A Special Announcement About the Future of Agency Journey

All right, welcome back to Agency Journey. I am your host, Gray MacKenzie from Zenpilot, and today I've got a special guest with me. It is my colleague, my teammate, my coworker, Kuba Kuba. Welcome to the podcast.

It's so nice to be back here.

I think we've done one of these together previously.

Oh, yeah.

Awesome. And I think I messed up your. I should have actually intro'd with the full name. So. Jakob Greiser, AKA Cuba, has been a huge part of our marketing efforts here or last year, plus. And, yeah, I'm excited to dig in and talk about some of what we're doing from a marketing perspective. And we've got a special announcement. I have been the host of this podcast or co host of this podcast since 2015, and I'm handing over the reins of primarily leading the Agency Journey podcast to Kuba. To Kuba. How are you feeling? You've got pretty small shoes to step into. I think this would be a pretty easy one to blow out of the water, but taking over the reins. Talk to us a little bit about what you're excited about and what our formats will look like, what's staying the same, what's changing.

Okay, well, a little bit of experimentation, I think, is on the horizon for our listeners. So you'll be hearing different formats of episodes. A little bit of a different approach, of course. But first, I should start from the top. I'm feeling super honored to be taking over Agency Journey. I remember, you know, back when we were first talking about me joining Zenpilot, and that was, I think, back in 2021, I was listening to Agency Journey as a way to get to know Zenpilot better, get to know you better, and to learn about this agency space that I'm now in. And I, you know, I still remember, you know, doing some chores and listening to. I think it was an episode about SEO. I listened to a few. I recently even reviewed my. My history on. I'm listening on Google Podcasts because I'm weird like that. You know, I found the first episodes that I was listening to, and I thought, wow, if I join, I would love to be able to get in on that. And now I'll get to do that. I'm really excited about that. You're obviously joking about the small shoes to Phil. I've heard from multiple agency leaders talking about, you know, this is the first podcast that they tune into. When there's a new episode. They immediately listen to the full thing or download it. So, yeah, really stoked to be Taking over here.

Yeah. This is not your first time hosting a show, and I don't know if we gave any context last time we had you on the podcast, but tell us a little bit about. I would imagine a lot of listeners have seen you at our live events. You've done a fantastic job hosting a lot of our LinkedIn lives, our webinars, that kind of stuff. You've got a signature opening that I'm sure people will get used to here on this podcast feed as well, but that's not like your hosting experience predates that as well. Little bit about your experience, sure.

So, I mean, I'm enthusiastic about public speaking in general. If anybody here is a part of Toastmasters, I used to do that for a few years and I'm super exciting, excited about that and recommended to anyone. And yeah, my podcasting experience and hosting live streams dates back to 2020, the pandemic. A lot of people were getting more into streaming in those days as everything turned virtual for a while there. And so did we at my previous company. And the show that I used to host was called TEC Leaders Hub. You know, it was in the IT space I was interviewing primarily CTOs, VPs of engineering, a lot of leadership lessons learned from that and lessons on just how to get good content out of people, great connections made and friendships made along the way. Which. Which is what I've always liked about this kind of show is that you get to sit with somebody, really listen to them, get their best insights. So, yeah, that show, the way it worked is we always live streamed it. So you would call it like a live podcast recording and then got turned into podcast episodes. Agency Journey works a little bit differently. Although Agency Journey live streams, I know it's happened before, so we might be doing some of those in the near future as well.

Yeah, that's awesome. For everyone who's excited and celebrating right now that boring Greg has finally gone for the podcast. I'm not disappearing. This is the first episode that Kuba and I are recording today, but once we wrap this one up, we're going to flip things around a little bit. Kobe, you'll be hosting and then we're going to do kind of like one on one conversations back and forth. We've got a whole bunch of themes identified as you kind of have planned out and thought about what that looks like. Is there anything you're excited about? You don't give any preview of any of the themes that are coming up.

