Latest / Agency Advantage / Build a Team or Borrow One? A White Label Founder Tells the Truth | Austin Benoit

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Build a Team or Borrow One? A White Label Founder Tells the Truth | Austin Benoit · Agency Advantage

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yup and C owners, you know how it goes.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: More adds, more pressure, more profit to stop.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: You built 15 grind, more revenue coming, but you're running out of time.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Agency advantage.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Red starts breaking it down.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Better people, better systems, better moves all around.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Leadership leverage, profit and scale.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Real world lessons from the winds that fail.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Build it smarter, lead the team, take your freedom back.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Agency advantage.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now you're on the right track.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, welcome to the Agency Advantage podcast.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: Today we're talking to a guy who traded a mechanical engineering career for the marketing world and never looked back.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: Austin is the founder of Search Prestige, which is a white label agency delivering senior-led SEO, Google Ads, and meta-ad fulfillment for other agency brands.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_02: When COVID hit, Austin walked away from the corporate engineering world, taught himself STO, and went full-time freelancing within a few months.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: That freelance hustle grew into a company that now powers delivery for over 100 agencies across the US.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: Now, full transparency before we begin, at Talent Fees, we help agencies hire vetted team members and build their own in-house teams.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: Austin helps agencies skip the team and borrow his.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: On paper, we are competitors, but in reality, we're solving the same problem from opposite ends because not every agency is ready to build in-house, and plenty of agencies have everything they can out of white label and may need to begin building their own delivery process.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: Somewhere in the middle, one of those two paths is likely where your agency is today.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: So rather than pretending the other model doesn't exist, Austin and I in this episode are going to talk through his journey of growing search prestige, and we're going to put it both on the table and figure out which one actually fits your agency depending on where you're at in the process.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: So if you're ever wondered whether you should build your own delivery team or borrow one, this is the episode for you.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: Austin, welcome on.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, Brad.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: Glad to be here.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Good intro.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we what would we do without Claude, Chat GPT, and a little bit of magic.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you uh you and I were messaging earlier on before getting on the on the show, and I had you thought our guest form.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: And my uh, you know, my my admin goes in and creates these notes, and I'm like looking at this and I'm like, his guest form said nothing about like an engineering track or whatever.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm like, is this right?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: And she's like, yeah, I cross-checked and verified it.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: And Claude told me that it came from his website and linked the website and everything like that.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, what would we do without Claude?
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's all true.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: So so, anyhow, uh on the notion of like AI and SEO and everything like that, before we get into that, uh, obviously I had my little intro here for you, but why don't you give a little bit of an introduction uh beyond what I said of like what you guys do at Search Prestige and who exactly do you help?
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, uh as you said, we're a white label marketing agency.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: So at our agency, Search Prestige specifically, our most core competencies are SEO and of course GEO now, um, as well as Google Ads and Meta Ads.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: So pretty much anything under that kind of performance marketing umbrella.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's what we've you know chosen as our skill set to get really good at.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: So we we help agencies of of many different shapes or sizes kind of plug in.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: Some people kind of need that that all-in-one solution, everything under the sun that that we plug into.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Some people maybe they're great at ads, or they're great at, you know, maybe they're a full service agency, but they just don't have a good SEO team and they don't want to build it out in-house.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: So sometimes we're just getting plugged into gaps.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: So um it really varies.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: And it's everything from uh niche local agencies, people who work with maybe home service or dental or you know, things of that nature that we see a lot in this space, or it could be, you know, anything else.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like we work with a lot of e-commerce focused agencies, so kind of a wide mortgage board, but yeah, we're we're trying to plug in and help them scale by getting a lot of the the gritty work done behind the scenes with a you know skilled, skilled team that that we've built in in-house.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, it's one of those things like when I had my agency, like I got into the world building websites.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_02: I was building websites back when I was like 14.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: And and, you know, then I self-taught myself SEO, right?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: But then when I had clients that were like, hey, do you do meta-ads?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: Do you do Google ads?
