EP339: The Marketing Connector: Finding the Right Agency

This is the High Voltage Business Builders Podcast, daily intelligence for serious e-commerce portfolio builders across Amazon, TikTok Shop, Shopify, Walmart, and every channel that moves the needle. Neil Twa and his Voltage team, all day, every day since 2012. Let's get into it. I done anything weird in school?

Yeah. Oh, I don't know. I was just coming up with something weird, you know, get people's attention from the very beginning.

That I've gone, that I've visited 55 European cities. I don't know. Is that—

55? Well, is your favorite food, do you like eat sardines? I mean, is something like unnormal about you? Do you like, you know, you don't like chocolate cake or you hate popcorn? You know, something weird.

Give me a second, man. I'm sure you've never asked me this question before. What is weird about me? Yeah.

What is weird about you? I should make that the first question on every podcast. What is weird about you, sir? Yeah.

Uh, what is weird about me, bro?

Oh, you're Canadian. There it is. I just figured it out. You're Canadian. Say, hey, no, I just offended everybody who's Canadian on my podcast.

There you go.

That's the hook we needed. That gets their attention. What? You stupid American.

He's a Canadian.

All right. Okay, so you do put mayonnaise on your fries and that, you know, malt vinegar on stuff. So that's That's not—

yeah, that's not what I do. I do a lot.

I'm pretty—

now I'm starting to realize I'm like, I'm pretty normal as a human other than just doing too many things at once.

You're a moderate American Canadian.

Am I what?

You're a moderate American Canadian.

I'm a moderate American Canadian.

Yeah, whatever. You are in Vancouver, so you're just a northerly cousin to our Portland city.

Yeah, we're just friends.

We're just friends. Yeah, just across the border.

Yeah, exactly.

Just right up the river.

I don't got anything weird for you, man.

I don't.

Oh, dude, we'll figure it out. We'll keep talking. There'll be something in there like you want to talk about.

We found it. We found it. We should have started with that.

Yeah, you know, covered ants in chocolate or something. I know it's something weird, but you travel a lot. I do. Why? Do you like to travel?

Uh, no.

So there's something weird. I'd love to travel. I hate to travel, but I do it anyway.

I travel a lot, but I don't like doing it that much, especially when it's like for business. I like traveling with my wife. Like, that's what I like doing.

Oh, do I recognize that. When I left IBM in 2007, I had traveled close to 250 days that last year.

And I'm like, that's crazy.

No thanks. 2, 3 cities a week. That was hard.

I'm one of the business owners that don't care, doesn't care about scale.

I don't care about scale.

That's crazy.

That's totally anti-American, dude. No wonder everybody's like, we need more scale.

Yeah, everyone's like, this business doesn't scale, I must change my model. I'm like, I don't care if my business is not scaling. It's a— I mean, it's scalable, but I don't want to.

What does that mean? Like, is it because of life, family? Is it travel?

You're already traveling enough, man. Balancing life. You start running, uh, the more and more you start growing your business, the more and more you got to deal with shit. And that's just not—

This is absolutely true. I recognize that. Turned down some opportunities in the past so that I didn't have to do that, including What we call firing the man, or, you know, burning the boats and walking away from my corporate career because I was done with that crap.

Yeah.

And, you know, you've traveled a lot more than I have since then. I think I've traveled maybe like 5 times on an airplane since then in 18 years. I don't— you know, airplanes, well, they're like buses. They're like, you know, they became like, you know what I'm saying? Like, especially in the last, you know, 10 years or so, it's just like everybody's got to go. They're all hyped up. Airports are turning a little crazy. I don't, I don't know. You can just tell the people who are really stressed and You know, not feeling their blessings. They're too stressed to be blessed, and they're like out there just crazing and raging with their families on trips and stuff. And you get caught up in the middle of it at airports, and everybody's just so like— and I'm like, yeah, I don't really want to be around all that all the time, you know?

That's super fair.

Yeah, luckily I don't have to travel for my business.

Yeah, you're lucky.

Well, I just created the business I didn't want to travel for, man. Isn't that what we're here to talk about? Creating the businesses?

That's the plan. Okay, so Yeah, so I'm— my actual goal in 2027 is not to travel as much.

There you go. That's a good plan. Yeah, so get it all out of your system this year.

That's the plan. Legit in the docket. It's already started.

Well, you're not traveling for fun as much as business. What— where is the business taking you out so much?

Um, because it's just different masterminds and different groups that people invite me to. And yeah, you're just like, these are good opportunities to go to meet certain people. Um, That's essentially it.

And business development then? Networking?

That's basically it.

