August 21, 2025 • 44 mins
Scaling your agency shouldn’t cost you peace, clarity, or capacity. If growth feels like a bottleneck — more clients, more chaos, and too many hats — this episode will help shift that.
I sat down with Brent Weaver, serial entrepreneur and now CEO of E2M Solutions, a white-label services platform supporting over 300 digital agencies worldwide. Brent built, scaled, and exited his own agency, then led UGURUS inside Cloudways (a $100M division of Digital Ocean) before stepping in to help agency owners like you remove the operational ceiling.
We talk about the systems behind sustainable white label agency growth, embedding external teams into your ops stack, automating proposals, leveraging AI for service delivery, and how to build with discipline — not burnout.
This isn’t theory. It’s proven strategy you can plug in now.
📚 Books Mentioned
- The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
If you're an agency owner exploring white label partnerships, or simply want to connect, Brent would love to hear from you. Reach him directly at brent@e2msolutions.com or visit e2msolutions.com
Join Dr. William Attaway on the Catalytic Leadership podcast as he shares transformative insights to help high-performance entrepreneurs and agency owners achieve Clear-Minded Focus, Calm Control, and Confidence.
- Free 30-Minute Discovery Call:
Ready to elevate your business? Book a free 30-minute discovery call with Dr. William Attaway and start your journey to success.
- Special Offer:
Get your FREE copy of Catalytic Leadership: 12 Keys to Becoming an Intentional Leader Who Makes a Difference.
Connect with Dr. William Attaway:
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dr. William Attaway (00:00):
It is such an honor today to have Brent
Weaver on the podcast.
From founder, entrepreneur andbest-selling author to speaker,
coach, partner and investor,brent Weaver is currently the
CEO of E2M Solutions, a leadingwhite-label services platform
helping digital agencies scaleprofitably with expert WordPress
(00:24):
development, e-commerce, seocontent and cutting-edge AI
solutions.
He previously led the UGURUsand agency growth teams within
Cloudways, a $100 millionbusiness unit inside
DigitalOcean, focused ondelivering cloud web hosting
solutions for the SMB market.
Delivering cloud web hostingsolutions for the SMB market he
(00:47):
and his teams helped thousandsof agencies worldwide master
sales, marketing and operationsto achieve freedom in business
and in life.
He is a serial entrepreneurwith multiple exits, following
over a decade of digital agencyvalue creation.
He's also an experienced teambuilder and servant leader who
is passionate about hiring anddeveloping top talent, building
(01:11):
high-performing teams andcreating customer-obsessed
cultures.
Brent, I'm so glad you're here.
Thanks for being on the show.
Thank you, william.
I'm so looking forward to thisconversation.
Brent Weaver (01:23):
I wasn't nervous before, but now that you've
given that introduction, I'mclearly nervous.
I think you've set the barmaybe slightly too high for me,
but we'll take it from here.
Dr. William Attaway (01:33):
You know, all I did was right size
expectations for what you'regoing to bring today.
I'm just going to start there.
Intro (01:43):
Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed
to help leaders intentionallygrow and thrive.
Here is your host author andleadership and executive coach,
dr William Attaway.
Dr. William Attaway (02:01):
I would love to start with you sharing a
little bit of your story withour listeners, particularly
around your journey and yourdevelopment as a leader.
How did you get started?
Brent Weaver (02:13):
Gosh, I mean, I think the as a leader, I mean I
guess I would, I would thinkback to from a company
perspective, like first time youhire somebody, I don't know,
maybe that's like your firstlike jaunt into leadership or
maybe that's more management.
But you know, I think, like ifI were to even go back further
than that, I mean, I think I'vealways had kind of a knack for
(02:35):
organizing people and trying toachieve something.
I tell people often that myfirst business was selling
seashells on the beach when Iwas, like you know, eight years
old or something, and I hadenlisted I was the youngest
cousin, but I was I was sellingthe seashells on the beach,
which obviously beaches haveplenty of seashells, right.
So there's a there's, there'snot a supply problem, um, but I
(02:57):
think there's there's a cutenessfactor of an eight year old
selling seashells on a beachthat, uh, that that becomes a
business, right.
But I enlisted all of my brotherand my cousins and they were
all much older than me.
So, you know, here I was at,you know, seven or eight years
old and I had these you knowkids that were, you know, 11 and
15, right they were.
(03:17):
I had organized them to go andfind the best supply right, and
so I think, from very early, Ihad a knack, for you know, hey,
we have a goal or we want toachieve something, and it's not
just about what I can do, butwhat we can do and I think
that's a core part of leadershipis that you have to find a goal
(03:38):
or a mission, and you can gomuch further when you have a
team of people, and I thinkthat's something that I've I've
recognized at a very young age.
Dr. William Attaway (03:48):
How did you get into marketing?
Brent Weaver (03:50):
Started building websites.
Uh, and I don't.
I don't think it's.
I think it took me a long timeto realize that websites for
most businesses, you know, arekind of fit underneath the
marketing budget.
To get more customers, get moreleads, let's grow this thing
and so.
But that was not where Istarted, but that's where I
(04:11):
think we eventually kind offound ourselves.
Now there was a period of timewe also built websites that were
more web applications or, youknow, building custom software,
and I think you could, you couldcertainly go one of the
direction we kind of leaned into, the get more customers, get
more leads for our digitalagency.
But the first website I builtwas probably like in 1995-ish
(04:31):
1996.
You know, I was in high schooljust messing around with
computers and you know, had aninternet connection, wrote an
HTML page and a text editoruploaded it to some free hosting
.
I had that was you know, withour internet service provider
and I called a friend of mineand said check this out.
I had him type in a super longURL, right, because it was part
(04:53):
of our free hosting bin orwhatever, and he pulled it up
and it just it said like helloworld.
It probably said something moreinappropriate for that because
I was, like, you know, 15 yearsold or whatever.
More inappropriate for thatbecause I was, like you know, 15
years old or whatever.
But you know it said somethingand he's like okay, like what is
this Right?
I'm like it's a webpage, right.
So that was.
That was like my first webpage.
(05:14):
I'd say that's where it gotstarted for me.
Dr. William Attaway (05:22):
And from there it was a rocket ride.
Brent Weaver (05:23):
I mean a decade plus running your own agency.
What was that like?
I love, you know.
I mean I'm back to running anagency different than what our
initial agency was.
I mean, the scale that weoperate at E2M is much different
than what my kind of boutiqueagency was.
But I feel like my first agencywas my unofficial MBA in
(05:44):
business.
I got to, um, you know, I got tomeet, uh, you know, I think I
think the internet was the onlytype of business that you could
run, where you'd walk into aconference room of you know
corporate executives or oiltycoons or whatever, running a
billion dollar business.
And here you are, this 24 yearold kid, that 25 year old kid
(06:07):
that really doesn't knowanything about anything, but
they all look to you for theanswer.
Right, so it was.
It was cool because I got tolearn a lot about business.
You know we had a lot ofsuccess in various niches.
You know I got to go and tourall these businesses.
That was something I love doing.
I would go in and try to win anaccount and I'd drive over to
their business.
It's very different now withZoom and whatever.
(06:28):
I don't know if I would havebeen driving as much had I been.
You know, if I was running thistype of agency today, but I
would drive over to thesebusinesses factories, breweries,
restaurants, corporations,right and I'd pitch them on
building websites and doingmarketing for them and you know
they'd always want to give me atour of the business.
(06:49):
They would always give me kindof this whole like any question
that I asked right, how muchrevenue do you do?
How much profit do you do?
What are your most profitableproducts and services?
Right, because the website waslike this, like we kind of had
to help them grow the business.
Because the website was likethis, like we kind of had to
help them grow the business,most clients were very open to
really talking about theircompanies.
(07:09):
Right, and we had to, obviously,a lot of times sign NDAs and
stuff.
But I got to learn a lot aboutbusiness and so I think that's
why I look back at my firstagency.
That was like my fondest memorywas just every day seemed like
I was learning something new.
Memory was just every dayseemed like I was learning
something new.
Now there's elements of havingto constantly learn about all
these new businesses.
That's not necessarilyprofitable or very scalable.
(07:32):
We eventually kind of learnedhow to niche down our business
and really become masters ofsome verticals.
And then that became a lotdifferent type of learning,
where we weren't learning aboutall these different types of
businesses but we were morelearning about what it took to
scale a service and scale asystem.
Dr. William Attaway (07:51):
You know, a lot of the people who are
listening can resonate with whatyou're describing that rocket
ride of learning and justconstantly adapting to new
environments, new situationsthat you've never been in before
, you know and that's what thatsounds like.
Is that where you thrive, inthat space where you are just
constantly in learning mode?
Brent Weaver (08:13):
I mean, I think I love to learn.
I definitely love the idea ofhaving a growth mindset.
One thing, though, is I think,if you look at it over a decade,
maybe we can use rocket as a,you know, as a metaphor, but I
think, if you looked at theindividual days that were my
(08:33):
life over that period of time, Imean I would say that you know
and this is something I try totell people that are thinking
about running a business orgrowing a business that a lot of
it is.
It's it's like watching paintdry.
I mean, it's slow, you're doingreally boring, repetitive tasks
.
I mean, I think, if I look atyou know, how would I recommend
for somebody to get out there inthe niche, right?
(08:55):
It would be like, all right,well, we're going to build a
list of, you know, a market mapof all the different speakers
and stages and influencers andpodcasts, and then we're going
to, one by one.
We're going to reach out tothem every day, and we're going
to, you know, we're going toLinkedIn, message them, we're
going to email them, we're goingto call them on the phone,
right and we're.
And then there's this momentwhere you get on a podcast or
(09:15):
you get on a stage it's kind ofexciting, you're at an event.
But then there's the other 97%of your time, which I think for
a lot of entrepreneurs is likethe more okay and comfortable
you can be with doing likereally mundane, boring kind of
stuff.
I think that that's a key partof being successful and I think
(09:35):
we see this with, likeprofessional athletes, olympians
.
It's almost like theirtolerance for doing the same
thing every day.
The routine it's actually notvery exciting, right.
If we look at when you knowsomebody wins an Olympic medal
for you know swimming orwhatever, it's very exciting.
