Agency Forward

Unknown Speaker 0:00
Hey everyone, today I'm joined by Tyler pygot. Tyler is a growth strategist and brand messaging expert at story brand. He bootstrapped and scaled his own agency. Ran over 300 story brand workshops and now leads revenue at story brand while building the agency builders community, I want to have Tyler on because he's he brings these hard won insights on how constraints and clarity help agencies scale more effectively. In this episode, we discuss using constraints to boost creative problem solving, how to apply story brand without sounding formulaic, the one clarity shift that unlocks agency growth and more.

Unknown Speaker 0:37
No one was asking for another community, but I made one anyway. So what's different the dynamic agency community is designed around access rather than content. Access to peers who've done it before, access to experts who've designed solutions, access to resources that have been battle tested. And right now, the price for founding members is only $97 a year. Join today so your agency has immediate access to everything you need to grow. You can join a dynamic agency. Dot community and now. Tyler Pigot,

Unknown Speaker 1:13
it's easier than ever to start an agency, but it's only getting harder to stand out and keep it alive. Join me as we explore the strategies agencies are using today to secure a better tomorrow. This is agency forward.

Unknown Speaker 1:31
How did your experience bootstrapping businesses now shape your approach to agency growth? That's a good question. I've done a lot of different startups in my life, and kind of built stuff from scratch. I think one of my favorite things is the is the zero to one mentality. There's books out there on it, all that kind of stuff. But, yeah, that's probably where I thrive. You know, give me a little bit of, little bit of a nudge in the right direction, and then I'll go, you know, create whatever. And I think there's, there's something about, like, capital constraints, like allowing influence and, like, a lot of creativity, right? Of like, how do you accomplish something when you don't don't have what you need, or whatever? And I've found that many businesses as they, you know, I think the trap that lots of people fall into and one of the hardest things I would say in business to do is to keep your business lean as you grow. Because most people just take the resource they've made, you money, they made, whatever it is, and just grow and just kind of throw money at problems. And we all know that that doesn't always fix the problem, but you can kind of check the box next to the fact that you feel like it did. And so I think for me, just growing the agency from the beginning and just kind of being real scrappy and kind of allows you to, or,

Unknown Speaker 2:50
well, it requires you to be scrappy and focused, you know, because if you're not, you're, you know, spread real thin. And when you don't have, like, the cushion, every decision matters a ton, especially around your team and the offer that you have, and, you know, your positioning and problem you're focused on, and really, just, I don't know, I feel like it forces you to prioritize, like clarity, return on your investment. And investment could be whatever resource you're throwing out. It could be time, it could be money. It could be, you know, just what you're whatever you're whatever you're leaning into, you know, you've got to make sure that there's, like, a return on that. So I don't know, I feel like it's like that mindset still drives how I help agencies grow even today, and how I help, you know, different organizations grow today, after agency land kind of wrapped up a little bit for me. But, you know, leaning into what works and, you know, cutting what doesn't. So yeah, I want to go deeper into your thoughts on constraints. Yeah, I like

Unknown Speaker 3:45
so constraints are awesome. Yeah, I'm a proud supporter. But the I've looked at a couple buckets for how we can put constraint. You have governing constraints and then enabling constraints and governing constraint like lines on a road. As long as everybody follows the lines on the road, we're going to get where we're going faster. We're good. Everybody's safer. We win. Enabling constraints being like other criteria we're going to put on top to kind of force our hand, to make ourselves think like more creatively or in different ways, about problems, yeah, whether it's budgets, time, deadlines, like things that we're going to set up. Yeah, because how are you looking at constraint like, what types of things do you look to, like, implement within the companies you're working with? Yeah, well, one of the things that like was a huge

Unknown Speaker 4:30
influence for me. A number of years ago, they came out with a study called the playground study. I don't know if you're familiar throughout it's, I don't even know how widely I know, yeah. So

Unknown Speaker 4:40
yeah, they're basically, they took, you know, a school, and then paraphrase it down, there's pages of data on it and everything. But they basically took two different schools and kids that were in that school, you know, they let kids out for recess. And at one of the schools, the kids really kind of stayed pretty, huddled around, like the big toy and that, you know, teachers that were out there.

