V.O. Guy
Hello and thanks for coming along too. And we have an office dog, the digital agency podcast where we talk to agency owner, directors and learn more about what makes them tick from the things that make them similar to the things they’d rather have known sooner where they’ve had success. And where they’ve learned some hard lessons. All will be revealed. With your host, Chris Simmance, the agency coach, and he’ll be talking to a different awesome agency person in each episode, asking them four questions and seeing where the conversation takes us over the next 25 minutes. OK, so let us begin over to you.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Thanks. Voice over guy, another podcast today. We’ve got Adam, the managing partner of A Purpose Partnership over in the United States. How you doing?
Adam Sinkus (Guest)
I’m doing well. We are finally out of hurricane out of our hurricane season and just wrapping up a big Hurricane Ian, they came through. So we have power water. I was able to make coffee this morning. Life is good.
Chris Simmance (Host)
As long as you can have the coffee, it doesn’t really matter if you’ve got a roof, I think. So just finishing off uh off Umm, hurricane season, ready for holiday season. So I’m sure you’re quite busy with the agency. At the minute.
Adam Sinkus (Guest)
Oh yeah, we are. We are staying very, very busy. It was, it was quite, uh. After a week and 1/2 and no power, it was quite hard. Like all this stuff going through my head, you know, going, I gotta do this and this and this and no power, no Internet to do any of that.
Chris Simmance (Host)
So first and foremost, good to see you alive. Secondly, tell us what our purpose partnership does. What? What’s the agency all about give? Us a plug.
Adam Sinkus (Guest)
Yeah. So purpose partnership, we are the anti agency. You know we we’ve broken the agent, we’ve broken the agency model in the respect of. The fact that we are myself, my, my other partner, Chuck Hester, we are actually out there doing the work. We’re not, you know, sending in a junior team. We’re not hiring in people that don’t have years and years of marketing experience. We’re actually out there with the senior team doing the work, whether it be web, whether it be PR, marketing. You know, the traditional marketing digital. Marketing. We have people in place that are all senior, senior level people doing that work for our clients. So it’s a little bit different mindset than well, let’s let’s put on a pretty sales presentation and then send in a team that kind of knows what the heck is going on. You actually talked to the people that are doing. The work throughout the entire process.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah, and I’m guessing that that that decision came from having had bad experiences, either as your own agency or with agencies. In the past, yeah.
Adam Sinkus (Guest)
Yeah. So I come from. I come from the world of consulting more in the operation side of things, you know. But you know, I’ve seen this so many, so many times in the BPSO industry where you get this really awesome sales presentation from a partner that’s going to come in and save your business, right. And then you get. You get the people there and they’re like, you know, like, you know, fresh out of college and hardly know, you know, which end is up beyond. They’ve never experienced half the problems you have.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah, and the other side of that is obviously quite a lot of agencies where they have, uh, you know, large scale uh delivery of low level support or teams which they want to get to that top scale. I can see you can see why they’d have juniors, but those are the ones that you know in a nice way. Agencies who are listening our genius. To keep them away from the clients until they’re still they’re seniors enough to be able to show off how good you are. As a team, so. How long has the agency been going for?
Adam Sinkus (Guest)
We actually just officially opened in April of this year, but.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Oh wow.
Adam Sinkus (Guest)
But my part between my partner and I, we’ve got we have close to 50 years plus experience combined. So we we’ve been around the market.
Chris Simmance (Host)
And you look and look. And you look very young for it, Adam. So you know, it’s obviously been a been a breeze. So if you could go back to if you know, if you think the time when you and your partner were thinking about starting the agency and if you were to give yourself a piece of advice based on everything you’ve learned so far. What piece of advice might you give yourself?
Adam Sinkus (Guest)
Don’t chase the dollar, right? So yes, it’s it’s such a conundrum. I I think that, you know, every business owner, not just marketing agencies, but every business owner starting out, you know, gets stuck into it’s we chase the dollar because well we need to make ends meet. We need to pay bills. We need to pay. For our software, we need to pay for all those things, right? And what I learned very, very quickly, we actually are just wrapping up with a with a client that was one of our biggest, you know, biggest clients for our monthly retainers and it’s. As we wind things down, I’m so actually relieved that we’re winding things down with them because it just wasn’t a fit. But we did it because the dollars were there and that’s what made what made ends meet and so just don’t chase clients because you want a dollar. Right, you know, don’t discount your prices because you need to. You need an extra $500 in revenue this month. You know, figure out what clients you really want to work for and work with and. Sign none.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Absolutely. I think it’s a worthy thing to balance for obvious reasons. You know, pay the bills and things like that. But equally, you know, I’ve been in that position in the past where you say yes to something you shouldn’t have really taken on or you take something on that’s pays well, but you don’t feel the right fit and there’s not. The chemistry that you need. And it is, you know, it’s chasing the cash. But I guess if you went back in time and gave yourself that bit of advice. Would you have listened to it, or would you have gone? No, no. I need those dollars.