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, uh, and so like I had, you know, uh web dev was always in-house.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: And then uh we had SEO that was white labeled, and then I eventually brought that in-house with my agency.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: But meta-ad and Google ad fulfillment was never in-house.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: That was always a white label fulfillment that was doing that on uh on the back end.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and to your point, like there's some people and some agencies who like they're really good at what they do in certain areas, but they have no clue about this other area.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so why try to be the expert in that uh when you can hire someone else to do it?
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: And in fact, uh, you know, your you and I met at the uh Josh Nelson's Seven Figure Agency event, and uh I was driving back to the airport with your uh director of paid ads, right?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: And he's just like the the conversation he and I had on the drive to the airport, like absolute genius.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I said that to him, I'm like, I I didn't know ads, right?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: Like, and so it was uh not something that with me growing my agency, it was worth me um worth me going through.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: So just for from the conversation I've had with him, and I, you know, I just sent you guys a referral because just from the conversation I had, it was like, wow, this guy, this guy really knows, knows his crap.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: So let's kind of go back a little bit real quick.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: You know, uh I've said this multiple times uh to people, but the the COVID-19 pandemic in a way, like obviously was not good in many fashions, right?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_02: But for many people, it was there was a silver lining in the pandemic.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: And it sounds like that's kind of what it was for you.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: So you had this like full corporate track ahead of you.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: You're at the University of Michigan, mechanical engineering degree.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: Walk me back during COVID when you like decided to teach yourself SEO out of all sayings.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: And like how did that then lead you into what you're doing now?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, like most people in SEO or maybe even just in our space in general, right?
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: You don't really find it always by traditional means.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that was right the same story for for me personally.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: So, yep, engineering track, that's what I went to school for.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like any college kid, you just pick, you know, math and science.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: If you're good at that, engineering is a good option.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: So that's you know, as as much as I thought about it basically, and never liked it at all.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: Frankly, I I struggled through school.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: I I got a good degree on the tail end of it, and I I I I'm glad I I did for sure.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, never never was called to be the next great engineer in in this world.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: I always had a knack for business and entrepreneurship or at least an interest.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: So that I never really scratched that itch until you know a couple years out of school.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I I I guess when I say that I I I did dabble in a lot of things like Amazon FBA and I even did like some multi-level marketing, and I I did like a little bit of drop shipping, you know.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: I I kind of tried all sorts of things.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I always kind of had this burning desire to find a way to make money online and you know, kind of be my own entrepreneur type of thing.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: So, anyways, um COVID, I always make the same joke, but I watched Breaking Bad first, and then after that, I figured I should do something a little bit more productive with all the extra free time that I had um just sitting around at at home.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, long story short, I was doing a lot of research and found um found this paid course that was um you know definitely a a pretty big stretch for me to make that investment at the time, especially having no idea if I was gonna make money on the tail end of this.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: But I did that, and then kind of the rest is history.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I was, you know, I learned SEO, learned how to make websites, learned how to get them to, you know, get get the phone ringing, so to speak, and then started freelancing on upwork for about a year, kind of moonlighting while I was still working as an engineer.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: So that was a really good way for me to do it.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I was just kind of getting married throughout all that as well.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: So fiance now, now wife kind of had, you know, she knew I was kind of doing this thing um on the side that was starting to grow.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: So eventually got her on board with the idea of quitting my job.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: She was still going through PT school, getting her doctorate.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: So we needed to make sure we had like the insurance and all that kind of fun stuff.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we ended up making enough sense that that I made the leap full time, yeah, kind of right in the middle of the pandemic.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: And um and yeah, haven't haven't looked looked back since.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: So it kind of started as a freelance gig, just kind of me, myself, and I, but naturally grew into being able to hire out help.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: As I grew, I I always kind of had that proclivity for like the sales and marketing side of it.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I ended up getting some some help and yeah, learned a lot of things, learned, learned by making pretty much every mistake in the book.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: And and frankly, I I still do.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: But yep, that's kind of kind of how I got got got here today, basically.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_02: You know, as uh you and I talked to 7FA, and it sounds like you and I have kind of gone down a similar path with the the marriage and the kids and uh the insurance thing and making sure the wife is employed so you have the insurance and all that stuff.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: It is uh it is a fun game.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: I could do 20 episodes on uh on the whole healthcare uh side of things.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: So what's what's kind of you you know, you you you kind of kind of mentioned like you you didn't enjoy engineering, right?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: It was like just something you chose.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I would have never made it because there's a lot of like physics and calculus in there.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: And like after I was in my undergrad was in computer science, and after I was about to fail uh calculus the second time, uh I decided to swap from computer science to undergrad or two because I knew I didn't have to take calc two.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and I was like, I just have to get through calc one and then like we're good.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: So I, you know, engineering is not for the faint of heart, but uh, engineers are trained really to think in systems and tolerances and everything like that.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: What do you feel like that background gave you in marketing?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_02: And then especially now is like you're growing as this white label provider.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: You have other agencies, systems, and processes, and you're trying to appeal to the masses and everything like that.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like how is that translated into what you guys do now?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for sure.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: You're exactly right.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: We're we're that's probably the biggest skill that I bring from kind of that, you know, my my my track as an engineer is that systems thinking.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, there's there's two main ways that it gets applied.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's in the individual disciplines, right?