You know the starting gun goesoff the buzzer, it's like this
(09:57):
two minutes of intensity, right.
But if you looked at the other99.9% of their life, it's like
driven by routine.
But if you looked at the other99.9% of their life, it's driven
by routine.
It's driven by them gettingvery comfortable doing things
when they really don't likedoing it anymore.
I'm sure there's moments wherethere's passion and drive, but I
think there's a lot of.
When I look at my businesssuccess, it's like I've become,
(10:19):
I think, pretty good at doingthings that are uncomfortable or
that aren't super excitingevery day.
So you know, I mean that wouldbe.
My message to the listeners is,like you know, find the things
that aren't that exciting, learnhow to do them well, learn how
to do them at scale, and I thinkyou can find a lot of success
in your business.
And then you get some frosting,you get some, you know, really
(10:42):
high moments interspersed inthere, and those are always fun,
of course.
Dr. William Attaway (10:46):
I'm so glad you brought that up, brad,
because I think we tend to lookat the exciting parts, and
that's typically what makes itsway to social media.
We see the highlight reelyou're on the platform receiving
the gold medal, but you'reexactly right, you're not seeing
the other 99.9%, which is justdiscipline.
It's discipline, it'sconsistency.
(11:07):
It's the unsexy part of it, butyou don't get to the platform
without it and some of the teamsthat are producing these videos
right?
Brent Weaver (11:16):
Whether it's, I think, I read somewhere.
I don't know what the number is, but like the average amount of
money that Mr Beast puts into avideo right.
He's sometimes giving away thesemassive amounts of money, right
, but, like, the actualproduction of what he does is
(11:38):
orders of magnitude more thanthe actual money that they give
away, and the amount of energyand time that they put into that
, uh, is insane.
Um, you know, my, my kids are abig fan of mark rober and and I
don't know if you watch himhe's got an amazing youtube
channel covers.
He's a former nasa guy, pivoted, and he used to launch, like I
think it was like one video amonth or something you know.
(12:00):
So it's like he would do 30days of work to produce this
like six minute video.
You know, and I think that's areally good, like you know,
parallel to business, in thatyou'll see these highlight reels
, you'll see the really amazingintroductions, but there's so
much stuff that you've got to dobehind the scenes.
(12:20):
It's actually one of the reasons, like, when I look at what we
do with E2M as an example, right, we're a white label agency,
we're kind of the back end formore than 300 digital agencies
and that's kind of one of thethings like we provide peace of
mind, I think, as a business andwe're able to we're able to
kind of abstract a lot of thathard work, abstract a lot of
(12:46):
that hard work, that daily grindof building websites and SEO
campaigns and pay-per-clickcampaigns right, we're able to
kind of abstract that away forthe average digital agency,
where they can rely on our teamto do those work cycles, to have
a very scalable and flexibleteam for them to produce their
projects, and then the agencycan maybe focus more on those
the more exciting stuff right,getting out there on social
(13:09):
media speaking on stages,growing their business, and not
have to worry about, you know,going and interviewing 100
people to find one web designer.
Right, that's something that wedo every day.
We've got amazing processes forit and they can just tap into
our team and be able to delivergreat value without having to
deal with all that headache.
So how did you get to E2M?
Dr. William Attaway (13:24):
to deliver great value without having to
deal with all that headache.
Brent Weaver (13:27):
So how did you get to E2M?
You know I mean so.
E2m was a sponsor of UGurus, myformer company.
So Manish was introduced to meby one of our coaches, our
mentors that were part of theUGurus program.
A gentleman by the name ofJonathan Hinshaw said hey, you
should.
You got to meet Manish, hecould maybe you know, he's got
an amazing team he should comeand support you gurus.
(13:50):
And at the time, e2m was doinga his mind of okay, maybe
agencies could be our.
You know, instead of us goingand hiring a big sales team in
(14:13):
the US, maybe agencies could bea distribution channel for us.
And so he made a very bold move, which was to essentially stop
doing direct client work andpivoted 100% to a white label
agency for, for digital agencies.
And yeah, so then, so, so, soE2M was a supporter for UGURs
(14:54):
for many years.
I think one thing that made E2Mstand out as a company was that
they weren't as obsessed aboutthe you know, sponsored came to
events, would take people out tolunch or whatever.
Never a hard pitch, never ahard sell, just built
relationships, provided helpwhere he could.
And, you know, one personsigned up for E2M, then two
people signed up for E2M threepeople and then what ended up
(15:15):
happening?
It was kind of cool, of cool,like our, our, our community
became the marketing engine youknow, one of the marketing
engines for e2m and you know,all manish had to do was show up
and be in the room and so manypeople had such a great
experience with e2m that theykind of did the, they did the
pushing, totally voluntary.
(15:35):
Hey, well, you got to use e2M,right, we use E2M.
Oh, e2m makes it so easy, right?
So the customers, our community, really was talking about E2M.
And so when we, you know,ugurus was acquired, it was
exciting.
We had a lot of amazing growthas part of DigitalOcean.
Ultimately, digitalocean did notwant to run a services business
(15:57):
unit within their corecomputing infrastructure AI
business.
You know, if you're familiar,digitalocean is kind of like
Amazon Web Services for smallbusinesses hosting compute.
I mean hardcore info, security,data, I mean literal hardware,
right, Like, yeah, giantwarehouses with servers and all
(16:20):
that kind of stuff, right, andso to run this like agency
community was kind of a littlebit oil and water just didn't
fit.
They wanted to get reallyaggressive about artificial
intelligence that decided, hey,this doesn't work for us, so
they decided to shutter thebusiness and they're ruthlessly
focused, which is a good thing,that's great.
They didn't even want to thinkabout like spinning it off or
(16:42):
whatever.
It was just like stop doingthis, right.
And so I actually parted wayswith them very amicably and, and
when I did, manish was like,hey, we should talk, right.
And so then we started kind ofscheming up ideas of how to grow
E2M and there was a fewdifferent options at table.
And you know, we were, we weremeeting actually in in phoenix,
(17:02):
and I was about to leave themeeting and he said I have one
other idea.
You know, it's kind of thissteve jobs, move right, like
there's one other thought that Ihave.
And he said what about?
You know, what would it looklike if you became?
You know, you came on board anddid you know we're, we're a CEO
at E2M?
It's like, oh, okay, well, I'minterested, we should, we should
(17:23):
keep talking.
And we did and and yeah, here Iam.
What a story.
Dr. William Attaway (17:28):
You know, I had I had Manish on the show
and we got to know each otherand have stayed in touch since
and he dropped so much insighton the show.
And I love that, as you'restepping into this and getting
the opportunity to meet you andtalk with you and get to know
you and you're doing the same.
I mean, your story is justlittered with so many pieces of
wisdom that, even though you hadfound success, and then you
(17:52):
found success again, you're like, hey, what's next?
What does this look like?
And I think that teachablespirit that seems to pervade you
and your story is at play there, because it's so easy to push
back on an opportunity or apotential open door and say, ah,
no, I've never, I'm not, I'mnot doing that, I do this, I
(18:12):
couldn't do that, I do this.
And we tend to box ourselvesand limit our own potential
because we only see that we do X, when by having an open hand
and a teachable spirit, you canbe open to something that maybe
you didn't see coming.
I'm guessing you didn't seethat coming becoming the CEO of
(18:34):
HUM.
Brent Weaver (18:35):
My wife and I do.
It's been an annual traditionfor the last, I guess, three
years, so it's I can now sayannually we do this right.
But we one time, on one of ourdate nights, we made predictions
for where we're going to be ina year and we wrote those down,
we put them in an envelope andthen we, you know, put on the
schedule for our date night.
A year later we would look atour predictions, right.
(18:56):
So I think we've done likethree of these.
Year later we would look at ourpredictions, right.
So I think we've done likethree of these.
And and, and I have to say Ithink my we do it in april.
So april of 2024 to april 2025.
You know, in april it was likeyou know I was.
I was still at digital ocean,you gurus was doing really well.
We were growing.
There was a lot of likeexcitement about what's
happening next.
And you know, april of 2025 waslike my last day at
(19:20):
DigitalOcean.
I had no concrete idea of whatwas going to be next.
I mean, I was in conversationswith E2M by that point, but it
was just a good reminder of that.
There's just a lot of things inour life that we certainly have
control over, and we have a lotof control over our daily
choices.
Like we're presented with, likecrossroads were presented with
(19:41):
options and we can kind ofchoose, but but oftentimes the
options that get presented to us, uh, are outside of our control
, you know, and it's like justkind of how we, how we navigate
life.
Obviously, um, some of the alot of those things are are are
things that we don't have a hugeamount of control of.
But we can control how we showup, right, and I love that
(20:03):
phrase, that teachable spirit,because certainly, you know,
when I sat down with Manish andsaid, okay, I want to do this,
you know, here's the stuff Iknow, I know, here's the stuff I
think I know but might not knowright, and then there was like
this blind spot of like there'sso much that I don't even know,
that I don't know.
And that's where I'm like, youknow, if I step in on June 2nd,
(20:24):
you know, are you?
I was like, are you, are youstepping out?
Or you know, just look, I thinkI think there'll be 90 days of
a lot, kind of a jointpartnership, and then at least a
year of mentorship and so kindof coming back to that long-term
view.
That's something that I'm reallylearning to admire and
appreciate about Manish is thathe definitely has a very you
know, in our day and age ofentrepreneurship where it's
(20:46):
instant results, got to getsomething.
You know, I've got to do an ad,see a click, get a view, get a
buy.
You know, see my real ads,right All that kind of stuff.
And then to be talking toManish, he's got a very
long-term view for his businessand he's willing to make big
bets, and so that's somethingthat I'm learning a ton from as
(21:07):
an entrepreneur, because Iprobably would put myself you
know, I'm a performance, comefrom a performance marketing
background, I certainly like mystats and my data, and so I
think balancing that with kindof this more visionary,
long-term view has been reallyhelpful for me and I'm learning
a ton in the process.
Dr. William Attaway (21:27):
You know, playing the long game, I find,
is so often what separatespeople who endure, who last as
an entrepreneur.
Because you're not thinkingmicrowave, you're thinking
crockpot.
