Masters in Marketing Agency DevNoodle

Dive into an episode where marketing meets self-growth, as Theresa Bassett shares her journey from radio to CEO of The Diamond Group. Discover how her agency adapts to client needs, why comfort zones hinder growth, and the power of identity in shaping behaviors. Plus, she teases their big move towards franchising. Get ready for a treasure trove of agency insights mixed with life lessons.

Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.

Pivoting toward Full-Service Agency.The Why behind MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue).Diamonds are made under pressure.The power of identity in shaping behavior.Franchising: The Next Big Leap.
Resources:
The Diamond GroupDevNoodleBlue Ocean Strategy
Connect with Theresa Bassett:
LinkedInEmail
Connect with our hosts:
Josh Hoffman - LinkedInAlex Garashchenko - LinkedIn
Quotables:
36:50 - Like if all I'm after ever doing is seeking comfort and then I'm essentially seeking what I know. And if I'm always seeking what I already know, then I'm not growing much at all. And so I think comfort, you have to get, you have to allow yourself to embrace discomfort in order to embrace the unknown. And the unknown is where all of the growth happens, it’s where all the ideas happen. It's where all of the challenge happens. Yes. But it's also where all of the experiential learning happens. And that's where you grow in capacity and compassion and wisdom and all of those things. So yeah, screw comfort.54:10 - Theresa: And that's where it has to tie back to that identity piece we were talking about. Because I think that you can set targets like those three categories we talked about, and those are the three categories that I recommend in the Uplevel System. But, there's targets and then there's targets, and then there's really good targets, really good targets that pull from a heart space because they're tied to your identity,Josh: Right? Yep, I've never talked about this publicly yet, but if I start this new podcast idea that I have it's all about this whole self-awareness, motivation, discipline thing, and talk. Theresa:I love it. Josh: Successful people and, and how they approach it and everything. Theresa: It’s gonna be a wild success with that because I hope so. It's system on self-awareness that you've already baked into what fires you up.46:40 - Because I would bet you that, I would bet if you look back at some of the things that you've started and maybe feel like you're undisciplined about maintaining, they're probably in the same genre of the same category year after year, year after year. Like totally right? And so you're practicing long obedience in the same direction, but you just need a different rhythm to being optimally productive. That is me a hundred percent. So I was doing these sprints without really realizing it. And then I was subsequently sometimes beating up myself up for not being disciplined enough, not being persistent enough. And then I'm like, holy crap, actually no, that's not true. Because I'm doing the same things that I'm working on some of the same things year after year, year after year.45:36 - That was very personal to me because I have this whole theory that I'm sure I've mentioned before of like what makes a successful person and to me I think it's a combination and they all kind of work together of self-awareness, motivation, and discipline. And I do this really unfair thing where I'll start to like, you know, I'm like, oh, let me test this theory. Let me look at someone and like a friend, I know this is so bad, but like, okay, where do I rank them in self-awareness? Are they a plus minus or neutral? Same thing with motivation, same thing with discipline. And I think where my biggest weakness is, is discipline. I like to think that I'm self-aware. I think everyone does. I like to, I spend time focusing on motivation and really like capturing that and making sure I'm taking advantage of it. When I call it like the first half-li

Dive into the world of marketing mastery with Aaron Gaeir, CEO of GDX Studios, sharing his wisdom on creating enchanting experiences that amplify every form of media. From  fostering an adventurous culture to leveraging pivotal success strategies and crafting valuable partnerships, this episode is a treasure trove for any marketing aficionado.

Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.

