Agency Trends & The Agency Growth Book With Baris Onay

What are some of the agency trends we expect to see in 2023? And what are some of the biggest challenges agencies are facing? Have you heard of the Agency Growth Book which yours truly contributed to? Those are just some of the topics we're going to discuss in this wide ranging episode of today's podcast where I'm joined by Dr. Baris Oneh, who is the founder of Agency Events and is the mind behind the Agency Growth Book. So without further ado, let's jump into the episode and get started. Rob I'm Rob Da Costa 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 in the ups and 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. Hey everybody and welcome to this week's episode of the Agency Accelerator Podcast. I'm really excited to be joined by Barisoni, who is the CEO of Precision Communities and the founder of Agency Events and the Agency Growth Book. Now we met because I was involved in the launch of the Agency Growth Book last year. So I was keen to have Barris join us today and learn a little bit more about him and what he's doing to support the agency world. So what? Welcome to the podcast and why don't we just kick things off by you giving us a bit of background on yourself and how Agency Events came about.

Thanks, Rob. And the thing is, actually I have to start by thanking you because you did contribute to the book, you're one of the authors and thank you for that. Well, we ourselves, the company is called, just like you said, Precision Communities and we are an events company. We are people that come from events and not the world of agencies. And the Agency Growth Events is a media brand that we're running and it is tailored to the growth of digital marketing agencies worldwide. And this came about in the pandemic as everything that in the past four or five years, I guess the huge accelerator. We're a group of people who were employed in the, let's say Events live, face to face events industry. And when that crumbled, we started our own thing because what happened is some of the incumbent players in the World Events did not want to support virtual as a format, whereas we thought it did have legs. So we launched our own company and now we're partnering with different communities out there to launch event and media brands. On top of them, so AGC growth events came about in one of those collaborations and it has been quite a journey because we always say you cannot just go and launch events or media, let's say a brand on top of let's do it today for dentists. You don't do that. Yeah, you can only do that for a industry that you are from yourself that you have a brand and reputation in. So therefore by that let's say definition, we could only do events for events. So we didn't do that. So we, we are, that's why we're partnering with other people to launch events and content in the books strategies yourself to come right in our books to, to bring our events to life. So you can think of us more of a platform. Actually we are a platform company that hosts the know how and the let's say media and marketing, let's say know how around how to do virtual events and bring communities together and agencies is just the world that we are servicing.

Yeah. And tell us why, why did, why did you decide to launch an event and write the book for the agen agency world? What was it that got you into the agency? Was it a partner that approached you or how did that happen?

Yeah, we actually started off partnering with the digital agency network and that was the first community that we started working with and we kind of liked it a lot. And the thing is, I personally, I worked in events all my life but I was heading up digital and marketing for very big publicly traded companies here in the uk. So I'm not a, let's say complete stranger to the world of agencies and marketing. And what we've come to find is just like you know, Russian dolls, big agency, another small agency, another small agency. So. So there is a proliferation of agencies in this world. So for us, for events people, it's a perfect ground because the supply of attention is self perpetuating. Yeah, there's always a new agency being founded and that's a. And they always live through the same growth pains. And we have come to understand when we did our research and we found out topics that agency owners are interested in and for us with agency growth events, we only cater for the owners or let's say senior managers of agencies because our content is only about growing your agency faster. And so with that we started in our season one, we did like four events, we had like 20ish speakers and we had accumulated a lot of content around how to grow your agency. And we looked at the top four or five which ones were driving lots of let's say attention our way. And we, we thought to ourselves, because I also come from a publishing background, so let's, let's put that into a book. But we quickly realized that we needed real experts to write the book for us. So that's when we started approaching Rob yourself and some other highly regarded experts in the field to bring together what we now call the agency growth book. And it actually has taken a life of its own. I've been said by, told some by someone else that it was a classic case of right time, right place. So we found ourselves in an incredibly lucky position where we had people like you wanting to write for us. So it has been an incredible privilege to host all that content together into one concise resource where agency owners can just go and download, it's free for them and it will give them a very good idea on the basics of growth because as you know much better than I do, most of their pain points are common and shared and well, let's say articulated and perhaps already solved problems that they need to finance us to. Yeah.

