Latest / Entrepreneur Odyssey / Building a Selective Marketing Agency
Transcript
- Tejneet Selhi: Hello everybody, welcome back to the Entrepreneur Odyssey. I'm your host Tejneet Selly and this is the show where we sit down with founders who've actually done the hard yards so you don't have to learn from every single lesson the painful way. Before we dive into today's episode, a quick shout out to our sponsor AI Efficacy who help their customers gain efficiencies and grow their business through smart and personalized workflows. Now, on to today's guest, the lovely Amy Winner. She's the co-founder and head of strategy and development at Wheels Up Collective, a marketing agency born out of COVID that has grown over six and a half years into a deliberately selective shop, working with 10 to 12 clients at a time. From major retainer clients to fractional CMO work and to pro bono non-profit projects. That work is after my own heart. Lovely to have you on the show, Amy. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: Thank you so much. It's fun to be here. Thanks. Tejneet Selhi: Excellent. Well, I think we should start at the beginning and Wheels Up Collective started almost by accident, I understand, during COVID. I think you mentioned when we spoke in the pre-chat that friends, former colleagues were calling you, asking you to help them with side gigs. What was the moment it stopped being like a side project and you decided to turn it into a fully fledged business? Amy Winner | Wheels Up: Yeah, it really was very serendipitous and very opportunistic. you know, it was in the early days of COVID. my co-founder and I, coincidentally, both were in between jobs. We had left large corporate jobs and because we were kind of over that that culture. And so as you mentioned, our friends were kind of reaching out to us, our old colleagues saying, like, hey, can you help? You know, we it was that that mad dush That mad rush to digital that companies were going through in the early days of COVID when people were on lockdown. And so we were just kind of doing little projects here and there and chatting with each other, like, hey, can you believe all this work? And and then we kept hearing about some of our other really favorite colleagues that had become good friends who were maybe like their time was cut in half, or we had a couple friends that had babies and kind of wanted a little bit of work. We had a friend that went back to school and wanted a little bit of work. So it we really the universe kind of pulled us all together as this group of people who needed work and had Tejneet Selhi: Okay. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: the skill set that was in demand. And I don't know when we finally looked at each other and were like, wait a minute. Like we inadvertently started an agency. But you know, I think it was like somewhere around that summer of twenty twenty where we were like, okay, we're gonna we're gonna do this for real. and we kind of never looked back. So it's been fun. Tejneet Selhi: Nice and six years later exactly you're Amy Winner | Wheels Up: Mm-hmm. Tejneet Selhi: still going strong which is amazing. So you describe the agency as filling the gap between bloated expensive shops like Edelman and mom-and-pop providers that couldn't deliver. Has that positioning held up you know six years later? Amy Winner | Wheels Up: You know, it I think any company like you need to really know what you're good at and really know who you're good for. And for us, you know, and that and that's a personality fit. Like for the kind of people on our team, the kind of people who we get along with and we mesh with and we we are good marketers for, that positioning has definitely held up. You know, we we work well with companies that are in like hyper growth mode and need to figure things out quickly and they just don't have the layers of bureaucracy, they don't have the layers and layers of oversight. They have a gun to their head to like figure it out quickly. You know, that's sort of our Tejneet Selhi: Thank Amy Winner | Wheels Up: our niche. And I think that that positioning has definitely held up, if not been reinforced even more and more. You know, like we talk to, you know, companies Tejneet Selhi: amazing. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: at both ends of the spectrum, small companies, local companies and then like larger companies, and we kinda explain that that piece of the pie that we're trying to fit and they're like, Yes, yes, I get that. I d I didn't know that there was this other fit. And and it's something that Elise and I lived daily when we were in-house running marketing organizations. We just couldn't find agencies that could and partners that could that could really, you know, move really, really quickly, but also bring a super high level of of sophistication to the work. Tejneet Selhi: Nice, that, but yeah. And I think that that's, that's testament that you have kept that same niche going You know, I love that niche of sort of helping clients that kind of on the cusp, right? They're on the cusp. They don't quite know how to Amy Winner | Wheels Up: Mm-hmm. Tejneet Selhi: get to that next stage. How do you find those customers? Amy Winner | Wheels Up: Well, we've been really lucky so far that it's we all have really good networks. You know, like we all worked together, the whole team, you know, we'd worked together in in the Seattle tech world and that's such a little you know, in incestuous group of people. So, you know, like we have a couple Tejneet Selhi: I'm not doing it. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: companies where a lot of us have kind of conglomerated together and so it's been through referrals by by and large. our most successful Tejneet Selhi: reason. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: clients, I will say, have come through referrals because know, I think I was mentioning to this before, like they come with a level of trust kind of right out of the gates where we have a little bit more time and and trust equity to be able to build things the right way instead of having to produce results immediately. and I think that's where a lot of agencies have trouble, you know, like there's just that unrealistic expectations that, you know, that Tejneet Selhi: Yeah, that makes sense. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: are on a vendor. Tejneet Selhi: And reputation is the most equitable stock, so to speak, right? Amy Winner | Wheels Up: Mm, ya. Tejneet Selhi: And you mentioned again when we spoke last time that you come from a long line of entrepreneurs and that your dad actually always wanted you to start your own business. And so I Amy Winner | Wheels Up: Yeah, yep. Tejneet Selhi: wondered how much of that shaped the way you're actually running Wheels Up Today? Amy Winner | Wheels Up: I mean I think so my dad was a dairy farmer, you know, and he he was part of a a co-op Tejneet Selhi: Thanks. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: of farms that sold, you know, brought their the product together, the milk together, and sold it to actually Landa Lakes, the the butter company. and you know, he he always I remember years when things were really good and I remember things years when things were really tough. And at the time I don't think I I understood that. I just knew that it rained a lot that year or it didn't rain a lot that year, you know. Tejneet Selhi: Yeah. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: but you know, he was very tenacious and he was I not even tenacious, relentless. And I think that that definitely I draw on that a lot. He he is he passed away a couple of years ago, but I frequently Tejneet Selhi: Sorry. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: when things are really bad evoke Bob Winter. I'm like, Come on, Bob, like you gotta get me out of pickle, you know, you have to I have to kind of channel his tenacity and his very resourcefulness. You know, he was one of those people that could his he said his favorite thing was to make something out of nothing. You know, and he would have like this Tejneet Selhi: well. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: workshop of all these little spare parts and you know something would break and he'd, you know, kind of run out to the shop and find the little pieces and like I do that every day. Like we do that every single Tejneet Selhi: you Amy Winner | Wheels Up: day in the company for our clients, you know, actually working on projects where we're looking at like, okay, you have these these assets at your disposal or you have these these things that you've already built at your disposal. Let's figure out how to put them back together and use them quickly and so we're not starting from scratch. but then also like from you know I I run all the operations at the organization, which I've never done before. I had never run an you know HR. I'd never run payroll and and so kind of like learning those things on the job, you have to kind of get scrappy and resourceful. And I think that's like Tejneet Selhi: Yeah, nice. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: the one thing I took from my dad the most. Tejneet Selhi: I love that, right? Because you can be in completely different industries, but it's Amy Winner | Wheels Up: Mm. Tejneet Selhi: the tenacity, the resourcefulness and the relentlessness, the hustle. Yeah, Amy Winner | Wheels Up: The hustle. It's the hustle. Mm-hmm. Tejneet Selhi: yeah, yeah, yeah. And not kind of giving up after a few no's or after a few wrong turns. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: Yeah. Tejneet Selhi: I love that. That's something that I'm definitely gonna take forward. So kudos to Bob and you. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: thanks. Tejneet Selhi: So I think you mentioned that you're deliberately picky about the clients that you take on and the people you hire. What does Amy Winner | Wheels Up: Mm. Tejneet Selhi: that selectivity actually screen for and what does it cost you to say no, would you say? Amy Winner | Wheels Up: Yeah. in the beginning, it was really hard to say no. you know, you're hungry, you're you're young, you're hungry, you're you just need to make payroll. and Tejneet Selhi: Yeah. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: then in twenty twenty two there was that big tech recession, twenty twenty three, there was that tech recession, and we lost half our clients overnight. Tejneet Selhi: Gosh. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: which was have our business have our billables overnight, which was like terrifying, you know, but Both in the beginning and then recovering from that, we out of desperation, you know, brought on clients that weren't that didn't fit our our profile. And in the short term, it was nice to have the revenue coming in, but like pretty quickly within like a month, you know, we realized that the hours that we had estimated for projects were wildly underestimated and things were taking us twice as long as they should have because of, you know, this this culture mismatch, this expectation mismatch. And so, you know, th those clients like, you know, we end up kind of separating ways with them because like we're not doing a good job. We're not s we we try really hard to be a good steward of their money and we're not a good steward of their money when it's when it's not a good fit. And, you know, it's hard on me, it's hard on Elise. But it's really hard on our team. You know, like Tejneet Selhi: Yeah. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: our team does well because we have handpicked this group of like super high achievers. You know, like they, they, they take their Tejneet Selhi: that. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: work so seriously and we're really deliberate about work-life Tejneet Selhi: you Amy Winner | Wheels Up: balance and creating an environment where you can come and really throw yourself into work and then leave. And like you're done when you're done. When you're at your when you're at your desk, you're like really focused. But then when you're done, you're done. And so I'm very protective of them and making sure that. you know, we're not burning them out on stupid stuff. Tejneet Selhi: Yeah. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: You know, like the work's hard enough. I don't need Tejneet Selhi: Bye. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: to burn them out on, you know, a culture a culture mismatch that I should have seen coming. So, you know, we Tejneet Selhi: Amazing. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: fired clients, you know, because they've treated our people badly. We have said no to clients because, you know, we just are like, hey, we're not the right fit for you, but here's another agency that we think is the right fit, or here's another, you know, freelancer who we think is the right fit. and hopefully they remember that. you know, we're trying to do do right by them instead of, you know, leaving with a bad taste in their mouth. Tejneet Selhi: I think that's so important, building a book of business with the right fit and the right culture of customers. So like you say, you can treat your staff in the best way possible because, know, staff and employees are the backbone of any business, right? Quality people. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: Yeah. Yeah. Tejneet Selhi: I love that. I love that. You said you're never quite content, even With a healthy year, year over year growth and a full client roster, how do you manage to pull far more against staying deliberately capacity constrained? Amy Winner | Wheels Up: I don't know. Like that, I don't know. If you figure that out, let me know. Like, entrepreneurs, let me know how you like sit on that edge where, you know, you you're like, I would love another client. But like, if we get another client, Tejneet Selhi: Yeah. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: like we're kind of on the bubble of needing another project manager. Like, how do we? And so the way we've since we're small, the way we've we've juggled Tejneet Selhi: No. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: it in the past is like Elise and I take on more time. You know, like we we kind of take the brunt of that until we feel Tejneet Selhi: Okay. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: like it's consistent enough that we can add somebody, or we feel like it's cons you know, it's a sure enough thing that the client is gonna be a good fit. But it's hard. It's really hard. It's probably the hardest thing that that I do regularly is try and match that demand with capacity. And and this year's been a little bit of a curveball because the economics of our agency have changed significantly this year. And so, Tejneet Selhi: Bye! Amy Winner | Wheels Up: you know, it's changed the profitability our profitability. And so it changes that model of like when we can afford to hire somebody else or you know what kind of clients we can take extra, you know, Elise and I can take extra. So and Elise has a little girl. She's a little three-year-old girl. So, you know, Tejneet Selhi: Okay. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: she we started this agency to also be able to live the lives that we want to live. And so she's not gonna be at an office for 18 hours a day anymore. She doesn't want to do that. So you know Tejneet Selhi: No. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: we have to kind of guard that that balance but it's hard. Tejneet Selhi: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, it's not easy. It's definitely not easy and it's known when to hire. It's also known when to use automation. I know you use freelancers, right? There's Amy Winner | Wheels Up: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Tejneet Selhi: different ways that you can achieve things, right? Amy Winner | Wheels Up: Yep. Yeah. Tejneet Selhi: So you spent two years as a fractional CMO for a client that went from pre-sales A to series B in a regulated utility space and Amy Winner | Wheels Up: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Tejneet Selhi: I understand you knew nothing about it. What did that engagement teach you about the debt versus range? Amy Winner | Wheels Up: Yeah, I think you know, I've done that a couple of times where I've gone into an a a technology company serving an industry that like I know nothing about, you know, like and it it's been dozens of different industries that I think I would be great on Jeopardy because I have all this useless information about different industries that, you know, you have to learn to like be able Tejneet Selhi: No. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: to to be a good marketer and and to understand the customer. But, you know, I think that there are truths in marketing that are our industry agnostic, you know, knowing the customer, you know, knowing that the customer buys from people who they who they like and who they trust, and who are are consistent, you know, especially in startup world where things are moving, you know, the thing it's a little bit of a moving target. You know, your product is is shifting a little bit as as you're trying to find that product market fit and and keeping those early customers happy and on board and bought in as as the roadmap changes or as the the the service changes. you know, I I think that that engagement in particular, I was working with two people who I had worked with before, the CEO and the CRO I had worked with before. And so again, I had that like immediate trust and and I was able to go in and say, like, you you gotta trust me on this one. Like it's gonna get ugly before it gets better. And they were able to give me the runway to, you know, we went from having like no funnel whatsoever to in six months having Predictive modeling around our conversion rates and and able to map marketing spend and marketing activity to that. And they were growing really rapidly on the revenue side at the time. And so, you know, back to your earlier question, the capacity, capacity mapping was really important because marketing's only as good as the sales team that can follow up on it. So if you have a ton of leads and a ton of prospects that are qualified, but you don't have the salespeople. To focus on it or the sales capacity to actually work those leads, you know, correctly, you're losing it. You're losing it. And especially Tejneet Selhi: Yeah. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: in regulated utilities, you know, those are big behemoth companies. Like you lose your shot at bat and like you're not gonna get it back for a couple of years. You're not gonna get a chance to repitch that client for a couple of years. So, Tejneet Selhi: Mm-hmm. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: you know, that trusting in the system and trusting that. you need to get to the data first that that predictive model was so was the most important thing to them was really it was wonderful to have the runway to do that because a lot of our clients don't don't kind of give us you know six months to really build it. but I think I learned too like you have to you have to show like successes little wins along the way. You have to figure out like with the CRO and the C CEO like what are the shiny things that that they get excited about that can be quick wins and make sure that you're showing some of them too so that you're not like, you know, just waiting for this big project that's gonna be finished in six months. So Tejneet Selhi: That's so important, isn't it? It's the client communications throughout the project and giving progress updates, pitfalls, things like that. So yeah, I think that's really, really important. Yeah. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: It's it's funny because like this is this is like a true a truism like in in any marketing organization I've ever been in. Marketers are the worst marketers of themselves. Like they don't they Tejneet Selhi: gosh, I'm learning that! Amy Winner | Wheels Up: don't show their wins internally. Tejneet Selhi: next. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: Like they, you know, sales has a big chart that's like we hit this Tejneet Selhi: Yeah. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: number, you know, like Engineering has a product roadmap where every quarter you're checking in a cra you know, like marketers Tejneet Selhi: Thank Amy Winner | Wheels Up: don't do that. And especially, you know, they put their little heads down and you know, they've got they've got their own and and it's such a long process to get from I have no idea what your company does to buy now that you know you you can't rely on sales frequently to show that you're moving the needle, you know, like in a in a short term. So marketers need to market themselves. Tejneet Selhi: Absolutely, absolutely. Because Amy Winner | Wheels Up: Internally. Yeah. Tejneet Selhi: marketing is only responsible for getting the leads, right? The sales team then have to close them and marketers don't have much control over that, if any at all, in most cases. yeah, Amy Winner | Wheels Up: In a lot of organizations, yeah. Yep. Tejneet Selhi: absolutely. Now I want to pivot a little bit because I know both you and Elise do pro bono work. And I wanted to understand what made that a non-negotiable part of how you build the business and I ask that from a somewhat selfish point of view because I want to grow my business in that that direction as well and do that pro bono work or you know things that are good for socioeconomic growth. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: Yeah. I think well she and I had both done like nonprofit work like on the side our whole careers. You know, like I was on a couple boards when I lived in Seattle and I think that you have to use your powers for good. You know, like whatever you're good at, like you need to use your powers for good. And, you know, I Tejneet Selhi: Yeah. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: guess some people's superpowers having a lot of money and just and being able to donate it, you know, but like in lieu of Tejneet Selhi: Yeah. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: that, you know, like I I I'm gonna give my time and I I think that if you if you It can be if it can be incredibly fulfilling. You know, it can be fun. It can be a part of work that rejuvenates you if you feel like, you know, you're making an impact. And I think that it's it's funny how I mean I I guess that's one of the things about like volunteering that it gives like it's benef it's beneficial to both parties. You know, like you feel like you're giving of yourself and and it's nice to be able to take your life's work and and things that you're good at that, you know, at a dinner party nobody cares about, you know, that and and apply it to something that, you know, can maybe make the world a better place or maybe make lives Tejneet Selhi: No. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: better for people. and we're, you know, we we try and she and Elise and I each have like one pro bono client at a time. and, you know, we pick organizations or causes that are important to us and you know, try and support them. And it looks different, you know, sometimes it's operations, you know, like here's the operational here's here's what's wrong with your your client, your or your organization, you know, your business model. You know, and sometimes it's hey, I'm gonna help you run these campaigns or I'm gonna help you, you know, with creative. That's usually expensive to to produce. So Tejneet Selhi: amazing and and that's thing different different charities different businesses need different things and I love that I love that Okay, let's talk a little bit about AI because I think you've said that the team use it critically Amy Winner | Wheels Up: Mm-hmm. Tejneet Selhi: and pushing to use AI aggressively, however, testing everything very, very carefully Amy Winner | Wheels Up: Yeah. Tejneet Selhi: because you've watched other agencies assume that it's cheaper when it isn't necessarily. Where has that caution actually paid off for you, would you say? Amy Winner | Wheels Up: well, I mean, we've gotten a lot more efficient. I think like our like f just from an operations perspective, we're able to do more work faster for clients. So they're hopefully, you know, getting more bang for their buck. Tejneet Selhi: Yeah. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: where just from the efficiencies of of large language models and like, you know, predictive work that comes out of that. I think that it we need to be really critical of it. And we've had clients that you know, say out of the gates like we want you to use AI for this, or we're replacing this person with AI, or here's an AI product, you know, here's a AI output, like a wireframe Tejneet Selhi: Yeah. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: or a white paper, like we can have this published by tomorrow, right? And you're like, let's slow down a little bit. And you Tejneet Selhi: you Amy Winner | Wheels Up: know, it's it's still at this point needs like a a pretty heavy-handed human touch to things, or or we think it does at least, but it's definitely helped us do more higher quality work, I think, for clients faster. Tejneet Selhi: Amazing, amazing. And that's the thing, is a tool, not replacement, it's a tool. So coming from a tech background yourself, how does that change the way Wheels Up evaluates and adopts new tools compared to a typical marketing agency, would you say? Amy Winner | Wheels Up: Yeah. I think well, number one is we are all technologists. Everyone on the team has come from a technology background. So I think it's easier to to test things and adopt things and kind of critically vet things. which, you know, we all have parents who were still trying to explain how to use an iPhone too. So like you know, like we don't have the those kind of personalities on the team. Tejneet Selhi: Yep. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: You know, we've got people who are like pretty tech savvy. Tejneet Selhi: Yeah. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: and I think too, we've all used automation enough. We've all kind of grown up with automations maturity curve like along with that we have one of our other fractional CMOs she specializes in automation and robotics and you know so I I think that we're good at at identifying what it's good for as it evolves and what it's not good for. And I'll tell you in the you know maybe you know the first year after Chat GPT came out and kind of like shocked the world a little bit and and then you Tejneet Selhi: Thank Amy Winner | Wheels Up: know the evolution to agentic AI, you know, like I took every sales call I could get from an AI vendor. Because I want it from a marketing AI vendor, you know, because everybody was Tejneet Selhi: you Amy Winner | Wheels Up: promising that these agents were gonna replace agencies and, you know, replace in-house. And I I wanted Tejneet Selhi: Bye. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: to see, do we need to build our own? You know, do we need, do we need to worry about this? And also our clients were asking us, you know, like our clients were asking us, should I worry about this? You know, should we test this? Can we, or hey, I bought this, you need to roll it out. and so we needed to be able to speak in an educated way about it. Tejneet Selhi: Yeah. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: and I think that just like that tech fluency really helps. Tejneet Selhi: I think there's something to be said for testing it and doing a bit of QA really before it goes live. what does growth look like for Wheels Up? Is it more of the same mix or is it a shift? shift into another direction. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: I think, you know, we're gonna stay true to our ICP, which is high growth companies who are navigating change, you know, whether it's an acquisition or a seri funding round or, you know, a large product pivot or land competitive landscape change. you know, that's that's our secret sauce that we're able to really figure out change and how to exploit it a little bit. Tejneet Selhi: Yeah. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: I think where the next six months keeps me awake at night is, you know, like the tools, you know, and and the sophistication of of AI tools in particular and how can we temper clients a little bit when they're like, try this, try this, can we do this? embrace it, br embrace the technology where we can and and really use it to go, produce better better results for our clients. it's fun though. Tejneet Selhi: Well, it sounds like you've got the right people to address that challenge, whatever it may be. Quick, if you can quickly just tell our audience, what's the best way to get in contact with you if they wanna talk about, you know, hiring a fractional CMO or any of the other services that you offer? Amy Winner | Wheels Up: Great. Yeah, thank you. We're at wheelsupcollective dot com. We're on all the socials there. I think LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. and then you can email me anytime at Amy at wheels up dot com. Wheels up collective dot com. we my favorite thing to do is to talk to entrepreneurs. so I have there's a scheduling link on the website if you want to pick my brain for fifteen or twenty minutes and and talk about what keeps you up at night as an entrepreneur or a or a business owner. I try and leave space on my calendar each week to do two or three of those calls and it's absolutely my favorite two or three calls of the week. So invite anybody to to do that. Tejneet Selhi: Amazing. Well, there you go. What a generous offer of time. So I would definitely encourage new founders to take Amy up on that offer. Amy Winner | Wheels Up: Thank you. Tejneet Selhi: So thank you again, Amy, for being so open about building a selective, sustainable agency through COVID and beyond, actually, and staying critically AI first and never quite settling for fine. And so if today's episode has struck a chord do hit subscribe so you don't miss the next one and a huge thank you again to our sponsor AI Efficacy for making this show possible until next time see you next time on the Entrepreneur Odyssey and keep building thank you Amy Amy Winner | Wheels Up: Thank you so much.