This episode breaks three records!* The longest one we've had to date.* Our first consultation episode!* Our first returning guest!Cesar joins us on the podcast once again 5 months after his original episode ($25k MRR and I Have No Idea What I'm Doing | #108) seeking direct help from us.He has a list of issues his agency is dealing with at this size:* Deliverables are being dropped.* Quality isn't up to his standards.* Good employees are too expensive and cheap ones are bad.* There's too much...

How much money can you make as an agency owner?We've been seeing this question pop up a lot and not just online, but in person. It seems that people seem to think that the earning potential is unlimited and thought that may be true, what is mostly disagreed on is the timeframe it takes to earn a lot o money as an agency owner.There really are two fundamental ways to make a lot of money as an agency owner:1) Fast and dangerous. 2) Slow and sustainable. ----------------------------------Our...

**Cold Open (Our Advice to a Redditor // Google Local Service Ads are Changing)****Skip the Cold Open at 16:15**Our agency has been working on two very big things that are fundamentally changing how digital marketing agencies operate. We talked about one of those things in episode 123.This time, we're tackling server-side tracking -- specifically with Google's "Enhanced Conversions".The days of accurate paid media reporting are coming to an end with privacy regulations and tech companies...

Since the release of Chat GPT 2 years ago, we have seen a surge in AI-related tools and content.AI allowed creators to pump out content at 1000x the rate they were and at 1/1000th the cost. The content was good, too. Over time, it became detectable just by reading it.Jon Gillham from Originiality.ai joins us on this episode to talk about the efficacy of AI content detection, when it's applicable, and why it's an important tool as AI content is continually used to pump out massive amounts of...

A listener of the podcast has a bone to pick with us (Jake) on our position with High Level.Josh Kimmes owns a digital marketing agency called Bear North Digital up in Superior, Wisconsin who uses High Level as his agency's primary tech stack.We grill Josh on his whole agency journey, his business model, and his agency's size. Meanwhile, Josh makes the case for why High Level is the best agency tool on the market.Find Josh at bearnorthdigital.com...

**Cold Open (Someone told Cody our podcast was bad... to his face)****Skip the Cold Open at 25:44**It's not looking good for the world's most widely used website builder. WordPress' founder, Matt Mullenweg, attacked WP Engine the other week and WP Engine sent Matt a cease and desist.If you're not in the website-building community or manage websites, that's okay -- we'll give you the backstory.Basically the #1 website builder is going after the #1 website host that hosts that website builder...

**Cold Open (AMAZON GIFT CARD CHALLENGE TO LISTENERS / Headlines without Context)****Skip the Cold Open at 19:50**We've had to dive down the email rabbit hole. Exploring SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and SMTP solutions.Why?Because our job is to deliver leads to our clients. When someone fills out a form on our client's site, in order for us to properly get credit for that lead, the client needs to be alerted immediately.However, as 2024 comes to a close, the website and digital marketing space has been...

**Cold Open (A listener and guest sent us a gift box -- we taste and rank everything in it)****Skip the Cold Open at 13:08**If you don't have a lawyer and don't know how to write agreements for your agency, perhaps hearing how we write ours will help you craft yours.Because we need to say it, we're not lawyers. Our agreements are not airtight. But they work for us.We give practical advice for writing your agreements to make sure clients don't take advantage of you as well as helping you set...

We talk to Andrew Jenkins at Catalyst RVA about his home service agency and how he was able to scale to $15k/mo in recurring profit in under a year.Does Andrew have a secret to his quick success that we don't know? How long can he sustain that? Does he plan to get any bigger... or can he?Find out more as we sit down and chat with Andrew over the next hour and a half.----------------------------------Our recommended agency tools:everbrospodcast.com/recommended-tools/...

For the first time in over 2 years of doing this podcast, we're covering mental health. Specifically our own experiences with it as agency owners.We're covering both perspectives of coming into agency ownership with pre-existing mental health issues as well as developed ones from the natural stressors that come with operating an agency and business in general.We both deal with our own very separate issues. It's not just depression. It's anxiety, imposter syndrome, body dysmorphia, anger, and...

**Skip the fun stuff and get to the meat of the episode at 21:26**The number one problem agencies seem to struggle with is getting clients. They often blame competition or not having a good enough value prop. But that's rarely actually the case.Lacking basic business, marketing, and sales fundamentals is what's killing agencies and causing them to spin their wheels.----------------------------------Our recommended agency tools:everbrospodcast.com/recommended-tools/...

We're joined by Lindsay Halsey of Pathfinder SEO (https://pathfinderseo.com/). Lindsay also owns her own SEO and PPC agency with her partner, Lori Calcott, called Webshine (https://webshine.com/).Pathfinder SEO is a tool developed by Lindsay and Lori, to not only use in their own agency, but also help other agency owners learn the fundamentals of SEO as well as create standardized SEO processes and procedural SEO documentation.Get 30% off your first 3 months with code:...