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: Of like how you actually run an SEO campaign, how you you know troubleshoot issues in an ad is ads account, but it's also on the the business side of it, right?
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of like how do you structure a team, you know, how do you how do you stay profitable?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: How do you predict and manage growth and things of that nature?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: So it really applies in in both ways.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: For for an engineer, I'm rather, and even an entrepreneur, I'm rather type B.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: So to be honest, sometimes I do struggle with like staying to like a some sort of you know framework or organizational model, but um, I I've definitely still got got enough of my brain wired that that I can kind of flex those those skills when I need it.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I've always really excelled more in like the people side of it.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like I love our team, I love the hiring part of it, I love you know, really investing in our our team culture.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: I love the the clients and I like doing like the sales side of it as as well.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: That part of it excites me.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: So so yeah, that's kind of so I I think having my education be kind of more so where my weaknesses are has actually made me a pretty well-rounded person.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: But I guess uh I'll let others be the judge of that.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, it's it's one of those things that like uh, you know, you you you say, like, you know, you're very typey, like a lot of times IT people also like very like process driven, right?
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm I'm the exact opposite.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, you know, there's I have to have somebody on my team who can do the process and implement the systems and everything.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I did a Colby A test a while back, and it's like your quick start is like a nine, but your follow-through is a two.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's like that's me, right?
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so you have to like s surround yourself around people and team members that are really gonna help you grow your your your agency.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: And and on that note, you know, one of the things you've you've said early, uh, you know, like every early hire you had uh inside of Search Prestige kind of felt like a gamble in a way.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh you don't have to like name names or anything like that, but you know, what was like your your worst one or your best one that you've had and like what did it permanently change about how you build a team today?
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I wouldn't say I had any like major tragedies.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think what I didn't realize when I was earlier on in running this agency is I thought the I thought the B players were A players when they were really B players.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: I thought the C players were B players when they were really C players.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: So um for me it was like until I really had like a real A player that I did I realized kind of that my my uh my baseline was totally skewed up up a notch in terms of what I thought really good was.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's been so I I yeah, I think for me, just kind of um, you know, definitely learning the the people's side of the business has been the biggest unlock for me in terms of yeah, getting good people on the team, figuring out how to do that.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then once you do, you want to support them, right?
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: So you start to realize that, oh yeah, some of these kind of underperformers, not only are they underperforming in their specific role, but they're really affecting my A players and their ability to want to be able to run through through brick walls for me, which which I should obviously be all about.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I had to definitely make some some hard decisions over, even just like the last year here at our agency to to do some some restructuring and and kind of really build a base of of good A players.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_02: You know, uh I mentioned already about us being at that seven-figure agency, like there was uh a whole session on like A players versus B players, right?
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: And the the ongoing joke I heard from a lot of people is like we're all gonna leave seven-figure agency and just fire a bunch of people, right?
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so uh, you know, obviously that's probably not what happened with with a lot of people, but we've gone through that too, right?