Yeah. So first of all, I'm excited about picking your brain Gray, you know, talking a little bit more about. Well, a lot more actually about your pov. I listen to the Agency Journey episodes as we produce them. I'm very involved in the production right now as I'm moving to the host seat here. And in some cases, I have a feeling that, you know, the topic that the guest is talking about. You could talk about that, you know, easily for half an hour and share some great insights based on your experience. And now we'll have a platform for that because you'll be kind of the most frequent recurring guest. You know, hopefully you'll catch up with Carl Sakis in a moment here, because we just recorded what, episode four with him. So that is part of what I'm excited about. Other than that, just a little bit more experimentation. And I am looking forward to also making this more of a thing on LinkedIn. We're posting a lot of clips from Agency Journey. And, you know, in terms of my personal profile, I recommend the listeners follow that because I'd be talking a lot about both what's discussed on the Agency Journey podcast, but also a little bit about kind of behind the scenes, how it is running a show like this, a show where we've got almost 300 episodes already out and nearing 100,000 downloads. So it's quite a big thing to be taking over. So those are some of the things. And other than that, like I mentioned, live streams, multiple guests at once, different formats, maybe an event where we would have multiple speakers, you know, under the Agency Journey umbrella. There's a lot of different options that we could explore here.

Yeah, that's awesome. Where did you pull the download numbers? Did you pull that out of.

Yeah, transistor. I saw like 90,000 there.

Yeah, you're missing the. Oh, we should have kept. I wonder if I got any old screenshots. You're missing the first half. For up until maybe 2020, we ran the podcast, maybe even 21. We ran the podcast on boy, not Libsyn, another platform that I'll remember at some point in time, I'm sure when we're not recording. But there were a couple hundred thousand downloads, so I wonder if we're going the opposite direction or if downloads are being tracked separately. I guess we're more consistent. It was every week instead of biweekly as well. That'd be interesting to dig into, but yeah, that's awesome. So outside of following you on LinkedIn, what else should we ask folks to do?

Well, as always, rate and review Agency Journey on Apple podcasts and all the other Podcast platforms I believe you can rate on Spotify right now as well. And Spotify has really conquered the market, haven't they? You know, they made huge headways here. I. When I talk with my friends, they mostly talk about distributing their podcasts on Spotify these days, or consuming, I should say. And, yeah, you know, look forward to various other episodes. And now might be a good idea to pitch yourself as a guest, too. If you want to talk about that, then just reach out to me, Yakubenpilot.com you can reach me there via email and we can talk.

Awesome. Well, I'm excited to hand over the reins to you, Kuba, and you'll do great work and it's in great hands. So congratulations on taking over Agency Journey.

Yeah. And I don't mean to let you go so easily. Can you talk for a minute or two about how you're feeling as this transition is happening, what you're excited about?

Um, I feel great. I feel like there's a lot going on. There's a lot of conversations that I have that I really enjoy. Like, that's one of the things that I will miss the most is the podcast format as an excuse to meet people who I wouldn't be forced to chat with other, you know, I wouldn't naturally maybe fall into a lot of the conversations that I've been able to have. And the conversations, really, probably as much as I've enjoyed a lot of the live conversations, a lot of the conversations and personal connection that's come out of the post recording, like, oh, hey, you talked to this and can I ask you something about that? Yeah, let's talk about this. Or, you know, vice versa. And so a lot of those connections, you know, I just have to be intentional in other ways to do it. I think it's going to be a great step for Zenpilot. I've had this list of things and I've probably bombarded you with too many things that are ideas. Hey, here's what we ought to do to make the podcast better. Here's what we ought to do to get the podcast out in front of more folks. Here's what we ought to do to improve the listening experience. And a lot of those ideas I've not made the time or prioritized executing on over the last couple years. And so I'm excited to have more of your dedicated bandwidth to like, hey, let's take this thing and let's. Let's take it to the next level. I think the other thing I'm excited about is I know I'll be on here a decent amount with you, but just pulling in more thought leadership from the Zen pilot team. So whoever that is from our, from our cast of characters here, pulling them on, getting those insights from our team. A lot of folks who follow us, we certainly have folks who are running an agency. Project management is working well. This is not a core thing that they're trying to solve right now, but there are a lot of folks who follow us because they found our content because it was relevant and want more stuff in that vein. And so purely an interview based format around, you know, a lot. We jump around to a lot of different things in agency life. I think we're leaving out some gold that should be there for folks and we can, we can provide some really relevant, contextual and timely insights from the Zen pilot team. So I'm really excited to ramp up our, our thought leadership and sharing more of that here through the podcast with you as the host too, which again, was one of those things I've wanted to do for a while and we've not prioritized making that happen. So I'm excited.

Yeah, exactly. In certain ways, the challenge is going to be more on you here than on me, at least with these episodes that we'll be recording with you because now you'll be the source of the insights. But with your experience, I'm not worried about that at all.

