Agencies That Build

Meg Scarborough is the founder & CEO of Megawatt. She has more than 15 years of expertise in the B2B sector. She's a natural communicator with expertise in content marketing and brand messaging. Her team helps clients reach new audiences and convert new customers through the art and science of content. 
Discussion points - 
What is some sort of myth kind of bogus strategy misconception that you would like to set the record straight on? What do you get to learn? 2:14
What are those questions that you ask that can actually help the writer understand and write the technical problems in a way that the non-technical person can understand at the same time? 6:49
What's the one-liner that you guys do at Megawatt is content and branding? 9:18
You do have a range of senior and junior, from a training perspective and a growth perspective, as an agency owner, how do you foster that? 11:19
What are your thoughts on AI? Where do you see it going from the content generations perspective, and the overall future of this industry as a whole? 14:29
How much content do we need in today's world? How do you foresee what type of content is needed? 19:06
Let's talk a little bit about your origin story. Like how did you get into this? 22:36
Tell us a little bit about your process and saying yes to clients, how do you know somebody is the right fit for you? 25:14
What are some of the key metrics that you show to your clients to show them the value that you are producing for the work for which they're paying you? 27:00
 As an agency owner, what would you say is the biggest mistake you made? 32:33
Let's talk about the future, what are you looking forward to? 34:27
Show notes -
“I don't think you actually have to code to be able to write intelligently about code” - Meg 3:06
They (writers) need to understand how to ask intelligent questions that tie things to the bigger picture. And I think that's really the core skill set, that we focus on teaching all of our writers from Jr., all the way up to senior. 10:56
Curious is something that we always look for in the interview process. I think any good writer or reporter is curious by nature, and growth-oriented as well. 12:28 
“Making sure that Training is always prioritized, even when it's not necessarily something you can build back to the client, But it's really important because it helps us do fantastic work for our clients.” - Meg 13:42
There's still so much experimentation to be done before we really understand what's the most effective way for us to be using AI and machine learning in content, but I'm not really concerned that it's coming for our jobs. 17:04
You shouldn't be thinking producing a piece of content or putting it up on your site is the end. Distribution is, in many ways a bigger part of what you're doing, and then repurposing and finding ways to get that message in front of different audiences, whether it is on social media or other platforms like that. 21:22
We want to think about brand awareness, because if nobody's ever heard of you, and nobody knows you exist, then you're never going to get that downstream effect that you're looking for. 28:38
Busted Myth - 
You don’t need to be a coder to write about software.
 
Links - 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganscarborough/
Company website: https://megawattcontent.com/
Newsletter - https://megawattcontent.com/content-marketing-newsletter/
 
Show Credits - 
Host - Varun Bihani & Jessie CoanProduced by Bobby Soni Edited by Priyanka Sharma Content by Aakash Damani, Yashika Neekhra, and Juhie Bhardwaj

What does it take to be a “Conversion Scientist”? - Andrew Litchford - S2 Episode #1
 
In this episode of Agency That Build, we chat with Andrew Litchford, the Partner/Director of Business Development at Starling. He is an expert in transforming organizations through marketing and strategy. He is considered an all -rounder and is also recognized as a conversion scientist by his team members due to his broad competence in areas like Web development, UX marketing, and business growth.
 
Discussion Points -
 
What sort of bogus strategy misconception, What do you want to clear the air about? 1:50
Why do you think copy is important? And why do people focus more on design and not copy? 3:16
When we talk about conversion, just the mention of you being a conversion scientist, how do you define that? What exactly do you look for when you play that? Or when you put that scientist hat on? What are you digging into? What are you looking for, in that study? 11:11 
What's your standard practice when you're working with clients? 15:34
How did your partner and you get into this business? 19:16
What in your opinion is the biggest mistake you might have made? And what did it cost you? Either personally, or long as a business? 26:04
Tell us a little bit about your contracting experience. 30:11
What is the biggest challenge you are facing right now? 36:24
What's exciting you for the future? 39:24
 
