June 11, 2025 • 40 mins
Ever feel like you’re doing your vendor’s job for them — and still footing the bill? In this episode, we pull back the curtain on the hidden costs of poor vendor relationships. From endless back-and-forth emails to fixable mistakes, to the time you spend double-checking work that should’ve been right the first time, we explore how inefficiencies chip away at your bottom line.
We’ll talk real-world examples of how trust gets eroded, why “white-glove” often means “we hand you the mess,” and what to look for when choosing partners who actually make your life easier — not harder. If you’re tired of managing the people you hired to lighten your load, this episode is for you.
Over The Bull is brought to you by IntegrisDesign.com. All rights reserved.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
You're listening to Over the Bull, where we cut
through marketing noise.
Here's your host, Ken Carroll.
SPEAKER_01 (00:10):
Everyone is wasting your time day in and day out and
what you can do to break thatloop and make your life more
efficient.
Let's face it.
We face it and I know you faceit.
Every day we take time loggingin, re-logging in.
Resetting passwords, dealingwith vendors that have poor
(00:33):
SOPs, dealing with other vendorsthat have good SOPs, but they're
so big that they don't reallywork well, dealing with uncaring
technical support people,dealing with the never-ending
tickets, looking for answers.
You can feel the weight of this,can't you?
(00:53):
I know I can.
I deal with it all the time.
So if you could imagine theamount of times that you may go
into using something liketwo-step authentication or
validating with your phonenumber or your browser
forgetting its password and thenhaving to reset it and redo it.
You can imagine what I gothrough on a weekly basis
(01:13):
dealing with all the customerswe deal with and trying to not
only manage ours, but help themnavigate their processes as
well.
Now, When we look at it from anagency standpoint, or I look at
it personally, I mean, let'sforget agency standpoint.
Me as a person, I hate it.
(01:34):
I hate every bit of it.
I hate every bit of going to tryto talk to a vendor that we
spend a lot of money with andgetting put into an AI loop
where it sends me to a forum.
And on the forum, it's a pageabout two, I don't know, 2,000
characters long with a bunch ofsteps that I have to go through.
(01:56):
I try to go through it, and thensometimes it works, sometimes
it's outdated.
I end up going back into it.
Then I end up trying to get areal person.
You know, you know thesituation.
Oh, yes, I do it, too, where Igo in and I try to just give me
a real person.
And sometimes it works andsometimes it doesn't.
So the question is, is what dowe do with this?
(02:17):
I mean, last week, I'll give youan example.
We've been partners with Googleforever.
I mean, in Google Workspace andGoogle Ads.
When it came to GoogleWorkspace, they reset our
business information because weneeded to for various reasons.
And then what happened was theyreset our business, our payment
(02:40):
profile.
We didn't get a lot ofnotifications.
And prior to doing this changeto our business, everything was
on autopilot.
Everything happened every month.
It automatically happened.
Everything worked great.
Then after the change, They justdeleted our payment profile
altogether.
(03:01):
No notifications, no warningsthat we saw or picked up on.
And they just let that go untilit got to a point where
basically it was in our partnerportal that, hey, you've got to
make a payment.
Well, believe it or not, Googledoes not take credit cards for
partners.
So what you have to do, well, atleast now they used to, So now
(03:25):
what you've got to do is you'vegot to go through a wire
transfer process.
So once you do the wiretransfer, first of all, you know
what you've got to do.
They've got to send you a littlebit of money.
You've got to validate it.
Then you've got to wait.
And then you can transfer money,and then you're in this holdback
loop where you're dealing withthe accounting department and
everything looking to see if themoney is cleared.
(03:48):
And then you're just in thiswait mode, and you wonder what's
going to happen.
That's a situation that happenedto me literally last week.
Another situation.
I was going through Dun&Bradstreet, and they have a
system now where they give youan extra layer of verification.
(04:10):
I got the email, so it's like$300 to do it,$300 a year.
And I went in and I thought,well, I want to do it because,
you know, we like to have, wewant people to trust us.
And we thought, well, if we havethat extra layer of
certifications, it's just onemore feather in our hat,
probably not a very big featherfor most people we work with,
(04:31):
but it's something.
So we went in or I went in andsimply bought a certification.
Oh my gosh, it was amazing.
probably five hours, maybelonger.
The information they have wascompletely wrong.
They put wrong information inthere unverified.
(04:53):
But when you try to correct it,guess what?
They want you to prove it.
They want you to verify thatinformation.
So they put things in that areunverified, but then you have to
change it with verifications.
Then once you change it andsubmit it, then they have to go
through their internalprocesses.
I don't know what those are.
Then you're in a wait loop.
(05:13):
Then you're waiting on them toget back to you.
Then once they get back to you,then they tell you that it will
be an additional amount of timebefore the public sees what
they've privately approved.
So essentially I paid them$300for a simple little icon to put
on our site.
(05:35):
And it ended up costing me a lotof time, effort, energy, and
unmeasurable frustration.
I hope you can feel theintensity when I say that
because it's there.
So I know you go through thesethings.
I'm sure you have vendors.
I'm sure you have partners.
I'm sure you have people thatwork outside of your company
(05:58):
that provide you services.
And I'm sure it's a mess becauseif every one of your vendors,
and they do, take five minutes,10 minutes, 20 minutes to
require you to do a reset, torequire you to log back in, give
a phone call, submit a ticket,all those things, you multiply
(06:20):
that out, you're losing a lot oftime every single day.
And if you compound that withthe, um, challenges of
marketing.
A lot of times, a lot of theseguys are getting away with doing
very minimal work and making itlook like they're doing a lot of
(06:40):
work.
Now, if we zoom out, let's lookat realistically what the world
has turned into.
Yeah, this may be a complainingsession, but I got some good
stuff at the end, so hang withme.
So the idea is if we zoom out,In marketing, at least, what
we're finding is that the wholeworld is obsessed with providing
(07:05):
a service to a business that hasminimal overhead.
So they may build this place,this thing, that helps your
business out theoretically.
And what they want to do is giveyou the keys to the car.
You log in, you set it up, youdo everything that you've got to
do.
(07:25):
Basically you manage it.
You do everything.
They have no overhead other thanminimal overhead with AI.
They may have a couple people,they may have a ticket system,
but they try to reduce thatwhole part.
And then what they want to do iscollect your money every month
for the thing that they'reselling you that you have to
self manage.
(07:46):
Now, If you compound that on topof everything else I've
described, now you're dealingwith some serious hours every
single day where you're jumpingin, jumping out, doing all this
junk that really distracts youfrom your business.
While the companies that aregiving you these services are
not giving you, you're payingfor it.
(08:06):
They're making out like banditsbecause they're not really
supporting it in any meaningfulway.
So all the work, you become anemployee for the people that
you're paying for services.
Now, you know this is true.
Now, the reality is, isfreelancers and everyone, they
try to get away with as littleas they can get away with.
And a lot of them, honestly,from my experience here
(08:29):
recently, are really notprepared for what's getting
ready to happen with artificialintelligence.
They're using old practices, butthat really doesn't surprise me
because a lot of these agencies,they're still using techniques
that were like valid 10 yearsago.
You know, you still have peopletalking about things like
(08:49):
reciprocal links and SEO.
And so no telling what else isgoing on out there.
So you're a business owner.
I'm a business owner.
And the idea is we want tomaximize our time.
We want to do a good job for ourclients and not be distracted at
the same time.
(09:09):
And we don't want to have todeal with all this stuff, right?
but yet we have to deal with allthis stuff in the world today.
We're being forced to work forother companies that we pay for
services while they make moremoney, reduce their overhead and
do better.
So the tendency is for ownerslike you and me to go, okay, how
(09:34):
do we jump on that bandwagon?
How do we jump on it to where wedo less work and make more
money?
But you see, that's the problembecause that premise is not
right.
The premise is, is that we'reseeing the Tower of Babel start
to shake a little bit.
We're seeing it where even thebig tech companies are starting
(09:56):
to flounder because they'reoutsourcing all their technical
support.
