Smart Agency Masterclass with Jason Swenk: Podcast for Digital Marketing Agencies Jason Swenk

Do you prioritize new clients or building lasting relationships? Would you be willing to lose money on a client in order to build a long-lasting relationship? Today’s guest has built two successful agencies banking on the power of planning for the long term instead of focusing just on the numbers. She’ll explain how she and her partner formed their vision of an agency where people could do their best work, clients felt heard, and it would all translate into business. Tune in to learn all about the visionary approach that led her and her partner to success.
Kim Lawton is a successful agency owner with two agencies under her belt. She’s the founder of Inspira Marketing, a 300-employee agency reaching the nine-figure mark, as well as the president and CEO of Enthuse Marketing, a purpose-driven group committed to building brands through effective experiential marketing strategies. She shares her journey building two agencies and discusses her approach of over-resourcing client relationships, her role as the chief possibilities officer and president/CEO, and her entrepreneurial journey from a young age.
In this episode, we’ll discuss:
The four pillars of relationship building.
Risking losing money for long-term client relationships.
Strategic hiring to fuel growth.
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Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service.
The Four Pillars of a Relationship-Driven Agency Although she’s an accidental agency owner, according to Kim she’s been an entrepreneur since the age of fourteen, when she managed her father’s pizza shop and fell into the role of marketer. It wasn't until years later, working at an agency during the rise of experiential marketing, that she truly started to believe in her marketing abilities. It was there that she met her current business partner.
As Kim and her partner dreamed of owning their own agency, they kept a journal to define the key elements they wanted to include. Their primary focus was creating a place where people felt seen, heard, and empowered to do their best work. They believed this would translate into a successful business.
Rather than focusing on the numbers, hourly billing, or time spent on each account, like most agencies, they made the strategic decision to invest in relationships over profit. As they planned how this would look as a profitable business, Kim and her partner decided their agency would be built on four main pillars:
People: Their investment in talent.
Organizational development: Tools they invest in that help people do their jobs more effectively.
Client leadership: How they show up for their clients.
Growth and reputation: They measure the previous three elements and look at that to establish how the agency performed that year.
It may seem counterintuitive for business owners who prioritize profit margins and bottom lines, but it was a conscious choice to become their clients' preferred solution, even if it meant potential short-term financial losses. Their long-term relationship investment approach not only allowed them to create long-lasting relationships, but it was also a good way to quickly identify bad clients. If the client didn’t value the time they were investing in their project, it was easy to say goodbye to them and not look back.
Maximizing Client Relationships: A Strategy for Long-Term Success How do you start to set up a structure where the business is set to lose money with each client for the first year? Kim suggests allocating a portion of marketing expenses to client service. This approach allows agencies to prioritize nurturing existing client relationships, leading to inc

What sets high-performing agencies apart from their low-performing counterparts? How are you positioning your agency for success? Our guest today is a seasoned business executive with extensive experience in product marketing and sales leadership. In his current role, he collaborates with agencies and gains insights into what separates successful ones from the rest. Tune in to gain valuable perspectives on agency performance and growth strategies.
Tim Condon is the Chief Revenue Officer of Clutch, a one-stop-shop were businesses can identify leading service providers through an innovative research process that melds the best of traditional B2B research and newer consumer review services. He discusses the difference between high-performing and low-performing agencies and shares insights from working with professional services companies and marketing firms, highlighting key factors that contribute to agency success.
In this episode, we’ll discuss:
Focusing on organic growth.
Making 100,000 leads in one day.
Shortening the sales cycle.
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Sponsors and Resources


Clutch: This episode is sponsored by Clutch, the #1 marketplace for agencies just like yours. With their innovative process, your agency will be matched with highly motivated buyers looking for the exact services you offer. Leave the lead generation to Clutch and let your team focus on delivery. Get started for FREE at clutch.co/smartagency by creating your agency profile.



