April 24, 2024 • 53 mins
Join us as we journey through the economic landscape of resilient Midwest cities with special guest Jan Almasy of Apex Communications Network. We start in the heartland, exploring Cleveland and Detroit's evolution from manufacturing giants to modern-day economic contenders. Our discussion takes a deep dive into Ohio's untapped potential, where a skilled labor shortage meets a rich cultural heritage, and we look at how preserving cities like Canton's unique character can stimulate their economies.
This episode is a must for marketing mavens and agency operators; we strip away the gloss to reveal the grind of building a successful marketing agency. From nurturing meaningful client relations to the ethical dilemmas faced when managing family-owned businesses' marketing needs, we share the unvarnished truth behind the scenes. Our conversation goes beyond surface strategies to underscore the importance of a robust local network over digital tactics, serving as a lifeline for agencies in times of adversity. Listeners will also find practical takeaways, such as conducting an 80-20 customer audit, that are essential for refining client management and service offerings.
But the wisdom doesn’t stop there. We dissect the fine art of adapting and expanding within the agency world, emphasizing the value of challenging oneself to foster long-term client relationships and carve out stable revenue streams. Hear how taking on a demanding construction client from Chicago transformed my approach to business, improving both processes and communication. And don't miss our discussion on the shift from project-based work to the security of retainer services, as we reveal how bundling offerings can pave the way for cohesive digital marketing solutions. So, tune in and get ready to elevate your business strategies to new heights with Side Hustle City!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for
joining us.
Our goal is to help you connectto real people who found
success turning their sidehustle into a main hustle, and
we hope you can too.
I'm Adam Kaler.
I'm joined by Kyle Stevie, myco-host.
Let's get started, all right.
(00:24):
Welcome back everybody to theSide Hustle City podcast Today's
special guest, jan Olmacy.
Jan, how you doing, man?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Not too bad, Adam.
Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
I was just up in Cleveland a couple of days ago
at a political thing and I waslike dang, I should have hit you
up.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Oh, who are you up repping, or who are you up
seeing?
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Bernie Morenono.
I was at his, like, victoryparty, yeah, yeah, I think he
kind of knew he was gonna win,but he was the only candidate
that came down here and actuallymet with me.
So I was like really, yeah,I'll support him, you know.
I mean, he, you know, came down, talked to me, invited me down
to a uh fundraiser that he washaving in Miami a while back,
kind of the bow Harbor area.
(01:06):
And yeah, man, he came out andI said, hey, if he's willing to
come out and chat with me.
None of the other two were.
So, yeah, throw my support athim, you know.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, heck, yeah.
No, I've been seeing a lot ofhis name circulating around.
That's why I was curious whenyou said who you're going up to
see.
But that's awesome, I lovegoing up to events in Cleveland
I mean, being from Canton, it's,you know, 40 minutes away to
the south side and then you knowyou've got the Indians up there
, you've got the Q.
Well, I guess they're theGuardians.
(01:36):
Now, right, the Guardians,you've got the Q and it's just a
beautiful city.
I think it's underestimated,being the quote unquote mistake
on the lake right.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Well, you could tell there was money up there at one
point.
I remember seeing a thing from1949, the cities with the
highest per capita income.
I think Cleveland was second.
I think Detroit was first,Cleveland was second.
It was wild that sounds aboutright Back when manufacturing
was popping and you know thecars were rolling off the
assembly lines and you know thatwas what drove most of the US
(02:12):
economy back in the day.
You know, and you knowCleveland and Detroit and cities
like that were at the forefrontof it.
Pittsburgh, you know, with alltheir steel and everything, and
that's since gone overseas andnow there's a lot of people who
worked in that industry with nojobs.
So that's.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
That's even how Canton is.
When I look at Canton you drivearound inside of this city.
You know we're kind of like aminor C compared to Cincinnati,
cleveland and Columbus, butstill along that same highway
path.
We used to be the only pit stopbetween Youngstown and Chicago
on old Route 30.
So there's these beautiful oldhotels and you know a lot of
(02:52):
ornate architecture that thecity has actually been doing a
great job of kind of restoringto its original glory, rather
than like the fabricated stuffthat got put over top of it to
make it all look, you know,dystopian in my eyes, but that's
, that's exactly the same waythey can is.
You let the manufacturing andeverything else kind of moved
(03:14):
and now it's a place where it'sa little bit more rural.
I mean, I still think there's alot of stuff hopping here, but
I'm also biased because you knowI was going to come back in.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
So yeah, yeah, I mean you've got the, the big intel
plant coming south of ofcolumbus there and you've got a
lot of things happening.
I met a developer in columbusand he said he just can't find
enough workers and I thinkthat's one problem.
I think ohio could grow.
It's just we don't have enoughpeople to build stuff here and
it's crazy when you think of itas like a manufacturing state.
(03:43):
Now you've got people that havejust ignored a lot of the
trades and you know, everybodythought they had to go to
college.
I mean this is what the seventhlargest state population wise
in the entire country and it'slocated in a great place.
I mean from Cincinnati, you'rea day's drive from a third of
the US population.
I mean we're a few hours fromNashville, a couple hours from
(04:05):
Louisville, an hour and a halffrom Louisville, an hour from
Lexington, an hour and a halffrom Columbus, an hour to Dayton
, three and a half hours toCleveland, an hour and a half
from Indianapolis, four hours toPittsburgh, four and a half
hours, five hours to Chicago.
I mean the list goes on and on.
I mean direction you go, and Imean you're in a great spot.
(04:26):
You got river transport upthere in cleveland they have, uh
, you know the, the lake.
You've got i-70 kind of cuttingthrough the middle of the state
going east and west.
You got i-75 going north andsouth.
I mean it's it's.
It's wild that logisticallythis is a state that's in such a
good spot and the weather's notterrible.
People crack on the weather.
(04:47):
Up in cleveland.
When I left the other day itwas snowing, so and then as soon
as I got to columbus it's likesunny and 20 degrees warmer.
But it's just you got that lakeeffect.
You know of cold and snow andstuff that happens up there.
But it was actually nice to seesnow because we didn't get much
of it down here, uh, this year.
So hardly at all.
Yeah, hardly at all, man, butyeah, so you grew up in canton.
I mean you know there's somefamous people from canton.
(05:10):
I mean that whole area columbus, I'd say well, cincinnati too.
I looked at a stat.
It said some of the highest percapita athletes, professional
athletes, have come from sinceit was st louis was number one,
cincinnati was number two.
Youngstown, believe it or not,was like number four.
That doesn't from since it was.
St Louis was number one,cincinnati was number two,
youngstown, believe it or not,was like number four.
That doesn't surprise me.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
It was wild.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
I mean the people, the athletes that come from the
city, from Cincinnati, dayton,cleveland, youngstown and
Pittsburgh, like this area righthere.
It's unbelievable how manyathletes have come from here.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
And just right here, it's unbelievable how many
athletes have come from here andjust, I think, resilient people
in general.
I talk to people about beingborn and raised in you know,
like kind of consider ourselvesthe Midwest but like Northeast
Ohio is really the area that Ikind of point to Football
culture, crazy wrestling culture, insane A lot of immigrant
populations that moved intothese areas and that mentality
(06:06):
is still very deeply rooted in alot of these cities.
Pick yourself up.
You got to keep moving, you gotto be able to figure things out
.
There's actually a study.
So I spent six, seven years inthe Air National Guard and when
I was in the Air National GuardI originally was going on a
track where I was going to getmy nursing license and I wanted
to apply for something calledthe special operations surgical
teams.
So this was before I started.
(06:28):
Apex and all that other dreamkind of entered, you know,
pretty drastically rapidly and Ihad to pivot paths.
But when I was doing researchinto the special operations
teams, right, inevitably the waythat I approach things in life
is I'm going to know everythingI can possibly about it.
How am I going to approach thisthing from as many different
(06:49):
angles as I can check off all ofthose angles, you know, then go
on the attack.
So I'm reading all of thesestats on what are the things
that get people through specialoperations, training.
You know it's not always rawphysicality, actually.
In fact, most of the often it'snot strictly raw physicality,
right, there's a lot of mentalstuff that goes into lasting
through extremely difficulttimes.
(07:09):
Um, and there's this malt.
There's multiple researchreports out, um, that kind of
point to this area of Ohio andthe Midwest in general.
Um, and then it kind of goes upand follows, like the eastern
coastal cities, but ones thatexperience like really harsh
winters.
That's kind of like the personaof the city that we're inside
(07:30):
of these studies and theyactually saw that individuals
that were born and raised inthose areas had higher
resiliency rates, really, whenthey were exposed to different
temperatures of training andother stuff like that, because
we have the seasons and they canget so intense that it you do
have to go outside and work in a95 degree summer but you also
have to survive a negative 20degree wind chill, yeah, and
(07:53):
figure out how to go on withyour day so I've always thought
that that was interesting, thatyou know people from that area
um we.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
We are more resilient as a group and you got to have
a bigger closet so you got tohave coats.
Some people don't have coats.
I feel bad for people who havecoats.
Where do they put their stuffin the winter?
You're walking around.
You got plenty of pockets.
Yeah, I have to carry aroundlike a man purse in the summer
because I don't have anywhere toput my stuff.
You go down to Miami.
(08:23):
Everybody's got a fanny packkind of across their chest
because they don't have anywhereto put my stuff you go down to
miami, everybody's got a fannypack kind of across their chest
because, that's, you know, theydon't have coats, man, too bad
for them.
Sad they don't get to layer upand have all these different
styles and stuff.
You know it's too hot, so butyeah, man, uh.
So when I first met, you guyswere, uh, you guys were building
wells in africa.
You were working on waterbottles.
You've've been doing, you know,agency work.
(08:44):
You've got your own like thinggoing on there.
You've got your own podcast.
Tell us a little bit, actuallytell us about your podcast.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
OK, yeah.
So, man, it's been what?
Two years probably since wefirst first met at this point,
so, yeah, like starting thejourney with Joe Knopp.
Joe Knopp, um, you know, in theRipple brand, um, which was an
amazing thing to watch.
He graduated from the sameuniversity that I did, uh, met
him very organically, uh, andthen just got to help out with
(09:15):
Ripple from day one throughacquisition, um, which was a
massive blessing, um, to watchit come to that fruition, um,
but also to be able to go on theexperience of, you know,
stepping ground in Uganda andputting my money where my mouth
is and actually going out anddoing the thing was
life-changing and that kind ofplays into like the whole
(09:36):
mission behind the podcast thatI initially started.
At this point I have twodifferent shows that I really
focus on.
The original one that I startedit kind of kicked off the whole
landslide of life alteringdecisions that had to be made
and, you know, pulled me off ofthe trajectory I was on for
nursing and the military and youknow the special operations,
(09:57):
surgical teams and all thatother kind of stuff was called
the apex podcast and that one'sstill running.
We still publish probably twicea month on average, heavily
interview based.
But also we have just me and myco-founder kind of bantering
about the days and nights ofrunning an agency, you know, and
keeping people honest aboutwhat it's actually like, versus
(10:19):
you see these people onInstagram preaching like start a
marketing agency and you'll beable to make a quarter million
dollars a year in six months.
And those people are makingmoney selling courses.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
They're not making money.
Building agencies, I mean,anybody can go on chat.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Somebody said it yeah .
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Build me a course.
Go on chat.
You say, build me a course onhow to build an advertising
agency and it'll build you anentire outline.
You could just go on and make acourse.
These guys are like 24 andthey're building courses on how
to build like multimilliondollar agencies.
Dude, I've worked atmultimillion dollar agencies and
none of them are likesolopreneurs.
(10:53):
They're all right, they're alllike I mean, got a hundred
people working there and yeah,there's a lot of stuff.
The margins can be kind of thin, you know, the more people you
bring on and I get it likeoffshoring and a lot of that
other stuff.
But man, it takes years just tofind the right group of service
providers for your agency, evenif you're going to offshore
(11:13):
stuff.
I mean it's tough and you knowthey'll do everything, jump
through fire hoops just to getyour business.
But then after a few months itkind of starts slowing down,
they stop caring about yourbrand.
But then after a few months itkind of like starts slowing down
, they stop caring about yourbrand, they start slacking off a
little bit and then you knownext thing, your brand suffers.
And not saying that's happeningto everybody, but it's just
things you got to watch out for,and I'm sure you guys talk
about those.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yeah, and that's those.
Actually, a lot of the stuffthat you just brought up are
things that I recall in recentconversations.
