Over the years in business, people come and people go... Typing that felt like the beginning of a George Strait song. 🙂 Sometimes you work people off the team based on your core values or culture, or sometimes just for job performance issues. Other times people choose to leave, and those have always been the hardest for me as an owner, especially when they were such a great fit and outstanding performer.
At The Marketing Squad, we’ve always had good success with retention. We have used a consistent hiring process, operated by our Core Values, and put a lot of focus on the culture we’re building. We don’t always get it right. No one does. But we’ve done pretty well if we’re grading ourselves.
Now back to the ones that got away. Those are ones that I honestly always envision coming back, especially if I thought the departure wasn’t meant to be. Sometimes even I have to recognize that the timing or life circumstances of a situation just make departure the wise and right thing to do. I never want to hold someone back. I do tell our team somewhat jokingly, “You know you can never leave right?” That’s because they become like family to me and I really love to watch them grow as we grow.
When it came to Judson Kovasckitz leaving about this time last year, the owners understood completely. He had moved to a new city. He gave it his best college try to work remotely from Charlotte. We weren’t set up as well at the time to support him in that way and a change made sense. Jud, as we call him, made a jump and gained some great experience with a new employer.
In my mind, I was always keeping an open door to the possibility of Jud coming back on board. I’ve got another one we lost over the years, and not a week goes by where I don’t think about a path for that former Squadstar to come back on board. Heck, we’ve got a former teammate in Texas, and I’d like to see our paths cross again.
With Jud, the thoughts in my head became a reality on January 2, 2019. Jud has rejoined The Squad after a 1-year departure. He’s jumped back in alongside our current amazing designer Emily and he’s getting to work with one of the best, our Creative Director, Kevin Peterson.
Jud allows us to have multiple designers (3) that can serve our 28 ongoing partner and program clients with digital and non-digital graphic design, while also dividing up the load of websites, logos, and branding projects. At any given time we had 15-30 projects happening in 2018.
After we stayed in contact during 2018, some things starting to happen at The Squad that made sense to reconnect with Jud. He was looking to get back in our team workflow, he had desires to stay connected to friends and community in Louisville, and he was excited about the possibilities of The Squad entering the Charlotte market.
Which brings us to our next topic. Fulfilling our long-term vision to take The Marketing Squad to two additional cities in the U.S. Our goal was never to jump over to Nashville, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Lexington, or any city we could service from Louisville. We have a few clients in each of those cities right now, along with Boston, San Francisco, and Texas. We can work with and service clients virtually anywhere, however, having boots on the ground in Charlotte allows us to really have a presence and serve that area.
Last year we brought on Marshall Fall, as our VP of Business Development and he’s originally from Asheville and Charlotte, North Carolina. He takes trips down to visit his family often and now he’ll be strategically building relationships and The Squad brand in the Charlotte market. Tag teaming with Jud to grow The Squad presence in the Charlotte area is going to be an organic process in 2019, with no formal plans yet for physical office space.
We’ll have a lot more to share about Charlotte in the coming months. Stay tuned. One thing is for sure, though, we won’t lose focus on operations and clients in Louisville as a part of this process. It’s why we’ve waited 10 years to attempt this.
To wrap this post up and get back to the original intent, I’d like to give a hearty "Welcome back!" to Jud. We are very excited to see how this expands our ability to serve our clients. It also takes our meme game back to a place we can be proud of.
For those who don’t know Jud, he’s such a great dude. He has a quick wit and great sense of humor that grows on you quickly. If you’re in need of a punch line or a laugh, then Jud will supply your needs. But, he’s also just as likely to drop a wisdom bomb on a room. Jud is a strategic thinker and that influences his approach to design. Jud likes podcasts and keeps up with culture just enough to make light of it. He doesn’t take himself too seriously, but he takes your results very seriously. He’s the oldest of 5 siblings and comes from a very creative family. He and wife Michelle love to take in good food and experiences whether they are in Charlotte, Louisville, or Portland, Oregon.
We're glad to have Jud back on the team and we're excited to see where 2019 takes us in Charlotte.
