YouTube Content Ideas, Owner Mindset, and Recognizing Your Leadership Style with Ali Schwanke

All right, welcome back to Agency Journey. This is your host, Gray MacKenzie from Zenpilot. And this week, I've got the pleasure of bringing on Ali Schwanke from Simple Strat. Ali's known for a number of things in the HubSpot ecosystem, and you've got an awesome story, Ali. So I'm excited to dig into it today. Welcome to the podcast.

Yeah, thanks. This is awesome to talk to you. Cause actually, I think I first was introduced to you through the podcast multiple years ago. So excited to be here.

Yeah. That's awesome. Let's start with Simple Strat. What? Tell us a little about the agency. Who do you help? How do you serve them?

Yeah. The best way for us to encompass that is think about yourself as a business owner or a. Maybe even a marketer that wants to do more with less. And HubSpot is a tool. In order to do that, we actually found ourselves creating content around it, and that's kind of how we found our expertise and we found our. Our niche down. But what that means today is if you are looking to get more out of a sales marketing automation platform and you want to use HubSpot, we are the experts on that. And we work with agencies, we work with people that are in marketing departments, work with founders across multiple industries and nationwide.

Yeah. Did the business start around HubSpot or what's the. What's the origin story?

Yeah. So it's funny that there's multiple parts of our journey that I think is. Any business owner or agency founder has said, this is going to be the thing. And often the thing that you think is going to be the thing. Never. It's like some random thing in the corner. And that's kind of how we started. When I first started the agency, I sat down at my kitchen table and I kind of had this manifesto. I typed out all the things I believed to be true about marketing. And I remember taking it to my husband and kind of putting it off. He's not a marketer. He now works in sales. But he didn't at the time. And I had presented it to him, and I thought it was wonderful. And he was like, you know, you get the spouse. That's like, good job, honey. And you were just like, this is my heart. I poured it out. It's here on this paper. And ultimately, what I kind of centered around was strategy. I saw a lot of people jumping into tactics and trying to find the silver bullet. And that's not. That hasn't gone away, actually. It's probably getting worse. But I want to be a strategy firm. And at that time, we needed to kind of attach ourselves to some credibility in the marketplace. And HubSpot partnership was the way to do that. And we quickly learned that HubSpot partnership means you pay a bunch of money to get a badge and you're just like everybody else. So our expertise actually came from creating content around HubSpot, which meant we had to stay on top of it. We then visibly looked like we knew what we were doing better and it's actually just catapulted us to the front and center. And we, we didn't. We decided to stop doing anything else. That's not HubSpot.

Yeah. When did you make that decision?

We went all in on HubSpot. I remember Tyler and I, my co founder, were sitting at. There's a coffee shop down the road. They have a conference room. We're now all remote. So we're like, woohoo. You know, get this conference room. You had to schedule it for $40. You had to buy up to $40 worth of coffee. So we're both getting like these giant coffees with like big muffins. So we can use our $40 worth of credit. And we said, it seems really difficult right now to compete on content marketing, marketing retained packages, because everyone's doing that. So what if we went all in on HubSpot and we just played there and that was kind of, I mean, it was loosely defined at that time. We didn't know what that looked like. But now two years later, that was maybe three years ago, but you know, a short period of time, we now have, have continued to live through that.

Yeah. So in the HubSpot ecosystem, you are really well known for the HubSpot Hacks YouTube channel. Is that when YouTube started? Were you already doing YouTube before that and then you just turned the dial up or were there. Was there a different like, predecessor stage of how you went all in on HubSpot and what that looked like marketing wise?

Yeah, the predecessor to that was us trying to run a local user group. And that was kind of the vehicle at that time. It was pre pandemic, so companies were remote. There was definitely virtual options, webinars, but people were used to kind of getting together and hiring local teams to help them. And so we were based in Lincoln, Nebraska, which is, you know, we'd like to think that we're pretty progressive, but outside of the Midwest region, people actually just ask like, where is Nebraska again? What do you guys have running water? Yes, we do. And so we ended up Just really struggling to find our footprint in the user group ecosystem around us. And a lot of DIY marketers like, thanks for the knowledge, but we don't need to hire you guys. So when we went to YouTube, we had been trying to do YouTube. My advice for anybody looking to emulate a content creator is go back as far as you can to try and find the stuff they first did. And if you find the stuff that we first did, I mean, our tags on YouTube gray were like Midwest.