You know that we've had on theshow, uh, where we'll talk about
the difference between gettinginto something like a marketing
agency with a legacy mindset oflike wanting to build something
that's going to last you oroutlast you, um, and what it
(11:54):
means to actually buildrelationships as a marketing
agency in a core area, um, andwhy it's important to to lean
into the trust of thosecustomers that are.
They're trusting theirbusinesses with you.
A lot of our customers they're$3,000 a month in ad spend or
whatever they're trusting uswith for optimizing their SEO or
(12:14):
whatever is going on.
These are three to $5 millionmom and pop companies that are
family owned, 20, 30 years, youknow.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
So when they say I am trusting you to keep my leads
alive, that means something tothem, yeah, um well, something
that they've worked hard tobuild for a while, and I mean,
I'm sure they have employees andthey got to pay these employees
and that's one of the hardestthings about our families
exactly and now that becomesyour responsibility.
So yeah, I mean, if their leadsstart to slow down or something
(12:44):
happens or, uh, you know yourebuild a website.
Next thing you know, you getyou didn't do the redirects and
they lose a bunch of traffic orbacklinks.
Uh, you've got some issues andthey've got some issues, and if
they can't pay their employees,then I mean it's.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
There's a whole bunch of stuff that I could think
about that is not good If you'resomebody that is, you know,
putting out these courses andit's one thing that drives me
nuts when I read these coursesis like, oh, there's going to be
this churn rate.
Like, oh, it's fine if youscrew over a couple of people
along the way, Like you got tobreak a couple of eggs to really
make an omelet.
I will not argue with the factthat there are customers that
(13:19):
become misal aligned or that youmess up on and you will churn
like that's inevitable.
That's doing business right.
There's people that are goingto like working with you, People
that aren't going to likeworking with you, people that
are a fit at a time, and thenyou outgrow them.
You have to figure out how toeither raise their account or
offload them.
That's the natural by-productdoing business.
What I have an issue with isgoing into business with the
(13:40):
mentality that there are goingto be a couple of people that
I'm going to try to screw overalong the way.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Well, and not only that dude like that's it's kind
of messed up that they wouldeven say that but the personal
relationship.
The reason a lot of people useagencies like ours is because
they can call you, they can talkto you, they can email you, you
get back to them, you explainthings to them, because most
people are running whatevertheir business is.
They don't know much aboutmarketing.
(14:06):
They know a little bit, right,but they don't know you know how
to build a proper funnel, orthey don't know how to, how to
change the code on their websiteor any of that kind of stuff.
Right, they need you to helpthem with that.
And what I hear from a lot ofthese people is oh, just
automate the whole damn thing.
You automate everything.
Just use this software and thatsoftware and use some zaps and
do this and do that and use AIand use offshore people and all
(14:29):
this and that, but you take, youjust become another digital
agency.
At that point You're not.
You lose the, the, the thingthat people want to pay for
because they could do that samething.
Right, and a lot of them do.
They just go build a Wixwebsite and they use ChatGPT to
do the content and what the helldo they need you for?
(14:49):
Right?
Right, it's the understandingof the things like do they know
about titles and descriptions?
Do they know how to properlywrite those?
Do they know how to the rightkeyword density?
Do they know which keywords toput in there?
Have they done any research ontheir competitor sites?
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Like there's a bunch of stuff that they just like
they kind of leave out you know,yeah, yeah, agreed, and then a
lot of it is the customerservice piece, which, I mean,
kind of takes me back to likethe second half of what we talk
about on the on the apex podcast.
So you know, the one episodestyle is really just our banter.
But we do have an interviewstyle episode on that podcast as
(15:26):
well where our premise wasordinary people accomplishing
extraordinary things.
That was kind of the thoughtprocess, Right, and we try to
find these individuals that havetaken something that either
neither of us have ever thoughtof.
Like I'm just mind blown at thefact that they were able to
pull it off and I'm like, wow,you found a market where I
didn't even know there was amarket.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Isn't that wild when people bring something up and
you're like holy crap, how did Inot think of that?
But I love that feeling though,that feeling of like just
getting smacked with ignorance.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
You're like, wow, yeah, there's a whole wide world
out there that I am not awareof.
That's right that this personjust tapped into.
So we find them and we bringthem on and we just start to
dive in, like, what are thesethings that you're able to do?
And over and over and overagain we've done over 200
interviews now, and I know thatyou know this is a podcaster too
(16:18):
you start to see these goldenthreads, right.
They kind of just tricklethrough every single person's
story over and over.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
I'm interested.
What are those that you'veuncovered?
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Yeah, so one of the ones very pertinent to what
we're talking about right now isjust, you know, you constantly
get this idea of being acontrarian thinker, being the
latest and greatest.
You have to be the first one tothe new thing Right.
And over and over and overagain, I've heard from people
(16:47):
that are they, don't, don'tbreak it, or, if it's not broken
, don't fix it.
In some senses, and the onethat comes up the most often is
what you just tapped on, whichis one-on-one relationships and
customer service and justshowing up for your customers
when they need it and not tryingto automate them out of a
(17:08):
process or treating them likethey're a nuisance.
That's another thread that kindof comes up is like customers
can feel when you're likebothered by them asking a
question or needing assistanceor something.
Yeah, exactly, I've seen thatover and over again across, you
know, trash removal, marketingagencies, supply chain logistics
consultants, roofers, likeevery industry, every business
(17:37):
owner that I've ever talkedabout or talked to, they don't,
you know, some of them bring uptech, but not everybody does.
Every single one of them bringsup that personal relationship
with customers.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Yeah, and it's something that when you think
about what you buy, it's weird.
People don't make thattransition when they own a
business, right, it's like Iwant to automate the hell out of
it.
I just want to automate it,make it super fast.
But think about it.
Mcdonald's is automated, right,but people go to Chick-fil-A
because the people are nice.
I mean you could go getsomething at McDonald's.
(18:04):
I mean the food's not as goodeither, but I mean people will
comment on how nice the peopleare at Chick-fil-A.
It's like a thing, right, thatthey train their employees way
better and everybody's nice,everybody's sweet.
I've noticed, you know what,since that kind of has been
pervasive around the internetand you know, just in Americana
(18:24):
in general, people know thisabout Chick-fil-A I've noticed
the people at McDonald's aregetting nicer at the drive-thru
and I think that's there.
I you know, I don't knowanybody works in pressure.
I don't know anybody that worksat McDonald's, so I don't know,
but I'm guessing that there wassome pressure and they said hey,
look, we need to start trainingour people better and they need
to be nicer and smile more andthings like that.
But yeah, even thoseexperiences.
(18:46):
Well, even a company that'sspent its entirety just
automating everything,automating their food processes.
I mean because when you buy aMcDonald's franchise, you're
buying a process.
Right, you're buying a systemand a process and you're not
necessarily buying, you know,the food I mean.
You are, but it's a process, iswhat you're buying?
You're buying one of the bestprocesses in business, and what
(19:09):
separates them?
What?
What could Chick-fil-A do?
Oh, we just got another chickensandwich, right.
Like, what do we do?
How do we stand out?
And it was with customerservice, I think.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Yeah, oh, agreed 100% .
And that actually brings me toanother.
That's a another golden threadthat has consistently popped up
is you choose what you want tobe known for, yeah, and then you
become that thing Like I I'mgoing to butcher this, but I
think the way that I had itexplained to me by one of my
(19:39):
mentors named John Koontz uh,he's a great guy Um, he kind of
planted this seed in my headwhere he was like if you see
things where people are sayingfake it till you make it ignore
that advice, he's he, he alwayswould change that to embody it
until you become it ohinteresting if you fake it till
you make it, you just end upliving somebody else's you feel
(19:59):
like a fraud too.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yeah, because you're like, oh, I'm faking it instead
of I'm embracing it.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Yeah, and so he was.
He was a big one with me whereI didn't want to automate a
whole bunch of stuff early on.
You know I was willing to dothat in the trenches work.
I was willing to do some ofthis manual labor.
And a lot of my friends in theagency space were why are you
going to physical networkingevents with a small group of
local business owners?
Like, why are you doing thesethings?
Why are you doing these things?
Shouldn't you just be sendingout?
You know mastering your emailautomation sequence and getting
out bulk.
(20:31):
You know numbers and then, okay, 500 people get the same
message and you know, a hundredpeople convert here on email one
, blah, blah, blah, blah, godown the funnel.
But in my mind I was like, no,I want to.
Early on in the business I waslike, no, I want to it.
Early on in the business I'm,I'm feeling called to invest
more in the personalrelationships.
And John would always tell mecause.
I would feel this impostersyndrome where I'm like maybe I
(20:54):
just do need to fake it till Imake it.
I actually don't care as muchabout this stuff I I could see
where some of it's valuable.
It's not really working for me,but maybe I just need to push
harder and do this more andit'll start working all of a
sudden.
And when he kind of said, youknow, embody it till you become
it, to me in our mentorshipsessions it was really lean into
those strengths because they'restanding out to you for a
(21:16):
reason.
Maybe you're seeing stuff inthe market that's you know.
I see the value of you know,pontificating your brand on
social media, massivelydecreasing Right, I tell people
all the time social is not meantto be a platform where you're
shouting out a cliff at youraudience.
It's meant to be a place whereyou have conversations with
(21:37):
people.
So if you're not likingcommenting on other people's
stuff and you're just postingall the time, it's not social.
You're just yelling at anewsfeed.
And the same thing applies inthat real life situation.
I saw that social was havingissues and thought that Facebook
(21:57):
was going to get sued andprivacy was going to be an issue
and all this other stuffmultiple years ago.
And now I talked to some of myfriends that have agencies where
their entire business model wasbased off of Facebook ads and
other stuff like that andthey're like how are you
maintaining revenues?
I'm like well cause, I haverelationships.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Yeah In my community, like that's the thing you got
to own where you're at I meanthe fact that you're in Canton
but you're very sophisticatedwhen it comes to marketing and
you know what the hell you'redoing, you know.
I think that's a big benefit,especially guys, if you're
listening and you're not in ahuge city like I'm in a pretty
big metro area.
I mean this is the biggestmetro area in the state of ohio.
(22:33):
There's three million somethingpeople in this area if you
include dayton.
So I mean I could do businesshere.
I could drive up an hour 45minutes and do business in
dayton.
There's a couple cities inbetween.
Big suburbs in between daytonand cinc could go down to
Lexington.
I could.
I mean, like I said before,there's a bunch of cities around
(22:54):
here.
But I could really own NorthernKentucky because my building is
here in Northern Kentucky.
If I say ad agency inCincinnati, my physical location
is actually in CovingtonKentucky.
It's not in Cincinnati, right?
So but I could own CovingtonKentucky because there's not a
whole lot of agencies inCovington.
There's a bunch of them over inCincinnati because you got
Procter and Gamble to competewith these big guys out of New
York and all that stuff.
(23:16):
But I do and I have for 13,almost 14 years now.
(23:37):
But own your local market.
Go out like Jan, like you'retelling people, go out, network,
meet people, join a B&I groupif you got to.
But own your local market,build a reputation.
You never know when that onesmall little client, that
flooring laminate guy or theHVAC guy you don't know who he
(24:00):
knows, the HVAC guy's going outhere putting in commercial HVAC
in bigger companies.
Oh wow, how'd you find me?
Oh, I saw your website.
It looked great.
Oh, yeah, you know who did that.
Jan did that website.
Oh, who's Jan?
Oh, call him up.
If you guys are looking to do awebsite, next thing you know
you got a million dollar website.
So it's things like that.
People don't understand theseonline relationships that you
can form.
Those aren't going to be asstrong and you're pulling in
(24:22):
clients from all over thecountry those aren't going to be
as strong as your local ones.
So I would almost say whatyou're saying and repeat it own
your local, have personalrelationships in your own
community, and I think those aregoing to be kind of the base of
your agency, of your agencyrevenue.
I would say Agreed.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
I love hearing that, especially from somebody that's
been in the agency space longer,right, because I can give it
the perspective of going intoyear six, and so you know we're
relatively young.
It's taken us all of the sixyears to really earn the trust
in the market.
But to know, you know, in mymind I'm just building the
foundation.
I know that we want to gobigger.
(25:02):
I know that we want to have abigger clients that are.
You know, we have relationshipsin Chicago.
We do business in NYC, we dobusiness in Miami, which is the
beautiful part about havingthose relationships.
But every single time one ofthose contracts cancels early or
does something else.