Now obviously we're going to share the link to the book in the show notes, so all the listeners, please do go and grab it because yours truly is in there and there are a lot of other amazing coaches in there. So tell us about some of the themes that are covered in the book.

Yeah, we start well to grow a business, let's put agencies to side now. I mean, you need to sell better, sell more service better, so that you retain your clients and operate more efficiently. Yeah. So we started looking at those broader themes and then applied them to the world of agencies. And I'm just going to read out the chapter names. They're like six chapters in the book. The first one is excelling at new business acquisition because that is the first thing perhaps you need to start with to make sure that you are getting more and more new business. The second one is creating new products and services, so actually selling more services to existing clients or maybe to new clients as well. The third one is attaining operational excellence, the third chapter, and that is about making sure that you operate in a, the most efficient way possible. And then there is efficiency through technology as well in the book, so that you get some vendors that might give you automation power or other things that might allow you to really jump to another, let's say, level of efficiency. And then we look at leadership and teams, which is perhaps branded as a softer topic. But I do believe it's perhaps the most important topic to make sure that you know what you're doing. And you can lead people because I think the biggest, I think you also conquer one of the biggest problems that they might be facing is actually learning, going through their own maturity curve. Yeah. Becoming, let's say if it's a fresh start, a few people coming together, everyone's doing everything, then you grew up a bit more. It's about being able to manage, create, manage and lead teams. And then we look at business planning until your exit. Because if you don't have a roadmap, you actually don't know where you're going. Just dancing with the wind. So it's very important to plot your journey. That's the chapter that your article is in, plotting your agency's journey. And it's about planning from day one until your exit, potentially if you want to, from your agency, and making sure that you do have a roadmap. So these are the, the big issues that we've covered on one big book. And you might be thinking that's a bit too much. But the book is now 115 pages so there's a lot of content in it.

Yeah. So I'd really encourage everyone to read it because I've been working through it myself just to hear the perspective of other people in my industry that have similar view to me or have different views to me, which is fantastic. I just want to pick up a couple of things that you just said, Baris. So one thing is I completely agree about people and I think people, the agencies need to think when they're talking about managing people. It might be an in house team, it might be a remote team, it might be a part time team or, or it might be a freelance team. And if you want to be successful, you need to manage all of them in a similar way as if they were in house. I'm sure that comes across in the book. But you're absolutely right. People, you know, we all start our agency for some reason, but there's a catalyst, there's an opportunity. We're very entrepreneurial and that doesn't always lead us to being great people managers. So you definitely need to acquire those skills.

And you're right on the issue of people because I did find myself in my professional career because pre all this I have been a CEO of a company of 120 people and we had like five business lines and I was 32 when I was made CEO and I found it a baptism of fire to actually, because I was very good at what I was doing in my own department. So they, somebody decided that it was a good idea to put me on charge of everyone else. And this is actually what happens to most people. They are thrown into the deep end and you either swim or you don't. And I think if you are enlightened enough, which I wasn't, you educate yourself on how to become a leader. Because before you become a leader and then you live up to that, then I found myself working for very big corporates here in the UK, companies that employed 1,500 people across the globe in 20 locations, whatever. And I've been like, I found myself in my career path up to the C level and I did get a lot of coaching and it has helped me a lot. So I would really encourage everyone listening to us right now. You don't have all the answers and be cool with that and just ask people who do have the answers because there are people out there that have lived through the same arc that you have and it's an incredible. It's a cheat sheet. Yeah, just talk to these people and understand, ask them what can I do better? And they'll just tell you.