They're frustrating people.
But here's the thing.
Some people go, we're bigenough.
We don't really care.
That's what they're reallytelling you.
We're big enough.
We don't really care.
We don't care how many ticketsyou go through.
We don't care how much headacheyou have, how much stress you
(10:18):
have, how slow we go, how muchwe hold your business up, how
much we cost your business, aslong as we make what we're
supposed to make.
See, that's an unfairrelationship, isn't it?
It's kind of like them saying,we're going to provide a service
to you.
We may support you.
We may help you out.
But all in all, we're just, youknow, we're here and we'll do
(10:40):
what we can do.
And now this leads to anotherlayer of problems, obviously.
Imagine the morale of the peoplethat they put on the front
lines.
I mean, I feel so sorry for thepeople that are on technical
support on the phone lines.
I mean, a lot of thesecompanies, they hire people that
(11:00):
aren't good at speaking thenative language of the people
that they support.
So a lot of times, what happensis that the person who owns the
business after being just tiredand frustrated and angry, after
looking at tickets, after tryingto solve it on their own, going
through processes, clicking abutton that doesn't work, and
(11:22):
then they call somebody, finallyget a hold of them, probably
after 30 or 45 minutes of beingon hold, and that person is the
front-line person.
That person is the cannon fodderfor that frustration.
That person is the outlet wherethe person brain dumps all the
problems that they've had.
(11:43):
And that person has to handlethat.
Now, what's more disrespectfulto a human being than to put
them in a situation wherethey're going to receive those
phone calls and have to dealwith those situations?
It doesn't matter if they speakyour native language or not.
That's a real problem.
And so there's this layer of,it's not the guys who make the
(12:06):
decisions.
It's not the guys on the golfcourses you're talking to.
It's not the people that arebuilding the SOPs that are
driving you crazy.
It's the poor people that areworking for minimum salary,
probably really minimaloverseas, because they work for
pennies on the dollar.
(12:26):
And they're the ones that haveto take those calls.
So you see, It's really just ahorrible, horrible situation.
And I feel sorry for people whoare in technical support.
I feel sorry for those that arethe front lines.
I feel sorry for the ones thatare so marginalized by companies
(12:49):
that, first, they put them insituations like that, but then,
secondly, they're looking toreplace them with artificial
intelligence to completely putthem out of work.
And you know, I don't know theanswers, but as a human, I can
tell you that I feel sorry forthose people.
Now, what does this mean foryou?
(13:11):
Well, first you, again, you'reprobably relating to everything
I'm saying right now, and youprobably understand, and you're
probably just like me.
You get on the phone and you'reexasperated.
And the first thing you say is,man, that website is horrible to
work with.
Um, you know, it's justhorrible.
Oh, and if we want to couple itall off, I'll tell you one more
(13:31):
I've run into.
A lot of times, you know howhard they make it to cancel
subscriptions now?
Have you seen that?
I mean, sometimes you can't justhit a cancel button.
They intentionally make it towhere you'll hit cancel
sometimes.
Like I'm in this one site, andit says you hit the cancel
button on services.
And it says, are you reallysure?
(13:52):
Yeah.
We'll call this number tocancel.
And then you're on hold for anhour and a half.
They do this intentionally.
They do it intentionally becausethey know they're going to
frustrate you to a point whereyou go, you know, it ain't worth
canceling that$10 a month.
I just don't have time to do itright now.
And anyway, it can be fun.
(14:13):
Then you call your credit cardcompany or you put a block on it
and then that takes even moretime.
You see the problem here withbusinesses is by the time we're
done, we're working for ourvendors.
We're chasing a bunch of ghosts.
We're trying to get answers wecan't get answers to.
We're hurting people thatshouldn't be hurt.
And we're adding frustration andreducing the number of days
(14:36):
we're going to have on thisplanet.
In marketing, it even getsworse.
I mean, not from my perspective,but from your perspective.
Because you're faced withpeople...
A lot of times who don't knowwhat they're talking about.
They're selling you dreams.
They're selling you what youwant to hear.
And because the language is sotechnical, you go based on the
(14:59):
best sales pitch.
And you know that's not theright thing to do, but you end
up doing it because probablywhat you're doing is not
working.
And you're hoping that the nextguy that makes you a promise,
you know, may be able to providewhat they're telling you they
can provide.
You see, one of the great thingsabout owning a boutique agency
that's solely based in the U.S.
is the fact that we just sellthe truth.
(15:22):
And believe it or not, mostpeople who come to us are ready
for the truth.
So the question is, how do wedeal with this world we're in
today where we're being forcedto not deal with people and the
people we do talk to are notincentivized enough to do a good
job?
They're just kind of goingthrough the motions.
(15:45):
So here's some here's someideas.
This is what I do.
So you may want to follow this.
You may not.
The first thing that I do, Iminimize the number of people
that I work with.
It doesn't matter how good itis.
I really think hard, not justabout the offer.
OK, the offer is one thing.
(16:05):
But I look at the amount of timethat I deal with that person or
potentially have to deal withthat person, organization or
service as overhead on thebusiness.
are overhead on my life too.
And then I go, is it worth it?
It's just really, really worthit.
And then what I do is I look atwhat they're, I look at their
(16:26):
background.
I look at what they provide.
I never, ever, ever, ever replyto one of those spam emails
because that's just junk.
That's just junk.
It's junk for me.
It's junk for you.
Anyone that spam emails you isbasically throwing their hands
up in the air and going, I don'thave a clue how to market to
you.
All I'm doing is sending you acold spam email intruding on
(16:47):
your life for 15 minutes.
And I'm hoping that you willrespond to me and take advantage
of whatever I'm offering thatobviously doesn't work.
Okay.
So that's the reality of it.
Don't ever answer those things.
But then once you qualify, thenthe next thing that you want to
do is you sign up for it.
And then I start looking forflags right out of the gate.
How is our customer support?
(17:08):
Was their sales team qualified?
Very engaging.
But then when you walk into thesausage factory, everybody
disappears.
Now I'm forced to talk withbots.
Now I'm in this confusingsystem.
Now I'm waiting a day for ananswer.
I start looking for stuff likethat or longer, right?
It's not usually a day.
Normally it's a couple of days.
(17:29):
And normally the answer that youget is incomplete and you have
to respond.
Or worse yet, they close aticket and you have to reopen
the ticket.
That also happened with Google.
UNKNOWN (17:39):
Okay.
SPEAKER_01 (17:40):
So restrict the number of people that you work
with.
Find ones that are good peopletrying to do a good job and
stick with those people.
You're going to have to workwith some of the big companies.
That's just a fact of life.
Now, maybe and maybe not in yourcase.
Okay, in my case, I have to.
(18:01):
I have to work with big techcompanies.
In your case...
If you work directly with them,then yes, you're going to have
to.
But if you work with a boutiqueagency like ours, we usually
have a lot of the big tech stufffigured out, like the complexity
of Google ads.
(18:23):
We never talk to the personsending you a, hey, I'm your
partner.
customer contact person forGoogle ads.
By the way, they rotate thosepeople every 60 or 90 days.
So just when they start tounderstand your business,
they're looped out and then youget somebody else.
So don't ever do that.
That's just a tip.
(18:43):
They're just there to get you toincrease your budget, put
everything on full automationand then make more money.
That's all they're out to do.
That's why they rotate.
They don't care about yourlong-term success.
So the idea is number one, youwant to mitigate that.
You want to mitigate the numberof people that you work with.
You want to start looking at theamount of headache as the cost
(19:05):
of doing business with thatparticular company.
If you find out that you're onlarge delays, you're having to
yell, scream, kick, do whateverin order to get help, then that
company probably is not thecompany you should be working
with.
And you should start lookingsomewhere else.
The next thing is you're goingto need to look for...
(19:27):
I'm looking here at my noteshere.
Talks about one of the commentsthat I'm looking through my
notes was talking about tools orpractices that can help reduce
time spent on administrativetasks.
Now, this is good.
