40 Agency Experts Share Their Best Business Advice

Hey everyone. Can you believe that today we have reached the amazing milestone of episode 100? I know, I know. Thank you so much. When I started this podcast, I'd read that the average number of episodes a podcaster creates before they give up is seven. And I really said to myself, Rob, if you're going to do this, you have to keep doing it week in and week out. And I'm really proud to say that nearly two years in, we've reached episode 100 and we've got a really exciting special episode for you. So stay with me and let's get on with the Show. I'm Rob DaCosta and this is the Agency Accelerator Podcast. As someone who has stood in your shoes, having started, grown and sold my own agency, I know just how it feels during the ups and the downs of agency life. So this podcast aims to ease your journey just a little by sharing mine and my guests experiences and advice as you navigate your way to growing a profitable, sustainable and enjoyable business. So welcome to episode 100 of the Agency Accelerator Podcast. That means before this, there's been 99 episodes of me sharing everything I know about starting, growing and running a successful, profitable agency, as well as having well over 40 guests sharing their experiences, which sometimes aligned with mine and sometimes had very different views to mine. But that's the beauty of having a guest on on the podcast. So I think to myself, what can I do to mark episode 100 to make this really special and to make this super valuable for you, my dear listener. That stuck with me right up until episode 100. Now, if you listen to all the episodes, when I have a guest, you know that at the end of each episode I ask them what one piece of advice would they go back and give their younger self just starting out in business, what would they say? So what I've done in this episode is collated 40 of my guests response to that question and it is really interesting. In fact, I think this is real gold because you can listen in half an hour to 40 pieces of really sound advice that they wish they could give their younger self, but you can apply to your agency today. Doesn't matter whether you are thinking about starting an agency, whether you're freelancing, whether you're in year two and you're thinking about hiring your first member of staff. All these pieces of advice are absolute gold to help you grow your agency. So in this episode, for the next half an hour, you will hear from 40 guests and the piece of advice they would give their younger selves. Now in the show notes. I've listed exactly who said what, so you can see who said what and you can also see which episode they said it in in case you want to go back and listen to that episode again. I'm also going to be collating this into some kind of guide or PDF and if we've got it done in time, it will be with this episode, but more than likely you'll be able to grab it from my website. So make sure you go and check out da Costa coaching to to grab that guide as well. So I'm sure you're going to find this really interesting. It was great fun putting this together and reliving some of the interviews and it's just fascinating to hear the different pieces of advice everybody would give themselves. So let's get on with the show and let's hear from our first person, our very first interview, Sally Alexander from Amberglow.

I think I would say to myself, don't be intimidated when you go to meetings. And I've sat in so many meetings in the past, certainly when I first started out in my career when I was talking to clients and thinking, oh, do I know enough? Am I good enough? And actually the very fact that they've requested a meeting is because we're the experts. So I'd say don't let people intimidate you. You're there for a reason. I guess the best analogy is if you've got a dishwasher that's broken, I'm not going to come and fix it. I would get an expert in. So don't be intimidated by people in meetings, really, you're there as the expert. Have fun and enjoy it and own.

I think it would be around this idea would be very clear on who it is you want to market to. If I, if I'd found. I wish I discovered Venetian concept many, many years ago because since I, since I started doing that, I've, you know, it's definitely changed the business for the better. It makes the work more enjoyable. It means I can charge higher fees.

It means I'm not so stressed running.

Around trying to, you know, service lots and lots of different clients. So I think, yeah, that would be, that would be my advice to my younger self would be find a niche and market market to that niche.

A couple of things very much harking back to the niching concept, Rob. I wish I'd have done that kind of from, from day dot rather than come across as an agency that offers something for everyone and also huge thing. Don't be afraid to Charge what you're worth. That is something that I have really, really struggled with from starting my agency. Certainly in the early days, I was afraid to charge XYZ because I had massive imposter syndrome and wasn't confident enough in myself to charge the fees that I wanted to, which, in short, attracted some clients that weren't. Weren't great for me or great for my agency. So be strong, be confident, and know your worth.

