Warum die zweite Führungsebene in der Agentur fehlt

0:00We provide social media marketing and financial influencer management for publicly traded ETFs and stocks. This year we're on pace for 2.7 million and we're going to keep about 700,000 of that. Okay. I see a multi-fold problem, but I know you wanted to sum down to one. The biggest problem that I came in with I think Frank has largely helped me with which is I have incredible top-end talent, really really amazing people in that operations management, but in the secondary level it's a huge drop-off.

0:27Uh-huh. And I think it's largely because I've never put out a traditional job application website posting anything. Everyone's pretty much reached out to me and come on in so we don't have that big application pool. So I was curious just as we dive into that if So you create social like so you create like an Instagram for I can give you more context. >> So right now this ETF industry is very complex because it's compliance focused, right? And they want to target retail because they see that for the first time ever as of last month there's more ETFs in the world than stocks. And there's more retail investors than ever that own these ETFs so the industry I'm looking at and I think it's going to explode over the next 3 years. And speaking of which the revenue I like to be at is 20 million. Okay. Uh per year and I do think it's very reasonable within this industry, but it has to get an S1 player which is part of all the So what do they pay you?

1:09So my average client right now pays $20,000 a month and I work them through uh I work them through the channels that their compliance department is willing to work with which is why it is so piecemeal because different compliance departments are willing to do different things. Some of them will touch Instagram, some won't. Some of them will touch Twitter, some won't, etc. So uh the first part was all the uh >> post as them and just say like you know, the weather is warm but the deals are hot, you know, like >> [snorts]

1:36>> Uh pretty much. I mean what we're trying to >> Schwab ETF. >> [laughter] >> More so what it is is nobody knows that these tools exist. They don't know how to use them. They don't know what they're for. And also I think they just want to build trust with someone like ourselves, right? We have a couple million of our own followers and then our influencers have tens of millions of followers and so they want to hear from somebody that they So you have an influencer network. Yes, about 100 influencers. >> That It's a strong word for it, but yes, we educate the public about >> We educate, of course, we educate public. Yes, education, entertainment, fine line. Triple C, compliance, customers, clients.

2:05>> Yeah. Sorry. Content. Um so yes, I think for me right now, I see a huge opportunity. I see a lot of people that want to come in, but I need incredibly high end talent because they have to be able to adhere to the compliance side of this. We're working with companies that are worth 60 billion plus. >> Yeah. And I just see a big drop off from the top level to the lower level, and I'm curious how you work on those mid-level managers or people that really have to get the execution in the hiring side. And then I have the one other side of the company, which is this is such a compliance-laden area, and it's such a legacy industry that I'm trying to get an S-tier client. I need one S-tier client. I need a Vanguard, a BlackRock, somebody to come. But I'm 27 years old, right? They are not looking to work with people like me. They're not used to it. They don't understand targeting retail, and I am running a giant education campaign to people that are 30 years older than me.

2:50Uh-huh. And I'm trying to figure out how to blast it through their brains that this is going to be their best seller. Yeah, I'm the age thing I think you think about more than anyone else does. So I would just like erase it from your brain. It doesn't matter at all. Like it just doesn't matter. Um like I was in the gym industry and the average person that was like buying from me was a gym owner like age 40. And I was like 26. So like I just don't I just don't think that's a thing. I think if you demonstrate competence, which it seems like you are, the only person who believes that stuff is you.

3:22Um so that's thing one. Um I do think there's probably an element of you might you might be mispriced. You also might be underpriced. Um like you have these $60 million companies, $20,000 a month is like a not even a rounding error, right? >> So it's the last 2 months I've basically tripled prices or at least doubled. I was selling at an 8 and 1/2 K month package. I then went to a 15K, but then people just kept hitting me up, so I said, "Okay, it's 20. It's 25." And I think every meeting I go into I just raise prices by 5K.

3:47>> Yeah. Yeah. I I we do that. You could also just skip to 100 if you want, but um if you're going to get there eventually, you might as well get there now. Um well, it's like they might not take you seriously, you know? It's like, how do I get to take it seriously? It's just be like, it's a million bucks a year. So, the other piece within that, and that's the question I have for you, is metrics. It's a very complex industry when it comes to metrics because there's no perfect way to track that when we do marketing, those are the dollars that are flowing into the ETF providing AUM.