This is actually a really goodthing because we do use a lot of
tools that help us out quite abit without impairing our
(19:51):
ability to work with people onan individual basis.
So one of those tools we have isa project management tool.
And what we're able to do ishave one consolidated place
where all of our communicationsgo to where both the customer,
you, could look at what we'redoing from a marketing
(20:12):
perspective, but then also wecan see it as well.
And what it does is itstreamlines emails, you know,
make sure that there'sverification.
If something was sent, it wassent, and you can see it, refer
back to it, and do things likethat.
And so when you're dealing withit, think about...
You see, I wrote something along time ago, and it was about
(20:33):
the concept of time.
And this is really importantbecause the one thing, you can
always make more money, right?
You can always do certainthings.
But the one thing you can neverdo is put more time on your
clock of life.
You just can't do it.
You can take it away.
I mean, if you're stressed andyou're aggravated and
(20:55):
everything, you can never dothat.
But you can never replace thetime you have on this planet.
It could be five minutes.
It could be 50 years.
It could be 100 years.
But you can't replace it.
And any time that someone forcesyou to use your time, they're
taking time away from yourbusiness while you're trying to
accomplish, but they're alsotaking away the most invaluable
(21:16):
resource that you could possiblyhave on this planet, and that is
your time.
It's something no one with aninfinite amount of money can buy
more of.
They might be able to string italong with transplants or
something like that, but you getthe point.
The time that they have is thetime that they have.
Okay, so...
Here's what we do as a boutiqueagency.
(21:38):
And maybe this is a blueprintthat can help you with your
business.
Now, there's some give and take.
So I want to hyper focus on thewhole idea of marketing at this
point.
OK, so, you know, this problemexists well beyond.
It's your banks.
It's everything.
But you want to streamline it.
You want to make it as efficientas you possibly can make it.
(22:00):
And there comes a point whereyou just need to break the
relationship.
Period.
If you're not being heard, ifthey're not doing what you need
them to do, quit beating it up.
Quit going back to thegirlfriend cheating on you or
the boyfriend cheating on you.
Hang it up.
Go somewhere else.
Call it a day and find someonebetter and ask better questions
before you connect with that newcompany.
(22:20):
Don't just jump into it out offrustration.
I mean, that's one of thebiggest things I can give you
outside of marketing.
But let's focus on the marketingleg of the thing.
Okay, so...
Here's what we do for ourclients, and maybe this will
help you out.
First thing is we are the pointof contact, and we provide a
portal where the client canupload images, assign us
(22:46):
projects, we can assign themprojects, we can communicate
through it, and we can alsocommunicate via email, via text,
via whatever.
Our agency does not use AIsupport systems.
Now we may be behind the eightball before it's over with, but
I have this crazy idea thatpeople like dealing with people.
(23:09):
The other thing that we like todo is we're the middleware
between all that frustrationbecause we've bridged a lot of
those gaps and we intentionallybuilt our SOPs And we use
software for 99% of the companyor 99% of our clients that we
(23:31):
understand intimately.
So when we develop websites, weuse similar processes across the
board to where our team is fullyaware of what's going on so we
can fully support it.
We don't pull in plugins wedon't understand unless we have
to.
And then we charge accordinglyto make sure that we can
properly support it.
If you deal with a lot of webagencies, a lot of them will
(23:55):
just put whatever they can putinto a website online.
put whatever theme they can getinto it, put whatever plugins
they can get into it, get itover the goal, but they don't
understand that software.
And so then they're not able tosupport it.
Well, then that draws out yourproblems when you have them.
And that makes a 15 minuteproblem, a week problem.
And again, it's just becausepeople are trying to just do
(24:16):
things as short and quick asthey can thinking that somehow
they're, they're being moreefficient in reality.
They're just causing youheadaches.
So we've become that middleware,uh, between those situations.
And so with Google Ads, forexample, it's incredibly
complicated.
Running your own account, Godbless you.
(24:38):
But I'm telling you that to runGoogle ads effectively, a lot of
agencies don't run themeffectively.
A lot of them over promise.
A lot of them give you fakemetrics or they stack the cards
or they make it look likethey're doing more than they
are.
And there's just all these gamesand stuff that happen when
people are doing those things.
(25:00):
So the idea is we're that place.
We're that place where they cancommunicate.
They can talk to you.
We have a real person thatanswers the phone.
If there is some kind ofinteraction with the system, we
typically do it.
And then we reconcile thebilling to where the client pays
us so that they don't have todeal with, okay, I need
(25:24):
multi-language credits.
How do I go in and buy thosecredits?
Okay, now I've got to do it, andthen I've got to figure out who
will apply And then we save youall those times.
And so I think the reason thatwe have such a high customer
retention rate is because we doall those little minor details
and then give the client moretime.
(25:44):
Now, I don't know if the clientsare even aware of how much time
we're saving them by preventingthem from having to do all the
additional two-stepauthentications, paying for
stuff, all the stuff we'vetalked about.
But it's what we do as an agencyand our clients typically align
with us and they like that.
And so from your perspective,what I strongly recommend is
(26:05):
finding someone that can handleall that.
and reduce the amount of, and Idon't know, maybe there's a term
we can come up with, timeoverhead.
I don't know.
That's not very clever, is it?
But it's the overhead on yourtime.
And then if that can be reduced,then you've got more time to
have crazy ideas like spend anevening with your family or
(26:28):
going out on a date night withyour wife or doing the things
that really matter in the worldversus the things you have to do
and, worse, the things thatyou're doing for free in order
to pay somebody else money,which it blows my mind when you
really think about this.
Okay.
So, um, but you haveresponsibility.
(26:48):
Okay.
There's, there's aresponsibility on your end if
you want that.
And I think you should havethat.
Now we can't support everybodylistening to this podcast.
I mean, we're, the podcast isgrowing and there's obviously
not a thing.
And honestly, uh, we had to, uh,not take on clients for a month
because we've been so busy, uh,just with the, the normal, uh,
(27:11):
flow of clients that we have.
So this is not me going callIntegris to design and book with
us.
That's not what I'm asking youto do.
I'm just saying if you can findsomeone that does that, then I
think your life's going to be alot easier, especially with
marketing.
But here's a trick.
There's a couple of tricks,actually.
First is to find somebody thatwill actually do the work and
(27:34):
know what they're talking about.
And unfortunately, a lot ofpeople, I found her talking a
really good game.
Man, there was this company inTennessee, a marketing firm.
And we were qualifying thatmarketing firm.
And that guy went on for like 45minutes about the stuff that
they do.
And they were charging like$1,000 a month.
(27:56):
And I knew the tool he wasusing.
It's a tool that resellers getfor, if you buy in bulk, it's
like$30 a month.
And basically what you do is youput all the...
the heavy lifting, either it'sdone by artificial intelligence
or it's just, it's just thisthing.
And they were just charging theclient a lot of money for it.
(28:17):
So you got to find somebody thatdoesn't just show you a snazzy,
uh, portal and says, Hey, lookat the shiny new toy.
It's not someone who does that,but it's somebody who really
knows what they're talkingabout.
Someone who can talk the game.
Uh, I met with the companyyesterday.
I love these people.
I look forward to working withthem.
And, uh, we talked for an hourand a half.
(28:38):
And they ask a ton of questions.
And I showed them tools where wecould look at their competitors.
We could look at how theirwebsite should be structured,
their digital marketingprocesses, how it all ties
together to make one seamlessexperience for clients no matter
where they're at.
And so I was able to go throughthat with them.
(28:59):
And so part of that, which I'vestill not figured out how to
qualify for, real businessesother than credibility
certifications, the amount oftime they've been in business,
look at their website address,go to Google, look at ICANN, and
then look up their web addressto see how long they've been in
(29:19):
business because a lot of theseguys are fly-by-nights right
now, and they've actuallystarted up in less than a year
ago.
So there's all kinds of weirdgames going on.
But finding that person is goingto be important because you need
to be able to trust what they'redoing because a lot of times
there is a lot of planting seedsand not reaping, especially
early on in a game.
(29:40):
And I call it the snowballeffect.