Yeah, you know, it's very, verydifficult to see the whole
picture when you're not thinkingmicrowave, you're thinking
crockpot.
It's very, very difficult tosee the whole picture when
you're in the frame.
You just don't have theperspective.
And one of the things I get todo is come alongside leaders and
(21:50):
businesses and help them seewhat they can't see because
they're in it every day, and Ilove that.
He's creating that type of anenvironment at E2M.
That speaks volumes.
And I know you're's creatingthat type of an environment at
E2M.
That speaks volumes, and I knowyou're going to continue that.
You're going to take that batonand you're going to take it to
the next level.
Let me ask you a lot of ourlisteners are agency owners.
A whole lot of people listen tothis show who are either
(22:11):
thinking about white labelpartners or maybe they've heard
of E2M, but they don't know muchabout you.
What differentiates E2M?
Brent Weaver (22:22):
heard of e2m, but they don't know much about you.
What differentiates e2m?
We're well, I mean, we wereactually currently doing a real
big deep dive on this for ourown business and our own brands
I feel like this is this good,good question, uh, william,
because it's very fresh in mymind.
But one thing is that we'rewe're 100 about agency growth,
and so there are a lot of whitelabel teams that also serve end
(22:42):
clients.
They kind of do white label asa side strategy.
They have direct-to-clientbusiness and then they kind of
see white label as thisopportunity to, you know, just
fill up their pipeline and tryto grow their business.
And so we're focused 100% onagency growth and so a lot of
times we go into work with anagency, their biggest concern is
(23:05):
, you know, can we help themwith their WordPress website
development?
Can we help them with go highlevel?
Can we help them with do that?
Can we help them with ShopifyBigCommerce?
Right, they have very tacticalfocus.
They have a project.
They need to get it done.
They want it to be done in acost-effective way right, we
check all those boxes, right.
That's very easy for us.
But what ends up happening interms of our partnership with
(23:26):
clients is when we start goingand actually working with them.
Because we work with over 300agencies, we get to kind of see
like, what are amazing processesand where are there processes
where agencies could benefitfrom improvements, whether
that's in our pre-sale support.
So a lot of agencies might havelike.
(23:47):
When I talk to agency I say,well, what do you enjoy about
sales?
And they're like oh, I lovetalking to clients I love doing.
You know it's like, okay, great.
What do you not enjoy aboutsales, creating scopes of work
and proposals and whatever,right, right.
And so our team makes thatstuff too right.
So we actually will do thatpre-sale support with you.
We'll look at what yourclient's asking for, we'll meet
with you and we'll build notjust a quote but a proposal that
(24:09):
you can essentially turn aroundand use that within your
proposal.
So that heavy lifting of whatdo we have to have in the scope
of work, how do we break thatdown in terms of cost and
timeline and investment?
Right, that's an example wherewe kind of build that for you
and a lot of agencies.
When they see how we do it,because we do it so much and
it's at scale, we start to seethem adjust their processes and
(24:32):
they start raising the bar forhow they approach their clients.
And this goes through theentire life cycle of the agency
process, whether it's thedevelopment processes.
So, like our team because weknow it's frustrating to work
with a white little partnerthat's outside of your business
we embed ourselves within yourexisting processes.
So our team will actually go inand be a member of your
(24:54):
teamwork.
Asana ClickUp Monday we'llactually go into your project
management system.
We'll be a member of yourteamwork.
Asana ClickUp Monday We'llactually go into your project
management system.
We'll be a member of thatsystem and we'll work within
your agency's process.
So, instead of you having tolearn a whole new process, we do
the heavy lifting and we learnyour process, which is just
really interesting.
So I used to be a partner in acompany called Unlimited WP
(25:15):
which got acquired by E2M and wehad the opposite process and I
remember we had a big discussionabout this and it was like for
us to go in and learn everyagency's process was just going
to be an incredible amount ofwork and overhead and the
complexity.
I was like adamant that wedidn't do this.
But now that I've joined E2Mand I see how they've been able
(25:39):
to accomplish this, I'm like man, this is like two-day shipping,
right?
Like I'm sure everybody atAmazon hated the idea of two-day
shipping.
It's impossible, right?
People probably said this isnot possible and Bezos says no,
we're going to do two-dayshipping.
And so I think Manish basicallysaid no, we're going to make
this easy for agencies we'regoing to work within their
(26:00):
systems.
It agencies we're going to workwithin their systems.
It's not going to be easy forus, but it's going to be really
valuable for our clients and sogood.
I level all of this up to beinga growth partner for agencies,
and I think that's one of themost unique components of
working with E2M is just howmuch we think about not just
doing the task, but how do wehelp our agency partners grow
(26:21):
their business.
And a lot of that comes back tojust peace of mind, how to help
you like not have to stressabout it.
Oh, you work in our system.
Oh, okay, we just add you andthen you're in there and you're
working on the task.
You're working on the projects,right?
Oh, sales is really frustrating.
We have to create our ownscopes of work, but you guys do
that for us.
Oh, that's really easy, right?
(26:41):
Just adding those peace of mindlayers on every element of the
business.
And I mean I could go on, likein terms of our pricing.
We have recurring kind offlexible plans.
So if an agency's businessfluctuates, if they all of a
sudden don't have work, you knowwe have an active account
manager that works with theagency.
We'll pause that plan to makesure that they're, if they're
(27:02):
not going to utilize the time.
We're not going to be billingthem for unused time right.
So we're very actively managedin terms of our plans with our
clients.
We kind of move clients up anddown on their plans based on
their demand, so that helps theagency be more profitable Again,
just that peace of mind.
That growth partner stuff isreally what makes E2M unique.
Dr. William Attaway (27:20):
It's fascinating and it's very
different from a whole lot ofother white label partners I'm
familiar with, you know, and thefact that you step into into
the agency system, that's that'sa massive differentiator.
I love that.
Brent Weaver (27:32):
Yeah, it's, yeah, not, not easy, but but the team
does it and they do an amazingjob with it.
And it's, you know, when welook at why people stay with us.
You know we have very, very low, less than 1% churn of agency
partners and one of the thingsthat I look at that I say, well,
it's because we're integratedwith the agency's processes,
(27:52):
we're an extension of their team, we're part of their team,
we're flexible within theirbusiness model.
The ups and downs of running abusiness I know for myself.
You know, one of the biggeststresses when I was running an
agency was payroll and it's verydifficult, without hurting some
feelings, to fluctuate yourpayroll month to month.
Right, like, if you're spending50 grand a month, you're like,
(28:14):
oh, we don't have work thismonth.
Like, you know, you can't justnotch that down to 25 grand
without, you know, devastatingsome people on your team.
Whereas within an E2Mrelationship, hey, if you don't
have the work, cool, we'll scaleyour account down and we'll
reallocate our human resourcesto other areas, right, other
clients, our own business, etcetera, and you don't have to
(28:36):
have that stress of feeling badfor having that fluctuation in
business.
So we want to see agencies beprofitable.
We want to see them beproductive.
We want to see them grow faster.
Dr. William Attaway (28:45):
I think that's really going to resonate
with a lot of people listening.
You know, one of the thingsthat I'm talking to a lot of
people about in agency worldright now is AI, and at E2M you
guys are stepping into that in apretty unique way.
Could you share a little bitabout where you are and where
you're going in that realm?
Could?
Brent Weaver (29:03):
you share a little bit about where you are and
where you're going in that realm.
Absolutely, we definitely wantto be a go-to white-label
partner, but we also want to bethe world's best AI-first
white-label partner, and I thinka lot of people are using AI
first or AI curious or thesedifferent things.
I don't know how many peopleare walking the walk in that
(29:28):
space and I think this requiresan investment and you have to
almost hit pause on some areasof your business and you have to
say, okay, how are we makingtime for this?
Are we actually giving teammembers at every level of the
organization time to leverage AI?
So we're doing AI in a fewdifferent ways.
One is through our own internaltooling and services that we're
(29:48):
delivering.
So, whether that's WordPress,pay-per-click advertising, seo,
every single team member at E2Mhas an amount of time that we're
allotting for them to invest inAI tooling, ai knowledge and
things like that we're actuallyeven doing every first Friday.
Everybody in the company comesin and works on that.
(30:10):
I'm sorry, ai for Saturdays Imissed the date there.
Saturdays, every first Saturday, a whole team comes in and is
working on AI knowledge andtooling and kind of doing some
hackathon type projects, and sowe're curating that, we're
bringing in speakers, we'reinvesting in team in terms of
(30:30):
tools and presentations, and sothat's something that our team
is coming to the table andthey're saying, hey, we're
willing to invest some of ourown time in this.
And then we're also coming tothe table with additional
investment in courses andknowledge and stuff like that,
and because we look at this asthis is like once in a lifetime
and so, you know, it's like wekind of have to maybe bottle
(30:52):
some of our inner you know ElonMusk and kind of go hardcore and
like, hey, we're going to gothe extra mile.
So that's something that we'redoing internally.
We're building a lot of reallycool tools within our business
to help serve clients better, dothings faster, better quality,
all that kind of stuff.
The other piece that we'redoing is, you know, we're
actually building some softwarearound.
(31:13):
We have a tool called RazorCopy.
It's our content team.
So obviously, chatgpt has beentransformational in terms of
content.
But there's a lot of thingsthat are missing from chat, just
in a lot of the other SEO tools, a lot of the content tools.
We've actually built that as aninternal tool where our human
content team is enhanced with avery specific kind of
(31:34):
application called Razor Copy,so that's been really cool.
We're going to be launchingthat later in Q3.
And then we have our fractionalAI service offering.
So this is where we're actuallygoing in as an extension of our
agency partners teams and we'redoing AI strategy for them.
We're building AI workflows,agentic workflows, we're
(31:55):
building custom agents, andthat's been revolutionary.
So right now, like as ofrecording this, we've got over
20 agencies that we'resupporting.
We have a team of I was justlooking at this morning.
I think we've got about close to20 people on the AI services
team and we're constantly, justevery day, inside of those
(32:15):
agencies looking at how do wehelp them to grow their business
faster, how do we help them bemore profitable, more efficient,
how do we help them delivermore value to their clients,
leveraging the power ofartificial intelligence, and so
that's probably one of the mostexciting areas for us, just
because of the amount oflearning that we're doing.
