From Solopreneur to Streamlined Agency: How ZenPilot Helped George B. Thomas Scale Using ClickUp

It was getting kind of messy because when you have 1, 2, 3 clients, you can kind of fly by the seat of your pants. You can kind of make stuff buffet as you go. But when you get into the 5, 6, 8, 10, 12 monthly retainer clients, flying by the seat of your pants becomes painful. I mean, really painful and really messy. And I had kind of started to use click up, but man, I really wasn't using ClickUp. Like I had it, I paid for it, I had typed some stuff in it, but it wasn't the truth of all source and knowledge around deliverables for the clients that we actually had. And I was like, oh, what have I done to myself? And so, you know, you could either crumble at that point and say, I'm just going to go back to just doing my thing that I wanted to do, or you could say, hey, let's double down. Let's educate ourselves, let's find a good partner to get us past this hurdle.

Hello, hello, hello everyone, and welcome to a very special Zen pilot story. With me on the call today is George B. Thomas, CEO and founder of Sidekick Strategies, a HubSpot agency. George, how are you doing here today?

Jacob, I'm doing amazing. Like, even hearing that intro, to be honest with you, founder of Sidekick Strategies, I never thought that I would create an agency. The last thing I thought the world needed was another HubSpot agency. But here we are. This is what the universe is doing and I'm excited to actually be able to talk about the journey that we've been on and kind of the people that have been there to help along the way. So doing great, my friend.

Yeah, yeah. I saw that announcement on your LinkedIn and it sounds like it's an exciting time for you. So I'm very glad that we get to have a conversation, the two of us, this time, in just your life trajectory, man. Okay, so what we'll be doing here today is twofold. I want to ask because on the Zenpilot channel, we want to help agencies and other businesses improve their operations. So I wanted to tap you and learn from you about how to improve operations. There will be a segment for that second. We'll talk about you and Zenpilot working together. You went through our blueprint process to, you know, to boost your project management and your operations. And I wanted to get some details from you about that. But before we get to all of that and before we learn more about you, I wanted to ask you a little bit of a warm up question. Here it comes. What is the Most fun thing you've done this year thus far.

Oh, wow. I've done a lot of fun things. So that's actually not as easy of a question as it would sound, I have to say. Probably going on a cruise. We did that earlier this year. And the cool thing about it was I was able to take all of my kids. So I have four kids, two boys, two girls. My wife was there, of course, but then I got the pleasure of taking my mother and my stepfather along on the cruise with us as well. And so just having the whole family and doing it was 12 days, 14 days. It was a long time, actually. But it was really fun. We did five ports, saw a lot of stuff. You know, got to snorkel with the turtles. So that probably has to hit the top of the fun list for me this year so far.

Snorkel with the turtles. I recorded the similar conversations of this one. The guest went to New York and I'm like, yeah, that's on my bucket list. Snorkeling with turtles now lands on my bucket list as well.

There you go.

I really hope to do that today. I like snorkeling. I love turtles, so hope to do that. What was the entertainment on board like? Was there anything fun there?

Oh, yeah, I love me a good show. There was some good, like, musical shows. Comedy was really good. There was a couple folks that we made sure we went and saw a couple times. And of course, anywhere that I can go, Jacob, with 24 hour pizza and all, you can eat soft serve ice cream. Like, you might as well just sign me up.

Speaking of my bucket list. Okay, that's awesome. That sounds really, really fun. Wow. Instantly put me in a good mood. Thank you so much for sharing. Okay. Okay, so we know that about you now. Could you tell the watchers and listeners a little bit more about yourself, know, professionally, what you do about sidekick strategies, A little bit more detail about that and, you know, and your story in that sense.

