Jeremy Weisz 17:43
Influencer agency stuff kind of fascinates me. It feels like a shortcut. Can you talk about some of the results and things you’ve seen people working with influencer agencies and how it worked a little bit?
Behdad Jamshidi 17:57
Yeah. I mean, influencer marketing is all about just using someone else’s audience that they’ve already established. It’s very similar to podcasting, right? Like, it’s not that much different. And so if someone has the right audience, and you’re able to find the right influencer combos, I’ve seen a lot of businesses like e-comm, businesses like running off, like, one really solid influencer, like the influence has millions of people following them, and they’re just running them to this one product, for example, right? And so those relationships can really work, but when you’re looking at influencer marketing agencies, you have to realize that they have their own relationships, right?
So that’s why, like, my customer was like, hey, I want as many influencer marketing agencies you could possibly get me, because I know each of them are going to have different relationships in different areas. And so I want to maximize on all those relationships, which is really smart, right? So if you’re like an e-comm brand, if you’re a B2B brand, if there’s certain influencers that have your target audience, like building the relationship with those influencers and building some sort of affiliate play or something like that, could really boost a business forward pretty quickly without having to spend as much on ads, and you might even be able to tie it to actual results.
Jeremy Weisz 19:00
So I’m sure you get this question a lot, and or people are thinking about it. So there’s two kind of questions. Is one, when should someone use an agency versus in-house? And then I know you have a separate kind of thought process and ideas around when you are going to use an agency, there’s different levels of agencies. So I wanted to start with kind of the first question, which is, companies are probably thinking this, whether they say it to us or not, which is like, are we going to use an agency, or are we going to do this ourselves? Right? So what point do you say, okay, when should a company use an agency? And maybe you could define what type of companies come to you, like, what size and type of companies are really a good fit to come to you and go, hey B, we need help.
Behdad Jamshidi 19:55
Yeah, yeah. So let me answer the first question of, like, when to use in-house and when to use agency. So I kind of think it like this, if you have no internal resources in the marketing space, like, typically, you want to outsource, and you want to outsource to one agency, even if that one agency is only good at one to three things and does the other stuff off the side of the table, at least they can kind of be that bridge to bring a lot of the things together. So like, until you get to a certain point where you can hire some in-house people. And so a lot of what I see is like the first hire is either going to be like a marketing director, or you get to, like hiring a fractional CMO that can then hire that marketing director, right? So once you have one or two people internally, and the way that I would hire internally for that is, like, hire people that understand overall marketing, and then as you feed them partners or freelancers, they can basically manage bringing all those people together, right?
And typically, if you’re hiring like a marketing director, they might be good at, like, copywriting, or they might be good at other stuff. So you can maximize on what they’re good at and then outsource the other stuff. As you get into becoming a bigger company, like now you have five or six in-house resources, or some teams have, like, 30, now you start hiring very niche type agencies where you’re like, well, we’re not going to build an entire SEO team in-house, or we’re not going to build out the entire video team in-house, so we’re going to hire for that, and we have a social media team in house to basically take all that stuff, guide it, and then use it, right? So you become much more niche in that perspective. And the other thing that I would say is, if a core marketing service is really, really important to your business, like, I know this one business, and they’re massive on social media, right? Like over a million plus followers.
You’re not going to hire an agency for that, like you need to hire the internal resources to be able to manage that, because you need to iterate really, really fast, and you need someone that really understands your business is working on it 24/7. So those are some of the ways to think about how to hire in-house versus outsourced. And there are some, like, unique edge cases where most people might not know about, like, for example, I know an agency out of Germany that works with enterprise type customers, and they’re basically slot in as the design team. So as you work with different agencies, they’re in the middle.
They built out software where they will literally just interact with the agency and the customer to say, Okay, well, we need this brochure to look like this, or we need this video to look like this. We need this landing page to look like this. They do all of the creative in the middle because they have a team, kind of, like, plugged into it. They do over 44,000 assets for one company in a year. Like, that’s efficiency you can never get if you’re trying to do it in-house, right? Like, really hard. Or there’s like an agency, for example, that has built out their teams in a way that you can almost, like, mix and match them. So if you’re already a business, like franchise-based business, you have an internal team, but you’re like, like I said, you don’t want to build an SEO or social media team.