I have this rock solid 30client base that I could drive
to any of their offices.
(25:23):
There's been times where Icouldn't make payroll if I
wouldn't have been able to driveto a location and pick up a
check that day and deposit it.
And clients were like, yeah,we'll cut this a week early.
We got you To make ends meet inthe early years and those
relationships are irreplaceablewhen stuff like that comes up.
(25:45):
And what it ended up doing,because we were willing to
follow through.
They did that favor to us andwe continue to treat each other
right.
I'm not nervous going into, youknow, an election year and all
this other kind of stuff becauseI really feel like those
relationships are all rock solidall the way around.
So at a bare minimum I know wehave enough revenue coming in at
this point going into year sixthat I can cover all of the
(26:06):
bills, the benefits for my teamand payroll stably without
really needing to expand.
We can add in those biggeraccounts and I am pursuing those
larger accounts at this pointto start continuing forward
momentum.
But building that relationshipis the only reason why I can
look at my P&L every month andbe like, oh, I have some freedom
(26:27):
to like actually work on thebusiness, not just in it fight
or flight mode, trying to drawin contracts or feel like my
clients are only month to month.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Yeah, well, tell people, I mean, the challenges.
I think a lot of people don'tunderstand the challenges with
cashflow.
Do you, do you have a line ofcredit with the bank?
Like, how do you managecashflow when you're dealing
with situations like youmentioned, having to go pick up
a check?
That can be really, reallystressful, especially payrolls
creeping up.
There's not that much in thebank right now.
You're trying to get theclients for whatever they can
(27:00):
hey, hurry up and pay me, I gotto pay my guys kind of mentality
.
But do you have some kind of aline of credit?
Or do you use credit cards?
Or what do you do?
And I know a lot of people wantto know this because you know,
even people that have been inthe business for a long time
probably don't understand asolution.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Right, yeah.
So I mean early on, just to bestraight with everybody
listening like we did years onethrough 3.5, no cashflow
management, right, I came from anursing and a clinical psych
background, served in the AirForce, had no traditional
business training, so I justkind of dove in and the company
kind of started on accident.
(27:37):
Right, I made my first sixfigures as a solo and just
started hiring people.
I'm like I'm going to figurethis out.
If I step on a few bear trapsalong the way and I can stitch
myself up, I'll be fine.
So the first three and a halfyears was were scary.
I was in that fight or flightmode, right, landing contracts
for whatever we could land themwith, because I hired people too
early and, you know, tried todelegate too soon and
(27:59):
encountered all of theseproblems early on.
That put me into a place whereI couldn't even see past a
three-month mark.
Sometimes it was even atwo-week mark.
Are we going to make it throughthe next two weeks Sending out
mass cold outreaches or DMsgetting on the phone?
Actually, one of our originalconversations two, three years
(28:24):
ago now was in one of thosevalleys where I'm like what am I
doing?
Why do I want to be here Torealize that all of that
existential stress I was feelingwas just something called poor
cashflow management was such afreeing revelation that I was
like, oh, that's actually aproblem that a lot of people
face.
I just need to figure out howto fix it and make myself more
(28:45):
resilient to it.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Do you think it's just your problem, Like you're
on an island and it's justsomething that you're dealing
with.
But no, every business,especially small businesses,
deal with that on a regularbasis and the problem is, unless
you've got a you know, advancedbusiness degree or you worked
in accounting or something likethat, you don't even know what
the name of the problem is sothat you could look up a
solution for it.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Dude, yep, put the words in my mouth.
That's exactly how it felt.
And then, when I rememberhaving that realization, like,
oh, it's like when you buy a newcar, all of a sudden you see 40
blue Hondas everywhere.
Right, you're like, oh, thatmakes sense, okay, like it
actually is everywhere and it'sbeen there the whole time I just
hadn't bought the car.
So years you know, 3.5 to now weprogressively implementing
(29:30):
stuff that is really alleviated.
It, I mean a.
We set a profit margin minimumfor any accounts that we were
going to bring on and reallystay diligent to that and had to
get used to the fact that, eventhough our nervous system said,
take every client you can,there's actually more growth in
creating this place ofselectiveness.
(29:51):
You know when people in thecommunity are talking about, oh,
I need to get to here and thenApex will let me become a client
, you know it does something andit makes your organization feel
more sought after in a way.
I think is what ended uphappening for us.
The second thing that we starteddoing that was more inward
think is what ended up happeningfor us.
The second thing that westarted doing that was more
inward facing is I have a greatops guy and he looked at stuff
(30:14):
and he said well, me as founder,salesman, visionary brain, not
process oriented guy was likewell, I'm just going to invoice
people.
When we invoice people andit'll be at the end of the month
and some of it will be at thebeginning of the month.
But there's no really rhyme orreason.
Like, whenever the sale closes,I'm going to send out the
invoice so we can draw in cash,which was necessary in some of
(30:35):
those early days, like I said,just trying to make payroll.
It's like I'm going to invoiceyou on Monday, please pay by
Friday.
Please, for the love of God,pay by Friday.
But as soon as we got to aplace where we could say, hey,
invoices go out on the first forclient subtype A, they go out
on the 15th for client subtype B, oh, everybody's on a net 10.
(30:55):
And then cash flow is nowconstantly we get a big bump on
the first, we get a well fromthe between the first and the
seventh and then we get a bigbump between the 15th and the
21st or whatever that secondseven day period is, and that's
been fantastic for predictingstability and being able to look
(31:15):
at all of our metrics and thinkOK, we have X number of Google
ads accounts, those all getinvoiced at the end of the month
.
If we want to increase our endof the month stability, we need
to land some more Google adsaccounts.
If we have these one-offprojects or big web dev jobs or
whatever else, those are alwaysinvoiced on the 15th.
(31:37):
So those types of jobs, if wewant to beef up our middle of
the month, we land those, andthen one-off projects just kind
of fall in between there.
But they all get grouped intothose two groups.
So that was probably the secondthing.
And then to your point with theline of credit.
Thankfully I've never had todip into one since I've gotten
one.
But as soon as I was able toapply for one, I applied for one
(31:59):
that was essentially coveringthree months of payroll, oh and
kept.
You know, I have never touchedit.
The goal is to not have toutilize it, but I think a
by-product that I wasn'texpecting that I was actually it
was holding me back fromaccessing that line of credit
(32:20):
was oh, you know, if I have itI'm going to use it needlessly,
or I might try to lean into it.
You know, maybe I don't want tohave that option.
What I wasn't accounting for isthe amount of bandwidth.
The potential anxiety of notmaking a payroll was eating up
in my brain and how much morestuff I would be able to
(32:42):
accomplish if that just wasn't afactor.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
I'm not worried about whether or not I touch it, but
knowing that it's there lets mebe a little bit more risk not
risk averse, but a little bitmore risky on the growth side.
Gives me the chance to like goto sleep and get good rest on a
nightly basis, just knowing thatthat thing is in the back, yeah
, and that our cash flows arestable.
(33:05):
So those are probably the threethings like yeah and that our
cash flows are stable.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
So those are probably the three things like our
perception of the communitygrouping invo every year of all
your clients because they sayyou know, 10% of your clients
(33:36):
are like 80% of your revenue,right, or something like that,
and they're, and they're theones that don't mess with you as
much, like they don't need asmuch from you.
Where you have, say, 80, saylike 60% of your clients are
just a complete pain in the buttand not really worth your time.
Like the amount of time youspend with them is not worth it.
So do you believe in firingclients?
Speaker 2 (33:58):
I do, and I have um and and I say fire very lightly.
I have referred them to bettersuited.
Ah, there you go, yes Is how Iphrase it.
So in our name, apexCommunications Network.
The reason why I chose thatname is because it allowed me to
lean into the tagline.
Our duty is to find you asolution, whether that's
in-house or elsewhere.
That's our, our go-to.
(34:20):
And I think about this becauseI'm like.
I came from the medical field,right?
So as an RN, I see physiciansall the time saying hey, I may
not be the best surgeon for this, you need to go talk to
so-and-so.
He's a specialist in cardiac orthis needs to happen here, this
needs to happen here.
So I explain to people.
We're like a primary careprovider.
(34:40):
You come in and talk to us, I'mgoing to draw some labs, I'm
going to give you a head-to totoe observation, we're going to
take your blood pressure, makesure you do some checks, and
then I'm going to figure outwhether or not you need a Z-Pak,
which we can totally handlein-house, or if I need to send
you to a gut surgeon because youhave a tumor.
You know, that's a totallydifferent conversation.
(35:02):
Yeah, right.
But it makes people feelcomfortable because even when we
have to let them go which Ihave cleansed the clients list
in the past I'm in the processof doing that right now with a
couple of accounts because weset new goals for next quarter
yeah, I'm able to just tell themhey, this is a part of our
mission statement.
I'm not, you know, leaving youin the dust.
(35:23):
I'm setting you up withsomebody that's better suited to
take care of you with whereyou're at Um and that's that's
worked out really well.
Um, on the second half of thatlike, how often do you do that?
How do you evaluate that?
Um, we personally are on anevery six month schedule um, we
look at our clients list and Iactually learned this in a
(35:46):
curriculum that I'm now the headof community for called indie
collective, which is essentiallylike a 10-week accelerator
program um for solopreneurs,agency owners, um coaches, uh,
consultants, uh.
It walks you through designingyour life around what they call
the three L's your living,lifestyle and loving
(36:06):
relationships and then takes youall the way through setting up
your business, prototyping yourservice, streamlining your back
office and developing abulletproof psychology is what
they call it.
And what one thing that they'vebrought up.
That was revolutionary for mewhen I was a student this is a
great realization.
Way before I started doing thehead of community, work was
(36:28):
something that they called their80-20 customer audit.
So 80-20 principle is prettywidely known, right, and you
kind of referenced it.
20% of your clients are goingto bring you 80% of your revenue
, so how do you figure out whofits in what bucket?
So every six months we sit downand we go over this sheet that I
got essentially from the IndieCollective program and it asks
(36:51):
you a couple of questions.
It's list all of the clients.
List how much you've made fromthat client for the year, list
how many hours you've had towork on that project
collectively, and then askeverybody that is on the project
team for that client to ratetheir satisfaction of the
project on a scale of one tofive.
And it asks you a couple.
(37:12):
It asks you in a couple ofdifferent ways, right, like how
satisfied are you with clientcommunication?
How open do you believe theclient is to improvements?
Um, there's a couple ofdifferent things that it asks,
but at the end of that you canlook and say, hey, this client
is really only in the 40thpercentile as far as the money
that it makes us, and we'reextremely unhappy with working
(37:35):
with this customer.
Yes, and not just me, but likemy team members who are boots on
the ground doing this work,because it's not just me anymore
, we have a staff of five.
So I'm looking at them.
I'm like do you want to?
Do you find yourself gettinganxious when this person calls?
Do you want to be on?
Do you want to genuinely seethis person's business succeed?
Cause if you don't, we're doingthem a disservice.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Yeah, but like you said, send them off to somebody
else.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Yeah, that may be more passionate about what
they're doing.
So that's really the onlycontext that we've ever had for,
like us firing a client hasbeen they failed an 80, 20 audit
and kind of look at it and say,okay, now we have a quarter to
start having a conversationabout how to reallocate this
person.
And that's also important.
Like, you have to set timebound goals for yourself after
(38:27):
you have the realization,otherwise it'll just end up
being an infinite thorn in theside.
Give yourself a runway, say Iknow that this is a problem.
Now I'm going to try to figureout what to do in X amount of
time.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Well, and also you got to keep track of things in
your agency, otherwise you can'teven do a report like that.
And when you're a solopreneur,when you're going out on your
own, you're just like, ah, it'sall me, like it's my time.
But you do have to value yourown time and you have to keep
track of the amount of time youspend on things, because you may
not think that email that yousent should be billable or the
(39:02):
proposal you put together.
Obviously, most of the timethose aren't billable, but you'd
be surprised how much time youspend on just administrative
tasks for a particular client.
And if you're not keeping trackof that stuff, you can't even
do that report you're talkingabout.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Right.
Well, and I mean kind of.
The reason I like this reportis because all you really need
to know is who the client is,how much money you've made from
them and what the sentiment isabout your relationship with
that client.
So it kind of points you in theright direction.
But to your point, when itcomes down to actually making a
critical decision, yeah, you canlook at that and be like
(39:39):
everybody feels sad when they'retalking to this customer.