It's to. To understand my identity and stop trying to be something that I'm not. That. That guy who, as in the me years ago who stood in front of that camera wearing a suit, trying to be something that I wasn't, which was therefore attracting the wrong type of people. I would just go right back there and say, dude, be yourself. Unpack your identity. Because it all starts from identity and everything else just naturally flows. There's pretty much no rocket science at that point. And that's the one thing I really wish I'd nailed years ago. I've built websites for years and years and years and years for anyone, and it's only when I worked out who I was and who I wanted to attract that things really started to change.

I would go back and tell myself.

To commit to a niche immediately because although we had lots of fun doing lots of jobs and meeting lots of people and there being lots of variety, we actually were probably more stressed and more underpaid for the work that we were capable of at the time. I know it feels like I'm slightly laboring the point, but we would have definitely just gone in at the point.

Where I had an inkling that I.

Wanted it to be an agency, for agencies to just have gone in then and saved the 12 months of umming and ahhing. What I would say to my younger self is play to your strengths, know what you're good at, don't be scared or don't be ashamed of what you're good at. I've always been somebody who enjoys standing up in front of an audience. You know, I was that kid in assembly at school who wanted to stand up and do things. I was always doing readings at church and all that sort of thing. So I've always, you know, I've always enjoyed it, but it took me a long time to recognize that that was actually a useful, usable, sellable skill. So I would say to my younger self, recognize your strengths and play to those and have more fun. Have fun with it. I'm a big believer that business in particular, if you're running your own business, it Needs to be fun. If you're not enjoying it, do something different. You know, we're going back to what we said earlier about Sunday night blues. You have to have, there has to be enjoyment, there has to be satisfaction and not just monetary satisfaction. If all you're doing it is to generate money, I think that's a problem. You know, you're not going to get a chance to rerun this career. You might as well enjoy it while you're doing it. So, yeah, play to your strengths and have some more fun. That was what I would, would say to my younger self. There's a couple of pieces of advice. The first one is just be, try and be sort of clear about your outcomes. I think starting a business is an incredibly exciting thing to do. And I think you immediately, immediately get wrapped up in just trying to make money. And I think once that starts happening, it's just so exciting. You just sort of, you know, you carry on doing that without necessarily, you know, looking to the future. And then I think the other thing is I certainly looked around me at my sort of peers and thought that what they had was exactly what I should have or should strive for. So, for example, you know, an office with 20 people in and, you know, being the MD and sitting in the office on my own, and it took me quite a few years to realize actually that really, really wasn't me. So I think you've got to be able sort of take time out and be really, really honest with yourself and honest with the skills that you've got and say, am I where I need to be? Am I really happy doing this? Because you, you're going to be doing it for a long time and it's, it's something that you've made yourself. So if you're not happy doing it, then there's, there's, there's something wrong. I always say these two things. So the number one thing is develop healthy relationship with failure. It's a logical one, not an emotional one. And lay down strong foundations first in you and then in whatever you do.

I think because it's one piece of advice, it would be that, okay, look, you're going to make mistakes. So get out there, start making some mistakes and use that process to learn. And the opportunity with my own marketing is to make some of those technical mistakes. That's where I get a bit more experimental or stuff that, you know, I produce for myself that isn't necessarily released. It's just an experiment. Just be prepared to make mistakes. Don't beat yourself up about it use it as a point of learning.

If I was going to ask someone for advice, I mean, you know, or advise myself, the first thing I'd get them to do is make sure they spoke to someone who had done it already. And just so that they, so the thing that they're trying to do, make sure they speak to that person that's already done it and succeeded or failed at it. Because I think the one that fails at something probably has got more advice to offer than the one that succeeds. Because if you've only ever kind of been successful at what you're doing, I mean it's great, but you don't. You still in this bubble of whatever you touch works and at some point you're going to make a mistake.