Takeaways
Conversion copy matters, even if just a little more than design, when converting website visitors into leads. People in our industry put a lot of emphasis on visual structure, and not enough emphasis on copy.
Start with copy and work your way from there. Voice customer research, read all the conversions, copy out and do the content architecture and then move from that into the design.
A lot of people got into web design and development because there's a great intersection between being nerdy and solving problems logically with development. And then, there's this creative side to it with the visual identity.
How do you stand out and differentiate your business in a sea of other businesses doing the same things that look just as good?  It comes down to communication, at the end of the day, your users are people, and what you say to them matters. 
The primary point of conversion is getting people to fill up their contact form, to reach out to them for whatever service it might be.
First, define that conversion goal, and then dig into current users to understand how they're getting to the site, and how they're using it.
Technology and humans are constantly changing, and we need to work to keep up with that. 
It's easy for clients to see through a facade, someone hiding behind a public entity or organization that's really just like a single person that doesn't have a broad skill set.
Our biggest challenge right now is educating prospects and even existing clients on the value of strategy and copy. 
We have a really clear definition of what our end goal is in terms of team structure and size and business revenue. Not only so that we can get to that goal, but so that we don't go past that goal. 
I see a lot of agencies that grow too far too fast, and it ends up being to their detriment.
Myth Busted - Design should be prioritized over the copy.
Links - 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewlitchford/Company’s Website: https://starlingdigital.com/Company’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/starlingdigital/
 
Show Credits - Host - Varun Bihani & Jessie CoanProduced by Bobby Soni Edited by Priyanka Sharma Content by Aakash Damani, Yashika Neekhra and Juhie Bhardwaj

Jonathon Hensley is the CEO of EMERGE, a digital product agency, where he works with clients to develop valuable products and services based on business strategies, user needs, and new technologies. EMERGE has committed to a simple philosophy under Jonathon's leadership: the relationship between EMERGE and its clients should exist to create real and lasting value and to motivate people to take action. Inspire and motivate a team to focus on what is important.
Discussion Points:
What myth or bogus strategy do you want to bust? 2:45
How did you get to the point where you are now? Share some of your secret sauce with us. 5:53
Do you have any stories to tell about a project that didn't go as planned? And how you used it to learn from it and move forward. 9:20
How did you come up with a definition for failure? 14:55
How do you define the strategy? 18:20
How did you get started in business, how have you grown, and how have these strategic ideas aided your growth? 24:00
Have you always worked in the area of product development? What drew you to product development in the first place? 27:05
What did you release that was a game-changer for your company? Or What is the biggest mistake you made? 29:55
How do you keep your team motivated, and what keeps your staff from leaving you? 39:16
What initially drew you to product development? 43:15 
What does the future look like for you and your agency? 46:05
 
Takeaways 
I think it's really important that we understand the intentions of this idea of fail fast fail often and what it really means in an organization so it can be used effectively.
Failure is not the objective of any organization, but to learn is critical to every organization. And so we have to get failed fast and fail often as a mechanism for learning and not a methodology that use it in the wrong way, can erode that accountability.
Agile is meant to be about a continuous improvement and learning approach to more effective collaboration and delivery. And so this essence gets missed all the time.
Through the additive, experimentation, testing, and validation, we were able to verify what we knew from the client. 
Once you have a learning culture in place, and you can start to really think about how you implement it, you know the insights that come from each experimentation or each failure. You need to also have a clearer way of how that knowledge is then distributed across the company to collect it, help everyone level up. 
When we look at micro experiments, we're looking at how we can collect that information to that insight much faster and in smaller increments.
What does a great strategy need to encompass at its core, and these things are not very well articulated or defined for most organizations.
Strategy is not that one-time thing, but it's episodic it has to happen is a continuing practice inside the business ongoing, and depending on how fast you're trying to grow, or evolve in the market, will determine how often you have to be working through those steps of strategy.
The essence of what we do hasn't changed, but how we do it.
The passion and the core of the company was still in the roots of where we started, which was in product.
Time being spent on on staying true to our core and staying hyper focused with our core customer, and working in those being in that community, is would have been really powerful for us
Links 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathonhensley/
Twitter:https://twitter.com/jonathonhensley
Company website: https://www.emergeinteractive.com/
Company linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/emerge-interactive/
Busted Myths: Fail fast and fail often.