Yeah, you can look at that andbe like everybody feels sad when
they're talking to thiscustomer.
But if they're an 80thpercentile customer and you're
just going through a difficultseason of work, then that person
that you can infer based on theactual metrics yeah, okay, this
person is actually probablybetter suited staying on the
client book, like we're justhaving a tough project with them
right now.
That's right.
(40:00):
But if you don't have thosenumbers to lean back on, you're
just going to base everythingoff of emotion and that's its
own rabbit hole of bad decisionmaking, I think.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Yeah, I think so, and you got to have tough skin too.
You can't just, I mean, there'sa lot of people nowadays are
like, well, if a client's meanto me, I'm just going to cancel
them.
But you know what?
But you know what?
You're providing them a service?
I mean, are you always nice toeverybody who provides you a
service?
I mean there's people out herewho are complete dicks to
servers at restaurants and theyexpect everyone to be nice to
them when they have their ownservice business.
(40:31):
And it's just not how the worldworks.
I mean, sometimes you're goingto have people that are
difficult, just tougher,thicker-skinned people that are
used to working a certain way.
Uh, you know, I mean I could, I, I'm sure there's a lot of guys
like that up in Canton andCleveland.
Uh, that are tough guys thatare, you know, hard nose.
You know probably gamble, smokecigars, go to gentlemen's clubs
(40:55):
and, uh, you know, worked inthe steel industry at some point
, you know, and and those guys,they don't, they don't got time
for BS.
You know they can sniff out BS,or from the streets, you know,
and you're going to have thoseclients that are tough like that
, or ladies who have foughttheir way up the corporate
ladder, who've had to be toughthe whole way up, and you know
they don't take nonsense fromanybody.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
You're going to have people like that, um, and, and
you got to have tougher skinwhen you start an agency I I
agree with that and I know youcan relate to this too, because
I've seen you talk about itmultiple times.
But I think that what you justtalked about right there tough
skin, being able to stay genuineto yourself even in crazy
circumstances I've, you know,like I was mentioning earlier,
(41:38):
we've now done work wildlyoutside of canton.
You know London, chicago, newYork, all those different cities
and cultures that you encounterand one thing I get
consistently from people istheir appreciation for the
directness and honesty that I'mable to bring into conversations
, because they're like you'renever trying to play an angle,
you're trying to tell me whatthe situation is, and I really
(42:01):
think that that is a gift thatbeing raised under the median
household income average gave meright.
I look around and I'm able tobe genuine and honest about
stuff, because I'm so baffledthat I'm at where I'm at, that
I'm just grateful to be here.
And so, when it comes toforming those relationships with
people, I'm not thinking well,how can I squeeze another half a
(42:23):
percent into this?
Or how can I make sure thatthis gets counted towards X, y
or Z?
Okay, you have to draw a lineat some point.
You can't just give awayeverything for free, right?
Obviously you have to make aliving.
You got to have a business.
But I talked to some of thesepeople that are, you know,
example a construction companyworked with out of Chicago, very
(42:44):
direct, straight to the point,very high effort, very high
demand, and we weren't used toworking with that type of client
when we first started workingwith them.
And I could have looked at itone of two ways.
I could have looked at it asI'm going to get out of this as
soon as I possibly can becausethis client's not a fit, I chose
(43:08):
to look at it Like I signed upfor this for a year.
What's the worst that I couldlearn out of putting myself in
this situation for a year?
Yeah, you know, it's tough,it's new, it's a group of people
I don't know, it's a culturefrom a city that I've never
lived in.
There's all this other stuffthat goes to it, but approaching
it from that place of, likedamn dude, I'm just so grateful
to be in this room.
I'm going to deal with it for ayear.
Yeah, we ended up parting waysat the end of that year.
(43:31):
I'm not saying to just stay inthat relationship for a decade,
you know.
But I also want to get across,because I think I've been saying
a lot of you know stay.
But I also want to get across,because I think I've been saying
a lot of you know stay true toyourself and stay true to the
things that make you comfortable.
That sometimes those situationsthat put you in that uncomfort
(43:52):
zone are what actuallyspearheads you.
It forced me to come up withbetter procedures.
It forced me to come up withprettier PowerPoint
presentations.
It forced me to understand howto communicate to an executive
team that has zero time for youand your problems.
You know, there's all of theseother supplemental things that I
was able to draw in and that'sa huge learning experience and
that's something you have tolearn by doing.
Speaker 1 (44:13):
You can't really have somebody teach a course on that
and it makes you a better ownerat the end of the day.
Now I want to talk aboutsomething pro project work
versus retainer work.
A lot of people don'tunderstand it.
Like, when you start at youragency, chances are you're just
going to be doing project workfor people, like you'll be doing
(44:34):
a logo, here and there you'llbe doing maybe one website,
forum and uh, but over time, ifyou start to have employees, you
need retainers you need.
So what are some of the typesof services that you sell on
retainer?
Like you mentioned this guy inChicago you, you had him.
It was a year long project.
Was that a retainer job?
(44:56):
What kind of retainer type ofservices do you guys offer?
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Um.
So I think that, to your point,when you're starting out, uh,
you know, take you typicallyspecialize in one area and you
start to branch right.
I know people that started inweb dev.
I know people that started inpaid.
I know people that started insocial, as graphic designers,
and you know they're all agencyowners now, one way or the other
.
They just started with adifferent skills set.
So you're absolutely right,like early on, when you're doing
(45:24):
those projects, I think youhaven't had enough experience
inside of the arena yet toreally know what pairs with what
right.
You're not a what do they callit?
A sommelier, like the wine.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
Yeah, you're a logo designer, right?
Or you're a web designer, right?
Yeah, right, exactly.
You're not a marketing expertor a funnel development person
or, you know, a growth hacker.
You're none of those things,you're just know how to design
things.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
Exactly, exactly, um.
And so, by no fault of your own, you're looking at that
client's problems through thatlens 24, seven, like everything
that you see that clientstruggling with, you're going to
buy.
Again, no fault of your own,it's just a lack of knowledge or
things to connect with.
You're going to be thinking, ohwell, I bet I could fix that
(46:10):
through modifying theirSquarespace or doing X, y or Z.
Like, let's say, you're a webdesigner, right, um?
And then you start to dive intoSEO and all this other stuff
and it's like, oh, I actuallydon't need to redesign the
website, I need to put goodcontent on the site if I want to
do X, y or Z.
And then, oh well, now I cansell a website and SEO package.
If I build them their website,then they can.
(46:31):
I can charge them $500 a monthor a thousand dollars a month to
create content for their site.
Whoa, there's a retainer rightthere.
Look at that.
Um, you start as a graphicdesigner, right?
Maybe you learn how to dosocial media management.
That's a slippery slope,because now everybody expects a
social media manager to wearlike 40 hats.
But let's say it's a utopianworld, right?
(46:52):
You could say, oh, I can designthe posts for you and I can
post them.
I'll do the design as a project, I'll charge you X amount for
10.
And then boom, here's thisretainer.
I'll actually post them for youon a monthly basis for X amount
of dollars.
That's kind of how we started.
So we just started experimentingwith like what, what services
pair nicely together.
(47:12):
You know, what meal do I wantto serve with this glass of wine
?
And then, as we kept tinkering,we started to realize people
were employing, like some of thesmall businesses in our area
dude, it's wild to me thatthey're employing like three or
four different agencies.
Like they have one agency fortheir Google my Business because
(47:33):
they got upsold by somenational brand that called them
on the phone.
And then they have one agencymanaging their SEO they're not
talking to the Google myBusiness people.
Then they have one agencymanaging their SEO they're not
talking to the Google myBusiness people.
And then their PPC guy is somedude that oversees that.
You know they fell into a salesfunnel on and none of them are
talking to each other None ofthem.
So all the strategies are goingin different directions.
(47:54):
And once I had that realizationthat that's what small
businesses were dealing with.
I started walking in and our toptwo ways of kicking projects
off now are redesigning yourwebsite or doing something that
we call an SEO refresh, which isgoing into your current site.
We're not really like buildingyou a new one from scratch.
We're just optimizing it anddoing a bunch of competitive
(48:16):
research and helping youactually rank for stuff that you
want to rank for, and it comeswith X number of pieces of
content that we upload into thesite to help, depending on the
package that you purchase, andthen following up each one of
those services.
I have basically a.
I wouldn't say it's like a menu, because they're heavily
recommended, but more like whenyou go to the doctor's office
(48:39):
and it's like here's all thedifferent meds that could
potentially solve your problem.
Let's talk about the risks andbenefits and costs of each of
them, right, yeah, and so thenI'm able to look at them and say
, okay, seo takes a little bitlonger.
Your cashflow is kind of poopright now.
Maybe we do paid ads to getyour cashflow up.
And then you invest in SEO alittle bit later, right, smart,
(49:09):
invest in SEO a little bit later, right, um, smart strategy.
And I have that a little bit ofa custom conversation with them
and I'm willing to give awaywhat I perceive as a strategic
insight to them for free,because it's so asinine to me
that I'm fine giving that awaybecause it's it's just like a
little aha Right.
Then, when they put me onretainer and they're like wow,
we're getting leads from thiswebsite, we've built trust there
.
Hey, can we start runningGoogle ads with you?
Can we fire this other agency?
100%, come on over, we'll helptake care of you there.
(49:32):
And I've seen this acrossdozens of accounts.
At this point, getting in withsomething simple like SEO or I'm
not trying to say that SEO issimple for all my SEO people out
there but getting in withsomething that is defined and
executable, like an SEO contentpackage or a website redesign or
something like that that'stangible, it has a start and end
(49:53):
date, building trust, findingthat point along that project
cycle where the client is justlike wow, you guys are killing
it, you're answering all mycalls, you're doing everything
else.
Have a 30 minute conversationwith them and say what, what
else are you dealing with?
Like, I know I've heard throughthese conversations that we've
been having that you're dealingwith these other agencies or
you're unhappy with this, you'reunhappy with this.
(50:14):
Can you just vent to me aboutthe problems that you're facing?
Don't try to sell them on thatcall.
Just let them vent.
And then dollars to donuts.
Within a week they're eitherhitting you up and saying, hey,
I know that we had thatconversation.
Could you actually send me aquote Like, what if we were to
do that through you guys?
Yeah, or you're following upwith them and you're saying, hey
, based on that conversation wehad, I genuinely think and this
(50:37):
is what makes it less salesy,because you now have genuine
context I genuinely believe thatthese services would do you a
service and we could puteverything under one house.
So all you have to do is payone invoice and you know that
everything's getting taken careof, and that's kind of been our
upsell strategy across all ofthem.
So it starts as that one-offproject and it almost always
(51:01):
ends up in that you know MRR,monthly, recurring, whatever you
want to call that retainerproject so, yeah, and how?
Speaker 1 (51:08):
how do people reach out to you what?
What's, what's?
How do they find your podcast?
How do they find your the urlfor your company?
You know, linkedin, all thatgood stuff yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:20):
So if you want to find me on LinkedIn, it's Jan.
Looks like Jan J-A-N.
Uh, all in the C-A-L-M-A-S-Y.
Um, I do.
Linkedin's probably the mostactive platform that I'm on
these days.
I do a lot of posting on there.
Um, like I was mentioning, ontop of the agency stuff, I'm
also the head of community fororganization called Indie
(51:40):
Collective, so constantlysharing stories about other
entrepreneurs, solopreneurs,teams that are out there doing
cool random stuff in the world.
So that's what you'll find ifyou scroll through my LinkedIn
feed.
The podcast the two that I hostthe most often are called the
Apex Podcast, and that logo islike a little triangle.
And then the other one's calledthe Modern Independent, and
(52:02):
that one is way more focused onpeople.
I like to think of it passingthrough the gateway into the
freelance economy, right.
What is that journey like toenter, Starting off as somebody
just doing gigs, and then nextthing you know you have three
streams of income and you'reactually more resilient than
somebody that has a full-timejob 100%.
What are those stories like?
(52:23):
So those are the two podcaststhat you could find me as well.
Speaker 1 (52:26):
And they're on any platform.
Anywhere people go to listen topodcasts, right?
Speaker 2 (52:30):
Spotify, apple podcasts pretty much everything
that you can think of.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
Awesome, jan.
This has been great.
I'm glad that I got to hear alittle bit more about your story
and where you guys are at rightnow.
I'm glad that I got to hear alittle bit more about your story
and where you guys are at rightnow.
I'm on the same page with you.
