The Many Hats of PMs in Digital Agencies - TJ Pitre - S2 Episode#11

In this episode, we are joined by Mr. TJ Pitre, the founder, and CEO of Southleft, LLC,  a leading front-end application design and development agency. With two decades of experience in managing and designing large-scale responsive websites, TJ is an expert in executing front-end strategies with a mobile-first approach. Join us as we delve into his creativity, attention to detail, and unwavering commitment to delivering exceptional user experiences.

Discussion Points - 

Q1. What is the most difficult thing you have done in your life? 1:55

Q2. What sort of myth bogus strategy misconception would you like to set the record straight on? 14:44

Q3. Do you personally check in with all clients or is it selected clients? 22:37

Q4. How do you ensure that the relationship specialist effectively manages all accounts and fulfills their responsibilities? Do you have specific metrics or a scorecard in place to measure their performance and ensure no account is overlooked? 28:01

Q5. You mentioned your PMs who play the role of business development. How do you train them? How do you guide them to think from that perspective of growing the business? 34:17

Q6. How do you guys internally support that PM’s growth? 40:09

Q7. Tell us how you started this agency. How did you get into this, a little bit about your background? 42:56

Q8. Where do you spend your time to find the next shiny object that you have always been looking for? 51:34

Q9. What is exciting you about the future? 55:37

 

Show notes - 

• A lot of the ways that our business grows isn't through outbound marketing, like cold calls or anything like that, or social, it's usually through projects that we already have now. 23:47
• Everybody who's involved in that project gets a taste of who the producer is, and who the business relationship specialist is, so it shouldn't be any surprise if they(clients) hear from either of those people throughout the whole project. 26:58
• The role (relationship specialist) is 25% strategy and 75% of tactical work, in a lot of that tactical work like checking the boxes to make sure all these things are done in a recurring fashion. So there's always going to be things that are occurring in projects while the projects are happening. I'm always very conscious of burnout with this person in particular. But there's never any shortage of things to do. 28:14
• There's this long list of leads that we have that we'd like to get out to in two or three weeks, And these aren't AI-generated, these aren't templated things or anything. These are legitimate people who we've met or know from our past, and then we always write them a heartfelt email with the goal is to have zero sales pitch in it. 30:52
• Our secret is to invest in your PMs. PMs can do more for you than what you would think that they could do. 35:01
• Good PMs have emotional awareness in technical aptitude, they understand the intricacies of what a software development lifecycle is. 35:22
• There are courses that we start at the very lowest level, and that's usually a part of everybody's goal, including developers. We use these courses called Star 12 courses, and we enroll the whole team and then we add a couple of goals to their gusto. 40:22
• Hire yourself a consultant, enterprise level, seasoned 30-year vet of product management, and then do a three-month engagement and have them work on your team and then examine your workflows or have interview each pm recognize their strengths and weaknesses. 41:24
• Year over year, we've grown both by personnel and finances, and it's been a great ride ever since it's definitely had its ups and downs. But, I'm happy with the progress. 51:11
• We're not using AI, as a part that's taking other people's jobs or taking over our jobs, what we're doing is using it to enhance things that we're currently doing. 56:22

Myth-Busted - It’s necessary to have a tier of account management in a design and development agency.

 

Links - 

LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/tpitre/ 

Company website: https://southleft.com/ 

Company Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/southleft-llc/