Yeah. And I think it's important for anyone listening to this who's thinking, I never want to employ staff, I just want to be kind of a one person business. But you will employ staff because you employ VA or you'll outsource work to a freelancer because when you need more capacity and if you don't manage those people like an in house team, then you are going to come across problems. So the second part of what I wanted to pick up on from what you were saying about the structure of the book is the section on kind of plotting your journey till till your exit. And I just want to say that not everyone will always want to exit their business. Not everyone. That isn't a succession plan doesn't mean exiting a business necessarily. It could be, but let's be realistic here. When you're selling a service based business, you're not going to necessarily get the millions that you hope for and you're certainly going to be tied in for a long earn out if you do sell the business. That's a whole other topic. So when you're thinking about your plan, think about succession because succession can mean building a business that's less dependent on you. That's how my book, the Self Running Agency and My Group came about. I saw that lots of people didn't necessarily want to sell their business but they did want to build it. So it gave them more flexibility and freedom. So when you're plotting your course, just bear that in mind, we can kind of get our ego stroked and get our ego boosted by the idea of selling our business. But that doesn't necessarily. Isn't always the smartest approach to succession planning.

Yeah. May I just interject because I did sell a business which is not in any. But it was an events business and I have been on the buying ad multiple times because the world of events is a very acquisitive space and it's not always a fairy tale. Yeah. And I did get acquired. I. I sold the business that I was working as the CEO of and we were living a dream. Yeah. We're selling to this PLC from London. It's the mothership. It's going to be fantastic. Perfect. And the reality is with itself. And lots of people became millionaires. Not me. And then the next morning I received an email from someone I don't know at all. Yeah. From corporate hq that they wanted my sales numbers by this date. So the sell the sale is not the holy grail that will suddenly enable all of your dreams.

Yeah. And listen, I've got a similar story. I sold my agency to a large US company and I always talk about my two year prison sentence that I did, which it was not a very pleasant experience. And this will be. This, this story will be surprisingly familiar to many people. At the end of my two years, I was offered to buy my agency back for a pound and I said no, thank you because I didn't want the stress of it. And I have one of my first employees has gone on to do amazing things. He has a multinational PR agency now and, you know, he's been. This is Pietro Ranieri, he's been on the podcast a few times and he talks about his experiences as well. So you have to have your eyes open when it comes to selling a business. And that's a whole other topic that I'm sure we could spend lots of time on. So tell me, did you see. I'm putting you on the spot a bit now because Barris was amazing. On the day of the launch, there was a whole day conference and Barris was comparing it. So. And I was speaking about 7 o' clock in the evening, so you must have been absolutely exhausted. But if you were able to pay attention throughout the whole day, did you see any sort of trends that you saw from the conversations that were taking place during the launch of the book?

Yeah, I mean, I think this ties nicely to a broader topic about what are the emerging trends, not only from the event, but what we're seeing on our Network. And I think there's this topic around the recession that never comes. I think we're talking about the recession for a long time. That much longer anticipation before it actually hits. But I don't know if or not but people are looking at ways of becoming more effective and making sure that they have a very strong understanding of their profit driver. And profit drivers as in, yeah, becoming more profitable on the let's say accounting side of things but also making sure that there is pipeline management, there's a, let's say better processes. Yeah, it's about, I think it's about without becoming corporate, learning from the corporate world on how to run stuff more efficiently and more process driven way. I think that's what I can say because all of the chats I had with all the speakers during the day and I did it on our own, let's say networking sessions as well. The questions received. People are of course concerned about all this talk about 2023 becoming a bad year for everyone. There's this concern now if that's going to be a reality, I do not know. But that concern automatically puts people into a more defensive and more aggressive stance at the same time. We come to. You might become super defensive, you might just batten down the hatches, but that's not going to get you anywhere in a bad year. Yeah, you might become too aggressive, then you're gonna be exposed at some point. So I think a defensive aggressive stance, if that makes sense at all. But that's one of actually one of the let's say articles in the book talking about. That is I think the, the biggest trend I can see because you want to be aggressive where you can be which is getting more new business and making sure there's a process behind it. But you also want to be defensive as in getting more technology doing the work for you, making sure that you don't spend too much here and there. So basically being cautiously aggressive is I think the biggest trend I see.