4:15It could come from advisors, it could come from other people talking about it. We can provide social media metrics, how many people listen, how many people listen, how many people click the link, but we cannot say the sale was done here. I'm curious how you think about that. >> just think about it in terms of revenue per earned media. Like, I'd just be like, for you to reach a retail investor, CPMs would be somewhere in the neighborhood of, call it, 30 bucks or 40 bucks. We reached 3 million, you know, people, and if you were to pay for that, just like I If you sold yourself more as cheaper impressions that are to the correct audience, then you become more of a media company and less of a services business, and I think that would be the right way to price because they'll just see you as a channel.

4:56How did you How do you break through though to the S tier? Right now, the best advice that I've gotten was actually from somebody here who said, "Basically, poach somebody from one of these firms who has all the connections and go in." That feels like that's going to be a, you know, a $300,000 a year hire. Um that's very different than where we work with right now, so I'm just curious about that. You might not charge enough so that you can make more money so that you can attract the talent that can come in and then bring those people with you.

5:25Yeah, I do think you're underpriced for who your avatar is. I think I would position it as you are a channel that is enough cuz they're trying to get They want more exposure. And so, it's like, I will give you that exposure. And instead of saying like, the reason I'm I'm saying this is that you're not I don't want to position like I'm doing services and getting paid $100,000 a month. I'm saying instead of paying Meta $100,000 a month for ads, you're going to pay me $100,000 a month, and you're going to get trusted people who are going to talk about your product, which is way more valuable than just you saying you're great. It's like show us some stats of like somebody saying you're great is way more valuable is five times more valuable than you saying you're great.

5:59Great. So, every dollar that you're giving me, you're going to that 100 100 to 100,000 dollar comparison, as long as this these audiences are correct, which you'd say, "Look, they are all financial influencers, whatever. These are the correct retail audiences." And so, this is way higher uh value than this. So, I want to compare myself to Meta, not to a marketing agency or services. That's how I'd position this, cuz you're giving them all this free exposure, free, right? They're paying for it, and they're just paying for it in bundles.

6:28And so, like you're a media company, not necessarily a services business. And I would just reposition that way. It's a good way to think about it. Right now, the deck's focused on showing, "Hey, we started campaign here, we ended it here. Here was the AUM movement." >> No, that's a marketing agency. I would say like you want to reach this many people, we own these audiences. We will give you access to these audiences for this amount of money. Got it. That's how I'd position it. And yeah, you can get the um you can go get talent from those top places like Fortune 100 and things like that. Um it is one of the better acquisition strategies. A good friend of mine owns a big marketing agency, and that's how he does it. What about the mid-level talent? Because they're not going to come to your agency.

7:05>> That's just straight up ads. You just need to learn how to run ads. Fair. Like good old-fashioned in Like if you guys are looking for mid-tier and and bottom-tier, um it's going to be ads for both of those, basically manager and and one level down. Obviously, referrals would be ideal, but if you don't have that, then it's going to be those two. Um the top end of manager into director and, you know, VPs, et cetera, it's almost all through outreach.

7:32And so, that's how that's kind of how it splits. Like you could technically do it from an ad. Um ads for high-level people can work if they're done in industry groups and industry job postings. So, like our general counsel, exceptional. We posted on two general counsel specific uh posting sites and then uh you know, Liz came in. And so, you can get the high-level talent, but it's not going to be on the mass mass market cuz they're not looking there. Right? So, it's going to be headhunters or super specific for the high-level, which you don't need. Um but the mid-level and below, you can just do you can just just run ads and you'll be fine. And if they're not you're not getting bites, it's cuz it's the same as a marketing campaign.

8:14The offer isn't good, the funnel sucks, the headline isn't good, the copy needs to be improved. All of that stuff still applies. It's just the same marketing on the other side. Perfect. Thank you. Yeah, you bet. If you are a business owner and you are not growing as fast as you'd like, I'd like to give you a free gift. So, my team and I put together the 100 million dollar scaling road map, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had and what stages of growth they went through and more importantly, where they got stuck and how they got past it. And so, we broke it in these 10 stages and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you put in your business information, it'll tell you where you're at and the most important part for you, what to do for each of functions of the business across product, marketing, sales, customer success, recruiting, IT, human resources and finance. And so, no matter what you're struggling with, someone else has already struggled with it and solved it. And so, I'd like to give you this thing absolutely free. You can go to acquisition.com/roadmap, plug in your business information and if you want us to actually help you deconstruct the business and you're trying to scale, we'd love to help you out. On the thank you page, you can just book a call with my team and we will look at your business, see if we can help and if we can, we'll invite you out to Vegas and we'll do this in person live.