market. MAYO Designs now works with like-minded companies who care about positively impacting our world through their products or services.
In this episode, Carrie dives into how to shift the focus of your brand to fit your values, how to bring existing clients along for that ride, and why niching down helps you build stronger client bonds and communities.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Connect your values to your ideal audience
- Go deeper not wider can create better clients and communities
- Build your business for yourself
Connect with Carrie at mayowebdesign.com and follow her adventures in living her mission and vision at becausetheresnoplanetb.com.
How did Crystal Gaskin, the owner of Found it Digital, take all the unique challenges of working in fashion and retail and turn it into digital marketing gold? Find out as I sit down with Crystal to learn how to scale up your team (even if you’re just one person), and balance your ever growing list of current deadlines and new projects.
Crystal is an Arizona native who loves brunch dates with her chi-mix puppy named Corbin, weight lifting, reading, and doing outreach with her church families at CFTN and Faith Christian Center.
Her expertise is web development, brand identity, execution, and strategy for paid media, organic website traffic, and email marketing. She leads the Found it Digital team of creatives and marketers as they help small businesses, specifically local boutiques and direct to consumer brands, grow their online sales and visibility.
Follow her and the team on instagram at @founditdigital for educational captions on branding and digital marketing; IGTV tutorials and training; and creative inspo, Adobe Creative tricks & retail industry updates in their Stories.
Tune in to learn how to:
-
Set realistic goals based on your team's capacity
-
Balance your time between current deadlines and taking on new projects
- Hone in on what key qualities to look for when hiring help outside your team
Connect with Crystal at founditdigital.com and on Instagram @founditdigital.
We’re back for part two of “how to handle decision fatigue.”
You know we love a good process here at Anansi.
So we did what we do best, we talked about how to create processes, patterns, and safeguards to keep your projects on track when you (or a member of your team) are stuck because of decision fatigue.
In this episode, Celene and I dive into what decision fatigue looks like from the other side. What do you do when someone has dropped the ball due to decision fatigue, and how can you safeguard against it in the future?
Tune in to learn how to:
- Identify next steps when someone drops the ball due to decision fatigue
- Stay in control of your project — even when you’re struggling to make a decision
- Decide if you want to be a part of “the cult of busy”
When you decided to start your own agency I bet you thought that making your own hours meant a breezy 4 day work week with every weekend off?
Then how did it turn into working 24-7, 365?
Today’s guest, Natasha Votypka found that not having 24hr availability with clients makes her even more successful as a web designer and developer? Learn more as I sit down with Natasha to talk about how saying no to certain projects and setting clear “office hours” lets digital agencies book projects that are more valuable to them.
A veteran interactive designer, web developer, and digital consultant with over 20 years of experience, Natasha Votypka combines both creative and technical skill-sets with extensive project management chops to bring rich interactive experiences to your audience. As a digital consultant she works to create a clear and detailed digital strategy for your growing business.
Her design approach is intuitive. She listens to her clients needs, looks at their market, and zeros in on bringing them the best possible web solution and strategy for their business. Whether it's a small business site or Fortune 500 solution, she brings the same level of expertise, devotion, and passion to her client’s online presence.
In this episode, Natasha dives into how to manage expectations and set boundaries with clients, how to specialize in your field, and how to define the type of life that makes you happy.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Set clear boundaries with your clients.
- Shift from being a freelancer to a value-driven provider.
- Make wellness a baseline instead of an afterthought.
Connect with Natasha at nvwebdesignstudio.com and wellnesscoachnv.com.
Do you have those moments where the thought of just one more notification coming out of your phone makes you want to drive over it with your car?
Us too.
It’s called decision fatigue — and it sucks! It’s every digital agency owner’s kryptonite. That’s why we decided to sit down and talk about all the many, many, MANY, decisions it takes to just run your agency day-to-day.
In this episode of Digital Agency Real Talk, Celene and Say dive into how to prioritize your decision list, how reducing life decisions can help at work, and how to keep moving when you feel completely overwhelmed by choices.