Yeah, it's such an interesting topic and I do feel that we can be in danger of talking ourselves into a recession and talking ourselves into behaving like we're in the depths of despair. And then that creates your own sort of self fulfilling prophecy of losing business. And we can be afraid to. Like I had my group coaching call yesterday and we had two questions around increasing prices and paying staff more and implementing profit share for staff all based on but could I, can I increase my prices? Because it's a challenging time and it's like yeah, of course you can if you are promoting the value of what you do to your clients and you are invaluable to your clients, then they should be paying a fair fee for that. So I do feel like there is a danger that we talk ourselves into a recession. And interesting enough, I started my marketing agency in 1992, which was when the Gulf War was going on in the UK recession. And then I started this coaching business in 2007 at the height of the financial crisis. So inadvertently, I've started two businesses when we're in a recession. And I've always believed, well, if I could survive that, I can survive anything. So I think I would concur with what you just said, Barris. And I think that we just have to do business as usual, but also be super mindful on making sure we're doing the right tasks. Because running a business is a simple equation of do A plus B plus C and you get the results. And you just need to know what A plus B plus C is, which is keep, keep an eye on your costs. Make sure investing consistently in business development. Make sure you're winning the right type of client charging. Be really mindful of your margin because that's the number that really, really matters. And I know there was some great talks from people like Marcel Pettibar on the launch and in the book, who is a. He's been a guest on my podcast, he's done some expert training with my group and he is fantastic. So, listeners, make sure you grab a copy of the book because it is full of tons of insightful golden nuggets that will, will help you. And definitely I was just talking to.

Him yesterday, by the way, and yes, his speech was one of the most popular ones because there's a lot of practical information packed into that 10 minutes. So I highly advise everyone to make sure that that is one of the articles they read or watch on our website.

Yeah. So let's just move the conversation forward a bit. What's the plans? I don't know if you can reveal any of this, but what are the plans in 2023 for repeating this or doing again or other agency events?

Absolutely. Well, more books. Absolutely. Because what we're going to do next year is we're going to do it three, three books. The agency growth book is going to become this annual conference. Annual growth conference that we do. It will be always on the the first week of December. So next year, this, this year, actually 2023, December, you will have the new version of the book and hopefully with your new article in it. Rob, I'm hoping and it will be a most probably two day event this time and the agencies will be able to come engage more with the the experts in the field and get a two day immersive course on how to accelerate their growth. So that's definitely happening on the first of the first week of December. We're also going to be doing two other specific agency type books. One of them is going to be for PPC agencies, one of them is going to be for e commerce agencies. And so for those one of them before and one of them right after the summer and the same will be working with the experts in the field to give us related content to those type of agencies and how to operate them better. And on top of those three books and three events, we'll be doing a lot of roundtables. Now we're talking to some sponsors that will that do want to have select roundtables and some of them also want webinars. So we'll be doing some smaller events throughout the year in the webinars and roundtables. But roundtables are interesting because that is where you get a two way debate. That is a select number of agencies that come together around one topic and there is a presentation and then we all get to talk. It's like a two hour call and that's a more intimate interaction with between people. So we'll be doing those as well. And we'll also have a special project which might be an in person gathering in the U.S. but we'll see. We'll see.

Fantastic. So it sounds like you're going to become a fairly significant kind of provider of education and information in the agency world, which is really exciting. Yeah, I was glad to be a little part, albeit fairly late to the game last year and hopefully this year will be a bit more proactive and involved.

Absolutely.

Let me ask you the question that I ask all of my guests, Baris, which is? Well, you've obviously you don't look that old, but it sounds like you've been around in the world of business for quite some time. So if you could go back in time and give your younger self a piece of advice who was just starting out in business, what would it be?

Let me start by reverting a question because I'm 45 now, but how far back are we talking? Are we talking me at 25? Why are we talking to me at 35? Because my advice will differ.

Yeah, well actually you can. I'll let you do both. But I would say typically you at 25 is the young, naive, fresh chorus. But fresh. Paris is just starting out.