Yeah, definitely. Well, my HubSpot story starts back in 2012. I. I actually used to be a designer developer guy. So, you know, a six pack of coke and a pizza would come in one side and a website would come out the other. And in 2012, we learned about HubSpot through this thing called the world's largest webinar, which was, you know, educational content put on by the HubSpot Academy. And during it, they said something about giving 10 free tickets away to the top 5% of tweeters. Back before it was X and it was actually Twitter and our social Media guy. His fingers were on fire. Long story short, the owner of the agency and I won two tickets and we went to inbound. I heard Gary Vaynerchuk speak for the first time. I heard HubSpot say, don't call me a customer, call me human. And as a recovering youth pastor, I don't know, there was something that I just connected with that I was like, oh, man, I really like that, that direction. And so we came back in 2012. By 2013, we had HubSpot in place. I started taking HubSpot Academy certifications. One certification became three became six. Pretty soon I got a phone call from a gentleman named Marcus Sheridan. He wrote the book, they ask, you answer. This was actually before he wrote the book that I got the call. And he said, hey, I think you have some talents that I could use for my small agency called the sales line. Are you interested? I thought I won the marketing lottery, to be honest with you. I was like, yeah, I'll give you a call back in like a week. I got off the phone, my wife saw this like, crap eating grin on my face and she's like, what happened? I explained. She goes, why don't you call him back and say yes? Literally 10 minutes later, I called him back and I'm like, I'm down. So the rest of the journey was five years working for him. I ended up getting around 42 HubSpot certifications, became a HubSpot accredited trainer, started doing a podcast called the Hubcast, which was really the first HubSpot specific podcast. And that started to build a little bit of a brand. And that's where we transitioned from George Thomas to George B. Thomas, because if you Google George Thomas Jacob, you get a mathematician or a Civil War hero, which I am neither of those humans. And so I needed to figure out a differentiator. In 2014, we actually started doing something really strange that wasn't, you know, all the rage yet. Not even the cool kids were doing it. We started doing video tutorials, and I was doing HubSpot video tutorials in 2014. So I've probably done about over 3,000 HubSpot tutorials in the last 12 years. And so then I worked for Impulse Creative because the sales line got acquired from Impact. I worked there for a little bit, then went to Impulse Creative, worked with Remington bag, grew a YouTube channel from zero to over 8,000 subscribers. The funny thing is those 8,000 subscribers were only 26% of our viewable audience. If you know anything about YouTube analytics, you're like, holy crap, That's a lot of human watching your stuff. Pretty much every video we would put out, it would end up being ranked first on the Googles and be a video there within an hour to two hours. And so, again, that just kind of was building this personal brand that was George B. Thomas, the happy, helpful, humble human, putting out HubSpot tutorials and doing podcasts and creating valuable content. Now, I say that on purpose because I want everybody to realize that it was valuable content that got me into the ecosystem. It was valuable content that grew my brand inside the ecosystem, and it's valuable content that allowed me to actually do. The next thing is that I stepped out of agency life and I said, I'm going to be a solopreneur. I'm going to do some HubSpot coaching, some HubSpot consulting. I'm going to eke out an existence. Maybe I can have two or three clients, but I'm just tired of the politics. I'm tired of humans. I don't want to manage humans. I just want to kind of be in my own little playground and do my own little thing. So I launched George B. Thomas llc. And by the way, I had friends tell me, you should probably name it something. I'm like, no. Well, what if you want to sell it? I'm not going to sell it. I'm going to die or retire. That's what's going to happen here. Like, because I'm in the long haul for HubSpot and helping people with HubSpot. Like, I just. I love the software, I love the culture, I love what it enables us to do as far as businesses. But. But Jacob, because of all of the brand building, all of the value, all of the content creation, the universe had a different idea for me. And so all of a sudden, within the first three months of being a solopreneur, we were getting more people coming to us than I could help as just me, especially me, creating valuable content. So I hired my son to do podcast editing and video editing. And then shortly after that, I hired my daughter to do project management and my wife to do project management, and then my other daughter to do social media. Then I hired a HubSpot implementation specialist. And then I looked around and realized I had three contractors also hanging around on a weekly basis to do things like web development and content strategy and writing. And I said, shoot. You know what's funny is I'm not really a solopreneur anymore. Like, I want to act like I am one, but we're literally sitting here, like, running an agency. And it's not being called an agency. And Jacob, I'm one for being authentic and being your whole self. And I realized if I'm showing up to the world as an agency, I should probably just be an agency. And I should probably be the best dang agency that I can be and create as I move forward. And so we had some conversations. We figured out a name, we put a method to our madness and a plan and strategy towards launching the website and letting people know that we are transitioning out of solopreneurship. And along the way it was getting kind of messy because, Jacob, when you have 1, 2, 3 clients, you can kind of fly by the seat of your pants. You can kind of make stuff buffet as you go. But when you get into the 5, 6, 8, 10, 12 monthly retainer clients, flying by the seat of your pants becomes painful. I mean, really painful and really messy. And I had kind of started to use ClickUp, but man, I really wasn't using ClickUp. Like I had it. Yeah, I paid for it. I had typed some stuff in it, but it wasn't the truth of all source and knowledge around deliverables for the clients that we actually had. And I was like, oh, what have I done to myself? Like, I didn't want to be an agency owner. I didn't want to have an agency. And so, you know, you could either crumble at that point and say, I'm just gonna go back to just doing my thing that I wanted to do, or you could say, hey, let's double down. Let's educate ourselves, let's find a good partner to get us past this hurdle. Let's figure out a process and move forward. And so that really has been the journey. You're just a lone dude making websites, learns about HubSpot, falls in love, works for agencies for over a decade and decides, I'm going to do my own jam.

Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Wow, that is such a story. And what a rush. You mentioned Marcus Sheridan. I recently, I mean, I've been a long time fan. I recently, last year had a pleasure to finally run a podcast episode with him. It was such a blast.

Nice.

That's on our other podcast. Yeah. Oh yes. He is the best dude that's on a. You might know the Zen pilot podcast agency Journey Watchers and listeners. This is another podcast that we ran, you might call the limiter run called Agency Breakthrough, but definitely look up Agency Breakthrough. Marcus Sheridan. It was a very nice episode and I was super happy to run that myself and Gray McKenzie, our CEO. Okay, George, so we're at the point in the story now where, you know, you're. You've committed to your operations. From what I'm gathering, you've committed to, you know, kind of giving this a little bit more scale. Got ClickUp, but not realizing yet its full potential. So in a second, we'll talk about the story of working with us as your partner, et cetera. But I've got one pet peeve about conversations like that, about case studies in general, where it's usually the story of somebody came in, they needed help, we helped the end, happy ending. But everybody who works with us, they also do the work themselves before they start working with Zenpilot. During the Zenpilot process, before we jump into, you know, you working with design pilot, I wanted to ask you about your operations knowledge and kind of your best tip for agency operations. And that's actually the question, George, what is your number one tip for agency operations from your experience?

Yeah, my number one tip has to be spend the time that you think you don't have doing the things that you don't think you need. I'm telling you. And what I mean by that is you have to take the time. You're busy, you're running, you literally feel like you're in a race, but you're going to be able to get a better stride, a better pace if you actually take some time to work on those templates to build the pieces that you need to actually deliver it faster, to do the research, to understand how to answer the question better. Right. And so, so many times we get in this conveyor belt mentality. It's almost like the I Love Lucy show of old, where they're doing the chocolates and they're, like, throwing them behind their back and in their apron and they're trying to eat them. And. And you're just trying to do everything you can do to get the conveyor, you know, belt going and the stuff off of it. And I'm telling you, if you take the extra time that you think you don't have to do the things that you think at that moment you don't need that aren't important because they aren't related to your client specifically in that moment, it is going to take you in dramatically better places as you move forward.