Is that where you're getting more of your clients?

That's, that's what I do.

Okay. So it's a, it's a different way of, you know, client acquisition, I guess.

Exactly.

Okay. Yeah. Well, there's ways to do that without it too, of course, as I'm sure you know. I decided to just write off all of those myself. I don't really go to them anymore.

Yeah, that's the plan for 2026 is to build the system so that you don't have to travel as much and then you just keep touch with your current network, right?

Yeah. Well, I mean, you're a connector, right? So part of getting into that personal aspect is many times getting in a relationship-driven aspect, which is in person ultimately for a lot of deals. I've done a lot of deals that were never done in person. In fact, I met my partner at our, for the first time, 3 years into our business together at a conference that we held and we met on stage for the first time.

Wow.

So it's doable.

It's very— I mean, I've made some— I have some best friends that I never met in person until 3 or 4 years after. Yeah, like, you know what I mean?

Like, no, I get it, dude.

Or, hey, do you want to come to, uh, Las Vegas for, uh, this random conference? Yeah, sure, we're down just to hang out.

Like, yeah, it's very possible. Happened. Yeah, I usually do when I want to take the family with me versus just going it alone, unless it's gonna be like a 2-day thing or it's gonna be in and out kind of thing.

I love when I travel with my wife. Like, that's my favorite part.

So that's awesome.

She took me, we went to China and Korea last year and she came on the trip and I presented in China, which is cool. But having her there and experience and having those experiences are so much more fun.

Well, see, that's what's weird about you. I just figured it out. Who likes to travel with their wife? I've never, nobody ever says that.

I love traveling with my wife. She's the one that loves to travel. So like, she loves to travel and have adventure. I'm the engineer that likes to be stable. And then that's where it comes into play.

You guys have been married for how long?

Uh, we've been married 7 years, but together for 15.

So the new smell has sort of worn off and now you're sort of into it.

Uh, I mean, honestly, I keep loving her more and more, dude. Like, it's like we're 15 years in, uh, and I love her more now than I did before. And we're still like very close. Like, yeah, that's probably because we don't have kids.

I was gonna say, are you one of those dinks? No. Somebody came up with that. I heard one the other day, self-proclaimed, not me, on another podcast. He called himself a dickwad and I was like, what? Timeout. What did you just say? He says, yeah, we're dual income, no kids with a dog.

That's funny.

I hadn't heard that one before. That was a new one for me.

That isn't— that's the first time I heard it.

Yeah, that was first for me too. And I told my wife and she's like, don't say that anymore. I was like, okay.

You have to get— that's why their wives are there.

Don't say that anymore. Yeah, no, I actually do like hanging out with my wife and my kids and I like traveling with them and I enjoy their company and, you know, I've been with my wife for almost 20 years. We've been married for— shoot, we'll be 19 years in March. So, you know, I like— I feel like I'm one of the oddities a lot of times, you know?

You know? Yeah. But it comes down to just having good communication and understanding how each one has to grow. Like, we understand that. Like, you've been in a relationship for a long time, right?

Oh, we're jamming. We're best friends. So where are we going to meet? Vegas for drinks? Is that where we're going?

Vegas might— I don't like Vegas that much. Can we choose somewhere else?

Well, you said it. I was gonna like, I don't like Vegas. I don't wanna go to Vegas. I just went there just to shower and burn all my clothes and, you know, all the normal.

No, on my list is, uh, on my list is Chicago. Uh, is there anywhere else I wanna go in the States that I haven't visited yet?

Chicago? It's cold there, man.

But they have good food apparently.

Someone told me. Well, they do have some of the best deep dish pizza if that's what you're going after.

I mean, I'm there for food. I, I travel for food. So that's—

You travel for food and match— there's your matchmaking, right?

Yeah, travel for free. Like, I'll spend like 3 hours to try to find the place to go eat when we're traveling. So like, my wife will travel, plan all the rest of the stuff, I will find the food places.

Okay, so then you need to go to Trinidad and Tobago, and there's a little— in the little island corner down there, just past where the airport is, there's this really great sandy beach down there, and they have shark bake.

Shark what?

Shark bake. They, they have these stands where they make the food, like the food trucks, if you will.

Okay.

And then it's fresh shark from that day, and they cut part of it off and they grill it up, and then they have this amazing sauce and stuff that's on top of it, and it's called a shark bake, and you eat it right there on the beach. It's amazing.

Note taken. So I'll reach out to you when I go to Trinidad and Tobago to remember where to go eat this shark bake.