Well, just starting out. And I think the advice I would give would be to be more patient and listen to more mature people. Had to say because I remember when you're young you always have a sense that the world is different now. It's going to be your world and the people in charge now are from the world of the past. That's what you think automatically. Which is not. It's half true by the way. That's there. There's some truth in that. But if you look at all of the lifespan of humanity, of a million years of evolution. Yeah. And you find that the maximum lifespan of a person now is at 80. It used to like 20, whatever. So 80 years. We live in 80 year cycles. Yeah. So lots of things change, but lots of things are so well repeated. All the mistakes that you will be making have been made before. Yeah. So basically find a mentor quicker than I did. Find so quick. Find a mentor and learn from that person. Choose someone who's good at what they're doing, that you admire or has more experience than you have and spend time with that person because well, for everyone listening right now, your mistakes were made before you. They have been repeated by a lot of people. So some solutions will stick. Even if the world changes into the world of AI and whatever. It doesn't matter. The mistakes will be repeated, the mistakes will be the same.

Yeah. Wise words. I'm not sure that my 23, 24 year old would listen to that advice.

But mine would have tighter.

But what would be the advice to the 35 version of Barris?

Yeah. And at 35 I was in the UK working at ski level for a very big company and I got sucked into the corporate glam. Yeah. Glob trotting business. All that and board meetings and committee meetings, assistants, all that stuff. Hundreds of people that is. And I've been very lucky in my own personal career to reach that level much faster than a lot of people. And my advice would be to that butter is to. To make sure that. Because for a very long while I thought I was going to make it until the very top at that corporate ladder. And I wasn't too far off by the way. But now that I'm back to entrepreneurship, it's been like two years and a half now. I now know that this fits my personality so much better. And now do understand looking back at myself that I health wise depleting myself. Although it was glamorous, although it was cool, although it was Admired from the outside. I find I now understand that me in that world, although I was thriving, wasn't the perfect fit. Yeah. And I would advise myself in 35, 10 years ago to really look at, is this what you want to end up doing for all your life? Do you want to start, do you.

Think you needed to do that in order to get where you're at today? Do you think that was part of the journey to go through that corporate life?

Absolutely was. It absolutely was. But to be open to all the listeners, to show some more vulnerability, I did not choose to become an entrepreneur. The whole world of events collapsed. So we had to become an entrepreneur. So I didn't all of a sudden raise my head above the parapet and say, oh no, this is actually I'm looking at my life goals revolting my life. So I want to become an entrepreneur. I didn't work like that, but I'm happy that I am entrepreneur now because this fits my personal style so much better and I feel so much more, let's say grounded and happy and effective.

I think that's why a lot of acquisitions don't work very well because we go from like, for me, I went from running a 25 person agency to being part of a 2000 person business and I went from complete autonomy to being part of a 13 person board and lots of politics and bureaucracy. So yeah, the other thing I wanted to just kind of empathize with you on is I believe a lot of people who start their own businesses who are entrepreneurs, have a catalyst, have a moment that causes them to do that. So often they'll, and they'll relate very much to what you said. It won't be necessarily a pandemic, but I was the marketing manager for a very small software company and I got made redundant. And while I was the marketing manager, I felt we were struggled to find an agency that understood the tech that we sold. So I thought I could do this better. And then I got made redundant and that was my catalyst to start my agency. So I think a lot of people will relate to that. Now I'm going to share obviously the link to the book download, but if anybody wants to reach out to you, how should they go about doing that?

Personally, to me, the easiest way to do is on LinkedIn. Just type my name on LinkedIn and add me. And while you're adding me, just please make sure that you're writing a small message as well. Don't just press the add button.

Amazing.

And, and I always accept people. I always love talking to people because I have a firm belief that my entrepreneur, let's say years now, has taught me that the answers are not in the room I'm sitting at right now. The answers are outside. So I would say that that's true for anyone. Yeah. Don't just sit in a room by yourself with, like, some pen and paper and sort out all your problems. You can't. Yeah. Talk to people, explain your problems, and that's how problems get solved. And so I'm very open to talking to people if they want to reach out to me. Just use LinkedIn. That's the easiest way to get hold of me.

Sure. So we'll. We'll include your LinkedIn URL and also the. The URL to download the book. Just want to say a big thank you for doing what you're doing for the agency world and for joining us today on the Agency Accelerator podcast.

My. My pleasure. I'll make sure that you promise in front of everyone that you'll be in the book next year.

I will.

All right, cool.