It's where it takes time tobuild the snowball, push it up
the hill to where it starts togain momentum.
And the more you're involved init, the better it is.
But of course, the less otherpeople want you to be involved
because you guessed it, that'soverhead on them.
So you need to find somebodywho's willing to listen to you.
(30:03):
Now, in exchange for that.
you'd have to pay the agency.
So here's the thing.
Our agency, we're more thanhappy to work with the customer.
But let me share a story withyou.
We deal with mom and pop shops.
We deal with large companies.
We deal with huge corporations.
We deal with the whole nineyards.
(30:24):
And what we love are the peoplethat engage with us because
they're the most successful.
It combines what they know withwhat we know.
And This isn't a shot againstsmall businesses, but we're
dealing with one particularcompany, and it's a small mom
and pop, but they keep askingthe same questions.
(30:46):
They keep asking us to do themost mundane, small task.
Even when we provide like a30-second video or a two-minute
video on how to do something,they still ask the questions and
say they watch the video.
Now, it's literally type in thisaddress, click this button.
So you can imagine how simplethose things are.
(31:07):
And we can certainly help out.
And we can be that person thatgoes, okay, let me walk you
through that.
Let's jump into a Zoom meeting.
Let's do those things.
But we can't do that fornothing.
And so those kind of servicescome at a cost.
And you should expect to pay thecost because what you're paying
for is you're paying to get outof this world of junk support
(31:31):
services Let me send you a linkto a web page that's 400 miles
long on how to solve something.
That's what you're paying to getout of.
You're paying for quick answers.
You're paying for someone thatcares about your business and
cares about your time.
And so the idea is that youshould expect to have to pay for
(31:51):
that one-on-one service asopposed to some junk AI system.
And so on your end, there's theaccountability of watching the
videos and referring back tothose videos, if they're little
small videos, asking forclarifications, but then turning
the corner and moving on.
(32:12):
If not, then just be aware thatyou should expect a larger bill,
but that can be there to fullysupport you.
So what I've seen from ourperspective is is over the last
several years the people are aregetting more frustrated because
they're getting a lot ofpromises that aren't really true
(32:33):
they're disillusioned they'rejaded and they want instant
answers because they get instantorders on amazon and they want
instant help they don't want topay for it and they equate
personalized support with thejunk support that's out there,
or even the people you talk to.
(32:57):
Like you call certain companiesand they ask you for your
number.
How much support can they giveyou if they're going to go
through and know you by anumber, go back and look at a
couple tickets, you re-explainit, and then they just try to
get you over the goal and getyou off the phone?
That doesn't work either.
So the idea here is you do wantto respect that person's time,
(33:20):
but also you need to be able totrust that person as well.
Because, you know, you thinkabout it, if you go through an
explanation process every monthabout what's going on and then
you have to re-explain it or youdon't trust that person or
whatever, that also eats a lotof time up, yours and theirs.
And so you want to be carefulabout that.
(33:41):
Okay, so what's the lesson here?
First lesson is you want tominimize the number of vendors
that you work with.
Realize bigger is not better andrealize that the game today are
people that are trying to sellservices that you pay for and
they want you to manage it andthey poorly service it.
(34:03):
That's the game.
So when you think about it,think about that situation and
are you willing to pay somebodyto to have another layer of that
thrown in your life.
If you do and you think it'sworth it, then give it a shot,
but know what you're gettinginto, but also have your exit
strategy.
Don't go throw everything intoit because what they want to do
is get you completely immersedwhere it's almost impossible to
(34:27):
get out of it.
So have a strategy where you'regoing to test it, but then not
be fully immersed in it whereyou can't get out of it easy
because then you're so far deepyou can't get out.
Next thing is, is really startlooking at your time.
Again, I've said this a milliontimes.
Do not respond to those emailsasking you if you need help with
(34:49):
your website.
They solve problems.
Can they give you 500 millionleads in a week and only do it
if they prove it?
Do not respond to those, okay?
Period, ever, ever, ever.
Never respond to those.
It's junk.
If they could market, then theywould market to you.
They wouldn't have to send youspammy emails, okay?
They wouldn't have to send youLinkedIn invitation.
(35:10):
They wouldn't have to do thesethings, okay?
So if you're doing that, you'rechasing ghosts.
I have never seen that situationwork out where someone says, you
know what, that cold email wasthe best thing that ever
happened to me.
I've never heard that.
You may be the one out therethat has that experience, but
not me.
And so the idea then, of course,is to minimize, have your exit
(35:33):
strategy and be ready to get outand then look at your time as a
valuable resource.
Don't look at your time as nothaving monetary value.
Think of your hourly rate andthink of the time that it takes
for you to do that extra loginstep every time or two if
they're down and you have to goback in and then think about it
and then go back into it.
Think about all that stuff andthen if you can get rid of those
(35:56):
things, get rid of them.
Start throwing things out.
Look at the movie Armageddon.
Watch Bruce Willis in the scenewhere he's going through that
moon vehicle or that meteorvehicle, and he starts throwing
things out, going, you know,what is this thing and what is
that thing?
Get rid of it.
Get rid of all that overheadthat doesn't mean anything to
you.
If it doesn't contribute to yourbusiness, lose it.
(36:17):
You're going to save time.
You're going to save money.
You're going to save headache.
That would be the big one.
I recommend you work with aboutique agency when it comes to
marketing because then you dealwith real people who care about
you Large companies are lessinvested in you because they
have a lot of you.
And if you go away, you havevery little pull.
You have very little ability tomake things happen because,
(36:38):
honestly, they don't care.
They just want to get you offtheir line so they can mark
their support ticket as closed,and then that support ticket is
one of the indicators thatthey're doing a good job.
So you don't want to get intothat situation.
Plus, a good agency has alreadybuilt and crossed a lot of
bridges, and they already haveprocesses.
(36:59):
A really good agency usesconsistent software all the
time, and that Consistentsoftware makes support even
easier.
On your end, be really carefuland cognizant of following
through.
This is a big one.
Make sure that if you're askingthe same questions over and over
(37:19):
again or if you're not able todo something or don't have the
technical ability to do it andwant someone to do it, Those
come at a cost.
And so if you need more help andmore support, then you should
expect to have a largermaintenance package.
But remember, what you'regetting in exchange for that is
time.
You're getting less headache,you're getting less stress.
You're not killing yourselfchasing these things and you're
(37:41):
able to focus on your businessmore.
So that'd be a good way to lookat that.
Last thing is, is find someonethat you trust.
Absolutely find someone youtrust and do not go for these
sales pitches Don't just beenamored by the technical
language that they throw at you.
Don't go for that.
I have, again, I've debated atthe end how you qualify a
(38:04):
boutique agency.
I know I'm a drone pilot.
I know you're certified withGoogle Ads, Google Workspace.
We're partners with ConstantContact.
We have a slew of certificationsand verifications.
We're a business.
We're an actual business.
We're not just operating out ofour house under an assumed name
or whatever.
(38:26):
We don't do it as a hobby forweekend projects and work other
jobs.
We're dedicated to it, andthere's a lot of work that goes
into it.
And there's a philosophy behindwhy we do the things that we do.
And so one of the things Isuppose you could do is just
make sure you ask a lot ofquestions early on, especially.
Oh, and then the last tip, ofcourse, is pay attention to the
(38:49):
pre-sales, post-salesexperience.
Pre-sales experience, salesexperience, they're out to sell
you something.
The post sales people, these arethe people that you're actually
going to work with.
And so if they're heavy on thesales end, but light on the
support and infrastructure end,or they send you places you
don't want to go to for support,then those are all flags as
(39:09):
well.
So anyway, as a fellow owner ofa business who deals with this
all the time, I thought I wouldjust complain today.
and share with you myfrustrations with it as I go
through my day.
And I'll probably go throughabout 20 or 30 two-step
authentications.
(39:29):
I'll probably reset a fewpasswords and do a couple of
other things.
And I'm constantly, constantlylooking at that next person
that's wasting time that I needto let go, a vendor or whatever
may have you.
