Why AI & Automation Will Save Your Agency in 2025

All right, so we have a little treat for you. So this is a coaching call from the Agency Owners Association. This is a group that Neil and I have for agency owners to help you grow faster. So if you're in the agency space, you are a services business, this is applicable to you. It's a little preview of a call. It's probably 10, 15 minutes or so, and you get a sense for what it looks like to be in the group. If you want to learn more about the group, you can go to marketingschool.io/agency. Again, it's marketingschool.io/agency. Hope you enjoy the episode.

Austin is away today. He did ask me to facilitate the conversation. We didn't know how many people are going to join, and I think we're kind of right time now. But yeah, just going to take his place for a call, and I guess he's busy with getting back into the new year and see where we go with the conversation today. I don't know how many owners of the Snowtakers are going to join us. But we've got a small, neat crowd. And I was kind of thinking, you know, 2024 was an interesting year. I was just talking to John and Jason and a lot of highs and lows, as Jason said. And some of them felt like pretty extreme highs in some cases, I think, with the agency world. But I was curious, I spent the last 2 weeks pretty much thinking through 2024 and then kind of reflecting and trying to figure out What 2025 would look like, and in a full transparency, like majority of my agency business is SEO, and that's where I feel a lot of pressure. And so I was thinking, you know, if I was doing it, probably other agency owners were doing it, and was wondering where everybody else was in terms of those reflections. And if you guys came out of that December and you're now excited about 2025 because you've got great plans, not for SEO, but in general as an agency owner, and what those plans would look like. Do you guys? Is that an Interesting conversation to start off since it's the first New Year call.

Sure.

Yeah.

Sure.

Anyone wants to kick off or should I kick off?

Go for it.

You got the mic.

Okay. Well, I felt like 2024 was super stressful. I think the number of conversations that I have as an agency owner with clients, just about everything that's happening has gone up like tenfold, right? And then it's not just harder to sell now, it's also harder to retain. And when— and the budgets seem to be distributing, getting kind of distributed quite a bit around other things as well. As AI becomes more dominant, everybody looks at becoming more holistic in terms of marketing. And so if you've ever been niched down to a particular service, it starts to feel like, oh, damn it, now we got to go into everything else, meta and ads, which we're already kind of doing, but we just never emphasized it as much. And so for me, 2024 was in a way kind of a wake-up call. And I thought to myself, is that 2025 we want to keep clients on the same level? not go too crazy in terms of acquisition, but instead start to focus more. I'm blessed to have a portfolio of businesses, and so focus more on our traditional businesses and kind of take a bit of a backstep on agency, wait it out in terms of 2025 where it settles, and then go into 2026 and see where that goes. But if we're going to put the same effort as we would into agency, we'll probably see much greater returns in our other businesses. And so that's something that we decided on for 2025. Obviously everybody here is in different situations, but that was something that we had to pivot towards. And I'm curious to see, I'm actually excited about that, but I'm curious to see where everyone else kind of decided to go and what situations you guys are in.

Scott, when you say other businesses, what do you mean by that?

So we have a portfolio about 11 different businesses. So we have health and wellness business. It's about, it's healthy 6 figures. And so we have that business. I have a partnership, Basically is with the operator. I have additive manufacturing business. I have a partnership 50/50 with the operator there. So what I do is I find great operators and then I put marketing in place for the business. We do all of the works through my agency, pretty much all the ads, all SEO and everything. It becomes an in-house agency for that case. And then the operator focuses on day-to-day operations. And so we grow that way. So we had a lot of success in the first year just getting to $100,000, $120,000. That's never a problem. And where it gets problematic is getting past like $300,000, $500,000 a year. But that's what we want to focus on this year. So our businesses are very diversified. We have tree removals, we have, we have a lot of, we have health and wellness, we have additive manufacturing, we have e-commerce stores. And so about 11 different types, but they're very diversified.

Yeah.

That makes sense.

And different percentages. Yeah.