Building a Culture That Amplifies Success.The Power of Experiential Marketing.Strategic Partnerships in Agency Growth.Maintaining Optimism Through Challenges.Harnessing Tech for Marketing Innovation.
Resources:
GDX StudiosDevNoodle
Connect with Aaron Gaeir:
LinkedInEmail 
Connect with our hosts:
Josh Hoffman - LinkedInAlex Garashchenko - LinkedIn
Quotables:
17:48 - What do you mean your DNA and your P&L, your profit loss has a line item for culture. Yeah. And I'm not talking about Taco Tuesdays, I'm not talking about vacations or more time off or doing, you know, happy hours on Fridays, that is, you know, that should be done anyways, right? I'm talking about how you structure building great culture or things like transparency, the way that people are paid, the way that people are compensated, not just in the time and money, and how that influences your culture and the people you hire, what I call PLU’s, people like us.25:00 - Wouldn't it be great to work somewhere where as you create value, you can then create, and I'm not talking about taking out the trash or doing the windows or, you know, plugging in the computer or turning the lights off. That's, you should be doing that anyways. I'm talking about real value and everybody knows what that is. Real, real value. And that doesn't mean maybe a new client or new sales. It could be a new software, it could be uncovering a new employee, a new colleague, right? There's all kinds of things that you can do to create value and everybody can create value from the account bookkeeper on up to the secretary, you name it. Everybody has the opportunity to create value in our company and harness that value.14:04 -  Aaron: It's the mental capacity to get through just really tough, tough mental challenges, you know?Josh: Yeah. I think still to this day, out of all the, the sports and workouts that I've done, I think a wrestling match has been the hardest and most tiring thing. And then not to go too far in this direction, but those tournaments, when you have three matches, four matches in a day, I mean, you feel a hundred percent cooked after one match and then you gotta recoup after, you know, an hour and then get back out there. It was, it was unlike anything I've ever done. 01:28:00 - This is a gateway to getting to the spatial computing. This is the gateway of using tactile experiences to get people into the metaverse or spatial computing. So it's exciting new, very cool that I'm putting a lot of eggs in that basket so people in that space could use us big time. 'cause I'm having people like agencies, I got one guy in Prague that I love that does these amazing mockups and he, they're they're blown you away. 01:04:15 - Aaron: It does feel good, right?Josh: Yeah. you know, I have this whole obsession of motivation, you know, which one's more powerful, a good positive, a positive motivator or an FU motivator. And as much as I want to pretend like the positive motivators are stronger, it tends to be the FU motivators are the stronger ones.Aaron: I had a whole company in that field of medical devo, you know, medical as you know, diabetes, obesity. I sold that to Cigna. And my IP was motivation. And it's two things. It's carrot or the stick. And you're right, the stick works better. Fear.Josh: Well said.Aaron: Losing eyesight, fear of dying from diabetes, fear of losing your leg is far stronger than saying, Hey dad, I want you to walk me down the aisle, get off the couch and stop eating cheeseburgers. That's powerful, right? I want you to be there for

Dive into an energizing discussion on the simplicity of work attire, the nuances of office culture, and the riveting journey of climbing the corporate ladder in digital marketing. From wardrobe hacks to the intricacies of acquisitions and the essence of agency success, this episode is a treasure trove for keen minds!

Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.

Sweatshirt and white polos for weeks!Why choose consistent clothing?Tactical decision-making power talk.How a chance dinner talk led to a job.Transforming from peer to president.
Resources:
MediauraDevNoodleThe Influence of ADHD on Entrepreneurial Tendencies (Masters in Marketing Agency episode with Andrew Aebersold
Connect with Amelia Veron:
LinkedIn
Connect with our hosts:
Josh Hoffman - LinkedInAlex Garashchenko - LinkedIn
Quotables:
56:35 - It's 'cause I think it's so important. But you know, I always use the diner example. When you go to a restaurant that has everything under the sun on the menu, it usually means nothing is that great there. As opposed to when you go to those fine dining restaurants, and there's like three things on the menu, you know, that there's services or in this case, the food is probably a lot better per service or dish. So I think and to your point, we've talked to a few marketing agencies that their aim was to be that full service, and then they realize they're kind of diluting all the services and not providing the best service for their clients. So, you know, I think that's worth mentioning.22:03 - Amelia: And that, not to say we haven't had our fair share of disagreements, but I think the trust is built there at this point that we can disagree and get into it and then the next day be like, I'm fine. I'm over it now.Josh: Well that was literally gonna be kind of my next question, which is like, does that ever get frustrating or is that kind of just how it should be? 'cause you know, I think there's a lot of power when it comes, I call it like diversity and thought.33:57 - Your kind of production work doesn't really have much to do with your managerial skills. You know, I think, you have to be self-motivated. Like you have to be a problem solver and you have to just be a little tenacious. Like, I mean, stuff gets rough sometimes and you have to go home and be like, I'm gonna do it one way or the other, I'm going to do it. And sometimes people just don't have those qualities and I don't think you can make someone be that person.38:32 - I call it like Aristotle's mean, or Aristotle's, I forget, but it's this idea that everyone tends to bounce up and down. Whether it's happiness, it can go into politics, it can go into anything and people bounce. 'Cause what they do is they identify that there's an issue, maybe everyone's upset so they try to go the other way and they usually go too far and then they identify that too far and then they come back. And the more someone can kind of close that, that gap or that parabola, that tends to be the better solution. So I think that was, a really good point.42:36 - The beginning stage is mainly like, how are you doing? Are you getting the concepts like do you like it here? Do I mean frankly like, do we like you here? And so it's kind of us trying to suss out like the skills that maybe you can't interview about during that 90 days.