Unknown Speaker 5:00
And it was like, you know, they'd play it, it was fun. And then the other school they, you know, bell rang for recess, and the kids, just like, ran out. They ran out. They were all the fields. They were all over the place. And the kind of main key factor that was different between the two schools that did it was one had a fence that was the boundary of the recess kind of or playground, and one did not. And so I think one of the things that that led me, and, you know, just was a great visual for how my brain thinks around when I know where the boundary is, man, I'm going to do, I'm going to just have a lot of fun in that boundary and figure out what that is inside, almost, kind of put that boundary as the same thing, as a constraint, going, Hey, I actually do, like, when, when, you know, working with a sales team and you have to have a quota, or working with, you know, having to hit a certain budget number or whatever, like, it just makes you focus and kind of go, Okay, I've got my playground now. How can I maximize what's inside these, you know, kind of playground, and so for me, it just was that really good visual of, like many people, especially when you work in agency, land and branding and marketing and kind of with creatives. Reality is, is that creatives, I believe are, they're creative problem solvers, and so it might be in the in the format of design or copywriting or strategy or whatever, but oftentimes creatives kind of like when you put constraints and even say the word constraints or boundaries or process or system, they, you know, kind of like, you know, hairs on the back of their heads stand up and people freak out, you know. But I actually really love like the idea of that playground. And kind of go, Well, you need to have like boundaries. You need to have those constraints to to be able to have maximum creativity within those so that you're not really thinking about anything else, but it's your brains fully focused on that kind of space. So I oftentimes, I'm looking for those to answer your question a little more directly. I'm looking for those working with organizations now of what are the constraints? You know, there is an element where I love brands that really do have a focus, and so that could be a horizontal focus of services they offer. Could be a vertical focus of industries they work with, or whatnot. But that allowed that almost provides that constraint of, it's not one thing to everything, but one thing to everybody, but it's, oh, I work with this industry, or I provide this specific service, or I have this problem that I solve for this specific audience. So that that is a constraint. And I actually really like that constraint. Sometimes it's frustrating, sometimes it means you have to turn down business or whatever, but you do have, like, those boundaries, if that makes sense, or those guardrails that kind of you try to stay between. So for someone who doesn't feel like they have enough constraints, or they want to try playing with some other systems, I guess, for creating these what would you recommend?

Unknown Speaker 7:43
Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I think, you know, the two things that come to mind are the visualization of guardrails. So you've got like, you know, lanes on a highway, but then there's guardrails when something's like, kind of wild. And so

Unknown Speaker 7:57
I just always like to reference if people have, like, little kids, and, you know, they back to playground land. I go to a park or whatever. I really, as a parent, loved when my kids just got to play in a park, and I generally tried to let them kind of do their own thing, but the minute that they started to run for the road where something was dangerous, I'm like, jumping in. And so I use that example specifically to go, okay, so what are those like for in a business or in a service offering or whatever it is like in the organization that you're in. What are the things that, how do you differentiate between, you know, what are the things that you kind of let in this, like, loose guardrail versus, hey? These are like, can't, can't do this, or can't, you know, have to do this kind of thing. And I feel like one of the things, and the reason I say that's because oftentimes, when people talk about constraints, they want to apply the same mental energy of constraints towards everything. And I don't believe that that's really necessary, because not everything is kind of like life or death or, you know, I use that, you know, Park analogy of running around, hanging out with other kids playing tag, whatever it is, is very safe, even though, yeah, you could fall over and skin your knee, versus running into the street and getting hit by a car. Those are different scenarios, you know. And so that concept of really taking the time to like outline, well, what are the constraints that are? Hey, I need to, I can't do this, or I can do this, or I have to stay away from that, versus the other things that are a little bit more fluid or flexible, that that's where I would start with. And I use T charts all the time. It's, you know, top line, middle, down the line, down the middle, ones on each side. And kind of like playing out what those types of things look like. I love setting budgets. Budgets are one of the first thing that I'll go for, because of the fact that when oftentimes people freak out about budgets, but if you don't have a budget, you have no idea if you're spending great saving money, great within your realm that kind of stuff. Those are really easy to implement. I with Creatives or marketing or branding agencies, I love setting a cap on rounds or revisions internally. And it sounds funny, but there's also like, well, if you don't have them, then how do you mean going back and forth with the client? 28 times you usually mean.

