Wesley Mathews is the Chief Revenue Officer of High Level Marketing, which he co-founded in 2009. It has quickly become one of the fastest-growing web marketing firms in Michigan, with revenues over $6.5 million. High Level Marketing provides website development, SEO, PPC, email marketing, social media, and more.
Wesley likes to describe himself as a “scrappy entrepreneur.” Still, he is a strong leader who cares about helping small businesses grow. He is also on the board for EO Detroit. When he’s not working, he takes part in golfing, fishing, and playing hockey with his four boys.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- How Wesley Mathews balances work and family time
- Wesley reveals how he met his partner, Jon Bowerman — and how High Level Marketing came to being
- The evolution of High Level Marketing
- What to expect for your business when working with Wesley
- How can you keep your agency-client retention rate high?
- Mistakes companies make working with agencies
- The near-failure big break that took Wesley’s company to another level
- How High Level Marketing transitioned from 45 to 100 staff members
- The challenge of becoming a more prominent agency
- What Wesley wanted to do for a living when he was younger
In this episode…
Growing a digital agency is a steep climb. For each step, you may struggle to grow your team and serve more clients while maintaining a high retention rate with existing clients. Unfortunately, not too many digital agencies can find the sweet spot between those areas. High Level Marketing is one of the few agencies that has cracked it and grown from 45 to 100 staff members with an 88% client retention rate.
How has High Level Marketing achieved such a feat, and how can you secure those same results? Wesley Mathews is here to share his tried-and-true solutions to scale your company, successfully serve your clients, and avoid common mistakes that agencies make.
Listen to this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast with Dr. Jeremy Weisz and the High Level Marketing agency’s Chief Revenue Officer and Co-founder, Wesley Mathews. They talk about how Wesley’s agency serves clients to achieve a high retention rate, how they grew their staff from 45 people to 100 people, their near misses, and the deep learnings along the way.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
Special Mention(s):
- Todd Taskey on LinkedIn
- Gino Wickman on LinkedIn
- Josh Linkner on LinkedIn
- Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO)
Books Mentioned:
- Rocket Fuel: The One Essential Combination That Will Get You More of What You Want from Your Business by Gino Wickman and Mark C. Winters
- Traction: Get A Grip On Your Business by Gino Wickman
- Big Little Breakthroughs: How Small, Everyday Innovations Drive Oversized Results by Josh Linkner
Related Episode(s):
- “[Top Agency Series] Structuring Your Org Chart Properly And Growing Your Company from $10K with Jon Morris, CEO of Ramsay Innovations LLCrris, CEO of Ramsay Innovations LLC”
- “[Top Agency Series] How to Make Your Book a Best-Seller with Jonathan Jacobs of Digital Natives Group”
- “Leading with Passion with Gino Wickman Founder of EOS Worldwide”
- “The Two Leadership Traits To Explode Your Business With Mark C. Winters Author and Founder of RocketFuelNow.com”
- “[One Question] Exploring Innovation with Josh Linkner Founder of Platypus Labs”
Sponsor for this episode
At Rise25, we’re committed to helping you connect with your Dream 100 referral partners, clients, and strategic partners through our done-for-you podcast solution.
We’re a professional podcast production agency that makes creating a podcast effortless. Since 2009, our proven system has helped thousands of B2B businesses to build strong relationships with referral partners, clients and audience without having to do the hard work.
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We make distribution easy
We’ll distribute each episode across more than 11 unique channels including iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. We’ll also create copy for each episode and promote your show across social media.
Cofounders Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran credit podcasting as the best thing they have ever done for their businesses. Podcasting connected them with the founders/CEOs of P90x, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, Rx Bars, YPO, EO, Lending Tree, Freshdesk, and many more.
The relationships you form through podcasting run deep. Jeremy and John became business partners through podcasting. They have even gone on family vacations and attended weddings of guests who have been on the podcast.
Podcast production has a lot of moving parts and is a big commitment on our end; we only want to work with people who are committed to their business and cultivating amazing relationships.
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Rise25 was co-founded by Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran who have been podcasting and advising about podcasting since 2008.