So, to your success, thank youso much for listening to Over
(39:53):
the Bull, and this was the topicof the week.
God bless.
SPEAKER_00 (39:58):
Thanks for tuning in to Over the Bull, brought to you
by Integris Design, afull-service design and
marketing agency out ofAsheville, North Carolina.
Until next time.
You're listening to Over the Bull, where we cut
through marketing noise.
Here's your host, Ken Carroll.
SPEAKER_01 (00:10):
Everyone is wasting your time day in and day out and
what you can do to break thatloop and make your life more
efficient.
Let's face it.
We face it and I know you faceit.
Every day we take time loggingin, re-logging in.
Resetting passwords, dealingwith vendors that have poor
(00:33):
SOPs, dealing with other vendorsthat have good SOPs, but they're
so big that they don't reallywork well, dealing with uncaring
technical support people,dealing with the never-ending
tickets, looking for answers.
You can feel the weight of this,can't you?
(00:53):
I know I can.
I deal with it all the time.
So if you could imagine theamount of times that you may go
into using something liketwo-step authentication or
validating with your phonenumber or your browser
forgetting its password and thenhaving to reset it and redo it.
You can imagine what I gothrough on a weekly basis
(01:13):
dealing with all the customerswe deal with and trying to not
only manage ours, but help themnavigate their processes as
well.
Now, When we look at it from anagency standpoint, or I look at
it personally, I mean, let'sforget agency standpoint.
Me as a person, I hate it.
(01:34):
I hate every bit of it.
I hate every bit of going to tryto talk to a vendor that we
spend a lot of money with andgetting put into an AI loop
where it sends me to a forum.
And on the forum, it's a pageabout two, I don't know, 2,000
characters long with a bunch ofsteps that I have to go through.
(01:56):
I try to go through it, and thensometimes it works, sometimes
it's outdated.
I end up going back into it.
Then I end up trying to get areal person.
You know, you know thesituation.
Oh, yes, I do it, too, where Igo in and I try to just give me
a real person.
And sometimes it works andsometimes it doesn't.
So the question is, is what dowe do with this?
(02:17):
I mean, last week, I'll give youan example.
We've been partners with Googleforever.
I mean, in Google Workspace andGoogle Ads.
When it came to GoogleWorkspace, they reset our
business information because weneeded to for various reasons.
And then what happened was theyreset our business, our payment
(02:40):
profile.
We didn't get a lot ofnotifications.
And prior to doing this changeto our business, everything was
on autopilot.
Everything happened every month.
It automatically happened.
Everything worked great.
Then after the change, They justdeleted our payment profile
altogether.
(03:01):
No notifications, no warningsthat we saw or picked up on.
And they just let that go untilit got to a point where
basically it was in our partnerportal that, hey, you've got to
make a payment.
Well, believe it or not, Googledoes not take credit cards for
partners.
So what you have to do, well, atleast now they used to, So now
(03:25):
what you've got to do is you'vegot to go through a wire
transfer process.
So once you do the wiretransfer, first of all, you know
what you've got to do.
They've got to send you a littlebit of money.
You've got to validate it.
Then you've got to wait.
And then you can transfer money,and then you're in this holdback
loop where you're dealing withthe accounting department and
everything looking to see if themoney is cleared.
(03:48):
And then you're just in thiswait mode, and you wonder what's
going to happen.
That's a situation that happenedto me literally last week.
Another situation.
I was going through Dun&Bradstreet, and they have a
system now where they give youan extra layer of verification.
(04:10):
I got the email, so it's like$300 to do it,$300 a year.
And I went in and I thought,well, I want to do it because,
you know, we like to have, wewant people to trust us.
And we thought, well, if we havethat extra layer of
certifications, it's just onemore feather in our hat,
probably not a very big featherfor most people we work with,
(04:31):
but it's something.
So we went in or I went in andsimply bought a certification.
Oh my gosh, it was amazing.
probably five hours, maybelonger.
The information they have wascompletely wrong.
They put wrong information inthere unverified.
(04:53):
But when you try to correct it,guess what?
They want you to prove it.
They want you to verify thatinformation.
So they put things in that areunverified, but then you have to
change it with verifications.
Then once you change it andsubmit it, then they have to go
through their internalprocesses.
I don't know what those are.
Then you're in a wait loop.
(05:13):
Then you're waiting on them toget back to you.
Then once they get back to you,then they tell you that it will
be an additional amount of timebefore the public sees what
they've privately approved.
So essentially I paid them$300for a simple little icon to put
on our site.
(05:35):
And it ended up costing me a lotof time, effort, energy, and
unmeasurable frustration.
I hope you can feel theintensity when I say that
because it's there.
So I know you go through thesethings.
I'm sure you have vendors.
I'm sure you have partners.
I'm sure you have people thatwork outside of your company
(05:58):
that provide you services.
And I'm sure it's a mess becauseif every one of your vendors,
and they do, take five minutes,10 minutes, 20 minutes to
require you to do a reset, torequire you to log back in, give
a phone call, submit a ticket,all those things, you multiply
(06:20):
that out, you're losing a lot oftime every single day.
And if you compound that withthe, um, challenges of
marketing.
A lot of times, a lot of theseguys are getting away with doing
very minimal work and making itlook like they're doing a lot of
(06:40):
work.
Now, if we zoom out, let's lookat realistically what the world
has turned into.
Yeah, this may be a complainingsession, but I got some good
stuff at the end, so hang withme.
So the idea is if we zoom out,In marketing, at least, what
we're finding is that the wholeworld is obsessed with providing
(07:05):
a service to a business that hasminimal overhead.
So they may build this place,this thing, that helps your
business out theoretically.
And what they want to do is giveyou the keys to the car.
You log in, you set it up, youdo everything that you've got to
do.
(07:25):
Basically you manage it.
You do everything.
They have no overhead other thanminimal overhead with AI.
They may have a couple people,they may have a ticket system,
but they try to reduce thatwhole part.
And then what they want to do iscollect your money every month
for the thing that they'reselling you that you have to
self manage.
(07:46):
Now, If you compound that on topof everything else I've
described, now you're dealingwith some serious hours every
single day where you're jumpingin, jumping out, doing all this
junk that really distracts youfrom your business.
While the companies that aregiving you these services are
not giving you, you're payingfor it.
(08:06):
They're making out like banditsbecause they're not really
supporting it in any meaningfulway.
So all the work, you become anemployee for the people that
you're paying for services.
Now, you know this is true.
Now, the reality is, isfreelancers and everyone, they
try to get away with as littleas they can get away with.
And a lot of them, honestly,from my experience here
(08:29):
recently, are really notprepared for what's getting
ready to happen with artificialintelligence.
They're using old practices, butthat really doesn't surprise me
because a lot of these agencies,they're still using techniques
that were like valid 10 yearsago.
You know, you still have peopletalking about things like
(08:49):
reciprocal links and SEO.
And so no telling what else isgoing on out there.
So you're a business owner.
I'm a business owner.
And the idea is we want tomaximize our time.
We want to do a good job for ourclients and not be distracted at
the same time.
(09:09):
And we don't want to have todeal with all this stuff, right?
but yet we have to deal with allthis stuff in the world today.
We're being forced to work forother companies that we pay for
services while they make moremoney, reduce their overhead and
do better.
So the tendency is for ownerslike you and me to go, okay, how
(09:34):
do we jump on that bandwagon?
How do we jump on it to where wedo less work and make more
money?
But you see, that's the problembecause that premise is not
right.
The premise is, is that we'reseeing the Tower of Babel start
to shake a little bit.
We're seeing it where even thebig tech companies are starting
(09:56):
to flounder because they'reoutsourcing all their technical
support.
They're frustrating people.
But here's the thing.
Some people go, we're bigenough.
We don't really care.
That's what they're reallytelling you.
We're big enough.
We don't really care.
We don't care how many ticketsyou go through.
We don't care how much headacheyou have, how much stress you
(10:18):
have, how slow we go, how muchwe hold your business up, how
much we cost your business, aslong as we make what we're
supposed to make.