Dive deep into the insightful world of marketing and PR with our expert guest, Jen Hartmann. Discover fascinating insights on mergers, strategic networking, and innovative PR tactics like News Jacking. Packed with relatable stories and expert tips, this episode is a goldmine for agency owners looking to up their game.

Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.

The art of strategic networking.Importance of community in agency growth.Innovative PR tactics that work.Hiring practices that set agencies apart.The impact of M&A on your agency.
Resources:
NEAT: The AgencyDevNoodleInvisible InfluenceMy First Million Podcast
Connect with Jen Hartmann:
LinkedIn
Connect with our hosts:
Josh Hoffman - LinkedInAlex Garashchenko - LinkedIn
Quotables:
38:11 - I pay for their coffee and I ask them all about them. I do not make the conversation about me. In fact, I talk very little when I am taking somebody out to dinner or coffee. I just wanna learn all about them and what they're working on. And then what I do is I do something for them. I don't expect anything in return. I want nothing in return, in fact in that moment. But I will make an intro to somebody who I think they should meet. I will review their website or their marketing strategy, their social media, I'll give them tips, I will send them a contact of a journalist. I do something just because I think I should do something for that person and that comes back tenfold every single time. They will open up doors for me that I would not have been able to open myself. And so that has been really impactful. 28:28 - Josh: How did you guys get your first client?Jenn: Oh my gosh, okay. Let me think back. My network, this is still something I do a lot of, but I do a lot of networking and I go on a lot of coffee dates and dinner dates and whatever it may be. But I really leveraged my network to get our first couple of clients back in 2020 or back in 2019 really. And I still do it today. I still do a healthy amount of networking and that really helps to bring in clients. I mean of course we have a sales team and we're doing a lot of lead gen and closing deals on the phone, but like I'm still out and about having conversations with people. I've just noticed that when I meet people they, not to toot my own horn, but people like me very quickly. And when people like you, they trust you and they wanna buy from you.47:34 - And that's truly not the way to do PR in 2024. I think that worked maybe 20 years ago. But things are just different nowadays. So for example, we do a lot of news jacking, which sounds kind of wild, but essentially what it means is we're constantly looking at trends and breaking news and we're figuring out how can we latch our client onto that trend or that breaking news topic. And so we get a ton of features for our clients from doing that. So other agencies see it, they like it, they bring clients to us.20:02 - Josh: Because this is something that we've talked about a decent amount, especially if the owner was an athlete or something like that and they find a lot of value in hiring athletes. Do you see the same thing?Jenn: For sure. I would say that a high percentage of our employees played professional sports or competed at like the top level of their sport, whatever that might look like. And I think athletes do have certain traits, they know how to work really, really hard and they also know how to take feedback. They're very coachable. And so yes, I think athletes develop these skills that do carry over into the workplace.36:31 - So a piece of advice I would definitely give people right off the bat is start building your network before you need your network. If you need a network and you haven't built a network, it's too late. Like you, you're already starting up behind. So start building up your network years before you need them. I have always been a really great networker. I think I got it from my dad. My dad has a gr

Dive into the dynamic world of influencer marketing with BabbleBoxx CEO Sherri Langburt. Discover the resilience behind her story, groundbreaking moves in marketing, and the power of trusting your gut in business. This episode is a must-listen for those seeking inspiration and industry-insider knowledge.

Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.