I mean, it's tough running anagency but you know, people just
got to fight through it.
Speaker 2 (52:52):
People got to listen to folks like you and I listen
to more podcasts.
Listen to your podcasts and bemore prepared.
Speaker 1 (52:57):
Agreed, agreed, awesome man.
Well, thank you, sir, for beingon today.
All right, adam thanks forhaving me.
I'll talk to you soon, see ya.
Thanks for joining us on thisweek's episode of side hustle
city.
Well, you've heard from ourguests.
Now let's hear from you.
Join our community on Facebook,side hustle city.
It's a group where people shareideas, share their
inspirational stories andmotivate each other to be
(53:17):
successful and turn their sidehustle into their main hustle.
We'll see you there and we'llsee you next week on the show.
Thank you.
Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for
joining us.
Our goal is to help you connectto real people who found
success turning their sidehustle into a main hustle, and
we hope you can too.
I'm Adam Kaler.
I'm joined by Kyle Stevie, myco-host.
Let's get started, all right.
(00:24):
Welcome back everybody to theSide Hustle City podcast Today's
special guest, jan Olmacy.
Jan, how you doing, man?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Not too bad, Adam.
Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
I was just up in Cleveland a couple of days ago
at a political thing and I waslike dang, I should have hit you
up.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Oh, who are you up repping, or who are you up
seeing?
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Bernie Morenono.
I was at his, like, victoryparty, yeah, yeah, I think he
kind of knew he was gonna win,but he was the only candidate
that came down here and actuallymet with me.
So I was like really, yeah,I'll support him, you know.
I mean, he, you know, came down, talked to me, invited me down
to a uh fundraiser that he washaving in Miami a while back,
kind of the bow Harbor area.
(01:06):
And yeah, man, he came out andI said, hey, if he's willing to
come out and chat with me.
None of the other two were.
So, yeah, throw my support athim, you know.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, heck, yeah.
No, I've been seeing a lot ofhis name circulating around.
That's why I was curious whenyou said who you're going up to
see.
But that's awesome, I lovegoing up to events in Cleveland
I mean, being from Canton, it's,you know, 40 minutes away to
the south side and then you knowyou've got the Indians up there
, you've got the Q.
Well, I guess they're theGuardians.
(01:36):
Now, right, the Guardians,you've got the Q and it's just a
beautiful city.
I think it's underestimated,being the quote unquote mistake
on the lake right.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Well, you could tell there was money up there at one
point.
I remember seeing a thing from1949, the cities with the
highest per capita income.
I think Cleveland was second.
I think Detroit was first,Cleveland was second.
It was wild that sounds aboutright Back when manufacturing
was popping and you know thecars were rolling off the
assembly lines and you know thatwas what drove most of the US
(02:12):
economy back in the day.
You know, and you knowCleveland and Detroit and cities
like that were at the forefrontof it.
Pittsburgh, you know, with alltheir steel and everything, and
that's since gone overseas andnow there's a lot of people who
worked in that industry with nojobs.
So that's.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
That's even how Canton is.
When I look at Canton you drivearound inside of this city.
You know we're kind of like aminor C compared to Cincinnati,
cleveland and Columbus, butstill along that same highway
path.
We used to be the only pit stopbetween Youngstown and Chicago
on old Route 30.
So there's these beautiful oldhotels and you know a lot of
(02:52):
ornate architecture that thecity has actually been doing a
great job of kind of restoringto its original glory, rather
than like the fabricated stuffthat got put over top of it to
make it all look, you know,dystopian in my eyes, but that's
, that's exactly the same waythey can is.
You let the manufacturing andeverything else kind of moved
(03:14):
and now it's a place where it'sa little bit more rural.
I mean, I still think there's alot of stuff hopping here, but
I'm also biased because you knowI was going to come back in.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
So yeah, yeah, I mean you've got the, the big intel
plant coming south of ofcolumbus there and you've got a
lot of things happening.
I met a developer in columbusand he said he just can't find
enough workers and I thinkthat's one problem.
I think ohio could grow.
It's just we don't have enoughpeople to build stuff here and
it's crazy when you think of itas like a manufacturing state.
(03:43):
Now you've got people that havejust ignored a lot of the
trades and you know, everybodythought they had to go to
college.
I mean this is what the seventhlargest state population wise
in the entire country and it'slocated in a great place.
I mean from Cincinnati, you'rea day's drive from a third of
the US population.
I mean we're a few hours fromNashville, a couple hours from
(04:05):
Louisville, an hour and a halffrom Louisville, an hour from
Lexington, an hour and a halffrom Columbus, an hour to Dayton
, three and a half hours toCleveland, an hour and a half
from Indianapolis, four hours toPittsburgh, four and a half
hours, five hours to Chicago.
I mean the list goes on and on.
I mean direction you go, and Imean you're in a great spot.
(04:26):
You got river transport upthere in cleveland they have, uh
, you know the, the lake.
You've got i-70 kind of cuttingthrough the middle of the state
going east and west.
You got i-75 going north andsouth.
I mean it's it's.
It's wild that logisticallythis is a state that's in such a
good spot and the weather's notterrible.
People crack on the weather.
(04:47):
Up in cleveland.
When I left the other day itwas snowing, so and then as soon
as I got to columbus it's likesunny and 20 degrees warmer.
But it's just you got that lakeeffect.
You know of cold and snow andstuff that happens up there.
But it was actually nice to seesnow because we didn't get much
of it down here, uh, this year.
So hardly at all.
Yeah, hardly at all, man, butyeah, so you grew up in canton.
I mean you know there's somefamous people from canton.
(05:10):
I mean that whole area columbus, I'd say well, cincinnati too.
I looked at a stat.
It said some of the highest percapita athletes, professional
athletes, have come from sinceit was st louis was number one,
cincinnati was number two.
Youngstown, believe it or not,was like number four.
That doesn't from since it was.
St Louis was number one,cincinnati was number two,
youngstown, believe it or not,was like number four.
That doesn't surprise me.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
It was wild.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
I mean the people, the athletes that come from the
city, from Cincinnati, dayton,cleveland, youngstown and
Pittsburgh, like this area righthere.
It's unbelievable how manyathletes have come from here.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
And just right here, it's unbelievable how many
athletes have come from here andjust, I think, resilient people
in general.
I talk to people about beingborn and raised in you know,
like kind of consider ourselvesthe Midwest but like Northeast
Ohio is really the area that Ikind of point to Football
culture, crazy wrestling culture, insane A lot of immigrant
populations that moved intothese areas and that mentality
(06:06):
is still very deeply rooted in alot of these cities.
Pick yourself up.
You got to keep moving, you gotto be able to figure things out
.
There's actually a study.
So I spent six, seven years inthe Air National Guard and when
I was in the Air National GuardI originally was going on a
track where I was going to getmy nursing license and I wanted
to apply for something calledthe special operations surgical
teams.
So this was before I started.
(06:28):
Apex and all that other dreamkind of entered, you know,
pretty drastically rapidly and Ihad to pivot paths.
But when I was doing researchinto the special operations
teams, right, inevitably the waythat I approach things in life
is I'm going to know everythingI can possibly about it.
How am I going to approach thisthing from as many different
(06:49):
angles as I can check off all ofthose angles, you know, then go
on the attack.
So I'm reading all of thesestats on what are the things
that get people through specialoperations, training.
You know it's not always rawphysicality, actually.
In fact, most of the often it'snot strictly raw physicality,
right, there's a lot of mentalstuff that goes into lasting
through extremely difficulttimes.
(07:09):
Um, and there's this malt.
There's multiple researchreports out, um, that kind of
point to this area of Ohio andthe Midwest in general.
Um, and then it kind of goes upand follows, like the eastern
coastal cities, but ones thatexperience like really harsh
winters.
That's kind of like the personaof the city that we're inside
(07:30):
of these studies and theyactually saw that individuals
that were born and raised inthose areas had higher
resiliency rates, really, whenthey were exposed to different
temperatures of training andother stuff like that, because
we have the seasons and they canget so intense that it you do
have to go outside and work in a95 degree summer but you also
have to survive a negative 20degree wind chill, yeah, and
(07:53):
figure out how to go on withyour day so I've always thought
that that was interesting, thatyou know people from that area
um we.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
We are more resilient as a group and you got to have
a bigger closet so you got tohave coats.
Some people don't have coats.
I feel bad for people who havecoats.
Where do they put their stuffin the winter?
You're walking around.
You got plenty of pockets.
Yeah, I have to carry aroundlike a man purse in the summer
because I don't have anywhere toput my stuff.
You go down to Miami.
(08:23):
Everybody's got a fanny packkind of across their chest
because they don't have anywhereto put my stuff you go down to
miami, everybody's got a fannypack kind of across their chest
because, that's, you know, theydon't have coats, man, too bad
for them.
Sad they don't get to layer upand have all these different
styles and stuff.
You know it's too hot, so butyeah, man, uh.
So when I first met, you guyswere, uh, you guys were building
wells in africa.
You were working on waterbottles.
You've've been doing, you know,agency work.
(08:44):
You've got your own like thinggoing on there.
You've got your own podcast.
Tell us a little bit, actuallytell us about your podcast.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
OK, yeah.
So, man, it's been what?
Two years probably since wefirst first met at this point,
so, yeah, like starting thejourney with Joe Knopp.
Joe Knopp, um, you know, in theRipple brand, um, which was an
amazing thing to watch.
He graduated from the sameuniversity that I did, uh, met
him very organically, uh, andthen just got to help out with
(09:15):
Ripple from day one throughacquisition, um, which was a
massive blessing, um, to watchit come to that fruition, um,
but also to be able to go on theexperience of, you know,
stepping ground in Uganda andputting my money where my mouth
is and actually going out anddoing the thing was
life-changing and that kind ofplays into like the whole
(09:36):
mission behind the podcast thatI initially started.
At this point I have twodifferent shows that I really
focus on.
The original one that I startedit kind of kicked off the whole
landslide of life alteringdecisions that had to be made
and, you know, pulled me off ofthe trajectory I was on for
nursing and the military and youknow the special operations,
(09:57):
surgical teams and all thatother kind of stuff was called
the apex podcast and that one'sstill running.
We still publish probably twicea month on average, heavily
interview based.
But also we have just me and myco-founder kind of bantering
about the days and nights ofrunning an agency, you know, and
keeping people honest aboutwhat it's actually like, versus
(10:19):
you see these people onInstagram preaching like start a
marketing agency and you'll beable to make a quarter million
dollars a year in six months.
And those people are makingmoney selling courses.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
They're not making money.
Building agencies, I mean,anybody can go on chat.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Somebody said it yeah .
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Build me a course.
Go on chat.
You say, build me a course onhow to build an advertising
agency and it'll build you anentire outline.
You could just go on and make acourse.
These guys are like 24 andthey're building courses on how
to build like multimilliondollar agencies.
Dude, I've worked atmultimillion dollar agencies and
none of them are likesolopreneurs.
(10:53):
They're all right, they're alllike I mean, got a hundred
people working there and yeah,there's a lot of stuff.
The margins can be kind of thin, you know, the more people you
bring on and I get it likeoffshoring and a lot of that
other stuff.
But man, it takes years just tofind the right group of service
providers for your agency, evenif you're going to offshore
(11:13):
stuff.
I mean it's tough and you knowthey'll do everything, jump
through fire hoops just to getyour business.
But then after a few months itkind of starts slowing down,
they stop caring about yourbrand.
But then after a few months itkind of like starts slowing down
, they stop caring about yourbrand, they start slacking off a
little bit and then you knownext thing, your brand suffers.
And not saying that's happeningto everybody, but it's just
things you got to watch out for,and I'm sure you guys talk
about those.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yeah, and that's those.
Actually, a lot of the stuffthat you just brought up are
things that I recall in recentconversations.
You know that we've had on theshow, uh, where we'll talk about
the difference between gettinginto something like a marketing
agency with a legacy mindset oflike wanting to build something
that's going to last you oroutlast you, um, and what it
(11:54):
means to actually buildrelationships as a marketing
agency in a core area, um, andwhy it's important to to lean
into the trust of thosecustomers that are.
They're trusting theirbusinesses with you.
A lot of our customers they're$3,000 a month in ad spend or
whatever they're trusting uswith for optimizing their SEO or
(12:14):
whatever is going on.
These are three to $5 millionmom and pop companies that are
family owned, 20, 30 years, youknow.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
So when they say I am trusting you to keep my leads
alive, that means something tothem, yeah, um well, something
that they've worked hard tobuild for a while, and I mean,
I'm sure they have employees andthey got to pay these employees
and that's one of the hardestthings about our families
exactly and now that becomesyour responsibility.