I would tend to agree that I think 2024, I don't know if wake-up call is the, is because, you know, I think we all saw this trend. Coming before 2024. But all of a sudden, it just really exploded. And so, you know, I think it's really, you know, we're, we've got a, like a pretty healthy pipeline. But, you know, I want to be able to, you know, have many multiples of that. And I'm seeing more of the stress on my team from just trying to, because we, we work with SMBs. So there's like, you know, at any given time we have like thousands of open tasks and I'm just seeing the team is really kind of struggling to stay on top of everything. So, you know, and in my mind I'm like, well, we need to 3x our capacity this year, like this year, not over the next several years, this year. And the only way that we're gonna do that is through automation, including, you know, application of AI, but also through more Automation. So we're really doubling down, I think, for 2025 on just revisiting our tech stack. You know, there's certain things that I'm not gonna change. I'm not gonna change Asana. That would be way too disruptive. I'm not gonna change our accounting system, but I'm sort of looking at everything that plugs into that and looking at, you know, how can we really automate the process of like from, you know, you're not gonna fully automate sales, obviously, but make it more efficient, you know, Semi-automate onboarding and get to the point where, you know, our team can be focused more on the creative and on the relationships, and then on, you know, kind of overseeing the work. But, you know, what I'm kind of trying to share with my team is, even though we don't actually, you know, autonomous AI agents are not quite there yet, but, you know, you can do some pretty cool things with other tools and with custom GPTs and all of that. And I'm really looking at, you know, if each one of our team had a couple of, you know, AI sidekicks, if you will. And so that, you know, they could almost be like a, you know, even if you're not a manager, you could be like a mini manager of agents to try to do more of the work. And then how can we just really do every year, we always try to streamline our processes again. And I think we really need to double down on that. So, you know, I think efficiency in order to be able to deliver more for the same budgets for our clients, because I don't know what you all are seeing, I don't see their budgets are going up. So I'm a little bit nervous about going into 2025 and going, here's your annual price increase, because I, I'm not sure that's such a good idea. I kind of feel, especially because of all the press around, um, you know, everything that AI can do and technology can, you know, do all these marketing functions that if you're an agency owner looking to break high 7 figures, 8 figures, or even 9 figures, the Agency Owners Association is for you.

It's ran by my partner Neil Patel and myself. And we've been there, done that from an agency standpoint. And if you want to learn more about it, if you want to grow faster, get more clients, take yourself out of the day-to-day, just go to marketingschool.io/agency to learn more.

I would rather be able to go to them and say, hey, good news, as your partner, we're actually not going to raise your rates this year. We're even going to deliver more for your budget because I think really trying to focus on retention is is going to be the name of the game. And so, yeah, retention, efficiency, that's where, where my mind is at for 2025.

To drill down a bit on that, I'm sure everyone would be curious, but when it comes to AI agents, I think a lot of us are looking at it as like, we want to have them, how do we build them? What are you approaching it as? Like, are you going to outsource that to get the help to build that, or are you doing it in-house? What's the most efficient way right now for you? How do you see that changing?

For me right now, I think it is in-house because I think, you know, by the time, you know, my team understands our work and our processes, and I'm, you know, I'm fortunate that I also have somebody on my team who is, you know, pretty AI articulate and has, you know, created apps and done that. So, you know, we're looking at all of our, our tools and looking at, you know, if integrations don't exist, we're gonna build them and, you know, that type of thing to try to drive efficiency. And if it's not the right tool, we'll swap it out. And we are really looking at You know, AI has become— I don't wanna say it's a buzzword, but, you know, there's things that AI can do, but then there's things that automation can do. So we're kind of looking at really, you know, upgrading our tech stack more than anything and to include agents. And so when we look at agents, in some cases it's gonna be, you know, something that's embedded in a tool, and it might not actually be a pure agent. In other cases, you know, we're really getting very detailed on our custom GPT. So I'm, I'm, we're building GPTs that, you know, we're naming them and, you know, and trying to train them as if we would train a new employee. And it's not 100% there yet. But every time we see a new release of, of from OpenAI, it just, it feels like we're getting a little bit closer. So there's some things that you try to get the, the agent to do, and especially on the creative side, and it's just, it's very frustrating.

Yeah.

It's not quite there. But then sometimes I'll talk to, you know, I'm also fortunate that I, you know, I have a podcast so I can use that almost as an excuse to like interview founders of companies that are doing cool things and, you know, get into the weeds is what they're doing. And I had a chance actually yesterday, I haven't published it yet, but I interviewed the founder of Blaze. I don't know if you're familiar, but it's been around, so like blaze.ai. So that's a, he's, that's the idea of, you know, kind of syndicating content Through automation. So, I mean, in his mind, it can basically become like a member of your team. So if there's something like that that's on the— off the shelf that I can use, then we're looking— we have within our team, we have kind of a task force of— we're calling them the AI app testers. And so we have our list of, you know, here's all the things that we're, you know, we're testing, what we're planning to test, and we're thumbs up or thumbs down on it. And will this replace something that's already in our tech stack? So we're kind of going through that process and just reevaluating everything.

Wow. Okay, cool.