I think the team has launchedover 100 agentic workflows for
agencies, everything fromautomating lead generation with
(32:38):
Go High Level automating,proposal creation, invoicing,
billing, delivery of services.
You know, doing some of thethings that agencies are doing
with clients right.
Helping them to automate thoseto help them, you know, increase
capacity, increase profits,create new revenue opportunities
.
Wow.
Dr. William Attaway (32:57):
I love the fact that you're stepping into
this space with suchintentionality and you're
looking at this space sayingwhere can we come alongside of
agencies?
Where can we add value andtruly be what you said a minute
ago, truly be a growth partner,helping them to grow what
they're doing and increase theservices and the level of
excellence they're providing fortheir clients.
(33:18):
I think that is leadership andwell done with that.
Brent Weaver (33:23):
Yeah well, I have to give credit where credit's
due.
A lot of this train was alreadymoved.
I jumped onto the side of it,so you know it was obviously AI
has been a big part of when Iwas running YouGurus.
We started running a monthlywebinar around AI for agencies
Incredibly well attended, tonsof registrations.
(33:44):
We'd bring in case studies fromour members and showcase that
stuff, and so that was reallycool for me in terms of just
learning what agencies are doingwith AI.
I think it's very differentwhen you're actually the company
that's behind the scenesbuilding that stuff with those
agencies.
And so you know, coming on toE2M's team, you know, june 2nd,
I mean, the biggest thing that Iwas thinking about in reading
(34:06):
and trying to uplevel my ownknowledge and growth around was
AI coming into this position.
But even just since I joinedJune 2nd, I mean I feel like the
amount the hive mind that is AIwithin E2M is absolutely
incredible is AI within E2M isabsolutely incredible.
We actually have an event thatwe're going to be hosting in
Denver September 28th through30th called Vistara.
(34:28):
That's all about AI foragencies, and even just thinking
about us planning the contentfor this event, I have to know
like it's like from when we'rerecording this to when it's
going to happen.
It's like 65 days or something,68 days, and, like I know, I'm
going to learn so much about AI.
I don't even know what I'mgoing to talk about in September
(34:49):
.
I have no idea, right, becauseI know now and then my knowledge
on AI is going to increaseexponentially and so, but yeah,
we're continuing to make thatinvestment.
We think that it's important foragencies to hit pause and come
out of their business for acouple of days, come to Denver,
hang out with us and invest thattime to learn about AI, because
the only way you're going to doit well is if you kind of put
(35:14):
on that student hat, thatbeginner hat, and say, look, I
don't know what I don't know,and I certainly don't know
everything there is to knowabout AI.
And I need to hit pause.
I need to go learn for a coupleof days, immerse myself and
then, and then from there we canstart building strategy.
From there we can startexperimenting and making some
bets.
And I'll tell you right nowmost people's AI bets a year
(35:35):
from now will probably not payvery, very good dividends.
A couple of them will beextraordinary, but most of them
will probably be thrown in thetrash can.
That being said, if you're notmaking AI bets, you're certainly
not going to have any winnersand you're not going to have
those failed bets until youstart making bets.
So I think the key thing foragencies is start investing that
(35:58):
time, make the space to learnabout AI, put that beginner
mindset hat on, and I thinkit'll be a fun journey.
Dr. William Attaway (36:07):
You know you have to lead at a different
level today than you havepreviously.
You know you're leading in anew environment, in a new role.
How do you maintain thatmindset, that student hat, how
do you stay on top of your gameand level up with the new
leadership skills that E2M andyour client and the business as
(36:28):
a whole is going to?
They're going to need you tohave.
Brent Weaver (36:30):
Gosh, I think I have my.
I'm learning a ton from Manish.
I also try to keep my own kindof personal advisory board
separate from the business.
So having those people that arekind of trusted advisors I mean
I have NDA agreements with somefolks, right, just so I can
(36:51):
discuss my business mattersoutside of the core confines of
the business, right and so Ithink having those people that
can come in and kind of teachyou, constantly, provide that
feedback, has been huge, meanoutside of the normal, like
listening to podcasts, readingbooks, kind of always having a
little bit of my my foot in ortoe in the river of kind of you
(37:14):
know knowledge around leadershipand things like that.
But I think I think a key partof just getting that perspective
, having some you knowmentorship for yourself, having
folks like yourself kind of inyour corner where you can go and
say, okay, here's the situation, what do you think about this?
I actually have been a huge fan, I mean, lately I've been kind
of bringing that student mindsetand using chat as a great
(37:35):
thought partner, as a greatknowledge partner, and I've got
kind of a little bit of apersonal SOP of here's the
important things about me and,hey, I need to get feedback on
this decision, or how would youapproach this?
And I like you know, not all ofmy personal mentors like to be
woken up at 4 am or, you know, 1am in the morning or whatever,
(37:55):
and give me feedback right, andso I think chat's been great for
that just-in-time like kind ofinformation and it has required
a little bit of reprogrammingfor me to you know.
Oh, you know what I should askbefore I asked my mentor, I'm
going to ask chat, or maybe I'llask chat.
Hey, I'm going to go talk to mymentor about this issue.
How would you frame this Right?
What can I do?
What can I?
What can I think about now?
(38:16):
That would help me frame thisand get the right experience
share, you know, from my mentor,and so that's been.
That's been huge for me.
I love that.
Dr. William Attaway (38:26):
As you are continually learning and reading
.
Is there a book that has made abig difference in your journey
that you would recommend to theleaders who are listening?
Brent Weaver (38:35):
Um, yeah, there's.
I was thinking about this one,William, and I've got so many,
but there's a book called, uh,the boys in the boat.
I think they turned it into amovie.
I never saw the movie but it'sabout a crew team and it has so
many parallels.
Right, building an amazing team.
Right, getting people rightperson, right seat.
(38:55):
You know the discipline that isnecessary to be successful in
business and, I think,competitive crew.
It's a very touching story.
I won't give away too much ofthe book, but I think if you're
somebody who really obsessesabout right person, right seat,
how do you build an amazing teamthat's literally rowing in the
(39:15):
same direction?
Right, those are things that wesay in business all the time
right, right, person, right seat, rowing in the same direction.
But Boys in the Boat, I think,was one of the books that really
helped me to understand that.
You know, sometimes you have,you know the right people in the
boat, but they're just in thewrong seat.
Sometimes you have the wrongpeople in the boat, right, and
just how to be, you know, kindof ruthless about that to some
(39:38):
extent, right, I think mostcompanies are better framed as a
team, not as a family, right,and we can have some overlay in
terms of family and company,right, but I think you know
building a high performance teamis what leaders should obsess
about, so that would be my bookrecommendation for your
listeners.
Dr. William Attaway (39:57):
I love that I have not read that, and now
I'm going to check it out.
Thank you, I have not read that, and now I'm going to check it
out, thank you.
So last question you knowanybody looking at you from the
outside, brett is looking at thehighlight reel that we all have
online and they think, oh man,you know, he's just, his
journey's just been up and tothe right, like he's never
really struggled, he's neverreally had to go through the
(40:21):
days like I have.
You know, and if somebody weresitting across the table from
you and they were listening toyou talk about your story, they
said something like that.
I want to ask this questionwith that in mind.
If I had the ability right nowto snap my fingers and solve one
problem in your business oryour leadership, what would you
(40:42):
want that problem to be?
Brent Weaver (40:44):
Gosh, I, you know, um.
Besides, like you know, I thinkevery business leader is always
thinking about growth.
You know where's the growthgoing to come from?
How are we going to serve thegrowth?
So I mean, if we're talkingabout total magic wand, right?
I think that would be the one,but I think more like a
(41:06):
strategic and tactical level.
I think that you know, andwe're certainly no exception to
this, we have a lot moreappetite, maybe, than we have a
stomach for.
Right, we have, you know, Ithink a lot more businesses
suffer from overconsumption thanfrom starvation.
Right, we take on too manyideas, we try too many shiny
objects, and I don't think we're, you know.
(41:28):
I think that's one area where Ihave to exercise a lot of
discipline of just like how tosay no to things effectively
throughout the day andthroughout the week.
I think if we were to kind ofsolve one problem though, it's,
like you know, at the leadershiplevel, even though a lot of us
are in individual seats, we weara couple of different hats, and
so I think, you know, if we canmagically, you know, bifurcates
(41:49):
of our leaders, you know, justlike dna, copy that person, like
hey, we need more people likethis person, but instead of this
person having four kind ofseats they're sitting in, they
can have two seats they'resitting in or, better yet, one
seat.
So so I think that's, that's anarea where, you know, I wish we
could snap our fingers and justreplicate our best top
performers, but it's.
That's a little bit more.
(42:10):
I think you have to take moreinspiration, for maybe, like
gardening right, you have tolike, plant a seed, you have to
water it kind of back to thisidea that a lot of this stuff is
really boring William is, Ithink, having that patience.
So I don't know if that's avery good answer to that
question, but you know, maybeit's a cloning machine, maybe
it's a patience wand, I don'tknow, it's one of those, william
(42:35):
, I love it.
Dr. William Attaway (42:36):
You know, developing a leadership bench is
a process and, like I saidearlier, it's a crockpot.
There's no microwave for this.
Developing a bench that willserve you three, five years from
now is something that you starttoday.
It's like the old Chineseproverb about planting a tree.
You know, the best time to doit is 20 years ago.
(42:56):
Second best time to do it istoday, and I think what you just
shared and I appreciate theauthenticity and honesty there I
think what you just shared issomething a lot of people
resonate with and struggle with,and they wish they had started
this three years, five years,some 20 years ago developing
that bench of leaders so thatyou can bifurcate the roles, so
that you can allow people toserve in their zone of genius
(43:19):
instead of perhaps two or threeareas, one or more of which they
may not be in their zone ofgenius.
Developing that bench takes timeand today is a great day to
start that, and I just want ourlisteners to hear that and
understand that it doesn'tmatter where you've been, but
you can start today.
That is an action item that youcan take from what you've
(43:39):
shared today, brent, and I lovethat from what you've shared
today, brent, and I love that.
I'm so grateful for your timetoday, for your generosity in
sharing so much from yourjourney.