They will actually input a pod into your company that works with your internal team so you don’t have to go and hire all those resources yourself. They typically charge anywhere between 10 and 15 grand retainers. But imagine trying to hire three to five different people, full-time, salary, all that stuff that comes with that. That’s another like model too, right? So there are some like, really unique type agencies that most people don’t know about that might be useful. Hope that answered the first one.
Jeremy Weisz 22:57
Yeah. And that’s what you get with I mean, an agency in general is the specialization. And you don’t have to hire full time or multiple full time people, and you get someone who’s already an expert and has the process and systems.
Behdad Jamshidi 23:14
Exactly. That’s exactly it, right? You don’t have to, like, build that in-house. And then to your other question was kind of like, what kind of businesses really work well with me, it’s pretty much businesses that are scaling, like, anywhere from 3 million to 30 million is like a real sweet spot for me, right? Because you get to a point you have product market fit, you know that you need the right partners in place to kind of get to that next level, and you’re basically bringing in your leadership layer. And so I work really well with those types of customers. But I also have larger customers in the 60 million, 150 the 60 million $150 million range. And I don’t play a lot in the enterprise space, but I do know that in like the enterprise space, there’s pods and teams that need certain things done, and the people within those teams don’t have the resources or the network to find what they need to find, so they typically just search on Google for a branding or a website agency or an app agency, and that’s kind of how they do it. And there aren’t a lot of times where you end up failing your projects.
Jeremy Weisz 24:06
What type of questions do you get from those companies? I know you also talk a lot about this, some specific questions a company should ask, like an interviewing guide, and if you want to talk through a few of those questions, and we could talk, what other questions are these companies asking you?
Behdad Jamshidi 24:24
Yeah, so they don’t ask me specifically, but they’re asking kind of, like, the agencies. So I built a guide. What I realized was that, like, customers, when they’re going to meeting agencies, there’s no set questions they’re asking, like, it’s very high level. That’s kind of off the cuff. No one actually has, like, an interview guide going into a lot of these agency meetings, and I’m sure you probably, how many customers have you had that came to you with what looked like a pretty set question guide that they’re going to ask you? Like zero and how long you’ve been doing what you’re doing for? Long time, right? So that’s what, like, blows my mind, like, you’re about to hire an agency, and it’s a $300,000 project, and you don’t even have, like, a set guideline to compare these agencies to apples to apples. And so one of the things that I thought was like, okay, well, I’m asking these agencies these questions.
There’s even deeper questions I want to ask, but I just don’t have the time to get every single one as deeply as I want to. So what if I gave these questions to my customers? Right? Like, what if I gave these questions to companies that want to hire agencies, whether it’s like a website agency or an SEO agency or email. I started with a lot of the core five services, and then I’m going to expand on it, if everyone likes it. But it was to basically take these guides and go, I’m going to ask these questions. And the questions go from basic to advanced, to if you’re hiring for E Comm, to if you’re to know about operations. And if you can ask the agencies these questions, you’re going to be much better off figuring out who actually knows what they’re talking about versus who’s just kind of like a good salesperson.
Jeremy Weisz 25:46
Totally, you have this Intel, because you do talk to a lot of agencies, and so people always, and myself included, always geek out on different software, tools, resource and things like that. So I figured I’d start with top project management tools that you like, and then maybe we can just talk through other software tools that you’re seeing that are popular in agency space. I was reading through this blog here, which is really good. People, if you’re watching the video or listening to the audio at cjammarketing.com you can go to their blog. They have a lot of great resources here, and we’re on pm tools, project management tools, and so you can see a list here. I don’t know if I’m just curious, your personal favorites, what you like to use? We’re seeing Jira, ClickUp, Monday, Asana.