Yep. Right.

And like marketing.

I've been there.

Woohoo. Good job. YouTube strategy. So when we first started on YouTube, we were doing videos about just generic marketing stuff. And the one client we had that was not HubSpot, they were a software company. We said, what if you would create tutorials to like, better learn how to use your product? Their product was complicated and they said, interesting, but we're going to go in a different direction. So we said, well, what if we just. I'm kind of a person that wants to prove things to people. I'm like, seriously, listen to me.

Right.

And so Tyler and I both put together concept of just recording loom videos and optimizing for better search on what people were saying online and how they searched. It was a big point in time where everyone was actually searching for things that are like how to do X in the words of the customer, not this superfluous jargon stuff. So we did that with loom videos and we started to see traction. And then we decided to double down and actually make it a separate channel, invest in production and process. And it took six months until it got us off the ground. And then once we started being known as the quote unquote HubSpot people, we'd been the HubSpot people locally for two years. Suddenly we release a video a week and everyone's like, whoa, where have you been? And.

Right.

So it's just kind of a good learning experience.

Yeah. What are you using today to do that same kind of like keyword research or planning out what, what topics you're going to create content on?

Yeah. We have a couple things that I think one of the things that helps us with our content calendar is we look at YouTube for a couple of different reasons. One is definitely search traffic. Two is efficiency of us helping our clients, period. So if our clients, let's say so Will on our team, brought a topic up a while ago that he says, every consultation I do these things called like the five things you should do to set up your HubSpot portal. He's like we go over them on the call, I send them the recording of the call, but it really should just be a five minute video. So we shot that video, optimized it the best we could for search. But the primary use case of that is after every single initial consultation they get that video. Y so we're kind of dual purposing it, but we're using T buddy to do some keyword research there. We have an airtable that anytime someone asks us, do you have a video about this? We've now been talking to HubSpot reps like what do you wish you could send to your clients? So we're trying to tap into the. We call it the mothership. And then ultimately like we're seeing what people are commenting on as far as comments on YouTube and then anything that our competition's ranking on that we don't have a good video for, we put that in there as well.

Yeah. Wait, so are you saying the airtable you make public or a version of that public to HubSpot team members or.

No, we don't at the moment. No. We do have an intake form that we can have people fill out if they want to request a topic.

Do you know, is anybody doing that right now as a, you know, everyone's trying to get the ears of more HubSpot reps and be the like the go to resource for their direct sellers. Are you aware of anybody who's done that where they've created the resource? Like hey, when you have this question. So I could see giving them the airtable and say just type in whatever the question is, here's the answer. And it all links conveniently to our own stuff, you know, primarily. Yeah, I haven't seen anyone do that.

I haven't seen anyone do that. I've seen another agency put together a how we help HubSpot reps. Yeah, which there. That's pretty smart I do think. But yeah, they. What we found out was there was a lot of turnover with HubSpot reps during COVID and so even any relationships we'd built before kind of had to start over. And at least like a lot of agencies that turnover too. So people had to kind of refigure out like who to work with and why to work with them. And so HubSpot hacks has helped keep us top of mind for that too.

Yeah, that makes sense. You were telling me a little bit about some. I think there's a mindset shift and kind of, you know, separate like hey, what's the long term plan? For the agency, we talk about some of your mindset shift. And what is, what did you mean by talking about, like, hey, are we building a product company or a services company?