I know our listeners are goingto want to stay connected to you
, to continue to learn from youand to learn more about E2M.
What is the best way for themto do that?
Brent Weaver (43:58):
Yeah, I mean, if you're an agency that's looking
for a Y-level partner, or if youjust want to connect, talk
about some of the themes wetalked about today, whatever
your motivation is, you canreach me on email, brent at E,
the number 2MSolutionscom.
You can obviously go to ourwebsite at E2MSolutionscom, but
if you want to connect with meindividually, just drop me an
(44:19):
email.
I'm also on all the majorsocial media platforms, but
probably I'm most responsive onemail.
So brent at e2msolutionscom.
Dr. William Attaway (44:30):
We'll have that in the show notes, Brent.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you, William.
It is such an honor today to have Brent
Weaver on the podcast.
From founder, entrepreneur andbest-selling author to speaker,
coach, partner and investor,brent Weaver is currently the
CEO of E2M Solutions, a leadingwhite-label services platform
helping digital agencies scaleprofitably with expert WordPress
(00:24):
development, e-commerce, seocontent and cutting-edge AI
solutions.
He previously led the UGURUsand agency growth teams within
Cloudways, a $100 millionbusiness unit inside
DigitalOcean, focused ondelivering cloud web hosting
solutions for the SMB market.
Delivering cloud web hostingsolutions for the SMB market he
(00:47):
and his teams helped thousandsof agencies worldwide master
sales, marketing and operationsto achieve freedom in business
and in life.
He is a serial entrepreneurwith multiple exits, following
over a decade of digital agencyvalue creation.
He's also an experienced teambuilder and servant leader who
is passionate about hiring anddeveloping top talent, building
(01:11):
high-performing teams andcreating customer-obsessed
cultures.
Brent, I'm so glad you're here.
Thanks for being on the show.
Thank you, william.
I'm so looking forward to thisconversation.
Brent Weaver (01:23):
I wasn't nervous before, but now that you've
given that introduction, I'mclearly nervous.
I think you've set the barmaybe slightly too high for me,
but we'll take it from here.
Dr. William Attaway (01:33):
You know, all I did was right size
expectations for what you'regoing to bring today.
I'm just going to start there.
Intro (01:43):
Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed
to help leaders intentionallygrow and thrive.
Here is your host author andleadership and executive coach,
dr William Attaway.
Dr. William Attaway (02:01):
I would love to start with you sharing a
little bit of your story withour listeners, particularly
around your journey and yourdevelopment as a leader.
How did you get started?
Brent Weaver (02:13):
Gosh, I mean, I think the as a leader, I mean I
guess I would, I would thinkback to from a company
perspective, like first time youhire somebody, I don't know,
maybe that's like your firstlike jaunt into leadership or
maybe that's more management.
But you know, I think, like ifI were to even go back further
than that, I mean, I think I'vealways had kind of a knack for
(02:35):
organizing people and trying toachieve something.
I tell people often that myfirst business was selling
seashells on the beach when Iwas, like you know, eight years
old or something, and I hadenlisted I was the youngest
cousin, but I was I was sellingthe seashells on the beach,
which obviously beaches haveplenty of seashells, right.
So there's a there's, there'snot a supply problem, um, but I
(02:57):
think there's there's a cutenessfactor of an eight year old
selling seashells on a beachthat, uh, that that becomes a
business, right.
But I enlisted all of my brotherand my cousins and they were
all much older than me.
So, you know, here I was at,you know, seven or eight years
old and I had these you knowkids that were, you know, 11 and
15, right they were.
(03:17):
I had organized them to go andfind the best supply right, and
so I think, from very early, Ihad a knack, for you know, hey,
we have a goal or we want toachieve something, and it's not
just about what I can do, butwhat we can do and I think
that's a core part of leadershipis that you have to find a goal
(03:38):
or a mission, and you can gomuch further when you have a
team of people, and I thinkthat's something that I've I've
recognized at a very young age.
Dr. William Attaway (03:48):
How did you get into marketing?
Brent Weaver (03:50):
Started building websites.
Uh, and I don't.
I don't think it's.
I think it took me a long timeto realize that websites for
most businesses, you know, arekind of fit underneath the
marketing budget.
To get more customers, get moreleads, let's grow this thing
and so.
But that was not where Istarted, but that's where I
(04:11):
think we eventually kind offound ourselves.
Now there was a period of timewe also built websites that were
more web applications or, youknow, building custom software,
and I think you could, you couldcertainly go one of the
direction we kind of leaned into, the get more customers, get
more leads for our digitalagency.
But the first website I builtwas probably like in 1995-ish
(04:31):
1996.
You know, I was in high schooljust messing around with
computers and you know, had aninternet connection, wrote an
HTML page and a text editoruploaded it to some free hosting
.
I had that was you know, withour internet service provider
and I called a friend of mineand said check this out.
I had him type in a super longURL, right, because it was part
(04:53):
of our free hosting bin orwhatever, and he pulled it up
and it just it said like helloworld.
It probably said something moreinappropriate for that because
I was, like, you know, 15 yearsold or whatever.
More inappropriate for thatbecause I was, like you know, 15
years old or whatever.
But you know it said somethingand he's like okay, like what is
this Right?
I'm like it's a webpage, right.
So that was.
That was like my first webpage.
(05:14):
I'd say that's where it gotstarted for me.
Dr. William Attaway (05:22):
And from there it was a rocket ride.
Brent Weaver (05:23):
I mean a decade plus running your own agency.
What was that like?
I love, you know.
I mean I'm back to running anagency different than what our
initial agency was.
I mean, the scale that weoperate at E2M is much different
than what my kind of boutiqueagency was.
But I feel like my first agencywas my unofficial MBA in
(05:44):
business.
I got to, um, you know, I got tomeet, uh, you know, I think I
think the internet was the onlytype of business that you could
run, where you'd walk into aconference room of you know
corporate executives or oiltycoons or whatever, running a
billion dollar business.
And here you are, this 24 yearold kid, that 25 year old kid
(06:07):
that really doesn't knowanything about anything, but
they all look to you for theanswer.
Right, so it was.
It was cool because I got tolearn a lot about business.
You know we had a lot ofsuccess in various niches.
You know I got to go and tourall these businesses.
That was something I love doing.
I would go in and try to win anaccount and I'd drive over to
their business.
It's very different now withZoom and whatever.
(06:28):
I don't know if I would havebeen driving as much had I been.
You know, if I was running thistype of agency today, but I
would drive over to thesebusinesses factories, breweries,
restaurants, corporations,right and I'd pitch them on
building websites and doingmarketing for them and you know
they'd always want to give me atour of the business.
(06:49):
They would always give me kindof this whole like any question
that I asked right, how muchrevenue do you do?
How much profit do you do?
What are your most profitableproducts and services?
Right, because the website waslike this, like we kind of had
to help them grow the business.
Because the website was likethis, like we kind of had to
help them grow the business,most clients were very open to
really talking about theircompanies.
(07:09):
Right, and we had to, obviously,a lot of times sign NDAs and
stuff.
But I got to learn a lot aboutbusiness and so I think that's
why I look back at my firstagency.
That was like my fondest memorywas just every day seemed like
I was learning something new.
Memory was just every dayseemed like I was learning
something new.
Now there's elements of havingto constantly learn about all
these new businesses.
That's not necessarilyprofitable or very scalable.
(07:32):
We eventually kind of learnedhow to niche down our business
and really become masters ofsome verticals.
And then that became a lotdifferent type of learning,
where we weren't learning aboutall these different types of
businesses but we were morelearning about what it took to
scale a service and scale asystem.
Dr. William Attaway (07:51):
You know, a lot of the people who are
listening can resonate with whatyou're describing that rocket
ride of learning and justconstantly adapting to new
environments, new situationsthat you've never been in before
, you know and that's what thatsounds like.
Is that where you thrive, inthat space where you are just
constantly in learning mode?
Brent Weaver (08:13):
I mean, I think I love to learn.
I definitely love the idea ofhaving a growth mindset.
One thing, though, is I think,if you look at it over a decade,
maybe we can use rocket as a,you know, as a metaphor, but I
think, if you looked at theindividual days that were my
(08:33):
life over that period of time, Imean I would say that you know
and this is something I try totell people that are thinking
about running a business orgrowing a business that a lot of
it is.
It's it's like watching paintdry.
I mean, it's slow, you're doingreally boring, repetitive tasks
.
I mean, I think, if I look atyou know, how would I recommend
for somebody to get out there inthe niche, right?
(08:55):
It would be like, all right,well, we're going to build a
list of, you know, a market mapof all the different speakers
and stages and influencers andpodcasts, and then we're going
to, one by one.
We're going to reach out tothem every day, and we're going
to, you know, we're going toLinkedIn, message them, we're
going to email them, we're goingto call them on the phone,
right and we're.
And then there's this momentwhere you get on a podcast or
(09:15):
you get on a stage it's kind ofexciting, you're at an event.
But then there's the other 97%of your time, which I think for
a lot of entrepreneurs is likethe more okay and comfortable
you can be with doing likereally mundane, boring kind of
stuff.
I think that that's a key partof being successful and I think
(09:35):
we see this with, likeprofessional athletes, olympians
.
It's almost like theirtolerance for doing the same
thing every day.
The routine it's actually notvery exciting, right.
If we look at when you knowsomebody wins an Olympic medal
for you know swimming orwhatever, it's very exciting.
You know the starting gun goesoff the buzzer, it's like this
(09:57):
two minutes of intensity, right.
But if you looked at the other99.9% of their life, it's like
driven by routine.
But if you looked at the other99.9% of their life, it's driven
by routine.
It's driven by them gettingvery comfortable doing things
when they really don't likedoing it anymore.
I'm sure there's moments wherethere's passion and drive, but I
think there's a lot of.
When I look at my businesssuccess, it's like I've become,
(10:19):
I think, pretty good at doingthings that are uncomfortable or
that aren't super excitingevery day.
So you know, I mean that wouldbe.
My message to the listeners is,like you know, find the things
that aren't that exciting, learnhow to do them well, learn how
to do them at scale, and I thinkyou can find a lot of success
in your business.