Yeah, that sounds awesome. Can you tell me a little bit more about how do you actually carve out that time? Is it, you know, some classic technique like time boxing, or is it more of a mental mindset thing of, you know, you just need to find motivation for it. Like, what's the secret there?

Yeah, great question by the way. I don't think it's like anything other than just being human. And what I mean by that is we humans, it's funny, we find time for what we deem to be important and as soon as you in your mind flip the switch that these things around my process to make my life easier in three months, six months are important, then I think it just becomes a thing where either you box the time out or you make the extra time or you work a little bit harder for a little while so that you can work a little less later on in life. But see, that's the thing. You have to navigate something that we're usually historically most of us are bad at and that is actually looking at the future and understanding how to set ourselves up better for success. Like if you look at the stats around the amount of humans that actually have money in their savings account, this proves my point. We suck at looking at the future and what's going to happen when we turn 65 or 70 and want to retire. The amount of people who are not putting in the things to make the next three months, six months, three years, six years easier is baffling. And so again, if you in your mind flip the switch of this is important and either box the time out or work extra time, it is going to pay off in spades in the future.

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's all about a long term view. We, we hear that often from, from people working with us where kind of the trigger to work with us was. I finally made the decision to give my operations a closer look, make the investment work a little harder short term. So that long term it's a lot more smooth sailing. So thank you so much for sharing that tip. Very insightful. And now I wanted to transition to talking about you meeting Zenpilot. You mentioned this conveyor belt type of situation, this race. Was that the point at which you were when you were first meeting Zenpilot or how did that went down? How did you meet us in the first place?

Yeah, well, first of all, the way that I knew about Zen Pilot is I knew Gray and Andrew back when they were doing Guava Box in the inbound original like stuff that they were doing with that and then kind of transition from that to some other stuff. So I've known them for a long time and, and that's one thing that I think most people probably pay attention to. Some might not, but like I, I pay attention to good humans. And I try to surround myself with good humans. There's. There's a very important piece of having the circle of influence around you. And so I always kept Gray and Andrew close in my social feed. And when I would go to inbound, I would make sure to shake hands, hug, talk, all that kind of stuff. And so when I found myself in this transition point of going from solopreneur, going into an agency and looking at my ClickUp and going, woo, this is one big issue right here. Like, this is a hot mess. Like, I don't even know what to do. Immediately my brain went to, you know what? But I know the cats that could help me out of this. I know the people to tag in and the conversations to have. And so I reached out, you know, through normal Zen pilot channels, like a normal human would do, but quickly let folks that I was talking to know, like, hey, the reason I'm here, I know Gray and I know Andrew, and I just know that you guys will be able to help me in some sort of fashion, take my massively disgusting looking like somebody threw up in ClickUp and turn it into a masterpiece where people will actually want to use it. Because again, there are things that fundamentally we were not doing as solopreneurs. I really wasn't worried about tracking time. You know, as a solopreneur, I wasn't looking at the efficiency rate of X, Y, Z or abc. And I knew that we had to clean things up, organize things and build a process and patterns and put them in place. And so that literally was. I knew good humans, I knew my hurdle. I knew those good humans and their team could help fix the hurdle. Let me make the call and start the journey.

Okay, so you're mentioning your ClickUp was messy and there were certain, you know, features, functionalities you weren't utilizing. Could you say a couple more sentences about, like, what you were seeing in ClickUp, what you were hoping to see but not seeing? Like, what was the pain there?