I think the best piece of advice, the thing that's really been a game changer for me is a willingness to dig in and learn. Being willing to understand what is happening behind the scenes really empowers you to make better choices, to make different choices and to understand why you're making a choice. So my best advice that you know, has, has been pivotal for me all the way along has been invest in learning about how to run a business. You know, most of us spend time, we come into business, we know that we want to do the thing that we want to do. You know, maybe we come in and we like doing web design, so we start a web design agency. But there's not really a great methodology to learn about how to run a business. Well, they don't teach it in school and they don't like hand you a card when you become a business owner that says, oh, you're a business owner, here's what you need to know. So spending time learning how to actually run a business really will pay off huge dividends.

What you think now is true, keep believing it and listen to people who are on track with you all the time and focus on what they're saying. And that I think is it. I think I would have certainly learned a lot if I'd have had a bit more self belief and I being open to advice, more advice. I would just say be patient, you know, it's marathon, not sprint sort of thing. And try to enjoy yourself a little bit more. Try to be less stressed all the time about trying to, to make some super successful business within a week or whatever. I think that's, that's probably the main advice I give myself. The piece of advice I would give would just be remember that people relationships are at the core of any good business and I don't mean that just by your team are the core of the business, of course they are. But also how you conduct yourself when you are at a networking event, how you speak to people, the, the fact that you don't have to to run a business or to be successful, be sales all the time, just helping people is enough and is a sign of your character sometimes putting people together because you see there's a need and a sort of demand there or some sort of benefit for that individual. I think it's quite common that when businesses start out, they're quite closed and they don't like to share at all. And we were certainly like that at the beginning. And I think just to be a little bit more open, remember people at the heart of this and enjoy. I think the first thing I would say is don't be too regimented in your thinking or your approach. I had a very solid career path that I was following and I had a certain job title that I wanted by the time I was 30 and.

I got there at 26 and absolutely hated it. Be careful what you wish for. Exactly.

Very much so. But that was something that then enabled me to completely change who I was and what I found my passion for again, which was really, really critical. And I think doing that in a way that. So if I combine that not being too regimented with the concept of being inquisitive or being curious and trying to learn as much about the world as possible or about processes in the office as possible was something that took me a while to get to. And I think if I'd had that mindset first off, it would have been really useful. But it was something where I then later questioned, you know, when I was working for a health insurance company, why.

Is it that we do it this way?

And I was able to do things such as reduce our time frame to enter into new geographic markets by 70% or exceed our business case expectations by 250%. Well, I'm very much like a forward thinking person, so I often think, oh, if I could go back and tell myself something, would I? And I think sometimes you have to allow your younger self to make mistakes. And I think it's through those mistakes that you make that you actually learn the most. So if I was going to go back and talk to my younger self when just starting out business, I wouldn't really give any specific advice. What I would just say is just be as informed as possible. You know, knowledge is power. So you know, I'm just, I'm just a sponge for any new information. And it's just to, to make sure that that was like properly instilled in me a few years ago because I'm getting more and more like that as I get older. So I would like that have instilled in me a little bit more when I was younger.

That's an easy one really, because I think the biggest number one tip is, is to have enough capital to get you through the first six months and enough to get you some expert support. Because there's nothing worse than thinking, oh my God, I need a client, I'm not going to be able to pay the mortgage next month or I'm not going to feed my kids or it just kills your sales and it kills your mindset, which kills your sales. So if you've got enough capital in the bank to last you through six months and also enough to get some expert support because you know, as business owners we have to wear many hats. We're not expert in all those areas. So you need to be able to identify what your strengths and weaknesses are and you know where you need help right from the, right from the get go as well as the capital. The other thing is, is do your research in terms of the audience and, and really understand what's going to encourage them to spend money with you and what results they want to see as a result of working with you. Because if you haven't cracked that, you're not going to go anywhere. And that's why I call it my unshakable business foundation. All those things that you should do right in the beginning to give you the best chance of success, I would.

