『Smart Agency Podcast: The #1 Digital Marketing Agency Podcast for Social Media, SEO, PPC & Creative Agencies』のカバーアート

Smart Agency Podcast: The #1 Digital Marketing Agency Podcast for Social Media, SEO, PPC & Creative Agencies

Smart Agency Podcast: The #1 Digital Marketing Agency Podcast for Social Media, SEO, PPC & Creative Agencies

著者： Jason Swenk
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今ならプレミアムプランが3カ月 月額99円

2026年5月12日まで。4か月目以降は月額1,500円で自動更新します。

概要

 The popular agency podcast has been around since the beginning of 2014 and covers everything from starting a successful digital marketing agency to selling your marketing agency. What makes this podcast a must-listen is Swenk's background as the founder and CEO of an agency for over a decade. Swenk brings his own experience to the table, in addition to the expertise of his guests. He covers topics that help growing agencies scale to the next level by providing the resources he wishes he had while growing his agency.Jason Swenk, LLC マネジメント・リーダーシップ リーダーシップ 経済学
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  • How One Bad Hire Turns a Marketing Agency Owner Into the Bottleneck with Scott Leff | Ep #903

    How One Bad Hire Turns a Marketing Agency Owner Into the Bottleneck with Scott Leff | Ep #903
    2026/05/06
    Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training What if hiring smart people and getting out of your way was not enough to build a self-managing agency? Today's featured guest will talk through the decisions most agency owners get wrong: when to stay involved, when to let go, and how the absence of rigor compounds into structural problems you won't even notice until you're stuck. He'll talk about how bad hiring decisions led him to become the bottleneck, how he's trying to fix that, as well as why your "number" for how much your agency is worth is probably based on nothing, and the one financial habit that gives you genuine optionality. Scott Leff is the founder of Leff, a B2B content marketing agency serving global professional services firms and nonprofits for over 16 years. His background spans business communications working as a managing director for a big brand, as well as a 22-month stint leading communications for Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympic Games. When the bid failed in the first round, he found himself in a period of reinvention. With the gig economy just taking off, he decided it was time to hang up his shingle. He started to take freelance work, which eventually led to hiring and forming his own business. This agency grew steadily, exploded during COVID, and is now navigating the reassessment most established agencies are facing in a shifting market. In this episode, we'll discuss: Why becoming the bottleneck isn't always about control The hiring rigor every owner should have Which metrics are you tracking? Why declining revenue doesn't equal failure Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Toggl: Most agencies are losing 15–30% of their profit every year: lack of time tracking, messy manual timesheets, scope creep, untracked revisions, and all those "quick" client requests that never get billed. Toggl has created a fast, interactive way to uncover exactly where your margins are leaking. Start your investigation now at toggl.com/smartagency and use the code SMARTAGENCY10 at checkout for a 10% off annual plans. Knowing What You Should Never Have Delegated For the first ten-plus years of his agency business, every meaningful decision flowed through Scott or his business partner. That wasn't always a problem, but as the agency grew and decision-making had to push down through a management layer, cracks formed. Not because the team was incapable, but because they were being handed authority without the context, direction, or support to use it well. Hiring is the clearest example Scott points to. He gave department managers the autonomy to bring in their own people, which was a reasonable call on paper. But in a culture-driven organization like an agency, where your people are both your product and 80% of your overhead, that's the one decision you can't outsource and expect to get right. The fix wasn't micromanaging the process. It was figuring out the specific places where the founder's perspective is irreplaceable, and staying in the conversation there, even when it's uncomfortable to be involved. Hiring Rigor Is Not Optional and Most Agencies Are Winging It Scott attended a conference session led by someone who'd overseen hiring at Amazon and other large organizations. The biggest takeaway was a story about Jeff Bezos showing up to a debrief with three to four pages of handwritten notes on candidates, while everyone else showed up with nothing. That level of intentionality is what most agencies are missing entirely. The real problem isn't that agency owners don't care about hiring. It's that they go in underprepared, unclear on exactly what they're looking for, leaning on gut instinct, and writing role descriptions that don't reflect the actual job. To ensure you're getting applications from candidates that truly align with your agency and the required role, every part of the hiring process should be a test. Attention to detail? Bury the real application instructions at the bottom of the job post and see who finds them. Hiring a senior exec? Don't tell them much, give them a week and ask them to come back with a 90-day success plan. If they dive into answers before they ask a single question, that tells you everything. The point isn't the process for its own sake. It's that rigor on the front end reduces the cost of being wrong, and in an agency, being wrong on a hire is expensive for a long time. Watch Who You're Hiring From: Big Agency Talent Doesn't Always Travel Well There's a version of agency hiring that looks like a smart move: pull experienced people from larger, more ...
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    40 分
  • How AI Tools Helped a 24-Year SEO Agency Vet Scale 5x Faster Without Burnout with Navneet Kaushal | Ep #902