Tune in to learn how to:
Pinpoint which decisions are yours and which you can delegate
Minimize decisions in your personal life to reduce decision fatigue at work
Recognize when in the day you’re best equipped to make bigger decisions
Want to follow along with our episode transcript? Click here!
We literally couldn’t fit this topic into just one episode, so this is just part one — part two will be out February 28.
When did the fallback response to “how are you?” become “busy”?
As agency owners, we’ve learned to operate at a certain level of panic, stress, and busy-ness. We live in a world of “hustle” culture — always piling on more jobs and new goals. What ever happened to enjoying our lives? Isn’t the whole reason you started your own business so you could make your own schedule?
That’s why Taylor Cashdan wants to stop the culture of entrepreneurs glamorizing how busy they are. Learn more as I sit down with Chris to talk about side-hustle culture, and how to set healthy boundaries around work and life.
Taylor Cashdan is a North Carolina-based multidisciplinary creative and community builder that's passionate about the intersectionality of people and design. He has a burning desire to collaborate with others to create exceptional work for people who give a shit.
In this episode, Chris dives into our addiction to stress, why humans think it’s perfectly okay to sacrifice our wellness to fulfill a goal, and why you shouldn’t wait until you’re in an emergency situation to take self care seriously.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Prevent your passion for what you do become your downfall
- Stop stress taking over your life
- Set clear boundaries around work and life so you can be a more successful business owner and human
Connect with Taylor at taylorcashdan.com/stressfulstuff and at his side hustle www.blacksoulclub.com. Taylor is also on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
We’re back behind the scenes here at Anansi for more Digital Agency Real Talk. This time we’re talking about values.
What values does your agency live, breathe, and die by? Your core values shouldn’t be just vague words that look nice painted on the wall. They should define how your business runs.
In this episode, Celene and I dive into how we identified Anansi’s core values, and how we use them to connect our team, and drive our processes.
Tune in to learn:
- How to define or redefine your agency’s values
- How to weave your values into your everyday processes and policies
- Why you should have a set of values for your agency
Ah, the elusive unicorn that is work-life balance. A mythical goal for any person — a seemingly impossible goal for entrepreneurs. When you own and run a business it’s easy to see the work part of the equation creeping up and taking over the life side of your world.
What if I just work a little longer? What if I cancel plans just one more time? Can I consider myself a good business owner if I’m not working on my brand EVERY SINGLE SECOND OF EVERY SINGLE DAY?!
To quote today’s guest, John Jantsch, “the entrepreneurial journey is sucking the joy out of what it means to build and run a business.” He wants us to follow a different journey.
John is a marketing consultant, speaker, and author of Duct Tape Marketing, Duct Tape Selling, The Commitment Engine, SEO for Growth, The Referral Engine, and the founder of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network. His latest book, The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur: 366 Daily Meditations to Feed Your Soul and Grow Your Business, is a daily reminder to entrepreneurs that a better you makes a better business.
In this episode, John talks about how your mindset and how you react are the key to building a new version of the entrepreneurial journey. He digs into his personal experience with meditation and chats about how to use your bad habits to create better habits.
Tune in to learn how to:
Redefine what the entrepreneurial journey means
Build a better business by treating yourself better
Create processes to help you get even a little bit closer to that “work-life balance” unicorn
Connect with John at selfreliantentrepreneur.com and ducttapemarketing.com.
Quick question — do you ever feel greasy when pitching your services? Your palms get sweaty when it comes time to drop those actual numbers on potential clients. Learn how you can harness that nervous energy into building stronger relationships with your clients.
Jeremy Pope is a former clinical hypnotist who now helps entrepreneurs build scalable high-ticket businesses. He’s been a top salesperson, sales manager, and sales trainer for international businesses, including the direct-marketing giant Guthy Renker. Now, he and his team build done-for-you big-budget sales departments, as well as help small business owners repair broken discovery calls.
In this episode, Jeremy walks us through his sales process and why he believes that you should treat each new prospective client like a new relationship.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Get your clients to connect with you and what you have to offer.
- Stop feeling sleazy everytime you run through your sales pitch.