See, that's an unfairrelationship, isn't it?
It's kind of like them saying,we're going to provide a service
to you.
We may support you.
We may help you out.
But all in all, we're just, youknow, we're here and we'll do
(10:40):
what we can do.
And now this leads to anotherlayer of problems, obviously.
Imagine the morale of the peoplethat they put on the front
lines.
I mean, I feel so sorry for thepeople that are on technical
support on the phone lines.
I mean, a lot of thesecompanies, they hire people that
(11:00):
aren't good at speaking thenative language of the people
that they support.
So a lot of times, what happensis that the person who owns the
business after being just tiredand frustrated and angry, after
looking at tickets, after tryingto solve it on their own, going
through processes, clicking abutton that doesn't work, and
(11:22):
then they call somebody, finallyget a hold of them, probably
after 30 or 45 minutes of beingon hold, and that person is the
front-line person.
That person is the cannon fodderfor that frustration.
That person is the outlet wherethe person brain dumps all the
problems that they've had.
(11:43):
And that person has to handlethat.
Now, what's more disrespectfulto a human being than to put
them in a situation wherethey're going to receive those
phone calls and have to dealwith those situations?
It doesn't matter if they speakyour native language or not.
That's a real problem.
And so there's this layer of,it's not the guys who make the
(12:06):
decisions.
It's not the guys on the golfcourses you're talking to.
It's not the people that arebuilding the SOPs that are
driving you crazy.
It's the poor people that areworking for minimum salary,
probably really minimaloverseas, because they work for
pennies on the dollar.
(12:26):
And they're the ones that haveto take those calls.
So you see, It's really just ahorrible, horrible situation.
And I feel sorry for people whoare in technical support.
I feel sorry for those that arethe front lines.
I feel sorry for the ones thatare so marginalized by companies
(12:49):
that, first, they put them insituations like that, but then,
secondly, they're looking toreplace them with artificial
intelligence to completely putthem out of work.
And you know, I don't know theanswers, but as a human, I can
tell you that I feel sorry forthose people.
Now, what does this mean foryou?
(13:11):
Well, first you, again, you'reprobably relating to everything
I'm saying right now, and youprobably understand, and you're
probably just like me.
You get on the phone and you'reexasperated.
And the first thing you say is,man, that website is horrible to
work with.
Um, you know, it's justhorrible.
Oh, and if we want to couple itall off, I'll tell you one more
(13:31):
I've run into.
A lot of times, you know howhard they make it to cancel
subscriptions now?
Have you seen that?
I mean, sometimes you can't justhit a cancel button.
They intentionally make it towhere you'll hit cancel
sometimes.
Like I'm in this one site, andit says you hit the cancel
button on services.
And it says, are you reallysure?
(13:52):
Yeah.
We'll call this number tocancel.
And then you're on hold for anhour and a half.
They do this intentionally.
They do it intentionally becausethey know they're going to
frustrate you to a point whereyou go, you know, it ain't worth
canceling that$10 a month.
I just don't have time to do itright now.
And anyway, it can be fun.
(14:13):
Then you call your credit cardcompany or you put a block on it
and then that takes even moretime.
You see the problem here withbusinesses is by the time we're
done, we're working for ourvendors.
We're chasing a bunch of ghosts.
We're trying to get answers wecan't get answers to.
We're hurting people thatshouldn't be hurt.
And we're adding frustration andreducing the number of days
(14:36):
we're going to have on thisplanet.
In marketing, it even getsworse.
I mean, not from my perspective,but from your perspective.
Because you're faced withpeople...
A lot of times who don't knowwhat they're talking about.
They're selling you dreams.
They're selling you what youwant to hear.
And because the language is sotechnical, you go based on the
(14:59):
best sales pitch.
And you know that's not theright thing to do, but you end
up doing it because probablywhat you're doing is not
working.
And you're hoping that the nextguy that makes you a promise,
you know, may be able to providewhat they're telling you they
can provide.
You see, one of the great thingsabout owning a boutique agency
that's solely based in the U.S.
is the fact that we just sellthe truth.
(15:22):
And believe it or not, mostpeople who come to us are ready
for the truth.
So the question is, how do wedeal with this world we're in
today where we're being forcedto not deal with people and the
people we do talk to are notincentivized enough to do a good
job?
They're just kind of goingthrough the motions.
(15:45):
So here's some here's someideas.
This is what I do.
So you may want to follow this.
You may not.
The first thing that I do, Iminimize the number of people
that I work with.
It doesn't matter how good itis.
I really think hard, not justabout the offer.
OK, the offer is one thing.
(16:05):
But I look at the amount of timethat I deal with that person or
potentially have to deal withthat person, organization or
service as overhead on thebusiness.
are overhead on my life too.
And then I go, is it worth it?
It's just really, really worthit.
And then what I do is I look atwhat they're, I look at their
(16:26):
background.
I look at what they provide.
I never, ever, ever, ever replyto one of those spam emails
because that's just junk.
That's just junk.
It's junk for me.
It's junk for you.
Anyone that spam emails you isbasically throwing their hands
up in the air and going, I don'thave a clue how to market to
you.
All I'm doing is sending you acold spam email intruding on
(16:47):
your life for 15 minutes.
And I'm hoping that you willrespond to me and take advantage
of whatever I'm offering thatobviously doesn't work.
Okay.
So that's the reality of it.
Don't ever answer those things.
But then once you qualify, thenthe next thing that you want to
do is you sign up for it.
And then I start looking forflags right out of the gate.
How is our customer support?
(17:08):
Was their sales team qualified?
Very engaging.
But then when you walk into thesausage factory, everybody
disappears.
Now I'm forced to talk withbots.
Now I'm in this confusingsystem.
Now I'm waiting a day for ananswer.
I start looking for stuff likethat or longer, right?
It's not usually a day.
Normally it's a couple of days.
(17:29):
And normally the answer that youget is incomplete and you have
to respond.
Or worse yet, they close aticket and you have to reopen
the ticket.
That also happened with Google.
UNKNOWN (17:39):
Okay.
SPEAKER_01 (17:40):
So restrict the number of people that you work
with.
Find ones that are good peopletrying to do a good job and
stick with those people.
You're going to have to workwith some of the big companies.
That's just a fact of life.
Now, maybe and maybe not in yourcase.
Okay, in my case, I have to.
(18:01):
I have to work with big techcompanies.
In your case...
If you work directly with them,then yes, you're going to have
to.
But if you work with a boutiqueagency like ours, we usually
have a lot of the big tech stufffigured out, like the complexity
of Google ads.
(18:23):
We never talk to the personsending you a, hey, I'm your
partner.
customer contact person forGoogle ads.
By the way, they rotate thosepeople every 60 or 90 days.
So just when they start tounderstand your business,
they're looped out and then youget somebody else.
So don't ever do that.
That's just a tip.
(18:43):
They're just there to get you toincrease your budget, put
everything on full automationand then make more money.
That's all they're out to do.
That's why they rotate.
They don't care about yourlong-term success.
So the idea is number one, youwant to mitigate that.
You want to mitigate the numberof people that you work with.
You want to start looking at theamount of headache as the cost
(19:05):
of doing business with thatparticular company.
If you find out that you're onlarge delays, you're having to
yell, scream, kick, do whateverin order to get help, then that
company probably is not thecompany you should be working
with.
And you should start lookingsomewhere else.
The next thing is you're goingto need to look for...
(19:27):
I'm looking here at my noteshere.
Talks about one of the commentsthat I'm looking through my
notes was talking about tools orpractices that can help reduce
time spent on administrativetasks.
Now, this is good.
This is actually a really goodthing because we do use a lot of
tools that help us out quite abit without impairing our
(19:51):
ability to work with people onan individual basis.
So one of those tools we have isa project management tool.
And what we're able to do ishave one consolidated place
where all of our communicationsgo to where both the customer,
you, could look at what we'redoing from a marketing
(20:12):
perspective, but then also wecan see it as well.