Behdad Jamshidi 25:47
Yeah, so I’ll tell you the two biggest ones that I hear agencies using like ClickUp is like, by far one that like stands out when it comes to project management for agencies. ClickUp’s the one and I use ClickUp within my agent that was actually one of the reasons why I chose ClickUp for my own team, that’s number one. Asana comes in number two, and then the third one is, like, not even on this list, but it’s not even coming to the top of my head. But there’s another platform that agencies use, but ClickUp for sure, number one, Asana, number two, and then it goes from there. And then it just depends on the agency when you’re using them, like, if they’re going to be using things like Slack for communication, or is it just email-based, right? Like, usually, if you’re working with more enterprise, larger customers, things typically stick in the email, because that’s just how the world works in that space. But then there’s some agencies that use Slack a lot, which is, I think most people kind of understand that space.
Zoom is another huge one, like I’ve seen that use way more than, like Google Meet or, I mean, Microsoft Teams, is there too, but that’s also, once again, on the larger side of things. The other thing I’m kind of seeing, and I mean, everyone’s seeing the AI stuff happening, right? So, people are using it for content creation and all that different kind of stuff. But what I’m starting to see is, like branding agencies using it to basically create mockups in less than six minutes that would have taken three to four weeks to do before, like, mood boards, right? Like, create me three, four different mood boards that have this, this and this, and try these different cuts, and you can do that in such less time. So the amount of efficiency that these agencies are gonna have is gonna be way higher. Don’t know if the cost is gonna be passed off to the customer, but at least you know you can finish projects faster.
Jeremy Weisz 28:19
Yeah, any other apps or software that you like personally? It could be productivity-related too. It doesn’t have to be business. If there’s just apps or things that you use.
Behdad Jamshidi 28:33
There’s like, I use different tools, like, I’m using different course-based stuff. So one of them is Mind Valley, like, for courses, and I’m doing like, a quantum leap thing there. Like, I really like the meditation aspect of that I use, like the Calm, that kind of stuff, not thinking crazy. I do a lot of journaling, like, Presently, as an app, just to just get journaling in what’s going on in my mind. One of the ways that I use, for example, OneNote, and people use Evernote and all this other stuff, um, but I have a whole system of, like, OneNote, of like, just journaling throughout business, right? Like, if you’re having a hard time, or if you’re having a great month, or whatever it is, like, I’ve categorized all that stuff, um, which has been used for me to build out content.
And so another thing that I use ClickUp for that. I don’t think most people use it for outside of project management, is just like managing my entire social media presence, right? So I have, like, all my video editing in there. I have all my posts in there all categorized, so that my social media manager can grab stuff and basically post on my behalf. But it’s all my thoughts, all my ideas. But I just made it so much more efficient so that I can be across five different channels. Different channels without having to spend 10, 20, 30 hours a month for it.
Jeremy Weisz 29:46
Love it, yeah, we’re big, heavy ClickUp users, and it’s been awesome. We use SweetProcess for SOP, like related, kind of a sense. Wise database with ClickUp, and we love it. Talk about, you had a client who sold their home service business. Can you talk about that case?
Behdad Jamshidi 30:13
Yeah. That was a really cool case, too. Once again, someone mentioned me in a group, and we’re like, hey, you should talk to B about what you want to do, because they wanted to build out a website. It turns out that, like, halfway through the person that they hired, like, just was like, Man, I can’t do this anymore. I got a lot of stuff going on. I got to leave. Like, so one of the things happens when you hire a freelancer, like, that kind of stuff does happen.
Jeremy Weisz 30:32
I hear that all the time, not even that. It’s just someone, just ghosts, and they don’t even return the person’s call. I’ve heard that numerous times, too.
Behdad Jamshidi 30:41
Yeah. So he had a scenario where that exact thing happened, and he’s like, look like, this is all the files we have. This is all things we do. Like, we need to get this up and running. Like, do you know a partner to do that? And they just recently exited, and they wanted to get into, like, the E comm space. It’s more for fun for them. Like, they bought another business. They’re not starting from scratch. They bought another business. The other business didn’t have enough revenue to buy stock, enough stock. And so they were like, well, we just finished this business. Let’s have some fun with this new one. And midway through, they lost their developer.