Todd Kaufman is the President and CEO of Test Double. Todd has worn a number of hats including - Software Developer, Project Manager, Agile Coach, Salesperson, and Entrepreneur. Test Double is a software development consulting agency experienced in: Ruby, Rails, JavaScript, React, Elixir, Erlang, iOS, Android, React Native...and a lot more!Discussion Points:
What myth or bogus strategy do you want to bust?  2:20
How did you guys get into working remotely? 3:15
How was the response and experience 10 Years ago when you started the remote culture in your office? 6:00
What process and key tools did you set up to stay successful in remote culture? 7:00
We would like to hear a little bit about the client engagement from a thought process standpoint. 17:40
What do you do to keep your employees inspired and motivated? 24:10
What does the future look like to your employees who are also part owners? 33:10
How does offshore integration process work for you? 41:00
What is the biggest mistake you made as an agency owner? 43:40
Tell us a little bit about you. How many marathons have you run? 47:50
What does the future look like to you and your agency? 49:50Show Notes
Software developers prefer the flexibility, the autonomy, and really the level of focus that they get working remotely. 3:01
Remote work isn't 100% Great and 0%, like bad. There are trade offs, as with everything. But with us, we want people to work where they best operate, where they're most focused, most energized, et cetera. So we give them the choice of working wherever they like. 5:09
You have to build in the connectedness piece. Otherwise, I think it just tends to feel like a cooperative of independent consultants. 9:48
We've lost out on bigger opportunities that just didn't feel like they wanted a partner coming in, who would be remote. 10:45
In some sense, a lot of companies want you to be inside their office spaces, and then you go in there, and everyone has headphones on, no one's communicating via any other means than slack. And it feels just like, you know, working from home. 10:54
What we do is we do open ended contracts. So our clients, any one of our clients can fire us with a seven day notice, that keeps a healthy pressure on us to continue adding value. 14:08
I think what we've seen work is honestly trying to be respectful and operate in our clients best interests. So that includes the budget. So it's not that we want to ignore their budget, by any means. We want to understand what their budget is, we want to be good stewards of their funds. 15:13
We want to do some planning. We just don't want to be beholden to it when, you know, we're at the most uncertain point of a project. We want to iterate, get feedback and keep adjusting. So I think that that model works well for almost all software projects 16:18
We've partnered with some companies that are really, really good at UIUX. And as a set of specialists, we provide a pretty comprehensive, valuable solution there. 19:22
For software talent, we recognize that if we don't find projects that people want to work on, they're going to find them themselves, whether it's at Tesla or elsewhere. 23:18
We didn't become remote because we wanted to be remote. We were remote, because we wanted people to be autonomous. 25:40
Links:
Company LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/testdouble/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/testdouble
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/testdoubletodd/
Company website: https://testdouble.com/
 
Myth: You have to be in an office space to be productive in the software industry. 

Michael Kelly is the Managing Partner at Developer Town that works with established companies to create software aimed at key business problems or opportunities. 
Michael helps corporate leaders and founders craft a vision for new products by working with them to put together strategies, teams, and funding to help launch, validate, and grow those products and businesses.
Discussion Points:
What myth or bogus strategy do you want to bust?  2:27
How do you find outlets for energy on harder days: 8:00
Agencies talk about impacting society with their culture and environment. What does this mean to you? 22:25
 How has the experience been working with contractors? 35:58
How does the open book concept work and how does the finance work when you work with other agencies? 45:42
What's exciting you about the future? 51:44
Takeaways:
If you're not deeply energized by the work that you're doing, and it's not the thing that's fulfilling you, then maybe that's more of a sign of a problem than a sign that you need to take time away and recharge.
In the total human experience, this concept of leisure, that we're very focused on right now in today's world, is such a small part of the human experience. Leisure is a very, very new idea.
We're made to work, we're made to produce and we're made to take care of each other and we're made to challenge one another.
Our clients are only successful to the extent that we're successful.
What I want to be the best in the world at is helping companies build and launch new digital products.
To build a product, you need to understand a market, you need to understand your customer, you need to understand the competition, you need to understand the context in which you're building and deploying this thing. 
Product launch engages every element of what we do as a business, design, marketing, software development, engineering, data, science, all the DevOps.
We want to make sure everybody in the business knows how we make money. We want to make sure they know how much we're making or how little their mate we're making, unless it's a global pandemic. And we want to make sure that they know, we win as a firm, that everybody wins through profit sharing.
So when you have an unhappy client, it's not about that client, this is a seed that has been planted, is this seed going to bear fruit? Or is this seed going to bear weeds, you do not want weeds if you're an agency owner.
From a market perspective, as an agency, we are choosing to lean into financial services and healthcare as two industries that we want to do more in, we're going through high trust certification right now, we're trying to get the regulatory house in order.
Links 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/developertown/
Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeldkelly/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/developertown
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/developertown
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/developertown/
Company website: https://developertown.com/
 
Busted Myths:
Self Care is all about Leisure.

Julia Becker Collins is the Chief Operating Officer at Vision Advertising that specializes in inbound marketing programs.Vision advertising is a woman-owned, women-run organization that aims to build an economy of equal wealth and opportunity.
 