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like even us being in the talent world, like what the team that got me here won't get me there, right?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: The team that got you to where you're at won't get you to the next level.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: And so you constantly have to look at like how can you level up your team and everything like that.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: We had two people on board this week, uh, one yesterday and one today.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and we just right before we hopped on this recording had like our weekly ops call.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and just like we have a fractional COO brought him in and like what he was just extracting out of these people, I was like on the call and I'm like, why the hell did I not make these hires sooner?
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and it's like you you then see that glimpse of the A player, and it's like, wow, like we have been like, you know, there's these people I brought on, you know, tied to churn or tied to this, right?
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, wow, damn, if I had this person on board, I wouldn't have lost XYZ client or we wouldn't have messed up an XYZ way.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's definitely important to have those A players on the team.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I I I mentioned it in the the intro, kind of the elephant in the room is like, you know, we at Talent Fees help agencies build their in-house teams, you help agencies.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna say in a way like borrow yours or rent yours or whatever you want to call it.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: So technically competition, but I think we'd both agree that there's a right stage for each.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_02: Where does, like in your opinion, where do you feel that white label fits best in an agency's life cycle?
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_02: And when do you tell a partner or recommend a partner like, hey, now's about time that you kind of graduate from us and begin building your own team?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the answer really does vary a little bit because yeah, we have had people who, like you said, kind of do graduate, right?
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like we're we're kind of more a bridge versus kind of like a ladder that they're kind of building on.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: Some people they just really never want to build one service line in-house and they just kind of want to keep tacking us on.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: So it it really goes kind of both ways.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: So in our experience, it really first comes down to like what's like your true core competency as an agency owner and just kind of knowing who you are as as a leader, right?
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to really kind of build out that that team and and and do the HR part of it?
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: And and and for a lot of really successful agencies, the answer is yeah, absolutely, right?
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: I need a team, I need, need, need kind of that the full-time, you know, collaboration and and and kind of grow that that route.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, some some people really just kind of want that more simple um structure where where they kind of have that very predictable cost.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: They just want to be able to, you know, kind of just plug and chug somebody who's kind of already knows what what they're doing.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um but the true answer is it's normally somewhere in the middle, right?
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's there's some people who who just use us for like certain things and they're white labeling it, but they're also building out a team at the same time.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: So the right answer is really gonna, you know, come down to kind of knowing your your yourself the the the the the best.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: But even when you know it does make sense to say, hey, I think it's time for us to bring in, you know, an SEO team in-house, like we're we're we totally understand that, right?
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we're we're more than willing to help and or you know, even bring somebody on with you.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: So so yeah, we're we're just you know, just like you, right?
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: We serve agencies, right?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: So we just want to make sure we're setting up the people who do decide to partner with us in the best position position possible to hit whatever their their their goals are.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I also say too, kind of like what what you guys do, Brad, in terms of helping people hire the best talent for them and train them and make sure that they're gonna be a good fit for the team.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: We in a way do that for our agency partners just kind of under our own, our own, our own payroll, right?
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like we're doing the work to like bring in talent, hire it, train it.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you just kind of get to tap into that.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's it's almost like we're kind of doing the same thing, just a slightly different delivery mechanism and and kind of cost model that goes into it too.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's always what I say to our scaling partners too.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, hey, as we you know, you grow and scale with us, we we will do the hard work of like finding people, firing people if need be, and kind of all that stuff.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_02: Well, because you know, what what what you don't want is you don't want an unhappy partner, right?
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: And so if you have, you know, team members who aren't performing, right, you're gonna have to do that, like firing and hiring and everything like that.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_02: But what should happen, and this is what I like from conversations we've had, like I know happens, is like if you do have to let somebody go, like that delivery engine continues to run, right?
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes for these agencies, when they begin to hire and build in-house teams, if they do it too soon, if that one person leaves, the delivery engine doesn't continue to run, right?
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_02: Like I mentioned us bringing on somebody on board, uh, the the team member that got hired on today, she is replacing somebody who just left our organization.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_02: And because of like our engine, right, we're able to just like roll him off and roll her on, right?