- Build a stronger sales process whether you’re a team of 100 people, or just you.
Connect with Jeremy at theclosingengine.com and by joining Prosperity Pioneers Facebook Group to improve your sales and sales team.
Why do some projects seem so freakin’ messy!?
Your client has signed the contract. Your scope is clearly laid out before you, and the bright shiny vision of a new project is glistening in the distance. You drive off into the sunset. Cut to half a second later when you’ve crashed this metaphorical car into the ocean of “to-do” and are desperately trying not to drown.
Maybe you should have had a better map — or a better project process (spoiler alert, I’ll always find a way to loop it on back to processes).
In this episode, Mary Shaw dives into the importance of having effective processes when tackling larger projects with more fingers in the pie, how she strategically prioritizes her “to-do”, and how to balance family time with consuming projects.
Mary Shaw is a UX design consultant with over 20 years of experience in digital design. She’s worked on hundreds of web projects for some of the world’s largest companies and brands — we’re talkin’ Coca-Cola, Starbucks, and Conair.
She started consulting in 2006 after a career that produced over $5 million in agency and corporate websites, including a website for Dove that receives over 3 million visits during the Super Bowl halftime show. Now, while continuing to be a rockstar consultant, she helps other UXers level up their own business game.
You see, Mary Shaw believes content strategy and user experience design (UX) are two sides of the same coin. So, I’m sitting down with Mary to chat about UX design, prioritizing tasks for complex and large projects, and how she organically built her coaching services.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Not crash your metaphorical car into the ocean — by nailing your project processes.
- Un-messy your projects — by learning how to prioritize your “to-do”.
- Get closer to that ever elusive “work-life-balance" we keep hearing so much about.
Connect with Mary at maryshaw.net/contact. To sign-up for her online UX career coaching program, click here.
Mary has also shared with us Right Message, an awesome tool for analysing your website visitors so you can curate clear and targeted content for all your digital marketing.
Agency growth is good — unless it’s unfocused and out of control. If you aren't setting personal and professional boundaries for yourself, your agency, and your relationships with clients, it’s easy to get pushed around and totally lose track of your growth strategy.
Karl Sakas helps agency owners conquer their growing pains so they can increase their profits and reduce their stress. As a management consultant and executive coach at Sakas and Company, Karl has personally advised hundreds of agencies on every inhabited continent. He is the author of Made to Lead, The In-Demand Marketing Agency, and more than 350 articles on agency management.
In this episode, Karl helps you confront the barriers you’ll need to face to grow your agency, explains why you can never stop marketing, and digs into his Agency Satisfaction Index which identifies “The Four Stages of Client Relationships”.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Manage power dynamics within clients.
- Identify if your marketing approaches are actually connecting you with your ideal clients.
- Set realistic expectations for yourself, your team, and your clients.
Connect with Karl on Twitter, LinkedIn, or at Sakas and Company. Subscribe to his newsletter by clicking here!
Get a free copy of his eBook Don’t Just Make the Logo Bigger: Taking Clients from Painful to Profitable when you sign up for his free agency business tips. You can also access here his Agency Satisfaction Index and the Client Ranking Index.
Karl has given us a TON of resources based on this epic chat. Browse the links here for references and tools for conquering those agency growing pains!
- Agency 101: How to start a marketing agency
- Feeling trapped? How to escape the Agency Doldrums
- Avoid the "feast or famine" cycle
- 37 sales tips to grow your agency
- Extreme Referencing: Be sure they're the best candidate
- Think, Teach, Do: A more-strategic way to think about your agency's services
- Why you allow scope creep... and how to stop
- How to Fire Bad Clients
- Setting client boundaries: Reason-Options-Choose (R-O-C)
- Become a "Strategy-First" agency
- WeCroak mobile app
How do we realistically reach our quarterly goals here at Anansi Content? Find out as Celene and I dive deeper into bringing your agency’s goals to life.
We’ve provided you with our quarterly planning template, and walk you through how to use it. We also dive into simplifying and clarifying goals, breaking goals up into actionable steps, and making realistic decisions about your growth.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Plan and execute your quarterly planning.