Give you, I would give myself the advice that I took, which is to get a customer first. A business doesn't exist without a customer. It's a, it's a vanity project. Otherwise the first, the first thing I did before I went to Asia was I got a customer. And that is the advice I'd give myself and anybody that looking to start a business because without a customer you just got an idea, start earlier.

What's that mean?

I.

So I've been in digital for. I'm, I'm currently almost 39 and I joined the world of digital when I was 20 and it took until it took me at least, I should say in just over two, two and a quarter years ago now to go. I should just be doing this for myself. I'm so busy, you know, kind of helping everybody else. And actually I love what I do. You know, every single day I genuinely get up and I love Making a difference. I love working with agencies. I love tackling their problems and their challenges and helping to solve them. My simple summary is, if you've got an idea in your head and you think it can work, go make it happen and be willing to fail fast. Learn from it, pick yourself up and go at it again. 2 answers to that question, if that's okay. The first is buy stock in Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Netflix. I had my own business when I was 20, 21, 22, right. Fresh out the rapper. I had no idea about anything and I had to learn. You know, they talk about being a startup, you're kind of building the plane while you're trying to fly it. Well, like, imagine about, like learning what a plane looks like while you're trying to build a plane while you're trying to fly it. So I learned a lot of lessons the hard way when I was that age. I think the one big lesson that I learned, and I'm still trying to teach it to myself today, I still have to remind myself, and I still don't get it right. Every day is focus your time and your effort on the things that only you can do and that no one else can do. And if you find yourself spending time on something that you know someone else could do, but you just think that you haven't got time to show them or that it would just be quicker for you to do it or anything like that, you are. You're wasting your time and have a word with yourself and get some help from someone else within the business to do it.

I tried to do too much too soon in my career. I wanted to have my own business. I would tell my younger self to be a little bit more strategic about how I approach that because it's taken several attempts to kind of actually have my own business and where I want to be. So, yeah, that would be my advice, I think. I think be focused on what you love to do and what you're really good at and go for it. Never give up. Well, when I set up on my own, I was probably a bit too broad. And, you know, my background's marketing biz dev. Done that for like 20 years for agencies. But then when I went out on my own, I sort of thought, well, I'll do everything. But then the more I did it, the more I realized that what I really wanted to be doing was nurturing and building those relationships with clients and looking at how to engage better with clients, to turn them into advocates and friends. And so I think it's being as focused as possible on what you really want to be doing, as opposed to trying to broadcast everything you can do.

It would be to really work on your proposition, to really know what you are, what sets you apart from the competition, why clients would want to hire you. And I didn't do that when I set out. When I set out with WriteArm, the proposition was we write, oh, and by the way, we can also do your website and we can also do your photography and so on, because I knew a couple of people who could do that and it was useless as a proposition. And it was only really when I began to think about culture, which is all part of this and what I was really about, why I was doing this, that I developed this proposition of we are a flexible writing resource for marketers. And as soon as I say that to clients, they get it. The light bulb goes on and they want to talk, whatever you do. And you know, there'll be people listening to this who are at the start of their agency journey and, you know, they might be a designer or a video maker or a web developer, whatever, and they will say, okay, well, you know, I'm a designer, that's what I'll offer. You know, I'm a web developer, that's what I'll offer. But you've got to think more about what you, what you are, what you do. And you know, that might be something sector specific rather than the way you do business, but it's got to be at the core of your identity. It's got to be easily understood and it's got to be, it's, it's, it's going to be the reason that people will pick up the phone to you and answer your emails. It's got to be easily comprehensible. There's no point in saying, oh, well, we just do this. Name the skill. That will get you nowhere. So that's the single most important thing that I would tell my younger self.