    How AI Tools Helped a 24-Year SEO Agency Vet Scale 5x Faster Without Burnout with Navneet Kaushal | Ep #902
    2026/05/03
    Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training What separates the agencies growing through the AI wave from the ones quietly shrinking? Do you think you are on the right side of that line? Today's featured guest claims his agency has grown faster than ever in these recent years of AI ubiquity. He'll break down how 24 years of process obsession set him up to capitalize on AI before his competitors even stopped panicking. We get into the real mechanics of building SOPs that survive scale, why founders keep sabotaging their own teams (and how to stop), and how personal branding turned his sales calls into qualification calls. If you're running a $1M+ agency and still feel like the bottleneck, this one is going to sting a little, in the right way. Navneet Kaushal is the founder and CEO of Page Traffic, a white label SEO agency he's been building since 2002. He's since navigated every major algorithm shift, scaled through multiple hiring cycles, and now uses AI to encode decades of institutional knowledge directly into his systems. He's also built a recognizable personal brand through conference speaking worldwide and a growing YouTube channel, a move he credits as one of the top three drivers of his agency's recent growth. In this episode, we'll discuss: Building systems early on When founders undermine their teams Life after leaving the operator role: focusing on personal brand Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio: If you're leveling up your team and your client experience, your site builder should keep up too. That's why successful agencies use Wix Studio — built to adapt the way your agency does: AI-powered site mapping, responsive design, flexible workflows, and scalable CMS tools so you spend less on plugins and more on growth. Ready to design faster and smarter? Go to wix.com/studio to get started. Herringbone Digital: If you're thinking about exiting now, planning a few years ahead, or just want to understand your options, you should know about Herringbone Digital. They're not a typical financial buyer. They're operators who actually understand what it takes to build and scale an agency because they've done it themselves. Their approach is simple: invest in great founders, protect what's already working, and help agencies scale faster. Go to https://www.herringbonedigital.com/swenk and start the conversation. Building Systems That Outlast the Founder Navneet has been doing SEO since before Google Penguin existed, back when keyword stuffing and reciprocal link building were legitimate strategies. Back then, barely anyone knew what SEO was and training people took a long time, so Navneet started growing his team by investing in three-day training sessions and hiring only those who would, by the end, understand basic SEO concepts. This initial investment in training also led him to focus on building SOPs since 2002, with his first being a printed sheet for reciprocal link building. That early process obsession became the foundation everything else was built on. More recently, he develops new SOPs by explaining the process to someone sitting next to him while simultaneously recording a Loom video. That method forces clarity. If he can't explain it simply enough for someone else to follow in real time, the SOP isn't ready. His onboarding process reflects the same rigor as Navneet's agency has grown to a 120+ person team and is regarded as one of the largest dedicated SEO agencies in India. Every new hire goes through a minimum six-to-eight-week onboarding, and every training module ends with a 100/100 quiz requirement. No partial credit or exceptions. That standard has kept quality consistent as the team scaled. The system doesn't bend to accommodate shortcuts. The hire rises to meet the standard, or they don't make it through onboarding. The Rubber Band Effect: When Founders Undermine Their Own Teams Even after he had the systems, the team, and the leadership layer in place, Navneet still felt the pull to go back and do the work himself. Not because the team wasn't capable but because SEO has always been his hobby. He genuinely enjoys it. So he'd chime in, jump back into SOPs, insert himself where he no longer needed to be. That's the rubber band effect. Your identity is still attached to the version of you that built the thing. Even when your role has shifted to CEO, part of you still wants to be the architect. The problem isn't the instinct, it's the impact. When a founder steps back into a team member's lane, it creates confusion about ownership, slows the team down, and signals that their work isn't trusted. Navneet's saving grace is that his longest-tenured employees have been with him for 17 to 20 years. They know his temperament and don't rattle. But for any founder with a younger team, this behavior hits harder. The goal isn't to never feel the pull, but to...
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    17 分
  • Your Agency Can't Scale Past the Role You're Stuck In with Dave Benton | Ep #901