- Set realistic goals for your next 3 months to 1 year, and put actions into place to achieve them.
- Tackle your issues list.
To grab our quarterly planning template click here!
For books we referenced, see:
- Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profits!: 4 Keys to Unlock Your Business Potential by Greg Crabtree
- Profit First by Mike Michalowicz
Why are we so in love with our quarterly planning processes here at Anansi Content? Find out in this episode of Digital Agency Real Talk where Celene and I chat strategic planning and why you should be doing it (and how).
We dive into our quarterly planning processes, the real (and super honest) reason why strategic planning became so crucial to our success, and how to analyse your progress so you can continue to move business forward.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Identify high-level strategic planning needs and implement measurement tools
- Develop your framework and stick to it (plus learn what we do and how we’ve found it successful)
- Craft realistic goals and communicate them to your team
Why doesn’t Fabienne Raphaël believe in cookie cutter strategies? Find out as I sit down with Fabienne to learn how she coaches her clients to face internal barriers so they can lead successful businesses.
Fabienne Raphaël is a business building coach, speaker, and podcaster. With her one on one coaching and Mastermind Group, she helps aspiring and underpaid coaches become highly paid experts by building their coaching business and living their true purpose.
She has worked in television and broadcasting, hosting unique interviews on her top ranked Marketing to Crush your Competitors podcast — which has broadcasted 300 episodes. She has even hosted her own TV show.
Fabienne has also shared the stage with John Lee Dumas, Chris Brogan, and Sue Zimmerman. She spoke at the last New Media Europe conference in London, has been featured in Forbes, ABC, FOX, CBS, Inc., the Huffington Post, and has appeared on over 30 podcasts, such as CopyChief Radio and Entrepreneur on Fire.
As a former elite athlete and physical therapist, Fabienne brings a high level of energy, radiance, and authenticity in order to lead her clients to a thriving business that allows them to meet their most ambitious goals.
Last but not least, Fabienne was an athletes' mentor with the Canadian delegation at the 2019 Pan-American Games in Lima, Peru.
In this episode, Fabienne dives into the need for resiliency when growing your empire, approaches to building relationships and trust (especially within a partnership), the journey of being a mom-preneur, and how to clarify what you want to accomplish.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Identify the practical steps you need to take when starting your business (aside from the fun stuff, like branding).
- Eliminate distractions so you can focus on your core business goals.
- Be coachable so that you can reach success.
Connect with Fabienne at fabienneraphael.com and enroll in her upcoming Mastermind Retreat by clicking here.
How do we manage our team of 8 (in 3 different countries!) here at Anansi Content? Find out in this episode of Digital Agency Real Talk where Celene and I chat processes to help you manage your remote team.
We dive into why you need processes for communication, resources that help your team understand what’s happening behind the scenes, and how to identify “trip wires” that need to be examined for creating more efficiency in your agency.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Use weekly touch points to empower your team to take action
- Foster interconnection within your remote team
- Organize your processes around your people
Want more resources for managing and communicating effectively with your remote team?
Learn how to lead a meeting like a boss, master the art of delegation, and see our general meeting template by clicking here.
Connect with Say at say@anansicontent.com and Celene at celene@anansicontent.com.
Why does Jenn O'Brien, Account Manager here at Anansi Content swear by the power of video for building connection? Find out as I sit down with Jenn to dive into the challenges, and opportunities, when fostering relationships between colleagues, partners, and clients as a digital agency.
After spending over a decade building a successful real estate agency, and years as a full-time marketing expert and trainer for REMAX, Jenn was ready for a change.
Fuelled by Storybrand, Simon Sinek, and other leaders in authentic marketing, Jenn went looking for a new career. When she stumbled across Anansi’s gang of sassy and empathy-driven marketers, she knew she’d found her home.