So yeah, I mean, if their leadsstart to slow down or something
(12:44):
happens or, uh, you know yourebuild a website.
Next thing you know, you getyou didn't do the redirects and
they lose a bunch of traffic orbacklinks.
Uh, you've got some issues andthey've got some issues, and if
they can't pay their employees,then I mean it's.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
There's a whole bunch of stuff that I could think
about that is not good If you'resomebody that is, you know,
putting out these courses andit's one thing that drives me
nuts when I read these coursesis like, oh, there's going to be
this churn rate.
Like, oh, it's fine if youscrew over a couple of people
along the way, Like you got tobreak a couple of eggs to really
make an omelet.
I will not argue with the factthat there are customers that
(13:19):
become misal aligned or that youmess up on and you will churn
like that's inevitable.
That's doing business right.
There's people that are goingto like working with you, People
that aren't going to likeworking with you, people that
are a fit at a time, and thenyou outgrow them.
You have to figure out how toeither raise their account or
offload them.
That's the natural by-productdoing business.
What I have an issue with isgoing into business with the
(13:40):
mentality that there are goingto be a couple of people that
I'm going to try to screw overalong the way.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Well, and not only that dude like that's it's kind
of messed up that they wouldeven say that but the personal
relationship.
The reason a lot of people useagencies like ours is because
they can call you, they can talkto you, they can email you, you
get back to them, you explainthings to them, because most
people are running whatevertheir business is.
They don't know much aboutmarketing.
(14:06):
They know a little bit, right,but they don't know you know how
to build a proper funnel, orthey don't know how to, how to
change the code on their websiteor any of that kind of stuff.
Right, they need you to helpthem with that.
And what I hear from a lot ofthese people is oh, just
automate the whole damn thing.
You automate everything.
Just use this software and thatsoftware and use some zaps and
do this and do that and use AIand use offshore people and all
(14:29):
this and that, but you take, youjust become another digital
agency.
At that point You're not.
You lose the, the, the thingthat people want to pay for
because they could do that samething.
Right, and a lot of them do.
They just go build a Wixwebsite and they use ChatGPT to
do the content and what the helldo they need you for?
(14:49):
Right?
Right, it's the understandingof the things like do they know
about titles and descriptions?
Do they know how to properlywrite those?
Do they know how to the rightkeyword density?
Do they know which keywords toput in there?
Have they done any research ontheir competitor sites?
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Like there's a bunch of stuff that they just like
they kind of leave out you know,yeah, yeah, agreed, and then a
lot of it is the customerservice piece, which, I mean,
kind of takes me back to likethe second half of what we talk
about on the on the apex podcast.
So you know, the one episodestyle is really just our banter.
But we do have an interviewstyle episode on that podcast as
(15:26):
well where our premise wasordinary people accomplishing
extraordinary things.
That was kind of the thoughtprocess, Right, and we try to
find these individuals that havetaken something that either
neither of us have ever thoughtof.
Like I'm just mind blown at thefact that they were able to
pull it off and I'm like, wow,you found a market where I
didn't even know there was amarket.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Isn't that wild when people bring something up and
you're like holy crap, how did Inot think of that?
But I love that feeling though,that feeling of like just
getting smacked with ignorance.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
You're like, wow, yeah, there's a whole wide world
out there that I am not awareof.
That's right that this personjust tapped into.
So we find them and we bringthem on and we just start to
dive in, like, what are thesethings that you're able to do?
And over and over and overagain we've done over 200
interviews now, and I know thatyou know this is a podcaster too
(16:18):
you start to see these goldenthreads, right.
They kind of just tricklethrough every single person's
story over and over.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
I'm interested.
What are those that you'veuncovered?
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Yeah, so one of the ones very pertinent to what
we're talking about right now isjust, you know, you constantly
get this idea of being acontrarian thinker, being the
latest and greatest.
You have to be the first one tothe new thing Right.
And over and over and overagain, I've heard from people
(16:47):
that are they, don't, don'tbreak it, or, if it's not broken
, don't fix it.
In some senses, and the onethat comes up the most often is
what you just tapped on, whichis one-on-one relationships and
customer service and justshowing up for your customers
when they need it and not tryingto automate them out of a
(17:08):
process or treating them likethey're a nuisance.
That's another thread that kindof comes up is like customers
can feel when you're likebothered by them asking a
question or needing assistanceor something.
Yeah, exactly, I've seen thatover and over again across, you
know, trash removal, marketingagencies, supply chain logistics
consultants, roofers, likeevery industry, every business
(17:37):
owner that I've ever talkedabout or talked to, they don't,
you know, some of them bring uptech, but not everybody does.
Every single one of them bringsup that personal relationship
with customers.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Yeah, and it's something that when you think
about what you buy, it's weird.
People don't make thattransition when they own a
business, right, it's like Iwant to automate the hell out of
it.
I just want to automate it,make it super fast.
But think about it.
Mcdonald's is automated, right,but people go to Chick-fil-A
because the people are nice.
I mean you could go getsomething at McDonald's.
(18:04):
I mean the food's not as goodeither, but I mean people will
comment on how nice the peopleare at Chick-fil-A.
It's like a thing, right, thatthey train their employees way
better and everybody's nice,everybody's sweet.
I've noticed, you know what,since that kind of has been
pervasive around the internetand you know, just in Americana
(18:24):
in general, people know thisabout Chick-fil-A I've noticed
the people at McDonald's aregetting nicer at the drive-thru
and I think that's there.
I you know, I don't knowanybody works in pressure.
I don't know anybody that worksat McDonald's, so I don't know,
but I'm guessing that there wassome pressure and they said hey,
look, we need to start trainingour people better and they need
to be nicer and smile more andthings like that.
But yeah, even thoseexperiences.
(18:46):
Well, even a company that'sspent its entirety just
automating everything,automating their food processes.
I mean because when you buy aMcDonald's franchise, you're
buying a process.
Right, you're buying a systemand a process and you're not
necessarily buying, you know,the food I mean.
You are, but it's a process, iswhat you're buying?
You're buying one of the bestprocesses in business, and what
(19:09):
separates them?
What?
What could Chick-fil-A do?
Oh, we just got another chickensandwich, right.
Like, what do we do?
How do we stand out?
And it was with customerservice, I think.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Yeah, oh, agreed 100% .
And that actually brings me toanother.
That's a another golden threadthat has consistently popped up
is you choose what you want tobe known for, yeah, and then you
become that thing Like I I'mgoing to butcher this, but I
think the way that I had itexplained to me by one of my
(19:39):
mentors named John Koontz uh,he's a great guy Um, he kind of
planted this seed in my headwhere he was like if you see
things where people are sayingfake it till you make it ignore
that advice, he's he, he alwayswould change that to embody it
until you become it ohinteresting if you fake it till
you make it, you just end upliving somebody else's you feel
(19:59):
like a fraud too.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yeah, because you're like, oh, I'm faking it instead
of I'm embracing it.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Yeah, and so he was.
He was a big one with me whereI didn't want to automate a
whole bunch of stuff early on.
You know I was willing to dothat in the trenches work.
I was willing to do some ofthis manual labor.
And a lot of my friends in theagency space were why are you
going to physical networkingevents with a small group of
local business owners?
Like, why are you doing thesethings?
Why are you doing these things?
Shouldn't you just be sendingout?
You know mastering your emailautomation sequence and getting
out bulk.
(20:31):
You know numbers and then, okay, 500 people get the same
message and you know, a hundredpeople convert here on email one
, blah, blah, blah, blah, godown the funnel.
But in my mind I was like, no,I want to.
Early on in the business I waslike, no, I want to it.
Early on in the business I'm,I'm feeling called to invest
more in the personalrelationships.
And John would always tell mecause.
I would feel this impostersyndrome where I'm like maybe I
(20:54):
just do need to fake it till Imake it.
I actually don't care as muchabout this stuff I I could see
where some of it's valuable.
It's not really working for me,but maybe I just need to push
harder and do this more andit'll start working all of a
sudden.
And when he kind of said, youknow, embody it till you become
it, to me in our mentorshipsessions it was really lean into
those strengths because they'restanding out to you for a
(21:16):
reason.
Maybe you're seeing stuff inthe market that's you know.
I see the value of you know,pontificating your brand on
social media, massivelydecreasing Right, I tell people
all the time social is not meantto be a platform where you're
shouting out a cliff at youraudience.
It's meant to be a place whereyou have conversations with
(21:37):
people.
So if you're not likingcommenting on other people's
stuff and you're just postingall the time, it's not social.
You're just yelling at anewsfeed.
And the same thing applies inthat real life situation.
I saw that social was havingissues and thought that Facebook
(21:57):
was going to get sued andprivacy was going to be an issue
and all this other stuffmultiple years ago.
And now I talked to some of myfriends that have agencies where
their entire business model wasbased off of Facebook ads and
other stuff like that andthey're like how are you
maintaining revenues?
I'm like well cause, I haverelationships.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Yeah In my community, like that's the thing you got
to own where you're at I meanthe fact that you're in Canton
but you're very sophisticatedwhen it comes to marketing and
you know what the hell you'redoing, you know.
I think that's a big benefit,especially guys, if you're
listening and you're not in ahuge city like I'm in a pretty
big metro area.
I mean this is the biggestmetro area in the state of ohio.
(22:33):
There's three million somethingpeople in this area if you
include dayton.
So I mean I could do businesshere.
I could drive up an hour 45minutes and do business in
dayton.
There's a couple cities inbetween.
Big suburbs in between daytonand cinc could go down to
Lexington.
I could.
I mean, like I said before,there's a bunch of cities around
(22:54):
here.
But I could really own NorthernKentucky because my building is
here in Northern Kentucky.
If I say ad agency inCincinnati, my physical location
is actually in CovingtonKentucky.
It's not in Cincinnati, right?
So but I could own CovingtonKentucky because there's not a
whole lot of agencies inCovington.
There's a bunch of them over inCincinnati because you got
Procter and Gamble to competewith these big guys out of New
York and all that stuff.
(23:16):
But I do and I have for 13,almost 14 years now.
(23:37):
But own your local market.
Go out like Jan, like you'retelling people, go out, network,
meet people, join a B&I groupif you got to.
But own your local market,build a reputation.
You never know when that onesmall little client, that
flooring laminate guy or theHVAC guy you don't know who he
(24:00):
knows, the HVAC guy's going outhere putting in commercial HVAC
in bigger companies.
Oh wow, how'd you find me?
Oh, I saw your website.
It looked great.
Oh, yeah, you know who did that.
Jan did that website.
Oh, who's Jan?
Oh, call him up.
If you guys are looking to do awebsite, next thing you know
you got a million dollar website.
So it's things like that.
People don't understand theseonline relationships that you
can form.
Those aren't going to be asstrong and you're pulling in
(24:22):
clients from all over thecountry those aren't going to be
as strong as your local ones.
So I would almost say whatyou're saying and repeat it own
your local, have personalrelationships in your own
community, and I think those aregoing to be kind of the base of
your agency, of your agencyrevenue.
I would say Agreed.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
I love hearing that, especially from somebody that's
been in the agency space longer,right, because I can give it
the perspective of going intoyear six, and so you know we're
relatively young.
It's taken us all of the sixyears to really earn the trust
in the market.
But to know, you know, in mymind I'm just building the
foundation.
I know that we want to gobigger.
(25:02):
I know that we want to have abigger clients that are.
You know, we have relationshipsin Chicago.
We do business in NYC, we dobusiness in Miami, which is the
beautiful part about havingthose relationships.
But every single time one ofthose contracts cancels early or
does something else.
I have this rock solid 30client base that I could drive
to any of their offices.
(25:23):
There's been times where Icouldn't make payroll if I
wouldn't have been able to driveto a location and pick up a
check that day and deposit it.
And clients were like, yeah,we'll cut this a week early.
We got you To make ends meet inthe early years and those
relationships are irreplaceablewhen stuff like that comes up.
(25:45):
And what it ended up doing,because we were willing to
follow through.
They did that favor to us andwe continue to treat each other
right.
I'm not nervous going into, youknow, an election year and all
this other kind of stuff becauseI really feel like those
relationships are all rock solidall the way around.
So at a bare minimum I know wehave enough revenue coming in at
this point going into year sixthat I can cover all of the
(26:06):
bills, the benefits for my teamand payroll stably without
really needing to expand.