Adam Sinkus (Guest)
Yes, because this is not my first go around and starting a starting a business. So yes, I I personally would have, but I can tell you from experience, the first time I went through this, no, I wouldn’t have listened to that at. All, everyone like you gotta pay. Bill’s like, what are you? Talking about you fool.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah, exactly. And at the at the time of recording this, that naturally it’s gonna be a little while before it goes out. But at the time of recording this, the pound and the dollar are on a parity. So, you know anyone in the in the states looking to hire an SEO agency in the UK, it’s stopped, stopped becoming a cost effective measure. So get in touch with Adam.
Adam Sinkus (Guest)
Yeah. Yeah, we appreciate that.
Chris Simmance (Host)
So it’s been a relatively short ride at the for you 2 at the moment, but in you? Know in in general as it has. It been a positive. Start. Have you have you hit the ground running? How’s things like going along there?
Adam Sinkus (Guest)
Yeah. No, we we’ve hit the ground running very, very positive start. So we actually started a nonprofit organisation a couple years ago called Pay it Forward Tuesdays where we were. We brought together a team of consultants that were donating time to underserved small businesses and nonprofits. And so we kind of we we had some, we had some momentum coming off of that a little bit we we got together and just kind of had a conversation in the beginning of this year and said you know what look, we’re doing this in a in the nonprofit space, but we really could probably go make some bucks at this week. Between the two of us, we have Connexions. We have the teams to do this, so we kind of came together and took that momentum from pay it forward Tuesdays and, you know, a matter of fact, we’ve actually signed one of our one of our recipients as one of our clients now and.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah, yeah.
Adam Sinkus (Guest)
Not intentional, just kind of worked out that way. But.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah, yeah. If it works, it works. But uh.
Adam Sinkus (Guest)
You know, so would you say that that?
Chris Simmance (Host)
That has been one of the biggest successes since you started the agency. Or do you think there’s something else that you do you think you know? That’s really we’ve started. We’ve just started, but this is the win.
Adam Sinkus (Guest)
You know, for me, the biggest success is seeing that every week we’re continuing to have new business conversations, right? And this is this is where I think a lot of people get stuck. The in in starting a business in general and starting an agency in general is. You get that initial momentum, you get a couple of clients in, then you get really busy working on their work and you stop working on your work and you know and generating more business and growing and scaling. And so we have been so just so fortunate in being able to continually have these new business conversations. And not just get stuck in that paradigm where all we can do. Is client work?
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah. And it’s the stories all the time, isn’t it? Exactly as you say. You know, you start an agency with the right momentum. The momentum slides into the client work. And what you end up with is an agency owner who’s. Tired, fed up and not seeing the the leads come in that they need in order to to stem the churn that that happens when you’re tired and. Fed up as well. And you know, there’s a. One thing that one thing that we do quite well is, you know, an online community and support agencies in that way, because there’s times when you know you and your partner, you can be as good to each other as you can be, but you often need something else to bounce off of. And when you’ve got that early momentum? Like you have right now. All your energies going into the momentum. And everything like that and as. Soon as it starts to wane. You start to think, OK? Where could I do better? That is a blind spot right now and lots of agencies get past that. Having not seen that, there’s blind spots at all, so it sounds like you know this is not being your first. Uh, first, go round. I think you know. You know when you know, you know when you know what you don’t know. To quote Donald Rumsfeld.
Adam Sinkus (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, definitely. You know, and I I think. That that’s key. Really, when it when you think about overall success and how do you continue success, it’s being transparent that one you can’t do everything. And two, it’s OK to ask for help when you don’t know something.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah. And agency people, we’re all the worst at asking for help because we’re the. Best at what we do. So being comfortable with that is important, so. In over your career and what’s one thing that you’ve learned that’s really been brought in and taken from all of that knowledge and expertise that you’ve brought in on day one as like this is a? Thing that that we’re part of.