In this episode, Jenn and I talk about the experience of meeting colleagues and partners in-person after months (or years!) of digital calls, the power of empathy for building connections, and the most memorable commercials and marketing campaigns of our time.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Foster vibrant culture within your digital team
- Approach marketing authentically
- Master connection through various storytelling mediums, from videos to the written word
How does Harris III from STORY use illusion to build empathy, trust, and connection with his audiences? Find out as I sit down with Harris III to talk about how storytelling can paint the perfect picture for your clients.
While people around the globe know Harris “the Third” as an award-winning illusionist, the last few years has seen his career explode into becoming a sought-out keynote speaker, storyteller, and event curator. His endeavors expanded as an entrepreneur as he founded the Istoria Collective, an event and production company that creates and executes meaningful and transformative experiences for people and brands through both live events and a variety of other mediums.
His experience has taken him to thousands of stages in 49 states across America, and in almost 40 countries throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and even the Middle East.
Harris is now entering the next decade of his career with a new enthusiasm for stories and art. In 2016, he began a new season by relaunching STORY conference. What began as a simple two-day annual conference has grown into a prolific movement of culture-shaping storytelling.
STORY has had speakers from companies like Disney, DreamWorks, Pixar, Nike, YouTube, NatGeo, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories, and more. Harris is awakening child-like wonder, imagination, and curiosity in a way that only someone who believes in real magic can.
In this episode, we dive into different mediums to engage your audience through story, the concept of “wonder”, and the power of storytelling to influence decisions.
But remember, with great power comes great responsibility.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Engage your audience on diverse storytelling platforms — from social media to your blog content.
- Utilize the power of story for good and empower others to make informed decisions.
- Build connection, trust, and empathy with your audience.
Connect with Harris III at Harrisiii.com and STORY.
Why are we such process nerds here at Anansi Content? Well, because they work. We also get a lot of praise on how our processes make completing projects and tasks super smooth.
Introducing the first episode of a series between Celene, our Chief of Operations, and I: Digital Agency Real Talk.
In this series, Celene and I go behind the scenes of leading a digital agency.
This week, we’re talking processes.
You don’t have to constantly be striving for perfect.
Honestly, we’re all about done is the new perfect.
We continually create and enhance our processes to work as efficiently as possible, and review our processes on a quarterly basis to ensure we’re working towards perfection.
It’s a big task on its own, as processes are only as efficient as the people who are following them. However, after years of building, implementing, and analysing processes, we think we’re getting pretty good at them.
This episode is for any digital agency owner who is craving more efficiency in their team’s workdays (and who are looking to simplify their life).
In this episode, we dive into how to build high-level processes, what tools will help you build your processes, who should be creating them, and when is the right time to make them.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Effectively delegate tasks to our team
- Continually enhance processes so your team is always problem solving
- Establish outcomes for your processes
Need a handy tool to get started on building and implementing processes?
After listening, download our Process Guide and Template and start putting process making into practice.
How did Christine Bahu turn a need for a second revenue stream into a successful digital marketing agency? I sit down with Christine to learn how she leveraged marketing, and her experience in the dental field, to lead her niche marketing agency, SmileMore Marketing.
Christine Bahu has helped 100+ dentists bring new patients into their offices through traditional and digital marketing strategies. Her creation of the SmileMore Dental Savings Plan has enabled independent dentists to provide quality care for 1000’s of uninsured patients throughout the country.
In this episode, Christine dives into why she loves to be surrounded by people she can learn from, and how she created a cohesive customer journey to bring structure to her organization and provide maximum value to clients.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Access and analyze the right data for creating valuable new strategies
- Leverage contractors to maximize value and minimize financial strain
- Identify and stick to your key services
Connect with Christine at smilemore.marketing.
Why did Jake Jorgovan once have a job description taken down because of the use of the word “moist”? Find out as I sit down with Jake to learn about the importance of building a strong agency culture and collaborating with your team.
Jake Jorgovan is a writer, entrepreneur and creator. He is the founder of Lead Cookie, a done-for-you Linkedin Lead Generation service, as well as Content Allies, an agency that turns consultants into thought leaders through content marketing.