I think it was even worse than that, Jacob. It was more of ClickUp was such a mess that many times I would just ignore it and I would be living my project management out of my email and my slack and just the fly by the seat of my pants conversations I was having with clients. There was no real way to track what I had done and do like a weekly recap and be able to send the clients. Here's what we worked on this week. But, but here's the thing. The clients weren't mad. The clients weren't looking for that, the clients were actually really happy. As a matter of fact, my wife once said, I don't think you have any clients. And I said, what the heck do you mean? She said, I think you have friends that like to pay you money because we would get on calls and we would have fun and I would get the work done, but there was just no historical record of it. And as soon as I tried to tag somebody else in my HubSpot implementation specialist or, you know, developer on contract, then I had no foundation to stand on. I'm like, shoot, how do I download the things in my brain and what I've done and actually like bring them up to speed? And that's the world that I was living in. Like, I. I literally felt like even though I was using ClickUp, and I said this, by the way, to Andrew at that point, I said, brother, I just want you to treat me like I'm frickin net new. Like, like I'm net new. Starting from zero, we can blow this whole thing up. I'm not married to anything. I am just trying to move forward in a more positive way than living out of my email and my Slack messages.

Yeah, I hear that. So everything was basically in your head, in your email and slack, and it became difficult to delegate anything because there was no record. Okay, okay, I hear you. And you landed this beautifully at the moment where you actually started working with Andrew, working with our team. So like I mentioned earlier in the conversation, what you did with Zenpiler was the blueprint process, right? So that's the kind of. This is changing at Zenpilot right now a little bit. But we still do the blueprint at the beginning of the ZenPilot process. So to somebody who has never heard of it, you know, in your words, how would you explain, you know, what the zenpilot blueprint is actually?

It's nirvana. It's ClickUp nirvana. I mean, for me it was, listen, we're a little technical, right? We help people with HubSpot. We're a little nerdy. I mean, I started this conversation out with it. I was a web developer designer and the blueprint for us was this. It was insight into what it could be. It was a road map in how to actually get started down the, you know, the golden path, if you will, the yellow brick road to like get to Oz. This place that we dreamt of and wanted to kind of get back to this like sweet home of being able to be optimized and efficient and be able to everybody be understanding where we're at with the projects and the clients. And, and, and it was these also these micro pieces that we could dive into. And so it was all of these things of a holistic journey and micro steps to take along the way. And, and so for us, I'm not joking, like at that moment in time, in a place where we were ready to blow it up and rebuild, it was the roadmap to our future success.

Okay, okay. So can you shed more light about on how that process went down? Like, what are, what were the stages? What were the steps? What did you have to do as part of the process? You know, what was the work on your end versus what you got from us?

Yeah, so the initial first work, I think is. Most people will think of it as a pain point, but it's worth it. Meaning you guys do a great job. Zenpilot does a great job of. We need you to fill out these surveys, answer these questions. We really need to know information about you, what you're trying to do, what you're trying to see, like how you're helping people so that we can build a blueprint that is customized to you and your needs versus it just being this like one off blueprint that we kind of give to everyone. It doesn't feel like that's what you're going to get. And to me, that's not what we got. We got something that was very much what we needed in that moment in time. The other thing is I could have gone through this whole process and not done any work at all. I could have said, hey, here's my wallet, here's my checkbook, whatever, where do I deposit the money? And I could have had somebody just do it all for us. But we chose at the point at the end of the blueprint. And I think it was partly because we were as new as we were. We are paying attention to being financially responsible for the money that we had and the team that we had to pay, but also a little bit of like, well, I don't want them to see my dirty room. Like, you don't invite friends over to a party if you haven't cleaned up. Right. And I feel like I would have been like, bringing people. I listen, I called my click up an ish show. Right. I mean, it was bad. And so I'm like, maybe. Maybe I'll just clean up a little bit in here first and get some stuff organized and then circle back around and see what other help or assistance we can get. Because there's so many different layers of this there's actually, like, getting ClickUp cleaned up and organized and in a way that is focused on, like, growth and deliverability and these other pieces of your business that you need. Then there's these other layers of, like, automation, from HubSpot to ClickUp and ClickUp to HubSpot and, you know, reporting and dashboards. And so there is. There is a piece that if you choose to do it, you can kind of lay the foundation yourself. And that's what we chose to do. But again, fully knowing, I could hit the easy button here and I could wake up in a couple weeks and we would have ClickUp and all the stuff. But I'm a big believer in going through the messy middle so that you understand, like, what it is that you've built, what's there. You understand how to use it, how to teach your team how to use it. And so we've done a good amount of work of, like. And it's been fun, though, by the way, because we have that blueprint to go back to. And when we go in our ClickUp now and we see, like, labels with certain colors and things customized to, like, content processes that we're putting people through, every time I look at that, I'm like, thanks and pilot.