Yeah, when I started the company, I had that manifesto. And I think as a, as a marketer turned agency owner, I have long seen myself as a very good marketer. I'm a very good marketer, I'm a very good communicator, I'm a good content creator. And that's my lane. And I know how to. I know how to drive in that lane very, very well. And so especially when you have skills like that and you don't come from a. Like, I was not in a CMO of a giant company with a giant team. Like, I'm not opposed to getting my hands dirty. That also comes with a risk of any time something like breaks down or something, I jump in and I do things right. So when you look at how to grow a company, a lot of times if you Google this and you read on entrepreneur McKinsey or even, you know, first round review, you come up with ideas that are based on product companies or E commerce or retail or manufacturing, whatever. We're selling to hours and we're selling trust and we're selling, you know, intangibles. And when I realized that we're a service company, I had to take a step back. And this has been a challenge for me to say, how do I become the best president, owner of a services business versus the best marketer anybody knows? And I'm still working on that.

What. What are the types of things that you're doing with that? Different mindset, communities you're in, like training or programs that you've gone through. Like, what. What types of things has that led you to already?

Yeah, I mean, this podcast has been an excellent resource for that. I mean, systems and processes, that's kind of the name of the game. As we were talking about before we started recording, I. I run my house like that. I run my house so that my house hopefully doesn't need me when I'm not here. You know, my kids have lists, my dogs have schedules. I mean, even like the bills and everything, like, just runs on clockwork. But when I look at the agency structure, for me, it's how do I help now? Level up team members. And so instead of looking at how do I solve the problem, it's how do I teach them how to solve the problem? And even our HubSpot hacks, we have a YouTube template that is used. We have an editing team we have a process. We have a how you record it. We have, like, we have all these pieces now that if I were to step out, hopefully for, you know, six months, that can continue without me. And that's. I think sometimes your ego takes a hit there because it's like, oh, they don't need me anymore. Yeah, but that's actually the best place to be because my. My energy should be spent on innovation and ideas and making sure that we're hitting our metrics, which that shouldn't. And it shouldn't require me to jump in and try to save everything all the time, which I've worked for people. I think I've worked for people that do that too. So it's just a bad place to be.

That makes sense. I just. Just a little bit ago, I was talking with Carl Sakis.

Oh, yeah.

Who wrote Work Less, Earn More. And he's got these. What does he call this? The four stages of day to day involvement. Yeah. So if you picture like a fuel gauge. I realize most people will not be on YouTube, will not see this, but his four stages are, hey, you go from being mandatory to necessary to needed to optional. And there's definitely a lot of our identity that gets wrapped up in stuff. And I think that, like, how do I go from being necessary to need? It is like, his distinction that I hadn't thought about before reading that book, but I really like that. Necessary is like, you have to be there for it. Needed is like, hey, you're needed at some point in time for some things. And also in any business, like, you'll be at different stages at different points in times. Hey, in the sales process, I'm mandatory right now, but, you know, in delivering to the client, I'm optional or I'm, you know, necessary here and I'm needed there. So, yeah, I think that is deeply tied to our identity. I think one thing that you said there was like, going from how do I jump in and solve it to how do I teach other people to jump in and solve it? And I think there's another level that's like, how do I spend my time recruiting and finding the people who know how to solve it, you know, without me having to teach, like, they're farther along in a specific area than I am. And figuring out, like, when is the right application of all three of those. It's definitely a challenge, but a cool learning opportunity.

Yeah, I think some of that also comes with the, like, we just went through a change in our family. My older son went to college and so because my personal life was going through this. Like you're needed, but not really anymore. You know, they sell like he saw calls and there's a funny. There's a TikTok that is a picture or it's a, it's a video of a guy calling his mom. And the, the phone just rings and rings and rings and rings and it says pov when you're trying to figure out if you're doing this adulting thing right. You know, and your mom doesn't answer because you're trying to basically check all the time. But I do think that we, one of the things that's hard for leaders to do is to watch their team fail because we, it's inherently also our failure and we don't like that feeling. And so when you have to, especially in a world where everyone's kind of padded and, and we all like, we, we talk about fail fast and fail this and fail that, but it's actually hard and it actually, it sucks to fail. It really does. And if you send an email out, I remember the first time that one of my early employees had messed up and he said, ali, I meant to order 2,000 flyers and I ordered 20,000. Yep, okay, so it was a couple hundred dollars. But he's like, I'll pay for it, it's fine. And I said, you know what, I'll pay for it. It's a mistake. Tell me what you can learn from this. And he's like, we always double check the proof or the whatever and I guarantee you he'll tell that story probably the rest of his life as well.