And what it does is itstreamlines emails, you know,
make sure that there'sverification.
If something was sent, it wassent, and you can see it, refer
back to it, and do things likethat.
And so when you're dealing withit, think about...
You see, I wrote something along time ago, and it was about
(20:33):
the concept of time.
And this is really importantbecause the one thing, you can
always make more money, right?
You can always do certainthings.
But the one thing you can neverdo is put more time on your
clock of life.
You just can't do it.
You can take it away.
I mean, if you're stressed andyou're aggravated and
(20:55):
everything, you can never dothat.
But you can never replace thetime you have on this planet.
It could be five minutes.
It could be 50 years.
It could be 100 years.
But you can't replace it.
And any time that someone forcesyou to use your time, they're
taking time away from yourbusiness while you're trying to
accomplish, but they're alsotaking away the most invaluable
(21:16):
resource that you could possiblyhave on this planet, and that is
your time.
It's something no one with aninfinite amount of money can buy
more of.
They might be able to string italong with transplants or
something like that, but you getthe point.
The time that they have is thetime that they have.
Okay, so...
Here's what we do as a boutiqueagency.
(21:38):
And maybe this is a blueprintthat can help you with your
business.
Now, there's some give and take.
So I want to hyper focus on thewhole idea of marketing at this
point.
OK, so, you know, this problemexists well beyond.
It's your banks.
It's everything.
But you want to streamline it.
You want to make it as efficientas you possibly can make it.
(22:00):
And there comes a point whereyou just need to break the
relationship.
Period.
If you're not being heard, ifthey're not doing what you need
them to do, quit beating it up.
Quit going back to thegirlfriend cheating on you or
the boyfriend cheating on you.
Hang it up.
Go somewhere else.
Call it a day and find someonebetter and ask better questions
before you connect with that newcompany.
(22:20):
Don't just jump into it out offrustration.
I mean, that's one of thebiggest things I can give you
outside of marketing.
But let's focus on the marketingleg of the thing.
Okay, so...
Here's what we do for ourclients, and maybe this will
help you out.
First thing is we are the pointof contact, and we provide a
portal where the client canupload images, assign us
(22:46):
projects, we can assign themprojects, we can communicate
through it, and we can alsocommunicate via email, via text,
via whatever.
Our agency does not use AIsupport systems.
Now we may be behind the eightball before it's over with, but
I have this crazy idea thatpeople like dealing with people.
(23:09):
The other thing that we like todo is we're the middleware
between all that frustrationbecause we've bridged a lot of
those gaps and we intentionallybuilt our SOPs And we use
software for 99% of the companyor 99% of our clients that we
(23:31):
understand intimately.
So when we develop websites, weuse similar processes across the
board to where our team is fullyaware of what's going on so we
can fully support it.
We don't pull in plugins wedon't understand unless we have
to.
And then we charge accordinglyto make sure that we can
properly support it.
If you deal with a lot of webagencies, a lot of them will
(23:55):
just put whatever they can putinto a website online.
put whatever theme they can getinto it, put whatever plugins
they can get into it, get itover the goal, but they don't
understand that software.
And so then they're not able tosupport it.
Well, then that draws out yourproblems when you have them.
And that makes a 15 minuteproblem, a week problem.
And again, it's just becausepeople are trying to just do
(24:16):
things as short and quick asthey can thinking that somehow
they're, they're being moreefficient in reality.
They're just causing youheadaches.
So we've become that middleware,uh, between those situations.
And so with Google Ads, forexample, it's incredibly
complicated.
Running your own account, Godbless you.
(24:38):
But I'm telling you that to runGoogle ads effectively, a lot of
agencies don't run themeffectively.
A lot of them over promise.
A lot of them give you fakemetrics or they stack the cards
or they make it look likethey're doing more than they
are.
And there's just all these gamesand stuff that happen when
people are doing those things.
(25:00):
So the idea is we're that place.
We're that place where they cancommunicate.
They can talk to you.
We have a real person thatanswers the phone.
If there is some kind ofinteraction with the system, we
typically do it.
And then we reconcile thebilling to where the client pays
us so that they don't have todeal with, okay, I need
(25:24):
multi-language credits.
How do I go in and buy thosecredits?
Okay, now I've got to do it, andthen I've got to figure out who
will apply And then we save youall those times.
And so I think the reason thatwe have such a high customer
retention rate is because we doall those little minor details
and then give the client moretime.
(25:44):
Now, I don't know if the clientsare even aware of how much time
we're saving them by preventingthem from having to do all the
additional two-stepauthentications, paying for
stuff, all the stuff we'vetalked about.
But it's what we do as an agencyand our clients typically align
with us and they like that.
And so from your perspective,what I strongly recommend is
(26:05):
finding someone that can handleall that.
and reduce the amount of, and Idon't know, maybe there's a term
we can come up with, timeoverhead.
I don't know.
That's not very clever, is it?
But it's the overhead on yourtime.
And then if that can be reduced,then you've got more time to
have crazy ideas like spend anevening with your family or
(26:28):
going out on a date night withyour wife or doing the things
that really matter in the worldversus the things you have to do
and, worse, the things thatyou're doing for free in order
to pay somebody else money,which it blows my mind when you
really think about this.
Okay.
So, um, but you haveresponsibility.
(26:48):
Okay.
There's, there's aresponsibility on your end if
you want that.
And I think you should havethat.
Now we can't support everybodylistening to this podcast.
I mean, we're, the podcast isgrowing and there's obviously
not a thing.
And honestly, uh, we had to, uh,not take on clients for a month
because we've been so busy, uh,just with the, the normal, uh,
(27:11):
flow of clients that we have.
So this is not me going callIntegris to design and book with
us.
That's not what I'm asking youto do.
I'm just saying if you can findsomeone that does that, then I
think your life's going to be alot easier, especially with
marketing.
But here's a trick.
There's a couple of tricks,actually.
First is to find somebody thatwill actually do the work and
(27:34):
know what they're talking about.
And unfortunately, a lot ofpeople, I found her talking a
really good game.
Man, there was this company inTennessee, a marketing firm.
And we were qualifying thatmarketing firm.
And that guy went on for like 45minutes about the stuff that
they do.
And they were charging like$1,000 a month.
(27:56):
And I knew the tool he wasusing.
It's a tool that resellers getfor, if you buy in bulk, it's
like$30 a month.
And basically what you do is youput all the...
the heavy lifting, either it'sdone by artificial intelligence
or it's just, it's just thisthing.
And they were just charging theclient a lot of money for it.
(28:17):
So you got to find somebody thatdoesn't just show you a snazzy,
uh, portal and says, Hey, lookat the shiny new toy.
It's not someone who does that,but it's somebody who really
knows what they're talkingabout.
Someone who can talk the game.
Uh, I met with the companyyesterday.
I love these people.
I look forward to working withthem.
And, uh, we talked for an hourand a half.
(28:38):
And they ask a ton of questions.
And I showed them tools where wecould look at their competitors.
We could look at how theirwebsite should be structured,
their digital marketingprocesses, how it all ties
together to make one seamlessexperience for clients no matter
where they're at.
And so I was able to go throughthat with them.
(28:59):
And so part of that, which I'vestill not figured out how to
qualify for, real businessesother than credibility
certifications, the amount oftime they've been in business,
look at their website address,go to Google, look at ICANN, and
then look up their web addressto see how long they've been in
(29:19):
business because a lot of theseguys are fly-by-nights right
now, and they've actuallystarted up in less than a year
ago.
So there's all kinds of weirdgames going on.
But finding that person is goingto be important because you need
to be able to trust what they'redoing because a lot of times
there is a lot of planting seedsand not reaping, especially
early on in a game.
(29:40):
And I call it the snowballeffect.
It's where it takes time tobuild the snowball, push it up
the hill to where it starts togain momentum.
And the more you're involved init, the better it is.
But of course, the less otherpeople want you to be involved
because you guessed it, that'soverhead on them.
So you need to find somebodywho's willing to listen to you.
(30:03):
Now, in exchange for that.
you'd have to pay the agency.