In this episode, Jake dives into how to sustainably invest in your business long-term and the need for your hiring process to reflect your agency’s culture.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Create a hiring process based on your agency’s values and culture
- Identify trends among your team members to help you hire the right people for your agency
- Build yourself up as a thought leader in your field of expertise
Connect with Jake by subscribing to Jake-Jorgovan.com for weekly blog posts and articles.
Why has our team started creating profiles for our ideal candidates the way we build our customer avatars for clients? Find out in this episode as I sit down with Celene, our Chief of Operations to discuss the challenges of hiring for a digital team.
Honestly, we’ve had a lot of challenges in hiring—specifically with our Admin role. We had to take a step back and ask ourselves “are we hiring for the right role?”
Over the last couple of years, hiring a Virtual Assistant has been a revolving door while our strategists have been with us since day one. We decided to dig in and share some of the biggest barriers we’ve faced in hiring for our remote team, and how we overcame them by truly understanding the role we were hiring for so we could hire the right person.
Find out why we decided to go with a long job description (over 1500 words!), the importance of culture on hiring choices, and how we put proper screening processes in place to ensure we found the right, long-term person for our Admin role.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Build job responsibilities based on problem solving and efficiency.
- Shift the language of your job posting to ensure you’re engaging the right candidates.
- Engage your team in building a job description that will attract the right candidates.
Curious to how we ended up hiring the best Admin Manager EVER?
See the job description we used to find Kevin by clicking here!
Why does Joshua Maddux from 95Visual think developing a website is like training a new employee? Find out as I sit down with Joshua to learn about the elements of his process and why each step is so crucial to success, even if it’s just a project wrap-up call.
95Visual is a Los Angeles based web design, web development and branding firm. In this episode, Joshua dives into how to get clients to take action on deliverables (especially during discovery), and the need for ADA compliance with websites in the USA.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Leverage resources and tools to keep clients on the ball
- Shift your language to keep clients engaged in every step of the project
- Ensure your website is ADA compliant
Connect with Joshua at 95visual.com.
Not sure how to differentiate voice and tone in your content?
Your brand voice is your personality and is conveyed through your word choice, reflecting your brand’s core values and how you nurture your clients. Tone is all about the formality of your voice, and it can shift depending on your communication platform, however your voice should always remain consistent.
In this episode, I sit down with Senior Strategist Jazzmine Raine to chat about honing your brand voice, and using it to empower your audience to take action, specifically in the nonprofit world.
Jazzmine came to us from a background in nonprofit sponsorship and fundraising, having led two nonprofits in her hometown of Toronto, even leading a youth organization as Executive Director at just 25-years-old. She now works 12.5 hours ahead of our team as her daytime hours are spent running India’s experiential education and impact travel organization, Hara World. At Anansi, Jazzmine is our nonprofit specialist and our Director of Marketing.
In this episode, Jazzmine dives into her personal struggles in communicating effectively (and strategies she put in place to overcome them), the importance of honing your brand voice as a nonprofit, and how to target a local audience compared to an international audience.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Access resources and put processes in place to become a better communicator.
- Effectively capture your audience through emotion and authenticity.
- Choose a powerful and relatable voice for your brand.
Connect with Jazz on Instagram and at haraworld.com.
Why is Staeven Frey of Quantum Branding passionate about “brand science”? Find out in this episode as I sit down with Staeven to learn about how his process in creating exceptional branding strategies for his clients.
Quantum Branding is a research-driven and strategy-focused branding agency that uses metrics, insights and science to build authentic brands. Staeven dives into the importance of clarifying your brand identity, why being too “different” could be harming your brand, and the difference between brand attributes and assets.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Find your key uniques by using the “onliness statement”
- Use your brand attributes to enhance and structure your brand assets
- Leverage your brand through brand science (and what that means!)
Connect with Staeven at quantumbranding.agency.
Why does Celene Hoag, Chief Integrator at Anansi Content swear by our process and resources for leading our agency? Find out in this episode as I sit down with Celene to learn about leading a growing team in the digital world from the start-up phase.