Right, because you got that, you know, you might call it a map. I mean, the blueprint is an. Is an apt metaphor, I would say here. And actually, this is something that we sometimes hear when we talk with, you know, prospective clients or clients, where there isn't total clarity on what do you actually get as part of the blueprint versus what you don't get. And you're a perfect example where past the blueprint process, you decided to just take this and diy build a house based on the schematics, basically. So can you talk kind of in a more specific way about what you get as the output of that process? Of the blueprint Process?

Yeah. So we got the blueprint. In the blueprint, there's literally these videos that you can watch. And when you watch these videos, your mind will take you. And here's what's fun too, by the way. It wasn't so much what the videos were teaching, but it's where my mind went after watching the videos. So it was like, yes, I can do this thing that is in the video, and I'm going to. But now that I know this, I can do XYZ and ABC. So it was almost like a 2x or 3x amplifier to like, here's the training. Here's your first stepping point. But Then I noticed that I started to do these other things outside of that. And what was nice is not only I was doing the things outside of that, but the rest of the team started to do things outside of that. And the rest of the team started to realize, oh, this is where we're at with the clients. We actually started doing a weekly recap where we send an email every Friday afternoon with all of the work that we've actually done for them for that week. We actually started inviting clients into their designated areas so that they could send see the work in the moment if they want it, or create tasks for us there instead of asking us to do it in Slack or email. And so this thing of alignment, this thing of like bringing them into the fold, this thing of being able to stand firm on this is the stuff that we've done. Even though again, we never really had clients that were penny pinching us or asking if we use the hours because they're happy clients. But we still had this reassurance, this understanding, this belief that we had a system under us, that if we were asked, if we got to that moment in time, we'd be good to go. Because, yes, we are documenting what we're doing. And we even started tracking time. Jacob, which is crazy talk when you're talking about a person who comes from that solopreneur world. But what's funny is there was a little hurdle there that I had to reassure all the employees, the team and the by the way, family and team. But family always comes first. I had to reassure them. I am not having us track time because I'm trying to optimize the crap out of XYZ or abc. We're simply tracking the time because in the future we need to know what we should be charging people to do, the things that we're going to do for them. And we can hone in better at what that's actually going to be. And what's funny is that was a totally freeing thing to people who weren't used to tracking time, but they knew the reason why, right? So we got a why we got alignment. We started to bring things in closer and we had a better output of ideas and actual documentation for our clients.

That's awesome. That's awesome. And the time tracking piece. This is, I think, conversation number four in this series of recordings that I've had in recent weeks. Time tracking always comes up. There usually comes up with some sort of comment that it was a hurdle. And what you said, to my mind, it brings and many founders or Operations specialists have this approach where it's like, the team is worried that this is surveillance, but it feels more like research and gathering information and data on, you know, how long things actually take, you know, tying it to what you charge at the. At the back end of it. That makes a ton of sense, Jacob.

Letting your team know that I'm not trying to be Big Brother. I'm trying to be Big Helper. There's just a. There's a big difference in the mindset that they actually come to the table when they hit that little track time button.

Okay. Yeah. Wow.

That.

That is. That was such a cool comment. That'll be a quote for sure. Okay, so you shared a lot about this process. I wanted to prod just one last time. Was there anything else that stood out to you as particularly. This is a double question. You can pick kind of your path here. Was there a part of the process that was easier than you expected? Or on the other hand, a part that took a little more work than usual, and you would like others who are going down that path to be prepared for it?

