A short interview excerpt with agency founder Ben Gerster about the habits that drove his agency success. Ben credits courage to try new things, rapid iteration based on data, and a willingness to 'break things' early; he also emphasizes building strong leaders and processes so he can work on the business rather than in it.
All right, guys, what's up? I'm here with Ben Gerster. Ben is extremely successful agency owner, exited his agency. What's the number one thing that helped you to become successful in the early days when you first started your company? I think the willingness to be courageous and try new things and just constantly iterate on what was working and what wasn't working, and not just getting stuck in my head, like, I think that's the biggest thing, is just to move fast, be willing to break things, and just keep iterating on what is working for me. That's been the game, what I've done. You know, you snapshot my business every two or three years. It looks different than it did two or three years ago. And that's because I'm not willing to stay stuck and stubborn on what I'm building or what I'm doing. I'm always looking at the data and just modifying it where the opportunity is. How do you make sure that you're doing all the things that you need working on your business instead of in your business? Well, I think the key to working on a business and not in a business is going to actually be the people you put around you, the process and the people that you put around you, specifically your leaders in the business. Because you can't. If you don't get that layer below you established, then everything is still rolling up to you, and it's gonna take all your time, and you're gonna get stuck in fire after fire. So for me, the biggest thing that I did that really helped me work on the business was I got a couple really strong, talented people that I could have underneath me that are running the business, that are actually serving our clients that know their stuff, and that I really invested a lot of time in to train up. That has really given me that full opportunity to sit above the business, really observe what's working, know the marketplace, new decisions, and truly be a visionary and not just part of the fulfillment team.