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: There's a little bit of a onboarding, but it's going to be seamless in that sense.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and so that that's a lot of what what your agency partners expect of you guys, right?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: On the back end is that, like, hey, I don't care who is behind the engine doing the work.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: I just care that the work's done and it's done well.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and that our clients, the the roofing company, the HVAC company, whoever it may be, gets the results that they deserve as well on the back end.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, you you you work best, you you mentioned like niche agencies, local shops, e-com.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_02: With all the agencies that you've worked with, like you've probably had some that have come in and they've tried like a few clients with you guys and then like they just closed up shop or they just didn't work out, or you've probably had like a ton of agencies who have come through and you mentioned like they they get to a point where it's like they're huge with you, right?
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's a huge, uh, it's a large account of of your business.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: In your opinion, what separates the agency partners who scale with you versus the ones that stall?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I it really just comes down to you know what any agency does to to grow, basically.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of the smaller ones that kind of hit a plateau with us, and we're even trying to build out some things to more proactively address this, but a lot of times the own limiting factor is the agency owner themselves, as much as I love them and they're they're great customers of ours still, even when that is the case.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: But a lot of business owners, you know, they're they're selling and then they're fulfilling and then they're selling and then for they're fulfilling.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: They don't have any good systems for sales and marketing for themselves.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: So they they always they kind of have the self-imposed plateau of like, hey, I can't take on more than this many clients because I don't want to hire more people or whatever it may be, because they're they're taking on things that a CEO should not be taking on, right?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: So that's typically the one biggest thing.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing is frankly, too, we have some people who are good at sales, but they actually don't sell in the way that we'd prefer, which is like consultatively and really having a good true understanding of what services a client needs, right?
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: So we've had, you know, again, to I won't name names, of course, but we have had like some snake oil salesmen who really go off to a hot start.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: They're onboarding clients, and you know, it sounds like this is gonna be a great relationship.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then 30 days in, the clients were promised like insane results for 30 days of you know, doing SEO, for example.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: So um that that stuff, you you know, again, we've gotten way better at proactively nipping that in the bud, but sometimes you just gotta, you know, walk away from those kind of situations to kind of protect your own team's uh, you know, morale basically in terms of like churning clients and stuff.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's always tough.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: So those are like the biggest red flags we see.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: But the the best ones, yeah, again, they've they've got they're typically a little bit more established.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said, they've got, even if it is the founder, but they have really good ongoing like sales marketing systems, um, whether it's upselling, cross-selling your existing clients or generating new, new book of business.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: They typically do have like a good account management layer into place too, whether it's a project manager, account manager, a mix of the both, because there still needs to be some conduit between the work we're doing and the end client.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: We we are actually like pretty client-facing, like we hop on calls, white label friendly and and all that stuff, um, which not a lot of agencies do, but at the end of the day, we still need someone to be like that main champion of the campaign, that main point of contact internally.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: So if you have those in place, you'll typically do pretty well with the white label like us because uh yeah, I'm biased.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, the the work itself we do is always always great.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: There there's always just a few factors that aren't always in our control that can lead to kind of those those more uh volatile, you know, uh situations, basically.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: And and and you're right.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: There's not many white label companies that will like, yes, they'll hop on calls with you as the partner, uh, but they won't hop on calls with the clients, right?
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so the fact that you guys do that is uh is huge.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: The white label company that uh that that we used, like they they did that, but it was like I wasn't impressed with the uh the account manager, the client success manager we had, right?
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so they were client facing for us.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but it was kind of like, you know, it it got us to where we needed to be.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_02: So the fact that the agency owner can be client-facing, right?