I think it would just be just to go for it, as in the old kind of Nike slogan, just do it. Because I first had my idea for my online teaching in the agency growth academy years ago, and I even started it years ago but never finished it. And what was holding me back, if I'm honest with myself, it was kind of fear, fear of putting myself out there. Whereas actually, if you, and I think now a lot of businesses are moving this way, aren't they, in terms of. If they're looking to launch something, they will look just to launch an MVP rather than get something really polished Just to test it. And I definitely just think that don't be afraid to take those little leaps because there's no harm in failing. We can only learn from our mistakes that we make along the way. I am a recovering perfectionist. I can spend ages on doing things. And what I've learned and what I wish I'd known at the time when I started in business is that perfection is illusory. You can spend hours tweaking, dotting, I's crossing t's trying to make it perfect. But actually, as far as your client is concerned and as far as your deadlines are concerned, good enough really is good enough. Even if you're doing something in rough, if you're putting your expertise and your knowledge down on paper or on video or whatever, actually probably is good enough. And perfection can waste you time, it can delay deadlines, and in the end, it's just a source of frustration. So please, if you're building a business around expertise and knowledge, the chances are you already have a head start. You already are meeting standards that will satisfy your clients. So please, don't strive for perfection.

I would say don't hold back. You know, don't procrastinate. Procrastination is back in those days, let's say, I mean, 10, 15 years ago, procrastination was bad. In the world we live in today, procrastination is tenfold worse because the world is moving way quicker. So any procrastination I reckon you put in now and you actually do now affects you 10 times worse than it would have 10 years ago. So that's definitely something I would say to myself, listen, get off your ass, stop thinking about doing it and just do it. Because I believe that if I'd taken that advice all those years ago, I'd be in a very different place. Definitely on the social. And from a social media perspective, I think that's 100% true. You know, you can't sit around waiting because. And I think another piece of advice I'd give is don't care too much about what other people think. Thankfully, I've never been that hung up on what other people think. But even, even with that said, I could have cared less, a little bit less. You know, the world, people don't. People that aren't really that interested in what you're up to. Only you're interested in what you have to just do it, you know, Because I think that the, the more you try and the more you put into it, like you say, is persistence.

I believed for a long Time. And I don't know where this advice came from, but I believe that a good job would speak for itself. And actually it took me a long time to realise that a good job doesn't speak for itself. You can do the best job in the world and actually if nobody knows that you're doing it, or if the right people don't see that you're doing it, then, you know, you can just sit there doing your good job for a long time. So actually look for ways to make sure that the right people know that. And that doesn't mean that you've got to be going away around blowing your own trumpet all the time. But I think there are definitely ways where you can make sure that you're getting the right exposure or informing the right people of what you're doing. And the other thing is, don't wait till somebody comes and taps you on the shoulder. Yes, it happens sometimes. And I've been in that for, you know, I've been in that fortunate position and I've also been frustrated by other people who have been tapped on the shoulder. But actually the biggest movements for me have been when I've got off my bottom, out of my chair and gone actually and found those opportunities. And sometimes they were there waiting to be discovered and sometimes I created them as well. So, yeah, a good job doesn't always speak for itself and don't wait to be tapped on the shoulder.

I probably say to find some, some people that you admire, some mentors that you look up to and follow them. I think that's something I kind of really lacked early on in my career. And typically, you know, I've done most of this stuff by myself without someone else involved. And I think I could have learned a lot more, a lot quicker if there were people around with that kind of. That kind of expertise, you know. And looking back, if I'd have gone and sort that out, I think, you know, I think I would have seen some quite big improvements quite quickly. I imagine this is something that lots of other people would, would say as well. I think it would probably be this quote I read in a book called Essentialism. I still am not doing a great job at living this value. But the idea of less but better, that there's so much opportunity in getting really good at fewer things and then it's okay to say no to things. And if anything, it's not just okay, but it's. The path to success is turning down opportunities and taking the opportunities you do have that you do commit to and going all in on that idea sooner. I think that was one of the biggest limiters to us scaling that. I just didn't have that discipline to say no. And when I finally said no to, like, a really big shiny object and I started saying no more often, like, we saw the business grow and. And that's something that I think if I would have learned that lesson sooner, I think it could have accelerated some things a little faster.