Right, right, right. That makes sense. Let me switch to like long term plans for the agency and how we should be thinking about it. How has your mindset shifted around like, hey, what is this agency here to do? Kind of over your, your career, owning it.

We initially started, I again I wanted to put that stake in the ground and have a strategy product. We actually had a software that very similar story to yourselves. Like we had started building something and kind of realized the inherent value around it wasn't necessarily the product but the process around it. So we've taken that sort of templated and process problem solving, thinking and that's how we approach our HubSpot scenarios. So when we're in a HubSpot environment and someone saying I want to do this, like we don't typically have cookie cutter implementation, we don't have cookie cutter recommendations because every input is going to be a little bit different. So what it looks like for us is we want to be the absolute best at learning how to use the tool in a variety of application settings and industries because we know the tool so stinking well that we know how the, how to answer that question faster than any of our competitors would. And we can bring that inherent value and speed to you as a company. So what that looks like now and we, we've got a couple of different service lines across that we're now looking at the integration of the whole entire ecosystem. You know, we're getting well known with what tools do best for meeting, recording and what tools do best for third party reporting. And that just going to continue to grow. And I think for us, like, content's always going to be a big play there.

Yeah, that makes sense. What I wanted to talk a little bit about, kind of like as we're setting up the business, do we set up a business? Like, how do we go into owning a business and decide, hey, do we want to sell this someday? Am I building this as a lifestyle type business? What choices or decisions would I make differently depending on how we set it up? Well, the simplest answer or simplest question is like, where do you want to take simple Strat? What's your long term goal?

Yeah, ultimately, if you would've asked me this when I first started the company, I mean, I think anybody thinks that like, oh, it's, we're gonna do this and I could work on this forever. It's so fun. And then you kind of wake up one day and go, okay, I don't, I don't know if I want to do this forever. What do I want to do? So, you know, we do talk a lot about saleable value and the ability for us to have options. I don't entirely know what that looks like for me at the moment. I do believe that there needs, for me, there needs to be some sort of transition of value at some point. But I don't know if that's into our product. I'm not sure if that's into a sale or private equity. But I mean, what I want to do right now is I, I want to build a brand large enough that, that allows people to do what they love, have a good team environment, make a considerable impact in the industry, and ultimately change the scope of marketing and sales automation throughout that process. So I do have one child left at home. So I, I'm giving myself about seven years, he's 11 before I have to really make that. And you know, seven years is a pretty good time to set yourself up for one of those things.

To happen for sure. I think it's helpful regardless of what your ambition is. I think it's really helpful to build like you would sell it.

Agree.

I don't, I don't think that, that, you know, like any private equity firm that comes in and buys an agency, the playbook is like step one, hire a salesperson, Step two, hire another salesperson. Step three, hire another salesperson. Yeah. Um, so I don't know you necessarily go like that crazy with out of the box, but I think thinking, hey, there might be a sale or an exit or liquidity event at some point in time gets you to do, gets you to think differently around like, hey, how is the business performing now and how are we trending over time? It also gets you to do things like, you know, take your legal compliance really seriously and build out a data room and have your stuff uploaded. And that really has simplified. I only know a handful. I know a bunch of folks who've exited or transacted their business in some way and I only know a handful who've done it who were actually prepared and had that stuff ready to go. And it's just such a different experience for like the common thing. If you talk to any agency owner who sold, it's like this was the worst three to six months of my life because I'm working crazy hours trying to pull this all up. I'm trying to do it all in secret and not tell anybody that this is happening. And I don't know if it's going to happen or not happen. And it's got a huge financial implications for my life if it does or doesn't happen. And then a totally different, you know, it's going to be stressful regardless, but totally different tuning from the folks who've. And usually because they were either a partner or were privy somehow to a prior one or this was their intention and they had a failed one at some point in time and the next time around they were actually ready and prepared but totally different experience when they've got those things buttoned up. So I do think it's, it's really helpful to think in terms of hey, am I prepared to exit this at some point? And that'd be great to have regardless of, of what happens down the road.