We can add in those biggeraccounts and I am pursuing those
larger accounts at this pointto start continuing forward
momentum.
But building that relationshipis the only reason why I can
look at my P&L every month andbe like, oh, I have some freedom
(26:27):
to like actually work on thebusiness, not just in it fight
or flight mode, trying to drawin contracts or feel like my
clients are only month to month.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Yeah, well, tell people, I mean, the challenges.
I think a lot of people don'tunderstand the challenges with
cashflow.
Do you, do you have a line ofcredit with the bank?
Like, how do you managecashflow when you're dealing
with situations like youmentioned, having to go pick up
a check?
That can be really, reallystressful, especially payrolls
creeping up.
There's not that much in thebank right now.
You're trying to get theclients for whatever they can
(27:00):
hey, hurry up and pay me, I gotto pay my guys kind of mentality
.
But do you have some kind of aline of credit?
Or do you use credit cards?
Or what do you do?
And I know a lot of people wantto know this because you know,
even people that have been inthe business for a long time
probably don't understand asolution.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Right, yeah.
So I mean early on, just to bestraight with everybody
listening like we did years onethrough 3.5, no cashflow
management, right, I came from anursing and a clinical psych
background, served in the AirForce, had no traditional
business training, so I justkind of dove in and the company
kind of started on accident.
(27:37):
Right, I made my first sixfigures as a solo and just
started hiring people.
I'm like I'm going to figurethis out.
If I step on a few bear trapsalong the way and I can stitch
myself up, I'll be fine.
So the first three and a halfyears was were scary.
I was in that fight or flightmode, right, landing contracts
for whatever we could land themwith, because I hired people too
early and, you know, tried todelegate too soon and
(27:59):
encountered all of theseproblems early on.
That put me into a place whereI couldn't even see past a
three-month mark.
Sometimes it was even atwo-week mark.
Are we going to make it throughthe next two weeks Sending out
mass cold outreaches or DMsgetting on the phone?
Actually, one of our originalconversations two, three years
(28:24):
ago now was in one of thosevalleys where I'm like what am I
doing?
Why do I want to be here Torealize that all of that
existential stress I was feelingwas just something called poor
cashflow management was such afreeing revelation that I was
like, oh, that's actually aproblem that a lot of people
face.
I just need to figure out howto fix it and make myself more
(28:45):
resilient to it.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Do you think it's just your problem, Like you're
on an island and it's justsomething that you're dealing
with.
But no, every business,especially small businesses,
deal with that on a regularbasis and the problem is, unless
you've got a you know, advancedbusiness degree or you worked
in accounting or something likethat, you don't even know what
the name of the problem is sothat you could look up a
solution for it.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Dude, yep, put the words in my mouth.
That's exactly how it felt.
And then, when I rememberhaving that realization, like,
oh, it's like when you buy a newcar, all of a sudden you see 40
blue Hondas everywhere.
Right, you're like, oh, thatmakes sense, okay, like it
actually is everywhere and it'sbeen there the whole time I just
hadn't bought the car.
So years you know, 3.5 to now weprogressively implementing
(29:30):
stuff that is really alleviated.
It, I mean a.
We set a profit margin minimumfor any accounts that we were
going to bring on and reallystay diligent to that and had to
get used to the fact that, eventhough our nervous system said,
take every client you can,there's actually more growth in
creating this place ofselectiveness.
(29:51):
You know when people in thecommunity are talking about, oh,
I need to get to here and thenApex will let me become a client
, you know it does something andit makes your organization feel
more sought after in a way.
I think is what ended uphappening for us.
The second thing that we starteddoing that was more inward
think is what ended up happeningfor us.
The second thing that westarted doing that was more
inward facing is I have a greatops guy and he looked at stuff
(30:14):
and he said well, me as founder,salesman, visionary brain, not
process oriented guy was likewell, I'm just going to invoice
people.
When we invoice people andit'll be at the end of the month
and some of it will be at thebeginning of the month.
But there's no really rhyme orreason.
Like, whenever the sale closes,I'm going to send out the
invoice so we can draw in cash,which was necessary in some of
(30:35):
those early days, like I said,just trying to make payroll.
It's like I'm going to invoiceyou on Monday, please pay by
Friday.
Please, for the love of God,pay by Friday.
But as soon as we got to aplace where we could say, hey,
invoices go out on the first forclient subtype A, they go out
on the 15th for client subtype B, oh, everybody's on a net 10.
(30:55):
And then cash flow is nowconstantly we get a big bump on
the first, we get a well fromthe between the first and the
seventh and then we get a bigbump between the 15th and the
21st or whatever that secondseven day period is, and that's
been fantastic for predictingstability and being able to look
(31:15):
at all of our metrics and thinkOK, we have X number of Google
ads accounts, those all getinvoiced at the end of the month
.
If we want to increase our endof the month stability, we need
to land some more Google adsaccounts.
If we have these one-offprojects or big web dev jobs or
whatever else, those are alwaysinvoiced on the 15th.
(31:37):
So those types of jobs, if wewant to beef up our middle of
the month, we land those, andthen one-off projects just kind
of fall in between there.
But they all get grouped intothose two groups.
So that was probably the secondthing.
And then to your point with theline of credit.
Thankfully I've never had todip into one since I've gotten
one.
But as soon as I was able toapply for one, I applied for one
(31:59):
that was essentially coveringthree months of payroll, oh and
kept.
You know, I have never touchedit.
The goal is to not have toutilize it, but I think a
by-product that I wasn'texpecting that I was actually it
was holding me back fromaccessing that line of credit
(32:20):
was oh, you know, if I have itI'm going to use it needlessly,
or I might try to lean into it.
You know, maybe I don't want tohave that option.
What I wasn't accounting for isthe amount of bandwidth.
The potential anxiety of notmaking a payroll was eating up
in my brain and how much morestuff I would be able to
(32:42):
accomplish if that just wasn't afactor.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
I'm not worried about whether or not I touch it, but
knowing that it's there lets mebe a little bit more risk not
risk averse, but a little bitmore risky on the growth side.
Gives me the chance to like goto sleep and get good rest on a
nightly basis, just knowing thatthat thing is in the back, yeah
, and that our cash flows arestable.
(33:05):
So those are probably the threethings like yeah and that our
cash flows are stable.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
So those are probably the three things like our
perception of the communitygrouping invo every year of all
your clients because they sayyou know, 10% of your clients
(33:36):
are like 80% of your revenue,right, or something like that,
and they're, and they're theones that don't mess with you as
much, like they don't need asmuch from you.
Where you have, say, 80, saylike 60% of your clients are
just a complete pain in the buttand not really worth your time.
Like the amount of time youspend with them is not worth it.
So do you believe in firingclients?
Speaker 2 (33:58):
I do, and I have um and and I say fire very lightly.
I have referred them to bettersuited.
Ah, there you go, yes Is how Iphrase it.
So in our name, apexCommunications Network.
The reason why I chose thatname is because it allowed me to
lean into the tagline.
Our duty is to find you asolution, whether that's
in-house or elsewhere.
That's our, our go-to.
(34:20):
And I think about this becauseI'm like.
I came from the medical field,right?
So as an RN, I see physiciansall the time saying hey, I may
not be the best surgeon for this, you need to go talk to
so-and-so.
He's a specialist in cardiac orthis needs to happen here, this
needs to happen here.
So I explain to people.
We're like a primary careprovider.
(34:40):
You come in and talk to us, I'mgoing to draw some labs, I'm
going to give you a head-to totoe observation, we're going to
take your blood pressure, makesure you do some checks, and
then I'm going to figure outwhether or not you need a Z-Pak,
which we can totally handlein-house, or if I need to send
you to a gut surgeon because youhave a tumor.
You know, that's a totallydifferent conversation.
(35:02):
Yeah, right.
But it makes people feelcomfortable because even when we
have to let them go which Ihave cleansed the clients list
in the past I'm in the processof doing that right now with a
couple of accounts because weset new goals for next quarter
yeah, I'm able to just tell themhey, this is a part of our
mission statement.
I'm not, you know, leaving youin the dust.
(35:23):
I'm setting you up withsomebody that's better suited to
take care of you with whereyou're at Um and that's that's
worked out really well.
Um, on the second half of thatlike, how often do you do that?
How do you evaluate that?
Um, we personally are on anevery six month schedule um, we
look at our clients list and Iactually learned this in a
(35:46):
curriculum that I'm now the headof community for called indie
collective, which is essentiallylike a 10-week accelerator
program um for solopreneurs,agency owners, um coaches, uh,
consultants, uh.
It walks you through designingyour life around what they call
the three L's your living,lifestyle and loving
(36:06):
relationships and then takes youall the way through setting up
your business, prototyping yourservice, streamlining your back
office and developing abulletproof psychology is what
they call it.
And what one thing that they'vebrought up.
That was revolutionary for mewhen I was a student this is a
great realization.
Way before I started doing thehead of community, work was
(36:28):
something that they called their80-20 customer audit.
So 80-20 principle is prettywidely known, right, and you
kind of referenced it.
20% of your clients are goingto bring you 80% of your revenue
, so how do you figure out whofits in what bucket?
So every six months we sit downand we go over this sheet that I
got essentially from the IndieCollective program and it asks
(36:51):
you a couple of questions.
It's list all of the clients.
List how much you've made fromthat client for the year, list
how many hours you've had towork on that project
collectively, and then askeverybody that is on the project
team for that client to ratetheir satisfaction of the
project on a scale of one tofive.
And it asks you a couple.
(37:12):
It asks you in a couple ofdifferent ways, right, like how
satisfied are you with clientcommunication?
How open do you believe theclient is to improvements?
Um, there's a couple ofdifferent things that it asks,
but at the end of that you canlook and say, hey, this client
is really only in the 40thpercentile as far as the money
that it makes us, and we'reextremely unhappy with working
(37:35):
with this customer.
Yes, and not just me, but likemy team members who are boots on
the ground doing this work,because it's not just me anymore
, we have a staff of five.
So I'm looking at them.
I'm like do you want to?
Do you find yourself gettinganxious when this person calls?
Do you want to be on?
Do you want to genuinely seethis person's business succeed?
Cause if you don't, we're doingthem a disservice.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Yeah, but like you said, send them off to somebody
else.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Yeah, that may be more passionate about what
they're doing.
So that's really the onlycontext that we've ever had for,
like us firing a client hasbeen they failed an 80, 20 audit
and kind of look at it and say,okay, now we have a quarter to
start having a conversationabout how to reallocate this
person.
And that's also important.
Like, you have to set timebound goals for yourself after
(38:27):
you have the realization,otherwise it'll just end up
being an infinite thorn in theside.
Give yourself a runway, say Iknow that this is a problem.
Now I'm going to try to figureout what to do in X amount of
time.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Well, and also you got to keep track of things in
your agency, otherwise you can'teven do a report like that.
And when you're a solopreneur,when you're going out on your
own, you're just like, ah, it'sall me, like it's my time.
But you do have to value yourown time and you have to keep
track of the amount of time youspend on things, because you may
not think that email that yousent should be billable or the
(39:02):
proposal you put together.
Obviously, most of the timethose aren't billable, but you'd
be surprised how much time youspend on just administrative
tasks for a particular client.
And if you're not keeping trackof that stuff, you can't even
do that report you're talkingabout.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Right.
Well, and I mean kind of.
The reason I like this reportis because all you really need
to know is who the client is,how much money you've made from
them and what the sentiment isabout your relationship with
that client.
So it kind of points you in theright direction.
But to your point, when itcomes down to actually making a
critical decision, yeah, you canlook at that and be like
(39:39):
everybody feels sad when they'retalking to this customer.
Yeah, you can look at that andbe like everybody feels sad when
they're talking to thiscustomer.
But if they're an 80thpercentile customer and you're
just going through a difficultseason of work, then that person
that you can infer based on theactual metrics yeah, okay, this
person is actually probablybetter suited staying on the
client book, like we're justhaving a tough project with them
right now.
That's right.
(40:00):
But if you don't have thosenumbers to lean back on, you're
just going to base everythingoff of emotion and that's its
own rabbit hole of bad decisionmaking, I think.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Yeah, I think so, and you got to have tough skin too.
You can't just, I mean, there'sa lot of people nowadays are
like, well, if a client's meanto me, I'm just going to cancel
them.
But you know what?
But you know what?
You're providing them a service?