Celene came to us from commercial real estate appraisal. During her maternity leave, Celene joined the team taking on admin tasks which quickly led her to leading all operations for our organization, and basically running the company!
Celene dives into common mistakes copywriters make in creating conversion content, why and how to stay away from generic language, and how to build the best team for your digital agency.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Find the right tone to engage your ideal customers on an emotional level
- Screen and keep the right people on your team
- Use your organizational values in your hiring process
Curious about our amazing process and resources?
Be sure to grab our Conversion Content Rubric to see how your content scores.
How did Sarah Olivieri from Pivotground turn her one year sales process into less than 3 months? Find out in this episode as I sit down with Sarah to learn about her unique challenges in communicating with nonprofit organizations.
Pivotground is a digital agency that provides business consulting and marketing support to nonprofit organizations. Sarah dives into how she revamped her sales process based on the needs of her clients, her experience working with multiple stakeholders, and why you should always have a third party copywriter write your content.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Approach consulting and marketing for clients who don’t understand their own needs
- Help Executive Directors and large organizations make informed decisions
- Find your signature message and share it confidently
Connect with Sarah at www.pivotground.com.
Why is Michaela Kemp, Senior Content Strategist here at Anansi Content totally okay with being nervous in client meetings? Find out in this episode as I sit down with Michaela to learn how she uses her versatile skills and quirky personality to master meetings and copywriting.
Michaela came to us from a background in hospitality and customer service. Her passion for academia, copywriting, connection, and storytelling drives her ability to help connect her clients to their audience through fun and engaging content. Michaela dives into her love for helping brands find their voice and why she loves working with small businesses, start-ups and our team!
Tune in to learn how to:
- Tell a story through copywriting (and find your love for copy)
- Get creative with copywriting
- Find your brand voice by honing your unique personality
Why is comedy Rachael Kay Alber’s go-to tool for communicating with her audience about marketing and branding? Find out as I sit down with Rachael from RKA Ink, the one woman SNL of biz TV.
Rachael is the owner and founder of RKA Ink, her branding, website and marketing design studio. She is also the creator and personality on Awkward Marketing, a business comedy show helping entrepreneurs make epic brands online through storytelling.
In this episode, Rachael dives into the success of Awkward Marketing, why “done” is the new “perfect”, and how to get the biggest bang for your time investment.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Build a process for creating ongoing content and keeping yourself accountable
- Use the power of video to communicate with your audience
- Leverage feedback and analytics to understand what content speaks to your audience
Connect with Rachael at rkaink.com and subscribe to Awkward Marketing at awkwardmarketing.com.
Why does Brent Weaver from uGurus encourage repetition in communication with clients? Find out in this episode as I sit down with Brent to learn about some of the biggest communication challenges for digital agency owners.
Brent is the founder of uGurus, a coaching and training program for digital agency owners to help grow their businesses. Having interacted with tons of different digital agencies, Brent dives into the challenges around structuring conversations and choosing the right medium for clear communication to avoid misunderstandings.
Tune in to learn how to:
-
Speak to your client’s level of understanding, especially with technical terms
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Avoid making assumptions about the needs of your clients
- Communicate the many moving parts of a digital project to your team and your clients
Connect with Brent at ugurus.com and find tons of free resources for your digital agency.
Why does Dana DiTomaso from Kickpoint believe it’s important to teach clients how to tackle marketing independently? Find out as I sit down with Dana to discuss the training tools she provides to clients so that they can “learn to fish” for themselves.
Dana DiTomaso is the President of Kickpoint, a digital marketing agency that helps exceptional entrepreneurs and organizations to do better marketing.
In this episode, Dana dives into clearly communicating your agency’s methodology and processes, engaging clients through training, and how to approach those “hard” conversations with clients.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Scale your language to respect and translate technical issues with ease to your clients
- Create the A-team of your dreams
- Keep your clients issues at the forefront for your entire team
Connect with Dana at Kickpoint.ca or on Twitter at @danaditomaso.
Why is trust the backbone of a creative project? Find out from the “impatient entrepreneur” Pia Silva, branding expert and author of BADASS YOUR BRAND.