Organic Growth and Operational Excellence Build a Scalable Agency From his many interactions with agencies at Clutch, Tim has gathered some great intel on what is working for the most successful agencies. First, they start doing something they are really good at and focus on organic growth. Many prominent agency CEOs initially honed their skills in website development, later expanding their expertise to encompass SEO and pay-per-click advertising to drive increased traffic.
As these successful agencies matured, they strategically planned their expansion into new areas, leveraging their organic growth to thrive and deliver exceptional outcomes. Also, Tim has observed a crucial aspect of sustained agency growth lies in establishing a robust infrastructure. Agencies that have mastered this have implemented comprehensive systems for lead tracking, incentivizing sales teams, and organizing their operational structure. These systems are essential for ensuring seamless operations and maximizing growth opportunities.
Without a solid foundational framework, agencies may encounter challenges in effectively attracting, converting, and scaling their business. But by implementing streamlined processes, performance tracking, and identifying areas for improvement, they can enhance their lead generation, and client conversion, and ultimately scale their business to new heights.
Leveraging Brand Power and Partnerships to Land 100,000 Leads! As CRO at Clutch, Tim has seen many different and innovative approaches to generating leads but especially remembers a time when he was working at the Washington Post. At that time, he was tasked with building a platform to showcase the Post’s potential as a local resource with a lot of local merchants.
The Washington Post faced competition from larger companies like Groupon and LivingSocial, so Tim capitalized on the assets at his disposal, particularly the Post's strong brand and local market distribution, to build a robust email list.
Strategically aligning with Papa John's, Tim proposed a mutually beneficial promotion that involved giving away pizzas in exchange for registrations on their site. The campaign's resounding success resulted in 100,000 new leads! And consequently, 100,000 Papa Johns pizzas delivered — which solidified the partnership between the two seemingly unlikely partners.

This was by far the best promotion either brand had done and Tim made it happen by leveraging his

What would you do if you sold your agency tomorrow? Are you clear enough on your purpose that you could keep on creating value? Today’s guest is the founder of a beloved app that changed the way people drive nowadays. He eventually sold that company but hasn’t stopped looking for ways to improve people’s lives through his startups. He’ll share what he’s learned from failure, why he was out of the company as soon as he sold, and why you should always look to understand users to create real value. Tune in to learn valuable insights into building successful startups.
Uri Levine is the co-founder of Waze, a popular app that helps users have a better driving experience, get to their destination faster, and avoid speeding tickets. After his business was acquired by Google a decade ago for over $1 billion dollars, Uri went on to focus on other ventures. He more recently wrote the book Fall In Love With the Problem, Not the Solution.
He shares his entrepreneurial journey, from creating Waze to building Moveit, and discusses the importance of solving real problems to achieve product-market fit and the impact of failing to do so.
In this episode, we’ll discuss:
Fall in love with the problem, not the solution.
Cracking product-market fit.
Making hard choices with conviction.
What comes after selling an agency for $1 billion.
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Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service.
Find a Problem Worth Solving: Advice for Agencies to Create Lasting Value Years ago, Uri had the chance to meet one of his technological gurus – Steve Wozniak – at an event. He got to take a picture with him and that exchange inspired a chapter of his book called “Understanding Users”. In it, he explains there’s no right or wrong way to use a product, something he always tried to take into account when it came to Waze users and how they overcame problems.
In his view, every entrepreneur should start by solving a problem. “Think about something worth solving,” he advises. If a lot of people have the same problem, speak with them, understand their perception of the problem, and only then set out to build the solution. For Uri, this is the only way to guarantee that you’re creating value. Instead, starting with the solution may lead to creating a solution that no one was asking for.
Uri encourages entrepreneurs to find a problem worth solving and make it the North Star of their journey. This way, you’ll be much less likely to deviate from the path toward your goal and much more likely to succeed. To agencies, he reminds them that the problem is a significant part of their marketing. The story you’ll tell about the problem is much more compelling than one about the solution. An enticing story will help you make customers care, and if they care, they’ll make you successful.
Biggest Successes and Failures Outside of Waze Although Waze has over 700 million users, and even more use Moveit, neither is Uri’s most successful product. His most successful venture was a voicemail company called Converse Technology. At the time, it had many more users than either Waze or Moveit and it was a massive success. Years, later, he switched to software development, always looking for innovation and change.
On the other hand, his first startup focused on mobile email and it became his first big failure. Uri knew focusing on a problem worth solving was the starting point for any successful venture. This should always be followed by speaking with potential consumers. This way, you’ll see whether or not they share your vision of the problem. If not, they may still point you to a different approac