I think there's a natural evolution that happens. When we started this podcast, we were so early into the project management space. We were building a platform at that time, do inbound. And it was so helpful for us to make connections and to hear and be able to ask the questions around what are. We had our own agency experience, but what are other agencies feeling and thinking and stuff. And now I'm not in those same shoes that I was in nine years ago when we started the podcast. Now I'm in the shoes where there's constantly new stuff to learn. I still find those conversations really helpful and enlightening, but I've got a whole backlog of experiences and experiences trying to solve that problem in multiple ways. And so there is, I think this is just a natural part of life and growing up and maturing is you never want to lose the curiosity, but you have an awful lot more to share the more that you've been through and the more times you've solved a specific problem or attempted to solve a specific problem and figure out what didn't work. And so I am excited to share some of that and have the team Share that as well.

Yeah. And I feel like I'm on the other side of this. I still got a huge bank of curiosity left and a lot of questions to ask, so I'm looking forward to having an opportunity to do just that. One last question for you, Gray. As this transition happens, tell the listeners, but also me, and I promise to take it seriously. What is one thing about Agency journey that you hope is not going to change?

Yeah, great question. I think the, the authenticity of the connections. So my standard policy has been. So you just asked for people to reach out and pitch themselves. I don't think I've ever asked for that on the podcast before. And my default reaction to the pitches is spam or trash right away, depending on the quality of who's pitching and where it's coming from. And I've had this staunch, like, I know that I'm going to dread going into a podcast interview if it's not someone who I'm actually excited to, to interview. And I've been, I think I've talked about this on podcasts before. Like, I've batched podcasts. So, you know, hey, I've got Wednesday for this quarter, has seven interviews back to back to back, pretty much lined up throughout the day. And if I tell anybody that most folks who are not currently batching, like, oh, that's gotta be so exhausting, right? Isn't that a terrible day? And it is tiring, but it's really exciting. And I notice a huge difference if I've got seven folks lined up who I'm really excited to have a conversation with, versus if I've got five folks who I'm excited to talk to and two folks who I decided to let on for some other reason, they reached out and pitched and they want to promote whatever it is or something else. And so I think the authenticity in connection, like, do I actually want to talk to these people? And then can we have a. Hopefully this will be the best, one of the best networking or relationship building tools for you as well and for people to get introduced to Zenpilot. I've got a lot of folks through the podcast who have become really good friends with, text with, talked to frequently, in some cases not talk to frequently, but be able to take big or weighty stuff to them and say, hey, I know that you went through something like this, like, let's, let's have this conversation. And so I think that just, yeah, genuineness of like, relationship building is really big. That's not at all to discourage anybody from pitching. I think That's. That's great. And as you form your hey, who do we want to bring on approach, I think that makes sense. I have nothing against folks pitching to have them on. And frankly, if other folks are running podcasts and want to bring on Kuba or myself, like, reach out and happy to have that conversation, but I've just found it's way easier for me to say no. I'd rather be the person asking than the person saying, yes, that's fine. Come on. Because even if I'm excited about you, if you reached out and you were the person who said, hey, I want to talk about xyz, unless it's a. If it's a typical. What those pitches look like and you'll start getting these now, you know, I've gotten for a week, for the last however many years of just the. The poorly formatted, hey, here's the one pager for this person and they'd like to talk about one of these three topics. And here's what these ideas are. And here's two places that they've been before, and neither of them would you recognize. It's just really low quality pitches, and I've not been excited to have those conversations. So hopefully just genuine excitement about the folks you're bringing on and real personal connections that come out of that.

That's awesome. I'm really glad I asked. And the recordings that I have scheduled thus far, I am very excited about. So I think we're on the right track. And if you do put yourself here.

It'D be way better if you said the opposite. If you're like, oh, no, I messed up. I've got four people in the pipeline and they have to guess who this is.

Oh, gosh, they're all so dull. How did I go wrong here? No, they're not. They're not. You'll be hearing from them, watchers and listeners, very, very soon. Awesome. I'm really glad I asked. And like I said, I promise to take it seriously and to kind of take it forward and we'll stay in touch about everything that happens on Agency Journey. So thank you, Gray. Anything else to add to this one, or shall we wrap it up? No.

Here's Take Over. Take over. And congrats.

Got him. Awesome. All right, so let me close this one out. Thank you so much, watchers and listeners, for joining us here today. We're off to record a few more episodes today because we like batching, and you'll be hearing those very soon. More insights from Gray and a little bit more from me in the near future here on Agency Journey. See you next time.