And then you get some frosting,you get some, you know, really
(10:42):
high moments interspersed inthere, and those are always fun,
of course.
Dr. William Attaway (10:46):
I'm so glad you brought that up, brad,
because I think we tend to lookat the exciting parts, and
that's typically what makes itsway to social media.
We see the highlight reelyou're on the platform receiving
the gold medal, but you'reexactly right, you're not seeing
the other 99.9%, which is justdiscipline.
It's discipline, it'sconsistency.
(11:07):
It's the unsexy part of it, butyou don't get to the platform
without it and some of the teamsthat are producing these videos
right?
Brent Weaver (11:16):
Whether it's, I think, I read somewhere.
I don't know what the number is, but like the average amount of
money that Mr Beast puts into avideo right.
He's sometimes giving away thesemassive amounts of money, right
, but, like, the actualproduction of what he does is
(11:38):
orders of magnitude more thanthe actual money that they give
away, and the amount of energyand time that they put into that
, uh, is insane.
Um, you know, my, my kids are abig fan of mark rober and and I
don't know if you watch himhe's got an amazing youtube
channel covers.
He's a former nasa guy, pivoted, and he used to launch, like I
think it was like one video amonth or something you know.
(12:00):
So it's like he would do 30days of work to produce this
like six minute video.
You know, and I think that's areally good, like you know,
parallel to business, in thatyou'll see these highlight reels
, you'll see the really amazingintroductions, but there's so
much stuff that you've got to dobehind the scenes.
(12:20):
It's actually one of the reasons, like, when I look at what we
do with E2M as an example, right, we're a white label agency,
we're kind of the back end formore than 300 digital agencies
and that's kind of one of thethings like we provide peace of
mind, I think, as a business andwe're able to we're able to
kind of abstract a lot of thathard work, abstract a lot of
(12:46):
that hard work, that daily grindof building websites and SEO
campaigns and pay-per-clickcampaigns right, we're able to
kind of abstract that away forthe average digital agency,
where they can rely on our teamto do those work cycles, to have
a very scalable and flexibleteam for them to produce their
projects, and then the agencycan maybe focus more on those
the more exciting stuff right,getting out there on social
(13:09):
media speaking on stages,growing their business, and not
have to worry about, you know,going and interviewing 100
people to find one web designer.
Right, that's something that wedo every day.
We've got amazing processes forit and they can just tap into
our team and be able to delivergreat value without having to
deal with all that headache.
So how did you get to E2M?
Dr. William Attaway (13:24):
to deliver great value without having to
deal with all that headache.
Brent Weaver (13:27):
So how did you get to E2M?
You know I mean so.
E2m was a sponsor of UGurus, myformer company.
So Manish was introduced to meby one of our coaches, our
mentors that were part of theUGurus program.
A gentleman by the name ofJonathan Hinshaw said hey, you
should.
You got to meet Manish, hecould maybe you know, he's got
an amazing team he should comeand support you gurus.
(13:50):
And at the time, e2m was doinga his mind of okay, maybe
agencies could be our.
You know, instead of us goingand hiring a big sales team in
(14:13):
the US, maybe agencies could bea distribution channel for us.
And so he made a very bold move, which was to essentially stop
doing direct client work andpivoted 100% to a white label
agency for, for digital agencies.
And yeah, so then, so, so, soE2M was a supporter for UGURs
(14:54):
for many years.
I think one thing that made E2Mstand out as a company was that
they weren't as obsessed aboutthe you know, sponsored came to
events, would take people out tolunch or whatever.
Never a hard pitch, never ahard sell, just built
relationships, provided helpwhere he could.
And, you know, one personsigned up for E2M, then two
people signed up for E2M threepeople and then what ended up
(15:15):
happening?
It was kind of cool, of cool,like our, our, our community
became the marketing engine youknow, one of the marketing
engines for e2m and you know,all manish had to do was show up
and be in the room and so manypeople had such a great
experience with e2m that theykind of did the, they did the
pushing, totally voluntary.
(15:35):
Hey, well, you got to use e2M,right, we use E2M.
Oh, e2m makes it so easy, right?
So the customers, our community, really was talking about E2M.
And so when we, you know,ugurus was acquired, it was
exciting.
We had a lot of amazing growthas part of DigitalOcean.
Ultimately, digitalocean did notwant to run a services business
(15:57):
unit within their corecomputing infrastructure AI
business.
You know, if you're familiar,digitalocean is kind of like
Amazon Web Services for smallbusinesses hosting compute.
I mean hardcore info, security,data, I mean literal hardware,
right, Like, yeah, giantwarehouses with servers and all
(16:20):
that kind of stuff, right, andso to run this like agency
community was kind of a littlebit oil and water just didn't
fit.
They wanted to get reallyaggressive about artificial
intelligence that decided, hey,this doesn't work for us, so
they decided to shutter thebusiness and they're ruthlessly
focused, which is a good thing,that's great.
They didn't even want to thinkabout like spinning it off or
(16:42):
whatever.
It was just like stop doingthis, right.
And so I actually parted wayswith them very amicably and, and
when I did, manish was like,hey, we should talk, right.
And so then we started kind ofscheming up ideas of how to grow
E2M and there was a fewdifferent options at table.
And you know, we were, we weremeeting actually in in phoenix,
(17:02):
and I was about to leave themeeting and he said I have one
other idea.
You know, it's kind of thissteve jobs, move right, like
there's one other thought that Ihave.
And he said what about?
You know, what would it looklike if you became?
You know, you came on board anddid you know we're, we're a CEO
at E2M?
It's like, oh, okay, well, I'minterested, we should, we should
(17:23):
keep talking.
And we did and and yeah, here Iam.
What a story.
Dr. William Attaway (17:28):
You know, I had I had Manish on the show
and we got to know each otherand have stayed in touch since
and he dropped so much insighton the show.
And I love that, as you'restepping into this and getting
the opportunity to meet you andtalk with you and get to know
you and you're doing the same.
I mean, your story is justlittered with so many pieces of
wisdom that, even though you hadfound success, and then you
(17:52):
found success again, you're like, hey, what's next?
What does this look like?
And I think that teachablespirit that seems to pervade you
and your story is at play there, because it's so easy to push
back on an opportunity or apotential open door and say, ah,
no, I've never, I'm not, I'mnot doing that, I do this, I
(18:12):
couldn't do that, I do this.
And we tend to box ourselvesand limit our own potential
because we only see that we do X, when by having an open hand
and a teachable spirit, you canbe open to something that maybe
you didn't see coming.
I'm guessing you didn't seethat coming becoming the CEO of
(18:34):
HUM.
Brent Weaver (18:35):
My wife and I do.
It's been an annual traditionfor the last, I guess, three
years, so it's I can now sayannually we do this right.
But we one time, on one of ourdate nights, we made predictions
for where we're going to be ina year and we wrote those down,
we put them in an envelope andthen we, you know, put on the
schedule for our date night.
A year later we would look atour predictions, right.
(18:56):
So I think we've done likethree of these.
Year later we would look at ourpredictions, right.
So I think we've done likethree of these.
And and, and I have to say Ithink my we do it in april.
So april of 2024 to april 2025.
You know, in april it was likeyou know I was.
I was still at digital ocean,you gurus was doing really well.
We were growing.
There was a lot of likeexcitement about what's
happening next.
And you know, april of 2025 waslike my last day at
(19:20):
DigitalOcean.
I had no concrete idea of whatwas going to be next.
I mean, I was in conversationswith E2M by that point, but it
was just a good reminder of that.
There's just a lot of things inour life that we certainly have
control over, and we have a lotof control over our daily
choices.
Like we're presented with, likecrossroads were presented with
(19:41):
options and we can kind ofchoose, but but oftentimes the
options that get presented to us, uh, are outside of our control
, you know, and it's like justkind of how we, how we navigate
life.
Obviously, um, some of the alot of those things are are are
things that we don't have a hugeamount of control of.
But we can control how we showup, right, and I love that
(20:03):
phrase, that teachable spirit,because certainly, you know,
when I sat down with Manish andsaid, okay, I want to do this,
you know, here's the stuff Iknow, I know, here's the stuff I
think I know but might not knowright, and then there was like
this blind spot of like there'sso much that I don't even know,
that I don't know.
And that's where I'm like, youknow, if I step in on June 2nd,
(20:24):
you know, are you?
I was like, are you, are youstepping out?
Or you know, just look, I thinkI think there'll be 90 days of
a lot, kind of a jointpartnership, and then at least a
year of mentorship and so kindof coming back to that long-term
view.
That's something that I'm reallylearning to admire and
appreciate about Manish is thathe definitely has a very you
know, in our day and age ofentrepreneurship where it's
(20:46):
instant results, got to getsomething.
You know, I've got to do an ad,see a click, get a view, get a
buy.
You know, see my real ads,right All that kind of stuff.
And then to be talking toManish, he's got a very
long-term view for his businessand he's willing to make big
bets, and so that's somethingthat I'm learning a ton from as
(21:07):
an entrepreneur, because Iprobably would put myself you
know, I'm a performance, comefrom a performance marketing
background, I certainly like mystats and my data, and so I
think balancing that with kindof this more visionary,
long-term view has been reallyhelpful for me and I'm learning
a ton in the process.
Dr. William Attaway (21:27):
You know, playing the long game, I find,
is so often what separatespeople who endure, who last as
an entrepreneur.
Because you're not thinkingmicrowave, you're thinking
crockpot.
Yeah, you know, it's very, verydifficult to see the whole
picture when you're not thinkingmicrowave, you're thinking
crockpot.
It's very, very difficult tosee the whole picture when
you're in the frame.
You just don't have theperspective.
And one of the things I get todo is come alongside leaders and
(21:50):
businesses and help them seewhat they can't see because
they're in it every day, and Ilove that.
He's creating that type of anenvironment at E2M.
That speaks volumes.
And I know you're's creatingthat type of an environment at
E2M.
That speaks volumes, and I knowyou're going to continue that.
You're going to take that batonand you're going to take it to
the next level.
Let me ask you a lot of ourlisteners are agency owners.
A whole lot of people listen tothis show who are either
(22:11):
thinking about white labelpartners or maybe they've heard
of E2M, but they don't know muchabout you.