Does your onboarding process set new hires up for success from day one? Do you believe the hardest part of adding new team members is the hiring process? Today’s guest believes most business owners disregard the importance of the onboarding process, which can affect a new hire’s chances of success in the agency. He goes over the many aspects you should improve for properly onboarding a new team member and why you don’t want to waste the time, money, and effort put into the hiring process by doing a bad job with onboarding. Learn valuable insights and strategies in setting up new team members for success and avoid pitfalls in hiring remote staff.
Noel Andrews is the CEO of JobRack, a hiring service that helps agencies find great remote talent from Eastern Europe and South Africa. As someone who focuses on finding the best talent and matching them with agencies looking to hire remotely, Noel knows the significance of prioritizing onboarding to ensure successful hires and discusses common mistakes agency owners make during the hiring process.
In this episode, we’ll discuss:
Common onboarding mistakes you should avoid.
How to kickstart a new hire for success.
Effective remote team onboarding strategies.
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Sponsors and Resources Copper: This episode of Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Copper, a CRM solution built specifically for agencies that use Google Workspace. Its CRM integration works seamlessly with Gmail, Google Calendar, and Drive, so you never have to switch tabs to add leads, track email conversations, find files, or manage tasks in your marketing or sales process. Head over to Copper.com/agencies and get a free trial exclusively for Jason’s listeners!
The Biggest Onboarding Mistakes Agency Owners Make When Hiring Whether you’re hiring remotely or locally, hiring is hard so once agency owners get to the last stage of hiring and they’ve got a start date confirmed they breathe a sigh of relief thinking their job is done. However, this is not true. The next step now is onboarding and it is a critical stage in the hiring process that is often overlooked, with the most common mistakes being.
Not preparing for it.
Not prioritizing it.
Failing to adequately prepare for new hires leads to inefficiency. This looks like: no email access, Slack use, or client accounts ready on someone’s first day in the office. Even at big companies, it may take three days to get a new hire a laptop. It’s both a waste of their time and a terrible first impression.
For Noel, proper onboarding is a twelve-week process, where you’ll gradually provide them with the context they need to work in your agency. During this process, you should be preparing people with the background of who your clients are, what your services are, and why you do things the way you do. It’s the sort of detail that will help workers go above and beyond for the company.
Neglecting or rushing through the onboarding process can result in wasted time, money, and effort invested in the hiring process. Just like onboarding a new client, the first few weeks should be about how excited you are about them joining the team and offering everything they’ll need to set them up for success, foster a positive work environment, and ultimately improve retention and productivity in the long run. Especially if it’s a remote position, where you’ll have to be very intentional about making sure you’re giving them all the tools for success.
Emphasizing Values in the Onboarding Process What Simon looks for in each team member will, of course, depend on the role. However, all his account managers, recruiters, operations managers, and customer success managers roles involve dealing with people, whether clients or customers.
In this sense, their energy and attitude play a big role in how they’ll do working in his agency. Of course, attitude is something that cannot be easily trained whi

Is the fear of failure holding you back from taking the first steps to establish your brand? Are you hesitating to start a podcast because you believe it would only be worthwhile if it garners millions of downloads? Our guest today is a true trailblazer in the podcast industry, having successfully built a thriving agency around his initial decision to create a show dedicated to entrepreneurs. Tune in for an insightful conversation on the power of pushing boundaries and the value of trying new things in the ever-evolving world of podcasting and entrepreneurship.
Pat Flynn is the serial entrepreneur and podcasting pioneer behind Smart Passive Income, a massive podcast with a long history of teaching entrepreneurs proven strategies to run and optimize their businesses. He’s also the founder SPI Media, an agency that helps people launch and grow their brands. Pat’s podcast was actually the inspiration for the Smart Agency Masterclass podcast and now he joins Jason to discuss the importance of taking risks and embracing failure as part of the learning process.
In this episode, we’ll discuss:
What’s holding people back from starting a podcast?
Mastering the podcasting game.
3 key principles for brand success.
Letting go to grow: lessons on delegating.
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Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service.
Navigating the Evolution of Your Brand and Business Just like Pat has inspired so many entrepreneurs, he was inspired by the Internet Business Mastery to start his own podcast in 2007. The result was so terrible he never released that episode and it took over a year for him to gather the courage to try again. After finally releasing his first episode in 2010, he’s started several other podcasts and has amassed around 80 million downloads and a massive following.
Much has changed since he chose Smart Passive Income as the name for his brand and “passive income” has recently gained some negative connotations due to influencers promoting the idea of making money without putting in even 1% of the work. As a result, some big brands are hesitant to partner with a business associated with the term.
Of course, this is not what Pat teaches in his content, and, although he is now referring to it as just SPI, a rebrand is probably in the future to welcome as many opportunities as possible.
Currently, Pat is running a business with 11 employees, which is something he never would’ve thought he’d do. Back when he started his business, he dreamt of running a very lean operation working exclusively with contractors.
As the years went by, however, Pat felt a calling to help as many people as possible and he needed to bring the very best talent to the business to help him realize that. Once he had a team, especially his partner and CEO who took over project management and finances, Pat was able to focus on his zone of genius, doing interviews, building relationships, and going to events.
Focusing Too Much on the Numbers: The Misconception Holding People Back from Podcasting For Pat, the number one reason people refrain from starting a podcast is the fear of wasting time. Things have changed a lot since he started and now it has become such a saturated space that he can’t blame people for thinking theirs may just get lost in the multitude of new releases each day.
Pat challenges agency owners to ask themselves, how many more clients do you need to make a positive impact in your business? Could a podcast help you close more business by attracting potential clients who wouldn’t otherwise find your agency? If the answer is yes, he suggests tailoring podcast episodes to appeal t