Unknown Speaker 10:00
You're gonna lose money on the on the project. And so how do you kind of have some constraints? So some of those are just low hanging fruit type opportunities, but even just writing them down and establishing them, I believe, is just a helpful like, oh, I can see it. I know, if I'm you know what success looked like, if you will, you know, kind of doing a certain thing. So I don't know if that makes sense, but yeah, I like that. And the added, the added layer of, like, what level of risk are you willing to assume? Yeah, or some of these is, is huge, and, like, it adds another layer to all of your decision making process. But it could be what saves your agency. So, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think with constraints, a lot of times, my brain's like a big, like, reverse engineer. So it's kind of like that, you know, Hey, you don't, you don't know how to run a long distance. Sign up for a marathon. Work your way backwards figure, you know, yeah, in a little bit, you know. And so I think about like, you know, I don't want to have to have a budget, you know, my business thing that's dumb, whatever. Okay, cool. Well, you don't have an unlimited amount of money. So if your end result is this, and this is what you have to make or can't spend, work backwards from it. And what does that look like? And you kind of, that's how you really do have success, towards going towards some of those goals, you know, and having, like, those, you know, ceilings that you run into, or guardrails that you can't go over, or those types of things. So, yeah, I mean that thinking also kind of forces agencies into in the idea of, like, running more deliberate, like, tests, I guess, where it's like, if you just have an open budget, right, and you can do everything, yeah, you might be able to get some of these results when you go to replicate them later. And maybe now you do have a budget, you're like, you don't know that this is going to fail because you didn't have these constraints before. Yeah. And so yeah, I think even if it's making up the constraint, like putting a fake number in there. Just say, we got to try hitting it with this totally is only going to benefit you. Yeah, yeah. Like, outlining what that like scorecard, or whatever you want to call it, but like, if you're testing something, what does the test look like? How long you're running it? What does success look like? What does failure look like? And people run away from the word failure or success, but you're also like, well, what made it win or not win? Or, you know, everybody wants to win, so you're like, cool, but that oftentimes mean you're not going to win in a lot of scenarios. To get to the fact that you would, you know, and so I don't, I feel like it's just such a great exercise to go down, you know, go through and go, What would I look at, whatever I'm doing right now, as a failure, or as a man? I just missed What's that you're either number or what's that thing you're measuring it by? And I think that that acts as a constraint a little bit of, well, I need to make sure I don't hit that, you know? And I just think it's a powerful,

Unknown Speaker 12:30
obvious mindset in some ways, for some people, well, indefinitely, because then you can, if it either a test comes back inconclusive or as like a failed hypothesis, then it's much easier to now try run a new test with that new information, and say, Okay, well, we know this failed because of this reasons. And like, you know, with we need more budget, right? We actually have to expand, expand some of these constraints, otherwise we can't do this totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like the MVP. I'm a huge like, 1.1 1.2 1.3 version, you know, of things, versus waiting until it's like the there's hell butcher the saying. But I love the idea of my, you know, half baked product that I launched is so much better than your perfect product that you never launched, and you're just kind of like, well, it's gonna get better over time. And it's kind of do that anyway, even if you wait to launch something or wait to do something until it's quote, unquote perfect. But so you might as well just kind of like, get it out there, start improving, but you but to your point, if you aren't really measuring, you know, some different kind of things on a scorecard, whatever you want to call it, you have no idea what the next version should look like, or what you're comparing it against or what, like the new baseline kind of concept is. So I was having a conversation with someone the other day about how all marketing is essentially a guess, right? And it's we take our best guess because we've done thing, we've seen patterns, we do these things, but like we're guessing, yeah, and hopefully you like, by someone working with an agency the right, they're able to shortcut some of that guessing, because they're getting there a lot faster. But really, the way we figure out if this works is if the market like likes it or they don't like it, right? They're the ones deciding. But yeah, if you're, if you're not measuring, even if it's a guess, you should be measuring what you think is going to happen so that you can model this. Yeah, I mean, that's the reason people hire agencies, is it's you've done, you've done this, whatever tactical thing, strategy thing, so many times. And me as a marketer over here, CMO, whatever it is, I've, you know, I've launched whatever two brands, and you've launched 102 brands, right? You've in the same amount of time, yeah, totally, exactly right, right? And you've just learned more because you've had more reps than that. You've done more kind of zero to 10 type things. And so that's why people hire agencies. Or at least, in my opinion, why they should hire agencies is because they're trying to, like, cut like, the I was used to tell prospects when I was on, you know, on on calls, of like, we're here to help you fall in your face at least one last time than we have, you know, kind of concept. And usually that, you know, you.