The interesting thing for me is that once you start down the path, once you've created one space with the folders that you need and the list that you need and you've done this customization, it's a lot easier to keep it going. It's almost like this snowball effect. Like, once it's in place, the next new client, it's like net new super easy. You've already got the things built in because you did it for the folks that were already in your ClickUp. So that, to me, was surprising. Like, oh, wow. Like, it doesn't always have to be a struggle. It actually gets easier along the way. Which, again, is a callback to my spend time that you think you don't have doing the things that you think you don't need. Because all of a sudden, when you realize, I'm using the thing that I didn't think I needed, and, boy, it just made my life a whole lot easier. Like, that's. That's kind of one of those epiphany moments. I'm trying to think of something that, like, harder than I thought it would be. I will tell you the one thing that I haven't overcome yet, and the thing that I did try to dive into and the thing that I know eventually I'll come back to Zen Pilot and be like, okay, mercy. Like I give. Can somebody help me? Is the automation and getting these two platforms to talk to each other. And you have to listeners, you have to understand I'm a guy who helps people integrate softwares into HubSpot. Like, I've done this on other levels before, but doing it with ClickUp and HubSpot seems to be just this very unique beast to me. And so I'm like, dang gone it. I'm. And I'm like, I know I need this, I know I want this. I went and actually tried to take a swing at it a couple times, but I keep not getting the results that I want and also the results that I know through those initial conversations with the blueprint that are possible. And so that has been a little bit more difficult in a place where I would suggest that most people lean into. If you know, you want those platforms talking together, then keep Zen Pilot along for the flight or the ride or whatever analogy you want for that piece of it. Because again, once you know it, it becomes easy. And I'm sure that in the two or three times that I've gone to bat to try to do that automation and connecting those two platforms, ZenPilot team probably could have done it in half the time and it would already be in place. So that's kind of the easy and the hard part of it, I would say.

Yeah. And it is true that we have a service line and a team all related to automations. You know, with ClickUp and HubSpot specifically, the possibilities really open up when you start going through make.com so we have some experts on board that can actually connect via make the two platforms. And it's really nice when a new deal lands even in our HubSpot because we do use it and then that automatically generates ClickUp tasks for the team. It's pretty neat. Watchers and listeners, if you're curious about this, you can always look up zenpilot, ClickUp, HubSpot and we have some videos from our productivity professor Jeff about that for you to have a taste. And of course you can go to zenpile.com call to have a conversation about that. Thought I would drop that in because that connected.

It seemed fitting, didn't it? It seemed fitting.

So you're invited to check that out. Okay, George, any kind of last piece of advice to somebody considering working with zenpilot in terms of what they should be prepared for or, you know, what would you say to somebody who's on the fence?

So if you're on the fence, there's probably a couple reasons why you're on the fence. One, you're curious about the that they'll actually bring to your life. My suggestion for that would be get that out of your head. You're going to get the value that you need. They're going to get you over the hurdles that you're having. They're going to help your agency or business optimize itself as far as processes and the things that you need to do. The other side of this, though, is you might be worried about the money that you have to spend to do the things. And what I love about Zen Pilot is the fact that I can choose to do this in layers, right? And so many companies, that's not the case. So many companies, it's like, yeah, we can build that thing for you for $152,000, and then you can sit back and hope that it works. That is not this case. That is not this scenario. That is not what Zen Pilot has built or what they're delivering. And so just rest assured, like, think of it maybe as the seed money to get that first initial part. Whether it's the blueprint or if, if by the time you're listening to this, Zen Pilot has come up with something different or something better, whatever that seed step is, at least make that investment to take the seed step, because then you'll start to see the initial value. And once you see the initial value, once you start to make that initial move, then everything else, mentally, will fall in line to what it's worth. Worth or not worth for you to continue to move forward and fix the things that need to be fixed. And so again, the value, it's there. Don't worry about it. The finances, figure out a way to make it work.