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: Even have their own account managers, but then bring, you know, your team in as like the subject matter experts on things to talk on points and everything like that definitely helps elevate the client experience and everything like that.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_02: So uh one of the things you you mentioned um kind of like in our onboarding process for this podcast was you know talking about like AI and marketing and AI and and and SEO.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: You know, let's let's talk about that you know there's there's AI SEO, there's GEO, there's all these different turbs you know one of the things you guys are doing, I believe is like you're tracking client visibility inside you know Chat GPT, perplexity, Google AI overviews, uh, you know, what like is this truly like real discipline in the sense of like uh there's actual great data we can use to track this to like to tell that this is coming from these AI search engines and everybody's still kind of guessing on this.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: And then what do you feel from an AI perspective, you know, showing up in these search results in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, everything like that, really moves the needle for these agencies or in this case for their clients to really help them rank inside of those those platforms.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: The the true answer is there's a lot of new stuff that kind of seems to be unfolding every week.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: So sometimes you got to turn off LinkedIn and YouTube and make sure you're not flooding your head with too much uh sensationalization to a certain extent.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time it is very true that like we're still learning like really what GEO is, AI visibility is all these things and how to how to really approach it.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: Our stance has typically been um that you know GEO and SEO they they do share the same foundation.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: So there there's obviously quite a bit of overlap with having a good website with good content and you know good technically sound website things like that.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: But they you know of course the way that a large language model actually recommends somebody is inherently different than the way a search engine operates.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: So there's there's definitely quite a bit of difference there as well.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah there's a good question about like the the tracking piece of it because that that is a challenging part of it.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of clients say hey I kind of know that AI is like this big thing and I should probably be investing some of my marketing dollars into getting visibility on AI but like what's my ROI?
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know how how am I really going to understand if this is like even a worthwhile endeavor.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: That piece of it frankly is hard to answer.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: So we've you know typically a lot of like the tools that are out there like the the prompt tracking tools the AI visibility monitors things of that nature we're always telling clients like those are directional at best.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now don't get me wrong we still use them and and pay for these tools and and and have them set up for all of our client campaigns.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: But the reality is like it's is it is a harder it's you know the the data we have it's it's more like any other kind of top of funnel channel like you know posting organically on social media more so than it is like like paid ads where you get you know that you know click attribution data or or or conversion attribution.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: You you you can do some things right again those prompt uh tracking tools are a good start.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: They're only as good as the prompts you give it and you we still know that AI is like super personalized but it's still a good again directional data point to have on comparative purposes.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then you can of course inside of Google Analytics you can track actual traffic that comes to your website directly from a a a tool like ChatGPT.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: But again we all we know that that's still probably just a drop in the bucket because not everybody is going to click directly from a chat and then you know go straight to your website so that you know maybe they'll get recommended by an AI tool and then they'll Google you or then they'll find you on social media.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really not perfect and that's just kind of the reality that that that that it is we we do know some other things right we know that the AI traffic converts extremely well typically the best channel compared to all the other ones even though it's like a really really small percent of traffic right now.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: So really the the brands who are going to win are going to be ones that that do kind of see that big picture and can make that investment.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: Now I'm not saying that every company where they're at in this stage like that's like the next best marketing dollar for them to spend is AI visibility or GEO.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: What I will say is if you're already investing in SEO which you should at least GEO should be a component of that.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time some things that maybe your SEO strategy was missing you're and if you really do have the ability and the the capabilities to invest more in your AI visibility, there's there's certain things that that you should be adding on in terms of making sure your content's you know even more fresh than it has been, making sure you're taking these third party platforms more seriously that AI likes to mention, whether it's UGC or social media.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: So there there's definitely a lot of things.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of it's you know kind of becoming a little bit more of a holistic play but definitely knowing that that getting mentioned by AI is going to still be become a a big big uh big win if if you can get get your business to that point.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah absolutely well and and it it's only going to continue to evolve right like the you know we all hear like the SEO's dead blah blah it's not but like what we've seen over the last even just the last two months last six months last year of how AI has changed has been tremendous right in terms of what you can do.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_02: Now you have you know Victor that's involved in your Slack channel and uh I just downloaded a new tool that like I can literally with my iMessage I can text an an AI agent uh and it's connected to different things and I can ask it questions and everything like that.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_02: But as you were talking like I just went on ChatGPT and I'm like what is the best white label company for marketing agencies that does SEO, Google ads and meta ads and so like it tells me its sources and everything like that.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_02: But then when I click on the companies that it provides uh which is ironic because it's given me three companies that I have actually put into my chat GPT recently.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_02: So it's probably you know it's changing my results based off data that I've given its personal, which is good, right?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's more personalized.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_02: But when I click on uh on the links it does add a uh UTM source for Chat GPT, right?