Insider Stories from Top Leaders & Entrepreneurs…
Episode Transcript
Jeremy Weisz 0:19
Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, Founder of InspiredInsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. You know, I’m gonna introduce today’s guest Wesley Mathews in a second of High Level Marketing, but I always like to mention past episodes that people should check out. And since Wes has started and grown this amazing agency, I figured I’d mentioned Jon Morris talked about growing his agency to 250 people and then selling it. He’s got an amazing story. And then Jonathan Jacobs of Digital Natives talks about how he helps top authors with their book launches. I found that book launch what he does there, it was fascinating. And check out there are many, many more on inspiredinsider.com. And before I introduce Wes, this episode is brought to you by Rise25 at Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream 100 relationships by helping you run your podcasts. And for me, while I’m always looking at the companies I admire the people, I admire profiling them on my podcast to learn from them and other people can learn from them. And you know, the number one thing in my life is relationships and just building those relationships and giving a giving fashion. So if you haven’t thought about starting a podcast, you are in business even before, you know I was doing this, I’ve been doing this for over 10 years, Wes, and I’ve been telling people whole 10 years. If you have a business, you’d have a podcast period. And you guys do websites, I say every you wouldn’t be a you know, if you did edit a business and you did not have a website. That’s absolutely crazy. Now only a bad website. Now you help people actually optimize their website, and we’ll talk about that. But I believe that will happen with podcasts and whatever it is three years, five years, 10 years, like everyone should and will have one but we’ll see. We’ll Mark but we’ll go back to this conversation. See if I’m right on that. But without further ado, if you have questions, by the way, go to Rise25.com. You know, I want to give a big shout out to Todd Taskey you introduce today’s guest and Todd is a 20 plus year entrepreneur, he helps people develop a successful exit strategy and help them sell their business for maximum value. So check out Todd Taskey what he’s doing there. Wes Mathews is a CEO and Founder of High Level Marketing. And, Wes, I think you you like to describe yourself as scrappy, a scrappy entrepreneur, a strong leader who cares about helping businesses grow. And fun fact about Wes is if you’re not watching the video, he’s obviously got an amazing beard at this point in time, but he’s on the board for EO, Detroit. He’s got four boys. And so you look pretty relaxed writing for kids running around who you like golfing, fishing and hockey. So Wes, thanks for joining me.
Wesley Mathews 3:03
Yeah, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Jeremy Weisz 3:05
You know, there’s a couple things I want to dig into. I want to talk about how you balance wife four kids with business. But first of all, how’d you meet Todd?
Wesley Mathews 3:19
randomly. So through COVID I, you know, I must get maybe no shortage of five to 10 emails a week people asking me about selling the company meet this company. And I randomly got a cold email from Todd. I was sitting at my desk, I was bored. I clicked on it. And he looked like Grant Cardone, a little bit and I just got on a weekend Grant Cardone’s book. And I said, All right, yeah, maybe I’ll take a call with this guy. So I replied to the email. He replied, right away. And then I had a video call with them. And I was like, I actually like this guy. You know, he’s a refreshing guy. He’s more of a sales guy at heart. He wasn’t like a suit, you know, private equity. And we just had a great conversation. And yeah, I mean, I really wasn’t in any opportunity or a position to sell at that moment in time. And I just kind of the serendipity serendipitously came in that moment. And yeah, it’s interesting chance.
Jeremy Weisz 4:12
Because you get so many people reaching out to you. What was it about that cold email that stuck out?
Wesley Mathews 4:19
It was your memory, all brass tacks, like, it wasn’t fancy. It was just like, Hey, I’m Todd Taskey. You know, I don’t know if you’re interested. It was very basic. And most the ones I get are very straight to the point. Most of the ones I get are like, we are the largest hedge fund manager and praying like it was none of that. It was as raw and I’m like, all right, I was bored. You know.
Jeremy Weisz 4:40
That’s good. I love that. So four kids and a wife with a budding company, and we’ll talk about kind of the transition and growing from 45 people to 100 people. Talk about how you make sure in weavin family stuff and for kids