And so I was able to help connect them with a marketing partner. Like, literally within four days, I was like, well, sent this to like, six different partners. Hey, who can do this? What price point? This is the kind of range that he’s comfortable with, and match them with that. And then, turns out he also was building another home service-based business at the same time. So we ended up doing two projects out of one, comes back two months later and says, Hey B, the website is almost complete and done. Can we chat about what else I need? And so we had a talk around, like, all the different avenues of like, how people typically grow on E-commerce, whether it’s paid ads, if you have money like, that’s typically how you fast track things and then making sure that you have a solid foundation of like, when you get to spending paid ads, you have to have a solid email flow and solid campaign email idea, so that you can basically upsell as you go through and as you bring new products out.
And so once again, within a week, gave me a little bunch of options, ended up hiring two different partners for me on that one and an email partner, and then one that’s going to be doing paid ads and SEO, and he’s been running with them for the last three, four months. Checked in on him. He’s like, man, they’re doing a great job. So I’m happy with what’s going on there.
Jeremy Weisz 32:16
Love it, we were talking about the full-service agency myth, I guess we’ll call it. What other if you talk to, it’s almost 1,000 at this point, one on one. What are some of the other mistakes you see agencies making?
Behdad Jamshidi 32:37
Communication is number one like that is the biggest one. I’ve noticed that a lot of agencies, especially if you’re working with, like, smaller ones, let’s say sub 20 people, a lot of them, don’t have one sales experience or just like, haven’t worked in a professional environment long enough. So a lot of things that get missed is just in communication, like when we’re talking about conflict resolution and mediation and mediation and all that different kind of stuff. Like, those foundations aren’t there. And so what ends up happening, though, is even on the customer side, sometimes that’s not there, right? Like, people are building out businesses, they don’t have enough time to communicate.
There’s not enough time to say, hey, I don’t like the way you did that thing. I’d rather it be done this way. Or can I put some input in there? And so the biggest, like breakage is in knowing how to communicate with people, knowing how to disarm and just being able to, like, have a heart-to-heart talk and build an actual relationship. Like, that’s number one. I think the biggest problem agencies have outside of, like, taking on stuff that they shouldn’t take.
Jeremy Weisz 33:37
So taking on stuff they shouldn’t take, just being very clear with communication. Anything else you see by talking to these agencies that maybe people can improve on?
Behdad Jamshidi 33:50
Yeah, so when an agency is growing too fast, like, that’s the other thing. Like, agencies are not scalable businesses, like I’ve said this on other podcasts, and I’ll continue saying it, it’s a service-based business, right? So typically, agency businesses are going to grow at 10% to 15% a year, right? And so when you start hearing things like, oh, we grew 100% last year, we’re about to grow 100% this year, another 100% next year, and I’m like, man, like, you’re going to break. Like, in my head, I’m like, you’re going to break. This is not going to work. And so once you break, you’re going to learn that you have to have to have systems and processes because you can’t hire fast enough, and you can’t hire the level of quality you want to make sure the agency doesn’t break.
And so that’s another like, just red flag to look for, like, when someone like tuning out how fast they’re growing, I would probably walk the other way. And a lot of the times like, this isn’t my area of expertise, but I know that a lot of agencies make eight figures, but they’re not profitable, right? Like they might be building so that they can sell at some point, but they don’t build their agencies profitably, which makes it really, really tough as you’re growing.
Jeremy Weisz 34:54
Talk about that for a second the profitability, right? Because I was actually discussing this with someone, yes. Yesterday, and there was a lot. We did a podcast, like an eCommerce conference, and we were running one of these e-commerce groups, and people had huge numbers. Some of the people like, they’re doing 10, 20, 50 million, but their profit maybe 3% on some of these types of businesses. So it’s interesting. What are some of the things you see that would improve their profitability? Is it their pricing? Like, what is causing these agencies to not be profitable?