P.S. Jud will be making 8 strategic week-long trips back to Louisville in 2019, with the first one right around the corner. And Marshall will be visiting him about the same number of times in Charlotte.
Spring is all about "new" beginnings. But by summer it’s hot and muggy around this part of the country, and it’s usually time for a refresh. Well, we’re rolling into our first full week of summer and it’s gonna be heating up. So you might be thinking a refresh means jumping in the pool, or grabbing a cold drink in the shade. We have a different type of refresh in mind.
We’re talking about giving your website a refresh. After all, it is the hub of all your offline and online marketing activities. People search and find you there. They validate you on the web and it’s your biggest source of credibility outside testimonials and positive reviews.
Since we’re rolling into summer, we’re working hard to fill our project pipeline heading into fall and the end of the year. And if you keep reading on, you’ll hear about an offer we’re making to those considering a website refresh in 2018.
In the agency world, summer can be a slower time of year. We’re still busy launching websites that were sold through the spring, but we want to make sure our project team stays sharp in these dog days of summer. So If you’re in the market for a website, that makes it an opportune time to get your project launched in the next 30 - 60 or 90 days.
Taking the time to give your website a refresh can position your brand for a strong close to 2018. We see a lot of businesses start the year or even end it with a website refresh, but why wait? The best time to plant an oak tree was 30 years ago. As the old adage says, the next best time is now.
If you’re on the fence and need a nudge to tip you over, we’ve created a little incentive for the end of June and the wrap up to the 2nd quarter. Check out the video below and we’ll explain. This applies to new website sales signed between now (June 25th) and June 30, 2018 end of day. If you have a proposal you haven’t signed or if you are expecting a proposal this week, then this deal is for you.
If you execute your agreement by June 30th EOD (that’s end of day 🙂 then we’ll throw in that half-day video and photo shoot we mentioned above.
If you’d like to talk more about a website redesign, then fill out our online form and there’s a chance we can meet or talk and have a proposal to you by the end of the week. If not, we’d still love to pursue this with you heading into July.
P.S. These are the longest days of the year so make sure and get outside and enjoy them by the way.
The last few months the owners have been positioning The Squad for growth. We had one of the first flat years in our 10 year history in 2017. That flat growth led us to set some big goals in 2018. We know that going big requires a talented team. It’s the chicken and the egg question. The empty fireplace requires wood to kick up the heat. Do you hire first or sell the business then hire? Well we’ve always tried to keep our capacity and bandwidth ahead of our sales and growth. I’m sure it’s not as profitable. I know it’s not as profitable. I’m sure that some business book, TV show guru, or MBA will tell us that’s wrong. It may be, but we feel good about it. Being Truth Tellers when we give our word is of the utmost importance. It’s hard to be a Trusted Ally if you're selling into an understaffed position.
Well, we’re looking to go far. I want to take a moment to frame up where we are and where we’re heading.
When I’m leading, recruiting, selling, or telling stories (true ones), I have a tendency to let people know we’re small potatoes. When I say that, I want to convey that we don’t think of ourselves higher than we ought. But I don’t say that to say we’re content being small. Be certain we are driven to make an impact, and it’s tough to give if you don’t have margin. Right now, as I type this, we are working on 21 different website or video projects, serving 30 partner clients on a monthly basis, hosting around 100 websites, and running just above a 1 million run rate on revenue. That being said, we have our sights set much higher. We’re not quite thinking 10x yet, but we’re on our way to setting higher targets.
We have a talented team at The Marketing Squad. I’d encourage you to get to know them better if you’re already partnering with us or if you’re considering a partnership. We go out of our way to lead with our team and to pull back the curtain to let you get to know them. Without our team, we’re left with a bucket full of processes and a necessary service. When you add the team to those two things, now we have something.
The team has changed quite a bit in the last few months and that’s part of what I want to elaborate on in this blog post.