Okay, awesome. Thanks for sharing that. And for anybody who might be curious about the investment, not all consultancies like ours have that, but we do. We put together and published a pricing page fairly recently. So you can go to zenpower.com pricing, there's a few options for you. There's so you can have total clarity into how that's going to go down. And, you know, within the initial conversations with us, it's all about roi, because if we don't see the ROI at the back end of the process, I mean, at the end of our process, we want happy clients. And if we don't see a path towards you watcher listener becoming that, we just won't proceed. That's how we do things.

Yeah, Jacob, that's one thing. I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I do want to say this because it shouldn't be a differentiator, but it is a differentiator Ladies and gentlemen, let me just reassure you that when you get into the process with the Zen pilot team, the thing that you'll take away is that they fundamentally care. They care about your success. They're not just somebody there trying to, like, do a thing in exchange for dollars. Like, you can just tell that they're passionate about your future success. And for me, that made a huge difference of just this, like, core rooted human cares about where we're trying to go and what we're trying to do.

Thank you so, so much for saying that. I got just, like, chills off of that. All right, George, well, thank you. You've been very generous with your. With your comments here today and sharing your whole Zen pilots story. We'll be wrapping up in just a minute here or two. But before that, can you tell, you know, the watchers and listeners where they can follow you, where they can learn more about, you know, your services? What kind of people are you seeking right now in terms of connecting with anything about that?

Yeah, definitely. People that I want to connect with all humans, by the way, because I do a thing called beyond your default podcast, which it's about personal growth. But the reason that I'm on this podcast is I'll narrow it down a little bit to humans that use HubSpot. If you use HubSpot and you find it difficult and you need training or you need implementation services, or you're not sure about your lead generation or your automation or nurturing or scoring or any of those, like, nerdy things that come down the pipeline, then just let us know, reach out again. You can go to Sidekickstrategies.com you can dive into the wonderful world that is all the things that we have. We've got an AI assistant bot and a super admin training page and services pages, and you can learn about the story, about the team and all that stuff. But if you want to just strike up a conversation, the easiest place is to honestly go to LinkedIn. Just look for George B. Thomas, Connect with me on LinkedIn. You can hit me in that chat panel, as long as you're not going to spam the crap out of me. And we can have real human conversations and you can ask me questions. The funny thing that I love to do is I love to answer questions without charging people money. And then if we decide we want to work together, then we can have a deeper conversation after that.

Okay, that's awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much, George. And for anybody listening to this who might be curious about The Zenpire process, zenpilot.com, really recommended not just to book a call with us, although obviously I'm mentioning that. But there's a ton of free resources and there's a lot that we share in terms of useful content. If you want to completely DIY your ClickUp setup, but follow the ZenPilot system, we have the ultimate guide to ClickUp, a 56 page ebook that's up on the website right now for free that you can use to set things up our way and then, you know, to build more of the processes and habits piece of this or to get more specific consulting or you know, a custom build. Then you can contact us definitely. So check that out. And George, thank you so much. It was such a nice conversation. Really set my mood for the day in a pleasure positive way. And we'll be wrapping up here. Any final comments to share with our watchers before I hit the stop button on this recording?

Yeah, the only thing I'll say, first of all, thank you for the opportunity to do the podcast and add value to the world. And here's what I'll say as a client of closing piece to the listeners. Believe in yourself and realize that you can probably achieve things that you don't yet believe that you can achieve. And the way that you're going to achieve those is by picking the right people to have in your corner as you step into the ring of life. And I'll just say for us, Zen Pilot was definitely a set of those folks that we needed in our corner as we moved forward in our agency life.

Okay, awesome. That is an amazing note to end on. Thank you for saying that. Thank you George, for all your time here today. Thank you watchers and listeners for joining us here today. And we'll see you in the next Zen Pilot story coming your way soon. Bye everyone.