It's such a great little place. Yeah, well, at least it was before Venezuela. I don't know if it is anymore. Um, I haven't been down there a long time because there's a lot of crap going on that side. Um, but I don't suppose business takes you down that far south at the No, no. But you're in the matchmaking space. You're a connector. You're out making deals happen, right? You're the guy that brings the buyer and seller together and gets them to fall in love.

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Go make babies.

Yeah, go make babies that make money.

Baby bunnies.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

How'd you get into this, man? How'd you become this, uh, this virtual business matchmaker?

Uh, well, I started out as an engineer, uh, out of all things. I was not even into marketing. So a lot of my, uh, engineering work was working with mid-sized businesses, 50 to 1,000 type employer range. So that's where I got to learn about like the business side of the world, learning from CEOs and their teams and making connections on how to build the right roadmap, like technology roadmap. And so a lot of my business consulting, sales leadership, and technology experience came from that. On the marketing side, the matchmaking side, I was building out websites, Google Ads, SEO initially. Got to a point where I hated doing 80-hour websites on the weekend. I was like, I don't need to do this. I get paid very well. I mean, you work full-time at some point too. So when you make a 6-figure salary and you do a good job, it's fine. But as I was working in the marketing space, I started realizing, oh, I started passing work off to marketing agencies instead of doing it myself and realizing most marketing agencies didn't understand business and most businesses didn't understand marketing. So there's always this gap in the middle and every business would be talking to marketing agencies, not speaking the same language. I've come down to about like 93% of marketing agencies are just kind of good, which means they don't really do anything. And then 7% are good at 1 to 3 things, especially when they're matched well. And so to date, I've talked to over 1,126 different marketing agencies and experts, and I work with about 11% in a vetted network. And all I do is the matchmaking work because I'm just really good at connecting with people and people together.

Any specific types of connections you love to make?

I like the connections when you have a business owner that understands how marketing works, right? That has a good understanding of like, hey, this does take time. There's different channels. I have a marketing strategy, but I need the right people in place. And then when you have the agency that's like, I'm really good at X and I'm really good at this, when you make that match and people like working with each other and they work with each other for like 4+ years, those are the ones that feel the best because you just did a really good job of connecting them.

Yeah. Okay. And do you just, there's a commission fee or something? I mean, how do you make your money? Like how does this work for you?

Yeah, so I get paid referral fees from marketing agencies. It's essentially the same fees that they would be paying their sales teams.

Got it.

So I take advantage of that. And then businesses do pay me an engagement fee. So usually I'll jump on a call, discovery call, understand what a business needs. And then from there I charge $1,500 to do the matchmaking. And then if they end up hiring someone, I have a small success finder fee and that's essentially it.

Okay.

I just make the connections.

Awesome. So you're kind of a marketer affiliate matchmaker, not to deride, I'm trying to put this together in my own words. So if it doesn't sound right, please correct my language.

I've heard things like marketing broker. People have called me the Zapier for marketing agencies.

The Zapier. Yes, I am a connector. Yeah, that's fun. How'd you get into this?

Like I said, man, when I was building out the websites and stuff, like I didn't really enjoy doing it. And the long story was like when I was working with a marketing agency, they were really good at websites, but they weren't good at Google Ads or SEO. And so my brain went, okay, can I find an agency that's good at all of them? And as I started meeting other agencies, I was like, oh, this agency's only really good at video creative and doing commercials. They're not good at the other stuff. And as I got to about 400 to 500 marketing agencies and realizing, Oh, maybe the type of agency I'm looking for doesn't actually exist, like a full-service marketing agency.

Yeah.

Maybe it's the process of piecing people together based on what people need and when they need it. And that's essentially kind of how I got into it. And more and more people kept referring me, my own customers and things like that. And so it just kind of started growing. It was like, you need a marketing thing, you need website, paid ads, SEO, go talk to B. He has a whole list and Rolodex of people. He'll matchmake you and then kind of go from there.

Yeah, that is cool. And it sounds like it meets your personality type as well as your drive. Yeah.

Yeah. Everything I like doing is around connection. So, uh, I'm starting to realize like every little side thing that I do, every business that I do, um, it's all around like just one, learning how to connect with people. But then my brain works in a way where it's like, oh, you're saying this, this connects with this other thing. You, you two should probably talk. Or have you thought about that? Um, probably tied to why I became an engineer too.

Yeah. Do you still geek out in the engineering backend? Is that still part of what you do?

And not as much anymore. No. It's more just like the mindset of like problem solving. You'll start noticing like when you talk to a lot of engineers, like they actually end up outside of engineering, project management, or they start working in different areas. All engineering really teaches you to do is to be really good at problem solving. 'Cause that's just the way our brains work and the way we were trained. Yeah.