Sherri’s unique approach to getting hired.Influencer marketing: beyond the hypeStaying in your lane for success.The impact of having immigrant parents.Building communities within agencies.
Resources:
BabbleBoxxDevNoodle
Connect with Sherri Langburt:
LinkedIn
Connect with our hosts:
Josh Hoffman - LinkedInAlex Garashchenko - LinkedIn
Quotables:
41:18 - Sherri: I think the cream thing was like, you could see all the stuff on your face, right?Josh: Not only that, but it was actually like, it was like a silly design. Like it was this, it looks like a push pop almost. And because even just the look of it was like anyone could put cream on their face, right? But it was like literally the look of the product was different, and for that reason, it ended up blowing up on TikTok. So Yeah. Yeah. TikTok is, and I'll be honest, I don't see it cooling off anytime soon. I, I see that as like it's, we're still in the ramp-up phase. I'm trying to think if there's like another example of something that took off and then didn't really go anywhere after two years. But I see TikTok shop or whatever it's called.16:28 - Josh: And I guess since you, you know, you did talk about the box, can you tell us a little bit more about BabbleBoxx and who you guys help?Sherri: So we have all different kinds. So we're an influencer marketing agency. I say full service because we stay in our lane. We don't offer SEO and we don't offer email marketing. We only do influencer very specific, but we do a lot with an influencer. So when you think about influencers and you say full service, people are like, that's bizarre. But you know, we do regular campaigns that are not a Boxx. So any kind of influencer activation. We do our co-branded boxes, which are our BabbleBoxx, which are these themed kits that go out to brands. So they're multi-brand collab. So right now we have one for Super Bowl in market, we're gearing up for National Nutrition Month and we bring five brands in those boxes. They go out to influencers. And then because of those kits, then brands started to come to us saying, well wait a minute, could you do custom kits? So we do custom kits. I would say, my favorite way to describe them is these hype kits.21:10 - Like we've had a lot of PR people say, could we become your in-house PR person? And I think we have to stay in our lane. And you know, it's funny, so many people come to me and say like, as I was growing this and people laughed at me when I launched this and what are you doing? And oh, now they're like, there's so much competition. There's like 30,000 ad agencies in New York, so there's a thousand influencer agencies.29:05 - Josh: And I think I shared a story last time we spoke, but how do you listen to your gut? Do you have any, do you focus on specifically, do you think it's actually just natural to you now? Like what does that look like?Sherri: I think that I'm by nature very intuitive and I think that for so many years people told me, like with the Weight Watchers thing, like, you're crazy. You're crazy, you're crazy. And if you have that intuition, listen to it. Don't listen to the, I'm crying to the outside voices, right? And so it's like taking the outside voices and not listening to them is I think one of the biggest steps. It's even like you'll see it on social, like, why are you listening to all the noise? Or when I started this company and people are like, there's, there's one woman who kept calling me and really might wanna come work with you, but, and she would always find a thing and it's like the noise. But I think that it's something

Dive into the engaging world of Brian Mattocks as he unfolds the significance of community in business, the nuances of marketing, and the power of podcasting in this insightful episode. Discover his unique perspective on building networks, mastering communication, and why attention is the currency of connection.

Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.

Community building insights.Teaching through experience.Marketing attention mechanics.Brian's podcasting journey.Referral importance in business.
Resources:
Podcast ChefDevNoodle
Connect with Brian Mattocks:
LinkedIn
Connect with our hosts:
Josh Hoffman - LinkedInAlex Garashchenko - LinkedIn
Quotables:
24:25 - If you give someone attention, you've beaten the game. The trick is how to give them the right attention in the right way. And how to direct that into something that's positive and productive with what you guys have done with the profiles and with building out the amount of research you've done, you are giving attention to somebody in a even more powerful way because the attention you're giving them is information about the most important subject in their life, right? Which is them.37:36 - I had to deal with the fact that, you know, what I thought was clever and interesting wasn't effective. I had to learn that everything that you're doing in an environment like this is practice. And as practice as that experiment, you have to evolve your approach to solving those problems. And as I went through, you know, week after week, year after year, I learned what works and what doesn't in this case.45:34 - Alex Garaschenko: That's really interesting. So we're starting our community with having done 60 some episodes, so 60 plus members potentially that will be coming into this community wonder, do you think that the initiation, when we start the community of all 60 coming together by us pairing people up, maybe in a way would that, how would you do the initiation for something like that where you already have a pool of people and now you're just.Brian Mattocks: I wouldn't have, I wouldn't take 60, I'd take a dozen, I'd take eight and make them the founding founding members, give them their own experience and then slowly bring in the rest of the, the outliers. Make sure that your initial tribe, as it were, are folks that you believe are gonna be spark plugs in your community, folks that engage folks that care and make them your founder circle.47:02 - So, alright, so there's a couple ways to learn, right? I mean, you can talk about the learning styles, which has been debunked, but the best way to learn is from somebody else's experience, right? Because it's a force multiplier. I can go out and learn how to play piano by myself or I can watch somebody else who's learned how to play piano and get access to that, like in a video game, right? I'm a big video gamer, and so learning from other people is outrageously the strongest force multiplier you can get.49:32 - Yeah, a podcast is great. Like how big is your network gonna be when you're sitting in your office by yourself? Even if you go to the local networking events, more often than not, the folks that are showing up there aren't sweet spot folks for you. They're not either great partner relationships or not good peer relationships. More often than not, those are a collection of local folks that don't want to sit in their office anymore. I'm not suggesting that face-to-face networking is bad, but focus driven face-to-face networking is so much better where you can control, or at the very least, get access to a limited audience that's specialized. That's why the conferences usually are a much better play when it comes to the networking conversation or do it on steroids, do it with podcasting. I can specify position an organization, I can specify size of organization, I can get folks to be on a show that really, you know, you can get down to some very, very fine level of demograph