Discussion Points:
What myth or bogus strategy do you want to bust? 2:28
What do sales and marketing people need to do to make them work together as a team? 4:28
What are those things that you recommend people to do as a part of the nurturing program to move the leads forward in the pipeline? 12:48
How do you keep the team motivated? How do you guys function? 18:05
Tell us more about your hiring process. 25:52
What is the biggest mistake you made as an agency owner? 30:08
Tell us a little bit about how you got into this business. 38:20
What keeps you up at night? 44:42
 
Takeaways 
Sales and marketing teams need to understand that in order to succeed, they need to be holding hands.
We have two things that are superpowers. One is how we communicate. And it's both internally with the team and externally with our clients. And the other is being transparent, honest, and open.
The best way to understand working for Julia and vision advertising is to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
You should always say what you're thinking, but you're always gonna get feedback!
Setting employees and clients up for success is the goal and to do that you need to communicate clearly.
When you have a new hire, the biggest challenge is to make sure they know what they're supposed to do.
I don't like being the smartest person in the room. I don't want to know everything. I want to hire people that know more than I do. So I might know the most about leadership, but somebody on my team is gonna know way more than me about graphic design, SEO or presenting a live webinar for that matter.
If you are a marketing agency, and you're not doing your own marketing, create a marketing plan like we did for our own agency, and start marketing yourself and prioritizing yourself as a client.
 
Links 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-becker-collins/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JuliaRivka
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/juliarivka/
Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/vision-advertising/
Website: https://www.vision-advertising.com/
Busted Myths:
The relationship between sales and marketing should be siloed.

Brett Snyder is the founder and CEO of Knucklepuck. Brett built Knucklepuck with a holistic digital philosophy, assembling a team of experts in SEO, Paid Media, Content Marketing, and Web Development that is uniquely positioned to adapt to clients’ evolving business needs.
 
Discussion Points:
What myth or bogus strategy do you want to bust?  1:53
How did you get into this business? 5:56
Tell us more about your experience with customers. 11:48
How do you keep the team motivated? 18:38
Tell us more about your hiring process. 25:18
What's your favorite interview question? 41:40
What is your understanding of success? 48:07
What is Brettgammon? 52:40
 
Takeaways 
A lot of people, in the startup world, or running a company, spend so much time putting agreements in place because we want to adhere to those agreements forever and forever.
If you're in a leadership position you have to make the best decision, given the circumstances that you have. And then as those circumstances change, you have to be willing to reassess your decisions.
Every decision is the right decision when you make it - Jessie
There's always an option! Nobody is here in a prison state that has to continue working for a client that abuses them or their team.
Everybody tries to accumulate leverage, I would argue, but it's kind of like playing a video game and stashing a whole bunch of inventory and then getting to the final boss and not using any of it! And so if you're going to collect this leverage, you have to apply it.
“And I think that's where leverage really comes into play, where you just have to be willing and able to go out there and say, This is what I need for me and for my team. And I think that's the big part about leadership and a CEO role in particular”. - Brett
“And I think it's one thing to say we don't require a college degree, it's another to look at the majority of the people on the team stating a college degree in their bio. Um, but we really want to be able to look at our roles as a digital company and say, does a college degree help here? I'm not sure it helps for most roles or as required for most roles. But can we at least give people the opportunity to apply, knowing that their lack of a college degree is not going to be something that will hold them back?”- Brett
Success is a very individualized metric. It's defined very differently for every individual. And I think I'm no exception to that.
 
Links 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brettasnyder/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KnucklepuckDC
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knucklepuckdc/
Company Website: https://www.knucklepuckmedia.com/
 
Busted Myths:
You don’t have to honor your agreements.

JC Grubbs founder and CEO of Tandem, formerly known as DevMynd. Tandem is an end-to-end product development and innovation firm with services including business strategy, user research, UX/UI design, product management, software development, hardware design, and managed services.
 
Discussion Points:
What myth or bogus strategy do you want to bust?  2:42
How do you generate the leads? 9:20
What are some of the marketing tactics that you guys have found? 12:05
What percentage of time do you usually spend on building networks and connections? 16:53
Give us a little rundown on your hiring model. 28:55
Do you have any tricks and tips for cultural building within an agency? 35:19
What is the best part of running a business? 43:52
How did you get into this business? 46:40
Can you tell us the story of where you started to get into the agency world? 52:00
What keeps you up at night? 57:42
 
Takeaways 
We choose to compete against the client as opposed to competing against a competitor. In fact, we're choosing to compete against the client's understanding of how we would solve their problem. And that's the challenge for us in the process of closing a deal.
You can get a lot of bang for your buck, if you're just giving people a little bit of attention, here and there.
My goal always was, Can I meet one new person a week? Yeah, you know, one new person a week and one person I haven't talked to for a while and re-engage with them - Jessie
It might sound harsh, but if somebody really isn't valuable, don't just move on. There are people out there that end up really just being time thieves. And you spend a lot of time that is just not valid. 
There are people out there that end up really just being time thieves. And you spend a lot of time that is just not valid. And as you progress through your career, you build this sixth sense of like, Oh, I've met this person and they're a nice human being, but in the context of business, they're not going to be helpful but they're going to keep wanting to take. And you need to move on to another relationship where there's both give and take.
If somebody is at the company, and isn't the right fit for our clients, for our values, for the way that we want to work, we're both doing each other a disservice by not disengaging from that relationship.
The kindest thing to do sometimes is to disengage. 
 