Yeah. You're linear thinkers in many ways. It's tough to see somebody expand that thinking process when they've been kind of trained and it's kind of who they are, maybe profile a little bit. It's hard to break out of that kind of segment. And you seem to be a hybrid of the person, the business, and the engineering, which is fun.

It's a lot of fun, which is why I became a sales engineer because I was like, oh, I can talk to people, understand what they need, and then bridge together the technical stuff without needing to know the technical stuff at a 10 out of 10 level. That's cool. I could be the bridge. It's really fun. It's where I get excited.

Do you help strategize with any of the clients that are looking for the type of agency? Do you strategize on the marketing plan and then kind of help them figure out exactly which agency to fit in? Is that part of the consult?

Yeah. So a lot of what I'll do is when I'm talking on a discovery call, I'm understanding the business side. So understanding everything that they have, so what their goals are, where they're at today, where they want to head, what kind of resources they have, where they failed before, what they tried to hire for, all that stuff. Based on that, I'll have a really high-level thing where I'm like, okay, it looks like you don't just need execution, you actually need strategy. And to do strategy on one call is impossible.

Yeah.

A lot of what I do is I get fractional CMOs to kind of come in and I go, look, I think the first piece of this is building out a proper marketing strategy based on where you're at. Once you have that marketing strategy, then we can go and execute on which channel makes the most sense. And so I'll input a fractional CMO, they'll work with a business sometimes for 3 to 6 months to build out the strategy and get things organized and in position. And then I feed them the partners that they need to kind of move forward. forward, whether that's like, oh, we have to reposition our branding because we actually don't even know what we're trying to say to people, right? And then once you do that, then it's a website piece. So you're kind of like sitting there along the roadmap of like, as they're building their marketing strategy and the next pieces of execution, I start placing in the partners. Because if I started doing a lot of the marketing strategy stuff, I'd only be able to take on 2 to 4 customers and that just doesn't work.

Yeah.

Because FCMOs max out, right? Like max 2 customers that are full-time, right?

Makes sense. So do you do anything in the middle of that marketing to help find your clients and stuff? Do you do any of the SEO stuff anymore or marketing stuff for yourself?

Yeah, so my team does all my own marketing. So I have a team of 7. And a lot of my marketing is around like content, email marketing, like newsletter type stuff, getting people into my environment, running different events for like people in my business network or my marketing network, and just staying top of mind for a lot of people. I've done some SEO stuff before. I'm competing against some pretty heavy hitters in that area. So I was like, maybe I won't keep spending money in the SEO area, but I have tried a lot of channels myself and always trying new ones, right? So the next kind of like 2 pieces that we're gonna be doing for CJAM is one, working out on the cold email front, but trying to find if we can take more of a human connection approach to it rather than just like a volume of calls. And then 2 would be on the paid ads front, like the Google Ads front, long-tail keywords, that kind of stuff.

That is awesome. Well, what website should they go check you out, or social media, Instagram, LinkedIn? Where do you like to hang out?

Uh, the 2 best places is on my website, so www.cjammarketing.com, um, or you can find me on LinkedIn under Beta Jamshidi. Uh, I post quite often there as well.

Well, cool, man. Thank you for coming on and sharing a good word. I appreciate it. Anything else I didn't ask you that you wanted to cover that we didn't like jam on yet? Your favorite other food or something?

Favorite other food? A lot of my foods are— our favorite foods are Persian, uh, but if you're Persian, okay. Hit up some kebab and you'll have a good time.

That's awesome, man. Appreciate you coming on. Thanks for being a business builder and for spending some time with me today just jamming out.

Thanks, Neil. It's great to be.

All right, guys. Like, comment, share, engage as always. Subscribe. Leave snide remarks. Tell us your favorite food in the comments. That'd be awesome too. And always remember that your opportunity begins at the end of your excuses. Do something imperfectly and something perfect will happen along the way. Catch you guys on the next episode.

Today, we talked with Baydad Jamshidi about finding the right agency for your business. Baidad shared how important it is to connect with the right people and build relationships that matter. He emphasized the value of networking and how it can open doors to new opportunities. It's all about being a connector and making those key partnerships work for you. If you're tired of all the noise in e-commerce, I have something for you. Get the 5 updates that really matter with the Voltage E-commerce Brief. It's free and comes straight to your inbox every Tuesday and Friday. Find out what changed and what to do next. Sign up at voltage dm dot com slash newsletter. We will see you back here tomorrow. Until then, stay high voltage.