Do you want to sell your agency at some point? Do you know where you want to take your business before you’re ready to search for a partnership? Today’s guest started his agency at just twenty-three years old and was ready to sell ten years later, when his business was thriving and had a solid position in a coveted niche. However, the selling process was not as smooth as he hoped and he soon found himself looking for expert advice to understand a complex process that was sure to take a lot of his time for months on end. Tune in to learn how he navigated the M&A process while prioritizing clients and employees, and creating the ideal work environment for his team.
Simon Cristal is the founder of SWC Partnership, an international full-service marketing agency that helps clients increase lead generation and brand awareness by developing strategies and creative ideas. Last year, his agency was acquired by a global independent agency, which he says was a natural process and a great experience overall. Learn his insights on building a client-centric agency, the importance of taking care of clients, and the type of help you’ll need for a smooth acquisition process.
In this episode, we’ll discuss:
Positioning and prioritizing profitability.
From Zero employees to selling an agency.
The agency owner’s roadmap to M&A.
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Sponsors and Resources Copper: This episode of Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Copper, a CRM solution built specifically for agencies that use Google Workspace. Its CRM integration works seamlessly with Gmail, Google Calendar, and Drive, so you never have to switch tabs to add leads, track email conversations, find files, or manage tasks in your marketing or sales process. Head over to Copper.com/agencies and get a free trial exclusively for Jason’s listeners!
Lessons in Pricing, Positioning, and Prioritizing Profitability Simon was born into the advertising world, with his father owning an agency that exposed him to the creative realms of design and copywriting from a young age. As he grew up, Simon navigated his way through several London agencies, honing his skills and gaining valuable experience. Surprisingly, the opportunity to set up his own agency came up earlier than expected. He knew he’d wanted to do it at some point in his career, although he didn’t expect to do it at twenty-three.
Simon started his agency with zero clients, which looking back was a risky move. He did, however, have a clearer vision of pricing. His first client was a big German dairy company and he knew the most effective approach to earn their respect was to refrain from underbidding.
It took around five years for him and his team to start really focusing on B2B and position themselves as specialists in helping brands connect to international audiences. This proved to be a savvy move, as the pandemic forced blue-chip businesses to seek out more affordable, niche agencies like Simon's, with their unique expertise in global brand-building.
In the ten years since starting the business, Simon has seen the importance of surrounding yourself with a good team to get through all sorts of situations. They operate under a very lean model since, in his view, it should never be about how many employees you have but about the type of business you build and whether or not it’s profitable.
This approach to building a passionate team and providing the best possible work environment helped him grow his business, and create great client relationships. It was even a deciding factor when it came to selling the agency.
Inspiring Creativity, Delivering Impact: Secrets of a Thriving Agency Mindset Simon used to believe the agency should be focused on making sales. This has changed with time, as he realized they needed to focus on taking care of clients and looking for ways to help them succeed. It’s a friendly approach that sets the tone for a good agency-client rela