For the last month or so we’ve been transitioning our project management role over from Wayne, my partner in the business, to Billy Ward, our new COO. Billy comes to us with quite the resume (which I never look at if we’re being honest). He spent years at Delta Airlines as a Regional VP with over 300 people on his team. Then he managed large projects for different Microsoft partners in the technology space. In the middle of that, he was the Event’s Director over at Southeast Christian Church. Billy is a very capable guy and it’s been a great freedom to turn over operations and project management to him in the last month. Wayne and I are currently evaluating and defining our new active roles in the business and we’ll have more on that in a future post. The freedom this is providing is allowing us to really focus on taking our partner experience, team experience, and growth to new levels. Billy is a workshorse and a true leader of people. We are blessed to have him by our side leading The Squad into the future. If you ever get a chance to grab lunch with Billy, he loves mayonnaise. (#fakenews He hates it and avoids it like the plague.)
Next up, is a guy that has brought all types of leadership and productivity to The Squad in the past 4-5 months. Kevin Peterson has joined our team as our new Creative Director and Director of Partner Marketing for Key Accounts. He joins Alea Petersen, and Courtney Nappo in that role, and will lead our design team, Emily Houze and Taylor Bieschke. Kevin brings years of experience in design and strategic communications. He spent years in digital communications at Southeast Christian Church here in Louisville, and most recently ran all communications at a megachurch in Mississippi before coming back home to the Ville. We’re glad he did. He’s quite the wordsmith and has a quick wit which is always fun around the office.
One of my favorite stories here at The Squad is Brooke Moody. Brooke came on board with us during her freshman year in college at U of L. She has had many roles around The Squad, and probably knows the culture and nuances of The Squad as well as anyone outside of the owners and Sarah Stewart, our long-standing Office Administrator. Brooke recently graduated from U of L and has come on board full time in the role of Content Manager. She is also functioning in a Director of Partner Marketing role for some partner accounts. With Brooke, comes Tucker, our office dog. Tucker is still in negotiations over his new full-time role.
Next up, helping us take our business development to new levels, is a long time friend of mine, Marshall Fall. Marshall is the consummate pro. He’s joined our team as our VP of Business Development. He has been a success in sales, marketing, and business development in the technology, IT, and web integration spaces over the last decade. He’s also a soccer coach, amazing golfer, and word is he’s handy with a paddle and racket. Marshall is gonna take The Squad to new levels as he comes alongside myself, my business partner Wayne Cox, Billy Ward, and Glenn Herrera in bringing on new business, and guiding partner clients.
Emily Houze is a recent graduate at U of L and has accepted a position as our new graphic designer. Emily in her short time here has proven to be a super efficient designer who is very flexible. Emily was referred to us by her mother who was an existing client and her former employer who was a friend of mine. Emily gives additional bandwidth to our creative department which consists of Kevin Peterson and Taylor Bieschke.
The most recent team member to join The Marketing Squad is Brayden Ward. Brayden is Billy’s son #nepotism 🙂 and is wrapping up his final years at Boyce College here in Louisville. Brayden has come on board for the summer and we hope that may extend into his senior year and beyond. He has been a great help to Spencer Smith, our Marketing Coordinator. The two of them handle SEO, SEM (Google PPC, Social Ads, Display Ads), and reporting/analytics. Brayden has also been helping Alea Petersen, Courtney Nappo, Michalah Hopper, and the aforementioned Brooke Moody, to create and procure content for our ongoing partner clients.
Not to leave anyone out, I’d also like to mention our web dev team which consists of the newlywed Matt Bitely, the world’s most flexible and crafty web developer and the greatest Creative Problem Solver that I know, Josh Ahlers. Josh is our website property manager. Websites, just like homes or apartments, need a property manager. Josh is our guy when it comes to hosting, support, hourly work, training, and website launches.
One of my biggest goals as CEO in the upcoming years, will be focusing on those first few inches of the P & L— where the income and sales numbers are reflected. The only way I’d be comfortable doing that is knowing that we are staffed to serve our partners well on projects and programs, and our team well in developing the next generation of leaders.
So as the title of this post says, this team has us poised for growth, but staffed to deliver.
If you’d like to learn more, register for one of our What’s Next Connection events!
More and more over the last few years I’ve been thinking about how I lead The Squad. It’s not something I ever thought about for the first 7-8 years. I can think of a few natural reasons why and other reasons based on my internal wiring.