Behdad Jamshidi 35:35
Yeah, so one is, like, you said, pricing so people don’t know how to price themselves appropriately, but at the same time, like, they just don’t know, because they don’t know what the market is, right? Like, so they’re competing all the time. Like, well, I lost that deal — must have been pricing. I lost this deal — must have been pricing. But like, no, it’s actually on your sales delivery. You didn’t hit the core things. You don’t understand what they actually really wanted, right? So they don’t look at all the other things that could potentially be affected. So they think it’s pricing. So the next time they price, of less. And then what ends up happening is, you take on a project, and then you go, well, it should have been a $60,000 project, but I quoted $40,000. Now I’m losing money on this project because it should have been a $60,000 project.
The other thing is, like, just scope, right? Like when it comes to projects, like having very clear scope in your contracts, and as soon as something’s outside your scope of project. You should be charging for it. There should be something there, and you should be that, once again, comes back to communication with the customer, Hey, this was our scope of thing. We’re going outside of this. Now we’re going to need to charge. If you want us to continue doing the thing, do you want us to continue doing it? Or do you want us to stick to what we originally scoped out? Like, it’s very simple, like, business-type stuff that I don’t think people understand, like, just do those simple things well, and your business will be profitable.
Jeremy Weisz 36:46
What are some good ways you’ve seen agencies handle that scope creep? Because I’ll put a scenario: someone is like, oh my god, B introduces these people. We want to do good by B, also we want to do good by the client. And so we’ll just do these couple things, even though it’s not in our scope, right? So what are some good, in my mind, like, I think most people, they want to over deliver as much as possible. Also, we don’t want to be unprofitable or that’s not sustainable. What are some good ways you’ve seen agencies approach that, like, scope creep, conversation or issue?
Behdad Jamshidi 37:31
Yeah, I mean, just be upfront about it. Like, like, don’t just, like, do it and then go afterwards and be like, Hey, we went above and beyond for you after the fact. Like, just go like, hey, I know you’re asking for X. Like, we think that, we’ll put five hours towards it, but anything above that, like, we’re going to need to charge for it. Like, if you know that, they could get out of hand, like, put a limit to it. Like, to say, yeah, we’ll do that. We’ll spend the five hours. But just realize after five hours we’re going to need to charge moving forward, right? Like, that kind of thing, so that customers know that it’s just outside of the scope of work. But if you just do it, you go back and go look at all the stuff that I did for you. Like, why don’t you realize all the stuff that I did for you? It’s because you didn’t set that up front that hey, yeah, we’re doing you a favor.
And here’s the little word for it, but here’s the, what’s the word when you like, you say, hey, oh, the condition. Here’s the condition of that favor. And then afterwards, then you, then you set up the expectations properly upfront, so that you can charge after the fact, right? But even before that, like, set that up in your contract. Like, if a project, for example, let’s say it’s a website project or a branding project, say, hey, we’ve done this scope of work. We think it’s going to take this range of hours, if it goes above the top range of hours, which it usually doesn’t, 95% of time it doesn’t, but if it does, at that point when we’re 10% close to that, we’re going to let you know so that we either have to close the project pretty quickly, or we have to be prepared that there’s going to be an additional fee to this project.
Jeremy Weisz 38:54
Love it, yeah. Because that’s why it’s called scope creep, because it keeps creeping. If you let it come in, yeah, B, first of all, I have one last question before I ask it. I want to point people to check out, cjammarketing.com, to learn more. And, my question is — you obviously take different courses, books. I’m curious about your favorite resources, whether it’s books, it’s podcasts, it’s a course that you took. What are some of your favorites?
Behdad Jamshidi 39:28
Yeah, so I read a lot of books for the last while. Like there’s a point in my life where my goal was read 60 books in five years, and I did it in 3.6 so that was fun. I still continue reading right now, some of my favorite I’ll tell you, one of my authors that I’m really liking right now is, like, Matt Haig, I really like his books, and they’re just around, just self-discovery, growth and just, like, really good storytelling. Like, I read a lot of nonfiction, but I’m starting to realize, like, fiction has a lot of power when stories are said well, like, it just kind of like passes your logical brain. Really sits in the subconscious. So that’s one. Matt Haig. So I’m really liking his books. In terms of courses, I actually signed up for a program recently that’s like $15,000 on and learning how to build out like an attractive character, how to dress that attractive character, and doing that right now. So that’s just, like, just learning about…
Jeremy Weisz 40:24
Is that through a platform, or just an individual.