Yeah, one of. And I'm sure you referenced this on the podcast before, one of my favorite books is is Built to Sell and initially when a friend of mine, John, he runs a website design agency, they focus only on a specific type of, of CMS build tool and, and we Used to have a mastermind. And when we'd meet in our mastermind, we always had a bet with the other group members of. Of how many times he would mention the book in every single mastermind. So I finally listened to it. Cause I don't. The books that are fables, I struggle to read them. Cause I can't underline and take notes. But if they're fables, I'll listen to them on Audible. So I listened to the book twice, and every single time, I come back to that part in the book where he says, I'm ready to give up. I'm done. This must have some sort of value. And he goes to his friend, and his friend says, it really doesn't. And that's, I think, you know, trying to look ahead and learn from other people's mistakes. Of you think. You think you have so what? Equity worth something, but it's only worth it to you.

Yeah.

So what am I building that's worth something to somebody else? And that does reframe your thinking quite a bit.

That's such a good point. Yeah. Your level of sacrifice has nothing to do with the value of the business.

Exactly.

It feels like, no, I've put so much into it. And it's like that. That has. No, that doesn't mean anything to somebody buying the business, what you put into it. What matters is, like, what's the state of the business today? And. And where are you. Are there any other books that. That have been really influential in your entrepreneurial career?

Yeah. As far as the shift from selling. Well, I. I would say the shift in realizing that we are, again, a services business. One book that I just. I recommend to every agency owner, any professional services owner, is how to win client business when you don't know what you're doing. And that's. I think it's Doug Fletcher. I think that's his name. I. I looked him up on LinkedIn and shot him a note. Cause I was like, this has been so impactful. And I listened to it and then I read it. And he has another one called the Trusted Advisor. And I think so much of. Of understanding how people buy professional services is so important, because it's not. Yes, we're getting leads from YouTube, but they are going there to learn something. And they're developing a relationship with us on that YouTube channel because our faces are there, our personalities are there. People will ask us, do you follow a script? And we're like, not. No, not really. Like, if you watch them, you'll see that we screw up. And it's. It's real and genuine. And I think that those. Like that book alone has. Has changed a lot of my perspective on how we look at things like trust. Factors like awards don't matter to me, but they hold a little bit of prestige in the client's mind. You know, the onboarding process to us may be like, oh, it's buttoned up. But then the client's like, I haven't heard from you in two days. And to them, that was forever.

Right.

So that book was helpful. And then anything that talks about the customer experience and ideas and psychological stuff. So, like thinking fast and slow the way people perceive and price value. Like, I've learned a lot about. About that from you all and creating consistent expectations. So anything around that would be highly recommended.

Yeah, those are all really good. Thinking Fast and Slow is a really good book. But I feel like some of those books and that one sticks out to me in the same realm, like, a little bit dense. The first, like, trying to get.

Oh, my gosh. Well, it's like, it's like on video, I'm showing this giant. It's huge.

Right.

I'm a big fan of. I am. Well, I'm very frugal. Let's not use the word cheap. I'm smart with my money. Let's say that.

Right. There we go.

But I use the library app to read a lot of books that I know. Like if I sometimes read them there or look at them enough to know if I want to buy it. Right.

Yep.

And the library app often has these pretty terrible reviews of business books. And so I bought. I. Or I checked out the one that was like. I think it was like Rockefeller habits. And it was great because you just got the habits. You didn't get all this superfluous other stuff.

Right.

Thinking Fast and Slow has a couple of those that I would recommend maybe reading instead.

Yeah, yeah, that's great. Psycho Cybernetics is kind of like along the same. Some of the same lines.

Yeah. Like, same thing with like, I. I love any of the psychological perspective from, like, Heberman Labs on how to make myself more effective, but, man, I don't have 60 minutes to talk about a bunch of stuff. Tell me the three things I should do every morning and like, let me go.

We need the hacks channel for that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's awesome. I ask everybody this question. What's your number one tip for other agency operators?