Naturally, when there are just a few people to lead, then it follows that leadership doesn’t come to mind much. That’s especially true in a partnership where all the partners are involved in the day-to-day operations. That was pretty much us for the first several years. Another thing that squelched some of my leadership opportunity was an illness a few years back. When your mind is on survival it’s not on leadership.
Internally I’m wired to want to drive, produce, and go. If I had any leadership focus it probably came through in the way I tried to lead by action or the way I tried to energize the team around a common mission, vision, or big goal. Â
In recent years a few things have really propelled the way I think about leadership. Our annual owner’s retreat has been great breeding ground for getting my head up to 30,000 feet and out of the weeds. One output from the annual meeting in 2016 was a set of 8 Core Values.
Another thing that has helped me is watching others lead the way. One particular CEO that comes to mind is Scott Diamond over at Unified Technologies. I’ve watched from nearby as Scott has created Core Values, led through them, and created an amazing team and culture. They have also created amazing growth over the years.
Another leader who I’ve watched is Meg Panella over at Keller Williams Louisville East. Meg has taught me a lot about leverage when it comes to systems, training, and your team. There are several others, both local and some from a distance, that I’d love to mention. Maybe that’s a future blog. There are a few other leaders I’ve had the privilege of getting to know recently, and I’m watching and learning a lot from them along the way. Who are you watching? Better find them. Leadership is a lonely place.
Lastly, the biggest impact has been coaching. I spent some time working through X’s and O’s with the team at ActionCoach Louisville. I learned a lot about leading to our Core Values and Culture. It helped me work people onto and, frankly, off of the team over the past few years. It also gave us the initial tools to start documenting our business processes. More recently in the past 8 months, I’ve been blessed to work with Daniel Montgomery of Leadership Reality. Daniel approached me after launching his business around a year ago. He’s been instrumental in my personal development and helping me to learn my leadership style. I’m in the middle of creating a life plan with his guidance. Then we’ll be shifting to my leadership story: past, present, and future. This coming week, our entire team will be journeying with Daniel and his team through their Leadership Challenge workshop. Stay tuned for updates.
So there you have the history of my leadership of The Marketing Squad. And as I’ve reflected on it, I wanted to leave you with 10 philosophies that have developed over these last 10 years. Heck probably over the last 42 years if we’re being real.
My hope is that they help you form some of your own.
My goal is to begin sharing wins, insights, problems, and pains each week. If you’re a business owner or leader out there, my hope is that these will add value as you reflect on your own journey. I know none of us need more noise.
Every industry has them. Ours is no different.
Let’s talk about magic beans, jazz hands, and freelancers. We’ll tackle them one at a time and hopefully give you the insight you need to protect yourself from getting burned.
Let me first say that as the leader of this business, we don’t have it all figured out. We make mistakes. We miss some deadlines. We could improve our communication. We could innovate more.
What I will say is that our Core Values are either offended or exemplified through our actions as an agency. Our goal in all we do is to show the following values in not just our words but our actions:
In working with us, we want to know when we’re not living up to the standards we’ve set.
Just in the last few months we’ve encountered the following scenarios. These are all real life examples of clients getting the raw end of the deal.
Example 1 Jazz Hands — This is the agency that sells things then figures out how to do them on your time and your dime. As I mentioned earlier Disciplined Learners is one of our core values. We want to be learners and some projects not only require new learning but also some creative problem solving along the way. Recently, we’ve seen an agency sell ecommerce services and the end result was, um, lacking. You could clearly tell someone got in over their head and then bailed. When you ask questions of an agency like this, you’ll very likely get Jazz Hands. It’s the only way to distract long enough to keep you from figuring out they are in over their heads.
To contrast this, for years we turned down Ecommerce websites as we didn’t feel competent enough to handle them with confidence. We met a recent client and spent the beginning stages of our relationship fixing things that were broken and completing what was owed to them. I happen to know from first hand knowledge this particular agency that worked with them before us sells videos, ecommerce sites, and other services, and then tries to figure out how in the world to deliver said services after the fact. Please stop making our industry look bad.