Unknown Speaker 15:00
You're getting there faster, or you're helping them get there faster. So Right? So I want to shift focus a bit to some story brand stuff. Okay, because, surprisingly, we actually haven't talked about story brand a lot on this podcast. So what? What are some of the like, common messaging mistakes that you're seeing with founders going into their branding?

Unknown Speaker 15:23
I mean, the most common mistake that I see, that, like 100%

Unknown Speaker 15:27
of the time, almost, is that people talk about themselves first, and they don't talk about a problem, or they talk about something general, but they don't talk about like an outcome or a solution or a problem that prospect buys. I mean, literally all of us. I don't, I can't think of a single thing I've purchased in the last whatever amount of time that's not to solve a problem. It might be a stupid problem, you know, it might be something that's like, luxurious or cool or fun, or I'm just interested, but it solves a problem, like it's, you know, I bought a Garmin watch recently for some different fitness things I'm doing. And you're like, did I need that? No, but did it actually solve something that I was trying to do? Yeah, and that's how people spend money. And so I would say most founders, brands, organizations that are having a hard time with their message is because of the fact that they're not cutting through all the noise with communicating. Well, this is what we help clients fix or solve or do, or the challenge we help them overcome, and usually by just simply shifting your message to talking about the problem that your audience has, makes a pretty significant change in your kind of overall impact your to your audience or your network, you have

Unknown Speaker 16:35
probably the hardest shift, yeah, and I've had to get people in for their marketing, was to Just focus on the problem, yeah, and get people talking about it. How do you help them making that mental shift to like talking about the problem? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it is a tough mental shift. I think for a lot of people. I think when you're able to use, like, the storyboard framework, and for those that aren't familiar with it, you know, look it up, and it's a great framework. But essentially, the survey framework starts with like the hero of the story, and that's not you. Like reality is is nobody's interested. If you've ever watched a movie, read a book, seen a story play out, you know, the story is not usually about the kind of the guide that helps the person with the problem. The story is usually the person with the problem overcoming that problem, right? And so when you kind of really can communicate what that is to different people that you're you know, different agencies or organizations or brands that you're helping them with, when they can make that mental shift, it is really powerful, because they stop talking about themselves, and they start talking about their their hero that they're trying to communicate with. And you know, the hero has a problem. That problem is usually an external thing they're trying to fix, but generally, an external thing that you're trying to fix makes you feel a certain way inside. Could be fearful, could be overwhelmed. It could be, you know, any sort of emotions. And so then you're being introduced to the guide that's going to help you lead that out of, you know, lead you out of that which that guide has to be, the brand, has to be the organization that you know is going to help you fix the problem. And there's some different down thing, you know, downstream steps to that, of, how are they going to help you with that? And what's that call to action, and that's going to drive success, all that kind of stuff. But I would say the more that you can shift, I one of my superpowers is being able to be in the buyer's shoes. And so being able to, like, you know, stop. My brain can go, oh, what's the what's the experience like for the buyer? And I would say, the more you can figure that out, and have somebody in your organization or yourself, you know, be able to kind of be in the buyer's shoes of what's the experience they're having, of, you know, of interacting with, you know, with my brand or with this brand. And you know, that usually solves a lot, because most of the time, we've drank in our own kool aid for so long that we really don't know what it's like to not have all the knowledge that we do and what it's like for the first time. And you know, a prospect or a lead or an individual would even come in contact with your brand. And so I think that mind shift, you know, can kind of it takes a little while sometimes, but the people that really want to grow their brand are looking for ways they can have a mindset shift to kind of solve some solve some different challenges they're having. So, yeah, you're definitely more open to it. Yeah, I guess in your in your superpower, putting yourself in the buyer shoes, did that just come across naturally, just over time, doing, like, doing different things business world, are there books you read that got you kind of already thinking differently, and then you just went and explored, had you kind of acquire that skill?