So here's the thing.
Our agency, we're more thanhappy to work with the customer.
But let me share a story withyou.
We deal with mom and pop shops.
We deal with large companies.
We deal with huge corporations.
We deal with the whole nineyards.
(30:24):
And what we love are the peoplethat engage with us because
they're the most successful.
It combines what they know withwhat we know.
And This isn't a shot againstsmall businesses, but we're
dealing with one particularcompany, and it's a small mom
and pop, but they keep askingthe same questions.
(30:46):
They keep asking us to do themost mundane, small task.
Even when we provide like a30-second video or a two-minute
video on how to do something,they still ask the questions and
say they watch the video.
Now, it's literally type in thisaddress, click this button.
So you can imagine how simplethose things are.
(31:07):
And we can certainly help out.
And we can be that person thatgoes, okay, let me walk you
through that.
Let's jump into a Zoom meeting.
Let's do those things.
But we can't do that fornothing.
And so those kind of servicescome at a cost.
And you should expect to pay thecost because what you're paying
for is you're paying to get outof this world of junk support
(31:31):
services Let me send you a linkto a web page that's 400 miles
long on how to solve something.
That's what you're paying to getout of.
You're paying for quick answers.
You're paying for someone thatcares about your business and
cares about your time.
And so the idea is that youshould expect to have to pay for
(31:51):
that one-on-one service asopposed to some junk AI system.
And so on your end, there's theaccountability of watching the
videos and referring back tothose videos, if they're little
small videos, asking forclarifications, but then turning
the corner and moving on.
(32:12):
If not, then just be aware thatyou should expect a larger bill,
but that can be there to fullysupport you.
So what I've seen from ourperspective is is over the last
several years the people are aregetting more frustrated because
they're getting a lot ofpromises that aren't really true
(32:33):
they're disillusioned they'rejaded and they want instant
answers because they get instantorders on amazon and they want
instant help they don't want topay for it and they equate
personalized support with thejunk support that's out there,
or even the people you talk to.
(32:57):
Like you call certain companiesand they ask you for your
number.
How much support can they giveyou if they're going to go
through and know you by anumber, go back and look at a
couple tickets, you re-explainit, and then they just try to
get you over the goal and getyou off the phone?
That doesn't work either.
So the idea here is you do wantto respect that person's time,
(33:20):
but also you need to be able totrust that person as well.
Because, you know, you thinkabout it, if you go through an
explanation process every monthabout what's going on and then
you have to re-explain it or youdon't trust that person or
whatever, that also eats a lotof time up, yours and theirs.
And so you want to be carefulabout that.
(33:41):
Okay, so what's the lesson here?
First lesson is you want tominimize the number of vendors
that you work with.
Realize bigger is not better andrealize that the game today are
people that are trying to sellservices that you pay for and
they want you to manage it andthey poorly service it.
(34:03):
That's the game.
So when you think about it,think about that situation and
are you willing to pay somebodyto to have another layer of that
thrown in your life.
If you do and you think it'sworth it, then give it a shot,
but know what you're gettinginto, but also have your exit
strategy.
Don't go throw everything intoit because what they want to do
is get you completely immersedwhere it's almost impossible to
(34:27):
get out of it.
So have a strategy where you'regoing to test it, but then not
be fully immersed in it whereyou can't get out of it easy
because then you're so far deepyou can't get out.
Next thing is, is really startlooking at your time.
Again, I've said this a milliontimes.
Do not respond to those emailsasking you if you need help with
(34:49):
your website.
They solve problems.
Can they give you 500 millionleads in a week and only do it
if they prove it?
Do not respond to those, okay?
Period, ever, ever, ever.
Never respond to those.
It's junk.
If they could market, then theywould market to you.
They wouldn't have to send youspammy emails, okay?
They wouldn't have to send youLinkedIn invitation.
(35:10):
They wouldn't have to do thesethings, okay?
So if you're doing that, you'rechasing ghosts.
I have never seen that situationwork out where someone says, you
know what, that cold email wasthe best thing that ever
happened to me.
I've never heard that.
You may be the one out therethat has that experience, but
not me.
And so the idea then, of course,is to minimize, have your exit
(35:33):
strategy and be ready to get outand then look at your time as a
valuable resource.
Don't look at your time as nothaving monetary value.
Think of your hourly rate andthink of the time that it takes
for you to do that extra loginstep every time or two if
they're down and you have to goback in and then think about it
and then go back into it.
Think about all that stuff andthen if you can get rid of those
(35:56):
things, get rid of them.
Start throwing things out.
Look at the movie Armageddon.
Watch Bruce Willis in the scenewhere he's going through that
moon vehicle or that meteorvehicle, and he starts throwing
things out, going, you know,what is this thing and what is
that thing?
Get rid of it.
Get rid of all that overheadthat doesn't mean anything to
you.
If it doesn't contribute to yourbusiness, lose it.
(36:17):
You're going to save time.
You're going to save money.
You're going to save headache.
That would be the big one.
I recommend you work with aboutique agency when it comes to
marketing because then you dealwith real people who care about
you Large companies are lessinvested in you because they
have a lot of you.
And if you go away, you havevery little pull.
You have very little ability tomake things happen because,
(36:38):
honestly, they don't care.
They just want to get you offtheir line so they can mark
their support ticket as closed,and then that support ticket is
one of the indicators thatthey're doing a good job.
So you don't want to get intothat situation.
Plus, a good agency has alreadybuilt and crossed a lot of
bridges, and they already haveprocesses.
(36:59):
A really good agency usesconsistent software all the
time, and that Consistentsoftware makes support even
easier.
On your end, be really carefuland cognizant of following
through.
This is a big one.
Make sure that if you're askingthe same questions over and over
(37:19):
again or if you're not able todo something or don't have the
technical ability to do it andwant someone to do it, Those
come at a cost.
And so if you need more help andmore support, then you should
expect to have a largermaintenance package.
But remember, what you'regetting in exchange for that is
time.
You're getting less headache,you're getting less stress.
You're not killing yourselfchasing these things and you're
(37:41):
able to focus on your businessmore.
So that'd be a good way to lookat that.
Last thing is, is find someonethat you trust.
Absolutely find someone youtrust and do not go for these
sales pitches Don't just beenamored by the technical
language that they throw at you.
Don't go for that.
I have, again, I've debated atthe end how you qualify a
(38:04):
boutique agency.
I know I'm a drone pilot.
I know you're certified withGoogle Ads, Google Workspace.
We're partners with ConstantContact.
We have a slew of certificationsand verifications.
We're a business.
We're an actual business.
We're not just operating out ofour house under an assumed name
or whatever.
(38:26):
We don't do it as a hobby forweekend projects and work other
jobs.
We're dedicated to it, andthere's a lot of work that goes
into it.
And there's a philosophy behindwhy we do the things that we do.
And so one of the things Isuppose you could do is just
make sure you ask a lot ofquestions early on, especially.
Oh, and then the last tip, ofcourse, is pay attention to the
(38:49):
pre-sales, post-salesexperience.
Pre-sales experience, salesexperience, they're out to sell
you something.
The post sales people, these arethe people that you're actually
going to work with.
And so if they're heavy on thesales end, but light on the
support and infrastructure end,or they send you places you
don't want to go to for support,then those are all flags as
(39:09):
well.
So anyway, as a fellow owner ofa business who deals with this
all the time, I thought I wouldjust complain today.
and share with you myfrustrations with it as I go
through my day.
And I'll probably go throughabout 20 or 30 two-step
authentications.
(39:29):
I'll probably reset a fewpasswords and do a couple of
other things.
And I'm constantly, constantlylooking at that next person
that's wasting time that I needto let go, a vendor or whatever
may have you.
So, to your success, thank youso much for listening to Over
(39:53):
the Bull, and this was the topicof the week.
God bless.
SPEAKER_00 (39:58):
Thanks for tuning in to Over the Bull, brought to you
by Integris Design, afull-service design and
marketing agency out ofAsheville, North Carolina.
Until next time.
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