Example 2 Freelancers — This might be the most dangerous one. With an agency they don’t often disappear, so you have some recourse to go back and work with them toward a mutually acceptable end result. I love the fact that people can start out the same way we did, with some bootstrap energy and a great bit of desire. Unfortunately, that’s some of what I see missing from freelancers and moonlighters. Before you hand your next website build over to someone who doesn’t understand hosting, plugins, or marketing automation software, think long and hard. Sure we all want to support a start up. All of us have a little affinity for the underdog. If you do decide to go this route make the decision based on the character of the person, not the price or deal they are offering. No overhead equals some sweet deals. Finding a freelancer can be a big win for the right startup or small business. If you’re established, then I may question the win.
Example 3 Magic Beans — Although I said freelancers are possibly the place where most might be burned, I believe that those peddling Magic Beans offend us the most. This is the digital marketing agency that talks big game. They use big words. They mystify things like SEO and analytics. They promise a lot and deliver far less.
This type of agency wars against transparency and truth. They act like measurable things are not measurable. They make simple things complicated to confuse you and create value that might not actually be there.
Find someone who will level with you. Someone you can trust. There is no man behind the curtain. Digital marketing is about strategy and execution with a bit of craft. It’s not rocket science. You can figure out many a things with a Google search, but that doesn’t mean you can create the strategy, execute, and measure in a rhythm and cadence that produces results.
That’s where working with a digital marketing agency comes in. Interested in learning more? Let’s connect.
Perfectionism is the enemy of progress and procrastination is its close cuz.
If you find yourself saying the following things, you might be procrastinating your digital marketing and without even realizing it. It happens to everyone. Heck it was happening to us and we run an agency. We do this type of work every day for around 25 partner clients in a multitude of different industries from B2B to B2C businesses. Yet procrastination and perfectionism still knock at our door.
Plans are great. Strategic ones are even better. That being said we’ve found that progress begets progress. Action is usually the quickest path to learning. One of my heroes and mentors in business, Peter J Daniels, says you can correct something but you can’t correct nothing. Let that sink in for a moment. It doesn’t take nearly as much effort to bring any task, idea, or project to a screeching halt, as it does to solve a problem, create something useful and hit publish. Did you hit publish?
Our 8 Core Values help our marketing agency balance out our desire to have a plan with our desire to take action. We lead our team to be Strategic Doers and Faithful Stewards but not at the expense of being Passionate Storytellers and Creative Problem Solvers. Even with a Core Value like learning, we added the phrase disciplined to create Disciplined Learners. We’ve seen plenty of unfocused learning in the digital space. You can drink from the knowledge firehose but never implement anything you learn and therefore never impact a business bottom line. But you did gain new knowledge, right?
We believe it starts with plans but we don’t believe in planning out too far into 2018. Are we an agile, lean startup agency? No. Not yet. But we do believe digital marketing is a mix of editorial planning, persona creation, and goal setting with a good dose of real-time media. If you’re making plans too far out in advance, you’re setting yourself up to waste a good bit of time. Things change rapidly with digital marketing and social media. So will your plans and reactions to what’s happening. You need a flexible approach with progress as your goal, not perfection.
Get better each week, each month, and each year. Sure there are setbacks along the way and no progress curve is without some steps backwards and downward spikes, however, in the end, progress and momentum are the keys to your success.
At times you have to press into the urgent, and circle back to the strategic. Sometimes opportunity is thrust upon us and we have to take advantage of it. Other times we must work the plan and wait for the results. Seize the opportunities but make the strategic plans along the way. It can be done.
If your marketing is too planned out, it will wreak of automation and people will tune it out. If you have no plan and shoot from the hip, you’ll struggle to get consistent results. Avoid both extremes. Again, the answer is in the middle. Make plans, take action, then measure, rinse and repeat. You’ve got this.
Whatever is the case, don’t let your marketing team be excusiologists. Encourage one another to try things and take action. Then at least you have something to measure.
Need help? We may have the ongoing digital marketing program for you. Many of our partner clients choose to outsource all or a portion of their inbound/digital marketing to The Squad. If you’re the next contestant on the Price is Right, then come on down.
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