Unknown Speaker 19:29
That's a good question.

Unknown Speaker 19:31
I mean, probably all the above, I would say, like early on, I've kind of had the disease of being an entrepreneur. And I say disease because sometimes it's annoying. I've had that disease, want to call it for a lot of years, and I can remember it all the way to, you know, growing up, and I grew up on a Christmas tree farm, which is kind of weird, but Christmas trees do grow somewhere, and 100 acres was, you know, my family ran the Christmas tree farm. And I remember early, like before I was 10.

Unknown Speaker 20:00
And playing this game with my dad about product ideas. And it could be as simple as, we're going to host a car wash, a lemonade stand, right? Like, simple. And my dad would just ask me, Well, who are you going to sell it to? Like, what do you like? You have a car wash? Who's going to who's going to come to your car wash? And then he pushed to, like, Go, would we know, what do they look like? What kind of cars do they drive to wash, small cars or big cars. And then he'd ask, well, you know, how are you going to sell them? Like, how are you going to sell them into it? Well, how are you going to get their money from them? Kind of concept, you know, obviously he phrased it more of a game to talking to, like a nine year old or whatever. But I would say, like, the that motion early on in my life was really helpful, as I've just had, I mean, I probably have two to five ideas a day of products you could launch, or businesses you could start. And I will play that game now. I still do, and I have for years and years and years where you're like, Okay, I have this idea, and it's this AI product, and I could do this, and I could do that with it, and then I could tie it in this way, and this is how it would play out. All right. Who's gonna buy that? Okay? How would I sell it to them? You know, like, you just kind of go down that path, and the more you do that, I mean, it sounds really weird, but I'll be riding a stationary bike, I'll be out for a walk, I'll be doing something else completely, and I'll just be thinking about it, and that's how my brain processes it. And so that helps me, like, actually put myself in the buyers or the audience's shoes a little bit easier, because I'm playing out what it would look like to actually interact with a brand that's doing that, because I'm just going through that repetition. So I don't know if I explained that very well. I haven't really thought through, like, the trench that's been ingrained in my mind. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 21:33
no, I think it's a so something I've been doing lately is copy working, where you you just, you grab them, all those great ads, yeah, and just handwrite them. And, like, I had done this in college, did it cool some point, but like, you know, and let's just do that again, right? So handwriting, and I'm realizing that as I'm, like, writing out some of these great ads, it's like you're spotting, oh, they use like, this word three times, you know, in this paragraph. Like, why did they do that? And you start, like, actually questioning all these things, but just the act of, like, taking 30 minutes in the morning to do that, yeah, I feel is making me way more aware, yeah, of everything else and and so I think the similarly, yeah, you just thinking about these ideas and working through them means, when you go into a client call, it's like, it's just easy, it's second nature to be able to spot the patterns and everything. And so it's like, the study, it's, I mean, I think, like, if you study buyer behavior, you study sales calls, you study whatever you are or whatever you want to. I mean, rarely is it everything that that is impacting someone, but most of the time, like, if you listen to a 30 minute sales call, there's like, two, maybe three pivotal moments that happen in the call. And it could be a story that's being communicated. It's just like that aha moment that the prospect is having. And those are the things I'm always studying like I'm looking for those I'm looking for Wait, hold on, back up. 15 seconds, something shifted, something changed. And because, you know, you're trying to pay attention to questions you asked and all that kind of stuff. But reality is, is like you and I can go back and I can go back and forth on questions all day long, and they're not going to really change. Like, be massively impactful. And so, like, how do you study? And same thing with you. Like, okay, rewriting where you're like, Okay, which are the words that are used often? Okay, what? What do we think is like the most? Like, the pivotal moment in this ad, or this copy, or this whatever, where it's actually, you know, getting traction, or it's, you know, making a

Unknown Speaker 23:24
difference in that individual that's reading it. So I think if you start to study or lean into those types of things, many people are really trying to figure out, what's the exact word I should use, or the phrase I should use, or the question I should ask, and you're kind of going, Yeah, sure, those are obviously really important, but at the same standpoint, more so looking into what's the kind of pivotal change moments that individual buyers are having, and figuring out, how do you uncover those in your own brand? So, right?