Links 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcgrubbs/
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/thegrubbsian/
Company website: https://madeintandem.com/
 
Busted Myths:
Sales is Overrated and Marketing is underrated

Haley Stracher is the CEO of Iris Design Collaborative, and an expert designer and marketing strategist. With more than 8 years of experience in graphic design and UI/UX, she has led creative teams at major publications and companies including the Chicago Tribune, American Osteopathic Association, and the University of Florida.
 
Discussion Points:
What myth or bogus strategy do you want to bust?  2:20
Tell us more about your experience and process. 3:41
How do you facilitate the collaboration? 12:06
 Do you have any tricks, tips, and tricks for maintaining the bonding between employees? 14:20
How did you get into this business? 16:10
What's the theme strength? 19:42
How do you guys find clients? 21:10
How did you overcome the fear of saying no to your clients? 25:12
What are the best practices that have given you more accurate estimates in the beginning? 27:25
How does your pricing model work? 30:22
What would you say was kind of one mistake that you made. 37:07
What keeps you up at night? 40:06
 
Takeaways 
Platforms are always changing. There are new design softwares rolling out all the time. But, the eagerness to learn, the excitement and passion is really what makes most amazing team members.
Hiring is hard, finding great team members is as hard; As an agency owner, you know, your team members are a huge part of what you do.
Everything that you say yes to, you're saying no to something else. 
Having the power to say ‘NO’ to your sales lead, having that strength to say, “No, I don't think we are the right fit” is a huge thing. It can help you win bigger deals, but not everyone thinks like that. - Varun
With the pricing of the contract versus the hourly component of it, the best way to manage that is to know how long a project takes with some of the standards. And then the upcharge is the nice way to say that for when they want to add on things. 
Set realistic goals for yourself because your team learns from you as a leader. 
 
Links 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/haley-s-04b29939/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/irisdesigncollab/ 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/irisdesigncollab/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/iris-design-collaborative/ 
Company website: https://www.irisdesigncollaborative.com/
 
Busted Myths:
The most technically skilled person may not be the best person to hire onto your team.

Bob Armbrister is the President and CEO of SPARK Business Works. Bob has led SPARK to serve hundreds of clients using a business-first approach to custom software. He leans on his experience as CIO at a national construction management firm to implement "The SPARK Way" – an approach of practical innovation that helps business leaders build tech that gets adopted (and brings ROI).
Discussion Points:
What myth or bogus strategy do you want to bust?  2:22
Tell us more about your experience with the SAAS products. 3:21
How does your billing model work? 6:20
What were your exit plans to shape your decisions? 9:20
Tell us more about your statement developers are winning.13:40
How is your business set up now? 18:00
Tell us about some of the experiences that you had, during the process of buying other agencies. 21:30
What would you say was kind of one mistake that you made. 24:00
Tell us about how you got into this business. 23:32
Is there any tip or trick that you use to keep your employee's stay? 28:00
How have things changed w/COVID? 30:50
How do you manage your team? 34:20
How have you kept the team connected? 36:31
Tell us about your experience with offshoring? 39:13
What keeps you up at night? 49:00
 
Takeaways 
You don't have to make sure that your idea is going to be the winner, if you're the one, servicing the entrepreneur and so.
The biggest thing in a SaaS business is churn. You're constantly trying to figure out churn, why are people leaving? What aren't you doing? What features do you need, you're trying to guess.
Not everybody has the same exit plan or the same strategy in terms of what growth looks like. - Jessie
The pressure on software-based markets is also the same as the service-based markets.
Entrepreneurs get it right one in a million.
The more experience you have, the more value you can add to the customer.
The more failures we have made in the past, make us able to not repeat them with future customers.
The Discovery of a problem is absolutely important. But at the same time, the person who is making that discovery also plays a huge role. - Varun
Links 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobarmbrister/
Company website: https://www.sparkbusinessworks.com/
 
Busted Myths:
Custom software is going to be needed for a long time.