I would definitely say you can be or do absolutely anything you want. Do not believe anybody that gives you limitations or that says you can't possibly do that or that's going to be too hard. No, just don't. This is the main thing that I would tell myself and anybody else.

I haven't had any sort of regrets or disappointments, to be honest. I've made the right decisions. It's been great so far. I guess the only one thing I would probably reinforce the belief that everything's going to be all right. 98, 99% of things that I've been afraid of never realized. It's just been in my head just knowing that most of the things that you worry about, whether it's business or how it's going to affect your personal life, will never become a reality. It's just a bit of illusion, imagination, I guess. I think one of my biggest fears when I was younger was choosing the wrong thing and wasting my time. And I think looking back, nothing that I did over the last decade ever made sense while it was happening. But it makes perfect sense in retrospect. I can see how every single project I've worked on, every single business I've been involved in is serving me today. So that's probably the word of advice is like, don't worry about it. Just say yes to things that scare you and you'll be fine. And that that playbook has worked pretty well for me so far.

Well, my advice would be keep up with tech. I remember, like, being a journalist fresh out of university, and at that point we were still pitching to the nationals on a fax machine. We were still using yellow pages and the telephone directory to ring round and find story leads. And the curve that journalism has gone on since I graduated in 2001 has been huge. The number of new technologies that have come out and social media is obviously revolutionized everything. And I think a key strength of ours has always been to evolve with that. So when any. Anything new comes up to be an early adopter and then you can help other people coming down the line to. To upskill as well. So for me, I would say always be at the forefront of new tech, and even if you are not a technical person, use it as a user just so you can have an understanding of how it operates and. And then you can leverage that to push your agency forward.

Yep. And from my point of view, I think that myself and Michelle would have saved a lot of time and energy that we expended had we have reached the conclusion earlier that it's okay to put your hand up and seek help from experts within any chosen field. So what I mean by that is that we were very guilty right at the beginning of trying to do everything on our own. So not only we'll be trying to run the PR agency and show up in a way that we knew that we were experts in, but we were also trying to do a myriad of other things as well, which we were not so great at, and things which we didn't particularly enjoy doing. So when we began to learn the value of outsourcing, and we had a lot of people telling us to do that who had been in business for a lot longer than we had, that really started to open our eyes. It gave us a massive energy boost. It allowed us to focus on. On the things which we knew we needed to be doing in order to give the most value that we could and just to trust other people to do other aspects of the business which are so important and let them take care of that. It's sort of one of those things where you can pass it over, trust that person or people or organization to do it for you, and then it just frees you up to really, really get enjoyment and fun. As we talked about earlier, looking at the things which light you up and that you want to be focused on. So I do wish that I'd taken that step earlier to have outsourced quicker than we did. That's more of a recent thing for us, to be fair.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I was thinking about that, and the answer I came up with is that I would want to trust my employees more. And that's something actually I'm still struggling with and kind of working my way through, because it always feels like I'm the person that knows how the business should be run. I started it, so, yeah, I can, of course, help them, only help them by being involved. But I'm just seeing when I take a step back and reflect that it's not always true. And I also am conscious of the fact that I need to let my employees grow, need to put them in a position where they can actually Grow the business for me. Not necessarily. I'm always the person that's doing the growing. So that's something I wish I've started on earlier, I've now started and I'm still working through it. So I think many people have a similar problem. But I think that is the good fight to fight. So that's, that's what I'm trying to do. Well, I haven't been back and checked, but there are actually two bits of advice because I think since you asked me that on episode six, I think I got asked it on someone else's podcast and gave a different answer. So I'm going to give both.

Okay.