Unknown Speaker 23:51
So with the story brand, there is a formula to, yeah, you know, help people actually follow it and get their get some clarification or clarity within their message? Yeah, took a sentence, took me for a ride. But you start waiting time you say formula, I think it's like, how do I stumble through this?

Unknown Speaker 24:10
How do you, how do you kind of use the formula without creating a message that sounds formulaic? Yeah, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 24:18
yeah. Good question. Um, I mean, a long time ago, you know, when i we i ran an agency for a decade, and seven of those years we were story brand certified, and so we did 300 plus workshops with people and brand scripts with people, maybe more than that.

Unknown Speaker 24:35
But pretty early on, we realized that the story brand messaging kind of framework was more of a messaging filter than it was a formula to, like, just kick out this word or the sentence. And the reason I say that's because so often, when you're working with an organization and you're really kind of, like, trying to understand, like, okay, who's the hero of their store, who's their audience they're selling to, or, like, that ideal client profile, or that.

Unknown Speaker 25:00
Persona, or whatever word you want to use, and then what's the problem they have? And, okay, how do we then, you know, empathetically, talk about their the brand's ability to connect with the prospect, and what's the authority they would then have to, like, actually be able to solve that problem? And you know, you're kind of working through all the different characteristics, the seven different parts of the story, brand framework. But then you kind of have to go, all right, the same sentence doesn't work in an email that works on a homepage, that works on a paid ad, that works on a, you know, whatever, a speech on stage or, like, it's not the same exact words. And so then you have to kind of go, okay, so how do we figure out how to use this as a filter to, like, go, Hey, if we're ever saying something to our audience. It needs to run through this filter, like, are we talking about, are we talking to our audience? Are we talking about the problem they have, or we position ourselves as the kind of guide, or that, you know, person that can help, you know, lead them out of their problem or their challenge, you know, are we? Are we using it as a filter? And so I'd say probably in the in the work that I've done with it, and what I know about the store brand framework, really understanding the why behind each different element of the of the formula is probably just the most important part. One is for any agency or, you know, marketing guru out there, like, it's probably the fastest way that I've found to get up to speed with a brand. So if you're trying to work with them, or you're, you know, okay, you know, just starting with them, or whatever, and you probably have a discovery process of some some way, shape or form, I would say it is one of the fastest ways to get up to speed. Like I say, with that brand and what they're doing products, they sell, challenges they have, or that they're solving those types of things. And so using it as a fill, as like a filter, is probably been the easiest I've found to not have, which is that it's like the, you know, everything's like art and science, right? There's a combo of both of them in everything. So you've got, like, the science of the formula, right? And kind of digging into each different section, understanding the why, and then you have the art of, okay, what's the actual implementation or execution you're trying to, trying to do, and then using the store brand kind of framework as that filter. So I don't know if that does that make sense at all? I feel like it was a non linear explanation, but it was, that was good. I pulled a handful of notes from

Unknown Speaker 27:14
so I guess jumping back towards just agency life. Yeah, what's the like? One

Unknown Speaker 27:20
Domino? He would say, an agency needs to knock this down to make everything else in their lives easier.

Unknown Speaker 27:32
If you could figure out what problem that you solve,

Unknown Speaker 27:38
I think that probably is going to make your life easier, because

Unknown Speaker 27:42
you know, reality is, is that kind of everybody is, you're kind of known for one thing. Like, even, like, I'm a generalist. I, like, I know a lot of different things, and I kind of go deep on a few