Behdad Jamshidi 40:27
No that’s an individual. Yeah, it’s an individual part.
Jeremy Weisz 40:31
So is your wife gonna determine if it’s successful or not, or?
Behdad Jamshidi 40:34
I guess you will, yeah. But the cool part is, like, you can create the attractive character across everything, right? Like, you can do it for business, but then you can do it for like, I have a, what I call a Sunday bad ad. It’s like, the chill not have to think about work like, you know, enjoying time off. Like, you can create these different versions for different aspects of your life, and then kind of step into those characters depending on what you need to do, for example. So doing that, I’m in the middle of it. I’ll give you a review after I’m done.
Jeremy Weisz 40:59
What made you decide to do that, that course?
Behdad Jamshidi 41:03
I love to look, grow like this, learning and growing. So there’s a couple aspects of it. One, I was afraid of spending the $15,000 on one program. Like, I’m cool with spending three to five, but like, 15 is getting up there at this point. But I also knew that back in the day, I was afraid to spend three to $5,000 in something, right? And so getting through that fear that was one of the main things. Two was I trusted the person that’s running it like I was like, okay, I want to get closer to I want to understand more about what he does and how he does it. And three, I’m like, stuff that I’m going to learn is going to be super valuable for me to be able to share with other business owners and things like that. So for me, it’s always just about like, growth and learning, and I can afford it, so why not do it? And if it’s just fear that’s stopping it, that’s why I pushed through it. So in September, I’m actually going to Vegas to learn how to dress this attractive character and learn the psychology of it. So that’s going to be pretty fun.
Jeremy Weisz 41:54
It’s like, literally meaning, like, what you should wear is that? Yeah, yeah.
Behdad Jamshidi 41:58
Yeah, yeah. It’s pretty cool. I don’t know enough yet to share more, but once I do, learn more, I’ll share it.
Jeremy Weisz 42:04
I’m sure my wife would love for me to be in that, you dress terribly, but thanks for sharing that. B who should be contacting you from, like, the business side and also the agency side. I know you have an Agency Network within CJAM.
Behdad Jamshidi 42:23
Yeah, yeah. So on the business side, basically it’s founders or people that are running the marketing division. That’s just typically who I talk to on that side. And on the agency side, it’s founders. Sometimes I’ll work with, like, larger agencies and you’re talking to the partnership person, but I always have to meet the founders, because their personality and their values literally run through the entire company.
Jeremy Weisz 42:46
Are there certain size agencies or types of niche agencies. I know at this point you have a lot in your arsenal. What does that look like?
Behdad Jamshidi 42:56
Yeah, for me, I have agencies across pretty much everything at this point, but I’m always looking for stronger and stronger agencies. Like, for me, like, I want to build the best network possible, the best people possible. So typically, what I say, like, even in my onboarding form, that’s coming up pretty soon on the website, it’s like, are you in the top 15% of what you do? And if you’re not, like, don’t reach out to me, because you’re not going to fit my network. So if you’re really good at, like, small business for X cool, if you’re really good at, like, mid-market SEO, and you’re in the top 15% cool. Like, I want to talk to the people that are like, really care about what they do. Want to make sure their customers are winning, and have basically the drive and the will to want to run an agency. I’m not looking for people that are like, I’m growing this agent for two years and I’m out afterwards, like, that’s not an interest to me.
Jeremy Weisz 43:44
B, I want to be the first one to thank you. Thanks for sharing the knowledge. This has been really instructive. People can check out cjammarketing.com, to learn more, and we’ll see everyone next time. B, thanks so much.
Behdad Jamshidi 43:56
Thanks for having me Jeremy.
Jeremy Weisz 43:57
Thanks everyone.