My number one tip for other agency owners would be decide what type of leader you're going to be. And understand what that means for your team. And the reason I say that is I think when you, especially if you don't come into agency ownership necessarily as like I went to school for leadership and entrepreneurship and all those things, you come, you know, like the E myth, I guess, is another one. You come as a technician. You come with this understanding that everybody knows your skills and as much as you do. And really when you realize there's different types of leaders, there's technical leaders, there's more charismatic leaders, there's going to be people who have a lot of capital so they're able to use a network. For myself, I realize that I am a very idea and people driven person and what that means for my team is sometimes I overwhelm them and I need to understand how to ideate without spoiling the rhythm of our company. So I've been privy to that thanks to some insights from my business partner and a coach. But figure out what kind of leader you're going to be and then make sure you're getting coaching or insight or some sort of assistance to help you become that person.

Yeah, I think that's also. So let me say that back to you though. I think you said decide what type of leader you want to be and then you name some different types of leaders and told us what type of leader you think you are. Kind of naturally, is that in line, like, is what you described in line with who you want to be? Or what type of like, do you have a clear picture in your mind of here's the leader I want to be?

Yeah, well, the leader I want to be makes other people feel really good about learning new things and makes them believe they can do anything. Makes them wake up and realize that the world is exciting despite the amount of obstacles that are in their path. I think the leader that I am sometimes assumes that to be true and does not acknowledge the fear and the anxiety that we all deal with. So I'm now, I think, realizing what that journey looks like to go from where I am to where I want to be and realizing that, you know, you're probably never going to get there because you're always regressing to how you're typically wired. But you know that that comes day at a time.

Yeah, that makes sense. Going back to conversation with Carl Sikas, which is recently on the, on the podcast here, he said it was talking about leadership as well and going through a leadership just awareness and improvement exercise. And one of the, one of the parts of that was getting 360 degree feedback from the team and then having this construct presented to him of like, there are a couple different axes and one is competence. So the competent leader is extremely good at getting projects done on time and to scope and in budget and all that kind of stuff. And then there's this dimension called warmth that's like how you make other people feel as you move through that. And so the feedback that he took was like extremely competent but not very enjoyable for everybody else along with it. This is quite a while ago. And so that was an opportunity he embraced to then figure out, oh, how do I make this fun for people as we're going through it? Or rewarding, engaging for them as they're going through it. And when he said that, I was like, oh man, that's me. Like, I'm very much like, hey, let's go get this done and let's. I'm very driven and that's not a bad thing at all. But the other side of that is, hey, what's the experience for everyone else? Can we create a good experience where people relate? And so you mentioning, you know, being people oriented and the experience that they're having coming from that I can definitely relate to. Relate to, like working on that area as a leader.

Yeah. We just did the working genius assessment with the team and this is where some of those insights came from. Seeing that for them, they talk about going from this, this left side being wonder all the way over to tenacity. So you have wonder, you have invention, discernment, galvanizing, enablement, and then tenacity. And so your team building people kind of live in the middle of that. The, like taskmasters love on the end of that. And then the ones that are like, let's try things differently, live on the way far left. And so you do need a healthy team to have all those qualities. But if you don't understand that about other people, like my husband is a hundred percent a tenacity person. When he knows what's expected of him, when he doesn't know what's expected of him, he's like, what am I supposed to be doing something? What are you talking about? I don't have a list. So that's like, it's great to know that and be able to lean into that and not just assume someone's not like you. Right?

Yeah, right, right. That's awesome. Well, this has been great, Allie, thanks for making time to come on and share with us today. Give us a couple of the best places for folks to follow connect. Check out HubSpot, Hacks where should we. Where should we point people?

Sure, yeah. If you Happen to use HubSpot or looking at that, the HubSpot hacks channel on YouTube for us is one of the best places to go. We have about 130 videos there. You can just go YouTube.com forward/HubSpot hacks, and you'll find us if you Visit our website, Simplestrat.com We've got resources there. We've got links to videos, we've got lots and lots of blogs, like why your HubSpot's broken, how to fix it. We've got, like, how to do reporting correctly. So definitely check that out. And then I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, if you follow me there. I tend to put out quite a bit of content as well.

That's awesome. All thanks for coming on Agency Journey today. This has been great.

Yeah, thanks for the invite.