**Cold Open (Tea, Coffee, Reviews, Our YouTube Channel)****Skip the Cold Open at 7:52**Even if you're not an SEO or web design agency, you should know how to audit a website. The website is an asset that affects everything in digital marketing whether you're a social media agency, email marketing agency, or even video and design agency.If you're a design agency, you may want to consider adding website maintenance and basic SEO service for monthly retainer work.If you're an SMMA, you might...

**Cold Open (The Everbros YouTube Channel)****Skip the Cold Open at 9:38**Agency software comes in different pricing variations. Picking the right software for your agency shouldn't just be about the features it has, how it's billed should also be a major determining factor in the scalability of that software in your agency as your agency scales.We break down the different types of pricing models and what software you should go with based on where your agency is in size as well as how your...

**Cold Open (Our advice to a developmental agency owner)****Skip the Cold Open at 13:55**In this episode, we dive deep into what our onboarding process looks like for new clients. More specifically, we go over our entire Onboarding document that we make new clients fill out.It gives us every detail about their business that we need to know in order to effectively execute our services.That includes their brand messaging, the size of business they are, what their target CPA is, and even...

Our first agency guru-type episode where we talk about success.But more importantly... that when it comes down to it, nobody really cares if you don't succeed at something.The only person you should be doing things for you is you. Sharing your success is great, but don't be scared to do something if you feel like it might not lead to success because at the end of the day... nobody cares.----------------------------------If there's anything we've learned about owning a digital agency, it's...

Fresh off of Jake's appearance on Josh's Web Design Business podcast, Josh makes a special appearance on our podcast diving deep into just how accessible starting a web design agency is.We never wanted to build websites. It was something we realized we had to do for our clients because, at its core, any campaign is only as successful as the landing page. Josh is different. Josh started out doing what he loved -- designing and building websites.He went on to write for Elegant Themes (the...

Wix has never been a platform that agency owners or SEOs recommended. It was the DIY website builder for small businesses.SEOs brought up glaring issues such as the entire site structure being built with Javascript, the inability to issue 301 redirects, edit robots.txt, and the lack of simple integrations to necessary tools like Google Analytics, Search Console, and Facebook Pixel.Since then, Wix has had a bad reputation with agencies. However, it's clear the Wix of today is not the same Wix...

**Cold Open (The new podcast music / Jake and Lauren started a new business)****Skip the Cold Open at 14:58**Increasing regulations and privacy-focused web users are making it harder for agencies to target in-market audiences and track conversions properly.It's our duty as agencies to do those two things:1) Target the right audiences2) Track our success and ROIThe harder it is for us to do that the harder it is for clients to justify paying us.In this episode, we talk about a number of...

**Cold Open (A question for the listeners)****Skip the Cold Open at 16:25**Whether you write content for your clients or you write content for yourself, writing good content for SEO is a must for every agency owner.And As Google pumps more and more spam updates into their algorithm their answer to everything seems to just be "write good content". But how do you write good content when the purpose is simply to get it to rank?In this episode, we give you extremely simple tips on how each of us...

**Cold Open (Cody eats breakfast-flavored cup noodles)****Skip the Cold Open at 9:39**White labeling can be an easy way to earn revenue for your agency while still trying to carve out your niche. But it can be a slippery slope when you're first starting out.There's a time and place to consider other agencies as your clients. For us, we don't white label for a few reasons. However, white labeling might be part of your business model and that's fine.We simply wanted to put this episode out...

We're joined by Cesar Gil, owner and operator of Symphony Advertising based out of Houston, Texas.We found Cesar through TikTok where he regularly posts updates of his agency and bares all for his audience. His videos are often spur-of-the-moment monologues on different issues he's dealing with or comments he gets.Cesar runs a similar agency to ours that's about 2/3 of our size ($25k MRR). There's just one problem... He has no idea what he's doing.Join us on this episode where we dive into...

**Cold Open (Cody went to Scotland for a Taylor Swift concert)****Skip the Cold Open at 12:40**Our podcast is largely about practical advice we give to other agency owners as we grow ours -- however, we thought it would be a good idea to air out all of the problems our agency is currently facing.Every business faces new challenges as they grow. Problems don't go away, they just change.In this episode, we talk about the challenges we're facing today. Let us know if you can relate to any of...

**Cold Open (Cody and Jake talk office chairs and Chat GPT)****Skip the Cold Open at 7:57**It's been a year since we've talked about AI and its potential effect on agencies. Now that we have had some time, it's time to talk about what is actually being impacted.When we first thought about this, we figured the biggest impact would actually come from agencies using AI. However, we've noticed something a bit different... Vendors and media platforms like Google and Facebook using more and more AI...