Anyone's got any question or anything to add to that?

No, I think it can be a little overwhelming with the amount of AI kind of opportunities that are out there. I think that's the biggest thing, right? The agents, building agents, you know, and then just using all the different platforms. I think that is just such a task in itself beyond running our agencies and growing them. That's such a big area, maybe. And there's probably people who are even selling services along those lines out there. But, you know, I don't know. I just think that's a, that's something that's here that, you know, that we know that needs to come like at the forefront this year, especially.

I feel like a cool opportunity would be as Diane figures out it for her agencies and she sets it up as a separate service and she's like, hey, agency Agency owners, here's the AI solutions.

There you go.

That we can build. Yeah.

You have some customers. You have potential customers here. Yeah.

There's a lot of, I mean, I, what, what's interesting though is I'm seeing, and you're probably all getting pitched by all sorts of leaders for everything you can imagine. And every single app out there says that, you know, it's an AI app just because they kind of have to. But I got pitched by somebody whose business is doing virtual headshots. And I looked at that and I'm like, so you're just, you're basically just taking, you know, a picture of somebody virtually and then you're removing their background like Canva.

Yeah.

So it's, you know, it's kind of funny that, you know, there's, there's people that are building different businesses. I had somebody else who was pitching some other business to me and it was about kind of local referrals. And I asked him about, you know, how he was gonna manage his his data. He's like, oh, well, you know, maybe you would be willing to do this, like, with restaurants. I said, well, you know, tell me a little bit more. And so he's describing it, you know, I said, well, how do you secure your data? And do you integrate with, you know, like Restaurant 365 and with, like, all of the platforms that a restaurant owner is gonna use? And he's like, oh, no, no, we— I'm like, well, then why? Like, you know, I think there's just this proliferation of apps that are coming out that is, you know, I find we really need to vet them carefully because there's so many of them that just, I, in my opinion, they're going to crash and burn. I just don't think they add value.

Yeah. And that, I think a lot of a consensus online is that those apps are, they don't have moat. There's not a lot of moat in there. A lot of them are just wrappers. They're all built around some kind of API, whether that's OpenAI or whatnot. But an interesting case is that I had a client, we have a client, and they needed to create About Us page with their photos. And he's like, oh, it's gonna take me 2 weeks to take headshots. 2 hours later, he's like sending me headshots like, oh, I found an AI tool to create headshots and we use that on the website. So yeah, one-off, but it works, I guess.

Cool.

Rustam, what's your, what's your 2025? I'm hoping positive, lots of energy. Yeah, I kind of started off negative.

Sorry, guys. No, no, that's good. I think you got to put a little context here as well. Like some of, some of us or some of you all have been in the game for, for quite some time. Some others may be a little bit newer to the agency game. Let's just say.

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I've been basically doing this for a little bit over 2 years. And so for me, this year was definitely— or last year was a lot of just kind of putting pieces in place. You know, making mistakes, figuring out, you know, different aspects of the business, consulting versus agency. I offer consulting and agency services. Agency kind of came out of consulting. And so I think moving into 2025, still trying to figure out like packaging my services where the needs are in the industry. I think one of the things, at least for— and I'm in education, so higher education primarily. I work with schools and universities, help them find students. There's definitely consolidation happening in higher ed because of all the options that are out there, and then also the cost of a degree and all those other things. But I think the other thing, to me, the big thing is There's a lot of agencies that have been in place for a long time. And for me, my goal is like to figure out how to take away market share from them and come in with something a little unique or different to get my foot in the door. Because I do believe, just like I'm sure all you believe, I can do things better. And, you know, and I've seen it because we've audited a number of these school agencies that have been doing their work, and there are some good ones out there, but some of these larger ones, it's just, they're just not doing what we could. And so just trying to figure that out, how to position something differently. Maybe it's a product coming in with a product that could be different, like a student journey product or a customer journey product that could help with conversion rate optimization, that could help with multiple other things. That's where I see the big opportunity in 2025 for me is to try to figure out how to create something unique other than being better because I think that claim is out there from everybody. That's where I see the biggest opportunity.

Yeah, higher ed is cool. I had someone who pitched me a, in a way, a partnership like a few, a year ago, 2 years ago, and I come originally from Kazakhstan. So Central Asia, And a lot of students there look for opportunities to come to North America to study. And so a lot of North American universities love international students due to how much they pay.

Yeah, full tuition.

Yeah, but the opportunity was there is that apparently higher eds have agents, but they pay commission per student. And so what those guys were doing is setting up a bunch of these websites.