Pia built her successful branding “studio” after rebranding her career in graphic design. Now, Pia helps businesses stand out against their biggest competitors through exceptional branding.
In this episode, Pia dives into building trust with your clients, why you should only work with your “best clients”, managing expectations, and why “bigger” doesn’t always mean “growth”.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Steer away from tunnel vision that may be harming your brand
- Set expectations and effectively communicate them to clients
- Prepare your clients to make informed decisions
Connect with Pia at piasilva.com and get your exclusive mini brand shrink here!
Are you looking to improve your ability to focus? Find out how to get started by putting your health first.
In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Steve Young to learn how to identify the root issues that cause poor health habits and how to prioritize health even with a busy schedule. Dr. Young dives into how to begin your journey to improving your health, and reap the benefits of productivity and increased capacity as a result.
Dr. Steve Young holds degrees in kinesiology, physical therapy, and physiology. He is deeply passionate about helping people prioritize health and fixing the healthcare system in the United States. He also runs Toss Out Toxicity, a platform promoting alternative personal care products that eliminate the toxins and chemicals found within mainstream products.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Incorporate health and wellness into your daily routine
- Increase productivity and capacity by prioritizing health
- Identify how beneficial your current habits are for your health
Why is Abbygail Wood at The Content Lab not fazed by being called a hippy? Find out in this episode as I sit down with Abbygail to chat about using your abundance mindset and open communicate to stand out against your competition and stand up for your clients.
Abbygail Wood is the founder of The Content Lab, helping digital agencies connect with their audiences through professional copywriting. In this episode, Abbygail dives into the importance of networking, why “fancy and formal” is not the way to go with online content, and why you need to invest in your skills. Plus, why continuous learning is such a big part of your professional journey when working in the digital space.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Take advantage of networking to help solve issues your agency is facing
- Communicate to your clients how online content works
- Practice active listening to address problem solving
How did gaming lead Victor Ventor from Ventobot into helping businesses communicate effectively online? Find out in this episode as I sit down with Victor to learn how using chatbots can help businesses capture leads and nurture healthy relationships with clients.
Victor is the founder of Ventobot, helping businesses create exceptional experiences for clients online that turn conversation into action. Victor dives into the evolution of online communication, mapping out the customer journey from end to beginning, and how instant gratification plays into communicating with potential clients. Plus, find out why he thinks all businesses in the next 2 years will have implemented chatbots to help with the customer experience.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Nurture your client’s through the sales process without overwhelming them
- How to continuously shift and innovate the way you communicate your business to clients
- How to analyse and understand the way your clients talk and make decisions
As a digital agency, with team members in 3 different countries, effective communication is one of our biggest values. As a content strategy and copywriting team, it’s also one of our greatest strengths.
In this episode of Say it Online, I sit down with our OG Senior Content Strategist Anam Ahmed to chat processes for mastering remote communication within our team, and as a freelance contractor.
Anam came to us from leading the For Dummies brands as Canadian Editor. After her second daughter, Anam decided there was no way she was going back to working full-time in an office. To meet her lifestyle needs, she decided to work as a full-time contractor from her home office (which she shares with her husband). Now she successfully juggles toddlers and content strategy every day.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Create and stick to a process that helps you effectively communicate with remote colleagues, partners, and clients
- Ensure your team never misses an action item or deadline
- Develop exceptional content that empowers audiences to take action
In the digital space, clear and effective communication is crucial. It’s easy to misinterpret or completely miss something when you’re working with contractors and clients across the globe.
At Anansi Content, we work with digital agencies on a daily basis. We see what works and what doesn’t when connecting with your team. That’s why we launched Say it Online, helping digital agency owners communicate in a way that actually gets stuff done.
In episode zero of Say it Online, I sit down our very own Chief Integrator, Celene Hoag, to introduce who we are, what you can expect, and our goals with Say it Online.
Tune in to find out:
- How we came up with our punny podcast name
- The importance of active listening
- Why building communities is one of our biggest values as an organization
Plus, find out who you’ll be hearing from over the next couple of weeks.