What differentiates E2M?
Brent Weaver (22:22):
heard of e2m, but they don't know much about you.
What differentiates e2m?
We're well, I mean, we wereactually currently doing a real
big deep dive on this for ourown business and our own brands
I feel like this is this good,good question, uh, william,
because it's very fresh in mymind.
But one thing is that we'rewe're 100 about agency growth,
and so there are a lot of whitelabel teams that also serve end
(22:42):
clients.
They kind of do white label asa side strategy.
They have direct-to-clientbusiness and then they kind of
see white label as thisopportunity to, you know, just
fill up their pipeline and tryto grow their business.
And so we're focused 100% onagency growth and so a lot of
times we go into work with anagency, their biggest concern is
(23:05):
, you know, can we help themwith their WordPress website
development?
Can we help them with go highlevel?
Can we help them with do that?
Can we help them with ShopifyBigCommerce?
Right, they have very tacticalfocus.
They have a project.
They need to get it done.
They want it to be done in acost-effective way right, we
check all those boxes, right.
That's very easy for us.
But what ends up happening interms of our partnership with
(23:26):
clients is when we start goingand actually working with them.
Because we work with over 300agencies, we get to kind of see
like, what are amazing processesand where are there processes
where agencies could benefitfrom improvements, whether
that's in our pre-sale support.
So a lot of agencies might havelike.
(23:47):
When I talk to agency I say,well, what do you enjoy about
sales?
And they're like oh, I lovetalking to clients I love doing.
You know it's like, okay, great.
What do you not enjoy aboutsales, creating scopes of work
and proposals and whatever,right, right.
And so our team makes thatstuff too right.
So we actually will do thatpre-sale support with you.
We'll look at what yourclient's asking for, we'll meet
with you and we'll build notjust a quote but a proposal that
(24:09):
you can essentially turn aroundand use that within your
proposal.
So that heavy lifting of whatdo we have to have in the scope
of work, how do we break thatdown in terms of cost and
timeline and investment?
Right, that's an example wherewe kind of build that for you
and a lot of agencies.
When they see how we do it,because we do it so much and
it's at scale, we start to seethem adjust their processes and
(24:32):
they start raising the bar forhow they approach their clients.
And this goes through theentire life cycle of the agency
process, whether it's thedevelopment processes.
So, like our team because weknow it's frustrating to work
with a white little partnerthat's outside of your business
we embed ourselves within yourexisting processes.
So our team will actually go inand be a member of your
(24:54):
teamwork.
Asana ClickUp Monday we'llactually go into your project
management system.
We'll be a member of yourteamwork.
Asana ClickUp Monday We'llactually go into your project
management system.
We'll be a member of thatsystem and we'll work within
your agency's process.
So, instead of you having tolearn a whole new process, we do
the heavy lifting and we learnyour process, which is just
really interesting.
So I used to be a partner in acompany called Unlimited WP
(25:15):
which got acquired by E2M and wehad the opposite process and I
remember we had a big discussionabout this and it was like for
us to go in and learn everyagency's process was just going
to be an incredible amount ofwork and overhead and the
complexity.
I was like adamant that wedidn't do this.
But now that I've joined E2Mand I see how they've been able
(25:39):
to accomplish this, I'm like man, this is like two-day shipping,
right?
Like I'm sure everybody atAmazon hated the idea of two-day
shipping.
It's impossible, right?
People probably said this isnot possible and Bezos says no,
we're going to do two-dayshipping.
And so I think Manish basicallysaid no, we're going to make
this easy for agencies we'regoing to work within their
(26:00):
systems.
It agencies we're going to workwithin their systems.
It's not going to be easy forus, but it's going to be really
valuable for our clients and sogood.
I level all of this up to beinga growth partner for agencies,
and I think that's one of themost unique components of
working with E2M is just howmuch we think about not just
doing the task, but how do wehelp our agency partners grow
(26:21):
their business.
And a lot of that comes back tojust peace of mind, how to help
you like not have to stressabout it.
Oh, you work in our system.
Oh, okay, we just add you andthen you're in there and you're
working on the task.
You're working on the projects,right?
Oh, sales is really frustrating.
We have to create our ownscopes of work, but you guys do
that for us.
Oh, that's really easy, right?
(26:41):
Just adding those peace of mindlayers on every element of the
business.
And I mean I could go on, likein terms of our pricing.
We have recurring kind offlexible plans.
So if an agency's businessfluctuates, if they all of a
sudden don't have work, you knowwe have an active account
manager that works with theagency.
We'll pause that plan to makesure that they're, if they're
(27:02):
not going to utilize the time.
We're not going to be billingthem for unused time right.
So we're very actively managedin terms of our plans with our
clients.
We kind of move clients up anddown on their plans based on
their demand, so that helps theagency be more profitable Again,
just that peace of mind.
That growth partner stuff isreally what makes E2M unique.
Dr. William Attaway (27:20):
It's fascinating and it's very
different from a whole lot ofother white label partners I'm
familiar with, you know, and thefact that you step into into
the agency system, that's that'sa massive differentiator.
I love that.
Brent Weaver (27:32):
Yeah, it's, yeah, not, not easy, but but the team
does it and they do an amazingjob with it.
And it's, you know, when welook at why people stay with us.
You know we have very, very low, less than 1% churn of agency
partners and one of the thingsthat I look at that I say, well,
it's because we're integratedwith the agency's processes,
(27:52):
we're an extension of their team, we're part of their team,
we're flexible within theirbusiness model.
The ups and downs of running abusiness I know for myself.
You know, one of the biggeststresses when I was running an
agency was payroll and it's verydifficult, without hurting some
feelings, to fluctuate yourpayroll month to month.
Right, like, if you're spending50 grand a month, you're like,
(28:14):
oh, we don't have work thismonth.
Like, you know, you can't justnotch that down to 25 grand
without, you know, devastatingsome people on your team.
Whereas within an E2Mrelationship, hey, if you don't
have the work, cool, we'll scaleyour account down and we'll
reallocate our human resourcesto other areas, right, other
clients, our own business, etcetera, and you don't have to
(28:36):
have that stress of feeling badfor having that fluctuation in
business.
So we want to see agencies beprofitable.
We want to see them beproductive.
We want to see them grow faster.
Dr. William Attaway (28:45):
I think that's really going to resonate
with a lot of people listening.
You know, one of the thingsthat I'm talking to a lot of
people about in agency worldright now is AI, and at E2M you
guys are stepping into that in apretty unique way.
Could you share a little bitabout where you are and where
you're going in that realm?
Could?
Brent Weaver (29:03):
you share a little bit about where you are and
where you're going in that realm.
Absolutely, we definitely wantto be a go-to white-label
partner, but we also want to bethe world's best AI-first
white-label partner, and I thinka lot of people are using AI
first or AI curious or thesedifferent things.
I don't know how many peopleare walking the walk in that
(29:28):
space and I think this requiresan investment and you have to
almost hit pause on some areasof your business and you have to
say, okay, how are we makingtime for this?
Are we actually giving teammembers at every level of the
organization time to leverage AI?
So we're doing AI in a fewdifferent ways.
One is through our own internaltooling and services that we're
(29:48):
delivering.
So, whether that's WordPress,pay-per-click advertising, seo,
every single team member at E2Mhas an amount of time that we're
allotting for them to invest inAI tooling, ai knowledge and
things like that we're actuallyeven doing every first Friday.
Everybody in the company comesin and works on that.
(30:10):
I'm sorry, ai for Saturdays Imissed the date there.
Saturdays, every first Saturday, a whole team comes in and is
working on AI knowledge andtooling and kind of doing some
hackathon type projects, and sowe're curating that, we're
bringing in speakers, we'reinvesting in team in terms of
(30:30):
tools and presentations, and sothat's something that our team
is coming to the table andthey're saying, hey, we're
willing to invest some of ourown time in this.
And then we're also coming tothe table with additional
investment in courses andknowledge and stuff like that,
and because we look at this asthis is like once in a lifetime
and so, you know, it's like wekind of have to maybe bottle
(30:52):
some of our inner you know ElonMusk and kind of go hardcore and
like, hey, we're going to gothe extra mile.
So that's something that we'redoing internally.
We're building a lot of reallycool tools within our business
to help serve clients better, dothings faster, better quality,
all that kind of stuff.
The other piece that we'redoing is, you know, we're
actually building some softwarearound.
(31:13):
We have a tool called RazorCopy.
It's our content team.
So obviously, chatgpt has beentransformational in terms of
content.
But there's a lot of thingsthat are missing from chat, just
in a lot of the other SEO tools, a lot of the content tools.
We've actually built that as aninternal tool where our human
content team is enhanced with avery specific kind of
(31:34):
application called Razor Copy,so that's been really cool.
We're going to be launchingthat later in Q3.
And then we have our fractionalAI service offering.
So this is where we're actuallygoing in as an extension of our
agency partners teams and we'redoing AI strategy for them.
We're building AI workflows,agentic workflows, we're
(31:55):
building custom agents, andthat's been revolutionary.
So right now, like as ofrecording this, we've got over
20 agencies that we'resupporting.
We have a team of I was justlooking at this morning.
I think we've got about close to20 people on the AI services
team and we're constantly, justevery day, inside of those
(32:15):
agencies looking at how do wehelp them to grow their business
faster, how do we help them bemore profitable, more efficient,
how do we help them delivermore value to their clients,
leveraging the power ofartificial intelligence, and so
that's probably one of the mostexciting areas for us, just
because of the amount oflearning that we're doing.
I think the team has launchedover 100 agentic workflows for
agencies, everything fromautomating lead generation with
(32:38):
Go High Level automating,proposal creation, invoicing,
billing, delivery of services.
You know, doing some of thethings that agencies are doing
with clients right.
Helping them to automate thoseto help them, you know, increase
capacity, increase profits,create new revenue opportunities
.
Wow.
Dr. William Attaway (32:57):
I love the fact that you're stepping into
this space with suchintentionality and you're
looking at this space sayingwhere can we come alongside of
agencies?
Where can we add value andtruly be what you said a minute
ago, truly be a growth partner,helping them to grow what
they're doing and increase theservices and the level of
excellence they're providing fortheir clients.