I mean, are you always nice toeverybody who provides you a
service?
I mean there's people out herewho are complete dicks to
servers at restaurants and theyexpect everyone to be nice to
them when they have their ownservice business.
(40:31):
And it's just not how the worldworks.
I mean, sometimes you're goingto have people that are
difficult, just tougher,thicker-skinned people that are
used to working a certain way.
Uh, you know, I mean I could, I, I'm sure there's a lot of guys
like that up in Canton andCleveland.
Uh, that are tough guys thatare, you know, hard nose.
You know probably gamble, smokecigars, go to gentlemen's clubs
(40:55):
and, uh, you know, worked inthe steel industry at some point
, you know, and and those guys,they don't, they don't got time
for BS.
You know they can sniff out BS,or from the streets, you know,
and you're going to have thoseclients that are tough like that
, or ladies who have foughttheir way up the corporate
ladder, who've had to be toughthe whole way up, and you know
they don't take nonsense fromanybody.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
You're going to have people like that, um, and, and
you got to have tougher skinwhen you start an agency I I
agree with that and I know youcan relate to this too, because
I've seen you talk about itmultiple times.
But I think that what you justtalked about right there tough
skin, being able to stay genuineto yourself even in crazy
circumstances I've, you know,like I was mentioning earlier,
(41:38):
we've now done work wildlyoutside of canton.
You know London, chicago, newYork, all those different cities
and cultures that you encounterand one thing I get
consistently from people istheir appreciation for the
directness and honesty that I'mable to bring into conversations
, because they're like you'renever trying to play an angle,
you're trying to tell me whatthe situation is, and I really
(42:01):
think that that is a gift thatbeing raised under the median
household income average gave meright.
I look around and I'm able tobe genuine and honest about
stuff, because I'm so baffledthat I'm at where I'm at, that
I'm just grateful to be here.
And so, when it comes toforming those relationships with
people, I'm not thinking well,how can I squeeze another half a
(42:23):
percent into this?
Or how can I make sure thatthis gets counted towards X, y
or Z?
Okay, you have to draw a lineat some point.
You can't just give awayeverything for free, right?
Obviously you have to make aliving.
You got to have a business.
But I talked to some of thesepeople that are, you know,
example a construction companyworked with out of Chicago, very
(42:44):
direct, straight to the point,very high effort, very high
demand, and we weren't used toworking with that type of client
when we first started workingwith them.
And I could have looked at itone of two ways.
I could have looked at it asI'm going to get out of this as
soon as I possibly can becausethis client's not a fit, I chose
(43:08):
to look at it Like I signed upfor this for a year.
What's the worst that I couldlearn out of putting myself in
this situation for a year?
Yeah, you know, it's tough,it's new, it's a group of people
I don't know, it's a culturefrom a city that I've never
lived in.
There's all this other stuffthat goes to it, but approaching
it from that place of, likedamn dude, I'm just so grateful
to be in this room.
I'm going to deal with it for ayear.
Yeah, we ended up parting waysat the end of that year.
(43:31):
I'm not saying to just stay inthat relationship for a decade,
you know.
But I also want to get across,because I think I've been saying
a lot of you know stay.
But I also want to get across,because I think I've been saying
a lot of you know stay true toyourself and stay true to the
things that make you comfortable.
That sometimes those situationsthat put you in that uncomfort
(43:52):
zone are what actuallyspearheads you.
It forced me to come up withbetter procedures.
It forced me to come up withprettier PowerPoint
presentations.
It forced me to understand howto communicate to an executive
team that has zero time for youand your problems.
You know, there's all of theseother supplemental things that I
was able to draw in and that'sa huge learning experience and
that's something you have tolearn by doing.
Speaker 1 (44:13):
You can't really have somebody teach a course on that
and it makes you a better ownerat the end of the day.
Now I want to talk aboutsomething pro project work
versus retainer work.
A lot of people don'tunderstand it.
Like, when you start at youragency, chances are you're just
going to be doing project workfor people, like you'll be doing
(44:34):
a logo, here and there you'llbe doing maybe one website,
forum and uh, but over time, ifyou start to have employees, you
need retainers you need.
So what are some of the typesof services that you sell on
retainer?
Like you mentioned this guy inChicago you, you had him.
It was a year long project.
Was that a retainer job?
(44:56):
What kind of retainer type ofservices do you guys offer?
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Um.
So I think that, to your point,when you're starting out, uh,
you know, take you typicallyspecialize in one area and you
start to branch right.
I know people that started inweb dev.
I know people that started inpaid.
I know people that started insocial, as graphic designers,
and you know they're all agencyowners now, one way or the other
.
They just started with adifferent skills set.
So you're absolutely right,like early on, when you're doing
(45:24):
those projects, I think youhaven't had enough experience
inside of the arena yet toreally know what pairs with what
right.
You're not a what do they callit?
A sommelier, like the wine.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
Yeah, you're a logo designer, right?
Or you're a web designer, right?
Yeah, right, exactly.
You're not a marketing expertor a funnel development person
or, you know, a growth hacker.
You're none of those things,you're just know how to design
things.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
Exactly, exactly, um.
And so, by no fault of your own, you're looking at that
client's problems through thatlens 24, seven, like everything
that you see that clientstruggling with, you're going to
buy.
Again, no fault of your own,it's just a lack of knowledge or
things to connect with.
You're going to be thinking, ohwell, I bet I could fix that
(46:10):
through modifying theirSquarespace or doing X, y or Z.
Like, let's say, you're a webdesigner, right, um?
And then you start to dive intoSEO and all this other stuff
and it's like, oh, I actuallydon't need to redesign the
website, I need to put goodcontent on the site if I want to
do X, y or Z.
And then, oh well, now I cansell a website and SEO package.
If I build them their website,then they can.
(46:31):
I can charge them $500 a monthor a thousand dollars a month to
create content for their site.
Whoa, there's a retainer rightthere.
Look at that.
Um, you start as a graphicdesigner, right?
Maybe you learn how to dosocial media management.
That's a slippery slope,because now everybody expects a
social media manager to wearlike 40 hats.
But let's say it's a utopianworld, right?
(46:52):
You could say, oh, I can designthe posts for you and I can
post them.
I'll do the design as a project, I'll charge you X amount for
10.
And then boom, here's thisretainer.
I'll actually post them for youon a monthly basis for X amount
of dollars.
That's kind of how we started.
So we just started experimentingwith like what, what services
pair nicely together.
(47:12):
You know, what meal do I wantto serve with this glass of wine
?
And then, as we kept tinkering,we started to realize people
were employing, like some of thesmall businesses in our area
dude, it's wild to me thatthey're employing like three or
four different agencies.
Like they have one agency fortheir Google my Business because
(47:33):
they got upsold by somenational brand that called them
on the phone.
And then they have one agencymanaging their SEO they're not
talking to the Google myBusiness people.
Then they have one agencymanaging their SEO they're not
talking to the Google myBusiness people.
And then their PPC guy is somedude that oversees that.
You know they fell into a salesfunnel on and none of them are
talking to each other None ofthem.
So all the strategies are goingin different directions.
(47:54):
And once I had that realizationthat that's what small
businesses were dealing with.
I started walking in and our toptwo ways of kicking projects
off now are redesigning yourwebsite or doing something that
we call an SEO refresh, which isgoing into your current site.
We're not really like buildingyou a new one from scratch.
We're just optimizing it anddoing a bunch of competitive
(48:16):
research and helping youactually rank for stuff that you
want to rank for, and it comeswith X number of pieces of
content that we upload into thesite to help, depending on the
package that you purchase, andthen following up each one of
those services.
I have basically a.
I wouldn't say it's like a menu, because they're heavily
recommended, but more like whenyou go to the doctor's office
(48:39):
and it's like here's all thedifferent meds that could
potentially solve your problem.
Let's talk about the risks andbenefits and costs of each of
them, right, yeah, and so thenI'm able to look at them and say
, okay, seo takes a little bitlonger.
Your cashflow is kind of poopright now.
Maybe we do paid ads to getyour cashflow up.
And then you invest in SEO alittle bit later, right, smart,
(49:09):
invest in SEO a little bit later, right, um, smart strategy.
And I have that a little bit ofa custom conversation with them
and I'm willing to give awaywhat I perceive as a strategic
insight to them for free,because it's so asinine to me
that I'm fine giving that awaybecause it's it's just like a
little aha Right.
Then, when they put me onretainer and they're like wow,
we're getting leads from thiswebsite, we've built trust there
.
Hey, can we start runningGoogle ads with you?
Can we fire this other agency?
100%, come on over, we'll helptake care of you there.
(49:32):
And I've seen this acrossdozens of accounts.
At this point, getting in withsomething simple like SEO or I'm
not trying to say that SEO issimple for all my SEO people out
there but getting in withsomething that is defined and
executable, like an SEO contentpackage or a website redesign or
something like that that'stangible, it has a start and end
(49:53):
date, building trust, findingthat point along that project
cycle where the client is justlike wow, you guys are killing
it, you're answering all mycalls, you're doing everything
else.
Have a 30 minute conversationwith them and say what, what
else are you dealing with?
Like, I know I've heard throughthese conversations that we've
been having that you're dealingwith these other agencies or
you're unhappy with this, you'reunhappy with this.
(50:14):
Can you just vent to me aboutthe problems that you're facing?
Don't try to sell them on thatcall.
Just let them vent.
And then dollars to donuts.
Within a week they're eitherhitting you up and saying, hey,
I know that we had thatconversation.
Could you actually send me aquote Like, what if we were to
do that through you guys?
Yeah, or you're following upwith them and you're saying, hey
, based on that conversation wehad, I genuinely think and this
(50:37):
is what makes it less salesy,because you now have genuine
context I genuinely believe thatthese services would do you a
service and we could puteverything under one house.
So all you have to do is payone invoice and you know that
everything's getting taken careof, and that's kind of been our
upsell strategy across all ofthem.
So it starts as that one-offproject and it almost always
(51:01):
ends up in that you know MRR,monthly, recurring, whatever you
want to call that retainerproject so, yeah, and how?
Speaker 1 (51:08):
how do people reach out to you what?
What's, what's?
How do they find your podcast?
How do they find your the urlfor your company?
You know, linkedin, all thatgood stuff yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:20):
So if you want to find me on LinkedIn, it's Jan.
Looks like Jan J-A-N.
Uh, all in the C-A-L-M-A-S-Y.
Um, I do.
Linkedin's probably the mostactive platform that I'm on
these days.
I do a lot of posting on there.
Um, like I was mentioning, ontop of the agency stuff, I'm
also the head of community fororganization called Indie
(51:40):
Collective, so constantlysharing stories about other
entrepreneurs, solopreneurs,teams that are out there doing
cool random stuff in the world.
So that's what you'll find ifyou scroll through my LinkedIn
feed.
The podcast the two that I hostthe most often are called the
Apex Podcast, and that logo islike a little triangle.
And then the other one's calledthe Modern Independent, and
(52:02):
that one is way more focused onpeople.
I like to think of it passingthrough the gateway into the
freelance economy, right.
What is that journey like toenter, Starting off as somebody
just doing gigs, and then nextthing you know you have three
streams of income and you'reactually more resilient than
somebody that has a full-timejob 100%.
What are those stories like?
(52:23):
So those are the two podcaststhat you could find me as well.
Speaker 1 (52:26):
And they're on any platform.
Anywhere people go to listen topodcasts, right?
Speaker 2 (52:30):
Spotify, apple podcasts pretty much everything
that you can think of.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
Awesome, jan.
This has been great.
I'm glad that I got to hear alittle bit more about your story
and where you guys are at rightnow.
I'm glad that I got to hear alittle bit more about your story
and where you guys are at rightnow.
I'm on the same page with you.
I mean, it's tough running anagency but you know, people just
got to fight through it.
Speaker 2 (52:52):
People got to listen to folks like you and I listen
to more podcasts.
Listen to your podcasts and bemore prepared.
Speaker 1 (52:57):
Agreed, agreed, awesome man.
Well, thank you, sir, for beingon today.
All right, adam thanks forhaving me.
I'll talk to you soon, see ya.
Thanks for joining us on thisweek's episode of side hustle
city.
Well, you've heard from ourguests.
Now let's hear from you.
Join our community on Facebook,side hustle city.
It's a group where people shareideas, share their
inspirational stories andmotivate each other to be
(53:17):
successful and turn their sidehustle into their main hustle.
We'll see you there and we'llsee you next week on the show.
Thank you.
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