Advice I would give to my younger business self are niche your business. Because I didn't do that until about five or six years ago and I wish I'd done it sooner. And the second piece of advice would be start building your email list because again, that's something that I only really started focusing heavily on a few years ago. If I'd started doing that 10, 20 years ago, I'd have an even bigger. I mean, my email list is a massive asset and like I said, it was where the majority of my members have come from for my membership program. Imagine if I'd started building that 15 years ago, it would have been even, even bigger and better. Other than buying as much Bitcoin as I possibly could. I think I would, I would say just to focus on one thing. So it's whether it's because there's so many different elements to SEO, it's not just link building, it's not just technical, it's not just content. There's so many things. I would just focus on one aspect of SEO because as, as the business is growing or the industry, sorry, it's, you have specialists in all these different areas and I would just say just to focus on one, one thing in one market. What I would definitely say is try fast and fail fast. For me, that, that has become one of the, I guess, main building blocks of my business is because if I go ahead and when I first started off in business, I would work on projects for six months at a time or nine months, even if it wasn't profitable. Thinking that like, oh, it takes so much effort to go out and, and start a business that it makes sense to kind of work for free for six months or 12 months. And the, the reality behind it is that if you can just get it in front of enough people and then see what the conversion rates are and, and how much you're making from it in 24 hours. I mean you're going to be way better off because you're going to have all those misses and then you'll be able to find those couple winners that will allow you to scale at that kind of exponential rate. I've tried a couple of different things and I'm quite pleased that I have. I'd always say go with your go. If it works, if it works, fantastic. If it doesn't, you know, there's more options and I think the younger me would have maybe had a lot self doubt. I mean eventually I've done things but I think I would have done it a lot easier lot earlier. I would say just go with the gut feeling. If it works, fantastic. If it doesn't, there's always other options. So you know, and you're, I think you're a long time dead as well. So you kind of got to live your life. So it's the possibilities and the possibilities now are endless. I wish we had the opportunity now. You know me at 50, what I had when I first started doing my own thing because I've worked in various different industries and my first business was I think 20 years ago and it's still alive and well today. And sometimes I wish I'd stayed within that. Yeah, I just think it's nice to have choices and you know, gut feeling is a massive one. If you think it's a good idea, get the right advice, you know, speak to the right people. Don't just maybe go gung ho with it.

I think the biggest thing that I've probably learned is just to be more. Well, I am very action focused but to be braver and, and I'm very much someone that goes with my gut feeling in life. But I think when I was younger I would look to other people for reassurance and maybe hold back and wait before I took action. So I would say the biggest thing is just to try things. Your worst thing is something might not work quite right but you'll learn very quickly that it's not going to work right. So yeah, take action as quickly as you can and do things would be my advice.

I would say be a little more confident. What I mean by that is when you're just starting out in business, as I'm sure you know, it's so, so easy to have kind of that imposter imposter syndrome. I have no idea what I'm doing. All of my competitors, they have it all figured out and they're doing a fantastic job and you know, how do I. How do I get into this space and just realizing everybody's figuring it out every day? The market's always changing. You know, people look like they've got it together, but we're all, we're all figuring it out. And if you invest that time, that energy, that intelligence into what you're doing, and if you're truly meeting a market need and caring for the businesses you're working with, the clients you're serving, then go forth and do it. And things are going to work out.

So there you go. What a value packed episode. It was really good for me to listen to the comments again and remind my myself of some of the things that they said and some of the things that I still need to apply to my business. So I hope you found that useful. I hope you're feeling equally inspired and have made some notes. And as ever, if you did enjoy the episode, I would really love you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, especially since this is our hundredth episode. By doing that, you help this podcast reach more like minded people just like you, so that I can help them grow their agency in a profitable, sustainable and enjoyable way. So please consider leaving a review. And other than that, I'm off to celebrate. But I'll see you next Thursday for our 101st episode of the Agency Accelerator podcast.