(33:18):
I think that is leadership andwell done with that.
Brent Weaver (33:23):
Yeah well, I have to give credit where credit's
due.
A lot of this train was alreadymoved.
I jumped onto the side of it,so you know it was obviously AI
has been a big part of when Iwas running YouGurus.
We started running a monthlywebinar around AI for agencies
Incredibly well attended, tonsof registrations.
(33:44):
We'd bring in case studies fromour members and showcase that
stuff, and so that was reallycool for me in terms of just
learning what agencies are doingwith AI.
I think it's very differentwhen you're actually the company
that's behind the scenesbuilding that stuff with those
agencies.
And so you know, coming on toE2M's team, you know, june 2nd,
I mean, the biggest thing that Iwas thinking about in reading
(34:06):
and trying to uplevel my ownknowledge and growth around was
AI coming into this position.
But even just since I joinedJune 2nd, I mean I feel like the
amount the hive mind that is AIwithin E2M is absolutely
incredible is AI within E2M isabsolutely incredible.
We actually have an event thatwe're going to be hosting in
Denver September 28th through30th called Vistara.
(34:28):
That's all about AI foragencies, and even just thinking
about us planning the contentfor this event, I have to know
like it's like from when we'rerecording this to when it's
going to happen.
It's like 65 days or something,68 days, and, like I know, I'm
going to learn so much about AI.
I don't even know what I'mgoing to talk about in September
(34:49):
.
I have no idea, right, becauseI know now and then my knowledge
on AI is going to increaseexponentially and so, but yeah,
we're continuing to make thatinvestment.
We think that it's important foragencies to hit pause and come
out of their business for acouple of days, come to Denver,
hang out with us and invest thattime to learn about AI, because
the only way you're going to doit well is if you kind of put
(35:14):
on that student hat, thatbeginner hat, and say, look, I
don't know what I don't know,and I certainly don't know
everything there is to knowabout AI.
And I need to hit pause.
I need to go learn for a coupleof days, immerse myself and
then, and then from there we canstart building strategy.
From there we can startexperimenting and making some
bets.
And I'll tell you right nowmost people's AI bets a year
(35:35):
from now will probably not payvery, very good dividends.
A couple of them will beextraordinary, but most of them
will probably be thrown in thetrash can.
That being said, if you're notmaking AI bets, you're certainly
not going to have any winnersand you're not going to have
those failed bets until youstart making bets.
So I think the key thing foragencies is start investing that
(35:58):
time, make the space to learnabout AI, put that beginner
mindset hat on, and I thinkit'll be a fun journey.
Dr. William Attaway (36:07):
You know you have to lead at a different
level today than you havepreviously.
You know you're leading in anew environment, in a new role.
How do you maintain thatmindset, that student hat, how
do you stay on top of your gameand level up with the new
leadership skills that E2M andyour client and the business as
(36:28):
a whole is going to?
They're going to need you tohave.
Brent Weaver (36:30):
Gosh, I think I have my.
I'm learning a ton from Manish.
I also try to keep my own kindof personal advisory board
separate from the business.
So having those people that arekind of trusted advisors I mean
I have NDA agreements with somefolks, right, just so I can
(36:51):
discuss my business mattersoutside of the core confines of
the business, right and so Ithink having those people that
can come in and kind of teachyou, constantly, provide that
feedback, has been huge, meanoutside of the normal, like
listening to podcasts, readingbooks, kind of always having a
little bit of my my foot in ortoe in the river of kind of you
(37:14):
know knowledge around leadershipand things like that.
But I think I think a key partof just getting that perspective
, having some you knowmentorship for yourself, having
folks like yourself kind of inyour corner where you can go and
say, okay, here's the situation, what do you think about this?
I actually have been a huge fan, I mean, lately I've been kind
of bringing that student mindsetand using chat as a great
(37:35):
thought partner, as a greatknowledge partner, and I've got
kind of a little bit of apersonal SOP of here's the
important things about me and,hey, I need to get feedback on
this decision, or how would youapproach this?
And I like you know, not all ofmy personal mentors like to be
woken up at 4 am or, you know, 1am in the morning or whatever,
(37:55):
and give me feedback right, andso I think chat's been great for
that just-in-time like kind ofinformation and it has required
a little bit of reprogrammingfor me to you know.
Oh, you know what I should askbefore I asked my mentor, I'm
going to ask chat, or maybe I'llask chat.
Hey, I'm going to go talk to mymentor about this issue.
How would you frame this Right?
What can I do?
What can I?
What can I think about now?
(38:16):
That would help me frame thisand get the right experience
share, you know, from my mentor,and so that's been.
That's been huge for me.
I love that.
Dr. William Attaway (38:26):
As you are continually learning and reading
.
Is there a book that has made abig difference in your journey
that you would recommend to theleaders who are listening?
Brent Weaver (38:35):
Um, yeah, there's.
I was thinking about this one,William, and I've got so many,
but there's a book called, uh,the boys in the boat.
I think they turned it into amovie.
I never saw the movie but it'sabout a crew team and it has so
many parallels.
Right, building an amazing team.
Right, getting people rightperson, right seat.
(38:55):
You know the discipline that isnecessary to be successful in
business and, I think,competitive crew.
It's a very touching story.
I won't give away too much ofthe book, but I think if you're
somebody who really obsessesabout right person, right seat,
how do you build an amazing teamthat's literally rowing in the
(39:15):
same direction?
Right, those are things that wesay in business all the time
right, right, person, right seat, rowing in the same direction.
But Boys in the Boat, I think,was one of the books that really
helped me to understand that.
You know, sometimes you have,you know the right people in the
boat, but they're just in thewrong seat.
Sometimes you have the wrongpeople in the boat, right, and
just how to be, you know, kindof ruthless about that to some
(39:38):
extent, right, I think mostcompanies are better framed as a
team, not as a family, right,and we can have some overlay in
terms of family and company,right, but I think you know
building a high performance teamis what leaders should obsess
about, so that would be my bookrecommendation for your
listeners.
Dr. William Attaway (39:57):
I love that I have not read that, and now
I'm going to check it out.
Thank you, I have not read that, and now I'm going to check it
out, thank you.
So last question you knowanybody looking at you from the
outside, brett is looking at thehighlight reel that we all have
online and they think, oh man,you know, he's just, his
journey's just been up and tothe right, like he's never
really struggled, he's neverreally had to go through the
(40:21):
days like I have.
You know, and if somebody weresitting across the table from
you and they were listening toyou talk about your story, they
said something like that.
I want to ask this questionwith that in mind.
If I had the ability right nowto snap my fingers and solve one
problem in your business oryour leadership, what would you
(40:42):
want that problem to be?
Brent Weaver (40:44):
Gosh, I, you know, um.
Besides, like you know, I thinkevery business leader is always
thinking about growth.
You know where's the growthgoing to come from?
How are we going to serve thegrowth?
So I mean, if we're talkingabout total magic wand, right?
I think that would be the one,but I think more like a
(41:06):
strategic and tactical level.
I think that you know, andwe're certainly no exception to
this, we have a lot moreappetite, maybe, than we have a
stomach for.
Right, we have, you know, Ithink a lot more businesses
suffer from overconsumption thanfrom starvation.
Right, we take on too manyideas, we try too many shiny
objects, and I don't think we're, you know.
(41:28):
I think that's one area where Ihave to exercise a lot of
discipline of just like how tosay no to things effectively
throughout the day andthroughout the week.
I think if we were to kind ofsolve one problem though, it's,
like you know, at the leadershiplevel, even though a lot of us
are in individual seats, we weara couple of different hats, and
so I think, you know, if we canmagically, you know, bifurcates
(41:49):
of our leaders, you know, justlike dna, copy that person, like
hey, we need more people likethis person, but instead of this
person having four kind ofseats they're sitting in, they
can have two seats they'resitting in or, better yet, one
seat.
So so I think that's, that's anarea where, you know, I wish we
could snap our fingers and justreplicate our best top
performers, but it's.
That's a little bit more.
(42:10):
I think you have to take moreinspiration, for maybe, like
gardening right, you have tolike, plant a seed, you have to
water it kind of back to thisidea that a lot of this stuff is
really boring William is, Ithink, having that patience.
So I don't know if that's avery good answer to that
question, but you know, maybeit's a cloning machine, maybe
it's a patience wand, I don'tknow, it's one of those, william
(42:35):
, I love it.
Dr. William Attaway (42:36):
You know, developing a leadership bench is
a process and, like I saidearlier, it's a crockpot.
There's no microwave for this.
Developing a bench that willserve you three, five years from
now is something that you starttoday.
It's like the old Chineseproverb about planting a tree.
You know, the best time to doit is 20 years ago.
(42:56):
Second best time to do it istoday, and I think what you just
shared and I appreciate theauthenticity and honesty there I
think what you just shared issomething a lot of people
resonate with and struggle with,and they wish they had started
this three years, five years,some 20 years ago developing
that bench of leaders so thatyou can bifurcate the roles, so
that you can allow people toserve in their zone of genius
(43:19):
instead of perhaps two or threeareas, one or more of which they
may not be in their zone ofgenius.
Developing that bench takes timeand today is a great day to
start that, and I just want ourlisteners to hear that and
understand that it doesn'tmatter where you've been, but
you can start today.
That is an action item that youcan take from what you've
(43:39):
shared today, brent, and I lovethat from what you've shared
today, brent, and I love that.
I'm so grateful for your timetoday, for your generosity in
sharing so much from yourjourney.
I know our listeners are goingto want to stay connected to you
, to continue to learn from youand to learn more about E2M.
What is the best way for themto do that?
Brent Weaver (43:58):
Yeah, I mean, if you're an agency that's looking
for a Y-level partner, or if youjust want to connect, talk
about some of the themes wetalked about today, whatever
your motivation is, you canreach me on email, brent at E,
the number 2MSolutionscom.
You can obviously go to ourwebsite at E2MSolutionscom, but
if you want to connect with meindividually, just drop me an
(44:19):
email.
I'm also on all the majorsocial media platforms, but
probably I'm most responsive onemail.
So brent at e2msolutionscom.
Dr. William Attaway (44:30):
We'll have that in the show notes, Brent.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you, William.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!