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: So I imagine things like that are going to continue to roll out and really make it even easier for us to track that data, but it doesn't solve the issues you said like somebody looks it up inside of uh inside of Chat GPT and then they wind up going to you know Google and then search it on Google and everything like that um as well on there.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah I think I think one I guess kind of quick tip that I can offer for agency owners to do for their clients is consider um take consider taking like self-attributed reporting a little bit more seriously.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: And when I say that all I mean is like when you're you know when on your client's website when somebody goes to fill out a form just add a simple dropdown of like hey how'd you hear about us, right?
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: Google or AI tool or ad or whatever, right?
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: Those those things actually you know are more valuable data point over time than than I think a lot of people um believe basically.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: So that that's at least a really good place to that that's the best thing that we can come up with right now in terms of really getting it as close to that source to that point of conversion right where they actually become a lead which is obviously what your your clients and and you know your business owner is going to typically care most about.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah absolutely absolutely so uh Austin as we wrap up here um and I and I hope you don't mind me mentioning this um but I obviously you and I have connected the fact of like two kids under two you and your wife are uh expecting additional child here soon and everything like that.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: So that's a lot right for uh for a business owner who is scaling to the size that you guys are at to then have to step away from the company while it continues to grow.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: Like sales continue to come in, delivery continues to run everything like that.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: And so like I was able to do it for the most part when my daughter was born in March.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you asked me before we hopped on here recording how my vacation was that I just saw on last week and I was like great like everything ran except for the fact that I had inbound leads that I was responding to right.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_02: But if that's the worst thing that I have to do while on vacation is respond to new business coming through like I'm not complaining, right?
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_02: But when it comes to like somebody who's listening and they're like hey like that's never going to happen for me.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we're we're expecting a child or we're going on vacation or whatever it may be, from your point of view, what is like that one hire and obviously it changes per agency, but from all the people that you talk to that are using you guys for white label side of things, what's that hire that you would recommend for these agency owners to make that may not be like an in-house like fulfillment role to help them really be able to hand delivery off?
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think for most people probably the account management seat is typically the one that people probably sleep on the most like maybe they've got some underlings who can do some SEO, write some content, build some websites for them, but they're still the main point of contact with with clients.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: If you're if you're running an agency, the account management piece often is actually where you provide more value than the actual results you drive for clients and that's maybe a controversial take but I always say that you could get great results for the clients but if you suck at communicating that to them they're gonna fire you way quicker than if you have blackluster results but you're communicating constantly and you're letting them know that you're working on stuff.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you let them know you know what's going wrong and and why.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: Now you'll probably still get fired eventually if you can't fit you know get things to to start working well for them.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: But I'd much rather have that problem versus the other one, right?
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: So typically like if you're the main point of contact for clients, yeah, you're never going to stop having having fires, right?
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: Agencies, you know, until you get to a certain size and even always I think are can be kind of a high cortisol business type just because it's a service based business.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: You're dealing with clients all day um you're you're trying to make a lot of people happy at at once and there's always going to be you know some fire to put out so having that account manager that person who really can take that load off your plate for me personally has been the definitely the the most helpful hire for me to feel like I can spend more time doing the part that I like, which is you know the sales and marketing our own business and again building out some some more big picture systems for the team and investing in our our our our HR and you know things of that nature.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and that was I used to say like an executive admin or an operations manager is that first hire you should make which I do believe to an extent to this day.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_02: But when I you know was in the process of launching Talent Fuse my executive admin I had for my agency became my director of operations for for Talent Fuse and she has been like the core of our delivery engine.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_02: And from day one like I launched the company from my son's hospital groom because he was admitted to the ICU uh two days prior to when I had like already teased and was promoting that I was announcing this new thing and everything like that.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: And like from day one on the sales calls I had to say okay Karen from my team is going to do your onboarding call.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_02: And Karen was onboarding she was client success.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_02: She was finding the talent like she did everything right and then we began to like hire to buy back her time right because I wasn't involved in delivery.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: I had, you know, my son was hospitalized four times last year.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so it was like my focus was hey I got to be present and just like drive as much business as I can to this company.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_02: But you you what I I bring all that up because like in my case I was able to leverage somebody as an executive admin to then be an account manager, client success manager for talent fees on our side of things.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_02: But you made a comment of like agency owners kind of like sleep on that account management role too long, right?