Adam Sinkus (Guest)
You know, for me. The biggest thing that we that we’ve put together is building a people first mindset and that’s kind of a cliche thing, right? You know, everybody’s talking about culture right now, but. It’s not just culture, it’s stopping and realising that these business owners are people realising that the CEO’s and executives that we’re talking to are people and as people, if we start with that natural relationship, everything else blossoms. From there, and so you know, instead of trying to chase, you know, the LinkedIn DM. Can you build a relationship with the people you want to talk to? That looks like providing value upfront, whether that be in my content that I’m posting, whether that be in conversations that I’m having with people in their circles? But how do we provide that value upfront? And then how do we take that value and start a valuable conversation? With them.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Absolutely. You’ve hit the nail on the head, people first is cliche, but it’s only cliche if you don’t follow through. And back to the previous point, it’s often with the best of intentions that you would follow through, but you get to a point where you’re. You just run out of steam. And then you don’t follow through because you’ve run out. Of steam. And I think agency leaders, uh, we often fall foul of kind of that follow through of accountability to ourselves when it comes to the reason you start the agency and over time you know as you. Grow up in agency land, you start to realise actually this is a people business that hires people, works with people, ultimately for people. And if we don’t do it based on people, then we’re are we are chasing a slow cash flow, fiery death.
Adam Sinkus (Guest)
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Becoming more and more adept to point out the people that are just chasing cash flow, yeah.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Exactly. So if someone’s listening to this podcast podcast now and they’re thinking they’re just about to start an agency or they’re they’ve got an idea, they wanna start an agency. What one thing would you give them as a piece of advice to take away from this?
Adam Sinkus (Guest)
You know what goes back to what we were just talking about? Leverage the human side of your business. Connect with people in a genuine nature. Build your network of people that you want to surround yourself with. Build your network with people that you want to work with, not for specifically with. When you start doing that. That’s where success stems from, because you start to build this connexion with the people that you’re going to eventually be working with, and it’s a little bit of a longer strategy, but All in all, it’s a strategy that we’ll build.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah, that’s a. That’s a great piece of advice and one that I think you know you probably as an agency you probably revisit your own kind of uh thinking in that quite often because a lead may come in that may be worth an awful lot of money may seem really good. And you think? If I just if I just take this, what then? Just this one, it’s. A6 month. Six month project. Uh. And then the next thing you know, it’s a spiral that that you end up, you know, with an agency of. 50 people, all of which uh churn through all the time, because you can’t spend the right amount of time on helping them. Clients churn because you don’t have good systems, good process and the strategy is keep as much as you can for as long as you can. And all because you didn’t just keep the focus on the people bit. So, what do you think? And I don’t wanna put words in your mouth, but I am absolutely. Gonna put words in. Your mouth, what would your, uh co-founder? What would his his advice be based on everything you know?
Adam Sinkus (Guest)
So his advice would be to pay it forward in the Community, give unconditionally, and understand that when you give unconditionally, the world will reciprocate back for you and so find ways. Whether it’s giving information, whether it’s supporting. Somebody in a time in need, whether it’s just being there to be near to listen. But be that person in the community that can help instead of expecting the community just to give back to you.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah, I think it’s a, it’s a, it’s a uh. It’s an old. Story. You know, you kind of get more out than you put in. Often when it comes to community and I think. Like uh, it feels good to help people’s .1, especially if you help them, you know, honestly, uh, it feels great when someone reciprocates in the future when you need help, but you just never know when any of these kinds of acts of support will turn into an introduction to your dream client or one of those sorts. Of things you know. And it’s hard to hard to know whether it’s gonna happen and when it’s gonna happen. And I think that, you know, and keeping keeping in mind that you can always just help people for no reason as well because it. Feels good.
Adam Sinkus (Guest)
Yeah, yeah. No, it does. It does feel good, you know, I mean, like I said, we, we’ve garnered clients off of our off of our nonprofit, pay it forward Tuesdays. You know, not because we went chasing clients there, but because they came to us and said we love the work you did with us as as part of your nonprofit, we want more.
Chris Simmance (Host)
And hopefully in recording this podcast, you paid it forward to another agency leader or another agency’s soon to be founder who who? You know, who really wanted to to to learn something from you, Adam.
Adam Sinkus (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I encourage people to reach out as well.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Well, I hope they do and thank you very much. For being on the podcast.
Adam Sinkus (Guest)
Thank you so much for having me.
Chris Simmance (Host)
And in our next podcast, we’ll be speaking to another awesome agency leader to hear things that they’ve learned and some of the lessons that they’ve taken from them.