    Your Agency Can't Scale Past the Role You're Stuck In with Dave Benton | Ep #901
    2026/04/29
    Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training How can you build an agency that outlasts your involvement in it? And what happens to your identity when you finally make that shift? Over the course of 22 years, today's featured guest grew a one-person freelance operation into a full-service digital agency doing eight figures and then sold it. In this conversation, he'll unpack the real lessons from that journey: the painful transitions between operator, manager, and architect, the hiring decision that finally unlocked his ability to step back from the work he loved, and why the question isn't just who you need on your team — it's who you need to become. Dave Benton is the founder and former CEO of Metajive, a full-service digital agency specializing in complex digital products and platforms. With over two decades of experience, Dave built his agency from freelance beginnings into an eight-figure business, eventually leading to a successful exit. Today, Dave is focused on innovation, particularly in AI, and how agencies must evolve structurally to remain competitive in a rapidly shifting landscape. In this episode, we'll discuss: Operator to owner evolution Recurring revenue as a growth lever AI as an operational requirement, not a competitive advantage Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Toggl: Most agencies are losing 15–30% of their profit every year: lack of time tracking, messy manual timesheets, scope creep, untracked revisions, and all those "quick" client requests that never get billed. Toggl has created a fast, interactive way to uncover exactly where your margins are leaking. Start your investigation now at toggl.com/smartagency and use the code SMARTAGENCY10 at checkout for a 10% off annual plans. When Freelancing Becomes a Business Building an agency wasn't a single decision for Dave. It was an evolution that happened only after making several key decisions. It took him nearly eight years before the business truly felt like a company, not just a collection of projects and contractors. This delay wasn't due to lack of opportunity, but rather the absence of structural clarity. Like many founders, he initially relied on freelancers and partnerships to extend capacity. It wasn't until he introduced stability, through a small team and operational support, that the business began to compound. His experience reinforces a critical principle: agencies don't become scalable when revenue increases, but when structure stabilizes. The key mistake many founders make at this stage is avoiding the discomfort of responsibility. Hiring a team introduces fixed obligations in a variable revenue model, which forces a shift in thinking. The Founder Evolution Problem (Operator → Architect) Dave candidly describes this transition as "slow and painful," largely because he attempted to skip stages, trying to build a leadership team before the business could support it. This misalignment is common. Founders hear advice like "hire great people" or "get the right people on the bus," but apply it prematurely. Without the revenue, clarity, or systems to support those hires, it leads to inefficiency and frustration. The business must earn the right to complexity. Dave also dealt with the challenge of redefining his identity within the agency. He deeply identified as a creative director, which made delegation difficult because of his personal attachment to the work. This is the hidden bottleneck in most agencies: the founder's self-concept. The breakthrough came when he hired an exceptional executive creative director, someone good enough to replace him at a level he respected. This evolution required letting go of control, redefining his role, and shifting focus from output to system design. That transition, from doing the work to building the machine, is where real scale begins. Recurring Revenue and Stability as a Growth Multiplier Another critical unlock Dave shares is the role of recurring revenue in accelerating growth. His agency's trajectory changed significantly when they secured a long-term relationship with a major enterprise client, embedding a dedicated team within that organization. This shift introduced predictability, which is often underestimated in agency growth. Project-based revenue creates constant volatility, forcing founders to stay involved in sales and delivery. Recurring revenue, on the other hand, creates operational breathing room, allowing leadership to focus on systems, talent, and long-term strategy. Stability reduces decision fatigue, smooths cash flow, and enables more strategic ...
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    37 分
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