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_02: And that was something that we did was like Karen was rocking at my clients love her, you know, great relationships, blah, blah, blah.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_02: But to be an account manager and to be that, you know, uh consultant in a way, you know, takes a different person than somebody who has that executive admin like operations brain.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so we recently hit a point where I was like, okay, like we got to take that hat off of her, right?
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_02: She's she's gotten us to where we're at, but I need her back in that operations and leadership role.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so just this week one of the hires we brought on was a client success manager who has like five years of expertise working for one of our competitors, uh, sales expertise, all those things.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_02: But I put that into people's minds because, you know, oftentimes we think we have to go out and hire this like super expensive account manager and client success manager.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_02: That may be the route to go.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_02: We have clients who uh who go and hire an account manager, client sex manager either through us or they do it here in the US.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_02: But sometimes you can kind of, you know, hide behind an executive admin in a way where they're the ones that are responding to your emails.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: They're the one that's sending reports to clients.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_02: They're the ones that's managing the relationship with the white label provider and double checking results and everything like that.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_02: So that way you as the founder can continue to go out and sell and grow your agency.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_02: So with that, you know, Austin, are there any last words like if for anybody who's an agency owner listening to this episode uh and they're trying to debate like do I, you know, do I do white label, do I not?
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_02: I'm deciding between these different white label companies.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_02: What's kind of that one piece of advice that you would give to them?
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: I would say um really just understand your numbers as a business in terms of, you know, a lot of people like to line up scopes and look at you know who's the cheapest or who's the the whatever but really, you know, what what what you really need to be thinking about is hey what's my LTV right?
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: So not necessarily well how can I get the lowest cost per month, right?
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: How how can I actually make this client the most valuable to me?
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: The way you do that is by making them the most valuable that they they can be as a business.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: But it's really easy to to kind of look at the monthly metrics, right?
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, it costs me this much and I make this much on the top but but really understanding hey is this client going to stay with me six months versus 12 months versus 24 months like that's that's like insanely different for a business that I think people don't always um really put as much weight into because they feel like they can't control it to a certain extent.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like hey sometimes clients just leave right so I think really understanding like your your LTV and your retention metrics is probably where I would start how do I get that and then kind of work backwards from there.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then you know as long as you feel like comfortable from that standpoint, then yeah you can kind of make a decision hopefully a little bit more clearly.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah I mean we're and and we're always happy to be the first one not to recommend ourselves right if we don't think they should be doing SEO or we don't think you know maybe they maybe they're not ready for a white label arrangement like like us, right?
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: We'd rather be the first one to honestly and transparently tell you no.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean I'm I'm I'm pretty open and available too so I'm always happy to to talk to agencies that maybe want to pick my brain about anything under the sun or or see if it's a good good fit for them too yeah absolutely absolutely well and then and then that's that's probably the reason why I've sent your business to you know sent business your way is because we're the same way.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like I'm not gonna just take your business take your business if I don't think we're a good fit we're a good fit and the guy that I sent your way like had like five clients for SEO right and it's like hey hiring your own in-house team like isn't the the right path like here's who you should go talk to.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_02: So if you guys are are listening as we wrap up here, Austin one, thank you for hopping on here today and recording this episode with me.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_02: If you're listening to this and you're looking for a white label provider that you'd like to use for your your agency, you can visit Austin and his team at searchprestige.com uh to learn more about what they do and book a call with with Austin to see how they can help your agency serve.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_02: Or if you're on the other side of things, you're looking to kind of build your own internal team or need to hire somebody to help support your uh your relationship with your white label partner, you can visit us at TalentFuse.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_02: But until next time, this is the agency advantage.