Unknown Speaker 27:54
but like, for the most part, if you want me in your organization, I'm going to create momentum. Like, that's all you need to remember, and that, and that, and that is so I've kind of, you know, honed in on a bit of a problem that I help people fix, and that's kind of to help people get unstuck and to help create momentum in their organizations and so, but it's taken me years to figure out, how do I describe that? Because I am a generalist, it's really easy for if you're a specialist and all you do is this, and you're dedicated your whole life to it, like, great, that's the problem you fix. But anyway, I feel like that's the thing that people should chase after, is what's the problem they actually fix? For people, there's a lot of aspects to being able to, like, narrow down what that kind of problem, you know, how do you get there? And is it relevant to the marketplace? And, you know, do people actually want to buy it, and all those types of things, and that's all part of it. But feel like once you have the problem or clarity on the problem that you solve,

Unknown Speaker 28:46
kind of everything downstream from that you know, your offers, your positioning, your pricing, your pitch, all those types of things are much more clear and but if you can't articulate your problem or kind of what you solve and who, like whom you solve it for, you'll probably struggle to really scale most anything because of the fact that you just you're not going to resonate super well, and you're going to be kind of spread thin and do a lot of different things. So that's, I mean, if I were to pick one, I'd say that's the thing that's probably the most valuable to chase down and actually articulate. Yeah, we have very similar answers for that one. So nice.

Unknown Speaker 29:21
Either both of us are wrong or we have good companies, either way. So,

Unknown Speaker 29:27
all right, I got two questions as we wind down. First being, what book do you recommend every agency owner should read?

Unknown Speaker 29:36
I mean, I can't, I can't recommend the story brand. You know, building a storybrand book, enough, there's a new version that came out this year. Sure brand, building a store brand, 2.0 highly recommend that if you're building an agency and you're more on the creative side, less on the business side, and haven't scaled a business or something before, I'd recommend reading traction by Gina Wickman.

Unknown Speaker 29:58
You know, entrepreneur.

Unknown Speaker 30:00
Operating System, Eos, big name that's out there. But if you don't have a way, like a framework that you're using to, like, operate your business, it's something to lean into.

Unknown Speaker 30:08
So those are two that I would recommend for sure. It's interesting because I've read. I mean, I read, I listen to our read books all the time, every month, and there's lots of them. They're tactical things. There's sales questions, there's, you know, there's hiring things, there's team building things, there's manager things, there's leadership things, I would argue that for most kind of creatives or people in agency land, that that, after navigating it, my response really, is, is read books and get around content that helps you understand who you are as an individual and confidently believe in yourself.

Unknown Speaker 30:45
Because most people have a hard time selling their service because they're not confident that their service or that themselves can help that person. They're kind of like, I think we can help you like, you know, you're kind of like, they're almost like, ducking and and so, yeah, you've got all the tactical things, you've got all the sales questions. I would argue that there's a lot of books now that are out there that if you ask the question of some sort of AI service, you're gonna learn it just as fast, if not faster. The thing you can't learn from AI is really who you are as an individual. Might be able to have words that are put to it, you know, AI can help you with that, but who you are as individual, and then how do you like approach different situations with confidence. So I think that's probably falls into, like, the psychology self help leadership type kind of genre, more than anything else. But if I look back on the last like 15 years, probably those books have been the most impactful for me, comparatively to Sure, I'll pick things out of other, you know, books that are more tactical. But yeah, that'd be my answer. Awesome. Taking this full circle, yeah, I have, like, no constraints on this question, and so the answer is very incredibly. Wondering if I, if I did, add a couple of constraints, what would happen? Yeah, last, the last question, Where can people find you?

Unknown Speaker 32:00
Yeah, I'm probably the most active on LinkedIn, on any like social platforms.

Unknown Speaker 32:07
We've got a community that we're building called agency builders. So agencybuilders.com is a great way to kind of find that it's basically just fostering community of people that are doing similar things and running all the same directions and have similar questions and that kind of stuff. So check that out. And then I work at storybrand, around the revenue team at storybrand, and so feel free to reach out to storybrand, but those are kind of the, probably the best, best places to find me. Awesome. All right. Tyler, thanks for joining, and then fun to see you too.

Unknown Speaker 32:41
That's the show everyone. You can leave a rating and review, or you can do something that benefits. You click the link in the show notes to subscribe to agency forward on sub stack, you'll get weekly content resources and links from around the internet to help you drive your agency forward. You

Transcribed by https://otter.ai